Acharya Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya

India has been a seat of learning since before it kept dates. The Rigveda is the first book in any human library, and from the Vedic tradition came the Upanishads, the eighteen Puranas, the Vedangas, yoga and tantra, the six darshanas, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and a literature of poetry and polity — given, as the phrase has it, for the good of all.

That body of work has lasted because it was taught, continuously, in gurukuls and rishikuls for thousands of years. This college stands in that line.

Sanskrit universities have run in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Odisha, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh for many years. Rajasthan’s came later: the enabling act received assent on 2 September 1998, and the university took shape on 6 February 2001 with Padma Shri Dr. Mandan Mishra as its first Vice-Chancellor. On 27 June 2005 it was renamed Jagadguru Ramanandacharya Rajasthan Sanskrit University, Jaipur.

The college runs the Shastri three-year degree and the Acharya two-year postgraduate degree across the traditional subjects: the four Vedas — Rigveda, Shukla Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda — together with Sahitya, Nava Vyakarana, Jyotisha in both its computational and predictive branches, Dharmashastra and Darshana, the latter in its general and Nyaya forms.

Modern subjects are taught at Shastri level as well: Hindi literature, English literature, Political Science and History.