July 30, 2024

By Shirish N Kavadi*

In 1965, the University of Pennsylvania (U Penn) published Spoken Marathi Book 1. First Year Intensive Course, a reader co-written by my father Naresh B Kavadi (1922-2000) and Franklin C Southworth, (1929—present). Marathi is the official language in Maharashtra, whose capital is Mumbai, and is spoken by most of the state’s 124 million people.

The 252 page book, which continues to be used at U Penn and other universities, is among the earliest readers in an Indian language to be published by an American university. The U Penn Marathi reader had a second print in 1968 and a third one in 2016.

Interest in Indology and Sanskrit at U.S. universities has a long history. At U Penn, for instance, the study of Sanskrit began in 1890, with the first full time faculty in the language appointed in 1912. Following the end of World War 11, South Asian studies at U.S. universities received a boost in funding from the U.S. government as well as from private foundations.

In 1926, W. Norman Brown (1892-1975) was named Chair of Sanskrit at U Penn. Over the next thirty years, Brown “profoundly changed the study of South Asia in the United States,” notes the U Penn South Asia Studies website.

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