Aindra School of Grammar

The Aindra(of Indra) school of Sanskrit grammar is allegedly one of the ancient schools of Sanskrit grammar. It is named after Indra as a reference to Lord Indra, the king of deities in Hindu mythology. Arthur Coke Burnell, a renowned orientologist, in his 1875 book, "On the Aindra school of Sanskrit grammars", describes this school. Burnell believed that most non-Pāṇinian systems of Sanskrit grammar were traceable to this school of grammar, believed to be the oldest and reputed to be founded by Indra himself.

Aindra, Katantra schools and the Tolkappiyam

Burnell's search for the Aindra school took him to Southern India where he came across the Tamil grammatical work Tolkappiyam. A preface of this work, written during the twelfth century CE by Ilampuranar describes the work as aindiram nirainda Tolkappiyam^{[incorrect quote]}('comprising Aindra'). Burnell posits that this is an allusion to the pre-Pāṇinian Aindra school of grammar.

While his demonstration of the influence of Sanskrit on the Tolkappiyam has met with some approval, his attribution and approximation of all non Pāṇinian schools of Sanskrit grammar with the Aindra school has met with resistance. Some scholars have also taken a less committal line on the question of Sanskrit influence itself.

Burnell's hypothesis

In his 1875 work On the Aindra School of Sanskrit Grammarians, he proposed a comprehensive, and at the time radical, reconstruction of the Aindra school's historical significance. He argued that the Aindra tradition was the original, primitive system of Indian grammar which predated Pāṇini.

Burnell's major claims regarding the Aindra school included:

• Pre-Pāṇinian origins: The Aindra school represented the earliest systematic grammatical thought in India, and the ancient Vedic Prātiśākhyas (phonetic manuals used to preserve the pronunciation of the Vedas) were actually products of this school.
• Contrast with Pāṇini: Burnell characterized the Aindra system as a "natural" and logically arranged grammar. He drew a sharp contrast between it and Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, which he viewed as an algebraically complex and "artificial" system that eventually usurped the older Aindra tradition in orthodox circles.
• Survival in the Katantra: Because no single text explicitly titled "Aindra Grammar" survived, Burnell posited that the Kātantra, a later Sanskrit grammar by Śarvavarman, was not merely a beginner's text but the most complete surviving relic of the ancient Aindra framework.
• Adoption by non-Brahmanical traditions: As Pāṇini's system dominated orthodox Hinduism, Burnell argued that the older Aindra system became the favored framework for heterodox and non-Sanskritic traditions. He claimed that the Pali Kaccayana (the foundational grammar of Theravada Buddhism), as well as early Jain and Tibetan grammatical, were directly modeled on the Aindra school.
• Mythological basis: He interpreted the Hindu myth of the god Brihaspati teaching grammar to Indra as holding historical truth, representing a real, primitive school of linguistic thought associated with an Indra cult that codified Sanskrit long before Pāṇini.

While Burnell's work successfully directed scholarly attention toward pre-Pāṇinian grammatical traditions, modern linguists and Indologists generally view his concept of a single, monolithic Aindra school—responsible for the Prātiśākhyas, Pali grammar, Tibetan texts, and the Tamil Tolkāppiyam—as a 19th-century oversimplification.

See also

• Schools of Sanskrit grammar
• Pāṇini
• Tolkappiyam
• Vyakarana
• Sanskrit grammar
• Katantra

References

• Trautmann, Thomas R. 2006. Languages and nations: the Dravidian proof in colonial Madras. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 52–54.
• Burnell, Arthur Coke. 1875. On the Aindra school of Sanscrit Grammarians: their place in the Sanscrit and subordinate literatures.