Was Sanskrit ever spoken by "all"?

[Madhav Deshpande]

	An interesting further dimension of "spoken" Sanskrit may be 
extracted from all those ritual performative texts in which women, and 
members of classes other than Brahmans, are expected to say something, 
not just recite, in Sanskrit.  A number of such "women's Sanskrit 
utterances" may be found Stephany Jamison's fascinating book 
"Sacrificer's Wife / Sacrificed Wife".  
	Madhav Deshpande

On Wed, 21 Feb 1996 JHOUBEN at rullet.LeidenUniv.nl wrote:

> Was Sanskrit ever spoken by "all"? 
> 
> The extent to which Sanskrit was spoken beyond the limited circle of a small 
> religious and cultural elite has since long been discussed by Sanskrit 
> scholars. An early discussion of this problem  is found in E.J. Rapson's "In 
> what degree was Sanskrit a spoken language?" which appeared in the 1904 issue 
> of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (pp. 435-456). It is 
> difficult to disentangle this question from more general issues like: what is a 
> language, what is a dialect; when is a language a "living" language; how 
> homogeneous or heterogeneous is the linguistic usage which goes under some 
> generally accepted labels like "English", "French" etc.). Modern 
> sociolinguistic research has revealed some of the complexities involved in 
> these questions of which Rapson had (and, in his time, could be expected to 
> have) little or no awareness. 
> 
> The status of Sanskrit in society (how it was used and by whom and why; also 
> its relation to other languages/dialects, Prakrit, Dravidian, etc.) was one of 
> the topics of a seminar hosted by the International Institute for Asian Studies 
> (November 1994) on "The Ideology and Status of Sanskrit". A preliminary report 
> of this seminar can be found through the IIAS-homepage on Internet 
> (http://iias.leidenuniv.nl), under IIAS Newsletter 4 (Spring 1995 issue), "IIAS 
> News". At present I am editing a volume entitled "Ideology and Status of 
> Sanskrit: Contributions to the history of the Sanskrit Language", based on 
> selected articles presented at the seminar and some other contributions (to be 
> published in the course of this year by E.J. Brill, Leiden).  
> 
> Some important, by now "classical" contributions on this topic can be found in: 
> 
> Deshpande, Madhav M. 
> 1979	Sociolinguistic Attitudes in India. An historical reconstruction. Ann 
> Arbor: Karoma Publishers. 
> 1993	Sanskrit & Prakrit: Sociolinguistic Issues. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. 
> Hock, Hans Henrich; Pandharipande, Rajeshwari. 
> 1976	"The sociolinguistic position of Sanskrit in pre-Muslim South Asia" 
> Studies in Language Learning 1:2.105-138. (Special issue on Dimensions of 
> Bilingualism: Theory and Case Studies), ed. by Braj B. Kachru, Urbana. 
> 1978	"Sanskrit in the pre-Islamic context of South Asia." (condensed version 
> of the preceding in:) Kachru, Bra B.; Sridhar, S.N. (eds.) Aspects of 
> Sociolinguistics in South Asia ( = International Journal of the Sociology of 
> Language 16), pp. 11-25.
> 
> Another work with important contributions on this topic is: 
> Caillat, Collette (ed.)
> 1989	Dialectes dans les Litteratures Indo-Aryennes. Paris: College de 
> France, Institut de Civilisation Indienne. 
> 
> Cardona, 1976, Paa.nini, A survey of Research, pp. 238-239, reviews the 
> discussion since the end of the last century on whether the language described 
> by Paa.nini was more than just "grammarian's Sanskrit". 
> Diametrically opposed positons regarding the use of Sanskrit in the period from 
> Paa.nini to Patanjali have been adopted by S.D. Laddu, Evolution of the 
> Sanskrit Language from Paa.nini to Patanjali, Poona: Centre of Advanced Study 
> in Sanskrit, 1974 and S.D. Joshi and J.A.F. Roodbergen, Vyaakara.na-
> Mahaabha.sya, Paspashaahnika, Poona: Centre of Advanced Study in Sanskrit, 
> 1986:135: "one may wonder what was the linguistic basis of Sanskrit in 
> Paa.nini's days, and whether Sanskrit has ever been more than a learned 
> language and a language to be learntin paa.thashaalaas by an elite." 
> 
> 
> Jan E.M. Houben
> Research Fellow IIAS
> IN%"JHOUBEN at rullet.LeidenUniv.nl"
> 
> *********
> 
> On 21 February Sreenivas wrote: 
> 
> Greetings!
> 
> I have a couple of questions on the evolution of language(s) in todays India.
> 
> a) Was Sanskrit spoken by the common folk also in olden days? I mean other
> than the priests and the elite (?) in the society?
> 
> b) If not, what did the common folk speak?
> 
> Could you pl. recommend me some monographs/publications on this subject!
> 
> Herzlichen Dank!
> 
> mit freundlichen Gruessen,
> Sreenivas
> 
>