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| Image for representative purpose: Screengrab from a Sanskrit movie Shakuntalam by Dushyanth Sridhar, YouTube |
Dr. Shonaleeka Kaul, Associate Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi gave the Keynote Address titled "Sanskrit and the Society: Beyond the Politics of Language" on the inaugural day 7th February 2024 at Savitri Bhavan as part of a two-day Sanskrit Litfest in Auroville. The following is a report based on her address which included quotes from the original Sanskrit texts.
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| Dr Shonaleeka Kaul speaking on "Sanskrit and the Society: Beyond the Politics of Language" |
The speaker began by questioning the idea that Sanskrit was a language of the powerful classes of people and said it was also used to speak truth to the power and gave the example of a poet telling a King that as a Kavi (seer-poet) the poet was superior to the King.
Srimad Bhagavad Gita is nothing but engaging with profound individual and social dilemmas. The epics Ramayana and Mahabharata were classified as ithihasas meaning “thus it was”. They were history according to Indian tradition which defined them as tales of the past containing instructions on the four stages of life - dharma, artha, kama, moksha - pious, power, pleasure, and liberation. This is one of the earliest explicit definitions of history and is at variance with Western empiricist notions of history. The cultural specificity and virtuosity of India’s definition of history need to be recognized and respected rather than dismissed simply because it is different from the Western terminology and definition. “What I am saying is that if history is not precise being Sanskrit poetry, it is [precise] because of it.”
According to tradition, the poet was a seer, sage, a rishi who possessed divine sight, divya drishti, much like Sri Aurobindo.
Natyashastra tells us that Sanskrit dramas were played at temples and city squares, which were public locales, and not only at royal courts as it is claimed. They were sponsored by small groups of people for mahajanasamaja, a huge social gathering of people at big festivals. The people were from the high and low classes - Arya and UnArya. [Ed- Aryan people were those who practiced high self-culture in the Vedic times and in later times the word Arya expressed a particular social and ethical ideal, according to Sri Aurobindo] Natyashastra described the drama as the fifth Veda, for all classes of society. The audience entertained included idiots and children but the shastra says the play should not have obscure, unintelligible words and must be intelligible to cultured people. The drama culture was inclusive as the audience consisted of both men and women and young and old who were of superior or inferior types and of different dispositions. Learning was not a prerequisite for enjoying Sanskrit drama. The natas and natis - actors and actresses - traditionally belonged to low classes.
Mainstream historians claim that Sanskrit was spoken only by men of high status and the rest spoke only in Prakrit. According to this theory, there was a linguistic hierarchy correlated to socioeconomic hierarchy. The role of Vidhushaka, the jester, was played by Brahmin class actors but he spoke in Prakrit. Marchants and courtiers also spoke in Prakrit. Women may speak in Sanskrit and children, even of the high-class families, spoke in Prakrit. So, the allocation of tongues to actors and actresses in the dramas did not correlate to their socio-economic status.
Dr. Kaul concluded by suggesting that Sanskrit knowledge may have been more common (in ancient and medieval India) than we imagined. Natyashastra described Sanskrit and Prakrit as two ways of interaction among the four castes. She hoped that her talk would lead to questioning the rigid views about India’s languages.
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| A view of the audience |