Hi everyone my name is Julie and today we're traveling through time
to the mystical world of ancient India to the times of the Vedas and Ramayana
today we're exploring the oldest language in the world
the language of Gods, the mother of all languages
all of these are different names of Sanskrit. But which of these statements
are actually true and which part of the mythology
Namo namaha
and welcome to the Sanskrit language
The first question that rises when talking about Sanskrit
is whether the language is actually dead or alive
I'll give my personal opinion in the end of the video but first some facts
It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of modern India
which means that the government recognized its important status
it is also an official language of two indian states: Himachal pradesh and Uttarakhand.
Plus, around 25000 people in India and
1600 people in Nepal have registered Sanskrit as their mother tongue
with total speaker number around 2300000 people
But this is actually a very small amount by India's standards
The importance of Sanskrit comes from its history so let's explore that
The oldest example of Sanskrit that has survived to our days are the Vedas
the sacred scriptures of hinduism that are around 3500 years old
Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-european language family
More importantly, Sanskrit was a key player in the formation of the
Indo-european language theory itself. It was conceptualized when a linguist
such as Sir William Jones have compared
the structures of Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit
and found striking similarities in them. These kind of researches have also
helped to define the theory of Indo-european migration
And it went something like this.
Of course there are different theories
about that but i'm going to show the most widely accepted one
So around 3500 BC in the stepes of southern Russia
and Ukraine a new people group, ancient Indo-europeans
started spreading in all directions. Of these people groups, Indo-iranians
went East, then traveled South, split into two branches
Iranian and Indo-aryan in 1800 BC
and around 1500 BC these Indo-aryans are already in the Indian subcontinent
and they already have the Vedas which means they already speak Sanskrit
From that time Sanskrit of course did not remain the same
The early period of this language's history is named Vedic Sanskrit
as it corresponds to the language of the Vedas
Interesting things started happening to it in 500 BC
when the scholar named Panini standardized the language
by defining 3959 rules of syntax, semantics and morphology
in his famous text Ashtadhayi
He created a systematic language where all the exceptions were eliminated
and where the whole grammar was ordered
The name of the language speaks for itself: samskritam
which means perfected or polished
It became the language of the elites
of arts, sciences and religious practices which it stays to these days
In the beginning sanskrit was a language of oral tradition
but when they started inscribing it they were unstoppable
Ancient texts on religion, mathematics, philosophy
such as the Vedas, Jyotisha, Ayurveda, Kama sutra, Ramayana, Mahabharata
and the main texts of buddhism and jainism were all written in Sanskrit
To this day we know of 30 million ancient texts in Sanskrit
more than any other ancient language
The decline of Sanskrit started from 12th century AD with the muslim invasions
when the languages of prestige and high class became Persian and Arabic
Sanskrit however has always remained in use even though it has been restricted
mainly to religious hindu practices
It has been changing recently though with the Indian government putting effort
to promote learning and researching the Sanskrit language
And there have been villages who have chosen to switch to speaking in
Sanskrits on everyday basis as a part of a revival initiative
While the elites of ancient India were
using the perfected Sanskrit, the common people have developed their
own language: Prakrit, which is the direct descendant of the
Vedic Sanskrit. From Prakrit many modern languages of
India have developed, with the total number of native speakers
around 800 million. And all of them have in common the
parent language —Sanskrit, so no doubt it is called by
some the mother of all languages.
Now let's explore the features of Sanskrit
starting with the pronunciation
Sanskrit has been inscribed in many various scripts but the most common
and the one that is used nowadays is Devanagari
It is an abugida which means that the vowels
here they are
and yes, "r" and "l" are also considered vowels
when in combination with a consonant are
written as a complementary symbol to that consonant
that can appear anywhere around it
The consonant sounds as everything in Sanskrit are organized into a beautiful system
where the sounds are classified on multiple parameters
in the columns they go from the easiest to more complex sounds
and the rows represent the area of the mouth where the sound is made
from the furthest to nearest
Because of its rhythmical and musical nature Sanskrit chants
are considered by some to possess healing powers
so let's hear some examples of Sanskrit and let's heal a little bit
now after we've heard some Sanskrit let's dive deeper into it
and explore its grammar. And here we're gonna see
even more systems and structures
The grammar of Sanskrit has many features but
it has no exceptions. Both nouns and verbs have
three attributes. For nouns that is gender, of which there're three
number, also three, and cases, seven cases. The verbs have gender, number
and tense: past, present and future, but here it is
more complicated as past has three variations, future has two
variations and there are six moods
So after seeing how the language itself is structured let's see how words in Sanskrit work
Sanskrit is a unique language because it gives you possibility
to create an infinite number of words
Again, there is a beautiful system for that which consists in
dividing a word into a root, which gives the general meaning
an affix, which narrows it, and the ending, which gives the grammatical role
from a single word "kr" which indicates doing or action
you can make thousands of words, for instance "karana" –
action or "kartavvia" – must be done. Or you can combine multiple roots to
create new words, like "rupa" — picture and "grahakam" —
capture, becomes "rupagrahakam" — a camera
Or "dhvani" — sound and "grahakam" become "dhvanigrahakam" — microphone
Sanskrit is also characteristic by its very
rich vocabulary as it is a property based language
meaning that a word is named according to its properties
that's how water managed to have 200 different names
and love 96 different names. Water can be called
"jalam" from "jal" — to harden because water becomes
hard from the liquid state. "Niram" from "ni"
to lead, or "vari" from "vr" — to cover because water evaporates
becomes cloud and it covers the sky. Similarly a snake can be
called "uraga" — breast going, "vishadhara" — poisonous
or "phanin" — the hooded. The influence of Sanskrit language has spread
way beyond the Indian subcontinent. This zone of influence is called
the Sanskrit cosmopolis. The influence of Sanskrit can still be found in languages of these regions
In English too we have some Sanskrit words
Avatar, which in Sanskrit means descent
Guru, which means teacher
Yoga, which means union and many everyday words
like sugar, orange, jungle and many many others
which came to european languages from
Sanskrit through Persian and Arabic
And about the question from the beginning of the video: is Sanskrit dead or alive?
Well, in my opinion it is definitely not dead as it is
continued to be used on everyday basis and it is a
native language to some people. But it is also not alive in the common
sense of speaking because its grammatical and phonetical
structures are not changing and evolving through time
as it does in any other language. So Sanskrit is something else and it is
definitely something special
Please write in the comments what do you think about it
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Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time
bye bye