Mahābhāṣya (Great Commentary on Sanskrit grammar)

Patañjali's governing claim, articulated most famously in the Paspaśāhnika (introductory chapter), is that the relationship between word and meaning is established (siddha) within the community, not created by grammarians . Language is a social institution whose authority rests on the usage of learned, ethical scholars (śiṣṭa)—those who speak correctly without needing grammatical rules to guide them . This is why Patañjali insists that the grammarian describes an existing given rather than inventing language: people use words knowing their meanings, but no one goes to a grammarian asking to have words made for them . Grammar's function is to preserve this inherited linguistic order, especially for Vedic recitation and ritual efficacy.

The text is structured as a series of debates in which multiple interlocutors raise objections, propose provisional solutions, and are ultimately answered by a definitive position. The typical pattern involves an initial challenge to a grammatical rule's utility or application, followed by responses that are not always final, allowing various theses to clash before resolution . Patañjali's most characteristic move is to eliminate apparent defects in Pāṇini's rules through reinterpretation—adapting the rule to data the original author may not have considered—rather than admitting error . This method has been described as a form of Hindu dialectic in which provisional positions are advanced and then revised, a technique that makes the Mahābhāṣya as much a work of philosophical argumentation as of grammatical exegesis.

This is a genuine scholarly controversy. The traditional attribution is to Patañjali, dated to roughly the second century BCE. However, Dr. Burnell argued in the nineteenth century that the Mahābhāṣya as it stands is a compilation prepared during or after the seventh century CE, containing abridged versions of Kātyāyana's criticisms and Patañjali's refutations rather than the original texts . Burnell pointed to the Paspaśāhnika's long argument on the utility of grammar as evidence of a later, more systematic and controversial style out of keeping with Patañjali's era . This view has not been universally accepted, and modern scholarship generally treats the text as substantially Patañjali's work, while acknowledging that it has been transmitted through a complex commentarial tradition.

The Paspaśāhnika is the Mahābhāṣya's introduction, and it is widely regarded as a foundational text in Indian philosophy of language. It defines grammar's subject matter as the words of the Veda and of ordinary usage, and it outlines the purposes of grammatical study: preservation of the Veda, correctness in ritual performance, and precise understanding of meaning . More philosophically, it argues that grammar is the only economical means of acquiring knowledge of correct language, since the number of words and forms is too vast to be learned individually . The Paspaśāhnika also asserts that studying grammar is a brahmin's duty, defining the brahmin class more by intellectual function than by religious function—a significant claim about the social role of linguistic knowledge .

Bhartṛhari, the fifth-century author of the Vākyapadīya, is the foundational thinker of the Absolutist school of Indian philosophy of language, and he explicitly claims that his philosophy is based on the Vedas and on the Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali . However, Patañjali himself did not expressly state his views on the philosophical questions Bhartṛhari developed—such as the nature of sphoṭa and the relation between sound and meaning . Bhartṛhari read the Mahābhāṣya with an eye to its philosophical implications, extracting from Patañjali's grammatical discussions a metaphysics of language that the text itself does not articulate systematically. Reading the Mahābhāṣya in light of Bhartṛhari thus requires distinguishing between what Patañjali says and what his later interpreter made of it.

English access to the Mahābhāṣya is partial and fragmented. Franz Kielhorn's Sanskrit edition, revised by K. V. Abhyankar and published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, remains the standard scholarly text . For English translation, the situation is less satisfactory: Surendranath Dasgupta's uncompleted English translation was edited by Sibajiban Bhattacharyya and published by the Indian Council of Philosophical Research in 1991, covering only a portion of the text . The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute also published an English translation of the first three Āhnikas, edited by Abhyankar and Shukla, in 1975 . There is no complete English translation of the Mahābhāṣya, and readers without Sanskrit must work with partial renderings and scholarly summaries.