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A strong tradition of linguistic analysis developed in India associated with the composition and preservation of the ancient Vedic hymns in the first millennium BCE and continued uninterrupted to modern times. Fields of metrics, lexicography, phonetics, and grammar were recognized first. By the early fourth century BCE, Pāṇini composed a complete grammar of Sanskrit that generates utterances from basic elements under semantic and co-occurrence conditions. The grammar utilizes sophisticated techniques of reference, a formal meta-language, and abstract principles of rule precedence. The long tradition of grammatical commentary investigated subtleties of verbal cognition in discussion with well-developed philosophical disciplines of logic and ritual exegesis. Linguistic analysis of Sanskrit inspired similar analysis of middle Indic and early modern Indian languages.

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