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Kātyāyana | |
|---|---|
| Born | est. 3rd century BCE |
| Academic work | |
| Era | Vedic period |
| Main interests | Sanskrit grammarian,mathematician andVedic priest |
| Notable works | Vārttikakāra, Vyākarana, laterŚulbasūtras |
Kātyāyana (कात्यायन) also spelled as Katyayana (c. 3rd century BCE)[1][2][3] was aSanskrit grammarian,mathematician andVedic priest who lived inancient India.
According to some legends[citation needed], he was born in the Katya lineage originating fromVishwamitra, thus[citation needed] called Katyayana.
TheKathāsaritsāgara mentions Kātyāyana as another name ofVararuci, a re-incarnation of LordShiva's gana or follower Pushpadanta. The story also mentions him learning grammar from Shiva's sonKartikeya which is corroborated in theGaruda Purana whereKartikeya (also called Kumara) teaches Katyayana the rules of grammar in a way that it could be understood even by children.[4] It may be that his full name was in fact Vararuci Kātyāyana.[5]
In texts likeKalika Purana, it is mentioned that he worshipped Mother Goddess to be born as his daughter hence she came to be known asKatyayani or the "daughter of Katyayan" who is worshipped on the sixth day ofNavratri festival.[6] According to theVamana Purana once the gods had gathered together to discuss the atrocities of the demonMahishasura and their anger manifested itself in the form of energy rays. The rays crystallized in the hermitage of KātyāyanaRishi, who gave it proper form therefore she is also called Katyayani.[7]
He is known for two works:
Kātyāyana's views on the sentence-meaning connection tended towards naturalism. Kātyāyana believed, that the word-meaning relationship was not a result of human convention. For Kātyāyana, word-meaning relations weresiddha, given to us, eternal. Though the object a word is referring to is non-eternal, the substance of its meaning, like a lump of gold used to make different ornaments, remains undistorted, and is therefore permanent.[citation needed]
Realizing that each word represented a categorization, he came up with the following conundrum (followingBimal Krishna Matilal):
Clearly, this leads to infinite regress. Kātyāyana's solution to this was to restrict the universal category to that of the word itself — thebasis for the use of any word is to be the very same word-universal itself."
This view may have been the nucleus of theSphoṭa doctrine enunciated byBhartṛhari in the 5th century, in which he elaboratesthe word-universal as the superposition of two structures — the meaning-universal or thesemantic structure (artha-jāti) is superposed on the sound-universal or thephonological structure (śabda-jāti).
In the tradition of scholars likePingala, Kātyāyana was also interested in mathematics. Here his text on the Śulbasūtras dealt withgeometry, and extended the treatment of thePythagorean theorem as first presented in 800 BCE byBaudhayana.[12][failed verification]
Kātyāyana belonged to theAindra School of Grammar[citation needed].
