Pāṇini

Ancient Indian grammarian whose Aṣṭādhyāyī gave Sanskrit the most rigorous grammatical description of antiquity.

Core Principles & Analysis

• His Aṣṭādhyāyī compresses Sanskrit grammar into roughly 4,000 concise rules.
• Used ordered rewrite rules and metarules anticipating modern formal grammar.
• The Backus-Naur notation for programming languages has been compared to his system.

Specifications & Metrics

• ERA: c. 4th century BCE