Possible Translation of hRdaya sUtra

Years ago i was intrigued by the resemblance of some Sanskrit and Romanian words. There are many, maybe as many as 50% of the lexis of Romanian, but when they match, some of them identically, most of the time they do not coincide as first meaning, neither in Sanskrit nor in Romanian. This indicates a strong but very old connection. Thinking many thousands of years.

After finding more than enough material on the web, i searched of course for any recorded source to hear the best pronunciation. Cause i wanted to know if the resemblance is indeed at the phonetic level.

Then i learned about several Latin transliterations of Sanskrit, that is writing Sanskrit with Latin characters in several different ways, which all lead to about the same pronunciation when pronounced in Latin which coincide with Romanian (Romanian has a phonetic writing which means the words are pronounced exactly how they are written, as in Latin and Sanskrit). I also found mp3s and videos with entire texts like hRdaya sUtra in different interpretations.

By listening and reading i was intrigued by some words and expressions in the text that were telling me that in a possible (out of many) translation, this mantra could be more than a prayer, more exactly, a way of transmitting ancient knowledge. Starting with the syntagm

पञ्च स्कन्ध
paJca skandha

Without knowing a lot of Sanskrit, very little grammar, i just put below the most significant meaning for each word, not ignoring the more... scientific meanings with the above hypothesis in mind. This is what i got, and of course i would try to ... perfect it the future.

I know if you asked any practitioner of Budhism he/her will tell you that is about the five senses. But in the dictionary close to that meaning we have the words shedding, aggregate, elements, moving and a number of words that all seem to converge in their meaning towards a single word that could be force.

Let's also not forget the word boson comes from the name Indian scientist "Satyendra Nath Bose [who] first sent a paper to Einstein on the quantum statistics of light quanta (now called photons), in which he derived Planck's quantum radiation law without any reference to classical physics. Einstein was impressed, translated the paper himself from English to German and submitted it for Bose to the Zeitschrift für Physik, which published it [in 1924]."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose%E2%80%93Einstein_condensate#History

प्राज्ञ	पारमिता	हृदय	सूत्र
prAjJA	pAramitA	hRdaya	sUtra
refining	complete	science	plan
आर्य	अवलोकिते	बोधिसत्त्वो
Arya	avalokitezvara	bodhisattva
wise	most revered	on the way to attainment
गंभीरम्	प्रज्ञापारमितायां	चर्या	चरम
gaMbhIram	prajJApAramitA	caryA	carama
profoundly	refining perfection	performing	ultimate
नो	व्य	वल्कयति	स्म
no	vya	valkayati	sma
and not	coverer	speak	certainly
पञ्च	स्कन्ध	ताः	च
paJca	skandha	tAH	ca
five	forces	they	fundamental
स्वाभाव	शून्य	पश्यति	स्म
svAbhAva	zUnya	pazyati	sma
natural state	non-existence	incure	certainly
इह	शारिपुत्र	रूप
iha	zAriputra	rUpa
in this reality	random	form
शून्यता	शून्यता	इव	रूप
zUnyatA	zUnyatA	iva	rUpa
absence of mind	non-existence	as if	form
रूपण	पृथक्	शून्यता
rUpaNa	pRthak	zUnyatA
examination	separate	non-existence
शून्यता	या	न	पृथग्रूप
zUnyatA	yA	na	pRthagrUpa
absence of mind	generate	no	discrete form
यद्	रूप	सा	शून्यता
yad	rUpa	sA	zUnyatA
which	form	itself	non-reality
या	शून्यता	तद्	रूप
yA	zUnyatA	tad	rUpa
generate	non-existence	then	form
एवमेव	वेधन
evameva	vedhana
only in this manner	puncturing a hole
संज्ञा	संस्कार	विज्ञानना	नि
saMjJA	saMskAra	vijJAnanA	ni
meaning	re-creation	perceiving	leading
इह	शारिपुत्र	सर्व	धर्म
iha	zAriputra	sarva	dharma
in this reality	randomly	completely	natural state
शून्यता	लक्षणा
zUnyatA	lakSaNA
non-existence	aimed at
अनुत्पन्न	अनिरुद्ध	अमल	न
anutpanna	aniruddha	amala	na
not produced	self-willed	pure	not
विमल	नाना	न	परिपूर्ण
vimala	nAnA	na	paripUrNa
pristine	distinctly	not	complete
तस्मात्	चारी	पुत्र
tasmAt	cArI	putra
therefore	particular step	descendant
शून्यता	आय	न	रूप
zUnyatA	Aya	na	rUpa
non-existence	gain	no	form
न	वेदना	न	संज्ञा
na	vedanA	na	saMjJA
no	transition	no	signs
न	संस्कार	न	विज्ञान
na	saMskAra	na	vijJAna
no	re-creation	no	knowledge
न	क्षु	श्रोत्र	घ्राणा
na	cakSu	zrotra	ghrANA
without	observance	hearing	smelling
जिह्वा	काय	मना	सि
jihvA	kAya	manA	si
speach	assemblage	purpose	service
न	रूप	शब्द	गन्ध
na	rUpa	zabda	gandha
not	form	sound	scent
रस	स्प्रष्टव्य	धर्म	न
rasa	spraSTavya	dharma	na
primary soup	sensible	natural law	not
चक्	सुर्	दातृ	यवान
cak	sur	dhAtR	yavAna
repel	rule	permiting	boiled
मनोविज्ञान	धातु
manovijJAna	dhAtu
psychology	divisible
न	विद्या	नविद्य
na	vidyA	navidya
no	knowledge	ignorant
न	विद्या	क्षय
na	vidyA	kSaya
no	knowledge	decay
यवान	जार	मारण
yavAna	jAra	mAraNa
boiled	aging	destruction
न	जार	मारण	क्षय
na	jAra	mAraNa	kSaya
not	boiled	destruction	decay
न	दुःख
na	duHkha
not	difficult
समुदय	नीर	धा	मार्ग
samudaya	nIra	dhA	mArga
assemblage	essence	wish to gain	way
न	ज्ञान	न	प्राप्ति
na	jJAna	na	prApti
not	conscious	not	attaining
तस्मात्	अप्राप्ति	त्वद्
tasmAt	aprApti	tvad
therefore	non-attainement	thou
बोधिसत्त्व	नम्	प्रज्ञापारमिता	आश्रित्य
bodhisattva	nam	prajJApAramitA	Azritya
on the way to attainemnt	one's self	refining perfection	practicing
विहरति	चित्त	वर	न
viharati	citta	vara	na
carry away	aimed at	best	not
चित्तावरण	नास्तित्व	द	त्रस्त
cittaavaraNa	nAstitva	da	trasta
aimed at cover	unrest	offering	quick
विपर्यास्यति	क्रान्त	निष्ट	निर्वाण
viparyAsyati	krAnta	niSTa	nirvANa
causing to turn aroun	surpassed	dependent on	final deliverance
त्र्यध	व्यवस्थित	सर्व	बुद्धाः
tryadha	vyavasthita	sarva	buddha
	expected for	each	enlightened
प्रज्ञापारमितायां	मा	स्रुत्य	नतराम्
prajJApAramitA	mA	srutya	natarAm
refinement of perfection	no	road of pain	not at all
सम्यक्सम्बोधि	अभिसम्बुद्ध
samyaksambodhi	abhisambuddha
complete enlightement	having attained
तस्मै	ज्ञातव्य
tasmai	jJAtavya
therefore	to be considered as
प्रज्ञा	पर	मित	महामन्त्र
prajJA	para	mita	mahAmantra
intelectual	following	strong	great text
मह	विद्या	मन्त्र
maha	vidyA	mantra
great	philosoply	text
	नतराम्	मन्त्र
a	natarAm	mantra
no	not at all	text
सम	सम	मन्त्र
sama	sama	mantra
equally	matching	text
सर्व	दुःख	प्राश	मन
sarva	duHkha	prAsa	mana
each	difficult	spread	belief
सत्य	अमिथ्या	त्व
satya	amithyA	tva
genuinly	truly	thou
प्रज्ञापारमितायां	मुक्त	मन्त्र	तद्यथा
prajJApAramitA	mukta	mantra	tadyathA
refining perfection	emancipated	text
गत	गत	पारगत	परसंगत
gata	gata	pAragata	parasaMgata
बोधि	स्वाहा
bodhi	svAhA

Sanskrit Words with English Resonance

After looking for Romanian words of possible Sanskrit etymologies and browsing thousands of words in Sanskrit dictionaries, i stumbled upon a number of English words that sound very close to Sanskrit ones and to me the etymologies i found for those words in different English dictionaries are not satisfying anymore.

Romanian - Sanskrit Comparison

Cristian Ioanide - In Memoriam

"In principle, every difference between two related languages should be explicable to a high degree of plausibility and systematic changes, for example in phonological or morphological systems are expected to be highly regular (i.e. consistent). In practice, the comparison may be more restricted, e.g. just to the lexicon."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_linguistics

The generally accepted Indo-European theory in linguistics states that all languages in Europe and India have a common ancestor, the hypothetical PIE or Proto-Indo-European language.

However there are major disagreements regarding this hypothetical language and the reconstruction attempts so far lay in the domain of bizarre. No serious academic attention had been directed into reconstructing this hypothetical language. In dictionaries so far (like the Romanian Explicative Dictionary or DEX) though there are many basic words deemed as of unknown origin, generally attributed by some authors, mostly biased nationalist, to the Dacian language or the language we all assume it was spoken in Dacia before Romans arrived, there is not on single etymology given as PIE. In French i haven't seen a single word given of unknown etymology or as PIE but in both languages i found words that certainly remind me of Sanskrit. The English lexis may be also as rich as Romanian in Sanskrit roots. Interestingly enough, the words are distributed in different languages, as if Sanskrit divided or distributed separate chunks or lists of words to different inheriting languages though many are overlapping, like from English and Romanian.

It is almost impossible to believe that Romans did not keep or no archives are found regarding the different aspects of life in Dacia during their direct administration period which lasted some 165 years including basic lexis or pieces of written language. No written records are to be found in any archive about the Dacian language (with some dubious exceptions).

The subject of such records being hidden in archives for political reasons or even destroyed is a completely different story i won't start to dig in right now.

So personally following an intuition triggered by an anecdotal information i found in an article i read in early 90s which stated that a numbered a Romanian basic words are matching with perfectly similar Sanskrit ones like apa-apa (water), gand-gandiva (thought) etc. i tried to look in current online dictionaries like spokensankrit.org (formerly .de) just to verify. To my surprise they all seemed to have a Sanskrit corespondent, almost identical, down to pronunciation.

So i took the list of Romanian words of unknown origin (Wikipedia version) and started to look in that dictionary for more matches and found an abundance of words of undoubtful (to me) Sanskrit origin.

I assume the online dictionary mentioned above that is based on the widely recognized Monier Williams Sanskrit dictionary which is also available online from the University of Koln is still not complete though it numbers over half million entries. There are in there words that have obviously too many entered meanings [by volunteering contributors] of which some being even opposite, many probably coming from only one occurrence in an isolated text maybe used as metaphors. No one can tell. But i was pretty conservative in building this list and picked correspondences only from the roughly first 10-20% of meanings confirmed by the most redundancies (or close meanings) in the rest of the entered meanings staying mainly in the Monier Wiliams safe area. Interestingly, there are words, like gata that have the same corresponding many meanings both in Romanian and Sanskrit and this is obvious only for those who know Romanian as i cannot add more entries for words with different meaning in Romania being beyond the current purpose of this modest work.

Never finished checking that list because while browsing the dictionaries i started to find more and more words that where not on that list having a greater resemblance with Sanskrit words than with Latin or Old Slavonic (the precursor of all modern Slavic languages) of which etymologies are officially given in Romanian dictionaries and i started to build a list on a spreadsheet with all the words i could find that seemed to me closer to Sanskrit than Latin and Slavonic which are the officially accepted by academics main ancestors of Romanian language, besides the still largely unknown Dacian language. All words from the basic or day to day usage Romanian language lexis.

I also added verbs that seem similar in writting, pronunciation and meaning with nouns and adjectives in Romanian. https://sanskritstudio.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/the-sanskrit-past-passive-participle/. I am not a linguist but i assume in a few thousands years of separation some past participles may have morphed into adjectives and even nouns. Same thing happened in the dictionary itslef, noun from Sanskrit are translated like verbs in English.

Also while browsing this online dictionary i had the surprise to also come across many English words that seem to have a direct corespondent in Sanskrit of which some i added in a smaller list that is also included in this blog post.

My conclusion so far is there are many Sanskrit words in Romanian, maybe as many as 50% of the lexis of Romanian, but when they match, some of them identically as pronunciation, most of the time they do not coincide as first meaning. This indicates a strong but very old connection.

Could the reason for finding so many Romanian words of possible Sanskrit origin be the Dacian language was closed to Sanskrit which was also close to PIE. It is up to linguists in the future to follow these hypotheses. This work is by far not complete and i strongly believe what i found is intriguing enough to requires their attention. But i am also afraid many already knew about all these complex and contradictory issues, since i don't know, the first contact of modern western civilization with the eastern one, probably since German linguists Franz Bopp built the first known grammar of Sanskrit and for some obvious political reasons they chose to delay their findings until people of the world will be able to better deal with the Indo-European linguistic theory that if was to be applied would probably require extensive rewriting of dictionaries and why not, maybe history itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Bopp

When i first started to study the lexis of Sanskrit i started to ask myself how i will pronounce the words. In the end i realized the pronunciation follows pretty much Latin, as the several existing transliteration types use mainly Latin alphabet.

However there is an alternate way to figure pronunciation. Since Google Translate cannot translate Sanskrit and there is no other site on the internet that i know of that can pronounce any typed words in Devanagari script one can trick Google Translate to pronounce Sanskrit as Hindi since Hindi uses the same alphabet and almost the same pronunciation.

So i added links to every word in the list (done with Google Spreadsheets) written in Sanskrit with Devanagari script so you can click on then on the little speaker icon under the box where the word appears to hear the pronunciation. Most of those words do not even exist in Hindi.

There are also links provided for every Romanian word to Google Translate for both translation in English to eliminate any doubt and pronunciation for comparison of pronunciation with the paired Sanskrit words and also links for every Sanskrit word transliterated with Latin characters to different dictionaries where i found that word. There are more than 700 links in total.

Google Translate is not particularly good with Romanian phrases although lately it got much better. However, for individual words it is acceptable. The computer generated pronunciation in Romanian is kind of rough, compared to the one in Hindi, but good enough for the purpose.

For Devanagari script pronunciation of each separate letter here is an easy to use interactive page.

http://www.digitaldialects.com/Hindi/alphabet.htm

For comparing the words i used the following on-line dictionaries and lists:

Lists

https://www.google.com/search?q=Cuv.+autoht.+site%3Adexonline.ro%2F,

https://www.google.com/search?q=Et.+Nec.+site%3Adexonline.ro%2F

http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%C4%83_de_cuvinte_rom%C3%A2ne%C8%99ti_mo%C8%99tenite_probabil_din_limba_dac%C4%83

Sanskrit dictionary linkable per word and meaning

www.sanskritdictionary.com/ (default IAST transliteration)

Sanskrit dictionary linkable per word

http://spokensanskrit.org/

http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/monier/indexcaller.php

Dictionary not linkable per word (need to manually input the words below)

http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de

For Devanagari script pronunciation of each separate letter here is an easy to use interactive page.

http://www.digitaldialects.com/Hindi/alphabet.htm

Here is also a link to a Google sheet that holds the same table with the table itself framed below in this blog post.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rFNHh0hUZoX05HMLQmA041H2pGj3fAPdmwAoGkkkJMk/edit?usp=sharing

[On August 18 2017 i discovered spokensanskrit.de has changed to spokensanskrit.org. I am currently working to restore all broken links below. Already re-established first 100 links. For the new links you have to scroll right.]


Also here is a link to a much shorter list that probably could be much longer with English words that could have direct sanskrit etymology and also the table.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Z30OzrhFN6aiqmK_cra0rv8z_wfRr0WJd9LxS5tsKrQ/edit?usp=sharing

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Dacian_POW_IMG_6358.jpg
Roman Statue of a Dacian POW in 2nd century AD