SANSKRIT

SANSKRITAlso, especially formerly, Sanscrit [From Sanskrit saṃskṛta put together, well-formed, perfected]. The dominant classical and scholarly language of the Indian subcontinent, the sacred language of Hinduism (with Pali), a scriptural language of Buddhism, and the oldest known member of the Indo-European language family. It is usually written in the Devanagari script, which runs from left to right. Much as Latin influenced European languages, Sanskrit has influenced many languages in South and South-East Asia. Since the 19c, it has also provided loans to European languages including English and French. The most apparent of these loans relate to religion, philosophy, and culture, such as ahimsa, chakra, guru, karma, kundalini, mahatma, pundit, swami, and yoga/yogi, but less direct loan-words in English (borrowed through other languages) include carmine, cheetah, chintz, chutney, juggernaut, jungle, and jute.

All major modern Indian languages (both Indo-Aryan and Dravidian) have a Sanskritized register, used in religious and secular contexts. Indian English, especially when concerned with Hindu religion and philosophy, also freely uses Sanskrit terms, and Indian literature in English makes use of such conventions from Sanskrit as repetition of main themes in paragraphs and an abundance of compounds and embedded clauses. Sanskrit words appear in English texts in two forms: fully Anglicized, as with the variants pundit and pandit (through Hindi pandit); or, in scholarly writings, with various diacritics, following the conventions for transliterating Sanskrit into the Roman alphabet, as with pandita. A representative scholarly text using full transliterations is:
In the Brhad-āranyaka Upanisad (3.9.1) we are told that, when Sākalya asked the sage Yājñavalkya what was the number of the gods, the sage gave a cryptic answer (

Alain Daniélou

, Hindu Polytheism, 1964).

Differences in meaning and use often match the different styles: for example, pandita means a learned brahmin (or brahman, or brāhmana); pandit may have the same meaning and is used as a title for such a person, as in Pandit Nehru; pundit may have the same meaning and use, but is more fully integrated into English, in which it commonly refers to an expert; as in political pundits. Comparably, the term guru may refer to a Hindu teacher, a venerable spiritual leader, or any expert, as in the phrases management guru and usage guru. The extended non-Hindu senses of pundit and guru are often used to suggest that there is something suspect about the persons so described, whereas such terms as Gandhi's ahimsa and satyagraha have positive implications. See BORROWING, CLASSICAL LANGUAGE, INDIAN ENGLISH, INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGES.