Journalism of Courage
The 200-year-old Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute in Maharashtra’s Pune city is hosting an Open Day for the general public to witness its ongoing encyclopedia of Sanskrit dictionary project.
The Open Day, to be organised Saturday, is aimed at introducing the huge and distinct encyclopedia of Sanskrit to the visitors, demonstrating and promoting India’s intellectual heritage hidden in Sanskrit literature.
Led by researchers from the Department of Sanskrit and Lexicography at the college, the encyclopaedic dictionary of Sanskrit will be the world’s biggest dictionary.
Thirty-five volumes have been published as part of this project, which began in 1948. This dictionary consists of references from 62 knowledge disciplines restored in Sanskrit language and traces the language’s linguistic developments right from Rigveda to Hasyarnava (1850 AD).
The Sanskrit scholars have been tracing phonetic changes, semantic development of words since inception of the mighty project.
Over ten million references have been collected from more than 1,500 Sanskrit books in disciplines like vedas, vedant, darshana, polity, mathematics, agriculture, chemistry, architecture, dramaturgy and others. These have been collected and stored in the form of slips safely preserved in the college’s scriptorium, one-of-its-kind in the world. Each slip — in either pink or green colours and in different sizes — holds information about exact vocable, grammatical category, citation to attest the vocable.
During the Open Day, multiple sessions of hour-long guided tours will be organised. The registration for which can be done on https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf1HBnUeJZOeXU_3QiclTs4hVE7kEKIF4IF7OB5dj5DShjZtg/viewform.
