Monday, July 20, 2009

Sanskrit Newspaper Turns 40

Sanskrit newspaper turns 40
Express News Service
First Published : 20 Jul 2009 07:55:10 AM IST
Last Updated : 20 Jul 2009 09:50:13 AM IST
MYSORE: Sudharma, the world's only Sanskrit daily, published from Mysore celebrated its 40th year on Sunday.
A special anniversary issue was brought out to mark the occasion.
The newspaper's readership comprises mainly of Sanskrit scholars and students.

Sudharma has a daily circulation of about 2,000 copies and is mostly circulated through post. The paper, which strives to revive Sanskrit as a spoken language, has subscribers in countries like Japan and USA. "According to popular perception, Sanskrit, like Latin, is not spoken outside academia," said Ramchandra, a resident of Mysore," This is not true." The newspaper was launched by Kalale Nadadur Varadaraja Iyengar, a Sankrit scholar, in 1970. The purpose of the paper was to revive the Sanskrit language.

On its launch, many believed that the endeavour would fail. However, it did not. KV, Sampath Kumar, son of Varadaraja Iyengar, is the current editor of the paper.
Former chief justice of India MN Venkatachaliah, released the special edition.

In his address, Venkatachallaiah called for increased efforts to revive the language and aid its growth on par with the progress of science and technology. He said that the promotion
of Sanskri would help protect Indian culture and tradition.

"Science and technology is constantly evolving. The Indian culture and tradition is under threat by the growth of Information technology and biotechnology.

There is an urgent need to protect our culture and tradition for posterity and learning the Sankrit language would help," he said.

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