126-537: Kapila ( Sanskrit : कपिल ) (7th-6th-century BCE), also referred to as Cakradhanus , is a Vedic sage in Hindu tradition, regarded the founder of the Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy . His influence on Buddha and Buddhism have long been the subject of scholarly studies. There have been accusations of orthodox Buddhists that Sarvastivadins are heavily influenced by Sankhya school of philosophy. According to
252-606: A Kapila Śākhā situated in the Āryāvarta, which implies a Yajurveda school is named after Kapila. The term Kapileya, meaning "clans of Kapila", occurs in the Aitareya Brahmana VII.17 but provides no information on the original Kapila. The pariśiṣṭa (addenda) of the Atharvaveda (at XI.III.3.4) mentions Kapila, Āsuri and Pañcaśikha in connection with a libation ritual for whom tarpana is to be offered. In verse 5.2 of Shvetashvatara Upanishad , states Larson, both
378-708: 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
504-433: A bed for him with their bodies. Prahalada was then thrown from a valley into a river but was saved by Bhumi , the companion of Vishnu and Lakshmi . Holika , the sister of Hiranyakashipu , was blessed in that she could not be hurt by fire. Hiranyakashipu put Prahlada on the lap of Holika as she sat on a pyre. Prahlada prayed to Vishnu to keep him safe. Holika is burned to ashes and killed, as Prahlada goes away. This event
630-505: A boon, and Indra sought the king's virtue and hence robbed Prahlada of his dharma as well. Prahlada once commanded the asuras to accompany him to the holy tirtha of Naimiṣa, where he hoped to see a vision of Vishnu. They went hunting along the banks of the Sarasvati River . Prahlada observed two ascetics with matted hair, bearing the bows of Sharanga and Ajagava . The asura king asked them why they held weapons while performing
756-429: 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." Prahlada Prahlada ( Sanskrit : प्रह्लाद , romanized : Prahlāda ) is an asura king in Hindu mythology . He is known for his staunch devotion to
882-433: A focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts, the dominant language of Hindu texts has been Sanskrit. It or a hybrid form of Sanskrit became the preferred language of Mahayana Buddhism scholarship; for example, one of the early and influential Buddhist philosophers, Nagarjuna (~200 CE), used Classical Sanskrit as the language for his texts. According to Renou, Sanskrit had
1008-591: 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
1134-658: 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
1260-519: A mid-air collision, Prahlada wielded his mace against Narayana. His mace broke, and Prahlada found himself growing helpless and sought Vishnu's assistance. Vishnu told his devotee that the Nara-Narayana brothers were invincible as they were the sons of Yama and could only be conquered in devotion rather than combat. The king left the regency to Andhaka and erected an ashrama to propitiate Nara-Narayana and apologise for his folly. According to
1386-454: 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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#17327803654771512-479: 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
1638-546: 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
1764-448: A penance, and the two ascetics responded that all those who held power were righteous in their conduct. One of the rishis assured the king that none of the three worlds could conquer them in a duel. Prahlada rose to the challenge. Nara fired arrows at the king with his Ajagava, but the latter was able to defeat him with his own gold-plated arrows. Prahlada employed the divine Brahmastra against Nara's Narayanastra. Seeing them neutralised in
1890-578: 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
2016-538: 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
2142-416: A similar death. According to Chaturvedi, in a study of inscriptions of Khajuraho temples, the early Samkhya philosophers were possibly disciples of female teachers. Kapila's imagery is depicted with a beard, seated in padmāsana with closed eyes indicating dhyāna , with a jaṭā-maṇḍala around the head, showing high shoulders indicating he is greatly adept in controlling breath, draped in deer skin, wearing
2268-439: 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
2394-410: Is accused of denying the existence of an Ishvara . Max Muller states the link between the more ancient Kapila's teachings on Buddha can be overstated. This confusion is easy, states Muller, because Kapila's first sutra in his classic Samkhya-sutra, "the complete cessation of pain, which is of three kinds, is the highest aim of man", sounds like the natural inspiration for Buddha. However, adds Muller,
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
2646-404: Is an indefinite term, and may mean very different things. In one sense, every Indian philosopher was an atheist, for they all perceived that the gods of the populace could not claim the attributes that belong to a Supreme Being (Absolute, the source of all that exists or seems to exist, Brahman ). (...) Kapila, when accused of atheism, is not accused of denying the existence of an Absolute Being. He
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#17327803654772772-496: Is celebrated as the Hindu festival of Holi . The asuras Shambara and Vayu were tasked with slaying the prince, but both of them were driven away and were killed by Vishnu. The boy was entrusted to Shukra , who educated him regarding his duties, the sciences, and justice, and was returned to his father after he was deemed to have become humble. The asura king once again broached the topic of deities with his son, only to discover that
2898-656: Is distinct and is later used to link Kapila and assign the authorship of Sankya system to Hiranyagarbha in reverence for the philosophical system. Kapila, states George Williams, lived long before the composition of the Epics and the Puranas, and his name is coopted in various later composed mythologies. Non-violence Fearlessness to all living beings from my side, Svāhā! — Kapila , Baudhayana Grihya Sutra, 4.16.4 Translators: Jan E. M. Houben, Karel Rijk van Kooij As son of Prahlada : The Baudhayana Dharmasutra mentions
3024-452: 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
3150-403: Is likely that these names refer to different people. The most famous reference is to the sage Kapila with his student Āsuri , who in the Indian tradition, are considered as the first masters of Samkhya school of Hindu philosophy . While he pre-dates Buddha , it is unclear which century he lived in, with some suggesting 6th-century BCE. Others place him in the 7th century BCE. This places him in
3276-532: 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
3402-581: Is said to have made rules for renouncement of the sacrifices and rituals in the Vedas, and an ascetic's attachment instead to the Brahman . In other Hindu texts such as the Mahabharata, Kapila is again the sage who argues against sacrifices, and for non-violence and an end to cruelty to animals, with the argument that if sacrifices benefited the animal, then logically the family who sacrifices would benefit by
3528-479: 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,
3654-589: 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
3780-540: 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
3906-550: The Brahmanda Purana , Kapila is described as an incarnation of Vishnu : "Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa will protect us all. The Lord of the universe has now been born in the world as Kapilācārya." Many historic personalities in Hinduism and Jainism , mythical figures, pilgrimage sites in Indian religion, as well as an ancient variety of cow, are named after Kapila, or share his name. The name Kapila appears in many texts, and it
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4032-580: 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
4158-613: 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
4284-547: The Kurma Purana , Prahlada always served thousands of Brahmanas daily. One day, Prahlada accidentally forgot to serve one Brahmanas. The latter cursed the asura, saying that he would forget Vishnu and become unrighteous. The curse soon came into fruition, with Prahlada ignoring the Vedas and the Brahmanas and soon deviating from the path of dharma. Determined to avenge his father's death, he waged war against Vishnu. When he
4410-930: The Nanda Empire era. According to Jnatadharmakatha , Kapila is a contemporary of Krishna and the Vasudeva of Dhatakikhanda . The text further mentions that both of them blew their shankha (conch shell) together. Buddhists literature, such as the Jataka tales , state the Buddha is Kapila in one of his previous lives. Scholars have long compared and associated the teachings of Kapila and Buddha. For example, Max Muller wrote (abridged), There are no doubt certain notions which Buddha shares in common, not only with Kapila, but with every Hindu philosopher. (...) It has been said that Buddha and Kapila were both atheists, and that Buddha borrowed his atheism from Kapila. But atheism
4536-753: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became
4662-532: 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 ,
4788-531: 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
4914-406: 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
5040-500: 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
5166-414: 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
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5292-581: The 14th-century Vedic commentator Sayana thought refers to a sage; a view which Chakravarti in 1951 and Larson in 1987 consider unreliable, with Chakravarti suggesting that the word refers to one of the Maruts , while Larson and Bhattacharya state kapilam in that verse means "tawny" or "reddish-brown"; as is also translated by Griffith. The Śata-piṭaka Series on the Śākhās of the Yajurveda – estimated to have been composed between 1200 and 1000 BCE – mention of
5418-532: 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
5544-631: The Asura Kapila is the son of Prahlada in the chapter laying rules for the Vaikhanasas . The section IV.16 of Baudhāyana Gṛhyasūtra mentions Kapila as the one who set up rules for ascetic life. Kapila is credited, in the Baudhayana Dharmasutra, with creating the four Ashrama orders: brahmacharya, grihastha, vanaprastha and sanyassa, and suggesting that renouncer should never injure any living being in word, thought or deed. He
5670-479: The Asura throne and ruled peacefully and virtuously. He was known for his generosity and kindness. He sowed similar seeds in his son, Virochana , and grandson, Mahabali . When the ruler of the asuras, Hiraṇyakashipu, was performing a penance in the forest to gain the boon of destroying Vishnu, the devas attacked the asura realm. A great battle ensued, in which the devas were defeated. While fleeing, Indra abducted
5796-425: 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
5922-532: 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
6048-521: 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
6174-476: 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
6300-519: 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
6426-532: 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
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#17327803654776552-496: 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
6678-499: 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
6804-638: 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
6930-447: 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
7056-451: 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
7182-459: 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
7308-440: 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
7434-461: The city of Kapilavastu is built in the honor of Kapila. It is in Kapilavastu that the Buddha is born; and, it is here he spent the first twenty-nine years of his life. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is
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
7686-614: 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
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#17327803654777812-653: 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
7938-466: The daitya soldiers attacked their prince with weapons, Prahlada informed them that their efforts were futile since Vishnu resided within them. The asura then had the Prahlada trampled by the aṣṭadiggajas , the eight elephants who bear the weight of the earth, but their tusks were broken to bits upon contact with him and they went away. He placed Prahlada in a room with venomous, dark snakes, and they made
8064-479: The day of full moon, of new moon, or on the eighth or twelfth day of the lunation, shall yield fruit equal to the donation of cattle. As Vishnu protected Prahlada in all the calamities to which he was exposed, so shall Vishnu protects them who listens constantly to the tale. Because of his steadfast devotion to Vishnu as well as the teachings of Shukra , Prahlada became the mighty King of the Asuras and Asuris. Prahlada
8190-467: 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
8316-471: 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
8442-460: 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
8568-490: 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
8694-627: The embodiment of the Vedas his image is seated facing east with eight arms; of which four on the right should be in abhaya mudra, the other three should carry the Chakra, Khaḍga, Hala; one left hand is to rest on the hip in the kațyavarlambita pose and other three should carry the Ṡaṅkha, Pāśa and Daṇḍa. Kapila-Devahuti Samvada is the basis of Sankhya Philosophy for which Kapila is well known. Kapila-Devahuti Samvada which roughly translates to "The Discussions between Kapila and Devahuti", touches topics on how to control oneself effectively and truly become
8820-548: 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
8946-532: The following statement in regard to Prahlada, showing his favour towards him: prahlādaścāsmi daityānāṁ kālaḥ kalayatāmaham . mr̥gāṇāṁ ca mr̥gēndrō’haṁ vainatēyaśca pakṣiṇām .. 10-30.. Translation: "Among the Daityas, I am the great devotee Prahlada and of calculators, I am Time; among quadrupeds, I am the lion; and among birds, I am Garuda." In the Vishnu Purana , the sage Parasara ends narrating
9072-412: 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
9198-474: The founder of Samkhya, has been a highly revered sage in various schools of Hindu philosophy. Gaudapada (~500 CE), an Advaita Vedanta scholar, in his Bhasya called Kapila as one of the seven great sages along with Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana, Asuri, Vodhu and Pancasikha. Patanjali , the Yoga scholar, in his Yogasutra -bhasya wrote Kapila to be the "primal wise man, or knower". The Buddhist sources mention that
9324-465: The goddess pacified both of them, and they returned to their abodes. Prahlada, Virochana, Bali, and Banasura fought against Shiva and Parvati with the devas and devis when Andhaka attacked Kailasha . Prahlada had strongly advised Andhaka against the invasion of Kailasha, but Andhaka refused. Andhaka was eventually killed by Shiva and Parvati, and Prahlada once more became the King of the Asuras. Prahlada
9450-537: 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
9576-431: 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
9702-486: 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
9828-432: 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
9954-530: The late Vedic period (1500 BCE to 500 BCE), and he has been called a Vedic sage. Kapila is credited with authoring an influential sutra , called Samkhya-sutra (also called Kapila-sutra), which aphoristically presents the dualistic philosophy of Samkhya. These sutras were explained in another well studied text of Hinduism called the Samkhyakarika . Beyond his Samkhya philosophy, he appears in many dialogues of Hindu texts, such as in explaining and defending
10080-407: The latter had never wavered in his faith. Finally, the wicked daitya commanded all the daityas and the danavas to collect all the mountains of the earth to construct a barrier over the boy in the ocean, so that his son would be submerged for a year. Even though they spread over him for a thousand kilometres, Prahlada, bound hands and feet, prayed to Vishnu, who granted him a number of boons, moved all
10206-412: 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
10332-514: 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 ,
10458-458: The master of oneself. Kapila Devahuti Samvada is a text where Devahuti approaches Kapil with a dilemma. She mentions that she is fed up of satisfying her five senses. She states that all her life, she has been giving in to these senses. but they are never satisfied. Kapila explains the Samkhya philosophy to set her mind at ease and give her inner peace. This discussion is in the form of question and answers format. This has been mentioned in detail in
10584-511: 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
10710-429: 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
10836-401: 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
10962-602: 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
11088-486: The mountains of the earth to their places from the seas and moved the asuras away and had Prahlada returned to prostrate before his father, who was left bewildered. After tolerating repeated abuse from Hiranyakashipu, Prahlada is eventually saved by Narasimha , an avatara of Vishnu in the form of a lion, who emerges from within a stone pillar in the palace, caught and placed Hiranyakashipu on his thighs, and then disemboweled and killed Hiranyakashipu with his sharp nails at
11214-545: 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,
11340-403: 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
11466-431: 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
11592-414: 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
11718-430: The pregnant Kayadhu, the wife of Hiranyakashipu, as a spoil of war. Narada listened to the wails of the poor asuri and got her released from Indra’s captivity. She stayed in the ashrama of the divine sage in gratitude. Prahlada, while inside his mother's womb, listened to Narada 's chants of devotion towards Vishnu . He was taught by Narada during his early childhood. As a result, he grew devoted to Vishnu . His father
11844-694: The preserver deity, Vishnu . He appears in the narrative of Narasimha , the lion avatara of Vishnu, who rescues Prahlada by disimboweling and killing his evil father, the asura king Hiranyakashipu . Prahlada is described as a saintly boy, known for his innocence and bhakti towards Vishnu. Despite the abusive nature of his father, Hiranyakashipu, and his uncle and aunt, Hiranyaksha and Holika, he continues to worship Vishnu, and Vishnu as Varaha kills his paternal uncle Hiranyaksha by piercing and crushing him, and Vishnu kills his paternal aunt Holika by burning her to ashes alive, and Vishnu as Narasimha disimbowels and kills his father Hiranyakashipu and saves Prahlada and
11970-439: 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
12096-711: The principle of ahimsa (non-violence) in the Mahabharata . Kapila is the tenth child of sage Kardama and Devahūti. Kardama is provided a boon by Narayana that he would himself be born as his son. After attaining this, Kardama wished to leave for the forest for penance and research and Vedic study. Kardama had nine daughters who were very learned and went ahead to marry great sages mentioned in ancient Indian history ^ . Kala married Marichi , Anusuya married Atri , Arundhati married Vashishtha , Havirbhu married Pulastya , and Shanti married Atharvan . The Rigveda X.27.16 mentions Kapila ( daśānām ekam kapilam ) which
12222-480: 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
12348-609: 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
12474-497: 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,
12600-562: 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
12726-496: 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
12852-556: 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
12978-615: 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
13104-453: The tale of Prahlada to Maitreya with the following proclamation: Such, Maitreya, was Prahlada, the wise and faithful worshipper of Vishnu, of whom you wished to hear; and such was his miraculous power. Whoever listens to the history of Prahlada is immediately cleansed from their sins: the iniquities that they commits, by night or by day, shall be expiated by once hearing, or once reading, the history of Prahlada. The perusal of this history on
13230-736: The teachings on how to achieve this, by Kapila and by Buddha, are very different. As Buddhist art often depicts Vedic deities, one can find art of both Narayana and Kapila as kings within a Buddhist temple, along with statues of Buddhist figures such as Amitabha, Maitreya, and Vairocana. In Chinese Buddhism, the Buddha directed the Yaksha Kapila and fifteen daughters of Devas to become the patrons of China. The following works were authored by Kapila, some of which are lost, and known because they are mentioned in other works; while few others are unpublished manuscripts available in libraries stated: Ayurveda books mentioning Kapila's works are: Kapila,
13356-543: The terms Samkhya and Kapila appear, with Kapila meaning colour as well as a "seer" ( Rishi ) with the phrase " ṛṣiṃ prasūtaṃ kapilam ... tam agre.. "; which when compared to other verses of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad Kapila likely construes to Rudra and Hiranyagarbha. However, Max Muller is of view that Hiranyagarbha, namely Kapila in this context, varies with the tenor of the Upanishad,
13482-532: The third canto of Shrimad Bhagavata Purana . Kapila is mentioned in chapter VIII of the Uttaradhyayana-sutra , states Larson and Bhattacharya, where a discourse of poetical verses is titled as Kaviliyam , or "Kapila's verses". The name Kapila appears in Jaina texts. For example, in the 12th century Hemacandra 's epic poem on Jain elders, Kapila appears as a Brahmin who converted to Jainism during
13608-494: The threshold to his home at dusk and Hiranyakashipu died after being disemboweled by Narasimha, thus nullifying all of Hiranyakashipu's boon of virtual immortality and destroying it fully and Narasimha disembowels and kills Hiranyakashipu. Prahlada eventually becomes the king of the asuras and attains a place in the abode of Vishnu and Lakshmi ( Vaikuntha ) after his death. In the Bhagavad Gita (10.30) Krishna makes
13734-653: 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
13860-579: The universe from destruction and chaos. He is considered a mahājana , or great devotee, by followers of Vaishnava traditions. A treatise is attributed to him in the Bhagavata Purana , in which Prahlada describes the process of his loving worship towards Vishnu. The majority of stories in the Puranas regarding him are based on the activities of Prahlada as a young boy, and he is usually depicted as such in paintings and illustrations. Prahlada
13986-408: 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
14112-564: 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
14238-461: The yagñopavīta, with a kamaṇḍalu near him, with one hand placed in front of the crossed legs, and feet marked with lines resembling outline of a lotus. This Kapila is identified with Kapila the founder of Sāṅkhya system; while the Vaikhānasasāgama gives somewhat varying description. The Vaikhānasasāgama places Kapila as an āvaraņadēvāta and allocates the south-east corner of the first āvaraņa. As
14364-502: 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
14490-716: Was Prahlada who asked Shukracharya to acquire the Mritasanjivani mantra from Shiva to save the asuras from the devas and devis. After a long life, Prahlada attained Vaikuntha . Prahlada's great-grandson was the thousand-armed Banasura , who was defeated in battle by Krishna and later, Banasura was killed by Kartikeya in the Mahabharata . The following sites in Maharashtra , Andhra Pradesh , Telangana and Uttar Pradesh in India, are associated with Prahlāda or Narasiṁha as places of pilgrimage: In Pakistan: The Prahallada Nataka (also spelled Prahlada-Naṭaka),
14616-408: 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
14742-427: 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
14868-472: 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
14994-738: 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
15120-561: Was antagonised by his spiritual inclination and tried to warn Prahlada against offending him since he had greatly desired to turn his son against Vishnu in particular. Despite several warnings from his father Hiranyakashipu, Prahlada continued to worship Vishnu instead of the former. The child is successful in converting other students of the Asura clan into Vaishnavism by teaching them the Narayana mantra . His father then decided to commit filicide and poison Prahlada, but he survived. When
15246-434: Was born to Kayadhu and Hiranyakashipu , an evil asura king who had been granted a boon from Brahma that he could not be killed off by anything born from a living womb, neither by a man nor an animal, neither during the day nor at night, neither indoors nor outdoors, neither on land nor in the air nor in water, and with no man-made weapon. However, after repeated attempts of filicide by Hiranyakashipu against Prahlada, Prahlada
15372-489: Was defeated, he realised his folly and ruled on the throne, making Andhaka also to reign as king. According to the Devi Bhagavata Purana , Prahlada was compelled to wage war against Indra and the devas by the daityas. In the fierce devasura war that ensued, Prahlada emerged as the victor. Fearing that the asura king would destroy the devas, Indra prayed to Parvati , and Prahlada responded in kind. Pleased,
15498-460: Was even more powerful than his father, Hiranyakashipu, who was killed by Vishnu as Narasimha, ever was. He enjoyed the love and respect of his subjects. Without lifting a single weapon and by virtue of his good behaviour, Prahlada conquered the three worlds easily, and Indra ran away from Svarga . In the disguise of a Brahmana , Indra sought an audience with the asura and asked him to teach him about Hinduism . Pleased with this pupil, he offered him
15624-421: Was finally saved by Narasimha, the fourth avatara of Vishnu, who descended to demonstrate the quality of divine rage and redemption and then Narashima killed Hiranyakashipu. The word "Narsimha" is derived from the Sanskrit words "Nara", meaning man, and "Simha", meaning lion. Thus, the preserver god took the form of a part-human, part-lion and killed Hiranyakashipu. After the death of his father, Prahlada ascended
15750-530: Was present during the Samudra Manthana and also fought in the Tarakamaya War against the devas and devis alongside the asuras and asuris. Prahlada's son was Virochana , who was the father of Bali . The devas had Virochana killed by taking advantage of his generosity. Prahlada raised his grandson, Bali. Later on, Prahlada and Bali lived on Sutala Loka under the instructions of Vishnu. It
15876-442: 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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