The International Institute of Pali, Sanskrit and Comparitive Philosophy, Gulbarga has been established by the Department of Human Resources, Government of India represented by the Central Sanskrit University (Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan), New Delhi and the Department of Higher Education, Government of Karnataka in association with the Siddhartha Vihar Trust.
The International Institute of Pali, Sanskrit and Comparitive Philosophy, Gulbarga is primarily a post graduate research institute conducting research activities in order to increase the intellectual focus on the ancient Pali language as a commitment to higher learning in the humanities and literary studies. The Institute aims to be at the forefront of research on the language, literature, history, archaeology, and other dimensions of the cultures of ancient India when Pali was a literary language along with Prakrit and Sanskrit. We believe that study of an ancient and extinct language is better treated as an interdisciplinary field that benefits from a variety of approaches and methods. Hence our work will span a wide range, including language and literature, linguistics, art, archaeology, philosophy, and history.
The Pali Institute has been initially set up with grant of Rs 10 crores from the Siddhartha Vihar Trust. The Siddharth Vihar Trust also provisions an annual grant of up to Rs. 50 lakhs for meeting the day to day expenses of the Pali Institute and various activities of the institute.
Through the Pali Institute, the Siddhartha Vihar Trust hopes to introduce Pali and Sanskrit as languages in schools so that children are taught these classical languages as third languages or additional co-scholastic languages. One of the objectives of the Siddhartha Vihar Trust is to establish a model school where Pali and Sanskrit can be taught as a first language along with the regular board curriculum so that the next generation can be introduced to the languages early as a means to nurture and protect the Pali language.