page_title: Nirukta
hierarchical_section_title: Nirukta
caption_attribution_description: English: The Vedas are scriptures of Hinduism. They consist of four layers of texts: samhita, brahmana, aranyaka and upanishads. They also have six Vedangas such as above, and appendices to these main layer of Vedic texts. The Vedangas are dated to between 1000 to 600 BCE. Each Vedic layer consists of books. The corpus of Vedic texts, as well all post-Vedic texts, are generally accepted to have been orally transmitted from generation to generation for over a millennium, till about the start of the common era. In Sanskrit, they were written in many Indic scripts. The scripture was written on palm leaf manuscripts, copied for preservation in Hindu temples and monasteries. Later paper and cloth versions were produced, where the page size was similar to the heritage palm leaf-like long pages. The above image is from Yaska's Nirukta, a text on etymology of Sanskrit words. It is the systematic creation of a glossary and it discusses how to understand archaic, uncommon words in the Vedic literature. This manuscript has been digitized under the eGangotri philanthropic initiative by the eGangotri Digital Preservation Trust. The upper left corner of the cover page has a 3x3 magic square, where all rows, columns and diagonal add up to 20 (in Indic numeral script). Such mathematical features and artistic doodles elsewhere are relatively common in ancient Hindu manuscripts. The bolded letters are the text, the light diacritics, any colored marks, light dashes, characters and dots over or under the letters are coded markers found in Sanskrit manuscripts for readers and reciters, i.e. dandas separate the words/sentences/verses, avagrahas for various compounds, circles for the galitas, and the particle iti. Manuscript pages in the Hindu traditions (as well as Buddhist and Jain traditions) may also contain colored or light texts on the margins, which may be either corrections to a scribal errors or they are commentaries of the owner or some scholar / citations / reference-by-incorporation of another ancient Hindu scholar's work. Text language: Sanskrit Script: Devanagari The photo above is of a 2D artwork of a text that is over 2,000 years old, from a manuscript that was produced before the 19th-century. Therefore Wikimedia Commons PD-Art licensing guidelines apply. Any rights I have as a photographer is herewith donated to wikimedia commons under CC 4.0 license.
context_page_description: Nirukta means "explained, interpreted" and refers to one of the six ancient Vedangas, or ancillary science connected with the Vedas – the scriptures of Hinduism. Nirukta covers etymology, and is the study concerned with correct interpretation of Sanskrit words in the Vedas. The critical edition by Lakshman Sarup places it between 700 and 500 BCE, i.e., before the Buddha.
  Nirukta is the systematic creation of a glossary and it discusses how to understand archaic, uncommon words. The field grew probably because almost a quarter of words in the Vedic texts composed in the 2nd-millennium BCE appear just once.
  The study of Nirukta can be traced to the last centuries of the 2nd-millennium BCE Brahmanas layer of the Vedic texts. The most celebrated scholar of this field is Yāska, who wrote the Nighantu, the first book on this field. His text is also referred simply as Nirukta. The study of Nirukta has been closely related to the ancillary Vedic science of Vyakarana, but they have a different focus.
context_section_description: Nirukta (Sanskrit: निरुक्त, IPA: [nɪɽʊktɐ]) means "explained, interpreted" and refers to one of the six ancient Vedangas, or ancillary science connected with the Vedas – the scriptures of Hinduism. Nirukta covers etymology, and is the study concerned with correct interpretation of Sanskrit words in the Vedas. The critical edition by Lakshman Sarup places it between 700 and 500 BCE, i.e., before the Buddha. 
  Nirukta is the systematic creation of a glossary and it discusses how to understand archaic, uncommon words. The field grew probably because almost a quarter of words in the Vedic texts composed in the 2nd-millennium BCE appear just once.
  
  The study of Nirukta can be traced to the last centuries of the 2nd-millennium BCE Brahmanas layer of the Vedic texts. The most celebrated scholar of this field is Yāska, who wrote the Nighantu, the first book on this field. His text is also referred simply as Nirukta. The study of Nirukta has been closely related to the ancillary Vedic science of Vyakarana, but they have a different focus. Vyakarana deals with linguistic analysis to establish the exact form of words to properly express ideas, while Nirukta focuses on linguistic analysis to help establish the proper meaning of the words, given the context they are used in. Yaska asserts that the prerequisite to the study of Nirukta is the study of Vyakarana.
  The texts of the Nirukta field of study are also called Nirvacana shastra. A critical edition of the Nighantu and the Nirukta was published by Lakshman Sarup in the 1920s.
caption: The opening pages of Yaska's Nirukta Vedanga text (Sanskrit, Devanagari script)
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