Is there no difference between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit?

 

Is there no difference between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit?

Shrikant G. Talageri

 

This is going to be a very short blog: just a small rejoinder to one of the Invasionist Hindus that I often refer to in my books and articles: the kind of Hindus who harbor and express all kinds of orthodox views and prejudices when it comes to pedestrian or mundane matters, but are fanatically pro-AIT when it comes to the AIT-vs.-OIT debate. Apparently one of them put up the following tweet today:

https://x.com/shrikanth_krish

Indologists are criticized for the wrong things... Indic folks attack them for "AIT" where they are actually on reasonably solid ground But not for numerous subtle distortions of narratives. E.g. The view that Vedic Sanskrit is somehow a v different language from Classical Sanskrit, when they are essentially the same tongue

5:09 AM · Jan 19, 2025

 

I have apparently been receiving sharp censure in these Hindu invasionist circles on the internet for “reacting to tweets”, but I only react to tweets (giving abuse for abuse) when someone chooses to abuse me and makes demonstrably wrong points, in the process of doing so, which require to be clarified; or when, even without necessarily abusing me personally, someone nevertheless writes things in the course of answering which I am able to clarify certain basic points which remain unknown or ignored among these Hindu chatterati. [Of course, I need hardly add that for every tweet that I “react” to, there must be countless times more tweets that I choose to ignore as mere unanswerable abuse, and even more countless times more tweets which I never come to know about].

So here is this Hindu invasionist taking the orthodox line that the Indologists should be criticized for “The view that Vedic Sanskrit is somehow a v different language from classical Sanskrit, when they are essentially the same tongue”; while at the same time taking the sepoy line that the AIT is true and stands on “reasonably solid ground” even when his espousal of the AIT is only based on establishmentarian academic pulpit pronouncements and establishmentarian criticisms (such as that I am not published in the journals controlled by my opponents in the debate!), and when he never sees the need to explain which OIT argument (and which demolition of any AIT argument) is wrong and on what grounds of logic or data.

I at least have never “attacked” Indologists, and if this sepoy were to have read my writings on the subject, he would have known that I have repeatedly and strongly expressed my opposition to personal criticism of the traditional Indologists (as distinct from the present-day pseudo-Indologists who make up a big part of the woke leftist academia-media blitzkrieg brigade who work against Hindus on every front) and in fact expressed my respect and defense for their scholarship – though of course without slackening my criticism of their wrong interpretations, but which I have always attributed to the AIT blinkers worn by them rather than to any motivated malignance against India. For this, in certain discussions, orthodox (but non-invasionist) Hindus have even accused me of being “influenced” by the “western outlook” of those traditional western Indologists (of the last two centuries).

Sorry to say, this sepoy accuses me (indirectly, as I am a member of the “Indic folks” category) of not opposing, or rather not criticizing, the Indologists (both traditional and present-day woke) for their claim that “Vedic Sanskrit is somehow a v different language from classical Sanskrit, when they are essentially the same tongue”. But the reason I am not criticizing them for it is because they are right! I don’t criticize just for criticizing, just for the heck of it. I criticize anyone only if they are wrong.

And “Vedic Sanskrit” and “classical Sanskrit” are not exactly “essentially the same tongue”, any more than shrikanth_krish and Shrikant Talageri speak in exactly “essentially the same tongue” just because both share the same name. There really is a great difference between them.

 

In fact, as I have shown in my very recent article “Is It Just an “Assumption” that Book 10 of the Rigveda is the Latest Book?”, there are different important language changes even within the language of the Rigveda itself. to the extent that the New Rigveda (Books 5,1,8,9,10) contains a massive new vocabulary, a massive new culture of personal names, and many very important new meters totally missing in the Old Rigveda (Books 6,3,7,4,2) to the extent that all these new vocables and meters are found distributed as follows in the Rigveda:

OLD BOOKS 6,3,7,4,2: (280  Hymns, 2368 verses)

Book 6: 0 new words, 0 new composer names, 0 new meters.

Book 3: 0 new words, 0 new composer names, 0 new meters.

Book 7: 0 new words, 0 new composer names, 0 new meters.

Book 4: 0 new words, 0 new composer names, 0 new meters.

Book 2: 0 new words, 0 new composer names, 0 new meters.

REDACTED HYMNS IN OLD  BOOKS 6,3,7,4,2: (62  Hymns, 873 verses)

Book 6: 233 new words in 16/16 hymns and 160 verses, 0 new composer names, 2 new meters.

Book 3: 148 new words in 14/14 hymns and 100 verses, 1 new composer name, 0 new meters.

Book 7: 206 new words in 16/17 hymns and 121 verses, 0 new composer names, 3 new meters.

Book 4: 91 new words in 11/11 hymns and 66 verses, 0 new composer names, 0 new meters.

Book 2: 46 new words in 4/4 hymns and 23 verses. 0 new composer names, 1 new meter.

NEW BOOKS 1,5,8,9,10:  (686 Hymns, 7311 verses)

Book 1: 1750 new words in 190/191 hymns and 1112 verses, 61 new composer names, 24 new meters.

Book 5: 685 new words in 87/87 hymns and 434 verses, 39 new composer names, 20 new meters.

Book 8: 1505 new words in 102/103 hymns and 928 verses, 50 new composer names, 26 new meters.

Book 9: 966 new words in 114/114 hymns and 658 verses, 61 new composer names, 7 new meters.

Book 10: 1922 new words in 191/191 hymns and 1124 verses, 89 new composer names, 19 new meters.

Most of these new words would have been incomprehensible to a speaker of Vedic Sanskrit living during the period of composition of the Old Rigveda.

 

And, even within the New Rigveda itself, the latest Book 10 is so late that it stands out in many respects from all the other nine books:

As B.K.Ghosh puts it, in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan volume “History and Culture of the Indian people, Vol.1, The Vedic Age”, 1951/1957, edited by R.C.Majumdar:

“On the whole, however, the language of the first nine Maṇḍalas must be regarded as homogeneous [….] With the tenth Maṇḍala it is a different story. The language here has definitely changed. The difference in language between the earlier Maṇḍalas and tenth would have appeared in its true proportions if the texts concerned had been written down at the time they were composed and handed down to us in that written form.

The fact, however, is that the text tradition of the Rigveda was stabilized at a comparatively late date, and fixed in writing at a much later epoch. The result has been not unlike what would have happened if the works of Chaucer and Shakespeare were put in writing and printed for the first time in the twentieth century: in short, the text of the Rigveda as handed down to us is, in various details, not only different from what it actually was, but to some extent also screens the differences that mark off the languages of the earlier Maṇḍalas from that of the tenth.” (pp.340-341).

“The language of the tenth Maṇḍala represents a distinctly later stage of the Rigvedic language. Hiatus, which is frequent in the earlier Rigveda, is already in process of elimination here. Stressed i u cannot in sandhi be changed into y v in the earlier parts, but in the tenth Maṇḍala they can. The ending –āsas in nominative plural is half as frequent as –ās in the Rigveda taken as a whole, but its number of occurrences is disproportionately small in the tenth Maṇḍala. Absolutives in –tvāya occur only here. The stem rai- is inflected in one way in the first nine Maṇḍalas, and in another in the tenth, and in the inflexion of dyau-, too, the distribution of strong and weak forms is much more regular in the earlier Maṇḍalas. The Prakritic verbal stem kuru- appears only in the tenth Maṇḍala  for the earlier kṛiṇu-. Many words appear for the first time in the tenth Maṇḍala or are shared by it only with the interpolated part of other Maṇḍalas. The old locative form pritsu, adjectives like girvaṇas and vicharṣani, and the substantive vīti do not occur at all in the tenth Maṇḍala , though in the earlier Maṇḍalas they are quite common. The particle sim, which is unknown in the Atharvaveda, occurs fifty times in the first nine Maṇḍalas but only once in the tenth. Words like ājya, kāla, lohita, vijaya, etc., occur for the first time in the tenth Maṇḍala, as also the root labh-. Words shared with the tenth Maṇḍala only by the interpolated parts of other Maṇḍalas, the Valakhilyas, and unmistakably late hymns, are loka (for earlier uloka which is a haplology for uruloka), mogha, visarga, gup- (a back-formation from gopa), etc. And words which occur mostly, though not exclusively, in the tenth Maṇḍala and these parts, are sarva, bhagavant,  prāṇa,  hridaya, etc. The archaic particle ī of pronominal origin, for which the Padapāṭha throughout wrongly reads īm, does not occur at all in the tenth Maṇḍala, and the particle īm, which is only less archaic than ī, occurs in it only about half a dozen times. Of forms like dakshi, adukshat , etc., which are the results of the action of a pre-Vedic phonetic law, only one, namely dudukshan, occurs in the tenth Maṇḍala. It is unnecessary to dilate any further on the language of the Rigveda.” (pp.343-344).

In fact Ghosh points out: “This also proves in a striking manner that the language of the earlier Mandalas was already in danger of being misunderstood when the hymns of the tenth Mandala were being composed.”  (p.340).

Needless to say, an examination of the new vocabulary, and new culture of personal names in The Atharvaveda as compared to the Rigveda, and so on, and going on in a like manner until we come to the language of the Sutras which form the end of Vedic literature, will show similar cycles of massive changes even within Vedic Sanskrit itself down the ages.

So. even if the sepoys and their modern woke Indologist masters refuse to accept the actual number of centuries separating Vedic Sanskrit from Classical Sanskrit, the accepted number of centuries is sufficient to make it clear that the language changes from Vedic Sanskrit to Classical Sanskrit must indeed be even more numerous. This is particularly massive in respect of vocabulary: many of the words of  Vedic Sanskrit fell into disuse, or the meanings of many Vedic words and verses are still disputed because they are unknown or open to speculation, or Vedic words acquired completely new meanings (a pedestrian example on the spur of the moment, though I am open to correction, could be  the Sanskrit word āśā, which means “space, region, quarter of the heavens” in Vedic Sanskrit, but means “hope, wish” in Classical Sanskrit as we know it today) while an extremely huge and rich wealth of new words appeared in Classical Sanskrit (created from its own Sanskrit roots as well as borrowed from other local Indian languages) which were completely missing in Vedic Sanskrit, and would have been like foreign words to an ancient speaker of the Vedic language. Classical Sanskrit vocabulary is countless multiple times richer than Vedic Sanskrit vocabulary, somewhat like modern English vocabulary is countless multiple times richer than medieval English vocabulary.

But while the greatest and most striking changes from Vedic Sanskrit to Classical Sanskrit are in vocabulary, there are important differences in phonology and grammar as well. Just three examples:

(a) Vedic Sanskrit sounds like cerebral ḷa (ळ) and its aspirated form ḷha were lost, and replaced by ḍa (ड) and ḍha (ढ) in Classical Sanskrit. Also the long form of ṛ (ऋ) and the sounds ऌ and ॡ fell into disuse in Classical Sanskrit.

(b) Vedic Sanskrit had pitch accents, with most words having one vowel or syllable in a high tone called udātta, which affected the meaning of the words: thus rāja-putrá with accent on trá meant "king's son" or a prince, as in Rigveda X.40.3; while rā'ja-putra with accent on rā' meant "having sons who are kings" or the father of kings, as in Rigveda II.27.7. Classical Sanskrit had no system of pitch accents.

(c) The tenses and moods in the conjugation of verbs were formed or used differently in Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit, and many grammatical forms of  Vedic Sanskrit were completely lost in Classical Sanskrit: for example Vedic Sanskrit had 12 forms of the infinitive while Classical Sanskrit had only 1 form.

In any case, whether anyone likes it or not, Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit are definitely not “essentially the same tongue”, any more than medieval English and modern English. Of course, both the former are called Sanskrit, and both the latter are called English, with the necessary qualifying adjectives in recognition of the fact that they represent different chronological phases of the same language. But how many people would be able to read a text in  medieval  English? Obviously I doubt that many people could: certainly neither I nor my namesake in this discussion would be able to do it. But neither do we object to medieval English being given the name English (albeit qualified), and nor do we insist that both should be considered as “essentially the same tongue” and not differentiated with qualifying words as medieval and modern.

In that same sense, let us understand that both Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit are Sanskrit, and at the same time definitely not “essentially the same tongue”.

But here, the orthodox Hindu in this man insists that we should criticize Indologists for adopting the view and attitude that “Vedic Sanskrit is somehow a v different language from classical Sanskrit” – a view and attitude very necessary for logical analysis of historical issues, where the chronological and linguistic state of the language has significant importance in arriving at logical conclusions; but at the same time, the sepoy in this man insists that we should not criticize Indologists for twisting facts, and indulging in deliberate misinterpretations and falsifications and stonewalling of data in the matter of the AIT and should humbly accept their dogmatic pronouncements as divine revelations.

Sorry, mere hamnaam, it is you and others like you, and not I and others like me, who criticize Indologists for “wrong things… But not for numerous subtle distortions of narratives”.