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Sri Krishnaya Namah!

I was given to understand on another sanskrit Village in Shimoga District, 
Karnataka. The village is Matthur and the entire people there converse 
using sanskrit just as any other language.

sukumar

Sri Krishna Parabrahmane Namah!

-----Original Message-----
From:   Muni Trayam [SMTP:munitraya@xxxx]
Sent:   25/03/2003 2:26 PM
To:     srirangasri@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject:        [SriRangaSri] Where Sanskrit is a way of life


Interesting piece of information about Sanskrit. - Srinath

Rajasthan village switches to ancient language

Ganoda, Banswada, March 10: From the walls of Shambhunath Jha's house, 
plastered posters vie for attention. But the one that catches the eye is a 
conversation chart that goes something like this: ''Welcome. Please sit 
down. Would you like some water? Nice to meet you. See you again. 
Goodbye.''

The chart doesn't just tell you how to make polite conversation. It also 
tells you how to do it in Sanskrit. Jha's little daughter rapidly replies 
to her father's questions, all in Sanskrit. Near the kitchen, the Jha 
household has put up another chart, this time listing the name of cooking 
ingredients and food items.
''We use it as a regular glossary. Sanskrit is not our mother tongue, so 
sometimes we need to look up the chart. But most of the time, we manage 
without it,'' says Jha proudly.

The professor is one of the many residents in Ganoda village who are 
confident that they can carry on an entire conversation in Sanskrit without 
a problem. The grocery shop owner claims he can rattle off shlokas in 
Sanskrit while in the adjoining utensil store, the owner informs that he 
helps his children with their language homework.

''Almost everyone can speak or understand the language here,'' Naresh Doshi 
says. ''I studied only till class VIII but I still manage in Sanskrit. We 
don't speak it at home all the time, but we understand and if someone comes 
to my shop and asks for something in Sanskrit, I'll know what to give.''

In this tribal-dominated village, Sanskrit is slowly becoming a way of 
life. Slogans
in Sanskrit make the village walls, the language spoken in practically 
every house and every school-going child rattling off a few sentences.

The entire process actually started by default. Until about 10 years ago, 
Ganoda village was like any other in Banswada district of Rajasthan. Tribal 
dominated, average literacy levels and a non-descript entity.

But the growing number of students passing out of the government Sanskrit 
college in Ganoda changed all that. Over 1,000 students in the three 
Sanskrit institutions of the village - a primary school, middle school and 
the college - have joined hands with a group of their teachers to try and 
make Sanskrit the second language of the Wagdi-speaking population.
In 14-year-old Dharmesh Joshi's house, almost everyone understands a 
smattering of the language. ''My mother can't speak very well but everyone 
else manages. Now I have attended a few Sanskrit camps and we are slowly 
trying to teach others.''
Kanhaiya Lal Yadav is a first generation learner from his tribal household 
in Dukhvada. ''We speak Wagdi at home but with my friends I often debate in 
Sanskrit,'' says the undergraduate student.
Jha adds: ''We decided recently to try and take the language to as many 
people as possible. There's already an atmosphere of learning that has been 
created over the years. Now we are trying to reach out to people in remote 
villages and initiate them into the world of Sanskrit.''
And to spread the good word, the teachers and students are practically 
going door-to-door, teaching, putting up posters and impressing many with 
their synchronised recital of shlokas.
For the motivated Sanskrit-speaking lot of Ganoda, the ulitmate aim is to 
make it a unique and model Sanskrit village. Their punchline is ''don't say 
hello, say Hari Om.''



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