Kaccayana and Kaccayanavutti

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The first and, until now, only edition and translation of the Pali grammar Kaccayana and its commentary Kaccayanavutti was published in Paris in 1871 by Emile Senart.

Since then little work has been done in this area of Pali scholarship. The authorship of Kaccyana and Kaccayanavutti is far from clear. It is likely that the grammar and its commentary were compiled by several authors over a long period of time. The date of Kaccayana, also knows as the Kaccayanavyakarana or Kaccayanappakarana, is therefore uncertain, but it was undoubtedly composed in Sri Lanka some time after Buddhaghosa, who clearly does not know of it, and before its earliest major commentary, the Mukhamattadipani, probably written in the tenth century. Kaccyana is obviously influenced by the Sanskrit traditions of Panini's Astadhyayi and the Katantra, however, as Louis Renou pointed out, Kaccayana's adherence to the Katantra "n'est pas constante". The kaccyana grammar triggered a long tradition of commentaries, as well as a series of expanded, revised versions of it, such as the Rupasiddhi and the Balavatara, and an enormous number of interpolations, particularly in the Kaccayanavutti. These and other issues contribute to the problem that kaccayana is a very unstable text, a fact that creates a serious difficulty for anyone seeking to edit it. There is, however, also no doubt that Kaccayana forms the foundational text for all later works by pali grammarians, and therefore is of fundamental importance for the study and development of Pali grammatical literature. Ole Holten Pind's new critical edition of Kaccayana and Kaccayanavutti accordingly represents a great leap forward for the study of Pali grammatical literature and for Pali studies in general.