Competency with Sanskrit translation is a key skill for academics in the field of South Asian Studies. It is one of the most important research skills that gives scholars access to resources that are the object of their research, and it is also a skill that, when demonstrated with translations in one’s publications, gives a great deal of much needed credibility to the academic work of scholars.

But Sanskrit can also be very helpful to strengthen and deepen one’s connection to one’s own spiritual tradition. For most Dharma traditions (Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism), Sanskrit is often the medium of liturgical practices, and Sanskrit texts also tend to form the doctrinal, philosophical, and practical foundation for individual and collective spiritual practices in those traditions. Dharma traditions are deep reservoirs of spiritual wisdom that have the power to transform us personally and collectively in profound ways, and Sanskrit is on one of the most important keys to unlocking that great reservoir of ancient spiritual wisdom that is much needed in our own personal lives, and in our collective society at large. 

In this course, students will gain the important research skills necessary to translate Sanskrit texts by actually translating modified excerpts from Sanskrit literature. These research skills include basic philology such as etymology, the ability to identify inflexions and grammatical forms, and syntactical analyses. 

This course will be divided into two sections. Upon completion of both of these sections, we will have completed the Devavāṇīpraveśikā Sanskrit primer (Goldman and Goldman, 1980). In the process, students will learn to memorize, recognize, and recall all major paradigms of inflection (conjugations, declensions, indeclinable suffixes, prefixes, etc.) and use these skills when translating, reading, memorizing, or liturgically reciting Sanskrit texts.

Course Length

Learning Area

Jain Philosophy, History and Anthropology

Instructor

Cogen Bohanec, MA, PhD

Cogen Bohanec currently holds the position of Assistant Professor in Sanskrit and Jain Studies at Arihanta Institute where he teaches various courses on Jain philosophy and its applications. In addition, he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Claremont School of Theology (CST) where he teaches Sanskrit and Gujarati, and he has taught numerous classes on South Asian Culture & Religions and Sanskrit language at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley. Dr. Bohanec specializes in the Jain and Hindu traditions, comparative dharma traditions, philosophy of religion, theo-ethics (virtue ethics, and environmental and animal ethics in particular), and Sanskrit language and literature, and has numerous publications in those areas, particularly in the fields of Jain and Hindu Studies amongst other disciplines. He has a PhD in “Historical and Cultural Studies of Religion” with an emphasis in Hindu Studies from GTU, where his research emphasized ancient Indian languages, literature, and philosophical systems. He also holds an MA in Buddhist Studies from the Institute of Buddhist Studies at GTU where his research primarily involved translations of Pāli Buddhist scriptures in conversation with the philology of the Hindu Upaniṣads. He is the author of “Bhakti Ethics, Emotions and Love in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Metaethics” (Lexington, 2024), an interdisciplinary study that frames traditional Hindu themes of ecotheology, ecofeminist theology, feminist care ethics, within a framework of virtue ethics in conversation with a bhakti-based psychology of emotions. Currently he is largely engaged in publication and research on various aspects of the Jain tradition, emphasizing translations and analyses of Jain Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Gujarati texts, but is also publishing academic works on various topics within the Hindu tradition.