Sanskritisation (linguistics)

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Manipravalam, a heavily Sanskritised style of Tamil, written in Tamil script. Manipravala.JPG
Manipravalam, a heavily Sanskritised style of Tamil, written in Tamil script.

Sanskritisation is the process of introducing features from Sanskrit, such as vocabulary and grammar, into other languages. [1] It is sometimes associated with the "Hinduisation" of a linguistic community, or less commonly, with introducing a more upper-caste status into a community. [2] [3] Many languages throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia were greatly influenced by Sanskrit (or its descendant languages, the Prakrits and modern-day Indo-Aryan languages) historically. [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Sanskritisation often stands in opposition to the Persianisation or Englishisation of a language within South Asia, [7] [8] as occurs with the Hindustani language, which in its Sanskritised, Persianised, and English-influenced registers becomes Hindi, Urdu, and Hinglish/Urdish respectively. [9] [10] [11] [12] Support for Sanskritisation in South Asia runs highest among Hindu nationalists. [13]

Sanskritization of the names of people and places is also commonplace in India. [14] [15] [16]

History

Ancient era

This section is an excerpt from Sanskrit § Influence on other languages.[ edit ]
For nearly 2,000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. [17] A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana and Mahabharata . The deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. [18] Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa (आर्ष), meaning 'of the ṛṣis', the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts, there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than in Classical Sanskrit proper. Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is a literary language heavily influenced by the Middle Indo-Aryan languages, based on early Buddhist Prakrit texts which subsequently assimilated to the Classical Sanskrit standard in varying degrees. [19]

Modern era

During the medieval era, the Indian languages had taken in a lot of Perso-Arabic influences as a result of Muslim invasions, particularly in the northwestern subcontinent; [20] colonial-era education policies, religious nationalism, and the influence of some of the more Sanskritised Indian languages played a role in Hindus and Muslims increasingly separating in terms of their linguistic influences, [21] with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and the Sanskrit-associated Devanagari script for writing Hindi. [22] [23] [24]

Since the 1947 Partition of India, the Indian government, which at one point considered making Sanskrit the national language, instead has sought to further Sanskritise Hindi, [25] considering it to be easier for Indians to learn, [26] and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan (though Urdu continues to have official status in several Indian states, such as Uttar Pradesh). [27] [28] Sanskrit has been used to form new words to describe modern concepts and technologies in several South Asian languages by forming calques based on English words. [29] [23] [30] In addition, Sanskrit words that have been nativised into other languages have been mixed with words from other language families, such as the Dravidian languages, to form new words. [31]

Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be, [32] [33] with Hindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi, [34] opposing Urdu in part because it is a Muslim-associated language, [35] and some boycotting the Hindi-language Bollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English in its movies. [36] [37]

De-Sanskritisation

This section is an excerpt from De-Sanskritisation § Linguistics.[ edit ]

The de-Sanskritisation of Tamil started during the 1950s. [38] These attempts at "de-sanskritization" came to see the language having altered to remove a lot of the Sanskrit borrowing. [39]

The Hela Havula movement advocated de-Sanskritisation of the Sinhala language. [40]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Modern Standard Hindi, commonly referred to as Hindi, is the standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in Devanagari script. It is the official language of India alongside English and the lingua franca of North India. Hindi is considered a Sanskritised register of the Hindustani language, which itself is based primarily on the Khariboli dialect of Delhi and neighbouring areas. It is an official language in nine states and three union territories and an additional official language in three other states. Hindi is also one of the 22 scheduled languages of the Republic of India.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hindustani language</span> Indo-Aryan language spoken in India and Pakistan

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References

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  2. ↑ "Hindi/Urdu/Hindustani in the Metropolises: Visual (and Other) Impressions", Defining the Indefinable: Delimiting Hindi, Peter Lang, 2014, doi:10.3726/978-3-653-03566-7/18, ISBN   9783631647745 , retrieved 2023-10-29
  3. ↑ Punnoose, Reenu, and Muhammed Haneefa. "Problematising Hindi as the'Self'and English as the'Other'." Economic & Political Weekly 53.7 (2018).
  4. ↑ Chakraborty, Shibashis. "The Role of Specific Grammar for Interpretation in Sanskrit". Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, 9 (2) (2021): 107-187.
  5. ↑ Burrow, Thomas (2001). The Sanskrit Language. Motilal Banarsidass Publ. ISBN   978-81-208-1767-8.
  6. ↑ Bronkhorst, Johannes (2010-01-01). "The spread of Sanskrit". From Turfan to Ajanta. Festschrift for Dieter Schlingloff on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday.
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  8. ↑ Calabrese, Rita; Chambers, J. K.; Leitner, Gerhard (2015-10-13). Variation and Change in Postcolonial Contexts. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN   978-1-4438-8493-8.
  9. ↑ Coleman, Julie (10 January 2014). Global English Slang: Methodologies and Perspectives. Routledge. p. 130. ISBN   978-1-317-93476-9. Within India, however, other regional forms exist, all denoting a mixing of English with indigenous languages. Bonglish (derived from the slang term Bong 'a Bengali') or Benglish refers to 'a mixture of Bengali and English', Gunglish or Gujlish 'Gujarati + English', Kanglish 'Kannada + English', Manglish 'Malayalam + English', Marlish 'Marathi + English', Tamlish or Tanglish 'Tamil + English' and Urdish 'Urdu + English'. These terms are found in texts on regional variations of Indian English, usually in complaint-tradition discussions of failing standards of language purity.
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  15. ↑ Shah, A.M. (2005). "Sanskritisation Revisited". Sociological Bulletin. 54 (2): 238–249. ISSN   0038-0229. JSTOR   23620499.
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  17. ↑ Pollock 2001.
  18. ↑ Oberlies 2003, pp. xxvii–xxix.
  19. ↑ Edgerton, Franklin (2004). Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit grammar and dictionary. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN   978-81-215-1110-0.
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  23. 1 2 Ganpat Teli, M.Phil. "Revisiting the Making of Hindi as a ‘National’ Language", M.Phil.
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  36. ↑ "Is the Hindu Nationalist 'Boycott Bollywood' Campaign Impacting the Box Office?". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  37. ↑ "The siege of Bollywood". The Economist. ISSN   0013-0613 . Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  38. ↑ Sekar, R. (1992). The Sabarimalai Pilgrimage and Ayyappan Cultus. Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. p. 92. ISBN   978-81-208-1056-3 . Retrieved 2024-10-05.
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