A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TWO ANCIENT INDIAN GRAMMATICAL TRADITIONS: THE TAMIL TOLKAPPIYAM COMPARED WITH THE SANSKRIT RK-PRATISAKHYA, TAITTIRIYA-PRATISAKHYA, APISALI SIKSA, AND THE ASTADHYAYI

The question of the relation of the first available Tamil grammarTolkappiyam to various Sanskrit grammatical works remains unresolved.Divergent views proposing Sanskrit sources for the Tamil grammar andvice versa have been expressed in the past by Western and non-Western scholars. However, there is no single, comprehensive, systematic and unbiased study that brings out the methodological differences or similarities between the grammars of the two traditions--Tamil and Sanskrit.;The study shows that: (1)The Tolkappiyam and each one of the Sanskrit texts considered here share some characteristics regarding their methods of description. (2)There are also significant dissimilarities between the methods of grammatical description found in the Tolkappiyam and those of the Sanskrit works. (3)The Sanskrit works vary considerably among themselves in their approach in describing Sanskrit. At the same time, they are not totally divergent from one another.;Considering all this, this study proposes a 'galaxy model' for the ancient Indian grammatical tradition. This 'galaxy model' considers the authors of the unknown grammatical works as numerous unidentifiable stars and the authors of the extant grammatical works as giant stars.;The present study is an attempt in that direction, and it looks at themethods of grammatical description adopted by the authors of variousgrammatical works representing the two traditions. The texts chosen forthe study are the Tolkappiyam representing the Tamil tradition, andthe Rk-Pratisakhya, Taittir(')iya-Pratisakhya, Apisali-Siksa and the(' )Astadhyay(')i representing the Sanskrit tradition. The study is alsoconfined to the areas of phonetics, phonology, and morpho-phonemics.