Atas, Russian (simple). It is considered just some kind of semi-hooligan exclamation, meaning “Quickly, guys, get out of here!”, but Skt. atas adv. from here. That’s exactly what it means, it turns out.

Aty-baty, Russian. It is considered just some kind of meaningless sentence added for rhyme in “Aty-baty, soldiers were walking ...”, but the Sanskrit ati means “past”, bhata a mercenary warrior (i.e. exactly a soldier, which word comes from the name of the coin “soldo” , because at that time they, that is, mercenaries, were paid so much per day). like “Soldiers passed, soldiers walked, soldiers passed by, to the market, soldiers bought past, soldiers passed by, a samovar ...” Here’s a “meaningless sentence” for you.

Stone women, Russian. practically women in the Russian sense, i.e. images of women and are not. The word "baba" in this sense should be compared with "Indian" (ie in Hindi, from Sanskrit) baba - 1) father; 2) grandfather; 3) baba (appeal to an old man, an ascetic); 4) baba (affectionate address to a child). Those. stone "women" are actually images of our Fathers.

Burka, Russian, named after the fairy-tale horse "Sivka-Burka" Skt. bhur (var. bhumi) earth + ka which is like. Therefore, the general meaning of the name "Burka" is "(which, ~th like) the earth"

Varyag, Russian, Old Russian. VARENZ, VRYAG, VARYAG Skt. var cover, cover; hide, hide; surround; close the door; repel a blow; stop; hold back; prevent; suppress; vara - limited, enclosed space; a circle; vara rebuff, reflection; varaha boar, boar; vartar m. defender; varuna nom. pr. the lord of waters, the deity of rivers, seas and oceans; Ocean; a fish; varutar m. the one who fights back; defender. Varutha n. armor, armor, chain mail; shield; security; army; lots of. Thus, "Varangian" - "guard"; "mercenary warrior" The early medieval Russian “Varangian” is not the name of some people, but the name of the profession - from “var” - “guard”, “guard”. V.R.Ya.: "... cook, protect ..." (in the article "pack"). Wed tzh. commodity tъ varъ Skt. ta vara - “that is the best” / “that is protected”. See also Gates.

Enemy, Russian, cf. Skt. rahum. invader; nom. pr. a demon that swallows the Sun and the Moon, thereby causing an eclipse. “B” is added here, like in “duck-woofer”, “fire-fire”. The general meaning of the word "enemy" is "invader" and "one who inflicts wounds". See also Wound.

Virgo, Russian, Old Russian. VIRGO (with yat after "d"). The Sanskrit deva (deva, from the root div-, with the original meaning "to radiate, shine", has the basic meaning of "a shining being" - "heavenly; divine; god (i.e. "one of the gods")". Thus, the original the meaning of the word “maiden” is “a shining being”, “celestial, ~aya; divine, ~aya.” The word meaning maiden, girl, cannot be the same deva, meaning “god”, but must at least be derived from him, and indeed, “girl” is this derivative, because the formant -ka means “which / such as”, which gives the general meaning “such as a shining being”.

Elecampane, Russian, pron. [dv`sil] - (maiden + forces) a strong herb dedicated to the deities, deva.

Nine, Russian, Old Russian. Sanskrit Devata - divinity; divine power; deity; image of a deity (statue, painting, etc.). The general meaning of this word is "divine". Interestingly, “nine” in Sanskrit is called “nava”, i.e. “new, -th, -th”, and with long vowels the same word means “ship”.

Ivan, Russian Russian personal name In its present sound form it is associated with Skt. ivan(t) "so big", "so great", because in the end, the present sound form is of greater importance, because it is valid for the present time. Vanya is not a diminutive form of Ivan. See also Vania.

Kupala, Russian, theonym. The first part of the word "Kupala" (as in the word "idol") is the same as in Skt. ku, land, country, region. The second part is Skt. palam. watchman; the keeper; shepherd; patron, protector; lord, king = Defender of the Earth, Lord of the Earth. The flame (frying pan) is a protector from predators. Skt. gopala Gopala (lit. "shepherd"), an epithet of Krishna. The name and Deity of the third month of the annual circle (kola), beginning with the vernal equinox corresponding to May-June (until June 22). Lord / Lord of the Earth - an epithet and aspect of the Sun.

Indra, Intra - Leader of the heavenly host (Skt. indra 1. Lord of the celestial sphere, God of thunder and storm, Lord of the Gods in the Vedic period 2. king, head; first among ..., best of ...). Sanskrit ina strong, strong, powerful; dra go; run or tra guard; save; defender. Thus, indra can have the general meaning of "strongly-strongly-mighty walking", while in the form of intra - "strongly-strongly-mighty savior-protector".

Meta, Russian distinguishing feature; goal (cf. also Bel. meta goal; Central Russian meta mark, mark; goal; what they aim at; what they strive for, what they want to achieve; Polish. meta finish (final point of the distance); distance, distance; limit, boundary, designated place, Skt mati f. thought, intention, goal, idea, concept, opinion, respect, prayer, hymn, Ukrainian meta goal, Czech meta goal directly and figuratively, compare also Greek methodos , pursuit, method, from meta- through, after + hodos, path, method, i.e. "method of action", "path to the goal").

Nahal, Russian Nahusha, in Hindu mythology, the mythical ascetic king, son of Ayus, grandson of Pururavas and father of Yayati. When Indra atoned for the sin of killing the brahmin Vritra, Nahusha, famous for his exploits, took his place as the king of the gods in heaven. However, he became so proud that he not only desired the wife of Indra Saci, but also traveled on a palanquin carried by the holy sages-rishis. One of them, Agastya, he kicked, and after that, according to the curse of the sage, he had to atone for his sin for ten thousand years in the form of a snake. His sin fell on his offspring. Surely he was quite impudent… So, this word means “behaving like Nahusha”.

Ohalnik, Russian Cursing, cursing, cursing, swearing. Sanskrit ahhalya - Ahalya, the name of the first woman created by Brahma, was the wife of the famous sage Gautama. Ahalya, the wife of the sage Gautama, was very beautiful. To win her, Indra had to resort to the help of the Moon, which turned into a rooster and crowed not at dawn, but at midnight. Gautama woke up, got out of bed and, as usual, went down to the river for morning baths. Indra assumed the form of Gautama, entered his house and took possession of Ahalya. When this trick was revealed, Indra became a freak as a punishment, and Ahalya became a roadside stone. Once Rama, heading into the forest, accidentally touched this stone, and then Ahalya again turned into a woman. (According to the Indian epic). Here he was, who was the slacker - whether it was Indra or someone else - but he raped a virtuous wife, which is why he got his nickname. And you can also understand that the “stunner” is a “lustful freak”.

Weapons, Russian drvnrussian. weapon; weapons, cf. Skt. arus 1. wounded 2. n. wound. Thus, the meaning of the word ARUZE ORUZE / WEAPONS, weapon is “wounding”.

Resentment, Russian Old Russian OFFENSE - the opposite. the word "victory", i.e. defeat.

Victory, Russian Old Russian POBIDA / POBIEDA / VICTORY PO + TROUBLE - “after the trouble”, i.e. defeat. See also Trouble, resentment.

Paradise, Russian є Skt. size, f. wealth. For some reason, it is considered an Iranian borrowing by official science.

Rana, Russian Old Russian RANA, VRANA є Skt. vrana wound; wound; sore. See also Enemy.

Pig, Russian; Ukrainian pig Skt. Svinna - sweaty.

Slava, Russian є Skt. shravas n. sound; glory; call; call; price; reward; prize; delight, admiration; zeal; zeal; ardor; look, appearance. See also Word. Obviously, glory and the word are the same word in two phonetic variants. In addition, praise without a word simply cannot be. "C" - light - radiance, "Lava" - a powerful stream. That is, Glory is literally - a radiant energy flow.

Tyrlovat, old Russian. TERLO; TURLOVATI Skt. tiryag-ga 1. 1) going across something. 2) moving in a horizontal position. (Old Russian TERLOVATI - to roam; TERLO - a place where they roam, i.e. move horizontally, migrate). tiryag-gati f. resettlement (migration) of animals. Tiryak Nm. from tiryanc 1. moving across; horizontal 2. m., n. living being, animal 3. n. width 4.adv. 1) across; sideways, crooked 2) to the side. Tyrlo Russian. dial. paddock for livestock.

Courteous, courtesy, Russian. Wed Central Russian courteous; cf. tzh. Old Russian POTCHEMO / POSCHEMO we honor, we honored / we honor; performed / are performing veneration Skt. ukta 1. (p.p. from vac) 1) said, pronounced 2. n. word, address, expression. uktha n. 1) praise, laudatory hymn 2) call, appeal (Russian veneration; reverence; honor; honor; courtesy; Polish uczciwy honest; conscientious; decent uczcic honor; honor; uczta feast; feast; courteous; courtesy). ucatha see uktha (Russian veneration; honor; honour; Pol. uczcic honor; honor; uczta feast; feast; courteous; courtesy). Ucitatva n. 1) proportionality 2) relevance 3) custom. Also Skt. cit [pron. “chit”] notice, understand, know. See also Honour. Maybe whales (sketes, Scythians) - knowing, revering, glorifying the great ancestors-ancestors, i.e. Slavs.

Chur. From the Dictionary of the VK: "SHURE - Shchur / Chur, involved in the Divine in Svarga Ancestor-heroes (Skt. shura (pronounced [shura]) courageous, courageous; hero; warrior)". As part of the word "ancestor" "u" is preserved to this day. It is clear that someone had to guard the boundaries and borders, and for this, statues were erected - both stone and wooden.

I, Russian - personal pronoun 1 l. units hours; in Old Russian “Az”, which also means the first letter of the Russian alphabet, while I is the last letter of the alphabet and also ends with the sound a (see also A). In the Middle Ages, this word was also pronounced differently: “Yaz is a personal pronoun old. az, i. Se yaz, the great prince, etc. Deeds of sale and donations began with these words: Se yaz, etc. ” (according to V.R.Ya.). Sanskrit ya (pron. "I") - "which", while Skt. aham (pron. "aham") - local. 1 l. units h. i. Thus, the original meaning of the word "I" is "which". See also Az.

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.

O OH confirms that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages. The influence of this language has directly or indirectly spread to almost all the languages ​​of the planet (according to experts, it is about 97%). If you speak Sanskrit, you can easily learn any language in the world. The best and most efficient computer algorithms were created not in English, but in Sanskrit. Scientists in the United States, Germany and France are creating software for devices that work in Sanskrit. At the end of 2021, several developments will be presented to the world, and some commands such as "send", "receive", "forward" will be written in the current Sanskrit.

The ancient language of Sanskrit, which transformed the world centuries ago, will soon become the language of the future, controlling bots and guiding devices. Sanskrit has several main advantages that scholars and linguists admire, some of them consider it a divine language - it is so pure and harmonious. Sanskrit also reveals some of the secret meanings of the hymns of the Vedas and Puranas, ancient Indian texts in this unique language.

Amazing facts of the past

The Vedas, written in Sanskrit, are the oldest in the world. They are believed to have been preserved unchanged in oral tradition for at least 2 million years. Modern scholars date the creation of the Vedas to 1500 BC. e., that is, "officially" their age is more than 3500 years. They have a maximum time interval between oral dissemination and written fixation, which falls on the 5th century AD. e.

Sanskrit texts cover a wide variety of topics, from spiritual treatises to literary works (poetry, drama, satire, history, epic, novels), scientific works in mathematics, linguistics, logic, botany, chemistry, medicine, as well as works of explanation. obscure subjects for us - "raising elephants" or even "growing curved bamboo for palanquins." The ancient library of Nalanda included the largest number of manuscripts on all topics until it was looted and burned.

Sanskrit poetry is remarkably diverse, with over 100 written and over 600 oral works.

There are works of great complexity, including works that describe several events at the same time using wordplay or use words that are several lines long.

Sanskrit is the mother of most North Indian languages. Even the tendentious pseudo-Aryan intrusion theorists who ridiculed the Hindu texts, after studying it, recognized the influence of Sanskrit and accepted it as the source of all languages. The Indo-Aryan languages ​​developed from the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, which in turn evolved from the Proto-Aryan Sanskrit. Moreover, even the Dravidian languages ​​(Telugu, Malalam, Kannada, and to some extent Tamil), which do not originate from Sanskrit, borrowed so many words from it that Sanskrit can be called their adopted mother.

The process of forming new words in Sanskrit continued for a long time, until the great linguist Panini, who wrote the grammar, established the rules for the formation of each word, compiling a complete list of roots and nouns. After Panini some changes were made, they were streamlined by Vararuchi and Patanjali. Any violation of the rules laid down by them was recognized as a grammatical error, and therefore Sanskrit has remained unchanged from the time of Patanjali (about 250 BC) to our times.

For a long time, Sanskrit was used mainly in the oral tradition. Before the advent of printing in India, Sanskrit did not have a single written alphabet. It was written in local alphabets, which includes more than two dozen scripts. This is also an unusual occurrence. The reasons for establishing Devanagari as the standard of writing are the influence of the Hindi language and the fact that many of the early Sanskrit texts were printed in Bombay, where Devanagari is the script for the local Marathi language.

Of all the languages ​​in the world, Sanskrit has the largest vocabulary, while it makes it possible to pronounce a sentence with a minimum number of words.

Sanskrit, like all literature written in it, is divided into two large sections: Vedic and classical. The Vedic period, which began in 4000-3000 BC. e., ended around 1100 AD. e.; the classical began in 600 BC. and continues to the present. Vedic Sanskrit merged with classical Sanskrit over time. However, a fairly large difference remains between them, although the phonetics are the same. Many old words were lost, many new ones appeared. Some meanings of words have changed, new phrases have arisen.

The sphere of influence of Sanskrit spread in all directions of Southeast Asia (now Laos, Cambodia and other countries) without the use of military action or violent measures from India.

The attention paid to Sanskrit in India (the study of grammar, phonetics, etc.) until the 20th century came, surprisingly, from outside. The success of modern comparative linguistics, the history of linguistics and, ultimately, linguistics in general, originates in the enthusiasm for Sanskrit by Western scholars such as A. N. Chomsky and P. Kiparsky.

Sanskrit is the scientific language of Hinduism, Buddhist teachings (together with Pali) and Jainism (second after Prakrit). It is difficult to classify it as a dead language: Sanskrit literature continues to thrive thanks to the novels, short stories, essays and epic poems that are written in this language. In the last 100 years, authors have even been awarded some literary awards, including the respected Jyanpith in 2006. Sanskrit is the official language of the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Today, there are several Indian villages (in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Karnataka and Uttara Pradesh) where this language is still spoken. For example, in the village of Mathur in Karnataka, more than 90% of the population knows Sanskrit.

There are even newspapers in Sanskrit! Sudharma, printed in Mysore, has been published since 1970 and now has an electronic version.

At the moment, there are about 30 million ancient Sanskrit texts in the world, 7 million of which are in India. This means that there are more texts in this language than Roman and Greek combined. Unfortunately, most of them have not been catalogued, and therefore a lot of work is required to digitize, translate and systematize the available manuscripts.

Sanskrit in modern times

In Sanskrit, the number system is called katapayadi. She assigns a certain number to each letter of the alphabet; the same principle is incorporated in the construction of the ASCII table. Drunvalo Melkizedek's book The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life provides an interesting fact. In the sloka (verse), the translation of which is as follows: “O Lord Krishna, smeared with yogurt of the worship of milkmaids, O savior of the fallen, O lord of Shiva, protect me!” After applying katapayadi, the number 0.3141592653589793238462643383279 was obtained. If you multiply it by 10, you get the number pi to the thirty-first digit! It is clear that the probability of a simple coincidence of such a series of numbers is too unlikely.

Sanskrit enriches science by passing on the knowledge contained in such books as the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas, Mahabharata, Ramayana and others. To this end, it is studied at the Russian State University and especially at NASA, which contains 60,000 palm leaves with manuscripts. NASA has declared Sanskrit "the only unambiguous spoken language on the planet" that is suitable for computers. The same thought was expressed back in July 1987 by Forbes magazine: "Sanskrit is the language most suitable for computers."

NASA presented a report that America is building the 6th and 7th generations of computers based on Sanskrit. The project end date for the 6th generation is 2025 and the 7th generation is 2034. After that, it is expected that there will be a boom in Sanskrit learning around the world.

In seventeen countries of the world there are universities for the study of Sanskrit for technological knowledge. In particular, a protection system based on the Indian Shri Chakra is being studied in the UK.

There is an interesting fact: the study of Sanskrit improves mental activity and memory. Students who master this language begin to better understand mathematics and other exact sciences and receive higher marks in them. School of James Jr. In London, she introduced the study of Sanskrit as a compulsory subject for her students, after which her students began to study better. This example was followed by some schools in Ireland.

Studies have shown that the phonetics of Sanskrit has a connection with the energy points of the body, so reading or pronouncing Sanskrit words stimulates them, increasing the energy of the whole body, thereby increasing the level of resistance to diseases, relaxing the mind and getting rid of stress. Also, Sanskrit is the only language that uses all the nerve endings in the language; when pronouncing words, the general blood supply improves and, as a result, the functioning of the brain. This results in better overall health, according to the American Hindu University.

Sanskrit is the only language in the world that has existed for millions of years. Many languages ​​descended from it have died; many others will come to replace them, but he himself will remain unchanged.

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 short 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 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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Devanagari alphabet

Indian alphabets, including Brahmi, Devanagari and others, are the only ones in the world where the order of characters is not random, but 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.
We do not know of any centuries-old development of the Devanagari script in India itself. This letter is considered a divine revelation. Indian Brahmin priests claim that Sanskrit is the language spoken by the Indian gods. According to one legend, Shiva presented the sacred sounds. From them, Sanskrit was later created.
According to another legend, the ancient enlightened yogis, who listened to their body in silence, caught fifty different vibrations that came from the chakras, and each of these subtle vibrations became one of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, that is, Sanskrit is internal energies expressed in sounds. For example, many people know the sacred sound in the East, OM, which is also a mantra, and at the same time a letter of the Devanagari alphabet.
The Sanskrit word "Devanagari" itself is translated by different specialists in different ways:
- writing "in the dialect of the Devas " or " spoken by the Devas ( over)";
- "writing of the city of the gods" , the script of the Heavenly City (Deva-Nagari).
Devas are demigods-half-humans (what tell tales, legends and traditions not only of the Indian epic ). The devas appear in human form. Can also be translated as divine, (single-root words "div ny", "at div tedious")
"Naga", Nagas - the people of snake people, who lived, according to legend, in India in ancient times. Nagas could be gods, demigods, or close associates of the gods.
"Ri" - (one-root wordrew) speech, writing, law, order, ritual.
Thus, we get the Deva-Naga-Ri" - the letter (or speech) of the Divine Nagas.
It's funny, isn't it? The Nagas are a people who are considered a mythical fiction, and their writing is a completely material object that has existed for 5000 years. And this despite the fact that many other mythical races are mentioned in the legends of the ancient Indians: Siddhas, Charanas, Gandharvas, Rudras, Apsaras, Uragas, Guhyakis and Vidyadharas, Danavas, Nagas, Maruts, Rakshasas, Nayrrits, intelligent monkeys and others. But the fact is that the Indians themselves consider the Nagas to be their ancestors and still worship them. In many temples scattered throughout India from north to south, we find images of serpent people from the Naga clan.
The cult of snakes is also found in some myths, which are given in the collection of ancient religious texts of the Maya, the Book of Chilam-Balam. It is reported there that the first inhabitants of Yucatan were the Snake People. from Anskrit snake sounds like "naga", and in some Indian dialects (Achuar and Awahun): "napi" and "naka-naka".
There is another translation of the word Devanagari. This is the language of communication between Nagas and Devas. The Nagas are the original inhabitants of our planet, they represent the Lunar Dynasty. The virgins, representatives of the solar dynasty, are aliens. Thus, the sounds and script of Devanagari formed the basis of the language in which the gods and intelligent beings, the former inhabitants of our planet, communicated.

Sanskrit - the language of the Naga snake people?

All of the above is confirmed by the following curious observations. Specialists involved in the study of fonts and alphabets believe that when writing symbols or letters, the image of a mouth is accepted almost everywhere, making a sound from left to right (except for the letters "O" and "Ö" , drawn in front).
Suppose that each Devanagari sign represents, as in Cyrillic and other alphabets, a schematic representation of the mouth and organs of speech at the moment of pronouncing the sound. It turns out a schematic representation of the mouth from the side. The upper palate is a horizontal line, the lower jaw is a vertical line. The mouth is always open. At the same time, the teeth in this font are not depicted in any character. And some of the letters are either badly distorted or represent the positions of the mouth not of a human being, but perhaps of Naga, the serpent-man, since these symbols depict a long tongue forked at the end.
The language of the creators of Devanagari did not contain a single dental letter. It can be assumed that these creatures did not have teeth at all. This is exactly how Indian sculptures depict nagas.But in Sanskrit and Hindi there are many sounds, with exhalation through the nose, and not through the mouth, i.e. aspirated sounds ha, dha, jha, bhra, etc. For other human languages, this phenomenon is extremely rare. Why complicate things so much when our mouth and lips allow us to pronounce a huge number of different pronunciation variations? Moreover, in classical Sanskrit, these same "exhaled" sounds are also pronounced through the mouth, but with aspiration. It seems that the creators of the language did not have such a mobile mouth, but the nasopharynx was overdeveloped.

In India, to this day, the strange custom of incising the base of the tongue is widespread. Many yogis stretch their tongues in length with special training (sometimes even very strongly). There are references to the incision of the Brahmins in ancient times along the tongue so that it resembles a snake.
Why such seemingly very artificial operations? This, of course, is just a hypothesis, but isn’t it with the quite pragmatic, rational goal to make it easier to speak the Naga language? Perhaps people sought to speak the Naga language correctly, and for this purpose they changed their organs of speech.

If we look at the distribution map of such languages ​​with aspirated sounds, we will find that the language of the Nagas, Snake People and Dragons was distributed in Southeast Asia (Hindostan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea). This fact is consistent with the legends of the countries mentioned that these intelligent beings, representatives of the Lunar dynasty, lived in this territory. And as the legends say, they taught the first people literacy, agriculture, crafts and other knowledge. And they also conveyed the secret knowledge about the structure of the world and man, so that a person could develop and improve ...