Sanskrit: How Useful is It?

Sanskrit is a mystical language. So many people wish to learn more about it despite the fact it is classified by academics as a "dead language" such as Latin. Many people do not realize that Sanksrit was eventually affected by Latin during it's later evolution. The Sanskrit script, known as, devanagari script, is still used for the Hindi language. I spent many semesters taking Sanskrit as both a graduate student and as an undergraduate. In all honesty, this language is so difficult I still can not put a sentence together to do this day. Of course, what you do not use, you lose and I have not used Sanskrit for anything other than spiritual practice in years. Sanskrit uses the feminine, the masculine and the neuter forms as opposed to a language such as Spanish where there are only two choices of pronoun for all objects..masculine and feminine. Furthermore, declensions occur in nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental, locative and the vocative. If that isn't enough one must deal with a phenomenon called sandhi. If you have ever looked at long Sanskrit documents you may have noticed that the script is all connected to a bar across the top. All the figures seem to run together. What happens is that after one has gone through all the declensions and grammar to determine the right form of the word one wants to use ..one then must look at the next word and depending on the next letter or meaning of that word it may change everything about what the first word's rules are..and usually does. If that seems complicated..it is because it IS! A swami who thought I was very silly for studying Sanskrit in college once told me that I should not waste my time doing so. I was told that learning Sanskrit would not help me if I needed to find a bathroom in India. This is true. However, although I have forgotten most of what I learned in college I am glad I took the time to learn about it and to learn a bit about how it worked. (The language is also so revered in India that if you happen to be a Sanskrit student and also happen to be in India, many families wil take you in and offer you room and board so you may further your studies! So it may put a roof over your head.) What I learned in the oral tradition of the Himalayan masters may be the reason that people are so interested in knowing Sanskrit in this day and age. According to tradition the way the rishis, the great meditators in the Himalayan mountains of India and Tibet established the actual symbols of the Sanskrit alphabet was amazing. They would set up drums of different shapes and sizes. Then, they would cover the top of the instrument in sand. The instrument would be stuck to produce the sound that the rishis wanted. the vibrations from the instrument would then move the sand into a particular pattern..that pattern would be repeated every time the sand would be placed on the instrument and the same tone struck. The pattern of the sound would be recorded. So, Sanskrit is truly the language of sound. Each figure in the devanagari alphabet is formed from this process that was carried out by the sages thousand and thousands of years ago. So when we use Sanskrit prayers are they more effective than a prayer in Latin or English. I believe that prayer is about intent of the heart personally. I believe that our intentions and our heart felt knowing is more important than what language we use to pray or communicate in. However, since Sanskrit has such deeps roots in sound (and sound and breath are so deeply connected to life), I believe that their is a great usefulness in using Sanskrit in meditation and for calming the mind. It is certainly something one should take some time to study about and learn a little history about, if interested, on the spiritual path.