Thursday, November 20, 2008

Business in India - Understanding History

I was interested in learning about sanskrit translation and the fact that the ancient language is three thousand years old. The story of the origin of Sanskrit began right from the Vedic age, sailing through the post-Vedic years and centuries later till today.

The Aryans collected a mass of hymns, rituals and poems about their gods which document the various dialects that they brought to India. From the Punjab, where the Aryans settled first after they came from Central Asia, their speech spread along the east as far as present Bihar by about 600 BC. The result was Prakrit or Middle Indo-Aryan dialect which soon engulfed the whole country in the north, east and centre.

Meanwhile, the ‘pure’ Aryans in Punjab were very unhappy about their sacred language getting ‘defiled’. So between 8th and 4th century BC, they came up with Classical Sanskrit, based on the old Vedic speech. But for all practical purposes, the origin of the language is taken to be the old Vedic Sanskrit.

With that being said, I just found the interpretation history to be quite amazing and needed to take a break from business as usual!