Making the Argument for Sanskrit

Richard Salomon rsalomon at U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Thu Jan 11 21:23:17 UTC 2007


Also of course T.S. Eliot who studied Sanskrit at Harvard, whence his 
Upanisad citation in "The Wasteland." (I think Gary Tubb knows the details 
of his Sanskrit coursework.)

Rich Salomon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Donald R. Davis, Jr." <drdavis at WISC.EDU>
To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
Sent: Thursday, January 11, 2007 11:18 AM
Subject: Re: Making the Argument for Sanskrit


Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) the famous French sociologist and member of the
Année Sociologique studied Sanskrit.

Best,

Don Davis
Dept of Languages & Cultures of Asia
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
> Further to David's point below, it could be useful to compile a list of 
> particularly famous people who had Sanskri, sometimes unexpectedly, in 
> their backgrounds.  Using such a list would be purely a rhetorical device, 
> but could still be effective in winning some hearts and minds.
>
> examples off the top of my head:
>
> Hermann Grassmann (1809-1877), famous mathematician.
> Leonard Bloomfield (1887--1949), structural linguist, behaviourist,
>   scholar of American Indian languages, and founder of the Linguistic
>   Society of America.
> Ferdinand de Saussure (1857--1913), linguist, founder of structuralism.
>
> Dominik
>
>
> On Thu, 11 Jan 2007, David Rustin Mellins wrote:
>
>> I certainly agree with Andrea and others that the most effective
>> immediate response to the current crisis is to send letters in
>> support of the Sanskrit program in Berlin. As a component of a more
>> comprehensive strategy to redress cutbacks in Sanskrit programs
>> throughout the world, would it be feasible or helfpul to conduct
>> studies to investigate whether studying Sanskrit expedites
>> linguistic capacity more generally? Statistical evidence might well
>> strengthen the argument for Sanskrit studies.
>>
>>                          David Mellins





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