{"id":119648,"date":"2017-03-07T16:36:50","date_gmt":"2017-03-07T11:06:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalpress.hinduismnow.org\/?p=45819"},"modified":"2017-03-07T16:36:50","modified_gmt":"2017-03-07T11:06:50","slug":"111-year-old-madras-sanskrit-college-goes-digital-times-india-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/?p=119648","title":{"rendered":"111-year-old Madras Sanskrit College goes digital | The Times of India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>CHENNAI: It&#8217;s the dawn of a new era at Madras Sanskrit College in Mylapore. The 111-year-old institution is finally going digital in a bid to get on with the times. On Tuesday, courses will go online, classrooms will go global and Sanskrit books will turn &#8216;live&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>The campus will take on a virtual avatar -50,000 palm leaf manuscripts will be digitised and webcasts made possible with Sanskrit scholars around the world. &#8220;We want to engage with Sanskrit lovers of all ages and levels of knowledge,&#8221; says trustee Ramesh Mahalingam. &#8220;It&#8217;s what we call a total website for people at any level of Sanskrit, whether beginner or advance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Madras Sanskrit College, started on February 1, 1906, owes its origin to the philanthropy of V Krishnaswami Iyer, a judge in the Madras high court. In 1907, the college was recognized by the director of public instruction and placed in the list of aided institutions with a grant of Rs 1,000.<\/p>\n<div class=\"last6brdiv\">The Kuppuswamy Sastri Research Institute, on the same campus, is a pioneer in the preservation and study of ancient and rare manuscripts. The college played host to Mahatma Gandhi in 1915 and Rabindranath Tagore in 1922.<\/div>\n<div class=\"last6brdiv\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"last6brdiv\">Mahalingam says original Sanskrit manuscripts are being digitised so that they are accessible to anyone seeking information. &#8220;There are Sanskrit books on astronomy , ayurveda, medicine and astrology . With these manuscripts online, experts in those fields will have access to information from centuries ago.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"last2brdiv\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"last1brdiv\">One of the first manuscripts digitized was the Gajashastra, a compendium of the veterinary science of the elephant, he adds.&#8221;Anyone seeking knowledge on the elephant can make use of this from the net,&#8221; says Mahalingam.The only drawback though is that, at the moment, there are no translations of the texts, and one needs to have a knowledge of Sanskrit to read them. &#8220;We have plans to get comic books online with voice-overs as well as translations. We are taking every step to keep the language alive,&#8221; says Mahalingam.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CHENNAI: It&#8217;s the dawn of a new era at Madras Sanskrit College in Mylapore. The 111-year-old institution is finally going digital in a bid to get on with the times. On Tuesday, courses will go online, classrooms will go global and Sanskrit books will turn &#8216;live&#8217;. The campus will take on a virtual avatar -50,000 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}