Saturday, May 8, 2010

Sanskrit and Modern Indian Languages

Languages spoken in India belong to various language families like (i) Indo- European Family, (ii) Dravidian Family (iii) Austric, (iv) Sino-Tibetan etc, which include 179 languages and about 544 dialects. The languages spoken in North India are called Indo-Aryan Languages and come under Indo- European Family. The languages spoken in South India belong to Dravidian family. The Languages of Kashmir and Assam belong to Sino-Tibetan Family. Some dialects of Andaman and Nikobar Islands, West Bengal, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Tamilnadu and Orissa belong to Austric Family.

The geographical position of a language has very often had a great deal of positive influence upon its development. So Sanskrit being the oldest language of India has influenced all other languages of India, even those, which have not directly originated from it. There are ample evidences that all the languages of Indo-Aryan Group are the offsprings of Sanskrit Languages. Sanskrit is considered to be the mother of most of Indian Languages except Dravidian Family.

All the Modern Indian Languages, like, Hindi, Marathi, Gujrati, Oriya, Bengali, Sindhi, Maithili, Kashmiri, Assamese, Konkani, Rajsthani, Manipuri, Punjabi etc., have been enriched with the words of Sanskrit. Sanskrit has influenced other languages also which have not originated from it, like Urdu and the Dravidian languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam.

Another Evidence of the influence of Sanskrit on the Modern Indian Languages is its literary component. The Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the two oldest epics of Sanskrit are the sources of many other literatures the Ramacaritamanasa in Hindi by Tulasidas, the Adhyatmaramayana in Malayalam by Ramanuja Eutachh, the Kambaramayana in Tamil by Kamban, the Mullaramayana in Telugu and the Krttibasaramayana on Bangla by Krttivasab. The notable evidence of the influences of Sanskrit language on modern Indian languages is the literary heritage of it.

http://kksv.blogspot.com/search/label/Eminent%20Sanskrit%20Authors

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