[Over
the past decade, there has been a small but significant increase in interest in
learning classical Indian languages, especially Sanskrit. They might not yet
form a corpus of expert translators - a lack of which was cited as the reason
why the Murty Classical Library of India mostly uses foreign experts to
translate Indian classics, a decision that was criticised by some Indian
academics - but they are learning to enjoy the couplets and cadences written
eons ago.]
By Sandhya Soman & Shalini
Umachandran
Arjun Bharadwaj learnt Sanskrit as a child,
listening to his teacher talk about the shubhashitas (epigrammatic poems and
sayings). As he grew older, Bharadwaj followed the well-trodden path of
engineering degrees and a masters abroad, but languages, especially Sanskrit,
remained a passion. "I've learnt German, Italian, Latin and took a course
on classical Greek in Zurich," he says. "What I want to do now is to
use Sanskrit aesthetics to examine Greek classics," says Bharadwaj, who enrolled
at the Karnataka Samskrit University in Bengaluru, and is working on his
masters in the language.
He is not alone. There are IT company
executives, engineers, the occasional doctor, and scores of students from
pathashalas (schools) and mutts in search of a formal degree in Sanskrit. Over
the past decade, there has been a small but significant increase in interest in
learning classical Indian languages, especially Sanskrit. They might not yet
form a corpus of expert translators - a lack of which was cited as the reason
why the Murty Classical Library of India mostly uses foreign experts to
translate Indian classics, a decision that was criticised by some Indian
academics - but they are learning to enjoy the couplets and cadences written
eons ago.
The tide could turn in the future. The
Karnataka Samskrit University (KSU), set up in 2010, has 31 colleges that offer
BA, MA and postdoctoral study courses, as well as a basic course via 354
traditional pathashalas across the state. "In 2010, there were around
12,000 pathashala students. Now, the student population is more than
22,000," says Shrinivasa Varakhedi, professor and dean, KSU. Five years
ago, the colleges had around 1,500 students, which has gone up to 4,000. The
number of colleges has also gone up from 13 in 2010 to 31 now, and 90 students
registered for MPhil and PhD programmes in the last three years. "Out of
this, 22 have got their MPhil," Varakhedi says.
At some level, the increased interest in
Sanskrit seems to be a case of 'If you build it, they will come'. "The
formation of a university and the opportunity to get a formal degree has
created a lot of interest," says Varakhedi. A significant number of
students come from mutts, or from groups who have traditionally learnt the
language, but change is visible, especially if you happen to visit the KSU's
evening college centre in Bengaluru. "We started the BA programme three
years ago and opened it to all. Now, we have working professionals, retirees
and students," says Varakhedi. When PG classes were offered at the same
centre last year, the pattern repeated. "Some who work in IT companies
start from their offices by 4pm, travel for a few hours to spend time at the
class between 6pm and 9pm. Though the number is really small, just 11 students,
the impact has been high," he says.
Traditional
learning:
The Rajiv Gandhi Kendriya Sanskrit
Vidyapeetha in Sringeri has also seen a steady increase in enrolment.
"What decline?" asks A C Sachhidananda Udupa, the head of the
institution.
"There has been a steady increase in
interest in Sanskrit learning. We have students from 14 states enrolled here.
There are students who have quit senior-level
bank jobs in Tamil Nadu and Odisha to learn Vedanta and Advaita. Others have
stayed on to research the influence of Sanskrit on other languages and its role
in the preservation of our cultural heritage," he says.
The students come from a variety of back
grounds. Niranjan, the son of a farmer in a village near Karwar, is a second
year MA student who wants to see for himself what vedic science is all about.
Swarna Man dara, the son of a medical shop attendant from Sholapur in
Maharashtra, wants to specialize in kavya (poetics) and mimamsa (a branch of
philosophy).
Pali-drome:
A search for meaning could also lead to Pali.
The International Institute of Pali, Sanskrit and Comparative Philosophy,
affiliated to KSU, has around 50 students for a six-month course in basic Pali
that was started recently.
Some, like 54-year-old Ravi Sajjan, joined up
to read the Dhammapada (a collection of Buddha's sayings) in the original. For
others, like Vijayakumar Bhogappa, learning Pali is the logical extension of a
fascination with Dr Ambedkar's impact on the arid Hyderabad Karnatak district.
Institute director Mallepuram G Venkatesh says
he was surprised to see the number of students who showed interest in the
course. The interest in Pali and Buddhism in north Karnataka is not just due to
the historical links but also due to the Ambedkarite movement that has come in
from neighbouring Maharashtra. "Language students hope to do comparative
study of Sanskrit and Pali, which are ancient sister languages. There are also
many interested in comparative history and philosophy," he says.
Local
lessons:
The search to understand one's history and
heritage has also prompted an interest in learning Halegannada, or ancient
Kannada, which dates back to the 5th century, and is the language of classical
poetry and epigraphy. "I've been writing poetry from the time I was a
child and wanted to improve, so I started reading Pampa's verses," says
Ganesh Koppalatota, 26, a mechanical engineer who has been learning Halegannada
with the help of a dictionary for the past few years. "Reading the
classics in their original form brings me great personal joy," he says.
For Sudha Murty, chairman of Infosys Foundation, the introduction to
Halegannada came during a diploma course on epigraphy. "I always wanted to
study Kannada history and language but was busy with engineering, Infosys,
children," says Murty. "One part of the epigraphy course was
Halegannada and I decided to pursue it further," she says. Murty does
about eight to 10 classes a month with her tutor and has read 22 mahakavyas
(lyrical epics of Kannada) of 8th, 9th and 10th century poets in the last six
years.
One of the challenges to learning a classical
language is finding a good teacher. "The grammar is the same but much of
the vocabulary is different and this is the struggle with learning it,"
she says, adding that a knowledge of Sanskrit, which she learned as a child,
made the going easier.
It's easy to worry about the state of our
classical languages -and indeed, there is cause for concern. "Young people
are exposed to English and Hindi so much that regional languages are losing
out," says Vaddagere Nagarajaiah, a writer and member of the Karnataka
Sahitya Academy in Bengaluru. "But knowing Halegannada, for instance, is a
route into understanding your own history and about society, ideas and politics
of the past. You can read original texts. There is so much to enjoy and learn
from our poetry," he says."And you can also compare with and better
appreciate all world classics in all languages."
Sajjan talks about the sheer pleasure of
reading the rhyming verses of Dhammapada, and hopes to learn enough to
translate some of the lesser known Buddhist texts.
Though Murty began Halegannada purely for the
love of the language, she's found that it has helped her with her work. When
the Infosys Foundation was restoring the 1,400-year-old Somanatheswara Temple
in Lakshmeshwara, 40km from Hubli, she could read the inscriptions on its
walls. "I could truly understand the history of the place we were working
in," she says.
