The beauty of Sanskrit language
Sanskrit is one of the earliest languages, which has a systematic and precise grammar, phonetics and prosody. The name ‘Sanskrit’ itself means ‘prepared, pure, refined or perfect’. Sanskrit is the foundation of Indian culture. The Vedas, Puranas, The Ramayana and the Mahabharata were written originally in Sanskrit. These great texts act as a custodian of our unique culture.
Maheshwara Sutras:
One of the first systematic arrangements of sounds is the ‘māheśvarāṇi sūtrāṇi’ developed by the grammarian Pāṇini. It is said that the god Śiva sounded his drum fourteen times to reveal these sounds to Pāṇini from which he later invented the ‘Varnamālā’, the systematic arrangement of letters.
Panini is known as the father of Sanskrit and is considered the earliest known Indian linguist. He wrote the Ashtadhyayi, or the “Eight Chapters on Grammar”.
Chhandas:
A very interesting grammatical aspect of Sanskrit is the prosody/metrical poetry, called CHHANDAS which means pleasing/alluring. It is one of the 6 Vedangas (limbs of Vedas) of Hinduism connected to the Vedic study. Chhandas was invented by the Indian poet and mathematician Acharya Pingala. He has described Chhandas in his book ‘Chandaḥśāstra’.
Chhandas gives a rhythm to the poem making it pleasing to hear. There are 26 types of Chhandas each imparting a unique rhythm. A Chhandas follows these rules: fixed number of syllables per verse, and fixed number of morae per verse. A mora is a basic timing unit of a letter- example: hrisvaswaram is unimoraic and dhirgswaram is bimoraic.
All the rules of applying each chhandas are written in the form of verses or shloka each of which are itself in that particular chhandas which it explains. Example : उक्ता वसन्ततिलका तभजाः जगौ गः। Is a verse explaining the features of वसन्ततिलका chhandas, which itself is an example of that chhandas. In this metre, the first two, the fourth, the eighth and the eleventh and the thirteenth and the fourteenth syllables of a foot (pāda) are heavy (guru), while the rest of the syllables are light (laghu).
Most of the notable scripts follow some specific chhandas, for instance, in the Bhagavad Gita, the majority of the verses are set in the Anuṣṭup-chhandas, which is essentially a chhandas of eight syllables in each quarter of the verse. The remaining are presented in the Triṣṭup-chhandas, which has eleven syllables in each quarter. These metrics make it a musical text and hence the name Gītā.
Samaasah:
Samaasah is an important aspect of Sanskrit grammar, which deals with the combination of words. Most words in Sanskrit are formed by a combination of root words.
In Samaasah, 2 or more words are combined to form a new meaningful word.
Examples include:
1. राज्ञः गृहम् (king’s abode) = राजगृहम्(palace).
2. पीतानि अम्बराणि यस्य सः (one who is wearing yellow dress) = पीताम्बरः(referring to the person wearing yellow dress)
Samaasah is the reason for the existence of a vast number of words in Sanskrit. For instance, each description of Lord Shiva has a word referring to him:
Nilakanthah: one who has blue throat,
Gangadharah: one who possesses the Ganges,
Trilokinatha: lord of the three realms
Ghrneshwar: lord of compassion
Maheshwar: supreme being,
Phalachandrah: the one who keeps the moon on his head, etc.
Amarakosha and its significance:
The Amarakosha is the popular name for Namalinganushasanam -instruction concerning nouns and gender- a thesaurus in Sanskrit written by the ancient Indian scholar Amarasimha. (Amarasimha was one of the Navaratnas(“nine gems”) at the court of Vikramaditya, the legendary king inspired by Chandragupta II). It consists of verses comprising of synonyms of a particular word, which can be easily memorized. It is divided into three kāṇḍas or chapters. The first, svargādi kāṇḍa -heaven and others- has words about heaven and the Gods and celestial beings who reside there. The second, bhūvargādi kāṇḍa -earth and others- deals with words about earth, towns, animals, and humans. The third, sāmānyādi kāṇḍa -common- has words related to grammar and other miscellaneous words. It is still used as one of the major source of Sanskrit grammar. It was once widely taught in gurukulas and happens to be one of the finest collections till date.
The Poet Kalidasa and his contributions to Sanskrit:
When it comes to the literary works of Sanskrit, Kalidasa is the first person to be remembered. Great poets from all over the world have recognized and praised him. Jayadeva, a poet, has called Kalidasa a Kavi kulaguru, ‘the lord of poets’ while the scholar and philologist Sir William Jones considers Kalidasa as ‘the Shakespeare of India’.
He has also had an impact on the lives of eminent intellectuals such as Rabindranath Tagore. Meghadūta’s romanticism is found in Tagore’s poems on the monsoons. Sanskrit plays by Kalidasa influenced late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century European literature. According to Dale Carnegie, Father of Modern Medicine Sir William Osler always kept on his desk a poem written by Kalidasa.
The story of Kalidasa’s rise to greatness is fascinating:
In the kingdom of King Bhoja lived a shepherd named Kalidasa. He wasn’t always so wise and learned. In fact, there was a time he was considered to be one of the stupidest people in the kingdom!
One sunny day, Kalidasa was sitting on a branch of a tree, trying to saw it off. But the dimwitted man was sitting on the wrong end of the branch, so when he finally sawed through the branch, he tumbled! This act of sheer stupidity was observed by some shrewd pundits minister passing by.
Now these pundits wanted to play a trick on the arrogant princess Vidyadhare, daughter of King Bhoja, to teach her a lesson. She was determined to marry someone who would defeat her in a debate about the scriptures. The princess had heaped considerable abuse on them over a period of time, and they were determined to extract their revenge. So, when they chanced upon Kalidasa, they decided to present him to the queen as a suitable match for her.
In order to conceal his stupidity, the pundits asked Kalidasa to pretend that he was a great sage, who was observing a vow of silence. Kalidasa readily agreed, and they presented him to the queen, saying that Kalidasa would only communicate by way of gestures. When the queen asked Kalidasa a few questions to test his intelligence, Kalidasa gesticulated wildly and the astute pundits ‘interpreted’ these gestures as extremely witty answers and retorts. The princess was suitably impressed, and the couple was married without much delay.
Kalidasa’s stupidity could be concealed for only so long, and the night of the wedding Kalidasa blurted out something inane. The princess realized that she had married a fool. Shattered, Vidyadhare locks Kalidasa in the palace temple and gets him to demand knowledge and wisdom from the goddess Kali. Vidyadhare loses consciousness, while Kalidasa is blessed with wisdom and knowledge. Kalidasa then walked away from the palace-temple, implying him casting off his earlier ignorance and walking away from his previous life.
Kalidasa, now a renowned poet, is one of the astadiggajas -eight great poets including Daṇḍin- in the court of King Bhoja. Among many of his great literary works, only three plays namely Mālavikāgnimitram, Vikramōrvaśīyam and Abhijñānaśākuntalam, two epic poems namely Raghuvaṃśa and Kumārasambhava and two shorter poems namely Meghadūta and Ṛitusaṃhara survive today.
Sanskrit is the mother of many languages, many of whose aspects are from Sanskrit. All these grammatical aspects appear in most of the Indian regional languages. Sanskrit was the language of our philosophers, our scientists, our mathematicians, our poets and playwrights, our grammarians, our jurists, etc. In grammar, Panini and Patanjali (authors of Ashtadhyayi and the Mahabhashya) have no equals in the world, in astronomy and mathematics the works of Aryabhatta, Brahmagupta and Bhaskar opened up new frontiers for mankind, as did the works of Charak and Sushrut in medicine. Sanskrit has greatly impacted the birth and growth of Indian culture and holds a significant value as an asset to humanity.
AUTHOR: Pranav Nadgir, CS22B1034: The beauty and richness of Sanskrit always amazes me. The amount of knowledge that one can acquire from these ancient Sanskrit texts is immense and invaluable. It gives me great pleasure to peruse these great Sanskrit texts. As a student of Sanskrit I wish to increase my knowledge of this language spread its richness to everyone.
