Sanskrit Language
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State |
Family |
Some Facts |
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Indo-Aryan |
The classical language of India brought to us by the Aryans,
and also one of the oldest languages of the world. There’s a
whole corpus of classical literature, the earliest being the Rig
Veda of 1200 BC. |
¤ Sanskrit Originated From Vedic
Age
Truly a fountainhead, if one surveys its three thousand years of its
existence. The story of the evolution of Sanskrit began right from the
Vedic age, sailing through the post-Vedic years and centuries later
till today.
The Aryans collected the mass of hymns, rituals and poems about their
gods in the four Vedas (10th century BC) which document
the various dialects that they brought to India (but that wasn’t
the Sanskrit we know of today).
From the Punjab, where the Aryans settled first after they came from
Central Asia, their speech spread along the east as far as present
Bihar by about 600 BC.
Obviously this Vedic or Old Indo-Aryan language met with the language
of the Dravidians (who were then not restricted to just the southern
regions) and Austrics, and some give and take happened.
The result was Prakrit or Middle Indo-Aryan dialect which soon
engulfed the whole country in the north, east and centre. The Aryan
invasion was moving towards completion.
Meanwhile, the ‘pure’ Aryans in Punjab were very unhappy
about their sacred language getting ‘defiled’. So between 8th
and 4th century BC, they came up with Classical Sanskrit,
based on the old Vedic speech. But for all practical purposes, the
origin of the language is taken to be the old Vedic Sanskrit.
¤ Modification In The Language
But Prakrit dialects were already on their steady journey of
spreading and mixing. Buddhists picked up one of these dialects around
the 6th century BC and developed it into Pali. The process
of simplification of the dialects continued throughout the Middle
Indo-Aryan stage, culminating in the Apabhramsa stage in 600AD.
Further modification of the regional Apabhramsas during 600-1000AD
gave rise to the New Indo-Aryan languages of the present day.
Sanskrit Remains The Supreme Language But even while other languages
were taking shape, Sanskrit continued to be the vehicle of creative
and all other scholarly work.
The sheer volume of work in Sanskrit is formidable. With the Vedas
was laid the foundation stone of Vedic literature and all Sanskrit
literature thereafter. From religion and philosophy to grammar,
phonetics, etymology, lexicography, astronomy, astrology, sociology,
sex, politics, arts and aesthetics, Sanskrit ruled. Sanskrit is also
the language of India’s two most talked about epics, the Ramayana
and the Mahabharata. The Puranas are perhaps the most interesting
collection of works in Sanskrit. There are 18 major books, the
Bhagavad Gita being among them, and numerous minor ones. The Puranas
contain all the fodder for stories about the Hindu gods and goddesses.
¤ Literary Activities
Literary activities burst forth with the playwright Bharata’s
(200BC) Natya Shastra, the Bible of dramatic criticism. The earliest
plays were those of Bhasa, but were soon overshadowed by Kalidasa’s
Shakuntala, a model for ages. History tells us that Kalidasa was the
greatest of fools in his early years.
He is known to have hacked at the very branch he was sitting on!
Anyway, Shakuntala was a heroic play, while Shudraka’s
Mrichchhakatika, was a play of the social class. Bhavabhuti (circa
700AD) was another well-known figure, his best being Malatimadhava and
Uttaramacharita, the latter based on the story of the Ramayana.
¤ The Foremost Sanskrit Works
The great Sanskrit poems are five – Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa
and Kumarasambhava, Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi (550AD), Sishupalavadha
of Magha (7th century AD) and Naishadhiyacharita of
Sriharsha (12th century AD).
All of them draw from the Mahabharata, the source for many writers
even today. Shorter poems of great depth were composed on a single
theme like love, morality, detachment and sometimes of grave matters.
The earliest and best collections of such verses called Muktakas are
those of Bhartrihari and Amaruka.
Much of the early prose work in Sanskrit has not survived. of the
remaining, some of the best are Vasavadatta of Subandhu, Kadambari and
Harshacharita of Bana (7th century AD) and
Dasakumaracharita of Dandin (7th century AD). The
Panchatantra and Hitopadesha are collections of wit and wisdom in the
Indian style, teaching polity and proper conduct through animal fables
and aphorisms.
With a glorious life of over 3000 years, Sanskrit continues to be a
living language even today, bobbing up during Hindu ceremonies when
mantras (ritual verses) are chanted. and though restricted, it’s
still a medium of literary expression, but ‘great works’
have long stopped being written.
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