
A Neuroscientist Explores the “Sanskrit Effect” - triplesec
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/a-neuroscientist-explores-the-sanskrit-effect/
======
uptownfunk
I have to say, as someone who studied Sanskrit grammar in the paninian system,
and also mathematics in University how mathematical the Paninian grammar is,
incredibly algebraic. Prefixes and suffixes combine to change and modify
words, words can be joined together to create new words. Though I’m sure these
features are found in other languages.

Another interesting note is that Vedic mantras are sometimes traditionally
learnt and recited in what is known as a Ghana patha. If i were to number the
words in a sentence, “The cow jumped over the moon” as 1 2 3 4 5 6 and then if
I were to recite the sentence now permuting the words as 1 2 2 1 1 2 3 3 2 1 1
2 3,, 2 3 3 2 2 3 4 4 3 2 2 3 4.... The complexity increases. This is because
words can be joined together in Sanskrit. Furthermore each letter in Vedic
Sanskrit has three ways of pronouncing it (similar to the Chinese four
accents) and these can change as you permute and apply the sandhi rules as
well.

I haven’t seen such complexity in other languages (though it’s possible it may
exist) but such complexity is why it wouldn’t surprise me that the effect
could possibly be specific to Sanskrit.

~~~
satish-setty
> Vedic Sanskrit has three ways of pronouncing it (similar to the Chinese four
> accents)

Just a nitpick: Vedic Sanskrit has _pitch accent_ , not tone. Chinese is
tonal. And I'm a huge fan of ghana patha as well!

~~~
pen2l
I was really sad the article didn’t have a video of the hymns it spoke of, I’m
similarly really interested now w in seeing an example of pitch accent you
speak of in action, could you please link a video which you feel shows it well
in play? Thanks!

~~~
uptownfunk
Sure, here is an example of the rudram chanted in ghanam mode, there is a
brief example given in the beginning similar to what i explained in my above
comment. This is from the yajur Veda I believe, some scholars date these
chants close to 3000 years old. [https://youtu.be/5VP-
NTPEjGg](https://youtu.be/5VP-NTPEjGg)

~~~
ing33k
Another video, 103 year old Ambattur Ganapadigal chanting ghanam:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seCJU0zwHpY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seCJU0zwHpY)

~~~
uptownfunk
A ghanam of the famous “Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya” of the ancient
brihadaranyaka.

------
thro1237
Given that people who memorize sanskrit hymns typically come from a single
caste (with limited intermarriage between castes), the control should just
include the members of that caste (but who don't memorize hymns) - to account
for genetic effects. And as another commenter pointed out, this doesn't prove
anything about Sanksrit. To prove something like that, the authors should have
compared brain sizes with people who memorize other non-sanskrit texts.

~~~
f42z
A substantial group that memorizes a foreign-language (to many) text are
Muslim huffaz, who commit the entire Koran to memory. They'd make a good
comparison group, given their large numbers, ethnic heterogeneity and
worldwide distribution.

~~~
ketralnis
Or The Knowledge, where London cab drivers have to memorise the whole of
London’s streets

~~~
gumby
It is well attested that licensed London taxicab drivers (those with “the
knowledge”) do in fact end up with different brain structure.

I haven’t seen any studies of what they might give up in the process, though
it does involve a lot of sitting.

Example: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-
memor...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/london-taxi-memory/)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Wow. I didn't know about that.

Kind of casts the whole dispute with Uber thing into a whole different light,
doesn't it?

~~~
gumby
Does it? A machine can indeed do a better job (in the sense of requiring
negligible training) of knowing all the streets and democratized “the
knowledge” which previously was the purview of a small guild.

I am sorry for their sunk cost, but really minicabs+gps and now uber/Lyft et
al are as good, or would be if taxis didn’t have a pick up monopoly.

~~~
Pamar
From previous articles on "the knowledge" I believe that no, a machine cannot
really do "better" or not yet, at least.

IIRC at the exam you could get questions like "The passenger tells you that
his cousin mentioned a building with a bas-relief of Holy Mary holding Jesus,
it was right around the angle from his hotel, but he does not remember the
hotel's name".

You are supposed to know the place and the best way to get there, based on
just this (also, a good number of "knowledgeable" taxi drivers go for an
official London Tour Guide exam soon after, with relatively little effort,
considering they have already memorized thousands of places, monuments and
architectural details).

~~~
eru
Untrained driver + Google Maps sits on a different point on the cost / benefit
curve than Driver-with-the-Knowledge.

Different customers might prefer different total packages on different
occasions.

I for one rarely need the more expensive Driver-with-the-Knowledge option,
especially when I can ask Google many of the same questions.

~~~
Pamar
I may concede that it can perform “adequately at a lower price point” (I use
Google myself when I am not in my hometown), but the parent wasn’t talking
about price.

~~~
eru
I went off the phrase "A machine can indeed do a better job [..]" and was
seeing the price as a big part of that package.

Looks we agree about everything that we actually made explicit. The
disagreement was about the implicit meaning of whether price was included in
the meaning of 'better job'.

------
svat
The article is about “India's Vedic Sanskrit pandits [who] train for years”.
For anyone who wants a glimpse of what this training (or the result of the
training) looks like, there are some great videos on YouTube:

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALEHkgOx8EE)
“Embodying the Vedas - A day in the Śrī Kṛṣṇayajurveda Pāṭhaśālā” (The article
mentions the closely related _Shukla Yajurveda_.) (Examples of the training
are from 00:00 to 00:55, from 04:59 to 05:35, from 08:00 to 09:08, from 11:15
to 13:40.)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruuPbvViOe4)
“Glimpses of the current status of Vedic tradition in Kerala” (Examples of the
training are from 00:00 to 03:44, from 08:45 to 12:57, from 13:15 to 14:46)

\-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZbpPAjukHI)
“Champakaapura Veda Paathashale” (Examples are from 06:35 to 07:43, etc.)

(These three from this playlist:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmS...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL63uIhJxWbgjpQhSwfAmSt2p_TqqWLGha)
; click around for more.)

If you look at the age at which students start, theories like “people with
strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras” (proposed in another
comment) are easy to discard. Of course, other statistical effects are still
possible, such as selection bias (people who do not have or develop the needed
memory may abandon training, etc).

------
dude01
I just recently learned that Sanskrit was the first language to have its
grammar formally specified. Pāṇini in the 4th century BCE wrote down the
complete one. I couldn't find a good translation of it online. I suppose
translating a grammar written in the language itself is tough.

I was curious because I want to know how much of BNF grammar functionality is
represented in it. Perhaps BNF is just a rediscovering/reformatting of the
Sanskrit grammar?

~~~
neel_k
Panini's grammar is closest to an instance of a Post canonical system. It is
basically a set of general rewriting rules, with features going beyond BNF in
power.

This is for pretty much the same reason that the grammatical formalisms modern
linguists use also go beyond BNF. Linguists are interested in issues of
grammaticality that actually do need context (such as subject-verb agreement)
and so obviously context-free grammars can't do the whole job!

(For a programming example, you can see type correctness as a case of how
well-formedness of programs depends on context -- whether a variable can be
used in an expression depends on its type.)

~~~
sriku
Panini covered both the grammar in the regular sense as well as the phonology
of the language. "Optimality theory" attempts to model phonology as a
collection of violable constraints operating with a least violation principle.
It is supposed to be more generally applicable to what we normally know as
grammar (dealings at the words/phrases level), but has seen most success with
phonology.

------
formyread3
As someone who read some of these scriptures mentioned here , they are always
cited from memory. When we were taught , it is usually the teacher reciting
once and the students reciting again with 2 repeats. Usually it starts with
one word at a time , then by joining 2 together , then entire sentences and
then entire chapters.An example here
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCO1FIQzbQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCO1FIQzbQk))
It is quite incidental that , many of these stick in memory quite a lot. When
i chant these after a few years , i am quite surprised that i can recall this
without much effort. P.S. Not glorifying, just stating the facts

------
sriram_malhar
Hmm, interesting observation, but the causal link seems a bit tenuous.

Is it possible that only people with larger hippcampi and other cortical
regions are good at memorizing large texts? (that is, the causal link is
inverted)

Is it possible that people who learn or do something focussedly over a long
stretch of time (practice music 4 hours a day) show larger development over
those same areas than the average distracted person?

~~~
jhiska
>Is it possible that people who learn or do something focussedly over a long
stretch of time (practice music 4 hours a day) show larger development over
those same areas than the average distracted person?

It's more than possible -- it's well-documented with some kinds of meditative
practice. [1]

The only interesting question this article raises for a knowledgeable person
is whether or not the Sanskrit language _itself_ would have an effect on
cognition, but it never succeeds to prove it would or offer a mechanism for
how it would work, and instead asks for funds for more studies.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/meditationpapers/top/?sort=top&t=al...](https://www.reddit.com/r/meditationpapers/top/?sort=top&t=all)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/MeditationNerds/top/?sort=top&t=all](https://www.reddit.com/r/MeditationNerds/top/?sort=top&t=all)

------
0xcde4c3db
> Does the pandits’ substantial increase in the gray matter of critical verbal
> memory organs mean they are less prone to devastating memory pathologies
> such as Alzheimer's? We don't know yet, though anecdotal reports from
> India's Ayurvedic doctors suggest this may be the case.

If there is such an association, self-selection bias must be accounted for. It
might be that dementia risk factors or subclinical pre-dementia pathology
makes a person less likely to pursue training as a pandit.

Also, anecdotal reports from Ayurvedic doctors suggest a lot of things. For
example, that the right sort of yoga practice leads to 80-year-olds who look
and feel like teenagers.

~~~
modi15
80-year-olds looking and feeling like teenagers is stretching it, but Yoga is
magical in making you look/feel younger.

------
anthk_
Well, I've read Snow Crash yesterday.

How interesting...

(Anyone who read the book can relate...)

~~~
sideshowb
Nam shub of enki indeed

------
bobosha
while this is interesting, it would be good to know if the memorizing of other
texts - say, the works of Shakespeare, or Encyclopedia britannica, would have
a similar effect. It is perhaps not the mantras, but the act of memorization
perhaps?

~~~
lr4444lr
Strong oral traditions still exist, or did until recently, in the Balkans
around their lengthy epics and wedding hymns. There may be some traditions in
northern Europe clinging on for dear life as well. In the classical tradition,
it was a hallmark of leaning to memorize long blocks if not whole works of
Homer, Vergil, and various Elegiac poets.

Part of the problem in teasing out the effect is that there is an inherent
selection bias in the type of people who receive this type of education (or
any education, in the not too distant past) to conclude from population
analyses to what degree the particular task of literary memorization confers
this benefit. Someone's going to have to ferret out the mechanism or do
controlled longitudinal studies, which will be costly and fraught with
difficulty. Even Socrates (i.e. Plato) was attuned to the idea that memory was
under attack with the advent of writing[0] and a culture that has other
information retrieval technology, so it's debatable whether we could really
plumb the depths of what human cognition could be under different pressures.
It's also unclear how early this kind of training has to be started too in
order to have an effect.

[0][https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-
wr...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/on-writing-
memory-and-forgetting-socrates-and-hemingway-take-on-zeigarnik/)

------
FrozenVoid
The Sanskrit Effect is result of repeating specific mantra words that occur in
the text.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099099/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3099099/)
It will be much easier just to chant the specific "brainy" mantras(such as
brim/aim) instead of hours of random text.

------
jhiska
>Although this initial research, focused on intergroup comparison of brain
structure, could not directly address the Sanskrit effect question (that
requires detailed functional studies with cross-language memorization
comparisons, for which we are currently seeking funding), we found something
specific about intensive verbal memory training.

This quote, coupled with a lack of a proposed mechanism as to how the Sanskrit
language would itself have an influence on cognition, means that as far as we
know right now there is no such thing as the Sanskrit Effect.

It makes for a catchy headline, though, and the other stuff in the article
speaks to my own successful experiments in memory training -- if interested,
look up the books from the World Memory Championship winner.

------
tw1010
Funny, I just read Andre Weils biography, and one thing that stood out about
it was that he spent a lot of time learning sanskrit. I wonder if there's a
connection between this and his massive intellect.

------
pacificleo11
From the article "Our study was a first foray into imaging the brains of
professionally trained Sanskrit pandits in India. Although this initial
research, focused on intergroup comparison of brain structure, could not
directly address the Sanskrit effect question (that requires detailed
functional studies with cross-language memorization comparisons, for which we
are currently seeking funding)," Is it just me who thinks that this disclaimer
negate whole point of research ?

~~~
murukesh_s
I too don't think a language by itself don't have a certain effect on brain
development. But Brahmins (who study vedas in India) starting learning Vedas
at about 4 years of age, if am not wrong, chanting it daily morning from 4.am
for couple of hours. That would definitely have an impact on your brain.
Remember the study which showed London taxi drivers had bigger brains?

[https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-
memory/](https://www.wired.com/2011/12/london-taxi-driver-memory/)

------
tragomaskhalos
Does anyone have recommendations for a good Sanskrit book for the self-
learner? Years ago I tried Coulson's "Teach Yourself Sanskrit" but found it
too dense, and more recently have been considering Ruppel's "The Cambridge
Introduction to Sanskrit" ?

~~~
svat
The best book I've found for self-study is the two-volume set by Thomas Egenes
( _Introduction to Sanskrit_ ). It's very gently paced, though, so you need to
have the motivation to stick through till the end (about 400 pages in Part 1
and about 450 in Part 2).

Other alternatives are to contact a local chapter of the volunteer
organization Samskrita Bharati if there's one (or watch these videos produced
by them:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudSN7Po9muLeRM6545s6...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLudSN7Po9muLeRM6545s68eakbxwZRpEJ)),
or to try [http://www.learnsanskrit.org/](http://www.learnsanskrit.org/) for
something online. See more book reviews at
[https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/book-
reviews/](https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/book-reviews/)

If you say what _your_ reasons are for learning Sanskrit, there may be other
suggestions….

------
flatfilefan
What about the IQ of those people? Not that IQ were of any huge significance,
but that's the first thing probably come to mind of any researcher.

------
mushufasa
wait why isn't this reverse causation?

people with strong verbal memories will choose to memorize mantras.

~~~
Ar-Curunir
Because there isn't really a choice involved here.

~~~
mushufasa
aspiring pandits who can't keep up won't graduate to the author's sample group

