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Mahesh

21/10/24 09:28 AM IST

How will a classical status help languages?

In News
  • The Union Cabinet approved classical status for five more languages earlier this month — Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, Pali, and Prakrit — by tweaking the criteria for the declaration.
Classical language
  • Globally, classical languages have been considered as those which have an ancient and independent literary tradition with a body of written literature considered to be classical.
  • They are often not in use as spoken languages — such as Latin or Sanskrit — or are distinct from their modern versions. 
Marathi language
  • Maharashtra put forth a proposal for Marathi to be declared as a classical language in 2013, but it was not approved under the criteria at that time.
  • The process actually started in 2012, when the Pathare committee was set up to develop the proposal with evidence from old documents.
  • It initially submitted its report in Marathi, which then had to be translated to English.
  • It was finally submitted to the [Union Culture Ministry’s] Linguistic Experts Committee in November 2013,”
  • In July 2024, the LEC removed the requirement that any proposed language’s “literary tradition must be original and not borrowed from another speech community”, and added the requirement that a classical language must include “knowledge texts, especially prose texts in addition to poetry, epigraphical and inscriptional evidence”.
  • It also said a classical language “could be” distinct from its current form.
  • These new criteria paved the way for not just Marathi, but also Bengali and Assamese, which are also modern languages in current use. 
  • The new criteria also allowed for the inclusion of Pali and Prakrit, ancient vernacular languages used by the masses in their time in comparison to the Sanskrit used for Vedic ritual, which were adopted by Jainism and Theravada Buddhism. 
Source- The Hindu

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