The Holy Connection An Alternative Exploration of Existence
Sanskrit was the mother of European languages. She was the mother of our philosophy … of our mathematics … of the ideals embodied in Christianity … of self-government and democracy…mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.
— William Durant. Author of the ten volume, ‘Story of Civilisation’
All of us, we speak a little Sanskrit. Known as the mother of languages, there are Sanskrit influences in almost every second language of the world. Historically, Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is also known as the ‘sister’ of Old Greek, Latin, Celtic, Persian& German (Gothic) languages. To English, it is like an ancestor. Perhaps a great grandmother. This explains the coincidence of words with similar sound & meaning in both languages, for example, ‘Bratha’ in Sanskrit becomes ‘Brother’ in English or ‘Mata’ becomes ‘Mother’.
Sanskrit is recently rising as a pop culture in the US, India, Germany and some more places. Germany has over 14 universities offering courses in Sanskrit.
“In ancient India the intention to discover truth was so consuming, that in the process, they discovered perhaps the perfect tool for fulfilling such a search that the world has ever known — the Sanskrit language.”
— Rick Briggs. NASA Scientist & Programmer
The corpus of Sanskrit includes rich & contextual use of poetry, drama, science & philosophy. The vast ocean of Sanskrit requires an in-depth exploration. And through this series, we begin a journey that is ‘Sanskrit exploration’. Mind you, exploring Sanskrit is just a means to explore our own mind & body. We will understand how Sanskrit just as a language takes us to higher transcendental states with the self.
We take this one-week long exploration as a research week for setting up the base for future studies. ‘Sanskrit 101’ article series would broadly cover the following articles in the week to come:
- A lot of work was done in Sanskrit regarding the concept of ‘Ludic Dreaming’ some 3000 years back. We will study & analyze the references that Sanskrit literature makes towards aspects such as enlightenment, lucid dreaming, REM sleep and so on.
- Our research claims that the country names of the whole of South Asia, South eastern Asia & Central Asia could be traced back to Sanskrit, etymologically. We will dissect the names of all these countries into its original roots.
- We will delve into the lesser known facts about Sanskrit that you wouldn’t have heard of.
- Sanskrit is rising in the popular culture. We will understand the evolution of Sanskrit from a philological point of view also probing into the classical literary works of drama, poetry and other miscellaneous manuscripts.
- During the medieval times, Sanskrit language paved a way for ‘Monism’ as a faith or rather a school of thought. Much work was done in Sanskrit around that concept. We will curiously explore the world where there is no duality. Everything is ‘one’.
- Sanskrit has much higher acceptance of altered states of consciousness and hence the language has been really inclusive with words that specifically explore elevated planes of mindfulness. We will lookout for such words.
- We will visit the heyday of the prosperity of Sanskrit & we will also visit the day when Sanskrit started to decline. We lost the libraries & universities of one more highly advanced civilization to our greed & religious fanaticism. Each civilization as we know ultimately undergoes ‘a self-inflicted radical brain surgery’.
Apart from these, we would be interviewing some scholars, promoters & activists of Sanskrit to make it a wholesome trip for you. Stay tuned. Let’s understand our mind-body better by exploring Sanskrit.
