Towards automating the generation of derivative nouns in Sanskrit by simulating Panini

About 1115 rules in Aṣṭādhyāyī from A.4.1.76 to A.5.4.160 deal with generation of derivative nouns, making it one of the largest topical sections in Aṣṭādhyāyī, called as the Taddhita section owing to the head rule A.4.1.76. This section is a systematic arrangement of rules that enumerates various affixes that are used in the derivation under specific semantic relations. We propose a system that automates the process of generation of derivative nouns as per the rules in Aṣṭādhyāyī. The proposed system follows a completely object oriented approach, that models each rule as a class of its own and then groups them as rule groups. The rule groups are decided on the basis of selective grouping of rules by virtue of anuvṛtti. The grouping of rules results in an inheritance network of rules which is a directed acyclic graph. Every rule group has a head rule and the head rule notifies all the direct member rules of the group about the environment which contains all the details about data entities, participating in the derivation process. The system implements this mechanism using multilevel inheritance and observer design patterns. The system focuses not only on generation of the desired final form, but also on the correctness of sequence of rules applied to make sure that the derivation has taken place in strict adherence to Aṣṭādhyāyī. The proposed system’s design allows to incorporate various conflict resolution methods mentioned in authentic texts and hence the effectiveness of those rules can be validated with the results from the system. We also present cases where we have checked the applicability of the system with the rules which are not specifically applicable to derivation of derivative nouns, in order to see the effectiveness of the proposed schema as a generic system for modeling Aṣṭādhyāyī.