Compiled by London Swaminathan

swami_48@yahoo.com

Date: 6 September 2018

Time uploaded in London – 13-20 (British Summer Time)

Post No. 5398
During Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to London to attend the Common Wealth Leaders Conference in 2018, over one thousand Indians assembled near the British parliament on the banks of River Thames , and raised the slogan ‘Bharat Mataki Jai’ . Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India also faced such slogans. He had narrated an interesting anecdote in his book ‘The Discovery of India’.

“Often as I wandered from meeting to meeting, I spoke to this audience of this India of ours , of Hindustan and of Bharata, the old Sanskrit name derived from the mythical founder of the race.

Sometimes as I reached a gathering, a great roar of welcome would greet me
Bharat Mataki Jai  — ‘Victory to Mother India’. I would ask them unexpectedly what they meant by that cry, who was this Bharat Mata, Mother India, whose victory they wanted? My question would amuse them and surprise them, and then not knowing exactly what to answer, they would look at each other and at me. I persisted in my questioning. At last a vigorous Jat, wedded to the soil from immemorial generations, would say that it was the ‘Dharti’, the good earth of India, that they meant.
What earth? Their particular village patch or all the patches in the district or province or the whole of India? And so question and answer went on, till they ask me impatiently to tell them all about it.

I would endeavour to do so and explain that India was all this that they had thought, but it was much more. The mountains and the rivers of India, the forests and the broad fields, which gave us food, were all dear to us, but what counted ultimately were the people of India, people like them and me, who were spread out all over this vast land. Bharat mata, Mother India, was essentially these millions of people, and victory to her meant victory to these people. You are part of this Bharat Mata, I told them, you are in a manner yourselves Bharat Mata, and as idea slowly soaked into their brains, their eyes would light up as if they had made a great discovery”.

Xxx
Nehru on Panini , World’s Greatest Grammarian

“As early as sixth century BC Panini wrote his great grammar of Sanskrit language. He mentions previous grammars
and already in his time Sanskrit had crystalized and become the language of an ever growing literature. Panini’s book is something more than a mere grammar. It has been described by the Soviet Professor Th. Stcherbatsky of Leningrad, as ‘one of the greatest productions of human mind’. Patanjali wrote a famous commentary called the ‘Mahabhashya’ on Panini’s work in as much of a classic as Panini’s work . The professor said ‘the ideal scientific work for India is the grammar of Panini with the Mahabhashya of Patanjali’.

Panini is still the standard authority on Sanskrit grammar, though subsequent grammarians have added to it and interpreted it. It is interesting to note that Panini mentions the Greek script. This indicates that there was some kind of contact s between India and Greece long before Alexander came to the East.

Taxila (THAKSHASEELAM) was a pre- Buddhist University and a seat of Brahminical learning. Panini, the great grammarian of sixth or seventh century BC, is said to have studied here. It was considered an honour and a distinction to be a graduate of Taxila.

Panini mentions some dramatic forms (this he mentioned when he wrote about the history of Natyasastra).

–subham-