Kultur- und religions-geschichte südasiens (Klassische indologie)

goa, 11th February - 1st March 2013teacher: dr. sadananda das

advanced course in spoKen sansKrit

At Shadvala – Cen-tre for Sanskrit Studies, situated in the remote temple-village of Naroa on the banks of the Mandovi river, in central Goa, eight Sanskritists, from seven different countries, gath-

ered for three weeks in February 2013 for an advanced course in Spoken Sanskrit organized by the Department of Classical Indology, Heidelberg University. Our teacher was Dr. Sadananda Das, of the University of Leipzig. Although most of us had attended one of Sadananda’s elementary Sanskrit summer schools in Heidelberg in the past, we did not know each other before the course, and for some of us it was our first time in India.

Classes took place on reed mats, with our notes on our lap, in the all pur-pose ‘class room’, where morning and evening meditation and recitation were also performed. The focal point of the house, howev-

er, was the hall-way, in front of the open-air shrine to Vishnu. Here, with everyone gathered round the single table, or supine on the reed couches, many a fascinat-ing debate on a finer point of Paninian grammar was engaged in, calls to home were made, and delicious veg-etarian Indian meals and cups of cay were consumed.

Our daily routine began with the bell calling us to medi-tation and chanting in the class room, at the unearthly

hour of seven a.m.. Here, to a raucous dawn-chorus of Indian cuckoos in the surrounding banyan trees, and the vigorous tooting of horns by early-rising traffic on the village road, we would attempt not to fall straight back to sleep again in our half-hour’s meditation. Follow-ing this, we would coax our voices into a (reasonably) tuneful rendering of the Shivastotravali. Thereafter, revived by mounds of exotic fruit salad and rice, and perhaps a con-spiratorial coffee (in principle alcohol and other stimu-lants were forbid-den), we repeated, recited, sang and spoke Sanskrit all morning, under the direction of our guru.

All classes were taught entirely in Sanskrit. Starting with relatively sim-ple grammar and phrases, such as api bhavān kushalī? – ām, aham kushalī, dhanyavādaḥ , we progressed quickly to more complicat-ed forms and syntax, such as the past and future passive, the co-ordinating con-junctions, and the cases required by

different prepositions and verbs. Sadananda stressed the much wider range of constructions available in Sanskrit,

than, for example in English, and encour-aged us thus to diver-sify our expression; he also encouraged us to speak Sanskrit among ourselves as much of the time as possible. This law was only breached when someone had

something so witty or urgent to say that putting it into orderly Sanskrit phrases first would have either wrecked the punchline or caused an accident. Every day we were asked to give an account in Sanskrit of the previous day’s activities, the dreaded dinacharyam. Above all, Sadanan-da ensured that for three weeks a constant stream of San-skrit language flowed into our ears, whether in the form of ancient subhāshitas, modern songs, snippets from the Sanskrit radio or television programme, or constant rep-etition of conjugations and declensions; by the end of the three weeks, this stream was at least beginning to be con-verted into a (halting) stream of Sanskrit conversation. If at the beginning English threated to conquer as the lingua franca of Shadvala, by the end Sanskrit was victorious.

And it was not all study: we also rehearsed and put on a modern Sanskrit drama, Gurubhakti. Afternoons and weekends were spent walking in the surrounding coun-tryside and villages, or chatting in Sanskrit on the banks of the river. Sanskrit was also consolidated on sallies out to the nearest beach, by hired car or scooter; and other expeditions were made to beach-side markets, Old Goa, and other sights.

All in all, much Sanskrit was learned, in a traditional and inspiring environment, and a good time was had by all. I

am sure I can speak for us all in saying how grateful we are to our teacher Sadananda for all that he did, and to everyone else who made the course possible. We have all come away chanting, chatting and singing Sanskrit, and I for one cannot wait for the time when so many spoken Sanskritists, and so able a teacher, are gathered together in such an inspiring location again.

(Iona Macgregor, Hamburg University)