[INDOLOGY] training in Sanskrit composition

[richard gombrich]

I am afraid that what recent contributors have written about "Sanskrit composition" in the Oxford final exams is a bit misleading. In this context, "composition" meant translation from a set passage of English, usually from a literary work by a well known author. This precisely followed how Latin and Greek were taught in schools when I was young -- and for centuries before that. No originality was involved.
Richard Gombrich