The International Conference on ‘DemetriosGalanos and His Legacy’ was inaugurated at IGNCA in New Delhi today.The Ambassador of Greece to India, H.E MrPanasKalogoripoulos, Sanskrit Scholar, Shri SatyavratShastri, IGNCA Trustee, Shri Bharat Gupt and Member Secretary,Shri Sachchidanand Joshi were present at the inaugural session of the conference. Many senior scholars and young researchers from Greece as well as from Indiaare attending the conference.
Indira GandhiNational Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) is organizing the 8-days International Conference on, ‘DemetriosGalanos and His Legacy’. The 8-day long convention is being held in Delhi and Varanasi, in addition to organizing the exhibition and folk music of Greece.
IGNCA Trustee Shri Bharat Gupt said that “DemetriosGalanos (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 9000 words.”
IGNCA Member Secretary, Shri Sachchidanand Joshi while addressing the inaugural session said that “India and Greece share great traditions of philosophy, architecture and music.In fact, all the artsare 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.”
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