Talk:Sanskrit/Archive 1

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Greek in Medieval Europe

The statement that Sanskrit "has a similar position in India to that of Latin and Greek in Medieval Europe" is somewhat perplexing. Medieval scholars routinely noted "Graecum est, non legitur" (it's Greek, you can't read it) and anyone vaguely familiar with early Renaissance culture will know of Petrarch's unsuccessful efforts to learn Greek. Of course Byzantine scholars read Greek, since that was their mother tongue, but I would not confuse Medieval Europe with the Byzantine world. It is only starting from the fifteenth century that "Graeca leguntur" (Greek texts are read) and that e.g. the substantial chunks of the "Corpus Iuris Civilis" written in Greek are studied by European scholars.

German and Sanksrit

In fact, students of both German and Sanskrit say that the similarities are sometimes quite striking [I have this on good authority, but I have no examples].

I'm a German native speaker, but unfortunately I know nearly nothing about Sanskrit. Nevertheless, I deem it very unlikely that there is any significant similarity. Sanskrit has a full-fledged flectional system featuring about 700 conjugated verb forms, I think - German has exactly two conjugated tenses and only a handful of conjugated forms. Sanskrit has eight declensional cases, German three or four. -- This list could be continued, I guess, but perhaps your authority could set me straight there.

Really striking similarities exist (AFAIK) between Sanskrit and the classical European languages like ancient Greek or Latin. For example, Sanskrit has an optative mode and an aorist tense - like Greek, but unlike most other European languages (I don't know about Farsi). Then, I once found a Sanskrit conjugation table giving some forms of the verb "ni", "to lead" - the present has the forms "nayami", "nayasi", "nayati" (...) "nayamah", "nayatha", "nayanti". This reminds me stronlgy of Latin "eram", "eras", "erat", "eramus", "eratis", "erant". These forms aren't present forms, I know, but the principle is the same.

Finally, I think it is wrong to speak of a Sanskrit "influence" on European languages. It would be better to say that they are of common origin.

I think the example of german Atmen(to breathe), Sanskrit Atman(Breath,Spirit) is quite striking, although I'm not sure if that is a real cognate.
it may be a cognate, but the etymology is obscure (for both words), so it's not really a very good example. there are many clear cognates, hamsa=Gans, shvashura=Schwager etc. but that's just because both languages are Indo-European, and not because they are particularly close within the IE group. dab 09:15, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Thanks... BTW, I must admit that the stem(root?) of the word is at(e)m and the -en ending is only the standard german verb infinitive ending, don't accuse me of lax nostratic etymology, here... =P Btw, what is the believed stem of atman?

Pokorny (1959)

 e:t-me/n-

'Hauch, Atem': Ai. a:tma/n-, Gen. a:tma/nah. m. `Hauch, Seele';

   ags. æ:ðm m., as. a:thum `Hauch, Atem', ahd. a:dhmo:t (Isid.) `flat', sonst im Ahd. m. gramm. Wechsel a:tum (= a:dum Isid.) m. `Atem', nhd. Atem und (mit dial. o aus a) Odem. Ob hierher ir. athach (*@t-a:ko-) `Hauch, Wind'?

the point is that the root e:t is not otherwise known, so the equation is shaky. dab 09:02, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)



I agree that the sentence quoted above is misleading. There are quite a few similarities between Sanskrit and the Germanic languages that you don't see in Latin or Greek (unless you know what to look for), but they are tremendously outnumbered by the similarities that Sanskrit does share with Latin and Greek.

One example of a German-Sanskrit similarity is in family member names not mentioned in the article: bhratr and duhitr (brother/bruder & daughter/tochter) do not have as obvious a relationship to the words that mean the same in Latin and Greek. Of course as you point out, the similarites are much greater between Sanskrit and, say, Greek when you look at grammatical endings. In particular, forms like the reduplicated prefix in the past perfect stem were innovations that came into PIE after the Germanic family had parted ways from what came to be Greek, Indo-Iranian, and Armenian.

Perhaps the author's informants had been unacquainted with any language with an inflectional system, other than German and Sanskrit. If they were native English speakers, the entire notion of grammatical cases and genders (and even verb conjugagtion!) is so difficult to acquire that the fact that both German and Sanskrit have such might make them seem similar.

This reminds me stronlgy of Latin "eram", "eras", "erat", "eramus", "eratis", "erant". These forms aren't present forms, I know, but the principle is the same.

It reminds you of that for a reason. As I remember from my Greek and Sanskrit classes (taken quite a while ago), PIE had two classes of verb ending suffixes -- one in which the first-person singular ended in 'o', and another in which it ended with 'mi'. Ancient Greek retained this for a while, and the first-person singular of "to be", eimi will be very familiar. In Sanskrit, the -mi ending came to replace the -o ending as a productive verb form, whereas in Italic and Germanic languages -o won out. Many, however, retained something like the 'mi' as an irregular first-person singular form for "to be", so that this provides the -m ending in Latin "sum" and English "am".

Finally, I think it is wrong to speak of a Sanskrit "influence" on European languages. It would be better to say that they are of common origin.

I totally agree with this, with the caveat that English has acquired a few Sanskrit loanwords through Hinduism.

Basically, though, I agree with all your criticisms and just wanted to shoot my mouth off.

-Ben Brumfield

There is actually a world of history behind this discussion here and it goes back to F. Max Mueller, who first marked the similarities between Sanskrit and European languages and proposed the Indo-European languages. Currently, in India, linguistics and history are tied up in a socio-political dispute. Many Indians resent the idea that their languages and culture originated elsewhere and the notion that their religion and culture are the result of an "invasion" of white people (Aryans) who taught the dark people (Dravidians) what is what. See this [1], for example. Mixed up in all of this is the Nazi-era desire of some Germans to draw a connection between Germans and Indians. So on the one hand you have Indians saying that the "Aryan invasion theory" (and its linguistic implications) is a conspiracy to rob Indians of ownership of their own civilization and accomplishments. And on the other hand, you have people going around saying "Sanskrit is very close to German" (which I heard on a flight from Washington to Amsterdam in 2002), a statement which is nonsense absent the context of an Indo-European language group in which Indo-Aryan languages are related to all the IE languages of Europe, being no closer to German than to French or Russian or Greek. It's very hard to clear up all the nonsense that flies about when the subject of Sanskrit is brought up. Acsenray 18:33, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Not Max Mueller. William Jones (philologist). Most Indians don't seem to be able to grasp science as a concept apart from politics or mythology. But "Sanskrit is very close to German" is nonsense, anyway. dab 09:18, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

'second language'

What is meant by calling Sanskrit a "second language"? Is this a technical term, and if so, what does it mean? -Chinju


It means that it is not learned as a child was born and raised by his/her family. It is later taken on by the offspring, on his/her own, usually after adolescence, as a secondary language. It is "second", because it is in addition to his/her familial/first/native lanaguage. The first language is also called "mother tongue." --Menchi 00:33 21 May 2003 (UTC)

Why is that sentence deleted without explanation [2]? --Menchi 00:23, Aug 9, 2003 (UTC)

Transliteration issues

There should be section about translittering sanskrit to latin script using diacritical marks. How is the academic sanskrit-latin translitteration officially called? How the symbols can be produced on a normal keyboard? Unicode fonts and unicode-aware browsers do display these symbols correctly, but how do you actually create them? All the samples on this page should be written using the mentioned transliteration scheme.

Hi, I have removed the paragraph you added on transliteration because it should be in the devanagari article, which already appears to have some info, so this para should be merged with that article. In particluar, devanagari says that the most common transliteration is the National Library at Calcutta romanization while you say it is the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration. Are these two the same? I don't know, so I haven't edited it. -- Arvindn 12:06, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Arvindn, I think you're making a mistake. I know that Indian languages have very similar sound inventories and that transliteration schemes are similar but this isn't to say that every Sanskrit transliteration scheme is identical to every generic Devanagari transliteration scheme - and even if it is it is certainly worth providing such information here. Besides this, Sanskrit is very much older than the Devanagari script and has been written in several other scripts through history but latin-based transcriptions of Sanskrit need not be based on the Devanagari writing system. Again, even if it turns out that the all are, this is worthy of noting here. — Hippietrail 12:24, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Devanagari became predominant around the 11th century, IIRC, so all transliterations of Sankskrit to latin are likely to be based on it. That said, you have a point, so feel free to reinstate the paragraph. -- Arvindn 12:35, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I returned the paragraph slightly modified. After some research I did not find easy way to denote sanskrit diacritical marks on a standard web page even though the page is using unicode. Is there a way to note the dot under r or top of n by using standard unicode font and some standard HTML tags? This page should have sanskrit words written using diacritical notification. --Arjuna 15:49, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Sure there is: ṛ , ṅ. You really should take a look at devanagari. -- Arvindn 16:36, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Thank you, Arvindn - I have studied a lot about entering unicode diacritics into HTML pages. Fixed also vowels section to include diacritics. Please feel free to correct if I made any mistakes. For instance, perhaps it would be better to use capital Lrii (Ḹ) for the sake of clarity --Arjuna 20:41, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I changed "Pāṇini's c. 500 BC Aṣṭādhyāyī" to "Pạ̄nini's c. 500 BC Ạṣtādhyāyī". At least at my system the latter is viewed better. The prior one utilizes pre-composed diacritical marks and is more convinient to produce, and latter utilices composing diacritics written separately and being harder to produce but gives better result. Which is the proper way of presenting diacritics in Wikipedia? Found an article that discusses the same problem without solution: "Them old diacritical blues again"

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000616.html and http://tenser.typepad.com/tenser_said_the_tensor/2004/03/underdots.html --Arjuna 19:58, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. That smacks of being incorrect, at least to my ear/eye. It's not just that it's harder to produce, it's a less accurate way of recording the information. What exactly is your problem with viewing the "pre-composed" marks? If it's just that you don't have a good font covering unicode indic characters, that's a user-end problem that shouldn't effect our composition practices. If it's that you're using monobook and some lameass made Verdana the standard font for monobook, well, I hope that'll be remedied soon. And I'm pretty sure there's no current standard on Wikipedia. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 22:03, 29 May 2004 (UTC)
I'm using mozilla as my browser and standard wiki skin, that appears to be monobook you mentioned. Default font being verdana that is lacking those precompiled diacritics makes my browser to search for another font when it comes across with a character that isn't included in the default font set. Combining diacritics view correctly, though. Still yesterday I did not know that it is only problem with my system, I thought I was being smart. Sorry folks. --Arjuna 06:38, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Some concerns regarding Surya's recent changes

Summary line: "(Sanskrit not just a classical language of India but of Hinduism, and most of its texts are Hinduism; started looking like it was a random and its texts part of random traditions)"

Huh. well, sure, Sanskrit is important to Hindus, but I'm not sure that's really a defining characteristic of it. I don't think it needs to be pointed out Hinduism is the dominant perspective in Indian intellectual history. Certainly not twenty thousand times. Not every substantive requirs the adjective "Hindu," nor is it always strictly accurate to provide such.

"Vedic/Hindu", "The first Sanskrit text available is from the early canon of Hinduism from Vedic culture, the Vedas."

In the first place, I remain suspicious of the term "Hindu"'s meaningfulness, particularly in dealing with ancient sources. The Vedas are prior to Hinduism in pretty much every way--they are the texts of people who lived differently and worshipped differently. They were certainly appropriated by all orthodox Indian philosophies that developed out of them, but their status in Hinduism is almost comparable to that of the "Old Testament" in Christianity. Certainly "Hindu" and "Vedic" should be neither equated nor used interchangeably.
Also, Vedic Sansrkit should probably be differentiated from "Sanskrit" used as a standalone word.

Sanskrit is related as a more refined linguistic strain of the Prakrit languages of India, compared to the lower vernaculars such as Pali and Ardhamagadhi.

Okay, that's linguistically problematic for me. "more refined" is, gotta say it, both linguistically specious and possibly POV. If you want to say, "artificial," that's cool.

After the consolidation of its grammar and lexicon it turned into a classical language of strict esthetic rules and gave rise to considerable literature of drama, medicine, politics, astronomy, mathematics, alchemy, etc., *largely based on Vedic or Hindu philosophy. *

That's a little unnecessary, I think, and possibly misleading. I'm not sure it's accurate to say that, say, the Indian dramatic tradition is "based on Vedic philosophy."कुक्कुरोवाच 22:29, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
I've edited it a wee bit to address this issue. One of my main grouses is the use of "Hindu" where it's both inappropriate and wrong - for instance, in "Hindu traders" to describe sea-faring Indians that went to SE Asia. Also, "Hindu philosophy" is ambiguous without a date, while "ancient Indian" and "Vedic" are less so, IMHO. Lastly, कुक्कुरोवाच is dead-on about delinking Sanskrit literature and Hinduism. I've separated out the Major Sanskrit works section into categories; perhaps it should go into a different article. Ambarish 22:42, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)
Your concerns are totally valid and I did go overboard and become redundant. But it was largely in response to an unfortunate tendency to overdo things on the side of rabid secularism. yes, rabid secularism. What I mean to say is that minority views supported by controversial scholars like Thapar that Vedic culture has nothing to do with Hinduism are at best marginal.
You know, I've been avoiding this for a while, because I have a feeling it's a bigger can of worms than I want to know about, but who exactly is this Thapar person, and what is his/her deal? It seems to keep coming up.कुक्कुरोवाच
Vedic practice is early Hinduism. This is a crossover conversation from Buddhism talk page, but it's more neccessary here. I'll say why:
When I first saw this page, I got the impression the writing that Sanskrit has nothing to do with anything but some minor transfer of vocabulary to Buddhist Pali/Chinese texts. When you talk about a classical language it cannot reasonably be divorced from its circumambient culture.
The concern isn't whether Sanskrit should be divorced from its culture, but whether it's important to call that culture "Hindu"; I continue to dislike "Hindu" mainly on precision of language grounds. I have no problem with Hinduism, I like Hinduism just fine. Or, rather, I like the Mahabharata, I like the Upanishads, I like Samkhya, and I'm a fan of what Vedic material I've come across, and I respect the religious forms that have grown out of these materials. My objections to plastering "hindu" all over everything stem from a preference for precise terminology and, in some places, a concern about POV. That's all.कुक्कुरोवाच
to study classical Sanskrit one must study the Vedangas. In order to study Panini's grammar, you end up studying about his analyses of Hindu texts. Half of the Sanskrit varnamala and philosophical connectives regarding morphology and half-matras, sphotas and all that are rooted in Hindu philosophy. If you don't like it, fine. But it still doesn't change that.
To address your Vedic/Hindu concern. It is a fond and modern practice for many people, particularly non-Hindus who are into Yoga, to try and divorce Vedic philosophy and religion from Hindu religion. Indeed, they're not trying to negate Hinduism's existence. Rather, they claim that things like Divine Mother worship and Yoga are completely non-Hindu ideas and practices that instead were slowly practiced by people who happened to be Hindu. What we're left with is this bizarre mass of inexplicable rituals and borrowed symbolism, a religion that apparently has no base of its own nor native practices.
I'll assume this part isn't addressed to me.कुक्कुरोवाच
The very definition of the term Hindu itself is used to refer to people whose beliefs are rooted in and sprang from Vedic culture and the Vedas. The six orthodox, or Astika, philosophies of India are part of the hindu religion, otherwise called Sanatana Dharma.
Hmm. The definition of "hindu" is "An Aryan of Northern India (Hindustan), who retains the native religion (Hinduism), as distinguished from those who have embraced Islam; hence, any one who professes Hinduism; applied by Europeans in a wider sense, in accordance with the wider application of Hindustan," according to the OED, which is the authoritative source of definitions of words, and of "hinduism" we have, "The polytheistic religion of the Hindus, a development of the ancient Brahmanism with many later accretions," neither of which I like very much.
I think you make a good use of the word, but I still think it has definitional problems, and I'm a little skeptical of it.कुक्कुरोवाच


Your statements about discontinuance of beliefs from the Vedas to current Hinduism are ignorant and reveal that you haven't read them or that you're sadly biased.
Woah there, that's a little harsh, now isn't it? There's no radical discontinuity betwixt the Vedas and the evolved philosophical and religious traditions, but there are considerable differences--as with Judaism and its descendent Christianity. Or perhaps a better analogy is to distinguish, as scholars do, between the religion of the Hebrews as opposed to the developed Judaic tradition. In any case, my concerns arise from a background in religious studies and an acquiantance with the particular elements in question, not from ignorance. Nor do I think your perhaps over-strident insistence upon certain ideas stems from ignorance, though I do disagree with it.कुक्कुरोवाच
Concepts, gods, mantras and philosophies from the Vedas have continued unbroken from way back when, among which are "mahamrityunjaya mantra", "gayatri mantra," "Ekam Sat Vipraha Bahuda Vadant", the "Nasadiya Hymn", Saraswati, Brahma... other developments that are directly traceable to the early Vedas are HIndu philosophical monism, as evidenced by the 10th mandala Nasadiya Hymn; Devi worship is NOT a purely indigenous culture, but rather a harmonious melding of Vedic and indigenous beliefs, since the Devisukta Hymn of the Rig clearly developed with Vedic-rooted, Puranic and indigenous cultures to produce works like the Devi Mahatmya. Even Shiva worship is not purely indigenous, as Pashupati's destructive, cyclic aspects in Rudra and Shiva were imbibed from the vedas. purva mimamsa is a school of thought that prescribes empirical intuitive assessment of Vedic rituals, philosophy and cosmology while developing a greater purview of the world based on newer vedic philosophies that were slowly emerging. Its impact has continued till today, and much of the Hindu practices in puja and personal understandings of sraddha stem from such orthodox Vedic practices. vedic memorization and homa rituals, by the way, are still done today in modern India, while perhaps with not as much vigor and universality, with nonetheless existing schools of Smartists. Most temples, in any case, utilize large sections of Vedic hymns and karma-kanda. Hindu life is permeated with the still living and very much active vedic astrologers, some of whom, for your uninformed benefit, many people in India visit regularly.
Also, I have to add, most of the philosophies and schools around today are in one way or another completely indebted to the Upanishads. Oh wait, did you know that the Upanishads are called Vedanta because they are directly in line with Vedas and develop/refine, rather than split off? Whoops!
Again, dude, slow your roll. Of course I knew that. Basic compound formation. ::grin::कुक्कुरोवाच
Better read your Hindu scripture, and maybe buy a copy of the Vedas and perhaps Radhakrishnan or Hume's translations of the Upanishads (I don't know if you're ready to tackle Ghosh, because your understanding of Vedic/Early Hindu philosophy as developed into classical Hindu philosophy is lacking greatly).
While it may please Buddhists and Yoga practitioners who feel queasy about embracing ideas that may stem from a cemented schools of Vedic faiths that is otherwise known as Hinduism, it doesn't change the reality of the situation.
Huh. I'm not queasy about the complex interchange of ideas (which goes both ways) between the many schools of Indian thought, including between Buddhism and the orthodox schools.कुक्कुरोवाच
Your placing, Ambarisha, of Yoga Sutras under 'science' is only your blatant ignorance about the sutras. they are clearly Samkhya and Upanishad derived, first off, and Patanjali was notably concerned not with science, which in ancient studies is at best the study of natural phenomena and metaphysics, but with spiritual realization and realizing oneness with Brahman, permissibly through the worship of an ishta devata.
I am all for developing a more NPOV article in regards to splattering Hindu all over the place, but my somewhat unrestrained point was that attempts to render the Sanatana Dharma tradition into a meaningless flurry of 'indian spiritual traditions' is in and of itself POV and biased.
What precisely is "meaningless" about talking about "Indian spiritual traditions"? (Though I'd prefer "Spiritual, philosophical, and religious systems") Sounds perfectly meaningful to me...कुक्कुरोवाच
Talking about Brahminism and trying to separate it from Hinduism today is stupid. It's a continuing progression. I have mentioned before that ancient Judaic practices would seem BIZARRE today and the temples of Jerusalem have little in common with Judaism as it is today. And yet, it is the same faith evolved.
Ah, but technically, scholars distinguish the religious practices of the one and the other, because they are different. Judaism and Christianity (and the many subsets of those) both lay claim to the earliest form of the religion, but that doesn't mean there aren't distinctions worth drawing.कुक्कुरोवाच
If you are trying to impute that Vedic religion is not the same as Early Hinduism, you'll need to give me better evidence, because what you've given thus far is flimsy.
The problem isn't distinguishing Vedic religion from early Hinduism, but deciding what the hell "Hinduism" means in the first place.कुक्कुरोवाच
Shankuntala, by the way, is a phenomenal drama written by Kalidas in the 4th century CE in Sanskrit, and is a pivotal work. It is also Mahabharata derived and with its supplications to Shiva and clear overtones of Vedic philosophy, it is undoubtedly of the Hindu tradition. it deserves mention.
I am not saying that all writers in Sanskrit were Hindu. Certainly not. That's why I have not made such a bold statement. Hwoever, to sugarcoat instances of what to you may be an unfortunately strong link to Vedic religion and culture is POV.
What? I'm not looking to "sugarcoat" anything, just to deal with some precision and accuracy with a complex situation.कुक्कुरोवाच
And minority views about the sharp distinction between Vedic and early Hindu religion are not tenable. Early Hinduism is vedic culture, since Hinduism is defined around its acceptance of vedic philosophy and the Vedas. There is no sharp break, and those about which you speak are silly. Give me a bullet list of your supposed proof and I'll shoot back. -- LordSuryaofShropshire 05:59, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
User:LordSuryaofShropshire, is the above addressed to कुक्कुरोवाच or to me? It seems to be addressed to me (it's one level of indentation deeper than my response), but it contains lots of references to statements I have no idea about. If it's indeed a response to me, please let me know. Ambarish 11:48, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)
It's addressed to you both. --LordSuryaofShropshire 21:07, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)
Last bit: " they are the texts of people who lived differently and worshipped differently. "
In what way? Support this grand pronouncement. Back up such statements. vedic culture did not come before Hinduism. If you're asking me for dates give some yourself. When do you think Hinduism 'started'? In reality, it is coexistent with Vedism, since they are the same tradition.
Well, I question the term "Hinduism," but consider the variations in the pantheon of gods, the widely varying importance of ritual, the vanishing of Soma as the essence of religion, etc.कुक्कुरोवाच
Sanskrit drama has a lot to do with Vedic philosophy. Name me some Sanskrit dramas, apart from Shakuntala, whose story and very writing bespeak its links.
the traders who went to the east of India, by the way, were Hindu. That's how the bloody religion and words like guru spread.
With your logic, there was never a Hindu religion, because without the fundamental source of the Vedas, there's no starting point for your undefined hinduism.
Well, I would say it's everybody's undefined "hinduism," and that's precisely the problem.कुक्कुरोवाच
If your thought process be allowed, "Sanatana Dharma" is an artificial construct! Remember, silly tangents about the accuracy or late date of the nomenclature Hindu have nothing to do with the long-standing existence of a real tradition of vedic, astika thought systems joined by a reverence and springing from the Vedas, often known as Sanatan Dharma, Veda Dharma, or just Dharma pre-Buddha/Mahavira. --LordSuryaofShropshire 06:06, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

We can archive this for sure... but, allowing for you to have the final response, I will put in my last word on this. It is not about calling ourselves what we want. It is about having a culture acknowledged for what it is not for mere pride but beyond for accuracy. A culture has continuously grown from one point to another, allows maintaining key aspects of a culture, the progenitor of Dharma, often known as Sanatana, and with the ingress of foreigners, known as Hindus. The name arose largely out of a need to identify, and thus it was eminently suitable. Men far greater in vision and more learned than us in India have decided the name Hindu works as a signifier for the Vedic tradition, and thus framed it as such in their constitution in India. Accuracy bends, by the way, to reality, and the reality is that these traditions are called Hinduism today. Lastly, the chief export of Indians to the far East was Hinduism, which is why remnant Hindu cultures still exist there. The export of the Europeans to the Americas was conquest. The context of a situation must be at least somewhat similar in order to compare. You may have at the page, and I hope discussions in the future are more fruitful. Look, I appreciate your academic puritanism (said in the most respectful way), but there is a reason that the phrase "it's all academic in any case" arose... My point stands with the Impressionist example... the term works, thus it is in use. That's how language and nomenclature evolves... if you dug around some of the appelations for other groups or terms we have today, you'd be similarly appalled at their 'corruption.' --LordSuryaofShropshire 13:11, Apr 14, 2004 (UTC)

(Remainder of discussion adjourned to anteroom at User:Kukkurovaca/Hindu term and Sanskrit; see my reply there.)

The article page was getting a bit unwieldy; for a start, I've moved the list of literary works into Sanskrit literature. (Compare Latin and Latin literature. Eventually, it will be good to have separate pages for, say, Sanskrit grammar, History of Sanskrit etc.) Ambarish 12:02, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Your edits are eminently fair. --LordSuryaofShropshire 18:27, Apr 11, 2004 (UTC)

Sanskrit Wikipedia

Quick question: Do any of the folks who edit this page have any interest in the Sanskrit-language wikipedia, or know recruitable online communities of fluent Sanskritists? I ask because it sounds like a nifty thing to have around, and it actually exists, but it's totally empty. I don't feel comfortable trying to populate it myself as, while I'm okay at translating from Sanskrit, I'm not so great at translating into it. So while I would enjoy helping with editing and maintenance and whatnot, I can't really add substantive content. And yet, it would be a shame to just leave it there...कुक्कुरोवाच 03:45, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The phonemes need explanation as to how they are pronounced. Telling me there is a "dh" digraph tells me next to nothing other than it's different from a "d" followed by an "h". --Furrykef 18:35, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, there's the part that explains "Sanskrit has a voiceless, voiceless aspirate, voiced, voiced aspirate, and nasal stop at each of the following places of articulation: ...Dental (tongue against teeth, like Spanish) (t, th, d, dh, n)...", which should tell you that "dh" is a voiced aspirate dental stop, which should tell you most of what you need to know, particularly if you follow the links for aspiration and voicing, etc. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽

This is to question the classification of the vowels 'e' and 'o' as diphthongs. Admittedly in modern English the nearest vowels are diphthongs. But that is just English, with its own specific collection of vowels, which is more extensive than that of many languages. I have not studied Sanksrit but I was taught to say all Sanskrit words with simple vowels (except of course 'ai' and 'au'). Imc 09:24, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean when say you were "taught to say" them as "simple vowels" as opposed to dipthongs; isn't an "e" an "e" and an "o" an "o"? And they are certainly categorized separately from the simple vowels in Sanskrit; (a) they're formed through Sandhi by combining a+i and a+u, and (b) they're separated in the traditional alphabetization, which is quite phonologically sophisticated, and differentiates the dipthongs from the simple vowels just as it organizes stops by place of pronunciation, etc. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 11:57, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
Are you saying that the word 'deva' (god) for instance, is actually pronounce something like 'daiva' in Sanskrit then? And what I mean by simple vowel is that I say 'deva' with a simple vowel e, not a diphthong, or 'deiva'. Imc 13:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
What "simple vowel e"?--do you mean a lax "eh" sound, like in "devil"? The Sanskrit "e" is comparable to the sound in English "Hey" or "Way", as opposed to the Sanskrit "ai" which is comparable to English "eye" or "lie". Both "e" and "ai" are dipthongs. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 14:08, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
We may be speaking at cross purposes here. To me 'e' is not a diphthong; the mouth, place of articulation, and tongue do nto change during articulation. Hence it is a simple vowel, unlike 'ai' where the lips change form an open to a closed (vowel) position. It is not often used in English. Yes, it is somewhat like the pronounciation of 'eh', though I would say it is more like a common pronounciation of the German 'Herr' than 'devil'. Imc 17:16, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
I was taught that the "e" should be a righteous "hey"/"way"/etc. sound. This might be one of the many things that have shifted between classical Sanskrit and modern Indo-Aryan languages. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 19:27, 31 May 2004 (UTC)
As कुक्कुरोवाच points out above, the reason they're classified as diphthongs is not because of pronunciation but because of sandhi. I'm not sure if this (ambiguous) usage of the term "diphthong" is incorrect, but it's certainly the standard term used for those Sanskrit vowels. Ambarish | Talk 18:56, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
This is a red herring. People often forget that 'e', 'o' are ad-hoc (western) transliteration. We are not dealing with letters, but with phonemes. The phonology section needs clearing up, and sandhi needs to be explained better ("sort of blurring" is really horrible for an encyclopedia article). e and o are diphtongs because a+i=e, a+u=o, that's the long and the short of it (as was correctly pointed out above), but this is not deducible from the article (it needs to at least hint at the ablaut (=apophony) system). They are called diphtongs because etymologically and structurally, they are diphtongs, regardless of how they are pronounced today Dbachmann 07:09, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I was under the impression that "diphthong" is simply a phonological concept (a vowel whose articulatory position slides from one value to another.) Merriam-Webster's also lists a digraph (a two-letter sequence or ligature that forms a phonological unit), as another meaning. Neither meaning justifies the use of the term for the 'e' or 'o' phonemes in Sanskrit. Of course, the word "diphthong", in the context of Sanskrit, might still have such a usage (that Webster's doesn't know about.) In that case, it needs to be mentioned here. As for the pronunciation itself, I'm curious about

कुक्कुरोवाच 's claim that the 'e' phoneme in classical Sanskrit was like the vowel in "way" or "hey". I'd like to see evidence for it. Since the diphthong character of the English vowels in question itself came about after the great vowel shift, I'm a bit sceptical about that claim. rajneesh 08:03, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC) P.S. sorry about the bad syntax; my browser seems to be freaking out on the Devanagari.

Whitney's Grammar refers to the e and o as diphthongs, and that fits with what I was taught, though my experience is admittedly rather limited. I'm not sure how the Great Vowel Shift relates - weren't the transliterations established after it in any case? Factitious 05:55, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)
Ah, didn't see this comment before because my internet access has been profoundly sporadic for the last three months or so. Now, as a third-year Sanskrit student, I'm drawing on no more profound authority than what my professor taught me in terms of pronunciation. He seemed pretty sure about it, though. And what on earth does the great vowel shift have to do with Sanskrit? -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 00:38, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Infobox

Added infobox as per Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages. I'm not sure about the exact extent of the region where Sanskrit was spoken - was it actually spoken in SE Asia? Possibly by Indian traders? I hope someone can clarify those entries in the box. Ambarish | Talk 00:25, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Well Sanskrit was not spoken in SE Asia, but it surely was assidously studied. There are some 750 Sanskrit loanwords in Modern Indonesian and Malay, and about 12.000 (!) loanwords in (Old) Javanese. Meursault2004 22:50, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Just because there are loanwords doesn't mean it was assiduously studied. Also, even if it was, which sounds reasonable, that doesn't mean the language was a spoken language of that region. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽

Some edits

I've been editing several sections of the article. Most of what I'm doing is just typical cleanup; a lot of sections were out of order or redundant, and I'm trying to impose a logical structure. Hopefully most of this is uncontroversial. I pulled the following from the Morphology and Syntax section, because it wasn't clear to me it was really useful. If others disagree, please feel free to re-introduce it. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 21:54, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Here is a simple example to illustrate the different contexts in which the cases are used for the pronouns:

           mayaa tatam idam sarvam jagad avyaktamuurtinaa |
     matsthaani sarvabhuutaani na caaham teshv avasthitah ||

                                   -- Giitaa (9.4)

"mayaa" (by me) in the first line is in the instrumental case. Word for word this says "by me is pervaded this all universe" but a naturalized translation would be "I pervade all this universe...".

"mat-sthaani" in the second line is a compound of "mat" (me) and "stha" (standing, staying at) and means "they are in me".

"-aham" (I) in the second line is nominative. na caaham = "...and not I....", meaning "but I am not...".

"teshv-" (in/at/by them) at the end of the second line is in locative plural. Translated: "...in them".

Almost 2 years ago I moved that paragraph over from the locative case article. I'm not into Sanskrit so I don't know what to do with this bit. I just didn't want to delete it. Maybe you can re-use it somewhere in this article or in some other sanskrit-related one? FYI, here's the diff when I removed it and here the associated talk
It wouldn't be too bad to have a longer excerpt that demonstrated lots of case, compound, and verb stuff that we could then annotate to show how these things work, to those who use comparitively uninflected languages like English. But this isn't a stellar example, it's not marked up clearly enough for beginners to make lots of sense of it, and I'd personally just as soon let it go. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 22:15, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Official language of India?

As far as I know India's official languages are Hindi and English. Maybe we should have more but I don't think Sanskrit will make the list in the future anyway. I find it hard to believe that I'm mistaken about this but I'm posting here first in case I am. If I'm not the official language of India part at the top of the article needs to be removed.

no, it's quite correct. just look at a rupee note; india has lots of official languages (as it should, too):

Hindi is the national language and primary tongue of 30% of the people; there are 14 other official languages: Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil, Urdu, Gujarati, Malayalam, Kannada, Oriya, Punjabi, Assamese, Kashmiri, Sindhi, and Sanskrit; (CIA factbook)
Dbachmann 08:46, 3 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Konkani, Manipuri, Nepali are also official languages since 1992. -- 210.214.227.228 19:50, 4 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Removed section

I removed this section:

=== Sanskrit and computing ===
Sanskrit is probably the only spoken language to have context-free grammers, which are central to computer languages.

There was recently some talk about Sanskrit as a programming language in some internet discussion lists, which probably refers to a technical paper from 1989, but the above sentence is absolutely false. In fact, only a very few syntactic constructs in a very few language have been proved to be non-context-free. The vast majority of natural languages are context-free, even though the grammars might be too large to handle. It has been claimed that Panini's grammar of Sanskrit is essentially context-free. If this is what the author wants to imply, the above section needs to be rewritten. Burschik 09:44, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

well done! Dbachmann 12:46, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

To add my bit, large portions of Tamil grammar are also context-free. We wrote a technical paper under the title Context-free grammar for natural language constructs - An implementation for Venpa class of Tamil poetry. Any body interested can have a look at the conference proceedings or the citeseer page -- Sundar 13:24, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

Sanskrit syllabary

       The Sanskrit syllabary serves as a model for most Indian language writing 
       systems (Urdu as a spoken language is also primarily Sanskritic, with a few 
       additions from Arabic and Persian, though the writing system is an adaptation
      of Persian script) and those of the southern base, like Tamil and Malayalam.

Moving the reference to Urdu in the parantheses, it reads thus:

       The Sanskrit syllabary serves as a model for most Indian language writing 
       systems and those of the southern base, like Tamil and Malayalam.

This places Indian language writing systems and those of the southern base, like Tamil and Malayalam under two different heads. Hence, I am removing this reference and take Urdu out of the parantheses.

       The Sanskrit syllabary serves as a model for most Indian language writing 
       systems. Urdu as a spoken language is also primarily Sanskritic, with a few 
       additions from Arabic and Persian, though the writing system is an adaptation
       of Persian script.

I am further rewording the above version to the following for NPOV as the above version seems to subtly indicate Sanskrit being the origin of all Indian languages, which is not proven.

       The Sanskrit syllabary is representative of most Indian language writing 
       systems. Urdu as a spoken language is also primarily Sanskritic, with a few 
       additions from Arabic and Persian, though the writing system is an adaptation
       of Persian script.

Sundar 13:41, Oct 29, 2004 (UTC)

You are too kind with this stuff.
Corrected the spelling, thanks. -- Sundar 06:02, Nov 2, 2004 (UTC)
  • Devanagari is not properly called a syllabary
  • Discussion of this should be on Devanagari. The script is *much* younger than the grammar of classical Sanskrit, and should have no bearing at all on this article. I find it too much already to give the Devanagari Aksaras in the phonology section. All that has to do with this script should be moved to Devanagari.
dab 14:00, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Devanagari is properly called a syllabary, as the basic letters represent entire syllables. It is as much a syllabary as, say, Katakana. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 22:54, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I think the issue is whether we should identify it as an abugida instead. In Devanagari, the difference between ku and ki is the same as the difference between nu and ni. The vowels in the syllables have a character of their own, which makes it sort of in between an alphabet and a syllabary. This is not true for Katakana; its characters are not systematically related by vowels (as far as I know). Factitious 00:19, Oct 30, 2004 (UTC)
exactly. Katakana and Linear B are examples of proper syllabaries. Devanagari expresses vowels by dacritics. That the unmarked vowel is "a" rather than no vowel does not matter. "abugida" is a term coined, happily or unhappily, for such scripts. dab 07:09, 30 Oct 2004 (UTC)
I never said Devanagari wasn't an abugida; it most certainly is. But an abugida (also called "phonetic syllabary") is one type of syllabary. "Pure" syllabaries (such as Katakana) are another type of syllabary, but to say that they are the only "true" type is ridiculous, IMHO. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 15:25, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)
yeah, let's not argue about trifles. I'm not going to take you to arbcom for calling Devanagari a syllabary. I try to avoid calling it one because it's misleading, but as long as the article makes clear in which sense the term is used, we can in god's name call it a syllabary, too. But I do insist that this is Talk:Sanskrit, and any discussion of what Devanagari may or may not be belongs on Talk:Devanagari. dab 15:50, 1 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Unicode Encoding

The encoding of the Sanskrit glyphs seems incorrect and not within the Unicode standards. It woud be advisable to replace all glyphs here with the correspondent Unicode. --Zappaz 03:11, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

um, elaborate please? (which ones?) As far as I can see they are properly encoded. U+0905 = #2309 = अ User:Dbachmann|dab (T) 10:49, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
something must be wrong with my browser (Mozilla Firefox) I cannot see any of the glyphs Any ideas? I am working on several articles to display ancient alphabets and I need my Unicode to work... --Zappaz 16:53, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
well, I am using Firefox (on KDE 3.2), and the fonts display fine (although Devanagari ligatures are not yet realized in any browser afaik). It must be a fonts-issue, I think; you do not have the proper fonts installed, or the browser doesn't know where to find them... dab (T) 17:00, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, the problem is in Firefox 1.0 (under Mac OS X), In Safari I can see the glyphs without any problem. Thanks for the assistance. --Zappaz 00:59, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I primarily use Safari on Mac OS X and Mozilla on Windows XP. Both browsers do just fine with Unicoded Devanagari, and ligatures appear exactly as they should. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 22:11, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I neglected to mention in my earlier comment that certain fonts may not be able to display Devanagari ligatures properly, but that's not a browser problem. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 11:28, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that certain skins specify fonts that interfere with the display of extended characters. You might want to try a different skin. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 21:07, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Yes, I checked with the Mozilla folks and they said that Firefox still needs to somooth its corners regarding Devanagari and other Unicode groups. --Zappaz 22:54, 9 Dec 2004 (UTC)

native speakers

6000 of them? is this correct? iirc, there were some 300 native speakers reported in the 1981 census (and even those are self-described native speakers, i.e. I don't think anybody checked) I think I will dig up the census data to verify this. dab (ᛏ) 10:45, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Jana Gana Mana and Vande Mataram though written by Bengali authors (Tagore and Bankim Chandra) are not in some 'higher form of Bengali' but in Sanskrit itself.


image

well, it is difficult to come up with a relevant image for a language article, and I don't think it should be an FA requirement. and no, I don't think a screenshot of sa: is very notable. I did a web search and came up with an image of a manuscript, which I have now included. dab (ᛏ) 17:02, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

cats

well, I'm not going to argue about categories too much, but note that Category:Sanskrit is itself subcat to all these other categories. So it seems redundant to have them here, too. dab (ᛏ) 08:48, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)

While there is a general rule that an article should not be in a category and its subcat, Wikipedia:Categorization lists the following important exception:

Note: An exception would be an article that defines a category, and so is itself a parent article of subtopics as well as one in a series of like topics - for instance, placing Ohio in both Category:Political divisions of the United States and Category:Ohio.

The present instance is covered by this exception, IMHO. For example, Sanskrit is an Indo-Aryan language, and as such should be in that category; it is also the topic of an entire category (Category:Sanskrit), and as such should be listed there as well.

typo

Hi Dbachmann,

the correct sanskrit spelling is संस्कृत वाक्, not संस्कृता वाक् - I saw that you reverted my correction. I have set it back to the correct spelling again. --ashwatha 00:55, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I am afraid what we are transliterating here is saṃskṛtā vāk, i.e. the Sanskrit term, not the Hindi term. saṃskṛta- is an adjective (as explained in the etymology section!). masculine: saṃskṛtaḥ. neuter: saṃskṛtaṃ. feminine: saṃskṛtā. vāk happens to be feminine, therefore: saṃskṛtā vāk. dab (ᛏ) 07:57, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Ah, that's fine then. I hadn't noticed the explanation before. Now I remember that 'vaak' is feminine in Sanskrit. Thanks, and my apologies. --ashwatha 19:51, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)

POV?

I'm just concerned about the neutrality of the lead section. What kind of proof is there for Sanskrit being the "premier classical language?" As a Classicist (and former student of Sanskrit), I realize it may sound a little funny coming from me, but there doesn't seem to be any basis for this comment other than elitism. -Eudyptes 04:15, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I think the syntax is supposed to mean "the premier classical language of India" here, which is arguable. I agree that it still reeks of Hindu elitism, and should be rephrased. dab (ᛏ) 07:51, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I went ahead and reworded it. Feel free to change the wording further. -- Sundar 08:52, Jan 31, 2005 (UTC)

Vedic

Well, why does the entry Vedic Sanskrit link here? I expected to read something about the differences between classical Sanskrit and Vedic, which are significant. A lot of form common in Vedic but lost somewhere in the 1st millenium BC are not in Panini's grammar; that makes the differences big enough, I think, to discuss the extremely archaic Vedic apart. But if you have any objections, then let us write at least a little on Vedic Sanskrit on this page - I think that is something it deserves!--Caesarion 16:10, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

of course -- the redirect is just sitting there, waiting for someone's loving attention. dab (ᛏ) 19:01, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Dbachmann, I think you may have made an error in your additions about Vedic retroflex L (Devanagari ळ): I think you confused it with vocalic L (Devanagari ऌ). You say that Vedic retroflex L is attested in the root klp (Devanagari क्ळ्प्, I suppose), but that would create a root consting of three consonants and no vowel (retroflex L is a consonant just like dental L). Vedic certainly had vocalic L as well as retroflex L, and AFAIK the classical root कॢप् appears in Vedic in that same form. So where is Vedic retroflex L attested? --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 21:48, 24 Mar 2005 (UTC)

phonology

In this article I read that Vedic Sanskrit has the following phonemes /f/ and /x/. Is this really true? Can you provide us some examples? If this is correct then this means Vedic Sanskrit resembles Avestan which also has these phonemes. Meursault2004 14:00, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

it doesn't. It does have the sounds [f] and (approximately) [x], however. They are both allophones of [s]. dab (ᛏ) 18:17, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ah right, can you also tell me in which positions this will occur? Meursault2004 00:45, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Before /p/ and /k/ respectively, if memory serves. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 20:35, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)
OK thanks! Meursault2004 05:03, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

L

I'm sorry, I have indeed mixed up vocalic and retroflex L in an earlier edit. It's ok now, vocalic L should of course not appear under consonants either. I am bracing myself now to export Vedic-specific stuff to Vedic Sanskrit. Concerning klp,

Finally, there was a vocalic l, also transliterated ḷ (L), but not to be confused with the cerebral l sound just mentioned. This vowel was phonematic, but it survives only in a single root in the Rigveda (kḷp "to order") and is lost in the later Vedic texts

It's true that the root is classical (with a present kalpate etc.) But forms containing vocalic L are restricted to Vedic, I think? It is in either case notable that the phoneme occurs only in this single root (cognate to English help, btw). dab (ᛏ) 15:25, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Vocalic L is attested in classical Sanskrit, AFAIK. I don't know Sanskrit well enough to be 100% certain, but I seem to recall that both classical Sanskrit grammars I have (neither of which delve at all into Vedic forms other than passing mentions) speak of classical forms such as कॢपतम् kḷptam. I'm at work right now, so I don't have the books in question handy, but I can check at least one of them when I'm at home. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 16:04, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have checked now. There are indeed classical forms with vocalic L. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 13:56, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Transliterating

I'm going to add conjugation and declension tables in IAST, but I'm afraid to touch the Devanagari in Unicode. Perhaps someone with more experise could add those in? StradivariusTV 16:04, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The Devanagari is redundant, and a pain. This is not the Devanagari article, so why should we bother with it? It adds no information. And, as we point out already, there are like a dozen scripts Sanskrit is or was written in, and we'll certainly not add all of those. Compare Arabic grammar: I've written the whole thing in transliteration, so that people can concentrate on the grammar, not the alphabet. All there is to know about that goes to Arabic alphabet. dab (ᛏ) 07:09, 31 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Of course Devanagari isn't the only alphabet used to write Sanskrit, but it certainly is the most common worldwide (kind of the "default" script for the language), and it represents the language far more efficiently than Roman transliteration (which I actually find more tiring to read than the Devanagari in some respects). If any script is redundant here, it's the Roman, but we add it so that people who don't read Devanagari can understand the article. --Marnen Laibow-Koser (talk) 13:55, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

hey, I am really grateful somebody is adding declension tables now, thanks! But afaik, the numbering Declension I, II etc. is not in any way canonical. I imagine it's taken over from Latin grammar. Why don't we just label them neuterally, thematic stems, long a stems, i and u stems, r, n, s stems and occlusive stems? Another possibility would be to go by Panini's nomenclature, but that may also turn out a bit weird. dab (ᛏ) 08:55, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes I do agree with Dbachmann. This article is about the Sanskrit language and Devanagari is not the only alphabet used to write Sanskrit. Let's respect the others and just stick with the neutral Roman script. Meursault2004 12:38, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
ok, but on a related note, what is Image:John 3 16 Sanskrit translation grantham script.gif doing in the language template? it is not a very typical script, nor a very typical text (John 3:16) at all, nor does it seem common to have script samples in the template at all, so if you don't mind I'll just remove that. dab (ᛏ) 09:19, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

different image issue

The image atop the article that purportedly says "sanskrit" ("sa.msk.rtam", if you will), does not match the spelling of this word in either the opening of the article nor in the language classification breakdown table. Someone can fix? Or explain? Tomer TALK 10:16, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

The image was incorrect, and it said "Sam.sakr.tam" instead of "Sam.skr.tam"

--sébastien 19:16, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I have replaced the image with the correct one.--GatesPlusPlus 06:14, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I am sorry, but why do we have this image?? This is the only language article with the name of the language given in giant font at the beginning of the article. What gives? Also, why is everyone so much into Devanagari? This is not the devanagari article, people! We are talking about the language. Too many people think that "in Devanagari" equals "in Sanskrit" already. The script is, for the purposes of this article, a red herring. There is a script section, so let's keep script issues there. dab (ᛏ) 07:06, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
btw, I am afraid the image is not very nice, anyway. it doesn't even show the -sk- ligature. If we're going to have an image of devanagari, make it a nice penned example, not some computer font without ligatures. dab (ᛏ) 07:13, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
In the interest of getting such a search rolling, I used MSPaint to make this image Image:Samskrtam.jpg. If we can't find anything nicer, I submit that this is better than what was there before (at the very least, it's accurate, if messy)... Tomer TALK 08:38, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
We seem to be talking about entirely different things here. I can give you an image with the proper ligature in the nice bibtex font by Charles Wikner. I just don't see the point, as it adds no information. When I say penned, I don't mean a free-hand drawing with MSPaint. I mean penned by some expert, preferably old, say along the lines of Image:Rigveda MS2097.jpg. Anything else is simply not encyclopedic. dab (ᛏ) 08:47, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Apparently a lack of sleep (for shame!) is making me incomprehensible. At no time was I proposing that my disgraceful attempt at writing sa.msk.rtam using MSPaint be considered as a "good image to include for the article". I would have thought it obvious that if I thought it useful for that purpose, I would have put it into the article. It was meant rather as a "pretty much anything must be better than this obscenity...anyone any ideas?" post. Tomer TALK 12:28, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

period spoken, # of speakers, link request

If anyone can defend the assertion that people were speaking Sanskrit in 3,000,000 BC, I'll be glad to rv my change of the period when S. was spoken from "the 3rd millennium BC" back to "3 million BC".

I changed the number of speakers from some that were, in my POV, either utterly bogus or outright irrelevant. I put in the 4 million "second language" speakers figure based on the last sentence of the "Attempts at revival" section.

On that note, the "Attempts at revival" section ends with a rather cryptic "See link." If anyone knows which link it is, please replace "See link." with a link to the relevant URL. Tomer TALK 21:06, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I think the numbers you removed were official Indian census numbers. That doesn't mean they're accurate, but just quoting a random number with "(est.)", without saying whose estimate that is, is certainly not an improvement. Can we have the official numbers back, please? dab (ᛏ) 08:53, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
If you really wish to put back "official" numbers, which are ludicrous, not only in their specificity, but also in their obscenely "out-of-datednes", go ahead and do so, I'm not going to rv you. I made VERY CLEAR whence I got the estimate with which I replaced the earlier figures, and if you take the time to read the article, you'll realize that. Saying that there are a couple hundred thousand 2nd language speakers in the language spec table and then later on in the article saying that there are an estimated 4 million 2nd language speakers, however, strikes me as worse than bad editing, it strikes me instead as utter idiocy. If you would like to insist on a 1961 estimate, however, that estimates right down to single digits, as a "legitimate" number tho, I'm not going to stop you, but I'm going to disavow any responsibility for the legitimacy of the article as a whole right now, if you do so, on that basis alone. Tomer TALK 10:22, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
Dum dam dumb domm dim, how many ways can you spell "moronic"? Until those numbers are BACKED UP WITH SOME OUTSIDE SOURCE, I'm going to insist that you're dum dam dumb domm dim to insist on using them as realistic figures. I don't mean this as a personal attack, I simply think you're pursuing refinement for the article without bothering to take into account how completely irrelevant the "official data" you're using as "noteworthy" and "authoritative" really are...I'd RV your, in my opinion, completely foolish edit, but it would probably be WP:POINT of me to do so. In the meantime, until someone undoes that nonsense, I'll make my point in other ways...for example, pointing out to anyone who consults me about the reliability of Wikipedia, the utter idiocy of the insistence upon using such hopelessly outdated data as somehow relevant...(Try to keep in mind...India's population has almost doubled since 1961...that alone should convince you to discard that figure, but I see no point in arguing with a brick wall...) Tomer TALK 10:29, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, and I'll have a tale to tell with what sort of people you have to put up on WP talk pages. I did read your statement above. The four millions is based on a "cryptic 'see link'" while the 1961 census data is based, well, on the 1961 census of India, as reported by the most recent edition of the SIL ethnologue. So, if you'll stop your Bombadilesque humming and your oblique potshots, and come up with some sort of reference for a higher number, we'll gladly include that. Until then, we'll just have to keep the outdated figure, clearly admitting it is outdated. I readily believe the number of "second language speakers" (whatever that means. Do you have to be fluent?) is four million, but until we do not have a credible source for the number (no, "see link" without a link is not a credible source), we'll have to do without. dab (ᛏ) 11:11, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Oh shush :-p At least you're not trying to defend the "three million years ago" thingy.  :-) We'll figure this out, I was just hoping that someone had access to a relevant, by which, I by now obviously mean current "number of speakers" list. That said, I still think that the "exact numbers", i.e., right down to the individual, is ludicrous in the extreme, and that the very exactness of those figures should be sufficient to cast serious doubt upon their accuracy. Like I said, I'm not going to rv you, but I still think your insistence on listing those figures is an unjustified pæan to "hyperaccuracy" without respect to time constraints, i.e., reality. In the meantime, I'm going to do what I can to do what you should have done before rving to such idiotic figures: looking for reliable current sources. Tomer TALK 11:41, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)
nobody claimed these numbers were the exact number of speakers, at any time. In 1981, he govenment of India did a census. They counted how many forms had "Sanskrit" in the field "native language". They came up with the number 6'106. Anybody with any sense parses this as "in the 80s, there were a couple of thousand people who claimed their first language was Sanskrit", and not "there are 6106 native speakers of Sanskrit in India". These people may have been lying, mind you. They were probably brahmins who learned Sanskrit from a very early age, and decided to give it as their first language rather than the other language they learned from very early on. I don't see what's stupit with just giving the data in the Ethnologue. We're an encyclopedia, after all. Find a source superior to SIL, great. Until then, SIL is a fair enough authority.
as an aside, I think you'll have a much better time on Wikipedia if you don't fling around accusations of idiocy so light-heartedly.
and, ffs, we give the source, and the date. We can say "6106 (1981 census)", but we cannot say "6000 (1981 census)" , because the former, idiotic or not, is what's in the bloody census. We could say "some 6000", but that would mean "WP claims some 6000", while "6106 (1981 census)" simply means "WP claims the 1981 census of India came up with the number 6106" which is obviously the weaker statement, and the "some 6000" claim would just be based on that directly anyway. dab (ᛏ) 12:19, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
hmmm...reconsidering...nope! still DONE. Tomer TALK 12:23, Apr 20, 2005 (UTC)

Article title

This article in specific was discussed during the development of the naming policy for language articles, and the consensus is that the word language would only appear in the article title when the language's name had a primary meaning distinct from the language, which is not the case with Sanskrit. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages), which says "If the language's name is unique, there is no need for any suffix." Nohat 17:53, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

Patent nonsense?

I found the following text in the article: "Sanskrit, though many linguists may deny, has great influence on Old Latin and other present-day Europian languages too. The study of relation between Sanskrit and Europian languages has already began in India, which is in its early stages at present." which sounds a bit like patent nonsense. So I removed it.

Good call. By the way, you can sign your comments with ~~~~. -- Sundar (talk · contribs) 04:06, Jun 17, 2005 (UTC)
very patent, thanks. I consider this article about "halfway there", at the moment (thanks for the declination tables!). Once we filled in the remaining blanks, it'll need another general overhaul before we can start thinking of FA. But keep going! It'll get there some day. dab (ᛏ) 08:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Hinduism in the Philippines

I would like to start this article.I am search through google now. If anybody would like to recommend a link or collaborate, please let me know.--Jondel 09:24, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

vernacular?

the 'revival' of Sanskrit as a "vernacular" as claimed in the indiantimes article is a bit of an oxymoron: Sanskrit can never be a vernacular, since by its very definition, from the times of Panini, it was the non-vernacular, as opposed to "the Prakrits"="the vernaculars". If they really succeed in reviving a Sanskrit based vernacular in Karnataka, all they will do is recreate some sort of Prakrit: All vernaculars are innovative, while Sanskrit is "frozen", i.e. its grammar is prescriptive. The situation will at best be similar to Ivrit, which certainly isn't equal to biblical Hebrew. dab (ᛏ) 13:48, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

General remarks

This is a good article overall, but the second sentence is confusing as it states that "it is a dead language" with "no community of native speakers" and then immediately "some 6000 Brahmins even identify it as their mother tongue". Could it be this mirrors some confusion about the status of Sanskrit in India today?

Also, regarding the sentence, "Most Sanskrit texts available today were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were written down in medieval India," although the oral tradition is important, I believe that Sanskrit manuscripts were kept from earliest times. But I don't have the facts to hand right now to back this up.

Regarding the previous comment, I agree that Sanskrit is by definition not a vernacular language, and this should be changed in the article. However, neither is Sanskrit "frozen": literary style, choice of vocabulary, precise word meaning etc. change over time, so, for example, the Sanskrit of Kalidasa is very different from that of Dandin a few centuries later. --Abhinava 00:56, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

"Nam" false cognate?

On the page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_cognate, it is claimed that "nam" is a word unrelated to English "name". I just thought it looked strange, since the PIE root for "name" is so common in most PIE languages. Also, Sanskrit has nāmah. Are really the words unrelated?

According to the OED, nāman is cognate with name. StradivariusTV 05:39, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
BTW, there is a Japanese word 名前(namae) which means -- you guessed it-- name.--Jondel 05:43, 28 September 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, Namae seems to be a false cognate, but I wondered about the Sanskrit claim. Could be from one of these fringe individuals that claims that Sanskrit is unrelated to all European languages, and that the IE language group is an unproven hypothesis... Original Research, anyone...