The lunch fare was as democratic as earthy. There were wheat chapatis, rice, thick dal, a vegetable stew. There were boiled eggs in a container for people to pick up. Finally there was a choice of fruits: oranges and mangoes. We took our food on a metal plate and sat down with a crowd of people. Some people knew each other and greeted. Most were quiet and appeared impersonal. Various visiting groups were making noise in some other tables. We ate quietly. After finishing food, we dropped our utensils in the cleaning area and used the common faucets to clean our hands and drink water. I was wondering the culture of group eating. Eating through convenience versus eating through a structure are two different facets of human development. There are some empirical reasoning for orderly and interval eating. Interval eating is forced through group eating. Respecting others in a group teaches a powerful concept of acceptance and sharing. Sometimes it is viewed as sanctification through communion. It possibly has a psychological impact. When we sit together to eat in a line we do have to forego our vanity by default. It would take efforts to integrate into the Ashram living. I was observing a monastery without the walls. We returned to our desks. After checking over some administrative tasks, Dr. Sampad left to oversee the logistics for the seminar. The seminar was to be held in the ground floor seminar hall in the same building. We were two speakers. Besides me there was another young doctoral student who would talk about the computer simulation of word formation in Sanskrit. The talks would be video-recorded for the archives.
There is no clear understanding how Sanskrit language developed in India. There is a western claim that some proto-European language speakers "migrated" to India some five thousand years ago and Sanskrit was developed through their interaction with the native inhabitants. The background for such theory is the similarity of Sanskrit with most of the European languages in phonology, grammar and syntax. Unfortunately no archaeological evidence is yet found to substantiate the argument.
There is an alternate theory promoted by scholars in India drawing evidence from the scriptures to suggest a possible westward migration of people from India. This has to do with fixing dates to various compositions which can contain a wide margin of error. There is new genetic evidence that the population of India does not show any influx for the last forty thousand years. This makes the story complicated.
Whichever way the language is produced, Sanskrit provides a medium of expressive capacity unparalleled anywhere in human civilization. Strongly phonological, the language presents a syllable structure which appear scientific from a neurological point of view. My inclination was to present our neurological findings in the seminar. Thinking that they could get fairly technical for a public lecture, I abandoned the idea. I looked up my slides on my Story of Sanskrit project where I document the language for the lay public.
I was escorted to the seminar hall. There were about a hundred people sitting on chairs filling half the room. There was arrangements of floor sitting in the front which covered about fifteen feet width. There were photographs of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on the wall behind the speaker's podium. There was a screen for slide displays and there were various computers for use. Myself and the companion speaker arranged our slides in the respective computers. The arrangements were like a public seminar hall in the west.
Dr Sampad gave a short survey of the program and then introduced me. He called upon me to deliver my lecture. I offered my respects to Sri Aurobindo whose commentary on the Bhagavadgita was the first spiritual text I read in my life. I had loved his style of writing and read his other works as I grew older. He was a master of English language and his depth of expression was intense. I bowed down to the Pictures in the hall.
The story of Sanskrit is an educational project to document the essence of Sanskrit. It would be divided in six segments (i) Phonemes (ii) Word (iii) Prosody (iv) Grammar (v) Literature and (vi) Linguistics. I gave an outline of each of the proposed segments. The idea is to bring out the challenges between the empiricism and scientific understanding. The goal is to help understand the mechanics of the language and foster scientific research for better appreciation. The project would publish books and create educational videos for public distribution.
In order to extend the point, I presented my appreciation of the text of Valmiki's Ramayana and my efforts of creating an English translation for the children. I commented that the translation task must preserve the lyricism and the storytelling of the original text. Valmiki's drama in the story and his use of words in creating imagery do pose a scientific question of creating emotion through imagination triggered by word imagery.
There were interesting questions following the lecture. Many questions centered on the efficacy of Sanskrit in yogic meditation. My viewpoint has been that the process of calming the mind is through the techniques of breathing. The recitation of Sanskrit syllables force different rhythms of breathing and various empirical combinations have been discovered in time. The science of the Mantra as it is called is not properly understood. The role of mind in human activities is an open topic for investigation.
I met a Chinese student who had been a resident in the Ashram for more than six months. I admired his dedication and his curiosity. He had many more personal questions which I tried to answer to the best of my ability. There were a few other students from the local educational institutions. They were very supportive of my ideas and wanted to help the project. An old resident Ashramite in shorts spoke about his journey in Sanskrit and blessed the project. He spoke only in Sanskrit.
I was followed by Mr. Martin Gluckman who presented his work on the creation of a Sanskrit dictionary for help in learning Sanskrit. It is a computational tool that collects information from various publishes resources and presents a collection of translation ideas for the student. The Sanskrit word creation is conceptual and its application makes a contextual meaning. For the reading of Sanskrit literature, the dictionary is a good tool though the discovery of the right meaning might need more detailed cultivation.
The meeting ended with tea for all attendees and there was further social discussion. I loved the scholarly interest with the attendees and admired their attention on application. There were several summer visitors from various countries making the audience diverse and interesting. The waters of the Bay of Bengal across the walls gave the seminar hall a good location for meditation and contemplation.
Dr Sampad and I visited the shrine dedicated to the Mother which was in the building she lived. There were many assembled in the meditation hall next to the shrine. We spent some time at the shrine and then slowly walked towards the waterfront. We passed by an old Temple and reached the embankment of the sea.
