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The first Sanskrit text known to us is the Rig-veda (or Ṛgveda ऋग्वेद), part of the early canon of Hinduism, the Vedas. There are far more Sanskrit texts preserved than there are Latin and Greek ones combined. Most Sanskrit texts available today were composed in ancient and medieval India.
| Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्) | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in: | Asia |
| Region: | India and some other areas of South Asia, parts of South East Asia |
| Total speakers: | 6,106 native ( 1981Events January-February January Sarawak Chamber found January 1 Greece enters the EEC January 1 Palau becomes self-governing January 4 Sheffield police arrests Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper January 16 Protestant gunmen shoot and wound Bernadette D);
194,433 second language ( 19611961 (As MAD Magazine pointed out on its first cover for the year) was the first "upside-down" year i. one that looked the same upside down since 1881, and the last until 6009. Events January January 1 The farthing coin, used since the 13th century, cease) |
| RankingThis page tries to present a list of languages by total native speakers . Note, however, that lists such as this may vary somewhat depending upon the definition given to certain terms. In particular, the exact difference between " dialect" and " language": | Not in top 100 |
| GeneticLanguages Most languages are known to belong to language families ("families" hereforth). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i. all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since mos classificationLanguages Most languages are known to belong to language families ("families" hereforth). An accurately identified family is a phylogenetic unit, i. all its members derive from a common ancestor. The ancestor is very seldom known to us directly, since mos: | Indo-EuropeanIndo-European is originally a linguistic term, referring to the Indo-European language family. By extension, it became a collective name for cultures and religions associated with these languages. Hypothetically, these cultures arose from the expansion of Indo-Iranianthe Indo-Iranian languages the prehistoric Indo-Iranian people, see Aryan. |
| Official status | |
| Official language of: | India |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | sa |
| ISO 639-2 | san |
| SIL | SKT |
The word saṃskṛtam means "put together or constructed well, completely formed, perfected", also "purified, consecrated, sanctified". The language referred to as saṃskṛtā vāk "the refined language" has by definition always been a 'high' language, used for religious and scientific discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Pnini's Astdhyyi ("8 Chapter Grammar") datng to ca. the 5th century BC. It is essentially a prescriptive grammar, i. e. an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts, mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in Panini's time.
Virtually every Sanskrit student in India learns the traditional story that Sanskrit was created and then refined over many generations (traditionally more than a thousand years) until it was considered complete and perfect. When the term arose in India, "Sanskrit" was not conceived of as referring to a specific language set apart from other languages (the people of the time regarded languages more as dialects), but rather referred to a particularly refined manner of speaking, bearing somewhat the same relation to common language that "Standard" English bears to commonly spoken dialects in many regions of the United States. The knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment, and was closely governed by the analyses of grammarians. This form of the language evolved out of the earlier "Vedic" form, and scholars often distinguish Vedic from Classical as separate languages. However, they are extremely similar in most regards, differing only in a few points of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar.
Vedic is the language of the Vedas, the earliest sacred texts of India and the base of the Hindu religion. The earliest of the Vedas, the Rigveda, was composed in 2nd millennium BC. The Vedic form survived until the middle of the first millennium BC. It is around this time that Sanskrit made the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, marking the beginning of the Classical period. A form of Sanskrit called Epic Sanskrit is seen in the Mahabharata and other Hindu epics. This includes more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than Classical Sanskrit proper. There is also a language dubbed " Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" by scholars, which is actually a prakrit ornamented with Sanskritized elements, perhaps for purposes of ostentation.
There is a strong genetic relationship between the various forms of Sanskrit and the Middle Indo-Aryan "Prakrits", or vernacular languages, (in which, among other things, most early Jain and Buddhist texts are written) and the modern Indo-Aryan languages. The Prakrits are probably descended from Vedic, and there is mutual interchange between later forms of Sanskrit and various Prakrits. There has also been reciprocal influence between Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages.
The Vedic form of Sanskrit is a close descendant of Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed root of all later Indo-European languages. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family. It is very closely related to Avestan, the language of Zoroastrianism. The genetic relationship of Sanskrit to modern European languages and classical Greek and Latin can be seen in cognates like Eng. mother/Skt. मतृ matṛ or Eng. father/Skt. पितृ pitṛ. Other interesting links are to be found between Sanskritic roots and Persian (the language of modern-day Iran), present in such a striking example as the generic term for 'land' which in Sanskrit is sthaan and in Persian staan.
European scholarship in Sanskrit, initiated by Heinrich Roth and Johann Ernest Hanxleden, led to the proposal of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones, and thus played an important role in the development of Western linguistics. Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) first arose among Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics owes a great deal to these grammarians, and to this day, key terms for compound analysis are taken from Sanksrit.
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