Focus on spoken Sanskrit, Vajpayee tells scholars

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 5. The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, today called for a collective national effort to take Sanskrit - the repository of Indian culture and heritage - to the masses.

``Sanskrit is not a language of the dead, it is a language of the immortals,'' Mr. Vajpayee said inaugurating the World Sanskrit Conference here. However, he added that the scholars must try and simplify the approach to the teaching of Sanskrit, emphasising more on the spoken language rather than merely its grammar.

Giving his own example, Mr. Vajpayee, said he had studied Sanskrit up to graduation, but still lacked the capacity to speak fluently in the language. ``We have failed to establish Sanskrit as the language of the masses''.

He said there must be a nation-wide effort to enhance scholarship in the language. An effort should be made to publish the as-yet unpublished manuscripts to bring out the richness of the language.In his presidential address, Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, Union Human Resource Development Minister, said the knowledge contained in Sanskrit and works in that language covered every field. Therefore, there had to be a programme of research at the national and international level to scrutinise the manuscripts that have yet not been studied.

Prof. Fredrick Wilhelm, a Sanskrit scholar from Germany, said this was a modern language and scholars must pay attention to its evolution. ``It should not be difficult to find the Sanskrit equivalent of technological terms'', he said. The noted jurist and scholar, Dr. L. M. Singhvi, said Sanskrit was not just a language and part of our heritage. It was ``our identity''.

The former Chief Justice of India, Dr. Ranganath Mishra, who is also the organising secretary of the conference, pointed to the fact that the Constitution recognised Sanskrit as a modern language and accorded it a special status.

Scholars from all over the world are participating in the four- day conference which will, among other things, deliberate on the power of the language to integrate not only India, but bring together peoples across the world.

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