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Sanskrit
Sanskrit language is truly a
fountainhead, if one surveys its three thousand years of its existence.
The story of the origin of Sanskrit began right from the Vedic age,
sailing through the post-Vedic years and centuries later till today. The
Aryans collected the mass of hymns, rituals and poems about their gods
in the four Vedas (10th century BC) which document the various dialects
that they brought to India (but that wasn’t the Sanskrit we know of
today). From the Punjab, where the Aryans settled first after they came
from Central Asia, their speech spread along the east as far as present
Bihar by about 600 BC. Obviously this Vedic or Old Indo-Aryan language
met with the language of the Dravidians (who were then not restricted to
just the southern regions) and Austrics, and some give and take
happened. The result was Prakrit or Middle Indo-Aryan dialect which soon
engulfed the whole country in the north, east and centre. The Aryan
invasion was moving towards completion.
Meanwhile, the ‘pure’ Aryans in Punjab were very unhappy
about their sacred language getting ‘defiled’. So between 8th
and 4th century BC, they came up with Classical Sanskrit, based on the
old Vedic speech. But for all practical purposes, the origin of the
language is taken to be the old Vedic Sanskrit.
But Prakrit dialects were already on their steady journey of spreading
and mixing. Buddhists picked up one of these dialects around the 6th
century BC and developed it into Pali. The process of simplification of
the dialects continued throughout the Middle Indo-Aryan stage,
culminating in the Apabhramsa stage in 600AD. Further modification of
the regional Apabhramsas during 600-1000AD gave rise to the New
Indo-Aryan languages of the present day.
But even while other languages were taking shape, Sanskrit continued to
be the vehicle of creative and all other scholarly work. The sheer
volume of work in Sanskrit is formidable. With the Vedas was laid the
foundation stone of Vedic literature and all Sanskrit literature
thereafter. From religion and philosophy to grammar, phonetics,
etymology, lexicography, astronomy, astrology, sociology, sex, politics,
arts and aesthetics, Sanskrit ruled. Sanskrit is also the language of
India’s two most talked about epics, the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata. The Puranas are perhaps the most interesting collection of
works in Sanskrit. The Puranas contain all the fodder for stories about
the Hindu gods and goddesses.
Literary activities burst forth with the playwright Bharata’s
(200BC) Natya Shastra, the Bible of dramatic criticism. The earliest
plays were those of Bhasa, but were soon overshadowed by Kalidasa’s
Shakuntala, a model for ages. History tells us that Kalidasa was the
greatest of fools in his early years. He is known to have hacked at the
very branch he was sitting on! Anyway, Shakuntala was a heroic play,
while Shudraka’s Mrichchhakatika, was a play of the social class.
Bhavabhuti (circa 700AD) was another well-known figure, his best being
Malatimadhava and Uttaramacharita, the latter based on the story of the
Ramayana.
Some of the greatest Sanskrit poems are Kalidasa’s Raghuvamsa and
Kumarasambhava, Kiratarjuniya of Bharavi (550AD), Sishupalavadha of
Magha (7th century AD) and Naishadhiyacharita of Sriharsha (12th century
AD). All of them draw from the Mahabharata, the source for many writers
even today. Shorter poems of great depth were composed on a single theme
like love, morality, detachment and sometimes of grave matters. The
earliest and best collections of such verses called Muktakas are those
of Bhartrihari and Amaruka.
Much of the early prose work in Sanskrit has not survived. Of the
remaining, some of the best are Vasavadatta of Subandhu, Kadambari and
Harshacharita of Bana (7th century AD) and Dasakumaracharita of Dandin
(7th century AD). The Panchatantra and Hitopadesha are collections of
wit and wisdom in the Indian style, teaching polity and proper conduct
through animal fables and aphorisms.
With a glorious life of over 3000 years, Sanskrit continues to be a
living language even today, bobbing up during Hindu ceremonies when
mantras (ritual verses) are chanted. And though restricted, it’s
still a medium of literary expression, but ‘great works’ have
long stopped being written.