Sanskrit

Sanskrit (saṃskṛtam संस्कृतम् ; pronunciation: / səⁿskr̩t̪əm /) is an Indo-European classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe, and is a central part of Hindu tradition. It is one of the oldest Indo-European languages in the world with a documented history of 4,000 years and boasts a rich tradition of poetry, literature; as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts. Sanskrit is one of the 22 official languages of India. It is being revived as a vernacular in the village of Mattur near Shimoga in Karnataka.

Today Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. Its pre-Classical form of Vedic Sanskrit, the liturgical language of the Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, its most ancient text being the Rigveda. It is also the language of Yoga.

The scope of this article is that of Classical Sanskrit as laid out in the grammar of Panini, roughly around 500 BC. Most Sanskrit texts available today were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were written down in ancient/medieval India. The original form, Vedic Sanskrit, was probably in use as early as 1800 BC.

History

Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century.The adjective saṃskṛta- means "refined, consecrated, sanctified". The language referred to as saṃskṛtā vāk "the refined language" has by definition always been a 'high' language, used for religious and scientific discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Pāṇini's Aṣtādhyāyī ("Eight-Chapter Grammar") dating to ca. the 5th century BC. It is essentially a prescriptive grammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts, mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in Panini's time.

When the term arose in India, "Sanskrit" was not thought of as a specific language set apart from other languages (the people of the time regarded languages more as dialects), but rather as a particularly refined or perfected manner of speaking. Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment and was taught mainly to Brahmins through close analysis of Sanskrit grammarians such as Pāṇini.

It is no wonder that Sanskrit shows stark similarities--to varying degrees--with Latin, Ancient Greek, Avestan and even Persian and German. Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. It is part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages, which also includes the Iranian branch and the Balto-Slavic branch. The categorization may be shown as:

Indo-European → Indo-Iranian → Indo-Aryan (i.e., Sanskrit and its descendants).

Technically, Sanskrit is the oldest of the Old Indo-Aryan languages. Its "daughter languages" include the Prakrits of ancient India, Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Urdu, Marathi, Gujarati, Assamese, Nepali, Punjabi and Romany (spoken by the European Roma people, a.k.a. gypsies). Most of the Dravidian languages of India, despite being a separate linguistic family by their own right, have a high influence of Sanskrit, especially in terms of loanwords. Telegu has the highest influence while Tamil has the lowest. This influence of Sanskrit on these languages is reconginized by the notions of Tat Sama (equivalent) and Tat Bhava (rooted in). Sanskrit itself has also been influenced by the Dravidian family.

Vedic Sanskrit

Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, had evolved out of the earlier "Vedic" form, and scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or "Paninian" Sanskrit as separate dialects. However, they are extremely similar in many ways and differ mostly in a few points of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Classical Sanskrit can therefore be considered a seamless evolution of the earlier Vedic language. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a large collection of hymns, incantations, and religio-philosophical discussions which form the earliest religious texts in India and the basis for much of the Hindu religion. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, composed by many authors over centuries of oral tradition. The end of the Vedic period is marked by the composition of the Upanishads, which form the concluding part of the Vedic corpus in the traditional compilations. The current hypothesis is that the Vedic form of Sanskrit survived until the middle of the first millennium BC. It is around this time that Sanskrit began the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, marking the beginning of the Classical period.

Hinduism believes that the language of the Vedas is eternal and revealed in its wording and word order. Evidence for this belief is found in the Vedas itself, where in the Upanishads they are described as the very "breath of God" (nihsvasitam brahma). The Vedas are therefore considered "the language of reality", so to speak, and are unauthored, even by God, the rishis or seers ascribed to them being merely individuals gifted with a special insight into reality with the power of perceiving these eternal sounds. At the beginning of every cycle of creation, God himself "remembers" the order of the Vedic words and propagates them through the rishis. Orthodox Hindus, while accepting the linguistic development of Sanskrit as such, do not admit any historical stratification within the Vedic corpus itself.

This belief is of significant consequence in Indian religious history, as the very sacredness and eternality of the language encouraged exact memorization and transmission and discouraged textual learning via written propagation. Each word is believed to have innate and eternal meaning and, when properly pronounced, mystic expressive power. Erroneous learning of repetition of the Veda was considered a grave sin with potentially immediate negative consequences. Consequently, Vedic learning