Mission & Vision
The Department of South Asian Studies provides students with an opportunity to study the civilizations of South Asia and of related cultures by developing competence in Sanskrit, Hindi-Urdu, Tamil, Tibetan, or another South Asian language, and by examining the literature, the religious and philosophical traditions, the aesthetic and artistic traditions, and the moral and social traditions of that civilization.
While the Department of South Asian Studies is small, the resources available to students at Harvard are not, and include related degree programs and courses in Anthropology, Religions, Linguistics, Economics, Fine Arts, Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, Social Medicine, and Near Eastern Languages, among many others. In addition, the Sanskrit Library (Widener A) and the Widener and Houghton Libraries contain a collection of reference works, periodicals, and tape recordings of oral recitations, as well as one of the largest collections of Sanskrit and Tibetan manuscripts and printed texts in the West.
New Course Highlight
SAS 108— Introduction To The Hindu Calendar As A Lived Experience
No prior knowledge in South Asian languages needed! The purpose of this course is to acquaint someone completely new to the religious traditions of South Asia with Hinduism as a lived experience. It is meant to introduce students to ways of life that are informed by the most prominent sub-traditions of Hinduism today as they are reflected in the different versions of the Hindu calendar, also called Pañcāṅga or Pañjikā. Building on the history of different Hindu calendars, which consist of lunar dates (tithis), this course aims to give a broad overview of Hindu religious life as it revolves around festivals, fasts, seasonal rituals and pilgrimages that comprise each version of the calendar. Students will begin this journey with the Lunar New Year of the Vikrama Saṁvat calendar, which coincides with the end of the Spring Festival of Nine Nights (Caitra Navarātri) dedicated to the feminine divine, Śakti. After exploring the many ways in which the same event is celebrated in different regions, students will progress through the calendar towards the end of the year, learning about other major Hindu festivals along the way.. Throughout the course, students will learn about the ways in which devotees structure their lives around sacred dates, such as the birthdays and anniversaries of their chosen deities of worship, as well as commemorations of other mythological events. In addition to this, they will gain a perspective on food, visual art, dance, and music as aspects of life regulated by the Hindu calendar. The course will highlight cross-religious experiences, as certain major festivals transcend religious boundaries and share a history with some non-Hindu festivals that coincide with them.
Our History
Sanskrit was first taught at Harvard in 1872, when James Bradstreet Greenough, a Latin grammarian, began offering courses in Sanskrit and comparative philology as Latin electives. Charles Lanman, who began at Harvard in 1880, was the first to preside over the department of Indo-Iranian Languages, as it was then called. During his tenure, Lanman produced A Sanskrit Reader (1888), a collection of Sanskrit and Indic manuscripts which is still the standard introductory text today, as well as founded The Harvard Oriental Series in 1891. By 1902, as a result of the relinquishing of Avesta and the addition of Pali and Prakrit, the name of the department was changed to Indic Philology.
Degree Programs
Contact Us
1 Bow Street, 3rd floor
Cambridge, MA 0213
1 (617) 495-3295 – phone
1 (617) 496-8571 – fax
southasianstudies@fas.harvard.edu