Fw: [Kalidasa] Fwd: Sanskrit

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Tuesday, January, 2004 4:52 PM

[Kalidasa] Fwd: Sanskrit

Wow! good collection about Sanskrit from Sri.Bhattathry. Pl. read.

Govindarajan.Note: forwarded message attached.

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Tue, 20 Jan 2004 14:50:51 +0530

Bhattathiri mpmahesh

Sanskrit

govinda rajan vcgrajan

Sanskrit

>From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Sanskrit

(संस्कृत in devanagari) is

a member of the Indo-European language family, and an official

language of India. Having first developed around 1500 BC, It has

sometimes been described as the Asian equivalent to Latin for its

role in the religious and historical literature of India. Sanskrit is

also the ancestor of the Prakrit languages of India, such as Pali and

Ardhamagadhi. Scholars have preserved more Sanskrit documents than

documents in Latin and Greek combined. The Vedic scriptures were

written in a form of Sanskrit.

Table of contents

[showhide]

1 History

2 Script

3 Influences

4 Phonology and writing system

4.1 Vowels (with approximate English equivalents)4.2 Diphthongs

(Combinations of Simple Vowels)4.3 Consonants

5 Morphology and Syntax

6 External Links

History The word Sanskrit means completed, refined, perfected. Sum

(Complete) + krt (created). 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. The original

crude language from which Sanskrit was derived could be Prakrit which

means Prototype. Pra (prime, first, pre-) + krt (created). The

language underwent several stages of consolidation and modification.

In its older Vedic form, it is a close descendant of

Proto-Indo-European, the root of all later Indo-European languages.

Vedic Sanskrit is also practically identical to Avestan, the language

of Zoroastrianism. After the consolidation of its grammar and lexicon

it turned into a classical language of strict esthetic rules and gave

rise to considerable literature of drama, medicine, politics,

astronomy, mathematics, alchemy etc. Its common origin with modern

European and the more familiar classical languages of Greek and Latin

can be seen, for instance, in the Sanskrit words for mother, matr, and

father, pitr. The similarities between Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit led

to the discovery of this language family by Sir William Jones, and

thus played an important role in the development of linguistics.

Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) was first developed

by Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify

Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics, which arose much later in the

rest of the world, owes a great deal to the grammarians, including

key terms for compound analysis. Sanskrit is the oldest member of

Indo-Aryan sub-branch of Indo-Iranian. Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan are

the oldest members of the Indo-Iranian sub-branch of the Indo-European

family. Nuristani languages, spoken in roughly what has become

Afghanistan, are grouped with Vedic and Avestan. The oldest form of

Sanskrit is Vedic, in which the Vedas, the earliest Sanskrit texts,

were composed. The earliest of the Vedas, the Rîgveda, was composed

in the middle of the second millennium BC. The Vedic form survived

until the middle of the first millennium BC. Around this time, as

Sanskrit made the transition from a first language to a second

language of religion and learning, the Classical period began. The

intense study of the structure of Sanskrit at this time led to the

beginnings of linguistics. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is

Paanini's c. 500 BC Astaadhyaayii ("8 Chapter Grammar"). A form of

Sanskrit called Epic Sanskrit is seen in the Mahabharata and other

epics. Vernacular Sanskrit may have developed into the Prakrits (in

which, among other things, early Buddhist texts are written) and the

modern Indic languages. There has been much reciprocal influence

between Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages. See also: Upanishad

Script

Sanskrit is generally written in the syllabic Devanagari script

composed of 51 letters or aksharas. Several Latin-alphabet

transliterations of varying utility are also available. It is found

written on stone, birch bark, palm leaves and paper.

Influences

Sanskrit had some influence on the Chinese culture because Buddhism

was initially transmitted to China in Sanskrit. Many Chinese Buddhist

scriptures were written with Chinese transliterations of Sanskrit

words. Some Chinese proverbs use Buddhist terms that originate from

Sanskrit. Sanskrit words are found in many present-day languages. For

instance the Thai language contains many loan words from Sanskrit, and

ranged as far as the Philippines viz. Tagalog 'guru', or 'teacher',

with the Hindu seafarers who traded there well before Magellan.

Phonology and writing system

Sanskrit has 48 phonemes (Vedic Sanskrit has 49). The Sanskrit

syllabary serves as a model for all Indian language writing systems

except Urdu. For the ingenious phonetic classification scheme of

these writing systems see Indian language. The sounds are described

here in their traditional order: vowels, stops and nasals (starting

in the back if the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquids

and sibilants. (Note: The long vowels are held about twice as long as

their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long

length for most vowels, which is used in various cases, but

particularly when recording a shout, or a greeting.)

Vowels (with approximate English equivalents) a - gutaa - fatheri -

pinii - tweaku - pushuu - moor^i = r + ilong r^i = r + ii or r + uu,

depending on the regionl^i = l + r^i

(Sanskrit recognizes vocalic r (errr) and l (ulll), unlike, say, English)

Diphthongs (Combinations of Simple Vowels) e - hayai - aisleo - snowau - pow

Vowels can be nasalized.

Consonants

Sanskrit has a voiceless, voiceless aspirate, voiced, voiced aspirate,

and nasal stop at each of the following places of articulation:

Velar (soft palate) (k, kh, g, gh, n as in ing) Palatal (hard palate)

(c, ch, j, jh, ~n) Retroflex (roughly the place of articulation of

English alveolars like t, but with the tongue curled back) (t, th, d,

dh, n) Dental (tongue against teeth, like Spanish) (t, th, d, dh, n)

Labial (with the lips) (p, ph, b, bh, m)

It also has four semivowels: y, r, l, v. All of these but r have

nasalized forms. Sanskrit also has palatal, retroflex, and alveolar

sibilants. Rounding out the consonants are the voiced and voiceless h

(the voiceless h, called the visarga, tends to repeat the preceding

vowel after itself) and the anusvaara, which often appears as

nasalization of the preceding vowel or as a nasal homorganic to the

following consonant.

Vedas Sanskrit had a pitch (music) or tonal accent, but it was lost by

the Classical period. Vedic Sanskrit also had labial and velar

fricatives and a retroflex L. Sanskrit has an elaborate set of

phonological rules called sandhi and samaas which are expressed in

its writing (except in so-called pada texts). Sandhi reflects the

sort of blurring that occurs, particularly between word-boundaries,

in spoken language generally, but is codified in Sanskrit and written

down. A simple example of English sandhi is "an apple" versus "a

clock". Sandhi makes Sanskrit very hard to read without a great deal

of practice. It also creates ambiguities which clever poets have

exploited to perform such feats as writing poems which can be

interpreted in multiple, unrelated ways depending on how the reader

chooses to break apart the sandhi.

Morphology and Syntax

Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders

(masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, plural,

dual). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative,

instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative. It has over

ten noun declensions. Sanskrit has ten classes of verbs divided into

in two broad groups: athematic and thematic. The thematic verbs are

so called because an a, called the theme vowel, is inserted between

the stem and the ending. This serves to make the thematic verbs

generally more well-behaved. Exponents utilized in verb conjugation

include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and reduplication. Also

extremely common is vowel gradation; every root has (not necessarily

all distinct) zero, guna, and vrdhii grades. If V is the vowel of the

zero grade, the guna grade vowel is traditionally thought of a V + a,

and the vrdhii grade vowel as V + aa. One other notable feature of

the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which

may be huge (10+ words) like in some modern languages like German

language. Nominal compounds occur with various meanings, some

examples of which are: 1.Bahuvrihi

Bahuvrihi, or much-rice, denotes a rich person--one who has much rice.

Bahuvrihi compounds refer to a thing which is not specified in any of

the parts of which the compound is formed. A block-head, for example,

is someone whose head is said to be as thick as a block.

2.Karmadhariya

A compound in which all of the words specify that to which the

compound refers. A houseboat, for example, is both a house and a

boat. 3.Tatpurusha

There are many tatpurushas (one for each of the nominal cases, and a

few others besides); in a tatpurusha, one component is related to

another. For example, a doghouse is a dative compound, a house for a

dog. It would be called a "caturtitatpurusha" (caturti refers to the

fourth case--that is, the dative). Incidentally, "tatpurusha" is a

tatpurusha ("this man"--meaning someone's agent), while

"caturtitatpurusha" is a karmadhariya, being both dative, and a

tatpurusha.

The verbs tenses (a very inexact application of the word, since more

distinctions than simply tense are expressed) are organized into four

'systems' (plus gerunds and infinitives, along with such creatures as

intensives/frequentives, desideratives, causatives, and benedictives

derived from more basic forms). Each verb is also has a grammatical

voice: either active, passive or middle. (Middle indicates actions

done to something other than the speaker for the speaker's own

benefit. The semantic distinction between middle and passive is not

maintained in later Sanskrit). The four systems are:

Present (Present, Imperfect, Imperative, Potential) Future (Future, Conditional) Aorist Perfect

Word order is free with tendency toward SOV. Here is a simple example

to illustrate the different contexts in which the cases are used for

the pronouns: mayaa tatam idam sarvam jagad

avyaktamuurtinaa |

matsthaani sarvabhuutaani na caaham teshv avasthitah ||

-- Giitaa (9.4)

"mayaa" (by me) in the first line is in the instrumental case. Word

for word this says "by me is pervaded this all universe" but an exact

translation would be "I pervade all this universe...". "mat-sthaani"

in the second line is a compound of "mat" (me) and "stha" (standing,

staying at) and means "they are in me". "-aham" (I) in the second

line is nominative. na caaham = "...and not I....", meaning "but I am

not...". "teshv-" (in/at/by them) at the end of the second line is in

locative plural. Translated: "...in them".

External Links

Sanskrit Documents Despite the name, a metasite with links to

translations, dictionaries, tutorials, tools and other Sanskrit

resources. GiirvaaNi - Sanskrit Classical Literature with translation

Sanskrit Alphabet in Devanagari Script and Pronunciation Key The

Sanskrit Alphabet The earliest dated illustrated Sanskrit manuscript

in the world A list of Chinese words originated from Sanskrit

Transliteration of Indic Languages & Scripts - including devanagari

for sanskrit