Sanskrit is far from extinct
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[This is the first of two consecutive posts on things Indian. After reading them, if someone is prompted to send me material for a third, I'll be happy to make it a trifecta.]
Our entry point to the linguistically compelling topic of today's post is this Nikkei Asia (11/29/23) article by Barkha Shah in its "Tea Leaves" section:
Why it's worth learning ancient Sanskrit in the modern world:
India’s classical language is making a comeback via Telegram and YouTube
The author begins with a brief introduction to the language:
The language had its heyday in ancient India. The Vedas, a collection of poems and hymns, were written in Sanskrit between 1500 and 1200 B.C., along with other literary texts now known as the Upanishads, Granths and Vedangas. But while Sanskrit became the foundation for many (though not all) modern Indian languages, including Hindi, it faded away as a living tongue.
So I was taken aback when a former school friend told me recently that she was learning Sanskrit. How was she practicing, I wondered. The unexpected answer was that India's ancient literary language is now being taught to students all over the world on social media.
Prajwal Joshi, a 23-year-old Sanskrit student and teacher from Mysuru, in India's Karnataka state, started the Telegram channel Pathat Sanskritam (Learn Sanskrit) in September 2021 with the sole purpose of communicating and sharing knowledge in Sanskrit.
"I joined Telegram to improve my spoken English skills through voice chats," says Joshi. "But when I would introduce myself as a learner of Sanskrit, it would make people curious. That spurred the start of my channel, which now has over 1,200 members from Ukraine, London, Iran, India and [other countries]."
Joshi also has a YouTube channel with more than 12,000 subscribers on which he showcases short films that he makes in Sanskrit.
One aspect of the article that most caught my attention was the popularity of Sanskrit in Iran, and the reasons for it. One of the thousands of subscribers to Joshi's Sanskrit channels is:
…Mohammad Hosein Gholami Mehrabadi, a 50-year-old doctoral student of ancient languages at Iran's Tehran University. "In our course, we study Sanskrit as it helps us to understand Avesta — Zoroastrian religious texts composed in the Avestan language (an Old Persian language related to Sanskrit)," Mehrabadi says.
"We don't have Sanskrit experts, so learning how to communicate in this language is difficult here" Mehrabadi adds. "So, I engage in charcha (discussion) on the Telegram channel, I learn through YouTube videos, and I listen to Radio Sanskrit Bharati (an online service). I also use apps like Language Curry to further my knowledge."
Mehrabadi, who lives in Iran's Markazi province, says he is intrigued by the links between Sanskrit and Avestan. "We have so many common words in these two languages," he says. "In fact, when I hear someone speak in Sanskrit, I feel that it is my ancestors' language."
Another large group of students who are learning Sanskrit from Joshi's channels and other online resources are Yoga practitioners around the world.
In addition,
Learning Sanskrit is believed to help improve diction and pronunciation, even in a student's native tongue, because it requires mastery of a variety of pronunciation techniques ranging from guttural and palatal to those that come from the teeth or lips. Its emphasis on correct grammar also makes learning other languages easier, says Sindhu Sajeev, a teacher of yoga and Sanskrit in Bengaluru, where I now live.
The online learning methods used by many modern Sanskrit students are a radical departure from the traditional gurukul method, in which the language was passed down from gurus directly to students who lived with or near the guru for the period of learning.
Like the language, though, the gurukul system is not quite dead. The Montessori school that my 5-year-old daughter attends in Bengaluru teaches the children Sanskrit shlokas (verses), which she recites at home. My hope is that she does better than me at retaining her command of India's classical language in later life.
There's yet another way to approach the study of Sanskrit in the modern world that will be especially of interest to Language Log readers, namely, from the vantage of linguist. When I was studying Buddhism at the University of Washington (Seattle) in 1967-68, there were about ten students in my first-year Sanskrit course for Buddhologists and Indologists. What intrigued me greatly was that there was another beginning Sanskrit course being offered at the same time. It had many more students than the class I was in and was offered by the Linguistics Department. The rationale for encouraging (I can't remember if it was actually required) linguistics students to take Sanskrit was that the foundations of the scientific study of language had been laid by Panini, Patanjali, and other ancient Sanskrit grammarians around two and a half millennia ago (the first grammarians in the world), so that it would be good to have at least a basic understanding of the roots of the tradition. (source)
The overwhelming emphasis of Joshi's channels seems to treat Sanskrit as a spoken language. That is in stark contrast to the way I learned Sanskrit, strictly as a book language for philological purposes (i.e., Buddhology and Indology).
I've noticed that some younger Sanskrit scholars and teachers, such as Varun Khanna at Swarthmore College, approach Sanskrit pedagogy from an oral angle, while not eschewing textual studies.
Different strokes for different folks. No matter how you come to it, ancient Sanskrit, which was long thought to be a dead language, has of late been showing a surprising resilience and has been humming along quite nicely, dhanyavād धन्यवाद (which reminds me of our recent holiday).
Selected readings
- "Sanskrit resurgent" (8/13/14)
- "Spoken Sanskrit" (1/9/16)
- "'In Pāṇini We Trust'" (12/15/22)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
Rodger C said,
November 29, 2023 @ 10:48 am
I'll say it first: The Vedas were composed, not written, in the second millennium BCE.
Deven M. Patel said,
November 29, 2023 @ 12:27 pm
Wholly independent of this "comeback" via Telegram and Twitter, it should be recognized that between 1850 and 2011, more than 5000 works of Sanskrit literature have been recorded as published (with countless more unpublished) [See the work of Radhavallabh Tripathi of Allahabad University.] There is still a vibrant minor (or, as Matt Nelson puts it, uber-minor) literary tradition of Sanskrit in contemporary India. One can attend the 19th World Sanskrit Conference in Kathmandu next December (2024) to participate or observe in a gathering of poets and scholars speaking and creatively composing in Sanskrit. While certainly not "alive" like South Asia's regional languages, Sanskrit's presence today does not really fit the mold of other ancient languages.
cameron said,
November 29, 2023 @ 2:39 pm
I work in software development and have had many, many Indian co-workers over the years. I've been told by several of them who came from Brahmin families that they learned to read and write Sanskrit before they learned to read and write their mother tongues. Effectively their parents get them started on Sanskrit at home before they start school. I think all the people who have told me that were men; perhaps it's only the male children in Brahmin families who get the early Sanskrit home-schooling. . .
S. Roy said,
November 29, 2023 @ 2:47 pm
When I first saw the title of the article about the necessity of learning Sanskrit in the modern world on the Nikkei Asia website, I was excited. However, reading the article left me with thorough disappointment!!
Barkha Shah seems to have failed to make the case that was claimed in the article title.
The examples she cited have specific PERSONAL reasons. However, NONE of the reasons is UNIVERSAL and certainly not much to do with the "modern world"!!
Some time ago I read an article about Computer Science students taking Sanskrit classes at the University of Toronto. In that article, a specific case was made for learning Sanskrit because of the exactness of Sanskrit grammar and syntax which also are a necessity in coding in a computer language. That made sense.
Since I too was taught Sanskrit while attending a school run by monks and have intimately participated in computer applications in business and engineering design, that Univ of Toronto article resonated in me.
The Barkha Shah article admirably fails to make a case convincingly to answer WHY – specifically – one should learn ancient Sanskrit to benefit in the modern world.
Arun said,
November 29, 2023 @ 3:49 pm
Thanks for sharing the article. It's an interesting read, and I share your interest the fact that Sanskrit is popular in Iran.
Stray thoughts:
– In the Sanskrit projects and communities I'm familiar with, it's quite common to use Sanskrit for tasks like filing bug reports, planning projects, and the like. The register of usage varies widely, with the modern style used by Samskrita Bharati being especially common. While it's not surprising that Sanskrit would be used in these environments, I'm curious if a similar situation obtains for, say, Greek and Latin.
– I have never heard of the "Granths," and the only meaningful Google results are this blog post and the original article. Perhaps the article author is thinking of the Grantha script, or "grantha" in the generic sense of any written work.
– To @cameron's point or reading Sanskrit early, part of the reason for this might also be a strong emphasis on English-medium education in certain Indian milieus. Some of my acquaintances, for example, can barely read Tamil despite growing up in Tamil Nadu and speaking Tamil at home. I'm not well-versed in the gender and community dynamics surrounding Sanskrit studies today, but I'll note in passing that two of the most respected teachers of Sanskrit grammar in India today are women, namely Pushpa Dikshit and Sowmya Krishnapur.
– I second @S. Roy's observation that the article doesn't quite deliver on its headline. That said, it's an interesting sampling of three very different communities.
Martin Schwartz said,
November 29, 2023 @ 5:25 pm
I was impressed years ago to hear Prof. Robert Goldman of
UC Berkeley converse in Sanskrit about vitamins with a
visiting pandit from S. India.
Granth is used by Sikhs, most famousl re their worshiped holy book
the Ādi Granth or Guru Granth Sahib.
Martin Schwartz
Neil said,
November 29, 2023 @ 6:37 pm
@ Martin I think you can assume any adult Indian will know about the Sikhs and the Guru Granth Sahib, including Arun. From the context of the article I think it’s safe to assume that was not meant in the article. I share Arun’s curiosity re: granths.
Christopher J. Henrich said,
November 29, 2023 @ 8:26 pm
I read S/ Roy's posting with mostly positive, but slightly mixed feelings.
In the community of software developers, many of us have felt a spark of new interest whenever we hear of a programming language that is new to us. (Which happens to us often.) So, I am tickled pink at the idea of many young people cooperating in teaching/learning Sanskrit simply "because it is there," with added interest caused by the challenges involved.
I think that the "exactness of Sanskrit grammar and syntax" may be a function of the exactness of how Sanskrit syntax is defined for teaching purposes, I seem to recall learning of a Sanskrit grammarian, living about 2,500 years ago, named Panini, who devised a system for specifying grammatical forms which is astonishingly similar to "Backus – Naur formalism" used to define recent programming languages.
So I think there are good grounds for saying that Sanskrit is a lively part of the "modern world." It does not have to be "universal;" probably most people will have little interest in learning Sanskrit. One of the best things about the modern world is that many, many communities of shared interest can exist and flourish.
AntC said,
November 29, 2023 @ 8:30 pm
But while Sanskrit became the foundation for many (though not all) modern Indian languages, including Hindi, …
"many"?
I have a friend who grew up in Karnataka, first language Kannada. Although she more often now speaks Hindi with her family since they moved north, I'm pretty sure she'd take exception to Shah's claim: whilst it's true Sanskrit has influenced many languages in the subcontinent (especially borrowing vocab), it's not the "foundation" for Dravidian languages. (I think she'd say this is another symptom of Northern imperialism, trying to belittle Dravidic — which has a least as valid a claim for being amongst India's most ancient tongues.)
david said,
November 29, 2023 @ 8:31 pm
@Arun: among English speakers Latin and/or Greek are used by scientists, medical doctors and lawyers for precision and, perhaps, for obfuscation.
AntC said,
November 29, 2023 @ 8:46 pm
@S.Roy, @CJH the "exactness of Sanskrit grammar and syntax" may be a function of the exactness of how Sanskrit syntax is defined for teaching purposes,
Indeed. I remember in my schooling, Latin being touted for how it disciplined your thought. Furthermore the Latin master was of the view modern European languages were somehow corrupted Latin, and English was a particular disaster. (I wish I'd know then that English was categorized as Germanic/never descended from Latin despite all its Norman vocab, and that if he wished to set himself up as a teacher he'd better get hold of the facts before coming out with pure prejudice, and how the ban on split infinitives is total bunkum … but I digress.)
It's easy to be exact about syntax if your language is dead, and the paradigms are ossified in ancient texts. It'll be interesting to see if Sanskrit gets uptake amongst a community, and whether it then gets 'corrupted' [not] in "lively" usage.
Victor Mair said,
November 29, 2023 @ 8:51 pm
From Philip Lutgendorf:
Our wonderful AIIS (American Institute of Indian Studies) Sanskrit teachers in Pune also teach it as a living language, using a 4-skills approach. Students coming from the US (usually after a year of college Sanskrit) often find this shocking at first, but generally become enthusiastic when they realize how much speaking, listening, and writing improves even their reading ability.
Arun said,
November 29, 2023 @ 9:32 pm
@AntC It's easy to be exact about syntax if your language is dead, and the paradigms are ossified in ancient texts. It'll be interesting to see if Sanskrit gets uptake amongst a community, and whether it then gets 'corrupted' [not] in "lively" usage.
We have examples of this, both historically and in the present day. Roughly, I would say Sanskrit has been morphologically conservative but syntactically very fluid. (The grammatical tradition tends to focus much more heavily on morphology. Compound syntax is treated thoroughly, but sentence syntax has a relatively light treatment.)
The grammarian Panini was describing the living usage of the educated speakers (śiṣṭas) of his time, and although I am not sure off-hand when native speech in India effectively [*] ended, the tradition is careful to track emendations to the grammar and corrections in light of differences in idiom and usage. Aside from these emendations, we see broader trends like:
– the change of ātmanepada ("middle voice") semantics to being more or less identical with parasmaipada ("active voice") semantics;
– the loss of pitch accent;
– a shift away from verbs and toward participles and verbal adjectives;
– an increase in the use of compounds, which are generally much longer than they are in the earliest Sanskrit works.
And in modern Sanskrit usage I see a greater increase in the use of the verb as ("be"), a more analytic sentence structure mirroring modern Hindi or English, and more relaxed standards for sandhi usage.
As an aside — when I was in Bengaluru recently, I spent some time with one of the most accomplished Sanskrit poets in the country, and one of the subjects we touched on was the relationship between poetic composition and grammatical fidelity. While he puts high value on studying grammatical literature to understand the patterns of correct usage, I think he is comfortable with slight deviations in usage in service of poetic expression. He shared a wonderful idiom from a friend of his — this friend studies grammar but has a low opinion of modern Indian grammarians who can't read or write simple poems, and whose relationship with Sanskrit is "like someone who is married and celibate at the same time."
[*] But not totally! Some of the families in the Samskrita Bharati community have raised their children as first-language Sanskrit speakers. Much of Sanskrit's productive history has been as a "dead" L2, so I wonder how well it really fits that label.
AntC said,
November 29, 2023 @ 10:33 pm
@Arun "like someone who is married and celibate at the same time."
Thank you Haha! That's a great epigram.
BTW, whilst I was looking up Karnataka, I found
Fred Smith said,
November 29, 2023 @ 10:40 pm
I agree fully with Deven – Sanskrit is a panditic language that is best heard at conferences like the WSC in Kathmandu next year or in "pandit parishads" in South India. I have documented many large scale Vedic rituals in South India and Maharashtra since about 1980 in which the only common language between highly educated ritual officiants who otherwise spoke only Marathi, Kannada, Tamil or Telugu, was Sanskrit. Various attempts have been around since Indian Independence to revive Sanskrit as a spoken language in India, with little to no success, although the purveyors of this, such as Samskrita Bharati, will tell you differently. I visited such a village in Karnataka once, just to listen to the locals bargaining over a kg of tomatoes in Sanskrit. It was hopeless. A branch of this exists in the US. The Sanskrit they teach is exceptionally simplified, because the language itself has an endlessly complicated grammar. Such modern initiatives are, first and foremost, part of Hindu nationalist efforts, even if we do, to be sure, lament its passing as a spoken language, which must have been before the time of the Buddha.
martin schwartz said,
November 30, 2023 @ 2:31 am
@Neil @Arun: I granth tat. There are many mgs. in Sanskrit for
grantha- pertaining to books & compositions , < grantha-
'knot, binding together'. If apology is due to Arun, here it is.
Martin Schwartz
crturang said,
November 30, 2023 @ 4:47 pm
@Arun:
>> Perhaps the article author is thinking of the Grantha script, or "grantha" in the generic sense of any written work.
I think Grantha script is out of place in the context. Perhaps the author meant to refer to Brahmanas.
Neil said,
November 30, 2023 @ 5:28 pm
@AntC
“But while Sanskrit became the foundation for many (though not all) modern Indian languages, including Hindi, …
"many"?
I have a friend who grew up in Karnataka, first language Kannada. Although she more often now speaks Hindi with her family since they moved north, I'm pretty sure she'd take exception to Shah's claim: whilst it's true Sanskrit has influenced many languages in the subcontinent (especially borrowing vocab), it's not the "foundation" for Dravidian languages. (I think she'd say this is another symptom of Northern imperialism, trying to belittle Dravidic — which has a least as valid a claim for being amongst India's most ancient tongues.)”
Not sure I understand the comment. The author clearly stated Sanskrit wasn’t the fore father of all Indian languages. But “many” is factually correct— Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi,, Gujarati, Bengali, Marwari, Bhojpuri, , and many many more. Not sure any of the article was South bashing.
Varun Khanna said,
December 1, 2023 @ 2:00 am
Thanks for the mention, Victor! I find that introducing spoken Sanskrit in the classroom dramatically speeds up (and deepens) students' absorption of grammatical concepts in Sanskrit. It not only makes them generators of the language, which is a joy in itself, but it also makes them better readers because through spoken Sanskrit they are also introduced to certain nuances of the language that simply do not come through when you approach it as a purely textual endeavor. I have observed that after a single semester of Sanskrit where spoken Sanskrit is included, my students are able to read and write sentences at the level of their 2nd- or 3rd-year Sanskrit peers at other institutions.
ohwilleke said,
December 1, 2023 @ 6:48 am
@David "among English speakers Latin and/or Greek are used by scientists, medical doctors and lawyers for precision and, perhaps, for obfuscation."
There is more Yiddish and French in English speaking law practice than there is Greek, which is virtually non-existent in English speaking law.
M said,
December 1, 2023 @ 7:37 am
i@ohwilleke. Could you please give some examples of Yiddish in English-speaking law practice?
Mark S. said,
December 1, 2023 @ 8:21 am
According to data from the MLA, Sanskrit (considered here as the combination of "Sanskrit" and "Sanskrit, Vedic") has more enrollments in U.S. universities than ever (423 as of 2021), except during the peak years of 2002-2009.
And although the number of undergraduate programs in Sanskrit has been dropping, graduate programs have been increasing.
Taylor, Philip said,
December 1, 2023 @ 11:52 am
I wondered the same, M, but a quick search shews that Yiddish is indeed increasingly used in American legal language — https://www2.law.ucla.edu/Volokh/yiddish.htm. I do not believe that the same obtains in the U.K.