List of English Words derived from Sanskrit via Latin Greek Persian

Look at the rich technical vocabulary of English. Isn’t it amazing that today we have so many new words created in English on almost a daily basis? Especially in evolving technical fields – Computer, Processor, Monitor, Internet, Hardware, Software, Branes, Quantum, etc. It is almost impossible to create words with similar meaning in other languages and so instead we simply loan these English words into our languages to keep pace with the rapidly evolving new terminology.

Any language during the times of its peak usage as a spoken language across large geographies will have its words imported into other languages that exist during that period. When Sanskrit was at its peak as a medium of education in India, and in the ancient Indian universities, words got imported into Greek, Latin, Persian, and of course into all languages of the Indian subcontinent from Sanskrit. These Sanskrit words have today silently form a vast majority of the original English Language. Because, English itself loaned words heavily from these ancient languages like Greek, Latin, Persian.

Many Indians ourselves fail to recognize the obvious phonetic and synonymous connection that exist between words in Indian languages (which have heavily loaned words from Sanskrit) and in English!

So I thought I better pen down a list of all such English words derived indirectly from the ancient Sanskrit.

“The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of  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 in the forms of  grammar, than could not 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 Gothick and the Celtick, though blended  with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanskrit; and  the old Persian might be added to the same family” - Sir William Jones, at the 3rd annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (on 2 February 1786)

Sir William Jones was an the English Philologist who for the first time in 1786 suggested that Greek and Latin were related to Sanskrit and perhaps even Gothic, Celtic and Persian languages were related to Sanskrit.

It was this work which later led to the Proto-Indo-European theory which suggests that all Indo-European languages must have a common origin.

“I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges.” said Voltaire. He believed that the “Dynasty of Brahmins taught the rest of the world”.

Read about the Varna system to understand that Brahmin in ancient India was the title given to any knowledgeable person who had completed formal education, and was not a title earned due to birth in a family, as is the practice today. Brahmin in ancient India, was like the graduate of today.

 “Mankind together with all science must have originated on the roof of the world i.e. the Himalayas” declared Immanuel Kant.

And here goes the list of English words derived from Sanskrit.

NOTE: Just to make it clear the below list does not contain Sanskrit words that have been directly borrowed into English in recent times like Karma, Avatar, Mantra, Guru, Cheetah, Pundit, Juggernaut, Nirvana, Lakh etc but lists only those English words which were derived from Sanskrit as English evolved by borrowing words from Greek/Latin etc.