Bharatiya Languages
Language, music and arts are few of the key things that form the basis of a civilization and culture. These have been passed on through generations.
Furthermore, language is one of the most visible factors of any culture or community. It is the medium through which people get close. You feel more
propinquity with the people who speak your language.
Our spiritual land, Bharat, is truly a multi-linguistic land. There is hardly any other country that speaks so many languages. With more than 18
official languages and more than two thousand different dialects, Bharatiya languages can get a bit confusing. Yet, each dialect and language can be
tracked back to the same mother language called Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is an ancient Bharatiya language that is still in use today. Many Hindu religious texts were written in Sanskrit such as the Vedas, Mahabharata,
Ramayana and many other scriptures. These are still read in Sanskrit by many all around the world. It is still unknown how old the Sanskrit is. But it can
surely be traced all the way back to earlier than 2500 B.C. Today, Sanskrit is no more a spoken language but it still exists like Latin in the western
countries. Now people have again started taking interest to learn Sanskrit to understand the knowledge mentioned in old Sanskrit scriptures. One of our
affiliates, Samskar Bharati, is engaged in promoting Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is the basis of almost all other Bharatiya languages. Most of the languages slowly developed from Sanskrit with few exceptions. Few languages
are independently developed such as Tamil. “How did these languages come into existence?” There could be several reasons. As people started to move
across Bharat and live in different areas, they began to form their own dialect or way of speaking. For example, people in Gujarat developed Gujarati, whereas
the people of Calcutta began to speak Bengali. This exercise also might have been encouraged due to the complexity in ancient languages
(Sanskrit).
Most of the languages are vibrant with long literary tradition. Not only they developed their own literature but also most of the ancient literature and
religious scriptures also got translated into various different languages. Shown below are regions in Bharat and their languages.
|
Regions
|
Language
|
| Northern (most of the northen states) |
Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri |
Southern (Karnataka, Tamil Nadu,
Kerala, Andhra Pradesh) |
Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu |
Eastern (North-East states such as
Assam, W. Bengal) |
Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Oriya,
Manipuri |
Western (Maharashtra, Gujarat,
Rajasthan, Goa) |
Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Konkani |
Although variety of languages, due to their origin in Sanskrit, they are not all that different from each other. Most of the languages share the
same script. They are all written in either Devanagari or Brahmi. There are also few languages which do not have any name or script. They are only
spoken languages! Those languages are mainly practiced in the tribal areas of Bharat.
Not only is the script alike but many times even the pronunciation of the languages
is similar. There are only a few differences in how some of the
words are said.
|
Hindi |
Marathi |
Gujarati |
|
Ghar (Home) |
Ghar |
Gher |
|
Lamba (Long) |
Laamb |
Lambu |
|
Din (Day) |
Divas |
Divus |
Regardless of each state having a state language of its own, Bharat (India) can still communicate over state boundaries without too much of a hassle.
This is because they share a national language called Hindi. Hindi is also very similar to all other languages and is also written in Devanagari script.
Though many languages are in practice in Bharat, all stand for a homogeneous culture (Hindu Culture). No Bharatiya language try to eradicate
or dominate any other language. They all live together in harmony. New generations not only learn their mother language, but also state (regional)
language as well as national language. This is the essence of the great Bharatiya
languages.
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