Panel for pay parity for Sanskrit teachers

Special grants for infrastructure should be given to Sanskrit Universities and it should be ensured that those teaching the language in schools get the same salary as teachers of other subjects, an HRD Ministry- appointed committee has said.
The panel, headed by former Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami, on Thursday submitted its 40-page report to the ministry in which it has recommended measures for promotion of Sanskrit and 'veda-vidya'.
"One of the key suggestions in the report is that the UGC should provide a one-time grant for developing Infrastructure in Sanskrit Universities," Gopalaswami told PTI.
There are three Sanskrit Universities under the Centre and over a dozen state universities.

The panel found that salaries paid to Sanskrit teachers in schools were often less than those of their peers teaching other subjects.
Gopalaswami said during the British period emoluments of Sanskrit teachers used to be less than their peers teaching other subjects and, in many states, even now those teaching the language draw lesser pay. The panel has therefore recommended a pay parity in schools, he said.

Observing there was no B Ed course in Sanskrit, the committee has suggested introduction of diploma course for those aspiring to become teachers in the subject.
Besides, the panel has suggested that the proposed Maharishi Sandipani Rastriya Veda Vidya Pratisthan in Ujjain be converted into a Central Sanskrit and Vedic Studies Board for the benefit of Sanskrit 'pathshalas' across the country.

"The interplay between politics and culture flowed both
directions, and larger shifts, particularly within the Sanskrit literary ecumene, ultimately led to the decline of Mughal engagements with this tradition," she writes.
These diverse encounters, the author says, over the course of roughly 100 years continued to exert vibrant effects for centuries in numerous literary and cultural contexts on the subcontinent.
According to the author, the Mughals never focused solely on absorbing the Sanskrit tradition into the Indo-Persian world but rather repeatedly forged numerous types of connections.
"Certain projects like Abu Fazl's 'Ain-i-Akbari' sought to robustly introduce Sanskrit ideas and discourses into Persian. But Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan also supported Sanskrit literary production as a largely independent activity in which they could participate as patrons," the book says.

Highlighting how the Mahabharata was treated as a politically important work in the Mughal court, the author says, "In the 1580s, Emperor Akbar ordered the translation of the Sanskrit Mahabharata into Persian. The newly minted Mughal epic, called the 'Razmnamah' (Book of War), would prove a seminal work in imperial circles for decades. In the 20 years following the initial translation, Mughal literati composed a highly political preface for the 'Razmnamah' and reworked portions of the text several times."
The translation was even incorporated into the education of royal princes. Truschke says the Mughals took up the Mahabharata as part of a larger translation movement that Akbar had inaugurated in the mid-1570s.

"In 1575, three successive translators failed to produce a Persian Atharva Veda, an enigmatic Brahmanical religious text. Around the same time, literati authored two Persian retellings of the 'Simhasana-dvatrimsika' (Thirty-Two Tales of the Throne), a popular collection of Sanskrit stories.
"A team of translators produced the Razmnamah in the mid-1580s and tackled the Ramayana a few years later. Thereafter imperial support abounded for translations of all sorts. Akbar liberally patronised Persian adaptations of astronomical and mathematical treatises, the most renowned of which was Fayzi's poetic rendering of Bhaskara's Lilavati.
"He underwrote Persian versions of several narrative texts, including story collections such as the Pancatantra (Five Tales) and historical chronicles like the Rajatarangi (River of Kings)."

Another noteworthy Sanskrit-based narrative sponsored by Akbar is Fayzi's "Nal-Daman", a masnavi retelling of the love story of Nala and Damayanti, the author says.