Sanskrit A Binding Force For Knowing The Relationship Of Different Languages And Cultures Of Asia And Europe

An article in the Hindustan Times titled ‘Sanskrit - a powerful binding force’ written by Dr Satyamurti attempts to understand the linguistic unity in Europe and Asia. And Sanskrit is the key to understanding the linguistic unity.

‘Sanskrit - a powerful binding force’ 

The history of the development of various languages of Asia and Europe reveals an interesting fact. Nearly 4000-5000 years ago, the ancestors of the majority of people in Asia and Europe had been living together for hundreds of years at one place and our forefathers, whom we call arya, used to speak one language. The original language of the aryans has been termed as Proto Indo-European language -- called PIE in short. While studying the family tree of Indo-European languages, the similarity among languages becomes very visible. It has been established that Sanskrit is more similar to classical languages like Greek, Latin, Avestan and Gothic than the modern languages like English, German and French that have been directly derived from them. 

Also, Sanskrit is the only language among ancient languages, which has undergone minimal change. Its vast repository of literature is intact even today. Moreover, most of the characteristics of PIE are still lying in Sanskrit and without knowing Sanskrit, no comparative study of the languages of Indo-European family is possible. In other words, Sanskrit is a binding force for knowing the mutual relationship of different languages and cultures of Asia and Europe. The reason behind it is that the literature of the classical languages like Greek, Latin etc hardly exists today.