The Deccan College Post-Graduate
Research Institute (Deccan College, for short) is one of the oldest
educational institutions of modern learning in India.
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 2025) 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.
In 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.
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