Can I Learn Sanskrit and Immediately Read Ancient Texts

When the announcement about Sanskrit pedagogy in the IITs was made final month, it was greeted with some consternation. How can C++ and Java-script be expected to hold a coherent chat with the shlokas of Shankara or Bhartrhari? Why should other classical languages with a distinguished intellectual ancestry such every bit Tamil not besides be taught? Is there a cultural agenda that motivates this move? Has the autonomy of the IITs been compromised?

Now that the HRD Minister has clarified in the Rajya Sabha that the IITs "have been requested to offering Sanskrit" but as "an elective subject or as a language course for students who wish to study the language", the furore might be expected to quieten down. Yet, Sanskrit has always been a bit of a celebrity language, attracting headlines at least since William Jones praised its "wonderful structure" correct down to when Dinanath Batra filed a case under Section 295A of the Indian Penal Lawmaking against the United states scholar Wendy Doniger for her interpretation of the history of the Hindus through an "culling" reading of ancient Sanskrit texts. Given these recent perturbations circular an ancient linguistic communication, this may be as good a fourth dimension as any to review the possible contribution that Sanskrit, as well as the many languages of modern Bharat, tin brand to intellectual paradigm-shifts in an historic period of virtual reality.

Hither, to get-go with, is a little mind-game I sometimes play with students on introductory linguistics courses at IIT Delhi: Accept the words in Column A and fill in the words in Cavalcade B; then take the words in Column C and fill in Column D (of course, all the words are already entered in the nowadays case).

IIT students find right away, every bit do students elsewhere, that at that place is a more than a coincidental resemblance between these two languages - whether you begin at the Sanskrit end or the English. This piques their involvement in historical linguistics and they are able to go on to explore questions of "language families", sociology of language and the like. My point is that fifty-fifty such tiny exercises immediately place Sanskrit in an interdisciplinary modern context, opening out potential avenues of enquiry into linguistic communication which, as we know, oftentimes constitutes our basic sense of "identity".

Indeed, the "identity question" has been at the heart of language contention around Sanskrit both pre- and post-Independence. For example, you might have imagined that Rabindranath Tagore, poet of burnished Brahmin ancestry, would be a vocal supporter of Sanskrit - but no. Tagore was convinced that the purist punditry of Sanskrit and the colonial imposition of English language both conspired to stifle creativity and intellectual inquiry in the female parent-tongue, which to him was the language in which instruction in scientific discipline and technology was best imparted. In brief, Tagore saw "Sanskritization" non as an assist just a barrier to the "democratization" of access to education.

BR Ambedkar, iconic Dalit leader, on the other manus, surprisingly advocated Sanskrit as the national language of Republic of india in the Constituent Assembly language debates of 1949 and the early 1950s, along with Dr BV Keskar who later became Minister for Data and Broadcasting, Prof. Nazimuddin Ahmed and some others. Although their motion was defeated, it is instructive to listen to these voices from the early history of independent India, equally nosotros once more debate the role of Sanskrit in the education of 21st century IIT students. Consider, for case, Prof Ahmed's rather charming perspective at the time: not only, he averred, was Sanskrit a "grand" and "great" linguistic communication, but it was "impartially hard for all." Hindi might exist "easy for Hindi speaking areas, just it is difficult for other areas." Sanskrit, on the opposite, was a challenge for everyone! It was, declared the Professor with unproblematic conviction, "the earth's greatest language".

Few modern linguists would concur with Prof. Ahmed'due south implicit assumption that the languages of the world - about vi,500, roughly speaking - should exist ranked according to how "great" or even how "difficult" they are. English, for example, is actually not any more difficult than, say, Western farsi or Bantu - or the other way around. All children everywhere, we know for a fact, larn the entire range of their native languages by the age of about four or five, whatever that language is.

Interestingly, many scholars believe that Sanskrit was never a natural spoken language. On the Indian subcontinent, aboriginal Sanskrit was used by the relatively modest, literate upper echelons. The populace, at large, spoke in the prakrits. This bespeak is relevant in the context of the IITs since Sanskrit, a formal, constructed (sams + krta = 'put together') linguistic communication, was exquisitely codified and laid out in the class of thousands of grammatical rules by Panini (quaternary century BCE, in Purushapura, at present Peshawar in Pakistan). It has thus been argued, that Sanskrit, owing to the admirable efforts of Panini and other ancient grammarians, is especially amenable to computerization.

Although, in principle, every unmarried man language possesses the belongings of "recursion", making each a sound base for computation, this codification was already achieved to a great extent for Sanskrit. Indeed, Rajeev Sangal and his colleagues at IIT Kanpur adult, near xx years ago, the "Anusaaraka" system which could more or less translate between some major Indian languages. Their inspiration, they explicitly claimed, was Panini'south meticulous Sanskrit grammer. Then information technology's not as if Sanskrit has not been a presence at the IITs.

The current commission headed by former Chief Ballot Commissioner N Gopalaswami now proposes a further step. A knowledge of Sanskrit, they advise, "may facilitate study of science and technology as reflected in Sanskrit literature along with inter-disciplinary study of Sanskrit and modernistic subjects". Now, the operative give-and-take in this clause is the modal verb "may". Sanskrit may - but equally, it may non - stimulate "interdisciplinary" enquiries in premier institutes committed, in the master, to taking forward modern science and technology.

The commencement matter to notation in this context is that Sanskrit, like its Indo-European counterparts, Latin and Greek, had the advantage of a torso of written texts ("smriti") in add-on to ritual methods of oral transmission ("shruti" i.east. Vedic literature). Inevitably then it accumulated over time a huge, rich reservoir of materials ranging from sacred incantations to courtly plays to doggerel poetry; from sophisticated philosophical schools ("darshana") and abstruse commentaries thereon to questions and conjectures (as, for example, in the "Kena" Upanishad) to scientific treatises and descriptions. It is the last category, nosotros are told, that the IITs should expect to for inspiration.

Languages, though, are organic wholes. It is hard, if not impossible, to mine Sanskrit or any other linguistic communication, just for its possible imagination in the fields of scientific discipline and technology. If yous await for actual, modern science in such old texts, deep problems of scholarly estimation arise. For case, my IIT students today who are mostly innocent of Sanskrit, when asked what kinds of scientific devices they would similar to invent, mention "teleportation", "time travel machines", "robots that tin tunnel through the earth" etc. Manifestly, they have read of these things in gimmicky scientific discipline fiction simply they could as well have institute similar inspiration from reading Sanskrit texts. For what literature or myth imagines, science executes. And what scientific discipline executes, the social sciences discuss. Such is the nature of interdisciplinary activity.

In short, interdisciplinary rigor is fundamental to any real research. Crimson-picking for "science and engineering" lone does not seem respectful enough to the tensile, flexible and cultural indexing of languages. Languages are truly "human" in the sense that they alive, breathe and ultimately die. But even "dead" languages like Latin, Hebrew or Sanskrit, have a "soul" or "spirit" that will never endure trammeling or cultural control. So if Sanskrit is to be "brought to life" in the IITs today, colonial descriptions of it every bit 'the sacred language of the Hindus' should be rejected equally inadequate. Sanskrit today, if revived, must be "secularized". Only how?

Five tentative suggestions:

1. Relate the study of Sanskrit at the IITs and elsewhere to broader interdisciplinary fields such as translation studies, including machine translation, cognitive linguistics then forth.

2. Bharat has an virtually legendary richness of languages, nonetheless several (at least about 200) of our languages are endangered; if Sanskrit and/or other classical languages are studied in our universities, link them to the archiving and preservation of our often non-Sanskritic endangered languages; the IITs have the skills to do this electronically and should coordinate in this respect with centers such equally the Cardinal Institute of Indian Languages - a chore well worth undertaking.

iii. Establish internships/scholarships especially for Dalit students to report Sanskrit if they wish.

four. Make Sanskrit courses entirely voluntary; IIT students are already quite stressed out.

   5. Coordinate with some of the excellent national and international websites and universities that are already documenting Sanskrit resources and try and start a not-irksome, interactive and argumentative inter-IIT MOOC for virtual Sanskrit/other Indian language classes.

Sanskrit is undoubtedly a fine, majestic and robust language. It is too oft times startlingly destructive. I cease with a favourite verse from Kalidasa, freely translated into the idiom of modern times:

If a professor thinks what matters almost
Is to have gained an academic mail service
Where he can earn a livelihood, and then
Neglect research, let controversy rest,
He's merely a petty tradesman at the best,
Selling retail the work of other men.
(From the "Malavikagnimitra" trans. John Brough)

Sanskrit, anyone?

(Critical theorist and writer Rukmini Bhaya Nair is a professor at IIT Delhi. She is the author of several bookish books.)

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this commodity are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions actualization in the article practise not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does non assume any responsibility or liability for the same.

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Source: https://www.ndtv.com/opinion/yes-sanskrit-at-iits-may-be-a-good-idea-but-conditions-must-apply-1401680

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