Talk:Sanskrit/Archive 2

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Spoken in Mattur

According to recent reports, it is being revived as a vernacular in the village of Mattur near Shimoga in Karnataka. The veracity of these reports, however, should be considered very doubtful.

To whoever wrote the above lines,

What do u mean by 'recent' reports? Just because you hear of something 'recently' doesnt mean it is 'recent'. And what the hell is "....veracity of these reports, .... doubtful" all about??

That Sanskrit is spoken in Mattur like English is spoken in England is common knowledge. If you want to be absolutely sure, nothing in this world should prevent you from making a trip to Mattur yourself.

It is like saying "according to recent reports, the statue of liberty is in New York. the veracity of these reports is...doubtful". With perverted arguments like that the only way that someone can prove to you that SoL is indeed in New York is by taking you there. and when u get there u might turn around and ask, "okay now prove to me this is New York" or even "now prove to me that this is the real SoL"!!

The great Sanskrit scholar and director of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Shri. Mattur Krishnamurthy hails from this place.

I don't really see a valid comparison. The Statue of Liberty is a large material object in a very populated area. Its history is well documented, which demonstrates that the burden of proof lies in the person who denies its presence. Inferring doubt in a statement about a linguistic item that has no scholarly source is appropriate. AEuSoes1 10:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Here is a source. This is the program from some linguistics conference at the University of Michigan. Professor Adi Hastings of the University of Chicago is giving a talk on the revival of Sanskrit:
Through a careful ethnographic and linguistic study of Sanskrita Bharati, an organization based in Bangalore, and Mattur, a "Sanskrit-speaking village" in central Karnataka, the project (1) examines the emblematization of Sanskrit in the rhetoric and practices of these two sites and (2) documents the structural and sociolinguistic aspects of the variety of Sanskrit being promoted, including the methods by which it is taught, learned, and used in actual sites of practice.
I'm going to change the language in the main article. -- Superdosh 17:28, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

"Sanskrit" or "Sanskrit language"?

Why do we have this article at Sanskrit language, with Sanskrit as a redirect? Why not use the shorter title? We don't have an article at Esperanto language. - Nat Krause 16:15, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

It was decided two years ago that articles on language should be at "[x] language". Sanskrit is no exception. Esperanto somehow is, but that doesn't make it right. CRCulver 05:10, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages) says "Languages which share their names with some other thing should be suffixed with 'programming language' in the case of programming languages, or 'language' in the case of natural languages. If the language's name is unique, there is no need for any suffix." That seems like a better and simpler way to do it. - Nat Krause 09:11, 8 October 2005 (UTC)
I support this position, and will put it up to WP:RM. It will be controversial; some people insist on imposing an artificial uniformity on Wikipedia, policy or not. Septentrionalis 04:48, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

This appears not to have been so controversial after all. I'm moving it. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:36, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Too late, someone already has. But the talk page needs to be moved too. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:37, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
Done. The article is at Sanskrit, the talk page is here at Talk:Sanskrit, the old talk is archived at Talk:Sanskrit/Archive 1, God is in his heaven, and all's right with the world. --Angr/tɔk tə mi 09:43, 24 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm not too happy with this move, but I can't be bothered to protest. The correct (pedantic) way to refer to this language is "the Sanskrit language" (samskrta vak), Sanskrit just being an adjective yadda yadda. dab (ᛏ) 21:38, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

the other reason maybe Samskruti,which means culture,and should not be confused with Sanskrit,which is pronounced as Sanskrut.

You mean Sanskriti. Some people pronounce "ऋ" as Ru and others as Ri. But Sanskriti (culture) is the noun and Sanskrit (culture) is the adjective from the same root, also related to the word Sanskar.
Yeah, Sanskrit is an adjective. So you can say (in Hindi and other modern Indo-Aryan languages, besides in Sanskrit itself) "He is Sanskrit" to mean something like "He is cultured". deeptrivia (talk) 00:59, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
An observation: "Sanskrit" is not an uncommon adjective in Indian languages. Just open up a matrimonial page of any local newspaper, and this adjective will be all over. deeptrivia (talk) 06:16, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

well, in English otoh, "Sanskrit" refers to the language exclusively; so certainly, Sanskrit should redirect here. I would still opt to have the page at Sanskrit language for correctness, but, as I said, that's just an opinion, not a campaign to move it back. dab (ᛏ) 07:36, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, in fact, in English, no one will ever confuse the language with the adjective, so there's no ambiguity at all. It was just an observation. deeptrivia (talk) 14:22, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup

I noted at least one mistake ("Sanskrit is the official language of India", instead of just "an official language of India"), and a couple of phrases that should be rewritten.

"a pure Language native only to bHaratha (Today's India)"; (I believe that is a reference to the fact that Sanskrit means "excellently made" or "pure" in Sanskrit, though it should be confirmed with non-Wikipedia sources)

"Sanskrit was the language for thousands of years even before anything similar to language with lexicon, phonetic and ontological definations occured elswhere on the globe." (I guess this is a reference to Panini, but that's ~ 2.5 thousand years back, not thousands of years back).

The rest of the article should probably be checked over for inaccuracies that either might have crept in or might have been added by zealots of various types

Arun

Those phrases and others were added recently by one user ([1]) and, needless to say, have now been removed. But I agree that this article does need improvement in other places. StradivariusTV 00:45, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Meaning

Isnt the basic meaning just "put/written together" in the sense of Codification? Which is the best Font to view this page, some of the letters are missing in my browser? -- 84.159.189.7 16:58, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Sam or Sams (prefix meaning "together") plus "krit" ("put", "done", made"). Often glossed as "perfected", "complete". People who didn't like Sanskrit, and preferred more colloquial language took it in a derogatory sense, to mean "artificial", "contrived", "assumed", "affected", "put on". Basically, however, it means just "constructed", "put together". Since Panini enunciated the rules of the language so logically, the word may have originally referred to Panini's work, in which case it means in effect "codified".

I thought about an interesting alternate meaning. In Red Pine's translation of the Heart Sutra, he translates samskar as memory. "Sanskrit" can in the same way mean "that which is memorized"? Somewhat plausible considering that most ancient Sanskrit texts, like the Vedas were transmitted for at least a thousand years by memorization generation after generation before they were written down. deeptrivia (talk) 18:09, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Sam means good or better, kritam means done well or did well. The pratyutpatti is Samyak Krtah itih Samskrtah. Actual meaning is "Well did so, The (it is) well done". Before Panini, Sanskrit was just like any other ordinary vernacular language which had undergone many changes. After his monumental work Ashtadhyayi, the total facect of that language changed. Initially there was no name to that language. Similar to hinduism having no name, just called Sanatana Dharma. After him another master pieces were included by Pingala, Patanjali and Bhartrihari. If we carefully observe only after their era Sanskrit literature flourished by works of kalidasa, Dandi, Bhasa, etc. Language is divine. Every language is great and linguistically, Sanskrit is neither superior nor inferior to other langauges, but due to its codied and standard grammar, Expression of feeling is made far better than others. User:Bsskchaitanya 13:57, 14 Novenber 2006 (UTC)

List of notable sanskrit scholars

I'm thingking of placing a list of notable Sanskrit shcolars--Jondel 01:38, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I totally agree (I didn't know Gauss did Sanskrit!). To the list I'd add:

He really did. Sometimes I wonder if his mathematical ideas came from Hindu cosmological works and mathematics.--Jondel 00:22, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

... that's all I can think of at the moment. We should also have an honor roll of amateur Sanskritists, e.g. T.S. Eliot, Goethe &c.
Matter of fact, why don't we just move the Western Sanskrit vogue section to a new article and expand it. That way, we can discuss the rediscovery of Sanskrit in the West, and give proper attention to different regional traditions (Germany, the UK, America), and discuss the impact Sanskrit has had on different disciplines/traditions (I'm thinking primarily of science and Transcendentalism). Mrgah 13:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Tagalog

I have heard that Tagalog is actually the closest living language to sanskrit, sharing more in common with it than any indian language. However, googling "tagalog sanskrit" gets me way too many hits that have nothing to do with what I am trying to find out.

Anybody got advice or know this to be not true?

I think the number of Sanskrit loans in Tagalog would not be that great, just a few hundreds. Although this number is actually quite large. But another Austronesian language like the Old-Javanese has some 12,500 Sanskrit loans. So if this number is compared to the number of Sanskrit loans in Tagalog, then the number in Tagalog is dwarfed. Meursault2004 22:00, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Most of the Indo-European loanwords in Tagalog are from Spanish, not Sanskrit (nor its daughter languages). I think if you modify your google search to look for Spanish rather than Sanskrit, you'll find what you're looking for...although perhaps not what you expected. ;-) Tomertalk 18:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Jana Gana Mana: "sanskritized Bengali language"

The article Jana Gana Mana begins: "Jana Gana Mana ... is the first of five stanzas of a poem by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, written in the highly sanskritized Bengali language." - There's been some question about whether it's meaningful or appropriate to use this expression "sanskritized Bengali language". Can anyone contribute to this? (Please discuss in Talk:Jana Gana Mana.) Thanks. -- Writtenonsand 16:12, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


Sanskrit in Javanese and Balinese script

Sanskrit sentence from the article, with two scripts added.

He guys, I just added two Indic scripts from Indonesia to the one which is already in the article. What do you think of it? Meursault2004 22:06, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

Good job! deeptrivia (talk) 18:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

One more thing about this script. The text states Grantha is modelled after the tamil script. I rather think it is the other way round. Grantha is the mother of the tamil script tiself. Kartheeque

Sanskrit Palatal Fricative

I am not sure why the IPA postaveolar is being used as the sound of the Sanskrit palatal fricative. Sanskrit is of course extinct and modern speakers tend to use the postaveolar, but most sources have the pronunciation of this sound as the alveolo-palatal fricative. I can quote this work from Ulrich Stiehl: http://www.sanskritweb.net/deutsch/ipa_sans.pdf Imperial78

After looking it over more I will put the alveolo-palatal or the post-alveolar and perhaps a new description for the sibilants paragraph which doesn't make much sense to my English ears. Imperial78
I had read in a book "Historical Linguistics" that the sibilants are characterized only by their hissing sound and not necessarily by their place of articulation. This is a major point of difference from other consonants, including fricatives. The description of /ʃ/ clearly said that it can be looked upon as a palatal consonant as well as a post-alveolar consonant. Thats what I was trying to say! Further, one change I am going to make in my IPA pronunciations, is that I shall put one space before and one space after the slash enclosures, because the IPA characters often interfere with the slashes. ie, like / XYZ / rather than /XYZ/ (square brackets would cause even more confusion.)Cygnus_hansa 08:31, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
What that means is that sibilants are sibilants because of the hissing, which is why you can have a dental /s/ that is different from /θ/. Place of articulation is still important in phonetic detail.AEuSoes1 08:57, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
Cygynus_hansa, I think maybe you are misunderstanding my point. We know there are three sibilants in Sanskrit: one was the voiceless alveolar frictative /s/, another was the voiceless retroflex fricative /s./, the third is where it becomes not as clear exactly what it was. There are three choices: it could be the voiceless postalveolar fricative, the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative, or the voiceless palatal fricative. Since Sanskrit is extinct, we do not know exactly which sibilant this was. Many sources list it has the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative. As well it is transcribed with ś (formerly ç) not š. This is why I believe transcribing the sound with the postalveolar is not correct. I am rather well versed in phonology/phonetics so I hope I am making myself clear. Imperial78
Imperial, you are not getting my point. The third sibilant you are talking about is clearly the voiceless palatal sibilant, and it has been attested as such in the Grammar of Panini and Prātishākhyas of all Vedas. What I am trying to say is that it does not matter whether you classify this sibilant as postalveolar sibilant or alveolo-palatal sibilant or palatal sibilant: it will always give the sound of "sh" as in "ship", etc. This is a particular feature of sibilants--their articulation varies from person to person with no phonemic change. And you are wrong to say that Sanskrit is "extinct". You must know that exceedingly great stess has always been given on the correct pronunciation and correct articulation--failing which one incurs great wrath of the deities--pronunciation in Sanskrit has been very faithfully preserved, rather than Greek or Latin. Further, the Atharvaveda Prātishākhya gives clear directive for pronouncing ś: and its is as a postalveolar sibilant.

Cygnus_hansa 11:42, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

OK, you point is clear now. Yes people can vary the pronunciations of certain sibilants without phonemic change although the language Kabardian distinguishes the aveolo-palatal frictatives from the postalveolar fricatives! Note, most speakers of English have a labialized voiceless postalveolar fricative for "sh". Well, Sanskrit is spoken by a few isolated communities, but these are not a continuation of Sanskrit but more recent revival much like modern Hebrew. Can you please quote from the Atharvaveda Prātishākhya here? Imperial78
Even if modern speakers were direct linguistic descendants, one cannot avoid language change. However, since the palatal fricative /ç/ isn't a sibilant, then what we have is either a postalveolar or a palatalized postalveolar. The physical distinction small and since Sanskrit didn't have both, a description from a grammarian without modern tools will probably fall short of the discussion. AEuSoes1 22:33, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you Aeusoes1. I do quote one linguist source about this frictative. When I have time, I will have to look over all my Sanskrit sources at the library and see how they describe this fricative. It has always been an issue on its exact pronunciation. I still vouch for the alveolo-palatal since this is what I usually see. The postalveolar must be a more modern pronunciation in my opinion. Even the palatal stops are an issue. Were they palatal stops or postalveolar or palato-alveolar affricates? Perhaps all of this variation and opinions needs to be addressed in the article. Imperial78.
Hello Sir! The Sanskrit pronunciation is no recent revival! It is the utmost faithful preservation of something going on thousands of years ago--according tothe rules set out thousands of years ago. It is used in everyday ceremonies. As for ś, it is śvāsānupradāna (aspirated: acoording to Sanskrit, all sibilants are classified as aspirates), aghoSha (voiceless) and kaNThavivRti. It is amde with the flat of the tongue against the forward part of the palatal arch (Rgveda Prātiśākhya). The Atharvaveda Prātiśākhya 1.31 gives a more graphic desciption by referring to the tongue as trough shaped. According to modern phonetic analysis of this phoneme (Sanskrit Phonetics, Mishra, V., Chowkhambha Publication, p 153), ś is an unvoiced lingua-palatal sibilant (ūShman). It is produced with the sides of the tongue in contact with the teeth and the gums. The tip and blade of the tongue are raised forward, but do not touch the alveolar ridge or front of the palate. An unvoiced breath stream with hissing is directed against the front part of the palate, alveolar ridge and teeth. The tongue is adusted such that a relatively broad channel is formed between the tongue and the roof of the mouth. The lips may be rounded. Secondly, my point is why its only wikipedia which classifies / ʃ / as postalveolar. The Webster's dictionary simply classifies / ʃ / as a Palatal sibilant. Thirdly, in the Sanskrit tradition, there is nothing such as postalveolar or alveolar. Anything is either labial (oShThya) or dental (dantya) or palatal (taalavya) or retroflex (mūrdhanya) or velar (kaNThya). So it is natural that ś will be classified as taalavya. S is called "dental", but by modern phonetics we know its alveolar. Similarly, the palatal stops are also palatal stops! Actually nothing such as "postalveolar" actually exists. Cygnus_hansa 20:41, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
Well, it isn't Wikipedia that says it is postalveolar it is the International Phonetic Alphabet which is recognized the world over by linguists. "Webster" is not a qualified authority on phonetics. I know well the difference between a palatal fricative and a postalveolar fricative. Of course, to find out the precise phonetic value, we need a spectrogram which will not be possible for the ancient Sanskrit language, although the old texts do have value of course when it comes to pronunciation, although they do not use modern phonetic descriptions so they are open to interpretation. On a related note, old texts from al-Khalil and Sibawayhi on Classical Arabic give a great amount of detail on the consonants. For example, Arabic emphatic /d./ was actually emphatic /dl./. All of this is really interesting and deserves more discussion. Imperial
Actually /s/ can be both dental and alveolar. Different languages have it in different places but they are close enough that we don't need a separate symbol just a diacritic. So it is not the case that people once thought they were dental and then realized that the tongue doesn't touch the teeth. Ladefoged calls using the word "palatal" for ʃ as "eccentric." It is not a palatal sound, but some might call it palatal because postalveolar is too long a word or, as I believe could be the case with Sanskrit, to fit with the paradigm of other sounds in the language. Sanskrit has a number of palatal sounds. The fact that the traditional descriptions by grammarians have no "postalveolar or alveolar" demonstrates that they were inclined to lump things together that fit into this paradigm.
That is what I am exactly trying to say: Sanskrit grammarians have clubbed together consonants under limited categories: hence the fact that ś is categorized as a palatal sound. Cygnus_hansa 08:17, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
There is no such thing as a perfect "utmost faithful preservation" of the pronunciation of languages. They change, it's a fact and nothing can stop it. The Catholic Church has a similar practice with Latin but we know that their pronunciation is not the original pronunciation of the words. In addition to the situation you describe, there are also communities that have adopted Sanskrit. This is the recent revival that Imperial is talking about.

AEuSoes1 22:27, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

About spaces: I feel many people in the world are moving towards Linux, or if still on Windows--towards Mozilla Firefox. So for aesthetic sense, let the extra spaces remain in the IPA slashes / /. They cause no harm: only benefit.Cygnus_hansa 08:17, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
You can feel what you want, but the fact is that only ten percent of web browsers worldwide use firefox. It's a problem having the spaces because it is not IPA convention and not Wikipedia convention. Not to mention that if we did it your way we would have to change every article on Wikipedia. AEuSoes1 10:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
Here is a good example of the difference between Classical Latin and church Latin: Veni Vidi Vici is /weni widi wiki/ in Classical Latin and /veni vidi viči/ in Church Latin. Imperial78
This is too poor an example--according to Christianity/Judaism, it is the text and the written matter which is considered holy, hence pronunciation was not scruplously preserved. Furthermore, the Romans had never done a comprehensive phonological analysis. In the Hindu philosophy (esp Mimamsa), it is the sound which is utmost holy and sacred and eternal. A combination of sounds, as a mantra, is holy in itself and has automatic "magical" power. Even the deities are bound by it. That is why Panini, the Pratishakhyas, the shikshas and Patanjali lay so much emphasis on correct pronunciation. Minor variations and allophones ARE possible in limited cases, I know that.Cygnus_hansa 08:17, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
I assume you are referring to the allophones of Vedic Sanskrit?

Imperial78

it's true the Brahmins put rather more emphasis on phonology than the Church, so the comparison is flawed. The Rigveda-Pratishakya may indeed go back to the 1st millennium BC, so that it is true that the pronunciation remained essentially stable for more than 2,000 years. For times earlier than that, we have only reconstruction of the evolution from Indo-Iranian, which gives us a fair idea, but no exact knowledge. (e.g. when did z disappear? Was it still there in the oldest parts of the Rigveda? When (post-RV) did they lose etymological laryngeal hiatus? When and how did formalized sandhi destroy the metrics of the hymns? Was this a natural development of the spoken language, or artificial scohlarly "language design"? We know the rough processes, but no Pratishakya will answer these questions. dab (ᛏ) 20:09, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
First of all, Sanskrit never had the voiced sibilant / z /. Proto-Indo-Iranian (hypotheized) had an aspirated voiced alveolar sibilant / zh /--a very, very, rare consonant. Of course, according to the sacred texts, the Vedas are eternal truths and so no explicit indication about history can ever be found there. And continuing about pronunciation and allophones, there is an interesting story in probably on of the Puranas. There was a certain evil demon who wished to be immortal (like all other demons wish). A sage advised him to perform penances to the high-god Brahmaa. When the demon asked what should he ask for a boon,the sage advised him to say the Sanskrit word "daoham" (or something like this, I dont remember well--meaning "make me immortal"). But since the demon did not know the Aryan language very well (being a demon), he performed penances and when finally the high-god Brahmaa (a member of the holy trinity) did appear, the demon spoke "dhāoham" (or something like that, I dont remember). This minor variation of sounds actually meant "burn me". Brahmaa said "Amen" and the demon was immediately burnt to ashes and annihited. Cygnus_hansa 08:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

rare or impossible?

The article says that /zʱ/ is a rare consonant in the world's languages. I've never seen an aspirated fricative anywhere. I've seen aspirated affricates, but those are different. If no language has an aspirated fricative then maybe this should be changed to murmured /z̤/. AEuSoes1 19:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I wrote it. It is from the book Principles of Historical Linguistics by Hans H. Hoch (Mouton de Gruyter, 1991).Cygnus_hansa 10:18, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Slashes

what "IPA slashes"? I thought IPA is commonly enclosed in square brackets, while phonological transcriptions are between slashes. Far from "even more confusing" I would find square brackets rather an improvement. dab (ᛏ) 20:00, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

IPA convention is to enclose phonological transcriptions in slashes /like this/ and phonetic transcriptions in brackets [like this]. Magicalsaumy would like this to change to have spaces between the brackets and slashes / like this / and [ this ]. This isn't an issue of slashes vs brackets. AEuSoes1 21:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)
I realize you were talking about spaces. I am talking about slashes. That's two unconnected points. Since we are dealing with phonetic transcription here, I was suggesting we replace the slashes with the more correct square brackets. dab (ᛏ) 14:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Featured article

The article is very well written and has every possibility to become a featured article. I used the to write a school report on Sanskrit language and I got a A+ grade in it!! --Spartian 07:24, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

you mean you presented the article as your own work in school and got a good grade? When will teachers learn to google? The article is presently still rather far from FA level. It needs quite some cleanup. But we could put it on WP:PR, and it could be there in a couple of weeks. dab (ᛏ) 13:38, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Lol. I didn't copy and paste the article. But yeah this article is very informative --Spartian 18:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed a link (to a bogus website) from the list of External links Bharatveer 09:08, 22 March 2006 (UTC) --- Removed a link to a website from the list of external links . Bharatveer 15:37, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Panini and pitch accent

This article claimed that the pitch accent was not present in Sansrkit as codified by Panini. This ignores the fact that Panini's derivation builds the pitch accent using the device of anubandhas, has a large section devoted to the accent of compounds, and a shorter section devoted to when finite verbs retain their accent in a sentence. We should not confuse modern grammars of "Classical Sanskrit" and Panini's grammar.

Also, the usual descriptions of the stress accent (eg, Macdonnel, "Sanskrit Grammar for Students") say that the stressed syllable is penultimate to preantepenultimate, not one of the last three syllables. NathRao 17:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)NathRao

Sanskrit is not a stress-timed language. It is a syllable-timed language, like Latin. And yes, it seems that the pitch accent was lost by 6th century AD, not BC. Classical Greek also lost its pitch accent almost by the same time.Cygnus_hansa 22:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Relative Dates of the Epics and Panini

This is likely to erupt into a controversy.

The usual dates of Panini (5-4th c BCE) and the Epics (post-Mauryan at the earliest. extant Mahabharata likely even latter) make it unlikely that the Sanskrit Epics are pre-Paninean. As Oberlies categorically states in the introduction to "A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit", this is not defensible from linguistic point of view. The justification is the rest of that book. NathRao 17:22, 25 April 2006 (UTC)NathRao

sanskrit not an Indo-European language

Sanskrit has found its origin in the Sarasvati Sindhu Civilization. it has nothing to do with Aryan invasion. and all such theories have been proved wrong. Sanskrit is not part of the Indo-European language in fact English has come from Sanskrit. Sanskrit has 400 grammar rules. please get these facts correct

Dear Anonymous. Before making your Hindutvavadi claim, I want to ask you something. How much do you know about Linguistics, especially Historical Linguistics? Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, let me guesssss...... Nothing. You know nothing about linguistics. Without any knowledge in your brains, you have read some crap on the internet and this is what you have claimed here. And we have not claimed anything here related to Aryan invasion, for your kind information.Cygnus_hansa 22:53, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Can you provide any evidences or sources please. In that case we can throw the whole Indo-European hypothesis into the dustbin, including the historical linguistics. Meursault2004 13:52, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Meursault,You can throw Indo european hypotheses including historical linguistics even without fighting these "made for the purpose" Straw men .Bharatveer 13:56, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Huh ??? I was just being cynical. Meursault2004 17:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
so when someone supports your bizarre POV but looks like an idiot doing it, you claim they're actually someone secretly trying to discredit your cause? Genius. --Krsont 22:25, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

This should get you acquainted with the comparative method before you attack it:

  • Jeffers, Robert J. and Lehiste, Ilse (1979). Principles and Methods for Historical Linguistics. MIT press. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

The idea that Sanskrit is an Indo-European language came from 19th century linguists who were fluent in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Heck, Sanskrit puts the "Indo" in Indo-European. There is arising further verification in genetic studies. This doesn't mean that there isn't influence from substrate languages that existed before the arrival of IE speakers.

I would like to point out, though, that if you claim that English comes from Sanskrit that you are simply promoting an alternate IE family tree. AEuSoes1 01:29, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Help on transcribing a name in Sanskrit (and etymological info.)

Not related to the Sanskrit article, but I read the name of the Barmakids political clan (famous for it's Viziers!) originally came from the Sanskrit (or maybe Pali) Pramukh, which I've seen translated in various places as "High Priest", "Abbot", "President", "Administrator" ... could one of you fine folks help me find the proper Devangari (or whatever script is historically appropriate) writing ?

(Also, I wouldn't be surprised if Pramuck was etymologically related to Brahmin, though I haven't seen any evidence for that, beyond that they're both designations for a priestly function and "BRM" is close to "PRMK". But then, I have no idea how Sanskrit etymology works.)

I also have the same question for the name Nava Vihara (New monastery / new temple), though it's not as important. Thank you! flammifertalk 08:10, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

प्रमुख - It's related to "मुख्य" ("mukhya") which means "important". -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:38, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
"नव विहार" - Nava Vihara -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:39, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Yay! That was quick, Thanks :) flammifertalk 08:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

1991 Census-language data

I have modified the number of speakers in Info box. References are given below.

Languages in descending order of strength - India, states and union territories : 1991 Census

Population by Language, Bilingualism, Trilingualism : Scheduled Languages : 1991 CensusBharatveer 13:33, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Ablaut

Over on the article on Indo-European ablaut there has been a request for examples from other languages (at present we refer to English, German, Latin and Greek). Any chance of some of you Sanskrit experts looking over there to see if you have anything to add? Possibly a whole sub-section on ablaut in Sanskrit would be justified? --Doric Loon 14:01, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Tutorial

Crc , why are you deleting such a good free resource for learning sanskrit? Ofcourse it is sure better than a lot of useless dictionaries? You cannot decide to delete anything from here.I think you will be kind enough to discuss it here.Bharatveer 18:35, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I can't tell what tutorial exactly you are talking about. Put the link here and we'll discuss it. CRCulver 18:42, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The link that you tried to delete Chitrapurmath.Bharatveer 18:56, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I see. Well, I think we should only link here to general, authoritative, scholarly tutorials. This one is affiliated with a particular sect, and instead of teaching the full range of literary Sanskrit, it teaches only the sort of writing that the sect uses in teaching and worship. CRCulver 19:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
Your argument is not logical. A language remains the same , irrespective of the fact that it is taught by different sects, religion or region. And regarding 'scholarship' it is many times better than oiropean scholars. Bharatveer 03:33, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, the international scholarly community favours "European" publications (which are really often written by non-Europeans) over the tutorials of sects or nationalists. And Wikipedia reflects international scholarship. CRCulver 17:44, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I am sure 'International' readers can decide about the scholarly value of such publications.SO you dont have to 'censor' such information from them.Let them decide which is good and which is not. Bharatveer 03:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
PLEASE do not delete that link!! i'm no scolar, but a class 7 student. i came to this article to look for a good, easy tutorial in the links section. the ONLY one that is practical for me is that one. this page is not just for scolars, you know! if you really want to, please put it in something like a "basic tutorial" section, or add a note to it, or a warning, or anything, i dont care! just dont get rid of it! who knows how many students like me will fail their tests?

"computer friendly"

Once again, Vedic Sanskrit has the full richness of a natural language. Classical Sanskrit as defined by Panini, otoh, is much reduced and streamlined for regularity. It is this Paninean Sanskrit that is "computer friendly"; it arguably qualifies as an engineered language in some respects, but it is not "more computer-friendly" than other "engineered languages spoken by humans" such as Lojban (because it is not fully artificial, it is a compromise between the natural language it is based on and Panini's principles of regular morphology). Paninean Sanskrit is notable as the earliest known attempt at such regularization, but it doesn't do Sanskrit justice to reduce it to that, seeing the full irregularity of Vedic grammar. dab (ᛏ) 11:21, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Few people spoke Sanskrit (post-Vedic or Upanishadic Sanskrit to be specific) as their mother tongue in Panini's time, and second-language learners were probably having difficulty with the extreme irregularity and randomness (12 ways of forming infinitives) of Vedic Sanskrit . I suspect that Panini made some of the regularisations and simplifications based on parallel developments in the Prakrits, but made sure to stay slightly archaic and very conservative - especially in terms of phonology. Also, the inflectional grammar had probably been simplified in various ways by speakers of various languages (even post-Paninean Epic Sanskrit does not fully conform to classical grammar, probably because further developments had taken place in the writers' mother-tongues), and Panini probably tried to make these simplifications uniform (as opposed to various forms used by various people) and more regular. --Grammatical error 15:53, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Vowels

Someone changed my vowel classification, making the ऋ, लृ etc as alveolar approximants. They are in fact retroflex approximants, (Sanskrit: mūrdhanya), VERY CLEARLY classified as such by the Sanskrit grammarians and MW Sanskrit dictionary. I am going to make the necessary change. Further, let me be clear that the Sanskrit grammarians do NOT define any alveolar articulation. For them, coronal articulations are either dental or retroflex.Cygnus_hansa 22:19, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

So words like "Rishi" are meant to be pronounced [ɻ̩ʂi]? Are you sure? I've never heard anyone pronounce it like that (Sanskrit doesn't even have the retroflex approximant as a normal consonant phoneme and the retroflex lateral approximant only exists as an allophone of intervocalic /ɖ/ in Vedic Sanskrit). I have always heard something like [r̩ʂi]--Grammatical error 05:53, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
The section is about pronunciation as supposed to be according to the old grammarians, not as realized in modern times.Cygnus_hansa 06:07, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
My native language is Malayalam and we have the retroflex approximant as a phoneme but we never use it in any borrowed Sanskrit words, so I'm rather surprised at the fact that Sanskrit "r" and "vocalic r" are meant to be retroflex. However, since you say that the ancient grammarians do indeed classify them as retroflex, I'll stop arguing. --Grammatical error 06:23, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Help wanted for a Sanskrit link spammer

Every so often a spammer using an IP address that starts with 64.228.225. spams links to bogus web sites. I have tracked down and reverted all I could find, but I'm getting a little sick of tracking all these articles on my watchlist (it's up to 263 pages by now). Can I ask the regular, frequent editors of this article to keep an eye out for this person? If they hit again, please revert the edit and warn the spammer. If you have the time, check out what other edits they made that day and revert them as well -- or just let me know and I'll do it.

The link they like to add to this article is [http:// sanskrit ipfox com/ Sanskrit Etymological Sources - Cognates]. The real point of the link is to build search engine rankings for the commercial links at the bottom of the page; the same spamdexer is linking similarly bogus pages for Hindu mystical figures and U.S. country music stars -- all with the same links at the bottom of the page.

The spammer also recently created an account, User:Borgengruft.

For more info, see:

Thanks for your help.--A. B. 06:01, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

if it's the same url all the time, we just need to add it to the meta:Spam blacklist, I'll suggest that on meta. dab (ᛏ) 09:08, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
I just learned of this resource and left a note there -- only to see that you had beaten me to this! I'll leave a note on your talk page.--A. B. 14:28, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

I've blacklisted ipfox.com. MaxSem 07:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

ḥ

Why did ḥ replace final s in -a stem declension, but not in -i stems and -u stems? As far as I know, final "s" is always changing into ḥ in pronunciation. --82.139.47.117 20:07, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence ??

Sanskrit & Artificial Intelligence / Knowledge Representation

any idea ?

-- 172.174.175.119 11:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks a lot for the link to that NASA article (I was searching for it for quite some time). Sanskrit is the most computer-friendly and unambigous spoken language in the world.

I had added a statement pertaining to the same, but the HIJACKERS removed it I had given a link to a scientific paper by INDIAN brown-skinned computer scientists. Now that a (prolly caucusoid) man from NASA has written a paper to the same effect, I hope they do not revert any changes to the same when I add details to the Sanskrit article later. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IAF (talk • contribs)

wow. never mind that there has been a "computational linguistics" section here for ages, don't let mere facts distract you from your paranoia, IAF. Yes there was a "Sanskrit & AI" fad in the 1980s. Worth mentioning, not much to it. dab (ᛏ) 18:26, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
  • I would not call that a "fad", but rather a field in which research was abandoned. It happens ; like in in the case of fast-breeder reactors in the US, or Object-oriented operating systems. That computer linguistics page is incomplete. Far more research has been done in this field, and ALL of them have been spectacular failures. Like one scientist who fed verbs, nouns and sentence formation tips into a computer so that he could communicate, or the massive project undertaken by Japan in the early 90s to literally make a Terminator like computer. ALL these projects have failed.

Archaic or Ancient

"....is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the most archaic of the Vedic texts being the Rigveda." User dab, Now here , Why are you insisting on using the word "archaic" here?

From Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Archaic means Archaic

Ancient means Ancient

Can you please explain why a mainstream academic scholar like you insists on the word "archaic" .Bharatveer 06:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Rig Vedic texts don't go back all that far, as it was preserved for so long through oral transmission, so calling it an "ancient text" conjures up images of manuscripts that don't really exist. However, its language is truly old, so the first definition of "archaic" you linked to works. I think "archaic text" is a reasonable way of putting things. CRCulver 06:53, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Your argument is not reasonable.Bharatveer 07:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Since at least two of us agree that it should be there, and you seem to be all alone, the article should retain the wording "archaic" until such time as you are able to build consensus. That's how things work around here. CRCulver 07:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
AFAIK Wikipedia is not a democracy.I have removed the word "texts" this taking the wind out of your unreasonable argument. Bharatveer 07:13, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia relies on consensus for article changes. That means that the majority rules until the minority is able to convince sufficient editors of their views. You've been around for a while, you should know that already. CRCulver 07:18, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
With the word "text" gone : there is no basis for your insistence on the word "archaic". Bharatveer 07:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes there is, look at the first definition of "archaic" that you yourself gave. The second one works as well. In a few minutes, I should be able to source the wording from outside scholarship, which would seal it. CRCulver 07:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Bah, most of my library is boxed up now in preparation for a move. But dab (or other IEists), you can easily source the wording from Lehmann, Macdonell, Whitney, and probably a dozen other authors sure to be on your shelves. CRCulver 07:32, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
As a wikipedia user, I respect rules like building consensus.But I am appalled by the attempts of some scholarly wikipedia editors to bring in the worst possible "words" and "meanings" to India-related articles.The reason why some users insist on the word "archaic" will be very clear to anyone who understands the usage of "archaic" in the contemporary writing.Bharatveer 07:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, but I see the wording "archaic" in the scholarship all the time, and our job here is to mirror the mainstream scholarship. CRCulver 07:38, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
If we're looking for a difference between the two, I'd say that ancient can imply something that has existed for a long time while archaic denotes something that is no longer done/existing. Since the Vedic text still exists in manuscript form, it seems as though ancient is the better choice for the Veda. If one wants to discuss the language behind it, then archaic is the better choice, although at present the sentence is worded in away that makes it sound as though the subject is the Veda rather than the language. Considering the rest of the paragraph, I think it should probably be worded as such:
...is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, with the Sanskrit of the Rigveda being the oldest and most linguistically most archaic.
AEuSoes1 07:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Bharatveer, I must insist that you are not suited to argue about stylistic nuances in English. Nor is it my job to serve as your dictionary. See also [3]. "Archaic" was indeed used in the linguistic sense: Rigvedic Sanskrit is the most archaic stage of the language preserved. It is certainly fair to call the RV "ancient", but calling it the "oldest and linguistically most archaic" Sanskrit text is more accurate and therefore preferable: this is not about glowing prose (or I'd call it hoary), it is about objective assessment. dab (ᛏ) 08:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with Crculver's arguments. The oral or Shrauta tradition was probably more due to lack or recording material such as papyrus or stone tablets rather than a deliberate tradition. The RigVeda can definitely be classified as an ancient text. Okay since it was not a "text" i.e in written form, then it can definitely be said that the RigVed is the ancient most recorded collection of ideas. I say recorded since it was first brought down orally and then in writing. IAF
yes, of course the Rigveda is an ancient text, there can be no debate about that. A "text" (unlike "scripture" or "writing") must not be in written form at all, I don't understand this point of contention. The text is "ancient" or "old", and its language (and arguably, its content) is "archaic". Oral tradition was still deliberate: in that culture, texts were supposed to be memorized, and writing was considered inferior. dab (ᛏ) 08:54, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Dab , see NPA . You have been repeatedly making these sorts of comments . Who are you to decide whether I am qualified enough to argue about stylistic nuances in English.Bharatveer 10:06, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
well, if your editing behaviour was half decent, I wouldn't need to waste my time with you. And no, don't "AGF" me here, AGF is only possible within reason, we do have to assume good faith to the point of ridicule. When AGF is exhausted, DFTT takes effect: I will not argue with you any further. But I do recommend you show some good faith for a change. dab (ᛏ) 07:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

historical linguistics

it is news to me that historical linguistics was "developed by Christian missionaries". I always thought Christian missionaries were busy, like, converting people. It is true that comparative linguistics owes much to the early grammatical records of the Jesuits, because they were the first scholars interested in all languages, but that precisely doesn't apply to Sanskrit which has its own native grammatical tradition, Jesuits or no Jesuits. historical linguistics is of no interest to Christian missionaries whatsoever, who typically just want to translate the bible at everything that moves. I realize Bharatveer is just trolling (stop it) but the point seems to need making. dab (ᛏ) 06:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

How relevant is it to mention 'Christian missionaries'?

User:Bharatveer has once again started an edit war and trying to push his POV the one should mention that Christian missionaries were the one who proposed that Sanskrit evolved from the PIE family of languages. I am not in the mood to have a revert war with this user. My previous experiences with him has shown me that I would be wasting my time. I would like to invite the larger editor pool to look in and do the needful. - Parthi 06:59, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

no need for a 'larger pool' here, the case is transparent enough. thanks for looking after the article. dab (ᛏ) 07:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
dab & venu . Pls be civil . Stop your unnecessary nasty comments and it would be better if you just stick to the above discussion.

If comparitive studies , historical linguistics etc can be mentioned here, then the man who single handedly created this new wonderful subject also deserves to be mentioned. And him being a christian missionary cannot be called a disqualification .Bharatveer 07:26, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

*melts under scathing sarcasm exposing historical linguistics as a Christian conspiracy*
seriously, get over Max Muller. He didn't single-handedly create any field. We are to thank him for the editio princeps of the Rigveda, however. Ever picked up the Rigveda from a bookshelf, beautifully typeset in Devanagari? You'd have to thank Muller for that, even if he had been a bleeding Promise Keeper, voted Bush and ate infidel babies. dab (ᛏ) 07:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I dont care whether you are a cannibal or you vote for hitler .It would be better if you can just restrict to the above discussion .-Bharatveer 08:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
nice one. you stop bringing up "MM=the West=academia=evil Christian conspiracy to subdue Hinduism (by editing their sacred texts)" and we'll be fine, thanks. At least go and edit MM's article if your're so into exposing him. dab (ᛏ) 08:25, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Now who brought out the Christian conspiracy here? I see that you have no intention to stop your snide remarks.So there is no point in continuing this discussion.Bharatveer 09:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)Bharatveer 09:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
IE linguistics and comparative Sanskrit was started by Jones, who wasn't a Christian missionary (in fact, he was criticized for loving Hinduism). It made progress under Grimm, who wasn't a Christian missionary, and Bopp, who wasn't one either. One of its most productive scholars was Brugmann, who wasn't a Christian missionary. Only Max Müller even comes close to this definition, and his purview wasn't even strictly linguistics. No, comparative Indo-European linguistics was not started by Christian missionaries. And in fact, historical linguistics in general (the discovery of the Uralic family) began some time before Sanskrit was examined, and all that was uncovered by people who, wait for it, weren't Christian missionaries. CRCulver 13:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
the sad part being that we even need to point this out. dab (ᛏ) 14:42, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh! How sad !!!!-Bharatveer 15:02, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe this link will make you happy.
ARYAN INVASION FANTASYBharatveer 15:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
The link is just as wrong as you are. You said (and the compiler of that site suggests) that historical linguistics was created by Christian missionaries working in India. The truth is, the science existed before any interest in Sanskrit, and it was first applied to the Uralic languages by people who had no interest in Christian mission. Furthermore, you both continue the calumny that historical linguistics today has anything to do with Christians, since most historical linguists I know are agnostics who find Christianity somewhat quaint. CRCulver 15:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh! You just needed 15 mins to read all that stuff. I am sure you are very happy now. Pls reserve the words like "calumny" for the works of your "Linguistics" friends.-Bharatveer 15:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I've read the link several times over the past year, since WIN likes to bring it up. Have you noticed most of that stuff is from decades after Jones' report (which in turn is some years after the development of historical linguistics)? How can you ascribe Indo-European linguistics to Müller's machinations if the field existed before he was even born? Furthermore, "calumny" is no uncivil term. CRCulver 15:57, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
please, CRCulver, it should be evident by now that Bv is not interested in actual debate. dab (ᛏ) 07:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Introduction

I found this article's PR entry, and since I just want to make a few points about the introduction and article organization instead of giving a section-by-section review, I'm commenting here. Per WP:LEAD, the introduction really should be 3 paragraphs. That last sentence about the article's scope should become an italicized "disambiguation-type" statement at the top of the article. Something along the lines of This article focuses on Classical Sanskrit. For the pre-Classical form of the language, see Vedic Sanskrit. Since there is already a main article on that, the summary here can be condensed further. Perhaps a summary mention of some grammatical features can be put in the lead in the sentence's place, because there are many grammar sections. -Fsotrain09 18:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not the nationwide language dears

Hello fellow wikipedians,

Understand the wikipedia project to provide authentic sources alone.This article features sanskrit is speaken nationwide in India . mm . This is a dead language dears. and u r giving as much hype to make it alive. - what is your problem with comprehension? Nowhere the article says it is " speaken nationwide in India" . It says Sanskrit is used ofr liturgical and religious purposes and has lots of prestige, which is true.

Please provide some useful or if u dare give REAL facts about sanskrit.There are a bunch of blog entries to defame sanskrit than that of its promoters. No false info —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.92.36.96 (talk • contribs) February 21, 2006

Hellø feller 59.92.36.96? Zø whæt længuaigzhe ærest thøu spaekin'? Nøt B1FFian isit? Rursus 21:45, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

It is one of the "scheduled languages" by definition of the "Official Language Commission", not by virtue of being "alive" in any way. dab (ᛏ) 18:15, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

lengthy opinion piece removed -User:Bsskchaitanya 15.45, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

What is this section even about? Sanskrit is a "scheduled language" in India. The definition of this lies with the Indian govenment, not with Wikipedia, and we're merely reporting the fact. Sanskrit is the topic on this page, so of course it is concentrating on Sanskrit (wth?) -- if you want to discuss the relative notability of languages of India, you are looking for languages of India. dab (ᛏ) 11:51, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Dab, that's the same thing I'm saying. Why feed trolls? And what do the claims have to do with the article in question? --­ ॐ Kris (☎ talk | contribs) 04:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Pronouncing Vowels

In section Sanskrit#Vowels, it is mentioned that IAST /a/ is equiv. to English schwa. Isn't it a little closer a short IPA /ɑː/ ? Also, as noted in section Sanskrit#Phonology, is IPA /ŗ/ pronounced /ri/ in modern Sanskrit? I have heard /ŗg/ being said as it is in the name of the veda, and, in Malayalam, the name of Christ pronounced /kŗsθu/. Kummini 16:01, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

No, IAST /a/ is NOT the short form of IPA /ɑː/ . It is a central vowel, and it is pronounced as schwa (the open-mid central vowel). Yes, for sandhi purposes, the ancient Sanskrit grammarians agree that a + a = IPA /ɑː/ . And the Pandits of modern India are no longer to speak vowel-like /ŗ/ , they approximate it as /ri/. Exceptions are always there, though. Cygnus_hansa 20:27, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
Most Sanskrit pandits from Tamil Nadu across pronounce /ŗ/ as r. Lay speakers of Telugu pronounce it /ru/, while the /ri/ pronounciation from what I understand is dominant in the North. I've tried to clarify this, but feel free to change the wording. Ambarish 05:41, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


-I will try to clarify your doubt. Telugu people name it as "aru". In pronunciation of that vowel you need to know the following

  • Place of origin: Cerebral (Mūrdhanya) [Touch your tip of the tongue to the alveola inside mouth]
  • Now narrow your mouth (i.e., it is a tensed vowel) and try to pronounce the consonant "ra".
  • The pronunciation will be inbetween ra, ri and ru.

User:Bsskchaitanya 13.57 14 November 2006.

translators needed at Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Translation

Wikipedia:WikiProject India/Translation--D-Boy 19:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Motto of the Indian Navy

The motto of the Indian Navy is 'Shano Varuna' - meaning 'May the Lord of the Oceans be Auspicious Unto Us' according to the Indian Navy site:[4]

I would like to know is it Shan No Varuna as stated in the Indian Navy page of wikipedia or is it Shan O Varuna. Which one is correct. Kindly help. Thank you. Chanakyathegreat 10:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe it's actually Sham No Varunah, or in Sanskrit transliteration, Śaṃ No Varuṇaḥ. The anusvãra at the end of the first word is often pronounced as a nasal belonging to the same class as the subsequent consonant, and so in this case it sounds like there is a double n sound. The second word is definitely No though, which is actually Naḥ transformed by sandhi rules; it's the dative plural form of the first person pronoun (i.e., the "Unto Us" part of the motto). Gokulmadhavan 06:40, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Indian subcontinent

Since IAF choose to defended his repeated revert on this page, I will copy-paste his arguments to this Talk:

I confirm unsourced reverts by certain elements of anything that might include or point to the existence of Pakistan or Pakistan territory, most probably to the purpose of edit warring on the subject. Unre4L made a correction and I have the impression this was enought to revert. I am hardly amused by this erroneous equalizing of the Indian Subcontinent to India and suspect malicious intentions, especially here, even creating redundancy subsequently abused as a pretext to further contextual romovals. Rokus01 10:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Comment: So you are accusing User:Dbachmann of being an Indian nationalist? Talk about oxymorons. Amey Aryan DaBrood© 14:59, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Where do I say "Indian nationalists"? I hold Indian people in high esteem. I mention elements that create a culture of senseless reverting and editwarring within Wikipedia. Nationalists are many and all over, and it takes outstanding administration and excellent administrators to make the difference. Rokus01 16:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

The Indo-Aryan aspect of Sanskrit has been dealt with later in the article, as that Sanskrit is a proto-Indo-European language. It does not merit mention in the opening sentence at all. The opening line as I edited can be deemed fit according to norms.
Besides, your assertion about introduction of redundancy is wrong at the outset, because at the very next edit---in the space of just 3 minutes---I removed that reducndancy myself. In your excitement to prove a wrongdoing, you overlooked that fact.
The opening line speaks about what Sanskrit IS and not a> which familiy it belongs to, and b> where exactly were its origins i.e. the Indian-Sub continent. You could have added the part of Indian-subcontinent and/or Panini's base that lies in present-day Pakistan in the section of History. The opening line's context of Sanskrit being an Indian classical language is based upon its official Status in India presently. The Subcontinental encompassment need not be provided as it is not recognized officially by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. IAF

Mister IAF, for the sake of arbitration I don't have to explain about the principles of a good introduction. Rather invoke a third opinion, if the meaning of the word "introduction" is not clear to you and if you don't have the 15th edition of Britannica at hand to verify the edits you choose to revert. However, don't pretend such a degree of off-topic ignorance to contradict this evidence of introducing error for the sake of promoting the word "India", where in reality a much larger geographical area is involved. Rokus01 16:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Old Indo-Aryan language and Introduction

To concentrate on the current disagreement, I want to mention two reasons against this revert:

  • Being an introduction, this introduction should give a overview of the nature and the significance of Sanskrit. This significance involves (1) Sanskit being an old Indo-Aryan language, (2) Sanskrit being the classical literary language of the Hindus of India (this includes Sanskrit being a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism) and (3) Sanskrit being one of the official languages of India. The Indo-Aryan nature of Sanksrit being mentioned elsewhere in the article is not an argument to exclude this element from the introduction. Also, to Sanskit being an Old-Aryan language does not suffice the current geographic definition of India.
  • This introduction to the nature and significance of Sanskrit is sourced and according to the Britannica last (15th) edition.

Accordingly I will restore the sourced information. Rokus01 16:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

well, you are right, but "an old Indo-Aryan langauge from India" sounds silly and clumsy. The intro was fine as it was, if you're going to revert, revert to that. dab (𒁳) 13:48, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

An "old Indo-Aryan language" is the definition of Britannica. The addition "from India" is geographically incorrect, thus "from the Indian Subcontinent" was proposed instead. The introduction should be complete to avoid being as clumpsy and silly as you depict. Please give me a better reason for not restoring the sourced information, for essential information about the nature of Sanskrit is missing. Rokus01 14:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I said "clumsy", not "factually incorrect". Really, the intro is fine, thanks. Sanskrit can be said to be "from India" if you meet her sitting around an airport terminal somewhere. An introduction should not be "complete", it should be concise and polished. dab (𒁳) 14:20, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Clumsy to your Swiss ears, maybe. However, "from" is perfectly correct to indicate the geographical origin. Thus phrases like "a language from Yanyuwa Country" or "a language from hell", or languages from wherever, are valid without implying those languages should come over to you first by any means of transport, by drilling a hole to hell or whatever. You say: an introduction should not be complete. According to WP:LEAD this is true to minor details popping up in the article that do not need an introduction. Also, it says an introduction should give an overview. You just don't have a general outline, this is an overview, without mentioning the most important characteristics to a subject. You should know very well the importance of Sanskrit in comparative linguistics, as much as I do. At the moment the introduction just gives an outline of the religious (Hindu) and political (official language) facts about Sanskrit. Can you please give me any reason why not to outline those very important linguistic facts? Also, making the difference between religious, political and linguistic facts, one should be concise about the related geographical information. According to the Britannica overview the use of Sanskrit within the Hindu religion is related, or even limited, to India, and generally spoken this might be more or less correct. The linguistic geography of Sanskrit however is completely different from the current religious and political geography. About being careful in changing long-standing and already evolved introductions: you should be equally careful about long-standing and already evolved old-fashioned information, like the proposed age of Sankskrit being from 1500BC, while nowadays 1800BC is generally accepted. Rokus01 15:16, 19 February 2007 (UTC)


Deb, in answer to your remark on personal Talk: Here I copy relevant information concerning linguistics:

Linguistics is the scientific study of language.

Theoretical (or general) linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields, such as the study of language structure (grammar), and meaning (semantics).

Linguistics compares languages (comparative linguistics) and explores their histories, in order to find universal properties of language and to account for its development and origins (historical linguistics).

The above has no bearing with Sanskrit being classical, liturgical or an official language. Linguistics do not follow from Sanskrit being a classical language. The opening sentence evades the information necessary to define the linguistic context. This linguistic context should be made clear by mentioning circumstantial facts about its classification, like saying (following the example of Britannica): and old Indo-Aryan language from the Indian subcontinent. Rokus01 17:55, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

It is apparent that the Indo-Aryan-esque mania has crept up everywhere. What nonsense ! As another example, just look at the Urdu page. What is Indo-Aryan about urdu ?? It is an Indian as well as Pakistani language, because it is spoken in both nations, its recognized in both nations, and it originated in India. IAF

Excellent, where do we get these people fearing India and Hinduism so much. Sanskrit originated in India, how the hell can you deny that? Sanskrit was created by the same people you call hindus, how does it matter what you call them. If you call hindus to be "x" and "sanskrit" to be "y" and India to be "z". Still it will be "x" created "y" in "z". People are scared to death in accepting simple truths and still they may be looking for some kind of their own truths in their own lies.

Name of the page?

Hi.

Should the name of this page be changed to "Sanskrit language", to conform with the titles of other language pages, like English language, French language, German language, Navajo language, Chinese language, Korean language, etc.? 74.38.35.171 03:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think so. — Athænara ✉ 03:59, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it should comply with the emerging standard. For an example of why this matters, see the documentation on Template:DisplayTranslations which by default supports a pipe to a language page if the language has a page named Sanskrit_language (or Whatever_language). Buddhipriya 05:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
The reason why the examples 74.38 gave have language at the end is because English, French etc. don't necessarily refer to the language. If you click the links, you will that notice that they are Disambiguation pages because they can refer to English people, English culture, English language ... The reason why Sanskrit and Hindi don't have language at the end is because they can only refer to the language, nothing else! Most languages are named after a particular ethnic group or culture and hence the name can have other meanings. To be honest, if standardisation helps the technical problems, I don't mind it being changed. But bear in mind that I have never someone say "I study Sanskrit language" whereas "I'm interested in the Punjabi and Spanish languages" sounds more familiar. GizzaChat © 07:09, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
DaGizzaji, could there not be "Sanskrit Literature", "Sanskrit drama", "Sanskrit Philosophy", "Sanskrit Poetry", etc.? Perhaps I did not understand what you meant. Buddhipriya 03:29, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
that's not the point. The correct designation is in fact "the Sanskrit language", and "Sanskrit" just by ellipsis. The title should be "Sanskrit language" for reasons of encyclopedicity; otherwise, it's a bit like having the article on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe reside at Goethe. dab (𒁳) 20:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Just random thoughts, do we need to change the title of Esperanto to "Esperanto language"? Are there Sanskrit people, like French people, Navajo people, Chinese people, Korean people? Considering things like this, Sanskrit's naming case is a bit different than these other languages. We badly need French to be a disambig page, because it might be linked with sentences like "X was French" as well as "X is a book in French". This problem would never arise with links to Sanskrit. I don't know if this means the current article name is fine. deeptrivia (talk) 22:09, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

javanese 50% assertion

"Old Javanese – English Dictionary", written by professor P.J. Zoetmulder in 1982. I dont have the info on the book thoughBakaman 02:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Was Pāṇini the first to call Sanskrit "Sanskrit"?

I've read unsourced assertions that claim that Pāṇini was the first person to actually name the language Sanskrit as "Sanskrit." Is this true? If so, what did users call the language before Pāṇini came along to write his grammar? Patiwat 07:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

good question, but your unsourced assertion is mistaken. Panini didn't call Sanskrit Sanskrit. It is first so called in the Mahabharata. In the Vedas, there is just "language", "vak". "Sanskrit" is an adjective added to that, "samskrta vak" = "posh language". dab (𒁳) 08:49, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
The old grammarians used the term bhāṣā, especially when distinguishing it from chandas, the term for "vedic" (cf. chandasi bahulam). rudra 12:41, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
that would be "spoken" as opposed to "hymnic" -- we shouldn't infer a sense of historical depth or language change here, but a distinction between different registers. I don't know any Vedic term for non-Indo-Aryan languages. Just as in Greece, foreign language wasn't even recognized as language proper. The ShBr has mleccha for any "barbarians" that aren't part of Vedic culture, including, of course, linguistically, but I am not aware that Vedic texts show any interest in such "barbarian" language at all. Interest in languages that aren't either your own, or your religion's liturgical language, only arises in the 16th-17th century as part of the European "Enlightenment" (the Jesuits seem to have begun it, starting with Athanasius Kircher, and possibly some Renaissance precursors. Before that, "grammar" always meant either "our grammar", or "the grammar of the language of the gods"). dab (𒁳) 13:08, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Sanskrit e and o, as also a before t.

I totally disagree with the current opinion that Sanskrit पे (IAST e) and पो (IAST o) are pronounced as long /eː/ and /oː/. The Old Prussian language shows, that theese characters have to be pronounciated and written as ei [ei] and ou [ou]. For example OP. deivs 'god', Skr. devaḥ, must be deivaḥ, OP. dātvei 'to give', Skr. dātave, must be dātavei, Latvian govs 'of cow', Skr. gos, must be gous etc.
The Skr. ai really comes from long diphthong āi, au from āu, so along theese changes the short diphthong ai turns into ei and au - into ou. e: and o: are later developments from ei and ou and can't be introduced in Classic Sanskrit!
And now abaut a before t. Indo-Iranian languages have the feature, that tautosyllabic n or m (ṃ) falls out in some cases before t and in the end of the word. And in order to preserve ethymology, such a(n)/a(m) have to be written in IAST by using character ą [an]. So the Skr. šata '100' must be written as śątą (<*čamtam 'hand', cf. Latvian cimds 'glove', čamdīt 'to fumble, to paw'), not śata!, nava as navą (<*navam 'new'), dataḥ 'tooth' as dątaḥ (<*adhantas 'eating') etc. Cognates Proto-Baltic čimtan/cimtan '100' and dantas 'thooth'. Roberts7 01:41, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The "e" and "o" are pronounced as long /eː/ and /oː/ though if what you are saying is valid, then the pronunciation may have been different in Vedic or an earlier form of Classical Sanskrit. The fact is nobody pronounces "e" and "o" as ei and ou anymore. Even ऐ and औ ([IAST]]: ai and au) are pronounced as either /əi/ and /əu/ by those well educated in Sanskrit but more commonly as /ɛː/ and /ɔː/ whenever Indians in the twenty-first century need to speak in Sanskrit. If you want to add your technical details on pronunciation, please add the rough dates of when that form of pronunciation died out. Thanks GizzaChat © 05:19, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
The main question is why the pronounciation of Sanskrit पे and पो was defined from nowadays pronounciation? We are speaking about Classic Sanskrit not Hindi or other later language, which of course can have newer sound system. I think that pronounciation of पे and पो as ē and ō is only an assumption! Imho wrong assumption. The talk isn't about how somebody is pronouncing now theese sounds, but how they were pronounced in ages of Classical Sanskrit. Of course if we are speaking about nowadays, then in Latvian and Lithuanian Sanskrit पे and पो are pronounced as /ie/ and /uo/ (in some words still the oldest /ai,ei/ /au/ is preserved), e.g. Skr deivah, Old Prussian deivs, East Baltic dievas; Skr. roupāsa, Scyt. laupāsa, Latv. lapsa (<*laupusa<*laupāsa) engl.'fox', Latvian verb laupīt 'to rob, thieve' (fox is an thievish animal). So then why not to pronounce पे and पो as Baltic /ie/ and /uo/? E.g. Skr. devaḥ [dievaḥ], gos [guos] - Latvian guovs 'of cow'.
My opinion is that पे and पो couldn't be pronounced as [ē] and [ō], because even in nowadays in Baltic languages are preserved the pronunciation of पे and पो as /ai/ and /au/, then how the Sanskrit, which is older than Modern Baltic languages, could have newer sounds?!
So there is necessity to strictly separate Sanskrit pronounciation in nowadays and the Sanskrit pronounciation in the past. Imho Sanskrit with modern pronounciation is not Classic Sanskrit anymore, it's some dialect of Sanskrit and so must be defined!   Roberts7 15:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
the monophtongic pronunciation is that given in the pratishakyas. It is anyone's guess when /ai/ and /au/ became monophtongs, and if the Rigvedic pronunciation might still have been diphtongic, we don't know, it's prehistory. They were monophtongs in 200 BC, and likely in 500 BC. That's well before the bulk of the Classical Sanskrit corpus. You are free to speculate about the proper historic pronunciation of Rigvedic Sanskrit, but it will be just that, speculation. dab (𒁳) 16:10, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Can someone provide a book reference for these interesting issues? Buddhipriya 17:38, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

discussion continued on Talk:IAST. dab (𒁳) 21:20, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

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