The majority of surviving Sanskrit literature is actually secular like Poems, Dramas, science and mathematics.
Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan, in its heyday. Otherwise it wouldn’t be part of the liturgical traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Nastika traditions.
Why would Sudraka,Vatsayana, Brhathari write in Sanskrit if no one spoke it?
> Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan
Is that so ? I am not knowledgeable myself but some of my family members are (professor s in Sanskrit) and from what I have absorbed from their conversation is in direct contradiction to your claim.
The language of interpersonal communication were vulgarised forms, aka the vernacular languages. Sanskrit was used were a need for formality, respect, speciality was felt.
Regarding your claims about secularity, you are very correct.
With all due respect, are they historians of Sanskrit linguistics or professors of Sanskrit language? That makes a big difference.
Diglossia is very common in Indian culture and it is not far fetched to imagine Indians speaking Sanskrit and Prakrits fluently and switching them based on context.
You can find minor examples of it even today if you look at public announcements, which are done in Sanskrit inspired verbiage.
This isn’t a black and white case where “proofs” exist. Indian history is notoriously hard to study due to lack of primary sources.
> historical changes in Sanskrit used in the Vedas.
This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions. It hardly gives them expertise over the rest of the traditions spanning few millennia.
Jains, Buddhists and various other Sramana movements were championed by lower varnas and they all used Sanskrit as a liturgical language.
I have already mentioned the widespread presence of edicts, danapatra, inscriptions, secular literature created for wider public which hints that Sanskrit was widely understood and Sanskrit/Prakrit Diglossia is not too far fetched.
> This is just one small corpus of Sanskrit linguistic traditions.
That was just what her dissertation was on, not the sum total of her expertise. I was responding to your question about familiarity with history in addition to linguistics of Sanskrit. In any case it's expert vetted piece of research, not claims about far-fetchednesd by someone on the internet.
Far fetchedness is hardly the the standard for wannabe scientific claims. If it was, there are many bridges that people can sell.
If proof free speculations are your thing, speculate away. There's a large population of similar proof-free quacks and hacks one can join. I have nothing more to add.
Funnily enough I’ve given enough examples and sources already in this thread. I think it’s better than “I know someone who knows” and “it’s expert vetted research”. I’ll stick to my theory about Sanskrit/Prakrit diglossia for now.
In the end we are two lay people arguing about a topic we’re not experts in and speculating how things would have been few millennia ago. It’s fine to have diverse perspectives! I’m not sure which quacks you deal with but I wish you all the best.
> Sanskrit was widely spoken and understood just like Latin or Avestan, in its heyday. Otherwise it wouldn’t be part of the liturgical traditions of Buddhism, Jainism and Nastika traditions.
I think, and it is just my speculation, that for most of Indian History, Sanskrit was the link language.
Just like "Latin" in the USA and Europe of the early 17th and 18th centuries, when all academic instructions were carried out in Latin!
So, nobody used Sanskrit as the primary language, but everyone could or knew someone who could convert Sanskrit to the local dialect.
It is almost like how Chinese and Colombian traders might sign a contract for coffee purchase in English. Neither might use English in most of their daily operations.
> I think, and it is just my speculation, that for most of Indian History, Sanskrit was the link language.
> Just like "Latin" in the USA and Europe of the early 17th and 18th centuries, when all academic instructions were carried out in Latin!
You're suggesting that Sanskrit became a scholarly language, which no one was disputing. You're even using as a metaphor Latin, which started out as a vulgate tongue - which is the argument you are doubting.
Edit: It also applies to your English comparison. English IS spoken by millions, just not by the people you are referring to. Are you actually claiming English isn't a mother tongue to anyone?
> Are you actually claiming English isn't a mother tongue to anyone?
I gave a specific example where neither the coffee wholesaler nor the buyer probably operates day to day in English. But they would still use English for the official agreement.
That does not take away from other benefits of English like being spoken by millions as a primary language and probably billions as a second language
Yes this makes a lot of sense, if I recall correctly the first grammar of Telegu was written in Sanskrit, and many South India languages use a lot of Sanskrit words, but of course they are not intelligible if you don't know the grammar.
Not sure why you are speculating or what your background would be to do so, when the info is easy to find. Yes it was a link language given its prominence, but also
> Sanskrit was a spoken language in the educated and the elite classes, but it was also a language that must have been understood in a wider circle of society because the widely popular folk epics and stories such as the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, the Panchatantra and many other texts are all in the Sanskrit language, while many Sanskrit dramas indicate that the language coexisted with the vernacular Prakrits.[115] Thus, Classical Sanskrit with its exacting grammar was the language of the Indian scholars and the educated classes, while others communicated with approximate or ungrammatical variants along with other natural Indian languages,[114] with the cities of Varanasi, Paithan, Pune and Kanchipuram being centres of Sanskrit learning and debate until the arrival of the colonial era
Comparing Sanskrit to the status of Latin in 17th CE is bit disingenuous and a sign of presentism.
Sanskrit enjoyed scholarship since 6th BCE and it was prevalent and commonly used for more than a millennia after that.
The various inscriptions found across the subcontinent, and meant for common people are in Sanskrit which disproves this idea that it was not widely used.
> can travel up to 125 kilometers (77 miles) on a single charge
This would be a big hit in European cities. I own VW e-Up! and it's a perfect EU city car. With it's 375KM range, I rarely charge it more than once a month.
The entire education industry, so many students ask ChatGPT to help with their homework, and lots pass it off as their own work. Many students have quit going to office hours & tutoring, and ask AI for personalized answers instead. The education industry has no answer, and is struggling to deal with this.
The homework "help" industry (i.e. paying for answers) is dead. Chegg stock fell 99% because of ChatGPT.
Stock photography is rapidly dying, nobody will pay for shutterstock when ChatGPT can generate a passable image for free.
ChatGPT is killing studio photography, it can generate great looking studio photos for free.
Same with basic graphic design / custom art commissions.
SEO / copywriting has been almost fully replaced by AI. Companies no longer pay writers to churn out SEO slop, and now the web is full of AI generated SEO spam.
Customer service as a job is dying and is rapidly being replaced by AI chatbots.
You have no data to support what you're saying, you sound anecdotical, and on top of these flaws in your argument, you proceed to make a point mentioning "industries" that are neither formally upended, nor at all significant in the great scheme of things in terms of value produced or perceived.
I believe the education industry is fundamental and one of the most important industries in the world, but it hardly moves markets, nor is filled with high-paying customers.
On top of that, you are showing another stark bias in considering the US experience as the global experience. It is not, and education in particular works way differently, aka, it's not a business wild west.
Cognitive surrender in writing emails is another shaky ground: do you honestly think that AI's worth the tens of trillion the tech bros are claiming it'll be worth as a glorified email-maker?
I will add that my point still stands.
If you say this:
>>ChatGPT is killing studio photography, it can generate great looking studio photos for free.
Same with basic graphic design / custom art commissions.
the only point you're proving is that you don't understand shit about photography as a business, nor about design as a business.
AI is being rapidly integrated, for sure, but it has not upended those industries, and the average mediocrity it produces (because of its very nature) is not even close to replacing what you claim it is.
You have no data to support what you're saying, you sound anecdotical, and on top of these flaws in your argument, you have shifted the goalposts, to the point that you don't even know what you're replying to.
You asked about data, and I have it, and here it is: Chegg's CEO explicitly stated in their earnings call that ChatGPT was directly responsible for their collapse. Chegg stock fell 99%. You can verify this fact yourself. ChatGPT led to the near-destruction of a $14 billion company.
On photography and design: your counterargument is entirely assertion. You're claiming I don't understand those industries without demonstrating that you do. There is demonstrable fact AI has absolutely upended both industries. AI has gutted the commodity tier that constitutes the vast majority of revenue volume. Product shots, website graphics, social media content, marketing material. AI produces this content for free, at a quality so good that millions of people don't realize it's created by AI. You only consider the high-end, professional market, which so far has been relatively untouched.
Your only valid criticism is that my argument is US-centric. Fair enough. But ChatGPT has 700 million users globally, and you've produced zero evidence that non-US markets are insulated from the trends happening in the US.
Used Vivaldi for years but it kept breaking my workflows and would wipe out my meticulously assembled tab groups. After few such gaffes I switched to Brave. I really wanted Vivaldi to work but can’t let it break workflows.
Adding C++ to the project wasn't unprecedented TBH. The app was blazing and we didn't have any issues with perf in the project. The app failed for a different reason.
I run my micro-homelab on a Pi Zero from 2018. It’s behind Cloudflare tunnels. It runs the apps i need on a DietPi OS within 180MB and it’s uptime is ~8 months.
> Mughals palace households were mainly speaking Persian language
They actually spoke Chagatai Turkish in the households and Persian was the court language. Urdu developed independently, mostly outside the royal patronage, and much later.
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