Discover the cultures, histories, languages, literatures, and peoples of South Asia
Background Video of South asian countries and their people
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Sanskrit. It’s easier than you think! Unlock the depth and complexity of South Asia in two semesters of study. In this course, students will gain mastery of the foundations of the Sanskrit language: the Devanāgarī writing system, correct pronunciation, all fundamental topics of grammar, basic writing and speaking. By the end of the academic year, students will be poised to read epic Sanskrit (the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa) with the aid of only a dictionary.
Classical Sanskrit is the transcultural, transregional language par excellence for the civilizations that have flourished in South Asia. For its beauty and complexity, it has been called “the language of the gods.” For nearly three millennia, South Asian seers and sovereigns, poets and philosophers, scholars and scientists composed texts of astonishing literary beauty and incredible logical rigor in Sanskrit. Indeed, to be a South Asian intellectual was to be a master of Sanskrit—not merely to be fluent in it, but to understand the rigorous linguistic underpinnings of the language (its morphology, syntax, and prosody) as well as to absorb the complex theories of aesthetics and hermeneutics that govern Sanskrit texts. The study of Sanskrit is therefore absolutely essential for unlocking the profundities and the complexities of the life of the mind and of the heart in classical South Asia. It offers many lifetimes’ worth of insight into worlds of literature, linguistics, law, ritual, and philosophy—all the more so, since millions of precious manuscripts remain unstudied and untranslated in the original Sanskrit. Studying Sanskrit also provides a powerful foundation for studying the modern South Asian languages, most of which bear the deep imprint of the language of the gods. It is thus the key not just to South Asia’s past, but also to its present and to its future.
News
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- The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) announces the mentees for ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program – including SAS’s very own Poorna SwamiPoorna will continue to study Urdu translation under this program. Many of the other mentees’ subject languages are also South…
- Mittal Institute Summer Grants (deadline February 9th)Don’t miss the chance to travel to South Asia this summer! Apply NOW for an internship grant, language study grant, or…
Explore South Asian Studies at Harvard
The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute
We emphasize a rigorous approach to South Asian texts and traditions, the cultural, intellectual, and social practices that they inform, and the diverse disciplinary perspectives that are needed to study and write about them.