147-517: Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas Shastra ( Sanskrit : शास्त्र , romanized : Śāstra pronounced [ɕaːstrɐ] ) is a Sanskrit word that means "precept, rules, manual, compendium, book or treatise" in a general sense. The word is generally used as a suffix in the Indian literature context, for technical or specialized knowledge in
294-557: A dime store area of New York's Lower East Side , where he blurred the line between art and commerce by producing and selling brightly painted plaster replicas of hamburgers and cans of soda, dresses, underwear, and other everyday objects: "Museum in b[ourgeois] concept equals store in mine". Oldenburg was one of the most recognizable sculptors identified with postmodernism, a group that included Jeff Koons , Eva Hesse , Louise Bourgeois , Anish Kapoor , Damien Hirst , Rachel Whiteread , and Richard Serra . Postmodern theater emerged as
441-426: A 2011 museum exhibition, Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990 : "Anything could be mixed and matched – or mashed up, as is said today – and anything was fair game for inspiration.” The composer Jonathan Kramer has written that avant-garde musical compositions (which some would consider modernist rather than postmodernist) "defy more than seduce the listener, and they extend by potentially unsettling means
588-553: A Postmodern Literature . According to scholar David Herwitz, American writers such as John Barth (who had controversially declared that the novel was "exhausted" as a genre), Donald Barthelme , and Thomas Pynchon responded in various ways to the stylistic innovations of Finnegans Wake and the late work of Samuel Beckett . Postmodern literature often calls attention to issues regarding its own complicated connection to reality. The postmodern novel plays with language, twisted plots, multiple narrators, and unresolved endings, unsettling
735-751: A Shastra is typically longer, with more detail and explanations. An example of a Sutra is Patanjali 's Yogasutras (considered a classic Hindu treatise), while an example of Shastra is Hemachandra 's Yogasastra (considered a classic Svetambara Jain treatise), both on yoga . Shastras and Sutras are among the numerous other genres of literature that have survived from ancient and medieval India . Other genres include Vedas , Upanishads , Vedangas , Itihasa , Puranas , Bhasyas , and Subhashitas . Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
882-442: A break from modernism . They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the world. Still, there is disagreement among experts about its more precise meaning even within narrow contexts. The term began to acquire its current range of meanings in literary criticism and architectural theory during the 1950s–1960s. In opposition to modernism's alleged self-seriousness, postmodernism
1029-474: A cause for aesthetic celebration. Their further influence on the conversation about postmodernism, however, would be largely mediated by French poststructuralism . ) If literature was at the center of the discussion in the 1970s, architecture was at the center in the 1980s. The architectural theorist Charles Jencks , in particular, connected the artistic avant-garde to social change in a way that captured attention outside of academia. Jenckes, much influenced by
1176-400: 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." Postmodern Postmodernism is a term used to refer to a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark
1323-571: A defined area of practice. Shastra has a similar meaning to English -logy , e.g. ecology, psychology , meaning scientific and basic knowledge on a particular subject. Examples in terms of modern neologisms include In Western literature, Shastra is sometimes spelled as Sastra , reflecting a misunderstanding of the IAST symbol 'ś', which corresponds to the English 'sh'. The word Śāstra literally means "that which has been instructed/decreed", from
1470-521: A departure from French Impressionism . Similarly, the first citation given by the Oxford English Dictionary is dated to 1916, describing Gus Mager as "one of the few 'post' modern painters whose style is convincing". Episcopal priest and cultural commentator J. M. Thompson, in a 1914 article, uses the term to describe changes in attitudes and beliefs in the critique of religion, writing, "the raison d'être of Post-Modernism
1617-433: 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
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#17327653659001764-591: 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
1911-658: 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
2058-538: A matter of dispute. Various authors place its beginnings in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In the mid-1970s, the American sociologist Daniel Bell provided a general account of the postmodern as an effectively nihilistic response to modernism's alleged assault on the Protestant work ethic and its rejection of what he upheld as traditional values. The ideals of modernity, per his diagnosis, were degraded to
2205-454: 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
2352-479: 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
2499-474: A new literary form. Also in the arts, the term was first used in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with the modernist architectural movement known as the International Style . Although these early uses anticipate some of the concerns of the debate in the second part of the 20th century, there is little direct continuity in the discussion. Just when the new discussion begins, however, is also
2646-546: 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
2793-683: A political dimension. One manifestation of postmodernism in fashion explored alternatives to conventional concepts of elegance. Rei Kawakubo ’s Spring/Summer 1997 collection featured "dresses asymmetrically padded with goose down, creating bumps in unexpected areas of the body". Issey Miyake ’s 1985 dreadlocks hat "offered an immediate, yet impermanent, ' multi-culti ' fashion experience". Vivienne Westwood took "an extremely polyglot approach", from early work with copies of 1950s clothes, to exploration of historic modes and cultural influences: her first runway show, "Pirate", merged British history, 18th- and 19th-century dress, and African textile design, with
2940-508: A prime example of postmodernism. The setting is a future dystopia where "replicants", enhanced android workers nearly indistinguishable from humans, are hunted down when they escape from their jobs. The film blurs boundaries between genres and cultures, and fuses disparate styles and periods: futuristic visuals "mingle with drab 1940s clothes and offices, punk rock hairstyles, pop Egyptian styles and oriental culture." The blending of film noir and science-fiction into tech noir illustrates
3087-525: A rap and ethnic music soundtrack. Postmodern film aims to subvert the mainstream conventions of narrative structure and characterization , and to test the audience's suspension of disbelief . Typically, such films also break down the cultural divide between high and low art and often upend typical portrayals of gender , race , class , genre , and time with the goal of creating something that does not abide by traditional narrative expression. Certain key characteristics are used to separate
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#17327653659003234-420: A reaction against modernist theater. Most postmodern productions are centered on highlighting the fallibility of definite truth, instead encouraging the audience to reach their own individual understanding. Essentially, thus, postmodern theater raises questions rather than attempting to supply answers. In the 1970s, a disparate group of French theorists – often grouped together as "poststructuralists" – developed
3381-578: 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
3528-538: 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
3675-439: 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
3822-463: Is "diffuse, fragmentary, [and] multi-dimensional". Critics have described it as "an exasperating term" and claim that its indefinability is "a truism". Put otherwise, postmodernism is "several things at once". It has no single definition, and the term does not name any single unified phenomenon, but rather many diverse phenomena: "postmodernisms rather than one postmodernism". Although postmodernisms are generally united in their effort to transcend
3969-711: 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
4116-578: Is a bore". The term "postmodern dance" is most strongly associated with the Judson Dance Theater located in New York's Greenwich Village during the 1960s and 1970s. Arguably its most important principle is taken from the composer John Cage 's efforts to break down the distinction between art and life. The Judson dancers "[stripped] dance of its theatrical conventions such as virtuoso technique, fanciful costumes, complex storylines, and
4263-464: 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
4410-489: Is characterized by its playful use of eclectic styles and performative irony , among other features. Critics claim it supplants moral, political, and aesthetic ideals with mere style and spectacle. In the 1990s, "postmodernism" came to denote a general – and, in general, celebratory – response to cultural pluralism . Proponents align themselves with feminism , multiculturalism , and postcolonialism . Building upon poststructural theory, postmodern thought defined itself by
4557-512: Is closely linked with the writings of critic-turned-architect Charles Jencks , beginning with lectures in the early 1970s and his essay "The Rise of Post-Modern Architecture" from 1975. His magnum opus , however, is the book The Language of Post-Modern Architecture , first published in 1977, and since running to seven editions (in which he famously wrote: "Modern architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on 15 July 1972 at 3:32 p.m. (or thereabouts) when
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4704-550: Is found in other Upanishads as well as in Bhagavad Gita such as in verses 15.20, 16.23–16.24, and 17.1. The Ṛigvedaprātiśākhya (11.36; 14.30) uses the term Shastra to refer to the prātiśākhya tradition. Kātyāyana , Patañjali and Pāṇini 's Aṣṭādhyāyī use the term. Similarly, the Vedāṅgajyotiṣa uses the term to refer to astronomical treatises. The term vedāṅgaśāstrāṇām , refers to
4851-452: 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
4998-411: Is often a suffix, added to the subject of the treatise, such as In Buddhism , a "shastra" is often a commentary written at a later date to explain an earlier scripture or sutra . For example, Yutang Lin says that a text written by him and not given by Buddha, cannot be called a "Sutra"; it is called a "Sastra". In Buddhism, Buddhists are allowed to offer their theses as long as they are consistent with
5145-532: 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
5292-479: 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,
5439-468: Is the Swiss Army knife of critical concepts. It’s definitionally overloaded, and it can do almost any job you need done." From an opposing perspective, media theorist Dick Hebdige criticized the vagueness of the term, enumerating a long list of otherwise unrelated concepts that people have designated as postmodernism, from "the décor of a room" or "a 'scratch' video", to fear of nuclear armageddon and
5586-589: 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
5733-515: Is to escape from the double-mindedness of modernism by being thorough in its criticism by extending it to religion as well as theology, to Catholic feeling as well as to Catholic tradition". In 1926, Bernard Iddings Bell , president of St. Stephen's College and also an Episcopal priest, published Postmodernism and Other Essays , which marks the first use of the term to describe an historical period following modernity. The essay criticizes lingering socio-cultural norms, attitudes, and practices of
5880-539: Is unclear when various Shastras were composed and completed. The authenticity of the manuscripts is also unclear, as many versions of the same text exist, some with major differences. Patrick Olivelle , credited with a 2005 translation of Manu Dharma-sastra, published by the Oxford University Press, states the concerns in postmodern scholarship about the presumed authenticity and reliability of manuscripts as follows (abridged): The MDh ( Manusmriti )
6027-531: The śāstra of the Vedāṅga s. The term " śāstra " is found in Yaska 's Nirukta (1.2, 14), where the reference is to Nirukta (etymology). An early use of the term śāstra with reference to the literature on dharma is found in the vārttika of Kātyāyana , who uses the expression dharmaśāstra Shastras are predominantly post-Vedic literature, that is after about 500 BCE. However, it
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6174-540: 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
6321-580: 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
6468-507: The Enlightenment . It is also critical of a purported cultural shift away from traditional Christian beliefs. The term "postmodernity" was first used in an academic historical context as a general concept for a movement by Arnold J. Toynbee in a 1939 essay, which states that "Our own Post-Modern Age has been inaugurated by the general war of 1914–1918". In 1942, the literary critic and author H. R. Hays describes postmodernism as
6615-613: 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
6762-753: 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
6909-532: 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 ,
7056-531: 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
7203-409: The modernist movement . Even here, however, there continued to be disagreement about such basic issues as whether postmodernism is a break with modernism, a renewal and intensification of modernism, or even, both at once, a rejection and a radicalization of its historical predecessor. While discussions in the 1970s were dominated by literary criticism, these were supplanted by architectural theory in
7350-406: 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
7497-500: The verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- is a compound word consisting of sáṃ ('together, good, well, perfected') and kṛta - ('made, formed, work'). It connotes a work that has been "well prepared, pure and perfect, polished, sacred". According to Biderman, the perfection contextually being referred to in the etymological origins of the word is its tonal—rather than semantic—qualities. Sound and oral transmission were highly valued qualities in ancient India, and its sages refined
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#17327653659007644-468: The "implosion of meaning", and stated that anything that could signify all of those things was "a buzzword". All this notwithstanding, scholar Hans Bertens offers the following: If there is a common denominator to all these postmodernisms, it is that of a crisis in representation: a deeply felt loss of faith in our ability to represent the real, in the widest sense. No matter whether they are aesthestic [sic], epistemological, moral, or political in nature,
7791-414: 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
7938-456: The 1950s. Their stance against modernist poetry – and Olson's Heideggerian orientation – were influential in the identification of postmodernism as a polemical position opposed to the rationalist values championed by the Enlightenment project. During the 1960s, this affirmative use gave way to a pejorative use by the New Left , who used it to describe a waning commitment among youth to
8085-467: The 1980s. Some of these conversations made use of French poststructuralist thought, but only after these innovations and critical discourse in the arts did postmodernism emerge as a philosophical term in its own right. According to Hans Bertens and Perry Anderson , the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson and Robert Creeley first introduced the term "postmodern" in its current sense during
8232-532: 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
8379-498: The American architect Robert Venturi , celebrated a plurality of forms and encourages participation and active engagement with the local context of the built environment. He presented this as in opposition to the "authoritarian style" of International Modernism. In the 1970s, postmodern criticism increasingly came to incorporate poststructuralist theory, particularly the deconstructive approach to texts most strongly associated with Jacques Derrida , who attempted to demonstrate that
8526-522: The Black Mountain poets an exemplary instance of the new postmodern type, Hassan celebrates its Nietzschean playfulness and cheerfully anarchic spirit, which he sets off against the high seriousness of modernism. (Yet, from another perspective, Friedrich Nietzsche 's attack on Western philosophy and Martin Heidegger 's critique of metaphysics posed deep theoretical problems not necessarily
8673-461: The British magazine, "Design". A characteristic of postmodern graphic design is that "retro, techno, punk, grunge, beach, parody, and pastiche were all conspicuous trends. Each had its own sites and venues, detractors and advocates." In 1971, the American literary theorist Ihab Hassan made "postmodernism" popular in literary studies with his influential book, The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward
8820-425: 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
8967-532: 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
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#17327653659009114-521: 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
9261-476: 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
9408-519: 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
9555-532: 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
9702-496: 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
9849-499: 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
9996-638: 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
10143-650: The Sutras, and those are called "Sastras." In Jainism , the term means the same as in Hinduism . An example of Jaina Shastra is the 12th-century Yoga Shastra of Hemchandracharya . Shastra is sometimes the root of compounded Sanskrit words. A custodian of Shastra , for example, is called Shastradhari ( Sanskrit : शास्त्रधारी). The term is found in several passages of the Rigveda (2nd millennium BCE), such as in hymn VIII.33.16. नहि षस्तव नो मम शास्त्रे अन्यस्य रण्यति । यो अस्मान्वीर आनयत् ॥१६॥ In this Rigvedic verse,
10290-447: 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
10437-451: 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
10584-493: The Western world. The Industrial Revolution , urbanization , secularization , technological advances , two world wars , and globalization deeply disrupted the social order. Modernism emerged in the late 1800s, seeking to redefine fundamental truths and values through a radical rethinking of traditional ideas and forms across many fields. Postmodernism emerged in the mid-20th century with a skeptical perspective that questioned
10731-459: 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
10878-441: The arts in general, it instead turned to address the more general problems posed to society in general by a new proliferation of cultures and forms. It is during this period that it also came to be associated with postcolonialism and identity politics . Around this time, postmodernism also began to be conceived in popular culture as a general "philosophical disposition" associated with a loose sort of relativism . In this sense,
11025-434: The authenticity of Kulluka's text was openly articulated by Burnell (1884, xxix): "There is then no doubt that the textus receptus, viz., that of Kulluka Bhatta, as adopted in India and by European scholars, is very near on the whole to the original text." This is far from the truth. Indeed, one of the great surprises of my editorial work has been to discover how few of the over fifty manuscripts that I collated actually follow
11172-440: 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
11319-527: 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
11466-614: 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
11613-464: The conventional idea of the novel as faithfully reflecting the world. In Postmodernist Fiction (1987), Brian McHale details the shift from modernism to postmodernism, arguing that postmodern works developed out of modernism, moving from concern with what is there (" ontological dominant") to concern with how we can know it's there (" epistemological dominant"). McHale's "What Was Postmodernism?" (2007) follows Raymond Federman 's lead in now using
11760-653: 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
11907-627: The deconstruction of both cinema and genre. The film can also be seen as an example of major studios using the "mystique and cachet of the term 'postmodern' as a sales pitch", resulting in Hollywood movies that "demonstrate all the postmodern characteristics". From another perspective, "critical responses to Blade Runner fall on either side of a modern/postmodern line" – critical analysis from "modernist" and "postmodernist" approaches produce entirely different interpretations. Early mention of postmodernism as an element of graphic design appeared in
12054-467: 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
12201-471: 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
12348-460: 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
12495-490: 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
12642-548: 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
12789-412: 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
12936-537: 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
13083-431: 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
13230-465: The infamous Pruitt–Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grâce by dynamite." ). Jencks makes the point that postmodernism (like modernism) varies for each field of art, and that for architecture it is not just a reaction to modernism but what he terms double coding : "Double Coding: the combination of Modern techniques with something else (usually traditional building) in order for architecture to communicate with
13377-486: 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
13524-432: 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
13671-546: The late 1970s and ’80s." Media theorist Dick Hebdige , examining the " Road to Nowhere " (1985) music video, said the group "draw eclectically on a wide range of visual and aural sources to create a distinctive pastiche or hybrid 'house style' which they have used since their formation in the mid-1970s deliberately to stretch received (industrial) definitions of what rock/pop/video/Art/ performance/audience are", calling them "a properly postmodernist band." According to lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter David Byrne , commenting for
13818-521: The late-20th century, avant-garde academics labelled American singer Madonna as the "personification of the postmodern" because "the postmodern condition is characterized by fragmentation, de-differentiation, pastiche, retrospection and anti-foundationalism", which they argued Madonna embodied. Christian writer Graham Cray also said that "Madonna is perhaps the most visible example of what is called post-modernism", and Martin Amis described her as "perhaps
13965-417: The level of consumer choice. This research project, however, was not taken up in a significant way by others until the mid-1980s when the work of Jean Baudrillard and Fredric Jameson , building upon art and literary criticism, reintroduced the term to sociology. Discussion about the postmodern in the second part of the 20th century was most articulate in areas with a large body of critical discourse around
14112-531: The lines between fine art and commercial design. His work, exemplified by the iconic Campbell's Soup Cans series during the 1960s, brought the postmodernist sensibility to mainstream attention. Criticism of postmodernist movements in the arts include objections to departure from beauty, the reliance on language for the art to have meaning, a lack of coherence or comprehensibility, deviation from clear structure, and consistent use of dark and negative themes. Scholarship regarding postmodernism and architecture
14259-412: 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
14406-514: 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 ,
14553-511: 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
14700-429: 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
14847-401: 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
14994-602: 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
15141-403: The most postmodern personage on the planet". She was also suggested by literary critic Olivier Sécardin to epitomise postmodernism. Sculptor Claes Oldenberg , at the forefront of the pop art movement, declared in 1961: "I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical … I am for an art that embroils itself with everyday crap and still comes out on top." That year, he opened The Store in
15288-471: The most studied as the colonial British government attempted to establish different laws in British India based on Sharia for Muslims and Manu's code of law. The shastras are not consistent or single-consensus documents. Dharma-sastras, for example, contain opposing views and contradictory theories. This is in part because they represent an ideal of human behaviour, while at the same time recognising
15435-585: The need to account for likely failings. The shastras do not present life as it was lived. Rather they reveal an idea of what life should be. The shastra texts constitute one of the great bodies of literature of the ancient world. Sutras are another genre of Indian texts that emerged in the 1st millennium BCE, particularly after the 600 BCE. Sutra (literally "binding thread") denotes a type of literary composition distinct from Shastra. In Sanskrit, "sutra" typically referred to one or more aphorisms ; hence sutras use short, aphoristic, evocative statements. In contrast,
15582-422: The notion of universal truths and reshaped modernist approaches by embracing the complexity and contradictions of modern life. The term "postmodernism" first appeared in print in 1870, but it only began to enter circulation with its current range of meanings in the 1950s—60s. The term "postmodern" was first used in 1870 by the artist John Watkins Chapman, who described "a Postmodern style of painting" as
15729-597: 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,
15876-403: 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
16023-431: 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
16170-409: The past tense when discussing postmodernism. Others argue that postmodernism in literature utilizes compositional and semantic practices such as inclusivity, intentional indiscrimination, nonselection, and "logical impossibility." Music critic Andy Cush described Talking Heads as "New York art-punks" whose "blend of nervy postmodernism and undeniable groove made them one of the defining rock bands of
16317-482: The perceived limits of modernism, "modernism" also means different things to different critics in various arts. Further, there are outliers on even this basic stance; for instance, literary critic William Spanos conceives postmodernism, not in period terms, but in terms of a certain kind of literary imagination so that pre-modern texts such as Euripides ' Orestes or Cervantes ' Don Quixote count as postmodern. According to scholar Louis Menand , "Postmodernism
16464-477: The political ideals socialism and communism . The literary critic Irving Howe , for instance, denounced postmodern literature for being content to merely reflect, rather than actively attempt to refashion, what he saw as the "increasingly shapeless" character of contemporary society. In the 1970s, this changed again, largely under the influence of the literary critic Ihab Hassan 's large-scale survey of works that he said could no longer be called modern. Taking
16611-414: 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
16758-407: The postmodern from modernist cinema and traditional narrative film. One is an extensive use of homage or pastiche , imitating the style or character of other artistic works. A second is meta-reference or self-reference, highlighting the relation of the image to other images in media and not to any kind of external reality. Viewers are reminded that the film itself is only a film, perhaps through
16905-482: The prevailing narratives of beauty and objectivity common to Modernism. Author on postmodernism, Dominic Strinati, has noted, it is also important "to include in this category the so-called ' art rock ' musical innovations and mixing of styles associated with groups like Talking Heads , and performers like Laurie Anderson , together with the self-conscious 'reinvention of disco ' by the Pet Shop Boys ". In
17052-439: 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
17199-480: 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
17346-412: The public and a concerned minority, usually other architects." In their book, "Revisiting Postmodernism", Terry Farrell and Adam Furman argue that postmodernism brought a more joyous and sensual experience to the culture, particularly in architecture. For instance, in response to the modernist slogan of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe that "less is more", the postmodernist Robert Venturi rejoined that "less
17493-609: 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
17640-501: The rejection of any single, foundational historical narrative. This called into question the legitimacy of the Enlightenment account of progress and rationality. Critics allege that its premises lead to a nihilistic form of relativism . In this sense, it has become a term of abuse in popular culture. "Postmodernism" is "a highly contested term", referring to "a particularly unstable concept", that "names many different kinds of cultural objects and phenomena in many different ways". It
17787-497: 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,
17934-547: The representations that we used to rely on can no longer be taken for granted. In practical terms, postmodernisms share an attitude of skepticism towards grand explanations and established ways of doing things. In art, literature, and architecture, this attitude blurs boundaries between styles and genres, and encourages freely mixing elements, challenging traditional distinctions like high art versus popular art . In science, it emphasizes multiple ways of seeing things, and how our cultural and personal backgrounds shape how we see
18081-562: 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
18228-485: The root √śās- which means "instruction/decree" combined with the ṣṭran-suffix . "Shastra" commonly refers to a treatise or text on a specific field of knowledge. In early Vedic literature, the word referred to any precept, rule, teaching, ritual instruction or direction. In late and post Vedic literature of Hinduism , Shastra referred to any treatise, book or instrument of teaching, any manual or compendium on any subject in any field of knowledge, including religious. It
18375-496: 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
18522-556: 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
18669-615: 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
18816-808: The term also started to appear as a "casual term of abuse" in non-academic contexts. Others identified it as an aesthetic "lifestyle" of eclecticism and playful self-irony. Postmodernism encompasses a wide range of artistic movements and styles. In visual arts, pop art , conceptual art , feminist art , video art , minimalism , and neo-expressionism are among the approaches recognized as postmodern. The label extends to diverse musical genres and artists: John Cage , Madonna , and punk rock all meet postmodern definitions. Literature, film, architecture, theater, fashion, dance, and many other creative disciplines saw postmodern expression. As an example, Andy Warhol 's pop art across multiple mediums challenged traditional distinctions between high and low culture, and blurred
18963-490: The term means rule or instruction. The Maitri Upanishad (mid to late 1st millennium BCE), similarly, mentions the materialist Charvakas and Brihaspati who disagreed that the Vedas are a treatise of knowledge, proposing relativism instead, in the following passage: बृहस्पतिर्वै शुक्रो भूत्वेन्द्रस्याभयायासुरेभ्यः क्षयायेमामविद्यामसृजत् तया शिवमशिवमित्युद्दिशन्त्यशिवं शिवमिति वेदादि शास्त्र हिंसकधर्माभिध्यानमस्त्विति The term
19110-461: The traditional stage [and] drew on everyday movements (sitting, walking, kneeling, and other gestures) to create their pieces, often performing them in ordinary spaces." This was developed in particular by the American dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham , Cage's partner. In the 1980s and 1990s, dance began to incorporate other typically postmodern features such as the mixing of genres, challenging high–low cultural distinctions, and incorporating
19257-653: 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
19404-469: The use of intertextuality , in which the film's characters reference other works of fiction. A third characteristic is stories that unfold out of chronological order , deconstructing or fragmenting time to emphasize the constructed nature of film. Another common element is a bridging of the gap between highbrow and lowbrow , . Contradictions of all sorts are crucial to postmodernism. Ridley Scott 's Blade Runner (1982) has been widely studied as
19551-408: 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
19698-564: 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
19845-407: The very idea of what music is." In the 1960s, composers such as Terry Riley , Henryk Górecki , Bradley Joseph , John Adams , Steve Reich , Philip Glass , Michael Nyman , and Lou Harrison reacted to the perceived elitism and dissonant sound of atonal academic modernism by producing music with simple textures and relatively consonant harmonies, whilst others, most notably John Cage challenged
19992-454: The vulgate in key readings. The literature of late 1st millennium BCE such as Arthashastra , and Shastras of various fields of knowledge from the early 1st millennium period is of great interest as it helped the emergence of diverse schools and the spread of Indian religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism in and outside South Asia . The shastras are both descriptive and prescriptive. Among the various Shastras, Manu's code of law has been among
20139-422: The whole foundationalist approach to language and knowledge was untenable and misguided. It is during this period that postmodernism came to be particularly equated with a kind of anti-representational self-reflexivity. In the 1980s, some critics began to take an interest in the work of Michel Foucault . This introduced a political concern about social power-relations into discussions about postmodernism. This
20286-576: The world, making it impossible to be completely objective . In philosophy, education, history, politics, and many other fields, it encourages critical re-examination of established institutions and social norms, embracing diversity and breaking down disciplinary boundaries. Though these ideas weren't strictly new, postmodernism amplified them, using an often playful, at times deeply critical, attitude of pervasive skepticism to turn them into defining features. Two broad cultural movements, modernism and postmodernism, emerged in response to profound changes in
20433-502: 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
20580-408: 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
20727-427: 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
20874-472: 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
21021-468: Was also the beginning of the affiliation of postmodernism with feminism and multiculturalism . The art critic Craig Owens , in particular, not only made the connection to feminism explicit, but went so far as to claim feminism for postmodernism wholesale, a broad claim resisted by even many sympathetic feminists such as Nancy Fraser and Linda Nicholson. Although postmodern criticism and thought drew on philosophical ideas from early on, "postmodernism"
21168-738: 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
21315-468: Was only introduced to the expressly philosophical lexicon by Jean-François Lyotard in his 1979 The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge . This work served as a catalyst for many of the subsequent intellectual debates around the term. By the 1990s, postmodernism had become increasingly identified with critical and philosophical discourse directly about postmodernity or the postmodern idiom itself. No longer centered on any particular art or even
21462-513: Was the first Indian legal text introduced to the western world through the translation of Sir William Jones in 1794. (...) All the editions of the MDh , except for Jolly's, reproduce the text as found in the [Calcutta] manuscript containing the commentary of Kulluka. I have called this as the " vulgate version". It was Kulluka's version that has been translated repeatedly: Jones (1794), Burnell (1884), Buhler (1886) and Doniger (1991). (...) The belief in
21609-442: 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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