Has Sanskrit Become An Ornamental Language?

By Sumit Paul, New Age Islam 11 August 2025 Saturday, August 9 was commemorated as World Sanskrit Day, also known as Vishva-Samskrita-Divas. It's an annual event focused around the ancient Indian language Sanskrit that incorporates lectures about the language and is aimed to promote its revival and maintenance. It is celebrated on Shraavana Poornima, i.e, the full moon day of the Shraavana month in the Hindu calendar. This generally corresponds with the month of August in the Gregorian calendar. The Sanskrit organisation Samskrita Bharati is involved in promoting the day. August 9 was World Sanskrit Day. A shorter version of this article appeared on the edit page of The Free Press Journal a few months ago. ----- Shraavana Poornima, i.e. Raksha Bandhan, is considered to be the festival of remembrance and worship of sages and worship for their dedication. In Vedic literature it was called Shravani. On this day, before the study of Vedas in Gurukulas, Yajñopavita - sacred thread - is worn. This ceremony is called Upanayana or Upakarma Sanskar. The old Yajñopavita is also changed on this day. Priests also tie Raksha-Sutras to the hosts. Rishis are considered the original source of Sanskrit literature, hence Shravani Purnima is celebrated as Rishi Parv and World Sanskrit Day. This day was chosen because the academic year in ancient India started on this day. On this day, students started the study of Vedas in the Gurukulas. From the full moon of the month of Paush to the full moon of the month of Shraavana, the studies are stopped to learn other Vedantic scriptures. This tradition is still unbroken in modern Vedic schools. The World Vedic Day is on 11 July. Agreed, Sanskrit is a great language, but like Latin, it's a moribund language if not completely dead. Today, it's anything but a functional tongue. No one converses in it just like no one speaks Latin in Europe. Linguists and philologists unanimously believe that a language survives because of its functional and conversational relevance. When no one uses a language in everyday life, its utility wanes and it becomes a relic of the past to be studied by the researchers, linguists and experts in the sphere of archaic languages. In these times of fervid nationalism and resurgent Hinduism, the Hindutva forces are trying to impose Sanskrit on young and reluctant students. Since our mythological works are mostly in Sanskrit, it (Sanskrit) is being viewed as India's religious language spoken by the gods of Hinduism (Dev Bhasha in Sanskrit). This is a flawed perception; as faulty as Muslims believing that Arabic is spoken in paradise because Al-Furqaan (the Quran) is written in Arabic. We've an exaggerated and over-respectful attitude towards Sanskrit. All languages must be respected but none should be forced upon those who're not disposed to learn it. A widespread myth among the Indians that Sanskrit is the most scientific language and is tailor made for computers and all software has made its study compulsory at school level. Sanskrit, like any other classical languages, is rich but not flawless. No language is perfect. You can't find a single language, old or modern, accommodating all the sounds. Does Sanskrit have typical guttural and fricative sounds of Qaaf/Ain/Ghain/Zuad of Arabic and Persian? Likewise, the Arabic alphabet doesn't have a letter specifically for the "p" sound; the closest sound in Arabic would be "b", so many Arabic speakers might pronounce a "p" as a "b" when speaking English. Our nebulous understanding of Sanskrit as a spoken language is also responsible for its unnecessary perpetuation at school level. This needs elaboration. When B R Chopra's 'Mahabharat' became famous thirty-seven years ago, people started thinking that it was Sanskrit because the serial's Hindi was overloaded with Sanskrit words, Sorry, it was not Sanskrit, but Sanskritnishth (Sanskrit-based) Hindi. This erroneous notion still persists. Teachers teaching Sanskrit at schools, teach it (Sanskrit) in Hindi with a generous sprinkling of Sanskrit words because they themselves don't know how to speak it correctly. Students opt for it because it's a 'scoring' subject. They get 100 out of 100 in Sanskrit. This is humiliating and an unwitting insult to a great language. Those who're genuinely interested in learning Sanskrit must be encouraged but those who've no interest in it can be exempted from learning it. One ought to have a feel for a language. Otherwise also, those who teach Sanskrit are themselves in need of learning it anew. Sanskrit also needs to shed its condescendingly classist and Brahminical image. Remember, it's just a language. Lastly, there's a misconception in India that all Indian languages originated from Sanskrit. We must disabuse ourselves of this deep-seated wrong belief. What about Tamil? From the syntax and context angles, Tamil is vastly different from Sanskrit. It's also older than Sanskrit. While both Tamil and Sanskrit are ancient languages with rich histories, Tamil is generally considered to have older documented evidence and roots than Sanskrit, with Tamil epigraphy dating back to 300 BCE, while the earliest Sanskrit epigraphy is dated to 100 AD. Scholars of Jainism knowing Prakrit have serious reservations regarding the claim that Prakrit is a tributary of Sanskrit. They believe, with incontrovertible pieces of evidence and references, that Prakrit birthed Sanskrit and not the other way around. There's no end to it. It's, therefore, time we studied languages from a purely linguistic point of view and also with genuine interest and intention. Politicization of any tongue will not lead us anywhere. All said and done, there's no denying the fact that Sanskrit is arguably the most flexible language among all the classical and modern tongues. Let us look at this exceptionally beautiful example, based on a well-known problem in mathematics. The challenge is to place a knight in one corner of a chessboard and to cover all 64 squares using the knight, without landing on any square twice. The Swiss mathematician Euler found the answer to this problem in the 18th century. This is why this is known as Euler’s Chess and Knight problem. However, in India, a manuscript titled Pādukā Sahasram, written by a Tamil saint Shri Vedanta Desikan, has been discovered in which we find a thousand verses written in praise of the wooden sandals of Lord Rama. Here are two verses from Pādukā Sahasram: स्थिरागसां सदाराध्या विहताकततामता | सत्पादुके सारासा मा रङ्गराजपदन्नय || sthirāgasāṃ sadārādhyā vihatākatatāmatā | satpāduke sārāsā mā raṅgarājapadannaya || स्थिता समयराजत्पा गतरामादके गवि | दुरंहसां सन्नतादा साध्यातापकरासरा || sthitā samayarājatpā gatarāmādake gavi | duraṃhasāṃ sannatādā sādhyātāpakarāsarā || As we can see, the syllables of the first verse are written out in the squares on a chessboard. Then, beginning with the first syllable, if the second verse is read among the letters of the first verse, one finds that the letters follow the movement of the knight on the chessboard, giving simultaneously a solution to the Chess and Knight problem. In fact, the writing of the verses in this fashion is far more difficult than the original Chess and Knight problem. One is even more amazed when one realises that the Indian saint lived 500 years before Euler, and the manuscript was written in the 13th century. But from the perspectives of phonetics and philology, Sanskrit is still not a phonetically smooth and spontaneous language and this is not a subjective opinion. Despite having less fricative and guttural words (like those of Persian and Arabic), Sanskrit still creates problems in enunciation. It suffers from constant Tadasyam Samasya (Tongue-twisting; described by Bhattoji Diksita in his Siddhant Kaumudi, written in the first half of the 17th-century; Tadasya: archaic synonym for Jhiwa in Sanskrit or Jeebh as Tadbhav in Hindi). These conversational wrinkles and creases keep cropping up every now and then. Not all teachers of Sanskrit are properly trained to master these sounds. Nor can they teach how to enunciate those inflections. So, young students learning Sanskrit are forever at sea. These aspects, if you don't want to call them limitations, discourage students from opting for Sanskrit. It, therefore, remains limited to a select few scholars. Agreed, India has scholars of Sanskrit, you don't meet them frequently. Seldom, if ever, you bump into a scholar of Sanskrit in India. Moreover, when no language is written and spoken properly, how can you expect that Sanskrit will flourish and become a conversational tongue? Sorry, this will remain a pipedream. ----- A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Sumit Paul is a researcher in comparative religions, with special reference to Islam. He has contributed articles to the world's premier publications in several languages including Persian. URl: https://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/sanskrit-ornamental-language/d/136456 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism