On Jun 25, 2021, at 07:43, Dean Michael Anderson via INDOLOGY
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Jan,
Thank you for this informative post. One question. You wrote that
French was: "the language which was the first occidental language of
the scientific study of Sanskrit"
Could you please give me more information on this? I was recently
briefly covering the history of Sanskrit in the West and, while I was
aware that France was one of the major players, I was not aware that
it was the "first" in this sense.
I am not doubting you, since you no doubt know more about this than me.
Could you please point me to some publications on this? Sadly,
though, French is not one of my main languages and is only at the
tourist level.
Of course, in today's climate in the US, even that is enough that
some might consider it un-American. I've heard that more than one
person said, "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough
for me."
Best,
Dean
On Friday, June 25, 2021, 7:16:48 PM GMT+5:30, Jan E.M. Houben via
INDOLOGY <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Dominik,
Thanks for asking this useful question.
In addition to Isabelle's earlier contribution to this thread I would
like to add a few elements: the BA in Sanskrit at the Sorbonne
Nouvelle is pedagogically one of the best in the world -- the only
limitations I would add are: in the occidental world, for a Western
public, because the strategy to teach Sanskrit to Indian / South
Asian students can be and should be different as most of them, even
if their main subjects are IT, engineering etc., are already so much
familiar with Sanskrit and Sanskritic vocabulary which often helps
but may frequently also put the student on a wrong or deceptive track.
Hence during my stay at IIT-Bhubaneswar as visiting professor in 2019
(teaching, among other things, an introductory course on Sanskrit,
German and comparative linguistics specially for IIT-students with an
Indian linguistic background), I planned and organized a seminar on
"Functional and Communicative Sanskrit" on 21 December 2019 with
contributions by Godabarish Mishra, Amba Kulkarni, Siniruddha Dash
and others. My plan to help to develop this further, in 2020, to an
introductory course on Sanskrit and comparative linguistics specially
for these students could not be realized due to the Corona crisis.
As for the BA in Sanskrit at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, another plus is
that it is in French, so that the student at the same time can
develop familiarity with the language which was the first occidental
language of the scientific study of Sanskrit, extensively used also
by the earlier generation of German Sanskrit scholars such as the
brothers von Schlegel and Franz Bopp.
As for the Sorbonne Nouvelle, the manual used, or one of the major
manuals used, is /Le Sanskrit/ by Nalini Balbir (Paris, 2013) of
which an English version is in preparation. The specialty of /Le
Sanskrit/ is that it presents, for the first time, the language not
only in its grammatical structure but also as a living means of
expression and communication, /entirely on the basis of examples
attested/ in Sanskrit literature (fiction, fables, dramas) -- hence
it is different both from classical occidental introductions to
Sanskrit and from modern introductions to "spoken Sanskrit". It is a
worthy contribution to the series "Assimil" in which /Le Sanskrit/ is
published, as it follows throughout the "assimilation" method
(/nipāna-rīti/) of language learning.
When it appeared I composed a brief verse:
निपानरीतिमार्गेण संस्कृताध्यापनार्थकम् ।
चकार नलिनी शास्त्रम् अतोऽध्येता प्रसिध्यति ॥
/nipānarītimārgeṇa saṁskṛtādhyāpanārthakam |/
/cakāra Nalinī śāstramato’dhyetā prasidhyati || /
Jan Houben
N.B. Specifically to /practice and read/ Sanskrit there is a yearly
"stage de Sanskrit" organized by Sylvain Brocquet at the Université
de Provence et Aix-en-Provence
(https://cpaf.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article423&lang=fr
<https://cpaf.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article423&lang=fr>); another "stage
de Sanskrit" is expected soon at the new institute ILARA, here in Paris.
On Fri, 25 Jun 2021 at 08:46, Isabelle Ratie via INDOLOGY
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear Dominik,
That our BA in Sanskrit includes a few courses without Sanskrit
requirement does not disqualify our BA as one in Sanskrit! It
definitely focuses on the Sanskrit language, as is specified on
the first page to which I sent a link:
son objet principal est le sanskrit et ses littératures, dont
elle met en évidence la richesse: l’apprentissage du
sanskrit s’y fait avant tout par la lecture et la traduction
intensives de textes appartenant à des genres très
différents (contes, épopée, poésie savante, littérature
historiographique, traités philosophiques, traités
d’esthétique, etc.).
With all best wishes,
Isabelle
Le ven. 25 juin 2021 à 04:44, Dominik Wujastyk
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> a écrit :
What about
*l’histoire de la société, des philosophies et des religions
indiennes*, ou encore*l’histoire de la connaissance de l’Inde*.
Those would not be courses involving reading Sanskrit as
such, would they? They would be in French, about India?
Similarly at UT Austin, it looks like students have to take
lots of courses called,
Asian Studies related to South Asia
Again, that wouldn't be actual reading of Sanskrit texts,
would it? And there appear to be a lot of courses under
"Core" that are not Sanskrit. (US History; Social and
Behavioural Science, etc.). Presumably students take a few
of these? So it's a general humanities degree with a high
Sanskrit content. Would that be right, or am I misunderstanding?
I was thinking about a degree that focussed on Sanskrit
language and literature, not a course where Sanskrit was a
component (even a large component). I'm thinking of the
Oxford BA, or the BA at SOAS, when it existed, in the days
when it was taught by Mr J. E. B. Gray with his legendary
cyclostyled, typewritten, four-year course. Or the courses
taught at German universities in the days of the old MA system.
Best,
Dominik
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--
*Jan E.M. Houben*
Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology
/Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite/
École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, Paris Sciences et Lettres)
/*Sciences historiques et philologiques */
Groupe de recherches en études indiennes (EA 2120)
/johannes.houben [at] ephe.psl.eu <mailto:[email protected]>/
/https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben
<https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben>/
/https://www.classicalindia.info/ <https://www.classicalindia.info/>
LabEx Hastec OS 2021 -- /L'Inde Classique/augmentée: construction,
transmission
et transformations d'un savoir scientifique
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