Sanskrit language

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A Sanskrit script
Sanskrit letters

Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language. It is a sacred language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism and is the origin of most Indian languages. Today, about 14,000 people in India use it as their daily language. It is one of the 22 official languages of India[1] and an official language of the state of Uttarakhand.[2]

Sanskrit is a standardized dialect of Old Indo-Aryan. Its linguistic ancestry can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European. The Indo-Aryan migration theory proposes that the Indo-Aryans migrated from the Central Asian steppes into South Asia during the early 2nd millennium BC, which brought the Indo-Aryan languages.[3] The main script used to write Sanskrit is Devanāgarī, but it can be written in the scripts of various other Indian languages and is sometimes written by the Latin alphabet.

William Jones, working as a judge in India in the 18th century, studied Sanskrit and recognized its similarities to Latin and Greek.[1]

Sanskrit literature includes poetry and drama. There are also scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts.[4][5] Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns and chants.

The language has a very complex grammar, with eight grammatical cases, the grammatical genders, and three grammatical numbers. The language is considered highly scientific as each word in a sentence can describe the number, gender, and action of the subject.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ "Indian Constitution Art.344(1) & Art.345" (PDF). Web.archive.org. 4 October 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 October 2007. Retrieved 2012-04-05.
  2. ↑ "Sanskrit is second official language in Uttarakhand – The Hindustan Times". Hindustantimes.com. 19 January 2010. Retrieved 2012-04-05.
  3. ↑ Witzel, Michael 2005. Indocentrism. In Bryant, Edwin & Patton, Laurie L. The Indo-Aryan controversy: evidence and inference in Indian history. London: Routledge.
  4. ↑ "Sanskrit as a language of science".
  5. ↑ Katju, Markandey (5 December 2011). "Markandey Katju: What is India?". The Times of India.
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