SANSKRIT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does Sanskrit mean? 

• SANSKRIT (noun)
  The noun SANSKRIT has 1 sense:

1. (Hinduism) an ancient language of India (the language of the Vedas and of Hinduism); an official language of India although it is now used only for religious purposes

  Familiarity information: SANSKRIT used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SANSKRIT (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(Hinduism) an ancient language of India (the language of the Vedas and of Hinduism); an official language of India although it is now used only for religious purposes

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

Sanskrit; Sanskritic language

Hypernyms ("Sanskrit" is a kind of...):

Indic; Indo-Aryan (a branch of the Indo-Iranian family of languages)

Domain category:

Hindooism; Hinduism (a body of religious and philosophical beliefs and cultural practices native to India and based on a caste system; it is characterized by a belief in reincarnation, by a belief in a supreme being of many forms and natures, by the view that opposing theories are aspects of one eternal truth, and by a desire for liberation from earthly evils)

Domain member category:

optative; optative mood (a mood (as in Greek or Sanskrit) that expresses a wish or hope; expressed in English by modal verbs)

Asvins ((literally 'possessing horses' in Sanskrit) in Hinduism the twin chariot warriors conveying Surya)

Agni ((Sanskrit) Hindu god of fire in ancient and traditional India; one of the three chief deities of the Vedas)

Ayurveda ((Sanskrit) an ancient medical treatise summarizing the Hindu art of healing and prolonging life; sometimes regarded as a 5th Veda)

Veda; Vedic literature ((from the Sanskrit word for 'knowledge') any of the most ancient sacred writings of Hinduism written in early Sanskrit; traditionally believed to comprise the Samhitas, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, and the Upanishads)

Vedanta ((from the Sanskrit for 'end of the Veda') one of six orthodox philosophical systems or viewpoints rooted in the Upanishads as opposed to Mimamsa which relies on the Vedas and Brahmanas)

Mimamsa ((from the Sanskrit word for 'reflection' or 'interpretation') one of six orthodox philosophical systems or viewpoints on ritual traditions rooted in the Vedas and the Brahmanas as opposed to Vedanta which relies mostly on the Upanishads)

Darsana ((from the Sanskrit word for 'to see') one of six orthodox philosophical systems or viewpoints on the nature of reality and the release from bondage to karma)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "Sanskrit"):

Gypsy; Romany (the Indic language of the Gypsies)

Urdu (the official literary language of Pakistan, closely related to Hindi; widely used in India (mostly by Moslems); written in Arabic script)

Hindi (the most widely spoken of modern Indic vernaculars; spoken mostly in the north of India; along with English it is the official language of India; usually written in Devanagari script)

Bihari (the Indic language spoken in Bihar (and by some people in Pakistan and Bangladesh))

Magadhan (a subfamily of Indic languages)

Mahratti; Marathi (an Indic language; the state language of Maharashtra in west central India; written in the Devanagari script)

Gujarati; Gujerati (the Indic language spoken by the people of India who live in Gujarat in western India)

Panjabi; Punjabi (the Indic language spoken by people in Pakistan and Punjab)

Singhalese; Sinhala; Sinhalese (the Indic language spoken by the people of Sri Lanka)

 Context examples 

The Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit languages engaged his attention, and I was easily induced to enter on the same studies.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

But that evening Jo fancied that Beth's eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket match, though the phrases, 'caught off a tice', 'stumped off his ground', and 'the leg hit for three', were as intelligible to her as Sanskrit.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)