Sanskrit

(“perfected”) For much of Indian history,
Sanskrit was the language of the cultural
and religious elite. Even in the twentieth
century, it is still the language with the
highest religious status. Its name reflects
the religious conviction that it was the
perfect language—the language of the
gods. Sanskrit was essentially fixed in the
fourth century B.C.E. by the grammarian
Panini in his Ashtadhyayi. Since it has
not changed from Panini’s time, Sanskrit
is no longer considered a “natural”
language. Even in Panini’s time, Sanskrit
would have been a person’s second
language, learned by conscious study
after acquiring a grammatically simpler
mother tongue (one of the Prakrits)
595
Sanskrit
through the normal process of language
learning. In a religious context Sanskrit
has primarily been the province of
brahmins, serving both as a sacred
language and a common language
through which the brahmins from various areas could communicate with each
other. Its place of pride as the religious
language par excellence has been somewhat undercut by the influence of the
devotional (bhakti) religious movement.
One of this movement’s pervasive features was poetry composed in vernacular
languages, which reflected the conscious
choice to speak in a language that everyone could understand.