Sanskrit language

I have read with great interest the letters by Mr. Masli Arman and Ms. Anita on the subject of Bahasa Indonesia and Sanskrit in your issue of June 9,1995.

To have a love for one's own language and to promote it is both patriotic and commendable. However, on the subject of Sanskrit I have the following comments: No doubt, Sanskrit is indeed a "dead" language as far as the use in the pure form is concerned. However, many languages like the Germanic languages (Teutonic), many of the Indian languages (there are more than 100) and South East Asian languages (including Malay) have a lot of Sanskrit in them. In fact, Sanskrit has been described as the "Mother of languages." Contrary to what Mr. Arman thinks, Indian Moslems speak Urdu (very similar to Hindi), which is a mixture of Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian.

If Mr. Arman wishes to eliminate Sanskrit altogether from Indonesian (or Malay) he has to eliminate such words as swami, istri, bapa, pria, wanita, putra/putri, kaca, karena, denda, surya, bahaya, guru, samudera, Pancasila, darma, utara, satrya, pertiwi, mamak (mama) madu, kusta, dewi, tapi (tetapi) and so on. They are Sanskrit words, also used with the same meaning in many of the Indian languages. Mangga, kapal and kolam are found in Tamil and Malayalam, which are the south Indian languages. There are hundreds of such words if one goes through a Bahasa Indonesia dictionary. The word bahasa itself comes from bhasha which is Sanskrit! In the words Negara Indonesia or Bangsa Indonesia, the word negara and bangsa are Sanskrit.

Bahasa Indonesia itself has borrowed heavily from other languages -- like supir (driver) and rokok (cigarette) which is Dutch, proklamasi, informasi, manajemen (English) and of course from Indian languages as mentioned above. This is not a disadvantage -- a language becomes richer when it borrows key phrases from others. Present day English, for example, is not a "pure" language -- it has borrowed words from Saxon, Celtic, Norman-French, German and Roman.

So my sincere advice to Mr. Arman, Ms. Anita and all others who think along the same lines is -- definitely be proud of your own language and use it whenever you can. Bahasa Indonesia is indeed a beautiful language and I am also proud that I can speak it fluently. But do not exclude other languages -- for example, English -- whether you like it or not this language is essential for international forums. There is also nothing wrong in having words in Indonesian which are borrowed from Sanskrit or Old Javanese -- this will only make the language richer.

B.M. MENON

Jakarta