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SanskritFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia(Redirected from Sanskrit language)Jump to: navigation, searchSanskritसंसà¥à¤•à¥ƒà¤¤à¤®à¥ saṃská¹›tamSpoken in:India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and some other areas of South and Southeast Asia; many Buddhist scholars in the countries of East Asia such as China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam are also able to communicate in Sanskrit.Total speakers:49,736 fluent speakers (as of 1991)194,433 second-language speakers (as of 1961).Language family:Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Sanskrit Official statusOfficial language of:India (one of the scheduled languages)Regulated by:no official regulationLanguage codesISO 639-1:saISO 639-2:sanISO/DIS 639-3:san This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...The Sanskrit language (संसà¥à¤•à¥ƒà¤¤à¤‚ saṃská¹›tam, संसà¥à¤•à¥ƒà¤¤à¤¾ वाकॠsaṃská¹›tÄ vÄk) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India.It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe, and is a central part of Hindu tradition. Its pre-Classical form of Vedic Sanskrit, the liturgical language of the historical Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the most archaic of the Vedic texts being the Rigveda.Today, Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. The corpus of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and literature, as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts.The scope of this article is the Classical Sanskrit language as laid out in the grammar of Panini, roughly around 500 BC. Most Sanskrit texts available today were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were commited to writing.Contents1 History 1.1 Vedic Sanskrit 1.2 Classical Sanskrit 1.3 European Scholarship 2 Phonology and writing system 2.1 Vowels 2.2 Consonants 2.3 Phonology 2.4 Pitch 2.5 Script 2.5.1 Romanization 3 Grammar 3.1 Grammatical tradition 3.2 Verbs 3.2.1 Classification of verbs 3.2.2 Tense systems 3.2.2.1 Present system 3.2.2.2 Perfect system 3.2.2.3 Aorist system 3.2.2.4 Future system 3.3 Verbs: Conjugation 3.3.1 Basic conjugational endings 3.3.2 Present system conjugation 3.3.2.1 Athematic inflection 3.4 Nominal inflection 3.4.1 The basic declension suffix scheme for nouns and adjectives 3.4.2 a-stems 3.4.3 i- and u-stems 3.4.4 Long Vowel-stems 3.4.5 á¹›-stems 3.5 Personal Pronouns and Determiners 3.6 Compounds 3.7 Syntax 3.8 Numerals 4 Influence 4.1 Modern-day India 4.1.1 In non-Indian languages 4.1.2 Attempts at revival 4.2 Interactions with Sino-Tibetan languages 4.3 Western vogue for Sanskrit 4.4 Computational linguistics 5 See also 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Dictionaries 7.2 Primers 7.3 Grammars [edit]History Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century.The adjective saṃská¹›ta- means "refined, consecrated, sanctified". The language referred to as saṃská¹›tÄ vÄk "the refined language" has by definition always been a 'high' language, used for religious and scientific discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is PÄṇini's Aá¹£tÄdhyÄyÄ« ("Eight-Chapter Grammar") dating to ca. the 5th century BC. It is essentially a prescriptive grammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts, mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in Panini's time.When the term arose in India, "Sanskrit" was not thought of as a specific language set apart from other languages (the people of the time regarded languages more as dialects), but rather as a particularly refined or perfected manner of speaking. Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment and was taught mainly to Brahmins through close analysis of Sanskrit grammarians such as PÄṇini.Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. It is part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages, which also includes the Iranian branch and the Balto-Slavic branch. The categorization may be shown as:Sanskrit was the learned language of Ancient India, existing alongside the Prakrits (vernaculars), which evolved into the modern Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi/Urdu, Bengali etc.). Most of the Dravidian languages of India, despite being a separate linguistic family by their own right, have a high influence of Sanskrit, especially in terms of loanwords. Telugu has the highest influence while Tamil has the lowest. This influence of Sanskrit on these languages is recognized by the notions of Tat Sama (equivalent) and Tat Bhava (rooted in). Sanskrit itself has also been influenced by the Dravidian family.[edit]Vedic SanskritMain article: Vedic SanskritSanskrit, as defined by PÄṇini, had evolved out of the earlier "Vedic" form, and scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or "Paninian" Sanskrit as separate dialects. However, they are extremely similar in many ways and differ mostly in a few points of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Classical Sanskrit can therefore be considered a seamless evolution of the earlier Vedic language. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a large collection of hymns, incantations, and religio-philosophical discussions which form the earliest religious texts in India and the basis for much of the Hindu religion. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, composed by many authors over centuries of oral tradition. The end of the Vedic period is marked by the composition of the Upanishads, which form the concluding part of the Vedic corpus in the traditional compilations. The current hypothesis is that the Vedic form of Sanskrit survived until the middle of the first millennium BC. It is around this time that Sanskrit began the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, marking the beginning of the Classical period.Hinduism believes that the language of the Vedas is eternal and revealed in its wording and word order. Evidence for this belief is found in the Vedas itself, where in the Upanishads they are described as the very "breath of God" (niḥśvÄsitam brahma). The Vedas are therefore considered "the language of reality", so to speak, and are unauthored, even by God, the rishis or seers ascribed to them being merely individuals gifted with a special insight into reality with the power of perceiving these eternal sounds. At the beginning of every cycle of creation, God himself "remembers" the order of the Vedic words and propagates them through the rishis. Orthodox Hindus, while accepting the linguistic development of Sanskrit as such, do not admit any historical stratification within the Vedic corpus itself.This belief is of significant consequence in Indian religious history, as the very sacredness and eternality of the language encouraged exact memorization and transmission and discouraged textual learning via written propagation. Each word is believed to have innate and eternal meaning and, when properly pronounced, mystic expressive power. Erroneous learning of repetition of the Veda was considered a grave sin with potentially immediate negative consequences. Consequently, Vedic learning by rote was encouraged and prized, particularly among Brahmins, where learning of one's own Vedic texts was a mandated duty.Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric Greek and Classical Greek. Tiwari ([1955] 2005) lists the following principal differences between the two:Phonology Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative (/ɸ/, called upamÄdhamÄ«ya) and a voiceless velar fricative (/x/, called jihvÄmÅ«lÄ«ya)—which used to occur when the breath visarga (अः) appeared before voiceless labial and velar consonants respectively. Both of them were lost in Classical Sanskrit to give way to the simple visarga. Vedic Sanskrit had a retroflex lateral approximant (/É/) (ळ) as well as its aspirated counterpart /ÉÊ°/ (ळà¥à¤¹), which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, to be replaced with the corresponding plosives /É–/ (ड) and /É–Ê°/ (ढ). The pronunciations of syllabic /ɻˌ/ (ऋ), /lËŒ/ (लृ) and their long counterparts no longer retained their pure pronunciations, but had started to be pronounced as short and long /É»i/ (रि) and /lri/ (लà¥à¤°à¤¿). The vowels e (à¤) and o (ओ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthongs /ÇŽi/ and /ÇŽu/, but they became pure monophthongs /eË/ and /oË/ in Classical Sanskrit. The vowels ai (à¤) and au (औ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthongs /aËi/ (आइ) and /aËu/ (आउ), but they became diphthongs /ÇŽi/ (अइ) and /ÇŽu/ (अउ) in Classical Sanskrit. The PrÄtishÄkhyas claim that the dental consonants were articulated from the root of the teeth (dantamÅ«lÄ«ya), but they became pure dentals later. This included the /r/, which later became retroflex. Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent which could even change the meaning of the words, and was still in use in Panini's time, as we can infer by his use of devices to indicate its position. At some latter time, this was replaced by a stress accent limited to the second to fourth syllables from the end. Today, the pitch accent can be heard only in the traditional Vedic chantings. Vedic Sanskrit often allowed two like vowels to come together without merger during Sandhi. Grammar The subjunctive mood of Vedic Sanskrit was also lost in Classical Sanskrit. Also, there was no fixed rule about the use of various tenses (luṇ, laṇ and liá¹). There were more than 12 ways of forming infinitives in Vedic Sanskrit, of which Classical Sanskrit retained only one single form. Nominal declinations and verbal conjugation also changed pronunciation, although the spelling was mostly retained in Classical Sanskrit. E.g., along with the Classical Sanskrit's declension of deva as devaḥ—devau—devÄḥ, Vedic Sanskrit additionally allowed the forms devaḥ—devÄ—devÄsaḥ. Similarly Vedic Sanskrit has declined forms such as asme, tve, yuá¹£me, tvÄ, etc. for the 1st and 2nd person pronouns, not found in Classical Sanskrit. The obvious reason is the attempt of Classical Sanskrit to regularize and standardize its grammar, which simultaneously led to a purge of Old Proto-Indo-European forms. To emphasize that Proto-Indo-European and its immediate daughters were essentially end-inflected languages, both Proto-Indo-European and Vedic Sanskrit had independent prefix-morphemes. Such prefixes (sic), especially for verbs, could come anywhere in the sentence, but in Classical Sanskrit, it became mandatory to attach them immediately before the verb. Vocabulary Many lexemes attested in the Vedic texts became lost, while others contained a considerable amount of polysemy. Numerous loanwords from Dravidian languages brought in more and more retroflex plosives. [edit]Classical SanskritA significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The deviations from PÄṇini in the epics are generally due to interference from Prakrits, and not because they are 'pre-Paninean'. "In fact, almost all 'un-Paninean' forms of Epic Sanskrit are innovations" [Oberlies, "A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit", p.XXIX, emphasis in the original]. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations aarsha (आरà¥à¤·) or "of the rishis", the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than Classical Sanskrit proper. Finally, there is also a language dubbed "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" by scholars, which is actually a prakrit ornamented with Sanskritized elements (see also termination of spoken Sanskrit). According to Tiwari ([1955] 2004), there were four principal dialects of Sanskrit, viz., paÅ›cimottarÄ« (Northwestern, aslo called Northern or Western), madhyadeśī (lit., middle country), pÅ«rvi (Eastern) and daká¹£iṇī (Southern, arose in the Classical period). The first three are even attested in the Vedic BrÄhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest (Kauṣītaki BrÄhmaṇa, 7.6).[edit]European ScholarshipEuropean scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620 - 1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681 - 1731), led to the proposal of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones, and thus played an important role in the development of Western linguistics. Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) first arose among Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics owes a great deal to these grammarians, and to this day, for example, key terms for compound analysis such as bahuvrihi are taken from Sanskrit.[edit]Phonology and writing systemNote: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.Classical Sanskrit distinguishes 48 sounds. Some of these, are, however, allophones. The number of phonemes is smaller, at about 35, see below.The sounds are traditionally listed in the order vowels, diphthongs, anusvara and visarga, stops and nasals (starting in the back of the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquids and fricatives, written in IAST as follows (see the tables below for details):a Ä i Ä« u Å« á¹› Ṡḷ ḹ ; e ai o au ṃ ḥ k kh g gh á¹…; c ch j jh ñ; á¹ á¹h Ḡá¸h ṇ; t th d dh n; p ph b bh m y r l v; Å› á¹£ s h An alternate traditional ordering is that of the Shiva Sutra of PÄṇini.[edit]VowelsDevanagari script is the one most popularly associated with Sanskrit, although most other Indic scripts have been and continue to be used to write it. Modern Hindi also uses the Devanagari script (its alphabets are truly speaking, alpha-syllables). Devanagari, being an abugida script, non-word-initial vowels are expressed by diacritics; see Devanagari for details. The vowels of Classical Sanskrit with their word-initial devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant पॠ(/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and ITRANS and (approximate) equivalents in Standard English are listed below:AlphabetDiacritical mark with “पà¥â€PronunciationPronunciation with /p/IAST equiv.ITRANS equiv.Approximate English eqivalentअप/É™/ or /ä/ (two sounds are represented by the same letter)/pÉ™/ or /pä/aashort Schwa: as the a in above or sometimes like the u in under.आपा/É‘Ë//pÉ‘Ë/ÄAlong Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in fatherइपि/i//pi/iishort close front unrounded vowel: as i in bitईपी/iË//piË/Ä«Ilong close front unrounded vowel: as i in machineउपà¥/u//pu/uushort close back rounded vowel: as u in putऊपू/uË//puË/Å«Ulong close back rounded vowel: as oo in schoolà¤à¤ªà¥‡/eË//peË/eelong close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong), or é in caféà¤à¤ªà¥ˆ/É™i/ or /ai//pÉ™i/ or /pai/aiaia long diphthong: approx. as ei in heightओपो/οË//poË/oolong close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)औपौ/É™u/ or /au//pÉ™u/ or /pau/auaua long diphthong: approx. as ou in houseऋपृ/ɻ̩//pɻ̩/á¹›Rshort syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximantॠपॄ/ɻ̩Ë//pɻ̩Ë/á¹RRlong syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: a longer version of /rÌ©/ऌपॢ/ÉÌ©//pÉÌ©/ḷLRshort syllabic vowel-like retroflex lateral approximant: approx. as handleॡपॣ/ÉÌ©Ë//pÉÌ©Ë/ḹLRRlong syllabic vowel-like retroflex lateral approximant: longer version of /lÌ©/The long vowels are held about twice as long as their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long length for most vowels, called pluti, which is used in various cases, but particularly in the vocative. The pluti is not accepted by all grammarians.The vowels e and o continue as allophonic variants of Proto-Indo-Iranian /ai/, /au/, and they are phonologically (conceptually) /ai/ and /au/ still in Sanskrit, and are categorized as diphthongs by Sanskrit grammarians even though they are realized phonetically as simple long vowels. (See above).Additional points:There are some additional vowels traditionally listed in the Sanskrit/Hindi alphabet. They are : अं (called anusvÄra), pronounced as /əŋ/ (IAST: ṃ). Its diacritic (the dot above) is used both for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable and for the sound of a vowel-like /n/ or /m/. (पं). अः (called visarga), pronounced as /É™h/ (IAST: ḥ). The diacritic à¤}} (called chandrabindu), not listed in the alphabet, is used interchangeably with the anusvÄra to indicate nasalization of the vowel (पà¤). If a lone consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virÄma diacritic below (पà¥). The vowel /aË/ in Sanskrit is realized as being more central and less back than the closest English approximation, which is É‘Ë. But the grammarians have classified it as a back vowel. (Tiwari, [1955] 2004). All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized. All vowels can have acute grave or circumflex pitch accent. Note that the ancient Sanskrit grammarians have classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and front vowels. Hence ठand ओ are classified respectively as palato-velar (a+i) and labio-velar (a+u) vowels respectively. But the grammarians have classified them as diphthongs and in prosody, each is given two mÄtrÄs. This does not necessarily mean that they are proper diphthongs, but neither excludes the possibility that they could have been proper diphthongs at a very ancient stage (see above). These vowels are pronounced as long /eË/ and /oË/ respectively by learned Sanskrit Brahmins and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit usually disallows any other diphthong—vowels in succession, if occur, are converted to semivowels according to predetermined rules. In the devanagari script used for Sanskrit, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without any virÄma (ie, freely standing in the orthography: प as opposed to पà¥), the neutral vowel schwa (/É™/) is automatically associated with it—this is of course true for the consonant to be in any position in the word. Word-ending schwa is always short. But the IAST a appended to the end of masculine noun words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as /É‘Ë/—this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound like feminine! e.g., shiva must be pronounced as /É•ivÉ™/ and not as /É•ivÉ‘Ë/. Tiwari ([1955] 2004) argues that in Vedic Sanskrit, अ was simply short É‘, and became centralized and raised in the era of the Prakrits. [edit]ConsonantsIAST and Devanagari notations are given, with approximate IPA values in square brackets.LabialLabiodentalDentalRetroflexPalatalVelarGlottalStopUnaspiratedp प [p]b ब t त [t̪]d द [d̪]Ṡट [ʈ]Ḡड [É–]c च [c]j ज [ÉŸ]k क [k]g ग [g]Aspiratedph फ [pÊ°]bh ठ[bʱ]th थ [t̪ʰ]dh ध [d̪ʱ]á¹h ठ[ʈʰ]á¸h ढ [ɖʱ]ch छ [cÊ°]jh ठ[ɟʱ]kh ख [kÊ°]gh घ [gʱ]Nasalm म [m]n न [n̪]ṇ ण [ɳ]ñ ञ [ɲ]á¹… ङ [Å‹]Semivowelv व [Ê‹]y य [j]Liquidl ल [l̪]r र [É»]Fricatives स [s̪]á¹£ ष [Ê‚]Å› श [É•]ḥ ः [h]h ह [ɦ]The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (/É™/), and is named in the table as such.PlosivesUnaspiratedVoicelessAspiratedVoicelessUnaspiratedVoicedAspiratedVoicedNasalVelarक/kÉ™/; English: skipख/kÊ°É™/; English: catग/gÉ™/; English: gameघ/gʱə/; Aspirated /g/ङ/Å‹É™/; English: ringPalatalच/cÉ™/; ≈English: chatछ/cÊ°É™/; Aspirated /c/ज/ÉŸÉ™/; ≈English: jamà¤/ɟʱə/; Aspirated /ÉŸ/ञ/ɲə/; English: finchRetroflexट/ʈə/; American Eng: hurtingठ/ʈʰə/; Aspirated /ʈ/ड/É–É™/; American Eng: murderढ/ɖʱə/; Aspirated /É–/ण/ɳə/; American Eng: hunterApico-Dentalत/t̪ə/; Spanish: tomateथ/t̪ʰə/; Aspirated /t̪/द/d̪ə/; Spanish: dondeध/d̪ʱə/; Aspirated /d̪/न/n̪ə/; English: nameLabialप/pÉ™/; English: spinफ/pÊ°É™/; English: pitब/bÉ™/; English: boneà¤/bʱə/; Aspirated /b/म/mÉ™/; English: mineNon-Plosives/SonorantsPalatalRetroflexDentalLabial/GlottalApproximantय/jÉ™/; English: youर/rÉ™/; American Eng: tearingल/l̪ə/; English: loveव (labio-dental)/Ê‹É™/; English: vaseSibilant/Fricativeश/É•É™/; English: shipष/Ê‚É™/; Retroflex form of /ʃ/स/s̪ə/; English: sameह (glottal)/ɦə/; English behind[edit]PhonologyThe Sanskrit vowels are as discussed in the section above. The long syllabic l (ḹ) is not attested, and is only discussed by grammarians for systematic reasons. Its short counterpart ḷ occurs in a single root only, kḷp "to order, array". Long syllabic r (á¹) is also quite marginal, occurring in the genitive plural of r-stems (e.g. mÄtá¹› "mother" and pitá¹› "father" have gen.pl. mÄtá¹á¹‡Äm and pitá¹á¹‡Äm). i, u, á¹›, ḷ are vocalic allophones of consonantal y, v, r, l. There are thus only 5 invariably vocalic phonemes,a, Ä, Ä«, Å«, á¹. Visarga ḥ ः is an allophone of r and s, and anusvara ṃ, Devanagari ं of any nasal, both in pausa (ie, the nasalized vowel). The exact pronunciation of the three sibilants may vary, but they are distinct phonemes. An aspirated voiced sibilant /zʱ/ was inherited by Indo-Aryan from Proto-Indo-Iranian but lost shortly before the time of the Rigveda (note that aspirated sibilant are exceedingly rare in any language). The retroflex consonants are somewhat marginal phonemes, often being conditioned by their phonetic environment; they do not continue a PIE series and are often ascribed by some linguists to the substratal influence of Dravidian. The nasal ñ is a conditioned allophone of n (n and ṇ are distinct phonemes - one has to distinguish aṇu "minute, atomic" (nom. sg. neutr. of an adjective) from anu "after, along"; phonologically independent á¹… occurs only marginally, e.g. in prÄá¹… "directed forwards/towards" (nom. sg. masc. of an adjective) and can thus be omitted). There are thus 31 consonantal or semi-vocalic phonemes, consisting of four/five kinds of stops realized both with or without aspiration and both voiced and voiceless, two nasals, four semi-vowels or liquids, and four fricatives, written in IAST transliteration as follows:k, kh, g, gh; c, ch, j, jh; á¹, á¹h, á¸, á¸h; t, th, d, dh; p, ph, b, bh; m, n, ṇ; y, r, l, v; Å›, á¹£, s, h or a total of 36 unique Sanskrit phonemes altogether.The phonological rules to be applied when combining morphemes to a word, and when combining words to a sentence are collectively called sandhi "composition". Texts are written phonetically, with sandhi applied (except for the so-called padapÄá¹ha).Some additional features of the Sanskrit phonological system are given here, as well as some useful tips for those whose native language is English but are interested in learning Sanskrit language.No other nasal consonant except /m/ and /n/ can start a word in Sanskrit. The number of allowable consonant clusters of Sanskrit is limited, but still very large as compared to other IE languages. The "r" of Sanskrit may be as in Standard American English. Certain regional traditions pronounce the vowel "á¹›" (ऋ) as /ri/, while others as /ru/. Still others pronounce it simply as /r/. The oldest Åšiká¹£Äs (general phonetic texts) and PrÄtiÅ›Äkhyas (phonetic studies of particular branches of Vedas) vary significantly in descriptions of these sounds; this may be due to different dialects and/or traditions their authors belonged to. There is no retroflex flap (ड़) in Sanskrit. In modern Hindi, they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskrit’s simple voiced retroflex plosives. The /ɳ/ (ṇ or ण) in Sanskrit is not a flap but a simple nasal stop, although it is pronounced by modern pundits while chanting as a nasal variant of the voiced retroflex flap (devanagari/Hindi: ड़à¤). Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers could try pronouncing the words “kiteâ€, “takeâ€, “chip†and “pack†with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corresponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all. For practicing the voiced aspirates, one could try pronouncing, with very clear articulation: “drag himâ€, “said himâ€, “enrage himâ€, “grab himâ€. The voiced aspirated plosives (also called as murmur stops or breathy voice) are extremely important and frequent in Sanskrit, and preserve the series of Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates. The dental consonants in Sanskrit are as in Spanish or French. They can be pronounced by pronouncing /t/ and /d/ (of English) by pressing the tip of the tongue against the back of the teeth rather than against the back of the alveolar ridge as done by English speakers. The normal "t" and "d" in IAST transliteration are the dental stops; and they occur much, much more frequently than the retroflex stops. The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling-up the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". However, bringing the tip of the tongue a bit above the normal alveolar ridge would also work fine. The normal alveolar plosives of English /t/ and /d/ do not exist as such in Sanskrit. The palatal plosives of Sanskrit do not have a sharp frictional sound following them, as what happened in English chips and jam. These are more of pure plosives than affricates. Sanskrit has no /v/. Its nearest equivalent is /Ê‹/, which is very close to /v/, but does not a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. But in consonant clusters, this may allophonically change to /w/. The voiceless palatal sibilant of Sanskrit (श, IAST: Å›) is very close to like the English sh in ship (although the Sanskrit phoneme is the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /É•/) while the English phoneme is the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ with optional lip rounding). Today, some speakers of Sanskrit vary the palatal fricative from /É•/ to /ʃ/. The voiceless retroflex sibilant (ष, /Ê‚/) is pronounced like /ʃ/, but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In MÄdhyandini branch of Yajurveda, this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as /kÊ°/. The Sanskrit voiced glottal fricative (ह, /ɦ/) is a voiced allophone of the normal h, as in English behind. Although any consonant may come in the word-final position in an uninflected word-stem, the number of word-final consonants in any inflected word (or verb or particle) standing freely by itself is severly limited and determined by the rules of Sandhi. Only the following consonants may come in the word-final position: /k/, /ʈ/, /t/, /p/, /l/ (rare), voiceless /h/ (i.e., visarga), and all nasals except /ɲ/. Any vowel may come at the word-final position. [edit]PitchVedic Sanskrit is a pitch accent language. Native grammarians define three tones (svara): udÄtta = 'raised', anudÄtta = 'not raised', and svarita = 'sounded'. The udÄtta syllable corresponds to the original Proto-Indo-European stress. The svarita is usually the next syllable after an udÄtta. Probably when the Rigveda was written down, the pitch of speech rose through the udÄtta and came back down through the following svarita. A svarita which is not preceded by an udÄtta is called an "independent svarita". In transliteration udÄtta is marked with acute accent (´) and independent svarita with a grave accent (`). Independent svarita occurs only where its udÄtta was lost because of vowel sandhi.Classical Sanskrit is usually pronounced with a stress accent decided by the syllable length pattern of each word. That is, Sanskrit, like Latin, is a syllable-timed language. It is the syllable which forms the basis of Sanskrit prosody.[edit]Script Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript in the Sharada script (17th or 18th century)Sanskrit has had no single script associated with it, since written Sanskrit was of limited importance throughout the age of classical Sanskrit literature. Since the late 19th century the Devanagari script became the script most widely used for Sanskrit. In northern India, there are Brahmi inscriptions dating from the 3rd century BCE onwards, the oldest appearing on the famous Prakrit pillar inscriptions of king Ashoka. Roughly contemporary with the Brahmi, the Kharosthi script was used. Later (ca. 4th to 8th centuries AD) the Gupta script, derived from Brahmi, became prevalent. From ca. the 8th century, the Sharada script evolved out of the Gupta script, and was mostly displaced in its turn by Devanagari from ca. the 12th century, with intermediary stages such as the Siddham script. The Bengali and other scripts were also used in their respective regions.The Devanagari letters ("akshara") for the vowels and the consonants were discussed above. The table below illustrates the combining of two consonants into a consonant cluster. To write a consonant cluster /XYa/ using the letters for /Xa/ and /Ya/, Devanagari usually modifies the first into an abbreviated combining form, generally by omitting the right side. Similarly, for a cluster /XYZa/, both /Xa/ and /Ya/ would be abbreviated. However, some forms are irregular, and there are many stylistic variants. Here the most common system is illustrated, with the second consonant represented by /n/.ka-groupकà¥à¤¨/knÉ™/खà¥à¤¨/kÊ°nÉ™/गà¥à¤¨/gnÉ™/घà¥à¤¨/gʱnÉ™/ङà¥à¤¨/Å‹nÉ™/cha-groupचà¥à¤¨/cnÉ™/छà¥à¤¨/cÊ°nÉ™/जà¥à¤¨/ÉŸnÉ™/à¤à¥à¤¨/ɟʱnÉ™/ञà¥à¤¨/ɲnÉ™/ta-groupटà¥à¤¨/ʈnÉ™/ठà¥à¤¨/ʈʰnÉ™/डà¥à¤¨/É–nÉ™/ढà¥à¤¨/ɖʱnÉ™/णà¥à¤¨/ɳnÉ™/ta-groupतà¥à¤¨/t̪nÉ™/थà¥à¤¨/t̪ʰnÉ™/दà¥à¤¨/d̪nÉ™/धà¥à¤¨/d̪ʱnÉ™/नà¥à¤¨/nnÉ™/pa-groupपà¥à¤¨/pnÉ™/फà¥à¤¨/pÊ°nÉ™/बà¥à¤¨/bnÉ™/à¤à¥à¤¨/bʱnÉ™/मà¥à¤¨/mnÉ™/ya-groupयà¥à¤¨/ynÉ™/रà¥à¤¨/rnÉ™/लà¥à¤¨/lnÉ™/वà¥à¤¨/Ê‹nÉ™/va-groupशà¥à¤¨/É•nÉ™/षà¥à¤¨/Ê‚nÉ™/सà¥à¤¨/snÉ™/हà¥à¤¨/ɦnÉ™/In the south where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanscrit include Grantha in Tamil speaking regions, Telugu in Telugu and Tamil speaking regions, Kannada, and Malayalam. Grantha, which was the precursor to the Tamil script, was used exclusively for Sanskrit and is rarely seen today. A recent development has been to use Tamil characters with numeric subscripts indicating voicing and aspiration.Sanskrit in modern Indian scripts. May Åšiva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods. (Kalidasa)Verbal learning occupied the pride of place in ancient India and bears an influence which can still be felt in Indian schooling today. High value was placed on the memorization of texts, often using sophisticated mnemonic techniques. As such, propagation and learning through writing was correspondingly deemphasized, and it is hypothesized that writing was introduced relatively late to India. Rhys Davids suggests that writing may have been introduced from the Middle East by traders, with Sanskrit remaining a purely oral language until well into India's Classical age.It is interesting to note the importance that Sanskrit orthography and Vedic philosophy of sound play in Hindu symbolism, as the varnamala, or sound-garland/alphabet, of 51 letters is also seen to be represented by the 51 skulls of Kali. In the Upanishads, the transcendent-immanent nature of Brahman is represented by the half-matra, or sphota of sound that is inherent to a beat of sound in the Sanskrit system.[edit]RomanizationMain article: Romanization of SanskritSince the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1912, and which is used in this article. ASCII-based transliteration schemes have evolved due to difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS, a lossless transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode aware web browsers, IAST has become common also for online articles.For scholarly work, Devanagari in the 19th century was generally preferred for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts also by European scholars; however, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European languages are usually represented using Roman transliteration, and from the mid 20th century, textual editions edited by Western scholars have also been mostly in romanized transliteration.[edit]Grammar[edit]Grammatical traditionMain article: Sanskrit grammariansPlease expand and improve this section as described on this article's talk page or at Requests for expansion,then remove this message.Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyÄkaraṇa, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India, and culminates in the Aá¹£á¹ÄdhyÄyÄ« of PÄṇini (ca. 5th century BC). Patañjali, who lived several centuries after Panini, is the reputed author of the MahÄbhÄá¹£ya, the "Great Commentary" on the Aá¹£á¹ÄdhyÄyÄ«.[edit]Verbs[edit]Classification of verbsSanskrit has ten classes of verbs divided into in two broad groups: athematic and thematic. The thematic verbs are so called because an a, called the theme vowel, is inserted between the stem and the ending. This serves to make the thematic verbs generally more regular. Exponents used in verb conjugation include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and reduplication. Every root has (not necessarily all distinct) zero, guṇa, and vá¹›ddhi grades. If V is the vowel of the zero grade, the guṇa-grade vowel is traditionally thought of as a + V, and the vá¹›ddhi-grade vowel as Ä + V.[edit]Tense systemsThe verbs tenses (a very inexact application of the word, since more distinctions than simply tense are expressed) are organized into four 'systems' (as well as gerunds and infinitives, and such creatures as intensives/frequentatives, desideratives, causatives, and benedictives derived from more basic forms) based on the different stem forms (derived from verbal roots) used in conjugation. There are four tense systems:Present (Present, Imperfect, Imperative, Optative) Perfect Aorist Future (Future, Conditional) [edit]Present systemThe present system includes the present and imperfect tenses, the optative and imperative moods, as well as some of the remnant forms of the old subjunctive. The tense stem of the present system is formed in various ways. The numbers are the native grammarians' numbers for these classes.For athematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through:2) No modification at all, for example ad from ad 'eat'. 3) Reduplication prefixed to the root, for example juhu from hu 'sacrifice'. 7) Infixion of na or n before the final root consonant (with appropriate sandhi changes), for example rundh or ruṇadh from rudh 'obstruct'. 5) Suffixation of nu (guṇa form no), for example sunu from su 'press out'. 8) Suffixation of u (guṇa form o), for example tanu from tan 'stretch'. For modern linguistic purposes it is better treated as a subclass of the 5th. tanu derives from tnnu, which is zero-grade for *tannu, because in the Proto-Indo-European language [m] and [n] could be vowels, which in Sanskrit (and Greek) change to [a]. Most members of the 8th class arose this way; kar = "make", "do" was 5th class in Vedic (krnoti = "he makes"), but shifted to the 8th class in Classical Sanskrit (karoti = "he makes") 9) Suffixation of nÄ (zero-grade nÄ« or n), for example krīṇa or krīṇī from krÄ« 'buy'. For thematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through:1) Suffixation of the thematic vowel a with guṇa strengthening, for example, bháva from bhÅ« 'be'. 6) Suffixation of the thematic vowel a with a shift of accent to this vowel, for example tudá from tud 'thrust'. 4) Suffixation of ya, for example dÄ«Ìvya from div 'play'. The tenth class described by native grammarians refers to a process which is derivational in nature, and thus not a true tense-stem formation.[edit]Perfect systemThe perfect system includes only the perfect tense. The stem is formed with reduplication as with the present system.The perfect system also produces separate "strong" and "weak" forms of the verb — the strong form is used with the singular active, and the weak form with the rest.[edit]Aorist systemThe aorist system includes aorist proper (with past indicative meaning, e.g. abhūḥ "you were") and some of the forms of the ancient injunctive (used almost exclusively with mÄ in prohibitions, e.g. mÄ bhūḥ "don't be"). The principal distinction of the two is presence/absence of an augment - a- prefixed to the stem.The aorist system stem actually has three different formations: the simple aorist, the reduplicating aorist (semantically related to the causative verb), and the sibilant aorist. The simple aorist is taken directly from the root stem (e.g. bhÅ«-: a-bhÅ«-t "he was"). The reduplicating aorist involves reduplication as well as vowel reduction of the stem. The sibilant aorist is formed with the suffixation of s to the stem.[edit]Future systemThe future system is formed with the suffixation of sya or iá¹£ya and guṇa.[edit]Verbs: ConjugationEach verb has a grammatical voice, whether active, passive or middle. There is also an impersonal voice, which can be described as the passive voice of intransitive verbs. Sanskrit verbs have an indicative, an optative and an imperative mood. Older forms of the language had a subjunctive, though this had fallen out of use by the time of Classical Sanskrit.[edit]Basic conjugational endingsConjugational endings in Sanskrit convey person, number, and voice. Different forms of the endings are used depending on what tense stem and mood they are attached to. Verb stems or the endings themselves may be changed or obscured by sandhi.ActiveMiddleSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralPrimaryFirst PersonmivásmáséváhemáheSecond PersonsithástháséÄÌthedhvéThird Persontitásánti, átitéÄÌteánte, áteSecondaryFirst PersonamvámáÃ, áváhimáhiSecond PersonstámtáthÄÌsÄÌthÄmdhvámThird PersonttÄÌmán, ústáÄÌtÄmánta, áta, ránPerfectFirst PersonavámáéváhemáheSecond PersonthaáthusáséÄÌthedhvéThird PersonaátusúséÄÌteréImperativeFirst PersonÄniÄvaÄmaÄiÄvahÄiÄmahÄiSecond PersondhÃ, hÃ, —támtásváÄÌthÄmdhvámThird PersontutÄÌmántu, átutÄÌmÄÌtÄmántÄm, átÄmPrimary endings are used with present indicative and future forms. Secondary endings are used with the imperfect, conditional, aorist, and optative. Perfect and imperative endings are used with the perfect and imperative respectively.[edit]Present system conjugationConjugation of the present system deals with all forms of the verb utilizing the present tense stem (explained under Tense Stems above). This includes the present tense of all moods, as well as the imperfect indicative.[edit]Athematic inflectionThe present system differentiates strong and weak forms of the verb. The strong/weak opposition manifests itself differently depending on the class:The root and reduplicating classes (2 & 3) are not modified in the weak forms, and receive guṇa in the strong forms. The nasal class (7) is not modified in the weak form, extends the nasal to ná in the strong form. The nu-class (5) has nu in the weak form and nó in the strong form. The nÄ-class (9) has nÄ« in the weak form and nÄÌ in the strong form. nÄ« disappears before vocalic endings. The present indicative takes primary endings, and the imperfect indicative takes secondary endings. Singular active forms have the accent on the stem and take strong forms, while the other forms have the accent on the endings and take weak forms.IndicativeActiveMiddleSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralPresentFirst Persondvéṣmidviá¹£vásdviá¹£másdviṣédviá¹£váhedviá¹£máheSecond Persondvéká¹£idviá¹£á¹hásdviá¹£á¹hádvikṣédviá¹£ÄÌthedviá¸á¸hvéThird Persondvéṣá¹idviá¹£á¹Ã¡sdviṣántidviá¹£á¹Ã©dviá¹£ÄÌtedviṣáteImperfectFirst Personádveá¹£amádviá¹£vaádviá¹£maádviá¹£iádviá¹£vahiádviá¹£mahiSecond Personádveá¹Ã¡dviá¹£á¹amádvisá¹aádviá¹£á¹hÄsádviá¹£ÄthÄmádviá¸á¸hvamThird Personádveá¹Ã¡dviá¹£á¹Ämádviá¹£anádviá¹£á¹aádviá¹£ÄtÄmádviá¹£ataThe optative takes secondary endings. yÄ is added to the stem in the active, and Ä« in the passive.OptativeActiveMiddleSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralFirst Persondviá¹£yÄÌmdviá¹£yÄÌvadviá¹£yÄÌmadviṣīyádviṣīvahidviṣīmahiSecond Persondviá¹£yÄÌsdviá¹£yÄÌtamdviá¹£yÄÌtadviṣīthÄsdviṣīyÄthÄmdviṣīdhvamThird Persondviá¹£yÄÌtdviá¹£yÄÌtÄmdviá¹£yusdviṣītadviṣīyÄtÄmdviṣīranThe imperative takes imperative endings. Accent is variable and affects vowel quality. Forms which are end-accented trigger guṇa strengthening, and those with stem accent do not have the vowel affected.ImperativeActiveMiddleSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralFirst PersondvéṣÄṇidvéṣÄvadvéṣÄmadvéṣÄidvéṣÄvahÄidvéṣÄmahÄiSecond Persondviá¸á¸hÃdviá¹£á¹Ã¡mdviá¹£á¹Ã¡dviká¹£vádviá¹£ÄthÄmdviá¸á¸hvámThird Persondvéṣá¹udviá¹£á¹ÄÌmdviṣántudviá¹£á¹ÄÌmdviá¹£ÄÌtÄmdviṣátÄm[edit]Nominal inflectionPlease expand and improve this section as described on this article's talk page or at Requests for expansion,then remove this message.Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, plural, dual). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative.The number of actual declensions is debatable. Panini identifies six karakas corresponding to the nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental, locative, and ablative cases [1]. Panini defines them as follows (Ashtadhyayi, I.4.24-54):Apadana (lit. 'take off'): "(that which is) firm when departure (takes place)." This is the equivalent of the ablative notion which signifies a stationary object from which movement proceeds. Sampradana ('bestowal'): "he whom one aims at with the object". This is equivalent to the dative notion which signifies a recipient in an act of giving or similar acts. Karana ("instrument") "that which effects most". This is equivalent to the instrumental notion. Adhikarana ('location'): or "substratum". This is equivalent to the locative notion. Karman ('deed'/'object'): "what the agent seeks most to attain". This is equivalent to the accusative notion. Karta ('agent'): "he/that which is independent in action". This is equivalent to the nominative notion. (On the basis of Scharfe, 1977: 94) Possessive (Sambandha) and vocative are absent in Panini's grammar.In this article they are divided into five declensions. Which declension a noun belongs to is determined largely by form.[edit]The basic declension suffix scheme for nouns and adjectivesThe basic scheme is given in the table below—valid for almost all nouns and adjectives. However, according to the gender and the ending consonant/vowel of the uninflected word-stem, there are predermined rules of compulsory sandhi which would then give the final inflected word. The parentheses give the case-terminations for the neuter gender, the rest are for masculine and feminine gender. Both devanagari script and IAST transliterations are given.SingularDualPluralNominative-सॠ-s(-मॠ-m)-औ -au(-ई -Ä«)-असॠ-as(-इ -i)Accusative-अमॠ-am(-मॠ-m)-औ -au(-ई -Ä«)-असॠ-as(-इ -i)Instrumental-आ -Ä-à¤à¥à¤¯à¤¾à¤®à¥ -bhyÄm-à¤à¤¿à¤¸à¥ -bhisDative-ठ-e-à¤à¥à¤¯à¤¾à¤®à¥ -bhyÄm-à¤à¥à¤¯à¤¸à¥ -bhyasAblative-असॠ-as-à¤à¥à¤¯à¤¾à¤®à¥ -bhyÄm-à¤à¥à¤¯à¤¸à¥ -bhyasGenitive-असॠ-as-ओसॠ-os-आमॠ-ÄmLocative-इ -i-ओसॠ-os-सॠ-suVocative-सॠ-s(- -)-औ -au(-ई -Ä«)-असॠ-as(-इ -i)[edit]a-stemsA-stems (/É™/ or /É‘Ë/) comprise the largest class of nouns. As a rule, nouns belonging to this class, with the uninflected stem ending in short-a (/É™/), are either masculine or neuter. Nouns ending in long-A (/É‘Ë/) are almost always feminine. A-stem adjectives take the masculine and neuter in short-a (/É™/), and feminine in long-A (/É‘Ë/) in their stems.Masculine (kÄÌma- 'love')Neuter (Äsya- 'mouth')Feminine (kÄnta- 'beloved')SingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralNominativekÄÌmaḥkÄÌmÄukÄÌmÄḥÄsyà mÄsyèÄsyÄÌ€nikÄntÄkÄntekÄntÄḥAccusativekÄÌmamkÄÌmÄukÄÌmÄnÄsyà mÄsyèÄsyÄÌ€nikÄntÄmkÄntekÄntÄḥInstrumentalkÄÌmenakÄÌmÄbhyÄmkÄÌmÄiḥÄsyènaÄsyÄÌ€bhyÄmÄsyÄìḥkÄntayÄkÄntÄbhyÄmkÄntÄbhiḥDativekÄÌmÄyakÄÌmÄbhyÄmkÄÌmebhyaḥÄsyÄÌ€yaÄsyÄÌ€bhyÄmÄsyèbhyaḥkÄntÄyaikÄntÄbhyÄmkÄntÄbhyÄḥAblativekÄÌmÄtkÄÌmÄbhyÄmkÄÌmebhyaḥÄsyÄÌ€tÄsyÄÌ€bhyÄmÄsyèbhyaḥkÄntÄyÄḥkÄntÄbhyÄmkÄntÄbhyÄḥGenitivekÄÌmasyakÄÌmayoḥkÄÌmÄnÄmÄsyà syaÄsyà yoḥÄsyÄÌ€nÄmkÄntÄyÄḥkÄntayoḥkÄntÄnÄmLocativekÄÌmekÄÌmayoḥkÄÌmeá¹£uÄsyèÄsyà yoḥÄsyèṣukÄntÄyÄmkÄntayoḥkÄntÄsuVocativekÄÌmakÄÌmaukÄÌmÄḥÄÌsyaÄsyèÄsyÄÌ€nikÄntekÄntekÄntÄḥ[edit]i- and u-stemsi-stemsMasc. and Fem. (gáti- 'gait')Neuter (vÄÌri- 'water')SingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralNominativegátisgátÄ«gátayasvÄÌrivÄÌriṇīvÄÌrīṇiAccusativegátimgátÄ«gátÄ«svÄÌrivÄÌriṇīvÄÌrīṇiInstrumentalgátyÄgátibhyÄmgátibhisvÄÌriṇÄvÄÌribhyÄmvÄÌribhisDativegátaye, gátyÄigátibhyÄmgátibhyasvÄÌriṇevÄÌribhyÄmvÄÌribhyasAblativegátes, gátyÄsgátibhyÄmgátibhyasvÄÌriṇasvÄÌribhyÄmvÄÌribhyasGenitivegátes, gátyÄsgátyosgátÄ«nÄmvÄÌriṇasvÄÌriṇosvÄÌriṇÄmLocativegátÄu, gátyÄmgátyosgátiá¹£uvÄÌriṇivÄÌriṇosvÄÌriá¹£uVocativegátegátÄ«gátayasvÄÌri, vÄÌrevÄÌriṇīvÄÌrīṇiu-stemsMasc. and Fem. (śátru- 'enemy')Neuter (mádhu- 'honey')SingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralNominativeśátrusśátrūśátravasmádhumádhunÄ«mádhÅ«niAccusativeśátrumśátrūśátrÅ«nmádhumádhunÄ«mádhÅ«niInstrumentalśátruṇÄśátrubhyÄmśátrubhismádhunÄmádhubhyÄmmádhubhisDativeśátraveśátrubhyÄmśátrubhyasmádhunemádhubhyÄmmádhubhyasAblativeśátrosśátrubhyÄmśátrubhyasmádhunasmádhubhyÄmmádhubhyasGenitiveśátrosśátrvosśátrūṇÄmmádhunasmádhunosmádhÅ«nÄmLocativeśátrÄuśátrvosśátruá¹£umádhunimádhunosmádhuá¹£uVocativeśátrośátrūśátravasmádhumádhunÄ«mádhÅ«ni[edit]Long Vowel-stemsÄ-stems (jÄ- 'prodigy')Ä«-stems (dhÄ«- 'thought')Å«-stems (bhÅ«- 'earth')SingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralNominativejÄÌsjÄújÄÌsdhÄ«ÌsdhÃyÄudhÃyasbhÅ«ÌsbhúvÄubhúvasAccusativejÄÌmjÄújÄÌs, jásdhÃyamdhÃyÄudhÃyasbhúvambhúvÄubhúvasInstrumentaljÄÌjÄÌbhyÄmjÄÌbhisdhiyÄÌdhÄ«bhyÄÌmdhÄ«bhÃsbhuvÄÌbhÅ«bhyÄÌmbhÅ«bhÃsDativejéjÄÌbhyÄmjÄÌbhyasdhiyé, dhiyÄÃdhÄ«bhyÄÌmdhÄ«bhyásbhuvé, bhuvÄÃbhÅ«bhyÄÌmbhÅ«bhyásAblativejásjÄÌbhyÄmjÄÌbhyasdhiyás, dhiyÄÌsdhÄ«bhyÄÌmdhÄ«bhyásbhuvás, bhuvÄÌsbhÅ«bhyÄÌmbhÅ«bhyásGenitivejásjósjÄÌnÄm, jÄÌmdhiyás, dhiyÄÌsdhiyósdhiyÄÌm, dhÄ«nÄÌmbhuvás, bhuvÄÌsbhuvósbhuvÄÌm, bhÅ«nÄÌmLocativejÃjósjÄÌsudhiyÃ, dhiyÄÌmdhiyósdhīṣúbhuvÃ, bhuvÄÌmbhuvósbhūṣúVocativejÄÌsjÄújÄÌsdhÄ«ÌsdhiyÄudhÃyasbhÅ«ÌsbhuvÄubhúvas[edit]á¹›-stemsá¹›-stems are predominantly agental derivatives like dÄtá¹› 'giver', though also include kinship terms like pitá¹›Ì 'father', mÄtá¹›Ì 'mother', and svásá¹› 'sister'.SingularDualPluralNominativepitÄÌpitárÄupitárasAccusativepitárampitárÄupitá¹ÌnInstrumentalpitrÄÌpitá¹›ÌbhyÄmpitá¹›ÌbhisDativepitrépitá¹›ÌbhyÄmpitá¹›ÌbhyasAblativepitúrpitá¹›ÌbhyÄmpitá¹›ÌbhyasGenitivepitúrpitróspitá¹á¹‡ÄÌmLocativepitáripitróspitá¹›Ìá¹£uVocativepÃtarpitárÄupitárasSee also Devi inflection, Vrkis inflection.[edit]Personal Pronouns and DeterminersThe first and second person pronouns are declined for the most part alike, having by analogy assimilated themselves with one another.Note: Where two forms are given, the second is enclitic and an alternative form. Ablatives in singular and plural may be extended by the syllable -tas; thus mat or mattas, asmat or asmattas.First PersonSecond PersonSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralNominativeahamÄvÄmvayamtvamyuvÄmyÅ«yamAccusativemÄm, mÄÄvÄm, nauasmÄn, nastvÄm, tvÄyuvÄm, vÄmyuá¹£mÄn, vasInstrumentalmayÄÄvÄbhyÄmasmÄbhistvayÄyuvÄbhyÄmyuá¹£mÄbhisDativemahyam, meÄvÄbhyÄm, nauasmabhyam, nastubhyam, teyuvÄbhyÄm, vÄmyuá¹£mabhyam, vasAblativematÄvÄbhyÄmasmattvatyuvÄbhyÄmyuá¹£matGenitivemama, meÄvayos, nauasmÄkam, nastava, teyuvayos, vÄmyuá¹£mÄkam, vasLocativemayiÄvayosasmÄsutvayiyuvayosyuá¹£mÄsuThe demonstrative ta, declined below, also functions as the third person pronoun.MasculineNeuterFeminineSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralSingularDualPluralNominativesástÄútétáttétÄÌnisÄÌtétÄÌsAccusativetámtÄútÄÌntáttétÄÌnitÄÌmtétÄÌsInstrumentalténatÄÌbhyÄmtÄÃsténatÄÌbhyÄmtÄÃstáyÄtÄÌbhyÄmtÄÌbhisDativetásmÄitÄÌbhyÄmtébhyastásmÄitÄÌbhyÄmtébhyastásyÄitÄÌbhyÄmtÄÌbhyasAblativetásmÄttÄÌbhyÄmtébhyamtásmÄttÄÌbhyÄmtébhyamtásyÄstÄÌbhyÄmtÄÌbhyasGenitivetásyatáyostéṣÄmtásyatáyostéṣÄmtásyÄstáyostÄÌsÄmLocativetásmintáyostéṣutásmintáyostéṣutásyÄmtáyostÄÌsu[edit]CompoundsOne other notable feature of the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which may be huge (10+ words) as in some modern languages such as German. Nominal compounds occur with various structures, however morphologically speaking they are essentially the same. Each noun (or adjective) is in its (weak) stem form, with only the final element receiving case inflection. Some examples of nominal compounds include:1. Dvandva (co-ordinative)These consist of two or more noun stems, connected in sense with 'and', e.g. matara-pitara 'Mother and Father'. Due to these compounds having more than one noun in them, they must be in the dual or plural. 2. BahuvrÄ«hi (possessive)BahuvrÄ«hi, or "much-rice", denotes a rich person—one who has much rice. BahuvrÄ«hi compounds refer (by example) to a compound noun with no head -- a compound noun that refers to a thing which is itself not part of the compound. For example, "low-life" and "block-head" are bahuvrihi compounds, since a low-life is not a kind of life, and a block-head is not a kind of head. (And a much-rice is not a kind of rice.) Compare with more common, headed, compound nouns like "fly-ball" (a kind of ball) or "alley cat" (a kind of cat). BahurvrÄ«his can often be translated by "possessing..." or "-ed"; for example, "possessing much rice", or "much riced". 3. Tatpuruá¹£a (determinative)There are many tatpuruá¹£as (one for each of the nominal cases, and a few others besides); in a tatpuruá¹£a, the first component is in a case relationship with another. For example, a doghouse is a dative compound, a house for a dog. It would be called a "caturtitatpuruá¹£a" (caturti refers to the fourth case—that is, the dative). Incidentally, "tatpuruá¹£a" is a tatpuruá¹£a ("this man"—meaning someone's agent), while "caturtitatpuruá¹£a" is a karmadhÄrya, being both dative, and a tatpuruá¹£a. An easy way to understand it is to look at English examples of tatpuruá¹£as: "battlefield", where there is a genitive relationship between "field" and "battle", "a field of battle"; other examples include instrumental relationships ("thunderstruck") and locative relationships ("towndwelling"). 4. KarmadhÄraya (descriptive)The relation of the first member to the last is appositional, attributive or adverbial, e. g. uluka-yatu (owl+demon) is a demon in the shape of an owl. 5. Amreá¸ita (iterative)Repetition of a word expresses repetitiveness, e. g. dive-dive 'day by day', 'daily'. [edit]SyntaxPlease expand and improve this section as described on this article's talk page or at Requests for expansion,then remove this message.Because of Sanskrit's complex declension system the word order is free (with tendency toward SOV).[edit]NumeralsThe numbers from one to ten are:1éka2dvÃ3trÃ4catúr5pañca6ṣáṣ7saptá, sápta8aá¹£á¹Ã¡, áṣá¹a9náva10dáśaThe numbers one through four are declined. Éka is declined like a pronominal adjective, though the dual form does not occur. Dvá appears only in the dual. Trà and catúr are declined irregularly:ThreeFourMasculineNeuterFeminineMasculineNeuterFeminineNominativetráyastrÄ«ÌṇitisráscatvÄÌrascatvÄÌricátasrasAccusativetrÄ«ntrÄ«ÌṇitisráscatúrascatvÄÌricátasrasInstrumentaltribhÃstisá¹›Ìbhiscatúrbhiscatasá¹›ÌbhisDativetribhyástisá¹›Ìbhyascatúrbhyascatasá¹›ÌbhyasAblativetribhyástisá¹›Ìbhyascatúrbhyascatasá¹›ÌbhyasGenitivetriyÄṇÄÌmtisṛṇÄÌmcaturṇÄÌmcatasṛṇÄÌmLocativetriṣútisá¹›Ìá¹£ucatúrá¹£ucatasá¹›Ìá¹£u[edit]Influence[edit]Modern-day IndiaSanskrit's greatest influence, presumably, is that which it exerted on languages that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base. Especially among elite circles in India, Sanskrit is prized as a storehouse of scripture and the language of prayers in Hinduism. Like Latin's influence on European languages, Sanskrit has influenced most Indian languages. While vernacular prayer is common, Sanskrit mantras are recited by millions of Hindus and most temple functions are conducted entirely in Sanskrit, often Vedic in form. Most higher forms of Indian vernacular languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu and Hindi, often called 'shuddha' (pure, higher) are much more heavily Sanskritized. Of modern day Indian languages, while Hindi tends to be more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence, Bengali and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base. The national anthem, Jana Gana Mana is higher form of Bengali, so Sanskritized as to be archaic .in modern usages. The national song of India Vande Mataram which is originally a poem - composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and taken from his book called 'Aanandmath', is in highly sanskritized Bengali. Malayalam, which is spoken in the Kerala state of India, also combines a great deal of Sanskrit vocabulary with Tamil (Dravidian) grammatical structure. Kannada, another South Indian language, also contains Sanskrit vocabulary. But as a medium of spiritual instruction for Hindus in India, Sanskrit is still prized and widespread.[edit]In non-Indian languagesDue to common cultural, ethnic and linguistic traditions, Sanskrit words are found in Sinhalese, Nepali, Sindhi and other languages of the Indian subcontinent.Sanskrit words are also found in many other present-day non-Indian languages.For instance, the Thai language contains many loan words from Sanskrit. For example, in Thai, the RÄvana - the emperor of Sri Lanka is called 'Thoskonth' which is clearly a derivation of his Sanskrit name 'Dashakanth' (of ten necks).And ranged as far as the Philippines, e.g., Tagalog 'gurò' from 'Guru', or 'teacher', with the Hindu seafarers who traded there. Many Sanskrit words are also found in modern day Malay and Vietnamese.[edit]Attempts at revivalOf late, there have been attempts to revive the speaking of this ancient tongue among people, so that vast literature available in Sanskrit can be made easily available to everyone. The CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) in India has made Sanskrit a third language (though it is an option for the school to adopt it or not, the other choice being the state's own official language) in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools, including but not limited to Christian missionary schools, affiliated to the ICSE board too, especially in those states where the official language is Hindi. An option between Sanskrit and Hindi (or many other local languages) as a second language exists for grades 9 and 10. Many organizations like the Samskrta Bharati are conducting Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularize the language. About four million people are claimed to have acquired the ability to speak Sanskrit fluently.Sanskrit is claimed to be spoken natively by the population in Mattur, a village in central Karnataka. Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in childhood and converse in the language. Even the local Muslims speak and converse in Sanskrit. Historically, the village was given by king Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Tuluva.Several organizations across India are putting in efforts to revive the language and to preserve oral transmission of the Vedas. Shri Vedabharathi is one such organization based out of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh that has been digitizing the Vedas through voice recording the recitations of Vedic Pandits.Some claim that its syntax makes it ideal for computer translation.[edit]Interactions with Sino-Tibetan languagesSanskrit and related languages have also influenced their Sino-Tibetan-speaking neighbors to the north through the spread of Buddhist texts in translation. Buddhism was spread to China by Mahayanist missionaries mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit texts, and many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. (Although Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is not Sanskrit, properly speaking, its vocabulary is substantially the same, both because of genetic relationship, and because of conscious imitation on the part of composers. Buddhist texts composed in Sanskrit proper were primarily found in philosophical schools like the Madhyamaka.)[edit]Western vogue for SanskritMain article: Sanskrit in the WestAt the end of the introduction to The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that the rediscovery of the ancient Indian tradition would be one of the great events in the history of the West. Goethe borrowed from Kalidasa for the Vorspiel auf dem Theater in Faust.Goethe and Schopenhauer were riding a crest of scholarly discovery, most notably the work done by Sir William Jones. (Goethe likely read Kalidasa's The Recognition of Sakuntala in Jones' translation.) However, the discovery of the world of Sanskrit literature moved beyond German and British scholars and intellectuals — Henry David Thoreau was a sympathetic reader of the Bhagavad Gita — and even beyond the humanities. In the early days of the Periodic Table, scientists referred to as yet undiscovered elements with the use of Sanskrit prefixes (see Mendeleev's predicted elements).The nineteenth century was a golden age of Western Sanskrit scholarship, and many of the giants of the field (Whitney, Macdonnell, Monier-Williams, Grassmann) knew each other personally. Perhaps the most commonly known example of Sanskrit in the West was also the last gasp of its vogue. T.S. Eliot, a student of Indian Philosophy and Lanham's, ended The Waste Land with Sanskrit: "Shantih Shantih Shantih".[edit]Computational linguisticsThere have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. machine translation, and other areas of natural language processing because of its highly regular structure (The AI Magazine, Spring, 1985 #39). This is due to Classical Sanskrit being a regularized, prescriptivist form abstracted from the much more irregular and richer Vedic Sanskrit. This levelling of the grammar of Classical Sanskrit occurred during the Brahmana phase, after the language had fallen out of popular use, arguably qualifying Classical Sanskrit as an early engineered language.[edit]See alsoAkshara Devanagari Sanskrit literature Vrddhi Grantha Script Indo-European [[2] The Panini-Backus Form in Syntax of Formal Languages] Languages of India List of national languages of India List of Indian languages by total speakers [edit]ReferencesThe Sanskrit Language - T. Burrow - ISBN 8120817672 Sanskrit Pronunciation - Bruce Cameron - ISBN 1557000212 Teach Yourself Sanskrit - Prof. M. Coulson - ISBN 0340859903 DevavÄṇīpraveÅ›ikÄ: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language - Robert P. Goldman - ISBN 0944613403 A Higher Sanskrit Grammar - M. R. Kale - ISBN 8120801784 A Sanskrit Grammar for Students - A.A. Macdonell - ISBN 8124600945 The Sanskrit Language: An Introductory Grammar and Reader - Walter Harding Maurer - ISBN 0700713824 Sanskrit Grammar - William D. Whitney - ISBN 8185557594 à¤à¤¾à¤·à¤¾ विजà¥à¤žà¤¾à¤¨ (Bhasha Vigyan) — Bholanath Tiwari — [1955] 2004 — ISBN 81-225-0007-2 [edit]External linksSanskrit edition of WikipediaWikibooks has more about this subject: SanskritSanskrit Documents Documents in ITX format of Upanishads, Stotras etc. and a metasite with links to translations, dictionaries, tutorials, tools and other Sanskrit resources. Samskrita Bharati American Sanskrit Institute Ethnologue's Sanskrit report Sanskrit & Sánscrito, Sanskrit resources in English and Spanish Transliterator from romanized to Unicode Sanskrit transliterator. Sanskrit transliterator with font conversion to latin and other Indian Langauges [edit]DictionariesMonier-Williams Dictionary - Searchable Monier-Williams Dictionary - Printable Sanskrit Translation Online Hypertext Dictionary [edit]PrimersDiscover Sanskrit A concise study of the Sanskrit language Sanskrit Self Study An introduction to Sanskrit Language in 54 self study lessons by Chitrapur Math Harivenu Dâsa - An Introductory Course based on S'rîla Jîva Gosvâmî's Grammar a vaishnava version of Pânini's grammar: (pdf-file) A Sanskrit Tutor Sanskrit Audio Lessons from NCERT Samskrit Video Lessions [edit]GrammarsAn Analytical Cross Referenced Sanskrit Grammar By Lennart Warnemyr. Phonology, morphology and syntax, written in a semiformal style with full paradigms. 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All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Iyengar Iyengar Classification: Ethnic group/ Caste/Community of South India Total population: 2004: (approx) 600,000 (roughly 1% of Tamilians) Significant populations in: Chennai Thanjavur Tiruchirapalli Bangalore Mysore Mandya Hassan USA Language Mother tongue is Tamil with unique Iyengar accent. Knowledge in Sanskrit for religious/traditional reasons. Religion Vishishtadvaita Hinduism Acharyas Ramanuja Vedanta Desika Manavala Mamunigal Related Communities *Madhva *Iyer Iyengar (or Aiyangar) is the name of a small in number caste of Tamil Brahmins of South India whose members profess the Visishtadvaita philosophy codified by Ramanuja. The word Iyengar (Anglicised from the Tamil ????????(Aiya?kar)) means " people entrusted with five tasks " , referring to the five duties that traditional Iyengars perform (see [1]). The most common spelling is " Iyengar " , but " Aiyangar " is the phonetically correct spelling. Sometimes although rarely " Iengar " is also used . Iyengars along with Iyers are known as Tamil Brahmins . Although most Iyengars speak Tamil, there is a significant number of Iyengars speaking Kannada or a dialect of Tamil, highly influenced by Kannada in southern Karnataka (popularly known as Mysore, Hebbar, Mandyam, Hemige Iyengars), as well as smaller numbers of Telugu-speakers in southern Andhra Pradesh. There is also a sizeable number of Iyengars in the Purulia district of West Bengal who had migrated from Tamil Nadu a few centuries ago due to an invitation by a Bengal king around Ramanuja's time. Iyengars are primarily Vaishnavites, and as is the case with the majority of Brahmins, are also vegetarians. Today, Iyengars are taxonomised into two sub-sects of Thenkalai and Vadakalai based on the different stresses in religious literature. The Thenkalai community ascribes more importance to the Tamil works while the Vadakalai community deems the Vedas, written in Sanskrit to be more important. Religion Iyengars follow Visishtadvaita, a system of thought embodied by the Vedanta, the philosophical portion of the Vedas, India's ancient scriptures. The central idea of Visishtadvaita is this: there exists an Ultimate Reality, an Absolute Being that is the source and substratum of all that exists. This immanent spirit is the inner guide and controller of the whole universe with all its diverse animate and inanimate elements. Communion with this gracious, omnipotent Supreme Being constitutes the supreme end of existence or Moksha. Such communion is attainable exclusively through complete self-surrender and undivided, loving meditation (Bhakti). The Vaishnavite tradition began during the Vedic period. Most Iyengars follow Ramanuja's and Vedanta Desikar's school of philosophy. The objects of worship are the images of Vishnu and His incarnations and the saligramas - small stone pebbles of different colors (predominantly black) recovered from the bed of the river Gandaki in Nepal at Mukti Kshetra. Saligramas are fossilized ammonite shells formed 140 million years, having several spiral grooves resembling the chakra of Narayana which are formed by the river worms called Vajra-keeta. The priests at Tirupati Balaji temple, the most famous and important of Hindu Temples are Iyengars. The 108 holy temples of Vishnu called 108 Divya Desams[2][3] are important to the Iyengars. The 108th Divya Desam is Vaikuntam which is the Mythical abode of Lord Vishnu. Origins According to the migratory view, many members of the Brahmin community, originally based in the Northern part of India, migrated to the Tamil kingdoms in the South. However, the current historians have started to discredit the migratory view and started to perceive Iyengars as natives of the Tamil region of Tamil Nadu. The lack of any written historical records hampers the search for the origin of that peculiar branch of Iyengars, the Hebbars. This sub-community, based in the border areas of Mysore with Tamilnadu, speaks a mixture of Kannada and archaic Tamil, with a sprinkling of Sanskrit words thrown in. One theory is that the Hebbar Iyengars of today are descended from the Jains who were converted from Jainism to Vishisht Advaita along with their monarch, Bittideva, the Hoysala king, circa 1180 AD, by Ramanujacharya, who resided at Melkote (near Mysore) at that time. (Bittideva then termed himself Vishnu Vardhana, and is renowned under that name for building a myriad Vaishnavite temples, including the exquisite Chenna Kesava Temple at Belur). These Jains were immigrants to Mysore from undetermined regions in North India, probably fleeing from the recurrent depradations of the Muslim invaders. Another peculiarity, supporting this theory of late conversion, is the fact that Hebbars are not permitted to perform their own religious ceremonies (marriages, funerals), but rely on a community of co-located pure-Tamil speaking Iyengars termed Swayam Acharyas for these services. The Swayam Acharyas are supposedly the original Tamil Iyengar followers of Ramanuja, who initiated the Hebbar converts into the Vaishnavite rituals of worship. 'Gotra's and 'Nakshatra's All the Iyengars trace their origin to one of the eight major rishis or sages. Iyengars classify themselves under different Gotras (also referred to as Gothram), those of the same Gotra share common ancestors. Thus in the Iyengar community, marriage among people of the same Gotra is prohibited. This is generally cited as an example of scientific practices followed even in the distant past. A plausible explanation for the term gotra being used to indicate ancestry from a certain sage, would be the use of this term to refer to the cowpens in which the sages used to keep their animals. Another terminology which is used in conjunction with Gotra is Nakshatra (or Nakshatram). The superiority/inferiority of the various gotras and subgroups with reference to each other and their stereotyping is the subject of many debates, often amusing to the current generation. Iyengars today are found all over the world and are an extraordinarily visible community with relation to their population. Iyengars Today In addition to their earlier occupations, Iyengars today have diversified into a variety of fields—their strengths particularly evident in the fields of law,mass media, science, engineering, mathematics and computer science. A minuscule percentage of Iyengars today choose to pursue the vocation of priesthood. Iyengars have been active in the cultural field too. Music has always been integral to the Iyengar community; Carnatic music forms a sacred tradition including within its fold, apart from vocal music, instruments such as mridangam, naadaswaram, veena, ghatam, etc., Bharatanatyam. Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam together enjoy a rich patronage during the Chennai cultural season in the months of December and January. A large numbers of Iyengars also work in film industries, particularly the Tamil movie industry in the south of India. Some famous actors who were born Iyengars and/or are practising Iyengars are Kamal Hassan, Hema Malini ,Vyjayanti Mala , Jayalalitha , Madhavan and Vasundhara Das. Some of these actors have also acted in Bollywood. Some Famous Iyengars in Recent Times The following were all born Iyengars * Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan - world renowned Mathematician * Ariyakkudi T. Ramanuja Iyengar - World renowned Carnatic musician * Rajaji - Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the first Governor General of Independent India * Masti Venkatesha Iyengar - Kannada Literature * Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar - Kannada Literature * G P Rajarathnam - Kannada Literature * Mysore Doreswamy Iyengar - Veena Maestro * Raja Ramanna - Nuclear Scientist * B.K.S. Iyengar - Yogi and founder of Iyengar Yoga * Gen. K. Sundarji - Former Chief of the Indian Army * C. Rangarajan - Former Governor of Reserve Bank of India and governor of Andhra Pradesh,India * General S. Padmanabhan - Former chief of the Indian Army * K S Sudarshan - Senior BJP member * K N Govindacharya - RSS Idealogue * Ramanujacharya - Sanskrit Scholar, Philosopher & Social Reformer * Madurai T.N. Seshagopalan - Carnatic music maestro * T.T. Krishnamachari - Industrialist & Freedom fighter * T.V. Sundaram Iyengar - Founder of T.V.S. group (automobile and finance) * J. Jayalalithaa - Present Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu * S. Venkataraghavan - Cricketer * Krishnamachari Srikkanth - Cricketer * Sadagopan Ramesh - Cricketer * M. Chinnaswamy - Cricket administrator * Hema Malini - Tamil/Hindi Actress * Vyjayantimala Bali - Tamil/Hindi Actress * Suhasini - Tamil Actress * Vaali - Lyricist * Srinivas - Playback singer * Sujatha Rangarajan - Writer & Visionary * K S Sudarshan - Senior BJP member * B.S.Ranga - Veteran producer and director of Kannada and Tamil films with more than 70 movies to his credit, winner of 2 President's Awards, Rajotsava Awardee * Chitraveena Ravi Kiran - Chitraveena maestro & Child Prodigy * Kamal Haasan - Actor * Chaaru Haasan - Actor * Y.G. Mahendra - Stage & Movie Actor * Crazy Mohan - Screenplay & Comedian * Professor S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society * Professor Mudumbai NARASIMHAN - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society (1996) * Professor Madabusi RAGHUNATHAN - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society (2000) * Professor Conjeeveram SESHADRI - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society (1988) * Professor Mandyam SRINIVASAN - Fellow of the Royal Society (2001) * Rangaswamy Srinivasan - Inventor of Ablative Photodecomposition (APD) - Using Excimer Laser for Eye surgery * Professor Cadambathur Tiruvenkatacharlu Rajagopal - Mathematician, Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics * Professor Chidambaram Padmanabhan Ramanujam - Mathematician, TIFR * Madhan - Cartoonist * K. Santhanam- (1895-1980)An attorney, Gandhian, 1st Railway Minister in Free India,Governor of Vindhya Pradesh, Chairman of Santhanam Committee on Corruption, authored several books (1895-1980) * S. Parthasarathi Ayyangar,Former Commissioner of Police in Madras Presidency See Also Smartha, Madhva, Brahmin, Iyer k.r.srinivasan - distinguished i.p.s officer,director general of police - karnataka state External links * NAMA Inc.- An Association of SriVaishnavas * Sri Parakalamath, Mysore * Sri Vaishnava Home Page * Srirangam Srimad Andavan Periyaashramam * Official Site of Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams * Ahobila Matam Home Page * Vanamamalai Divya Kshetram * Sri Sri Sri Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji's Home page * Important Links for Vaishnava Amrutham * Vadakalai Vs Thenkalai * Malibu, CA Temple * Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh, PA, USA * [4] Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted July 29, 2006 Thanks.srinivasan sadagopan <vaasan2vanamamalai Sent: Monday, July 24, 2006 8:21:51 AM Fwd: hi This is a good page to read and reread,hatred to a language arises just coz "don't know the lingua!!!"Note: forwarded message attached. Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. 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Sanskrit From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Sanskrit language) Jump to: navigation, search Sanskrità ¤¸à ¤à ¤¸à ¥à ¤à ¥à ¤¤à ¤®à ¥ saá¹ská¹tam Spoken in: India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and some other areas of South and Southeast Asia; many Buddhist scholars in the countries of East Asia such as China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam are also able to communicate in Sanskrit. Total speakers: 49,736 fluent speakers (as of 1991)194,433 second-language speakers (as of 1961). Language family: Indo-European Indo-Iranian Indo-Aryan Sanskrit Official status Official language of: India (one of the scheduled languages) Regulated by: no official regulation Language codes ISO 639-1: sa ISO 639-2: san ISO/DIS 639-3: san This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More... The Sanskrit language (à ¤¸à ¤à ¤¸à ¥à ¤à ¥à ¤¤à ¤ saá¹ská¹tam, à ¤¸à ¤à ¤¸à ¥à ¤à ¥à ¤¤à ¤¾ à ¤µà ¤¾à ¤à ¥ saá¹ská¹tÄ vÄk) is a classical language of India, a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and one of the 22 official languages of India. It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe, and is a central part of Hindu tradition. Its pre-Classical form of Vedic Sanskrit, the liturgical language of the historical Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, the most archaic of the Vedic texts being the Rigveda. Today, Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. The corpus of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and literature, as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and religious texts. The scope of this article is the Classical Sanskrit language as laid out in the grammar of Panini, roughly around 500 BC. Most Sanskrit texts available today were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were commited to writing. Contents 1 History 1.1 Vedic Sanskrit 1.2 Classical Sanskrit 1.3 European Scholarship 2 Phonology and writing system 2.1 Vowels 2.2 Consonants 2.3 Phonology 2.4 Pitch 2.5 Script 2.5.1 Romanization 3 Grammar 3.1 Grammatical tradition 3.2 Verbs 3.2.1 Classification of verbs 3.2.2 Tense systems 3.2.2.1 Present system 3.2.2.2 Perfect system 3.2.2.3 Aorist system 3.2.2.4 Future system 3.3 Verbs: Conjugation 3.3.1 Basic conjugational endings 3.3.2 Present system conjugation 3.3.2.1 Athematic inflection 3.4 Nominal inflection 3.4.1 The basic declension suffix scheme for nouns and adjectives 3.4.2 a-stems 3.4.3 i- and u-stems 3.4.4 Long Vowel-stems 3.4.5 á¹-stems 3.5 Personal Pronouns and Determiners 3.6 Compounds 3.7 Syntax 3.8 Numerals 4 Influence 4.1 Modern-day India 4.1.1 In non-Indian languages 4.1.2 Attempts at revival 4.2 Interactions with Sino-Tibetan languages 4.3 Western vogue for Sanskrit 4.4 Computational linguistics 5 See also 6 References 7 External links 7.1 Dictionaries 7.2 Primers 7.3 Grammars [edit] History Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century. The adjective saá¹ská¹ta- means "refined, consecrated, sanctified". The language referred to as saá¹ská¹tÄ vÄk "the refined language" has by definition always been a 'high' language, used for religious and scientific discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is PÄá¹ini's Aá¹£tÄdhyÄyÄ« ("Eight-Chapter Grammar") dating to ca. the 5th century BC. It is essentially a prescriptive grammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts, mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in Panini's time. When the term arose in India, "Sanskrit" was not thought of as a specific language set apart from other languages (the people of the time regarded languages more as dialects), but rather as a particularly refined or perfected manner of speaking. Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment and was taught mainly to Brahmins through close analysis of Sanskrit grammarians such as PÄá¹ini. Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. It is part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages, which also includes the Iranian branch and the Balto-Slavic branch. The categorization may be shown as: Sanskrit was the learned language of Ancient India, existing alongside the Prakrits (vernaculars), which evolved into the modern Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi/Urdu, Bengali etc.). Most of the Dravidian languages of India, despite being a separate linguistic family by their own right, have a high influence of Sanskrit, especially in terms of loanwords. Telugu has the highest influence while Tamil has the lowest. This influence of Sanskrit on these languages is recognized by the notions of Tat Sama (equivalent) and Tat Bhava (rooted in). Sanskrit itself has also been influenced by the Dravidian family. [edit] Vedic Sanskrit Main article: Vedic Sanskrit Sanskrit, as defined by PÄá¹ini, had evolved out of the earlier "Vedic" form, and scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or "Paninian" Sanskrit as separate dialects. However, they are extremely similar in many ways and differ mostly in a few points of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Classical Sanskrit can therefore be considered a seamless evolution of the earlier Vedic language. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a large collection of hymns, incantations, and religio-philosophical discussions which form the earliest religious texts in India and the basis for much of the Hindu religion. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, composed by many authors over centuries of oral tradition. The end of the Vedic period is marked by the composition of the Upanishads, which form the concluding part of the Vedic corpus in the traditional compilations. The current hypothesis is that the Vedic form of Sanskrit survived until the middle of the first millennium BC. It is around this time that Sanskrit began the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, marking the beginning of the Classical period. Hinduism believes that the language of the Vedas is eternal and revealed in its wording and word order. Evidence for this belief is found in the Vedas itself, where in the Upanishads they are described as the very "breath of God" (niḥÅvÄsitam brahma). The Vedas are therefore considered "the language of reality", so to speak, and are unauthored, even by God, the rishis or seers ascribed to them being merely individuals gifted with a special insight into reality with the power of perceiving these eternal sounds. At the beginning of every cycle of creation, God himself "remembers" the order of the Vedic words and propagates them through the rishis. Orthodox Hindus, while accepting the linguistic development of Sanskrit as such, do not admit any historical stratification within the Vedic corpus itself. This belief is of significant consequence in Indian religious history, as the very sacredness and eternality of the language encouraged exact memorization and transmission and discouraged textual learning via written propagation. Each word is believed to have innate and eternal meaning and, when properly pronounced, mystic expressive power. Erroneous learning of repetition of the Veda was considered a grave sin with potentially immediate negative consequences. Consequently, Vedic learning by rote was encouraged and prized, particularly among Brahmins, where learning of one's own Vedic texts was a mandated duty. Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric Greek and Classical Greek. Tiwari ([1955] 2005) lists the following principal differences between the two: Phonology Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative (/ɸ/, called upamÄdhamÄ«ya) and a voiceless velar fricative (/x/, called jihvÄmÅ«lÄ«ya)âwhich used to occur when the breath visarga (à ¤…à ¤) appeared before voiceless labial and velar consonants respectively. Both of them were lost in Classical Sanskrit to give way to the simple visarga. Vedic Sanskrit had a retroflex lateral approximant (/ÉÂ/) (à ¤³) as well as its aspirated counterpart /ÉÂÊ°/ (à ¤³à ¥à ¤¹), which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, to be replaced with the corresponding plosives /É/ (à ¤¡) and /ÉÊ°/ (à ¤¢). The pronunciations of syllabic /É»Ë/ (à ¤), /lË/ (à ¤²à ¥) and their long counterparts no longer retained their pure pronunciations, but had started to be pronounced as short and long /É»i/ (à ¤°à ¤¿) and /lri/ (à ¤²à ¥à ¤°à ¤¿). The vowels e (à ¤) and o (à ¤) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthongs /Çi/ and /Çu/, but they became pure monophthongs /eË/ and /oË/ in Classical Sanskrit. The vowels ai (à ¤) and au (à ¤) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthongs /aËi/ (à ¤à ¤) and /aËu/ (à ¤à ¤), but they became diphthongs /Çi/ (à ¤…à ¤) and /Çu/ (à ¤…à ¤) in Classical Sanskrit. The PrÄtishÄkhyas claim that the dental consonants were articulated from the root of the teeth (dantamÅ«lÄ«ya), but they became pure dentals later. This included the /r/, which later became retroflex. Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent which could even change the meaning of the words, and was still in use in Panini's time, as we can infer by his use of devices to indicate its position. At some latter time, this was replaced by a stress accent limited to the second to fourth syllables from the end. Today, the pitch accent can be heard only in the traditional Vedic chantings. Vedic Sanskrit often allowed two like vowels to come together without merger during Sandhi. Grammar The subjunctive mood of Vedic Sanskrit was also lost in Classical Sanskrit. Also, there was no fixed rule about the use of various tenses (luá¹, laá¹ and liá¹Â). There were more than 12 ways of forming infinitives in Vedic Sanskrit, of which Classical Sanskrit retained only one single form. Nominal declinations and verbal conjugation also changed pronunciation, although the spelling was mostly retained in Classical Sanskrit. E.g., along with the Classical Sanskrit's declension of deva as devaḥâdevauâdevÄḥ, Vedic Sanskrit additionally allowed the forms devaḥâdevÄâdevÄsaḥ. Similarly Vedic Sanskrit has declined forms such as asme, tve, yuá¹£me, tvÄ, etc. for the 1st and 2nd person pronouns, not found in Classical Sanskrit. The obvious reason is the attempt of Classical Sanskrit to regularize and standardize its grammar, which simultaneously led to a purge of Old Proto-Indo-European forms. To emphasize that Proto-Indo-European and its immediate daughters were essentially end-inflected languages, both Proto-Indo-European and Vedic Sanskrit had independent prefix-morphemes. Such prefixes (sic), especially for verbs, could come anywhere in the sentence, but in Classical Sanskrit, it became mandatory to attach them immediately before the verb. Vocabulary Many lexemes attested in the Vedic texts became lost, while others contained a considerable amount of polysemy. Numerous loanwords from Dravidian languages brought in more and more retroflex plosives. [edit] Classical Sanskrit A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. The deviations from PÄá¹ini in the epics are generally due to interference from Prakrits, and not because they are 'pre-Paninean'. "In fact, almost all 'un-Paninean' forms of Epic Sanskrit are innovations" [Oberlies, "A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit", p.XXIX, emphasis in the original]. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations aarsha (à ¤à ¤°à ¥à ¤·) or "of the rishis", the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than Classical Sanskrit proper. Finally, there is also a language dubbed "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" by scholars, which is actually a prakrit ornamented with Sanskritized elements (see also termination of spoken Sanskrit). According to Tiwari ([1955] 2004), there were four principal dialects of Sanskrit, viz., paÃ…cimottarÄ« (Northwestern, aslo called Northern or Western), madhyadeÅÄ« (lit., middle country), pÅ«rvi (Eastern) and daká¹£iá¹Ä« (Southern, arose in the Classical period). The first three are even attested in the Vedic BrÄhmaá¹as, of which the first one was regarded as the purest (Kauṣītaki BrÄhmaá¹a, 7.6). [edit] European Scholarship European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth (1620 - 1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681 - 1731), led to the proposal of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones, and thus played an important role in the development of Western linguistics. Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) first arose among Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics owes a great deal to these grammarians, and to this day, for example, key terms for compound analysis such as bahuvrihi are taken from Sanskrit. [edit] Phonology and writing system Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key. Classical Sanskrit distinguishes 48 sounds. Some of these, are, however, allophones. The number of phonemes is smaller, at about 35, see below. The sounds are traditionally listed in the order vowels, diphthongs, anusvara and visarga, stops and nasals (starting in the back of the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquids and fricatives, written in IAST as follows (see the tables below for details): a Ä i Ä« u Å« á¹ á¹ ḷ ḹ ; e ai o au á¹ ḥ k kh g gh ṅ; c ch j jh ñ; á¹ á¹Âh Ḡá¸h á¹; t th d dh n; p ph b bh m y r l v; Ã… á¹£ s h An alternate traditional ordering is that of the Shiva Sutra of PÄá¹ini. [edit] Vowels Devanagari script is the one most popularly associated with Sanskrit, although most other Indic scripts have been and continue to be used to write it. Modern Hindi also uses the Devanagari script (its alphabets are truly speaking, alpha-syllables). Devanagari, being an abugida script, non-word-initial vowels are expressed by diacritics; see Devanagari for details. The vowels of Classical Sanskrit with their word-initial devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant à ¤ªà ¥ (/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and ITRANS and (approximate) equivalents in Standard English are listed below: Alphabet Diacritical mark with âà ¤ªà ¥â Pronunciation Pronunciation with /p/ IAST equiv. ITRANS equiv. Approximate English eqivalent à ¤… à ¤ª /É/ or /ä/ (two sounds are represented by the same letter) /pÉ/ or /pä/ a a short Schwa: as the a in above or sometimes like the u in under. à ¤ à ¤ªà ¤¾ /ÉË/ /pÉË/ Ä A long Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father à ¤ à ¤ªà ¤¿ /i/ /pi/ i i short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /iË/ /piË/ Ä« I long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /u/ /pu/ u u short close back rounded vowel: as u in put à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /uË/ /puË/ Å« U long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /eË/ /peË/ e e long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong), or é in café à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /Éi/ or /ai/ /pÉi/ or /pai/ ai ai a long diphthong: approx. as ei in height à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /οË/ /poË/ o o long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong) à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /Éu/ or /au/ /pÉu/ or /pau/ au au a long diphthong: approx. as ou in house à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥ /ɻ̩/ /pɻ̩/ á¹ R short syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant à ¥ à ¤ªà ¥ /ɻ̩Ë/ /pɻ̩Ë/ á¹ RR long syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: a longer version of /rÌ©/ à ¤ à ¤ªà ¥¢ /ÉÂÌ©/ /pÉÂÌ©/ ḷ LR short syllabic vowel-like retroflex lateral approximant: approx. as handle à ¥¡ à ¤ªà ¥£ /ÉÂÌ©Ë/ /pÉÂÌ©Ë/ ḹ LRR long syllabic vowel-like retroflex lateral approximant: longer version of /lÌ©/ The long vowels are held about twice as long as their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long length for most vowels, called pluti, which is used in various cases, but particularly in the vocative. The pluti is not accepted by all grammarians. The vowels e and o continue as allophonic variants of Proto-Indo-Iranian /ai/, /au/, and they are phonologically (conceptually) /ai/ and /au/ still in Sanskrit, and are categorized as diphthongs by Sanskrit grammarians even though they are realized phonetically as simple long vowels. (See above). Additional points: There are some additional vowels traditionally listed in the Sanskrit/Hindi alphabet. They are : à ¤…à ¤ (called anusvÄra), pronounced as /ÉÅ/ (IAST: á¹). Its diacritic (the dot above) is used both for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable and for the sound of a vowel-like /n/ or /m/. (à ¤ªà ¤). à ¤…à ¤ (called visarga), pronounced as /Éh/ (IAST: ḥ). The diacritic à ¤}} (called chandrabindu), not listed in the alphabet, is used interchangeably with the anusvÄra to indicate nasalization of the vowel (à ¤ªà ¤). If a lone consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/virÄma diacritic below (à ¤ªà ¥). The vowel /aË/ in Sanskrit is realized as being more central and less back than the closest English approximation, which is ÉË. But the grammarians have classified it as a back vowel. (Tiwari, [1955] 2004). All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized. All vowels can have acute grave or circumflex pitch accent. Note that the ancient Sanskrit grammarians have classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and front vowels. Hence à ¤ and à ¤ are classified respectively as palato-velar (a+i) and labio-velar (a+u) vowels respectively. But the grammarians have classified them as diphthongs and in prosody, each is given two mÄtrÄs. This does not necessarily mean that they are proper diphthongs, but neither excludes the possibility that they could have been proper diphthongs at a very ancient stage (see above). These vowels are pronounced as long /eË/ and /oË/ respectively by learned Sanskrit Brahmins and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit usually disallows any other diphthongâvowels in succession, if occur, are converted to semivowels according to predetermined rules. In the devanagari script used for Sanskrit, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without any virÄma (ie, freely standing in the orthography: à ¤ª as opposed to à ¤ªà ¥), the neutral vowel schwa (/É/) is automatically associated with itâthis is of course true for the consonant to be in any position in the word. Word-ending schwa is always short. But the IAST a appended to the end of masculine noun words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as /ÉË/âthis makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound like feminine! e.g., shiva must be pronounced as /ÉivÉ/ and not as /ÉivÉË/. Tiwari ([1955] 2004) argues that in Vedic Sanskrit, à ¤… was simply short É, and became centralized and raised in the era of the Prakrits. [edit] Consonants IAST and Devanagari notations are given, with approximate IPA values in square brackets. Labial Labiodental Dental Retroflex Palatal Velar Glottal Stop Unaspirated p à ¤ª [p] b à ¤¬ t à ¤¤ [t̪] d à ¤¦ [d̪] á¹ à ¤ [Ê] á¸ à ¤¡ [É] c à ¤ [c] j à ¤ [É] k à ¤ [k] g à ¤ [g] Aspirated ph à ¤« [pÊ°] bh à ¤ [bʱ] th à ¤¥ [t̪ʰ] dh à ¤§ [d̪ʱ] á¹Âh à ¤ [ÊÊ°] á¸h à ¤¢ [Éʱ] ch à ¤ [cÊ°] jh à ¤ [Éʱ] kh à ¤ [kÊ°] gh à ¤ [gʱ] Nasal m à ¤® [m] n à ¤¨ [n̪] á¹ à ¤£ [ɳ] ñ à ¤ [ɲ] ṅ à ¤ [Ã…] Semivowel v à ¤µ [Ê] y à ¤¯ [j] Liquid l à ¤² [l̪] r à ¤° [É»] Fricative s à ¤¸ [s̪] á¹£ à ¤· [Ê] Ã… à ¤¶ [É] ḥ à ¤ [h] h à ¤¹ [ɦ] The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (/É/), and is named in the table as such. Plosives UnaspiratedVoiceless AspiratedVoiceless UnaspiratedVoiced AspiratedVoiced Nasal Velar à ¤/kÉ/; English: skip à ¤/kÊ°É/; English: cat à ¤/gÉ/; English: game à ¤/g汃/; Aspirated /g/ à ¤/ÅÉ/; English: ring Palatal à ¤/cÉ/; âEnglish: chat à ¤/cÊ°É/; Aspirated /c/ à ¤/ÉÉ/; âEnglish: jam à ¤/ÉʱÉ/; Aspirated /É/ à ¤/ɲÉ/; English: finch Retroflex à ¤/ÊÉ/; American Eng: hurting à ¤ /ÊÊ°É/; Aspirated /Ê/ à ¤¡/ÉÉ/; American Eng: murder à ¤¢/ÉʱÉ/; Aspirated /É/ à ¤£/ɳÉ/; American Eng: hunter Apico-Dental à ¤¤/t̪É/; Spanish: tomate à ¤¥/t̪ʰÉ/; Aspirated /t̪/ à ¤¦/d̪É/; Spanish: donde à ¤§/d̪ʱÉ/; Aspirated /d̪/ à ¤¨/n̪É/; English: name Labial à ¤ª/pÉ/; English: spin à ¤«/pÊ°É/; English: pit à ¤¬/bÉ/; English: bone à ¤Â/b汃/; Aspirated /b/ à ¤®/mÉ/; English: mine Non-Plosives/Sonorants Palatal Retroflex Dental Labial/Glottal Approximant à ¤¯/jÉ/; English: you à ¤°/rÉ/; American Eng: tearing à ¤²/l̪É/; English: love à ¤µ (labio-dental)/ÊÉ/; English: vase Sibilant/Fricative à ¤¶/ÉÉ/; English: ship à ¤·/ÊÉ/; Retroflex form of /Ê/ à ¤¸/s̪É/; English: same à ¤¹ (glottal)/ɦÉ/; English behind [edit] Phonology The Sanskrit vowels are as discussed in the section above. The long syllabic l (ḹ) is not attested, and is only discussed by grammarians for systematic reasons. Its short counterpart ḷ occurs in a single root only, kḷp "to order, array". Long syllabic r (á¹) is also quite marginal, occurring in the genitive plural of r-stems (e.g. mÄtá¹ "mother" and pitá¹ "father" have gen.pl. mÄtá¹á¹Äm and pitá¹á¹Äm). i, u, á¹, ḷ are vocalic allophones of consonantal y, v, r, l. There are thus only 5 invariably vocalic phonemes, a, Ä, Ä«, Å«, á¹. Visarga ḥ à ¤ is an allophone of r and s, and anusvara á¹, Devanagari à ¤ of any nasal, both in pausa (ie, the nasalized vowel). The exact pronunciation of the three sibilants may vary, but they are distinct phonemes. An aspirated voiced sibilant /zʱ/ was inherited by Indo-Aryan from Proto-Indo-Iranian but lost shortly before the time of the Rigveda (note that aspirated sibilant are exceedingly rare in any language). The retroflex consonants are somewhat marginal phonemes, often being conditioned by their phonetic environment; they do not continue a PIE series and are often ascribed by some linguists to the substratal influence of Dravidian. The nasal ñ is a conditioned allophone of n (n and á¹ are distinct phonemes - one has to distinguish aá¹u "minute, atomic" (nom. sg. neutr. of an adjective) from anu "after, along"; phonologically independent ṅ occurs only marginally, e.g. in prÄṅ "directed forwards/towards" (nom. sg. masc. of an adjective) and can thus be omitted). There are thus 31 consonantal or semi-vocalic phonemes, consisting of four/five kinds of stops realized both with or without aspiration and both voiced and voiceless, two nasals, four semi-vowels or liquids, and four fricatives, written in IAST transliteration as follows: k, kh, g, gh; c, ch, j, jh; á¹Â, á¹Âh, á¸, á¸h; t, th, d, dh; p, ph, b, bh; m, n, á¹; y, r, l, v; Ã…, á¹£, s, h or a total of 36 unique Sanskrit phonemes altogether. The phonological rules to be applied when combining morphemes to a word, and when combining words to a sentence are collectively called sandhi "composition". Texts are written phonetically, with sandhi applied (except for the so-called padapÄá¹Âha). Some additional features of the Sanskrit phonological system are given here, as well as some useful tips for those whose native language is English but are interested in learning Sanskrit language. No other nasal consonant except /m/ and /n/ can start a word in Sanskrit. The number of allowable consonant clusters of Sanskrit is limited, but still very large as compared to other IE languages. The "r" of Sanskrit may be as in Standard American English. Certain regional traditions pronounce the vowel "á¹" (à ¤) as /ri/, while others as /ru/. Still others pronounce it simply as /r/. The oldest Ã…iká¹£Äs (general phonetic texts) and PrÄtiÅÄkhyas (phonetic studies of particular branches of Vedas) vary significantly in descriptions of these sounds; this may be due to different dialects and/or traditions their authors belonged to. There is no retroflex flap (à ¤¡à ¤¼) in Sanskrit. In modern Hindi, they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskritâs simple voiced retroflex plosives. The /ɳ/ (á¹ or à ¤£) in Sanskrit is not a flap but a simple nasal stop, although it is pronounced by modern pundits while chanting as a nasal variant of the voiced retroflex flap (devanagari/Hindi: à ¤¡à ¤¼à ¤). Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers could try pronouncing the words âkiteâ, âtakeâ, âchipâ and âpackâ with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corresponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all. For practicing the voiced aspirates, one could try pronouncing, with very clear articulation: âdrag himâ, âsaid himâ, âenrage himâ, âgrab himâ. The voiced aspirated plosives (also called as murmur stops or breathy voice) are extremely important and frequent in Sanskrit, and preserve the series of Proto-Indo-European voiced aspirates. The dental consonants in Sanskrit are as in Spanish or French. They can be pronounced by pronouncing /t/ and /d/ (of English) by pressing the tip of the tongue against the back of the teeth rather than against the back of the alveolar ridge as done by English speakers. The normal "t" and "d" in IAST transliteration are the dental stops; and they occur much, much more frequently than the retroflex stops. The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling-up the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". However, bringing the tip of the tongue a bit above the normal alveolar ridge would also work fine. The normal alveolar plosives of English /t/ and /d/ do not exist as such in Sanskrit. The palatal plosives of Sanskrit do not have a sharp frictional sound following them, as what happened in English chips and jam. These are more of pure plosives than affricates. Sanskrit has no /v/. Its nearest equivalent is /Ê/, which is very close to /v/, but does not a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. But in consonant clusters, this may allophonically change to /w/. The voiceless palatal sibilant of Sanskrit (à ¤¶, IAST: Ã…) is very close to like the English sh in ship (although the Sanskrit phoneme is the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /É/) while the English phoneme is the voiceless postalveolar fricative /Ê/ with optional lip rounding). Today, some speakers of Sanskrit vary the palatal fricative from /É/ to /Ê/. The voiceless retroflex sibilant (à ¤·, /Ê/) is pronounced like /Ê/, but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In MÄdhyandini branch of Yajurveda, this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as /kÊ°/. The Sanskrit voiced glottal fricative (à ¤¹, /ɦ/) is a voiced allophone of the normal h, as in English behind. Although any consonant may come in the word-final position in an uninflected word-stem, the number of word-final consonants in any inflected word (or verb or particle) standing freely by itself is severly limited and determined by the rules of Sandhi. Only the following consonants may come in the word-final position: /k/, /Ê/, /t/, /p/, /l/ (rare), voiceless /h/ (i.e., visarga), and all nasals except /ɲ/. Any vowel may come at the word-final position. [edit] Pitch Vedic Sanskrit is a pitch accent language. Native grammarians define three tones (svara): udÄtta = 'raised', anudÄtta = 'not raised', and svarita = 'sounded'. The udÄtta syllable corresponds to the original Proto-Indo-European stress. The svarita is usually the next syllable after an udÄtta. Probably when the Rigveda was written down, the pitch of speech rose through the udÄtta and came back down through the following svarita. A svarita which is not preceded by an udÄtta is called an "independent svarita". In transliteration udÄtta is marked with acute accent (´) and independent svarita with a grave accent (`). Independent svarita occurs only where its udÄtta was lost because of vowel sandhi. Classical Sanskrit is usually pronounced with a stress accent decided by the syllable length pattern of each word. That is, Sanskrit, like Latin, is a syllable-timed language. It is the syllable which forms the basis of Sanskrit prosody. [edit] Script Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript in the Sharada script (17th or 18th century) Sanskrit has had no single script associated with it, since written Sanskrit was of limited importance throughout the age of classical Sanskrit literature. Since the late 19th century the Devanagari script became the script most widely used for Sanskrit. In northern India, there are Brahmi inscriptions dating from the 3rd century BCE onwards, the oldest appearing on the famous Prakrit pillar inscriptions of king Ashoka. Roughly contemporary with the Brahmi, the Kharosthi script was used. Later (ca. 4th to 8th centuries AD) the Gupta script, derived from Brahmi, became prevalent. From ca. the 8th century, the Sharada script evolved out of the Gupta script, and was mostly displaced in its turn by Devanagari from ca. the 12th century, with intermediary stages such as the Siddham script. The Bengali and other scripts were also used in their respective regions. The Devanagari letters ("akshara") for the vowels and the consonants were discussed above. The table below illustrates the combining of two consonants into a consonant cluster. To write a consonant cluster /XYa/ using the letters for /Xa/ and /Ya/, Devanagari usually modifies the first into an abbreviated combining form, generally by omitting the right side. Similarly, for a cluster /XYZa/, both /Xa/ and /Ya/ would be abbreviated. However, some forms are irregular, and there are many stylistic variants. Here the most common system is illustrated, with the second consonant represented by /n/. ka-group à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/knÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/kÊ°nÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/gnÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/gʱnÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/Ã…nÉ/ cha-group à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/cnÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/cÊ°nÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/ÉnÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/ÉʱnÉ/ à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/ɲnÉ/ ta-group à ¤à ¥à ¤¨/ÊnÉ/ à ¤ à ¥à ¤¨/ÊÊ°nÉ/ à ¤¡à ¥à ¤¨/ÉnÉ/ à ¤¢à ¥à ¤¨/ÉʱnÉ/ à ¤£à ¥à ¤¨/ɳnÉ/ ta-group à ¤¤à ¥à ¤¨/t̪nÉ/ à ¤¥à ¥à ¤¨/t̪ʰnÉ/ à ¤¦à ¥à ¤¨/d̪nÉ/ à ¤§à ¥à ¤¨/d̪ʱnÉ/ à ¤¨à ¥à ¤¨/nnÉ/ pa-group à ¤ªà ¥à ¤¨/pnÉ/ à ¤«à ¥à ¤¨/pÊ°nÉ/ à ¤¬à ¥à ¤¨/bnÉ/ à ¤Âà ¥à ¤¨/bʱnÉ/ à ¤®à ¥à ¤¨/mnÉ/ ya-group à ¤¯à ¥à ¤¨/ynÉ/ à ¤°à ¥à ¤¨/rnÉ/ à ¤²à ¥à ¤¨/lnÉ/ à ¤µà ¥à ¤¨/ÊnÉ/ va-group à ¤¶à ¥à ¤¨/ÉnÉ/ à ¤·à ¥à ¤¨/ÊnÉ/ à ¤¸à ¥à ¤¨/snÉ/ à ¤¹à ¥à ¤¨/ɦnÉ/ In the south where Dravidian languages predominate, scripts used for Sanscrit include Grantha in Tamil speaking regions, Telugu in Telugu and Tamil speaking regions, Kannada, and Malayalam. Grantha, which was the precursor to the Tamil script, was used exclusively for Sanskrit and is rarely seen today. A recent development has been to use Tamil characters with numeric subscripts indicating voicing and aspiration. Sanskrit in modern Indian scripts. May Ã…iva bless those who take delight in the language of the gods. (Kalidasa) Verbal learning occupied the pride of place in ancient India and bears an influence which can still be felt in Indian schooling today. High value was placed on the memorization of texts, often using sophisticated mnemonic techniques. As such, propagation and learning through writing was correspondingly deemphasized, and it is hypothesized that writing was introduced relatively late to India. Rhys Davids suggests that writing may have been introduced from the Middle East by traders, with Sanskrit remaining a purely oral language until well into India's Classical age. It is interesting to note the importance that Sanskrit orthography and Vedic philosophy of sound play in Hindu symbolism, as the varnamala, or sound-garland/alphabet, of 51 letters is also seen to be represented by the 51 skulls of Kali. In the Upanishads, the transcendent-immanent nature of Brahman is represented by the half-matra, or sphota of sound that is inherent to a beat of sound in the Sanskrit system. [edit] Romanization Main article: Romanization of Sanskrit Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has been transliterated using the Latin alphabet. The system most commonly used today is the IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration), which has been the academic standard since 1912, and which is used in this article. ASCII-based transliteration schemes have evolved due to difficulties representing Sanskrit characters in computer systems. These include Harvard-Kyoto and ITRANS, a lossless transliteration scheme that is used widely on the Internet, especially in Usenet and in email, for considerations of speed of entry as well as rendering issues. With the wide availability of Unicode aware web browsers, IAST has become common also for online articles. For scholarly work, Devanagari in the 19th century was generally preferred for the transcription and reproduction of whole texts and lengthy excerpts also by European scholars; however, references to individual words and names in texts composed in European languages are usually represented using Roman transliteration, and from the mid 20th century, textual editions edited by Western scholars have also been mostly in romanized transliteration. [edit] Grammar [edit] Grammatical tradition Main article: Sanskrit grammarians Please expand and improve this section as described on this article's talk page or at Requests for expansion,then remove this message. Sanskrit grammatical tradition (vyÄkaraá¹a, one of the six Vedanga disciplines) begins in late Vedic India, and culminates in the Aá¹£á¹ÂÄdhyÄyÄ« of PÄá¹ini (ca. 5th century BC). Patañjali, who lived several centuries after Panini, is the reputed author of the MahÄbhÄá¹£ya, the "Great Commentary" on the Aá¹£á¹ÂÄdhyÄyÄ«. [edit] Verbs [edit] Classification of verbs Sanskrit has ten classes of verbs divided into in two broad groups: athematic and thematic. The thematic verbs are so called because an a, called the theme vowel, is inserted between the stem and the ending. This serves to make the thematic verbs generally more regular. Exponents used in verb conjugation include prefixes, suffixes, infixes, and reduplication. Every root has (not necessarily all distinct) zero, guá¹a, and vá¹ddhi grades. If V is the vowel of the zero grade, the guá¹a-grade vowel is traditionally thought of as a + V, and the vá¹ddhi-grade vowel as Ä + V. [edit] Tense systems The verbs tenses (a very inexact application of the word, since more distinctions than simply tense are expressed) are organized into four 'systems' (as well as gerunds and infinitives, and such creatures as intensives/frequentatives, desideratives, causatives, and benedictives derived from more basic forms) based on the different stem forms (derived from verbal roots) used in conjugation. There are four tense systems: Present (Present, Imperfect, Imperative, Optative) Perfect Aorist Future (Future, Conditional) [edit] Present system The present system includes the present and imperfect tenses, the optative and imperative moods, as well as some of the remnant forms of the old subjunctive. The tense stem of the present system is formed in various ways. The numbers are the native grammarians' numbers for these classes. For athematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through: 2) No modification at all, for example ad from ad 'eat'. 3) Reduplication prefixed to the root, for example juhu from hu 'sacrifice'. 7) Infixion of na or n before the final root consonant (with appropriate sandhi changes), for example rundh or ruá¹adh from rudh 'obstruct'. 5) Suffixation of nu (guá¹a form no), for example sunu from su 'press out'. 8) Suffixation of u (guá¹a form o), for example tanu from tan 'stretch'. For modern linguistic purposes it is better treated as a subclass of the 5th. tanu derives from tnnu, which is zero-grade for *tannu, because in the Proto-Indo-European language [m] and [n] could be vowels, which in Sanskrit (and Greek) change to [a]. Most members of the 8th class arose this way; kar = "make", "do" was 5th class in Vedic (krnoti = "he makes"), but shifted to the 8th class in Classical Sanskrit (karoti = "he makes") 9) Suffixation of nÄ (zero-grade nÄ« or n), for example krÄ«á¹a or krÄ«á¹Ä« from krÄ« 'buy'. For thematic verbs, the present tense stem may be formed through: 1) Suffixation of the thematic vowel a with guá¹a strengthening, for example, bháva from bhÅ« 'be'. 6) Suffixation of the thematic vowel a with a shift of accent to this vowel, for example tudá from tud 'thrust'. 4) Suffixation of ya, for example dÄ«Ìvya from div 'play'. The tenth class described by native grammarians refers to a process which is derivational in nature, and thus not a true tense-stem formation. [edit] Perfect system The perfect system includes only the perfect tense. The stem is formed with reduplication as with the present system. The perfect system also produces separate "strong" and "weak" forms of the verb â the strong form is used with the singular active, and the weak form with the rest. [edit] Aorist system The aorist system includes aorist proper (with past indicative meaning, e.g. abhūḥ "you were") and some of the forms of the ancient injunctive (used almost exclusively with mÄ in prohibitions, e.g. mÄ bhūḥ "don't be"). The principal distinction of the two is presence/absence of an augment - a- prefixed to the stem. The aorist system stem actually has three different formations: the simple aorist, the reduplicating aorist (semantically related to the causative verb), and the sibilant aorist. The simple aorist is taken directly from the root stem (e.g. bhÅ«-: a-bhÅ«-t "he was"). The reduplicating aorist involves reduplication as well as vowel reduction of the stem. The sibilant aorist is formed with the suffixation of s to the stem. [edit] Future system The future system is formed with the suffixation of sya or iá¹£ya and guá¹a. [edit] Verbs: Conjugation Each verb has a grammatical voice, whether active, passive or middle. There is also an impersonal voice, which can be described as the passive voice of intransitive verbs. Sanskrit verbs have an indicative, an optative and an imperative mood. Older forms of the language had a subjunctive, though this had fallen out of use by the time of Classical Sanskrit. [edit] Basic conjugational endings Conjugational endings in Sanskrit convey person, number, and voice. Different forms of the endings are used depending on what tense stem and mood they are attached to. Verb stems or the endings themselves may be changed or obscured by sandhi. Active Middle Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Primary First Person mi vás más é váhe máhe Second Person si thás thá sé ÄÌthe dhvé Third Person ti tás ánti, áti té ÄÌte ánte, áte Secondary First Person am vá má ÃÂ, á váhi máhi Second Person s tám tá thÄÌs ÄÌthÄm dhvám Third Person t tÄÌm án, ús tá ÄÌtÄm ánta, áta, rán Perfect First Person a vá má é váhe máhe Second Person tha áthus á sé ÄÌthe dhvé Third Person a átus ús é ÄÌte ré Imperative First Person Äni Äva Äma Äi ÄvahÄi ÄmahÄi Second Person dhÃÂ, hÃÂ, â tám tá svá ÄÌthÄm dhvám Third Person tu tÄÌm ántu, átu tÄÌm ÄÌtÄm ántÄm, átÄm Primary endings are used with present indicative and future forms. Secondary endings are used with the imperfect, conditional, aorist, and optative. Perfect and imperative endings are used with the perfect and imperative respectively. [edit] Present system conjugation Conjugation of the present system deals with all forms of the verb utilizing the present tense stem (explained under Tense Stems above). This includes the present tense of all moods, as well as the imperfect indicative. [edit] Athematic inflection The present system differentiates strong and weak forms of the verb. The strong/weak opposition manifests itself differently depending on the class: The root and reduplicating classes (2 & 3) are not modified in the weak forms, and receive guá¹a in the strong forms. The nasal class (7) is not modified in the weak form, extends the nasal to ná in the strong form. The nu-class (5) has nu in the weak form and nó in the strong form. The nÄ-class (9) has nÄ« in the weak form and nÄÌ in the strong form. nÄ« disappears before vocalic endings. The present indicative takes primary endings, and the imperfect indicative takes secondary endings. Singular active forms have the accent on the stem and take strong forms, while the other forms have the accent on the endings and take weak forms. Indicative Active Middle Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Present First Person dvéṣmi dviá¹£vás dviá¹£más dviṣé dviá¹£váhe dviá¹£máhe Second Person dvéká¹£i dviá¹£á¹Âhás dviá¹£á¹Âhá dvikṣé dviá¹£ÄÌthe dviá¸á¸hvé Third Person dvéṣá¹Âi dviá¹£á¹Âás dviṣánti dviá¹£á¹Âé dviá¹£ÄÌte dviṣáte Imperfect First Person ádveá¹£am ádviá¹£va ádviá¹£ma ádviá¹£i ádviá¹£vahi ádviá¹£mahi Second Person ádveṠádviá¹£á¹Âam ádvisá¹Âa ádviá¹£á¹ÂhÄs ádviá¹£ÄthÄm ádviá¸á¸hvam Third Person ádveṠádviá¹£á¹ÂÄm ádviá¹£an ádviá¹£á¹Âa ádviá¹£ÄtÄm ádviá¹£ata The optative takes secondary endings. yÄ is added to the stem in the active, and Ä« in the passive. Optative Active Middle Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural First Person dviá¹£yÄÌm dviá¹£yÄÌva dviá¹£yÄÌma dviṣīyá dviṣīvahi dviṣīmahi Second Person dviá¹£yÄÌs dviá¹£yÄÌtam dviá¹£yÄÌta dviṣīthÄs dviṣīyÄthÄm dviṣīdhvam Third Person dviá¹£yÄÌt dviá¹£yÄÌtÄm dviá¹£yus dviṣīta dviṣīyÄtÄm dviṣīran The imperative takes imperative endings. Accent is variable and affects vowel quality. Forms which are end-accented trigger guá¹a strengthening, and those with stem accent do not have the vowel affected. Imperative Active Middle Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural First Person dvéṣÄá¹i dvéṣÄva dvéṣÄma dvéṣÄi dvéṣÄvahÄi dvéṣÄmahÄi Second Person dviá¸á¸hàdviá¹£á¹Âám dviá¹£á¹Âá dviká¹£vá dviá¹£ÄthÄm dviá¸á¸hvám Third Person dvéṣá¹Âu dviá¹£á¹ÂÄÌm dviṣántu dviá¹£á¹ÂÄÌm dviá¹£ÄÌtÄm dviṣátÄm [edit] Nominal inflection Please expand and improve this section as described on this article's talk page or at Requests for expansion,then remove this message. Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, plural, dual). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative. The number of actual declensions is debatable. Panini identifies six karakas corresponding to the nominative, accusative, dative, instrumental, locative, and ablative cases [1]. Panini defines them as follows (Ashtadhyayi, I.4.24-54): Apadana (lit. 'take off'): "(that which is) firm when departure (takes place)." This is the equivalent of the ablative notion which signifies a stationary object from which movement proceeds. Sampradana ('bestowal'): "he whom one aims at with the object". This is equivalent to the dative notion which signifies a recipient in an act of giving or similar acts. Karana ("instrument") "that which effects most". This is equivalent to the instrumental notion. Adhikarana ('location'): or "substratum". This is equivalent to the locative notion. Karman ('deed'/'object'): "what the agent seeks most to attain". This is equivalent to the accusative notion. Karta ('agent'): "he/that which is independent in action". This is equivalent to the nominative notion. (On the basis of Scharfe, 1977: 94) Possessive (Sambandha) and vocative are absent in Panini's grammar. In this article they are divided into five declensions. Which declension a noun belongs to is determined largely by form. [edit] The basic declension suffix scheme for nouns and adjectives The basic scheme is given in the table belowâvalid for almost all nouns and adjectives. However, according to the gender and the ending consonant/vowel of the uninflected word-stem, there are predermined rules of compulsory sandhi which would then give the final inflected word. The parentheses give the case-terminations for the neuter gender, the rest are for masculine and feminine gender. Both devanagari script and IAST transliterations are given. Singular Dual Plural Nominative -à ¤¸à ¥ -s(-à ¤®à ¥ -m) -à ¤ -au(-à ¤ -Ä«) -à ¤…à ¤¸à ¥ -as(-à ¤ -i) Accusative -à ¤…à ¤®à ¥ -am(-à ¤®à ¥ -m) -à ¤ -au(-à ¤ -Ä«) -à ¤…à ¤¸à ¥ -as(-à ¤ -i) Instrumental -à ¤ -Ä -à ¤Âà ¥à ¤¯à ¤¾à ¤®à ¥ -bhyÄm -à ¤Âà ¤¿à ¤¸à ¥ -bhis Dative -à ¤ -e -à ¤Âà ¥à ¤¯à ¤¾à ¤®à ¥ -bhyÄm -à ¤Âà ¥à ¤¯à ¤¸à ¥ -bhyas Ablative -à ¤…à ¤¸à ¥ -as -à ¤Âà ¥à ¤¯à ¤¾à ¤®à ¥ -bhyÄm -à ¤Âà ¥à ¤¯à ¤¸à ¥ -bhyas Genitive -à ¤…à ¤¸à ¥ -as -à ¤à ¤¸à ¥ -os -à ¤à ¤®à ¥ -Äm Locative -à ¤ -i -à ¤à ¤¸à ¥ -os -à ¤¸à ¥ -su Vocative -à ¤¸à ¥ -s(- -) -à ¤ -au(-à ¤ -Ä«) -à ¤…à ¤¸à ¥ -as(-à ¤ -i) [edit] a-stems A-stems (/É/ or /ÉË/) comprise the largest class of nouns. As a rule, nouns belonging to this class, with the uninflected stem ending in short-a (/É/), are either masculine or neuter. Nouns ending in long-A (/ÉË/) are almost always feminine. A-stem adjectives take the masculine and neuter in short-a (/É/), and feminine in long-A (/ÉË/) in their stems. Masculine (kÄÌma- 'love') Neuter (Äsya- 'mouth') Feminine (kÄnta- 'beloved') Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Nominative kÄÌmaḥ kÄÌmÄu kÄÌmÄḥ Äsyà m Äsyè ÄsyÄÌni kÄntÄ kÄnte kÄntÄḥ Accusative kÄÌmam kÄÌmÄu kÄÌmÄn Äsyà m Äsyè ÄsyÄÌni kÄntÄm kÄnte kÄntÄḥ Instrumental kÄÌmena kÄÌmÄbhyÄm kÄÌmÄiḥ Äsyèna ÄsyÄÌbhyÄm ÄsyÄìḥ kÄntayÄ kÄntÄbhyÄm kÄntÄbhiḥ Dative kÄÌmÄya kÄÌmÄbhyÄm kÄÌmebhyaḥ ÄsyÄÌya ÄsyÄÌbhyÄm Äsyèbhyaḥ kÄntÄyai kÄntÄbhyÄm kÄntÄbhyÄḥ Ablative kÄÌmÄt kÄÌmÄbhyÄm kÄÌmebhyaḥ ÄsyÄÌt ÄsyÄÌbhyÄm Äsyèbhyaḥ kÄntÄyÄḥ kÄntÄbhyÄm kÄntÄbhyÄḥ Genitive kÄÌmasya kÄÌmayoḥ kÄÌmÄnÄm Äsyà sya Äsyà yoḥ ÄsyÄÌnÄm kÄntÄyÄḥ kÄntayoḥ kÄntÄnÄm Locative kÄÌme kÄÌmayoḥ kÄÌmeá¹£u Äsyè Äsyà yoḥ Äsyèṣu kÄntÄyÄm kÄntayoḥ kÄntÄsu Vocative kÄÌma kÄÌmau kÄÌmÄḥ ÄÌsya Äsyè ÄsyÄÌni kÄnte kÄnte kÄntÄḥ [edit] i- and u-stems i-stems Masc. and Fem. (gáti- 'gait') Neuter (vÄÌri- 'water') Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Nominative gátis gátÄ« gátayas vÄÌri vÄÌriá¹Ä« vÄÌrÄ«á¹i Accusative gátim gátÄ« gátÄ«s vÄÌri vÄÌriá¹Ä« vÄÌrÄ«á¹i Instrumental gátyÄ gátibhyÄm gátibhis vÄÌriá¹Ä vÄÌribhyÄm vÄÌribhis Dative gátaye, gátyÄi gátibhyÄm gátibhyas vÄÌriá¹e vÄÌribhyÄm vÄÌribhyas Ablative gátes, gátyÄs gátibhyÄm gátibhyas vÄÌriá¹as vÄÌribhyÄm vÄÌribhyas Genitive gátes, gátyÄs gátyos gátÄ«nÄm vÄÌriá¹as vÄÌriá¹os vÄÌriá¹Äm Locative gátÄu, gátyÄm gátyos gátiá¹£u vÄÌriá¹i vÄÌriá¹os vÄÌriá¹£u Vocative gáte gátÄ« gátayas vÄÌri, vÄÌre vÄÌriá¹Ä« vÄÌrÄ«á¹i u-stems Masc. and Fem. (Åátru- 'enemy') Neuter (mádhu- 'honey') Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Nominative Åátrus ÅátrÅ« Åátravas mádhu mádhunÄ« mádhÅ«ni Accusative Åátrum ÅátrÅ« ÅátrÅ«n mádhu mádhunÄ« mádhÅ«ni Instrumental Åátruá¹Ä ÅátrubhyÄm Åátrubhis mádhunÄ mádhubhyÄm mádhubhis Dative Åátrave ÅátrubhyÄm Åátrubhyas mádhune mádhubhyÄm mádhubhyas Ablative Åátros ÅátrubhyÄm Åátrubhyas mádhunas mádhubhyÄm mádhubhyas Genitive Åátros Åátrvos ÅátrÅ«á¹Äm mádhunas mádhunos mádhÅ«nÄm Locative ÅátrÄu Åátrvos Åátruá¹£u mádhuni mádhunos mádhuá¹£u Vocative Åátro ÅátrÅ« Åátravas mádhu mádhunÄ« mádhÅ«ni [edit] Long Vowel-stems Ä-stems (jÄ- 'prodigy') Ä«-stems (dhÄ«- 'thought') Å«-stems (bhÅ«- 'earth') Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Nominative jÄÌs jÄú jÄÌs dhÄ«Ìs dhÃÂyÄu dhÃÂyas bhÅ«Ìs bhúvÄu bhúvas Accusative jÄÌm jÄú jÄÌs, jás dhÃÂyam dhÃÂyÄu dhÃÂyas bhúvam bhúvÄu bhúvas Instrumental jÄÌ jÄÌbhyÄm jÄÌbhis dhiyÄÌ dhÄ«bhyÄÌm dhÄ«bhÃÂs bhuvÄÌ bhÅ«bhyÄÌm bhÅ«bhÃÂs Dative jé jÄÌbhyÄm jÄÌbhyas dhiyé, dhiyÄàdhÄ«bhyÄÌm dhÄ«bhyás bhuvé, bhuvÄàbhÅ«bhyÄÌm bhÅ«bhyás Ablative jás jÄÌbhyÄm jÄÌbhyas dhiyás, dhiyÄÌs dhÄ«bhyÄÌm dhÄ«bhyás bhuvás, bhuvÄÌs bhÅ«bhyÄÌm bhÅ«bhyás Genitive jás jós jÄÌnÄm, jÄÌm dhiyás, dhiyÄÌs dhiyós dhiyÄÌm, dhÄ«nÄÌm bhuvás, bhuvÄÌs bhuvós bhuvÄÌm, bhÅ«nÄÌm Locative jàjós jÄÌsu dhiyÃÂ, dhiyÄÌm dhiyós dhīṣú bhuvÃÂ, bhuvÄÌm bhuvós bhūṣú Vocative jÄÌs jÄú jÄÌs dhÄ«Ìs dhiyÄu dhÃÂyas bhÅ«Ìs bhuvÄu bhúvas [edit] á¹-stems á¹-stems are predominantly agental derivatives like dÄtá¹ 'giver', though also include kinship terms like pitá¹Ì 'father', mÄtá¹Ì 'mother', and svásá¹ 'sister'. Singular Dual Plural Nominative pitÄÌ pitárÄu pitáras Accusative pitáram pitárÄu pitá¹Ìn Instrumental pitrÄÌ pitá¹ÌbhyÄm pitá¹Ìbhis Dative pitré pitá¹ÌbhyÄm pitá¹Ìbhyas Ablative pitúr pitá¹ÌbhyÄm pitá¹Ìbhyas Genitive pitúr pitrós pitá¹á¹ÄÌm Locative pitári pitrós pitá¹Ìá¹£u Vocative pÃÂtar pitárÄu pitáras See also Devi inflection, Vrkis inflection. [edit] Personal Pronouns and Determiners The first and second person pronouns are declined for the most part alike, having by analogy assimilated themselves with one another. Note: Where two forms are given, the second is enclitic and an alternative form. Ablatives in singular and plural may be extended by the syllable -tas; thus mat or mattas, asmat or asmattas. First Person Second Person Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Nominative aham ÄvÄm vayam tvam yuvÄm yÅ«yam Accusative mÄm, mÄ ÄvÄm, nau asmÄn, nas tvÄm, tvÄ yuvÄm, vÄm yuá¹£mÄn, vas Instrumental mayÄ ÄvÄbhyÄm asmÄbhis tvayÄ yuvÄbhyÄm yuá¹£mÄbhis Dative mahyam, me ÄvÄbhyÄm, nau asmabhyam, nas tubhyam, te yuvÄbhyÄm, vÄm yuá¹£mabhyam, vas Ablative mat ÄvÄbhyÄm asmat tvat yuvÄbhyÄm yuá¹£mat Genitive mama, me Ävayos, nau asmÄkam, nas tava, te yuvayos, vÄm yuá¹£mÄkam, vas Locative mayi Ävayos asmÄsu tvayi yuvayos yuá¹£mÄsu The demonstrative ta, declined below, also functions as the third person pronoun. Masculine Neuter Feminine Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Singular Dual Plural Nominative sás tÄú té tát té tÄÌni sÄÌ té tÄÌs Accusative tám tÄú tÄÌn tát té tÄÌni tÄÌm té tÄÌs Instrumental téna tÄÌbhyÄm tÄÃÂs téna tÄÌbhyÄm tÄÃÂs táyÄ tÄÌbhyÄm tÄÌbhis Dative tásmÄi tÄÌbhyÄm tébhyas tásmÄi tÄÌbhyÄm tébhyas tásyÄi tÄÌbhyÄm tÄÌbhyas Ablative tásmÄt tÄÌbhyÄm tébhyam tásmÄt tÄÌbhyÄm tébhyam tásyÄs tÄÌbhyÄm tÄÌbhyas Genitive tásya táyos téṣÄm tásya táyos téṣÄm tásyÄs táyos tÄÌsÄm Locative tásmin táyos téṣu tásmin táyos téṣu tásyÄm táyos tÄÌsu [edit] Compounds One other notable feature of the nominal system is the very common use of nominal compounds, which may be huge (10+ words) as in some modern languages such as German. Nominal compounds occur with various structures, however morphologically speaking they are essentially the same. Each noun (or adjective) is in its (weak) stem form, with only the final element receiving case inflection. Some examples of nominal compounds include: 1. Dvandva (co-ordinative) These consist of two or more noun stems, connected in sense with 'and', e.g. matara-pitara 'Mother and Father'. Due to these compounds having more than one noun in them, they must be in the dual or plural. 2. BahuvrÄ«hi (possessive) BahuvrÄ«hi, or "much-rice", denotes a rich personâone who has much rice. BahuvrÄ«hi compounds refer (by example) to a compound noun with no head -- a compound noun that refers to a thing which is itself not part of the compound. For example, "low-life" and "block-head" are bahuvrihi compounds, since a low-life is not a kind of life, and a block-head is not a kind of head. (And a much-rice is not a kind of rice.) Compare with more common, headed, compound nouns like "fly-ball" (a kind of ball) or "alley cat" (a kind of cat). BahurvrÄ«his can often be translated by "possessing..." or "-ed"; for example, "possessing much rice", or "much riced". 3. Tatpuruá¹£a (determinative) There are many tatpuruá¹£as (one for each of the nominal cases, and a few others besides); in a tatpuruá¹£a, the first component is in a case relationship with another. For example, a doghouse is a dative compound, a house for a dog. It would be called a "caturtitatpuruá¹£a" (caturti refers to the fourth caseâthat is, the dative). Incidentally, "tatpuruá¹£a" is a tatpuruá¹£a ("this man"âmeaning someone's agent), while "caturtitatpuruá¹£a" is a karmadhÄrya, being both dative, and a tatpuruá¹£a. An easy way to understand it is to look at English examples of tatpuruá¹£as: "battlefield", where there is a genitive relationship between "field" and "battle", "a field of battle"; other examples include instrumental relationships ("thunderstruck") and locative relationships ("towndwelling"). 4. KarmadhÄraya (descriptive) The relation of the first member to the last is appositional, attributive or adverbial, e. g. uluka-yatu (owl+demon) is a demon in the shape of an owl. 5. Amreá¸ita (iterative) Repetition of a word expresses repetitiveness, e. g. dive-dive 'day by day', 'daily'. [edit] Syntax Please expand and improve this section as described on this article's talk page or at Requests for expansion,then remove this message. Because of Sanskrit's complex declension system the word order is free (with tendency toward SOV). [edit] Numerals The numbers from one to ten are: 1 éka 2 dvà3 trà4 catúr 5 pañca 6 ṣáṣ 7 saptá, sápta 8 aá¹£á¹Âá, áṣá¹Âa 9 náva 10 dáÅa The numbers one through four are declined. Ãka is declined like a pronominal adjective, though the dual form does not occur. Dvá appears only in the dual. Tràand catúr are declined irregularly: Three Four Masculine Neuter Feminine Masculine Neuter Feminine Nominative tráyas trÄ«Ìá¹i tisrás catvÄÌras catvÄÌri cátasras Accusative trÄ«n trÄ«Ìá¹i tisrás catúras catvÄÌri cátasras Instrumental tribhÃÂs tisá¹Ìbhis catúrbhis catasá¹Ìbhis Dative tribhyás tisá¹Ìbhyas catúrbhyas catasá¹Ìbhyas Ablative tribhyás tisá¹Ìbhyas catúrbhyas catasá¹Ìbhyas Genitive triyÄá¹ÄÌm tisá¹á¹ÄÌm caturá¹ÄÌm catasá¹á¹ÄÌm Locative triṣú tisá¹Ìá¹£u catúrá¹£u catasá¹Ìá¹£u [edit] Influence [edit] Modern-day India Sanskrit's greatest influence, presumably, is that which it exerted on languages that grew from its vocabulary and grammatical base. Especially among elite circles in India, Sanskrit is prized as a storehouse of scripture and the language of prayers in Hinduism. Like Latin's influence on European languages, Sanskrit has influenced most Indian languages. While vernacular prayer is common, Sanskrit mantras are recited by millions of Hindus and most temple functions are conducted entirely in Sanskrit, often Vedic in form. Most higher forms of Indian vernacular languages like Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu and Hindi, often called 'shuddha' (pure, higher) are much more heavily Sanskritized. Of modern day Indian languages, while Hindi tends to be more heavily weighted with Arabic and Persian influence, Bengali and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base. The national anthem, Jana Gana Mana is higher form of Bengali, so Sanskritized as to be archaic .in modern usages. The national song of India Vande Mataram which is originally a poem - composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay and taken from his book called 'Aanandmath', is in highly sanskritized Bengali. Malayalam, which is spoken in the Kerala state of India, also combines a great deal of Sanskrit vocabulary with Tamil (Dravidian) grammatical structure. Kannada, another South Indian language, also contains Sanskrit vocabulary. But as a medium of spiritual instruction for Hindus in India, Sanskrit is still prized and widespread. [edit] In non-Indian languages Due to common cultural, ethnic and linguistic traditions, Sanskrit words are found in Sinhalese, Nepali, Sindhi and other languages of the Indian subcontinent. Sanskrit words are also found in many other present-day non-Indian languages. For instance, the Thai language contains many loan words from Sanskrit. For example, in Thai, the RÄvana - the emperor of Sri Lanka is called 'Thoskonth' which is clearly a derivation of his Sanskrit name 'Dashakanth' (of ten necks). And ranged as far as the Philippines, e.g., Tagalog 'gurò' from 'Guru', or 'teacher', with the Hindu seafarers who traded there. Many Sanskrit words are also found in modern day Malay and Vietnamese. [edit] Attempts at revival Of late, there have been attempts to revive the speaking of this ancient tongue among people, so that vast literature available in Sanskrit can be made easily available to everyone. The CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) in India has made Sanskrit a third language (though it is an option for the school to adopt it or not, the other choice being the state's own official language) in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools, including but not limited to Christian missionary schools, affiliated to the ICSE board too, especially in those states where the official language is Hindi. An option between Sanskrit and Hindi (or many other local languages) as a second language exists for grades 9 and 10. Many organizations like the Samskrta Bharati are conducting Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularize the language. About four million people are claimed to have acquired the ability to speak Sanskrit fluently. Sanskrit is claimed to be spoken natively by the population in Mattur, a village in central Karnataka. Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in childhood and converse in the language. Even the local Muslims speak and converse in Sanskrit. Historically, the village was given by king Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Tuluva. Several organizations across India are putting in efforts to revive the language and to preserve oral transmission of the Vedas. Shri Vedabharathi is one such organization based out of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh that has been digitizing the Vedas through voice recording the recitations of Vedic Pandits. Some claim that its syntax makes it ideal for computer translation. [edit] Interactions with Sino-Tibetan languages Sanskrit and related languages have also influenced their Sino-Tibetan-speaking neighbors to the north through the spread of Buddhist texts in translation. Buddhism was spread to China by Mahayanist missionaries mostly through translations of Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit texts, and many terms were transliterated directly and added to the Chinese vocabulary. (Although Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is not Sanskrit, properly speaking, its vocabulary is substantially the same, both because of genetic relationship, and because of conscious imitation on the part of composers. Buddhist texts composed in Sanskrit proper were primarily found in philosophical schools like the Madhyamaka.) [edit] Western vogue for Sanskrit Main article: Sanskrit in the West At the end of the introduction to The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer claimed that the rediscovery of the ancient Indian tradition would be one of the great events in the history of the West. Goethe borrowed from Kalidasa for the Vorspiel auf dem Theater in Faust. Goethe and Schopenhauer were riding a crest of scholarly discovery, most notably the work done by Sir William Jones. (Goethe likely read Kalidasa's The Recognition of Sakuntala in Jones' translation.) However, the discovery of the world of Sanskrit literature moved beyond German and British scholars and intellectuals â Henry David Thoreau was a sympathetic reader of the Bhagavad Gita â and even beyond the humanities. In the early days of the Periodic Table, scientists referred to as yet undiscovered elements with the use of Sanskrit prefixes (see Mendeleev's predicted elements). The nineteenth century was a golden age of Western Sanskrit scholarship, and many of the giants of the field (Whitney, Macdonnell, Monier-Williams, Grassmann) knew each other personally. Perhaps the most commonly known example of Sanskrit in the West was also the last gasp of its vogue. T.S. Eliot, a student of Indian Philosophy and Lanham's, ended The Waste Land with Sanskrit: "Shantih Shantih Shantih". [edit] Computational linguistics There have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. machine translation, and other areas of natural language processing because of its highly regular structure (The AI Magazine, Spring, 1985 #39). This is due to Classical Sanskrit being a regularized, prescriptivist form abstracted from the much more irregular and richer Vedic Sanskrit. This levelling of the grammar of Classical Sanskrit occurred during the Brahmana phase, after the language had fallen out of popular use, arguably qualifying Classical Sanskrit as an early engineered language. [edit] See also Akshara Devanagari Sanskrit literature Vrddhi Grantha Script Indo-European [[2] The Panini-Backus Form in Syntax of Formal Languages] Languages of India List of national languages of India List of Indian languages by total speakers [edit] References The Sanskrit Language - T. Burrow - ISBN 8120817672 Sanskrit Pronunciation - Bruce Cameron - ISBN 1557000212 Teach Yourself Sanskrit - Prof. M. Coulson - ISBN 0340859903 DevavÄá¹Ä«praveÃ…ikÄ: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language - Robert P. Goldman - ISBN 0944613403 A Higher Sanskrit Grammar - M. R. Kale - ISBN 8120801784 A Sanskrit Grammar for Students - A.A. Macdonell - ISBN 8124600945 The Sanskrit Language: An Introductory Grammar and Reader - Walter Harding Maurer - ISBN 0700713824 Sanskrit Grammar - William D. Whitney - ISBN 8185557594 à ¤Âà ¤¾à ¤·à ¤¾ à ¤µà ¤¿à ¤à ¥à ¤à ¤¾à ¤¨ (Bhasha Vigyan) â Bholanath Tiwari â [1955] 2004 â ISBN 81-225-0007-2 [edit] External links Sanskrit edition of Wikipedia Wikibooks has more about this subject: Sanskrit Sanskrit Documents Documents in ITX format of Upanishads, Stotras etc. and a metasite with links to translations, dictionaries, tutorials, tools and other Sanskrit resources. Samskrita Bharati American Sanskrit Institute Ethnologue's Sanskrit report Sanskrit & Sánscrito, Sanskrit resources in English and Spanish Transliterator from romanized to Unicode Sanskrit transliterator. Sanskrit transliterator with font conversion to latin and other Indian Langauges [edit] Dictionaries Monier-Williams Dictionary - Searchable Monier-Williams Dictionary - Printable Sanskrit Translation Online Hypertext Dictionary [edit] Primers Discover Sanskrit A concise study of the Sanskrit language Sanskrit Self Study An introduction to Sanskrit Language in 54 self study lessons by Chitrapur Math Harivenu Dâsa - An Introductory Course based on S'rîla Jîva Gosvâmî's Grammar a vaishnava version of Pânini's grammar: (pdf-file) A Sanskrit Tutor Sanskrit Audio Lessons from NCERT Samskrit Video Lessions [edit] Grammars An Analytical Cross Referenced Sanskrit Grammar By Lennart Warnemyr. Phonology, morphology and syntax, written in a semiformal style with full paradigms. 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All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers IyengarIyengar Classification: Ethnic group/ Caste/Community of South India Total population: 2004: (approx) 600,000 (roughly 1% of Tamilians) Significant populations in: Chennai Thanjavur Tiruchirapalli Bangalore Mysore Mandya Hassan USA Language Mother tongue is Tamil with unique Iyengar accent. Knowledge in Sanskrit for religious/traditional reasons. Religion Vishishtadvaita Hinduism Acharyas RamanujaVedanta DesikaManavala Mamunigal Related Communities *Madhva*Iyer Iyengar (or Aiyangar) is the name of a small in number caste of Tamil Brahmins of South India whose members profess the Visishtadvaita philosophy codified by Ramanuja. The word Iyengar (Anglicised from the Tamil ????????(Aiya?kar)) means "people entrusted with five tasks", referring to the five duties that traditional Iyengars perform (see [1]). The most common spelling is "Iyengar", but "Aiyangar" is the phonetically correct spelling. Sometimes although rarely "Iengar" is also used . Iyengars along with Iyers are known as Tamil Brahmins .Although most Iyengars speak Tamil, there is a significant number of Iyengars speaking Kannada or a dialect of Tamil, highly influenced by Kannada in southern Karnataka (popularly known as Mysore, Hebbar, Mandyam, Hemige Iyengars), as well as smaller numbers of Telugu-speakers in southern Andhra Pradesh. There is also a sizeable number of Iyengars in the Purulia district of West Bengal who had migrated from Tamil Nadu a few centuries ago due to an invitation by a Bengal king around Ramanuja's time.Iyengars are primarily Vaishnavites, and as is the case with the majority of Brahmins, are also vegetarians. Today, Iyengars are taxonomised into two sub-sects of Thenkalai and Vadakalai based on the different stresses in religious literature. The Thenkalai community ascribes more importance to the Tamil works while the Vadakalai community deems the Vedas, written in Sanskrit to be more important.ReligionIyengars follow Visishtadvaita, a system of thought embodied by the Vedanta, the philosophical portion of the Vedas, India's ancient scriptures. The central idea of Visishtadvaita is this: there exists an Ultimate Reality, an Absolute Being that is the source and substratum of all that exists. This immanent spirit is the inner guide and controller of the whole universe with all its diverse animate and inanimate elements. Communion with this gracious, omnipotent Supreme Being constitutes the supreme end of existence or Moksha. Such communion is attainable exclusively through complete self-surrender and undivided, loving meditation (Bhakti).The Vaishnavite tradition began during the Vedic period. Most Iyengars follow Ramanuja's and Vedanta Desikar's school of philosophy.The objects of worship are the images of Vishnu and His incarnations and the saligramas - small stone pebbles of different colors (predominantly black) recovered from the bed of the river Gandaki in Nepal at Mukti Kshetra. Saligramas are fossilized ammonite shells formed 140 million years, having several spiral grooves resembling the chakra of Narayana which are formed by the river worms called Vajra-keeta.The priests at Tirupati Balaji temple, the most famous and important of Hindu Temples are Iyengars.The 108 holy temples of Vishnu called 108 Divya Desams[2][3] are important to the Iyengars. The 108th Divya Desam is Vaikuntam which is the Mythical abode of Lord Vishnu.OriginsAccording to the migratory view, many members of the Brahmin community, originally based in the Northern part of India, migrated to the Tamil kingdoms in the South. However, the current historians have started to discredit the migratory view and started to perceive Iyengars as natives of the Tamil region of Tamil Nadu.The lack of any written historical records hampers the search for the origin of that peculiar branch of Iyengars, the Hebbars. This sub-community, based in the border areas of Mysore with Tamilnadu, speaks a mixture of Kannada and archaic Tamil, with a sprinkling of Sanskrit words thrown in. One theory is that the Hebbar Iyengars of today are descended from the Jains who were converted from Jainism to Vishisht Advaita along with their monarch, Bittideva, the Hoysala king, circa 1180 AD, by Ramanujacharya, who resided at Melkote (near Mysore) at that time. (Bittideva then termed himself Vishnu Vardhana, and is renowned under that name for building a myriad Vaishnavite temples, including the exquisite Chenna Kesava Temple at Belur). These Jains were immigrants to Mysore from undetermined regions in North India, probably fleeing from the recurrent depradations of the Muslim invaders. Another peculiarity, supporting this theory of late conversion, is the fact that Hebbars are not permitted to perform their own religious ceremonies (marriages, funerals), but rely on a community of co-located pure-Tamil speaking Iyengars termed Swayam Acharyas for these services. The Swayam Acharyas are supposedly the original Tamil Iyengar followers of Ramanuja, who initiated the Hebbar converts into the Vaishnavite rituals of worship.'Gotra's and 'Nakshatra'sAll the Iyengars trace their origin to one of the eight major rishis or sages. Iyengars classify themselves under different Gotras (also referred to as Gothram), those of the same Gotra share common ancestors. Thus in the Iyengar community, marriage among people of the same Gotra is prohibited. This is generally cited as an example of scientific practices followed even in the distant past. A plausible explanation for the term gotra being used to indicate ancestry from a certain sage, would be the use of this term to refer to the cowpens in which the sages used to keep their animals.Another terminology which is used in conjunction with Gotra is Nakshatra (or Nakshatram).The superiority/inferiority of the various gotras and subgroups with reference to each other and their stereotyping is the subject of many debates, often amusing to the current generation. Iyengars today are found all over the world and are an extraordinarily visible community with relation to their population.Iyengars TodayIn addition to their earlier occupations, Iyengars today have diversified into a variety of fieldstheir strengths particularly evident in the fields of law,mass media, science, engineering, mathematics and computer science. A minuscule percentage of Iyengars today choose to pursue the vocation of priesthood. Iyengars have been active in the cultural field too. Music has always been integral to the Iyengar community; Carnatic music forms a sacred tradition including within its fold, apart from vocal music, instruments such as mridangam, naadaswaram, veena, ghatam, etc., Bharatanatyam. Carnatic music and Bharatanatyam together enjoy a rich patronage during the Chennai cultural season in the months of December and January. A large numbers of Iyengars also work in film industries, particularly the Tamil movie industry in the south of India. Some famous actors who were born Iyengars and/or are practising Iyengars are Kamal Hassan, Hema Malini ,Vyjayanti Mala , Jayalalitha , Madhavan and Vasundhara Das. Some of these actors have also acted in Bollywood.Some Famous Iyengars in Recent TimesThe following were all born Iyengars* Srinivasa Iyengar Ramanujan - world renowned Mathematician* Ariyakkudi T. Ramanuja Iyengar - World renowned Carnatic musician* Rajaji - Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and the first Governor General of Independent India* Masti Venkatesha Iyengar - Kannada Literature* Gorur Ramaswamy Iyengar - Kannada Literature* G P Rajarathnam - Kannada Literature* Mysore Doreswamy Iyengar - Veena Maestro* Raja Ramanna - Nuclear Scientist* B.K.S. Iyengar - Yogi and founder of Iyengar Yoga* Gen. K. Sundarji - Former Chief of the Indian Army* C. Rangarajan - Former Governor of Reserve Bank of India and governor of Andhra Pradesh,India* General S. Padmanabhan - Former chief of the Indian Army* K S Sudarshan - Senior BJP member* K N Govindacharya - RSS Idealogue* Ramanujacharya - Sanskrit Scholar, Philosopher & Social Reformer* Madurai T.N. Seshagopalan - Carnatic music maestro* T.T. Krishnamachari - Industrialist & Freedom fighter* T.V. Sundaram Iyengar - Founder of T.V.S. group (automobile and finance) * J. Jayalalithaa - Present Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu * S. Venkataraghavan - Cricketer * Krishnamachari Srikkanth - Cricketer * Sadagopan Ramesh - Cricketer * M. Chinnaswamy - Cricket administrator* Hema Malini - Tamil/Hindi Actress * Vyjayantimala Bali - Tamil/Hindi Actress * Suhasini - Tamil Actress * Vaali - Lyricist * Srinivas - Playback singer* Sujatha Rangarajan - Writer & Visionary * K S Sudarshan - Senior BJP member* B.S.Ranga - Veteran producer and director of Kannada and Tamil films with more than 70 movies to his credit, winner of 2 President's Awards, Rajotsava Awardee* Chitraveena Ravi Kiran - Chitraveena maestro & Child Prodigy * Kamal Haasan - Actor* Chaaru Haasan - Actor * Y.G. Mahendra - Stage & Movie Actor * Crazy Mohan - Screenplay & Comedian * Professor S.R. Srinivasa Varadhan - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society * Professor Mudumbai NARASIMHAN - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society (1996) * Professor Madabusi RAGHUNATHAN - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society (2000) * Professor Conjeeveram SESHADRI - Mathematician & Fellow of the Royal Society (1988) * Professor Mandyam SRINIVASAN - Fellow of the Royal Society (2001) * Rangaswamy Srinivasan - Inventor of Ablative Photodecomposition (APD) - Using Excimer Laser for Eye surgery * Professor Cadambathur Tiruvenkatacharlu Rajagopal - Mathematician, Ramanujan Institute of Mathematics * Professor Chidambaram Padmanabhan Ramanujam - Mathematician, TIFR* Madhan - Cartoonist* K. Santhanam- (1895-1980)An attorney, Gandhian, 1st Railway Minister in Free India,Governor of Vindhya Pradesh, Chairman of Santhanam Committee on Corruption, authored several books (1895-1980)* S. Parthasarathi Ayyangar,Former Commissioner of Police in Madras PresidencySee AlsoSmartha, Madhva, Brahmin, Iyerk.r.srinivasan - distinguished i.p.s officer,director general of police - karnataka stateExternal links* NAMA Inc.- An Association of SriVaishnavas* Sri Parakalamath, Mysore* Sri Vaishnava Home Page* Srirangam Srimad Andavan Periyaashramam* Official Site of Tirumala Tirupathi Devasthanams* Ahobila Matam Home Page* Vanamamalai Divya Kshetram* Sri Sri Sri Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Chinna Jeeyar Swamiji's Home page* Important Links for Vaishnava Amrutham* Vadakalai Vs Thenkalai* Malibu, CA Temple* Sri Venkateswara Temple in Pittsburgh, PA, USA* [4] Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted September 15, 2008 --- On Mon, 9/15/08, Radha Sridhar <radha27361 wrote:Radha Sridhar <radha27361Fwd: hirusk38, "rajendranmanjula manjula" <rajendranmanjulama, "chanakya.deepak" <chanakya.deepak, "Divya Sridhar" <divyasridhar1982, darsh2hot2006, "Sowmya Gopaalan" <parigopaalan, viji215, giyas247Date: Monday, September 15, 2008, 5:36 PM---------- Forwarded message ----------Radha Sridhar <radha27361 2008/9/15hiradha27361Subject: Fwd: Truth Hurts-Wake Up Call ! In Advance Looking at upcoming ganpati season Plz forward it IDLE worship ? or IDEAL worship ? After immersion .. ? The Day after .... Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ? and treated like this ... ? or dumped like this ? left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ? Lying at your feet ..Helpless .. Abandoned by worshipers ! Maimed ? Desecrated ? And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ? You burn down buses and call for bandhs ? Ab Kya hua ? Was that statue a GOD, OR Is this GOD only a Statue? You decide. -- Wake Up ! This is our GOD !~ Friends, -- Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted September 16, 2008 Very beautiful and thought provoking. No Hindu should allow this to happen in the coming years. In those days, Vinayagar dolls was to be made of clay mud for celebrating in individuals' houses and on the completion of the Vinayaka Chaturthi, next day evening the same dolls would de dissloved either in the wells in their houses or in rivers and ponds, so that the doll would dissolve in the water and the mud would join the place from where it had come. It is not called as destruction of the idol and instead worshipped as bidding farewell to a guest, who had come from Kailash for his parents to our Call. At least from next year, let us worship properly and bid fare in the way it was followed in olden days. Sridharan--- On Mon, 15/9/08, P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 wrote: P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 Fwd: hi Date: Monday, 15 September, 2008, 8:51 PM --- On Mon, 9/15/08, Radha Sridhar <radha27361 wrote: Radha Sridhar <radha27361Fwd: hirusk38, "rajendranmanjula manjula" <rajendranmanjulama, "chanakya.deepak" <chanakya.deepak, "Divya Sridhar" <divyasridhar1982, darsh2hot2006, "Sowmya Gopaalan" <parigopaalan, viji215, giyas247Date: Monday, September 15, 2008, 5:36 PM ---------- Forwarded message ----------Radha Sridhar <radha273612008/9/15hiradha27361 Fwd: Truth Hurts-Wake Up Call ! In Advance Looking at upcoming ganpati season Plz forward it IDLE worship ?or IDEAL worship ? After immersion .. ? The Day after .... Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ? and treated like this ... ? or dumped like this ? left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ? Lying at your feet ..Helpless .. Abandoned by worshipers ! Maimed ? Desecrated ? And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ? You burn down buses and call for bandhs ? Ab Kya hua ? Was that statue a GOD, OR Is this GOD only a Statue? You decide. -- Wake Up ! This is our GOD !~ Friends, -- Connect with friends all over the world. Get India Messenger. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted September 17, 2008 Not to mention the environmental damage all this causes given the use of lead paint and other synthetic products in making these idols.I wonder if we can all our revered gurus and acharyas to jointly issue a call to not do this and go back to the traditional model of celebrating vinayaka chathurthi. I'm sure it will have an impact both on government and the public.I see this and many other events moving away from the spiritual foundation into crass commercialism.VijayParthasarathy Sridharan <srirangpaTo: Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:30:23 PMRe: Fwd: hi Very beautiful and thought provoking. No Hindu should allow this to happen in the coming years. In those days, Vinayagar dolls was to be made of clay mud for celebrating in individuals' houses and on the completion of the Vinayaka Chaturthi, next day evening the same dolls would de dissloved either in the wells in their houses or in rivers and ponds, so that the doll would dissolve in the water and the mud would join the place from where it had come. It is not called as destruction of the idol and instead worshipped as bidding farewell to a guest, who had come from Kailash for his parents to our Call. At least from next year, let us worship properly and bid fare in the way it was followed in olden days. Sridharan--- On Mon, 15/9/08, P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 wrote: P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 Fwd: hi Date: Monday, 15 September, 2008, 8:51 PM --- On Mon, 9/15/08, Radha Sridhar <radha27361 wrote: Radha Sridhar <radha27361Fwd: hirusk38, "rajendranmanjula manjula" <rajendranmanjulama, "chanakya.deepak" <chanakya.deepak, "Divya Sridhar" <divyasridhar1982, darsh2hot2006, "Sowmya Gopaalan" <parigopaalan, viji215, giyas247Date: Monday, September 15, 2008, 5:36 PM ---------- Forwarded message ----------Radha Sridhar <radha273612008/9/15hiradha27361 Fwd: Truth Hurts-Wake Up Call ! In Advance Looking at upcoming ganpati season Plz forward it IDLE worship ?or IDEAL worship ? After immersion .. ? The Day after .... Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ? and treated like this ... ? or dumped like this ? left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ? Lying at your feet ..Helpless .. Abandoned by worshipers ! Maimed ? Desecrated ? And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ? You burn down buses and call for bandhs ? Ab Kya hua ? Was that statue a GOD, OR Is this GOD only a Statue? You decide. -- Wake Up ! This is our GOD !~ Friends, -- Connect with friends all over the world. Get India Messenger. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted September 17, 2008 Well done! Mr. Sridharan for UR follow-up. It is surprising that both our thoughts sailed identical. In fact , I had similarly addressed a set of cosmopolitan Hindus on the same date, the cream of which is produced below:=================================================================Tuesday, 16 September, 2008 "Srinivasan Varadarajan" <ganovasan View contact details "Jitendra Thacker" <jitenthacker, "Chandan Kaprani" <ckaprani, "anand ahiya" <a_ahiya, "Chandra Mani" <manicm, "ramachandran iyer" <chanderdxn, "vyjayanthimala kumar" <indialuver28, "shrikant kannan" <shrikant_kannan, "Raji Sriram" <rajsri77090, "Rajesh Narasimhan" <rajesh_narasima, "Ramanujam Ramabadran" <rramanuj1950, "Ramani Iyengar" <ertechin, "Niraj Shah" <elitegems07, "kanthamani krishnakumar" <kanthakk, "jyoti jyotish" <jyotijyotish, "Dr.RAMASWAMY VEERARAGHAVAN" <veeraraghavanramaswamy, "Mohankumar Iyengar" <mohankumar_av, "charanyan iyengar" <charanyan_24iyengar... more Cc: radha27361 $ knj u§f uhkhE#ha kAhnj¼fha ek: $ knj $Ãthrh uhkhE#ha kAhnj¼fha ek: $ knj ntjhªjh uhkhE#ha kAhnj¼fha ek: $ knj Ãfkhªj kAhnj¼fha ek: From the DESK of GanoVasan Kudos to you, Ms. Radha Sridhar for this thought provoking and awakening the dormant realization of the people at large. Some one has to send this to the appropriate addressof the major organisors of this festival to install wiser counsel so that at least within a reasonalable time, the object behind is realiszed. $Ãthr¬ SRINIVASAN rª½uh Chandra========================================================As the pld saying goes, who should bell th CAT!$Ãthr¬ = --- On Tue, 16/9/08, Parthasarathy Sridharan <srirangpa wrote:Parthasarathy Sridharan <srirangpaRe: Fwd: hi Date: Tuesday, 16 September, 2008, 9:30 PM Very beautiful and thought provoking. No Hindu should allow this to happen in the coming years. In those days, Vinayagar dolls was to be made of clay mud for celebrating in individuals' houses and on the completion of the Vinayaka Chaturthi, next day evening the same dolls would de dissloved either in the wells in their houses or in rivers and ponds, so that the doll would dissolve in the water and the mud would join the place from where it had come. It is not called as destruction of the idol and instead worshipped as bidding farewell to a guest, who had come from Kailash for his parents to our Call. At least from next year, let us worship properly and bid fare in the way it was followed in olden days. Sridharan--- On Mon, 15/9/08, P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 wrote: P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 Fwd: hi Date: Monday, 15 September, 2008, 8:51 PM --- On Mon, 9/15/08, Radha Sridhar <radha27361 wrote: Radha Sridhar <radha27361Fwd: hirusk38, "rajendranmanjula manjula" <rajendranmanjulama, "chanakya.deepak" <chanakya.deepak, "Divya Sridhar" <divyasridhar1982, darsh2hot2006, "Sowmya Gopaalan" <parigopaalan, viji215, giyas247Date: Monday, September 15, 2008, 5:36 PM ---------- Forwarded message ----------Radha Sridhar <radha273612008/9/15hiradha27361 Fwd: Truth Hurts-Wake Up Call ! In Advance Looking at upcoming ganpati season Plz forward it IDLE worship ?or IDEAL worship ? After immersion .. ? The Day after .... Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ? and treated like this ... ? or dumped like this ? left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ? Lying at your feet ..Helpless .. Abandoned by worshipers ! Maimed ? Desecrated ? And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ? You burn down buses and call for bandhs ? Ab Kya hua ? Was that statue a GOD, OR Is this GOD only a Statue? You decide. -- Wake Up ! This is our GOD !~ Friends, -- Connect with friends all over the world. Get India Messenger. Add more friends to your messenger and enjoy! Invite them now. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Guest guest Report post Posted September 18, 2008 Well said Mr.Srinivasan. Your observation also similar to that of mine. As rightly said by you, the learned elderly people from our religon should come forward to set right this sad practice and the meaning of this great function should be properly understood by everyone and should not become a mere ritual of making big paper dolls and throw them like this. Let us hope Better counsel will prevail upon on these enthusiatic people to celebrate this great function in the proper way. Thanks for your comments. Sridharan --- On Wed, 17/9/08, Srinivasan Varadarajan <ganovasan wrote: Srinivasan Varadarajan <ganovasanRe: Fwd: hi Date: Wednesday, 17 September, 2008, 4:15 PM Well done! Mr. Sridharan for UR follow-up. It is surprising that both our thoughts sailed identical. In fact , I had similarly addressed a set of cosmopolitan Hindus on the same date, the cream of which is produced below:=================================================================Tuesday, 16 September, 2008 "Srinivasan Varadarajan" <ganovasanView contact details "Jitendra Thacker" <jitenthacker, "Chandan Kaprani" <ckaprani, "anand ahiya" <a_ahiya, "Chandra Mani" <manicm, "ramachandran iyer" <chanderdxn, "vyjayanthimala kumar" <indialuver28, "shrikant kannan" <shrikant_kannan, "Raji Sriram" <rajsri77090, "Rajesh Narasimhan" <rajesh_narasima, "Ramanujam Ramabadran" <rramanuj1950, "Ramani Iyengar" <ertechin, "Niraj Shah" <elitegems07, "kanthamani krishnakumar" <kanthakk, "jyoti jyotish" <jyotijyotish, "Dr.RAMASWAMY VEERARAGHAVAN" <veeraraghavanramaswamy, "Mohankumar Iyengar" <mohankumar_av, "charanyan iyengar" <charanyan_24iyengar... more Cc: radha27361 $ knj u§f uhkhE#ha kAhnj¼fha ek: $ knj $Ãthrh uhkhE#ha kAhnj¼fha ek: $ knj ntjhªjh uhkhE#ha kAhnj¼fha ek: $ knj Ãfkhªj kAhnj¼fha ek: From the DESK of GanoVasan Kudos to you, Ms. Radha Sridhar for this thought provoking and awakening the dormant realization of the people at large. Some one has to send this to the appropriate addressof the major organisors of this festival to install wiser counsel so that at least within a reasonalable time, the object behind is realiszed. $Ãthr¬ SRINIVASAN rª½uh Chandra ======================================================== As the pld saying goes, who should bell th CAT! $Ãthr¬ = --- On Tue, 16/9/08, Parthasarathy Sridharan <srirangpa wrote: Parthasarathy Sridharan <srirangpaRe: Fwd: hi Date: Tuesday, 16 September, 2008, 9:30 PM Very beautiful and thought provoking. No Hindu should allow this to happen in the coming years. In those days, Vinayagar dolls was to be made of clay mud for celebrating in individuals' houses and on the completion of the Vinayaka Chaturthi, next day evening the same dolls would de dissloved either in the wells in their houses or in rivers and ponds, so that the doll would dissolve in the water and the mud would join the place from where it had come. It is not called as destruction of the idol and instead worshipped as bidding farewell to a guest, who had come from Kailash for his parents to our Call. At least from next year, let us worship properly and bid fare in the way it was followed in olden days. Sridharan--- On Mon, 15/9/08, P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 wrote: P Vijayalakshmi <viji215 Fwd: hi Date: Monday, 15 September, 2008, 8:51 PM --- On Mon, 9/15/08, Radha Sridhar <radha27361 wrote: Radha Sridhar <radha27361Fwd: hirusk38, "rajendranmanjula manjula" <rajendranmanjulama, "chanakya.deepak" <chanakya.deepak, "Divya Sridhar" <divyasridhar1982, darsh2hot2006, "Sowmya Gopaalan" <parigopaalan, viji215, giyas247Date: Monday, September 15, 2008, 5:36 PM ---------- Forwarded message ----------Radha Sridhar <radha273612008/9/15hiradha27361 Fwd: Truth Hurts-Wake Up Call ! In Advance Looking at upcoming ganpati season Plz forward it IDLE worship ?or IDEAL worship ? After immersion .. ? The Day after .... Would you like your Gods bulldozed like garbage ? and treated like this ... ? or dumped like this ? left to rot for scavengers to feast ... ? Lying at your feet ..Helpless .. Abandoned by worshipers ! Maimed ? Desecrated ? And you create a hue and cry when some statue in your city gets 'desecrated' ? You burn down buses and call for bandhs ? Ab Kya hua ? Was that statue a GOD, OR Is this GOD only a Statue? You decide. -- Wake Up ! This is our GOD !~ Friends, -- Connect with friends all over the world. Get India Messenger. Add more friends to your messenger and enjoy! Invite them now. Connect with friends all over the world. Get India Messenger. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
