Pingala

Who is Pingala?

Pingala is the traditional name of the author of the Chandaḥśāstra, the earliest known Sanskrit treatise on prosody.

Little is known about Piṅgala himself. In later Indian literary tradition, he is variously identified either as the younger brother of Pāṇini, or as Patañjali, the author of the Mahabhashya.

The Chandaḥśāstra is a work of eight chapters in the late Sūtra style, not fully comprehensible without a commentary. It has been dated to either the final centuries BCE or the early centuries CE, at the transition between Vedic meter and the classical meter of the Sanskrit epics. This would place it close to the beginning of the Common Era, likely post-dating Mauryan times. The 10th century mathematician Halayudha wrote a commentary on the Chandaḥśāstra and expanded it.