Samskrit is the oldest but best structured language in the world. This perhaps is the only language with provision for clear cut identification of second case. (I/we, You (single and plural and he/they.) This again is perhaps the only language with defined verbal endings for 1, 2 and 3/more persons).
What all this means that the sentence can be very short and the subject can be deduced from the verb endings.
Samskrit is perhaps the only language with precise rules and regulations for the combination of words, again making the sentence brief. (In Narayaneeyam one word can be expanded to a dozen or more qualitative attributes that occupy a whole paragraph in translation)
The best in the world in the three formats of texts (prose, poetry and drama) can be found in Samskrit. No other language contains as much books/treatises in all aspects of life like: science, art, technology etc. as much as Samskrit.
Samskrit was the unifying language of the nation. It is true that the British united politically and administratively the modern India, which perhaps was not a boon after all considering the fissiparous fightings in all issues that we see all around. In the past Bharat was one nation, culturally, in spite of several small kingdoms. There was no ban on movement and settling down of people from any kingdom, anywhere in the Bharata Desa. In fact outsiders were more than welcome as can be seen from the warm reception the early priests of Islam and Christianity received in our country. The rituals and practises subtly motivated the integration of the entire population across the borders of the petty kingdoms. Borders were for rulers and not for the masses. (no Sons of the soil theory.) All this unity in diversity was possible because of the popularity of Samskrit and the epics and puranas in it.
Samskrit is one language where rules are available to from words from roots. The concept of roots (dhatu?) is not there in the western languages, as far as I know.
Samskrit uses the passive voice extensively, which perhaps afford better flexibility. Most of the texts were in poetry form which could be memorised easily. Memorisation does not clutter the brain, as some modern educationists believe, but expands the reach of the brain and provides the quickest means of data retrieval.
Samskrit was thriving in this nation for thousands and thousands of years. The 400 years long rule by the Mughals or the 200 years rule of the Europeans could not dislodge it from it/s pre eminent positions. But our leaders of Independent India have managed to totally destroy it within a short span of 60 years or so. And in the process they have also destroyed the spirit of love and tolerance that most texts in Samskrit stood for.
Samskrit appears to be difficult to learn because of the innumerable rules and regulations. But it is not so. There are no uncertaintities and contradiction between the spoken and written word. For e.g.: in English a spoken `see' can be a written `see' or `sea' with totally different meanings. It is not so in Samskrit.
English is very difficult to master, but we do not realise it as we spend years and years learning it. One can master Samskrit by putting 20 % of this effort. But who cares?
Revival of Samskrit is a must for the survival of our ancient culture, which alone can bring peace and prosperity to our great nation. Perhaps, this could be reason, why our great scientists give Samskrit names to the new missions and weapon systems.
Almost two generations of Indians have are out of touch with this great heritage language because of deliberate selfish policies of the rulers. It is our duty to give at least a glimpse of this language and the treasures therein to the future generations. It is equally (if not more) important like tennis and jazz classes. Let us give them a chance to have a dip at the vast ocean whose depths can never be reached in a life span.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
Specialities of Sanskrit Language and Literature
http://sanskritdocuments.org/articles/SpecialitiesofSanskritLanguageLiterature.html
Prabhu Shastry londonprabhu at yahoo.co.uk
I. A few misconceptions about Sanskrit
In spite of an active, fact-finding and researching schedule all through the millennia, we find some prevailing superstitious elements about Sanskrit and Sanskrit pundits in India. To sum up these, those who are yet to know Sanskrit do not examine before believing what the antagonists want to hold:
* a. That Sanskrit is a dead language; that it is out-dated; that it is not and can never be and was never a spoken language.
* b. That it is a language of scriptures / religion; that only the people of certain professions like pundits or the priests study it to understand and help do rituals; that it has no use in the daily walks of life or for the common man.
* c. That since it is used in the scriptures (the language of gods), it is sacred and consequent to this, committing mistakes in Sanskrit is sinful and cannot be excused.
* d. That only the scholars can use it because, before using it, one needs to master the whole grammar which is the most complicated and that its vocabulary which is again endless.
* e. That there is a lot to memorise / learn by heart / mug up to learn Sanskrit; that even its learning is very difficult, labouring as well as boring and even dreadful.
* f. That on the racial discriminations, Sanskrit was once an ancient language owned by the Aryans; that it was a member of the Indo-Aryan family of languages; for the overdoing of this theory which is only a speculation or a hypothesis, that the non-Aryan races can think they should have no interest or discourage any efforts favouring Sanskrit. This is a over reacting to the idea of the Aryans. race who are blamed as the oppressors of the indigenous cultures of certain countries.
Falling prey to these widespread misnomers and some intimidating aspects which are often deliberately commissioned that, unfortunately, people shy away from studying Sanskrit. They either give up after some trial or never try to own this treasure of human wisdom stored in Sanskrit literature.
On the contrary, see how many virtues and advantages Sanskrit language and literature has to offer to all.
II. Advantages while studying Sanskrit
* 1. It is a natural language. There is a direct link between the sound and signs; it is phonetic. We write Sanskrit and other Indian languages exactly as we say which means that the writing of Sanskrit language is based on the sound of the spoken form.
In other words, Sanskrit has no spelling; there are no silent letters either. In contrast to Sanskrit, you can't read many English words properly unless you know English to certain extant. This means that a student is assumed to have known already the English language before one starts learning it!
Sanskrit coalescence (SANDHI) is yet another example of the natural flow in Sanskrit.
* 2. There is only one set of alphabet in Sanskrit. This avoids many complexities of writing capital / small and italic letters as they are in the Roman alphabet / European scripts.
* 3. There aren't many punctuation marks found in Sanskrit (Devanagari) script.
* 4. For writing Sanskrit language, any comprehensive alphabet can be used and vice versa.
* 5. Thanks to its phonetic scripts, there is an easy-flowing, natural and logical way to proceed while learning this wonderful language or to write any language after that.
To give a contrast example to this, see how difficult it is to learn the spelling-oriented European languages whose silent letters add to the complications.
By a careful examination of the Roman alphabet we can see that some sounds are repeated in it while many sounds are left out. Capital letters are a whole set of repetition.
* 6. There is logic in its sound system, and a natural continuity in its word-making as well as sentence-making. Compare this with pronouncing and spelling of the languages of other countries than India.
For example, unless one has visited England, one cannot guess the correct reading of the names / places like Reading, Gloucester, Leicester, Peugeot, Plymouth. .Chaos. in English, follows if not pre-learnt.
* 7. Sanskrit sentence structure is flexible. The declensions and the conjugations have a wide range. Hence every student has more freedom in composing sentences in Sanskrit. In contrast to this, every English sentence has to follow syntax (the law of particular order of words).
* 8. In Sanskrit, the order of words in a sentence does not matter. Thanks to this flexibility, a Sanskrit sentence may well follow any language the student is familiar with.
III. About its uniqueness
That Sanskrit is unique is the popular quotation we find in every manual of its teaching. Look at the few following realities:
* 1. Sanskrit is the oldest and living language on our planet. Hence in its study and research we see a wonderful history passing through many millennia.
* 2. It is the language of the most ancient Indian scriptures belonging to various faiths. Sanskrit is a spiritual language. Owing to these reasons, the description is very popular, like .as old as the hills., that Sanskrit is the language of Divinity, language of gods.
* 3. It is a language of classical literature . rich and abundant.
* 4. As its name itself explains, it is systematised and perfected. Its alphabets are impeccably arranged. They are easy to remember and help in memorising textual stanzas which explains why the oral tradition of Indian wisdom is so popular and long-standing in the entire world.
Virtually everything, including those subjects which are technical - like science, engineering, medicine, grammar, philosophy, law . are in poetry, easy to memorise and to quote them melodiously. Not even a Sanskrit dictionary (Amara-kosha) is spared from this impeccably convenient structure/formation.
* 5. Sanskrit literature is unique in its overwhelmingly poetic character.
* 6. Rationality is in everything including the arrangement of its alphabets. It is perfected. The Devanagari script used to write Sanskrit is also complete. Being phonetic, it can easily be adopted to write any language.
* 7. It is a global language. It has no territory, has no bias; hence has no limitations.
* 8. Sanskrit is a 'world language' in the real sense of the term. It hasn't got local variations or vernaculars nor dialects nor usages of slang words. Its uniformity owes to this aspect as well.
* 9. It has written rules of grammar, phonetics, etymology and epistemology which are all followed wherever Sanskrit is used. The wonder that this bedrock of Sanskrit grammar, which is, allows its purity to continue no matter however it grows.
Consequent to this, the uniformity found only in Sanskrit has not changed even after many millennia of its expansion as well as migration to so many lands outside India.
* 10. There is infinity in its word-formation possibilities and they are all well-structured, computerized long before the computers came in use.
* 11. There is a vibration or resonance in the sounds well-expressed in Sanskrit speaking.
* 12. Absolute freedom is in using this language because of "No syntax". This means that even a beginner can proceed with words as one.s thoughts progress.
* 13. Flexibility or adaptability - Same sentence can be said in a variety of ways.
Brevity and elaboration . both are possible, thanks to the 'classical' nature of Sanskrit. If one sentence in Banabhatta's novel - "Kadambari" virtually runs beyond 20 printed pages and a single word extends to 13 printed lines, imagine the range of expansion and contraction achieved by this celestial language namely, Sanskrit!
Here, a mention has to be made about the Dwi-sandhana Kavyas and other specimen of Chitra kavyas in Sanskrit which exhibit a funtastic world. On those lines you will be able to say a whole story . even of whole Ramayana if you like, in one set of formation, say, in one set of letters, or in one set of words . only nouns and those nouns only in the Nominative case, singular no. etc...
E.g.
.Ayodhya-emperor, three-wived-Dasharatha, child-less, performer-of-Putrakameshti-sacrifice, becoming-the-father-of-four-sons, - Rama- Lakshmana-Bharata-Shatrughna-as-well, consequently-the-sender-of-two-of-his-sons-namely-Rama-and Lakshmana-along-with-viswamitra-sage-who-came-with-request-for-the-king.s-help-to-rescue-his-sacrifice . . . . . ..
Such a never-ending phrase = ANANTYA-PADAM or ANANTYA-VAKYAM = one single sentence for the whole story i.e. going to any length can contain in it, not just an episode, but the whole epic of Ramayana itself. Such a feat is possible in a Sanskrit narration. There are many reasons for this amazing power of Sanskrit which all explain the richness and inexhaustibility of this classical language.
Depending upon how pedantic the narrator could be, even in one long word . running for many pages - one can fill in the whole story.
Owing to its enormous flexibility, only Sanskrit can imitate any language in the sentence structure.
* 14. Its universality. It can do all functions, - scriptural (holiness), technical (precision and derivative power) and romantic (resourceful and flowery style) but can never be slang.
* 15. Has a very rational derivative power. In Sanskrit, etymology (Niruktam) is a special science (Sastra) of finding the derivations. The derivative potential of Sanskrit words is breath-taking. Unbelievable it may look though, there are no proper nouns in Sanskrit! Every single Sanskrit word has a meaning built into the word itself; the root hidden in the word contains the meaning of that word. Hence a Sanskrit scholar seldom runs for a dictionary to find out the meaning of any new or a strange word one may come across. He uses the key of etymology which breaks the egg, and the contents come out!
* 16. Its economy. Sanskrit letters can be used to write other languages as well. Any lengthy expression could be put in brief in Sanskrit - as small as a word; or sometimes it is smaller than a word, say a syllable! E.g. A Bijakshara like OM.
Passive voice sentences are more in Sanskrit also owing to this reason which are surprisingly shorter expressions!
* 17. Sanskrit words possess a special vibration of sound waves whose resonance is very effective. People use Sanskrit Mantras for healing. They owe this mystic character and holiness to the essential spiritual character of Sanskrit.
* 18. Spirituality has moulded into Sanskrit! Hence its name , - perfection to be reached by any word.
Different voices . 3 of them . in Sanskrit make way for different aspects related to the same . i.e. Reality.
By knowing Sanskrit, you are now in touch with a language which is very natural (sound-oriented), rationally developed or systematised in its structure and versatile in its usage even while retaining its purity and uniformity. Its ancient, abundant, full of variety and everlasting literature passing through the longest period of time has plentiful wonders to offer to those interested in any of them.
IV. Benefits of the Sanskrit knowledge
See the previous paragraph as well. If you know Sanskrit,
* 1. Since Sanskrit is the oldest language of our planet, your ability to speak it amounts to a unique experience (and perhaps your special status!).
* 2. Clear in speech, perfect in pronunciation, articulate in conversation, sharp in memory, rapid in thinking, logical in analysis, rational in understanding, accurate in expression and communication, familiarity with a wide variety of concepts, liberal in views and polite in behaviour as well as a quick grasping of other languages and scripts also - are some opf the benefits attached to and traditionally proverbial attributed to a Sanskrit scholar.
* 3. Sanskrit is really the world-language. Its knowledge helps in studying:
a. European things of the past as a lot of technical terms are similar between Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Hittite etc. in many technical fields like medicine, law, physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and many more.
b. The languages, religion and cultures of the Middle east like Persian, Iranian and Arabic which owe a lot of similarity.
c. Indian things whether religions, philosophy, arts, science (like Ayurveda, Vedic mathematics, Vastu, Tantra, Kriyayoga and other specialisations) which are all the popular subjects in today.s world.
* 4. A glimpse of ancient world religions, languages, customs, traditions, culture can be easy to get through the glass of Vedic and Sanskrit literature.
* 5. In this modern age of computers, Sanskrit has one more thing to offer, - adoption of the already computerised contents or the Sutras in many of its technical subjects like Panini's Ashtadhyayi - the text book of grammar. Since both Sanskrit and the computer are having less irregularities, if not perfect, their combination should work marvellously for the benefit of mankind.
* 6. By knowing Sanskrit, you have an access to the most ancient, profound, rich and extensive literature of Sanskrit which strengthens your contacts / association/ understanding of a life style associated with that language.
In short, Sanskrit is the container of all that which is Indian. Like the saying, .England, without Shakespeare is a zero., they quote .India without Sanskrit would be zero.. In other words, understanding and appreciation of numerous Indian things whether music, dance, arts, rituals, tradition, religions, values, languages, science etc. will be easy for one who knows Sanskrit. By analogy of England, Netherland, Sovietland etc, India is, in fact, Sanskritland! The integrity of the Indian elements owe essentially to the Sanskrit language and literature which has the universal impact upon them.
* 7. You have now access to the most systematised oriental language.
* 8. You are now in touch with a language which is very natural (euphonic / built on sound factor), rationally developed, systematic in its structure and versatile in its usage even while retaining its purity and uniformity (without any regional vernaculars).
* 9. Sanskrit being the mother of all Indian languages and a sister of all the European languages, with its knowledge you are capable of learning most of the current world languages easily.
* 10. Owing to the spiritual contents predominant in its literature, the knowledge of Sanskrit adds many important dimension to our personality.
Prabhu Shastry londonprabhu at yahoo.co.uk
I. A few misconceptions about Sanskrit
In spite of an active, fact-finding and researching schedule all through the millennia, we find some prevailing superstitious elements about Sanskrit and Sanskrit pundits in India. To sum up these, those who are yet to know Sanskrit do not examine before believing what the antagonists want to hold:
* a. That Sanskrit is a dead language; that it is out-dated; that it is not and can never be and was never a spoken language.
* b. That it is a language of scriptures / religion; that only the people of certain professions like pundits or the priests study it to understand and help do rituals; that it has no use in the daily walks of life or for the common man.
* c. That since it is used in the scriptures (the language of gods), it is sacred and consequent to this, committing mistakes in Sanskrit is sinful and cannot be excused.
* d. That only the scholars can use it because, before using it, one needs to master the whole grammar which is the most complicated and that its vocabulary which is again endless.
* e. That there is a lot to memorise / learn by heart / mug up to learn Sanskrit; that even its learning is very difficult, labouring as well as boring and even dreadful.
* f. That on the racial discriminations, Sanskrit was once an ancient language owned by the Aryans; that it was a member of the Indo-Aryan family of languages; for the overdoing of this theory which is only a speculation or a hypothesis, that the non-Aryan races can think they should have no interest or discourage any efforts favouring Sanskrit. This is a over reacting to the idea of the Aryans. race who are blamed as the oppressors of the indigenous cultures of certain countries.
Falling prey to these widespread misnomers and some intimidating aspects which are often deliberately commissioned that, unfortunately, people shy away from studying Sanskrit. They either give up after some trial or never try to own this treasure of human wisdom stored in Sanskrit literature.
On the contrary, see how many virtues and advantages Sanskrit language and literature has to offer to all.
II. Advantages while studying Sanskrit
* 1. It is a natural language. There is a direct link between the sound and signs; it is phonetic. We write Sanskrit and other Indian languages exactly as we say which means that the writing of Sanskrit language is based on the sound of the spoken form.
In other words, Sanskrit has no spelling; there are no silent letters either. In contrast to Sanskrit, you can't read many English words properly unless you know English to certain extant. This means that a student is assumed to have known already the English language before one starts learning it!
Sanskrit coalescence (SANDHI) is yet another example of the natural flow in Sanskrit.
* 2. There is only one set of alphabet in Sanskrit. This avoids many complexities of writing capital / small and italic letters as they are in the Roman alphabet / European scripts.
* 3. There aren't many punctuation marks found in Sanskrit (Devanagari) script.
* 4. For writing Sanskrit language, any comprehensive alphabet can be used and vice versa.
* 5. Thanks to its phonetic scripts, there is an easy-flowing, natural and logical way to proceed while learning this wonderful language or to write any language after that.
To give a contrast example to this, see how difficult it is to learn the spelling-oriented European languages whose silent letters add to the complications.
By a careful examination of the Roman alphabet we can see that some sounds are repeated in it while many sounds are left out. Capital letters are a whole set of repetition.
* 6. There is logic in its sound system, and a natural continuity in its word-making as well as sentence-making. Compare this with pronouncing and spelling of the languages of other countries than India.
For example, unless one has visited England, one cannot guess the correct reading of the names / places like Reading, Gloucester, Leicester, Peugeot, Plymouth. .Chaos. in English, follows if not pre-learnt.
* 7. Sanskrit sentence structure is flexible. The declensions and the conjugations have a wide range. Hence every student has more freedom in composing sentences in Sanskrit. In contrast to this, every English sentence has to follow syntax (the law of particular order of words).
* 8. In Sanskrit, the order of words in a sentence does not matter. Thanks to this flexibility, a Sanskrit sentence may well follow any language the student is familiar with.
III. About its uniqueness
That Sanskrit is unique is the popular quotation we find in every manual of its teaching. Look at the few following realities:
* 1. Sanskrit is the oldest and living language on our planet. Hence in its study and research we see a wonderful history passing through many millennia.
* 2. It is the language of the most ancient Indian scriptures belonging to various faiths. Sanskrit is a spiritual language. Owing to these reasons, the description is very popular, like .as old as the hills., that Sanskrit is the language of Divinity, language of gods.
* 3. It is a language of classical literature . rich and abundant.
* 4. As its name itself explains, it is systematised and perfected. Its alphabets are impeccably arranged. They are easy to remember and help in memorising textual stanzas which explains why the oral tradition of Indian wisdom is so popular and long-standing in the entire world.
Virtually everything, including those subjects which are technical - like science, engineering, medicine, grammar, philosophy, law . are in poetry, easy to memorise and to quote them melodiously. Not even a Sanskrit dictionary (Amara-kosha) is spared from this impeccably convenient structure/formation.
* 5. Sanskrit literature is unique in its overwhelmingly poetic character.
* 6. Rationality is in everything including the arrangement of its alphabets. It is perfected. The Devanagari script used to write Sanskrit is also complete. Being phonetic, it can easily be adopted to write any language.
* 7. It is a global language. It has no territory, has no bias; hence has no limitations.
* 8. Sanskrit is a 'world language' in the real sense of the term. It hasn't got local variations or vernaculars nor dialects nor usages of slang words. Its uniformity owes to this aspect as well.
* 9. It has written rules of grammar, phonetics, etymology and epistemology which are all followed wherever Sanskrit is used. The wonder that this bedrock of Sanskrit grammar, which is, allows its purity to continue no matter however it grows.
Consequent to this, the uniformity found only in Sanskrit has not changed even after many millennia of its expansion as well as migration to so many lands outside India.
* 10. There is infinity in its word-formation possibilities and they are all well-structured, computerized long before the computers came in use.
* 11. There is a vibration or resonance in the sounds well-expressed in Sanskrit speaking.
* 12. Absolute freedom is in using this language because of "No syntax". This means that even a beginner can proceed with words as one.s thoughts progress.
* 13. Flexibility or adaptability - Same sentence can be said in a variety of ways.
Brevity and elaboration . both are possible, thanks to the 'classical' nature of Sanskrit. If one sentence in Banabhatta's novel - "Kadambari" virtually runs beyond 20 printed pages and a single word extends to 13 printed lines, imagine the range of expansion and contraction achieved by this celestial language namely, Sanskrit!
Here, a mention has to be made about the Dwi-sandhana Kavyas and other specimen of Chitra kavyas in Sanskrit which exhibit a funtastic world. On those lines you will be able to say a whole story . even of whole Ramayana if you like, in one set of formation, say, in one set of letters, or in one set of words . only nouns and those nouns only in the Nominative case, singular no. etc...
E.g.
.Ayodhya-emperor, three-wived-Dasharatha, child-less, performer-of-Putrakameshti-sacrifice, becoming-the-father-of-four-sons, - Rama- Lakshmana-Bharata-Shatrughna-as-well, consequently-the-sender-of-two-of-his-sons-namely-Rama-and Lakshmana-along-with-viswamitra-sage-who-came-with-request-for-the-king.s-help-to-rescue-his-sacrifice . . . . . ..
Such a never-ending phrase = ANANTYA-PADAM or ANANTYA-VAKYAM = one single sentence for the whole story i.e. going to any length can contain in it, not just an episode, but the whole epic of Ramayana itself. Such a feat is possible in a Sanskrit narration. There are many reasons for this amazing power of Sanskrit which all explain the richness and inexhaustibility of this classical language.
Depending upon how pedantic the narrator could be, even in one long word . running for many pages - one can fill in the whole story.
Owing to its enormous flexibility, only Sanskrit can imitate any language in the sentence structure.
* 14. Its universality. It can do all functions, - scriptural (holiness), technical (precision and derivative power) and romantic (resourceful and flowery style) but can never be slang.
* 15. Has a very rational derivative power. In Sanskrit, etymology (Niruktam) is a special science (Sastra) of finding the derivations. The derivative potential of Sanskrit words is breath-taking. Unbelievable it may look though, there are no proper nouns in Sanskrit! Every single Sanskrit word has a meaning built into the word itself; the root hidden in the word contains the meaning of that word. Hence a Sanskrit scholar seldom runs for a dictionary to find out the meaning of any new or a strange word one may come across. He uses the key of etymology which breaks the egg, and the contents come out!
* 16. Its economy. Sanskrit letters can be used to write other languages as well. Any lengthy expression could be put in brief in Sanskrit - as small as a word; or sometimes it is smaller than a word, say a syllable! E.g. A Bijakshara like OM.
Passive voice sentences are more in Sanskrit also owing to this reason which are surprisingly shorter expressions!
* 17. Sanskrit words possess a special vibration of sound waves whose resonance is very effective. People use Sanskrit Mantras for healing. They owe this mystic character and holiness to the essential spiritual character of Sanskrit.
* 18. Spirituality has moulded into Sanskrit! Hence its name , - perfection to be reached by any word.
Different voices . 3 of them . in Sanskrit make way for different aspects related to the same . i.e. Reality.
By knowing Sanskrit, you are now in touch with a language which is very natural (sound-oriented), rationally developed or systematised in its structure and versatile in its usage even while retaining its purity and uniformity. Its ancient, abundant, full of variety and everlasting literature passing through the longest period of time has plentiful wonders to offer to those interested in any of them.
IV. Benefits of the Sanskrit knowledge
See the previous paragraph as well. If you know Sanskrit,
* 1. Since Sanskrit is the oldest language of our planet, your ability to speak it amounts to a unique experience (and perhaps your special status!).
* 2. Clear in speech, perfect in pronunciation, articulate in conversation, sharp in memory, rapid in thinking, logical in analysis, rational in understanding, accurate in expression and communication, familiarity with a wide variety of concepts, liberal in views and polite in behaviour as well as a quick grasping of other languages and scripts also - are some opf the benefits attached to and traditionally proverbial attributed to a Sanskrit scholar.
* 3. Sanskrit is really the world-language. Its knowledge helps in studying:
a. European things of the past as a lot of technical terms are similar between Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Hittite etc. in many technical fields like medicine, law, physics, chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and many more.
b. The languages, religion and cultures of the Middle east like Persian, Iranian and Arabic which owe a lot of similarity.
c. Indian things whether religions, philosophy, arts, science (like Ayurveda, Vedic mathematics, Vastu, Tantra, Kriyayoga and other specialisations) which are all the popular subjects in today.s world.
* 4. A glimpse of ancient world religions, languages, customs, traditions, culture can be easy to get through the glass of Vedic and Sanskrit literature.
* 5. In this modern age of computers, Sanskrit has one more thing to offer, - adoption of the already computerised contents or the Sutras in many of its technical subjects like Panini's Ashtadhyayi - the text book of grammar. Since both Sanskrit and the computer are having less irregularities, if not perfect, their combination should work marvellously for the benefit of mankind.
* 6. By knowing Sanskrit, you have an access to the most ancient, profound, rich and extensive literature of Sanskrit which strengthens your contacts / association/ understanding of a life style associated with that language.
In short, Sanskrit is the container of all that which is Indian. Like the saying, .England, without Shakespeare is a zero., they quote .India without Sanskrit would be zero.. In other words, understanding and appreciation of numerous Indian things whether music, dance, arts, rituals, tradition, religions, values, languages, science etc. will be easy for one who knows Sanskrit. By analogy of England, Netherland, Sovietland etc, India is, in fact, Sanskritland! The integrity of the Indian elements owe essentially to the Sanskrit language and literature which has the universal impact upon them.
* 7. You have now access to the most systematised oriental language.
* 8. You are now in touch with a language which is very natural (euphonic / built on sound factor), rationally developed, systematic in its structure and versatile in its usage even while retaining its purity and uniformity (without any regional vernaculars).
* 9. Sanskrit being the mother of all Indian languages and a sister of all the European languages, with its knowledge you are capable of learning most of the current world languages easily.
* 10. Owing to the spiritual contents predominant in its literature, the knowledge of Sanskrit adds many important dimension to our personality.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Sanskrit In Computing
http://bhashaindia.com/patrons/Sanskrit/computing.aspx
By Sonia Pardesi Published on 17th June 2005
Introduction
The Indian culture, apart from consisting of a richness in tradition, can trace it’s roots to some of the most ancient languages to have evolved and existed in the world. Sanskrit being one of them, a classical language of India, is also one of the oldest languages of the world or rather the oldest language to have been recorded. Its evolution began with the Rig Veda (an ancient Sanskrit text composed around BC 2000), the Upanishads, Sama Veda, and Yajur Veda etc. The Aryan language, the Indic branch of the Indo-European family, came to India with the Aryan tribe. Through this language, have some of the various existing languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Marathi, and Bengali, Assamese etc. evolved. Thus, Sanskrit belonged to this era. Early Sanskrit was known as Vedic Sanskrit (BC 2000-500; the Vedas were written sometime during this period), whilst Classical Sanskrit was the spoken language. It was the spoken language of only a few learned classes and was not for the common man.
Sanskrit, being the quintessential language of the Devanagari script (Hindu scriptures are written in Devanagari), has accompanying languages like Konkani, Hindi, Marathi etc. which are also written in the same script. The Devanagari script can be further traced from the ‘Brahmi’ language (an ancient language of India). Sanskrit has become a Scheduled language (A Schedule) and it belongs to the VIII Schedule of the Indian Constitution (of regional languages), although it is hardly spoken today.
Besides being an ancient language, sustaining itself in the modern world, and spreading far and wide, Sanskrit has taken a step further by achieving a breakthrough and being initiated into the world of computing since the last few years. It not only has been developed in the form of fonts and types, but has also facilitated scripting. Through this, it has been made available on the Web, with a number of websites being conceptualized on it.
Let’s look at Sanskrit via computing and its development
Devanagari (a syllabic alphabet consisting of consonants with vowel signs), being a descendant of the Brahmi script, has evolved into a highly cursive script. Sanskrit uses this script. In the past, encoding for Indian languages was not a major issue for news and information sites as they had their own fonts to download, but it used to be a long process. Now with the introduction of the Unicode standard (Utf-8 for Devanagari), it has become a more simple and quick process to supply and receive information in one’s own language. So emphasis has been laid upon developing these Unicode fonts and web pages. The Devanagari Encoding consists of codes that allow browsers and screen readers to process data in the appropriate language. The letters in codes are always in lower case. For e.g. Sanskrit might have a code like ‘sa’. Software companies, Microsoft being one of them, have introduced Devanagari keyboards for Sanskrit, Hindi, and Marathi. These have to be installed from the Windows system disk. Since 1990, encodings for Sanskrit have been developed and modified. At around this time an encoding for Classical Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit Extended (CSX) was developed by John Smith, Dominick Wujastyk and other Indologists. In 1998, the CSX was modified to CSX+, which is still being used by Indologists (e.g. for the electronic files of the BORI edition of the Mahabharata).
As the CSX+ encoding was based on a particular code page, the old fonts were compatible with only the old Windows. Therefore, a new True type Font with the old CSX+ encoding was designed. This font (URW Palladio CSX+) takes care of all the internal aspects by the newer version of Windows.
An Indic True Type Font Package has been introduced by Elman Kniprath, which comprises of 15 True Type Fonts and a Microsoft Word for Windows DOT file that covers these languages. Sanskrit being one of them is also subjected to Phonetic Transcription. The old versions of 1.0 and 2.0 were incompatible with Unicode earlier, but the new versions 3.0 of these fonts are partly compatible with Unicode.
Books on Sanskrit have been advertised on websites pertaining to the language. E.g. the Rigveda Samhita, (a complete text in the Devanagari script), which has been written by, Prof. R.L.Kashyap and Prof. S. Sadagopan (published in 1998 by the Sri Aurobindo Kapali Sastry Institute of Vedic Culture) is a masterpiece of Indian Devanagari typography, thereby assisting Sanskrit students in their study.
Certain files are also available on Sanskrit websites to be downloaded by Sanskrit students on Rig Veda hymns. The web also promotes and encourages individuals to participate by reviewing, encoding, spreading the word about the particular site and implementing the available resources to make languages like Sanskrit easier (e.g. www.sanskritweb.net). It also consists of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), Sanskrit Link Pages and Mailing Lists-> where lively discussions take place in both Sanskrit and English languages. The topics discussed, may be Mahabharata shlokas posted with meanings, grammar, humor etc. In addition to this, the websites also provide tips on how to go about formats for printing documents (e.g. postscript and PDF [Acrobat]), and downloading fonts (from processing tools and also using the Itranslator). Certain sites also provide additional Sanskrit & scriptural documents available in Devnagari. One can also shop on these sites, which sell, audio/video cassettes on Sanskrit stotras.
The grammatical & phonetical know-how of languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Konkani, etc available on the web facilitate user convenience by providing information on font usage. In the grammatical context Sanskrit, is a language, which brings out the differences in the meaning conveyed by the noun. This is made possible through the use of Suffixes, which distinguish each case. Due to this, Sanskrit packs a lot of information in a sentence. Thus, this shows that Sanskrit imparts much more information than what one sees from its grammatical construction. There are eight ways/cases of using a noun that have been identified in various languages of the world. In these languages the noun remains unchanged, while in Sanskrit & some ancient languages of the world like Greek & Latin the noun is modified with a specific suffix for each case. Primers generally address audiences in India where most languages are similar to Sanskrit. Therefore in traditional Sanskrit primers one is directly introduced to the cases.
Thus, the above explanation depicts how Sanskrit has been made easily available in the computing world thereby enabling easy access to information, and helping Sanskrit users find a simple way of processing & accessing data.
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