SANSKRIT

Due to the way in which its grammar was fixed by grammarians like Pāṇini, Sanskrit has one of the most extensive literatures of all languages. It introduces students to vast epics, profound scripture, subtle philosophy, voluminous mythology, exquisite poetry and much else. Study of these works offers a student a wider perspective to enable a better understanding of their own tradition, but also shows them which questions and insights are shared across cultures.

“The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family.”
– Sir William Jones (Anglo-Welsh philologist, Orientalist, and jurist).