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Journalism of Courage
SARNATH, DEC 17: At a stone’s throw away from the spot where Buddha delivered his sermon is a unique institution where one can learn everything about culture and history of the roof of the world – Tibet.
Nestled in a compact campus in sylvan surroundings right in the heart of sarnath is the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies (CIHTS) – the world’s only institution imparting education on the heritage of a land struggling to preserve its culture since the Chinese takeover in the 1950s.
Fully financed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the CIHTS is a deemed university, with courses available upto the Ph.D level in different streams of Tibetan education. “The main objective of the Tibetan government in exile to set up CIHTS with help from India was, to preserve our culture,” says Prof Jampa Samten, who teaches Tibetan history and culture at the institution.
With a maximum capacity for 300 students at a time, CIHTS strives to teach younger Tibetans, many of whom have never seen theirmotherland and were born in India and other foreign countries, the intricacies of the rich culture of their land. “Tibetan youth are losing touch with their culture, though it is a phenomena in all societies where the young are being lured towards things modern in an era of globalisation”.
“When the Dalai Lama came to India, one of the main challenges before him was how to educate the younger generation about their heritage so that it is preserved for posterity,” says Samten, who also officiates as the librarian of the Shantarakshita Library in the institution.
Set up in 1967 following intense discussion between the Dalai Lama and the then prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, CIHTS has five main faculties — Sabda Vidya (languages), Hetu (logic) and Adhyatma Vidya (spiritual realisation), Adhunika Vidya (social sciences), Cikitsa Vidya (Tibetan medicine and astrology) and Silpa Vidya (fine arts and craft).
Apart from preservation of Tibetan culture andtradition, one of the main objectives of CIHTS is to restore ancient Indian sciences and literature preserved in the Tibetan language but lost in their original forms.
CIHTS, Samten says, does not only impart education to Tibetan youth, but also fills up the gap for students from Indian areas bordering Tibet in the Himalayas, who, before the 1959 political upheaval used to go to Lhasa to get higher education.
Education at CIHTS starts at the ninth standard in the form of the two-year purva madhyama, which is equivalent to secondary school, followed by uttara madhyama, which comprises another two years equivalent to higher secondary schooling.
This is followed by shastri (three years – equivalent to B.A) and acharya (two years – equivalent to M.A). Around 60 per cent of the students at the institution, which functioned as a special wing of Varanasi’s Sampurnananda Sanskrit University till 1977, when it was shifted to its present location to operate as an autonomousorganisation.
On April 5, 1988, CIHTS received university status after the University Grants Commission and the Centre reviewed its growth. “Among the present lot of students, around 60 per cent are of Tibetan origin, while the rest are Indians and a few foreigners,” says Samten, who is part of the nearly-50-strong faculty.
CIHTS, which joined the Internet recently — its web address being cihts.ac.in — has around 25 to 30 students graduating every year, says Samten noting that around 30 per cent of the students are girls. The basic approach of CIHTS, which due to the 100 per cent Central assistance does not have any financial problems, is to keep the traditional style of Tibetan education alive and help students develop an “unfragmented personality,” he says.
“In accordance with the traditional Tibetan educational system, each person should possess the basic knowledge of all the five mahavidyas, only after which one may specialise in any selective field,” explains Samten. The mahavidyas arewhat form four of the faculties — sabda vidya, hetuvidya, adhyatmavidya, silpavidya and cikitsavidya.
According to Samten, the main employment avenues of students graduating from CIHTS are teaching and translator jobs. CIHTS also has a research department comprising restoration, translation and dictionary units, with the last already having brought out several volumes of Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary.
Another major wing of the institution is the one on rare Buddhist texts: research project, which concentrates on critical study of original Sanskrit Buddhist tantrik texts with their Tibetan versions, says Samten.
