145-477: The greatest linguist of antiquity Pāṇini.. was the greatest linguist of antiquity, and deserves to be treated as such. — JF Staal, A reader on the Sanskrit Grammarians Pāṇini ( Sanskrit : पाणिनि , pronounced [paːɳin̪i] ) was a logician, Sanskrit philologist , grammarian, and revered scholar in ancient India , variously dated between the 7th and 4th century BCE. Since
290-622: A civil war among them, arising in their own country, there will be a terrible and ferocious war." The "Anushasanaparava" of the Mahabharata affirms that the country of Majjhimadesa was invaded the Yavanas and the Kambojas who were later utterly defeated. The Yona invasion of Majjhimadesa ("middle country, midlands") was jointly carried out by the Yonas and the Kambojas. Majjhimadesa here means
435-816: A contemporary with the king Dhana Nanda (reigned 329-321 BCE), the last monarch of the Nanda Empire before Chandragupta Maurya came to power. Cardona offers an earlier date for Pāṇini, by arguing the compound word yavanānī , discussed in sutra 4.1.49, instead of referring to a writing ( lipi ) c.q. cuneiform of the Achaemenid Empire , or the Greek of Alexander the Great , refers to Greek women ; and that Indus valley residents possibly had contacts with Greek women before Darius's 535 BCE, or Alexander's 326 BCE conquests. K. B. Pathak (1930) argues that
580-684: A dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollock's notion of the "death of Sanskrit" remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says that "most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead." Yona The word Yona in Pali and the Prakrits , and the analogue Yavana in Sanskrit , were used in Ancient India to designate Greek speakers. "Yona" and "Yavana" are transliterations of
725-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had
870-517: A lamp to those who perceive the meaning of words and like a hand mirror for a blind man to those without grammar. This poem, which is to be understood by means of a commentary, is a joy to those sufficiently learned: through my fondness for the scholar I have here slighted the dullard. Bhaṭṭikāvya 22.33–34. Pāṇini is known for his text Aṣṭādhyāyī , a sutra -style treatise on Sanskrit grammar , which consists of 3,996 verses or rules on linguistics , syntax and semantics in "eight chapters" which
1015-591: A language competed with numerous, less exact vernacular Indian languages called Prakritic languages ( prākṛta - ). The term prakrta literally means "original, natural, normal, artless", states Franklin Southworth . The relationship between Prakrit and Sanskrit is found in Indian texts dated to the 1st millennium CE. Patañjali acknowledged that Prakrit is the first language, one instinctively adopted by every child with all its imperfections and later leads to
1160-658: A limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as the Hinayana) but the Prakrit works that have survived are of doubtful authenticity. Some of the canonical fragments of the early Buddhist traditions, discovered in the 20th century, suggest the early Buddhist traditions used an imperfect and reasonably good Sanskrit, sometimes with a Pali syntax, states Renou. The Mahāsāṃghika and Mahavastu, in their late Hinayana forms, used hybrid Sanskrit for their literature. Sanskrit
1305-811: A millennial ethnic epic"; therefore they altered the meaning of yuon that being misleading implied as savages, foreigners . The Sinhalese term Yonaka referring to the Sri Lankan Moors , is thought to have been derived from the term Yona. The word Yona, or one of its derivatives, is still used by some languages to designate contemporary Greece, such as in Arabic ( يونان ), in Hebrew ( יוון ), in Turkish (" Yunanistan "), in Armenian ( Հունաստան Hounistan ), modern Aramaic ( ܝܘ̈ܢܝܐ Yawnoye ), or
1450-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This
1595-479: A negative evidence to Pollock's hypothesis, but it is not positive evidence. A closer look at Sanskrit in the Indian history after the 12th century suggests that Sanskrit survived despite the odds. According to Hanneder, On a more public level the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages and the fact that it is spoken, written and read will probably convince most people that it cannot be
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#17327718687591740-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given
1885-589: A part of his capital city of Anuradhapura for the Yonas. Another Yona thera, Mahādhammarakkhita , is mentioned as having come from Alexandria on the Caucasus in the country of the Yonas, to be present at the building of the Ruwanwelisaya . Another example is that of the Milinda Panha (Chapter I), where "Yonaka" is used to refer to the great Indo-Greek king Menander (160–135 BC), and to
2030-484: A plethora of ideas to organize the known grammatical forms of his day in a systematic way. Like any mathematician who models a known phenomenon in mathematical language, Pāṇini created a metalanguage which is very close to the modern-day ideas of algebra. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
2175-578: A refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars, the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini . The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa , wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit. The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and
2320-538: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond
2465-439: A similar phonetic structure to Tamil. Hock et al. quoting George Hart state that there was influence of Old Tamil on Sanskrit. Hart compared Old Tamil and Classical Sanskrit to arrive at a conclusion that there was a common language from which these features both derived – "that both Tamil and Sanskrit derived their shared conventions, metres, and techniques from a common source, for it is clear that neither borrowed directly from
2610-473: A specific gold coin, the niṣka , in several sutras, which originated in India in the 4th-century BCE. According to Houben, "the date of " c. 350 BCE for Pāṇini is thus based on concrete evidence which till now has not been refuted." According to Bronkhorst, there is no reason to doubt the validity of Von Hinüber's and Falk's argument, setting the terminus post quem for the date of Pāṇini at 350 BCE or
2755-645: A standard method in the design of computer programming languages . Sanskritists now accept that Pāṇini's linguistic apparatus is well-described as an "applied" Post system. Considerable evidence shows ancient mastery of context-sensitive grammars , and a general ability to solve many complex problems. Frits Staal has written that "Panini is the Indian Euclid ." Two literary works are attributed to Pāṇini, though they are now lost. There are many proto-mathematical concepts found in Pāṇini's works. Pāṇini came up with
2900-484: A wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure , Leonard Bloomfield , and Roman Jakobson . Frits Staal (1930–2012) discussed the impact of Indian ideas on language in Europe. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal notes that the idea of formal rules in language – proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1894 and developed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 – has origins in
3045-711: Is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in
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#17327718687593190-463: Is akin to that of Latin and Ancient Greek in Europe. Sanskrit has significantly influenced most modern languages of the Indian subcontinent , particularly the languages of the northern, western, central and eastern Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit declined starting about and after the 13th century. This coincides with the beginning of Islamic invasions of South Asia to create, and thereafter expand
3335-568: Is called Śalāturiya, which means "a man from Salatura". This means Panini lived in Salatura in ancient Gandhara (present day north-west Pakistan ), which likely was near Lahor , a town at the junction of the Indus and Kabul rivers. According to the memoirs of the 7th-century Chinese scholar Xuanzang , there was a town called Suoluoduluo on the Indus where Pāṇini was born, and where he composed
3480-476: Is contrary to Paninian procedure." The founding father of American structuralism, Leonard Bloomfield , wrote a 1927 paper titled "On some rules of Pāṇini". Rishi Rajpopat elaborated in 2021 in his PhD thesis a deeper understanding of Panini's "language machine" by designing a simple system of resolving rule conflicts. His thesis has been critiqued as being built upon flawed premises and understanding of rules by prominent Indian Sanskrit scholars. Pāṇini's grammar
3625-613: Is described by other donors in other inscriptions as a "vaniya-gama" (A community of merchants). The Yavanas are also known for their donation of a complete cave at the Nasik Caves (cave No.17), and for their donations with inscriptions at the Junnar caves . The Yavanas or Yonas are frequently found listed with the Kambojas , Sakas , Pahlavas and other northwestern tribes in numerous ancient Indian texts. The Mahabharata groups
3770-452: Is found in the writing of Bharata Muni , the author of the ancient Natya Shastra text. The early Jain scholar Namisādhu acknowledged the difference, but disagreed that the Prakrit language was a corruption of Sanskrit. Namisādhu stated that the Prakrit language was the pūrvam ('came before, origin') and that it came naturally to children, while Sanskrit was a refinement of Prakrit through "purification by grammar". Sanskrit belongs to
3915-532: Is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different. The early Vedic form of the Sanskrit language was far less homogenous compared to the Classical Sanskrit as defined by grammarians by about the mid-1st millennium BCE. According to Richard Gombrich—an Indologist and a scholar of Sanskrit, Pāli and Buddhist Studies—the archaic Vedic Sanskrit found in
4060-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,
4205-629: Is the foundational text of the Vyākaraṇa branch of the Vedanga , the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of the Vedic period . His aphoristic text attracted numerous bhashya (commentaries), of which the Mahābhāṣya by Patanjali is the most famous. His ideas influenced and attracted commentaries from scholars of other Indian religions such as Buddhism . Pāṇini's analysis of noun compounds still forms
4350-589: Is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from the 1st century BCE, such as the Ayodhya Inscription of Dhana and Ghosundi-Hathibada (Chittorgarh) . Though developed and nurtured by scholars of orthodox schools of Hinduism, Sanskrit has been the language for some of the key literary works and theology of heterodox schools of Indian philosophies such as Buddhism and Jainism. The structure and capabilities of
4495-412: Is the world's first formal system , developed well before the 19th century innovations of Gottlob Frege and the subsequent development of mathematical logic . In designing his grammar, Pāṇini used the method of "auxiliary symbols", in which new affixes are designated to mark syntactic categories and the control of grammatical derivations. This technique, rediscovered by the logician Emil Post , became
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4640-540: The Bhagavata Purana , the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language. The Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was thus the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants of it as well as other natural Indian languages. Sanskrit, as the learned language of Ancient India, thus existed alongside
4785-580: The Dalai Lama , the Sanskrit language is a parent language that is at the foundation of many modern languages of India and the one that promoted Indian thought to other distant countries. In Tibetan Buddhism, states the Dalai Lama, Sanskrit language has been a revered one and called legjar lhai-ka or "elegant language of the gods". It has been the means of transmitting the "profound wisdom of Buddhist philosophy" to Tibet. The Sanskrit language created
4930-469: The Greek successors of Alexander the Great and the Nanda rulers of Magadha , and thus establishing his Mauryan Empire in northern India. Manusmriti lists the Yavanas with the Kambojas, Sakas, Pahlavas, Paradas etc. and regards them as degraded Kshatriyas (Hindu caste). Anushasanaparva of Mahabharata also views the Yavanas, Kambojas, Shakas etc. in the same light. Patanjali's Mahabhashya regards
5075-613: The Indo-European family of languages . It is one of the three earliest ancient documented languages that arose from a common root language now referred to as Proto-Indo-European : Other Indo-European languages distantly related to Sanskrit include archaic and Classical Latin ( c. 600 BCE–100 CE, Italic languages ), Gothic (archaic Germanic language , c. 350 CE ), Old Norse ( c. 200 CE and after), Old Avestan ( c. late 2nd millennium BCE ) and Younger Avestan ( c. 900 BCE). The closest ancient relatives of Vedic Sanskrit in
5220-761: The Qingming-lun (Sanskrit: Vyākaraṇa ). According to Hartmut Scharfe, Pāṇini lived in Gandhara, close to the borders of the Achaemenid Empire , and Gandāra was then an Achaemenian satrapy following the Achaemenid conquest of the Indus Valley . He must, therefore, have been technically a Persian subject but his work shows no awareness of the Persian language . According to Patrick Olivelle , Pāṇini's text and references to him elsewhere suggest that "he
5365-753: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
5510-532: The Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,
5655-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
5800-580: The University of Taxila . Pāṇini is also mentioned in Indian fables and other ancient texts. The Panchatantra , for example, mentions that Pāṇini was killed by a lion. According to some historians Pingala was the brother of Pāṇini. Pāṇini was depicted on a five-rupee Indian postage stamp in August 2004. The most important of Pāṇini's works, the Aṣṭādhyāyī , is a grammar that essentially defines
5945-524: The kumāraśramaṇa , of sutra 2.1.70, derived from śramaṇa , which refers to female renunciates, c.q. " Buddhist nuns ", could also refer to Jain Aryika , of unknown origin, possibly permitting Pāṇini to be placed before the, 5th century BCE, Gautama Buddha . Others, based on Panini's linguistic style, date his works to the sixth or fifth century BCE, as: Nothing certain is known about Pāṇini's personal life. In an inscription of Siladitya VII of Valabhi , he
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6090-406: The sandhi rules, both internal and external. Quite many words found in the early Vedic Sanskrit language are never found in late Vedic Sanskrit or Classical Sanskrit literature, while some words have different and new meanings in Classical Sanskrit when contextually compared to the early Vedic Sanskrit literature. Arthur Macdonell was among the early colonial era scholars who summarized some of
6235-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined
6380-614: The "Chaturvarna" or four class social system was absent in the lands of Kiratas in the East, and the Yavanas and Kambojas etc. in the West. Numerous Puranic literature groups the Yavanas with the Sakas , Kambojas, Pahlavas and Paradas and refers to the peculiar hair styles of these people which were different from those of the Hindus . Ganapatha on Pāṇini attests that it was a practice among
6525-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and
6670-481: The 20th century. His treatise is generative and descriptive, uses metalanguage and meta -rules, and has been compared to the Turing machine wherein the logical structure of any computing device has been reduced to its essentials using an idealized mathematical model . Traditional Pāṇini's work became known in 19th-century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp . Subsequently,
6815-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to
6960-425: The Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what is the relationship between words and their meanings in the context of a community of speakers, whether this relationship is objective or subjective, discovered or is created, how individuals learn and relate to the world around them through language, and about the limits of language? They speculated on
7105-532: The Dravidian languages borrowed from Sanskrit vocabulary, but they have also affected Sanskrit on deeper levels of structure, "for instance in the domain of phonology where Indo-Aryan retroflexes have been attributed to Dravidian influence". Similarly, Ferenc Ruzca states that all the major shifts in Indo-Aryan phonetics over two millennia can be attributed to the constant influence of a Dravidian language with
7250-521: The Dravidian words and forms, without modifying the word order; but the same thing is not possible in rendering a Persian or English sentence into a non-Indo-Aryan language. Shulman mentions that "Dravidian nonfinite verbal forms (called vinaiyeccam in Tamil) shaped the usage of the Sanskrit nonfinite verbs (originally derived from inflected forms of action nouns in Vedic). This particularly salient case of
7395-701: The Emperor Ashoka refers to the Greek populations under his rule. Rock Edicts V and XIII mention the Yonas (or the Greeks) along with the Kambojas and Gandharas as a subject people forming a frontier region of his empire and attest that he sent envoys to the Greek rulers in the West as far as the Mediterranean, faultlessly naming them one by one. In the Gandhari original of Rock XIII , the Greek kings to
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#17327718687597540-512: The European exposure to the formal rules of Pāṇinian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari ; his idea of the unity of the signifier-signified in the sign somewhat resembles the notion of Sphoṭa . More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics may itself have been catalysed by Europe's contact with
7685-598: The Great Chaitya of the Karla Caves built and dedicated by Western Satraps Nahapana in 120 CE, there are six inscriptions made by self-described Yavana donors, who donated six of the pillars, although their names are Buddhist names. They account for nearly half of the known dedicatory inscriptions on the pillars of the Chaitya. The city of Dhenukakata is thought to be Danahu near the city of Karli . It
7830-482: The Great 's invasion, the Greek settlements had existed in eastern parts of Achaemenid Empire , northwest of India, as neighbours to the Kambojas . The references to the Yonas in the early Buddhist texts may be related to the same. The Yavanas are mentioned by the grammarian Pāṇini , probably in reference to their writing. Some of the better-known examples are those of the Edicts of Ashoka (c. 250 BCE), in which
7975-784: The Greek kingdoms which neighboured or sometimes occupied the Punjab over a period of several centuries from the 4th century BCE to the first century CE, such as the Seleucid Empire , the Greco-Bactrian kingdom and the Indo-Greek kingdom . The Yavanar are mentioned in detail in Sangam literature epics such as Paṭṭiṉappālai , describing their brisk trade with the Early Cholas in the Sangam period . After Alexander
8120-692: The Greek word for " Ionians " ( Ancient Greek : Ἴωνες < Ἰάoνες < *Ἰάϝoνες ), who were probably the first Greeks to be known in India. Both terms appear in ancient Sanskrit literature. Yavana appears, for instance, in the Mahabharata , while Yona appears in texts such as the Sri Lankan chronicle Mahavamsa . The Yona are mentioned in the Ashoka inscriptions, along with the Kambojas , as two societies where there are only nobles and slaves. Examples of direct association of these terms with
8265-428: The Greeks include: In general, the words "Yoṇa" or "Yoṇaka" were the current Greek Hellenistic forms, while the term "Yavana" was the Indian word to designate the Greeks or the Indo-Greeks . This usage was shared by many of the countries east of Greece, from the Mediterranean to Sindh : The usage of "Yona" and "Yavana, or variants such as "Yauna" and "Javana", appears repeatedly, and particularly in relation to
8410-428: The Indian grammarian Panini. — Rens Bod , University of Amsterdam The name Pāṇini is a patronymic meaning descendant of Paṇina. His full name was Dakṣiputra Pāṇini according to verses 1.75.13 and 3.251.12 of Patanjali 's Mahābhāṣya , with the first part suggesting his mother's name was Dakṣi. Nothing definite is known about when Pāṇini lived, not even in which century he lived. Pāṇini has been dated between
8555-412: The Indo-Aryan language underwent rapid linguistic change and morphed into the Vedic Sanskrit language. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit . The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the Rigveda , a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that
8700-400: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
8845-417: The Muslim rule in the form of Sultanates, and later the Mughal Empire . Sheldon Pollock characterises the decline of Sanskrit as a long-term "cultural, social, and political change". He dismisses the idea that Sanskrit declined due to "struggle with barbarous invaders", and emphasises factors such as the increasing attractiveness of vernacular language for literary expression. With the fall of Kashmir around
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#17327718687598990-433: The Muslim rulers. Hindu rulers such as Shivaji of the Maratha Empire , reversed the process, by re-adopting Sanskrit and re-asserting their socio-linguistic identity. After Islamic rule disintegrated in South Asia and the colonial rule era began, Sanskrit re-emerged but in the form of a "ghostly existence" in regions such as Bengal. This decline was the result of "political institutions and civic ethos" that did not support
9135-424: The Original System of Vowels in the Indo-European Languages ) published in 1879, he mentions Indian grammar as an influence on his idea that "reduplicated aorists represent imperfects of a verbal class." In his De l'emploi du génitif absolu en sanscrit ( On the Use of the Genitive Absolute in Sanskrit ) published in 1881, he specifically mentions Pāṇini as an influence on the work. Prem Singh, in his foreword to
9280-488: The Sakas, Kambojas, Yavanas and Paradas in the extreme north-west beyond the Himavat (i.e. Hindukush ). The Buddhist drama Mudrarakshasa by Visakhadutta as well as the Jaina works Parishishtaparvan refer to Chandragupta 's alliance with Himalayan king Parvataka. This Himalayan alliance gave Chandragupta a powerful composite army made up of the frontier martial tribes of the Shakas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Parasikas, Bahlikas etc. which he may have utilised to aid defeat
9425-432: The Sanskrit language. Modeled on the dialect and register of elite speakers in his time, the text also accounts for some features of the older Vedic language. The Aṣtādhyāyī is a descriptive and generative grammar with algebraic rules governing every aspect of the language. It is supplemented by three ancillary texts: the akṣarasamāmnāya , dhātupāṭha and gaṇapāṭha . Growing out of a centuries-long effort to preserve
9570-420: The Saṃskṛta language, both in its vocabulary and grammar, to the classical languages of Europe. In The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World , Mallory and Adams illustrate the resemblance with the following examples of cognate forms (with the addition of Old English for further comparison): The correspondences suggest some common root, and historical links between some of
9715-406: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with
9860-447: The Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states Louis Renou – an Indologist known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into
10005-451: The Vedic Sanskrit's bahulam framework, to respect liberty and creativity so that individual writers separated by geography or time would have the choice to express facts and their views in their own way, where tradition followed competitive forms of the Sanskrit language. The phonetic differences between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, as discerned from the current state of the surviving literature, are negligible when compared to
10150-435: The Viets as Yuen (yvan). Both terminologies in Cham materials were written in Cham script and Old Cam , the first dated 1142 during the reign of Harivarman I , showing little linguistic evidence to prove that Cham Yuen and Indian Yavana are connected. Similarly for Kiernan's argument to Khmer Yuon , the Cham reference for the Viet should have been derived from "Yue" or "Viet". The Khmer word "Yuon" (yuôn) យួន /yuən/
10295-413: The West are associated unambiguously with the term "Yona": Antiochus is referred as "Amtiyoko nama Yonaraja" (lit. " The Greek king by the name of Antiochus "), beyond whom live the four other kings: "param ca tena Atiyokena cature 4 rajani Turamaye nama Amtikini nama Maka nama Alikasudaro nama" (lit. "And beyond Antiochus, four kings by the name of Ptolemy , the name of Antigonos , the name of Magas ,
10440-524: The Yavanas and Sakas as Anirvasita (pure) Shudras . Gautama-Dharmasutra regards the Yavanas or Greeks as having sprung from Shudra females and Kshatriya males. The Assalayana Sutta of Majjhima Nikaya attests that in Yona and Kamboja nations, there were only two classes of people... Aryas and Dasas ...the masters and slaves, and that the Arya could become Dasa and vice versa. The Vishnu Purana also indicates that
10585-638: The Yavanas and the Kambojas to wear short-cropped hair ( Kamboja-mundah Yavana-mundah ). Vartika of Katayayana informs us that the kings of the Shakas and the Yavanas, like those of the Kambojas, may also be addressed by their respective tribal names. Brihatkathamanjari of Kshmendra informs us that king Vikramaditya had unburdened the sacred earth of the Barbarians like the Shakas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Tusharas, Parasikas, Hunas etc. by annihilating these sinners completely. The Brahmanda Purana refers to
10730-659: The Yavanas with the Kambojas and the Chinas and calls them "Mlechchas" (Barbarians). In the Shanti Parva section, the Yavanas are grouped with the Kambojas, Kiratas , Sakas , and the Pahlavas etc. and are spoken of as living the life of Dasyus (dacoits). In another chapter of the same Parva, the Yaunas, Kambojas, Gandharas etc. are spoken of as equal to the "Svapakas" and the "Grddhras". Udyogaparva of Mahabharata says that
10875-659: The Yavanas, wicked and valiant, will reach Kusumadhvaja ("The town of the flower-standard", Pataliputra). The thick mud-fortifications at Pataliputra being reached, all the provinces will be in disorder, without doubt. Ultimately, a great battle will follow, with tree-like engines (siege engines)." "The Yavanas will command, the Kings will disappear. (But ultimately) the Yavanas, intoxicated with fighting, will not stay in Madhadesa (the Middle Country); there will be undoubtedly
11020-522: The Yonas with the Kambojas ( Yonakambojesu ) and conveys that brahmans and śramaṇas are found everywhere in his empire except in the lands of the Yonas and the Kambojas. The Mahavamsa or "Great Chronicle" of Sri Lanka refers to the thera Mahārakkhita being sent to preach to the Yona country, and also to the Yona thera Dhammarakkhita , who was sent to Aparanta ("the Western Ends"). It also mentions that Pandukabhaya of Anuradhapura set aside
11165-570: The Yonas, Kambojas , Sakas and Pahlavas . There are important references to the warring Mleccha hordes of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, the Pahlavas and others in the Bala Kanda of Valmiki 's Ramayana . Indologists like Dr H. C. Raychadhury, Dr B. C. Law, Dr Satya Shrava and others see in these verses the clear glimpses of the struggles of the Hindus with the mixed invading hordes of
11310-488: The algorithms to be applied to them for the generation of well-formed words. Such is its intricacy that the correct application of its rules and metarules is still being worked out centuries later. The Aṣṭādhyāyī , composed in an era when oral composition and transmission was the norm, is staunchly embedded in that oral tradition. In order to ensure wide dissemination, Pāṇini is said to have preferred brevity over clarity—it can be recited end-to-end in two hours. This has led to
11455-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound
11600-405: The arrival of Islam to the subcontinent, the term Yavana was used along with Turuka, Turuska, Tajik, and Arab more than Mussalaman or Muslim for invaders professing Islam as their religion. The Chams of Champa are thought referring Đại Việt as "Yavana". However this statement is largely vague. Cham sources refer Dai Viet as nagara Yuen ( Cham : nagara yvan, lit. "Viet state"), and
11745-578: The barbaric Sakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Pahlavas etc. from north-west. The time frame for these struggles is 2nd century BCE downwards. The other Indian records prophecies the 180 BCE Yona attacks on Saket , Panchala , Mathura and Pataliputra , probably against the Shunga Empire, and possibly in defence of Buddhism: "After having conquered Saketa, the country of the Panchala and the Mathuras,
11890-540: The basic sounds of these sutras, Panini accepted them and they are now known as the Shiva Sutras . Armed with this new grammar Pāṇini came back from the Himalayas to Pataliputra. But at the same time, Vararuchi , another disciple of Varsha had learned of a grammar from Indra . They engaged in a debate which lasted eight days and on the last day, with Vararuchi emerging dominant, Pāṇini was able to defeat him with
12035-436: The basis of modern linguistic theories of compounding in Indian languages . Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit . His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. Pāṇini's theory of morphological analysis was more advanced than any equivalent Western theory before
12180-440: The capacity to understand the old Prakrit languages such as Ardhamagadhi . A section of European scholars state that Sanskrit was never a spoken language. However, evidences shows that Sanskrit was a spoken language, essential for oral tradition that preserved the vast number of Sanskrit manuscripts from ancient India. The textual evidence in the works of Yaksa, Panini, and Patanajali affirms that Classical Sanskrit in their era
12325-527: The close relationship between the Indo-Iranian tongues and the Baltic and Slavic languages , vocabulary exchange with the non-Indo-European Uralic languages , and the nature of the attested Indo-European words for flora and fauna. The pre-history of Indo-Aryan languages which preceded Vedic Sanskrit is unclear and various hypotheses place it over a fairly wide limit. According to Thomas Burrow, based on
12470-522: The composite army of the Kambojas, Yavanas and Sakas had participated in the Mahabharata war under the supreme command of Kamboja king Sudakshina . The epic numerously applauds this composite army as being very fierce and wrathful. Balakanda of Ramayana also groups the Yavanas with the Kambojas, Sakas, Pahlavas etc. and refers to them as the military allies of sage Vishistha against Vedic king Vishwamitra The Kishkindha Kanda of Ramayana locates
12615-614: The context of a speech or language, is found in verses 5.28.17–19 of the Ramayana . Outside the learned sphere of written Classical Sanskrit, vernacular colloquial dialects ( Prakrits ) continued to evolve. Sanskrit co-existed with numerous other Prakrit languages of ancient India. The Prakrit languages of India also have ancient roots and some Sanskrit scholars have called these Apabhramsa , literally 'spoiled'. The Vedic literature includes words whose phonetic equivalent are not found in other Indo-European languages but which are found in
12760-601: The crystallization of Classical Sanskrit. As in this period the Indo-Aryan tribes had not yet made contact with the inhabitants of the South of the subcontinent, this suggests a significant presence of Dravidian speakers in North India (the central Gangetic plain and the classical Madhyadeśa) who were instrumental in this substratal influence on Sanskrit. Extant manuscripts in Sanskrit number over 30 million, one hundred times those in Greek and Latin combined, constituting
12905-403: The decades thereafter. According to Bronkhorst, ...thanks to the work carried out by Hinüber (1990:34-35) and Falk (1993: 303-304), we now know that Pāṇini lived, in all probability, far closer in time to the period of Aśoka than had hitherto been thought. According to Falk's reasoning, Panini must have lived during the decade following 350 BCE, that is, just before (or contemporaneously with?)
13050-467: The detailed and sophisticated treatise then transmitted it through his students. Modern scholarship generally accepts that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as Lipi ('script') and lipikara ('scribe') in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The Classical Sanskrit language formalized by Pāṇini, states Renou, is "not an impoverished language", rather it is "a controlled and
13195-535: The differences between the Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Louis Renou published in 1956, in French, a more extensive discussion of the similarities, the differences and the evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit within the Vedic period and then to the Classical Sanskrit along with his views on the history. This work has been translated by Jagbans Balbir. The earliest known use of the word Saṃskṛta (Sanskrit), in
13340-437: The discovery and publication of his work Aṣṭādhyāyī by European scholars in the nineteenth century, Pāṇini has been considered the "first descriptive linguist ", and even labelled as "the father of linguistics ". His approach to grammar influenced such foundational linguists as Ferdinand de Saussure and Leonard Bloomfield . Father of linguistics The history of linguistics begins not with Plato or Aristotle, but with
13485-409: The distant major ancient languages of the world. The Indo-Aryan migrations theory explains the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages by proposing that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in South Asia from a region of common origin, somewhere north-west of the Indus region , during the early 2nd millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes
13630-452: The double flute called aulos . Also visible are carnyx -like horns . They are all celebrating at the entrance of the stupa. These men would be foreigners from north-west India visiting the stupa , possibly Mallas , Indo-Scythians or Indo-Greeks. Three inscriptions are known from Yavana donors at Sanchi, the clearest of which reads " Setapathiyasa Yonasa danam " ("Gift of the Yona of Setapatha"), Setapatha being an uncertain city. In
13775-490: The early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of the political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in
13920-481: The emergence of a great number of commentaries of his work over the centuries, which for the most part adhere to the foundations laid by Pāṇini's work. Indian curriculums in the late classical era had at their core a system of grammatical study and linguistic analysis. The core text for this study was the Aṣṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini, the sine qua non of learning. This grammar of Pāṇini had been the object of intense study for
14065-548: The first language of the respective speakers. The Sanskrit language brought Indo-Aryan speaking people together, particularly its elite scholars. Some of these scholars of Indian history regionally produced vernacularized Sanskrit to reach wider audiences, as evidenced by texts discovered in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Once the audience became familiar with the easier to understand vernacularized version of Sanskrit, those interested could graduate from colloquial Sanskrit to
14210-412: The foundation of Vyākaraṇa, a Vedānga . The Aṣṭādhyāyī was not the first description of Sanskrit grammar, but it is the earliest that has survived in full, and the culmination of a long grammatical tradition that Fortson says, is "one of the intellectual wonders of the ancient world". Pāṇini cites ten scholars on the phonological and grammatical aspects of the Sanskrit language before him, as well as
14355-537: The gods Varuna, Mitra, Indra, and Nasatya found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature. O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names they first set forth the beginning of Language, Their most excellent and spotless secret was laid bare through love, When the wise ones formed Language with their mind, purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan, Then friends knew friendships – an auspicious mark placed on their language. — Rigveda 10.71.1–4 Translated by Roger Woodard The Vedic Sanskrit found in
14500-569: The guard of "five hundred Greeks" that constantly accompanies him. The Vanaparava of Mahabharata contains prophecies that " Mleccha kings of the Shakas, Yavanas, Kambojas, Bahlikas etc. shall rule the earth un-righteously in Kaliyuga ;...". This reference apparently alludes to chaotic political scenario following the collapse of the Maurya and Shunga Empires in northern India and its subsequent occupation by foreign hordes such as of
14645-462: The help of Shiva who destroyed Vararuchi's grammar book. Pāṇini then defeated the rest of Varsha's disciples and emerged as the greatest grammarian. Pāṇini is believed to have spent the major portion of his life in Pataliputra and according to some pandits , he was born and brought up there, the ancestors of Pāṇini having already moved there from Salatura . Pāṇini, has also been associated with
14790-431: The historic Sanskrit literary culture and the failure of new Sanskrit literature to assimilate into the changing cultural and political environment. Sheldon Pollock states that in some crucial way, "Sanskrit is dead ". After the 12th century, the Sanskrit literary works were reduced to "reinscription and restatements" of ideas already explored, and any creativity was restricted to hymns and verses. This contrasted with
14935-522: The historical dating of Pāṇini. Pāṇini cites at least ten grammarians and linguists before him: Āpiśali, Kāśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cākravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana , Śākalya , Senaka, Sphoṭāyana and Yaska . According to Kamal K. Misra, Pāṇini references Yaska's Nirukta , "whose writings date back to the middle of the 4th century B.C". The Sanskrit epic Brihatkatha and the Buddhist scripture Mañjuśrī-mūla-kalpa both mention Pāṇini to have been
15080-570: The horses born in Yavana country. The Mahaniddesa speaks of Yona and Parama Yona, probably referring to Arachosia as the Yona and Bactria as the Parama Yona. The terms "Yona", "Yonaka" or "Yavana" literally referred to the Greeks , however "mlechas" was also used probably due to their barbaric behaviour as invaders. Indian languages did not base a distinction on religion early on but after
15225-400: The influence of Pāṇini on modern linguistics: "Although Saussure also refers to predecessors who had taken this Paninian rule into account, it is reasonable to conclude that he had a direct acquaintance with Panini's work. As far as I am able to discern upon rereading Saussure's Mémoire , however, it shows no direct influence of Paninian grammar. Indeed, on occasion, Saussure follows a path that
15370-486: The intense change that must have occurred in the pre-Vedic period between the Proto-Indo-Aryan language and Vedic Sanskrit. The noticeable differences between the Vedic and the Classical Sanskrit include the much-expanded grammar and grammatical categories as well as the differences in the accent, the semantics and the syntax. There are also some differences between how some of the nouns and verbs end, as well as
15515-426: The invasion by Alexander of Macedonia. It is not certain whether Pāṇini used writing for the composition of his work, though it is generally agreed that he knew of a form of writing, based on references to words such as lipi ("script") and lipikara ("scribe") in section 3.2 of the Aṣṭādhyāyī . The dating of the introduction of writing to present day North West Pakistan may therefore give further information on
15660-623: The language of the Vedic hymns from "corruption", the Aṣtādhyāyī is the high point of a vigorous, sophisticated grammatical tradition devised to arrest language change. The Aṣtādhyāyī 's preeminence is underlined by the fact that it eclipsed all similar works that came before: while not the first, it is the oldest such text surviving in its entirety. The Aṣṭādhyāyī consists of 3,959 sūtras in eight chapters, which are each subdivided into four sections or pādas . The text takes material from lexical lists ( dhātupāṭha , gaṇapātha ) as input and describes
15805-598: The language of the Yavanas with the Milakkhabhasa i.e. impure language . Roman traders in Tamilakkam were also considered Yavanas. Some of the friezes of Sanchi also show devotees in Greek attire. The men are depicted with short curly hair, often held together with a headband of the type commonly seen on ancient Greek coinage . The clothing too is Greek, complete with tunics , capes and sandals. The musical instruments are also quite characteristic, such as
15950-432: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. — Foreword of Sanskrit Computational Linguistics (2009), Gérard Huet, Amba Kulkarni and Peter Scharf Sanskrit has been the predominant language of Hindu texts encompassing a rich tradition of philosophical and religious texts, as well as poetry, music, drama , scientific , technical and others. It
16095-412: The linguistic expression and sets the standard for the Sanskrit language. Pāṇini made use of a technical metalanguage consisting of a syntax, morphology and lexicon. This metalanguage is organised according to a series of meta-rules, some of which are explicitly stated while others can be deduced. Despite differences in the analysis from that of modern linguistics, Pāṇini's work has been found valuable and
16240-456: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,
16385-791: The middle of Greater India which then included Afghanistan, Pakistan and large parts of Central Asia. On the 110 BCE Heliodorus pillar in Vidisha in Central India, the Indo-Greek king Antialcidas , who had sent an ambassador to the court of the Shunga emperor Bhagabhadra, was also qualified as "Yona". The Mahavamsa also attests Yona settlement in Anuradhapura in ancient Sri Lanka , probably contributing to trade between East and West. Buddhist texts like Sumangala Vilasini class
16530-511: The modern age include the Samaveda , Yajurveda , Atharvaveda , along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and the early Upanishads . These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent. According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of
16675-429: The more advanced Classical Sanskrit. Rituals and the rites-of-passage ceremonies have been and continue to be the other occasions where a wide spectrum of people hear Sanskrit, and occasionally join in to speak some Sanskrit words such as namah . Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini , around the fourth century BCE. Its position in the cultures of Greater India
16820-401: The most advanced analysis of linguistics until the twentieth century. Pāṇini's comprehensive and scientific theory of grammar is conventionally taken to mark the start of Classical Sanskrit. His systematic treatise inspired and made Sanskrit the preeminent Indian language of learning and literature for two millennia. It is unclear whether Pāṇini himself wrote his treatise or he orally created
16965-602: The most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer . As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity, as a single text without variant readings, its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European . Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around
17110-634: The name Alexander "). Other Buddhist texts such as the Dipavamsa and the 1861 Sasana Vamsa reveal that after the Third Buddhist council , the elder monk ( thero ) Maharakkhita was sent to the "Yona country" and he preached Buddhism among the Yonas and the Kambojas, and that at the same time the Yona elder monk ( thero ) Dharmaraksita was sent to the country of Aparantaka in Western India also. Ashoka's Rock Edict XIII also pairs
17255-597: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
17400-403: The oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition. However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as
17545-431: The other." Reinöhl further states that there is a symmetric relationship between Dravidian languages like Kannada or Tamil, with Indo-Aryan languages like Bengali or Hindi, whereas the same relationship is not found for non-Indo-Aryan languages, for example, Persian or English: A sentence in a Dravidian language like Tamil or Kannada becomes ordinarily good Bengali or Hindi by substituting Bengali or Hindi equivalents for
17690-414: The possible influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is only one of many items of syntactic assimilation, not least among them the large repertoire of morphological modality and aspect that, once one knows to look for it, can be found everywhere in classical and postclassical Sanskrit". The main influence of Dravidian on Sanskrit is found to have been concentrated in the timespan between the late Vedic period and
17835-439: The previous 1,500 years when "great experiments in moral and aesthetic imagination" marked the Indian scholarship using Classical Sanskrit, states Pollock. Scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language did not die, but rather only declined. Jurgen Hanneder disagrees with Pollock, finding his arguments elegant but "often arbitrary". According to Hanneder, a decline or regional absence of creative and innovative literature constitutes
17980-480: The problems of interpretation and misunderstanding. The purifying structure of the Sanskrit language removes these imperfections. The early Sanskrit grammarian Daṇḍin states, for example, that much in the Prakrit languages is etymologically rooted in Sanskrit, but involves "loss of sounds" and corruptions that result from a "disregard of the grammar". Daṇḍin acknowledged that there are words and confusing structures in Prakrit that thrive independent of Sanskrit. This view
18125-609: The regional Prakrit languages, which makes it likely that the interaction, the sharing of words and ideas began early in the Indian history. As the Indian thought diversified and challenged earlier beliefs of Hinduism, particularly in the form of Buddhism and Jainism , the Prakrit languages such as Pali in Theravada Buddhism and Ardhamagadhi in Jainism competed with Sanskrit in the ancient times. However, states Paul Dundas , these ancient Prakrit languages had "roughly
18270-497: The relationship between various Indo-European languages, the origin of all these languages may possibly be in what is now Central or Eastern Europe, while the Indo-Iranian group possibly arose in Central Russia. The Iranian and Indo-Aryan branches separated quite early. It is the Indo-Aryan branch that moved into eastern Iran and then south into South Asia in the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE. Once in ancient India,
18415-535: The reprint edition of the German translation of Pāṇini's Grammar in 1998, concluded that the "effect Panini's work had on Indo-European linguistics shows itself in various studies" and that a "number of seminal works come to mind," including Saussure's works and the analysis that "gave rise to the laryngeal theory ," further stating: "This type of structural analysis suggests influence from Panini's analytical teaching." George Cardona , however, warns against overestimating
18560-562: The role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as a means for a community of speakers, separated by geography or time, to share and understand profound ideas from each other. These speculations became particularly important to the Mīmāṃsā and the Nyaya schools of Hindu philosophy, and later to Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism, states Frits Staal —a scholar of Linguistics with
18705-496: The same relationship to Sanskrit as medieval Italian does to Latin". The Indian tradition states that the Buddha and the Mahavira preferred the Prakrit language so that everyone could understand it. However, scholars such as Dundas have questioned this hypothesis. They state that there is no evidence for this and whatever evidence is available suggests that by the start of the common era, hardly anybody other than learned monks had
18850-556: The semi-nomadic Aryans . The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the " Mitanni Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and Mitanni people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of Syria and Turkey. Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes
18995-464: The seventh and fourth century BCE. George Cardona (1997) in his authoritative survey and review of Pāṇini-related studies, states that the available evidence strongly supports a dating not before 400 BCE, while earlier dating depends on interpretations and is not probative. Based on numismatic findings, von Hinüber (1989) and Falk (1993) place Pāṇini in the mid-4th century BCE. Pāṇini's rupya (A 5.2.119, A 5.2.120, A. 5.4.43, A 4.3.153,) mentions
19140-615: The social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres. While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit similes in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan Gathas lack simile entirely, and it
19285-501: The ten centuries prior to the composition of the Bhaṭṭikāvya . It was Bhaṭṭi's purpose to provide a study aid to Pāṇini's text by using the examples already provided in the existing grammatical commentaries in the context of the Rāmāyaṇa . The intention of the author was to teach this advanced science through a relatively easy and pleasant medium. In his own words: This composition is like
19430-653: The turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts , and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari . Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India 's Eighth Schedule languages . However, despite attempts at revival, there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India. In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue, but
19575-408: The variants in the usage of Sanskrit in different regions of India. The ten Vedic scholars he quotes are Āpiśali, Kaśyapa , Gārgya, Gālava, Cakravarmaṇa, Bhāradvāja , Śākaṭāyana, Śākalya, Senaka and Sphoṭāyana. In the Aṣṭādhyāyī , language is observed in a manner that has no parallel among Greek or Latin grammarians. Pāṇini's grammar, according to Renou and Filliozat, is a classic that defines
19720-564: The vernacular Prakrits. Many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits. The cities of Varanasi , Paithan , Pune and Kanchipuram were centers of classical Sanskrit learning and public debates until the arrival of the colonial era. According to Lamotte , Sanskrit became the dominant literary and inscriptional language because of its precision in communication. It was, states Lamotte, an ideal instrument for presenting ideas, and as knowledge in Sanskrit multiplied, so did its spread and influence. Sanskrit
19865-577: The work of Sanskrit grammarians. Pāṇini, and the later Indian linguist Bhartrihari , had a significant influence on many of the foundational ideas proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure , professor of Sanskrit , who is widely considered the father of modern structural linguistics and with Charles S. Peirce on the other side, to semiotics , although the concept Saussure used was semiology . Saussure himself cited Indian grammar as an influence on some of his ideas. In his Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européennes ( Memoir on
20010-502: The Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan Zoroastrian Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey . According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times
20155-408: Was a spoken language ( bhasha ) used by the cultured and educated. Some sutras expound upon the variant forms of spoken Sanskrit versus written Sanskrit. Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang mentioned in his memoir that official philosophical debates in India were held in Sanskrit, not in the vernacular language of that region. According to Sanskrit linguist professor Madhav Deshpande, Sanskrit
20300-427: Was a spoken language in a colloquial form by the mid-1st millennium BCE which coexisted with a more formal, grammatically correct form of literary Sanskrit. This, states Deshpande, is true for modern languages where colloquial incorrect approximations and dialects of a language are spoken and understood, along with more "refined, sophisticated and grammatically accurate" forms of the same language being found in
20445-472: Was adopted voluntarily as a vehicle of high culture, arts, and profound ideas. Pollock disagrees with Lamotte, but concurs that Sanskrit's influence grew into what he terms a "Sanskrit Cosmopolis" over a region that included all of South Asia and much of southeast Asia. The Sanskrit language cosmopolis thrived beyond India between 300 and 1300 CE. Today, it is believed that Kashmiri is the closest language to Sanskrit. Reinöhl mentions that not only have
20590-738: Was also the language of some of the oldest surviving, authoritative and much followed philosophical works of Jainism such as the Tattvartha Sutra by Umaswati . The Sanskrit language has been one of the major means for the transmission of knowledge and ideas in Asian history. Indian texts in Sanskrit were already in China by 402 CE, carried by the influential Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who translated them into Chinese by 418 CE. Xuanzang , another Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, learnt Sanskrit in India and carried 657 Sanskrit texts to China in
20735-517: Was clearly a northerner, probably from the northwestern region". According to Kathāsaritsāgara legends Pāṇini studied under his guru Varsha in Pataliputra . Not the brightest of his disciples, on the advice of Varsha's wife, Pāṇini went to the Himalayas to do penance and gain knowledge from Shiva . Sutras were granted by Shiva, who danced and played his damaru before Pāṇini and produced
20880-507: Was thought to be an ethnic slur for Vietnamese , derived from the Indian word for Greek, "Yavana", however, it is actually the transcription of the word "Viet" or "Yueh" rather than "Yavana", because the Khmer word Yuon spelled with the diphthong uo, not v in "Yavana". According to Kiernan, "the Pol Pot regime , following French orientalists, mythologized its conflict with Hanoi as part of
21025-442: Was visualized as "pervading all creation", another representation of the world itself; the "mysterious magnum" of Hindu thought. The search for perfection in thought and the goal of liberation were among the dimensions of sacred sound, and the common thread that wove all ideas and inspirations together became the quest for what the ancient Indians believed to be a perfect language, the "phonocentric episteme" of Sanskrit. Sanskrit as
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