丅ᕼᗴ Ǥᖇᗴᗩ丅 ᔕᗩᑎᔕᛕᖇI丅 ᗷᒪᑌᑎᗪᗴᖇ

[संस्कृत संवादः]

丅ᕼᗴ Ǥᖇᗴᗩ丅 ᔕᗩᑎᔕᛕᖇI丅 ᗷᒪᑌᑎᗪᗴᖇ

वाग्देवतामाश्रये | 26th June 2024 | Mohit Dokania

Read here : tinyurl.com/2qm9worc

"Speak, even distorted Sanskrit, all of you." 
"Even if it is incorrect, there is no need to worry." 
"Please let the mistakes not be pointed out." 
"Let there be mistakes."

These were the slogans by Samskrita Bharati activists during the Sanskrit Sambhashana Andolana, started in 1981, as revealed by Shri Chamu Krishna Shastry.¹ Before 1981, even a single mistake in Sanskrit was taken seriously and rectified immediately, fostering a culture of pure Sanskrit being spoken in the mainstream. This culture pretty much still survives in Nepal but was suppressed in India using the organizational and financial muscle power of Samskrita Bharati with support from its allies.

Major Sanskrit universities, including Central Sanskrit University (then Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan), supported this movement by planning² the degradation of Sanskrit to the level of Hindi, making it accessible to all under the banner of Sarala Samskrutam (Simple Sanskrit). This reduction to the level of Hindi has stripped Sanskrit of its inherent divinity, diminishing its sacred and profound nature.

This push to spread Sanskrit, even at the cost of corrupting it, has resulted in unprecedented distortion of the language. Most of the Sanskrit newspapers, digital magazines, research papers, brochures and such have degraded in terms of linguistic richness. When compared with Sanskrit writings before the 1980s, one might think they are reading two different languages. This distortion has even crept into tools like Google Translate, leading to inaccurate and misleading translations of Sanskrit. The eternally uniform Classical Sanskrit has been reduced to a substandard level.

Simple Standard Sanskrit discouraged the excessive use of sandhi (compound conjunction) and samasa (compound formation), which unsurprisingly instilled more fear in the minds of students. It advocated trimming the ten lakāras (tenses and moods) to only four, replacing past lakāras with kridanta usages, which resulted in a fear of Sanskrit verb forms. Most unfortunately, it tried to eliminate³ the use of madhyama purusha (second person), even when it is mandatory to use madhyama purusha verb forms when Yushmad (second person pronouns) forms are ellipsed.⁴ This ungrammatical approach led to the widespread suffix of तु in every लोट्लकार form (imperative mood). This is just a glimpse of the entire plan.

Shri Shastry further admitted that the knowledge of Sanskrit has remained unchanged even after 20 years in many Samskrita Bharati volunteers. This indicates that their volunteers are no longer interested in speaking Sanskrit correctly. This blunder is now beyond the control of even its planners and implementers. Volunteers who themselves did not know how to speak Sanskrit properly were assigned as teachers in Sambhashan Shibiras (spoken Sanskrit camps). This resulted in a severely flawed quality of education.

Sanskrit education is not a joke where one teaches anything they believe is right and then asks poorly taught students to correct their own mistakes through self-study. Foundational education should be firm, basic, and precisely correct.

This blunder, although unintentional, has caused significant corruption to Sanskrit, a level of damage neither Islamic invasions nor British destruction of the gurukula system was able to achieve. It is often internal decay that leads to the corruption of dharmic elements, eroding their true essence from within.

If we want to bring back that culture of zero tolerance for Sanskrit corruption, we must gently rectify the mistakes of humble Sanskrit speakers but act firmly with arrogant or habitual distorters of Sanskrit.

We must also work to dismantle this flawed teaching system and ensure an alternative method that simplifies Sanskrit without degrading it.

— — — — —

¹ Chamu Krishna Shastry, "Bhāṣāśuddhiḥ api cintanīyā," Sambhashana Sandesha, January 2009. bit.ly/3RMmMft

² https://sanskrit.nic.in/data/Simple_Standard_Sanskrit.pdf

³ तथा क्रियते चेत् प्रथमपुरुषः, उत्तमपुरुषः चेति पुरुषद्वयस्य प्रयोगेण एव सर्वमपि व्यवहारं कर्तुं शक्नुमः । [If we do so, we can conduct all communication using only the first person and the third person.] in २.३.१.३, Simple Standard Sanskrit.

⁴ युष्मद्युपपदे समानाधिकरणे स्थानिन्यपि मध्यमः। १।४।१०५॥ https://ashtadhyayi.com/sutraani/1/4/105 (अपि is the key word here.)

[अभ्यंकरकुलोत्पन्नः श्रीपादः | श्रीपतेः पदयुगं स्मरणीयम् ।]

This message should go to all of Sanskrit Bharati centres, such that Sanskrit Bharati would themselves close their programs of Sambhashana Sanskritam and replace it with programs of learning correct Sanskritam only.

[Vishvas Vasuki (Vishvas)]

https://groups.google.com/g/bvparishat/c/vZBhsz6Hm4Q/m/rP0HbQQXAQAJ  इत्यत्रास्य साधूत्तरं प्रदत्तम् अभुयुक्तेन जनार्दनार्येण। 

किं शिष्यते वक्तुम्?  

पुरापि नानाविधा अपभ्रंशा अवर्तन्त, यथा buddhist hybrid sanskrit, tAntrik sanskrit etc.. । पुनर् विद्वांसोऽपि प्रायेण सस्वरम् अभाषमाणा पाणिन्यादिदृष्ट्या भ्रष्टभाषका एव पुराऽपि। सदैवैवं देशीय-मार्गीय-भेदो वर्तते - सर्वे ऽपि शिष्टास् स्युर् इति दुराग्रह एव। व्याकरणज्ञानस्य तावत् फलं हि शिष्टाभिज्ञानम् इति पतञ्जलेर् अभिप्रायं स्मरामि।  

यद्य् अयम् दोकनियामोहितः किञ्चिद् वरं मार्गम् आविष्करोति - साधयतु नाम, वीक्ष्य प्रशंसिष्यामः।