Indianization of Scientific Terms: Writings and notes of the late Prof. RaghuVira, ed. posthumously by his son Lokesh Chandra

Modern science has created around a million words in European languages. As India gained independence it became imperative to create terms for administration, industry, humanistic and scientific disciplines. It was a continuation of a long tradition of linguistic creativity. This book is a collection of the writeups of Prof. RaghuVira who was the prime ‘maker of Indian words’. The source languages of European terminologies Greek and Latin shared the same grammatical basis of word-formation from roots with prefixes and suffixes like Sanskrit the historical source language of India. Linguistic nihilism of India’s leadership had to be convinced that new words have to be coined continuously as research discovers new facts and concepts. Language as a process of evolution, creation of Japanese and Chinese terminologies, the linguistic reform in Turkish, rejuvenation of Hebrew, the development of Hindi as the official language, principles of coining Indian terms, the art of translation, improvement in Indian terms due to scientific advances, and several facets of the linguistic revolution in newly liberated countries can be read in this book in the very words of Prof. RaghuVira the creator of India’s macrocosm of linguistic evolution. Recently the Oxford University Press has named Samvidhaan as the “Oxford Hindi word of 2019”. It was created by Prof. RaghuVira in 1946, thrilled the President of the Constituent Assembly of India in 1947 and it became the word for Constitution, sharing its prefix samo with the cognate Lain cono in Constitution. The book is a thrilling narrative of India’s logos, with parallels from other lands.