Katyayana

Kātyāyana (c. 3rd century BC) was a Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India.

He is known for two works:
* The "Varttika", an elaboration on Panini's grammar. Along with the "Mahā-bhāsya" of Patanjali, this text became a core part of the "vyākarana" (grammar) canon. This was one of the six Vedangas, and constituted compulsory education for Brahmin students in the following twelve centuries.
* He also composed one of the later Sulba Sutras, a series of nine texts on the geometry of altar constructions, dealing with rectangles, right-sided triangles, rhombuses, etc.

Katyayana's views on the word-meaning connection tended towards naturalism. Katyayana believed, like Plato, that the word-meaning relationshipwas not a result of human convention. For Katyayana, word-meaningrelations were "siddha", given to us, eternal. Though the object a word isreferring to is non-eternal, the substance of its meaning, like a lumpof gold used to make different ornaments, remains undestroyed, and is thereforepermanent.

Realizing that each word represented a categorization,he came up with the following conundrum (following Matilal):: If the 'basis' for the use of the word 'cow' is "cowhood" (a universal) what would be the 'basis' for the use of the word 'cowhood'? Clearly, this leads to infinite regress. Katyayana's solution to this was to restrict the universal category to that of the word itself - the"basis" for the use of any word is to be the very same word-universalitself.

This view may have been the nucleus of the sphota doctrineenunciated by Bhartrihari in the 5th c., in which he elaboratesthe word-universal as the superposition of two structures - the meaning-universal or the semantic structure ("artha-jāti") is superposed on the sound-universal or the phonological structure ("shabda-jāti")

In the tradition of scholars like Pingala, Katyayana was also interestedin mathematics. Here his text on the sulvasutras dealt with geometry, and extended thetreatment of the Pythagorean theorem as first presented in 800 BC by Baudhayana.

Katyayana belonged to the Aindra school of grammarians and may havelived towards the North west of the Indian subcontinent.

ee also

*Panini (grammarian)
*Indian mathematicians

See the article Indian Sulbasutras for more information on the Sulbasutras in general and the mathematical results which they contain.

References

*
* Harvard reference
Surname1 = Matilal
Given1 = Bimal Krishna
Year = 1990/2001
Title = The word and the world: India's contribution to the study of language
Publisher = Oxford University Press
ID = ISBN 0-19-565512-5.

External links

* [http://www.shankaracharya.org Katyayana and Advaita]