acad. Andrey Zaliznyak (1935-2017)

[Mārcis Gasūns]

Namaste,

Sad news coming from Russia lately. Yesterday in Moscow Andrey Zaliznyak at age 83 was buried. If there is one man in XX century linguistics (who taught Sanskrit as well in Moscow State University

for more than 50 years from time to time, mixing it with Old Persian, Arabic and Old Church Slavonic) whom I can compare to Panini, it is he. He learned

Sanskrit from Renou in Paris. His article on classification of verbal roots (1975) is still outstanding and there is nothing of that kind written in French, German 

or English - before or after. It takes Whitney and reclassifies his Sanskrit Roots in a logical way, adding meta-data, but typographically, instead of Panini's letter-anubandhas.
His biggest work in field of Sanskrit, "Outline of Sanskrit Grammar" (1st. ed. 1978), reprinted 5 times, continues the structuralist approach. It's similar to

Mayrhofer, Manfred. Sanskrit-Grammatik mit sprachvergleichenden Erläuterungen. Series:Sammlung Göschen

but goes beyond and adds classification in which exclusions become part of the rule, something I've not seen for last 2500 years in India. In 2015 I printed his "A Brief Outline of Sanskrit Grammar", that was circulating widely since 2004 as a 10-page handout. To understand it one needs to have brain an patience, a rare combination nowadays.

Zaliznyak is mostly known as the man who reopened the Russian language, reading for the first time the 1000 years old birch bark letters. But for me, he remains to be my teacher of Sanskrit and it's a pity that the level reached in research of Sanskrit has not gone outside Russia. I've read tens and hundreds of manuals, textbooks and readers on Sanskrit. But only Panini is above Zaliznyak. But I never visited Pakistan, so we did not met before. On the West only George Cardona comes close. A month before his best colleague, Ivanov died. Ivanov's book "Sanskrit. Moscow: Nauka Pub. House, Central Dept. of Oriental Literature, 1968" was lately still quoted by Peter Scharf, Cardona's most talented pupil. So in just 2 months, we have lost 2 of the most outstanding Russian Sanskrit scholars. From the old school, only Vera Kochergina (in her 93 years) remains the last keeper of fire in Moscow (and Russia). We've become deserted.

Let me quote a memory of one of the students at that time:

Then came the undergraduate courses. The first one was Sanskrit. We get a handout. Seven pages. Half a page for the writing system. The rest of it was *all* of the grammar, and a list of roots. What are we meant to do? ‘Here is a stanza from the Mahabharata. Go.’ And we did. Oh boy we did. It was magic, again, but now week in and week out. Did I become a Sanskritologist? Of course I didn’t. Was I able to construct, in a few hours, a data set for my phonology exam this year, more than ten years later, still using that handout? Yes I was.

Photos were taken by me in 2014 and 2016:

http://samskrtam.ru/zaliznyak/ 

Please let me know if there is a printed journal on Sanskrit where I could print my Obituary.
I did not do it for Elizarenkova. So give me a chance to do it for Zaliznyak, if you can.

PhD. Mārcis Gasūns,
Krasnodar, Russia

[Dr.BVK Sastry(G-MAIL)]

Namaste

 

1. The scholars demise is deeply mourned. It certainly is a loss to the field of comparative linguistics.

 

2. Samskruth research seems to have remained compartmentalized in national boundaries !  There needs to be some way for Indian traditional scholars to understand how world outside of India has looked at the

‘ Paninian frame of language’.

 

3.  How to rekindle the fire for Samskruth Research ? at Russia ? or rather globally ?  Options being:

 

  - Conversational model (Sambhashanam) or

-  Ritual ( Karma Kaanda) 

-  Academic translation – manuscript research Classical model in ivory towers

-   Science-Technology- Techno-linguistic Research ? where Technologist frames language in machine boundaries and ‘ anglicized program strucutures’

   OR

Yoga-Samskrutham model as  People Wellness benefits  by ‘ practice of Samskrutham as Yoga’ ?

 

Regards

BVK Sastry

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[S P Narang]

Sir, It is shocking that a great scholar of Sanskrit linguistics is no more I have forwarded it to the editor of Arvachin Sanskritam Delhi. Regards, spnarang

On ‎Friday‎, ‎December‎ ‎29‎, ‎2017‎ ‎04‎:‎14‎:‎16‎ ‎PM‎ ‎IST, Mārcis Gasūns <gas...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[S. L. Abhyankar]

नमस्ते मार्सिस-गसुन्स-महोदय !

भवता विज्ञापिता दुःखदा वार्ता प्रसृता मया (https://sanskritaprasruti.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/andrey-zaliznyak-sanskrit-scholar-par-excellence-passed-away/)-इत्यत्र !

आन्द्रे-जलिझ्-नेक्-वर्यस्य दिवंगमने संस्कृत-विश्वस्य हानिः प्रतीयते !

आन्द्रे-जलिझ्-नेक्-वर्यस्य धातुपाठविषये तीव्रा जिज्ञासा मम ! 

Cordially, S. L. Abhyankar 

[Narayan Prasad]

Namaste.

It is a very sad news to hear the demise of Prof. A. A. Zaliznyak.

I knew him as the author of highly useful for me "Грамматический словарь русского языка" (1980) [Grammatical Dictionary of the Russian Language]. This is also a reverse dictionary about which I learnt during my student life of Russian. Such a dictionary in any Indian language is still a desideratum.

May his soul rest in peace !

Narayan Prasad