5 ms·

The Second Life of Sanskrit

69 points by bookofjoe 4mo ago

alephnerd 4mo ago
Something that isn't called out but is playing a role as well is the rise of humanities and interdisciplinary research in India. 20-30 years ago, specializing in ancient languages and texts from a CompLing perspective or a humanities perspective just didn't occur. As India grew richer, the newer generation of liberal arts colleges (eg. Ashoka) and humanities programs in public universities (eg. IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, JNU) started attracting and hiring Western educated faculty and researchers (Indian as well as Foreigners) to help revitalize interest in humanities and social sciences. India also now has a new generation philanthropists who are starting to donate to this kind of research (eg. Murthy and the "Murty Classical Library of India" at Harvard). There is a similar revitalization for older texts in Tamizh, Telugu, Koshur, Pahari, Tibetan, etc as well.
- selimthegrim 4mo ago
  What about Prakrit and Punjabi? I knew a guy at UCSB, Gurinder Singh Mann who taught me to read Punjabi. Nice guy (to me) but got himself in a lot of trouble for many different reasons.
  - alephnerd 4mo ago
    Yes as well. My list of languages was non-exhaustive.
  - ashishb 4mo ago
    > What about Prakrit and Punjabi? There is no official "Prakrit", by definition of the term itself. "Prakrit" just means "natural" and the way I understand it, was the term for all colloquial dialects/languages across India. "Sanskrit", on the other hand, meant "cultured" and its grammar, at least for the last 2500 years, is strictly defined by Panini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%AD%C4%81dhy%C4%81y%C4%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%AD%C4%81dhy%C...)
- lioeters 4mo ago
  That's fascinating to learn. I'm curious, is there a political angle to the revival of some of the languages? The posted article mentions "values and traditions" associated with Sanskrit, and I imagine some religions and cultures are motivated to bring back languages for..not to say "selfish", but for their own survival and spread of ideas.
  - alephnerd 4mo ago
    There is a political aspect to it as well, but it's overstated to a certain extent. Most of these humanities programs are being created via philanthropy from alumni or business families now thinking about their legacy. Also, now that India isn't as poor as it was previously, it's unsurprising that a new generation of humanities and social sciences researchers are choosing to take roles in India versus abroad.
    - orsenthil 4mo ago
      > India isn't as poor as it was previously India 2020, did happen.
profsummergig 4mo ago
Taleb says that some languages are only meant for ritual. IMHO, Sanskrit quotes sound cool to those who know Prakrit languages just like Latin and Greek quotations sound cool to those who know Romance languages (and even to those who know English, like myself). Yes, there is a revival, and an interest. But Sanskrit has always been known to the "priestly" class even though they never conversed in it. This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations. IMHO.
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  > This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations This, but also social sciences and interdisciplinary research (especially in the NLP, CompLing, and ML space).
- smokeyfish 4mo ago
  There's always Lithuanian.
  - alephnerd 4mo ago
    Or Koshur - it still retains archaic word forms, syntax, and roots that fell out of other Indo-Iranian languages.
  - ralfd 4mo ago
    Context?
    - cyberax 4mo ago
      It's a small language that has everything: a complicated case system, genders, a unique vocabulary, and even freaking tones.
      - senderista 4mo ago
        A famous example (similar to the ones you can find between West Frisian and modern English): Vedic Sanskrit: Devas adadat datas; Devas dat dhanas. Lithuanian: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos duonos. English Translation: God gave teeth; God will give bread.
throwawayamzn1 4mo ago
It is caused by the ability of LLM to translate it quite accurately
Alien1Being 4mo ago
This highly recommended, excellent school in Sydney offers Sanskrit. "A third elective is chosen from Accelerated Classical Greek/Italian/German, Sanskrit, ..." https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/life-at-grammar/academic/ https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/life-at-grammar/academic/ My children had a great time there.
latchkey 4mo ago
we named our dog "santosha", such a great word.
- ashishb 4mo ago
  Fun fact: the famous "Sentosa" island in Singapore is a spelling variation of the same word.
- __rito__ 4mo ago
  Don't tell that to Indians! A lot of humans are named "Santosh". :x Unlike in the West, naming one's dog after someone's name is considered an insult. "I will have a pet dog named after you" is insult thrown in fights. So, Indians name their dogs uncommon among humans. Or they have foreign names like Johnny, Jack, etc.
  - latchkey 4mo ago
    I really don't care. A Swami suggested the name and I agreed to it.
selimthegrim 4mo ago
>According to Tripathi, the problem of Sanskrit being narrowed to religion is a colonial inheritance. British Orientalists, he argues, created an image of Sanskrit as the language of ritual and one religious community, ignoring its vast Buddhist, Jain, Carvaka, scientific, theatrical, poetic and philosophical corpus. I don't understand how you can take what happened to AH Dani at BHU and say this with a straight face.
- tecoholic 4mo ago
  From down south of India - the Proto Tamil language is the basis for modern Tamil, Malayalam and others. We still have Sanskrit being used by Temple priests. One of changes in the last decade is - Tamilnadu finally has temples with priests using Tamil for religious rituals. Sanskrit was gate kept by the priestly class. It’s not a colonial reframing.
  - thesmtsolver2 4mo ago
    Look forward to Tamil being used in mosques and the Adan being in Tamil instead of Arabic.
    - tecoholic 4mo ago
      That’s in utterly bad taste. Not sure what offended you. But there is no need to call in Muslims and mosques in this conversation.
      - HexDecOctBin 4mo ago
        Was your argument not about replacing non-local languages like Sanskrit and Arabic (used exclusively for liturgical purposes in Tamil Nadu) with local languages like Tamil? If not, it might be useful if you spelled your argument out.
    - anukin 4mo ago
      In Kerala most of mosque prayers are in Malayalam. I don’t know whether they do same in tamilnadu
thisumang 4mo ago
The amount of advertisements instantly made me close the page before reading.
an0malous 4mo ago
There’s some Sanskrit texts that don’t have English translations that I’d really like to read so I was going to use an LLM to create translations. Does anyone know how well LLMs handle Sanskrit or have any suggestions? Are any particular models better than others? Especially because I know that ancient texts sometimes use different dialects of Sanskrit and have different challenges. The one I’m mostly interested in translating is called the Moksopaya, here’s the Sanskrit on GRETIL: https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastra/3_phil/advaita/motik_pu.htm https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastr...
- orsenthil 4mo ago
  No, LLMs do not handle low resource / low corpus languages, including Sanskrit well.
  - rramadass 4mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945898
- neomantra 4mo ago
  Yesterday in HN "what are you working on", dr_dshiv presented SourceLibrary [1] which has tons of machine translation of beautiful texts. Here's my "Let Me SourceLibrary That For You" using their Librarian search which presents the "The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (The Expanded Mokṣopāya)" [2] ETA: My apologies, I went deeper and the links therein are scans/ocr of English translations of that text. The library does have other Sanskrit translations, but not of that? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889335 [2] https://sourcelibrary.org/librarian?thread=6a56c578a50845441f63efd1 https://sourcelibrary.org/librarian?thread=6a56c578a50845441...
- rramadass 4mo ago
  The Madras Sanskrit College in collaboration with IIT-Madras is working on a exclusive LLM for the Sanskrit language - https://madrassanskritcollege.edu.in/ https://madrassanskritcollege.edu.in/ From Mylapore to the World: The Story of India’s Sanskrit LLM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_Bic7RqOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_Bic7RqOg PS: What translations of Yoga-Vasistha/Laghu-Yoga-Vasistha have you read/have had access to? This is one of my favourite philosophical texts and i am curious to know more.
orsenthil 4mo ago
There is also, Sourashtra, a surviving and a thriving of dialect of Prakrit (Souraseni Prakrit), which was a common man Sanskrit. Buddha is believed to taught in Prakrit.
iamshs 4mo ago
Look at the IIT Bombay photo, in the background is the colonial era copy of Lady Britannia - "Bharat Mata". The fact article is hosted on Open Magazine, I was already a bit suspect. So the full context missing from headline is - "Under Hindu Nationalism". What the article misses is what some of these accounts post. SanskritSparrow channels his followers on stories to some kooky post which claims to have decoded Indus Valley Script as Sanskrit. Learned persons better be careful about the intent here, the rider that is riding the "ancient" horse into the present is as much trying to invade intellectual spaces, as the actual Rishis were trying with the lands. Besides, the appeal is only among upper caste Hindus. What else is a Dalit going to do with Sanskrit? No literature is written for them in Sanskrit. They're not even allowed learning it, it is an exclusive domain of Brahmins. What will Dalits get from reading Vedas and finding out how they are termed as devils and filed under a degraded caste pyramid? It's an article borne out of very rosy lens. A Dalit Ambedkarite writer should research the accounts mentioned and tell us what the subsurface vibe looks like here, is it the same old wine in new glass?
- WelkinFolk 4mo ago
  Which Vedas call Dalits "devils"? In what context are these verses, if any? And why would a majority of the Hindu population not benefit from reading their sacred texts - Vedas and Gita and such? My literal Sanskrit teacher wasn't a Brahmin, what on earth are you on about?
Alien1Being 4mo ago
My South Indian Dravidian language Malayalam, is around 50% Sanskrit words. Technically any Sanskrit word is also a Malayalam word. Examples of Sanskrit words we would use daily in conversation with a fluent Malayalam speaker include: Pusthakam (Sanskrit: Pustakam) - Book Bhāryā - Wife Swapnam (Sanskrit: Swapnam) - Dream Agni (Sanskrit: Agni) - Fire Varṇam - Color Samayam (Sanskrit: Samayam) - Time Vidhyālaya (Sanskrit: Vidyālaya) - School And of course many personal names ( including mine, my wife's and my children's ) are in Sanskrit. We have a word for this phenomenon : "Manipravalam is a medieval South Indian literary style and hybrid language that blended Sanskrit with local Dravidian vernaculars—primarily Malayalam and Tamil. Translating to "ruby and coral," it symbolized the seamless, decorative intertwining of the local tongue's grammar with the eloquent vocabulary of Sanskrit" There are thousands of other Sanskrit words in daily use in Malayalam. "bodham, santoṣam, saṅkaṭam, sneham, iṣṭam, premam, deṣyam, (Skt : dveṣyam) kopam, viṣamam, saṁśayam, bhayam, buddhi, dhairyam, ālocana, cinta, vicāram, vedana, daya(vu), dākṣiṇyam, abhimānam, mānam, sukham, tṛpti, manass, antass, śānti, samādhānam, svairam, sahatāpam, paribhavam, parāti (a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit; parātī, act of rejection) duḥkham, ātmā(vu), āgraham, virodham, prayāsam, kaṣṭam, manaḥprayāsam, manassamādhānam, manośūnyam (this is a common phrase in some dialects and completely absent in others, it refers to the act of not having mental happiness in anything) dhārṣṭyam (I am surprised how mallus still use such tough words) puccham, (means “tail”/”inferior” literally, used in the sense of contempt) ahaṅkāram, bhāvam, svabhāvam, guṇam, āśvāsam, āśaṅka, (colloquial in some dialects) ākulam, (colloquial in some other dialects) ākrāntam, ārtti, krūram, vīryam, ākāṃkṣa, vātsalyam, vāśi, tātparyam, svapnam, saṅkalpam " "vṛtti, sampatt-, sāmpattikam (this is a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit vṛddhi rule, the Sanskrit word should have been sāmpadikam) svatt-, prakṛti, praśnam, upayogam, svantam, svātantryam, sādhanam, sammānam, sammatam, saṅgītam, pratīkṣa, pradhānam, ādyam, avasānam, divasam, rātri, sambhavam, samayam, kālam, vidham, vidhi, śīlam, rīti, svasthata, asvasthata, sūryan, candran, bhūmi, guḷika (meaning “round”, same root as gola) sūkṣ-ikkuka, rakṣa, surakṣa, upadeśam, lābham, prayojanam, āvaśyam, atyāvaśyam, adhikam, sāram, nissāram, tatkālam, prasiddham,upakāram, anugraham, varam, dānam, śāpam, śalyam, aṅgīkāram, anveṣaṇam, ākrama-, akramam, parākramam, yuddham, tarkam, sallāpam, niścayam, jīvitam, mārgam, uccam, śabdam, āghoṣam, sādhu, puṇyam, pāpam, svargam, narakam, pātāḷam, prakāśam (more colloquial words are veṭṭam, veḷiccam, all are equally frequent according to dialects) viśvāsam, kāryam, śuddham, vaśam, sāmarthyam, sādhakam, dikk, diśa, vākk, svaram, ābharaṇam, viparītam, nāśam, vārtta (for “news” : made using vṛddhi from Sanskrit varta- “present affair”, compare with NIA bāt) sāmyam, trāss (from Skt tulās) saṃsāram, vartamānam, anusaraṇa, anuvādam, anāvaśyam, alpam, svalpam, abhiprāyam, dhārālam (an old Sanskrit dialectal word used today only in Malayalam, the opposite of viralam) and hundreds more. (even out of the world Sanskrit-Malayalam combination words like vṛtti-kEṭu, buddhi-muṭṭu, piṭi-vāśi)"
Alien1Being 4mo ago
Free Sanskrit lessons from IIT Roorkee: https://sanskritclub.iitr.ac.in/course/Subhashitam/uview https://sanskritclub.iitr.ac.in/course/Subhashitam/uview
pianoben 4mo ago
Sanskrit is an amazing language - it is so BIG! Because of its extensive case system (10 different cases, IIRC), word order is highly flexible. The formalized rules of how spelling changes based on word adjacency (sandhi), and the ambiguity of interpreting long compounds, combined with the free word order, are so rich with poetic possibility that English seems baby-talk in comparison. It's hard to describe just how cool this language is. Even the alphabet! The way we learned it, it is arranged in a grid with all of the letters in a row corresponding to one sound, and each column based on where in the mouth you make the sound. I wish I could do it justice, but words fail. IMO it is absolutely, intrinsically, worthwhile to study.
- rraghur 4mo ago
  For anyone here, here is a great example of constrained writing in Sanskrit from 7th or 8th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ingenuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_in... Just the verbal gymnastics, the wordplay and the ingenuity is mind boggling
- rramadass 4mo ago
  In this context, this former discussion thread is also relevant; Words for the Heart: A treasury of emotions from classical India (book review) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766 Bhartrihari is a notoriously difficult philosopher, and scholars are still puzzling over what exactly his work means. But perhaps radically oversimplified, here are a few things he suggests. First: wholes are always more real than the parts that comprise them. The whole comes first, and parts exist always and only as conceptual divisions within a pre-existing, coherent whole. Second: these divisions are always linguistic. It is language that carves up experience. But importantly, when language carves up experience, it is not, as some Buddhists thought, simply the superimposition of an artificial, conceptual filter onto a non-conceptual reality. Instead, Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it. Note-1: Does the above explain why many people perceive LLMs to be "conscious"? Note-2: The effectiveness of Mathematics (when considered as a language in itself) to explain the "real world" also seems related here. See also the book; The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language by Bimal Krishna Matilal - https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributiontothestudyoflanguagebimalakrishnamatilal_202003_376_e https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributio...

69 points by bookofjoe 4mo ago

Something that isn't called out but is playing a role as well is the rise of humanities and interdisciplinary research in India. 20-30 years ago, specializing in ancient languages and texts from a CompLing perspective or a humanities perspective just didn't occur. As India grew richer, the newer generation of liberal arts colleges (eg. Ashoka) and humanities programs in public universities (eg. IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, JNU) started attracting and hiring Western educated faculty and researchers (Indian as well as Foreigners) to help revitalize interest in humanities and social sciences. India also now has a new generation philanthropists who are starting to donate to this kind of research (eg. Murthy and the "Murty Classical Library of India" at Harvard). There is a similar revitalization for older texts in Tamizh, Telugu, Koshur, Pahari, Tibetan, etc as well.

selimthegrim 4mo ago
What about Prakrit and Punjabi? I knew a guy at UCSB, Gurinder Singh Mann who taught me to read Punjabi. Nice guy (to me) but got himself in a lot of trouble for many different reasons.
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  Yes as well. My list of languages was non-exhaustive.
- ashishb 4mo ago
  > What about Prakrit and Punjabi? There is no official "Prakrit", by definition of the term itself. "Prakrit" just means "natural" and the way I understand it, was the term for all colloquial dialects/languages across India. "Sanskrit", on the other hand, meant "cultured" and its grammar, at least for the last 2500 years, is strictly defined by Panini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%AD%C4%81dhy%C4%81y%C4%AB https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%AD%C4%81dhy%C...)
lioeters 4mo ago
That's fascinating to learn. I'm curious, is there a political angle to the revival of some of the languages? The posted article mentions "values and traditions" associated with Sanskrit, and I imagine some religions and cultures are motivated to bring back languages for..not to say "selfish", but for their own survival and spread of ideas.
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  There is a political aspect to it as well, but it's overstated to a certain extent. Most of these humanities programs are being created via philanthropy from alumni or business families now thinking about their legacy. Also, now that India isn't as poor as it was previously, it's unsurprising that a new generation of humanities and social sciences researchers are choosing to take roles in India versus abroad.
  - orsenthil 4mo ago
    > India isn't as poor as it was previously India 2020, did happen.

profsummergig 4mo ago

Taleb says that some languages are only meant for ritual. IMHO, Sanskrit quotes sound cool to those who know Prakrit languages just like Latin and Greek quotations sound cool to those who know Romance languages (and even to those who know English, like myself). Yes, there is a revival, and an interest. But Sanskrit has always been known to the "priestly" class even though they never conversed in it. This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations. IMHO.

alephnerd 4mo ago
> This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations This, but also social sciences and interdisciplinary research (especially in the NLP, CompLing, and ML space).
smokeyfish 4mo ago
There's always Lithuanian.
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  Or Koshur - it still retains archaic word forms, syntax, and roots that fell out of other Indo-Iranian languages.
- ralfd 4mo ago
  Context?
  - cyberax 4mo ago
    It's a small language that has everything: a complicated case system, genders, a unique vocabulary, and even freaking tones.
    - senderista 4mo ago
      A famous example (similar to the ones you can find between West Frisian and modern English): Vedic Sanskrit: Devas adadat datas; Devas dat dhanas. Lithuanian: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos duonos. English Translation: God gave teeth; God will give bread.

throwawayamzn1 4mo ago

It is caused by the ability of LLM to translate it quite accurately

Alien1Being 4mo ago

This highly recommended, excellent school in Sydney offers Sanskrit. "A third elective is chosen from Accelerated Classical Greek/Italian/German, Sanskrit, ..." https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/life-at-grammar/academic/ https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/life-at-grammar/academic/ My children had a great time there.

latchkey 4mo ago

we named our dog "santosha", such a great word.

ashishb 4mo ago
Fun fact: the famous "Sentosa" island in Singapore is a spelling variation of the same word.
__rito__ 4mo ago
Don't tell that to Indians! A lot of humans are named "Santosh". :x Unlike in the West, naming one's dog after someone's name is considered an insult. "I will have a pet dog named after you" is insult thrown in fights. So, Indians name their dogs uncommon among humans. Or they have foreign names like Johnny, Jack, etc.
- latchkey 4mo ago
  I really don't care. A Swami suggested the name and I agreed to it.

selimthegrim 4mo ago

>According to Tripathi, the problem of Sanskrit being narrowed to religion is a colonial inheritance. British Orientalists, he argues, created an image of Sanskrit as the language of ritual and one religious community, ignoring its vast Buddhist, Jain, Carvaka, scientific, theatrical, poetic and philosophical corpus. I don't understand how you can take what happened to AH Dani at BHU and say this with a straight face.

tecoholic 4mo ago
From down south of India - the Proto Tamil language is the basis for modern Tamil, Malayalam and others. We still have Sanskrit being used by Temple priests. One of changes in the last decade is - Tamilnadu finally has temples with priests using Tamil for religious rituals. Sanskrit was gate kept by the priestly class. It’s not a colonial reframing.
- thesmtsolver2 4mo ago
  Look forward to Tamil being used in mosques and the Adan being in Tamil instead of Arabic.
  - tecoholic 4mo ago
    That’s in utterly bad taste. Not sure what offended you. But there is no need to call in Muslims and mosques in this conversation.
    - HexDecOctBin 4mo ago
      Was your argument not about replacing non-local languages like Sanskrit and Arabic (used exclusively for liturgical purposes in Tamil Nadu) with local languages like Tamil? If not, it might be useful if you spelled your argument out.
  - anukin 4mo ago
    In Kerala most of mosque prayers are in Malayalam. I don’t know whether they do same in tamilnadu

thisumang 4mo ago

The amount of advertisements instantly made me close the page before reading.

an0malous 4mo ago

There’s some Sanskrit texts that don’t have English translations that I’d really like to read so I was going to use an LLM to create translations. Does anyone know how well LLMs handle Sanskrit or have any suggestions? Are any particular models better than others? Especially because I know that ancient texts sometimes use different dialects of Sanskrit and have different challenges. The one I’m mostly interested in translating is called the Moksopaya, here’s the Sanskrit on GRETIL: https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastra/3_phil/advaita/motik_pu.htm https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastr...

orsenthil 4mo ago
No, LLMs do not handle low resource / low corpus languages, including Sanskrit well.
- rramadass 4mo ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945898
neomantra 4mo ago
Yesterday in HN "what are you working on", dr_dshiv presented SourceLibrary [1] which has tons of machine translation of beautiful texts. Here's my "Let Me SourceLibrary That For You" using their Librarian search which presents the "The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (The Expanded Mokṣopāya)" [2] ETA: My apologies, I went deeper and the links therein are scans/ocr of English translations of that text. The library does have other Sanskrit translations, but not of that? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889335 [2] https://sourcelibrary.org/librarian?thread=6a56c578a50845441f63efd1 https://sourcelibrary.org/librarian?thread=6a56c578a50845441...
rramadass 4mo ago
The Madras Sanskrit College in collaboration with IIT-Madras is working on a exclusive LLM for the Sanskrit language - https://madrassanskritcollege.edu.in/ https://madrassanskritcollege.edu.in/ From Mylapore to the World: The Story of India’s Sanskrit LLM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_Bic7RqOg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_Bic7RqOg PS: What translations of Yoga-Vasistha/Laghu-Yoga-Vasistha have you read/have had access to? This is one of my favourite philosophical texts and i am curious to know more.

orsenthil 4mo ago

There is also, Sourashtra, a surviving and a thriving of dialect of Prakrit (Souraseni Prakrit), which was a common man Sanskrit. Buddha is believed to taught in Prakrit.

iamshs 4mo ago

Look at the IIT Bombay photo, in the background is the colonial era copy of Lady Britannia - "Bharat Mata". The fact article is hosted on Open Magazine, I was already a bit suspect. So the full context missing from headline is - "Under Hindu Nationalism". What the article misses is what some of these accounts post. SanskritSparrow channels his followers on stories to some kooky post which claims to have decoded Indus Valley Script as Sanskrit. Learned persons better be careful about the intent here, the rider that is riding the "ancient" horse into the present is as much trying to invade intellectual spaces, as the actual Rishis were trying with the lands. Besides, the appeal is only among upper caste Hindus. What else is a Dalit going to do with Sanskrit? No literature is written for them in Sanskrit. They're not even allowed learning it, it is an exclusive domain of Brahmins. What will Dalits get from reading Vedas and finding out how they are termed as devils and filed under a degraded caste pyramid? It's an article borne out of very rosy lens. A Dalit Ambedkarite writer should research the accounts mentioned and tell us what the subsurface vibe looks like here, is it the same old wine in new glass?

WelkinFolk 4mo ago
Which Vedas call Dalits "devils"? In what context are these verses, if any? And why would a majority of the Hindu population not benefit from reading their sacred texts - Vedas and Gita and such? My literal Sanskrit teacher wasn't a Brahmin, what on earth are you on about?

Alien1Being 4mo ago

My South Indian Dravidian language Malayalam, is around 50% Sanskrit words. Technically any Sanskrit word is also a Malayalam word. Examples of Sanskrit words we would use daily in conversation with a fluent Malayalam speaker include: Pusthakam (Sanskrit: Pustakam) - Book Bhāryā - Wife Swapnam (Sanskrit: Swapnam) - Dream Agni (Sanskrit: Agni) - Fire Varṇam - Color Samayam (Sanskrit: Samayam) - Time Vidhyālaya (Sanskrit: Vidyālaya) - School And of course many personal names ( including mine, my wife's and my children's ) are in Sanskrit. We have a word for this phenomenon : "Manipravalam is a medieval South Indian literary style and hybrid language that blended Sanskrit with local Dravidian vernaculars—primarily Malayalam and Tamil. Translating to "ruby and coral," it symbolized the seamless, decorative intertwining of the local tongue's grammar with the eloquent vocabulary of Sanskrit" There are thousands of other Sanskrit words in daily use in Malayalam. "bodham, santoṣam, saṅkaṭam, sneham, iṣṭam, premam, deṣyam, (Skt : dveṣyam) kopam, viṣamam, saṁśayam, bhayam, buddhi, dhairyam, ālocana, cinta, vicāram, vedana, daya(vu), dākṣiṇyam, abhimānam, mānam, sukham, tṛpti, manass, antass, śānti, samādhānam, svairam, sahatāpam, paribhavam, parāti (a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit; parātī, act of rejection) duḥkham, ātmā(vu), āgraham, virodham, prayāsam, kaṣṭam, manaḥprayāsam, manassamādhānam, manośūnyam (this is a common phrase in some dialects and completely absent in others, it refers to the act of not having mental happiness in anything) dhārṣṭyam (I am surprised how mallus still use such tough words) puccham, (means “tail”/”inferior” literally, used in the sense of contempt) ahaṅkāram, bhāvam, svabhāvam, guṇam, āśvāsam, āśaṅka, (colloquial in some dialects) ākulam, (colloquial in some other dialects) ākrāntam, ārtti, krūram, vīryam, ākāṃkṣa, vātsalyam, vāśi, tātparyam, svapnam, saṅkalpam " "vṛtti, sampatt-, sāmpattikam (this is a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit vṛddhi rule, the Sanskrit word should have been sāmpadikam) svatt-, prakṛti, praśnam, upayogam, svantam, svātantryam, sādhanam, sammānam, sammatam, saṅgītam, pratīkṣa, pradhānam, ādyam, avasānam, divasam, rātri, sambhavam, samayam, kālam, vidham, vidhi, śīlam, rīti, svasthata, asvasthata, sūryan, candran, bhūmi, guḷika (meaning “round”, same root as gola) sūkṣ-ikkuka, rakṣa, surakṣa, upadeśam, lābham, prayojanam, āvaśyam, atyāvaśyam, adhikam, sāram, nissāram, tatkālam, prasiddham,upakāram, anugraham, varam, dānam, śāpam, śalyam, aṅgīkāram, anveṣaṇam, ākrama-, akramam, parākramam, yuddham, tarkam, sallāpam, niścayam, jīvitam, mārgam, uccam, śabdam, āghoṣam, sādhu, puṇyam, pāpam, svargam, narakam, pātāḷam, prakāśam (more colloquial words are veṭṭam, veḷiccam, all are equally frequent according to dialects) viśvāsam, kāryam, śuddham, vaśam, sāmarthyam, sādhakam, dikk, diśa, vākk, svaram, ābharaṇam, viparītam, nāśam, vārtta (for “news” : made using vṛddhi from Sanskrit varta- “present affair”, compare with NIA bāt) sāmyam, trāss (from Skt tulās) saṃsāram, vartamānam, anusaraṇa, anuvādam, anāvaśyam, alpam, svalpam, abhiprāyam, dhārālam (an old Sanskrit dialectal word used today only in Malayalam, the opposite of viralam) and hundreds more. (even out of the world Sanskrit-Malayalam combination words like vṛtti-kEṭu, buddhi-muṭṭu, piṭi-vāśi)"

Alien1Being 4mo ago

Free Sanskrit lessons from IIT Roorkee: https://sanskritclub.iitr.ac.in/course/Subhashitam/uview https://sanskritclub.iitr.ac.in/course/Subhashitam/uview

pianoben 4mo ago

Sanskrit is an amazing language - it is so BIG! Because of its extensive case system (10 different cases, IIRC), word order is highly flexible. The formalized rules of how spelling changes based on word adjacency (sandhi), and the ambiguity of interpreting long compounds, combined with the free word order, are so rich with poetic possibility that English seems baby-talk in comparison. It's hard to describe just how cool this language is. Even the alphabet! The way we learned it, it is arranged in a grid with all of the letters in a row corresponding to one sound, and each column based on where in the mouth you make the sound. I wish I could do it justice, but words fail. IMO it is absolutely, intrinsically, worthwhile to study.

rraghur 4mo ago
For anyone here, here is a great example of constrained writing in Sanskrit from 7th or 8th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_ingenuity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shishupala_Vadha#Linguistic_in... Just the verbal gymnastics, the wordplay and the ingenuity is mind boggling
rramadass 4mo ago
In this context, this former discussion thread is also relevant; Words for the Heart: A treasury of emotions from classical India (book review) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766 Bhartrihari is a notoriously difficult philosopher, and scholars are still puzzling over what exactly his work means. But perhaps radically oversimplified, here are a few things he suggests. First: wholes are always more real than the parts that comprise them. The whole comes first, and parts exist always and only as conceptual divisions within a pre-existing, coherent whole. Second: these divisions are always linguistic. It is language that carves up experience. But importantly, when language carves up experience, it is not, as some Buddhists thought, simply the superimposition of an artificial, conceptual filter onto a non-conceptual reality. Instead, Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it. Note-1: Does the above explain why many people perceive LLMs to be "conscious"? Note-2: The effectiveness of Mathematics (when considered as a language in itself) to explain the "real world" also seems related here. See also the book; The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language by Bimal Krishna Matilal - https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributiontothestudyoflanguagebimalakrishnamatilal_202003_376_e https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributio...