Linguistics is the scientific study of language. It involves an analysis of language form, language meaning, and language in context. Linguistics began to be studied systematically by the Indian scholar Pānini in the 6th century BCE. Beginning around the 4th century BCE, Warring States period China also developed its own grammatical traditions. Aristotle laid the foundation of Western linguistics as part of the study of rhetoric in his Poetics ca. 335 BC. Traditions of Arabic grammar and Hebrew grammar developed during the Middle Ages in a religious context like Pānini's Sanskrit grammar.