Sanskrit

The earliest traces of Sanskrit, an Indo-Aryan language that is part of the larger family of Indo-European languages, occur in the hymns of the Rig Veda (the earliest Hindu sacred writings), which may have been composed as early as the second millennium BCE. By the second century BCE, Sanskrit had become the medium of many religious and philosophical texts on the Indian subcontinent and in Sri Lanka. From the fourth to thirteenth centuries CE, the role of Sanskrit as a language appropriate for the expression of sacred material greatly expanded not only throughout the Indian subcontinent, but also to large parts of mainland and insular Southeast Asia. It thus became the language of scholars across a region that connected a wide spectrum of cultures, a phenomenon that has recently been termed the Sanskrit cosmopolis.

Sanskrit grammar was reputedly first codified by Panini, an Indian grammarian who flourished around 400 BCE. Nouns and pronouns are declined in the nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative cases. Along with singular and plural forms, Sanskrit also recognizes a dual. The verb forms distinguish seven moods: present, imperfect, aorist (indefinite), imperative, perfect, future, and conditional. A marked phenomenon in Sanskrit is sandhi: many vowels or consonants slurring together to form different phonemes.

Sanskrit was the medium in which many Indian religious, philosophical, and literary texts were transmitted. Written in Sanskrit, the great Indian epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana became known in many Southeast Asian courts where they were recited and performed, inspiring local artists with their narratives, rich imagery, and symbolism. Also, the cosmology of the Puranas (religious texts of the Hindus, dating from the third century CE, with eternal cycles of 4,320,000,000 years) was transmitted to Southeast Asia in Sanskrit. Until Theravada Buddhism, with its use of the Pali language, gained the upper hand during the eleventh and twelfth centuries CE, many Mahayana Buddhist texts also were transmitted in Sanskrit.

From the seventh century onward, religious and political texts appeared in both Sanskrit and vernacular languages, and gradually the role of Sanskrit diminished in favor of local forms of speech. On the Indian subcontinent, Sanskrit continues to be used as a sacred language. In the early twenty-first century, Sanskrit has gained new support as an aspect of Indian nationalism.

Houben, Jan E. M., ed. (1996) Ideology and Status of Sanskrit, Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill.

Pollock, Sheldon. (1996) "The Sanskrit Cosmopolis, 300–1300: Transculturation, Vernacularization." In Ideology and Status of Sanskrit, Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language, edited by Jan E. M. Houben. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 197–249.