Matturu, the Sanskrit village

           

           Matturu, the Sanskrit village in Shivmogga Dsitrict,                                        Karnataka state, India.

The two villages Mattur and Hosahalli situated across the banks of Tunga River. 

These two villages are agraharas given to the Sanskrit Pandits and asked to keep the divine language alive for generations by the king Krishnadevaraya.

Sanskrit script is known as ‘Devanagari’ and also called as ‘Devabhasha’ namely language of gods. There are very few villages in India where Sanskrit is predominant as in Mattur.

The unique aspect of this village is that still use a form of sanskrit for their everyday communication. The entire village is like an Agraharam (the Brahmin quarter) with about 120 houses and seven temples. The outer area of the Agraharam has about 300 houses. The residents of these houses are not necessarily brahmins but have learned Sanskrit.

People here actually speak a language called 'Sanketi'. This language is a mix of Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Tamil, and Sanskrit. The most interesting part is, it does not have a script or written alphabets.

All 120 families are brahmins and their main occupation includes farming and doing puja ceremonies. They are also required to learn Vedic scriptures since childhood.

Even small children wear traditional attire, dhoti and even they play with it. Here every house is a Sanskrit, Ved and Vedanta pathasala. But many families migrated to cities as it became a problem for their livelihood.

Only a few families are still following the culture and heritage of this place.

Many newspapers published articles about the village but none of them mentioned about the problems of those families who strictly follow the word of Krishnadevaraya.

The youth faces many problems. they are not getting marriages as they don't have job security and have no monthly salary.

Many houses are in poor condition. Government has to take care of such places by providing job security particularly the families who follow the tradition. Then only they can carry on their mission, to pass on the culture and heritage to generations.

I am staying here for a month and got an opportunity to study the situation and present condition of the village.

The world accepted sanskrit and many countries have begun introducing Sanskrit and Bhagavadgita in schools, but still, here in India, we do not have any such condition.

We hope the central government will take responsibility and make arrangement to uplift the lives of those families still stick to Sanskrit culture and heritage.

Here I'm uploading some pictures which show the condition of the village.