Sanskrit
All roads and languages lead to the ultimate reality of Brahmin.
Why Learn Sanskrit
10 Reasons Why You Should Learn Sanskrit
My Top Reasons:
- Programming, it's object-oriented Similarities Between Sanskrit and Programming Languages
- A healing therapeutic reason.
- The way it exhibits Vedic or Eastern belief systems and their philosophies, linguistics and religions.
Top Reason
"The most practical value of learning Sanskrit lies in the fact that it trains the mind to think logically, brings clarity of expression, develops intellectual strength, and provides keen insight into the meanings of the words."
What is Sanskrit
In the strictest sense of the term, Sanskrit refers to a later "preserved" form of the language of the Vedas, a set of ancient compositions among the oldest known in any Indo-European language. The older form of the language, variously called either Vedic Sanskrit or just Vedic, was likely the native language of its users. But from the Vedas onward, the language started to lose many of its features. Then, around the 5th century BC, a grammarian known as Panini (pronounced "paa-ni-nee" in English) essentially "froze" the language [Astadhyayi], transforming it from the fluid native language of the ancient Indians to an unchanging and timeless language for intellectual expression, both in India and in the whole of South and Southeast Asia. Near this time, the last native speakers of Sanskrit had probably already died.
Proto-Indo-European language tree and Indigenous Aryans and Dravidians.
| Sanskrit | Greek | Latin | English |
|---|---|---|---|
| danta | odontos | dens | tooth |
| pitar | pater | pater | father |
| asti | esti | est | is |
Vedic Belief Systems and East to West
The Upanishads were the last written part of the Vedas and serve as the basis for Advaita Vedanta.
Guru Sri Ramakrishna taught Swami Vivekananda who represented Hindu at Chicago's Parliament of Religions in 1893.
I highly recommend watching Vivekananda | Full Movie | Life History | English | official
American Veda by Philip Goldberg is
"a thrilling examination of how deeply the ancient, vibrant philosophies of India have penetrated western culture"
Mark Twain
"India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me...When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night"
Sir William Jones
"The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists"
How Indian though influenced T.S. Eliot
Sri Swami Satchidananda's commentary from 1966
it may be interesting and useful to know how to fix a car or cook a meal or how atoms are split. But something that holds a more immediate and vital interest for thoughtful people is their own mind.
Additional Resources
http://www.learnsanskrit.org/grammar
The Sanskrit Channel on youtube.
Swami Sarvapriyananda & Vedanta New York
3 common mantras (vedic chants) in Sanskrit
Audio of original vedic chants 1
Audio of original vedic chants 2
Audio - Gaiea Sanskrit is adapted chants, great for soothing background music.
Sanskrit & Software Programming
Similarities Between Sanskrit and Programming Languages
Mechanism of Generating New Words in Sanskrit
Meditation / Yoga / Health
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the father of yoga
In contrast to its modern Western transplanted forms, Yoga essentially consists of meditative practices culminating in attaining a state of consciousness free from all modes of active or discursive thought, and of eventually attaining a state where consciousness is unaware of any object external to itself, that is, is only aware of its own nature as consciousness unmixed with any other object.
“Yoga is the progressive settling of the mind into silence."
"When the mind is settled, we are established in our own essential state, which is unbounded consciousness."
"Our essential nature is usually overshadowed by the activity of the mind”
Raja Yoga itself is an integral approach. It does not simply advocate meditation, but takes into consideration the entire life of a person. Its philosophy is scientific. It welcomes and in fact demands experimental verification by the student...Its goal is nothing less than the total transformation of a seemingly limited physical, mental and emotional person into a fully illumined, thoroughly harmonized and perfected being- from an individual with likes and dislikes, pains and pleasures, successues and failtures, to a sage of permanent peace, joy and selfless dedication to the entire creation...
Ashram is a spiritual hermitage or a monastery in Indian religions - Popular Ashrams in India
Ayurvedic diet and the 3 Doshas
Computational Linguistics
Proceedings of the 6th International Sanskrit Computational Linguistics Symposium
Computation Linguistics Sanskrit And Modern Indian Languages
"Panini writes the Ashtadhyayi like an algorithm with three types of statements—definitions, rules, and meta-rules."
The Astadhyayi is Panini's work on Sanskrit grammar.