Editing Sanskrit (section)

===Vedic Sanskrit===
{{Main|Vedic Sanskrit}}
[[File:Rigveda MS2097.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|''Rigveda'' ([[Vedic chant|padapatha]]) manuscript in [[Devanagari]], early 19th&nbsp;century. The red horizontal and vertical lines mark low and high pitch changes for chanting.]]
The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as ''[[Vedic Sanskrit]]''. The earliest attested Sanskrit text is the [[Rigveda]] ({{Transliteration|sa|IAST|Ṛg-veda}}), a Hindu scripture from the mid- to late-second millennium&nbsp;BCE. No written records from such an early period survive, if any ever existed, but scholars are generally confident that the oral transmission of the texts is reliable: they are ceremonial literature, where the exact phonetic expression and its preservation were a part of the historic tradition.{{Sfn|Meier-Brügger|2003|p=20}}{{sfn|MacDonell|2004}}{{sfn|Keith|1996|pp=3–4}}

However some scholars have suggested that the original Ṛg-veda differed in some fundamental ways in phonology compared to the sole surviving version available to us. In particular that retroflex consonants did not exist as a natural part of the earliest Vedic language,{{sfn|Deshpande|1993|p=165}} and that these developed in the centuries after the composition had been completed, and as a gradual unconscious process during the oral transmission by generations of reciters.{{citation needed|date=June 2024}}

The primary source for this argument is internal evidence of the text which betrays an instability of the phenomenon of retroflexion, with the same phrases having sandhi-induced retroflexion in some parts but not other.{{sfn|Bloomfield|Edgerton|1932|loc=§163–170}} This is taken along with evidence of controversy, for example, in passages of the Aitareya-Āraṇyaka (700 BCE), which features a discussion on whether retroflexion is valid in particular cases.{{sfn|Deshpande|1993|pp=130–196}}

The Ṛg-veda is a collection of books, created by multiple authors. These authors represented different generations, and the mandalas&nbsp;2 to 7 are the oldest while the mandalas&nbsp;1 and 10 are relatively the youngest.{{sfn|Barbara A. Holdrege|2012|pp=229–230}}{{sfn|Bryant|2001|pp=66–67}} Yet, the Vedic Sanskrit in these books of the Ṛg-veda "hardly presents any dialectical diversity", states [[Louis Renou]] – an [[Indology|Indologist]] known for his scholarship of the Sanskrit literature and the Ṛg-veda in particular. According to Renou, this implies that the Vedic Sanskrit language had a "set linguistic pattern" by the second half of the 2nd millennium&nbsp;BCE.{{sfn|Louis Renou|Jagbans Kishore Balbir|2004|pp=5–6}} Beyond the Ṛg-veda, the ancient literature in Vedic Sanskrit that has survived into the modern age include the ''Samaveda'', ''Yajurveda'', ''Atharvaveda'', along with the embedded and layered Vedic texts such as the [[Brahmana]]s, [[Aranyaka]]s, and the early [[Upanishad]]s.{{Sfn|Meier-Brügger|2003|p=20}} These Vedic documents reflect the dialects of Sanskrit found in the various parts of the northwestern, northern, and eastern Indian subcontinent.{{Sfn|Cardona|2012}}{{Sfn|Witzel|1997|p=9}}

According to Michael Witzel, Vedic Sanskrit was a spoken language of the semi-nomadic [[Aryan]]s.{{Sfn|Witzel|1997|p=16-17}}{{sfn|Harold G. Coward|1990|pp=3–12, 36–47, 111–112, Note: Sanskrit was both a literary and spoken language in ancient India.}} The Vedic Sanskrit language or a closely related Indo-European variant was recognized beyond ancient India as evidenced by the "[[Mitanni]] Treaty" between the ancient Hittite and [[Mitanni]] people, carved into a rock, in a region that now includes parts of [[Syria]] and [[Turkey]].<ref name="Cohen2017p11">{{cite book
 |first=Signe
 |last=Cohen
 |year=2017
 |title=The Upanisads: A complete guide
 |pages=11–17
 |publisher=Taylor & Francis
 |isbn=978-1-317-63696-0
 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EnE3DwAAQBAJ
 |access-date=18 July 2018
 |archive-date=29 March 2024
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329134215/https://books.google.com/books?id=EnE3DwAAQBAJ
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>{{efn|The Mitanni treaty is generally dated to the 16th&nbsp;century&nbsp;BCE, but this date and its significance remains much debated.{{sfn|Bryant|2001|p=249}} }} Parts of this treaty, such as the names of the Mitanni princes and technical terms related to horse training, for reasons not understood, are in early forms of Vedic Sanskrit. The treaty also invokes the gods [[Varuna]], [[Mitra]], [[Indra]], and [[Ashvins|Nasatya]] found in the earliest layers of the Vedic literature.<ref name="Cohen2017p11"/><ref>{{cite book
 |first=Andrew
 |last=Robinson
 |year=2014
 |title=India: A Short History
 |pages=56–57
 |publisher=Thames & Hudson
 |isbn=978-0-500-77195-2
 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TgU7CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT44
 |access-date=18 July 2018
 |archive-date=29 March 2024
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329134211/https://books.google.com/books?id=TgU7CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT44#v=onepage&q&f=false
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>

{{Quote box
| width = 28%
| style = min-width:25em
| bgcolor = #FFE0BB
| align = right
| quote = <poem>
O Bṛhaspati, when in giving names
::they first set forth the beginning of Language,
Their most excellent and spotless secret
::was laid bare through love,
When the wise ones formed Language with their mind,
::purifying it like grain with a winnowing fan,
Then friends knew friendships –
::an auspicious mark placed on their language.
</poem>
| source = — ''[[Rigveda]] 10.71.1–4''<br />Translated by Roger Woodard<ref>{{cite book
 |first=Roger D.
 |last=Woodard
 |year=2008
 |title=The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas
 |page=1
 |publisher=Cambridge University Press
 |isbn=978-0-521-68494-1
 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UQpAuNIP4oIC
 |access-date=18 July 2018
 |archive-date=29 March 2024
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240329131545/https://books.google.com/books?id=UQpAuNIP4oIC
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref>
}}
The Vedic Sanskrit found in the Ṛg-veda is distinctly more archaic than other Vedic texts, and in many respects, the Rigvedic language is notably more similar to those found in the archaic texts of Old Avestan [[Zoroastrianism|Zoroastrian]] ''Gathas'' and Homer's ''Iliad'' and ''Odyssey''.<ref name="Lowe2015p2">{{cite book
 |first=John Jeffrey
 |last=Lowe
 |year=2015
 |title=Participles in Rigvedic Sanskrit: The syntax and semantics of adjectival verb forms
 |pages=2–3
 |publisher=Oxford University Press
 |isbn=978-0-19-870136-1
 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=u7u6BwAAQBAJ
 |access-date=18 July 2018
 |archive-date=7 September 2023
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230907144358/https://books.google.com/books?id=u7u6BwAAQBAJ
 |url-status=live
 }}</ref> According to Stephanie W. Jamison and Joel P. Brereton – Indologists known for their translation of the Ṛg-veda – the Vedic Sanskrit literature "clearly inherited" from Indo-Iranian and Indo-European times the social structures such as the role of the poet and the priests, the patronage economy, the phrasal equations, and some of the poetic metres.{{sfn|Stephanie W. Jamison|Joel P. Brereton|2014|pp=10–11, 72}}{{efn|An example of the shared phrasal equations is the ''dyáuṣ pitṛ́'' in Vedic Sanskrit, from Proto-Indo-European ''*dyḗws ph₂tḗr'', meaning "sky father". The Mycenaean Greek equivalent is ''Zeus Pater'', which evolved to ''Jupiter'' in Latin. Equivalent "paternal Heaven" phrasal equation is found in many Indo-European languages.{{sfn|Stephanie W. Jamison|Joel P. Brereton|2014|p=50}}}} While there are similarities, state Jamison and Brereton, there are also differences between Vedic Sanskrit, the Old Avestan, and the Mycenaean Greek literature. For example, unlike the Sanskrit [[simile]]s in the Ṛg-veda, the Old Avestan ''Gathas'' lack simile entirely, and it is rare in the later version of the language. The Homerian Greek, like Ṛg-vedic Sanskrit, deploys simile extensively, but they are structurally very different.{{sfn|Stephanie W. Jamison|Joel P. Brereton|2014|pp=66–67}}