“Even a dry compendium on grammar, the Astadhyayi of Panini, provides a nearly complete count of all the Janapadas in India.”

—  Sita Ram Goel

Sita Ram Goel quoted in S. Talageri, The Aryan Invasion Theory and Indian Nationalism (1993)

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Sita Ram Goel192
Indian activist 1921–2003

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“The Ramayana, the Puranas and the Dharmashastras paint the same portrait of an ancient land, every spot of which is sacred to some cultural memory or the other. The Jainagama and the Tripitaka speak again and again of sixteen Mahajanapadas, which spanned the spread of Bharatavarsha in the life-time of Bhagvan Mahavira and the Buddha. Even a dry compendium on grammar, the Ashtadhyayi of Panini, provides a near complete count of all the Janapadas in ancient India-Gandhara and Kamboja, Sindhu and Sauvira, Kashmir and Kekaya, Madra and Trigarta, Kuru and Panchala, Kaushala and Kashi, Magadha and Videha, Anga and Vanga, Kirata and Kamarupa, Suhma and Udra, Vatsa and Matsya, Abhira and Avanti, Nishadha and Vidarbha, Dandakaranya and Andhra, Karnataka and Kerala, Chola and Pandya. The epic poetry poured out by Kalidasa, Magha, Bharavi and Sriharsha continues the same tradition of talking endlessly about Bharatavarsha as a single and indivisible geographical entity, as a karmabhûmi for Gods and Goddesses, Brahmarshis and Rajarshis, and as higher than heaven for all those who have had the good fortune of being born in it.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)

“The author of the oldest extant Sanskrit grammar was Panini, a native of extreme north-west India, … His work consists of nearly 4000 aphorisms, each of which owing to the extreme conciseness of the style, generally consists of not more than two or three words. Hence, the whole grammar could be printed within the compass of about thirty-five octavo pages. Yet it describes the entire Sanskrit language with a completeness which has never been equalled elsewhere. Thus it is at once the shortest and the fullest grammar in the world.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Gazetteer in: Sanskrit literature http://dsal.uchicago.edu/reference/gazetteer/pager.html?objectid=DS405.1.I34_V02_298.gif,The Digital South Asia Library - University of Chicago (dsal.uchicago.edu)

“A treatise called Astadhyayi (or Astaka) is Panini's major work. It consists of eight chapters, each subdivided into quarter chapters. In this work Panini distinguishes between the language of sacred texts and the usual language of communication. Panini gives formal production rules and definitions to describe Sanskrit grammar. Starting with about 1700 basic elements like nouns, verbs, vowels, consonants he put them into classes. The construction of sentences, compound nouns etc., is explained as ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner similar to modern theory. In many ways Panini's constructions are similar to the way that a mathematical function is defined today.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

An Analytical Study of 'Sanskrit' and 'Panini' as Foundation of Speech Communication in India and the World

“The medicine of Sushruta is considerably older than the ninth century; and the grammar of Panini probably precedes Christianity.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Horace Hayman Wilson in: The Vishńu Puráńa: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition https://books.google.co.in/books?id=rpVTAAAAcAAJ&pg=PR38, J. Murray, 1840, p. 38.

“Sanskrit is a scientific and systematic language. Its grammar is perfect and has attracted scholars worldwide. Sanskrit has a perfect grammar which has been explained to us by the world's greatest grammarian Panini.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

An Analytical Study of 'Sanskrit' and 'Panini' as Foundation of Speech Communication in India and the World

“Panini’s grammar is the earliest scientific grammar in the world, the earliest extant grammar of any language, and one of the greatest ever written. It was the discovery of Sanskrit by the West, at the end of the 18th century, and the study of Indian methods of analyzing language that revolutionized our study of language and grammar, and gave rise to our science of comparative philology … The study of language in India was much more objective and scientific than in Greece or Rome. The interest was in empirical investigation of language, rather than philosophical and syntactical. Indian study of language was as objective as the dissection of a body by an anatomist.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

—Walter Eugene Clark ,.Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.

Will Durant photo

“It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

The Case for India (1931)

“The most interesting non-Western grammatical tradition—and the most original and independent—is that of India, which dates back at least two and one-half millennia and which culminates with the grammar of Panini, of the 5th century BCE. There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Pavle Ivić in: Linguistics http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/342418/linguistics#ref411727, britannica.com, 9 April 2013.

“Ashtadhyayi Sanskrit treatise on grammar was written in the 6th to 5th century BCE by the Indian grammarian Panini. This work set the linguistic standards for Classical Sanskrit. It sums up in 4,000 sutras the science of phonetics and grammar that had evolved in the Vedic religion. Panini divided his work into eight chapters, each of which is further divided into quarter chapters, beyond defining the morphology and syntax of Sanskrit language.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Encyclopedia Britannica in: Panini Indian grammarian http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/441324/Panini, britannica.com.

“The grammar of Panini is one of the most remarkable literary works that the world has ever seen, and no other country can produce any grammatical system at all comparable to it, either for originality of plan or analytical subtlety.”

Pāṇini ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Sir Monier Monier-Williams in: Indian Wisdom https://books.google.co.in/books?id=CgBAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA172, W. H. Allen & Company, 1876, p. 172.

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