Latin, Sanskrit, Arabic

Vidhyanath Rao vidynath at math.ohio-state.edu
Thu Sep 9 19:34:30 UTC 1999


<JoatSimeon at aol.com> wrote:
> -- Sanskrit was preserved orally for centuries; however, it was used
> only for religious purposes, and primarily as religious poetry.
> Nobody spoke it in day-to-day life,

Are we supposed to take this as applying at all times in the past or
starting from certain point in time? If the latter, what is that point in
time? And what is the evidence for this?

The counter-evidence is and has been well-known to specialists for a long
time. We find grammars go out of their way to mention such idioms as
``dasya: samprayacchati'', `is carrying on with the servant girl'. Of what
use is this for religious poetry?
And are medicine, political science, mathematics/astronomy etc religion?
Why did people use Sanskrit for these?

I suspect that the quoted assertion is based on the texts that are
available, especially from before 3rd c. Applying the same argument, we
must conclude that Prakrit was used only for religious purposes before 3rd
c., as Prakrit texts from before then are all Jain religious texts. Texts
are preserved only when people take the trouble to preserve them. In
India, the texts had to preserved by memorization or copying rather
frequently (typical life of a palm leaf manuscript was about 300-400
years). It should be obvious why religious texts were more likely to be
preserved. (what kind of Hebrew texts are preserved from before 2nd c.
BCE?)

---

On the other hand, it is not true that Sanskrit did not change, either. We
tend to look only at phonology and morpholog, forgetting that syntax is an
integral part of any language. If you arrange Sanskrit works per their
relative chronology, you can see the syntax change, tracking the changes
in the ``popular language'', especially in the earlier periods.

This brings up an important point: when is a language a single language?
Let us take Tamil, for example. The phonology of formal Tamil, as used
today, is, as far as we can ascertain, the same as the phonology of about
1200 years ago (if not earlier). The phonology of colloquial Tamil has
undoubtedly changed though the extent is not clear. Butcomparing texts
makes it clear that syntax and semantics have changed considerably. Formal
Tamil of today is not much different from colloquial Tamil in syntax. Is
formal Tamil a living language or a dead language? After all, nobody
speaks it at home. They learn it at school, reading books or listening to
teachers (and, nowadays, scholars on mass media). On the other hand, if
you give me a sentence in formal Tamil and ask if it is grammatical, I do
not check it with rule books, but with my (presumably) intuitive knowledge
of what is grammatical in colloquial Tamil. (This can lead to different
results compared to Tamil of 1200 years ago: Back then, the morphe -kir-
formed progressives; today it is the general present). [A weaker version
was already made by A. B. Keith, ``Sanskrit literature'' who compared
Sanskrit vs MIA to queen's English vs Cockney.]



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