Talk:Sanskrit/Archive 3

message: Is there a reason why this page contains an extensive description of Sanskrit grammar when such information could be moved to a different article? Having a separate Sanskrit grammar article would be in consonance with most of the other Wikipedia articles on major languages, and would allow us to present complete nominal and verbal inflectional paradigms. We could even have separate articles for the Sanskrit noun and the Sanskrit verb, if we choose to follow the pattern for German grammar.
Apologies if this has been discussed before. Gokulmadhavan 08:34, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yah, you are right. The Grammar section must be restructured and moved to Sanskrit grammar. Further the declension section must be moved to Sanskrit declension, and conjugation section to Sanskrit conjugation. As also case order of nouns must be changed to traditional - Nom.Voc.Acc.Instr.Dat.Abl.Gen.Loc. Roberts7 17:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I've taken a few steps to create the new structure. I've created separate pages for Sanskrit verbs and Sanskrit compounds that lead off from this page. Currently these offshoots are essentially identical to the main Sanskrit page, as I'm wary of making large-scale changes to a well-regarded page. As for now, Sanskrit grammar redirects to a page describing traditional and modern grammarians, and I haven't made any changes to this yet. Gokulmadhavan 05:20, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am surprised we have not seen more comment on this proposal, which seems rather reasonable to me.  I have looked at the example of German grammar that you gave and it seems to me that having a similar approach to Sanskrit would be helpful in keeping the article length to a reasonable level.  You are showing wisdom by hesitating to make major changes too rapidly, as the outcries may come only after some motion is perceived.  My suggestion would be to test this in phases, simply creating the Sanskrit Grammar page first, and just doing a move of existing content.  I would not make any other changes for a week.  We just did a similar major reorganization of content on the Vedas article and I expected the roof to fall in, but it did not.  At each stage we tried to do the move in chunks that could easily be reverted to a status quo ante.  If I understand your proposal, basically you would just move the current section 4 on grammar to a new page. I think that the redirect of Sanskrit Grammar to Vyakarana that is taking place now could simply be removed, keeping Vyakarana unchanged.  It is really about the grammatical tradition, not the grammar itself, so it is a separate topic. I do not agree with the proposal to create subpages for different aspects of Sanskrit Grammar at this stage.  I think all that is now in section 4 should be kept together as part of phase 1 of any changes. Buddhipriya 05:27, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible Restructuring of the Article? 

message: Wouldn't it be more Sanskritic to write भाषा instead of वाक्? In any case isn't contemporary Indian usage just to call the language संस्कृतम्? Vijñaptimātra 08:00, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: contemporary Indian usage has nothing to do with it, this being the article on a language codified in 500 BC. dab (𒁳) 07:32, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why vāk? 

message: Could someone add something about Agglutination in Sanskrit? deeptrivia (talk) 04:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Agglutination]] 

message: Hey, this is just to inform whoever might watch this page that I'm going to remove the grammatical paradigms. Maybe these might have a place in a more specific article. Rājagṛha 10:52, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Rājagṛha, we're migrating grammatical paradigms to the various pages linked to from Sanskrit grammar in order to make the main page more informative and less technical. All paradigms that have been copied to the grammar pages can be removed from the main page. I think our goal should be to take out all paradigms from the main page and to put them away in other articles where they may be more relevant. Gokul Madhavan 15:48, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removing the grammar manual 

message: The numerals I have added are accurate and are from A Sanskrit Primer by Perry.  Sanskrit does not use "sh" for a transliteration. Azalea pomp 00:05, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've edited the numbers and this current list should now be accurate.  ṣáṣ, ṣáṭ is Sanskrit for six, and sapta is seven. Gokul Madhavan 20:00, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sanskrit Numerals 

message: I know this amounts to misusing the talk page, but I'm desperate. :-O
Just a question to all you Sanskrit speakers:
Can the word "Anavasthā" be taken to mean "infinity"? I looked it up in a really good English-Sanskrit dictionary (spokensankrit.de) and the definition given was "absence of finality or conclusion", which seems to me to mean "infinity".
So, are "anavasthā" and "infinity" synonymous?
I hope a kind soul out there can help me out. I promise I'll delete this when I have an answer.
Thanks!
60.48.216.237 03:19, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need help with a word here. 

message: Sanscrit is not spoken in Nepal. It is only spoken in a village in Karnataka. Princemathewalleppey 12:54, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sanscrit is Not spoken in Nepal 

message: Can someone please verify whether or not the following words originate from Sanskrit.  I'm having a debate with another user who thinks they are probably Javanese but possibly originate from Sanskrit.  I need a reference, too.
"Bhinneka Tunggal Ika"
Thanks,
Glenn McGrew
(Respond here or on my userpage)
ReveurGAM 10:28, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Verification of possible Sanskrit word needed 

message: "The Turangalîla-Symphonie is a large-scale piece of orchestral music by Olivier Messiaen. ... He derived the title from two Sanskrit words, turanga and lîla, which roughly translate into English as "love song and hymn of joy, time, movement, rhythm, life, and death" ..." -- Uh, yeah? -- 201.53.4.206 11:46, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Turangalîla-Symphonie]] 

message: It seems that it should be noted both in the table in the Vowels section and also in the table in the Consonants section what kind of retroflexes are the sounds: laminal, apical or sub-apical. --Klimov 16:26, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hindi is apical, according to Ladefoged, as presumably are most of the Indic languages. Tamil and many of the Dravidian languages are sub-apical. Sanscrit is a different matter, because it isn't really an independent language anymore. I would guess that native Hindi speakers pronounce them apically, and that native Tamil speakers pronounce them sub-apically. kwami 20:49, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is it too speculative to postulate that Sanskrit retroflexes were apical in Classical times? Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 21:09, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You might want a source. I don't know that anyone knows. It's thought that pre-Sanskrit acquired retroflexes from the languages (presumably Dravidian) that it displaced and absorbed. But whether northern Dravidian was apical, the Aryans didn't fully master the sounds, or the Prakrits relaxed them is something that I'm not qualified to theorize about. kwami 22:39, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Retroflexes 

message: The canonical language of Sikhism is not Sanskrit but rather Punjabi with a vocabulary balanced between Sanskrit and Arabic/Farsi words. Jainism's major Agama texts are written in Ardha-Magadhi Prakrit while many non-Agama texts find writings in all sorts of Prakrits, some Sanskrit, and apabhramsa and later tongues, so Sanskrit is really not the primary vehicle for Jain thought by a long shot. In reality, Sanskrit is most closely allied with the broader Vedist tradition while Buddhism is split between Sanskrit and Pali, though Pali ultimately won out. All of this should, in my opinion, be taken into account in the introductory paragraph. I know the attitude of regular editors on anons taking it upon themselves to edit major portions of text, so I've refrained from instituting the change myself until more people inveigh. --69.203.80.158 (talk) 14:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canonical language: problem 

message: I'd like to do a major edit on this portion of uncited text on the page titled "Sanskrit":
"Writing came relatively late to India, introduced from the Middle East by traders around the 5th century BCE[citation needed], according to a hypothesis by Rhys Davids and favored by the Persian administration of Gandhara and Sindh. Even after the introduction of writing, oral tradition and memorization of texts remained a prominent feature of Sanskrit literature." 
This is CONTRADICTED by the CITED information located on the Wikipedia relating to the venerated Sankrit grammarian, a page titled "Panini":
"Writing first reappears in India (since the Indus script) in the form of the Brāhmī script from ca. the 6th century BC, though these early instances of the Brāhmī script are from Tamil Nadu in southern India...."
Also note in that same article on Panini:
"He is known for his Sanskrit grammar, particularly for his formulation of the 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology in the grammar known as Ashtadhyayi (meaning "eight chapters"), the foundational text of the grammatical branch of the Vedanga, the auxiliary scholarly disciplines of Vedic religion."
"It is not certain whether Panini used writing for the composition of his work, though it is generally agreed that he did use a form of writing, based on references to words such as "script" and "scribe" in his Ashtadhyayi.[3] It is believed that a work of such complexity would have been very difficult to compile without written notes, though some have argued that he might have composed it with the help of a group of students whose memories served him as 'notepads'."
Given that "script and "scribe" appear in his work, and relate to, let's say scripts and the scribes who were doing the scripting, that while Panini lived, which would have been early as the 6th Century BCE, that writing ALREADY EXISTED IN INDIA, AND WAS NOT "introduced by the Middle East around the 5th century BCE" as the article erroneously states now.
Additionally, the article concerning Panini states:
"The Ashtadhyayi is the earliest known grammar of Sanskrit (though scholars agree it likely was built on earlier works), and the earliest known work on descriptive linguistics, generative linguistics, and together with the work of his immediate predecessors (Nirukta, Nighantu, Pratishakyas) stands at the beginning of the history of linguistics itself."
So, there were scribes and scripts well before Panini, since HE LIKELY BUILT ON EARLIER WORKS.
Also note, in Sanskrit itself, the language is called, SAMSKRIT, and not Sankrit.
YogiVasistha (talk) 04:35, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You've built up quite a case.  So if it's not the fifth century, when was it?  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 05:17, 4 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed edit 

message: Satem and Centum describe sound changes in the various branches of IE.  There is no subgrouping of IE called Satem or Centum.  Also, since Sanskrit is but one Indo-Iranian language, to mention a satem sound change is redundant as this information is already on the Indo-European pages.  Also, I removed an unsourced statement that Sanskrit had an especially strong influence on the Indo-Aryan languages.  Where is the source that it did not have a strong influence on the on IA languages? Azalea pomp (talk) 04:08, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I see no reason not to be explicit about Indo-Iranian languages being part of the group of Satem languages.  If you've got a problem with the precise wording because it sounds like it's talking about a Satem family, I recommend rewording it rather than removing.  As for the second removed claim, that Sanskrit has influenced Indian languages, I've restored it with a citation request tag.  Let's give other editors time to back it up.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 06:57, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

text: I reworded the sentence.  The previous edit was simply not worded well, but incorrect.  There is not any Satem subgroup of Indo-European.  Many of the Indo-European languages with the Satem sound change have never been demonstrated to form a valid subgroup.  Many Indo-European linguists such as Calvert Watkins have connected Armenian (satem) with Greek (centum) as a likely subgroup. Azalea pomp (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: While you make some controversial assertions, I think the way you've reworded the article makes it neutral to whether Satem/Centum were ever dialects.  Good job.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 00:01, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Satem is a sound change not a branch or group of Indo-European