108 Samskrit Slokas That Everyone Must Learn

As part of the work that I do for Soham Academy of Human Excellence, I identified a grand new idea that will have tremendous all round impact on my kids. This is an unintended positive consequence. This post is all about this grand new project and how it works. This project shall not be a secret project. It will be open to all and whoever wants to use the products coming out of this project may do so without any restraint. You have my word! 

It all started like this: It was from the Balavikas days that I got habituated with the process of starting and ending every class of mine with some Samskrit slokas. When I started working with the government school children I did not want to change a thing. I know that these kids have no exposure to Samskrit slokas whatsoever! So, I started off with one sloka at the beginning of the class and a second one to chant before closing for the day. This was repeated on the second day. They learnt these two slokas within three days. Immediately I started teaching two new slokas. By the time the module concluded, I taught them a total of 6 slokas. It was not bad at all. I got encouraged by that and in the second module I taught them six more slokas in the same fashion. By the end of the second module, all the children were able to chant 12 slokas by heart. These slokas became a permanent part of the classroom session.

Encouraged by these children, I decided to take it to the next level. I gathered eight students to come together and learn slokas whenever time permitted. They were as excited as I was. Soon I cobbled together 36 different slokas including the 12 earlier ones. They learnt how to chant them all in 5 days and in another five days they knew them all by heart. Thus the idea of a book was born. I put together a book containing all the 36 slokas along with their meanings in both English and Telugu. This book was published in November 2017. I gave it away as a gift to every kid who was able to chant all the 36 slokas. In other words, this book was meant to be earned! Others, including some teachers, friends and well-wishers got it without much effort!

Encouraged by the response I wanted to take this project to a new level. This time I collected 45 new slokas – all from Bhagavad Gita. This is a small subset of 45 slokas from chapters 10 and 12. More about it in later posts. I collected the same set of students and one or two others. They were able to chant all the 45 slokas. They are yet to recite them without referring to them. They are almost there.

If I add another 27 slokas – the total will come to 108 slokas. All these new slokas, that are yet to be finalized, are going to be from Hitopadesa/Shubhashitams.

Now, I am ready to publish all this information to the wider world of my friends across the globe and all those unknown  smart people who visit my website. This is the first post in the series. I shall publish all these slokas in a separate post for each with both English and Telugu translations and transliterations along with Devanagari script.

They say that anyone who has mastered 100 slokas may be considered as a pandit.  I am not sure if I will be able to create pandits in the process. A person is as good as a pandit if he/she:

• possesses a complete knowledge of over 100 wonderful slokas.
• knows the meanings of the slokas
• builds a nice vocabulary of all the key words from all the slokas
• has a fairly good age-adjusted understanding of the embedded philosophies in each of the slokas
• recall slokas based on the context they are exposed to

If a few of my kids are able to do these things, and they are able to teach this to their children and their grand children, I shall consider my job done, a dream fulfilled and a purpose served!

I hope you will be able to join me in this new project by offering your feedback and your insights on these slokas.