Sanskrit, earliest of the ancient languages.
Among the current languages which possess a hoary antiquity like Latin or Greek, Sanskrit is the only language which has retained its pristine purity. It has maintained its structure and vocabulary even today as it was in the past.
The oldest literature of the world, the Vedas, the Puranas and the Ithihasas which relate to the Indian subcontinent, are still available in the same form as they were known from the very beginning. There are many many scholars in India who can interpret them today, much the same way great scholars of India did years ago. Such interpretation comes not by merely studying earlier known
interpretations but through a steady process of assimilation of knowledge
linking a variety of disciplines via Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is a Scientist's paradise Sanskrit, the vocabulary of which is derived from root syllables, is ideal for coining new scientific and technological terms. The need to borrow words or special scientific terms does not arise. From the very beginning, scientific principles have been hidden in the verses found in the Vedas, Upanishads and the great epics of India. Concepts and principles seen in present day mathematics and astronomy, are all hidden in the compositions and treatises of many early scholars of India.
Linguistics The precise and extremely well defined structure of Sanskrit, coupled with its antiquity offers a number of areas in linguistics research including Computational Linguistics.
Also, Sanskrit distinguishes itself in that it is the only known language which has a built-in scheme for pronunciation, word formation and grammar.Sanskrit, a language for Humanity Sanskrit is a language
for humanity and not merely a means for communication within a society.
The oldest surviving literature of the world, viz. the Vedas, encompass
knowledge in virtually every sphere of human activity. The fact that many
profound principles relating to human existence were given expression through
Sanskrit, continue to amaze those who study Sanskrit. A Sanskrit Scholar
understands the world better than most others.
Sanskrit perfectly depicted (and continues to depict) the social order of the day and offers clues to historical developments within the Society. The language has been used effectively to describe the virtuous and the not so virtuous qualitiesof great men, women, kings and queens, the philosophers and Saints of thecountry. Philosophy, Theology and Sanskrit Sanskrit abounds in Philosophy and Theology related issues.
There are so many words one encounters within Sanskrit that convey subtly differing meanings of a concept that admits of only one interpretation when studied with other languages. The language thus has the ability to offer links between concepts using just the words.
Sanskrit for your emotions The connoisseurs of the Sanskrit language know that it is the language of the heart. Whatever be the emotion one wishes to display, be it devotion, love, affection, fear, threat, anger, compassion, benevolence, admiration, surprise and the like, the most appropriate words of Sanskrit can flow like a gushing stream.
Some Unique Characteristics of the language Sanskrit is co-original with the Vedas.. The vedas cannot be studied without the Vedangas, which are six in number. The first three deal with the spoken aspects of the language. The first of these three, namely Siksha, tells us how to pronounce the letters of the aksharas. Siksha divides the letters into three classes- Swaras, Vyanjanas and Oushmanas. Depending on the effort (Prayatna), place of origin in the body (Sthana), the force used (Bala) and the duration of time (Kala), the letters differ from each other in their auditory quality
and meaning. Vyakarna, known as the grammar of Sanskrit, is the second Vedanga which describes meaningful word formations. This is usually referred to as Sphota or meaningful sound. The third Vedanga, Niruktam, describes certain fundamental root words used in the Vedas. Classification of words into groups of synonyms is an example.
For instance, approximately a hundred and twenty synonyms for water are given in Niruktam. The fourth Vedanga, Chandas, describes the formation of sentences in metrical form. Unlike
English which used a very limited number of metres (basically four), Sanskrit
offers about two dozen Vedic metres and innumerable conventional metres.
The remaining two Vedangas, Kalpa and Jyothisha deal with
space and time.
The letters of Sanskrit Sanskrit comprises
fifty one letters or aksharas. In other languages, we refer to the letters
of the alphabet of the language. We know that the word alphabet is derived
from the names of the first two letters of Greek. The term alphabet has
no other meaning except to denote the set of letters in the language.
In contrast, the word
"akshara" in Sanskrit denotes something fundamental and significant. One
of the direct meanings of the word is that it denotes the set of letters
of Sanskrit from the first to the last.
The word also means that the soundof the letter does not ever get destroyed and thus signifies the eternalquality of the sound of the letters. The consequence of this meaning is
that the sound of a word is essentially the sounds of the aksharas in the
word, a concept which will help simplify text to speech applications with
computers.
There are two aspects
of non destruction in the above explanation. The first one refers to the
phonetic characteristics of the language, i.e., in any word, the aksharas
retain their sound. The second aspect of non destruction, amazingly, is
that the aksharas retain their individual meanings as well!
To give an example, the word "guru" consisting of the aksharas "gu" and "ru" stands for a teacher- one who dispels darkness (ignorance) of the the mind (person). "gu" means darkness and "ru" means the act of removal. The popular Sanskrit language is based on root syllables and words. Unlike the other languages of the world, every word in Sanskrit is derived from a root. It is a well accepted fact that all Indo-European languages have a common origin. On
the basis of the above mentioned fact that all the words of Sanskrit are
traceable to specific roots, a feature not seen in other languages, one
can presume that Sanskrit is most certainly the origin.
Massive, yet precise One can learn Sanskrit
purely for the sake of the great epics of India. The Ramayana has 24,000
verses fully in metre and the Mahabharata qualifies as the world's largest
epic with 100,000 verses. The Mahabharata says, "what is here may be elsewhere, what is not here is nowhere." The precision with which the verses convey information on so many different aspects of life in a society, is a factor
one must reckon as the ultimate in composition.
SOURCE:- http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskr..
Sanskrit was also suggested as the
best language for use in Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence by NASA. It is the
only language in the world which is scientifically precise as was
discovered by the NASA scientist Rick Briggs as published in the
Artificial Intelligence Magazine
Rick Briggs:
"As we shall see, there was a language spoken among an ancient scientific community that has a deviation of zero. This language is Sanskrit."Link
http://www.hinduwisdom.info/Sans... furnishes more opinions on the language by many
contemporary eminent scholars from all over the world.
A nice quote written in Sanskrit:-
भवन्ति नम्रास्तरवः फलोद्गमैः
नवाम्बुभिर्भूरिविलम्बिनो घनाः ।
अनुद्धताः सत्पुरुषाः समृद्धिभिः
स्वभाव एवैषः परोपकारिणाम् ॥
English translation:-
On bearing fruits, trees bend (i.e. become humble),
with new [recently] gathered water, clouds hang very low,
wealthy good men maintain non-arrogant nature,
this is the nature of benevolent persons.
Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages in the world. The grammar for Sanskrit was laid out by Panini in the 4th century BC. Most North Indian languages today are descended from Sanskrit. When we say descended, we mean that they are corruptions of Sanskrit, in the same way that Bhojpuri, Khadi Boli, Awadhi, Mumbaiyya Hindi might be considered corruptions of Hindi. Over the years, these corruptions developed into full fledged languages in their own right. However, most of them retain the same grammatical structure and have many words that are common, and differ only in pronunciation.
For example, home in Sanskrit is Griha. Home in Hindi, Marathi, Gujrati is Ghar, and in Punjabi is Grahi. [1]
In this way, most North Indian languages can be traced back to Sanskrit. This is why it is called the mother of North Indian languages
Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages. Its closest ancient relatives are the
Iranian languages Avestan and
Old Persian.
[41][42]
In order to explain the common features shared by Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages, the
Indo-Aryan migration theory states that the original speakers of what became Sanskrit arrived in the Indian subcontinent from the north-west some time during the early second millennium BCE. Evidence for such a theory includes 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.
[43]
The earliest attested Sanskrit texts are religious texts of the Rigveda, from the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if they ever existed. However, scholars are confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they were ceremonial literature whose correct pronunciation was considered crucial to its religious efficacy.
[44]
From the Rigveda until the time of
Pāṇini (fourth century BCE) the development of the early Vedic language can be observed in other Vedic texts: the
Samaveda,
Yajurveda,
Atharvaveda,
Brahmanas, and
Upanishads. During this time, the prestige of the language, its use for sacred purposes, and the importance attached to its correct enunciation all served as powerful conservative forces resisting the normal processes of linguistic change.
[45] However, there is a clear, five-level linguistic development of Vedic from the Rigveda to the language of the Upanishads and the earliest sutras such as the
Baudhayana sutras
