On Sanskrit

My new favorite argument for the necessity of rules in grammar:

Lord Indra, chief of the gods and infinitely more capable than humans, asked Lord Bṛhaspati, preceptor of the gods and infinitely more powerful than mortal instructors, to teach him the Sanskrit language. Lord Bṛhaspati, trying to oblige him, began to enumerate the forms of Sanskrit. But in spite of the superhuman abilities and efforts of these two gods, Bṛhaspati could not accomplish his task even in a thousand divine years (which far exceed a thousand human years). For us poor mortals, with our limitations in capacity and time, this approach will surely fail. It is therefore that we need a grammar that formulates rules or generalizations, which will make it unnecessary to memorize every single form.

From Hock's Principles of Historical Linguistics, p. 251.