SANSKRIT –THE ORIGIN AND TODAY’S USAGE

Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, of the Upanishads, of the epics

Ramayana, Mahabharata, and the Bhagavad Gita, and of the works of
Kalidasa, Bhasa, and Bhavabhuti, Panini, and of the great texts of Ayurveda.

Sanskrit is known as the Devabhasha, or the language of the Gods.

Millions of people use Sanskrit in their daily life for various needs. Sanskrit,
a member of the Indo-European family of the world's languages, is one of
the official languages of India.

Sir William Jones – the English Philologist who for the first time in 1786
suggested in his book “The Sanscrit Language” that Greek and Latin were
related to Sanskrit and perhaps even Gothic, Celtic and Persian languages
were related to Sanskrit.

Thus it clearly shows that many researchers have a clear idea that Sanskrit is
the root for other languages. And many words have been derived from
Sanskrit.

For example, in Sanskrit ‘Arjuna’ means ‘Charm of Silver’ but in Latin

Arjuna means ‘Argentinum’ and in English Arjuna means ‘Argentinum’ that
is it’s the other name for ‘Silver’.

The term 'Sanskrit' means 'refined' or 'polished'

Scholars who tried to trace the antiquity of the language have showed that
the Indo-Europeans migrated out of a homeland north and northeast of the
Black Sea as mounted warriors in the Hypothetical Kurgan Invasion of about
4000 BC and reached Greece about 3500 BC. This discovery paved the way
for the development of the study of comparative linguistics, which groups
the languages of the world into families. The fact is that Sanskrit has a
mysterious relationship with the languages of Europe, except Finnish,
Estonian, Hungarian, Turkish and Basque. But other scholars stick to the
idea of Vedic Sanskrit being the nucleus of the language group later called
the Indo-European family of languages. They also stand firmly that the
origin of Sanskrit can be accredited to the vedic society. But there has been
no surviving information about the speakers of that language, the proto-
Indo-European who should have lived for several centuries before the vedic
texts appeared in the form of memorized stanzas handed down from
generation to generation.
The term 'Indo-European' was coined by certain European scholars who
found great similarities among hundreds of languages and dialects spread
over Europe, and Asia – mainly Indian and European languages.

The earliest surviving form of Sanskrit, that of the Rig Veda, bears about the
same relation to the classical tongue as does Homeric to classical Greek. At
all its stages Sanskrit is a language of many inflexions, but the Vedas
contain numerous forms which later went out of use. The verb is of a
complexity, rivaling the Greek, with a bewildering array of vices and moods,
later much simplified. The Vedic noun, as in later Sanskrit, has eight cases,
and both verb and noun have dual numbers. But the Vedic Sanskrit is
believed to be of a date earlier than that of Iliad or Odyssey.

The Vedic period dates back to 2nd millennium BC, according to one
school. The Western researchers and other scholars had no idea about 'the
language of the gods', or of the great works composed in that language, or of
the ordinary people of India who spoke the language. Those researchers
began to take interest in Sanskrit just about two hundred years ago when the
first translations came up. They thought that Sanskrit was a distant cousin of
Greek. But this language was different from the European members of the
Indo-European languages.

Vedic Sanskrit had developed certain phonetic specialties, morphemic

identities through the inflections, might be borrowed from the proto-
Dravidian tongues. But the language was developing faster, especially after
the composition of the Rig Veda. Scholars have pointed out that the old
inflexions disappeared, grammar and usage got simplified, and new words
from diverse sources introduced. Meaning shift affected many of the old
words and the language was slowly transforming itself into a growing
medium. But the people behind the Vedas needed to preserve the purity of
the texts and it was how the sciences of phonetics and grammar developed in
India. It was how Yaaska's Nirukta, the oldest Indian text on the science of
language came into being in the 5th century BC.

Within a century after that came up Ashtadhyayi (meaning 'the one with
eight chapters'), the great work of grammar from Panini, hailed as the
earliest known work on descriptive linguistics, and it consists of almost 4000
rules of the internal structure for Sanskrit words. The Ashtadhyayi is the
grammar that standardized Sanskrit and its usage. According to experts, no
grammarian has had as much influence over the grammar of any language as
much as Panini has had. His is a descriptive grammar which also is a
generative grammar. Panini's work, also known as Paniniyam, was a
comprehensive scientific theory of the language.

Historians of the language points out that this work changed the course of
Sanskrit by ending the Vedic period of Sanskrit and bringing in the age of
classical Sanskrit. Many centuries passed by after the turning point that
Paniniyam marked in the history of Sanskrit. The language developed into a
wonderful medium for literary creations, and Hinduism found itself growing
and developing through some of its greatest literary contributions. A
merchant from Florence, Italy, named Filippo Sassetti, traveled to India in
the 16th century AD, and it was he who made the first mention of a language
of India known as 'Samskrutam' (Sanskrit) to the European scholars. In the
next century, a Dutch scholar, Marcus Boxhorn, came across and noted
down the similarity among some of the Indian and European languages and
brought up a theory about the existence once of a common language for this
group. But it was in the next century, in 1786 to be precise, that this
hypothesis came up for discussion again, when Sir William Johns spoke of
the similarities among Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Persian. It was in the
early19th century that the term 'Indo-European' became the standard
expression to denote all the languages of the family. The theory of the
existence of a proto-Indo-European was almost accepted. The evolution of
the languages, especially Sanskrit, gained greater significance. Sanskrit
came to be designated as the leading member of what they called Indo-
Iranian subdivision of the family and studies were undertaken seriously
about the development, evolution, and influence of the language. Sanskrit
literature underwent rigorous examination, study and translation, and the
Western world of scholars was mesmerized by the works of Kalidasa and
others. It was an ocean of aesthetic brilliance, scholastic profundity and
literary excellence.

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of 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
not 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; there is
a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the
Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the
same origin with the Sanskrit; and the old Persian might be added to the
same family

Many of India's and Nepal's scientific and administrative terms are named in
Sanskrit, as a counterpart of the western practice of naming scientific
developments in Latin or Greek.
The Indian guided missile program that was commenced in 1983 by DRDO
has named the five missiles (ballistic and others) that it has developed as
Prithvi, Agni, Akash, Nag and Trishul. India's first modern fighter aircraft is
named HAL Tejas.
Recital of Sanskrit shlokas as background chorus in films, television
advertisements and as slogans for corporate organizations has become a
trend.
Recently, Sanskrit also made an appearance in Western pop music in two
recordings by Madonna. One, "Shanti/Ashtangi," from the 1998 album "Ray
of Light," is the traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga chant referenced above
set to music. The second, "Cyber-raga," released in 2000 as a B-side to
Madonna's single "Music," is a Sanskrit-language ode of devotion to a
higher power and a wish for peace on earth. The climactic battle theme of
The Matrix Revolutions features a choir singing a Sanskrit prayer from the
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad in the closing titles of the movie. Composer John
Williams also featured a choir singing in Sanskrit for Star Wars Episode I:
The Phantom Menace.
The Sky1 version of the title sequence in season one of Battlestar Galactica
2004 features the Gayatri Mantra, taken from the Rig Veda (3.62.10). The
composition was written by miniseries composer Richard Gibbs.

Though the Language of Gods-Sanskrit was lost in the middle, it has

regained now and is widely used throughout the world.