11 ms·

A Neuroscientist Explores the “Sanskrit Effect”

168 points by triplesec 9y ago

bobosha 9y ago
while this is interesting, it would be good to know if the memorizing of other texts - say, the works of Shakespeare, or Encyclopedia britannica, would have a similar effect. It is perhaps not the mantras, but the act of memorization perhaps?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- lr4444lr 9y ago
  Strong oral traditions still exist, or did until recently, in the Balkans around their lengthy epics and wedding hymns. There may be some traditions in northern Europe clinging on for dear life as well. In the classical tradition, it was a hallmark of leaning to memorize long blocks if not whole works of Homer, Vergil, and various Elegiac poets. Part of the problem in teasing out the effect is that there is an inherent selection bias in the type of people who receive this type of education (or any education, in the not too distant past) to conclude from population analyses to what degree the particular task of literary memorization confers this benefit. Someone's going to have to ferret out the mechanism or do controlled longitudinal studies, which will be costly and fraught with difficulty. Even Socrates (i.e. Plato) was attuned to the idea that memory was under attack with the advent of writing[0] and a culture that has other information retrieval technology, so it's debatable whether we could really plumb the depths of what human cognition could be under different pressures. It's also unclear how early this kind of training has to be started too in order to have an effect. [0]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-writing-memory-and-forgetting-socrates-and-hemingway-take-on-zeigarnik/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-wr...
- spraak 9y ago
  As a Hindu, it feels very much inherent in Sanskritam and the works themselves, but I recognize that it is just my opinion based in my world view.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  I think there is some evidence that singing can help people with dementia, and also that recall is as much of an issue as memorization.
- kilpikaarna 9y ago
  In a pre-literate society these kinds of works (including much of Shakespeare) would've been composed in verse form to aid with memorization. So if you intend to recite from memory for six hours straight, like in the article, you probably want that rather than Britannica or the phone book. I do find it plausible that certain (combinations of) language and verse metre might have mantra-like qualities, conducive to achieving trance states that could affect the brain. India has been on the case for a looong time, so it wouldn't surprise if Sanskrit + Vedic poetry present a particularly sophisticated example.
0xcde4c3db 9y ago
> Does the pandits’ substantial increase in the gray matter of critical verbal memory organs mean they are less prone to devastating memory pathologies such as Alzheimer's? We don't know yet, though anecdotal reports from India's Ayurvedic doctors suggest this may be the case. If there is such an association, self-selection bias must be accounted for. It might be that dementia risk factors or subclinical pre-dementia pathology makes a person less likely to pursue training as a pandit. Also, anecdotal reports from Ayurvedic doctors suggest a lot of things. For example, that the right sort of yoga practice leads to 80-year-olds who look and feel like teenagers.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  I think Tom Brady is doing some of that yoga?
- Ar-Curunir 9y ago
  I don't think the children involved in the training have a great deal of choice in the matter. Most priests then start their career almost immediately as adults.
- modi15 9y ago
  80-year-olds looking and feeling like teenagers is stretching it, but Yoga is magical in making you look/feel younger.
anthk_ 9y ago
Well, I've read Snow Crash yesterday. How interesting... (Anyone who read the book can relate...)
- sideshowb 9y ago
  Nam shub of enki indeed
thro1237 9y ago
Given that people who memorize sanskrit hymns typically come from a single caste (with limited intermarriage between castes), the control should just include the members of that caste (but who don't memorize hymns) - to account for genetic effects. And as another commenter pointed out, this doesn't prove anything about Sanksrit. To prove something like that, the authors should have compared brain sizes with people who memorize other non-sanskrit texts.
- f42z 9y ago
  A substantial group that memorizes a foreign-language (to many) text are Muslim huffaz, who commit the entire Koran to memory. They'd make a good comparison group, given their large numbers, ethnic heterogeneity and worldwide distribution.
  - ketralnis 9y ago
    Or The Knowledge, where London cab drivers have to memorise the whole of London’s streets
    - gumby 9y ago
      It is well attested that licensed London taxicab drivers (those with “the knowledge”) do in fact end up with different brain structure. I haven’t seen any studies of what they might give up in the process, though it does involve a lot of sitting. Example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memor...
      - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
        Wow. I didn't know about that. Kind of casts the whole dispute with Uber thing into a whole different light, doesn't it?
        gumby 9y ago
        Does it? A machine can indeed do a better job (in the sense of requiring negligible training) of knowing all the streets and democratized “the knowledge” which previously was the purview of a small guild. I am sorry for their sunk cost, but really minicabs+gps and now uber/Lyft et al are as good, or would be if taxis didn’t have a pick up monopoly.
dude01 9y ago
I just recently learned that Sanskrit was the first language to have its grammar formally specified. Pāṇini in the 4th century BCE wrote down the complete one. I couldn't find a good translation of it online. I suppose translating a grammar written in the language itself is tough. I was curious because I want to know how much of BNF grammar functionality is represented in it. Perhaps BNF is just a rediscovering/reformatting of the Sanskrit grammar?
- neel_k 9y ago
  Panini's grammar is closest to an instance of a Post canonical system. It is basically a set of general rewriting rules, with features going beyond BNF in power. This is for pretty much the same reason that the grammatical formalisms modern linguists use also go beyond BNF. Linguists are interested in issues of grammaticality that actually do need context (such as subject-verb agreement) and so obviously context-free grammars can't do the whole job! (For a programming example, you can see type correctness as a case of how well-formedness of programs depends on context -- whether a variable can be used in an expression depends on its type.)
  - sriku 9y ago
    Panini covered both the grammar in the regular sense as well as the phonology of the language. "Optimality theory" attempts to model phonology as a collection of violable constraints operating with a least violation principle. It is supposed to be more generally applicable to what we normally know as grammar (dealings at the words/phrases level), but has seen most success with phonology.
  - dude01 9y ago
    Thank you, that makes sense.
- thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > I just recently learned that Sanskrit was the first language to have its grammar formally specified. Pāṇini in the 4th century BCE wrote down the complete one. People can say this, but that won't make it true. There are unexaggerated 100% odds that what Pāṇini specified was not a complete description of the speech of his time or any other point in history, just as no complete description of any modern language exists today. It's not for lack of scholastic effort; the idea of completely specifying a human language isn't even well defined. > I want to know how much of BNF grammar functionality is represented in it. Perhaps BNF is just a rediscovering/reformatting of the Sanskrit grammar? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GUBIJ8/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GUBIJ8/ describes the style in which Pāṇini's rules are written. (I'm not saying this is the best source to answer that question, just that it's a book I've read and its description is probably enough for your purposes.)
sriram_malhar 9y ago
Hmm, interesting observation, but the causal link seems a bit tenuous. Is it possible that only people with larger hippcampi and other cortical regions are good at memorizing large texts? (that is, the causal link is inverted) Is it possible that people who learn or do something focussedly over a long stretch of time (practice music 4 hours a day) show larger development over those same areas than the average distracted person?
- jhiska 9y ago
  >Is it possible that people who learn or do something focussedly over a long stretch of time (practice music 4 hours a day) show larger development over those same areas than the average distracted person? It's more than possible -- it's well-documented with some kinds of meditative practice. [1] The only interesting question this article raises for a knowledgeable person is whether or not the Sanskrit language _itself_ would have an effect on cognition, but it never succeeds to prove it would or offer a mechanism for how it would work, and instead asks for funds for more studies. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/meditationpapers/top/?sort=top&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/meditationpapers/top/?sort=top&t=al... https://www.reddit.com/r/MeditationNerds/top/?sort=top&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/MeditationNerds/top/?sort=top&t=all
jhiska 9y ago
>Although this initial research, focused on intergroup comparison of brain structure, could not directly address the Sanskrit effect question (that requires detailed functional studies with cross-language memorization comparisons, for which we are currently seeking funding), we found something specific about intensive verbal memory training. This quote, coupled with a lack of a proposed mechanism as to how the Sanskrit language would itself have an influence on cognition, means that as far as we know right now there is no such thing as the Sanskrit Effect. It makes for a catchy headline, though, and the other stuff in the article speaks to my own successful experiments in memory training -- if interested, look up the books from the World Memory Championship winner.
mushufasa 9y ago
wait why isn't this reverse causation? people with strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras.
- Ar-Curunir 9y ago
  Because there isn't really a choice involved here.
  - mushufasa 9y ago
    aspiring pandits who can't keep up won't graduate to the author's sample group
- sriram_malhar 9y ago
  Brahminical training starts when one is a kid, so choice doesn't come into play. I was exposed to it when I was 15 years old, and I still didn't have a choice. FML. I'd like to see a similar study of people who remember hundreds of prime digits.
tw1010 9y ago
Funny, I just read Andre Weils biography, and one thing that stood out about it was that he spent a lot of time learning sanskrit. I wonder if there's a connection between this and his massive intellect.
uptownfunk 9y ago
I have to say, as someone who studied Sanskrit grammar in the paninian system, and also mathematics in University how mathematical the Paninian grammar is, incredibly algebraic. Prefixes and suffixes combine to change and modify words, words can be joined together to create new words. Though I’m sure these features are found in other languages. Another interesting note is that Vedic mantras are sometimes traditionally learnt and recited in what is known as a Ghana patha. If i were to number the words in a sentence, “The cow jumped over the moon” as 1 2 3 4 5 6 and then if I were to recite the sentence now permuting the words as 1 2 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 1 1 2 3,, 2 3 3 2 2 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 4.... The complexity increases. This is because words can be joined together in Sanskrit. Furthermore each letter in Vedic Sanskrit has three ways of pronouncing it (similar to the Chinese four accents) and these can change as you permute and apply the sandhi rules as well. I haven’t seen such complexity in other languages (though it’s possible it may exist) but such complexity is why it wouldn’t surprise me that the effect could possibly be specific to Sanskrit.
- satish-setty 9y ago
  > Vedic Sanskrit has three ways of pronouncing it (similar to the Chinese four accents) Just a nitpick: Vedic Sanskrit has pitch accent, not tone. Chinese is tonal. And I'm a huge fan of ghana patha as well!
  - pen2l 9y ago
    I was really sad the article didn’t have a video of the hymns it spoke of, I’m similarly really interested now w in seeing an example of pitch accent you speak of in action, could you please link a video which you feel shows it well in play? Thanks!
    - uptownfunk 9y ago
      Sure, here is an example of the rudram chanted in ghanam mode, there is a brief example given in the beginning similar to what i explained in my above comment. This is from the yajur Veda I believe, some scholars date these chants close to 3000 years old. https://youtu.be/5VP-NTPEjGg https://youtu.be/5VP-NTPEjGg
formyread3 9y ago
As someone who read some of these scriptures mentioned here , they are always cited from memory. When we were taught , it is usually the teacher reciting once and the students reciting again with 2 repeats. Usually it starts with one word at a time , then by joining 2 together , then entire sentences and then entire chapters.An example here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCO1FIQzbQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCO1FIQzbQk) It is quite incidental that , many of these stick in memory quite a lot. When i chant these after a few years , i am quite surprised that i can recall this without much effort. P.S. Not glorifying, just stating the facts
svat 9y ago
The article is about “India's Vedic Sanskrit pandits [who] train for years”. For anyone who wants a glimpse of what this training (or the result of the training) looks like, there are some great videos on YouTube: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE “Embodying the Vedas - A day in the Śrī Kṛṣṇayajurveda Pāṭhaśālā” (The article mentions the closely related Shukla Yajurveda.) (Examples of the training are from 00:00 to 00:55, from 04:59 to 05:35, from 08:00 to 09:08, from 11:15 to 13:40.) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4 “Glimpses of the current status of Vedic tradition in Kerala” (Examples of the training are from 00:00 to 03:44, from 08:45 to 12:57, from 13:15 to 14:46) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI “Champakaapura Veda Paathashale” (Examples are from 06:35 to 07:43, etc.) (These three from this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmSt2p_TqqWLGha https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmS... ; click around for more.) If you look at the age at which students start, theories like “people with strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras” (proposed in another comment) are easy to discard. Of course, other statistical effects are still possible, such as selection bias (people who do not have or develop the needed memory may abandon training, etc).
FrozenVoid 9y ago
The Sanskrit Effect is result of repeating specific mantra words that occur in the text. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099099/ It will be much easier just to chant the specific "brainy" mantras(such as brim/aim) instead of hours of random text.
pacificleo11 9y ago
From the article "Our study was a first foray into imaging the brains of professionally trained Sanskrit pandits in India. Although this initial research, focused on intergroup comparison of brain structure, could not directly address the Sanskrit effect question (that requires detailed functional studies with cross-language memorization comparisons, for which we are currently seeking funding)," Is it just me who thinks that this disclaimer negate whole point of research ?
- murukesh_s 9y ago
  I too don't think a language by itself don't have a certain effect on brain development. But Brahmins (who study vedas in India) starting learning Vedas at about 4 years of age, if am not wrong, chanting it daily morning from 4.am for couple of hours. That would definitely have an impact on your brain. Remember the study which showed London taxi drivers had bigger brains? https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-memory/ https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-memory/
tragomaskhalos 9y ago
Does anyone have recommendations for a good Sanskrit book for the self-learner? Years ago I tried Coulson's "Teach Yourself Sanskrit" but found it too dense, and more recently have been considering Ruppel's "The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit" ?
- svat 9y ago
  The best book I've found for self-study is the two-volume set by Thomas Egenes (Introduction to Sanskrit). It's very gently paced, though, so you need to have the motivation to stick through till the end (about 400 pages in Part 1 and about 450 in Part 2). Other alternatives are to contact a local chapter of the volunteer organization Samskrita Bharati if there's one (or watch these videos produced by them: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudSN7Po9muLeRM6545s68eakbxwZRpEJ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudSN7Po9muLeRM6545s6...), or to try http://www.learnsanskrit.org/ http://www.learnsanskrit.org/ for something online. See more book reviews at https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/book-reviews/ https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/book-reviews/ If you say what your reasons are for learning Sanskrit, there may be other suggestions….
flatfilefan 9y ago
What about the IQ of those people? Not that IQ were of any huge significance, but that's the first thing probably come to mind of any researcher.

168 points by triplesec 9y ago

while this is interesting, it would be good to know if the memorizing of other texts - say, the works of Shakespeare, or Encyclopedia britannica, would have a similar effect. It is perhaps not the mantras, but the act of memorization perhaps?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
lr4444lr 9y ago
Strong oral traditions still exist, or did until recently, in the Balkans around their lengthy epics and wedding hymns. There may be some traditions in northern Europe clinging on for dear life as well. In the classical tradition, it was a hallmark of leaning to memorize long blocks if not whole works of Homer, Vergil, and various Elegiac poets. Part of the problem in teasing out the effect is that there is an inherent selection bias in the type of people who receive this type of education (or any education, in the not too distant past) to conclude from population analyses to what degree the particular task of literary memorization confers this benefit. Someone's going to have to ferret out the mechanism or do controlled longitudinal studies, which will be costly and fraught with difficulty. Even Socrates (i.e. Plato) was attuned to the idea that memory was under attack with the advent of writing[0] and a culture that has other information retrieval technology, so it's debatable whether we could really plumb the depths of what human cognition could be under different pressures. It's also unclear how early this kind of training has to be started too in order to have an effect. [0]https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-writing-memory-and-forgetting-socrates-and-hemingway-take-on-zeigarnik/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-wr...
spraak 9y ago
As a Hindu, it feels very much inherent in Sanskritam and the works themselves, but I recognize that it is just my opinion based in my world view.
mannykannot 9y ago
I think there is some evidence that singing can help people with dementia, and also that recall is as much of an issue as memorization.
kilpikaarna 9y ago
In a pre-literate society these kinds of works (including much of Shakespeare) would've been composed in verse form to aid with memorization. So if you intend to recite from memory for six hours straight, like in the article, you probably want that rather than Britannica or the phone book. I do find it plausible that certain (combinations of) language and verse metre might have mantra-like qualities, conducive to achieving trance states that could affect the brain. India has been on the case for a looong time, so it wouldn't surprise if Sanskrit + Vedic poetry present a particularly sophisticated example.

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

> Does the pandits’ substantial increase in the gray matter of critical verbal memory organs mean they are less prone to devastating memory pathologies such as Alzheimer's? We don't know yet, though anecdotal reports from India's Ayurvedic doctors suggest this may be the case. If there is such an association, self-selection bias must be accounted for. It might be that dementia risk factors or subclinical pre-dementia pathology makes a person less likely to pursue training as a pandit. Also, anecdotal reports from Ayurvedic doctors suggest a lot of things. For example, that the right sort of yoga practice leads to 80-year-olds who look and feel like teenagers.

jessaustin 9y ago
I think Tom Brady is doing some of that yoga?
Ar-Curunir 9y ago
I don't think the children involved in the training have a great deal of choice in the matter. Most priests then start their career almost immediately as adults.
modi15 9y ago
80-year-olds looking and feeling like teenagers is stretching it, but Yoga is magical in making you look/feel younger.

anthk_ 9y ago

Well, I've read Snow Crash yesterday. How interesting... (Anyone who read the book can relate...)

sideshowb 9y ago
Nam shub of enki indeed

thro1237 9y ago

Given that people who memorize sanskrit hymns typically come from a single caste (with limited intermarriage between castes), the control should just include the members of that caste (but who don't memorize hymns) - to account for genetic effects. And as another commenter pointed out, this doesn't prove anything about Sanksrit. To prove something like that, the authors should have compared brain sizes with people who memorize other non-sanskrit texts.

f42z 9y ago
A substantial group that memorizes a foreign-language (to many) text are Muslim huffaz, who commit the entire Koran to memory. They'd make a good comparison group, given their large numbers, ethnic heterogeneity and worldwide distribution.
- ketralnis 9y ago
  Or The Knowledge, where London cab drivers have to memorise the whole of London’s streets
  - gumby 9y ago
    It is well attested that licensed London taxicab drivers (those with “the knowledge”) do in fact end up with different brain structure. I haven’t seen any studies of what they might give up in the process, though it does involve a lot of sitting. Example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memor...
    - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      Wow. I didn't know about that. Kind of casts the whole dispute with Uber thing into a whole different light, doesn't it?
      - gumby 9y ago
        Does it? A machine can indeed do a better job (in the sense of requiring negligible training) of knowing all the streets and democratized “the knowledge” which previously was the purview of a small guild. I am sorry for their sunk cost, but really minicabs+gps and now uber/Lyft et al are as good, or would be if taxis didn’t have a pick up monopoly.

dude01 9y ago

I just recently learned that Sanskrit was the first language to have its grammar formally specified. Pāṇini in the 4th century BCE wrote down the complete one. I couldn't find a good translation of it online. I suppose translating a grammar written in the language itself is tough. I was curious because I want to know how much of BNF grammar functionality is represented in it. Perhaps BNF is just a rediscovering/reformatting of the Sanskrit grammar?

neel_k 9y ago
Panini's grammar is closest to an instance of a Post canonical system. It is basically a set of general rewriting rules, with features going beyond BNF in power. This is for pretty much the same reason that the grammatical formalisms modern linguists use also go beyond BNF. Linguists are interested in issues of grammaticality that actually do need context (such as subject-verb agreement) and so obviously context-free grammars can't do the whole job! (For a programming example, you can see type correctness as a case of how well-formedness of programs depends on context -- whether a variable can be used in an expression depends on its type.)
- sriku 9y ago
  Panini covered both the grammar in the regular sense as well as the phonology of the language. "Optimality theory" attempts to model phonology as a collection of violable constraints operating with a least violation principle. It is supposed to be more generally applicable to what we normally know as grammar (dealings at the words/phrases level), but has seen most success with phonology.
- dude01 9y ago
  Thank you, that makes sense.
thaumasiotes 9y ago
> I just recently learned that Sanskrit was the first language to have its grammar formally specified. Pāṇini in the 4th century BCE wrote down the complete one. People can say this, but that won't make it true. There are unexaggerated 100% odds that what Pāṇini specified was not a complete description of the speech of his time or any other point in history, just as no complete description of any modern language exists today. It's not for lack of scholastic effort; the idea of completely specifying a human language isn't even well defined. > I want to know how much of BNF grammar functionality is represented in it. Perhaps BNF is just a rediscovering/reformatting of the Sanskrit grammar? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GUBIJ8/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003GUBIJ8/ describes the style in which Pāṇini's rules are written. (I'm not saying this is the best source to answer that question, just that it's a book I've read and its description is probably enough for your purposes.)

sriram_malhar 9y ago

Hmm, interesting observation, but the causal link seems a bit tenuous. Is it possible that only people with larger hippcampi and other cortical regions are good at memorizing large texts? (that is, the causal link is inverted) Is it possible that people who learn or do something focussedly over a long stretch of time (practice music 4 hours a day) show larger development over those same areas than the average distracted person?

jhiska 9y ago
>Is it possible that people who learn or do something focussedly over a long stretch of time (practice music 4 hours a day) show larger development over those same areas than the average distracted person? It's more than possible -- it's well-documented with some kinds of meditative practice. [1] The only interesting question this article raises for a knowledgeable person is whether or not the Sanskrit language _itself_ would have an effect on cognition, but it never succeeds to prove it would or offer a mechanism for how it would work, and instead asks for funds for more studies. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/meditationpapers/top/?sort=top&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/meditationpapers/top/?sort=top&t=al... https://www.reddit.com/r/MeditationNerds/top/?sort=top&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/MeditationNerds/top/?sort=top&t=all

jhiska 9y ago

>Although this initial research, focused on intergroup comparison of brain structure, could not directly address the Sanskrit effect question (that requires detailed functional studies with cross-language memorization comparisons, for which we are currently seeking funding), we found something specific about intensive verbal memory training. This quote, coupled with a lack of a proposed mechanism as to how the Sanskrit language would itself have an influence on cognition, means that as far as we know right now there is no such thing as the Sanskrit Effect. It makes for a catchy headline, though, and the other stuff in the article speaks to my own successful experiments in memory training -- if interested, look up the books from the World Memory Championship winner.

mushufasa 9y ago

wait why isn't this reverse causation? people with strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras.

Ar-Curunir 9y ago
Because there isn't really a choice involved here.
- mushufasa 9y ago
  aspiring pandits who can't keep up won't graduate to the author's sample group
sriram_malhar 9y ago
Brahminical training starts when one is a kid, so choice doesn't come into play. I was exposed to it when I was 15 years old, and I still didn't have a choice. FML. I'd like to see a similar study of people who remember hundreds of prime digits.

tw1010 9y ago

Funny, I just read Andre Weils biography, and one thing that stood out about it was that he spent a lot of time learning sanskrit. I wonder if there's a connection between this and his massive intellect.

uptownfunk 9y ago

I have to say, as someone who studied Sanskrit grammar in the paninian system, and also mathematics in University how mathematical the Paninian grammar is, incredibly algebraic. Prefixes and suffixes combine to change and modify words, words can be joined together to create new words. Though I’m sure these features are found in other languages. Another interesting note is that Vedic mantras are sometimes traditionally learnt and recited in what is known as a Ghana patha. If i were to number the words in a sentence, “The cow jumped over the moon” as 1 2 3 4 5 6 and then if I were to recite the sentence now permuting the words as 1 2 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 1 1 2 3,, 2 3 3 2 2 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 4.... The complexity increases. This is because words can be joined together in Sanskrit. Furthermore each letter in Vedic Sanskrit has three ways of pronouncing it (similar to the Chinese four accents) and these can change as you permute and apply the sandhi rules as well. I haven’t seen such complexity in other languages (though it’s possible it may exist) but such complexity is why it wouldn’t surprise me that the effect could possibly be specific to Sanskrit.

satish-setty 9y ago
> Vedic Sanskrit has three ways of pronouncing it (similar to the Chinese four accents) Just a nitpick: Vedic Sanskrit has pitch accent, not tone. Chinese is tonal. And I'm a huge fan of ghana patha as well!
- pen2l 9y ago
  I was really sad the article didn’t have a video of the hymns it spoke of, I’m similarly really interested now w in seeing an example of pitch accent you speak of in action, could you please link a video which you feel shows it well in play? Thanks!
  - uptownfunk 9y ago
    Sure, here is an example of the rudram chanted in ghanam mode, there is a brief example given in the beginning similar to what i explained in my above comment. This is from the yajur Veda I believe, some scholars date these chants close to 3000 years old. https://youtu.be/5VP-NTPEjGg https://youtu.be/5VP-NTPEjGg

formyread3 9y ago

As someone who read some of these scriptures mentioned here , they are always cited from memory. When we were taught , it is usually the teacher reciting once and the students reciting again with 2 repeats. Usually it starts with one word at a time , then by joining 2 together , then entire sentences and then entire chapters.An example here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCO1FIQzbQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCO1FIQzbQk) It is quite incidental that , many of these stick in memory quite a lot. When i chant these after a few years , i am quite surprised that i can recall this without much effort. P.S. Not glorifying, just stating the facts

svat 9y ago

The article is about “India's Vedic Sanskrit pandits [who] train for years”. For anyone who wants a glimpse of what this training (or the result of the training) looks like, there are some great videos on YouTube: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE “Embodying the Vedas - A day in the Śrī Kṛṣṇayajurveda Pāṭhaśālā” (The article mentions the closely related Shukla Yajurveda.) (Examples of the training are from 00:00 to 00:55, from 04:59 to 05:35, from 08:00 to 09:08, from 11:15 to 13:40.) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4 “Glimpses of the current status of Vedic tradition in Kerala” (Examples of the training are from 00:00 to 03:44, from 08:45 to 12:57, from 13:15 to 14:46) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI “Champakaapura Veda Paathashale” (Examples are from 06:35 to 07:43, etc.) (These three from this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmSt2p_TqqWLGha https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmS... ; click around for more.) If you look at the age at which students start, theories like “people with strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras” (proposed in another comment) are easy to discard. Of course, other statistical effects are still possible, such as selection bias (people who do not have or develop the needed memory may abandon training, etc).

FrozenVoid 9y ago

The Sanskrit Effect is result of repeating specific mantra words that occur in the text. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099099/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099099/ It will be much easier just to chant the specific "brainy" mantras(such as brim/aim) instead of hours of random text.

pacificleo11 9y ago

From the article "Our study was a first foray into imaging the brains of professionally trained Sanskrit pandits in India. Although this initial research, focused on intergroup comparison of brain structure, could not directly address the Sanskrit effect question (that requires detailed functional studies with cross-language memorization comparisons, for which we are currently seeking funding)," Is it just me who thinks that this disclaimer negate whole point of research ?

murukesh_s 9y ago
I too don't think a language by itself don't have a certain effect on brain development. But Brahmins (who study vedas in India) starting learning Vedas at about 4 years of age, if am not wrong, chanting it daily morning from 4.am for couple of hours. That would definitely have an impact on your brain. Remember the study which showed London taxi drivers had bigger brains? https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-memory/ https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-memory/

tragomaskhalos 9y ago

Does anyone have recommendations for a good Sanskrit book for the self-learner? Years ago I tried Coulson's "Teach Yourself Sanskrit" but found it too dense, and more recently have been considering Ruppel's "The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit" ?

svat 9y ago
The best book I've found for self-study is the two-volume set by Thomas Egenes (Introduction to Sanskrit). It's very gently paced, though, so you need to have the motivation to stick through till the end (about 400 pages in Part 1 and about 450 in Part 2). Other alternatives are to contact a local chapter of the volunteer organization Samskrita Bharati if there's one (or watch these videos produced by them: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudSN7Po9muLeRM6545s68eakbxwZRpEJ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudSN7Po9muLeRM6545s6...), or to try http://www.learnsanskrit.org/ http://www.learnsanskrit.org/ for something online. See more book reviews at https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/book-reviews/ https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/book-reviews/ If you say what your reasons are for learning Sanskrit, there may be other suggestions….

flatfilefan 9y ago

What about the IQ of those people? Not that IQ were of any huge significance, but that's the first thing probably come to mind of any researcher.