The Word Is God

I would be willing to bet your first reaction to hearing that Hindus consider grammar a a sacred science was identical to mine: " You've got to be kidding"!

But consider the opening words of the Gospel of John in the Bible. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God". The concept of the sacred word has an extremely ancient pedigree, not only in India but in other ancient cultures as well. The ancient Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks pondered long and hard over the sanctity of the inherent meaningfulness of  life and the mystery of meaningful human and divine communication.

Four of the six Vedangas- grammar, phonetics, meter, and etymology-are devoted to the science of language.

< Vedic grammar explores in incredible detail the question of how a series of sounds uttered by one person can be understood by another. How complex concepts can be conveyed through the medium of physical sound.

< Phonetics looks agonizingly closely at all aspects of pronunciation. This was immensely important to the brahmins whose job it was to ensure that the Veda continued to be pronounced in exactly the same way despite the passage of thousands of years.

< Meter means the measured rhythms in which a verse is chanted. This is a big deal in Hinduism because the different meters in which the Veda are chanted are said to have different effects in the human psyche and in the subtle inner worlds.

< Etymology looks at where words came from, their present meaning, and their inner significance. As the millennia rolled by, the brahmins continued to pronounce the Veda correctly but they were beginning to forget what some of the words it meant! Therefore etymology became an increasingly important field of study.

Until only recently- and some would argue even today- no other culture has come remotely close to the Hindus in detailed analysis of language structure or in the exploration of how the human mind actually understands language.

Recently, American linguists have admitted that, even with the super computers now at their disposal, they would have a very difficult time matching the ancient Hindus in the brilliance of their analysis.