Origin of Sanskrit
An Historical Analysis based on concrete available evidences
Why is this question important? The original historians mentioned that long long ago, India was occupied by dark skinned Dravidians who led a peaceful civilization which was invaded and conquered from the west by a set of white skinned, tall, bluish eyes rays called Aryans. Aryans spoke Vedic Sanskrit and they destroyed the indigenous culture and imposed the Vedic rituals and customs on the entire population. It is also these Aryans who imposed the Caste System in the country
Early British Scholars propagated the idea that Sanskrit was the mother of all languages and Max Mueller placed Rig Veda at 1500BC and many authors even today state that Sanskrit Origin must have happened sometime near 5000BC. However let us look at the hard archaeological evidences which is available with us now
The earliest Sanskrit inscriptions are the Hathi Bada Ghosundi Inscription dating back to 100 BCE and this was written in Brahmi Script.
Oldest evidence of Sanskrit that too not in Devanagari Script and in Brahmi Script dates back to just 100 BCE. But MaxMueller dated this to 1500BCE to 2000BCE. Some historians have dated this to 5000BCE as well. Then how was these dates derived is the question. Is there any fundamental basis for these assumptions that Sanskrit is the oldest language in world. This appears to be more on presumption than scientific evidence.
Although there are older inscriptions were that of Edicts of Ashoka which was written in Prakrit dating back to 250 BCE.
The Edicts are divided into four categories, according to their size (Minor or Major) and according to their medium (Rock or Pillar). Chronologically, the minor inscriptions tend to precede the larger ones, while rock inscriptions generally seem to have been started earlier than the pillar inscriptions:
Minor Rock Edicts: Edicts inscribed at the beginning of Ashoka’s reign; in Prakrit, Greek and Aramaic. This dates back to 269 to 233 BCE.
Minor Pillar Edicts: Schism Edict, Queen’s Edict, Rummindei Edict, Nigali Sagar Edict; in Prakrit. This dates back to 256BCE
Major Rock Edicts: 14 Edicts (termed 1st to 14th) and 2 separate ones found in Odisha; in Prakrit and Greek.
Major Pillar Edicts: 7 Edicts, inscribed at the end of Ashoka’s reign; in Prakrit.
Notice that the language used in Ashoka Edicts indicate that they are probably dating to 250BCE, but notice that these was written in Prakrit and not classical Sanskrit. Now the question is whether Sanskrit was existing before Prakrit or Prakrit was widely used. Now notice that Ashoka edicts are written in three major scripts, Brahmi, Greek, Aramaic and none of them are written in Devanagari Script.
So if one takes the archaeological evidences, then it is clear that Prakrit is older than Classical Sanskrit and also it is difficult to conclude that Sanskrit is the oldest language.
So the classical Sanskrit was never the common language of India and early historians analysis that Rig Veda must have been written sometime during 1500BC is without any archaeological evidences.
Now let us look at the archaeological evidences backing the origin of Atharavaveda and Rig veda. The oldest known copies of Atharvaveda and Rigveda (2 of the 4 books) are kept at the Bhandarkar Oriental Institute in Pune, Maharashtra. These two manuscripts are written in Sanskrit and were found in Rajasthan during the late 1800’s. They are dated from around 12–1300 AD and thus preceding any major Persian influences.
So then how did the dating of Sanskrit happen to 1500BCE or beyond. This has happened mainly on the basis of linguistic studies which involve comparison of few words and the outcomes of these studies are completely biased that all languages actually emerged from Europe. This facts are now disputed. So the argument that Sanskrit is the oldest language is without any basis.
