VITALITY OF SANSKRIT

Vitality of Sanskrit

by

JAWAHARLAL NEHRU

Sanskrit is a language amazingly rich, efflorescent , full of luxuriant growth of all kinds, and yet precise and strictly keeping within the framework of grammar which Panini laid down two thousand six hundred years ago. It spread out, added to its richness, became fuller and more ornate, but always it stuck to its original roots.

In the years of the decline of Sanskrit literature, it lost some of its power and simplicity of style and became involved in highly complex forms and elaborate similes and metaphors. The grammatical rule which enable words to be joined together became in the hands of the epigones a mere device to show off their cleverness by combining whole strings of words running into many lines.

Sir William Jones observed as long ago as 1784: ‘the Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either: yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs, and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all without believing them to have sprung from some common source which perhaps no longer exist…..’

William Jones as followed by many other European scholars, English, French, German, and others, who studied Sanskrit and laid the foundations of a new science-comparative philology. German scholarship forged ahead in this new domain and it is to these German scholars of the nineteenth century that the greatest credit must go for research in Sanskrit. Practically every German university had a Sanskrit department, with one or two professors in charge of it.

Indian scholarship, which was considerable, was of the old style, uncritical and seldom acquainted with foreign classical languages, except Arabic and Persian. A new type of scholarship arose in India under European inspiration, and many Indians went to Europe (usually to Germany) to train themselves in the new methods of research and critical and comparative study. These Indians had an advantage over the Europeans, and yet there was a disadvantage also. The disadvantage was due to certain preconceived notions, inherited beliefs and tradition, which came in the way of dispassionate criticism. The advantage, and it was great, was the capacity to enter into spirit of the writing, to picture the environment in which it grew and thus to be more in tune with it.

A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies that have moulded them. Words change their meanings from age to age and old ideas transform themselves into new, often keeping their old attire. It is difficult to capture the meaning, much less the spirit, of a word or phrase. Some kind of a romantic and poetical approach is necessary if we are to have a glimpse into that old meaning and into the minds of those who used the language in former days. The richer and more abundant the language, the greater the difficulty. Sanskrit, like other classical languages, is full of words which have not only poetic beauty but a deep significance, a host of associated ideas, which cannot be translated into a language foreign in spirit and outlook. Even its grammar, its philosophy, has a strong poetic content; one of its old dictionaries is in poetic form.

It is no easy matter, even for those of us who have studied Sanskrit, to enter into the spirit of this ancient tongue and to live again in its world of long ago. Yet we may do so to a small extent, for we are the inheritors of old traditions and that old world still clings to our fancies. Our modern languages In India are children of Sanskrit, and to it owe most of their vocabulary and their forms of expression. Many rich and significant words in Sanskrit poetry and philosophy, untranslatable in foreign languages, are still living parts of our popular languages. And Sanskrit itself, though long dead as a language of the people, has still an astonishing vitality. But for foreigners, however learned, the difficulties become greater. Unfortunately, scholars and learned men are seldom poets, and it is the scholar poet who is required to interpret a language. So while study of comparative philology has progressed and much research work has been done in Sanskrit, it is rather barren and sterile from the point of view of a poetic and romantic approach to this language. There is hardly any translation in English or any other foreign language from the Sanskrit which can be called worthy of or just to the original. Both Indians and foreigners have failed in this work for different reasons. That is a great pity and the world misses something that is full of beauty and imagination and deep thinking, something that is not merely the heritage of India but should be the heritage of the human race.

The hard discipline, reverent approach, and insight of the English translation of the Authorized Version of the Bible, not only produced a noble book, but gave to the English language strength and dignity. Generations of European scholars and poets have labored lovingly over Greek and Latin classics and produced fine translations in various European languages. And so even common folk can share to some extent in those cultures and, in their drab lives, have glimpses of truth and loveliness. Unfortunately, this work has yet to be done with the Sanskrit classics. When it will be done, or whether it will be done at all, I do not know. Our scholars grow in numbers and grow in scholarship, and we have out poets too, but between the two there is a wide and ever-growing gap. Our creative tendencies are turned in a different direction, and the many demands that the world of to-day makes upon us hardly give us time for the leisured study of the classics. Especially in India we have to look another way and make up for long time; we have been too much immersed in the classics in the past, and because we lost our own creative instincts we ceased to be inspired even by those classics which we claimed to cherish so much. Translations, I suppose , from the Indian classics will continue to appear, and scholars will see to it that the Sanskrit words and names are properly spelt and have all the necessary diacritical marks, and that there are plenty of notes and explanations and comparisons. There will be everything, in fact, literally and conscientiously rendered, only the living spirit will be missing. What was a thing of life and joy, so lovely and musical and full of imaginative daring, will become old and flat and stale, with neither youth nor beauty, but with only the dust of the scholar’s study and the smell of midnight oil.

For how long Sanskrit has been a dead language, in the sense of not being popularly spoken, I do not know. Even in the days of Kalidasa it was not the people’s language, though it was the language of educated people throughout India. So it continued for centuries, and even spread to the Indian colonies in south-east Asia and central Asia. There are records of regular Sanskrit recitations, and possibly plays also, in Cambodia in the seventh century A.C Sanskrit is still used for some ceremonial purposes in Thailand (Siam). In India the vitality of Sanskrit has been amazing. When the Afghan rules had established themselves on the throne of Delhi, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, Persian became the court language over the greater part of India and, gradually, many educated people took to it in preference to Sanskrit. The popular languages also grew and developed literary forms. Yet in spite of all this Sanskrit continued, though it declined in quality. Speaking at the oriental Conference held in 1937 at Trivandrum, over which he presided, dr. F. F. Thomas pointed out what a great unifying force Sanskrit had been in India and how widespread its use still was. He actually suggested that a simple form of Sanskrit, a kind of basic Sanskrit, should be encouraged as a common all-India language to-day! He quoted, agreeing with him, what Max Muller had said previously: ‘Such is the marvelous continuity between the past and the present in India, that in spite of repeated social convulsions, religious reforms, and foreign invasions, Sanskrit mya be said to be still the only language spoken over the whole extent of that vast country…. Even at the present moment, after a century of English rule and Dnglish teaching, I believe that Sanskrit is more widely understood in india than Latin was in Europe at the time of Dante.’

I have no idea of the number of people who understood Latin in the Europe of Dante’s time; nor do I know how many understand Sanskrit in India to-day; but the number of these latter is still large, especially in the south. Simple spoken Sanskrit is not very difficult ti follow for those who know well any of the present-day Indo-Aryan languages-Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Gujrati, etc. Even present-day Urdu, itself wholly an Indo-Aryan language, probably contains 80 percent words derived from Sanskrit. It is often difficult to say whether a word has come from Persian or Sanskrit, ad the root words in both these languages are alike. Curiously enough, the Dravidian languages of the south, though entirely different in origin, have borrowed and adopted such masses of words from the Sanskrit that nearly half their vocabulary is very nearly allied to Sanskrit.

Books in Sanskrit on a variety of subjects, including dramatic works, continued to be written throughout the medieval period and right up to modern times. Indeed, such books still appear from time to time, and so do Sanskrit magazines. The standard is not high and they do not add anything of value to Sanskrit literature. But the surprising thing is that this hold of Sanskrit should continue in the way throughout this long period. Sometimes public gatherings are still addressed in Sanskrit, though naturally the audieneces are more or less select.

This continuing use of Sanskrit has undoubtedly prevented the normal growth of the modern Indian languages. The educated intellectuals looked upon them as vulgar tongues not suited to any creative or learned work, which was written in Sanskrit, or later not infrequently in Persian. In spite of this handicap the great provincial languages gradually took shapes in the course of centuries, developed literary forms, and built up their literatures.

It is interesting to note that in modern Thailand when the need arose for new technical, scientific, and governmental terms many of these were adapted from Sanskrit.

The ancient Indians attached a great deal of importance to sound, and hence their writing, poetry or prose, had a rhythmic and musical quality. Special efforts were made to ensure the correct pronunciation of words and elaborate rules were laid down for this purpose. This became all the more necessary as, in the old days, teaching was oral, and whole books were committed to memory and thus handed down from generation to generation. The significance attached to the sound of words led to attempts to co-ordinate the sense with the sound, resulting sometimes in delightful combinations, and at other times in crude and artificial mixtures. E. H. Johnstone has written about this: ‘The classical poets of India have a sensitiveness to variations of sound, to which the literature of other countries afford few parallels, and their delicate combinations are a source of never failing joy. Some of them, however, are inclined to attempt to match the sense with the sound in a way that is decidedly lacking in subtlety, and they have perpetrated real atrocities in the manufacture of verses with a limited number of consonants or even only one.’

Recitations from the Veda’s, even in the present day, are done according to the precise rules for enunciation laid down in ancient times.

The modern Indian languages descended from the Sanskrit, and therefore called Indo-Aryan languages, are:Hindi-Urudu, Bengali,Marathi,Gujarati,Oriya,Assamese,Rajaasthani(a variation of Hindi), Punjabi,sindhi,Pashto, and Kashmiri. The Dravidian languages are: Tamil,Telugu,Kanarese, and Malayalam. These fifteen languages cover the whole of India, and of these, there are only some dialects and some undeveloped and forest tribes. The oft-repeated story of India having give hundred or more languages is a fiction of the mind of the physiologist and the census commissioner who notes down every variation in dialect and every petty hill-tongue on the Assam-Bengal frontier with Burma as a separate language, although sometimes it is spoken only by a few hundred or a few thousand persons. Most of these so-called hundreds of languages are confined to this eastern frontier of India and to the eastern border tracts of Burma. According to the method adopted by census commissioners, Europe has hundreds of languages and Germany was, I think, listed as having about sixty.

The real language question in India has nothing to do with this variety. It is practically confined to Hindi-Urudu, one language with two literary forms and two scripts. As spoken there is hardly any difference; as written, especially in literary style, the gap widens. Attempts have been, and are being made to lessen this gap and develop a common form, which is usually styled Hindustani. This is developing into a common language understood all over India.

Pushto, one of the Indo-Aryan languages derived from Sanskrit, is the popular language in the North west Frontier Province as well as in Afganisthan. It has been influenced, more than any of our other languages, by Persian. This frontier area has in the past produced a succession of brilliant thinkers, scholars, and grammarians in Sanskrit.

The language of Ceylon is Singhalese. This is also an Indo Aryan language derived directly from Sanskrit. The Singhalese people have not only got their religion, Buddhism, from India, but are racially and linguistically akin to Indians.

Sanskrit, it is now well recognized, is allied to the European classical and modern languages. Even the Slavonic languages have many common forms and roots with Sanskrit. The nearest approach to Sanskrit in Europe is made by the Lithunian language.