history of Sanskrit: was the Classical variant ever spoken?

pc2 · Post by **pc2** » 10 Sep 2006 12:43

salutations,

by what we know about Sanskrit history (we have read a lot about the subject), the old Vedic variant of the language is the one used to write the scriptures and the old religious documents and epics like Mahaabhaarata and Ramayana. naturally, the language spoken after the Vedic period, by what we know, were the Prakrits or "naturally created" (pra-kṛtaḥ), like Pāli and Apabhramsa.
by what we've read about Astadhyayi and the works of the grammarian Pāṇini, Classical Sanskrit seems to be no more than a grammatically re-estructured language, because Vedic was very rich and irregular, but Classical Sanskrit is "mathematically perfect", with thousands of rules.
if the so called Classical form of Sanskrit is based on the works of Panini, besides the Prakrits, the early Vedic form and today's Hindu monks who study it, can one say that it was ever spoken?

any thoughts?

salutations,

drkpp · Post by **drkpp** » 26 Sep 2006 19:04

Vedic sanskrit was more of spoken dialect in ancient times rather than wirtten language. The greatness of Panini lies in the fact that he corrected many irregularities in the language & made it a structured language that we know today as sanskrit (= edited, restructured)

pc2 · Post by **pc2** » 27 Sep 2006 22:29

drkpp wrote:Vedic sanskrit was more of spoken dialect in ancient times rather than wirtten language. The greatness of Panini lies in the fact that he corrected many irregularities in the language & made it a structured language that we know today as sanskrit (= edited, restructured)

so, can we say if the so-called saMs-kRtaH was ever a spoken language, besides a restructured language?

drkpp · Post by **drkpp** » 28 Sep 2006 11:43

Yes. It was spoken in post-vedic period.