12 ms·

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

by r0h1n 13y ago

s-topper 13y ago
Why not?
- r0h1n 13y ago
  There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. Of what use is Sanskrit to anyone who learns it? P.S. I say this as a person who was forced to study Sanskrit in school for three years.
  - s-topper 13y ago
    >>>>>>>Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online? >>>>>>>>There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. You can apply that flawed reasoning to pretty much everything. It would've been a perfectly valid question if you had said "Why would I want to learn Sanskrit?". Please don't universalize your opinion by saying things like why would anyone want to learn Sanskrit online or offline.
    - r0h1n 13y ago
      I maintain that very few people have a reason to learn Sanskrit. It is a dead/dying language that will add zero value besides the esoteric joy of knowing a language for the sake of knowing it. If you feel that is not the case, please elucidate your reasons. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
      - svasan 13y ago
        And very few people have reason to learn LISP or programming languages, for that matter. (If we are generalizing, we might as well go the full length and include the entire world population) You seem to be mistaken that folks would learn a language for just the sake of knowing it. Far from it. Language is just a tool for communication of ideas. There have been some brilliant treatises, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies expressed in Sanskrit. Folks are more interested in accessing the thoughts and works in Sanskrit as opposed being infatuated with the technical aspects of the language.
  - eitally 13y ago
    As someone whose comparative religion BA was mostly spent comparing flavors of Indian religions, it was very helpful to have a basic understanding of Sanskrit. I don't "use" it now, but knowing it during the research phase of my life sure made the learning process smoother.
ximeng 13y ago
They try to answer that question here: http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction "Its importance is plain: Sanskrit was once the most influential literary language in India, and texts written in the language could be understood by millions of people throughout the South Asian world. These texts contain profound meditations on every point on the spectrum of human concern: existence, reality, God, love, duty, marriage, war, sex, death, violence, laughter, beauty, perception, nature, anatomy, urbanity, ritual, desire, food, purpose, meaning, and language, among hundreds of others. Moreover, Sanskrit texts are the repository of non-modern modes of thought, and they present distinct conceptions of the world that are often at odds with the understanding we have today. By learning how people used to think, we better understand both ourselves and the world we have inherited. "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond."
- r0h1n 13y ago
  > "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond." What does that even mean? Indian history, intellectual or not, isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators. As someone who was forced to learn Sanskrit in school for 3 years, I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher or a linguist.
  - chattoraj 13y ago
    >isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response. Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher. (And before you ask, most of it hasn't been translated and will probably never be translated. See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_pub/classics.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_... )
    - 13y ago
primitivesuave 13y ago
Many Hindus chant in Sanskrit for religious/ceremonial purposes, e.g. Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita is often chanted before eating a meal (http://www.asitis.com/15/ http://www.asitis.com/15/). It's useful to understand what the Sanskrit words mean, although there are English translations for virtually all Sanskrit texts.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  If you're talking about the shlokas most commonly recited by average people, they may amount to maybe 10-20 lines. Learning their meaning will take at best one hour of research/effort. Learning Sanskrit to understand the meaning of a shloka is like learning Latin because you came across 'Cogito, Ergo Sum' or 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' on some blog. Both are pointless overkill.
  - 1457389 13y ago
    This average people comment isn't consistent with what I am familiar with. I regularly come across people, especially in the older generations, who have memorized literally pages of verse that they may not necessarily understand fully. The older generations in general in India seem to be multilingual as a rule and deeply interested in Vedic philosophy and ancient Indian history. Case in point the recent success of those Shivva books.
slaxman 13y ago
I am a ployglot and know several indian and foreign languages. My favourite is Sanskrit. Why? Once I learnt Sanskrit, esp. the grammar, learning other languages was really easy. You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.
- chattoraj 13y ago
  > You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit. Your claims are a subset of the “everything comes from India” school of BSology.[1] German is related to Sanskrit but does not descend from it.[2] Finnish belongs to a different language family entirely.[3] [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages
- donniezazen 13y ago
  How do you practice or make yourself not forget the several languages you know? I find it really hard to be proficient in a language unless you live among native speakers?
  - srik 13y ago
    There is a small village in India which still speaks Sanskrit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur
- angerman 13y ago
  Could you please elaborate on this a little more? How did German and Finnish derive from Sanskrit? Could you give examples?
  - h1karu 13y ago
    Russian too.
yati 13y ago
From your comments, this is like asking "Why would someone, programmer or not, want to learn Lisp online?". The answer: because they want to, because they might find it interesting. They don't have to ask you. You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.
- melling 13y ago
  You can learn Lisp and do real work with it. It has commercial value. It's not some ancient dead language.
  - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
    Ah FUD against Sanskrit. Thought I would see those only in Indian politics. Nice to see that on HN too. Do you, the no-nonsense hyper-practical man, smirk at mathematicians who study pure theory?
    - melling 13y ago
      I was simply pointing out that the analogy is not a good one. I have no problem learning Sanskrit for the pure enjoyment.
      - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
        Sanskrit is not a dead language. Enough with the FUD. At least it is more intellectual than current day colonial languages like Spanish.
  - yati 13y ago
    The parent has been commenting asking people why they want to learn Sanskrit when there is "infinitely many other" things to learn about. I bet that you can not learn Lisp and sail through a great programming career. And I really don't think Sanskrit is a "dead" language - it is important to far too many people to be called dead.
- pessimizer 13y ago
monster_group 13y ago
For the sheer joy of it. I learnt Sanskrit in middle school formally yet superficially. About a year ago I decided I wanted to get rid of the 'superficial' part and devoured several Sanskrit grammar books including this website. It has been a very joyful journey and I feel very happy when I am able to read and understand the only Sanskrit newspaper in the world. I don't know about you but for me that's a good enough reason. Sometimes one makes the journey because the path is so much fun even though the destination may be uninteresting.
cscurmudgeon 13y ago
I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)
- ksk 13y ago
  >The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Okay, give me 10 reasons.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    I'd be satisfied with 5. Maybe even 3.
  - trevelyan 13y ago
    (1) You are defusing a bomb, but the wires are tucked behind a casing on which there is a label written in Sanskrit and underlined in red. With only 2 minutes left before the bomb explodes, don't you wish you started the language earlier? (2) Women love Sanskrit. (3) You have a dream one day that seems more real than real. In it, you are standing in a desert and are approached by a man who seems intensely familiar. With a shock, you realize this is a flashback from a past life. And you know you would have something incredible to tell yourself... if only both of you spoke Sanskrit. (4) Academic research. (5) On a business trip to China, a question emerges about the etymological origins of certain Chinese characters, and whether they entered the language through Middle Indo-Aryan speakers. Flush with the answer from your knowledge of ancient Sanskrit, you are able to impress your hosts and secure the contract. (6) "Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. While there is no need to worry, we do have to ask: is there anyone on this plane who happens to be a doctor, and also speaks Sanskrit?" (7) Your boss has outsourced development work on a new software platform to a team in Uttarakhand. The project was a disaster as predicted, but it is now essential to find someone - anyone - who is both local and able to read the commit log as well as Sanskrit-commented source code. (8) A software malfunction switches your phone's display and input languages to Sanskrit. Now how exactly are you planning to switch it back? And if you read Sanskrit, why would you ever want to? (9) You are working for Google, and tasked with organizing ALL of the world's information. (10) As a member of the TSA working to ensure aviation safety, you are responsible for screening Sanskrit speaking passengers, and conversing with them as part of general counter-terrorism screening measures. Can you really do that with only Pimsleur-level fluency?
laichzeit0 13y ago
Serious question, how many languages do you know and actively use? As someone who grew up bilingual I've found that there is a certain untranslatable element in any language, particular when it comes to poetry and humor. Why do you learn multiple programming languages? Why are there several types of text-editing systems? Put it to you this way: learning a new language can be as enlightening as learning functional programming for the first time in your life. Edit: I also want to add that I came across this website in the past http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html where the idea of a highly unambiguous natural language struck me as interesting. Sadly, I've subsequently read a lot of negative comments regarding "vedic" sciences here on HN. Something akin go what the Creationists have tried to do with the bible. But I nevertheless would like to spend a few months looking at Sanskrit grammar and making an opinion about it myself.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  Okay, serious answer: I can read and write proficiently in English and Hindi. I can speak proficiently in Malayalam. I can understand or business-converse in Kannada. I can understand about 75% of Tamil conversations. I learned Sanskrit in school. I've tried at various points to learn both French and Spanish using Rosetta Stone, but I gave up after the initial few weeks, probably because I was doing it alone. Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    Depends on how you feel about the vedic "sciences."
nkuttler 13y ago
For the same reason you have other hobbies, they like it. You obviously wouldn't.
ateevchopra 13y ago
Because they say the knowledge of the whole universe is written in sanskrit in the vedas. Thousands of years the Indian sages researched about almost every topic and wrote this vedas. We would have been many years ahead if we could decode those teachings. Many lost, many still to be decoded. If people learn sanskrit, maybe someone will find its life purpose in this and do a big research on the old knowledge. Just saying. Anything is possible. knowledge is never in vain.
RestlessMind 13y ago
Why do you want to live? Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.
jimgardener 13y ago
Long time back I was interested in Indian Tantric stuff and found that most English translations (except those by Arthur Avalon) contained too many interpretations by the translator -some of them skewed :).So I got some original Sanskrit texts and tried to translate word by word .I couldn't progress much becoz you cannot understand the meaning of a sentence by just adding up the words- you need to learn the grammer.At that time I wished I had learned the language
involans 13y ago
Because it is an enjoyable pursuit. I would agree that it is not the most practical thing to do; but not everything need be practical. Incidentally - this course seems to be one of the better ones I've seen; it actually uses modern phonetic and segmental terminology instead of throwing people straight into sandhi with no explanation of why this happens.
kops 13y ago
As an Indian, 1. For the same reason as solving sudoku online i.e. for the joy of it. 2. Some interesting literature was written in Sanskrit. I may want to read that. 3. To be able to judge when a hindu preacher is bullshitting me. 4. To be able to critically analyze some of the religious stuff e.g. does the age of Sun god tally with what the modern physics tells us. 5. Its grammar expands my view of what is possible to express in a language. 6. For the same reason as pursuing archaeology. The words in a dead language can tell you a lot about the life when it was in common use. I see that you substantiate some of your views with a "P.S." that you were forced to learn it for 3 years. That means nothing. I learnt it for 5 years purely to pass exams but that hardly makes me qualified enough to start judging whether others should learn it or not. Nopes I don't know Sanskrit and it is not on my radar right now. But a while ago when I tried to learn German, faint memories from Sanskrit classes came quite handy(see #5 above).
- the_af 13y ago
  "For the joy of it" is probably the most important motive. For archeology is also good, though I assume a serious student of ancient languages won't learn from online guides.
mchaver 13y ago
Because they might not have access to offline Sanskrit resources.
tekalon 13y ago
As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

by r0h1n 13y ago

Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online?

s-topper 13y ago

Why not?

r0h1n 13y ago
There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. Of what use is Sanskrit to anyone who learns it? P.S. I say this as a person who was forced to study Sanskrit in school for three years.
- s-topper 13y ago
  >>>>>>>Why would someone, Indian or not, want to learn Sanskrit online? >>>>>>>>There's nearly an infinite amount of knowledge in the world. And each of us has a finite amount of time. Why not is not an answer. You can apply that flawed reasoning to pretty much everything. It would've been a perfectly valid question if you had said "Why would I want to learn Sanskrit?". Please don't universalize your opinion by saying things like why would anyone want to learn Sanskrit online or offline.
  - r0h1n 13y ago
    I maintain that very few people have a reason to learn Sanskrit. It is a dead/dying language that will add zero value besides the esoteric joy of knowing a language for the sake of knowing it. If you feel that is not the case, please elucidate your reasons. I'll be happy to be proven wrong.
    - svasan 13y ago
      And very few people have reason to learn LISP or programming languages, for that matter. (If we are generalizing, we might as well go the full length and include the entire world population) You seem to be mistaken that folks would learn a language for just the sake of knowing it. Far from it. Language is just a tool for communication of ideas. There have been some brilliant treatises, thoughts, ideas, and philosophies expressed in Sanskrit. Folks are more interested in accessing the thoughts and works in Sanskrit as opposed being infatuated with the technical aspects of the language.
- eitally 13y ago
  As someone whose comparative religion BA was mostly spent comparing flavors of Indian religions, it was very helpful to have a basic understanding of Sanskrit. I don't "use" it now, but knowing it during the research phase of my life sure made the learning process smoother.

ximeng 13y ago

They try to answer that question here: http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction http://www.learnsanskrit.org/introduction "Its importance is plain: Sanskrit was once the most influential literary language in India, and texts written in the language could be understood by millions of people throughout the South Asian world. These texts contain profound meditations on every point on the spectrum of human concern: existence, reality, God, love, duty, marriage, war, sex, death, violence, laughter, beauty, perception, nature, anatomy, urbanity, ritual, desire, food, purpose, meaning, and language, among hundreds of others. Moreover, Sanskrit texts are the repository of non-modern modes of thought, and they present distinct conceptions of the world that are often at odds with the understanding we have today. By learning how people used to think, we better understand both ourselves and the world we have inherited. "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond."

r0h1n 13y ago
> "By learning this language, you open the door to more than three thousand years of intellectual history, both in India and beyond." What does that even mean? Indian history, intellectual or not, isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators. As someone who was forced to learn Sanskrit in school for 3 years, I'll repeat: it has zero value unless you happen to be a researcher or a linguist.
- chattoraj 13y ago
  >isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response. Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher. (And before you ask, most of it hasn't been translated and will probably never be translated. See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_pub/classics.pdf http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/pollock_... )
  - 13y ago

primitivesuave 13y ago

Many Hindus chant in Sanskrit for religious/ceremonial purposes, e.g. Chapter 15 of the Bhagavad Gita is often chanted before eating a meal (http://www.asitis.com/15/ http://www.asitis.com/15/). It's useful to understand what the Sanskrit words mean, although there are English translations for virtually all Sanskrit texts.

r0h1n 13y ago
If you're talking about the shlokas most commonly recited by average people, they may amount to maybe 10-20 lines. Learning their meaning will take at best one hour of research/effort. Learning Sanskrit to understand the meaning of a shloka is like learning Latin because you came across 'Cogito, Ergo Sum' or 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' on some blog. Both are pointless overkill.
- 1457389 13y ago
  This average people comment isn't consistent with what I am familiar with. I regularly come across people, especially in the older generations, who have memorized literally pages of verse that they may not necessarily understand fully. The older generations in general in India seem to be multilingual as a rule and deeply interested in Vedic philosophy and ancient Indian history. Case in point the recent success of those Shivva books.

slaxman 13y ago

I am a ployglot and know several indian and foreign languages. My favourite is Sanskrit. Why? Once I learnt Sanskrit, esp. the grammar, learning other languages was really easy. You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit.

chattoraj 13y ago
> You easy almost all languages have their roots from Sanskrit. The grammar rules for German and Finnish, for example, are a subset of Sanskrit. Your claims are a subset of the “everything comes from India” school of BSology.[1] German is related to Sanskrit but does not descend from it.[2] Finnish belongs to a different language family entirely.[3] [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln5QgeCL1fs [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IndoEuropeanTree.svg [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uralic_languages
donniezazen 13y ago
How do you practice or make yourself not forget the several languages you know? I find it really hard to be proficient in a language unless you live among native speakers?
- srik 13y ago
  There is a small village in India which still speaks Sanskrit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattur
angerman 13y ago
Could you please elaborate on this a little more? How did German and Finnish derive from Sanskrit? Could you give examples?
- h1karu 13y ago
  Russian too.

yati 13y ago

From your comments, this is like asking "Why would someone, programmer or not, want to learn Lisp online?". The answer: because they want to, because they might find it interesting. They don't have to ask you. You may not like something, but that is your preference. Don't impose it on us.

melling 13y ago
You can learn Lisp and do real work with it. It has commercial value. It's not some ancient dead language.
- cscurmudgeon 13y ago
  Ah FUD against Sanskrit. Thought I would see those only in Indian politics. Nice to see that on HN too. Do you, the no-nonsense hyper-practical man, smirk at mathematicians who study pure theory?
  - melling 13y ago
    I was simply pointing out that the analogy is not a good one. I have no problem learning Sanskrit for the pure enjoyment.
    - cscurmudgeon 13y ago
      Sanskrit is not a dead language. Enough with the FUD. At least it is more intellectual than current day colonial languages like Spanish.
- yati 13y ago
  The parent has been commenting asking people why they want to learn Sanskrit when there is "infinitely many other" things to learn about. I bet that you can not learn Lisp and sail through a great programming career. And I really don't think Sanskrit is a "dead" language - it is important to far too many people to be called dead.
pessimizer 13y ago

monster_group 13y ago

For the sheer joy of it. I learnt Sanskrit in middle school formally yet superficially. About a year ago I decided I wanted to get rid of the 'superficial' part and devoured several Sanskrit grammar books including this website. It has been a very joyful journey and I feel very happy when I am able to read and understand the only Sanskrit newspaper in the world. I don't know about you but for me that's a good enough reason. Sometimes one makes the journey because the path is so much fun even though the destination may be uninteresting.

cscurmudgeon 13y ago

I imagine people like you breezing through life maximizing some objective function, never waiting to admire poetry or relish a moment, only to die at the end. Hyper-practical no-nonsense men questioning the value of everything for everyone. (The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons.)

ksk 13y ago
>The funny thing is Sanskrit is incredibly practical for lots of reasons. Okay, give me 10 reasons.
- r0h1n 13y ago
  I'd be satisfied with 5. Maybe even 3.
- trevelyan 13y ago
  (1) You are defusing a bomb, but the wires are tucked behind a casing on which there is a label written in Sanskrit and underlined in red. With only 2 minutes left before the bomb explodes, don't you wish you started the language earlier? (2) Women love Sanskrit. (3) You have a dream one day that seems more real than real. In it, you are standing in a desert and are approached by a man who seems intensely familiar. With a shock, you realize this is a flashback from a past life. And you know you would have something incredible to tell yourself... if only both of you spoke Sanskrit. (4) Academic research. (5) On a business trip to China, a question emerges about the etymological origins of certain Chinese characters, and whether they entered the language through Middle Indo-Aryan speakers. Flush with the answer from your knowledge of ancient Sanskrit, you are able to impress your hosts and secure the contract. (6) "Attention passengers, this is the captain speaking. While there is no need to worry, we do have to ask: is there anyone on this plane who happens to be a doctor, and also speaks Sanskrit?" (7) Your boss has outsourced development work on a new software platform to a team in Uttarakhand. The project was a disaster as predicted, but it is now essential to find someone - anyone - who is both local and able to read the commit log as well as Sanskrit-commented source code. (8) A software malfunction switches your phone's display and input languages to Sanskrit. Now how exactly are you planning to switch it back? And if you read Sanskrit, why would you ever want to? (9) You are working for Google, and tasked with organizing ALL of the world's information. (10) As a member of the TSA working to ensure aviation safety, you are responsible for screening Sanskrit speaking passengers, and conversing with them as part of general counter-terrorism screening measures. Can you really do that with only Pimsleur-level fluency?

laichzeit0 13y ago

Serious question, how many languages do you know and actively use? As someone who grew up bilingual I've found that there is a certain untranslatable element in any language, particular when it comes to poetry and humor. Why do you learn multiple programming languages? Why are there several types of text-editing systems? Put it to you this way: learning a new language can be as enlightening as learning functional programming for the first time in your life. Edit: I also want to add that I came across this website in the past http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html http://www.vedicsciences.net/articles/sanskrit-nasa.html where the idea of a highly unambiguous natural language struck me as interesting. Sadly, I've subsequently read a lot of negative comments regarding "vedic" sciences here on HN. Something akin go what the Creationists have tried to do with the bible. But I nevertheless would like to spend a few months looking at Sanskrit grammar and making an opinion about it myself.

r0h1n 13y ago
Okay, serious answer: I can read and write proficiently in English and Hindi. I can speak proficiently in Malayalam. I can understand or business-converse in Kannada. I can understand about 75% of Tamil conversations. I learned Sanskrit in school. I've tried at various points to learn both French and Spanish using Rosetta Stone, but I gave up after the initial few weeks, probably because I was doing it alone. Does that make me "qualified" to comment on this HN thread?
- pessimizer 13y ago
  Depends on how you feel about the vedic "sciences."

nkuttler 13y ago

For the same reason you have other hobbies, they like it. You obviously wouldn't.

ateevchopra 13y ago

Because they say the knowledge of the whole universe is written in sanskrit in the vedas. Thousands of years the Indian sages researched about almost every topic and wrote this vedas. We would have been many years ahead if we could decode those teachings. Many lost, many still to be decoded. If people learn sanskrit, maybe someone will find its life purpose in this and do a big research on the old knowledge. Just saying. Anything is possible. knowledge is never in vain.

RestlessMind 13y ago

Why do you want to live? Questioning utility of anything in life is futile. People do what they do because they want to. Simple.

jimgardener 13y ago

Long time back I was interested in Indian Tantric stuff and found that most English translations (except those by Arthur Avalon) contained too many interpretations by the translator -some of them skewed :).So I got some original Sanskrit texts and tried to translate word by word .I couldn't progress much becoz you cannot understand the meaning of a sentence by just adding up the words- you need to learn the grammer.At that time I wished I had learned the language

involans 13y ago

Because it is an enjoyable pursuit. I would agree that it is not the most practical thing to do; but not everything need be practical. Incidentally - this course seems to be one of the better ones I've seen; it actually uses modern phonetic and segmental terminology instead of throwing people straight into sandhi with no explanation of why this happens.

kops 13y ago

As an Indian, 1. For the same reason as solving sudoku online i.e. for the joy of it. 2. Some interesting literature was written in Sanskrit. I may want to read that. 3. To be able to judge when a hindu preacher is bullshitting me. 4. To be able to critically analyze some of the religious stuff e.g. does the age of Sun god tally with what the modern physics tells us. 5. Its grammar expands my view of what is possible to express in a language. 6. For the same reason as pursuing archaeology. The words in a dead language can tell you a lot about the life when it was in common use. I see that you substantiate some of your views with a "P.S." that you were forced to learn it for 3 years. That means nothing. I learnt it for 5 years purely to pass exams but that hardly makes me qualified enough to start judging whether others should learn it or not. Nopes I don't know Sanskrit and it is not on my radar right now. But a while ago when I tried to learn German, faint memories from Sanskrit classes came quite handy(see #5 above).

the_af 13y ago
"For the joy of it" is probably the most important motive. For archeology is also good, though I assume a serious student of ancient languages won't learn from online guides.

mchaver 13y ago

Because they might not have access to offline Sanskrit resources.

tekalon 13y ago

As someone that has been meaning to learn, its a beautiful language and beautiful script. My motivation comes from a love of ancient history, so being able to read original texts make me happy.