Kaccāyanabyākaraṇa

The Kaccāyanabyākaraṇa, the root of the whole Pali grammatical literature. This volume closes Kaccāyanapakaraṇaṃ niṭṭhitaṃ.

Kaccāyana's is the earliest Pali grammar we have, and almost nothing is known about it. He must be later than Buddhaghosa, who never refers to him; if he used the Kāsikā he is later than the 600s CE, but that evidence is disputed — so the honest statement of his date is after Buddhaghosa, possibly after 600 CE, with no upper limit. Nothing is known of the man but his name, and he seems unconnected with any other Kaccāyana known from Sanskrit or Pali. His work owes much to Pāṇini and to the Kātantra.

What it started is easier to date than the book itself. The earliest surviving commentary on it is Vimalabuddhi's Nyāsa, or Mukhamattadīpanī, probably of the 1000s CE; Chapaṭa Saddhammajotipāla wrote on that in turn at the end of the 1100s. There is an abridgement, the Kaccāyanasāra, and a subcommentary on the abridgement by the Burmese grammarian Mahāyasa. Two of the rearrangements of Kaccāyana — the Rūpasiddhi and the Bālāvatāra — are printed in this collection as volumes of their own.