The Original Language of Mankind — Devabhasha

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6 min readNov 7, 2022

According to Sri Aurobindo, mankind has one original language and from this original source, all the languages of the world emerged and diversified. The story of the Towel of Babel in Genesis 11:1–9 says something similar. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and migrating eastward agreed to build a city and a tower with its top in the sky. Yahweh, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.

Interestingly regarding Auroville the Mothers once spoke :

“Ah, it’s a Tower of Babel in reverse.” (Mother laughs) That’s interesting! They united and divided in the construction, so now, they come together to unite in the construction. That’s it: a Tower of Babel… in reverse!
The Mother, 1

Quotes from Sri Aurobindo

… mankind has one original language based on certain eternal types of sound, developed by certain laws of rhythmic variation, perfectly harmonious and symmetrical in its structure and evolution. This is the devabhasha and is spoken in the Satya yuga. Then it suffers change, detrition, collapse. Innumerable languages, dialects, vernaculars are born. The guardians of the sacred language attempt always to bring back the early purity, but even they cannot do it; they reconstruct it from time to time, compromise with the new tendencies, preserve something of the skeleton, lose the flesh, blood, sinew, much of the force & spirit. This reconstructed language they call Sanskrit; all else Prakrit.
Sri Aurobindo, 2

Ancient Sanskrit

The Sanscrit language is the devabhasha or original language spoken by men in Uttara Meru at the beginning of the Manwantara; but in its purity it is not the Sanscrit of the Dwapara or the Kali, it is the language of the Satyayuga based on the true and perfect relation of vak and artha. Every one of its vowels and consonants has a particular and inalienable force which exists by the nature of things and not by development or human choice; these are the fundamental sounds which lie at the basis of the Tantric bijamantras and constitute the efficacy of the mantra itself. Every vowel and every consonant in the original language had certain primary meanings which arose out of this essential shakti or force and were the basis of other derivative meanings. By combination with the vowels, the consonants, and, without any combination, the vowels themselves formed a number of primary roots, out of which secondary roots were developed by the addition of other consonants. All words were formed from these roots, simple words by the addition again of pure or mixed vowel and consonant terminations with or without modification of the root and more complex words by the principle of composition. This language increasingly corrupted in sense and sound becomes the later Sanscrit of the Treta, Dwapara and Kali Yuga, being sometimes partly purified and again corrupted and again partly purified so that it never loses all apparent relation to its original form and structure.
Every other language, however remote, is a corruption formed by detrition and perversion of the original language into a Prakrit or the Prakrit of a Prakrit and so on to increasing stages of impurity. The superior purity of the Indian language is the reason of its being called the Sanscrit and not given any local name, its basis being universal and eternal; and it is always a rediscovery of the Sanscrit tongue as the primary language that prepares first for a true understanding of human language and, secondly, for a fresh purification of Sanscrit itself.
Sri Aurobindo, 3

Example of Devabhasha

Madhuchchhanda Vaisvamitra’s Hymn to Agni written in the Gayatri metre in which the first verse runs in the devabhasha,
“Agnim île puro hitam Yajnasya devam ritvijam,
hotaram ratnadhatamam”
and in English,
“Agni I adore, who stands before the Lord, the god who seeth Truth, the warrior, strong disposer of delight.”
Sri Aurobindo, 4

Fourteen translations!

Did you know that Sri Aurobindo made at least fourteen versions of this hymn? You can find them here: https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/16/translations-of-the-first-hymn-of-the-rig-veda

Sri Aurobindo’s Linguistic Research

The idea of Devabhasha or the original language “based on the true and perfect relation of vak and artha.” was a serious field of research for Sri Aurobindo and he has done considerable work in this area which is not much known to the world. Most of it can be found here https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/14 under the title Vedic and Philological Studies.

The object of this treatise is to provide a reasoned basis, built up on the facts of the old languages, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, German, Celtic, Tamil, Persian, Arabic, for a partial reconstruction, not of the original devabhasha, but of the latest forms commonly original to the variations in these languages. I shall take the four languages, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin and Tamil first, to build up my scheme and then support it by the four other tongues. I omit all argument and handling of possible objections, because the object of this work is suggestive and constructive only, not apologetic. When the whole scheme is stated and has been worked out on a more comprehensive scale than is possible in the limits I have here set myself, the time will come for debate. Over an uncompleted exegesis, it would be premature.
Sri Aurobindo, 5

Word-Formation

I shall first indicate the principle on which the roots of the devabhasha were formed. All shabda (vak) as it manifests out of the akasha by the force of Matariswan, the great active and creative energy, and is put in its place in the flux of formed things (apas) carries with it certain definite significances (artha). These are determined by the elements through which it has passed. Shabda appears in the akasha, travels through vayu, the second element in which sparsha is the vibration; by the vibrations of sparsha, it creates in tejas, the third element, certain forms, and so arrives into being with these three characteristics, first, certain contactual vibrations, secondly, a particular kind of tejas or force, thirdly, a particular form. These determine the bhava or general sensation it creates in the mind and from that sensation develop its various precise meanings according to the form which it is used to create.
Sri Aurobindo, 6
The language of man is not framed on earth, but in heaven, as indeed are all things that the soul uses in this mortal journey. By the threefold energy of eternal truth, manifesting force and sustaining delight everything is created as a type in the world of ἰδέαɩ, the mahat of the ancients, in the principle of self-manifest and perfectly arranged knowledge, it is diversely developed by the more discursive but less surefooted agencies of intellectual mind. Imagination hunts after new variations, memory and association corrupt, analogy perverts, sensation, emotion, pleasure seize violent and partial satisfaction. Hence, change, decay, death, rebirth, — the law of the world. All this takes place in the descent into the worlds of mind and the worlds of matter.
Sri Aurobindo, 7
The backbone of the skeleton is composed of the roots of the original language that survive; the rest is the various principles of word-formation. Accordingly in the languages of the world which are nearest to the old sacred language, the ancient Aryan languages, there is one common element, — the roots, the elemental word-formations from the roots and so much of the original significance as survives variety of mental development playing on different lines and to different purposes.
Sri Aurobindo, 8

Indications in Savitri

We must fill the immense lacuna we have made,
Re-wed the closed finite’s lonely consonant
With the open vowels of Infinity,
A hyphen must connect Matter and Mind,
The narrow isthmus of the ascending soul:
We must renew the secret bond in things,
Our hearts recall the lost divine Idea,
Reconstitute the perfect word, unite
The Alpha and the Omega in one sound;
Then shall the Spirit and Nature be at one.

Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, 9