Sanskrit and Lithuanian are closely related
It is a common belief that there is a close similarity between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages; Lithuanian being the European language grammatically closest to Sanskrit. It is not difficult to imagine the surprise of the scholarly world when they learned that even in their time somewhere on the Nemunas River lived a people who spoke a language as archaic in many of its forms as Sanskrit itself.
Antoine Meillet (1866 - 1936) famous French linguist said: "Sanskrit scholar could understand and be understood by a Lithuanian farmer".
Lithuanian: dievas dave dantis; dievas duos duonos
Sanskrit: devas adat datas, devas dasyati dhanas
Translated: God gave us teeth, God will give us bread
Paul Thieme, (1905 - 2001) in 1958, has compared the Lithuanian proverb: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos ir duonos ‘God gave teeth, God will also give bread’ with what he (Thieme) calls an old form of Sanskrit: Devas adadā t datas; Devas dā t (or dadā t) api dhā nā s. (Actually according to the rules of Old Indic phonetics, several of the words occur in a slightly different form in a connected text in Sanskrit.)
SON: Sanskrit sunus - Lithuanian sunus
SHEEP: Sanskrit avis - Lithuanian avis
SOLE: Sanskrit padas - Lithuanian padas
MAN: Sanskrit viras - Lithuanian vyras
SMOKE: Sanskrit dhumas - Lithuanian dumas
These Lihuanian words have not changed their forms for the last five thousand years.
The relationship between Sanskrit and Lithuanian goes even deeper. Take, for example, the Lithuanian word 'daina' that usually is translated as 'song'. The word actually comes from an Indo-European root, meaning ‘to think, to remember, to ponder over’. This root is found in Sanskrit as dhi and dhya. The word also occurs in the Rigveda (ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns) in the sense of ‘speech reflecting the inner thoughts of man’.
Apart from its Indo-European background as word and term, the ‘daina’ incorporates the idea of the Sun-Goddess who was married to the Moon-God, reminiscent of goddess Surya in the Rigveda.
Incredible Indian-Lithuanian relations
Professor Lokesh Chandra has observed:
“The very mention of Lithuanian opens up an image, a vision that gives a people their identity through language. It shows how the darkness of dreams becomes the new embodied hope. My father was stimulated and strengthened in his work on the development of Hindi by the history of the Lithuanian language. It has been the eternal continuity of these people; - it rustles something deep in their being. My father felt that we in India share with our distant Lithuanian brothers the silent geography of lost frontiers. Political freedom is inseparable from language.”
And the professor continues with his amazing story: “My father would relate how grandmas in the remote villages narrated folk-tales to eager grandchildren in their Lithuanian language which was despised by the Slavised nobility and punished by the Czarist regime. My father also told me how the Lithuanian daina (songs) were abandoned by the courts, but still continued to live on in the villages, faithfully preserved by the poorest people of Lithuania, guarded by the mothers of the families even during the darkest periods of Lithuania’s history.”
Antoine Meillet (1866 - 1936) famous French linguist said: "Sanskrit scholar could understand and be understood by a Lithuanian farmer".
Lithuanian: dievas dave dantis; dievas duos duonos
Sanskrit: devas adat datas, devas dasyati dhanas
Translated: God gave us teeth, God will give us bread
Paul Thieme, (1905 - 2001) in 1958, has compared the Lithuanian proverb: Dievas davė dantis; Dievas duos ir duonos ‘God gave teeth, God will also give bread’ with what he (Thieme) calls an old form of Sanskrit: Devas adadā t datas; Devas dā t (or dadā t) api dhā nā s. (Actually according to the rules of Old Indic phonetics, several of the words occur in a slightly different form in a connected text in Sanskrit.)
SON: Sanskrit sunus - Lithuanian sunus
SHEEP: Sanskrit avis - Lithuanian avis
SOLE: Sanskrit padas - Lithuanian padas
MAN: Sanskrit viras - Lithuanian vyras
SMOKE: Sanskrit dhumas - Lithuanian dumas
These Lihuanian words have not changed their forms for the last five thousand years.
The relationship between Sanskrit and Lithuanian goes even deeper. Take, for example, the Lithuanian word 'daina' that usually is translated as 'song'. The word actually comes from an Indo-European root, meaning ‘to think, to remember, to ponder over’. This root is found in Sanskrit as dhi and dhya. The word also occurs in the Rigveda (ancient Indian sacred collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns) in the sense of ‘speech reflecting the inner thoughts of man’.
Apart from its Indo-European background as word and term, the ‘daina’ incorporates the idea of the Sun-Goddess who was married to the Moon-God, reminiscent of goddess Surya in the Rigveda.
Incredible Indian-Lithuanian relations
Professor Lokesh Chandra has observed:
“The very mention of Lithuanian opens up an image, a vision that gives a people their identity through language. It shows how the darkness of dreams becomes the new embodied hope. My father was stimulated and strengthened in his work on the development of Hindi by the history of the Lithuanian language. It has been the eternal continuity of these people; - it rustles something deep in their being. My father felt that we in India share with our distant Lithuanian brothers the silent geography of lost frontiers. Political freedom is inseparable from language.”
And the professor continues with his amazing story: “My father would relate how grandmas in the remote villages narrated folk-tales to eager grandchildren in their Lithuanian language which was despised by the Slavised nobility and punished by the Czarist regime. My father also told me how the Lithuanian daina (songs) were abandoned by the courts, but still continued to live on in the villages, faithfully preserved by the poorest people of Lithuania, guarded by the mothers of the families even during the darkest periods of Lithuania’s history.”
Comments
Post a Comment