Ideas of divine origin of speech go back to the R̥gveda:

देवीं वाचमजनयन्त देवास्तां विश्वरूपाः पशवो वदन्ति |
सा नो मन्द्रेषमूर्जं दुहाना धेनुर्वागस्मानुप सुष्टुतैतु || ऋग्वेद
08.100.11.

 

I am attaching an old article of mine surveying the Vedic ideas and ideas about the Vedas. Best,

Madhav

Madhav M. Deshpande

Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies

Adjunct Professor, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]

On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 1:57 PM Matthew Kapstein via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

I am now traveling and cannot look up references, but as I recall, one of the arguments that emerged in Nyāya theology held that the existence of the Lord is proven because language requires a divine originator to stipulate the original conventions. 

Matthew Kapstein 

EPHE, Paris 

---

From: INDOLOGY <indology-bounces@list.indology.info> on behalf of Buchta, David via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info>
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 5:52:15 PM
To: Gruenendahl, Reinhold <gruenen@sub.uni-goettingen.de>; Indology <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Divine origin of Sanskrit

 

Hi again,

A further thought: Jīva Gosvāmin (16th c), at the opening of his Harināmāmṛtavyākaraṇa, says "nārāyaṇād udbhūto'yaṃ varṇakramaḥ." I have long suspected that he intended to imply a contrast between the "ordinary" sequence of sounds, which he says comes from Nārāyaṇa, and the sequence presented by Pāṇini, which of course gets attributed to Śiva. Again, I can dig up PDFs of a few editions of Jīva's work if needed.

--
David Buchta, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit
Department of Classics
Brown University

On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 10:26 AM Johannes Bronkhorst <johannes.bronkhorst@unil.ch> wrote:

I also would be happy (and surprised) to see references to a divine origin of Sanskrit. It is true that Sanskrit is daivī vāk (Bhartṛhari) “divine language” or “language of the gods”, but this does not mean that is has a divine origin. In Brahmanical circles, at least since Kātyāyana and Patañjali, Sanskrit is eternal and has no origin at all.

 Johannes Bronkhorst

 

On 27 Jul 2022, at 13:36, Buchta, David via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Hi,

George Cardona has a 1990 paper, "On Attitudes Towards Language in Ancient India" that might be helpful. It was published as #15 of the Sino-Platonic Papers from the Department of Oriental Studies at UPenn. I can dig up a PDF as needed.

Best,

Dave

--
David Buchta, PhD
Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit
Department of Classics
Brown University

On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 6:08 AM Gruenendahl, Reinhold <gruenen@sub.uni-goettingen.de> wrote:

Dear list members,

I would be very grateful for any references to the concept of a divine origin of Sanskrit in primary and/or secondary literature.

With thanks in advance

and best wishes

Reinhold Grünendahl

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