A grammatical dilemma that has puzzled scholars since the 5th century BC. was deciphered by a student from the University of Cambridge and could “revolutionize the study of Sanskrit”, announced a professor from the university, according to DPA and BBC, according to Agerpres.

Rishi Rajpopat, a 27-year-old graduate student, deciphered a rule taught by Panini, an ancient Sanskrit master who lived about 2,500 years ago.

According to the University of Cambridge, Sanskrit is spoken by only about 25,000 people out of a population of over one billion in India. But it is the sacred language of Hinduism and the medium through which much of Indian science, philosophy, poetry, and other secular works have been transmitted over the centuries.

Panini’s grammar, called Astadhyayi, is based on a system that worked as an algorithm that converts the root and suffix of a word into grammatically correct words and sentences. However, two or more Panini rules are often applied simultaneously, resulting in conflicts between the rules.

Panini taught the “meter rule”, which is traditionally interpreted by scholars as follows: “in case of conflict between two rules of the same rank, the last rule in grammatical order applies.”

However, grammatically incorrect results were often achieved.

A discovery made by a Cambridge student

Rajpopat rejected the traditional interpretation of this metarule. Instead, the PhD student demonstrated that Panini’s intention was that between the rules applicable to the left and the right of the word, we should choose the rule applicable to the right.

Using this interpretation, Rajpopat concluded that Panini’s “linguistic machinery” produced grammatically correct words almost without exception.

Rajpopat said he had a “Eureka moment” after his teacher at Cambridge, Sanskrit professor Vincenzo Vergiani, advised him:

“If the decision is difficult, you probably did it wrong.”

“After trying to solve the problem for nine months, I was about to give up, I got nowhere,” said the student. “So I put the books down for a month and enjoyed the summer swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating,” he added.

A Revolution in the Study of Sanskrit?

“Then when I trudged back to work, within a few minutes while I was turning the pages, these patterns started to appear and it all made sense.” “A lot of ancient Indian wisdom was written in Sanskrit, and we still don’t fully understand what our ancestors achieved,” he said.

“We were often made to believe that we weren’t important, that we didn’t contribute enough.” “I hope this discovery will give Indian students confidence, pride and hope that they too can achieve great things,” he added.

The graduate student hopes that computers will now be able to learn the rules of Panini’s grammar.

“My student Rishi has solved a puzzle – he has found an extremely elegant solution to a problem that has baffled scientists for centuries,” said Professor Vergiani.

“The discovery will revolutionize the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in this language has increased,” the university professor emphasized.