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profsummergig 5 hours ago [-]
Taleb says that some languages are only meant for ritual.
IMHO, Sanskrit quotes sound cool to those who know Prakrit languages just like Latin and Greek quotations sound cool to those who know Romance languages (and even to those who know English, like myself).
Yes, there is a revival, and an interest. But Sanskrit has always been known to the "priestly" class even though they never conversed in it. This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations. IMHO.
FlyingSnake 4 hours ago [-]
The majority of surviving Sanskrit literature is actually secular like Poems, Dramas, science and mathematics.
Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan, in its heyday. Otherwise it wouldn’t be part of the liturgical traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Nastika traditions.
Why would Sudraka,Vatsayana, Brhathari write in Sanskrit if no one spoke it?
ashishb 3 hours ago [-]
> Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan, in its heyday. Otherwise it wouldn’t be part of the liturgical traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Nastika traditions.
I think, and it is just my speculation, that for most of Indian History, Sanskrit was the link language.
Just like "Latin" in the USA and Europe of the early 17th and 18th centuries, when all academic instructions were carried out in Latin!
So, nobody used Sanskrit as the primary language, but everyone could or knew someone who could convert Sanskrit to the local dialect.
It is almost like how Chinese and Colombian traders might sign a contract for coffee purchase in English. Neither might use English in most of their daily operations.
DiscourseFan 3 hours ago [-]
Yes this makes a lot of sense, if I recall correctly the first grammar of Telegu was written in Sanskrit, and many South India languages use a lot of Sanskrit words, but of course they are not intelligible if you don't know the grammar.
busymom0 2 hours ago [-]
I grew up in India and till grade 8 (or 9? Can't remember), it was mandatory for me to take Sanskrit lessons along with English and Hindi.
ColdStream 3 hours ago [-]
My favorite use of Sankrit is the plant 'Ashwagandha'. Sounds fancy but it means 'Smell of a horse' as that is what it smells like.
lioeters 3 hours ago [-]
The revival of Hebrew is a counter example, of a "ritual" language that managed to become a practical daily language for written and spoken communication.
DiscourseFan 3 hours ago [-]
Biblical Hebrew has no vowel markings (well it does, but they are an interpretation), so it cannot be used in daily speech. Modern Hebrew is distinct from Biblical Hebrew. Sanskrit itself does not have much use as an actual language because it lacks a lot of the features that, say, Hindi or English or Ancient Greek have, it has 7 past tenses that are basically identical and it does not make fine distinctions between moods, which it does not have enough of. Only Vedic Sanskrit could actually be used as a language, but similarly to Ancient Greek there are relatively few extant texts in Vedic Sanskrit and certainly the task of learning the language to fluency would be monstrous compared to studying a living language; and one that few, if any, would be willing to devote their life towards, especially considering that Classical Sanskrit already works fine enough as a literary language and is only so practical for that purpose because it has such a strictly defined grammar.
dinkelberg 1 hours ago [-]
> Biblical Hebrew has no vowel markings (well it does, but they are an interpretation), so it cannot be used in daily speech. Modern Hebrew is distinct from Biblical Hebrew
The same can be said about Latin (of which we do not exactly know how they used to pronounce words), or any other language. How to pronounce letters or words is always "interpretation" (or more accurately, tradition).
lioeters 2 hours ago [-]
I see, very interesting, thanks! I've been curious about Sanskrit "indirectly" from learning about root words in Slavic (and other) languages, as they call it proto-Indo-European roots. Similarly with ancient Greek or Latin, I enjoy learning the etymology of many of the words in modern languages like Spanish, French, etc.
smokeyfish 5 hours ago [-]
There's always Lithuanian.
alephnerd 5 hours ago [-]
Or Koshur - it still retains archaic word forms, syntax, and roots that fell out of other Indo-Iranian languages.
ralfd 3 hours ago [-]
Context?
ivewonyoung 1 hours ago [-]
Lithuanian underwent fewer changes than other European languages languages from the same root language that begat all the proto-Indo-European languages. So it shares a lot of similar words with Sanskrit which is extremely well preserved.
There’s some Sanskrit texts that don’t have English translations that I’d really like to read so I was going to use an LLM to create translations. Does anyone know how well LLMs handle Sanskrit or have any suggestions? Are any particular models better than others? Especially because I know that ancient texts sometimes use different dialects of Sanskrit and have different challenges.
Yesterday in HN "what are you working on", dr_dshiv presented SourceLibrary [1] which has tons of machine translation of beautiful texts.
Here's my "Let Me SourceLibrary That For You" using their Librarian search which presents the "The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (The Expanded Mokṣopāya)" [2]
ETA: My apologies, I went deeper and the links therein are scans/ocr of English translations of that text. The library does have other Sanskrit translations, but not of that?
No, LLMs do not handle low resource / low corpus languages, including Sanskrit well.
orsenthil 3 hours ago [-]
There is also, Sourashtra, a surviving and a thriving of dialect of Prakrit (Souraseni Prakrit), which was a common man Sanskrit. Buddha is believed to taught in Prakrit.
thisumang 3 hours ago [-]
The amount of advertisements instantly made me close the page before reading.
Alien1Being 47 minutes ago [-]
My South Indian Dravidian language Malayalam, is around 50% Sanskrit words.
Technically any Sanskrit word is also a Malayalam word.
Examples of Sanskrit words we would use daily in conversation with a fluent Malayalam speaker include:
Pusthakam (Sanskrit: Pustakam) - Book
Bhāryā - Wife
Swapnam (Sanskrit: Swapnam) - Dream
Agni (Sanskrit: Agni) - Fire
Varṇam - Color
Samayam (Sanskrit: Samayam) - Time
Vidhyālaya (Sanskrit: Vidyālaya) - School
And of course many personal names ( including mine, my wife's and my children's ) are in Sanskrit.
We have a word for this phenomenon : "Manipravalam is a medieval South Indian literary style and hybrid language that blended Sanskrit with local Dravidian vernaculars—primarily Malayalam and Tamil. Translating to "ruby and coral," it symbolized the seamless, decorative intertwining of the local tongue's grammar with the eloquent vocabulary of Sanskrit"
There are thousands of other Sanskrit words in daily use in Malayalam.
"bodham, santoṣam, saṅkaṭam, sneham, iṣṭam, premam, deṣyam, (Skt : dveṣyam) kopam, viṣamam, saṁśayam, bhayam, buddhi, dhairyam, ālocana, cinta, vicāram, vedana, daya(vu), dākṣiṇyam, abhimānam, mānam, sukham, tṛpti, manass, antass, śānti, samādhānam, svairam, sahatāpam, paribhavam, parāti (a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit; parātī, act of rejection) duḥkham, ātmā(vu), āgraham, virodham, prayāsam, kaṣṭam, manaḥprayāsam, manassamādhānam, manośūnyam (this is a common phrase in some dialects and completely absent in others, it refers to the act of not having mental happiness in anything) dhārṣṭyam (I am surprised how mallus still use such tough words) puccham, (means “tail”/”inferior” literally, used in the sense of contempt) ahaṅkāram, bhāvam, svabhāvam, guṇam, āśvāsam, āśaṅka, (colloquial in some dialects) ākulam, (colloquial in some other dialects) ākrāntam, ārtti, krūram, vīryam, ākāṃkṣa, vātsalyam, vāśi, tātparyam, svapnam, saṅkalpam "
"vṛtti, sampatt-, sāmpattikam (this is a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit vṛddhi rule, the Sanskrit word should have been sāmpadikam) svatt-, prakṛti, praśnam, upayogam, svantam, svātantryam, sādhanam, sammānam, sammatam, saṅgītam, pratīkṣa, pradhānam, ādyam, avasānam, divasam, rātri, sambhavam, samayam, kālam, vidham, vidhi, śīlam, rīti, svasthata, asvasthata, sūryan, candran, bhūmi, guḷika (meaning “round”, same root as gola) sūkṣ-ikkuka, rakṣa, surakṣa, upadeśam, lābham, prayojanam, āvaśyam, atyāvaśyam, adhikam, sāram, nissāram, tatkālam, prasiddham,upakāram, anugraham, varam, dānam, śāpam, śalyam, aṅgīkāram, anveṣaṇam, ākrama-, akramam, parākramam, yuddham, tarkam, sallāpam, niścayam, jīvitam, mārgam, uccam, śabdam, āghoṣam, sādhu, puṇyam, pāpam, svargam, narakam, pātāḷam, prakāśam (more colloquial words are veṭṭam, veḷiccam, all are equally frequent according to dialects) viśvāsam, kāryam, śuddham, vaśam, sāmarthyam, sādhakam, dikk, diśa, vākk, svaram, ābharaṇam, viparītam, nāśam, vārtta (for “news” : made using vṛddhi from Sanskrit varta- “present affair”, compare with NIA bāt) sāmyam, trāss (from Skt tulās) saṃsāram, vartamānam, anusaraṇa, anuvādam, anāvaśyam, alpam, svalpam, abhiprāyam, dhārālam (an old Sanskrit dialectal word used today only in Malayalam, the opposite of viralam) and hundreds more. (even out of the world Sanskrit-Malayalam combination words like vṛtti-kEṭu, buddhi-muṭṭu, piṭi-vāśi)"
throwawayamzn1 5 hours ago [-]
It is caused by the ability of LLM to translate it quite accurately
selimthegrim 3 hours ago [-]
>According to Tripathi, the problem of Sanskrit being narrowed to religion is a colonial inheritance. British Orientalists, he argues, created an image of Sanskrit as the language of ritual and one religious community, ignoring its vast Buddhist, Jain, Carvaka, scientific, theatrical, poetic and philosophical corpus.
I don't understand how you can take what happened to AH Dani at BHU and say this with a straight face.
tecoholic 2 hours ago [-]
From down south of India - the Proto Tamil language is the basis for modern Tamil, Malayalam and others. We still have Sanskrit being used by Temple priests. One of changes in the last decade is - Tamilnadu finally has temples with priests using Tamil for religious rituals. Sanskrit was gate kept by the priestly class. It’s not a colonial reframing.
thesmtsolver2 2 hours ago [-]
Look forward to Tamil being used in mosques and the Adan being in Tamil instead of Arabic.
iamshs 2 hours ago [-]
Let's go a bit back and try to understand what happened with Buddhists of India. A whole religion exterminated from such a vast land.
thesmtsolver2 2 hours ago [-]
Buddhism wasn’t exterminated due to violence like Zoroastrianism from Iran.
Really just a tribute to the syncretic capacity of Hinduism.
thesmtsolver2 1 hours ago [-]
Not a lot got absorbed into Hinduism though. Look at the link for factors that contributed.
Jainism and Sikhism have survived and didn’t get absorbed into Hinduism.
selimthegrim 15 minutes ago [-]
You do know iamshs is Sikh, correct?
iamshs 2 hours ago [-]
Look at the IIT Bombay photo, in the background is the colonial era copy of Lady Britannia - "Bharat Mata". The fact article is hosted on Open Magazine, I was already a bit suspect. So the full context missing from headline is - "Under Hindu Nationalism".
What the article misses is what some of these accounts post. SanskritSparrow channels his followers on stories to some kooky post which claims to have decoded Indus Valley Script as Sanskrit. Learned persons better be careful about the intent here, the rider that is riding the "ancient" horse into the present is as much trying to invade intellectual spaces, as the actual Rishis were trying with the lands. Besides, the appeal is only among upper caste Hindus. What else is a Dalit going to do with Sanskrit? No literature is written for them in Sanskrit. They're not even allowed learning it, it is an exclusive domain of Brahmins. What will Dalits get from reading Vedas and finding out how they are termed as devils and filed under a degraded caste pyramid? It's an article borne out of very rosy lens. A Dalit Ambedkarite writer should research the accounts mentioned and tell us what the subsurface vibe looks like here, is it the same old wine in new glass?
alephnerd 5 hours ago [-]
Something that isn't called out but is playing a role as well is the rise of humanities and interdisciplinary research in India. 20-30 years ago, specializing in ancient languages and texts from a CompLing perspective or a humanities perspective just didn't occur.
As India grew richer, the newer generation of liberal arts colleges (eg. Ashoka) and humanities programs in public universities (eg. IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, JNU) started attracting and hiring Western educated faculty and researchers (Indian as well as Foreigners) to help revitalize interest in humanities and social sciences.
India also now has a new generation philanthropists who are starting to donate to this kind of research (eg. Murthy and the "Murty Classical Library of India" at Harvard).
There is a similar revitalization for older texts in Tamizh, Telugu, Koshur, Pahari, Tibetan, etc as well.
lioeters 3 hours ago [-]
That's fascinating to learn. I'm curious, is there a political angle to the revival of some of the languages? The posted article mentions "values and traditions" associated with Sanskrit, and I imagine some religions and cultures are motivated to bring back languages for..not to say "selfish", but for their own survival and spread of ideas.
alephnerd 3 hours ago [-]
There is a political aspect to it as well, but it's overstated to a certain extent.
Most of these humanities programs are being created via philanthropy from alumni or business families now thinking about their legacy.
Also, now that India isn't as poor as it was previously, it's unsurprising that a new generation of humanities and social sciences researchers are choosing to take roles in India versus abroad.
orsenthil 3 hours ago [-]
> India isn't as poor as it was previously
India 2020, did happen.
selimthegrim 4 hours ago [-]
What about Prakrit and Punjabi? I knew a guy at UCSB, Gurinder Singh Mann who taught me to read Punjabi. Nice guy (to me) but got himself in a lot of trouble for many different reasons.
ashishb 4 hours ago [-]
> What about Prakrit and Punjabi?
There is no official "Prakrit", by definition of the term itself.
"Prakrit" just means "natural" and the way I understand it, was the term for all colloquial dialects/languages across India.
IMHO, Sanskrit quotes sound cool to those who know Prakrit languages just like Latin and Greek quotations sound cool to those who know Romance languages (and even to those who know English, like myself).
Yes, there is a revival, and an interest. But Sanskrit has always been known to the "priestly" class even though they never conversed in it. This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations. IMHO.
Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan, in its heyday. Otherwise it wouldn’t be part of the liturgical traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Nastika traditions.
Why would Sudraka,Vatsayana, Brhathari write in Sanskrit if no one spoke it?
I think, and it is just my speculation, that for most of Indian History, Sanskrit was the link language.
Just like "Latin" in the USA and Europe of the early 17th and 18th centuries, when all academic instructions were carried out in Latin!
So, nobody used Sanskrit as the primary language, but everyone could or knew someone who could convert Sanskrit to the local dialect.
It is almost like how Chinese and Colombian traders might sign a contract for coffee purchase in English. Neither might use English in most of their daily operations.
The same can be said about Latin (of which we do not exactly know how they used to pronounce words), or any other language. How to pronounce letters or words is always "interpretation" (or more accurately, tradition).
https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/v2/C4D22AQGncdnVV2H6Mg/fee...
Other languages like English mutated too much so it shares fewer similarities to Sanskrit.
Vedic Sanskrit: Devas adadat datas; Devas dat dhanas.
Lithuanian: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos duonos.
English Translation: God gave teeth; God will give bread.
West Frisian: Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk.
Modern English: Butter, bread, and green cheese is good English and good Frisian.
This, but also social sciences and interdisciplinary research (especially in the NLP, CompLing, and ML space).
https://sanskritclub.iitr.ac.in/course/Subhashitam/uview
"A third elective is chosen from Accelerated Classical Greek/Italian/German, Sanskrit, ..."
https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/life-at-grammar/academic/
My children had a great time there.
The one I’m mostly interested in translating is called the Moksopaya, here’s the Sanskrit on GRETIL: https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastr...
Here's my "Let Me SourceLibrary That For You" using their Librarian search which presents the "The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha (The Expanded Mokṣopāya)" [2]
ETA: My apologies, I went deeper and the links therein are scans/ocr of English translations of that text. The library does have other Sanskrit translations, but not of that?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48889335
[2] https://sourcelibrary.org/librarian?thread=6a56c578a50845441...
Technically any Sanskrit word is also a Malayalam word.
Examples of Sanskrit words we would use daily in conversation with a fluent Malayalam speaker include:
Pusthakam (Sanskrit: Pustakam) - Book
Bhāryā - Wife
Swapnam (Sanskrit: Swapnam) - Dream
Agni (Sanskrit: Agni) - Fire
Varṇam - Color
Samayam (Sanskrit: Samayam) - Time
Vidhyālaya (Sanskrit: Vidyālaya) - School
And of course many personal names ( including mine, my wife's and my children's ) are in Sanskrit.
We have a word for this phenomenon : "Manipravalam is a medieval South Indian literary style and hybrid language that blended Sanskrit with local Dravidian vernaculars—primarily Malayalam and Tamil. Translating to "ruby and coral," it symbolized the seamless, decorative intertwining of the local tongue's grammar with the eloquent vocabulary of Sanskrit"
There are thousands of other Sanskrit words in daily use in Malayalam.
"bodham, santoṣam, saṅkaṭam, sneham, iṣṭam, premam, deṣyam, (Skt : dveṣyam) kopam, viṣamam, saṁśayam, bhayam, buddhi, dhairyam, ālocana, cinta, vicāram, vedana, daya(vu), dākṣiṇyam, abhimānam, mānam, sukham, tṛpti, manass, antass, śānti, samādhānam, svairam, sahatāpam, paribhavam, parāti (a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit; parātī, act of rejection) duḥkham, ātmā(vu), āgraham, virodham, prayāsam, kaṣṭam, manaḥprayāsam, manassamādhānam, manośūnyam (this is a common phrase in some dialects and completely absent in others, it refers to the act of not having mental happiness in anything) dhārṣṭyam (I am surprised how mallus still use such tough words) puccham, (means “tail”/”inferior” literally, used in the sense of contempt) ahaṅkāram, bhāvam, svabhāvam, guṇam, āśvāsam, āśaṅka, (colloquial in some dialects) ākulam, (colloquial in some other dialects) ākrāntam, ārtti, krūram, vīryam, ākāṃkṣa, vātsalyam, vāśi, tātparyam, svapnam, saṅkalpam "
"vṛtti, sampatt-, sāmpattikam (this is a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit vṛddhi rule, the Sanskrit word should have been sāmpadikam) svatt-, prakṛti, praśnam, upayogam, svantam, svātantryam, sādhanam, sammānam, sammatam, saṅgītam, pratīkṣa, pradhānam, ādyam, avasānam, divasam, rātri, sambhavam, samayam, kālam, vidham, vidhi, śīlam, rīti, svasthata, asvasthata, sūryan, candran, bhūmi, guḷika (meaning “round”, same root as gola) sūkṣ-ikkuka, rakṣa, surakṣa, upadeśam, lābham, prayojanam, āvaśyam, atyāvaśyam, adhikam, sāram, nissāram, tatkālam, prasiddham,upakāram, anugraham, varam, dānam, śāpam, śalyam, aṅgīkāram, anveṣaṇam, ākrama-, akramam, parākramam, yuddham, tarkam, sallāpam, niścayam, jīvitam, mārgam, uccam, śabdam, āghoṣam, sādhu, puṇyam, pāpam, svargam, narakam, pātāḷam, prakāśam (more colloquial words are veṭṭam, veḷiccam, all are equally frequent according to dialects) viśvāsam, kāryam, śuddham, vaśam, sāmarthyam, sādhakam, dikk, diśa, vākk, svaram, ābharaṇam, viparītam, nāśam, vārtta (for “news” : made using vṛddhi from Sanskrit varta- “present affair”, compare with NIA bāt) sāmyam, trāss (from Skt tulās) saṃsāram, vartamānam, anusaraṇa, anuvādam, anāvaśyam, alpam, svalpam, abhiprāyam, dhārālam (an old Sanskrit dialectal word used today only in Malayalam, the opposite of viralam) and hundreds more. (even out of the world Sanskrit-Malayalam combination words like vṛtti-kEṭu, buddhi-muṭṭu, piṭi-vāśi)"
I don't understand how you can take what happened to AH Dani at BHU and say this with a straight face.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianHistory/comments/18rdfjx/hist...
Jainism and Sikhism have survived and didn’t get absorbed into Hinduism.
What the article misses is what some of these accounts post. SanskritSparrow channels his followers on stories to some kooky post which claims to have decoded Indus Valley Script as Sanskrit. Learned persons better be careful about the intent here, the rider that is riding the "ancient" horse into the present is as much trying to invade intellectual spaces, as the actual Rishis were trying with the lands. Besides, the appeal is only among upper caste Hindus. What else is a Dalit going to do with Sanskrit? No literature is written for them in Sanskrit. They're not even allowed learning it, it is an exclusive domain of Brahmins. What will Dalits get from reading Vedas and finding out how they are termed as devils and filed under a degraded caste pyramid? It's an article borne out of very rosy lens. A Dalit Ambedkarite writer should research the accounts mentioned and tell us what the subsurface vibe looks like here, is it the same old wine in new glass?
As India grew richer, the newer generation of liberal arts colleges (eg. Ashoka) and humanities programs in public universities (eg. IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, JNU) started attracting and hiring Western educated faculty and researchers (Indian as well as Foreigners) to help revitalize interest in humanities and social sciences.
India also now has a new generation philanthropists who are starting to donate to this kind of research (eg. Murthy and the "Murty Classical Library of India" at Harvard).
There is a similar revitalization for older texts in Tamizh, Telugu, Koshur, Pahari, Tibetan, etc as well.
Most of these humanities programs are being created via philanthropy from alumni or business families now thinking about their legacy.
Also, now that India isn't as poor as it was previously, it's unsurprising that a new generation of humanities and social sciences researchers are choosing to take roles in India versus abroad.
India 2020, did happen.
There is no official "Prakrit", by definition of the term itself. "Prakrit" just means "natural" and the way I understand it, was the term for all colloquial dialects/languages across India.
"Sanskrit", on the other hand, meant "cultured" and its grammar, at least for the last 2500 years, is strictly defined by Panini (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A%E1%B9%A3%E1%B9%AD%C4%81dhy%C...)