This is the first episode of several short films I am making about the 'Sanskrit village' Jhiri, which is located in Madhya Pradesh, India. This ethnographic documentary series is titled 'Imagining Sanskrit Land'. It is a visual complement to the post-doctoral project I intend to work on.
Across India there are rumours of rural communities where 'everyone speaks fluent Sanskrit'. I spent one month in Jhiri during the summer of 2015 documenting the linguistic vitality of vernacular Sanskrit and the aspirations of this community to transition to only speak Sanskrit and forego their mother tongue, Malvi. It must be said that the linguistic reality is very different to what the media presents it as. Less than 10 percent of the village speak any Sanskrit at all.
This film is about the effort it took to actually find the village and includes some of the original audio/video of the first mention I came across that inspired this project. There are several villages called 'Jhiri' in this district of MP. We drove around for several hours, sometimes in circles, while my driver pleaded with me to just turn around and go home. Finally, around dusk we found it.
You can find other films and information about my research into spoken Sanskrit at:
or follow me @psdmccartney