As the eighteenth century approached its end, another revolution was unfurling alongside the French Revolution. William Jones, in 1786, wrote, “the Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philosopher could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source…” Later, these words would become famous in the world of comparative linguistics and, like the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, attain semi-mythical status as some kind of symbol representing the opening of a new era.
However, what I seek to do in my essay is not to compare the grammatical skeletons of languages, but to discover language in the flesh, as something inseparable from society. I have decided to delve into the territory from this angle because language comparisons since Jones' time have been variously made from a linguistic standpoint, but have rarely been explored from a historical or societal perspective despite the wealth of interest this offers. Hence, I will trace, in Parts I and II, the development of Sanskrit and Latin's respective roles in their societies and, accordingly, what this reveals about the societies they lived in. After exploring their individual destinies, I will then make a comparison between both languages in Part III, because the very selection of these two was based on their comparability.
[...] Sic transit gloria mundi the glory of the world must pass” Even though Sanskrit is not as central to Sikhism as it is to Hinduism, Sikhism does fall into its sphere of influence, as can be seen from the numerous Sanskrit words scattered throughout the Guru Granth Sahib as well as other Sikh sacred texts like the Adi Granth Bibliography Print Ostler, Nicholas: Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, New York, 2nd edition, Walker & Company Ostler, Nicholas: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, USA, 1st American ed., Harper Perennial Pollock, Sheldon: The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India, USA, 1st paperback edition, University of California Press Pollock, Sheldon: The Cosmopolitan Vernacular, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol No (Feb., 1998), pp. 6-37 Pollock, Sheldon: The Death of Sanskrit, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol No (Apr., 2001), pp. 392-426 Pollock, Sheldon: India in the Vernacular Millennium: Literary Culture and Polity Daedalus, Vol No Early Modernities (Summer, 1998), pp. 41-74 Maurer, Walter H.: On the Name Devanāgarī, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol No (Jan. [...]
[...] (Ostler, 1998) Being remoulded into archaic grammatical and morphological forms, the language was increasingly estranged from contemporary audiences. This, coupled with the second major development of printing, meant that Latin was forced into competition with the 9 Figure 4 Newton's last major vernaculars—which it, ultimately, lost. It is said to have drawn its work Opticks (1704) last meaningful breath in the late 17th century: the last major was written in scientific work to appear in Latin was Principia Mathematica (1687) English, as seen from the title page of the by Sir Isaac Newton, who, by the end of his career, turned to English. [...]
[...] Conclusion Subsequently, Latin rode on the colonial wave and its alphabet came to dominate large areas of the globe, even managing to displace others, such as its Arabic counterpart in Turkey and Malaysia. Some of its spirit also remains in scientific fields, especially botany. What is left of Sanskrit today, though, is somewhat more one-dimensional. Although researchers like Rick Briggs have proposed to use it in computer programming (in view of its highly organised and consistent structure), Sanskrit has by and large been left on the lips of priests. [...]
[...] For example, Latin was often in partnership with practical matters, two prominent examples of which are trade and the military. Traders who were yet to be incorporated into the would-be Roman Empire spoke the language, as Cicero attested in 69 BC: a Gaul does the slightest business without the involvement of a Roman citizen; not a coin changes hands without the involvement of Roman citizens' accounting” (Pro M. Fonteio, while it was used so much in the army that there were men like Q. [...]
[...] It was the same in other domains: as Pliny the Elder remarked in the 1st century AD, “[Medicine] is the only one of the Greek arts not practised by the serious Roman.”6 (Natural History, xxix.17) From this we can infer how closely aligned Roman society was to the Greek, culturally speaking, such that Greek disciplines subsequently went wherever Romans settled, interpreted through Latin. This was representative of the general state of affairs, until the advent of Christianity. From the time that the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion, what had once been Latin's shortcomings became its strengths. Right from the beginning, Latin belonged to everyone, without discrimination. [...]
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