Kātantra and non-Pāninian grammars vis-a-vis Bengal

Bengal's contribution to Sanskrit grammar in Pāninian and non-Pāninian systems represent a great tradition of language analysis in many of its ramifications including morphology, syntax and semantics. Advent of the Cāndra School in the 5th Century A.D., its impact on Kāsikā and development of subsequent commentary literature of the Pāninian system complete a full circle of the Paninian studies by the Buddhist grammarians of Bangal around the 12th Century A.D. Later grammarians in this part of India shifted their attention to some non-Pāninian systems so much that a very large number of codifications, commentaries, scholia, appendices, supplementary and discourses relating to Kātantra, Mughabodha, Samksiptasāra, Sāraswta, Supadma, Prayograratnamālā and Harināmāmmrta systems developped. This paper made a comparative study in arrangement of rules and distribution of topics in different non-Pāninian sūtra texts that would reveal much of experiments done by these grammatical schools. It has also made a comparison between the Pāninian systems and the non-Pāninians. Bengal benefits a lot from this great heritage of language analysis. The 'philosophical grammar' of neo-logicians of medieval Bengal had been immediatly linked with this non-Pāninian tradition. How far Bengali grammar has been derived and influenced by these non-Pāninian sources is also discussed in this paper.