The Times Of India
Bhavika Jain & Hemali Chhapia | TNN | Mar 28, 2016, 09.30 AM IST
MUMBAI: Students of the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, through a crowd funding campaign, have managed to save Prakrit classes from being discontinued for the 2016-2017 academic year. SOAS is the only college in the UK to offer the course.
Prakrit, like Sanskrit, is no longer spoken by any communities. Scholars of Jainism say Mahavira used to speak a ver sion of it and so it dates back to at least the sixth century BC.The study of this ancient language is essential to read Jain scriptures and texts. It is also mandatory for students of Buddhism for the same reason.
SOAS students had put out a crowd funding initiative on the university's website, with a target to generate £3,500 to meet the administrative cost of the course. The teacher is an unpaid volunteer. The campaign ended on Saturday evening, with a collection of £3,701 from 30 sponsors, enough to let Prakrit classes run at SOAS for another year.
In an email interview with TOI, Peter Flugel, chair of the centre of Jaina studies, the SOAS department that runs the course, said SOAS students are permitted to crowdfund for specific purposes that are beneficial for the student body, and so me who are rightly very excited about the unique opportunity to gain expertise in Prakrit have taken the initiative to create a crowdfunding platform to rai se funds for maintaining the class for the benefit of the next cohort of students (not themselves). The class size for the course ranges between one and eight; the school decided to cull courses where student strength was less than 10.
Flugel said, "Specialized classes which always will have few students specializing in a subjects are bound to fall by the wayside, and expertise will be lost for generations if nothing is done to find external support for keeping small classes funded." SOAS terminated the course in 2010 due to austerity measures and was initially funded by Dr Renate Soehnen-Thieme in memory of her deceased hus band Paul Thieme, a Sanskrit scholar. Private donations, varying from year to year, of single individuals or several individuals contacted by the chair of the centre, had kept the course afloat till the crowd funding route to raise funds now.
Samani Pratibha Pragya, a Jain monk who is a PhD student at SOAS, told TOI that learning Prakrit is essential for someone who wants to connect with Jain religion, history, philosophy and any other branch of knowledge related to Jainism. "Through this language one can feel the richness of knowledge in Jainism. Truly, Prakrit is a medium to connect with a centuries old treasure house." Even in India, very few institutions teach Prakrit. Yatin Shah, trustee of Hemchandra Acharya Gyan Mandir, said, "Education is no longer pursued for its own sake. All education is linked to employment." Across Gujarat, Prakrit was offered in several universities about 25 years ago. But dipping enrolment forced many institutions to shut down the courses.