How I Started My Journey in DevBhasha Sanskrit?
My up bringing is north of India made me comfortable to Devanagari letters, but it does not mean you can read, understand, talk in Sanskrit. Sanskrit is the mother of Indian languages so Sanskrit can be written in all India languages including South Indian Languages like Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Telegu. Therefore I cannot say because of Devanagari or Hindi I know Sanskrit better than any other person who just know any south Indian languages or for that matter any Indian languages.
An ability to identify letters of certain language doesn’t mean you can understand or conversant in that language. For example I can understand Roman letters and if you write English using Roman letters I can understand but if you write Tugaloo using Roman I cannot understand what is written, except reading letters or pronouncing words.
My natural inclination towards devotional music and instrumental music took me near to Sanskrit Sholka, Stotra, Sukta, Ashtakam, Prayers etc. After some time I wanted to understand the meaning of those texts. For this I picked up different English translations of those Sanskrit based prayers and music. Very soon I realized different book has different meaning of the same sloka, especially if text is philosophical in nature. Therefore to understand the correct meaning from my perspective I realized the need of learn Sanskrit.
This was the starting point around 2001 and then I started moving deeper into this beautiful forest. I call it forest because this is huge unending journey for a single life. As per some guess work of some Sanskrit experts there are 5 million manuscripts in Sanskrit language. Most of that work is in Science, Technology, Ayurveda, Yoga, Astrology, Astronomy, Philosophy, Building Architecture etc. But unfortunately most of our today’s professionals of these streams cannot read that work. Because they don’t know this language. The saddest part is people started calling it dead language and limited it to temple prayer and some important rituals.
I completed my Pravesha, Parchichya, Shiksha and Kovida Exams of Sanskrit from Sanskrit Bharati. Learned to decode Patanjali’s Ashtadhyayi after one full reading. Heard Adisankara’s commentary on Prasthan-Triyam from my Vedanta Guru Swami Paramarthananada Ji. This is huge and beautiful work by Swamiji. It is approximately 2000 hours of mp3 and very lucid explanation of complex philosophy of Vedanta. Mantra chanting became part of my daily life especially Rudram, Chamakam, Vishnu Sahsranamam, Lalita Sahasranamam, Bhagawat Gita, Durga Saptashati etc.
Two very important thing which happened in my life after this journey are I never ever became negative to anything in the life or low in energy at any point of time. Another important thing happened is I can better understand the meaning of words of any Indian language, if it spoken slow.
Around 2 decades I have lots to share around this. Only issue is time to express and talk. I am using this blog space to express myself and inspire others professionals to learn this mother language, which is mother of all Indian languages except Tamil, so that you become one with cosmic music of Aum.
One more thing we need to keep in mind our Acharyas whether they were from south or north, east or west always learned and used Sanskrit to share their spiritual experiences and compose their work. In spite of the fact that languages like Tamil, Telegu, Kannada, Malayalam, Bangla, Nepali, Hindi etc. are part of our societies for many centuries.
Aum Tat Sat. ॐ तत् सत्
Dr. Hari Thapliyaal @Bangalore
Trainer, Consultant, Coach in Data Science, Machine Learning, Project Management