Sanskrit Language


Sanskrit is a classical Indian language. The name Sanskrit means 'refined', 'sacred'and 'sanctified'. Hence, Sanskrit was not thought of as a specific language but as a refined or perfected sacred tongue. It is a language always kept in high esteem and used mostly for religious and scientific discourses in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The Sanskrit language is supposed to have emerged as early as around 2,000 to 1,000 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era).
It has the credit of being one of the oldest existing languages. Though the origin of the language could not be clearly defined, it is thought to have come from the Indus Valley, the present Pakistan and northwestern India. It has been grouped with the Indo-European languages such as French, German and English, which are considered to share a common ancestor language. In ancient India, knowledge of Sanskrit was a symbol of the elite class and a source for educational attainment. This language is still in use primarily among the educated men, upper class people and religious scholars. It is also one of the 22 official languages of India.


However, the later exegetical (explanation of religious text) and philosophical works, the Brahmanas (commentaries on the four Vedas that guides the proper performance of rituals) and the earlier Upanishads (Hindu scriptures that teaches of Vedanta), have preserved considerable relics of the old Vedic language. This vast literature of Vedic exegesis and Vedic philosophy like the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads, were somehow connected to one or the other of the four Vedas. These works were composed through centuries, and indicate the continuous and gradual evolution of the Vedic Sanskrit into its later phase, called Classical Sanskrit.
The great works in Classical Sanskrit like the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Puranas and other works like the Dharmasastras were the fallout of this revolution. They were considered sacred like Vedic texts. With its expanding literature, Sanskrit had its influence in the formation of most of the cultural and linguistic movements in the following centuries. The later dialects like the Prakrits (Pali and the rest) were taken up by the heterodox sects, the Buddhists and the Jains, and great literary works in these forms were created. According to Tiwari (1955), there were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit viz.pascimottari, madhyadesi, purvi and daksini.



During the period of Guptas, ie. from the 4th to the 7th century A.D., Sanskrit attained a boom in creative literature. The Mahabharata that emerged during this period came to be considered as one more addition to the Vedas. The older Puranas, such as the Vayu, Matsya, the Visnu and the Markhandeya, were composed or improved during this period. The Dharma- sastras are the numerous codes of Hindu civil and social law composed by various authors, the most respected being those by Manu and Yajnavalkya. Sanskrit epics and dramas saw their dawn in this period.
Along with the expansion of Indian commerce, Sanskrit spread outside India, in fact all over Asia. Thus Sanskrit became familiar in Central Asia, Tibet, Indo-China and Indonesia. It was also studied in China, Korea and Japan and in about 500-800 A.D. Sanskrit became the great unifying force, source and inspiration of culture among these countries. Even though the Prakrits came into use among the Buddhists and Jains, Sanskrit continued as a medium of Brahmanical religious rituals even in Buddhism and Jainism. It was also established as the language of the elite at the royal courts and the medium of all higher studies in philosophy and science.





Modern Hindi, during the last one hundred years, had acquired great expressiveness by borrowing the vocabulary and other resources of Sanskrit. Bharatendu Harishchandra of Kashi (1850-1883) was the first great writer in modern Hindi and he was the one who gave a definition to modern literary Hindi through his writings. Sanskrit also had its influence over the literature of the other great Indian languages like Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, etc.
Today Sanskrit is used mainly in Hindu religious rituals as a ceremonial language for reciting hymns and mantras. However, efforts are going on to revive Sanskrit as an everyday spoken language in a place near Shimoga in Karnataka. There are many devoted Sanskrit scholars who speak Sanskrit as a second language. Sanskrit is studied by many Indians as a source of knowledge as Sanskrit plays an important role in the study of Vedas, Brahmanas, Upanishads, Puranas and several epic literatures like Ramayana and Mahabharatha. Sanskrit is taught in India right from the school level to the University level through various National Institutes of Sanskrit as well as Sanskrit Universities.