Agathocles I Dicaeus ( Ancient Greek : Ἀγαθοκλῆς Δικαῖος , romanized : Agathoklês Dikaîos , meaning "Agathocles the just") was a Greco-Bactrian / Indo-Greek king, who reigned between around 190 and 180 BC, likely of the dynasty of Diodotus I , due to his commemoration of Antiochus Nicator .
136-479: Balarama ( Sanskrit : बलराम , IAST : Balarāma ) is a Hindu god , and the elder brother of Krishna . He is particularly significant in the Jagannath tradition, as one of the triad deities. He is also known as Haladhara , Halayudha , Baladeva , Balabhadra , and Sankarshana . The first two epithets associate him with hala ( langala , "plough") from his strong associations with farming and farmers, as
272-487: A Hala (plough) and a musala (pestle) in his two hands. In all of these early depictions, Balarama-Samkarsana seems to hold a senior position over Vāsudeva-Krishna. On the coins of Agathocles of Bactria , Balarama is on the front of the coin (the side with a legend in Greek), whereas Vāsudeva-Krishna is on the reverse ( Brahmi side). At Chilas, Balarama is shown taller and bigger than Vāsudeva-Krishna. The same relationship
408-546: 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." Agathocles of Bactria There is a near-complete lack of written sources except an extensive coinage . Agathocles was first discovered by Johann Martin Honigberger in 1834, with hoards of coins being discovered at
544-501: A fire created by an ascetic named Dvaipayana. Similarly, after dying from the hunter Jara's arrow, the Jaina texts state Krishna goes to the third hell in Jain cosmology , while Balarama is said to go to the sixth heaven . In other Jain texts, Krishna and Baladeva are stated to be a cousin of the twenty-second Tirthankara , Neminatha. The Jain texts state that Naminatha taught Krishna all
680-433: 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
816-409: A headdress and conch with a high-necked vase; he hypothesizes that a Greek artist had engraved the coin from a now-lost (or undiscovered) sculpture. A dancing girl, found on the obverse of some Bronze coins of Agathocles are believed to be representations of Subhadra . Also, Agathocles and Pantaleon , along with their contemporary Euthydemus II , are unique in the ancient world, in that they were
952-591: 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
1088-658: 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
1224-535: A meditative state and departed from this world. Some scriptures describe a great white snake that left the mouth of Balarama, in reference to his identity as Ananta- Sesha , a form of Vishnu. The place where he departed is situated near Somnath Temple in Gujarat . The local people of Veraval believe about the cave near the temple place, that the white snake who came out of Balarama's mouth got into that cave and went back to Patala . In Hindu tradition, Balarama
1360-474: A mix of good (about 1/3) and bad guesses, which did not permit proper decipherment of the Brahmi. The first successful attempts at deciphering the ancient Brahmi script of the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE were made in 1836 by Norwegian scholar Christian Lassen , who used the bilingual Greek-Brahmi coins of Indo-Greek kings Agathocles and Pantaleon to correctly and securely identify several Brahmi letters. The task
1496-454: 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
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#17327917522891632-479: 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
1768-546: 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
1904-457: A plough and other farm artifacts such as a watering pot, possibly indicating his origins in a bucolic, agricultural culture. Narratives of Balarama are found in Mahabharata , Harivamsha , Bhagavata Purana , and other Puranas . He is identified with the vyuha avatar of Sankarshana , along with the deities of Shesha and Lakshmana . The legend of Balarama as the avatar of Shesha,
2040-479: A rapid pace. No sooner had Desiré-Raoul Rochette held him to be the founder of the Bactrian dynasty than he was rejected by Christian Lassen , who felt that Agathocles was a contemporary of Demetrius and Eucratides I . Agathocles' father may have been Diodotus II , and he would therefore have been illegitimate. Agathocles ruled c. 185 BC and was probably the immediate successor of Pantaleon ; he
2176-578: 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
2312-538: 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
2448-444: A series of coins mentioning a variety of rulers. The first of these types was acquired by a Russian explorer Nicholai de Khanikoff from Bukhara and published by Jean-Jacques Barthélemy : on the obverse was the usual image of Diodotus but with an epithet of "ΣΩΤΗΡΟΣ" (savior) instead of basileus and on the reverse was the usual image of Zeus but with an additional inscription that read "ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΟΝΤΟΣ ΑΓΑΘΟΚΛΕΟΥΣ ΔΙΚΑΙΟΥ" (Agathocles
2584-621: A significant farmer deity in Jain tradition in parts of the Indian subcontinent such as near the Mathura region. Jain texts such as the Kalpasutra describe the same idea of embryo transfer, as in Hindu texts for Balarama, for the 24th Tirthankara Mahavira ; in the latter case, the embryo of a Brahmin woman is moved into the womb of a Kshatriya woman. Balarama, states Pratapaditya Pal , was one of
2720-439: 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
2856-479: A sub-king of someone who had ruled about two hundred years earlier, Droysen's explanation was summarily rejected in favor of Sallet. Gardner proposed that these coins were struck to increase his public on the eve of an (eventually successful) challenge by Eucratides I . In the early-mid 1900, Hugh Rawinson and William Tarn would extrapolate Gardner's ideas to further their visions of a grand Hellenistic past where Agathocles had faked his pedigree and Eucratides I
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#17327917522892992-429: A team of French archaeologists. These coins are the first numismatic representations of Vedic deities and serve as key evidences about Bhagavatism being the first form of Vaishnavism in early India. The coins display early Avatars of Vishnu : Balarama - Sankarshana with attributes of pestle and plow on reverse, and Vāsudeva - Krishna with attributes of Shankha and Sudarshana Chakra on obverse. On
3128-587: Is Rama and because of his extraordinary strength, he is called Baladeva. He attracts the Yadus to follow his instructions and therefore his name is Sankarshana. When his elder brother, fatigued from playing, would lie down with his head upon the lap of a cowherd boy, Lord Kṛiṣṇa would help him relax by personally massaging his feet and offering other services Balarama spent his childhood as a cow herder with his brother Krishna. He killed Dhenuka , an asura sent by Kamsa, as well as Pralamba and Mushtika wrestlers sent by
3264-711: 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
3400-516: 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
3536-534: Is also visible in the hierarchy of the Vrishni heroes. In some Indian ancient arts and texts, Balarama (Sankarsana) and Krishna (Vasudeva) are two of the five heroes ( Pancaviras of the Vrishnis ). The other three differ by the text. In some those are "Pradyumna, Samba and Aniruddha", in others "Anadhrsti, Sarana and Viduratha". The 1st-century Mora well inscription near Mathura, dated between 10 and 25 CE, mention
3672-780: Is an important character in the 11th-century Javanese text Kakawin Bhāratayuddha , the Kakawin poem based on the Mahabharata . Balarama was anciently a powerful local deity named Samkarshana , associated with the local cult of the Vrishni heroes in Mathura from around the 4th century BCE. The concept of the avatars of Vishnu formed during the Kushan period in the 3rd to 2nd century CE. Coins dated to about 185-170 BCE belonging to
3808-447: Is depicted as a farmer's patron deity, signifying the one who is "harbinger of knowledge", of agricultural tools and prosperity. He is almost always shown and described with Krishna, such as in the act of stealing butter, playing childhood pranks, complaining to Yashoda that his baby brother Krishna had eaten dirt, playing in cow sheds, studying together at the school of guru Sandipani , and fighting malevolent beasts sent by Kamsa to kill
3944-452: 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
4080-409: Is in bronze . 3. Hindu god Balarama - Samkarshana with attributes. Greek: "King Agathokles". 4. Hindu god Vāsudeva - Krishna with attributes. Brahmi : "Rajane Agathukleyasa", "King Agathokles". In 1880, a coin of the same kind struck by Agathocles but "commemorating" Alexander, Son of Philip was published by Percy Garnder of British Museum. That it was impossible for Agathocles to be
4216-518: Is known for his strength, the reason for his name; Bala means strength in Sanskrit. In the Jagannath tradition, one particularly popular in eastern and central regions of India, he is more often called Balabhadra. Balarama is one in the triad, wherein Balarama is shown together with his brother Jagannath (Krishna) and sister Subhadra ( Subhadra ). Jagannath is identifiable from his circular eyes compared to an oval of Shubhadra and almond-shaped eyes of
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4352-492: Is my abode, will become an embryo in Devaki's womb which you shall transplant to Rohini's womb. He was named Rama, but because of his great strength, he was called Balarama, Baladeva, or Balabhadra, meaning Strong Rama . He was born on Shraavana Purnima , which coincides with the occasion of Raksha Bandhan . One day, Nanda requested the presence of Sage Gargamuni , his priest, to name the newborn Krishna and Balarama. When
4488-532: 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
4624-479: 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,
4760-589: 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
4896-636: Is the source of all avatars and existence. In some art works of the Vijayanagara Empire , temples of Gujarat and elsewhere, for example, Baladeva is the eighth avatar of Vishnu, prior to the Buddha (Buddhism) or Arihant (Jainism). Balarama finds a mention in Kautilya's Arthashastra (4th to 2nd century BCE), where according to Hudson, his followers are described as "ascetic worshippers" with shaved heads or braided hair. Balarama, as Baladewa,
5032-540: 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
5168-580: 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
5304-613: 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
5440-701: 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
5576-532: 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 ,
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5712-531: 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
5848-517: The Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita of Hemachandra , narrate hagiographical accounts of nine Baladevas or Balabhadras who are believed to be śalākāpuruṣas (literally torch-bearers, great personalities). Balarama was the ninth one. Balarama along with Krishna are considered as cousins of the revered Tirthankara Neminatha (Aristanemi) by Jains. The Jainism tradition lists 63 Śalākāpuruṣa or notable figures which, amongst others, includes
5984-406: 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
6120-424: The stupa and the "tree in railing" have been located in his coins. These coins sometimes use Brahmi , and sometimes Kharoshthi , whereas later Indo-Greek kings only used Kharoshthi. Lakshmi , goddess of abundance and fortune, appears in several of these coins. On 3 October 1970, six Indian-standard silver drachmas were discovered at the administrative quarters of Ai-Khanoum from a pilgrim's water vessel by
6256-500: 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
6392-414: 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
6528-532: 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
6664-425: 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
6800-532: 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
6936-521: 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
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#17327917522897072-460: The Garga arrived, Nanda received him well and requested the naming ceremony. Gargamuni then reminded Nanda that Kamsa was looking for the son of Devaki and if he performed the ceremony in opulence, it would come to his attention. Nanda, therefore, asked Garga to perform the ceremony in secret and Garga did so: Because Balarama, the son of Rohini, increases the transcendental bliss of others, his name
7208-476: 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
7344-519: 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
7480-565: The Indo-Greek King Agathocles show Balarama's iconography and Greek inscriptions. Balarama-Samkarshana is typically shown standing with a gada in his right hand and holding a plough in his left. On the other side of these coins is Vāsudeva-Krishna holding the conch and chakra. At Chilas II archeological site dated to the first half of 1st-century CE in northwest Pakistan, near Afghanistan border, are engraved two males along with many Buddhist images nearby. The larger of
7616-489: The Just, ruling as a King). This peculiar coinage led to significant debate among numismatists — Barthélemy had construed the coins to venerate a dead ancestor but Johann Gustav Droysen argued, to significant acclaim, that it meant Agathocles was ruling as a subordinate of Diodotus. Precisely similar coins but commemorating other rulers were located in the following decades — Euthydemus (1858) and Antiochus (1868). A coin of
7752-532: 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
7888-496: 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
8024-499: 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
8160-638: 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
8296-447: 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
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#17327917522898432-451: 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
8568-475: The abstract icon for Balarama. Further, Balarama's face is white, Jagannath's icon is dark, and Subhadra icon is yellow. The third difference is the flat head of Jagannath icon, compared to the semi-circular carved head of abstract Balarama. The shape of Balabhadra's head, also called Balarama or Baladeva in these regions, varies in some temples between somewhat flat and semi-circular. The Jain Puranas , notably,
8704-459: 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
8840-527: The art of war with a mace . When war broke between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, Balarama carried obligations for both sides and so remained neutral. He went for a pilgrimage with his nephew Pradyumna and other Yadavas during the war, and returned on the last day, to watch the fight between his disciples. When Bhima defeated Duryodhana by striking him in the thigh with his mace, a traditional violation of
8976-416: The bases of the coins bearing characteristic trademarks of Indian sculpture — frontal pose as opposed to three-quarter, stiff and starched folds in drapes, absence of proportions, and sideways disposition of feet — Audoin and Bernard speculated that the engravings were by Indian artists. Bopearachchi disputes the conclusion and points out the mis-representational depictions of Vāsudeva-Krishna's chattra with
9112-440: 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
9248-527: 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
9384-468: The coins of Agathocles was ultimately of Chinese origin (Chinese Baitong , 白铜, "white copper"), and that they were indicative of the existence of trade links with China around that time. However, a recent archaeometallurgical study of trace elements has shown that nickel in these coins actually came from natural nickeliferous copper ore. From 1834, some attempts were made to decipher the Brahmi script ,
9520-614: 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
9656-653: 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
9792-407: The deity who used farm equipment as weapons when needed, and the next two refer to his strength. Originally an agri-cultural deity, Balarama is mostly described as an incarnation of Adi Shesha , the serpent associated with the deity Vishnu while some Vaishnava traditions regard him as the eighth avatar of Vishnu, with Jayadeva ’s Gitagovinda (c.1200) "incorporat[ing] Balarama into the pantheon" as
9928-431: The demigod-serpent Vishnu rests upon, reflects his role and association with Vishnu. However, Balarama's mythology and his association with the ten avatars of Vishnu is relatively younger and post-Vedic, because it is not found in the Vedic texts. Balarama's legend appears in many Parva (books) of the Mahabharata . Book Three ( Vana Parva ) states about Krishna and him that Balarama is an avatar of Vishnu, while Krishna
10064-467: 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
10200-471: 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
10336-460: 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
10472-490: 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
10608-528: The embodiments of agriculture along with livestock with whom Krishna is associated with. The plough is Balarama's weapon. In the Bhagavata Purana , he uses it to fight asuras, dig a way for Yamuna river to bring it closer to Vrindavan , and he also availed it to drag the entire capital of Hastinapura into the Ganga river. Balarama taught both Duryodhana of the Kauravas and Bhima of the Pandavas
10744-671: The fact that these did not came from controlled excavations but auction networks. They were evaluated by scholars only after they have traveled continents and passed through multiple hands. It has been since accepted that these coins indeed represented Agathocles' predecessors. The precise context of minting and significance is still not clear. Agathocles was unique in issuing bilingual coinage. Meant for local circulation in Gandhara, they were typically of smaller denominations, square or rectangular in shape, and minted in bronze or silver. The obverse had his portrait labelled in Greek while
10880-525: The first in the world to issue copper-nickel (75/25 ratio) coins, an alloy technology only known by the Chinese at the time (some weapons from the Warring States period were in copper-nickel alloy). These coins used the symbolism of Dionysos with a thyrsus over his left shoulder and his panther, which were his type for smaller coinage. It has long been suggested that the nickel contained in
11016-548: 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
11152-412: 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
11288-537: 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
11424-427: The hands of her eighth child. The Harivamsha states that Kamsa went on to murder the first six children of the imprisoned Devaki by smashing the newborns against a stone floor. When Balarama was conceived, Vishnu intervened, state the Hindu legends; his embryo was transferred from Devaki's womb into the womb of Rohini , Vasudeva's first wife. In some texts, this transfer gives Balarama the epithet Sankarshana (one who
11560-431: 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
11696-542: The historic deities revered in Jainism along with Ambika, Lakshmi and others. As with the Hindu farmers, state Paul Dundas and other scholars, it is likely that Balarama was the patron deity of Jain farmers in the early centuries of the common era, because a large number of Balarama images have been found in early Jain arts. Balarama images have been discovered in central Indian Buddhist sites, such as with Sanchi stupas at Andher, Mehgaon and Chandna. These are dated to around
11832-525: The installation of five Vrishni heroes in a stone temple. The earliest surviving southeast Asian artwork related to Balarama is from the Phnom Da collection, near Angkor Borei in Cambodia 's lower Mekong Delta region. Balarama was the son of Vasudeva . The evil king Kamsa , the tyrant of Mathura , was intent upon killing the children of his cousin, Devaki , because of a prophecy that he would die at
11968-486: 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
12104-409: The king. When Krishna was killing Kamsa, Balarama slew his mighty commander, Kalavakra . After the evil king was slain, Balarama and Krishna went to the ashrama of sage Sandipani at Ujjain for their education. Balarama married Revati , the daughter of King Kakudmi . He had two sons - Nishatha and Ulmuka, and a daughter - Shashirekha also known as Vatsala. Balarama is the celebrated tiller, one of
12240-465: The knowledge that dug a water channel to bring Yamuna water to Vrindavan; that restored groves, farms and forests; that produced goods and drinks. In Hindu texts, Balarama almost always supports Krishna in form and spirit. However, there are occasions where the dialogues between Balarama and Krishna present different viewpoints, with Krishna's wisdom establishing him to be the ultimate divinity. Balarama's constant symbolic association with Krishna makes him
12376-432: 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
12512-412: 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
12648-456: The literary works. The Indian tradition, states Winternitz , has favored the learning and the usage of multiple languages from the ancient times. Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana , the Mahabharata ,
12784-712: The main script used in old Indian inscriptions such as the Edicts of Ashoka , and which had become extinct since the 5th century CE. Some attempts by Rev. J. Stevenson were made to identify characters from the Karla Caves ( c. 1st century CE ) based on their similarities with the Gupta script of the Samudragupta inscription of the Allahabad pillar (4th century CE) which had just been deciphered, but this led to
12920-511: 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
13056-429: 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
13192-401: 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
13328-602: 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
13464-524: The ninth of the 10 principal avatars of Vishnu. Balarama's significance in Indian culture has ancient roots. His image in artwork is dated to around the start of the common era, and in coins dated to the second-century BCE. In Jainism, he is known as Baladeva, and has been a historically significant farmer-related deity. Balarama is an ancient deity, a prominent one by the epics era of Indian history as evidenced by archeological and numismatic evidence. His iconography appears with Nāga (many-headed serpent),
13600-545: 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,
13736-403: 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
13872-431: 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
14008-414: 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
14144-439: 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
14280-480: 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
14416-423: The protector and supporter of dharma . Balarama is depicted as light-skinned, in contrast to his brother, Krishna, who is dark-skinned; Krishna in Sanskrit means dark. His ayudha or weapons are the plough hala and the mace gadā . The plough is usually called Balachita. He often wears blue garments and a garland of forest flowers. His hair is tied in a topknot and he has earrings, bracelets and armlets; he
14552-432: The rare dissenting voices was Alfred von Sallet who asserted that these "ancestor coins" were struck for the purpose of commemoration and rejected that these rulers were contemporary, based on the design of coins. 1. Zeus standing with goddess Hecate . Greek: "King Agathokles". 2. Deity wearing a long himation with a volume on the head, arm partly bent, and contrapposto pose. Greek: "King Agathokles". This coin
14688-554: 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
14824-497: 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,
14960-537: The reverse had imagery from the Buddhist as well as Hindu pantheon alongside inscriptions in Brahmi / Kharosthi . Monolingual coinage (in Kharosthi) of similar kinds have been discovered. These finds have led scholars to conclude that Agathocles favored socio-religious tolerance. Osmund Bopearachchi hold him to have inaugurated the first Indo-Greek era; others have been skeptic. Buddhist symbols such as
15096-562: 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
15232-467: The rules of combat, Balarama threatened to kill Bhima. This was prevented when Krishna reminded Balarama of Bhima's vow—to kill Duryodhana by crushing the thigh he had exposed to Bhima's wife, Draupadi . In the Bhagavata Purana , it is described that after Balarama took part in the battle causing the destruction of the remainder of the Yadu dynasty and witnessing the disappearance of Krishna, he sat down in
15368-529: The same general outline as those in the Hindu texts, but in details, they are very different: they include Jain Tirthankaras as characters in the story, and generally are polemically critical of Krishna, unlike the versions found in the Mahabharata , the Bhagavata Purana , and the Vishnu Purana . For example, Krishna loses battles in the Jain versions, and his gopis and his clan of Yadavas die in
15504-423: The same kind commemorating Diodotus but struck by Antimachus was also chanced upon. Scholars increasingly accepted the reasoning of Droysen and Cunningham proposed that Agathocles (alongside Antimachus) first ruled under Diodotus and then under Euthydemus and Antiochus. The general understanding of Bactrian Kingdom around the middle nineteenth century hold all of these Kings to be contemporaneous co-rulers. Among
15640-496: 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
15776-556: 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
15912-615: 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
16048-598: The start of the common era. The Ghata Jataka, one of the Jataka Tales that form part of Buddhist scriptures, depicts Krishna as a previous birth of Buddha's disciple Sariputta and has Balarama depicted as the previous birth of one of the Buddha's disciples. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
16184-653: 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
16320-672: The twenty-four Tirthankaras and nine sets of triads. One of these triads is Krishna as the Vasudeva , Balarama as the Baladeva , and Jarasandha as the Prati-Vasudeva . In each age of the Jain cyclic time is born a Vasudeva with an elder brother termed the Baladeva . Between the triads, Baladeva upholds the principle of non-violence, a central idea of Jainism. The villain is the Prati-vasudeva , who attempts to destroy
16456-472: The two brothers. He is the constant companion of Krishna, ever watchful, leading to the epithet "Luk Luk Dauji" (or Luk Luk Daubaba ) in the Pustimarga tradition of Vaishnavism . In the classical Tamil work Akananuru , Krishna hides from Balarama when he steals the clothes of the milkmaids while they bathe, suggesting his brother's vigilance. He is a creative store of knowledge for the agriculturists:
16592-548: The two males hold a plough and club in his two hands. The artwork also has an inscription with it in Kharosthi script, which has been deciphered by scholars as Rama-Krsna , and interpreted as an ancient depiction of the two brothers Balarama and Krishna. The early Balarama images found in Jansuti (Mathura, Uttar Pradesh) and two at Tumain (Ashoknagar, Madhya Pradesh) are dated to 2nd/1st-century BCE and these show Balarama holding
16728-408: 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
16864-564: 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
17000-579: The wisdom that he later gave to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita . According to Jeffery D. Long , a professor of Religion known for his publications on Jainism, this connection between Krishna and Neminatha has been a historic reason for Jains to accept, read, and cite the Bhagavad Gita as a spiritually important text, celebrate Krishna-related festivals, and intermingle with Hindus as spiritual cousins. Evidence related to early Jainism, states Patrick Olivelle and other scholars, suggests Balarama had been
17136-628: The world. To save the world, Vasudeva-Krishna has to forsake the non-violence principle and kill the Prati-Vasudeva . The stories of these triads can be found in the Harivamsa Purana (8th century CE) of Jinasena (not be confused with its namesake, the addendum to Mahābhārata ) and the Trishashti-shalakapurusha-charita of Hemachandra. The story of Krishna's life in the Puranas of Jainism follows
17272-502: 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
17408-579: Was a contemporaneous relative (maybe, son) of Demetrius I , who was busy expanding towards India. He was challenged by Antimachus I . Depending on the results, which is not accurately ascertainable, he was either immediately ousted by Antimachus I or a few years later, by an usurper Eucratides I . No gold mints have been found. Bronze and silver mints were commonplace. Copper mints having significant Nickel were discovered by Flight in 1868; François Widemann believes them to have had an intermediate value between bronze and silver. Agathocles issued
17544-408: 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
17680-427: 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
17816-472: 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
17952-738: 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
18088-478: Was carrying out the orders of Antiochus IV to reestablish the Seleucid control. Other scholars generally avoided giving too much significance to these "ancestor coins". More varieties of these coins would be discovered later. These mention Diodotus II , Demetrius II and Demetrius . In the last few decades, such coins have been discovered in more numbers but the accuracy of these finds remain plagued by
18224-567: Was dragged away). Balarama grew up with his younger brother Krishna with his foster-parents, in the household of the head of cowherds Nanda , and his wife, Yashoda . The chapter 10 of the Bhagavata Purana describes it as follows: The Bhagavan as the Self of everything tells the creative power of His unified consciousness (yogamaya) about His plan for His own birth as Balarama and Krishna. He begins with Balarama. The whole of Shesha, which
18360-530: Was then completed by James Prinsep , an archaeologist, philologist, and official of the East India Company , who was able to identify the rest of the Brahmi characters, with the help of Major Cunningham . In a series of results that he published in March 1838 Prinsep was able to translate the inscriptions on a large number of rock edicts found around India, and provide, according to Richard Salomon ,
18496-442: 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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