Is Sanskrit an ideal language for knowledge representation in AI?

It’s been suggested for decades that Sanskrit might be the ideal language for knowledge representation in artificial intelligence (AI). This is because of Skaskrit’s rule-heavy and formula-based syntax, which makes it a logical and excellent choice for writing algorithms. But is this true? Let’s investigate.

Origin
The claims that Sanskrit is one of the best languages for AI are based on a research paper, “Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence,” published by NASA scientist Rick Briggs in 1985. Access the research at this link.

However, just because Sanskrit represents an ideal language for AI, this does not mean it must be used as a programming language. Rather, the suggestion refers to using the language for datasets used by AI models. There are reasons for this.

Sanskrit is one of the oldest languages, dating back to Vedic times in India. The language is often called Devabhasha, meaning the language of Gods. All ancient Hindu and many Buddhist and Jain religious manuscripts are written in Sanskrit.

For this and other reasons, Sanskrit is considered a pure language. It’s remained independent and authentic, never mixing with other Indo-European languages. This is partially because it was never a language for commoners or common conversations.

In ancient times, Sanskrit was solely used for writing and preserving knowledge. Other languages, including Prakrit Bhasha or vernacular languages, were used for conversing. Over the centuries, many different languages and dialects emerged, and some do have roots in Sanskrit.

Currently, India has 22 official languages, with 121 recognized by the Indian constitution. More than 19,569 dialects have been derived, of which 1,369 are recognized as deriving from native mother tongues. This does not count the languages and dialects in other South Asian countries.

When scientists seek for pure unadulterated languages (not mixed with other languages), they resorted to ancient languages like Sanskrit, Latin, and Greek. Sanskrit has remained true to form, without adulteration over history.

Comprehensive phonetics
Sanskrit is a phonetic language. The words have a direct correspondence between symbols and sounds. In fact, there is no sound or pronunciation that cannot be written in Sanskrit letters. As such, once you know the language, Sanskrit is easy to translate and record.

Without syntax
In most languages, the order of the words in a sentence is essential to understanding. This is untrue in Sanskrit.

In Briggs’ research paper (link above), he compares Sanskrit to English. Accordingly, in English sentences, the order of the words or the syntax of a sentence is critical to comprehension. For example, “He will go” and “Will he go” have different meanings.

In Sanskrit, the words have a lot of suffices that indicate the context and use of the word within a sentence. So, even if the words in a sentence in Sanskrit are shuffled, the meaning remains the same.

The sentence “He will go” in Sanskrit can be written either way:

The same is true of any sentence in the Sanskrit language.

The meaning of words
In Sanskrit, each word of a sentence carries more information than in English (according to Briggs). Contrarily, in English, the descriptive words in a sentence will typically represent either the noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, or adjective. For example, a verb in English only provides information about the action and a hint about the tense (past, present, or future). The tense of the action (when the action was done) is interpreted based on the syntax of the sentence.

However, in Sanskrit, the verb contains insight into the action, its tense, and the noun (like if the noun is singular, dual, or plural).

Let’s take the sentence, “The students will read.” In English, the word “students” only tells us about the noun. The “will” tells us about the tense (in the future), and the word “read” tells us the verb or action.

This is the same sentence in Sanskrit:

The second word alone in the above Sanskrit sentence tells us that the noun is plural, the tense is in the future, and the action is reading.

Understanding cases
“Cases” indicate the grammatical functions of nouns and pronouns according to their relationship with other words in a sentence. Sanskrit has far more cases for nouns or pronouns than any other language.

Consider the English word “beautiful,” which is an adjective, but the root can be used as a noun (“She is a beauty.”). It can also be an adverb (“She sang beautifully.”) or a verb (“Let’s beautify this room.”).

In Sanskrit, each noun has eight cases and the word for each case also signifies the singularity, duality, or plurality of the case. The following table represents the cases for the noun Ram in Sanskrit.

With several “cases,” each word in Sanskrit is self-explanatory and relies minimally on other words in a sentence. Each word in itself indicates its role and context.

So, what can this mean for AI? According to Briggs, the power of Sanskrit’s cases can provide more information to a computer in more precise sentences than any other language.

Going to the root
One thing that distinguishes Sanskrit from all other languages of the world is that is has its own meta-language or “metarule.”

In 500 BC, Pāṇini’s, a sage and master of the Sanskrit language wrote a text on its grammar called Astadhyayi or Eight-Chaptered. The text illustrates a system for Sanskrit grammar and vocabulary, indicating how each word in the language is actually derived from a root word. There’s a set of 4,000 rules (or Sutras) applied to these root words. The Sutras are similar to a mathematical formula.

Essentially, Pāṇini’s taught a “metarule,” which is typically interpreted by scholars as follows: “In the event of a conflict between two rules of equal strength, the rule that comes later in the grammar’s serial order wins.”

This means that Sanskrit words technically need no translation from any other language (such as how some English words derive from Latin). Instead, all Sanskrit words are derivatives or roots of the language itself.

All languages have structures and rules for the formation of words and sentences. But sometimes there are variations in the spelling of words. This is not the case with Sanskrit.

In Sanskrit, there are no random words. The language is based on a grammatical derivational system. Astadhyayi explains how all Sanskrit words are derived from fundamental letters given in its Maheshwar Sutras, a set of 14 rules, which are the foundation of the language.

A research paper, “On the Architecture of Panini’s Grammar,” by Stanford University linguistic expert Paul Kiparsky sheds more light on this.

Pāṇini’s Astadhyayi (with its Sutras) shares similar rules to modern programming languages.

For example, it has:

Sangyak Varna — similar to keywords
Pratyaya — similar to operators
Vidhi — similar to functions
Anuvrati — similar to libraries or packages

As Sanskrit can be derived algorithmically from a meta-language or “metarules” as described in Pāṇini’s Astadhyayi, it could be easy or easier to create a generative model for the language — at least compared to other modern languages. Its rules-based grammatical foundation is one reason Sanskrit has been considered by some as an ideal language for knowledge representation in artificial intelligence.