Modern indeed

 When AI Looked at Pāṇini — And Found a 2,500-Year-Old Language Machine

There are moments when the past suddenly looks astonishingly modern.

One such moment has emerged from an unexpected place — the grammar of Sanskrit.

More than two millennia ago, the Indian grammarian Pāṇini created the Aṣṭādhyāyī, a remarkably compact system of about 4,000 grammatical sūtras. Today, when linguists and computer scientists examine those rules through the lens of computational linguistics, something extraordinary becomes apparent:

Pāṇini's grammar behaves remarkably like a formal rule-based system — almost like a language-generating machine. ⁰0⁰the 

And this is where the story becomes fascinating.

Not just a grammar book

We normally think of grammar as a collection of rules:

This word should be written this way.

This ending belongs here.

This sound changes in this situation.

Pāṇini's approach was fundamentally different.

His system describes how linguistic forms are generated and transformed.

One can begin with a root and grammatical information, apply the appropriate rules in sequence, and arrive at the correctly formed Sanskrit word.

In modern computational language, that sounds remarkably familiar:

Input → Rules → Transformations → Output

Researchers have therefore explored ways of representing Pāṇini's system mathematically and implementing it computationally. 

It is important, however, not to say that Pāṇini invented a computer or artificial intelligence.

He did not.

What is extraordinary is that a grammatical system created long before electronic computers has features that lend themselves so naturally to computation.

The astonishing shorthand

Perhaps one of the most beautiful aspects of Pāṇini's system is its economy.

The Aṣṭādhyāyī does not repeatedly spell out everything in full. It uses technical conventions, abbreviations and markers to make enormous amounts of information fit into extraordinarily short rules.

His Śiva Sūtras, for example, provide a sophisticated way of grouping Sanskrit sounds. Special markers allow Pāṇini to refer to whole classes of sounds without listing every sound individually.

It is almost as though someone had designed a compressed notation system for language.

Modern researchers have been able to represent aspects of these operations in formal and mathematical terms. An IIT Bombay study, for example, explored modelling Pāṇinian rules as functions, including cases where a single input can produce multiple possible outputs. 

Imagine writing:

x → f(x)

rather than describing the entire transformation every time.

That is why the comparison with algorithms becomes tempting.

Then came the 2,500-year-old puzzle

Here the story becomes even more remarkable.

Pāṇini's rules sometimes create a problem: two rules can appear to apply at the same time.

Which one should win?

For centuries, Sanskrit scholars struggled with this question.

Pāṇini himself had supplied a principle for resolving such conflicts, but its interpretation became a matter of intense scholarly debate.

Then came Dr Rishi Rajpopat, an Indian Sanskrit scholar who studied at Cambridge.

In his 2022 doctoral research, Rajpopat proposed a new interpretation of Pāṇini's famous rule 1.4.2, vipratiṣedhe paraṃ kāryam.

His interpretation resolves the competing-rule problem in a remarkably systematic way and allows Pāṇini's grammatical system to generate correct Sanskrit forms in cases that had caused difficulties for scholars for centuries. 

Cambridge described the achievement as making it possible to use Pāṇini's “language machine” much more effectively. 

Consider the word mantraiḥ

Take the Sanskrit form:

mantraiḥ

“by the mantras”

The derivation involves competing rules.

Rajpopat's interpretation says, in this situation, that the rule applicable to the right-hand part takes precedence.

The same principle helps explain the formation of:

guruṇā

“by the guru”.

What sounds like an obscure grammatical technicality is actually the central problem of rule selection — something that looks surprisingly familiar to anyone who has ever written a computer program.

A computer cannot simply say:

“Several instructions apply. I'll choose whichever I like.”

It needs a decision procedure.

Pāṇini had one.

Was Pāṇini really a programmer?

Not in the modern sense.

That would be an exaggeration.

There were no computers, programming languages or silicon chips in ancient India.

But Pāṇini did something intellectually extraordinary:

He constructed a finite, highly structured system of symbolic rules capable of generating an enormous range of grammatical expressions.

Modern formal-language researchers have consequently found deep points of contact between Pāṇinian grammar and computational theory. One scholarly analysis notes that Pāṇini's system uses rewrite rules and a formal metalanguage in ways that invite comparison with later formal systems. 

A modern Cambridge University Press study published in 2024 even examines Pāṇini specifically through the concepts of formal language theory, computational power and generative capacity. 

That is a remarkable intellectual journey:

Pāṇini → Sanskrit grammar → formal rules → computational linguistics → AI and NLP

And India is still working on it

This is not merely an historical curiosity.

Indian researchers have been applying Pāṇinian ideas to Natural Language Processing (NLP) — the technology that enables computers to process human language.

The Paninian framework has been used in computational work on Indian languages, including parsing and representing grammatical and semantic relationships. 

Institutions such as IIT Kharagpur now have dedicated research efforts combining Sanskrit, computational linguistics and AI, working on tasks such as word segmentation, morphological analysis, syntactic parsing and machine translation. 

Sanganaka

So the ancient grammar is not simply being admired.

It is being computationally studied.

The truly astonishing part

Perhaps the most fascinating lesson is not that “ancient India had AI.”

It didn't.

The deeper lesson is this:

Thousands of years before computers, someone tried to describe language as a precise system of rules.

And he did it with such extraordinary economy and structure that modern computer scientists can still translate important aspects of that system into computational terms.

Pāṇini was not predicting computers.

He was trying to understand language.

But in attempting to describe language with absolute precision, he came surprisingly close to something that the computer age would rediscover:

a language can be treated as a system of symbols, rules, transformations and constraints.

That is why Pāṇini continues to surprise us.

The ancient machine that never needed electricity

A computer needs electricity.

Pāṇini's machine needed none.

It lived in memory.

It operated through rules.

It compressed enormous complexity into tiny sūtras.

And for more than two thousand years, generation after generation of scholars preserved and interpreted it.

Today, artificial intelligence is looking back at that system and finding something strangely familiar.

Not a computer hidden in an ancient manuscript.

Something more profound:

A human mind had discovered how to make language behave like a system long before machines learned to process it.

Perhaps that is the real wonder of Pāṇini.

The machine was never made of metal.

It was made of thought.

Movie on

 Neem Karoli Baba's story becomes particularly fascinating when we separate what is historically documented from what belongs to the faith and testimony of his devotees.

Neem Karoli Baba — the mysterious saint of Kainchi

Neem Karoli Baba, affectionately called Maharaj-ji, was born as Lakshman Narayan Sharma around 1900 in Uttar Pradesh. He became a wandering sadhu and later settled into family life before again becoming a spiritual teacher. His principal ashrams were at Kainchi in Uttarakhand and Vrindavan. Kainchi Dham, with its Hanuman temple, was established in the 1960s and became the centre of his later life. He died in 1973. 

What makes him unusual is that he left behind neither a philosophical system nor a major written work. He gave short instructions, told stories, joked, fed people and served them. Ram Dass later wrote that there could hardly be a conventional biography of him because "facts are few, stories many." 

His central message was remarkably simple

Love everyone.

Serve everyone.

Remember God.

Tell the truth.

This became the foundation of the worldwide Love Serve Remember movement associated with him and Ram Dass. 

There is something deeply Indian about the simplicity of this teaching. It does not ask one to escape the world. Serving another human being becomes itself a form of worship.

And Hanuman was central to his devotion. His bhakti was not primarily about intellectual discussion—it was about complete surrender, service and remembrance.

But what about the miracles?

This is where his story becomes extraordinary.

His devotees have recorded numerous incidents which they regarded as miracles—sometimes involving knowing things he seemingly could not have known, appearing to people unexpectedly, healing, providing food when none seemed available, or influencing events from a distance.

Ram Dass's Miracle of Love is one of the principal collections of such accounts. Importantly, even the book presents them as stories and experiences of devotees rather than scientifically established events. 

One famous account concerns Richard Alpert, the Harvard psychologist who later became Ram Dass.

When Alpert first encountered Maharaj-ji in India in 1967, he was deeply sceptical of gurus. Yet he experienced an encounter in which Baba appeared to know intimate information about Alpert's deceased mother. Alpert regarded the experience as profoundly transformative. 

Whether one interprets such incidents as miracles, extraordinary intuition, coincidence or spiritual experience is ultimately a matter of personal belief.

But the transformation of the people who encountered him is historically much easier to establish than the supernatural explanations for it.

The extraordinary story of Ram Dass

This may actually be the most important part of Neem Karoli Baba's legacy.

Richard Alpert had been a Harvard professor and was associated with Timothy Leary's psychedelic research. He travelled to India in 1967 searching for something beyond the limits of conventional psychology.

He met Neem Karoli Baba.

Baba gave him the name Ram Dass — "servant of God."

Alpert's life changed dramatically.

He returned to America and eventually published Be Here Now in 1971, a book that introduced millions of Western readers to meditation, yoga and Indian spirituality. 

So one might say:

Neem Karoli Baba did not go to the West.

His disciple carried his message there.

That is perhaps his greatest "miracle" in historical terms.

And then came Steve Jobs

Here the popular story needs one important correction.

Steve Jobs never met Neem Karoli Baba.

In 1974, Jobs travelled to India as a young man, hoping to meet him. But Maharaj-ji had died in 1973.

Jobs nevertheless visited Kainchi Dham and spent months travelling through India. Contemporary accounts describe this as an important part of his spiritual search. 

The interesting point is that Jobs was not searching for a business strategy.

He was searching for meaning.

The experience has subsequently been associated with his ideas about intuition, simplicity and stripping away the unnecessary. We should be cautious, however, about claiming that Neem Karoli Baba directly taught Jobs these principles—the two never met. 

And then Steve Jobs sent Mark Zuckerberg

This is perhaps the most fascinating link.

Years later, when Facebook was going through a difficult period, Steve Jobs reportedly advised Mark Zuckerberg to visit the Indian temple/ashram that had been meaningful in Jobs's own spiritual journey.

Zuckerberg followed the advice.

He travelled to India in 2015 and visited Kainchi Dham.

Zuckerberg later spoke publicly about the experience, saying that the journey helped him reconnect with the original purpose of Facebook and regain clarity at a crucial point in the company's development. 

So the chain is remarkable:

Neem Karoli Baba → Ram Dass → Steve Jobs → Mark Zuckerberg

And there is a beautiful irony here.

The saint himself had little interest in wealth, technology or worldly success.

Yet his influence eventually reached two of the most influential technology entrepreneurs of the modern world.

What I find most interesting about him

It is tempting to make Neem Karoli Baba's story entirely about miracles.

I think that misses something much deeper.

He seems to have taught that spirituality is not measured by how much we know, but by how much we love and serve.

Ram Dass's own account says that Maharaj-ji's most important teaching was love and service. 

Perhaps his entire philosophy could be reduced to four words:

Love. Serve. Remember.

That would make a beautiful subject for one of your reflective articles—“The Saint Who Taught the World Four Words”, beginning with Kainchi Dham and ending with the unexpected journey from a Himalayan ashram to Silicon Valley.

Mountain of enlightenment.

 Borobudur — The Mountain of Enlightenment

Imagine a colossal stone monument rising from the green plains of Central Java, its terraces climbing towards the sky, crowned by 72 bell-shaped stupas surrounding one great central stupa.

This is Borobudur, one of the world's most extraordinary Buddhist monuments.

Built in the 8th–9th centuries CE, during the Sailendra dynasty, Borobudur stands near present-day Magelang in Central Java, Indonesia. It was constructed from enormous quantities of volcanic stone and consists of nine stacked platforms — six square and three circular — leading symbolically from the earthly world towards enlightenment.

But Borobudur is far more than a temple.

A journey carved in stone

The visitor does not simply enter Borobudur and look at a deity.

The visitor walks.

The lower levels contain hundreds of relief panels depicting human life, moral choices, stories of the Buddha and scenes from Buddhist texts. As one climbs, the imagery gradually becomes less concerned with the material world.

The journey itself is symbolic:

Desire → understanding → detachment → enlightenment.

At the upper circular terraces, the solid walls and narrative reliefs give way to open space and rows of stupas.

Inside many of these stupas sits a Buddha statue.

And at the very top stands the great central stupa — deliberately empty.

That emptiness is profoundly symbolic.

72 stupas and one great stupa

The familiar bell-shaped stupas are among Borobudur's most remarkable features. The 72 perforated stupas on the three circular terraces each contain a seated Buddha.

At the summit, however, there is no Buddha image inside the great central stupa.

The symbolism can be read as a movement from the visible and knowable towards something beyond ordinary perception.

The pilgrim begins surrounded by stories and images and ends in silence.

A book in stone

Perhaps the most amazing aspect of Borobudur is that it can be experienced almost like a three-dimensional sacred book.

Its walls contain approximately 2,600 narrative relief panels and hundreds of Buddha images.

Before modern books, cameras or screens, a pilgrim could literally walk through a teaching.

Every step upward changed the visual experience.

The monument therefore combines architecture, sculpture, storytelling and spiritual philosophy into one extraordinary pilgrimage.

Why was it built?

Borobudur was probably constructed as a Buddhist pilgrimage monument and as a physical representation of the Buddhist cosmos.

Its creators transformed an entire hill into a sacred landscape.

And then, mysteriously, Borobudur was gradually abandoned or neglected after the decline of the kingdoms that supported it. For centuries it remained largely hidden beneath vegetation and volcanic ash.

It was rediscovered and brought to wider international attention in the 19th century, and extensive restoration followed, including a major international restoration completed in the 1980s.

Today, Borobudur is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The thought that stays with us

There is something wonderfully universal about Borobudur.

It does not tell the pilgrim simply:

“Look at this monument.”

It seems to say:

“Walk.”

Walk through life.

Observe.

Learn.

Rise above attachment.

And finally arrive at a place where there are fewer images, fewer stories and more silence.

Perhaps that is the genius of Borobudur:

The temple is not merely something to be seen.

It is something to be experienced step by step.

And after more than a thousand years, those ancient stones are still inviting us to make the same journey.

A few.

 Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — Blessed Are These Eyes

Abhi To Sooraj Uga Hai — The Sun Has Just Risen

Tasveer Ke Us Paar — Beyond the Picture

Kargil

Vande Mataram

Narmada

Titali — Butterfly

Prem — Love

Maa, Mujhe Daivatva Dena — Mother, Give Me Divinity

Sapnon Ke Beej — Seeds of Dreams

Mallah — The Boatman

Garba

Basant

Swabhiman — Self-respect

Ek-aadh Aansoo — A Tear or Two

Aise Manushya — Such a Human Being

Narendra Modi the Poet — The Man Behind the Public Persona

We know Narendra Modi as a political leader, administrator, orator and Prime Minister of India. But there is another Narendra Modi who is less visible — the poet.

Long before the enormous political responsibilities of today, Modi wrote poetry in Gujarati. His collection Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — These Eyes Are Blessed — brought together poems written over a period of years. The collection was later translated into English as Letters to Self.

What makes this interesting is not simply that a political leader writes poetry. It is what he chooses to write about.

The observer behind the leader

Poetry requires a different kind of attention.

A politician has to look outward — at people, events, problems and possibilities. A poet often looks inward and notices things that ordinary attention misses.

Modi's poems frequently turn towards nature, seasons, the sky, rivers, flowers, light, darkness and the changing world around him. His own official website describes his poetry as revolving particularly around themes such as Mother Nature and patriotism.

There is something revealing in that.

The man who spends much of his public life speaking about development and the future also finds space in his writing for the silent world of nature.

“What cannot be explained in prose…”

Modi has himself expressed an important thought about poetry:

“What cannot be explained in prose can often be expressed in poetry…”

That perhaps provides the key to reading his poems.

A speech has an audience. A poem can be almost a conversation with oneself.

And that is why the English edition was appropriately titled Letters to Self.

A different emotional vocabulary

Public life demands certainty.

Poetry permits questioning.

In his poems one encounters not merely declarations but observations, feelings, memories and reflections. There is patriotism, but also solitude. There is nature, but also human emotion. There are moments of confidence as well as introspection.

This is particularly interesting because political personalities are usually presented through their public words — speeches, slogans, interviews and parliamentary statements.

Poetry gives us something different:

the private imagination behind the public voice.

The eyes that notice

The title Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — These Eyes Are Blessed — itself suggests a philosophy of seeing.

To be blessed is not merely to possess eyes.

It is to see.

To notice the first change of a season.

To observe a flower.

To look at the sky.

To feel the presence of nature.

To recognise beauty in something that millions may pass without noticing.

Perhaps this is one of the most interesting connections between observation and leadership. A person who observes deeply may see possibilities, problems and people differently.

Poetry and patriotism

His poetry also contains a strong sense of the nation.

But patriotism in poetry can be different from patriotism in a political speech. It becomes personal — an emotional relationship with the land, its people and its cultural memory.

Nature and nation sometimes meet in the same imaginative landscape.

The river becomes more than water.

The soil becomes more than earth.

The country becomes more than a political boundary.

It becomes something felt.

The man behind the microphone

There is a curious contrast here.

The public Modi is known for speaking to enormous audiences.

The poet Modi writes to an audience of one — himself.

That contrast is perhaps the real reason to explore his poetry.

We need not agree with every political position of a public figure to appreciate an artistic or literary dimension of that person. Poetry allows us to step temporarily outside politics and ask a simpler question:

What does this person notice when he is alone with his thoughts?

That is a much more intimate question.

A poet does not necessarily look like a poet

We often have an image of a poet as someone sitting quietly with a notebook, detached from the world.

But poets can come from anywhere.

They can be scientists, soldiers, teachers, administrators, businesspeople — or political leaders.

Modi himself once told schoolchildren that poetry exists within every person: for some it comes through the pen, for others through tears, and for some it remains within.

That is a revealing observation.

It suggests that he does not regard poetry merely as literature. He sees it as another way of experiencing life.

Beyond the political biography

History will record Narendra Modi through his political life.

His poetry records something else.

It gives us glimpses of the observer, dreamer and reflective human being behind the office.

And perhaps that is why reading a leader's poetry can be worthwhile.

Not to judge the politician.

Not to praise or criticise the government.

But simply to discover the person.

For behind every public personality there is usually another, quieter individual — the one who observes, remembers, wonders and feels.

Perhaps the poet is one of the places where that quieter person speaks.

And sometimes, to understand a person, we should listen not to what he says from a podium…

but to what he writes when he is alone.

Seven poems by Narendra Modi

1. Aankh Aa Dhanya Chhe — “These Eyes Are Blessed”

The title itself suggests gratitude for the gift of seeing. The poem reflects on the world through observant eyes — nature, beauty and the experiences that make life meaningful. It presents the poet as someone who pauses to look rather than merely pass through life.

2. Titali — “The Butterfly”

A butterfly becomes a symbol of beauty, movement and fleeting moments. The choice of such a delicate subject gives us a glimpse of a more sensitive and contemplative side of the poet.

3. Narmada

The Narmada is not merely a river. It becomes a living presence, connected with land, memory, culture and emotion. The poem reflects a relationship with the landscape that goes beyond geography.

4. Ek-aadh Aansoo — “A Tear or Two”

Here the tone turns inward. Tears represent emotions that may remain unspoken. Behind strength and outward composure there is also a human being capable of tenderness, pain and vulnerability.

5. Prem — “Love”

A meditation on love and human feeling. It moves away from public life and achievement and towards the emotions that connect one human being with another.

6. Kargil

The poet turns from the intimate to the national. Kargil evokes courage, sacrifice, patriotism and the price paid by soldiers. It reveals the poet's response to the nation through the sacrifice of those who defend it.

7. Abhi To Sooraj Uga Hai — “The Sun Has Just Risen”

This is the voice of optimism and possibility. The rising sun becomes a metaphor for a journey that has only begun. Its message is essentially: there is much more to be done; the dawn is not the conclusion but the beginning.

In his 2025 address marking 150 years of Vande Mataram, Modi said its core essence is Bharat — Maa Bharati, the eternal idea of India. He sees the Motherland not simply as territory but as a civilisational presence that has witnessed centuries of change and absorbed lessons from history.

He also describes Vande Mataram as much more than a patriotic slogan: a mantra of freedom, sacrifice, energy, purity and dedication. He emphasises how it gave courage to people during the freedom struggle and continues to inspire the responsibility to protect that freedom. 

There is a particularly interesting connection with our earlier idea of Mother Earth: Modi interprets Vande Mataram through the ancient Indian idea of the land as Mother — the mother who gives, nourishes and, when her children are in danger, protects them. 

Gaining popularity.

 

Maine Tere Hi Bharose Hanuman - Read in English

A bhajan from the movie Hanuman Ansh based on Baba Neeb Karori, Maine Tere Hi Bharose Hanuman, Sagar Main Naiya Daal Dae ॥

Soil sustains the soul.

Soil Sustains the Soul — A Tribute to Mother Earth

Another 350 people workers found buried in hydro project site.

Amazing is it not.  

We walk over it every day.

We build upon it, cultivate it, dig into it and sometimes even forget that beneath our feet lies one of the greatest miracles of existence—soil.

Mother Earth has quietly sustained humanity from the beginning of civilisation. From her soil came the grain that filled our barns, the fruits that nourished our bodies and the forests that gave us shelter. Every civilisation that rose beside a river and every village that flourished around fertile land owed something to the thin layer of living earth beneath it.

Yet soil does far more than merely hold the roots of plants.

Within it lives an unseen universe. Countless microorganisms work silently, breaking down what has died and returning its elements to life again. Fallen leaves become nourishment. Organic matter becomes fertility. Seeds wait patiently for rain and sunlight. Then, almost magically, life pushes upward.

A tiny seed disappears into darkness—and returns as a plant.

That is Mother Earth's ancient promise.

Recent tragedies have also reminded us of another astonishing aspect of nature. When disasters bury people beneath mud and debris, rescuers sometimes find survivors after days of desperate searching. In small pockets beneath the earth, life holds on with extraordinary determination. Such moments are rare and miraculous, reminding us that even in the midst of destruction, life refuses to surrender easily.

How remarkable that the very earth which can appear silent and lifeless is actually one of the greatest supporters of life.

We often look upwards for miracles—in the stars, the skies and distant worlds. But perhaps one of the greatest miracles lies beneath our feet.

The soil feeds us.

It stores water.

It nurtures forests.

It supports crops.

It recycles life.

And through countless generations, without recognition or applause, it has continued its work.

Ancient cultures understood this relationship deeply. They did not see the Earth merely as land or property. They saw her as Mother.

In the Indian tradition, Bhūmi Devi is revered as the Divine Mother—the patient bearer of all beings. We take from her constantly: food, water, minerals, shelter and space to live. Yet she continues to give.

Perhaps this is why we should pause occasionally and offer our gratitude.

Not merely to the grand mountains and mighty oceans that inspire our admiration—but to the humble soil that clings to our feet.

For civilisation may reach the skies, technology may explore other planets and humanity may build cities of unimaginable complexity.

But in the end, we still depend upon a handful of living earth.

Soil sustains the body.

Earth sustains civilisation.

And gratitude for both may sustain the soul.

Let us therefore bow, in thought and gratitude, to Mother Earth—Bhūmi Devi—the silent giver who has carried humanity through every age.

We walk upon her.

We live because of her.

And perhaps it is time we remembered to thank her.

Happening.

 For the first time in a long time, a woman panel chairperson was seen presiding over the House from the historic Speaker’s Chair.

Minister Thangam Thennarasu praised the moment and said that many had hoped to see a woman sitting in the chair and presiding over the Assembly.

The chair itself holds a special place in Tamil Nadu’s history. It was gifted by Lord Willingdon and Lady Willingdon in 1922 and was designed based on the Speaker’s Chair in the UK House of Commons.

More than 100 years later, seeing a woman preside from the same historic chair made the moment even more meaningful. 

A small moment in the Assembly, but one with a lot of history and meaning.

Proud moment indeed. May the tribe grow.