A day after president of the 86th Akhila Bharata Kannada Sahitya Sammelana Doddarange Gowda took exception to the huge difference in release of grants to Sanskrit and Kannada, Saraswati Samman awardee S.L. Bhyrappa, in a short letter to the organisers, emphasised that Sanskrit was the “mother of all Indian languages”.
Dr. Bhyrappa, who was to attend a session titled ‘Bharata Jannaniya Tanujate Jaya he Karnataka Mate’, in which books on Saraswati Samman awardees was to be released, did not come owing to illness.
In a letter sent to the organising committee, which was read out by writer Pradhan Gurudatt, at the session, Dr. Bhyrappa presented some of his views.
He said: “... In the beginning, Sanskrit stood as mother of all languages and encouraged all languages and was the reason for their growth and prosperity. One may note that most of the works in Sanskrit have been translated into other Indian languages.”
He further said that the “word treasure” of all Indian languages has roots mostly in Sanskrit. “For the same reason, when I went to Vallabh University as philosophy teacher, I was able to understand Gujarati language and also communicate in Gujarati at a very short period.... If we take the four main South Indian languages, linguists have opined that 65% of the Kannada words have their roots in Sanskrit. In Telugu and Malayalam languages it is around 70% to 75%. In Tamil, it is comparatively less with 15% to 20%.”
Daughter’s turn
Dr. Bhyrappa said in the letter that while Sanskrit was responsible for prosperity of Indian languages in the first phase, in the second phase, the translations of Indian languages were contributing to the growth of Sanskrit, which in itself was a special phenomenon .
“My seven novels, including ‘Parva’, have been translated into Sanskrit, and scholars of other languages have conveyed to me that they have understood the achievements of Kannada through the Sanskrit translation. So while at one point of time daughters (Indian languages) prospered drawing support from Sanskrit, now it is a pleasure to see daughters taking care of the elder goddess of Sanskrit... I hope this mother-daughter relationship will continue happily,” he said.
Absentees
Meanwhile, some nine other invitees stayed away from the sammelana. Former Chief Minister M. Veerappa Moily, scholar Viranna Rajur, writer Chandrashekhar Vastrad, IAS officer Nandini, and journalism teacher Omkar Kakade were prominent among them.
It may be recalled that poets H.R. Sujatha, Chand Pasha, and Ramesh Aroli had announced earlier that they would not participate in the sammelana, taking exception to exclusion of some from the literary event.
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