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Sanskrit literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
literary works written in Sanskrit constituting the main body of the classical literature of India. The literature is divided into two main periods—the Vedic (c.1500–c.200 B.C. ), when the Vedic form of Sanskrit generally prevailed, and the Sanskrit (c.200 B.C. –c. A.D. 1100), when classical Sanskrit (a development of Vedic) predominated. Sanskrit had, however, become the standard language of the court by 400 B.C. , and its early literature overlapped the Vedic. The word Sanskrit means “perfected,” and the language was adopted as an improvement of the Vedic. The first part of the Vedic period (c.1500–c.800 B.C. ), that of the Veda , was a poetic and creative age, but afterward (c.800–c.500 B.C. ) the priestly class transferred its energies to sacrificial ceremonial. They produced the Brahmanas , prose commentaries, in a later form of Vedic, explaining the relations of the Vedas (which had become sacred texts) to the ceremonials of the Vedic religion. In time the Brahmanas , like the…
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Full text Article Sanskrit literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
literary works written in Sanskrit constituting the main body of the classical literature of India. The literature is divided into two main periods—the Vedic (c.1500–c.200 B.C. ), when the Vedic form of Sanskrit generally prevailed, and the Sanskrit (c.200 B.C. –c. A.D. 1100), when classical…
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Full text Article Sanskrit literature

From Philip's Encyclopedia
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Full text Article Mahabharata

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
One of the two major Sanskrit epics of India, valued for its literary merit and its religious inspiration. It tells of the struggle for supremacy between two groups of cousins, the Kauravas and the Pandavas. Many myths and legends are woven into the poem, along with didactic material on topics such…
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Full text Article Jin, Kemu (1912-2000)

From Biographical Dictionary of the People's Republic of China
A respected Indologist, grammarian, poet, scholar, translator, and essay writer, Jin Kemu was one of the founders and promoters of the studies of India in China in the 20th century. Jin was a native of Shouxian City in Anhui Province. He received a classical education at private schools. In 1935 he…
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Full text Article Sanskrit

From Encyclopedia of World Religions: Encyclopedia of Buddhism
Also known as: Samskritam Sanskrit ( sam , “complete” + krita , “done”), “that which is done completely, the perfected, the refined,” is the ancient liturgical or ritual language of India. In its designation it is contrasted with prakrit , which indicates a “common” or vernacular language of ancient…
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Full text Article Prakrit literature

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
By the 6th cent. B.C. the people of India were speaking and writing languages that were much simpler than classical Sanskrit. These vernacular forms, of which there were several, are called the Prakrits [Skt.,=natural]. One very important and early Prakrit was Pali (see Pali canon ), which became…
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Full text Article Sanskrit

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
(săn'skrĭt), language belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-Iranian ). Sanskrit was the classical standard language of ancient India, and some of the oldest surviving Indo-European documents are written in Sanskrit; however, …
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Full text Article śloka

From The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
In Sanskrit, “stanza,” referring to a unit of metrical verse in traditional Sanskrit literature. Although the exact form of the verse may vary, the most common form of śloka is composed of four “feet” (pāda), each foot consisting of eight syllables, for a total of thirty-two; this form is called the…
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Full text Article bhagavat

From The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
In Sanskrit and Pāli, lit. “endowed with fortune”; one of the standard epithets of a buddha, commonly rendered in English as “Blessed One,” “Exalted One,” or simply “Lord.” The term means “possessing fortune,” “prosperous,” and, by extension, “glorious,” “venerable,” “divine.” In Sanskrit…
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Full text Article Paññāsajātaka

From The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism
InPāli, “Fifty Birth Stories,” and sometimes referred to in Western scholarship as the “Apocryphal Jātakas”; a collection of fifty jātaka stories that are not included in the canonical jātaka collection of the Pāli tripiṭaka . There are Thai, Cambodian, and Burmese recensions of these stories, the…
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