Traditional
120-529: Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas The Kaushitaki Upanishad ( Sanskrit : कौषीतकि उपनिषद् , Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad ) is an ancient Sanskrit text contained inside the Rigveda . It is associated with the Kaushitaki shakha , but a Sāmānya Upanishad, meaning that it is "common" to all schools of Vedanta . It
240-682: A 1998 review by Patrick Olivelle , and other scholars, the Kaushitaki Upanishad was likely composed in a pre-Buddhist period, but after the more ancient Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads, placing the Kaushitaki text between 6th to 5th century BCE. The Kaushitaki Upanishad is part of the Rigveda, but it occupies different chapter numbers in the Veda manuscripts discovered in different parts of India. Three sequences are most common:
360-482: 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." Agnihotra Agnihotra ( IAST : Agnihotra , Devnagari : अग्निहोत्र) refers to the yajna of offering ghee into the sacred fire as per strict rites, and may include twice-daily heated milk offering made by those in
480-541: A dialogue between Man and Brahman (Universal Self, Eternal Reality), He declares, "Man is the Self is every living being. You are the self of every being. What you are, I am." Man asks, "Who am I then?" Brahman answers, "The Truth." Edward Cowell translates the above verses that declare the "Oneness in Atman and Brahman" principle as follows, (The Self answers, when asked by Brahma, "Who art thou?") I am time, I am what
600-433: 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
720-448: A human being, because we see human beings midst us who are born without the power of speech (dumb); that sight cannot define a human being, because we see human beings midst us who are born without the ability of sight (blind); that hearing cannot define a human being, because we see human beings midst us who are born without the ability to hear (deaf); that mind cannot define a human being, because we see human beings midst us who are without
840-591: 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
960-562: A later era. Despite the variations, the central idea is similar in all recensions so far. The chapter offers sixteen themes in explaining what Brahman (Atman) is, which overlaps with the twelve found in Chapter 2 of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad . This last chapter of Kausitaki Upanishad states that Brahman and Self are one, there is ultimate unity in the Self, which is the creative, pervasive, supreme and universal in each living being. The Kaushitaki Upanishad has been translated by many scholars, but
1080-658: 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
1200-642: A milker. Vedic rituals are typically performed by four priests: the aforementioned adhvaryu , who is responsible for the physical details of the sacrifice and chants the Yajurveda , a hotṛi who recites the Rigveda , an udgātṛi who sings hymns of the Samaveda , and a brahman who supervises the ceremony, and recites the Atharvaveda while correcting any errors that may occur. There are three fires: an eastern offertorial fire called an āhavanīya lit in
1320-454: A natural part of the earliest Vedic language, and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters. The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other. This
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#17327722685421440-479: 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
1560-517: A number of physical and environmental benefits from performing the ritual; however, these are pseudoscientific . In 2007, Sylvia Kratz and Ewald Schaung found that while Agnihotra ash possibly increased the amount of phosphorus in soil, levels were the same regardless of whether the ceremony was done at the prescribed times with mantras or not. The composition of the pyramid was found to be a factor, with ash created in iron pyramids containing significantly less phosphorus than ones made of copper. Like
1680-546: 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
1800-578: 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
1920-538: 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
2040-439: 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
2160-414: A square fire pit , a western fire called the gārhapatya lit in a circular fire pit, which represents the householder's fire, and a southern fire simply called the dakṣiṇāgni (Southern fire). During the ceremonies, a poker, a pot called an agnihotrasthālī , a spoon known as a sruva , and a larger ladle called the agnihotrahavani are all used. At the centre of the ritual space is an earthen altar called
2280-408: A variation of agnihotra as part of the five yajnas as described in Vedic texts. A simplified variant of the agnihotra ceremony was popularized in the mid-1900s by Gajanan Maharaj, and entails the offering of ghee and brown rice into only a single fire lit in a copper pyramid-shaped brazier with cow dung and additional amounts of ghee. Mantras are repeated during this process. Practitioners claim
2400-711: 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
2520-516: 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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#17327722685422640-445: Is complete, the adhvaryu sips some of the leftover water, recites the mantra "From Rta I have found Satya " and pours water on his head. The Brāhmaṇas explains the origin of agnihotra. In one, Prajapati , after creating Agni , offers the sweat of his brow (which became ghee) or his eye after hearing his voice commanding himself to sacrifice, creating Surya . The origin of the exclamation svāhā , said as offerings are made into
2760-467: Is declared as Brahman (Universal Self, Eternal Being). To the extent a person realizes that his being is identical with Brahman, to that extent he is Brahman. He doesn't need to pray, states Kausitaki Upanishad, the one who realizes and understands his true nature as identical with the universe, the Brahman. To those who don't understand their Atman, they blindly serve their senses and cravings, they worship
2880-452: 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
3000-547: Is in time; I am born from the womb of space; from the self manifesting light of Brahman; the seed of the year; the splendour of the past and the cause, the Self of all that is sensible and insensible, and of the five elements; Thou art Self. What thou art, that am I. Brahma says to him, "Who am I?" His answer, "Thou art the Truth". In the second chapter of the Kausitaki Upanishad, each life and all lives
3120-480: Is prāṇa" (वै प्राणः सा प्रज्ञा या वा प्रज्ञा स प्राणः, Life-force is consciousness, consciousness is life-force). In the last verses of chapter 3, the Kaushitaki Upanishad asserts that to really know someone, one must know his Self. Know the Self of the subject, not just superficial objects. The structure of its argument is as follows (abridged), One should not desire to understand the speech but should desire to know him who speaks, One should not desire to understand
3240-532: 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
3360-418: Is supposed not to consist in the observance of the external cult; but that which places the whole life, with every breathe, in its service." It is knowledge that makes one the most beautiful, the most glorious, and the strongest. Not rituals, but knowledge should be one's pursuit. After asserting Atman (Self) as personified God in first two chapters, the Kausitaki Upanishad develops the philosophical doctrine of
3480-479: 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,
3600-589: 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
3720-440: Is unclear. It is based on an analysis of archaism, style and repetitions across texts, driven by assumptions about likely evolution of ideas, and on presumptions about which philosophy might have influenced which other Indian philosophies. Kaushitaki Upanishad was probably composed before the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. Ranade places Kaushitaki chronological composition in the third group of ancient Upanishads, composed about
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3840-540: 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
3960-580: 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
4080-613: 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
4200-596: The Old Avestan . In the historical Vedic religion , Agnihotra was the simplest public rite, and the head of every Brahmin and Vaishya family was required to conduct it twice daily. It was already popular in India with Upaniṣads as religious performance. The tradition is now practiced in many parts of South Asia in the Indian sub-continent , including primarily India and also in Nepal . The Brahmin who performs
4320-699: 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
4440-532: 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 ,
4560-476: 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
4680-406: 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
4800-422: The vedi where the tools to perform the ritual are placed. When the sacrificial area has been cleaned and the sacrificial fire lit, a cow is brought to the grounds and the milker, an ā́rya and not a śūdra , recites mantras before it, then brings the calf to the right side of its mother before beginning the milking. The milk is kept in the agnihotrasthālī , which can also only be made by an ā́rya. When
4920-500: 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
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5040-649: The Śrauta tradition. The ritual has been described by P.E. Dumont as a "fertility charm", and as a "solar charm" which symbolically preserved and created the sun at nightfall and sunrise. This tradition dates back to the Vedic age ; the Brahmans perform the Agnihotra ritual chanting the verses from the Rigveda . It is part of a pan- Indo-Iranian heritage, which includes the related Iranian fire-worship ritual called Zoroastrian Yasna Haptaŋhāiti ritual mentioned in
5160-414: 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
5280-532: 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
5400-418: The Agnihotra ritual is called an Agnihotri . The ritual is conducted twice daily, right before or after sunrise and after sunset or the appearance of the first night star. The morning and evening agnihotras differ by the mantras and chants made by the officiants. At least four people take part in the sacrifice: the sacrificer, who hires priests to perform the ceremony ( Brahmin ), his wife, an Adhvaryu and
5520-423: The Atman in the third chapter. It identifies perception of sense-objects as dependent on sense-organs, which in turn depend on integrative psychological powers of the mind. Then it posits that freedom and liberation comes not from sense-objects, not from sense-organs, not from subjective psychological powers of mind, but that it comes from "knowledge and action" alone. The one who knows Self, and acts harmoniously with
5640-425: 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
5760-532: 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
5880-521: 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
6000-476: 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
6120-519: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
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#17327722685426240-532: 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
6360-496: 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
6480-499: 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
6600-435: The Self, solemnly exists as the highest God which is that Self (Atman) itself. The chapter invokes deity Indra, personifies him as Atman and reveals him as communicating that he is Life-breath and Atman, and Atman is him and all is One. The chapter presents the metaphysical definition of a human being as Consciousness, Atman, Self. In verse 3, it develops the foundation for this definition by explaining that speech cannot define
6720-638: 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
6840-485: The Upanishad is chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 of Kausitaki Aranyaka, or 6, 7, 8, 9 chapters of that Aranyaka , or chapters 1, 7, 8 and 9 in some manuscripts. Paul Deussen suggests that these different chapter numbers may reflect that Upanishadic layer of Vedic literature were created and incorporated as spiritual knowledge in the pre-existing Aranyaka-layer of Vedic texts, and when this was being done in distant parts of India,
6960-468: The Vedic Agnihotra, the modern version of Agnihotra perpetuated by Gajanan Maharaj and groups such as Homa Therapy has two variants, one for the evening and one for the morning. At sunset, the practitioner says "Agnaye svāhā idam Agnaye na mama" ( Devanagari : अग्नये स्वाहा इदम् अग्नये न मम), offering the first half of the rice or ghee into the fire after "svāhā" is spoken. After the first mantra
7080-447: 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
7200-451: 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
7320-459: 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
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#17327722685427440-440: 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
7560-527: 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
7680-614: 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
7800-653: 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
7920-567: The deed but should desire to know him who performs the deed, One should not desire to understand pleasure and pain from excitation but should desire to know him who feels the pleasure and pain, One should not desire to understand the opinion and thinking but should desire to know him who opines and thinks. Because if there were no elements of consciousness, there would be no elements of material being Because if there were no elements of material being, there would be no elements of consciousness Because any one phenomenon does not come about through
8040-467: 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
8160-471: 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
8280-460: 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
8400-490: 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
8520-404: The first chapter of the Kausitaki Upanishad, rebirth and transmigration of Atman (Self) is asserted as existent, and that one's life is affected by karma , and then it asks whether there is liberation and freedom from the cycles of birth and rebirth. Verse 2 of the first chapter states it as follows (abridged), Born am I and again reborn, As twelvefold year, as thirteenth beyond the moon, From
8640-548: 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
8760-412: 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
8880-537: 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
9000-431: 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
9120-552: The initiations of his two sons, viz. Yasho Malla and prince Somesvara at Agnimatha (or Agnishala in Lalitpur ). The temple of Agnishala since the 12th century maintains the Vedic tradition of Agnihotra fire sacrifice ritual and despite having undergone many ritual changes, the basic Vedic performance is still intact. The Agnishala is maintained by the Newar Rajopadhyaya Brahmins of Patan , who are
9240-486: 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
9360-432: 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
9480-467: The libations are complete, the agnihotrahavani is cleaned with Darbha grass and refilled with water. It is then heated on the āhavanīya as additional mantras are recited, and poured onto the vedi as an additional libation. In certain versions of the ritual (but not that contained in the Tattirīya Brahmana), this is followed by a blade of grass being offered to the āhavanīya . When the ceremony
9600-412: 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
9720-514: 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 ,
9840-420: The milking is complete, the adhvaryu pours water around the three fires, before boiling the collected milk on coals collected from the gārhapatya . The adhvaryu draws milk from the agnihotrasthālī to the agnihotrahavani , pouring it onto sacrificial sticks twice: first when reciting mantras, and the second silently. He then ritually consumes some of the milk before placing the sticks into the āhavanīya . When
9960-456: 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
10080-429: 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
10200-401: 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
10320-602: 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
10440-597: 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,
10560-455: The one without the other, Because Prāṇa (life-force) is also the Prajñātman (knowledge-self), is bliss, is not ageing, is immortal This is my Ātman (Self) which one should know, O! this is my Ātman which one should know. Edward Cowell translates these last verses as, "Prāṇa is prajñā, it is joy, it is eternally young, it is immortal. This is the guardian of the world, this is the king of
10680-403: 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
10800-431: 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
10920-414: 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
11040-411: The power of clear thinking (foolishness); that arms or legs cannot define a human being, because we see human beings midst us who lose their arms or legs (cut in an accident). A being has life-force, which is consciousness. And that which is conscious, has life-force. In many verses of chapter 3, the theme, the proof and the premise is re-asserted by Kaushitaki Upanishad, that " Prāṇa is prajñā , Prajñā
11160-425: The premier Krishna Yajurvedic Brahmins of Nepal. Along with these, there are other Agnishalas identified and recently revived, viz. Arya Samaj is a religious reform movement founded in 1875 advocating a return to Vedic religion as interpreted by its founder, Dayananda Saraswati . Strongly criticizing the "Puranic" ritual of performing pujas to murtis (religious images such as statues), adherents perform
11280-439: 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
11400-480: 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
11520-609: 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
11640-497: 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,
11760-562: 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
11880-543: The sacrificial fire, is explained as a combination of svā (own) and āha (spoken). In another, the agnihotra is a condensed version of a thousand-year sacrifice Prajapati and the other devas performed to gain divine power. Witzel (1992) locates the first Agnishala hypothetically at Jhul ( Mātātīrtha ), in the western ridge of the Kathmandu valley and later at the southern rim of the palace of Aṃśuvermā at Hadigaon, Kathmandu . The first source of inscription evidence
12000-496: 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
12120-556: 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
12240-472: The sequencing information was not implemented uniformly. The Kausitaki Upanishad is a prose text, divided into four chapters, containing 6, 15, 9 and 20 verses respectively. There is some evidence that the Kaushitaki Upanishad, in some manuscripts, had nine chapters, but these manuscripts are either lost or yet to be found. Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas In
12360-429: The smell (described by a person) but should desire to know him who smells, One should not desire to understand the form (of the person) but should desire to know him who sees the form, One should not desire to understand the sound (described) but should desire to know him who hears, One should not desire to understand the food (description) but should desire to know him who tastes, One should not desire to understand
12480-615: 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
12600-469: The time of Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads. Juan Mascaró posits that Kaushitaki Upanishad was probably composed after Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya and Taittiriya Upanishads, but before all other ancient Principal Upanishads of Hinduism. Deussen as well as Winternitz consider the Kaushitaki Upanishad as amongst the most ancient prose style Upanishads, and pre-Buddhist, pre-Jaina literature. Ian Whicher dates Kaushitaki Upanishad to about 800 BCE. According to
12720-515: The translations vary because the manuscripts used vary. It was translated into Persian in medieval times, as Kokhenk; however, the manuscript used for that translation has been lost. The most cited English translations are those by Eduard Cowell, Paul Deussen, Robert Hume and Max Müller. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
12840-653: 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
12960-460: The twelvefold, from the thirteenfold father, The this one and the other versus this to know, Until ye, seasons, me led to death by virtue of this truth, by virtue of this Tapas , I am the seasons, I am the child of the seasons ! Who are you? I am you. In verse 6 of chapter 1, the Kausitaki Upanishad asserts that a man is the season (nature), sprouts from season, rises from a cradle, reborn through his wife, as splendour. It then states, in
13080-408: 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
13200-564: 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
13320-432: The without; and in contrast, those who do understand their Atman, their senses serve their Atman, they live holistically. In verse 5 of the second chapter, the Kausitaki Upanishad asserts that "external rituals such as Agnihotram offered in the morning and in the evening, must be replaced with inner Agnihotram, the ritual of introspection". Paul Deussen states that this chapter reformulates religion, by declaring, "religion
13440-497: The world, this is the lord of the world, this is my Self. Thus let a man know, thus let a man know." Robert Hume summarizes the last verse of Kaushitaki's Chapter 3 as stating that "a human being's ethical responsibility, his very self being is identical with the world-all". The fourth chapter of Kausitaki Upanishad builds on the third chapter, but it peculiarly varies in various manuscripts of Rigveda discovered in Indian subcontinent. This suggests that this chapter may be an addition of
13560-502: 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
13680-408: 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
13800-427: 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
13920-472: 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
14040-738: 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
14160-658: Was from Tachapal tole, east part of Bhaktapur city, also shown by a legend that the Maithila King Harisimhadeva would establish the yantra of Taleju Bhavānī in the house of an Agnihotri . From 1600 CE onward, the Agnihotra has been attested to the Agnishala temple in Patan only. The Agnihotra ritual in Nepal has been first recorded in an inscription of King Anandadeva in c. 1140 CE that mentions of
14280-693: Was included in Robert Hume's list of 13 Principal Upanishads, and lists as number 25 in the Muktikā canon of 108 Upanishads. The Kaushitaki Upanishad, also known as Kaushitaki Brahmana Upanishad, is part of the Kaushitaki Aranyaka or the Shankhayana Aranyaka . The Kausitaki Aranyaka comprises 15 chapters and four of these chapters form the Kaushitaki Upanishad. The chronology of Kaushitaki Upanishad, like other Upanishads,
14400-442: 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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