Introduction to Sanskrit Language

• Sanskrit is an ancient Indo-Aryan language.
• It is a significant liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
• Today, it is one of the 22 official languages of India.
• The name "Sanskrit" means "refined", "consecrated" and "sanctified".
• Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry, drama, philosophy, and scientific texts.

Origins and History

• Sanskrit's origins can be traced back to Proto-Indo-Iranian, the ancestor of the Indo-Aryan and Iranian language families.
• The earliest form of Sanskrit is Vedic Sanskrit, found in the Rigveda, dating back to approximately 1500-1200 BCE.
• Classical Sanskrit, standardized by the grammarian Pāṇini in the 4th century BCE, became the primary literary language.
• Sanskrit served as a lingua franca among scholars and intellectuals across diverse regions of South and Southeast Asia.
• During the medieval period, Sanskrit's influence gradually declined as regional languages rose to prominence.
• However, it continued as a language of learning and scholarship, and it has seen a revival in modern times.

Sanskrit Grammar

• Sanskrit grammar is highly structured and complex.
• Pāṇini's Ashtadhyayi, a comprehensive grammar composed around the 4th century BCE, is the foundational text.
• Sanskrit grammar is primarily descriptive and generative, aiming to explain and generate correct forms.

Phonology

• Sanskrit has a rich phonological system with a wide range of sounds.
• It includes vowels, diphthongs, consonants (both stops and continuants), and nasal sounds.
• Sounds are classified by place and manner of articulation.
• Sanskrit distinguishes between short and long vowels, affecting word meaning.
• It also has a system of aspiration, where some consonants are pronounced with an audible release of breath.
• Sandhi (euphonic combination) is a crucial aspect, where sounds change at word or morpheme boundaries.

Morphology

• Sanskrit morphology is highly inflected.
• Nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs change form to indicate grammatical function.
• Nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), three numbers (singular, dual, plural), and eight cases (nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, locative, vocative).
• Verbs are inflected for tense, mood, voice, number, and person.
• Sanskrit employs a system of prefixes and suffixes to derive new words and modify meaning.
• Compound words (samāsas) are common, where two or more words combine to form a single lexical unit.

Syntax

• Sanskrit syntax allows relatively free word order due to its rich inflectional system.
• The verb typically comes at the end of the sentence, but variations are possible.
• Agreement between words (e.g., subject-verb agreement) is crucial for grammatical correctness.
• Case endings on nouns indicate their function in the sentence, such as subject, object, or instrument.
• The use of particles and conjunctions helps to connect clauses and express logical relationships.

Vocabulary

• Sanskrit vocabulary is extensive and includes words of native Indo-Aryan origin as well as loanwords.
• The language has a rich system of roots (dhātus) from which many words are derived.
• Sanskrit has significantly influenced the vocabulary of many modern Indo-Aryan languages, such as Hindi.
• Many Sanskrit words have cognates in other Indo-European languages, reflecting their shared ancestry.

Declension

• Noun declension in Sanskrit involves changing the form of a noun based on its gender, number, and case.
• Each combination of gender, number, and case has a specific ending that is added to the noun stem.
• There are different patterns of declension for nouns, depending on the final sound of the stem.
• Pronouns also undergo declension, with distinct forms for different genders, numbers, and cases.

Conjugation

• Verb conjugation in Sanskrit involves changing the form of a verb based on its tense, mood, voice, number, and person.
• Verbs are classified into different classes, each with its own set of conjugational endings.
• Sanskrit verbs have ten tenses and moods, including present, past, future, imperative, and optative.
• The three voices in Sanskrit are active, passive, and middle.
• Verb endings indicate the number and person of the subject performing the action.

Sandhi

• Sandhi is the process of phonetic combination that occurs at the junction of word-final and word-initial sounds.
• There are two main types of sandhi: external sandhi (between words) and internal sandhi (within words).
• Sandhi rules specify how sounds change or combine in different contexts.
• Vowel sandhi involves changes to vowels, such as lengthening, shortening, or diphthongization.
• Consonant sandhi involves changes to consonants, such as assimilation or deletion.

Compounds (Samāsas)

• Compounds (Samāsas) are combinations of two or more words into a single lexical unit.
• There are several types of compounds in Sanskrit, each with its own syntactic structure.
• Dvandva compounds are copulative, combining words with equal status, such as "father and mother".
• Tatpurusha compounds are determinative, where one word modifies or specifies the other, such as "king's man".
• Karmadharaya compounds are descriptive, where one word describes or qualifies the other, such as "lotus-like face".
• Bahuvrihi compounds are exocentric, where the compound as a whole describes something else, such as "one with a beautiful wife".
• Avyayibhava compounds are adverbial, where the compound acts as an adverb, such as "according to rule".