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A Cambridge University PhD student has solved a Sanskrit grammatical problem that has challenged scholars since the fifth century B.C. C.
Rishi Rajpopat, of 59 years, he deciphered a rule taught by Panini, a master of the ancient language Sanskrit who lived about 2 years ago.500 years.
Sanskrit is only spoken in India by some 12. people out of a population of more than a billion, the University explained.
Rajpopat said he had “a eureka moment in Cambridge” after spending nine months “getting nowhere”.
“I closed the books for a month and dedicated myself to enjoying the summer: swimming, biking, cooking, praying and meditating,” he said.
“Then I reluctantly went back to work and within minutes as I was turning the pages these patterns started to emerge and it all started to make sense ”.
He said that he “spend hours in the library, even at night”, but he still needed to work for another two and a half years on the problem.
An ancient language
Sanskrit, although not widely spoken, is the sacred language of Hinduism and has been used in Indian science, philosophy, poetry and other publications throughout the over the centuries.
Panini’s grammar, known as Astadhyayi, was based on a system that worked like an algorithm to convert the base and the suffix of a word in sentences and grammatically correct words.
However, two or more of Panini’s rules often apply simultaneously and this has led to conflicts.
Panini taught a “meta-rule” that scholars traditionally interpret in the sense of “in case of conflict between two rules of equal force, the rule that comes later in the serial order of the grammar wins”.
However, this often led to grammatically incorrect results.
Rajpopat rejected the traditional interpretation of the meta-rule. Instead, he argued that Panini meant that between the rules applicable to the left and right sides of a word, respectively, Panini wanted us to choose the rule applicable to the right side.
Using this interpretation, he found that Panini’s “language machine” produced grammatically correct words with almost no exceptions.
“I hope this discovery gives Indian students confidence, pride and hope that they, too, can achieve great things,” said Rajpopat.
According to his supervisor at Cambridge, Sanskrit professor Vincenzo Vergiani, Rajpopat “has found an extraordinarily elegant solution to a problem that has perplexed scholars for centuries.
“This discovery will revolutionize the study of Sanskrit at a time when interest in the language is increasing.”
Now, the Archaeologists are using artificial intelligence to clarify the distribution patterns of the geoglyphs and thus contribute to their conservation.
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