So, we are agreed that there is a lot of information about
Sanskrit coming out of Texas lately, some of it is true and
some of it is just plain misleading.
However, in reality, there are not that many ordinary folks
around here who can read Sanskrit or understand it, much
less recite the nicknames of all the devas in a foreign
tongue!
We depend on hearsay for most of our information, usually
overhearing phrases at camp-meets. A few bhogis like to
read newsgroups on the Internet and post by day, but many
of us adepts do not even like to use overseas languages for
communication among ourselves, preferring instead our own
native Tex-Mex dialect, called Lingo, which is ideally
suited to household life.
However, a lot of folks around here are bi-lingual to a
certain degree. In fact, San Antonio has been described as
one of the most diverse ethnic cities in the U.S. I guess
that is why they call that amusement park 'Six Flags Over
Texas'.
Anyway, we local yokels aproppriate our phrases from Yaqui,
Spanish, English, German, and French words. In addition,
we make use of a lot of place names that we ripped off
from the native indigenous population, such as Pontiac,
Taos, and Milwaukee.
This notwithstanding, there has been an increased interest
in Oriental vernaculars, such as Hindi and Tibetan, due to
an influx of tourists, immigrants, and International
students.
The resident Swami here is said to be able to speak five
languages, including fluent English and Urdu. The Swami,
who recently gave a speech in Hindi, has an interesting
habit of omitting certain dipthongs when using Sanskrit
words, e.g. Yog for Yoga, etc.
In addition, there has been an increased interest in
learning Sanskrit on this very newsgroup. One informant,
sometimes posting under the handle 'Chief Shitting Bull',
claims to have a special apprenticeship with a certain
'Mullquist', who is reputed to be somewhat of a linguist
somewhere up in Nokialand.
Apparently, the language called Sanskrit was not spoken
by the Vedic population of ancient India, being a dead
language akin to Latin, and used solely for oral liturgical
purposes by priests during the Homa ceremony.
Written Sanskrit was invented later by Panini, who lived
long after the Vedas were first recited by the ancient
rishis and sages. It is a fact, that the first known
written vernacular in India is from the pillar of King
Ashoka at Sarnath, and it is not written in Sanskrit.
In fact, Sanskrit has never been the spoken language of
any people, anywhere.
There are no bija mantras mentioned in Rig Veda, and no
bija mantras are found in any Vedic Literature.