SANSKRIT AND THE ASPIRATIONS OF INDEPENDENT INDIA
 

1. A New Awakening of National Self-consciousness and Sanskrit

1. Ever since the beginning of the 19th century, when, as a result of the contact with the mind of Europe, a new renaissance of the Indian spirit had started. the place of Sanskrit came to be re- established in a new way in the intellectual and spiritual life of the Indian people. At first in the case of a few of the protagonists of the new learning through English, Sanskrit appeared to have lost its significance and importance. But its presence in the background of the intellectual and cultural life of India was never lost sight of, because Sanskrit studies were till then quite flourishing in the traditional way. There was a tendency among a certain class of over- enthusiastic students of English to be carried away from their national moorings by the flood-tide of European modernism, but very quickly a proper balance was restored. The study of Sanskrit in the Universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras was to a large extent responsible for this restoration of the balance. The discovery and study of Sanskrit by Europe opened up a hitherto-unknown chapter in the history of the peoples of Europe and India, and established a common Indo-European heritage for them. This fact gave to Sanskrit a new importance and prestige in the world-context. There was also appreciation of the philosophical, aesthetic and spiritual value of Sanskrit literature by European scholars. This gave a legitimate sense of pride and brought in a renewed interest in Sanskrit, particularly among our new intelligentsia.

2. The national aspirations of the Indian people became quickened during the second half of the last century when British colonialism and imperialism were for the first time realised as evil, and people began to dream of independence. With this desire for independence, the renascent Indian mind started to build up a new Weltanschauung which gave a new tone to Indian civilisation. It was a desire to synthesise the permanent and universal elements of Indian civilisation with the best that Europe could give us, both in, thought and science. Sanskrit at that time permeated all aspects of Indian life, and so there could be no question of reviving it--only there was an attempt to modernise its study. The place of Sanskrit in Indian life and in the Indian set-up was taken for granted by the nationalist workers before Independence. When Bankim Chandra Chatterji composed his National Song Vande Mataram about the year 1880, he could not have foreseen what an importance this song would later on acquire in the national movement, of which the two words, Vande Mataram, practically became the basic mantra, the Rastra-Gayatri, if we may say so. He composed this song in Sanskrit (with a few Bengali sentences within) as the most natural thing. The place of Sanskrit was so obvious that no one gave any special thought to it.

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3. Long before our Independence, some of our leaders were thinking of how best the unity of India as a single political and cultural unit could be strengthened. The English education had made us politically conscious. It was generally realised that English, though a foreign language, had helped to build up a sense of unity. But national aspirations were in favour of having an Indian language as a visible symbol of a single united Indian nation. Sanskrit was looked upon with respect, and its importance as a great unifying force was also generally recognised. But there was also the view that Sanskrit was no longer a living language; and so serious efforts were not made to revive it as a sort of common Indian speech. The wide prevalence of Hindi, in its various forms, gave to this language a position of importance among its sister speeches. Therefore, in 1921, Gandhiji, and following him the Congress also, accepted Hindi, in the last phase of our political struggle for freedom, as the prospective national language of India. After Independence, the Constituent Assembly decided that the official language of India was to be Hindi written in Devanagari script, and this was put in the Constitution. But the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly on this question were anything but smooth, and though there was a tacit agreement in this matter, Sanskrit never ceased to loom in the background. A general feeling was there that if the binding force of Sanskrit was taken away, the people of India would cease to feel that they were parts of a single culture and a single nation.

4. The readiness with which Hindi received the support of a large section of the Indian people was because Hindi appeared to make a stand for Sanskrit. Its script was the same as that of Sanskrit-the Devanagari, as adopted now as the pan-Indian script for the Sanskrit language. Besides, Hindi wanted to draw its words of higher culture from indigenous sources rather than from foreign languages, and, for this purpose, it naturally went back to Sanskrit. This was for Hindi its main recommendation, that it was, in a way, seeking to follow Sanskrit more than ever. In the meanwhile, through nearly 2,000 years of close connection with Sanskrit, most of the mediaeval and modern languages of India have become thoroughly impregnated with the spirit of Sanskrit, both in their words and in their ideas. So Sanskritised Hindi seemed to be the fitting representative for all the modern language's of India, add was looked upon as the most suitable national speech for a resurgent India; and in spite of the strong plea put forward by certain groups of people in favour of a cosmopolitan and not too much Sanskritised Hindi, by far the majority of the Indian population, if it was to give an opinion about Hindi as the pan-Indian language, would certainly underline the expression Sanskritised. For, Sanskritised Hindi alone can be easily understood in all non-Hindi- speaking areas.

5. The support of Hindi in a way meant laying stress on the unity of India through Sanskrit, even if it were through the intermediacy of Hindi. The aspirations of a free Indian people, it was thought, could be best expressed through Sanskrit, functioning through the Modern Indian Languages.

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6. In the national self-consciousness of India at the present day, Sanskrit is generally coming to the forefront. The Sanskrit name for India-Bharata-has been officially recognised. The national motto of India is a Sanskrit quotation from the Upanisads-Satyam eva jayate ("Truth alone triumphs"). The national Anthem of India, Jana-Gana- Mana, composed by Rabindranath Tagore, is 90% Sanskrit and 10% Sanskritic, and hence is understood all over India. The' Government of India have officially adopted Sri and Srimati as official forms of address. The motto of the Loka-Sabha is Dharma-cakra-pravartanaya ("For the promulgation of the Wheel of Law"). The All India Radio has adopted as its guiding principle and motto the Sanskrit expression Bahujana-hitaya bahujana-sukhaya ("For the good of the many and for the happiness of the many"). The Life Insurance Corporation's motto is Yogaksemam vahamy aham, which is a quotation from the Bhagavad- Gita, meaning "I take responsibility for access and security". The Indian Navy has accepted as its motto the Vedic prayer: sam no Varunah. The great principle of India's foreign policy is expressed by the Sanskrit term Panca-Sila. In several other departments of public life-as for instance on formal occasions like the laying of a foundation stone or the holding of a University Convocation-Sanskrit is slowly coming up, as a fitting expression of our national aspirations. In order to maintain our position in the comity of nations, the use of Sanskrit is supported as being conducive to the restoration of our sense of selfrespect.

2. The Importance of Sanskrit in Indian History and Culture

7. Sanskrit is one of the great languages of the world; and it is the classical language par excellence not only of India but of a good part of Asia as well. There is, of course, the time-honoured attitude towards Sanskrit, which holds it in a spirit of veneration, as the most ancient language of the world and as the repository of all spiritual knowledge and science. This veneration is reinforced in modern times by historical and critical study and appreciation., There is no question that Sanskrit is one of the greatest languages of civilisation; and comparable to it are. a few other great languages of the world, equally languages of civilisation which are still effective, like Greek, Chinese, Latin and Arabic. Its value for humanity in general and for India in particular is that of a great feeder language of the world-a language which not only gives the pabulum of a whole host of words and phrases. which are necessary for the self-expression of the speeches of many a modern people who have not as yet come up to the mark, but supplies through its literature the mental and spiritual pabulum as well to the peoples of the present age. Sanskrit is the speech through which the civilisation of India, ever since its formation in the Vedic Period, has found its expression for over four thousand years.

(a) Sanskrit as the Greatest Cultural Heritage of India

8. When Jawaharlal Nehru made the following observations about the importance of Sanskrit in Indial, he only reiterated the general belief

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of the Indian people, and the considered views which have been ex- pressed not only by the greatest thinkers and leaders of India, but also by foreign scholars and specialists in Indian history and civilisation who are in a position to appraise objectively the value of Sanskrit:

"If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly it is the Sanskrit language and literature, and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance, and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long the basic genius of India will continue".

As a matter of fact, a long series of quotations can easily be made in this connection from the most eminent savants and thinkers of both India and outside India, beginning with the illustrious Sir William Jones, who in 1786 announced to the western world the great fact of Sanskrit being a language "more perfect than Greek, more copious than Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either", and indicated the place of Sanskrit and its importance, not only for India but also for the whole world.

9. The long and unbroken continuity of Sanskrit in the life and tradition of India is something unique, and excepting China, with her system of writing keeping up this historical continuity, no other country in the world can show this unbroken line of development. The Greek and the Roman world suffered from a violent break when Christianity came and snapped the chain. Similarly Egypt and Babylon also sustained the double break of both language and religion. In India, religion and language have both maintained this unbroken continuity through the ages. .

10. In this context, Sanskrit has shown a dynamic force, the force of a language that is' perennially living-it has never been static. During its long course of development and expansion, it absorbed numerous elements from the speeches current in all parts of the country. It thus ultimately attained a truly all-India character, in the building of which all the peoples of India had a share.

11. "Sanskrit", in the broad sense of the term, can very well be taken to include the entire linguistic development of the Aryan speech in India, from the Vedic period right down to the establishment of the Turks as the dominant power in North India at the beginning of the 13th century A.D. This view of Sanskrit has been the traditional view, which was accepted by the early students of Sanskrit and Prakrit in India, and also by the early foreigners like Albiruni who took to Sanskrit and Indian studies. From this traditional point of view, the spoken forms of the Aryan speech in India-the Prakrits and the Apabhramsas were never looked upon as separate languages: they were considered to be merely different styles of the same Sanskrit speech, though in pronunciation and in grammar there was a considerable amount of modification. The intelligibility of Sanskrit to the masses, who used Prakrit in their ordinary life, was the criterion which they applied. A foreign observer like Albiruni also noted that the current language of India had

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two forms-the Sanskrit, as the learned and literary speech; forming its outward, formal, and literary facade, so to say, and the Prakrits, which were not regarded as distinct from Sanskrit for most practical purposes. This is necessary to be pointed out, for, sometimes people cite, without much thought, the evidence of Sanskrit dramas to show that the women and common characters understood only Prakrit, forgetting the fact that the Prakrit speakers made their Prakrit speeches in reply to Sanskrit speeches which they followed in all the subtlety of the latter.

12. In any case, as century by century there was development of civilisation in India, we have the Sanskrit speech in its various stages and forms-the Vedic Sanskrit as in the Samhitas; the Sanskrit of the Brahmanas and the Upanisads; the more popular Sanskrit of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana as well as of the Puranas; the Sanskrit of the learned Schools as envisaged by Panini, Katyayana and Patanjali as the language of a specially educated class, the Sistas; the mixed Sanskrit of the Buddhists; the Sanskrit of the practical and scientific writings, such as those on Artha-sastra; Kama-sastra, Natya-sastra, Ayurveda. and Jyotisa; the simple Sanskrit of a newly developed type of belleslettres as in the Dramas and the simple Kavyas; the ornate Sanskrit as in the more elaborate Kavyas and prose Romances; the simple unsophisticated folk style of Sanskrit, running close to the spirit and vocabulary of the vernaculars, such as we find in the fable-books like the Pancatantra and the Hitopadesa, and in later narrative poems, and in thousands of Subhasitas or reflective and didactic stanzas and distichs, which have always been in the mouths of the people; and besides, those forms of speech which frankly 'belong to the Sanskrit orbit, e.g., the important literature in Pali and the various Prakrits and Apabhramsas. which it is not possible to understand fully without reference to their Sanskrit bases'. All these form the repository of a mass of literature which gives expression to the intellectual and spiritual advancement of India in her great creative ages. The total output of this literature (even if we were to exclude that of Pali and the Prakrits) easily transcends in extent everything which any other ancient or mediaeval literature can show. Not only has the quantity to be taken into account, but also the extraordinarily high quality of a very large percentage of it too.

13. The Indian people and the Indian civilisation were born, so Lo say, in the lap of Sanskrit. It went hand in hand with the historical development of the Indian people, and gave the noblest expression to their mind and culture which has come down to our day as an inheritance of priceless order for India, nay, for the entire world.

14. Sanskrit is, therefore, not merely a classical language which enshrines the ancient literature of India, but it is something of much greater significance. It was through Sanskrit literature, e.g., in the Vedas on the one hand and the Epics and the Puranas on the other, that the

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Indian body politic created for itself a consistent and a comprehensive interpretation of its past and a raison d'etre and a hope for its present and its future. In the great cultural integration that was evolved, a common ideal was built up with the conception of a Moral or Divine Order called Rta and Dharma as its basis. In this ideology, everything could have its place, and place of harmony; and herein lay the wonderful power of elasticity shown by the literature of Sanskrit. It became a great force for bringing about unity among Indians who were to be brought within the evergrowing orbit of Sanskrit culture, in which all facets of thought, including certain heterodox attitudes of life and being, could also have their honoured and legitimate places. Sanskrit was the linguistic and literary expression of that great Cultural Synthesis which is identical with Bharata-Dharma, the Spirit of India, or Indianism, as it has been sometimes described.

15. The whole of India thus gradually came under the aegis of Sanskrit. Sanskrit did not suppress other languages which had merits of their own. Grammars on the Sanskrit model were prepared for the various Indian languages including those of the South. This policy of 'live and let live', and even of active support, led to spontaneous acceptance of Sanskrit.

16. Sanskrit is our great mental and spiritual link with the IndoEuropean and Aryan-speaking world to the West of India-with Iran, with Armenia, with. Europe. Sanskrit is the elder sister of Greek and Latin, of Gothic and Old Irish, and of Old Slav. The Modern North Indian Aryan Languages and the Indo-European languages outside India- Hindi, Bengali, Marathi and the rest on one hand, and English, French, Russian and the rest on the other-are cousins belonging to the same family. The very large and indispensable Sanskrit element in the cultivated Dravidian languages of South India, Telugu, Kannada, Tamil and Malayalam, is a cultural link of great value between these and the Indo-European Languages of Europe.

17. Sanskrit, as the oldest Indo-European language with a great, literature, has a unique importance even for the people of Indo-Euro- pean speech outside India. It was the inspiration from Sanskrit which had led to the establishment of the Indo-European world, and bad brought in a new conception of history. On a study of Sanskrit and its sister languages, the basic unity of the Indo-European people has been, to some extent, established'.

18. Sanskrit by its origin and its basic character links us to the West. But it has been no less a potent bond of union for India with the lands of Asia-with Serindia or Central Asia of ancient and mediaeval times

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where the cultures of China and India had a common meeting place; with Tibet; with China and the lands within the-orbit of Chinese civil- lisation-Korea and Japan and Vietnam; and above all, with the lands of Farther India-Burma and Siam, Pathet Lao and Cambodia, and Cochin China or Champa, and the area of Malaya and Indonesia. Ceylon is of course a historical and cultural projection of India. In all these lands, Sanskrit found a home for itself as the vehicle of Indian thought and civilisation which flowed out into them as a peaceful cul- tural extension, from the closing centuries of the first thousand years before Christ. It found for itself new homes in the other countries of Asia as noted above. It found also a place of honour in the culture of a great and civilised people like the Chinese, and following the Chinese the Koreans, the Japanese and the Vietnamese; and also the Tibetans, and the Turks of Central Asia, and the Mongols and the Manchus.*