Namaste,

 

Soon there will be no sad news from Russia - nobody will be left to tell them because the last Sanskrit scholar in Moscow died. The day before yesterday in Moscow Vera Kochergina at age 93 died at home at 3 a.m. and was cremated today. She taught Sanskrit at the Moscow State University since 1956 till 2014, for almost 60 years.

She learned Sanskrit from Peterson in Moscow. There is a Western-parampara that starts with Bopp and continues with Lenz, Petrov, Fortunatoff, Peterson Kochergina, Likhushina and ends on me.

Just in last four months, we have lost three biggest and most well-known Russian Sanskrit scholars: Ivanov, Zaliznyak, and Kochergina. She printed a trilogy:

1) Sanskrit Manual 1956; 1994, 1998, 2001, 2004, 2015

2) Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary 1978, 1987, 1996, 2005, 2007

3) Sanskrit Textbook 2009

The Sanskrit Manual is a bestseller for learning Sanskrit in Russia and V.A. Kochergina died just a week before the 6th, revised ed. of 2018 is planned to come out. She was the incarnation of Saraswati in Moscow for generations of students of linguistics.

The Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary contains 29 000 words and is based mainly on XIX century Sanskrit-German dictionaries. It is the most well known Sanskrit Dictionary in Russia (there are three more), although it is known, that only an 84 000 word dictionary could serve all the purposes of a translator from Sanskrit (like DICCIONARI SANSCRIT-CATALA, OSCAR PUJOL).

The Sanskrit Textbook remains almost unknown, because of many type errors and small, unclear Devanagari print. Nonetheless, I'm not aware of many other cases when the same person has shown his skills in all three genres. She was a scholar, writing mainly on samasas in Sanskrit, Historical linguistics, History of Linguistics and a teacher.

 

I've got only one photo of her: http://samskrtam.ru/kochergina/

Full bibliography: https://istina.msu.ru/profile/kocherginaVA/

 

Please let me know if there is a printed journal on Sanskrit where I could print my Obituary. 

 

PhD. Mārcis Gasūns,

Krasnodar, Russia

 

 

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