Being invited to an international conference is always an honour — but some invitations carry a deeper resonance. SCRIPTA 2025 was one of them.
An Invitation Steeped in Meaning
Being invited to SCRIPTA 2025: Scripts of India and Southeast Asia was, for me, an experience of profound pride and humility. The international conference was held at the Sanskrit Study Centre, Silpakorn University, in the Thawi Watthana district of Bangkok — a centre that has quietly carried the torch of Indo-Thai cultural continuity for three remarkable decades.
The event was organised to celebrate two significant milestones: 79 years of diplomatic relations between Thailand and India, and the 30th anniversary of the Sanskrit Study Centre itself. Two nations bound not merely by trade and politics, but by a shared civilisational inheritance of script, sound, and spiritual thought.
A Campus of Divine Presence
The moment I stepped onto the campus of the Sanskrit Study Centre, something shifted — a quiet, unmistakable divinity that settles over a space not by accident, but by years of intention and reverence.
Presiding over the centre are consecrated idols of Maa Saraswati — Goddess of Learning, Language, and the Arts — and Bhagwan Ganesha, the patron of wisdom and new beginnings. These are not decorative installations. Regular puja is performed with full ceremonial devotion, weaving spiritual practice seamlessly into the fabric of academic life.
संस्कृत स्टडी सेंटर का परिसर माँ सरस्वती और भगवान गणेश की दिव्य उपस्थिति से परिपूर्ण है, जहाँ उनकी प्रतिमाएं स्थापित हैं और विधि-विधान के साथ उनकी पूजा-अर्चना की जाती है।
In Thailand, the reverence for Indian deities is ancient and organic — not adopted but absorbed through centuries of cultural exchange. Seeing Saraswati honoured in Bangkok with the same spirit as in Varanasi or Mysuru was a deeply moving affirmation of how living culture transcends geography.
Three Moments That Stayed With Me
Three aspects of SCRIPTA 2025 left a lasting impression:
1. Traditional Puja Ritual worship conducted with meticulous ceremony — the chanting, the offerings, the incense — every gesture deliberate, every movement inherited across generations.
2. Dance Rooted in the Guru Mantra Enchanting classical dance performances woven around the Guru Mantra. The body itself becomes a living manuscript, each movement a letter in an ancient alphabet of devotion. It was, simply, mesmerising.
3. Sanskrit Recitation Precise, resonant, and deeply moving. To hear Sanskrit spoken correctly — not as a curiosity but as a living tongue — is to understand why it has endured for millennia. Oral transmission, I was reminded, is itself a form of script: sound encoded in memory, passed down breath by breath.
पारंपरिक पूजा, गुरु मंत्र पर आधारित मनमोहक नृत्य एवं उत्कृष्ट संस्कृत उच्चारण ने मुझे अत्यंत प्रभावित किया।
Why Conferences Like SCRIPTA Matter
In an age of instant translation and algorithmically generated text, one might question the urgency of gathering scholars to discuss ancient scripts. The answer lies in what is at stake when a script disappears.
A script is not merely a writing system. It is the architecture of a people’s thought — the way they organised the cosmos, encoded their values, and transmitted accumulated knowledge across time. When a script is lost, entire libraries of meaning vanish with it.
For Thailand and India — whose cultural DNA is inextricably intertwined, from the Ramayana to the names of Thai royalty, from Sanskrit loanwords embedded in the Thai language to temples that mirror Indian architectural grammar — SCRIPTA 2025 was both scholarship and sovereignty. A quiet, determined reclaiming of shared roots.
A Personal Note of Gratitude
To be invited into this space, to witness this living continuity between two great Asian civilisations, was a privilege I carry with deep gratitude.
I hope conferences like SCRIPTA continue to grow — drawing more voices, more languages, and more scripts into the light of global recognition. Because the script endures. And so must we.
लिपि अमर है। The Script Endures.