Excerpts from The New Indian Express article published on 1st June 2013:
Hundreds of people in Fiji are coming out to take a seven-day crash course of the Indian classical language Sanskrit.
Sanskrit scholar Gajendra Panda is in that south Pacific island nation at the invitation of the Fiji Sevashram Sangha (FSS) to impart knowledge of the language, the Fiji Times reported Saturday.
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“The way this course was run was easy to understand and it captured the participants’ interest and enthusiasm on the first day and they were compelled to take time every evening for classes.”
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Ethnic Indians comprise 37 percent of Fiji’s total population of nearly 870,000.
Most of them are descendants of indentured labourers who were brought in from India between 1879 and 1916 to work in the country’s sugarcane plantations.
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Full article at
I got booklets for Sanskrit by correspondence course of Samskrita Bharati yesterday. It is so interesting to practice the alphabets of this language of great antiquity and surprisingly it is quite easy. The picture above shows my first copies of the Sanskrit alphabets. Seems it is only a matter of days before I can directly read Sanskrit text!
South India born former Miss World Aishwarya Rai Bachchan advised cutting of desire, ambition and ego for peace at an annual peace meet at the United Nation.
Some excerpts from Times of India:
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, 38, visited the UN headquarters here yesterday, participating in the world body’s annual ceremony to commemorate the International Day of Peace.
It was a packed day for Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and UN Messengers of Peace actor Michael Douglas, British anthropologist Jane Goodall, Jewish-American writer and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and American actress and singer Monique Coleman.
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She later participated in a panel discussion attended by students from across the country on the theme of ‘Sustainable Peace for a Sustainable Future.’
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“We need to cut out our wants, desires, basic ambition to try and override each other and expand power. Only then we will be able to find our peace,” she said.
She concluded her address with the Sanskrit shloka ‘Om Shanti’ noting that peace is not just a word but a “divine manifestation which we have to give birth to within ourselves.”
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Ms. Rai who had a successful career as a movie actor has stopped acting since the birth of the first child. Whether the big change in her life has brought new perceptions to her or it is all to the credit of some speech writer it was an inspiring and fitting speech from the much loved celebrity of India.
A volunteer from Samskrita Bharati phoned to inform me about weekend Free Spoken Sanskrit classes in Chennai. Their 4-hour classes on weekends were ideal for me. I was a bit wary though that continuous four hours of class might be tedious but as classes were shared by several teachers there was no monotony. The class profile was quite diverse. Among the 25 students, there were primary school kids, college students, working people, and retired. Some had preliminary levels of exposure, others had already attended classes, and yet others, like me, had never undergone a Sanskrit class. Such a class profile would be daunting to any teacher but the Samkrita Bharati volunteers went about it effortlessly.
Objects, actual or miniature sizes, were physically shown while giving their names in Sanskrit. That helped one remember the names easily. Some names were the same as in Tamil or were derivable from related Tamil words. Aeroplane is Vimana, and the chair is Aasandhaga. Since I knew spoken Malayalam and Hindi as well a lot of words were quite familiar: Kuppi is a bottle, Budha vaasaha is Wednesday, Nava is number nine, Samasaha is a spoon, etc.
A volunteer Sanskrit teacher
Amazingly it was also possible to understand quite well the story narrations. Listening to stories in Sanskrit already studied in schools in various regional languages of India is really a wonderful way for Indians learning Sanskrit as words of it are found in almost all Indian languages. I noted a number of words and terms that were the same or similar in Tamil. Any Tamil speaker would have understood that “Veera maranam praapthu” meant “Veera maranam adaindhaar” or “Anya raja aakramanam karodhi” meant “Anniya raja aakkiramiththaar”.
A common feature of the teaching was that all volunteers spoke almost entirely in Sanskrit. Instead of giving translations they explained unknown words of Sanskrit with known words of the same. The reason was explained by one of the teachers: Everyone learns his mother tongue, in childhood, by listening to the people around and teachers. All students of the Sanskrit class are like children learning a new language and therefore taught in the same way. And quite a lot of adults really enjoyed acting childlike, particularly while learning simple Sanskrit songs. It was amusing to see them follow the gestures of the teachers like nursery kids do.
But if Sanskrit has to become a popular language spoken by people belonging to all religions then it may be wiser for Samskrit Bharati to avoid using pictures of deities and religious shlokas etc. which may be construed as promoting Hinduism through Sanskrit teaching. Then I think more people from all religions would be encouraged to attend. There were probably a few non-Hindus already in the class including a burka-clad Muslim girl.
After the course, the notion of Sanskrit being a difficult language to speak was certainly gone. Writing Sanskrit could be another matter but spoken Sanskrit is certainly easy if one attends a course like this. If a Sanskrit speaker is available to converse with, then one can remain a fluent speaker forever.
Everyone was speaking in a strange language. Strange yet somewhat distantly familiar. Tada, Kim, Danyavadhaha were the words often heard. Some spoke torrentially with pride and some haltingly but enthusiastically. From the reception stall where a gentleman with a very friendly spirit tied a Raksha Bandhan on my right wrist, to the roads beyond, grounds, stairs, corridors, stairs, halls and auditorium one could hear nothing but this new language everywhere. Costumed boys and girls awaiting to stage their plays men and women of all ages didn’t utter a word in English, Hindi or Tamil. But when I asked some explanation or direction they willingly talked my language and that helped me from not feeling lost. At times their first reply was in that strange new language followed by its translation which I found a very endearing way to learn the language quickly. That was my first experience with a Sanskrit speaking society. The place was a college campus in Chennai where SamskritotsavaH2012 was on – from 18th to 20th August, 2012.
Entrance of Vaishnav College, Chennai during Samskritostav2012
I could get to imbibe the spirit of the occasion a little more as my co-student from high school days and close friend from college years Suresh (presently a senior software engineeer at Bangalore) happens to be a Sanskrit enthusiast and came down to Chennai participate in the festival. Suresh looked like a Greek philosopher – quite a transformation from the dense haired Rajnikant appearance he had in his youth. He had attended spoken Sanskrit course conducted by Mr. Ramachandran who is the present Tamil Nadu head of Samskritha Bharati, the organisation spearheading the Sanskrit movement in India since the eighties. Though he seemed to have several friends who were fluent in the language he himself doesn’t speak Sanskrit. When I suggested that perhaps it requires the availability of someone to talk to, a Sanskrit teacher friend of his escorting us around the festival said, “Tadasmi”. I had heard that term before – isn’t it from some Upanishad? Suresh’s translation confirmed: “I am there”. To speak Sanskrit, I felt, is to become godlike; it has been aptly called as the Deva Basha – Divine language.
A Sanskrit play by school kids
There were a hall with posters displaying quotes from eminent people around the world on the greatness of Bhagavad Gita. I found a couple of quotes from Sri Aurobindo displayed there.
A quote from Sri Aurobindo on Bhagavad Gita
Solomon Pappiah who is a star of sorts on Tamil TV Channel discussions presided an assemblage of Tamil and Sanskrit scholars on the stage on Sunday morning. The auditorium was nearly full. He regaled the people in his inimitable way and expressed regret at the lack of opportunity to learn Sanskrit during his youth because of the anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu. He lamented that none of his teachers had told him that Vada Mozhi – as Sanskrit was termed in ancient Tamil literature – actually implied that it was a language that was taught under the Banyan tree, according to Encylopedia Britannica. I think Britannica found the meaning but lost the significance. Probably it was called as a “Banyan- like-language” as countless languages in the world have words traceable to Sanskrit. He also decried the yester year purist Tamil scholars’ rejection of sounds not existing in original Tamil but prevalent in Sanskrit. They started calling Samaskrutham as Samakrudham to avoid the “s” sound. One of the participants in the discussion read out Mahakavi Subramania Bharati’s advocacy of Sanskrit as common language for India which I think is a valuable piece of information quite unknown to public at large. Another speaker – whom I have seen anchoring doordarshan tv discusions – spoke eloquently on the Sanskrit knowledge that Tamil poets like Pattinaththaar and Kamban had. It was pointed out by a speaker that rulers in Tamil Nadu and Gujarat used Sanskrit to correspond with each other in ancient times. Another panelist described the story of a great Sanskrit scholar in deep poverty and requested the organisers to do something for very poor Sanskrit and Tamil scholars.
Solomon Pappiah delivering opening address of a discussion forum
To commemorate Swami Vivekananda’s 150 th birth anniversary and SamskitotsavaH, Samskrita Bharati is organising over 40 Sanskrit classes all over Chennai in August and September.
It seems Sanskrit is going to be unstoppable as it has a magical way to charm and enter every Indian heart.
jotsans 