A 27-year-old Indian Ph.D. student Rishi Rajpopat at Cambridge University has successfully solved a complex ancient grammatical problem from the Sanskrit language. This grammatical puzzle has defeated many Sanskrit scholars since the 5th century BC. The problem has derived from the ancient texts written by Panini who is renowned as the ‘Father of Linguistics’ and a great Sanskrit Scholar. Panini’s text ‘Astadhyayi’ which consists of a set of rules for deriving or forming new words from root words, frequently contains conflicting rules for creating new words, leaving many scholars perplexed about which rules to apply. Panini’s Astadhyayi is meant to work like a machine and feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a process. Many scholars were involved in resolving such a problem in this linguistic algorithm of a book and now Rishi Rajpopat has been immensely successful to crack it.
Indian Scholar Rishi Rajpopat made this epic breakthrough by decoding a rule by Panini which is now summed up in his thesis entitled ‘In Panini, We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Astadhyayi’. The 2500-year-old algorithm decoded by Rishi makes it now possible to accurately use Panini’s ‘language machine’ for the first time ever. The remarkable discovery makes it possible to derive any Sanskrit word, to construct millions of grammatically correct words, using Panini’s revered language machine, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest intellectual achievements in history.
Before the discovery, there have been some issues with two or more of Panini’s rules leaving scholars agonizing over choices. Many scholars have often misinterpreted the denotations and ended up with grammatically incorrect results. However, with a new discovery, Rajpopat has shown how Panini’s language machine is remarkably accurate and self-sufficient for the language.
According to Cambridge University, leading Sanskrit experts have described Rishi Rajgopal’s discovery as ‘revolutionary’ and it could mean that Panini’s grammar can now be taught to computers for the first time. This incredible discovery will now open multiple possibilities to create ways to develop distinct possible discoveries in the Sanskrit language.
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