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Archives

1. July 2001 – September 2005
2. October 2005 – October 2006
3. February 2007 – ??

This article needs citations

The article contains a lot of statements that are not attributed to any source. I previously made edits to note this, but Dbachmann reversed them, saying that my edits were "silly" and that the claims are "undisputed." Now, I am not aware that someone's opinion that some claims are "undisputed" is now a valid criterion for said claims to be accepted. I also note that there are very few references, and none at all for important claims (e.g., that Sanskrit dates to 1700 BCE, or that it is a national language of Nepal). I am not personally prepared to grant these claims as undisputed, and even if they are known from folklore, is it accepted practice not to cite when there is folklore? Yes, I accept that it is not necessary or good to moronically insert a citation every sentence, but having so few citations, and none at all for almost all claims which are simply made ex cathedra, does not make sense, unless Misplaced Pages just morphed when I was sleeping.

I don't want to get into an edit war with Dbachmann over this issue, but I do hope that the community will look at this matter carefully.

Thanks, shrao, 2007-06-08

Consistency (or an explanation) of the Romanization scheme here

In some places there are accents (Á) over some of the Sanskrit words. What do these mean?! These accent marks are not shown on the IAST article at Misplaced Pages. Are you even using IAST here? If you are, then please explain to me what these accent marks mean and why they are not shown on the IAST article. If they are not IAST, then please replace them with full IAST. YoshiroShin (talk) 20:07, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

At a quick glance I only notice the accents in the Numerals section. They are used in older Sanskrit, that is, Vedic Sanskrit. In transliteration practice various Vedic accents are used in both IAST and ISO 15919, but I do not have the knowledge to add the needed information to the IAST article. --Kess (talk) 22:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

we have dedicated Vedic accent article. --dab (𒁳) 11:28, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Southeast Asian languages originating from Sanskrit

Which languages in Southeast Asia originated from Sanskrit? Marxolang (talk) 23:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Southeast Asia? None that I'm aware. See Indo-Aryan languages. Grover cleveland (talk) 03:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

None. There are some words which have been borrowed because of Hinduism in South-East Asia, otherwise most of the languages in SE Asia like Thai and others are tonal and have minimal or NO influence of Sanskrit. ] (] · ]) 02:37, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

So wrong man. Thai is heavily influenced by Sanskrit, but it is not an Indo-Aryan language, rather it is from the Tai-Kadai language family. The reason so is because Thai is Tai-Kadai in structure and substratum, Sanskrit only influenced Thai in terms of loanwords. The same applies to almost all languages in Southeast Asia to as far as the Philippines. Kotakkasut (talk) 02:57, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

It appears so; trivial inspection of randomly selected entries in wikt:Category:th:Sanskrit derivations yields many basic terms, of not strictly liturgical origin, at least several of which are in 207 Swadesh list. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 03:08, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, if you believe South-East Asian languages originated from Sanskrit, then by the same token modern Indo-Aryan langauges like Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Gujarati etc. all "originated" from Persian and Arabic, which is clearly not the case. Also that would make English a Romance or Greek language, just because most of its technical vocabulary comes from Latin and Ancient Greek. Gizza 06:52, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Peacock terms

There are several glorifying phrases added without ANY factual substantiation or just about anything.

• What is this nonsense about Sanskrit being spoken in Pakistan, Korea and China? There is a difference between 'spoken in' and Buddhism's 'liturgical language' being Sanskrit, influencing China. Sanskrit has NOT influenced or changed Chinese (which is Tonal in the first place), Korean (which is a language isolate) or in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu is the ONLY official language and even Punjabi, Sindhi and others are only recognized languages).

• 'as the learned language'

Many more. The Misplaced Pages page has to only mention that Sanskrit is being revived. Please do not make use of this page to revive Sanskrit or any other agenda. ] (] · ]) 02:36, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Once again, 'spoken in' in the infobox modified since it is not 'spoken' as a liturgical language in any Buddhist areas but texts are only written. ] (] · ]) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

While I agree that such statements are inaccurate and should therefore be edited out unless backed by reliable sources it seems like an overreaction to give the entire article a heading of "peacock terms". By all means highlight the relevant/offending sections and call them "peacock" if you wish but I can't see how everything else amounts to a "revival" or glorification agenda. It seems a bit unfair as I have found the article generally very informative, comprehensive in scope and mostly very neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.36.248 (talk) 11:41, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

An article does not have to made up of only Peacock terms for that to be subject to this inspection. Also, informative articles can also have peacock terms used in them. So I am putting the tag back on, and I will clean up the Peacock terms if anyone is willing to help. Thanks ] (] · ]) 02:30, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

The article as pointed out before, in this same section, had nonsense about Sanskrit being spoke in Pakistan and all that. Neither did it have citations nor was it to provide information, just promoting a subject matter baselessly. The article has been improved slightly, however still seems to only promote the subject matter. Even normal information is being spiced up to make it look like a propaganda article. ] (] · ]) 02:40, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

Sudarsansn, some time back there was an disconcerted, but nevertheless stormy tirade from some editors who wanted to insert the phrase that Sanskrit is a "South-Asian language". When pointed out that there is government-approved acrimony against it in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and a near concentration only in India and Nepal, they whimpered away. Indian_Air_Force (IAF) (talk) 06:54, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

That is exactly what I mean by the use of peacock terms and promotion agenda, there are several such ones here. Removal of the tag is not substantiated in talk page, the reason for posting is clearly mentioned here. This might have to be taken notice of by the administrators. ] (] · ]) 04:23, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I see more and more edits being made to baselessly promote the subject matter, one look at the edit history of the article will make it evidently clear

• "the figurative presiding position accorded to all forms of Sanskrit" (??)
• "being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, its oldest core dating back" (Why this extreme redundancy?)
• "and it has significantly influenced most modern"

I see only the kind of edits pointed out by User IAF above

- ] (] · ]) 04:36, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Sudharsansn, may I ask you to tag the offending passages with an inline {{dubious}} (or else just remove them) instead of tagging the entire article with a less than helpful {{peacock}}? answering your points:

• "the figurative presiding position accorded to all forms of Sanskrit"-- I agrse this is bs.
• "being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, its oldest core dating back" -- this is due to the difference of Vedic Sanskrit in general and Rigvedic Sanskrit in particular. There is a millennium between the "oldest core" of Rigvedic Sanskrit and late Vedic Sanskrit, and another millennium between late Vedic Sanskrit and Kalidasa.
• "and it has significantly influenced most modern Indian languages" -- well, it has, just like Latin and Greek influenced most modern European languages.

--dab (𒁳) 08:22, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

The point is very simply this, there are too many ones, like those were the ones I saw in like one minute. There are several others, like almost every paragraph has about five or six of them. The tag is being removed because it is 'less' helpful but the point that is lost is that that is the most descriptive one to be used.

Based on your point Dbachmann, have you removed all the peacock terms and the tag in one go? Or at least, if you are interested, we, and other interested users, can clean it, giving it a time span of 2-3 days. Let me know, thanks ] (] · ]) 20:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Articulation

It seems that the Sanskrit article, the Phonology section could benefit from a subsection on Articulation (s. http://sanskritdocuments.org/learning_tutorial_wikner/index.html, for example).

Or maybe a new, specific article on Sanskrit articulation.

--Klimov (talk) 16:54, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Spoken languages

Sanskrit is NOT spoken in China, Nepal, Pakistan and other areas. It is not even spoken in India except for one hypothetical district with 3000 speakers. This was the issue raised in the Peacock terms section. Also, litturgical languages are NOT spoken languages, it is only the language in which the religious text is written.

People come here to glorify and revive Sanskrit, Misplaced Pages is not to be used for agenda and revival but citing information. Period. ] (] · ]) 02:50, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

So you don't think that in any of those areas where Sanskrit is used as a sacred language that Sanskrit is spoken at all? --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 16:10, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

It is used only for religious function. So Hindu priests and gurus often chant verses in Sanskrit and read the sacred texts in Sanskrit, but I doubt they speak it generally. It would need a source if that were the case. Gizza 07:00, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I have attended a course on spoken samkritam and have friends who went and studied the living sanskrit in the villages where it is spoken as a common language. It seems to be an old fashion to call Sanskrit 'dead' just to make it similar to Latin I guess. Wikidās ॐ 10:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Probably. I also watched a youtube video where there's this illiterate 6-year old girl not knowing anything about eka-vacana and bahu-vacana and obviously knowing the difference between singular and plural of Sanskrit nouns she uttered ^_^. I am really interested how far the tradition of vernacular spoken Sanskrit goes in the past: is it uninterrupted from Pāṇinian times, or just a result of subsequent cultivation of well-minded peasants by a few Brahmins that were not so obsessively possessive on "deva-bhāṣā" ? If this former is the case, then the things are radically different than in the case of Ancient Greek or Latin, who ceased to be utilized for any kind of conversation > millenium ago (even though people wrote books in them, and cherished them, but strictly as literary languages). --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 15:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Sanskrit debates were a common place just 300 years back, and poetry was written and recited not long ago. There is a huge wave of interest in spoke Sanskrit in recent years. At this pace it could become more of a spoke language then Gaelic Language at present. Yes people speak Gaelic but it is in a similar state to what you have described abpve:-) still its a living language. Completely different thing is the classical Sanskrit. Since the end of 17th c classical Sanskrit is not used for public debate and thus became less of a spoken language. Before that the debate was a major cultural element almost a 'theatre' level performance and was widespread. Now only a few villages (size of Gaelchta areas) has living language. Bleeding Mogul rule. Wikidās ॐ 15:51, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

It was not just the Muslims that made spoken Sanskrit in decline. Even 1500 years, Pali and Prakrits were very common. Most Buddhist and Jain texts are in these languages, not Sanskrit. By then, only the Brahmins would have known Sanskrit. Gizza 22:23, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

But the original purpose of this discussion was regarding countries other than India. There may be a few villages left which still speak Sanskrit in India but it is completely liturgical among other countries which used like South East Asia. So the infobox should only say "Spoken in India" unless somebody can pull out a source from somewhere. Gizza 22:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

DaGizza, you are right. It is not 'spoken' anywhere else. Wikidās ॐ 20:16, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

Sanskrit stopped being a mother-tongue before the Buddha's time. Classical Sanskrit never was. Mitsube (talk) 22:34, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

let's just say it is spoken in the Indian subcontinent. The 1947 borders are irrelevant to this. Liturgical languages aren't spoken as a first language, but they are, of course, spoken. Already, as hinted at by the term, in liturgy. --dab (𒁳) 13:06, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

We cannot just 'say' it is spoken in the subcontinent. Borders are very much relevant, how can they be redrawn to the point before 1947 just to make it sound bigger. It is marginally spoken ONLY in India, not in the Subcontinent (which includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Bhutan, etc). Liturgical languages may be spoken, but do not have to be spoken. Moreover, Sanskrit is used only mantras, shlokas kind of things and except for a dubious citation about some random village in Karnataka, is not spoken anywhere. Even if so, we can believe in the number cited and it has 49,000 odd speakers.

Please do Sanskrit revival elsewhere and come and write about it here, do not revive it here. Thanks ] (] · ]) 21:11, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

edit with care

this article is very vulnerable: It has a long history of development, and it has been contributed to by many people who actually know about the topic. Sadly, it seems to attract a lot of "improvements" on the part of editors with insufficient knowledge of the topic who inexplicably are always convinced they know better. Any unilateral change of long-standing, discussed, stable content needs to be viewed with suspicion. In the light of all this, permanent semiprotection would be best. The chance of article improvement by drive-by editors adding "corrections" is negligible. --dab (𒁳) 13:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, but also see . As far as I can see, that's an unsubstantiated POV. Sanskrit (or Classical Sanskrit) was not invented or created or defined by Panini. He wrote a grammar for it, the only extant grammar among a dozen others named by him prior to his time, see Schools of Sanskrit grammar#Preceding_Eleven_Schools. Kindly stop Mitsube from indulging in unconstructive edit-warring and POV pushing. ­ Kris (talk) 18:41, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

if this is your only concern, we can discuss the phrasing. The fact is that these "Eleven Schools" are only known via Panini. Panini's work is the oldest surviving grammar of Sanskrit. It is undisputedly true that he had predecessors, only their work has been lost. I would prefer the phrasing "as laid out by" over "as defined by" myself, but this is a detail and open to bona fide discussion.

so, would you be satisfied if we replace "as defined by Panini" by the more agnostic "as laid out by Panini"? dab (𒁳) 18:46, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

What about your ad-nauseum reverts without giving any specific reasons? ­ Kris (talk) 18:51, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes the earlier statement about Panini (before Mitsubi's revert) was good enough. ­ Kris (talk) 18:52, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

>>Any unilateral change of long-standing, discussed, stable content needs to be viewed with suspicion.<<
No, that is just your mentality. You need to see what those changes are and see what the damage (if any) is.
>>The chance of article improvement by drive-by editors adding "corrections" is negligible.<<
So I became a drive-by editor and the chances of me making any improvements is negligible, so you can flex your muscles and revert all my edits just because of your baseless suspicions? ­ Kris (talk) 18:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

You are acting like a drive-by editor, and you need to respect sourced material. Mitsube (talk) 19:22, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Sanskrit became a secular language of philosophy and culture after Panini. Mitsube (talk) 19:25, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Yeah you can try pushing that POV as hard as possible, Panini was just "one" popular sanskrit grammarian, thats all. ­ Kris (talk) 19:21, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I see no replies from user:dbachmann for his article-wide reverts based only on his suspicions rather than a careful analysis on whether each of my contributions were damaging the article or helping its improvement. I dont know if that is a case of bullying members like me, together with his above interesting adjectives to describe me. ­ Kris (talk) 19:21, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

You raised a valid point. I gave you a suggestion for a compromise phrasing. Instead of reacting, you immediately take the discussion elsewhere. If you want to continue this discussion, you'll need to focus on article content, point by point. So please stop testing people's nerve and start contributing in good faith. No, Panini was not just "one" popular sanskrit grammarian, you obviously have no clue what you are talking about. Already your grammatical mistake in the diff I link to above shows that you have no detailed knowledge of the topic. So why don't you just limit yourself to constructive suggestions and stop the antagonism. dab (𒁳) 19:35, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I have enough knowledge on Panini to talk about his contribution. To modern scholarship, Panini might appear to be the most important sanskrit grammarian, only because we dont know who the others were before him. It was a long tradition of grammar, and Panini himself acknowledges that. Most of what we credit to Panini were not his inventions. Despite what you might think, Panini's grammar was descriptive (not prescriptive), and there are enough mainstream linguists who attest this view. Also what you described as a grammatical error on my part is formed by your own ignorance and prejudice. If you know better you can try finding a saMskRtA vAk anywhere, it should be saMskRta vAk, because this is convention. Under what authority do you find yourself competent to make mass reverts without analysing whether my work on the article is constructive or desructive? I have no need or intention to antagonize you, but you are trying to play the bully with me, using words like "drive-by" editor etc and making total-reverts of my work without any basis. ­ Kris (talk) 14:40, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you note the difference between the saṃskṛta an adjective and a noun? vāc (nom. sg. vāk) is feminine, thus the -ā in qualifying adjective.

Pāṇini (or whoever signed the works under that name, regardless of whether they were his own inventions, result of a continual refinement during the history by a number of predecessors - all of which is speculative as very little known for sure even for Pāṇini himself, let alone for his predecessors), from today's perspective, did the capital work regarding the codification of what we today refer to as "classical Sanskrit". It is likely that he described his mother tongue (hence it was descriptive, but conditionally speaking - only in synchronic context), or the archaic Brahmin speech, but his work was prescriptive and dominating in terms of defining "proper Sanskrit" for all writers afters him. The term prescriptive refers to role of a work as defining some kind of standard language - an abstract role model one should strive to attain in his writing. The term descriptive refers to a way that e.g. grammar or dictionary is written - describing spoken language, not trying to e.g. invent words that are not spoken, but are necessary in order to describe some regular morphological process. As far as the latter point is concerned, the answer is no - Pāṇini and other grammarians invented e.g. verbal roots in order to explain etymologies for some nouns (cf. in MW dictionary notes for the roots √al, √ṇa, √dhiṣ, √naj, √nīl, √paṇḍ, √parṇ, √pal, √pall, √puṇ, √pur, √bid, √maṭh, √mark, √maṣ, √vaṭ, √śaś, √sakh, √sī, √stu, √stūp, √hal), or invented meanings or nouns themselves to account for e.g. lost or secondary meanings preserved in compounds or whatever appears to be some kind of derivation. So the terms descriptive and prescriptive are not necessarily in a collision. What must be emphasized is the absolute authority of Pāṇini's work in later times; saying that he was just "one popular Sasnskrit grammarian" would be a gross understatement of his influence. --Ivan Štambuk (talk) 17:35, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree with Ivan. To say that Panini was just another grammarian is silly. Contributors whining about their edits getting reverted should STOP editing Misplaced Pages as it is a gradual accumulation and compilation of ideas that have come-by, and NOT 'driven-by', owing to changes made to the articles. Such contributors who crib about the authority of others should first analyze that the authority is in the existing Misplaced Pages standards and not in a self-proclaimed sense of 'I-know-Panini-he-was-my-neighbor' POV authority. One should stop making absolutely immature statements like 'I know Panini' (as if he were one's neighbor), 'ignorance and prejudice', etc when it is patently obvious that user Srkris is the one driving-by to drop POV parcels. Some more rewording and rephrasing needs to be done and it will be done. ] (] · ]) 03:06, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Comments made by user Srkris who is whining about personal attacks: "which ignoramus altered this?", "formed by your own ignorance and prejudice", "Under what authority do you find yourself competent to make mass reverts ". User: Srkris warned about personal attacks: WP:CIVIL - BE CIVIL!! - ] (] · ]) 03:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Do we need a separate main articles?

Do we need separate main articles for each of this article's sections to reduce the article's size and make it better organized and meaningful? ­ Kris (talk) 19:24, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

the article is already WP:SS. I am not sure what you are trying to achieve here. dab (𒁳) 19:32, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

We have separate article already for Vedic Sanskrit, Sanskrit grammar, Sanskrit phonology, Sanskrit revival, etc. If others sections like history grow large enough such that they they no longer adhere to WP:SS, separate article will be created for them in due course. Gizza 23:17, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

This is clearly WP:POVFORK. A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts. Both content forks and POV forks are undesirable on Misplaced Pages, as they avoid consensus building and therefore violate one of our most important policies. ] (] · ]) 03:21, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

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