Mother of All Languages (Part 2)

Dean Brown was a Sanskrit scholar, computer scientist, translated Upanishads and Yoga Sutra. He was a physicist of the highest order - making contributions to the development of the hydrogen bomb and designing the fuel element for the Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarines.

A friend of Albert Einstein, Prof. Dean Brown points out that most European language can be traced back to a root language that is also related to Sanskrit - the sacred language of the ancient Vedic Hindu religions of India.

It has always been believed that Sanskrit was created and then refined over many generations, typically over more than a thousand years, until it was considered complete and perfect in all respects.

As per the Indian tradition Sanskrit Language has no beginning and no ending.  It is eternal. Self-born God has created it.  It is divine.  It is everlasting.  It was first used in Vedas and thereafter it has been the means of expression in other fields.

Sanskrit can be divided into two periods- the Vedic Sanskrit period (assumed to have been spoken from approximately 1500-200 B.C.) and the Classical Sanskrit period (approximately 500 B.C. - 1000 A.D.).

The Vedic period is typified by an archaic style and religious subject matter. The Classical period is more secular in orientation and closer to the written style as it continued in the current era. While the Vedic period’s most important works are the four Vedas, the Classical period witnessed the Ramayana and Mahabharata.

A strong relationship is evident between the various forms of Sanskrit, the Middle Indo-Aryan "Prakrits" and the modern Indo-Aryan languages. The Prakrits are estimated to have been descended from Vedic Sanskrit and its other forms and there is evidence of a large degree of mutual interchange of terms, words and phrases between later forms of Sanskrit and that various Prakrits that evolved.

In 1786 Sir William Jones, the English Chief Justice in India, noticed similarities between Greek and Sanskrit. This observation led Jones to hypothesize that Greek and Sanskrit, as well as Latin, descended from a common linguistic ancestor, now lost, and further that this language was also the source of the Germanic and Celtic languages. Jones, who was already familiar with Greek and Latin, when came in contact with Sanskrit, remarked that Sanskrit is more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin and more refined than either.

As the Latin language evolved into the Romance languages in Europe, Sanskrit gave rise to a variety of dialects that in time became separate languages. In modern India there are a number of languages that descend from Sanskrit, such as Sindhi, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu. Romany, the dialect of the Gypsies in western Asia and Europe, is also descended from Sanskrit.

Sanskrit has also exhibited reciprocal influences with the Dravidian languages, with the influences of Sanskrit imprinted in Dravidian language Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

Today, Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language, in hymns and mantras. But the evidence of Sanskrit still exists underneath the national consciousness of modern India. Bengali and Marathi still retain a largely Sanskrit vocabulary base. The national anthem, "Jana Gana Mana" is composed in an extremely Sanskritized form of Bengali. The national song, "Vande Mataram" originally a poem taken from the book "Anandmath" written by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay is in pure Sanskrit like a tribute to the mother of all the Indian languages today.

The beauty of this language, and the innumerable works written in it cannot easily be summed up in one go. But perhaps it can be rightly said that Sanskrit was the origin of it all, and it continues to live and flourish even today.