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In 1964 an Indian Sanskritist, Durga Prasad Shastri, visited Russia. After two weeks in Russia he told his interpreter Natalia Guseva: “Stop translating! I understand what you are saying in Russian. You are speaking here some corrupted form of Sanskrit!' When he returned to India He published an article claiming that Russian is the language closest to Sanskrit and in fact it is Sanskrit in its modern, naturally evolved form. He said: “Similar words can be found in Latin, German, Persian and Russian. But only in Russian you preserved the words, the style and the syntax, the grammar is similar as well. It's a matter of deep curiosity for all who are familiar with linguistics. When I was in Moscow, the receptionist gave me the keys to room 234 and said “dwesti tridsat chetire“. I could not understand in bewilderment whether I was standing in front of a nice girl in Moscow or in Varanasi or Ujjain about two thousand years ago. In Sanskrit 234 will be “dwishata tridasha chatwari“. Is it possible to have greater similarity? It is unlikely that we will find another language that has preserved the ancient pronunciation in such fullness to the present day as the Russian language“. The meeting described in the video happened in the village of Kachalovo, 25 km from Moscow, where Mr. Shastri was invited to visit. After visiting Russia he said: “How I wish that Panini, the great Indian grammarian, who lived about 2,600 years ago, could be here with me and hear the language of his time, so wonderfully preserved with all the finer details!“
