| Username |
Post |
| Biswo |
Posted
on 03-Sep-01 08:36 PM
One of the most prominent demands of Maoists is related to Sanskrit: they want
to discontinue its teaching in schools. This demand has been echoed by many
other people in nation, and for a moment, it seems nobody is defending or capable
of defending the teaching of Sanskrit. The experts of Sanskrit are often either
higher caste Brahmins or higher caste Newars, and their new generation is no longer interested in the learning of Sanskrit. Old people are listless to defend
the language they mastered in their childhood.Mastery of Sanskrit has always
been an exclusive power, and the same exclusiveness of the language contributed
to its slow death. Now, to some extent, yes, Sanskrit is a dead language.
-----------------------------------------
I ran into some reports from one international agency (I guess, UN) somedays ago.
When I analyzed the literacy rate of nations in the earth, one pattern came to
my mind: those countries where foreign languages are used as medium of
instruction in schools have failed miserably to improve their literacy rate.
Countries like India, Nepal, and those of Africa has very low literacy rates. While
even though being a poor country, China has excelled in this area, and so have
the countries in East Europe.
I don't know how we curled our hand around English waist, and walked along
with its footstep.But it is obvious that we have not achieved what we were
supposed to achieve in this 21st century. English language couldn't drag us to the
summit of literary awareness,and it is surely not like a Sherpa friend to drag us to
the summit and entitle instant coronation of success in any near future.
----------------------------------------------
Computer science students know about BNF. It is kind of notation used in the
computer languages, and it tries to remove ambiguities of languages, and frees
computer from 'mental responsibility' of thinking and interpreting commands. Its
full form was Backus Normal Form, which was later changed to Backus Neur form,
because people wanted to give credit to Naur also. In 1960, in ACM
communication, Donald Knuth also argued that the name should be Panini-Backus
Form, not anything else. Because the rules used in BNF were similar to the rules
developed by Panini(an Sanskrit scholar from Indian subcontinent, who flourished
in between 400-200 BC), and defined in his Ashtadhyayi.
Sanskrit, it turns out , is the most unambiguous language among the
literate languages used. In Ashtadhyayi, there are thousands of rules of
grammars are defined. It is sad that nowadays, very few Nepalis, REALLY FEW
NEPALIS, can write a few paragraphs of flawless articles, may it be in Nepali or
in English. Even King Gyanendra's speeches as a king aren't flawless in their
structure.
-------------------------------------
Gottfried Leibniz(1646-1716) is credited for developing binary representation,
which is the only form our current computer recognizes. However, in his finding
presented in one seminar(LSAIS, LA, October 25,1997) on Indian computation,
Professor B. Van Nooten of CalBerkeley says he discovered in ChandaShastra
(Science of Verse Meters) by Pingala(Before 4th century AD) the rules of binary
writing.
Also, though Panini's grammar failed in the test conducted in automaton, the test
(by a Berkeley scientist named Fowler, mentioned in the same seminar) was
fraught with errors, and it seems to me, people are trying to interpret it in the
way it would probably pass the test. But in any case, the evidences point toward
the Sanskrit being an useful and unambiguous formal language.
----------------
It seems that we lost the civilization that could be made by Sanskrit. People have
now put forward the treatises of ancient India that had somehow calculated the
radius of earth, and speed of sun correctly(as they are believed now), and even
the speed of lights.(In Puranic cosmology, concepts of different yojana as unit
of length are described) Even those interesting hash functions used profusively
in computer science were mentioned in katapayadi scheme by both Panini and Bhaskara.
----------------------
To me, it seems like we lost the opportunity to lead the world, and to precipitate
the human development by centuries, because of a lot of errors in our social
system. Education was limited to a chosen classes, and people rarely discussed
their findings in public. Mathematics and Medical sciences always remained as
occult science in our society. We didn't (and still do not) practice transparency,
and we didn't think anybody else other than ourselves to be 'a great person'.We
excluded woman and others from studying, and in our narrow mindedness, we
lost the opportunity to lead the mankind.
Of course, we haven't changed even now.
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| namita |
Posted
on 04-Sep-01 10:49 AM
Hi Biswo,
To see the so-called coorelation between as you put it “those countries where foreign languages are used as medium of instruction in schools have failed miserably to improve their literacy rate" is to say there was a great evidence that people drown more often if they eat ice cream before they go swimiing. People may or may not have heard this statistics that showed a great coorelation betwen drowning death and eating ice cream. Well later on they figured out if the weather is hot, more people go out to swim and if there are more people, the ice cream sale will go up. Thus the likelihood of higher rate of drowning death!
Only Science is taught in English and that also only in Colleges. (And that is by the way what they do in Germany too.) Except for few English medium schools, India and Nepal (to name the few countries of low literacy) don’t teach in English - not at least in the primary or secondary school. English is taught as a second language not as a primary language. And also if you look at the Phillipines the literacy rate is 95%! You cannot say the Phillipines is the first world or can you?
Poverty is more likely the cause of low literacy than the use of English language. AND you must be well aware of the quality of education in Terai and in mountains. Can we really blame on rampant use of English in big cities (if not all around the world) for the low literacy?
PS I really enjoy these postings of yours. I chose to talk about only those things that I don't agree with. If I agree then there is nothing to talk about, no? :)
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| Bone Head |
Posted
on 04-Sep-01 04:25 PM
Making Sanskrit mandatory in School is not a good idea. There is Sanskrit university for those who are interest and I believe it an optional course. This will satisfy the various tribes of nepal.
Bone Head
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 04-Sep-01 05:58 PM
Dear Namita:
I believe that there are no hard and fast rules about the correlation of literacy rate
and the medium of instruction, but there are patterns. My study is not scholarly,
and thus may have stemmed from shallow observation, as is the nature of such
newsgroup type kurakanis as this one,but I believe that there exists some kind of
pattern. Also, the literacy rate in Phillippines may have more to do with its
prosperous past (in 1950s, Phillippines was considered one of the most well-off
country in Asia, almost ranking behind Japan).
It is true that most of the people have to devote more time to understand and use
the foreign language. When such language is used in initial phase of science and
technology (not only primary school), the understanding of technical nuances
can't be very well. I am talking about the work force, not a chosen few people
here.The instruction of technology in exclusively foreign language from the initial
phase has hampered the rate(and nicety) of acquisition of knowledge of students,
I believe.I have found one interesting example: when you ask to define log 3,
lg 3 and ln 3 to most of the Nepali students, they get into the troubles. But ask
the same questions to the people from higher literacy rate countries, they will
tell you instantly. Because they take that as basic knowledge.
The good literacy rate in Phillippines seems to be more the result of primary school
level education and highschool level education, which doesn't have much to do
with the work force (technical work force,mainly). Again, here I don't intend to
understatement the hardwork of general Phillipino populace also. My major point
is same: most of the nations which use foreign language as their medium of instruction have failed miserably to improve their overall literacy rate, and national
economy that could have been result of expert work force.
-----------------
To Boneheadji:
I am not talking about making Sanskrit compulsory. I was just talking about the
good aspects of Sanskrit, that most of us seems to have forgotten.
It will be strange if we bury our own knowledge, and buy the same from others.
Also, Sanskrit as a self-contained knowledge source won't help much. It should
be used with other sciences to get maximum profit from this.
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 05-Sep-01 02:01 PM
Something about Vedic Mathematics
Those who are interested in mathematics should take a look at the famous book called "Vedic Mathematics" written by Shankaracharya Bharatikrishna Tirtha. Bharatikrishna Tirtha was a great scholar. He did Master's in more than 6 subjects ranging from Physics to philosophy.
This book is being taught in many universities in India and those parents who want their children to learn mathematics naturally and spiritually, must have a look at this book.
When his holiness jagadguruji met the famous mathematician De Morgan (Remember him from set theory?) in Harvard University, the latter remarked that the modern mathematics seemed like a child in front of the vast Sanskrit mathematics.
The famous Indian number theorist Srinivas Ramanujan used to write theorems like poetry. He arrived at those theorems not by rigorous and logical deductions but by sheer sense of beauty and pattern.
|
| info |
Posted
on 05-Sep-01 02:11 PM
Link for Vedic Mathematics
http://www.vedicmaths.org.uk/menu_files/WhatisVM.htm
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| Gokul |
Posted
on 05-Sep-01 02:53 PM
Info,
Your consideration is very much appreciated.
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| RAZOO |
Posted
on 05-Sep-01 03:57 PM
Sanskrit should be like LATIN is for english.
People that have interest, go ahead make my day.
Otherwise I do not see any use of it. I certainly won't be reading the scripts, besides they are available in Nepali or English anyway. Cannot use it with anyone else, I don't think there are that many people that actually speak Sanskrit.
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| paakhe |
Posted
on 05-Sep-01 05:23 PM
I absolutely agree with Razoo. Making something compulsory doesnot means that someone will take that thing seriously. But I think we, who are thinking that Nepal is doomed, there is no way out, and who claim to have seen more than our counterpart in the mainland, should start doing something to resurrect the heritage.
Just crying in this bulletin board and slandering one another is not going to take us anywhere. Why not we start building some groups comprising of people with similar interests. Like Biswo said, Sanskrit, though once was a great civilization, is almost lost now. It has now become the task of some English speaking professor to do research about those 'big books' and write papers in that. Can we not ourselves start doing that? We have so many energetic young scholars with us now. They can understand the context in which those books were written better than those from outside that culture.
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 05-Sep-01 06:42 PM
Just to clarify myself:
While I surely intended to extoll the virtue of Sanskrit-dominated era, I didn't mean
to campaign for its compulsory teaching. Nepal is a beautiful country in her
diversity and any forceful measure to 'unification' will only vitiate her beauty.
But, the respect for Sanskrit, and the adoption of Sanskrit as our ancestor's
language will not harm any of us. The thing that saddens me is when people
campaign for 'no-sanskrit-in-schools', they say: Sanskrit is totally dead language,
and is useless any more. Nothing can be farther from truth. I wish all of our
languages to be rich, but rarely any of those languages will be mastered without
sufficient knowledge on Sanskrit.Let's face it: even Chinese language and culture
is influenced by Sanskrit(fan wen), and they (the Chinese) have to learn this to
know their history.So is influence of Sanskrit in Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and
as far as Cambodia.
While formation of interest group is an interesting idea, it may not be practical unless additional resources are provided. For example:these days, a MS student in
math will find it more beneficial to learn Visual C++/Mathematica than work hard
on Vedic Mathematics for no apparent benefit. Unless a professor gets plenty of
grants,from states or any other philonthropists, such researches may be limited in
Kashi Pitha, in CalBerkeley or in Karlsruhe University.
So, what is the conclusion?Basically, I believe we are in a deadlock like situation.
May be if all of us discuss about this more, we can find out a solution for such
vexed problem. I think seeking solution of such epic problem by discussion in
community is really a good idea, rather than deciding something about it, and
imposing the decision on rest of community (as it has been a gloriuos tradition of
Nepal govt).And here , I believe that comments from Razoo, Paakhe, and Gokul
etc.. have only assisted us to think more deeply on this problem.
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| A mom |
Posted
on 06-Sep-01 09:05 AM
My little bit on this:-
My two children CAN take latin for one year IF they want to. If they do decide to take it the following year as well - the next two years are compulsory. I think this is done so that the child shows commitment to a decision she/he has made or maybe its just the way the language is taught that the next two years are compulsory, I'm not sure which.
My interest in the language is null therefore I wasn't at all the one to push Latin, they simply are interested in it.
I am sure there are plenty of people (regardless of caste, class, whatnot) who are interested in Sanskrit OR even some parents who would like to see the language offered as an elective in schools - there should be some means to pursue the interest hoina ra??
It is after all the basis of our language and it should be offered.
A mom
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| Paakhe |
Posted
on 06-Sep-01 09:24 AM
Let me clarify my point:
I just want some of us with similar interests to contribute some time out of their busy life in this area also. That doesnot mean we need to have some huge grants from 'states' or from some 'philantropist' organizations. Do we? Lets us start exploring the ancient literature. For that you donot have to read all of those 'arcane' stuff by yourself. We can find many assiatance in Nepal. We can ask with our father, grandfathers or any other elder who know about these stuffs. Our main task will be to publish those things to the whole world. Because we are in a position to do those things.
What good is mentioning that so-and-so professor or so-and-so university mentioned about some great ancienct Sanskrit scholar as the first to find out about so-and-so theory or somethings like that. If we start exploring those ancient mathematics, we can also say that. Because most of of know who our textbooks regard as the finder of some mathematical theory.
And about money and grants, I think most of us have heard and some of us may also have participated in open source movement in computer field. Do these people have grants and money from outside agencies? I don't think they have. They are doing that for their satisfaction and with the hope that it will change their future career. Same this also applies here. If we start volunteerily contributing our time in this field of research, who know we might even get some 'grants' from 'philantropist' organization.
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