Svabhava in grammar: notes on the early history of a philosophical term

The svabhavada is considered one of the “lost philosophies” of ancient India, perhaps the earliest powerful adversary doctrine of Buddha’s teachings or at least a crucial speculative obstacle to their comprehension, as pretended by the Madhyamika texts. Among the most ancient Brahminical sources, the Paninian terminological system employed svabhava to qualify the denotation of words, as an autonomous/self-standing power, i.e. as a counterpart of their linguistic form which is declared to be nitya ‘permanent’. This paper concentrates on the possible relationship between this technical concept and the more famous speculative usages of the term svabhava involved in the philosophical debate of most schools almost dating back to the same centuries.