Guru Geneaology

In Sanskrit, there is a term to denote the lineage of teachers, known as guru parampara, which means, "the succession of teachers (guru)" and is quite important. For, if the teacher of your teacher was important, that somehow makes you important, or at least means you better do something with what you learn.

When I completed my PhD at The University of Texas at Austin with a degree in Comparative Literature, the advisor who had to sign off on my final semester looked at all of the Sanskrit that I had taken as it did not directly "relate" to my main focus, James Joyce. She looked at me, and quite deprecatingly said, "Sanskrit, what are you going to do with Sanskrit?" Wow.

OK, aside from feeling rather insulted, and having left thinking, "Wasn't I supposed to just be congratulated for finishing a PhD in near-record time and also having learned Sanskrit, as a sidenote?" Nope, the question was, Why Sanskrit?

While I was at The University of Texas at Austin, my two primary Sanskrit teachers were Richard Lariviere, who is now the President of the University of Oregon in Eugene, and Patrick Olivelle, who is perhaps one of the world's greatest living Sanskrit translators, and is Oxford Press's primary Sanskritist.

I am in awe of both of them beyond words. Olivelle, who is originally from Sri Lanka, despite his western name, is truly a phenomenon. He literally has reams of verses memorized from multiple texts.

I worked under Lariviere and Olivelle and his wife, Suman (who is likewise a Sanskrit guru) for three years during graduate school on a manuscript collation project for the Laws of Manu. Olivelle and Lariviere had accumulated about 1500 either whole or partial variant manuscripts of the text from around India and throughout time, ranging from nearly contemporary to several hundreds years. I was one of the readers for the manuscripts and would spend hours every day reading the manuscripts and making notations in a notebook where variations occurred, and then what the variation was, etc.

After all of these were done over a period of more than a decade, Olivelle collated them and translated the text.

Sanskrit ended up being either directly or indirectly responsible for nearly half of my employment opportunities in the past fifteen years, directly thanks to Patrick Olivelle and Richard Lariviere. Both of them supreme gurus and I am honored to be part of their lineage as a student. Some teachers you will always be students of, and these are two of the greatest.

Both of them have told me for years that I needed to go to India, so honoring that, I will soon let them know that day has come.