Artful Lounger learns Sanskrit (among other things!)

That all sounds really Latin-y - clearly all these ancient languages are the same

Ah I see, that makes sense for the first year of the course. I find it gets more fun when you start texts so something to look forward to? And yeah I feel like all readers copy texts, probably to familiarise students?

That's really sad that some modules might get dropped, having less of a choice is never good and might put people off who aren't into yoga (which, although I could be wrong, seems possibly a bit more niche than wanting to study poetry or Epic). Poetry will be painful I'd imagine! Meter is both awesome and terrifying.

Yeah that was the impression I got from friends who studied it further. I also used Athenaze for a bit It gets a bit repetitive but we all love Dikaiopolis and Argus the dog

Yes it's the same with Latin really - prose tends towards certain patterns and a very clause based structure and lots of "envelopes" but poets can have a bit more fun! Especially Ovid. I don't know if Sanskrit has the same tendency to start just missing words out though.

Well they are all related - Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin are all Indo-European languages so share a lot of features, and it's hypothesized they all descended from the same ancestral language (Proto-Indo-European). In fact they also have elements of shared mythology that are hypothesized to descend from an earlier PIE mythology (for example shared stories of serpent/dragon slaying) and there are some parallel poetic forms in the Sanskrit and Greek epics that are hypothesised (maybe a bit more controversially?) to also be from what was once a shared oral tradition

Yeah yoga does seem pretty niche to me, although it's a popular one at SOAS because they've had a yoga studies MA that has been running for a fair bit of time now I think. That said I've no particular aversion to it - I don't really know anything about yogic texts and traditions, discounting any preconceptions based on Western physical yoga classes that are very popular

And yes, the repetitiveness of Athenaze gets tedious, especially very early in the book where it feels like everything is about fields and ploughs xD It is helpful, if boring, to have that format because it does reinforce the vocab by using it over and over again. Reading Greek, a different textbook I had used before Athenaze, was much worse in that respect; the stories were more varied but a lot of the time you would find some bits of vocab would only appear in one extract and never again :/ Also the way they organised the glossary/vocab lists was very stupid (Reading Greek did it alphabetically, instead of the order they appear in the text, and the alphabetical form also included the article! Nonsense!).

Not sure how Sanskrit works in actual texts, other than compared to the prepared/adapted texts there is a feature of how the script it's written in works where words get "smushed" together, so if one begins with a vowel and the word before ends in a consonant as I recall they get joined together, so you need to pick apart from the words D:

Oh that's really cool I'd heard of PIE, but not the hypothesised shared mythology - it sounds especially interesting as maybe more linked to a shared community than simply "people had these ideas a lot" (as with Flood myths, although I admit to not being a mythology student in any real capacity and could therefore be talking nonsense) And as you say all this can get so controversial since a lot of it kind of comes down to 'we don't know but Professor Bob has his favourite theory'

Poetry is a really interesting one - I wonder if we'd ever be able to work out if it was a shared tradition or one group copying the other's tradition/poetic style? Reminds me a bit of the debate as to whether some of Catullus's poems are direct translations of Greek poetry by Callimachus or just a homage. Very little Callimachus survives so probably we'll never know! Even now I love seeing people trying to write modern poetry in Classical metre - English doesn't suit it and it's rarely very succesful, but I like the idea.

Yeah it just seems niche I'd be interested to know more and how people get into it. SOAS has the most amazing and niche degrees and MAs, it's great

Oh God yes. As you say though it works - practically the only Greek I remember is cow and plough! I like how some of the stories, especially the later ones, 'sneak in' bits of history and culture too. Never heard of Reading Greek but I'll take your word for it and avoid it

Oh that sounds like a nightmare. Words smushing together is the easiest way to go from "yes! I know this word" to "aaaaaaaaa I'm so lost" :/

The PIE comparative mythology stuff is pretty fascinating, there's a surprising amount of correspondence across a pretty wide range of traditions, e.g. the "divine twins" which appear in some form in e.g. Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin texts (maybe also Old Norse or Celtic texts too, don't know much about those though and since they were generally later they may have been influenced by Latin traditions more). The flood myths are also pretty ubiquitous in the Mediterranean region at least, not sure if these also occur in Sanskrit literature as well.

They might not be specifically an Indo-European myth and may be a regional one or originated from Semitic mythologies though because I think they occurred in ancient near Eastern literature too (I don't really know much about the chronology of the ancient near East though - @Edminzodo might be able to contextualise that better perhaps?).

Yes, it's really interesting. I read something a while back about how basically every culture has a "seven sisters" myth about the Pleiades, even though there are only six stars, and usually some story explaining why one sister left - so a physicist did some cosmology and found that there were originally seven back when roughly we think humanity was living in Africa, and then due to physics one stopped being visible and the mythology might have arisen to explain that! Yay for interdisciplinary research is my main takeaway from that
That said I've spent a bit of time looking into how the chronology of the Torah maps up with what is likely to have actually happened at the time and it doesn't always match that well, so risky to assume myths always explain real events I think.

Yeah, that would make sense. With poetry as well there is an element of whether or not it just 'works' from a music theory POV.

I'd still think 10 people taking yoga studies is a lot
If it helped Sanskrit survive that's all to the good though.

It must be nice having such a diverse lot of people on the course, they must all bring very different perspectives!

What is a CertHe, sorry

Part of why I never really got on with Greek I think, I hated all the stem contractions!

Well done on the linguistics module by the way! It sounds stressful but hopefully at least a learning experience that it's not for you?

That's interesting about the seven sisters, I didn't know that!

The relationship between myth and history is kind of the focus for this and last week of the myth module, I've not finished going through all the new lecture notes the lecturer put up today yet though. There is a sense that there is overlap though, and it's not the case that one is purely a false creation while the other is purely factual, and more importantly to the people those myths belonged to they did serve some purpose in creating a history in a way (in terms of like, an origin). I think anyway, I need to finish reading the notes [

One of the more influential theories I gather was from Levi-Strauss about how myth represents a sort of "bricolage", pieced together from stories and history, both of the "owning" culture of that myth and also from other cultures they interacted with, sort of patched together because having that myth then serves some purpose in society (supporting a regime, individual, institution, etc). But there is a definite implication that no matter how fantastic or far-fetched it may be, there is some kernel of reality in it, I suppose.

Good ol' Levi-Strauss

I do think all this stuff is fascinating, especially your point about myth and history infuencing each other and both in some sense creating each other. As a Latinist everything makes me think of the Aeneid but I really wish I'd thought about all this a bit more when I was studying it last year, because I think it's a big part of why people have so many different takes on it, since it's using myth to make history (Augustinian propaganda lol) but also drawing on pre-existing myth and forms of tragedy, and of course it exists in a Roman historical context too, and generally it's complicated and brilliant

The 'bricolage' theory and myth as a tool to explain the world around us is really interesting too. I wonder what it says about us that we've come up with so many different mythologies in the same world!

Yeah, I think even knowing Sanskrit exists is a big step! And when people want to learn the language and make an effort it makes such a difference. It sounds like a really nice class.

Ah I see, thanks for explaining

Funding around uni is so complicated... Would you not be able to study full time later on?

Oh no not changing the vowels What I really hate is when one vowel (especially i/e) changes the tense of the verb and then you always get it wrong (even worse you know what's going on but not which form is which :/)

Would you say Sanskrit is "harder" than Greek



That is a very good way of putting it
I would always say life's too short to do something you don't enjoy much - could you just pick something without compulsory linguistics?

Yeah I think the Aeneid is a good example of that, from what I've read about it (I've not actually read the Aeneid itself though ).

If you do have time/want to, it's actually quite readable (better than Homer imo lol)

Sounds like an absolute nightmare to work everything out! Fingers crossed it does.

I never did enough Greek to actually learn anything, but I'll take your word for it
But not having massive tables of stuff to learn has to be good.

Ah yeah that actually sounds quite nice, it's so hard to know what datives or ablatives actually are

Interesting that the trend was to combine them, though.

Yep that definitely sounds good, it really helps when there actually are rules at some point Although maybe frustating for people who don't want to continue with more Sanskrit and just have to learn the exceptions.

That sounds interesting, especially as the main thing that would put me off (and maybe other people?) would be "aaa new alphabet scary"

Yeah that makes sense, so it might mean you'd maybe have to go down more of a literature or history route?

That is quite cool that you're using bits of existing texts to analyse/practice grammatical structures with. Particularly interesting about the literal meaning of the word nirvana! It does evoke something a bit different to terms like "enlightenment", hmmm

Keep going

Yeah, I forgot to actually write this in but our lecturer's plan is for us to start working with (whole passages from) real texts this term! She was hoping to do so initially before reading week but she decided in view of how we've progressed so far this term that might be too ambitious so instead we're going to have a real text to prepare over reading week and thereafter be using more real texts, rather than adapted one

Woohoo! Glad she isn't throwing you all in at the deep end and is revising her approach and passages given according to how the class is doing - sounds like a good lecturer

Well done! 68 is a very strong percentage indeed

Referencing =

Yay for full marks for seminar participation! I def would never get full marks if I'd been assessed on that, so hats off to you!