Sanskrit

Sanskrit
संस्कृत-, Saṃskṛta-, 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁,संस्कृतम्, Saṃskṛtam
(top) A 19th-century illustrated Sanskrit manuscript from the Bhagavad Gita,[1] composed c. 400  – 200 BCE.[2][3] (bottom) The 175th-anniversary stamp of the third-oldest Sanskrit college, Sanskrit College, Calcutta, founded in 1824.
Pronunciation[ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm]
RegionSouth Asia (India proper), Indianised Southeast Asia, Greater Tibet, Greater Mongolia, Central Asia (formerly).
Erac. 1500–600 BCE (Vedic Sanskrit);[4]
700 BCE – 1350 CE (Classical Sanskrit)[5]
RevivalThere are no known native speakers of Sanskrit.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
Early form
Official status
Official language in
Recognised minority
language in
South Africa (promoted religious language)[14]
Language codes
ISO 639-1sa
ISO 639-2san
ISO 639-3san – inclusive code
Individual codes:
cls – Classical Sanskrit
vsn – Vedic Sanskrit
Glottologsans1269
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Sanskrit (/ˈsænskrɪt/; attributively 𑀲𑀁𑀲𑁆𑀓𑀾𑀢𑀁, संस्कृत-, saṃskṛta-;[15][16] nominally संस्कृतम्, saṃskṛtam, IPA: [ˈsɐ̃skr̩tɐm][17][b]) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages.[19][20][21] It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late Bronze Age.[22][23] Sanskrit is the sacred language of Hinduism, the language of classical Hindu philosophy, and of historical texts of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a link language in ancient and medieval South Asia, and upon transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion and high culture, and of the political elites in some of these regions.[24][25] As a result, Sanskrit had a lasting impact on the languages of South Asia, Southeast Asia and East Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.[26]

Sanskrit generally connotes several Old Indo-Aryan language varieties.[27][28] The most archaic of these is the Vedic Sanskrit found in the Rigveda, a collection of 1,028 hymns composed between 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE by Indo-Aryan tribes migrating east from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across northern Pakistan and into northwestern India.[29][30] Vedic Sanskrit interacted with the preexisting ancient languages of the subcontinent, absorbing names of newly encountered plants and animals; in addition, the ancient Dravidian languages influenced Sanskrit's phonology and syntax.[31] Sanskrit can also more narrowly refer to Classical Sanskrit, a refined and standardized grammatical form that emerged in the mid-1st millennium BCE and was codified in the most comprehensive of ancient grammars,[c] the Aṣṭādhyāyī ('Eight chapters') of Pāṇini.[32] The greatest dramatist in Sanskrit, Kālidāsa, wrote in classical Sanskrit, and the foundations of modern arithmetic were first described in classical Sanskrit.[d][33] The two major Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, however, were composed in a range of oral storytelling registers called Epic Sanskrit which was used in northern India between 400 BCE and 300 CE, and roughly contemporary with classical Sanskrit.[34] In the following centuries, Sanskrit became tradition-bound, stopped being learned as a first language, and ultimately stopped developing as a living language.[9]

The hymns of the Rigveda are notably similar to the most archaic poems of the Iranian and Greek language families, the Gathas of old Avestan and Iliad of Homer.[35] As the Rigveda was orally transmitted by methods of memorisation of exceptional complexity, rigour and fidelity,[36][37] as a single text without variant readings,[38] its preserved archaic syntax and morphology are of vital importance in the reconstruction of the common ancestor language Proto-Indo-European.[35] Sanskrit does not have an attested native script: from around the turn of the 1st-millennium CE, it has been written in various Brahmic scripts, and in the modern era most commonly in Devanagari.[a][12][13]

Sanskrit's status, function, and place in India's cultural heritage are recognized by its inclusion in the Constitution of India's Eighth Schedule languages.[39][40] However, despite attempts at revival,[8][41] there are no first-language speakers of Sanskrit in India.[8][10][42] In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue,[e] but the numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language.[6][7][8][43] Sanskrit has been taught in traditional gurukulas since ancient times; it is widely taught today at the secondary school level. The oldest Sanskrit college is the Benares Sanskrit College founded in 1791 during East India Company rule.[44] Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial and ritual language in Hindu and Buddhist hymns and chants.

  1. ^ Mascaró, Juan (2003). The Bhagavad Gita. Penguin. pp. 13 ff. ISBN 978-0-14-044918-1. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 11 October 2020. The Bhagawad Gita, an intensely spiritual work, that forms one of the cornerstones of the Hindu faith, and is also one of the masterpieces of Sanskrit poetry. (from the backcover)
  2. ^ Besant, Annie (trans) (1922). "Discourse 1". The Bhagavad-gita; or, The Lord's Song, with text in Devanagari, and English translation. Madras: G. E. Natesan & Co. Archived from the original on 12 October 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2020. प्रवृत्ते शस्त्रसम्पाते धनुरुद्यम्य पाण्डवः ॥ २० ॥
    Then, beholding the sons of Dhritarâshtra standing arrayed, and flight of missiles about to begin, ... the son of Pându, took up his bow,(20)
    हृषीकेशं तदा वाक्यमिदमाह महीपते । अर्जुन उवाच । ...॥ २१ ॥
    And spake this word to Hrishîkesha, O Lord of Earth: Arjuna said: ...
  3. ^ Radhakrishnan, S. (1948). The Bhagavadgītā: With an introductory essay, Sanskrit text, English translation, and notes. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. p. 86. ... pravyite Sastrasampate
    dhanur udyamya pandavah (20)
    Then Arjuna, ... looked at the sons of Dhrtarastra drawn up in battle order; and as the flight of missiles (almost) started, he took up his bow.
    hystkesam tada vakyam
    idam aha mahipate ... (21)
    And, O Lord of earth, he spoke this word to Hrsikesha (Krsna): ...
  4. ^ Uta Reinöhl (2016). Grammaticalization and the Rise of Configurationality in Indo-Aryan. Oxford University Press. pp. xiv, 1–16. ISBN 978-0-19-873666-0.
  5. ^ Colin P. Masica 1993, p. 55: "Thus Classical Sanskrit, fixed by Panini's grammar in probably the fourth century BC on the basis of a class dialect (and preceding grammatical tradition) of probably the seventh century BC, had its greatest literary flowering in the first millennium AD and even later, much of it therefore a full thousand years after the stage of the language it ostensibly represents."
  6. ^ a b McCartney, Patrick (10 May 2020), Searching for Sanskrit Speakers in the Indian Census, The Wire, archived from the original on 21 October 2020, retrieved 24 November 2020 Quote: "What this data tells us is that it is very difficult to believe the notion that Jhiri is a "Sanskrit village" where everyone only speaks fluent Sanskrit at a mother tongue level. It is also difficult to accept that the lingua franca of the rural masses is Sanskrit, when most the majority of L1, L2 and L3 Sanskrit tokens are linked to urban areas. The predominance of Sanskrit across the Hindi belt also shows a particular cultural/geographic affection that does not spread equally across the rest of the country. In addition, the clustering with Hindi and English, in the majority of variations possible, also suggests that a certain class element is involved. Essentially, people who identify as speakers of Sanskrit appear to be urban and educated, which possibly implies that the affiliation with Sanskrit is related in some way to at least some sort of Indian, if not, Hindu, nationalism."
  7. ^ a b McCartney, Patrick (11 May 2020), The Myth of 'Sanskrit Villages' and the Realm of Soft Power, The Wire, archived from the original on 24 January 2021, retrieved 24 November 2020 Quote: "Consider the example of this faith-based development narrative that has evolved over the past decade in the state of Uttarakhand. In 2010, Sanskrit became the state's second official language. ... Recently, an updated policy has increased this top-down imposition of language shift, toward Sanskrit. The new policy aims to create a Sanskrit village in every "block" (administrative division) of Uttarakhand. The state of Uttarakhand consists of two divisions, 13 districts, 79 sub-districts and 97 blocks. ... There is hardly a Sanskrit village in even one block in Uttarakhand. The curious thing is that, while 70% of the state's total population live in rural areas, 100pc of the total 246 L1-Sanskrit tokens returned at the 2011 census are from Urban areas. No L1-Sanskrit token comes from any villager who identifies as an L1-Sanskrit speaker in Uttarakhand."
  8. ^ a b c d e Sreevastan, Ajai (10 August 2014). "Where are the Sanskrit speakers?". The Hindu. Chennai. Archived from the original on 24 December 2021. Retrieved 11 October 2020. Sanskrit is also the only scheduled language that shows wide fluctuations — rising from 6,106 speakers in 1981 to 49,736 in 1991 and then falling dramatically to 14,135 speakers in 2001. "This fluctuation is not necessarily an error of the Census method. People often switch language loyalties depending on the immediate political climate," says Prof. Ganesh Devy of the People's Linguistic Survey of India. ... Because some people "fictitiously" indicate Sanskrit as their mother tongue owing to its high prestige and Constitutional mandate, the Census captures the persisting memory of an ancient language that is no longer anyone's real mother tongue, says B. Mallikarjun of the Center for Classical Language. Hence, the numbers fluctuate in each Census. ... "Sanskrit has influence without presence," says Devy. "We all feel in some corner of the country, Sanskrit is spoken." But even in Karnataka's Mattur, which is often referred to as India's Sanskrit village, hardly a handful indicated Sanskrit as their mother tongue.
  9. ^ a b Lowe, John J. (2017). Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan. Oxford University Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-19-879357-1. The desire to preserve understanding and knowledge of Sanskrit in the face of ongoing linguistic change drove the development of an indigenous grammatical tradition, which culminated in the composition of the Aṣṭādhyāyī, attributed to the grammarian Pāṇini, no later than the early fourth century BCE. In subsequent centuries, Sanskrit ceased to be learnt as a native language, and eventually ceased to develop as living languages do, becoming increasingly fixed according to the prescriptions of the grammatical tradition.
  10. ^ a b Ruppel, A. M. (2017). The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-107-08828-3. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 5 October 2020. The study of any ancient (or dead) language is faced with one main challenge: ancient languages have no native speakers who could provide us with examples of simple everyday speech
  11. ^ Annamalai, E. (2008). "Contexts of multilingualism". In Braj B. Kachru; Yamuna Kachru; S. N. Sridhar (eds.). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 223–. ISBN 978-1-139-46550-2. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 5 October 2020. Some of the migrated languages ... such as Sanskrit and English, remained primarily as a second language, even though their native speakers were lost. Some native languages like the language of the Indus valley were lost with their speakers, while some linguistic communities shifted their language to one or other of the migrants' languages.
  12. ^ a b Jain, Dhanesh (2007). "Sociolinguistics of the Indo-Aryan languages". In George Cardona; Dhanesh Jain (eds.). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 47–66, 51. ISBN 978-1-135-79711-9. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 12 October 2020. In the history of Indo-Aryan, writing was a later development and its adoption has been slow even in modern times. The first written word comes to us through Asokan inscriptions dating back to the third century BC. Originally, Brahmi was used to write Prakrit (MIA); for Sanskrit (OIA) it was used only four centuries later (Masica 1991: 135). The MIA traditions of Buddhist and Jain texts show greater regard for the written word than the OIA Brahminical tradition, though writing was available to Old Indo-Aryans.
  13. ^ a b Salomon, Richard (2007). "The Writing Systems of the Indo-Aryan Languages". In George Cardona; Dhanesh Jain (eds.). The Indo-Aryan Languages. Routledge. pp. 67–102. ISBN 978-1-135-79711-9. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 12 October 2020. Although in modern usage Sanskrit is most commonly written or printed in Nagari, in theory, it can be represented by virtually any of the main Brahmi-based scripts, and in practice it often is. Thus scripts such as Gujarati, Bangla, and Oriya, as well as the major south Indian scripts, traditionally have been and often still are used in their proper territories for writing Sanskrit. Sanskrit, in other words, is not inherently linked to any particular script, although it does have a special historical connection with Nagari.
  14. ^ "Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 – Chapter 1: Founding Provisions". gov.za. Archived from the original on 28 October 2014. Retrieved 6 December 2014.
  15. ^ Cardona, George; Luraghi, Silvia (2018). "Sanskrit". In Bernard Comrie (ed.). The World's Major Languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 497–. ISBN 978-1-317-29049-0. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 13 October 2020. Sanskrit (samskrita- 'adorned, purified') ... It is in the Ramayana that the term saṃskṛta- is encountered probably for the first time with reference to the language.
  16. ^ Wright, J.C. (1990). "Reviewed Works: Pāṇini: His Work and Its Traditions. Vol. I. Background and Introduction by George Cardona; Grammaire sanskrite pâninéenne by Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 53 (1). Cambridge University Press: 152–154. doi:10.1017/S0041977X0002156X. JSTOR 618999. Archived from the original on 21 January 2022. Retrieved 12 October 2020. The first reference to 'Sanskrit' in the context of language is in the Ramayana, Book 5 (Sundarkanda), Canto 28, Verse 17: अहं ह्यतितनुश्चैव वनरश्च विशेषतः // वाचंचोदाहरिष्यामि मानुषीमिह संस्कृताम् // १७ // Hanuman says, 'First, my body is very subtle, second I am a monkey. Especially as a monkey, I will use here the human-appropriate Sanskrit speech / language.'
  17. ^ Apte, Vaman Shivaram (1957). Revised and enlarged edition of Prin. V.S. Apte's The practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Poona: Prasad Prakashan. p. 1596. Archived from the original on 7 April 2022. Retrieved 13 October 2020. from संस्कृत saṃskṛitə past passive participle: Made perfect, refined, polished, cultivated. -तः -tah A word formed regularly according to the rules of grammar, a regular derivative. -तम् -tam Refined or highly polished speech, the Sanskṛit language; संस्कृतं नाम दैवी वागन्वाख्याता महर्षिभिः ("named sanskritam the divine language elaborated by the sages") from Kāvyadarśa.1. 33. of Daṇḍin
  18. ^ Cardona 1997, p. 557.
  19. ^ Roger D. Woodard (2008). The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-521-68494-1. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 18 July 2018. The earliest form of this 'oldest' language, Sanskrit, is the one found in the ancient Brahmanic text called the Rigveda, composed c. 1500 BCE. The date makes Sanskrit one of the three earliest of the well-documented languages of the Indo-European family – the other two being Old Hittite and Myceanaean Greek – and, in keeping with its early appearance, Sanskrit has been a cornerstone in the reconstruction of the parent language of the Indo-European family – Proto-Indo-European.
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bauer2017p90 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference Ramat2015p26 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Dyson, Tim (2018). A Population History of India: From the First Modern People to the Present Day. Oxford University Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN 978-0-19-882905-8. Although the collapse of the Indus valley civilization is no longer believed to have been due to an 'Aryan invasion' it is widely thought that, at roughly the same time, or perhaps a few centuries later, new Indo-Aryan-speaking people and influences began to enter the subcontinent from the north-west. Detailed evidence is lacking. Nevertheless, a predecessor of the language that would eventually be called Sanskrit was probably introduced into the north-west sometime between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago. This language was related to one then spoken in eastern Iran; and both of these languages belonged to the Indo-European language family.
  23. ^ Pinkney, Andrea Marion (2014). "Revealing the Vedas in 'Hinduism': Foundations and issues of interpretation of religions in South Asian Hindu traditions". In Bryan S. Turner; Oscar Salemink (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Religions in Asia. Routledge. pp. 38–. ISBN 978-1-317-63646-5. According to Asko Parpola, the Proto-Indo-Aryan civilization was influenced by two external waves of migrations. The first group originated from the southern Urals (c. 2100 BCE) and mixed with the peoples of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC); this group then proceeded to South Asia, arriving around 1900 BCE. The second wave arrived in northern South Asia around 1750 BCE and mixed with the formerly arrived group, producing the Mitanni Aryans (c. 1500 BCE), a precursor to the peoples of the Ṛgveda. Michael Witzel has assigned an approximate chronology to the strata of Vedic languages, arguing that the language of the Ṛgveda changed through the beginning of the Iron Age in South Asia, which started in the Northwest (Punjab) around 1000 BCE. On the basis of comparative philological evidence, Witzel has suggested a five-stage periodization of Vedic civilization, beginning with the Ṛgveda. On the basis of internal evidence, the Ṛgveda is dated as a late Bronze Age text composed by pastoral migrants with limited settlements, probably between 1350 and 1150 BCE in the Punjab region.
  24. ^ Michael C. Howard 2012, p. 21
  25. ^ Pollock, Sheldon (2006). The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. University of California Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-520-24500-6. Once Sanskrit emerged from the sacerdotal environment ... it became the sole medium by which ruling elites expressed their power ... Sanskrit probably never functioned as an everyday medium of communication anywhere in the cosmopolis—not in South Asia itself, let alone Southeast Asia ... The work Sanskrit did do ... was directed above all toward articulating a form of ... politics ... as celebration of aesthetic power.
  26. ^ Burrow 1973, pp. 62–64.
  27. ^ Cardona, George; Luraghi, Silvia (2018). "Sanskrit". In Bernard Comrie (ed.). The World's Major Languages. Taylor & Francis. pp. 497–. ISBN 978-1-317-29049-0. Sanskrit (samskrita- 'adorned, purified') refers to several varieties of Old Indo-Aryan whose most archaic forms are found in Vedic texts: the Rigveda (Ṛgveda), Yajurveda, Sāmveda, Atharvaveda, with various branches.
  28. ^ Alfred C. Woolner (1986). Introduction to Prakrit. Motilal Banarsidass. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-81-208-0189-9. If in 'Sanskrit' we include the Vedic language and all dialects of the Old Indian period, then it is true to say that all the Prakrits are derived from Sanskrit. If on the other hand 'Sanskrit' is used more strictly of the Panini-Patanjali language or 'Classical Sanskrit,' then it is untrue to say that any Prakrit is derived from Sanskrit, except that Sauraseni, the Midland Prakrit, is derived from the Old Indian dialect of the Madhyadesa on which Classical Sanskrit was mainly based.
  29. ^ Lowe, John J. (2015). Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit: The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–2. ISBN 978-0-19-100505-3. Archived from the original on 10 October 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2020. It consists of 1,028 hymns (suktas), highly crafted poetic compositions originally intended for recital during rituals and for the invocation of and communication with the Indo-Aryan gods. Modern scholarly opinion largely agrees that these hymns were composed between around 1500 BCE and 1200 BCE, during the eastward migration of the Indo-Aryan tribes from the mountains of what is today northern Afghanistan across the Punjab into north India.
  30. ^ Witzel, Michael (2006). "Early Loan Words in Western Central Asia: Indicators of Substrate Populations, Migrations, and Trade Relations". In Victor H. Mair (ed.). Contact And Exchange in the Ancient World. University of Hawaii Press. pp. 158–190, 160. ISBN 978-0-8248-2884-4. The Vedas were composed (roughly between 1500-1200 and 500 BCE) in parts of present-day Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, and northern India. The oldest text at our disposal is the Rgveda (RV); it is composed in archaic Indo-Aryan (Vedic Sanskrit).
  31. ^ Shulman, David (2016). Tamil. Harvard University Press. pp. 17–19. ISBN 978-0-674-97465-4. (p. 17) Similarly, we find a large number of other items relating to flora and fauna, grains, pulses, and spices—that is, words that we might expect to have made their way into Sanskrit from the linguistic environment of prehistoric or early-historic India. ... (p. 18) Dravidian certainly influenced Sanskrit phonology and syntax from early on ... (p 19) Vedic Sanskrit was in contact, from very ancient times, with speakers of Dravidian languages, and that the two language families profoundly influenced one another.
  32. ^ a b c Evans, Nicholas (2009). Dying Words: Endangered languages and what they have to tell us. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 27–. ISBN 978-0-631-23305-3.
  33. ^ Glenn Van Brummelen (2014). "Arithmetic". In Thomas F. Glick; Steven Livesey; Faith Wallis (eds.). Medieval Science, Technology, and Medicine: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 46–48. ISBN 978-1-135-45932-1. Archived from the original on 10 October 2023. Retrieved 15 October 2020. The story of the growth of arithmetic from the ancient inheritance to the wealth passed on to the Renaissance is dramatic and passes through several cultures. The most groundbreaking achievement was the evolution of a positional number system, in which the position of a digit within a number determines its value according to powers (usually) of ten (e.g., in 3,285, the "2" refers to hundreds). Its extension to include decimal fractions and the procedures that were made possible by its adoption transformed the abilities of all who calculated, with an effect comparable to the modern invention of the electronic computer. Roughly speaking, this began in India, was transmitted to Islam, and then to the Latin West.
  34. ^ Lowe, John J. (2017). Transitive Nouns and Adjectives: Evidence from Early Indo-Aryan. Oxford University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-19-879357-1. The term 'Epic Sanskrit' refers to the language of the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa. ... It is likely, therefore, that the epic-like elements found in Vedic sources and the two epics that we have are not directly related, but that both drew on the same source, an oral tradition of storytelling that existed before, throughout, and after the Vedic period.
  35. ^ a b Lowe, John J. (2015). Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit: The Syntax and Semantics of Adjectival Verb Forms. Oxford University Press. pp. 2–. ISBN 978-0-19-100505-3. Archived from the original on 10 October 2023. Retrieved 13 October 2020. The importance of the Rigveda for the study of early Indo-Aryan historical linguistics cannot be underestimated. ... its language is ... notably similar in many respects to the most archaic poetic texts of related language families, the Old Avestan Gathas and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, respectively the earliest poetic representatives of the Iranian and Greek language families. Moreover, its manner of preservation, by a system of oral transmission which has preserved the hymns almost without change for 3,000 years, makes it a very trustworthy witness to the Indo-Aryan language of North India in the second millennium BC. Its importance for the reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, particularly in respect of the archaic morphology and syntax it preserves, ... is considerable. Any linguistic investigation into Old Indo-Aryan, Indo-Iranian, or Proto-Indo-European cannot avoid treating the evidence of the Rigveda as of vital importance.
  36. ^ Staal 1986.
  37. ^ Filliozat 2004, pp. 360–375.
  38. ^ Filliozat 2004, p. 139.
  39. ^ Gazzola, Michele; Wickström, Bengt-Arne (2016). The Economics of Language Policy. MIT Press. pp. 469–. ISBN 978-0-262-03470-8. The Eighth Schedule recognizes India's national languages as including the major regional languages as well as others, such as Sanskrit and Urdu, which contribute to India's cultural heritage. ... The original list of fourteen languages in the Eighth Schedule at the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1949 has now grown to twenty-two.
  40. ^ Groff, Cynthia (2017). The Ecology of Language in Multilingual India: Voices of Women and Educators in the Himalayan Foothills. Palgrave Macmillan UK. pp. 58–. ISBN 978-1-137-51961-0. As Mahapatra says: "It is generally believed that the significance for the Eighth Schedule lies in providing a list of languages from which Hindi is directed to draw the appropriate forms, style and expressions for its enrichment" ... Being recognized in the Constitution, however, has had significant relevance for a language's status and functions.
  41. ^ "Indian village where people speak in Sanskrit". BBC News. 22 December 2014. Archived from the original on 5 April 2023. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  42. ^ Annamalai, E. (2008). "Contexts of multilingualism". In Braj B. Kachru; Yamuna Kachru; S. N. Sridhar (eds.). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 223–. ISBN 978-1-139-46550-2. Some of the migrated languages ... such as Sanskrit and English, remained primarily as a second language, even though their native speakers were lost. Some native languages like the language of the Indus valley were lost with their speakers, while some linguistic communities shifted their language to one or other of the migrants' languages.
  43. ^ Distribution of the 22 Scheduled Languages – India / States / Union Territories – Sanskrit (PDF), Census of India, 2011, p. 30, archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022, retrieved 4 October 2020
  44. ^ Seth 2007, p. 171.


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