Sanskrit and Technology

I was just setting up my old books and files last week when I found a file full of paper cuttings I used to collect during my school days. You know what? I almost forgot about the existence of all these cuttings.:) Now when I see these it makes me think how I managed to collect a variety of articles depending on my that particular day’s interest. You must be thinking why I am telling all this .Well actually it is this particular article that made me post on subject like Sanskrit. It featured a so called ‘Silicon Village’ which is a little village Mattur in Karnataka’s Ghat  region ,may be the only place where people really speak Sanskrit. If you know any other place where Sanskrit is a spoken language do let me know.

While studying Sanskrit as one of the subjects till my 10^th grade I did’nt have any idea about how deep and reputed this language must be. I just liked the shlokas and their messages  and of course it was the subject in which I could score easily .Personally,I don’t know why people end up taking French ,German or any other language as electives when we can opt for Sanskrit.

You know what  the 1985 spring issue of California-based quarterly featured a write up by an American called Rick Briggs on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Sanskrit.Briggs ,who compared its grammer with that of the computer ,came to a startling conclusion :Sanskrit, which ceased to be a living tongue millennia ago,had such a logical meaning –structure that it could be a rich mining field for AI .Isn’t it amazing that people are really researching on Sanskrit.Well ,here it goes then most of  you must  be familiar with a programming technique called OOP(Object Oriented Programming) which is the basic of languages JAVA or C++ used by software developers.This OOP is very similar to Panini’s Sanskrit grammer.

Sanskrit is  a tough language to those  who have no idea about it.The word gachhami  means going which is much like gamanam that is related to movement.Both words come from the root class gam,from which a fluent Sanskrit speaker can dig up words for all kinds of movements and for things that move.From a few basic classes (root words),Sanskrit creates an endless chain of words –all linked to each other.The objects ,events and actions are all labelled depending on the root.Alright enough with the Sanskrit stuff.Now let me tell you about the village Mattur.

Mattur and its twin village Hosanahalli is situated few kilometres north of Shimoga town sandwiching a thin strip of the Tungabhadra.Sanskrit dominates the life of Mattur.Not only Sanskrit its the technological side of Mattur thats more interesting.Fifty to sixty software professionals from Mattur are placed in the different IT firms that made Bangalore the Silicon valley of India.Moreover there is a rural BPO-Shridam  that has set up operation in Mattur.The BPO,the brainchild of Mattur’s affluent techie migrants,employs 50 villagers at the moment.For Mr.Dhruv and his various associates setting up a rural BPO is merely the first step in stemming the flood of urban migration that is eroding   the very fabric if villages like Mattur.They have much bigger plans for the village which would make Mattur  a global village.It would be bizarre candidate not because the people of this  village speak Sanskrit and wear unstitched clothes while running software companies and techno-heavy development projects.