For nearly 2,000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia,Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia.[17] A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit ofIndian epic poetry—theRamayana andMahabharata. The deviations fromPāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference fromPrakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian.[18] Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviationsārṣa (आर्ष), meaning 'of theṛṣis', the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts, there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than in Classical Sanskrit proper.Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit is a literary language heavily influenced by theMiddle Indo-Aryan languages, based on early Buddhist Prakrit texts which subsequently assimilated to the Classical Sanskrit standard in varying degrees.[19]
During the medieval era, the Indian languages had taken in a lot of Perso-Arabic influences as a result of Muslim invasions, particularly in thenorthwestern subcontinent;[20] colonial-era education policies,religious nationalism, and the influence of some of the more Sanskritised Indian languages played a role in Hindus and Muslims increasingly separating in terms of their linguistic influences,[21] with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and theBrahmicDevanagari script for writingHindi & Muslims opting for a morePerso-Arabic vocabulary &NastaliqArabic script for writingUrdu.[22][23][24]
Since the 1947Partition of India, the Indian government, which at one point considered making Sanskrit the national language, instead has sought to further Sanskritise Hindi,[25] considering it to be easier for Indians to learn,[26] and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan (though Urdu continues to have official status in several Indian states, such asUttar Pradesh).[27][28] Sanskrit has been used to formnew words to describe modern concepts and technologies in several South Asian languages by formingcalques based on English words.[29][23][30] In addition, Sanskrit words that have been nativised into other languages have been mixed with words from other language families, such as theDravidian languages, to form new words.[31]
Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be,[32][33] withHindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi,[34] opposing Urdu in part because of its association withIslam,[35] and someboycotting the Hindi-languageBollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English vocabulary in its movies.[36][37]
Thede-Sanskritisation of Tamil started during the 1950s by followers ofDravidianism.[38] These attempts at "de-sanskritization" came to see the language having altered to remove a lot of the Sanskrit borrowing.[39]
^Bronkhorst, Johannes (2010-01-01)."The spread of Sanskrit".From Turfan to Ajanta. Festschrift for Dieter Schlingloff on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday.
^Coleman, Julie (10 January 2014).Global English Slang: Methodologies and Perspectives. Routledge. p. 130.ISBN978-1-317-93476-9.Within India, however, other regional forms exist, all denoting a mixing of English with indigenous languages.Bonglish (derived from the slang termBong 'a Bengali') orBenglish refers to 'a mixture of Bengali and English',Gunglish orGujlish 'Gujarati + English',Kanglish 'Kannada + English',Manglish 'Malayalam + English',Marlish 'Marathi + English',Tamlish orTanglish 'Tamil + English' andUrdish 'Urdu + English'. These terms are found in texts on regional variations of Indian English, usually in complaint-tradition discussions of failing standards of language purity.
^Benedikter, Thomas (2009).Language Policy and Linguistic Minorities in India: An Appraisal of the Linguistic Rights of Minorities in India. LIT Verlag Münster. p. 82.ISBN978-3-643-10231-7.
^Indian Political Science Association (1971).The Indian Journal of Political Science. The Indian journal of political science. Indian Political Science Association. p. 39. Retrieved2024-10-05.
Oberlies, Thomas (2003).A Grammar of Epic Sanskrit. Berlin New York: Walter de Gruyter.ISBN978-3-11-014448-2.
Pollock, Sheldon (2001). "The Death of Sanskrit".Comparative Studies in Society and History.43 (2). Cambridge University Press:392–426.JSTOR2696659.S2CID35550166.
