Growing up in Bengaluru, Rohan Murty spoke two dialects of Kannada at home – his father and Infosys founder Narayana Murthy spoke the Mysore variety and his mother Sudha Murty the Dharwad variety. His mother also introduced him to Kannada classics of Pampa and Ranna as well as the modern works of Kuvempu and Bendre.
Mr. Murty went on to be what he calls “an average Indian engineer with the typical spectacles”, but he also did a graduate course in Indian philosophy as he did his Ph.D at Harvard in Computer Science. His interest in Indian literature and classical texts lingered strong, and in 2010, he made a 5.2 million-dollar grant to found Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI) at Harvard University.
The ambitious project aims to make available the great literary works of India in multiple languages from the past two millennia to readers the world over in translation, with renowned scholar Sheldon Pollock as series editor. The Bengaluru launch of the first batch of five books from MCLI is on Wednesday.
“The richness of literature in so many diverse languages in the sub-continent is without a parallel,” says Mr. Murty, adding that it has sadly remained beyond the access of modern readers. It is this amnesia that the series hopes to correct. The books – 32 identified so far and more to come – are in Pali, Sanskrit, Kannada, Tamil, Persian, Telugu and many more. They plan to bring out five to six books every year and Mr. Murty says the project, through the endowment, will “outlive all of us.”
Mr. Murty is right now absorbed in “Terigatha”, poems in Pali language by the first Buddhist women, which is part of the first series. “I am struck by how I can connect to the human condition depicted in a text so ancient. If an engineer like me can relate to it, there must be many more who can too,” he says.
