NASA article on Sanskrit in Artificial Intelligence Magazine

[and/or www.mantra.com/jai]

[ Subject: NASA article on Sanskrit in AI (Artificial Intelligence) Magazine
[ From: "P. Subramani" <subramani6...@gmail.com>
[ Date: Sunday, December 23, 2007

Please read the below in full  for knowledge, proudness
and enjoyment.

NASA article on Sanskrit in AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Magazine

Modern scientists hail the ancient language of the gods
as the only unambiguous natural language on the
planetThis interesting article refers to a NASA article
on Sanskrit in AI (Artificial Intelligence) Magazine in
Spring of 1985 written by NASA researcher, Rick Briggs

In ancient India the intention to discover truth was so
consuming, that in the process, they discovered perhaps
the most perfect tool for fulfilling such a search that
the world has ever known -- the Sanskrit language

Of all the discoveries that have occurred and developed
in the course of human history, language is the most
significant and probably the most taken for granted.
Without language, civilization could obviously not exist.
On the other hand, to the degree that language becomes
sophisticated and accurate in describing the subtlety and
complexity of human life, we gain power and effectiveness
in meeting its challenges. The access to modern
technology which has been designed to give ease,
efficiency and enjoyment in meeting our daily needs did
not exist at the beginning of the century. It was made
possible by accelerated advancement in the field of
mathematics, a "language" which has helped us to discover
the interrelationship of energy and matter with a high
degree of precision. The resulting technology is evidence
of the tremendous power that is unleashed simply by being
able to make the finer and finer distinction that a
language like mathematics affords

At the same time humankind has fallen far behind the
advancements in technology. The precarious state of
political and ecological imbalance that we are now
experiencing is an obvious sign of the power of
technology far exceeding the power of human beings to be
in control of it. It could easily be argued that we have
fallen far behind the advancements in technology, simply
because the languages we use for daily communication do
not help us to make the distinctions required to be in
balance with the technology that has taken over our lives

Relevant to this there has recently been an astounding
discovery made at the NASA research center. The following
quote is from an article which appeared in AI Magazine
(Artificial Intelligence) in Spring of 1985 written NASA
researcher, Rick Briggs

In the past twenty years, much time, effort, and money
has been expended on designing an unambiguous
representation of natural languages to make them
accessible to computer processing. These efforts have
centered around creating schemata designed to parallel
logical relations with relations expressed by the syntax
and semantics of natural languages, which are clearly
cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles
for the transmission of logical data. Understandably,
there is a widespread belief that natural languages are
unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that
artificial languages can render with great precision and
mathematical rigor

But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise
underlying much work in the areas of linguistics and
artificial intelligence, is a false one. There is at
least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of
almost 1000 years was a living spoken language with a
considerable literature of its own. Besides works of
literary value, there was a long philosophical and
grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with
undiminished vigor until the present century. Among the
accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a
method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is
identical not only in essence but in form with current
work in Artificial Intelligence. This article
demonstrates that a natural language can serve as an
artificial language also, and that much work in AI has
been reinventing a wheel millennia old

The discovery is of monumental significance. It is mind-
boggling to consider that we have available to us a
language which has been spoken for 4-7000 years that
appears to be in every respect a perfect language
designed for enlightened communication. But the most
stunning aspect of the discovery is this: NASA the most
advanced research center in the world for cutting edge
technology has discovered that Sanskrit, the world's
oldest spiritual language is the only unambiguous spoken
language on the planet

In early AI research it was discovered that in order to
clear up the inherent ambiguity of natural languages for
computer comprehension, it was necessary to utilize
semantic net systems to encode the actual meaning of the
sentence. Briggs gives the example of how a simple
sentence would be represented in a semantic net

Example: "John gave the ball to Mary." give, agent, John
give, object, ball give, recipient, Mary give, time, past
He further comments, "The degree to which a semantic net
(or any unambiguous nonsyntactic representation) is
cumbersome and odd-sounding in a natural language is the
degree to which that language is "natural" and deviates
from the precise or "artificial" . As we shall see, there
was a language (Sanskrit) spoken among an ancient
scientific community that has a deviation of zero."
Considering Sanskrit's status as a spiritual language, a
further implication of this discovery is that the age old
dichotomy between religion and science is an entirely
unjustified one

It is also relevant to note that in the last decade
physicists have begun to comment on the striking
similarities between their own discoveries and the
discoveries made thousands of years ago in India which
went on to form the basis of most Eastern religions

Because of the high level of collaboration required in
uncovering the nature of energy and matter, it is
inconceivable that it ever could have taken place without
a common language, namely mathematics. This is a perfect
example of using a language for discovering and designing
life. The language of mathematics, being inherently
unambiguous, minimizes personal interpretation and
therefore maximizes opportunity for exploration and
discovery. The result of this is a worldwide community of
scientists working together with extraordinary vitality
and excitement about uncovering the unknown

It can also be inferred that the discoveries that
occurred in India in the first millennia B.C. were also
the result of collaboration and inquiry by a community of
spiritual scientists utilizing a common scientific
language, Sanskrit. The truth of this is further accented
by the fact that throughout the history and development
of Indian thought the science of grammar and linguistics
was attributed a status equal to that of mathematics in
the context of modern scientific investigation. In
deference to the thoroughness and depth with which the
ancient grammatical scientists established the science of
language, modern linguistic researchers in Russia have
concluded about Sanskrit, "The time has come to continue
the tradition of the ancient grammarians on the basis of
the modern ideas in general linguistics."

Sanskrit is the most ancient member of the European
family of languages. It is an elder sister of Latin and
Greek rom which most of the modern European languages
have been derived. The oldest preserved form of Sanskrit
is referred to as Vedic . The oldest extant example of
the literature of the Vedic period is the Rig-Veda .
Being strictly in verse, the Rig-Veda does not give us a
record of the contemporary spoken language

The very name "Sanskrit" meant "language brought to
formal perfection" in contrast to the common languages,
Prakrits or "natural" languages. The form of Sanskrit
which has been used for the last 2500 years is known
today as Classical Sanskrit. The norms of classical
Sanskrit were established by the ancient grammarians.
Although no records are available of their work, their
efforts reached a climax in the 5th century B.C. in the
great grammatical treatise of Panini, which became the
standard for correct speech with such comprehensive
authority that it has remained so, with little alteration
until present times

Based on what the grammarians themselves have stated, we
may conclude that the Sanskrit grammar was an attempt to
discipline and explain a spoken language

The NASA article corroborates this in saying that Indian
grammatical analysis "probably has to do with an age old
Indo-Aryan preoccupation to discover the nature of
reality behind the impressions we human beings receive
through the operation of our senses." Until 1100 A.D.,
Sanskrit was without interruption the official language
of the whole of India. The dominance of Sanskrit is
indicated by a wealth of literature of widely diverse
genres including religious and philosophical; fiction
(short story, fable, novels, and plays); scientific
literature including linguistics, mathematics, astronomy,
and medicine; as well as law and politics

With the Muslim invasions from 1100 A.D. onwards,
Sanskrit gradually became displaced by common languages
patronized by the Muslim kings as a tactic to suppress
Indian cultural and religious tradition and supplant it
with their own beliefs. But they could not eliminate the
literary and spiritual- ritual use of Sanskrit

Even today in India, there is a strong movement to return
Sanskrit to the status of "national language of India."
Sanskrit being a language derived from simple
monosyllabic verbal roots through the addition of
appropriate prefixes and suffixes according to precise
grammatical laws has an infinite capacity to grow, adapt
and expand according to the requirements of change in a
rapidly evolving world

Even in the last two centuries, due to the rapid advances
in technology and science, a literature abundant with new
and improvised vocabulary has come into existence.
Although such additions are based on the grammatical
principles of Sanskrit, and mostly composed of Sanskrit
roots, still contributions from Hindi and other national
and international languages have been assimilated. For
example: The word for television, duuradarshanam, meaning
"that which provides a vision of what is far away " is
derived purely from Sanskrit

Furthermore, there are at least a dozen periodicals
published in Sanskrit, all-India radio news broadcast in
Sanskrit, television shows and feature movies produced in
Sanskrit, one village of 3000 inhabitants who communicate
through Sanskrit alone, not to mention countless smaller
intellectual communities throughout India, schools, as
well as families where Sanskrit is fostered. Contemporary
Sanskrit is alive and well

The discussion until now has been about Sanskrit, the
language of mathematical precision, the world's only
unambiguous spoken language. But the linguistic
perfection of Sanskrit offers only a partial explanation
for its sustained presence in the world for at least 3000
years. High precision in and of itself is of limited
scope. Generally it excites the brain but not the heart.
Sanskrit is indeed a perfect language in the same sense
as mathematics, but Sanskrit is also a perfect language
in the sense that, like music, it has the power to uplift
the heart

It's conceivable that for a few rare and inspired
geniuses, mathematics can reach the point of becoming
music or music becoming mathematics. The extraordinary
thing about Sanskrit is that it offers direct
accessibility by anyone to that elevated plane where the
two, mathematics and music, brain and heart, analytical
and intuitive, scientific and spiritual become one. This
is fertile ground for revelation. Great discoveries
occur, whether through mathematics or music or Sanskrit,
not by the calculations or manipulations of the human
mind, but where the living language is expressed and
heard in a state of joy and communion with the natural
laws of existence

Why has Sanskrit endured? Fundamentally it generates
clarity and inspiration. And that clarity and inspiration
is directly responsible for a brilliance of creative
expression such as the world has rarely seen

The Ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit
tongue both in quality and in body and abundance of
excellence, in their potent originality and force and
beauty, in their substance and art and structure, in
grandeur and justice and charm of speech and in the
height and width of the reach of their spirit stand very
evidently in the front rank among the world's great
literatures. The language itself, as has been universally
recognized by those competent to form a judgment, is one
of the most magnificent, the most perfect and wonderfully
sufficient literary instruments developed by the human
mind, at once majestic and sweet and flexible, strong and
clearly-formed and full and vibrant and subtle, and its
quality and character would be of itself a sufficient
evidence of the character and quality of the race whose
mind it expressed and the culture of which it was the
reflecting medium

Sanskrit after all is the language of mantra -- words of
power that are subtly attuned to the unseen harmonies of
the matrix of creation, the world as yet unformed. The
possibility of such a finely attuned language is only
conceivable by drawing upon sounds so inherently pure in
combinations so harmoniously blended that the result is
as refreshing and pure as the energy of creation forming
into mountain streams and lakes and the flawless crystal
structures of natural gems, while at the same time
wielding the power of nebulae and galaxies expanding into
the infinitude of space

But from the perception of Rishis, the source of language
transcends such conceptions. In Sanskrit, Vaak,speech,
the "word" of Genesis, incorporates both the sense of
"voice" and "word". It has four forms of _expression. The
first, Paraa , represents cosmic ideation arising from
the original and absolute divine presence. The second,
Pashyantii (literally "seeing") is Vaak as subject
"seeing," which creates the object of madhyamaavaak , the
third and subtle form of speech before it manifests as
vaikhariivaak, the gross production of letters in spoken
speech

Sanskrit is a language whose harmonic subtlety,
mysteriously sources the successive phases of creation
all the way to origination. This implies the p ossibility
of having speech oriented to a direct living truth which
transcends individual preoccupation with the limited
information available through the senses

Spoken words as such are creative living things of power.
They penetrate to the essence of what they describe. They
give birth to meaning which reflects the profound
interrelatedness of life

It is a tantalizing proposition to consider speaking a
language whose sounds are so pure and euphonically
combined. The mere listening or speaking inspires and
produces joy and clarity. And yet it has been precisely
the tendency of humanity as a whole to merely be
tantalized by happiness, but not actually to choose it.
It's as though we had been offered the most precious gem
and we answered, "No, I'd rather be poor." The only
possible background for such a choice is the unconscious
belief that, "I can't have it. I can't be that."
Interestingly enough, this is exactly what is triggered
in people who are faced with the opportunity to learn
Sanskrit. The basic attitude towards learning Sanskrit in
India today is, "It's too difficult." Actually Sanskrit
is not difficult. On the contrary, there are few greater
enjoyments. The first stage, experiencing the individual
power of each of the 49 basic sounds of the Sanskrit
alphabet is pure discovery, especially for Westerners who
have never paid attention to the unique distinctions of
individual letters such as location of resonance and
tongue position. The complete alphabet must have been
worked out by learned grammarians on phonetic principles
by long before it was codified by Panini around 500 B.C.
It is arranged on a thoroughly scientific method, the
simple vowels (short and long) coming first, then the
complex vowels (dipthongs), followed by the consonants in
uniform groups according to the organs of speech with
which they are pronounced

The unique organization of the Sanskrit alphabet serves
to focus one's attention on qualities and patterns of
articulated sound in a way that occurs in no other
language. By paying continuous attention to the point of
location, degree of resonance and effort of breath, one's
awareness becomes more and more consumed by the direct
experience of articulated sound. This in itself produces
and unprecedented clarity of mind and revelry in the joy
of language

Every combination of sound in Sanskrit follows strict
laws which essentially make possible an uninterrupted
flow of the most perfect euphonic blending of letters
into words and verse

The script used to depict written Sanskrit is known as
Devanaagari or that "spoken by the Gods." Suitably for
Sanskrit, it is a perfect system of phonetic
representation. According to linguists, the phonetic
accuracy of the Devanaagari compares well with that of
the modern phonetic transcriptions

Because of its inherent logic, systematic presentation
and adherence to only the most clear and most pure
sounds, the Sanskrit alphabet in its spoken form, is
perhaps the easiest in the world to learn and recall.
Once the alphabet is learned, there is just one major
step to take in gaining access to the Sanskrit language:
learning the case and tense endings. The endings are what
make Sanskrit a language of math-like precision. By the
endings added onto nouns or verbs, there is an obvious
determination of the precise interrelationship of words
describing activity of persons and things in time and
space, regardless of word order. Essentially, the endings
constitute the software or basic program of the Sanskrit
language

The rigor of learning the case endings is precisely the
reason why many stop in their pursuit of Sanskrit. Yet by
an effective immersion method, fluent reading of the
Devanagari script, accurate pronunciation, and the
inputting of the case and tense endings can easily be
accomplished. Such a method must take advantage of the
fact that Sanskrit grammar is structured by precise
patterns, and once a pattern has been noted it is a
simple exercise to recognize all the individual instances
that fit the pattern; rather than see the pattern after
all the individual instances have been learned. Color
coding provides a tremendous support in this regard

Learning the case endings through the chanting of basic
pure sound combinations in musical and rhythmic sequences
is a way to overcome learning inhibitions, attune to the
root power of the Sanskrit language and access the
natural computer efficiency, speed and clarity of the
mind

Although learning Sanskrit in some ways presents
challenges similar to those of learning calculus or
music, it also induces a lubrication and acceleration of
mental function that actually makes such a process
exciting and enjoyable. Perhaps the greatest immediate
benefit of learning Sanskrit by this method is that it
requires participants to relinquish control, abandon
prior learning structures and come into a direct
experience of the language

The actual simplicity and enjoyment of the sounds of
Sanskrit provides everyone with an opportunity to learn a
subject which is technically precise with fluidity and
ease. This tends to produce a complete reversal of the
inhibiting competitive environment in which most life
education traditionally took place, by creating an
atmosphere in which mutual support generates personal
breakthrough and vice-versa

One thing is certain, Sanskrit will only become the
planetary language when it is taught in a way which is
exciting and enjoyable. Furthermore it must address
individual learning inhibitions with clarity and
compassion in a setting which encourages everyone to step
forth, take risks, make mistakes and learn

Already we have outstanding examples of this approach in
the work of teachers such as Jaime Escalante, whose
remarkable achievements in teaching advanced calculus to
underprivileged high school students in East Los Angeles
were featured in the Academy Award nominated movie,
"Stand and Deliver." Another hope for the return of
Sanskrit lies in computers. Sanskrit and computers are a
perfect fit. The precision play of Sanskrit with computer
tools will awaken the capacity in human beings to utilize
their innate higher mental faculty with a momentum that
would inevitably transform the world. In fact the mere
learning of Sanskrit by large numbers of people in itself
represents a quantum leap in consciousness, not to
mention the rich endowment it will provide in the arena
of future communication

Sanskrit has always inspired the hearts, mind and souls
of wise people. The great German scholar Max Muller, who
did more than anyone to introduce Sanskrit to the West in
the latter part of the 19th century, contended that
without a knowledge of the language (Sanskrit),
literature, art, religion and philosophy of India, a
liberal education could hardly be complete -- India being
the intellectual and spiritual ancestor of the race,
historically and through Sanskrit

Max Muller also pointed out that Sanskrit provides
perfect examples of the unity and foundation it offers to
the Celtic, Teutonic, Slavonic, Germanic and Anglo-Saxon
languages, not to mention its influence on Asian
languages.The transmission of Buddhism to Asia can be
attributed largely to the appeal to Sanskrit. Even in
translation the works of Sanskrit evoked the supreme
admiration of Western poets and philosophers like
Emerson, Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Goethe, Schlegel and
Schopenhauer

The fact is that Sanskrit is more deeply interwoven into
the fabric of the collective world consciousness than
anyone perhaps knows. After many thousands of years,
Sanskrit still lives with a vitality that can breathe
life, restore unity and inspire peace on our tired and
troubled planet. It is a sacred gift, an opportunity. The
future could be very bright

J. Venkatasubramanian

End of forwarded post.

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

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