131-568: Saiddhantika Non - Saiddhantika The Aghori (from Sanskrit : अघोर , lit. 'not dreadful', 'dreadless', IAST : aghora ) are a monastic order of ascetic Shaivite sadhus based in Uttar Pradesh, India . They are the only surviving sect derived from the Kāpālika tradition, a Tantric , non- Puranic form of Shaivism which originated in Medieval India between
262-416: A funeral pyre , is a structure, usually made of wood, for burning a body as part of a funeral rite or execution. As a form of cremation , a body is placed upon or under the pyre, which is then set on fire. In discussing ancient Greek religion , "pyre" (the normal Greek word for fire anglicized) is also used for the sacred fires at altars, on which parts of the animal sacrifice were burnt as an offering to
393-457: A balanced personal practice, placing importance on both sadhana (one's own spiritual practice) as well as seva (selfless service). Recognizing the need for change within his society, Baba Bhagwan Ramji renewed the socially conscious spirit of Baba Kinaram when he established a new ashram named Awadhut Bhagwan Ram Kusht Sewa Ashram (The Awadhut Bhagwan Ram Leprosy Service Ashram) at Parao, Varanasi. Baba Bhagwan Ramji dedicated Parao Ashram to helping
524-511: A body completely. Every year fifty to sixty million trees are burned during cremations in India, which results in about eight million tonnes of carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions . Air pollution , deforestation and large quantities of ash , which are later thrown into rivers , adding to the toxicity of its waters, pose great environmental problems. The Green Revolution Foundation, under its parent organization Sarthak Charitable Trust,
655-546: A corpse discovered floating in the Ganges and a member of the Dom caste reports that Aghori often take bodies from cremation ghats (or funeral pyres ). In his book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958), the Romanian historian of religion and University of Chicago professor Mircea Eliade remarks that the "Aghorīs are only the successors to a much older and widespread ascetic order,
786-534: 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." The Sanskrit language scholar Moriz Winternitz states, Sanskrit was never a dead language and it is still alive though its prevalence is lesser than ancient and medieval times. Sanskrit remains an integral part of Hindu journals, festivals, Ramlila plays, drama, rituals and
917-670: A form of "transformative healing". However, according to Aghori belief, this pollution must be moved into another person. In some cases, Aghoris make the claim that human or animal sacrifice is necessary to successfully complete a healing. Some aghori scholarship calls this process the transfer of karma. Such practices are in decline and not commonly seen. The Aghor tradition, which originated as confined and reclusive, has transformed since Baba Bhagwan Ramji's reforms to Aghor Yoga practices. By changing practices that have traditionally been shunned by conventional norms, Aghor Yoga now has entered mainstream society. Today, Aghor Yoga focuses upon forming
1048-581: 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
1179-522: 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 a focus on Indian philosophies and Sanskrit. Though written in a number of different scripts,
1310-642: A monastic order, states Lorenzen, and not a sect with a textual doctrine. The Kāpālika tradition gave rise to the Kulamārga , a subsect of Tantric Shaivism which preserves some of the distinctive features of the Kāpālika tradition. Some of the Kāpālika Shaiva practices are found in Vajrayana Buddhism , and scholars disagree on who influenced whom. Today, the Kāpālika tradition survives within its Shaivite offshoots:
1441-454: 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
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#17329414618031572-479: 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
1703-596: 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
1834-624: A practiced form of burial. Open-air cremations, known as funeral pyres, are uncommon and even illegal in some countries, particularly in the Western World, because it is considered taboo . While cremation is commonplace, open air cremations in the United Kingdom were considered to be unlawful under the Cremation Act 1902 . The law was created to prevent the creation of a private cremation industry and because of issues concerning property. But at
1965-419: A pyre. Coloring of bones before cremation is dependent on oxygen exposure, duration, and temperature. The bone color can range from black to brown or an oxidized white color. The type of bone and method of cooling may also alter the bone form. Cooling is also an important consideration, for if the remains are cooled via water it increases warping. This knowledge is a consideration for archaeologists to understand
2096-573: 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
2227-534: 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
2358-439: 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
2489-493: A widow of the deceased husband with his corpse or remains. This involves volunteering oneself (and generally being in state of samadhi ) to be burnt alive on the pyre with the remains of her husband for higher state of life. Chakrabarty RK, et al. examined the environmental effects of Southern Asia's funeral pyres in their study, "Funeral pyres in South Asia: Brown carbon aerosol emissions and climate impacts". The heating of
2620-692: 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
2751-463: Is a Delhi-based NGO working to reduce the environmental impact of funeral pyres. They claim to have created an alternative to wood-based funeral pyres, which reduces the number of trees which need to be cut down. Their alternative also promotes the Swachh Bharat Mission . As a result, the cost is reduced significantly and emissions are cut by up to 60%. In ancient times burning bodies was
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#17329414618032882-460: Is a centre of pilgrimage for Aghoris and Aghori devotees. Present head (Abbot), since 1978, of Baba Keenaram Sthal is Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram . According to Devotees, Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram is reincarnation of Baba Keenaram himself. Apart from this, any cremation ground would be a holy place for an Aghori ascetic. The cremation grounds near the Shakti Pithas , 51 holy centres for worship of
3013-491: Is a process of unlearning deeply internalized cultural models. When this sādhanā takes the form of charnel ground sādhanā, the Aghori faces death as a very young child, simultaneously meditating on the totality of life at its two extremes. This ideal example serves as a prototype for other Aghor practices, both left and right, in ritual and in daily life." Lord Aghora, an antinomian and annihilater form of Shiva closely associated with
3144-508: 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
3275-425: Is commonly worn. A study was done on the bone fragments of cremations to show that not only will movement of the bone fragments cause breakage but also environmental factors play a part. After studying cremation remains in urns that had been tightly sealed and had no evidence of environmental disturbance it was found that on average bigger bone fragment sizes were observed meaning less bone breakage had occurred. It
3406-415: Is considered one of the oldest standing cities. Hindu's believe that by resting the ashes of the dead in the Ganges river in at Varanasi, the dead will achieve Moksha . Hindus will travel great lengths in order to perform ritualistic duties such as praying, attending to their dead, or to die. Some Hindu groups practiced Sati (also known as suttee). Sati is the act of volunteered self immolation of
3537-452: 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
3668-470: Is now Northwestern Pakistan , wrote about Buddhists living with naked ascetics who covered themselves with ashes and wore bone wreathes on their heads, but Hsuan Tsang does not call them Kāpālikas or any particular name. Historians of Indian religions and scholars of Hindu studies have interpreted these ascetics variously as Kāpālikas, Jain Digambara monks , and Pashupatas . The Kāpālikas were more of
3799-524: 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
3930-479: 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,
4061-668: Is the realization of non-duality ( advaita ) transcending social taboos , attaining what is essentially an altered state of consciousness and perceiving the illusory nature of all conventional categories. Aghori rituals, which are performed precisely to oppose notions of purity commonplace in orthodox Hinduism , are typically macabre in nature. The practices of Aghoris vary and include living in cemeteries , smearing cremation ashes on their bodies, using human skulls for decoration and bowls, smoking marijuana , drinking alcohol , and seating in meditation on top of corpses. Although contrary to mainstream Hinduism, these practices exemplify
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4192-562: Is the current seat of Aghor Yoga in the United States. The mission of Sonoma Ashram is to foster spiritual growth in individuals. The Sonoma Ashram's sister ashram, Aghor Foundation, was established in 2001 on the bank of the Ganges River in the Varanasi, India and offers a safe home for orphaned and abandoned children. The Aghor Foundation also operates other social service projects, including
4323-708: Is the philosophy followed by the Aghora tradition, and he is often depicted in Hindu artwork and its holy scriptures of folk narratives, the Puranas , indulging in Aghori " left-hand " Tantric worship as his prime practice. An Aghori believes in getting into total darkness by all means, and then getting into light or self realizing. Though this is a different approach from other Hindu sects, they believe it to be effective. They are infamously known for their rituals that include such as shava samskara or shava sadhana (ritual worship incorporating
4454-437: 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 the role of language, the ontological status of painting word-images through sound, and the need for rules so that it can serve as
4585-402: Is without suspicious burn patterns compared to an individual murdered via pyre. Cremated remains are different from traditional human remains in the sense that their physical appearance including bone vary in color, fragmentation, and differ from their original shape and dimension. This is why forensic experimental studies are necessary to fully understand the differences the body undergoes in
4716-526: 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
4847-568: 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
4978-613: 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
5109-544: The Kāpālikas , or 'wearers of skulls'." According to David Lorenzen , there is a paucity of primary sources on the Kāpālikas, and historical information about them is available from fictional works and other traditions who disparage them. Various Indian texts claim that the Kāpālikas drank liquor freely, both for ritual and as a matter of habit. The Chinese pilgrim to India in the 7th century CE, Hsuan Tsang , in his memoir on what
5240-744: 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
5371-532: 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 ,
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5502-526: 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
5633-555: The endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth ( saṃsāra ). This freedom is attained through the knowledge that the Self ( ātman ) is identical to the eternal and formless metaphysical Absolute called Brahman . Because of their monistic doctrine , the Aghoris maintain that all opposites are ultimately illusory . The purpose of embracing intoxicant substances , pollution , and physical degradation through various Tantric rituals and customs
5764-406: 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
5895-500: 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
6026-538: The " charnel ground sādhanā" of the Aghora in both its left and right-handed proclivities and identifies it as principally cutting through attachments and aversion and foregrounding primordiality; a view uncultured, undomesticated: The gurus and disciples of Aghor believe their state to be primordial and universal. They believe that all human beings are natural-born Aghori. Hari Baba has said on several occasions that human babies of all societies are without discrimination, that they will play as much in their own filth as with
6157-414: 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
6288-560: 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 the Classical Sanskrit language launched ancient Indian speculations about "the nature and function of language", what
6419-997: The 4th and 8th century CE. Similarly to their Shaivite predecessors, Aghoris usually engage in post-mortem rituals, often dwell in charnel grounds , smear cremation ashes on their bodies, and use bones from human corpses for crafting kapāla ( skull cups which Shiva and other Hindu deities are often iconically depicted holding or using) and jewellery. They also practice post-mortem cannibalism , eating flesh from foraged human corpses, including those taken from cremation ghats . Their practices are sometimes considered contradictory to orthodox Hinduism . Many Aghori gurus command great reverence from rural populations and are widely referred to in medieval and modern works of Indian literature , as they are supposed to possess healing powers gained through their intensely eremitic rites and practices of renunciation and tápasya . Aghoris are Hindu devotees of Shiva manifested as Bhairava , and ascetics who seek liberation ( mokṣa ) from
6550-521: 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
6681-510: The Aghor lineage. The Krim Kund and Parao ashrams are situated on the opposite sides of the Ganges River in Varanasi, India. Baba Bhagwan Ramji also established Sri Sarveshwari Samooh Ashram, a secular social service organization that has worked throughout northern India. The Aghor lineage now includes many Ashrams in various locations in India and a number of centers and Ashrams in other countries. During his life, Aghoreshwar Bhagwan Ramji also guided
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#17329414618036812-547: The Aghori order, Kaula , and Trika traditions. Although akin to the Kāpālika ascetics of Medieval India and Kashmir , as well as the Kālāmukha of the Deccan Plateau , with whom there may be a historical connection, the Aghoris trace their origin to Baba Keenaram , a Shaivite ascetic who is said to have lived 150 years, dying during the second half of the 18th century. Dattatreya the avadhuta , to whom has been attributed
6943-459: The Aghori philosophy of criticizing commonplace social relations and fears through the use of culturally offensive acts. Furthermore, they demonstrate the Aghoris' acceptance of death as a necessary and natural part of the human experience. Another unusual Aghori belief is that they attribute spiritual and physical benefits, such as the prevention of aging, to the consumption of human flesh . In 2006, an Indian TV crew witnessed one Aghori feasting on
7074-810: The Anjali School, a tuition-free school for neighborhood children living in poverty and Vision Varanasi, a free eye clinic. Notably, The Aghor Foundation also runs Project Shakti, which offers vocational training for underprivileged women in Varanasi. The Aghor Foundation recently began to construct the Amrit Sagar Environmental Center, "a working model of the best environmental practices and a teaching center demonstrating… sustainable practices." Sanskrit language Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
7205-470: The Crestone End of Life Project, obtained legal permission to perform "open-air cremations". Others have attempted to open up more outdoor funeral pyres but have faced disapproval. Crestone, Colorado is the only place where open-air cremations are legal in the United States. They can perform around 12 a year, regardless of religion and families can be involved in the process if they would like. At this time,
7336-521: 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
7467-513: 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
7598-480: 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
7729-518: The Hindu Mother Goddess scattered across South Asia and the Himalayan terrain, are key locations preferred for performing sadhana by the Aghoris. They are also known to meditate and perform sadhana in haunted houses. Aghori practice healing through purification as a pillar of their ritual. Their patients believe the Aghoris are able to transfer health to, and pollution away from, patients as
7860-469: 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
7991-507: The Indo-European languages are the Nuristani languages found in the remote Hindu Kush region of northeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Himalayas, as well as the extinct Avestan and Old Persian – both are Iranian languages . Sanskrit belongs to the satem group of the Indo-European languages. Colonial era scholars familiar with Latin and Greek were struck by the resemblance of
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#17329414618038122-452: The Latin word 'ūrere' which means, to burn. However, regardless of professional build, pyres were unpredictable and would go wrong on a regular basis. The Elder Pliny writes of extreme cases in which bodies have been thrown from the pyre from the force of the flames. Other cases, described by Plutarch , involving deceased victims of poisoning, resulted in the human body bursting open and dousing
8253-521: 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
8384-489: 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
8515-600: The Pope, is burned. Funeral pyres were used by the Nazis to cremate the bodies of 1,500,000+ prisoners in Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps, in contrast to the crematoria used in other camps. Pyres have also been used to dispose of large quantities of livestock in agriculture, particularly those infected with disease. Pyres are lit around the clock in Varanasi , India as it
8646-488: 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
8777-616: 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
8908-447: 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
9039-451: 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
9170-407: 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
9301-448: The atmosphere from carbonaceous aerosols resulting from human activities is a significant contributor to climate change in South Asia . In this region, fossil fuel use and residential biofuels have been documented to be the primary emitter of light-absorbing black carbon aerosols. The study determined the emitted organic carbon contributed 40% to smoke absorption of visible solar radiation , about 92 Gg annually. A second study examined
9432-440: 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
9563-957: The carbonaceous fractions associated with indoor PM2.5/PM10 during Asian cultural and ritual burning practices. (Dewangan, et al.) This study concluded drastically higher levels of biomass burning markers within burial rituals performed indoors compared to levels collected for residential indoors and ambient outdoors, with levels reaching three- to eightfold higher levels of carbonaceous aerosols. These high chemical levels were also found to correlate to higher aerosol fraction levels during winter months in both Muslim Holy Shrines and marriage places. The study concluded PM concentrations were significantly higher in indoor-ritual locations and suggested further studies and actions be taken to investigate risk and health assessment and calls for regulatory agencies to propose new guidelines for indoor cultural/ritual locations. A traditional Hindu funeral pyre takes six hours and burns 500–600 kg (1,102–1,323 pounds) of wood to burn
9694-517: 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
9825-609: 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
9956-629: The cremation ground, who appeared to Baba Keenaram atop Girnar Mountain in Gujarat. Considered to be the adi guru (ancient spiritual teacher) and founding deity of Aghor, Lord Dattatreya offered his own flesh to the young ascetic as prasād (a kind of blessing), conferring upon him the power of clairvoyance and establishing a guru-disciple relationship between them. Although Aghoris are prevalent in cremation grounds across India, Nepal , and even sparsely among similar cremation grounds in South East Asia ,
10087-515: The cremation of the dead in the Hindu and Sikh religions, a practice which dates back several thousands of years. Funeral pyres were also used in Germanic and Roman culture. Pyres and bonfires are used in celebrations and remembrance in services. Examples of these are Guy Fawkes Night in the United Kingdom and some Commonwealth countries, where the 'Guy', either seen as an effigy of Guy Fawkes or
10218-639: 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
10349-452: The deity. Pyres are crafted using wood. The composition of a pyre may be determined through use of charcoal analysis. Charcoal analysis helps to predict composition of the fuel and local forestry of the charcoal being studied. Specifically, in the Bronze Age , pyre materials were gathered based on local abundance and ease of access to the wood although materials were also selected due to
10480-467: 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
10611-467: 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
10742-456: 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
10873-451: 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 a limited role in the Theravada tradition (formerly known as
11004-483: 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
11135-489: The esteemed nondual medieval song, the Avadhuta Gita , was a founding adi guru of the Aghor tradition according to Barrett (2008: p. 33): Lord Dattatreya, an antinomian form of Shiva closely associated with the cremation ground, who appeared to Baba Keenaram atop Mount Girnar in Gujarat. Considered to be the adi guru (ancient spiritual teacher) and founding deity of Aghor, Lord Dattatreya offered his own flesh to
11266-543: 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
11397-412: 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
11528-476: 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. The Vedic Sanskrit found in
11659-472: The group only allows people who are part of the local community to choose this alternative burial. In the time leading up to the 2nd century AD popular funeral practices in Rome consisted of cremation with a pyre. Ideal funeral practices meant burning an ornamental pyre for the deceased, that would burn with enough heat and a long enough time to only leave ashes and small bone fragments. Having to use another's pyre
11790-431: 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
11921-478: 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
12052-459: The largest cultural heritage that any civilization has produced prior to the invention of the printing press. 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 is the predominant language of one of the largest collection of historic manuscripts. The earliest known inscriptions in Sanskrit are from
12183-412: 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
12314-503: 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 ,
12445-501: 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
12576-429: 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
12707-401: 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
12838-593: 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
12969-535: 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,
13100-403: 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
13231-431: 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
13362-401: The poor and the afflicted, and included a leprosy hospital within the ashram grounds. By shifting Aghor Yoga's focus to helping those who are suffering within society, Baba Bhagwan Ramji modernized the ancient Aghor tradition. In order to maintain the continuum of the Aghor tradition, Baba Bhagwan Ramji initiated one of his disciples, Baba Siddharth Gautam Ram, to be the head of Krim Kund and of
13493-414: 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
13624-439: 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
13755-480: 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
13886-448: The pyre. A study conducted by Alunni, et al. examined the forensic science behind cremations on wooden pyres. The study concluded the average pyre does not completely destroy a human body effectively, and differences in suicide via pyres are evident in the remains. A pyre suicide shows signs of remains being more charred rather than completely oxidized by high temperatures, are in anatomically correct positions, poor bone fragmentation, and
14017-591: The reform of ancient Kina Ram Aghori practices. All of the ashrams started by Baba Bhagwan Ramji and his disciples around the world are continually dedicated to service. Contemporary Aghor practices focus especially on providing help and services to those who are downtrodden. Sri Sarveshwari Samooh Ashram remains invested in social issues, notably working to eliminate the dowry system, offering free leprosy treatment, and providing free schooling for impoverished children. The Sonoma Ashram in Sonoma, California, founded in 1990,
14148-596: 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
14279-490: 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,
14410-567: The rites-of-passage. Similarly, Brian Hatcher states that the "metaphors of historical rupture" by Pollock are not valid, that there is ample proof that Sanskrit was very much alive in the narrow confines of surviving Hindu kingdoms between the 13th and 18th centuries, and its reverence and tradition continues. Hanneder states that modern works in Sanskrit are either ignored or their "modernity" contested. Pyre A pyre ( Ancient Greek : πυρά , romanized : purá ; from πῦρ ( pûr ) 'fire'), also known as
14541-491: 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
14672-515: The secrecy of this religious sect fosters no aspiration to social recognition and notoriety among its practitioners. Hinglaj Mata is the Kuladevata (patron goddess) of the Aghori. The main Aghori pilgrimage centre is Kina Ram's hermitage or ashram in Ravindrapuri, Varanasi . The full name of this place is Baba Keenaram Sthal , Krim-Kund. Here, Kina Ram is buried in a tomb or samadhi which
14803-551: 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
14934-594: 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
15065-474: The specific properties, potential traditional purpose, or due to economical reasons. In Templenoe, pyres typically consisted of oak and fruit wood compositions. From analyzing three necropolises , in Kokotów, Pawłowice and Korytnica, it seems that Polish pyres consisted of primarily Scots pine, birch, and oak trees, as pines, birch, and oak were dense in local woodlands. All parts of the tree were used including
15196-449: The time environmental concerns did not play any factor in the creation of the law. In February 2010, a Hindu man named Davender Ghai was granted permission to be cremated on a traditional open-air pyre, when a court of appeals in the United Kingdom ruled them legal inside of a building with an open roof and away from roads or homes. In the U.S., a group in Crestone, Colorado , a part of
15327-402: The toys around them. Children become progressively discriminating as they grow older and learn the culturally specific attachments and aversions of their parents. Children become increasingly aware of their mortality as they bump their heads and fall to the ground. They come to fear their mortality and then palliate this fear by finding ways to deny it altogether. In this sense, the Aghora sādhanā
15458-461: The trunk, branches, twigs, and even pine cones. During World War II, pyres were used in German death camps on Polish territory, such as Treblinka . Worked antler and bone objects, along with flint and flake tools , and copper-alloys are most commonly found in pyre cremation remains. The copper-alloys leave a blue-green stain and are typically fused to the ribs, arms, and other areas where jewelry
15589-641: 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
15720-679: The use of a corpse as the altar) to invoke the mother goddess in her form as Smashan Tara (Tara of the Cremation Grounds). In Hindu iconography, Tara, like Kali , is one of the ten Mahavidyas (wisdom goddesses) and once invoked can bless the Aghori with supernatural powers. The most popular of the ten Mahavidyas who are worshiped by Aghoris are Dhumavati , Bagalamukhi , and Bhairavi . The male Hindu deities primarily worshiped by Aghoris for supernatural powers are manifestations of Shiva , including Mahākāla , Bhairava , Virabhadra , Avadhuta , and others. Barrett (2008: p. 161) discusses
15851-408: 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
15982-564: 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
16113-433: The young ascetic as prasād (a kind of blessing), conferring upon him the power of clairvoyance and establishing a guru-disciple relationship between them. Aghoris also hold sacred the Hindu deity Dattatreya as a predecessor to the Aghori tradition. Dattatreya was believed to be an incarnation of Brahma , Vishnu , and Shiva united in the same singular physical body. Dattatreya is revered in all schools of Tantra, which
16244-497: 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
16375-412: Was a sign of poverty or emergency cases. The process of constructing and properly burning a funeral pyre is a skilled task. Often, pyres would not burn with enough heat to properly cremate human remains. Pyres had to be maintained by stoking the flame and raking the pyre to allow good oxygen flow. Ancient literature refers to the skilled job of an ustor, meaning a professional pyre builder derived from
16506-408: 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
16637-427: 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
16768-472: 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
16899-722: 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
17030-414: Was concluded that if cremated bone is placed in an urn before burial the original bone fragment size will be preserved. This study was intended to explain that more cautionary measures should be taken during and after any cremation occurs and to educate those who are studying cremated bone that the size of the fragments will be smaller than there were right after cremation. Traditionally, pyres are used for
17161-442: 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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