Was Sanskrit ever spoken by "all"?

[JHOUBEN at rullet.LeidenUniv.nl]

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