Now, a five-week, five-session long course on Sanskrit is a little like learning oceonography by looking at photos of large bottles of salty water. So, I went in with many apprehensions.

Would I like it? Would I learn anything? Would it be too difficult? Would it put me off Sanskrit? Would it put me off Indian history completely? Would it be like that time when I became a member of the National Cadet Corps for exactly one weekend before getting an honourable discharge due to a hilarious asthma attack while jogging?

Reader, it gives me great pleasure to tell you that I had the time of my life. The course, just five sessions of 90 minutes each, packed in buckets of information on not just the language itself, but also on the history of the various Sanskrit texts, the evolution of Hindu scriptures and the great variety in ancient Indian schools of thought. As our teacher, Rohini Bakshi (@rohinibakshi), kept emphasizing, the history of Sanskrit and ancient Indian thought and philosophy is very, very messy. And I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense.

It is messy because it is history that refuses to neatly divide itself into periods or eras or phases. Instead, it seems to have taken place in great swirls and eddies of ideas and counter-ideas and revolutions and counter-revolutions and so on. It was all quite riveting. Best of all, we ended each session with a Sanskrit verse that we studied for meaning and pronunciation.

Consider this one from the Yajurveda:

Karpura Gauram Karunavataram

Sansara Saram Bhujagendra Haram

Sada Vasantam Hridayaravinde

Bhavam Bhavani Sahitam Namami

Just enunciating the words is very satisfying. But understand the meaning also and... it is really quite exciting. Suddenly, one gets the sense that a tiny window into India’s past has been left ajar... and you can just peer into it.

I am now considering signing up for the full-fledged one-year City Lit course on Sanskrit starting in September. It is not going to be easy. The grammar, in particular, seems quite daunting. But the reward seems worth it.

During our third session—the Watershed Centuries 400 BCE to 400 CE—Bakshi gave us a snapshot overview of the Arthashastra. Written sometime between 150 BCE and 50 CE, the Arthashastra is a remarkable ancient text on statecraft, economics and military strategy. It is one of those texts that most Indians are aware of, even if only in name.

Towards the end of that section, Bakshi said something that completely took me by surprise. She mentioned that the Arthashastra had been lost for many centuries before being rediscovered in Mysore (now Mysuru) just a century ago.

Wait a minute. We didn’t have a copy of the Arthashastra till the 1900s?

Bakshi confirmed. For centuries we knew of the Arthashastra, but didn’t have a single copy. Anywhere. We had little idea what was actually in it. Until R. Shamasastry, curator of the Government Oriental Library in Mysore, discovered it one day.

One day in 1904, or perhaps 1905, Shamasastry was going about his usual business of sorting through stacks of dusty, uncatalogued Sanskrit texts. Until he came across a set of palm leaf manuscripts in the Grantha script that been donated to the library by a pandit of the Tanjore district. Shamasastry slowly realized that he held a copy of the Arthashastra in his hands, along with a brief commentary by Bhattsvamin. It was a huge moment for both Shamasasrty and for the whole field of Indian history. A contemporary scholar, Julius Jolly, called it the most precious work in the whole range of Sanskrit literature.

A few weeks ago, I asked a friend, who requests anonymity, to visit the Oriental Research Institute — what the library in Mysore is now called — and ask them if they still have Shamasastry’s discovery. They not only confirmed this, but also allowed him to glimpse at it from a safe distance. He then sent me pictures of the palm leaves that are currently preserved rather simply with a coating of citronella oil. The pictures really did fill my heart with joy.

Peruse conversations on Indian history these days and what you see is politics, point-scoring and name-calling. Who are you? What about this? What about that?

The whimsy of political ideology seems far more important than the legacy of discovery, preservation and public access. I find it both tremendously repulsive and sad. All this even as hundreds of discovered and undiscovered documents languish in underfunded libraries and archives. So much of what needs to be done to preserve our history and make it sexy is beyond political differences and pitched rhetorical battles.

Anyone who has followed the brilliant brouhaha surrounding the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary in the UK will get a sense of the potential for engagement and education offered by the great texts.

This year marks the centenary of the first translation of the Arthashastra by Shamasastry. A seminal moment in Indian history. Let us do something to celebrate!

Perhaps an evening Sanskrit class?

Every week, Déjà View scours historical research and archives to make sense of current news and affairs.

To read Sidin Vadukut’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/dejaview

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