135-449: Matsya ( Sanskrit : मत्स्य , lit. 'fish') is the fish avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu . Often described as the first of Vishnu's ten primary avatars , Matsya is described to have rescued the first man, Manu , from a great deluge. Matsya may be depicted as a giant fish, often golden in color, or anthropomorphically with the torso of Vishnu connected to the rear half of
270-624: A vrata (vow) with fasting and worshipping Matsya (as a golden fish) in a three lunar-day festival culminating on the twelfth lunar day of the month of Margashirsha . There are very few temples dedicated to Matsya. Prominent ones include the Shankhodara temple in Bet Dwarka and Vedanarayana Temple in Nagalapuram . Matsya Narayana Temple, Bangalore also exists. The Brahma Purana describes that Matsya-madhava (Vishnu as Matsya)
405-492: A big fish, and the fish saves the man who would be the progenitor of the next race of mankind. In later versions, Matsya slays a demon named Hayagriva who steals the Vedas , and thus is lauded as the saviour of the scriptures. The tale is ascribed with the motif of flood myths , common across cultures. Mind element descend from vaikunth to earth, hence mind called avatar. mind of aquatic creatures descends from vaikunth to earth
540-456: A boundary between the earthly existence and land of salvation beyond. The protection of the fish and its horn represent the sacrifices that help guide Manu to salvation. Treated as a parable, the tale advises a good king should protect the weak from the mighty, reversing the "law of fishes" and uphold dharma , like Manu, who defines an ideal king. In the tales where the demon hides the Vedas, dharma
675-412: A conch is sometimes depicted attacking Matsya with a sword as Matsya combats or kills him. Both of them may be depicted in the ocean, while the god Brahma and/or manuscripts or four men, symbolizing the Vedas, may be depicted in the background. In some scenes, Matsya is depicted as a fish pulling the boat with Manu and the seven sages in it. The story of a great deluge is found in many civilizations across
810-417: 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." Edward Washburn Hopkins Edward Washburn Hopkins , Ph.D., LL.D. (September 8, 1857 – July 16, 1932), an American Sanskrit scholar,
945-559: A fish. The earliest account of Matsya is found in the Shatapatha Brahmana , where Matsya is not associated with any particular deity. The fish-saviour later merges with the identity of Brahma in post-Vedic era, and still later, becomes regarded with Vishnu. The legends associated with Matsya expand, evolve, and vary in Hindu texts. These legends have embedded symbolism, where a small fish with Manu's protection grows to become
1080-433: 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
1215-593: A holy bath on Matsya Jayanti and worship Matsya or Vishnu in the evening, ending their fast. Vishnu temples organize a special Puja . The Meena community claim a mythological descent from Matsya, who is called Meenesh ("Lord of the Meenas"/ "Fish-Lord"). Matsya Jayanti is celebrated as Meenesh Jayanti by the Meenas. The Varaha Purana and the Margashirsha-Mahatmya of the Padma Purana recommends
1350-591: 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
1485-658: 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
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#17327651261251620-481: A little fish that miraculously increases in size over time and soon he transfers the fish to the Ganges and later to the ocean. Manu recognizes the fish as Vishnu. The fish warns him about the impending fiery end of kalpa accompanied with the pralaya as a deluge. The fish once again has a horn, but the gods gift a ship to Manu. Manu carries all types of living creatures and plant seeds to produce food for everyone after
1755-454: 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
1890-479: 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
2025-546: 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
2160-583: A prayer in the Bhagavata Purana , Matsya is invoked for protection from the aquatic animals and the waters. The Agni Purana suggests that Matsya be installed in the Northern direction in temples or in water bodies. The Vishnudharmottara Purana prescribes worship for Matsya for grain. Matsya is invoked as a form of Vishnu in hymns in the Brahma Purana . The Vishnu Sahasranama version of
2295-578: 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
2430-538: 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
2565-474: A ship by that day, one he can attach to its horn. On the predicted day, Manu visits the fish with his boat. The devastating floods come. Manu ties the boat to the horn. The fish carries the boat with Manu to the high grounds of the northern mountains (interpreted as the Himalayas ). The lone survivor Manu then re-establishes life by performing austerities and yajna (sacrifices). The goddess Ida appears from
2700-439: 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
2835-537: A turbulent storm. The danger passes. The fish then reveals himself as Brahma and gives the power of creation to Manu. The key difference between the Vedic version and the Mahabharata version of the allegorical legend are the latter's identification of Matsya with Brahma, a more explicit discussion of the "law of the fishes" where the weak needs the protection from the strong, and the fish asking Manu to bring along sages and grains. The Matsya Purana identifies
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#17327651261252970-516: 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
3105-429: Is called Matsya Avatar. The deity Matsya derives his name from the word matsya ( Sanskrit : मत्स्य ), meaning "fish". Monier-Williams and R. Franco suggest that the words matsa and matsya , both meaning fish, derive from the root mad , meaning "to rejoice, be glad, exult, delight or revel in". Thus, matsya means the "joyous one". The Sanskrit grammarian and etymologist Yaska ( c. 600 BCE ) also refers to
3240-452: 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
3375-529: Is installed as the Manu of the current kalpa . The Agni Purana narrative is similar to the Bhagavata Purana version placed around Kritamala river and also records the rescue of Vedas from the demon Hayagriva. It mentions Vaivasvata Manu only collecting all seeds (not living beings) and assembling the seven sages similar to the Mahabharata version. It also adds the basis of the Matsya Purana , being
3510-740: Is located in the small town of Meenangadi situated on the highway between Kalpetta and Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad . Matsyamurti is the name of the principal deity, though the idol itself is that of Vishnu. The second temple dedicated to Matsya in the state is the Mootoli Sree Mahavishnu Temple in Kakkodi , Kozhikode . The third temple is the Perumeenpuram Vishnu Temple in Kakkur , Kozhikode. The idol
3645-520: Is missing. Another account in the Padma Purana mentions that a demon son called Makara steals the Vedas from Brahma and hides them in the cosmic ocean. Beseeched by Brahma and the gods, Vishnu takes the Matsya-form and enters the waters, then turns into a crocodile and destroys the demon. The sage Vyasa is credited with re-compilation of the Vedas in this version. The Vedas are then returned to Brahma. The Brahma Purana states that Vishnu took
3780-532: 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
3915-556: Is reciprocated by the fish. Though Matsya does not appear in older scriptures, the seeds of the legend may be traced to the oldest Hindu scripture, the Rigveda . Manu (lit. "man"), the first man and progenitor of humanity, appears in the Rigveda . Manu is said to have performed the first sacrifice by kindling the sacrificial fire ( Agni ) with seven priests; Manu's sacrifice becomes the archetypal sacrifice. Narayan Aiyangar suggests that
4050-465: Is said to rest at a Himalayan peak, where the herb grows. Maurice Bloomfield suggests that this may be an allusion to Manu's ship. The tale of Matsya also appears in sec. 186 of Book 3 (the Vana Parva ) of the epic Mahabharata . The legend begins with Manu (specifically Vaivasvata Manu , the present Manu. Manu is envisioned as a title, rather than an individual) performing religious rituals on
4185-479: Is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases. The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas 2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas 1 and 10 are relatively the youngest. Yet,
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4320-688: Is that of Matsya. The main ceremony of this temple for devotees is called mīnūt (feeding the fish). Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from
4455-589: 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
4590-456: Is threatened and Vishnu as the divine Saviour rescues dharma, aided by his earthly counterpart, Manu - the king. Another theory suggests that the boat of Manu and the fish represents the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor respectively, when the star Thuban was the Pole Star (4th to 2nd millennium BCE). Matsya is invoked as a form of Vishnu in various hymns in scriptures. In
4725-726: Is worshipped with Shveta-madhava (King Shveta) in the Shveta-madhava temple of Vishnu near the sacred Shweta ganga pond in Puri . A temple to Machhenarayan (Matsya) is found in Machhegaun , Nepal , where an annual fair is held in honour of the deity. The Koneswaram Matsyakeswaram temple in Trincomalee , Sri Lanka is now destroyed. There are three temples dedicated to Matsya in Kerala. The Sree Malsyavathara Mahavishnu Temple
4860-540: 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
4995-531: The Brahma Purana and the Vishnu Purana suggests that Vishnu resides as Matsya in Kuru-varsha, one of the regions outside the mountains surrounding Mount Meru . Matsya is depicted in two forms: as a zoomorphic fish or in an anthropomorphic form. The Agni Purana prescribes Matsya be depicted zoomorphically. The Vishnudharmottara Purana recommends that Matsya be depicted as horned fish. In
5130-580: 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
5265-534: The Garuda Purana includes Matsya. The Vishnu Sahasranama in the Skanda Purana includes Matsya , Maha-matsya ("Great fish") and Timingila ("a great aquatic creature"). The third day in the bright fortnight of the Hindu month of Chaitra is celebrated as Matsya Jayanti, the birthday of Matsya, when his worship is recommended. Vishnu devotees observe a fast from a day before the holy day; take
5400-621: The Garuda Purana regard Matsya as the tenth of 22 avatars and describe him as the "support of the earth". The Ayidhya-Mahatmya of the Skanda Purana mentions 12 avatars of Vishnu, with Matsya as the 2nd avatar. Matsya is said to support Manu, plants and others like a boat at the end of Brahma's day ( pralaya ). The Vishnu Purana narrative of Vishnu's boar avatar Varaha alludes to the Matsya and Kurma avatars, saying that Brahma (identified with Narayana, an epithet transferred to Vishnu) took these forms in previous kalpa s. The Agni Purana ,
5535-613: 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
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5670-534: The Kritamala river (identified with Vaigai River in Tamil Nadu , South India). There he finds a little fish. The fish asks him to save him from predators and let it grow. Satyavrata is filled with compassion for the little fish. He puts the fish in a pot, from there to a well, then a tank, and when it outgrows the tank, he transfers the fish finally to the sea. The fish rapidly outgrows the sea. Satyavrata asks
5805-655: The Maya of Americas and the Yoruba of Africa. The flood was a recurring natural calamity in Ancient Egypt and Tigris–Euphrates river system in ancient Babylonia. A cult of fish-gods arose in these regions with the fish-saviour motif. While Richard Pischel believed that fish worship originated in ancient Hindu beliefs, Edward Washburn Hopkins rejected the same, suggesting its origin in Egypt. The creator, fish-god Ea in
5940-699: 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
6075-531: 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
6210-677: The Sumerian and Babylonian version warns the king in a dream of the flood and directs him to build a boat. The idea may have reached the Indian subcontinent via the Indo-Aryan migrations or through trade routes to the Indus Valley civilisation . Another theory suggests the fish myth is home-grown in the Indus Valley or South India Dravidian peoples . The Puranic Manu is described to be in South India. As for Indus Valley theory,
6345-494: The flood myth in Hinduism. It does not associate the fish Matsya with any other deity in particular. The central characters of this legend are the fish (Matsya) and Manu . The character Manu is presented as the legislator and ancestor king. One day, water is brought to Manu for his ablutions. In the water is a tiny fish. The fish states that it fears being swallowed by a larger fish and appeals to Manu to protect it. In return,
6480-406: 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
6615-500: 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
6750-414: 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
6885-532: The 7th century where he established a major center of learning and language translation under the patronage of Emperor Taizong. By the early 1st millennium CE, Sanskrit had spread Buddhist and Hindu ideas to Southeast Asia, parts of the East Asia and the Central Asia. It was accepted as a language of high culture and the preferred language by some of the local ruling elites in these regions. According to
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#17327651261257020-425: 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
7155-515: The Creator-god (Brahma or Vishnu), who recreates the universe after the great destruction. This link to Creation may be associated with Matsya regarded as Vishnu's first avatar. Matsya is believed to symbolise the aquatic life as the first beings on earth. Another symbolic interpretation of the Matsya mythology is, states Bonnefoy, to consider Manu's boat to represent moksha (salvation), which helps one to cross over. The Himalayas are treated as
7290-532: 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
7425-521: 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
7560-476: 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
7695-519: 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
7830-532: 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
7965-496: 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
8100-499: 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
8235-578: The South India, such as the great Vijayanagara Empire , so did Sanskrit. There were exceptions and short periods of imperial support for Sanskrit, mostly concentrated during the reign of the tolerant Mughal emperor Akbar . Muslim rulers patronized the Middle Eastern language and scripts found in Persia and Arabia, and the Indians linguistically adapted to this Persianization to gain employment with
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#17327651261258370-498: The Vedas as well as the Manu. In another instance, it states that Vishnu as Matsya killed the demon Pralamba in the reign of the third Manu - Uttama. The Narada Purana states that the demon Hayagriva (son of Kashyapa and Diti) seized the Vedas of the mouth of Brahma. Vishnu then takes the Matsya form and kills the demon, retrieving the Vedas. The incident is said to have happened in the Badari forest . The deluge and Manu are dropped in
8505-421: The Vedas from Brahma, while Vishnu was sleeping. The Vedas escape from his clutches and hide in the ocean. Implored by the gods, Vishnu wakes on Prabodhini Ekadashi and takes the form of a saphari fish and annihilates the demon. Similar to the Padma Purana , the sages re-compile the scattered Vedas from the oceans. The Badari forest and Prayag also appear in this version, though the tale of growing fish and Manu
8640-633: The Vedas from the waters and then presents the same to Brahma in Prayag . This Purana does not reveal how the scriptures drowned in the waters. Vishnu then resides in the Badari forest with other deities. The Karttikamsa-Mahatmya in the Skanda Purana narrates that slaying of the asura (demon) Shankha by Matsya. Shankha (lit. "conch"), the son of Sagara (the ocean), snatches the powers of various gods. Shankha, wishing to acquire more power, steals
8775-515: The Vedas he recovered from the demon. Over his elbows is an angavastra draped, while a dhoti - like draping covers his hips. In rare representations, his lower half is human while the upper body (or just the face) is of a fish. The fish-face version is found in a relief at the Chennakesava Temple, Somanathapura . Matsya may be depicted alone or in a scene depicting his combat with a demon. A demon called Shankhasura emerging from
8910-459: The Vedas. He realizes that they are in the cosmic waters . He takes the form of a gigantic fish and rescues the Vedas and other scriptures. In another instance, Narayana retrieves the Vedas from the Rasatala (netherworld) and grants them to Brahma. The Purana also extols Narayana as the primordial fish who also bore the earth. PPL The Garuda Purana states that Matsya slew Hayagriva and rescued
9045-447: 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
9180-451: 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
9315-459: 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
9450-489: The anthropomorphic form, the upper half is that of the four-armed man and the lower half is a fish. The upper half resembles Vishnu and wears the traditional ornaments and the kirita-mukuta (tall conical crown) as worn by Vishnu. He holds in two of his hands the Sudarshana chakra (discus) and a shankha (conch), the usual weapons of Vishnu. The other two hands make the gestures of varadamudra , which grants boons to
9585-426: The banks of the Chirini River in Vishāla forest. A little fish comes to him and asks for his protection, promising to save him from a deluge in the future. The legend moves in the same vein as the Vedic version. Manu places him in the jar. Once it outgrows the jar, the fish asks to be put into a tank which Manu helps with. Then the fish outgrows the tank, and with Manu's help reaches the Ganges River (Ganga), finally to
9720-440: 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
9855-527: 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
9990-614: 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
10125-504: The cosmic symbolic residue in the form of Shesha. In this account, the ship of Manu is called the ship of the Vedas, thus signifying the rites and rituals of the Vedas. Roy further suggests that this may be an allusion to the gold ship of Manu in the Rigveda . In the Garuda Purana , Matsya is said to have rescued the seventh Manu, Vaivasvata Manu, from the great deluge by placing him in a boat. The Linga Purana praises Vishnu as
10260-653: 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
10395-491: The deluge is over. When the great flood begins, Manu ties the cosmic serpent Shesha to the fish's horn. In the journey towards the mountains, Manu asks questions to Matsya and their dialogue constitutes the rest of the Purana. The Matsya Purana story is also symbolic. The fish is divine to begin with, and needs no protection, only recognition and devotion. It also ties the story to its cosmology, connecting two kalpa s through
10530-467: 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
10665-457: The devotee, and abhayamudra , which reassures the devotee of protection. In another configuration, he might have all four attributes of Vishnu, namely the Sudarshana chakra , a shankha , a gada (mace) and a lotus. In some representations, Matsya is shown with four hands like Vishnu, one holding the chakra, another the shankha, while the front two hands hold a sword and a book signifying
10800-471: 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
10935-542: The discourse of Matsya to Manu, similar to the Bhagavata Purana version. While listing the Puranas, the Agni Purana states that the Matsya Purana was told by Matsya to Manu at the beginning of the kalpa . The Varaha Purana equates Narayana (identified with Vishnu) as the creator-god, instead of Brahma. Narayana creates the universe. At the start of a new kalpa , Narayana wakes from his slumber and thinks about
11070-460: 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
11205-578: The earth. It is often compared with the Genesis narrative of the flood and Noah's Ark . The fish motif reminds readers of the Biblical ' Jonah and the Whale' narrative as well; this fish narrative, as well as the saving of the scriptures from a demon, are specifically Hindu traditions of this style of the flood narrative. Similar flood myths also exist in tales from ancient Sumer and Babylonia , Greece ,
11340-548: 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
11475-435: The fish avatar teaches the highest knowledge to the sages and Satyavrata to prepare them for the next cycle of existence. The Bhagavata Purana states that this knowledge was compiled as a Purana, interpreted as an allusion to the Matsya Purana . After the deluge, Matsya slays the demon and rescues the Vedas, restoring them to Brahma, who has woken from his sleep to restart creation afresh. Satyavrata becomes Vaivasvata Manu and
11610-450: The fish is common in the seals ; also horned beasts like the horned fish are common in depictions. Even if the idea of the flood myth and the fish-god may be imported from another culture, it is cognate with the Vedic and Puranic cosmogonic tale of Creation through the waters. In the Mahabharata and the Puranas, the flood myth is in fact a cosmogonic myth. The deluge symbolizes dissolution of universe (pralaya); while Matsya "allegorizes"
11745-415: The fish promises to rescue Manu from an impending flood. Manu accepts the request. He puts the fish in a pot of water where it grows. Then he prepares a ditch filled with water, and transfers it there where it can grow freely. Once the fish grows further to be big enough to be free from danger, Manu transfers it into the ocean. The fish thanks him, tells him the timing of the great flood, and asks Manu to build
11880-472: The fish-savior (Matsya) with Vishnu, instead of Brahma. The Purana derives its name from Matsya and begins with the tale of Manu. King Manu renounces the world. Pleased with his austerities on Malaya mountains (interpreted as Kerala in Southern India), Brahma grants his wish to rescue the world at the time of the pralaya (dissolution at end of a kalpa ). As in other versions, Manu encounters
12015-416: The form of a rohita fish when the earth was in the netherland to rescue the Vedas. The Krishna -centric Brahmavaivarta Purana states that Matsya is an avatar of Krishna (identified with Supreme Being) and in a hymn to Krishna praises Matsya as the protector of the Vedas and Brahmins (the sages), who imparted knowledge to the king. The Purusottama-Ksetra-Mahatmya of Skanda Purana in relationship of
12150-412: 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
12285-537: 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
12420-431: 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
12555-486: 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
12690-432: 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
12825-412: 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
12960-514: 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 ,
13095-511: 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
13230-429: 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
13365-401: 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
13500-602: 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
13635-409: The mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India. Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax. Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit ,
13770-401: The narrative. The Shiva Purana praises Vishnu as Matsya who rescued the Vedas via king Satyavrata and swam through the ocean of pralaya . The Padma Purana replaces Manu with the sage Kashyapa , who finds the little fish who expands miraculously. Another major divergence is the absence of the deluge. Vishnu as Matsya slays the demon Shankha. Matsya-Vishnu then orders the sages to gather
13905-435: The northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of
14040-545: 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,
14175-544: The ocean. Manu is asked by the fish, as in the Shatapatha Brahmana version, to build a ship and additionally, to be in it with Saptarishi (seven sages) and all sorts of seeds, on the day of the expected deluge. Manu accepts the fish's advice. The deluge begins. The fish arrives to Manu's aid. He ties the ship with a rope to the horn of the fish, who then steers the ship to the Himalayas, carrying Manu through
14310-490: The one who saved various beings as a fish by tying a boat to his tail. The Bhagavata Purana adds another reason for the Matsya avatar. At the end of the kalpa , a demon Hayagriva ("horse-necked") steals the Vedas , which escape from the yawn of a sleepy Brahma. Vishnu discovers the theft. He descends to earth in the form of a little saphari fish, or the Matsya avatar. One day, the king of Dravida country (South India) named Satyavrata cups water in his hand for libation in
14445-403: 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
14580-543: The origin of the herb Damanaka states that a daitya (demon) named Damanaka tormented people and wandered in the waters. On the request of Brahma, Vishnu takes the Matsya form, pulls the demon from the waters and crushes him on land. The demon transforms into a fragrant herb called Damanaka, which Vishnu wears in his flower garland . Matsya is generally enlisted as the first avatar of Vishnu, especially in Dashavatara (ten major avatars of Vishnu) lists. However, that
14715-431: 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
14850-529: The political elites in some of these regions. As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies. Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties. The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from
14985-414: 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
15120-439: 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
15255-480: 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
15390-407: The protection, the little fish grows to become big and ultimately saves all existence. The boat that Manu builds to get help from the saviour fish, states Bonnefoy, is symbolism of the means to avert complete destruction and for human salvation. The mountains represent the doorway for ultimate refuge and liberation. Edward Washburn Hopkins suggests that the favour of Manu rescuing the fish from death,
15525-609: 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
15660-497: 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,
15795-562: 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
15930-464: The sacrifice and both together initiate the race of Manu, the humans. According to Bonnefoy, the Vedic story is symbolic. The little fish alludes to the Indian "law of the fishes", an equivalent to the " law of the jungle ". The small and weak would be devoured by the big and strong, and needs the dharmic protection of the legislator and king Manu to enable it to attain its full potential and be able to help later. Manu provides
16065-496: 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
16200-413: The same stating that fish are known as matsya as "they revel in eating each other". Yaska also offers an alternate etymology of matsya as "floating in water" derived from the roots syand (to float) and madhu (water). The Sanskrit word matsya is cognate with Prakrit maccha ("fish"). The section 1.8.1 of the Shatapatha Brahmana ( Yajur veda ) is the earliest extant text to mention Matsya and
16335-556: 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
16470-533: The ship from the Matsya legend alludes to the ship of Sacrifice referred in the Rigveda and the Aitareya Brahmana . In this context, the fish denotes Agni - God as well as the sacrificial flames. The legend thus signifies how man (Manu) can sail the sea of sins and troubles with the ship of sacrifice and the fish-Agni as his guide. In a prayer to kushta plant in the Atharvaveda , a golden ship
16605-615: 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
16740-475: The supernatural fish to reveal its true identity, but soon realizes it to be Vishnu. Matsya-Vishnu informs the king of the impending flood coming in seven days. The king is asked to collect every species of animal, plant, and seeds as well as the seven sages ( Saptarshi ) in a boat. The fish asks the king to tie the boat to its horn with the help of the Shesha serpent. The deluge comes. While carrying them to safety,
16875-653: 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
17010-408: 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
17145-564: 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
17280-502: 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
17415-408: 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
17550-427: 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
17685-472: 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
17820-738: 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
17955-605: Was born in Northampton, Massachusetts . He graduated at Columbia College in 1878, studied at Leipzig , where he received the degree of Ph.D. in 1881, was an instructor at Columbia (1881–1885), and professor at Bryn Mawr (1885–1895), and became professor of Sanskrit and comparative philology in Yale University in 1895. He became secretary of the American Oriental Society and editor of
18090-604: Was not always the case. Some lists do not list Matsya as first, and only later texts start the trend of Matsya as the first avatar. In the Garuda Purana listing of the Dashavatara, Matsya is the first. The Linga Purana , the Narada Purana , the Shiva Purana , the Varaha Purana , the Padma Purana , the Skanda Purana also mention Matsya as the first of the ten classical avatars. The Bhagavata Purana and
18225-442: 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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