Sanskrit

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'''Sanskrit''' (in Devanagari: संस्कृतम्) is the classical [[language]] of [[India]], and one of the liturgical languages of [[Hinduism]], the language of the [[Vedas]] and [[Upanishads]].
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'''Sanskrit''' (in Devanagari: संस्कृतम्) is the classical [[language]] of [[India]], and one of the liturgical languages of [[Hinduism]], the language of the [[Vedas]] and [[Upanishads]]. It is also the language of the Indian epic poems, the ''Ramayana'' and ''Mahabharata''.  It is one of the oldest and earliest attested of the Indo-European languages; parts of the Rig Veda are believed to date back to around 1500 BCE. When Sanskrit was encountered by [[Great Britain|British]] [[colonialism|colonialists]] in India, it became clear to them that the language was related to Classical Greek and other [[Indo-European languages]].  This led to the then-startling discovery that the languages of least some people in India shared a common ancestor with the languages spoken by most Europeans. 
  
 
==Hindu fundamentalist claims==
 
==Hindu fundamentalist claims==

Revision as of 17:03, 9 December 2013

If you could read Sanskrit, you might be able to make some sense out of this scene.
We will control
what you think with

Language

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Here's how we do it
Vishnu be praised

 Hinduism 

Icon om.svg
Om

Sanskrit (in Devanagari: संस्कृतम्) is the classical language of India, and one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism, the language of the Vedas and Upanishads. It is also the language of the Indian epic poems, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. It is one of the oldest and earliest attested of the Indo-European languages; parts of the Rig Veda are believed to date back to around 1500 BCE. When Sanskrit was encountered by British colonialists in India, it became clear to them that the language was related to Classical Greek and other Indo-European languages. This led to the then-startling discovery that the languages of least some people in India shared a common ancestor with the languages spoken by most Europeans.

Contents

Hindu fundamentalist claims

Various Hindu traditionalists have asserted that Sanskrit is the original language of the human race. These writers will take exception to the usual claims of historical linguistics, that:

  • there exists a Proto-Indo-European language that existed prior to Sanskrit, and is ancestral to it; or
  • the ancestor of Sanskrit developed outside of India, and was spread to the subcontinent by Aryan migrations.

"Sanskrit is the source of all the languages of the world and not a derivation of any language. As such, Sanskrit is the Divine mother language of the world."[1] This literature resorts to many of the standard tropes of denialism. For instance, because there is disagreement among linguists about the Indo-European homeland, claiming that it is native to India is as likely as any other explanation:[2]

So, as we can see, most of these ideas are but speculations that remain ever-changing, or, to put it plainly, inconclusive. Nonetheless, some people think that the original language has indeed already been identified, and has been around for thousands of years, if not longer, which is Sanskrit, which is the oldest of all languages and from which all other languages are but derivatives. Whatever factors for a Proto-Indo-European language the scholars are looking for can be found in Sanskrit.

Sanskrit is descended from Indo-European. But many features shared among other Indo-European languages, and that can be shown to be the result of inheritance from the original protolanguage, cannot be derived from Sanskrit alone.

There are many features of the Proto-Indo-European language whose existence is attested by the comparative evidence, that are not found in Sanskrit:

  • The laryngeal sounds, for instance, that are required for most linguists' reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European are not well preserved in Sanskrit. They can appear in Hittite, and also leave telltale signs in Greek and Old Irish.
  • Sanskrit also reduces the five primary vowels of Indo-European (*a *e *i *o *u) to three (a, i, u; *e> a, *o > u; Sanskrit e and o are in origin diphthongs representing *ai and *au, and are treated as diphthongs in Panini's grammar).[3]
  • Sanskrit is also a satem language. This is a group of Indo-European languages that underwent a common sound shift; at some point in their history, a sound reconstructed as *ḱ was palatized to s. They stand in contrast to the centum languages, which preserved the underlying sound as k. The names derive from the Latin word centum and the Indo-Iranian Avestan word satəm (Sanskrit शतम्, śatam), both meaning "one hundred".[4] In Sanskrit, this sound has regularly shifted; Sanskrit is in fact closely related to its sister Indo-Iranian language Avestan.[5]

In short, we can be certain that Sanskrit has changed several of its sounds from the ancestral from, and merged them with sounds it already had. The entire sound inventory of Indo-European can therefore not be recovered from the evidence of Sanskrit alone, and the method of comparative reconstruction requires inputs from other Indo-European languages. Sanskrit cannot be the sole ancestor of the Indo-European languages, much less all the world's languages.

Om (mani padme hum)

You probably know more Sanskrit than you think you do, the famous mantra syllable om () or aum (औं) is a Sanskrit word. It is used to begin and to close certain Hindu prayers, rather like amen is used in Christian traditions. Hindus believe that as creation began, the divine, all-encompassing consciousness took the form of the first and original vibration manifesting as sound "OM". "OM" is the reflection of the absolute reality, it is said to be "Adi Anadi", without beginning or the end and embracing all that exists.[6] Absolute reality is rather disappointing, it seems.

Om mani padme hum (Sanskrit: ॐ मणिपद्मे हूं) is a Buddhist variant, that adds a salutation to the "Jewel Lotus" or the "Jewel in the Lotus" to the invocation. The Dalai Lama explains: "The first, Om [...] symbolizes the practitioner's impure body, speech, and mind; it also symbolizes the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha... Thus the six syllables, om mani padme hum, mean that in dependence on the practice of a path which is an indivisible union of method and wisdom, you can transform your impure body, speech, and mind into the pure exalted body, speech, and mind of a Buddha."[7] This may take some time.

See also

External links

Notes

  1. Sanskrit - The Mother of All Languages, pt. 1 - The Vedic Foundation
  2. Stephen Knapp, Sanskrit: Was it the Original Language?, Haindava Keralam
  3. Alexander M Lubotsky, (1988). The System of Nominal Accentuation in Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European. (Brill. ISBN 90-04-08835-0.)
  4. Centum-satem isogloss, Wikipedia.
  5. Robert S.P. Beekes, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: an introduction. (Benjamins, 1995), pp. 109-113.
  6. Paramhans Swami Maheshwarananda, The hidden power in humans, Ibera Verlag, page 15., ISBN 3-85052-197-4
  7. The Meaning of Om Mani Padme Hung, Dharma Haven
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