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132-797: The hymns are dedicated to Indra , Agni , the Asvins , the Maruts , the Adityas , Varuna , Mitra-Varuna , the Vishvadevas , and Soma . 8.100 is dedicated to Indra and Vak (Speech). Of the Valakhilya, six hymns are dedicated to Indra, and one each to the Asvins, the Vishvadevas and Indra-Varuna. 8.55 and 8.56 praise "Praskanva's Gift", the reward given to the rishi by Dasyave-vrka "the wolf of

264-699: A Pontic origin and that both the phonology and the context of Indra in Indian religions is best explained from Indo-Aryan roots and a Circassian etymology (i.e. *inra ). Modern scholarship suggests the name originated at the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex where the Aryans lived before settling in India. In other languages, he is also known as Indra has many epithets in the Indian religions, notably Śakra (शक्र, powerful one), Indra

396-467: A bullish chariot, well-lipped one, as bull with bullish will, you of the mace, set us up in loot. Indra's weapon, which he used to kill the evil Vritra, is the Vajra or thunderbolt. Other alternate iconographic symbolism for him includes a bow (sometimes as a colorful rainbow), a sword, a net , a noose, a hook, or a conch. The thunderbolt of Indra is called Bhaudhara. In the post-Vedic period, he rides

528-858: A deity had a presence in northeastern Asia minor , as evidenced by the inscriptions on the Boghaz-köi clay tablets dated to about 1400 BCE. This tablet mentions a treaty, but its significance is in four names it includes reverentially as Mi-it-ra , U-ru-w-na , In-da-ra and Na-sa-at-ti-ia . These are respectively, Mitra, Varuna , Indra and Nasatya-Asvin of the Vedic pantheon as revered deities, and these are also found in Avestan pantheon but with Indra and Naonhaitya as demons. This at least suggests that Indra and his fellow deities were in vogue in South Asia and Asia minor by about mid 2nd-millennium BCE. Indra

660-433: 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

792-618: A god that suffers rebirth. In Jain traditions, unlike Buddhism and Hinduism, Indra is not the king of gods, but the king of superhumans residing in Svarga-Loka, and very much a part of Jain rebirth cosmology. He is also the one who appears with his consort Indrani to celebrate the auspicious moments in the life of a Jain Tirthankara , an iconography that suggests the king and queen of superhumans residing in Svarga reverentially marking

924-433: A hammer or an equivalent, for both the weapon returns to their hand after they hurl it, both are associated with bulls in the earliest layer of respective texts, both use thunder as a battle-cry, both are protectors of mankind, both are described with legends about "milking the cloud-cows", both are benevolent giants, gods of strength, of life, of marriage and the healing gods. Michael Janda suggests that Indra has origins in

1056-538: 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

1188-521: A large overlap between Hinduism and Buddhism, and the adoption of many Vedic terminology and concepts into Buddhist thought. Even the term Śakra , which means "mighty", appears in the Vedic texts such as in hymn 5.34 of the Rigveda . Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )

1320-601: A large, four-tusked white elephant called Airavata . In sculpture and relief artworks in temples, he typically sits on an elephant or is near one. When he is shown to have two, he holds the Vajra and a bow. In the Shatapatha Brahmana and in Shaktism traditions, Indra is stated to be the same as the goddess Shodashi (Tripura Sundari), and her iconography is described similarly to that of Indra. The rainbow

1452-449: A legend found in it , before Indra is born, his mother attempts to persuade him to not take an unnatural exit from her womb. Immediately after birth, Indra steals soma from his father, and Indra's mother offers the drink to him. After Indra's birth, Indra's mother reassures Indra that he will prevail in his rivalry with his father, Tvaṣṭar. Both the unnatural exit from the womb and rivalry with the father are universal attributes of heroes. In

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1584-658: 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

1716-473: A mountain and has trapped all the waters, namely the Seven Rivers . All the gods abandon Indra out of fear of Vṛtra. Indra uses his vajra, a mace, to kill Vritra and smash open the mountains to release the waters. In some versions, he is aided by the Maruts or other deities, and sometimes cattle and the sun is also released from the mountain. In one interpretation by Oldenberg, the hymns are referring to

1848-454: 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

1980-479: 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

2112-546: 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

2244-578: 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

2376-486: 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

2508-652: A river-helping god in the Vedas. Further, the Vritra demon that Indra slew is best understood as any obstruction, whether it be clouds that refuse to release rain or mountains or snow that hold back the water. Jamison and Brereton also state that Vritra is best understood as any obstacle. The Vritra myth is associated with the Midday Pressing of soma, which is dedicated to Indra or Indra and the Maruts. Even though Indra

2640-439: 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

2772-609: A sustainable non-sentient universe, according to the Upanishad. The eternal Atman then enters each living being making the universe full of sentient beings, but these living beings fail to perceive their Atman. The first one to see the Atman as Brahman, asserts the Upanishad, said, " idam adarsha or "I have seen It". Others then called this first seer as Idam-dra or "It-seeing", which over time came to be cryptically known as "Indra", because, claims Aitareya Upanishad , everyone including

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2904-652: 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

3036-489: Is a heroic god. In the Avestan (ancient, pre-Islamic Iranian) texts such as Vd. 10.9, Dk. 9.3 and Gbd 27.6-34.27, Indra – or accurately Andra – is a gigantic demon who opposes truth. In the Vedic texts, Indra kills the archenemy and demon Vritra who threatens mankind. In the Avestan texts, Vritra is not found. According to David Anthony, the Old Indic religion probably emerged among Indo-European immigrants in

3168-516: 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

3300-524: Is called Indra's Bow (Sanskrit: इन्द्रधनुस् , indradhanus ). Indra was a prominent deity in the Historical Vedic religion . In Vedic times Indra was described in Rig Veda 6.30.4 as superior to any other god. Sayana in his commentary on Rig Veda 6.47.18 described Indra as assuming many forms, making Agni , Vishnu , and Rudra his illusory forms. Over a quarter of the 1,028 hymns of

3432-486: Is connected to a myth where Indra and his sidekick Kutsa ride the same chariot drawn by the horses of the wind to the house of Uśanā Kāvya to receive aid before killing Śuṣṇa , the enemy of Kutsa. In one myth Indra (in some versions helped by Viṣṇu ) shoots a boar named Emuṣa in order to obtain special rice porridge hidden inside or behind a mountain. Another myth has Indra kill Namuci by beheading him. In later versions of that myth Indra does this through trickery involving

3564-416: Is declared as the king of gods in some verses, there is no consistent subordination of other gods to Indra. In Vedic thought, all gods and goddesses are equivalent and aspects of the same eternal abstract Brahman , none consistently superior, none consistently inferior. All gods obey Indra, but all gods also obey Varuna, Vishnu, Rudra and others when the situation arises. Further, Indra also accepts and follows

3696-537: Is depicted as an intoxicated hedonistic god. His importance declines, and he evolves into a minor deity in comparison to others in the Hindu pantheon, such as Vishnu , Shiva , or Devi . In Hindu texts, Indra is some times known as an aspect ( avatar ) of Shiva . In the Puranas , Ramayana and Mahabharata , the divine sage Kashyapa is described as the father of Indra, and Aditi as his mother. In this tradition, he

3828-452: 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

3960-779: Is in the capital city of Svarga, Amaravati , though he is also associated with Mount Meru (also called Sumeru). Traditional The etymological roots of Indra are unclear, and it has been a contested topic among scholars since the 19th-century, one with many proposals. The significant proposals have been: Colonial era scholarship proposed that Indra shares etymological roots with Avestan Andra , Old High German *antra ("giant"), or Old Church Slavonic jedru ("strong"), but Max Muller critiqued these proposals as untenable. Later scholarship has linked Vedic Indra to Aynar (the Great One) of Circassian, Abaza and Ubykh mythology, and Innara of Hittite mythology. Colarusso suggests

4092-421: Is not a visible object of nature in the Vedic texts, nor is he a personification of any object, but that agent which causes the lightning, the rains and the rivers to flow. His myths and adventures in the Vedic literature are numerous, ranging from harnessing the rains, cutting through mountains to help rivers flow, helping land becoming fertile, unleashing sun by defeating the clouds, warming the land by overcoming

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4224-494: Is of ancient but unclear origin. Aspects of Indra as a deity are cognate to other Indo-European gods; there are thunder gods such as Thor , Perun , and Zeus who share parts of his heroic mythologies, act as king of gods, and all are linked to "rain and thunder". The similarities between Indra of Vedic mythology and of Thor of Nordic and Germanic mythologies are significant, states Max Müller . Both Indra and Thor are storm gods, with powers over lightning and thunder, both carry

4356-478: Is praised as the highest god in 250 hymns of the Rigveda – a Hindu scripture dated to have been composed sometime between 1700 and 1100 BCE. He is co-praised as the supreme in another 50 hymns, thus making him one of the most celebrated Vedic deities. He is also mentioned in ancient Indo-Iranian literature, but with a major inconsistency when contrasted with the Vedas. In the Vedic literature, Indra

4488-441: Is presented as one of their thirty-three sons. Indra married Shachi , the daughter of the danava Puloman . Most texts state that Indra had only one wife, though sometimes other names are mentioned. The text Bhagavata Purana mention that Indra and Shachi had three sons named Jayanta , Rishabha, Midhusha. Some listings add Nilambara and Rbhus. Indra and Shachi also had two daughters, Jayanti and Devasena . Jayanti becomes

4620-532: 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

4752-479: 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,

4884-543: Is the king of the devas and Svarga in Hinduism . He is associated with the sky, lightning, weather, thunder, storms, rains, river flows, and war. Indra is the most referred deity in the Rigveda . He is celebrated for his powers based on his status as a god of order, and as the one who killed the great evil, an asura named Vritra , who obstructed human prosperity and happiness. Indra destroys Vritra and his "deceiving forces", and thereby brings rain and sunshine as

5016-589: 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

5148-540: 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

5280-729: The Rigveda mention Indra, making him the most referred to deity. These hymns present a complex picture of Indra, but some aspects of Indra are often repeated. Of these, the most common theme is where he as the god with thunderbolt kills the evil serpent Vritra that held back rains, and thus released rains and land nourishing rivers. For example, the Rigvedic hymn 1.32 dedicated to Indra reads: इन्द्रस्य नु वीर्याणि प्र वोचं यानि चकार प्रथमानि वज्री । अहन्नहिमन्वपस्ततर्द प्र वक्षणा अभिनत्पर्वतानाम् ॥१।। अहन्नहिं पर्वते शिश्रियाणं त्वष्टास्मै वज्रं स्वर्यं ततक्ष । वाश्रा इव धेनवः स्यन्दमाना अञ्जः समुद्रमव जग्मुरापः ॥२।। 1. Now I shall proclaim

5412-580: 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

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5544-613: 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

5676-699: The Rigveda had already evolved in the Vedic period, as evidenced in the later Vedic literature. Gombrich posits that the language in the early Upanishads of Hinduism and the late Vedic literature approaches Classical Sanskrit, while the archaic Vedic Sanskrit had by the Buddha 's time become unintelligible to all except ancient Indian sages. The formalization of the Saṃskṛta language is credited to Pāṇini , along with Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya and Katyayana's commentary that preceded Patañjali's work. Panini composed Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight-Chapter Grammar'), which became

5808-532: 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 ,

5940-531: 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

6072-6202: The Swat River in Gandhari . The dedication as given by Griffith is in the square brackets.  8.1 (621) [Indra.] mâ cid anyád ví śaṃsata  8.2 (622) [Indra.] idáṃ vaso sutám ándhaḥ  8.3 (623) [Indra.] píbā sutásya rasíno  8.4 (624) [Indra.] yád indra prâg ápāg údaṅ  8.5 (625) [Asvins.] dūrâd ihéva yát satî  8.6 (626) [Indra.] mahâṁ índro yá ójasā  8.7 (627) [Maruts.] prá yád vas triṣṭúbham íṣam  8.8 (628) [Asvins.] â no víśvābhir ūtíbhir  8.9 (629) [Asvins.] â nūnám aśvinā yuváṃ  8.10 (630) [Asvins.] yát sthó dīrgháprasadmani  8.11 (631) [Agni.] tvám agne vratapâ asi  8.12 (632) [Indra.] yá indra somapâtamo  8.13 (633) [Indra.] índraḥ sutéṣu sómeṣu  8.14 (634) [Indra.] yád indrāháṃ yáthā tuvám  8.15 (635) [Indra.] tám u abhí prá gāyata  8.16 (636) [Indra.] prá samrâjaṃ carṣaṇīnâm  8.17 (637) [Indra.] â yāhi suṣumâ hí ta  8.18 (638) [Adityas.] idáṃ ha nūnám eṣ~āṃ  8.19 (639) [Agni.] táṃ gūrdhayā súvarṇaraṃ  8.20 (640) [Maruts.] â gantā mâ riṣaṇyata  8.21 (641) [Indra.] vayám u tvâm apūrviya  8.22 (642) [Asvins.] ~ó tyám ahva â rátham  8.23 (643) [Agni.] îḷiṣvā hí pratīvíyaṃ  8.24 (644) [Indra.] sákhāya â śiṣāmahi  8.25 (645) [Mitra-Varuna.] tâ vāṃ víśvasya gop~a  8.26 (646) [Asvins.] yuvór u ṣû ráthaṃ huve  8.27 (647) [Visvedevas.] agnír ukthé puróhito  8.28 (648) [Visvedevas.] yé triṃśáti tráyas paró  8.29 (649) [Visvedevas.] babhrúr éko víṣuṇaḥ sūnáro yúvā  8.30 (650) [Visvedevas.] nahí vo ásti arbhakó  8.31 (651) [Various Deities.] yó yájāti yájāta ít  8.32 (652) [Indra.] prá kṛtâni ṛjīṣíṇaḥ  8.33 (653) [Indra.] vayáṃ gha tvā sutâvanta  8.34 (654) [Indra.] â indra yāhi háribhir  8.35 (655) [Asvins.] agnínéndreṇa váruṇena víṣṇunā  8.36 (656) [Indra.] avitâsi sunvató vṛktábarhiṣaḥ  8.37 (657) [Indra.] prédám bráhma vṛtratûryeṣu āvitha  8.38 (658) [Indra-Angi.] yajñásya hí sthá ṛtvíjā  8.39 (659) [Agni.] agním astoṣi ṛgmíyam  8.40 (660) [Indra-Agni.] índrāgnī yuváṃ sú naḥ  8.41 (661) [Varuna.] asmâ ū ṣú prábhūtaye  8.42 (662) [Varuna.] ástabhnād dyâm ásuro viśvávedā  8.43 (663) [Agni.] imé víprasya vedháso  8.44 (664) [Agni.] samídhāgníṃ duvasyata  8.45 (665) [Indra.] â ghā yé agním indhaté  8.46 (666) [Indra.] tuvâvataḥ purūvaso  8.47 (667) [Adityas.] máhi vo mahatâm ávo  8.48 (668) [Soma.] svādór abhakṣi váyasaḥ sumedhâḥ  (vālakhilya)  8.60 (669) [Agni.] ágna â yāhi agníbhir  8.61 (670) [Indra.] ubháyaṃ śṛṇávac ca na  8.62 (671) [Indra.] prá ū asmā úpastutim  8.63 (672) [Indra.] sá pūrviyó mahân~āṃ  8.64 (673) [Indra.] út tvā mandantu stómāḥ  8.65 (674) [Indra.] yád indra prâg ápāg údaṅ  8.66 (675) [Indra.] tárobhir vo vidádvasum  8.67 (676) [Adityas.] tiyân nú kṣatríyāṁ áva  8.68 (677) [Indra.] â tvā ráthaṃ yáthotáye  8.69 (678) [Indra.] prá-pra vas triṣṭúbham íṣam  8.70 (679) [Indra.] yó râjā carṣaṇīn~âṃ  8.71 (680) [Agni.] tuváṃ no agne máhobhiḥ  8.72 (681) [Agni.] havíṣ kṛṇudhvam â gamad  8.73 (682) [Asvins.] úd īrāthām ṛtāyaté  8.74 (683) [Agni.] viśó-viśo vo átithiṃ  8.75 (684) [Agni.] yukṣvâ hí devahûtamāṁ  8.76 (685) [Indra.] imáṃ nú māyínaṃ huva  8.77 (686) [Indra.] jajñānó nú śatákratur  8.78 (687) [Indra.] puroḷâśaṃ no ándhasa  8.79 (688) [Soma.] ayáṃ kṛtnúr ágṛbhīto  8.80 (689) [Indra.] nahí anyám baḷâkaram  8.81 (690) [Indra.] â tû na indra kṣumántaṃ  8.82 (691) [Indra.] â prá drava parāváto  8.83 (692) [Visvedevas.] devânām íd ávo mahát  8.84 (693) [Agni.] práyiṣṭhaṃ vo átithiṃ  8.85 (694) [Asvins.] â me hávaṃ nāsatiyā  8.86 (695) [Asvins.] ubhâ hí dasrâ bhiṣájā mayobhúvā  8.87 (696) [Asvins.] dyumnî vāṃ stómo aśvinā  8.88 (697) [Indra.] táṃ vo dasmám ṛtīṣáhaṃ  8.89 (698) [Indra.] bṛhád índrāya gāyata  8.90 (699) [Indra.] â no víśvāsu háviya  8.91 (700) [Indra.] kaníyā vâr avāyatî  8.92 (701) [Indra.] p~ântam â vo ándhasa  8.93 (702) [Indra.] úd ghéd abhí śrutâmaghaṃ  8.94 (703) [Maruts.] gaúr dhayati marút~āṃ  8.95 (704) [Indra.] â tvā gíro rathîr iva  8.96 (705) [Indra.] asmâ uṣâsa âtiranta yâmam  8.97 (706) [Indra.] yâ indra bhúja âbharaḥ  8.98 (707) [Indra.] índrāya sâma gāyata  8.99 (708) [Indra.] tuvâm idâ hiyó náro  8.100 (709) [Indra. Vak.] ayáṃ ta emi tanúvā purástād  8.101 (710) [Various.] ŕdhag itthâ sá mártiyaḥ  8.102 (711) [Agni.] tuvám agne bṛhád váyo  8.103 (712) [Agni.] ádarśi gātuvíttamo Vālakhilya:  8.49 (1018) [Indra.] abhí prá vaḥ surâdhasam  8.50 (1019) [Indra.] prá sú śrutáṃ surâdhasam  8.51 (1020) [Indra.] yáthā mánau sâṃvaraṇau  8.52 (1021) [Indra.] yáthā mánau vívasvati  8.53 (1022) [Indra.] upamáṃ tvā maghón~āṃ  8.54 (1023) [Indra.] etát ta indra vīríyaṃ  8.55 (1024) [Praskanva's Gift.] bhûrîd índrasya vīríyaṃ  8.56 (1025) [Praskanva's Gift.] práti te dasyave vṛka  8.57 (1026) [Asvins.] yuváṃ devā krátunā pūrviyéṇa  8.58 (1027) [Visvedevas.] yám ṛtvíjo bahudhâ kalpáyantaḥ  8.59 (1028) [Indra-Varuna.] imâni vām bhāgadhéyāni sisrata Indra Indra ( / ˈ ɪ n d r ə / ; Sanskrit : इन्द्र )

6204-585: The Tamil language contains more stories about Indra by various authors. In the Cilappatikaram , Indra is described as Malai venkudai mannavan, literally meaning, "Indra with the pearl-garland and white umbrella". Sangam literature also describes Indra Vila (festival for Indra), the festival for want of rain, celebrated for one full month starting from the full moon in Uttrai ( Chaitra ) and completed on

6336-406: 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

6468-500: 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

6600-472: The "king that moves and moves not", the friend of mankind who holds the different tribes on earth together. Indra is often presented as the twin brother of Agni (fire) – another major Vedic deity. Yet, he is also presented to be the same, states Max Muller, as in Rigvedic hymn 2.1.3, which states, "Thou Agni, art Indra, a bull among all beings; thou art the wide-ruling Vishnu, worthy of adoration. Thou art

6732-414: 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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6864-532: 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

6996-483: The Brahman, (...)." He is also part of one of many Vedic trinities as "Agni, Indra and Surya", representing the "creator-maintainer-destroyer" aspects of existence in Hindu thought. Rigveda 2.1.3 Jamison 2014 Parentage of Indra is inconsistent in Vedic texts, and in fact Rigveda 4.17.12 states that Indra himself may not even know that much about his mother and father. Some verses of Vedas suggest that his mother

7128-425: 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

7260-690: The Dasyus", a hero who in alliance with the Kanvas has won a victory over the Dasyus . According to some scholars, the 8th Mandala has the most striking similarity to the Avesta .: it contains allusions to Afghan flora and fauna, e.g. to camels ( úṣṭra- = Avestan uštra (c.f. Zaraθ-uštra ; RV 8.4.7, 8.5.37, 8.46.22, 8.46.31; elsewhere in the RV only in 1.138.2). The river name Suvastu in 8.19.37 refers to

7392-466: The Devas". Buddhist texts also refer to Indra by numerous names and epithets, as is the case with Hindu and Jain texts. For example, Asvaghosha's Buddhacarita in different sections refers to Indra with terms such as "the thousand eyed", Puramdara , Lekharshabha , Mahendra , Marutvat , Valabhid and Maghavat . Elsewhere, he is known as Devarajan (literally, "the king of gods"). These names reflect

7524-532: 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

7656-521: 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

7788-476: 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

7920-523: The Indo-European *trigw-welumos [or rather *trigw-t-welumos ] "smasher of the enclosure" (of Vritra , Vala ) and diye-snūtyos "impeller of streams" (the liberated rivers, corresponding to Vedic apam ajas "agitator of the waters"). Brave and heroic Innara or Inra, which sounds like Indra, is mentioned among the gods of the Mitanni , a Hurrian-speaking people of Hittite region. Indra as

8052-456: 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

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8184-621: The Indra of the current Manvantara is called Purandhara . Indra is also depicted in Buddhist ( Pali : Indā ) and Jain mythologies. Indra rules over the much-sought Devas realm of rebirth within the Samsara doctrine of Buddhist traditions. However, like the post-Vedic Hindu texts, Indra is also a subject of ridicule and reduced to a figurehead status in Buddhist texts, shown as

8316-532: 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

8448-496: 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

8580-424: The Rigveda, Indra's wife is Indrani, alias Shachi, and she is described to be extremely proud about her status. Rigveda 4.18.8 says after his birth Indra got swallowed by a demon Kushava. Indra is also found in many other myths that are poorly understood. In one, Indra crushes the cart of Ushas (Dawn), and she runs away. In another Indra beats Surya in a chariot race by tearing off the wheel of his chariot. This

8712-499: 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

8844-638: 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

8976-447: 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

9108-451: 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

9240-407: 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

9372-446: The beginning, Atman, verily one only, was here - no other blinking thing whatever; he bethought himself: let me now create worlds". This soul, which the text refers to as Brahman as well, then proceeds to create the worlds and beings in those worlds wherein all Vedic gods and goddesses such as sun-god, moon-god, Agni, and other divinities become active cooperative organs of the body. The Atman thereafter creates food, and thus emerges

9504-440: 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

9636-588: The cave by the Angirases (and sometimes Navagvas or the Daśagvas). Here Indra exemplifies his role as a priest-king, called bṛhaspati . Eventually later in the Rigveda, Bṛhaspati and Indra become separate deities as both Indra and the Vedic king lose their priestly functions. The Vala myth was associated with the Morning Pressing of soma, in which cattle was donated to priests, called dakṣiṇā . Indra

9768-527: 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

9900-567: The contact zone between the Zeravshan River (present-day Uzbekistan ) and (present-day) Iran. It was "a syncretic mixture of old Central Asian and new Indo-European elements", which borrowed "distinctive religious beliefs and practices" from the Bactria–Margiana Culture . At least 383 non-Indo-European words were found in this culture, including the god Indra and the ritual drink Soma . According to Anthony, Many of

10032-614: 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

10164-653: 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

10296-467: 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

10428-471: 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

10560-460: 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

10692-412: The earliest, not the later, hymns of Rigveda . The Vritra is an ice-demon of colder central Asia and northern latitudes, who holds back the water. Indra is the one who releases the water from the winter demon, an idea that later metamorphosed into his role as storm god. According to Griswold, this is not a completely convincing interpretation, because Indra is simultaneously a lightning god, a rain god and

10824-490: 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

10956-548: 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

11088-566: The foam of water. Other beings slain by Indra include Śambara, Pipru, Varcin, Dhuni and Cumuri, and others. Indra's chariot is pulled by fallow bay horses described as hárī . They bring Indra to and from the sacrifice, and are even offered their own roasted grains. The ancient Aitareya Upanishad equates Indra, along with other deities, with Atman (soul, self) in the Vedanta's spirit of internalization of rituals and gods. It begins with its cosmological theory in verse 1.1.1 by stating that, "in

11220-412: 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

11352-645: The full moon in Puyali ( Vaisakha ). This is described in the epic Cilappatikaram in detail. In his work Tirukkural (before c. 5th century CE), Valluvar cites Indra to exemplify the virtue of conquest over one's senses. Indra is an important deity worshipped by the Kalash people , indicating his prominence in ancient Hinduism . The Buddhist cosmology places Indra above Mount Sumeru , in Trayastrimsha heaven. He resides and rules over one of

11484-537: 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

11616-596: The gods like short nicknames. The passing mention of Indra in this Upanishad, states Alain Daniélou, is a symbolic folk etymology. The section 3.9 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad connects Indra to thunder, thunderbolt and release of waters. In section 5.1 of the Avyakta Upanishad , Indra is praised as he who embodies the qualities of all gods. In post-Vedic texts, Indra

11748-410: The heroic deeds of Indra, those foremost deeds that the mace-wielder performed: He smashed the serpent. He bored out the waters. He split the bellies of the mountains. 2. He smashed the serpent resting on the mountain—for him Tvaṣṭar had fashioned the resounding [sunlike] mace. Like bellowing milk-cows, streaming out, the waters went straight down to the sea. In the myth, Vṛtra has coiled around

11880-431: 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

12012-511: The instructions of Savitr (solar deity). Indra, like all Vedic deities, is a part of henotheistic theology of ancient India. The second-most important myth about Indra is about the Vala cave. In this story, the Panis have stolen cattle and hidden them in the Vala cave. Here Indra utilizes the power of the songs he chants to split the cave open to release the cattle and dawn. He is accompanied in

12144-486: 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

12276-432: 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

12408-412: 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

12540-514: 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 ,

12672-511: 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

12804-429: 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

12936-401: 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

13068-602: 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

13200-545: The numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language. Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule . Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants . In Sanskrit,

13332-403: 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

13464-431: 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

13596-414: 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

13728-439: 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

13860-480: 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

13992-516: The qualities of Indo-Iranian god of might/victory, Verethraghna , were transferred to the god Indra, who became the central deity of the developing Old Indic culture. Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda . He was associated more than any other deity with Soma , a stimulant drug (perhaps derived from Ephedra ) probably borrowed from the BMAC religion. His rise to prominence

14124-609: 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

14256-497: 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,

14388-473: The rescue by lifting Mount Govardhana on his fingertip, and letting mankind shelter under the mountain till Indra exhausts his anger and relents. According to the Mahabharata , Indra disguises himself as a Brahmin and approaches Karna and asks for his kavacha (body armor) and kundala (earrings) as charity. Although being aware of his true identity, Karna peeled off his kavacha and kundala and fulfilled

14520-562: 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

14652-496: 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

14784-522: The saviour of mankind. Indra's significance diminishes in the post-Vedic Indian literature, but he still plays an important role in various mythological events. He is depicted as a powerful hero. According to the Vishnu Purana , Indra is the title borne by the king of the gods , which changes every Manvantara – a cyclic period of time in Hindu cosmology . Each Manvantara has its own Indra and

14916-556: 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

15048-522: The six realms of rebirth, the Devas realm of Saṃsāra , that is widely sought in the Buddhist tradition. Rebirth in the realm of Indra is a consequence of very good Karma (Pali: kamma ) and accumulated merit during a human life. In Buddhism , Indra is commonly called by his other name, Śakra or Sakka, ruler of the Trāyastriṃśa heaven. Śakra is sometimes referred to as Devānām Indra or "Lord of

15180-409: The snaking thunderstorm clouds that gather with bellowing winds (Vritra), Indra is then seen as the storm god who intervenes in these clouds with his thunderbolts, which then release the rains nourishing the parched land, crops and thus humanity. In another interpretation by Hillebrandt, Indra is a symbolic sun god ( Surya ) and Vritra is a symbolic winter-giant (historic mini cycles of ice age, cold) in

15312-615: 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

15444-526: The spiritual journey of a Jain. He is a rough equivalent to Zeus in Greek mythology , or Jupiter in Roman mythology . Indra's powers are similar to other Indo-European deities such as Norse Odin , Perun , Perkūnas , Zalmoxis , Taranis , and Thor , part of the greater Proto-Indo-European mythology . Indra's iconography shows him wielding his Vajra and riding his vahana , Airavata . Indra's abode

15576-403: The spouse of Shukra , while Devasena marries the war god Kartikeya . Indra is depicted as the spiritual father of Vali in the Ramayana and Arjuna in the Mahabharata . Since he is known for mastering all weapons in warfare, his spiritual sons Vali and Arjuna also share his martial attributes. He has a charioteer named Matali . Indra had multiple affairs with other women. One such

15708-653: 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

15840-408: 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

15972-564: 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

16104-432: The winter forces, winning the light and dawn for mankind, putting milk in the cows, rejuvenating the immobile into something mobile and prosperous, and in general, he is depicted as removing any and all sorts of obstacles to human progress. The Vedic prayers to Indra, states Jan Gonda , generally ask "produce success of this rite, throw down those who hate the materialized Brahman ". The hymns of Rigveda declare him to be

16236-471: The wish of Indra. Pleased by this act, Indra gifts Karna a celestial dart called the Vasavi Shakti. According to the Vishnu Purana , Indra is the position of being the king of the gods which changes in every Manvantara —a cyclic period of time in Hindu cosmology . Each Manvantara has its own Indra and the Indra of the current Manvantara is called Purandhara . The Sangam literature of

16368-446: 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

16500-577: Was Ahalya , the wife of sage Gautama. Indra was cursed by the sage. Although the Brahmanas (9th to 6th centuries BCE) are the earliest scriptures to hint at their relationship, the 7th- to 4th-century BCE Hindu epic Ramayana – whose hero is Rama – is the first to explicitly mention the affair in detail. Indra becomes a source of nuisance rains in the Puranas, caused out of anger with an intent to hurt mankind. Krishna , an avatar of Vishnu , comes to

16632-413: Was a grishti (a cow), while other verses name her Nishtigri. The medieval commentator Sayana identified her with Aditi , the goddess who is his mother in later Hinduism. The Atharvaveda states Indra's mother is Ekashtaka, daughter of Prajapati . Some verses of Vedic texts state that Indra's father is Tvaṣṭar or sometimes the couple Dyaus and Prithvi are mentioned as his parents. According to

16764-519: Was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers. However, according to Paul Thieme , "there is no valid justification for supposing that the Proto-Aryan adjective *vrtraghan was specifically connected with *Indra or any other particular god." In Rigveda , Indra is described as strong willed, armed with a thunderbolt, riding a chariot: 5. Let bullish heaven strengthen you, the bull; as bull you travel with your two bullish fallow bays. As bull with

16896-408: 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

17028-427: 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

17160-472: 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

17292-738: 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

17424-442: 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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