Interested in Sanskrit? Sign up for these courses

It was World Sanskrit Day on August 31. Seminars, lectures, and meetings are held every year on this day to promote the language, one of the oldest in existence. Here are some offline and online centres that offer short-term courses for Sanskrit learning.

Sanskrit Learners Club

It is an online initiative by Shankar Iyer. The website lists out eight courses — the shortest is 50 hours and the longest goes up to 130 hours. The beginner courses cover alphabets, nouns, verbs, numbers, and basic verses. Native expressions, reading by splitting syllables in a word, Paninian grammar, and samasa (grammar rules for compounding) come up in advanced courses.

Visit sanskritlearners.club

Vyoma Linguistic Labs Foundation

This not-for-profit located in Nagarbhavi conducts free online classes. The topic and duration of every course varies.

In an upcoming course starting on September 4, titled ‘STEP up with Samskritam’, participants will learn how to read, write and pronounce simple Sanskrit words and make basic conversation. “These will be taught through Hindi,” customer relations representative Shubha says. ‘Experience Sri Ganesha’ classes where participants will learn the meaning of ‘Ashtottarashatanama’ hymns will also begin on September 4.

Details on sanskritfromhome.org

Sthaayi

This platform holds offline and online classes. The team of five Sanskrit lecturers use role-play and theatrics to demonstrate how to talk in Sanskrit during corporate meetings, over phone calls, inside metro trains or with policemen and doctors. The course spans three months and classes are held twice a week in two batches (6 am, and 7 pm). The fee is to be paid monthly and is priced at Rs 1,000.

Lecturer Samashti Gubbi, one of the course facilitators, says, “The global popularity of Sanskrit as a language is driving this adoption. There are 16 universities in Germany that teach Sanskrit.”

Look up sthaayi.in