Words for "library" in Sanskrit: the future of information science
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The words that leap to mind are pustakālaya पुस्तकालय (pustak पुस्तक ["book"] + ālaya आलय ["place"]) and granthālaya ग्रन्थालय (granth ग्रंथ ["text"] + ālaya आलय ["place"]). Those are simple and straightforward.
There were several other Sanskrit words for library I used to know, such as vidyākośasamāśraya विद्याकोशसमाश्रय* that included the component vidya ("knowledge"), but they were more subtle and complicated, so they were harder for me to recall.
*knowledge treasury coming together (for support or shelter)
How did I come to write on this somewhat arcane subject? It happened because I was pondering the following conundrum.
When I was in college and graduate school, I practically lived in the library. Among the best students I know now, fifty years later, a superlative PhD candidate attended a very good college and is enrolled at one of the world's premier universities, yet she spends almost no time in the library.
She is a humanist who also has a deep interest in the history of medicine, so if anyone would be spending a great deal of time in library, you'd think it would be people like her. Although she is a diligent, productive scholar, the library holds little abiding attraction for this student. Nearly everything she needs to read, she can find online or she can buy it rapidly from an online dealer or have it sent to her doorstep quickly from a depository or archive. Most of the time it arrives instantaneously in digital form.
I think we all realize the reason for this sea change in the storage of information that I was pondering: the electronification and digitization of massive data bases.
If you want to get an idea of how these processes have impacted Sinology, just to take one well documented case, read the first item of the "Selected readings" below, where I introduce this book:
Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Xiao Liu, Christopher M. B. Nugent, and Bruce Rusk, eds., Literary Information in China: A History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).
Not only has the collection, preservation, and organization of data profoundly transformed as a result of technological development, the analysis of information and the creation of new knowledge, and the nature of its delivery to eager recipients has also metamorphosed into hitherto unknown modes and forms
Hang on; we're all in for an exciting ride on the wisdom train.
Selected readings
- "Information Management and Library Science" (9/7/22)
- "Memorizing a thesaurus" (10/28/20) — Amarakośa अमरकोश ("Immortal collection")
- "Philology and Sinology" (4/20/14)
- "What would a 'return to philology' be a return to?" (4/19/14)
- "Philology vs. linguistics" (3/14/15)
- "'Between the Eyes and the Ears': SPP turns 300" (7/20/20)
Dan Boucher said,
March 19, 2025 @ 7:19 am
Victor, the library at Cornell is likewise primarily a place where students use computer terminals or more often, hang out in the ever expanding cafe. I can't remember the last time I was in the stacks and saw another person there at the same time. The much bigger fear is not that they'll get their information online, but that AI will "get it" for them much more efficiently.