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| Class text: Samskrita Bharati, based in India, is a source of instructional materials. Joanne Ciccarello – Staff |
Sanskrit echoes around the world
The rise of India's economy has brought an eagerness to learn the ancient 'language of the gods' – and a great-great aunt to English.
By Vijaysree Venkatraman | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitorfrom the July 5, 2007 edition
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Cambridge, Mass. - Deep inside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a Wednesday evening recently, a class of about a dozen students were speaking an arcane ancient tongue.
"It is time for exams, and I play every day," says one.
"Perhaps, you should study, too," counters another at the conversation table. The others laugh.
No, this isn't Latin 101 – that would be easy. This is Sanskrit, a classical language that is the Indian equivalent of ancient Greek or Latin.
Today, spoken Sanskrit is enjoying a revival – both in India and among Indian expatriates in the United States. There is even evidence of Sanskrit emerging in American popular culture as more and more people roll out yoga mats at the local gym and greet one another with "Namaste."
Soon, the conversation at the MIT class turns to plans for the summer. Most of those attending are graduate students. Lavanya Marla, working toward a PhD in transportation engineering, says the informal setting is a good break from science. "Plus, the homework is easy," she adds.
Among the other attendees are a French post-doctoral physics candidate (who attended out of sheer curiosity at first, then stayed), and an eleventh-grader from Lexington (Mass.) High School. Another is a self-described "old Yankee" from Salem, Mass., who has diligently taught himself Sanskrit script as well.
Harvard, Yale, and the University of Chicago, among others, have long offered Sanskrit courses to undergrads. But the demand for these classes is growing beyond academic settings. A decade-long economic boom has brought Indians some measure of prosperity, and with it a sense of pride in the nation's past. In large part, however, the revival is the result of the efforts of a private group, Samskrita Bharati, headquartered in New Delhi. The volunteer-based group's mission: Bring the pan-Indian language back to the mainstream and lay the groundwork for a cultural renaissance.
"There were many reasons for the decline of Sanskrit," says Chamu Krishna Shastry, who founded Samskrita Bharati in 1981, "but one of the foremost was the unimaginative way it was taught since [British] colonial times." Later, in a newly democratic India, the language associated with upper-caste Brahmin priests held little appeal to the masses. The present movement to revive Sanskrit aims to teach the "language of the gods" to anyone who cares to learn it.
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