Sacred language

A sacred language, holy language or liturgical language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.

Concept

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A sacred language is often the language which was spoken and written in the society in which a religion's sacred texts were first set down; these texts thereafter become fixed and holy, remaining frozen and immune to later linguistic developments. (An exception to this is Lucumí, a ritual lexicon of the Cuban strain of the Santería religion, with no standardized form.)

Once a language becomes associated with religious worship, its believers may ascribe virtues to the language of worship that they would not give to their native tongues.^{[citation needed]} In the case of sacred texts, there is a fear of losing authenticity and accuracy by a translation or re-translation, and difficulties in achieving acceptance for a new version of a text. A sacred language is typically vested with a solemnity and dignity that the vernacular lacks. Consequently, the training of clergy in the use of a sacred language becomes an important cultural investment, and their use of the tongue is perceived to give them access to a body of knowledge that untrained laypeople cannot (or should not) access.

Because sacred languages are ascribed with virtues that the vernacular is not seen to have, these typically preserve characteristics lost in the course of language development. In some cases, the sacred language is a

Mahayana Buddhism, now only followed by a small minority in South Asia makes little use of its original language, Sanskrit, mostly using versions of the local language. In East Asia, Classical Chinese is mainly used.^{[citation needed]} In Japan, texts are written in Chinese characters and read out or recited with the Japanese pronunciations of their constituent characters.^[3]

In

In Nepal, the Newar Buddhist form of Vajrayana is a storehouse of ancient Sanskrit Buddhist texts, many of which are now only extant in Nepal.^[9] Whatever language is used, Judith Simmer-Brown explains that a tantric Vajrayana text is often written in an obscure twilight language so that it cannot be understood by anyone without the verbal explanation of a qualified teacher.^[10]

Old Tamil was used for Sangam epics of Buddhist and Jain philosophy.^[11]

Christianity

Christian rites, rituals, and ceremonies are not celebrated in one single sacred language. Most churches which

The phrase "Jesus, King of the Jews" is reported in the Gospel of John as having been inscribed upon the cross in three different languages, thereby sanctifying them as the first languages to proclaim Christ's divinity. These are:

• Greek, the language in which the New Testament of the Christian Bible was originally written, as well as the Septuagint (a pre-Christian translation of the Hebrew Bible). This was the lingua franca of much of the Levant in the first century AD.
• Hebrew, the dominant language of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). This was the language commonly used among most Jews in the area.
• Latin, the language of the Roman Empire, which soon became an important language of the Christian Church, especially in the western provinces of the Roman Empire as well as being the language of the "First Among Equals", the Pope, in the Christian Pentarchy.

Liturgical languages are those which hold precedence within liturgy due to tradition and dispensation. Many of these languages have evolved from languages which were at one point vernacular, while some are intentional constructions by ecclesial authorities.

These include:

• Ecclesiastical Latin in the Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church.
• (
  Eastern Orthodox Churches and sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches
• Koine Greek as well as the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek Catholic Church.
• Old Georgian in the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Georgian Byzantine-Rite Catholic Church.
• Classical Armenian in the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic Church.
• Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and Coptic Catholic Church
  .
• Geʽez in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Eritrean Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Catholic Church and Eritrean Catholic Church.
• Saint Thomas Christian Churches
  .

The extensive use of

In the mid-16th century the Council of Trent rejected a proposal to introduce national languages as this was seen, among other reasons, as potentially divisive to Catholic unity.^{[citation needed]}

During the Reformation in England, when the Protestant authorities banned the use of Latin liturgy, various schools obtained a dispensation to continue to use Latin, for educational purposes.

From the end of 16th century, in coastal

In the 20th century, Pope Pius XII granted permission for a few vernaculars to be used in a few rites, rituals, and ceremonies. This did not include the Roman Liturgy of the Mass.

The Catholic Church, long before the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), had accepted and promoted the use of the non-vernacular liturgical languages listed above; while vernacular (i.e. modern or native) languages were also used liturgically throughout history; usually as a special concession given to religious orders conducting missionary activity.^[16]

In the 20th century, Vatican II set out to protect the use of Latin as a liturgical language. To a large degree, its prescription was disregarded and the vernacular not only became standard, but was generally used exclusively in the liturgy. Latin, which remains the chief language of the

Many Anabaptist groups, such as the Amish, use High German in their worship despite not speaking it amongst themselves.

Hinduism

Hinduism is traditionally considered to have Sanskrit as its primary liturgical language.^[17]

Sanskrit

Sanskrit is also the tongue of

Old Tamil is the language of the Shaiva (Devaram) and Vaishnava (Divya Prabhandham) scriptures. ^[19]

Early Telugu

Most of

Several personal names and place names traceable to Telugu roots are found in various Sanskrit and Prakrit inscriptions of 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. ^[23]

Others

Apart from Sanskrit, several Hindu spiritual works were composed in the various regional languages of India such as

Judaism

Hebrew

The core of the

List

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• Classical Arabic, the language of the Quran; it differs from the various forms of contemporary spoken Arabic in lexical and grammatical areas.
• Tanakh, some Jewish prayers, and the Talmud
  .
• Avestan, the language of the Avesta, the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism.
• Bahasa Tana is a sacred language used in special traditional ceremonies of the
  Alfur people in Maluku
  and is generally written using the Alifuru script.
• Sufi
  devotion, although it was only briefly used.
• Christian Bengali
  , the language of Christian worship and Bengali Christian literature restricted to the Anglo-Bengali Christian community
• Mahayana Buddhist sacred texts. The current pronunciation of Chinese characters is based on local pronunciation, for example Japanese Buddhists read Buddhist texts in Japanese Kanji
  pronunciation.
• Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church
  .
• Old Czech is used by the Moravian Church.
• Damin, an initiation language of the Lardil people in Australia.
• Early Modern Dutch is the language of the Statenvertaling, still in use among orthodox Calvinist denominations in the Netherlands.
• Early Modern English is used in some parts of the Anglican Communion and by the Continuing Anglican movement, as well as by a variety of English-speaking Protestants.
• Eskayan
  in the Philippines.
• Etruscan, cultivated for religious and magical purposes in the Roman Empire.
• Roman Catholic Church
  ).
• Early New High German is used in Amish communities for Bible readings and sermons.
• Gothic, the sole East Germanic language which is attested by significant texts, is usually considered to have been preserved by the Arian churches, while the Goths themselves spoke vulgar Latin dialects of their areas.
• Eastern Orthodox Churches. It differs markedly from Modern Greek
  but remains comprehensible for Modern Greek speakers.
• Palo religion with origins in Cuba, later spreading to other countries in the Caribbean Basin
  .
• Hattic was used by the Hittites who spoke an unrelated language.
• Biblical Hebrew – the languages in which the Hebrew Bible has been written over time; these differ from today's spoken Hebrew in lexical and grammatical areas.
• Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language, spoken by Jamaican Maroons, the descendants of runaway slaves in the mountains of Jamaica, during their "Kromanti Play", a ceremony in which the participants are said to be possessed by their ancestors
  and to speak as their ancestors did centuries ago.
• Early Middle Japanese is chanted in Shinto rituals.
• Judeo-Arabic, spoken by Jews living in the Arab world. Religious works were translated into it, and some religious works, such as those by Maimonides
  , were written in it.
• Kallawaya, a secret medicinal language used in the Andes.
• Ladino, used in translations of the Hebrew Bible and some Sephardic Jewish communities.^[27]
• Ecclesiastical Latin is the liturgical language of the Latin Church's Latin liturgical rites of the Catholic Church. It is based on the Italian pronunciation.
• Roman paganism, such as the Carmen Arvale and Carmen Saliare
  . These texts were unintelligible to classical Latin speakers and remain somewhat obscure to scholars even today.
• Manchu shamanic rituals
  .
• Mandaeanism
  .
• Classical Meitei, the holy language of Sanamahism (Meitei religion).
• Classical Mongolian was used alongside Classical Tibetan as sacred languages of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia.
• Old Norse, used in some Heathenry groups as a religious language
• Palaic and Luwian, cultivated as a religious language by the Hittites.
• Pali, the original language of Theravada Buddhism.
• Some Portuguese and Latin prayers are retained by the Kakure Kirishitan (Hidden Christians) of Japan, who recite it without understanding the language.
• Sikh holy scripture Guru Granth Sahib.^[29]
  It is different from the various dialects of Punjabi that exist today.
• Vedas and other sacred texts of Hinduism as well as the original language of several sects of early Buddhism and a language of Jainism
  .
• Old Bulgarian
  , the liturgical language of the Slavic Eastern Orthodoxy
• Eastern Catholic
  churches.
• Sumerian, cultivated and preserved in Assyria and Babylon long after its extinction as an everyday language.
• Syro Malabar Catholic Church and Maronite Church
  .
• Old Tamil is the language of the Shaiva (Devaram) and Vaishnava (Divya Prabhandham) scriptures. ^[30]
• Classical Tibetan, known as Chhokey in Bhutan, the sacred language of Tibetan Buddhism.
• Bozal, a type of Spanish-based creole with some words of Yoruba language as well as those of Bantu
  origin with an inflection similar to the way Africans would speak as they were learning Spanish during enslavement.