Sanskrit reveals the forgotten meaning of Russian words (2 photos). Sanskrit and Russian

Sanskrit is an ancient literary language that existed in India. It has a complex grammar and is considered the progenitor of many modern languages. In literal translation, this word means "perfect" or "processed". It has the status of the language of Hinduism and some other cults.

Spread of the language

The Sanskrit language was originally predominantly spoken in the northern part of India, being one of the languages ​​for rock inscriptions dating back to the 1st century BC. Interestingly, researchers do not consider it as the language of a particular people, but as a specific culture that has been common among the elite strata of society since antiquity.

Mostly this culture is represented by religious texts related to Hinduism, as well as Greek or Latin in Europe. The Sanskrit language in the East has become a way of intercultural communication between religious figures and scientists.

Today it is one of the 22 official languages ​​in India. It is worth noting that its grammar is archaic and very complex, but the vocabulary is stylistically diverse and rich.

The Sanskrit language has had a significant influence on other Indian languages, mainly in the field of vocabulary. Today it is used in religious cults, the humanities, and only in a narrow circle as a conversational one.

It is in Sanskrit that many artistic, philosophical, religious works of Indian authors, works on science and jurisprudence were written, which influenced the development of the culture of all of Central and Southeast Asia, Western Europe.

Works on grammar and vocabulary are collected by the ancient Indian linguist Panini in the work "Octateuch". These were the most famous works in the world on the study of any language, which had a significant impact on the linguistic disciplines and the emergence of morphology in Europe.

Interestingly, there is no single system of writing in Sanskrit. This is explained by the fact that the works of art and philosophical works that existed at that time were transmitted exclusively orally. And if there was a need to write down the text, the local alphabet was used.

It was only at the end of the 19th century that Devanagari became established as the script for Sanskrit. Most likely, this happened under the influence of Europeans, who preferred this particular alphabet. According to a common hypothesis, Devanagari was brought to India in the 5th century BC by merchants who arrived from the Middle East. But even after mastering writing, many Indians continued to memorize texts in the old fashioned way.

Sanskrit was the language of literary monuments by which one can form an idea of ​​ancient India. The oldest script for Sanskrit that has come down to our time is called Brahmi. It is in this way that the famous monument of ancient Indian history called "The Ashoka Inscriptions" was recorded, which is 33 inscriptions carved on the walls of caves, by order of the Indian king Ashoka. This is the oldest surviving monument of Indian writing and the first proof of the existence of Buddhism.

History of occurrence

The ancient language Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language family, it is considered to be the Indo-Iranian branch. He had a significant influence on most modern Indian languages, primarily Marathi, Hindi, Kashmiri, Nepali, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu and even Romani.

It is believed that Sanskrit is the oldest form of the once common language. Once within the diverse Indo-European family, Sanskrit underwent sound changes similar to other languages. Many scholars believe that the original speakers of ancient Sanskrit came to the territory of modern Pakistan and India at the very beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. As evidence for this theory, they cite a close relationship with the Slavic and Baltic languages, as well as the presence of borrowings from the Finno-Ugric languages ​​that do not belong to Indo-European.

In some studies of linguists, the similarity of the Russian language and Sanskrit is especially emphasized. It is believed that they have many common Indo-European words, with the help of which objects of fauna and flora are designated. True, many scholars adhere to the opposite point of view, believing that the speakers of the ancient form of the Indian language Sanskrit were the indigenous inhabitants of India, linking them with the Indian civilization.

Another meaning of the word "Sanskrit" is "the ancient Indo-Aryan language". It is to the Indo-Aryan group of languages ​​that Sanskrit belongs to the majority of scientists. Many dialects originated from it, which existed in parallel with the related ancient Iranian language.

Determining which language is Sanskrit, many linguists come to the conclusion that in ancient times in the north of modern India there was another Indo-Aryan language. Only he could transfer to modern Hindi some part of his vocabulary, and even phonetic composition.

Similarities with Russian

According to various studies of linguists, the similarity between the Russian language and Sanskrit is great. Up to 60 percent of Sanskrit words have the same pronunciation and meaning as Russian words. It is well known that one of the first to study this phenomenon was Natalya Guseva, Doctor of Historical Sciences, a specialist in Indian culture. Once she accompanied an Indian scholar on a tourist trip to the Russian North, who at some point refused the services of an interpreter, saying that he was happy to hear living and pure Sanskrit so far from home. Since that moment, Guseva began to study this phenomenon, now in many studies the similarity between Sanskrit and the Russian language is convincingly proved.

Some even believe that the Russian North has become the ancestral home of all mankind. The relationship of the northern Russian dialects with the oldest language known to mankind is proved by many scientists. Some suggest that Sanskrit and Russian are much closer than it might initially seem. For example, they say that it was not the Old Russian language that originated from Sanskrit, but exactly the opposite.

There are indeed many similar words in Sanskrit and Russian. Linguists note that words from the Russian language today can easily describe almost the entire sphere of human mental functioning, as well as its relationship with the surrounding nature, which is the main thing in the spiritual culture of any nation.

Sanskrit is similar to the Russian language, but, arguing that it was the Old Russian language that became the founder of the most ancient Indian language, researchers often use frankly populist statements that only those who fight against the Rus, helping to turn the Russian people into animals deny these facts. Such scientists frighten with the coming World War, which is being waged on all fronts. With all the similarities between Sanskrit and the Russian language, most likely, we have to say that it was Sanskrit that became the founder and progenitor of the Old Russian dialects. Not the other way around, as some would argue. So, when determining whose language it is, Sanskrit, the main thing is to use only scientific facts, and not go into politics.

Fighters for the purity of Russian vocabulary insist that kinship with Sanskrit will help cleanse the language of harmful borrowings, vulgarizing and polluting factors.

Examples of language kinship

Now, using a good example, let's see how similar Sanskrit and Slavic are. Take the word "angry". According to Ozhegov's dictionary, it means "to be irritated, angry, to feel anger towards someone." At the same time, it is obvious that the root part of the word "heart" is from the word "heart".

"Heart" is a Russian word that comes from the Sanskrit "hridaya", thus they have the same root -srd- and -hrd-. In a broad sense, the Sanskrit concept of "hridaya" included the concepts of soul and mind. That is why in Russian the word "angry" has a pronounced heart affect, which becomes quite logical if you look at the connection with the ancient Indian language.

But why then do the word "angry" have such a pronounced negative effect? It turns out that even the Indian Brahmins connected passionate affection among themselves in a single pair with hatred and anger. In Hindu psychology, malice, hatred and passionate love are considered emotional correlates that complement each other. Hence the well-known Russian expression: "From love to hate is one step." Thus, with the help of linguistic analysis, it is possible to understand the origin of Russian words associated with the ancient Indian language. Such are the studies of the similarities between Sanskrit and the Russian language. They prove that these languages ​​are related.

The Lithuanian language and Sanskrit are similar to each other, since initially Lithuanian practically did not differ from Old Russian, it was one of the regional dialects, similar to modern northern dialects.

Vedic Sanskrit

Particular attention in this article should be given to Vedic Sanskrit. You can get acquainted with the Vedic analogue of this language in several monuments of ancient Indian literature, which are collections of sacrificial formulas, hymns, religious treatises, for example, the Upanishads.

Most of these works are written in the so-called New Vedic or Middle Vedic languages. Vedic Sanskrit is very different from classical Sanskrit. The linguist Panini generally considered these languages ​​to be different, and today many scholars consider Vedic and classical Sanskrit as variations of dialects of one ancient language. At the same time, the languages ​​themselves are very similar to each other. According to the most common version, classical Sanskrit just came from the Vedic.

Among the Vedic literary monuments, the Rig Veda is officially recognized as the very first. It is extremely difficult to date it with accuracy, and, therefore, it is difficult to estimate where the history of Vedic Sanskrit should be calculated from. In the early era of its existence, sacred texts were not written down, but simply spoken aloud and memorized, they are memorized even today.

Modern linguists distinguish several historical strata in the Vedic language based on the stylistic features of texts and grammar. It is generally accepted that the first nine books of the Rig Veda were created precisely on

Epic Sanskrit

The epic ancient language Sanskrit is a transitional form from Vedic Sanskrit to Classical. A form that is the latest version of Vedic Sanskrit. It went through a certain linguistic evolution, for example, at some historical period, subjunctives disappeared from it.

This variant of Sanskrit is a pre-classical form, it was common in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Some linguists define it as a Late Vedic language.

It is generally accepted that it was the original form of this Sanskrit that was studied by the ancient Indian linguist Panini, who can be confidently called the first philologist of antiquity. He described the phonological and grammatical features of Sanskrit, preparing a work that was as accurate as possible and shocked many by its formalism. The structure of his treatise is an absolute analogue of modern linguistic works devoted to similar studies. However, it took modern science thousands of years to achieve the same accuracy and scientific approach.

Panini describes the language that he himself spoke, already at that time actively using Vedic turns, but not considering them archaic and obsolete. It is during this time period that Sanskrit undergoes active normalization and orderliness. It is in epic Sanskrit that such popular works as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, which are considered the basis of ancient Indian literature, are written today.

Modern linguists often pay attention to the fact that the language in which epic works are written is very different from the version presented in the works of Panini. This discrepancy is usually explained by the so-called innovations that occurred under the influence of the Prakrits.

It is worth noting that, in a certain sense, the ancient Indian epic itself contains a large number of prakritisms, that is, borrowings that penetrate into it from the common language. In this it differs greatly from classical Sanskrit. At the same time, Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit was the literary language in the Middle Ages. Most of the early Buddhist texts were created on it, which eventually assimilated to classical Sanskrit to one degree or another.

Classical Sanskrit

Sanskrit is the language of God, many Indian writers, scientists, philosophers, and religious figures are convinced of this.

There are several varieties of it. The first examples of classical Sanskrit reach us from the 2nd century BC. In the comments of the religious philosopher and founder of yoga, Patanjali, which he left on the grammar of Panini, one can find the first studies in this area. Patanjali claims that Sanskrit is a living language at the time, but it may eventually be supplanted by various dialectal forms. In this treatise, he acknowledges the existence of Prakrits, that is, dialects that influenced the development of ancient Indian languages. Due to the use of colloquial forms, the language begins to narrow, and the grammatical notation is standardized.

It is at this point that Sanskrit freezes in its development, turning into a classical form, which Patanjali himself designates with a term meaning "completed", "finished", "perfectly made". For example, the same epithet describes ready-made dishes in India.

Modern linguists believe that there were four key dialects in classical Sanskrit. When the Christian era came, the language practically ceased to be used in its natural form, remaining only in the form of grammar, after which it ceased to evolve and develop. It became the official language of worship, it belonged to a certain cultural community, without being associated with other living languages. But it was often used as a literary language.

In this position, Sanskrit existed until the XIV century. In the Middle Ages, Prakrits became so popular that they formed the basis of neo-Indic languages ​​and began to be used in writing. By the 19th century, Sanskrit was finally forced out by the national Indian languages ​​from their native literature.

A noteworthy story that belonged to the Dravidian family was in no way connected with Sanskrit, but from ancient times competed with it, since it also belonged to a rich ancient culture. In Sanskrit, there are certain borrowings from this language.

Today's position of the language

The Sanskrit alphabet has approximately 36 phonemes, and if we take into account the allophones that are usually considered when writing, the total number of sounds increases to 48. This feature is the main difficulty for Russians who are going to learn Sanskrit.

Today, this language is used exclusively by the upper castes of India as the main spoken language. During the 2001 census, over 14,000 Indians admitted that Sanskrit was their primary language. Therefore, officially it cannot be considered dead. The development of the language is also evidenced by the fact that international conferences are held regularly, and Sanskrit textbooks are still being reprinted.

Sociological studies show that the use of Sanskrit in oral speech is very limited, so that the language does not develop anymore. Based on these facts, many scientists classify it as a dead language, although this is not at all obvious. Comparing Sanskrit with Latin, linguists note that Latin, having ceased to be used as a literary language, has long been used in the scientific community by narrow specialists. Both of these languages ​​were constantly updated, went through stages of artificial revival, which were sometimes associated with the desire of political circles. Ultimately, both of these languages ​​became directly associated with religious forms, even though they were used in secular circles for a long time, so there is a lot in common between them.

Basically, the displacement of Sanskrit from literature was due to the weakening of the institutions of power that supported it in every possible way, as well as to the high competition of other spoken languages, the speakers of which sought to instill their own national literature.

A large number of regional variations have led to the heterogeneity of the disappearance of Sanskrit in different parts of the country. For example, in the 13th century, in some parts of the Vijayanagara empire, Kashmiri was used in some areas along with Sanskrit as the main literary language, but Sanskrit works were better known outside of it, most common in the territory of the modern country.

Today, the use of Sanskrit in oral speech is minimized, but it continues to be in the written culture of the country. Most of those who have the ability to read the vernaculars are also able to read Sanskrit. It is noteworthy that even Wikipedia has a separate section written in Sanskrit.

After India gained independence in 1947, more than three thousand works were published in this language.

Studying Sanskrit in Europe

Great interest in this language remains not only in India itself and in Russia, but throughout Europe. Back in the 17th century, the German missionary Heinrich Roth made a great contribution to the study of this language. He himself lived for many years in India, and in 1660 he completed his book in Latin on Sanskrit. When Roth returned to Europe, he began publishing excerpts from his work, lecturing at universities and before meetings of specialist linguists. Interestingly, his main work on Indian grammar has not been published until now, it is kept only in manuscript form in the National Library of Rome.

Active study of Sanskrit in Europe began at the end of the 18th century. For a wide range of researchers, it was discovered in 1786 by William Jones, and before that, its features were described in detail by the French Jesuit Kerdu and the German priest Henksleden. But their work was not published until after Jones's, so they are considered subsidiary. In the 19th century, acquaintance with the ancient language Sanskrit played a decisive role in the creation and development of comparative historical linguistics.

European linguists were delighted with this language, noting its amazing structure, sophistication and richness, even in comparison with Greek and Latin. At the same time, scientists noted its similarity with these popular European languages ​​​​in grammatical forms and verb roots, so that, in their opinion, this could not be an ordinary accident. The similarity was so strong that the vast majority of philologists who worked with all three of these languages ​​did not doubt the existence of a common ancestor.

Language research in Russia

As we have already noted, in Russia there is a special attitude towards Sanskrit. For a long time, the work of linguists was associated with two editions of the "Petersburg dictionaries" (large and small), which appeared in the second half of the 19th century. These dictionaries opened a whole era in the study of Sanskrit for Russian linguists, they became the main Indological science for the whole coming century.

Professor of Moscow State University Vera Kochergina made a great contribution: she compiled the "Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary", and also became the author of the "Sanskrit Textbook".

In 1871, the famous article by Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev was published under the title "The Periodic Law for the Chemical Elements". In it, he described the periodic system in the form in which it is known to all of us today, and also predicted the discovery of new elements. He named them "ekaaluminum", "ekabor" and "ekasilicium". For them, he left empty spaces in the table. We talked about the chemical discovery in this linguistic article not by chance, because Mendeleev here showed himself as a connoisseur of Sanskrit. Indeed, in this ancient Indian language, "eka" means "one." It is well known that Mendeleev was a close friend of the Sanskrit researcher Betlirk, who at that time was working on the second edition of his work on Panini. The American linguist Paul Kriparsky was convinced that Mendeleev gave Sanskrit names to the missing elements, thus expressing recognition of the ancient Indian grammar, which he highly valued. He also noted a special similarity between the periodic table of elements of the chemist and Panini's Shiva Sutras. According to the American, Mendeleev did not see his table in a dream, but came up with it while studying Hindu grammar.

Nowadays, interest in Sanskrit has significantly weakened; at best, individual cases of the coincidence of words and their parts in Russian and Sanskrit are considered, trying to find reasoned justifications for the penetration of one language into another.

Recently, even in serious publications, one can come across discussions about Vedic Russia, about the origin of Sanskrit and other Indo-European languages ​​from the Russian language. Where do these ideas come from? Why is it now, in the 21st century, when scientific Indo-European studies have already more than 200 years of history and have accumulated a huge amount of factual material, proved a huge number of theories, these ideas have become so popular? Why do even some textbooks for universities seriously consider the Book of Veles as a reliable source for studying the history and mythology of the Slavs, although linguists have convincingly proved the fact of forgery and the late origin of this text?

All this, as well as the discussion that unfolded in the comments to my post, prompted me to write a series of small articles talking about Indo-European languages, the methods of modern Indo-European studies, about the Aryans and their connection with the Indo-Europeans. I do not pretend to be a complete statement of the truth - huge studies, monographs by a large number of scientists are devoted to these issues. It would be naive to think that within a blog you can dot all the i's. However, in my defense I will say that due to the nature of my professional activity and scientific interests, I have to come into contact with the issues of the interaction of languages ​​and cultures on the Eurasian continent, as well as with Indian philosophy and Sanskrit. Therefore, I will try to present the results of modern research in this area in an accessible form.

Today I would like to briefly talk about Sanskrit and its study by European scholars.

Text of the Shakta text "Devi Mahatmya" on palm leaves, Bhujimol script, Nepal, 11th century.

Sanskrit: languages ​​and writing

Sanskrit refers Indo-Aryan group of the Indo-Iranian branchIndo-European family of languages and is an ancient Indian literary language. The word "Sanskrit" means "processed", "perfect". Like many other languages, it was considered of divine origin and was the language of ritual, sacred rites. Sanskrit refers to synthetic languages ​​(grammatical meanings are expressed by the forms of the words themselves, hence the complexity and great variety of grammatical forms). It has gone through a number of stages in its development.

In II - early I millennium BC. began to penetrate into the territory of Hindustan from the north-west Aryan Indo-European tribes. They spoke several closely related dialects. Western dialects formed the basis Vedic language. Most likely, its addition occurred in the XV-X centuries. BC. Four (lit. "knowledge") - samhitas (collections) were recorded on it: Rig Veda("Veda of hymns"), Samaveda("Veda of Sacrificial Spells"), Yajurveda("Veda of Songs") and Atharva Veda("Veda Atharvanov", spells and conspiracies). A corpus of texts adjoins the Vedas: Brahmins(priestly books), aranyaki(books of forest hermits) and upanishads(religious and philosophical writings). All of them belong to the class "shruti"- "heard". It is believed that the Vedas are of divine origin and were written down by a sage ( rishis) Vyasa. In ancient India, only “twice-born” could study “shruti” - representatives of the three higher varnas ( Brahmins- priests kshatriyas- warriors and vaishyas- farmers and artisans); sudras(servants), on pain of death, were not allowed to access the Vedas (more details about the varna system can be found in the post).

Eastern dialects formed the basis of Sanskrit proper. From the middle of the 1st millennium BC. according to III-IV centuries. AD was forming epic sanskrit, on which a huge body of literature was recorded, especially epics Mahabharata("The Great Battle of the Descendants of Bharata") and Ramayana("Wanderings of Rama") - itihasas. Also in epic Sanskrit are written Puranas(from the word "ancient", "old") - a collection of myths and legends, tantras(“rule”, “code”) - texts of religious and magical content, etc. All of them belong to the class "smriti"- "remembered", complementing shruti. Unlike the latter, representatives of the lower varnas were also allowed to study the "smriti".

In the IV-VII centuries. formed Classical Sanskrit, on which fiction and scientific literature was created, the works of six darshan- orthodox schools of Indian philosophy.

Starting from the III century. BC. addition is in progress Prakrits("ordinary language"), based on the spoken language and giving rise to many modern languages ​​​​of India: Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, etc. They are also of Indo-Aryan origin. The interaction of Sanskrit with Prakrit and other Indian languages ​​led to the Sanskritization of the Middle Indian languages ​​and the formation hybrid Sanskrit, on which, in particular, Buddhist and Jain texts are recorded.

For a long time, Sanskrit has practically not developed as a living language. However, it is still part of the system of Indian classical education, services are performed on it in Hindu temples, books are published, and treatises are written. As the Indian orientalist and public figure rightly said Suniti KumarChatterjee(1890-1977), India's modern languages ​​rose "figuratively speaking, in the atmosphere of Sanskrit".

There is still no consensus among scholars and researchers as to whether the Vedic language belongs to Sanskrit. Thus, the famous ancient Indian thinker and linguist Panini(approx. 5th century BC), who created a complete systematic description of Sanskrit, considered the Vedic language and classical Sanskrit to be different languages, although he recognized their relationship, the origin of the second from the first.

Sanskrit script: from Brahmi to Devanagari

Despite its long history, there has never been a unified writing system in Sanskrit. This is due to the fact that in India there was a strong tradition of oral transmission of the text, memorization, recitation. When necessary, the local alphabet was used. V. G. Erman noted that probably the written tradition in India begins around the 8th century. BC, about 500 years before the appearance of the oldest written monuments - the rock edicts of King Ashoka, and wrote further:

“... the history of Indian literature begins several centuries earlier, and here it is necessary to note an important feature of it: it is a rare example of literature in the history of world culture that has reached such a high development at an early stage, in fact, without writing.”

For comparison: the oldest monuments of Chinese writing (Yin divinatory inscriptions) date back to the 14th-11th centuries. BC.

The oldest writing system is the syllabary brahmi. On it, in particular, the famous Edicts of King Ashoka(III century BC). There are several hypotheses regarding the time of the appearance of this letter. According to one of them, in the monuments of the III-II millennium BC, discovered during excavations harappans and mohenjo-daro(on the territory of present-day Pakistan), a number of signs can be interpreted as the predecessors of the Brahmi. According to another, the Brahmis are of Middle Eastern origin, as indicated by the similarity of a large number of characters with the Aramaic alphabet. For a long time, this writing system was forgotten and deciphered at the end of the 18th century.

Sixth edict of King Ashoka, 238 BC, Brahmi letter, British Museum

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In Northern India, as well as in the southern part of Central Asia, from the 3rd century BC. BC. according to the IV century. AD semi-alphabetic, semi-syllabic writing was used kharosthi, which also bears some resemblance to the Aramaic alphabet. Written from right to left. In the Middle Ages, it, like Brahmi, was forgotten and deciphered only in the 19th century.

From the Brahmi came the letter gupta, common in the IV-VIII centuries. It got its name from the powerful Gupta empire(320-550), the time of the economic and cultural heyday of India. Since the 8th century, the western version has been distinguished from the gupta - the letter charade. The Tibetan alphabet is based on the Gupta.

By the 12th century, gupta and brahmi were transformed into writing. devanagari("divine city [writing]"), still in use today. At the same time, there were other types of writing.

Text of the Bhagavata Purana (c. 1630-1650), Devanagari script, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Sanskrit: the oldest language or one of the Indo-European languages?

The founder of scientific Indology is the Englishman Sir William Jones(1746-1794). In 1783 he arrived in Calcutta as a judge. In 1784 he became chairman of the founded on his initiative Bengal Asiatic Society(Asiatic Society of Bengal), whose task was to study Indian culture and introduce Europeans to it. On February 2, 1786, in his third jubilee lecture, he wrote:

“No matter how ancient Sanskrit is, it has an amazing structure. It is more perfect than Greek, richer than Latin, and more refined than either, and at the same time bears such a close resemblance to these two languages, both in verb roots and in grammatical forms, that it can hardly be an accident; this similarity is so great that no philologist who would study these languages ​​could not but believe that they came from a common source, which no longer exists.

However, Jones was not the first to point out the closeness of Sanskrit and European languages. Back in the 16th century, a Florentine merchant Filippo Sacetti wrote about the similarity of Sanskrit with the Italian language.

Since the beginning of the 19th century, the systematic study of Sanskrit began. This served as an impetus for the formation of scientific Indo-European studies and the establishment of the foundations of comparative studies - the comparative study of languages ​​and cultures. There is a scientific concept of the genealogical unity of the Indo-European languages. At that time, Sanskrit was recognized as the standard, the language closest to the Proto-Indo-European language. German writer, poet, philosopher, linguist Friedrich Schlegel(1772-1829) spoke of him:

"Indian is older than its kindred languages ​​and was their common ancestor."

By the end of the 19th century, a large amount of factual material had been accumulated, which shook the opinion that Sanskrit was archaic. At the beginning of the twentieth century, written monuments were discovered on Hittite dated to the 18th century. BC. It was also possible to discover other Indo-European, previously unknown ancient languages, for example, Tocharian. It has been proven that the Hittite language is closer to Proto-Indo-European than Sanskrit.

In the last century, great results have been achieved in comparative linguistics. A large number of texts written in Sanskrit were studied and translated into European languages, the proto-languages ​​were reconstructed and dated, a hypothesis was put forward about Nostratic macrofamily, which unites Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic and other languages. Thanks to interdisciplinary research, discoveries in archeology, history, philosophy, genetics, it was possible to establish the places of the alleged ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans and the most probable migration routes of the Aryans.

However, the words of a philologist, an Indologist are still relevant. Friedrich Maximilian Müller (1823-1900):

“If I were asked what I consider to be the greatest discovery of the 19th century in the study of ancient human history, I would give a simple etymological correspondence - Sanskrit Dyaus Pitar = Greek Zeus Pater = Latin Jupiter.”

References:
Bongard-Levin G.M., Grantovsky E.A. From Scythia to India. M., 1983.
Bongard-Levin G.M., Ilyin G.F. India in antiquity. M., 1985.
Basham A.L. The miracle that was India. M., 2000.
Kochergina V.A. Sanskrit textbook. M., 1994.
Rudoy V.I., Ostrovskaya E.P. Sanskrit in Indian culture // Sanskrit. SPb., 1999.
Shokhin V.K. Vedas // Indian philosophy. Encyclopedia. M., 2009.
Erman V.G. Essay on the history of Vedic literature. M., 1980.

Photos are from Wikipedia.

PS. In India, it is the oral language (sound) that serves as a kind of core, since there was no single writing system, while in China and in the Far East region in general - hieroglyphic writing (image), for which the specific sound of words does not matter. Perhaps this influenced the idea of ​​space and time in these regions and predetermined the features of philosophy.

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Sanskrit is one of the most ancient and mysterious languages. Its study helped linguists get closer to the secrets of ancient linguistics, and Dmitri Mendeleev created a table of chemical elements.

1. The word "Sanskrit" means "processed, perfected."

2. Sanskrit is a living language. It is one of the 22 official languages ​​of India. For about 50,000 people it is their native language, for 195,000 it is a second language.

3. For many centuries, Sanskrit was simply called वाच (vāc) or शब्द (śabda), which translates as "word, language". The applied meaning of Sanskrit as a cult language was reflected in another of its names - गीर्वांअभाषा (gīrvāṇabhāṣā) - "the language of the gods".

4. The earliest known monuments in Sanskrit were created in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC.

5. Linguists believe that classical Sanskrit originated from Vedic Sanskrit (the Vedas are written in it, the earliest of which is the Rigveda). Although these languages ​​are similar, today they are considered dialects. The ancient Indian linguist Panini in the fifth century BC considered them to be different languages.

6. All mantras in Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism are written in Sanskrit.

7. It is important to understand that Sanskrit is not a national language. It is the language of the cultural environment.

8. Initially, Sanskrit was used as the common language of the priestly class, while the ruling classes preferred to speak Prakrit. Sanskrit finally became the language of the ruling classes already in late antiquity in the era of the Guptas (4th-6th centuries AD).

9. The extinction of Sanskrit occurred for the same reason as the extinction of Latin. It remained the codified literary language while the spoken language changed.

10. The most common writing system for Sanskrit is the Devanagari script. "Deva" is a god, "nagar" is a city, "and" is a relative adjective suffix. Devanagari is also used to write Hindi and other languages.

11. Classical Sanskrit has about 36 phonemes. If allophones are taken into account (and the writing system takes them into account), then the total number of sounds in Sanskrit increases to 48.

12. For a long time, Sanskrit developed separately from European languages. The first contact of linguistic cultures occurred during the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great in 327 BC. Then the lexical set of Sanskrit was replenished with words from European languages.

13. A full-fledged linguistic discovery of India occurred only in the second half of the 18th century. It was the discovery of Sanskrit that marked the beginning of comparative historical linguistics and historical linguistics. The study of Sanskrit revealed similarities between it, Latin and ancient Greek, which prompted linguists to think about their ancient relationship.

14. Until the middle of the 19th century, it was widely believed that Sanskrit was the proto-language, but this hypothesis was recognized as erroneous. The real proto-language of the Indo-Europeans was not preserved in the monuments and was several thousand years older than Sanskrit. However, it was Sanskrit that least of all moved away from the Indo-European proto-language.

15. Recently, there have been many pseudo-scientific and "patriotic" hypotheses that Sanskrit originated from the Old Russian language, from the Ukrainian language, and so on. Even superficial scientific analysis shows them to be false.

16. The similarity of the Russian language and Sanskrit is explained by the fact that Russian is a language with slow development (unlike, for example, English). However, Lithuanian, for example, is even slower. Of all European languages, it is he who is most similar to Sanskrit.

17. Hindus call their country Bharata. This word came to Hindi from Sanskrit, in which one of the ancient epics of India "Mahabharata" ("Maha" is translated as "great") was written. The word India comes from the Iranian pronunciation of the name of the region of India Sindhu.

18. A friend of Dmitri Mendeleev was the Sanskrit scholar Bötlingk. This friendship influenced the Russian scientist and during the discovery of his famous periodic table, Mendeleev also predicted the discovery of new elements, which he called in the Sanskrit style "ekabor", "ekaaluminum" and "ekasilicium" (from the Sanskrit "eka" - one) and left there are "empty" places for them in the table.

The American linguist Kriparsky also noted the great similarity between the periodic table and Panini's Shiva Sutras. In his opinion, Mendeleev made his discovery as a result of the search for the "grammar" of chemical elements.

19. Despite the fact that Sanskrit is said to be a complex language, its phonetic system is understandable for a Russian person, but it has, for example, the sound “r syllabic”. So we don't say "Krishna" but "Krishna", not "Sanskrit" but "Sanskrit". Also, the presence of short and long vowels in Sanskrit can cause difficulties in learning Sanskrit.

20. There is no contrast between soft and hard sounds in Sanskrit.

21. The Vedas are written with stress marks, it was musical and depended on tone, but in classical Sanskrit, stress was not indicated. In prose texts, it is transmitted on the basis of the stress rules of the Latin language.

22. Sanskrit has eight cases, three numbers and three genders.

23. There is no developed system of punctuation marks in Sanskrit, but punctuation marks are found and are divided into weak and strong ones.

24. Classical Sanskrit texts often contain very long compound words, including dozens of simple ones and replacing entire sentences and paragraphs. Their translation is similar to solving puzzles.

25. From most verbs in Sanskrit, a causative is freely formed, that is, a verb with the meaning "to force to do what the main verb expresses." As in pairs: drink - water, eat - feed, drown - drown. In the Russian language, the remnants of the causative system have also been preserved from the Old Russian language.

26. Where in Latin or Greek some words contain the root "e", others the root "a", still others - the root "o", in Sanskrit in all three cases it will be "a".

27. The big problem with Sanskrit is that one word in it can have up to several dozen meanings. And no one will call a cow in classical Sanskrit a cow, it will be “variegated”, or “hair-eyed”. The 11th-century Arab scholar Al Biruni wrote that Sanskrit is "a language rich in words and endings, which designates the same object with different names and different objects with one name."

28. In ancient Indian drama, the characters speak two languages. All respected characters speak Sanskrit, while the women and servants speak Middle Indian languages.

29. Sociolinguistic studies of oral use of Sanskrit indicate that its oral use is very limited and that Sanskrit is no longer developed. Thus, Sanskrit becomes a so-called "dead" language.

30. Vera Aleksandrovna Kochergina made a huge contribution to the study of Sanskrit in Russia. She compiled the Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary and wrote the Sanskrit Textbook. If you want to learn Sanskrit, then you cannot do without the works of Kochergina.

Sanskrit- it is officially considered that this is an ancient Indian literary language, belongs to the Indian group of Indo-European languages. But you and I know that there were no Indo-European languages, as well as Indo-Europeans: Negroids lived in India, and whites lived in (Europe), there were no “zebra people”.
* In Russia, this language was called SELF-HIDDEN (samskrta), i.e. self hidden. This special language was created for the new priests of the Vedic direction in India. Those. The x'Aryan Karuna has been simplified from 144 to 48 so that even if the enemies steal the text, they cannot read it. Sanskrit is a priestly language, the language of worship.
* Literary - because a lot of ancient literature has been preserved on it, therefore it is considered literary.

Vedic language

In the II millennium BC. the Aryan tribes came to the territory of Hindustan from the north and west, they spoke several closely related dialects: the Holy Russian language, the Rasen language, the Kh'ary language and the Da'Aryan language. Western dialects are believed to have formed the basis of the language reflected in the Vedas (the transcription was as follows: Veda), but this word is not Indian, but Slavic: VѣDA, i.e. B - wisdom, ѣ - bestowed, D - good, A - created by the Gods. Veda means Sacred Knowledge. Therefore, some researchers also call this language Vedic or Vedic.

The Vedic language represents the earliest period of the ancient Indian written heritage. The time of its formation, some scientists consider the XV-X centuries to the modern chronology. There are 4 collections in the Vedic language called Samhita. In everyday life, it is believed that the British were the first to tell the world about the existence of Sanskrit. Those. The Russians did not know this to the whole world, but kept it at home (they brought the Vedas there, the Vedas talk about this), and the British began to know the whole world. Those. when our troops left, we will say, because of the mess that Petrushka Romanov made, European scientists got acquainted with Sanskrit at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century. In 1786, the founder of the Asiatic Society in Calcutta, William Jones, drew the attention of Europeans to the ancient Indian language and its similarity with the ancient languages ​​of Europe.

“No matter how ancient Sanskrit is, it has an amazing structure. It is more perfect than Greek, richer than Latin, and more refined than either, and at the same time it bears such a close resemblance to the two languages, both in roots and in grammatical forms, that it can be hardly an accident; this similarity is so great that no philologist who would study these languages ​​could believe that they came from a common source that no longer exists— William Jones.

Well, he spoke like that, and we know that Sanskrit is based on, as they say now, Proto-Slavic appeared, and on the basis of this language, Greek appeared, and then on the basis of the same, Latin turned out. So the source still exists.

Since the 19th century, the systematic study of Sanskrit began, the intensive development of the spiritual heritage of ancient India. The latter was facilitated by a great deal of work on translating into European languages ​​and commenting on ancient Indian monuments of legal culture, excerpts from epic poems, including the famous Bhagavad Gita, or how the Indians themselves read the Bhagavad Gita, dramaturgy, prose, and so on.

It is significant that a village school teacher in India read the Vimana Shastra, the Vimana Purana, and back in 1868 made a small vimana, unpretentious, and flew over the village. When the British ran there: “How? What?" he has already taken it apart and says: here is the text in Sanskrit, take it, read it, do it, I can’t help you with anything. Those. what our people keep belongs to our people and to those who brought, you have nothing to do with it. Therefore, the British very stubbornly took up the study. But what was the problem with the British? Note that they no longer used figurative language (not Saxon runes, not Scottish runes, not Celtic runes, Welsh runes, i.e. the language of Wales, or, as they say, Celtic scripts). Those. they have already switched to a purely phonetic language, just as Esperanto was created in the 20th century – an artificial language. So the Catholic Church also created an artificial language of worship for recording - Latin, and he also transmitted only phonemes, i.e. sound form. That's why it was very difficult for the British to understand Sanskrit, they took it literally, i.e. as it is written, so we read. The only thing that they took as a basis during the study, in order to sort of understand, is a simplified Sanskrit.

We have already recorded that Sanskrit is the language of worship. Ancient Sanskrit has the right to study and read only male priests. But at the festivities on the hill, the girls danced, sang, read, performed ancient sacred texts. Now, so that they could perform them, a simplified form of notation was made for them, so that they could learn to read in this simple form, and then sing. This simplified notation, as if reproduction in singing, in dance, when the girl on the hill (maiden on the mountain) got the name - Devanagari language. Those. if Sanskrit itself is figurative, then Devanagari is figurative-syllabic. In Sanskrit, each rune has its own image, and when another rune is next, it affects the previous one and it turns out, as it were, a different image, when a third rune is added, the image still changes. Therefore, let's say if 50 people translate a text in Sanskrit, everyone will get their own translation, because everyone will see one of the images that Sanskrit carries. Those. 48 runes and 2 punctuation marks, they will, as it were, create 50 different translations, and they will all be correct, but in order to understand the full meaning, you need to combine all these 50 into one. And Devanagari is a simplified language, syllabic, i.e. let's say: "K" is written alone, but reads like "KA".

Samhita

Samhita- a term used to refer to a number of sacred texts. Let's figure out what it means in Slavonic.
* We see that both Sanskrit (samskrta) and Samhita (samhita) begin with "SAM" - i.e. independent.
* Next comes (h), its image means: sent down, as if bestowed.
* Next is Izhei (i) - Universal meaning.
* Then Firmly (t) and Gods (a).
Those. independent sent down (or bestowed) Highest truth, approved by the Gods - samhita. But the English translated it simply as "Compilation of Sacred Texts." This collection, they believe, includes: Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sama-Veda, Atharva-Veda.

1. Rig Veda(rgveda). We see "RiG" - here Izhe (and) as connecting, harmonious: R - river and G - verbal wisdom (Veda). Rig Veda is Veda of hymns, i.e. The wisdom of hymns. But we know from that hymns are an appeal to the Gods and the glorification of the Divine World of Light. Therefore, in the Slavic system "RIG" means the Shining World. Rig Veda - if you take the Kh'Aryan or ancient Slovenian, it will mean Wisdom of the World of Radiance, i.e. Shining Peace, which they know. And all our hymns are addressed to the Shining World — this is also space. Therefore, in the Slavic-Aryan Vedas, the Rig Veda is called the Wisdom of the World of Lights. Here the English translated simply as "Veda of hymns" or "Collection of hymns (addresses)".

2. Yajur Veda(ydjurveda) - i.e. "Collection of Sacrificial Spells".

3. Sama Veda(samaveda) - i.e. it was the Veda of Life, life in various spheres. But for the Hindus, the third collection was very large, and they divided it into two. Those. Sama Veda is Collection of melodies and sounds”, i.e. like songs. You know, there is such an ancient Russian saying: “You can’t throw words out of a song.” But this is in Russia, and the Indians threw it out, i.e. they got a separate collection of sounds (SamaVeda) and took out the texts themselves separately.

4 (3.2) . And this 4th collection was named Atharva Veda(atharvaveda), i.e. Veda Atharvana is the priest of Fire. Otherwise, it is called the "Collection of Spells and Conspiracies."
Etymology:
* AT is originally (A) approved (T), and initially approved by us, this is Inglia = Fire.
* Ha is a positive force.
* Ditch - river Vanami.
Those. “The Vanirs said how to conjure fire”, how to bring trebs through fire, and so on, and this was Wisdom (Veda), hence the name Atharva Veda. Vans- these are the Kh'Aryans, i.e. there was a tribe among the Kh'Arits, they kept their traditions, as it were, and the Ases kept theirs. Having lived in different places on Midgard-Earth, the Vanirs seemed to separate themselves, especially after the Great Cold Snap, and since foreign advisers arrived from other tribes, sometimes skirmishes even turned out.

Additional books

Those. ours brought 3 collections to the Hindus, and they made 4 out of 3, which are considered as the main ancient texts. But ours came more than once, there were two Kharian campaigns, and then more priests came, taught and brought books, plus they wrote and taught there, i.e. additional books appeared, i.e. scrolls, tables, tablets.

1. Bharanas- but many write it the other way around: not Divine (B) positive (HA), but insert a modified form - Brahmans (braxmana), i.e. Ha - positive and Ra - the radiance of the Divine, and man - men. Those. Priestly books.

2. Aranyaki(aranyaka) - literally means: relating to Nature, to the forest or forest. Those. this is nature books. For example, one of the books of the Mahabharata (Great Controversy) was called “The Book of the Forest”.

3. Upanishads(upanisat) - think about it, when a person begged for something, for example, he asked another for life, he said: "have mercy on me." To spare is, as it were, to show one's favor. And here "Upani" - i.e. fell. Fell with a request or sat down, i.e. dropped below the level of the one to whom he addressed. Therefore, the Upanishads meant - sit-down(they say: the student sat down to the teacher, i.e. the teacher stands and narrates or sits on a hill, and the student sits down to him and listens, he writes everything down). Therefore, the Upanishads, as they say now, are sacred, esoteric, hidden teachings, i.e. a set of texts crowning the religious and philosophical tradition of the Vedic period. Those. the period of the first Harian campaigns, when ours brought them knowledge - this is the Vedic (Vedic) period, when ours taught the Dravidians and Nagas a new culture without human sacrifices, without humiliation, where everyone in work, in training received their own path of development, i.e. aspiration we will speak to a new life, i.e. know what is beyond this life. And before that, they didn’t know the way, so ours said about each of them: “ he is without yang”, i.e. The Path of Spiritual Development (The Path of Life) was called Yang, and those who did not have this path, they said about him: “he is without Yang”, and only then philologists translated it as “monkey”.

4. Upa Veda(upaveda) - i.e. as if lower, fallen, supplementing the Vedas. Those. 4 supplements were created to the Vedas, among them the famous treatise on medicine Ayurveda(ayurveda) or “Health Veda”, which until now a lot of people are studying, and there is a concept of how to find out about a person’s illnesses by the glow of his aura, by his pulse, and so on. Each organ, it radiates, has its own aura, its own glow.

epic poems

From the middle of the 1st millennium BC. by the 3rd-4th centuries of the new era, Indian epic poems are being formed. Those. almost 1000 years.

1. Mahabharata(mahabharata), i.e. literally: maha - great (hence it passed into Latin as a maximum - max); bha - counteraction; rata - army, army; those. "Great opposition to the rati", or as the Hindus decipher more fully: "The great battle of the descendants of Bharata." Those. " great battle". But we understand that this happened then in India, although now many Orientalists, studying the Mahabharata, say that everything in it describes the battle that took place in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe current Kursk Bulge, i.e. the same names of rivers, the name of the area, and so on. Those. that Great Battle took place, as they say now, on the Russian Plain.

2. Ramayana(ramayana) - translate the Ramayana as " Rama's Journey". But we know that "YANA" is the Path of Life, the Path of Spiritual Development, and not just wandering, vagrancy. Those. Yana is a meaningful path, unlike wandering, when a person wanders wherever he wants.

The ancient language of these poems is called epic Sanskrit. Epic monuments were associated with the genre of smrti (smrti), i.e. with the word “smriti” they measured certain orders. And when they are measured, certain orders are established, i.e. what we store, we call it memory. Smriti genre means - memory, remembrance. Those. this is our tradition. And note that everything is similar to the Russian language, i.e. when a person remembers something, even now he just returns to the smriti genre, i.e. he narrates memories: LOOK, i.e. it comes from me, and explains: look, I remembered this and that. Those. earlier, as it were, the texts were shortened. This is the smriti genre, legends are referred to it, when a person remembers, either he himself saw it, or someone passed it on to him, told him. Hence and Tradition— i.e. handed down from generation to generation.

3. Puranas(purāna). But it would be more correct not Pur-rana, but Pur-ana, i.e. "PUR" meant that which is beyond your perception; hence the "blizzard", i.e. like a vanishing path. And here is the Divine instruction left. Therefore, the Puranas are translated as “ancient, old”, i.e. you did not see it, because it was in ancient times. Those. The Puranas are Collection of myths and legends". Myths and legends are not verbatim primitive, but figurative narrative, and they all have their own real prehistory, going back, as they would say now, to prehistoric times, i.e. before the appearance of the Torah. But the Torah is perceived by many literally, that's how it is said, do it, and myths and legends, i.e. what Lehi left is imagery about other Worlds. Or, let's say, mind you, we still say: two women in the market barked like dogs, fought like cats. Those. if this is translated into an image, two cat women with dog heads. Hence all sorts of legends about dogheads.

Prose, fables, stories

Most of the Sanskrit monuments were created in classical Sanskrit, the language of the 4th-6th centuries. This is literature of different genres: prose, collections of stories and fables. A variety of scientific literature in Sanskrit has been preserved: works on philosophy, treatises on ethics and the theory of drama.

1. Panchatantra— i.e. "Five manuals" (panca - five, tantra - manual).

2. Hitopadesha- translated as "Good Instruction", this is a collection of fables in Sanskrit in prose and verse.

3. Shastras- collections of commandments, instructions on various branches of knowledge.
Etymology:
* Sh - commanded from above.
* AS - Ases.
* T - approved.
* RA - radiance.
Those. Radiance, approved by Asami as commanded from above. Therefore, these were collections of commandments, instructions.

4. Vaimanika Shastra and there is the Vaimanika Purana, i.e. one will be about piloting, the other about building a vimana or wightman - vimanika.
And others.

Dravidian languages

Sanskrit, as a literary language, for many centuries coexisted and interacted with other Indian languages: with the late Vedic, with the Middle Indian and Dravidian languages, i.e. languages ​​of south India. But our Ancestors did not say "India", they said " Dravidia”, i.e. the land of the Dravidians and Nagas. Those. Initially, Negroid peoples lived on the territory of India, the most numerous were the Dravidians and Nagas, hence the “Dravidian languages”.

Middle Indian languages ​​are called: Pali(pali) and prakrita(prakrta); "Prakrita" literally - raw, natural language, or, as they say now, colloquial, folk. It was in these two languages ​​that the teachings of the unorthodox philosophical systems of India were preached. Orthodoxy, translated from Greek, is a steady adherence to the original sources, and neo is new, i.e. like a return to the original, when a new look was given to the old teaching, which was originally. Suppose now they say that there was before all over the world, and when a new look, a new return, this is already called neo-paganism. Here are these unorthodox philosophical systems of India, the preaching of the teachings of Buddhism, and Buddhism, as a rule, was written in the Pali language and Jainism.

The Middle Indian languages ​​yielded to Sanskrit as the spokesman for a more ancient and rich cultural tradition and were subjected to its powerful influence. Sanskrit, as it were, influenced these languages ​​of ancient India. The Sanskritization of the Middle Indian languages ​​led to the creation Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit and Jain Sanskrit. Jainism is one of the religious teachings of India, which has also spread throughout Southeast Asia. It's the same as how the Proto-Slavic language was transformed in our country into a record of the Russian language, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Polish.

They, like the forms of late Sanskrit, are a phenomenon of the pseudo-historical evolution of the language, i.e. believe they contributed to the change. Sanskrit played an exceptionally important role in India as the language of the country's cultural unity. Until now, the study of Sanskrit is part of the system of traditional Indian education. Sanskrit is used as the language of worship in Hindu temples, newspapers and magazines are published in Sanskrit, and scholars correspond in it. Sanskrit is recognized as the working language at scientific Sanskrit conferences. The literary scientific heritage in Sanskrit is carefully preserved, researched and republished by scientists of modern India.

History of Sanskrit

... Sanskrit-language literature (including all monuments in Vedic, Epic, Classical and Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit) is the most extensive of all known literatures and one of the most ancient. As the modern Indologist J. Gonda writes: “To say that Sanskrit literature surpasses the literature of Greece and Rome in volume is a mistake. Sanskrit literature is almost limitless, that is, no one knows its true size and the number of its compositions. It is also curious to note that the volume of non-fiction Sanskrit literature (philosophical, technical, etc.) significantly exceeds the volume of fiction. Sanskrit, being the language of the upper classes of Indian society, was used along with various Middle Indian dialects, which reflected a later stage of linguistic evolution. exerted a strong and ever-increasing influence on classical Sanskrit, resulting in something like a "mixed Sanskrit". At the same time, Vedic Sanskrit, being primarily a liturgical language and, because of this, carefully guarded by the priests, was practically not influenced by the Prakrits. Interestingly, in the early Indian dramas, the upper class people speak Sanskrit, while the lower class people use various prakrits, most often shauraseni and magadhi. This is a very striking example of the coexistence of two or more languages. Thus, the linguistic status of Sanskrit resembles the situation with Latin in the Middle Ages and in the era of the Italian Renaissance.

Features of Sanskrit

Now it makes sense to go directly to the description of the distinctive features of Sanskrit. It should be noted right away that Sanskrit has a very complex grammatical structure. Referring to the relevant literature, anyone can verify this. Sanskrit has 8 cases, 3 noun numbers, 6 verb tenses, 6 moods, 3 voices, 2 main conjugations and 10 verb classes plus three derived conjugations. Sanskrit far surpasses all modern languages ​​in terms of expressive abilities. So, what in English or Russian can be expressed in several words, in Sanskrit can be expressed in a single word. This wonderful language is equally suitable for creating both strictly analytical scientific and philosophical texts and fiction. This is largely due to the variety of styles in Sanskrit, which in some respects may differ more than ordinary closely related languages.

The Sanskrit vocabulary is also unusually rich, especially with many synonyms. For example, in English, water can only be called “water”, and nothing else. In Sanskrit, it can be called “ap”, “ambhas”, “udaka”, “udan”, “kilala”, “jala”, “toya”, “dharya”, “payas”, “vari”, “salila”, “challah”, and this list is far from complete. But especially large synonymous series, including dozens of words, exist to designate the sun, moon, fire, earth, bird, king, elephant, horse, lotus, law. At the same time, along with simple names of the subject, there are many descriptive ones. In Classical Sanskrit, descriptive names are preferred over simple and straightforward ones, as being more refined and avoiding repetition when naming the same subject. In addition, individual words are striking in their ambiguity. In many ways, this stems from the desire for maximum imagery, for sophistication of expression. From this follows the frequent use of words in figurative meanings, sometimes very bizarre; for example, the word “go”, meaning “bull; cow" can be used in the meanings of "earth", "speech", in the plural - "stars", "rays". Polysemy also increases due to the multiplicity of literary schools. As a result, some entries in the dictionary, where values ​​are arranged in the same row, differing in the degree of metaphor or the area of ​​use, look very implausible. For example, the word “tantra” can be translated as “loom”, “basis of fabric”, “basis”, “essence”, “order, rule”, “state structure”, “teaching, set of rules”, “name of a class of religious texts ”, “spell”, “trick; cunning".

Another feature of Sanskrit is the active use of compound words. There are four types of such words in total. In Vedic and epic Sanskrit literature, compound words are quite common, but usually they consist of no more than two or three members. The poets and playwrights of the Gupta era, such as Kalidasa (4th-5th centuries AD), also showed some moderation in the use of such words: a maximum of six elements. But in later texts in classical Sanskrit, very long compound words are often found, including dozens of simple ones and replacing entire sentences and paragraphs. The translation of such words is similar to solving puzzles. For example, in the novel by Subandhu (7th century AD) “Vasavadatta”, a compound word consisting of twenty-one simple words is used in the description of the ocean shore. There, the ocean shore is described as the place where "many-lions-sparkling-beautiful-heavy-manes-damp-from-flows-of-blood-from-frontal-mounds-of-wild-elephants-torn-by-many-furious-blows-of-lions- claws-sharp-as-lightning-teeth" -bhara-bhasura-kesari-kadambena). And such an example of a compound word is far from the most impressive. In the same description of the seashore there is a compound word consisting of more than a hundred simple ones. Hence the desire for very long sentences, many of which take up two or even three printed pages.

The script that is used to write Sanskrit texts is also unique. At different times, different alphabets were used to write Sanskrit, the earliest of which was Brahmi. But the most commonly used alphabet was and remains Devanagari. The word "Devanagari" means "[the script used] in the cities of the gods." It is important to note here that the term "Devanagari" refers to a script, that is, to a set of graphemes, rather than to a sequence of phonemes, which is traditionally denoted by the word "matrika" (little mother). This alphabet consists of forty-eight characters: thirteen for vowels and thirty-five for the combination "consonant + short vowel a". It should be noted that the alphabets used to write Sanskrit, including Brahmi and Devanagari, are the only ones in the world where the order of characters is not random, but is based on an impeccable phonetic classification of sounds. In this they compare favorably with all other alphabets, imperfect and chaotically built: ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Georgian, etc.

It is also interesting that when writing Sanskrit texts, only two punctuation marks are used - “|”, which indicates the end of a separate semantic part of the sentence and is an approximate analogue of a comma, and “||”, which means the end of the sentence, like a dot. From the above features of the language, it is clear what difficulties a person who studies Sanskrit encounters.

From the point of view of social linguistics, Sanskrit has a significant drawback, because it is very redundant for the average expressive needs of an ordinary individual. Therefore, the average layman is simply not able to learn this language, because it requires an excessive strain of reason, memory and imagination, which is why representatives of the lower castes of Indian society were not allowed to study it. But, nevertheless, since ancient times, Sanskrit has been the subject of study by scientists of various specializations - from astrologers to architects. The study and description of Sanskrit began in ancient times in India itself. Interest in the language itself was due primarily to concern for the correct preservation and understanding of sacred texts, because it was believed that if you do not read them with absolute accuracy, then pronouncing them will not have the required magical effect, but will only bring harm.

The oldest Indian treatise on linguistics that has come down to us was the work of Yaska "Nirukta" (5th century BC), which explained words from the Vedas that had become obsolete. However, the most prominent of the ancient Indian grammarians was Panini, already mentioned above. His Ashtadhyaya contains more than four thousand grammatical rules, set out in a very concise form using individual letters and syllables to designate cases, tenses, moods, etc. Indian linguistic works became a commentary on Panini's work. At the same time, in the field of linguistics, the Indians achieved great success, they were thousands of years ahead of Europe in learning the language. In Ashtadhyaya, Western linguists were surprised to find a description of the sounds and grammatical forms of Sanskrit that anticipated twentieth-century Western structural linguistics.

Sanskrit mysticism

Despite all the diversity and multi-thematic nature of Sanskrit-language literature, Sanskrit, first of all, is the language of sacred books. The ancient Indians considered it not one of the many languages ​​​​of the world, even the best of them, but the only real language in which all things have their correct designation, the divine language, and therefore, the one who studies Sanskrit, according to the Indians, approaches the gods . The rest of the languages ​​were considered the same Sanskrit, only corrupted to a greater or lesser extent, just as the Sanskrit that exists in our world was considered a kind of refined and greatly simplified form of the Sanskrit spoken by the gods. In their opinion, the ancient Aryans, the progenitors of modern humanity, were direct descendants of the gods and inherited from them their language, which over time, due to the gradual degradation of people, has undergone significant changes towards simplification. This is what they explain the fact that the earlier Vedic language was in its structure much more complicated than the later epic and classical Sanskrit. According to legend, the sounds of Sanskrit originated from the sound of the small two-sided drum of the god Shiva when he danced the tandava dance. Thus, the divine origin of Sanskrit is postulated. According to the famous treatise of the outstanding mystic-grammatist of his time Abhinavagupta “Paratrishika-vivarana”, the divine consciousness is identical to the highest Word (Speech), and, therefore, each letter or word comes from consciousness and is absolutely inseparable from it. Therefore, the analysis of language is not separated from the analysis of consciousness. Since letters, words, etc. contain many levels of meaning, language in general should be taken as a complete symbolic system.

Sanskrit, by virtue of its ambiguity, certainly to a much greater extent than any other language, provides the basis for a variety of mystical-philosophical mental constructions regarding letters, words and sentences. Much of mystic thinking about the hidden meaning of letters usually centers around two ways of ordering these letters in the Sanskrit alphabet. One of them, called “matrix”, has already been mentioned above. In the matrix, letters are arranged in the usual, classical order, that is, at the beginning vowels follow, and then consonants, united according to the specifics of their pronunciation into five groups: back-lingual, palatal, labial, cerebral and dental. Another way is called "malini" and consists in the fact that vowels and consonants are mixed without following the usual sequence.

Each letter of the Sanskrit alphabet corresponds to one or another type of energy and is considered its sound manifestation. So, the sound “a” symbolizes chit (consciousness), “a” long - ananda (bliss), “i” - ichchha (will), “and” long - ishana (dominion), “u” - unmesha (power of knowledge) etc. The vowels are collectively called “bija” (seeds) and correlate with Shiva, the original male principle of being, which underlies all manifestation: external formation, the development of the language (alphabet) and the opening of consciousness, while the consonants are called “yoni” (womb), and are identified with Shakti, or the feminine principle. The fact that it is impossible to pronounce a consonant sound separately from a vowel is an expression of the fact that the feminine, that is, the dynamic, generative and creative principle of being, is impelled to activity by the static male principle that “fertilizes” it. Moreover, it is important that the sounds of Sanskrit are considered not just a symbolic expression of a particular energy, but its real carriers. Thus, correctly pronounced, they are able to awaken these energies both within a person and in external space. This principle underlies the theory of mantras. The ancient sages believed that with the help of the correct pronunciation of mantras, that is, special phonetic formulas, it is possible to achieve any, even the most incredible result, from the fulfillment of a trivial momentary desire to the elevation of one's own consciousness to a divine level. That is why almost all Hindu prayer and liturgical texts are composed in Sanskrit and must be performed in Sanskrit. Reading a translation of a Sanskrit text into any other language will at best have the power of ordinary prayer, the effectiveness of which depends not so much on the peculiarities of its phonetics, but on the sincerity of the person praying. This is the fundamental difference between an ordinary prayer and a mantra. If the first one acts at the expense of the mental energy of the person pronouncing it, then the second one in itself is a carrier of energy, and of a strictly defined type. Strictly speaking, the Vedas are nothing more than a collection of various mantras designed to achieve certain results. There is evidence that the ancient Vedic priests, with the help of their impeccably pronounced mantras, could control the weather, materialize objects, levitate and teleport. And although the mantra will act regardless of whether the one who pronounces it realizes its true meaning, nevertheless, if it is fully understood, its effect will be ten times stronger, because the energy of the mantra will be amplified by the individual’s own energy.

Perhaps the most famous of all mantras is the mystical syllable "Om". According to legend, this sound was the primary vibration from which the entire universe originated. It has no direct lexical meaning, but it is said to include all conceivable and unthinkable meanings. The sound "o" is not self-existent, because, according to the rule of Sanskrit phonetics, called "sandhi" (joint), it is formed as a result of the merging of the sounds "a" and "y". The rule of sandhi says that if the sound “a” is immediately followed by the sound “u”, then these two sounds merge, forming one sound “o”. So, for example, the phrase “raja uvacha” (the king said) after applying this rule to it will be read as “rajovacha”. In the same way, the syllable “Aum” turns into “Om”, that is, in fact, “Om” consists of three vowel sounds: “a”, “y” and “m” (the last sound “m” in Sanskrit is called “anusvara ". It is nasal and is considered a vowel). As mentioned above, the sound “a” is an expression of consciousness as an energy substance, “y” is a phonetic manifestation of the power of knowledge, the sound “m”, or anusvara, is a manifestation of the perfect comprehension of the universe, the absolute. Thus, the correct pronunciation of the syllable “Om”, or, as it is also called, the “tara-mantra” (saving mantra), should awaken in the mind of the individual the perfect knowledge of the universe, that is, God, and full awareness of one’s inseparability from him. This example of the mantra "Om" vividly illustrates how mystical Sanskrit is. In addition to “Om”, there are at least a thousand more of this kind of syllables in it, which do not have a direct lexical meaning, but at the same time can have many mystical meanings. The most common of them are the syllables “hrim”, “shrim”, “hum”, “bam”, “gam”, “phat”, “jhmryum”, etc. They, like vowel sounds, are called “bija” ( seeds), because they contain a huge amount of knowledge in potential form, just as a huge tree can be enclosed in a small seed. For example, if you take a huge literary work and single out the most basic chapter in it, then the most basic paragraph in this chapter, a sentence in the paragraph, a word in the sentence, and a syllable in the word, then this syllable will be “bija”, in which the entire work will be enclosed in a condensed form. It is said that of all the four Vedas, the Yajurveda is the most important, in it the most important hymn is Rudram, in Rudram the most important anuvaka (chapter) is the eighth, in it the most important verse is the first, in it is the main mantra “namah shivaya” , in this mantra the main two syllables are “shi” and “va”, of which “shi” is the most important. From this it can be seen that the knowledge of all four Vedas is contained in one syllable “shim”. The reverse process is also possible, that is, the deployment of knowledge hidden in the syllable. But for its implementation, a deep knowledge of the relationship of different sounds with different energies is necessary, as well as an impeccable pronunciation, coupled with the utmost concentration of attention on the reproduced sounds. This process is called “mantra yoga”.

Moreover, ancient Indian mystics and mathematicians believed that Sanskrit itself contained a unique numerical code that could be used to interpret the hidden essence of events and predict the future. It is believed that the Sanskrit numerological code, called “”, allows those who know it to influence natural phenomena and human destinies, as well as gain higher knowledge and move faster along the path of spiritual perfection. The first written studies and references to this code date back to about 400 AD. These studies relied primarily on the deciphering of the Vedic hymns, which themselves are often regarded as the original source of numerological correspondences. The key to unraveling this code, according to mystics, lies in such ancient texts as the Puranas, astrological samhitas and Tantras.

One can talk about the mysticism of Sanskrit for an infinitely long time, and a complete presentation of this material is beyond the thematic scope of this essay. Those wishing to get acquainted with this topic in more detail, the author refers to the classic work “Paratrishika-vivarana” already mentioned here.

Conclusion

Sanskrit is now sometimes called, like Latin, a dead language, but this is not true. Until now, its study is part of the system of traditional Indian education. Sanskrit is listed in Schedule 8 of the Constitution of India as one of the 14 official languages. In India, the largest centers of Sanskrit studies are Pune, Kolkata, Varanasi, Baroda, Madras and Mysore. At the same time, Pune and Varanasi always stand out. It is believed that only in these two cities can one learn to speak Sanskrit. Sanskrit is mainly used as a liturgical language, but newspapers and magazines are also published in it, and some scholars correspond in it. The Literary Academy of India regularly awards awards for achievements in the field of Sanskrit literature. Modern Indians even translate foreign literature into Sanskrit, including Shakespeare, Dostoevsky and Sholokhov. It is curious that during the time of the English colonization of India, the Bible was translated into Sanskrit. Sanskrit vocabulary serves as the main source for enriching the vocabulary of modern Indian languages, especially in the field of creating terms denoting modern phenomena. Sanskrit also retains its importance as a spoken language, according to all the latest official censuses, the number of people using it in everyday communication is several hundred people, and most of them are pandits (scholars - theologians) from Varanasi and Mithila. All over the world, Sanskrit is attracting more and more attention both in scientific circles and among amateur Indologists, which is associated with a general increase in interest in traditional Indian culture. Evidence of this was the tenth international conference on Sanskrit, which took place on January 3-9, 1997 in Bangalore and brought together several hundred delegates from around the world. At this conference, a resolution was adopted proposing that the year 2000 be declared the year of Sanskrit. At this conference, among other things, the problems of computerization of Sanskrit were also discussed. So Sanskrit, although ancient, remains an eternally living language and does not lose its significance in our time.