Sanskrit: the mother of all languages

[Guest guest]

Please accept my humble obeisances.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

 

Many times Srila Prabhupada said that Sanskrit is the mother of all

languages.

 

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Prabhupada: Sanskrit. Sanskrit is a language which is mother of all

languages. Sanskrit, S-a-n-s-k-r-i-t, Sanskrit language. So this is the

original language of this..., not only of this planet. In other planets

also, this language is spoken. So the names are in Sanskrit. They do not

belong to any community or any section. It is universal.

 

>>> Ref. VedaBase => Interview -- February 1, 1968, Los Angeles

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However, the following was written by some Shyam Rao on the Web

(http://www.dalitstan.org/books/a_sans/a_sans_i.html) under the title, "The

Anti-Sanskrit Scripture".

 

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The main pillar of the Sanskrit-centric ideology is the Mother Sanskrit

Theory. This hypothesis, which was never proven, postulates that Sanskrit is

the Mother of all Indian languages. It is essentially a colonial theory, a

hangover from the age of Anglo-Brahmin colonialism. The close collaboration

between the Brahmins and the British invaders meant that the British saw

India through Brahmin eyes, and Brahmin theories of history and linguistics

infected European science. In this, Sanskritisation is merely another

manifestation of the destructive aspects of Brahmanism at work.

 

The harm that this theory has done to Indian culture is immense, for it sees

all Indian vernaculars as merely degraded forms of Sanskrit. It hence

logically follows that all regional Indian languages, which are in fact each

separate languages in their own right, are considered as unnecessary blocks

to the proper learning of Sanskrit. For decades this theory has been taught

in schools, yet it is entirely without foundation, and has been discarded by

international linguists. (...).

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My question is whether there is any other proof besides the words of Srila

Prabhupada (who quotes some professors -- see below*) that Sanskrit is

indeed the mother of all languages. Are there some studies available from

scholars inside or outside ISKCON that firmly establish the validity of the

"Mother Sanskrit Theory"?

 

Thank you very much in advance. Hare Krishna.

Your humble servant,

Rogier.

 

* Srila Prabhupada quoting professors:

 

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"Prabhupada: Latin is from Sanskrit. Yes. Latin is from Sanskrit. Professor

Rowe and Webb of Presidency College in Calcutta, they have got a grammar.

They have said the Sanskrit language is mother of all languages. They were

big English scholar, professor, Mr. Rowe and Webb.

 

>>> Ref. VedaBase => Room Conversation With Allen Ginsberg -- May 12, 1969,

Columbus, Ohio

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[Guest guest]

Please accept my humble obeisances.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

 

 

 

Gopiparanadhana prabhu:

"According to material history, Sanskritis not the origin of all languages on

this planet. It is not even the original language of the Indo-european family.

And there are many other families of language which have no historical

connection with the Indo-european group.

But from a higher point of view, Skt is the transcendental origin of all

language. It is spoken in the heavenly planets and in Vaikuntha. There is a

history of how all languages derive from Skt, but this history cannot be seen

with material eyes. Just as the Supreme Lord is the oldest, but at certain

times appears on earth as if a recent descendent of some ancient dynasty, so

Skt appears on earth periodically and seems to be youger than some

other "proto-indo-european" language.

Our proof of this is the opinion of Vedic sastra."

in Essential Truths (of Harikesa Swami) p414

 

Ravindra Svarupa prabhu:

"I learned the terms “synchronic” and “diachronic” in a university Sanskrit

course. The way we devotees approach Sanskrit--the traditional way--is

synchronic, while academicians employ the diachronic. Tradition says that

Sanskrit is a perfected language spoken by the devatas; the academicians see

its as a mundane historical creation, a language that evolved from more humble

origins. This attitude toward Sanskrit was developed in the nineteenth century

by German scholars who devised the historical science then called “Indo-

European philology.” (Today the word “philology” has been replaced

by “linguistics.”) In 1786 the English scholar Earnest Jones had noted

affinities among Sanskrit, Persian, Greek and Latin. Inspired by evolutionary

ideas, German scholars applied them to the history of languages and traced

branching paths of evolutionary a vast family of languages that includes

Sanskrit ,Persian, Latin, Italian, ancient and modern Greek, , Gaelic, Swedish

French, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Armenian, and so on. The result is

considered one of the most well-established of scholarly achievements.

 

Prabhupada has taught us that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, but the

philologists place Sanskrit as one among a group of ancient languages which

evolved from an original, parent language which they called Proto-Indo-

European, the Indo-European Ursprache. If you look up the derivation of a

modern English word you'll see sometimes that the English word is traced back--

let us say--to a French word, then a Old French word, then Latin, then

Sanskrit word, and finally a Proto-Indo-European word. That word will have an

asterisk before it. This sign means that the word is imaginary, or

hypothetical. There is no attestation for it, no written appearance of the

word. It has been imaginatively constructed--they would say reconstructed--as

has indeed the entire Proto-Indo-European language.

 

When I took a Sanskrit course at the University of Pennsylvania the graduate

assistant in the class would like to give us the diachronic view of Sanskrit.

I must say its a persuasive account. Panini’s classical Sanskrit grammar as

some four of five thousands rules, but there are a number of them which have

only one application. These are the anomalies or exceptions. Why should they

be there. Well our grad assistant would account for the otherwise inexplicable

anomaly by showing how the anomalous form in Sanskrit was standard in, say,

Avestan, and then go on to show how both evolved out of earlier forms in Proto-

Indo-Aryan which in turn which evolved out of Proto-Indo-European. Granting

them their presuppositions, the entire structure seemed to make sense on its

own terms, and to account for things which on the face of it seems otherwise

inexplicable It tidied up a whole area of thought. Its was enormously clever.

Yet I did not for a moment accept it as true. I recognized it as the product

of modern historical consciousness, and I realized that the graduate assistant

and I were simply inhabitants of two different cognitive universes. My coin of

truth--a citation from sastra--had no value whatsoever in his kingdom."

(from: Modern Historical Consciousness)