Talk:Sanskrit

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Sanskrit is a former featured article candidate. Please view the links under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. For older candidates, please check the archive.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
January 10, 2005	Featured article candidate	Not promoted
September 14, 2006	Peer review	Reviewed
April 17, 2007	Good article nominee	Listed
June 8, 2007	Good article reassessment	Delisted
Current Status: Former featured article candidate

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[edit] Usage in Modern Times

Perhaps somebody could add the following to the Usage in Modern Times section? "Govinda" is a song by British band Kula Shaker. The song is unique in being the only British Top Ten hit to be sung entirely in Sanskrit. The text is taken from a Sanskrit devotional song to Krishna (Govinda) previously recorded by singers from Radha Krsna Temple in a 1970 album produced by George Harrison. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.28.41.102 (talk) 02:54, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] This article needs citations

The article contains a lot of statements that are not attributed to any source. I previously made edits to note this, but Dbachmann reversed them, saying that my edits were "silly" and that the claims are "undisputed." Now, I am not aware that someone's opinion that some claims are "undisputed" is now a valid criterion for said claims to be accepted. I also note that there are very few references, and none at all for important claims (e.g., that Sanskrit dates to 1700 BCE, or that it is a national language of Nepal). I am not personally prepared to grant these claims as undisputed, and even if they are known from folklore, is it accepted practice not to cite when there is folklore? Yes, I accept that it is not necessary or good to moronically insert a citation every sentence, but having so few citations, and none at all for almost all claims which are simply made ex cathedra, does not make sense, unless Wikipedia just morphed when I was sleeping.

I don't want to get into an edit war with Dbachmann over this issue, but I do hope that the community will look at this matter carefully.

Thanks, shrao, 2007-06-08

Concerning the notion that Sir William Jones was the first to hypothesize what we now call the Indo-European proto-language, based on a comparision of Sanskrit with Greek and Latin, see this scholarly discussion: [1] Also consider the caveats expressed in this discussion, a summary by Bill Poser of the book he wrote with Lyle Campbell called Language Classification': [2].

Andy Szabo —Preceding unsigned comment added by Szaboz (talk • contribs) 20:55, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Southeast Asian languages originating from Sanskrit

Which languages in Southeast Asia originated from Sanskrit? Marxolang (talk) 23:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Southeast Asia? None that I'm aware. See Indo-Aryan languages. Grover cleveland (talk) 03:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

None. There are some words which have been borrowed because of Hinduism in South-East Asia, otherwise most of the languages in SE Asia like Thai and others are tonal and have minimal or NO influence of Sanskrit. Sudharsansn (talk · contribs) 02:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

So wrong man. Thai is heavily influenced by Sanskrit, but it is not an Indo-Aryan language, rather it is from the Tai-Kadai language family. The reason so is because Thai is Tai-Kadai in structure and substratum, Sanskrit only influenced Thai in terms of loanwords. The same applies to almost all languages in Southeast Asia to as far as the Philippines. Kotakkasut (talk) 02:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

It appears so; trivial inspection of randomly selected entries in wikt:Category:th:Sanskrit derivations yields many basic terms, of not strictly liturgical origin, at least several of which are in 207 Swadesh list. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 03:08, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if you believe South-East Asian languages originated from Sanskrit, then by the same token modern Indo-Aryan langauges like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati etc. all "originated" from Persian and Arabic, which is clearly not the case. Also that would make English a Romance or Greek language, just because most of its technical vocabulary comes from Latin and Ancient Greek. Gizza^Discuss ^© 06:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Definitely. We can conclude that although Sanskrit has influenced most Southeast Asian languages through loanwords, there is no direct descendant of the language in the area. Ashiwin (talk) 06:40, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

The anthropomorphic relation of "descendancy" in natural languages is in many respects stupid and misleading. In a lexical case the point is clear: In what way is the several millenia old Sanskritism in Thai, Javanese, Prakrit or Dravidian lesser to a cotemporal coinage formed by means of regular derivational morphology of the "inherited" words? Exactly none. On each of those you can trace later occurrence of regular sound laws. In both cases you have single point of entrance, where the word is lexically diffused from one source (heard it : used it : mediate it to peers). In a non-lexical sense (e.g. phonological, accentological, morphological and syntactical isoglosses) there is no clear cut either: isoglosess can spread accross dialect clusters which are not genetically related. Languages can even borrow entire paradigms (I've read about one language borrowing present tense endings from Russian). It is well-known that some accentual and tonal properties are areal features. In South Slavic dialects for almost every single isogloss you can possibly imagine that should represent some "common innovation" for some dialect grouping you can find speech of some godforsaken village that was not affected by it, or where it's provably secondary.

So what is the point? By utilising the ambiguous copula "to be" in forming statements such as "English is Germanic language" or "Persian is not a Semitic language" you are deliberately ignoring an entire domain of consideration. Languages are not like biological species where there is a discrete (DNA-controlled) line that separates them. By saying that some highly-Sanskritised Indo-Aryan dialect, or highly-Arabicised Persian is "not X" where "X" would be some hypothetical quasi-genetic grouping of languages based on arbitrary collections of isogloss bundles, you are just diminishing the immense culturally-induced effect the genetically-unrelated language donor has made onto them, possibly radically altering their morphophonological and syntactical structure, as if the linguistic-genetic relation of "descendancy" is something unalterable and eternal. It's been a long, long time since English ceased to be a "typical" Germanic language in phonology and lexis. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 08:21, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

see also Sanskritization. --dab (𒁳) 09:20, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

A totally misleading article.. thats not about linguistics or languages at all —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.49.14.132 (talk) 16:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, that's a confusingly long explanation. I'm sticking to Grover cleveland and Ashiwin's conclusion. Kotakkasut (talk) 05:15, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

Ivan, does this mean that you are advocating throwing out the whole concept of genetic relationships between languages? In that case we would have to delete every single article in Category:Language families and its subcategories. Seems a little extreme. Grover cleveland (talk) 16:06, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Not throwing out, just discussing it as people seem to have some b/w picture of this. In lots of cases the traditionally-held grouping in low-level language families is not a real "genetic" grouping (no exclusive common innovations + relative chronology for the sound changes). For example, Slavic languages are still today traditionally divided into South, West and East. The the first two are provably not genetic groupings, as well as some of the dialectal clusters within them (of what I know for sure: Čakavian or Kajkavian systems, i.e. there was no e.g. Proto-Čakavian and all Čakavian idioms descended from Proto-Slavic, there is not a single exclusive isogloss that covers all Čakavian idioms and same very ancient isoglosses divide them, hence the needed timeframe for potential common innovation is basically non-existing). Morover, recent findings of Old Novgorodian letters revise a traditional view of East Slavic as a separated cluster in 10th-14th century (Old East Slavic period) and indicate a state of much greater dialectal diversity. A major PIE subgrouping—the Baltic languages—is itself prob. not a genetic grouping but a "remnant" (reconstructing Proto-Baltic from Proto-Balto-Slavic has many problems).

Schelicherian Stammbaum model is only applicable in cases of clear-cut scenarios of isolated communities, so you get a non-empty set for the territorial intersection of all isoglosses that operating on all points of territory over the course of time. In all the other cases you get some pseudo-random (geography, prestige..various non-deterministic factors) spread of innovations, often across language boundaries.

cf. also Mixed_languages#Mixed_languages - is language with e.g. prevalently (>95%) Greek lexis but with Turkish inflectional and derivational morphology an Indo-European or Turkic? Should the fact it was originally Turkishised Greek or Hellenicised Turkish influence the answer to that question? Is the e.g. highly-Arabicised Persian speech much more intelligible to the speaker of Arabic more "close" to Semitic Arabic or some of its close "genetic" relatives like Ossetian, or more distinct like Hindi? What I'm saying that it's pointless to speak of some "close affinity" taking into account the state of affairs 3 millennia ago, and not recent ones that are somehow "artifical" like loanwords or loan-morphemes, by intensity much more greater in relatively recent historical period when the coinage of modern terms began and is affected by external factors such as media, schooling, religion.. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 04:06, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Do you guys know the difference between official language and scheduled language?

Sanskrit is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India not official you fool!!!!

[edit] नामविश्व भाषांतरण

Dear Friends,

undersigned wants to put following request at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/ to programmers of MediaWiki software to make apropriate changes in Sanskrit Language Wikipedia.Undersigned requests openions or support from those who know Sanskrit Language.Please do reply at your earliest or post your comment directly at संस्कृत विकिपीडिया:ग्रामस्य चौपालम्

Mahitgar १५:०३, १ पौषमाघे २००९ (UTC)

Dear Wikimedia Programmers,

Since undersigned wants to create new articles in Sanskrit Language Wikipedia specialy in "Wikipedia" and "Help" Namespace;Correction in Namespace Names will help me and Sanskrit Language Wikipedia a Long way. We kindly request following localisation of Sanskrit Language Wikipedia at https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Namespace Current English Name 'Wikipedia' change the same to Sanskrit विकिपीडिया
- Namespace Current semi-English Name 'Wikipediaसंभाषणं' change the same to Sanskrit विकिपीडिया संभाषणं

Namespace Current English Name 'MediaWiki' change the same to Sanskrit मिडियाविकि
- Namespace Current English Name 'MediaWiki talk' change the same to Sanskrit मिडियाविकि संभाषणं

Namespace Current English Name 'Template' change the same to Sanskrit बिंबधर
- Namespace Current English Name 'Template talk' change the same to Sanskrit बिंबधर संभाषणं

Namespace Current Sanskrit Name 'उपकार:'(stands for 'Help') change the same to Sanskrit साहाय्य
- Namespace Current Sanskrit Name 'उपकारसंभाषणं' (stands for 'Help talk') change the same to Sanskrit साहाय्य संभाषणं

Notes:

1)बिंबधर is a newly created applied term for Template.बिंब means an image that can transclude,and since a wikipedia template holds and helps transclude an image term created in sanskrit is बिंबधर

2)Help Namespace 'उपकार:' is being requested to be changed since 'उपकार:' means 'favour' where as right word for 'Help' in Sanskrit is available and is साहाय्य so this namespace change is being requested.

Please do reply at your earliest or post your comment directly at संस्कृत विकिपीडिया:ग्रामस्य चौपालम्

Mahitgar १५:०३, १ पौषमाघे २००९ (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mahitgar (talk • contribs)

[edit] "classical"

please distinguish two things:

(a) scholarship: there is a historical sequence of Vedic, Epic, Classical and Hybrid (post-classical) Sanskrit.
(b) language politics in the 2000s Republic of India: "Sanskrit" (without qualifiers) is declared a "classical language of India" by the Indian government.

Don't confuse (a) and (b). (a) is essential in pointing out the main divisinon of the Vedic vs. the Classical language. (b) is a minor factoid to be listed under "current status" or similar. There is no way (b) has a place in the article lede. --dab (𒁳) 18:05, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Your implication that the classification of Sanskrit as a Classical language has got to do with language politics only, and no other reason does not hold water. Sanskrit is a classical language and was declared rightly so, regardless of the ensuing politics that was endured in it's classification.

As regards point (a), the classification of Sanskrit must be differed to the later sections, and must not be introduced in the lede itself. When we refer to Sanskrit in the lede, we introduce it as ONE language that can reasonably be dated to 1,500 B.C. The various periods and evolutions notwithstanding, we are refering to it as a single entity.

Classifying it's evolutionary milestones as separate languages is nonsensical on your part.

I won't revert immediately, as I've been off for a long time. You think it over and give your damned reply. IAF (talk) 12:06, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

you did not pay attention. Classical Sanskrit is, of course, "Classical" by definition. Classical Sanskrit is a subset of Sanskrit, which therefore also contains non-classical variants, especially pre-classical (Vedic) Sanskrit, but also post-classical "Hybrid" Sanskrit. There is much more to Sanskrit than just Classical Sanskrit. --dab (𒁳) 15:53, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested additional external links

Here are two external links which could be added, either to the list of external links, or within the article.

Learn Sanskrit from Sanskrit Tutors on eduFire (edufire page)
कर्माधिकारः (website entirely in Sanskrit)

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:07, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Also, please see this recently archived discussion and open the navigation template "Thousands of native Sanskrit speakers live in modern India." to see even more external links.

-- Wavelength (talk) 20:16, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sanskrit विकिपीडिया:लोगो,लेखन चर्चा

A Request from sanskrit language wikipedia was made at [bugzill bug no.16857] bugzill has requested that,The image should be no bigger than 135 x 155 pixels, please fix it and reopen this bug. undersigned does not have requisite skills needed for the same please some one do help by providing needful change to bugzill

Thanks and regards

Mahitgar ०७:५८, ८ फेब्रुवारी २००९ (UTC) (Copyright image from Marathi Language wikipedia is being taken for using as matches with gramatically correct Sanskrit language wording and writing system.Image was posted by user user:कौस्तुभ on Marathi Language Wikipedia & commons as authorised logo for Marathi Language Wikipedia and the same is proposed tobe used on Sanskrit Language Wikipedia )

sa:चित्रं:Wiki.png

Image is updated

at Sanskrit Wikipedia sa:चित्रं:Wiki.png
at commons:File:Wikipedia-logo-sa.png
at meta:Wikipedia_in_other_languages

समर्थन करोति Mahitgar ०९:२०, १ पौषमाघे २००९ (UTC)

Though I am not a great expert on Sanskrit, I do agree that second change to use "Sahay" instead of "upkar" makes sense. This is from my understanding of other indian languages , especially Hindi.

mr:चित्र:wiki1.png mr:चित्र:wiki3.png mr:चित्र:myWiki4.png - suggessions received so far कोल्हापुरी १३:२९, ९ फेब्रुवारी २००९ (UTC)

Template:WikimediaCopyrightWarning

[edit] "Interactions with other Asiatic languages"

This section on the page, should retain the word other. India (and the rest South Asia) are part of Asia, therefore it is an Asian language that is Indo-European. Removing other implies that Sanskrit (and hence India (and the rest South Asia)) is not Asian. Thegreyanomaly (talk) 05:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

What is an "Asiatic language", anyway? It isn't in List of language families. How is "Asiatic" different from "Asian"? Shreevatsa (talk) 15:26, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

it should be "Asian", if anything. "Asiatic" suggests the existence of an "Asiatic languages" family, which does not exist. There is the Afro-Asiatic family, but no "Asiatic" one. Also, the article does not discuss Sanskrit wrt "Asian languages" in general. The point of the section is to discuss interaction with non-Indian languages, i.e. related to the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism outside India. --dab (𒁳) 15:39, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Basic unanswered questions

I am curious about Sanskrit, but this article does not answer my questions. Where was Sanskrit spoken? When/where/how long was it a spoken language by a large number of people, if at all? Even if the answers to these questions are unclear, it would still be good to write that at least.

In addition, I think very few educated people (in the US at least) know that Sanskrit's evolution in some ways parallels that of Latin in western Europe (and Arabic and Chinese for that matter, although these Dachsprachen are still technically considered one language). It would be great to discuss the transition from Sanskrit to the Prakrits more clearly... and then to have the Prakrit and Apabhraṃśa articles discuss more clearly how these languages evolved into Hindi, Bengali, etc. And lastly to discuss more clearly what relation these languages have to each other!

All of this would be an interesting direction to take this article in. Agh.niyya (talk) 18:41, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

These questions aren't so basic. The problem is that Sanskrit is properly the term for a register of a language, and not for the language itself. That language being "Old Indo-Aryan". But the Sanskrit register happens to be the only part of that language we have attested, beause there are no inscriptions. And Sanskrit is only know via several centuries of oral tradition.

The absence of literacy prior to the Maurya period means that the situation is completely different from the situation of Latin or Greek, where we have epigraphic evidence from the 8th century BC, and manuscript traditions going back to the 5th or 6th century BC. Indian literacy is about five centuries behind this, meaning that we would miss out on the Old Indo-Aryan stage completely if it wasn't for the remarkable (albeit rather removed from natural speech) Vedic oral tradition.

You are right that the relation of Sanskrit to the spoken Prakrits should be explored more, but that should mostly happen on the Prakrit article. First and foremost, it must be pointed out that the historical Prakrits are not derived from Sanskrit any more than French is derived from the Latin of Cicero (but rather from the spoken Old Indo-Aryan dialects of wich Sanskrit was the elevated register). This cannot be emphasized enough, because this is a very common misconception. --dab (𒁳) 06:52, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Article classification suggestion

I've never looked at this article before today so I conjecture that I'm an entirely unbiased reader. If you look at the article rating scale and then look for other high rated articles you will see that many articles described as class GA and some described as A are similar to this one but articles described as class B are less complete and less finished. Thus I could argue that this article should be upgraded in class. I'd recommend that the usual editors request a status upgrade from their project administrators. Regards.Trilobitealive (talk) 05:10, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

this is easily a good article. I don't know whether it is a "Good Article", nor do I care, seeing that the GA bureaucracy has been detached from any kind of encyclopedic assessment for years. This kind of figures, since people interested in content will be busy writing good articles instead of spending their time with this rating industry. "GA" on Wikipedia more or less means "grammar checked and WP:MOS compliant". --dab (𒁳) 06:45, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Sanskrit no more classified as a Indo-Aryan language

Even though Sanskrit has been classified as a Indo-Aryan language by some historians and linguist, recent and more vigorous research in this direction has discredited the Aryan invasion theory (AIT) which also in turn makes classification of Sanskrit into a India-Aryan language redundant. The linguist theory supporting the AIT was based on similar sounding words in other languages with possible roots in Sanskrit was thus derived which again has been further discredited with the exit of Aryan invasion theory.

The basic premise being that since there was no existence of an Aryan race and no Aryan invasion ever took place into India, there cannot be a language that can be classified as a Indo-Aryan language.

It is now widely believe that Sanskrit is a language that was developed indigenously along the now extinct Saraswati river during the pre-Vedic and Vedic period. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vijay shivramiah (talk • contribs) 18:35, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

And we're supposed to believe this because you say so? Shreevatsa (talk) 21:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

I never cease to be amazed at the utter twaddle people see fit to dump on this page. --dab (𒁳) 06:41, 7 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Help request from sanskrit language wikipedia

सुयोग्य संस्कृत लोगो चयन करोसि!

Mahitgar (talk) 15:51, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

[edit] origin of name "Sanskrit"

"Sanskrit" is not the name of language. Original name of this language is "Girvaana"(गीर्वाण). This language is known not to have a script. All the text is handed down only by word of mouth.

Since this was the language of the "cultured" (सुसंस्कृत) this language became known as sanskrit (संस्कृत)

We find the language in almost all known scripts of India at written at different time periods. In later years the populous north India adopted Devanagari script and all the works are written in that script. There are a few vowels in Sanskrit that cannot be 'written' in any known language. These can only be taught by a proper teacher in person. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aroonpk (talk • contribs) 08:04, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] etymology of sanskrit w.r.t tamil

i only speak english and french but i know many ppl from south india who speak tamil and sanscrit and i do not think they are lying to me when they tell me that sanskrit is etymologically derived from tamil. or as they put it "all of the

sounds* originate in tamil". please refer to the following URL, as i think this will better explain what i am talking about:

http://www.mayyam.com/hub/viewtopic.php?p=147743

this might be a "political correctness" or "nationalist" issue for some bad acedemics but if you actually listen to the two languages or better yet what native speakers of both languages would tell you i think you can learn that the view being put forward by wikipedia that "tamil is one of 62 other proto-dravidian derived south asian language group languages" and "like all other nearby languages borrows many words from sanscrit". this is completely wrong and also completely ignores this:

http://tamil.berkeley.edu/Tamil%20Chair/TamilClassicalLanguage/TamilClassicalLgeLtr.html

which strangely enough, is linked to as a footnote on the page of Tamil language, but this page nonetheless tells the idea of "proto-dravidian" and tamil being one of all offshoots thereof (albeit one of the only 4 or 5 written). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reetside (talk • contribs) 15:51, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how a native speaker has any authority in determining the history of theirs or others' languages. Not only does it give limited awareness of cognates, but it doesn't help with directionality (that is, we can reasonably guess that English ease and French aise are cognates but we can't tell which is the borrowing language). The second source you cite implies the opposite of what you're saying.

Now, if you're saying that the sounds of Sanskrit (several of which are rare amongst non-Indian Indo-European languages) occurred as a result of influence from Dravidian languages, I don't think that that's too outrageous. However, this doesn't mean that Sanskrit is "derived" from Tamil or that there are a large number of "etymological" cognates. It simply means that the languages have influenced each other. Besides, you'd need to find some reputable scholarly sources that argue this, not random forums on the internet. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:37, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] it should be mentioned that sanscrit is the oldest language

sanscrit is proven to be the oldest language written with an alphabet and grammar on earth. this is not even possible to dispute academically -- as the date of the rig veda is put at 1,500 BC. such a remarkable characteristic of this language deserves some kind of mention on the wikipedia page. i would not want to be so politically incorrect as to suggest that this represents the actual invention of alphabet and grammar and writing from which all other western languages copied but maybe the case that can be made in this respect might be mentioned too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reetside (talk • contribs) 16:04, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

That doesn't make sense. How could it be the oldest language written with an alphabet and grammar but not the invention of an alphabet and grammar? History of writing disputes your claim as there were quite a few alphabets developed before 1500 BC. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:50, 13 June 2009 (UTC)