103-563: The Chandra X-ray Observatory ( CXO ), previously known as the Advanced X-ray Astrophysics Facility ( AXAF ), is a Flagship-class space telescope launched aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-93 by NASA on July 23, 1999. Chandra is sensitive to X-ray sources 100 times fainter than any previous X-ray telescope , enabled by the high angular resolution of its mirrors. Since
206-496: A Wolter telescope consisting of nested cylindrical paraboloid and hyperboloid surfaces coated with iridium or gold . X-ray photons would be absorbed by normal mirror surfaces, so mirrors with a low grazing angle are necessary to reflect them. Chandra uses four pairs of nested mirrors, together with their support structure, called the High Resolution Mirror Assembly (HRMA); the mirror substrate
309-496: A spectral resolution of 60–1000. The Low Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer (LETGS) has a range of 0.09–3 keV and a resolution of 40–2000. Summary: Flagship program NASA's large strategic science missions or large strategic missions , formerly known as Flagship missions or Flagship-class missions , are the costliest and most capable NASA science spacecraft. Flagship missions exist within all four divisions of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD):
412-677: A decrease in NASA funding in 2024 by the US Congress , Chandra is threatened with an early cancellation despite having more than a decade of operation left. The cancellation has been referred to as a potential "extinction-level" event for X-ray astronomy in the US. A group of astronomers have put together a public outreach project to try to get enough American citizens to persuade the US Congress to provide enough funding to avoid early termination of
515-433: 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
618-597: A high school teacher and high school student, respectively), suggested the name in honor of Nobel Prize–winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar . He is known for his work in determining the maximum mass of white dwarf stars, leading to greater understanding of high energy astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars and black holes . Fittingly, the name Chandra means "moon" in Sanskrit . Originally scheduled to be launched in December 1998,
721-591: 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
824-658: 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
927-454: 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
1030-479: 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
1133-546: 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
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#17327722917891236-479: A proposed launch in 2028. On October 10, 2018, Chandra entered safe mode operations, due to a gyroscope glitch. NASA reported that all science instruments were safe. Within days, the 3-second error in data from one gyro was understood, and plans were made to return Chandra to full service. The gyroscope that experienced the glitch was placed in reserve and is otherwise healthy. In March 2024, Congress decided to reduce funding for NASA and its missions. This may lead to
1339-578: 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
1442-538: 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
1545-439: 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
1648-409: Is 2 cm-thick glass, with the reflecting surface a 33 nm iridium coating, and the diameters are 65 cm, 87 cm, 99 cm and 123 cm. The thick substrate and particularly careful polishing allowed a very precise optical surface, which is responsible for Chandra's unmatched resolution: between 80% and 95% of the incoming X-ray energy is focused into a one- arcsecond circle. However,
1751-711: 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
1854-637: Is active as of 2024 and has an upcoming schedule of observations published by the Chandra X-ray Center. In July 2008, the International X-ray Observatory , a joint project between ESA , NASA and JAXA , was proposed as the next major X-ray observatory but was later canceled. ESA later resurrected a downsized version of the project as the Advanced Telescope for High Energy Astrophysics (ATHENA), with
1957-516: 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
2060-452: 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
2163-532: 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
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#17327722917892266-479: 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,
2369-589: 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
2472-540: 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
2575-580: 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
2678-837: The Decadal Surveys . " Science " marks these missions as primarily scientific in nature, under the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), as opposed to, e.g., human exploration missions under the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD). The lines can be blurred, as when the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter began as a directed mission from the HEOMD, and was later transferred to the SMD. Flagship missions are not under
2781-615: The Earth's atmosphere absorbs the vast majority of X-rays , they are not detectable from Earth-based telescopes ; therefore space-based telescopes are required to make these observations. Chandra is an Earth satellite in a 64-hour orbit, and its mission is ongoing as of 2024. Chandra is one of the Great Observatories , along with the Hubble Space Telescope , Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991–2000), and
2884-613: 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
2987-753: 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
3090-532: 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 ,
3193-531: 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
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3296-575: The Spitzer Space Telescope (2003–2020). The telescope is named after the Nobel Prize-winning Indian-American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar . Its mission is similar to that of ESA 's XMM-Newton spacecraft, also launched in 1999 but the two telescopes have different design foci, as Chandra has a much higher angular resolution and XMM-Newton higher spectroscopy throughput. In response to
3399-795: The astrophysics , Earth science , heliophysics and planetary science divisions. "Large" refers to the budget of each mission, typically the most expensive mission in the scientific discipline. Within the Astrophysics Division and the Planetary Science Division, the large strategic missions are usually in excess of US$ 1 billion. Within Earth Science Division and Heliophysics Division, the large strategic missions are usually in excess of US$ 500 million. "Strategic" refers to their role advancing multiple strategic priorities set forth in plans such as
3502-406: 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
3605-500: 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
3708-414: 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
3811-532: 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
3914-425: 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
4017-532: 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
4120-521: 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
4223-476: 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
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4326-519: 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
4429-532: 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
4532-496: 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
4635-499: 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
4738-638: 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
4841-447: 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
4944-451: 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
5047-459: 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
5150-440: 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
5253-527: 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
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#17327722917895356-614: 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
5459-653: 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
5562-467: 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
5665-471: 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
5768-460: 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
5871-490: 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
5974-548: 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
6077-412: 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
6180-489: The four Great Observatories , only the Spitzer Space Telescope is not a Flagship mission. Initially budgeted at US$ 2 billion, Spitzer was downscoped to a medium-size mission of US$ 720 million. Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
6283-608: The geostationary satellites and beyond the outer Van Allen belt . With an angular resolution of 0.5 arcsecond (2.4 μrad), Chandra possesses a resolution over 1000 times better than that of the first orbiting X-ray telescope. CXO uses mechanical gyroscopes , which are sensors that help determine what direction the telescope is pointed. Other navigation and orientation systems on board CXO include an aspect camera, Earth and Sun sensors , and reaction wheels . It also has two sets of thrusters, one for movement and another for offloading momentum. The Science Instrument Module (SIM) holds
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#17327722917896386-537: 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
6489-431: 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
6592-420: The instrument is now removed from the telescope's focal plane during passages. Although Chandra was initially given an expected lifetime of 5 years, on September 4, 2001, NASA extended its lifetime to 10 years "based on the observatory's outstanding results." Physically Chandra could last much longer. A 2004 study performed at the Chandra X-ray Center indicated that the observatory could last at least 15 years. It
6695-486: 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
6798-432: 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
6901-412: 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
7004-514: 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 ,
7107-455: The meantime, in 1978, NASA launched the first imaging X-ray telescope, Einstein (HEAO-2), into orbit. Work continued on the AXAF project throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, to reduce costs, the spacecraft was redesigned. Four of the twelve planned mirrors were eliminated, as were two of the six scientific instruments. AXAF's planned orbit was changed to an elliptical one, reaching one third of
7210-511: 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
7313-429: 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
7416-401: 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
7519-602: 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
7622-597: 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,
7725-650: The observatory. In 1976, the Chandra X-ray Observatory (called AXAF at the time) was proposed to NASA by Riccardo Giacconi and Harvey Tananbaum. Preliminary work began the following year at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), where the telescope is now operated for NASA at the Chandra X-ray Center in the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian . In
7828-403: 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
7931-431: 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
8034-414: 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
8137-410: The premature end of this mission. In June 2024, Senators urged NASA to reconsider the cuts to Chandra, which was accepted. The data gathered by Chandra has greatly advanced the field of X-ray astronomy . Here are some examples of discoveries supported by observations from Chandra: Unlike optical telescopes which possess simple aluminized parabolic surfaces (mirrors), X-ray telescopes generally use
8240-439: 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
8343-480: 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
8446-824: The purview of any larger "Flagship Program", unlike, e.g., Discovery-class missions that are under the purview of the Discovery Program . Unlike these competed classes that tender proposals through a competitive selection process, the development of Flagship missions is directed to a specific institution — usually a NASA center or the Jet Propulsion Laboratory — by the Science Mission Directorate . Flagship missions are developed ad-hoc, with no predetermined launch cadence or uniform budget size. Flagship missions are always Class A missions: high priority, very low risk. Of
8549-438: The range of 0.1–10 keV. It also has a time resolution of 16 microseconds . Both of these instruments can be used on their own or in conjunction with one of the observatory's two transmission gratings . The transmission gratings, which swing into the optical path behind the mirrors, provide Chandra with high resolution spectroscopy. The High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer (HETGS) works over 0.4–10 keV and has
8652-609: 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
8755-497: 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,
8858-562: 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
8961-496: 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
9064-556: 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
9167-615: 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
9270-467: The spacecraft was delayed several months, eventually being launched on July 23, 1999, at 04:31 UTC by Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-93 . Chandra was deployed by Cady Coleman from Columbia at 11:47 UTC. The Inertial Upper Stage's first stage motor ignited at 12:48 UTC, and after burning for 125 seconds and separating, the second stage ignited at 12:51 UTC and burned for 117 seconds. At 22,753 kilograms (50,162 lb), it
9373-401: The thickness of the substrate limits the proportion of the aperture which is filled, leading to the low collecting area compared to XMM-Newton . Chandra's highly elliptical orbit allows it to observe continuously for up to 55 hours of its 65-hour orbital period . At its furthest orbital point from Earth, Chandra is one of the most distant Earth-orbiting satellites. This orbit takes it beyond
9476-653: 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
9579-584: The two focal plane instruments, the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) and the High Resolution Camera (HRC), moving whichever is called for into position during an observation. ACIS consists of 10 CCD chips and provides images as well as spectral information of the object observed. It operates in the photon energy range of 0.2–10 keV . The HRC has two micro-channel plate components and images over
9682-408: 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
9785-564: 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
9888-735: The way to the Moon's at its farthest point. This eliminated the possibility of improvement or repair by the Space Shuttle but put the observatory above the Earth's radiation belts for most of its orbit. AXAF was assembled and tested by TRW (now Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems) in Redondo Beach , California . AXAF was renamed Chandra as part of a contest held by NASA in 1998, which drew more than 6,000 submissions worldwide. The contest winners, Jatila van der Veen and Tyrel Johnson (then
9991-502: 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
10094-408: 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
10197-427: 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
10300-472: 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
10403-738: 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
10506-615: Was the heaviest payload ever launched by the shuttle, a consequence of the two-stage Inertial Upper Stage booster rocket system needed to transport the spacecraft to its high orbit. Chandra has been returning data since the month after it launched. It is operated by the SAO at the Chandra X-ray Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts , with assistance from MIT and Northrop Grumman Space Technology. The ACIS CCDs suffered particle damage during early radiation belt passages. To prevent further damage,
10609-442: 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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