About IASS

In 1971 Professor V.K.R.V. Rao, the then Minister of Education/Ministry of Human Resource Development (Government of India) and Chairman of the Central Sanskrit Board, planned the First International Sanskrit Conference. The two themes he suggested for the proposed Sanskrit Conference were the contribution of the various regions of the world to Sanskrit Studies and the contribution of Sanskrit to the advancement of knowledge in different regions of the world. This first Conference had to be postponed to 1972.

In close cooperation with Professors V. Raghavan, R. N. Dandekar and other scholars, Universities and Sanskrit Institutions, the first postponed International Sanskrit Conference/ Viśva Saṃskṛta Saṃmelana was held at New Delhi in March 1972, under the joint auspices of the Ministry of Education (Government of India) and the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. It was during the valedictory session of the Conference that, with the permission of the Ministry of Education, a decision to establish the IASS was taken.

The idea behind this first International Sanskrit Conference coincided with the perception in the 1970s that the International Congress of Orientalists, as the International Congress for Asian and North African Studies was then called, did not allow sufficient scope for a full discussion of Sanskrit and allied subjects.

It was against this background that at the 29th International Congress of Orientalists, held in Paris in 1973, a year after the First International Sanskrit Conference in Delhi, Sanskritists from various countries endorsed the formation of the International Association of Sanskrit Studies and drafted its constitution. The main task of the IASS was agreed to be the organizing of a World Sanskrit Conference at different venues around the world. The 1972 International Sanskrit Conference in New Delhi was recognised retrospectively as the First World Sanskrit Conference.