So Why learn Sanskrit let’s first all establish what Sanskrit is when I first started to teach Sanskrit I know that many people thought that the main purpose of Sanskrit was for tattoos and indeed. we had many celebrities who would have Sanskrit tattoos on their arm often with very important messages It must be said.
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But no the Sanskrit language is very ancient. it is close to the source of all Indo-European languages. that’s to say all the languages which are in Europe and India or most of them. Is Sanskrit still spoken?
Many Sanskrit words have come directly into the English language for example the word ‘Mantra’ or ‘guru’ or ‘yoga’ or ‘pundit’ but there may be one or two Sanskrit words that have come directly into English which we’re not so aware of.
When was the last time for example that you overtook a juggernaut on the motorway? juggernaut comes from “Jagannatha” which means the lord of the world. I don’t have much cause to use shampoo but you may and it’s from the root chap which means to knead or massage as in the Indian head massage.
I hope you’ve not recently met a “Mugger” down a dark alley but you should be aware that the word Mugger comes from “Makara/मकर” which means a crocodile.
Well, the first person to point out the importance of the Sanskrit language for the West that is was a man called Sir William Jones in the 18th century. He was a judge he knew 28 languages and he made a very important statement we have to realize that people like Sir William Jones and his contemporaries were brought up in Greek and Latin and indeed Jones could speak Greek and Latin and could compose poems in Greek. History of Sanskrit language & Founder of sanskrit
but what he said about Sanskrit was this the “Sanskrit 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”
It’s this expression exquisitely refined that hits the nail on the head. This could be a translation of the word “Sanskrita” because this is precisely what Sanskrit means it’s an exquisitely refined language. It has a beautiful script it has a most beautiful sound. How is Sanskrit related to computer?
When I was a boy I used to play Scrabble with my family. This is where you take various letters you’re given random letters and you make up words of course we used to refer to a dictionary to check the English words that we had formed.
The particular dictionary that my mother had which was from 1925 took a lot of English words back to Sanskrit roots. I remember looking at the word stand and it said that this word stand was from star the Sanskrit root star and it gave rise to many different English words such as statue, state, still, constant, and station and it goes on and on so many English words from this one Sanskrit root star .
Now this wonderful structure that William Jones spoke of part of it has to do with how words are developed. you see every Sanskrit word starts with a root and then you get the prefixes and the suffixes added to the root.
What is sthita prajna?
we could take one example, the expression from the Sanskrit classic “The Bhagavad Gita” The sthita prajna is the person of steady wisdom so we have sthita. this is from the root “stha” with the affix “ta” so we get sthita which means steady, constant
Prajna is from the root “ja” to no gives us words like gnosis and also its opposite ignorance but the “ja” is the knowledge but “prasha” is excellent knowledge the “pra” has the sense of excellence so the “sthita Prajna” is the person of excellent steady wisdom.
Now here we have a spiritual practice and this is why I study Sanskrit. I love to investigate these words to find out their deep meaning and then that gives me a spiritual practice.Unraveling Pingala Contribution to Mathematics
so I can remember “sthita Prajna” and I can attempt to be “sthita Prajna” a person of steady wisdom so this is why I study Sanskrit.
You can also read 13 interesting facts about Sanskrit language