Evolution of Syntactic Theory in Sanskrit Grammar: Syntax of the Sanskrit Infinitive -tumUN (paperback) by Madhav M. Deshpande

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Madhav M. Deshpande

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Madhav M. Deshpande

Evolution of Syntactic Theory in Sanskrit Grammar: Syntax of the Sanskrit Infinitive -tumUN (paperback)
Author:	Madhav M. Deshpande
ISBN:	9789376540334
Binding:	Paperback
Year:	2027
Pages:	172
Size:	16 x 24 cm
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About the Book

Evolution of Syntactic Theory in Sanskrit Grammar: Syntax of the Sanskrit Infinitive -tumUN is a detailed investigation of the development of syntactic analysis within the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. Taking the infinitival formation in -tum as its central problem, Madhav M. Deshpande traces how some of the most important figures in the Pāṇinian tradition understood and explained its grammatical and syntactic behaviour.

Through close examination of Pāṇini, Kātyāyana, Patañjali, and Bhartṛhari, the study brings into focus significant differences in the analysis of the Sanskrit infinitive and shows how grammatical interpretation developed across successive stages of the tradition. A seemingly restricted problem of Sanskrit syntax thus becomes a means of examining larger questions about the evolution of grammatical theory and the changing conceptual resources available to Sanskrit grammarians.

Deshpande approaches the grammatical tradition historically as well as analytically, paying close attention to the ways in which later thinkers inherited, interpreted, refined, and sometimes reformulated earlier analyses. The book consequently reveals the Pāṇinian tradition not as a static body of doctrine but as an extended intellectual conversation in which grammatical problems continued to generate new theoretical responses.

Rigorous in its textual foundations and linguistic analysis, the book is an important study for scholars of Sanskrit grammar, Pāṇinian linguistics, the history of linguistic thought, and Indian intellectual traditions.

About the Author

Madhav M. Deshpande

Madhav M. Deshpande is Professor Emeritus of South Asian Literature and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, where he taught for several decades in Asian Languages and Cultures and Linguistics. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. The University of Michigan lists his principal fields as the Sanskrit grammatical tradition, historical linguistics, Sanskrit phonetics, Indo-Aryan linguistics, and the sociolinguistics of Sanskrit and Prakrit.

Trained in both traditional and modern Sanskrit scholarship in Pune, he received his doctorate in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and joined the University of Michigan the same year. Over the course of a distinguished scholarly career, his research has ranged across Pāṇinian grammar, the historical and sociolinguistic development of Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskrit intellectual traditions, and the religious and philosophical traditions of India.

He is the author or editor of numerous books and more than 150 research papers. Among his best-known works are Sociolinguistic Attitudes in India: A Historical Reconstruction; Evolution of Syntactic Theory in Sanskrit Grammar: Syntax of the Sanskrit Infinitive -tumUN; The Meaning of Nouns: Semantic Theory in Classical and Medieval India; Critical Studies in Indian Grammarians I: The Theory of Homogeneity; and Samskrta-Subodhini: A Sanskrit Primer. His scholarship is distinguished by its close engagement with the Indian grammatical tradition alongside historical linguistics and sociolinguistic analysis.

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