Maharishi Panini

There is a story in Kathasaritsagara (it is kathasaritsagara) (originally written in Paishachi (or satanic [a sort of jargon spoken by demons on the stage]) language by Gunadhya and translated into Sanskrit by Somadeva) which says that Panini was a disciple of Guru Varsha of Pataliputra. Panini was allegedly the most dull-witted amongst all disciples of Varsha but he was greatly devoted to his Guru. This pleased the wife of Guru Varsha who took great care of Panini. One day she called and advised him to go to the Himalayas and do tapasya to propitiate Lord Shiva. Panini obeyed her instruction and went to the Himalayas. Lord Shiva was pleased and granted him knowledge about a new grammar. By the time Panini came back with his new grammar, another disciple of Guru Varsha called Vararuchi, had been taught a different grammar as a boon from Indra. Panini challenged Vararuchi for a polemical contest. It took eight days and finally, Panini, by the grace of Lord Shiva, defeated Vararuchi and all his co-disciples and emerged as the greatest grammarian of the world.

There may or may not be any truth in the above story but Panini is undoubtedly the greatest grammarian of the world. Panini was born in Shalatulra, a small town near Attock on the northwestern Indian peninsula in present Pakistan. There existed a statue raised in memory of Panini up to the time of Hiuen Tsiang, who narrates a legend that he had heard in Shalatura (I made search but could not get the legend). Patanjali, a commentator on Panini’s Ashtadhyayi, recognised Panini as the son of Dakshi. From this we know that Panini’s mother’s name was Dakshi. According to a verse found in Panchatantra of Vishnu Sharma, Panini is said to have been killed by a lion. It is also said that Pingala, the author of a treatise on Metrics, was the brother of Panini. There are many opinions about Panini’s date. And although we are informed that he belonged to eighth century B.C. there is no proof for it. However, the inadequate details of Panini's life are completely overshadowed by the importance of his work titled as Ashtadhyayi. This treatise has eight chapters and is considered to be the most important work in the development of Sanskrit and one of the most important works in the history of any language.
Panini’s Ashtadhyayi is the most ancient systematic grammar in the world. Brevity of form and comprehensiveness of content are the two unparalleled features of Panini’s work. Through the ages, the Ashtadhyayi has evoked great admiration and profound reverence in India and abroad. Many scholars of eminence have praised Panini’s grammar as “one of the greatest monuments of human intelligence”, “a masterpiece of the first rank”, “a miracle of ingenuity” etc. Panini’s Ashtadhyayi describes with the minutest detail every inflection, derivation and composition, and every syntactic usage of Sanskrit. No other language to this day has been so perfectly described. The more thoroughly one studies it, the more one is struck by the acuteness and the successful mastery of the vast matter shown in it.
Katyayana expanded the work of Panini in his supplementary rules in the 4^th century B.C. Patanjali wrote his famous commentary on the works of Panini and Katyayana, known as the Mahabhashya, in the 2^nd century B.C. These three are revered as the Trinity of Indian grammatical tradition.
Apart from Ashtadhyayi, Panini also wrote Unadisutra, related to grammar, while Jambavativijaya and Patalavijaya belong to literary creations.
Panini is now considered as the forerunner of the modern formal language theory used to specify computer languages. Panini uses metarules, transformations, and recursion in such sophistication that his grammar has the computing power equivalent to a Turing (This machine goes by the name of an English mathematician by the name Alan Mathison Turing who conceived of this machine and broke German codes during World War II (1912-1954) machine. In this sense Panini may be considered the father of computing machines. Paninian grammars have been devised for non-Sanskrit languages also. The Backus-Naur Form or BNF grammars used to describe modern programming languages have significant similarities with Panini's grammar rules.
These rules are said to be perfect—that is, they perfectly describe the Sanskrit morphology, and are regarded so clear that computer scientists have made use of them to teach computers to understand Sanskrit.

Panini's grammar of Sanskrit is highly systematized and relies on patterns found in the language. Features of language are categorized according to their similarities, and then form the subject matter of the set of ordered morphological rules which constitute the bulk of the work. Inherent in the analytic approach employed by Panini are the concepts of the phoneme and the morpheme, only recognized by Western linguists thousands of years after he used them. The Paninian grammar is notably descriptive; it does not attempt to tell people how they should speak and write; Panini was only concerned with what people actually did say and write.

It is a matter of pride for Indians that predating even the early Greek examination of language, Panini's work continues to exert influence in the realm of linguistics even more than 2,500 years after its composition; a monumental achievement indeed.