Sanskrit Language

	nativename	संस्कृतम् ''''
	region	India and some other areas of South and Southeast Asia many Buddhist scholars in the countries of East Asia such as China , Japan , Thailand and Vietnam are also able to communicate in Sanskrit
	speakers	6,106 fluent speakers<br>194,433 second-language speakers
	familycolor	Indo-European
	fam2	Indo-Iranian
	fam3	Indo-Aryan
	nation	India (one of the '' Scheduled Languages '')
	iso1	saiso2=saniso3=san

{class

"wikitable"

If a lone consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a ''halanta/virāma'' diacritic below ().

The vowel in Sanskrit is more central and less back than in English.

All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized. All vowels can have acute grave or circumflex pitch accent.

Note that the ancient Sanskrit grammarians have classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and mid vowels. Hence and are classified respectively as palato-velar (a+i) 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. These vowels ''are'' pronounced as long /e/ and /o/ respectively by learned Sanskrit Brahmins and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit usually disallows any other diphthongs—vowels in succession, if occur, are converted to semivowels according to predetermined rules.

In the devanagari script used for Sanskrit, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without any ''virāma'' (ie, freely standing in the orthography: as opposed to ), the neutral vowel Schwa () is automatically associated with it—this is of course true for the consonant to be in any position in the word. Word-ending schwa is always short. But the IAST a appended to the end of masculine noun words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as —this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound like feminine! e.g., '''shiva''' must be pronounced as and not as .

Consonants

Devanagari and IAST notation is given, with approximate IPA values in square brackets.

The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel Schwa (), and is named in the table as such.

Phonology

The Sanskrit vowels are as discussed in the section above. The long syllabic l () is not attested, and is only discussed by grammarians for systematic reasons. Its short counterpart occurs in a single root only, "to order, array". Long syllabic r () is also quite marginal, occurring in the genitive plural of r-stems (e.g. ' "mother" and ' "father" have gen.pl. '''' and ''''). are vocalic allophones of consonantal . There are thus only 5 invariably vocalic Phoneme s,
:.

Visarga is an Allophone of and , and Anusvara , Devanagari of any nasal, both in Pausa (ie, the nasalized vowel). The exact pronunciation of the three sibilants may vary, but they are distinct phonemes. An aspirated voiced sibilant was inherited by Indo-Aryan from Proto-Indo-Iranian but lost shortly before the time of the Rigveda (note that aspirated sibilant are exceedingly rare in any language). The Retroflex Consonant s are somewhat marginal phonemes, often being conditioned by their phonetic environment; they do not continue a PIE series and are often ascribed by some linguists to the Substratal influence of Dravidian . The nasal is a conditioned allophone of ( and are distinct phonemes - one has to distinguish "minute, atomic" (nom. sg. neutr. of an adjective) from "after, along"; phonologically independent occurs only marginally, e.g. in "directed forwards/towards" (nom. sg. masc. of an adjective) and can thus be omitted). There are thus 31 consonantal or semi-vocalic phonemes, consisting of four/five kinds of stops realized both with or without aspiration and both voiced and voiceless, two nasals, four semi-vowels or liquids, and four fricatives, written in IAST transliteration as follows:
:
or a total of 36 unique Sanskrit phonemes altogether.

The Phonological rules to be applied when combining morphemes to a word, and when combining words to a sentence are collectively called '' Sandhi '' "composition". Texts are written phonetically, with sandhi applied (except for the so-called ''padapāha'').

Some additional features of the Sanskrit phonological system are given here, as well as some useful tips for those whose native language is English but are interested in learning Sanskrit language.

No other nasal consonant except /m/ and /n/ can start a word in Sanskrit.

The number of allowable consonant clusters of Sanskrit is limited, but still very large as compared to other IE languages.

The "r" of Sanskrit may be as in Standard American English. Certain regional traditions pronounce the vowel as /ri/, while others as /ru/. Still others pronounce it simply as /r/. The oldest (general phonetic texts) and Prātiśākhyas (phonetic studies of particular branches of Vedas) vary significantly in descriptions of these sounds; this may be due to different dialects and/or traditions their authors belonged to.

There is no Retroflex Flap in Sanskrit. In modern Hindi, they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskrit's simple Voiced Retroflex Plosive s. The ( or ण) in Sanskrit is not a flap but a simple nasal stop, although it is pronounced by modern pundits while chanting as a nasal variant of the Voiced Retroflex Flap .

Aspiration is actually a ''puff of breath'' that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers could try pronouncing the words "kite", "'''t'''ake", "'''ch'''ip" and "'''p'''at" with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corresponding ''unaspirated'' plosives must be pronounced with '''no''' significant puff of breath at all.

For practicing the voiced aspirates, one could try: "drag him", "sai'''d h'''im", "enra'''ge h'''im", "gra'''b h'''im". The voiced aspirated plosives (also called as '''murmur stops''') are extremely important and frequent in Sanskrit.

The dental consonants in Sanskrit are as in Spanish or French. They can be pronounced by pronouncing /t/ and /d/ (of English) by pressing the tip of the tongue against the back of the teeth rather than against the back of the alveolar ridge as done by English speakers. The normal "t" and "d" in IAST transliteration are the dental stops; and they occur much, much more frequently than the retroflex stops.

The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". However, bringing the tip of the tongue a bit above the normal alveolar ridge would also work fine. The normal alveolar plosives of English /t/ and /d/ do not exist as such in Sanskrit.

The palatal plosives of Sanskrit do not have a sharp frictional sound following them, as what happened in English chips and '''j'''am. These are more of pure plosives than affricates.

Sanskrit has no /v/. Its nearest equivalent is , which is very close to /v/, but does not a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. But in consonant clusters, this may allophonically change to /w/.

The palatal sibilant of Sanskrit ( ) while the English phoneme is the Voiceless Postalveolar Fricative with lip rounding). Today, speakers of Sanskrit vary the palatal fricative from to .

The retroflex sibilant is pronounced like , but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In ''Mādhyandini'' branch of ''Yajurveda'', this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as .

The Sanskrit is a voiced allophone of the normal ''h''.

Although any consonant may come in the word-final position in an uninflected word-stem, the number of word-final consonants in any inflected word (or verb or particle) standing freely by itself is severly limited and determined by the rules of Sandhi. Only the following consonants may come in the word-final position: , , , , (rare), voiceless (i.e., visarga), and all nasals except . Any vowel may come at the word-final position.

Pitch

Vedic Sanskrit is a Stress . The svarita is usually the next syllable after an udātta. Probably when the Rigveda was written down, the pitch of speech rose through the udātta and came back down through the following svarita. A svarita which is not preceded by an udātta is called an "independent svarita". In transliteration udātta is marked with acute accent (´) and independent svarita with a grave accent ('''`'''). Independent svarita occurs only where its udātta was lost because of vowel Sandhi .

Classical Sanskrit is usually pronounced with a stress accent decided by the syllable length pattern of each word.

Script

i Shaivaite manuscript in the Sharada Script (17th or 18th century)]]

Sanskrit has had no single script associated with it, since it was not written until after it had ceased being spoken as a vernacular. Since the late 19th century the Devanagari script (meaning "as used in the city of the gods") became the script most widely used for Sanskrit. In the north there are inscriptions dating from the early centuries B.C. in the Brahmi script, also used by the king Ashoka in his famous Prakrit Pillar Inscriptions . Roughly contemporary with the Brahmi, the Kharosthi script was used. Later (ca. 4th to 8th centuries AD) the Gupta Script , derived from Brahmi, became prevalent. From ca. the 8th century, the Sharada Script evolved out of the Gupta script, and was mostly displaced in its turn by Devanagari from ca. the 12th century, with intermediary stages such as the Siddham script. The Bengali and other scripts were also used in their respective regions.

The Devanagari letters ("akshara") for the vowels and the consonants were discussed above. The table below illustrates the combining of two consonants into a Consonant Cluster . To write a consonant cluster /XYa/ using the letters for /Xa/ and /Ya/, Devanagari usually modifies the first into an abbreviated combining form, generally by omitting the right side. Similarly, for a cluster /XYZa/, both /Xa/ and /Ya/ would be abbreviated. However, some forms are irregular, and there are many stylistic variants. Here the most common system is illustrated, with the second consonant represented by /n/.

In the south where Dravidian Languages predominate, scripts used for Sanscrit include Grantha in Tamil speaking regions, Telugu in Telugu and Tamil speaking regions, Kannada , and Malayalam . Grantha , which was the precursor to the Tamil script, was used exclusively for Sanskrit and is rarely seen today. A recent development has been to use Tamil characters with numeric subscripts indicating voicing and aspiration.

Sanskrit in modern Indian scripts. ''May Śiva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods.'' ( Kalidasa )
Verbal learning occupied the pride of place in ancient India and bears an influence which can still be felt in Indian schooling today. High value was placed on the memorization of texts, often using sophisticated mnemonic techniques. As such, propagation and learning through writing was correspondingly deemphasized, and it is hypothesized that writing was introduced relatively late to India. Rhys Davids suggests that writing may have been introduced from the Middle East by traders, with Sanskrit remaining a purely oral language until well into India's Classical age.

It is interesting to note the importance that Sanskrit orthography and Vedic philosophy of Sound play in Hindu symbolism, as the Varnamala , or sound-garland/alphabet, of 51 letters is also seen to be represented by the 51 skulls of Kali . In the Upanishad s, the transcendent-immanent nature of Brahman is represented by the half-matra, or ''sphota'' of sound that is inherent to a beat of sound in the Sanskrit system.

Romanization

See Also: Romanization of Sanskrit

Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been Transliterated using the Latin Alphabet . The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1912 , and which is used in this article. ASCII -based transliteration schemes have evolved due to difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS , a lossless transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode aware web browsers, IAST has become common also for online articles.

For scholarly work, Devanagari in the 19th century was generally preferred for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts also by European scholars; however, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European languages are usually represented using Roman transliteration, and from the mid 20th century, textual editions edited by Western scholars have also been mostly in romanized transliteration.

GRAMMAR

Grammatical tradition

See Also: Sanskrit grammarians

Sanskrit grammatical tradition ('''''', one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India , and culminates in the '''''' of (ca. 5th Century BC ).
Patañjali , who lived several centuries after Panini, is the reputed author of the '''', the "Great Commentary" on the .

Verbs

Classification of verbs

Sanskrit has ten classes of and Thematic . The thematic verbs are so called because an ''a'', called the Theme Vowel , is inserted between the stem and the ending. This serves to make the thematic verbs generally more regular. Exponents used in verb Conjugation include Prefix es, Suffix es, Infix es, and Reduplication . Every root has (not necessarily all distinct) zero, Gua , and Vddhi grades. If V is the vowel of the zero grade, the gua-grade vowel is traditionally thought of as a + V, and the vddhi-grade vowel as ā + V.

Tense systems

The verbs Tense s (a very inexact application of the word, since more distinctions than simply tense are expressed) are organized into four 'systems' (as well as Gerund s and Infinitive s, and such creatures as Intensive s/ Frequentative s, Desiderative s, Causative s, and Benedictive s derived from more basic forms) based on the different stem forms (derived from verbal roots) used in conjugation. There are four tense systems:

Present ( Present , Imperfect , Imperative , Optative )

Perfect

Aorist

Future ( Future , Conditional )

=Present system

The present system includes the Present and Imperfect tenses, the Optative and Imperative moods, as well as some of the remnant forms of the old Subjunctive . The tense stem of the present system is formed in various ways. The numbers are the native grammarians' numbers for these classes.

For athematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through:

2) No modification at all, for example ''ad'' from ''ad'' 'eat'.

3) Reduplication prefixed to the root, for example ''juhu'' from ''hu'' 'sacrifice'.

7) Infixion of ''na'' or ''n'' before the final root consonant (with appropriate sandhi changes), for example ''rundh'' or ''ruadh'' from ''rudh'' 'obstruct'.

5) Suffixation of ''nu'' (gua form ''no''), for example ''sunu'' from ''su'' 'press out'.

8) Suffixation of ''u'' (gua form ''o''), for example ''tanu'' from ''tan'' 'stretch'. For modern linguistic purposes it is better treated as a subclass of the 5th. ''tanu'' derives from ''tnnu'', which is Zero-grade for ---''tannu'', because in the Proto-Indo-European Language and [n could be vowels, which in Sanskrit (and Greek) change to [a]. Most members of the 8th class arose this way; ''kar'' = "make", "do" was 5th class in Vedic (''krnoti'' = "he makes"), but shifted to the 8th class in Classical Sanskrit (''karoti'' = "he makes")

9) Suffixation of ''nā'' (zero-grade ''nī'' or ''n''), for example ''krīa'' or ''krīī'' from ''krī'' 'buy'.

For thematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through:

1) Suffixation of the thematic vowel ''a'' with gua strengthening, for example, ''bháva'' from ''bhū'' 'be'.

6) Suffixation of the thematic vowel ''a'' with a shift of accent to this vowel, for example ''tudá'' from ''tud'' 'thrust'.

4) Suffixation of ''ya'', for example ''dī́vya'' from ''div'' 'play'.

The tenth class described by native grammarians refers to a process which is derivational in nature, and thus not a true tense-stem formation.

=Perfect system

The perfect system includes only the Perfect tense. The stem is formed with reduplication as with the present system.

The perfect system also produces separate "strong" and "weak" forms of the verb — the strong form is used with the singular active, and the weak form with the rest.

=Aorist system

The aorist system includes aorist proper (with past indicative meaning, e.g. ''abhū'' "you were") and some of the forms of the ancient injunctive (used almost exclusively with ''mā'' in prohibitions, e.g. ''mā bhū'' "don't be"). The principal distinction of the two is presence/absence of an augment - ''a-'' prefixed to the stem.

The aorist system stem actually has three different formations: the simple aorist, the reduplicating aorist (semantically related to the causative verb), and the sibilant aorist. The simple aorist is taken directly from the root stem (e.g. ''bhū-'': ''a-bhū-t'' "he was"). The reduplicating aorist involves reduplication as well as vowel reduction of the stem. The sibilant aorist is formed with the suffixation of ''s'' to the stem.

=Future system

The future system is formed with the suffixation of ''sya'' or ''iya'' and gua.

Verbs: Conjugation

Each verb has a Grammatical Voice , whether active, passive or middle. There is also an impersonal voice, which can be described as the passive voice of intransitive verbs. Sanskrit verbs have an Indicative , an Optative and an Imperative mood. Older forms of the language had a Subjunctive , though this had fallen out of use by the time of Classical Sanskrit.

Basic conjugational endings

Conjugational endings in Sanskrit convey Person , Number , and Voice . Different forms of the endings are used depending on what tense stem and mood they are attached to. Verb stems or the endings themselves may be changed or obscured by sandhi.

Primary endings are used with present indicative and future forms. Secondary endings are used with the imperfect, conditional, aorist, and optative. Perfect and imperative endings are used with the perfect and imperative respectively.

Present system conjugation

Conjugation of the present system deals with all forms of the verb utilizing the present tense stem (explained under Tense Stems above). This includes the present tense of all moods, as well as the imperfect indicative.

=Athematic inflection

The present system differentiates strong and weak forms of the verb. The strong/weak opposition manifests itself differently depending on the class:

The root and reduplicating classes (2 & 3) are not modified in the weak forms, and receive guṇa in the strong forms.

The nasal class (7) is not modified in the weak form, extends the nasal to ''ná'' in the strong form.

The nu-class (5) has ''nu'' in the weak form and ''nó'' in the strong form.

The nā-class (9) has ''nī'' in the weak form and ''nā́'' in the strong form. ''nī'' disappears before vocalic endings.

The present indicative takes primary endings, and the imperfect indicative takes secondary endings. Singular active forms have the accent on the stem and take strong forms, while the other forms have the accent on the endings and take weak forms.

The optative takes secondary endings. ''yā'' is added to the stem in the active, and ''ī'' in the passive.

The imperative takes imperative endings. Accent is variable and affects vowel quality. Forms which are end-accented trigger gua strengthening, and those with stem accent do not have the vowel affected.

Nominal inflection

Sanskrit is a highly , Vocative , Accusative , Instrumental , Dative , Ablative , Genitive , and Locative .

The number of actual Declension s is debatable. In this article they are divided into five declensions. Which declension a noun belongs to is determined largely by form.

The basic declination suffix scheme for nouns and adjectives

The basic scheme is given in the table below—valid for almost all nouns and adjectives. However, according to the gender and the ending consonant/vowel of the uninflected word-stem, there are predermined rules of compulsory ''sandhi'' which would then give the final inflected word. The parentheses give the case-terminations for the neuter gender, the rest are for masculine and feminine gender. Both devanagari script and IAST transliterations are given.

a-stems

A-stems () comprise the largest class of nouns. As a rule, nouns belonging to this class, with the uninflected stem ending in short-a (), are either masculine or neuter. Nouns ending in long-A () are almost always feminine. A-stem adjectives take the masculine and neuter in short-a (), and feminine in long-A () in their stems.

i- and u-stems

Long Vowel-stems

-stems

-stems are predominantly Agental derivatives like ''dāt'' 'giver', though also include kinship terms like ''pit́'' 'father', ''māt́'' 'mother', and ''svás'' 'sister'.

See also Devi Inflection , Vrkis Inflection .

Personal Pronouns and Determiners

The first and second person pronouns are declined for the most part alike, having by Analogy assimilated themselves with one another.

Note: Where two forms are given, the second is Enclitic and an alternative form. Ablatives in singular and plural may be extended by the syllable -''tas''; thus ''mat'' or ''mattas'', ''asmat'' or ''asmattas''.

The demonstrative ''ta'', declined below, also functions as the third person pronoun.

Compounds

One other notable feature of the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which may be huge (10+ words) as in some modern languages such as German . Nominal compounds occur with various structures, however morphologically speaking they are essentially the same. Each noun (or adjective) is in its (weak) stem form, with only the final element receiving case inflection. Some examples of nominal compounds include:

1. (co-ordinative)
::These consist of two or more Noun stems, connected in sense with 'and', e.g. ''matara-pitara'' 'Mother and Father'. Due to these compounds having more than one noun in them, they must be in the dual or plural.
2. (possessive)
::Bahuvrīhi, or "much-rice", denotes a rich person—one who has much rice. Bahuvrīhi compounds refer (by example) to a compound noun with no head -- a compound noun that refers to a thing which is itself not part of the compound. For example, "low-life" and "block-head" are bahuvrihi compounds, since a low-life is not a kind of life, and a block-head is not a kind of head. (And a much-rice is not a kind of rice.) Compare with more common, headed, compound nouns like "fly-ball" (a kind of ball) or "alley cat" (a kind of cat). Bahurvrīhis can often be translated by "possessing..." or "-ed"; for example, "possessing much rice", or "much riced".
3. Tatpurusha (determinative)
::There are many tatpuruas (one for each of the nominal cases, and a few others besides); in a tatpurua, the first component is in a case relationship with another. For example, a doghouse is a dative compound, a house ''for'' a dog. It would be called a "caturtitatpurua" (caturti refers to the fourth case—that is, the dative). Incidentally, "tatpurua" is a tatpurua ("this man"—meaning someone's agent), while "caturtitatpurua" is a karmadhārya, being both dative, and a tatpurua. An easy way to understand it is to look at English examples of tatpuruas: "battlefield", where there is a genitive relationship between "field" and "battle", "a field of battle"; other examples include instrumental relationships ("thunderstruck") and locative relationships ("towndwelling").
4. (descriptive)
::The relation of the first member to the last is appositional, attributive or adverbial, e. g. uluka-yatu (owl+demon) is a demon in the shape of an owl.
5. Amredita (iterative)
::Repetition of a word expresses repetitiveness, e. g. dive-dive 'day by day', 'daily'.

Syntax

Because of Sanskrit's complex declination system the Word Order is free ( with tendency toward SOV ).

Numerals

The numbers from one to ten are:

The numbers one through four are declined. Éka is declined like a pronominal adjective, though the dual form does not occur. '''Dvá''' appears only in the dual. '''Trí''' and '''catúr''' are declined irregularly:

INFLUENCE

Modern-day India

Sanskrit's greatest influence, presumably, is that which it exerted on languages that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base. Especially among elite circles in India, Sanskrit is prized as a storehouse of scripture and the language of prayers in Hinduism . Like Latin 's influence on European languages, Sanskrit has influenced most Indian languages. While vernacular prayer is common, Sanskrit Mantra s are recited by millions of Hindus and most temple functions are conducted entirely in Sanskrit, often Vedic in form. Most higher forms of Indian vernacular languages like Bengali , Gujarati , Marathi , Telugu and Hindi , often called 'shuddha' (pure, higher) are much more heavily Sanskritized. Of modern day Indian languages, while Hindi tends to be, in spoken form, more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence, Bengali and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base. The national anthem, Jana Gana Mana is higher form of Bengali, so Sanskritized as to be archaic in modern usages. The national song of India Vande Mataram which is originally a poem - composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and taken from his book called 'Aanandmath', is in pure Sanskrit. Malayalam , which is spoken in the Kerala state of India, also combines a great deal of Sanskrit vocabulary with Tamil (Dravidian) grammatical structure. Kannada , another South Indian language, also contains Sanskrit vocabulary. But as a medium of spiritual instruction for Hindus in India, Sanskrit is still prized and widespread.

Sanskrit words are found in many other present-day non-Indian languages. For instance, the Thai Language contains many Loan Word s from Sanskrit. For example, in Thai, the Rāvana - the emperor of Sri Lanka is called 'Thoskonth' which is clearly a derivation of his Sanskrit name 'Dashakanth' (of ten necks). And ranged as far as the Philippines, e.g., Tagalog 'gurò' from 'Guru', or 'teacher', with the Hindu seafarers who traded there.

Attempts at revival

Of late, there have been attempts to revive the speaking of this ancient tongue among people, so that vast literature available in Sanskrit can be made easily available to everyone. The '' CBSE '' (Central Board of Secondary Education) in India has made Sanskrit a third language in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8. An option between Sanskrit and Hindi (or many other local languages) as a second language exists for grades 9 and 10. Many organizations like the ''Samskrta Bharati'' are conducting Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularize the language. About four million people are claimed to have acquired the ability to speak Sanskrit fluently.

Sanskrit is claimed to be spoken natively by the population in Mattur , a village in central Karnataka . Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in childhood and converse in the language. Even the local Muslims speak and converse in Sanskrit. Historically, the village was given by king Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagar a Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Tuluva.

Several organizations across India are putting in efforts to revive the language and to preserve oral transmission of the Vedas. Shri Vedabharathi is one such organization based out of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh that has been digitizing the Vedas through voice recording the recitations of Vedic Pandits.

Interactions with Sino-Tibetan Languages

Sanskrit and related languages have also influenced their Sino-Tibetan-speaking neighbors to the north through the spread of Buddhist texts in translation. Buddhism was spread to China by Mahayanist missionaries mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit texts, and many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. (Although Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is not Sanskrit, properly speaking, its vocabulary is substantially the same, both because of genetic relationship, and because of conscious imitation on the part of composers. Buddhist texts composed in Sanskrit proper were primarily found in philosophical schools like the Madhyamaka .)

Western vogue for Sanskrit

See Also: Sanskrit in the West

At the end of the introduction to '' The World As Will And Representation '', Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that the rediscovery of the ancient Indian tradition would be one of the great events in the history of the West. Goethe borrowed from Kalidasa for the ''Vorspiel auf dem Theater'' in Faust.

Goethe and Schopenhauer were riding a crest of scholarly discovery, most notably the work done by Sir William Jones . (Goethe likely read Kalidasa's '' The Recognition Of Sakuntala '' in Jones' translation.) However, the discovery of the world of Sanskrit Literature moved beyond German and British scholars and intellectuals — Henry David Thoreau was a sympathetic reader of the Bhagavad Gita — and even beyond the Humanities . In the early days of the Periodic Table , scientists referred to as yet undiscovered elements with the use of Sanskrit prefixes (see Mendeleev's Predicted Elements ).

The nineteenth century was a golden age of Western Sanskrit scholarship, and many of the giants of the field ( Whitney , Macdonnell , Monier-Williams , Grassmann ) knew each other personally. Perhaps the most commonly known example of Sanskrit in the West was also the last gasp of its vogue. T.S. Eliot , a student of Indian Philosophy and Lanham's, ended '' The Waste Land '' with Sanskrit: "Shantih Shantih Shantih".

Computational linguistics

There have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a Metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. Machine Translation , and other areas of Natural Language Processing because of its highly regular structure
( The AI Magazine, Spring, 1985 #39 ). This is due to Classical Sanskrit being a regularized, prescriptivist form abstracted from the much more irregular and richer Vedic Sanskrit . This levelling of the grammar of Classical Sanskrit occurred during the Brahmana phase, after the language had fallen out of popular use, arguably qualifying Classical Sanskrit as an early Engineered Language .

SEE ALSO