Importance of Sanskrit in Indian Literature

For well over two thousand years Sanskrit was a principal language of learning and literature across the Indian subcontinent. Poetry, drama, grammar, philosophy, law, medicine and mathematics were all written in it, by authors from many regions and several religious traditions. This article gives a short survey of that literature and explains why it still matters to a student today.

Vedic literature

The oldest works in Sanskrit are the four Vedas: the Ṛgveda, Yajurveda, Sāmaveda and Atharvaveda. The Ṛgveda, a collection of more than a thousand hymns, is the earliest of them and is among the oldest surviving texts in any Indo-European language. Its language, called Vedic Sanskrit, is older than the classical Sanskrit taught in schools and differs from it in some forms and in its use of pitch accent.

Attached to the Vedas are the Brāhmaṇas, which explain ritual, the Āraṇyakas, and the Upaniṣads, which discuss the self and ultimate reality. These texts were preserved for centuries by careful oral recitation before they were written down.

The two epics

The Rāmāyaṇa, attributed to Vālmīki, tells the story of Rāma in about 24,000 verses and is traditionally called the ādikāvya, the first poem. The Mahābhārata, attributed to Vyāsa, is traditionally said to contain about one hundred thousand verses, which makes it one of the longest poems in the world. It includes the Bhagavad Gita. Both epics have been retold in almost every Indian language and continue to shape theatre, dance, painting and everyday speech.

Grammar: Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī

Around the middle of the first millennium BCE the grammarian Pāṇini composed the Aṣṭādhyāyī (अष्टाध्यायी), 'the work in eight chapters'. In nearly four thousand short rules (sūtras) it describes the sounds, word formation and sentence structure of Sanskrit. Its method, in which a small set of rules and technical markers generates a very large number of correct forms, is admired by modern linguists. Kātyāyana and Patañjali later added to it, and the standard of classical Sanskrit rests on the work of these three grammarians.

This is why Sanskrit grammar can be learnt so systematically: the rules were worked out and written down with great care at a very early date.

Classical poetry, drama and stories

Classical Sanskrit literature (kāvya) is known for careful language, metre and imagery. Some of the best-known authors and works are listed below.

The Pañcatantra, a collection of animal fables teaching practical wisdom, travelled far beyond India through translations into Persian, Arabic and many other languages. Sanskrit also has a large body of writing about literature itself, beginning with Bharata's Nāṭyaśāstra on drama and the theory of rasa.

Philosophy, science and other knowledge

• Philosophy: the sūtra texts of the six classical schools (Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta), including Patañjali's Yogasūtra and Bādarāyaṇa's Brahmasūtra, with a long tradition of commentaries.
• Mathematics and astronomy: Āryabhaṭa's Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE), Brahmagupta's Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (7th century) and Bhāskara II's Līlāvatī (12th century).
• Medicine: the Caraka Saṃhitā and Suśruta Saṃhitā, foundational texts of Āyurveda.
• Statecraft and law: Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra and the Dharmaśāstra literature.
• Lexicography: Amarasiṃha's Amarakośa, a verse dictionary of synonyms that students memorised for centuries.

Many of these works are written in verse or in very short sūtras. This made them easier to memorise at a time when teaching was mainly oral.

Buddhist and Jain works in Sanskrit

Sanskrit was not the language of one religion alone. Buddhist authors wrote major works in it, such as Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita, a poem on the life of the Buddha, and Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, a foundational text of Madhyamaka philosophy.

Jain scholars also made large contributions. The Tattvārthasūtra of Umāsvāti (known as Umāsvāmī in the Digambara tradition) sets out Jain doctrine in Sanskrit sūtras and is accepted by both main Jain traditions. Later authors include Jinasena, who composed the Ādipurāṇa, and Hemacandra, who wrote a grammar, dictionaries and the Triṣaṣṭiśalākāpuruṣacarita. The earliest Jain and Buddhist scriptures, however, are in Prakrit and Pāli; see Sanskrit vs Prakrit for the difference.

Influence on modern Indian languages

Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Odia and the other Indo-Aryan languages developed from the Middle Indo-Aryan languages (the Prakrits and Apabhraṃśa), which are closely related to Sanskrit. They also borrowed a great deal of vocabulary directly from Sanskrit. The Dravidian languages (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam) belong to a different language family, but they too have taken many words from Sanskrit, in differing degrees.

Some words, like vidyā, are used in Hindi unchanged; others, like hāth, have changed in form over time. New technical and official terms in Indian languages are still commonly built from Sanskrit roots.

Knowing even basic Sanskrit lets you read verses, prayers and well-known lines in the original, understand the roots of words in your own language, and approach these texts without depending entirely on translation. If you would like to begin, read how to learn Sanskrit from scratch or look at the Sanskrit for Beginners course.