How old is vedic sanskrit

An emphatic yes! Can the explanation be summarised to save your time? It would result into erroneous editorial push such as this Scroll.

Will it ever end? Have you ever taken a look at Dharampal's books? He includes reports by British civil servants — yes all white ones too — mentioning about the equitability of the pre-British education system in India. They were mostly funded by the community before your white heroes came and purged India of its prosperity — ahem "civilised the brown heathen"!

Coming to the crux of the article, Avestan shares a lot with Sanskrit. Witzel — a hero of yours, I'm sure — mentions that speakers of Avestan and Sanskrit would have easily been able to understand each other, and would be able to speak the other in a matter of weeks. This means nothing.

That the whole chronology is tweaked to fit an ideology is quite another thing despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. The article is frankly ridiculous. The author may as well have claimed that Sanskrit belongs to Germany because they share "linguistic characteristics".

By dominance of a foreign language, mother tongue can't be wiped out. But an external language can lose its grip after many centuries.

Just by recording as ancient language and labelling it as its origin is a foolish act. If language has taken birth in one area even after series of attacks, its remnants will survive. Actually this post supports the fact —at ancient times Hinduism was seen throughout the globe. However, your article about how Sanskrit was first recorded in Syria is not only misleading but factually incorrect.

The author claims that Mittani people used Sanskrit names. However, it is a well-known fact that they used names from Indo-Aryan languages which was later developed. Eg- Modern Indian languages such as Marathi and Hindi, though developed ultimately from Sanskrit, shows features distinct from Sanskrit and hence can't be called Sanskrit.

Please refer to the Wikipedia page for more information. I would request Scroll to either take out this article with factually incorrect information or publish a research paper not just opinion but facts supported by evidence that clarifies why the author thinks that Mittani used Sanskrit names and not Indo-Aryan.

Come out of that yellow coloured view. I think the author has forgotten the basic way in which Vedas were taught. It was not recorded.

It was taught orally by a guru. Then it was repeated, spelt out by the disciple using his memory. Hence, Vedas were called Srutis heard and Smriti remembered.

This is injustice done to Vedas by undermining its glory and greatness. What about the Saraswati River in India, what about Rishis and Munis who were using such language day in and day out, mentioned in the Vedas? Has the author given a thought towards that? Author of the article needs to change his confused view towards Sanskrit and the Vedas before venturing to write something about such great assets of the universe.

This is written in goodwill and just pertains to the topic raised. At the start, Shoaib Daniyal says nobody speaks, writes or reads Sanskrit, and immediately after, he says it is the liturgical language of Hinduism- an internal contradiction. From his insistence on Sanskrit being a platform for the BJP and his assumption that all Muslims are its enemies, there arises the curious idea that Hindus would or should object to ancient Syrian kings and deities having Sanskrit names.

Surely this is a sign of the influence and reach of early Indian civilisation. To insist upon the false directionality of the Aryan Invasion myth to explain the early reach of Sanskrit without the slightest factual proof is simply foolish.

We have zero archaeological evidence that any purported Indo-European people arose in the Steppes, far from any large natural waters and brought Sanskrit to the subcontinent on horseback. How sad that Danyal must cite the insistence of Western scholars on that ridiculous and unproven view, which arose in the context of colonialism. All this begs the question: would Shoaib Daniyal say the same of Latin, which after all is widely studied in schools and universities throughout the Western world?

They occur naturally when a language is spoken at speed, and are a good source of the punning jokes beloved of children as in "say iced ink very quickly". The last two lines of the first lesson text,. All the lesson texts are glossed word for word with the sandhi changes removed, and sandhi changes are also regularly explained in square brackets when they occur in the examples.

Included within the scope of sandhi are changes known as retroflexion. A characteristic feature of Indo-European languages is the variation of vowels in derivatives from a root. Found regularly in the verbal system, it also occurs in nouns, as in sing, sang, sung , and also song. This vowel variation is known as ablaut. Its occurrence in Sanskrit was recognised by the ancient grammarians, who described it as 'strengthening' of the vowel. The table shows how the simple vowel is strengthened.

The most important resource for studying the Rigveda is the text itself, and the metrically restored text is the first to show its original poetic form. Previous editions are misleading in masking both form and meaning, as explained in section 45 of Lesson 9.

Arnold's study goes well beyond its modest title, not only in disentangling the original metrical form but also in using the metre, together with vocabulary and grammatical forms, to attempt a chronological arrangement of the poems.

Grassmann's dictionary and analytical concordance remains invaluable; the recent concordance by Lubotsky is useful in listing all the word forms, without translation, in the context of the line in which they occur. Though deriving from van Nooten and Holland's metrical edition, the text in Lubotsky's concordance is quoted in unrestored form.

As a compendium of Rigvedic grammar, Macdonell's Vedic Grammar for Students remains extremely useful. The same author's earlier and fuller Vedic Grammar is an outstanding work of scholarship, and is currently available from India as a reprint Munshiram Manoharal, ; the reprint however lacks the last gathering and therefore much of the index.

In addition to the works by Macdonell, Whitney's nineteenth-century Sanskrit Grammar , which includes the early language, is useful in regularly clarifying what may seem unduly complex. His supplementary volume, The Roots, Verb-forms and Primary Derivatives of the Sanskrit Language , arranges nominal forms under the verbal roots to which they belong, and is a guide to the regularly transparent word formation of Sanskrit see section 49 in Lesson Arnold's Historical Vedic Grammar , while not for the beginner, is a rich statistical resource for the historical study of pre-Classical Sanskrit.

All dictionaries contain translations that are misleading for the Rigveda. The most recent dictionary of early Sanskrit, by the eminent linguist Manfred Mayrhofer, is useful for presenting the Rigveda in its Indo-European context, and is distinguished by the regular unwillingness of its author to accept traditional interpretations without question.

Those interested in the reconsideration of inherited interpretations may wish to look at my studies of some of the words mentioned in this introduction. Most but not all language courses taught at The University of Texas concern modern languages; sometimes courses are offered in ancient languages, though more often at the graduate level. Indic language courses, including Sanskrit, are taught in the Department of Asian Studies link opens in a new browser window.

Other online language courses for college credit are offered through the University Extension new window.

Our Web Links page includes pointers to Indic resources elsewhere. General Inquiries: Student Inquiries: Menu GIVE. Ancient Sanskrit Online Series Introduction Jonathan Slocum Please pardon our dust: This lesson series is currently under construction as we seek to remove errors and update the series. The earliest Indo-European poems. They indeed were comrades of the gods, Possessed of Truth, the poets of old: The fathers found the hidden light And with true prayer brought forth the dawn.

VII, 76, 4 The circumstances of the original composition of these poems remain unknown. The continuing influence of 'the Veda'. Existing translations. Four pages on he quotes the first verse of Rigveda I, , again using Griffith's translation: "To thee the Mighty One I bring this mighty Hymn, for thy desire hath been gratified by my praise.

In Indra, yea in him victorious through his strength, the Gods have joyed at feast, and when the Soma flowed. The decipherable Rigveda. The text, and the editorial tradition. A note on methodology. The sounds of Sanskrit and the Sanskrit alphabet.

Four long vocalic sounds classified as diphthongs follow: e , ai , o , au The equivalent English sounds are e bait , ai bite , o boat , and au bout. The consonants are also arranged phonetically. Sound changes, combination of sounds, or sandhi. Sandhi of vowels. Sandhi of consonants. Vowel gradation, or ablaut. Reading List. Rig Veda. Edited by Barend A.

Harvard University Press, The Rigveda: Metrically Restored Text. Online version edited by Karen Thomson and Jonathan Slocum. University of Texas, Arnold, E. Vedic Metre. Cambridge University Press, Grassmann, Hermann. Leipzig, Brockhaus Lubotsky, Alexander. Macdonell, Arthur. Vedic Grammar for Students.

Oxford, Clarendon Press Vedic Grammar. Whitney, William D. Sanskrit Grammar. Second Edition. Harvard University Press Historical Vedic Grammar. Dictionaries and semantic studies. Monier-Williams, Monier. Sanskrit-English Dictionary. New Edition, Oxford University Press Mayrhofer, Manfred. Heidelberg, Carl Winter Related Language Courses at UT Most but not all language courses taught at The University of Texas concern modern languages; sometimes courses are offered in ancient languages, though more often at the graduate level.

Depending on the source consulted, these are spelled, for example, either Rig Veda or Rigveda. Vedic Sanskrit was orally preserved as a part of the Vedic chanting tradition, predating alphabetic writing in India by several centuries. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita, the most ancient layer of text in the Vedas, to have been composed by many authors over several centuries of oral tradition.

Sanskrit Literature began with the spoken or sung literature of the Vedas from c. At approximately BCE, Vedic Sanskrit began the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning. Around BCE, the ancient scholar Panini standardized the grammar of Vedic Sanskrit, including 3, rules of syntax, semantics, and morphology the study of words and how they are formed and relate to each other.

Through this standardization, Panini helped create what is now known as Classical Sanskrit. A Indian stamp honoring Panini, the great Sanskrit grammarian. With this standardization, Sanskrit became a language of religion and learning. The classical period of Sanskrit literature dates to the Gupta period and the successive pre-Islamic middle kingdoms of India, spanning approximately the 3rd to 8th centuries CE. Hindu Puranas, a genre of Indian literature that includes myths and legends, fall into the period of Classical Sanskrit.

Drama as a distinct genre of Sanskrit literature emerged in the final centuries BCE, influenced partly by Vedic mythology. Famous Sanskrit dramatists include Shudraka, Bhasa, Asvaghosa, and Kalidasa; their numerous plays are still available, although little is known about the authors themselves.