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> Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined I have studied Sanskrit literature extensively and do not know what this means. > people have interprete

> Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined I have studied Sanskrit literature extensively and do not know what this means. > people have interpreted these mnemonics in different ways Your implication is that people interpreted these mnemonics differently due to misunderstanding these rules. The mainstream scholarly response is rather some version of प्रयोगशरणा वैयाकरणाः ("grammarians take refuge in usage"), i.e. that different grammarians working in different eras and time periods were forced to reconcile the Ashtadhyayi as a fixed document with the slight divergence in contemporary usage -- that is, that they followed usage and intentionally reinterpreted rules to fit usage. For an example of how this accounts for Patanjali's readings in particular, see [1]. [1]: https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/markers.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/markers.pdf

fooker 4y ago
>I have studied Sanskrit literature extensively and do not know what this means. This means a sentence can often have many different meaning, not just the literal one suggested by the words. The idea is you either accept multiple meanings or settle it through debate. I am not criticizing this, this is fundamentally what makes literature and poetry interesting. But this makes it really difficult to draw a line between philosophy and science.
- progmetaldev 4y ago
  Perhaps this was intentional, or supported by having teachers and a stronger oral history/tradition? Just as with Buddhism, I always felt there wasn't as much of a clear divide between philosophy and science as you find in western thought. You seem more well versed than I in this topic, so thought I would throw this out there in case you have any insight into this (or I easily could be misinterpreting).
  - fooker 4y ago
    That is exactly right. The claim from the Greek historian is that this is what caused eastern science and engineering to stagnate compared to Greek/Roman efforts. I am inclined to agree, of course it is not really possible to prove any causality here.
    - progmetaldev 4y ago
      This is one of those topics where we can only dream of where we could currently be, had these traditions been allowed to continue and the knowledge shared. Being from the western world, with a deep curiosity in eastern thought and practice, these types of thought experiments are very interesting to me, but also depressing when you look closely at the reality of how things played out.
      - marcosdumay 4y ago
        Did knowledge stop being freely shared? Or rich families stopped hiring teachers? I'm not sure this ever happened on a worldwide scale.
        progmetaldev 4y ago
        This was strictly in regards to the oral tradition of passing down knowledge in India.
        marcosdumay 4y ago
        Oh, ok. I understood something completely different.
    - ramblenode 4y ago
      > The claim from the Greek historian is that this is what caused eastern science and engineering to stagnate compared to Greek/Roman efforts. I am not an historian, but is this really true? Scientists/mathematicians then were philosophers or "natural philosophers" and it seems like most of the famous ones also worked on things like metaphysics.
      - fooker 4y ago
        It’s definitely true that European, Arabic, and Chinese engineering overtook Indians at some point in ancient history. If I had to put a timestamp on it, it would be the fall of the Maurya empire around 200BC when the Roman War Machine was getting more and more organized and industrialized.
- DiscourseFan 4y ago
  Yes, it was disappointing to me to learn at some point that you can't actually read much of the great classical and vedic compositions without assistance of a commentary. Although the commentaries themselves are fairly exact. It reminds me a lot of Greek drama, except there even if the grammar is funky, you can usually deduce how the language is being stretched and why, even if its very difficult and technical. In Sanskrit that isn't always an option, you just have to know from context why and how certain words are being used after having already studied the language for decades.
  - fooker 4y ago
    >Although the commentaries themselves are fairly exact. Now the problem is that these descriptions are colored by the philosophy and opinion of the person writing it, often heavily because of the lack of cross pollination of ideas. For example, the ISKCON descriptions of the verses of Gita are often completely orthogonal to the main philosophy of Gita, but the interpretation is technically as valid as the literal interpretation.
    - DiscourseFan 4y ago
      >Now the problem is that these descriptions are colored by the philosophy and opinion of the person writing it, often heavily because of the lack of cross pollination of ideas. Yes but you can always read multiple commentaries, and its usually good to be critical of whichever one you are looking at. >For example, the ISKCON descriptions of the verses of Gita are often completely orthogonal to the main philosophy of Gita, but the interpretation is technically as valid as the literal interpretation. Yea, my first Sanskrit teacher was not ISKCON but ISKCON-adjacent, a very well-meaning guy, but I think recently we're beginning to break because I'm rejecting his interpretations of the Gita and the Sankhya philosophy. I've never read the ISKCON materials directly but I get the feeling that they emphasize a kind of personal monasticism and asceticism, which seems not exactly antithetical to what the Gita propounds, but is certainly a very restricted reading.
      - danans 4y ago
- snambi 4y ago
  Not true. Unless you learn Sanskrit, you cannot understand that the language can communicate multi[le dimensions of meanings. Ofcourse, it is not needed rudimentary things like physics, chemistry etc. Ofcourse, Sanskrit can be used like English too. That is like using a super computer as a calculator.
  - fooker 4y ago
    That’s exactly the point being made. Even if you try to describe precise and scientific facts in Sanskrit, the nature of the language would enable multiple interpretations of it. That is amazing if you want to have intellectual debates, but useless if you are trying to follow directions to build ..say.. a bridge.
    - akprasad 4y ago
      > Even if you try to describe precise and scientific facts in Sanskrit, the nature of the language would enable multiple interpretations of it. Sanskrit's high polysemy is restricted to a rather bounded set of words (see the नानार्थवर्गः in the अमरकोशः). Stepping back, this claim and the others you have made in this thread are strange and at odds with my experience reading and speaking and teaching the language, specfically the claims that: - "Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined" - the Rigveda contains "words and idioms made up when the situation called for it" in some way that is different from the ordinary suffixation that is a standard part of Sanskrit grammar; - the ISKCON interpretation of the Gita is "technically as valid as the literal interpretation" in some manner that is unique to Sanskrit. I consider these claims extraordinary and request evidence that any of these problems are (a) real and (b) unique to Sanskrit. > That is amazing if you want to have intellectual debates, but useless if you are trying to follow directions to build ..say.. a bridge. We have the various Shilpa Shastras [1] as a clear example of this kind of instruction, so I eagerly await a concrete example of what you mean. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilpa_Shastras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilpa_Shastras
      - fooker 4y ago
        > "Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined". I'm not sure what evidence for this would satisfy you but here is an article with examples. https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-subtleties-of-sanskrit/ https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-subtleties-of... > in some way that is different from the ordinary suffixation This is fairly well studied, rigvedic sanskrit differs from modern sanskrit in the sense that vedic sanskrit is similar to all other languages. https://www.remembersanskrit.com/articles/vedic-vs-classical https://www.remembersanskrit.com/articles/vedic-vs-classical Panini codified Sanskrit because he felt the language was evolving too rapidly and knowledge and wisdom might be getting lost in translation. > the ISKCON interpretation [...] unique to Sanskrit. I concede that this problem is not unique to Sanskrit. It is unique to classical (and not vedic) Sanskrit literature though. My hypothesis is that it is a natural side effect of codifying a language strictly and trying to prevent change. Other languages can (and has been) used to produce literature where interpretation is the key to understanding, but for Sanskrit it is the vast majority of the available literature, not a few oddballs here and there. > We have the various Shilpa Shastras Do you notice that these are heavily focused on art and crafts? And the number of these is astonishingly low for a ~7000 year old civilization.
fooker 4y ago
>that they followed usage and intentionally reinterpreted rules to fit usage. Makes sense. What I was touching upon was the culture of leaving things up to interpretation though, not just this particular issue.

fooker 4y ago

>I have studied Sanskrit literature extensively and do not know what this means. This means a sentence can often have many different meaning, not just the literal one suggested by the words. The idea is you either accept multiple meanings or settle it through debate. I am not criticizing this, this is fundamentally what makes literature and poetry interesting. But this makes it really difficult to draw a line between philosophy and science.

progmetaldev 4y ago
Perhaps this was intentional, or supported by having teachers and a stronger oral history/tradition? Just as with Buddhism, I always felt there wasn't as much of a clear divide between philosophy and science as you find in western thought. You seem more well versed than I in this topic, so thought I would throw this out there in case you have any insight into this (or I easily could be misinterpreting).
- fooker 4y ago
  That is exactly right. The claim from the Greek historian is that this is what caused eastern science and engineering to stagnate compared to Greek/Roman efforts. I am inclined to agree, of course it is not really possible to prove any causality here.
  - progmetaldev 4y ago
    This is one of those topics where we can only dream of where we could currently be, had these traditions been allowed to continue and the knowledge shared. Being from the western world, with a deep curiosity in eastern thought and practice, these types of thought experiments are very interesting to me, but also depressing when you look closely at the reality of how things played out.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      Did knowledge stop being freely shared? Or rich families stopped hiring teachers? I'm not sure this ever happened on a worldwide scale.
      - progmetaldev 4y ago
        This was strictly in regards to the oral tradition of passing down knowledge in India.
        marcosdumay 4y ago
        Oh, ok. I understood something completely different.
  - ramblenode 4y ago
    > The claim from the Greek historian is that this is what caused eastern science and engineering to stagnate compared to Greek/Roman efforts. I am not an historian, but is this really true? Scientists/mathematicians then were philosophers or "natural philosophers" and it seems like most of the famous ones also worked on things like metaphysics.
    - fooker 4y ago
      It’s definitely true that European, Arabic, and Chinese engineering overtook Indians at some point in ancient history. If I had to put a timestamp on it, it would be the fall of the Maurya empire around 200BC when the Roman War Machine was getting more and more organized and industrialized.
DiscourseFan 4y ago
Yes, it was disappointing to me to learn at some point that you can't actually read much of the great classical and vedic compositions without assistance of a commentary. Although the commentaries themselves are fairly exact. It reminds me a lot of Greek drama, except there even if the grammar is funky, you can usually deduce how the language is being stretched and why, even if its very difficult and technical. In Sanskrit that isn't always an option, you just have to know from context why and how certain words are being used after having already studied the language for decades.
- fooker 4y ago
  >Although the commentaries themselves are fairly exact. Now the problem is that these descriptions are colored by the philosophy and opinion of the person writing it, often heavily because of the lack of cross pollination of ideas. For example, the ISKCON descriptions of the verses of Gita are often completely orthogonal to the main philosophy of Gita, but the interpretation is technically as valid as the literal interpretation.
  - DiscourseFan 4y ago
    >Now the problem is that these descriptions are colored by the philosophy and opinion of the person writing it, often heavily because of the lack of cross pollination of ideas. Yes but you can always read multiple commentaries, and its usually good to be critical of whichever one you are looking at. >For example, the ISKCON descriptions of the verses of Gita are often completely orthogonal to the main philosophy of Gita, but the interpretation is technically as valid as the literal interpretation. Yea, my first Sanskrit teacher was not ISKCON but ISKCON-adjacent, a very well-meaning guy, but I think recently we're beginning to break because I'm rejecting his interpretations of the Gita and the Sankhya philosophy. I've never read the ISKCON materials directly but I get the feeling that they emphasize a kind of personal monasticism and asceticism, which seems not exactly antithetical to what the Gita propounds, but is certainly a very restricted reading.
    - danans 4y ago
snambi 4y ago
Not true. Unless you learn Sanskrit, you cannot understand that the language can communicate multi[le dimensions of meanings. Ofcourse, it is not needed rudimentary things like physics, chemistry etc. Ofcourse, Sanskrit can be used like English too. That is like using a super computer as a calculator.
- fooker 4y ago
  That’s exactly the point being made. Even if you try to describe precise and scientific facts in Sanskrit, the nature of the language would enable multiple interpretations of it. That is amazing if you want to have intellectual debates, but useless if you are trying to follow directions to build ..say.. a bridge.
  - akprasad 4y ago
    > Even if you try to describe precise and scientific facts in Sanskrit, the nature of the language would enable multiple interpretations of it. Sanskrit's high polysemy is restricted to a rather bounded set of words (see the नानार्थवर्गः in the अमरकोशः). Stepping back, this claim and the others you have made in this thread are strange and at odds with my experience reading and speaking and teaching the language, specfically the claims that: - "Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined" - the Rigveda contains "words and idioms made up when the situation called for it" in some way that is different from the ordinary suffixation that is a standard part of Sanskrit grammar; - the ISKCON interpretation of the Gita is "technically as valid as the literal interpretation" in some manner that is unique to Sanskrit. I consider these claims extraordinary and request evidence that any of these problems are (a) real and (b) unique to Sanskrit. > That is amazing if you want to have intellectual debates, but useless if you are trying to follow directions to build ..say.. a bridge. We have the various Shilpa Shastras [1] as a clear example of this kind of instruction, so I eagerly await a concrete example of what you mean. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilpa_Shastras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shilpa_Shastras
    - fooker 4y ago
      > "Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined". I'm not sure what evidence for this would satisfy you but here is an article with examples. https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-subtleties-of-sanskrit/ https://yogainternational.com/article/view/the-subtleties-of... > in some way that is different from the ordinary suffixation This is fairly well studied, rigvedic sanskrit differs from modern sanskrit in the sense that vedic sanskrit is similar to all other languages. https://www.remembersanskrit.com/articles/vedic-vs-classical https://www.remembersanskrit.com/articles/vedic-vs-classical Panini codified Sanskrit because he felt the language was evolving too rapidly and knowledge and wisdom might be getting lost in translation. > the ISKCON interpretation [...] unique to Sanskrit. I concede that this problem is not unique to Sanskrit. It is unique to classical (and not vedic) Sanskrit literature though. My hypothesis is that it is a natural side effect of codifying a language strictly and trying to prevent change. Other languages can (and has been) used to produce literature where interpretation is the key to understanding, but for Sanskrit it is the vast majority of the available literature, not a few oddballs here and there. > We have the various Shilpa Shastras Do you notice that these are heavily focused on art and crafts? And the number of these is astonishingly low for a ~7000 year old civilization.

fooker 4y ago

>that they followed usage and intentionally reinterpreted rules to fit usage. Makes sense. What I was touching upon was the culture of leaving things up to interpretation though, not just this particular issue.