Language Centre
Sanskrit Upper-Intermediate Course
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Key information
Key information
- Duration
- 1 term per sub-level; 10 weeks per term
- Attendance mode
- Part-time, live online session/blended learning
Course overview
Course Aim
This module develops students’ ability to read and interpret extended passages of classical Sanskrit literature with increasing independence. Focusing on Bhavabhūti’s Uttararāmacarita, the course deepens linguistic competence while introducing students to key features of Sanskrit dramatic style and the aesthetic theory of rasa. By the end of the course, students will be able to engage critically with sophisticated literary texts and reflect on their thematic and formal dimensions. This course is delivered by the Language Centre.
Method
Teaching is based on close, guided reading of the Sanskrit text in the original. Sessions combine detailed grammatical and syntactic analysis with discussion of literary form, style, and interpretation. Students are encouraged to consolidate prior knowledge of morphology and syntax while developing strategies for reading longer and more complex passages. Attention is also given to the broader literary and cultural context of the work.
Material
- Upper-Intermediate 1: The primary text for the course is Bhavabhūti’s Uttararāmacarita (“Rāma’s Last Act”), of which selected passages will be studied in Sanskrit
- Upper-Interemediate 2: The primary text for the course is Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita ("Life of the Buddha"), of which selected passages will be studied in Sanskrit
Supplementary resources may include excerpts from Sanskrit textbooks and secondary readings where appropriate. All core materials will be provided by the tutor as PDFs.
Entry requirements and progression route
For the first stage of Sanskrit Upper-Intermediate (i.e. Upper-Intermediate 1), you should have completed Sanskrit Intermediate 3 at the SOAS Language Centre or have an equivalent knowledge of 135 guided learning hours. The progression route from Sanskrit Upper-Intermediate 1 is to Sanskrit Upper-Intermediate 2; from Upper-Intermediate 2 to Upper-Intermediate 3.
Please contact sa@soas.ac.uk if you have had previous Sanskrit training and would like to discuss joining any of the Sanskrit Intermediate groups.
Each term, classes are subject to quorum requirements. For course dates and information, please see our timetables.
Structure
Sanskrit Upper-Intermediate 1
This module continues sustained engagement with sophisticated Sanskrit literature through one of the most self-aware dramatic works of the classical Sanskrit tradition: the Uttararāmacarita (translated by Sheldon Pollock as “Rāma’s Last Act”) by Bhavabhūti, an influential playwright of eighth-century India. Building on the linguistic and aesthetic training acquired at Intermediate level, students will work with extended Sanskrit passages from the play.
Bhavabhūti’s drama stands in a long conversation with India’s great epic, the Rāmāyaṇa; it re-enters the epic terrain from a reflective angle, exploring what happens after heroic action—after exile, war, and restoration—when questions of moral responsibility and loss come to the fore.
The play is also remarkable for its reflexive engagement with literature itself, as the text invites readers to consider not only what theatre depicts, but what it does: students will thus explore how Bhavabhūti develops and deploys karuṇa rasa (which Pollock renders as ’the tragic’).
To borrow Sheldon Pollock’s formulation, “‘Rāma’s Last Act’ is as much about the power of drama itself, about the capacity of literary narrative to make life intelligible and coherent, as it is about the problem of moral agency that the best literature aims to highlight.” This reflexivity operates both at the level of literary form, focusing on the paradoxes of representation, and at the level of content, where traditional dramaturgical concerns converge on the problem of rasa.
By the end of the module, students will be able to read sections of classical Sanskrit drama with limited support and will be prepared for further work at Upper Intermediate 2 and 3 levels.
Sanskrit Upper-Intermediate 2
This module continues sustained engagement with sophisticated Sanskrit literature through Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita ("Life of the Buddha", II century CE). Patrick Olivelle offers an excellent and overarching general introduction to this poem in his Life of the Buddha by Ashvaghosha (Clay Sanskrit Library, 2008).
Olivelle, p. xix: "Aśvaghoṣa, according to tradition, was a brahmin who converted to Buddhism and became a Buddhist monk. Internal evidence of his extant works shows that he was a learned man well versed both in the Brahmanical texts, mythology, ritual, and philosophy, and in Buddhist theology and history. In addition to being an erudite theologian, Aśvaghoṣa was a gifted poet. In “Life of the Buddha” (Buddhacarita), he melds the theological and the poetic into an epic poem that presents Buddhism as the crowning and consummation of the Brahmanical religion, as the means of releasing human beings from the agony of their imprisonment in life, and as the fulfillment of all human aspirations. The poem is an ‘apologia’ for Buddhism against Brahmanical attacks and arguments, an apologia in the form of a finely crafted “Life of the Buddha” from his conception to his Awakening, preaching, and death."
Olivelle, pp. xxiv-xxv: "The form of [Aśvaghoṣa's] response, a finely crafted epic poem, was also probably intended to reach a broad, diverse, and educated audience. Citations of his work by later writers on aesthetics and the imitation of his poems by major Brahmanical poets, including Kālidāsa, show that Aśvaghoṣa largely achieved his aim.
There are two extant works of Aśvaghoṣa, “Life of the Buddha” and “Handsome Nanda.” Both are written in verse and intended to be poetic works (kāvya) of distinction. Indeed, these are the two earliest extant kāvyas in Sanskrit.
