My guest this month is Amba Kulkarni from the Department of Sanskrit at the University of Hyderabad, who has also been associated with IIT Kanpur and the National Sanskrit University. Professor Kulkarni is best known for her work linking traditional Indian linguistic theory (starting with Pāṇini and focussing on aspects such as Śabdabodha and Kāraka theory as studied especially within the Navya-Nyāya/'Neo-Logical' school of philosophy) and AI theories of Knowledge Representation to effect computer-based cognition of Sanskrit texts. Find out more about her recent book 'Sanskrit Parsing based on the theories of Śabdabodha' here.

The article by Rick Briggs that she mentions as her inspiration to apply her Computer Science background to Sanskrit is reprinted here, that by Rajeev Sangal and Vineet Chaitanya can be accessed here, and there is discussion of Bhāratīkṛṣṇa Tīrtha's book on Vedic Mathematics here.

She has collaborated extensively with Gérard Huet, best known in Sanskritist circles for his Sanskrit Heritage Site (part of which is the Segmenter). Relating to the parsing of the sentence yānaṃ vanaṃ gacchati 'the vehicle goes to the forest', she mentions the factors śabdabodha considers essential for verbal cognition: yogyatā or mutual compatibility, ākaṅksā or expectancy and saṃniddhi or proximity (read some discussion of these here). More on the three types of meaning of a word (abhidhā or literal, lakṣaṇā or metaphoric/extended and vyañjanā or suggested meaning) e.g. here.

If you are a Sanskritist interested in working in computational linguistics, Professor Kulkarni suggests a thorough focus in Kāvya/Kāvyaśāstra, Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya or
Vyākaraṇa.

My guest this month is Robert Zydenbos, who is Professor of Modern Indology at the LMU Munich. (Full disclosure: we thus are colleagues!)

His first point of contact with Indian languages and philosophies was through Collier's Encyclopaedia. It introduced him to such ideas as rebirth, a concept found in various traditions (see e.g. here, here or here)

His first degree was in Indian Studies at the University of Utrecht, at an institute that developed into a centre of Tantric Studies and that has in the meantime been closed. His teachers included Jan Gonda, T. Goudriaan , Henk Bodewitz, Leen van Dalen , George Chemparathy, Kamil Zvelebil, Sanjukta Gupta, Karel van Kooij. He did his PhD and much subsequent work in Mysore, where he frequently visited the university and the Oriental Research Institute; and whereas his early interest in Jainism brought him to Karnataka, he also studied religious currents such as Vīraśaivism and Mādhva Vaiṣṇavism.

Through his close acquaintance with Bannanje Govindacharya, he began working on Madhvācārya and his writings, also those concerning the Bhagavadgītā. (The article he mentions may be found here.)

He would use the SSPRG, the Sanskrit Studies Podcast Research Grant, to learn Old Javanese.

For anyone interested in learning about Sanskrit for the first time, he recommends Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat's Le sanskrit/The Sanskrit Language.

My guest this month is Professor Saroja Bhate, former Professor of Sanskrit and Head of the Department of Sanskrit and Prakrit Languages at Pune University, who has published prolifically on Vyākaraṇa.

Her first contact with Sanskrit was through the recitation of stotras. She was educated at Pune University and at Ṭiḷaka Mahārāṣṭra Vidyāpīṭha, and among her teachers were Pundit Vāmanaśāstrī Bhāgavata, T. G. Mainkar and S. D. Joshi.

Among the texts she read during her studies are the Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata including the Bhagavadgītā, Meghadūta, Raghuvaṃśa, plays by Kālidāsa and Viśākhadatta, Śiśupālavadha, Kirātārjunīya as well as selections from the Brāhmaṇas and the Upaniṣads.

The linguistic texts she mentioned include Pāṇini's Aṣṭādhyāyī, the Brahmakāṇḍa, a portion of Bhartṛhari's Vākyapadīya, the Paramalaghumañjūṣā, texts from the Cāndravyākaraṇa and Kātantra traditions, and the works of Nāgoji (or Nāgeśa) Bhaṭṭa, such as the Paribhāṣenduśekhara. The modern linguists she mentioned are George Cardona and Paul Kiparsky.

Her advice for those embarking in the field includes learning languages and studying Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, manuscriptology, and symbolic logic.