“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.”
These remarkable words of
Sir William Jones (1746-1794)
are important as the 18th
century European enlightenment’s
view of an ancient language
of Asia.
He had founded Asiatic Society
in 1784. On 2nd February 1786,
during the third anniversary
discourse he expressed his
view of Sanskrit as a language
superior to Greek and Latin
Professor H H Wilson says:”It
is impossible to conceive
a language so beautifully
musical or so magnificently
grand.” Pictet says
:”The most beautiful
perhaps of all languages”
One of the most exciting applications
is the use of Sanskrit as
a natural language interface
for computers.
In 1984, an article was published
in AI (Artificial Intelligence)
magazine which stated that
Sanskrit is ideally suited
as an intermediate language
for machine translation. That
is if we have to translate,
Japanese into English, we
should first translate Japanese
into Sanskrit and then Sanskrit
to English.
Consider a sentence: Sam
reads a book If the words
are interchanged in this sentence,
the meaning changes completely.
A book reads Sam! The meaning
is changed completely.
“Book Sam reads a”
has no meaning! Whereas in
Sanskrit even if the words
are interchanged the meaning
will be the same!
Sanskrit words are self expressive
as they are all derived from
about 4000 basic roots. They
are usually a combination
of two or more roots. Once
the meanings of the roots
are known and a word is split
into its basic roots, the
meaning of the word becomes
derivable and thus is self
expressive. The structural,
grammatical and semantic properties
of Sanskrit make it a suitable
candidate for machine communication.
Dr Sen Gupta ex-vice Chancellor
of Burdwan University says:
“Another aspect of this
perfect language that should
appeal to the modernists,
is its wonderful science.
The five vargas or classes
in Sanskrit consonant –
ka, cha, ta, tha, pa –
sounds of which originate
from the throat down to the
lips have been most scientifically
defined, described and classified
which is a wonder achievement
according to all the linguists
of the world. You may be surprised
that the modern system of
stenography followed by Pittman
to his shorthand is indebted
to this science of language
embodied in Sanskrit.”
Sanskrit is described as the
Language of Gods, the language
of immortals and ‘amarvani’
or’ that does not perish’.
However one can not describe
all the glories of the wonder
that is Sanskrit.
S.Nagarajan is a vehicle
body engineer by profession.
He has written more than 1300
articles in 16 magazines and
published 18 books so far.
He is revealing Eastern Secret
Wisdom through T.V.Programmes,
magazine articles, seminars,
courses. His email address
is : snagarajans@gmail.com.
