Vedic Sanskrit is an old
Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
language. It is an archaic form of
SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to
AvestanAvestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...
, the oldest preserved Iranian language. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the
Indo-European familyThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
The languages descending from Vedic or sister dialects include Kashmiri, Pahari or Pahari Punjabi, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Multani, Hariyanwi, Hindustani, Marwari, Dhundharu, Miwati, Haraoti, Mewari, Malwi, Kacchi, Kathiawari,
GujaratiGujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
, Marathi, Khandeshi, Niwari, Barari, Konkani, Garhwali, Kumayuni, Brajabhasa, Awadhi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chattisgari, Halwi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagpuri or Sadri or Sadani, Sambalpuri, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Angika, Maethilii, Gorkhali (Nepali) and Assamese.
TeluguTelugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
, which is an ancient Dravidian Language was influenced by many words of Sanskrit, due to Aryan invasion.
Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the
VedasThe Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....
, texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been
orallyOral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
preserved as a part of the
Śrauta' traditions are conservative ritualistic traditions of the historical Vedic religion in Hinduism, based on the body of Śruti literature...
tradition of
Vedic chantThe oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...
ing, predating the advent of
alphabetic writing in IndiaBrāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
by several centuries. For lack of both epigraphic evidence and an unbroken manuscript tradition, Vedic Sanskrit can be considered a reconstructed language. Especially the oldest stage of the language,
Rigvedic Sanskrit, the language of the hymns of the
RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...
, is preserved only in a redacted form several centuries younger than the texts' composition, and recovering its original form is a matter of linguistic reconstruction.
From ca. 600 BCE, in the classical period of
Iron AgeIron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent, succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition...
Ancient IndiaThe history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...
, Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of .
Prehistoric derivation
In spite of being comparatively close to the reconstructed form of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit is already clearly marked as a language of the Indic group.
Among the phonological changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian is the loss of the /z/ and /ž/ phonemes, and the introduction of a series of retroflex stops. For example, Proto-Indo-Iranian
*nižda- "nest" gives Vedic
"resting-place, seat, abode", involving both the loss of
*ž (accompanied with a lengthening of the
*i to
) and the substitution of the retroflex
for
*d .
On the side of vocabulary, Rigvedic Sanskrit shows a considerable number of
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s taken from an indigenous Indian source. This
substratum influenceVedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically, the formation of gerunds; and syntactically, the use of a quotative...
on early Vedic Sanskrit also extends to phonetic, morphological and syntactical features, and is variously traced to the Dravidian or Munda language families.
The separation of
Indo-AryansIndo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...
proper from the undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestor group is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The composition of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda is dated to several centuries after this division, or to roughly 1500 BCE. Both
Asko Parpola (1988) and J.P. Mallory (1998) place the locus of the division of Indo-Aryan from Iranian in the Bronze Age BMAC culture. Parpola (1999) elaborates the model and has "Proto-Rigvedic" Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and "Proto-Rigvedic" (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE. According to this model, Rigvedic Sanskrit within the larger Indo-Aryan group is the direct ancestor of the
Dardic languagesThe Dardic languages are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir...
.
The hymns of the Rigveda are thus composed in a liturgical language which was based on the
natural languageIn the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
spoke in
GandharaGandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...
during the early phase of the Swat culture, at the end of the Indian Bronze Age. This liturgical language over the following centuries came to be separated from spoken vernaculars and came to be known as the "artificial" or "elaborated" (
saṃskṛta) language, contrasted to the "natural" or "unrefined"
prākṛtaPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
vernaculars by the end of the Vedic period.
Chronology
Five chronologically distinct strata can be identified within the Vedic language (Witzel 1989).
- Rigvedic The
Vedic Sanskrit (c. 2000 BC – c. 600 BC) is an old Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
language. It is an archaic form of SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to AvestanAvestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...
, the oldest preserved Iranian language. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European familyThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
The languages descending from Vedic or sister dialects include Kashmiri, Pahari or Pahari Punjabi, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Multani, Hariyanwi, Hindustani, Marwari, Dhundharu, Miwati, Haraoti, Mewari, Malwi, Kacchi, Kathiawari, GujaratiGujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
, Marathi, Khandeshi, Niwari, Barari, Konkani, Garhwali, Kumayuni, Brajabhasa, Awadhi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chattisgari, Halwi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagpuri or Sadri or Sadani, Sambalpuri, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Angika, Maethilii, Gorkhali (Nepali) and Assamese. TeluguTelugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
, which is an ancient Dravidian Language was influenced by many words of Sanskrit, due to Aryan invasion.
Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the VedasThe Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....
, texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been orallyOral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
preserved as a part of the Śrauta' traditions are conservative ritualistic traditions of the historical Vedic religion in Hinduism, based on the body of Śruti literature...
tradition of Vedic chantThe oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...
ing, predating the advent of alphabetic writing in IndiaBrāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
by several centuries. For lack of both epigraphic evidence and an unbroken manuscript tradition, Vedic Sanskrit can be considered a reconstructed language. Especially the oldest stage of the language, Rigvedic Sanskrit, the language of the hymns of the RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...
, is preserved only in a redacted form several centuries younger than the texts' composition, and recovering its original form is a matter of linguistic reconstruction.
From ca. 600 BCE, in the classical period of Iron AgeIron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent, succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition...
Ancient IndiaThe history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...
, Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of {{IAST|Pāṇini}}.
Prehistoric derivation
{{see|Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit}}
In spite of being comparatively close to the reconstructed form of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit is already clearly marked as a language of the Indic group.
Among the phonological changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian is the loss of the /z/ and /ž/ phonemes, and the introduction of a series of retroflex stops. For example, Proto-Indo-Iranian *nižda- "nest" gives Vedic {{IAST|nīḍa-}} "resting-place, seat, abode", involving both the loss of *ž (accompanied with a lengthening of the *i to {{IAST|ī}}) and the substitution of the retroflex {{IAST|ḍ}} for*d .
On the side of vocabulary, Rigvedic Sanskrit shows a considerable number of loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s taken from an indigenous Indian source. This substratum influenceVedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically, the formation of gerunds; and syntactically, the use of a quotative...
on early Vedic Sanskrit also extends to phonetic, morphological and syntactical features, and is variously traced to the Dravidian or Munda language families.
The separation of Indo-AryansIndo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...
proper from the undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestor group is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The composition of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda is dated to several centuries after this division, or to roughly 1500 BCE. Both Asko Parpola (1988) and J.P. Mallory (1998) place the locus of the division of Indo-Aryan from Iranian in the Bronze Age BMAC culture. Parpola (1999) elaborates the model and has "Proto-Rigvedic" Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and "Proto-Rigvedic" (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE. According to this model, Rigvedic Sanskrit within the larger Indo-Aryan group is the direct ancestor of the Dardic languagesThe Dardic languages are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir...
.
The hymns of the Rigveda are thus composed in a liturgical language which was based on the natural languageIn the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
spoke in GandharaGandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...
during the early phase of the Swat culture, at the end of the Indian Bronze Age. This liturgical language over the following centuries came to be separated from spoken vernaculars and came to be known as the "artificial" or "elaborated" (saṃskṛta) language, contrasted to the "natural" or "unrefined" prākṛtaPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
vernaculars by the end of the Vedic period.
Chronology
Five chronologically distinct strata can be identified within the Vedic language (Witzel 1989).
- Rigvedic The
Vedic Sanskrit (c. 2000 BC – c. 600 BC) is an old Indo-AryanThe Indo-Aryan languages constitutes a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages, itself a branch of the Indo-European language family...
language. It is an archaic form of SanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian. It is closely related to AvestanAvestan is an East Iranian language known only from its use as the language of Zoroastrian scripture, i.e. the Avesta, from which it derives its name...
, the oldest preserved Iranian language. Vedic Sanskrit is the oldest attested language of the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European familyThe Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
.
The languages descending from Vedic or sister dialects include Kashmiri, Pahari or Pahari Punjabi, Dogri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Multani, Hariyanwi, Hindustani, Marwari, Dhundharu, Miwati, Haraoti, Mewari, Malwi, Kacchi, Kathiawari, GujaratiGujarati is an Indo-Aryan language, and part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is derived from a language called Old Gujarati which is the ancestor language of the modern Gujarati and Rajasthani languages...
, Marathi, Khandeshi, Niwari, Barari, Konkani, Garhwali, Kumayuni, Brajabhasa, Awadhi, Bundeli, Bagheli, Chattisgari, Halwi, Bhojpuri, Magahi, Nagpuri or Sadri or Sadani, Sambalpuri, Oriya, Bengali, Sinhala, Angika, Maethilii, Gorkhali (Nepali) and Assamese. TeluguTelugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
, which is an ancient Dravidian Language was influenced by many words of Sanskrit, due to Aryan invasion.
Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the VedasThe Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....
, texts compiled over the period of early-to-mid 2nd to mid 1st millennium BCE. Vedic Sanskrit has been orallyOral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
preserved as a part of the Śrauta' traditions are conservative ritualistic traditions of the historical Vedic religion in Hinduism, based on the body of Śruti literature...
tradition of Vedic chantThe oral tradition of the Vedas consists of several pathas, "recitations" or ways of chanting the Vedic mantras. Such traditions of Vedic chant are often considered the oldest unbroken oral tradition in existence, the fixation of the samhita texts as preserved dating to roughly the time of Homer...
ing, predating the advent of alphabetic writing in IndiaBrāhmī is the modern name given to the oldest members of the Brahmic family of scripts. The best-known Brāhmī inscriptions are the rock-cut edicts of Ashoka in north-central India, dated to the 3rd century BCE. These are traditionally considered to be early known examples of Brāhmī writing...
by several centuries. For lack of both epigraphic evidence and an unbroken manuscript tradition, Vedic Sanskrit can be considered a reconstructed language. Especially the oldest stage of the language, Rigvedic Sanskrit, the language of the hymns of the RigvedaThe Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...
, is preserved only in a redacted form several centuries younger than the texts' composition, and recovering its original form is a matter of linguistic reconstruction.
From ca. 600 BCE, in the classical period of Iron AgeIron Age India, the Iron Age in the Indian subcontinent, succeeds the Late Harappan culture, also known as the last phase of the Indus Valley Tradition...
Ancient IndiaThe history of India begins with evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens as long as 75,000 years ago, or with earlier hominids including Homo erectus from about 500,000 years ago. The Indus Valley Civilization, which spread and flourished in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from...
, Vedic Sanskrit gave way to Classical Sanskrit as defined by the grammar of {{IAST|Pāṇini}}.
Prehistoric derivation
{{see|Substratum in Vedic Sanskrit}}
In spite of being comparatively close to the reconstructed form of Proto-Indo-Iranian, Vedic Sanskrit is already clearly marked as a language of the Indic group.
Among the phonological changes from Proto-Indo-Iranian is the loss of the /z/ and /ž/ phonemes, and the introduction of a series of retroflex stops. For example, Proto-Indo-Iranian *nižda- "nest" gives Vedic {{IAST|nīḍa-}} "resting-place, seat, abode", involving both the loss of *ž (accompanied with a lengthening of the *i to {{IAST|ī}}) and the substitution of the retroflex {{IAST|ḍ}} for*d .
On the side of vocabulary, Rigvedic Sanskrit shows a considerable number of loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
s taken from an indigenous Indian source. This substratum influenceVedic Sanskrit has a number of linguistic features which are alien to most other Indo-European languages. Prominent examples include: phonologically, the introduction of retroflexes, which alternate with dentals; morphologically, the formation of gerunds; and syntactically, the use of a quotative...
on early Vedic Sanskrit also extends to phonetic, morphological and syntactical features, and is variously traced to the Dravidian or Munda language families.
The separation of Indo-AryansIndo-Aryan is an ethno-linguistic term referring to the wide collection of peoples united as native speakers of the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages...
proper from the undifferentiated Proto-Indo-Iranian ancestor group is commonly dated, on linguistic grounds, to roughly 1800 BCE. The composition of the oldest hymns of the Rigveda is dated to several centuries after this division, or to roughly 1500 BCE. Both Asko Parpola (1988) and J.P. Mallory (1998) place the locus of the division of Indo-Aryan from Iranian in the Bronze Age BMAC culture. Parpola (1999) elaborates the model and has "Proto-Rigvedic" Indo-Aryans intrude the BMAC around 1700 BCE. He assumes early Indo-Aryan presence in the Late Harappan horizon from about 1900 BCE, and "Proto-Rigvedic" (Proto-Dardic) intrusion to the Punjab as corresponding to the Swat culture from about 1700 BCE. According to this model, Rigvedic Sanskrit within the larger Indo-Aryan group is the direct ancestor of the Dardic languagesThe Dardic languages are a sub-group of the Indo-Aryan languages spoken in northern Pakistan, eastern Afghanistan, and the Indian region of Jammu and Kashmir...
.
The hymns of the Rigveda are thus composed in a liturgical language which was based on the natural languageIn the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written...
spoke in GandharaGandhāra , is the name of an ancient kingdom , located in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Gandhara was located mainly in the vale of Peshawar, the Potohar plateau and on the Kabul River...
during the early phase of the Swat culture, at the end of the Indian Bronze Age. This liturgical language over the following centuries came to be separated from spoken vernaculars and came to be known as the "artificial" or "elaborated" (saṃskṛta) language, contrasted to the "natural" or "unrefined" prākṛtaPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
vernaculars by the end of the Vedic period.
Chronology
Five chronologically distinct strata can be identified within the Vedic language (Witzel 1989).
- Rigvedic The {{IAST
The Rigveda is an ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns...
retains many common Indo-IranianIndo-Iranian peoples are a linguistic group consisting of the Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Dardic and Nuristani peoples; that is, speakers of Indo-Iranian languages, a major branch of the Indo-European language family....
elements, both in language and in content, that are not present in any other Vedic texts. Its creation must have taken place over several centuries, and apart from the latest books (1 and 10), it must have been essentially complete by around 1200 BCE-Overview:The 12th century BC is the period from 1200 to 1101 BC. Although many human societies were literate in this period, most individual persons mentioned in this article ought to be considered legendary rather than historical...
.
- Mantra language This period includes both the mantra and prose language of the Atharvaveda
The Atharvaveda is a sacred text of Hinduism and one of the four Vedas, often called the "fourth Veda"....
(Paippalada and Shaunakiya), the Rigveda KhilaniThe Khilani are a collection of 98 "apocryphal" hymns of the Rigveda, recorded in the , but not in the shakha. They are late additions to the text of the Rigveda, but still belong to the "Mantra" period of Vedic Sanskrit.-Literature:...
, the SamavedaThe Sama veda , is second of the four Vedas, the ancient core Hindu scriptures. Its earliest parts are believed to date from 1700 BC and it ranks next in sanctity and liturgical importance to the Rigveda...
Samhita (containing some 75 mantras not in the Rigveda), and the mantras of the YajurvedaThe Yajurveda, a tatpurusha compound of "sacrificial formula', + ) is the third of the four canonical texts of Hinduism, the Vedas. By some, it is estimated to have been composed between 1400 and 1000 BC, the Yajurveda 'Samhita', or 'compilation', contains the liturgy needed to perform the...
. These texts are largely derived from the Rigveda, but have undergone certain changes, both by linguistic change and by reinterpretation. Conspicuous changes include change of {{IAST|viśva}} "all" to {{IAST|sarva}}, and the spread of {{IAST|kuru-}} (for Rigvedic {{IAST|kṛno-}}) as the present tense form of the verb {{IAST|kar-}} "make, do". This period corresponds to the early Iron AgeThe Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
in north-western India (iron is first mentioned in the Atharvaveda), and to the kingdom of the Kurus, dating from about the twelfth century BCE.
- Samhita prose (roughly 1100 BCE to 800 BCE). This period marks the beginning collection and codification of a Vedic canon. An important linguistic change is the complete loss of the injunctive
The injunctive mood was a mood in Sanskrit characterized by secondary endings but no augment, and usually looked like an augmentless aorist or imperfect. It typically stood in a main clause and had a subjunctive or imperative meaning; for example, it could indicate intention, e.g. "Indra's heroic...
and of the grammatical moodIn linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used to signal modality. That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying...
s of the aoristAorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
. The commentary part of the Black Yajurveda (MS, KS) belongs to this period.
- Brahmana prose (roughly 900 BCE to 600 BCE) The Brahmanas proper of the four Vedas belong to this period, as well as the Aranyakas ({{IAST|Āraṇyakas}}) oldest of the Upanishad
The Upanishads are philosophical texts considered to be an early source of Hindu religion. More than 200 are known, of which the first dozen or so, the oldest and most important, are variously referred to as the principal, main or old Upanishads...
s (Brihadaranyaka UpanishadThe Upanishad is one of the older, "primary" Upanishads. It is contained within the Shatapatha Brahmana, and its status as an independent Upanishad may be considered a secondary extraction of a portion of the Brahmana text. This makes it one of the oldest texts of the Upanishad corpus...
, Chāndogya UpanishadThe Chandogya Upanishad is one of the "primary" Upanishads. Together with the Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad it ranks among the oldest Upanishads, dating to the Vedic Brahmana period....
, Jaiminiya Upanishad BrahmanaThe Jaiminiya Upanishad Brahmana or the Talavakara Upanishad Brahmana is a Vedic text associated with the Jaiminiya or the Talavakara shakha of the Samaveda. It is considered as an Aranyaka. A part of this text forms the Kena Upanishad...
).
- Sutra language This is the last stratum of vedic Sanskrit leading up to 500 BCE, comprising the bulk of the Shrauta and Grhya Sutras, and some Upanishads (E.g. Katha Upanishad
The Katha Upanishad , also titled "Death as Teacher", is one of the mukhya Upanishads commented upon by Shankara. It is associated with the school of the Black Yajurveda, and is grouped with the Sutra period of Vedic Sanskrit. It is a middle Upanishad...
, Maitrayaniya UpanishadThe Maitrayaniya Upanishad or the Maitri Upanishad belongs to the Maitri or Maitrayaniya shakha of the , though some texts assign it to the . It figures as number 24 in the Muktika canon of 108 Upanishads under the name of the Upanishad, which is included there as a Upanishad, associated with...
. Younger Upanishads are post-Vedic).
Around 500 BCE, cultural, political and linguistic factors all contribute to the end of the Vedic period. The codification of Vedic ritual reached its peak, and counter movements such as the VedantaVedānta was originally a word used in Hindu philosophy as a synonym for that part of the Veda texts known also as the Upanishads. The name is a morphophonological form of Veda-anta = "Veda-end" = "the appendix to the Vedic hymns." It is also speculated that "Vedānta" means "the purpose or goal...
and early BuddhismBuddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
emerged, using the vernacular Pali
, a PrakritPrakrit is the name for a group of Middle Indic, Indo-Aryan languages, derived from Old Indic dialects. The word itself has a flexible definition, being defined sometimes as, "original, natural, artless, normal, ordinary, usual", or "vernacular", in contrast to the literary and religious...
dialect, rather than Sanskrit for their texts. Darius I of PersiaDarius I , also known as Darius the Great, was the third king of kings of the Achaemenid Empire...
invaded the Indus valley and the political center of the Indo-Aryan kingdoms shifted eastward, to the Gangetic plain. Around this time (4th century BCE), Panini fixes the grammar of Classical Sanskrit.
Phonology
- This section treats the distinguishing features of Vedic Sanskrit — see Classical Sanskrit for a general account.
Sound changes between Proto-Indo-Iranian and Vedic Sanskrit include loss of the voiced sibilant z.
Vedic Sanskrit had a bilabial fricative-See also:* List of phonetics topics...
[ɸ], called {{IAST|upadhmānīya}}, and a velar fricative [x], called {{IAST|jihvamuliya}}. These are both allophones of visargaVisarga is a Sanskrit word meaning "sending forth, discharge". In Sanskrit phonology , is the name of a phone, , written as IAST , Harvard-Kyoto , Devanagari . Visarga is an allophone of and in pausa...
: upadhmaniya occurs before {{IAST|p}} and {{IAST|ph}}, jihvamuliya before {{IAST|k}} and {{IAST|kh}}. Vedic also had a retroflex l for retroflex l{{Clarify|reason=TAUTOLOGY?|date=August 2010}}, an intervocalic allophone of {{IAST|ḍ}}, represented in DevanagariDevanagari |deva]]" and "nāgarī" ), also called Nagari , is an abugida alphabet of India and Nepal...
with the separate symbol {{Unicode|ळ}} and transliterated as {{IAST|ḷ}} or {{IAST|ḷh}}. In order to disambiguate vocalic l from retroflex l, ISO 15919ISO 15919 Transliteration of Devanagari and related Indic scripts into Latin characters is an international standard for the transliteration of Indic scripts to the Latin alphabet formed in 2001...
transliterates vocalic l with a ring below the letter, {{Unicode|l̥}}. (Vocalic r is then also represented with a ring, {{Unicode|r̥}}, for consistency and to disambiguate it additionally from the retroflex {{Unicode|ṛ}} and {{Unicode|ṛh}} of some modern Indian languages.)
Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accentPitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a syllable or mora within a word. The placement of this tone or the way it is realized can give different meanings to otherwise similar words...
. Since a small number of words in the late pronunciation of Vedic carry the so-called "independent svarita" on a short vowel, one can argue that late Vedic was marginally a tonal languageTone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...
. Note however that in the metrically restored versions of the Rig Veda almost all of the syllables carrying an independent svarita must revert to a sequence of two syllables, the first of which carries an udātta and the second a (so called) dependent svarita. Early Vedic was thus definitely not a tonal language but a pitch accent language. See Vedic accentThe tone accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity, is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities, udātta "raised" , anudātta "not raised" and svarita "sounded" .-The accents:Udātta marks the place of the inherited PIE accent...
.
{{IAST gives accent rules for the spoken language of his (post-Vedic) time, though there is no extant post-Vedic text with accents.
The plutiPluti is the term for overlong vowels in Sanskrit. Pluti vowels are usually noted with a numeral "3" , , also ....
vowels (trimoraicMora is a unit in phonology that determines syllable weight, which in some languages determines stress or timing. As with many technical linguistic terms, the definition of a mora varies. Perhaps the most succinct working definition was provided by the American linguist James D...
vowels) were on the verge of becoming phonological during middle Vedic, but disappeared again.
Principal differences from Classical Sanskrit
Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric GreekHomeric Greek is the form of the Greek language that was used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is an archaic version of Ionic Greek, with admixtures from certain other dialects, such as Aeolic Greek. It later served as the basis of Epic Greek, the language of epic poetry, typically in...
and Classical Greek. Tiwari ([1955] 2005) lists the following principal differences between the two:
- Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative
-See also:* List of phonetics topics...
(/ɸ/, called upadhmānīya) and a voiceless velar fricativeThe voiceless velar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound was part of the consonant inventory of Old English and can still be found in some dialects of English, most notably in Scottish English....
(/x/, called jihvāmūlīya)—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 (/ɭ/) (ळ) as well as its aspirated counterpart /ɭʰ/ (ळ्ह), which were lost in Classical Sanskrit, to be replaced with the corresponding plosives /ɖ/ (ड) and /ɖʱ/ (ढ). (Varies by region; Vedic pronunciations are still in common use in some regions, e.g. southern India, including Maharashtra.)
- The pronunciations of syllabic /ɻ̩/ (ऋ), /l̩/ (लृ) and their long counterparts no longer retained their pure pronunciations, but had started to be pronounced as short and long /ɻi/ (रि) and /li/ (ल्रि).
- The vowels e (ए) and o (ओ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s /ai/ and /au/, but they became pure monophthongA monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
s /eː/ and /oː/ in Classical Sanskrit.
- The vowels ai (ऐ) and au (औ) were actually realized in Vedic Sanskrit as hiatus
In phonology, hiatus or diaeresis refers to two vowel sounds occurring in adjacent syllables, with no intervening consonant. When two adjacent vowel sounds occur in the same syllable, the result is instead described as a diphthong....
/aːi/ (आइ) and /aːu/ (आउ), but they became diphthongA diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
s /ai/ (अइ) and /au/ (अउ) in Classical Sanskrit.
- The Prātishākhyas claim that the dental consonants were articulated from the root of the teeth (dantamūlīya), but they became pure dentals later. This included the /r/, which later became retroflex.{{Citation needed|date=December 2007}}
- Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent
The tone accent of Vedic Sanskrit, or Vedic accent for brevity, is traditionally divided by Sanskrit grammarians into three qualities, udātta "raised" , anudātta "not raised" and svarita "sounded" .-The accents:Udātta marks the place of the inherited PIE 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.
- Vedic Sanskrit often allowed two like vowels to come together without merger during Sandhi
Sandhi is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries . Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words...
.
Grammar
{{Main|Vedic Sanskrit grammar}}
Vedic had a subjunctive absent in Panini's grammar and generally believed to have disappeared by then at least in common sentence constructions. All tenses could be conjugated in the subjunctive and optative moods, in contrast to Classical Sanskrit, with no subjunctive and only a present optative. (However, the old first-person subjunctive forms were used to complete the Classical Sanskrit imperative.) The three syntheticIn linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
past tenses (imperfect, perfect and aoristAorist is a philological term originally from Indo-European studies, referring to verb forms of various languages that are not necessarily related or similar in meaning...
) were still clearly distinguished semantically in (at least the earliest) Vedic, although not at all with the semantics that would be implied by their name. Rather, the imperfect was a narrative tense, similar to the Greek aorist; the perfect was often indistinguishable from the present tense, although possibly with a stative meaning; and the aorist had a meaning similar to the Greek perfect. A fifth mood, the injunctiveThe injunctive mood was a mood in Sanskrit characterized by secondary endings but no augment, and usually looked like an augmentless aorist or imperfect. It typically stood in a main clause and had a subjunctive or imperative meaning; for example, it could indicate intention, e.g. "Indra's heroic...
, also existed.
Long-i stems differentiate the Devi inflection and the Vrkis inflectionIn Vedic Sanskrit, the and inflections are two types of inflection of feminine ī-stems.-Vrkis:The inflection exhibits an ablaut pattern different from its counterpart, the Devī inflection. The distinguishing feature of this inflection is that the ī is always accented , and that the Nominative...
, a difference lost in Classical Sanskrit.
- The subjunctive mood
In grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used in subordinate clauses to express various states of irreality such as wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred....
of Vedic Sanskrit was also lost in Classical Sanskrit. Also, there was no fixed rule about the use of various tenses {{Unicode|(luṇ, laṇ and liṭ)}}.
- There were more than twelve ways of forming infinitive
In grammar, infinitive is the name for certain verb forms that exist in many languages. In the usual description of English, the infinitive of a verb is its basic form with or without the particle to: therefore, do and to do, be and to be, and so on are infinitives...
s in Vedic Sanskrit, of which Classical Sanskrit retained only one 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 {{Unicode|devaḥ—devau—devāḥ}}, Vedic Sanskrit additionally allowed the forms {{Unicode|devaḥ—devā—devāsaḥ}}. Similarly Vedic Sanskrit has declined forms such as asme, tve, {{Unicode|yuṣme}}, tvā, 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.
- Proto-Indo-European and its immediate daughters
In historical linguistics, a daughter language is a language descended from another language through a process of genetic descent.-Examples:*English is a daughter language of Proto-Germanic, which is a daughter language of Proto-Indo-European....
were essentially end-inflected languages in which what would later become bound prefixes were still independent morphemes. Such morphemes (especially for verbs) could come anywhere in the sentence, but in Classical Sanskrit, it became mandatory to attach them immediately before the verb; they, then, ceased being independent morphemes and became prefix-morphemes bound to the beginnings of verbs. There was a similar development from Homeric Greek to Classical Greek: see tmesisTmesis is a linguistic phenomenon in which a word or set phrase is separated into two parts, with other words occurring between them.-Verbs:...
.
External links
{{Indo-Iranian languages}}
{{Languages of South Asia}}