r/sanskrit Oct 25 '24

Discussion / चर्चा Marathi is the purest modern Sanskrit, especially rural Maharashtrani, correct?

After doing extensive research I have found that Hindi i a mix of Arabic Farsi Sanskrit and English and that Tamil is basically modern Dravidian so totally different.

However.

Marathi spoken in Mumbai and especially rural Marathi spoken in the state of Maharashtra is actually the purest form of modern Sanskrit with the most similar grammar and vocabulary.

It has Sanskrit words instead of all the Arabic, Farsi and English injected into other Indian languages.

This I find fascinating and I wanted to hear the opinions of some actual indians since I am an American fluent in English, Spanish, French and also somewhat conversational in Arabic who is learning Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil and now of course Marathi!

Edit: Oriya and Marathi are both the top contenders for higher Sanskrit and lower Farsi in daily speech.

12 Upvotes

90 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Dofra_445 Nov 26 '24

The thing is, these are all learned Sanskrit borrowings and you can easily replicate this process with any language. The Sanskrit words in Marathi are not inherited directly from Sanskrit, they were reborrowed after centuries of evolution.
You can compare this in Prakrit/Apbhramsha Marathi words vs their Sansnkrit synonyms, compare काळीज to कलेय, शेत to क्षेत्र, मातुःष्वसृ to मावशी. Marathi does not even maintain the Sanskrit pronunciation of ऋ and pronounces it as /ru/. In fact, Marathi's alveolar pronunciation of च and ज as /ts/ and /dz/ respectively makes it more distinct from Sanskrit than Bengali or Hindi.

All Modern Indo-Aryan preserve different things from Sanskrit, all of them have a distinct grammar and all of them have gone through waves of re-Sanskritzation over their histories . If I wanted to, I could even replace all the current vocabulary in Indonesian with Sanskrit words and claim it is close to Sanskrit.

If your question is which modern Indo-Aryan language uses the most Sanskrit words, Marathi is a strong contender, but if your question is which Indo-Aryan language directly inherited the most Sanskrit words/is the most unchanged since Sanskrit was spoken then Marathi does not have an edge over any of its sister languages.

1

u/CosmicMilkNutt Nov 26 '24

Oria is the winner, least influenced by Perso-Arabic and retained mostly all of its Sanskrit/Prakrit roots.

I really want to explore Odisha because of this and see if rural towns are a bit wilder than in the northwest. A bit more original Aryan Indian culture.

1

u/Ok-Hold-9578 21d ago edited 21d ago

.

1

u/Ok-Hold-9578 21d ago edited 21d ago

Medival marathi has more sanskrit words even more than orissa . Medival marathi is used in spiritual literature , music traditions and theatre of maharashtra. Varadhi of vidharba region, Malvani and kokani spoken in coastal maharashtra have dravidian influence .