Divisions
155-485: Divisions Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas Traditional The Nāṭya Shāstra ( Sanskrit : नाट्य शास्त्र , Nāṭyaśāstra ) is a Sanskrit treatise on the performing arts . The text is attributed to sage Bharata , and its first complete compilation is dated to between 200 BCE and 200 CE, but estimates vary between 500 BCE and 500 CE. The text consists of 36 chapters with
310-488: A comprehensive aid to the learning of virtue, proper behavior, ethical and moral fortitude, courage, love and adoration of the divine. — Susan L. Schwartz The contents of the Natyashastra , states Susan Schwartz, are "in part theatrical manual, part philosophy of aesthetics, part mythological history, part theology". It is the oldest surviving encyclopedic treatise on dramaturgy from India, with sections on
465-403: A cumulative total of 6,000 poetic verses describing performance arts. The subjects covered by the treatise include dramatic composition, structure of a play and the construction of a stage to host it, genres of acting, body movements, make up and costumes, role and goals of an art director, the musical scales, musical instruments and the integration of music with art performance. The Nāṭya Śāstra
620-537: 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." Vyakarana Sama vedic Yajur vedic Atharva vedic Vaishnava puranas Shaiva puranas Shakta puranas Vyākaraṇa ( Sanskrit : व्याकरण , lit. 'explanation, analysis', IPA: [ˈʋjaːkɐrɐɳɐ] ) refers to one of
775-504: A drama can deploy to carry its message. The text describes four means of communication between the actors and the audience – words, gestures, dresses, representation of temperament and aharya (make ups, cosmetics), all of which should be harmonious with the temperament envisioned in the drama. The text discusses the dominant, transitory and temperamental states, for dramatic arts, and the means that an artist can use to express these states, in chapters 6 through 7. The Natyashastra describes
930-433: 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
1085-539: A form of Vedic ritual ceremony (yajna). The general approach of the text is treated entertainment as an effect, but not the primary goal of arts. The primary goal is to lift and transport the spectators, unto the expression of ultimate reality and transcendent values. The text allows, states Schwartz, the artists "enormous innovation" as they connect the playwright and the spectators, through their performance, to Rasa (the essence, juice). The "rasa theory" of Natyashastra , states Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, presumes that bliss
1240-595: A higher level of consciousness, suggests Natyashastra . Great songs do not instruct or lecture, they delight and liberate from within to a state of godlike ecstasy. According to Susan Schwartz, these sentiments and ideas of Natyashastra likely influenced the devotional songs and musical trends of the Bhakti movement that emerged in Hinduism during the second half of the 1st millennium CE. Indian dance ( nritta , नृत्त) traditions, states Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, have roots in
1395-591: 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
1550-658: 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
1705-628: A list of fourteen groups of sounds, in three sections called the Shiva-sutra, Pratyahara-sutra and Maheshvara-sutra. The Aṣṭādhyāyī groups the rules of language, for clear expression and understanding, into two, the verbal ( Dhatupatha ) and the nominal bases ( Ganapatha ). The text consists of an analytical part covered in the first five chapters, and a synthetic part found in the last three chapters. The Aṣṭādhyāyī manuscript has survived with sets of ancillary texts (appendices) whose dates of composition and authors are contested. The main text
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#17327838079991860-630: A manner similar to those found in more ancient Vedanga texts such as the Pingala Sutras . Chapters 28 through 34 are dedicated to music, both vocal and instrument based. Chapter 28, discusses the harmonic scale, calling the unit of tonal measurement or audible unit as Shruti , with verse 28.21 introducing the musical scale as follows, Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
2015-454: 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
2170-479: 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
2325-546: 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
2480-535: A prediction or prophecy by a Buddha to a Bodhisattva who has just embarked on the path, that he will achieve enlightenment and be a buddha , in other words, an enlightened one. Vyākaraṇa emerged as a distinct auxiliary field of Vedic study in ancient times. Its aim was to prevent sloppy usage and transmission of the Vedic knowledge, states Howard Coward – a professor emeritus at the University of Victoria and
2635-453: A professor of Music specializing on classical Indian music, the earliest Indian artistic thought included three arts, syllabic recital ( vadya ), melos ( gita ) and dance ( nrtta ), as well as two musical genre, Gandharva (formal, composed, ceremonial music) and Gana (informal, improvised, entertainment music). The Gandharva subgenre also implied celestial, divine associations, while the Gana
2790-578: 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
2945-486: 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
3100-439: 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
3255-675: A simplified grammatical system called Sārasvatavyākaraṇa . In the 14th century grammarian Padmanabhadatta , founder of the Supadma School, composed the Supadmavyākaraṇa . The text is based on Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi , but remodeled and rearranged with explanatory notes. It is written in Bengali alphabet , making it accessible to the Bengal provinces by removing the complexity of Sanskrit grammar. The main objective of Padmanabhadatta
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#17327838079993410-475: A super sensual inner state of being. The Natya connects through abhinaya , that is applying body-speech-mind and scene, wherein asserts Natyashastra , the actors use two practices of dharmi (performance), in four styles and four regional variations, accompanied by song and music in a playhouse carefully designed to achieve siddhi (success in production). The verse details the eleven essential components of drama and dramatic production: The text discusses
3565-806: A supersensual state of discovery and understanding. The stories and plots were provided by the Itihasas (epics), the Puranas and the Kathas genre of Hindu literature. The text also states that the god Brahma combined the elements of acting from the four Vedas: "recitation from the Rigveda , music from the Samaveda , mimetic art from the Yajurveda , and sentiments from the Atharvaveda ." The text states that
3720-673: A temporal sequence while nouns are static elements, states K Kunjunni Raja. Patañjali's 2nd-century BCE Mahābhāṣya is another important ancient text in Vyākaraṇa scholarship. It is not a full commentary on everything Pāṇini wrote in Aṣṭādhyāyī , but it is more a commentary on Kātyāyana's text on grammar called Varttikas , as well as the ideas of Vyadi. While Kātyāyana's additions have survived, Vyadi have not. The Kātyāyana's text reflects an admiration for Pāṇini, an analysis of his rules, their simplification and refinement. The differences between
3875-404: A variety of performance arts as well as the design of the stage. The text details three architectural styles for the playhouse: Drama, in this ancient Sanskrit text, is an art to engage every aspect of life, in order to glorify and gift a state of joyful consciousness. The text discusses the universal and inner principles of drama, that it asserts successfully affects and journeys the audience to
4030-438: A view shared by Kapila Vatsyayan . The Agni Purana , a generic encyclopedia, includes chapters on dramatic arts and poetry, which follow the Natyashastra format, but enumerates more styles and types of performance arts, which states Winternitz, may reflect an expansion in studies of the arts by the time Agni Purana was composed. The Natyashastra is the oldest surviving ancient Indian work on performance arts. The roots of
4185-438: A word at the time the text was composed supersedes the historical or etymologically derived meanings of that word. A word has the conventional meaning at the time the text was composed, but it is not so when it is quoted (cited or referred to) from another prior art text. In the latter case, the Sanskrit word is suffixed with iti (literally, thus), whereupon it means what the prior text meant it to be. Yāska asserted that both
4340-504: Is Nata (नट) which means "act, represent". The word Shāstra (शास्त्र) means "precept, rules, manual, compendium, book or treatise", and is generally used as a suffix in the Indian literature context, for knowledge in a defined area of practice. Performance arts and culture Let Nāṭya (drama and dance) be the fifth vedic scripture . Combined with an epic story, tending to virtue, wealth, joy and spiritual freedom, it must contain
4495-711: Is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages . It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age . Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism , the language of classical Hindu philosophy , and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism . It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in
4650-464: 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
4805-476: Is carried out everywhere, by recognizing: In this speech, so much is one sentence; In this sentence then, so much is one word; In this word then, this is the base and this is the suffix. A word that is a verb is concerned with bhava (to become), while a noun is concerned with sattva (to be, reality as it is). Sattva and bhava are two aspects of the same existence seen from the static and dynamic points of view. Verbs according to Vyākaraṇa indicate action in
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4960-452: 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
5115-482: Is intrinsic and innate in man, it exists in oneself, that manifests non-materially through spiritual and personally subjective means. Performance arts aim to empower man to experience this rasa , or re-experience it. Actors aim to journey the spectator to this aesthetic experience within him. Rasa is prepared, states Natya Shastra , through a creative synthesis and expression of vibhava (determinants), anubhava (consequents) and vyabhicharibhava (transitory states). In
5270-478: Is notable as an ancient encyclopedic treatise on the arts, one which has influenced dance, music and literary traditions in India. It is also notable for its aesthetic "Rasa" theory, which asserts that entertainment is a desired effect of performance arts but not the primary goal, and that the primary goal is to transport the individual in the audience into another parallel reality, full of wonder, where they experience
5425-426: Is notable for its details and systematic nature, syntactic functions and arranging the sutras in an algorithmic fashion where the grammar rules typically apply in the order of sutras. The Aṣṭādhyāyī sutras were widely studied and a subject of the bhāṣya (review and commentary) tradition of Hinduism. The oldest emendation and commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī is attributed to Kātyāyana (~3rd century BCE), followed by
5580-454: Is presented in chapters 26 and 35 of the text. The theory of music, techniques for singing, and music instruments are discussed over chapters 28 to 34. The text in its final chapters describes the various types of dramatic characters, their roles and need for team work, what constitutes an ideal troupe, closing out the text with its comments of the importance of performance arts on culture. Dramatic arts Natyashastra praises dramatic arts as
5735-460: Is quoted in Patañjali's Mahābhāṣya on Vyākaraṇa as asserting the nature of a sentence as follows: A sentence consists of a finite verb together with indeclinables, karakas and qualifiers. – Mahābhāṣya 1.367.10 A sentence has one finite verb. – Mahābhāṣya 1.367.16 Similarly, Sayana asserts the scope of Vyākaraṇa to be as follows: Grammar [Vyākaraṇa] is that process by which division
5890-532: 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
6045-461: Is related to the fourth Vedānga called Nirukta . Vyākaraṇa scholarship has dealt with linguistic analysis to establish the exact form of words to properly express ideas, and Nirukta scholarship has focussed on linguistic analysis to help establish the proper meaning of the words in context. Vyākaraṇa ( IPA: [ʋjaːkɐrɐɳɐ] ) means "separation, distinction, discrimination, analysis, explanation" of something. It also refers to one of
6200-485: Is stated, how, where and when. The Aṣṭādhyāyī tradition of Sanskrit language, with some reservations, accepts the premise that all words have verbal roots, and that words are created by affixing fragments to these roots. However, Pāṇini asserts that it is impossible to derive all nouns from verbal roots. The Aṣṭādhyāyī is primarily focussed on the study of words, how words are formed, and their correct architecture. However, it does not exclude syntax. Pāṇini includes
6355-479: 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,
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6510-416: Is the most important surviving text of the Vyākaraṇa traditions. This text, as its very title suggests, consists of eight chapters, each divided into four padas, cumulatively containing 4000 sutras. The text is preceded by abbreviation rules grouping the phonemes of Sanskrit. Pāṇini quotes ten ancient authorities whose texts have not survived, but they are believed to have been Vyākaraṇa scholars. Vyākaraṇa
6665-434: Is the popular usage. The artha (meaning) of a shabda (word) is established by popular usage at the time the text was composed, not by etymological theory nor historical usage nor later usage. A sentence is a collection of words, a word is a collection of phonemes, states Pāṇini. The meaning of Vedic passages has to be understood through context, the purpose stated, keeping in mind the subject matter being discussed, what
6820-589: 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
6975-409: Is traditionally alleged to be linked to a 36,000 verse Vedic composition called Adibharata , however there is no corroborating evidence that such a text ever existed. The text has survived into the modern age in several manuscript versions, wherein the title of the chapters varies and in some cases the content of the few chapters differ. Some recensions show significant interpolations and corruption of
7130-540: 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
7285-423: The "Rasa" theory on aesthetics in performance arts, while chapters 8 to 13 are dedicated to the art of acting. Stage instruments such as methods for holding accessories, weapons, relative movement of actors and actresses, scene formulation, stage zones, conventions and customs are included in chapters 10 to 13 of the Natyashastra . The chapters 14 to 20 are dedicated to plot and structure of underlying text behind
7440-491: The Brahmanas , Aranyakas and Upanishads , states Moriz Winternitz . The extant manuscripts of Pāṇini and Yaksa suggest that the Vedic age had competing schools of grammar. One school, for example, held that all nouns have verbal roots, while another held that not all nouns have verbal roots. However, it is unclear how, who or when these ancient Vedic theories of grammar originated, because those texts have not survived into
7595-580: 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
7750-613: 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
7905-593: The Kalpasutras and Srautasutras , may have been associated with the performance of vedic rituals, which involved storytelling with embedded ethical values. The Vedanga texts such as verse 1.4.29 of Panini Sutras mention these as well. The roots of the Natyashastra thus likely trace to the more ancient vedic traditions of integrating ritual recitation, dialogue and song in a dramatic representation of spiritual themes. The Sanskrit verses in chapter 13.2 of Shatapatha Brahmana (~800–700 BCE), for example, are written in
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#17327838079998060-577: The Mahābhāṣya . The author of the Mahābhāṣya is named Patañjali, who may or may not be the same person as the one who authored Yogasutras . The Mahābhāṣya , or "Great Commentary", is more than a commentary on the Aṣṭādhyāyī, it is the earliest known philosophical text of the Hindu grammarians. Non-Hindu texts and traditions on grammar emerged after Patañjali, some of which include the Sanskrit grammar by
8215-699: 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
8370-532: 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 ,
8525-531: 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
8680-406: 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
8835-500: 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
8990-414: 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
9145-400: The 1st-millennium CE, all of them condensed Pāṇini, accepted and flowered largely from his theories of Vyākaraṇa. The nature of grammar The energy called word has the nature of an egg. It develops in the form of an action, and realizes itself as a sequence of parts. — Bhartṛhari , Vākyapadīya 1.52 Translator: Tibor Kiss The 5th-century Hindu scholar Bhartṛhari has been
9300-532: 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
9455-425: 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
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#17327838079999610-532: 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
9765-521: 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
9920-476: 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
10075-519: 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
10230-579: The Jain author Jainendra and the Cāndra grammar by the Buddhist Candragomin. Patanjali's Great Grammatical Discourse [ Vyakrana-Mahābhāṣya ] is regarded as the classical model for academic texts. It is written with a great deal of didactic skill as a dialog in clear, simple Sanskrit, and contains many enlightening examples. One notices that the text follows in the tradition of instruction, similar to
10385-532: 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
10540-496: 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
10695-499: 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
10850-638: 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
11005-447: 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
11160-451: 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
11315-498: The aesthetics of Natyashastra . The text defines the basic dance unit to be a karana , which is a specific combination of the hands and feet integrated with specific body posture and gait ( sthana and chari respectively). Chapter 4 describes 108 karanas as the building blocks to the art of dance. The text states the various movements of major and minor limbs with facial states as means of articulating ideas and expressing emotions. The Natyashastra is, states Emmie te Nijenhuis ,
11470-407: 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
11625-435: The audience tastes dominant states of a drama through expression of words, gestures and temperaments. These dominant states are love, mirth, sorrow, anger, energy, terror, disgust and astonishment. Further, states the text, there are 33 psychological states which are transitory such as discouragement, weakness, apprehension, intoxication, tiredness, anxiety, agitation, despair, impatience. There are eight temperamental states that
11780-440: 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
11935-527: 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
12090-427: The commentaries and rebuttals by later authors. Yāska 's Nirukta is one of the earlier surviving texts, and he mentions Śākaṭāyana, Krauṣṭuki, Gārgya among others. Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī is the most ancient extant manuscript on Vyākaraṇa. It is a complete and descriptive treatise on Sanskrit grammar in aphoristic sutras format. This text attracted a famous and one of the most ancient commentary ( bhāṣya ) called
12245-614: 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
12400-653: 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
12555-467: 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
12710-475: The dialog stye of the Western classics of antiquity. Later Indian scholars simplified Pāṇini rules, and trimmed his compilation of sutras to essential 1,400 from comprehensive 4,000, eliminating those they felt were too difficult and complicated or those narrowly concerned with Vedic language. Non-Hindu traditions, such as Jainism and Buddhism, developed their own Vyākaraṇa literature, but all of them are dated to
12865-471: 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
13020-469: The discussion of sentence structure. The text, state Howard and Raja, describes compound word formation based on syntactic and semantic considerations, such as in sutra 2.1.1. Pāṇini asserts that a proper sentence has a single purpose, and is formed from a group of words such that, on analysis, the separate words are found to be mutually expecting each other. A sentence, states Pāṇini, must have syntactic unity, which includes mutual expectancy ( Akansha ) of
13175-460: 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
13330-490: 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
13485-456: The essence of their own consciousness, and reflect on spiritual and moral questions. The text further inspired secondary literature such as the 10th century commentary Abhinavabharati – an example of a classic Sanskrit bhasya ("reviews and commentaries") – written by Abhinavagupta . The title of the text is composed of two words, "Nāṭya" and "Shāstra". The root of the Sanskrit word Nāṭya
13640-496: The famous Mahābhāṣya of Patañjali (~2nd century BCE) which has survived into the modern age. Other commentaries on the Aṣṭādhyāyī likely existed, because they are cited by other Indian scholars, but these texts are believed to be lost to history. Pāṇini writes that the Anjna (popular usage of a word) is the superseding authority, and the theoretically derived meaning of a word must be discarded and instead superseded by that which
13795-548: 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
13950-420: The form of a riddle play between two actors. The Vedic sacrifice ( yajna ) is presented as a kind of drama, with its actors, its dialogues, its portion to be set to music, its interludes, and its climaxes. The most studied version of the text, consisting of about 6000 poetic verses, is structured into 36 chapters. The tradition believes that the text originally had 12,000 verses. Somewhat different versions of
14105-412: 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
14260-540: The foundation of works of the Buddhist Jinendrabuddhi who is known for his grammar insights in Buddhist literature. The most studied Vyākaraṇa scholars of early and mid-second millennium are Ksirasvamin, Haradatta, Maitreya Rakshita, and Kaiyata. The modern era Vyākaraṇa scholars have included Bhattoji Dikshita, Konda Bhatta and Nagesha Bhatta. Between 1250 and 1450 Anubhūti Svarūpācārya created
14415-519: The founding editor of the Journal for Hindu-Christian Studies . Vyākaraṇa helped ensure that the Vedic scriptures of Hinduism and its message of "Sabda Brahman" (explanation of metaphysical truths through words) that Vedic Rishis had realized by their efforts, remains available to all in a pristine form. In Indian traditions, Vyākaraṇa has been one of the most important sciences, one extensively studied over its history, and that led to major treatises in
14570-537: 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
14725-621: The good and the bad, actions and feelings, of each character, whether God or man. According to Natyashastra , state Sally Banes and Andre Lepeck, drama is that art which accepts human beings are in different inner states when they arrive as audience, then through the art performed, it provides enjoyment to those wanting pleasure, solace to those in grief, calmness to those who are worried, energy to those who are brave, courage to those who are cowards, eroticism to those who want company, enjoyment to those who are rich, knowledge to those who are uneducated, wisdom to those who are educated. Drama represents
14880-431: 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
15035-486: 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
15190-432: 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
15345-522: The last half of the first millennium, particularly by the ritual-driven , Mīmāṃsā school of Hindu philosophy and by Dharmakirti of Buddhism . The Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism defended the ideas of Bhartṛhari. About the seventh century, the Kāśikāvṛttī co-authored by Jayaditya and Vamana, and the tenth century studies of Helaraja on Vyākaraṇa were the next major milestone. These Hindu texts were not only commented in Hindu tradition, but were
15500-412: 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
15655-514: 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 ,
15810-494: The manuscripts exist, and these contain 37 or 38 chapters. Predominant number of its verses are in precise Anustubh meter (4x8, or exactly 32 syllables in every shloka ), some verses are in Arya meter (a morae-based Sanskrit meter), and the text has some text that is in prose particularly in chapters 6, 7 and 28. The structure of the text harmoniously compiles aspects of the theatrical arts into separate chapters. The text opens with
15965-409: The material they are made of). The Natyashastra accepts these four categories as given, and dedicates four separate chapters to them, one each on stringed instruments ('tat' or chordophones ), hollow instruments ('sushir' or aerophones ), solid instruments ('ghan' or idiophones ), and covered instruments ('avanaddha' or membranophones ). Chapters 15 and 16 of the text discuss Sanskrit prosody in
16120-420: The meaning and the etymology of words is always context dependent. Vyākaraṇa in the Hindu traditions has been a study of both the syntax structure of sentences, as well as the architecture of a word. For instance, Pāṇini asserts that grammar is about the means of semantically connecting a word with other words to express and understand meaning, and words are to be analyzed in the context they are used. Kātyāyana
16275-489: The message and the meaning being communicated. After the 10th-century, Hindu temples were designed to include stages for performance arts (for example, kuttampalams ), or prayer halls (for example, namghar ) that seconded as dramatic arts stage, based on the square principle described in the Natyashastra , such as those in the peninsular and eastern states of India. The Natyashastra discusses Vedic songs, and also dedicates over 130 verses to non-Vedic songs. Chapter 17 of
16430-400: 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
16585-506: The modern era. There were many schools of Sanskrit grammar in ancient India, all established before the mid 1st-millennium BCE. Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī , which eclipsed all other ancient schools of grammar, mentions the names of ten grammarians. ). Some of these pre-Pāṇinian scholars mentioned by Pāṇini include Apisali, Kasyapa, Gargya, Galava, Cakravarmana, Bharadvaja, Sakatayana, Sakalya, Senaka and Sphoṭayāna. The works of most these authors are lost but we find reference of their ideas in
16740-429: 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
16895-401: 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
17050-602: 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
17205-424: The mythical genesis and history of drama, mentions the role of different Hindu deities in various aspects of the arts, and the recommended puja (consecration ceremony) of a stage for performance arts. The text, states Natalia Lidova, then describes the theory of Tāṇḍava dance ( Shiva ), the theory of rasa , of bhāva, expression, gestures, acting techniques, basic steps, standing postures. Chapters 6 and 7 present
17360-483: The next most influential Vyākaraṇa thinker , wherein he presented his philosophy of grammar and how language affects thoughts. His theories on "philosophical problem of meaning", contained in the Vākyapadīya , has been unique, states Howard Coward. Bhartṛhari is considered to be a major architect of the " sphoṭa theory" of meaning, in the Hindu traditions. Bhartṛhari ideas were widely studied, but challenged as well in
17515-545: 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,
17670-415: The older one and more known for Nirukta (etymology) – the fourth auxiliary field of Vedic studies, but the evidence for him preceding Pāṇini is scanty and uncertain. In terms of dedicated treatise on Vyākaraṇa, Pāṇini is the most recognized ancient Hindu scholar, and his Aṣṭādhyāyī ("Eight Chapters") is the most studied extant ancient manuscript on Sanskrit grammar. Pāṇini's fame spread outside India, and
17825-554: The oldest surviving text that systematically treats "the theory and instruments of Indian music". Music has been an integral part of performance arts in the Hindu tradition since its Vedic times, and the theories of music found in the Natyashastra are also found in many Puranas , such as the Markandeya Purana . Prior to the Natyashastra, the ancient Indian tradition classified musical instruments into four groups based on their acoustic principle (how they work, rather than
17980-403: 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
18135-431: 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
18290-496: The performance art. These sections include the theory of Sanskrit prosody , musical meters and the language of expression. Chapter 17 presents the attributes of poetry and figures of speech, while chapter 18 presents the art of speech and delivery in the performance arts. The text lists ten kinds of play, presents its theory of plot, costumes, and make-up. The text dedicates several chapters exclusively to women in performance arts, with chapter 24 on female theater. The training of actors
18445-411: The philosophy of language. Pāṇini and Yāska, two celebrated ancient scholars of Vyākaraṇa, are both dated to several centuries prior to the start of the common era, likely the 5th-century BCE. However, both of them cite prior scholars and texts, which though lost to history, imply that the field of Vyākaraṇa was an established and developed science of language before them. Between the two, Yaksa may be
18600-509: The playwright should know the bhavas (inner state of being) of all characters in the story, and it is these bhavas that the audience of that drama connects with. The hero is shown to be similar to everyone in some ways, trying to achieve the four goals of human life in Hindu philosophy, then the vastu (plot) emerges through the "representation of three worlds – the divine, the human, the demonic". Drama has dharma, it has artha, it has kama, it has humor, fighting and killing. The best drama shows
18755-414: 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
18910-439: 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
19065-480: 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
19220-402: The process of emotionally engaging the individual in the audience, the text outlines the use of eight sentiments – erotic, comic, pathetic, terrible, furious, odious, heroic and marvellous. The Natyashastra defines drama in verse 6.10 as that which aesthetically arouses joy in the spectator, through the medium of actor's art of communication, that helps connect and transport the individual into
19375-609: 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
19530-497: 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,
19685-469: The reverence for ancient Pāṇini in northwest India is mentioned in Chinese texts of Xuanzang – the 7th-century traveller and scholar. The study of grammar and the structure of language is traceable to the Rigveda , or 2nd millennium BCE, in hymns attributed to sage Sakalya. Sakalya is acknowledged by Pāṇini's works. The literary evidence that the science of Vyākaraṇa existed in Vedic times abound in
19840-562: 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
19995-496: 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
20150-556: 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
20305-454: The significance of every scripture, and forward every art. — Nāṭyaśāstra 1.14–15 The composition date of Nāṭya Shāstra is unknown. Estimates vary between 500 BCE to 500 CE. The text may have started in the 1st millennium BCE, expanded over time, and most scholars suggest, based on mention of this text in other Indian literature, that the first complete version of the text was likely finished between 200 BCE to 200 CE. The Nāṭyaśāstra
20460-457: The six Vedāngas, or the Vedic field of language analysis, specifically grammatical analysis, grammar, linguistic conventions which creates, polishes, helps a writer express and helps a reader discriminate accurate language. The word Vyākaraṇa is also found in Mahayana sutras and first-millennium Mahayana Buddhist texts, but with a different meaning. Vyākaraṇa, in these Buddhist texts, means
20615-523: The six ancient Vedangas , ancillary science connected with the Vedas , which are scriptures in Hinduism . Vyākaraṇa is the study of grammar and linguistic analysis in Sanskrit language. Pāṇini and Yāska are the two celebrated ancient scholars of Vyākaraṇa; both are dated to several centuries prior to the start of the common era, with Pāṇini likely from the fifth century BCE. Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī
20770-615: 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
20925-408: The stage for performance arts as the sacred space for artists, and discusses the specifics of stage design, positioning the actors, the relative locations, movement on stage, entrance and exit, change in background, transition, objects displayed on the stage, and such architectural features of a theatre; the text asserts that these aspects help the audience get absorbed in the drama as well as understand
21080-468: The studies of ancient drama, singing, dance and Sanskrit compositions for these arts. The Natyashastra refers to drama performers as Śhailālinas, likely because they were so known at the time the text was written, a name derived from the legacy of the vedic sage Śilālin credited with Natasutras . Richmond et al. estimate the Natasutras to have been composed around 600 BCE. According to Lewis Rowell,
21235-489: The text extend at least as far back as the Naṭasūtras , dated to around the mid 1st millennium BCE. The Natasutras are mentioned in the text of Panini , the sage who wrote the classic on Sanskrit grammar , and who is dated to about 500 BCE. This performance arts related Sutra text is mentioned in other late Vedic texts, as are two scholars names Shilalin ( IAST : Śilālin) and Krishashva (Kṛśaśva), credited to be pioneers in
21390-528: The text from the University of Wisconsin, the surviving version of Natya Shastra likely existed by the 8th-century. The author of the Natya Shastra is unknown, and the Hindu tradition attributes it to the Rishi (sage) Bharata . It may be the work of several authors, but scholars disagree. Bharat Gupt states that the text stylistically shows characteristics of a single compiler in the existing version,
21545-454: The text is entirely dedicated to poetry and the structure of a song, which it states is also the template for composing plays. Its chapter 31 asserts that there are seven types of songs, and these are Mandraka , Aparantaka , Rovindaka , Prakari , Ullopyaka , Ovedaka and Uttara . It also elaborates on 33 melodic alankaras in songs. These are melodic tools of art for any song, and they are essential. Without these melodic intonations, states
21700-471: The text, a song becomes like "a night without the moon, a river without water, a creeper without a flower and a woman without an ornament". A song also has four basic architectural varna to empower its meaning, and these tone patterns are ascending line, steady line, descending line and the unsteady line. The ideal poem produces bliss in the reader, or listener. It transports the audience into an imaginative world, transforms his inner state, and delivers him to
21855-410: The text, along with internal contradictions and sudden changes in style. Scholars such as PV Kane state that some text was likely changed as well as added to the original between the 3rd to 8th century CE, thus creating some variant editions, and the mixture of poetic verses and prose in a few extant manuscripts of Natyashastra may be because of this. According to Pramod Kale, who received a doctorate on
22010-566: The theory and practice of various performance arts. The text extends its reach into asking and understanding the goals of performance arts, the nature of the playwright, the artists and the spectators, their intimate relationship during the performance. Natya topics as envisioned in this text includes what in western performing arts would include drama, dance, theatre, poetry and music. The text integrates its aesthetics, axiology and description of arts with mythologies associated with Hindu Devas and Devis . Performance arts, states Natyashastra , are
22165-406: The truths about life and worlds, through emotions and circumstances, to deliver entertainment, but more importantly ethos, questions, peace and happiness. The text goes into specifics to explain the means available within dramatic arts to achieve its goals. Just like the taste of food, states Natyashastra , is determined by combination of vegetables, spices and other articles such as sugar and salt,
22320-653: 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
22475-408: 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
22630-564: 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
22785-431: The words and phonetic contiguity ( Sannidhi ) of construction. Pāṇini adds semantic fitness ( Yogayata ), but not tacitly. He accepts that a sentence can be grammatically correct even if it is semantically inappropriate or a deviant. The Aṣṭādhyāyī describes numerous usage of words, and how the meaning of a word is driven by overall context of the sentences and composition it is found in. The popular usage and meaning of
22940-502: 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
23095-408: 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
23250-427: 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
23405-472: 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
23560-738: 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
23715-400: Was free form art and included singing. The Sanskrit musical tradition spread widely in the Indian subcontinent during the late 1st millennium BCE, and the ancient Tamil classics make it "abundantly clear that a cultivated musical tradition existed in South India as early as the last few pre-Christian centuries". The art schools of Shilalin and Krishashva, mentioned in both the Brahmanas and
23870-505: Was to make knowledge of Sanskrit grammar clear and simple and to Sanskritize the new words that developed in the language. In terms of the place of Vyākaraṇa scholarship over South Asian history, from ancient to 16th-century, Kashmir, Kerala, Nepal, Andhra Pradesh, Varanasi and Bengal have been influential, but the location of many Vyākaraṇa scholars is unknown. Pāṇini's text Aṣṭādhyāyī is in sutras format, has eight chapters, and cumulative total of 4,000 sutras. These rules are preceded by
24025-442: 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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