Image: "Sanskrit" as it's traditionally written. Directly translated into English, it would be "Sam(nasalized 'a')skrtam
To linguists, Sanskrit is often an origin of controversy. South Asian and Western scholars have different ideas on the geographic origin and significance of the origin. When Sanskrit was first largely opened to the Western world by William Jones, ‘father of linguistics’ in the mid 1700’s, he admired it at the greatest language he has ever seen:
“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family (William Jones).”
At the start of Western Sanskrit study, the language was admired as the pinnacle of language, culture, and religious expression. But some Indian linguists claim that over time, the West has lost its admiration and respect for Sanskrit and India. This is shown in the term “Indo-European”, claims Indian linguist Varun Singh, which places the “Indo” in a marginalized position to the “European” (Singh 2017):
“Sense of European superiority, which guides and drives the present status, has undivided support of Western scholarship spanning several disciplines, particularly those devoted to the Indo-European cause, study of ancient languages including Sanskrit, the practitioners of Indo-European or historical linguistics and more recently the rapidly evolving field of genetics. Sadly, India has so far lacked specialists in these fields who could take on and redress the kind of imbalance generated by the specious Western scholarship (Singh 2017).”
Colonialism and politics brought the concepts of the nordic looking “aryan” to the forefront of 20th century European ideals, although the term aryan is heavily distorted in this sense. The origins of Sanskrit/Hinduism are still debated as either coming from Syria, the Mongolian/Russian steppes, or India itself. These conflicts in scholarly opinion are likely to continue with the resurgence in popularity of Sanskrit across India.
Sources:
Singh, Varun. Origin of Hindu religion and Sanskrit in Central Asia: A recent claim and its rebuttal. 2017. Indian Historical Review, 44.1, pp. 1-20.
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