Samskritam

In the wonderland of Samskrit  

The word संस्कृत means polished or refined. It is allied to words like संस्कृति (samskriti), meaning culture or civilization, and संस्कार (samskara), meaning purification ceremony or sacrament.

Most Indian languages, to a greater or lesser degree, trace their roots in Sanskrit. In that sense, more than a mother tongue, Sanskrit is a grandmother tongue.

Indeed, that influence extends beyond the boundaries of today’s India, to elsewhere in Asia. Nepal’s motto is जननी जन्मभूमिश्च स्वर्गादपी गरीयसी. This is taken from the Valmiki Ramayana and means, “The mother and the mother-land are superior to heaven.” 

The name of the national airline of Indonesia is Garuda, which is also a Samskrit word and is believed as a carrier of Bhagwan Vishnu. There are several such instances in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

The name of the Bangkok airport in Thailand is called “Swarna Bhoomi”, the land of Gold in English.

To understand the exalted status of Samskrit, it’d be nice to know what Justice Kuldeep Singh of the Supreme Court had to say in 1994 while delivering a judgment that was related to the teaching of Samskrit in government-run schools. 

“Learning of Samskrit is undoubtedly necessary to protect our heritage. The stream of our culture would get dried up if we were to discourage the study of Samskrit. Without the learning of Samskrit, it's not possible to decipher the Indian philosophy on which our culture and heritage are based.” 

 “Sanskrit is the thread on which the pearls of the necklace of Indian culture are strung; break the thread and all the pearls will be scattered, even lost forever.”

Dr. Lokesh Chandra 

William Jones in 1786 called Sanskrit a language “more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either.”

Rajiv Malhotra spells out in his book, “The Battle for Sanskrit”, what is at stake for Samskrit?

1.     Meditation Mantras: The importance of meditation mantras derives from the large body of evidence accumulated by practitioners over the centuries that they produce effects that ordinary sounds do not. Today, several scientists the world over researching on the meditation since last several years keep concluding what our rishis propounded. Thus these mantras are the building blocks of Samskrit.

2.     Yagna Mantras: Many rituals and practices involve Samskrit mantras chanted with specific intonations and precise steps. It’s not possible to substitute Samskrit with any other language and get the same results and same meaning.

3.     Indian Darshan or philosophy: Indian Darshana was conceived in Samskrit and is a part of our living tradition of creative innovations in many intellectual disciplines.

4.     Samskrit’s non-translatable categories are the genetic code in which our civilization is expressed. The integral unity of Samskrit and Samskriti is reflected across diverse realms such as architecture, dance, theatre, sculpture, poetry, and so forth. Examples of some words-Dharma(धर्म-is not religion), AtmA (आत्मा-is not soul), Murti (मूर्ति-is not idol), mAyA (माया-is not Illusion), Om(ॐ-is not Amen/Amin) etc.

5.     Discourses in Physical Science, Mathematics, Medicine, linguistics, etc: The enormous libraries of Samskrit comprise an impressive body of knowledge pertaining to both worldly and transcendental domains. Much of the knowledge is yet to be understood and appreciated by modern society.

6.     Living language for cultural production and ordinary communication: To this day, Bharatmuni’s Natya Shastra remains a means for teaching dance and music.

Some films also have been made in Samskrit such as “Adi Shankaracharya”, “Bhagavad Gita”, “Mudrarakshasa”, "Punyakoti" etc.

Today we all might have been talking to each other in Samskrit if the decision to make Samskrit a national language had not been lost by JUST ONE VOTE in India’s Constituent Assembly after our independence.

Today, there are seven villages in India that speak Samskrit. 

If Israel could revive the glory of its ancient language Hebrew, if Iranians still speak their ancient language, if Japanese and Chinese still use their ancient languages, why cannot we?

Samskrit is as easy as Chinese or as difficult as our mother tongue. It all depends on when does one begin to learn the language.

A Neuroscientist Explores the "Sanskrit Effect" 

MRI scans show that memorizing ancient mantras increases the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function.

Neuroscience shows how rigorous memorizing can help the brain. The term the ‘Sanskrit Effect’ was coined by neuroscientist James Hartzell, who studied 21 professionally qualified Sanskrit pandits. He discovered that memorizing Vedic mantras increases the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function, including short and long-term memory. This finding corroborates the beliefs of the Indian tradition which holds that memorizing and reciting mantras enhances memory and thinking.

As of now, India has a listing/ digitization of three million manuscripts and the estimated stock of manuscripts in India is 35 million. There are at least 60,000 manuscripts in Europe and another 1,50,000 elsewhere in South Asia. Ninety-five percent of these manuscripts have never been listed, collated, and translated.

If we think of all the literature available in this linguistic system, it would be a vast treasury useful not only to India but to the whole world: from the Vedas, the Vedangas, the Epics, the Kavya literature, drama, science, philosophy, aesthetics, indeed the endless knowledge in nearly all branches of human endeavor available in Sanskrit makes it a unique repository, the world’s heritage language. In fact, Sanskrit is conducive to all the four purusharthas or cardinal aims of life, Dharma, Artha, Kama, and Moksha, with its vast repositories of knowledge and guidance in each of these realms. Without Sanskrit, the fullest development of the human mind is almost impossible. 

Sanskrit is also the “great unifying force” in India, knitting a vast subcontinent from Kashmir to Kanyakumari, and Saurashtra to Kamarupa. Pointing out how the Chinese system of writing and modern Hebrew served to unify the newly formed nations of China and Israel respectively, we may as well ask why Sanskrit could not be expected to play a similar role in India. It was only Sanskrit that could play the role of unifying India: “This great inheritance of Sanskrit is the golden link joining up all the various provincial languages and literature and cultures, and it should not be allowed to be neglected and to go waste.”

I would conclude by quoting from what Will Durant, an American historian writing about India, had to say:

“India was the motherland of our race and Samskrit the mother of Europe’s languages; she was the mother of our philosophy, mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother through the Buddha, of the ideals, embodies in Christianity; mother through the village community of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.”

 Udit Shah

(reference: https://swarajyamag.com/culture/the-wonder-that-is-sanskrit)