Intl conference on ‘ Demetrios Galanos’ begins

Speed Post News Network

New Delhi : The International Conference on ‘Demetrios Galanos and His Legacy’ was inaugurated at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) in New Delhi on February 3, 2018.

The Ambassador of Greece to India Panas Kalogoripoulos, Sanskrit Scholar Satyavrat Shastri, IGNCA Trustee Bharat Gupt, and Member Secretary Sachchidanand Joshi were present at the inaugural session of the conference. Many senior scholars and young researchers from Greece as well as from India are attending the conference.

Indira GandhiNational Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is organizing the 8-days International Conference on ‘Demetrios Galanos and His Legacy’. Demetrios Galanos was the earliest recorded Greek Indologist. The 8-day long convention is being held in Delhi and Varanasi, along with an exhibition and folk music of Greece.

IGNCA Trustee Bharat Gupt said that “Demetrios Galanos (1760–1833) has a special place among the foreign scholars who came to India to study in the nineteenth century. He was the only one who stayed in India for 47 years and except for the first seven years when he lived in Calcutta, for 40 years he lived in the city of Varanasi. He translated the Bhagvad Gita into Greek among many other Sanskrit texts. His major contribution was the compilation of a Sanskrit-English-Greek lexicon of about 9,000 words.”

IGNCA Member Secretary Sachchidanand Joshi while addressing the inaugural session said, “India and Greece share great traditions of philosophy, architecture and music. In fact, all the arts are regarded as civilizations that have enormously impacted the East and the West. Demetrios Galanos can be seen as a symbol of coming together of these two great civilizations, as he embraced and enriched both these cultures by his immense knowledge and deep insight. For the last one and a half year, we have started a new project called ‘Bharat Vidya Prayojana’ and we are trying to reconceive Indology from Bharat perspective. Bharat Vidya Prayojana is the principle host of this conference.”