Sanskrit 101: What is the Sanskrit language?

August 15, 2009 by jbasdeo

August 12, 12:05 PM · Sohoni Das - SF Hindu Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-13893-SF-Hindu-Examiner~y2009m8d12-Sanskrit-10...

Sanskrit is one of the holy languages of the Hinduism and Buddhism. Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-Iranian sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. Its closest ancient relatives are the Iranian languages of the Old Persian and Avestan. Coeurdoux and others made a through comparison of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek conjugations in the late 1760s to suggest a relationship between them. It was further substantiated by Sir William Jones in 1786 and Thomas Young in 1813. It was Young who first used the term Indo-European, which consisted of four languages namely Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Persian.

The earliest attested Sanskrit texts are Hindu texts of the Rigveda, which may be located in the Greater Punjab region and adjacent to Afghanistan, and dated to the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. However there were no written records from such early period hence the scholars believed that Sanskrit was used as oral transmission especially during the religious ceremonies.

From Rigveda till Panini (4th Century BCE) the Sanskrit language was used in Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, Brahmanas and Upanishads. The language was used mostly for sacred purposes and the importance to its correct pronunciation was critical in all rituals. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Panini’s Astadhayayi (Eight-Chapter Grammar). Sanskrit was mostly taught to members of higher caste and the knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment in ancient India.

A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of the Hindu Epics- Ramayana and Mahabharata. There are four principal dialect of classical Sanskrit there are pascimottari (Northwestern), madhyadesi (middle country), purvi (Eastern) and daksini (Southern). Since its extensive usage in religious literature specially in Hinduism, one can conclude that most modern Indian languages are directly derived from or influenced by Sanskrit akin that of Greek and Latin in European culture. Hindi is a Sanskritized register of the Khariboli dialect where its vocabulary and grammatical base are derived from Sanskrit. Languages like Nepali, Bengali, Assamese, Konkani, Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada are all derived or influenced from Sanskrit.

Speaking of Sanskrit grammar it has ten classes of verbs divided into two groups, they are athematic and thematic. Sanskrit nouns consists of three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers singular, plural and dual, and it has eight cases they are nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive and locative.

In modern day Sanskrit mantras are recited by millions of Hindus during the rituals and most temple functions are conducted entirely in Sanskrit. The Indian national anthem, Jana Gana Mana is written in literary form of Bengali but Sanskritized to be recognizable. Similarly the national song of India, Vande Mataram is written in Sanskritized Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. Sanskrit is taught in many schools across the Indian sub continent as a course work. Thus the holy language of Sanskrit plays an integral part of the Hindu religion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit

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