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Sanskrit

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The Sanskrit language (संस्कृतं saṃskṛtam, संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India.

It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe, and is a central part of Hindu tradition. Its pre-Classical form of Vedic Sanskrit, the liturgical language of the historical Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the most archaic of the Vedic texts being the Rigveda.

Today, Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. The corpus of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and literature, as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts.

The scope of this article is the Classical Sanskrit language as laid out in the grammar of Panini, roughly around 500 BC. Most Sanskrit texts available today were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were commited to writing.

Contents

History

Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century.
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Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century.

The adjective saṃskṛta- means "refined, consecrated, sanctified". The language referred to as saṃskṛtā vāk "the refined language" has by definition always been a 'high' language, used for religious and scientific discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is ).

  • Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers could try pronouncing the words “kite”, “take”, “chip” and “pack” with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corresponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all.
  • For practicing the voiced aspirates, one could try pronouncing, with very clear articulation: “drag him”, “said him”, “enrage him”, “grab him”. The voiced aspirated plosives (also called as murmur stops or breathy voice) are extremely important and frequent in Sanskrit, and preserve the series of Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates.
  • The dental consonants in Sanskrit are as in Spanish or French. They can be pronounced by pronouncing /t/ and /d/ (of English) by pressing the tip of the tongue against the back of the teeth rather than against the back of the alveolar ridge as done by English speakers. The normal "t" and "d" in IAST transliteration are the dental stops; and they occur much, much more frequently than the retroflex stops.
  • The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling-up the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". However, bringing the tip of the tongue a bit above the normal alveolar ridge would also work fine. The normal alveolar plosives of English /t/ and /d/ do not exist as such in Sanskrit.
  • The palatal plosives of Sanskrit do not have a sharp frictional sound following them, as what happened in English chips and jam. These are more of pure plosives than affricates.
  • Sanskrit has no /v/. Its nearest equivalent is /ʋ/, which is very close to /v/, but does not a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. But in consonant clusters, this may allophonically change to /w/.
  • The voiceless palatal sibilant of Sanskrit (श, IAST: ś) is very close to like the English sh in ship (although the Sanskrit phoneme is the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/) while the English phoneme is the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ with optional lip rounding). Today, some speakers of Sanskrit vary the palatal fricative from /ɕ/ to /ʃ/.
  • The voiceless retroflex sibilant (ष, /ʂ/) is pronounced like /ʃ/, but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In Mādhyandini branch of Yajurveda, this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as /kʰ/.
  • The Sanskrit voiced glottal fricative (ह, /ɦ/) is a voiced allophone of the normal h, as in English behind.
  • Although any consonant may come in the word-final position in an uninflected word-stem, the number of word-final consonants in any inflected word (or verb or particle) standing freely by itself is severly limited and determined by the rules of Sandhi. Only the following consonants may come in the word-final position: /k/, /ʈ/, /t/, /p/, /l/ (rare), voiceless /h/ (i.e., visarga), and all nasals except /ɲ/. Any vowel may come at the word-final position.

    • Pitch

    Vedic Sanskrit is a pitch accent language. Native grammarians define three tones (svara): udātta = 'raised', anudātta = 'not raised', and svarita = 'sounded'. The udātta syllable corresponds to the original Proto-Indo-European stress. The svarita is usually the next syllable after an udātta. Probably when the Rigveda was written down, the pitch of speech rose through the udātta and came back down through the following svarita. A svarita which is not preceded by an udātta is called an "independent svarita". In transliteration udātta is marked with acute accent (´) and independent svarita with a grave accent (`). Independent svarita occurs only where its udātta was lost because of vowel sandhi.

    Classical Sanskrit is usually pronounced with a stress accent decided by the syllable length pattern of each word. That is, Sanskrit, like Latin, is a syllable-timed language. It is the syllable which forms the basis of Sanskrit prosody.

    Script

    Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript in the Sharada script (17th or 18th century)
    Enlarge
    Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript in the Sharada script (17th or 18th century)

    Sanskrit has had no single script associated with it, since written Sanskrit was of limited importance throughout the age of classical Sanskrit literature. Since the late 19th century the Devanagari script became the script most widely used for Sanskrit. In northern India, there are Brahmi inscriptions dating from the 3rd century BCE onwards, the oldest appearing on the famous Prakrit pillar inscriptions of king Ashoka. Roughly contemporary with the Brahmi, the Kharosthi script was used. Later (ca. 4th to 8th centuries AD) the Gupta script, derived from Brahmi, became prevalent. From ca. the 8th century, the Sharada script evolved out of the Gupta script, and was mostly displaced in its turn by Devanagari from ca. the 12th century, with intermediary stages such as the Siddham script. The Bengali and other scripts were also used in their respective regions.

    The Devanagari letters ("akshara") for the vowels and the consonants were discussed above. The table below illustrates the combining of two consonants into a consonant cluster. To write a consonant cluster /XYa/ using the letters for /Xa/ and /Ya/, Devanagari usually modifies the first into an abbreviated combining form, generally by omitting the right side. Similarly, for a cluster /XYZa/, both /Xa/ and /Ya/ would be abbreviated. However, some forms are irregular, and there are many stylistic variants. Here the most common system is illustrated, with the second consonant represented by /n/.

    ka-group
    cha-group
    ta-group
    ta-group
    pa-group
    ya-group
    va-group

    In the south where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanscrit include Grantha in Tamil speaking regions, Telugu in Telugu and Tamil speaking regions, Kannada, and Malayalam. Grantha, which was the precursor to the Tamil script, was used exclusively for Sanskrit and is rarely seen today. A recent development has been to use Tamil characters with numeric subscripts indicating voicing and aspiration.

    Phrase_sanskrit.png
    Sanskrit in modern Indian scripts. May Śiva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods. (Kalidasa)
    Verbal learning occupied the pride of place in ancient India and bears an influence which can still be felt in Indian schooling today. High value was placed on the memorization of texts, often using sophisticated mnemonic techniques. As such, propagation and learning through writing was correspondingly deemphasized, and it is hypothesized that writing was introduced relatively late to India. Rhys Davids suggests that writing may have been introduced from the Middle East by traders, with Sanskrit remaining a purely oral language until well into India's Classical age.

    It is interesting to note the importance that Sanskrit orthography and Vedic philosophy of sound play in Hindu symbolism, as the varnamala, or sound-garland/alphabet, of 51 letters is also seen to be represented by the 51 skulls of Kali. In the Upanishads, the transcendent-immanent nature of Brahman is represented by the half-matra, or sphota of sound that is inherent to a beat of sound in the Sanskrit system.

    Romanization

    Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1912, and which is used in this article. ASCII-based transliteration schemes have evolved due to difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS, a lossless transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode aware web browsers, IAST has become common also for online articles.

    For scholarly work, Devanagari in the 19th century was generally preferred for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts also by European scholars; however, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European languages are usually represented using Roman transliteration, and from the mid 20th century, textual editions edited by Western scholars have also been mostly in romanized transliteration.

    Grammar

    Grammatical tradition

    Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyākaraṇa, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India, and culminates in the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini (ca. 5th century BC). Patañjali, who lived several centuries after Panini, is the reputed author of the Mahābhāṣya, the "Great Commentary" on the Aṣṭādhyāyī.

    Verbs

    Classification of verbs

    Sanskrit has ten classes of verbs divided into in two broad groups: athematic and thematic. The thematic verbs are so called because an a, called the theme vowel, is inserted between the stem and the ending. This serves to make the thematic verbs generally more regular. Exponents used in verb conjugation include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and reduplication. Every root has (not necessarily all distinct) zero, gu

    i- and u-stems

    Long Vowel-stems

    ṛ-stems are predominantly agental derivatives like dātṛ 'giver', though also include kinship terms like pitṛ́ 'father', mātṛ́ 'mother', and svásṛ 'sister'.

    See also Devi inflection, Vrkis inflection.

    Personal Pronouns and Determiners

    The first and second person pronouns are declined for the most part alike, having by analogy assimilated themselves with one another.

    Note: Where two forms are given, the second is enclitic and an alternative form. Ablatives in singular and plural may be extended by the syllable -tas; thus mat or mattas, asmat or asmattas.

    The demonstrative ta, declined below, also functions as the third person pronoun.

    Compounds

    One other notable feature of the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which may be huge (10+ words) as in some modern languages such as German. Nominal compounds occur with various structures, however morphologically speaking they are essentially the same. Each noun (or adjective) is in its (weak) stem form, with only the final element receiving case inflection. Some examples of nominal compounds include:

    1. Dvandva (co-ordinative)

    :These consist of two or more noun stems, connected in sense with 'and', e.g. matara-pitara 'Mother and Father'. Due to these compounds having more than one noun in them, they must be in the dual or plural.
    2. Bahuvrīhi (possessive)
    :Bahuvrīhi, or "much-rice", denotes a rich person—one who has much rice. Bahuvrīhi compounds refer (by example) to a compound noun with no head -- a compound noun that refers to a thing which is itself not part of the compound. For example, "low-life" and "block-head" are bahuvrihi compounds, since a low-life is not a kind of life, and a block-head is not a kind of head. (And a much-rice is not a kind of rice.) Compare with more common, headed, compound nouns like "fly-ball" (a kind of ball) or "alley cat" (a kind of cat). Bahurvrīhis can often be translated by "possessing..." or "-ed"; for example, "possessing much rice", or "much riced".
    3.

    The numbers one through four are declined. Éka is declined like a pronominal adjective, though the dual form does not occur. Dvá appears only in the dual. Trí and catúr are declined irregularly:

    Influence

    Modern-day India

    Sanskrit's greatest influence, presumably, is that which it exerted on languages that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base. Especially among elite circles in India, Sanskrit is prized as a storehouse of scripture and the language of prayers in Hinduism. Like Latin's influence on European languages, Sanskrit has influenced most Indian languages. While vernacular prayer is common, Sanskrit mantras are recited by millions of Hindus and most temple functions are conducted entirely in Sanskrit, often Vedic in form. Most higher forms of Indian vernacular languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu and Hindi, often called 'shuddha' (pure, higher) are much more heavily Sanskritized. Of modern day Indian languages, while Hindi tends to be more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence, Bengali and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base. The national anthem, Jana Gana Mana is higher form of Bengali, so Sanskritized as to be archaic in modern usages. The national song of India Vande Mataram which is originally a poem - composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and taken from his book called 'Aanandmath', is in highly sanskritized Bengali. Malayalam, which is spoken in the Kerala state of India, also combines a great deal of Sanskrit vocabulary with Tamil (Dravidian) grammatical structure. Kannada, another South Indian language, also contains Sanskrit vocabulary. But as a medium of spiritual instruction for Hindus in India, Sanskrit is still prized and widespread.

    Sanskrit words are found in many other present-day non-Indian languages. For instance, the Thai language contains many loan words from Sanskrit. For example, in Thai, the Rāvana - the emperor of Sri Lanka is called 'Thoskonth' which is clearly a derivation of his Sanskrit name 'Dashakanth' (of ten necks). And ranged as far as the Philippines, e.g., Tagalog 'gurò' from 'Guru', or 'teacher', with the Hindu seafarers who traded there.

    Attempts at revival

    Of late, there have been attempts to revive the speaking of this ancient tongue among people, so that vast literature available in Sanskrit can be made easily available to everyone. The CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) in India has made Sanskrit a third language (though it is an option for the school to adopt it or not, the other choice being the state's own official language) in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools, including but not limited to Christian missionary schools, affiliated to the ICSE board too, especially in those states where the official language is Hindi. An option between Sanskrit and Hindi (or many other local languages) as a second language exists for grades 9 and 10. Many organizations like the Samskrta Bharati are conducting Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularize the language. About four million people are claimed to have acquired the ability to speak Sanskrit fluently.

    Sanskrit is claimed to be spoken natively by the population in Mattur, a village in central Karnataka. Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in childhood and converse in the language. Even the local Muslims speak and converse in Sanskrit. Historically, the village was given by king Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Tuluva.

    Several organizations across India are putting in efforts to revive the language and to preserve oral transmission of the Vedas. Shri Vedabharathi is one such organization based out of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh that has been digitizing the Vedas through voice recording the recitations of Vedic Pandits.

    Some claim that its syntax makes it ideal for computer translation.

    Interactions with Sanskrit and related languages have also influenced their Sino-Tibetan-speaking neighbors to the north through the spread of Buddhist texts in translation. Buddhism was spread to China by Mahayanist missionaries mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit texts, and many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. (Although Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is not Sanskrit, properly speaking, its vocabulary is substantially the same, both because of genetic relationship, and because of conscious imitation on the part of composers. Buddhist texts composed in Sanskrit proper were primarily found in philosophical schools like the Madhyamaka.)

    Western vogue for Sanskrit

    At the end of the introduction to The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that the rediscovery of the ancient Indian tradition would be one of the great events in the history of the West. Goethe borrowed from Kalidasa for the Vorspiel auf dem Theater in Faust.

    Goethe and Schopenhauer were riding a crest of scholarly discovery, most notably the work done by Sir William Jones. (Goethe likely read Kalidasa's The Recognition of Sakuntala in Jones' translation.) However, the discovery of the world of Sanskrit literature moved beyond German and British scholars and intellectuals — Henry David Thoreau was a sympathetic reader of the Bhagavad Gita — and even beyond the humanities. In the early days of the Periodic Table, scientists referred to as yet undiscovered elements with the use of Sanskrit prefixes (see Mendeleev's predicted elements).

    The nineteenth century was a golden age of Western Sanskrit scholarship, and many of the giants of the field (Whitney, Macdonnell, Monier-Williams, Grassmann) knew each other personally. Perhaps the most commonly known example of Sanskrit in the West was also the last gasp of its vogue. T.S. Eliot, a student of Indian Philosophy and Lanham's, ended The Waste Land with Sanskrit: "Shantih Shantih Shantih".

    Computational linguistics

    There have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. machine translation, and other areas of natural language processing because of its highly regular structure ([The AI Magazine, Spring, 1985 #39]). This is due to Classical Sanskrit being a regularized, prescriptivist form abstracted from the much more irregular and richer Vedic Sanskrit. This levelling of the grammar of Classical Sanskrit occurred during the Brahmana phase, after the language had fallen out of popular use, arguably qualifying Classical Sanskrit as an early engineered language.

    See also

    References

    • The Sanskrit Language - T. Burrow - ISBN 8120817672
    • Sanskrit Pronunciation - Bruce Cameron - ISBN 1557000212
    • Teach Yourself Sanskrit - Prof. M. Coulson - ISBN 0340859903
    • Devavāṇīpraveśikā: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language - Robert P. Goldman - ISBN 0944613403
    • A Higher Sanskrit Grammar - M. R. Kale - ISBN 8120801784
    • A Sanskrit Grammar for Students - A.A. Macdonell - ISBN 8124600945
    • The Sanskrit Language: An Introductory Grammar and Reader - Walter Harding Maurer - ISBN 0700713824
    • Sanskrit Grammar - William D. Whitney - ISBN 8185557594
    • भाषा विज्ञान (Bhasha Vigyan) — Bholanath Tiwari — [1955] 2004 — ISBN 81-225-0007-2

    External links

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    Indo-Iranian languages
    Indo-Aryan Varieties of Sanskrit: Vedic Sanskrit - Classical Sanskrit | Angika | Assamese | Bengali | Bhojpuri | Dhivehi | Dogri | Gujarati | Hindi | Hindustani | Konkani | Magadhi | Mahl | Maithili | Marathi | Nepali | Oriya | Pāli | Prakrit | Punjabi | Romani | Sindhi | Sinhala | Urdu
    Iranian languages>Iranian Avestan | Varieties of Persian: Old Persian - Middle Persion (Pahlavi) - Modern Persian (Fārsī) - Darī (Afghanistan) - Tājikī | Bactrian | Balochi | Dari (Zoroastrianism) | Gilaki | Kurdish | Mazandarani | Ossetic | Pamiri | Pashto | Saka | Scythian | Sogdian | Talysh | Tat | Yagnobi
    Dardic languages>Dardic Dameli | Domaaki | Gawar-Bati | Kalasha | Kashmiri | Khowar | Kohistani | Nangalami | Pashayi | Palula | Shina | Shumashti
    Nuristani languages>Nuristani Ashkun | Kamviri | Kati | Prasuni | Tregami | Waigali

     

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