Careers

Sanskrit is the oldest and also one of the modern Indian languages. Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand. Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies.

The corpus of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical and dharma texts. Today, the scientific literature in Sanskrit available to us is vast and varied, covering subjects as diverse as Alchemy and Astronomy, Mathematics and Metallurgy, Gemology ( Branch of mineralogy) and Zoology, Chemistry and Physics and many more.

Sir William Jones, speaking to The Asiatic Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata) on 2 February 1786, said: The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong, indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.

Leadership:

Sanskrit has produced a number of eminent leaders such as Dr. Rajendra Prasad (First President of India), Shankar Dayal Sharma (Ninth President of India), P. V. Narasimha Rao (10th Prime Minister of India) Sushma Swaraj (Current Minister of External Affairs of India) and others who played very important role to the development of India. It is well known fact that Sanskrit student can become a good leader.

Teaching and Research in Universities, Colleges and Schools

Many universities throughout the world train and employ Sanskrit scholars either within a separate Sanskrit department, or within a broader focus area - for example, in South Asian studies/linguistics departments in universities across the globe.

The Seven Śāstra (Science) disciplines that are popular in Sanskrit are 1. Yoga 2. Āyurveda 3. Sanskrit Computational Linguistics 4. Manuscriptology 5. Mathematics 6. Vāstu- Śāstra (Architecture) 7. Jyotiṣa (Astrology). Particularly Yoga (Internationally recognized), Āyurveda, Computational Linguistics, Vāstu- Śāstra (Architecture) and Jyotiṣa (Astrology) fields hold good career path as a mainstream or as an alternative career option. It is also popular amongst the many practitioners of Yoga in the West, who find the language useful in understanding the Yogasūtra of Patañjali.

Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan (A Deemed University) has 10 campuses spread across the country. Besides this there are 15 Exclusive Sanskrit Universities (totalling 26 campuses), 3 Yoga Universities, over 300 Sanskrit Colleges and over 20 Āyurvedic colleges. Sanskrit is also taught in almost most of the Colleges in State and Central Universities including 50 (approximately) colleges of Delhi University at undergraduate level. At school level Sanskrit is taught as third language in most of the schools including Kendriya Vidyalaya and their School teaching positions over 20,000 schools in India are open for Sanskrit students. This gives great opportunity to Sanskrit students for building their career in academics.

There are 14 Universities in Germany which teach Sanskrit in their Departments. After India Germany is the second country where students from all corners of globe visit to learn Sanskrit.

In addition to the above, Sanskrit scholars are also in demand in the department of Philosophy, Linguistics, C-DAC, Computational Sanskrit, Machine Translation and Indological and Oriental study institutes etc.

There are many positions, outside India, in Germany, France, USA, Japan, South Korea, United Kingdom for Sanskrit teachers, linguistics and Programmers.

St. James Junior School offers Sanskrit as part of the curriculum. Students from this school are fluent in both spoken Sanskrit and in chanting Sanskrit mantras.

In Mass Media

Over 90 weeklies, fortnightlies and quarterlies are published in Sanskrit. Sudharma, a daily newspaper in Sanskrit has been published in Mysore since the year 1970, while Sanskrit Vartmāna Patram and Viśvasya Vtāntam were started in Gujarat over the last five years. Since 1974 All India Radio has been broad casting daily News in Sanskrit. Durdarshan also telecasts daily Sanskrit News. A new Sanskrit Programme named Vārtāvali has been started by Durdarshan covering all aspects of Sanskrit.

Students can pursue their career as a Journalist, Editor, Broadcast Executive etc.

European scholarship

European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth(1620–1668) and Johann Ernst Hanxleden (1681–1731), is regarded as responsible for the discovery of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones. This scholarship played an important role in the development of Western philology, or historical linguistics.

Career as a Musician or Music Faculty

Recital of Sanskrit shlokas as background chorus in films, television advertisements and as slogans for corporate organizations has become a trend. The opera Satyagraha by Philip Glass uses texts from the Bhagavad Gita, sung in the original Sanskrit.

Recently, Sanskrit also made an appearance in Western pop music in two recordings by Madonna.

Sanskrit has also seen a significant revival in China. Musicians such as Sa Dingding have written pop songs in Sanskrit.

Students can pursue their academic career as a faculty or researcher in music in India or abroad.

Computational linguistics

Sanskrit as the most Scientific and Structured language has many Algorithms built-in as part of vast scientific treatises for analysing "Meanings" or "Word sense" from many perspectives since time immemorial - "It is our job to discover and convert the scientific methods inherent in Sanskrit into usable Computational models and Tools for Natural Language Processing rather than reinventing the wheel" - as scientists put it. According to Rick Briggs, Sanskrit is such a language in which a message can be sent by the computer in the least number of words.

There have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. machine translation, and other areas of natural language processing because of its relatively high regular structure. This is due to Classical Sanskrit being a regularized, prescriptivist form abstracted from the much more complex and richer Vedic Sanskrit.

Sanskrit will be a part of the space, with the United States of America (USA) mulling to use it as computer language at NASA. Some of the scientists believe that Sanskrit is also helpful in speech therapy besides helping in mathematics and science. It also improves concentration. The alphabets used in the language are scientific and their correct pronunciation improves the tone of speech. It encourages imagination and improves memory retention also.

Conclusively, the study of Sanskrit not only protects the language and culture but also offers students good career options. Students can pursue their academic career as a faculty or researcher in India or abroad. They can also contribute in research and development activities in industry and Space and military Science. Sanskrit students can appear in any administrative examination (such as Civil Services, State Public Service Commission) and Banking Services Examination (Bank P.O., Language Officer etc.). There are plenty of jobs for Sanskrit students as religious teacher in Defence Services