Sanskrit Quotes - page 2
By Sanskrit is meant the learned language of India - the language of its cultured inhabitants, the language of its religion, its literature and science - not by any means a dead language, but one still spoken and written by educated men by all parts of the country, from Kashmir to Cape Comorin, from Bombay to Calcutta and Madras.
Monier Monier-Williams
The word `Sanskrit' means "prepared, pure, refined or prefect”. It was not for nothing that it was called the `devavani' (language of the Gods). It has an outstanding place in our culture and indeed was recognized as a language of rare sublimity by the whole world. 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 Aryabhata, Brahmagupta and Bhaskara opened up new frontiers for mankind, as did the works of Charaka and Sushruta in medicine.
Pāṇini
A treatise called Astadhyayi (or Astaka) is Panini's major work. It consists of eight chapters, each subdivided into quarter chapters. In this work Panini distinguishes between the language of sacred texts and the usual language of communication. Panini gives formal production rules and definitions to describe Sanskrit grammar. Starting with about 1700 basic elements like nouns, verbs, vowels, consonants he put them into classes. The construction of sentences, compound nouns etc., is explained as ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner similar to modern theory. In many ways Panini's constructions are similar to the way that a mathematical function is defined today.
Pāṇini
There is in the rules or definitions (sutras) of Panini a remarkably subtle and penetrating account of Sanskrit grammar. The construction of sentences, compound nouns, and the like is explained through ordered rules operating on underlying structures in a manner strikingly similar in part to modes of modern theory. As might be imagined, this perceptive Indian grammatical work held great fascination for 20th-century theoretical linguists. A study of Indian logic in relation to Paninian grammar alongside AristotleAristotelian]] and Western logic in relation to Greek grammar and its successors could bring illuminating insights.
Pāṇini
The current language Pāṇini describes is very close in structure to the late Vedic found in certain Brāhmaṇa texts. As noted earlier, scholars have recognized other varieties of Sanskrit. Epic Sanskrit is so called because it is represented principally in the two epics, Mahābhārata ("Great Epic of the Bhārata Dynasty”) and Rāmāyaṇa ("Romance of Rāma”). In the latter the term saṃskṛta ‘adorned, cultivated, purified (by grammar)' is encountered, possibly for the first time with reference to the language. The date of composition for the core of early Epic Sanskrit is considered to be in the centuries just preceding the Common Era.
Pāṇini
The most interesting non-Western grammatical tradition-and the most original and independent-is that of India, which dates back at least two and one-half millennia and which culminates with the grammar of Panini, of the 5th century BCE. There are three major ways in which the Sanskrit tradition has had an impact on modern linguistic scholarship.
Pāṇini
Pāṇini had before him a list of irregularly formed words, which survives, in a somewhat modified form, as the Uṇādi Sūtra. There are also two appendixes to which Pāṇini refers: one is the Dhātupāṭha, "List of Verbal Roots," containing some 2000 roots, of which only about 800 have been found in Sanskrit literature, and from which about fifty Vedic verbs are omitted; the second is the Gaṇapāṭha, or "List of Word-Groups," to which certain rules apply. These gaṇas were metrically arranged in the Gaṇaratna-mahodadhi, composed by Vardhamāna in 1140 A. D.
Pāṇini
The most successful, hence most prominent amongst these grammarians was Panini. His grammar, surpassing all others in tightness and precision, became the standard and remained so undisputedly until today. Panini was able to joint the original devanagari language into an exact framework of rules, thus preserving it for the posterity. Since his time, this language is called Sanskrit, "joined together, refined.”.
Pāṇini
The grammar of Panini stands supreme among the grammars of the world, alike for its precision of statement, and for its thorough analysis of the roots of the language and of the formative principles of words. By employing an algebraic terminology, it attains a sharp succinctness unrivalled in brevity, but at times enigmatical. It arranges, in logical harmony, the whole phenomena which the Sanskrit language presents, and stands forth as one of the most splendid achievements of human invention and industry. So elaborate is the structure, that doubts have arisen whether its complex rules of formation and phonetic change, its polysyllabic derivatives, its ten conjugations with their multiform aorists and long array of tenses, could ever have been the spoken language of a people.
Pāṇini
Panini's grammar is the earliest scientific grammar in the world, the earliest extant grammar of any language, and one of the greatest ever written. It was the discovery of Sanskrit by the West, at the end of the 18th century, and the study of Indian methods of analyzing language that revolutionized our study of language and grammar, and gave rise to our science of comparative philology ... The study of language in India was much more objective and scientific than in Greece or Rome. The interest was in empirical investigation of language, rather than philosophical and syntactical. Indian study of language was as objective as the dissection of a body by an anatomist.
Pāṇini
Sanskrit is constructed like geometry and follows a rigorous logic. It is theoretically possible to explain the meaning of the words according to the combined sense of the relative letters, syllables and roots. Sanskrit has no meanings by connotations and consequently does not age. Panini's language is in no way different from that of Hindu scholars conferring in Sanskrit today.
Pāṇini
The author of the oldest extant Sanskrit grammar was Panini, a native of extreme north-west India, ... His work consists of nearly 4000 aphorisms, each of which owing to the extreme conciseness of the style, generally consists of not more than two or three words. Hence, the whole grammar could be printed within the compass of about thirty-five octavo pages. Yet it describes the entire Sanskrit language with a completeness which has never been equalled elsewhere. Thus it is at once the shortest and the fullest grammar in the world.
Pāṇini
Classical Sanskrit theatre flourished during the first nine centuries CE. Aphorisms on acting appear in the writings of Panini, the Sanskrit grammarian of the 5th century BCE, and references to actors, dancers, mummers, theatrical companies, and academies are found in Kautilya's book on statesmanship, the Artha-shastra (4th century BCE).
Pāṇini
Ashtadhyayi Sanskrit treatise on grammar was written in the 6th to 5th century BCE by the Indian grammarian Panini. This work set the linguistic standards for Classical Sanskrit. It sums up in 4,000 sutras the science of phonetics and grammar that had evolved in the Vedic religion. Panini divided his work into eight chapters, each of which is further divided into quarter chapters, beyond defining the morphology and syntax of Sanskrit language.
Pāṇini
Panini was a Sanskrit grammarian who gave a comprehensive and scientific theory of phonetics, phonology, and morphology. Sanskrit was the classical literary language of the Indian Hindus and Panini is considered the founder of the language and literature. It is interesting to note that the word "Sanskrit" means "complete" or "perfect" and it was thought of as the divine language, or language of the gods.
Pāṇini
The Pāṇinian commentator Kātyāyana (c. 3rd–4th century BCE) knew of the coexistence of Middle Indic forms with earlier ones. There is a Pāṇinian rule that provides that verb bases listed in an appendix to the Aṣṭādhyāyī have the class name dhātu (verbal base, root). Kātyāyana discusses whether one could define verbal bases semantically and thereby possibly do without the verb list. He remarks that even if one defines a verbal base as denoting an action, the roots must be listed in order to preclude the possibility that constituents of terms such as āṇapayati/āṇavayati ‘commands' be assigned the class name in question; āṇapayati/āṇavayati is a Middle Indic counterpart of Sanskrit ājñāpayati.
Pāṇini
I myself am by both temperament and training inclined to texts. I am neither an archaeologist nor an art historian; I am a Sanskritist, indeed a recovering Orientalist, of a generation that framed its study of Sanskrit with Latin and Greek rather than Urdu or Tamil. I've never dug anything up out of the ground or established the date of a sculpture. I've labored all my adult life in the paddy fields of Sanskrit, since I know ancient India best.
Wendy Doniger
