410 Sappho languages Chinese monks and pilgrims traveled to India in search of Buddhist texts to translate into Chinese, and they formed an important medium through which Sanskrit-expressed ideas entered into the Chinese world and its intellectual tradition Sanskrit is also the language through which early Jainist thought is expressed SANSKRIT IN THE COMMON ERA Sanskrit moved from being a spoken language to one that was better known for its use in sacred rituals and written literature The great Buddhist king Ashoka, for example, followed Gautama Buddha’s teaching to use vernacular languages to spread religious teachings Although religious and philosophical texts used Sanskrit, government-produced monuments and pronouncements employed other languages (Indo-Aryan) until the early centuries of the Common Era A parallel development was for commentators to insist that only correct pronunciation in Sanskrit should be permitted and that this could only be achieved by studying the methods of the past Sanskrit became separated from the masses, who were excluded from learning and mastering the language Grammarians distinguished between words of Sanskrit origin and words influenced by Sanskrit Sanskrit witnessed the importation of words from other languages, especially those necessary to describe new concepts or proper nouns Sanskrit also spread as a result of political and military change The expansion of first the Persian Empire and subsequently the entry into northern India of Alexander the Great provided conduits through which the language could spread to the West Contact with the Arab world in later centuries was also important in the transmission of cosmology and mathematics Sanskrit epics had tremendous influence on cultural and artistic production throughout India and Indianinfluenced societies Some works, including the retelling of part of the Mahabharata by Nannaya Bhatta (1100– 60 c.e.), took as their subject well-known tales of the past and brought them into contemporary focus both through the contrast between the heroic milieu and that familiar with the audience, and also by presenting existing characters with new encounters and events to face This has begun a tradition of inventive mixing of the past and present that has led to a burgeoning form of popular culture in both oral and written forms Some critics maintain that the use of Sanskrit has been a tool by which the central Indian state has sought to oppress local traditions and cultures Sanskrit studies became popular in Europe in the early modern period both as a subject of scholarly inquiry and also as a source of spir- itual sustenance Its popularity has waxed and waned with interest in Eastern philosophies STRUCTURE OF THE LANGUAGE Sanskrit has come most commonly to be expressed through the Devanagri script, although this is a comparatively modern invention Sanskrit has a complex and highly mannerized structure, resulting from its origins as a deliberately created language There are three genders and three numbers, with 10 types of verbs, eight cases, and 10 noun declensions There are a variety of voiced and unvoiced aspirated sounds in the language and the retroflex sound that has been introduced and distinguishes Indian languages from the Indo-European family The language is highly inflected and numerous suffixes, for example, govern different shades of meaning and emphasis Expressions of time in verb tenses are also complex and contain various types of meaning embedded within them See also Aryan invasion; Buddhism in China; Jainism Further reading: Deshpande, Madhav Samskrta-Subodhini: A Sanskrit Primer Detroit: University of Michigan Press, 1999; Filliozat, Pierre-Sylvain The Sanskrit Language: An Overview: History and Structure, Linguistic and Philosophical Representations, Uses and Users Varanasi, India: Indica Books, 2000; McGrath, Kevin The Sanskrit Hero: Karna in Epic Mahabharata Leiden, Netherlands: E J Brill 2004; Narasimhan, Chakravarthi V., trans The Mahabharata New York: Columbia University Press, 1997; Sen, Amartya “Indian Traditions and the Western Imagination.” Daedalus (v.134/4, 2005); Valmiki The Ramayana Translated by Arshia Sattar New York: Penguin Global, 2000 John Walsh Sappho (fl early 6th century b.c.e.) Greek poet Sappho is one of the most important of the lyric poets of the ancient Greek world She probably lived from the middle part of the seventh through the early part of the sixth centuries b.c.e Though the exact date of her birth and death are unknown, it is fairly certain that she was born in the city of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos, which is located in the eastern Aegean Sea near Turkey She came from a noble family Her father’s name was Skamandronymos, her mother’s Kleiss, and her husband’s Kerkylas She had a daughter named Kleiss and either two or three brothers Around the year 600