Sanskrit

[S Krishna (by way of jacob.baltuch@euronet.be Jacob Baltuch)]

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>AUTHOR, ETC.: Walker, George Benjamin, 1913-
>TITLE: The Hindu world; an encyclopedic survey of Hinduism by Benjamin
Walker.
>IMPRINT: New York, Praeger [c1968]
>
 << The Indo-Iranian triabl
>communities gave place to new territorial kingdoms situated on great
>rivers and the jungle retreats of the rishis.  The old Iranian gods
>faded in importance and were substituted by deities of new
dimensions,Brahmaa, Shiva, VishNu, KrishNa, the Naagas, the Linga.>>

I am a little lost here...what exactly am I supposed to understand by
saying that kingdoms on great rivers and jungle retreats of the rishis?
Were they independent each of other? Er, no...Dr walker should know that
there was a lot of interaction between the RSis and the kings

Secondly, when did the Nagas become Gods ?

>Tibeto-Burmese or north-eastern loan words include Bhullam-buthur,
>'making a gurgling sound', which became Sanskritized into Brahmaputra,
>the name of India's largest river.

This seems to be a very..ahem... interesting theory and I would like to
know what establioshed scholars think of this...I would like to point
out
1. Tsangpo is the Tibetean name for the Brahmaputra.
2. Many tibetean name places and proper names are themselves from
Samskrt and have undergone the *Cunning changes* FROM samskrt (alluded
to by Dr Walker)..also , is "bhullum" phonetically correct? I have been
assured that the letters gh, jh, th, bh are missing in tibetean
(This from somebody who has studided Tibetean formally for ten long
years).

>
>
 << Charioteers were court bards and their familiarity with
>the priestly tongue does not necessarily indicate an acquantance with
>it on the part of the general public.>>

This, AFAIK, is inconsistent with : 1. The fact that Karna in the MBh
was insulted as the "Son of a charioteer" i.e. the status being very
much lower than a court bard....charioteers were not all that familar
with the priestly tongue and and were not court bards...


>Modern Hindu reformers have frequently reiterated the same plaint, and
have advoacated the abandonment of Sanskrit as a vehicle of thought
expression.  As Raammohan Roy put it,
>
>' The Sanskrit language, so difficult that almost a lifetime is
>necessary for its acquisition, is well known to have been for ages a
>lamantabel check to the diffusion of knowledge, and the learning
>concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from sufficient to
>reward the labour of acquiring it'.>>

Oh really! Boy, I wonder why Dayananda Saraswati, who was also a social
reformer in the 19th century went to the other end and insisted on
everybody learning Samskrt? Please also read about the
politics/activities of the DharmarakSana sabhA in Madras in the early
part of the century; you will soon discover how wrong the above
statement( about reformers that is) is...

Sidestory: In the not-too-distant past, somebody ;-) quoted the Same Dr
Walker about the deleterious effect that Samskrt had on other languages
and asked Dr George Hart for his reaction.. Dr Hart's reply was that
such ideas were decidedly fascist.

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