Kātyāyana

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For the Buddhist monk, see Katyayana (Buddhist).
Kātyāyana
Bornest. 3rd century BCE
Śulbasūtras

Kātyāyana (कात्यायन) also spelled as Katyayana (c. 3rd century BCE)

Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India
.

Origins

According to some legends[

Vishwamitra, thus[citation needed
] called Katyayana.

The

Vararuci, a re-incarnation of Lord Shiva's gana or follower Pushpadanta. The story also mentions him learning grammar from Shiva's son Kartikeya which is corroborated in the Garuda Purana where Kartikeya (also called Kumara) teaches Katyayana the rules of grammar in a way that it could be understood even by children.[4] It may be that his full name was in fact Vararuci Kātyāyana.[5]

Relation to Goddess Katyayini

In texts like

Navratri festival.[6] According to the Vamana Purana once the gods had gathered together to discuss the atrocities of the demon Mahishasura and their anger manifested itself in the form of energy rays. The rays crystallized in the hermitage of Kātyāyana Rishi, who gave it proper form therefore she is also called Katyayani. [7]

Works

He is known for two works:

Views

Kātyāyana's views on the sentence-meaning connection tended towards naturalism. Kātyāyana believed, that the word-meaning relationship was not a result of human convention. For Kātyāyana, word-meaning relations were siddha, given to us, eternal. Though the object a word is referring to is non-eternal, the substance of its meaning, like a lump of gold used to make different ornaments, remains undistorted, and is therefore permanent.[citation needed]

Realizing that each word represented a categorization, he came up with the following conundrum (following Bimal Krishna 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'[citation needed]?

Clearly, this leads to infinite regress. Kātyāyana'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-universal itself."

This view may have been the nucleus of the Sphoṭa doctrine enunciated by Bhartṛhari in the 5th century, in which he elaborates the 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 (śabda-jāti).

In the tradition of scholars like

Baudhayana.[9]

Kātyāyana belonged to the Aindra School of Grammar[citation needed].

Notes

  1. ^ www.wisdomlib.org (2013-06-05). "Katyayana, Kātyāyana: 24 definitions". www.wisdomlib.org. Retrieved 2021-11-20.
  2. ^ "Approximate Chronology of Indian Philosophers". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2022-02-21.
  3. ^ "Kātyāyana". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 2022-02-21.
  4. ^ "Topic 101".
  5. ^ Winternitz, Moriz (1920). Geschichte der indischen Literatur. Bd. 3: Die Kunstdichtung. Die wissenschaftliche Litteratur. Neuindische Litteratur. Nachträge zu allen drei Bänden. Leipzig: Amelang. p. 391.
  6. ^ Forms of Durga
  7. ^ "Topic 1".
  8. ^ Joseph (2000), p. 328
  9. ^ Pingree (1981), p. 6

References

External links
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