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Sanskrit
संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam
Pronunciation	[sə̃skɹ̩t̪əm]
Spoken in	Greater India
Total speakers	14,135 fluent speakers in India as of 2001[1]
Language family	Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Sanskrit
Writing system	Devanāgarī (de facto), various Brāhmī-based scripts, and Latin alphabet
Official status
Official language in	One of the 22 scheduled languages of India
Regulated by	No official regulation
Language codes
ISO 639-1	sa
ISO 639-2	san
ISO 639-3	san
This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Sanskrit (संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Indo-Aryan language, one of the liturgical languages of Hinduism and Buddhism,^[2] and one of the 22 official languages of India.^[3]

Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the 4th century BCE. Its position in the cultures of South and Southeast Asia is akin to that of Latin and Greek in Europe and it has significantly influenced most modern languages of Nepal and India.^[4]

The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, its oldest core dating back to as early as 1500 BCE,^[5] qualifying Rigvedic Sanskrit as one of the oldest attestation of any Indo-Iranian language, and one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family.^[6]

The corpus of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and Hindu religious texts. Today, Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. Spoken Sanskrit is still in use in a few traditional institutions in India, and there are many attempts at revival.

Contents [hide] 1 Etymology 2 History 2.1 Vedic Sanskrit 2.2 Classical Sanskrit 2.3 Decline 2.4 European scholarship 3 Phonology 3.1 Vowels 3.2 Consonants 3.3 Phonology and Sandhi 4 Writing system 4.1 Romanization 5 Grammar 5.1 Grammatical tradition 5.2 Verbs 5.3 Nouns 5.4 Personal Pronouns and Determiners 5.5 Compounds 5.6 Syntax 5.7 Numerals 6 Influence 6.1 Modern-day India 6.1.1 Influence on vernaculars 6.1.2 Revival attempts 6.2 Symbolic usage 6.3 Interaction with other languages 6.4 Usage in modern times 6.5 Computational linguistics 7 See also 8 Notes 9 Bibliography 10 Further reading 11 External links 11.1 Sanskrit documents 11.2 Primers

Etymology

The Sanskrit verbal adjective saṃskṛta- may be translated as "put together, well or completely formed, refined, highly elaborated".^[7] It is derived from the root saṃ(s)kar- "to put together, compose, arrange, prepare",^[8] where saṃ- "together" (as English same) and (s)kar- "do, make". The language referred to as saṃskṛtā vāk "the cultured language" has by definition always been a "sacred" and "sophisticated" language, used for religious and learned discourse in ancient India, and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people, prākṛta- "natural, artless, normal, ordinary". It is also called dēva-bhāṣā meaning the "divine language" or the "language of devas or demigods".

History

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 Old Persian and Avestan.^[9] Within the wider Indo-European language family, Sanskrit shares characteristic sound changes with the Satem languages (particularly the Slavic and Baltic languages), and also with Greek.^[10]

In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, many scholars have proposed migration hypotheses asserting that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in what is now India and Pakistan from the north-west some time during the early second millennium BCE.^[11] Evidence for such a theory includes the close relationship of the Indo-Iranian tongues with the Baltic and Slavic languages, vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Finno-Ugric languages, and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna.^[12]

The earliest attested Sanskrit texts are Hindu texts of the Rigveda, which may be located in the Greater Punjab region and adjacent Afghanistan, and dated to the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive. However, scholars are confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they were ceremonial literature whose correct pronunciation was considered crucial to its religious efficacy.^[13]

From the Rigveda until the time of Pāṇini (fl. 4th century BCE) the development of the Sanskrit language may be observed in other Hindu texts: the Samaveda, Yajurveda, Atharvaveda, Brahmanas, and Upanishads. During this time, the prestige of the language, its use for sacred purposes, and the importance attached to its correct enunciation all served as powerful conservative forces resisting the normal processes of linguistic change.^[14]

The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī ("Eight-Chapter Grammar"). 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 some Vedic forms the use of which had become rare in Pāṇini's time.

The term "Sanskrit" was not thought of as a specific language set apart from other languages, but rather as a particularly refined or perfected manner of speaking. Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment in ancient India and the language was taught mainly to members of the higher castes, through close analysis of Sanskrit grammarians such as Pāṇini. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside the Prakrits (vernaculars), which evolved into the Middle Indic dialects, and eventually into the contemporary modern Indo-Aryan languages.

Vedic Sanskrit

Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, had evolved out of the earlier "Vedic" form. Beginning of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced as early as around 1500 BCE (accepted date of Rig-Veda).^{[citation needed]} Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or "Paninian" Sanskrit as separate 'dialects'. Though they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a large collection of hymns, incantations (Samhitas), theological discussions, and religio-philosophical discussions (Brahmanas, Upanishads) which are the earliest religious texts 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. Around the mid 1st millennium BCE, Sanskrit began the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, marking the beginning of the Classical period.

Classical Sanskrit

For nearly 2,000 years, a cultural order existed that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent, East Asia.^[15] A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of the Hindu Epics—the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or "innovations" and not because they are pre-Paninean.^[16] Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations aarsha (आर्ष), or "of the rishis", the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts, there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than in Classical Sanskrit proper. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is a Middle Indic literary language based on early Buddhist prakrit texts which subsequently assimilated to the Classical Sanskrit standard in varying degree.^[17]

According to Tiwari (1955), there were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit: paścimottarī (Northwestern, also called Northern or Western), madhyadeśī (lit., middle country), pūrvi (Eastern) and dakṣiṇī (Southern, arose in the Classical period). The predecessors of the first three dialects are even attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest (Kauṣītaki Brāhmaṇa, 7.6).

Decline

There a number of sociolinguistic studies of spoken Sanskrit which strongly suggests that in this oral use it is limited and is not developing.^[18] Based on this, some suggest that Sanskrit had become 'dead', but the distinction is not clearly understood, as Pollock (2001) describes it in comparison with the "dead" language of Latin:^[19]

Both died slowly, and earliest as a vehicle of literary expression, while much longer retaining significance for learned discourse with its universalist claims. Both were subject to periodic renewals or forced rebirths, sometimes in connection with a politics of translocal aspiration… At the same time… both came to be ever more exclusively associated with narrow forms of religion and priestcraft, despite centuries of a secular aesthetic.

The decline of Sanskrit use in literary and political circles was likely due to a weakening of the political institutions that supported it, and to heightened competition with vernacular languages seeking literary-cultural dignity.^[20] There was regional variation in the forcefulness of these vernacular movements and Sanskrit declined in different ways across the subcontinent. For example, in some areas Kashmiri was used along side of Sanskrit as the language of literature after the 13th century, and Sanskrit works from the Vijayanagara Empire failed to circulate outside their place and time of composition; by contrast, works in Telugu and Kannada flourished.^[21]

But despite this presumed "death" of Sanskrit and the literary use of vernacular languages, Sanskrit continued to be used in literary cultures in India, and those who could read vernacular languages could also read Sanskrit.^[20] But the "death" meant that Sanskrit was not used to express changing forms of subjectivity and sociality embodied and conceptualized in the modern age.^[20] Instead, it was reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity in Sanskrit was restricted to religious hymns and verses.^[22][23]

European scholarship

European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620–1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681–1731), is regarded as responsible for the discovery of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones. This scholarship played an important role in the development of Western linguistics.^{[citation needed]}

Sir William Jones, speaking to the Asiatic Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on February 2, 1786, said:

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

Phonology

Classical Sanskrit distinguishes about 36 phonemes. There is, however, some allophony and the writing systems used for Sanskrit generally indicate this, thus distinguishing 48 sounds.

The sounds are traditionally listed in the order vowels (Ach), diphthongs (Hal), anusvara and visarga, plosives (Sparśa) and nasals (starting in the back of the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquids and fricatives, written in IAST as follows (see the tables below for details):

a ā i ī u ū ṛ ṝ ḷ ḹ ; e ai o au

ṃ ḥ

k kh g gh ṅ; c ch j jh ñ; ṭ ṭh ḍ ḍh ṇ; t th d dh n; p ph b bh m

y r l v; ś ṣ s h

An alternate traditional ordering is that of the Shiva Sutra of Pāṇini.

Vowels

The vowels of Classical Sanskrit with their word-initial Devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant प् (/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and ITRANS and (approximate) equivalents in English are listed below:

Letter	प्	Pronunciation	Pronunciation with /p/	IAST equiv.	ITRANS equiv.	English equivalent (GA unless stated otherwise)
अ	प	/ɐ/ or /ə/	/pɐ/ or /pə/	a	a	short near-open central vowel or schwa: u in bunny or a in about
आ	पा	/ɑː/	/pɑː/	ā	A	long open back unrounded vowel: a in father (RP
इ	पि	/i/	/pi/	i	i	short close front unrounded vowel: e in england
ई	पी	/iː/	/piː/	ī	I	long close front unrounded vowel: ee in feet
उ	पु	/u/	/pu/	u	u	short close back rounded vowel: oo in foot
ऊ	पू	/uː/	/puː/	ū	U	long close back rounded vowel: oo in cool
ऋ	पृ	/ɻ/	/pɻ/	ṛ	R	short retroflex approximant: r in burl
ॠ	पॄ	/ɻː/	/pɻː/	ṝ	RR	long retroflex approximant r in burl
ऌ	पॢ	/ɭ/	/pɭ/	ḷ	LR	short retroflex lateral approximant (no English equivalent)
ॡ	पॣ	/ɭː/	/pɭː/	ḹ	LRR	long retroflex lateral approximant
ए	पे	/eː/	/peː/	e	e	long close-mid front unrounded vowel: a in bane (some speakers)
ऐ	पै	/əi/	/pəi/	ai	ai	a long diphthong: i in ice, i in kite (Canadian English)
ओ	पो	/oː/	/poː/	o	o	long close-mid back rounded vowel: o in bone (some speakers)
औ	पौ	/əu/	/pəu/	au	au	a long diphthong: Similar to the ou in house (Canadian English)

The long vowels are pronounced twice as long as their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long length for most vowels, called pluti, which is used in various cases, but particularly in the vocative. The pluti is not accepted by all grammarians.

The vowels /e/ and /o/ continue as allophonic variants of Proto-Indo-Iranian /ai/, /au/ and are categorized as diphthongs by Sanskrit grammarians even though they are realized phonetically as simple long vowels. (See above).

Additional points:

• There are some additional signs traditionally listed in tables of the Devanagari script:
  • The diacritic ं called anusvāra, (IAST: ṃ). It is used both to indicate the nasalization of the vowel in the syllable ([◌̃] and to represent the sound of a syllabic /n/ or /m/; e.g. पं /pəŋ/.
  • The diacritic ः called visarga, represents /əh/ (IAST: ḥ); e.g. पः /pəh/.
  • The diacritic ँ called chandrabindu, not traditionally included in Devanagari charts for Sanskrit, is used interchangeably with the anusvāra to indicate nasalization of the vowel, primarily in Vedic notation; e.g. पँ /pə̃/.
• If a lone consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virāma diacritic below (प्).
• The vowel /aː/ in Sanskrit is realized as being more central and less back than the closest English approximation, which is /ɑː/. But the grammarians have classified it as a back vowel.^[24]
• The ancient Sanskrit grammarians classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and front vowels. Hence ए and ओ are classified respectively as palato-velar (a+i) and labio-velar (a+u) vowels respectively. But the grammarians have classified them as diphthongs and in prosody, each is given two mātrās. This does not necessarily mean that they are proper diphthongs, but neither excludes the possibility that they could have been proper diphthongs at a very ancient stage (see above). These vowels are pronounced as long /eː/ and /oː/ respectively by learned Sanskrit Brahmans and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit usually disallows any other diphthong—vowels in succession, where they occur, are converted to semivowels according to sandhi rules.

Consonants

IAST and Devanagari notations are given, with approximate IPA values in square brackets.

		Labial Ōshtya		Labiodental Dantōshtya	Dental Dantya		Retroflex Mūrdhanya		Palatal Tālavya		Velar Kanthya		Glottal
Stop Sparśa	Unaspirated Alpaprāna	p प [p]	b ब [b]		t त [t̪]	d द [d̪]	ṭ ट [ʈ]	ḍ ड [ɖ]	c च [c͡ç]	j ज [ɟ͡ʝ]	k क [k]	g ग [g]
	Aspirated Mahāprāna	ph फ [pʰ]	bh भ [bʱ]		th थ [t̪ʰ]	dh ध [d̪ʱ]	ṭh ठ Posted by Christopher Augustine.   Hinduism August 27, 2009 Hinduism From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Not to be confused with the language Hindi. Part of a series on Hinduism History · Deities Denominations Mythology Beliefs and practices Dharma · Artha Kama · Moksha Karma · Samsara Yoga · Bhakti · Maya Puja · Hindu temple Scriptures Vedas · Upanishads Ramayana · Mahabharata Bhagavad Gita · Puranas Dharmaśāstra · others Related topics Hinduism by country Guru... Continue reading... Posted by Christopher Augustine.   Sakaldwipiya August 27, 2009 Sakaldwipiya From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia   (Redirected from Maga Brahmin) Jump to: navigation, search Sakaldwipiya Brahmins or Bhojaka Brahmins, is a class of Hindu priests and Ayurveda teachers (acharyas),[1] with concentrations in Western- and Northern India. "Sakaldwipiya" is a tadbhav of Sanskrit Shakadvipiya, an -iya adjective of Shakadvipa, one of the dvipa ("continents") of Hindu mythology. Spelling variants include Shakdvipi, Shakdwipi, Shakdweepi, Sh... Continue reading... Posted by Christopher Augustine.   Ayurveda August 27, 2009 Ayurveda From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search Ayurveda (Devanāgarī: आयुर्वेद, the 'science of life') is a system of traditional medicine native to India,[1] and practiced in other parts of the world as a form of alternative medicine.[2] In Sanskrit, the word Ayurveda[3] consists of the words āyus, meaning 'life', and veda, meaning 'related to knowledge' or 'science'.[1] Evolving throughout its history, Ayurveda remains a... Continue reading... Posted by Christopher Augustine.	Categories Uncategorized Recent Posts