Sir Girja Shankar Bajpai was India's first ambassador to the US (called Agent General in 1943). After Independence, he went to the UN to represent India.

There's this famous story of his trip to New York. The then President of Truman had arranged to fly the Indian delegation (consisting of Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Bajpai and a couple others) in his personal aircraft, the Sacred Cow, from London to Washington. (This aircraft can be seen today in a museum in Dayton, OH). So upon landing, the reception committee drove off with Nehru and Indira Gandhi. Sir Bajpai and a couple others were left to the mercies of a junior officer of the US Air Force who asked them brightly, "Speak English?". Apparently, Bajpai turned red in the face and looked daggers at one of his assistants. The assistant had to explain to the junior officer, "He was educated in Oxford. He speaks King's English which I'm sure most of you Americans don't understand”.

Just like we have King’s English (or Queen’s English) and other ordinary spoken forms, there have always been Paninian Sanskrit and various degrees of unPaninian language being used in India during our early history.

That Sanskrit was the refined and cultivated language used by the educated people is quite obvious.

Patanjali’s Mahabhāṣya even has a name for the exemplars of the educated people - they are called the śiṣṭa. The śiṣṭa are described as those who lived in certain part of the country, whose sole worldly possession was a few days’ grain and who had achieved the highest wisdom in some branch of study, for its own sake. These śiṣṭa are the people whose speech is the norm for Sanskrit.

The Mahabhāṣya says one of the purposes of the studying the aṣṭādhyāyī is to recognize these śiṣṭa. It is very instructive that these śiṣṭa people used correct forms, as taught in the aṣṭādhyāyī, without even having studied it. The argument is then extended saying that these śiṣṭa then must know other correct forms which are not mentioned directly in the aṣṭādhyāyī . This is the double benefit of being able to recognize the śiṣṭa.

All this goes to show that Sanskrit was very much a living, spoken language and much of the language was learnt by observing the śiṣṭa and not necessarily from books.

In literature there are many instances where one notices this aspect of Sanskrit, i.e., its living and spoken nature. Thus in the Ramayana when Hanuman first proposes to speak with Sita, he is in a dilemma as to how he should address her. He wonders whether he should address her the way ordinary people speak or should he use the tones of an educated person. He mulls:

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यिद वाचं प्रदास्यािम िद्वजाितिरव संसृ्कताम् । रावणं मन्यमाना मां सीता भीता भिवष्यित ।। (R 5.30.18)

If I speak in the polished language of the higher classes (i.e., the 3 upper varnas), Sita might become afraid thinking I’m Ravana (in disguise).

Hanuman is merely concerned about making the right impression on Sita.

Another occasion where the diction employed by the speaker make the right impression on the listener is again in the Ramayana itself when Rama and Lakshmana meet Hanuman for the first time.

Rama tells Lakshmana about Hanuman:

नूनं व्याकरणं कृत्स्नमनेन बहुधा श्रुतम् । बहु व्याहरतानेन न िकिञ्चदपशिब्दतम ्।। (R 4.3.29)

It is clear that he is very learned in the science of grammar. He spoke so long and so much without making a single grammatical slip.

Did all educated people speak Sanskrit? Evidently so. The notion that Sanskrit was a living language with native speakers is resisted only by those people (some among whom are western scholars) who assume implicitly and uncritically that Sanskrit was exclusively the language of the Brahmana.

Nothing can be further from the truth. It is evident from the example of Hanuman in the aśokavāṭikā (cited above) that all the dvijāti spoke Sanskrit. Even in Sanskrit dramas, it is seen as being spoken by the Brahmana, the Kshatriya and the ascetic classes. We know from other sources that the leaders of trading delegations (sārthavāha) spoke Sanskrit too. As for the sudra, the sutra pratyabhivāde’aśudre (A 8.2.83), provides more evidence for the sudra having spoken Sanskrit than for not having spoken it.

Another reason for the resistance to thinking of Sanskrit as a language with native speakers has been the extraordinary emphasis on grammar in the teaching of Sanskrit especially in the modern period - when notions of natural and artificial languages have been in vogue. To be sure, Sanskrit pedagogy has always been inextricably linked with rigorous teaching of its wonderful grammar. But then in the earlier periods, such rigor was practiced in a different cultural environment and in different institutional setting. But this emphasis on grammar has led many modern students to believe that a language requiring so much mastery over grammar could not have been anyone’s native language.

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In this they are sadly mistaken. Other languages too such as Classical Arabic have the same rigorous pedagogy insofar has correct grammatical forms are concerned.

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