Structure and Implementation of a Digital

The As.t.ādhyāȳı, Pān. ini’s grammar of Sanskrit, exhibits an unparalleled structure which to this day has not been fully understood. It encodes the grammar rules in a very concise manner, making use of inheritance and a sophisticated metalanguage. Modern linguistics could benefit from a deep study of its precise description methods. Unfortunately, due to the fact that they have little to no knowledge of Sanskrit and Indian grammatical theory and are unable to read Devanāgar̄ı, many (western) linguists lack the necessary skills to understand the As.t.ādhyāȳı. In this paper, we present an approach towards a digital, web-based edition of the As.t.ādhyāȳı developed in order to unlock it for broader scientific research. We focus on the database scheme which provides the core of the digital edition.