The Influence of the Sanskrit Grammar to build up the Kaccāyana Grammar.

Abstract

In the Pāli language, there are three grammatical traditions. They are Kaccāyana, Saddhanīti and Moggallāna. These grammatical traditions were appeared after the commentarial period. Before these traditions, the commentators would use another grammatical tradition like BodhisattaVyākarana. However, because of the deficiencies of those grammatical traditions, Kaccāyana, Moggallāna and Saddhanīti traditions would appear. There were great Sanskrit grammarians and they have written lot of grammar books before these grammatical traditions like Astadyāyi of pannini and candravyakarana. However, traditionally, we believe that Kaccāyana Grammar was composed by Arahant Mahākaccāyanathera lived in the Buddha’s time. But when we compare these books comparatively, we can see lot of similarities among these books. Therefore, we can come to conclusion that this book would compose by a monk named Kaccāyana or a monk related to pupillary succession of KaccāyanaMahathera in later period. The Kaccāyana Grammar (Kaccāyanaya) is the main book of the Kaccāyana tradition. In this paper, I try to point out about the Sanskrit influence for the Kaccāyana Grammar. Specially, I pay attention to the structure of Kaccāyanaya, grammatical rules and language usage of Kaccāyanaya. As well as, I mention the Sanskrit grammar books comparatively, which were influenced to Kaccāyana grammar. There are lot of commentaries and sub-commentaries were composed under the Kaccāyana Grammar. The Sanskrit influence can be seen even in those commentaries and sub-commentaries.