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Your view of Sanskrit is probably skewed by a few things. First of all, nearly the entire corpus of Sanskrit literature was written after (and in many cases lon
by arnsholt 13y ago
Your view of Sanskrit is probably skewed by a few things. First of all, nearly the entire corpus of Sanskrit literature was written after (and in many cases long, long after) it was used as a day-to-day language. It was probably already losing ground at the time of Panini, roughly 500 BCE.
Second, what Sanskrit literature we have is highly artistic and edited literary text, replete with hard-to-get cultural references, not ordinary spoken language.
Finally, it's probably just plain different from whatever language you're used to, not intrinsically harder or more complicated.
- contingencies 13y agoIMHO Sanskrit is both harder and more complicated than Latin, which I spent years on before coming to a dalliance with Sanskrit and Pali. Then again, other than Latin (which I aced), I've never had much success with Indo-Europeans (except basic French, through drink).
- gngeal 13y agoI've never had much success with Indo-Europeans Did you compose this text with the help of Google Translate, then?
- anuraj 13y agoNot really, there is no evidence of Sanskrit being used for conversation other than in learned circles. Most of the Upanishads, Aranyakas and Puranas and the last two vedas were written after 500 BC. Kalidasa - arguably the greatest litterateur in Sanskrit lived after 500 BC. Bhasa - the playwright lived after 200BC. Most of the Sanskrit oeuvre has been produced after 1st AD and prolific works continued till 16th century.