I think the discussion about proficiency in Sanskrit proceeds from differing

fundamentals, each based on different conceptions of what it might mean to “know

(or teach) a language”. Incidentally, misunderstandings of this kind prevail also in
these parts (in the West).

On the one hand speaking abilities and pronunciation skills are of course essential to
a spoken language and therefore native speakers are unsurprisingly superior to
speakers of a second language. All of this belongs however to the domain of practical
linguistic skills. Those who have them “know” the language, as one would rightly say.
But in general, native speakers have little or even no idea about the grammar of the
language they speak with natural ease. Were it otherwise, 1.3 billion Indians would
be grammatical experts in their respective vernaculars and 100 million German
native speakers would be born professors of German. Language acquisition and
communication in the mother tongue is one thing, the scholarly application of
methods to solve research questions is another, for the latter requires academic study
and training.

Scholars, on the other hand, who make languages the object of linguistic or of
comparative research, also do “know” the languages they examine, although they
hardly speak any of them actively. They need not, because their interest lies in
various fields of linguistics, in history, the analysis and comparison of grammatical
structures and etymologies, the (historical) affinity of languages, etc. It would be
unreasonable to demand of them to speak all the languages they compare. Yet, no one
would deny that they “know” them perfectly well in their theoretical aspects within
the realm of linguistics.

Thirdly there are those, who use language only as a tool for the analysis and
evaluation of texts written in a given language. Their interest lies not so much in the
language as such (which is the mission of linguists), but in the meaning of texts. In this
case we speak of philology. In the case of texts handed down to us from antiquity in
an often complex and complicated manner (e.g. conflated oral and written
transmissions), we speak of historico-critical philology. The application of the latter
method requires not only a perfect grammatical “knowledge”, but also an academic
training in textual criticism, in epigraphy and palaeography, as the case may be. To
achieve the objective, “speaking” is not required at all. If we think of ancient
languages other than Sanskrit, discovered encoded e.g. in hieroglyphic or in
cuneiform characters, they were deciphered without any knowledge of how to
articulate the respective sounds. It was the discovery of the phonetic value of each
written character that facilitated the breakthrough. Today, we understand classical
Tibetan perfectly although its original pronunciation remains undetermined.
Scholars read and study Buddhist Chinese texts without the need to pronounce the
difficult pitches of the spoken language.
It was James Prinsep (1799–1840) who deciphered the Brāhmī and Kharoṣṭhī scripts –
long fallen into oblivion in India, for no Indian Pandit was able to interpret the
characters – by applying methods developed by scholars. “Tradition” proved to be of
no avail, method alone did. Without Prinsep’s pioneering achievement the ancient
inscriptions and a considerable part of India’s history beginning with Aśoka would
remain silent to this day in the absence of the positive data gained from these and
countlessly more epigraphic records.

What I try to convey is the simple fact that research into Sanskrit texts composed in
the past and research into the political and cultural history of India couched in these
sources can of course be done without articulating one single syllable. Indology is a
perfectly effective research method even when carried out in silence. Actually it is
accessibly for the mute. This type of Indological research may therefore be seen as a
cerebral business aiming at understanding in a cognitive sense. It is not necessarily
talk in the sense of spelling out and repeating after the speaker. Fluency may be
desirable for those who wish to converse in contemporary Sanskrit or who are
reciting texts of their living traditions from memory.
The way one takes depends on personal interest and maybe also on just how a
professorship in Sanskrit is defined by a given university in a given country. Though
basically a matter of differing academic traditions and conventions, for some orality
outweighs cerebrality. They show no tolerance towards academic disciplines and
methods different from their own and contest their right to exist. Despite this
narrow-mindedness on display on a daily basis, in my opinion both groups have
their merits and both do have a right to exist. If this is done peacefully side by side,
both parties may benefit from each other’s skills and results of research respectively.

That being said, let me conclude with the following comparison in light of a
methodological remark of Vasiṣṭha according to which the wise man will accept that
to serve the purpose of illustrating a subject it will suffice that the comparison and
the compared have at least one quality in common, meaning to say that every
comparison must in a sense be lame (upameyasyopamānād ekāṃśena sadharmatā |
aṅgīkāryāvabodhāya dhīmatā nirvivādinā || II.18.64 || ... ekadeśasadharmatvād
upameyāvabodhanam | upamānaṃ karoty aṅga dīpo rthaṃ prabhayā yathā || II.18.66 ||).
So take it as a lame comparison if you will:

A singing bird is not an ornithologist, and there is no need for an ornithologist to

sing like a bird.

Yours Inimitably,
Dr. Slaje

11 March 2019