The day began with Shashi Kiran's session on appreciating Sanskrit through subhashitas and ended with a wonderful dance performance by Ramaa Bharadvaj titled Mitra, which dealt with the friendship between Krishna and Sudhama. This was followed by a creative appreciation of the dance with the artist having a discussion with Arjun Bharadwaj.
Shatavadhani Dr. R Ganesh
The day began with a trip to Fort Kochi, followed by a visit to the Paradesi Synagogue, the oldest active synagogue in India, which was built in the 16th century. After some shopping on Jew’s street, the participants visited Hill Palace in Tripunithura, which is the largest archeological museum in Kerala. At one point, it was the official palace of the Cochin maharajas. It was built in the middle of the 19th century. After a traditional Kerala lunch, the participants returned to the Chinmaya Eswar Gurukula campus.
Arjun Bharadwaj started off the day’s proceeding with the fourth session of kavya-samskrtam, which has been a regular morning activity of the summer school. In this session, Shashi and Arjun have helping understand and appreciate the beauty of a few Sanskrit verses. In today’s session, Arjun covered five verses from Lilashuka’s Krishnakarnamrtam. While explaining the nuances of the verse with respect to grammar, prosody, etc. he also brought out the various suggestions (dhvani) in those verses.
Shatavadhani Dr. R Ganesh
Kalidasa cannot be compared with anyone – he is totally unique, totally Indian. He is the ideal poet – one who observes keenly both the outer and inner worlds. He is like a scientist, a naturalist, and a businessman the way he astutely sees the external world. He is like a seer, a philosopher, and a scholar the way he calmly regards the internal world. By observing the world outside, we get the details; by observing the world within we get the emotional connections.
Shatavadhani Dr. R Ganesh and Dr. Nagavalli Nagaraj
Dr. Ganesh started out by mentioning about the all-pervading influence of Vyasa, Valmiki, and Kalidasa on all aspects of Indian life and culture. While the story of the Ramayana moves in a longitudinal manner, from North to South and back to the North, the story of the Mahabharata moves in a latitudinal manner, from East to the West. Thus in the movements of Rama and Krishna, all corners of India have been covered. And Kalidasa connects all these in his writings.
Day 3 started on a bright note with Dr. Ganesh speaking about the beautiful qualities of the two great epics as well as Kalidasa's creation, followed by Shashi Kiran's wonderful presentation of the seven sections of the Ramayana. The post-lunch session had a riveting presentation on Kalidasa's Kumarasambhavam by Arjun Bharadwaj and a wonderful audio-visual presentation by Nirupama Rajendra about the dance ballets produced by Abhinava Dance Company. The day ended with a fabulous Carnatic classical concert by Dr.
In its history of more than a thousand years, Kannada literature’s most recent golden age came in the 20th century with the advent of the Navodaya movement, which can be called as the ‘Kannada literary renaissance.’ Many of the poets and writers of this era were polyglots and they drew from the rich cultural streams of regional language writings, thus adding to the perennial river of Indian literature.
The second day of the Summer School jointly organized by Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth and Chinmaya International Foundation took the participants into a wonderful journey into the past. Starting off with an overview of the poets, it took everyone on the path of Rāma, helped them make friends with Kālidāsa and Guṇāḍhya, gave an artistic and insightful glimpse into the Pañcatantra, and finally concluded with a wonderful Hindustani classical music performance by Swapnil Chaphekar and Pramodini Rao.
Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth and Chinmaya International Foundation have jointly organized a ten-day Summer School from 17 to 26 June, 2017 to realize the spirit of Indian culture through the creations of Vyāsa, Vālmīki, Kālidāsa (and Guṇāḍhya) at the Adi Sankara Nilayam, Veliyanad. The Summer School is support by Indian Council of Philosophical Research. Prekshaa is delighted to present a daily summary of the discussions over the course of the next ten days.
I had requested Sri Shastri to instruct me in [Adi Shankara’s] commentary on the Brahmasutras[i]. Equally, I had requested him to train me in two or three other Vedanta commentaries that I hadn’t seen so far, and entreated him that I had set aside two years for this Shastric study. He said that that period was insufficient. I said, “Let it go on for two years; if required, we can extend it for an additional six months.”