The language of the Gods is no more

Death of the 'Sanskrit speaking village' || Photo Courtesy: Anusha Ravishankar

Mattur: This silent village, along the banks of the river Tunga, prided itself in being one of the only three villages in India where inhabitants conversed exclusively in Sanskrit. Around 182 kms. from Manipal, Mattur village in Shivamooga (Shimoga) district stands testimony to a failed reality in revival of Sanskrit. One enters the famed ‘Sanskrit speaking village’ expecting communication in devavani but is taken aback to hear the villagers, sitting under the village banyan tree, speaking in free flowing kannada. Ploughing further, the reality only seeps in deeper.

The village with around 2500 residents was once claimed to have 95% of its population fluent in spoken as well as written Sanskrit. Today, the graffiti on the walls has been replaced by Kannada script and villagers converse in same language too. “We know little Sanskrit but very few people in the village actually speak in the language. A meagre 10-20% of the whole population must be using Sanskrit for daily communications”, said Keshava Vardhan, one of the villagers. “Maximum people here speak in Sankethi, which is a dialect of Kannada. The second most common language around is Kannada”, chipped in his daughter. Routine affairs, whether it is medium of instruction at school or dialogue with friends, continue to be in local languages. No apparent reason for the gradual decline in the usage of the language can be ascertained.

The traditions of shlokas, vedas and spoken Sanskrit have been kept alive mostly by the cluster of brahminical families in the area. The front doors to some of these houses announce that ‘You can speak in Sanskrit in this house’. A few families like that of K N Avadhani, a renowned scholar in Sanskrit, still communicate in the language. The script is barely used only around the three temple premises in the area.

Yet the efforts of Samkrit Bharati, whose activists had been trying hard for the revival of the language in all three villages in India, seem to have failed to reap results. While Government data still maintains that the village has seen no shift, ground reality differs. From a time when children on the cricket field would have duels in Sanskrit to today when they use Kannada to converse on dinner tables. Alas, the language already dead is on the verge of meeting its end all over again.