142-844: The Shandilya Upanishad ( Sanskrit : शाण्डिल्य उपनिषत्, IAST : Śāṇḍilya Upaniṣad) is a Sanskrit text and one of the minor Upanishads of Hinduism . It is one of twenty Yoga Upanishads in the four Vedas , and is attached to the Atharvaveda . The text is primarily focussed on Yoga techniques, and is among the most detailed in the Upanishadic corpus of texts dedicated to Yoga. It describes ten Yamas (ethical don'ts, restraints), ten Niyamas (ethical to do list, observances) and eight Asanas (postures), along with three Pranayamas , five types of Pratyaharas , five kinds of Dharana , two types of Dhyana and one Samadhi . Gavin Flood dates
284-538: A Mimamsa scholar, "thinks of the Veda as something to be trained and mastered to be put into practical ritual use", noticing that "it is not the meaning of the mantras that is most essential [...] but rather the perfect mastering of their sound form." According to Galewicz, Sayana saw the purpose ( artha ) of the Veda as the " artha of carrying out sacrifice", giving precedence to the Yajurveda . For Sayana, whether
426-464: A common noun means "knowledge". The term in some contexts, such as hymn 10.93.11 of the Rigveda , means "obtaining or finding wealth, property", while in some others it means "a bunch of grass together" as in a broom or for ritual fire . The term "Vedic texts" is used in two distinct meanings: The corpus of Vedic Sanskrit texts includes: While production of Brahmanas and Aranyakas ceased with
568-607: 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." Vedas Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas The Vedas ( / ˈ v eɪ d ə z / or / ˈ v iː d ə z / ; Sanskrit : वेदः , romanized : Vēdaḥ , lit. 'knowledge'), sometimes collectively called
710-433: 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
852-591: 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
994-658: 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
1136-454: 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
1278-479: 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
1420-622: A number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal that are dated from the 11th century onwards. The Vedas, Vedic rituals and its ancillary sciences called the Vedangas , were part of the curriculum at ancient universities such as at Taxila , Nalanda and Vikramashila . According to Deshpande, "the tradition of the Sanskrit grammarians also contributed significantly to the preservation and interpretation of Vedic texts." Yāska (4th c. BCE ) wrote
1562-546: 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
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#17327759482021704-511: A particular area, or kingdom. Each school followed its own canon. Multiple recensions (revisions) are known for each of the Vedas. Thus, states Witzel as well as Renou, in the 2nd millennium BCE, there was likely no canon of one broadly accepted Vedic texts, no Vedic “Scripture”, but only a canon of various texts accepted by each school. Some of these texts have survived, most lost or yet to be found. Rigveda that survives in modern times, for example,
1846-578: 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
1988-822: A region spanning the Indian subcontinent, Persia and the European area, and some greater details are found in the Vedic era texts such as the Grhya Sūtras. Only one version of the Rigveda is known to have survived into the modern era. Several different versions of the Sama Veda and the Atharva Veda are known, and many different versions of the Yajur Veda have been found in different parts of South Asia. The texts of
2130-486: A restrained language from which archaisms and unnecessary formal alternatives were excluded". The Classical form of the language simplified the sandhi rules but retained various aspects of the Vedic language, while adding rigor and flexibilities, so that it had sufficient means to express thoughts as well as being "capable of responding to the future increasing demands of an infinitely diversified literature", according to Renou. Pāṇini included numerous "optional rules" beyond
2272-439: 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
2414-441: A single god , agnosticism , and monistic beliefs where "there is an absolute reality that goes beyond the gods and that includes or transcends everything that exists." Indra , Agni , and Yama were popular subjects of worship by polytheist organizations. Each of the four Vedas were shared by the numerous schools, but revised, interpolated and adapted locally, in and after the Vedic period, giving rise to various recensions of
2556-711: 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
2698-516: 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
2840-468: Is attested to by the preservation of the most ancient Indian religious text, the Rigveda , as redacted into a single text during the Brahmana period, without any variant readings within that school. The Vedas were orally transmitted by memorization, and were written down only after 500 BCE, All printed editions of the Vedas that survive in the modern times are likely the version existing in about
2982-637: Is derived from the root vid- "to know". This is reconstructed as being derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *weyd- , meaning "see" or "know". The noun is from Proto-Indo-European *weydos , cognate to Greek (ϝ)εἶδος "aspect", "form" . This is not to be confused with the homonymous 1st and 3rd person singular perfect tense véda , cognate to Greek (ϝ)οἶδα ( (w)oida ) "I know". Root cognates are Greek ἰδέα , English wit , Latin videō "I see", Russian ве́дать ( védat' ) "to know", etc. The Sanskrit term veda as
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#17327759482023124-439: Is followed by artha - bodha , perception of their meaning." Mukherjee explains that the Vedic knowledge was first perceived by the rishis and munis . Only the perfect language of the Vedas, as in contrast to ordinary speech, can reveal these truths, which were preserved by committing them to memory. According to Mukherjee, while these truths are imparted to the student by the memorized texts, "the realization of Truth " and
3266-452: 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
3408-465: Is in only one extremely well preserved school of Śåkalya, from a region called Videha , in modern north Bihar , south of Nepal . The Vedic canon in its entirety consists of texts from all the various Vedic schools taken together. There were Vedic schools that believed in polytheism in which numerous gods had different natural functions, henotheistic beliefs where only one god was worshipped but others were thought to exist, monotheistic beliefs in
3550-1115: Is listed at number 58 in the serial order of the Muktika enumerated by Rama to Hanuman in the modern era anthology of 108 Upanishads. It is also known as the Shandilya Yoga Sutras. According to Alain Daniélou this Upanishad is one of the three Upanishads in the genre of the Hatha yoga ; the others are the Darshana Upanishad and the Yoga-kundalini Upanishad . Virtues of a Yogi तत्राहिंसासत्यास्तेयब्रह्मचर्यदयाजप क्षमाधृतिमिताहारशौचानि चेति यमादश । तत्राहिंसा नाममनोवाक्कायकर्मभिः सर्वभूतेषु सर्वदा क्लेशजननम् । सत्यं नाममनोवाक्कायकर्मभिर्भूतहितयथार्थाभिभाषणम् । (...) Under Yamas are ten: Ahimsa , Satya , Asteya , Brahmacharya , Dayā , Ārjava , Kṣamā , Dhṛti , Mitāhāra Śauca . Of these, Ahimsa
3692-664: Is one who has conquered anger and is proficient in Yoga theory and practice. Yoga is best done in a peaceful pleasant place, states the Upanishad, such as near river banks or water bodies, temple, garden abounding with fruits, water falls, a place of silence or where Vedic hymns are being recited, frequented by fellow yoga practitioners and such, and there the Yogi should find a level place. After settling into his posture, he should do breath exercises to cleanse his body, then meditate, states
3834-532: 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
3976-514: Is remembered"). This indigenous system of categorization was adopted by Max Müller and, while it is subject to some debate, it is still widely used. As Axel Michaels explains: These classifications are often not tenable for linguistic and formal reasons: There is not only one collection at any one time, but rather several handed down in separate Vedic schools; Upanişads [...] are sometimes not to be distinguished from Āraṇyakas [...]; Brāhmaṇas contain older strata of language attributed to
4118-479: 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,
4260-533: Is the Vedic period itself, where incipient lists divide the Vedic texts into three (trayī) or four branches: Rig, Yajur, Sama and Atharva. Each Veda has been subclassified into four major text types – the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies such as newborn baby's rites of passage, coming of age, marriages, retirement and cremation, sacrifices and symbolic sacrifices),
4402-404: Is the not causing of any pain to any living being at any time through the actions of one's mind, speech or body. Satya is the speaking of truth that conduces to the well being of creatures, through the actions of one's mind, speech or body. (...) — Shandilya Upanishad Chapter 1 The Shandilya Upanishad is structured as three chapters with many sections in each chapter. The first chapter of
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4544-589: 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
4686-848: Is titled, and who is credited in section 3.14 of the Chandogya Upanishad with the oldest known statement of the Vedanta foundation. This doctrine, also repeated in the last two chapters of this text, is "the identity of Brahman with the Atman, of God with the soul", states Deussen. The closing sections of the text declare the Aum , Atman, Brahman, Shiva and Dattatreya to be one and the same. Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
4828-481: The Saṃhitās ; there are various dialects and locally prominent traditions of the Vedic schools. Nevertheless, it is advisable to stick to the division adopted by Max Müller because it follows the Indian tradition, conveys the historical sequence fairly accurately, and underlies the current editions, translations, and monographs on Vedic literature." Among the widely known śrutis include the Vedas and their embedded texts –
4970-540: 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
5112-527: The Nirukta , which reflects the concerns about the loss of meaning of the mantras, while Pāṇinis (4th c. BCE) Aṣṭādhyāyī is the most important surviving text of the Vyākaraṇa traditions. Mimamsa scholar Sayanas (14th c. CE) major Vedartha Prakasha is a rare commentary on the Vedas, which is also referred to by contemporary scholars. Yaska and Sayana, reflecting an ancient understanding, state that
5254-572: The Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and symbolic-sacrifices), and the Upanishads (texts discussing meditation , philosophy and spiritual knowledge). Some scholars add a fifth category – the Upāsanās (worship). The texts of the Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana traditions. The Samhitas and Brahmanas describe daily rituals and are generally meant for
5396-822: The Brahmacharya and Gr̥hastha stages of the Chaturashrama system, while the Aranyakas and Upanishads are meant for the Vānaprastha and Sannyasa stages, respectively. Vedas are śruti ("what is heard"), distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smr̥ti ("what is remembered"). Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya , which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless", revelations of sacred sounds and texts heard by ancient sages after intense meditation. The Vedas have been orally transmitted since
5538-550: The Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices), and the Upanishads (text discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge). The Upasanas (short ritual worship-related sections) are considered by some scholars as the fifth part. Witzel notes that the rituals, rites and ceremonies described in these ancient texts reconstruct to a large degree the Indo-European marriage rituals observed in
5680-580: 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
5822-613: 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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5964-753: 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
6106-532: 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 ,
6248-476: The Rāmāyaṇa , however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit. In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language. The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to
6390-516: The Samhitas , the Upanishads , the Brahmanas and the Aranyakas . The well-known smṛtis include Bhagavad Gita , Bhagavata Purana and the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata , amongst others. Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeyā , which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless". The Vedas, for orthodox Indian theologians, are considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation, and texts that have been more carefully preserved since ancient times. In
6532-533: The Vedanta philosophy, particularly the "nondual Nirguna Brahman as the ultimate self" concept of Hinduism, and asserts that there is oneness of Atman in all living beings, that everything is Brahman. The Yoga techniques-related chapter 1, which is the largest part of this Upanishad, begins by asserting that to be an accomplished Yogin, one must possess self-restraint, introspectively delight in truth and in virtue towards self and towards others. A successful Yogin
6674-406: 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
6816-500: 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
6958-499: The Ŗik (words) without understanding their inner meaning or essence, the knowledge of dharma and Parabrahman . Mukherjee concludes that in the Rigvedic education of the mantras "the contemplation and comprehension of their meaning was considered as more important and vital to education than their mere mechanical repetition and correct pronunciation." Mookei refers to Sayana as stating that "the mastery of texts, akshara-praptī ,
7100-536: The "correct tradition" ( sampradaya ) has as much authority as the written Shastra", explaining that the tradition "bears the authority to clarify and provide direction in the application of knowledge". The emphasis in this transmission is on the "proper articulation and pronunciation of the Vedic sounds", as prescribed in the Shiksha , the Vedanga (Vedic study) of sound as uttered in a Vedic recitation, mastering
7242-414: The 13th century, a premier center of Sanskrit literary creativity, Sanskrit literature there disappeared, perhaps in the "fires that periodically engulfed the capital of Kashmir" or the "Mongol invasion of 1320" states Pollock. The Sanskrit literature which was once widely disseminated out of the northwest regions of the subcontinent, stopped after the 12th century. As Hindu kingdoms fell in the eastern and
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#17327759482027384-527: The 14th century BCE, the only epigraphic record of Indo-Aryan contemporary to the Rigvedic period. He gives 150 BCE ( Patañjali ) as a terminus ante quem for all Vedic Sanskrit literature, and 1200 BCE (the early Iron Age ) as terminus post quem for the Atharvaveda. The Vedas were orally transmitted since their composition in the Vedic period for several millennia. The authoritative transmission of
7526-419: The 16th century CE. The canonical division of the Vedas is fourfold ( turīya ) viz., Of these, the first three were the principal original division, also called " trayī vidyā "; that is, "the triple science" of reciting hymns (Rigveda), performing sacrifices (Yajurveda), and chanting songs (Samaveda). The Rig Veda most likely was composed between c. 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE. Witzel notes that it
7668-503: The 2nd millennium BCE with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques . The mantras, the oldest part of the Vedas, are recited in the modern age for their phonology rather than the semantics , and are considered to be "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer. By reciting them the cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base." The various Indian philosophies and Hindu sects have taken differing positions on
7810-532: 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
7952-621: The Brahmin communities considered study to be a "process of understanding". A literary tradition is traceable in post-Vedic times, after the rise of Buddhism in the Maurya period , perhaps earliest in the Kanva recension of the Yajurveda about the 1st century BCE; however oral tradition of transmission remained active. Jack Goody has argued for an earlier literary tradition, concluding that
8094-425: 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
8236-532: 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
8378-521: 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
8520-608: The Hindu Epic Mahabharata , the creation of Vedas is credited to Brahma . The Vedic hymns themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity, just as a carpenter builds a chariot. The oldest part of the Rig Veda Samhita was orally composed in north-western India ( Punjab ) between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE, while book 10 of the Rig Veda, and
8662-476: 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
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#17327759482028804-456: 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
8946-532: 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
9088-496: 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
9230-499: 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
9372-638: 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
9514-622: The Upanishad describes three types of Pranayama, namely Ujjayi , Sitkara and Sitala . The text is one of the four Upanishads which includes a discussion of Kundalini chakras from Yoga perspective, the other three being Darshana Upanishad , the Yogachudamani Upanishad , and the Yogashikha Upanishad . However, the ideas in the four texts show an acceptance of a diversity of views; for example, this text asserts that Manipura Chakra has 12 petals instead of 10 in
9656-406: The Upanishad presents five kinds of Dharanas (concentration), section 1.10 presents two kinds of Dhyana (meditation), while section 1.11 describes Samadhi – its last stage of Yoga. The ultimate goal of its teachings is the realization of the nature of one's Atman and its nonduality with Brahman (ultimate reality). This is the "Shandilya doctrine", named after the Vedic sage after whom this text
9798-509: The Upanishads discuss ideas akin to the heterodox sramana -traditions. Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of non-Eternity): Who really knows? Who can here proclaim it? Whence, whence this creation sprang? Gods came later, after the creation of this universe. Who then knows whence it has arisen? Whether God's will created it, or whether He was mute; Only He who is its overseer in highest heaven knows, He only knows, or perhaps He does not know. — Rig Veda 10.129.6–7 The Rigveda Samhita
9940-444: The Upanishads. This has inspired later Hindu scholars such as Adi Shankara to classify each Veda into karma-kanda (कर्म खण्ड, action/sacrificial ritual-related sections, the Samhitas and Brahmanas ); and jnana-kanda (ज्ञान खण्ड, knowledge/spirituality-related sections, mainly the Upanishads'). Vedas are śruti ("what is heard"), distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti ("what
10082-496: The Veda , are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India . Composed in Vedic Sanskrit , the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism . There are four Vedas: the Rigveda , the Yajurveda , the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda . Each Veda has four subdivisions – the Samhitas ( mantras and benedictions ), the Brahmanas (commentaries on and explanation of rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices – Yajñas ),
10224-454: The Veda can be interpreted in three ways, giving "the truth about gods , dharma and parabrahman ." The pūrva-kāņda (or karma-kanda ), the part of the Veda dealing with ritual, gives knowledge of dharma , "which brings us satisfaction." The uttara-kanda (or jnana-kanda ), the part of the Veda dealing with the knowledge of the absolute, gives knowledge of Parabrahma , "which fulfills all of our desires." According to Holdrege, for
10366-429: The Vedas bear hallmarks of a literate culture along with oral transmission, but Goody's views have been strongly criticised by Falk, Lopez Jr,. and Staal, though they have also found some support. The Vedas were written down only after 500 BCE, but only the orally transmitted texts are regarded as authoritative, given the emphasis on the exact pronunciation of the sounds. Witzel suggests that attempts to write down
10508-450: The Vedas is by an oral tradition in a sampradaya from father to son or from teacher ( guru ) to student ( shishya ), believed to be initiated by the Vedic rishis who heard the primordial sounds . Only this tradition, embodied by a living teacher, can teach the correct pronunciation of the sounds and explain hidden meanings, in a way the "dead and entombed manuscript" cannot do. As Leela Prasad states, "According to Shankara ,
10650-480: The Vedas. Schools of Indian philosophy that acknowledge the importance or primal authority of the Vedas comprise Hindu philosophy specifically and are together classified as the six "orthodox" ( āstika ) schools. However, śramaṇa traditions, such as Charvaka , Ajivika , Buddhism , and Jainism , which did not regard the Vedas as authoritative, are referred to as "heterodox" or "non-orthodox" ( nāstika ) schools. The Sanskrit word véda "knowledge, wisdom"
10792-447: 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
10934-451: 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
11076-414: The Vedic texts towards the end of 1st millennium BCE were unsuccessful, resulting in smriti rules explicitly forbidding the writing down of the Vedas. Due to the ephemeral nature of the manuscript material (birch bark or palm leaves), surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years. The Sampurnanand Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript from the 14th century; however, there are
11218-566: The Yamas, the Niyamas and an Asana, states the Upanishad, should proceed to the Pranayama to help cleanse the inner body. The text is notable in repeatedly reminding the importance of ethical virtues in a Yogi, virtues such as truthfulness, non-anger, temperance, proper eating habits, proper conduct and others, as it transitions from one stage of Yoga to next. After reminding the ethical mandates,
11360-457: The advent of writing in the early first millennium CE. According to Staal , criticising the Goody -Watt hypothesis "according to which literacy is more reliable than orality", this tradition of oral transmission "is closely related to Indian forms of science" and "by far the more remarkable" than the relatively recent tradition of written transmission. While according to Mookerji, understanding
11502-488: The alphabet as a mnemotechnical device , "matching physical movements (such as nodding the head) with particular sounds and chanting in a group" and visualizing sounds by using mudras (hand signs). This provided an additional visual confirmation, and also an alternate means to check the reading integrity by the audience, in addition to the audible means. Houben and Rath note that a strong "memory culture" existed in ancient India when texts were transmitted orally, before
11644-459: 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
11786-440: 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
11928-527: 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
12070-614: 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
12212-410: The cosmos is regenerated, "by enlivening and nourishing the forms of creation at their base. As long as the purity of the sounds is preserved, the recitation of the mantras will be efficacious, irrespective of whether their discursive meaning is understood by human beings." Frazier further notes that "later Vedic texts sought deeper understanding of the reasons the rituals worked", which indicates that
12354-653: 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
12496-467: 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
12638-471: 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
12780-460: 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
12922-490: 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
13064-600: The end of the Vedic period, additional Upanishads were composed after the end of the Vedic period. The Brahmanas , Aranyakas , and Upanishads , among other things, interpret and discuss the Samhitas in philosophical and metaphorical ways to explore abstract concepts such as the Absolute ( Brahman ), and the soul or the self ( Atman ), introducing Vedanta philosophy, one of the major trends of later Hinduism . In other parts, they show evolution of ideas, such as from actual sacrifice to symbolic sacrifice, and of spirituality in
13206-476: The exponents of karma-kandha the Veda is to be "inscribed in the minds and hearts of men" by memorization and recitation, while for the exponents of the jnana-kanda and meditation the Vedas express a transcendental reality which can be approached with mystical means. Holdrege notes that in Vedic learning "priority has been given to recitation over interpretation" of the Samhitas. Galewicz states that Sayana,
13348-548: 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
13490-412: 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
13632-482: The four kinds of mantras into four Samhitas (Collections). The Vedas are among the oldest sacred texts . The bulk of the Rigveda Samhita was composed in the northwestern region (Punjab) of the Indian subcontinent , most likely between c. 1500 and 1200 BCE, although a wider approximation of c. 1700–1100 BCE has also been given. The other three Samhitas are considered to date from
13774-537: 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
13916-431: 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
14058-486: 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
14200-535: The knowledge of paramatman as revealed to the rishis is the real aim of Vedic learning, and not the mere recitation of texts. The supreme knowledge of the Absolute, para Brahman - jnana , the knowledge of rta and satya , can be obtained by taking vows of silence and obedience sense-restraint, dhyana , the practice of tapas (austerities), and discussing the Vedanta . The four Vedas were transmitted in various śākhā s (branches, schools). Each school likely represented an ancient community of
14342-432: 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
14484-412: 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
14626-514: 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 ,
14768-445: The mantras had meaning depended on the context of their practical usage. This conception of the Veda, as a repertoire to be mastered and performed, takes precedence over the internal meaning or "autonomous message of the hymns." Most Śrauta rituals are not performed in the modern era, and those that are, are rare. Mukherjee notes that the Rigveda, and Sayana's commentary, contain passages criticizing as fruitless mere recitation of
14910-502: The meaning ( vedarthajnana or artha - bodha ) of the words of the Vedas was part of the Vedic learning , Holdrege and other Indologists have noted that in the transmission of the Samhitas , the emphasis is on the phonology of the sounds ( śabda ) and not on the meaning ( artha ) of the mantras. Already at the end of the Vedic period their original meaning had become obscure for "ordinary people", and niruktas , etymological compendia, were developed to preserve and clarify
15052-525: The meaning of the mantras, in contrast to the number of commentaries on the Brahmanas and Upanishads, but states that the lack of emphasis on the "discursive meaning does not necessarily imply that they are meaningless". In the Brahmanical perspective, the sounds have their own meaning, mantras are considered as "primordial rhythms of creation", preceding the forms to which they refer. By reciting them
15194-455: 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
15336-429: 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
15478-401: 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
15620-602: 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
15762-597: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,
15904-403: 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
16046-598: The original meaning of many Sanskrit words. According to Staal, as referenced by Holdrege, though the mantras may have a discursive meaning, when the mantras are recited in the Vedic rituals "they are disengaged from their original context and are employed in ways that have little or nothing to do with their meaning". The words of the mantras are "themselves sacred", and "do not constitute linguistic utterances ". Instead, as Klostermaier notes, in their application in Vedic rituals they become magical sounds, "means to an end". Holdrege notes that there are scarce commentaries on
16188-574: The other Samhitas were composed between 1200 and 900 BCE more eastward, between the Yamuna and the Ganges rivers, the heartland of Aryavarta and the Kuru Kingdom ( c. 1200 – c. 900 BCE ). The "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000 –500 BCE. According to tradition, Vyasa is the compiler of the Vedas, who arranged
16330-470: The other texts. Section 1.8 of Shandilya presents five kinds of Pratyahara , namely the ability to withdraw sensory organs from the external world at will, the ability to view everything as the Atman (soul), the ability to give away fruits of one's effort, the ability to be unaffected by the presence of sensual pleasures, and finally the fifth Pratyahara being the ability to project one's attention to one of eighteen vital parts of one's own body. Section 1.9 of
16472-431: 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
16614-414: 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
16756-439: 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
16898-480: 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
17040-609: 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
17182-497: 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,
17324-562: 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
17466-458: The sacred Vedas included up to eleven forms of recitation of the same text. The texts were subsequently "proof-read" by comparing the different recited versions. Forms of recitation included the jaṭā-pāṭha (literally "mesh recitation") in which every two adjacent words in the text were first recited in their original order, then repeated in the reverse order, and finally repeated in the original order. That these methods have been effective,
17608-496: 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
17750-556: 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
17892-615: 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
18034-531: The text deals with Ashtanga Yoga . It contains eleven sections. The other Chapters have a single section each. The Second chapter is comparatively a smaller one and expounds the Brahma Vidya. The Third Chapter talks about the nature and forms of Brahman: Sakala Brahman, Niskala Brahman and Sakala-Niskala Brahman. Raman states that the first chapter is one of the most detailed Upanishadic treatises on various types of Yoga . The last two chapters integrate
18176-585: The text to around 100 BCE to 300 CE. Roy Eugene Davis suggests Shandilya Upanishad probably pre-dates Patanjali's Yogasutras , while Georg Feuerstein suggests the text probably post-dates the Yogasutras. Thomas McEvilley states that the chronology of the text is uncertain, but it was probably composed around the time Dhyanabindu Upanishad and before Hatha Yoga Pradipka , Kaulajnananirnaya and Shiva Samhita . Some historical manuscripts of this Upanishad are titled as Śāṇḍilyopaniṣad (शाण्डिल्योपनिषद्). It
18318-530: The text. The Upanishad elaborates on eight-fold or Ashtanga Yoga , without citing Patanjali . The Upanishad defines each Yamas and each Niyamas. For example, Ahimsa (virtue of non-violence) states the text is the Yamas of "not causing pain to any living being at any time either mentally, vocally, or physically". Section 1.3 of the text describes eight Asanas , which includes Svastikasana , Gomukhasana , Padmasana , Virasana , Simhasana , Bhadrasana , Muktasana and Mayurasana . The Yogi who has mastered all
18460-484: The text. Some texts were revised into the modern era, raising significant debate on parts of the text which are believed to have been corrupted at a later date. The Vedas each have an Index or Anukramani , the principal work of this kind being the general Index or Sarvānukramaṇī . Prodigious energy was expended by ancient Indian culture in ensuring that these texts were transmitted from generation to generation with inordinate fidelity. For example, memorization of
18602-407: The texts "literally forward and backward in fully acoustic fashion". Houben and Rath note that the Vedic textual tradition cannot simply be characterized as oral, "since it also depends significantly on a memory culture". The Vedas were preserved with precision with the help of elaborate mnemonic techniques , such as memorizing the texts in eleven different modes of recitation ( pathas ), using
18744-526: The time of the Kuru Kingdom , approximately c. 1200–900 BCE. The "circum-Vedic" texts, as well as the redaction of the Samhitas, date to c. 1000 –500 BCE, resulting in a Vedic period , spanning the mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE, or the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age . The Vedic period reaches its peak only after the composition of the mantra texts, with the establishment of
18886-653: 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
19028-408: 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
19170-569: The various shakhas all over Northern India which annotated the mantra samhitas with Brahmana discussions of their meaning, and reaches its end in the age of Buddha and Panini and the rise of the Mahajanapadas (archaeologically, Northern Black Polished Ware ). Michael Witzel gives a time span of c. 1500 to c. 500 –400 BCE. Witzel makes special reference to the Near Eastern Mitanni material of
19312-564: 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
19454-446: 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
19596-408: 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
19738-427: 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
19880-472: 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
20022-738: 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
20164-442: 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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