We had a little
discussion on Sanskrit the other day, and I was asked to send in my notes to
the group. Since I want to increase my blog readership, I decided to post my
stuff! I will try my best not to say things most people already know.
The word Sanskrit
refers to that, which has been ‘put together’. (It happens to have the same meaning as the Greek syncretismos although the origin for the
Greek word is attributed to the term for the Cretan Federation. Someone better
challenge that etymology quick! To my laywoman’s way of thinking, the root word
obviously comes from a proto Indo-European language.) We infer that Sanskrit is
a language that has been crafted according to scientific principles,
synthesized if you please, as opposed to Prakrit,
which refers to language that evolves naturally (from Prakriti or nature). Sanskrit has always been a language of
learning and refinement in India. The Prakrits were therefore not derivatives
of Sanskrit (most probably the other way round), but simply the less hidebound
easy-speak version of the same language. Prakrit and Sanskrit were mutually
intelligible when our Indo-European ancestors first came to the sub-continent,
but Prakrit being natural and not controlled by convention, evolved (but naturally!)
giving rise to various dialects which ultimately transmogrified (Calvin,
right?) into the various North Indian regional languages. The evolution was
apparently slowest in the Gandharan region and fastest in Magadha. I suppose
that means Kashmiri is closest to the old Prakrit, and therefore Sanskrit,
while maybe Bhojpuri is the farthest. (Just hazarding baba. I know no Kashmiri
or Bhojpuri). Sanskrit is regarded as the mother language of the North Indian
languages, from Kashmiri to Bengali, much like Latin and the Romance languages
– French, Italian, and Spanish.
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| Geographical spread of Indo European languages in the Old World. Indo-European is spoken by 3 billion native speakers. Grey is the non Indo-European world. Brown shows the Indo-Iranian branch of the family that contains Sanskrit, Persian. Blue is the Italic (Romance) Family, Red is Germanic, Green is Balto-Slavic, Yellow is Greek. |
Sanskrit is an
Indo-European language. This means that it shares a common parent language with
other languages of the Indo-European/Indo-Germanic family. Of course all of us
have always been struck by the incredible similarities between the different
languages of the family. Pater in Latin is Father in English is Pitareh in Sanskrit. Mater, Mother, Maatereh. Brother, Braathereh. Path-पथ, Go-गो,
este- अस्ित, we found this game
very exciting as children, until my dad pointed out that Fart and पाद probably
have the same roots too. He felt we were getting carried away. Point noted but not
taken. Excuse our Hindi. And English.
Sanskrit writing system–Originally, Sanskrit was intended to be transmitted
orally. Megasthenes the Greek ambassador to Pataliputra mentions that the
Indians have no writing system! So Chanakya literally composed the Arthashastra
off the top of his head, and kept it inside his disciples' heads? Incredible.
And we think the Chinese strange, sticking to their pictorial script
for communication! In the peripatetic pre-paper and pre-printing era, it was
easier to remember stuff than carry notes around I guess. I must say it is
taking me much longer to write all this down. Definitely more than the 15
minutes I took to say it.
One uncharitable
motivation for this oral tradition could have been that it ensured knowledge
remained the preserve of a select few. There was no danger of it reaching the
‘masses’. (The horror of the masses remains the Indian intellectual’s greatest
drawback. Just saying.) So, to decipher the language was not enough in those
times, unless you got a teacher who imparted the know-how, orally. Apropos the Guru-Sishya Parampara. Remember how
Karna and Ekalavya struggled without a teacher? Not like today, when mere paas Wikipedia hai!
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| Asokan edict in Brahmi |
In fact scripts were first
used for the Prakrits, by royal dynasties that obviously had to connect to
their subjects. It was only later, that the body of
Sanskrit literature, starting with the Vedas were redacted (meaning compiled,
or reduced to writing), possibly in competitive response to a resurgent Prakrit
writing tradition taking off, especially with the advent of Buddhism and
Jainism that were not so bought into the casteist traditions of ancient India. The
script adopted was usually the local Prakrit script of the scribe, from Kharoshti in the North West to Brahmi in the main subcontinent. (The
point is not that no script existed, but that our intellectual forefathers
sneered at the technology, preferring to rely on their memory. Statement thing,
like not being on Facebook.) The Brahmi
script had descendants – in the north, the Gupta, Sharada and Devnagari scripts
came about in the 5th, 7th and 11th centuries of
the Common Era; Grantham and Vattezhuththu came up between the 6th
and 8th centuries in the South and spread to South East Asia through
trade contacts, giving rise to the Burmese Mon script as well as the Khmer and
Javanese scripts. Modern Thai comes from Khmer that comes from Vattezhuththu.
Brahmi was the man. Or woman, likelier. (The Hiragana, phonetic system of Japanese writing is attributed to
women; their men thought it was cooler to struggle with Kanji, which is the same as the Chinese logographic script.)
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| The Indus Valley script has not been deciphered yet. It could have been a precursor to Brahmi |
I digress. Point is
that Sanskrit did not pay much heed to the script used, although correct pronunciation
was of paramount importance. In the nineteenth century Occidental Indologists found
this lack of a uniform writing system an impediment to their research and
promoted the use of the Nagari system. Hamare paas guru nahin par empire hai,
they said.
Body of Sanskrit literature:
The non-reliance on a
script has infused some unique features into Sanskrit literature. The earlier
works are mostly metrical compositions with mnemonics interwoven to facilitate
memorization. Sanskrit does not depend on syntax to convey meaning, and every
word has a vast number of synonyms to facilitate composition into a metrical
scheme (the number of synonyms frustrated foreign students like the 11th
century scholar Al Beruni who wrote his ‘India’ for the Islamic world.)
Sanskrit literature
may be seen as belonging to different eras starting with the Pre-Classical era or Vedic era. Reliance was solely on oral
transmission and the writing was essentially religious, philosophic or
scientific. Around the 5th or 6th century BCE, Panini
standardized the grammar for Sanskrit. With the Gupta Empire ensuring peace and
stability and prosperity, many works were written. The period between 300 BCE and
800 CE is called the Classical Sanskrit era.
Then there is the Later period.
Important works in more or less chronological order are as follows-
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| Rig Veda in Nagari - ca 19th cent. CE |
Rig Veda – “Praise” - A collection of hymns in praise of the gods, mythological
accounts for the origin of the world, prayers for prosperity etc., composed
between 1700 BC and 1100 BC, redacted in 1000 BC and written down ca 400
CE.
Yajurveda: Composed between 1000BC and 600 BC it is the liturgical knowledge for
conducting sacrifices, the mantras etc. Will have a lot of mathematics, like
the formulae for constructing an altar etc.
Samveda- Melody is
emphasized; these are hymns.
Atharva Veda- Dealt among other things, in magic, healing, warfare, philosophy etc.
Seems secular to me.
The Vedas usually come in a set – the Samhita, that is the main collection of
the metrical material itself, and the Brahmana,
which is the commentary on the material, often in prose. Aranyakas and the early Upanishads are also seen as part of the Brahmanas,
although of course, there are always works that straddle periods and
classifications. The Upanishads or
Vedanta are a set of philosophical treatises, which form the theoretical
basis for Hinduism. They were composed over a wide swathe of time, from the
Pre-Buddhist Period.
Sutra literature: Knowledge codified in metrical material, composed
between 500 and100 BCE, concision being of importance. Includes the Vedangas consisting of manuals on
astrology, metrics, domestic life etc. etc. Panini’s Ashtadhyayi is an example of the Vyakarana Sutra. Panini
standardized Sanskrit grammar through his brilliant Ashtadhyayi that works through examples.
The Epics: – The Ramayana and the Mahabharata were composed and redacted between
600 BCE and 100 BCE. These are described as Itihasa,
“It happened thus”, i.e. history.
Classical Sanskrit Literature: 300 BCE to 800
CE.
The main works of this
era are –
Epic Poetry (Mahakavya): Western
scholars refer to this as Court Poetry, since the hero is usually either godly
or Kshatriya. Since everything was composed metrically, poetry, especially epic
poetry was distinguished by certain identifying features, that I will not go
into, as Ranjani has already done this. One important aspect was the technical
virtuosity of the Mahakavis. They were not shy of showing off either. The great
epic poems of this time are – Kalidasa’s ‘Kumarasambhava’ and ‘Raghuvamsa’,
Bharavi’s ‘Kiratarjunaya’, Maagha’s ‘Shishupaala Vadha’, ‘Naishada-charita’, and
‘Bhattikavya’.
Lyric poetry (Khandakavya): ‘Meghadootam’
and ‘Ritusamharam’ by Kalidasa are superb examples. Bhartrihari’s ‘Shringarashataka’
is a contemplation on erotic sentiment.
Ethical poetry, as the name suggests, is exclusively devoted to poetic aphorisms,
(anyway found abundantly in Sanskrit literature) e.g. Bhartrihari’s ‘Nitishataka’
and ‘Vairagyashataka’. Yes it’s the same poet. He turned monk and then layman
and back and fluctuated thus seven times between his house and the monastery.
The substance of his work would have also been inconstant.
Fiction
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| Raja Ravi Varma's Shakuntala |
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| Vasantasena |
Drama: Kalidasa,
Bana, Ashvaghosha, Shudraka were the big playwrights. The most lauded are Kalidasa’s plays from ‘Malavikagnimitram’ to ‘Abhigyan Shakuntalam’. ‘Mrichchakatikam’ is one of the oldest plays
and was made into the Hindi movie – Utsav. The Amar Chitra Katha Vasantasena, will give you the
plot. I can't help giving a nod to Uncle Pai of Amar Chitra Katha (www.amarchitrakatha.com) who familiarised half a generation of Indian kids with their heritage and their culture.
My personal favourite
is Bana’s Swapnavasavadatta–the story of Vasavadatta and Udayana, which reads
like an ancient times Bold and the Beautiful. Harsha’s Ratnavali, however, was like a sequel with different actors and poor continuity.
Apparently Harsha’s works were lauded not as much for his hackneyed plots as
for his brisk dialogue and knowledge of stagecraft. His Nagananda is seen as a brilliant play, however, departing from the stereotypical, and combining Buddhist philosophy with a Hindu Devi ex machina!
Story Collections: Panchatantra
(in prose with an admixture of verse), Hitopedesha
(in prose with even more sententious verse), are the primary examples– These
are stories with a lesson. These are actually seen as part of Niti-Shastra, (see
down, under Shastra in Non Fiction). The Vikram Vetal stories (Chandamama anyone?), The
stories of Vikramaditya’s throne, and The Stories of the Parrot are other short prose
collections.
Novel: The first Sanskrit novelist would be Bana Bhatta who wrote Kadambari in 6th-7th
centuries CE. He was in Harsha's court and author of Swapnavasavadatta.
Non-Fiction
Scholarly treatises – Shastras, Tantras, Siddhanta and Jataka,
on topics ranging from astronomy to mathematics to sexual congress. The Aryabhatiyam for example contains mathematical
formulae in 33 verses! By the way Aryabhata left out the proofs in his Ganitapada, and it is thought that the
teacher would have supplied those – see the unwillingness to let go? However
from Bhaskara’s time in 600 CE, derivations were given in prose form! Tantras were mystical/scientific/
magical works and composed within the Hindu and Buddhist canon through the
classical period.
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| Aryabhatta's sloka approximating π |
It transalates as follows and indicates the use of π : Add 4 to 100, multiply by 8, then add 62000, then divide by 20000. The result is "approximately" circumference of a circle of diameter 20000.
The ‘Kamasutra’ by
Vatsyayana would fall under the category of Kama-shastra. It is written in
prose with poetic interpolations, and may have been composed between 400-200
BCE. It might have been collected into a compendium in 200 BCE. There are other
works that fall under Kama-shastra.
Puranas: Our corpus of mythological and historical literature, written in
verse form, dates between the 3rd and 10th century CE
when the divergence of Shaivism and Vaishnavism emerged. Deals with creation of
life, the various eras and genealogies.
Later Sanskrit literature – 800 CE to 1100 CE
A later, but important
story collection is the Kathasaritasagara,
written in verse, and adapted from the legendary Brihatkatha (lost work in Paisachi, a Prakrit dialect). Vikram
Seth was only following in the footsteps of his ancestors.
Jayadeva’s Gita
Govinda, describes the love story of Radha and Krishna in melodic and beautiful
Sanskrit. Avadhuta Gita attributed to Dattatreya is a work of philosophy from
this period that had a huge impact on the development of the Advaita
philosophy.
There was a decline
after the eleventh century coinciding with the rise of local dialects (the
local Prakrits) that had so veered away from their original form that they were
mutually unintelligible with Sanskrit and had a separate tradition of
literature. But Sanskrit continued to be used for religious and philosophical literature
and remained an inspiration for the vernacular literature of India.
Reference: Wikipedia zindabad.
1 comment:
New translation of selected verses from the Amarushataka of Amaru
http://www.scribd.com/doc/160936543/Sanskrit-erotic-poetry-Vol-1
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