Sanskrit

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A 19th-century illustrated Sanskrit manuscript from the Bhagavad Gita.

Sanskrit (IAST: Saṃskṛtam) is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a lingua franca in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions.[1][2] As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.[3]

Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit, a refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini.[4] The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa, wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit.[5]

The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit.[6] In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language.[7]

Modern scholars used the term Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit to refer to the form of Sanskrit used in many Buddhist manuscripts from northern India.[8]

History

Sanskrit is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages.[9] It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age.[10][11]

Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties.[12][13] The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda.[14][15] Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax.[16]

Vedic Sanskrit

Main article: Vedic Sanskrit
Rigveda (padapatha) manuscript in Devanagari, early 19th century. The red horizontal and vertical lines mark low and high pitch changes for chanting.

Vedic Sanskrit, also simply referred as the Vedic language, is the earliest attested form of the Sanskrit and Prakrit languages: members of the Indo-Aryan subgroup of the Indo-European language family. It is attested in the Vedas and related literature[17] compiled over the period of the mid-2nd to mid-1st millennium BCE.[18] It is orally preserved, predating the advent of writing by several centuries.[19][20]

The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda (Ṛg-veda), 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.[21][22][23]

The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest.[24][25] Yet, the Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE.[26] Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into the modern age include the Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and the early Upanishads.[21] These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent.[27][28]

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.[29] 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.[30] 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.[31]

Classical Sanskrit

A 17th-century birch bark manuscript of Pāṇini's grammar treatise from Kashmir

Classical Sanskrit, as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE, was far more homogenous then the early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language. According to Richard Gombrich, 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 Buddha's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages.[32]

The formalization of the Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit) language is credited to Pāṇini, along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work.[33] Panini composed the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became the foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga.[34] 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".[35] 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.[34] The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa, Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja, Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana.[36][37]

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.[38] 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.[39] 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.[35]

Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit.[40] His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia.[41]

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit

Main article: Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit

Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit (BHS) is a modern linguistic category applied to the language used in a class of Indian Buddhist texts, such as the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. BHS is classified as a Middle Indo-Aryan language. It is sometimes called "Buddhist Sanskrit" or "Mixed Sanskrit".

Further reading

Notes

  1. ↑ Michael C. Howard 2012, p. 21
  2. ↑ Pollock, Sheldon (2006). The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. University of California Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-520-24500-6. Once Sanskrit emerged from the sacerdotal environment ... it became the sole medium by which ruling elites expressed their power ... Sanskrit probably never functioned as an everyday medium of communication anywhere in the cosmopolis—not in South Asia itself, let alone Southeast Asia ... The work Sanskrit did do ... was directed above all toward articulating a form of ... politics ... as celebration of aesthetic power. 
  3. ↑ Burrow 1973, pp. 62–64.
  4. ↑ Evans 2009
  5. ↑ Glenn Van Brummelen (2014). "Arithmetic". In Thomas F. Glick; Steven Livesey; Faith Wallis. Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 46–48. ISBN 978-1-135-45932-1. Archived from the original on 10 October 2023. Retrieved 15 October 2020. The story of the growth of arithmetic from the ancient inheritance to the wealth passed on to the Renaissance is dramatic and passes through several cultures. The most groundbreaking achievement was the evolution of a positional number system, in which the position of a digit within a number determines its value according to powers (usually) of ten (e.g., in 3,285, the "2" refers to hundreds). Its extension to include decimal fractions and the procedures that were made possible by its adoption transformed the abilities of all who calculated, with an effect comparable to the modern invention of the electronic computer. Roughly speaking, this began in India, was transmitted to Islam, and then to the Latin West.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  6. ↑ Lowe, John J. (2017). Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan. Oxford University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-19-879357-1. The term 'Epic Sanskrit' refers to the language of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. ... It is likely, therefore, that the epic-like elements found in Vedic sources and the two epics that we have are not directly related, but that both drew on the same source, an oral tradition of storytelling that existed before, throughout, and after the Vedic period. 
  7. ↑ Lowe, John J. (2017). Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan. Oxford University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-19-879357-1. The desire to preserve understanding and knowledge of Sanskrit in the face of ongoing linguistic change drove the development of an indigenous grammatical tradition, which culminated in the composition of the Aṣṭādhyāyī, attributed to the grammarian Pāṇini, no later than the early fourth century BCE. In subsequent centuries, Sanskrit ceased to be learnt as a native language, and eventually ceased to develop as living languages do, becoming increasingly fixed according to the prescriptions of the grammatical tradition. 
  8. ↑ See Sanskrit Buddhist literature.
  9. ↑ Roger D. Woodard (2008). The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-521-68494-1. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2018. The earliest form of this 'oldest' language, Sanskrit, is the one found in the ancient Brahmanic text called the Rigveda, composed c. 1500 BCE. The date makes Sanskrit one of the three earliest of the well-documented languages of the Indo-European family – the other two being Old Hittite and Myceanaean Greek – and, in keeping with its early appearance, Sanskrit has been a cornerstone in the reconstruction of the parent language of the Indo-European family – Proto-Indo-European.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  10. ↑ Dyson, Tim (2018). A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the Present Day. Oxford University Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN 978-0-19-882905-8. Although the collapse of the Indus valley civilization is no longer believed to have been due to an 'Aryan invasion' it is widely thought that, at roughly the same time, or perhaps a few centuries later, new Indo-Aryan-speaking people and influences began to enter the subcontinent from the north-west. Detailed evidence is lacking. Nevertheless, a predecessor of the language that would eventually be called Sanskrit was probably introduced into the north-west sometime between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago. This language was related to one then spoken in eastern Iran; and both of these languages belonged to the Indo-European language family. 
  11. ↑ Pinkney, Andrea Marion (2014). "Revealing the Vedas in 'Hinduism': Foundations and issues of interpretation of religions in South Asian Hindu traditions". In Bryan S. Turner; Oscar Salemink. Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia. Routledge. pp. 38–. ISBN 978-1-317-63646-5. According to Asko Parpola, the Proto-Indo-Aryan civilization was influenced by two external waves of migrations. The first group originated from the southern Urals (c. 2100 BCE) and mixed with the peoples of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC); this group then proceeded to South Asia, arriving around 1900 BCE. The second wave arrived in northern South Asia around 1750 BCE and mixed with the formerly arrived group, producing the Mitanni Aryans (c. 1500 BCE), a precursor to the peoples of the Ṛgveda. Michael Witzel has assigned an approximate chronology to the strata of Vedic languages, arguing that the language of the Ṛgveda changed through the beginning of the Iron Age in South Asia, which started in the Northwest (Punjab) around 1000 BCE. On the basis of comparative philological evidence, Witzel has suggested a five-stage periodization of Vedic civilization, beginning with the Ṛgveda. On the basis of internal evidence, the Ṛgveda is dated as a late Bronze Age text composed by pastoral migrants with limited settlements, probably between 1350 and 1150 BCE in the Punjab region. 
  12. ↑ Cardona, George; Luraghi, Silvia (2018). "Sanskrit". In Bernard Comrie. The World's Major Languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 497–. ISBN 978-1-317-29049-0. Sanskrit (samskrita- 'adorned, purified') refers to several varieties of Old Indo-Aryan whose most archaic forms are found in Vedic texts: the Rigveda (Ṛgveda), Yajurveda, Sāmveda, Atharvaveda, with various branches. 
  13. ↑ Alfred C. Woolner (1986). Introduction to Prakrit. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-81-208-0189-9. If in 'Sanskrit' we include the Vedic language and all dialects of the Old Indian period, then it is true to say that all the Prakrits are derived from Sanskrit. If on the other hand 'Sanskrit' is used more strictly of the Panini-Patanjali language or 'Classical Sanskrit,' then it is untrue to say that any Prakrit is derived from Sanskrit, except that Sauraseni, the Midland Prakrit, is derived from the Old Indian dialect of the Madhyadesa on which Classical Sanskrit was mainly based. 
  14. ↑ Lowe, John J. (2015). Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit: The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-19-100505-3. Archived from the original on 10 October 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2020. It consists of 1,028 hymns (suktas), highly crafted poetic compositions originally intended for recital during rituals and for the invocation of and communication with the Indo-Aryan gods. Modern scholarly opinion largely agrees that these hymns were composed between around 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, during the eastward migration of the Indo-Aryan tribes from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across the Punjab into north India.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  15. ↑ Witzel, Michael (2006). "Early Loan Words in Western Central Asia: Indicators of Substrate Populations, Migrations, and Trade Relations". In Victor H. Mair. Contact And Exchange in the Ancient World. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 158–190, 160. ISBN 978-0-8248-2884-4. The Vedas were composed (roughly between 1500-1200 and 500 BCE) in parts of present-day Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and northern India. The oldest text at our disposal is the Rgveda (RV); it is composed in archaic Indo-Aryan (Vedic Sanskrit). 
  16. ↑ Shulman, David (2016). Tamil. Harvard University Press. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-0-674-97465-4. (p. 17) Similarly, we find a large number of other items relating to flora and fauna, grains, pulses, and spices—that is, words that we might expect to have made their way into Sanskrit from the linguistic environment of prehistoric or early-historic India. ... (p. 18) Dravidian certainly influenced Sanskrit phonology and syntax from early on ... (p 19) Vedic Sanskrit was in contact, from very ancient times, with speakers of Dravidian languages, and that the two language families profoundly influenced one another. 
  17. ↑ Burrow 2001, p. 43.
  18. ↑ Witzel, Michael (2006). "Early Loanwords in Western Central Asia: Indicators of Substrate Populations, Migrations, and Trade Relations". In Mair, Victor H. Contact And Exchange in the Ancient World. University of Hawaii Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-8248-2884-4. 
  19. ↑ Macdonell 1916, p. 2.
  20. ↑ Reich 2019, p. 122.
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Meier-Brügger 2003, p. 20.
  22. ↑ MacDonell 2004.
  23. ↑ Keith 1996, pp. 3–4.
  24. ↑ Barbara A. Holdrege 2012, pp. 229–230.
  25. ↑ Bryant 2001, pp. 66–67.
  26. ↑ Louis Renou & Jagbans Kishore Balbir 2004, pp. 5–6.
  27. ↑ Cardona 2012.
  28. ↑ Witzel 1997, p. 9.
  29. ↑ Lowe, John Jeffrey (2015). Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit: The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms. Oxford University Press. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-0-19-870136-1. Archived from the original on 7 September 2023. Retrieved 18 July 2018.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  30. ↑ Stephanie W. Jamison & Joel P. Brereton 2014, pp. 10–11, 72.
  31. ↑ Stephanie W. Jamison & Joel P. Brereton 2014, pp. 66–67.
  32. ↑ Gombrich, Richard (2006). Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Colombo. Routledge. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-1-134-90352-8. Archived from the original on 3 July 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2018.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  33. ↑ Huet, Gérard; Kulkarni, Amba; Scharf, Peter (2009). Sanskrit Computational Linguistics: First and Second International Symposia Rocquencourt, France, October 29–31, 2007 Providence, RI, USA, May 15–17, 2008, Revised Selected Papers. Springer. pp. v–vi. ISBN 978-3-642-00154-3. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 19 July 2018.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Harold G. Coward 1990, pp. 13–14, 111.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Fortson, §10.26.
  36. ↑ Pāṇini; Katre, Sumitra Mangesh (1989). Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. xix–xxi. ISBN 978-81-208-0521-7. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2018.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  37. ↑ Cardona 1997, p. 2.
  38. ↑ Renou, Louis, and Filliozat, Jean. L'Inde Classique, manuel des etudes indiennes. Vol. II. pp. 86–90. École française d'Extrême-Orient, 2000 [1953]. ISBN 2-85539-903-3.
  39. ↑ Angot, Michel (2001). L'Inde Classique. pp. 213–215. Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ISBN 2-251-41015-5
  40. ↑ Kawaguchi, Yuji; Minegishi, Makoto; Viereck, Wolfgang (2011). Corpus-based Analysis and Diachronic Linguistics. John Benjamins. pp. 223–224. ISBN 978-90-272-7215-7. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2018.  Unknown parameter |url-status= ignored (help)
  41. ↑ Bowman, John (2005). Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. Columbia University Press. p. 728. ISBN 978-0-231-50004-3. 

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