Indian Scholar At Cambridge Solves 2,500 Year Old Sanskrit Algorithm Problem In Panini’s Text

Ashtadhyayi, which consists of principles for deriving or forming new words from root words, frequently contains contradictory laws. An Indian scholar at Cambridge solved a 2,500-yr-old Sanskrit algorithm problem in Panini’s text.

A grammatical issue with the writings of the legendary Sanskrit scholar Paṇini has been resolved by Rishi Atul Rajpopat, a PhD scholar at the faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in St. John's College, Cambridge, reports ThePrint.

Paini's work Aṣṭādhyāyī, which consists of a collection of principles for deriving or forming new words from root words, frequently has conflicting rules for creating new words, leaving many scholars perplexed over which criteria to apply.

Many researchers were interested in resolving such contradictions in this linguistic algorithm of a book. Paṇini himself established a meta-rule to handle rule conflicts, which scholars have read as follows: In the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the r...

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