Sanskrit

When dealing with something all-comprehensive such as the science of mind and the cosmic, one comes up against various challenges. One of them is where to stop. For instance, when considering ways to communicate this particular science, I got entangled with the Sanskrit language. In the it was decided to leave it out as linguistics isn’t an essential part of the science, although closely related to it both at the cosmic and microcosmic level, as explained in the book. Here it is, relating to the discussion on the Vedas, page 290 in the second edition of the book. I hope the thoughtful reader will ponder further the future of this one-of-a-kind language.

Old Sanskrit—Vedic—was spoken in the Aryan areas in the West through Central Asia up to the non-Aryan Southeast Asia. Vedic was the world language of this enormous area,[1] and the Aryans brought their language with them when invading India during the millennium before our calendar. Modern Sanskrit is the later Indian development of this language. Sanskrit means “cultivated, refined language”. Shrii Shrii Anandamurti observed that the ancient Vedic language was transformed into modern Sanskrit when it got a proper grammatical structure.[2] That Indian Sanskrit became known as devabhasa, “the language of the gods” (the subtle reason for it was explained on pages 23-24 in the book).

In 1986, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti maintained that out of India’s more than 300 languages, Sanskrit is the mother of more than 200 of them, and that approximately twelve million people were capable of speaking Sanskrit at the time (35 years ago).[3] At the time of writing, Sanskrit is one of the twenty-two official languages of India and eighteen universities in that country are working to revitalise and strengthen the position of it.[4] Sanskrit is taught at universities all over the world, and there is talk of “the revival of Sanskrit”.[5]

In fact, it is hard to come by a language with such a long timeline and endurance as that of Sanskrit, stretching back all the way to the ending of the Ice Age. Normally, languages last for up to a thousand years or so. The Rigveda was composed outside of India, during the period of 15,000 to 10,000 years ago, in a language known to us as Vedic Sanskrit, considered as the proto-Indio-European language.[6] The Yajurveda was composed partly outside and partly in India, from 10,000 to 7000 years ago. The Atharvaveda was composed in Afghanistan and India about 3000 years ago, when India was one great cultural area from Afghanistan to Burma.[7][8] The fourth Veda, Samveda, consists of hymns of the three other Vedas. As much content of the original Vedas are lost, estimates of the periods and areas of production of the different Vedas vary with the yardsticks applied by researchers. Some look only towards existing material. While others measure their antiquity in terms of historical and other indications. The above estimates were provided by Shrii Sarkar.

Notes
1. “An Introduction to Shiva”, Discourses on Tantra 1, Namah Shiváya Shántáya.
2. Samarpan, Ac. Nityashuddhananda Avadhuta, Ananda Marga Publications (2021), p. 165.
3. Samarpan, as the preceding.
4.  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_with_official_status_in_India#List_of_official_languages_by_states_and_territories (accessed 3.1.2021).
5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_revival (accessed 26.8.2022).
6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language (accessed 3.1.2021).
7. “Tantra and Indo-Aryan Civilisation”, Discourses on Tantra 1, A Few Problems Solved 1.
8. “Rk to Rkśa” (Discourse 11), Shabda Cayaniká 2.

Where not noted the author is Shrii Shrii Anandamurti / Shrii Prabhat Rainjan Sarkar, and the publisher is Ananda Marga Publications, source: the Electronic Edition of the Works of P.R. Sarkar, version 9.

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