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139-460: Traditional Makar(a) Sankranti ( Sanskrit : मकरसङ्क्रान्ति , romanized :  Makarasaṅkrānti ), ( transl.  Capricorn Festival ) also referred to as Uttarayana , Makar , or simply Sankranti , is a Hindu observance and a festival. Usually falling on the date of 14 January annually (15 January on a leap year), this occasion marks the transition of the sun from the zodiac of Sagittarius ( dhanu ) to Capricorn ( makara ). Since

278-418: A Sankranti offering in a plate and exchange the same with other families. This ritual is called "Ellu Birodhu." Here the plate would normally contain "Ellu" (white sesame seeds) mixed with fried groundnuts, neatly cut dry coconut and fine cut bella (jaggery). The mixture is called "Ellu-Bella" (ಎಳ್ಳು ಬೆಲ್ಲ). The plate contains shaped sugar candy moulds (Sakkare Acchu, ಸಕ್ಕರೆ ಅಚ್ಚು) with a piece of sugarcane. There

417-624: A ceremony of thanks to the Sun. Every twelve years, the Hindus observe Makar Sankranti with Kumbha Mela – one of the world's largest mass pilgrimage, with an estimated 60 to 100 million people attending the event. At this event, they say a prayer to the Sun and bathe at the Prayagaraj confluence of the River Ganga and River Yamuna, a tradition attributed to Adi Shankaracharya . Makar Sankranti

556-435: A change in food habits and intake of nourishing and rich food. Therefore, this festival holds traditional cultural significance. It is astronomically important for devotees who worship the sun god at the great Konark temple with fervour and enthusiasm as the sun starts its annual swing northwards. According to various Indian calendars, the Sun's movement changes and the days from this day onwards become lengthier and warmer and so

695-420: A coordinate system which can be considered as fixed in space, these motions require specification of the equinox of a particular date, known as an epoch , when giving a position in ecliptic coordinates. The three most commonly used are: A position in the ecliptic coordinate system is thus typically specified true equinox and ecliptic of date , mean equinox and ecliptic of J2000.0 , or similar. Note that there

834-458: 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." Ecliptic coordinate system The celestial equator and the ecliptic are slowly moving due to perturbing forces on the Earth , therefore

973-433: 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

1112-478: A four-year cycle. And Makar Sankranti will be on 16 January for the first in the year 2102 as 2100 will not be a leap year. Makar Sankranti is celebrated when the Sun's ecliptic longitude becomes 270° measured from a fixed starting point which is in opposition to Spica , i.e. this is a sidereal measure. Uttarayana begins when the Sun's ecliptic longitude becomes 270° measured from the Vernal equinox, i.e. this

1251-486: A gift pack, called "Sindhara" or "Sidha", of wood and warm clothing for her and her husband's family. Women give gift to their in-laws called "Manana". Women congregate in the nearby havelis to sing Haryani folk songs and exchange gifts. In Jammu , Makar Sankranti is celebrated as ' Uttrain ' (derived from Sanskrit: Uttarayana ). Alternatively, terms ' Attrain ' or ' Attrani ' have also been used to describe this festival. A day before

1390-591: 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

1529-658: 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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1668-535: A longitude of ♌ 19° 55′ 58″ is 19.933° east of the start of the sign Leo . Since Leo begins 120° from the March equinox, the longitude in modern form is 139° 55′ 58″ . In China, ecliptic longitude is measured using 24  Solar terms , each of 15° longitude, and are used by Chinese lunisolar calendars to stay synchronized with the seasons, which is crucial for agrarian societies. A rectangular variant of ecliptic coordinates

1807-416: A married woman is of significance as she is invited by her parents and brothers to their houses with her husband for a big feast. People invite friends and relatives (specially their sisters and daughters) to their home for special festival meals (called as "Sankrant Bhoj"). People give out many kind of small gifts such as til-gud (jaggery), fruits, dry khichadi, etc. to Brahmins or the needy ones. Kite flying

1946-454: 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

2085-479: 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

2224-546: 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

2363-468: A rather subdued note, unlike major festivals of the region like Ganesh chaturthi . Uttarayana, as Makar Sankranti is called in Gujarati, is a major festival in the state of Gujarat which lasts for two days. Gujarati people keenly await this festival to fly kites, called patang . Kites for Uttarayana are made of special light-weight paper and bamboo and are mostly rhombus shaped with central spine and

2502-578: 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

2641-538: 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

2780-564: A result, the December solstice (Uttarayana) is continuously but very slowly moving away from Makar Sankranti. Conversely, the December solstice (Uttarayana) and Makar Sankranti must have coincided at some time in the distant past. Such a coincidence last happened 1700 years back, in 291 CE. Every year Makar Sankranti is celebrated in the month of January. This festival is dedicated to the Hindu religious sun god Surya . This significance of Surya

2919-439: 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

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3058-613: A single bow. The string often contains abrasives to cut down rival kites . The large number of kites leads to injuries and fatalities among birds. Jivdaya Charitable Trust , a local animal welfare charity, started a Save the Birds campaign, for example asking people to fly kites at times of day when birds are less likely to be flying to find food. In Gujarat, from December through to Makar Sankranti, people start enjoying Uttarayana. Undhiyu (spicy, baked mix of winter vegetables) and chikkis (made from til (sesame seeds), peanuts and jaggery) are

3197-403: A solstice increases and decreases in a cycle of four years. The time difference between two consecutive winter solstices is about 5 hours 49 minutes 59 seconds, with respect to winter solstice time, and the time difference between two consecutive Mankar Sankranti is about 6 hours and 10 minutes. Towards the end of the 21st century, there will be more occurrences of Makar Sankranti on 15 January in

3336-416: Is 365.24 days long and the time difference between the two consecutive instances of Makar Sankranti is almost the same as the year. There are 365 days in a year. Thus, every four years the calendar is offset by one day which is adjusted by adding leap day (29 February). Hence, Makar Sankranti falls on 15 January every leap year. Sidereal time of sign of Capricorn also shifts by a day due to leap year. Similarly,

3475-711: Is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in

3614-460: Is a tropical measure. While both concern a measure of 270° their starting points are different. Hence, Makar Sankranti and Uttarayana occur on different days. On the Gregorian calendar, Makar Sankranti occurs on 14 or 15 January; Uttarayana starts on 21 December. Due to the precession of the equinoxes the tropical zodiac (i.e. all the equinoxes and solstices) shifts by about 1° in 72 years. As

3753-424: Is a popular f lat bread stuffed with shredded jaggery and ground til in pure ghee are enjoyed for lunch as well as dinner. Married women invite friends/family members and celebrate Haldi-Kunku . Guests are given til-gul and some small gift, as a part of the ritual. On this day, Hindu women and men make it a point to wear black clothes. As Sakranti falls in the winter months of the region, wearing black adds to

3892-524: Is a saying in Kannada "ellu bella thindu olle maathadi" that translates to 'eat the mixture of sesame seeds and jaggery and speak only good.' This festival signifies the harvest of the season, since sugarcane is predominant in these parts. Ellu Bella, Ellu Unde, bananas, sugarcane, red berries, haldi and kumkum and small gift items useful in everyday lives are often exchanged among women in Karnataka. During

4031-465: Is a time of celebration and thanks giving, and is marked by a variety of rituals and tradition. Makar Sankranti is set by the solar cycle and corresponds to the exact time astronomical event of the Sun entering Capricorn and is observed on a day that usually falls on 14 January of the Gregorian calendar, but on 15 January in leap years. Makar Sankranti's date and time is analogous to Sidereal time of Zodiac sign of Capricorn (when sun enters). The year

4170-516: 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

4309-475: Is also celebrated as birth anniversary of Baba Ambo ji , a local deity of Jammu region. At Vasuki temple of Bhaderwah of Jammu , the idols of Vasuki Nag are covered on Magh Sankranti and they are uncovered only after three months on Vaisakha Sankranti . This is the Suggi (ಸುಗ್ಗಿ) or harvest festival for farmers of Karnataka. On this auspicious day, girls wear new clothes to visit near and dear ones with

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4448-413: Is believed to result in merit or absolution of past sins. They also pray to the Sun and give thanks for their successes and prosperity. A shared cultural practices found amongst Hindus of various parts of India is making sticky, bound sweets particularly from sesame ( til ) and a sugar base such as jaggery ( gud, gur, gul ). This type of sweet is a symbolism for being together in peace and joyfulness, despite

4587-507: Is celebrated as Maghi which is a religious and cultural festival. Bathing in a river in the early hours on Maghi is important. Hindus light lamps with sesame oil as this is supposed to give prosperity and drive away all sins. A major mela is held at Sri Muktsar Sahib on Maghi which commemorates a historical event in Sikh history. "Makar Sankrati" or "Sakraat" in the Rajasthani language

4726-451: Is celebrated as Lohri by Dogras to commemorate end of Poh ( Pausha ) month. It is also beginning of the Magha month as per Hindu Solar Calendar, hence also known as ' Maghi Sangrand ' ( Sankranti of Magh month). Among Dogras, there is a tradition of ' Mansana ' (charity) of Khichdi of Maah Dal . Khichdi of Maah di Dal is also prepared on this day and that

4865-700: Is celebrated by flying kites. Makara Sankranti is an important pan-Indian solar festival, known by different names though observed on the same date, sometimes for multiple dates around the Makar Sankranti. It is known as Pedda Panduga'/'Makara Sankranti in Andhra Pradesh, Makara Sankranti in Karnataka, Telangana, and Maharashtra, Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Magh Bihu in Assam, Magha Mela in parts of central and north India, as Makar Sankranti in

5004-516: Is celebrated in many parts of Jharkhand and West Bengal. Poush Mela , held traditionally on the seventh day of Poush, at Shantiniketan , in West Bengal , is unrelated to this festival. Mela Maghi is held in memory of the forty Sikh martyrs ( Chalis Mukte ) who gave their lives to protect Guru Gobind Singh , the tenth Guru of Sikhism, every year at Muktsar Sahib in Punjab. Before this tradition,

5143-641: Is celebrated with distinct names and rituals. It is celebrated differently across the Indian subcontinent. Many people take a dip in places like Ganga Sagar and pray to the Sun God ( Surya ). It is celebrated with pomp in southern parts of India as Sankranti in Andhra Pradesh , Telangana and Karnataka (Pongal in Tamil Nadu), and in Punjab as Maghi . Many melas or fairs are held on Makar Sankranti

5282-452: 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

5421-470: Is known as "Kichchu Haayisuvudu". In Maharashtra, on Makar Sankranti day, people exchange til-gul (sweetmeats made from sesame seeds and jaggery). A famous line associated with this joyous occasion is til gul ghya god god bola (Eat this sesame and jaggery and speak sweet words). Tilacha halwa (sugar granules) are also offered as prasad in the Devghar (Prayer room) after seeking blessings. Gulachi poli

5560-449: Is no "mean ecliptic", as the ecliptic is not subject to small periodic oscillations. From antiquity through the 18th century, ecliptic longitude was commonly measured using twelve zodiacal signs , each of 30° longitude, a practice that continues in modern astrology . The signs approximately corresponded to the constellations crossed by the ecliptic. Longitudes were specified in signs, degrees, minutes, and seconds. For example,

5699-508: Is often used in orbital calculations and simulations. It has its origin at the center of the Sun (or at the barycenter of the Solar System ), its fundamental plane on the ecliptic plane, and the x -axis toward the March equinox . The coordinates have a right-handed convention , that is, if one extends their right thumb upward, it simulates the z -axis, their extended index finger

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5838-439: Is one of the major festivals in the state of Rajasthan. The day is celebrated with special Rajasthani delicacies and sweets such as pheeni (either with sweet milk or sugar syrup dipped), til-patti, gajak, kheer, ghevar, pakodi, puwa, and til-laddoo. Specially, the women of this region observe a ritual in which they give any type of object (related to household, make-up or food) to 13 married women. The first Sankranti experienced by

5977-532: 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

6116-479: 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,

6255-549: Is the Assam celebration of Makar Sankranti, with feasting lasting for a week. The festival is marked by feasts and bonfires. The day of the Bihu starts at early dawn by a post-harvesting ceremony called "Meji". In this, bonfires are burned in the house, temples, fields and people pray to Agnidev for blessings Young people erect makeshift huts, known as Meji and Bhelaghar , from bamboo, leaves and thatch, and in Bhelaghar they eat

6394-589: 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

6533-409: Is to eliminate evil forces. This day is also held in honor of Indra , the Hindu god of rain. The second day of festival is Thai Pongal or simply Pongal. It is celebrated by boiling rice with fresh milk and jaggery in new pots, which are later topped with brown sugar, cashew nuts and raisins early in the morning and allowing it to boil over the vessel. This tradition gives Pongal its name. The moment

6672-633: Is traceable to the Vedic texts, particularly the Gayatri Mantra , a sacred hymn of Hinduism found in its scripture named the Rigveda . Makara Sankranti is also associated with the birth and coming of the final Avatar of the Hindu God Vishnu, Kalki. Makara Sankranti is regarded as important for spiritual practices and accordingly, people take a holy dip in rivers, especially Ganga , Yamuna , Godavari , Krishna and Kaveri . The bathing

6811-581: Is traditionally observed as a part of this festival. On this occasion the sky in Jaipur and Hadoti regions is filled with kites, and youngsters engage in contests trying to cut each other's strings. In Malwa and Nimar region kite flying is popular during makar Sankranti. It is a four-day festival in South India: The festival is celebrated four days from the last day of the Tamil month Margazhi to

6950-570: Is why this day is also referred to as ' Khichdi wala Parva ' . There is also a tradition of sending Khichdi & other food items to house of married daughters. Fairs are organised on holy places and pligrimages on this day. Dhagwal in Hiranagar tehsil is known for Fair on Makar Sankranti and Janamashtami . People of Jammu also take holy bath in Devika river and pilgrimages like Uttar Behni and Purmandal on this occasion. This day

7089-421: Is worshipped along with Vishnu and goddess Lakshmi throughout India. Makar Sankranti is observed with social festivities such as colourful decorations, rural children going house to house, singing and asking for treats in some areas, melas (fairs), dances, kite flying, bonfires and feasts. The Magha Mela is mentioned in the Hindu epic Mahabharata . Many observers go to sacred rivers or lakes and bathe in

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7228-540: 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

7367-580: 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

7506-613: 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

7645-753: 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

7784-532: 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 ,

7923-531: 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

8062-641: The Shakti deity. These pots are filled with newly harvested food grains and are offered with betel leaves and areca nut. Its observance takes place on a rather subdued note, unlike major festivals of the region like Ganesh Chaturthi . The festival is known as Makara Sankranti in Odisha where people prepare makara chaula ( Odia : ମକର ଚାଉଳ ): uncooked newly harvested rice, banana, coconut , jaggery , sesame , rasagola , Khai/Liaa and chhena puddings for naivedya to gods and goddesses. The withdrawing winter entails

8201-554: The Uttarayana , when the sun enters the 10th house of the zodiac Makara . It is commonly called as Pedda Panduga (Big festival) in the Andhra Pradesh state. Ariselu , a traditional sweet dish is offered to the god. The third day of the four-day festival, it is dedicated to the cattle and other domestic animals. The cattle are decorated, especially cows, they are offered bananas, a special meal and worshipped. On this day, popular community sport Kodi Pandem will begun playing until

8340-546: The orientation of the primary direction, their intersection at the March equinox , is not quite fixed. A slow motion of Earth's axis, precession , causes a slow, continuous turning of the coordinate system westward about the poles of the ecliptic , completing one circuit in about 26,000 years. Superimposed on this is a smaller motion of the ecliptic , and a small oscillation of the Earth's axis, nutation . In order to reference

8479-406: 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

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8618-500: 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

8757-1935: The x -axis, and the curl of the other fingers points generally in the direction of the y -axis. These rectangular coordinates are related to the corresponding spherical coordinates by [ x equatorial y equatorial z equatorial ] = [ 1 0 0 0 cos ⁡ ε − sin ⁡ ε 0 sin ⁡ ε cos ⁡ ε ] [ x ecliptic y ecliptic z ecliptic ] {\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}x_{\text{equatorial}}\\y_{\text{equatorial}}\\z_{\text{equatorial}}\\\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}1&0&0\\0&\cos \varepsilon &-\sin \varepsilon \\0&\sin \varepsilon &\cos \varepsilon \\\end{bmatrix}}{\begin{bmatrix}x_{\text{ecliptic}}\\y_{\text{ecliptic}}\\z_{\text{ecliptic}}\\\end{bmatrix}}} [ x ecliptic y ecliptic z ecliptic ] = [ 1 0 0 0 cos ⁡ ε sin ⁡ ε 0 − sin ⁡ ε cos ⁡ ε ] [ x equatorial y equatorial z equatorial ] {\displaystyle {\begin{bmatrix}x_{\text{ecliptic}}\\y_{\text{ecliptic}}\\z_{\text{ecliptic}}\\\end{bmatrix}}={\begin{bmatrix}1&0&0\\0&\cos \varepsilon &\sin \varepsilon \\0&-\sin \varepsilon &\cos \varepsilon \\\end{bmatrix}}{\begin{bmatrix}x_{\text{equatorial}}\\y_{\text{equatorial}}\\z_{\text{equatorial}}\\\end{bmatrix}}} where ε

8896-414: 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

9035-532: 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

9174-425: 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

9313-532: 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

9452-521: 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

9591-476: 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

9730-519: 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

9869-532: 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

10008-496: 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

10147-499: 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

10286-638: 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

10425-673: The Sun-God is worshiped on this day as a great benefactor. Many individuals at the start of the day perform a ritual bath while fasting. Makara Mela (Fun fair) is observed at Dhabaleswar in Cuttack , Hatakeshwar at Atri in Khordha , Makara Muni temple in Balasore and near deities in each district of Odisha. In Puri special rituals are carried out at the temple of Lord Jagannath . In Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Kalahandi, Koraput and Sundargarh where

10564-447: 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

10703-451: 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

10842-459: 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

10981-436: The body warmth. This is an essential reason behind wearing black, which is otherwise barred on festival days. As per another legend, Lord Surya forgave his son Shani and his son visited him on Sankranti. That is the essential reason why people distribute sweets and urge them to let go of any negative or angry feelings. Also, newly married women offer five sunghat or small clay pots with black beaded threads tied around them, to

11120-440: 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

11259-527: 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

11398-614: 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

11537-653: 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

11676-467: 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

11815-471: 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

11954-460: 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

12093-490: 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

12232-402: The evening, a ceremony called Bhogi Pallu, fruits of the harvest such as regi pallu and sugarcane are collected along with flowers of the season. Money is often placed into a mixture of treats and is poured over children. The children then collect the money and sweet fruits. The second and main day of the four-day festival, and is dedicated to the Hindu god Surya . The day marks the start of

12371-487: The festival was observed and mentioned by Guru Amar Das , the third Guru of Sikhism. The festival Sankranti is celebrated for four days in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. Telugu women decorate the entrance of their homes by geometric patterns drawn using colored rice flour, called Muggu . Bhogi Bhogi is the first day of the four-day festival. It is celebrated with a bonfire with logs of wood, other solid-fuels, and wooden furniture at home that are no longer useful. In

12510-548: 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

12649-414: The food prepared for the feast, and then burn the huts the next morning. The celebrations also feature traditional Assamese games such as tekeli bhonga (pot-breaking) and buffalo fighting. Magh Bihu celebrations start on the last day of the previous month, the month of "Pooh", usually the 29th of Pooh and usually 14 January, and is the only day of Magh Bihu in modern times (earlier, the festival would last for

12788-412: 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

12927-537: 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

13066-431: 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

13205-516: The holy dip in rivers, especially in Yamuna, or at sacred ponds such as ancient sarovars Kurukshetra and at local tirtha ponds associated with the ancestral guardian/founder deity of the village called Jathera or Dhok (dahak in Sanskrit or fire) in villages to wash away sins. People prepare kheer , churma , halva with desi ghee and distribute til-gud ( sesame and jaggery ) laddoos or chikkis . Brothers of married woman visits her home with

13344-405: The horns with gold or other metallic covers. In some places, Jallikattu , or taming the wild bull contest, is the main event of this day and this is mostly seen in the villages. Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )

13483-416: The house for the ceremony. People prepare savouries and sweets such as vadai, murukku, payasam and visit each other and exchange greetings. The third day of festival is Maattu Pongal. It is for offering thanks to cattle, as they help farmers in agriculture. On this day the cattle are decorated with paint, flowers and bells. They are allowed to roam free and fed sweet rice and sugar cane. Some people decorate

13622-486: 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

13761-432: 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

13900-412: 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

14039-514: 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 ,

14178-511: 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

14317-429: 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

14456-401: 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

14595-602: 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

14734-688: The most famous being the Kumbha Mela , held every 12 years at one of four holy locations, namely Haridwar , Prayag ( Prayagraj ), Ujjain and Nashik , the Magha Mela (or mini-Kumbh Mela held annually at Prayag) and the Gangasagar Mela (held at the head of the Ganges River , where it flows into the Bay of Bengal ). Makar Mela in Odisha . Tusu Mela also called as Tusu Porab

14873-543: The next one to two days, especially in the Coastal Andhra region of Andhra Pradesh. It is the fourth and last day of the four-day festival. Many families hold reunions on this day. Magh Bihu (also called Bhogali Bihu ( Bihu of eating foods and enjoyment) or Maghar Domahi is a harvest festival celebrated in Assam , India, which marks the end of harvesting season in the month of Maagha (January–February). It

15012-545: 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,

15151-414: The occasion, newly married women give away bananas for five years to married women from the first year of her marriage. Kite flying, drawing rangolis, giving away of red berries known as Yalchi kai are some of the intrinsic parts of the festival. Another vital ritual in rural Karnataka is the display of decorated cows and bulls and their procession is done and they are also made to cross a fire and this custom

15290-403: 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

15429-431: 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

15568-414: 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

15707-439: 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

15846-480: 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

15985-609: 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

16124-497: 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,

16263-403: The rice boils over and bubbles out of the vessel, the tradition is to shout "பொங்கலோ பொங்கல் (Ponggalo Ponggal)!" and blow the sangu (a conch), a custom practised to announce it was going to be a year blessed with good tidings. Then, new boiled rice is offered to the Sun god during sunrise, as a prayer which symbolises thanks to the sun for providing prosperity. It is later served to the people in

16402-562: 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

16541-496: 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

16680-556: 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

16819-615: 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

16958-534: The special festival recipes savoured on this day. The Hindu Sindhi community in western regions of India, that is also found in southeastern parts of Pakistan, celebrate Makar Sankranti as Tirmoori. On this day, parents sending sweet dishes to their daughters. "Sakraant" in Haryana and Delhi rural areas, is celebrated with traditional Hindu rituals of North India similar to Western UP and border areas of Rajasthan and Punjab. This includes ritual purification by taking

17097-551: The state, the crops harvested around the time are Sesame Seeds, Paddy, etc. Known as Sankrant in Goa and like in the rest of the country, people distribute sweets in the form of granules of sugar-coated till pulses among family members and friends. Newly married women offer five sughat or small clay pots with black beaded threads tied around them, to the deity. These pots are filled with newly harvested food grains and are offered with betel leaves and areca nut. Its observance takes place on

17236-1768: The sun has made this transition which vaguely coincides with moving from south to north, the festival is dedicated to the solar deity, Surya , and is observed to mark a new beginning. Many native multi-day festivals are organised on this occasion all over India. The festivities associated with Makar Sankranti are known by various names including Sankranthi or Peddha Panduga in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana , Khichari in Bhojpuri region , Magh Bihu in Assam , Maghi Saaji in Himachal Pradesh , Makara Sankranti in Kerala, Maghi Sangrand in Punjab, Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Maghi Sangrand or Uttarain (Uttarayana) in Jammu, Sakrat in Haryana, Sakraat in Rajasthan, Sukarat in central India, Uttarayana in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, Ghughuti in Uttarakhand, Dahi Chura in Bihar, Makar Sankranti in Odisha, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Goa, West Bengal (also called Poush Sankranti or Mokor Sonkranti ), Uttar Pradesh (also called Khichidi Sankranti ), Uttarakhand (also called Uttarayani ) or as simply, Maghe Sankranti (Nepal), Songkran (Thailand), Thingyan (Myanmar), Mohan Songkran (Cambodia), Til Sakraat in Mithila, and Shishur Senkrath (Kashmir). On Makar Sankranti, Surya (Hindu solar deity)

17375-405: The third day of the Tamil month Thai (Pausha) . The first day of festival is Bhogi . It is celebrated on the last day of Margazhi by discarding household items and setting them on fire, marking the end of the old and the emergence of the new. In villages there will be a simple ceremony of "Kappu Kattu" (kappu means secure). The 'neem' leaves are kept along the walls and roof of the houses. This

17514-414: The time of equinoxes also shifts by a day in each four year window. For example, the equinox of September does not fall on the same date each year nor does the winter solstice. Any event related to one revolution of the Earth around the Sun will have this date shift within a four year cycle. Similar changes can be seen in the exact time of solstices and equinoxes. See the table, how the time of the equinox and

17653-518: The tribal population is greater, the festival is celebrated with great joy. They celebrate this festival with great enthusiasm, singing, dancing and generally having an enjoyable time. This Makara Sankranti celebration is next to the Odia traditional new year Maha Vishuva Sankranti which falls in mid April. Tribal groups celebrate with traditional dancing, eating their particular dishes sitting together, and by lighting bonfires. In Punjab , Makar Sankranti

17792-653: 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

17931-457: The uniqueness and differences between individuals. For most parts of India, this period is a part of early stages of the Rabi crop and agricultural cycle, where crops have been sown and the hard work in the fields is mostly over. The time thus signifies a period of socializing and families enjoying each other's company, taking care of the cattle, and celebrating around bonfires, in Gujarat the festival

18070-408: 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

18209-564: 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

18348-409: The west, Makara Sankranti or Shankaranti in Kerala, and by other names. Makar or Makara Sankranti is celebrated in many parts of the Indian subcontinent with some regional variations. It is known by different names and celebrated with different customs in different Indian states and South Asian countries: In most regions of India, Sankranti festivities last for two to four days of which each day

18487-613: The whole month of Magh, and so the name Magh Bihu). The night before is "Uruka" (28th of Pooh), when people gather around a bonfire, cook dinner, and make merry. During Magh Bihu people of Assam make cakes of rice with various names such as Shunga Pitha, Til Pitha etc. and some other sweets of coconut called Laru or Laskara. It is popularly known as Sakraat or Khichdi in western Bihar and Til Sakraat or Dahi Chura in rest of Bihar where people usually eat Dahi and Chura (Flattened Rice), sweets made of Til Sesame seeds and Chini (Sugar)/Gud(Jaggery) such as Tilkut , Tilwa (Til ke Ladoo) etc. In

18626-502: 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

18765-408: 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

18904-427: 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

19043-472: 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

19182-738: 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

19321-442: 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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