Pāṇini

Pāṇini was a very, very smart man who lived a long, long time ago in India. He was so smart that he figured out how to write down the rules of the language that people there spoke, called Sanskrit.

You know how sometimes grown-ups tell you to use the right words and not make up words? Pāṇini did kind of the same thing, but he wrote down the rules for how to make the right words in Sanskrit. This helped people learn the language better, and also helped them read and write it too!

It's kind of like putting together a puzzle. You have all these little pieces that you can use to make a big picture. Pāṇini made rules for how to use the little pieces (the words in Sanskrit) to make a sentence or phrase that would make sense.

Some people even say that Pāṇini's rules are like a computer program, because they are very precise and logical. And even though he lived a long time ago, people still use his rules today to learn and study Sanskrit!