CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSSETS, July 9, 2007: Deep inside the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a Wednesday evening recently, a class of about a dozen students were speaking an arcane ancient tongue. “It is time for exams, and I play every day,” says one. “Perhaps, you should study, too,” counters another at the conversation table. The others laugh. No, this isn’t Latin 101 — that would be easy. This is Sanskrit, a classical language that is the Indian equivalent of ancient Greek or Latin. Today, spoken Sanskrit is enjoying a revival — both in India and among Indian expatriates in the United States. There is even evidence of Sanskrit emerging in American popular culture as more and more people roll out yoga mats at the local gym and greet one another with “Namaste.” In small part, the revival is the result of the efforts of a private group, Samskrita Bharati, headquartered in New Delhi. The volunteer-based group’s mission: Bring the pan-Indian language back to the mainstream and lay the groundwork for a cultural renaissance. “There were many reasons for the decline of Sanskrit,” says Chamu Krishna Shastry, who founded Samskrita Bharati in 1981, “but one of the foremost was the unimaginative way it was taught since [British] colonial times.” Later, in a newly democratic India, the language associated with upper-caste brahmin priests held little appeal to the masses. The present movement to revive Sanskrit aims to teach the “language of the Gods” to anyone who cares to learn it.
Yoga practitioners in the US are seeking out the authentic Sanskrit names of various poses such as “downward dog” or “spinal twist” and the philosophy behind the practice as spelled out in the Yoga Sutras — the original treatise on the subject written in Sanskrit thousands of years ago. Science-history buffs see old works in Sanskrit as treasure troves of ancient knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, medicine and metallurgy. When Copernicus announced that the sun was the center of the universe in 1543, it was a defining moment for Western science. In Samskrita Bharati’s recently released “Pride of India” — a compilation that offers a glimpse into India’s scientific heritage — Sanskrit scholars point to calculations from AD 499 that indicate astronomer Aryabhatta’s underlying concept of a sun-centered planetary model. “This knowledge tradition is what we hope to revive through the spread of Sanskrit,” says Shastry.