My Perspective

Saṃskṛta Bhāratī UK organized the 15th annual Saṃskṛta Saṃbhāṣaṇa Śibiram (residential Spoken Sanskrit Camp) at Leicester over the Easter long-weekend (3 days & 2 nights, spanning nearly 40 hours of learning and speaking Sanskrit). In this residential camp (Śibiram) I got to stay in a beautiful natural setting in the village near Loughborough in Leicester. I learnt and spoke Saṃskṛtam for 3 days without any distractions. This was a very good opportunity for improving my Saṃskṛtam that I had learned previously in school and currently via online classes. I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to present my 20+ Indic Knowledge web games by iSeek that I have created so far. Looking at the enthusiasm of the community, I even gave them a first glimpse at "Panchang puzzle", a work-in-progress game that I am yet to launch. I also thank the organizers for giving me a platform to hold an UK premiere of "Sri-Satya-Narayana-Katha" an animation movie entirely i...

I developed a combo "wordle" + "Hangman" like puzzle as a web app. One can test their grasp over Vishnu Sahasranama in this game. The player has to guess one of the names of Vishnu as listed in the Sahasranama based on the English meaning that is revealed as a clue. All valid guesses are the names of Vishnu. One can use hint shown in Hangman style. This game can be played either on a desktop or a hand held device. https://pd2.github.io/sahasranama/ My school mate had provided the link of my Vishnu Sahasranama based wordle game to the Head mistress of a Vishnu Gupta Vishwa Vidyalaya, a Gurukul in Gokarna where his daughter studies. He told me that the HM used it with the students to make them aware of Vishnu Sahasranama and she had also conducted a quiz using my game.  I am so glad that my game is being used for real in a school.

The "happy birthday" song that we sing on someone's birthday is quite prosaic, dull, and repetitive to say the least. Maybe it it so because it addresses the lowest common denominator i.e. children who are yet to learn a language fully. If so then it is not for the adults to also sing the same song. Here is a meaningful birthday song in Sanskrit with its meaning. Song in Sanskrit: अयि प्रिय सखे जन्मदिनमिदम् । प्रार्थयामहे भव शतायुषी ॥ १ ॥ पुण्य कर्मणा कीर्तिमार्जय । जीवनम् तव भवतु सार्थकम् ॥  २  ॥ Transliteration of the poem: ayi priya sakhē janmadinamidaṃ । prārthayāmahē bhava śatāyuṣī ॥ 1 ॥ puṇya karmaṇā kīrtimarjaya । jīvanaṃ tava bhavatu sārthakam ॥ 2 ॥ Translation in English: Oh dear friend, today is your birthday; We all pray for your long life. By noble deeds may you attain fame; May your life be meaningful. Credits : [x] Original Birthday Song in Sanskrit by Swami Tejomayanandaji Link -  https://www.chinmayajyoti.org/documents/birthdaysong.pdf  

I developed a web game on vibhakthi pratyayas (noun declensions) in Sanskrit language. Here, I gamified Sanskrit based rules of grammar for declining nouns as a sorting puzzle of the Shabd table.  This game entitled 'Shabd' has all three genders, all types of word ending, both for nouns and pronouns. I have included 40 Shabd tables in all. Check your memory on राम shabd below. I learnt the #declension of Masculine word ending in 'a': "Rama" Sanskrit for "God" in 71 sec at  https://pd2.github.io/shabd/

Shiva Sutra, also known as Akṣara samāmnāya, it refers to a set of 14 aphorisms devised as an arrangement of the sounds of Sanskrit for grammatical exposition by Pāṇini. I developed a web app to make it interesting to learn Shiva sutra. Your challenge is to arrange the tiles,  with either aphorisms or aksharas (alphabets), of this sliding puzzle in the correct order. As a clue you can listen any number of times to an audio clip (from Matheson Trust) reciting the Shiva sutra. In the process of solving it you would implicitly memorize the sutra without realising that you  are, which is the idea behind this game. You can use Devanagari, Kannada, Telugu or Latin based IAST scripts in this challenge. You can share your results the number of moves it took you to solve the sliding puzzle and the initial arrangement of tiles as a matrix of coloured squares. 🟧🟩🟨🟧 🟨🟩🟥🟧 🟧🟥🟩🔴 🟥🟨🟨🟩 Reference : [1] Shiva sutra sliding puzzle  https://pd2.github.io/shiva-sutra/

'Bhagawat Gita' (also 'Bhagavad Gita') is the holy sacred book of the Hindus. The verses or shlokas are written in Sanskrit language which is the oldest classical language from India. However, this language is not popular among common folks. So learning the sacred verses is quite hard. Yet, this holy scripture has something to offer to us in the 21st century. It is considered an influential management book by many leaders.  So I was wondering on how to make it interesting for younger generation to engage in learning of this holy book. Then I hit upon an idea to gamify learning of these verses. How about a game of typing but the text are the English transliterated Sanskrit verses from the Gita. I developed "Bhagavad Gita Typing Game" as a web app to enable wide reach across device types (desktop, mobile, tablet) yet be OS agnostic. Now one can practice their typing skills on a verse from the Sacred book. Thus learning both the sacred text as well as practising ...

Here is the basic tenet of Hinduism: Irrespective of our nationality, race, ethnicity, caste, creed, we (the entire world) belong to one big family. If one believes in this philosophy then it does matter which country's citizenship they have, they are a part of this big family.  Such a mindset enables us as a species to tackle global problems like climate change. Previously such an approach has been shown to work for instance when the world came together to tackle ozone layer depletion due to CFCs. So let us embrace this philosophy in its entirety. Sanskrit Shloka (couplet) : अयं निजः परो वेति गणना लघुचेतसाम्। उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम्॥ Transliteration : ayaṃ nijaḥ paro veti gaṇanā laghucetasām। udāracaritānāṃ tu vasudhaiva kuṭumbakam॥ English translation : This is mine, that is his, say the small minded, The wise believe that the entire world is one family. Kannada translation : ಇದು ನನ್ನದು, ಅದು ಬೇರೆಯವರದ್ದು, ಇಂತಹ ಯೋಚನೆ ಸಣ್ಣ ಮನಸ್ಸಿನವರು ಮಾಡುತ್ತಾರೆ. ಉನ್ನತ ಸ್ವಭಾವದ ಜನರು ಇಡೀ...

In a recent paper [1], that studied 21 professionally qualified Sanskrit pandits, it was discovered that memorising Vedic mantras increases the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function, including short and long-term memory. The term the ‘Sanskrit Effect’ was thus coined. In short, this study showed that