Eureka moment at Cambridge: Indian PhD student solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit puzzle

New Delhi: An Indian PhD student at the University of Cambridge has solved a grammatical problem that has baffled Sanskrit scholars since the 5th century BC, according to his thesis, which was published on Thursday. In his thesis titled 'In Panini, We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Astadhyayi,' Rishi Rajpopat had a 'Eureka' moment when he made a breakthrough by decoding a rule taught by Panini. Panini is regarded as the father of linguistics. 

"I had a eureka moment at Cambridge!"

The world's greatest grammatical puzzle that had defeated scholars for centuries has been cracked by #Sanskrit PhD student @RishiRajpopat.

Read how he did it @stjohnscam @CambridgeFames @HCI_London

— Cambridge University (@Cambridge_Uni) December 15, 2022

Leading Sanskrit experts have called Rajpopat's discovery "revolutionary," and it could now mean that Panini's grammar can be taught to computers for the first time. "I had a eureka moment in Cambridge," Rajpopat recalls.

"After nine months of trying to solve this problem, I was almost ready to give up because I was getting nowhere, So I put the books away for a month and spent it swimming, cycling, cooking, praying, and meditating. Then, grudgingly, I returned to work, and as I turned the pages, these patterns began to emerge, and it all began to make sense. There was still a lot of work to be done, but I'd found the most important piece of the puzzle." said the 27-year-old Cambridge scholar.

"Panini had an extraordinary mind, and he created a machine unparalleled in human history. He didn't expect us to come up with new rules. "The more we play with Panini's grammar, the more it eludes us," Rajpopat says.

Rajpopat's discovery enables the construction of millions of grammatically correct words from any Sanskrit word using Panini's revered language machine, widely regarded as one of the greatest intellectual achievements in history.

Panini's system is designed to work like a machine, with 4,000 rules detailed in his renowned work, the Astadhyayi, which is thought to have been written around 500 BC. Feed it a word's base and suffix, and it should turn it into grammatically correct words and sentences in a step-by-step process.

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Sanskrit is a South Asian ancient and classical Indo-European language. While it is only spoken by about 25,000 people in India today, it has influenced many other languages and cultures around the world.