Why Sanskrit has strong links to European languages and what it learnt in India

Newer scholarship has shown that even though Sanskrit did indeed share a common ancestral homeland with European and Iranian languages, it had also borrowed quite a bit from pre-existing Indian languages in India.

In 1783, the colonial stage in Bengal saw the entrance of William Jones who was appointed judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William. In the next couple of years, Jones established himself as an authority on ancient Indian language and culture, a field of study that was hitherto untouched. His obsession with the linguistic past of the subcontinent, led him to propose that there existed an intimate relationship between Sanskrit and languages spoken in Europe.

Jones’ claim rested on the evidence of several Sanskrit words that had similarities with Greek and Latin. For instance, the Sanskrit word for ‘three’, that is ‘trayas’, is similar to the Latin ‘tres’ and the Greek ‘treis’. Similarly, the Sanskrit for ‘snake’, is ‘sarpa’, which shares a phonetic link with ‘serpens’ in Latin. As he studied the languages further, it became clearer that apart from Greek and Latin, Sanskrit words could be found in most other European languages. For instance, ‘mata’ or mother in Sanskrit, is ‘mutter’ in German. ‘Dan’ or ‘to give’ in Sanskrit is ‘donor’ in Spanish.

To Jones’ surprise, there were many such words which were clearly born out of the same root. The Sanskrit for ‘father’, ‘pitar’ for instance, has remarkable phonetic relations across European languages. It is ‘pater’ in Greek and Latin, ‘padre’ in Spanish, ‘pere’ in French, and ‘vader’ in German.

“Jones’ hypothesis was picked up enthusiastically by European linguists in the last decade of the 18th century. From then, till about the 1930s, linguist after linguist in Russia, Iran, India, and Europe actively sought out similar words, their interconnections and etymologies, compiled dictionaries and histories of grammar to see if Jones’ thesis could be endorsed or refuted,” says linguist G N Devy in a telephonic interview with Indianexpress.com.

English scholar Thomas Young coined the term, ‘Indo-European’ for this widely spread group of related languages. But where did these languages come from and how did they migrate over such a large expanse of geographical territory? The question of the ancestral homeland of the Indo-European languages has, for more than two centuries, intrigued scholars. The issue has also led to several upheavals in the modern world, and continues to shape theories of racial supremacy. Yet, newer scholarship has shown that even though Sanskrit did indeed share a common ancestral homeland with European and Iranian languages, it had also borrowed quite a bit from pre-existing Indian languages in India.

The great Indo-European migration

In the middle of the 19th century, linguistic scholarship entered a new phase wherein the Indo-European languages were assumed to be derived from a common ancestral language called ‘proto-Indo-European’ (PIE). The PIE was a theoretical construct, and we still do not know what this language was like or who precisely were its speakers.

With the advancement of linguistics and archaeology, by the middle of the 20th century, some theories were put forward to explain the spread of the Indo-European languages. First is the Kurgan hypothesis, formulated in the 1950s by a Lithuanian-American archaeologist, Marija Gimbutas. It claimed that in the fourth millennium BCE people living in the Pontic steppe, north of the Black sea, were most likely to be the speakers of PIE.

Anthropologist David Anthony, in his book ‘The horse, the wheel, the language’, claims the domestication of horses, and the invention of wheeled vehicles gave the speakers of PIE an advantage over other settled societies of Europe and Asia. “As the steppes dried and expanded, people tried to keep their animal herds fed by moving them frequently. They discovered that with a wagon you could keep moving indefinitely,” writes Anthony. “With a wagon full of tents and supplies, herders could take their herds out of the river and live for weeks or months out in the open steppes between the major rivers,” he adds.

Consequently, the Kurgan theory claimed that the PIE speakers expanded in several waves in the third millennium BCE. “They started moving because of their military superiority. Some of them came to India, some went to Iran and others to Europe. The branch that went to Iran became Indo-Iranian, and the one that came to India became Indo-Aryan,” says Devi.

Even though other theories have emerged that have suggested the homeland of the proto-Indo-European speakers in Armenian highlands and in Asia Minor, scholars have largely refuted these claims and the Pontic steppe continues to be the most widely accepted region from where the source of Sanskrit and European languages emerged.

It was this theory of Indo-European migration that became the basis of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan supremacy theory. In India, Hindutva ideologues have long held the view that the Indo-European language speakers or the Aryans spread out from the subcontinent elsewhere.

The multiple migrations to India

Even as Hindutva ideologues have remained resistant to the theory of Sanskrit being a product of migration, newer research from 2010, particularly those based on genetics, have further complicated the picture. These studies of ancient DNA have shown that the Indo-European migration was preceded by several other rounds of migration and the South Asian language and culture is a product of different kinds of external and internal influences.

In the hugely popular 2018 book ‘Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From’, journalist Tony Joseph claims there indeed was large-scale migration of Indo-European language speakers to South Asia in the second millenium BCE. However, he further goes on to explain that “population groups in India draw their genes from several migrations to India”. He writes: “There is no such thing as a ‘pure’ group, race or caste that has existed since ‘time immemorial’.”

Yet another book, ‘Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past’, written by American geneticist David Reich in 2018, reiterated how the modern man is a product of several rounds of mass migration. “The formation of South Asian populations parallels that of Europeans. In both cases, a mass migration of farmers from the Near East nine thousand years ago mixed with previously established hunter-gatherers, and a second migration from the European steppe after five thousand years ago brought a different kind of ancestry and probably Indo-European languages as well,” he writes.

Also read: ‘There are 600 potentially endangered languages in India… each dead language takes away a culture system’

“Sanskrit arrived in the subcontinent around 1800 BCE at a time when there were already pre-existing languages here. These pre-existing languages were fairly developed, capable of producing philosophy and poetry,” says Devy. Devy explains how ancient Sanskrit developed in India in collaboration with these pre-existing languages. A good example to mention here is the addition of the sound ‘ri’ to Sanskrit, that produces words such as ‘rishi’, ‘richa’ and ‘ritu’. “This sound is not present in Indo-Iranian languages. It is derived from the ancient mother of Assamese language that was already existing in India,” says Devy.

Yet another instance of Sanskrit borrowing from pre-existing languages in India is that of ‘sandhi’, or compound words. “Take the example of ‘nava’ and ‘uday’ it becomes ‘navyodaya’. This feature of compounding words, through which a phonetic change occurs in the original words, did not exist in the pre-Sanskrit version of Sanskrit. Neither will you see this feature in Greek, German or other European languages. Whether Sanskrit acquired it from an earlier version of Tamil or Pali is difficult to say. But it is clear that it did acquire this feature after coming to the Indian subcontinent,” explains Devy. He goes on to remark that these are gifts that pre-existing languages in India gave to Sanskrit.

Further reading:

Archaeology and language: The puzzle of Indo-European origins by Colin Renefrew

The horse, the wheel, the language by David Anthony

Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From by Tony Joseph

Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past by David Reich

 Source: Indian Express, 25/08/2020

Indian languages face threat of fossilisation, need revitalisation

India has now been a free country for 70-odd years. Over these decades, we have made progress in many spheres of activity but there is one area where things seem to be sharply deteriorating — the state of Indian languages. I am not merely referring to the 220-odd minor languages and dialects than we have lost since the 1960s but the condition of major languages with tens of millions of speakers. This is hardly the first time someone has raised this issue, but the usual thinking is that Indian languages are being hurt by mutual suspicion combined with the apathy of an English-speaking elite. However, there may now be an even bigger threat — fossilisation.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan is one of the most important figures in Hindi literature but his great grand-children are almost certainly more comfortable in English than in Hindi. This is neither a unique situation nor can it be blamed solely on lingering colonial attitudes in elite schools. Across the country, this is being experienced by rooted families who are proud of their linguistic heritage.

The professional usefulness of English too is not a credible explanation. Indians have long been comfortable with a link language that was different from what they used in daily life. Over the centuries, Sanskrit, Persian and English were used for government, commerce, legal documents, high culture and so on. Far from displacing local languages, they enriched them with new words, ideas and themes. This is why the greatest writers and poets in most Indian languages were themselves multilingual and happily borrowed from the link languages.

In my view, the current crisis in Indian languages comes from a set of interlinked factors that are holding them back from evolving with the times. The first problem is that school textbooks are hopelessly outdated. I have personally verified this for Bengali and Hindi, but also asked parents of children learning other languages.

In lower grades, textbooks will have a smattering of folktales, stories from the Panchatantra and the epics, the lives of folk-heroes and so on. These are acceptable as they are timeless; analogous to nursery rhymes and fairy tales in English. However, the rest of the material seems stuck somewhere between the 1930s and 1970s. A survey of the technology reflected in the stories is quite telling. Forget mobile phones and laptops, you will rarely find television sets and aircraft. It is still a world of steam engines and animal husbandry.

Matters do not improve in higher grades — a great deal of preaching about “good habits” and the need to help the poor. These may be worthy goals but why do Indian language classes need to be specifically burdened with them? There is simply no sense of fun in the material. This is no way to promote a language in a country where the young, including the poor, are so aspirational. Munshi Premchand’s Idgah may be a great story but, at the risk of offending his fans, it may no longer resonate with most school children.

The second major problem with Indian languages is that the output of innovative new literature has slowed drastically. Allowing for the odd exception, publishing is increasingly limited to literary novels aimed at winning government awards rather than engaging readers. Once there was a flourishing culture of writing science fiction, detective novels and travelogues in languages like Bengali but these have slowed to a trickle.

Less than a decade ago, pretentious literary writing was strangling Indian English publishing till the arrival of Chetan Bhagat, Amish Tripathi and Devdutt Patnaik. Whatever one thinks of their writing styles, there is no denying that they opened up the field. A similar revolution in popular writing needs to happen in other languages. The steadily improving editorial quality of Indian language newspapers shows that there is demand for good writing.

The third related problem is a dearth of translations into Indian languages. A Tamil or Marathi writer will be pleased that his/her novel has been translated into a foreign language. While this may be good for the personal reputation of the writer, it does little for Tamil or Marathi. A language is a medium for transmitting ideas and its repertoire grows as it absorbs material from elsewhere. The success of English lies in the fact that we can read Homer and Kapuscinski without having to learn ancient Greek or Polish. Therefore, inward translation is more important than outward translation. For several languages, translation is an area where government support may be critical to creating a minimum ecosystem of material.

Popular culture depicted in cinema and television are today the most important factors that have kept Indian languages alive. However, these will not be enough in the long run if they do not keep evolving by generating and absorbing new material that fires the imagination of successive generations.

Source: Hindustan Times, 6-10-2016

Evolution of English as She is Spoke





Regional variety in how the language is spoken gets increasing acceptance

Thanks to the pukka accents of the British Raj, many Indians imagine the cut-glass enunciation of Received Pronunciation to be the default tone in Britain, too, with Eliza Doolittle's charming Cockney cadence providing a counterpoint.That, of course, is not true, with even Queen Elizabeth II's regal diction having changed perceptibly during nine decades of speaking Her English. Indeed, her grandchildren's accents -noticeably less posh than their older relative's -reflect how spoken English is changing even in its homeland. So, the news that the Estuary Accent -spoken in London and the South East -is swamping regional variations and colloquialisms is not surprising at all. Given that linguistic dissimilitudes are what traditionally perpetuated class and regional hierarchies in Britain, a single overweening accent may be just what the hour demands.Britons are at least opting for a form of English spoken on its side of the Atlantic and not the other -or even from populous anglophone lands east of the Suez. In India, luckily , the various accents of English mostly denote nothing more divergent than region. But trans-Atlantic rhoticity has crept in and even the once-hallowed tones of All India Radio newsreaders have evolved into a more indigenous patois, signalling a new era of Angrezi here too.

Source: Economic Times, 30-05-2016

GLOBAL CITIZEN - Now, Students Face Language Barrier in UK

With the UK government planning to introduce tougher English language tests for non-European Union students, many from India who are looking at UK as a destination for higher studies will be affected. In fact, this new move by the British government is likely to lead to a further fall in the number of Indians going to the UK for higher studies.According to a report in The Sunday Times, UK's Home Office officials recently held a workshop with representatives of universities to discuss the new system to introduce tougher English language standards for foreign students. The tests are, in fact, expected to be tougher than those being used in Australia and America. Top universities in the UK are worried over the hard stand being taken by home secretary Theresa May on limiting the number of international students.
“I think that these restrictions are economically illiterate and will damage the UK's global influence. It will come as a great blow to the UK's universities who have always advocated actually lessening the restrictions.Our university chiefs are already worried at the tarnished reputation and the loss of talent that UK universities and research faculties are suffering as a result of Theresa May's policies regarding international students,“ said UK entrepreneur Karan Bilimoria, who was recently appointed president of the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA).
He said it was strange that the UK government aims to increase restrictions on international students thereby making it tougher to enter the UK in order to study . “Our economy thrives on building international connections and taking in talent from throughout the world, and the higher education sector plays a key role in this. It is one of Britain's strongest forms of soft power. In other ways, the UK is inviting young international talent, such as through the UK Trade & Investment's Sirius programme, yet tighter rules on student visas run directly contrary to this.“
Earlier this year, the UK government changed rules related to Tier-4 student visas to prevent non-EU foreign students at publicly funded colleges from working and banning such college students from extending their Tier-4 visas in UK. Further, col lege students have also been banned from switching visas to Tiers 2 and Tier 5 in the UK and are now required to apply from outside the country .
“Stricter English language rules will further deter international students from coming here to study.International students will feel unwelcome in this country and the scrapping of the two-year post-study visa has already had very damaging effects. I have long campaigned for international students to be excluded from net migration figures and that the government should make more exceptions to allow international students to remain in the country , but we have not seen this happen,“ Bilimoria added.
The new rules are also causing concern among some sections within the government as the number of Indian students is falling every year. Last year, there were 12,000 student visas granted to Indians by the UK High Commission.
“Stricter student visa rules are potentially damaging, given that international students contribute massively to the system and financially prop up most universities. The UK needs to have a system in place where the brightest and best international students can come and flourish,“ said Navinder Kalsi, director of UK-based consultancy GB Immigration.
There are fears among educationists and experts that for many students from India, UK is becoming an unviable option to study with other countries such as Canada and Australia becoming more attractive.
“Indian students make up the second-largest portion of international students in the UK and the decreasing numbers represent a huge loss to UK universities, who rely on foreign talent that benefits UK universities in so many ways. The UK has extensive ties with India ­ we have India's largest share of foreign direct investment ­ and we want future generations of Indians to partner with the UK,“ said Bilimoria.

Source: Economic Times, 19-10-2015

English is a language of opportunity

It is a heartening sign that enrolment in English-medium schools has grown 89% over the past five years. It is also a sign of progress — and a bit ironical — that enrolment in English-medium schools of Bihar and UP has gone up by 4,700% and 1,000%, respectively, because these two states have been the hotbed of opposition to English. The advantages of being literate in English will certainly be apparent in the coming years. Among the states with the highest proportion of English-medium schools, Jammu and Kashmir tops the list, at 99.9%, with the second-highest being Kerala at 49%.

All these years, low enrolment in English-medium schools was largely bound up with political resistance to the language, which has been a post-Independence phenomenon. This gathered steam when vernaculars also became a medium of instruction. Earlier all the examinations, Class 10 upwards, were conducted, by and large, in English. Hostility to English cottoned on among a section of the middle-classes and got entangled with regional aspirations. For those at the lowest end of the social scale, the issue did not matter anyway because they were (and, in many places, still are) deprived of all kinds of education. But four years ago articulate sections of the Dalit community built a temple in UP dedicated to English learning. They also celebrate the birth anniversary of Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose educational minutes in 1835 set the stage for the growth of English education in India.

The more the times roll, the more it becomes obvious that there is no alternative to English education in whichever field one joins. This is true for more than reason. First, books are in English. Second, the medium of instruction in any institution worth the name is English. Third, as mobility grows, a person without a working knowledge of English will find herself or himself thrown in at the deep end if she or he moves to another part of the country. English is here to stay. Depriving some people of its advantages can only result in creating deep social divisions. However, all this is not to say vernaculars should get short shrift.

Source: Hindustan Times, 29-09-2015

No. of kids studying in English doubles in 5 yrs

Rema Nagarajan





Fastest Growing Medium; Biggest Rise In Bihar, UP

Politicians might try hard to push Hindi, but people are voting with their feet, opting to put their children in English-medium schools.While overall enrolment in schools went up by just 7.5% between 2008-09 and 2013-14, and enrolment in Hindi-medium schools went up by about 25%, enrolment in English-medium schools almost doubled in the same period.While the number of English-medium school students is still dwarfed by those in Hindi-medium, the growth in the English numbers is significant, jumping from over 1.5 crore in 2008-09 to 2.9 crore by 2013-14. In the same period, the Hindi numbers went up from 8.3 crore to 10.4 crore.
Interestingly , the highest growth in English-medium enrolment was in the Hindi speaking states. It was highest in Bihar, where it grew 47 times or 4,700% while Hindimedium enrolment grew by just 18%. In Uttar Pradesh, English-medium enrolment grew 10 times or by over 1,000% compared to just 11% in Hindi-medium enrolment. In other Hindi speaking states too English-medi um enrolment grew massively -525% in Haryana, 458% in Jharkhand, 209% in Rajasthan and so on.
These trends are based on data received from 14.5 lakh schools spread over 662 districts across 35 states and Union territories. English is the fastest growing medium of education in India, according to data received from states, which has been put together by the District Information System for Education (DISE) of the National University of Education Planning and Administration under the human resource development ministry .
Since 2010-11, DISE has been covering unrecognised schools and recognised and unrecognised madrassas, which in 2013 14 comprised 2.4% of all schools. While there is some underreporting of enrolment by medium of instruction, as acknowledged by DISE, the undercounting is not big enough to affect the overall picture.
UP and Bihar make up 53% of the students enrolled in Hindi medium schools. Add Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, and these four states account for more than three-quarters of Hindi-medium students, close to eight crore. If the other three Hindi speaking states -Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Haryana -are added, it would account for 90% of those in Hindimedium, leaving about one crore children in Hindi-medium schools in the rest of the country . Of the 2.9 crore English-medium students, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir, in that order, make up over 54%.
The highest proportion of English-medium enrolment was in Jammu and Kashmir, where almost all students are in English-medium schools.
For the full report, log on to http:www.timesofindia.com

Source: Times of India, 28-09-2015

Sanskrit and English: there’s no competition

India’s official language numbers show that English is India’s second most popular language

Does India really have more Sanskrit-speakers than English-speakers? No, absolutely not.

Anecdotally, we’d all agree that the last ten years are likely to have seen a huge jump in the number of English-speakers; English is now the second biggest language of instruction in primary schools after Hindi.

So India’s official language numbers, over ten years old now, are almost certainly an underestimation of the number of English speakers. Even so, there is little comparison between the number of English and Sanskrit speakers.

In terms of primary languages – what we commonly understand as the “mother tongue” – both English and Sanskrit were miles away from India’s Top 10. Of the123 primary languages counted by the Census – 23 scheduled and 100 non-scheduled – Sanskrit was fifth from bottom in terms of primary languages spoken, with only Persian, Chakhesang, Afghani/ Kabuli and Simte less commonly spoken. English, meanwhile, was the 45th most commonly spoken primary language.

But then, there are those who speak a language as their second or third language, India being famously bi- and tri-lingual, and that’s where English really comes into its own. With over 125 million people who speak it to some extent, English came second only to Hindi, which had over 550 million speakers in 2001.

Aug 06 2014 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)

Do not Put English Farther out of Reach





The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) may not be the French Foreign Legion, but it still requires its members to be equipped with specific skills. Being proficient in English happens to be one of them. English is a link language that connects not every Indian, but every opinion-making, decisiontaking Indian. To disregard this, is to disregard reality . The civil servant, well versed as he may -and should -be in any other Indian language, must be proficient in this language, rather than be able to simply comprehend it, particularly in these globalising times.For the government to make concessions to the populist demand to scrap the English comprehension portion of the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) preliminary examination is doubly unfortunate in this regard. Not only does this endorse the erroneous notion that one doesn't require English to become a civil servant, but it also drives the “English-non-English“ wedge even deeper. And the consequences of this will be felt beyond the UPSC exam.
But the anti-English agitators have a point. English is a language of power, status and class. A person proficient in English is far more likely to negotiate the world than someone who is not. This is apparent in the huge demand for English language learning among young job-seekers and job-enhancers across India irrespective of their socioeconomic backgrounds. It is a travesty that non-English languages have lagged as a vehicle for quality education. And the quality of English teaching in state-funded schools is abysmal. The government should ensure that quality English is available to all. And it should abstain from compromises that would erode the quality and coherence of governance in the country.