The Primitive Vedic Period

Finding the Roots of Sanskrit-Part 2/4

...Continued from Part 1

The hypothesis point# 1: The Vedas have the language that predates the later version of the Sanskrit language. And it was probably influenced by regions that are north-west of India or some other lands. Some of these theories take the Aryan migration theory as their basis, and some do not. The similarity of many words in some European, Central Asian with the words in the Sanskrit languages has given rise to the manufacturing of the proto-Indo European (PIE) language being the mother of all these languages. The words similar to पर्दते exist in the European languages as “fart”. But this word is not seen in Sanskrit usage.

• But this theory works on the assumption of taking the fake PIE language as the base and mapping the other languages against it. In such an assumption, Sanskrit language can also be taken as the base to map the other languages. Also, the composition Vedas dates back at least 40,000 years. And we all know what was the state of human living in other parts of the world in those times. This does not conform with the PIE hypothesis. As for the existence of the words in usage, each and every word from Sanskrit koshas and dhatupathas (noun and verb collections) may not be found in the works that are available today.

The hypothesis point# 2: In addition, the Sanskrit language was influenced by other languages like the old Persian language. The example quoted is: कृ changing to कृणोति - retained in the Persian, and supposed to be the “original” or the Vedic Sanskrit. And its variation करोति - is an adoption based on the Prakrit dialects.

• There are two different verb roots of कृ listed in the धातुपाठः - collection of verb roots by Panini. The currently available (धातुपाठः) from Panini lists just under 2000 roots. However, it is well known that many of the verb roots were lost by the time Panini documented them. By the way, Persia or Iran was also part of the ancient Bharata Varsha. 

The hypothesis point# 3: In the Vedas, it is said that there are four types of languages - men speak only the fourth type. That indicates there were many layers of the Sanskrit language.

• This part of the Vedas could have a different meaning, and may be referring to four stages of the speech generation in a human being.

In summary: The Vedas are our highest spiritual texts that are revealed only to the capable sages when they are in a deep meditative state. In that transcendental state, the speech follows a different pattern and defies the regular linguistic framework. Trying to put them in a humanly perceivable context and trying to disprove a theory like that of Sheldon Pollock is going to get into a trap because such theories operate on a very different plain.

Continued to Part 3...