Staal argued that the ancient Indian grammarians, especially
Pāṇini, had completely mastered methods of linguistic theory not rediscovered again until the 1950s and the applications of modern mathematical logic to linguistics by
Noam Chomsky. (Chomsky himself has said that the first
generative grammar in the modern sense was Panini's grammar). The early methods allowed the construction of discrete, potentially infinite generative systems. Remarkably, these early linguistic systems were codified orally, though writing was then used to develop them in some way. The formal basis for Panini's methods involved the use of "auxiliary" markers, rediscovered in the 1930s by the logician
Emil Post. Post's
rewrite systems are now a standard approach for the description of computer languages. In 1975, a consortium of scholars, led by Staal, documented the twelve-day performance, in
Panjal village,
Kerala, of the Vedic
Agnicayana ritual, which is available as a documentary titled
Altar of Fire. It was thought possible that this would be the last performance of the ritual, but it has since been revived. In
Rules without Meaning Staal controversially suggested that mantras "predate language in the development of man in a chronological sense". He pointed out that there is evidence that ritual existed before language, and argued that syntax was influenced by ritual. His more recent study was concerned with Greek and
Vedic geometry. He drew a parallel between geometry and linguistics, writing that, "Pāṇini is the Indian Euclid." Staal's point is that Pāṇini showed how to extend spoken Sanskrit to a formal
metalanguage for the language itself. ==Bibliography==