It required an Irish letter-writer (July 22) to remind us that Sanskrit is a universal language! It is the misplaced and distorted perception of Sanskrit being identified with religion and caste that is making Tamil Nadu’s politicians target the language in order to bolster their “social justice credentials.” The Tamil Nadu government opposed the creation of the National Counter Terrorism Centre claiming that it will erode State autonomy. By the same logic, it has no right to interfere in the day-to-day affairs of CBSE schools which are administered by a central organisation.
T.K.S. Thathachari,Bangalore
Sanskrit is not the mother of all languages, either in the world or in India. The large family of Indo-European languages has 10 branches, one of which is the Indo-Iranian. Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-branch of the Indo-Iranian branch. There are three major language families today in India. None of the Indian languages which belong to these major families is related to Sanskrit, though they may have borrowed words from Sanskrit, just as English, which has borrowed from Latin, is not descended from Latin.
On the other hand, the earliest Sanskrit shows borrowings from the parent of the Dravidian languages (Proto-Dravidian) mostly, and also from the Austro-Asiatic languages, progressively increasing from earlier Sanskrit to later Classical Sanskrit. The oldest surviving, attested and deciphered written language on the planet is Egyptian in hieroglyphic writing, dated 2690 BC. The oldest surviving written Sanskrit is a manuscript from AD 1100. Declaring that Sanskrit is the mother of all languages does not make it a fact, however often it is repeated. Such a statement reveals a pathetic lack of information on the part of those who make such outlandish claims, glaringly so, with a Board of Education.
Sharada Schaffter,Chennai
