Prakrit words in sanskrit songs

Languages used in Carnatic Music & Literature
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srkris
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Post by srkris »

Some carnatic songs in sanskrit contain prakrit forms of words rather than their sanskrit forms. Have you observed this feature?

Usually all songs on the god of Tirupati regularly use the prakrit form "Venkata" insead of the sanskrit "Vyankata". Can we come up with other such words?

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

vE^NkaTa is the name of the mountain. Hence He was known as vE^NkaTAcalapati. That is pure sanskrit. Where did you get vyankata from?

rshankar
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Post by rshankar »

vEnkaTa + acala + pati - the Lord (pati) of the static/mountain (acala) named vEnkaTa is the derivation of vEnkaTAcalapati.

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Post by srkris »

I am aware that venkaTa is the name of the mountain, but it is the prakrit form of vyankaTa or viankaTa. The sanskrit form of the word is not used anymore in sanskrit itself, sanskrit has adopted the prakrit form of late such that except in some of the old works like Devi Bhagawatam, vyankaTa is replaced with venkaTa.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

Prakrit pre dates sanskrit. Of course there are many varieties depending on the region. In that sense pali also belongs to prakrit. The latest form is apabramsa which was used by Tulsi. Hence to claim that a certain term is sanskrit and not prakrit requires deep literary analysis of literature. On the face of it vEnkaTa appears more refined than vyankaTa and hence the former maybe sanskrit and the latter may have been prakrit (more primitive). The 'vEnkaTa' hill is distinctly a dravidian boundary and there is reference to it in tolkAppiyam. Hence the term may be distinctly of Tamilian origin. The term must have been corrupted by the northerners and dialectically they may have named it 'vyankaTa'. But then the later sanskrit scholars may have correctly restored the pristine name. Now it will be difficult as to why it was named vEnkaTa malai. My wild guess is it may have something to do with it being in ancient times a habitation of leopards (vEngai in Tamil).

ramakriya
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Post by ramakriya »

I have not heard the use of word vyankata in Samskrita. It does exist in marAThi. However, I beleive that the word has gone from south to north, not the other way.

In that sense, vyankaTa is the apabhramSa of the original vEnkaTa. In current day Kannada it has become venkaTa with short 'e' rather than the original vEnkaTa.

-Ramakriya

srkris
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Post by srkris »

Prakrit pre dates sanskrit.
prAkrta does not refer to one dialect, it refers to groups of dialects that have evolved from saMskrta (more properly from vedic called by pANini as chandasA), not the other way round.
On the face of it vEnkaTa appears more refined than vyankaTa and hence the former maybe sanskrit and the latter may have been prakrit (more primitive)
vyankaTa uses the semivowel (antastha) ya which is derived from the diphthong "ia". Thus viankaTa (vyankaTa) would have morphed into vEnkaTa, while the converse is not possible (similar to guNa rule --> airavata can become eravata, but not other way round).

As Ramakriya mentions, vEnkaTa has further evolved into venkaTa (please note sanskrit does not have the long 'E'). The earlier form (found in tolkAppiyam) was vEnkaTa (vaDa vEnkaTam ten kumarI...), which seems to retain the mAtras of vyankaTa intact.
Now it will be difficult as to why it was named vEnkaTa malai. My wild guess is it may have something to do with it being in ancient times a habitation of leopards (vEngai in Tamil).
Wow, that seems to be a very good guess. vEngai nAdu and vEngai malai are referred to in some of the tamil literature, more particularly these were places mentioned as conquered by rAjarAja chola in his in his march upto the Ganges.

arasi
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Post by arasi »

Owning up to my ignorance in grammar, a wild guess here. vEngai+ aDavi (forest, kADu) malai. When we were children, there were leopards in Tiuppati. Very exciting for us! Perhaps, vEngaDaiyum malai (a hill which is their habitat).

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Post by PUNARVASU »

srkris wrote: please note sanskrit does not have the long 'E'.
Is it long 'E' or short 'e'?

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

prAkrita just means common or 'vulgar' language. It did coexist with vedic language but was spoken by the common folks. It continued to be spoken when sanskrit (refined or 'decorated' language evolved). There were innumerable dialects of prAkrita depending on the region and it was evolving continuously. For example pAli evolved from prAkrita (it is called 'pAkaTa' in pAli). See
http://www.wikieducator.org/Ancient_And ... Bangladesh
It is claimed that the vedic brahmins used the vedic language but prAkrita was used by the rest.
It is interesting to investigate why the short forms for 'O' and 'E' survive in the native languages but not found in Sanskrit! On the other hand the protracted 'plUta' is found in all of the long vowels! Sanskrit conceives of the letters 'O', 'E', 'ai' as diphthongs. In fact 'E' is actually 'a' + 'i'. Hence it is 'long' by definition. perhaps it iis the carry over from from the European languages from where the Aryans brought their language....

I could not accept 'viankaTa (vyankaTa) would have morphed into vEnkaTa, while the converse is not possible '.
In fact vi+a produces vya and not the reverse.

I would like see other examples of prAkrit names that may have gotten sanskritzed. I am not denying the possibilty. But vE^NkaTa (or venkata)appears to be an original...
If the original was venkaTa my tentative surmise goes down the drain :)

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Post by srkris »

Sanskrit conceives of the letters 'O', 'E', 'ai' as diphthongs.
Well, O & E are monophthongs which evolved out of the diphthongs au & ai respectively, (cf. first two pANini sutras "vṛddhir ādaic" & "adeṅ guṇaḥ" about guNa and vRddhi).

Example: gautama becomes gOtama. airavata becomes eravata

Whereas ua and ia are diphthongs that became the semivowels va & ya respectively.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

I found the following
http://vedabase.net/v/vyenkata
Apparentlt vyenkata survived in Bengali language which is one of the modern evolution of the prakrit language!

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Post by srkris »

Interesting and surprising. Its between vyankata and venkata. The link that you gave in vedabase is a citation from Chaitanya Charitamrita which is not in Bengali or Prakrit but in Sanskrit.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

No Sir!
The Chaitanyacaritamrita is in Bengali.
Check out the referred verse;
Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrī Caitanya Caritāmṛta Madhya 9.64

mahāprabhu cali' āilā tripati-trimalle

catur-bhuja mūrti dekhi' vyeńkaṭādrye cale

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Post by PUNARVASU »

That is what I also thought; those words did not sound Sanskrit to me.
Last edited by PUNARVASU on 29 Aug 2008, 00:39, edited 1 time in total.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

In connection with 'eravata' this is what I understand:
irA ApaH tadvAn irAvan samudraH tasmAdutpannaH aN (pratyaya)
(irA is water which is contained in the ocean whence called 'irAvAn' and since born out of the (milky) ocean the elephant of Indra is called 'airavataH)
This refers to the puranic episode of airAvata born out of churning the milky ocean and which was taken possession by Indra....
Hence to claim airavata ia sanskrit corruption of eravata is baseless :)

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Post by srkris »

Haha it appears that it is written in a mixture of Bengali and sanskrit. What is this?

śrī-vaiṣṇava eka, — 'vyeńkaṭa bhaṭṭa' nāma
prabhure nimantraṇa kaila kariyā sammāna (Śrī Caitanya Caritāmṛta Madhya 9.82)

ramakriya
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Post by ramakriya »

Punarvasu wrote:srkris wrote: please note sanskrit does not have the long 'E'.
Is it long 'E' or short 'e'?
samskRta does not have the short e, and has only the long E.

-Ramakriya

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Post by ramakriya »

cmlover wrote:prAkrita just means common or 'vulgar' language.
CML, won't it be better to call prAkRta as common or natural, and saMskRta as refined?

-Ramakriya

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Post by ramakriya »

cmlover wrote:I found the following
http://vedabase.net/v/vyenkata
Apparentlt vyenkata survived in Bengali language which is one of the modern evolution of the prakrit language!
It also in present day marAThi, which is also one of the off shoot of mahArAShtRi prARta - it is almost always written as vyenkaTa or vyankaTa both in roman script as well as in nAgari.

-Ramakriya

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Post by srkris »

ramakriya wrote:
Punarvasu wrote:srkris wrote: please note sanskrit does not have the long 'E'.
Is it long 'E' or short 'e'?
samskRta does not have the short e, and has only the long E.

-Ramakriya
Sorry, yes it is the long E.

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

ramakriya wrote:
cmlover wrote:prAkrita just means common or 'vulgar' language.
CML, won't it be better to call prAkRta as common or natural, and saMskRta as refined?

-Ramakriya
Yes ramakriya
prAkrit was the commoner's language and sanskrit that of the scholar. Just as scholarly terms get 'corrupted' and get passed on into common language the reverse is also possible.
In fact if 'vyankaTa' was the original name of the mountain it may have been actually of Kannada origin (which is why it still survives in Marathi and Bengali) and not Tamilian origin, since Tamil nomenclature never start with a 'mey ezhuthu' (consonant).

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Post by PUNARVASU »

prAk+kritam- prAkritam- the one done before
samyak+kritam-samskirtam-the one done well
So samskritam is an improvement on (of) prAkritam
Am I right in surmising so?

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Post by PUNARVASU »

Now that we are talking about prAkrit, can someone tell me what exactly the word 'aprAkrita'-
mean?
It occurs in the MSD song in sArangA
aruNAcala nAtham'- 'aprAkrita tEjOmaya lingam'

cmlover
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Post by cmlover »

aprAkrita = unnatural/not created/extraordinary/...

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Post by PUNARVASU »

Thank You, CML.

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Post by srkris »

prAk+kritam- prAkritam- the one done before
This is a common mistranslation. prAkRtam does not mean original. It the context of languages, it means natural/common i.e artless.
saMskRta means well-formed or ornamented.

It is also a misconception that prAkRta was refined to obtain saMskRta. In fact these are just vAks (or modes of speech) of the same language. One was ornamented/refined speech and the other was crude/common speech.

Many people who dont understand historical linguistics tend to apply the formula that a refined language is obtained from the refinement of a crude language. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact this misconception arises out of wrong translations.

More specifically prakrits are classified by linguists as Middle-Indic or Middle-Indo-Aryan while Sanskrit (both classical and Vedic) are classified under Old-Indo-Aryan or Old-Indic.

What this means is that Old-Indic preceeded Middle-Indic and the latter evolved out of the former, not by a process of growth but of decay.

Classical sanskrit lost a bit of vedic sanskrit's features, but in prakrits, these changes (losses) are very high.

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Post by PUNARVASU »

Could the origin of the word be 'prakRti' then- the natural one?

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Post by srkris »

Yes prakRti, prAkRta are all derived from the same roots. In some contexts it could mean natural (as in original). But here it simply means "evolved" or "subject to natural changes".

As a manner of speaking prAkRta is called so because it is an evolved language (changed, subject to natural evolution and therefore imperfect) vis-a-vis saMskRta which is the perfect/unchanged/adorned.

Modern Linguistics, as I said, classifies Sanskrit as Old-Indic and prakrits as Middle-Indic. But if we go back far enough in time, we would find that neither of the two are older or younger than the other, they just represent two ways in which the same original language evolved into: the first being resistant to all changes and thus being closer to the original (saMskRta) and the second taking all the changes and therefore becoming quite a different language (prAkRta).

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Post by PUNARVASU »

srkris,
thanks for explaining nicely.

vasanthakokilam
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Post by vasanthakokilam »

srkris: This last explanation of yours makes sense to me as well.

What is not clear is ( notwithstanding eminent linguists' claim ), why should "scholarly" vs "street" versions of the language start only with the parent language of Sanskrit and Prakrit. That parent should have had two versions. And people were quite nomadic during those times and I am sure among the nomads there were those who preserved the scholarly versions ( with allowances for normal and expected changes ) along with the rest who spoke the "street" versions. This is what Italian is considered to be, as a 'street' speak version of Latin.
Many people who dont understand historical linguistics tend to apply the formula that a refined language is obtained from the refinement of a crude language. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I agree that it may be misguided thinking, but it is still fascinating how such a thing happened in the past. The natural evolution of human created things like this is that it starts raw and over time it gets refined. Something being born completely refined and scholarly is quite rare. It is not a problem to accept for those who believe in divine inspiration for Sanskrit's perfectness but Linguistics do not believe in that. So, I am curious what led earlier humans to create perfect languages out of the blue and at the same time witness common people adapt it to their convenience. And who are those people who created such perfect languages?

In modern times, there are two examples on either side of the discussion. These do not prove anything but it is interesting nonetheless. The artificial 'perfect' language esperanto created by the scholars did not spread too far. The creole languages of the carribean were 'coined' through a natural process by the children of plantation workers who were brought to work there from different parts of the world. The children could not speak amongst themselves and so they evolved a language that is a mixture of their native languages plus the language of the plantation owner. Now there are scholars who try to study these creole languages and try to formalize them!!

arasi
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Post by arasi »

VK,
Very relevant, you citing Italian and Creole. While in Italy they spoke different dialects even within the country (and according to what I have heard from Italian friends, their ancestors did not understand others from a nearby province until Italian became a language, unifying them all in one language--just as in India, with our various languages, most of us do not know the language of our neighboring states. Creole, even more so because of its locales--colonized spots scattered all over. I bet in the island of Reunion for instance, besides French, the local language is peppered with Indian words since a lot of Indians migrated to that then French controlled island.
Why go that far? In the recent decades, spoken Tamizh has undergone more changes in a short time than ever before. Television, globalism being reasons among others. When I happen to switch on a TV Tamizh channel, the spoken Tamizh I hear amazes me. I understand it (so can any English speaking person), but the expressions and pronuncition are mind-boggling for someone from afar. In short, conversational language is impoverished, seeking out English words for expression, Tamizh just being an excuse! The one verb which is used is 'paNNUgiRathu--sorry, paNRAdu, and it is added to an English noun like work, think, try. sleep and so on to make a sentence!
I am not kidding. A dozen years ago, a youngster complimented me by saying how well I spoke Tamizh, sounding as if it came out of a book! And it was just regular 'speak' when I was growing up in India.
Yes VK, God knows through how many long years these changes were happening in the case of sanskrit and prAkrit!
Last edited by arasi on 03 Sep 2008, 07:11, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by PUNARVASU »

Arasi, as you said, there is an ocean of difference between the spoken Tamilzh and the pure grammatical one; of course it is the same case with any language; and also the the spoken language differs from disrict to district-you have the 'kovai tamizh', the T'veli one, the Madurai one ,the Tanjavur one and so on; this is true of any Indian language and well as the languages elsewhere; the accents are different, some words are peculiar to a particular region and so on. In Tamizh, some of the letters we had learnt as youngsters are done away with- the written Tamil hs also undergone so much change. And we have the
'Engamizh' or 'Tamignlish' as you said correctly.

arasi
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Post by arasi »

Punarvasu,
vaTTARa vazhakku (regional parole) is charming and it enriches a language. The conversational language I hear on the TV is what intrigues me. It is impoverished. Did prAkrit also sound that way to some? I am not talking about the elite here who looked down upon it from the 'I am for sanskrit and sanskrit alone', but ordinary folks like me who tend to appreciate richness in the spoken word.

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Post by srkris »

I agree that it may be misguided thinking, but it is still fascinating how such a thing happened in the past. The natural evolution of human created things like this is that it starts raw and over time it gets refined. Something being born completely refined and scholarly is quite rare. It is not a problem to accept for those who believe in divine inspiration for Sanskrit's perfectness but Linguistics do not believe in that. So, I am curious what led earlier humans to create perfect languages out of the blue and at the same time witness common people adapt it to their convenience. And who are those people who created such perfect languages?
There is no such thing as absolute perfection. A language that is more conservative is usually considered older than a lesser conservative one. This is true for all languages. The most conservative Tamil is the Tamil found in the Sangam anthologies. The most conservative sanskrit is vedic sanskrit. The most conservative Kannada is purva-hale-Kannada.

These are the earliest stages of the language we know, and in later stages, languages absorb foreign influences and get simplified and less-conservative. If we go back to 500BCE or thereabouts, Kannada and Tamil would have been the same language which became different languages due to various reasons. Linguists often construct language trees to show how languages evolve, for example this is the tree for south-dravidian branch of the dravidian language family:

Image

In the above image, we can see that proto-tamil-kannada was the ancestor (common) language before Tamil and Kannada evolved from it as independent languages.

Thus the Sangam literature in Tamil was probably composed in Proto-Tamil-Kodagu or Proto-Tamil-Malayalam, i.e. before the birth of Kodagu or Malayalam as distinct languages.

Who were the people who created such languages? No one in particular. All natural languages evolve from stone-age speech, and all ancient languages we know currently are natural languages.

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Post by vasanthakokilam »

srkris: Thanks for that diagram and the explanation.

I don't think the issue I was raising is addressed by this.
It is also a misconception that prAkRta was refined to obtain saMskRta. In fact these are just vAks (or modes of speech) of the same language. One was ornamented/refined speech and the other was crude/common speech.

Many people who dont understand historical linguistics tend to apply the formula that a refined language is obtained from the refinement of a crude language. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact this misconception arises out of wrong translations.
All natural languages evolve from stone-age speech
If you consider all of these statements together, isn't the implication that stone age speech was the most refined language?

How can we discard the possibility that naturally evolved languages which may not have a coherent grammar get organized into a 'clean' structure by the scholars/priests who were employed by the Royalty of the ancient times.

This is just my personal gut feel. It is hard for me to believe that supremely unambiguous languages with nicely architected syntactical structures arose out of the natural inclinations of a huge group of people without some manipulation by a few people who had some authoritarian power over the populace to enforce such formalisms. ( BTW, this is in the general context and not prakrit/sanskrit context )

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Post by srkris »

vasanthakokilam wrote:It is hard for me to believe that supremely unambiguous languages with nicely architected syntactical structures arose out of the natural inclinations of a huge group of people without some manipulation by a few people who had some authoritarian power over the populace to enforce such formalisms.
There is no authoritarian power that enforces anything.

As languages evolve from stone age speech, some groups of stone age speakers use more complex methods of communication than the others, and thus their languages evolve into sophisticated languages giving much attention to detail. When the language grows so formidably in its structure and phonetics, sometimes people find it all too much and it gets dumbed down again, else it is preserved in all its richness, or both. Usually a sort of diglossia prevails in all classical languages which is why you find that sentamizh coexisted with iyatramizh, sanskrit with prakrits, etc.

In the Indo-European language family, for example (to which Sanskrit belongs), Vedic sanskrit is in some ways the most conservative language, for it has preserved all the 8 cases (vibhaktis, called vetrumai in tamil) of the Proto-Indo-European language when compared to the other branches of Indo-European like Greek, Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Anatolian, Iranian, Armenian, Balto-Slavic, Albanian, Tocharian and other sub-families of Indo-European. Probably it had even preserved the Indo-European laryngeal(s) but studies are on about this and we can't say anything about the laryngeals for certain. Again, metric restoration of Vedic indicates that it had a lot more archaic features than what we currently attribute to it, for example use of diphthongs, no labiodental semivowels, etc.

At some point of time, not everyone could know sanskrit perfectly even though it was their mother tongue (similar to how NOT all tamils speak perfect tamil today), because the grammarians had amassed too much details and analysed it to the point where formal learning of the language's grammar was necessary to speak it properly (please note that writing had not been invented at that time, so both sanskrit and prakrits remained just spoken variants till about 400BCE in India). Those who could not learn sanskrit still spoke the same language imperfectly. The imperfect varieties of the languages were called prAkRta vAk which became more and more imperfect and distant from sanskrit (in the eyes of the grammarians & educated) that they eventually evolved into separate regional languages with a dim knowledge of the past that once they were all the same language and had evolved from sanskrit.

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Post by vasanthakokilam »

srkris;

That sounds like a reasonable account of how sophisticated and complex languages may have evolved. BTW, is this how it is understood by linguistic community ( consensus view ) as to how sophisticated languages like Sanskrit and Latin evolved or this is just one of many alternate narratives?

My curiosity is more along the build up to such sophisticated, well formed and unambiguous syntax over millenia to the proto IE and Sanskrit/Latin stage and then for the next 1500-2000 years, the reverse process, i.e. simplification, started. Much has been written about how the latter part may have happened, namely the IE tree we all know about.

The build up to the sophistication is not much talked about and it could have taken any number of paths including refinement by scholars/grammarians from a plethora of unrefined languages. Hence my objection to your statement before "Many people who dont understand historical linguistics tend to apply the formula that a refined language is obtained from the refinement of a crude language". That may be so for the derivation from proto IE but I am referring to the process that resulted in proto IE. Have the linguists rule out the possibility of a refined language being culled from a variety of unrefined languges?

I do not have any evidence one way or the other ( of course!! ). I also believe, like your narrative, that natural processes were mainly responsible for evolution of languages. It seems to me that natural processes go through selective pressures like natural evolution in shaping the course of evolution. I am not sure how much Linguists believe in such a view.

If I take that view, then there are several different possibilities. If you look at the results of 'Artificial Life' research, where they simulate what-if scenarios of the ancient past, some results are very thrilling and quite startling. You can have many robots with absolutely no common vocabulary, learn a common vocabulary over a period of time just through interaction and feedback. All sorts of craziness ensues in the path to such a common vocabulary but they do get there. If you introduce new robots with zero vocabulary into a mix of such robots, the new robots pick up the common vocabulary fairly quickly. But sometimes, if the vocabulary is not quite settled and you introduce a lot of new robots, the vocabulary gets much simpler. The existing population has not quite settled down on a set yet, and the new robots focus in on the common subset vocabulary and that tends to dominate the population and that becomes reality after 10000 iterations or so. Quite fascinating. May be something like this happens with language evolution in reality, a process that leads to complexity and then through interaction with another group ( through migration or invasion ) gets pruned to become somewhat simpler.

My statement about 'authoritarian interference' is in this context. One can definitely interfere with such a natural process through religious/royal/political high handedness.

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Post by srkris »

If we take human evolution as an example (although we cannot take it in the literal sense), it might seem incredible that homo-sapiens evolved from a single cell organism to such a complex species today. Same for other animals and plants.

Each species (like each language) exerts its influence both within itself and among other species, and this determines their adaptation and evolution, or extinction.

The process of building up the complexity takes such a long time in prehistory that one has not much alternative explanations except to believe in what we consider logical and feasible. We cant study the entire history of man right from the time humankind was a single-cell organism with the same level of detail as we study current humans, can we. We don't have that kind of data.

Again some species adapt to their environment by shedding some complex abilities they had for a long time (like how some birds within some generations lose the ability to fly). This is the dumbing-down process that similarly happens in languages too.

Whatever I said about Sanskrit & Prakrit in particular is the official mainstream scientific position of modern linguistics i.e about Sanskrit (Vedic and Classical stages) being classified Old-Indic followed by Middle-Indic (prakrits grouped into Maharashtri, Sauraseni, Magadhi and Paisachi) etc. It is the same position as was held by the ancient grammarians like Panini, Yaska, Patanjali and such.

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Post by vasanthakokilam »

srkris, Understood. Thanks.

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Post by keerthi »

Prakrit words in Sankrit - BhAsha-pathih patathi Vaasara-SUDDHIM from Venkatesa- Suprabhatam.
The word Suddhi means news in Kannada and telugu.

In the Song Adenamma harudu - Pharaz; there is a line Nandi 'sabhaash'ani koniyaada - This is not a prakrit word, but an urdu word in a telugu song.

Dikshitar has used names like 'Alamelumanga' - from the tamizh ' Alar-mael-mangai' in his surati and Vati-vasanthabhairavi songs.

rajesh_rs
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Post by rajesh_rs »

In Annamacharya's Bowli composition - "Sriman Narayana", the phrase "Thiruvenkatagiri Deva" appears in the charanam:

parama yogijana bhAgadheya shrI
paramapuruShA parAtparA
paramAtmA paramANurUpa shrI
tiruveN^kaTagiridevA sharaNu

This is an instance of a Tamizh word(?) being used in a composition which is otherwise in Sanskrit. Could this be considered a Prakrit word in a Sanskrit song?

rajesh_rs
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Post by rajesh_rs »

srkris wrote:Yes prakRti, prAkRta are all derived from the same roots. In some contexts it could mean natural (as in original). But here it simply means "evolved" or "subject to natural changes".

As a manner of speaking prAkRta is called so because it is an evolved language (changed, subject to natural evolution and therefore imperfect) vis-a-vis saMskRta which is the perfect/unchanged/adorned.

Modern Linguistics, as I said, classifies Sanskrit as Old-Indic and prakrits as Middle-Indic. But if we go back far enough in time, we would find that neither of the two are older or younger than the other, they just represent two ways in which the same original language evolved into: the first being resistant to all changes and thus being closer to the original (saMskRta) and the second taking all the changes and therefore becoming quite a different language (prAkRta).
In fact, could it be possible that the Prakrits are older than Sanskrit? I can sense this as being a distinct possibility, because it is possible that the religious order intended that they should have one language which doesn't vary in interpretation. This would be necessary for the shruti traditions to be passed on from one generation to another.

srkris
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Post by srkris »

There is no possibility that Prakrits are older than (or gave rise to) Sanskrit, and this is such a fundamental topic on Indology that linguists cannot afford to go wrong about. If we believe such speculations, we may as well believe that the sun revolves around the earth, or that past events are actually from the future. The point is, if we speculate like this without a basis, the distinction between sense and nonsense would become blurred.

Unless there is a quantum jump forward in our understanding of languages, we cannot overthrow facts and replace them with these wild speculations.

Preserving a particular dialect without change is sufficient to preserve literature written in it intact. There is no need to "create Sanskrit from Prakrits". It is impossible to create Sanskrit from Prakrits because all the linguistic features of Sanskrit are archaic compared to prakrits. In other words, the structure of sanskrit shows that it is older in all respects when compared to prakrit dialects (consider the case of sanskrit diphthongs vs. prakrit monophthongs, for example). Prakrits have all the newer features and it is possible to derive a prakrit word from a sanskrit word (example: Putra is a sanskrit word which can become Putta in pali, maudgalyAyana is a sanskrit word that became moggalAna in Pali, kAsyapa is a sanskrit word that gave rise to Pali kAssapa). Putta and Moggalana and Kassapa cannot be converted to Putra and Maudgalyayana and Kasyapa owing to the application of the geminate inalterability effect.

Your hypothesis is therefore ab-initio void.

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Post by PUNARVASU »

keerthi wrote:Dikshitar has used names like 'Alamelumanga' - from the tamizh ' Alar-mael-mangai' in his surati and Vati-vasanthabhairavi songs.
In bhajarE citta ,kalyANi, he uses the word 'rUpa muttukumAra jananIm'- the lord murugA in vaitteswarankovil being 'selvamuttukumaran'.

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Post by srkris »

Muttu might be a tamil borrowing from prakrit mutta (skt. mukta, meaning "free", or "extracted"... from the oyster; cf. mukti).

The Tamil Lexicon says its derived from mukta (http://dsal.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philol ... 8.tamillex).

I have my doubts though!

Anyways, that was an interesting observation.

rajesh_rs
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Post by rajesh_rs »

Are the dialects spoken before Panini formalized the Sanskrit grammar classified under the Prakrits? Could you provide a condensed timeline for the development of Sanskrit and Prakrits? Please provide references if possible.

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Post by srkris »

Sorry if my answer above was brusque.

Well, there were both Sanskrit as well as prakrits before Panini's time, because there were grammars on Sanskrit written by others before Panini (right from the time of the Vedas). The grammarians before Panini already realized the need to keep the language unchanging (because there was no indigenous writing in India before Panini's times (although scholars speculate that Panini himself knew about the writing that existed in the greek script in the north-western areas outside India i.e bactria). For the lay people, however, there was no use in learning an old language or to keep it unchanging. Their mother tongue was by now the evolving language (the Prakrits)..and this language kept on changing with every century of use (as all languages do).

The pratishakyas of the Vedas themselves contain appendices that describe the grammar of the vedic language. A total of 64 grammarians are named... so there was a lot of lively linguistic research and activity that seems to have preceeded the millenia before Panini. The very first grammar of (Vedic) sanskrit is called Aindra vyakarana (this word is derived by vriddhi from Indra), referring to the belief that the oldest grammarian of this school was the Vedic god Indra himself.

This aindra grammar was a very influential Pre-Paninian school of grammar which seems to have survived until about the 10th century AD, but most works pertaining to this (and 11 other grammatical schools that preceeded Panini) are now lost.

Says Ilampuranar of the tolkappiyam "Aindram niraintha tolkappiyan" (the tolkappiyam filled with aindra's grammar), perhaps a reference that indicates the tolkappiyam was modelled on the basis of the aindra grammar.

Since Sanskrit by its very definition means a "grammatical language" (saMskRta is a word that is derived from saMskarana "structured/whole language", as opposed to vyAkarana "dissecting the whole into its components". Vyakarana is a name commonly used for grammatical analysis of a language by understanding its constituent parts), the Vedic language is also called a Sanskrit dialect (since Vedic has its own grammar) rather than as a prakrit (even though Vedic was also a naturally evolving language that gave rise to classical sanskrit and prakrits).

With regard to the development of the Prakrits and Sanskrit, both Sanskrit (classical) and Prakrits originated from the Vedic sanskrit (and its dialects). This makes all these languages part of the Vedic (or Indic family of languages) rather than Iranian (although the Iranian languages Avestan and Old-Persian are very close to Vedic). Since sanskrit had a strong grammatical tradition, it was deliberately kept close to the Vedic form, while the prakrits kept evolving (and became more and more different from vedic with the passage of time.

To illustrate with an example, a person who spoke Vedic sanskrit in, say 1700-1500 BCE would have had no problem in understanding Panini's speech (Panini came about 50 generations after our Vedic guy, in about 500 BCE), but the same Vedic speaker would find the prakrit of 500BCE alien.

Since Classical Sanskrit was kept deliberately unchanging (and therefore close to the Vedic language), most of what applies to Vedic Sanskrit also applies to Classical Sanskrit. Although we have examples of pre-Paninian sanskrit (the sanskrit of the Itihasas is called Epic Sanskrit, which is placed between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit), we do not have any literature in Prakrits until the buddhist canon (which was codified and written down in Pali around the 1st century AD). Prakrits are also found in fragments in the rock inscriptions of Ashoka c. 3rd-2nd century BCE.

Sangeet Rasik
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Post by Sangeet Rasik »

srkris wrote:There is no such thing as absolute perfection. A language that is more conservative is usually considered older than a lesser conservative one. This is true for all languages. The most conservative Tamil is the Tamil found in the Sangam anthologies. The most conservative sanskrit is vedic sanskrit. The most conservative Kannada is purva-hale-Kannada.
There is nothing called "most conservative Sanskrit". Vedic is revealed, period. That is it.

The loss of perfection is in the "hearing" (sruti) and oral transmission which are both subject to human imperfection (error). This leads to corruption in various degrees (e.g, Prakrits, Epic Sanskrit) or well-thought-out contraction (classical Paninian Sanskrit).

Yes, as you correctly point out, it is very important to note that Prakrits and Sanskrit (and all Indo-European languages) are parallel developments. It is incorrect to claim that Sanskrit was formalized out of Prakrit.

Finally, oral transmission of Vedic was not due to illiteracy. This is nonsense peddled by Western "scholars". The "yavanAni" writing may have been well known to Panini but there was indigenous writing in India. The Indus script (that's not indigenous according to you?) influenced the Brahmi script, and also influenced Aramaic and Greek scripts. The types of "evidence" claimed by linguists and epigraphers to "show" that the Brahmi script came from outside India show a high level of stupidity.

SR
Last edited by Sangeet Rasik on 10 Sep 2009, 12:43, edited 1 time in total.

srkris
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Post by srkris »

SR,

It is easy to rant about modern linguists, it is difficult to understand what they are saying. You are not alone there.

How can a person who doesnt respect intellect claim to defend it? You remind me of people who consider some animals (pets) as part of their own family while not failing to eat other animals everyday.

I'm a bit different. I consider all intellect (modern or ancient) valuable, and believe in the rigvedic saying "let good knowledge come to us from all sources"

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