Sanskrit and Other Indian Languages

Sanskrit and Other Indian Languages
Author: Śaśiprabhā Kumāra
Publisher:
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2007
Genre: Sanskrit language
ISBN:

This Book Features The Influence And Interaction Of Sanskrit With Prakrit, Hindi Apabhransha, Urdu, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Assamese, Punjabi, Kashmiri And Gujarati. It Modestly Attempts To Cover Various Aspects Of Mutual Reciprocation Between Sanskrit And Other Indian Languages.

Language of the Snakes

Language of the Snakes
Author: Andrew Ollett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520968816

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Language of the Snakes traces the history of the Prakrit language as a literary phenomenon, starting from its cultivation in courts of the Deccan in the first centuries of the common era. Although little studied today, Prakrit was an important vector of the kavya movement and once joined Sanskrit at the apex of classical Indian literary culture. The opposition between Prakrit and Sanskrit was at the center of an enduring “language order” in India, a set of ways of thinking about, naming, classifying, representing, and ultimately using languages. As a language of classical literature that nevertheless retained its associations with more demotic language practices, Prakrit both embodies major cultural tensions—between high and low, transregional and regional, cosmopolitan and vernacular—and provides a unique perspective onto the history of literature and culture in South Asia.

The Language of History

The Language of History
Author: Audrey Truschke
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0231551959

For over five hundred years, Muslim dynasties ruled parts of northern and central India, starting with the Ghurids in the 1190s through the fracturing of the Mughal Empire in the early eighteenth century. Scholars have long drawn upon works written in Persian and Arabic about this epoch, yet they have neglected the many histories that India’s learned elite wrote about Indo-Muslim rule in Sanskrit. These works span the Delhi Sultanate and Mughal Empire and discuss Muslim-led kingdoms in the Deccan and even as far south as Tamil Nadu. They constitute a major archive for understanding significant cultural and political changes that shaped early modern India and the views of those who lived through this crucial period. Audrey Truschke offers a groundbreaking analysis of these Sanskrit texts that sheds light on both historical Muslim political leaders on the subcontinent and how premodern Sanskrit intellectuals perceived the “Muslim Other.” She analyzes and theorizes how Sanskrit historians used the tools of their literary tradition to document Muslim governance and, later, as Muslims became an integral part of Indian cultural and political worlds, Indo-Muslim rule. Truschke demonstrates how this new archive lends insight into formulations and expressions of premodern political, social, cultural, and religious identities. By elaborating the languages and identities at play in premodern Sanskrit historical works, this book expands our historical and conceptual resources for understanding premodern South Asia, Indian intellectual history, and the impact of Muslim peoples on non-Muslim societies. At a time when exclusionary Hindu nationalism, which often grounds its claims on fabricated visions of India’s premodernity, dominates the Indian public sphere, The Language of History shows the complexity and diversity of the subcontinent’s past.

Indian Epigraphy

Indian Epigraphy
Author: Richard Salomon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 401
Release: 1998-12-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0195356667

This book provides a general survey of all the inscriptional material in the Sanskrit, Prakrit, and modern Indo-Aryan languages, including donative, dedicatory, panegyric, ritual, and literary texts carved on stone, metal, and other materials. This material comprises many thousands of documents dating from a range of more than two millennia, found in India and the neighboring nations of South Asia, as well as in many parts of Southeast, central, and East Asia. The inscriptions are written, for the most part, in the Brahmi and Kharosthi scripts and their many varieties and derivatives. Inscriptional materials are of particular importance for the study of the Indian world, constituting the most detailed and accurate historical and chronological data for nearly all aspects of traditional Indian culture in ancient and medieval times. Richard Salomon surveys the entire corpus of Indo-Aryan inscriptions in terms of their contents, languages, scripts, and historical and cultural significance. He presents this material in such a way as to make it useful not only to Indologists but also non-specialists, including persons working in other aspects of Indian or South Asian studies, as well as scholars of epigraphy and ancient history and culture in other regions of the world.

A Brief History of India

A Brief History of India
Author: Alain Daniélou
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2003-02-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1594777942

Daniélou's powerful rebuttal to the conventional view of India's history, which calls for a massive reevaluation of the history of humanity • Explores historical occurrences from each major time period starting with the first appearance of man 30,000 years ago • Couples the clarity and perspective of an outsider with the unique and specific knowledge of an insider • By the internationally recognized Hindu scholar and translator of The Complete Kama Sutra (200,000 copies sold) Alain Daniélou approaches the history of India from a new perspective--as a sympathetic outsider, yet one who understands the deepest workings of the culture. Because the history of India covers such a long span of time, rather than try to create an exhaustive chronology of dates and events, Daniélou instead focuses on enduring institutions that remain constant despite the ephemeral historical events that occur. His selections, synthesis, and narration create a thoroughly engaging and readable journey through time, with a level of detail and comprehensiveness that is truly a marvel. Because of the continuity of its civilization, its unique social system, and the tremendous diversity of cultures, races, languages, and religions that exist in its vast territory, India is like a history museum. Its diverse groups maintained their separate identities and never fully supplanted the culture and knowledge of their predecessors. Even today one may encounter in India primitive Stone Age people whose technology has remained at what is considered prehistoric levels. Thus Daniélou's examination of India reveals not only the diversity and historical events and trends of that country, but also the history of all mankind. Through Daniélou's history of India we learn from whence we came, what we have discovered over the years in the fields of science, arts, technology, social structures, religions, and philosophical concepts, and what the future may hold for us.

The Ashṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini

The Ashṭādhyāyī of Pāṇini
Author: Pāṇini
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
Total Pages: 878
Release: 1980
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9788120804098

Panini's Ashtadhyayi represents the first attempt in the history of the world to describe and analyse the components of a language on scientific lines. It has not only been universally acclaimed as the first and foremost specimen of Descriptive Grammar but has also been the chief source of inspiration for the linguist engaged in describing languages of different regions. To understand Sanskrit language, and especially that part of it which embodies the highest aspirations of ancient Aryan people, viz., the Brahmanas, Samhitas, Upanisads, it is absolutely necessary to have a complete knowledge of the grammar elaborated by Panini. Being a masterpiece of reasoning and artistic arrangement its study is bound to cultivate intellectual powers. Western scholars have described it as a wonderful specimen or a notable manifestation of Indian intelligence. This book is an English translation of Ashtadhyayi in two volumes and has won a unique position in the world of scholarship.

Proto-Indo-European Language

Proto-Indo-European Language
Author: Alvaro Hans
Publisher: Notion Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2017-11-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1948096331

The Indo-European (IE) is the largest among the family of languages in the world, with 445 languages spoken by around 46% of the global population. Linguists have been looking for the mother of IE family, fondly called Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language but their decades of search have not revealed the face of PIE till now. What others have been missing so far, the author of this book Alvaro Hans has found out—by walking side-wards, jumping walls and looking for ‘her’, in unusual places. This book is all about that exciting journey and a deciding destination.