Sanskrit meaning ‘cultured’ or ‘refined’ is believed to be the oldest and most systematic language in the world. The vastness and versatility of this Indian classical language can be endorsed by the fact that the various forms of earth can be described in as many as 65 words, water in 67 words and rainfall in over 250 words. Most ancient literary, religious, or philosophical documents of the Indian culture are found to be in Sanskrit. According to the UNO, 97% of the world’s languages have been directly or indirectly influenced by Sanskrit. When Sir William Jones came to India as a judge of the supreme court in Calcutta, way back in 1784, he observed the Sanskrit language to be of wonderful structure and more perfect than Greek and Latin. Several others including Alain Danielou (in the 20^th century) a French author and Will Durant, an eminent American historian, have written about the Sanskrit language. Is it surprising then that America has a University dedicated to Sanskrit? NASA too has a department in it to research on Sanskrit manuscripts. Sanskrit was reported to be the most computer friendly language by the Forbes magazine in 1987.

Ancient Indian cultural facts accredit the origin of Sanskrit to the Vedic society, dating back to the 2nd millennium BC, when knowledge was handed down through the generations verbally. Sanskrit was originally believed to be an oral language without a written script. Sanskrit is also known as ‘Deva vani’ owing to the belief that it was first introduced by Brahma to the Sages of the celestial abodes. The perfect form of the Vedic Sanskrit language is believed to have existed even before the infancy of the earliest prime languages of the world like Greek, Hebrew and Latin etc.

However Sanskrit Pundits and Sanskrit lovers support the theory of Sanskrit having its roots in Europe, owing to the similarity between words of Sanskrit and those of other European languages. A classic example for endorsing that theory is the Sanskrit word ‘matru’ or mother in English, has several similar forms such as mater in Latin, mère in French, mutter in German and madre in Spanish. There are several such Sanskrit words which have similarities in meanings and pronunciation with other European languages. Very few Indian words of the scores of languages used in India share these similarities with Sanskrit. These facts clearly indicate that Sanskrit was language of the Aryans who came to India from Eastern parts of Europe. Would it be wrong then to say that Sanskrit is the mother of all European languages?