Sanskrit : the most remarkable and capable instrument of thought

I am currently reading about Kālidāsa, perhaps the greatest poet of all times, and about the language he used, Sanskrit.

Kālidāsa (कालिदास) was a Sanskrit poet and dramatist, his title Kavikulaguru (Preceptor of All Poets) bearing testimony to his stature. His name means, literally, "Kali's servant".

Sanskrit has been called the language of the Gods; the most perfect, the most sublime. It is definitely the most ancient one (Vedic Sanskrit dates back at least to the Mahabharata's age -- about 8000 b.C.).

Following is a striking excerpt about Sanskrit, by Sri Aurobindo.

The classical Sanskrit is perhaps the most remarkably
finished and capable instrument of thought yet fashioned, at
any rate by either the Aryan or the Semitic mind, lucid with
the utmost possible clarity, precise to the farthest limit of
precision, always compact and at its best sparing in its
formation of phrase, but yet with all this never poor or
bare: there is no sacrifice of depth to lucidity, but rather
a pregnant opulence of meaning, a capacity of high richness
and beauty, a natural grandeur of sound and diction inherited
from the ancient days.

The abuse of the faculty of compound structure proved fatal
later on to the prose, but in the earlier prose and poetry
where it is limited, there is an air of continent abundance
strengthened by restraint and all the more capable of making
the most of its resources.

The great and subtle and musical rhythms of the classical
poetry with their imaginative, attractive and beautiful
names, manifold in capacity, careful in structure, are of
themselves a mould that insists on perfection and hardly
admits the possibility of a mean or slovenly workmanship or a
defective movement.

The unit of this poetical art is the sloka, the sufficient
verse of four quarters or padas, and each sloka is expected
to be a work of perfect art in itself, a harmonious, vivid
and convincing expression of an object, scene, detail,
thought, sentiment, state of mind or emotion that can stand
by itself as an independent figure; the succession of slokas
must be a constant development by addition of completeness to
completeness and the whole poem or canto of a long poem an
artistic and satisfying structure in this manner, the
succession of cantos a progression of definite movements
building a total harmony.

It is this carefully artistic and highly cultured type of
poetic creation that reached its acme of perfection in the
poetry of Kalidâsa.