Sanskrit still speaks through Mathoor | Fusion - WeRIndia

Sanskrit is dead but long lives the Vedic language in the small, sylvan village of Mathoor. Everybody is giving it traditional voice as well as modern touch. Not just Sanketi Brahmins, but even Muslims and other castes and communities.

Maybe people here cannot voice the choice expletives of other languages, but they do express imperatives, such as ‘Maargaha swacchataya viraajithe, gramaha sujanai viraajithe’ (Cleanliness is as important for a road as good people are for a village).”Coffeya chaaya kim ichchathi?” asked one woman. Names are interesting: Manojava, Savyasaachi, Ikshudhanwa and Niharika.

The 5,000 residents of this hamlet are some distance from Shimoga. The village has some plantations that share some bonding with the Vedic times—arecanut and coconut plantations along the Tunga river.  Otherwise, it produced 30 Sanskrit professors teaching in Kuvempu, Bangalore, Mysore and Mangalore Universities, besides many software engineers and other modern professionals.

The Vijayanagar emperor gifted Mathoor and neighbouring Hosahalli, famed as hubs of learning for Sanskrit and Vedic studies to the “people” in 1512. It was inscribed in copper plates and preserved by the archaeology department. The village got its name from Pejawar mutt Pontiff, Vishvesha Theertha, 1982, who christened it ‘the Sanskrit village’.

Image Credit:- OldakQuill / CC BY-SA

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