whataboutsanskrit

8/7/2019 whataboutsanskrit

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What about Sanskrit

Dorotea Ciupa

SOMMARIO

Il Sanscrito la lingua classica per eccellenza dellIndia, ancor oggi usata nei riti

religiosi ed in situazioni di alta cultura. Larticolo ne esamina storia, forme di scrittura usate

nel tempo, influenza sulle culture vicine e rapporto con le altre lingue Indo-Europee.

Sanskrit is a historical Indo-Arian language, one of the liturgical languages of

Hinduism, member of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages

and one of twenty-two official languages of India. It has the same status in Nepal as well.Like Latin in Europe and elsewhere, Sanskrit has been used by the educated classes in India

for literary and religious purposes for over two thousand years. It achieved this status partly

through a standardisation that resulted from a long tradition of grammatical theory and

analysis. This tradition reached its height around 500 B.C. in the work of the grammarian

Panini, who composed an intricate and complex description of the language in the form of

quasi-mathematical rules reminiscent of the rule of generative grammar in modern times.

The language thus codified was called sanskratam, i.e. put together, perfectly

formed, artificial, to distinguish it from prakratam or the natural, vulgar speech of

ordinary people. Sanskrit thus became a fixed literary language, while Prakrit continued todevelop into what are now the modern spoken languages of northern and central India, such

as Hindi and Bengali. Sanskrit was the classical standard language of ancient India; however

Hittite is probably the earliest recorded Indo-European tongue with at least one text dated c.

17th century B.C. The oldest known stage of Sanskrit is Vedic or Vedic Sanskrit, so-called

because it was the language of the Veda, the most ancient extant scriptures of Hinduism. The

Veda probably date back to about 1500 B.C. or earlier, many centuries before writing was

introduced into India. Vedic Sanskrit was current c. 1500 B.C. to c. 200 B.C. However,

Sanskrit in its classical form was spoken as a standard court language. It became the literary

vehicle of Hindu culture and as such was employed until c. A.D. 1100. Even today Sanskrit

survives in liturgical usage; it was recognised in the Indian constitution of 1950 because of its

association with the religion and literature of India.

Study of grammar by Indian scholars began early. The oldest existing Sanskrit

grammatical work was written by the already mentioned grammarian Panini (c. 4th century

B.C.), who perceptively analysed and commented on the Sanskrit language. Grammatically,

Sanskrit has eight cases for the noun (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative,

instrumental, vocative and locative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), three

numbers for verbs, nouns, pronouns and adjectives (singular, dual and plural) and three

voices for the verb (active, middle and passive). The language is highly inflected. The ancient

Indian scripts known as Brahmi and Kharosthi alphabets have been employed to recordSanskrit. Both Brahmi and Kharosthi are thought to be of Semitic origin.


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Historically, Sanskrit was not associated with any particular script. The emphasis on

orality, not textuality, in the Vedic Sanskrit tradition was maintained through the

development of early classical Sanskrit literature. When Sanskrit was written, the choice of

writing system was influenced by the regional scripts of the scribes. As such, virtually all of

the major writing systems of South Asia has been used for the creation of Sanskritmanuscripts. Since the late 19th century, Devanagari has been considered as the de facto

writing system for Sanskrit, quite possibly because of the European practice of printing

Sanskrit texts in the script.

Writing came relatively late to India, introduced from the Middle East by traders

around the 5th century B.C., according to a hypothesis by Rhys Davids (1902). Even after the

introduction of writing, oral tradition and memorisation of texts remained a prominent feature

of Sanskrit literature. In northern India, there are Brahmi inscriptions dating from the 3 rd

century B.C. onwards, the oldest appearing on the famous Prakrit pillar inscriptions of king

Ashoka. Roughly contemporarily with the Brahmi, the Kharosthi script was used. Later (c. 4 th

to 8th centuries A.D.) the Gupta script, derived from Brahmi, became prevalent. From c. the

8th century the Sharada script evolved out of the Gupta script and, later, the Oryia script. In

the South where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanskrit include Kannada

in Kannada and Telugu-speaking regions, Telugu in Telugu and Tamil-speaking regions,

Malayalam in Kerala and Grantha in Tamil-speaking regions.

The Devanagari characters, which are descended from Brahmi, also were, and still

are, used for writing Sanskrit. The comparison of Sanskrit with the languages of Europe,

especially by Sir William Jones1, opened the way to the scientific study of language in

Europe in 18th century. Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the

Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabetof Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1912.

European scholars in the 19th century generally preferred Devanagari for the

transcription and reproduction of the whole text or lengthy excerpts. However, references to

individual words and names in texts composed in European languages were usually

represented with Roman transliteration. From the mid-20th century, textual editions edited by

Western scholars have mostly been in Romanised transliteration.

The corpus of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as

well as scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts. Today, Sanskrit continues to be

widely used as ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns andmantras. Spoken Sanskrit is still in use in a few traditional institutions in India, and there are

some attempts at revival.

Sanskrit greatest influence is presumably that which it exerted on languages that grew

from its vocabulary and grammatical base. Especially among elite circles in India, Sanskrit is

prized as storehouse of scripture and the language of prayers in Hinduism. Like Latins

influence on European languages and Classical Chineses influence on East Asian languages,

1 Sir William Jones (1746-1794) was a Welsh philologist, well known as a student of ancient

India and for having proposed a relationship among the Indo-European languages.


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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. Of modern day Indian languages, while Hindi and Urdu tend to

be more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence, Nepali, Bengali, Assamese,

Konkani and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base. The national anthem,Jana Gana Mana, is written in a literary form of Bengali (known as shuddha bhasha). The

national song of India Vande Mataram was originally a poem taken from the book called

Anandamath, and is in a similarly highly Sanskritised Bengali. Malayalam, Telugu and

Kannada also combine a great deal of Sanskrit vocabulary.

The 1991 Indian census reported 49.736 fluent speakers of Sanskrit. Since the 1990s,

efforts to revive spoken Sanskrit have been increasing. Many organisations are conducting

Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularise the language. The CBSE (Central Board of

Secondary Education) in India has made Sanskrit the third language in the schools it governs,

though it is an option for the schools to adopt it or not, the other choice being the states own

official language. Sudharma, the only daily newspaper in Sanskrit, has been published out of

Mysore in India since the year 1970. Sanskrit is spoken natively by the population of the

Mattur village in central Karnataka. Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in

childhood and converse in the language.

In the Republic of India and in Indonesia, Sanskrit phrases are widely used as mottoes

for various educational and social organisations (much as Latin is used by some institutions

in the West). The motto of the Republic is also in Sanskrit. All these examples are considered

as its symbolic usage. Sanskrit has also interacted with Eastern and South-Eastern Asiatic

languages and influenced its Sino-Tibetan-speaking neighbours to the North through the

spread of Buddhist texts in translation. Buddhism was spread to China by Mahayanistmissionaries mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit

texts, and many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. The

Thai language also contains many words borrowed from Sanskrit. The influence extends as

far as the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Many of Indias scientific discoveries and developments are named in Sanskrit, as a

counterpart of the western practice of naming scientific developments in Latin or Greek.

Sanskrit has also made an appearance in western pop music in recent years.

Recent research shows that most European languages can be traced back to a root

language that is also related to Sanskrit. Many English words actually have Sanskrit origins.Also all modern European languages contain a number of words which have the identical

phonetic, graphical and semantic structure or nature of Sanskrit.

In conclusion we could consider the fact that other, even very distant and apparently

extremely different cultures, are really very close to ours and are surely not in opposition.

Thanks to the word, language and communication, people have created, developed and

improved their cultural heritage for millennia in all parts of the world. The same or similar

linguistic elements in the vocabulary should really give the similar or familiar results of the

human creative work. Should we then approach and look at other cultures, other people as

less foreign, alien and unfamiliar?


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