India approves five centres to advance classical-language studies

India’s Ministry of Education has approved the creation of five Centres of Excellence for research into classical languages, officials said on Saturday. The centres will focus on Classical Assamese, Bengali, Pali, Marathi and Prakrit. According to the ministry, their work will strengthen academic research, digitisation, preservation and dissemination of the linguistic heritage associated with each language.

Tezpur University in Assam will host the centre for Assamese. Visva-Bharati University will host the Bengali centre, while the Central University of Odisha will focus on Pali. The Central University of Gujarat has been selected for the Prakrit centre.

Deccan College Post Graduate and Research Institute in Pune will host the centre for Marathi. Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi welcomed the approval of the Pali centre at the Central University of Odisha. He described the decision as an important step in preserving India’s linguistic heritage and said Pali was closely connected with the country’s intellectual, spiritual and cultural traditions.

Majhi said the centre would strengthen Odisha’s contribution to preserving India’s civilisational knowledge and language heritage. He congratulated the university and others involved in the initiative. The source material does not provide the centres’ budgets, staffing plans, launch dates or details of the research programmes.

It says only that the five institutions have been selected and that the centres are intended to support study, preservation and promotion of the languages.