Geographic Distribution
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Sanskrit language's historical presence has been attested in many countries. The
evidence includes manuscript pages and inscriptions discovered in South Asia,
Southeast Asia and Central Asia. These have been dated between 300 and 1800 CE.
The Sanskrit language's historic presence is attested across a wide geography
beyond the Indian subcontinent. Inscriptions and literary evidence suggests that
Sanskrit language was already being adopted in Southeast Asia and Central Asia in
the 1st-millennium CE, through monks, religious pilgrims and merchants.[159][160]
[161]
The Indian subcontinent has been the geographic range of the largest collection of
the ancient and pre-18th century Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions.[116] Beyond
ancient India, significant collections of Sanskrit manuscripts and inscriptions
have been found in China (particularly the Tibetan monasteries),[162][163] Myanmar,
[164] Indonesia,[165] Cambodia,[166] Laos,[167] Vietnam,[168] Thailand,[169] and
Malaysia.[167] Sanskrit inscriptions, manuscripts or its remnants, including some
of the oldest known Sanskrit written texts, have been discovered in dry high
deserts and mountainous terrains such as in Nepal,[170][171][note 12] Tibet,[163]
[172] Afghanistan,[173][174] Mongolia,[175] Uzbekistan,[176] Turkmenistan,
Tajikistan,[176] and Kazakhstan.[177] Some Sanskrit texts and inscriptions have
also been discovered in Korea and Japan.[178][179][180]
Contemporary distribution
Sanskrit is a studied school subject in contemporary India, but scarce as a first
language. In the 2001 Census of India, 14,135 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their
first language.[181] In the 2011 census, 24,821 people out of about 1.21 billion
reported Sanskrit to be their first language.[182][note 13][note 14] According to
the 2011 national census of Nepal, 1,669 people use Sanskrit as their first
language.[188] However, on investigation, none of these claims have been verified.
[Restore deleted ref]
Official status
In India, Sanskrit is among the 22 official languages of India in the Eighth
Schedule to the Constitution.[183] The state of Uttarakhand in India lists Sanskrit
as its second official language.[189]
Phonology
Sanskrit shares many Proto-Indo-European phonological features, although it
features a larger inventory of distinct phonemes. The consonantal system is the
same, though it systematically enlarged the inventory of distinct sounds. For
example, Sanskrit added a voiceless aspirated "t?", to the voiceless "t", voiced
"d" and voiced aspirated "d?" found in PIE languages.[190]
The most significant and distinctive phonological development in Sanskrit is vowel-
merger, states Stephanie Jamison � an Indo-European linguist specializing in
Sanskrit literature.[190] The short *e, *o and *a, all merge as "a" (?) in
Sanskrit, while long *e, *o and *a, all merge as long "a" (?). These mergers
occurred very early and significantly impacted Sanskrit's morphological system.
[190] Some phonological developments in it mirror those in other PIE languages. For
example, the labiovelars merged with the plain velars as in other satem languages.
However, the secondary palatalization of the resulting segments is more thorough
and systematic within Sanskrit, states Jamison.[190] A series of retroflex dental
stops were innovated in Sanskrit to more thoroughly articulate sounds for clarity.
For example, unlike the loss of the morphological clarity from vowel contraction
that is found in early Greek and related southeast European languages, Sanskrit
deployed *y, *w, and *s intervocalically to provide morphological clarity.[190]
Vowels
The cardinal vowels (svaras) i (?), u (?), a (?) distinguish length in Sanskrit,
states Jamison.[191][192] The short a (?) in Sanskrit is a closer vowel than a,
equivalent to schwa. The mid vowels e (?) and o (?) in Sanskrit are
monophthongizations of the Indo-Iranian diphthongs *ai and *au. The Old Iranian
language preserved *ai and *au.[191] The Sanskrit vowels are inherently long,
though often transcribed e and o without the diacritic. The vocalic liquid r? in
Sanskrit is a merger of PIE *r? and *l?. The long r? is an innovation and it is
used in a few analogically generated morphological categories.[191][193][194]
A palm leaf manuscript published in 828 CE with the Sanskrit alphabet
This is one of the oldest surviving and dated palm-leaf manuscript in Sanskrit (828
CE). Discovered in Nepal, the bottom leaf shows all the vowels and consonants of
Sanskrit (the first five consonants are highlighted in blue and yellow).
Sanskrit vowels in the Devanagari script[195][note 15] Independent form
IAST/
ISO Independent form IAST/
ISO
ka??hya
(Guttural) ? a ? a
talavya
(Palatal) ? i ? i
o??hya
(Labial) ? u ? u
murdhanya
(Retroflex) ? ?/r? ? ?/r?�
dantya
(Dental) ? ?/l? (?) (?/l?�)[196]
ka??hatalavya
(Palatoguttural) ? e/e ? ai
ka??ho??hya
(Labioguttural) ? o/o ? au
(consonantal allophones) ?? a?/a?[197] ?? a?[198]
According to Masica, Sanskrit has four traditional semivowels, with which were
classed, "for morphophonemic reasons, the liquids: y, r, l, and v; that is, as y
and v were the non-syllabics corresponding to i, u, so were r, l in relation to r?
and l?".[199] The northwestern, the central and the eastern Sanskrit dialects have
had a historic confusion between "r" and "l". The Paninian system that followed the
central dialect preserved the distinction, likely out of reverence for the Vedic
Sanskrit that distinguished the "r" and "l". However, the northwestern dialect only
had "r", while the eastern dialect probably only had "l", states Masica. Thus
literary works from different parts of ancient India appear inconsistent in their
use of "r" and "l", resulting in doublets that is occasionally semantically
differentiated.[199]
