Sanskrit

Definition: Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Noun

1. An ancient language of India (the language of the Vedas and of Hinduism); an official language of India although it is now used only for religious purposes.

Date "Sanskrit" was first used: 1617. (references)

Specialty Definitions: Sanskrit

Domain	Definitions
Dream Interpretation	To dream of Sanskrit, denotes that you will estrange yourself from friends in order to investigate hidden subjects, taking up those occupying the minds of cultured and progressive thinkers. Source: Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted ....
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Sanskrit

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Sanskrit is a member of the Indo-European language family, and an official language of India. Having first developed around 1500 BC, It has sometimes been described as the Asian equivalent to Latin for its role in the religious and historical literature of India. Sanskrit is also the ancestor of the Prakrit languages of India, such as Pali and Ardhamagadhi. Scholars have preserved more Sanskrit documents than documents in Latin and Greek combined. The Vedic scriptures were written in a form of Sanskrit.

History

The language underwent several stages of consolidation and modification. In its older Vedic form, it is a close descendant of Proto-Indo-European, the root of all later Indo-European languages. Vedic Sanskrit is also practically identical to Avestan, the language of Zoroastrianism. After the consolidation of its grammar and lexicon it turned into a classical language of strict esthetic rules and gave rise to considerable literature of drama, medicine, politics, astronomy, mathematics, alchemy etc.

Its common origin with modern European and the more familiar classical languages of Greek and Latin can be seen, for instance, in the Sanskrit words for mother, matr, and father, pitr. The similarities between Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit led to the discovery of this language family by Sir William Jones, and thus played an important role in the development of linguistics. Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) was first developed by Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics, which arose much later in the rest of the world, owes a great deal to the grammarians, including key terms for compound analysis.

Sanskrit is the oldest member of Indo-Aryan sub-branch of Indo-Iranian. Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan are the oldest members of the Indo-Iranian sub-branch of the Indo-European family. Nuristani languages, spoken in roughly what has become Afghanistan, are grouped with Vedic and Avestan.

The oldest form of Sanskrit is Vedic, in which the Vedas, the earliest Sanskrit texts, were composed. The earliest of the Vedas, the Rîgveda, was composed in the middle of the second millennium BC. The Vedic form survived until the middle of the first millennium BC. Around this time, as Sanskrit made the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, the Classical period began. The intense study of the structure of Sanskrit at this time led to the beginnings of linguistics. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is Paanini's c. 500 BC Astaadhyaayii ("8 Chapter Grammar"). A form of Sanskrit called Epic Sanskrit is seen in the Mahabharata and other epics. Vernacular Sanskrit may have developed into the Prakrits (in which, among other things, early Buddhist texts are written) and the modern Indic languages. There has been much reciprocal influence between Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages.

Script

Sanskrit is generally written in the syllabic Devanagari script composed of 51 letters or aksharas. Several Latin-alphabet transliterations of varying utility are also available. It is found written on stone, birch bark, palm leaves and paper.

Influences

Sanskrit had some influence on the Chinese culture because Buddhism was initially transmitted to China in Sanskrit. Many Chinese Buddhist scriptures were written with Chinese transliterations of Sanskrit words. Some Chinese proverbs use Buddhist terms that originate from Sanskrit.

Sanskrit words are found in many present-day languages. For instance the Thai language contains many loan words from Sanskrit, and ranged as far as the Philippines viz. Tagalog 'guru', or 'teacher', with the Hindu seafarers who traded there well before Magellan.

Phonology and writing system

Sanskrit has 48 phonemes (Vedic Sanskrit has 49). The Sanskrit syllabary serves as a model for all Indian language writing systems except Urdu. For the ingenious phonetic classification scheme of these writing systems see Indian language.

The sounds are described here in their traditional order: vowels, stopss and nasalss (starting in the back if the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquidss and sibilants.

(Note: The long vowels are held about twice as long as their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long length for most vowels, which is used in various cases, but particularly when recording a shout, or a greeting.)

Vowels (with approximate English equivalents)

a - gut
aa - father
i - pin
ii - tweak
u - push
uu - moo
r^i = r + i
long r^i = r + ii or r + uu, depending on the region
l^i = l + r^i

(Sanskrit recognizes vocalic r (errr) and l (ulll), unlike, say, English)

Diphthongs (Combinations of Simple Vowels)

e - hay
ai - aisle
o - snow
au - pow

Vowels can be nasalized.

Consonants

Sanskrit has a voiceless, voiceless aspirate, voiced, voiced aspirate, and nasal stop at each of the following places of articulation:

Velar (soft palate) (k, kh, g, gh, n as in ing)
Palatal (hard palate) (c, ch, j, jh, ~n)
Retroflex (roughly the place of articulation of English alveolars like t, but with the tongue curled back) (t, th, d, dh, n)
Dental (tongue against teeth, like Spanish) (t, th, d, dh, n)
Labial (with the lips) (p, ph, b, bh, m)

It also has four semivowels: y, r, l, v. All of these but r have nasalized forms. Sanskrit also has palatal, retroflex, and alveolar sibilants. Rounding out the consonants are the voiced and voiceless h (the voiceless h, called the visarga, tends to repeat the preceding vowel after itself) and the anusvaara, which often appears as nasalization of the preceding vowel or as a nasal homorganic to the following consonant.

Vedas Sanskrit had a pitch (music) or tonal accent, but it was lost by the Classical period. Vedic Sanskrit also had labial and velar fricatives and a retroflex L.

Sanskrit has an elaborate set of phonological rules called sandhi and samaas which are expressed in its writing (except in so-called pada texts). Sandhi reflects the sort of blurring that occurs, particularly between word-boundaries, in spoken language generally, but is codified in Sanskrit and written down. A simple example of English sandhi is "an apple" versus "a clock".

Sandhi makes Sanskrit very hard to read without a great deal of practice. It also creates ambiguities which clever poets have exploited to perform such feats as writing poems which can be interpreted in multiple, unrelated ways depending on how the reader chooses to break apart the sandhi.

Morphology and Syntax

Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, plural, dual). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative. It has over ten noun declensions.

Sanskrit has ten classes of verbs divided into in two broad groups: athematic and thematic. The thematic verbs are so called because an a, called the theme vowel, is inserted between the stem and the ending. This serves to make the thematic verbs generally more well-behaved. Exponents utilized in verb conjugation include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and reduplication. Also extremely common is vowel gradation; every root has (not necessarily all distinct) zero, guna, and vrdhii grades. If V is the vowel of the zero grade, the guna grade vowel is traditionally thought of a V + a, and the vrdhii grade vowel as V + aa.

One other notable feature of the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which may be huge (10+ words) like in some modern languages like German language. Nominal compounds occur with various meanings, some examples of which are:

1.Bahuvrihi

Bahuvrihi, or much-rice, denotes a rich person--one who has much rice. Bahuvrihi compounds refer to a thing which is not specified in any of the parts of which the compound is formed. A block-head, for example, is someone whose head is said to be as thick as a block.

2.Karmadhariya

A compound in which all of the words specify that to which the compound refers. A houseboat, for example, is both a house and a boat.

3.Tatpurusha

There are many tatpurushas (one for each of the nominal cases, and a few others besides); in a tatpurusha, one component is related to another. For example, a doghouse is a dative compound, a house for a dog. It would be called a "caturtitatpurusha" (caturti refers to the fourth case--that is, the dative). Incidentally, "tatpurusha" is a tatpurusha ("this man"--meaning someone's agent), while "caturtitatpurusha" is a karmadhariya, being both dative, and a tatpurusha.

The verbs tenses (a very inexact application of the word, since more distinctions than simply tense are expressed) are organized into four 'systems' (plus gerunds and infinitives, along with such creatures as intensives/frequentives, desideratives, causatives, and benedictives derived from more basic forms). Each verb is also has a grammatical voice: either active, passive or middle. (Middle indicates actions done to something other than the speaker for the speaker's own benefit. The semantic distinction between middle and passive is not maintained in later Sanskrit). The four systems are:

Present (Present, Imperfect, Imperative, Potential)
Future (Future, Conditional)
Aorist
Perfect

Word order is free with tendency toward SOV.

Here is a simple example to illustrate the different contexts in which the cases are used for the pronouns:

           mayaa tatam idam sarvam jagad avyaktamuurtinaa |
     matsthaani sarvabhuutaani na caaham teshv avasthitah ||
                                   -- Giitaa (9.4)

"mayaa" (by me) in the first line is in the instrumental case. Word for word this says "by me is pervaded this all universe" but an exact translation would be "I pervade all this universe...".

"mat-sthaani" in the second line is a compound of "mat" (me) and "stha" (standing, staying at) and means "they are in me".

"-aham" (I) in the second line is nominative. na caaham = "...and not I....", meaning "but I am not...".

"teshv-" (in/at/by them) at the end of the second line is in locative plural. Translated: "...in them".

External Links

Sanskrit Documents Despite the name, a metasite with links to translations, dictionaries, tutorials, tools and other Sanskrit resources.
GiirvaaNi - Sanskrit Classical Literature with translation
Sanskrit Alphabet in Devanagari Script and Pronunciation Key
The Sanskrit Alphabet
The earliest dated illustrated Sanskrit manuscript in the world
A list of Chinese words originated from Sanskrit
Transliteration of Indic Languages & Scripts - including devanagari for sanskrit

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Sanskrit."

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Synonym: Sanskrit

Synonym: Sanskritic language (n). (additional references)

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Synonyms within Context: Sanskrit

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Oldness	Seniority, eldership, primogeniture. archaism; (the past); thing of the past, relic of the past; megatherium; Sanskrit.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

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Crosswords: Sanskrit

English words defined with "Sanskrit": aorist ♦ Bhagavad-Gita, Biliteral ♦ Devanagari, Devanagari script, Dravidian languages ♦ Friedrich Max Muller ♦ Grimm's law, Guna ♦ Mahabharata, Mahabharatam, Mahabharatum, Max Muller, Muller ♦ Nagari, Nagari script ♦ optative, Optative mood ♦ Pali, Panini, Prakrit, Purana ♦ Raghuvansa, Ramayana ♦ Sanscrit, Sanskritic, Sanskritist ♦ transcribe, transliterate ♦ Vedic. (references)

Specialty definitions using "Sanskrit": Aryans, Attics, Attic Storey ♦ Indians ♦ Long Words ♦ Mahatmas ♦ Nala ♦ Pilpay' ♦ Sakta. (references)

Etymologies containing "Sanskrit": Ankus, Aurora, Aviary ♦ Barbarous, Bikh ♦ Calx, Carnal, Chrism, Client, Combust ♦ Eaglewood, Etymon ♦ fort ♦ gregarious, gullet ♦ hibernal ♦ igneous ♦ lugubrious ♦ mundane, Munition ♦ Nebula ♦ ODE, Opal, Origin, Osseous ♦ Pontoon, Prone, Propitious, Pundit ♦ robust, rosemary ♦ sandalwood, schism, SIR, Slav, somnolent, Sunn ♦ tepid, terror, timid, topaz, tumid ♦ Vesta, Virus, Voracious. (references)

Non-English Usage: "Sanskrit" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses.

French (sanscrit, sanskrit), German (Sanskrit), Manx (Sanskrit), Serbo-Croatian (sanscrit), Swedish (sanscrit, sanskrit).

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Commercial Usage: Sanskrit

Domain	Title
Books	Concise Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language (reference) Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook Translated from the Sanskrit (reference) Samskrta-Subodhini: A Sanskrit Primer (Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, 47) (reference) Sanskrit Grammar (reference) Sanskrit Pronunciation (reference) (more book examples)

Music	Holy Name of Amithaba: Sanskrit Music (reference) (more classical music examples; more popular music examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Non-Fiction Usage: Sanskrit

Subject	Topic	Quote
Civil Liberties	Bhutan	In the early 1990's, the Government provided funds for the construction of new Hindu temples and centers of Sanskrit and Hindu learning and for the renovation of existing temples and places of Hindu learning. (references)
Economic History	Nepal	Derived from Sanskrit, Nepali is related to the Indian language, Hindi, and is spoken by about 90% of the population. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Sanskrit

"Sanskrit" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 85.00% of the time. "Sanskrit" is used about 40 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	85%	34	59,261
Noun (proper)	10%	4	175,879
Lexical Verb (base form)	5%	2	245,945
Total	100.00%	40	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Sanskrit

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day
sanskrit	298
sanskrit dictionary	66
name sanskrit	40
sanskrit tattoo	31
baby name sanskrit	28
sanskrit symbol	27
sanskrit english dictionary	21
learn sanskrit	21
sanskrit alphabet	19
sanskrit font	16
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translations: Sanskrit

Language		Translations for "Sanskrit"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Albanian		sanskritisht (sanscrit). (various references)

Arabic		‏سنسكريتي (sanscrit). (various references)

Bulgarian		санскритски, санскрит (sanscrit). (various references)

Chinese		梵語 , 梵 (Brahma). (various references)

Dutch		Sanskriet. (various references)

Esperanto		sanskrito. (various references)

Farsi		سانسکریتی . (various references)

French		sanskrit (sanscrit). (various references)

German		Sanskrit. (various references)

Greek		σανσκριτική, σανσκριτικά. (various references)

Hungarian		szanszkrit (sanscrit). (various references)

Indonesian		bahasa sansekerta. (various references)

Italian		sanscrito. (various references)

Japanese Kanji		梵語 , サンケア指数 (belt, carefree, Saint-Simonism, San Diego, sand, sandal, sandwich, sandwich man, Sankei Sports, sans-souci, Santa Clara, Santa Claus, Santa Cruz, Santa Fe, Santa Maria, soundtrack, sun deck, sun protection index, sundae, sunset, sunshade, sunshine, suntan, suntan oil, Suntory, Suntory Hall, syndicalism, syndicalist, thunder, thunderbird). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		ぼ�"�", サンスクリット . (various references)

Malay		Sansekerta. (various references)

Manx		Sanskrit. (various references)

Pig Latin		anskritsay.(various references)

Portuguese		sânscrito (sanscrit). (various references)

Romanian		sanscrit (sanskritic). (various references)

Russian		санскрит (sanscrit). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		sanskritski. (various references)

Spanish		sánscrito. (various references)

Swedish		sanskrit (sanscrit). (various references)

Turkish		sanskrit dili. (various references)

Ukranian		санскрит, санкритський. (various references)

Vietnamese		tiếng Phạn (sanscrit). (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Ancestral Language Translations: Sanskrit

Language	Period	Translations
Sanskrit	300 BCE-Modern	samskrta. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

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Misspellings: Sanskrit

Misspellings
	"Sanskrit" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Sanski, zanskari, Zanskaris. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Anagrams: Sanskrit

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-i-k-n-r-s-s-t"
	-1 letter: instars, santirs, strains.
	-2 letters: instar, karsts, kraits, saints, santir, sarins, satins, sistra, sitars, skirts, snarks, stains, stairs, stanks, stinks, stirks, strain, takins, traiks, trains, tranks.
	-3 letters: airns, airts, antis, arsis, astir, ikats, kains, karns, karst, karts, kinas, kirns, kists, knars, knits, krait, naris, narks, rains, rakis, ranis, ranks, rants, riant, rinks, risks, sains, saint, sakis, sarin, saris, sarks, sasin, satin, satis, sinks, sitar, skats, skins, skint, skirt, skits, snark, snits, stain, stair, stank, stark, stars, stink, stirk, stirs, stria, tains, takin, tanks, tarns, tarsi, tasks, traik, train, trank, trans, trass, tsars.
	-4 letters: ains, airn, airs, airt, aits, akin, anis, anti, ants, arks, arts, asks, ikat, inks, irks, kain, karn, kart, kats, kina, kins, kirn, kirs, kiss, kist, kits, knar, knit, kris, nark, nits, rain, raki, rani, rank, rant, rats, rias, rink, rins, risk, sain, saki, sank, sans, sari, sark, sati, sink, sins, sirs, sits, skas, skat, skin, skis, skit, snit, sris, star, stir, tain, tank, tans, tarn, tars, task, tass, tins, tsar, tsks.
	-5 letters: ain, air, ais, ait, ani, ant, ark, ars, art, ask, ass, ink, ins, irk, its, kas, kat, kin, kir, kit, nit, ran, ras, rat, ria, rin, sat, sin, sir, sis, sit, ska, ski, sri, tan, tar, tas, tin, tis, tsk.
	Words containing the letters "a-i-k-n-r-s-s-t"
	+1 letter: snarkiest, stinkards.
	+2 letters: streakings.
	+3 letters: antismokers, asterisking, streakiness.
	+4 letters: stringybarks, waterskiings, workstations.
	+5 letters: enterokinases, heartsickness, sportsmanlike, stickhandlers, streakinesses, streptokinase.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.