10. Published editions of Panini's Ashtadhyayi

I find the best detailed exposition to be the 5-volume work of Rama Nath Sharma, The Ashtadhyayi of Panini (without the diacritical marks, which unusually are incorporated in the printed title, no doubt a cataloguer’s nightmare!), published in 1987 (first edition) and revised and enlarged (second edition) in 2002, by Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, New Delhi (see it on Google Books). Of course, being a detailed exposition in five volumes, it is for a serious pursuer of the subject! Volume 1 is a long (200-page) essay, covering such historical and biographical information as exists, then the various texts, commentaries and elucidations, both traditional and modern, theoretical considerations, various technical topics, and so on. Copious indexes, bibliographies, glossaries, etc. accompany the text. The sutras are given in both the Sanskrit type (Devanagari) as well as English transliteration.

Another well-known (and the earliest) modern  translation is Srisa Chandra Vasu’s Ashtadhyayi of Panini in 2 volumes (again, given here without the diacrictical marks that are very much there on the title page of the book!), originally published in 1891, and reprinted and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi from 1962 (the copy I have seen is the 2009 reprint). According to Rama Nath Sharma, Vasu was the “only  English translation” of the Ashtadhyayi before his own work. He finds Vasu generally “trustworthy”, but is concerned that Vasu “takes a great deal for granted”, “omits glosses”, “misses explanatory details of terms and principles”, has a “pedantic style” of “archaic English”, and so on. My own feeling is that Vasu may be good for a first reading, whereas Sharma really goes into the details and has very subtle chains of reasoning, and may probably address the natural doubts of the learner better. Vasu is let down, I feel, by the fuzziness of its Devanagari typeface, which (at least for my bleary old eyes!) calls for the magnifying glass most of the time! Vasu’s Ashtadhyayi can be downloaded here (comes in 8 files):

https://archive.org/details/ashtadhyayi

I also happen to own an interesting Hindi translation Ashtadhyayi-Bhashya-Prathamavrtti in three volumes by Pandit Brahmdatta Jijnasu published by Ramlal Kapur Trust, Sonipath  (Haryana), which Rama Nath Sharma also refers to (not disapprovingly!). The interesting thing about having translations in different languages is that they sometimes tell us the different ways  in which the same technical terms or ideas can be interpreted and made less mysterious to us. I haven’t yet (December 2014) studied Jijnasu, but I did look up his translation of the term pragrhyam in sutra 1.1.11 (see Post 07); he also translates it as  - pragrhyam, which does not throw light on the common meaning of the term!