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162-583: What little is known of the person Mardan-Farrukh (Martānfarrux-i Ohrmazddātān) comes to us through the pages of his book, written in Middle Iranian using the Pahlavi script . Its title Shkand-Gumanik Vichar has been rendered Analytical Treatise for the Dispelling of Doubts , or Decisive Solution for Doubts . A published text, as translated into English, runs 135 pages. The Muslim conquest of his native Persia

324-643: A dualist ethical metaphysics and a cosmology. In his remaining pages, the author discusses critically other neighboring religions. He addresses (chapters 11 and 12) the doctrines of the Qur'an , and later those of the Bible , both the Hebrew scriptures (chapters 13 and 14), as well as the Gospels (chapter 15). Earlier materialists (atheists or sophists) had been discussed and dismissed (chapters 5 and 6). He concludes with an adverse review of

486-526: A death, if God is indeed omnipotent. If so, he asks why God did not make it "without doubt" and "clear knowledge" to humankind? Mardan-Farrukh continues, asking rhetorically if God chose such a death "through the will of his enemies" why does he curse them? Should they not be rewarded? Mardan-Farrukh next challenges the doctrine of the Trinity , "the father and son and pure wind". Yet he begins without finesse: "If it be proper for three to be one, that implies that it

648-514: A derivative of Proto-Indo-European language *ar-yo- , meaning "one who assembles (skilfully)". In the Iranic languages spoken on the plateau, the gentilic is attested as a self-identifier, included in ancient inscriptions and the literature of the Avesta , and remains also in other Iranian ethnic names Alan ( Ossetian : Ир Ir ) and Iron ( Ирон ). When used as a linguistic term Iranian

810-433: 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

972-581: 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

1134-643: 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

1296-492: A long-ago "clash of Islam with Persian religious thought." Ali continues: "The doctrine that there are two creators, a creator of good and a creator of evil, had become the central doctrine of the Magian religion [another name for Zoroastrianism]... . The religion of Islam taught the purest monotheism, and it was probably in controverting the dualistic doctrine of the Magian religion, that the discussion arose as to whether or not God

1458-454: 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

1620-479: 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

1782-546: 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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1944-573: 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

2106-534: 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

2268-439: 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

2430-503: A third-century inscription at Naqsh-e Rostam , with the accompanying Parthian inscription using the term Aryān , in reference to the Iranian peoples . The Middle-Iranian ērān and aryān are oblique plural forms of gentilic nouns ēr- (Middle Persian) and ary- (Parthian), both deriving from Proto-Iranian language *arya- (meaning " Aryan ", i.e. "of the Iranians"), recognized as

2592-472: A writer." As to "that there is no recompense of good works and punishment of crime" he responds that "no one whatever is seen that has come... from death back to life, and it is not possible to say so." Further, Mardan-Farrukh invokes what he calls in humankind "the manifestation of the maintenance of a hope for a supreme inspection over mankind, and indeed, over wild animals, birds, ad quadrupeds." The sophist may argue that no distinctions can be made, as honey

2754-419: Is inevitable , or by knowing what is analogous , or by what is possible and fit to exist ." Later he adds the obvious: the direct tangibility of nature . An example of inevitable knowledge is "once one is one, and twice two is four" and within the inevitable it is not possible to say that sometime or someplace twice two will be five or three. Knowledge by analogy announces something invisible derived from

2916-402: Is admitted darkness is driven away." Thus the antagonistic pairing prevalent everywhere springs from the opposing natures of Ohrmazd and Ahriman. "The material world is the effect of the spiritual, and the spiritual is its cause." Accordingly, the wise and powerful Ohrmazd is not the maker of the evil that blights creation. "There is one dogma on which [Mardan-Farrukh] firmly takes his stand: God

3078-508: 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

3240-443: Is applied to any language which descends from the ancestral Proto-Iranian language . Some scholars such as John R. Perry prefer the term Iranic as the anthropological name for the linguistic family and ethnic groups of this category, and Iranian for anything about the modern country of Iran . He uses the same analogue as in differentiating German from Germanic or differentiating Turkish and Turkic . This use of

3402-458: Is best attested in one of the three languages of the Behistun inscription, composed c.  520 BCE , and which is the last inscription (and only inscription of significant length) in which Old Persian is still grammatically correct. Later inscriptions are comparatively brief, and typically simply copies of words and phrases from earlier ones, often with grammatical errors, which suggests that by

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3564-502: Is certainly possible for three to be nine... ." He questions how a son could be equal to the father; then he discusses the trinity and the crucifixion. After a theodicean analysis similar to his about Adam and Eve (see the Judaic section above), Mardan-Farrukh observes that "the sacred being himself created the executioners of his son," and concludes that these enemies then slew "the Messiah , who

3726-461: Is considered to have as independent and complete existence as good; they are both primeval. They are so entirely separate from each other that neither good originates from evil, nor evil from good. Each one of them exists by itself, and entertains perpetual antagonism towards the other." Mardan-Farrukh observes that if Ohrmazd and Ahriman had created the world together or in cooperation, then Ohrmazd would be "an accomplice and confederate with Ahriman in

3888-533: Is demonstrated by him that there are two original evolutions" [of Ohrmazd and of Ahriman], one which produces the Messiah, and one producing his opponents. Next the parable of the tree that bears good fruit is given: "[F]or every tree becomes manifest by its fruit, if it be of merit and if it be of offensiveness." Again he quotes the Messiah: "[E]very tree which the father has not sown should be dug up, and should be cast into

4050-452: 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

4212-538: Is good." Rather the Zoroastrians teach that it is his antagonist Ahriman who has corrupted the creation. The late Zoroastrian Dastur , Maneckji Nusservanji Dhalla , writes: "The author of the Shikand Gumanik Vijar , who is himself a dualist of the most pronounced kind, strongly urges in his polemics against other religions that good and evil can on no account have originated from one and the same source. Evil

4374-408: Is indistinguishable from effects due to other causes). In addition to Old Persian and Avestan, which are the only directly attested Old Iranian languages, all Middle Iranian languages must have had a predecessor "Old Iranian" form of that language, and thus can all be said to have had an (at least hypothetical) "Old" form. Such hypothetical Old Iranian languages include Old Parthian . Additionally,

4536-451: Is not known where that dialect (or dialects) was spoken either. Certain is only that Avestan (all forms) and Old Persian are distinct, and since Old Persian is "western", and Avestan was not Old Persian, Avestan acquired a default assignment to "eastern". Further confusing the issue is the introduction of a western Iranian substrate in later Avestan compositions and redactions undertaken at the centers of imperial power in western Iran (either in

4698-564: Is only "Eastern Iranian" in the sense that it is not Western. The Iranian languages all descend from a common ancestor: Proto-Iranian , which itself evolved from Proto-Indo-Iranian . This ancestor language is speculated to have origins in Central Asia , and the Andronovo culture of the Bronze Age is suggested as a candidate for the common Indo-Iranian culture around 2000 BCE. The language

4860-524: 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

5022-481: Is sweet, but "bitter to those abounding in bile" or that bread is both pleasant "to the hungry and unpleasant to the surfeited." Yet the wise say, 'Even this statement of you sophists, about the jaundiced nature of everything, is alike jaundiced, and there is no truth in it." As Muslim regimes ruled in the Iran of Mardan-Farrukh, he did not mention Islam by name in his critique. Zoroastrians lived under increasing pressure at

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5184-479: 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,

5346-580: 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

5508-536: Is the son, through the will of the father." The author's interpretation here resembles aspects of the Christian heresy fostered by the 2nd century gnostic Marcion . Mardan-Farrukh's analysis of free will in Christianity likewise (absent Ahriman) results in his ascribing to God responsibility for sins committed by humankind. Next he discusses St. Paul (Pâvarôs), quoting him thus, "Not the good works which I desire, but

5670-545: Is very archaic, and at roughly the same stage of development as Rigvedic Sanskrit . On the other hand, Younger Avestan is at about the same linguistic stage as Old Persian, but by virtue of its use as a sacred language retained its "old" characteristics long after the Old Iranian languages had yielded to their Middle Iranian stage. Unlike Old Persian, which has Middle Persian as its known successor, Avestan has no clearly identifiable Middle Iranian stage (the effect of Middle Iranian

5832-537: Is very ill-seeming." Accordingly, because of the use of time, "it is not fitting to speak of his producing [the world] from nothing." Continuing along these lines, Mardan-Farrukh says of the Biblical God, "It is manifest that he was not light," by inference from God's reaction to light following his creation of it. Mardan-Farrukh paraphrases from the Jewish Torah , and concludes that regarding light God "considered it for

5994-526: 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

6156-1160: The Achaemenid Empire ) and Old Avestan (the language of the Avesta ). Of the Middle Iranian languages, the better understood and recorded ones are Middle Persian (from the Sasanian Empire ), Parthian (from the Parthian Empire ), and Bactrian (from the Kushan and Hephthalite empires). As of 2000s , Ethnologue estimates that there are 86 languages in the group. Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The term Iran derives directly from Middle Persian Ērān , first attested in

6318-568: 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

6480-479: The Incarnation , although the premise of God taking the status of human being evokes no response, other than to call it "very strange". About the crucifixion ("death and execution on a tree") and its "resurrection" message for humankind, its 'brutality' and its "disgrace" offend Mardan-Farrukh. He questions why, from all the possible ways there are to signal human resurrection, God would want to choose to suffer such

6642-668: 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

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6804-579: The Iranic languages , are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family that are spoken natively by the Iranian peoples , predominantly in the Iranian Plateau . The Iranian languages are grouped in three stages: Old Iranian (until 400 BCE), Middle Iranian (400 BCE – 900 CE) and New Iranian (since 900 CE). The two directly-attested Old Iranian languages are Old Persian (from

6966-557: The Mu'tazilites --the promoters, in Islam, of a dialectical dogmatic theology ( kalam , i.e., 'speech'). The 'dualist' danger was strongly felt by these early theologians though it is not clear what they effectively meant by dualism ( thanawiya , zandaqa ) and we have sufficient data to believe that they often confused Mazdaism and Manichaeism . The term zandik (which already indicated heretics, and Manichaeans in particular, in Pahlavi ) indicated

7128-433: The Pahlavi , his work "is distinguished by its clarity of thought and orderly arrangement." It creates a "rationalist and philosophic climate." The Shkand-gumanig Vizar of Mardan-Farrukh was written during an "intellectual renaissance of Zoroastrianism" which occurred "shortly before the rapid decline of Zoroastrianism, migrations to India, and conversions to Islam." Several reasons may account for its occurrence: "First,

7290-744: 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

7452-526: 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

7614-499: The Shkand Gumanik Vicar ... . In the first half of his book, Mardan-Farrukh provides his version of the prevailing Zoroastrian response to issues of theodicy (chapters 1-4 and 7–10). As he sees it, the acute moral quandary is how and why a wise and powerful God would create a world that seemingly has turned out so imperfect, which can at times appear merciless and cruel to creatures living in it. He outlines what might be called

7776-402: The sacred being would be the only party responsible for the calamities endured by humankind. Humans "with little knowledge and little wisdom... so far as they are able, do not let the lion and the wolf and other noxious creatures in among their own young ones... ." Yet then, "why has the merciful sacred being now let... the demons in upon his own... ?" When he placed Adam in paradise, "why

7938-477: The sacred being , who acts judiciously and desires universal "happiness and prosperity", come to create a world that results in "misery for multitudes of the innocent who are distressed, poor, necessitous, and sick." Moreover, Mardan-Farrukh insists on the logic that a solitary creator would imply ultimately a single source for all moral qualities; "if it be said that evil and crime arise from [Satan] or mankind, that implies, as they are likewise created and produced by

8100-406: 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

8262-500: 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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8424-423: The "thorough understanding of the truth" he means the "blessedness and truth of the good religion" first taught by Zarathustra . The author does follow up on this quest later in his book. At one point Mardan-Farrukh describes several specific approaches to discovering the true (the matter at issue being the existence of the "exalted sacred being"). "[A] knowledge of anything is acquired in three modes: by knowing what

8586-414: 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

8748-428: The 4th century BCE the transition from Old Persian to Middle Persian was already far advanced, but efforts were still being made to retain an "old" quality for official proclamations. The other directly attested Old Iranian dialects are the two forms of Avestan , which take their name from their use in the Avesta , the liturgical texts of indigenous Iranian religion that now goes by the name of Zoroastrianism but in

8910-521: 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

9072-460: The Avesta itself is simply known as vohu daena (later: behdin ). The language of the Avesta is subdivided into two dialects, conventionally known as "Old (or 'Gathic') Avestan", and "Younger Avestan". These terms, which date to the 19th century, are slightly misleading since 'Younger Avestan' is not only much younger than 'Old Avestan', but also from a different geographic region. The Old Avestan dialect

9234-443: The Biblical God that his "will and command are inconsistent and unadapted, one to the other." Hence the Biblical God is "manifestly an opponent and adversary to his own will." Therefore, "to indulge in wrath about [Adam and Eve] is unreasonable." Mardan-Farrukh also finds fault with this story in that the curse of God on Adam affects everyone, "reaches unlawfully over people of every kind at various periods." In this vein, he states about

9396-546: The Biblical God, "This is what he says about his own nature, that is, 'I am the Lord, seeking vengeance, and retaliating vengeance, and I retaliate vengeance sevenfold upon the children, and one does not forget my original vengeance.'" In unspoken contrast would be the Zoroastrian Ohrmazd, "a wise Being whose actions were held to be wholly just and accessible to reason." Mardan-Farrukh himself notes that his unfavorable remarks on

9558-425: 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

9720-521: 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

9882-513: 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

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10044-589: The Eastern category. The two languages of the Western group were linguistically very close to each other, but quite distinct from their eastern counterparts. On the other hand, the Eastern group was an areal entity whose languages retained some similarity to Avestan. They were inscribed in various Aramaic -derived alphabets which had ultimately evolved from the Achaemenid Imperial Aramaic script , though Bactrian

10206-469: 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

10368-507: 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

10530-516: The Manichaeans in its Arabized form of zindiq , and later became generally synonymous with free thinker, 'libertine'." "Yahweh, however, could get inordinately excited about man as a species or men as individuals if they did not behave as he desired or expected, without ever considering that in his omnipotence he could easily have created something better than these 'bad earthenware pots'." Iranian languages The Iranian languages , also called

10692-403: The Messiah: "Our father, that art in the sky, let thy empire arise! And may it be thy will that shall take place on earth as in the sky! Also give us daily bread! And do not bring us to a cause of doubt!" He then continues: "From these words it is evident that his will is not so unalloyed on earth as in the sky. Also this, that the cause of doubt of mankind is not owing to the sacred being." So does

10854-521: 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

11016-542: 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

11178-543: The Qur'an where it seems to say that the Deity may lead people astray. Relentlessly from different points of view and using various illustrations, Mardan-Farrukh asks why the sacred being , with Divine wisdom and concern for the happiness of humankind, would have chosen freely to create the world as it is, a dangerous and contentious realm where evil exists and people suffer. That is, if "no opponent or adversary of his existed" then by reason

11340-488: 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

11502-616: 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

11664-447: 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

11826-451: 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

11988-453: The Zoroastrian position as discussed more than a thousand years ago by Mardan-Farrukh in his Shikand-gumanik Vichar may be said to embody a rational search by an inquiring mind as befits a creature of God. "On the Muslim side, these criticisms... disputes between Mazdeans and Muslims, especially at the court of the tolerant Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun ... were answered with alicrity by

12150-455: 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

12312-446: The ancient speakers of Iranian languages. Of that variety of languages/dialects, direct evidence of only two has survived. These are: Indirectly attested Old Iranian languages are discussed below . Old Persian was an Old Iranian dialect as it was spoken in southwestern Iran (the modern-day province of Fars ) by the inhabitants of Parsa , Persia, or Persis who also gave their name to their region and language. Genuine Old Persian

12474-494: The author work to appropriate to the Zoroastrian dualist view the words of the Christian Messiah, i.e., that Ahriman has corrupted the earth and injected doubt into mankind. {WORK IN PROCESS} Similar issues were addressed by the Muslim writer Maulana Muhammad Ali (1874–1951). He rejects as misinformed what he terms a popular idea that the Deity in Islam is maker of both good and evil. This false notion he traces to

12636-700: The beginning of his book he states, "[T]his composition is provided by me, who am Mardan-farukh son of Auharmazd-dad." He goes on to say, "I have been fervent-mindedly, at all times in my whole youthful career, an enquirer and investigator of the truth." He declares, "The possession of the truth is the one power of the faithful, through the singleness of truth." "Now, as I have said above, I have always been earnestly anxious to know God and have been curious in searching out his religion and his will. In this spirit of inquiry I have traveled to foreign countries and (even) to India... for I did not choose my religion simply because I inherited it, but I wanted (only that religion) which

12798-538: The benefit of the Parsis (the Zoroastrians of India). Modernly, the book has been translated into several European languages. Regarding issues of theodicy Mardan-Farrukh provides a summary of Zoroastrian doctrine. This view presents Ohrmazd , the Creator of the world, being opposed by and contested by the satanic Ahriman . The author justifies this belief by pointing to the universal presence of good vis-à-vis bad everywhere in

12960-453: The brand of dualist theology particular to the Manichees (chapter 16). In a limited sense his work might be described as a nascent, adumbrated forerunner of comparative religion studies with the understanding, of course, that it is rendered from the view point of a 9th-century Zoroastrian. R. C. Zaehner gives this description of Mardan-Farrukh's Shkand-Gumänïg Vichär : This is in some ways

13122-440: 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

13284-517: 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

13446-609: 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

13608-437: The creature is to understand and perform the will of the creator, and to abstain from what is disliked by him." To do so "is to preserve the soul." The will of the creator is known through his religion. From its care "for the soul are manifested [its] grandeur" and value, and "the compassion and [mercy] of the sacred being." The author at the start announces his intention to find the truth, which brings an "inward dignity". Yet by

13770-691: 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

13932-467: 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

14094-467: 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

14256-456: 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

14418-459: The existence of an opponent of the creatures [i.e., Ahriman] is obtainable from the innermost recesses of the body of man... " which may be observed. His critique of Christianity concludes with illustrations that seek to demonstrate a dualism partially embedded in Christian scriptures, or as he says, "The word of the Messiah is specially inconsistently a demonstrator as regards the two original evolutions" [of Ohrmazd and of Ahriman]. "[T]hey say, from

14580-409: The existence of unattested languages can sometimes be inferred from the impact they had on neighbouring languages. Such transfer is known to have occurred for Old Persian, which has (what is called) a " Median " substrate in some of its vocabulary. Also, foreign references to languages can also provide a hint to the existence of otherwise unattested languages, for example through toponyms/ethnonyms or in

14742-693: The far northwest; and the hypothetical "Old Parthian" (the Old Iranian ancestor of Parthian) in the near northwest, where original *dw > *b (paralleling the development of *ćw). What is known in Iranian linguistic history as the "Middle Iranian" era is thought to begin around the 4th century BCE lasting through the 9th century. Linguistically the Middle Iranian languages are conventionally classified into two main groups, Western and Eastern . The Western family includes Parthian ( Arsacid Pahlavi) and Middle Persian , while Bactrian , Sogdian , Khwarezmian , Saka , and Old Ossetic ( Scytho - Sarmatian ) fall under

14904-421: The fire." Mardan-Farrukh concludes, "Wherefore it is fitting to understand from these words that there is a tree, which the father has not sown; that it is necessary to dig up and cast away." Apparently our author is indicating an analogy to the cosmic contention between good and evil of Zoroastrian teaching, so that here Ohrmazd will surely dig up and cast away trees sown by Ahriman. Finally, Mardan-Farrukh quotes

15066-543: 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

15228-453: The following branches: According to modern scholarship, the Avestan languages are not considered to fall under these categories, and are instead sometimes classified as Central Iranian, since they diverged from Proto-Iranian before the east-west division rose to prominence. It has traditionally been viewed as Eastern Iranian; however, it lacks a large number of Eastern Iranian features and thus

15390-412: 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

15552-537: 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

15714-483: The good work, is a complete answer: it is a logical answer, more satisfying to the thinking mind than the one given by the author of the Book of Job , who withdrew to the claim that it did not behoove man to inquire into the ways of Omnipotence." Following a method found in modern comparative religion , more than one answer is possible, and several views may respectfully co-exist whatever the apparent mutual contradiction. Hence,

15876-443: The harm and evil which ever arise." Prior to creation Ohrmazd exists "fully complete in his own self", such that "his perfection consists in his having no need for any advantage or increase" from the outside. Hence when he created the world it was not to obtain "any advantage or aggrandizement". Yet Ohrmazd being "wise and sagacious" his actions "cannot be irrational or unmotivated". "We must conclude," continues Mardan-Farrukh, "that

16038-431: 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

16200-477: The iniquity which I do not desire, I do. And it is not I that do so, but that which is collected within me does it, because I always see that it is striving with me day and night." Mardan-Farrukh may well have associated St. Paul's feeling of an iniquity "within me" to Ahriman , for in the first half of the Shkand-Gumanik Vichar he states (as a proof of the existence of metaphysical evil), "[A] knowledge of

16362-478: 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

16524-432: 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

16686-412: 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

16848-503: 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 ,

17010-463: The merciful Deity, in which Job comes to hear God and to realize with awe the Mystery, that God's ways are beyond the reckoning of humankind. "Any claim that the world was created by a good and benevolent god must provoke the question why the world, in the outcome, is so very far from good. Zoroaster's answer, that the world had been created by a good and an evil spirit of equal power, who set up to spoil

17172-501: 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

17334-429: 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

17496-401: 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

17658-543: 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

17820-409: The most interesting of all the Zoroastrian books since it presents a philosophical justification of Zoroastrian dualism in a more or less coherent form; and it further contains a detailed critique of the monotheistic creeds, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity as well as an attack on Zoroastrianism's dualistic rival, Manichaeanism." The Škand-gumanik Vičār was translated first into Sanskrit c. 1100, for

17982-409: 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 ,

18144-399: The non-existence of a sacred being" or the atheists . Some atheists are said to believe "that there is no reward for good works, no punishment of sin, no heaven and hell, and no stimulator of good works and crime. Besides this, that things are only worldly, and there is no spirit." Mardan-Farrukh responds "that to be made without a maker... is as impossible as to prepare what is written without

18306-435: 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 the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture , and of

18468-583: 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,

18630-403: 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

18792-431: 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

18954-522: 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 the Rigveda , a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from

19116-464: The position of a small, deprived, and harassed minority, lacking all privileges or consideration." As would be expected given his prior chapters on theodicy , he faults the type of monotheism practiced by Islam because it posits an all-powerful Deity who creates the world and apparently the evil in it, so that (as he puts it) "good works and crime, truth and falsehood, life and death, good and evil are owing to him." Mardan-Farrukh alludes to passages in

19278-414: 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

19440-439: 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

19602-480: 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

19764-415: The reason and occasion" for the creation of the world was "to repel and ward off" his external adversary Ahriman and defeat the evil he intends; "this is the whole reason and occasion for the act of creation." Ohrmazd's strategy is that the good creation will act as a trap to capture Ahriman and neutralize his evil. Ahriman being aggressive, rash and ignorant (he "does not know the final outcome"), as against

19926-459: The reason that he had not seen it before." Not stated here is that the Zoroastrian creator God, Ohrmazd, is essentially associated with light. A narration in some detail he gives of the story of Adam and Eve in the garden and their expulsion from it. Mardan-Farrukh notes that God made Adam and Eve and thus made their inclinations, and that God commanded them not to eat of a certain tree, yet nonetheless they disobeyed. For this reason, he observes of

20088-509: The reconstructed linguistic relationships of common Indo-European. Proto-Iranian thus dates to some time after the Proto-Indo-Iranian breakup, or the early-2nd millennium BCE, as the Old Iranian languages began to break off and evolve separately as the various Iranian tribes migrated and settled in vast areas of southeastern Europe , the Iranian Plateau , and Central Asia. Proto-Iranian innovations compared to Proto-Indo-Iranian include:

20250-472: The recording of vocabulary, as Herodotus did for what he called " Scythian " and in one instance, Median ( σπάκα "dog"). Conventionally, Iranian languages are grouped into "western" and "eastern" branches. These terms have little meaning with respect to Old Avestan as that stage of the language may predate the settling of the Iranian peoples into western and eastern groups. The geographic terms also have little meaning when applied to Younger Avestan since it

20412-596: 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

20574-490: 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,

20736-558: 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

20898-420: The sacred being, that he is the source of them." Rather instead, for Zoroastrians the cause-of-evil Ahriman in origin and nature is completely independent of Ohrmazd the sacred being ; even now Ohrmazd is contending in the long-term but certain process by which he will defeat Ahriman with finality. From a comparative perspective, a Jewish response to the Zoroastrian faith may be seen in the Book of Job , which

21060-491: 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

21222-551: 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

21384-594: 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

21546-491: The south-west in Persia, or in the north-west in Nisa/Parthia and Ecbatana/Media). Two of the earliest dialectal divisions among Iranian indeed happen to not follow the later division into Western and Eastern blocks. These concern the fate of the Proto-Indo-Iranian first-series palatal consonants, *ć and *dź: As a common intermediate stage, it is possible to reconstruct depalatalized affricates: *c, *dz. (This coincides with

21708-454: The state of affairs in the neighboring Nuristani languages .) A further complication however concerns the consonant clusters *ćw and *dźw: A division of Iranian languages in at least three groups during the Old Iranian period is thus implied: It is possible that other distinct dialect groups were already in existence during this period. Good candidates are the hypothetical ancestor languages of Alanian/Scytho-Sarmatian subgroup of Scythian in

21870-399: The strong and prosperous Sasanid Empire; however, following several centuries under Islam, Zoroastrian fortunes had declined drastically. Mardan-Farrukh first questions the virgin birth, concluding skeptically "the origin of their religion has all come forth from the testimony of a woman, which was given about her own condition." He demonstrates a studied knowledge of the Christian doctrine of

22032-452: The term for the Iranian language family was introduced in 1836 by Christian Lassen . Robert Needham Cust used the term Irano-Aryan in 1878, and Orientalists such as George Abraham Grierson and Max Müller contrasted Irano-Aryan ( Iranian ) and Indo-Aryan ( Indic ). Some recent scholarship, primarily in German, has revived this convention. The Iranian languages are divided into

22194-637: The thoughtful and prudent Ohrmazd, certainly the ultimate result will be the triumph of good; undoubtedly creation will be restored. The entire cosmic process from the original creation by Ohrmazd and the attack by Ahriman, until the triumphant rehabilitation of physical goodness of creation, lasts twelve thousand years. Along with the Amesha Spenta , humankind plays a vital rôle in the defeat of Druj (the Lie) and victory of Asha (the Truth). Mardan-Farrukh notes, "The duty of

22356-457: The time Mardan-Farrukh was writing: "[L]ate in the ninth century the tide began to ebb swiftly for the Zoroastrians, with Islam now enjoying the full support of temporal power everywhere. It was then that the founding fathers of the Parsi community left their homeland to seek religious freedom in exile in India, and thereafter those who held by their ancient faith in Iran were steadily ground down into

22518-491: The times not only permitted but provoked such writings. Mu'tazilites , or Islamic free-thinkers, many of whom were Persians, had created an atmosphere of free debate and interest in philosophical and theological questions. ... Second, the Zoroastrians were losing ground and they passed from a militant defiance of Islam or the Arabs to an intellectual defensive. This may be seen in a number of apologetic works written at this time such as

22680-641: 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

22842-506: The turning of sibilant fricative *s into non-sibilant fricative glottal *h; the voiced aspirated plosives *bʰ, *dʰ, *gʰ yielding to the voiced unaspirated plosives *b, *d, *g resp.; the voiceless unaspirated stops *p, *t, *k before another consonant changing into fricatives *f, *θ, *x resp.; voiceless aspirated stops *pʰ, *tʰ, *kʰ turning into fricatives *f, *θ, *x, resp. The multitude of Middle Iranian languages and peoples indicate that great linguistic diversity must have existed among

23004-432: The type of monotheism held by Judaism and by Islam would apply as well to Christianity. During the prior Sasanid era (224–651), "non-Zoroastrians frequently occasioned heated polemics in which virulent criticism and derisive terms were exchanged between the Zoroastrian priests on the one side and the prelates of the rival faith on the other." In the case of Christianity, contention was not only religious, but military. "There

23166-408: 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

23328-564: 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

23490-454: The visible through similarity or resemblance, e.g., from the presence of a thing made one may infer the absent maker. Information about what is possible and fit to exist seems to rely on the trustworthiness and good character of the person testifying. This attention to methods (logic, analogy and inference, testimony , and tangible evidence) demonstrates some respectful rigor and craft in persuasion. Mardan-Farrukh addresses "the assertors of

23652-423: The will of your own father. By him truth is not spoken; whatever he speaks he tells a lie of it, therefore you are false yourselves together with your father. As for me, who speak the truth, you do not believe it of me. And he who is from the sacred being hears the words of the sacred being, but you, because you are not from the sacred being, do not hear my words." Mardan-Farrukh immediately adds, "By these sayings it

23814-411: The words of the Messiah, that the original evolution from the sacred being is light and goodness; evil and darkness are separate from him." Mardan-Farrukh quotes the Messiah, speaking to his human opponents: "I am appointed by that sacred being doing good works. Why do you not hear those words of mine? Only because you are from the iniquitous one it is not possible for you to hear them, and you wish to do

23976-406: The world, e.g., "darkness and light, knowledge and ignorance, perfume and stench, life and death, sickness and health, justice and disorder, slavery and freedom... visible in every country and land at all times." These distinct opposites are not of function, like that of the male and female, sun and moon, but rather are of the essence. "For where there is good there cannot possibly be evil. Where light

24138-497: 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

24300-408: 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

24462-427: 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

24624-566: Was a state of perennial war between Sasanian Persia and Byzantine Rome, which had embraced Christianity." A prime instance would be the border region of Armenia , which had included Zoroastrian believers since the Persian Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330); centuries later despite Sasanid pressure, Armenia converted to Christianity (after 300) and took the Byzantine side. In general Zoroastrian arguments contra Christianity first developed in

24786-472: 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

24948-722: 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

25110-603: Was completed by 651 C.E. Based on references made in his book to the then editions of other Zoroastrian works (e.g., the Dinkart ), Mardan Farrukh has been dated to the 9th century. "[I]t is evident that he lived after the time of Roshan, son of Atur-frobag, son of Farukh-zad. ...Abalis, the Zandik , had a religious deputation with Atur-frobag, son of Farukh-zad, in the presence of the Kalifah Al-Mamun who reigned A.D. 813-833." Near

25272-519: Was most firmly based on reason and evidence... ." Apparently Mardan-Farrukh the author was young, earnest, well-traveled and committed. He was ably acquainted with his own religion, both its writings and the views of its authorities; also he was conversant with other systems of belief. Among Zoroastrian authors of the Pahlavi period, Mardan-Farrux can best lay "claim to being considered a philosopher." A practicing layman who drew on priestly Zoroastrian books in

25434-540: Was not that garden made by him fortified and strong, so that that deluder [Satan] could not have gotten into it?" Mardan-Farrukh likewise brings his criticism of a type of monotheism to the Jewish texts. Here, he challenges the creation story of the Bible . Of creation out of nothing in six days, he asks: if God needed only to command and it arises, "to what was that delay of six days owing? ...the existence of that delay of six days

25596-590: Was situated precisely in the western part of Central Asia that borders present-day Russia and Kazakhstan . It was thus in relative proximity to the other satem ethno-linguistic groups of the Indo-European family , such as Thracian , Balto-Slavic and others, and to common Indo-European's original homeland (more precisely, the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to the north of the Black Sea and the Caucasus ), according to

25758-542: Was the creator of evil. These discussions grew very hot and many side-issues sprang up. ... God created man with certain powers which he could exercise under certain limitations, and it is the exercise of these powers in one way or another that produces good or evil. ... Hence the controversy, as to whether God was the creator of good and evil, arose simply out of a misconception of the nature of good and evil." Notwithstanding, Mardan-Farrukh asks why (if no adversary like Ahriman pre-existed as an independent source of evil) would

25920-442: 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

26082-571: Was written during or following a period of fruitful interaction between the Jews and the Zoroastrian Persians. In the Book of Job, the Biblical God allows Satan to severely punish Job, even though Job has done no wrong to merit the abuse. The tragedy of innocent suffering is discussed without resolution by Job and by several friends who blame Job unjustly. Finally, an epiphany of ecstasy is visited on Job by

26244-444: Was written using an adapted Greek script . Sanskrit Sanskrit ( / ˈ s æ n s k r ɪ t / ; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁 , संस्कृत- , saṃskṛta- ; nominally संस्कृतम् , saṃskṛtam , IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm] ) 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

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