115-623: The Hathibada Ghosundi Inscriptions , sometimes referred simply as the Ghosundi Inscription or the Hathibada Inscription , is the oldest Sanskrit inscriptions in the Brahmi script , and dated to the 1st century BCE. The Hathibada inscription were found near Nagari village , about 8 miles (13 km) north of Chittorgarh , Rajasthan , India , while the Ghosundi inscription was found in
230-727: A Padma (lotus), Kaumodaki gada (mace), Panchajanya shankha (conch), and Sudarshana chakra (discus). As stated in the epic Itihāsa , the Mahabharata : I am Narayana, the Source of all things, the Eternal, the Unchangeable. I am the Creator of all things, and the Destroyer also of all. I am Vishnu , I am Brahma and I am Shankara , the chief of the gods. I am king Vaisravana, and I am Yama,
345-601: A serpent in the sea. He quotes, "This Nārāyana of the Āryan pantheon seems to be the supreme being of the Mohenjo-Darians, a god who was probably styled Ān, a name still kept in Tamil literature as Āndivanam, the prototype of the historic Siva ". In the Vedas and the Puranas , Narayana is described as having the divine blackish-blue color of water-filled clouds, four-armed, holding
460-404: 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." Narayana Narayana ( Sanskrit : नारायण , IAST : Nārāyaṇa ) is one of the forms and epithets of Vishnu . In this form, the deity
575-433: 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
690-581: 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
805-469: A legacy that gave the location its name "Hathi-bada" or "elephant stable". The part discovered in the Hathibada wall has the same style, same Brahmi script, and partly same text as the Ghosundi well text, thereby suggesting a link. The inscription is significant not only for its antiquity but as a source of information about ancient Indian scripts, the society, its history and its religious beliefs. It confirms
920-643: 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
1035-454: 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
1150-479: 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
1265-546: 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
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#17328551012181380-573: 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
1495-534: 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
1610-439: 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
1725-523: Is Nārāyaṇī. He is said to have been born from Avalokiteśvara 's heart. The Buddhas are sometimes described as having a firm body like Nārāyaṇa. The Yogācārabhūmi Śāstra describes him as having three faces with a greenish-yellow complexion. He holds a wheel in his right hand and rides upon a garuḍa . Chapter 6 of the Yiqiejing Yinyi explains that he belongs to the Kāmadhātu and is veneration for
1840-692: 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
1955-531: Is a friendly duel between cousin brothers Neminatha (Tirthankara) and Krishna (Naryana) in which Neminath lost to Krishna without any effort at all. There is also a story of Neminatha lifting the conch of Krishna and blowing it without any effort. The Jain Mahabharata describes Krishna's conflict with Jarasandha , who he kills. Narayana is hailed in certain parts of the Vedas like the Narayana Suktam and
2070-508: 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
2185-485: Is also synonymous with Narayana and Arjuna is referred to as Nara. The epic identifies them both in plural 'Krishnas', or as part incarnations of the earlier incarnations of Vishnu , recalling their mystical identity as Nara-Narayana . Narayana (as Krishna) is also described in the Bhagavad Gita as having a universal form ( Vishvarupa ) which is beyond the ordinary limits of human perception or imagination. In
2300-679: Is conceived as the Supreme Soul in the texts. The Mahāsamaya Sutta (DN 20) of the Pali Canon mentions a deity by the name Veṇhu (Sanskrit: Viṣṇu ), though the text suggests that this name may also signify a class of deva. He also appears in the Veṇḍu Sutta (SN 2.12) as Veṇḍu where he addresses Gautama Buddha by celebrating the joy experienced by those who follow the Dhamma . He also makes brief mention of Manu . Mahayana Buddhism elaborates on
2415-717: Is depicted in yogic slumber under the celestial waters , symbolising the masculine principle and associated with his role of creation. He is also known as Purushottama , and is considered the Supreme Being in Vaishnavism . Narayan Aiyangar states the meaning of the Sanskrit word 'Narayana' can be traced back to the Laws of Manu (also known as the Manusmriti , a Dharmaśāstra text), which states: The waters are called narah, (for)
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#17328551012182530-452: 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
2645-524: 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
2760-479: 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,
2875-580: 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
2990-526: 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
3105-457: The Narayana Sukta , Narayana is essentially the supreme force and/or essence of all: 'Nārāyaṇa parabrahman tatvam Nārāyaṇa paraha'. Narayana's eternal and supreme abode beyond the material universe is Vaikuntha , a realm of bliss and happiness called Paramapada , which means the final or highest place for liberated souls, where they enjoy bliss and happiness for eternity in the company of
3220-520: The Sutras that describe the life of Gautama Buddha . It is said that The Buddha "is endowed with the great strength of Nārāyaṇa, he is called the great Nārāyaṇa himself." The Chinese Manichaean manuscript Moni Guangfo , a syncretic religious text incorporating both Buddhist and Manichaean elements, considers Narayana ( Chinese : 那羅延 ; pinyin : Naluoyan ) to be one of the Five Buddhas, with
3335-464: The Tiruvaymoli was and is significant to his Sri Vaishnava adherents, as it became a model prayer for future generations. In this prayer, Ramanuja describes Narayana to be the "beloved consort of Sri and of Bhumi and Nila ". He is stated to reside in his abode of Vaikuntha, where he assumes the role of the creation, preservation, as well as the destruction of the universe. Narayana is extolled to be
3450-672: The Vishnu Purana , Bhagavata Purana , Garuda Purana , and the Padma Purana , Narayana is Vishnu himself, who incarnates in various avatars . According to the Bhagavad Gita , he is also the "Guru of the Universe". The Bhagavata Purana declares Narayana as the Supreme Personality of Godhead , who engages in the creation of 14 worlds within the universe Brahma who is Deity of rajas - guna , himself sustains, maintains and preserves
3565-1378: The Ayodhya Inscription and Nanaghat Cave Inscription are generally accepted older or as old. The discovered inscription is incomplete, and has been restored based on Sanskrit prosody rules. It reads: 1 .....𑀢𑀸𑀦 𑀕𑀚𑀬𑀦𑁂𑀦 𑀧𑀭𑀰𑀸𑀭𑀺𑀧𑀼𑀢𑁆𑀭𑁂𑀡 𑀲.. 2.....𑀚𑀺𑀦𑀸 𑀪𑀕𑀯𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 𑀲𑀁𑀓𑀭𑁆𑀱𑀡 𑀯𑀸𑀲𑀼𑀤𑁂𑀯𑀸𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 3.....𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 𑀧𑀽𑀚𑀰𑀺𑀮𑀸 𑀧𑁆𑀭𑀓𑀸𑀭𑁄 𑀦𑀸𑀭𑀸𑀬𑀡 𑀯𑀸𑀝𑀺𑀓𑀸 1 ..... tēna Gājāyanēna P(ā)rāśarlputrāṇa Sa- 2 ..... [j]i[nā] bhagavabhyāṁ Saṁkarshaṇa-V[ā]sudēvābhyā(ṁ) 3 ......bhyāṁ pūjāśilā-prākārō Nārāyaṇa-vāṭ(i)kā. Fragment B 1 .....𑀢𑁆𑀭𑁂𑀡 𑀲𑀭𑁆𑀯𑀢𑀸𑀢𑁂𑀦 𑀅𑀰𑁆𑀯𑀫𑁂𑀥𑀸 ... 2.... 𑀲𑀭𑁆𑀯𑁂𑀲𑁆𑀯𑀸𑀭𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 1. ....[tr](ē)(ṇa) Sarvatātēna As[v]amēdha.... 2 .....sarvēśvarābh(yāṁ). Fragment C 1....𑀯𑀸𑀢𑀸𑀦 𑀕𑀚𑀬𑀦𑁂𑀦 𑀧𑀭𑀰𑀸𑀭𑀺𑀧𑀼𑀢𑁆𑀭𑁂𑀡 𑀲𑀭𑁆𑀯𑀢𑀸𑀢𑁂𑀦 𑀅𑀰𑁆𑀯𑀫𑁂𑀥𑀸 𑀬𑀚𑀺𑀦 2....𑀡 𑀯𑀸𑀲𑀼𑀤𑁂𑀯𑀸𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 𑀅𑀦𑀺𑀳𑀸𑀢𑁂𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 𑀲𑀭𑁆𑀯𑁂𑀲𑁆𑀯𑀸𑀭𑀪𑁆𑀬𑀁 𑀧𑀽𑀚𑀰𑀺𑀮𑀸 𑀧𑁆𑀭𑀓𑀸𑀭𑁄 𑀦𑀸𑀭𑀸𑀬𑀡 𑀯𑀸𑀝𑀺𑀓𑀸 1 ....vat(ēna) [Gā]j(ā)yan[ē]na P(ā)r(āśarīpu)t(rē)ṇa [Sa](r)[vatā]tēna Aś(vamē)[dha](yā)- [j](inā) 2 ....(ṇa)-V(ā)sudēvābh[y]ā(ṁ) anihatā(bhyāṁ) sa(r)v(ē)[ś]va[r](ā)bh(yāṁ) p(ū)[j](ā)- [ś](i)l(ā)-p[r]ā[k]ārō Nār[ā]yaṇa-vāṭ(i)[k](ā). – Ghosundi Hathibada Inscriptions, 1st-century BCE Bhandarkar proposed that
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3680-568: 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
3795-586: The Dravidian , and ultimately, the Indus Valley Civilisation , prior to his syncretism with Vishnu. To this end, he states that the etymology of the deity is associated with the Dravidian nara , meaning ‘water’, ay , which in Tamil means "to lie in a place", and an , which is the masculine termination in Dravidian languages . He asserts that this is also the reason why Narayana is represented as lying on
3910-613: 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
4025-525: The Pancharatras , a sectarian text that was accepted as authoritative by both the Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita schools of Vedanta . They are mechanisms by which the universe is ordered, was created, and evolves. Narayana possesses the chatur-vyuha aspects of Vasudeva, Sankarshana, Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, who evolve one after the other in the development of the universe. In the Mahabharata , Krishna
4140-744: 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
4255-532: 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 ,
4370-526: 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
4485-588: The Vishnu Suktam . He is also hailed in selective Vaishnava Upanishads like the Narayana Upanishad , Mahanarayana Upanishad , and the Nrisimha Tapaniya Upanishad . The Padma Purana relates an episode where Narayana grants Rudra (Shiva) a boon. The destroyer deity seeks two boons. Firstly, he wishes to be the greatest of the devotees of Narayana, as well as bearing the reputation of
4600-406: 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
4715-500: 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
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4830-414: 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
4945-521: 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
5060-637: The Ashvamedha Yajana and also constructed a Narayana-vatika compound dedicated to Samkarshana and Vāsudeva. Some scholars consider him to be a vassal king of any later Mauryan Emperor. Inscription which names Gajayana as his gotara or dynasty name, though it also is unclear. The same inscription also names his mother's gotra as Parasari or Parāśara . Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] )
5175-425: 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
5290-469: 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
5405-513: 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
5520-469: 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
5635-507: 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
5750-521: 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
5865-489: 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
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#17328551012185980-514: The Narayana Vatika, for the worship of Bhagavan Samkarsana and Bhagavan Vāsudeva, the invincible lords of all, [was erected] by [the Bhaga]vata king of the line of Gaja, Sarvatata, the victorious, who has performed an asvamedha, son of a Parasari. Within the inscriptions, a local king of Madhyamika (modern day Nagari, Rajasthan ) named Sarvata is mentioned. According to inscriptions, he performed
6095-488: 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
6210-616: 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
6325-584: The Vaishnavite pantheon as avatars of Vishnu. Taken together with independent evidence such as the Besnagar inscription found with Heliodorus pillar , the Hathibada Ghosundi Inscriptions suggest that one of the roots of Vaishnavism in the form of Bhagavatism was thriving in ancient India between the 2nd and 1st century BCE. They are not the oldest known Hindu inscription, however. Others such as
6440-447: 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
6555-451: 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
6670-594: The acquisition of power. Chapter 41 adds that he has eight arms that wield various "Dharma weapons" ( dharmayuda ) with which he subjugates the asuras . He appears as an interlocutor in several Mahayana sutras , including the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra , Sarvapuṇyasamuccayasamādhi Sūtra and the Nārāyaṇaparipṛcchā Dhāraṇī . He is also mentioned in several places in the Lalitavistara Sūtra , one of
6785-455: 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
6900-481: The ancient reverence of Hindu deities Samkarshana and Vāsudeva (also known as Balarama and Krishna ), an existence of stone temple dedicated to them in 1st-century BCE, the puja tradition, and a king who had completed the Vedic Asvamedha sacrifice. The inscription also confirms the association of the two deities Samkarshana and Vāsudeva with Narayana ( Vishnu ), possibly a step in their full incorporation into
7015-440: 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
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#17328551012187130-505: The cardinal points are my body, and the Air is my mind... ...And, O Brahmana, whatever is obtained by men by the practice of truth, charity, ascetic austerities, and peace and harmlessness towards all creatures, and such other handsome deeds, is obtained because of my arrangements. Governed by my ordinance, men wander within my body, their senses overwhelmed by me. They move not according to their will but as they are moved by me. As per texts like
7245-546: The character of this deity, where is often called Nārāyaṇa ( Chinese : 那羅延天 ; Tibetan : མཐུ་བོ་ཆེ། ) or more rarely, Narasiṃha ( 納拉辛哈 ) and Vāsudeva ( 婆藪天 ). Literature often depicts him as a Vajradhara ( 金剛力士 ). He is present in the Womb Realm Mandala and is among the twelve guardian devas of the Diamond Realm Mandala . He is associated with Śrāvaṇa in esoteric astrology. His queen consort
7360-414: 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
7475-559: 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
7590-489: 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
7705-418: 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
7820-418: 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
7935-409: 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
8050-427: 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
8165-491: 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
8280-412: 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
8395-537: 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
8510-431: 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
8625-478: 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
8740-707: The king does not mention his father by name, only his mother, and in his dedicatory verse does not call himself raja (king). The king belonged to a Hindu Brahmin dynasty of Kanvas, that followed the Hindu Sungas dynasty. He translates one of the fragments as: adherent of the Lord ( bhagavat ), belonging to the gotra of the Gajayanas, son of a mother from the Parasara gotra, performer of an Asvamedha. Benjamín Preciado-Solís – an Indologist, translates it as: [This] stone enclosure, called
8855-432: 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
8970-412: 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
9085-451: 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 ,
9200-577: The lord of the deceased spirits. I am Siva , I am Soma, and I am Kasyapa the lord of the created things. And, O best of regenerate ones, I am he called Dhatri, and he also that is called Vidhatri, and I am Sacrifice embodied. Fire is my mouth, the earth my feet, and the Sun and the Moon are my eyes; the Heaven is the crown of my head, the firmament and the cardinal points are my ears; the waters are born of my sweat. Space with
9315-501: 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
9430-429: 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
9545-401: 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
9660-593: 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
9775-583: 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,
9890-403: 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
10005-639: The other buddhas being Zoroaster , Śākyamuni , Jesus , and Mani . Balabhadra and Narayana are mighty half-brothers, who appear nine times in each half of the time cycles of the Jain cosmology and jointly rule half the earth as half-chakravarti. Ultimately Prati-naryana is killed by Narayana for his unrighteousness and immorality. Narayana are extremely powerful and are as powerful as 2 Balabhadras. Chakravartins are as powerful as 2 Narayanas. Hence Narayanas become half-chakravartins. Tirthankaras are much more powerful than Chakravartins. In Jain Mahabharata , there
10120-431: 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
10235-414: 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
10350-439: 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
10465-480: 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
10580-596: 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
10695-545: 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,
10810-558: 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
10925-530: The same area, but not exactly the same spot. One part was discovered inside an ancient water well in Ghosundi, another at the boundary wall between Ghosundi and Bassi, and the third on a stone slab in the inner wall of Hathibada. The three fragments are each incomplete, but studied together. They are believed to have been displaced because the Mughal emperor Akbar during his seize of Chittorgarh camped at Nagari, built some facilities by breaking and reusing old structures,
11040-491: 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
11155-438: The same throughout the world. Secondly, he desires the ability to offer salvation to whoever seeks refuge in him. The prowess of Narayana is described in the Ramayana : Narayana, like unto a luminous cloud, with his excellent shafts loosed from His bow, as so many lightning strokes, exterminated those rangers of the night with their hair dishevelled and streaming in the wind. Their parasols broken, their rich apparel torn by
11270-551: 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
11385-487: The shafts, their entrails ripped open, their eyes wide with fear, those warriors, throwing away their arms, fell into a frenzy of terror. Resembling elephants attacked by a lion, those night-rangers with their mounts emitted cries whilst fleeing from that Primeval Lion [i.e., Vishnu’s incarnation as Nrsimha—half man, half lion], who pursued them. Ramanuja 's prayer of surrender to Narayana in the Sharanagati Gadyam of
11500-594: 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
11615-521: The stone (object) of worship, called Narayana -vatika (Compound) for the divinities Samkarshana - Vāsudeva who are unconquered and are lords of all (has been caused to be made) by (the king) Sarvatata , a Gajayana and son of (a lady) of the Parasaragotra, who is a devotee of Bhagavat ( Vishnu or Samkarshana / Vāsudeva ) and has performed an Asvamedha sacrifice. – Ghosundi Hathibada Inscriptions, 1st-century BCE Harry Falk – an Indologist, states that
11730-459: The supreme lord. Vaikuntha is situated beyond the material universe and hence, cannot be perceived or measured by material science or logic. Sometimes, Kshira Sagara , where Narayana or Vishnu rests on Shesha in his reclining ananta shayana form, is also perceived as Vaikuntha within the material universe. The Śruti texts mention Narayana as the primordial being who was present even when Brahma and Ishana ( Shiva ) were not present. He
11845-454: The three fragments suggest what the complete reading of fragment A might have been. His proposal was: Fragment A (extrapolated) 1 (Karito=yam rajna Bhagava) tena Gajayanena Parasariputrena Sa- 2 (rvatatena Asvamedha-ya) jina bhagava[d*]bhyaih Samkarshana-Vasudevabhyam 3 (anihatabhyarh sarvesvara) bhyam pujasila-prakaro Narayana-vatika. – D. R. Bhandarkar Bhandarkar – an archaeologist, translates it as, (This) enclosing wall round
11960-641: 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
12075-697: The universe as Vishnu by accepting sattva - guna . Narayana himself annihilates the universe at the end of Maha-Kalpa as Kalagni Rudra who is presiding deity of tamas - guna . According to the Bhagavata Purana , Purusha Sukta , Narayana Sukta , and the Narayana Upanishad from the Vedas, he is the ultimate soul. According to Madhvacharya , Narayana is one of the five vyuhas of Vishnu , which are cosmic emanations of God, in contrast to his incarnate avatars . Madhvacharya separates Vishnu's manifestations into two groups: Vishnu's vyuhas (emanations) and His avataras (incarnations). The Vyuhas have their basis in
12190-457: 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
12305-564: 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
12420-467: The village of Ghosundi, about 3 miles (4.8 km) southwest of Chittorgarh . Dated to the 1st-century BCE, the Hathibada Ghosundi Inscriptions are among the oldest known Sanskrit inscriptions in Brahmi script from the Hindu tradition of ancient India, particularly Vaishnavism . Some scholars, such as Jan Gonda , have dated these to the 2nd century BCE. The Hathibada Ghosundi Inscriptions were found in
12535-407: The waters are, indeed, the offspring of Nara; as they were his first residence (ayana), he thence is named Narayana. This definition is used throughout post-Vedic literature such as the Mahabharata and the Vishnu Purana . 'Narayana' is also defined as the 'son of the primeval man ', and 'Supreme Being who is the foundation of all men'. L. B. Keny proposes that Narayana was associated with
12650-497: 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
12765-408: 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
12880-427: 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
12995-472: 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
13110-722: 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
13225-442: 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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