Sanskrit As A Language Of Science | Hacker News Reader

Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

kgfindia.com

72 pointscrazyphoton31 comments

Ah, the glorification of your old, dead language. This reads very much like an Oxford don extolling the virtues of Latin or Ancient Greek. Many of his claims are sheer nonsense, such as his digression on the ordering of alphabets. Sanskrit didn't use a fixed alphabet until the 19th century, and there are certainly other writing systems with collation orders just as sensible.

Everyone likes to claim that their old sophisticates were scientists before the scientific revolution in Europe. The basic insistence on repeatability, independent of any individual, and trumping any logical system, wasn't there, though. Thus mathematics flourished throughout the world for thousands of years, and philosophy, too, but not science. Vaisheshika had atomic theory? So did Democritus, several centuries earlier. Nyaya was doing logical syllogism? Yeah, Aristotle was doing that, again a couple centuries earlier. We don't think of Aristotle or Democritus as scientists, though, because they wouldn't test their ideas.

The whole thing is the ill informed cant of a bigot who wants to ensconce his particular folk tale that glorifies his heritage and denigrates all others.

It resurrected, so it seems! There is a village in India that adopted Sanskrit. It's certainly still endangered, but not dead yet.

Sanskrit is quite a unique language and is far from being dead.

Modern linguistics owes quite a lot to Sanskrit, e.g. Chomsky's famous notation, thematic roles in semantics, controlled grammar, compositional semantics etc.

I suggest the following article in the AI magazine which merely touches the surface of what makes Sanskrit stand out.

http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/46...

The whole thing is the ill informed cant of a bigot who wants to ensconce his particular folk tale that glorifies his heritage and denigrates all others.

The vitriolic tone of your comment sounds much the same as what you wrote above, which in turn makes me ignore it. Not sure if you disagree with the article, or are merely offended that it denigrates your heritage.

There are several very controversial ideas here about the prehistory and history of India. And the history of India is such a controversial subject within India that many thoughtful writers who live in India pass up the opportunity to dig into the sources and write thorough histories of their own country.

http://www.historytoday.com/mihir-bose/india%E2%80%99s-missi...

Readers from India who read widely are probably already well aware of the controversy about many of these issues (which have considerable influence on domestic politics in India and on foreign relations between India and neighboring countries). I point this out for the benefit of readers of HN who haven't read much about the history of India and who may not be aware that not all statements in the 2009 speech kindly submitted here enjoy agreement even within India.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_India#Historiography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_(history_...

In particular, the person who gave the speech

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markandey_Katju

has wide-ranging interests but has no specialized training as a linguist or any kind of scientist, but rather is a former judge and political commentator

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ten-ways-of-being-foolish/...

from a long family line of lawyers and politicians. The speech is not really about language, nor is it about science, but it is about politics, and I am aware that some readers of Hacker News take great care to keep discussions of politics off Hacker News, in the interest of finding more articles about the core subjects of Hacker News here.

It would be nice if you could expand on what the actual controversies are.

for one, the language of Tamil did not even get a passing mention in that article, even though it is a classical language just like Sanskrit, and its influence on ancient India, especially developments in South India. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamil_language#cite_note-riches...

At a meta level, he's saying that Sanskrit has a legitimate claim of Universalism. The linked speech states that "the foundation of India culture is based on the Sanskrit language." If you speak an Indian language that is not descended from Sanskrit, you might disagree with that statement!

India is a very diverse country with many languages and complicated ethnic politics. English would be a convenient national language, but is untenable for obvious historical political reasons. Some people in India feel the same way about Hindi. This person is arguing for Sanskrit as a neutral alternative, but language is political in India. (By contrast, Latin and Ancient Greek aren't things anyone argues about in Europe today.)

> (By contrast, Latin and Ancient Greek aren't things anyone argues about in Europe today.)

Not that true. There is a growing political problem with the use of English in EU, also at the technical level (XML element names, for examples). At the same time, using any of the other national languages is a no-go. One of the proposed solutions is to use Latin for technical details and leave national languages for the documentation and other user-facing documents.

An example of Latin-as-neutral-language is LexDania, an old Danish XML format for laws; in LexDania you have _arca_, not container, _linea_, not paragraph.

As an Indian whose mother tongue did not originate from Sanskrit, I find the attempt to project Sanskrit as a national language disturbing.

Independent India has already gone through this once. The original constitution mandated that Hindi should be made the national language. For obvious cultural and political reasons, when the time came to implement it, there was a backlash from states where Hindi is not spoken. This is especially true in Tamil Nadu, where the pro-Tamil movement altered the political landscape for ever. Congress, the largest political party in India has never won an election in Tamil Nadu after the pro-Tamil movement. in 1963, the constitution was amended to make it explicit that English and Hindi could be used for communication between state and central governments.

I think the status-quo works out well for everyone. I see no reason to impose a langage on people who does not speak or identify with it.

There is broad idealogical/political movement in India along the following lines:

"India" was an extremely advanced civilization that suffered under the Mughals and the British. Before these "foreign invaders" arrived, there existed a body of knowledge that remains unsurpassed.

This is a revisionist version of history based on cultural supremacy. It has become a compelling political argument, since it contains truisms that are either difficult to test, or jingoism that's hard to resist.

The controversy stems from the truisms, many of which are repeated in Justice Katju's speech. At it's heart however is this idea of India as an ancient nation.

The modern nation state as we know it today was stitched together from multiple nations by the British. Before them, the Mughals also ruled a vast area, but the ruling classes were completely separate (culturally, linguistically etc.) from the people they ruled. And the Mughals never ruled the south, where the Tamils continue to represent one of the last surviving classic (comparable to the Greek etc.) civilizations in the world.

There are those who choose to pick a particular culture as the dominant culture and present that as "India". However, that isn't necessarily true.

Thanks for making the point about the modern nation state.

Whenever I make this point to others, I encounter a lot of anger. A lot of people seem unable to comprehend the fact that the modern nation state was stitched together, and they demand that we should have a monolithic state that speaks the same language.

The Indus Valley Civilization is the indigenous civilization in the region of India, Pakistan, and parts of Afghanistan and Iran. It traded with Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, Greece, and Rome. For its time, it was the largest ancient civilization, and it was highly impressive (they had uniform brick buildings, perpendicular grid streets, covered sewers, a base-10 system of standardized weights, etc. : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization#Matur...) The IVC collapsed before Greece and Rome reached their peaks, but in the absence of more research, we can only surmise its legacy (e.g., Indian sarees, white waistcloths and sandals may have been mimicked as togas). I think more research needs to be done to flesh out all of the loose ends of inquiry, and lots of interesting research is happening currently. I'm sure more facts will continue to emerge about the IVC that shift our understanding of the world's history.

The prevailing theory is that the IVC bequeathed culture (religion, customs, knowledge, architecture, etc.) to all parts of the region. It is believed that the IVC inhabitants spread east and southwards to fill all parts of India. The IVC collapsed (1900 BCE), and around 1000 years afterwards (1000 BCE), a branch of proto-Indo European language speakers is believed to have moved south from the Caucuses into Iran/India. The language they spoke (Sanskrit) is believed to have taken on influences by the indigenous language taken hold in the northern parts of India, but considering their much fewer numbers and nomadic lifestyle at the time of their arrival, their genetic contribution is thought to be minimal. After the British colonial scholar Robert Caldwell, a scholar in Sanskrit, noticed the difference between the languages of north India (Indo-European > Sanskrit derived) and southern India (a distinct language family, of which Tamil has the least influence of Sanskrit), he used the term "Aryan" to describe the northern languages and "Dravidian" to describe the southern languages. (side note: Caldwell was opposed to and upset with attempts by people to project the terms Aryan and Dravidian for the purposes of racism and hegemony; he personally believed in the opposite) It is also believed that at the time of arrival of the Sanskrit speakers to India from the north, the existing indigenous culture (i.e., of the people from IVC) heavily influenced that of the arriving people. Among the first writings in Sanskrit (Veda scriptures), the earliest shows the most indigenous influence (e.g., water-based imagery), and the later Veda writings show a diminishing influence towards a more Sanskritic one (e.g., fire-based imagery). In light of all of this, scholars say that pretty much the only evidence we have that "Aryans", as a distinct group, existed is their language.

It is widely believed that the language of the IVC is most closely related to Dravidian languages, and the best attempts to decipher their writing comes from using Tamil as the starting point. An interesting, recent paper from last year puts forward a very compelling advancement in interpreting the script, and in the process, it further fleshes out the relationship between IVC, the culture of Indian peoples, Sanskrit writings and Dravidian languages:

http://harappa.drupalgardens.com/content/indus-fish-swam-gre...

Because of Caldwell's linguistic analysis and the convenient role it played in political maneuvering for accruing power in British colonial India (by the British, and by people in India regionally and caste-wise), the division along "Aryan"/"Dravidian" lines became seen as a racial one. (If there is a difference genetically today, it may be from the occasional invasion by empires from the Middle East in the north of India over the millennia, from which the south was largely insulated by the Deccan Plateau). As the idea of this racial divide survives while India is now divided into states based on language (and the southern states are a minority), and given the roughly 90/10 split of Hindus and Muslims, chauvinism along religious, geographic, and linguistic lines has gradually coalesced. It's to the point where some Indians want to portray the IVC as Sanskritic/Aryan (and Sanskrit-speakers as the originators of Hinduism because the oldest known Hindu writings are in Sanskrit), even if they have to blatantly distort facts: http://safarmer.com/frontline/horseplay.pdf But more commonly, you'll find resistance among such people from accepting a proto-Dravidian language hypothesis of the IVC in favor of interpreting the IVC in a Sanskritic light: http://www.sanskrit.org/www/Hindu%20Primer/induscivilization...

Thanks for sharing the link to the awesome article on the Indus Valley script and associations. HN was the last place where I thought I would get a such a link shared. Any nice forums on history?

http://history.stackexchange.com/

See

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4061784

for previous discussion here on HN about how little is actually known about the Indus Valley civilization, which may have had very little influence indeed on subsequent civilizations. The language spoken in the Indus Valley cities is unknown, and may not be recoverable, as there is not even general agreement that the Indus Valley inscriptions are writing (as contrasted with proto-writing ornamentation, a phenomenon attested in several other centers of world civilization).

Yes, some people propose that maybe the IVC writing isn't language at all. See this talk by one of the authors of a paper showing that it is, indeed, writing of a language: http://www.tedxsmu.org/events/tedxsmu-tuesday-7-5-11/ He used machine learning and the idea of entropy to prove his point, but as he says in the video, it's shocking how he got more menacing feedback -- to the level of death threats -- from saying that "the writing is a language" than saying "the language is Dravidian".

And as far as the Heras/Parpola Dravidian-based deciphering briefly mentioned in the talk, a much more expanded (and more compelling) deciphering is provided in the paper I linked above, called "The Indus Fish Swam in the Great Bath" by Iravatham Mahadevan. Ira. Mahadevan and Asko Parola are the the top 2 scholars of the IVC script. The paper also indicates several parallels to its other contemporary civilizations. That paper comes from the official website of the scholars involved in excavating and interpreting IVC sites.

minor correction, for the record: Max Müller did a lot of research into 'Aryan' culture via Sanskrit. Müller attempted to learn more about the origins of European religion and culture by reconstructing proto-Indo European language. Müller was opposed to Darwinism applied to people, and was very opposed to people using the term Aryan for racist purposes. He believed the shared history of different races should show we're all the same. The term 'Aryan' was coined for Western ears slightly before Müller. Robert Caldwell was the first one who came up with the term 'Dravidian' following his research into the matter. Prior to Caldwell, Dravidian languages and cultures were seen entirely through the lens of Sanskrit, although even today, as I mentioned before, this Sanskritic perspective to explain more than the evidence supports is kept alive by some people & interests.

On an interesting side note, according to Wikipedia, Müller also said, "the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians". That statement is true, even though Müller was not alive when the IVC was discovered -- swastika symbol clay seals have been found in the IVC, meaning that the swastika predates anything 'Aryan'. And there's similar irony with the red-and-black colors, in case you're wondering.

It often surprises me that in discussions of Indian History (including that article by Mihir Bose that you site), one of the best historians of ancient India is conveniently forgotten. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romila_Thapar

Also, for anyone interested in an academic, objective, inclusive and yet thoroughly fascinating summary of Indian history, I highly recommend "India: A History" by John Keay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keay)

I've found her writings to be very nuanced and rational. However she seems to be classified as a "Marxist historian" by the Indian media. I have no idea what that means.

Her book and articles on Somnath are very interesting.

Disclaimer: My mother tongue is Tamil(one of those dravidian language). Two points turned me off/ stopped me from reading the article. 1. He mentions that "it is believed now that Dravidians could have come from pakistan/afghanistan. This was a surprise news to me and after reading through that Brahui(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahui_people#Origins) wikipedia article, i realized it is one of the 3 leading theories.

2. Direct Quote "A language was created by the great grammarian Panini, namely Classical Sanskrit, which enabled scientific ideas to be expressed with great precision, logic and elegance. Science requires precision. "

This is when i stopped reading. Not because i disagree with sanskrit having provided precision so many years ago(i have no clue). But whatever sparse sanskrit i picked up living in Allahabad, India is very imprecise for modern science.

A very interesting discussion, I think, even if its promoting some strange ideas. But I don't think enough was done to explain the success of English as the dominant scientific language, as a basis for comparison. The subtext is that it is due to various geopolitical factors, which is likely not far from the truth. But I think one important feature of scientific English (I am a scientist, and so often write in this dialect) is the lexicon. I think the upper bounds on the number of words are around a million and a significant fraction (5 percent?) is used in science writing. Having this large pool of words, mostly co-opted from other languages, allows one to make precise technical statements in a simple way. This is not an elegant grammatical solution, as the author discusses in his analysis of Sanskrit. It is a practical solution. It is scalable inasmuch as scientific communication is specialized, so that I don't have to be familiar with the technical subset of the scientific lexicon outside my field. I feel as if the argument I am making here is not original, but I don't think I know the references. Any suggestions?

Agreed; it has just happened -- in a rapid idea-exchange environment science just works way better using a common language, regardless how hard or illogical it is; and English was on a right place and time (German and French used to have their chance, but they lost due to WW2).

From my father (who can read/write Sanskrit):

I'll add that at the University of Chicago, someone noted that modern linguistics really had its launch when German philologists in the 19th century encountered Sanskrit and the Sanskrit grammarians. Not just in grammar itself, but in phonemics as well.

Wikipedia appears to verify in part:

"This body of work became known in 19th century Europe, where it influenced modern linguistics initially through Franz Bopp, who mainly looked at Pāṇini [most famous Sanskrit grammarian]. Subsequently, a wider body of work influenced Sanskrit scholars such as Ferdinand de Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, and Roman Jakobson. Frits Staal discussed the possible European impact of Indian ideas on language. After outlining the various aspects of the contact, Staal posits the theory that the idea of formal rules in language, first proposed by de Saussure in 1894, and finally developed by Chomsky in 1957, based on which formal rules were also introduced in computational languages, may indeed lie in the European exposure to the formal rules of Paninian grammar. In particular, de Saussure, who lectured on Sanskrit for three decades, may have been influenced by Pāṇini and Bhartrihari; his idea of the unity of signifier-signified in the sign is somewhat similar to the notion of Sphoṭa. More importantly, the very idea that formal rules can be applied to areas outside of logic or mathematics, may itself have been catalyzed by Europe's contact with the work of Sanskrit grammarians." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_linguistics#India

I think Esperanto is a pretty good candidate for the language of science. As an attempt to not show linguistic or cultural bias, the International Academy of Sciences San Marino already uses it... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Scie... Students write their thesis in both Esperanto and another language of their choice.