" Very well, and now what was the
period during which this Siva-taught sage is allowed to have flourished?
One Orientalist (Bohtlingk) refers us to 350 B.C., while less lenient
ones, like Professor Weber, land the grammarian right in the middle of
the second century of the Christian era! Only, after fixing Panini's
period with such a remarkable agreement of chronology (other
calculations ranging variously between 400 B.C. and 460 A.D.), the
Orientalists place themselves inextricably between the horns of a
dilemma. For whether Panini flourished 350 B.C. or 180 A.D., he could
not have been illiterate; for firstly, in the Lalita Vistara, a
canonical book recognized by the Sanskritists, attributed by Max Muller
to the third Buddhist council (and translated into Tibetan), our Lord
Buddha is shown as studying, besides Devanagari, sixty-three other
alphabets specified in it as being used in various parts of India; and
secondly, though Megasthenes and Nearchus do say that in their time the
laws of Manu were not (popularly) reduced to writing (Strabo, xv.
Pages:
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577