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Sanskrit Was a Shared Intellectual Language
One of the assumptions that quietly disappeared during our translation project was the idea that Sanskrit belonged to any one religious tradition. Many students naturally began the course by thinking in terms of separate bodies of literature: Hindu Sanskrit, Buddhist Sanskrit, Jain Sanskrit, and so forth. While these distinctions are useful in many contexts, they can also obscure the remarkable degree to which medieval Indian intellectuals participated in a common literary and philosophical culture.
Reading Familiar Words in Unfamiliar Ways
The example of vedhas gave us the basic pattern: a word that might elsewhere suggest cosmic creation was redirected toward the Jain idea of establishing the tīrtha, the ford across saṃsāra. Once that movement became visible, we began to see that it was not an isolated case. Hemacandra’s hymn repeatedly takes up prestigious Sanskrit religious language and reorients it toward Jain categories of omniscience, liberation, teaching, and spiritual sovereignty.
Learning Sanskrit through Research, Part 2:
The Jina Beyond God: Jain Sanskrit and the Language of Divinity
08/18/2026
When Familiar Words Become Strange
One of the most enjoyable moments in our Advanced Sanskrit translation project came when the class collectively realized that we had stopped asking grammatical questions and had begun asking historical ones.
One of the most enjoyable moments in our Advanced Sanskrit translation project came when the class collectively realized that we had stopped asking grammatical questions and had begun asking historical ones.
In the first essay of this series, we saw how a single verse of Hemacandra’s Yogaśāstra opened into discussions of grammar, etymology, Jain doctrine, and medieval methods of reading. As our work continued into Hemacandra’s autocommentary, the Svopajñavṛtti, however, another pattern gradually emerged. The Sanskrit itself began to sound unexpectedly familiar, though not for grammatical reasons.
The turning point came when we reached Indra’s hymn of praise to the infant Mahāvīra. After narrating the heavenly consecration (abhiṣeka) of the future Jina, Hemacandra places on Indra’s lips a long series of honorific titles, including:
namo ’rhate bhagavate svayaṃbuddhāya vedhase |
tīrthaṅkarāyādikṛte puruṣeṣūttamāya te ||
tīrthaṅkarāyādikṛte puruṣeṣūttamāya te ||
“Obeisance to the Arhat, the Blessed One, the Self-Awakened, the Vedhas;
to you, the Tīrthaṅkara, the founder, the foremost amongst humanity.”
(YŚSV 1.2.19)[1]
to you, the Tīrthaṅkara, the founder, the foremost amongst humanity.”
(YŚSV 1.2.19)[1]
As the hymn unfolded, the language became even more striking. Mahāvīra was praised as lokādhīśa, “Lord of the World” (YŚSV 1.2.20), śambhu, “the Auspicious One” (YŚSV 1.2.21), svayaṃbhū, “the Self-Existent” (YŚSV 1.2.33), and finally ādi-puṃs, parameṣṭhin, and maheśa (YŚSV 1.2.34). For anyone familiar with Sanskrit literature beyond the Jain tradition, these are not ordinary honorifics. Many carry long associations with Hindu theistic contexts as Brahmā, Viṣṇu, Śiva, or with the language of supreme divinity more generally.
One title in particular immediately became the focus of our discussion: vedhas. Derived from the verbal root √vidh, “to arrange,” “ordain,” or “create,” the word commonly designates Brahmā, the creator of the universe. Yet Jain philosophy leaves no place for a creator God. How, then, could Mahāvīra be called vedhas?
The answer proved to be the key to the entire hymn. Hemacandra was not borrowing Brahmanical theology. He was reinterpreting Brahmanical vocabulary. The Jina is vedhas not because he creates the cosmos, but because he establishes the tīrtha, the spiritual ford by which beings cross the river of saṃsāra. The creative act has shifted from cosmology to soteriology. Rather than creating a world, the Jina creates the conditions under which liberation becomes possible.
Once we recognized that move, the rest of the hymn began to read differently. These familiar Sanskrit titles had not been chosen accidentally. Hemacandra was participating confidently in the shared literary vocabulary of medieval Sanskrit while quietly redefining many of its most prestigious theological terms. For many students, this became one of the most rewarding discoveries of the course. Translation had ceased to be an exercise in matching Sanskrit words with English definitions. It had become an investigation into how religious traditions inherit a common language, reshape inherited meanings, and use familiar words to express profoundly different philosophical visions.
Sanskrit Was a Shared Intellectual Language
One of the assumptions that quietly disappeared during our translation project was the idea that Sanskrit belonged to any one religious tradition. Many students naturally began the course by thinking in terms of separate bodies of literature: Hindu Sanskrit, Buddhist Sanskrit, Jain Sanskrit, and so forth. While these distinctions are useful in many contexts, they can also obscure the remarkable degree to which medieval Indian intellectuals participated in a common literary and philosophical culture.
By the twelfth century, when Hemacandra composed the Yogaśāstra, Sanskrit functioned as a shared scholarly language across much of South Asia. Jain ācāryas, Buddhist philosophers, Śaiva theologians, Vaiṣṇava commentators, Mīmāṃsakas, Naiyāyikas, and Vedāntins all wrote sophisticated Sanskrit prose and poetry. They debated one another’s ideas, responded to competing philosophical systems, cited many of the same grammatical authorities, and inherited a literary vocabulary that had already accumulated centuries of religious and intellectual history. Although these communities often disagreed profoundly about the nature of reality, liberation, or ultimate authority, they frequently expressed those disagreements using the very same language.
For students, this proved to be an important lesson in philology. Dictionaries record the range of meanings a word may possess, but they cannot explain why an author chose one word instead of another. Words accumulate histories. Every significant Sanskrit term arrives carrying traces of earlier texts, earlier interpretations, and earlier communities of readers. Translation therefore requires more than lexical accuracy. It requires learning to recognize the conversations into which an author deliberately enters.
Hemacandra’s hymn illustrates this process beautifully. Indra addresses Mahāvīra as Bhagavān, “the Blessed One,” Vedhas, “the Creator” or “Ordainer,” and Svayaṃbuddha, “the Self-Awakened” (YŚSV 1.2.19). A few verses later he praises him as Svayaṃbhū, “the Self-Existent” (YŚSV 1.2.33), and finally as Parameṣṭhin and Maheśa (YŚSV 1.2.34). Read individually, each of these expressions might seem to be little more than another respectful title. Read together, however, they begin to reveal a deliberate literary strategy. Hemacandra repeatedly reaches for words that already possessed long and distinguished histories within Sanskrit religious discourse.
As we worked through these verses, the classroom discussion gradually shifted away from questions of vocabulary and toward questions of literary intention. We no longer found ourselves asking simply, “What does Bhagavān mean?” or “How should Vedhas be translated?” Instead, we began asking why Hemacandra selected these particular titles when many other honorifics were available to him. Why call the Jina Vedhas, with its strong association with Brahmā? Why describe him as Maheśa, a title so closely connected with Śiva? Why invoke Svayaṃbhū, a word that evokes self-existence and primordiality across multiple Sanskrit traditions?
Those questions marked an important turning point in the project. We had moved beyond translating words into English and begun reading Hemacandra as a medieval intellectual making carefully considered rhetorical choices. The real philological question was therefore no longer, “What does this word mean?” It had become, “Why did Hemacandra choose this particular word here?” The remainder of the hymn would show that those choices were neither accidental nor merely ornamental. They formed part of a remarkably sophisticated engagement with the shared theological vocabulary of Sanskrit civilization.
Reading Familiar Words in Unfamiliar Ways
The example of vedhas gave us the basic pattern: a word that might elsewhere suggest cosmic creation was redirected toward the Jain idea of establishing the tīrtha, the ford across saṃsāra. Once that movement became visible, we began to see that it was not an isolated case. Hemacandra’s hymn repeatedly takes up prestigious Sanskrit religious language and reorients it toward Jain categories of omniscience, liberation, teaching, and spiritual sovereignty.
The clearest example comes near the end of Indra’s hymn, where several especially charged titles appear together:
ādi-puṃse namas tubhyaṃ namas te parameṣṭhine |
namas tubhyaṃ maheśāya jyotis-tattvāya te namaḥ ||
namas tubhyaṃ maheśāya jyotis-tattvāya te namaḥ ||
“Obeisance to you, the Primordial Person; obeisance to you, the Parameṣṭhin;
obeisance to you, the Great Lord; obeisance to you, the Principle of Light.”
(YŚSV 1.2.34)
obeisance to you, the Great Lord; obeisance to you, the Principle of Light.”
(YŚSV 1.2.34)
The force of the verse lies not simply in any one title, but in the density of the cluster. Ādi-puṃs, “Primordial Person,” evokes the language of the cosmic person familiar from Vedic and later Sanskrit theological traditions. Maheśa, “Great Lord,” carries an unmistakably Śaiva resonance, while jyotis-tattva, “Principle of Light,” draws upon the widespread Sanskrit association between divinity, radiance, and transcendent illumination. Parameṣṭhin occupies a particularly interesting position. It has a broad Sanskrit history as a title of supreme exaltation, including associations with Brahmā and the highest divine station, while also becoming thoroughly naturalized within Jain usage through the language of the Pañca-Parameṣṭhin, the five supreme objects of Jain veneration. Hemacandra’s use of the term therefore allows both resonances to operate at once: the title sounds grand within the wider Sanskrit religious world, yet it is also immediately intelligible within a Jain devotional and soteriological framework.
Read without context, this verse could easily sound like praise of a supreme creator deity. Within Hemacandra’s hymn, however, that is not what it means. The Jina is not being presented as the maker of the material universe, the ruler of karma, or the divine will behind cosmic history. He is the perfected knower, the liberated teacher, and the one whose realization makes the path to liberation visible. The language of lordship remains, but its theological center has shifted. Lordship here means spiritual sovereignty, not creatorhood.
Hemacandra raises the stakes even further a few verses earlier, when Indra praises Mahāvīra with one of the most recognizable sacred formulas in Sanskrit:
tamaḥ parastād uditāyaika-vīrāya bhāsvate |
oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svar iti vāk stavanīyāya te namaḥ ||
oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svar iti vāk stavanīyāya te namaḥ ||
“Obeisance to you, shining beyond darkness, the sole hero,
for whom the sacred utterance ‘Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ’ is worthy of praise.”
(YŚSV 1.2.30)
for whom the sacred utterance ‘Oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ’ is worthy of praise.”
(YŚSV 1.2.30)
This is more than the adoption of an honorific title. Here Hemacandra incorporates the mahāvyāhṛtis, the great Vedic utterance oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svaḥ, into a Jain hymn of praise. The verse does not make Mahāvīra into a Vedic creator god, nor does it turn Jain devotion into Vedic ritualism. Rather, it redirects one of the most authoritative sounds of Sanskrit religious culture toward the omniscient Jina. Sacred speech itself becomes available for Jain praise.
This was one of the places where the students could see most clearly how philology changes interpretation. A dictionary could tell us what maheśa, parameṣṭhin, or svayaṃbhū may mean, but only careful reading could show what Hemacandra was doing with them. He was not merely collecting exalted titles. He was demonstrating that the most prestigious vocabulary of Sanskrit religiosity could be made to speak Jain metaphysics. The words remained familiar, but the world of meaning to which they pointed had been transformed.
Conclusion: Shared Language, Different Theologies
Our students began this portion of the translation project expecting to encounter unfamiliar Sanskrit vocabulary. Instead, one of the most surprising discoveries was just how familiar much of the vocabulary already seemed. The real challenge lay not in recognizing words like Bhagavān, Vedhas, Maheśa, or Parameṣṭhin, but in recognizing that Hemacandra was asking them to read those words differently.
Our students began this portion of the translation project expecting to encounter unfamiliar Sanskrit vocabulary. Instead, one of the most surprising discoveries was just how familiar much of the vocabulary already seemed. The real challenge lay not in recognizing words like Bhagavān, Vedhas, Maheśa, or Parameṣṭhin, but in recognizing that Hemacandra was asking them to read those words differently.
That realization illustrates one of the central aims of advanced Sanskrit study. Translation is not simply the search for English equivalents. It is an effort to understand how authors position themselves within larger intellectual traditions, how they inherit existing vocabularies, and how they reshape those vocabularies to express new philosophical visions. Every significant lexical choice carries literary, historical, and doctrinal implications that only emerge through careful reading.
Hemacandra’s achievement is therefore more subtle than either borrowing or rejecting Brahmanical religious language. He demonstrates that Jainism can participate confidently in the shared intellectual culture of medieval Sanskrit while remaining thoroughly committed to its own metaphysical and soteriological commitments. The vocabulary may be shared, but the theology is unmistakably Jain.
For our class, this became another reminder that philology is ultimately about more than language. It is about learning to recognize how ideas travel, how traditions converse with one another, and how texts preserve those conversations across centuries. A single Sanskrit word can become the meeting place of multiple religious worlds.
In the next essay, we will turn from individual theological titles to Hemacandra’s literary method. Rather than asking how he redefines inherited vocabulary, we will examine how he constructs theological arguments through narrative, scriptural citation, and commentary. If this hymn shows the Jina speaking through a shared religious language, the pages that follow reveal how a great Jain scholar teaches his readers to interpret that language.
Citation
Hemacandra. Yogaśāstra, with Svopajñavṛtti. Edited by Muni Jambūvijaya, with the assistance of Muni Dharmacandravijaya, Puṇḍarīkaratnavijaya, Dharmaghoṣavijaya, Mahāvidehavijaya, and Namaskāravijaya. 1st part (Prathama–Dvitīya Prakāśa). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass; Ahmedabad: Śrī Siddhibhuvana-Manohara Jain Trust; Bhavnagar: Śrī Jain Ātmānanda Sabhā, n.d.
[1] The discussion in this essay centers on Hemacandra’s Yogaśāstra-Svopajñavṛtti (YŚSV), Chapter 1, commentary verses 19–35, comprising Indra’s hymn of praise to the infant Mahāvīra. Citations such as YŚSV 1.2.30 refer to Chapter 1, commentary on Yogaśāstra 1.2, commentary verse 30. All translations are the author’s.
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Every insight in this essay emerged from students reading the text for themselves—asking questions, debating interpretations, and discovering how grammar, philosophy, and history converge on the page.
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