ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. — Elizabethtown College has offered the Sanskrit course since the 2001-2002 academic year. And while in recent years the first level has nearly filled, there’s been a pattern that the second level falls short of those numbers. Is this a sign of the course becoming part of the ancient history it comes from?
Sanskrit is considered the sacred language of Hinduism as well as the language of historical
texts of Jainism and Buddhism. It comes mainly from the South Asian region of the world. It is
widely considered an “ancient language” by most given its lack of common current day usage.
Dr. Jeffery Long is the professor behind the Sanskrit course at Elizabethtown College, and he’s
been teaching it since the beginning. When some students asked him to teach them the
language in the 2001-2002 school year, he obliged, and he branched out to teaching a full class
around 2003-2004.
Long said he found it unusual for Sanskrit to be offered at a small college like Etown, but knew if he could offer it as a core class, it would help him stay in touch with the language. Elizabethtown College requires all students take at least one semester of a language course, part of a list of requirements the school refers to as the “Core Program”.
In a normal year, Long has around a dozen students in his Sanskrit I class. “I suspect part of the
reason the numbers have spiked is our other language offerings have diminished,” Long said.
While the first level of the class seems to be growing from the original two students nearly
two decades ago, Long reports only being able to offer the second level of the course four times
in the past 25 years. That’s an average of once every six years with about a third of the class size comparatively.Some second level Sanskrit students said they like the smaller class size, comparing it to a group of friends studying a subject they really enjoy. “I think the class size we have, it’s very easy to have conversations,” said Sanskrit II student Cam Mooney. “That being said, I would deal with a bigger class size if it means that more people got to learn the language.”
For more information on the Sanskrit courses, check out the Elizabethtown College Course
Listings page.
