Author: Jennifer Peltz
Publication: Sun-Sentine
Date: July 17, 2005
URL: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-cpsanskrit17jul17,0,6729952.story?coll=sfla-news-broward
It has a roughly 50-letter alphabet
and a grammar so complex that some have compared it to computer programming.
Its vocabulary is steeped in subtleties, so much so that after 55 years
of work on a dictionary, scholars still were on the first letter.
Virtually no one has had a casual
conversation in it for hundreds of years.
The subject is Sanskrit, a language
of ancient India -- and Florida International University. Miami-based FIU
and Orlando-based Hindu University of America are teaming up to offer the
language online this fall.
Sanskrit is relatively unusual at
any American university, and the FIU/Hindu University courses appear to
be the only college-credit Sanskrit classes conducted in cyberspace, according
to J.L. Brockington, the secretary general of the International Association
of Sanskrit Studies.
At least 3,500 years old, Sanskrit
is to India roughly what Latin and ancient Greek are to Europe -- the ancestor
of many modern tongues and the original form of many religious, literary
and scientific works. In fact, linguists surmise that Sanskrit, Latin and
Greek shared a common root language.
Sanskrit vanished from widespread
use long ago, but it survives in Hindu rituals and remains one of India's
22 official languages.
Sanskrit also echoes through the
English-language world, as the source of such words as "yoga," "karma"
and "nirvana" -- not to mention "orange" and "sugar."
The language also has some cachet
in computer science. A former NASA researcher suggested in the 1980s that
Sanskrit's painstaking grammar might be a guide for programming computers
to understand the meaning of words in context.
"Sanskrit's one of the real classical
forms of learning in the whole world ... [It] belongs in a good university
curriculum," said FIU professor Nathan Katz.
The University of Florida, Florida
State and at least 21 other U.S. universities teach the language. But FIU
and many other schools have too few would-be Sanskrit students to justify
offering it, Katz said.
Nationwide, fewer than 500 college
students were taking Sanskrit as of 2002, according to a federally financed
survey by the Modern Language Association.
"[The online class] is a way we
can have it available to our students and other students, and it is economically
viable," said Katz, a religious-studies professor who has taught the language
to some students individually.
FIU and Hindu University experimented
with online Sanskrit courses last year.
They're launching the effort in
earnest with "Sanskrit I" this fall, Katz said. It's open to college students
or graduates whether or not they're seeking degrees. Plans ultimately call
for a four-semester series of courses.
Sound files will help students with
pronunciation, said M.K. Sridhar, one of Hindu University's Sanskrit professors.
Special computer fonts form Sanskrit's intricate script.
Those who master it have an inside
track on major Hindu and Buddhist religious texts, grammar tracts that
helped shape modern linguistics, historical epics and centuries of creative
writing.
"There is this great variety of
literature -- there is sentimental poetry, there is comic stuff, there
are dramas," explained Sanskrit textbook author Madhav M. Deshpande, a
University of Michigan professor.
Sanskrit is a hot topic in its homeland,
where the government is trying to nurture and revive it. Proponents see
it as a cultural bedrock and a tool to forge national unity, but critics
say the language is being used to advance an elitist and retrogressive
political agenda.
To Diane Lillesand, it's simply
a key to understanding the Buddhist writings she went to graduate school
to explore.
A longtime Miami psychologist, she's
planning to take the online Sanskrit course this fall.
"You kind of want to go beyond reading
what other people have to say about things that were written and read them
yourself," she said.
Registration for the courses starts
in August. For more information, contact spirituality@fiu.edu.
