159-534: The Devi Bhagavata Purana ( Sanskrit : देवी भागवतपुराणम् , devī bhāgavatapurāṇam ), also known as the Devi Purana or simply Devi Bhagavatam , is one of the eighteen Mahapuranas as per Shiva Purana of Hinduism . Composed in Sanskrit by Veda Vyasa , the text is considered a major purana for Devi worshippers ( Shaktas ). It promotes bhakti (devotion) towards Mahadevi , integrating themes from
318-482: A personal God (like Krishna or Devi ), a formless ultimate reality (like Nirguna Brahman or the Sikh God ) or for an enlightened being (like a Buddha , a bodhisattva , or a guru ). Bhakti is often a deeply emotional devotion based on a relationship between a devotee and the object of devotion. One of the earliest appearances of the term is found in the early Buddhist Theragatha ( Verses of
477-556: A Buddhist. Also, bhakti is clearly connected with a person as an object, whereas śraddhā is less connected with a person, and is more connected with truthfulness and truth. Śraddhā focuses on ideas such as the working of karma and merit transfer . One source for Indian Buddhist devotion is the Divyāvadāna , which focuses on the vast amount of merit ( puṇya ) that is generated by making offerings to Buddhas, stupas and other Buddhist holy sites . This text contrasts faith in
636-566: A central virtue and liberally made use of Buddha images, which are often accompanied by attendant bodhisattvas. These new developments in Buddhist bhakti may have been influenced by the pan-Indian bhakti movement , and indeed, many Gupta monarchs, who were devoted to the Vaishnava Bhagavata religion also supported Buddhist temples and founded monasteries (including great ones like Nalanda ). Buddhists were in competition with
795-548: A claim apparently common during his day, thus making it clear that Devi Bhagavata is posterior to the Bhagavata Purana and prior to Sridhara, who lived about A.D. 1400. Winternitz mentions that there are three polemic treatises discussing whether Devi Bhagavata should instead be considered a Mahapurana. Hazra mentions that there is a band of scholars, both European and Indian, who hold that the Devi Bhagavata
954-589: 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." Bhakti Traditional Bhakti ( Sanskrit : भक्ति ; Pali : bhatti ) is a term common in Indian religions which means attachment, fondness for, devotion to, trust, homage, worship, piety, faith, or love. In Indian religions, it may refer to loving devotion for
1113-405: A devotee takes according to his individual temperament to express his devotion towards God in some form. The different bhāvas are: Several saints are known to have practiced these bhavas . The nineteenth century mystic, Ramakrishna is said to have practiced these five bhavas . The attitude of Hanuman towards the god Rama is considered to be of dasya bhava . The approach of Arjuna and
1272-433: 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
1431-551: A form of mysticism or "primitive" religious devotion of lay people with monotheistic parallels. However, modern scholars state "devotion" is a misleading and incomplete translation of bhakti . Many contemporary scholars have questioned this terminology, and most now trace the term bhakti as one of the several spiritual perspectives that emerged from reflections on the Vedic context and Hindu way of life. Bhakti in Indian religions
1590-589: A historical shift in meaning. Similar developments in Buddhist devotion took place with regards to worshipping the Buddha's relics and Buddha images . In later faith-oriented literature, such as the Avadānas , faith is given an important role in Buddhist doctrine. Nevertheless, faith ( śraddhā ) is discussed in different contexts than devotion ( bhakti ). Bhakti is often used disparagingly to describe acts of worship to deities, often seen as ineffective and improper for
1749-538: 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
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#17327726230371908-658: 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
2067-561: A movement , pioneered by the Tamil Alvars and Nayanars , that developed around the gods Vishnu ( Vaishnavism ), Shiva ( Shaivism ) and Devi ( Shaktism ) in the second half of the 1st millennium CE. Devotional elements similar to bhakti have been part of various world religions throughout human history. Devotional practices are found in Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. The Sanskrit word bhakti
2226-513: A murti, establishing prana (life force) into the image and inviting the god or goddess to reside in the murti. Bhakti ( bhatti in Pali ) has always been a common aspect of Buddhism , where offerings, prostrations, chants, and individual or group prayers are made to the Buddha and bodhisattvas , or to other Buddhist deities . According to Karel Werner Buddhist bhakti "had its beginnings in
2385-454: 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
2544-479: 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
2703-546: 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
2862-579: A personal God, or for spirituality without form ( nirguna ). According to the Sri Lankan Buddhist scholar Sanath Nanayakkara, there is no single term in English that adequately translates or represents the concept of bhakti in Indian religions. Terms such as "devotion, faith, devotional faith" represent certain aspects of bhakti , but it means much more. The concept includes a sense of deep affection, attachment, but not wish because "wish
3021-578: 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
3180-486: 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
3339-537: A scholar on Theravāda in Myanmar , "warm, personalized, emotional" bhakti has been a part of the Burmese Buddhist tradition apart from the monastic and lay intellectuals. The Buddha is treasured by the everyday devout Buddhists, just like Catholics treasure Jesus . The orthodox teachers tend to restrain the devotion to the Buddha, but to the devout Buddhist populace, "a very deeply devotional quality"
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#17327726230373498-439: 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
3657-529: A term for one of three possible religious approaches or yogas (i.e. bhakti yoga ). The Bhagavata Purana (which focuses on Krishna bhakti) develops the idea more elaborately, while the Shvetashvatara Upanishad presents evidence of guru-bhakti (devotion to one's spiritual teacher). The Bhakti Movement was a rapid growth of bhakti, first starting in the later part of 1st millennium CE, from Tamil Nadu in southern India with
3816-464: 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
3975-461: Is an important term in Sikhism and Hinduism. They both share numerous concepts and core spiritual ideas, but bhakti of nirguni (devotion to divine without attributes) is particularly significant in Sikhism. In Hinduism, diverse ideas continue, where both saguni and nirguni bhakti (devotion to divine with or without attributes) or alternate paths to spirituality are among the options left to
4134-448: Is called Devi Gita . This text may have been composed with the original text, or it might be a later interpolation, according to C Mackenzie Brown. He suggests that this portion of the text was probably composed by the 13th century; it may be later, but was set down before the 16th century. The ninth canto contains many verses that reference Mlecchas (barbarians) and Yavanas (foreigners). These words may just refer to hill tribes, but
4293-466: Is called in itself, Bhagavata or Srimad Bhagavata confirms to the definitions of Bhagavata contained in other Puranas including Matsya Purana. From J. L. Shastri's translation: Where the stories of the goddess Durga are mentioned, it is said to be Bhagavata Purana as well as Devi Purana. As mentioned in the Matsya Purana , the Bhagavata Purana is contain 18,000 slokas and begins with
4452-777: Is classified as a Mahapurana. Puri states that in the Devi Bhagavata Purana it is entitled as the Bhagavata Mahapurana and the Vaishnava Bhagavata as an upapurana. Sanyal states that in the Saura Purana and the revakhanda of Skanda Purana , the Bhagavata Purana is mentioned as being divided into two parts. He further points out that the Vaishnava Bhagavata Purana is not so divided and that the Devi Bhagavata Purana
4611-498: Is derived from the verb root bhaj- , which means "to worship, have recourse to, betake onself to" or bhañj-, which means "to break." The word also means "attachment, devotion to, fondness for, homage, faith or love, worship, piety to something as a spiritual, religious principle or means of salvation". The meaning of the term Bhakti is analogous to but different from Kama . Kama connotes emotional connection, sometimes with sensual devotion and erotic love. Bhakti, in contrast,
4770-572: Is divided into two parts of six chapters each, so it may be the Devi Bhagavata Purana. Wilson states that It is acceptable to include the Bhagavata among the eighteen Puranas, but it is said that it can only be the Devi Bhagavata as the circumstances apply more precisely than the Vaishnava Bhagavata. As a Sattvic Shakta Purana the Srimad Devi Bhagavatam has five characteristics. From Swami Vijnanananda translation: Thus,
4929-532: Is enlightened knowledge. The text presents the feminine to whom all masculine deities are subordinate and dependent on. Its also include Indra killing of Vritra . Consisting of 40 chapters, The seventh canto of the Srimad Devi-Bhagavatam shifts towards more philosophy, asserting its version of the essence of the Vedas. This book contains the philosophical text called Devi Gita , or the "Song of
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5088-523: Is eternal Consisting of 12 chapters, this canto is short and historical. It weaves in the characters well known in the Hindu epic Mahabharata , states Rocher, and introduces in the key characters that appear in remaining books of the Devi-Bhagavata Purana . It also includes: Consisting of 30 chapters, this canto mentions the glory of Devi Bhuvaneshvari and her worship, at the beginning of
5247-452: 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
5406-461: Is not a ritualistic devotion to a God or to religion, but participation in a path that includes behavior, ethics, mores and spirituality. It involves, among other things, refining one's state of mind, knowing God, participating in God, and internalizing God. Increasingly, instead of "devotion", the term "participation" is appearing in scholarly literature as a gloss for the term bhakti . Bhakti
5565-496: Is one of the earliest use of the word Bhakti in ancient Indian literature, and has been translated as "the love of God". Scholars have debated whether this phrase is authentic or later insertion into the Upanishad, and whether the terms "Bhakti" and "Deva" meant the same in this ancient text as they do in the modern era. Max Muller states that the word Bhakti appears only once in this Upanishad, that too in one last verse of
5724-532: 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
5883-853: Is selfish, affection is unselfish". Some scholars, states Nanayakkara, associate it with saddha (Sanskrit: Sraddha ) which means "faith, trust or confidence". However, bhakti can connote an end in itself, or a path to spiritual wisdom. The term Bhakti refers to one of several alternate spiritual paths to moksha (spiritual freedom, liberation, salvation) in Hinduism, and it is referred to as bhakti marga or bhakti yoga . The other paths are Jnana marga (path of knowledge), Karma marga (path of works), Rāja marga (path of contemplation and meditation). The term bhakti has been usually translated as "devotion" in Orientalist literature. The colonial era authors variously described Bhakti as
6042-458: Is spiritual, a love and devotion to religious concepts or principles, that engages both emotion and intellection. Karen Pechelis states that the word Bhakti should not be understood as uncritical emotion, but as committed engagement. She adds that, in the concept of bhakti in Hinduism, the engagement involves a simultaneous tension between emotion and intellection, "emotion to reaffirm the social context and temporal freedom, intellection to ground
6201-479: 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,
6360-589: 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
6519-524: Is the real Bhagavata and that the Vaishnava Bhagavata is a spurious work, which he views their opinion as untenable and elaborates on eleven reasons why in his book. Vishnulok Bihari Srivastava states that in Sanskrit literature, both Srimad Bhagavatam and Devi Bhagavatam are accepted as Mahapuranas, while the Vayu Purana , Matsya Purana and Aditya Upa Purana accept Devi Bhagavatam as a Mahapurana. Vanamali, in her book "Shakti", states that Devi Bhagavatam
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6678-420: Is the relationship of the intimate love. In bhakti worship, rituals are primarily directed towards physical images. The terms " murti " and " vigraham " are commonly used in Hinduism to describe these images. A murti denotes an object with a distinct form that symbolizes the shape or manifestation of a particular deity, either a god or goddess. A ritual called pranapratishta is performed before worshipping
6837-540: 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
6996-491: The Theragāthā , bhatti had the meaning of 'faithful adherence to the [Buddhist] religion', and was accompanied with knowledge. Later on, however, the term developed the meaning of an advanced form of emotional devotion. This sense of devotion was thus different than the early Buddhist view of faith . According to Sanath Nanayakkara, early Buddhist refuge and devotion, meant taking the Buddha as an ideal to live by, rather than
7155-535: The Bhagavad Gita offered an alternative to two dominant practices of religion at the time: the isolation of the sannyasin and the practice of religious ritual. Bhakti Yoga is described by Swami Vivekananda as "the path of systematized devotion for the attainment of union with the Absolute". In various chapters, including the twelfth chapter of the Bhagavad Gita , Krishna describes bhakti yoga as one of
7314-457: The Bhakti movement were ever a social reform or rebellion of any kind. They suggest Bhakti movement was a revival, reworking and recontextualization of ancient Vedic traditions. The Bhagavad Gita introduces bhakti yoga in combination with karma yoga and jnana yoga , while the Bhagavata Purana expands on bhakti yoga, offering nine specific activities for the bhakti yogi. Bhakti in
7473-580: 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
7632-672: 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
7791-613: 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
7950-631: The Krishna Yajurveda . The Alvars and Nayanars were instrumental in propagating the Bhakti tradition. The Bhagavata Purana 's references to the South Indian Alvar saints, along with its emphasis on bhakti , have led many scholars to give it South Indian origins, though some scholars question whether this evidence excludes the possibility that bhakti movement had parallel developments in other parts of India. Scholars state that
8109-539: The Mahabharata . However, this Purana's legends refocus the legends around the divine feminine, integrate a devotional theme to goddesses, and the Devi is asserted in this text to be the eternal truth, the eternal source of all of universe, the eternal end of everything, the nirguna (without form) and the saguna (with form), the supreme unchanging reality (Purusha), the phenomenal changing reality (Prakriti), as well as
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#17327726230378268-701: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
8427-532: 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 ,
8586-531: 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
8745-735: The Shaiva Nayanar poets were influential. The Tirumurai , a compilation of hymns by sixty-three Nayanar poets, is still of great importance in South India. Hymns by three of the most prominent poets, Appar (7th century CE), Campantar (7th century) and Sundarar (9th century), were compiled into the Tevaram , the first volumes of the Tirumurai . The poets' itinerant lifestyle helped create temple and pilgrimage sites and spread devotion to Shiva. Early Tamil-Shiva bhakti poets quoted
8904-498: The bhakti movement focused on Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti and other deities, that developed and spread in India, was in response to the arrival of Islam in India about 8th century CE, and subsequent religious violence . This view is contested by other scholars. The Bhakti movement swept over east and north India from the fifteenth-century onwards, reaching its zenith between the 15th and 17th century CE. According to Patton Burchett,
9063-493: The gopis . The behavior of the gopis in the Bhagavata Purana exemplifies the essence of bhakti. When separated from Krishna, the gopis practiced devotion by listening to his stories ( śravaṇa ), praising his glorious deeds ( kīrtana ), and other acts to keep him in their thoughts. Traditional Hinduism speaks of five different bhāvas or " affective essences". In this sense, bhāvas are different attitudes that
9222-406: 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
9381-500: 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
9540-414: 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
9699-532: 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
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#17327726230379858-504: The 9th book of the Devi Bhagavata Purana , with Vishnu's names substituted with Devi's names (incarnations). It also mentioned Krishna as the male form of goddess. Sanskrit language 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
10017-483: The Bhakti movement in Hinduism. Bhakti is also found in other religions practiced in India, and it has influenced interactions between Christianity and Hinduism in the modern era. Nirguni bhakti (devotion to the divine without attributes) is found in Sikhism , as well as Hinduism. Outside India, emotional devotion is found in some Southeast Asian and East Asian Buddhist traditions. The term also refers to
10176-480: The Buddha with bhakti for mundane deities (such as Hindu gods), and in this case, it sees bhakti as something for those who are less developed spiritually. However, in other passages, the term is used positively, and in one story, the sage Upagupta says to the demon Mara : Even a very small bit of bhakti [toward the Buddha] offers nirvana to the wise as a result. In short, the wicked things that you [Māra] did here to
10335-425: 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
10494-462: The Divine in which caste, class, or gender typically were said to have no place. This was a bhakti that found its most characteristic expression in (a) the context of spiritual fellowship ( satsaṅg ) with other devotees (bhaktas), (b) the medium of song, (c) the idiom of passionate love (śṛṅgāra/mādhurya) or painful separation (viraha), and (d) the remembrance—in meditation, recitation, chant, and song—of
10653-532: 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
10812-521: 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
10971-548: The Elders ). In ancient texts such as the Shvetashvatara Upanishad , the term simply means participation, devotion and love for any endeavor, while in the Bhagavad Gita , it connotes one of the possible paths of spirituality and towards moksha , as in bhakti marga . Bhakti ideas have inspired many popular texts and saint-poets in India. The Bhagavata Purana , for example, is a Krishna -related text associated with
11130-756: The Gayatri and glorifies the Sarasvata Kalpa. Vyasa mentions in Devi Bhagavatam that it was composed in Sarasvata Kalpa. Farquhar mentions that devotees of Devi accept this Purana as the original Bhagavata Purana, the fifth among all the Puranas, and the Vishnu Bhagavata Purana is believed to have been composed by Vopadeva around A.D. 1300. He points out that Sridhara remarks on this claim in his (Vishnu) Bhagavata Purana commentary,
11289-848: The Goddess". The Goddess explains she is the Brahman that created the world, asserting the Advaita premise that spiritual liberation occurs when one fully comprehends the identity of one's soul and the Brahman. This knowledge, asserts the Goddess, comes from detaching self from the world and meditating on one's own soul.Chapter 28 of the seventh book contain the story of Durgamasur and his annihilation by goddess Sivaa (Parvati) in her form of Shakambhari . This canto, states Rocher, also includes sections on festivals related to Devi, pilgrimage information and ways to remember her. Her relationship with Shiva and
11448-476: 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
11607-519: 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
11766-580: The Mahatma Veda Vyasa has divided this Bhagavata Purana into so many Skandhas and into so many chapters; and that the number of verses is eighteen thousand is already stated. That is denominated as Purana which contains the following five characteristics: (1) Sarga (creation of the universe), (2) Pratisarga (secondary creation), (3) Vamsa (dynasties), (4) Manvantaras, (5) Vamsa nuchararita (the description of Manus and other kings). Srimad Devi Bhagavatam consists of 12 cantos with 318 chapters. Although
11925-532: 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
12084-496: 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
12243-657: The Sage, when your mind was blind with delusion, all of these have been washed away by the copious waters of śraddhā that have entered your heart. - Divyāvadāna 360.1–4 [ Aśokāvadana 22.7-9] In the 11th century, the Bengali Buddhist scholar Rāmancandra Kavibhārati composed a work on Buddhist bhakti called the Bhakti Śataka. Today, affective devotion remains an important part of Buddhist practice, even in Theravada Buddhism. According to Winston King,
12402-499: 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
12561-584: The Shaiva Nayanars and the Vaishnava Alvars . Their ideas and practices inspired bhakti poetry and devotion throughout India over the 12th-18th century CE. The Alvars ("those immersed in God") were Vaishnava poet-saints who wandered from temple to temple, singing the praises of Vishnu. They hailed the divine abodes of Vishnu and converted many people to Vaishnavism . Like the Alvars,
12720-675: The Shaktadvaitavada tradition (a syncretism of Samkhya and Advaita Vedanta ). While this is generally regarded as a Shakta Purana, some scholars such as Dowson have also interpreted this Purana as a Shaiva Purana. The Purana consists of twelve cantos with 318 chapters. Along with the Devi Mahatmya , it is one of the most important works in Shaktism, a tradition within Hinduism that reveres Devi or Shakti (Goddess) as
12879-578: 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
13038-495: The Srimad Devi Bhagavatam The theosophy in the text, state Foulston and Abbott, is an encyclopedic mix of ancient history, metaphysics and bhakti . This history, states C Mackenzie Brown, is of the same type found in other Puranas, about the perpetual cycle of conflict between the good and the evil, the gods and the demons. These legends build upon and extend the ancient Hindu history, such as those found in
13197-447: 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
13356-451: 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
13515-407: 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
13674-411: The birth of Skanda is also briefly mentioned in the 7th book. The last ten chapters (31 to 40) of the canto 7 is the famous and philosophical Devi Gita , which often circulates in the Hindu tradition as a separate text. Consisting of 24 chapters, The eighth book of the Devi-Bhagavata Purana incorporates one of the five requirements of Puranic-genre of Hindu texts, that is a theory of the geography of
13833-477: The blessed Devi". Johnson states the meaning as the "ancient annals of the luminous goddess". The Srimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana has been variously dated. A few scholars suggest an early date, such as Ramachandran, who suggested that the text was composed before the 6th-century CE. However, this early date has not found wide support, and most scholars date it between the 9th and the 14th century. Rajendra Hazra suggests 11th or 12th century, while Lalye states that
13992-399: The canto mentions the glory of Devi (Devi Mahatmya), fight between Durga and Mahishasura , killing of Sumbha and Nisumbha and other demons. Consisting of 31 chapters, The sixth book continue these legends, states Rocher, with half of the chapters focussed on the greatness of Goddess, how male gods are befuddled by problems, how they run to her for help, and how she solves them because she
14151-440: 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
14310-537: The choice of a Hindu. The last of three epilogue verses of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad (6.23), dated to be from 1st millennium BCE, uses the word Bhakti as follows: yasya deve parā bhaktiḥ yathā deve tathā gurau । tasyaite kathitā hyarthāḥ prakāśante mahātmanaḥ He who has highest Bhakti of Deva (God), just like his Deva , so for his Guru (teacher), To him who is high-minded, these teachings will be illuminating. This verse
14469-527: 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
14628-468: The closing credit to sage Shvetashvatara in verse 6.21 can mean "gift or grace of his Soul". Scholarly consensus sees bhakti as a post-Vedic movement that developed primarily during the Hindu Epics and Puranas era of Indian history (late first mill. BCE-early first mill. CE). The Bhagavad Gita is the first text to explicitly use the word "bhakti" to designate a religious path, using it as
14787-614: 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
14946-404: The cowherd boys of Vrindavan with the god Krishna is regarded as sakhya bhava . Radha 's love towards Krishna is madhurya bhava . The attitude of Krishna's foster-mother Yashoda towards him exemplifies vatsalya bhava . The Chaitanya Charitamrita mentions that Chaitanya came to distribute the four spiritual sentiments of Vraja loka: dasya, sakhya, vatsalya, and sringara . Sringara
15105-653: 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
15264-467: 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
15423-405: The details contained in the description of Mlecchas within these verses, according to some scholars like Hazra, suggest that the writer of these parts knew about Islam and its spread in India, leading scholars to date these parts of the ninth book to the 12th to 15th centuries, compared to the older core of the ninth book. The Devi Bhagavata Purana is not the earliest Indian text that celebrates
15582-471: 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
15741-460: 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
15900-649: The divine feminine. The 6th century CE Devi Mahatmya , embedded in the Markandeya Purana , asserts the divine superiority of the Goddess. Archaeological evidence in Mathura and Bengal suggests that the concept of the divine feminine was in existence by about the 2nd century CE. Both the Devi Mahatmya and Devi Bhagavata Purana have been very influential texts within the Shakta tradition, asserting
16059-589: The drinking of nectar is quite useless in giving Mukti. But hearing the Bhagavata gives instantaneous Mukti from this Samsara or round of birth and death. There are two Bhagavatas in Hindu puranic literature, the Vishnu Bhagavata and Devi Bhagavata. There are some doubts between genuine of these two puranas, as an example in Uma Samhita of Shiva Purana Mentioned Srimad Devi Bhagavatam as fifth Mahapurana called Srimad Bhagavatam. Devi Bhagavata as it
16218-419: The earliest days". Perhaps the earliest mention of the term bhatti in all Indic literature appears in the early Buddhist Theragatha ( Verses of the Elders ). As such, Har Dayal writes that, bhakti "was an integral part of the Buddhist ideal from the earliest times". John S. Strong writes that the central meaning of Indian Buddhist bhakti was "recollection of the Buddha" (Sanskrit: buddhanusmrti ). One of
16377-440: The earliest form of Buddhist devotional practice was the early Buddhist tradition of worshiping the Buddha through the means of stupas and bodily relics ( sarira ). Later (after about the third century CE), devotion using Buddha images also became a very popular form of Buddha bhakti. Sri Lankan scholar Indumathie Karunaratna notes that the meaning of bhatti changed throughout Buddhist history. In early Buddhist sources like
16536-490: 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
16695-665: The earth, planets and stars, the motion of sun and moon, as well as explanation of time and the Hindu calendar. Its include: The largest canto is the 9th skandha Consisting of 50 chapters, which is very similar in structure and content of the Prakriti-kanda of the Brahmavaivarta Purana . Both are goddess-focused and discuss her theology, but have one difference. The Prakriti-kanda of the Brahmavaivarta Purana also includes many verses which praise Vishnu and use various names (incarnations), which re-appear in
16854-502: The epilogue, could have been a later addition and may not be theistic as the word was later used in much later Sandilya Sutras . Grierson as well as Carus note that the first epilogue verse 6.21 of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad is also notable for its use of the word Deva Prasada (देवप्रसाद, grace or gift of God), but add that Deva in the epilogue of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad refers to "pantheistic Brahman " and
17013-497: The experience in a thoughtful, conscious approach". One who practices bhakti is called a bhakta . The term bhakti, in Vedic Sanskrit literature, has a general meaning of "mutual attachment, devotion, fondness for, devotion to" such as in human relationships, most often between beloved-lover, friend-friend, king-subject, parent-child. It may refer to devotion towards a spiritual teacher ( Guru ) as guru-bhakti , or to
17172-429: The first book ( skandha ) like other major Puranas, states Rocher, presents the outline, the structure of contents, and describes how in the mythical Naimisha forest, the Devi-Bhagavata Purana was first recited among the sages. It also asserts that all of Reality was initially nirguna (without form, shape or attributes; in other words, there was nothingness except Truth). However, asserts the text, this nirguna Reality
17331-548: 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
17490-412: 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
17649-403: The four key features of this early modern bhakti movement in north India were: First and foremost, these communities were united by a distinctive focus on personal devotion to the Divine, as opposed to other traditional pillars of Indic religiosity such as knowledge , ritual, or the practice of yoga or asceticism . This devotion took place in the context of an intimate, loving relationship with
17808-510: The goddess Tara . Mahayana sources like the Lotus Sutra describe the Buddha as the loving father of all beings, and exhorts all Buddhists to worship him. Mahayana bhakti also led to the rise of temples which were focused on housing a central Buddha image, something which became the norm during the Gupta period . Gupta era Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism stressed bhakti towards the Buddha as
17967-537: 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
18126-431: 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
18285-486: 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
18444-432: 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
18603-551: The later sense of self-surrender. But already in the Commentary to the Abhidhamma text Puggalapaññatti , it is mentioned that the Buddhist devotee should develop his saddhā until it becomes bhaddi , a sense not mentioned in earlier texts and probably influenced by the Hindu idea of bhakti . There are instances where commentator Buddhaghosa mentions taking refuge in the Buddha in the sense of mere adoration, indicating
18762-412: 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
18921-514: 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 ,
19080-511: 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
19239-429: 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
19398-401: 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
19557-602: 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
19716-513: The most devoted to Me. The Shandilya Bhakti Sutra and Narada Bhakti Sutra define devotion, emphasize its importance and superiority, and classify its forms. According to Ramana Maharishi , bhakti is a "surrender to the divine with one's heart". It can be practiced as an adjunct to self-inquiry, and in one of four ways: The Bhagavata Purana (verse 7.5.23) teaches nine forms of bhakti: The Bhagavata Purana describes many examples of bhakti, such as those exhibited by Prahlada and
19875-464: The name(s) of God. Second, these new devotional communities of Mughal India were alike in their production and performance of devotional works, composed in vernacular languages, remembering the deeds of God (especially Kṛṣṇa and Rām ) and exemplary bhaktas. Third, important in all these communities was the performance and collection of songs attributed to renowned bhakti poet-saints like Kabīr, Raidās, and Sūrdās. Finally, despite their many differences,
20034-410: The number of original Sanskrit shlokas ('verses') is stated to be 18,000 by the Devi Bhagavata itself. The actual text, in different versions, is close. For ease of reference, Swami Vijnanananda's complete 18-volume translation of the Srimad Devi Bhagavatam in wisdomlib is cited. It also provides original Sanskrit verses, transliterations , synonyms , and purports. Consisting of 20 chapters,
20193-545: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
20352-403: 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
20511-431: 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
20670-606: The paths to the highest spiritual attainments. In the sixth chapter, for example, the Gita states the following about bhakti yogi: The yogi who, established in oneness, Honors Me as abiding in all beings, In whatever way he otherwise acts, Dwells in Me. He who sees equality in everything, In the image of his own Self, Arjuna, Whether in pleasure or in pain, Is thought to be a supreme yogi. Of all yogis, He who has merged his inner Self in Me, Honors me, full of faith, Is thought to be
20829-414: 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
20988-416: The present volume. That voluminous book comprising one hundred koti slokas compiled by Brahma is still extant in the deva loka The Purana Srimad Bhagavata (Devi Bhagavata) is excellent and holy; eighteen thousand pure Slokas are contained in it. Bhagavan Krishna-Dwaipayana has divided this Purana into twelve auspicious Skandhas (Books) and three hundred and eighteen chapters. O Suta! Fie to the nectar even! as
21147-439: 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
21306-422: The primordial creator of the universe, and as Brahman (ultimate truth and reality). It celebrates the divine feminine as the origin of all existence: as the creator, the preserver and the destroyer of everything, as well as the one who empowers spiritual liberation. While all major Puranas of Hinduism mention and revere the Goddess, this text centers around her as the primary divinity. The underlying philosophy of
21465-480: 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
21624-609: 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
21783-497: 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,
21942-562: 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
22101-496: 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
22260-556: 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
22419-615: 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
22578-852: The soul within each living being. From Swami Vijnanananda translation: Suta said: “O Rsis! In days of yore, from the Lotus Face of the Devi Bhagavati came out Srimad Bhagavatam in the form of half a Sloka, as the decided conclusion of the Vedas. About what She gave instructions to Vishnu, sleeping on a leaf of a Banyan tree, that same thing, the seed of the Srimad Bhagavata, Brahma Himself expanded into one hundred Koti slokas. Then, Veda Vyasa, in order to teach his own son Shuka Deva, condensed them into eighteen thousand slokas, in Twelve Books and named it Srimad Devi Bhagavatam,
22737-490: The supremacy of the female and have made the Goddess a figure of devotional ( bhakti ) appeal. This text, along with all the Puranas, Vedas and the Mahabharata has traditionally been attributed by Hindus to the sage Veda Vyasa . This table shows the notable incarnations of Devi mentioned in the Purana. This table shows the devotees of the Goddess according to the Purana. Many demons (villains) are mentioned throughout
22896-472: The text began taking form in the late centuries of the 1st millennium, was expanded over time, and its first complete version existed in the 11th century. Tracy Pintchman dates the text to between 1000 and 1200 CE. The last ten chapters (31 to 40) of the seventh canto consist of 507 verses, a part which has often circulated as an independent volume, just like the Bhagavad Gita of the Mahabharata circulates independently. This text, from Book 7 of this Purana,
23055-455: The text is Advaita Vedanta-style monism combined with the devotional worship of Shakti. It is believed that the text was spoken by Vyasa to King Janamejaya , the son of Parikshit . Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas The title of the text, ' Srimad Devi Bhagavata or ' Devi Purana' ', is composed of two words, which together mean "devotees of
23214-653: 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
23373-472: The universe Brahma , Vishnu and Shiva see the Goddess reside in Manidvipa and praise her. It also weaves in legends from the Ramayana . Consisting of 25 chapters, this fourth canto presents more legends, including interactions between avatars of Hari , Krishna and Shiva and Kashyapa 's birth as Vasudeva . It also introduces tantric themes and presents yoga meditation. Consisting of 35 chapters,
23532-408: 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
23691-472: The vast majority of bhakti authors and sectarian communities in early modern North India came together in articulating a devotional sensibility distinct from—and often explicitly positioned in opposition to—certain tantric paradigms of religiosity. Bhakti poetry and ideas influenced many aspects of Hindu culture, religious and secular, and became an integral part of Indian society. It extended its influence to Sufism , Christianity , and Jainism . Sikhism
23850-564: 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
24009-502: 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
24168-401: Was a Bhagavati (woman), and she manifested herself as three Shaktis - Sattviki (truth, creative action), Rajasi (passion, aimless action) and Tamasi (delusion, destructive action). It also includes: In chapter fifteen chapter of the 1st canto, Devi reveals her true identity to Vishnu who is lying on a banyan leaf. All this that is seen is I Myself; there is existent nothing other that
24327-408: 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
24486-427: 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
24645-472: 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
24804-738: 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
24963-607: Was and remains a part of the actual practice. This is observable, states King, in "multitudes of Pagoda worshippers of the Buddha images" and the offerings they make before the image and nowhere else. A rich devotionalism developed in Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism and it can be found in the veneration of the transcendent Buddha Amitabha of Pure Land Buddhism and of bodhisattvas like Mañjusri , Avalokiteshvara (known as Guanyin in East Asia and Chenrezig in Tibetan) and
25122-747: Was founded by Guru Nanak in the 15th century, during the bhakti movement period, and scholars call it a Bhakti sect of Indian traditions. Saints such as Mirabai , Soordas , Narsinh Mehta composed several bhajans that were a path towards Bhakti for many, that are universally sung even today. A modern age saint, Shri Devendra Ghia (Kaka) has composed about 10,000 hymns. These hymns are related to bhakti, knowledge, devotion, faith, introspection and honesty. The movement has traditionally been considered as an influential social reformation in Hinduism, and provided an individual-focused alternative path to spirituality regardless of one's birth caste or gender. Postmodern scholars question this traditional view and whether
25281-442: 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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