Sanskrit
Sanskrit | |
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संस्कृत-, Saṃskṛta-, संस्कृतम्, Saṃskṛtam | |
(top) A 19th-century illustrated Sanskrit manuscript from the Bhagavad Gita,[1] composed c. 400 – 200 BCE.[2][3] (bottom) The 175th-anniversary stamp of the third-oldest Sanskrit college, Sanskrit College, Calcutta. The oldest was founded as Benares Sanskrit College in 1791. | |
Pronunciation | [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] |
Region | South Asia (ancient and medieval), parts of Southeast Asia (medieval) |
Era | c. 1500 – 600 BCE (Vedic Sanskrit);[4] 700 BCE – 1350 CE (Classical Sanskrit)[5] |
Revival | There are no known native speakers of Sanskrit.[6][7][8][9][10][11] |
Indo-European
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Early form | |
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Official status | |
Official language in |
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Recognised minority language in | South Africa (protected language)[14] |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-1 | sa |
ISO 639-2 | san |
ISO 639-3 | san – inclusive codeIndividual codes: cls – Classical Sanskritvsn – Vedic Sanskrit |
Glottolog | sans1269 |
Sanskrit (
Sanskrit generally connotes several
The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to the most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the
Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the
Etymology and nomenclature
In Sanskrit, the verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta- ('made, formed, work').[45][46] It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred".[47][48][49] According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined the alphabet, the structure of words and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold", states Biderman, as an integral language they called Sanskrit.[46] From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit.[50][51]
Sanskrit as a language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages (
History
Origin and development
Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European:[19][20][21]
- Vedic Sanskrit (c. 1500–500 BCE).
- Mycenaean Greek (c. 1450 BCE)[54] and Ancient Greek (c. 750–400 BCE).
- Hittite (c. 1750–1200 BCE).
Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include
Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of the Sanskrit language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms[61] (with the addition of Old English for further comparison):
PIE | English | Old English | Latin | Greek | Sanskrit | Glossary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
*méh₂tēr | mother | mōdor | māter | mētēr | mātár- | mother |
*ph₂tḗr | father | fæder | pater | patēr | pitár- | father |
*bʰréh₂tēr | brother | brōþor | frāter | phreter | bhrā́tar- | brother |
*swésōr | sister | sweoster | soror | eor | svásar- | sister |
*suHnús | son | sunu | - | hyiós | sūnú- | son |
*dʰugh₂tḗr | daughter | dohtor | - | thugátēr | duhitár- | daughter |
*gʷṓws | cow | cū | bōs | bous | gáu- | cow |
*demh₂- | tame, timber | tam, timber | domus | dom- | dām- | house, tame, build |
The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of the distant major ancient languages of the world.[f]
The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region, during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.[63]
The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on the relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia.[64] The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India, the Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language.[65]
Vedic Sanskrit
The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit. The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda, a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition.[66][67][68]
However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as a natural part of the earliest Vedic language,[69] and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters.
The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other.[70] This is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases.[71]
The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors from distant parts[
Vedic Sanskrit was both a spoken and literary language of ancient India[citation needed]. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of the semi-nomadic Aryans who temporarily settled in one place, maintained cattle herds, practiced limited agriculture, and after some time moved by wagon trains they called grama.[77][78] The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the "Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey.[79][g] Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes the gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature.[79][81]
O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names
they first set forth the beginning of Language,
Their most excellent and spotless secret
was laid bare through love,
When the wise ones formed Language with their mind,
purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan,
Then friends knew friendships –
an auspicious mark placed on their language.
The Vedic Sanskrit found in the Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.[83] According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times the social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres.[84][h] While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different.[86]
Classical Sanskrit
The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the
The formalization of the Sanskrit language is credited to Pāṇini, along with Patanjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work.[88] Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'). The century in which he lived is unclear and debated, but his work is generally accepted to be from sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE.[89][90][91]
The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world".[92] Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as the variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India.[93] The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa, Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana.[94][95] The Aṣṭādhyāyī of Panini became the foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga.[93]
In the Aṣṭādhyāyī, language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines the linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language.[96] Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced.[97] Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and the most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century.[92]
Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.[98] His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.[99] It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created the detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī.[100][101][102][i]
The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and a restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded".[109] The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond the Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language.[110]
The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature,[71] are negligible when compared to the intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit.[111] The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax.[112] There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as the sandhi rules, both internal and external.[112] Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature.[112]
Sanskrit and Prakrit languages
The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in the context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana.
Colonial era scholars questioned whether Sanskrit was ever a spoken language, or just a literary language.[122] Scholars disagree in their answers. A section of Western scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language, while others and particularly most Indian scholars state the opposite.[123] Those who affirm Sanskrit to have been a vernacular language point to the necessity of Sanskrit being a spoken language for the oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. Secondly, they state that the textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini and Patanajali affirms that the Classical Sanskrit in their era was a language that is spoken (bhasha) by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit.[123] The 7th-century Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region.[123]
According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit.
According to Lamotte (1976), an Indologist and Buddhism scholar, Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence.[127] Sanskrit was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE.[128]
Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit.[129][130][131]
Dravidian influence on Sanskrit
Reinöhl mentions that not only have the Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence".[132] Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit.[133] Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from the other."[134]
Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English:
A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for the Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language.
— Reinöhl[132]
Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of the possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit".[135]
The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and the crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit.[136]
Influence
Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting the largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press.
— Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf[137][138][k]
Sanskrit has been the predominant language of
Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism.[143][144] The structure and capabilities of the Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language?[143][145] They speculated on the role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other.[145][l] These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal—a scholar of Linguistics with a focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit.[143] Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship;[148] for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts.[149] According to Renou, Sanskrit had a limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature.[150] Sanskrit was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati.[m][152]
The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE.[156] Xuanzang, another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in the 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong.[157][158] By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia,[159] parts of the East Asia[160] and the Central Asia.[161] It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions.[162] According to the Dalai Lama, the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet.[163]
The Sanskrit language created a pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally.[126][166] It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent.[166] As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language.[166] It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given the first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars.[126] Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to the more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah.[126]
Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE.[167] Its position in the cultures of Greater India is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent, particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent.[168][169][170]
Decline
Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century.[128][171] This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand the Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire.[172] Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression.[173]
With the fall of Kashmir around the 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared,[174] perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock.[175] The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century.[176] As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and the South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire, so did Sanskrit.[174] There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar.[177] Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with the Muslim rulers.[178] Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire, reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity.[178][179][180] After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support the historic Sanskrit literary culture[174] and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment.[173]
Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead".[181] After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with the previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock.[176]
Scholars maintain state that the Sanskrit language did not die, only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes a negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder,[182]
On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be a dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead."[174]
The Sanskrit language scholar Moriz Winternitz states, Sanskrit was never a dead language and it is still alive though its prevalence is lesser than ancient and medieval times. Sanskrit remains an integral part of Hindu journals, festivals, Ramlila plays, drama, rituals and the rites-of-passage.[183] Similarly, Brian Hatcher states that the "metaphors of historical rupture" by Pollock are not valid, that there is ample proof that Sanskrit was very much alive in the narrow confines of surviving Hindu kingdoms between the 13th and 18th centuries, and its reverence and tradition continues.[184]
Hanneder states that modern works in Sanskrit are either ignored or their "modernity" contested.[185]
According to Robert P. Goldman and Sally Sutherland, Sanskrit is neither "dead" nor "living" in the conventional sense. It is a special, timeless language that lives in the numerous manuscripts, daily chants, and ceremonial recitations, a heritage language that Indians contextually prize, and which some practice.[186]
When the British introduced English to India in the 19th century, knowledge of Sanskrit and ancient literature continued to flourish as the study of Sanskrit changed from a more traditional style into a form of analytical and comparative scholarship mirroring that of Europe.[187]
Modern Indo-Aryan languages
The relationship of Sanskrit to the Prakrit languages, particularly the modern form of Indian languages, is complex and spans about 3,500 years, states Colin Masica—a linguist specializing in South Asian languages. A part of the difficulty is the lack of sufficient textual, archaeological and epigraphical evidence for the ancient Prakrit languages with rare exceptions such as Pali, leading to a tendency toward anachronistic errors.[188] Sanskrit and Prakrit languages may be divided into Old Indo-Aryan (1500 BCE – 600 BCE), Middle Indo-Aryan (600 BCE – 1000 CE) and New Indo-Aryan (1000 CE – present), each can further be subdivided into early, middle or second, and late evolutionary substages.[188]
Vedic Sanskrit belongs to the early Old Indo-Aryan stage, while Classical Sanskrit to the later Old Indo-Aryan stage. The evidence for Prakrits such as Pali (Theravada Buddhism) and Ardhamagadhi (Jainism), along with Magadhi, Maharashtri, Sinhala, Sauraseni and Niya (Gandhari), emerge in the Middle Indo-Aryan stage in two versions—archaic and more formalized—that may be placed in early and middle substages of the 600 BCE – 1000 CE period.[188] Two literary Indo-Aryan languages can be traced to the late Middle Indo-Aryan stage and these are Apabhramsa and Elu (a literary form of Sinhalese). Numerous North, Central, Eastern and Western Indian languages, such as Hindi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Braj, Awadhi, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Marathi, and others belong to the New Indo-Aryan stage.[188]
There is an extensive overlap in the vocabulary, phonetics and other aspects of these New Indo-Aryan languages with Sanskrit, but it is neither universal nor identical across the languages. They likely emerged from a synthesis of the ancient Sanskrit language traditions and an admixture of various regional dialects. Each language has some unique and regionally creative aspects, with unclear origins. Prakrit languages do have a grammatical structure, but like Vedic Sanskrit, it is far less rigorous than Classical Sanskrit. While the roots of all Prakrit languages may be in Vedic Sanskrit and ultimately the Proto-Indo-Aryan language, their structural details vary from Classical Sanskrit.[28][188] It is generally accepted by scholars and widely believed in India that the modern Indo-Aryan languages – such as Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, and Punjabi – are descendants of the Sanskrit language.[189][190][191] Sanskrit, states Burjor Avari, can be described as "the mother language of almost all the languages of north India".[192]
Geographic distribution
The Sanskrit language's historic presence is attested across a wide geography beyond South Asia. Inscriptions and literary evidence suggests that Sanskrit language was already being adopted in Southeast Asia and Central Asia in the 1st millennium CE, through monks, religious pilgrims and merchants.[193][194][195]
South Asia has been the geographic range of the largest collection of the ancient and pre-18th-century Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions.[139] Beyond ancient India, significant collections of Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions have been found in China (particularly the Tibetan monasteries),[196][197] Myanmar,[198] Indonesia,[199] Cambodia,[200] Laos,[201] Vietnam,[202] Thailand,[203] and Malaysia.[201] Sanskrit inscriptions, manuscripts or its remnants, including some of the oldest known Sanskrit written texts, have been discovered in dry high deserts and mountainous terrains such as in Nepal,[204][205][n] Tibet,[197][206] Afghanistan,[207][208] Mongolia,[209] Uzbekistan,[210] Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,[210] and Kazakhstan.[211] Some Sanskrit texts and inscriptions have also been discovered in Korea and Japan.[212][213][214]
Official status
In
Phonology
Sanskrit shares many Proto-Indo-European phonological features, although it features a larger inventory of distinct phonemes. The consonantal system is the same, though it systematically enlarged the inventory of distinct sounds. For example, Sanskrit added a voiceless aspirated "tʰ", to the voiceless "t", voiced "d" and voiced aspirated "dʰ" found in PIE languages.[218]
The most significant and distinctive phonological development in Sanskrit is vowel merger.[218] The short *e, *o and *a, all merge as a (अ) in Sanskrit, while long *ē, *ō and *ā, all merge as long ā (आ). Compare Sanskrit nāman to Latin nōmen. These mergers occurred very early and significantly affected Sanskrit's morphological system.[218] Some phonological developments in it mirror those in other PIE languages. For example, the labiovelars merged with the plain velars as in other satem languages. The secondary palatalization of the resulting segments is more thorough and systematic within Sanskrit.[218] A series of retroflex and dental stops were innovated in Sanskrit to more thoroughly articulate sounds for clarity. For example, unlike the loss of the morphological clarity from vowel contraction that is found in early Greek and related southeast European languages, Sanskrit deployed *y, *w, and *s intervocalically to provide morphological clarity.[218]
Vowels
The cardinal vowels (svaras) i (इ), u (उ), a (अ) distinguish length in Sanskrit.[219][220] The short a (अ) in Sanskrit is a closer vowel than ā, equivalent to schwa. The mid vowels ē (ए) and ō (ओ) in Sanskrit are monophthongizations of the Indo-Iranian diphthongs *ai and *au. The Old Iranian language preserved *ai and *au.[219] The Sanskrit vowels are inherently long, though often transcribed e and o without the diacritic. The vocalic liquid r̥ in Sanskrit is a merger of PIE *r̥ and *l̥. The long r̥ is an innovation and it is used in a few analogically generated morphological categories.[219][221][222]
Independent form | IAST/
ISO |
IPA | Independent form | IAST/ ISO |
IPA | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
kaṇṭhya (Guttural) |
अ | a | /ɐ/ | आ | ā | /ɑː/ | ||
tālavya ( Palatal )
|
इ | i | /i/ | ई | ī | /iː/ | ||
oṣṭhya (Labial) |
उ | u | /u/ | ऊ | ū | /uː/ | ||
mūrdhanya (Retroflex) |
ऋ | ṛ/r̥ | /r̩/ | ॠ | ṝ/r̥̄ | /r̩ː/ | ||
dantya (Dental) |
ऌ | ḷ/l̥ | /l̩/ | (ॡ) | (ḹ/l̥̄)[p] | /l̩ː/ | ||
kaṇṭhatālavya (Palatoguttural) |
ए | e/ē | /eː/ | ऐ | ai | /ɑj/ | ||
kaṇṭhoṣṭhya (Labioguttural) |
ओ | o/ō | /oː/ | औ | au | /ɑw/ | ||
(consonantal allophones) | ं | ṃ/ṁ[225] | /◌̃/ | ः | ḥ[226] | /h/ |
According to Masica, Sanskrit has four traditional semivowels, with which were classed, "for morphophonemic reasons, the liquids: y, r, l, and v; that is, as y and v were the non-syllabics corresponding to i, u, so were r, l in relation to r̥ and l̥".[227] The northwestern, the central and the eastern Sanskrit dialects have had a historic confusion between "r" and "l". The Paninian system that followed the central dialect preserved the distinction, likely out of reverence for the Vedic Sanskrit that distinguished the "r" and "l". However, the northwestern dialect only had "r", while the eastern dialect probably only had "l", states Masica. Thus literary works from different parts of ancient India appear inconsistent in their use of "r" and "l", resulting in doublets that are occasionally semantically differentiated.[227]
Consonants
Sanskrit possesses a symmetric consonantal phoneme structure based on how the sound is articulated, though the actual usage of these sounds conceals the lack of parallelism in the apparent symmetry possibly from historical changes within the language.[228]
sparśa ( Plosive )
|
anunāsika ( Nasal )
|
antastha (Approximant) |
ūṣman/saṃgharṣhī ( Fricative )
| |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Voicing → | aghoṣa | ghoṣa | aghoṣa | |||||||||||
Aspiration →
|
alpaprāṇa | mahāprāṇa | alpaprāṇa | mahāprāṇa | alpaprāṇa | mahāprāṇa | ||||||||
kaṇṭhya (Guttural) |
क | ka [k] |
ख | kha [kʰ] |
ग | ga [ɡ] |
घ | gha [ɡʱ] |
ङ | ṅa [ŋ] |
ह | ha [ɦ] |
||
tālavya (Palatal) |
च | ca [t͜ɕ] |
छ | cha [t͜ɕʰ] |
ज | ja [d͜ʑ] |
झ | jha [d͜ʑʱ] |
ञ | ña [ɲ] |
य | ya [j] |
श | śa [ɕ] |
mūrdhanya (Retroflex) |
ट | ṭa [ʈ] |
ठ | ṭha [ʈʰ] |
ड | ḍa [ɖ] |
ढ | ḍha [ɖʱ] |
ण | ṇa [ɳ] |
र | ra [ɾ] |
ष | ṣa [ʂ] |
dantya (Dental) |
त | ta [ t ]
|
थ | tha [tʰ] |
द | da [ d ]
|
ध | dha [dʱ] |
न | na [ n ]
|
ल | la [ l ]
|
स | sa [s] |
oṣṭhya (Labial) |
प | pa [p] |
फ | pha [pʰ] |
ब | ba [b] |
भ | bha [bʱ] |
म | ma [m] |
व | va [ʋ] |
Sanskrit had a series of retroflex stops originating as conditioned alternants of dentals, albeit by Sanskrit they had become phonemic.[228]
Regarding the palatal plosives, the pronunciation is a matter of debate. In contemporary attestation, the palatal plosives are a regular series of palatal stops, supported by most Sanskrit sandhi rules. However, the reflexes in descendant languages, as well as a few of the sandhi rules regarding ch, could suggest an affricate pronunciation.
jh was a marginal phoneme in Sanskrit, hence its phonology is more difficult to reconstruct; it was more commonly employed in the Middle Indo-Aryan languages as a result of phonological processes resulting in the phoneme.
The palatal nasal is a conditioned variant of n occurring next to palatal obstruents.[228] The anusvara that Sanskrit deploys is a conditioned alternant of postvocalic nasals, under certain sandhi conditions.[229] Its visarga is a word-final or morpheme-final conditioned alternant of s and r under certain sandhi conditions.[229]
The system of Sanskrit Sounds
[The] order of Sanskrit sounds works along three principles: it goes from simple to complex; it goes from the back to the front of the mouth; and it groups similar sounds together. [...] Among themselves, both the vowels and consonants are ordered according to where in the mouth they are pronounced, going from back to front.
— A. M. Ruppel, The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit[230]
The voiceless aspirated series is also an innovation in Sanskrit but is significantly rarer than the other three series.[228]
While the Sanskrit language organizes sounds for expression beyond those found in the PIE language, it retained many features found in the Iranian and Balto-Slavic languages. An example of a similar process in all three is the retroflex sibilant ʂ being the automatic product of dental s following i, u, r, and k.[229]
Phonological alternations, sandhi rules
Sanskrit deploys extensive phonological alternations on different linguistic levels through sandhi rules (literally, the rules of "putting together, union, connection, alliance"), similar to the English alteration of "going to" as gonna.[231] The Sanskrit language accepts such alterations within it, but offers formal rules for the sandhi of any two words next to each other in the same sentence or linking two sentences. The external sandhi rules state that similar short vowels coalesce into a single long vowel, while dissimilar vowels form glides or undergo diphthongization.[231] Among the consonants, most external sandhi rules recommend regressive assimilation for clarity when they are voiced. These rules ordinarily apply at compound seams and morpheme boundaries.[231] In Vedic Sanskrit, the external sandhi rules are more variable than in Classical Sanskrit.[232]
The internal sandhi rules are more intricate and account for the root and the canonical structure of the Sanskrit word. These rules anticipate what are now known as the Bartholomae's law and Grassmann's law. For example, states Jamison, the "voiceless, voiced, and voiced aspirated obstruents of a positional series regularly alternate with each other (p ≈ b ≈ bh; t ≈ d ≈ dh, etc.; note, however, c ≈ j ≈ h), such that, for example, a morpheme with an underlying voiced aspirate final may show alternants with all three stops under differing internal sandhi conditions".[233] The velar series (k, g, gʰ) alternate with the palatal series (c, j, h), while the structural position of the palatal series is modified into a retroflex cluster when followed by dental. This rule creates two morphophonemically distinct series from a single palatal series.[233]
Vocalic alternations in the Sanskrit morphological system is termed "strengthening", and called guṇa and vr̥ddhi in the preconsonantal versions. There is an equivalence to terms deployed in Indo-European descriptive grammars, wherein Sanskrit's unstrengthened state is same as the zero-grade, guṇa corresponds to normal-grade, while vr̥ddhi is same as the lengthened-state.[234] The qualitative ablaut is not found in Sanskrit just like it is absent in Iranian, but Sanskrit retains quantitative ablaut through vowel strengthening.[234] The transformations between unstrengthened to guṇa is prominent in the morphological system, states Jamison, while vr̥ddhi is a particularly significant rule when adjectives of origin and appurtenance are derived. The manner in which this is done slightly differs between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit.[234][235]
Sanskrit grants a very flexible syllable structure, where they may begin or end with vowels, be single consonants or clusters. Similarly, the syllable may have an internal vowel of any weight. Vedic Sanskrit shows traces of following the
Sanskrit, like most early Indo-European languages, lost the so-called "laryngeal consonants (cover-symbol *H) present in the Proto-Indo-European", states Jamison.[236] This significantly affected the evolutionary path of the Sanskrit phonology and morphology, particularly in the variant forms of roots.[238]
Pronunciation
Because Sanskrit is not anyone's native language, it does not have a fixed pronunciation. People tend to pronounce it as they do their native language. The articles on
Transcription | Goldman (2002)[q] |
Cardona (2003)[240] | |
---|---|---|---|
a | ɐ | ɐ | |
ā | aː | aː | |
i | ɪ | ɪ | |
ī | iː | iː | |
u | ʊ | ʊ | |
ū | uː | uː | |
r̥ | ɽɪ | ɽɪ | ᵊɾᵊ or ᵊɽᵊ[r] |
r̥̄ | ɽiː | ɽiː?[s] | ?[s] |
l̥ | lɪ | ?[t] | [u] |
ē | eː | eː | eː |
ai | ai | ai | ɐi or ɛi |
ō | oː | oː | oː |
au | au | au | ɐu or ɔu |
aṃ | ɐ̃, ɐɴ | ɐ̃, ɐɴ[v] | |
aḥ | ɐh | ɐhɐ[w] | ɐh |
k | k | k | |
kh | kʰ | kʰ | |
g | ɡ | ɡ | |
gh | ɡʱ | ɡʱ | |
ṅ | ŋ | ŋ | |
h | ɦ | ɦ | ɦ |
c | t͡ɕ | t͡ɕ | |
ch | t͡ɕʰ | t͡ɕʰ | |
j | d͡ʑ | d͡ʑ | |
jh | d͡ʑʱ | d͡ʑʱ | |
ñ | n | n | |
y | j | j | j |
ś | ɕ | ɕ | ɕ |
ṭ | t̠ | t̠ | |
ṭh | t̠ʰ | t̠ʰ | |
ḍ | d̠ | d̠ | |
ḍh | d̠ʱ | d̠ʱ | |
ṇ | n̠ | n̠ | |
r | ɾ | ɾ | ɾ̪, ɾ or ɽ |
ṣ | s̠ | s̠ | ʂ |
t | t̪ | t̪ | |
th | t̪ʰ | t̪ʰ | |
d | d̪ | d̪ | |
dh | d̪ʱ | d̪ʱ | |
n | n̪ | n̪ | |
l | l | l | l̪ |
s | s | s | s̪ |
p | p | p | |
ph | pʰ | pʰ | |
b | b | b | |
bh | bʱ | bʱ | |
m | m | m | |
v | ʋ | ʋ | ʋ |
stress | (ante)pen- ultimate[x] |
Morphology
The basis of Sanskrit morphology is the root, states Jamison, "a morpheme bearing lexical meaning".[241] The verbal and nominal stems of Sanskrit words are derived from this root through the phonological vowel-gradation processes, the addition of affixes, verbal and nominal stems. It then adds an ending to establish the grammatical and syntactic identity of the stem. According to Jamison, the "three major formal elements of the morphology are (i) root, (ii) affix, and (iii) ending; and they are roughly responsible for (i) lexical meaning, (ii) derivation, and (iii) inflection respectively".[242]
A Sanskrit word has the following canonical structure:[241]
0-n + Ending
0–1
The root structure has certain phonological constraints. Two of the most important constraints of a "root" is that it does not end in a short "a" (अ) and that it is monosyllabic.[241] In contrast, the affixes and endings commonly do. The affixes in Sanskrit are almost always suffixes, with exceptions such as the augment "a-" added as prefix to past tense verb forms and the "-na/n-" infix in single verbal present class, states Jamison.[241]
Sanskrit verbs have the following canonical structure:[243]
Tense-Aspect + Suffix
Mood + Ending
Personal-Number-Voice
According to Ruppel, verbs in Sanskrit express the same information as other Indo-European languages such as English.[244] Sanskrit verbs describe an action or occurrence or state, its embedded morphology informs as to "who is doing it" (person or persons), "when it is done" (tense) and "how it is done" (mood, voice). The Indo-European languages differ in the detail. For example, the Sanskrit language attaches the affixes and ending to the verb root, while the English language adds small independent words before the verb. In Sanskrit, these elements co-exist within the word.[244][y]
Sanskrit word equivalent | ||
---|---|---|
English expression | IAST /ISO
|
Devanagari |
you carry | bharasi | भरसि |
they carry | bharanti | भरन्ति |
you will carry | bhariṣyasi | भरिष्यसि |
Both verbs and nouns in Sanskrit are either thematic or athematic, states Jamison.[246] Guna (strengthened) forms in the active singular regularly alternate in athematic verbs. The finite verbs of Classical Sanskrit have the following grammatical categories: person, number, voice, tense-aspect, and mood. According to Jamison, a portmanteau morpheme generally expresses the person-number-voice in Sanskrit, and sometimes also the ending or only the ending. The mood of the word is embedded in the affix.[246]
These elements of word architecture are the typical building blocks in Classical Sanskrit, but in Vedic Sanskrit these elements fluctuate and are unclear. For example, in the Rigveda preverbs regularly occur in tmesis, states Jamison, which means they are "separated from the finite verb".[241] This indecisiveness is likely linked to Vedic Sanskrit's attempt to incorporate accent. With nonfinite forms of the verb and with nominal derivatives thereof, states Jamison, "preverbs show much clearer univerbation in Vedic, both by position and by accent, and by Classical Sanskrit, tmesis is no longer possible even with finite forms".[241]
While roots are typical in Sanskrit, some words do not follow the canonical structure.[242] A few forms lack both inflection and root. Many words are inflected (and can enter into derivation) but lack a recognizable root. Examples from the basic vocabulary include kinship terms such as mātar- (mother), nas- (nose), śvan- (dog). According to Jamison, pronouns and some words outside the semantic categories also lack roots, as do the numerals. Similarly, the Sanskrit language is flexible enough to not mandate inflection.[242]
The Sanskrit words can contain more than one affix that interact with each other. Affixes in Sanskrit can be athematic as well as thematic, according to Jamison.[247] Athematic affixes can be alternating. Sanskrit deploys eight cases, namely nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative.[247]
Stems, that is "root + affix", appear in two categories in Sanskrit: vowel stems and consonant stems. Unlike some Indo-European languages such as Latin or Greek, according to Jamison, "Sanskrit has no closed set of conventionally denoted noun declensions". Sanskrit includes a fairly large set of stem-types.[248] The linguistic interaction of the roots, the phonological segments, lexical items and the grammar for the Classical Sanskrit consist of four Paninian components. These, states Paul Kiparsky, are the Astadhyaayi, a comprehensive system of 4,000 grammatical rules, of which a small set are frequently used; Sivasutras, an inventory of anubandhas (markers) that partition phonological segments for efficient abbreviations through the pratyharas technique; Dhatupatha, a list of 2,000 verbal roots classified by their morphology and syntactic properties using diacritic markers, a structure that guides its writing systems; and, the Ganapatha, an inventory of word groups, classes of lexical systems.[249] There are peripheral adjuncts to these four, such as the Unadisutras, which focus on irregularly formed derivatives from the roots.[249]
Sanskrit morphology is generally studied in two broad fundamental categories: the nominal forms and the verbal forms. These differ in the types of endings and what these endings mark in the grammatical context.[242] Pronouns and nouns share the same grammatical categories, though they may differ in inflection. Verb-based adjectives and participles are not formally distinct from nouns. Adverbs are typically frozen case forms of adjectives, states Jamison, and "nonfinite verbal forms such as infinitives and gerunds also clearly show frozen nominal case endings".[242]
Tense and voice
The Sanskrit language includes five tenses: present, future, past imperfect, past aorist and past perfect.[245] It outlines three types of voices: active, passive and the middle.[245] The middle is also referred to as the mediopassive, or more formally in Sanskrit as parasmaipada (word for another) and atmanepada (word for oneself).[243]
Active | Middle (Mediopassive) | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Singular | Dual | Plural | Singular | Dual | Plural | |
1st person | -mi | -vas | -mas | -e | -vahe | -mahe |
2nd person | -si | -thas | -tha | -se | -āthe | -dhve |
3rd person | -ti | -tas | -anti | -te | -āte | -ante |
The paradigm for the tense-aspect system in Sanskrit is the three-way contrast between the "present", the "aorist" and the "perfect" architecture.[250] Vedic Sanskrit is more elaborate and had several additional tenses. For example, the Rigveda includes perfect and a marginal pluperfect. Classical Sanskrit simplifies the "present" system down to two tenses, the perfect and the imperfect, while the "aorist" stems retain the aorist tense and the "perfect" stems retain the perfect and marginal pluperfect.[250] The classical version of the language has elaborate rules for both voice and the tense-aspect system to emphasize clarity, and this is more elaborate than in other Indo-European languages. The evolution of these systems can be seen from the earliest layers of the Vedic literature to the late Vedic literature.[251]
Number, person
Sanskrit recognizes three numbers—singular, dual, and plural.[247] The dual is a fully functioning category, used beyond naturally paired objects such as hands or eyes, extending to any collection of two. The elliptical dual is notable in the Vedic Sanskrit, according to Jamison, where a noun in the dual signals a paired opposition.[247] Illustrations include dyāvā (literally, "the two heavens" for heaven-and-earth), mātarā (literally, "the two mothers" for mother-and-father).[247] A verb may be singular, dual or plural, while the person recognized in the language are forms of "I", "you", "he/she/it", "we" and "they".[245]
There are three persons in Sanskrit: first, second and third.[243] Sanskrit uses the 3×3 grid formed by the three numbers and the three persons parameters as the paradigm and the basic building block of its verbal system.[251]
Gender, mood
The Sanskrit language incorporates three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter.[247] All nouns have inherent gender. With some exceptions, personal pronouns have no gender. Exceptions include demonstrative and anaphoric pronouns.[247] Derivation of a word is used to express the feminine. Two most common derivations come from feminine-forming suffixes, the -ā- (आ, Rādhā) and -ī- (ई, Rukmīnī). The masculine and neuter are much simpler, and the difference between them is primarily inflectional.[247][252] Similar affixes for the feminine are found in many Indo-European languages, states Burrow, suggesting links of the Sanskrit to its PIE heritage.[253]
Pronouns in Sanskrit include the personal pronouns of the first and second persons, unmarked for gender, and a larger number of gender-distinguishing pronouns and adjectives.[246] Examples of the former include ahám (first singular), vayám (first plural) and yūyám (second plural). The latter can be demonstrative, deictic or anaphoric.[246] Both the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit share the sá/tám pronominal stem, and this is the closest element to a third person pronoun and an article in the Sanskrit language, states Jamison.[246]
Indicative, potential and imperative are the three mood forms in Sanskrit.[245]
Prosody, metre
The Sanskrit language formally incorporates poetic metres.[254] By the late Vedic era, this developed into a field of study; it was central to the composition of the Hindu literature, including the later Vedic texts. This study of Sanskrit prosody is called chandas, and is considered one of the six Vedangas, or limbs of Vedic studies.[254][255]
Sanskrit prosody includes linear and non-linear systems.[256] The system started off with seven major metres, according to Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, called the "seven birds" or "seven mouths of Brihaspati", and each had its own rhythm, movements and aesthetics wherein a non-linear structure (aperiodicity) was mapped into a four verse polymorphic linear sequence.[256] A syllable in Sanskrit is classified as either laghu (light) or guru (heavy). This classification is based on a matra (literally, "count, measure, duration"), and typically a syllable that ends in a short vowel is a light syllable, while those that end in consonant, anusvara or visarga are heavy. The classical Sanskrit found in Hindu scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and many texts are so arranged that the light and heavy syllables in them follow a rhythm, though not necessarily a rhyme.[257][258][ab]
Sanskrit metres include those based on a fixed number of syllables per verse, and those based on fixed number of
There is no word without metre,
nor is there any metre without words.
— Natya Shastra[262]
Metre and rhythm is an important part of the Sanskrit language. It may have played a role in helping preserve the integrity of the message and Sanskrit texts. The verse perfection in the Vedic texts such as the verse
The metre-feature of the Sanskrit language embeds another layer of communication to the listener or reader. A change in metres has been a tool of literary architecture and an embedded code to inform the reciter and audience that it marks the end of a section or chapter.[268] Each section or chapter of these texts uses identical metres, rhythmically presenting their ideas and making it easier to remember, recall and check for accuracy.[268] Authors coded a hymn's end by frequently using a verse of a metre different from that used in the hymn's body.[268] However, Hindu tradition does not use the Gayatri metre to end a hymn or composition, possibly because it has enjoyed a special level of reverence in Hinduism.[268]
Writing system
The early history of writing Sanskrit and other languages in ancient India is a problematic topic despite a century of scholarship, states
Lipi is the term in Sanskrit which means "writing, letters, alphabet". It contextually refers to scripts, the art or any manner of writing or drawing.[100] The term, in the sense of a writing system, appears in some of the earliest Buddhist, Hindu, and Jaina texts. Pāṇini's Astadhyayi, composed sometime around the 5th or 4th century BCE, for example, mentions lipi in the context of a writing script and education system in his times, but he does not name the script.[100][101][273] Several early Buddhist and Jaina texts, such as the Lalitavistara Sūtra and Pannavana Sutta include lists of numerous writing scripts in ancient India.[ae] The Buddhist texts list the sixty four lipi that the Buddha knew as a child, with the Brahmi script topping the list. "The historical value of this list is however limited by several factors", states Salomon. The list may be a later interpolation.[275][af] The Jain canonical texts such as the Pannavana Sutta – probably older than the Buddhist texts – list eighteen writing systems, with the Brahmi topping the list and Kharotthi (Kharoshthi) listed as fourth. The Jaina text elsewhere states that the "Brahmi is written in 18 different forms", but the details are lacking.[277] However, the reliability of these lists has been questioned and the empirical evidence of writing systems in the form of Sanskrit or Prakrit inscriptions dated prior to the 3rd century BCE has not been found. If the ancient surfaces for writing Sanskrit were palm leaves, tree bark and cloth – the same as those in later times – these have not survived.[278][ag] According to Salomon, many find it difficult to explain the "evidently high level of political organization and cultural complexity" of ancient India without a writing system for Sanskrit and other languages.[278][ah]
The oldest datable writing systems for Sanskrit are the Brāhmī script, the related Kharoṣṭhī script and the Brahmi derivatives.[281][282] The Kharosthi was used in the northwestern part of South Asia and it became extinct, while the Brahmi was used all over the subcontinent along with regional scripts such as Old Tamil.[283] Of these, the earliest records in the Sanskrit language are in Brahmi, a script that later evolved into numerous related Indic scripts for Sanskrit, along with Southeast Asian scripts (Burmese, Thai, Lao, Khmer, others) and many extinct Central Asian scripts such as those discovered along with the Kharosthi in the Tarim Basin of western China and in Uzbekistan.[284] The most extensive inscriptions that have survived into the modern era are the rock edicts and pillar inscriptions of the 3rd century BCE Mauryan emperor Ashoka, but these are not in Sanskrit.[285][ai]
Scripts
Over the centuries, and across countries, a number of scripts have been used to write Sanskrit.
Brahmi script
The Brahmi script for writing Sanskrit is a "modified consonant-syllabic" script. The graphic syllable is its basic unit, and this consists of a consonant with or without diacritic modifications.[282] Since the vowel is an integral part of the consonants, and given the efficiently compacted, fused consonant cluster morphology for Sanskrit words and grammar, the Brahmi and its derivative writing systems deploy ligatures, diacritics and relative positioning of the vowel to inform the reader how the vowel is related to the consonant and how it is expected to be pronounced for clarity.[282][287][ak] This feature of Brahmi and its modern Indic script derivatives makes it difficult to classify it under the main script types used for the writing systems for most of the world's languages, namely logographic, syllabic and alphabetic.[282]
The Brahmi script evolved into "a vast number of forms and derivatives", states Richard Salomon, and in theory, Sanskrit "can be represented in virtually any of the main Brahmi-based scripts and in practice it often is".
Nagari script
Devanāgarī | |||
---|---|---|---|
ॳ (कऺ) | ॴ (कऻ) | ||
ॵ (कॏ) |