Among human languages, Sanskrit is recognized as the most complex and difficult language r.cn/zhfw/whdjt/ztjz/200712/t20071212_504652027_1.html
It is an Indo-European language in India -A language of the Indic branch of the Iranian language family and one of the oldest languages ??of the Indo-European language family. Like Latin, Sanskrit has become a specialized language of an academic and religious nature.
Sanskrit was the standard written language of ancient India. It was originally the language of the upper-class intellectuals in northwest India. Compared with the common language (Prakrit) used by ordinary people, it is also called elegant language. Our country and Japan call this language Sanskrit based on the legend that it was created by Brahma (one of the main gods of Hinduism). Its English name is sanskrit, derived from the Sanskrit samskrtam, which literally means "completely organized", that is, well-organized language.
In a broad sense, Sanskrit includes three types: Vedic Sanskrit, Epic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, while Sanskrit in a narrow sense only refers to Classical Sanskrit. Among all the ancient languages ??in the world, the number of Sanskrit documents is second only to Chinese, far exceeding Greek and Latin, and the content is extremely rich. Sanskrit literature in a broad sense includes: the four Vedas, the holy scriptures of ancient Brahmanism in India: "Rig Veda", "Sama Veda", "Yajur Veda" and "Atharva Veda", as well as a large number of Brahma books, Sutras, Upanishads, etc.; two major epics: Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as a large number of ancient records. In addition, it also includes a large number of grammar books, collections of fables, as well as works on medicine, natural science, literary theory, etc.; Indian classical literary works written in classical Sanskrit, that is, Sanskrit in a narrow sense, are of great literary talent and influence. Profound. Among them, the Mahayana classics of Buddhism are the most well-known examples. The original Buddhist scriptures were originally written in common language, and later they were gradually converted into Sanskrit, forming a special kind of Buddhist Sanskrit or mixed Sanskrit. However, after the tenth century, due to the development of various dialects in modern India and the invasion of India by Muslims, Sanskrit gradually lost its actual power and existed only as a classical language.
The script used in publishing Sanskrit texts today is called "Devanagari" (Devanagari). It is based on the Nagari script produced in Central India in the seventh century and developed into the eleventh century. font suitable for writing. In fact, there were many kinds of scripts popular in ancient India. Any script derived from Brahmi (Brahmi or Brahmilipi) letters, such as Siddhant, can be called Sanskrit.
Since ancient times, there have been many legends about the creator of Sanskrit characters. Volume 2 of Tang Xuanzang's "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" says: "The detailed text was made by Brahma, the original vertical rules, forty-seven words" (47 letters). "The Brahma kings and the heavenly emperors wrote their own writings at any time, and the immortals of different ways made their own writings." The oldest writings used in India are based on those unearthed in modern times from Harappa and Mohenjodaro in the Indus River Basin. Judging from the materials, it should be hieroglyphics from prehistoric times. However, it is still unclear what system its origin belongs to. Sanskrit and Phoenician writing (the prototype of modern European writing) are both Semitic writing systems and have been recognized by modern academic circles. Around 700 BC, Indian traders came into contact with people from Mesopotamia (a branch of the Semitic tribe) and spread the twenty-two letters of the Semitic tribe to India. After sorting out by the Indians, about 400 BC, about 40 letters were finally produced. With different times and places, calligraphy and fonts gradually differ. Around the first century AD, Sanskrit characters in the north gradually changed into square fonts, and Sanskrit characters in the south gradually changed into round fonts. By the fourth century, the differences between the two were extremely clear. Among them, the Gupta script developed in the north from the fourth to fifth centuries, and the Siddham script was derived from the Gupta script in the sixth century. The Sidtan alphabet was later introduced to China, Japan and other places. At the same time, the Gupta script was also spread to Kucha, Khotan and other places to form special alphabets, which were adopted by various ancient Central Asian languages.
The grammar of Sanskrit is similar to that of other ancient Indo-European languages ??(such as Latin and Greek), with complex inflections. Nouns have three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), three numbers (singular, even and plural) and eight cases (nominative, accusative, instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, person and avocative). grid).
Verb conjugations include singular, even, and plural; person includes first, second, and third person; time includes present tense, imperfect tense, perfect tense, aorist tense, future tense, and hypothetical tense; voice includes active and middle , passive; the mood is divided into declarative, subjunctive, imperative, and imperative (subjunctive mood in the aorist tense); in addition, the ending is also divided into two types: other position and autoposition.
In addition, Sanskrit also has a characteristic that is different from other Indo-European languages, that is, the rule of continuous sound changes (sandhi). That is to say, in a sentence, the last letter of a certain word and the first letter of a certain word are together. When the time comes, corresponding changes will occur; in a word, if a certain letter and a certain letter meet a certain positional relationship, corresponding changes in pronunciation, etc. will also be made. However, there are many and long compound words in Sanskrit, and they must be basically connected together when writing. When writing consecutively, the letters must be changed into a continuous form, and with the diacritical marks in the middle, the difficulty of reading can be imagined.
Europeans became interested in Sanskrit starting in the 16th century. When European missionaries, businessmen, etc. began to learn Sanskrit, they gradually realized that there were extensive similarities between Indian Sanskrit and European Latin, Greek and other languages. From the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century, Sanskrit literary works attracted the attention of European scholars, who began to use modern scientific methods to study Sanskrit. In fact, the ancient Indian grammarian Panini analyzed and summarized the linguistic characteristics of Sanskrit as early as the 4th century BC.
Pornini's life is generally believed to be in the 4th century BC, and his birthplace was near Peshawar, present-day Pakistan. The earliest existing record of him can be found in the second volume of "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" written by the eminent monk Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty in my country. Xuanzang said that Jian Tuo Luo Guo's town "was the birthplace of Bo Ni Immortal in the "Shengshenglun". ” He went on to say that in ancient times, the writing system was vast and diverse, and various immortals from different sects made their own writings, making it difficult for learners to study them in detail. When he reached the age of 100, Immortal Bonani "compiled a group of words and used them as a calligraphy book to prepare a thousand poems, thirty-two words of poems, which are the ultimate modern and ancient, summarizing classical Chinese". But Bonini's life is not discussed in detail.
Before Bonini, Indian grammar had a long history, and Bonini was the master of it. He left behind a book: "The Panini Sutra", because it contains eight chapters, it is also called "The Book of Eight Chapters", which is what Xuanzang called "The Theory of Statements", and he was Guigao who learned Sanskrit. The nearly 4,000 formulas in the Pā?ini Sutra contain a complete and scientific grammar system. The arrangement of letters is also very scientific. Vowels first, then consonants, arranged according to place of pronunciation and pronunciation method (this is also the order in current Sanskrit dictionaries). This order is more reasonable than the alphabets of Greek, Latin, Arabic and all Western languages ??that are independent of the language system.
As for the grammatical structure of Sanskrit, Panini is characterized by analysis. He started with phonetic analysis, not analyzing sentences, only analyzing words; regardless of semantics, he focused entirely on grammatical form as the object of analysis. He analyzes roots, stems, endings, prefixes, suffixes, derivatives, compounds, and more. The final analysis is the root word, which is the so-called "boundary". What is added to "jie" to make it a word, or makes it show all the relationships such as nouns and verbs, is called "yuan", that is, a direct suffix. Therefore, the basic formula of word formation is boundary + edge = word. In this analysis, all the final roots are verbs. It can also be said that only the root of the verb is the final component. Nouns come from verbs. The process of an action is expressed by verbs. Once the action is completed and the action is fixed, it becomes a thing, and it is expressed by nouns.
In modern times, the emergence of Indo-European historical comparative linguistics is also closely related to the study of Sanskrit, and its research focuses on the phonetic systems of Indo-European languages. Sir William Jones, a British Orientalist scholar in the 18th century, proposed the famous "Indo-European hypothesis" to explain the similarities between Indo-European languages. In an academic lecture at the Asiatic Research Society in 1786, he pointed out the connection between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin. He said: "The verb roots and grammatical forms of Sanskrit... are very similar to those of Greek and Latin. This is by no means accidental. Any linguist who has examined these three languages ??cannot help but think that they all come from the same source. But first The original language is probably no longer extant. It is also reasonable to assume (although the reasons are not sufficient) that Gothic, Celtic and Sanskrit, although very different in appearance, are still related to Sanskrit, and Persian is also the same. Belonging to the same language family." This "original language" is what people later called Proto-Indo-European.
Later, European linguists elevated Jones' empirical insights to scientific demonstrations.
Denmark's R.K. Lasker explored "The Origin of Old Norse and Icelandic" (1818); German scholar F. Bopp's "On the Sanskrit Verb Conjugation System and Greek, Latin, Persian and Germanic" "Comparison of Languages" (1816) was the first to conduct detailed research on the fact that Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German languages ??have the same origin. What Jones called "similarities" had by this time developed into correspondences. In his "German Grammar" (1819-1837), the German linguist J. Grimm (also known as the brother of the Brothers Grimm) proposed the law of phonetic change of Indo-European languages. After modification, this law made Phenomena that were originally thought to be exceptions were uniformly explained. The above three people are the founders of historical comparative linguistics. The German scholar A. Schleicher is a master of historical comparative linguistics. He absorbed Hegel's philosophy of history and Darwin's evolutionary thoughts and wrote "Introduction to the Comparative Grammar of Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin" (1874～1877), was the first person to propose the view of language genealogy. The five-volume "Comparative Grammar of Indo-Germanic Languages" (1886~1900) co-authored by K. Brueggemann and B. Delbrück is a masterpiece in this subject. The above-mentioned scholars all started with field investigations of languages, especially ancient languages ??such as Sanskrit, Persian, and Lithuanian.
It can be said that the emergence and development of Indo-European comparative linguistics benefited from the study and research of Sanskrit. Its greatest achievement is that it has a relatively clear understanding of the genetic relationship between languages, especially in the genealogical classification of Indo-European languages, and has obtained quite conclusive evidence. Furthermore, it helps people understand the expression form and usage area of ??the original mother tongue. For example, European scholars now generally believe that the original Indo-European mother tongue originated in the area north of the Black Sea. In terms of literature, the oldest surviving direct material is written in cuneiform dating to the 14th century BC or earlier in Hittite, before the discovery of Hittite and the interpretation of Mycenaean Linear B in the early 20th century , one of the Vedic scriptures, the Rig Veda, generally considered to be the oldest text in the Indo-European language family, written in Sanskrit.
Sanskrit
An ancient language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-Iranian family of Indo-European languages. Sanskrit in a broad sense includes three types: Vedic - the language of the four Vedas in ancient India; Epic Sanskrit - the language of the two epics; Classical Sanskrit - many literary works, including works by Kalidasa, etc. and the language of religious, philosophical, and scientific writings. Sanskrit in the narrow sense refers only to classical Sanskrit. Some people say that Sanskrit is the literary language standardized by the "Eight Chapters" of the great ancient Indian grammarian Panini. This is incorrect. Panini's grammar book is not a branch of Veda, it does not speak Vedic language, and it does not purely speak classical Sanskrit. Compared with classical Sanskrit, the grammatical rules in the book are closer to the language of Sanskrit books, Upanishads and sutras. Kaccanyana, the successor of Panini, spoke classical Sanskrit.
Judging from the original name of Sanskrit, sa╮sk╱tam (organized), Sanskrit seems to be an artificial language. Others believe that Sanskrit was once a living language. In ancient Indian dramas, noble characters such as gods, kings, and Brahmins spoke Sanskrit. The women and other low-level people who talk to them are only allowed to speak dialects and common slang. There is still no unified opinion on this issue.
Volume 2 of Tang Xuanzang's "Records of the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty" says: "Details of the writing were made by Brahma, the original vertical rules, forty-seven words" (47 letters). The term Sanskrit may represent an idea that has long been held by Indian language scholars. However, the word Sanskrit did not exist in China at the beginning. The Biography of Anqing, Volume 1 of "The Biography of the Liang Monk" says: "So the scriptures were translated and changed from Hu to Han." The word "Hu" appears in the Yuan Dynasty of the same book. , the original name is "Brahma". Replacing "Hu" with "Ban" means that Chinese scholars have a better understanding of Sanskrit. The picture on the right shows the Heart Sutra printed in Sanskrit for your comparison and reference.
Language Features
Sanskrit has used a number of different alphabets throughout history. Currently popular in India is the Devanagari (Devan╣garī) alphabet.
Sanskrit vowels are divided into simple vowels, diphthongs, and triphthongs, and consonants are divided into guttural, palatal, parietal, dental, labial, semivowel, sibilant, and breath sounds. wait.
Nouns have gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), number (singular, even, plural), case (physical case, business case, possessive case, for case, submissive case, genitive case, idative case) , vocative) changes.
Verb conjugations include singular, even, and plural; persons include first, second, and third persons; time is divided into present tense, imperfect tense, perfect tense, aorist tense, future tense, and hypothetical tense. ; The voice includes active, middle, and passive; the mood is divided into declarative, subjunctive, imperative, and imperative (subjunctive mood in aorist tense); the endings are divided into original and derived.
Grammar
Verbs
Sanskrit verbs have two voices: for him (parasmaipada, parasmai = para "opposite, other" dative case , pada = "sentence") and for oneself (ātmanepada, ātmane = dative case of ātman "oneself"). There is also the passive form, which is formed by adding the -ya- suffix to the self-state.
There are three tenses: present tense, indefinite tense, and perfect tense. It has been eliminated in later literature.
The future tense is formed by adding -sya or i?ya to the second form of the verb root, and its conjugation is the same as the present tense of the first type of verb.
Present tense
Verbs can be divided into ten categories based on present tense conjugation.
Among all the ancient languages ??in the world, the number of Sanskrit documents is second only to Chinese and far more than Greek and Latin. It is extremely rich in content and can be called the only one in mankind. Treasure. Sanskrit literature in a broad sense includes the Four Vedas: Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda, including a large number of Sanskrit books, sutras, Upanishads, two The great epics: "Mahabharata" (Figure 1) and "Ramayana", as well as a large number of ancient events. In addition, it also includes a large number of grammar books, collections of fables, and works on medicine, natural science, literary theory, etc. Indian classical literary works written in typical classical Sanskrit (that is, Sanskrit in the narrow sense) are even more brilliant and have far-reaching influence. Many famous writers, such as Bhasa, Sudraka, Kalidasa, Tandin, Ravana, Subandava, Bodhi and so on, are as brilliant as stars in the history of Indian literature. Most of the Mahayana Buddhist scriptures are also written in Sanskrit. There are several original Buddhist classics that were originally written in colloquial language, but were later gradually converted into Sanskrit, forming a special language - Buddhist Sanskrit or mixed Sanskrit.
Sanskrit research in Europe and the United States From the late 18th to the early 19th century, Sanskrit literary works attracted the attention of European scholars, and the study of Sanskrit using modern scientific methods began. On the one hand, it gave rise to one of the most important emerging disciplines in the 19th century: Indo-European comparative linguistics; on the other hand, it also contributed to a discipline that German scholars call the history of comparative literature. From the latter, comparative literature evolved, which is now almost popular all over the world.
Research on Sanskrit in Ancient China China has a history of translating Buddhist scriptures for more than 1,000 years. Of course, it pays great attention to the linguistic characteristics of Sanskrit, but systematic research is very lacking. Sanskrit grammar was neither translated nor written. A number of books on Sanskrit appeared in the Tang Dynasty, such as "Xitan Ziji" written by Zhiguang, "Sanskrit Thousand-Character Text" written by Yijing (Picture 2), and the complete collection of "Sanskrit Texts of the Tang Dynasty" (Picture 3) , "Sanskrit Miscellaneous Names" in the collection of ritual words, "Tang Sanskrit Dual Collection" in the Tang-Sanskrit Collection, etc. These books were written with the purpose of translating Buddhist scriptures. However, some of these books only study letters, while others imitate books such as the popular "Thousand-Character Classic" in China, which only list Sanskrit and Chinese words and do not talk about grammar at all. Yijing said in the preface of "The Thousand-Character Essay on Sanskrit": "They are not the most important characters for the current journey, but if you learn them, you will be able to understand the rest of the language, which is different from the old Thousand-Character Essay. If you also read the Sanskrit text at the same time, one or two It can be translated during the year. "However, this is difficult to do. Later, there were some books, such as "Translation of Sanskrit", "Collection of Translation Names", etc., which were just word translation books. It can be seen from "The Biography of Eminent Monks" that some Buddhist temples in the Tang Dynasty taught Sanskrit. As for what textbooks to use and how to teach, we don't know. There may be some records discussing Sanskrit grammar in some monk biographies and other books in the Tang Dynasty and before the Tang Dynasty, such as "The Biography of Master Sanzang of Dasi'en Temple in the Tang Dynasty", but the records are almost limited to noun changes.
Edit the current situation of Sanskrit in this paragraph
Sanskrit is not extinct in India and Nepal. Sanskrit and Sanskrit are one of the 23 official scripts and official languages ??in India today. Until the 20th century Sanskrit was still one of the official languages ??of Nepal at the beginning of the century. Sanskrit and Sanskrit are the communication languages ??of senior monks in the "Buddhist community" and "Hindu community" in India and Nepal. There are several newspapers and magazines published in Sanskrit in India. The 1991 Indian Census As a result, the number of people who spoke Sanskrit as their mother tongue was 49,736, and the 1961 Indian Census found that there were 194,433 people who spoke Sanskrit as their second language.
Edit this paragraph about myths and legends about Sanskrit letters
The Devanagari alphabet, because it has a long history of spelling Sanskrit, is called the Sanskrit alphabet by people around the world. The Devanagari alphabet is derived from Indian Buddhism The world and internationally recognized standard alphabet for writing Sanskrit. Devagna, Sanskrit is Devanagri, which literally translates to celestial city. Why is it called celestial city? Because according to the Indian point of view, the Sanskrit alphabet was created by the god "Brahma", which is commonly known as "Erawan Buddha" or "Great Brahma" by the Chinese. The Sanskrit alphabet is the text used by the gods in the sky. Each letter in the Sanskrit alphabet represents a source of power. People in India often meditate on Sanskrit letters when practicing "yoga". Chinese Sanskrit expert "Qian Wenzhong" even copied the "Heart Sutra" in Sanskrit. When reciting the Buddhist "mantra", it is necessary to pronounce it correctly, because the spelling and pronunciation of Sanskrit words are absolutely regular. The mantra spelled with Sanskrit letters can not only be spoken and written, but also maintain the pure Sanskrit pronunciation of the mantra, so use Sanskrit Alphabet spelling mantra is the best choice for those who recite the mantra. In the history of Indian writing, the writing format created by Brahma is that there are no spaces between words. Therefore, in ancient times, when writing Sanskrit and copying Indian sacred "Vedas" and other documents , there are no spaces between words. Until modern times, there were no spaces between words in orthodox "Sanskrit" and "Hindi" words. Since the modern Western writing format was introduced to India, India It began to imitate the Western format, and words were separated by spaces. This destroyed the writing format created by Brahma and weakened the power of Sanskrit letters to a certain extent. The picture on the right shows Sanskrit scholar Qian Wenzhong hand-copied the Sanskrit "Maha Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra" to accumulate merit.
Edit this paragraph of Sanskrit letters and spelling rules
Sanskrit began to use Devanagari letters from the 12th century. Each consonant letter contains a fixed a sound, and the consonants are spelled with other vowels. When writing, write the vowel symbols before, after, above or below the letters.
Use symbols when expressing pure consonants, nasal sounds or expiratory sounds.
Use separate vowel letters when a vowel appears before a word.
There is a horizontal line at the top of each Sanskrit letter to connect the letters together when spelling.
Edit the Sanskrit consonant string letters in this paragraph
If there are more than two consecutive pure consonants in Sanskrit, use half a consonant letter or a part of the consonant letter to combine them closely Together, they form consonant string letters. The number of consonants in a consonant string letter is two, starting from two and ending with five. Consonant string letters can generally identify the consonants contained in them, but some consonant string letters are difficult to identify, so they must be memorized. Sanskrit 1** *There are more than a thousand consonant string letters, and consonant string letters are the main difficulty in learning Sanskrit spelling.
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