In a first of its kind step, the Indian Institute of Technology Indore is conducting a fortnightly course to study classical scientific texts in their original form and converse about them in Sanskrit.
The course scheduled from August 22 to October 2 has been divided into two parts. The first part is aimed at enabling participants to develop skills and confidence to converse in simple Sanskrit. This is intended for beginners with no prior knowledge of Sanskrit.
The objective of the second part of the course is to enable participants to discuss technical subjects in Sanskrit. This part will consist of lectures on classical mathematical text Bhaskaracharya’s Lilavati by well-known experts in the field.
The lectures will be followed by a discussion in Sanskrit that will be facilitated by a Sanskrit language expert. Participation in the facilitated discussion will be mandatory for all participants for the award of the course completion certificate. A qualifying exam will be conducted to evaluate the preparedness of participants for Level 2 part of the course.
IIT Indore officiating director Prof Neelesh Kumar Jain said “Sanskrit being an ancient language is now finding its place in Artificial Intelligence and would become the language of future too. I am very happy that we have taken this initiative to reconnect people with this language, not just as a hobby but as a necessity as it comes with a blend of technology.”
IIT Indore faculty Dr Ganti S Murthy, who is the course coordinator, said “Most of the traditional Indic scientific treatises in sustainable water resource management, agriculture, mathematics, metallurgy, astronomy, medicine, plant sciences, economic and political texts such as Artha shastra are all in Sanskrit. Therefore, understanding Sanskrit with a view to studying these texts is extremely important to preserve and advance India's scientific heritage.
“The primary objective of this course is to encourage participants to study classical scientific texts in their original form and converse about them in Sanskrit. We were pleasantly surprised by the strong response to the course with over 750 participants from all over the world.”
“We are grateful to the strong support from All Indian Council for Technical Education,” he added.
IIT Indore PRO Sunil Kumar said that they are planning to conduct more courses in future exploring other scientific and technical areas of our scientific heritage to understand and draw inspiration from the past to become a Swabhimaan and Atmanirbhar Bharat.
The experts are conducting the course are Pramod Pandit, Mayuri Phadke, and Pravesh Vaishnav, Samskrita Bharati, Madhya Kshetram, Bharatam. The technical experts are Prof K Ramasubramanian and Dr K Mahesh from IIT Bombay.
