Sanskrit in the context of Bhaskara II

South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and ethnic-cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's population. As commonly conceptualised, the modern states of South Asia include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, with Afghanistan also often included, which may otherwise be classified as part of Central Asia. South Asia borders East Asia to the northeast, Central Asia to the northwest, West Asia to the west and Southeast Asia to the east. Apart from Southeast Asia, Maritime South Asia is the only subregion of Asia that lies partly within the Southern Hemisphere. The British Indian Ocean Territory and two out of 26 atolls of the Maldives in South Asia lie entirely within the Southern Hemisphere. Topographically, it is dominated by the Indian subcontinent and is bounded by the Indian Ocean in the south, and the Himalayas, Karakoram, and Pamir Mountains in the north.

Settled life emerged on the Indian subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus River Basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest, with the Dravidian languages being supplanted in the northern and western regions. By 400 BCE, stratification and exclusion by caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity.

A sacred language, liturgical language or holy language is a language that is cultivated and used primarily for religious reasons (like church service) by people who speak another, primary language in their daily lives.

Some religions, or parts of them, regard the language of their sacred texts as in itself sacred. These include Ecclesiastical Latin in Roman Catholicism, Hebrew in Judaism, Arabic in Islam, Avestan in Zoroastrianism, Sanskrit in Hinduism, and Punjabi in Sikhism. By contrast Buddhism and Christian denominations outside of Catholicism do not generally regard their sacred languages as sacred in themselves.

The English term enlightenment is the Western translation of various Buddhist terms, most notably bodhi and vimutti. The abstract noun bodhi (/ˈboʊdi/; Sanskrit: बोधि; Pali: bodhi) means the knowledge or wisdom, or awakened intellect, of a Buddha. The verbal root budh- means "to awaken", and its literal meaning is closer to awakening. Although the term buddhi is also used in other Indian philosophies and traditions, its most common usage is in the context of Buddhism. Vimutti is the freedom from or release of the fetters and hindrances.

The term enlightenment was popularised in the Western world through the 19th-century translations of British philologist Max Müller. It has the Western connotation of general insight into transcendental truth or reality. The term is also being used to translate several other Buddhist terms and concepts, which are used to denote (initial) insight (prajna (Sanskrit), wu (Chinese), kensho and satori (Japanese)); knowledge (vidya); the "blowing out" (nirvana) of disturbing emotions and desires; and the attainment of supreme Buddhahood (samyak sam bodhi), as exemplified by Gautama Buddha.

In linguistics, syllable weight is the concept that syllables pattern together according to the number and/or duration of segments in the rime. In classical Indo-European verse, as developed in Greek, Sanskrit, and Latin, distinctions of syllable weight were fundamental to the meter of the line.

India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area; the most populous country since 2023; and, since its independence in 1947, the world's most populous democracy. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is near Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Myanmar, Thailand, and Indonesia.

Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago. Their long occupation, predominantly in isolation as hunter-gatherers, has made the region highly diverse. Settled life emerged on the subcontinent in the western margins of the Indus river basin 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilisation of the third millennium BCE. By 1200 BCE, an archaic form of Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, had diffused into India from the northwest. Its hymns recorded the early dawnings of Hinduism in India. India's pre-existing Dravidian languages were supplanted in the northern regions. By 400 BCE, caste had emerged within Hinduism, and Buddhism and Jainism had arisen, proclaiming social orders unlinked to heredity. Early political consolidations gave rise to the loose-knit Maurya and Gupta Empires. Widespread creativity suffused this era, but the status of women declined, and untouchability became an organised belief. In South India, the Middle kingdoms exported Dravidian language scripts and religious cultures to the kingdoms of Southeast Asia.

An abugida (/ˌɑːbuːˈɡiːdə, ˌæb-/ ; from Geʽez: አቡጊዳ, 'äbugīda)—sometimes also called an alphasyllabary, neosyllabary, or pseudo-alphabet—is a segmental writing system in which consonant–vowel sequences are written as units; each unit is based on a consonant letter, and vowel notation is secondary, like a diacritical mark. This contrasts with a full alphabet, in which vowels have status equal to consonants, and with an abjad, in which vowel marking is absent, partial, or optional. In less formal contexts, all three types of script may be termed "alphabets". The terms also contrast them with a syllabary, in which a single symbol denotes the combination of a consonant and a vowel.

Related concepts were introduced independently in 1948 by James Germain Février (using the term néosyllabisme) and David Diringer (using the term semisyllabary), and in 1959 by Fred Householder (introducing the term pseudo-alphabet). The Ethiopic term "abugida" was chosen as a designation for the concept in 1990 by Peter T. Daniels. Faber suggested "segmentally coded syllabically linear phonographic script"; William O. Bright used the term alphasyllabary; and Gnanadesikan and Rimzhim, Katz, & Fowler suggested aksara or āksharik.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was an Indian lawyer, thinker, anti-colonial activist, and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahātmā (from Sanskrit, meaning great-souled, or venerable), first applied to him in South Africa in 1914, is used worldwide.

Born and raised in a Hindu family in coastal Gujarat, Gandhi was trained in the law at the Inner Temple in London and was called to the bar at the age of 22. After two uncertain years in India, where he was unable to start a successful law practice, Gandhi moved to South Africa in 1893 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. He went on to live in South Africa for the next 21 years. Here, Gandhi raised a family and first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. In 1915, aged 45, he returned to India and soon set about organising peasants, farmers, and urban labourers to protest against discrimination and excessive land tax.

Urdu (اُرْدُو) is an Indo-Aryan language spoken primarily in South Asia. It is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also an official Eighth Schedule language in India, the status and cultural heritage of which are recognised by the Constitution of India. It also has an official status in several Indian states.

Urdu and Hindi share a common, predominantly Sanskrit- and Prakrit-derived, vocabulary base, phonology, syntax, and grammar, making them mutually intelligible during colloquial communication. The common base of the two languages is sometimes referred to as the Hindi–Urdu or Hindustani language, and Urdu has been described as a Persianised standard register of the Hindustani language. While formal Urdu draws literary, political, and technical vocabulary from Persian, formal Hindi draws these aspects from Sanskrit; consequently, the two languages' mutual intelligibility effectively decreases as the factor of formality increases.

Corundum is a crystalline form of aluminium oxide (Al₂O₃) typically containing traces of iron, titanium, vanadium, and chromium. It is a rock-forming mineral. It is a naturally transparent material, but can have different colors depending on the presence of transition metal impurities in its crystalline structure. Corundum has two primary gem varieties: ruby and sapphire. Rubies are red due to the presence of chromium, and sapphires exhibit a range of colors depending on what transition metal is present. A rare type of sapphire, padparadscha sapphire, is pink-orange.

The name "corundum" is derived from the Tamil-Dravidian word kurundam (ruby-sapphire) (appearing in Sanskrit as kuruvinda).

Hindu philosophy or Vedic philosophy is the set of philosophical systems that developed in tandem with the first Hindu religious traditions during the iron and classical ages of India. In Indian philosophy, of which Hindu philosophy is a prominent subset, the word used for philosophy is Darshana (Sanskrit: दर्शन; meaning: "viewpoint or perspective"), from the Sanskrit root 'दृश' (drish) meaning 'to see, to experience'.

The schools of thought or Darshanas within Hindu philosophy largely equate to the six ancient orthodox schools: the āstika (Sanskrit: आस्तिक) schools, defined by their acceptance of the Vedas, the oldest collection of Sanskrit texts, as an authoritative source of knowledge. Of these six, Samkhya (सांख्य) is the earliest school of dualism; Yoga (योग) combines the metaphysics of Samkhya with meditation and breath techniques; Nyaya (न्याय) is a school of logic emphasising direct realism; Vaisheshika (वैषेशिक) is an offshoot of Nyaya concerned with atomism and naturalism; Mimamsa (मीमांसा) is a school justifying ritual, faith, and religious obligations; and Vedanta (वेदान्त) contains various traditions that mostly embrace nondualism.

The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the 19th century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan, William Jones, Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress, in September 1894. IAST makes it possible for the reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars.

Kishkindha (Sanskrit: किष्किन्धा, IAST: Kiṣkindhā) is a kingdom mentioned in Ramayana. It is ruled by King Sugriva, the younger brother of Vali, in the Sanskrit epic Ramayana. According to the Hindu epic this was the kingdom that Sugriva ruled with the assistance of his counsellor, Hanuman. Kishkindha is identified with the present location of Hampi, the erstwhile royal capital of Vijayanagara Empire.

During the Treta Yuga, the whole region was within the dense Dandaka Forest which was founded by King Danda, son of Ikshvaku, and descendant of Vaivasvata Manu in the Satya Yuga, which extended from the Vindhya range to the South Indian peninsula. Thus, this kingdom was considered that of the vanaras. During the Dvapara Yuga, the Pandava Sahadeva is stated to have visited this kingdom in the epic Mahabharata during his southern military campaign to collect tribute for Yudhishthira's Rajasuya sacrifice.

Shakuntala (Sanskrit: शकुन्तला, romanized: Śakuntalā) is a heroine in ancient Indian literature, best known for her portrayal in the ancient Sanskrit play Abhijnanashakuntalam (The Recognition of Shakuntala), written by the classical poet Kalidasa in the 4th or 5th century AD. Her story, however, originates in the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata (c. 400 BC - 400 AD), where she appears in the Adi Parva ("The Book of Beginnings"). In both narratives, Shakuntala is the daughter of the sage Vishwamitra and the celestial nymph Menaka. Abandoned at birth, she is raised by the sage Kanva in a forest hermitage. She later falls in love with King Dushyanta and becomes the mother of Bharata, a celebrated emperor of India.

In the Mahabharata, Shakuntala introduces herself to Dushyanta when he visits her hermitage during a hunting expedition in the absence of her foster father, Kanva. The two fall in love and secretly marry according to the Gandharva tradition (a love marriage), consummating their union in the forest. Afterward, Dushyanta returns to his palace life and gradually forgets about Shakuntala. Years later, she approaches him with their son, Bharata, but he hesitates to acknowledge them. Outspoken and fearless, Shakuntala rebukes him forcefully until a celestial voice intervenes to confirm the truth, compelling Dushyanta to accept her and their son.

Sanskrit literature is a broad term for all literature composed in Sanskrit. This includes texts composed in the earliest attested descendant of the Proto-Indo-Aryan language known as Vedic Sanskrit, texts in Classical Sanskrit as well as some mixed and non-standard forms of Sanskrit. Literature in the older language begins during the Vedic period with the composition of the Rigveda between about 1500 and 1000 BCE, followed by other Vedic works right up to the time of the grammarian Pāṇini around 6th or 4th century BCE (after which Classical Sanskrit texts gradually became the norm).

Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the extensive liturgical works of the Vedic religion, while Classical Sanskrit is the language of many of the prominent texts associated with the major Indian religions, especially Hinduism and the Hindu texts, but also Buddhism, and Jainism. Some Sanskrit Buddhist texts are also composed in a version of Sanskrit often called Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit or Buddhistic Sanskrit, which contains many Middle Indic (prakritic) elements not found in other forms of Sanskrit.

Aśvaghoṣa, also transliterated Ashvaghosha (Sanskrit: [ˌɐɕʋɐˈɡʱoːʂɐ], अश्वघोष; lit. "Having a Horse-Voice"; Tibetan: སློབ་དཔོན་དཔའ་བོ།, Wylie: slob dpon dpa' bo; Chinese: 馬鳴菩薩; pinyin: Mǎmíng púsà; lit. 'Bodhisattva with a Horse-Voice') (c. 80 – c. 150 CE), was a Buddhist philosopher, dramatist, poet, musician, and orator from India. He was born in Saketa, today known as Ayodhya.

He is believed to have been the first Sanskrit dramatist, and is considered the greatest Indian poet prior to Kālidāsa. It seems probable that he was the contemporary and spiritual adviser of Kanishka in the first century of our era. He was the most famous in a group of Buddhist court writers, whose epics rivaled the contemporary Ramayana. Whereas much of Buddhist literature prior to the time of Aśvaghoṣa had been composed in Pāli and Prakrit, Aśvaghoṣa wrote in Classical Sanskrit. He may have been associated with the Sarvāstivāda or the Mahasanghika schools.

Buddhacharita (Sanskrit: बुद्धचरितम्, romanized: Buddhacaritam; transl. Acts of the Buddha) is an epic poem in the Sanskrit mahakavya style on the life of Gautama Buddha by Aśvaghoṣa of Sāketa (modern Ayodhya), composed in the early second century CE.

The author has prepared an account of the Buddha's life and teachings which, unlike other treatments such as Mahavastu (“Great Story”) and Lalitavistara (“Full Description of the Play [of the Buddha]”), is not only artistically arranged but also restrained in the description of the miracles of Gautam Buddha. His work also reflects a vast knowledge of Indian mythology and pre-Buddhist philosophy, as well as a court poet's interest in love, war, and statecraft.

In Indian religions and philosophies, a śramaṇa (from Sanskrit) or samaṇa (from Pali), sometimes anglicised as shramana, is a person "who labours, toils, or exerts themselves for some higher or religious purpose" or a "seeker, or ascetic, one who performs acts of austerity".

In the early Vedic texts, the term is an epithet for the great rishi sages in association with their ritualistic exertion. However, it has since come to refer to a broad class of spiritual movements originally comprising wandering ascetics from ancient India—collectively called the Śramaṇa tradition, Shramanic tradition, or occasionally Shramanism—historically parallel to but distinct from the Vedic religion, Brahmanism, and their Hindu successor movements. The Śramaṇa tradition includes Jainism, Buddhism, and others such as the Ājīvika, Ajñana, and Cārvāka, while definitively excluding Hinduism. The tradition's name comes from the semantic narrowing of the term śramaṇa to mean a religious individual who specifically rejects the authority of the Vedas; however, the word did not hold this connotation until certain post-Vedic texts considered canonical by Buddhists and Jains. Similarly, in Indian philosophy, the terms āstika versus nāstika largely equate to this distinction between Vedic versus non-Vedic belief systems.

Palm-leaf manuscripts are manuscripts made out of dried palm leaves. Palm leaves were used as writing material in the Indian subcontinent, dating back to as early as the 5th century BCE. Their use began in India and spread to other regions, such as Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, in the form of dried and smoke-treated Palmyra or talipot palm leaves.Their use continued until the 19th century when the printing press replaced hand-written manuscripts.

One of the oldest surviving complete palm leaf manuscripts is a Sanskrit Shaivism text from the 9th century, discovered in Nepal, and now preserved at the Cambridge University Library. The Spitzer Manuscript is a collection of palm leaf fragments found in Kizil Caves, China. They are dated to around the 2nd century CE and is in Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit.

The Bhujimol script (or Bhujinmol, Devanagari: भुजिमोल or भुजिंमोल) is the most ancient form of Nepal script. It is also one of the most common varieties of the Nepal alphabet.

The Bhujimol script has been used to write Nepal Bhasa and Sanskrit.