Sanskrit is an ancient literary language that existed in India. It has a complex grammar and is considered the progenitor of many modern languages. In literal translation, this word means "perfect" or "processed". It has the status of the language of Hinduism and some other cults.
Spreading the language
The Sanskrit language was originally predominantly spoken in the northern part of India, being one of the languages for rock inscriptions, starting from the 1st century BC. Interestingly, researchers do not consider it as the language of a particular people, but as a specific culture that has been common among the elite segments of society since antiquity.
Mostly this culture is represented by religious texts related to Hinduism, as well as Greek or Latin in Europe. The Sanskrit language in the East has become a way of intercultural communication between religious figures and scientists.
Today it is one of the 22 official languages in India. It is worth noting that its grammar is archaic and very complex, but its vocabulary is stylistically diverse and rich.
The Sanskrit language has had a significant impact on other Indian languages, mainly in the field of vocabulary. Today it is used in religious cults, the humanities, and only in a narrow circle as a conversational one.
It is in Sanskrit that many artistic, philosophical, religious works of Indian authors, works on science and jurisprudence were written, which influenced the development of culture throughout Central and Southeast Asia, Western Europe.
Works on grammar and vocabulary are collected by the ancient Indian linguist Panini in the work "The Eight Book". These were the world's most famous works on the study of any language, which had a significant impact on the linguistic disciplines and the emergence of morphology in Europe.
It is interesting that in this case there is no single system of writing in Sanskrit. This is explained by the fact that the works of art and philosophical works that existed at that time were transmitted exclusively orally. And if there was a need to write down the text, the local alphabet was used.
As a written language of Sanskrit, Devanagari was established only at the end of the 19th century. Most likely, this happened under the influence of Europeans, who preferred this particular alphabet. According to a popular hypothesis, Devanagari was brought to India in the 5th century BC by merchants who arrived from the Middle East. But even after learningwriting, many Indians continued to memorize texts in the old fashioned way.
Sanskrit was the language of literary monuments by which one can get an idea of ancient India. The oldest script for Sanskrit that has come down to our time is called Brahmi. It is in this way that the famous monument of ancient Indian history called "The Ashoka Inscriptions" is recorded, which is 33 inscriptions carved on the walls of caves, by order of the Indian king Ashoka. This is the oldest surviving monument of Indian writing and the first proof of the existence of Buddhism.
History of occurrence
The ancient language Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language family, it is considered to be the Indo-Iranian branch. It has had a significant impact on most modern Indian languages, most notably Marathi, Hindi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, and even Romani.
It is believed that Sanskrit is the oldest form of the once single language. Once within the diverse Indo-European family, Sanskrit underwent sound changes similar to other languages. Many scholars believe that the original speakers of ancient Sanskrit came to the territory of modern Pakistan and India at the very beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. As evidence for this theory, they cite a close relationship with the Slavic and B altic languages, as well as the presence of borrowings from the Finno-Ugric languages that do not belong to Indo-European.
In some studies of linguiststhe similarity of the Russian language and Sanskrit is especially emphasized. It is believed that they have many common Indo-European words with which objects of fauna and flora are designated. True, many scientists adhere to the opposite point of view, believing that the speakers of the ancient form of the Indian language Sanskrit were the indigenous inhabitants of India, linking them with the Indian civilization.
Another meaning of the word "Sanskrit" is "the ancient Indo-Aryan language". It is to the Indo-Aryan group of languages that Sanskrit belongs to the majority of scientists. Many dialects originated from it, which existed in parallel with the related ancient Iranian language.
Determining which language is Sanskrit, many linguists come to the conclusion that in ancient times in the north of modern India there was another Indo-Aryan language. Only he could transfer to modern Hindi some part of his vocabulary, and even phonetic composition.
Resemblance to Russian
According to various studies of linguists, the similarity of the Russian language and Sanskrit is great. Up to 60 percent of Sanskrit words have the same pronunciation and meaning as Russian words. It is well known that Natalya Guseva, Doctor of Historical Sciences, a specialist in Indian culture, was one of the first to study this phenomenon. Once she accompanied an Indian scholar on a tourist trip to the Russian North, who at some point refused the services of an interpreter, saying that he was happy to hear living and pure Sanskrit so far from home. From that moment, Guseva began to study this phenomenon, now in many studiesthe similarity between Sanskrit and the Russian language is convincingly proved.
Some even believe that the Russian North has become the ancestral home of all mankind. The kinship of the northern Russian dialects with the oldest language known to mankind is proved by many scientists. Some suggest that Sanskrit and Russian are much closer than it might initially seem. For example, they say that it was not the Old Russian language that originated from Sanskrit, but exactly the opposite.
There are really a lot of similar words in Sanskrit and Russian. Linguists note that today, words from the Russian language can easily describe almost the entire sphere of a person’s mental functioning, as well as his relationship with the environment, which is the main thing in the spiritual culture of any nation.
Sanskrit is similar to the Russian language, but, arguing that it was the Old Russian language that became the founder of the most ancient Indian language, researchers often use frankly populist statements that only those who fight against the Rus, helping to transform Russian, deny these facts people into animals. Such scientists frighten with the coming World War, which is being waged on all fronts. With all the similarities between Sanskrit and the Russian language, most likely, we have to say that it was Sanskrit that became the founder and progenitor of the Old Russian dialects. Not the other way around, as some would argue. So, when determining whose language it is, Sanskrit, the main thing is to use only scientific facts, and not go into politics.
Fighters for the purity of Russian vocabulary insist that kinship with Sanskritwill help cleanse the language of harmful borrowings, vulgarizing and polluting factors.
Examples of language kinship
Now, using a good example, let's see how similar Sanskrit and Slavic are. Take the word "angry". According to Ozhegov's dictionary, it means "to be irritated, angry, to feel anger towards someone." At the same time, it is obvious that the root part of the word "heart" is from the word "heart".
"Heart" is a Russian word that comes from the Sanskrit "hridaya", thus they share the same root -srd- and -hrd-. In a broad sense, the Sanskrit concept of "hridaya" included the concepts of soul and mind. That is why in Russian the word "angry" has a pronounced heart affect, which becomes quite logical if you look at the connection with the ancient Indian language.
But why then do we have the word "angry" has such a pronounced negative effect? It turns out that even the Indian Brahmins connected passionate affection with hatred and anger into a single pair. In Hindu psychology, malice, hatred and passionate love are considered emotional correlates that complement each other. Hence the well-known Russian expression: "From love to hate is one step." Thus, with the help of linguistic analysis, it is possible to understand the origin of Russian words associated with the ancient Indian language. Such are the studies of the similarities between Sanskrit and the Russian language. They prove that these languages are related.
Lithuanian and Sanskrit are similar, soas originally Lithuanian practically did not differ from Old Russian, it was one of the regional dialects, similar to modern northern dialects.
Vedic Sanskrit
Special attention in this article should be given to Vedic Sanskrit. The Vedic analogue of this language can be found in several monuments of ancient Indian literature, which are collections of sacrificial formulas, hymns, religious treatises, for example, the Upanishads.
Most of these works are written in the so-called New Vedic or Middle Vedic languages. Vedic Sanskrit is very different from classical Sanskrit. The linguist Panini generally considered these languages to be different, and today many scholars consider Vedic and classical Sanskrit as variations of dialects of one ancient language. At the same time, the languages themselves are very similar to each other. According to the most common version, classical Sanskrit just came from Vedic.
Among the Vedic literary monuments, the Rig Veda is officially recognized as the very first. It is extremely difficult to date it with accuracy, and, therefore, it is difficult to estimate where the history of Vedic Sanskrit should be calculated from. In the early era of its existence, sacred texts were not written down, but simply spoken aloud and memorized, they are memorized even today.
Modern linguists identify several historical strata in the Vedic language based on the stylistic features of texts and grammar. It is generally accepted that the first nine books of the Rig Veda were writtenprecisely in the ancient Indian language.
Epic Sanskrit
Epic ancient Sanskrit is a transitional form from Vedic Sanskrit to Classical. A form that is the latest version of Vedic Sanskrit. It went through a certain linguistic evolution, for example, at some historical period, subjunctives disappeared from it.
This variant of Sanskrit is a pre-classical form, it was common in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Some linguists define it as Late Vedic.
It is generally accepted that it was the original form of this Sanskrit that was studied by the ancient Indian linguist Panini, who can be safely called the first philologist of antiquity. He described the phonological and grammatical features of Sanskrit, preparing a work that was as accurate as possible and shocked many by its formalism. The structure of his treatise is an absolute analogue of modern linguistic works devoted to similar studies. However, it took millennia for modern science to achieve the same precision and scientific approach.
Panini describes the language he spoke himself, already at that time actively using Vedic expressions, but not considering them archaic and obsolete. It is during this time period that Sanskrit undergoes active normalization and orderliness. It is in epic Sanskrit that such popular works as Mahabharata and Ramayana, which are considered the basis of ancient Indian literature, are written today.
Modern linguists oftennote that the language in which the epic works are written is very different from the version that is set out in the works of Panini. This discrepancy is usually explained by the so-called innovations that occurred under the influence of the Prakrits.
It is worth noting that in a certain sense, the ancient Indian epic itself contains a large number of prakritisms, that is, borrowings that penetrate into it from the common language. In this it differs greatly from classical Sanskrit. At the same time, Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit was the literary language in the Middle Ages. Most of the early Buddhist texts were created on it, which eventually assimilated to classical Sanskrit to one degree or another.
Classical Sanskrit
Sanskrit is the language of God, many Indian writers, scientists, philosophers, religious figures are convinced of this.
There are several varieties of it. The first examples of classical Sanskrit reach us from the 2nd century BC. In the comments of the religious philosopher and founder of yoga, Patanjali, which he left on the grammar of Panini, one can find the first studies in this area. Patanjali claims that Sanskrit is a living language at the time, but it may eventually be supplanted by various dialectal forms. In this treatise, he acknowledges the existence of Prakrits, that is, dialects that influenced the development of ancient Indian languages. Due to the use of colloquial forms, the language begins to narrow, and the grammatical notationstandardized.
It is at this moment that Sanskrit freezes in its development, turning into a classical form, which Patanjali himself designates with a term meaning "completed", "finished", "perfectly made". For example, the same epithet describes ready meals in India.
Modern linguists believe that there were four key dialects in classical Sanskrit. When the Christian era came, the language practically ceased to be used in its natural form, remaining only in the form of grammar, after which it ceased to evolve and develop. It became the official language of worship, it belonged to a certain cultural community, without being associated with other living languages. But it was often used as a literary language.
In this position, Sanskrit existed until the XIV century. In the Middle Ages, Prakrits became so popular that they formed the basis of neo-Indic languages and began to be used in writing. By the 19th century, Sanskrit was finally ousted by the national Indian languages from their native literature.
The history of the Tamil language, which belonged to the Dravidian family, was not related to Sanskrit in any way, but competed with it since ancient times, as it also belonged to a rich ancient culture. Sanskrit has certain borrowings from this language.
Today's position of the language
The Sanskrit alphabet has approximately 36 phonemes, and if we take into account the allophones that are acceptedcount when writing, then the total number of sounds increases to 48. This feature is the main difficulty for Russians who are going to learn Sanskrit.
Today, this language is used exclusively by the upper castes of India as the main spoken language. During the 2001 census, over 14,000 Indians admitted that Sanskrit was their primary language. Therefore, officially it cannot be considered dead. The development of the language is also evidenced by the fact that international conferences are held regularly, and Sanskrit textbooks are still being reprinted.
Sociological studies show that the use of Sanskrit in oral speech is very limited, so that the language does not develop anymore. Based on these facts, many scientists classify it as a dead language, although this is not at all obvious. Comparing Sanskrit with Latin, linguists note that Latin, having ceased to be used as a literary language, has long been used in the scientific community by narrow specialists. Both of these languages were constantly updated, went through stages of artificial revival, which were sometimes associated with the desire of political circles. Ultimately, both of these languages became directly associated with religious forms, even though they were used in secular circles for a long time, so they have a lot in common.
Basically, the displacement of Sanskrit from literature was due to the weakening of the institutions of power that supported it in every possible way, as well as to the high competition of other spoken languages, the speakers of which sought to instill their ownnational literature.
A large number of regional variations have led to the heterogeneity of the disappearance of Sanskrit in different parts of the country. For example, in the 13th century, in some parts of the Vijayanagara empire, Kashmiri was used in some areas along with Sanskrit as the main literary language, but works in Sanskrit were better known outside of it, most common in the territory of the modern country.
Today, the use of Sanskrit in oral speech is minimized, but it continues to be in the written culture of the country. Most of those who have the ability to read the vernaculars are also able to read Sanskrit. It is noteworthy that even Wikipedia has a separate section written in Sanskrit.
After India gained independence in 1947, more than three thousand works were published in this language.
Studying Sanskrit in Europe
Great interest in this language remains not only in India itself and in Russia, but throughout Europe. Back in the 17th century, the German missionary Heinrich Roth made a great contribution to the study of this language. He himself lived for many years in India, and in 1660 he completed his book in Latin on Sanskrit. When Roth returned to Europe, he began publishing excerpts from his work, lecturing at universities and before meetings of specialist linguists. Interestingly, his main work on Indian grammar has not been published until now, it is kept only in the form of a manuscript in the NationalLibrary of Rome.
Actively studying Sanskrit in Europe began at the end of the 18th century. For a wide range of researchers, it was discovered in 1786 by William Jones, and before that, its features were described in detail by the French Jesuit Kerdu and the German priest Henksleden. But their work was not published until after Jones's, so they are considered subsidiary. In the 19th century, acquaintance with the ancient language Sanskrit played a decisive role in the creation and development of comparative historical linguistics.
European linguists were delighted with this language, noting its amazing structure, sophistication and richness, even compared to Greek and Latin. At the same time, scientists noted its similarity with these popular European languages in grammatical forms and roots of the verb, so that, in their opinion, this could not be an ordinary accident. The similarity was so strong that the vast majority of philologists who worked with all three of these languages did not doubt that they had a common ancestor.
Language research in Russia
As we have already noted, in Russia there is a special attitude towards Sanskrit. For a long time, the work of linguists was associated with two editions of the "Petersburg dictionaries" (large and small), which appeared in the second half of the 19th century. These dictionaries opened a whole era in the study of Sanskrit for Russian linguists, they became the main Indological science for the whole coming century.
Professor of the Moscow StateUniversity Vera Kochergina: she compiled the Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary, and also became the author of the Sanskrit Textbook.
In 1871, the famous article by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev was published under the title "Periodic Law for Chemical Elements". In it, he described the periodic system in the form in which it is known to all of us today, and also predicted the discovery of new elements. He named them "ekaaluminum", "ekabor" and "ekasilicium". For them, he left empty spaces in the table. We talked about the chemical discovery in this linguistic article not by chance, because Mendeleev here showed himself as a connoisseur of Sanskrit. Indeed, in this ancient Indian language, "eka" means "one." It is well known that Mendeleev was a close friend of the Sanskrit researcher Betlirk, who at that time was working on the second edition of his work on Panini. The American linguist Paul Kriparsky was convinced that Mendeleev gave Sanskrit names to the missing elements, thus expressing recognition of the ancient Indian grammar, which he highly valued. He also noted a special similarity between the periodic table of elements of the chemist and Panini's Shiva Sutras. According to the American, Mendeleev did not see his table in a dream, but came up with it while studying Hindu grammar.
Today, interest in Sanskrit has significantly weakened, at best, they consider individual cases of the coincidence of words and their parts in Russian and Sanskrit, trying to find reasoned justifications for penetrationone language to another.
