Educationists across the world concur that primary education must be provided in the children's mother tongue, that is the first language. What then is the sense behind teaching Nepali children in English when they do not know their own?
All kinds of speech, tongue and language in the world have the right to survive, and all people who speak them should try their best to preserve them for their posterity and identity.
The Sanskrit language is as old as the hills; it is the oldest member of the Indo-European language family and has a recorded history that dates back to over 3500 years. The Vedas were transmitted orally before they were written down in Sanskrit between 1500 and 1200 BCE. All the Hindu scriptures such as Ramayana, Mahabharata, Puranas and Upanishads have gone down in this very language called devabhasha (god's language).
The modern technological breakthroughs, which we are so proud of, have endorsed, one after the other, what our saintly scholars already had discovered and found: our ancestors knew thousands of years ago, before the advent of modern science and technology, about the timing of the eclipses, distances between the earth and the sun, between the earth and the moon and other such feats. Without doubt, this language of the wonders, great skills and labour must not suffer our neglect.
Let us dispel the notion that Sanskrit is the language of the Brahmins alone. The thing is that the Brahmins had the sole privilege of learning, and the medium was Sanskrit. The fault does not lie with the learners rather with the hierarchical system devised by the society then. But in modern times, education has become the pursuit of all people regardless of caste, class, colour, religion and region. And the interesting thing to note is that a non- Brahmin can perform better not only at Sanskrit but other subjects as well.
It is, therefore, our collective obligation to revive, to revitalise, to reinvent the language that contains boundless treasures of knowledge and learning.
Moreover, we must not forget that our official language and vernaculars are all off-branches of Sanskrit itself. More than 85 per cent of the Nepali populace belong to this group of languages, which can be leveled up, brushed up and enriched by sufficiently exposing our students to Sanskrit education. Those belonging to the Tibeto-Burman or any other language family may skip it.
Please take a look at how Goswami Tulasidas in his Manas embellishes his contemporary Lok bhasha by playing upon words derived from Sanskrit: Bandhyo bananidhi neernidhi jaladhi sindhu varis; Satya toyanidhi kampati udadhi payodhi nadis.
In addition to using these nine words for ocean in the 5th couplet of the Lanka Kanda, Tulasidas uses other words like varidhi, pathodi, sagar and samudra for the same in the epic elsewhere. The actual words in Sanskrit for bananidhi, varis and nadis are: vananidhi, Varish and nadish.
Sanskrit is indeed unusually rich in vocabulary which can immensely enhance our official as well as vernacular languages if it is made a part of our language studies. But the irony is we teach more English to our children than it is due; we ask them to commit to their memory more words, synonyms, formal and informal expressions than they can digest. The other subjects like maths and their own language skills they fail to shine at.
We can replace one or two English books with Sanskrit to serve our purpose. It is not that we underestimate the English language. But, at the same time, why should we say goodbye to our legacy? It is a pity that our future heroes and builders learn their own languages but a little. The elderly must inculcate in their minds that their languages are more significant than their daura, surwal, dhaka topi and dhoti.
Learning multiple languages, especially those that are closely related, is an advantage. English school children learn French, Greek and Latin to boost their English language. We know very well that the English language does not have more than 10 per cent of its own original words, yet it has become the language of the world by borrowing words from other languages of the world.
So far as our case is concerned, our languages have directly stemmed from the Sanskrit language. If you are a Nepali speaker you need not go up to any school or university to speak Hindi. Similarly, a Hindi speaker has command over the Nepali language by living in the company of Nepali speakers for a month or two. So it is indispensable that our children learn Sanskrit for enhancing their language. This was the idea that drove our educationists to offer Sanskrit from classes 6 to 10 before 1971, when the new education plan was introduced.
Educationists across the world concur that primary education must be provided in the children's mother tongue, that is the first language. What then is the sense behind teaching Nepali children in English when they do not know their own? Moreover, why should they do 5 or 6 books in English at the primary level? Can an average student grasp them? Well, let them learn English from grade 3, and pile up, if needed, more English texts as they grow. So far as the matter with teaching Sanskrit is concerned, our school students must do Sanskrit from grades 6 to 12 as an elementary subject. Specialisations will follow later.
Thakur retired as Associate Professor of English from R Multiple Campus, Janakpurdham
