Divisions
155-544: Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad ( Sanskrit : बृहदारण्यकोपनिषद् , IAST : Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad ) is one of the Principal Upanishads and one of the first Upanishadic scriptures of Hinduism . A key scripture to various schools of Hinduism , the Brihadaranyaka Upanisad
310-478: 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." Monism Monism attributes oneness or singleness ( Greek : μόνος ) to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished: There are two sorts of definitions for monism: Although
465-514: A fire, so indeed do all the vital functions (prana), all the worlds, all the gods, and all beings spring from this self (atman). Its hidden name (upanisad) is 'The real behind the real,' for the real consists of the vital functions, and the self is the real behind the vital functions. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
620-433: 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
775-405: A form of absolute nondualism . Material monism can be traced back to the pre-Socratic philosophers who sought to understand the arche or basic principle of the universe in terms of different material causes. These included Thales , who argued that the basis of everything was water, Anaximenes , who claimed it was air, and Heraclitus who believed it to be fire. Later, Parmenides described
930-591: 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
1085-658: 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
1240-454: 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
1395-479: 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
1550-574: A number of ancient Vedic scholars. The Upanishad forms the last part, that is the fourteenth kānda of Śatapatha Brāhmana of "Śhukla Yajurveda". The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has six adhyayas (chapters) in total. There are two major recensions for the text – the Madhyandina and the Kanva recensions. It includes three sections: Madhu kānda (the 4th and 5th chapter of the fourteenth kānda of Satapatha Brahmana), Muni kānda (or Yajnavalkya Kanda ,
1705-546: A pan-Indo-Aryan accessibility to information and knowledge in the ancient and medieval times, in contrast to the Prakrit languages which were understood just regionally. It created a cultural bond across the subcontinent. As local languages and dialects evolved and diversified, Sanskrit served as the common language. It connected scholars from distant parts of South Asia such as Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, states Deshpande, as well as those from different fields of studies, though there must have been differences in its pronunciation given
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#17327721714161860-509: A person. It is described by the Bṛhadāraṇyaka as follows: This innermost thing, this self (atman)—it is dearer than a son, it is dearer than wealth, it is dearer than everything else...a man should regard only his self as dear to him. When a man regards only his self as dear to him, what he holds dear will never perish. This self is also the source of all vital functions: As a spider sends forth its thread, and as tiny sparks spring forth from
2015-578: 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
2170-538: 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
2325-439: 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
2480-533: A treatise on Ātman (Self), includes passages on metaphysics , ethics, and a yearning for knowledge that influenced various Indian religions , ancient and medieval scholars, and attracted secondary works such as those by Adi Shankara and Madhvacharya . The chronology of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , like other Upanishads, is uncertain and contested. The chronology is difficult to resolve because all opinions rest on scanty evidence, an analysis of archaism, style, and repetitions across texts, driven by assumptions about
2635-856: Is "in" the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that 'All is God', panentheism claims that God animates all of the universe, and also transcends the universe. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God, like in the Judaic concept of Tzimtzum . Much Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism. Paul Tillich has argued for such a concept within Christian theology, as has liberal biblical scholar Marcus Borg and mystical theologian Matthew Fox , an Episcopal priest. Pandeism or pan-deism (from Ancient Greek : πᾶν , romanized : pan , lit. 'all' and Latin : deus meaning " god " in
2790-531: Is Brahman". In the fourth brahmanam of sixth chapter, sexual rituals between a husband and wife are described to conceive and celebrate the birth of a child. Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad has been an important work in Vedanta and it discusses many early concepts and theories foundational to Hinduism such as karma , Atman-Brahman ,
2945-711: 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
3100-467: Is a meditative exercise of withdrawal from the particular and identification with the universal, leading to contemplation of oneself as the most universal, namely, Consciousness. This approach is different from the classical Yoga of complete thought suppression. Vivekananda, according to Gavin Flood , was "a figure of great importance in the development of a modern Hindu self-understanding and in formulating
3255-516: 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
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#17327721714163410-449: Is an incorporeal being that caused all other existence. According to Maimonides, to admit corporeality to God is tantamount to admitting complexity to God, which is a contradiction to God as the first cause and constitutes heresy . While Hasidic mystics considered the existence of the physical world a contradiction to God's simpleness , Maimonides saw no contradiction. According to Hasidic thought (particularly as propounded by
3565-514: Is because God/Nature has all the possible attributes and no two substances can share an attribute, which means there can be no other substances than God/Nature. Monism has been discussed thoroughly in Indian philosophy and Vedanta throughout their history starting as early as the Rig Veda . The term monism was introduced in the 18th century by Christian von Wolff in his work Logic (1728), to designate types of philosophical thought in which
3720-421: Is bliss, Brahman is knowledge, It is the highest good of one who gives charity , and also of one who stands away (renounces) and knows it. The fourth chapter of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad begins with a dialogue between King Janaka and Yajnavalka. It explores various aspects of the "Self exists" theory, its phenomenal manifestations, and its philosophical implications on soteriology . In the first brahmanam of
3875-452: 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
4030-548: Is further complicated because they are compiled anthologies of literature that must have existed as independent texts before they became part of these Upanishads. The exact year and even the century of the Upanishad composition is unknown. Scholars have offered different estimates ranging from 900 BCE to 600 BCE, all preceding Buddhism. Brihadaranyaka is one of the first Upanishads, along with that of Jaiminiya Upanishad and Chandogya Upanishads . The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
4185-453: Is his highest world. Now, this is the aspect of his that is beyond what appears to be good, freed from what is bad, and without fear. "It is like this. As a man embraced by a woman he loves is oblivious to everything within or without, so this person embraced by the prajna (conscious, aware, self) consisting of knowledge is oblivious to everything within or without. Clearly, this is the aspect of his where all desires are fulfilled, where
4340-453: Is not one with nature. Panentheism differentiates itself from pantheism , which holds that the divine is synonymous with the universe. In panentheism, there are two types of substance, "pan" the universe and God. The universe and the divine are not ontologically equivalent. God is viewed as the eternal animating force within the universe. In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn " transcends ", "pervades" or
4495-539: Is one substance, called Universe, God or Nature. Panentheism , a slightly different concept (explained below). Some of the most famous pantheists are the Stoics , Giordano Bruno and Spinoza . Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) "all"; ἐν (en) "in"; and θεός (theós) "God"; "all-in-God") is a belief system that posits that the divine (be it a monotheistic God , polytheistic gods , or an eternal cosmic animating force) interpenetrates every part of nature, but
4650-532: 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
4805-399: Is self-evident, Self is blissfully free, Self is eternally invulnerable, and Self is indescribable knowledge. The hymn 4.2.4 of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is one of many instances in the ancient Sanskrit text where the characters involved in philosophical debate greet each other with Namaste (नमस्ते), a practice in the culture of India . The third brahmanam of the fourth chapter discusses
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4960-479: 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,
5115-658: Is tenth in the Muktikā or "canon of 108 Upanishads". The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is estimated to have been composed about 7th–6th century BCE, excluding some parts estimated to have been composed after the Chandogya Upanishad . The Sanskrit language text is contained within the Shatapatha Brahmana , which is itself a part of the Shukla Yajur Veda . The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is
5270-557: Is the Brahma-world, O King, thus spoke Yagnavalkya." The last brahmanam of the Upanishad's second section is another Vamsa (generational line of teachers) with the names of 59 Vedic scholars who are credited to have taught the hymns of Muni Khanda from one generation to the next, before it became part of Brihadaranyaka. The fifth and sixth chapters of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad are known as Khila Khanda , which literally means "supplementary section, or appendix". Each brahmanam in
5425-584: Is the discernment of levels of truth, an emphasis on intuitive-experiential understanding of the Absolute such as jnana , bodhi and jianxing: (Chinese; 見性) , and the technology of yin and yang used within East Asian medicine with an emphasis on the integration of these levels of truth and its understanding. Vedanta is the inquiry into and systematisation of the Vedas and Upanishads, to harmonise
5580-705: Is the field where the beings act, and where their numerous actions create fruits that they separately and together experience. The Upanishad then states that everything is connected, beings affect each other, organic beings affect the inorganic nature, inorganic nature affects the organic beings, one is the "honey" (result, fruit, food) of the other, everyone and everything is mutually dependent, nourishing and nurturing each other, all stemming from one Brahman, resulting in blissful oneness. This theory appears in various early and middle Upanishads, and parallels Immanuel Kant 's doctrine of "the affinity of phenomena" built on "the synthetic unity of apperception ". The last brahmanam of
5735-426: Is the imperishable one that is invisible and concealed pervading all of reality. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad starts the second chapter as a conversation between Ajatashatru and Balaki Gargya on theory of dreams, positing that human beings see dreams entirely unto themselves because mind draws, in itself, the powers of sensory organs, which it releases in the waking state. Brihadaranyaka in brahmana 3 asserts that
5890-439: Is the lord of all, the king of all things, the protector of all things. He is a bank and a boundary, so that these worlds may not be confounded. He who knows him [Self], becomes a Muni. Wishing for that world, mendicants leave their homes. Max Müller and Paul Deussen, in their respective translations, describe the Upanishad's view of "Self" and "free, liberated state of existence" as, "[Self] is imperishable, for he cannot perish; he
6045-460: Is the most common among Hindus today. This monism, according to Flood, is at the foundation of earlier Upanishads, to theosophy in the later Vedanta tradition and in modern Neo-Hinduism. According to the Pāli Canon , both pluralism ( nānatta ) and monism ( ekatta ) are speculative views . A Theravada commentary notes that the former is similar to or associated with nihilism ( ucchēdavāda ), and
6200-589: 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
6355-416: Is these ascetic circles that are credited for major movements such as Yoga as well as the śramaṇa traditions later to be called Buddhism , Jainism and heterodox Hinduism . When one tears out the tree from its roots, the tree can grow no more, out of which root the man grows forth, when he is struck down by death? He, who is born, is not born, Who is supposed to beget him anew? (...) Brahman
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6510-583: Is unattached, for he does not attach himself; unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not fail. He is beyond good and evil, and neither what he has done, nor what he has omitted to do, affects him. (...) He therefore who knows it [reached self-realization], becomes quiet, subdued, satisfied, patient, and collected. He sees self in Self, sees all as Self. Evil does not overcome him, he overcomes all evil. Evil does not burn him, he burns all evil. Free from evil, free from spots, free from doubt, he became Atman-Brâhmana; this
6665-540: 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
6820-473: The identity thesis , a modern form of monism. Monism is also still relevant to the philosophy of mind , where various positions are defended. Different types of monism include: Views contrasting with monism are: Monism in modern philosophy of mind can be divided into three broad categories: Certain positions do not fit easily into the above categories, such as functionalism , anomalous monism , and reflexive monism . Moreover, they do not define
6975-580: 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
7130-613: 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
7285-654: The King Janaka in Mithila during the occasion of the Bahudakshina Yajna organised by the king at his court. The Bahudakshina Yajna was organised by the King Janaka to find out the greatest scholar of Vedas called as Brahmistha among the participating Brahmin scholars at the court. Paul Deussen calls the presentation of ancient scholar Yajnavalkya in this chapter "not dissimilar to that of Socrates in
7440-768: The Madhu theory , giving this section the name Madhu Khanda. The Madhu theory is one of the foundational principles of Vedanta schools of Hinduism, as well as other āstika schools of Indian philosophies. Madhu literally means "honey", or the composite fruit of numerous actions on the field of flowers. In this theory, notes Paul Deussen , the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad asserts that "Atman exists" (Self exists), that all organic beings (plants, animals, human beings and gods) are all beings are interconnected with each other and Brahman (Cosmic Self); it further asserts that inorganic nature (fire, air, earth, water, space)
7595-753: 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
7750-532: 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 ,
7905-531: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
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#17327721714168060-406: 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
8215-500: 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
8370-407: The "neti, neti" principle, which is later discussed along with the analogical equivalence between the physical features of a man and those of a tree. It highlights that the root of a man is his Self. The last hymns of chapter 3 in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad also attest to the prevalent practice of the renouncing ascetic life by the time Brihadaranyaka Upanishad was composed in Vedic age of India, and it
8525-414: 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
8680-508: The 18th century, early 19th-century founder of Chabad , Shneur Zalman of Liadi ), God is held to be immanent within creation for two interrelated reasons: The Vilna Gaon was very much against this philosophy, for he felt that it would lead to pantheism and heresy. According to some this is the main reason for the Gaon's ban on Chasidism. Christians maintain that God created the universe ex nihilo and not from his own substance, so that
8835-440: The 6th and 7th chapter of 14th kānda of Satapatha Brahmana) and Khila kānda (the 8th and 9th chapter of the fourteenth kānda of Satapatha Brahmana). The first and second chapters of the Upanishad's Madhu kānda consists of six brahmanas each, with varying number of hymns per brahmana. The first chapter of the Upanishad's Yajnavalkya kānda consists of nine brahmanams, while the second has six brahmanas. The Khila kānda of
8990-532: 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
9145-425: 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
9300-532: 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
9455-521: 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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#17327721714169610-476: 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
9765-519: 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
9920-532: 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
10075-496: 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
10230-499: 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
10385-488: The Self, the Self of one's own and one's beloved. All love is for the sake of one's Self, and the Oneness one realizes in the Self of the beloved. He then asserts that this knowledge of the Self, the Self, and Brahman is what makes one immortal, and the connection is also immortal. All longing is the longing for the Self, as the Self represents the true, the immortal, the real, and infinite bliss. The fifth brahmana introduces
10540-638: 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
10695-410: The Upanishad has fifteen brahmanas in its first chapter, and five brahmanas in the second chapter. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad starts by stating one of many Vedic theories of creation of the universe. It asserts that there was nothing before the universe began. Then, Prajapati created the universe from this nothingness as a sacrifice to himself, imbuing it with Prana (life force) to preserve it in
10850-467: The Upanishad's first section is a Vamsa (generational line of teachers) with the names of 57 Vedic scholars who are credited to have taught the Madhu Khanda from one generation to the next. The third chapter is a metaphysical dialogue between ten ancient sages, on the nature of Reality (Brahman), Atman (individual self), and Mukti (liberation). This metaphysical dialogue was held at the court of
11005-447: 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
11160-451: 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
11315-487: The West's view of Hinduism." Central to his philosophy is the idea that the divine exists in all beings, that all human beings can achieve union with this "innate divinity", and that seeing this divine as the essence of others will further love and social harmony. According to Vivekananda, there is an essential unity to Hinduism, which underlies the diversity of its many forms. According to Flood, Vivekananda's view of Hinduism
11470-413: The afterlife, etc. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka contains various passages which discuss the beginning of the universe and its creation. A key figure in this process is the deity Prajapati , who creates the world through liturgical recitation, priestly sacrifice , dividing up his own body, copulation, giving birth to various devas and demons. The verse 1.4.1 on the creation states: "in the beginning this world
11625-459: 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
11780-684: The attempt was made to eliminate the dichotomy of body and mind and explain all phenomena by one unifying principle, or as manifestations of a single substance. The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain . The problem was addressed by René Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism , and by pre- Aristotelian philosophers, in Avicennian philosophy , and in earlier Asian and more specifically Indian traditions. It
11935-572: The basis of moral absolutism , and rejected the dualistic notion that God and Satan are opposites, arguing instead that God has no equal, hence no opposite. Lewis rather viewed Satan as the opposite of Michael the archangel . Due to this, Lewis instead argued for a more limited type of dualism. Other theologians, such as Greg Boyd , have argued in more depth that the Biblical authors held a "limited dualism", meaning that God and Satan do engage in real battle, but only due to free will given by God, for
12090-478: The beginning of the journey toward profound knowledge and understanding the Self of all things, where freedom from frustration and sorrow is found. In the sixth and eighth brahmana, focus is on the concept of the imperishable ( akshara ). In these brahmanas, Gargi Vachaknavi and Yajñavalka engage in philosophical inquiries and debates, exploring the ultimate truth and the imperishable nature of reality. The discussions explore deep philosophical ideas, highlighting
12245-452: The belief that the creator of the universe actually became the universe, and so ceased to exist as a separate entity. Through this synergy pandeism claims to answer primary objections to deism (why would God create and then not interact with the universe?) and to pantheism (how did the universe originate and what is its purpose?). The central problem in Asian (religious) philosophy is not
12400-515: The body-mind problem, but the search for an unchanging Real or Absolute beyond the world of appearances and changing phenomena, and the search for liberation from dukkha and the liberation from the cycle of rebirth . In Hinduism, substance-ontology prevails, seeing Brahman as the unchanging real beyond the world of appearances . In Buddhism, process ontology is prevalent, seeing reality as empty of an unchanging essence. Characteristic for various Asian philosophy, technology and religions
12555-440: 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
12710-527: 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
12865-450: The concept of Absolute Monism. Sikh philosophy advocates that all that our senses comprehend is an illusion; God is the ultimate reality. Forms being subject to time shall pass away. God's Reality alone is eternal and abiding. The thought is that Atma (soul) is born from, and a reflection of, ParamAtma (Supreme Soul), and "will again merge into it", in the words of the fifth guru of Sikhs, Guru Arjan , "just as water merges back into
13020-614: 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
13175-687: The creator is not to be confused with creation, but rather transcends it. There is a movement of " Christian Panentheism ". In On Free Choice of the Will , Augustine argued, in the context of the problem of evil , that evil is not the opposite of good, but rather merely the absence of good, something that does not have existence in itself. Likewise, C. S. Lewis described evil as a "parasite" in Mere Christianity , as he viewed evil as something that cannot exist without good to provide it with existence. Lewis went on to argue against dualism from
13330-653: 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
13485-467: 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
13640-501: The dialogues of Plato". Among other things, the chapter presents the theory of perceived empirical knowledge using the concepts of graha (sensory action) and atigraha (sense). It lists 8 combinations of graha and atigraha: breath and smell, speech and name (ideas), tongue and taste, eye and form, ear and sound, skin and touch, mind and desire, arms and work respectively. The sages debate the nature of death and whether any graha and atigraha prevails after one dies. After ruling out six of
13795-471: 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
13950-460: 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
14105-467: The duration that God allows. Latter Day Saint theology also expresses a form of dual-aspect monism via materialism and eternalism , claiming that creation was ex materia (as opposed to ex nihilo in conventional Christianity), as expressed by Parley Pratt and echoed in view by the movement's founder Joseph Smith , making no distinction between the spiritual and the material, these being not just similarly eternal, but ultimately two manifestations of
14260-490: 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
14415-424: The emergence of analytic philosophy in the early twentieth century, which revolted against the neo-Hegelians. Rudolf Carnap and A. J. Ayer , who were strong proponents of positivism , "ridiculed the whole question as incoherent mysticism ". The mind–body problem has reemerged in social psychology and related fields, with the interest in mind–body interaction and the rejection of Cartesian mind–body dualism in
14570-572: The error of dichotomizing conceptualization, as Nagarjuna does, is not to address the question of the relationship between samsara and nirvana -or, in more philosophical terms, between phenomenal and ultimate reality [...] What, then, is the relationship between these two realms? This question is answered in such schemata as the Five Ranks of Tozan , the Oxherding Pictures , and Hakuin's Four ways of knowing . Sikhism complies with
14725-548: 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
14880-438: The form of cosmic inert matter and individual psychic energy. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad asserts that the world is more than just matter and energy; it is also constituted by Atman or Brahman (Self, Consciousness, Invisible Principles, and Reality) as well as Knowledge. The Brahmana 4 in the first chapter announces the non-dual monistic metaphysical premise that Atman and Brahman are identical Oneness. It asserts that because
15035-412: 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
15190-400: The fourth chapter, the Upanishad states that the Self manifests in human life in six forms: Prajna (consciousness), Priyam (love and the will to live), Satyam (reverence for truth, reality), Ananta (endlessness, curiosity for the eternal), Ananda (bliss, contentness), and Sthiti (the state of enduring steadfastness, calm perseverance). In the second brahmanam, the Upanishad explores
15345-537: 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
15500-412: The good nor the bad follows him, for he has now passed beyond all sorrows of the heart. (...) So did Yajnavalkya instruct him. "This is his highest goal! This is his highest attainment! This is his highest world! This is his highest bliss! On just a fraction of this bliss do other creatures live. The fourth brahmanam continues to build the thematic description of Atman-Brahman (Self) and
15655-431: 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
15810-609: The human mind can perceive and construct its own reality. Mind is a means, prone to flaws. It emphasizes the struggle to realize the true, unknowable nature of Atman-Brahman, described as "neti, neti" (not this, not this), beyond qualities or characteristics. In the fourth brahmana of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi engage in a dialogue about love and spirituality. Yajnavalkya states that one doesn't connect with and love forms, nor does one connect or love mind, rather one connects with
15965-425: The importance of seeking spiritual wisdom and the quest to understand the timeless, unchanging reality that transcends the material world. The seventh brahmana explores the interconnectedness of the Self with all of existence, emphasizing its role as the inner controller, often without the knowledge of beings. It asserts that the Self is the true essence. The ninth brahmana, the longest in the third chapter, introduces
16120-486: 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
16275-432: 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
16430-462: The latter is similar to or associated with eternalism ( sassatavada ). Within Buddhism, a rich variety of philosophical and pedagogical models can be found. Various schools of Buddhism discern levels of truth: The Prajnaparamita-sutras and Madhyamaka emphasize the non-duality of form and emptiness: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form", as the heart sutra says. In Chinese Buddhism this
16585-458: The likely evolution of ideas, and on presumptions about which philosophy might have influenced which other Indian philosophies. Patrick Olivelle states, "in spite of claims made by some, in reality, any dating of these documents (early Upanishads) that attempts a precision closer than a few centuries is as stable as a house of cards". The chronology and authorship of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , along with Chandogya and Kaushitaki Upanishads ,
16740-412: 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
16895-514: 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 ,
17050-456: The meaning of "real". While the lack of information makes it difficult in some cases to be sure of the details, the following pre-Socratic philosophers thought in monistic terms: Pantheism is the belief that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God, or that the universe (or nature ) is identical with divinity . Pantheists thus do or do not believe in a personal or anthropomorphic god, but believe that interpretations of
17205-511: 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
17360-429: 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
17515-401: 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
17670-602: 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
17825-597: 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,
17980-403: 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
18135-431: 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
18290-414: 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
18445-403: The premises of moksha (liberation, freedom, emancipation, self-realization), and provides some of the most studied hymns of Brihadaranyaka. Paul Deussen calls it, "unique in its richness and warmth of presentation", with profoundness that retains its full worth in modern times. It translates as follows, But when he appearing to be a god or a king, thinks 'I alone am this world! I am all!' — that
18600-439: 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
18755-480: 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
18910-545: The question, "what happens to Self after one dies?", and provides the root of two themes that play a central role in later schools of Hinduism: first, the concept of Self as individual Selves (dualism), and second, the concept of Self being One and Eternal, neither coming nor going anywhere, because it is everywhere and in everyone in Oneness (non-dualism). This chapter discusses the widely cited "neti, neti" (नेति नेति, "not this, not this") principle on one's journey to understanding Self. The second brahmanam concludes that Self exists
19065-609: 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
19220-497: 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,
19375-562: 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
19530-517: The same reality or substance. Parley Pratt implies a vitalism paired with evolutionary adaptation noting, "these eternal, self-existing elements possess in themselves certain inherent properties or attributes, in a greater or less degree; or, in other words, they possess intelligence, adapted to their several spheres." Parley Pratt's view is also similar to Gottfried Leibniz's monadology , which holds that "reality consists of mind atoms that are living centers of force." Brigham Young anticipates
19685-496: 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
19840-404: The self is the only desire, and which is free from desires and far from sorrows. Here a father is not a father, a mother is not a mother, worlds are not worlds, gods are not gods, and Vedas are not Vedas. Here a thief is not a thief, an murderer is not an murderer, an outsider is not an outsider, a pariah is not a pariah, a recluse is not a recluse, and an ascetic is not an ascetic. Neither
19995-556: 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
20150-423: The sense of deism ) is a term describing beliefs coherently incorporating or mixing logically reconcilable elements of pantheism (that "God", or a metaphysically equivalent creator deity , is identical to Nature ) and classical deism (that the creator-god who designed the universe no longer exists in a status where it can be reached, and can instead be confirmed only by reason). It is therefore most particularly
20305-539: The sensory actions, they assert that one's ideas (name) and one's actions and work (karma) continue to have an impact on the universe even after one's physical death. The fourth brahmana of the third chapter asserts, "it is your Self which is inside all", all Selfs are one, immanent and transcendent. The fifth brahmana states that profound knowledge requires one to give up showing off one's erudition, then to adopt childlike curiosity and simplicity, followed by becoming silent, meditating, and being observant ( muni ). This marks
20460-615: 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
20615-510: The state of self-realization as achieved. Yajnavalkya declares that knowledge is Self, knowledge is freedom, knowledge powers inner peace. In hymn 4.4.22, the Upanishad states: He is that great unborn Self, who consists of Knowledge, is surrounded by the Prânas (life-force), the ether within the heart. In it [Self] there reposes the ruler of all, the lord of all, the king of all. He does not become greater by good works, nor smaller by evil works. He
20770-410: The supplement is small except the fourteenth. This section, suggests Paul Deussen, was likely written later to clarify and add ideas considered important in that later age. Some brahmanams in the last section of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad , such as the second and third brahmanam in fifth chapter, append ethical theories, while fourth brahmanam in the fifth chapter asserts that "empirical reality and truth
20925-426: The term monism is derived from Western philosophy to typify positions in the mind–body problem , it has also been used to typify religious traditions. In modern Hinduism, the term "absolute monism" has been applied to Advaita Vedanta , though Philip Renard points out that this may be a Western interpretation, bypassing the intuitive understanding of a nondual reality. It is more generally categorized by scholars as
21080-428: The term differ. Pantheism was popularized in the modern era as both a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza , whose Ethics was an answer to Descartes ' famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate. Spinoza held that the two are the same, and this monism is a fundamental quality of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used
21235-653: 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
21390-467: The universe came out of nothingness when the only principle existent was "I am he", the universe, after coming into existence, continues as Aham brahma asmi (I am Brahman). In the last brahmana of the first chapter, the Upanishad explains that the Atman (Self) inspires by being self-evident (name identity), through empowering forms, and through action (work of a living being). The Self, states Brihadaranyaka,
21545-408: 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
21700-532: The various and contrasting ideas that can be found in those texts. Within Vedanta, different schools exist: The colonisation of India by the British had a major impact on Hindu society. In response, leading Hindu intellectuals started to study western culture and philosophy, integrating several western notions into Hinduism. This modernised Hinduism, at its turn, has gained popularity in the west. A major role
21855-564: 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
22010-737: The water." God and Soul are fundamentally the same; identical in the same way as Fire and its sparks. "Atam meh Ram, Ram meh Atam" which means "The Ultimate Eternal reality resides in the Soul and the Soul is contained in Him". As from one stream, millions of waves arise and yet the waves, made of water, again become water; in the same way all souls have sprung from the Universal Being and would blend again into it. Jewish thought considers God as separate from all physical, created things and as existing outside of time. According to Maimonides , God
22165-456: The word God to describe the unity of all substance. Although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate. H. P. Owen claimed that Pantheists are "monists" ... they believe that there is only one Being, and that all other forms of reality are either modes (or appearances) of it or identical with it. Pantheism is closely related to monism, as pantheists too believe all of reality
22320-428: The world as "One", which could not change in any way. Zeno of Elea defended this view of everything being a single entity through his paradoxes, which aim to show the existence of time, motion and space to be illusionary. Baruch Spinoza argued that 'God or Nature' ( Deus sive Natura ) is the only substance of the universe, which can be referred to as either ' God ' or ' Nature ' (the two being interchangeable). This
22475-502: 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
22630-408: 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
22785-427: 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
22940-472: 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
23095-686: 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
23250-429: Was in all likelihood composed in the earlier part of 1st millennium BCE, in the 7th–6th century BCE, give or take a century or so, according to Patrick Olivelle.The text was likely a living document and some verses were edited over some time before the 6th century BCE. Brihadaranyaka literally means "great wilderness or forest". The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is credited to ancient sage Yajnavalkya , but likely refined by
23405-459: Was just a single body (atman) shaped like a man. He looked around and saw nothing but himself." The Bṛhadāraṇyaka goes on to state that this single body became afraid and wanted to have a companion, so he split his body into two, made a wife and copulated with her to create all living beings. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad teaches the theory of atman (the Self), which is the eternal inner reality in
23560-428: Was later also applied to the theory of absolute identity set forth by Hegel and Schelling . Thereafter the term was more broadly used, for any theory postulating a unifying principle. The opponent thesis of dualism also was broadened, to include pluralism. According to Urmson, as a result of this extended use, the term is "systematically ambiguous". According to Jonathan Schaffer , monism lost popularity due to
23715-492: Was played in the 19th century by Swami Vivekananda in the revival of Hinduism , and the spread of Advaita Vedanta to the west via the Ramakrishna Mission . His interpretation of Advaita Vedanta has been called Neo-Vedanta . In Advaita, Shankara suggests meditation and Nirvikalpa Samadhi are means to gain knowledge of the already existing unity of Brahman and Atman , not the highest goal itself: [Y]oga
23870-476: Was understood to mean that ultimate reality is not a transcendental realm, but equal to the daily world of relative reality. This idea was well-situated for the existing Chinese culture, which emphasized the mundane world and society. But this does not tell how the absolute is present in the relative world: To deny the duality of samsara and nirvana, as the Perfection of Wisdom does, or to demonstrate logically
24025-442: 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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