The Vedic tradition informs us that
human beings in former ages were physically and intellectually by
far more able than nowadays. Knowledge was passed on by oral
reception since the disciples were able to remember everything by
hearing it once. Thus, no writing was necessary. But at the dawn of
the present age—the kali-yuga, or “age of quarrel”—human
mankind degraded more and more and gradually lost all good
qualities. The duration of life decreased, and with the loss of the
keen remembrance the traditional system of acquiring knowledge
ceased to be applicable. In order to prevent its decay, the Vedic
wisdom had to be conserved in written form. This happened about 5000
years ago by the divine incarnation Srila Vyasadeva. He compiled the
presently existing Vedic literature, namely the four Vedas, the
Upanisads, the Puranas and the Mahabharata. Thus,
he created no new knowledge but rather tried to preserve the
original wisdom of human mankind for the oncoming generations.
At that time, devanagari was the
language of the whole civilized population of the earth. But due to
lack of training and careless pronunciation, the uneducated people
began to develop numerous dialects. Before, such lingual alienation
had been carefully avoided since it was well-known that the material
and spiritual power of the language greatly depends on its purity.
Now, however, various dialects came up which, after gradually
deviating from the original language, could not be called
devanagari anymore. New languages, called prakrta, came
forth.
With
the further progress of kali-yuga, these prakrta
dialects spread more and more, up to the grade of dominating the
original pure language. Finally, they were adopted even by the
educated circles. The sages and scholars of that time became
alarmed. Together with its language, they foresaw the dying-out of
the root of Vedic culture. Thus, they invested enormous time and
effort to design a standardized grammar, with the aim of preserving
the devanagari language in its original purity. Although
unnecessary before, this measure seemed to be the only means of
counteracting the increasing cultural, intellectual and spiritual
decay of the society.
The most successful, hence most
prominent amongst these grammarians was Panini. His grammar,
surpassing all others in tightness and precision, became the
standard and remained so undisputedly until today. Panini was able
to joint the original devanagari language into an exact
framework of rules, thus preserving it for the posterity. Since his
time, this language is called Sanskrit, “joined together, refined”.
Thus, according to the Vedic version
Sanskrit is not the result of the prakrta languages; rather,
they in opposite have developed from the original Sanskrit language,
called devanagari. The present-day Sanskrit is nothing more
than the successful attempt to conserve the original language and to
prevent its further alienation. And the development of scriptural
record is not at all considered as a progress of human
civilization—rather, it is a symptom of the increasing degradation
of human qualities.
Following this tradition, Sanskrit is
the original language of the Vedas. They were transmitted directly
from the spiritual world at the dawn of creation. Therefore, their
language bears the power to connect the reciter and the receptors of
mantras and slokas with the eternal spiritual
reality—especially if the mantras contain one of the numerous
names of God. Consequently, Sanskrit produces a transcendental sound
vibration which is able to liberate the living entity from the
material existence called samsara, the circle of repeated
births and deaths.
No more than now, as we are forced by an
increasing number of archeological discoveries to date the age and
origin of human mankind more and more backwards, this version
appears to be absurd by no means. At least, no valid empiric reasons
force us to dismiss it as mythological.
No matter, however, if we accept the
academic opinion or the promotion of the Veda's own version—we have
to regard Sanskrit as one of the great original cultural languages
of this planet. It has influenced vast realms of our thinking and
cognition and is still spoken by many scholars in and outside of
India. Without knowledge of its Sanskrit culture, the present India
and its traditions are not to be understood.

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