Something that isn't called out but is playing a role as well is the rise of humanities and interdisciplinary research in India. 20-30 years ago, specializing in ancient languages and texts from a CompLing perspective or a humanities perspective just didn't occur.
As India grew richer, the newer generation of liberal arts colleges (eg. Ashoka) and humanities programs in public universities (eg. IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, JNU) started attracting and hiring Western educated faculty and researchers (Indian as well as Foreigners) to help revitalize interest in humanities and social sciences.
India also now has a new generation philanthropists who are starting to donate to this kind of research (eg. Murthy and the "Murty Classical Library of India" at Harvard).
There is a similar revitalization for older texts in Tamizh, Telugu, Koshur, Pahari, Tibetan, etc as well.
Taleb says that some languages are only meant for ritual.
IMHO, Sanskrit quotes sound cool to those who know Prakrit languages just like Latin and Greek quotations sound cool to those who know Romance languages (and even to those who know English, like myself).
Yes, there is a revival, and an interest. But Sanskrit has always been known to the "priestly" class even though they never conversed in it. This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations. IMHO.
Don't tell that to Indians! A lot of humans are named "Santosh". :x
Unlike in the West, naming one's dog after someone's name is considered an insult. "I will have a pet dog named after you" is insult thrown in fights. So, Indians name their dogs uncommon among humans. Or they have foreign names like Johnny, Jack, etc.
>According to Tripathi, the problem of Sanskrit being narrowed to religion is a colonial inheritance. British Orientalists, he argues, created an image of Sanskrit as the language of ritual and one religious community, ignoring its vast Buddhist, Jain, Carvaka, scientific, theatrical, poetic and philosophical corpus.
I don't understand how you can take what happened to AH Dani at BHU and say this with a straight face.
There’s some Sanskrit texts that don’t have English translations that I’d really like to read so I was going to use an LLM to create translations. Does anyone know how well LLMs handle Sanskrit or have any suggestions? Are any particular models better than others? Especially because I know that ancient texts sometimes use different dialects of Sanskrit and have different challenges.
The Madras Sanskrit College in collaboration with IIT-Madras is working on a exclusive LLM for the Sanskrit language - https://madrassanskritcollege.edu.in/
PS: What translations of Yoga-Vasistha/Laghu-Yoga-Vasistha have you read/have had access to? This is one of my favourite philosophical texts and i am curious to know more.
There is also, Sourashtra, a surviving and a thriving of dialect of Prakrit (Souraseni Prakrit), which was a common man Sanskrit. Buddha is believed to taught in Prakrit.
Look at the IIT Bombay photo, in the background is the colonial era copy of Lady Britannia - "Bharat Mata". The fact article is hosted on Open Magazine, I was already a bit suspect. So the full context missing from headline is - "Under Hindu Nationalism".
What the article misses is what some of these accounts post. SanskritSparrow channels his followers on stories to some kooky post which claims to have decoded Indus Valley Script as Sanskrit. Learned persons better be careful about the intent here, the rider that is riding the "ancient" horse into the present is as much trying to invade intellectual spaces, as the actual Rishis were trying with the lands. Besides, the appeal is only among upper caste Hindus. What else is a Dalit going to do with Sanskrit? No literature is written for them in Sanskrit. They're not even allowed learning it, it is an exclusive domain of Brahmins. What will Dalits get from reading Vedas and finding out how they are termed as devils and filed under a degraded caste pyramid? It's an article borne out of very rosy lens. A Dalit Ambedkarite writer should research the accounts mentioned and tell us what the subsurface vibe looks like here, is it the same old wine in new glass?
My South Indian Dravidian language Malayalam, is around 50% Sanskrit words.
Technically any Sanskrit word is also a Malayalam word.
Examples of Sanskrit words we would use daily in conversation with a fluent Malayalam speaker include:
Pusthakam (Sanskrit: Pustakam) - Book
Bhāryā - Wife
Swapnam (Sanskrit: Swapnam) - Dream
Agni (Sanskrit: Agni) - Fire
Varṇam - Color
Samayam (Sanskrit: Samayam) - Time
Vidhyālaya (Sanskrit: Vidyālaya) - School
And of course many personal names ( including mine, my wife's and my children's ) are in Sanskrit.
We have a word for this phenomenon : "Manipravalam is a medieval South Indian literary style and hybrid language that blended Sanskrit with local Dravidian vernaculars—primarily Malayalam and Tamil. Translating to "ruby and coral," it symbolized the seamless, decorative intertwining of the local tongue's grammar with the eloquent vocabulary of Sanskrit"
There are thousands of other Sanskrit words in daily use in Malayalam.
"bodham, santoṣam, saṅkaṭam, sneham, iṣṭam, premam, deṣyam, (Skt : dveṣyam) kopam, viṣamam, saṁśayam, bhayam, buddhi, dhairyam, ālocana, cinta, vicāram, vedana, daya(vu), dākṣiṇyam, abhimānam, mānam, sukham, tṛpti, manass, antass, śānti, samādhānam, svairam, sahatāpam, paribhavam, parāti (a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit; parātī, act of rejection) duḥkham, ātmā(vu), āgraham, virodham, prayāsam, kaṣṭam, manaḥprayāsam, manassamādhānam, manośūnyam (this is a common phrase in some dialects and completely absent in others, it refers to the act of not having mental happiness in anything) dhārṣṭyam (I am surprised how mallus still use such tough words) puccham, (means “tail”/”inferior” literally, used in the sense of contempt) ahaṅkāram, bhāvam, svabhāvam, guṇam, āśvāsam, āśaṅka, (colloquial in some dialects) ākulam, (colloquial in some other dialects) ākrāntam, ārtti, krūram, vīryam, ākāṃkṣa, vātsalyam, vāśi, tātparyam, svapnam, saṅkalpam "
"vṛtti, sampatt-, sāmpattikam (this is a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit vṛddhi rule, the Sanskrit word should have been sāmpadikam) svatt-, prakṛti, praśnam, upayogam, svantam, svātantryam, sādhanam, sammānam, sammatam, saṅgītam, pratīkṣa, pradhānam, ādyam, avasānam, divasam, rātri, sambhavam, samayam, kālam, vidham, vidhi, śīlam, rīti, svasthata, asvasthata, sūryan, candran, bhūmi, guḷika (meaning “round”, same root as gola) sūkṣ-ikkuka, rakṣa, surakṣa, upadeśam, lābham, prayojanam, āvaśyam, atyāvaśyam, adhikam, sāram, nissāram, tatkālam, prasiddham,upakāram, anugraham, varam, dānam, śāpam, śalyam, aṅgīkāram, anveṣaṇam, ākrama-, akramam, parākramam, yuddham, tarkam, sallāpam, niścayam, jīvitam, mārgam, uccam, śabdam, āghoṣam, sādhu, puṇyam, pāpam, svargam, narakam, pātāḷam, prakāśam (more colloquial words are veṭṭam, veḷiccam, all are equally frequent according to dialects) viśvāsam, kāryam, śuddham, vaśam, sāmarthyam, sādhakam, dikk, diśa, vākk, svaram, ābharaṇam, viparītam, nāśam, vārtta (for “news” : made using vṛddhi from Sanskrit varta- “present affair”, compare with NIA bāt) sāmyam, trāss (from Skt tulās) saṃsāram, vartamānam, anusaraṇa, anuvādam, anāvaśyam, alpam, svalpam, abhiprāyam, dhārālam (an old Sanskrit dialectal word used today only in Malayalam, the opposite of viralam) and hundreds more. (even out of the world Sanskrit-Malayalam combination words like vṛtti-kEṭu, buddhi-muṭṭu, piṭi-vāśi)"
Sanskrit is an amazing language - it is so BIG! Because of its extensive case system (10 different cases, IIRC), word order is highly flexible. The formalized rules of how spelling changes based on word adjacency (sandhi), and the ambiguity of interpreting long compounds, combined with the free word order, are so rich with poetic possibility that English seems baby-talk in comparison.
It's hard to describe just how cool this language is. Even the alphabet! The way we learned it, it is arranged in a grid with all of the letters in a row corresponding to one sound, and each column based on where in the mouth you make the sound.
I wish I could do it justice, but words fail. IMO it is absolutely, intrinsically, worthwhile to study.
Bhartrihari is a notoriously difficult philosopher, and scholars are still puzzling over what exactly his work means. But perhaps radically oversimplified, here are a few things he suggests. First: wholes are always more real than the parts that comprise them. The whole comes first, and parts exist always and only as conceptual divisions within a pre-existing, coherent whole. Second: these divisions are always linguistic. It is language that carves up experience. But importantly, when language carves up experience, it is not, as some Buddhists thought, simply the superimposition of an artificial, conceptual filter onto a non-conceptual reality. Instead, Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it.
Note-1: Does the above explain why many people perceive LLMs to be "conscious"?
Note-2: The effectiveness of Mathematics (when considered as a language in itself) to explain the "real world" also seems related here.
17 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 69.4 ms ] threadAs India grew richer, the newer generation of liberal arts colleges (eg. Ashoka) and humanities programs in public universities (eg. IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, JNU) started attracting and hiring Western educated faculty and researchers (Indian as well as Foreigners) to help revitalize interest in humanities and social sciences.
India also now has a new generation philanthropists who are starting to donate to this kind of research (eg. Murthy and the "Murty Classical Library of India" at Harvard).
There is a similar revitalization for older texts in Tamizh, Telugu, Koshur, Pahari, Tibetan, etc as well.
IMHO, Sanskrit quotes sound cool to those who know Prakrit languages just like Latin and Greek quotations sound cool to those who know Romance languages (and even to those who know English, like myself).
Yes, there is a revival, and an interest. But Sanskrit has always been known to the "priestly" class even though they never conversed in it. This new revival is not going to lead to actual communication, just a lot of visual art based on the script and quotations. IMHO.
"A third elective is chosen from Accelerated Classical Greek/Italian/German, Sanskrit, ..."
https://www.sydgram.nsw.edu.au/life-at-grammar/academic/
My children had a great time there.
Unlike in the West, naming one's dog after someone's name is considered an insult. "I will have a pet dog named after you" is insult thrown in fights. So, Indians name their dogs uncommon among humans. Or they have foreign names like Johnny, Jack, etc.
I don't understand how you can take what happened to AH Dani at BHU and say this with a straight face.
The one I’m mostly interested in translating is called the Moksopaya, here’s the Sanskrit on GRETIL: https://gretil.sub.uni-goettingen.de/gretil/1_sanskr/6_sastr...
From Mylapore to the World: The Story of India’s Sanskrit LLM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_Bic7RqOg
PS: What translations of Yoga-Vasistha/Laghu-Yoga-Vasistha have you read/have had access to? This is one of my favourite philosophical texts and i am curious to know more.
What the article misses is what some of these accounts post. SanskritSparrow channels his followers on stories to some kooky post which claims to have decoded Indus Valley Script as Sanskrit. Learned persons better be careful about the intent here, the rider that is riding the "ancient" horse into the present is as much trying to invade intellectual spaces, as the actual Rishis were trying with the lands. Besides, the appeal is only among upper caste Hindus. What else is a Dalit going to do with Sanskrit? No literature is written for them in Sanskrit. They're not even allowed learning it, it is an exclusive domain of Brahmins. What will Dalits get from reading Vedas and finding out how they are termed as devils and filed under a degraded caste pyramid? It's an article borne out of very rosy lens. A Dalit Ambedkarite writer should research the accounts mentioned and tell us what the subsurface vibe looks like here, is it the same old wine in new glass?
Technically any Sanskrit word is also a Malayalam word.
Examples of Sanskrit words we would use daily in conversation with a fluent Malayalam speaker include:
Pusthakam (Sanskrit: Pustakam) - Book
Bhāryā - Wife
Swapnam (Sanskrit: Swapnam) - Dream
Agni (Sanskrit: Agni) - Fire
Varṇam - Color
Samayam (Sanskrit: Samayam) - Time
Vidhyālaya (Sanskrit: Vidyālaya) - School
And of course many personal names ( including mine, my wife's and my children's ) are in Sanskrit.
We have a word for this phenomenon : "Manipravalam is a medieval South Indian literary style and hybrid language that blended Sanskrit with local Dravidian vernaculars—primarily Malayalam and Tamil. Translating to "ruby and coral," it symbolized the seamless, decorative intertwining of the local tongue's grammar with the eloquent vocabulary of Sanskrit"
There are thousands of other Sanskrit words in daily use in Malayalam.
"bodham, santoṣam, saṅkaṭam, sneham, iṣṭam, premam, deṣyam, (Skt : dveṣyam) kopam, viṣamam, saṁśayam, bhayam, buddhi, dhairyam, ālocana, cinta, vicāram, vedana, daya(vu), dākṣiṇyam, abhimānam, mānam, sukham, tṛpti, manass, antass, śānti, samādhānam, svairam, sahatāpam, paribhavam, parāti (a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit; parātī, act of rejection) duḥkham, ātmā(vu), āgraham, virodham, prayāsam, kaṣṭam, manaḥprayāsam, manassamādhānam, manośūnyam (this is a common phrase in some dialects and completely absent in others, it refers to the act of not having mental happiness in anything) dhārṣṭyam (I am surprised how mallus still use such tough words) puccham, (means “tail”/”inferior” literally, used in the sense of contempt) ahaṅkāram, bhāvam, svabhāvam, guṇam, āśvāsam, āśaṅka, (colloquial in some dialects) ākulam, (colloquial in some other dialects) ākrāntam, ārtti, krūram, vīryam, ākāṃkṣa, vātsalyam, vāśi, tātparyam, svapnam, saṅkalpam "
"vṛtti, sampatt-, sāmpattikam (this is a Malayalam word made using Sanskrit vṛddhi rule, the Sanskrit word should have been sāmpadikam) svatt-, prakṛti, praśnam, upayogam, svantam, svātantryam, sādhanam, sammānam, sammatam, saṅgītam, pratīkṣa, pradhānam, ādyam, avasānam, divasam, rātri, sambhavam, samayam, kālam, vidham, vidhi, śīlam, rīti, svasthata, asvasthata, sūryan, candran, bhūmi, guḷika (meaning “round”, same root as gola) sūkṣ-ikkuka, rakṣa, surakṣa, upadeśam, lābham, prayojanam, āvaśyam, atyāvaśyam, adhikam, sāram, nissāram, tatkālam, prasiddham,upakāram, anugraham, varam, dānam, śāpam, śalyam, aṅgīkāram, anveṣaṇam, ākrama-, akramam, parākramam, yuddham, tarkam, sallāpam, niścayam, jīvitam, mārgam, uccam, śabdam, āghoṣam, sādhu, puṇyam, pāpam, svargam, narakam, pātāḷam, prakāśam (more colloquial words are veṭṭam, veḷiccam, all are equally frequent according to dialects) viśvāsam, kāryam, śuddham, vaśam, sāmarthyam, sādhakam, dikk, diśa, vākk, svaram, ābharaṇam, viparītam, nāśam, vārtta (for “news” : made using vṛddhi from Sanskrit varta- “present affair”, compare with NIA bāt) sāmyam, trāss (from Skt tulās) saṃsāram, vartamānam, anusaraṇa, anuvādam, anāvaśyam, alpam, svalpam, abhiprāyam, dhārālam (an old Sanskrit dialectal word used today only in Malayalam, the opposite of viralam) and hundreds more. (even out of the world Sanskrit-Malayalam combination words like vṛtti-kEṭu, buddhi-muṭṭu, piṭi-vāśi)"
https://sanskritclub.iitr.ac.in/course/Subhashitam/uview
It's hard to describe just how cool this language is. Even the alphabet! The way we learned it, it is arranged in a grid with all of the letters in a row corresponding to one sound, and each column based on where in the mouth you make the sound.
I wish I could do it justice, but words fail. IMO it is absolutely, intrinsically, worthwhile to study.
Words for the Heart: A treasury of emotions from classical India (book review) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766
Bhartrihari is a notoriously difficult philosopher, and scholars are still puzzling over what exactly his work means. But perhaps radically oversimplified, here are a few things he suggests. First: wholes are always more real than the parts that comprise them. The whole comes first, and parts exist always and only as conceptual divisions within a pre-existing, coherent whole. Second: these divisions are always linguistic. It is language that carves up experience. But importantly, when language carves up experience, it is not, as some Buddhists thought, simply the superimposition of an artificial, conceptual filter onto a non-conceptual reality. Instead, Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it.
Note-1: Does the above explain why many people perceive LLMs to be "conscious"?
Note-2: The effectiveness of Mathematics (when considered as a language in itself) to explain the "real world" also seems related here.
See also the book; The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language by Bimal Krishna Matilal - https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributio...