

Sanskrit As A Language Of Science - crazyphoton
http://kgfindia.com/sanskrit-language-of-science.php

======
tokenadult
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...](http://www.historytoday.com/mihir-
bose/india%E2%80%99s-missing-historians)

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_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryan_Invasion_Theory_\(history_and_controversies\))

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/...](http://www.indianexpress.com/news/ten-ways-of-being-
foolish/940095/0)

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.

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

~~~
elangoc
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indus_Valley_Civilization#Mature_Harappan))
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...](http://harappa.drupalgardens.com/content/indus-fish-swam-great-bath)

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...](http://www.sanskrit.org/www/Hindu%20Primer/induscivilization.html)

~~~
tokenadult
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).

~~~
elangoc
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.

------
madhadron
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.

~~~
naveensundar
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...](http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/466)

------
aangjie
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.

------
gajomi
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?

~~~
mbq
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).

------
hadronzoo
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>

------
leke
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademio_Internacia_de_la_Sciencoj_San_Marino)
Students write their thesis in both Esperanto and another language of their
choice.

More interesting reading:

<http://www.uea.org/dokumentoj/IKU/en/science.html>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Science>

~~~
tokenadult
The best website about Esperanto, the remarkably little used constructed
language:

<http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/>

Esperanto is actually full of linguistic and cultural bias, as this website
carefully demonstrates, and Esperanto is not a successful language for
international scientific communication.

------
signa11
i found this <http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html> to be
pretty interesting.

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sirfried
i dozed off after the first few paragraphs

------
rblion
My name, Amar, means 'eternal' or 'deathless' in Sanskrit.

~~~
rblion
wow. this was negged? there are some really cynical people on this site. Peace
to all sentient beings ('hackers' included).

