Ms. Maria Elisabeth Bakker, from the Netherlands wins First Prize
The all India Kalidasa Samaroha was organized by the Vikram University of Ujjain from the 4th to the 10th of November 2022. In this all-Indian Sanskrit conference, the University announced an award for the best research paper. Ms Maria Elisabeth Bakker, from the Netherlands, wrote a paper titled “Yogadarśananidhi in Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa Canto I” (treasure of Yoga philosophy in Kālidāsa) and received the first prize. However, because of some inescapable circumstances, Ms Bakker was not able to attend that conference in person, and Ms. SK Abhirami, a master’s student of the department of Sanskrit Studies of the University of Hyderabad, represented her by presenting the research paper and receiving the reward.
Ms Bakker is a student of the University of Leiden in the programme of South and South East Asian Studies with a major in Sanskrit. She came to India as part of that programme to experience learning Sanskrit in an Indian University for a full semester and got admission to the Department of Sanskrit Studies of the University of Hyderabad. She is learning Sanskrit epics such as Raghuvaṃśa and Rāmāyaṇa along with the philosophy of the Ayurvedic doctrine with the supervision of Prof JSR Prasad, Head of department of Sanskrit Studies and Mr. Brijesh Kumar Mishra, a PhD research scholar of the same department. Ms Bakker attributes these teachings to have greatly inspired her to write the research paper.
The faculty and the students of the department congratulated Ms. Bakker for her achievement and thanked her for choosing the University of Hyderabad as a preferred place for studying Sanskrit in depth.