Traditional
148-512: A yogini ( Sanskrit : योगिनी, IAST : yoginī ) is a female master practitioner of tantra and yoga , as well as a formal term of respect for female Hindu or Buddhist spiritual teachers in the Indian subcontinent , Southeast Asia and Greater Tibet . The term is the feminine Sanskrit word of the masculine yogi , while the term " yogin " IPA: [ˈjoːɡɪn] is used in neutral, masculine or feminine sense. A yogini, in some contexts,
296-476: A corpse overnight before cremation "for fear of losing it to tantric practitioners". Dehejia notes that none of the yogini temples have sculptures depicting maithuna , ritual sex, nor are there any small figures in embrace carved into the pedestal of any yogini statue. All the same, she writes, it is "fairly certain" that maithuna was one of the Mahayaga rituals. The Kularnava Tantra mentions "the eight and
444-649: 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." Enlightenment in Buddhism The English term enlightenment is the Western translation of various Buddhist terms, most notably bodhi and vimutti . The abstract noun bodhi ( / ˈ b oʊ d i / ; Sanskrit : बोधि ; Pali : bodhi ) means
592-433: 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
740-426: A group of 9 Matrikas. The 7 Mothers or Saptamatrika (Brahmi, Maheshvari, Kaumari, Vaishnavi, Varahi, Indrani (Aindri) and Chamundi), joined by Chandi and Mahalakshmi, form the nine-Matrika cluster. Each Matrika is considered to be a yogini and is associate with 8 other yoginis resulting in the troupe of 81 (9 times 9). Some traditions have only 7 Matrikas, and thus fewer yoginis. There is no universally-agreed list of
888-591: 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
1036-932: A large part of this tradition, and many 2nd-millennium paintings depict them and their Yoga practices. Lorenzen states that the Nath yogis were popular with the rural population in South Asia, with medieval era tales and stories about Nath yogis continuing to be remembered in contemporary times, in the Deccan , western and northern states of India and in Nepal. Women in Tantra traditions, whether Hindu or Buddhist, are similarly called yoginis. In Tantric Buddhism , Miranda Shaw states that many women like Dombiyogini, Sahajayogicinta, Lakshminkara, Mekhala, Kankhala Gangadhara, Siddharajni, and others, were respected yoginis and advanced seekers on
1184-658: 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
1332-454: 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
1480-479: 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
1628-630: A number believed powerful, most often 64, and they became accepted as a valid part of Hinduism. Historical evidence on Yogini Kaulas suggests that the practice was well established by the 10th century in both Hindu and Buddhist tantra traditions. The nature of the yoginis differs between the traditions; in Tantra they are fierce and scary, while in India, celibate female sanyassins may describe themselves as yoginis. In ancient and medieval texts in Hinduism ,
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#17327729321541776-546: 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
1924-578: 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
2072-538: 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
2220-439: 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
2368-609: A woman who belongs to the Nath Yoga tradition founded around the 11th century. They usually belong to the Shaiva tradition, but some Natha belong to the Vaishnava tradition. Either way, states David Lorenzen, they practice Yoga and their principal God tends to be Nirguna , that is, without form and semi- monistic , influenced in the medieval era by Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, Madhyamaka Buddhism, and by Tantra. Human yoginis were
2516-537: A yogini is associated with or directly an aspect of Devi , the goddess. In the 11th century collection of myths, the Kathāsaritsāgara , a yogini is one of a class of females with magical powers, sorceresses sometimes enumerated as 8, 60, 64 or 65. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika mentions yoginis. Devi is sometimes portrayed with a superimposed Yogini Chakra, wheel of the 64 Yoginis, placing them as aspects of Devi. The term yogini has been in use in medieval times for
2664-405: Is a core problem in the study of Buddhism, and is one of the fundamentals of Buddhist practice. Bodhi , Sanskrit बोधि , "awakening", "perfect knowledge", "perfect knowledge or wisdom (by which a man becomes a बुद्ध [Buddha ] or जिन [ jina , arahant ; "victorious", "victor" ], the illuminated or enlightened intellect (of a Buddha or जिन)". The word Bodhi is an abstract noun , formed from
2812-464: 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
2960-744: Is equivalent to vipassana , insight into the three marks of existence, namely anicca , dukkha and anatta . Insight leads to the four stages of enlightenment and Nirvana. In Mahayana Buddhism Prajna (Sanskrit) means "insight" or "wisdom", and entails insight into sunyata . The attainment of this insight is often seen as the attainment of "enlightenment". Wu is the Chinese term for initial insight. Kensho and satori are Japanese terms used in Zen traditions. Kensho means "seeing into one's true nature". Ken means "seeing", sho means "nature", "essence", c.q Buddha-nature. Satori (Japanese)
3108-452: 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
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#17327729321543256-535: Is my last birth, now there is no rebirth." Schmithausen notes that the mention of the four noble truths as constituting "liberating insight", which is attained after mastering the Rupa Jhanas, is a later addition to texts such as Majjhima Nikaya 36. Bronkhorst notices that ...the accounts which include the Four Noble Truths had a completely different conception of the process of liberation than
3404-519: Is often used interchangeably with kensho, but refers to the experience of kensho. The Rinzai tradition sees kensho as essential to the attainment of Buddhahood , but considers further practice essential to attain Buddhahood. East-Asian (Chinese) Buddhism emphasizes insight into Buddha-nature. This term is derived from Indian tathagata-garbha thought, "the womb of the thus-gone" (the Buddha),
3552-610: Is often used to distinguish the enlightenment of a Buddha from that of an Arhat. The term Buddha and the way to Buddhahood is understood somewhat differently in the various Buddhist traditions. An equivalent term for Buddha is Tathāgata , "the thus-gone". In the suttapitaka , the Buddhist canon as preserved in the Theravada tradition, a couple of texts can be found in which the Buddha's attainment of liberation forms part of
3700-454: Is process-oriented. The western use of the term "enlighten" has Christian roots, as in Calvin's "It is God alone who enlightens our minds to perceive his truths". Early 19th-century bodhi was translated as "intelligence". The term "enlighten" was first being used in 1835, in an English translation of a French article, while the first recorded use of the term 'enlightenment' is credited (by
3848-460: Is radically different from the medieval practice. [REDACTED] Media related to Yogini at Wikimedia Commons Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of
3996-532: 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
4144-399: Is realized that observer and observed are not distinct entities, but mutually co-dependent. The term vidhya is being used in contrast to avidhya , ignorance or the lack of knowledge, which binds us to samsara . The Mahasaccaka Sutta describes the three knowledges which the Buddha attained: According to Bronkhorst, the first two knowledges are later additions, while insight into
4292-479: 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,
4440-514: Is the actualisation of insight, leading to an awakened awareness which is "non-reactive and lucid". In Mahayana-thought, bodhi is the realisation of the inseparability of samsara and nirvana , and the unity of subject and object. Similar to prajna , the realizing of the Buddha-nature , bodhi realizes sunyata and suchness . In time, the Buddha's awakening came to be understood as an immediate full awakening and liberation, instead of
4588-589: 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
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4736-406: Is the sacred feminine force made incarnate, as an aspect of Mahadevi , and revered in the yogini temples of India. These often revere a group of 64 yoginis, and are named as such, but can also have 42 or 81 yoginis. The names of the 64 yoginis vary in different classifications. According to Indologist and Yoga-Tantra scholar David Gordon White , yoginis are first mentioned in Indian literature in
4884-609: Is the same as liberation. The usage of the term "enlightenment" to translate "nirvana" was popularized in the 19th century, in part, due to the efforts of Max Müller, who used the term consistently in his translations. There are three recognized types of Buddha: Siddhartha Gautama , known as the Buddha, is said to have achieved full awakening, known as samyaksaṃbodhi (Sanskrit; Pāli: sammāsaṃbodhi ), "perfect Buddhahood", or anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi , "highest perfect awakening". Specifically, anuttarā-samyak-saṃbodhi , literally meaning unsurpassed, complete and perfect enlightenment,
5032-540: 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
5180-463: The Bodhisattva is the ideal. The ultimate goal is not only of one's own liberation in Buddhahood, but the liberation of all living beings. The cosmology of Mahayana Buddhism regards a wide range of buddhas and bodhisattvas, who assist humans on their way to liberation. Nichiren Buddhism , a branch of Mahayana Buddhism, regards Buddhahood as a state of perfect freedom, in which one is awakened to
5328-580: 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
5476-540: The Enlightenment as the free, unimpeded use of reason. Müller's translation echoed this idea, portraying Buddhism as a rational and enlightened religion that aligns with the natural religious truths inherent to human beings. By the mid-1870s it had become commonplace to call the Buddha "enlightened", and by the end of the 1880s the terms "enlightened" and "enlightenment" dominated the English literature. While
5624-472: The Four Noble Truths is here called awakening. The monk ( bhikkhu ) has "...attained the unattained supreme security from bondage." Awakening is also described as synonymous with Nirvana , the extinction of the passions whereby suffering is ended and no more rebirths take place. The insight arises that this liberation is certain: "Knowledge arose in me, and insight: my freedom is certain, this
5772-675: 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
5920-466: 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
6068-660: The Mula Chakra has a circle of 81 and the Malini Chakra has a circle of 50. The number 8 is auspicious; its square, 64, is "even more potent and efficacious". In tantric texts there are supposedly 64 Agamas and Tantras, 64 Bhairavas, 64 mantras , 64 sites sacred to the Goddess ( pithas ), and 64 extraordinary powers ( siddhis ). Dehejia notes that the yoginis are closely associated with the siddhis . Yogini temples are simple compared to typical Indian temples, without
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6216-753: 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
6364-532: 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 ,
6512-531: 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
6660-496: The Vira Tantra , which calls for offerings of food and wine to the 64 yoginis, and for pranayama to be practised while sitting on a corpse. The Vira Cudamani requires the naked practitioner (the sadhaka ) and his partner to sit on the corpse and practise maithuna , tantric sex. The Sri Matottara Tantra instructs that the corpse must be intact, beautiful, and fresh; Dehejia notes that this does not imply human sacrifice, but
6808-406: 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
6956-500: 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
7104-454: The "blowing out" ( nirvana ) of disturbing emotions and desires; and the attainment of supreme Buddhahood ( samyak sam bodhi ), as exemplified by Gautama Buddha . What exactly constituted the Buddha's awakening is unknown. It may have involved the knowledge that liberation was attained by the combination of mindfulness and dhyāna , applied to the understanding of the arising and ceasing of craving. The relation between dhyana and insight
7252-414: 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
7400-532: 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
7548-529: The 9th century. The goal of yogini worship, as described in both Puranas and Tantras, was the acquisition of siddhis . The Sri Matottara Tantra describes 8 major powers, as named in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali , namely: Anima , becoming microscopically small, giving knowledge of how the world works; Mahima , becoming huge, able to view the whole solar system and universe; Laghima , becoming weightless, allowing levitation and astral travel away from
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#17327729321547696-556: The Buddhist canon: "that the five Skandhas are impermanent, disagreeable, and neither the Self nor belonging to oneself"; "the contemplation of the arising and disappearance ( udayabbaya ) of the five Skandhas"; "the realisation of the Skandhas as empty ( rittaka ), vain ( tucchaka ) and without any pith or substance ( asaraka ). An example of this substitution, and its consequences, is Majjhima Nikaya 36:42–43, which gives an account of
7844-408: The Buddhist tradition regards bodhi as referring to full and complete liberation ( samyaksambudh ), it also has the more modest meaning of knowing that the path that is being followed leads to the desired goal. According to Johannes Bronkhorst , Tillman Vetter, and K.R. Norman, bodhi was at first not specified. K.R. Norman: It is not at all clear what gaining bodhi means. We are accustomed to
7992-425: 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
8140-532: 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
8288-521: 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
8436-588: The Great Goddess Devi , or her acolytes. The Kalika Purana includes 16 Matrikas among the yoginis. 9 of these Matrikas are of the Brahmi series; Dehejia comments that in this tradition, the yoginis are "64 varying aspects of Devi herself"; they are to be worshipped "individually". The Agni Purana does not include the Matrikas among the yoginis, but states that they are related. It divides
8584-476: 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
8732-519: 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
8880-532: 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
9028-496: 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
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#17327729321549176-736: The Oxford English Dictionary) to the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (February 1836). In 1857 The Times used the term "the Enlightened" for the Buddha in a short article, which was reprinted the following year by Max Müller . Thereafter, the use of the term subsided, but reappeared with the publication of Max Müller's Chips from a german Workshop , which included a reprint from the Times article. The book
9324-499: 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
9472-638: 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
9620-447: 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
9768-451: 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
9916-406: The abandonment of the ten fetters and the cessation of dukkha or suffering. Full awakening is reached in four stages. According to Nyanatiloka, (Through Bodhi) one awakens from the slumber or stupor (inflicted upon the mind) by the defilements ( kilesa , q.v.) and comprehends the Four Noble Truths ( sacca , q.v.). Since the 1980s, western Theravada-oriented teachers have started to question
10064-407: 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
10212-543: The attendants or manifestations of Durga engaged in fighting with the demons Shumbha and Nishumbha , and the principal yoginis are identified with the Matrikas . Other yoginis are described as born from one or more Matrikas. The derivation of 64 yoginis from 8 Matrikas became a tradition. By the mid-11th century, the connection between yoginis and Matrikas had become common lore. The mandala (circle) and chakra of yoginis were used alternatively. The 81 yoginis evolve from
10360-441: The awakening of the Buddha. The term bodhi acquired a variety of meanings and connotations during the development of Buddhist thoughts in the various schools. In early Buddhism, bodhi carried a meaning synonymous to nirvana , using only a few different metaphors to describe the insight, which implied the extinction of lobha (greed), dosa (hate) and moha (delusion). In Theravada Buddhism , bodhi and nirvana carry
10508-473: The body; Garima , becoming very heavy and powerful; Prakamya , having an irresistible willpower, able to control the minds of others; Ishitva , controlling both body and mind and all living things; Vashitva , controlling the natural elements, such as rain, drought, volcanoes, and earthquakes; and Kamavashayita, gaining all one's desires and any treasure. The Sri Matottara Tantra lists many other more or less magical powers that devotees can obtain by invoking
10656-440: 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
10804-647: The clans of the 8 Mothers (matris or matrikas ). Yoginis are often theriomorphic , having the forms of animals, represented in statuary as female figures with animal heads. Yoginis are associated with "actual shapeshifting " into female animals, and the ability to transform other people. They are linked with the Bhairava , often carrying skulls and other tantric symbols, and practising in cremation grounds and other liminal places. They are powerful and dangerous. They both protect and disseminate esoteric tantric knowledge. They have siddhis , extraordinary powers, including
10952-527: 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
11100-482: The conception of what exactly this "liberating insight" was developed throughout time. Whereas originally it may not have been specified, later on the four truths served as such, to be superseded by pratityasamutpada , and still later, in the Hinayana schools, by the doctrine of the non-existence of a substantial self or person. And Schmithausen notices that still other descriptions of this "liberating insight" exist in
11248-614: 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
11396-653: 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
11544-467: 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
11692-471: 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
11840-460: 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
11988-490: 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
12136-548: 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
12284-412: 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
12432-502: The four truths represents a later development, in response to concurring religious traditions, in which "liberating insight" came to be stressed over the practice of dhyana . Vimukthi, also called moksha , means "freedom", "release", "deliverance". Sometimes a distinction is being made between ceto-vimukthi , "liberation of the mind", and panna-vimukthi , "liberation by understanding". The Buddhist tradition recognises two kinds of ceto-vimukthi , one temporarily and one permanent,
12580-537: 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
12728-431: 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
12876-539: The inherent potential of every sentient being to become a Buddha . This idea was integrated with the Yogacara-idea of the ālaya vijñāna , and further developed in Chinese Buddhism , which integrated Indian Buddhism with native Chinese thought. Buddha-nature came to mean both the potential of awakening and the whole of reality, a dynamic interpenetration of absolute and relative. In this awakening it
13024-430: The insight into and certainty about the way to follow to reach enlightenment. In some Zen traditions, however, this perfection came to be relativized again; according to one contemporary Zen master, "Shakyamuni buddha and Bodhidharma are still practicing." Mahayana discerns three forms of awakened beings: Within the various Mahayana-schools exist various further explanations and interpretations. In Mahāyāna Buddhism,
13172-486: 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
13320-403: The jungle, and the attainment of awakening. The Mahasaccaka Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 36) describes his ascetic practices, which he abandoned. Thereafter he remembered a spontaneous state of jhana, and set out for jhana-practice. Both suttas narrate how, after destroying the disturbances of the mind , and attaining concentration of the mind , he attained three knowledges (vidhya): Insight into
13468-402: The knowledge or wisdom , or awakened intellect, of a Buddha. The verbal root budh- means "to awaken", and its literal meaning is closer to awakening . Although the term buddhi is also used in other Indian philosophies and traditions, its most common usage is in the context of Buddhism . Vimutti is the freedom from or release of the fetters and hindrances . The term enlightenment
13616-432: 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
13764-451: The last being equivalent to panna-vimukthi . Yogacara uses the term āśraya parāvŗtti , "revolution of the basis", ... a sudden revulsion, turning, or re-turning of the ālaya vijñāna back into its original state of purity [...] the Mind returns to its original condition of non-attachment, non-discrimination and non-duality". Nirvana is the "blowing out" of disturbing emotions, which
13912-535: The late 20th century, yoginis inspired a "deep sense of fear and awe" among "average" people in India, according to the scholar Vidya Dehejia . She notes that such fear may be ancient, as the Brahmanda Purana and the Jnanarnava Tantra both warn that transmitting secret knowledge to non-initiates will incur the curse of the yoginis. In Sanskrit literature, the yoginis have been represented as
14060-412: 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
14208-514: 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 ,
14356-415: The majority of English books on Buddhism use the term "enlightenment" to translate the term bodhi . The root budh , from which both bodhi and Buddha are derived, means "to wake up" or "to recover consciousness". Cohen notes that bodhi is not the result of an illumination, but of a path of realization, or coming to understanding. The term "enlightenment" is event-oriented, whereas the term "awakening"
14504-511: 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
14652-429: 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
14800-401: 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
14948-602: 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
15096-467: The names of the 64 yoginis; Dehejia located and compared some 30 different lists, finding that they rarely corresponded, and that there must have been multiple traditions concerning the 64. She states that the lists can be categorised into those that include the Matrikas among the Yoginis and give the Yoginis high status, and those that do neither. The high status means that the Yoginis are either aspects of
15244-484: The narrative. The Ariyapariyesana Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 26) describes how the Buddha was dissatisfied with the teachings of Āḷāra Kālāma and Uddaka Rāmaputta , wandered further through Magadhan country, and then found "an agreeable piece of ground" which served for striving. The sutta then only says that he attained Nibbana. In the Vanapattha Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 17) the Buddha describes life in
15392-597: 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,
15540-503: The one which includes the Four Dhyanas and the destruction of the intoxicants. It calls in question the reliability of these accounts, and the relation between dhyana and insight, which is a core problem in the study of early Buddhism. Originally the term prajna may have been used, which came to be replaced by the four truths in those texts where "liberating insight" was preceded by the four jhanas. Bronkhorst also notices that
15688-403: 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
15836-431: 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
15984-400: The path to enlightenment . From around the 10th century, yoginis appear in groups, often of 64. They appear as goddesses, but human female adepts of tantra can emulate "and even embody" these deities, who can appear as mortal women, creating an ambiguous and blurred boundary between the human and the divine. Yoginis, divine or human, belong to clans; in Shaiva , among the most important are
16132-414: 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
16280-418: The power of flight; many yoginis have the form of birds or have a bird as their vahana or animal vehicle. In later Tantric Buddhism, dakini , a female spirit able to fly, is often used synonymously with yogini. The scholar Shaman Hatley writes that the archetypal yogini is "the autonomous Sky-traveller ( khecari )", and that this power is the "ultimate attainment for the siddhi -seeking practitioner". Into
16428-439: 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
16576-426: The primacy of insight. According to Thanissaro Bhikkhu , jhana and vipassana (insight) form an integrated practice. Polak and Arbel, following scholars like Vetter and Bronkhorst, argue that right effort , c.q. the four right efforts (sense restraint, preventing the arising of unwholesome states , and the generation of wholesome states ), mindfulness, and dhyana form an integrated practice, in which dhyana
16724-480: 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
16872-442: The realisation of the four noble truths, which leads to deliverance. According to Nyanatiloka, (Through Bodhi) one awakens from the slumber or stupor (inflicted upon the mind) by the defilements ( kilesa , q.v.) and comprehends the Four Noble Truths ( sacca , q.v.). This equation of bodhi with the four noble truths is a later development, in response to developments within Indian religious thought, where "liberating insight"
17020-609: 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
17168-497: 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,
17316-562: 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
17464-424: The role. Dehejia notes, too, that the need for "privacy and secrecy" given such practices readily explained the isolated hilltop locations of the yogini temples, well away from towns with "orthodox Brahmanical thinking favouring vegetarianism and objecting to alcohol", let alone having maithuna among the temple rituals. David Gordon White writes that the modern practice of '" Tantric sex "' (his quotation marks)
17612-454: The same meaning: that of being freed from greed, hate and delusion. Bodhi , specifically, refers to the realisation of the four stages of enlightenment and becoming an Arahant . It is equal to supreme insight, the realisation of the four noble truths, which leads to deliverance. Reaching full awakening is equivalent in meaning to reaching Nirvāṇa . Attaining Nirvāṇa is the ultimate goal of Theravada and other śrāvaka traditions. It involves
17760-496: 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
17908-563: The selection of the best corpses. In the circle of the Mothers, in front of the statue of Bhairava, the corpse is to be bathed, covered in sandalwood paste, and have its head cut off in a single stroke. The Mothers will, it states, be watching this from the sky, and the sadhaka will acquire the 8 major siddhis . Further, flesh from the corpse is eaten; Dehejia states that the practice "is not uncommon" and that in Kamakhya, people avoid leaving
18056-556: 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
18204-578: The sixth-century Hindu Agni Purana, with their origins rooted in the Vedic tradition. Their development reflects a synthesis of Vedic and classical Hindu elements. The characteristics of Yoginis can be found in Vedic and Hindu reservoirs: 1. Vedic goddesses, Apsarasas (celestial nymphs), Grahīs or Grahaṇīs (female possessors), Yakṣinīs (tree spirits) and Ḍākinīs (noisemakers or flyers) 2. Various groupings of unnumbered maternal deities and other female entities central to Vedic ritual practices. 3. Broader societal views of women and femininity that influenced
18352-560: The sixty-four mithunas " (couples in embrace); and it proposes that the 64 yoginis should be portrayed "in embrace with the 64 Bhairavas" and that the resulting images should be worshipped. The Jnanarnava Tantra describes the 8 Matrikas paired off ( yugma yugma ) with the 8 Bhairavas. The Yogini Chakra, also called the Kaula Chakra or Bhairavi Chakra, is formed as a circle ( Chakra ) of at least 8 people, with equal numbers of men and women. Dehejia writes that this meant that pairing
18500-615: 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
18648-464: The symbolism and practices associated with the Yoginī traditions. According to Vidya Dehejia, the worship of yoginis began outside Vedic Religion , starting with the cults of local village goddesses, the grama devatas . Each one protects her village, sometimes giving specific benefits such as safety from the stings of scorpions . Gradually, through Tantra , these goddesses were grouped together into
18796-419: The translation "enlightenment" for bodhi , but this is misleading ... It is not clear what the buddha was awakened to, or at what particular point the awakening came. According to Norman, bodhi may basically have meant the knowledge that nibbana was attained, due to the practice of dhyana . Originally only "prajna" may have been mentioned, and Tillman Vetter even concludes that originally dhyana itself
18944-653: 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
19092-600: The usual towers, gateways and elaborate carvings that attract scholarly attention. Major extant hypaethral (open air) temples of the 64 yoginis ( Chausathi Jogan ) in India built between the 9th and 12th centuries include two in Odisha at Hirapur and Ranipur Jharial ; and three in Madhya Pradesh , at Khajuraho , Bhedaghat , and the well-preserved hilltop temple at Mataoli in Morena district. The iconographies of
19240-408: 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
19388-488: The verbal root *budh- , Sanskrit बुध , "to awaken, to know", "to wake, wake up, be awake", "to recover consciousness (after a swoon)", "to observe, heed, attend to". It corresponds to the verbs bujjhati (Pāli) and bodhati , बोदति, "become or be aware of, perceive, learn, know, understand, awake" or budhyate (Sanskrit). The feminine Sanskrit noun of *budh- is बुद्धि , buddhi , "prescience, intuition, perception, point of view". Robert S. Cohen notes that
19536-564: 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
19684-636: The yogini statues in the various temples are not uniform, nor are the yoginis the same in each set of 64. In the Hirapur temple, all the yoginis are depicted with their Vahanas (animal vehicles) and in standing posture. In the Ranipur-Jharial temple the yogini images are in dancing posture. In the Bhedaghat temple, the yoginis are seated in lalitasana . Temple images of yoginis have been made in materials including stone and bronze from at least
19832-454: The yoginis correctly, from the ability to cause death, disillusion, paralysis, or unconsciousness to provocation, delightful poetry, and seduction. Yogini worship, intended to yield occult powers, consisted of a set of rituals called Mahayaga . These took place in the sacred space of the circular temple, appropriate for the working of magic. The yoginis were invoked with offerings of wine, flesh, and blood. The Sri Matottara Tantra describes
19980-511: The yoginis delighting in and drunk upon wine; one of them is indeed named Surapriya (lover of wine). The Kularnava Tantra provides a recipe for brewing the yoginis' drink, involving dry ginger, lemon bark, black pepper, blossoms, honey and jaggery sugar in water, brewed for 12 days. The yoginis danced and drank blood and wine, according to the Brhaddharma Purana . The Kaulavali Nirnaya adds that blood and meat are needed to worship
20128-655: The yoginis into 8 family groups, each one led by a Matrika, who is either the mother or another relative of each of her yoginis. The Agni Purana , the Skanda Purana and the Kalika Purana each contain two lists ( namavalis ) of yoginis with often wholly differing contents. The Sri Matottara Tantra tells that the Khechari Chakra and the Yogini Chakra are both circles of 64 yoginis, while
20276-404: The yoginis. The sacrifice of animals, always male, is practised at Assam 's Kamakhya Temple , where the 64 yoginis continue to be worshipped. Sculptures at some of the yogini temples such as Shahdol, Bheraghat and Ranipur-Jharial depict the yoginis with kartari knives, human corpses, severed heads, and skull-cups. There appear to have been corpse rituals, shava sadhana , as is described in
20424-502: 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
20572-408: 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
20720-427: 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
20868-472: 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
21016-738: 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
21164-596: Was deemed essential for Liberation . The four noble truths as the liberating insight of the Buddha eventually were superseded by Pratītyasamutpāda , the twelvefold chain of causation, and still later by anatta, the emptiness of the self. In Mahayana Buddhism, bodhi is equal to prajna , insight into the Buddha-nature , sunyata and tathatā . This is equal to the realisation of the non-duality of absolute and relative . In Theravada Buddhism pannā (Pali) means "understanding", "wisdom", "insight". "Insight"
21312-399: Was deemed liberating, with the stilling of pleasure or pain in the fourth jhana, not the gaining of some perfect wisdom or insight. Gombrich also argues that the emphasis on insight is a later development. In Theravada Buddhism, bodhi refers to the realisation of the four stages of enlightenment and becoming an Arahant . In Theravada Buddhism, bodhi is equal to supreme insight, and
21460-432: Was popularised in the Western world through the 19th-century translations of British philologist Max Müller . It has the Western connotation of general insight into transcendental truth or reality. The term is also being used to translate several other Buddhist terms and concepts, which are used to denote (initial) insight ( prajna (Sanskrit), wu (Chinese), kensho and satori (Japanese)); knowledge ( vidya );
21608-457: Was random rather than having people arriving in couples, and that this explained the careful sexual preparations in Kaula texts, such as anointing the body and touching its parts to stimulate both partners. Caste was ignored during such Chakra-puja (circle worship), all men being Shiva while in the circle, and all women being Devi, and the women of the lowest castes were thought the best suited to
21756-399: Was translated in 1969 into German, using the term " der Erleuchtete ". Max Müller was an essentialist , who believed in a natural religion , and saw religion as an inherent capacity of human beings. "Enlightenment" was a means to capture natural religious truths, as distinguished from mere mythology. This perspective was influenced by Kantian thought, particularly Kant's definition of
21904-442: 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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