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Podcast: New Books in Indian Religions
Episode: Rishi Rajpopat, "Panini's Perfect Rule: A Modern Solution to an Ancient Problem in Sanskrit Grammar" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Description: Around 500 BCE, the Indian scholar PÄį¹ini wrote a treatise on Sanskrit, theĀ Aį¹£į¹ÄdhyÄyÄ«,Ā describing a kind of language machine: an algebraic system of rules for producing grammatically correct word forms. The enormity and elegance of that accomplishmentāand the underlying computational methodologyācemented PÄį¹iniās place as a founder of linguistics. Even so, centuries of commentators have insisted that there are glitches in the machineās ability to tackle rule conflict (that is, a situation in which two or more rules are simultaneously applicable) and have responded with complex rules and tools aimed at resolving the issues apparently b...