Sanskrit as a Natural Language?

[Ashok Aklujkar]

Dear Mr. Ranganathan,

You will find a discussion in parts of the following articles of mine, two
published and two, as far as I know, soon to be published. The second and
the fourth shoud be especially relevant. However, a comprehensive and
focused discussion of the issue to which you refer will do the field (and
the language politics in contemporary India) much good.:

1996. "The early history of Sanskrit as supreme language." Ideology and
Status of Sanskrit: Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language,
pp. 69-85. Ed. Jan E.M. Houben. Leiden, etc.: E.J. Brill.

2003 "A Different Sociolinguistics for Brahmins, Buddhists and Jains." In
Contemporary Views on Indian Civilization, pp. 54-69. (ed) Bhu Dev Sharma,
USA: World Association for Vedic Studies, USA. Originally, a keynote address
at a conference held in 2001.

2004. "Can the Grammarians' dharma be a dharma for all?" This will be
published  in the forthcoming Dharma volume of the Journal of Indian
Philosophy being edited by Prof. Patrick Olivelle. You can have a look at
its  "uncorrected proof" version by visiting
http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/0022-1791/ under "Articles in advance".

2004. "Where do laksanaika-caksuska and laksyaika-caksuska apply?" Professor
A.R. Kelkar Felicitation Volume of Bulletin of the Deccan College Research
Institute 62-63 (2002-2003). pp. 105-126. I can send you a pdf of this if
you need to read the article urgently.

ashok aklujkar

On 11/19/04 12:21 PM, "Shyam Ranganathan" <srangan at YORKU.CA> wrote:

>references to either articles
> or books in English on the question of whether Sanskrit was ever a natural,
> vernacular language, or whether what we understand as Sanskrit has for the
> most
> part been a formalized language.