Posted on 10/30/2006 11:51:01 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Cambridge has finally closed the door on Sanskrit as a hallowed subject of undergraduate study, nearly one-and-a-half centuries after it first established a chair in the 3,000-year-old language. The Times of India sought -- and received -- confirmation of the university's decision within hours of Cambridge honouring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with a doctor of law degree, in what some scholars believe to be the most cynical form of "tactless academic marketing"... Dr John Smith, reader in Sanskrit at Cambridge, told TOI that it is "not a trivial decision...this is a decision about letting the subject wither on the vine. It is an administrative decision but should actually have been an academic one"... "They are doing this at a point of time when they are honouring Manmohan Singh, soliciting benefactions from wealthy Indian businessmen and seeking students from South Asia," he said. He said he had no new undergraduate students seeking to learn Sanskrit in this academic year, which began a week ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at organiser.org ...
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on or off the
"Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list or GGG weekly digest
-- Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) first arose among Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics owes a great deal to these grammarians, and to this day, for example, key terms for compound analysis such as bahuvrihi are taken from Sanskrit.
The first proposal of the possibility of common origin for some of these languages came from the Dutch linguist and scolar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn in 1647. He discovered the similarity among Indo-European languages, and supposed the existence of a primitive common language which he called "Scythian".
He included in his hypothesis Dutch, Greek, Latin, Persian, and German, later adding Slavic, Celtic and Baltic languages. He excluded languages such as Hebrew from his hypothesis. However, the suggestions of van Boxhorn did not become widely known and did not stimulate further research.
The hypothesis re-appeared in 1786 when Sir William Jones first lectured on similarities between four of the oldest languages known in his time: Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Persian. Systematic comparison of these and other old languages conducted by Franz Bopp supported this theory, and Bopp's Comparative Grammar, appearing between 1833 and 1852 counts as the starting-point of Indo-European studies as an academic discipline.
From the movie PCU--"So your majoring in a 5000 year old dead language?" Sounds like liberalism....
The writing on the front of the link is in Hindu I assume. It should be in Sanskrit which is written depicted with straight line etches only.
What a shame. Guess they didn't have enough interested students.
Saw somewhere that Sanskrit can be written in a variety of scripts although it is most often seen in print in devanagari. Is that correct? There are also some Roman letter variations.
Thanks!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1464109/posts?page=4#4
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1464109/posts?page=15#15
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1464109/posts?page=16#16
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1464109/posts?page=17#17
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1464109/posts?page=19#19
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1464109/posts?page=20#20
Devnagri or its predecessors Brahmi script are the only known scripts in which Sanskrit was written. And Sanskrit existed at a time when Europe didn't even have a written script.
Sad that some people see any kind of scholarly activity as a form of "liberalism". I doubt we are that intellectually bankrupt.
Might be true that Sanskrit has other scripts too but Devanagari is the most popular and still in use script for this and several other Indian languages.
When I learnt a little bit of Sanskrit in my 11th and 12th grades, we used Devanagari script. Sanskrit was pretty difficult to learn it for me despite being fluent in Hindi. But speaking it gives you some kind of amazing feeling that I cant explain or maybe its just me because I am Hindu that I felt it that way. I forgot all of it now. :(
But your job opportunities are greater if you're bilingual, don'cha know.
What little I have studied of Sanskrit was kind of amazing. Seems like I already knew about 1/3 of it, it is familiar somehow, like we still speak it to a degree, even in English, although I don't know if Sanskrit was ever an actual commonly spoken language.
From Wikipedia:
Sanskrit is spoken natively by the population in Mattur village in central Karnataka. Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in childhood and converse in the language. Even the local Muslims speak and converse in Sanskrit. Historically, the village was given by king Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire to Vedic scholars and their families. People in his kingdom spoke Kannada and Tuluva.
That is fascinating to know that some people converse daily in Sanskrit. I think the University should keep the department open just in case they have a visitor from the village some day.
I'm devastated!
I have been saving for years, and finally had enough to apply & enroll next year.
I had planned to move in with my niece's family in Luton, and commute. Spend holidays hill walking. Maybe take a little time to search the Moors for Heathcliff...
Guess I'll just blow the dough on a Star Trek cruise or something.
;')
I agree.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
