Author: Anuradha C. Kumar
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 25, 2001
Although I greatly enjoyed Ajit
Kumar Jha's ''Why is the West crazy about a 'dead' language?'' (Indian
Express, June 10), I feel it is unfortunate that having been around as
a vehicle of literary expression for over 2500 years, Sanskrit still has
to bear the tag of a dead language. Sanskrit Pathshalas or Tols flourished
alongside the madrasahs as late as the 17th and 18th centuries. They survive
even today as indigenous systems of Sanskrit education exist side-by-side
with Sanskrit teaching in modern schools, colleges and universities. These
traditional institutes survived despite the presence of established colleges
and institutes set up under the Orientalist influence in the 18th century.
After independence, as per the findings
of the Sanskrit Commission set up in 1955-56, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal and
Bihar, particularly the Mithila region, still maintained the largest number
of these traditional institutions; as did Rajasthan and Saurashtra, once
an amalgam of native states and principalities that patronized Sanskrit
learning. In the 1950s and 1960s, in the aftermath of the linguistic agitation
in various states, Sanskrit ceded its second place after English to the
mother tongue. The need to study English, and the insistence in north India
on the learning of Hindi as the official language. have all served to complicate
schemes of language-adjustment, the eventual sufferer being Sanskrit.
But it is in South India, where
it flourished during periods of political convulsion in north India, Sanskrit
learning remains popular and continues to grow. There are institutes like
the Academy of Sanskrit research, at Melkote; and various others at Pondicherry,
Tirupati, Sringeri and at Yadagirigutta near Hyderabad, among others. There
is also the unusual village of Mattur in Karnataka's Shimoga district with
its 4,000 families, who while keeping the indigenous system of education
alive also conduct their daily activities in Sanskrit.
In the west, Sanskrit remains confined
within the ivory-tower precincts of certain universities, though the increasing
popularity of discourses, now recorded and even telecast, of the epics
and the Bhagdvad Gita, have served to give Sanskrit a renewed lease of
life. But this still leaves large gaps in Sanskrit teaching. The tendency
of most students is to crowd into the Sahitya section. Also most research
is being increasingly related to modern interests. Most universities have
a department of Indology or Indian studies. Indology, as a subject for
the degree course, is a conglomeration of several subjects, among which
Sanskrit occupies but a minor place. There is also the increasing popularity
of languages like Buddhist Sanskrit (University of California, Berkeley),
i.e., Pali, a language closely related to the old Indo-Aryan vedic and
Sanskrit dialects but apparently not directly descended from either of
these, that was the sacred language of the Theravada Buddhist canon. The
depth of Sanskrit learning in the universities suffers on account of a
more comprehensive and broad-based course.
To survive, Sanskrit needs to look
for innovative ways to sell itself as has happened in the case of Latin,
also one of the ''dead'' languages. In Leeds, England, bright secondary
school pupils are taking after-school classes in Latin to help boost their
analytical skills.
