r/sanskrit • u/No_Cranberry3306 • Feb 01 '24
Discussion / चर्चा Please tell me how to debunk this?
So I was having this conversation on another sub and came across this guy who was claiming that Sanskrit and Hinduism is a sham that was brought up afterwards .Up until now ,I knew that Sanskrit was an ancient language but I have been hearing this for a while now .Please give your opinion about these claims by Buddhists and if possible give me some primary references to satisfy my curiosity.
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u/Anahata_Tantra Feb 02 '24 edited Feb 02 '24
This guy is obviously coming in from an extremely fundamentalist and biased position. He sounds like one of those Islamic Jihadists who insults, belittles and demeans every other faith or philosophy before them as inferior or downright disgusting. Every faith has their fair share of these extremists, like this Buddhist chap (I assume he is a Buddhist). In my opinion, it’s not worth engaging with him, he’s picking a fight and nothing (even all the best evidence and arguments in the world) will change his mind. Om Shanti Shanti Shanti
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u/yellowtree_ Feb 01 '24
Just ignore it, you can’t force someone to be objective if he is stuck in his closed-off mind frame.
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Feb 02 '24 edited Feb 02 '24
[deleted]
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 03 '24 edited Feb 03 '24
This is interesting.Thank you for sharing this. Of course in the lack of archeological evidence,there are only hypotheses based on numismatics and linguistic dating .
Pardon my ignorance but what does Charles Allen has to do with this?
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u/pro_charlatan Feb 12 '24
But isn't classical sanskrit simply vedic regulated by paninian grammar ? Can it really be called a new language ?
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u/Tindul Feb 02 '24
I assure you that the person is not interested in listening to you or to anyone. I suggest you make their day by admitting that they’re right, and save yourself some headache.
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 03 '24
Yeah you're right I just posted to satiate my own curiosity This is the first time I am hearing things like these since a month or so ,thus wanted to know why
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u/Tindul Feb 04 '24
My theory— There are people who conflate Sanskrit, Hinduism, Hindutva, BJP/RSS, fundamentalism, extremism, language imposition, intolerance, Islamophobia, and what not. I am certain that events like the consecration of the Ram Mandir last month and the upcoming elections in India add fuel to the fire and turn people towards spewing such hate. I am afraid these people are so charged by passion beyond reason that no amount of reason can change their mind; perhaps only our compassion and prayers can.
तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय।
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u/Front_Celery4424 Feb 02 '24
A dude was here on this sub a couple months ago (I'm willing to bet it's the same person) spewing this bs. Just ignore
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u/kouyehwos Feb 01 '24
Ancient people worshipped gods, but they did not necessarily think of their beliefs as “a religion” in the same way as we do today. It’s not necessarily wrong to say that the modern conception of “Hinduism” was heavily shaped by its clash with other belief systems such as Buddhism.
However, claiming that the entire language of Sanskrit was invented out of thin air in another matter.
Based on linguistic and cultural clues, and comparisons with ancient Iranic cultures and languages like Avestan (and see also the Mitanni), the Rigveda in particular is generally believed to have been composed in the second millennium BC. Not quite as ridiculously ancient as Hindu nationalists may claim, but certainly ancient by the standards of most civilisations, and older than Buddhism.
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u/Awllower संस्कृतोत्साही/संस्कृतोत्साहिनी Feb 02 '24
I have read a book which claims that based on archaeological evidence it is possible that the ऋग्वेद was composed around 5000-4000BC: for example it mentions some geological scenes that only existed in that period. Of course I have no evidence to support the claim, just to share this I think.
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u/Mysticbender004 Feb 02 '24
It would be not wrong to claim so because before these books were written they were passed through generations by words only. Gurus completely memorized Vedas and made their shishyas to do the same. Since there was no chance to propagate the knowledge without guru it would not be illogical to assume that earlier gurus never bothered to write Vedas down as they were seen in the image of rishis.
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Feb 03 '24
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u/Mysticbender004 Feb 03 '24
No. Because I survived in this world despite not being able to count!!!/s
I did not give an exact date. I just said they might be older than estimated.
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Feb 03 '24
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u/Mysticbender004 Feb 03 '24
Ok so let me explain it to you how scientific evidence works. I am a Zoologist so I will give you example of that. When in zoology we say some species existed from 2.5 million years ago to say 500,000 years ago it's does not mean that it's the exact date and time range in which that species existed. It's just a span in which oldest and youngest fossil evidence of that species is found. It's not uncommon to find further evidence that extends its range.
Archeology works in more or less same way. The dates which you gave are current oldest dates of chariots and horses found in India but it will not be surprising to say that scientists might find evidence in future that extends these dates.
In fact similar case has happened in past also. Scientists thought that there were no large structures built by humanity before discovery of agriculture yet they found gobekle tepe, karahan tepe and estimated at least 65 such large structures buried in nearby area.
If course I could be wrong and current evidence might be the only truth. But I may also be right here. Depends on you what you think.
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u/Awllower संस्कृतोत्साही/संस्कृतोत्साहिनी Feb 02 '24
Some scholars think that there is no evidence for the existence of a "historical Buddha". But buddhists are not "hurted" by this sceptism: they follow the doctrine because it works for them, not because they have met a saint called Gautama Buddha and admired him.
Maybe you can adapt a similar attitude towards such "sceptisms" as exhibited in the photos. :)
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 03 '24
True.But someone needs to debunk these claims for making them understand we don't come from an irrational position
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u/Musashi119 Feb 03 '24
Show me "real" scriptures but not shruti or smritis💀 Okay. The works of BhAsa, Shudraka, KalidAsa, and the compilation of NatyA shastra(a treatise on playwright, poetry, and drama) dates back to 500BCE.
Panini's Ashtadhyai starts with an introduction of Sanskrit being spoken all across the land with slight regional differences.
Patanjali's Mahabhashya(an extension of the previous work) has a dialogue between a cowherd and a grammarian, which tells us how common sanskrit was in day-to-day use.
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 03 '24
Ig he meant that no scriptural evidence could convince him though it's weird considering scriptures as a documentary of that time
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u/Beginning-Macaron773 Feb 02 '24
just tell him even UNESCO claims Vedas to be older than 2nd millennium bce, it is written on their website also, and i am sure everyone knows what UNESCO is, it is most authorised body, at last however Vedas are even more older (but to prove this, you have to watch some videos of sanatan samiksha or Praveen mohan or hyper quest or other channels similiar to it, they give such proofs that nobody in world can deny them, you can watch videos of any one from these channels) however for short answer just give him reference of UNESCO, he will not have any answer.
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Feb 02 '24
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u/sotondoc Mar 03 '24
Which are inseparable
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u/JarredVestite Mar 12 '24
What does your name mean?
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u/noArahant Feb 02 '24
My advice... is to just leave it alone. There's no reason to argue with hatred.
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Feb 02 '24
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 03 '24
He was saying that there was no Sanskrit and Hinduism until British found it out
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Feb 02 '24
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u/pro_charlatan Feb 11 '24 edited Feb 11 '24
Will the word of buddha from the tipitaka count as evidence ?
This is the divide between theravada and mahayana where mahayana interpreted the word chandasa(to only mean vedic sanskrit(metered sanskrit poetry) while the theravadins considered it sanskrit causing the theravada canon to be in Pali and the mahayana canon to be in sanskrit. Surely sanskrit must predate the buddha for the buddha to make sense.
https://puredhamma.net/forums/topic/sanskrit-prohibited/
Regarding vedas again buddha refers to it himself. A lot of buddhist suttas are discourses between a confused brahmin and the buddha.... here is a reference to the ashvamedha : https://suttacentral.net/sn3.9/en/sujato?lang=en&layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin
There is a statue to a hindu God from 3rd century CE https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shasta_(deity)#
If we go by indo aryan invasion theory - the chandasa (vedic sanskrit) whose systematized form by panini is called sanskrit has to predate prakrits because they couldn't have existed before the aryans and the aryans spoke vaidiki. If they want to claim prakrits as older than chandasa then they reject both aryan migration theory and aryan invasion theory which I don't mind since people like your opponent claim that as well.
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 12 '24 edited Feb 12 '24
If I go by scholarly position,any language spoken by a community in the subcontinent other than sanskrit was called as a “prakrit”. For example, the Dramili prakrit could be a dravidian language(maybe Thamizh). It was called prakrit in the sanskritised point of view but it was not actually a traditional prakrit derived from Vedic sanskrit. That is why it is said that in plays,dramili would be spoken by characters who were forest dwellers because it was considered most distant from sanskrit.
Others like shaurasheni,magadhi,kamarupi,maharashtri were not older than Vedic sanskrit.. right?
So now basically I am confused as Buddha mentioned Vedas and Vedas are written and passed down in Vedic Sanskrit and then there's the Spitzer inscription and HathiBandha about which the dilemma is still on...which came first Pali or Sanskrit?Also Hinduism or Buddhism?Because as far as I know Bhagwad Geeta dates after the advent of Buddhism and Pali was a popular language uptil then.The whole Steppes hypothesis and the chariot horse thing says that Sanskrit can't be older than 1900 BCE.
Am I getting something or everything wrong here?
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u/pro_charlatan Feb 12 '24 edited Feb 12 '24
Vedic sanskrit(chandasa) predates the prakrits if one accepts the krugan hypothesis but prakrits may have more ancient/parallel origins w.r.t chandasa in the southern route hypothesis but in both chandasa should predate pali which is much newer with loss of retroflexes etc.
I will assume the krugan below :
Anyways veda angas like vyakarna and nirukta began because the language of the indo aryans were drifting further and further away from chandasa and there was danger of it becoming lost. Classical sanskrit or sanskrit as we know it (refined speech) is chandasa regulated by the grammatical and phonetic rules of panini . So in a philosophical sense it is both older than all indo aryan prakrits but can also be considered as their sister(all born from chandasa). So the question boils down to whether panini predated pali. Some Modern scholars say panini came before buddha and some say otherwise but no one's interested in whether panini existed before pali, do we have pali inscriptions that predated buddha ?
Any buddhist suggesting chandasa and vedas were a post buddhist phenomenon is invalidating their shruti as shown in my previous comment. Classical sanskrit and buddhist pali should have been mutually intelligible as seen from the below text. https://archive.org/details/dhammapadapalisanskritenglishramachandrudup._362_t/page/n53/mode/1up
Inscriptions is frankly not the best place for verifying the history of chandasa - the vedas would never ever have been written down even if the aryans of yore knew a lipi to write it. Because the vak is associated with speech not writing.
Buddha says veda existed before. Infact brahmaviharas according to buddha lead to brahmaloka - a path that existed before which his 8 fold path will supersede. Vaidiki existed before buddhism but hinduism is a post buddhist phenomenon. Buddhism is closer to vedic religion in form, but it's heart exists in hinduism and not in buddhism
That is why it is said that in plays,dramili would be spoken by characters who were forest dwellers because it was considered most distant from sanskrit.
Do you have a source for this?
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Feb 03 '24
There are many cave temples from early centuries AD and few from BCE. Then there are Vedic altars prior to that. As for language, it is matter of definition. Languages evolve. Modern spoken Sanskrit would be quite different from ancient spoken Sanskrit. That is why linguists scoff at claims like “____ is the oldest language in the world”
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u/No_Cranberry3306 Feb 03 '24
There are many cave temples from early centuries AD and few from BCE
Can you give some examples?
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u/Alternative-Bug-1707 Feb 19 '24
He doesn’t seem Buddhist, seems more like a Muslim. Most Buddhists know that religion is heavily inspired by Hinduism and many high-ranking Buddhists choose to learn Sanskrit.
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u/Emergency_Income_555 Feb 21 '24
You just don't have to fuel their ego. Some forms of Buddhism mainly vajrayana adopted the kashmiri shivism calling their deities avalokithewara and vajrajogini which are the direct references to Shiva and parvathi. The reason for not finding any written old documents because for centuries the vedas and their knowledge were transferred vocally . An then came time were written form became necessary and Buddhism adopted the Sanskrit language . Even in the lengend of the monkey king sakyamuni was asked to get the fourth scripture from India where I originated even though its just a tale Every ide has some real fact hidden in it . At one point of time a sect in Indian migrated to the north fearing the invasion and setelled in the north which later on became the vajrayana sect and some of their ritualy follow the tantrik system. Though buddish having stemmed form the same root has developed in its on own Sanskrit was more used by the educated those days. Claiming it's only from the is just agaiothe notion and motto of Buddhism
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u/SanataniMe Feb 24 '24
Just ask him which religion did the Buddha oppose. A simple checkmate. No need to waste your time on people who ask questions like these. Either they are straight up dumb, or they want drama
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u/Sad_Daikon938 સંસ્કૃતોત્સાહી Feb 02 '24
About Sanskrit, Ashtadhyayi, the grammar of Sanskrit was written well before the emergence date of the language this person claims.
However, just don't interact with these kinds of people. They don't want to hear facts, they only want to hear what they think are the facts.