10-12-2006, 10:31 PM
<!--emo&:devil--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/devilsmiley.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='devilsmiley.gif' /><!--endemo--> Cambridge closes door on Sanskrit even as it honours Manmohan
Rashmee Roshan Lall
[ 12 Oct, 2006 2112hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
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LONDON: 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 â 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".
On Thursday, Dr Gordon Johnson, Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge confirmed that "Sanskrit and Hindi will no longer be offered to undergraduates within the Oriental Studies Tripos". But Johnson insisted that "South Asian Studies are thriving at the University of Cambridge and an agreed plan for their expansion is underway. Students continue to study specialist papers with a South Asian content in History, Geography, Economics, Social and Political Sciences, Social Anthropology, Divinity and Archaeology ".
Even so, 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".
Smith, who has taught Sanskrit to Cambridge undergraduates for 22 years said the decision was "tactless" in its timing and skewed in its objectives. "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.
Smith added with unconcealed anger at Cambridge and other Western universities' increasing propensity to run themselves as businesses that employ MBA-speak: "There are some subjects simply worth doing. This is a language that has been going 3,000 years and hasn't stopped yet. You cannot understand the culture of the Indian sub-continent and the world outside it without learning Sanskrit".
As expected of a Sanskrit scholar, Smith's fulminations are thought to be in line with the well-known Sanskrit proverb that enjoins one to think about the effect of disasters before they actually occur because it is not appropriate to start digging a well when the house is on fire.
The tradition of teaching Sanskrit in England â from undergraduate to higher level goes back to 1831, when the first chair in Sanskrit - the Boden - was set up at Oxford.
Smith, who counts amongst his predecessors such internationally-acclaimed Sanskrit scholars such as John Brough and Harold Bailey, said that when he retires and his Sanskrit-scholar colleague does as well, a dozen years from now, Cambridge may be left with no one to teach this liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism and Janinism. The effect on Sanskrit scholarship will be marked, he warned, because of the useful joint initiatives British Sanskrit scholars are able to work through with their counterparts in India.
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Rashmee Roshan Lall
[ 12 Oct, 2006 2112hrs ISTTIMES NEWS NETWORK ]
RSS Feeds| SMS NEWS to 8888 for latest updates
LONDON: 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 â 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".
On Thursday, Dr Gordon Johnson, Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Cambridge confirmed that "Sanskrit and Hindi will no longer be offered to undergraduates within the Oriental Studies Tripos". But Johnson insisted that "South Asian Studies are thriving at the University of Cambridge and an agreed plan for their expansion is underway. Students continue to study specialist papers with a South Asian content in History, Geography, Economics, Social and Political Sciences, Social Anthropology, Divinity and Archaeology ".
Even so, 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".
Smith, who has taught Sanskrit to Cambridge undergraduates for 22 years said the decision was "tactless" in its timing and skewed in its objectives. "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.
Smith added with unconcealed anger at Cambridge and other Western universities' increasing propensity to run themselves as businesses that employ MBA-speak: "There are some subjects simply worth doing. This is a language that has been going 3,000 years and hasn't stopped yet. You cannot understand the culture of the Indian sub-continent and the world outside it without learning Sanskrit".
As expected of a Sanskrit scholar, Smith's fulminations are thought to be in line with the well-known Sanskrit proverb that enjoins one to think about the effect of disasters before they actually occur because it is not appropriate to start digging a well when the house is on fire.
The tradition of teaching Sanskrit in England â from undergraduate to higher level goes back to 1831, when the first chair in Sanskrit - the Boden - was set up at Oxford.
Smith, who counts amongst his predecessors such internationally-acclaimed Sanskrit scholars such as John Brough and Harold Bailey, said that when he retires and his Sanskrit-scholar colleague does as well, a dozen years from now, Cambridge may be left with no one to teach this liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism and Janinism. The effect on Sanskrit scholarship will be marked, he warned, because of the useful joint initiatives British Sanskrit scholars are able to work through with their counterparts in India.
1|2|Next >