In any formal or informal gathering about Sanskrit, the topic of Sanskrit being very well suited for modern day advanced intelligent technologies comes up invariably. (See also the blog post:
Sanskrit: Best Language for Computers-True or False?). And the Sanskrit lovers love to associate Sanskrit with any and every possible modern phenomenon. This goes in the same vein that many try to find everything in ancient Indian literature and stories to be somehow superior or advanced compared to its modern-day counterpart. For example: advanced weaponry, nuclear warfare, airplanes, architecture, astronomy, sea travel, test tube babies, gender-change procedures and so on. Some of it could be true. But this narcissism taken to the extreme could cloud the reality and become highly nonsensical and irrelevant.
For example, take the case of the subject of prosody (छन्दस्). The basic units of short and long weight of syllables are called laghu (लघु) and guru (गुरु). Some put it as the basis for today's binary system. The binary system has two states represented by 0 and 1, and is the underlying science of today's digital technology. But we can find this binary state in many other things like day/night, yes/no, black/white, wet/dry, hot/cold, open/close. The inventors of the binary system found it convenient and more efficient in the transmission of signals and quickly adapted it in electronics. There could be analogy between laghu/guru and 0/1, but saying that one has borrowed from another is bit of a stretch.
Another big topic is that of computers or robots and Sanskrit. Here, computers and robots represent state-of-the art technologies and are supposed to be the result of the most sophisticated advent in the technology. With the current trends in the industry, there is a huge push to mimic the human brain into a machine. That is a big temptation for Sanskrit lovers - to associate Sanskrit with anything that is perceived as modern and smart. Because Sanskrit grammar has a very well-defined structure and to the most part, is rule-based, it makes sense to think that the algorithmic approach fits the computers or the robots. This thought is in fact an insult to the Sanskrit language. If the entire language can be machine-generated and programmed into the robots, Sanskrit would be just another dumb computer language, only better in terms of its structure and understandable by humans too.
While Sanskrit has a well-defined grammatical structure, it is a highly evolved language. For those who do not believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, Sanskrit has been in existence forever and is the "original" language of the gods and mankind. Even with evolution theory in place, the experts have a range of 75,000 and 10,000 years for the most ancient Sanskrit literature - the Vedas- which themselves are in a very highly developed linguistic form. In Sanskrit, not only a word, but each sound, each letter has its own meaning. And they get together to form a word. The words can combine multiple times to form infinite number of words. The beauty of Sanskrit is that there is no specific word for a given thing. For example: for fire, there are not many alternate words in the English language. Thesaurus.com shows a few synonyms of fire, but they are mostly the words that are like fire - heat, tinder etc., but not the fire itself. But in Sanskrit, an object is defined by its characterstics. So, a fire can be referred to by multitude of words - like agni (one that does not move), hutaashana (one which eats everything), anala (one which is never satisfied), jvaalaa (one which burns), vaayusakha (friend of wind), saptajihva (one which has multiple flames) etc. Similarly, one word can refer to multiple objects. For example: hari might refer to the god (who destroys), or a horse (which moves fast), a lion, a parrot, a monkey, a serpent, a swan, a frog, a cuckoo, fire, wind, sun, moon, green and many more depending on the interpretation and context.
There is a famous verse which is a good example to quote here:
अङ्गुल्या कः कपाटं प्रहरति विशिखे माधवः किं वसन्तो
नो चक्री किं कुलालो न हि धरणीधरः किं द्विजिह्वः फणीन्द्रः |
नाहं घोराहिमर्दो किमुत खगपतिर्नो हरिः किं कपीन्द्रः
इत्येवं सत्यभामाप्रतिवचनाजितः पातु वश्चक्रपाणिः ||
When Krishna knocked on the door of his wife Satyabhaama's room, she asks - who is it?
Krishna: I am Maadhava. She: Is it the spring season (maadhava also means spring).
Krishna: No, I am Chakrii. She: Is it a potter?
Krishna: No, I am DharaNidhara. She: Is it the great serpent (who carries the earth)?
Krishna: No, I am the one who killed the poisonous snake (Kaaliya). She: Are you Garuda?
Krishna: No, I am Hari. She: Are you a monkey?
May lord Krishna, thus won over by the words of Satyabhaama, protect us.
This is true for every word and object in Sanskrit. It is completely contextual and the word formation is entirely natural. The speaker has the freedom to make use of the best combination of letters, words or compound words to describe the character(s) of an object in the given context and bring about the most appropriate meaning of that object. For instance, to describe a heating situation, jvaalaa maight be appropriate. If something is burning, saptajihava might convey it better. If want to indicate destruction, anala or hutaashana might work better. If the listener knows the difference in these meanings, the understanding would be more satisfying and complete, else it could be just understood as fire (something which burns). This flexible approach presents numerous possibilities to coin any new word on the fly. If it is some other language, we need to open its dictionary and look up the word or import the word as is. Not necessary here. For example: what is the word for traffic? The characteristic of traffic is excessive presence of flow of vehicles. One can come up with the word like प्रवाहिनी. What about a (motor) car? The machine is used for moving us or taking us places. While रथ or यन्त्ररथ can be used, one can call it गन्त्री.
Sanskrit language represents the pinnacle of human ingenuity, the unfathomable intelligence that has evolved (or existed) over billions of years. It is a complete natural representation of the eternal and infinite sounds in the universe. In that sense, it is truly गीर्वाणभारती - the divine language, the universal language. Thinking of today's (and any future) gadgets and Sanskrit on the same plane is belittling to this greatest language.
