Sanskrit is one of the 22 official languages in India.[3] In 2010, Uttarakhand became the first state in India to have Sanskrit as its second official language.[4] In 2019, Himachal Pradesh became the second state to have Sanskrit as the second official language.[5] There are 2,360,821 total speakers of Sanskrit in India, as of 2011.[6] However, despite attempts at revival,[7][8] there are no first language speakers of Sanskrit in India.[7][9][10] In each of India's recent decennial censuses, several thousand citizens have reported Sanskrit to be their mother tongue,[a] but the numbers are thought to signify a wish to be aligned with the prestige of the language.[7][11][12][13]
Historyedit
In 1891 there was organized activity among the Theosophists in India promoting and participating in the revival of Sanskrit.[14] In 1894 the American Asiatic and Sanskrit Revival Society was established.[15]
The state of Uttarakhand has become the first state in India to declare Sanskrit as an official language. The Central Board of Secondary Education in India has made Sanskrit a third language in the schools it governs (though it is an option for a school to adopt it or not, the other choice being the state's own official language). In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools, including but not limited to Christian missionary schools, affiliated to the ICSE board too, especially in those states where the official language is Hindi. An option between Sanskrit and a local language as a second language exists for grades 9 and 10.[citation needed]
Sanskrit revival movementsedit
Sanskrit literature movementedit
There is a Sanskrit literature movement to revive Sanskrit.[17]
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has started giving "World Sanskrit Award" to eminent Sanskrit scholars to recognise their outstanding contribution to the study, teaching, research in Sanskrit language and literature. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand was conferred the first ‘World Sanskrit Award’ in 2016.[18] In 2017, Robert Goldman was awarded the World Sanskrit Award.[19]
There are also many Sanskrit writers who won Sahitya Akademi Award winners.
Global organisationsedit
Samskrita Bharati is an organization working for Sanskrit revival. It is a tax exempt nonprofit organization with its headquarters in New Delhi, India. The International Centre, Aksharam, a complex located in Bangalore, India, is its international centre. It houses a research wing, a library, audio-visual lab, and staff quarters. It also has several state-units spread across the country both in the United States and India. The US chapter is a registered nonprofit tax-exempt organization with its headquarters in San Jose, California. Samskrita Bharati functions as an umbrella organization for various organizations working for promotion of Samskrita. Being the liturgical language of Hindus, it is used during worship in Hindu temples in the West. It is taught in many South Asian studies/linguistics departments in universities across the West. Also, Sanskrit revival attempts are underway amongst expatriate Hindu populations in the west.[20] It is also popular amongst the many practitioners of yoga in the West, who find the language useful in understanding the Yoga Sutra[citation needed].
Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is an India educational trust. It was founded on 7 November 1938 by K. M. Munshi, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi. The trust programmes through its 119 centres in India, seven centres abroad and 367 constituent institutions. One of its purposes is the promotion of Sanskrit over "all aspects of life from the cradle to the grave and beyond" – thus filling "a growing vacuum in modern life".[This quote needs a citation]
Modern Sanskrit universities in Indiaedit
In the last few years sporadic efforts have been made to form Sanskrit universities for Sanskrit studies and vyakarana in India. The Sanskrit Universities Bill is aimed at converting Sanskrit deemed to be universities to central universities.[21] The partial list of such universities is given below in chronological order:
The Maharshi Sandipani Rashtriya Veda Sanskrit Shiksha Board (MSRVSSB) is a national-level school education board which grants the Veda Bhushan (10th) and Veda Vibhushan (12th) certificates to the students of affiliated schools. MSRVSSB certificates are accredited by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and AICTE as the recognised qualifications for admission into other tertiary institutions for a higher degree. Along with the modern subjects, the students are also taught Hindu scriptures, vedas, upnishads, ayurveda and sanskrit.[22]
Assam and Northeast India, where Sanskrit has reached by the late vedic period, has Kamarupa Anusandhan Samiti which was established in 2012 to research Sanskrit, Ananda Ram Baruah institute of languages publishes Sanskrit manuscripts, and Assam Sanskrit Board is responsible for researching and preserving Sanskrit documents and manuscripts.[23]
Himachal Pradesh has many Sanskrit institutes.[29] In 2019 the Himachal Pradesh government decided to make Sanskrit the second official language replacing Punjabi.[30] Also, Himachal Pradesh government has plans to teach Sanskrit as a compulsory language from 3rd to 5th standards.[31][32] Currently Sanskrit is taught from 5th to 10th standards in the state. The state government has also intended to open a Sanskrit university to revive the language in the state.[33]
Some believe the move was controversial as is aimed at Sanskritisation of the province and rather than revival of Sanskrit, the Western Pahari language should have been revived which is the local language system of the province written originally in Takri script.[34][35]
Indonesia: the Udayana University of Bali established a "Chairs of Indian studies" in 2013 which also offers a Sanskrit course in Denpasar with the help of the Indian government.[51] Several educational institutions in Indonesia have also been teaching Sanskrit and Balinese Hinduism[52] such as the State Hindu College of Tampung Penyang (a state-owned Hindu institute in Central Kalimantan), the Gde Pudja Hindu State Institute in Mataram city, and many more. In 2019, the Bali TV has been conducting Sanskrit lessons for Hindu locals in Bali.[53] Indonesian languages are heavily influenced by Sanskrit and have numerous Sanskrit loanwords, mottoes of institutes and ancient inscriptions.
Laos: Buddhist studies such as Sanskrit and Pali are usually undertaken at Buddhist monasteries, such as Vientiane Sangha College and Champasak Sangha College.[54]
Vietnam: under pressure from Buddhist monks, a Khmer Buddhist Studies Institute of Southern Vietnam (called Wicia Stan Butisasana Khmer Vietnam Khang Thhon in Khmer language) was opened in 2007 on 12 ha land of Wat Sanvoar by the government in the Ô Môn District of Cần Thơ province to teach Sanskrit and Buddhist subjects in Khmer language at university level.[62] There are three more Buddhist institutes, one each at Hanoi, Mỹ Sơn and Saigon, in the Vietnamese language.[62]Cham Hindus, also called Balamon Chams, who mostly reside in Bình Thuận Province and Ninh Thuận Province, are practicing Hindus in Vietnam.[63][64]
Africaedit
The following nations in Africa offer opportunities for Sanskrit studies:
South Africa: St James Preparatory Schools in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg offer Sanskrit classes.[65][66][67]
Americasedit
The following nations in the Americas offer opportunities for Sanskrit studies:
USA: as of 2007, there are about 36 universities which offer Sanskrit education including Johns Hopkins University and Harvard University.[68] In the United States, since September 2009, high school students have been able to receive credits as independent study or toward foreign-language requirements by studying Sanskrit, as part of the SAFL: Samskritam as a Foreign Language program coordinated by Samskrita Bharati.[69] The Hindu University of America (HUA) offers several courses in written and spoken Samskritam (Sanskrit) as well as Sanskrit based courses on the Bhagavad-Gita, Upanishads and other Sanskrit literature and works.
Arab and Middle Eastedit
The following nations in the Middle East offer opportunities for Sanskrit studies:
^"C-17 Population by Bilingualism and Trilingualism".
^ abcdSreevastan, Ajai (August 10, 2014). "Where are the Sanskrit speakers?". The Hindu. Chennai. Retrieved October 11, 2020. Sanskrit is also the only scheduled language that shows wide fluctuations — rising from 6,106 speakers in 1981 to 49,736 in 1991 and then falling dramatically to 14,135 speakers in 2001. "This fluctuation is not necessarily an error of the Census method. People often switch language loyalties depending on the immediate political climate," says Prof. Ganesh Devy of the People's Linguistic Survey of India. ... Because some people "fictitiously" indicate Sanskrit as their mother tongue owing to its high prestige and Constitutional mandate, the Census captures the persisting memory of an ancient language that is no longer anyone's real mother tongue, says B. Mallikarjun of the Center for Classical Language. Hence, the numbers fluctuate in each Census. ... "Sanskrit has influence without presence," says Devy. "We all feel in some corner of the country, Sanskrit is spoken." But even in Karnataka's Mattur, which is often referred to as India's Sanskrit village, hardly a handful indicated Sanskrit as their mother tongue.
^"Indian village where people speak in Sanskrit". BBC News. December 22, 2014. Retrieved September 30, 2020.
^Ruppel, A. M. (2017). The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-107-08828-3. The study of any ancient (or dead) language is faced with one main challenge: ancient languages have no native speakers who could provide us with examples of simple everyday speech
^Annamalai, E. (2008). "Contexts of multilingualism". In Braj B. Kachru; Yamuna Kachru; S. N. Sridhar (eds.). Language in South Asia. Cambridge University Press. pp. 223–. ISBN 978-1-139-46550-2. Some of the migrated languages ... such as Sanskrit and English, remained primarily as a second language, even though their native speakers were lost. Some native languages like the language of the Indus valley were lost with their speakers, while some linguistic communities shifted their language to one or other of the migrants' languages.
^McCartney, Patrick (May 10, 2020), Searching for Sanskrit Speakers in the Indian Census, The Wire, retrieved November 24, 2020 Quote: "What this data tells us is that it is very difficult to believe the notion that Jhiri is a “Sanskrit village” where everyone only speaks fluent Sanskrit at a mother tongue level. It is also difficult to accept that the lingua franca of the rural masses is Sanskrit, when most the majority of L1, L2 and L3 Sanskrit tokens are linked to urban areas. The predominance of Sanskrit across the Hindi belt also shows a particular cultural/geographic affection that does not spread equally across the rest of the country. In addition, the clustering with Hindi and English, in the majority of variations possible, also suggests that a certain class element is involved. Essentially, people who identify as speakers of Sanskrit appear to be urban and educated, which possibly implies that the affiliation with Sanskrit is related in some way to at least some sort of Indian, if not, Hindu, nationalism."
^McCartney, Patrick (May 11, 2020), The Myth of 'Sanskrit Villages' and the Realm of Soft Power, The Wire, retrieved November 24, 2020 Quote: "Consider the example of this faith-based development narrative that has evolved over the past decade in the state of Uttarakhand. In 2010, Sanskrit became the state's second official language. ... Recently, an updated policy has increased this top-down imposition of language shift, toward Sanskrit. The new policy aims to create a Sanskrit village in every “block” (administrative division) of Uttarakhand. The state of Uttarakhand consists of two divisions, 13 districts, 79 sub-districts and 97 blocks. ... There is hardly a Sanskrit village in even one block in Uttarakhand. The curious thing is that, while 70% of the state's total population live in rural areas, 100pc of the total 246 L1-Sanskrit tokens returned at the 2011 census are from Urban areas. No L1-Sanskrit token comes from any villager who identifies as an L1-Sanskrit speaker in Uttarakhand."
^Distribution of the 22 Scheduled Languages – India / States / Union Territories – Sanskrit(PDF), Census of India, 2011, p. 30, retrieved October 4, 2020
^Theosophical Society (Madras, India) (1891). "The Theosophist". Theosophist: A Monthly Journal Devoted to the Oriental Philosophy, Art, Literature and Occultism. 12. Theosophical Publishing House: 192. ISSN 0040-5892. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
^The Path. Vol. 9. W.Q. Judge. 1895. p. 296. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
^"Language in India". languageinindia.com. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
^"First World Sanskrit Award Given". November 21, 2016.
^"Robert Goldman wins World Sanskrit Award for 2017". September 6, 2017.
^"YouTube". youtube.com. Archived from the original on May 11, 2014. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
^"Cabinet approves Central Sanskrit Universities Bill, to be introduced in Parliament: Prakash Javadekar". The Times of India. December 4, 2019. Retrieved December 10, 2019.
^Technical regulator asks universities, colleges to recognise & admit students of Vedic board, ThePrint, 22 Sept 2022.
^"The Cham: Descendants of Ancient Rulers of South China Sea Watch Maritime Dispute From Sidelines". National Geographic News. June 18, 2014. Archived from the original on June 20, 2014.
^Andrew Hardy, Mauro Cucarzi, Patrizia Zolese, Champa and the archaeology of Mỹ Sơn (Vietnam), p.105
^ ab"Home". John Scottus School. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
^ ab"Sanskrit script opens the path to spirituality and helps improve focus | Saturday Star". www.iol.co.za. Retrieved May 24, 2019.
^ abBarrett, David V. (1996). Sects, cults, and alternative religions: a world survey and sourcebook. London: Blandford. ISBN 0713725672. OCLC 36909325.
^Popularity of Sanskrit on rise in US, Europe, Hindustan Times], Hindustan Times, 10 July 2007.
^Varija Yelagalawadi. "Why SAFL?". Samskrita Bharati USA. Archived from the original on May 12, 2015.
^Sanskrit stages linguistic revival, Germans lead the way
^Sanskrit University signs MoUs with three German varsities, Times of India, 22 October 2019.
^SOAS BA Sanskrit pathway, SOAS University of London.
^"Sanskrit @ St James". Sanskrit @ St James. Retrieved October 8, 2017.
^"SEGUNDA LENGUA II: LENGUAS INDOIRANIAS | guias.usal.es".
^The ancient language of Sanskrit is being revived in Australia, SBS, 17 August 2017.
^Sydney Grammar School. "Headmaster's Introduction". Archived from the original on 15 March 2015.
^Hundreds in FIJI Learn Sanskrit, Spiritual Bangalore, 1 June 2013.
^"University of Fiji's First Batch of Graduates" Archived 2012-02-07 at the Wayback Machine, Islands Business, May 2008