In Sanskrit you do not need to remember a million words, thousands of grammar rules and have a thick dictionary to start understanding it. For general speaking, you only need to know 70 grammar rules and 50 root sounds to understand anyone who is speaking Sanskrit.
These 50 root sounds convert, following those 70 rules, to form words for action, words for name, words to act as an adjective and words for subject.
For example, the popular name Rama (राम) has its root in ram (pronounced as ‘rum’ the beverage) or रम. But it can also be converted to verb as रमण (ramar). रमा (pronounced as rum + aa) on the other hand is an adjective meaning attractive.
Mathematically speaking, the root words act as a base variable and the broader words are functioned with grammatical formulae to form a sentence. Hence, to understand any book written in Sanskrit, from ancient to modern, you only need to know 2000 root words and 4000 grammar rules. That is all it is.
This is possible in Sanskrit because Sanskrit words stand for the properties of ‘the thing’ associated with them, be it action, adjective or noun and can be changed by adding prefixes or suffixes as per requirement to further clarify their relative position as per the need of the context. Any living, non living or imaginary object can be covered in these 2000 root words and with the given grammar rules, any new word, formed even today, can be immediately translated to Sanskrit by anyone. Having said that, all the internet slang can be easily translated to Sanskrit.
To an extent, classical languages like Latin and Greek also work in the same manner. For example,
Vōx is a Latin term which means ‘voice’ in English.
Adding a suffix –alis to it becomes vocalis which means ‘vocal’ in English.
Adding -fero it will become vociferor meaning ‘scream’ or ‘cry out’. vocāvit will become, ‘I summon’… and so on.
While English is limited to adding -s, -es, -ing, -ed etc suffixes (or even limited prefixes), Latin and Greek are a further ahead in using these affixes to mean something. Sanskrit takes it farther and says, ‘sky is the limit’.
How?
Take an example: a very common Sanskrit word surya-koti-sama-prabha or in Sanskrit सूर्यकोटिसमप्रभ means
Surya = Sun
Koti = Crore or ten million
Sama = Resemble
Prabha = effulgence
SunCroreResembleEffulgence will be the literal translation which acts as an equation. This doesn’t make any sense though, right? But because of a single rule from Sanskrit grammar which says if all the words have same Vibhakti (Vibhakti is loosely related to Inflection in English or Latin grammar) then all the words represent the same object of discussion. This rule not only gives meaning to the whole sentence, but it also reduces the complexity of writing, reading and understanding which is a major challenge for latin and Greek.
Allow me to get a bit technical here because Sanskrit word formation is quite similar to the modern programming language which is based on algorithms (I know you have heard this a lot, just hold your horses for a few paragraphs).
A typical word in Sanskrit is like class in a programming language and the vibhaktified form of that word is like a pointer to an object of that class.
So, surya, koti, sama, prabha are the vibhaktified forms of words which are pointing to one object. Hence Sun + Crore + Resemble + Effulgence means someone who resembles ten million shining sun. This is an open ended pointer and can be used for anyone under discussion.
Some programming languages use methods (e.g Java) to further broaden the class selection. In Sanskrit, methods are the rules which are called upon in a certain context to find a meaning while in another context to find another meaning.
In the first example of Rama for instance, the root word ram (or rum) has several meanings in its library which can be called upon as per the context. So at one place Rama means someone who gives joy and happiness, while in another context it means someone who has dark complexion, while for Spiritual seekers the word means a process in which one is guided by a pious light out of darkness. Similarly, surya-koti-sama-prabha can mean differently depending on the context of conversation and the ability of the person to call upon the right methods.
Although the claim that Sanskrit is best for coding is highly debatable and is mostly used by people to create fantasy about the language. In the modern scenario of programming, the biggest issue with Sanskritised coding is the storage problem (read on if you understand programming otherwise please jump to next paragraph after the bullet points). While English seems regular and very natural in programming and takes one byte space per letter, Sanskrit requires a lot of restructuring and hence consumes more space. For example,
- The Sanskrit vowels or consonants take up 2 bytes of space each.
- Combination of a consonant and a vowel takes 4 bytes.
- A consonant with a suppressed (halved) vowel is 4 bytes.
- Double consonant conjunction takes 6 bytes.
- The Double consonant conjunction plus a vowel over it takes 8 bytes.
But as a Science student and a Sanskrit student on top of that, I am open to analyse all kinds of possibilities and fantasies and strongly believe in ‘fantasy for one generation is science for next generation’ so may be a time can come when someone will develop Sanskrit script based coding structure which can further reduce the byte size. But I don’t care much about replacing Abrahmic languages with Sanskrit or vice versa as long as the medium itself is evolving for good.
But there is something flawless about Sanskrit though.
Francis Sullivan once said about algorithms that “Algorithms are the poetry of computation. Just like verse, they can be terse, allusive, dense, and even mysterious. But once unlocked, they cast a brilliant new light on some aspect of computing.”
When I read this quote, I was confused whether he was talking about algorithms or Sanskrit because if I replace Algorithms with Sanskrit, the sentence still makes sense and that is where it is so flawless. Like algorithms, you can have unlimited fun with Sanskrit, as far as you are following the prescribed set of rules and are avoiding the human nature of slipping easily into fantasy rather than practical knowledge.
Sanskrit has every freedom to twist and turn and mould and break to change the shape of the sentence, alter meanings, play tricks to encode and convey hidden messages, mix with the environment and serve meaning as per the context. Sanskrit letters can literally dance in three dimensional shape and can play crazy geographical puzzles in a circular or spherical structure forming three dimensional palindromes, or run around the chess board without actually disturbing any other sentence. It can form a zigzag structure and still make sense. Some of these structures are arranged to look funny but as you start decoding, they give a very deep meaning of life.
But once you understand the pattern, like an algorithm, Sanskrit is easy and predictable. People who have learned European languages, have claimed that Sanskrit is highly predictable. By the time you have understood the initial basic principles of word formation, you will be able to predict the meaning of unfamiliar sentences without looking at the grammar rules. So yes, Sanskrit is a poetry of computation and not just a language but full of mysteries.
Next post: Sanskrit has the ability to transform the neurological capacity of humans.
