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Each House in Sasana Village in Orissa has a Sanskrit Teacher

At Sasana Village in Kendrapara District in Orissa, each home has a Sanskrit Pandit. Some are Sanskrit teachers in government schools and other institutions and others perform pujas and rituals. For generations each house in this village has made it sure that at least one child learns Sanskrit. Today there are households in this village were all the people teach or make a living through Sanskrit learning.

Kalinga Times writes about this unique village

The comparatively developed village, fully Brahmin-inhabited, has little above 200 population in 32 households.
In nearly all the families, one would come across Sanskrit Pundits employed in government-run Sanskrit medium educational institutions.
“We are proud patrons of Sanskrit. The ancient language is very much alive in the village though things are not so in other places,” said 76-year-old Baishnav Charan Pati, a Sanskrit Pundit who has retired from his teaching job.
In these parts of the state, Sanskrit is widely used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. Sanskrit as a spoken language is still in use in a few traditional institutions.
“By encouraging our children to learn Sanskrit, we are trying to revive the language. We are largely successful till now. We still pin the hope that our future generation would keep the tradition alive,” Pundit Pati said with a tinge of pride.
In hoary past, this language flourished in this region. A miniature temple dedicated to the great poet Kalidas, author of Abhigynam Shakuntalam and who is believed to have graced the court of Chandragupta Vikramaditya of the Gupta dynasty in the fourth century, finds its place in sleepy Babkarpur village of this district, according to Sanskrit researchers.
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