Pāṇini
c. 5th–4th century BCE · Gandhāra · Vyākaraṇa
Pāṇini, from Śalātura in Gandhāra in the north-west, wrote the Aṣṭādhyāyī, “the eight chapters” — a grammar of Sanskrit in about 4,000 compact rules (sūtras). It describes the whole language with such precision and economy that it is still studied by linguists and computer scientists, and it fixed the form of classical Sanskrit for all later centuries.
The work was explained by Kātyāyana’s vārttikas and Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya; together the three are called the munitraya, the three sages of grammar.
Tradition says that at the end of Śiva’s dance, his ḍamaru sounded fourteen times, and from these sounds Pāṇini received the Māheśvara Sūtras — the fourteen lists of sounds on which his grammar is built.
Aṣṭādhyāyī · c. 4,000 sūtras · Māheśvara Sūtras