147-473: The Bhagavata ( Sanskrit : भागवत, romanised : Bhāgavata ) tradition, also called Bhagavatism , refers to an ancient religious sect that traced its origin to the region of Mathura . After its syncretism with the Brahmanical tradition of Vishnu , Bhagavatism became a pan-Indian tradition by the second century BCE, according to R.C. Majumdar . Historically, Bhagavatism corresponds to the development of
294-521: A discus from Vishnu. An Udayagiri inscription records the construction of a Vaishnava cave temple by Chandragupta's feudatory Maharaja Sanakanika, in year 82 of the Gupta era (c. 401–402). Chandragupta was also tolerant of other faiths. The Udayagiri inscription of Chandragupta's foreign minister Virasena records the construction of a temple dedicated to the god Shambhu ( Shiva ). An inscription found at Sanchi near Udayagiri records donations to
441-641: A Shaka chief when besieged, but Chandragupta went to the enemy camp disguised as the queen, and killed the Shaka chief. Chandragupta bore the title Vikramaditya , and several Indian legends talk of king Vikramaditya who defeated the Shakas. Several modern scholars have theorised that these legends may be based on Chandragupta's victory over the Shakas. As a result of his victory over the Western Kshatrapas, Chandragupta must have extended his empire up to
588-495: A Vakataka king, it is more likely that he was a Kadamba king, because the Vakataka king did not rule over Kuntala, and was never called the lord of Kuntala. Several feudatories of Chandragupta are known from historical records: The following ministers and officers of Chandragupta are known from various historical records: Jyotirvidabharana (22.10), a treatise attributed to Kalidasa , states that nine famous scholars known as
735-400: 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." Chandragupta II Chandragupta II (r.c. 375-415), also known by his title Vikramaditya , as well as Chandragupta Vikramaditya , was
882-433: 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
1029-558: A hundred years (e.g. the year after 100 is 1, not 101). The date portion of the Mathura inscription reads (in IAST ): The letters before the words kālānuvarttamāna-saṃvatsare are abraded in the inscription, but historian D. R. Bhandarkar (1931–1932) reconstructed them as gupta , and translated the term gupta-kālānuvarttamāna-saṃvatsare as "year following the Gupta era". He translated
1176-591: 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
1323-658: 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
1470-474: A literary forgery of a date later than Kalidasa by multiple scholars. There is no mention of such "Navaratnas" in earlier literature, and D. C. Sircar calls this tradition "absolutely worthless for historical purposes". Nevertheless, multiple scholars believe that one of these Navaratnas – Kalidasa – may have indeed flourished during the reign of Chandragupta II. These scholars include William Jones , A. B. Keith , and Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi among others. It
1617-510: A local ruler. According to Sten Konow , the term "seven faces", mentioned in the iron pillar inscription, refers to the seven mouths of Indus. Historians R. C. Majumdar and K. P. Jayaswal, on the other hand, believe that the term refers to the tributaries of Indus: the five rivers of Punjab ( Jhelum , Ravi , Sutlej , Beas , and Chenab ), plus possibly the Kabul and the Kunar rivers. It
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#17327732092971764-669: A millennium old and many disparate groups, all following the Bhagavata Purana could be found. Various lineages of Gopala worshipers developed into identifiable denominations. However, the unity that exists among these groups in belief and practice has given rise to the general term Krishnaism . Today the faith has a significant following outside of India as well. Many places associated with Krishna such as Vrindavan attract millions of pilgrims each year who participate in religious festivals that recreate scenes from Krishna's life on Earth. Some believe that early Bhagavatism
1911-454: 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
2058-479: 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
2205-546: 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
2352-458: A piece of wood to announce their presence when they entered a city or a marketplace: this would enable other people to avoid contact with them. Only the Chandalas engaged in the fisheries and hunting and sold meat. In the general markets, there were no butchers' shops or alcohol dealers, and the people did not keep pigs or fowl. According to historian R. C. Majumdar , Faxian's observations about
2499-542: A popular theistic movement in India, departing from the elitist sacrificial rites of Vedism , and initially focusing on the worship of the Vrishni hero Vāsudeva in the region of Mathura . It later assimilated into the concept of Narayana where Krishna is conceived as svayam bhagavan . According to some historical scholars, worship of Krishna emerged in the 1st century BCE. However, Vaishnava traditionalists place it in
2646-727: A procession of 20 grand carts of Buddhas , the Brahmanas 's invitation to the Buddhas to enter the city, and music performances. He mentions that in the cities, the Vaishya chiefs had established centres for dispensing charity and medical help to the destitute. These centres attracted the poor, the orphans, the widowers, the childless, the handicapped, and the sick, who were examined by doctors and given food and medicine until they got better. The following inscriptions of Chandragupta have been discovered: Chandragupta continued issuing most of
2793-602: A queen of Chandragupta, and the mother of Govindagupta . It is unlikely that Chandragupta had two different queens with similar names: it appears that Dhruvasvamini was most probably another name for Dhruvadevi, and that Govindagupta was a real brother of Kumaragupta. Chandragupta also married Kuvera-naga (alias Kuberanaga), whose name indicates that she was a princess of the Naga dynasty , which held considerable power in central India before Samudragupta subjugated them. This matrimonial alliance may have helped Chandragupta consolidate
2940-578: 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
3087-535: A resident of Pataliputra , and states that he came to Udayagiri in Central India with the king who sought to "conquer the whole world". This indicates that Chandragupta had reached Udayagiri in central India during a military campaign. The theory that Chandragupta led an army to Central India is also corroborated by the c. 412–413 CE (Gupta year 93) Sanchi inscription of Amrakardava, who is said to have "acquired victory and fame in many battles and whose livelihood
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#17327732092973234-538: 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
3381-439: 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
3528-516: 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
3675-452: 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
3822-579: Is noteworthy that some medieval chiefs of present-day Karnataka (where the Kadambas ruled) claimed descent from Chandragupta. According to the Vikramaditya legends, emperor Vikramaditya (a character believed to be based on Chandragupta) sent his court poet Kalidasa as an ambassador to the lord of Kuntala . While the Kuntala king referred to in this legend has been identified by some scholars with
3969-416: Is possible that Kalidasa was a court poet of Chandragupta. Many gold and silver coins of Chandragupta, as well the inscriptions issued by him and his successors, describe him as a parama-bhagvata , that is, a devotee of the god Vishnu . One of his gold coins, discovered at Bayana , calls him chakra-vikramah , literally, "[one who is] powerful [due to his possession of the] discus", and shows him receiving
4116-461: Is probably based on Chandragupta II (among other kings), and the noted Sanskrit poet Kalidasa may have been his court poet. The cave shrines at Udayagiri were also built during his rule. Chandragupta II was the second ruler of the dynasty to bear the name "Chandragupta", the first being his grandfather Chandragupta I . He was also simply known as "Chandra", as attested by his coins. The Sanchi inscription of his officer Amrakardava states that he
4263-519: Is quite possible that Chandragupta passed through the Punjab region during this campaign: his political influence in this region is attested to by the use of the Gupta era in an inscription found at Shorkot , and by some coins bearing the name "Chandragupta". However, there is no evidence that Chandragupta annexed Punjab to the Gupta Empire, which suggests that Chandragupta's victory in this region
4410-532: 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
4557-479: 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,
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4704-589: 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
4851-475: 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
4998-508: The Alvars , "who by their Tamil songs inculcated Bhakti and Krishna-worship mainly". Bhagavatism had penetrated into the Deccan at least as early as the first century BCE. The Silappadikaram and the other ancient Tamil poems refer to temples dedicated to Krishna and his brother at Madura, Kaviripaddinam, and other cities. The wide prevalence of Bhagavatism in the far south is also testified to by
5145-521: The Arabian Sea coast in present-day Gujarat . The iron pillar of Delhi contains an inscription of a king called "Chandra". Modern scholars generally identify this king with Chandragupta II, although this cannot be said with complete certainty. While alternative identifications have been proposed, there is strong evidence for identifying Chandra of the iron pillar inscription as Chandragupta II: The iron pillar inscription credits Chandra with
5292-596: The Ashvamedha horse sacrifice to proclaim their military prowess. In the 20th century, the discovery of a stone image of a horse found near Varanasi , and the misreading of its inscription as "Chandramgu" (taken to be "Chandragupta"), led to speculation that Chandragupta also performed the Ashvamedha sacrifice. However, there is no actual evidence to support this theory. Historical and literary evidence suggests that Chandragupta II achieved military successes against
5439-671: The Bhagavata Purana which says that in the Kali Age, devoted worshippers of Narayana, though rare in some places, are to be found in large numbers in the Dravida country watered by the rivers Tamraparnl, Kritamala, the sacred Kaveri, and the great stream (Periyar) flowing to the west. Yamunacharya, who laid the tenets of the Vishishtadvaita philosophy, has his works described as "a somewhat modified and methodical form of
5586-580: 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
5733-675: 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
5880-572: The Kuntala region of Karnataka through a marriage alliance with Kadambas, and during his daughter Prabhavatigupta’s 20 years long regency, he effectively integrated the Vakataka kingdom into the Gupta Empire. Chandragupta II was a devout Vaishnav but tolerated other faiths as well. The Chinese pilgrim Faxian , who visited India during his reign, suggests that he ruled over a peaceful and prosperous kingdom. The legendary figure of Vikramaditya
6027-458: The Navaratnas ("nine gems") attended the court of the legendary Vikramaditya. Besides Kalidasa himself, these included Amarasimha , Dhanvantari, Ghatakarapara, Kshapanaka, Shanku, Varahamihira , Vararuchi , and Vetala Bhatta . However, there is no historical evidence to show that these nine scholars were contemporary figures or proteges of the same king. Jyotirvidabharana is considered
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6174-753: 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
6321-531: 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
6468-609: The Shaka year 310 or 319 (the coin legend is partially lost), that is 388 or 397. Chandragupta's coins, dated to 409, are similar to the Kshtrapa coins, with the Shakas' Buddhist vihara symbol replaced by the Gupta symbol of Garuda . Literary evidence also corroborates Chandragupta's victory over the Western Kshatrapas. The Sanskrit play Devichandraguptam , whose historicity is disputed, narrates that Chandragupta's elder brother Ramagupta agreed to surrender his queen Dhruvadevi to
6615-488: The Western Kshatrapas (also known as Shakas ), who ruled in west-central India. The Allahabad Pillar inscription of Chandragupta's father Samudragupta names the "Shaka-Murundas" among the kings who tried to appease him. It may be possible that Samudragupta reduced the Shakas to a state of subordinate alliance, and Chandragupta completely subjugated them. Virasena's Udayagiri inscription describes him as
6762-696: The Western Kshatrapas and the vassalization of the Hunas . Under the reign of Chandragupta II, the Gupta Empire reached its zenith, directly controlling a vast territory which stretched from the Oxus River in the west to the Bengal region in the east, and from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to the Narmada River in the south. Chandragupta II expanded his influence and indirectly ruled over
6909-461: The kālānuvarttamāna era denotes a system that restarts counting after a hundred years. The Yaksha figure inscription is dated to year 112 of the Gupta era (c. 432 CE), which corresponds to the kālānuvarttamāna year 5. Thus, the kālānuvarttamāna era used during Kumaragupta's time must have started in 432–5 = 427 CE. The years mentioned in the Buddhist image pedestal inscription also suggests that
7056-406: 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
7203-500: 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
7350-414: 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
7497-598: The 4th century BCE. Despite the relative silence of the earlier Vedic sources, the features of Bhagavatism and the principles of monotheism of Bhagavata school, as described in the Bhagavad Gita , are viewed as an example of the belief that Vāsudeva-Krishna is not an avatar of the Vedic Vishnu , but is the Supreme Being Himself. In the ninth century CE Bhagavatism was already at least
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#17327732092977644-532: 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
7791-528: The Bengal region was annexed to the Gupta empire by Chandragupta, and that this control continued into the 6th century. The Delhi iron pillar inscription suggests that an alliance of semi-independent chiefs of Bengal unsuccessfully resisted Chandragupta's attempts to extend the Gupta influence in this region. Gupta records mention Dhruvadevi as Chandragupta's queen, and the mother of his successor Kumaragupta I . The Basarh clay seal mentions Dhruva-svamini as
7938-446: The Buddhist image pedestal also denotes a year of the Gupta era: this is obviously incorrect, since Kumaragupta I ruled after Chandragupta II. Scholars K.K. Thaplyal and R.C. Sharma, who studied the Buddhist image pedestal inscription, speculated that the scribe had mistakenly interchanged the years 121 and 15, but Falk calls this assumption unnecessary. According to Falk, the discrepancy can be explained satisfactorily, if we assume that
8085-425: 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
8232-532: 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
8379-521: 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
8526-536: The Gupta empire, and the Nagas may have helped him in his war against the Western Kshatrapas. Prabhavati-gupta , the daughter of Chandragupta and Kuvera-naga, married the Vakataka king Rudrasena II , who ruled in the Deccan region to the south of the Gupta empire. After her husband's death in c. 390, Prabhavati-gupta acted as a regent for her minor sons. In the two copper-plate inscriptions issued during her regency,
8673-429: The Gupta era starts around 319–320 CE, the beginning of Chandragupta's reign can be dated to either 376–377 CE or 380–381 CE. Falk agrees that the missing letters denote a numerical year, but dismisses Sircar's reading as "mere imagination", pointing out that the missing letters are "abraded beyond recovery". In support of his Kushana era theory, Falk presents four Gupta inscriptions (in chronological order) that mention
8820-476: 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
8967-519: 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
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#17327732092979114-532: 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
9261-555: 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
9408-499: 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
9555-638: 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
9702-788: The Sun-bird Garuda with the "Devadeva" ("God of Gods") Vāsudeva in the Heliodorus pillar (113 BCE) suggests that the Bhagavat cult of human deities had already absorbed the Sun-god Vishnu , an ancient Vedic deity. Slightly later, the Nagari inscription also shows the incorporation of the Brahmanical deity Narayana into the hero-cult of Bhagavatism. Vishnu would much later become prominent in this construct, so that by
9849-586: The Vanga area in the present-day Bengal region. According to the Allahabad Pillar inscription of his father Samudragupta , the Samatata kingdom of the Bengal region was a Gupta tributary. The Guptas are known to have been ruling Bengal in the early 6th century, although there are no surviving records of the Gupta presence in this region for the intervening period. It is possible that a large part of
9996-447: 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
10143-451: 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
10290-410: The Western Kshatrapas. The Guptas also appear to have entered into a matrimonial alliance with the Kadamba dynasty , the southern neighbours of the Vakatakas. The Talagunda pillar inscription suggests that the daughters of the Kadamba king Kakusthavarman, married into other royal families, including that of the Guptas. While Kakusthavarman was a contemporary of Chandragupta's son Kumaragupta I, it
10437-407: The alphabet, the structure of words, and its exacting grammar into a "collection of sounds, a kind of sublime musical mold" as an integral language they called Saṃskṛta . From the late Vedic period onwards, state Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus, resonating sound and its musical foundations attracted an "exceptionally large amount of linguistic, philosophical and religious literature" in India. Sound
10584-487: The ancient Bhagavata, Pancharatra, or Satvata religion". The Alvars would be among the first catalysts of the Bhakti movement , a Hindu revivalist movement that would reintroduce Bhagavata philosophy back to its place of origin. References to Vāsudeva also occur in early Sanskrit literature. Taittiriya Aranyaka (X, i,6) identifies him with Narayana and Vishnu . Pāṇini , ca. 4th century BCE, in his Ashtadhyayi explains
10731-408: The beginning of Chandragupta's reign. The Sanchi inscription, dated to 412–413 CE (year 93 of the Gupta era), is the last known dated inscription of Chandragupta. His son Kumaragupta was on the throne by the 415–416 CE (year 96 of the Gupta era), so Chandragupta's reign must have ended sometime during 412–415 CE. The Udayagiri inscription of Chandragupta's foreign minister Virasena suggests that
10878-440: 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
11025-527: 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
11172-614: 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
11319-711: 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
11466-467: 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
11613-471: 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
11760-460: 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
11907-450: The enemy. Sometime later, Chandragupta dethrones Ramagupta, and becomes the new king. The historicity of this narrative is debated among modern historians, with some believing it to be based on true historical events, while others dismissing it as a work of fiction. The Mathura pillar inscription of Chandragupta II (as well as some other Gupta inscriptions) mention two dates: several historians have assumed that one of these dates denotes
12054-506: The entire sentence as: Historian D. C. Sircar (1942) restored the missing letters as "[paṃ]cāme" ("fifth") and concluded that the inscription was dated to the Chandragupta's fifth regnal year. The missing letters have alternatively been read as "prathame" ("first"). According to these interpretations, the inscription is thus dated in year 61 of the Gupta era, and either the first or the fifth regnal year of Chandragupta. Assuming that
12201-570: The epithet Apratiratha ("having no equal or antagonist"). The Supiya stone pillar inscription, issued during the reign of his descendant Skandagupta , also calls him "Vikramaditya". Some other notable titles such as Lord of the Three Oceans and Ascetic King ("King of the Brahmins") are also accoladed to Chandragupta II. Chandragupta was a son of Samudragupta and queen Dattadevi , as attested by his own inscriptions. According to
12348-428: The epoch of this era was c. 426–427 CE. Since the kālānuvarttamāna system restarts counting every 100 years, the kālānuvarttamāna era used during the reign of Chandragupta II must have started in 327 CE. Thus, the Mathura inscription can be dated to 327+61 = c. 388 CE. While Falk's theory does not change the Gupta chronology significantly, it implies that the date of the Mathura inscription cannot be used to determine
12495-530: The exclusive object of worship of a group of people", who are referred to as Bhagavatas . According to an opinion of some scholars, in Patanjali's time identification of Krishna with Vāsudeva is an established fact as is surmised from a passage of the Mahabhasya – ( jaghana kamsam kila vasudevah ). This "supposed earliest phase is thought to have been established from the sixth to the fifth centuries BCE at
12642-548: 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
12789-498: The followers of Ramanujacharya and other yoga sects. It can also refer to a Buddhist concept. 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
12936-582: The following victories: If Chandra is identified with Chandragupta, it appears that Chandragupta marched through the Punjab region , and advanced up to the country of the Vahlikas, that is, Balkh in present-day Afghanistan. Some short Sanskrit inscriptions at the Sacred Rock of Hunza (in present-day Pakistan), written in Gupta script , mention the name Chandra. A few of these inscriptions also mention
13083-412: 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
13230-537: 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
13377-431: 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
13524-486: 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
13671-593: The king had a distinguished military career. It states that he "bought the earth", paying for it with his prowess, and reduced the other kings to the status of slaves. His empire seems to have extended from the mouth of the Indus and northern Pakistan in the west to the Bengal region in the east, and from the Himalayan terai region in the north to the Narmada River in the south. Chandragupta's father Samudragupta and his son Kumaragupta I are known to have performed
13818-455: The king's administration, but otherwise, there was no corporal punishment for crimes: the criminals were only fined, lightly or heavily, according to the severity of the crime. According to Faxian, the king's bodyguards and attendants all received salaries. Faxian mentions that other than the untouchable Chandalas , the people did not consume meat, intoxicating drinks, onions or garlic. The Chandalas lived apart from other people and struck
13965-534: The king's regnal year, while the other date denotes the year of the Gupta calendar era . However, Indologist Harry Falk in 2004 has theorised that the date understood to be the regnal year by the earlier scholars is actually a date of the kālānuvarttamāna system. According to Falk, the kālānuvarttamāna system is a continuation of the Kushana calendar era established by emperor Kanishka , whose coronation Falk dates to 127 CE. The Kushana era restarts counting after
14112-625: The king. Another possibility is that "dhava" is a mistake for a common noun "bhava", although this is unlikely, as the rest of the inscription does not contain any errors. A passage in the Vishnu Purana suggests that major parts of the eastern coast of India – Kosala , Odra , Tamralipta , and Puri – were ruled by the Devarakshitas around the same time as the Guptas. Since it seems unlikely that an obscure dynasty named Devarakshita
14259-532: The kingdom as a peaceful and prosperous one seems to be generally true, attested by the fact that he did not face any brigandage unlike the later Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang . Faxian describes Madhya-desha ("Middle kingdom"), the region to the south-east of Mathura , as a populous region with good climate and happy people. He mentions that the citizens were not required to "register their households or attend to any magistrates and their rules". Faxian mentions that wicked repeated rebels had their right hand cut off by
14406-432: 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
14553-422: The last decade of the 4th century. The coins of this type reappear in the second decade of the 5th century, and are dated in the Gupta era, which suggests that Chandragupta subjugated the Western Kshatrapas. The exact date of Chandragupta's victory is not known, but it can be tentatively dated to sometime between 397 and 409. The last of the 4th century Kshatrapa coins – that of Rudrasimha III – can be dated to
14700-412: 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
14847-514: 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 ,
14994-503: The local Buddhist monastery by his military officer Amrakardava, in year 93 of the Gupta era (c. 412–413). Chinese pilgrim Faxian visited India during the reign of Chandragupta and spent around six years in the Gupta kingdom. He was mostly interested in Buddhist religious affairs and did not bother to record the name of the reigning king. His account presents an idealised picture of the Gupta administration, and not everything he states can be taken at face value. However, his description of
15141-407: The middle of the 5th century CE, during the Gupta period , the term Vaishnava would replace the term Bhagavata to describe the followers of this cult, and Vishnu would now be more popular than Vāsudeva. Bhagavatism would introduce the concept of the chatur-vyuhas , in which the four earthly emanations of Narayana were considered to be Vasudeva (Krishna) as the creator, Sankarsana ( Balarama ) as
15288-455: 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
15435-429: 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
15582-401: 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
15729-602: 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
15876-409: 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 ,
16023-466: The name Harishena, and one particular inscription mentions Chandra with the epithet "Vikramaditya". Based on the identification of "Chandra" with Chandragupta, and Harishena with the Gupta courtier Harishena , these inscriptions can be considered as further evidence of a Gupta military campaign in the area. However, this identification is not certain, and Chandra of the Hunza inscriptions could have well been
16170-483: The names of her Gupta ancestors with their imperial titles appear before the name of the Vakataka king with the lesser title Maharaja . This suggests that the Gupta court may have had influence in the Vakataka administration during her regency. Historians Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund believe that the Vakataka kingdom was "practically a part of the Gupta empire" during her 20-year long regency. The Vakatakas may have supported Chandragupta during his conflict with
16317-435: 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
16464-597: 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,
16611-417: The official Gupta genealogy, Chandragupta succeeded his father on the Gupta throne. The Sanskrit play Devichandraguptam , combined with other evidence suggests that he had an elder brother named Ramagupta , who preceded him on the throne. In the play, Ramagupta decides to surrender his queen Dhruvadevi to a Shaka enemy when besieged, but Chandragupta goes to the enemy camp disguised as the queen and kills
16758-403: 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
16905-431: 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
17052-548: The people's food habits seem to have been based on his contact with the Buddhist religious community and may not be applicable to the general public. Faxian mentions that the people used cowries for buying and selling goods. Faxian mentions the Pataliputra region as the most prosperous part of the Middle kingdom, describing its people as benevolent and righteous. He describes an annual Buddhist celebration, which involved
17199-529: 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
17346-414: 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
17493-471: The preserver, Pradyumna as the destroyer, and Aniruddha as the aspect of intellect. The concept of vyuhas would later be supplanted by the concept of avataras , indicating the transformation of Bhagavatism into Vaishnavism. Some relate absorption by Brahmanism to be the characteristic of the second stage of the development of the Bhagavata tradition. It is believed that at this stage Krishna- Vāsudeva
17640-439: 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
17787-480: 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
17934-609: 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
18081-497: 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,
18228-562: 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
18375-496: 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
18522-556: 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
18669-615: 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
18816-429: The term kālānuvarttamāna-saṃvatsare : Falk notes that the "dynastic year" in the table above appears to be a year of the Gupta era. The kālānuvarttamāna year cannot be regnal year, because Chandragupta I is not known to have ruled for as long as 61 years. If we assume "61" of the Mathura pillar inscription denotes a year of the Gupta era (as assumed by Bhandarkar, Sircar and other scholars), we must assume that "15" of
18963-618: The third ruler of the Gupta Empire in India . Modern scholars generally identify him with King Chandra of the Delhi iron pillar inscription. Chandragupta II continued the expansionist policy of his father Samudragupta through military conquests and marital alliances. Historical evidence attests to his remarkable victories, which include the defeat of the Sassanids , the conquest of
19110-541: The time of Pāṇini, who in his Astadhyayi explained the word vāsudevaka as a bhakta, devotee, of Vāsudeva and it is believed that Bhagavata religion with the worship od Vāsudeva Krishna was at the root of the Vaishnavism in Indian history." In the recent times, this often refer to a particular sect of Vaishnavas in West India, referring to themselves as 'Bhagavata-sampradaya'. It is also a common greeting among
19257-653: 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
19404-568: The ultimate object of bhakti . With the fall of the Guptas , Bhagavatism had lost its pre-eminence in the north, with Vardhana sovereigns such as Harsha adhering to non-Bhagavata creeds. Though the Bhagavata religion still flourished in the north, its stronghold was now not the valley of the Ganges or Central India, but the Tamil country. There, the faith flourished under the strong impetus given by
19551-408: 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
19698-564: 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
19845-400: The word "Vāsudevaka" as a Bhakta (devotee) of Vāsudeva. At some stage during the Vedic period, Vāsudeva and Krishna became one deity or three distinct deities Vāsudeva-Krishna, Krishna-Gopala and Narayana, all become identified with Vishnu, and by the time of composition of the redaction of Mahabharata that survives till today. A Gupta period research makes a "clear mention of Vāsudeva as
19992-502: 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
20139-408: 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
20286-427: 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
20433-472: 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
20580-416: Was also known as Deva-raja. The records of his daughter Prabhavatigupta , issued as a Vakataka queen, call him Chandragupta as well as Deva-gupta. Deva-shri ( IAST : Devaśri) is another variation of this name. The Delhi iron pillar inscription states that king Chandra was also known as "Dhava": if this king Chandra is identified with Chandragupta ( see below ), it appears that "Dhava" was another name for
20727-738: 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
20874-442: Was enriched and transformed with powerful and popular Krishna tradition with a strong "human" element to it. It is believed that Bhagavatas borrowed or shared the attribute or title Purusa of their monotheistic deity from the philosophy of Sankhya . The philosophy was formulated by the end of the 4th century BCE and as time went other names such as Narayana were applied to the main deity of Krishna- Vāsudeva . The association of
21021-419: Was identified with the deity of Vishnu, that according to some belonged to the pantheon of Brahmanism. Rulers onwards from Chandragupta II , Vikramaditya were known as parama Bhagavatas, or Bhagavata Vaishnavas . The Bhagavata Purana entails the fully developed tenets and philosophy of the Bhagavata cult where Krishna gets fused with Vasudeva and transcends Vedic Vishnu and cosmic Hari to be turned into
21168-528: Was not a decisive one. There is little evidence of Gupta influence in Punjab after his reign: numismatic evidence suggests that Punjab was ruled by petty chieftains after his death. These chieftains bore Indian names, but issued coins that imitate the Kidarite coinage: they may have been Hinduized foreigners or Indians continuing the usage of foreign-style coinage. The identification of Chandra with Chandragupta II also suggests Chandragupta achieved victories in
21315-435: Was powerful enough to control substantial territory during the Gupta period, some scholars, such as Dasharatha Sharma , theorize that "Deva-rakshita" ( IAST : Devarakṣita) was another name for Chandragupta II. Others, such as D. K. Ganguly, oppose this theory, arguing that this identification is quite arbitrary, and cannot be explained satisfactorily. Chandragupta assumed the titles Bhattaraka and Maharajadhiraja , and bore
21462-477: Was secured by serving Chandragupta." A c. 401–402 CE (Gupta year 82) inscription of Chandragupta's feudatory Maharaja Sanakanika has also been discovered in Central India. The only important power to have ruled in this region during Chandragupta's period were the Western Kshatrapas, whose rule is attested by their distinct coinage. The coins issued by the Western Kshatrapa rulers abruptly come to end in
21609-442: 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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