Donated by Guru and Anupama Radhakrishnan.
By Dileep Thekkethil
An Indian American couple has donated $3.5 million to the University of Chicago for establishing a professorship in Sanskrit studies to help the university advance its studies on the Indian classical language.
The Anupama and Guru Ramakrishnan Professorship in Sanskrit has been established using the amount donated by Guru and Anupama Ramakrishnan to support the faculty members of the University of Chicago to extend their knowledge base in India’s ancient classical language, Sanskrit, according to a press release.
“The University of Chicago is world renowned for its excellence in the scholarship of South Asia,” said the Humanities dean Martha T Roth, in a statement.
“Guru and Anupama Ramakrishnan’s generosity allows us to sustain that tradition and makes possible continued rigorous study of the cultural heritage of South Asia through its literary, religious and philosophical texts,” Roth said.
The faculty director of the University of Chicago in Delhi Gary Tubb, who is also the Professor in South Asian Languages and Civilizations, will be the first scholar to head the new post.
“We are delighted to fund this chair in Sanskrit – one of the oldest languages that have given the world the Vedas, Upanishads and other exceptional works of spirituality, poetry, music, and dance,” the Ramakrishnans said.
“The University of Chicago’s long-term commitment to scholarship in Sanskrit made it our institution of choice to partner with on this important initiative,” the couple, which also supports a scholarship program for Indian students at Chicago Booth, added.
The University of Chicago has been continuing with a campaign called ‘Inquiry and Impact’ to raise $4.5 billion by engaging with over 125,000 alumni members by the year 2019. As of now, the university has collected 2.82 billion by engaging more than 59,000 alumni.
The University of Chicago has been teaching Sanskrit – the oldest literary language of South Asia – since 1892 and is the longest continuously taught South Asian language at the university.
“Sanskrit really stands out among the world’s languages — alongside other classical languages — as being a single language that provides access to an extraordinarily broad range of texts and histories,” Tubb said.
Tubb also added that he was attracted to the language because it provided “access to a long and rich history of human thought.”
1 Comment
Enjoyed reading your profile and am interested into keeping up more.