India is a celebration of numbers,& not just in the Mathematical sense! Jewel-bright colours, a multitude of customs, various regional cuisines ranging from bland to spicy & everything in between, hundreds of languages, a variety of different scripts, & more than a billion people!

There are over 800 languages¹ today,& plenty more existed in ancient times. We have technology & apps that can translate text or audio in a matter of seconds. Yet we find it difficult to understand one another & rely on that Universal Indian Language - English, or the Aspiring Universal Language – Hindi (although some Indians south of the Vindhyas & in the North-East are putting up a spirited fight!). So with all these different tongues & long before English became the lingua franca, how did Indians of yore communicate with each other? How did they bridge the divide between the people in the north of the Vindhyas & those south of these mountains?

Fig 3 : Vedic Sanskrit & Old Avestan; Ancient Aryans

Ancient India was a dynamic mix of languages, & dialects, much like today. Vedic Sanskrit, the language of the Rig Veda, composed sometime around 1500 BCE, was possibly the mother tongue of the people of the Vedic culture. Vedic Sanskrit itself is a part of the Indo-European language family, & quite similar in grammar & vocabulary to Old Avestan² (spoken in Persia or present-day Iran).

Sometime in the 2^nd millenium BCE, winds of change blew over the sub-continent. People crossed borders. Civilisations clashed, & chaos ensued. Tribes met, married & communicated in varied tongues. A confluence of languages flowed down the Saraswati in the Indus valley & beyond. Thereafter, several regional languages or the Prakrits³, as they were known, were used by people in various kingdoms & republics in the sub-continent.

Fig 4 : Map of Indian in Early Vedic Period

The common people of ancient India relied primarily on oral tradition to record transactions, convey information, pass on religious traditions or stories, entertain themselves through music & drama, & preserve history and memories. Reading & writing were specialised skills, restricted to a small group of people such as kings, priests, scribes, authors, poets, & teachers. Writing on materials such as palm leaves, wood, cloth, etc. was time-consuming, & expensive. Writing was used primarily to record extraordinary events, royal proclamations, donations, & gifts or announcements through inscriptions, or to document religious or philosophical treatises, & literature.

Manuscripts & inscriptions were mostly commissioned by wealthy merchants, kings, or religious institutions. They were not commonly found in all homes. So how would a scholar, writer, or dramatist overcome these challenges to convey her work to a larger audience, & not limit herself to a small region that spoke her mother tongue? How would a king proclaim his victories & grants to future generations? The answer often lay in Sanskrit, or saṃskṛtam.

Fig 5 : Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu religious text, written in saṃskṛtam

Classical saṃskṛtam was a predominantly literary language & provided the perfect platform. Particularly from the 1^st century BCE onwards, saṃskṛtam was not the lingua franca of the common people⁴, but was employed in religious rituals, to write poems, plays, philosophies, & treatises or to document Hindu, Buddhist or Jain religious texts & scriptures such as the Vedas, Upanishads etc⁴.

A study of manuscripts in India shows that over 70% of Indian manuscripts & quite a few inscriptions in India are written in saṃskṛtam [⁵^][^5.1^]. Outside India, there are manuscripts or inscriptions in saṃskṛtam in South & Central Asian countries such as Sri Lanka⁶, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia⁷, Nepal, Tibet, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Kazhakhstan⁷, etc. Indeed, manuscripts & inscriptions in saṃskṛtam have even been found in Korea, Japan, & China⁷.

Fig 6 : Manuscripts & Inscriptions in saṃskṛtam across the world

The Bakhshali manuscript⁸dated 2^nd or 3^rd century CE, records the very first time that the numeral zero was found in Indian manuscripts. This manuscript is written in saṃskṛtam, in the Sharada script. Indonesian king Mulavarman’s sacrifices in 4^th century CE were etched on rock in saṃskṛtam, in the Pallava Grantha script⁹. Kulothunga Cholan’s exploits were inscribed in saṃskṛtam in Kedah, Malaysia, for people to marvel at ¹⁰. Chanakya Neeti, Shakuntalam, Ramayana, Mahabharata, the Puranas & so many other works that are a part of the Indian imagination & culture, were written, copied & preserved in saṃskṛtam in various parts of the country. This ritual of copying & conserving manuscripts over centuries was complemented by our rich oral traditions in native tongues that absorbed local myths & customs in their many re-tellings across the Indian subcontinent.

Fig 7 : Hiuen Tsang, the Chinese pilgrim, on his travels across India

Saṃskṛtam thus became a vehicle for people to preserve their ideas, creativity & inspirations, & influence other schools of thought, even other countries. Travellers like the Chinese Buddhist pilgrims Fa-Hien & Hiuen-Tsang carried back texts & manuscripts in saṃskṛtam which they translated to their native languages ¹¹¹². Saṃskṛtam was thus instrumental in spreading Hindu & Buddhist philosophies to many parts of South-East & Central Asia.

Native languages helped people on the sub-continent stay connected to their roots, & communicate with each other, while saṃskṛtam became a universal language that helped people access & transmit knowledge across boundaries of geography & time ¹³.

From the 13^th century CE onwards, the importance & prevalence of saṃskṛtam declined ¹⁴. The language ceded ground slowly to native languages, or languages favoured by the ruling elite such as Arabic or Persian. Today, saṃskṛtam is no longer used in conversation or to document India’s knowledge. It’s place as a professional language has been largely taken over by English.

Fig 8 : Bakhshali manuscript, dated 2nd or 3rd century CE, written in the Sharada script

Nevertheless, through hymns & prayers, stories & mythologies, oral traditions & written inscriptions, saṃskṛtam continues to help people of the sub-continent connect with each other - across the Vindhyas, across the mighty oceans, across time, religion & philosophy.

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