Śākaṭāyana

IAST|Śākaṭāyana is a Sanskrit grammarian of Iron Age India (fl. roughly 8th c. BCE). His work is referred by scholars such as Yaska (around 7th c. BCE) and Pāṇini (circa 5th c. BCE), as well as other Sanskrit grammarians, but islost to us today.

He claimed that all nouns are ultimately derived from some verbal root. This process is reflected in the Sanskrit grammar as thesystem of krit-pratyayas or verbal affixes.

In his "The word and the world", the philosopher
Bimal Krishna Matilal refers to this debate (which lasted severalcenturies) as an

interesting philosophical discussion between the "nairuktas" or etymologists and the "pāṇinīyas" or grammarians. According to the etymologists, all nouns (substantives) are derived from some verbal root or the other. Yāska in his "Nirukta" refers to this view (in fact defends it) and ascribes it to an earlier scholar Śākaṭāyana. This would require that all words are to be analysable into atomic elements, 'roots' or 'bases' and 'affixes' or 'inflections' — better known in Sanskrit as "dhātu" and "pratyaya" [...] Yāska reported the view of Gārgya who opposed Śākaṭāyana (both preceded Pāṇini who mentions them by name) and held that not all substantival words or nouns ("nāma") were to be derived from roots, for certain nominal stems were 'atomic'. (p. 8-9)

His text may have been called the "IAST|Lakṣaṇa Śāstra", in which he also describes the process of determining grammatical gender in animate and inanimate creation.

ee also

* Morphology

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.