The Story of Sanskrit
Sanskrit is the mother of many Indian and Indo-European languages. It is the language of Hindu Vedic scriptures and treasure house of most scientific knowledge. The “Untold Story of Sanskrit” is a finely crafted documentary, produced by the Project Shivoham YouTube channel, created for contributing to the preservation of glorious yet forgotten ancient cultural heritage of India. Ratnavathy Sivalingam-Chandrasegaran, a mother and an entrepreneur in Malaysia is behind this project. The channel claims to place great importance on extensive research of ancient scriptures to provide evidence for their claims.
The documentary: https://youtu.be/eQqJkm_q93k is in three sections: 1. The history of the language, 2. Its relationship to the world of computing, and 3. Reason for learning Sanskrit.
- The history takes us back to its origin and how it evolved across continents in the world, narrating its influence on both the linguistic and cultural aspects of various other ancient traditions. Beginning with the Panini Maharishi’s grammatical treatise Astadhyayi, known as the oldest and the most comprehensive work on linguistics ever known, it includes works of a number of other Sanskrit scholars who further researched and elaborated upon Panini’s work, such as:
- Rishi Nandinatha’s 14 principles forming the foundation of human speech;
- Rishi Pingala – author of Chandahshastra, a framework for constructing Sanskrit poems,
- Rishi Katyayana – author of Varttkakara, an elaboration of Panini’s work. He also contributed to mathematics, dealing with geometry and extended treatment of the Pythagorean theorem; and
- Rishi Patanjali – author of Yoga Sutras and provided further explanation of Panini’s
- Relationship to the world of computing: a) the basic assembly language programming in computing uses the binary numbering system which is derived from the rules outlined by Rishi Pingala in Chandahshastra; b) Combinatorics is a branch of mathematics dealing with counting. It has many applications ranging from logic to statistical physics and machine learning in artificial intelligence. Pingala’s Meru Prashtara gave rise to the Fibonacci series, also known as the Pascal’s Triangle, based on the 16th century French scientist Blaise Pascal.
- Reasons for learning Sanskrit: recent scientific research in brain development has found that memorising and reciting the Vedic Mantras by our Pundits increases the part of the brain called Hippocampus that stores the memory. Incidentally, this is what the most recited Gayatri Mantra tells us:
ॐ भूर्भुवः स्व: तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यं
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि
धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात् ॥
Om! We meditate on the Supreme Lord
whose light pervades the three worlds;
May thy light illuminate and empower
our intellect.
(Sourced from: Hinduism Today – Jan-Feb-Mar 2022) – Vijai Singhal
