Mattur The Sanskrit Village
This write-up is specially for
those who think that speaking Sanskrit is next to impossible. In Karnataka, a
few kilometres north of Shimoga town, lies a small
village Mattur. Enter Mattur, and your
senses are assailed by a host of sights that is eccentric in its fusion of the
picturesque and the quixotic. While a set of Smartha Brahmins recite
Vedic hymns by the riverside in the morning cold,
a couple of young
men with tufts zoom past on a black Pulsar the
unstitched folds of
their white uparivasthras
flapping in the breeze.
Sanskrit dominates the life of Mattur,
and not just because half the
populace speak the language with varying degrees
of fluency.
The journey back to its Vedic roots started for
the village in 1981
when Sanskrita Bharati, an organisation that promotes the classical
language, conducted a Sanskrit workshop in Mattur. It was attended,
among others, by the pontiff of the Pejawar Mutt in nearby Udupi.
Inspired by this village where Sanskrit survived as
a spoken language,
the seer reportedly exclaimed, A place where
individuals speak
Sanskrit, where whole houses talk in Sanskrit!
What next? A Sanskrit
village!. Its a call Mattur took to heart.
Sanskrit is reputedly a tough nut to crack, but is
it that different
from picking up any other language? In some rather
important ways, it
seems it is. When a student leaves for school and
says Aham
vidyalayam gachhami (I am going to
school), he will know that
gachhami is very much like gamanam
which means movement. Both words
come from the root class gam,
from which a fluent Sanskrit speaker can
dig up words for all kinds of movements and for
things that move. Like
gau for cows and khagah for
birds. But khagah is not merely something
that moves. It is that which it moves in khagam (sky). From a few
basic classes (root words), Sanskrit creates an
endless chain of words
all linked to each other.
Interesting ?? Well, Sanskrit is not only interesting
but also tends to occupy the mind entirely once a person takes the initiative
to get acquainted with it.
Lalitha Ramakrishnan
MA Sanskrit, Mumbai University
sanskritbhasha@gmail.com