A different arrangement of Panini's Sutras was attempted by several grammarians of which Siddhantakaumudi of Bhattoji Diksita is very popular, in bringing together the relevant sutras on a particular topic. Laghukaumudi is a suitable abridgement on the same by Varadaraja introducing the beginner to the rudiments of the Sanskrit Language.
The present book is an English version of Laghukaumudi together with comments, references and index. One of the important objects of this version is to explain each term and each process, on its first occurrence, with the fullness of illustration. Yet when a word is given as an illustration under a rule and more rules are to be referred to in forming the word there is no to them whatsoever in the original. This edition such references so that the student should know the steps the root has taken before it has attained its present form. The book is a valuable to the study of Sanskrit Grammar.
JAMES R. BALLANTYNE (1813-1864) was a Scottish Orientalist, who was a superintendent of the Sanskrit College, Varanasi since 1845. He returned back to England in 1861 where he served as a librarian of the India Office.
Ballantyne published grammars of Sanskrit, Hindi and Marathi. Besides Laghukaumudi of Varadaraja 1842-52 he also published Mahabhasya of Patanjali in 1856, which opened for the first time native Indian grammatical tradition to a wider European scholarly audience.
THE grammatical compendium of which this is a translation is current among t g the pandits of the North-west provinces, and of most of the other provinces of India. The translation is one of a, series of attempts to encourage and facilitate the interchange of ideas between the pandits and the senior English students of the Government Colleges. How different the arrangement of a Sanskrit treatise on Grammar is from that of an English treatise on the subject, may be inferred from the facts stated in the subjoined extract from the preface to the Hindf version of the same com- pendium.
The groundwork of the grammatical literature of the Sanskrit is comprised in Pánini's eight Lectures, entitled "The Ashtadh- yází." Each of the lectures is divided into four sections, and each section into a number of sútras, or succinct aphorisms. On these Mr. Colebrooke remarks:-"The studied brevity of the Pánintya "sutras renders them in the highest degree obscure; even with "the knowledge of the key to their interpretation, the student "finds them ambiguous. In the application of them when under "stood, he discovers many seeming contradictions; and with every "exertion of practised memory, he must experience the utmost "difficulty in combining rules dispersed in apparent confusion. "through different portions of Págini's eight Lectures."
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