Revival of Sanskrit - A Long Way to Go

In recent times, there have been tremendous efforts to revive Sanskrit both as a spoken language and as a language in vogue. Not to mention many educational establishments around the globe, but there are numerous groups, individuals who have taken up this effort as their lifelong mission. This is a very positive development and extremely laudable. Sanskrit is finding its place in the mainstream media, is becoming the subject of discussions and debates, more articles and books are being published.

In this great movement, there have been some voices to upgrade the language, revise its structure, to keep it current with the changing times. This stems from the fact that some of the Sanskrit phrases used by people now have no grammatical basis. For example: मां स्मारय (should be मया स्मारय), सर्वेषां नमः (should be सर्वेभ्यः नमः), हरि ॐ (should be हरिः ॐ) etc. Some be-modern enthusiast grammarians argue that everyone now-a-days uses such phrases. So, there needs to be a way in the grammar books to justify these kind of usages, or the grammar books need to be updated to include such usages, especially when the use of Sanskrit has increased. After all प्रयोगशरणाः वैयाकरणाः. Grammarians go as per the usage, they do not make up or invent their own rules. The language comes first, the grammar rules go according the usage. That is why there are Panini sutras defining the general rules of usage and also the exceptions to those general rules. And then there are “vaartikas” written by different people after Panini to include some corrections or more usage styles. Fair enough.

However, in this zeal of revival, we should be knowing where we stand and what we are doing. With all due respects to the grammarians and the people who are doing wonderful work of keeping this language alive and helping to spread it. When we say the use of Sanskrit is on the rise and lot of people are taking up Sanskrit, what does that mean? Yes, there is no doubt that the awareness of Sanskrit is on the rise in the last few years. Thousands of people may be attending some classes, seminars or camps conducted all over the world to know about the language. But this hardly qualifies as to count them as Sanskrit-speaking people. The Wikipedia page on Sanskrit mentions about 14,000 Indians with Sanskrit as their first language in the year 2001. Even if there is a ten fold increase in this number by this time, it is still a minuscule to say that the language has a critical mass. And currently, nobody in the world including the grammarians have their native tongue as Sanskrit (well, except maybe a handful in some very orthodoxical institutions). Most of the times, the knowledge of the grammarians appears to be confined to the rules and examples given in the classic treatises on grammar and many times hits the dead end in analyzing and applying various sutras. And people who are learning the language are trying to get a grip on the basics. It is obvious that their usage of Sanskrit is heavily influenced by grammatical constructs and their usages in their native languages.

In these situations, it would be very imprudent to start accepting the incorrect usages of the current times as valid. At the times of प्रयोगशरणाः वैयाकरणाः, entire mass of people across huge areas in and around India supposedly had everyday use of Sanskrit. People who could authenticate the शिष्टप्रयोग (use of words by knowledgeable people) and accordingly frame and re-frame the grammar rules were actually sages or equivalent to sages (ऋषि or ऋषिसदृशाः). Unfortunately, with the decline of Sanskrit for generations, that ability is currently lost. The good news is that with the efforts of thousands of selfless people, the language is growing despite many challenges. That is a tremendous achievement. But we are many generations away to get to the stage where the current grammatical structures can be played with and altered. Until then, the foundations of Sanskrit grammar are very profound to take on any usage needs in the modern times. It would be of great help if the enthusiast grammarians and academicians can guide the learners to understand and practice the correct usage. The responsibility of making an effort to learn Sanskrit in a correct way and passing it to the next generation lies with all of us.