Sanskritisation (language)

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For the sociological process in which lower-caste people imitate upper-caste customs, see Sanskritisation (sociology).
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 "Hindu-isation" 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]

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 respectively.[9][10][11] Support for Sanskritisation in South Asia runs highest among Brahmins and Hindu nationalists.[12]

Sanskritization of the names of people and places is also commonplace in India, except in many areas like Tamil Nadu.[13][14][15]

History[edit]

Ancient era[edit]

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.[16] 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.[17] 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.[18]

Modern era[edit]

See also: Hindi–Urdu controversy and Hindi § Sanskrit

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;[19] 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,[20] with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and the Sanskrit-associated Devanagari script for writing Hindi.[21][22][23]

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,[24] considering it to be easier for Indians to learn,[25] and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan.[26] 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.[27][22][28] 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.[29]

Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be,[30][31] with Hindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi,[32] opposing Urdu in part because it is a Muslim-associated language,[33] and some boycotting the Hindi-language Bollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English in its movies.[34][35]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Ramaswamy, Sumathi (1999). "Sanskrit for the Nation". Modern Asian Studies. 33 (2): 339–381. doi:10.1017/S0026749X99003273. ISSN 1469-8099. S2CID 145240374.
  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.
  7. ^ Bolton, Kingsley; Kachru, Braj B. (2006). World Englishes: Critical Concepts in Linguistics. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-31507-4.
  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. ^ Tull, Herman (2011). "Language in South Asia. Edited by Braj B. Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, and S. N. Sridhar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. xxiv, 608 pp. $120.99 (cloth); $50.00 (paper)". The Journal of Asian Studies. 70 (1): 279–280. doi:10.1017/s002191181000361x. ISSN 0021-9118. S2CID 163424137.
  10. ^ Kachru, Yamuna (2006). "Mixers lyricing in Hinglish: blending and fusion in Indian pop culture". World Englishes. 25 (2): 223–233. doi:10.1111/j.0083-2919.2006.00461.x. ISSN 0883-2919.
  11. ^ Kachru, Braj B. (1994). "Englishization and contact linguistics". World Englishes. 13 (2): 135–154. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.1994.tb00303.x. ISSN 0883-2919.
  12. ^ Fishman, Joshua A.; García, Ofelia (2010). Handbook of Language & Ethnic Identity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-539245-6.
  13. ^ Staal, J. F. (1963). "Sanskrit and Sanskritization". The Journal of Asian Studies. 22 (3): 261–275. doi:10.2307/2050186. ISSN 0021-9118. JSTOR 2050186.
  14. ^ Shah, A.M. (2005). "Sanskritisation Revisited". Sociological Bulletin. 54 (2): 238–249. ISSN 0038-0229. JSTOR 23620499.
  15. ^ Kapur, Anu (2019), "Sanskritization of place names", Mapping Place Names of India, Routledge India, pp. 78–87, doi:10.4324/9780429057687-4, ISBN 978-0-429-05768-7, retrieved 2023-10-30
  16. ^ Pollock 2001.
  17. ^ Oberlies 2003, pp. xxvii–xxix.
  18. ^ Edgerton, Franklin (2004). Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit grammar and dictionary. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. ISBN 978-81-215-1110-0.
  19. ^ Kachru, Braj B.; Kachru, Yamuna; Sridhar, S. N. (2008-03-27). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-46550-2.
  20. ^ Bhatia, Tej K. (1987). A History of the Hindi Grammatical Tradition: Hindi-Hindustani Grammar, Grammarrians, History and Problems. BRILL. ISBN 978-90-04-07924-3.
  21. ^ Rai, Alok (1995). "Making a Difference: Hindi, 1880-1930". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  22. ^ a b Ganpat Teli, M.Phil. "Revisiting the Making of Hindi as a ‘National’ Language", M.Phil.
  23. ^ Das, Sisir Kumar (1978), Standardisation of Hindi and Bengali, Pacific Linguistics, retrieved 2023-10-29
  24. ^ Ludden, David (1996). Contesting the Nation: Religion, Community, and the Politics of Democracy in India. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1585-4.
  25. ^ McCartney, Patrick. "The sanitising power of spoken Sanskrit". Himāl South Asian (2014).
  26. ^ Nijhawan, Shobna (2018-07-03). "Defining the Indefinable: Delimiting Hindi". South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies. 41 (3): 702–704. doi:10.1080/00856401.2018.1489763. ISSN 0085-6401. S2CID 149573096.
  27. ^ Hock, Hans Henrich (1992). "A note on English and modern Sanskrit". World Englishes. 11 (2–3): 163–171. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.1992.tb00061.x. ISSN 0883-2919.
  28. ^ D'Souza, Jean (1987). "English in India's language modernization". World Englishes. 6 (1): 63–70. doi:10.1111/j.1467-971X.1987.tb00177.x. ISSN 0883-2919.
  29. ^ "Crowd-sourced Technical Texts can help Revitalise Indian Languages". ResearchGate.
  30. ^ "India's War on Urdu". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
  31. ^ Yamuna Kachru. "Corpus planning for modernization: Sanskritization and Englishization of Hindi". Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 1989, pages 153-164
  32. ^ Sau, Ranjit (1999). "From Sanskritisation to Hindi-Isation and Hindu-Isation: The 13th Lok Sabha". Economic and Political Weekly. 34 (42/43): 2979–2983. ISSN 0012-9976. JSTOR 4408522.
  33. ^ "The curious case of Urdu". Frontline. 2022-05-16. Retrieved 2023-10-29.
  34. ^ "Is the Hindu Nationalist 'Boycott Bollywood' Campaign Impacting the Box Office?". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
  35. ^ "The siege of Bollywood". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2023-10-27.
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