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The Second Life of Sanskrit

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Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I was talking about what happened to Ahmad Hasan Dani this time. And I pointed out that you were again being dishonest with your selective quoting - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48930068 PS: As for our previous interactions which i pointed to, you did not provide citations but merely selective quoting which i had forcefully called out. People can read the chain of comments and judge for themselves.

I appreciate your comment and vouched for it, FWIW. And yes, I do remember hearing about Firoz Khan now that you mention it.

You need to stop playing the "woe betide me" muslim victimhood political card here on every possible occasion. It is tiresome, easily disproved, often irrelevant and adds no value whatsoever.

Anybody who knew of A.H.Dani from the 1940s would have known of Firoze Khan from 2019 and so there could be no reason to bring up the former unless of course one wanted to intentionally manufacture a controversy.

This thread should have been focused purely on the Sanskrit language in all its forms but instead you have tried to inject sectarian and political agenda into it.

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#72
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan Is that so ? I am not knowledgeable myself but some of my family members are (professor s in Sanskrit) and from what I have absorbed from their conversation is in direct contradiction to your claim. The language of interpersonal communication were vulgarised forms, aka the vernacular languages. Sanskrit was used were a need for formality, respect,…

With all due respect, are they historians of Sanskrit linguistics or professors of Sanskrit language? That makes a big difference. Diglossia is very common in Indian culture and it is not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context. You can find minor examples of it even today if you look at public announcements, which are done in Sanskrit inspired verbia…

Prof of Sanskrit with dissertation on historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas.

> not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context.

Any evidence in the form of records that this indeed happened. You are promoting a nonstandard position, so the burden of proof will be on you.

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#73
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, are they historians of Sanskrit linguistics or professors of Sanskrit language? That makes a big difference. Diglossia is very common in Indian culture and it is not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context. You can find minor examples of it even today if you look at public announcements, which are done in Sanskrit inspired verbia…

Prof of Sanskrit with dissertation on historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas. > not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context. Any evidence in the form of records that this indeed happened. You are promoting a nonstandard position, so the burden of proof will be on you.

This isn’t a black and white case where “proofs” exist. Indian history is notoriously hard to study due to lack of primary sources.

> historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas.

This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions. It hardly gives them expertise over the rest of the traditions spanning few millennia.

Jains, Buddhists and various other Sramana movements were championed by lower varnas and they all used Sanskrit as a liturgical language.

I have already mentioned the widespread presence of edicts, danapatra, inscriptions, secular literature created for wider public which hints that Sanskrit was widely understood and Sanskrit/Prakrit Diglossia is not too far fetched.

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#74
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prof of Sanskrit with dissertation on historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas. > not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context. Any evidence in the form of records that this indeed happened. You are promoting a nonstandard position, so the burden of proof will be on you.

This isn’t a black and white case where “proofs” exist. Indian history is notoriously hard to study due to lack of primary sources. > historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas. This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions. It hardly gives them expertise over the rest of the traditions spanning few millennia. Jains, Buddhists and various other Sramana movements were championed by lower varnas…

> This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions.

That was just what her dissertation was on, not the sum total of her expertise. I was responding to your question about familiarity with history in addition to linguistics of Sanskrit. In any case it's expert vetted piece of research, not claims about far-fetchednesd by someone on the internet.

Far fetchedness is hardly the the standard for wannabe scientific claims. If it was, there are many bridges that people can sell.

If proof free speculations are your thing, speculate away. There's a large population of similar proof-free quacks and hacks one can join. I have nothing more to add.

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#75
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t a black and white case where “proofs” exist. Indian history is notoriously hard to study due to lack of primary sources. > historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas. This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions. It hardly gives them expertise over the rest of the traditions spanning few millennia. Jains, Buddhists and various other Sramana movements were championed by lower varnas…

> This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions. That was just what her dissertation was on, not the sum total of her expertise. I was responding to your question about familiarity with history in addition to linguistics of Sanskrit. In any case it's expert vetted piece of research, not claims about far-fetchednesd by someone on the internet. Far fetchedness is hardly the the standard for wannabe sc…

> If proof free speculations are your thing…

Funnily enough I’ve given enough examples and sources already in this thread. I think it’s better than “I know someone who knows” and “it’s expert vetted research”. I’ll stick to my theory about Sanskrit/Prakrit diglossia for now.

In the end we are two lay people arguing about a topic we’re not experts in and speculating how things would have been few millennia ago. It’s fine to have diverse perspectives! I’m not sure which quacks you deal with but I wish you all the best.

आ नो भद्राः क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वतः

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#76

Sanskrit is an amazing language - it is so BIG! Because of its extensive case system (10 different cases, IIRC), word order is highly flexible. The formalized rules of how spelling changes based on word adjacency (sandhi), and the ambiguity of interpreting long compounds, combined with the free word order, are so rich with poetic possibility that English seems baby-talk in comparison. It's hard to describe just how c…

In this context, this former discussion thread is also relevant;

Words for the Heart: A treasury of emotions from classical India (book review) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43249766

Bhartrihari is a notoriously difficult philosopher, and scholars are still puzzling over what exactly his work means. But perhaps radically oversimplified, here are a few things he suggests. First: wholes are always more real than the parts that comprise them. The whole comes first, and parts exist always and only as conceptual divisions within a pre-existing, coherent whole. Second: these divisions are always linguistic. It is language that carves up experience. But importantly, when language carves up experience, it is not, as some Buddhists thought, simply the superimposition of an artificial, conceptual filter onto a non-conceptual reality. Instead, Bhartrihari tells us, ordinary language is a crystallization of something already implicit in reality. Reality itself is fundamentally linguistic, and what we think of as language—ordinary language, with its words and conceptual divisions—is just a devolution or fragmentation of this more primordial linguistic totality. This is precisely why, for Bhartrihari, the ultimate reality is shabdabrahman, a linguistic absolute. So this is a strong form of idealism: things in our experience, and all things in existence, are fundamentally linguistic. We have no access to anything outside of language and therefore no reason to assume that there is, or ever was, anything separate from it.

Note-1: Does the above explain why many people perceive LLMs to be "conscious"?

Note-2: The effectiveness of Mathematics (when considered as a language in itself) to explain the "real world" also seems related here.

See also the book; The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language by Bimal Krishna Matilal - https://archive.org/details/wordandtheworldindiascontributio...

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#77

There’s some Sanskrit texts that don’t have English translations that I’d really like to read so I was going to use an LLM to create translations. Does anyone know how well LLMs handle Sanskrit or have any suggestions? Are any particular models better than others? Especially because I know that ancient texts sometimes use different dialects of Sanskrit and have different challenges. The one I’m mostly interested in t…

The Madras Sanskrit College in collaboration with IIT-Madras is working on a exclusive LLM for the Sanskrit language - https://madrassanskritcollege.edu.in/

From Mylapore to the World: The Story of India’s Sanskrit LLM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB_Bic7RqOg

PS: What translations of Yoga-Vasistha/Laghu-Yoga-Vasistha have you read/have had access to? This is one of my favourite philosophical texts and i am curious to know more.

Re: The Second Life of Sanskrit

#78

There’s some Sanskrit texts that don’t have English translations that I’d really like to read so I was going to use an LLM to create translations. Does anyone know how well LLMs handle Sanskrit or have any suggestions? Are any particular models better than others? Especially because I know that ancient texts sometimes use different dialects of Sanskrit and have different challenges. The one I’m mostly interested in t…

No, LLMs do not handle low resource / low corpus languages, including Sanskrit well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48945898
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