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Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

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Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#21

Post by rushabh »

elangoc wrote: post #11
statictype wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.o…

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?

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#22

Post by sdqali »

wtn wrote: post #6
statictype wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 langu…

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.

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#24

Post by tokenadult »

elangoc wrote: post #11
statictype wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.o…

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).

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#25

Post by tokenadult »

leke wrote: post #20

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. More interesting reading: http://www.uea.org/dokumentoj/IKU/en/science.html…

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.

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#26

Post by sdqali »

narendranag wrote: post #8
statictype wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 tru…

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.

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#27

Post by naveensundar »

madhadron wrote: post #7

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 sop…

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...

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#28

Post by yumraj »

madhadron wrote: post #7

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 sop…

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.

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#29

Post by jayaram »

rushabh wrote: post #21
elangoc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.o…

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/

Re: Sanskrit As A Language Of Science

#30

Post by elangoc »

tokenadult wrote: post #24
elangoc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.o…

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…

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.

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