Sanskrit Documents

Learning Tools




 

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Learning Sanskrit

Sanskrit can be called as a "language of consciousness", may be because it opens the door to India 's rich spiritual literature. Sanskrit is not restricted to spirituality & religion, however, but also encompasses a vast literature of many genres; and for us to understand the beauty behind those copious beautiful texts, learning the Sanskrit language is a must.

Sanskrit, which was a primary language of communication in ancient India , lives on in modern India , though not in its full form: it survives in bits and pieces, in one way or another, in the various Indian languages that have descended from it. For natives of India , therefore, it is a matter of recapitulation of a language, which is present in them and merely seeking a proper channel.

Unlike English and other modern European languages, Sanskrit seems somewhat difficult to understand for most Westerners. This is true not only because of its script (devanagari), which is quite foreign to Western & European countries, but also because of its grammatically complex structure and highly inflected forms, which can be more richly inflected even than Greek or Latin, particularly the verbal conjugations.

The links below present an introduction to the Sanskrit language and a little motivation to joyously pursue it to one's own capacity.

 

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Sanskrit dictionary

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Tutorials & documentation:

 

Read Charles Wikner's reply on the purpose of the document here. His FTP url is ftp.nac.ac.za/wikner/. He advises - "Beware: there is a very thin piece of wire to South Africa, and it is stretched rather taut, so the best time to ftp would be Sunday morning local time (GMT+2:00)".

Please read notes about this translation. Email: Yann.Leglise@wanadoo.fr for more information.

  • Excellent "Introduction to Sanskrit" series at Sringeri Vidya Bharati Foundation: Units 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
  • The Le arn Sanskrit Series is developed by Mr. Vasudeva Bhat on ourkarnataka site. There are 39 lessons (Nov 2003) whic h are also translated in Kannada. For Kannadigas, this is an excellent site.
  • Samskritapriyah - and the Samskrit Education in Chennai , India . Information relating to Sanskrit and set of basic lessons to learn the language through self study. Devanagari Script via browser (without having to install any Fonts) , This site has a useful multilingual editor developed by Indian Institute of Technology Madras, at Chennai, and is available at http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/software/iitmed.html It may be used in a number of ways to prepare documents in Sanskrit and all the Indian languages. Inline images for the tutorial are generated from special text files prepared using the Multilingual Software. Contact Professor Kalyana Krishnan for additional information.
  • Learn Sanskrit using Marathi from sanskritdeepika.org as one of the major activities of Dnyanadeep foundation, in Sangli, Maharashtra . .
  • Kalidasa Samskrita Kendram in Chennai presents "Teaching Sanskrit Through Web" series of lessons. The center offers diploma courses in Sanskrit. The founder V.C. Govindarajan vcgrajan at yahoo.com has also initiated a Kalidasa group on yahoo where the lessons are first posted and discussed. The Kendram site also holds "Articles on History of Sanskrit Literature."
  • Master Sanskrit Easily written and presented by Dr. Narayan Kansara of Ahmedabad. This is an extensive 301 page tutorial and is well formatted for two sided booklet printing. The entire text is in Roman with Diacritics. Its details are summarized in the Preface text file. Get the PDF files as Title, Parts 1, 2, and 3.
  • A step by ste p lessons in Sanskrit are provided at http://www.chitrapurmath.net/. A registration (free) is needed to access all the lessons.
  • Spiritual Seeker's Essential Guide to Sanskrit prepared by Dennis Waite dennis.waite at virgin.net .
  • Dr. Sudhir Kaicker, Director, Computer Centre, Jawaharlal Nehru University , New Delhi , India , has coordinated development of a Sanskrit tutor called SanskritaPradipika for PC-Windows. It is available for download (after free registration) at http://www.sanskrit-lamp.org. The file size is over 20 Mb.
  • Gabriel Pradiipaka and Andres Muni have compiled a procedure to Learn Sanskrit Language Step by Step. The FAQ written by Gabriel may be inspiring for new students.
  • aravindAshrame sa.nskR^itam at http://sanskrit.sriaurobindoashram.org.in/ is a site for various online display and audio of Sanskrit tutorials, magazine from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry . The publications can be ordered from SABDA, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry - 605 002, India . For Ordering Information http://www.sabda.in.
  • Vedic Accents:
    • Notes on Vedic accents by Charles Wikner. Postscript and PDF-Acrobat files. (July 1997).
    • ITX | PS | PDF | XDVNG | GIF - svaramaJNjarii or vaidikasvarapaddhati text + trans. on Vedic accents
      grammar rules related to accents (by Tryambak B. Abhyankar)
  • A slide presentation with audio clips on Question Making for Sanskrit learners. (password for read only part is 12345). Prepared by S K Mishra.

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Grammar

A note on the pronunciation of vowel R^i by Dhananjay Vaidya

  • ITrans | PS | PDF | GIF - A chart of Devanaagarii letters for beginners
  • ITrans | PS | PDF | GIF | HTML - Consonant-Vowel combination, baaraakhaDii (ka, kaa, ki, ... GYaH)
  • ITrans | PS | PDF | HTML - Numbers (cardinals, ordinals, fractions, time telling) in Sanskrit
  • ITrans | PS | HTML | GIF Numbers in Hindi
  • ITrans | PS | PDF | GIF | HTML A pronunciation table for the Sanskrit alphabet
  • ITrans | PS | PDF | GIF Introduction to Sanskrit Grammar; (needs proof-reading/correction)
  • ITrans | PS | PDF Sanskrit Nouns/Verbs tables - "shabdavibhaktii pratyaya".
    (needs proof-reading/correction)
  • Automatic vibhaktiipratyaya generation by Gerard Huet's declension display and grammarian engine.
  • Gerard Huet's Sanskrit reader and sandhi analysis utility It can break a sentence in words, try sugandhi.mpu.s.tivardhanam. It requires TeX/Velthuis convention transliteration entry. The sindhi program is directly linked here.
  • Indian Lexicon by Dr. Kalyanraman
  • Roots | ITRANS | HTML Dhaatu PaaTha list of 2200 roots from Indian Lexicon Site
  • Verbs | ITRANS | HTML Verb forms (Whitney) from Indian Lexicon Site
  • Shabda Vyutpatti Nirukta is on-line at: http://tiger.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/mtokunag/skt_texts/nirukta.gz encoded by Tokunaga in Kyoto encoded format.
  • Sanskrit Flash Cards containing over 3000 basic words and their meaning organized in 300+ pages. The site also contains English translations of plays: Bhasa's Carudatta in Poverty (daridra chaarudattam), The Minister's Vows (pratij~naa yaugandharaayaNam), The Vision of Vasavadatta (svapna vaasavadattam), Harsha's Nagananda and Priyadarshika, and Kalidasa's Shakuntala. In addition, it has English translation of Swargarohanika Parvan in Mahabharata, and French translation Mahâbhârata, Strîparva ou Livre des Femmes.
  • TEX | PS | PDF - dhaatu ruupaaNi - verb tables and templates from Himanshu Pota (uses SKT)
  • ITrans | HTML | JAVA - Sanskrit word declensions from Avinash Sathaye's Sanskrit Goodies page (uses QDATR)
  • Dr Shivamurthy Swamiji of Sri Taralabalu Jagadguru Brihanmath, Sirigere - 577 541 Karnataka, India , has developed a software Ganakastadhyayi for PC-Win95/98/XP (not for NT) use for broader study of Panini's Ashtadhyayi. It includes pada-paaTha, Vrittis, and explanation. The newer version has the option of selecting Roman script or Devangari script. The Vrittis in Siddhanta Kaumudi and Laghu Kaumudi will also be given seperately. The data is being revised and updated. This also includes explanation on sandhi system.

Panini's Ashtadhyayi or suutrapATha is also available in Sanskrit in different formats among major works.

 

 

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Conversational Sanskrit (lessons and documents)

Sanskrit Bharati, based in Bangalore , India (Bharat) has been instrumental in promoting conversational Sanskrit on world-wide basis. The program has been circulated through camps, publications, correspondence courses, studies through personal contacts, and by various means suitable to individual's needs. The following books are some of their publications.

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Software:

  • Bhagavadgita - A verse a day PC/DOS utility by Ajaya Durg.
  • Technology Development for Indian Languages, TDIL, a program launched by Department of Information Technology, Govt. of India in 1991, has developed excellent tools related to word processing and analysis of Indian languages. The tools can be downloaded freely with simple registration from http://tdil.mit.gov.in/. Some of the software include
    Indian Language Keyboard Driver and Fonts
    iLEAP an Intelligent, Internet ready Indian language word processor on Windows
    Desika: Natural Language Understanding System for Sanskrit
    Shabdhabodha:to analyze the semantic and syntactic structure of Sanskrit sentences.
    Geeta Reader
    Apex Language Processor (ALP) is a character mode Wordprocessor
    Akshar (Word processor) for Windows
    Punjabi SpellChecker
    Speech Synthesizer
  • Sivananda Org -
    • http://www.sivananda.org/misc/anim/anim.htm Chakras - Animated ShockWave of the Chakras with pronunciations of the Biija aksharas.
  • Ulrich Stiehl's sanskritweb.net has an http://www.sanskritweb.net/deutsch/ipa_sans.pdf>International Phonetic IPA chart of Sanskrit alphabet pronunciations.
  • A research paper The use of Sanskrit, an ancient language, as a tool to evaluate cleft palate speech problems by Kalpesh Gajiwala surprisingly in an Internatinal Journal of Plastic Surgery! "Inherent advantage of this arrangement of Sanskrit alphabets to effectively analyze defective cleft palate speech and provides a tool for surgeons to decide a course of action in their routine clinical practice."
  • Sanskrit Pronunciation Audio Utilities for PC/Dos/Win -
  • Guide to pronunciation of Sanskrit with International phonetic alphabet pronounciation (IPA) prepared by Yves Codet, Toulouse communicated by Sylvain Lavoie, Québec , Canada . (In French) Also see associated International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration.