This was Boehtlingk's first publication which appeared in 1839-40 in two volumes. The first one contains Pariini's sutras accompanied by a German translation and notes and the second one contains the Dhatupatha and Ganapatha along with other useful indices.
Boehtlingk's was the first standard text and continued to be used until new editions with detailed exegetical explanations came into being. This edition of Panini was responsible for a revolution in linguistic thinking both in Indo-European linguistics as well as general linguistics, on which it had a great impact.
Otto von Boehtlingk, one of the greatest 19th century Indologists, is best known for the compilation of the monumental St. Petersburg Sanskrit dictionary.
He was born on 11.6. 1815 in St. Petersburg. Boehtlingk attended a German school in St. Petersburg and continued his university studies there. He later went to Bonn and Berlin where he studied with Bopp and Schlegel.
In 1842 Boehtlingk was appointed a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. In later years he was its honorary member.
In 1868 he went to Jena and later in 1885 he moved to Leipzig where he died on 1.4.1904.
Otto (von) Bohtlingk's Panini's Grammatik, reprinted here for the second time, but now by an Indian publisher, is in Europe, with its added German translation and various highly useful indices, considered the standard edition of the text. It is true that it "hardly serves to give a student insight into the way in which the rules apply and are related to each other" (CARDONA, Panini: A Survey of Research, The Hague - Paris 1976: 142) - and that in order to learn how the Astadhyayi works one has to consult either a teacher-specialist or turn e.g. to G. CARDONA'S Panini: His Work and its Traditions of which the second revised and enlarged edition of the first volume was published last year. But it is equally true that Bohtlingk's Panini's Grammatik not only "merits praise" "as a pioneer work" (CARDONA 1976: 143) -a very remarkable work indeed when one consideres that Bohtlingk was hardly 24 years old when he, in 1839 and 1840, published the first edition (Panini's acht Bucher grammatischer Regeln) in two volumes in Bonn, and that in preparing the edition he was neither assisted, let alone guided, by an Indian pandita nor had easy access to a great number of relevant research tools -, but that his version of Panini's grammar, although quite understandably not entirely free of mistakes, is still a very convenient and amazingly reliable work of reference. It should not be absent from the library of any student or scholar of Indology, general linguistics or Indo-European studies.
What is reprinted here is, of course, the second edition of 1887 which is not just revised, but differs so much from the first one that it could equally be called another work: Bohtlingk had learnt from his critics, and had, above all, further pursued his aim of understanding Panini's sutras as such and of presenting his own understanding. In my view, his decision to not address too many problems at once and to confine himself to the most urgent and important tasks justifies applying to him Goethe's famous dictum "In der Beschrankung zeigt sich erst der Meister" ("It is in restraint that the Master first reveals himself'). Paninian studies have made tremendous progress since then, i.e. in the course of the 110 years that have passed, especially since the second world war, and it would indeed be very difficult today for anyone, Sumitra M. KATRE's attempt forming an exception, to follow Bohtlingk's example and to confine an edition and annotated translation of the Astadhyayi to just one volume. There can hence be no doubt that the present reprint meets an existing demand and will hopefully be welcomed by the academic community and perhaps by even the modern vaiyakaranas who were not able to acquire the costly 1964 reprint made by G. Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung in Hildesheim (Germany). A list of printing errors has been added to the reprint. It is largely based on the corrections given by Rosanne Rocher at the end of her review - of the reprint, mentioned just now - that was published in (the German linguistic journal) Kratylos X, Heft 1 (1965), pp. 67-70; some others were detected by myself.
Otto von Bohtlingk was born in - what is now again called - St. Petersburg on June 11th, 1815 and was brought up there. His family originally hailed from Lubeck and had moved from Holland to the famous city founded by Czar Peter the Great on the bank of the Neva. (Those were the happy days when the relations between Russia and Germany were friendly and civil, and there is hope that they will return.) In fact it was only late in his life that Bohtlingk took Russian citizenship, giving up his original Dutch. He studied at the University in Berlin, one of his professors being Franz Bopp, but soon went on to Bonn where he attended the classes of A.W. von Schlegel, and finally became a student of Ch. Lassen.
In 1855 he was appointed an Ordinary Member of the Russian Imperial Academy; eleven years later he was allowed to live in "a southern climate" and moved to Jena (in Germany) where he met Delbruck and Cappeller, and, in 1885, to Leipzig where he resided until his death on April 1st, 1904. Indian philology is indebted to Bohtlingk for many ground-breaking fundamental works in several fields of studies, for his editions of texts, partly accompanied by translations, such as those of the Astadhyayi and of Vopadeva's Mugdhabodha, the Brhadaranyaka- and Chandogya-Upanisads, Hemacandra's Abhidhanacintamani, the Abhijnanasakuntala and the Mrcchakatika. Many students are still familiar with his Sanskrit Chrestomathie, which has served generations of students of Sanskrit as their first anthology of selected portions from original texts. His Indische Spruche, i.e. a collection of gnomic verses in 3 volumes (2nd edition) St. Petersburg, 1870-73, reprinted Osnabruck 1966), is still rightly held in high esteem as a treasure trove. But that Bohtlingk, his Panini's Grammatik aside, is still very much alive is mainly due to his Sanskrit-Worterbuch which he succeeded in compiling - together with R. von Roth and assisted by many of his other friends and colleagues - in the course of less than 30 years, and which was published in seven volumes between 1855 and 1875 by the Russian Imperial Academy (under whose auspices he was able to devote all his time to scholarly pursuits without being bound by other official duties like most of his colleagues in Germany). That he was able to complete this gigantic work - which is still not superseded - was not just due to a unique work mania, but rather to the rare capacity to organize work in an optimal manner and - again - to remain within certain reasonable limits. I am not sure whether he really deserves the Sanskrit anukarana of his name, viz. Bodhalinga, at least if this is taken a reference to "liberating insight"; yet his was quite evidently a brilliant buddhi, and he has put it to such wonderful use that even at the end of this century we cannot other than feel most grateful to him.
Otto Bohtlingk was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Indologists of the nineteenth century. He is best known for the Sanskrit-German dictionary he produced in collaboration with Rudolph von Roth, which appeared over the years 1852-1875; Prof. Roth was responsible for the Vedic literature and Bohtlingk for the classical literature. Bohtlingk contributed nearly 90% of the dictionary's material, although he was assisted in this venture by scholars like Whitney and Weber. A large number of quotations in the dictionary stem from the manuscripts. This dictionary remains a sine qua non for Indologists, Lexicologists and Lexicographists.
The present work was first published in 1839-40. The Astadhyayi of Panini is even today very hard to follow, and was in Bohtlingk's time an extremely challenging text.
Goldstucker (1861, Indian reprint 1965, p. 31)' refers to Bohtlingk's edition of the Astadhyayi as "his garbled and unauthorised reprint of the meritorious labour of the Calcutta editors of Panini". I quote a few more remarks of Goldstucker: "Prof. Muller must have had some misgivings like my own as to the critical acumen and accuracy of Dr. Bohtlingk's investigations" (p. 93); "In other words, to the mind of Dr. Bohtlingk the whole of ancient scientific literature of India presents a picture of a gigantic swindle and imbecility" (p. 96).
Such remarks are to be found throughout Goldstucker's book. Goldstucker criticizes almost every aspect of Bohtlingk's work and it appears as if he had some personal scores to settle with him. I must add that more often than not the criticism voiced by Goldstucker is not correct and intellectually totally unconvincing.
While I agree that there are many problems with the edition made by Bohtlingk, it was a pioneering work and it ought to have been evaluated in that spirit. As stated by Renou (1969:483) Bohtlingk's edition of the Astadhyayi of 1887 (second edition, Leipzig) was considered the standard edition in Europe "despite certain deficiencies in the manner in which the saran are given or the native gloss is rendered".
Cardona (1976:145) remarks that Bohtlingk's translation "hardly serves to give a student insight into the way in which the rules apply and are related to each other. It fails to give anywhere near the cross-referencing necessary to show this. For example, Bohtlingk translates rule 7.2.115 Vrddhi wird auch fur den Endvokal eines Stammes substituirt vor einem Suffix mit stummen n oder No reference is given to any other rule. Yet a good number of rules has to be considered in order to interpret this one rule correctly. "I do agree with Cardona that in order to interpret rule 7.2.115, we need to refer to rules 1.1.52, 1.1.71, 1.1.69, 1.4.13, 6.4.1, 1.1.72, 1.1.49, 1.1.50 and 1.1.66; and in addition to these rules there are even more rules required for the interpretation of the above rule, for instance 1.1.3, 6.1.78, 6.2.144, 6.1.159, 7.4.59 etc. Yet in spite of this and other limitations to the translation, Bohtlingk must be duly credited with providing the first standard text which, together with his indices, etc., has contributed greatly to the study of the Indian grammatical tradition.
One can only agree with Delbruck's statement (1904-1905, p. 131): Panini’s acht Bucher grammatischer Regeln verstehen ist auch jetzt noch trotz aller Hilfsmittel keine leichte Sache und war damals ausserordentlich schwer... Es war deshalb ein ausserordentliches Verdienst, dass Bohtlingk den Text neu abdruckte, Indices, Erklarungen der Kunstausdrucke und einen fortlaufenden Kommentar hinzufugte, so dass es demjenigen, der genug Vorkenntnisse und Fleiss mitbrachte, moglich wurde, sich einzuarbeiten."
We must understand Delbruck's remarks in the wider context of the linguistic situation in the middle of the nineteenth century. As a matter of fact, Bohtlingk's edition of Panini was responsible for what might be called a `revolution' in linguistic thinking both in Indo-European linguistics as well as in general linguistics and it is for this reason that Delbruck calls Bohtlingk "ein Heros der Wissenschaft." The discovery of Paninian grammar substantially revolutionized the approach to linguistics in Europe. The investigation of Sanskrit grammar proved to be a stimulus for the study of the history of Indo-European languages. It was realized for the first time in the history of linguistics that a word could be neatly broken into root, stem-forming suffix and desinence. I do not mean to say that these concepts did not exist in the Western linguistic tradition. Rather I refer to the fact that without the study of Paninian grammatical method the clarity and precision of linguistic analysis would not have been possible. As Brough (1951; p. 27) rightly remarks, "It is customary to add at this point the deprecatory remark that Panini was, of course, aided in his analysis by the extraordinary clarity of structure of the Sanskrit language; but we are apt to overlook the possibility that this structure might not have seemed so clear and obvious to us if Panini had not analyzed it for us."
The effect Panini's work had on Indo-European linguistics shows itself in various studies. A number of seminal works come to mind. The most important of these is F. Saussure's Memoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues Indo-europeennes (1879). In this book Saussure attempted to settle some basic
questions of Proto-Indo-European and more importantly to scrutinize the structure of roots in Proto-Indo-European. Saussure tried to show that Indo-European roots of the type aC, eC, oC, and Ca, Ce, and Co are totally anomalous and do not fit into the overall pattern of roots in Proto-Indo-European, which have a typical structure of the type CeC. To account for such anomalous structures Saussure posited certain elements at the deep structure level. Thus aC, eC, oC and Ca, Ce Co were re-interpreted as This analysis was not accepted by his contemporaries but later, with the decipherment of Hittite, where an element H was found in exactly the slots described by Saussure, his theory came to be more or less accepted. This kind of analysis gave rise to the laryngeal theory.
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