In India, thousands of years ago, lived the rishis, the ancient seers or sages.
They expressed their lofty spiritual insights in graceful verses and skillful prose,
all composed in a remarkable language, a language unlike any other,
the language known as Sanskrit.
Its name is derived from the word, samskritam, which means elegant, refined, flawless, perfect.
It’s also called devavani or girvani, which mean, “language of the gods.”
This distinguished language is granted a divine status because of its unique beginnings.
Whereas other languages are clearly the product of human culture,
Sanskrit is believed to be of divine origin.
It is said to be apaurusheya, not created by man.
This bold claim is based on the fact that it is the language of the Vedas,
the source scriptures for the entire Hindu tradition.
The very first use of Sanskrit is found in the Rig Veda Samhita,
the most ancient part of the Vedas.
Western scholars estimate this text to be more than 3500 years old,
but traditional Indian scholars allege that it’s actually timeless, beginningless, eternal.
How could they make such an audacious assertion?
Those scholars attribute the esoteric religious and spiritual teachings of the Vedas directly to God.
The scriptures themselves poetically say that they were exhaled by God like fire emits smoke.
Since God is the source of everything that exists, God must be the source of the Vedas as well.
According to this traditional view, the rishis did not independently compose the Vedas.
Instead, they discovered and gave verbal form to the knowledge that was created by God
at the beginning of time.
For this reason, the rishis are called mantra-drashtraarah,
the seers of mantras, those who discovered the teachings of the Vedas.
Somehow, they were able to perceive what others could not perceive;
that’s why they’re called rishis.
Another expression of Sanskrit’s divine origin occurs in a wonderful mythological story
that depicts Lord Shiva as Nataraja, engaged in his wild, cosmic dance of creation and destruction.
While dancing, he played his drum, his damaru.
With each beat, letters of the Sanskrit alphabet emerged from his drum,
arranged in fourteen groups.
This arrangement of letters into fourteen groups
became central in the work of the great grammarian, Panini.
Even more support for Sanskrit’s divine origin is found in an unusual linguistic theory.
Generally, the relationship between a word and its meaning is arbitrary.
There’s no special reason why the word “book” should refer to this object.
Any other word or sound, like grickle, could have been used instead.
Yet, we all use the word “book” by common consent or convention.
On the other hand, there are some words that are intimately connected to their meanings,
words like bang and boom, crash and creak, roar and hiccup.
Each of these words mimic the sounds they represent.
Poets call this usage, onomatopoeia.
The ancient grammarian Kaytyanana took this a step further.
He declared that the relationship between each Sanskrit word and its meaning is eternal,
created by God, not merely based on human convention.
According to Katyayana, the word aakaasha is eternally endowed with the power to indicate the sky,
and the word bhumi is eternally endowed with the power to indicate the earth.
Based on this theory, when the sky, earth, and everything else was created by God,
their Sanskrit names were also created.
No other language makes such a claim - to have a divine origin.
Linguists generally explain the origin of languages in terms of evolution.
As you know, all modern languages were derived from earlier ones,
like English, which evolved from the speech of the AngloSaxons.
Linguists show how languages develop by using a tree, whose small branches represent modern languages,
and whose larger limbs represent earlier ones.
This tree of Indo-European languages shows the evolution of English from Germanic languages.
It also shows how the vernaculars spoken in North India today
are all the direct descendents of Sanskrit.
But Sanskrit itself is not the descendent of any known language.
It’s grouped with other Indo-European languages, because it shares certain features with them.
Western scholars theorize that Sanskrit, Latin and ancient Greek are sister languages,
having all evolved from a common ancestor.
But, linguists are yet to discover that ancestral tongue.
So, based on their research, they formulated a hypothetical ancestral tongue.
They named it Proto-Indo-European.
But, there’s no evidence that such a language ever existed,
so Sanskrit is further distinguished by virtue of the fact that it’s not derived from any other known language.
Even though Sanskrit is related to Latin and ancient Greek, it really stands out from them
due to the extremely sophisticated structure and organization of its alphabet.
The Roman letters used in Latin begin a, b, c, d, and so on.
But why do these begin with a vowel, followed by three consonants, and then another vowel?
The same order is used in the Greek alphabet; alpha, beta, gamma, and so on.
Sanskrit, on the other hand, has a well-organized and highly-structured alphabet.
It begins with the vowels, short and long:
a aa, i ii, u uu,
r rr and lr, which doesn’t have a long form.
Then come the diphthongs which are basically combinations of vowels; e, ai, o and au.
Next come the consonants, which are organized according to their place of articulation,
starting with the gutturals at the back of the throat; k kh, g gh, n,
the palatals at the hard palate; c ch, j jh, n,
the linguals at the roof of the mouth; t th, d dh, n,
the dentals behind the front teeth; t th, d dh, n,
and the labials at the lips; p ph, b bh, m.
Each of these five groups has an internal order; the first pair is hard or unvoiced,
like k kh and c ch, the second pair is soft or voiced, like g gh and j jh.
The fifth letter of each group is nasal.
Each pair of consonants begins with an unaspirate, like k or g,
followed by its corresponding aspirate, like kh or gh.
These 25 consonants are followed by four semivowels, y r l v,
three sibilants, sh sh and s, and the letter h.
This highly organized structure helps insure the proper pronunciation of each letter.
Pronunciation of words in English is problematic for many,
because English is non-phonetic - the sound of each letter is not fixed.
It varies depending on the word, like the letter ay is pronounced uh in about,
aah in car, aaa in cat, and ay in skate.
Sanskrit, on the other hand, is perfectly phonetic; each letter has one and only one sound.
Sanskrit also makes possible tremendous clarity and precision of expression
due to its exceptionally complex grammar.
It has eight cases, compared to three in English,
it’s verbs can be conjugated in ten different tenses and moods,
it has a dual number, a neuter gender,
and an extensive vocabulary that permits the addition of newly-coined words.
All this complexity makes Sanskrit perfectly suited
for expressing subtle philosophical and spiritual teachings,
the very teachings that are so central to its literature.
Before concluding, let’s examine an event in the history of Sanskrit
that occurred in no other language and was of great consequence.
We’ve already referred to Panini, the great grammarian, who lived about 2500 years ago,
and was recently commemorated on a postage stamp.
Panini is renowned for composing a text that codified all the rules of Sanskrit grammar
in about 4000 brief aphorisms called sutras.
He modestly called his brilliant work, Ashtaadhyaayi, the book of eight chapters.
This work was so clear and concise, that it soon became universally accepted
as the standard text for Sanskrit grammar,
and it’s been used by scholars from the time of Panini right up to today.
Most of the books you used in college remained up to date and relevant for maybe 5 or 10 years,
but Panini’s Ashtaadhyaayi has been used continuously for the past 2500 years.
Every work of Sanskrit literature composed after Panini’s time
strictly adhered to the grammatical rules set forth in his text.
So, Panini’s work gave rise to complete grammatical uniformity,
and that had a surprising consequence; it prevented Sanskrit from evolving.
As older languages evolve into newer ones,
the older languages eventually become archaic and unintelligible.
For example, English works written before the time of Shakespeare, some 400 years ago,
cannot be understood without special training.
But Sanskrit escaped this process of evolution due to the strict conformance to Panini’s grammar.
As a result of this, works written thousands of years ago are as intelligible as works written mere decades ago.
Knowing English gives you access to 400 years of literature,
but knowledge of Sanskrit is a magical key that unlocks the door to 2500 years of literature.
And that body of literature is extraordinary.
It includes the wisdom of the ancient rishis like Vyasa, it includes the great epics Ramayana and Mahabharata,
it includes profound spiritual works like the Bhagavad Gita,
it includes works of great poets like Kalidasa,
great philosophers like Sankaracharya, and great saints like Narada.
Human culture has been immeasurably enriched by this vast body of Sanskrit literature
which has blessed thousands of past generations and will bless future generations for centuries to come.