Sanskrit

Sanskrit

"artfully created", "well—made", "perfect"

Sanskrit is one of the most ancient literary languages in the world. A large number of texts of Indian culture have been written in Sanskrit, including spiritual texts dedicated to yoga and tantra.

The origin of the language dates back to the second millennium BC. Scientists distinguish Vedic Sanskrit (the Vedas are written in it) and its descendant, classical Sanskrit. They are similar, but differ in some aspects of phonology and grammar, as well as vocabulary. Sanskrit has greatly influenced all languages and cultures of the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

Sanskrit has been used by Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. Many mantras are written in this language. Now it is literary only and is not used in verbal speech. However, most Hindu rituals are still performed in Sanskrit.

This language is extremely complex and has a synthetic grammar. The Sanskrit script is Devanagari. Its early form was simply called "nagari" and originated in the 8th century AD as an oriental variant of the Gupta script, which in turn was formed on the basis of the Brahmi alphabet. It is on Brahmi that the famous edicts of King Ashoka (III century BC) are carved, which are the oldest preserved monument of writing in India.

Devanagari is a syllabic letter, read from left to right. Each consonant sign indicates and contains a vowel "a". To convey only a consonant in a letter, a special sign is used. Several consecutive consonants are indicated by ligatures. The spelling of the vowels at the beginning and in the middle of the words are different. In the second case, diacritics are used. It is believed that Sanskrit was transmitted by Brahma to the rishis, sages residing in heaven, who then spread his knowledge among people. This language is also called sacred because the letters of its alphabet are correlated with Matrikas, various forms of Shakti, represented as sound vibrations.

The international transliteration alphabets IAST and ITRANS, which use letters of the Latin alphabet and diacritics, are used to transmit the Devanagari letter.