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Sanskrit Language: The Most Scientific, Ancient, Spiritual

Infact, if I am not mistaken there is even a Dravidian language spoken in Pakistan - Brahui
 
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It makes sense though, coz' Sanskrit arrived in India with the invasion of Aryans. Dravidian civilization must have developed an independent culture and language of their own. And Tamil scripts doesn't resemble Sanskrit even remotely.

Just my thought.

Divya already explained it the Tamil is the oldest living language, but Sanskrit is pre-vedic. Although the written scripts may be different, but most of the Indian languages are descendant of Sanskrit only (including Tamil). Why do you think prosperity is Mangal in Hindi/ Bengali/ Assamese/ Oriya and Mangalam in Sankrit/ Tamil?

Other examples:

Sorrow: Dukh - Hindi/ Bengali/ Assamese/ Oriya, Dukham- Sanskrit/ Telegu/ Tamil
Happiness: Sukh- Hindi/Assamese/ Bengali/ Oriya; Sukham: Sanskrit/ Tamil/ Telugu
Peace: Shanti- allmost all Indian language

If you think hard, you'll see thousands of such example. This is one link which strongly denounce either the Aryan invassion theory or Sanskrit being a language of the Aryans.
 
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Infact, if I am not mistaken there is even a Dravidian language spoken in Pakistan - Brahui

Yes, in fact some say it is the last remnant of the Indus Civilization language, or at least, that it is descended from it, which means it is extremely important to preserve it. It may be our last link to their language.
 
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Sanskrit is shackled by its own grammar, hence cant evolve with time. I dont take scintific language as a complement, it actually means it is less human, fit for machines.
 
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c
Divya already explained it the Tamil is the oldest living language, but Sanskrit is pre-vedic. Although the written scripts may be different, but most of the Indian languages are descendant of Sanskrit only (including Tamil). Why do you think prosperity is Mangal in Hindi/ Bengali/ Assamese/ Oriya and Mangalam in Sankrit/ Tamil?

Other examples:

Sorrow: Dukh - Hindi/ Bengali/ Assamese/ Oriya, Dukham- Sanskrit/ Telegu/ Tamil
Happiness: Sukh- Hindi/Assamese/ Bengali/ Oriya; Sukham: Sanskrit/ Tamil/ Telugu
Peace: Shanti- allmost all Indian language

If you think hard, you'll see thousands of such example. This is one link which strongly denounce either the Aryan invassion theory or Sanskrit being a language of the Aryans.

Hembo,

there is another phrase for prosperity - "selva chezhippu".thuyaram could be a rough equivalent for sorrow. inbam could be said for happiness. amaidhi can be taken as peace. Tamil experts may be able to give you better equivalents. However, I do agree that colloquial Tamil has quite a few loan words from Sanskrit. Calling Tamil a child of Sanskrit just based on some words, IMHO, is taking a very narrow view.
 
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India and China are where the most significant ancient culture and history settles down...
 
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Sanskrit still blooming in a tiny village in Karnataka
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: January 30, 2003

Sheeghram Dhave" (run fast), shouts a little boy in chaste Sanskrit to his fellow batsman while running between the wickets holding the bat on a nondescript maidan in this village, where the country's ancient language still remains alive and spoken among the rustic folk, reports UNI.

At the sight of an outsider, the lad is suddenly subdued and gives a nod to this correspondent: "Suprabhatam".

Sanskrit, touted as the mother of all languages, has overcome a brief lull in its verbal existence and again started blooming in this neat and tiny village located on the picturesque banks of the river Tunga in Shimoga district. As had been the case during its hoary past, a visitor to this place is greeted by a 'Good Morning' in the Indian version and even with vedic chants sometimes.

Historically, the natives of this village are settlers from Sankote located in Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border and had made Mattur their home since almost five centuries ago following a largesse sanctioned by Krishnadevaraya, the emperor of Vijayanagara in 1509-30. Known for his penchant to encourage all manifestations of culture and languages, he doled out 120 acres of land here for the migrants to five by practising and preaching the Vedas.

The advent of English education in the early spans of the last century did make some dent into Sanskrit-speaking habit of the successive generations. Until erosion was stemmed in 1992 by Udupi Pejawar Mutt pontiff Vishveshathirtha, who visited the village and was impressed by its lush-green locale.

So moved was the swamiji at the sight of Mattur's tranquil and pleasant ambience that he gave a clarion call to develop it as a model 'Sanskrit village'. His exhortion to the natives to rekindle the spirit of the ancient language eventually found results in all ways of life and walks of people.

Coming to the current times, all children in local schools invariably take Sanskrit as the optional language and display keen interest in ensuring that it existed even outside classrooms. Irrespective of caste and creed, the local people, totaling 3500, converse In Sanskrit across the village, which has not experienced any communal disturbance. Credit also goes to the Samskruta Bharati, a 1982-founded organisation in the wake of some adverse comments aired about Sanskrit language those days. Its functionaries took up the daunting task of helping Sanskrit flourish by roping in the help of pandits settled in the village.

---------- Post added at 01:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:28 PM ----------

Sanskrit speaking village in Madhya Pradesh
Sanskrit boulevard Aditya Ghosh, Hindustan Times
September 20, 2008

In these Indian villages, inhabitants of all castes speak Sanskrit natively since childhood:

1.Mattur in Karnataka,[40]
2.Jhiri, District: Rajgadh, Madhya Pradesh,[41]
3.Ganoda, District: Banswada, Rajasthan,[42]
4.Bawali, District: Bagapat, Uttar Pradesh
5.Mohad, District: Narasinhpur, Madhya Pradesh
6.Shyamsundarpur,District: Kendujhar, Odisha.[43]
 
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c

Hembo,

there is another phrase for prosperity - "selva chezhippu".thuyaram could be a rough equivalent for sorrow. inbam could be said for happiness. amaidhi can be taken as peace. Tamil experts may be able to give you better equivalents. However, I do agree that colloquial Tamil has quite a few loan words from Sanskrit. Calling Tamil a child of Sanskrit just based on some words, IMHO, is taking a very narrow view.

you're prbably right. I should not have said as much as descendant of Sanskrit, but borrowed heavily from Sanskrit. Dravidian languages origin has been a a mystery to more or less all lingustic expert so far. Even the Ind-Aryan theorist also cannot explain properly any linkage although it has been tried.

Nonetheless, while there are no readily detectable genealogical connections, there are strong areal features linking Dravidian with the Indo-Aryan languages. Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (either phonological or grammatical) borrowing, from Indo-Aryan, whereas the Indo-Aryan shows more structural features than lexical borrowings from the Dravidian languages.[4] The Dravidian impact on the syntax of Indo-Aryan languages is considered far greater than the Indo-Aryan impact on Dravidian grammar. Some linguists explain this asymmetry by arguing that Middle Indo-Aryan languages were built on a Dravidian substratum.

Reference: Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (2003) The Dravidian Languages Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-77111-0 at p. 40-41.


Sanskrit's Influence on vernaculars:
Sanskrit's greatest influence, presumably, is that which it exerted on languages of India that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base; for instance Hindi, which is a "Sanskritized register" of the Khariboli dialect. However, all modern Indo-Aryan languages as well as Munda and Dravidian languages, have borrowed many words either directly from Sanskrit (tatsama words), or indirectly via middle Indo-Aryan languages (tadbhava words). Words originating in Sanskrit are estimated to constitute roughly fifty percent of the vocabulary of modern Indo-Aryan languages, and the literary forms of (Dravidian) Malayalam and Kannada. Literary texts in Telugu are lexically Sanskrit or Sanskritized to an enormous extent, perhaps seventy percent or more.

Sanskrit is prized as a storehouse of scripture and the language of prayers in Hinduism. Like Latin's influence on European languages and Classical Chinese's influence on East Asian languages, Sanskrit has influenced most Indian languages. While vernacular prayer is common, Sanskrit mantras are recited by millions of Hindus and most temple functions are conducted entirely in Sanskrit, often Vedic in form. Of modern day Indian languages, while Hindi and Urdu tend to be more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence, Nepali, Bengali, Assamese, Konkani and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit and Prakrit vocabulary base. The Indian national anthem, Jana Gana Mana, is written in a literary form of Bengali (known as sadhu bhasha), Sanskritized so as to be recognizable, but still archaic to the modern ear. The national song of India Vande Mataram was originally a poem composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and taken from his book called 'Anandamath', is in a similarly highly Sanskritized Bengali. Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada also combine a great deal of Sanskrit vocabulary. Sanskrit also has influence on Chinese through Buddhist Sutras. Chinese words like 剎那 chànà (Skt. क्षन kṣana 'instantaneous period of time') were borrowed from Sanskrit.

References:
Chatterji 1942, cited in Stall 1963
Velcheru Narayana Rao; David Shulman, Classical Telugu Poetry (2 ed.), The Regents of the University of California
 
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Dravidian substratum influence on Sanskrit

Dravidian and Sanskrit have influenced each other in various ways from very early times, hence it is an interesting field for linguistic research.

The Indologist and linguist Zvelebil has remarked that: "... the period of the high water mark of Tamil classical literature was one in which the two great Sanskrit epics were already completed, but the Sanskrit classical poetry was barely emerging with Aśvaghoṣa." He continues: "No stylistic feature or convention could have been borrowed by the Tamils (though of course there are borrowings of purāṇic stories" (emphasis added). [21]

Zvelebil remarks:

"Though the dominance of Sanskrit was exaggerated in some Brahmanic circles of Tamilnadu, and Tamil was given unduly underestimated by a few Sanskrit-oriented scholars, the Tamil and Sanskrit cultures were not generally in rivalry".

However more recent research has shown that Sanskrit has been influenced in certain more fundamental ways than Dravidian languages have been by it: It is by way of phonology[22] and even more significantly here via grammatical constructs. This has been the case from the earliest language available (ca. 1200 B.C.) of Sanskrit: the Ṛg Vedic speech.

Dravidian languages show extensive lexical (vocabulary) borrowing, but only a few traits of structural (either phonological or grammatical) borrowing, from the Indo-Aryan tongues. On the other hand, Indo-Aryan shows rather large-scale structural borrowing from Dravidian, but relatively few loanwords.[4]

The Ṛg Vedic language has retroflex consonants even though it is well known that the Indo European family and the Indo-Iranian subfamily to which Sanskrit belongs lack retroflex consonants (ṭ/ḍ, ṇ) with about 88 words in the Ṛg Veda having unconditioned retroflexes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Some sample words are: (Iṭanta, Kaṇva,śakaṭī, kevaṭa, puṇya, maṇḍūka) This is cited as a serious evidence of substrate influence from close contact of the Vedic speakers with speakers of a foreign language family rich in retroflex phonemes (Kuiper 1991, Witzel 1999). Obviously the Dravidian family would be a serious candidate here (ibid as well as Krishnamurti 2003: p36) since it is rich in retroflex phonemes reconstructible back to the Proto-Dravidian stage[See Subrahmanyam 1983:p40, Zvelebil 1990, Krishnamurti 2003].

A more serious influence on Vedic Sanskrit is the extensive grammatical influence attested by the usage of the quotative marker iti and the occurrence of gerunds of verbs, a grammatical feature not found even in the Avestan language, a sister language of the Vedic Sanskrit. As Krishnamurti states: "Besides, the Ṛg Veda has used the gerund, not found in Avestan, with the same grammatical function as in Dravidian, as a non-finite verb for 'incomplete' action. Ṛg Vedic language also attests the use of iti as a quotative clause complementizer. All these features are not a consequence of simple borrowing but they indicate substratum influence (Kuiper 1991: ch 2)".

The Brahui population of Balochistan has been taken by some as the linguistic equivalent of a relict population, perhaps indicating that Dravidian languages were formerly much more widespread and were supplanted by the incoming Indo-Aryan languages.[23] However it has now been demonstrated that the Brahui could only have migrated to Balochistan from central India after 1000 CE. The absence of any older Iranian (Avestan) loanwords in Brahui supports this hypothesis. The main Iranian contributor to Brahui vocabulary, Balochi, is a western Iranian language like Kurdish, and moved to the area from the west only around 1000 CE.[24]

Thomason & Kaufman (1988) state that there is strong evidence that Dravidian influenced Indic through "shift", that is, native Dravidian speakers learning and adopting Indic languages. Elst (1999) claims that the presence of the Brahui language, similarities between Elamite and Harappan script as well as similarities between Indo-Aryan and Dravidian indicate that these languages may have interacted prior to the spread of Indo-Aryans southwards and the resultant intermixing of languages. Erdosy (1995:18) states that the most plausible explanation for the presence of Dravidian structural features in Old Indo-Aryan is that the majority of early Old Indo-Aryan speakers had a Dravidian mother tongue which they gradually abandoned. Even though the innovative traits in Indic could be explained by multiple internal explanations, early Dravidian influence is the only explanation that can account for all of the innovations at once – it becomes a question of explanatory parsimony; moreover, early Dravidian influence accounts for the several of the innovative traits in Indic better than any internal explanation that has been proposed.[25]

Zvelebil remarks[20]: "Several scholars have demonstrated that pre-Indo-Aryan and pre-Dravidian bilingualism in India provided conditions for the far-reaching influence of Dravidian on the Indo-Aryan tongues in the spheres of phonology (e.g., the retroflex consonants, made with the tongue curled upward toward the palate), syntax (e.g., the frequent use of gerunds, which are nonfinite verb forms of nominal character, as in 'by the falling of the rain'), and vocabulary (a number of Dravidian loanwords apparently appearing in the Rigveda itself)."
 
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BBC/PBS Jan 5 2009 – The Story of India, Aryan Invasion Theory Flawed is shown as facts to everyone of English speaking audience and this still taught in Indian schools.

Here is Superficial Aryan- Dravidian Divide:




Good Article by David Frawley: The Myth of the Aryan Invasion of India By David Frawley
The Myth of Aryan Invasion of India

Michael Woods’s documentary, The Story of India, professional archaeologist historian of BBC, misrepresents as there was Aryan invasion of India at 1500 BCE. According Rig Veda, there is no mention of any sort of invasion. Rig Veda mentions Saraswati River which is dried up in around 1900 BCE. Current satellite pictures shows this river dried up. This put Aryan Invasion Theory to bite the dust. His representation will upset scholars of Indus Valley Civilization (Ancient Vedic Society that still exists and practiced by today in India by Hindus), who believe in, Out Of India Theory first proposed by a German.

Indian History have to be rewritten inform ignorant people who are being brain washed by defunct theory of Aryan Invasion into India.

Michael Woods starts off by showing DNA evidence found in a South Indian, as a marker of earliest genes found to when first man migrated from Africa in recent Humans. But he doesn’t even mention Indian gene pool didn’t change for more than 6000 years.

Recent genetic study by University of Cambridge human genetics professor Dr. Toomas Kivisild in his 2007 genetic works show highest concentration of R1a1 gene found only in Indian Subcontinent and Gypsies(who are actually Indians). Who now backs, Out of India Theory.

In what is known as Mesopotamia, currently Turkey, there are findings of Sanskrit and worshiping of Hindu gods by Mittani people, Mittani, see section Indo-Aryan superstrate.

Google Videos – Story of India
Part 1
[video=google;2359467386775757720]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2359467386775757720&ei=OaBfSaWmMoSM-QG0zbjQDg&q=the+story+of+india"[/video]
Part 2
[video=google;-8520208019452953164]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8520208019452953164&ei=OaBfSaWmMoSM-QG0zbjQDg&q=the+story+of+india"[/video]
Part 4
[video=google;9111758677287606611]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9111758677287606611&ei=OaBfSaWmMoSM-QG0zbjQDg&q=the+story+of+india"[/video]
Part 5
[video=google;-468969693864555869]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-468969693864555869&ei=x6BfSYGjHonS-AGe-Pm8BQ&q=the+story+of+india"[/video]

This has good discussion about BBC Documentary:
Michael Wood
Talk Story of India
I can’t find Part 3 and Part 6 on the internet. If you do find it please add it to this thread.
 
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Divya already explained it the Tamil is the oldest living language, but Sanskrit is pre-vedic. Although the written scripts may be different, but most of the Indian languages are descendant of Sanskrit only (including Tamil).

Tamil and by extension all the four Southern Languages are NOT derived from Sanskrit. Their development is parallel to that of Sanskrit.


Why do you think prosperity is Mangal in Hindi/ Bengali/ Assamese/ Oriya and Mangalam in Sankrit/ Tamil?

Other examples:

Sorrow: Dukh - Hindi/ Bengali/ Assamese/ Oriya, Dukham- Sanskrit/ Telegu/ Tamil
Happiness: Sukh- Hindi/Assamese/ Bengali/ Oriya; Sukham: Sanskrit/ Tamil/ Telugu
Peace: Shanti- allmost all Indian language

If you think hard, you'll see thousands of such example. This is one link which strongly denounce either the Aryan invassion theory or Sanskrit being a language of the Aryans.

All these examples are a result of the Dravidian Languages just borrowing words from Sanskrit (or is it the other way around ??) and not as a result of derivation.

Even among the four languages (Tamil, Mal, Kannada and Telugu) the degree of Sanskrit borrowing varies - it is the mot among Malayalam and the least in Tamil.
 
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Ask madamjee she will definetly vote for making Italian mother tougue of Indians as well as national language....

Well, she will be head over heels listening to this and might hug Ahmed Patel in joy and then slap him for not suggesting it earlier. After that we might even have chance to vote for our National animal.

A) American Bison
B) Italian Wolf
 
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Reviving Sanskrit should be given impetus by the Indian Govt - of course the whole national language thing is rubbish. Can't force a language down anyone's throats. But the Israelis did revive Hebrew - so we too should work toward reviving Sanskrit.

Yes, that's true but they were in dire need of a national language because majority of their population came from different nations after the establishment of Israel. But even today there are many Israelis who can barely speak Hebrew since Russian used to be their mother tongue and they have a hard time learning and speaking Hebrew.
 
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Tamil and by extension all the four Southern Languages are NOT derived from Sanskrit. Their development is parallel to that of Sanskrit.



All these examples are a result of the Dravidian Languages just borrowing words from Sanskrit (or is it the other way around ??) and not as a result of derivation.

Even among the four languages (Tamil, Mal, Kannada and Telugu) the degree of Sanskrit borrowing varies - it is the mot among Malayalam and the least in Tamil.

Yes, I already accepted my mistake and said so in post #53
 
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