» See Panis for the Rigvedic race of demons. Pani's a surname used in India, found in the state of Orissa. There're two stories how this surname came about. The first one says the great grammar pundit Pāṇini's the ancestor of Panis, and the other story's that a king of Kalinga conferred the title Pani to Brahmins who could easily memorize all of the Vedas. Some Panis migrated inland to the tribal areas of Jharkhand and settled during the Mughal period (17th century). (The migrants'… (More on Pani)