Sanskrit

Sanskrit occupies a magnum position in the evolution of Indian civilization on the one hand and the development of most of the modern Indian languages on the other.

Sanskrit is broadly divided into two categories, i.e., Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit refers to the language of the earliest Hindu religious texts such as the Rig Veda and the other Hindu scriptures like the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Atharva Veda and the Upanishads. As Vedic language was associated with the composition of sacred hymns, incantations and philosophical discussions, a great importance was attached to its perfect enunciation.

Classical Sanskrit differs from the Vedic Sanskrit in respect of vocabulary, grammar, syntax and phonology. Panini, the renowned grammarian, played the chief role in evolving classical Sanskrit. It is the language of the post-Vedic Sanskrit literature, consisting of poetry, drama, scientific, technical and philosophical texts. Classical Sanskrit greatly influenced the modern languages of India and its impact reached out to many countries in South East Asia.

In ancient India, Sanskrit was the language of the educated and enlightened people who belonged to the higher castes. Knowledge of Sanskrit was therefore regarded as an indicator of social and intellectual status.

Sanskrit exerted a great influence on the modern languages of India by way of enriching them with its vocabulary and grammar. While Hindi and Urdu have Persian influence, Bengali, Assamese, Marathi, Konkani, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu draw their vocabulary from Sanskrit. As most of the Hindu scriptures, prayers, hymns and incantations are written in Sanskrit, it has a binding effect on all the Hindu religious functions across India and the globe.

In spite of its linguistic richness and unequalled literature that contributed to the sustenance of an entire civilization, a number of factors came in the way of its development after a particular point of time. Sanskrit became exclusively associated with ritualistic religious texts. It ceased to be used for expressing the changing idioms of the modern age and gave birth to a misconception that it was the language of the upper caste Hindus only.

Meanwhile, the vernaculars gradually gained foothold in cultural and literary arena and they offered stiff challenge to the predominance of Sanskrit. Moreover, the political institutions that had once supported the wide use of Sanskrit gradually became weak in course of time and hastened its decline. In independent India, lack of modern outlook in preparing syllabi and outdated method of teaching Sanskrit is responsible for its further decline.

Although the future of Sanskrit seems to be at stake, there are still some chances of its revival. Since 1990, some organizations have been trying to popularize Sanskrit by conducting workshops. In some States of India, Sanskrit has been made an optional third language in schools from grade 5 to 8. Another ray of hope of the revival of Sanskrit is that it is no longer regarded as a literary language. It is being studied as a science and attempts are being made to employ Sanskrit in the fields of computer applications such as machine translation and natural language understanding.