As a beginning Sanskrit student- I see how the “mystification” has stopped many practitioners of yoga etc from even starting to study the language. They think it’s enough to “feel the vibration.” This can be true, perhaps?
It’s too bad, though, in so many ways- there are so many layers that I enjoy even where I am- admittedly, just a scratch beneath the surface. Meter, for example. It blows my socks off. I look at iambic pentameter now and think, “how nice…”
Also samāsa (which, to me, does feel like a topic particularly open to interpretations…).
When we posture as “experts” in a yoga/tantra tradition, but have never read the texts closely (well, maybe the yoga sūtras) and don’t know any of the language, for me, it feels like colonization 2.0. There can be so much arrogance there… “what the texts are reaaallly saying…”
These pronlems are not just Western. For me, I had already been studying Tantra for several years, but the “translation” to the text I was reading (by another school of Indian philosophy) was so clearly being appropriated within the lens of that school that I finally had had enough and realized I needed to roll up my sleeves and actually love the thing that I so clearly loved.
A great article and it has inspired me to keep loving that thing (as I’m about to pop in to a Sanskrit class actually!)
Sanskrit is to Hindi what Latin is to Italian right? I remember hearing about hardcore Jews complaining about modern Hebrew when it was introduced. How undignified it is to use the holy language to talk about going to the bathroom. And yet it's just a language like any other.
As a beginning Sanskrit student- I see how the “mystification” has stopped many practitioners of yoga etc from even starting to study the language. They think it’s enough to “feel the vibration.” This can be true, perhaps?
It’s too bad, though, in so many ways- there are so many layers that I enjoy even where I am- admittedly, just a scratch beneath the surface. Meter, for example. It blows my socks off. I look at iambic pentameter now and think, “how nice…”
Also samāsa (which, to me, does feel like a topic particularly open to interpretations…).
When we posture as “experts” in a yoga/tantra tradition, but have never read the texts closely (well, maybe the yoga sūtras) and don’t know any of the language, for me, it feels like colonization 2.0. There can be so much arrogance there… “what the texts are reaaallly saying…”
These pronlems are not just Western. For me, I had already been studying Tantra for several years, but the “translation” to the text I was reading (by another school of Indian philosophy) was so clearly being appropriated within the lens of that school that I finally had had enough and realized I needed to roll up my sleeves and actually love the thing that I so clearly loved.
A great article and it has inspired me to keep loving that thing (as I’m about to pop in to a Sanskrit class actually!)
Good reflection. Thanks
Sanskrit is to Hindi what Latin is to Italian right? I remember hearing about hardcore Jews complaining about modern Hebrew when it was introduced. How undignified it is to use the holy language to talk about going to the bathroom. And yet it's just a language like any other.