The discovery makes it possible to translate any word written in Sanskrit.
© Cambridge University LibraryA page from an 18th-century copy of Dhātupāṭha by Pāṇini from the Cambridge University Library.
A PhD student studying at the University of Cambridge has solved a puzzle that has stumped scholars since the fifth century BCE. Rishi Rajpopat decoded a rule taught by Pāṇini,
an Indian grammarian who is believed to have lived in present-day northwest Pakistan and southeast Afghanistan. Scholars have referred to him as one of the fathers of linguistics.
Sanskrit is an ancient an classical Indo-European language from South Asia and the sacred and literary language of Hinduism. It is also how much of India's greatest science, philosophy, poetry, and other secular literature has been written. It is spoken in the country by
roughly 25,000 people today.
"Some of the most ancient wisdom of India has been produced in Sanskrit, and we still don't fully understand what our ancestors achieved, said Rajpopat, who first learned Sanskrit as a high school student and is now at the University of St. Andrews,
in a statement. "We've often been led to believe that we're not important, that we haven't brought enough to the table. I hope this discovery will infuse students in India with confidence, pride, and hope that they too can achieve great things."
With Rajpopat's discovery, scholars can now construct millions of grammatically correct words in Sanskrit. The findings were
published as Rajpopat's PhD thesis in 2021.
Rajpopat decoded a 2,500-year-old algorithm that can accurately use Pāṇini's "language machine" for the first time. Pāṇini's system consists of 4,000 rules and is detailed in the
Aṣṭādhyāyī. Considered his greatest work,
Aṣṭādhyāyī is believed to have been written around 500 BCE. It is meant to work like a machine, where the base and suffix of a word are fed in and a step-by-step process should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences.
"Pāṇini had an extraordinary mind, and he built a machine unrivaled in human history,"
said Rajpopat. "He didn't expect us to add new ideas to his rules. The more we fiddle with Pāṇini's grammar, the more it eludes us."
Often, two or more of Pāṇini's rules can be applied at the same time and step in the process, which has left scholars agonizing over which rule or step to choose.
An algorithm is needed to solve this rules conflict, which affects millions of Sanskrit words, including certain forms of the commonly used "mantra" and "guru." Pāṇini had a metarule to help the user decide which rule should be applied if a rule conflict occurred, but it has been misinterpreted by scholars for the last 2,500 years.
Traditionally, Pāṇini's metarule has been interpreted as: in the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar's serial order wins. However, Rajpopat argues that Pāṇini meant that between rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word respectively, Pāṇini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side.
"I had a eureka moment in Cambridge. After nine months trying to crack this problem, I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere. So I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer, swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating,"
said Rajpopat. "Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and, within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense. There was a lot more work to do but I'd found the biggest part of the puzzle."
By using this interpretation that Pāṇini expected the rule applicable to the right side to be chosen, Rajpopat found the ancient scholar's language machine produced grammatically correct words consistently and with almost no exceptions.
Over the next two-and-a-half years, he worked to solve problems in what he had found and presented. In addition to understanding more Sanskrit texts, the algorithm that runs Pāṇini's grammar can potentially be taught to computers.
"Computer scientists working on
Natural Language Processing gave up on rule-based approaches over 50 years ago,"
said Rajpopat. "So teaching computers how to combine the speaker's intention with Pāṇini's rule-based grammar to produce human speech would be a major milestone in the history of human interaction with machines, as well as in India's intellectual history."
Reader Comments
Indo-european my arse, europeans (and I am one) will never admit that the spirituality and culture, the civilization of the Indians was not only prior to their watered-down kindergarten version, it is far superior in that it speaks truth about what is permanent.
Gee, wouldn't it be nice if we could see the actual translation? duh.
As anubhavananda once said to a christian preaching christianity and "hell" for all non-believers (he later regretted the fact that he got emotional/angry) - "You are talking about a puddle while the Ocean exists".
scrutinizer not only did he set it aside , he went outside ... something we all need to do every now and then to clear our mental cobwebs.
We are all here trying to unravel the deliberately created Gordian knot of truth about all of our past. It’s a difficult & challenging quest for all involved when the status quo academia system puts up firewalls blocking the dissemination of knowledge. It’s hard to establish a baseline when you know the establishment & controlled academia lies & is trying to control past narratives.
There are several salient problems as I see it. All relating to competing hypothesis’s. We know the Silk Road et al trade routes & Seafaring trade routes were far more active regarding the ancient analog IoT. Where & how did the Vinca Culture get it’s knowledge - belief’s ? One would think that there was some sort of trade interaction at some level one would think in the Carpasian basin. But perhaps not. There are some similar Etruscan & Phoenician symbols that appear similar which would make sense either way.
There were several natural event chronicles. Younger Dryas, Santorini Caldera & Mt. Vesuvius eruption 79 AD. Younger Dryas Event (9-12,500 BCE) Santorini Cladera (1600 BCE). There may be even more events to still be discovered/uncovered. The Indo-Aryan migarations of those two periods seem to be what caused the major nomadic migrational changes in those AO’s. There location & magnitude evidenced by geological forensic evidence & Pliny the elder twistorical accounting. The Flood event which wiped out still untold massive swaths of land/people & the Minoan Santorini Caldera with wiped out Crete/Minoan culture.
We know some went East & some went West from that whole Indus Valley - Mohenjodaro-daro/Harappan civilizations (unbaked & baked brick - kiln fire bricks) construction). We can see the Vinca used the svastika symbol & a few other characters we readily recognize.
I’m still waiting for definitive Haplogroup genetic markers to help confirm who came from where. Seems like academia is clearly holding back this info for several reasons. Lots of unanswered questions that should be easy to wrap up this enigma but PTB aren’t helping or cooperating. Hmmmmm…
I suspect the lies are so badly intermingled to match a already fraudulent timeline it will take some more time to unravel who came from where & when.
Observations on the origin and demography of the Vinča culture [Link]
“The origins of the Vinča culture are debated. Before the advent of radiocarbon dating it was thought, on the basis of typological similarities, that Vinča and other Neolithic cultures belonging to the 'Dark Burnished Ware' complex were the product of migrations from Anatolia to the Balkans.”
Money well spent.