Sanskritisation is the process of introducing features from Sanskrit, such as vocabulary and grammar, into other languages. It is sometimes associated with the "Hinduisation" of a linguistic community.Punnoose, Reenu, and Muhammed Haneefa. "Problematising Hindi as the'Self'and English as the'Other'." Economic & Political Weekly 53.7 (2018). Many languages throughout South Asia and Southeast Asia were greatly influenced by Sanskrit (or its descendant languages, the Prakrits and modern-day Indo-Aryan languages) historically.Chakraborty, Shibashis. "The Role of Specific Grammar for Interpretation in Sanskrit". Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, 9 (2) (2021): 107-187.
Sanskritisation often stands in opposition to the Persianisation or Englishisation of a language within South Asia, as occurs with the Hindustani language, which in its Sanskritised, Persianised, and English-influenced registers becomes Hindi, Urdu, and Hinglish/Urdish respectively. Support for Sanskritisation in South Asia runs highest among Hindu nationalists.
Sanskritisation of the names of people and places is also commonplace in India.
History
Ancient era
Modern era
During the medieval era, the Indian languages had taken in a lot of Perso-Arabic influences as a result of Muslim invasions, particularly in the northwestern subcontinent; colonial-era education policies, religious nationalism, and the influence of some of the more Sanskritised Indian languages played a role in Hindus and Muslims increasingly separating in terms of their linguistic influences, with Hindus tending towards the usage of Sanskrit words and the Brahmic Devanagari script for writing Hindi while Muslims opting for a more Perso-Arabic vocabulary and the Nastaliq Arabic script for writing Urdu.Ganpat Teli, M.Phil. "Revisiting the Making of Hindi as a ‘National’ Language", M.Phil.
Since the 1947 Partition of India, the Indian government, which at one point considered making Sanskrit the national language, instead has sought to further Sanskritise Hindi, considering it to be easier for Indians to learn,McCartney, Patrick. "The sanitising power of spoken Sanskrit". Himāl South Asian (2014). and as a way of distancing Hindi from the Urdu spoken in the newly formed country of Pakistan (though Urdu continues to have official status in several Indian states, such as Uttar Pradesh). Sanskrit has been used to form new words to describe modern concepts and technologies in several South Asian languages by forming calques based on English words. In addition, Sanskrit words that have been nativised into other languages have been mixed with words from other language families, such as the Dravidian languages, to form new words.
Cultural debates have emerged over how much Sanskrit should appear in Hindi and how acceptable Persian and English influences should be,Yamuna Kachru. "Corpus planning for modernization: Sanskritization and Englishization of Hindi". Studies in the Linguistic Sciences, Vol. 19, No. 1, Spring 1989, pages 153-164 with Hindu nationalists favouring Sanskritised Hindi, opposing Urdu in part because of its association with Islam, and some boycotting the Hindi-language Bollywood film industry for featuring too much Urdu and English vocabulary in its movies.
Example of different registers of Khariboli
+ Comparison of different modern Khariboli registers using the same sentence Language Sentence (in Latin script) Remarks English The clouds of our country shower blessings on this land. Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ) Highly Sanskritised variety with tatsama vocabulary (although MSH does also employ native tadbhava vocabulary as well), generally preferred for formal purposes by followers of Dharmic religions, Sanskritists and linguistic purists and puritanists alike. Hindustani Colloquial variety with native tadbhava vocabulary, with a substantial number of loanwords from both tatsama vocabulary, as well as from Persian and Arabic (and to some extent, even Turkic), as seen (to some extent) in Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb. Hinglish/Urdish Heavy code-mixing with English words and phrases. Standard Urdu (Nastaliq: ) Highly Persianised and Arabised variety, mostly preferred for formal purposes by followers of Islam and people in a Persianate culture and setting.
De-Sanskritisation
See also
Sanskrit revival Sanskritism Prestige (sociolinguistics) Linguistic purism
References
Sources