The role and import of the metalinguistic chapters in the ‘new’ pāṇinian grammars

In the years between the end of the XVIth century and the beginning of the XVIIth, a period rich with intellectual changes and challenges in India, two grammars of Sanskrit of a new genre were composed, namely Bhaṭṭoji Dīkṣita’s Siddhāntakaumudī (SK) and Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa’s Prakriyāsarvasva (PS). Both these grammars consciously aimed at a kind of re-foundation of India’s most ancient grammatical tradition, deriving from the seminal opus of Pāṇini (IVth BC). The authors had at least one great model in common, Rāma-chandra’s (XVth century) Prakriyākaumudī (PK) which first attempted an almost exhaustive rearrangement of pāṇinian rules. Unlike previous attempts to ‘sim- plify’ Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī (A), these new grammars were characterised by a stricter adherence to the actual phrasing of pāṇinian rules; hence the core of the recasting of the text consisted in the re-ordering of rules.The import of this cultural operation still needs to be fully appraised: the present article will try to offer at least some hints for further research by analyzing the first two chapters of the Prakriyāsarvasva (namely the chapter on saṁjñā and the chapter on paribhāṣās) and the corresponding chapters in the Prakriyā- and Siddhāntakaumudī.