Pāṇini

Ancient Sanskrit grammarian

Panini (Sanskrit: पाणिनि; IAST: Pāṇini) was an ancient Indian Sanskrit grammarian and linguist whose masterwork, the Aṣṭādhyāyī, is the foundational text of Vyākaraṇa (linguistics)—one of the six Vedāṅgas (auxiliary scholarly disciplines) of ancient Indian scholarship. He lived during the mid-1st millennium BCE, dated variously by most scholars between the 6th–5th and 4th centuries BCE. The historical facts of his life are unknown, except only what can be inferred from his works, and legends recorded long after. His most notable work, the Ashtadhyayi (Aṣṭādhyāyī) (Devanagari: अष्टाध्यायी), is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.

From Wikipedia, under CC BY-SA. More on occurri.