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The '' ("great commentary"), attributed to Patañjali, is a commentary on selected rules of Sanskrit grammar from Panini's treatise, the Ashtadhyayi, as well as Kātyāyana's ''Varttika'', an elaboration of Panini's grammar.^[1] It is dated to the second century B.C.
Patañjali is one of the three most famous Sanskrit grammarians of ancient India, other two being and Kātyayana who preceded Patañjali (dated to ca. 150 BC). Kātyayana's work (nearly 1500 vārtikas on ) is available only through references in Patañjali's work.
It was with Patañjali that Indian linguistic science reached its definite form. The system thus established is extremely detailed as to shiksha (phonology, including accent) and vyakarana (grammar and morphology). Syntax is scarcely touched, because synax is not important in this highly inflexional language),, but nirukta (etymology) is discussed, and these etymologies naturally lead to semantic explanations. People interpret his work to be a defense of , whose Sutras are elaborated meaningfully. Patañjali also examines Kātyāyana rather severely. But the main contributions of Patañjali lies in the treatment of the principles of grammar enunciated by him.
Kātyayana introduced semantic discourse into grammar, which was further elaborated by Patañjali to such an extent that can be called a mix of grammar as such as well as a ''philosophy'' of grammar. ''Kāśika-vritti'' by Jayāditya and Vāmana (mentioned by Itsing) included viewpoints of other grammarians also which did nor conform to Patañjali's views. Many commentaries on were written, of which 's commentary named ''Pradīpa'' (ca. 11th century AD) is most celebrated.
After , interest in the study of Sanskrit grammar according to traditional an sequence of sūtras started declining, and a new simplified system gained gound which was started by Buddhist scholar Dharmakirti through his commentary on named ''Rūpāvatāra'' , which excluded Vedic sūtras of in which Dharmakīrti had no interest and dealt with only 2664 sutras.
James R. Ballantyne (1813-1864) published the first part of the of Patañjali in 1856, for the first time opening native Indian grammatical tradition to a wider European scholarly audience.

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References

Further reading

★ The of Patañjali with annotation (Ahnikas I – IV), Translated by Surendranath Dasgupta, Published by Indian Council of Philosophical Research

★ of Patañjali (Śrīmadbhagavat-patañjali-muni- Prakāśana, 1987-1988. ,OCLC: 20995237

★ Bronkhorst, Johannes, 1992. Panini's View of Meaning and its Western Counterpart. In, Maxim Stamenov (ed.) Current Advances in Semantic Theory. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. (455-64)

★ Scharfe, Helmut, 1977. Grammatical Literature. Vol. V, Fasc. 2, History of Indian Literature, (ed.) Jan Gonda. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

★ Staal, J.F. (ed.), 1985. A Reader on Sanskrit Grammarians. Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass.