Misplaced Pages

#206793

142-507: Akasha ( Sanskrit ākāśa आकाश ) means aether in traditional Hindu cosmology . The term has also been adopted in Western occultism and spiritualism in the late 19th century CE. In many modern Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages the corresponding word retains a generic meaning of "aether". The Hindu god of Akasha is Dyaus . The word in Sanskrit is derived from

284-623: A dead body; and mindfulness of breathing ( anapanasati ). These practices are described in the Satipatthana Sutta of the Pali canon and the equivalent texts of the Chinese agamas , in which they are interwoven with the factors of the four dhyanas or the seven factors of awakening ( bojjhanga ). This set of practices was also transmitted via the Dhyana sutras , which are based on

426-471: 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." Dhyana in Buddhism In the later commentarial tradition, which has survived in present-day Theravāda , dhyāna is equated with "concentration",

568-433: 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

710-591: 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

852-658: 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

994-463: A meditative state he entered by chance as a child: I thought: 'I recall once, when my father the Sakyan was working, and I was sitting in the cool shade of a rose-apple tree, then—quite secluded from sensuality, secluded from unskillful mental qualities—I entered & remained in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from seclusion, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation. Could that be

1136-476: A model for its neural-substrate. While dhyana typically refers to the four jhanas/dhyanas , the term also refers to a set of practices which seem to go back to a very early stage of the Buddhist tradition. These practices are the contemplation on the body-parts and their repulsiveness ( patikulamanasikara ); contemplation on the elements of which the body is composed; contemplation on the stages of decay of

1278-419: A more comprehensive and integrated understanding and approach, based on the oldest descriptions of dhyāna in the suttas . In Buddhist traditions of Chán and Zen (the names of which are, respectively, the Chinese and Japanese pronunciations of dhyāna ), as in Theravada and Tiantai, anapanasati (mindfulness of breathing), which is transmitted in the Buddhist tradition as a means to develop dhyana,

1420-454: 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

1562-479: 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

SECTION 10

#1732797663207

1704-546: 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

1846-413: A physical body has completely disappeared. Sujivo explains that this fear is needless and that the practitioner should instead continue concentration, in order to reach "full concentration" ( jhāna ). A meditator should first master the lower jhānas , before they can go into the higher jhānas . According to Nathan Katz, the early suttas state that "the most exquisite of recluses" is able to attain any of

1988-578: 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

2130-538: 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

2272-539: A root kāś meaning "to be". It appears as a masculine noun in Vedic Sanskrit with a generic meaning of "aether". In Classical Sanskrit, the noun acquires the neuter gender and may express the concept of "aether" ( Manusmriti , Shatapatha Brahmana ). In Vedantic philosophy, the word acquires its technical meaning of "an ethereal fluid imagined as pervading the cosmos". Indian philosophy classify Akasha into three categories. The first category, represented by

2414-439: 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

2556-462: A state of one-pointed absorption in which there is a diminished awareness of the surroundings. In the contemporary Theravāda-based Vipassana movement , this absorbed state of mind is regarded as unnecessary and even non-beneficial for the first stage of awakening , which has to be reached by mindfulness of the body and vipassanā (insight into impermanence). Since the 1980s, scholars and practitioners have started to question these positions, arguing for

2698-466: A teaching from the Buddha. According to Tse-fu Kuan, at the state of access concentration , some meditators may experience vivid mental imagery, which is similar to a vivid dream. They are as vivid as if seen by the eye, but in this case the meditator is fully aware and conscious that they are seeing mental images. Tse-fu Kuan grounds this view in the early texts, with further explication to be found in

2840-519: Is Shabda (sound). The direct translation of akasha is the word meaning 'aether' in Hinduism. The Nyaya and Vaisheshika schools of Hindu philosophy state that akasha ( aether ) is the fifth physical substance, which is the substratum of the quality of sound. It is the one, eternal, and all-pervading physical substance, which is imperceptible. According to the Samkhya school, akasha

2982-708: Is a central practice. In the Chan/Zen-tradition this practice is ultimately based on Sarvastivāda meditation techniques transmitted since the beginning of the Common Era . Dhyāna , Pali jhana , from Proto-Indo-European root *√dheie- , "to see, to look", "to show". Developed into Sanskrit root √dhī and n. dhī , which in the earliest layer of text of the Vedas refers to "imaginative vision" and associated with goddess Saraswati with powers of knowledge, wisdom and poetic eloquence. This term developed into

SECTION 20

#1732797663207

3124-466: Is a form of non-sensual happiness. The eightfold path can be seen as a path of preparation which leads to the practice of samadhi. According to some texts, after progressing through the eight jhānas and the stage of nirodha-samāpatti , a person is liberated. According to some traditions someone attaining the state of nirodha-samāpatti is an anagami or an arahant . In the Anupadda sutra,

3266-463: Is a later development. According to Crangle, the development of meditative practices in ancient India was a complex interplay between Vedic and non-Vedic traditions. According to Bronkhorst, the four rūpa-jhānas may be an original contribution of the Buddha to the religious practices of ancient India, forming an alternative to the ascetic practices of the Jains and similar śramaṇa traditions, while

3408-516: 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

3550-462: Is characterized by the temporary suppression of consciousness and its concomitant mental factors, so the contemplative reaches a state unconscious ( acittaka ) for a week at most. In the nirodha remain unically some elementary physiological process designated, in the Mahāvedalla-sutta , by the terms āyu and usmā . Neuroscientists have recently studied this phenomenon empirically and proposed

3692-651: Is entirely fictitious, and meant to flesh out the mentioning of those names in the post-enlightenment narrative in Majjhima Nikaya 36. Vishvapani notes that the Brahmanical texts cited by Wynne assumed their final form long after the Buddha's lifetime, with the Mokshadharma postdating him. Vishvapani further notes that Uddaka Rāmaputta and Āḷāra Kālāma may well have been sramanic teachers, as the Buddhist tradition asserts, not Brahmins. A stock phrase in

3834-452: 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

3976-662: Is identified as the first arūpa jhāna , but usually translates as "infinite space." Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) 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

4118-617: Is one of the five Mahābhūtas (grand physical elements) having the specific property of sound. In the Shiva Purana , it identifies akasha as having "the only attribute of sound". In the Linga Purana (Volume I, Chapter 65), akasha is translated as "aether" and listed as one of the 1000 names of Shiva . Akasha is space in the Jain conception of the cosmos. Akasha is one of the six dravyas (substances) and it accommodates

4260-461: Is probably a later addition. Vetter notes that such insight is not possible in a state of dhyāna , when interpreted as concentration, since discursive thinking is eliminated in such a state. He also notes that the emphasis on "liberating insight" developed only after the four noble truths were introduced as an expression of what this "liberating insight" constituted. In time, other expressions took over this function, such as pratītyasamutpāda and

4402-532: 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

Akasha - Misplaced Pages Continue

4544-463: Is retained in Zen and Dzogchen. The stock description of the jhānas , with traditional and alternative interpretations, is as follows: Grouped into the jhāna -scheme are four meditative states referred to in the early texts as arūpa-āyatana s. These are also referred to in commentarial literature as arūpa-jhāna s ("formless" or "immaterial" jhānas ), corresponding to the arūpa-loka (translated as

4686-479: 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,

4828-589: 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

4970-540: 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

5112-625: The Agama s describe four stages of rūpa jhāna . Rūpa refers to the material realm, in a neutral stance, as different from the kāma -realm (lust, desire) and the arūpa -realm (non-material realm). While interpreted in the Theravada-tradition as describing a deepening concentration and one-pointedness, originally the jhānas seem to describe a development from investigating body and mind and abandoning unwholesome states , to perfected equanimity and watchfulness, an understanding which

5254-580: 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

5396-613: 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

5538-547: The Nyaya vaisesika , Purva Mimamsa , and Jain traditions, considers Akasha to be an independent, all-pervading, and eternal substance essential to the structure of the universe. The second category encompassing the Samkhya - Yoga and Vedanta , views Akasha as an evolute of something else. The third category regards Akasha as a mental concept, a view particularly reflected in later Buddhist systems. In Hinduism, akasha means

5680-516: The Pāli canon commentarial tradition, access/neighbourhood concentration ( upacāra-samādhi ) is a stage of meditation that the meditator reaches before entering into jhāna . The overcoming of the five hindrances mark the entry into access concentration. Access concentration is not mentioned in the discourses of the Buddha, but there are several suttas where a person gains insight into the Dhamma on hearing

5822-753: 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

Akasha - Misplaced Pages Continue

5964-531: 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

6106-570: The arūpa-āyatanas were incorporated from non-Buddhist ascetic traditions. "That meditation-expert (muni) becomes eternally free who, seeking the Supreme Goal, is able to withdraw from external phenomena by fixing his gaze within the mid-spot of the eyebrows and by neutralizing the even currents of prana and apana [that flow] within the nostrils and lungs; and to control his sensory mind and intellect; and to banish desire, fear, and anger.” —The Bhagavad Gita V:27-28 Kalupahana argues that

6248-417: The jhānas and abide in them without difficulty. In the doctrine of the contemporary Vipassana movement, the jhāna state cannot by itself lead to enlightenment as it only suppresses the defilements. Meditators must use the jhāna state as an instrument for developing wisdom by cultivating insight, and use it to penetrate the true nature of phenomena through direct cognition, which will lead to cutting off

6390-698: The jhānas are often understood as deepening states of concentration, due to its description as such in the Abhidhamma, and the Visuddhimagga , since the 1980s some academics and contemporary Theravādins have begun to question both this understanding of the jhānas as being states of deep absorption, and the idea that they are not necessary for the attainment of liberation. While significant research on this topic has been done by Bareau, Schmithausen, Stuart-Fox, Bucknell, Vetter, Bronkhorst, and Wynne, Theravāda practitioners have also scrutinized and criticised

6532-486: The samatha - vipassana distinction. Reassessments of the description of jhāna in the suttas consider jhāna and vipassana to be an integrated practice, leading to a "tranquil and equanimous awareness of whatever arises in the field of experience." While the commentarial tradition regards vitarka and vicara as initial and sustained concentration on a meditation object, Roderick S. Bucknell notes that vitarka and vicara may refer to "probably nothing other than

6674-406: 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

6816-500: 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

6958-524: The "formless realm" or the "formless dimensions"), to be distinguished from the first four jhānas ( rūpa jhāna s). In the Buddhist canonical texts, the word " jhāna " is never explicitly used to denote them; they are instead referred to as āyatana . However, they are sometimes mentioned in sequence after the first four jhāna s (other texts, e.g. MN 121, treat them as a distinct set of attainments) and thus came to be treated by later exegetes as jhāna s. The four arūpa-āyatana s/ arūpa-jhāna s are: Beyond

7100-414: 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

7242-532: 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

SECTION 50

#1732797663207

7384-446: The Buddha "reverted to the meditational practices" he had learned from Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta , "directed at the appeasement of mind rather than the development of insight." Moving beyond these initial practices, reflection gave him the essential insight into conditioning, and learned him how to appease his "dispositional tendencies", without either being dominated by them, nor completely annihilating them. Wynne argues that

7526-499: The Buddha narrates that Sariputta became an arahant upon reaching it. In the commentarial tradition, the development of jhāna is described as the development of five mental factors (Sanskrit: caitasika ; Pali: cetasika ) that counteract the five hindrances : Buddhagosa's Visuddhimagga considers jhāna to be an exercise in concentration-meditation. His views, together with the Satipatthana Sutta , inspired

7668-425: 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

7810-532: 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

7952-521: 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

8094-476: 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

8236-519: 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

8378-532: 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

8520-496: 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

8662-495: The Sarvastivada-tradition, forming the basis of the Chan/Zen-tradition. The Buddhist tradition has incorporated two traditions regarding the use of jhāna . There is a tradition that stresses attaining insight ( vipassanā ) as the means to awakening ( bodhi , prajñā , kenshō ) and liberation ( vimutti , nibbāna ). But the Buddhist tradition has also incorporated the yogic tradition, as reflected in

SECTION 60

#1732797663207

8804-499: 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

8946-638: 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

9088-542: The Theravada-tradition, the arahant is aware that the jhānas are ultimately unsatisfactory, realizing that the meditative attainments are also anicca , impermanent. In the Mahasaccaka Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 36), which narrates the story of the Buddha's awakening, dhyāna is followed by insight into the Four Noble Truths. The mention of the Four Noble Truths as constituting "liberating insight"

9230-453: The Theravāda commentaries. According to Venerable Sujivo, as the concentration becomes stronger, the feelings of breathing and of having a physical body will completely disappear, leaving only pure awareness. At this stage inexperienced meditators may become afraid, thinking that they are going to die if they continue the concentration, because the feeling of breathing and the feeling of having

9372-447: 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

9514-451: 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

9656-431: The adaptation of the old yogic techniques to the practice of mindfulness and attainment of insight." Thus "radically transform[ed]" application of yogic practices was conceptualized in the scheme of the four jhānas . Yet—according to Bronkhorst—the Buddha's teachings developed primarily in response to Jain teachings, not Brahmanical teachings, and the account of the Buddha practicing under Uddaka Rāmaputta and Āḷāra Kālāma

9798-459: 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

9940-482: The attainment of insight, which is a cognitive activity, cannot be possible in a state wherein all cognitive activity has ceased. According to Vetter, therefore, the practice of (rupa-)jhāna itself may have constituted the core practice of early Buddhism, with practices such as sila and mindfulness aiding its development. It is the "middle way" between self-mortification, ascribed by Bronkhorst to Jainism, and indulgence in sensual pleasure. Vetter emphasizes that dhyana

10082-426: The attainment of the formless meditative absorption was incorporated from Brahmanical practices, and have Brahmnanical cosmogenies as their doctrinal background. Wynne therefore concludes that these practices were borrowed from a Brahminic source, namely Uddaka Rāmaputta and Āḷāra Kālāma. Yet the Buddha rejected their doctrines, as they were not liberating, and discovered his own path to awakening, which "consisted of

10224-476: The basis and essence of all things in the material world; the first element created. A Hindu mantra " pṛthivyāpastejovāyurākāśāta " indicates the sequence of initial appearance of the five basic gross elements. Thus, first appeared aether, from which appeared air, from that fire, from which water, and therefrom the earth. It is one of the Panchamahabhuta , or "five gross elements"; its main characteristic

10366-455: The canon states that one develops the four rupa-jhānas and then attains liberating insight. While the texts often refer to comprehending the Four Noble Truths as constituting this "liberating insight", Schmithausen notes that the Four Noble Truths as constituting "liberating insight" (here referring to paññā ) is a later addition to texts such as Majjhima Nikaya 36. Schmithausen discerns three possible roads to liberation as described in

10508-440: 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

10650-527: 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

10792-614: 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

10934-653: 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

11076-448: The defilements and nibbana . According to the later Theravāda commentorial tradition as outlined by Buddhagoṣa in his Visuddhimagga , after coming out of the state of jhāna the meditator will be in the state of post- jhāna access concentration. In this state the investigation and analysis of the true nature of phenomena begins, which leads to insight into the characteristics of impermanence, suffering and not-self arises. While

11218-467: 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

11360-754: The development of serenity and insight." Commonly translated as meditation , and often equated with "concentration", though meditation may refer to a wider scale of exercises for bhāvanā , development. Dhyāna can also mean "attention, thought, reflection". Zoroastrianism in Persia , which has Indo-Aryan linguistic and cultural roots, developed the related practice of daena . The Pāḷi Canon describes four progressive states of jhāna called rūpa jhāna ("form jhāna "), and four additional meditative attainments called arūpa ("without form"). Meditation and contemplation form an integrated set of practices with several other practices, which are fully realized with

11502-417: The development, in the 19th and 20th century, of new meditation techniques which gained a great popularity among lay audiences in the second half of the 20th century. According to Henepola Gunaratana , the term "jhāna" is closely connected with "samadhi", which is generally rendered as "concentration". The word "samadhi" is almost interchangeable with the word "samatha", serenity. According to Gunaratana, in

11644-471: 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

11786-407: The dimension of neither perception nor non-perception lies a state called nirodha samāpatti , the "cessation of perception, feelings and consciousness". Only in commentarial and scholarly literature, this is sometimes called the "ninth jhāna ". Another name for this state is saññāvedayitanirodha ("cessation of perception and feeling"). According to Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga (XXIII, 18), it

11928-460: 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

12070-473: The eighth step of the Noble Eightfold Path , Vetter notes that samādhi consists of the four stages of dhyāna meditation, but ...to put it more accurately, the first dhyana seems to provide, after some time, a state of strong concentration, from which the other stages come forth; the second stage is called samadhija" [...] "born from samadhi." According to Richard Gombrich, the sequence of

12212-472: The emptiness of the self. This scheme is rejected by some scholars as a later development, since the āyatanas are akin to non-Buddhist practices, and rejected elsewhere in the canon. The emphasis on "liberating insight" alone seems to be a later development, in response to developments in Indian religious thought, which saw "liberating insight" as essential to liberation. This may also have been due to an over-literal interpretation by later scholastics of

12354-444: The first dhyāna to give an equal number of five hindrances and five antidotes. The commentarial tradition regards the qualities of the first dhyāna to be antidotes to the five hindrances, and ekaggata may have been added to the first dhyāna to give exactly five antidotes for the five hindrances. Stuart-Fox further notes that vitarka , being discursive thought, will do very little as an antidote for sloth and torpor, reflecting

12496-548: 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

12638-412: 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

12780-489: The four rūpa jhāna s describes two different cognitive states: "I know this is controversial, but it seems to me that the third and fourth jhānas are thus quite unlike the second." Gombrich and Wynne note that, while the second jhāna denotes a state of absorption, in their interpretation of the third and fourth jhāna , one comes out of this absorption, being mindfully aware of objects while being indifferent to them. According to Gombrich, "the later tradition has falsified

12922-537: 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

13064-431: 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

13206-475: The inconsistencies which were introduced by the scholastics. Upekkhā , equanimity, which is perfected in the fourth dhyāna , is one of the four Brahmā-vihāra . While the commentarial tradition downplayed the importance of the Brahmā-vihāra , Gombrich holds that the Buddhist usage of the term Brahmā-vihāra originally referred to an awakened state of mind, and a concrete attitude toward other beings which

13348-486: 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

13490-432: 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

13632-412: 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

13774-514: 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 ,

13916-489: The mind becomes set, almost naturally, for the equanimity of dhyāna , reinforcing the development of wholesome states, which in return further reinforces equanimity and mindfulness. In the sutras, jhāna is entered when one 'sits down cross-legged and establishes mindfulness'. According to Buddhist tradition, it may be supported by ānāpānasati , mindfulness of breathing, a core meditative practice which can be found in almost all schools of Buddhism. The Suttapiṭaka and

14058-511: 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

14200-429: 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

14342-401: 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

14484-602: 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

14626-409: 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 ,

14768-409: The normal process of discursive thought, the familiar but usually unnoticed stream of mental imagery and verbalization." Bucknell further notes that "[t]hese conclusions conflict with the widespread conception of the first jhāna as a state of deep concentration." According to Stuart-Fox, the Abhidhamma separated vitarka from vicara , and ekaggata (one-pointedness) was added to the description of

14910-435: 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 the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of

15052-597: 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,

15194-429: The onset of dhyāna due to withdrawal and right effort c.q. the four right efforts , followed by concentration, whereas the third and fourth jhāna combine concentration with mindfulness. Polak, elaborating on Vetter, notes that the onset of the first dhyāna is described as a quite natural process, due to the preceding efforts to restrain the senses and the nurturing of wholesome states . Regarding samādhi as

15336-442: The onset of dhyāna . As described in the Noble Eightfold Path , right view leads to leaving the household life and becoming a wandering monk. Sīla (morality) comprises the rules for right conduct. Right effort , or the four right efforts , which already contains elements of dhyāna , aim to prevent the arising of unwholesome states, and to generate wholesome states. This includes indriya samvara (sense restraint), controlling

15478-403: 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

15620-467: The other five, namely sentient beings or souls ( jīva ), non-sentient substance or matter ( pudgala ), principle of motion ( dharma ), the principle of rest ( adharma ), and the principle of time ( kāla ). It falls into the Ajiva category, divided into two parts: Loakasa (the part occupied by the material world) and Aloakasa (the space beyond it which is absolutely void and empty). In Loakasa

15762-431: 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

15904-424: The path to Awakening?' Then following on that memory came the realization: 'That is the path to Awakening.' Originally, the practice of dhyāna itself may have constituted the core liberating practice of early Buddhism, since in this state all "pleasure and pain" had waned. According to Vetter, Probably the word "immortality" (a-mata) was used by the Buddha for the first interpretation of this experience and not

16046-466: 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 the Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from

16188-414: 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

16330-429: The practice of mindfulness. According to Frauwallner, mindfulness was a means to prevent the arising of craving, which resulted simply from contact between the senses and their objects, and this may have been the Buddha's original idea. According to Wynne, though, this stress on mindfulness may have led to the intellectualism which favored insight over the practice of dhyāna . Both Schmithausen and Bronkhorst note that

16472-439: 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

16614-480: 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

16756-609: 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

16898-497: 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,

17040-445: The response to sensual perceptions, not giving in to lust and aversion but simply noticing the objects of perception as they appear. Right effort and mindfulness ("to remember to observe" ), notably mindfulness of breathing, calm the mind-body complex, releasing unwholesome states and habitual patterns, and encouraging the development of wholesome states and non-automatic responses. By following these cumulative steps and practices,

17182-511: 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

17324-496: 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

17466-556: 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

17608-615: 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

17750-417: The suttas, to which Vetter adds a fourth possibility, while the attainment of nirodha-samāpatti may constitute a fifth possibility: According to the Theravada tradition, the meditator uses the jhāna state to bring the mind to rest, and to strengthen and sharpen the mind, in order to investigate the true nature of phenomena (dhamma) and to gain insight into impermanence, suffering and not-self. According to

17892-537: The term cessation of suffering that belongs to the Four Noble Truths [...] the Buddha did not achieve the experience of salvation by discerning the Four Noble Truths and/or other data. But his experience must have been of such a nature that it could bear the interpretation "achieving immortality". The time of the Buddha saw the rise of the śramaṇa movement, ascetic practitioners with a body of shared teachings and practices. The strict delineation of this movement into Jainism, Buddhism and brahmanical/Upanishadic traditions

18034-405: The terminology used by the Buddha, and to the problems involved with the practice of dhyāna , and the need to develop an easier method. Contemporary scholars have discerned a broader application of jhāna in historical Buddhist practice. Alexander Wynne summarizes this view in stating that the ultimate aim of dhyāna was the attainment of insight, and the application of the meditative state to

18176-653: 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

18318-496: The universe forms only a part. Akasha is that which gives space and makes room for the existence of all extended substances. At the summit of the lokākāśa is the Siddhashila (abode of the liberated souls). In Buddhist phenomenology , akasha is divided into limited space (ākāsa-dhātu) and endless space (ajatākasā). The Vaibhāṣika , an early school of Buddhist philosophy, hold the existence of akasha to be real. Ākāsa

18460-644: The use of jhāna as a concentrative practice, which—in some interpretations—is rejected in other sūtras as not resulting in the final result of liberation. One solution to this contradiction is the conjunctive use of vipassanā and samatha . The Mahasaccaka Sutta , Majjhima Nikaya 36, narrates the story of the Buddha's awakening. According to this story, he learned two kinds of meditation from two teachers, Uddaka Rāmaputta and Āḷāra Kālāma . These forms of meditation did not lead to liberation, and he then underwent harsh ascetic practices, with which he eventually also became disillusioned. The Buddha then recalled

18602-414: The variant √dhyā , "to contemplate, meditate, think", from which dhyāna is derived. According to Buddhaghosa (5th century CE Theravāda exegete), the term jhāna (Skt. dhyāna ) is derived from the verb jhayati , "to think or meditate", while the verb jhapeti , "to burn up", explicates its function, namely burning up opposing states, burning up or destroying "the mental defilements preventing [...]

18744-408: 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

18886-564: 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

19028-402: The widest sense the word samadhi is used for the practices which lead to the development of serenity. In this sense, samadhi and jhāna are close in meaning. Nevertheless, they are not exactly identical, since "certain differences in their suggested and contextual meanings prevent unqualified identification of the two terms." Samadhi signifies only one mental factor, namely one-pointedness, while

19170-498: The word "jhāna" encompasses the whole state of consciousness, "or at least the whole group of mental factors individuating that meditative state as a jhana." Furthermore, according to Gunaratana, samadhi involves "a wider range of reference than jhana", noting that "the Pali exegetical tradition recognizes three levels of samadhi: preliminary concentration ( parikammasamadhi ) [...] access concentration ( upacarasamadhi ) [...] and absorption concentration ( appanasamadhi )." According to

19312-502: 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

19454-408: 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

19596-427: 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

19738-472: 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

19880-738: 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

20022-487: Was equal to "living with Brahman" here and now. The later tradition, in this interpretation, took those descriptions too literally, linking them to cosmology and understanding them as "living with Brahman" by rebirth in the Brahmā-world. According to Gombrich, "the Buddha taught that kindness—what Christians tend to call love—was a way to salvation. Vetter, Gombrich and Wynne note that the first and second jhāna represent

20164-442: 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

#206793