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History The Devavānī Center of Sanskrit Studies was born at the beginning of 2006, as the fruit of work by Miquel Peralta to coalesce the efforts of a group of young Sanskrit scholars motivated by the desire to give continuity to the introductory courses in Sanskrit then offered in Spain. This led to the development of a serious teaching program for this language. At the beginning, Devavānī centered its activities on teaching and the compilation, translation and elaboration of teaching materials. This was the primary concern of the center for two main reasons. Firstly, there is not, at present, a sufficiently comprehensive program of studies in Spain for the study of Sanskrit, even at university level. Secondly, experience showed that there is a considerable and growing number of people looking for deeper knowledge of Sanskrit in order to approach the writings that interest them directly, rather than through translations. Nevertheless, Sanskrit presents a series of particular difficulties and many students are unable to overcome these initial barriers and learn it. In view of this, the teaching staff at Devavānī has made easing the path to learning the language its major priority to help those who have a serious interest in doing so. To that end we fully examined the teaching methods used in the major European and U.S universities. Without rejecting the valuable contributions of well-known and highly respected authors, we inclined towards the modern, dynamic, and highly instructive approach found in the three volumes of D.H. Killingley’s Beginning Sanskrit. This approach adapts the presentation of the elements of the language in a different order to the one usually found in other Sanskrit books. Its aim is to provide a high level of reading comprehension. To these foundations, the center added a large number of its own teaching materials in the preparation of the plan of studies for its four-year-long academic program for a Diploma in Sanskrit. Once the pedagogical road map had been determined, Level I of the Diploma in Sanskrit began in 2006 with a group of 18 students. From that moment on, the center began to increase its activities and as a result, in July 2007, a six-day intensive course in spoken Sanskrit was given with an enrolment of 25 students. At the beginning of the 2007-2008 course, the first year students passed to Level II of the Diploma in Sanskrit and a new group of students began Level I, which now has three different modes of study: Traditional Classroom mode, Combined mode (Attendance and Distance Learning), and Distance-Learning mode. During the next academic year Devavānī increased its program of activities in both the number of courses and the range of studies. Two new courses given on a weekly basis were initiated: Introduction to Hindi and A Workshop in Reading the Yogasūtra of Patañjali. |
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