Dear revered scholars,

Greetings from the Department of Philosophy - Manipal!

We are happy to share with you that the Department of Philosophy (DoP), Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), an Institution of Eminence in India, Manipal, is all set to launch Master’s in Sanskrit Studies from this academic year onward. The launch of Master’s in Sanskrit Studies will be set off by the inaugural address ‘The Importance of a Multidisciplinary Approach to Liberal Arts in India’ highlighting the case for Sanskrit in current educational scenario delivered by Dr Bibek Debroy, Chair of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), Govt of India, New Delhi. Prof Debroy is a Sanskrit scholar and an Economist. He has translated major literary classics from Sanskrit to English that run over 8000 pages.

The address will be a part of the orientation day for its master’s students in European Studies, Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit Studies organised jointly by the Jean Monnet Centre for Excellence – Manipal Centre for European Studies (MCES) and the Department of Philosophy (DoP) on Friday, 3 September 2021 at 3 pm with a special inaugural address via Zoom – https://bit.ly/orientation3sep2021. We extend a warm welcome to you for the launch of Sanskrit Studies this Friday afternoon at Manipal. You may please find attached the invitation for the same.

As a constituent of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, the Department of Philosophy (DoP) conducts teaching and research activities in the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences through academic programs, projects, publications, and events. Apart from the upcoming MA Sanskrit Studies, DoP offers its flagship program – MA Indian Philosophy and other courses in Humanities with a team of promising scholars - who are the beneficiaries of prestigious Erasmus Plus and Raman Charpak research fellowships at European universities. The Department is collaborating with the University of Toronto, Canada on a project on Indian dialectics and argumentation funded by Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI), New Delhi. It has also developed the first searchable Digital Concordance – MAHE Mahabharata with three critical editions (http://mahabharata.manipal.edu/). The Department has brought out several scholarly translations and publications and is conducting interdisciplinary research in the areas of philosophy, literature, digital humanities and computational linguistics.

The MA Indian Philosophy program involves critical and interdisciplinary engagements with Indian discourses and introduces philosophising as a skill set which students can incorporate in their approach (further studies/research) to other academic fields, as an acquired life skill, and as a professional competence necessary for diverse career pursuits. The program has been designed to accommodate students from diverse academic backgrounds and offer ample exposure to a variety of philosophical subjects such as ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and linguistics. With a structured curriculum that gradually proceeds from beginners to advanced levels of study, it prepares the students to specialize in subjects which best serve their intellectual growth.

The two-year MA Sanskrit Studies provides an opportunity to acquire proficiency in Sanskrit language and study its linguistic underpinnings, while also understanding Sanskrit as a broadly-deployed medium of intellectual, literary, artistic, and religious expression in India. A significant part of the course will include text-critical engagements with different genres of Indian thought in Sanskrit – literature, philosophy, and hermeneutics. Simultaneously, emphasis will be placed on achieving an understanding of the intellectual culture represented by Sanskrit and the socio-cultural setting in which it flourished. This also incorporates an attempt to trace and reconstruct the intellectual history of India and develop a familiarity with the ongoing debates and topics in the study of Sanskrit. The program aims at equipping students with the skills necessary for interpreting and analysing Sanskrit texts of various styles and genres - epic, poetry, commentary, and exploring the intertextual links between discourses in pre-modern and modern literary traditions of India.

We sincerely hope that you would consider joining us for the launch and participate in fostering Sanskrit – philosophy, language and literature.