Sanskrit: Ancient Indo-Aryan language of South Asia
Sanskrit is an ancient Indo-Aryan language that originated in the Swat and northern Punjab regions of Pakistan.
It is considered sacred by Hindus. Many languages in Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh are derived from Sanskrit. Today, only about 14,000 people use it as their daily language. It is also one of the 22 officially recognised languages of India.
| Sanskrit | |
|---|---|
| संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam | |
_in_Sanskrit.svg) The word Sanskrit (संस्कृतम्) written in Devanagari. | |
| Region | South Asia |
Native speakers | 14,000 (2001) |
Indo-European
| |
| No native script. Today it is usually written in Devanagari, but it was also previously written in various Brāhmī-based scripts. | |
| Official status | |
Official language in | One of the 22 scheduled languages of India. |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-1 | sa |
| ISO 639-2 | san |
| ISO 639-3 | san |
| Part of a series on | |
|---|---|
| |
| Constitutionally recognised languages of India | |
| Category | |
| Scheduled Languages | |
| A | |
| Related | |
| Official languages of India |
Sanskrit is a standardized dialect of Old Indo-Aryan and has a linguistic ancestry that can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European. The Indo-European Aryan migration theory proposes that the Indo-Europeans migrated from the Central Asian steppes into South Asia during the early 2nd millennium BC and brought the Indo-European language Sanskrit with them. The main script used to write Sanskrit today is Devanāgarī. Historically, it was also written in the Brāhmī and Kharoshti scripts.
William Jones, working as a judge in India in the 18th century, studied Sanskrit and recognised its similarities to Latin, Greek and other European languages. That led to the Indo-European languages being recognised as a group of related languages stretching from Europe to India.[source?]
Literature
Sanskrit literature includes poetry and drama and has also scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts. Sanskrit continues to be widely used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and also some Buddhist and Jain practice in the form of hymns and chants.
Grammar
Sanskrit has a very complex grammar, with eight grammatical cases, three grammatical genders, and three grammatical numbers. Words are also described based on their qualities. Sanskrit is considered highly scientific, words in a sentence can describe the subject's number, gender and action.
References
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