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American culture are not more than five hundred years old but the supremacy it claims and enjoys
over the world is worth noticing. As compared to them India has a legacy of five thousand years with
innumerable positive ideas, objects, theories, cultures, and languages to boast about but the humility,
selflessness, and spiritual orientation of our lifestyle across all Indian communities does not allow
us to blow our trumpets. But it is necessary to make the world aware of the contribution of Indian
languages, especially of the Sanskrit language. Instead of repetitive topics such as translations and
literary appreciations of famous works or the character-sketches of the roles in dramas, it is necessary
to bring to light the value-orientation of such compositions. Even after the hundreds of attacks by
foreign invaders India is firmly rooted in its culture because of the eternal values, which are inculcated
in the minds of natives from their childhood. In this era of competition for supremacy, greed
for wealth, land, and power, the human mind is restless and is in search of peace. It can certainly
be provided through the literature in Indian languages in general and in the Sanskrit language in
particular. Even the Indian canons of critical appreciation, which are used by the Western critiques is
the literary contribution of India to the world. The linguistic theories propounded by Bhartrihari, the
stalwart of the philosophy of grammar, are immensely appreciated by foreign scholars such as Noam
Chomsky. Current language research should take note of these points, take this research ahead, and
prove the Indian supremacy over other languages of the world, which Sanskrit has already done.

Ethics in Language Research

What exactly is conveyed by “research ethics”? It is concerned with the moral issues that arise during
or as a result of research activities, as well as the ethical conduct of researchers. Harvard Ethicist Louis
M. Guanine describes the ‘kernel’ of intellectual honesty to be, “A virtuous disposition to eschew
deception when given an incentive for deception” (Guanine, 2005).

The term “research ethics” is the product of medical research and research in other fields such as social
sciences, information technology, biotechnology, and engineering, which may generate different types
of ethical concerns to those in medical research (Iphofen, 2011). Intellectual honesty is an important
component of any research and so also in research in language. It is an applied method of problem-
solving characterized by an unbiased, honest attitude, which can be demonstrated in several different
ways says Wikipedia. These are listed here and clear measures are needed for the ethical governance
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of research to ensure that:

• Personal beliefs or politics do not interfere with the pursuit of truth.
• Relevant facts and information are not purposefully omitted even when such things may
contradict one’s hypothesis.
• Facts are presented in an unbiased manner, and not twisted to give misleading impressions or to
support one view over another.
• References, or earlier works, are acknowledged where possible and plagiarism is avoided.
• Intentionally committed fallacies in debates and reasoning are called intellectual dishonesty.

As mentioned earlier, dishonesty comes in the way of the pursuit of truth for various reasons discussed
above. It is not expected from the research to have positive results, supporting the hypothesis all the
while but one has to accept the results, which may be contrary to the hypothesis as well. Genuine
research includes both: positive and negative results and at that time the researcher has to analyse the
negative results and find out the reasons for that, or state and accept them boldly. If the researcher
hesitates to record the findings that are contrary to his or her hypothesis there is every possibility
of twisting the results to suit the hypothesis, which would be a transgression of research ethics. The

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