Indian PhD student solves 2,500-year-old Sanskrit puzzle

Rishi Rajpopat,an Indian PhD student at the University of Cambridge,has finally solved a Sanskrit grammatical problem that has baffled scholars since the 5th century BC. 27-year-old Rishi Atul Rajpopat, reportedly decoded a text written by the Sanskrit language master Panini, a master of the ancient Sanskrit language who lived around two-and-a-half-thousand years ago. Rajpopat made the breakthrough by decoding a rule taught by Panini and is now encapsulated in his thesis entitled ‘In Panini, We Trust: Discovering the Algorithm for Rule Conflict Resolution in the Astadhyayi’.

"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

According to the university, leading Sanskrit experts have described Rajpopat’s discovery as “revolutionary” and it could now mean that Panini’s grammar can also be taught to computers for the first time. "Panini had an extraordinary mind and he built a machine unrivalled in human history. He didn’t expect us to add new ideas to his rules. The more we fiddle with Panini's grammar, the more it eludes us,” says Rajpopat.

The 2,500-year-old algorithm decoded by him makes it possible, for the first time, to accurately use Panini’s so-called “language machine”. Rajpopat, is a PhD student at the faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in St. John's College, Cambridge.