Deccan College pune

Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute is a post-graduate institute of Archeology and Linguistics in Pune, India.

Established October 6, 1821, Deccan College is one of the oldest institutions of modern learning in India. It was originally run by the Bombay Government as a center for undergraduate and postgraduate studies, offering western education in accordance with the desire of its founder Mountstuart Elphinstone. It was temporarily shut down in 1934 due to lack of funding, but was reopened on August 17, 1939 as a Post-Graduate and Research Institute for promoting higher learning and research in

Indology and Social Sciences. The reopened institute originally had four teaching and research Departments: Archaeology, Linguistics, History, and Sociology-Anthropology. It was incorporated by the Poona University (now University of Pune) in 1948, becoming one of its recognized institutions. India granted the Deemed to be University Status to the Institute on March 5, 1990. Currently Deccan College has two teaching and research Departments, Archaeology and linguistics.

Deccan College was run by the Bombay Government for some years as a center for undergraduate and postgraduate studies imparting western education in accordance with the desire of Lord Elphinstone. It was shut down in 1934 for want of adequate financial support and was revived five years later (on 17 August 1939) as a Post-Graduate and Research Institute for promoting higher learning and research in Indology and Social Sciences. Deccan College, since then, is governed by the Board of Trustees and a Council of Management. To begin with, the Institute had four teaching and research Departments: 1. Archaeology, 2. Linguistics, 3. History, and 4. Sociology-Anthropology. With the foundation of the Poona University (now renamed as Pune University) in 1948, it became one of it's recognized institutions. and recognition of the excellence of the Institute's research work during its last fifty years, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India granted the Deemed to be University Status to the Institute on 5 March 1990. The Institute has two teaching and research Departments, namely, Archaeology and linguistics. It also houses a semi-permanent project for the preparation of an Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Sanskrit on Historical Principles. The Department of Linguistics, founded by Prof. S.M.Katre, has played a pioneering role in the development of linguistics in India. Almost all the linguists of the first generation have been trained at the Deccan College during the late fifties and sixties. The Department concentrates on basic as well as applied aspects of language in general and on the analyses of the languages of the subcontinent in particular. The Sanskrit Dictionary Project is the most ambitious project undertaken by the Institute. From 1948 to 1975 a data bank of nearly nine million words extracted from some 1500 texts from Vedic period to 18th century was prepared. From 1976 editing and printing of the Dictionary began and to date some 2500 out of the proposed 20,000 pages have been printed. Efforts are under way to computerize the working of the project so as to expedite its completion. Many prominent Sanskrit scholars (Prof. Basham, for example) have remarked that the "Dictionary when completed, will be the greatest work of Sanskrit Lexicography the world has ever seen". The Department of Archaeology, founded and nurtured by the late Prof. H.D.Sankalia, has developed, during the last fifty years, as the premier centre for teaching and research in archaeology in South Asia. It has professional expertise and laboratory facilities. The faculty consists of experts not only in Ancient Indian History, Culture and Archaeology, but in related disciplines of Cultural and Biological Anthropology, Geology, Geomorphology, Sedimentology, Palaeontology, Archaeozoology, Palaeobotany, Palynology, Archaeological Chemistry, and Computer Science. There are also facilities for surveying, drawing, modeling and photography. The Department regularly conducts field research in various areas of archaeology in all parts of the country. It periodically organizes seminars, workshops, conferences and refresher courses to enable its faculty and research staff to keep abreast of latest research and also to share its expertise and resources with colleagues and students in sister institutions. The expertise of the Archaeology Department, specially in science disciplines, is utilized by many universities and government departments of archaeology, within the country and also by institutions in several foreign countries. The department attracts students for M.A. and Ph.D. courses from all parts of the country and from many foreign countries, both developing and developed. Its faculty has regular and extensive interaction with prestigious overseas research institutions. It receives a number of distinguished scholars from various parts of the world every year.