Sanskrit is the classical language of Indian and the liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It is also one of the 22 official languages of India. The name Sanskrit means "refined", "consecrated" and "sanctified". It has always been regarded as the 'high' language and used mainly for religious and scientific discourse.

Vedic Sanskrit, the pre-Classical form of the language and the liturgical language of the Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family. The oldest known text in Sanskrit, the Rigveda, a collection of over a thousand Hindu hymns, composed during the 2nd millenium BC.

Today Sanskrit is used mainly in Hindu religious rituals as a ceremonial language for hymns and mantras. Efforts are also being made to revive Sanskrit as an everyday spoken language in the village of Mattur near Shimoga in Karnataka. A modern form of Sanskrit is one of the 17 official home languages in India.

There are about 24,800 people in India who speak Sanskrit as a first language, in particularly in Allahabad, Jaunpur, Kaushambi, and Pratagarh districts of Uttar Pradesh state, and also in Delhi and other cities. Another 5 million people in India use Sanskrit as a second language, and 3,000 people in Nepal do so as well.

Since the late 19th century, Sanskrit has been written mostly with the Devangar alphabet. However it has also been written with all the other alphabets of India, except Gurmukhi and Tamil, and with other alphabets such as Thai and Tibetan. The Bhaiksuki, Grantha, Sharda and Siddham alphabets are used only for Sanskrit.

Since the late 18th century, Sanskrit has also been written with the Latin alphabet. The most commonly used system is the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST), which was been the standard for academic work since 1912.

Note: there are about a thousand conjunct consonants, most of which combine two or three consonants. There are also some with four-consonant conjuncts and at least one well-known conjunct with five consonants. This is a selection of commonly-used conjuncts.

Translated into Sanskrit by Arvind Iyengar

Sarv mnav svatantr samutpann vartant api ca, gauravadr adhikradr ca samn va vartant. t sarv ctan-tarka-aktibhy susampann santi. Api ca, sarvpi bandhutva-bhvanay paraspara vyavaharantu.

Hear a recording of this text by Muralikrishnan Ramasamy

Sarv mnav janman svatantr vaiyaktikagaurava adhikra ca tuly va, sarv vivka tmask ca vartat, sarv paraspara bhrtbhvna vyavaharyu.

Hear a recording of this text by Shriramana Sharma

Some details provided by Shriramana Sharma and Krittathat Kaeofung

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)

Information about Sanskrit | Phrases | Numbers | Tower of Babel | Writing systems for Sanskrit: Devanagari, Bhaiksuki, Brahmi, Galik, Grantha, Gupta, Kadamba, Kharosthi, Nandinagari, Sharda, Siddham, Thai, Tibetan

Information about the Sanskrit languagehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrithttps://www.ethnologue.com/language/sanhttps://www.worldhistory.org/Sanskrit/

Online Sanskrit lessonshttps://learnsanskrit.org/https://learnsanskritlanguage.com/https://learnsanskritonline.com/https://sgc.best/

Sanskrit phraseshttp://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sanskrit/Everyday_Phrases

Sanskrit dictionarieshttp://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/indologie/tamil/cap_search.htmlhttps://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/tamil/

Devanagari fonts and keyboardshttp://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Devanagari.htmlhttp://www.devanagarifonts.nethttp://www.sanskritweb.net/cakram/

Sanskrit Library - contains digitized Sanskrit texts and various tools to analyse themhttp://sanskritlibrary.org/

ALPHABETUM - a Unicode font specifically designed for ancient scripts, including classical & medieval Latin, ancient Greek, Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian, Faliscan, Messapic, Picene, Iberian, Celtiberian, Gothic, Runic, Old & Middle English, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Old Nordic, Ogham, Kharosthi, Glagolitic, Old Cyrillic, Phoenician, Avestan, Ugaritic, Linear B, Anatolian scripts, Coptic, Cypriot, Brahmi, Old Persian cuneiform: http://guindo.pntic.mec.es/~jmag0042/alphabet.html

Awadhi, Assamese, Bagri, Bengali, Bhili, Bishnupriya Manipuri, Braj, Chakma, Chhattisgarhi, Chittagonian, Desiya, Dhatki, Dhivehi, Dhundari, Fiji Hindi, Gawar Bati, Gujarati, Hajong, Halbi, Haryanvi, Hindi, Kannauji, Khandeshi, Konkani, Kotia, Kumaoni, Kutchi, Lambadi, Marathi, Marwari, Mewari, Modi, Nimadi, Odia, Parkari Koli, Punjabi, Rajasthani, Rajbanshi, Rangpuri, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sarnmi Hindustani, Sindhi, Sinhala, Sourashtra, Sugali, Sylheti, Tanchangya, Urdu

Aka-Jeru, Angika, Athpare, Avestan, Awadhi, Balti, Bantawa, Belhare, Bhili, Bhumij, Bilaspuri, Bodo, Bhojpuri, Braj, Car, Chamling, Chhantyal, Chhattisgarhi, Chambeali, Danwar, Dhatki, Dhimal, Dhundari, Dogri, Doteli, Gaddi, Garhwali, Gondi, Gurung, Halbi, Haryanvi, Hindi, Ho, Jarawa, Jaunsari, Kannauji, Kham, Kangri, Kashmiri, Khaling, Khandeshi, Kharia, Khortha, Korku, Konkani, Kullui, Kumaoni, Kurmali, Kurukh, Kusunda, Lambadi, Limbu, Lhomi, Lhowa, Magahi, Magar, Mahasu Pahari, Maithili, Maldivian, Malto, Mandeali, Marathi, Marwari, Mewari, Mundari, Nancowry. Newar, Nepali, Nimadi, Onge, Pahari, Pali, Pangwali, Rajasthani, Rajbanshi, Rangpuri, Sadri, Sanskrit, Santali, Saraiki, Sirmauri, Sherpa, Shina, Sindhi, Sunwar, Sylheti, Tamang, Thakali, Thangmi, Wambule, Wancho, Yakkha, Yolmo

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Sanskrit alphabet, pronunciation and language - Omniglot

Translations from dictionary English - Sanskrit, definitions, grammar

In Glosbe you will find translations from English into Sanskrit comming from various sources. The translations are sorted from the most common to the less popular. We make every effort to ensure that each expression has definitions or information about the inflection.

Glosbe dictionaries are unique. In Glosbe you can check not only English or Sanskrit translations. We also offer usage examples showing dozens of translated sentences. You can see not only the translation of the phrase you are searching for, but also how it is translated depending on the context.

The translated sentences you will find in Glosbe come from parallel corpora (large databases with translated texts). Translation memory is like having the support of thousands of translators available in a fraction of a second.

Often the text alone is not enough. We also need to hear what the phrase or sentence sounds like. In Glosbe you will find not only translations from the English-Sanskrit dictionary, but also audio recordings and high-quality computer readers.

A picture is worth more than a thousand words. In addition to text translations, in Glosbe you will find pictures that present searched terms.

Do you need to translate a longer text? No problem, in Glosbe you will find a English - Sanskrit translator that will easily translate the article or file you are interested in.

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The English - Sanskrit dictionary | Glosbe

Sanskrit bashing is one of the visible manifestations of both the bandwagon fallacy and ultracrepidarianism. You have to forgive these villifiers, because it is evident that they do not know Sanskrit

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The hefty diatribes against the exquisite Sanskrit language, lodged mainly by privileged, elite members of the Western academy, of both Western and Indian origin, and by mainstream Western media and certain sections of the Indian media epitomise the bandwagon fallacy. India seems to be awash in self-loathing in a substantive wave of the aforementioned fallacy, coupled with a good measure of overt postcolonial cringing. Sanskrit bashing is one of the visible manifestations of both the bandwagon fallacy and ultracrepidarianism. You have to forgive these villifiers, because it is evident that they do not know Sanskrit. If they did, they would feel for the language in the way William Jones did: The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either....

Sanskrit is the mother of languages currently spoken by about 900 million people in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. That is where it differs from Latin and Greek. If you did not have Sanskrit, you would not have these vibrant Indian languages. Current Bengali still draws on Sanskrit in order to enrich itself; current Telugu, even if technically a Dravidian language, is delightfully rich in Sanskrit words. India Ink, the retired New York Times blog (you have to be grateful for small mercies), valorised articles by postcolonial cringers who systematically ran down Sanskrit and India.

The writings of the Sanskrit disparagers mostly emanate from ultracrepidarianism. In an embarrassing piece on Sanskrit in The New York Times, the correspondent cited linguists she had spoken to, for making a raft of erroneous statements I am wondering who they were! No linguists worth their salt would make the ad hominem statements she attributed to them. Here is her description of a visit to a Sanskrit institution in New Delhi, Unattached electrical wires dangle down its facade, and one of its senior scholars, Ramakant Pandey, greeted a recent visitor in a fluorescent-lighted office under a slowly revolving ceiling fan, his mouth stained bright red with paan, as betel is known in Hindi.

Too bad for her there is only a fluorescent light, and a slow-moving ceiling fan: we are a developing nation, and if Mr Pandey is content not guzzling huge amounts of electricity, and destroying the planet with the unnecessary use of an air conditioner, or inhabiting a modest work environment, that is just fine. As for pan, to appreciate its sense of charvana (gustibus, or relish), you need to be possessed of a sensibility as fine as EM Forster's. The question you have to ask here is: How is the value and infinite richness of Sanskrit, the language, connected with a slow-moving ceiling fan or paan? That is an example of the non sequitur fallacy.

I recall the late Barbara Stoller Miller calling often on my parents in Bhubaneswar, Professor Bidhu Bhusan Das and Professor Prabhat Nalini Das, when she was working on her translation into English of the Gitagovinda. She was respectful in her attitude towards her subject that was an artefact of the times, before Sanskrit-bashing became chic. Millers junior colleague, Sheldon Pollock's claim that Sanskrit is dead is refuted by Dr Jrgen Hanneder, an authority on Sanskrit, from the University of Marburg: On a more public level, the statement that Sanskrit is a dead language is misleading, for Sanskrit is quite obviously not as dead as other dead languages, and the fact that it is spoken, written and read, will probably convince most people that it cannot be a dead language in the most common usage of the term. Pollocks notion of the death of Sanskrit remains in this unclear realm between academia and public opinion when he says, most observers would agree that, in some crucial way, Sanskrit is dead.

Sanskrit is the liturgical language in thousands of temples across India. The Vedas and Upanishads are read and recited by priests and their students in hundreds of temples across India. That is testimony enough to its being alive, in a crucial way (sorry, Sheldon). Recitation and daily recitation at that imbues a language with a certain amount of prana. Prana is the antithesis of death. I recall an occasion when two colleagues from Yale University were dinner guests at my country home in Nova Scotia, Canada. After dinner, I recited and explained a couple of stanzas from the Upanishads to them. They were so enchanted with the sound and the meaning of those stanzas that they kept asking for more.

Nowadays, you encounter the hubris-rich rescuers of Sanskrit within the elite echelons of Western and Indian academia. From whom do they seek to rescue it? Ironically, they seek to rescue it from the impoverished priests in the thousands of temples in small towns and villages across India. The prevalent discourse on Sanskrit, in both the broadcast and print media, is mostly reductio ad Hitlerum.

Thankfully, an entire new perspective on Sanskrit is opening up, owing to Vikram Chandras book: Geek Sublime. Reviewing it in The New York Times, James Gleick writes, What no one told me was that generative grammar had been invented earlier in India 2,500 years earlier, in fact. ... Sometime around 500 B.C., the ancient scholar Panini analysed the Sanskrit language at a level of complexity that has never been matched since, for any language. His grammar, the Ashtadhyayi, comprises some 4,000 rules meant to generate all the possible sentences of Sanskrit from roots of sound and meaning phonemes and morpheme (italics mine). The rules include definitions; headings; operational rules, including replacement, affixation, augmentation and compounding; and metarules, which call other rules recursively. ... Paninis grammar of Sanskrit bears more than a family resemblance to a modern programming language. As Chandra says, the grammar is itself an algorithm, a machine that consumes phonemes and morphemes and produces words and sentences. This is not a coincidence. American syntactic theory, Chomsky channelling Panini, formed the soil in which the computer languages grew.

Enough said.

The writer is a Distinguished Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University since 1990, where she was appointed by its president, Dr Richard Cyert. She advises world leaders on public policy, communication and international affairs.

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Sanskrit, Ultracrepidarianism and the Bandwagon Fallacy - Firstpost

In 1846, a ship crashed into the sandbanks of River Hughli just as it was approaching the Calcutta harbour. On board the ship was a 21-year-old New Yorker in search of his runaway brother. The young man escaped with his life, only to be left stranded in Calcutta. Fortunately for him, he had a felicity with languages and a love for tracing the origins of common English words and phrases.

In this alien land, Fitzedward Hall fell into the company of English Orientalists and members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. In no time, he was studying Sanskrit, Persian, Hindustani and Bengali. Within months, he was editing texts in Sanskrit and translating others into Hindustani. And years later, with the Vedanta treatises tmabodha and Tattvabodha, he became the first American to edit a Sanskrit text.

Fortuity turned what was intended to be a short layover into a residence of 16 years in India. During this time, Hall became a key figure among the Orientalists, a group engaged in serious study of eastern languages and culture. Like William Jones, James Prinsep, Horace Hyman Wilson and others, his abiding interest in, and interpretation of, old Indian texts helped kindle a greater interest in the western world for the Orient.

Hall was born on March 21, 1825, in Troy, an important commercial centre in upstate New York. His father Daniel Hall was a wealthy lawyer, while his mother Anjinette Finch came from a family with old colonial connections. Hall was the eldest son among six children. He studied engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York before enrolling in Harvard University, which, as the story goes, he left to look for a runaway brother.

In a later article, Hall recollected the unpleasant sea voyage to India: the terribly named Captain Coffin exhibited blundering seamanship and the weevilly biscuits he had to subsist on made the experience all the worse.

We learn about Halls life in India from three long essays he wrote for popular magazines, including the Lippincotts Quarterly and The Century, in the 1870s. In these he recounted his association with members of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, who he called Pandits. Not only were these men his teachers but also his companions in travel, hunting and fishing. Hall remained in Calcutta for three years, studying Sanskrit and Persian, and involving himself with the Asiatic Society of Bengals activities. His first teacher in Sanskrit was the scholar-reformer Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, who he encouraged to read Shakespeare.

In 1849, prompted by medical advice after prolonged illness, he left for the north. In a later essay titled Early Traveling Experiences of India (1875), he wrote of his journey by palanquin, accompanied by servants. He described the lawlessness in places not under East India Company control, the presence of Robin Hood-like brigands, the hospitality of a British indigo planter, and the shooting of birds, nilgais and the occasional tiger.

About Avadh under nawab rule, he wrote:

The taxes, exorbitant as apportioned at the court, were farmed by merciless wretches who made them more exorbitant still, and who collected them, for the most part, at the point of the sword. Open robbery, deadly brawls and private assassination had become matters of perpetual occurrence.

After a few months in Ghazipur, Hall moved 75 miles west, to Benares, where he was made a tutor at the Government Sanskrit College. Collaborating with Orientalists and pandits, he edited and translated texts from Sanskrit and English to Hindustani, and on occasion from Hindustani to English. With Vitthala Shastri, who had earned fame as a child prodigy, he worked on two texts related to the Sankyapravachana. In 1856, he edited Rajniti, A Collection of Hindu Apologues in the Braj Bhsh language, a work by Lallu Lal, a munshi who taught at Calcuttas Fort William College.

This was followed by a collaboration with Bapu Deva Shastri, on the Suryasiddanta, a 5th century work on astronomy. Other works Hall was associated with included the Dasa Rupa, a work on dramaturgy, and Subandhus play Vasavadatta. He also translated into English, Nilkanta Nihemiah Gorehs work in Hindustani, A Mirror of Hindu Philosophical Systems.

My Pandits were often my only companions, Hall wrote in The Century magazine in 1873. By reason of their imperturbable good nature and humor, their society was always welcome. From their countrymen in general they differed, principally, I repeat, merely as the select differ from the vulgar.

To be sure, there was resistance among some pandits towards translating old Sanskrit texts into Hindustani, the more common language in the north. But the teachers at the Benares Sanskrit College, led by James Ballantyne, persisted. With Ballantyne, Hall worked on translating Tarkasangraha, an old work of analytical reasoning, from Sanskrit to Hindi. He edited Ballantynes Hindi Grammar, as well as a Hindi reader intended as a general study text for students at the college. He also penned the foreword of a book on Benares by the dissenting clergyman Matthew Sherring.

A letter sent by him to the Manchester Guardian in 1850 described the explosion in Benares after a fleet of boats carrying gunpowder inadvertently caught fire. The death toll, Hall said, was in the thousands and included some scions of the Mughal family whose houses were by the riverside. Hall himself had a narrow escape, having left the area a few hours ago.

In 1853, he was made professor in Anglo-Sanskrit at the Government Sanskrit College. But the very next year, he moved to Ajmer, and two years later, in December 1856, to the Saugor and Nerbudda territories in the Central Provinces as Inspector of Schools. While touring the areas under his jurisdiction and filing reports, he did not abandon his love for languages: on his travels, he would collect old manuscripts and decipher old land grants and inscriptions he sometimes came by. In between, in 1854, he married Amelia Warde Shuldman, daughter of the late Lt Colonel Arthur Shuldman, in Delhis St James Church.

During the revolt of 1857, when violence broke out, Hall and some companions found themselves besieged in Saugor Fort. The siege was lifted after Sir Hugh Rose arrived with his armies (following the battle with Lakshmibai of Jhansi). As a skilled rifleman, Hall made sorties against the rebels and witnessed horrors and atrocities. The revolt was brutally suppressed, and Hall described how the successor of the Gond dynasty was blown up by a cannon.

In 1862, Hall and his family left for London, where he taught Sanskrit and Indian jurisprudence at Kings College and became the librarian at the India Office. He succeeded Max Mueller as an examiner for languages, including Hindi, Persian and Sanskrit, for candidates in the Imperial Civil Service. In 1868, he was awarded a Diploma in Civil Law by Oxford University.

The next year, Hall found himself embroiled in a disagreement with Orientalist and scholar Theodor Goldstcker. Writer Simon Winchester notes in his book, The Professor and the Madman (1998), that differences between linguists and philologists could be petty, for they were mercurial and prone to holding grudges. Hall was accused of being a foreign spy and a drunk. Aggrieved, he gave up all his positions and retreated to a near-reclusive life with his family in the village of Marlesford, 100 miles northeast of London.

While the cause of the rivalry is murky, it is possible that it was related to their differences about the interpretation of Sanskrit texts. Both considered themselves heirs of Orientalist Horace Hyman Wilson. Goldstcker, professor of Sanskrit at University College, had worked on Hunters Sanskrit dictionary. Hall, for his part, was engaged in editing Wilsons masterful rendition of the multi-volumed Vaishnava text of medieval times, the Vishnupurana.

From the 1880s, Hall was involved in the Oxford English Dictionary project, which won him gratitude and recognition. For nearly 20 years, he compiled records of words and their origins, answered queries, offered advice and remained the dictionarys staunchest ally despite never meeting James Augustus Murray, the projects primary editor. As Murray observed in the preface: we have to record the inestimable collaboration of Dr. Fitzedward Hall, whose voluntary labours have completed the literary and documentary history of numberless words, senses and idioms, and whose contributions are to be found on every page.

In Suffolk, Hall spent time on the Vishnupurana, a medieval Vaishnava text, and continued his research on English philology. His Recent Exemplifications of False Philology (1872) was critical of American scholar Richard Grant Whites Words and their Uses. His Modern English on contemporary grammar and usage appeared in 1873, and in On English Adjectives in -able, he expounded on the origins of popular suffixed words.

He earned a reputation for being abrasive, arguing trenchantly with critics across the Atlantic over the usage of words and their origin. In the late 1880s, he donated his rich collection of manuscripts to Harvard University, and in 1895, the university awarded him a doctorate. He died on February 1 in 1901.

Many old associates remembered him fondly. Edward Byles Cowell, the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University, wrote: Hall was a little hasty in temper, but he was thoroughly kind at heart. I always admired his wide range of learning, though one could not help wishing that his language had been sometimes gentler in controversy.

This article is part of a series on notable Americans who visited India before mid-20th century. Read the rest of the series here.

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How a young New Yorker stranded in Calcutta became the first American editor of a Sanskrit text - Scroll.in

The present governments freely displayed unease with constitutional institutions is directly related to its inadequate understanding of the linguistic civilisation that India has been

The present governments freely displayed unease with constitutional institutions is directly related to its inadequate understanding of the linguistic civilisation that India has been

While deciding on the language question in India, the Constituent Assembly had clearly recognised that the unity of India could get adversely affected if the language policy got slanted towards the imposition of any single language over others. The creation of the Eighth Schedule, initially with 14 languages included in it, is testimony to the deep understanding that the Constituent Assembly had of the mutuality of language diversity and the Indian Republic. The number of languages included in the Eighth Schedule went up to 22, but its conceptual framework based on Indias federal structure had never been deliberately violated until recently.

The present regime, driven by the ideology of Hindi-Hindu-Rashtra, has been sending disturbing signals of its desire to impose a unilateral linguistic character on other linguistic populations in India. This desire pertains not just to the imposition of Hindi on non-Hindi speakers, but also to an unreasonable promotion of Sanskrit, which is pivotal to its brand of nationalism. The linguistic, cultural and education policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government have almost brought the architecture of the Constitution under question.

There is a widespread misconception about the place of Hindi in India's linguistic spectrum. It is one of the 22 scheduled languages. It is also the language with the highest number of speakers as per data from successive censuses. However, it is also true that Hindi is not the natural language of a majority of States and Union Territories in India, including Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Pondicherry in the south; Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat in the west; Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir in the northwest; Orissa and West Bengal in the east; Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya and Assam in the northeast. Hindi is believed to be the only or main language in States such as Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh but a closer look at their linguistic composition shows that they all have their own native regional languages and Hindi functions there as a shared pan-State language. Often, as Hindi becomes the second language for communication with people residing in these States or travelling through them, the impression about it being the primary language of these States gets reinforced. Yet, it is an impression not grounded in factual accuracy.

The 2011 Census which is still the latest had stated a total of 19,569 raw returns (read, non-doctored claims) of mother tongues. Of these, close to 17,000 were rejected outright, and another 1,474 were dumped because not enough scholarly corroboration for them existed. Only 1,369, almost 7% of the total claims, were admitted as classified mother tongues. Rather than placing them as languages, they were grouped under 121 headings. These 121 were declared as the languages of India. The data for Hindi were conspicuously bolstered shown at 52-plus crore by adding to its core figure of speakers the speakers of nearly 50 other languages. These included Bhojpuri, claimed by over five crore, many languages in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Bihar, claimed by close to a total six crore persons. At the same time, 17 of the 22 scheduled languages were reported by the census as showing a downward trend in their rate of growth in comparison to the previous decade. The statistical management acquires a deep meaning when seen together with public statements by the BJPs top brass about the promotion of Hindi, the stringency with which Hindi is being pushed into the administrative functioning of Central/national organisations even in non-Hindi areas and the change of signage on highways, trains and public places.

The case of Sanskrit is somewhat different. While it does not have a large number of speakers to its credit at present, and indeed it did not have the necessary numbers in support for most of its long history, it happens to be the linguistic mother for Hindi. Besides, the sacred books of Hindus are in Sanskrit. Therefore, though it does not have the numbers, it enjoys an undisputed psychological preeminence for people who consider themselves as Hindus. These include people who speak Hindi as well as speakers of many other Indian languages. Thus the number of those who consider Sanskrit a sacred language is much higher than the number of Hindi speakers.

When preparations for the 2021 Census had started, one noticed a rather unusual open appeal spread through social media. It said that if your language has any words derived from Sanskrit in it, please mention Sanskrit as your second mother tongue. An emotional and communal argument was added to the appeal. It was, if people (Hindus, by implication) did not do so, government funding for foreign languages (by implication Persian and Urdu, a completely false premise) would be much higher than funding for Sanskrit. There is no need to say that there is no language, including among the Dravidian languages, that does not have word borrowings from Sanskrit. It is a practice of the Census to include even the second language claimed by people in the tally of the total number of speakers. The last Census showed some 24,000 Indians out of a total 121 crore claiming Sanskrit as their mother tongue.

Several untenable claims have been made in recent years by votaries of a Hindu Rashtra towards the need for revival of the Sanskrit language. When one claims that Sanskrit has all the knowledge in the world, as a thinking person with at least some knowledge of the worlds history of ideas and respect for knowledge wherever it has sprung up in the world, I feel uneasy accepting the claim. Any given language cannot be made relevant. Either it is, or it is not relevant. A language remains relevant if people conduct their labour, their commerce and their intellectual and social exchanges using it. A language in which people acquire knowledge and develop it further remains relevant. Yet, one needs no Census to know that the proportion of the population which can use Sanskrit competently is negligible in India.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sanghs idea of building a fanaticised Hindu Rashtra has no space for a multilingual nation. In its understanding of nationalism, a single, large majority is the primary constituent of the nation and all others, linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious minorities, are non-national or anti-national, convenient targets for mobilising the majority. The idea of a nation made of Hindus, with their sacred transactions in Sanskrit and practical transactions in Hindi, is by implication a stark dismissal of all other indigenous languages. This idea of nationalism has in the past castigated the English media and the forms of knowledge that came to India as a kind of historical calamity imposed on India, polluting the great traditions of knowledge produced in Sanskrit.

All of these assumptions fly in the face of the deep thought and wise reflections that have gone into the making of Indias Constitution. The present governments freely displayed unease with constitutional institutions has a direct relation to its inadequate understanding of the linguistic civilisation that India has been. Realism and ideology-driven politics probably make a pair of antonymous terms. When a myopic ideology gets the better of realism in policy matters, immense harm can result to culture and society and a nation starts going back to the past rather than progressing to the future.

G.N. Devy is Chair, Peoples Linguistic Survey of India

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Misreading the language spectrum - The Hindu

The 75th Independence Day coincides with another milestone in the countrys history it was on August 15, 1972, that the Postal Identification Number (PIN) was introduced in India. As the PIN code turns 50 on Monday, we look at its history and evolution.

Why was the PIN code introduced?

According to the Department of Posts, there were 23,344 post offices, primarily in urban areas, in India at the time of Independence. But, the country was growing rapidly and the postal network had to keep pace.

The PIN code was meant to ease the process of mail sorting and delivery in a country where different places, often, have the same or similar names, and letters are written in a wide variety of languages.

How does the PIN code work?

The PIN is made up of six digits. The first number indicates the postal region Northern, Eastern, Western, Southern; and number 9, which signifies the Army Postal Service. The second number denotes a sub-region, and the third represents the sorting district. The remaining numbers narrow the geography further to the specific post office making the delivery.

Who was the person behind the initiative?

The person behind the initiative was Shriram Bhikaji Velankar, additional secretary in the Union Ministry of Communications and a senior member of the Posts and Telegraphs Board.

Velankar was also a Sanskrit poet of eminence who had been conferred the Presidents Award for Sanskrit in 1996, three years before he died in Mumbai. Among Velankars 105 books and plays in Sanskrit was the Viloma Kavya, which is considered a literary masterpiece because it comprises verses in praise of Lord Rama when read from one side and, when read backwards, it transformed into verses dedicated to Lord Krishna. Velankar had set up a cultural group in Mumbai, called the Dev Vani Mandiram, which worked to create awareness about Sanskrit in India and foreign countries. Velankar was also the chairman of the World Philatelic Exhibition, called Indipex, which was held in New Delhi in 1973 and featured 120 countries. He retired from his government service on December 31, 1973.

What are some parallel systems followed world over?

Globally, in the US, the Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP) code was introduced July 1, 1963, under the aegis of the Postal Service Nationwide Improved Mail Service plan to improve the speed of mail delivery. According to the Library of Congress, Under the old system letters went through about 17 sorting stops the new system was going to be considerably less time-consuming utilizing newer, more mechanical systems.

In the UK, the sorting of mail started getting mechanised in the mid-1960s. The key to mechanisation is an alphanumeric postal code that provides for sorting by machine at every stage of handling, including the carriers delivery route. The coding equipment translates the postal code into a pattern of dots by means of which machines can sort mail at eight times the speed of manual sorting, informs Encyclopedia Britannica. Japan created its postal code address system in July 1968, and automatic postal code reader-sorters exist in major post offices of the country.

Is the PIN code still relevant?

With the spread of the Internet, when people are sending fewer letters, it is easy to question the relevance of the PIN code.

But try to order a food delivery or a parcel over online shopping and the importance of Velankars work in India will become evident.

The rest is here:

Explained: History of the PIN code, which turns 50 this Independence Day - The Indian Express

Prof Akbar Masood VC of Baba Gulam Shah University , Rajouri -Jammu and Kashmir has expressed deep concern over the present university education system and has said that universities were producing more technical cycopaths and knowledge monaters than actual human beings.

He was addressing the inaugural session of the national seminar on Indian Teaching Traditions and Sanskrit organised by the Binod Behari Mahto Koylanchal university here today .

The three day seminar commenced here todaywith participants discussing the necessity of new education policy amidst Indian teaching traditions and sanskrit at CIMFR campus.

Delivering the keynote address Prof Akbar said that if we want to see Bharat as 'Vishwa guru' in near future we would have to adopt the 'gurukul system of education' for holistic development of students .

Dr RS Dubey VC of Gujrat Central university stressed upon the needs of holistic devlopment of students said that our focus should be that Indian students be shaped as global citizens but rooted in with Indian culture. Sighting the tradition of ancient Indian saints like Shushrut who had mastered surgery and other saints had knowledge of Atom and others who had mastered astrology , Prof Dubey said that Sanskrit as language had played a pivotal then and has to play the same once again .

Discussing new education policy he said all round development based on Indian traditions is the main focus of the policy that is to be introduces in UG courses .Dr HK Singh former VC of JP university Chapra said that around 300 languages of India are most dead. We need to save Sanskrit from that as it's the mother of all languages .

BBMKU VC Dr Sukhdev Bhui, registrar Dr Vikash Kumar besides host of other professors and staff of university were present during the inaugural session of the seminar.The VC and Registrar welcomed the guests and participants .

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Universities producing tech-monsters, says Prof Masood - Daily Pioneer

Unique culture of its own

India is an ancient civilization with unique culture of its own. It was a hub of Knowledge for a large part of the globe with its Gurukuls (Forest Schools) and Universities. All branches of knowledge had been preserved in the form of classical poetry on palmyra leaves in Sanskrit. It has been a sub-continent breathing spirituality. Hinduism coexisted with other religions which came up later.. Knowledge was given precedence over physical might. Still It was very rich in materialistic wealth too. People lived in harmony and peace. Gajani, Ghori came to loot but Moghals came to stay and enjoy the riches. Later British came for trade but started ruling us. In an attempt to exploit the riches they made us aliens to our culture by distancing us from Sanskrit in which our fund of knowledge existed and by enslaving our minds with English education and culture.

They left only after dividing us

Many countries in the world got their independence by winning wars. But India got independence in a unique way, under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, through non-violence. Sacrifices of innumerable heroes, men and women across India made the British quit India. But they left us only after dividing this sub-continent into two by creating Pakistan on both sides of the country. It was like cutting the two arms of mother India.

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Mixed Economy

Independent India created a written constitution to be the leading light in governing the country. It was decided to have a Parliamentary Democracy. Its structure would be a mixture of Unitary and Federal governments. Powers and responsibilities of Centre and States were defined. Taking some good things from Capitalism and Communism, we adopted Mixed Economy in which both Public and Private sectors co-exist. When the world was dominated by American and Russian groups we decided to remain neutral calling ourselves non-aligned. We had 5 year plans and created huge irrigation projects like Nagarjuna Sagar, Bhakranangal, Hirakud etc. Our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru advocated peace but we were attacked by China and it occupied a large part of our land in the North-East. Pakistan too attacked us and occupied a part of Kashmir on the North-West (POK). When there was trouble between east and west parts of Pakistan our PM Indira Gandhi helped East Pakistan to become a separate country, Bangladesh. With that Pakistan initiated efforts to separate Kashmir from India. Having failed in open war it started training terrorists and sending them to create disturbances and spreading disaffection between Muslims and Hindus in India.

Also read: Growing intolerance

Garibi Hatao

To avoid expensive wars India entered into defence agreement for 20 years with Russia and added the word Socialist to the name of our country. There was a 20 year plan for eradicating poverty (Garibi Hatao). But there was political turmoil when the court decided PM Indira Gandhis election as void. Then she imposed National Emergency. For two years all opposition leaders were jailed and human rights were scrapped. There were efforts to develop sciences as scientific research is the foundation for progress of a country. Our scientists in the fields of agriculture, space, atomic energy, electronics and communications contributed a lot for our development.

Also read: Parliamentary Democracy

Integration of Kashmir

As the economy was in doldrums, In 1991 Dr Man Mohan Singh, Finance Minister, under the leadership of Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, introduced economic reforms in the name of Market Economy. But due to lack of government control rich became richer and poor poorer. Industrialists and politicians got involved in several scams. There was change of guard and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to Power with Mr Modi as PM. Though it is said to be a Nationalist party, International political and economic relations improved. There has been better enforcement of rule of law. Corruption is controlled in some sectors like IT, RTO, and Sales-tax by digitalizing services. Though Kashmir has been a part of India, it was integrated into India by withdrawing the special status it enjoyed. The opposition parties (like Pakistan)made Muslims believe that their interests would be compromised in BJP rule. So though not religious, political intolerance started growing among Hindu and Muslim communities.

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Survived as a democracy

India, unlike its neighbors, survived as Democracy. But uneducated voters and legislators, who have no understanding of the system of governance, have been a problem. Hero worship is a part of Indian character and people blindly voted with loyalty even for those leaders whose criminality was proved in courts. Without caring for the competence and commitment of a man to serve people; money, muscle power, caste, religion, region became the basis of electing leaders. This resulted in inefficient, selfish legislators. They subjugated the Executive to consolidate their power. Paid media started propagating false news shielding reality from the eyes of the public. Some governments have become intolerant against criticism by public or media. Crimes and atrocities on women grew many fold with nearly uncensored movies in theatres and on internet. Our own values of life are undermined by watching things alien to our culture. Police became ineffective as some politicians supported criminals. Delay in judicial system perpetuated litigation and made criminals fearless. Reservations for some castes in education, employment and even promotions made the efficient leave the country for better life abroad. In the name of welfare political parties compete with one another in giving freebies to voters to create their vote banks. Obviously for funds they cut developmental activities and increase taxes. Apart from taxes, rising prices of petrol and other essential items remind us of the policy of robbing Paul to pay Peter. But legislators, though they delay or do not pay dues to employees and pensioners, increase their salaries and pensions as they please.

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Nationalistic perspective

Development of regionalism, sometimes in the name of language, is affecting centre state relations too. Looking at things from nationalistic and humanistic perspective has to be developed among people for a better and brighter future of India.

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India @ 75 : Past and Present - Primepost

Raja Harsa one day had seen Kayya, a devdasee, on the dancing stage of a temple & he took her into his royal seraglio. The devdasees dancing stage was an important institution in the social life of Kashmir.

The actresses sometimes came from the troupe of temple dancers. Ranga, a famous singer & musician of Domba/ Dumb caste performed in the court of Raja Cakravarman [936-937 AD]. His troupe, which included his two daughters, Hamsi & Nagalata, wearing necklaces, golden bracelets on arms & hands, had come from abroad, performed before Raja Cakravarman.

The Raja was completely enamoured with singing & dancing skills of two sweet-eyed daughters of low caste Domba, Ranga, so much that he took both girls, Hamsi & Nagalata, as concubines in his seraglio.

The high caste Raja being blind with passion raised the low caste, Hamsi, to the position of chief queen in his seraglio & granted Agrahara, jagir, of a village to Ranga, writes the chronicler.

Sanskrit antah-pura or ava-rodhana or ava-rodha-yana, is tantamount to seraglio or Arabic harem & Persian zenana. The idea of seraglio among Brahman & Buddhist Rajas existed long before the dawn of Islam in Kashmir.

Originally posted here:

Music and dance of Kashmir: A Historical Perspective - Part 1 - Greater Kashmir

Betaali Prem Katha

The National Academy of Performing Arts is hosting a play inspired by a tale from the ancient Sanskrit epic Kathasaritsagara, and follows the story of a boy who meets a creature with magical powers and a knack for telling stories. Titled Betaali Prem Katha, the play will run at 8pm until to August 21 at the Zia Mohyeddin Theatre. Call 0300-0899906 for more information.

Emblems of Here, Then and Now

The VM Art Gallery is hosting an art exhibition featuring works by Haniya Ali Athar and Amna Suheyl. Titled Emblems of Here, Then and Now, the show will run at the gallery until August 20. Call 0345-7787663 for more information.

Welcome to the Here-after

The VM Art Gallery is hosting an art exhibition featuring works by Abdul Rehman, Quratulain Dar, Shanzey Mir and Sehrish Willayat. Titled Welcome to the Here-after, the show will run at the gallery until August 20. Call 0345-7787663 for more information.

Excerpt from:

CITY PULSE - The News International