5. Sanskrit, a vedic language

Indus valley civilisation is not only connected to one area but also to other parts of India too. India was a vast country on those days. When comparing with the southern part, north was vulnerable to the influence of language and the culture of the neighbouring countries.

The people who lived in Indus valley until 2000 B.C and a century further vacated the area due to some reasons.

While the south India was concentrating on building 'kattumarams' and ships on it's own, north India was very much adopting the other cultures and the words from their language.

Catamaran is a Tamil word used as such in English. 'Navai' is the Tamil word for ships. It is used as 'Naval' in English. After constructing ships, south India attracted many business people from Greece and Rome. We understand from litterateurs that at one period of time, these foreigners occupied a full street in a southern port city called Poompugar. So, that street was named as 'Yavana street'. 'Yavana' represents Roman (business) people. Dravidian (Indus valley) civilisation never changed even after the business contacts with the foreigners in the south.

But, foreigners' influence with north India in between 2000 B.C and 1000 B.C changed them completely. Their language they spoke changed to 'Pali'. The original philosophical knowledge got mixed up and contaminated with the new concepts.

Arabians were calling the river 'Sindhu' as Indu and the religious  practices of the people who lived there as Hinduism.

As they (North Indians) parted away from their original,  the supporting texts on the original religious practices became foreign to them. Using their weakness, new religions like Jainism and Buddhism were started one after the other. The new religious people tried to eliminate the original by burning the existed religious books.

We are calling the years between 1500 B.C  and 500 B.C. as 'Vedic period'. Because of weak structure and age, the Pali language changed into Sanskrit. The people in north started using Sanskrit in all their religious practices.

There were many ancient technical books on various fields available with them. As they were in Tamil, they could not use them. At the same time, Sanskrit was not fully developed. It was in 200 B.C., when Chandra Gupta Mourya was ruling, a panel was appointed at Nalandha, a north eastern city to enrich and strengthen Sanskrit with required grammar.

Most of the Tamil texts were translated into Sanskrit and the originals destroyed during the above process. But, the panel could not find all the original philosophical Tamil books called 'Agamams'. They traced only one 'Agamam' and translated it into Sanskrit.

Veda Vyasa was only a poet and a saint on those days. He appointed four of his assistants called Bailar, Vaisambayanar, Jaimini and Sumanthu to collect all the religious practices prevailing in India. Their collections were later compiled by Veda Vyasar and given names as Rig, Yajur, Sama and Adharvana Vedas.

As there were no proper scripts in Sanskrit, all the four Vedas were left unwriten. Later, the Vedas were considered as sacred and orally transfered from masters to their students. The Vedas were not writen even today.

Then, how they were preserved without any change till date? Interesting.

Let us dig further.