Do you know some Sanskrit words? How about maharadja, from maha (great) and raja (king). Is it possible that your Indian restaurant has namaste (hello!) on it's door? Guitarist Santana played the instrumental Samba Pati: pati (husband/lord) of samba (son of the Hindu God Krishna). Oh, Carlos Humberto Santana Barragán's name was also Sanskrit: santāna, which means offspring/progeny. You saw that I put Sanskrit words in italics. The fruit orange comes from naranga, in Portugal we call them laranjas. Pepper comes from the Latin piper and Sanskrit pippali. Shampoo comes from the Hindi champo and capayati. Candi: Arabic sukkar qandi and Sanskrit khandah. Jungle: Farsi jangal and jangala. If you know a bit of Sanskrit, it is easier to recognise words, although Farsi and Latin are also helpful. Nowadays you can find online dictionaries, courses and word lists, see for example the Sanskrit-Swadesh list. Linguist Morris Swadesh made several lists, but online is the one with 207 words.
I myself analysed the list of 1000 most commonly used words on Travel with Languages. This list is based on texts from the Mahabharata (a long epic narrative from ancient India), several of the Upanishads (ancient Indian religious and philosophical texts), as well as several yogic texts (Patanjali and Pradipika). The most ancient oral form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, which was later written down in the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. These date back to around 1500 BCE, about 1000 years earlier than the oldest Dead Sea Scrolls. Of course, we don't know when the oral Vedas were conceived, but they were preserved by oral transmission, aka oral history, long before the advent of writing.
The 1000 words in the list are sorted by frequency, i.e., the first words occur most frequent, the last ones are least frequent. In the wordlists below, I also start with the most frequent words and end with the least frequent words.
You can find amusing anecdotes as well, like in the film Oppenheimer when his wife Katherine was sitting on top of Robert's penis and asked him to read from a Sanskrit book. That must have been very exciting, at least to her!
Wiki: Each of the northern Indian languages had different influences. For example,
Hindustani was strongly influenced by Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian (Farsi),
leading to the emergence of Modern Standard Hindi and Modern Standard Urdu.
Bangla, on the other hand, has retained its Sanskritic roots while heavily
expanding its vocabulary with words from Farsi, English, French and other
foreign languages.
Sanskrit arose in northwest South Asia, deriving from Indo-Aryan languages that
diffused from the northwest in the late Bronze Age. Sanskrit is the sacred
language of Hinduism and classical Hindu philosophy and religion and the
liturgical language of Buddhism and Jainism. It was a lingua franca in ancient
and medieval South Asia, and, as Hindu and Buddhist culture spread to Southeast
East and Central Asia in the early medieval era, it became a language of religion,
high culture and the political elites in some of these regions. As a result,
Sanskrit had a lasting effect on the languages of South, Southeast and parts of
Eastern Asia, especially in their formal and learned vocabularies.
Out of curiosity I took a look at Sanskrit, and I saw some remarkable properties. These could point at a generic and very early development of language, for example in Paleolithic and in Morocco, where oldest remnants of cave-life and fire have been found; see the archaeological site Jebel Ighoud. I saw that many simple words, with two, three and four characters, have very elementary meanings. Many of those words contain the vowels a, i and u, plus the consonants m, n and l. I think that these are among the very first sounds that early hominids could produce. I think that Sanskrit is in some way a remnant, a vestige of a protolanguage, when hominids started to talk. This is confirmed by e.g. Dediu and Levinson (see further reading below). They stated that our far cousins Neanderthals and Denisovans had a hyoid bone in the vocal tract for sound production similar to our, plus breathing control, and cochlear ear ossicles for audition, with suitable acoustic sensitivity for speech perception. Neanderthals had complex linguistic codes, they could communicate about spatial locations, about hunting and gathering, flora and fauna, and they had social relations plus (primitive) technology.
From phonology to proto language
Many scientists focus on phonology and phonetics, how languages are built on phonemes and sounds. Here I focus on semantics, how sounds are used to create words and their meanings. Below we will see that many languages share some basic, universal, properties. This could mean that many languages share a common proto language, one which was spoken by our very early ancestors. In my pages about religion, I write that its foundations were passed on by oral history, before the stories could be written down. At first it were moral rules, embedded in stories about good and bad behaviour. These were passed from parents to children, generation after generation. Combined with emerging religious mythology, this process likely took half a million years, before the Dead Sea Scrolls and, in case of Sanskrit, Vedic Sanskrit. So what criteria do we expect when we can call some language a proto language, or a remnant of some very, very early language? Only four or five points:
1. Age. It is generally accepted that Vedic Sanskrit had an oral history origin, from a time long before writing became possible. Oldest written Vedic texts are dated around 1500 BCE. However, it has taken an enormous time from experimenting with sounds, to establishing elementary sounds that many could reproduce, to a first set of basic, simple, but functional words, to intra- and inter-tribal acceptance, to develop and accept a more complete grammar and vocabulary, and, finally, to include moral, ethical and mythological concepts.
2. Simplicity of sounds. When hominids started to experiment with their vocal tract, tongue and lips, first words were ma, la and na, later came the vowels i and u, and other consonants. We'll see complete lists below.
3. Simplicity of words. The sounds from point 2 must be combined into words, at first very simple words with a few basic sounds. We'll see that Sanskrit has a lot of simple words with two, three and four characters, the latter have two syllables.
4. Functional semantics. The words from point 3 must have meanings which make sense, not only to us, but primarily to the tribal hunters and gatherers who lived in caves, who cooked on fire, and who might already have animals like goats for milk. I will end this essay with a list of only 160 words obtained from the most common Sanskrit words with only 2, 3 and 4 characters.
5? I added a question mark because this is complicated and beyond my linguistic knowledge: an old proto language on which more modern languages are built should be reflected in a broader language family. At the end of this essay I write about proto-Iranian, proto-Indo-Iranian and proto-Indo-European, the Andronovo culture from the late Bronze Age, after ca 2000 BCE, and late Neolithic from 3000 BCE. The problem of these proto languages is that they have been reconstructed, likely by combining genealogies of regional language families, which might include Sanskrit. Hence, we must accept the risk of circular reasoning.
From the ascent of speech to the proliferation of language
Beekman (2025) argued that, in addition to organised cave life, hunting and gathering, a major reason for the ascent of speech and language was the rearing of babies. In stark contrast with all other animals, Homo Sapiens babies are born prematurely. Because of the size of the brain and skull, after nine months birth has become a matter of “now or never.” Therefore, Homo babies must continue to grow outside the womb, they depend for 100% on their mother, for at least a year. But collective child rearing proved to be much better. Also others, and in particular the mothers of mothers helped, such that the mothers could participate in the search for food. H. Sapiens became H. Socialis, no other primates are as social as we are, except only the common marmosets.
MacDonald et al. (2021) argued that the use of fire spread rapidly from one point of origin to other regions, in Middle Pleistocene, in a rather small time window: 400-350 ka. The use and spread of fire was the first signal of active teaching, not only by observation and mirroring of behaviour, but also by language. The spread and use of fire was slightly later followed by Levallois stone-knapping of for example flint, for making cutting tools. And materials like flint were traded, as were the knapping techniques. Hominid subpopulations had often contact and were tolerant toward one another. Renfrew (1991) added that the real proliferation of language started after the decline of the hunters-gatherers. He argued that a major reason was the spread of farming from Anatolia, the Hittites in ancient Turkey. The Hittites were the dominant power in the Near East, 15th - 13th centuries BCE. This is much later than the above 400-350 ka, but keep in mind that there is a huge difference between the proliferation of farming, with a fast growth of the population, the number of settlements and linguistic diversity, and the ascent of early language for organised child rearing, hunting and gathering, and cooking with fire.
A cave-dweller's vocabulary?
Once I started speculating, why don't I continue about imagining a tribe in a cave, not necessarily in Morocco, it could be in the Denisova Cave, where both Denisovans and Neanderthals lived, but not at the same time. Denisovans emerged some 370,000 years ago, some 30,000 years before Homo rhodesiensis and H heidelbergensis in Morocco (see below). Tribal life implicated organisation and thus communication: when and where to hunt for meat, bones and furs, and which animals? By whom? The same applies to gathering fruits, berries, seeds and roots. Who collects twigs and wood for making fire? Who could make fire, and who could cook? How?
The above questions, when, where, which, who and what require answers: today or tomorrow, somewhere south, not too far, a deer or some snakes, some men or women, but then how many? Who stays in the cave caring for babies and infants, to defend them from intruding animals? Tribal life is not difficult to imagine. In the Moroccan caves, in early Paleolithic, some 700-500 thousand years ago, likely even earlier, our far cousins started to experiment with making sounds. They used their lips, their tongue, their vocal tract with the hyoid bone (or lingual bone) for varying the tongue, pharyngeal and laryngeal movements. They discovered how to pronounce vowels, mainly a, i and u, parallel with consonants: first the easy bilabial nasal m, the alveolars n and l, and then the plosives, bilabials p and b, alveolars t and d, and velars k and g. But the question is, what sounds were used for which words? I assume that it started with two-character words, first the a sound in combination with one consonant: ma and na. Then came three-character sounds, first an a between two consonants (kam, pad), and two a's (aka, aja). In parallel, or later, with other vowels and consonants. Still later came four-character words, two syllables, first two a's with two consonants, then with other vowels. And so on.
Below we will see that the 1000-word Sanskrit list counts 12 words with two characters and 33 words with three. There are 128 words with four characters, of which about 60 with only a's, i.e., with two a's. Sanskrit has more than 1000 words, but I analysed the 1000 most common words. It is not difficult to imagine that the simplest words with two, three and four characters were reserved, or have been introduced, for the most basic communications, whereas words with increasing numbers of characters were introduced later. This development continued until tribes had a reliable, guaranteed supply of food, drink and clothing, and they got more time for other things. And so emerged some form of religion with gods, ethics and moral rules. All this evolved into some verses: oral Vedic Sanskrit. I myself concentrated on Sanskrit, others might study other proto languages in order to see whether there were some corresponding developments.
Tribal life in caves
Before Paleolithic, very early hominids like Lucy in Ethiopia, Australopithecus afarensis, some 3 million years ago, lived in savannas. They were one of multiple hominin species. But they did not live in tribal clans. However, more than 2 million years later, some hominids moved to other places like Morocco, where human artifacts have been found in caves. See the archeaological site Jebel Ighoud with fossils of H. Sapiens from 320,000 BCE. At that time, first tribes or clans were already living together in caves, a clan normally consisting of several families. They needed to gather food and to hunt for meat, prepare and cook the food and meat, and use pelts and furs for clothing. Mothers and their babies were extremely important to guarantee the very existence and thus prosperity of a tribe. Hunting and defense from dangerous animals, the preparation of food etc, required a thorough organisation, and thus a clever way to communicate. Hence: the ascent of speech. As we will see below, speech development started by very simple sounds, just one syllable with one consonant and one vowel. Then two syllables. And the words which were used referred to the most basic requirements of tribal society and organisation. This is my own interpretation, my own speculation, but you can find other research, other speculations, in literature, for example based on genetic markers from population divergence, which point at at least some 135,000 years ago. Population divergence is defined as one (?) point in history, at which one or several populations splitted up and decided to move to different regions across Africa, Europe or India. From Morocco to India with its Sanskrit origin is a very long way, but we need to keep in mind that, apart from Morocco, there may have been other tribes living in caves in other parts of the world. I already mentioned the Denisova Cave, in Pleistocene, in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. And tribes could migrate, they could split or merge. For example, Denisovans moved over the Himalaya to Tibet, and later on to Papua New Guinea (Indonesian island). Tibetans' genes still have about 4% of Denisovan genes, which explains why they can live at very high altitudes (think Sherpas). There is still room for research and speculations about the exact origins of languages. I have written more on archaeology and language in my webpage about ultraconserved words. But here come my own two cents!
In early Paleolithic, some 315 thousand years ago, our first known tribal ancestors lived in caves, see the archaeological site Jebel Ighoud. Homo rhodesiensis near Casablanca and H heidelbergensis near Salé, in Morocco, already developed primitive language. In contrast to earlier hominids, their tribal existence implied that they needed to communicate. Sanskrit itself, samskrtam (cultivated), is an old Indo-Aryan langage in which the most ancient texts are the Vedas: Vedic Sanskrit. Earliest texts were poems, verses and songs, created before they could be written down. The very earliest Vedic texts, according to the Brittanica, stem from the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, the area of the seven rivers, sapta sindhavah, and are approximately dated 1500 BCE (BC). Hence, this and all other languages developed in the course of some 500-700 thousand years. It is interesting to study the development of early languages, eventual correspondences between them, and possibly remnants of the first paleolithic sounds and words. I will end with my ultimate speculation. After analysing the most simple Sanskrit words, assuming that Sanskrit is indeed a remnant of some first proto language, I will present a possible vocabulary which is suitable for early cave dwellers.
The development was an automatic process that started with anatomy. I learned this from Leonard Bernstein in his Harvard lectures “The unanswered question” (named after music from Charles Ives). His first Norton Lecture was about phonology and his quest for basic phonemes of an innate, universal grammar, the common origin of language: monogenesis. His assumption, proposal or proposition (?) was that the development of hominin speech resembles that of infants: a was the first sound, followed by ma (for mother, mama) and then mal. He said that he finally found a clue in Slavic language, where mal(o) means few. He speculated that for early hominins there was a monogenetic connection between smallness and badness; the Slavic mal for few or little, and the French mal for bad from the Latin malus. Since I am not familiar with Slavic I do not go into more detail. He said that he found the phoneme gr in Slavic words for big (grande) and good: bigness and goodness. I myself am stuck with the French bon (good from the Latin bonus) and beaucoup (many from the Old French biau cop, nice/beautyful plus hit/strike). At least the IPA phonetic notation /bo.ku/ has bo but bon is /bō/.
Check yourself basic phonology: open your mouth and press air out between your larynges. What comes out is an A, not only the letter/character A, but also the tone a, with a frequency of about 440 Hz in case of men, and about 880 Hz in case of women. Now repeat the experiment, but start with your lips closed and then open them. What comes out now is: ma. Below we will see that the sound a and syllables like ma are almost universal in all cultures, hence they must be a remnant, a vestige of very early language. I am convinced that ma was the first paleolithic word. In the next paragraph we will encounter the next sounds: la and na.
In the sound ma, the lips play an important role, but now use your tongue. Start by pressing your tongue to your palate, almost against your upper teeth, press air out, and quickly lower your tongue. Now you produced: la. But when you repeat this while making the sound more nasal, it will be: na. In Sanskrit, maa (yes) is long with a low pitch, whereas na (no) is short with a higher pitch. The syllable la is used in more than 80 words, including the list with four-character words below. The word la is very versatile in Sanskrit, it can be a consonant, a grammatical marker, and it has specific meanings in various philosophical and literary contexts.
The words maa and na for yes and no are not often used in other languages:
Maa: the Greek nai for yes is closer to na (no), Arabic (naam), and Hindi (haan).
Na: Portuguese (não), Persian and Bengali (na), and Hindi (nahin). Also
the Latin ne and English no, since these three languages belong to the
Indo-European language family.
My conlusion: in Sanskrit the proto words maa and na for
yes and no have been preserved better, and they are very often used, as is la,
as syllables in other words.
Intermezzo one: musical development
The development of language parallels with that of Paleolithic music, although formal descriptions of intervals, for example the fifths, only originate from Pythagoras, 6th century BCE. The male and female voices are an octave apart, the first interval is A-a. The second natural interval introduced later was the fifth, A-e, so there were three tones A-e-a. At that time there were no flats and sharps. Prehistoric bone pipes, such as those found in caves, often have holes spaced to produce perfect fifths, but also fourths. Do not forget that hole spacing was by trial and error! These intervals suggest that early humans already intuitively understood music theory, even before the development of written language and more complex instruments. Then came the third A-c (4 tones A-c-e-a) and the second A-b (5 tones A-b-c-e-a). In the oriental pentatonic (5-note) scale Am, there are A, C, D, E and G, and second intervals like A-b are never used. Lennie Bernstein could explain it much better in his Harvard lectures.
and back to language
After studying the 1000-word Sanskrit list from Travel with Languages, I noticed that the vowel a is by far the mostly used one. The second vowel is i, and third comes u. Much less frequent is e, while the o is very, very rare. Assuming that Sanskrit is indeed a remnant of the oldest langages, like the one used by hunters and gatherers, I assume that the vowels a, i and u were introduced first, whereas the vowels e and o came much later.
This is a speculation, my speculation. However, the vowels a, i and u are most common in most world languages, see Wiki's Origin of Speech. The tongue plays an important role, the word language comes from the Latin lingua, meaning tongue. I cite freely: Only humans use tongue, lips and other parts of the throat to produce speech. On the other hand, the morphology of outer and middle ear of Middle Pleistocene hominins found near Atapuerca (central Spain), about one million years old, is believed to be proto Neanderthal. The morphology suggests an auditory sensitivity which is similar to that of modern man, and very different from that of chimpanzees, see Dediu and Levinson (below). This auditory sensitiviy alllows to discriminate between many different speech sounds. Please notice the timeline: signs of earliest cooking with fire are about 1.5 million years old, the fossils of Atapuerca are about one million years old, whereas Homo heidelbergensis, from early Paleolithic, which I mentioned above, are about 600,000 years old. There was a gradual development, and a slow one.
Concerning consonants, I do not have a clear conclusion. Many of the four-character words, that I list below, start with p, m and k/d/s/j/v/n, whereas the two syllables are mostly separated by l, n, r and d. If you find a clear conclusion related to the early development of Sanskrit or other proto languages, please email me.
I speculate: During language development, after the similar vowels a and e, the other o and u followed, and finally i. However, a, i, and u are often used, but e much less and o almost never. First came the similar nasal consonants m and n, and then the plosives b, d, p, and t. I speculate that the last plosive k, the voiced alveolar r and the toneless g came last.
In Sanskrit, mainly the vocals a and u have one modulation to prolong their length: ā (aa) and ū (uu). Many consonants are written with dots and accents that indicate for example where the tongue needs to be placed, to the front touching your upper teeth, or touching your palate, in the middle or much further to the back. Other languages have similar modulations.
An interesting example is Chinese, in which four different accents give completely different meanings of the same word through tonal modulation. Example: ma. The first word is mā meaning mother. Hence in Chinese the first and simplest word ma, pronounced mā, is one of the most elementary beings, mother. The second is má, meaning spicy. The third is mǎ, horse. And the fourth is mà, to scold.
Sanskrit does not have the words ma, mama, pa and papa for mother and father. One likely reason is that the word maa was already reserved for yes. However, that does not mean that other and maybe later tribes introduced ma for mother.
Ma, mama, maa, maman and mamma are nearly universal words for mother in hundreds of languages. The normal reasoning is that this is due to the ease with which infants can produce the m sound and ma, their first word for their mother. This reasoning is based on infant vocal development, not my own reasoning about prehistoric anatomy and vocal development.
Nearly universal means Indo-European, Sino-Tibetan, African, and indigenous languages, including Mandarin, Hindi, English, Spanish, Swahili and Arabic. Examples: Mandarin māma, Hindi/Bengali/Urdu maa/maan/maji, English mum/mummy, French maman, Dutch mam and mammie, Spanish/Italian/Portuguese mamá/mamma/mãe/madre, Brazilian mamāe, Korean eomma, Japanese mama/haha/ma, Basque ama and Malay mak.
The word pa can be used in English for father/dad, and in Portuguese exist pai/padre/pátria. In other languages pa has another meaning; in Portuguese a pa is a shovel. However, the word papa is again nearly universal: Spanish, French, German, Dutch, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Persian/Farsi and Japanese. Variations are papi, pappa and papá. Modulations are pap and pappie in Dutch, appa in Korean, apa and apu in Hungarian, baba in Mandarin, also in Turkish, Swahili and Hindi, and tata in Serbian, Bosnian and Bulgarian. The French use père. The reason is the fundamental combinations of p/b/t+a or p/b/t+e. In the case of ma such combinations do not exist. On the other hand, the syllable pa is often used in Sanskrit, and there is only one papa: sin or sinful activities, moral transgressions, in religious and philosophical contexts.This is my reasoning: ma was the first word. What is the next easiest word? You simply repeat the ma: mama!. Which words containing ma do we know today? Maman is French, mam or mammie is Dutch, the English know ma'am from madam. Mama is Portuguese for mother, but also for the female breast. Portuguese has many words with ma: mamã is mummy, mamar is to feed, suck and breastfeed (!), mamada is feeding and nursing, mamário is mammary, mamila is nipple, and mamífero is mammal.
In Sanskrit, the word mama means mine, this is from me. Imagine, the mother, the female breast and mothermilk was the most essential condition for procreation. Without mother, breast and milk, babies could not survive. Mankind, and even primates, if überhaupt existing, would look completely different. In conclusion, one of the simplest Sanskrit words, mama, if projected to a baby's view, means mine. And what is mine? My mother, my breast, my milk!
The word mama for breast comes from the Latin mamma. In some languages the word is used in popular language, not necessarily vulgar, or in medical jargon. Examples are: Afro-Asiatic (Arabic mama, Hebrew ima), Austronesian (Indonesian mama), Indo-European (Spanish mamá, Italian and Portuguese mamma), and the Dutch mem and memme which come from the Jiddish mem (mother). Also in Swahili and Togalog.
I will not give an extensive list of Sanskrit words, you can find such lists online. I referred already to the Sanskrit-Swadesh list. I restrict myself to very short words and, below, to family members. Since I do not want to spend a lot of time with accents for the correct pronunciation, which, for example, indicate the length of vowels or the precise position of the tongue in consonants, I will simply ignore them. Except for ā which tells that the a must be long like maa and longer than na.
Two characters, one syllable
All lists below are from Travel with Languages with the 1000 most common words, starting with the most frequent words. So the lists below all start with the most frequent words and end with the least frequent ones. This is the first list with the vowel a:
na (no), an (not/without), ca (and), rā (or), sa (he/that), sā (she/that), ka (who/what), and jā means offspring.
Only two characters, one consonant followed by one vowel: n/c/r/s/k/j + a or ā. In coding theory, this is very efficient. I think that the first hominids, who started to talk, who experimented with their throats, vocal chords, tongues and lips, discovered these sounds and began to use them as words.
Apart from the words with a, there also are hi (indeed), tu (but/and), ni (in/into) and go (a cow). The cow might have been introduced later, or go was used for female animals that could be milked. Who knows? In any case, if we look at the 12 word meanings, all appear very useful for any population, including early cave dwellers.
And now three characters
Let's start with the words with an a between two consonants:
tad (that), yad/yat (who/which), pad (word/step), sat (true/exists), vāc (speed/voice), san (being/existing), nan (boat/ship), kam (how much/how many), sam (together/complete) and mah (to grow/honor).
Again, all are very useful, although the boat and ship may have been introduced later.
Now all other words with a:
ādi (beginning), āja (today), esa (this/these), eva (indeed), api (also), sva (self/own), khā (to eat), aka (fault/defect), rna (debt/obligation), īsa (lord/master), umā (light/tranquility), avi (sheep) and aja (goat).
We see that the first words in the list, which are more frequently used, are for general, basic communication, whereas the latter ones become more abstract. It is possible that our early ancestors already kept goats.
The other words not yet mentioned are iti (thus/so), rsi (sage), kim (what) and ghr (gee/butter).
Here I listed 26 of the in total 33 words with three characters in the 1000-word
list, the most abstract words I omitted.
To finish this section, how about persons?
Singular: ahám (I), trám (you) and
sá (he/she/it).
Plural: nas (we), vas (you) and té (they).
Here is a selection of common two-syllable words, mainly with the vowel a:
yadi (if), yadā (when), tadā (then), sadā (always), ayam (this), and para (other)
aham is I, mama is mine, tvam is you, and tava is your
We saw already that maha is great and raja is king.
tāta is father, mātā is mother, pati is husband, and patnī is wife
bāla is child, but putra is son and putrī is daughter
We see that, apart from son and daughter, there are many 4-character combinations which consist of two syllables, two consonants and often an a or ā. Why is that? Because these combinations are important for asking questions, for answering them, and for indicating family members. The above words form already an important vocabulary, which becomes much more diverse if we also take the list below with four-character words with a's, but my only problem is to learn this vocabulary, to memorise all words, which are pretty similar. Well, maybe I am too old already, but our granddaughter of 10 beats us every time in the game Memory. Since all words are common Sanskrit, people have managed to learn them, so I assume that early hunters-gatherers also did while they were developing their vocabulary.
I wrote above that I am not really interested in a full list of Sanskrit words, a complete dictionary. Because I am only interested in the possible relation between Sanskrit and very early langage development, which started with maa and na as first natural sounds. I therefore decided to extend the above analysis to all two-syllable words with only a and ā vowels. For this I went again through the entire list of the 1000 most common Sanskrit words from Travel with Languages. Here is the list (for saving my keyboard I do not put italics):
kara (doer,maker), dāna (gift), bāna (arrow), māra (death), sanā (army), bala (power), jala (water), saha (together), vana (forest), pada (foot),
māna (pride), nāsa (destruction), vara (boon,best), tapa (heat), kāma (love), mama (mine), kāla (time), rāga (passion), pāpa (evil), mayā (by me), nara (man),
vasa (control), gadā (male), kalā (skill), nāga (snake), pāna (drink), dasā (condition), latā (vine), pāla (guardian), jarā (old age), dayā (compassion),
gata (past), jāta (born), rana (war), mājā (magic), mada (pride), tāpa (heat), mala (dirt), nava (new), kadā (when), pāka (cooking),
mālā or māla (necklace), parā (beyond), vāma (beautiful), jana (person), dama (selfcontrol), sama (calm), sāta (good), dala (petal,leaf), vāda (speech), sāla (house),
bālā (girl), nāka (sky), rasa (sentiment), parā (limit), raga (disease), jaya (victory)
You don't need to count them, I did, and there are 56! And this is only a very small selection of the 1000 words, but a selection of words with the same structure and only a's and ā's. So let me analyse further. Which consonants occur most often?
Concerning consonants, I also scored them, but only from the above list with
four-character words. These words have the following structure: if c1 and
c2 are consonants, all words are c1-a-c2-a, with normal a or with ā.
This list counts 56 words. Result:
c1: 8 x p, 7 x m, k/d/s/j/v/n each x 5, r/b each x 3, g/t each x 2, and j x 1.
c2: 10 x l, 8 x n, 7 x r, 5 x d, m/s/t/y each x 4, p/g each x 3, k x 2, and v x 1.
I do not have a clear conclusion, many of the four-character words start with
the eight consonants p, m and k/d/s/j/v/n, whereas the two syllables are mostly
separated by only four: l, n, r or d (or eight, also including m/s/t/y).
What is obvious is that not all combinations are used. If N1 is the number of C1
consonants, and N2 that of C2, then N1 = N2 = 12, and 12 x 12 = 144. We could
subtract some combinations because not all repetions C2 = C1 make sense, but grosso
modo 144 is much bigger than 56. If we take the most probable consonants, that is
8 and 8 or 8 and 4, then 8 x 8 = 64 and 8 x 4 =32, and 56 is closer to 64.
I think the biggest problem must have been to memorize all words with the different
phoneme combinations. I can imagine that our early cousins started with a basic
but limited vocabulary, and once this was sufficiently accepted, more words were
introduced. If you find a clear conclusion related to the early development of
Sanskrit or other proto languages, please email me.
To conclude: so what did the cave-men say? We have seen many Sanskrit words, but only the shortest with two, three and four characters, and mainly with the vowel a. But I also have a list of all four-character words, with also the other vowels, the entire set of 128. Together with the 12 two-character words and the 33 with three characters, I analysed a total of 172 words, or almost 1/5th of the 1000 list. Since I am lazy, I do not write more lists, except for one last one: in English, what the most significant words are for our hunters and gatherers who were cooking on fire in their caves. It is a very remarkable, very telling list, which I separated in functional groups (lines):
Re-arranged words with mainly two and three characters:
and, or, indeed, but, not, without, he/that, she/that, who/what, apart,
away, this (in this way), this, (an)other, here, where, when, past, towards, over,
some, many, gone, certainly, maybe
what, that, this, these, who, which, how much, how many, lacking, missing
true, exists, also, and, moreover, thus, so, being, existing, over, beyond, very, down,
off
Re-arranged words with mainly four characters:
home, master, good, family, clan, together, father, mother, man, woman, girl, birth, born,
offspring, person, people, I, mine, you, love, evil
giver, donor, thief, to take away, part, portion,rest, remaining
life, span, longevity, age, era, end, stop, to be, was, existed, loss, decay
river, water, drink, food, taste, to eat, ghee
forest, plant, branch, root, petal/leaf, grain
animal, goat, cow, sheep, deer, body, arm, foot, limb, body part, snake, insect, worm
brave, death, kill, life, spear, dart, arrow
cooking, fire, heat, do, doer, make, maker, done, made
sky, sun, moon, time, today
world, far, distant, beyond, mountain, high, rock, stone
hole, wind, dust, dirt
This selection counts about 160 words of the 1000 in the Travel list, that is 1/6th, and only the shortest words. Not listed is, for example, the word milk (from goats or cows), because ksira counts five characters and kshira counts 6. I also excluded pati (husband) because of patnī (wife) with five characters. Also missing are kuta or kuthāra (ax), madhu (honey) and madhūka (honeybee), as is siktha (beeswax).
The Swadesh list etc.
Until here I have used the 1000-word list of Travel with Languages, the most frequently used words in the Vedas etc. Another list was established by Morris Swadesh in the 1950s, see glottochronology. He assumed that there exists a relatively stable vocabulary in all languages of the world, but word replacements happen in a way similar to radioactive decay; hence chronology. Anyway, the core vocabulary was designed to encompass concepts common to every language such as personal pronouns, body parts, heavenly bodies and living beings, verbs of basic actions, numerals, basic adjectives, kin terms, and natural occurrences and events. Conclusion: the 200-word Swadesh Sanskrit list could contain many words that are not in the 1000-word list! So these could extend the above 160-word list. In an additional webpage I further discuss the word lists and vocabulary, extend the list with 5-character words, and link to the Indo-European vocabulary table; see HdB on early vocabularies.
If you go through the above 160-word list, you'll notice the extreme usefulness and significance of this very limited vocabulary. I think that my hypothesis, that Sanskrit is one remnant of some proto-language from early cave-dwellers, is correct. QED?
When you are interested: I prepared another text with another, though small, word list. This list was obtained with a completely different, but scientific approach. So dive into (archeo)linguistic research, and read about Pagel et al's work on ultraconserved words and deep language ancestry!
It is not possible to exclude other developments. The list of 1000 most common Sanskrit words is based on oldest texts from Vedic Sanskrit, dating back to around 1500 BCE. What happened before is not so clear. Populations split up and migrated to other regions, also merged with other populations who had another linguistic background, perhaps not a remnant of our known cave-dwellers' jargon. I am looking further into other proto-languages in order to see whether there are common correspondences which point at a really proto-proto-language, the first which influenced all other languages. The main reason behind this is that the most elementary syllables like ma, la and na have been preserved from the earliest hominids until now, and are almost universal in most if not all languages.
One good candidate is
Proto-Iranian.
This is also a branch of the Indo-European language family and an ancestor of Persian,
Pashto and Kurdish, with a strong link to the earlier Avestan language: Zoroastrianism
from ca. 1500 BCE. Beware: Vedic Sanskrit may be partly based on Avestan and/or
Old Persian. Here is a small list, with English, Avestan/Old Persian and
Sanskrit:
father - pita - tāta
mother - māta - mātā
brother - brātar - bhrātr
grain - dana - anna
ten - dasa - dasa
who - kō - yad
cow - gao - go and
moon - māha - masa.
Take a look at the table on the wiki website.
Similarities are also found in languages from the same family, Anatolian, Syrian,
Hittite, Armenian and Luwian. Some examples in Luwian with Sanskrit last:
I - amn - aham
mine - ama - mama
you - tu - tvam and
your - tuwa - tava.
Its all one big language family. See for example The Andronovo culture, late Bronze Age from ca 2000 to 1150 BCE in Eurasian steppe. Also the older Corded Ware culture, the broad archeological horizon of Europe between ca 3000 and 2350 BCE, from late Neolithic, through Copper Age until the end of early Bronze Age. The name Corded Ware comes from decorating patterns on clay pots caused by pressing twisted cords or thin ropes into the wet clay. This culture played an important role in the spreading of Indo-European language.
Example: the word man/force in
proto-Indo-European (hnē), Greek (anē), Armenian (ayr), proto-Armenian
(aynr), Phrygian (anar), Latin (nero), Armenian (njeri), Persian (nar) and
Sanskrit (nara). Foot: proto-Indo-European (pódm), Greek (póda)
and Sanskrit (pada).
Another example is Old Egyptian, from 2600 to 2000 BCE, the Old Kingdom. You can take a
look at the Morris Swadesh list of 207 words:
Egyptian Swadesh list. Since the writing in Egypt was mostly consonantal, vowels are missing and can
be invented. Number 16 is not, in Old and Middle Egyptian nj, which
could be naj, in Sanskrit it is na. But the word yes is
completely different. Swadesh's list of proto-Indo-Iranian (ca 3rd millennium BCE),
likely a precursor to Vedic Sanskrit and Old Avestan, says:
I - ajám - aham
you - tuHám - tvam
father - pHtá - tāta
mother - máHtā - mātā
husband - pátis - pati
wife - pátniH - patnī and of course
no - na - na.
The oldest reconstructed language: PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN - PIE
It is thought to have been spoken between 4500 and 2500 BCE, see the
PIE Swadesh list. It was reconstructed through linguistic interpretations from its
descendant languages, like Indo-European and proto-Iranian. Using sophisticated
mathematical models, Pagel et al. (2013) established a 23-word list of an Eurasiatic
parent language of seven language families. PIE is only one of them. They
searched for
cognate words in the Swadesh lists, and some are 15,000 years old. The words I
and who have even a half-life of 77,000 years! The PIE tree
was formed roughly 8000 years ago. It bifurcated several times, successively leading
to Hittite (extinct Anatolian), Sanskrit, Iranian, Old Greek and Latin. The Latin
branch later resulted in French and Italian, whereas German and English resulted from
a separate branch. Pagel et al's 23-word list, from before PIE, is, sorted
by the number of language families in which they were found:
thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand,
fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, and worm.
You can check that almost all these words exist in all the five languages PIE,
Ancient Greek, Sanskrit, Iranian and Hittite: see the
Indo-European
vocabulary table. Of course, the words in the list of 23 are so common that one
can expect that they exist in almost all languages of the world, and thus also in
PIE and its descending languages Hittite, Sanskrit, Iranian, Old Greek and Latin.
When you study the vocabulary tables, you will notice that there are many similarities
between these languages, but also between Gothic, Slavic, Baltic, Celtic and Armenian.
Again, if you are interested in archeolinguistic research, read about Pagel et al's
work on ultraconserved words and deep language ancestry!
From Sanskrit we can recognise some PIE words
husband pótis (pati)
wife pótnih (patnī)
father phtēr (tatā) and
mother méhtēr (mātā).
Since PIE is also consonantal, the vowels o and e can be replaced by a.
Also
two dwó (dva)
three tréyes (tri)
four ketwóres (catur)
five pénke (panca)
and of course no né (na).
In addition to the above PIE list, to illustrate more similarities, I will end
with a small list of common words in English, PIE, Ancient Greek and Iranian (for
simplicity I omit all accents and special pronunciation symbols :-)
husband - potis - posis - pati
wife - gen - gune - gana
father - phter - pater - pita
mother - mehter - meter - madar
brother - brehter - prater - bratar
sister - swesor - eor - xwish
daughter - dughter - dugater - dugadar
son - putlo - pais - pudra
In an additional webpage I further discuss the word lists and vocabulary, extend the list with 5-character words, and link to the Indo-European vocabulary table; see HdB on early vocabularies.
In another page I write a bit about Old Persian and cuneiform scripts from the Behistun inscriptions. This was the “Rosetta Stone” of old scripts, because it included Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian translations of the same text. See the bottom (Epilogue 1) of HdB on religion.
Renfrew, C. (1991) Before Babel: speculations on the origins of linguistic diversity. Cambridge Archaeol. J., 1(1), pp 3-23.
Dediu and Levinson (2018) Neanderthal language revisited: not only us. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Vol 21, pp 49-55.
Beekman, M. (2025) The origin of language - How we learned to speak and why. Simon and Schuster.
MacDonald, K., Scherjon, F., van Veen, E., Roebroeks, W. (2021) Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution. PNAS Perspective, Anthropology, 118 (31) e2101108118.
Pagel, M., Atkinson, Q.D., Calude, A.s., Meade, A. (2013) Ultraconserved words point to deep language ancestry across Eurasia. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110(21), pp 8471-8476.
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