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Sanskrit

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Sanskrit
संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam
The word Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्) written in Sanskrit. Displayed in the Sarai font for Devanagari.
The word Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्) written in Devanagari.
RegionSouth Asia
Native speakers
14,000[1] (2001)
No native script.[2]
Today it is usually written in Devanagari, but it was also previously written in various Brāhmī-based scripts.
Official status
Official language in
One of the 22 scheduled languages of India.
Language codes
ISO 639-1sa
ISO 639-2san
ISO 639-3san
Part of a series on
Constitutionally recognised languages of India
Category
Scheduled Languages

A
Assamese
B
Bengali
Bodo
D
Dogri
G
Gujarati
H
Hindi
K
Kannada
Kashmiri
Konkani
M
Maithili
Malayalam
Marathi
Meitei (Manipuri)
N
Nepali
O
Odia (Oriya)
P
Punjabi
S
Sanskrit
Santali
Sindhi
T
Tamil
Telugu
U
Urdu

Related

Official languages of India
Languages with official status in India

A Sanskrit script

Sanskrit is an ancient Indo-European language. It is considered sacred by Hindus. Many languages in South Asia are derived from Sanskrit.[3] Today, only about 14,000 people use it as their daily language.[1]

Sanskrit is a standardized dialect of Old Indo-Aryan and has a linguistic ancestry that can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European. The Indo-European Aryan migration theory proposes that the Indo-Europeans migrated from the Central Asian steppes into South Asia during the early 2nd millennium BC and brought the Indo-European language Sanskrit with them.[4] The main script used to write Sanskrit today is Devanāgarī. Historically, it was also written in the Kharoshti and Brahmic scripts.[5]

William Jones, working as a judge in India in the 18th century, studied Sanskrit and recognised its similarities to Latin, Greek and other European languages. That led to the Indo-European languages being recognised as a group of related languages stretching from Europe to India.

It is also one of the 22 officially recognised languages of India. [source?]

Literature

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Sanskrit literature includes poetry and drama and has also scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts.[6][7] Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and also some Buddhist and Jain practice in the form of hymns and chants.

Sanskrit has a very complex grammar, with eight grammatical cases, three grammatical genders, and three grammatical numbers. Words are also described based on their qualities. Sanskrit is considered highly scientific, words in a sentence can describe the subject's number, gender and action.

References

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  1. 1.0 1.1 "Comparative speaker's strength of scheduled languages − 1971, 1981, 1991 and 2001". Census of India, 2001. Office of the Registrar and Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved 31 December 2009.
  2. Banerji, Suresh (1971). A companion to Sanskrit literature: spanning a period of over three thousand years, containing brief accounts of authors, works, characters, technical terms, geographical names, myths, legends, and twelve appendices. p. 672. ISBN 978-81-208-0063-2.[permanent dead link]
  3. "Sanskrit is second official language in Uttarakhand – The Hindustan Times". Hindustantimes.com. 19 January 2010. Archived from the original on 2011-11-02. Retrieved 2012-04-05.
  4. Witzel, Michael 2005. Indocentrism. In Bryant, Edwin & Patton, Laurie L. The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history. London: Routledge.
  5. Brown, W. Norman (1953). "Script Reform in Modern India, Pakistan, and Ceylon". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 73 (1): 1–6. doi:10.2307/595755. ISSN 0003-0279.
  6. Katju, Markandey (9 June 2014). "Sanskrit as a language of science". The Times of India.
  7. Katju, Markandey (5 December 2011). "Markandey Katju: What is India?". The Times of India.