A Practical

Sanskrit

Intro ductory

This print le is available from

ftpftpnacaczawiknersktintropsjan

Preface

This course of fteen lessons is intended to lift the Englishsp eaking studentwho

knows nothing of Sanskrit to the level where he can intelligently apply Monier

DhatuPat ha Williams dictionary and the to the study of the scriptures

The rst ve lessons cover the pronunciation of the basic Sanskrit alphab et

Devanagar together with its written form in b oth and transliterated Roman

ash cards are included as an aid The notes on pronunciation are largely

descriptive based on mouth p osition and eort with similar English Received

Pronunciation sounds oered where p ossible The next four lessons describ e

vowel emb ellishments to the consonants the principles of conjunct consonants

Devanagar and additions to and variations in the alphab et Lessons ten and

sandhi eleven present in grid form and explain their principles in sound The

next three lessons p enetrate MonierWilliams dictionary through its four levels

of alphab etical order and suggest strategies for nding dicult words The

artha DhatuPat ha last lesson shows the extraction of the from the and the

application of this and the dictionary to the study of the scriptures

In addition to the primary course the rst eleven lessons include a B section

whichintro duces the student to the principles of sentence structure in this fully

inected language Six declension paradigms and class conjugation in the

present tense are used with a minimal vo cabulary of nineteen words In the B

part of lessons ten and eleven the principles of comp ound words are intro duced

The course aims at a practical understanding of the basic principles at getting

a feel for the language and not a learning of rules byroteTo this end each

lesson concludes with exercises for the student to put that understanding into

practice answers to the exercises are presented in an app endix

MonierWilliams SanskritEnglish Dictionary is currently published by

b oth Motilal Banarsidass in India and Oxford University Press in

England although the two are printed from the same plates the latter

is far sup erior in the quality of printing pap er and binding and this

is reected in its much higher price

The edition of the Dhatupat ha referred to in these notes is that edited

by JLShastri and published by Motilal Banarsidass it is a small b o ok

and quite inexp ensive

iv A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

The pronunciation oered in these lessons is optimised for the Englishsp eaking

sandhi student to understand the underlying principles of sound changes

There are several variations in the pronunciation of some of the Sanskrit sounds

that have b een handed down over generations None of these traditions are

wrong although this may confuse the mind trained to think in terms of

opp osites of right and wrong Consider the English sp oken in Britain and

America for example they are certainly dierent but neither is wrong

A Where there is a variation in the form of a character eg or these lessons

standardize on the form that is most commonly used in currently available

Bhagavad Gta Upanis ad printed editions of the and s The common

variations are illustrated in the ninth lesson

In the Englishsp eaking world there is currently little appreciation of the value

of studying formal grammar as a result it has b ecome unp opular and many

scho ols have ceased to teach it In view of this situation an app endix of basic

English grammatical terms is included

Readers are invited to p oint out errors in the course and oer suggestions for

its improvement

Charles Wikner

wiknernacacza June

Contents

Preface iii

Contents v

Invo cation ix

Lesson

A Vowel Measures B The Concept of Dhatu

A Sanskrit Pronunciation B Intro duction to Verbs

A The Three Primary Vowels aiu B Exercises

A The Other Simple Vowels r l B Flash Cards

A The Comp ound Vowels eaioau

A Summary of All Vowels

A The Sixteen Sakti am ah

A Practicing the Alphab et

Lesson

A The Five Mouth Positions B More on Verbs

A The TwentyFive Stops ka to ma B Exercises

A Pronunciation of the Stops

A Devanagar Alphab et

Lesson

a B More on Verbs A The Four SemiVowels yaralav

A The Three Sibilants sa sasa B Intro duction to nouns

A The Final Consonant ha B Exercises

A Summary of the Consonants

A The Alphab etical Order

A Devanagar Alphab et

Lesson

A Devanagar Alphab et B Summary of Verbs

B More on Noun Cases

B Exercises

Lesson

A Devanagar Alphab et B More on Noun Cases B Exercises

vi A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Lesson

A Vowels after Consonants B Sentence Structure English and Sanskrit

A History of Vowel Emb ellishment B Noun Gender

B Summary of Case Information

B Exercises

Lesson

A Halanta Consonants B Verbal Prexes

A Conjunct Consonants B Exercises

A Sp ecial Conjuncts ksa and jna

A Pronunciation of ksa

A Pronunciation of jna

A List of Conjunct Consonants

Lesson

A Sp ecial Symb ols B More Noun Declensions

A Savarna B Adjectives

A Nasal Substitution for Anusvara B Adverbs

A Devanagar Numerals B Vo cabulary Summary

B Exercises

Lesson

A Vowel Accents B Typ es of Words

A Variations in Devanagar Alphab et B Use of iti

A Variations in Samyoga B Exercises

A Revision

Lesson

A Intro duction to Sandhi B Intro duction to Comp ound Words

A Guna and Vrddhi B Joining Words in Writing

A Vowel Sandhi B Exercises

A Exceptions to Vowel Sandhi

A Samprasarana

Lesson

A Visarga Sandhi B Dvandva Samasa

A Consonant Sandhi Grid B Tatpurusa Samasa

A Internal Sandhi B Avyaybhava Samasa

B Bahuvrhi Samasa B Exercises

Contents vii

Lesson

MonierWilliams Dictionary

Alphab et and Transliteration

Fundamental Structure

Page Heading Words

Dictionary Practice

Lesson

Words b eginning with Sa

Structure of Devanagar level

Structure within nonDhatu entries

References and Abbreviations

Sp ecial Symbols

Signicance of Hyphen and Caret Symbols

Supplement to the Dictionary

Dictionary Practice

Lesson

Tracing a Word to its Dhatu

Dhatu Entry Information

Numb ered Entries

Misleading Words

Dicult Words

Dictionary Practice

Lesson

Intro duction to DhatuPat ha

The Contents Page

The Text Bo dy

The Index

Dhatu Sp elling Changes

Illustrations of DhatuPat ha Use

Study of the Scriptures

Study Practice

App endix Suggestions for Further Study

App endix Answers to Exercises

App endix English Grammatical Terms

Sanskrit Glossary and Index

viii A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

ix

I NVOCATION teajaava naavaDa a ta ma tua

Translations

Eectivemay our study prove Invo cation to Daks inamurti Upanisad AMSastry

May our study b e thorough and fruitful Invo cation to Kat ha Upanisad Swam Sarvananda

Let what we are studying b e invigorating Invo cation to Kat ha Upanis ad SwamGambhrananda

May our study b e vigorous and eective Invo cation to Taittirya Swam Sarvananda

Let our study b e brilliant Invo cation to Taittirya SwamGambhrananda

May our study b e full of light First Lessons in Sanskrit Judith Tyb erg

padaana teajaava naEaADaatama Atua

teajaava neuter nominative singular of adjective tejasvin

tejasvin mw c mfn brilliant splendid bright energetic

Panini bahlM Cndasa In the Veda the ax vin is variously intro duced

u

in the sense of matup b elonging to this existing in this

tejas sharp edge of a knife p oint or top of ame or ray glow glare splendour brilliance

light re

p

tij mw a to b e or b ecome sharp

ataja BvaaadgaNa Aatmaneapad seaf anaZaanea DhP

nisana mw a n sharp ening whetting observing p erceiving

Comment Tejas is a name given to the subtle element of re having qualities of heat and light

With reference to our study of Sanskrit this may b e understo o d as the heat that burns o the

dross of ignorance and allows the light of understanding to shine through

naEa genitive dual of p ersonal pronoun I giving the meaning of us b oth student and teacher

or simply our

ADaatama neuter nominative singular of adhtam The past passive participle used in the sense

of an abstract noun

adhta mw c mfn attained studied read wellread learned

p

adhi i to turn the mind towards observe understand

adhi mw b prex expressing ab ove over and ab ove b esides

p

i to go walk to ow to blow to advance spread get ab out to go to or towards come

to succeed to arrive at reach obtain to undertakeanything to b e employed in

go on with continue in any condition or relation

DhP Ik AdaadgaNa Aatmaneapad Aanaf smaNea

smarana mw b n the act of causing to rememb er reminding calling to mind

DhPIz AdaadgaNa pasmEapad Aanaf ADyayanea

adhyayana mw c n reading studying esp ecially the Veda s

DhPIz AdaadgaNa pasmEapad Aanaf gataEa

gati mw c f going moving gait dep ortment motion in general

p

Atua rst p erson singular imp erativeof as to b e ie let it b e may it b e or simply b e

p

as mw a to b e live exist b e present take place happ en

DhPAsa AdaadgaNa pasmEapad seaf Buaava

bhu mw c f the act of arising or b ecoming

T reating adhtam as a neuter noun and tejasvi its complement this gives a rather plo dding

translation of Let our study b e bright Using p o etic licence to convey the sense of the whole

rather than the literal wordbyword translation wehave

y

May the Light Shine up on our Studies

y

The light of understandingknowledgetruth

x A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Lesson A

Sanskrit is written in devanagar script The word devanagar means the city

nagar of immortals deva There are no capital letters In Sanskrit each letter

represents one and only one sound In English the letter a for example may

indicate many sounds eg fat fate fare far but not so in Sanskrit

The alphab et is systematically arranged according to the structure of the mouth

It is essential to use the correct mouth p osition and not to merely imitate an

approximation of the sound Without this the development of the alphab et and

the euphonic combinations that o ccur in continuous sp eech will not b e understo o d

There are two fundamental divisions to the alphab et the vowel svara and the

consonantvyanjana The word svara literally means sound tone accent and

vyanjana an adornment or decoration to the sound manifesting as a stop in the

sound

A Vowel Measures

Vowels can b e short hrasva or long drgha or prolonged pluta The short

vowels are held for one measure matra the long vowels for two measures and the

prolonged for three or more measures

This system of enumeration one two many where many means more than two

manifests throughout the grammar and indeed throughout the systems of thought

expressed in Sanskrit for it reects the natural evolution of creation

The prolonged measure o ccurs in Vedic Sanskrit but is rare in Classical Sanskrit the

prolonged measure as a full breath is useful in practising the vowels The prolonged

measure in b oth transliterated Roman script and devanagar is indicated by the

short vowel follo wed bythenumeral You may also see it as the long vowel

followed by

A Sanskrit Pronunciation

The pronunciation of Sanskrit is very simple you op en the mouth wide and move

the tongue and lips as necessary the tongue and lips are almost pure muscle and

have little inertia or resistance to movement By contrast the pronunciation of

English requires much eort for we barely op en the mouth which means that all

sounds are indistinct or blurred and then instead of simply moving the tongue

wemove the whole jaw and what a great weightthatistomove ab out Having

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

b ecome well practised in sp eaking with a moving jaw it do es require some attention

to break that habit and sp eak with a moving tongue

The biggest single factor in practising the rened sounds of Sanskrit is to op en

the mouth For English the mouth op ens to a mere slit of ab out mm a p encil

thickness for Sanskrit this needs to increase fourfold literally Try this out for

yourself with the mouth op ened to a slit sound a prolonged a and slowly op en

the mouth wide and listen to the change in the quality to the richness and fulness

that emerges The mouth needs to op en a lot more than you think so dont

think use a measure liketwo ngers

A The Three Primary Vowels aiu

The sounding of a is simplicity itself with b o dy and mind relaxed but alert op en

the throat and mouth wide and with tongue relaxed breathe out and simply desire

that the vo cal cords vibrate What could b e more natural than that

This sound is central to all the vowel sounds indeed the whole alphab et is simply

an emb ellishment of this sound

As a very rough guide the short a sounds similar to the vowel in but and denitely

not bat likewise the long a is similar to the vowel in harm and not ham In

pro ducing the short a there is a slight tensioning in the throat that tension should

not b e there for the long a or the prolonged a In spite of this dierence b etween

a and a they are treated as though the same in the rules of sandhi euphonic

combination of the grammar

To sound i op en the mouth as for a and raise the bac k of the tongue the tip

should b e relaxed b ehind the b ottom front teeth In pro ducing this sound it will

b e noticed that there is a slight constriction or tensioning in the throat as compared

with the relaxed throat when sounding a

To sound u allow the lips to form a small circular op ening of the mouth so that

the moistened back of a p encil just slips in and out lling the op ening there should

b e no tension in the lips or face muscles so p out rather than purse the lips There

will b e a similar tension in the throat as for i

The short i sounds similar to the vowel in pink and not pin and the long like

p eep or seat the short u is similar to the vowel in put or so ot and the long u

like b o ot or suit

Lesson A

A The Other Simple Vowels r l

b egin by sounding a prolonged i and To get to the correct pronunciation of r

slowly raise the tip of the tongue so that it p ointing to the top of the head

approaching but not touching the ro of of the mouth Do not try to hold the backof

thetongueinthei p osition nor try to move it out of that p osition simply have

no concern with what is happ ening at the back of the tongue just attend to the tip

of the tongue and listen Rep eat the exercise a few times until comfortable with the

sound of r then practise directly sounding r for a full breath

start sounding with a prolonged i and slowly raise the tip of Similarly for l

the tongue to b ehind the upp er front teeth without touching them Continue the

exercise as for r

These vowels app ear to havevanished from p opular sp eech and the memory of how

to pronounce them has faded The pandit of to day tends to pronounce r as if it were

riandr even more improbably as r similarly l and l tend to b e pronounced as lri

and lr This accounts for the transliteration scheme found in the dictionary In fact

the vocalic r is still present in Eastern Europ ean languages and you may come across

surnames like Przybylski it is also present in English in some pronunciations of the

word interesting as int r sting or intrsting or indeed in the American prdy for

pretty

The long l is not used in the standard grammar and l o ccurs only in one verb klp

to manage to b e well ordered or regulated

In practice when either of these vowelsisfollowed by a consonant whose mouth

p osition requires that the tip of the tongue b e at a lower p osition a vestigial i will

emerge due to the bunching of the muscle at the back of the tongue when moving

i

the tip downwards for example rk tends to pro duce r k but a word like Krsna

should pro duce no i sound at all

A The Comp ound Vowels eaioau

Lets examine what wehavesofarWe b egan with a and

a

from this develop ed u and i to give the three primary

vowels and then the i gave rise to r and l These

u i

ve basic vowels eachhaving its own unique mouth

p osition dene the ve mouth p ositions used for the

r l

whole alphab et

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Further vowels are derived bycombining the a sound with i and u to form the four

comp ound vowels sandhyaks ara

The e sound arises when a is sounded through the i

e

mouth p osition Remember that a has a relaxed throat

and tongue while i has the back of the tongue raised and

the throat tense so relaxing the throat while retaining

a i

the back of the tongue raised will pro duce e

The vowel e sounds similar to that in fair or eight

The ai sound arises when e is further combined with a

as it were Now the only dierence b etween e and a is

ai

the raised back of the tongue so to move from e towards

the a sound we need to drop the back of the tongue to

a e

a p osition half waybetween that used for i and e and

the relaxed p osition used for a

The ai sounds similar to the vowel in aisle or pie there should b e no glide or slide

in the sound from a to i

o

In a manner similar to the arising of e when a is sounded

through the u mouth p osition ie with the lips in the

p osition for u but the throat relaxed for sounding a the

a u

sound o naturally arises

The vowel o should sound b etween awe and owe or b etween the vowel sounds in

corn and cone the ideal is that p oint where the sound could b e taken as either

of the two English sounds

au

And nally the au sound arises when a is combined

with o so that the p osition of the lips is roughly half

waybetween that used for u and a and the throat is

a o

relaxed

The au sounds similar to the vowel in down or hound but without the glide from

a to u

Lesson A

A Summary of All Vowels

Combining the previous vesketches illustrates the

au ai

central role played bythea sound

Note that all these vowel sounds may b e sounded

o a e

continuously for a full breath there is no glide from

one sound to another Also note that the four sounds

u

i

eaio au b eing an addition of two sounds as it were

are naturally long drghaandmay also b e prolonged

pluta but have no short measure

r l

y

Vowel Throat Tongue Lips Eng Approx

a tense relaxed wide op en bu t not ba t

a relaxed relaxed wide op en harm not ha m

i tense raised back wide op en pi nk peep

e relaxed raised back wide op en fai roreight

ai relaxed halfraised back wide op en ai sle or pie

u u tense relaxed small circle putboot

o relaxed relaxed small circle between o weawe

au relaxed relaxed large circle down or hound

halfraised back

r tense wide op en acre

tip vertical

halfraised back

l tense wide op en table

tip upp er teeth

y

The English approximations are only a very rough guide esp ecially considering

the wide variety of accents around the world Rather follow the instructions given

earlier or oral guidance given in p erson

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A The Sixteen sakti am ah

To these fourteen vowels are added the anusvara and visarga to form what are

called the sixteen matrka or sakti p owers or energies The anusvara mis

an after sound a nasal sound following a vowel It is sounded through the nose

only and should b e indep endent of mouth p osition Later on we shall consider

howitmay b e substituted by a nasal consonant dep ending on the following letter

The visarga h or visarjanyaisanunvoiced breath following a vowel and is

breathed through the mouth p osition of that vowel Some traditions app end an echo

a

of the vowel after the breath so that ah may b e sounded as ah etc

Strictly sp eaking the anusvara and visarga are not part of the alphab et inasmuch

as they arise only through the rules of sandhi euphonic combination Since these

b oth arise only after a vowel we shall precede them with a though they can o ccur

with other vowels to o when sounding the sixteen sakti which form the start of the

alphab etical order ie

a a i u u r r l l e ai o au am ah

In the transliteration scheme shown ab ove the lines and dots called diacritical

marks are used b ecause the Sanskrit alphab et has more letters than the English

alphab et Diacritics are combined with Roman letters to represent new sounds for

example the macron horizontal bar ab ove the letter is used to indicate the long

drghaversion of the vowel

A Practising the Alphab et

One way of memorizing the script is by writing it lo ok at the form of the letter

sound it and then write it In this exercise it is imp ortant to asso ciate the sound

with the form When you write the letter write the whole letter without referring

back to the original If half way through you forget howtocontinue the letter then

start again and do not continue with that halfcompleted letter Rememb er that

the exercise is not simply to copy the original form but to asso ciate a sound with

a whole form so do not practise half letters When the shap e has b ecome familiar

then time can b e sp ent rening the prop ortions of the letter

Another metho d of practising the alphab et is to use ash cards with the devanagar

letter on one side and the transliterated Roman letter on the other in case you forget

you can turn over These cards can also b e used in the other direction from the

transliterated Roman letter see if you can visualize the devanagar form In fact

there needs to b e a three way asso ciation namely b etween b oth the written forms

and the sound so that any one of these asso ciates with the other two

Lesson A

The ideal way of b ecoming familiar with these sounds and letters is to sp end

minutes eachday on the written exercise and one minute at a time times

throughout the day with the ash cards

Pens with nibs preground to the correct angle are not generally

available so start with an inexp ensive calligraphyfountain p en

Schaeer Platignum etc and le the end of the nib to as

mm

shown File across the nib in the sketch into the pap er and

nally remove the sharp edges by writing on grit water

pap er on a rm at surface

You will nd that a broad nib mm is b est for practising

the forms of the letters and a much narrower nib mm for

normal writing As a very rough guide the nib width should b e

of the overall height of the A character and the thickness of

the nib ab out of the width

Here are the rst six devanagar characters to practise They are the short hrasva

and long drgha measures of the three primary vowels

The transliteration of the rst rowis aa the second iandthethird uu

A Aa

I IR

o

Lesson B

Note Until you are familiar with the pronunciation of the consonants given in

the next lesson do not attempt to pronounce the Sanskrit words included in the

text this will save the unnecessary lab our of unlearning the incorrect pronunciation

B The Concept of Dhatu

A dhatu is a rudimentary verbal element from whichwords are derived it is the

nucleus to which other word fragments are added to form a whole word

Consider the English verb to stand Prexes may b e added to this to form

further verbs such as misunderstand or suxes may b e added to form nouns and

adjectives such as standard indeed a host of words may b e derived from stand

such as constant constitution stagnant instant static estate extant ecstatic etc

But a dhatu or ro ot is even more fundamental than a verb The dhatu itself is

not found in general sp eech or writing and may b e likened to the universal idea of

averbal activity whichdiverges into many sp ecic meanings eachofwhichisan

asp ect of that common universal idea

To appreciate how stand changes to state for example it would b e necessary to

study its etymological derivation from the Latin and ultimately from its ProtoIndo

Europ ean pieroot sta meaning to stand stand fast From this pie ro ot st a

are derived other simple English verbs suchasstay stow stack stem stammer

The situation is a lot simpler in Sanskrit for these fundamental ro ots are included

in the language itself and its grammar fully describ es the developmentofwords

from the dhatu to its fully inected form as found in sentences

The pie ro ot sta is allied to the Sanskrit dhatu stha which has the sense of

cessation or absence of movement and thus the simple verb derived from the

dhatu stha may b e translated as to stand MonierWilliams dictionary gives

several dozen English words that may b e used in translating the verb to stand

stay remain continue b e intentuponmake a practice of keep on p ersevere

endure last adhere to stand still stay quiet remain stationary stop halt wait

tarry linger hesitate rely on conde in desist b e left alone etc all these express

some sense of cessation or absence of movement which is the sense of the meaning

of the dhatu stha given in the DhatuPatha lit recitation of ro ots whichis

a list of ro ots ab out of them giving grammatical information ab out their

inection together with a concise sense of their universal meaning

Lesson B

B Intro duction to Verbs

p

A dhatu indicated with a surd or ro ot symbol b efore it develops to form a

stem anga and to the stem is added a p ersonal ending tinvibhakti to form a

complete verb kriya For example

p

dhatu ro ot stha sense of cessation or absence of movement

anga stem tistha to stand

kriya verb tisthati hesheit stands

As in English there are three p ersons purus a the rst p erson prathama

purus a middle p erson madhyamapurus a last p erson uttamapurusa

The word uttama derives from ud up and tama sup erlative sux to mean

b est upp ermost or highest so that uttamapurusa can also mean Supreme Spirit

however in a series of place or time or order as wehave here it means last In

Sanskrit the p ersonal ending of the verb c hanges according to purus atogive the

singular ekavacana forms

prathamapurusa tis thati hesheit stands

madhyamapurus a tis thasi you stand

uttamapurusa tis thami Istand

Note that the order is the reverse of that used in English

In forming the stem anga the dhatu do es not necessarily undergo as great a

p p

change as with stha for example vad remains clearly recognizable in the form

vadati hesheit sp eaks

Some words such as adverbs and conjunctions do not have endings these are called

indeclinables avyaya An example of this is ca and which is placed after the

last word of the series it links or after eachword in the series

With this limited vo cabulary simple sentences may b e constructed

vadami Ispeak or I am sp eaking

tisthati vad ami ca He stands and I sp eak

tisthasi vadasi ca You stand and you sp eak or You stand and sp eak

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

Awealth of information is presented in these notes but it is not at all necessary

to learn all this or the Sanskrit technical terms indeed it is preferable not to

learn them The practical way to b ecome familiar with the basics of Sanskrit is

through practice all the theory that is provided is simply so that the practice may

be intelligent and lead to understanding

With this aim in mind at the end of each lesson a few simple exercises are presented

a Practise sounding the sixteen matrka in their correct order and writing them

in Roman script

b Practise writing and recognizing the rst six vowels in devanagar

c Lo ok up the verb stand in a go o d English dictionary and observe its wide

range of meanings

d Translate the following sentences into English

tisthasi vadami ca tis thami vadati ca

tisthati vadasi ca vadasi tisthami ca

vadami tisthasi ca tis thami vadami ca

e Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit

He stands and I sp eak You sp eak and he stands

You stand and he sp eaks I stand and he sp eaks

You sp eak and I stand I sp eak and you stand

B Flash Cards

The next sheet has the ash cards for the rst six vowels Cut these out and start

using them Flash cards for the rest of the alphab et will b e provided at appropriate

places in the course It would b e useful to keep the ash cards in a b ox for example

a cigarette b ox there will b e a total of fortynine cards for the alphab et and a

further ten for the numerals

Lesson B

in

case you

do not have access

to a doublesided printer

please glue this sheet to the

next b efore cutting making

use of the registration

marks b ottom and

top of each page I o Aa R I

A

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory u i u a a

Lesson A

The mouth p ositions sthana used by the vowels svara are also used by the

consonants vyanjana Within these ve mouth p ositions the consonants are

further classied according to inner abhyantara and outer bahya metho ds of

articulation or eort prayatna

Like the vowels there are more consonants in Sanskrit than in English and thus

diacritical marks are used with the Roman consonants to represent further sounds

A The Five Mouth Positions

The ve mouth p ositions are considered from within the oral cavity itself The

back of the mouth as it narrows to form the throat is called the guttural p osition

kanthya this is asso ciated with the vowel aMoving towards the frontofthe

mouth next is the palatal p osition talavya used by the vowel i this is followed

by the cerebral p osition murdhanya used b y r and the teeth dantya used by

l and nally the twolipsosthya used by u The comp ound vowels make use of

two mouth p ositions e and ai use b oth guttural and palatal kanthatalavya and

o and au use guttural and labial kanthosthya

kanthya talavya murdhanya dantya osthya

guttural palatal cerebral dental labial

a i r l u

A The TwentyFive Stops katoma

The rst twentyve consonants are called stops sparsa b ecause the complete

contact sprsta in the mouth fully stops the breath and hence the sound through

the mouth These are arranged in ve sets varga according to mouth p osition

and named after the rst letter in the group for example the ve in the guttural

column kavarga are stops at the back of the mouth and the labials pavarga

are stops at the lips

The a is added for the sake of pronunciation only b eing stops they need a sound

ie a vowel to stop or start The same principle is used in English for example

the consonants bcd are pronounced b eeceedee In fact the word consonant

itself is derived from the the Latin cum together with and sonare to sound

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

kanthya talavya murdhanya dantya osthya

guttural palatal cerebral dental labial

ka ca ta ta pa

kha cha tha tha pha

ga ja da da ba

gha jha dha dha bha

na na na na ma

The table is also arranged horizontally byrows the rst for example comprises

ka ca ta taand pa

The rst third and fth rows are pronounced with little breath alpapran a and

the second and fourth rows with much breath mahapran a

The last three rows are voiced ghosa ie the vo cal cords vibrate in pro ducing the

consonant whereas the rst tworows are unvoiced aghosa

The consonants in the fth row are nasalized anunasika the others not

In terms of alphab etical order these follow after the sixteen matrka in order from

kavarga through pavarga ie

am ah ka kha ga gha na ca cha pa pha ba bha ma

A Pronunciation of the Stops

While the previous section A describ es the sounds authoritatively the following

notes may assist with rsttime pronunciation

The unvoiced aghosa stops have an explosive quality to them whereas the voiced

ghosa stops havea gentler quality to them as though releasing the stop more

slowly this can b e observed by listening to the dierence b etween ka and ga when

sounded without the following a

The nasal anunasika consonants continue to sound through the nose when the

breath through the mouth has b een stopp ed by the tongue or lips

The aspiration pranagives the native English sp eaker the most problems In

English there is a tendency to pronounce some consonants slightly aspirated b efore

Lesson A

a long vowel and this may b e used to illustrate the dierence b etween for example

pa and pha attend to the p breath when pronouncing the two English words

pick and p eek hold the nger tips close to the mouth to feel the dierence

This dierence needs to b e greatly increased to distinguish b etween the alpapran a

and mahapran a consonants but the common error is to use so much breath that a

vestigial vowel is inserted particularly for the ghosa consonants for example bha

a

can b e incorrectly pronounced as b ha

Because English pronunciation is acquired by imitating indistinct sounds which are

not precisely describ ed problems o ccur with the centre three mouth p ositions One

eect is that d and t are pronounced somewhere b etween the dental dantya and

cerebral murdhanya p ositions another eect is that manyspeakers do not use

the palatal talavya p osition for the stops so that ca is pronounced as tsha and

ja as dza It may help to consider the palatal stops as a mo dication or softening

of the gutturals so that ca is a softer ka ja a softer ga and so on

Some English consonants are similar to those in Sanskrit and may b e used to give

ery rough guide to the Sanskrit pronunciation however as mentioned earlier av

English do es not distinguish b etween dental dantya and cerebral murdhanya

iss kiln back tt tub tap cart k k

kh bunkh ouse bungkhouse thth anthill anthill

o o d give bug dd daydog god g g

gh loghouse logghouse dhdh redhead reddhead

n sing long tongue nn gentle hand gain

c cello chair church p pick pat tap

ch coachhorse coachhorse ph uphill upph ill

ust jollyjoy b be cabimbibe j j

jh hedgeh og hejjhog bh clubh ouse clubbh ouse

n enjoycanyon pinch m amble mumble

When in doubt the previous section has the authoritative description

There is a tradition that pronounces pha as fa ie makes use of b oth the teeth and

lips dantos thya the rules of sound and grammar will b e easier to understand if

pronounced purely with the lips osthya

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A Devanagar Alphab et

The previous lesson gave the rst six devanagar characters here are all sixteen

letters of the matrka to practise The Roman transliteration of the four rows is

a a i

u u r r

l l e ai

o au am ah

A Aa I IR

o

O Oe

Aea AEa AM AH

Lesson B

B More on Verbs

As well as the division into purusa p erson the verbs are divided into number

vacana in English there is singular and plural while in Sanskrit there is singular

ekavacana dual dvivacana and plural bahuvacana

The p ersonal endings are used to indicate b oth p erson and numb er for example

ekavacana dvivacana bahuvacana

prathama tis thati tisthatah tisthanti

purusa hesheit stands they two stand they pl stand

madhyama tis thasi tisthathah tisthatha

purusa you sing stand you two stand you pl stand

thami tisthavah tisthamah uttama tis

purusa I stand wetwo stand we pl stand

Note that when the sub ject is dual the dual form of the verb must b e used

A dhatu b elongs to one of ten classes gana this classication is according to

variations in the formation of the stem anga from the dhatuTheverbs used to

form simple sentences in this section are all from the rst class bhvadigan a

As in English a verb may express time past present future tense and mo o d

indicative imp erative b enedictive conditional etc English makes extensive use

of auxiliaries might ought should had etc to express these whereas in Sanskrit

these are all included in the form of the verb itself There are ten tensemo o d

classications in Sanskrit these are called lakara or laxes b ecause their technical

names all b egin with the letter l The conjugations given here are all in the present

indicative simple present tense called lat

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the sixteen matrka in their correct order

b Practise reading and writing the sixteen matrka in Roman script and

devanagar

c Translate the following sentences into English

tisthanti vadatah ca

tisthathah vadavah ca

vadamah tisthatah ca

tisthasi vadathah ca

tisthatha vadathah ca

vadatah tisthamah ca

tisthati vadanti ca

tisthasi vadavah ca

d Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit

Wetwo stand and you pl sp eak

You two sp eak and they pl stand

You two stand and sp eak

They pl stand and I sp eak

He stands and you pl sp eak

They two sp eak and he stands

We pl stand and you two sp eak

You pl sp eak and you sing stand

Lesson B O AH M A E a A e a A e O

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory ah e am l au l o r ai r

Lesson A

The sound or letter ka is called kakara kaaction the sound or letter ga is called

gakara and so on This applies to all the soundsletters including the vowels

eg akara except for ra which is traditionall y called repha snarl or burr or

simply ra but not rakaraTheanusvara and visarga or visarjanya which

only arise through the rules of sandhi euphonic combination and are thus not

strictly part of the alphab et are always referred to by their own name and haveno

kara name

We shall now consider the nal eight consonants vyanjana

A The Four SemiVowels yaralava

A semivowel antah stha arises when one of the basic vowels moves to the a sound

i mo ving to a gives rise to the sound ya similarly r moving to a pro duces ra

l to a pro duces laandu to a pro duces va As a moving to a will not pro duce

a new sound there are only four semivowels These are considered to b e b etween

vowels and consonants and so are called antah stha stand b etween and are

naturally voiced ghosa They are formed byslightcontact s atsprsta and thus

allow a restricted ow of air through the mouth

kanthya talava murdhanya dantya osthya

guttural palatal cerebral dental labial

ya ra la va

The rst three of these yaraand la are similar to the English sounds in yum

rum and luck but do pay attention to the mouth p osition The derivation of

the last semivowel antah stha although transliterated as va pro duces a sound

akin to the English wa this latter pronunciation accords with the grammatical

tradition and makes the rules of sandhi euphonic combination easier to grasp

Other traditions pronounce this as the English va in which case its mouth p osition

making use of b oth teeth and lips is called dantos tya

In the alphab etical order these follow after the twentyve stops ie

pa pha ba bha ma ya ra la va

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A The Three Sibilants sa sasa

A sibilant hissing sound is called us man heated They are considered to

be s advivrta slightly op en or ardhasprs ta halfcontact whichallows a

restricted hissing ow of breath through the mouth The sibilants are aspirated

mahapran aandunvoiced aghosa

kanthya talavya murdhanya dantya osthya

guttural palatal cerebral dental labial

sa sa sa

The sa sounds like the sibilant in the English words seek and kiss sa like the

sh in ship or wish and sa like the sibilant in the German ich These sound

analogies are given as a very rough guide the description given ab ove and the

mouth p osition in particular are to b e taken as authoritative

In theory there are two more sibilants called the jihvamul ya and upadhmanya

which are describ ed as a halfvisarga b efore kakha and papha resp ectively

These are so very rare that for all practical purp oses they can b e ignored

In the alphab etical order these follow the semivowels ie

ya ra la va sa sa sa

A The Final Consonant ha

This aspirate sometimes considered a sibilant is also called us man heated

with similar qualities It is generally pronounced as unvoiced aghos a however

according to the grammatical tradition it is voiced ghosa

In the alphab etical order this follows the sibilants and is the last letter of the

alphab et

sa sa sa ha

Lesson A

A Summary of the Consonants

The denitive qualities of the consonants are given in tabular form

kant hya talavya murdhanya dantya osthya

guttural palatal cerebral dental labial Qualities

ka ca ta ta pa unvoiced unaspirated full contact

kha cha tha tha pha unvoiced aspirated full contact

ga ja da da ba voiced unaspirated full contact

gha jha dha dha bha voiced aspirated full contact

na na na na ma voiced unaspirated full contact nasal

ya ra la va voiced unaspirated slight contact

sa sa sa unvoiced aspirated slightly op en

ha voiced aspirated slightly op en

A The Alphab etical Order

Having now considered the whole alphab et in sound and Roman transliteration it

would b e useful to start b ecoming familiar with the alphab etical order The order

is b est memorized in groups as shown b elow

a a i u u r r l l e ai o au am ah

ka kha ga gha na

ca cha ja jha na

ta tha da dha na

ta tha da dha na

pa pha ba bha ma

ya ra la va

sa s a sa

ha

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A Devanagar Alphab et

Here are the rst ten consonants in devanagar script Eachsymb ol includes the

sound a for example the rst symbol is ka and not just k Note the similarity

between the forms of i and jha

The transliteration of the tworows of devanagar characters is

ka kha ga gha na

ca cha ja jha na

k Ka ga Ga z

ca C ja Ja Va

The lo op on the kha and ga is written as follows

e write the downstroke with the curl at the end

f then change direction to start the lo op

g complete the lo op and for khacontinue the stroke

h this p ortion of the symb ol is written without lifting the p en

Lesson B

B More on Verbs

The p ersonal endings of verbs given thus far are called parasmaipada an

expression for another b ecause the fruit or result of the action is transmitted to

another These are the normal endings for an active transitiveverb The atmane

pada an expression for oneself p ersonal endings used in the active form of the

verb called the middle voice imply an action whose fruit reverts to oneself this

do es not mean reexive By way of illustration the sentence I married her would

b e expressed in atmanepada or parasmaipada when sp oken bythehusband or

priest resp ectively

Some verbs are conjugated in one pada only some in b oth and some partly in one

and partly in another The division is not at all denite and has come to b e a matter

of conventional usage nevertheless manyverbs do retain the formal distinction

between parasmaipada activevoice and atmanepada middle voice

parasmaipada atmanepada

eka dvi bahu eka dvi bahu

vacana vacana vacana vacana vacana vacana

prathama

nayati nayatah nay anti nayate nayete nayante

purusa

madhyama

nayasi nayathah nayatha nayase nayethe nayadhve

purusa

uttama

nayami nayavah nayamah naye nayavahe nayamahe

purusa

These are the only two forms of p ersonal endings to verbs that will b e used in this

course When verbs are presented for use in the exercises they will b e presented in

the form

p

n nayate he leads

where the dhatu is followed by the ekavacana prathamapurus a form and the

English translation of that form

but within the Many of the verbs in this course may b e conjugated in either pada

limits of the simple sentences in the exercises please use the pada given in the

case of dhatu n for example use the atmanepada endings

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Intro duction to Nouns

A noun like the verb has its ultimate origin in a dhatu ro ot axes to the dhatu

form the nounstem pratipadikawhich will have a particular grammatical gender

linga masculine pumlinga feminine strlinga and neuter napumsaka

linga Tothepratipadika form are added caseendings supvibhakti which

indicate the relationship of the noun to the verb

There are seven such grammatical relationships and liketheverb each of these has

a singular ekavacana dual dvivacana and plural bahuvacana form The

rst prathama of these is the nominative or naming case and usually names the

sub ject of a simple sentence or the agent initiator or instigator of the action of the

verb the second dvitya case ending generally indicates the immediate destination

of the action expressed bytheverb ie the direct ob ject of the sentence

The word nara the pratipadika form as listed in MonierWilliams dictionary

means man and with its supvibhakti endings app ears as

ekavacana dvivacana bahuvacana

prathama narah narau narah

dvitya naram narau naran

Other nouns that take this form of declension are asva horse and vrksa tree

Where tisthanti is translated as they pl stand the pronoun they is implied

in the verb and it is not necessary to add an explicit Sanskrit pronoun When the

sub ject of the sentence is explicitly stated for example the men pl stand then

the implied pronoun falls away and this is translated as narah tis thanti

For verbs having a sense of motion suchasgowalk run the destination is

expressed in dvitya There are some verbs suchas nwhichhave b oth a direct

ob ject and a destination in which case b oth are expressed in dvitya

narah asvam vrks am nayate

the man leads the horse to the tree

Since the noun endings dene the relationship to the verb the word order is not

imp ortant as contrasted with English where it is and allows the p o et for example

to juggle the word order to t the rules of scansion Normally however the verb is

found at the end of the sentence and the sub ject precedes the ob ject and destination

as in the ab ove example

Lesson B

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order as summarized in A

b Practise pronouncing the rst ten consonants vyanjana as well as reading

and writing them in Roman script and devanagar

c Translate the following sentences into English

asvah naram nayate

narah asvau ca tis thanti

asvau naram vrksan nayete

asvah tisthati ca narah vadati ca

narah asvah ca nayete

narau vrksan nayamahe

d Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit

The man leads the horse

The two horses lead the man

The men pl are sp eaking and leading

The horse leads the man to the tree

The tree and the horse are standing The men pl lead the horses pl

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

This page is intentionally blank there arent many of them so enjoy the rest while you can

Lesson B Va z Ga Ja ga ja C Ka

k ca

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory na na gha jha ga ja kha c ha k ca

a

Lesson A

A Devanagar Alphab et

Here are the next ten consonants in devanagar script Each symb ol includes the

sound a for example the rst symbol is ta and not just t

Note the dierences b etween dana and i gha and dhaand dha and da

The transliteration of the tworows of devanagar characters is

ta tha da dha na

ta tha da dha na

f F q Q Na

ta Ta d Da na

Note the form of the letters in relation to the and ruled lines There maybe

a tendency to limit letters suchasNa and ta to the halfwaypoint this is a carry

over from the Roman alphab et where it is appropriate for example with P and h

As we shall see later in devanagar the top horizontal bar is extended to join the

letters in a word and this gives a bias of blackness at the top of the letters this is

visually comp ensated for by using the and lines to op en the form of the letter

Lesson B

B Summary of Verbs

The tinvibhakti p ersonal endings of verbs are group ed into threes which means

vibhakti consists of the three vacana forms Thus three vibhakti cover that one

one entire pada It would b e useful to practise sounding the full conjugation of

dhatu n with a pause b etween each vibhakti and a longer pause b etween each

padaThus the pattern is

nayatinayatah nayanti pause nayasinayathah nayatha pause nayami

nayavahnayamah longer pause nayatenayetenayante pause nayase

nayethenayadhve pause nayenayavahenayamahe

As with practising the alphab et it is far more eective to sound this once ten times

aday than ten times once a day

For your convenience a reference sheet with the full conjugation of dhatu n is given

below this also has a list of all the verbs that will b e used in the simple sentence

exercises

parasmaipada atmanepada

eka dvi bahu eka dvi bahu

vacana vacana vacana vacana vacana vacana

prathama

nayati nayatah nayanti nayate nayete nayante

purusa

madhyama

nayasi nayathah nayatha nayase nayethe nayadhve

purusa

uttama

nayami nay avah nayamah naye nayavahe nayamahe

purusa

p

gam gacchati he go es

p

n nayate he leads

p

labh labhate he takes

p

vad vadati he sp eaks

p

vah vahati he carries

p

stha tisthati he stands

Lesson B

B More on Nouns Cases

The third trtya case ending indicates the instrument in relation to the verb

it is that by means of which the action is accomplished For example he go es

home bycar he cuts the wo o d with an axe note that here with has the sense

of by means of but in English it may also b e used in the sense of accompaniment

for example he go es home with an axe but this do es not convey the sense of

instrumentality

The fourth caturth case ending indicates the indirect ob ject the recipientor

b eneciary or purp ose of the action For example he gives the fo o d to the dog

he makes a kennel for the dog he works for money

The fth pancam case ending indicates the place from which the action b egins

For example he walks from the river he falls from the tree It may also express

he strikes the b oy cause or motive out of anger

ekavacana dvivacana bahuvacana

prathama narah narau narah

dvitya naram narau naran

trtya narena narabhyam naraih

caturth naraya narabhyam narebhyah

pancam narat narabhyam narebhyah

the generic ending is ena but this changes to ena due to internal sandhiThis

will b e given more fully in a later lesson A but for the time b eing accept that

this change o ccurs after rors in the same word thus asvena but vr ksena

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order as summarized in A

b Practise sounding the full conjugation of dhatu n as given in B

c Practise reading and writing the next ten consonants vyanjana in Roman

script and devanagar

d Translate the following sentences into English

asvah naram vrksam vahati

narah vrksam asvena gacchati

vrksan asvat labhadhve

asvah vrksam narayavahati

narah asvah ca vrksat gacchatah

asvam vrksat narayanayate

e Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit

He go es by horse

You two are leading the horse for the man

They pl carry the trees pl with horses

We pl go from the tree to the horses

Wetwo take the tree from the man by horse

The horses pl carry the man from the trees pl

Lesson B na Na Q Da d q F Ta ta

f

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory n na a d dha ha d da a t tha ha ta t

a

Lesson A

A Devanagar Alphab et

Here is the rest of the alphab et in devanagar script Eachsymb ol includes the

sound a for example the rst symbol is pa and not just p

Note the dierences b etween ba and va ya and tha pa and sa la and l bha ma

and sa and kha with ra and va

The transliteration of the three rows of devanagar characters is

pa pha ba bha ma

ya ra la va

sa sa sa ha

pa P ba Ba ma

ya l va

Za Sa sa h

Lesson B

B More on Nouns Cases

Unlike the other case endings the sixth sasth indicates a relationship to a word

other than the verb ie to another noun in the sentence This is usually rendered in

English by the prep osition of or with an ap ostrophe for example he talks to the

he drives Johns car In b oth these examples John has no relation to son of John

the action of the verb indeed John may b e absent even deceased This case ending

generally indicates a relationship of source or p ossession for example Johns b o ok

may refer to the b o ok that John purchased or to the b o ok that he wrote The word

in sasth is usually placed immediately b efore the word to which it is related

The seventh saptam case ending indicates the place or time where or when the

action takes place and may b e rendered in English by the prep ositions in on

at among etc for example he stands on the table it is hot in summer A

word with saptam case ending is often the rst in the sentence setting the scene

as it were

Strictly sp eaking Sanskrit has just seven case endings however many publications

give an eighth samb o dhana which is used for addressing or calling for example

Oh Lord hearmyprayers John where are you In fact this is simply a sp ecial

use of the prathama rst case ending

The strictly correct way of tabling the declension of nara is

ekavacana dvivacana bahuvacana

prathama narah narau narah

samb o dhana prathama he nara he narau he narah

dvitya naram narau naran

trtya narena narabhyam naraih

caturth naraya narabhyam narebhyah

pancam narat narabhyam narebhyah

naran am sasth narasya narayoh

saptam nare narayoh naresu

Lesson B

The vo cative particle he is traditionally sounded in the paradigm it is optional in

a sentence and may b e translated as Oh Publications that list samb o dhana as

an eighth case ending place that row at the b ottom of the table lab elling it simply

samb o dhana and omit the vo cative particle he

The sandhi change of n to n that o ccurs in ekavacana trtya also o ccurs in

bahuvacana sasththus asvanam but vrksanam

The vibhakti of the nouns are like the verbs group ed into threes so that the

prathama vibhakti refers to the forms of all three vacana In practising sounding

the full declension of the noun use the correct table given ab ove ie

narah narau narah pause he nara he narau he narah pause naram

narau naran pause etc

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order as summarized in A

b Practise sounding the full declension of nara as given in B

c Practise reading and writing the last thirteen consonants vyanjana in

Roman script and devanagar

d Translate the following sentences into English

nara asve tisthasi

naranam asvah tis thanti

narah vrksam asvat labhate

vrksesu narasyaasvah tis thanti

asvau vrksan narayavahatah

aih labhate naram vrksat asv

asvah naram vrksat gacchati

asvetisthati ca vadati ca

Continued overleaf

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

e Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit

He is standing on two horses

The man and horse stand among the trees pl

The trees pl of the two men are standing

The mans horse carries the man from the treespl

The two horses carry the man to the tree

Oh horse you are carrying the tree for the man

He takes the mans horses pl from the tree

You two are carrying the man from the tree to the horse

Lesson B Za ma va Ba ba l P pa

ya

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory ma sa bha v a ba la pha ra pa y

a

Lesson B h sa

Sa

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory ha sa s

a

Lesson A

The symb ols for the consonants inherently include a following a vowel for example

ba ba is the symb ol for the the consonant b together with a following short hrasva

aThus the word bala strength is written bal Notethatthecharacters are written

left to right like the Roman and that the horizontal line links the letters together

A Vowels after Consonants

The short vowel a A is never written unless it b egins a word for example abala

weakness is written Abal The a prex to a noun usually means negation

rather like the English un

All the vowel forms given earlier o ccur only at the b eginning of a word Where the

vowel following the consonant is other than a this is indicated byanemb ellishment

on the consonant itself The written form thus resembles the oral form maintaining

the principle that a consonant can only b e sounded together with a vowel The

forms indicating the various following vowels are

ba ba baa b a

aba bi baa b

bua bu bUa bu

x X

ba br ba br

w W

ba bl ba bl

bea be bEa bai

baea bo baEa bau

These vowel signs are used with all consonants ka through ha but note these

exceptions

ru ru hr

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Where the emb ellishmentisabove the letter itself with or without the addition of

a following vertical bar namely for ieoaiau these should link to the character

where it joins the top horizontal bar and where the character meets the bar more

than once to the rightmost junction For example

ak ki Nea n e

These syllables are connected together to form words they are literally connected

by the horizontal bar For example

devanagar de vanaaga a

matrka maatxaka

vadami vadaama

veda vead

gta gaataa

guru gua

A History of Vowel Emb ellishment

It b others some students that in a script read from left to right there should b e

the seeming anomaly that ki ak for example is written back to frontasitwere

with the isign b efore the consonant

Originally the emb ellishmentfori after a consonant had no down strokeatallso

that ki kekai were written as

ki i ke j kai k

However as p ersonality tends to intrude into handwriting it could prove dicult

to distinguish b etween ki and ke esp ecially if the ag was written somewhere

between the two p ositions

To solve this problem the downstrokewas added for ki

Whether this is true or not is debatable but it do es make a nice story

Lesson B

B Sentence Structure English and Sanskrit

In English sp eech or writing the order of words shows their connection or relation

ship to the whole sentence For example in the simple sentence

desire limits the mind

the information as to which is the limiter and which the limited is given by the

p osition of the words in relation to the verb This is an imp ortantpoint

in a sentence a words physical p osition in time or space

reects its subtle p osition the relationship or part that it plays

Nowaword may b e placed b efore or after the verb but these are the only two

p ossibili ties b efore or after and thus can indicate only two relationships namely

sub ject and ob ject The sub ject comes b efore an activeverb and the ob ject after

it The order is reversed for a passiveverb eg the mind is limited by desire

In order to show the relationship in a more complete sentence such as

desire limits the mind by attachment

we make use of a phrase containing a prep osition in our example by to indicate

the relationship of the word attachment to the activity of limiting

But notice the op eration of the prep osition prep ositi on i t is an element which

is placed b efore pre to give p osition to the word that is to indicate its

relationship to the activity Using prep ositional phrases we can thus enlarge our

sentence as for example

in the waking state desire limits the mind from the universal to the particularby attachment

Nowwe can split up this sentence into its core sub jectverbob jectanda number

of related phrases

in the waking state desire limits the mind from the universal to the particular by attachment

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Wemaynowshue these comp onents around in any order and still retain the

meaning in doing so wemaywell lose some clarityorwemayeven sound p o etic

for example

from the universal to the particular desire limits the mind in the waking state by attachment

The problem with these prep ositional phrases is that it is not at all clear whether

they are related to the activity of the whole sentence ie to the verb or are

merely qualifying one of the nouns For example the intention was to indicate

that the mind suers limitationrestri ction reduction from its natural op en state of

universality to the conned state when identied with the particular however other

interpretations are p ossible the phrases from the universal to the particular in the rst

of the two split up sentences may b e construed as qualifying the word mind and

thus b e understo o d as a range of separate minds from go ds to dogs in the second

of these split up sentences these phrases could b e viewed as qualifying the word

desire and mean a range of desires from the general to the p ersonal

The phrases can thus b e rearranged to pro duce all sorts of misunderstandings so let

us b e clear that the intended meaning of the other two phrases is that attachment

is the instrumentmeansmetho d bywhich the mind is limited and that the waking

state is the circumstance wherewhen the limitation takes place

In an inected language one that uses case endings the relationship to the verb is

shown by a sux app ended to the word our sentence would thus b ecome something

like

waking state desire limits mind universal particular attachment

IN SUBJECT VERB OBJECT FROM TO BY

There are two p oints to note here rstly the sub ject and ob ject also have endings

to show their relationship and secondly the word endings indicate the relationship

by denition All the words in the sentence are quite indep endent of their to the verb

p osition order or arrangement which is one limitation in a noninected language

like English but more imp ortantly the relationship to the verb is precisely dened

and thus minimizes the p ossibili ty of misunderstanding

In Sanskrit there are seven case endings the sixth indicates a relation to another

noun in the sentence and the other case endings indicate the relationship to the

verb

Lesson B

It matters not whether we give these case endings names or numb ers provided that

the relationship is clearly dened Using the Sanskrit numerical system our sentence

b ecomes

waking state desire limits mind universal particular attachment

VERB

In fact Sanskrit uses b oth names and numb ers for these relationships it names the

relationships subtle when dening them and numb ers the actual phonic sux

endings physical and then asso ciates the two according to circumstance for

example when a verb changes from activetopassive

desire limits mind desire limits the mind

ACTIVE

mind limits desire the mind is limited by desire

PASSIVE

The ax to the verb indicates tense mo o d p erson and numb er as wellasvoice

In English the words marked with in these two sentences are b oth called the

sub ject of the sentence this accords with the Sanskrit prathamavibhakti rst

case ending However in Sanskrit the agentkartr is the initiator having the

power to bring ab out the action with an activeverb the kartr is expressed in

prathama but with a passiveverb kartr is expressed by trtya similarly the

karman that most directly aimed at bythekartr is expressed in dvitya and

prathama resp ectivelyThus kartr and karman name the relationship whereas

prathama and English sub ject etc merely indicate that relationship Like the

vibhakti adorning a word so the clothing of a stage actor indicates his role the

crown is not the king but is worn by the actor playing the role of king

English is also sensitive to pauses b etween phrases and these to o can change the

relationship and the whole meaning of the sentence For example

Scripture says desire limits the mind

Scripture says desire limits the mind

The basic punctuation marks in English are the comma semicolon colon and full

stop which indicate pauses of increasing length

A fully inected language like Sanskrit b eing inherently clearer has no need of

these emb ellishments Sanskrit uses only two punctuation marks the virama

and purn avirama to indicate resp ectively the halfway p oint and end of a stanza

of verse In prose they are used to indicate the end of a sentence and the end of a

paragraph resp ectively

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Noun Gender

The nouns considered thus far are all masculine pumlinga the paradigms b elow

are for the neuter napumsakalinga noun phala fruit and the feminine str

linga noun bala girl

ekavacana dvivacana bahuvacana

prathama phalam phale phalani

samb o dhana prathama he phala he phale he phalani

dvitya phalam phale phalani

trtya phalena phalabhyam phalaih

caturth phalaya phalabhyam phalebhyah

pancam phalat phalabhyam phalebhyah

sas th phalasya phalayoh phalanam

saptam phale phalayoh phales u

ekavacana dvivacana bahuvacana

prathama bala bale balah

samb o dhana prathama he bale he bale he balah

dvitya balam bale balah

trtya balaya balabhyam balabhih

caturth balayai bal abhyam balabhyah

pancam balayah balabhyam balabhyah

sasth balayah balayoh balanam

saptam balayam balayoh balasu

Note that due to internal sandhi the napumsakalinga bahuvacana forms of

prathama and dvitya will also change from ani to ani if preceded byrors

There is another sandhi rule applicable within a word that applies here the

saptambahuvacana ending su changes to su following anyvowel except a

or a thus su is the most common form but in the declension of bala it remains

as suThissandhi rule will b e describ ed more fully in a later lesson A

Lesson B

B Summary of Case Information es place erb purp ose of action erb h action accomplished e h action b egins to v tsub ject of the v erb y whic not t b eneciary Relation to V names the agen callingaddressin g indicates immediate destination of action the means b recipien place from whic also causemotiv relation of sourcep ossessionetc relation is placetime wherewhen action tak ers Answ question Who What Whom What When Where rom whomwhat By whomwhat ofor whomwhat Of whom Whose F T e sub ject English genitiv grammar direct ob ject indirect ob ject e e tal e e e e e name ocativ dativ genitiv lo cativ ablativ v Latinate accusativ nominativ instrumen a a a h y t y t ncam as b o dhana tr s case dvit saptam caturth pa pratham Sanskrit sam

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise reading and writing all the letters of the alphab et

b Practise sounding the full declension of bala and phala

c Translate the following sentences into English

balaasvam vrksam phalayanayate

asvah naram ca balam ca vrksam vahati

narasyaasvah phalam balayah labhate

narau vrksanam phalani asvam labhete

balah naran phalani asvena nayante

bale vrksesutisthatah vadatah ca

vrksau gacchami ca phalani labhe

narah phale vrksat balayai vahati

bale phalani narasyavrksat labhete

bala narah ca vrksam asvam vahatah

d Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit

The man stands and the girl sp eaks

You two lead the horse and I take the fruit

The man and the girl go among the trees by horse

Wetwo take the man and the girl from the tree to the horse

The man go es to the trees pl by horse for fruit pl

The girl takes the fruit two from the tree for the horses pl

The horse carries the tree to the girl for the man

The man leads the horse by means of fruit

The horse carries the fruit pl to the girls for the man

The girls two stand on the horse and take the fruit s from the tree

Lesson A

Wehave examined how to write a consonant that is followed byanyvowel nowwe

consider how to write a consonant that is followed bynovowel at all

A Halanta Consonants

The adjective halanta is derived from hal a technical term referring to any

consonant and anta end so halanta means ending in a consonant Thus the

letter pa for example without its following a sound namely p is called halanta

pa In the devanagar script this is written as a short stroke called virama

stop b elow and to the right of the consonant For example

halanta pa pa halanta ka k halanta ta f

This is the form used when a word ends in a consonant however the virama should

ideally not b e used within aword Where a word uses a nonnal halanta letter

for example the s in svara it forms a consonant cluster or conjunct consonant and

a dierent metho d is used

A Conjunct Consonants

A conjunct consonantsamyoga literally yoked together comprises two or more

consonants with nothing separating them in particular there is no vowel b etween

them

At a rst glance through these samyoga familiarity with them may seem likea

daunting task but fortunately you dont have to learn them It is the general

principles that are imp ortant once you understand the principles you can discard

the notes Simply read through the general principles and use the illustrative

examples to understand the principle Thereafter it is just a matter of applying

the principles and you will nd that in practice it is a lot simpler than it lo oks

The symbols may b e written continuously in the usual order from left to right

with the rightmost vertical stroke dropp ed from all but the last letter

ta ma tma tma

Na ya Nya nya

na ta ya ntya ntya

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Or they may b e written one ab ove the other in which case they are read from

top to b ottom

ma na a mna

a bva ba va

Sa f sta

This arrangement can b e useful where the rst letter has no vertical strokeon

the right

d ga dga

f f tta

nk a z k

Left to right and vertical arrangements may app ear in the same comp ound

sa na ya ya snya

Sa F ya a sthya

a nky a z k ya

Most symb ols retain their familiar shap e in comp ounds but some are mo died

d d dda

d Da d ddha

k ma kma

When symb ols are mo died it is often only in combination with other particular

symb ols for example

ta ta a tta

h na hna

d ya d a dya

f ya fa tya

h ma hma

Lesson A

The symbol k kamay b e compressed to K oreven further to M for example

kka k k

k ta kta

The symbol Za is often written as or in combination for example

Za va a or a or Zva sva

Za ca a or a or Zca sca

The same group of symb ols can b e found in dierent forms

Va ca a or Vca nca

a va or tva ktva k t

or pl pla pa l p

ca ca a or cca cca

l l or l lla

While there may b e dierentconventions and styles for making comp ounds there

are no obvious absolute rules Ideas that familiar forms are right and others wrong

should b e avoided b oth prop ortions and angles of the symb ols maybevaried

The symbol ra changes form in comp ounds It alwaysappearsinavertical

arrangement and is read in the sequence top to b ottom When ra comes at the

b eginning of a comp ound it takes the form of a ho ok ab ove the line the same as

ab ovethedrgha it is attached ab ove the rightmost vertical of a comp ound For

example

pa pRa rpa

Da vaa DvaRa rdhva

This form is also used when ra is the only consonant b efore the vowels r and l

ie

R rr

R rl

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

When ra is nal in a comp ound it is represented by a small diagonal stroke

pa pra pra

d d dra

f f tra

ta a tra note the truncation of the ta

This form is retained when ra app ears in the middle of a cluster of consonants

ga ya gya grya

ma ya mya mrya

A Sp ecial Conjunct Consonants ksaandjna

Normally the symbols for a samyoga are constructed from their comp onentsymbols

and are quite obvious to see and their construction reects their pronunciation

However there are two which are quite dierent from their comp onent parts

k Sa a ksa

ja Va a jna

Although these two samyoga may b e separated into their comp onent parts when

for example the alphab etical order is required in lo oking up a word in the dictionary

the symb ols b eing so dierent from their comp onents reect their sounds which are

somewhat dierent from their comp onents

A practical metho d of approaching the pronunciation of these two sounds is oered

next

A Pronunciation of ksa

The idea maybenovel but it is quite straightforward to pronounce halanta sa

prolonged try it Now sound halanta ka through the sound of halanta s a

ie the prolonged halanta sa b egins with halanta ka the imp ortantpoint is that

the tip of the tongue is in the murdhanya p osition throughout Before sounding

the halanta ka the breath is fully cut o bytheback of the tongue in the kan thya

p osition as for the normal pronunciation of ka the dierence for ksa is that the tip

sounding the halanta of the tongue is raised to the murdhanya p osition before

Lesson A

ka This means that halanta ksa mayby sounded rep eatedly without moving the

tip of the tongue from the murdhanya p osition This sound is reminiscentof

tenyearolds playing cops and robb ers

Although the ksa is originall y formed by halanta ka joining with a following sa

ie k sa ksa and maybethus separated when for example the alphab etical

order is required in lo oking up a word in the dictionary the pronunciation as

k

reected in the changed symb ol is in practice s a

s

A Pronunciation of jna

The pronunciation of this is similar to the French J as in JeanJacques or as in

the z sound in the English words mirage rouge measure or vision but in all

cases it is sounded through the talavya mouth p osition and is strongly nasalized

As a practical metho d of approaching this sound b egin by sounding the English

hiss and holding the sibilant this sibilantismuchlike the Sanskrit halanta sa

Now sound the English his again holding the sibilant note that the dierence

between these sibilants is that the vo cal cords vibrate for his and not for hiss

Now with the tongue in the talavya p osition sound a prolonged halanta sa

And then rep eat the sound but allowing the vo cal cords to vibrate with some

imagination this is b eginning to sound like a prolonged halanta jawhichisof

course imp ossible to sound Now rep eat this voiced sound allowing it to b e strongly

nasalized This is ab out as close as one can get to describing the sound of halanta

jna

There are two common errors in sounding jna Firstly the halanta jna tends to

b e followed by an additional nasal consonant b efore the vowel ie jn n a the

halanta jna is a single sound Secondly the nasalization is often carried over into

the vowel to correct this practise sounding ajna attending to b oth a sounds

which should b e the same

Although the jna is originall y formed by halanta ja joining with a following na

ie j na jna and maybethus separated when for example the alphab etical

order is required in lo oking up a word in the dictionary the pronunciation as

j

reected in the changed symb ol is in practice a

n

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A List of Conjunct Consonants

The following is a standard list of conjunct consonants arranged in alphab etical

order simply read through the list and you will nd that most of the symb ols are

easily recognizable

kka Ka kkha ca kca Na kna kta a ktya

a knya kma kna ktra a ktrya ktva

ka kya k kra k a krya kla kva a kvy a

a ksa ma ksma ya ksya va ksva Kya khya Ka khra

gya gya ga gra gya grya ghna a ghnya Gma ghma

Gya ghya Gra ghra nk a nkta a nkt ya a nky a

nks a nks va nkha a nkh ya nga a ngy a

nma nna n na nghra a ngh ya ngha

a cna cma cma za ny a a cca cC ccha cC cchra

a jja jJa jjha a jna cya cya chya C chra

ya jnya ma jma ya jya ja jra va jva a nca

aa ncma aa ncy a VC nc ha nja a njy a tta

dgha a dgya fa tya Fa thya F thra dga

a dma qa dy ddha dghra a Qa dhya Q dhra

Nf nta NF ntha Nq nd a Nqa ndya Nq nd ra Nq andrya

NQ n dha NNa nna Nma nma Nya nya Nva nva tk tka

a ttra va ttva tTa ttha tk tkra a tta ya ttya

a tna ya tnya tpa tpa tpra tpra tma tma tya tmya

tya tya a tra ya trya tva tva tsa tsa ta tsna

dgra dgha dghra tya tsnya Tya thya dga

dda a ddya d ddha d a ddhya dna d dba

dbha d a dbhya a dma da dya d dra da drya

d dva d a dvya a dhna aa dhnya Da dhma Dya dhya

Lesson A

Dra dhra Drya dhrya Dva dhva nta nta ntya ntya na ntra

nd nda nd ndra nDa ndha nDra ndhra a nna npa npa

npra npra na nma nya nya na nra nsa nsa a pta

ya ptya pa pna ppa ppa pma pma pya pya pra pra

p pla pva pva psa psa pva psva bGa bgha bia bja

a bna a bba bBa bbha bBya bbhya bd bda bDa b dha

a bva Ba bhna Bya bhya Bra bhra bya bya bra bra

Bva bhva a mna pa mpa pra mpra ba mba Ba mbha

mla va mva yya yya mma mma ya mya ma mra

yva yva k lka pa lpa ma lma ya lya lla

a vna vya vya vra vra a vva va lva h lha

a sca ya scya a sna Zya sya ra sra rya srya

sla a sva ya svya ZZa ssa sta a stya

s tra astrya stva stha SNa sna SNya snya

Spa spa Spra spra Sma sma Sya sya Sva s va k ska

Ka skha ta sta tya stya a stra tva stva Ta stha

a sna ya snya pa spa P spha sma sma sya smya

ya sya a sra va sva ssa ssa hna hna

hma ha hya h hra hla hva

The table do es not cover all p ossible combinations of consonants but on the other

hand it do es contain many that are quite rare and whichyou maynever come across

in print So having worked through the table you maybecondent that you will

b e able to decipher any samyoga that you may meet

Just as a matter of interest the greatest numb er of conjunct consonantsinareal

artsnya wordisve the usual example quoted for this is katyRa k

Lesson B

B Verbal Prexes

p

The English verb to tend derives from the pie ro ot ten to stretch when a prex

is app ended to it its meaning alters For example with prex meanings given

attend attowards to at

contend con with together wholly

distend dis apart away

extend ex out of very

intend intowards in

p ortend p or b efore instead of

pretend pre instead of b efore

subtend sub under

Assuming that the meaning of these verbs is already understo o d more or less then

a grasp of their etymological derivation from the ro ot and prexes should contribute

to enlarging that understanding Again given the meanings of these verbs it can

b e appreciated that that the prexes are instrumental in mo difying the original

ro ot to give its particular meaning but the converse is not necessarily so given

the meanings of the ro ot and prexes onlyitmayprove dicult to arriveatthe

meanings of the particular verbs

The situation is Sanskrit is similar the meaning of a prexed verb as a comp ound

needs to b e lo oked up in the dictionary which will also give its comp onent parts of

prexes and dhatu whichmay then b e separately lo oked up Other words may

b e deriv ed from that prexed verb and they carry the sense of this comp ound as

though it were a separate dhatu this is also the case in English as for example the

derivation of attention attentive attendance attendant from the verb attend

A prex when app ended to a verb is called an upasarga in Sanskrit grammar

The grammarians list just twentytwo of these in alphab etical order they are

Lesson B

ati beyond over across past surpassing to excess

adhi over ab ove up on on onto

anu after along like towards following

apa away o from forth

api over on close proximate

abhi to towards into against near opp osite

ava down o away from

a towards to near into at from back return reversing

ud up upwards out ab ove

upa towards near to next to less down under

dur bad dicult hard

dus bad dicult hard

ni down in on under into

nir away out forth

nis away out forth

para back backwards away forth to a distance

pari around ab out

ard fore pra b efore forward forth onw

prati against towards to at near back again return reversing

vi apart asunder away out implying separation or disp ersion

sam with together along with conjoined with

su go o d excellent well

The ab ove list is included here for reference only and should not b e learned however

a familiarity with the Sanskrit forms will b e useful

An upasarga may simply emphasize the original sense of the dhatu but usually

mo dies the sense sometimes the changes is so great as to make the sense of the

original dhatu quite unrecognizable for example

dhatu hr to takeaway

prahr to hit

ahr to eat

samhr to destroy

vihr to roam

parihr to abandon

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order as summarized in A

b By now the alphab et should b e familiar practise writing all the characters of

the alphab et with particular attention to their prop ortions see the note at the

end of A

c Writeoutafaircopy of the devanagar sentences given in e b elow

d Lo ok up the words attend etc given B in a go o d English dictionaryto

see how their meanings link to the given etymology

e Write the following sentences in Roman transliteration

x

baalamavaaata naya Aama vahavaH

na H baala ca atataH vadtaH ca

x

AaH vaaya Ple baalaByaH lBatea

baalayaaH AaH Plaana naaya vahata

x

naaH vaaya Plma baalayEa lBantea

x

naya baala Aaanavaaana nayatea

f Now translate the sentences in e into English

g Translate the following sentences in to Sanskrit using Roman transliteration

You pl carry the fruit pl from the tree byhorse

The girls horses two take the fruit pl to the man

You two lead the horse to the fruit pl of the tree

The man takes the tree from the horse for the girl

The girl and the horse go among the trees pl for fruit pl

The horses pl carry the trees pl for the men pl

h Now write your answers to g in devanagar

Lesson A

A Sp ecial Symbols

The following symb ols are not strictly part of the alphab et but constitute sp ecial

symb ols such as punctuation

This punctuation mark is used at the end of a halfverse or sentence

This marks the end of a verse or paragraph

Y The elision of an A at the b eginning of a word due to the rules of sandhiis

indicated with this symbol called avagraha it is not sounded For example

teaYapa for teaAapa is pronounced teaapa in transliteration it is represented byan

ap ostrophe or prime mark ie te pi

This symb ol called candrabindu lit mo ondot placed ab oveavowel

indicates that the vowel itself is nasalized for example A is A sounded

through b oth nose and mouth together Contrast this with AM where the

anusvarawhich is just the bindu dot ab ovethevowel is a nasal sound

y also b e nasalized following after the vowel The antah stha y l and v ma

This symb ol indicates a compulsory anusvara ie b efore an us man or

rephaintheVedas and is traditionall y pronounced as a soft gna gna

You may also nd it written as gMa

The mystical symbol Om pronounced Aeama and called the pran avasab da

An abbreviation is indicated by this sign the rest of the word b eing provided

from the context

This symbol is rare it is pronounced like a half visarga and is called

jihvamul ya when b efore k or khandupadhmanya when b efore p or

ph See section A

A Savarna

Those sounds which are pronounced in the same mouth p osition and with the same

eort within the mouth itself ie the measure of contact or op enness see section

A are called savarn a same group This means that the kav arga sounds

k kh g ghand n see section A are savarn alikewise cavarga through

to pavarga eachforma savarna group of ve sounds

For grammatical purp oses and are also declared to b e savarn aeven though

their mouth p ositions dier

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A Nasal Substitution for Anusvara

The anusvara see section A arises through the rules of sandhi primarily it

is the replacement for a nal m b efore a consonant There are two traditions for

pronouncing the anusvara one tradition always pronounces it as an anusvara a

z like sound in Northern India and ma like further South the other tradition

substitutes the nasal that is savarna with the following consonant ie if the

following consonantisasparsa one of the twentyve from k to ma then the

anusvara is sounded as the nasal of the same mouth p osition as the following

letter thus sMakpa is pronounced sa paand sMaaa as saVaa and so on

The second tradition is muchlike the pronunciation of n in English sound the

words wink winch and wind prolonging the nasal if necessary and note

that the mouth p osition is determined by the following letter

alaor va the anusvara may optionally b e sounded as a nasalized version Before y

of that letter for example sMayaeaga may b e pronounced as say yaeaga

MonierWilliams in his dictionary follows the tradition of substituting the savarna

nasal b efore a sparsa the twentyvefrom ka to ma but not b efore an antah stha

It would b e useful for these lessons at least to practise that metho d

A Devanagar Numerals

The numb ers one to ten resp ectively are expressed in Sanskrit as ekadva tri catur

pancan sas saptan astan navan dasan zero is called sunya literally void or

empty The numerals use the familiar order of signicance so that is written

as

Here are the ten numerals in devanagar script ordered to

Lesson B

B More Noun Declensions

The pratipadika form of nouns may end in letters other than those considered

thus far the table on the next page includes the three declension previously covered

and adds agni re pumlinga ending in i guru teacher pumlinga ending in

u and nad strlinga ending in These declensions need not b e practised

but it would b e useful to sp end some time observing the dierences b etween the

declensions

The sandhi rule changing n to n following r or s follows through all declensions in

trtyaekavacana and sas thbahuvacana

B Adjectives

An adjectivevisesan a qualies a noun it is dep endent the noun as an attribute

This dep endence manifests in the grammar requiring the visesan a to agree with

the noun in gender case and numb er Thus using alpa small we could have

alpah narah alpam naram alpat narat vahanti

The small men pl carry the small man from the small man

In MonierWillia ms dictionary a visesana is listed in the form

alpamfan small

sundaramfn handsome b eautiful attractive

where mfn stands for masculinefeminineneuter ie it may b e declined in all

three genders as required bya visesan a and the a and inserted after the

f of mfn indicates the strlinga form in declension thus alpa declines like bala

and sundar like nad in the feminine For example

alpa sundarbala tisthati

The small b eautiful girl stands

As may b e seen from the ab ove examples the visesana precedes the noun whichit

qualies

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Declension Paradigms

Masculine in a Neuter in a

narah narau narah phalam phale phalani

he nara he narau he narah he phala he phale he phalani

phalam phale phalani naram narau naran

phalena phalabhyam phalaih narena narabhyam naraih

phalaya phalabhyam phalebhyah naraya narabhyam narebhyah

at phalabhyam phalebhyah phal narat narabhyam narebhyah

phalasya phalayoh phalanam narasya narayoh naranam

phale phalayoh phalesu nare narayoh naresu

Masculine in i Feminine in a

agnih agn agnayah b ala bale balah

he agne he agn he agnayah he bale he bale he balah

agnim agn agnn balam bale balah

agnina agnibhyam agnibhih balaya balabhyam balabhih

agnaye agnibhyam agnibhyah balayai balabhyam balabhyah

agneh agnibhyam agnibhyah balayah balabhyam balabhyah

agneh agnyoh agnnam balayah balayoh balanam

agnau agnyoh agnisu balayam balayoh balasu

Feminine in Masculine in u

nad nadyau nadyah guruh guru guravah

he nadi he nadyau he nadyah he guro he guru he guravah

nadm nadyau nadh gurum guru gurun

nadya nadbhyam nadbhih guruna gurubhyam gurubhih

nady gurave gurubhyam gurubhyah ai nadbhyam nadbhyah

guroh gurubhyam gurubhyah nadyah nadbhyam nadbhyah

guroh gurvoh gurun am nadyah nadyoh nadnam

gurau gurvoh gurusu nadyam nadyoh nadsu

Lesson B

B Adverbs

An adverb kriyavisesana qualies a verb it is indeclinable avyaya It is

usually found immediately b efore the verb for example using the adverb sghram

quickly

narah sghram gacchati

the man go es quickly

B Vo cabulary Summary

The following is a complete list of all the vo cabulary used in this course

p

kriya gama gacCata he go es

p

naa nayatea he leads

p

lBa lBatea he takes

p

vad vadata he sp eaks

p

vah vahata he carries

p

Taa ataata he stands

naman Aagna m re

Aa m horse

gua m teac her

nad a f river

na m man

Pl n fruit

baala f girl

x

vaa m tree

visesan a Apa mfan small

suand mfn b eautiful handsome

avyaya Iata ind thus lesson B

ca ind and

ZaaGrama ind quickly

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order as summarized in A

b Practise reading and writing the ten numerals in devanagar

c Write the following sentences in Roman transliteration

baala Aagnamasuandata naata gacCata

x

na H Apamavaama baalama AgnayeaZaaGrama lBatea

suand a baala Apama Aama nad ama nayatea

x

naEasuandaaNa Plaana Apaatavaaata lBeatea

guavaH Apamasuandma Aamanada Ea nayantea

x

ApaH vaaH suande AgnaE aataata

d Now translate the sentences in c into English

e Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit using Roman transliteration

The mans teacher go es to the river by horse

The girl carries the small fruit to the mans teacher

The teacher of the girl stands in the small river

The girl of the teacher stands on the handsome horse

The b eautiful girl leads the man to the small teacher quickly

The teacher stands among the b eautiful fruit of the small tree

f Now write your answers to e in devanagar

Lesson B

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Lesson A

The next three sections may b e considered as informational only they are provided

for completeness

A Vowel Accents

Accent is the sounding of a vowel at a higher or lower pitchortonesvara There

are three tones raised udatta not raised anudatta and a combination of the

twoormoving tone svarita These are only marked in the Veda for example

satyMa aanamanantMa bra

The horizontal bar under the syllable indicates anudattathevertical line ab ove

the syllable indicates svaritaand udatta syllables are not marked

In classical Sanskrit texts the accent is not marked

Where these are marked in the dictionary in Roman transliteration the udatta and

svarita will b e indicated by the acute and grave accent marks resp ectivelyThus

the ab ove example in transliteration would b e

satyam jnanam anantam brahma

In practice the accent system is not as simple as illustrated ab ove rstlyin

continuous sp eech the accent is aected by the accents on adjacent syllables

secondly the marking system may b e simplied so that many anudatta are also

not marked nally the notation system diers among the various Vedas For a

fuller treatment of the sub ject see ftpftpnacaczawikneraccentps

English has a stress accent system eg listen to the to syllable in photograph

and photographer but there is no stress system in Sanskrit indeed there should

b e no stress at all in the study of Sanskrit Sanskrit is either sounded with the

pitch accent describ ed ab ove or in ekasruti a neutral accentless tone

A Variations in Devanagar Alphab et

Just as there are variations in the Roman alphab et eg a and a so there are

variations in devanagar some of the less obvious ones are illustrated b elow

This is an alternate form of A and just as one has derivatives of the

a Ea familiar form as Aa AeaAEa so one has a e

E This is a variation of the form O

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

This is another form of similarly for

An alternative form of Ja

J Another variantofJa but far less common

a Obviously the same as l

a A radically dierentformofNa

a An alternative form of a jna

a This is a variation of the form for a ksa

gMa Another form of the Vedic anusvara see A

A rarer form of the Vedic anusvara

L Vedic form of q

h Vedic form of Q

The following are variations in the numerals

A Variations in Samyoga

As was mentioned in Lesson there are no hard and fast rules governing the

formation of a samyogahowever there are a few that are sometimes not obvious

x

D This is a quite common form of d dr

O Avariation of hna

P An alternativeof hla

Q Another form of hva

A Revision

The next page has a summary of the information ab out the alphab et and the

following page is a reference sheet of the character shap es of the alphab et

This would b e a go o d time to lightly revise all the notes ab out the alphab et starting

from Lesson now that you are more familiar with the alphab et you may nd that

much of the information now is clearer

Lesson A

Zaa

Anuavaa

kNFa taalvya Aeaa dntya kNFtaalvya kNFeaa

mUaDRanya

z z z z z z z

avasagRa

A Aa I IR o O Oe Aea AEa AM AH

a a i u u r r l l e ai o au am ah

ta taa ata taa tua tUa txa tXa twa tWa tea tEa taea taEa tMa taH

exceptions R R R R

Alphab etical Order

vyana

kNFa taalvya mUaDRanya dntya Aeaa

k ca f ta pa

Ka C F Ta P

x

paZRa pa

ga ja q d ba

Ja

Ga Q Da Ba

Anuanaaasak

z Va Na na ma

x

IR Satpa AntaH Ta

ya l va

Za Sa sa

x

IR Saadvata Smana

h

z

ApapraaNa

AaByantaprayaa

mahapraaNa

baahaprayaa

GaeaSa

AGaeaSa

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

A I o

k ca f ta pa

Ka C F Ta P

ga ja q d ba

Ga Ja Q Da Ba

z Va Na na ma

ya l va

h Za Sa sa

Lesson B

B Typ es of Words

Sanskrit grammarians traditionall y describ e four typ es of words kriya verb

naman noun upasarga verbal prex and nipata particle The naman

and kriya have the fundamental notions of b eing and b ecoming resp ectively

The kriya typ e includes the basic kriya verbs derived from a dhatu and the

namadhatu verbs derived from nouns which conjugate according purus a

vacana and lakaraaswell as the verbal qualier kriyavisesan a whichis

indeclinable avyaya

The naman typ e includes the basic naman common noun etymologically derived

a prop er noun p ersonal name or technical term whose from a dhatu the samjn

meaning cannot b e etymologically determined the sarvanaman pronoun and

the nominal qualier or adjectivevisesan a all these decline according to linga

vacana and vibhakti

The upasarga verbal prex has b een discussed in B and the nipata particle

is a catchall for the remaining typ es of word The nipata are avyaya indeclinable

and although they are separate words they are not used by themselves words of

this class are ca and and he vocative particle

B Use of iti

The nipata iti means thus it lays stress on what precedes it typically referring

to something that has b een said it is the Sanskrit equivalentofinverted commas

For example

asvena gacchami iti vadati

I am going by horse he says

There is no system of indirect or rep orted sp eech in Sanskrit so the ab ovemay

equally b e translated as He says that he is going by horse

Note that iti grammatically isolates the phrase or sentence b efore it from what

follows in the ab ove example the trtya vibhakti of asvena is not related to the

kriyavadatieven if the word gacchamiwere omitted This isolating function

of iti may also b e used to separate a denition from the word b eing dened or a grammatical rule from an example of its application and so on

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order which should b e familiar bynow

following it through the diagram on page once familiar with the relationship

of the alphab etical order to the diagram thereafter practice sounding the order

while following the alphab et chart on page Asso ciating the soundletter

with its p osition on the chart provides a visual shortcut to where a

soundletter is in relation to the alphab etical order as a whole this will prove

to b e a very useful trick when using the dictionary

b Write out the alphab et once p er day in the form given in the chart on page

ideally h should b e on a line by itself

c Write the following sentences in Roman transliteration

na H Plaana lBatea Iata baale vadtaH

he guaea baale nayaseaIata ApaH na H vadata

x

AaH vaaya Plaana baalayEavahata

x

PlmavaaayaataAeana naaya vahtaH

x

vaama ApaEaAgnaa AE aH ZaaGrama vahaama

x

nad a Apamavaamasuand ama baalama vahata

d Now translate the sentences in c into English

e Translate the following sentences into Sanskrit using Roman transliteration

I am taking the fruit pl to the horse the girl says to the teacher

The man says to the girl that he is carrying the tree to the river

You pl are quickly taking the girls fruit two to the man

Wetwo take the fruit pl from the girls tree

The man and girl go to the handsome teacher byriver

The b eautiful girl leads the horse to the small trees pl for fruit pl

f Now write your answers to e in devanagar

Lesson A

A Intro duction to Sandhi

Sandhi placing together is the principle of sounds coming together naturally

and harmoniously whichistosay without awkwardness or tonguetwisting This is

the principle b ehind the nasal substitution for the anusvara that was considered

earlier and for the various pronunciations of the English letter n mentioned in that

section A

Sandhi applies to other consonants b esides nasals for example consider the English

phrase cats and dogs which is pronounced as cats and dogz Why should that

be Lo oking at it do esnt help you need to sound it Haveyou heard whyitis

so Well try swapping the sibilants around catz and dogs Dicult isnt it So

there is an English sandhi rule that a sibilant preceded byanunvoiced consonant

is unvoiced and preceded bya voiced consonantitisvoiced ghosa It is quite

natural and for the ease of pronunciation

Sandhi applies to vowels to o consider how he is b ecomes hes When

sounded and thats the key you will hear that b oth vowels have the same sound

certainly one has a short measure and the other a long measure but the sound is

the same So when a long IR meets a short I they are b oth replaced by a long IR

The ap ostrophe functions somewhat like the avagraha Y inasmuch as it is not

sounded

Sandhi applies whenever two sounds come together and this is the p oint it is

sounds coming together In the written form the letters are symb ols representing

the sounds in Sanskrit the notation changes when the sound changes and thus it

has an inherently phonetic script the English script do es not do this and this is

one of the reasons that foreigners mutter darkly ab out English sp elling The rules

of sandhi only make sense in sound and not in writing thus it is imp ortant when

reading the written word to sound it aloud or in the mind at least and to hear

that sound

The rules of sandhi apply within a word as it is b eing develop ed from its elemental

sandhiinternal to an comp onents to its fully inected form this is called internal

individual word The rules also apply b etween words as they come together to form

sandhi external to the individual words The a sentence this is called external

rules of internal and external sandhi are largely the same but each has its own

eld of sp ecial cases and exceptions We shall examine external sandhi broadly and

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

only lightly touchoninternal sandhi as it aects the declension of formed words

In these notes the breve ab ovethevowel indicates a short measure onlyand

the macron long measure only combined they indicate a long or short

vowel Also V stands for anyvowel unless explicitly restricted

A GunaandVrddhi

The grammatical terms gun a secondary form and vrddhi increase can b e

considered as degrees of strengthening of the three primary vowels Panini denes

guna as the three vowels AOand Aeaand vrddhi as Aa Oe and AEa and also gives

the means for deriving the strengthened forms of the other twosimplevowels and

simple vowel a a u r l

gun a form a a e o ar al

vrddhi form a a ai au ar al

The breve and macron diacritical marks used together indicate a

long or short measure of the vowel

In the grammatical formation of words the drgha measure do es not o ccur



The vrddhi form of namely Aal do es not arise in the grammar

A useful way of considering guna is the strengthening of the ve simple vowels

by the addition of a single measure of A so as to leave A itself unchanged and

vrddhi as the strengthening of the gun a by the addition of a further measure of

A This pro cess has b een describ ed in Section A

A Vowel Sandhi

Vowel sandhiasyou would exp ect arises when a word ending in a vowel is followed

byaword b eginning with a vowel in the same sentence or line of p o etry a vowel nal

is not changed b efore a consonantorin pausa for example at the end of a sentence

There are only six principles that cover all cases it is not necessary to learn these

but what is imp ortant is to understand them and that means to work through

that they are simply statements of the each principle in sound and understand

obvious

Lesson A

When one of the ve simple vowels hrasva short or drgha long meet a

vowel of the same kind hrasva or drgha they are b oth replaced by the

drgha measure of that vowel

a a a

u u u

r r r

Note that is not shown here It was mentioned earlier that the drgha

measure of is not used in the grammar Section A and that and

are savarna Section A so that when meets or the result is

When A hrasva or drghaisfollowed by one of the ve simple vowels other

than A hrasva or drgha gun a replaces b oth

a e

a u o

a r ar

a l al

When A hrasva or drgha is followed byagun a or vrddhi sound the

vrddhi sound replaces b oth

e ai a

a o au

a ai ai

a au au

When a simple vowel hrasva or drgha other than A is followed bya

dierentvowel the rst vowel is replaced bytheantah stha of the same mouth

p osition

V yV

u V vV

r V rV

l V lV where V stands for any dierentvowel

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

When a comp ound vowel eaioau is followed by another vowel it splits

into its comp onent parts a or aandi or u and the second of those parts

is replaced bytheantah stha of the same mouth p osition The antah stha

may then optionally b e elided generally it is only retained when the preceding

vowel was au

e V a i V ayV aV

ai V a i V ayV aV

o V a u V avV aV

au V a u V avV where V stands for anyvowel

As a quite nonobvious exception to the ab overuleandoverriding it when O

or Aea are followed by hrasva AtheA is elided and replaced byanavagraha

e a e

o a o

All the information on vowel sandhi may b e conveniently displayed in tabular

form called a sandhi gridwhich though useful in its own way is no substitute

for understanding the principles in sound

Final Vowel

Following

a u r l e ai o au

Vowel

a ya va ra la e aa o ava a

a ya va ra la a a aa a a ava a

e vi ri li a i a i a i avi i

e v r l a a a av

o yu u ru lu a u ai a u avu u

o yu u ru lu au au au avu u

ar yr vr r r a r ar a r avr r

ar yr vr r r a r ar a r avr r

al yl vl r r a l al a l avr l

ai ye ve re le a e ae a e ave e

ai yai vai rai lai a ai aai aai avai ai

au yo vo ro lo a o ao a o avo o

au yau vau rau lau a au aau a au avau au

Lesson A

The breveabove the vowel indicates a short measure only and the macron

long measure only combined they indicate a long or short vowel

Optionally the basic vowel may b e replaced byits hrasva equivalent and the r

retained for example maha rsi maharsi or maharsi

Note l do es not o ccur as a word nal and neither r nor l as a word initial but they

are included in the table for completeness

One thing that the table do es illustrate is that resolving a given sandhi into its

comp onents is not at all straightforward for example while it is clear that a a

pro duces a the grid cannot determine from a whether either or b oth of the

original as were long or not

A Exceptions to Vowel Sandhi

There are some exceptions called pragrhya to b e taken separately where

sandhi rules do not op erate For external sandhi these are

a Particles consisting of a single vowel or ending in Aea these are usually

interjections or exclamations rather like the English Ah and Oh

b The terminations of duals whether nouns pronouns or verbs ending in

drgha IR or O

c Prolonged plutavowels

A Samprasaran a

Samprasaran a is the pro cess wherebyan antah sthah is replaced by the simple

vowel of the same mouth p osition and the following vowel is elided This is the

complement to rule in A Examples of this are ijya derived from dhatu yaj

supta from dhatu svap ucatha from dhatu vacand prcchati from dhatu

prach

A similar pro cess o ccurs in English when a nal y is replaced by i b efore adding

another sux as for example easy and easilybeauty and b eautiful holy and holiness

Lesson B

B Intro duction to Comp ound Words

The dhatu ro ot is the basic form of a word denoting verbal activity in order to

form a noun naman or adjectivevisesana etc this activity needs to freeze

as it were to makeitinto an ob ject that is manifest and knowable This xing of

the meaning is accomplished by the addition of a sux pratyaya the pro cess in

English is similar for example from the verb attend given in B are derived

attendant one who attends

attendance the action of attending

attention the quality of attending

attentive having the quality of attending

attentiveness the state of having the quality of attending

As shown by the last word in this list these suxes may b e concatenated and

further prexes may b e added as for example inattentiveness Words thus xed

by a sux pratyayamay b e joined together to form a comp ound word as in the

following English examples

b edro om reside headache screwdriver

blackbird gingerbread housekeeping sightseeing

breakfast greenback newspap er songwriter

daydream haircut pap erback sunrise

dressmaker handwriting rattlesnake wheelbarrow

The comp ound word may simply b e a conveniently brief way of expressing a longer

phrase eg gravestone stone marking a grave or express a sp ecic idea related

to its parts eg reman or mayhave a meaning quite dierent from its parts

eg pigtail a plait of hair hanging down from the back of the head from its

resemblance to the tail of a pig

When a comp ound is not yet fully accepted in English writing eg where it may

cause one to stumble when reading it it is hyphenated as

breadwinner fullgrown lightweight ro ofgarden

breakdown gingerb eer oldfashioned singleminded

doubledecker heartshap ed ponytail storero om

farfetched hothouse redhot wholehearted

rey lampp ost righthanded worldwide

Lesson B

In devanagar a comp ound word samasaisalways written without a break but

in transliteration these are often shown hyphenated for example

praTamapuaSa prathama rst purusa p erson rst p erson

A samasa is formed by simply placing the pratipadika stem forms together and

applying the sandhi rules at the junction One exception to this should b e noted

if the pratipadika ends in an then the n is dropp ed for example

atman self jnana knowledge atma jn ana selfknowledge

In declining the comp ound word the vibhakti ending is added to the end of the

comp ound as a whole ie only the last memb er app ears to decline while earlier

memb ers retain their pratipadika form There are a few exceptions to this rule

words suchas atmanepada and parasmaipada where the caseax of the rst

word is not dropp ed are called aluk samasa

Sanskrit makes extensive use of the samasavery extensive use indeed so muchso

tence without a samasa This makes expressions in that it is unusual to nd a sen

Sanskrit at once concise and precise

Although a samasa may comprise manywords all the principles are covered in

considering the joining of just twowords call them A and B a more complex

samasa is simply a case where A andor B is itself a samasa If the principal more

imp ortant word of the comp ound is underlined then the four classes of samasa

may b e indicated as

AB dvandva meaning A and B

tatpurusa A is in some case relationship to B AB

A B avyaybhava forms indeclinable avyaya functioning as an adverb

AB bahuvrhi serves as an adjective qualifying an external principal

Other typ es of samasa are sub divisions or sp ecial cases of these four main classes

B Joining Words in Writing

Sanskrit is sp oken without any break b etween words and the written form reects

this after the op eration of sandhiwords are joined together in writing except after

words ending in a vowel anusvara or visargaFor example

naanaApeana Aeana gacCaama naanapeanaaeana gacCaama

Ideallythevirama may only b e used at the end of a sentence

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order while following the consonants on the

alphab et chart on page

b Write out the alphab et chart on page once p er day from memory

c Join the following word pairs using vowel sandhi this exercise is most usefully

done in sound alone ie by rep eatedly pronouncing the word pairs aloud very

swiftly and then writing down what is heard the results mayafterwards b e

checked against the rules or the sandhi grid

Do rememb er that the purp ose of the exercises is a practical understanding

one learns from mistakes not from rightanswers

na de vaa Aanand ava A

satya Aanand avaSNaea Aaya

saaDua IR Za pama Aatmana

ktRxa ka na Iata

Aa Ova apatxa Aanand

BUa Aaad paEa Ak H

Aanand Otad maDua AacaayRa

kapa Ind maha Ind

maha aSa ktRxa Aanand

he ATa ka Iyama

x

Zaaanta Amatama na Ova

nad a IR Za aZava Aeadnama

maha IR a gua Oktvama

maayaa Ova pama IR a

htea Aata praata Okma

Lesson A

A Visarga Sandhi

This is most conveniently presented directly in tabular form

Final Vowel

as as Vs Vr Next Initial Sound

o a Vr Vr a

a a Vr Vr anyvowel other than a

o a V V r

o a Vr Vr any other ghosavyanjana

as as Vs Vs cch

as as Vs Vs tth

as as Vs Vs tth

ah ah Vh Vh any other aghosavyanjana

ah ah Vh Vh avasana eg

Vs anyvowel except a or a b efore the nal s

Vr anyvowel b efore the nal r



A followed by another is elided and a preceding

AIor o lengthened

Note The words saH or OSaH followed by hrasva A b ecomes saeaY or OSaeaY

b efore any other letter the visarga is dropp ed

The table is simple enough Basically a nal s or r b ecomes r before a voiced

ghos a sound which includes the vowels of course the exceptions to this are

as b efore a ghos a consonant b ecomes othes is dropp ed b efore

in which case AsaA avowel unless that vowel is hrasva A

b ecomes AeaY

where the nal is r and the following word b egins with r a

disallowed combination the rst r is dropp ed and the preceding

vowel if aior u is lengthened

And the nal s or r b ecomes a visarga b efore an unvoiced aghosa sound whether

a consonant or a pause in sound the exception to this is that b efore cchtth or

tth it is replaced with a sibilantssor s of the same mouth p osition as that of

the following consonant

One very imp ortantpoint to note ab out this table is the last row an avasana is

a pause or stop in sp eech as for example at the end of a sentence or line of p o etry

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

This also applies when a sentence is split up into its indep endentwords padaniby

removing the external sandhi a pro cess called sandhi vigraha The immediate

relevance is that the declension of nouns and conjugation of verbs is given in the

form of indep endentwords which means that sandhi rules applicable to a following

avasana have already b een applied So when the word is used in a sentence this

sandhi must b e removed where the word is given in the tables with a nal visarga

this should b e replaced with an s b efore applying the visarga sandhi

A Consonant Sandhi

As a rule a word may b egin with anyvowel or consonant except h m n nnr l

and may end b efore an avasana or pause with one of eight consonants kttpn

nmor horwithanyvowel except r and l The sandhi of words ending with a

visarga hwere discussed in A this table covers the remaining consonants

The rst four of the nal consonants are the alpapran aaghosa sparsa except c

and the remaining three are nasals As with the visarga sandhi this table is split

according to the following sound b eing ghosa or aghos a

The nal aghosa kt t and p are basically replaced with the ghosaalpapran a

consonant of the same mouth p osition when the following sound is ghosaand

remain unchanged when followed byan aghos a sound but note that a nal t

changes to the mouth p osition of a following talavya or murdhanya sound b oth

ghosa and aghos a and observe its sp ecial changes b efore l h and s in the last

case the substitute replaces the following s as well Before an h whichisghosa

these four are replaced bytheir ghosa equivalents and the h is replaced by the

mahapran a equivalent of that ghosa substitute eg k h gGa

The kanthya nasal remains unchanged while the dantya nasal likethetchanges

to the mouth p osition of a following talavya or murdhanya ghosa sound and to

an anusvara and sibilant of the following mouth p osition of a following talavya

murdhany a or dantya aghos a also note the sp ecial changes b efore l and sA

nal m changes to anusvara b efore any consonant see A for pronunciation of

the anusvara

There are no sandhi changes when a vowel meets a consonant with two exceptions

when a word ends in a short vowel and the following word b egins with chthenac

is inserted secondlywhenaword ends in n or n preceded by a short vowel and

the following word b egins with a vowel then the nasal is doubled ie

V V Vnn V Vn V Vnn Vch Vcch Vn

Lesson A

Final Consonant b efore avasana

k t t p n n m Next Sound

g d d b n n m anyvowel

g d d b n n m g gh

g d j b n n m jjh

g d d b n n m ddh

g d d b n n m ddh

g d d b n n m bbh

n n n m n n m nm

g d d b n n m y rv

g d l b n l m l

ggh dd h ddh bbh n n m h

k t t p n n m kkh

k t c p n ms m cch

k t t p n ms m tth

k t t p n ms m tth

k t t p n n m pph

k t cch p n n m s

k t t p n n m ss

The nasal doubles to nn or nn if the preceding vowel is short

This is a nasalized lie nal b ecomes l



ns may also b ecome nch

A Internal Sandhi

The two most common rules of internal sandhi and which aect the sp elling of

vibhakti endings in particular are

s following kriuurr eaioor au

is replaced by even if there is an intervening m or h

s unless it is the nal letter or followed by r

n following s rror r

is replaced by even if kavarga pavarga yv hor vowel intervene

n when followed byavowel mvyor n which last b ecomes n

Lesson B

The following detailed notes may b e used for reference they need not b e studied

B DvandvaSamasa

The dvandva lit couple samasa is a copulative comp ound in which the

memb ers if not comp ounded would b e in the same case vibhakti and connected

by the conjunction ca and There are twotyp es of dvandva

the memb ers are considered separately the gender of the comp ound is Itaretara

the gender of the last memb er the numb er is the sum of the members For example

ramah ca krsnah ca ramakrsnau note the dual Rama and Krs na

Samahara the memb ers are taken collectively as a unit it is always neuter

singular Pairs of opp osites are often put in this form for example

sukham ca duhkham ca sukhaduh kham note the singular

pleasure and pain

B Tatpurus aSamasa

The tatpurusa lit his man samasa is a determinativecompoundinwhich the

rst memb er dep ends on ie has a case relationship to or mo dies the second

There are several typ es

Tatpurus a also called vyadhikaran atatpurusaischaracterised as having

dierent case endings if the comp ound is dissolved ie the memb ers are dierent

ob jects The comp ound may b e further classied according to the case relationship

dvitya through saptam of the rst memb er to the second For example

vrksamulam vrksasyamulam s asthitatpurusa

ro ot of a tree treero ot

this is a descriptive determinativecompound also called Karmadharaya

samanadhikaran atatpurus a and is characterised as having the same case ending

if the comp ound is dissolved ie the memb ers refer to the same ob ject for example

purn acandrah purnah full candrah mo on fullmo on

this samasa has the same sense as the karmadharaya but has a word Dvigu

denoting direction or a numeral as its rst memb er for example

Lesson B

p

Okvacana ekavacana singular lit one sp eaking from vac to sp eak

also dvi two bahu many giving dual and plural

thiscompoundhasadhatu derivative as its second memb er for Upapada

example

p

kumbhakara kumbham p ot kr to do act make p otter

similarly akara etc

Nantatpurus a a comp ound with a negative particle na anor aasits

rst memb er giving a negative or privative sense for example

ajn anam a negation or absence jnanam knowledge ignorance

B AvyaybhavaSamasa

The avyaybhava lit an unchanging nature samasa is indeclinable avyaya

and functions as an adverb The rst memb er is an indeclinable prep osition or

adverbial prex and the last a noun naman and the whole takes the form of

the neuter singular for example

sakro dham sa the sense is accompaniment kro dha anger

with anger angrily

yathasraddham yatha the sense is prop ortion sraddha faith

according to ones faith

B Bahuvrhi Sam asa

The bahuvrhi lit having much rice samasa is a descriptive comp ound

forming an adjectivevisesana agreeing with a noun expressed or understo o d

for example

padmaksa padma lotus aksa eye

whose eyes are like lotuses lotuseyed

The dierence b etween the tatpurusa and the bahuvrhi is that the former remains

a noun while the latter b ecomes an adjective or epithet In the Vedic Sanskrit the

determinative and descriptive comp ounds were distinguished by accents see A

rajaputra rajan king putra son

the son of the king the kings son tatpurusa

rajaputra whose son is a king bahuvrhi

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

B Exercises

a Practise sounding the alphab etical order while following the consonants on the

alphab et chart on page

b Write out the alphab et chart on page once p er day from memory

c Write the following sentences in devanagar applying sandhi rules as

necessary and it will b e necessary quite often and then translate them

into English

For example

narah asvah ca alpan vrksan labhete

x

naeaYaaapaanvaaa lBeatea

The man and horse take the small trees

narau alpam vrksam agnim asvat vahatah

balaasvam naram ca vrksat labhate

phalani asvam vahati iti guruh balah vadati

guru alpam naram vrksayat sghram gacchatah

narah vrksam agnim balayai asvena vahati

balaasvam alpam nadm vrksat nayate

narah vrksan phalebhyah asvena gacchati

guruh agnim narat gacchati iti alpabalavadati

bala alpah asvah ca agnim narat gacchatah

alp ebhyah phalebhyah sundaresuvrksesugacchavah

Lesson

From here forward the lessons will no longer b e divided into parts A and B there

will however b e exercises related to the dictionary or DhatuPatha at the end of

each lesson

MonierWilliams Dictionary

In the dictionarywords are listed in their pratipadika stem form ie without the

vibhakti endings that they gather in actual use therefore in seeking the meaning

of words found in Sanskrit writings the rst part of the word will b e found in the

dictionary and the last syllable or two forming the vibhakti ending needs to b e

omitted There will b e an element of guesswork in this b ecause only the six most

common noun declensions have b een given forty declensions are necessary to cover

all p ossibili ties and as many again for exceptions

The dictionary often marks the accents of vowels in transliteration the udatta is

marked with the acute accent and the svarita with the grave accent this is

illustrated in section A There is an interesting section on the sub ject of accents

on page xviii of the dictionary intro duction b eginning with the fourth paragraph

Then a third improvement The rest of the lengthy Preface and Intro duction

need not b e read however do note that the dictionary was completed at the end

of the Nineteenth Centuryandthus there is some Victorian coyness in translating

sexual terms which are sometimes given in Latin rather than English

This dictionary is either very simple to use or very dicult the dierence lies in

understanding the founding principles of the dictionary and appreciating the devices

that MonierWilliams has employed in order to make it simple to use

In this lesson the broad structure of the dictionary is explained and subsequent

lessons will cover the details

Alphab et and Transliteration

Some of the devanagar characters used in the dictionary dier from the standard

followed in these lessons and some transliterations dier from the generally accepted

standard The alphab et used in the dictionaryinbothdevanagar and transliter

ated Roman characters is presented b elow in the standard format from which one

may deduce the standard alphab etical order which of course the dictionary do es use

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

a I IR o O Oe ea Ea M H

ah a a i u u ri r lri lr e ai o au aman

k ka ca ca f ta ta ta pa pa

Ka kha C cha F tha Ta tha P pha

ga ga ja ja q d a d da ba ba

Ga gha jha Q dha Da dha Ba bha

z na Va na a n a na na ma ma

ya ya ra l la va va

Za sa Sa sha sa sa

h ha

Observethe devanagar characters used for A and its derivatives in the sixteen

sakti and the consonan ts Ja and Na observe also the transliteration for r r l l

the anusvara s and s These are also shown on page xxxvi facing page of the

dictionary

which is inherentin MonierWilliams distinguishes b etween a true anusvara n

the word from its dhatu and is found in suchwords as AM sa ansaandahM sa hin sa

and the substitute anusvara mwhich arises through the op eration of the rules

of grammar as for example sama saa sMasaa samsara This distinction is

p eculiar to MonierWilliams the standard is to use m throughout and maybe

ignored simply treat m and n as synonymous with the anusvara

Fundamental Structure

The dictionary is arranged on etymological principles and it is this that makes it

suchapowerful to ol The two main advantages of this arrangement are rstly

that cognate words derived from the same dhatu are gathered together and this

facilitates a broad understanding of the word together with its applications and

uses secondly it b ecomes a trivial matter to trace the word back to its dhatuthus

allowing a p enetrating insightinto the very essence of the word This combination

giving b oth breadth and depth to the understanding of a word is immensely valuable in the p enetrating study of the scriptures

Lesson

Besides the etymological arrangement the dictionary is also ordered alphab eticall y

as one would exp ect of a dictionary The seeming conict b etween these twois

resolved quite simply the main etymological structure is ordered alphab etically

in devanagar script and the substructure of derived words is listed under the

devanagar entry in transliterated Roman script the derived words are themselves

listed alphab etically but their order is indep endent of the outer structure using

devanagar script For example the entries could b e listed as follows

Comments on the list

abaal

The entries in devanagar script are listed in alphab etical

abal

order and ignore anyintervening words in transliterated

Bila

Roman script

Bilasa

Similarly the words in Roman script are themselves listed

Bilma

alphab etically still in Sanskrit order and are all derived

from the previous word in devanagar script abal in this

Bilmin

case

Billa

The list also demonstrates the twolevels of alphab etical

Bilva

order without these levels the words abalal abaalnTa

Bilvaka

abaalZa in devanagar script should b e b etween Bilasa and

Bilma

Bilvakya

Bilvala

Do not pro ceed any further with this lesson

abalal until this principle of the indep endence of the

two levels of alphab etical order is clear

abaalnTa

abaalZa

The reason for this instruction is that the dictionary uses

abahNa

four levels of alphab etical order and not just two

Nowopenyour dictionary at page

Aword of caution the dictionary containsawealth of information do b e alert to

attention b eing captured by some interesting item At this stage the purp ose is not

to nd word meanings but to understand how to use this to ol called a dictionary

Lo ok down the rst column and observethateachentry b egins with an indented

word in devanagar or b old Roman script and that eachentry comprises just one

paragraph

The entries in this column should b e the same as the list given ab ove conrm this

Now lo ok at the next page at the b ottom of the rst column is the entry buaDa in

large devanagar typ e Suchanentry indicates a ma jor dhatu

The words derived from this dhatu include Buddha middle of second column

and Buddhaka and Buddhi middle of third column Continuing through these

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

derived words on the next page observe the change of the rst vowel from Bu

to Bo eg Bo dha and on the following page to Bau eg Bauddha b efore

a There are twopoints to appreciate the next word in devanagar script bua

here rstly rememb ering the twolevels of alphab etical order note that there

can b e several pages b etween devanagar entry words and secondly note the

strengthening of the dhatu vowel of the entry words from Bu through Bo to

Bau at this stage just note that they are the guna and vrddhi forms the

signicance of this will b e explained later

Now return to page to the entry Buddha in the middle of column two Three

inches mm b elow this is kap alin in b old typ e nd this This means that

kapalin is app ended to the entry word Buddha so as to form the samasa

Buddhakapalin Similarlyfollowing kapalin the next word in b old typ e is

kalpa forming the samasa Buddhakalpa

The rest of the column has several more suchwords in b old typ e and each b eginning

with a hyphen and the hyphen is not irrelevant but more of that later observe

that these words or listed in alphab etical order This is the third level of alphab etical

order samasa b eginning with the entry word whichmay b e in Roman typ e

or devanagar are listed within the b o dy of the paragraph for that entry in

alphab etical order

This third level maybeviewed as an extension of the second level where the leading

hyphen is mentally replaced by the entry word Continuing at this level note that

in the third column ab out three inches mm down is Buddhac gama the caret

c abovethev owel indicates that it is long drgha it conveys more information

in fact as will b e explained later

Buddhagama and subsequent samasa are sp elled out in full b ecause due to the

rules of vowel sandhi the nal a of buddha is changed thus in strict alphab etical

order Buddhagama with drgha afollows after the previous samasa sena

ie Buddhasena with hrasvaa Work through these samasa until satised

that they are in fact in alphab etical order

The next entry word is Buddhaka which returns to the second level of alphab etical

order the p oint to note here is that a samasa like Buddhagama is b efore it and

thus out of sequence as far as the second level in concerned Thus these samasa

subentries are truly a third level of alphab etical order

Return to the second column and nd the fourth samasa entry kshetra ab out

inches mm from the b ottom The next line contains the word in light italic

typ e pariso dhaka and similarly in the line b elow that is varalocana These form

Lesson

further samasa when app ended to ksetra ie Buddhiks etrapariso dhaka and

Buddhiks etravaralo cana Note that these two subsubentries listed under the

subentry ksetra are also in alphab etical order this is the fourth and last level

of alphab etical ordering

Page Heading Words

The words in the top margin of each page given in b oth devanagar and Roman

transliterated forms indicate resp ectively the rst and last entry words to b e found

on that page Do make use of these rather than the b o dy of the text as you scan

through the pages lo oking up a word but dont rely on them totally for they can

sometimes b e misleading in that they do not indicate at which of the four levels of

alphab etical order they o ccur

Examine the words at the top of page for example and note that the rst

biralaisindevanagar script in the text and the last bjin is in transliterated

Roman these words are at dierent levels in the hierarchy of alphab etical orders

Again on the next page the heading words are at the second and third levels and

turning over the page the words at the top of page are b oth at the second

level but are in reverse alphab etical order b eing derive from dierentwords in the

devanagar script had one b een lo oking for buaBaa the rst entry in the second

column the heading words would have b een quite misleading When you susp ect

that you have b een misled by the page heading words turn a few pages backwards

towards A and followthedevanagar entries in the b o dy of the dictionary

This situation do es not happ en often and so one forgets ab out it but b e aware that

it can happ en

At this stage you could start to make use of the dictionary if there are words that

you particularly want to lo ok up but for the moment leave aside words b eginning

with sa sa

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Dictionary Practice

Lo ok up the words in the following list in the dictionaryThewords in the list will

all b e found at the start of an entry like buddhi and not buried in the text the

words maybein devanagar or transliterated in the dictionary

The exercise is to nd the word in the dictionary and not to examine the meaning

of the word so simply nd the word and note the page and column in the form

buddhi b ie page second b column

When you are more familiar with the dictionary it should take no longer to nd a

word in the Sanskrit dictionary than it do es in the English dictionarysayfteen

seconds

Common errors of rsttime users are

Confusing the English and Sanskrit alphab etical orders

Forgetting that a and a for example are two separate letters

Not seeing what is actually there b oth in the list of words and in the

dictionary watch those diacritics

Failing to use the page heading words

Misunderstanding the structure of the devanagar and transliterated

entries

Wasting time by reading interesting but irrelevantentries

You have b een warned but go ahead and fall at on your face anyway

But then do observe what tripp ed you up

atman brahman purus a

hetu guru manas

yoga ra jas sarra

prakrti citta bhakti

jnana rsi ananta

ananda visnu krsna

vyakarana hrdaya

Lesson

Words Beginning with Sa

The prex sam altogether expressing conjunction union completeness is very

common and thus there are manywords b eginning with it since the nal m is

often replaced with the anusvara diculties may arise if the rules for pronouncing

the anusvara are not thoroughly practised

the word In lo oking up words containing the anusvara it is essential to sound

replacing the anusvara with its savarn a nasal where applicable and then lo ok

up the word in the standard alphab etical order with that substituted nasal For

example in the word sMapradana the anusvara is sounded as the savarna ma and is

then found in the dictionary where one would exp ect to nd sapradana similarly for

pafor sMaaa saVaa and for sMaaDa saanDa etc sMakpalookup sa

There are two p oints to b ear in mind here rstly the tradition followed by Monier

Williams makes this nasal substitution only b efore a sparsa the twentyve from

ka to ma and secondly one needs to make the same nasal substitution for the

anusvara for the words in the dictionary ie sound them

Do rememb er that in the dictionary the anusvara b efore an antah stha is not

substituted with a nasal for example the anusvara in sMavaa is not substituted

and therefore in the dictionary order where the anusvara app ears b efore the

consonants sMavaa will b e b efore saga which in turn will b e b efore sMakpa the

last b eing in the dictionary order of sa pa

the words examine the third column As an illustration of the imp ortance of sounding

of page of the dictionary the last three words given in devanagar script are

sMak al sa and sMaku ca and that is the alphab etical order in sound

u

This principle applies wherever the anusvara o ccurs and not only to words

b eginning with samFor example in column two of page is the entry Ahma

in devanagar and derived from it and hence transliterated is the next entry

word aham note the anusvara the samasa formed with aham yati yu

vadin etc are listed in alphab etical order but note that the sparsa karana

kartavya etc are listed after the antah stha and us man Again the anusvara

with its replacement savarna nasal to give Ah Na and of course z is sounded

follows the anusvara in the alphab etical order

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Structure of DevanagarLevel

The outermost layer of the dictionary namely the entries in devanagar script

should ideally only contain dhatu but in practice it includes those words whose

form has changed radically eg by samprasaran a or have a prex added or

whose dhatu is not known

Turn to page of the dictionary and examine the devanagar entries in the rst

column The last word in this column is in large devanagar typ e indicating a

ma jor dhatu the entry for this word b egins with its transliterated form followed

by cl i which stands for class There are ten classes of dhatu ie ten ways

of conjugating verbs but this together with the other information given in the

dhatu entry will b e explained in the next lesson At this stage simply b e aware

that a devanagar entry followed by its transliterated form and a class numb er is

a dhatu

Returning to the top of the rst column the rst entry is baaBawhichisa dhatu

and is followed by baaBatsa whichisnotadhatu but the entry shows that it is

derived from the dhatu badhFor the next three words no etymology is given

which means that the dhatu is not known to MonierWillia ms anyway and maybe

foreign words absorb ed into Sanskrit The word buak is onomatop o eic ie it sounds

like the thing signied This is followed by buak whose etymology is not known

the dhatu bua and buasa whose ro ot is not known The next dhatu bua is also

given the alternative reading vung the similarity in b oth sound and form of ba and

va allows this to happ en The next twoentries are dhatu note that buaf is given as

b oth class and and buaq is class These are followed by the onomatop o eic

buaqbuaq the p ersonal name buaadl and the dhatu buad The next word buad gives

references to columns two and three common words like this are often listed in the

devanagar with a crossreference given to their etymological entry p osition This

is followed by the onomatop o eic buad d and nally the dhatu buaDa

u

That was a prettymixedbagofwords but do es illustrate the manytyp es of entries

except for those b eginning with a prex which form the bulk listed in devanagar

of the words listed in devanagarPage of the dictionary is representativeof

this typ e of entry the second column b egins with praatasuaca and in transliteration is

p

conveniently split into the prex and dhatu as prati suc the next entry praatasMaca

p

has two prexes pratisam car and halfwaydown the column is praatasamaaadZa

p

having three prexes pratisama dis The transliteration shows the etymology

of the word and allows eachelement to b e separately examined in the dictionary

Lesson

Structure within nonDhatu Entries

The entries for naman nouns visesana adjectives and avyaya indeclinables

typically kriyavisesan a adverbs are listed in their pratipadika form followed

by a description indicating their meaning

The rst division of naman is into linga gender and this is shown in the dictionary

by m f or n masculine feminine neuter The visesana in bringing a quality

to a namanmust havethesame linga as that namanandmust therefore b e able

to takeany form of the three linga and are thus indicated in the dictionary as

mfn

Examine the entry for Buddha in the second column of page it b egins with

wever six lines down is m a wise or learned man mfn indicating a visesan aho

so Buddha can also b e a masculine naman and further down just b efore the b old

typ e kapalin is n knowledge thus the word Buddha can also b e a neuter noun

Thus the same pratipadika form maybea visesana or a naman so if the heading

word indicates mfn one mayyet nd m etc buried in the text for that word The

converse do es not apply had the entry b een Buddha m a wise man there will

b e no mfn buried in the text this reects the overall structure of the dictionary

in tap ering down from the general to the particular from a qualityvisesanato

the sp ecic naman

A fuller illustration of this principle is shown under the entry d aGRa near the b ottom

of the third column of page

st line mfan long lofty tall visesana form

th line am ind long for a long time avyay a form

th line m a long vowel pumlinga naman

th line a fanoblongtank strlinga naman

th line n a sp ecies of grass napumsakalinga naman

This is the general order followed in the dictionary within the text for an entry word

Return to page and lightly read through the text for the word Buddha the

information provided ab out Gautama Buddha the founder of Buddhism is typical

of the encyclopdic scop e of the dictionary

Now lightly read through the text for the word Buddhi in the third column Here

asabonus you are given an insightinto the mythology of India where the go ds and

their consorts are the p ersonication of universal forces from Daksa the Creative

Force arises Buddhi Intelligence which guided by Dharma Law pro duces

Bo dha Knowledge

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

References and Abbreviations

On page xxxiii of the Intro duction is the List of Works and Authors that Monier

Williams has consulted in compiling the dictionary lo ok for a few works that you

knowtoseehow it is abbreviated in the b o dy of the dictionary for example Bhag

for Bhagavadgta and MBh for MahaBharata

The next page of the dictionary has a list of symb ols that are used read through and

understand these The last four symb ols are not very clear but will b e elucidated

in the next section

The following page of the dictionary lists the abbreviations that are used

Make it a discipline to lo ok up the references when appropriate and abbreviations

always when you are not sure what it stands for this wayyou will very so on

b ecome familiar with them

Sp ecial Symb ols and ab cd

The little circle is a standard abbreviation symbol in the devanagar script to

denote either the rst or last part of a word that has to b e supplied from the context

MonierWilliams also uses this symb ol to abbreviate English words in order to save

space As an illustration of its use if the word conscious is under discussion rather

than rep eat the word in full the abbreviation con or even c may b e used similarly

ly would mean consciously and ness consciousness

The caret symbols abcd denote a joining of vowels short or long These are used in

the transliterated script for samasa comp ound words and very helpfully indicate

the length of the nal and initial vowels at the p oint of union so that the words

may readily b e lo oked up separately

a denotes the joining of two short vowels as a a a

c denotes the joining of a short with a long vowel as a a ac

b denotes the joining of a long with a short vowel as a a ab

d denotes the joining of two long vowels as a a ad

These are also used when the rules of sandhi change the vowel sound

eg a i ea a u oc etc

Signicance of Hyphen and Caret Symbols

Turning again to page column two nd the samasa listed under Buddha

b eginning with kap alin and kalpathehyphen not only indicates that the word

Lesson

is app ended to Buddha see section but that kapalin and kalpa are words

that may b e separately lo oked up in the dictionary and this is why the next samasa

kayavarnaparinis pattyabhinirhara is itself hyphenated each element kaya

and varna for example may usually b e separately found in the dictionary

Where the samasa is printed in full as in Buddhac gamawhich stands for

Buddhaagama this use of the caret symb ol allows the second word of the samasa

to b e correctly determined as b eginning with a drgha a so that agama can b e

separately lo oked up Similarlythesamasa printed as Buddhaa d uk a stands for

which are the two p ossibili ties listed in Buddhaeduk a and not Buddhaaid uk a

the vowel sandhi grid of A the reasoning here is that although O and Oe are

b oth long vowels the weaker of the twovowels in terms of gun a and vrddhi see

section A is given the thin stroke in the caret symbol

Supplement to Dictionary

If a word is not found in the main dictionary lo ok for it in the supplementof

Additions and Corrections b eginning on page

Dictionary Practice

Lo ok up the words in the following list in the dictionary the words maybeatany

of the four levels of alphab etical order and they maybeprinted in devanagar or

transliterated Roman or b oth and hyphenated appropriately

Anvayavyaatae k manaeaBavaZaasana

lGuasavataa avaveak

avavaahkal sMayaeaga

x

sMakta Dyaanaya eaga

kalyuaga ADyaaeapa

mUaQ rad atxa

sMagamamaaNa ahNyagaBRa

aaayaDamRa pUavRapaapaad

x

baalpaDak e cCjaaata

x

Bagava ataa Agah ata

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Lesson

Tracing a Word to its Dhatu

Since the dictionary is essentially etymologically arranged it is quite straightforward

to trace a word to its dhatu This is b est illustrated by example nd the word

Vyanjana in the third column of page

Vyanjana mfn manifesting indicating m a consonant

n decoration ornament manifestation indication sp ecication a

mark badge sign token a consonant

Since this entry is not in devanagarfollowtheentry words backwards towards

A until an entry given in devanagar the outermost level of alphab etical order

In the middle of the second column is

p

vy anj to anoint thoroughly to decorate adorn b eautify to vya

cause to app ear manifest display

This is the kriya from which the naman vyanjana derives The next step in

analysing this word is to lo ok up the two comp onent parts of this verb namely vy

and dhatu anj In the second column of page is found

vya vy in comp b efore vowels for vi

Here is an example of vowel sandhi used in forming a word In the third column of

page is the entry

ava vi ind used as a prex to verbs and nouns to express

division distinction distribution arrangement

Compare this with the sense of the upasarga vi given in B The dhatu of

vyanjana is given in the rst column of page

A anj to decorate to celebrate to cause to app ear make

clear

Compare all this information with the description of vyanjana given at the start

of the rst lesson Now that may app ear to b e a very owery description of what

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

is simply a consonant but in this complicated hitech age the profundity of simple

things is often overlo oked the ability to form a range of consonants is what separates

man from animal A dog may b e able to howl a p erfect prolonged u but can it

emb ellish that to say Who could fo ol you Without adorning the vowel sounds

with consonants there would b e no language without language there would b e no

mathematics or science no history or philosophy no culture or civilisation al l this

rich diversity is founded on the simplicityofvowels and consonants Indeed many

scriptures sp eak of the creativepower of sp eech and that creation itself is sp oken

into existence

Dhatu Entry Information

Turn again to the dhatu budh at the b ottom of the rst column of page

That the dhatu is printed in large devanagar means that it is a ma jor dhatu

this is followed bythenumeral which indicates that there is another entry

budhwhichmayormay not b e another dhatu infactitisa visesana listed

in the rst column on the next page Next cliP A indicates that the dhatu

conjugates according to class rules in b oth parasmaipada and atmanepada

this is followed by the DhatuPatha reference Dhatup xxi The following

twowords which are printed in light italic bodhati te showthelat present

indicative prathama purus aekavacana forms ie b o dhati and b o dhate for

parasmaipada and atmanepada resp ectively

Next there is cl A which means that it may also b e found as a class atmane

pada verb xxvi is a DhatuPatha reference next budhyate shows the lat

conjugation as a class verb The ep also P ti means that in the epics it

may also b e found conjugated in class parasmaipada where the form will b e

buddhyati Observe just as a matter of interest that the dhatu vowel remains

unchanged when conjugated as a class verb but in the class conjugation the

vowel has the guna form some other classes use the vrddhi form

The next eight lines show conjugations of this dhatu for other lakara tenses and

mo o ds etc b efore starting the English translations to wake etc Again simply

note that some of the forms have the rst syllable reduplicated eg bub o dha

or prexed with a eg abudhram

Within the English translation section passive forms of the verb are given as also

derivativeverb forms The last four lines show asso ciated verbs in several other IndoEurop ean languages

Lesson

Some dhatu entries givemuch less information suchasbaaBa near the top of the

p

x

rst column whilst others give more information suchas k kr at the end of

page but the overall format is similar

Numb ered Entries

Words having the same sp elling mayhave quite dierentetymologies having

dierentderivations their meanings will b e quite dierent in such cases where

entries have the same sp elling MonierWilliams numb ers these and so on

For example turning to the second column on page nd the two consecutive

entries for Anuaacata

p

Anuaacata anucita mfn ci set or placed along or

Anuaacata anucita mfn improp er wrong unusual strange

Note the numerals and the dierent derivations indicated in the transliterated forms

p

The rst is derived from ciwhich in turn indicates that there is more than one

p

dhatu ci in fact there are three the second is derived from ucwhich is found

by lo oking up ucita on page c

Further down the column are twoentries for anucchindat whichhave dierent

derivations from the same dhatu Note that the numerals app ear b efore the

transliterated form b oth here and in Anuaacata ab ove Also note that these words

do not have consecutiveentries indeed they may b e separated by several pages as

we shall see shortly

In the next column observe that there are twoentries for Anuaaawhichbothhave

the same etymological derivation but the rst is a verb and the second a noun

Turning to page nd the entry for pratipan a in the middle of the second

column where it is given as pana m for see sv now nd the meaning of

sv in the list of abbreviations on page xxxv two pages b efore page The entry

for pratipan a that we are now examining is at the third level of alphab etical order

and wenow need to nd it at the outermost devanagar alphab etical order this

is at the b ottom of the second column on page Here MonierWillia ms gives a

clear reference to where w ehave just come from where the numb ered entries are

widely spaced ve pages in this case he usually but not always gives p ointers to

where the other entry maybefound

twoentries Be aware that the numb ered entries inform you that there are at least

with the same sp elling for example there are veentries for cit on pages

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

and a sixth on page It would b e a useful exercise to nd them

Be warned that this numb ering system is not p erfect for example praaa is indicated

asaverb in the rst column of page and as a noun in the second column but

these are not numb ered Again in the third column of page are twoentries for

ceata but neither refer to cet in c which in turn do es not refer to the other two

Although there are these inconsistencies there are fortunately very few of them

Misleading Words

Because of the etymological foundation of the dictionary and its four levels of

alphab etical order some words may not b e straightforward to nd We shall examine

three suchwords here

Astanga Turn to page according to the heading words weshouldnd

astanga here If welookdown the second column there are three entries for asta

and in the next column as ta but there is no astanganoteven at the third level

of samasaHowever for reasons b est known to himself MonierWilliams has here

decided to ha ve a separate entry word for samasa where the adjoining word starts

with a astanga is on the third line of the rst column of page

Vicara Turn to page again according to the heading words we should nd

vicara in the middle of the second column All the samasa listed on this page are

derived from ava on the previous page The trick here is to escap e out of the current

level of alphab etical order to the next higher level searching backward for the entry

word under whichthesesamasa are listed we come to ava on the previous page

This is the outermost devanagarlevel now remain at that level and search

for vicara The next devanagar entry is avMaZa on b and the page ends with

avakl continue forward at the devanagar level lo oking for avacaa This will

p

b e found near the b ottom of c where it simply refers to vi car andthus the

entry word is found near the b ottom of b

Sattva This will b e found listed as sava in b where it gives a crossreference

to page column and indeed there it is listed as SattvaHowever if the

word had not b een found on page you would not have found it on this page

not according to the heading words which indicate that it is on the previous page

It is in fact listed at the third level in c where it simply gives see b elow this

means scan forward over entry words at level or for the entry

These examples illustrate that the page heading words are a useful guide to get

within ten pages or so of the target word but that they can also mislead This

Lesson

confusion arises b ecause the page heading words may refer to any of the rst three

levels of alphab etical order if the word soughtisnotquickly found on the exp ected

page then examine the heading words a few pages b efore and after If the word is

still not found then examine entries at the next level of alphab etical order until

nally at the outermost devanagar level

Dicult Words

Some words b ecause of their etymological development are just plain dicult to

nd When you have exhausted all the tricks that you know with the dictionary

see sections and then consider the following

a If it is a short word one or two syllables then it may not b e listed in the

dictionary at all the declension of pronouns for example is irregular

and the only recourse is to lists of paradigms

b If it has three or more syllables treat it as a samasa and use the sandhi

rules to split it into parts at every syllable this pro cess may seem rather

lab orious but it do es get there if the word is listed in the dictionary This

detectivework is illustrated with twowords

Yatatman The wordisnotfoundasasamasa under ya or yata and there

is no entry word Yata So lets split the word at awe could have yataatman

yat aatman yataatmanoryataatman The rst two dont help b ecause we

have already found that there is no entry word Yata but there is an entry word

yata Dont get excited it is a guess and could b e wrong Nevertheless following

this clue to page wendYatac tman in the third column who would have

guessed that it came from dhatu yam

Svadhyaya Having worked our waytothedevanagar level of alphab etical

order we nd the closest entry is vaaDaana but reading the text for that entry we

nd svadhyaya see p col And indeed there we nd twoentries the rst

as a noun and the second as a verb

Alternatively we could have tried splitting the word ourselves working from the left

again to pro duce suadhyaya su adhyaya svadhyaya svaadhyaya sva

adhyaya svaadhyayaorsvaadhyayaHaving found nothing useful under sua

veentries or sUa four entries or vaawewould have arrived at va and thus nd

the entries in b

However this is not the end of the story wewant to nd the dhatu from which

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

this word derives but cannot nd adhyaya on page where wewould exp ect it

So we do the same trick again starting from the left giving adhyaya but nothing

suitable is found under A six entries nor is the entry word dhyaya found So we

pro ceed to the next syllable adhiaya adhaya adhyaaya adhyaaya adhya

ayaandadhyaaya Again we nd nothing helpful under AaDa twoentries but

under ADaa we nd the entry word AdhyayaHaving found the word we return

p

to the devanagar level ADaa and there the dhatu is given as i

Dictionary Practice

Lo ok up the following words in the dictionary and trace their etymology as shown

in as an aid the English equivalentisalsogiven

ABaya fearlessness

pUaNRa abundance

pratyaaha withdrawal

Acaapaya steadiness

acaakmRaavad skilled in painting

naaatamaaanataa not to o much pride

Lesson

Intro duction to DhatuPat ha

Aword standing alone expresses a universal in a sentence it refers to a particular

and its meaning is restricted according to the context A word is thus given many

meanings in the dictionary the particular meaning is selected according to the

context in whichitisused

Nouns which name things freeze an asp ect of the activityofadhatu whereas

verbs which express the activity of a sentence derive directly from the dhatuA

dhatu is therefore the most universal element of all words and the DhatuPat ha

is a dhatu dictionary asitwere it provides a sense of the underlying meaning of

the dhatu usually in just one word

The DhatuPatha lit Recitation of Ro ots also enco des a wealth of grammatical

information ab out the conjugation of verbs and the formation of nouns derived from

each dhatumuch of this information will not b e used at this stage of the study

This lesson is concerned with extracting the artha or meaning of each dhatu

from the DhatuPat ha and its application in the study of the scriptures

The Contents Page

a or classes of dhatu conjugation Each gana is named This lists the ten gan

after the rst dhatu in its section for example the rst is BvaaadgaNa whichword

p

is formed from bhu adigan a the class b eginning with bhu where adi means

b eginning with

The eleventh class kNqaadgaNa is a class of dhatu derived from nouns ie names

that have come to b e used as verbs As an example of this class in the dictionary

see Payasya in a where Nom is the abbreviation for Nominal Verb Note

Nominal is the adjectival form of noun and here means derived from a noun

The immediate utility of this page is that it connects the dictionary classication

eg cl with that used in the Index ie Bvaa

Note that this publication makes use of alternate character forms to those wehave

b een using in this course see section A and since the page numb ers are also in

devanagar note the numeral forms used esp ecially for and

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

The Text Bo dy

Turn to the rst page of the b o dy of the DhatuPat ha after the heading the rest

of the page and subsequent pages are divided into two columns In the lefthand

column the rst entry is

BUa saaayaama

This is the rst dhatu bhu together with its artha or meaning sattayam

Following this are a few lines of technical information whichmay b e ignored and

the next entry is

x

ODa vad Ea

and so on Note the layout whichgives the dhatu and artha in two columns there

may b e more than one dhatu in the rst column and the artha may spread over

more than one line For example a little lower down is the entry

x x

naaTa naaDa yaaaeapataapE aayaRa

YYZaaH Sua

giving b oth dhatu the same artha

In the DhatuPatha each dhatu usually has an extra syllable app ended to the end

of it and sometimes one app ended b efore it for example the ab ove four app ear in

the dictionary as BUa ODa naaTa and naaDa These extra syllables are called anubandha

lit b ound along with and enco de further grammatical information which is not

now required our interest at this stage is in the basic dhatu and its artha

The artha is generally expressed in saptam vibhaktiwhichmay b e translated

as in the sense of For example the dhatu edh to prosp er increase b ecome

happygrow strong mwc is used in the sense of vrddhi growth success

fortune etc mwa Thus all words derived from this dhatu havethissense

of expansive go o d fortune a sense that maybeoverlo oked in some of the English

words oered in translation

Where the artha is a single word the ek avacana form is used when twowords

formed into a samasa the dvivacana form and when three or more words the

bahuvacana form When the artha has two or more words the comp ound formed

is an itaretara dvandva samasa see B forming a simple list of words which

not comp ounded would b e expressed in the same vibhakti and b e joined together

with ca and In this typ e of samasa only the last word of the comp ound takes a

vibhakti ending the others remain in their pratipadika form

Lesson

Togetback to the pratipadika form as listed in the dictionary use the following

a ekavacana endings have six forms

for an ending in e read a

for an ending in ayam read a

for an ending in yam read i

for an ending in au read i

for an ending in i remove i ie ends in halanta vyanjana

for an ending in uvi read u

b dvivacana samasa end in yohwhich is removed

c bahuvacana samasa end in su

for those ending in esu read a

in other cases simply remove the su

will generally not b e found in the dictionary as The itaretara dvandva samasa

one would exp ect to nd a samasa listed instead the words will need to b e lo oked

up separately This is straightforward enough simply start at the left and nd the

word in the dictionary that uses most syllables assume that is the rst word and

then rep eat the pro cess with the following syllables but do remember that sandhi

rules apply at the junction of words

Some entries in the DhatuPatha dier from the common format of dhatu and

artha illustrated ab ove For example when the artha is given as two separate

words b oth in saptam vibhakti then the rst of the pair is a visesana The last

entry on the rst page is of this typ e

had Avyae Zabde

Here the dhatu hrad to delight or refresh mwc is used in the sense

of unmanifest avyakta mwb sound sab da mwb The qualityof

happiness and refreshment referred to is thus that which comes from within from

the stillness of unmanifest sound and not that happiness and refreshment that

comes from without ie through the senses here wehave a subtlety of meaning

that is not at all obvious from the English translation

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

The interpretation of other variations in the format is describ ed

a When the dhatu is followed by ca and also then this has

the same artha as the previous dhatu

b When the artha is given as a word followed by ca then the

artha for that dhatu is that word together with the artha of

the previous dhatu

c When the artha is followed by naeacyatea it means that this artha

is not given elsewhere in the DhatuPatha

naeacyatea naocyatea not sp oken ie not mentioned elsewhere

d When the artha is followed Ityeake IataOke thus in one

or Ityany ea IataAnyea thus in another this refers to artha

given in dierentversions of the DhatuPatha as handed down

and are comments by the compiler of this edition

e Where the artha is given as a samasa ending in ATaRaH

prathama bahuvacana of ATRa bahuvacana b ecause

the artha applies to several dhatu then ATaRaH maybe

translated as for the purp ose of ie expressing motive

For example dhatu k Ta has the artha ahM saaTaRaH ahM saa

injuryharmmwc and may b e construed as for the sake

of causing injury or with the aim of harming

f Some entries hav eanunusual format enclosed by purnavirama

and mayhave the order of dhatu and artha reversed these

dhatu have a sp ecial meaning when they are amata causatives

treated as having an Ita ma which prevents the normal

lengthening of A in the causative

The Index

In the b o dy of the DhatuPat ha the dhatu are group ed together according to

common grammatical features of their developmentinto words This ordering is not

at all helpful in seeking the entry for the dhatuFortunately the DhatuPatha

includes an index listing the dhatu in alphab etical order and indicating where each

dhatu is listed in the b o dy The index also provides more grammatical information

some of which is helpful in nding the correct dhatu

Lesson

The index starts on page each page is divided into two columns so that a dhatu

together with its grammatical information is listed on one line in fact one rowof

tabulated data six columns wide These columns from left to right provide the

following information

a The dhatu together with its anubandha the index is ordered

alphab etically according to this column

b The gana to whichthedhatu b elongs this column has just the

rst syllable of the gan a whichisshown in full on the contents

page

c The bhasa sp eech synonymous with pada used in this

course whichmaybe atmanebhasa parasmaibhas aor

ubhayatobhas a b oth ie atmane and parasmai

d Whether the dhatu is seaf saIf accepts augment I in its

expansion or Aanaf AnaIf do es not do so this maybe

ignored at this stage

e The page number on whichthedhatu together with its artha

may b e found

f The column on that page where it may b e found

The rst entry of the index shows that the dhatu Ak with its anubandha

b elongs to BvaaadgaNa is pasmEaBaaSaaandmay b e found on page column as

Ak Aga ku aflayaMa gataEa

Note that the index has twoentries for dhatu Ak with dierent anubandha

vowels ie Ak and Aak whereas the dictionary lists only one dhatu Ak

Where the dhatu has more than one entry in the index do make use of the

information given in the dictionary immediately after the dhatu heading word

this information giv es the class ganaandbhasa of the dhatu see b and

c ab ove for example cl A means class bhvadigan aandatmane

bhas a cl P means divadigan a parasmaibhas a etc the table of contents

in the DhatuPatha gives the order of the gana Where the dictionary gives b oth

bhas aasP A this is the equivalentofubhayatobhas a in the DhatuPatha

At the end of the index on page is an Addendum listing entries that had b een omitted from the main index

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Dhatu Sp elling Changes

The sp elling of the dhatu may dier from that given in the dictionary

a An initial sa may b e sp elt here with an initial Sa

p p

w

Eg sUaa asava listed as aSavua opaanaSad sad as Sad

b An initial na may b e sp elt here with an initial Na

p p

Eg naad nad listed as Nad naal naal as Naal

c When the dhatu has a nal I as an anubandhaitmay require

the insertion of a nasal after the vowel of the dhatu

p p

Eg Aanand nand listedasfu naad muaNqk muaNq as muaaq

p

anand which is listed These sp elling changes mayalsobecombined as in ananda

in the DhatuPatha as aNaad

Those seeking the technical reasons b ehind these changes should consult the

commentaries to Pan ini and resp ectively

Illustrations of DhatuPat ha Use

The dhatu for eachword of the previous exercise of Dictionary Practice section

will b e used as a practical demonstration in the use of the DhatuPatha the

dhatu is lo cated in the index then its artha found in the b o dy and nally the

artha is examined in the dictionary

p

mw a Baa bh cl P to fear b e afraid of

DhP Index aVa Baa jua pa A

DhP Bo dy aVaBaa Bayea

p

mwa Baya bhaya n bh fear alarm dread

Notes This dhatu has its anubandha syllable placed in front of it in the

index this is enclosed in square brackets so that the dhatu Baa may b e found

in alphab etical order The class juhotyadigan aand bhasa agree with the

information provided in the dictionarysothedhatu entry aVaBaa is soughtin

the DhatuPat ha b o dy in the rst column of page it is the second entry

The notes in section may b e used to remove the vibhakti from the artha

ord in its although this declension should b e familiar and the remaining w

pratipadika form is lo oked up in the dictionary Inthiscasethegiven artha

is itself derived from the dhatu b eing examined and thus provides no further

insightinto the sense of the dhatu thanthatprovided by the dictionary entry

Lesson

p

X

mwa pa pr cl P toll to satecherish nourish

X

DhP Index pak aa pa sea

X

DhPBody pa paalnapUaNayaeaH

mwa Palana mfn guarding nourishing n the act of guarding

protecting nourishing defending

mwa Puran a mfn lling completing satisfying m completer

n the act of lling or lling up

X

Notes The index has three entries for dhatu pa so the class kryadigana

and bhas a information from the dictionary is used to select the correct one

column of The dhatu with its artha are in fact at the top of the second

page there are a numb er of such errors so b eware The vibhakti ending

of the artha is the dvivacana form see section so we can exp ect to

lo ok up twowords in the dictionary As nouns which is the sense here b oth

words end in na with or without sandhi changes this is a common neuter

sux usually meaning the act of and is given as such in the dictionary

translation

The artha palana adds the sense of nourishing to the lling up of puran a

which itself derives from the dhatu pr This gives a b enecial asp ect to the

dhatu it is not to ll to the p oint of bloatedness nor is it to ll with rubbish

but the sense is of generous abundance

p

mwa hri cl PA to take b ear carry

DhP Index Va Bvaa o A

DhPBody Va hNea

mwa Harana mfaorn carrying holding containing n the act of

carrying or bringing or fetching

Notes The gan a and bhasa are used to select the dhatu entry

p

mwb kpa kamp clA to tremble shake

DhP Index kapa Bvaa Aa sea

DhPBody kapa calnea

mwb Calana mfan moving movable tremulous n shaking motion

shaking trembling

Notes If the dhatu is not found at its exp ected place in the alphab etical order

in the index nor in the Addendum then check for applicable dhatu sp elling

changes see section the third rule applies here

p

a mwb acata cit cl to p erceive x the mid up on attend to

DhP Index acataa Bvaa pa sea

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

DhP Bo dy acataa saVaanea

mwc Samjn ana mfn pro ducing harmony n unanimity harmony

with consciousness right p erception

Notes Again the gana is used to select the entry in the index

Observe the asp ect of harmony and unityprovided bytheartha there is no

passion or ulterior motive in the p erception or attention of the dhatu cit

p

x

b mwc k kri cl P to do make p erform accomplish

x

DhP Index qu kVata o A

x

DhP Bo dy qu kVa kNea

mwa Karana mfan doing making eecting causing m a help er

companion n the act of making doing pro ducing eecting

Notes The dictionary entry for this dhatu is quite lengthy reading through

the rst column of page it also giv es cl P and cl P as well as cl

this is the usual formation in the Brahmanas Sutras and in classical Sanskrit

x

The DhatuPatha do es not list a class dhatu k hence the return to

the dictionary for more information In practice the cl dhatu should also

b e examined but its artha ahM saayaama meaning in the sense of injury is

inappropriate to the original word that led us to the dhatu in the rst place

p

c mwb avad vid cl P to know understand p erceive learn

DhP Index avad A pa sea

DhP Bo dy avad aanea

mwa Jnana n knowing b ecoming acquainted with knowledge

Notes The gana and bhasa given in the dictionary are used to cho ose among

the veentries in the index for dhatu avad

p

mwa mana man cl A to think b elieve imagine

DhP Index mana ad Aa A and manuata Aa sea

DhP Bo dy mana aanea and manua AvabaeaDanea

mwa Jnana n knowing b ecoming acquainted with knowledge

mwb Avab o dhana n informing teaching instruction

Notes Since the dictionary gives two classes for this dhatu and b oth are

listed in the index the artha for b oth need to b e examined In fact given

the original word that led to the dhatuandwhichwas to do with pride b oth

artha seem applicable one to the opinion held in the mind and the other to

the expression of that opinion in word or deed thus informing others

Lesson

Study of the Scriptures

Since most scriptures are available in translation it would b e a p ointless exercise to

apply the dictionary and DhatuPatha to merely conrm the translation in fact

all translations are signicantly awed bytwo factors the rst is the translators

level of understanding of the sub ject in resp ect of the scriptures that means spiritual

understanding and his ability to express that understanding in another language

secondly the student the reader of the translation has his own limited asso ciatio ns

with the words in his native tongue These sources of error and misunderstanding are

minimized by studying the scriptures in the original language and through tracing

the etymology of eachword to its nest most universal source therebyovercoming

the limitations that the individual has with particular words and ideas

The translations are helpful in selecting a passage for study and to conrm that the

correct word is b eing traced through the dictionary After this preparatory work

with the dictionary and DhatuPatha the passage is considered in relation to the

section of scripture in which it o ccurs in relation to the scripture as a whole in

relation to the entire Veda the mind is thus turned towards the spiritual world

and slowly trained to view all of life in terms of that spiritual world It do es take

practice b efore realising that the scriptural texts can only b e understo o d through

contemplation and meditation

As an illustration of this metho d of study let us examine a verse from the Bhagavad

Gta Chapter Verse is selected simply b ecause it has some words and concepts

as resp onse to Arjunas intro duced in this course It is an extract from SrKrsn

asking for details of His Glory and p owers the rst line of the verse is

AaaNaamakaea YasmadndH saamaaasakya ca

Of letters I am the letter A I am the copulativeofcompoundwords

At rst glance this statement do es not app ear to b e at all profound or have

any spiritual asso ciations whatso ever but nonetheless we pursue it through the

dictionary and DhatuPatha to see what may b e discovered

Removing the sandhi from this line wehave

AaaNaama Aka H Aasma dndH saamaaasakya ca

AaaNaama sasthbahuvacana of Aa

wel sound word mwb Aa akshara mfn imp erishable n a syllable letter vo

mwa A a a prex having a negative or privativeorcontrary sense

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

mwa Ksara mfn melting away p erishable m a cloud n water the b o dy

p

mwa a ksar cl Ptoow stream glide to melt awaywane p erish

DhP a Bvaa pa sea a sa alnea

mwa Samcalana n moving ab out agitation trembling shaking

Aka H prathamaekavacana of Aka

mwa A kara m the letter or sound a see b eginning of Lesson A

p

mwb ka kara mfn kri making doing working m ifc an act

action the term used in designating a letter or sound or indeclinable word

p

x

i cl P to do make p erform accomplish mwc k kr

x x

DhPqu kVata o A qu kVakNea

mwa Karana mfn doing making eecting causing m a help er com

panion n the act of making doing pro ducing eecting

p

Aasma ekavacana uttamapurusalatpresent indicative of as I am

p

mwa Asa as cl P to b e live exist b e present

DhP Asa A pa sea Asa Buaava

mwc Bhu mfn b ecoming b eing existing f the act of b ecoming or arising

the place of b eing space world or universe

dndH prathamaekavacana of dnd

mwb dM d n a couple male and female m a copulative comp ound or any

comp ound in which the memb ers if uncomp ounded would b e in the same case and

connected by the conjunction and

mwb d original stem of dvi

mwc ad two

saamaaasakya sasthekavacana of saamaaasak

mwb saamaaasak mfn from samasa comprehensive concise succinct

brief relating to or b elonging to a comp ound word m or n a comp ound word

Bhag

mwa sama sam ind connected with sa and sama with together with

along with altogether

mwa sama sama mfan even smo oth same equal similar like equivalent

liketooridentical or homogeneous with

sa ind expressing junction conjunction similarity equality mwb sa

having the same

mwc Asa m seat

p

mwc Aasa as to sit quietly abide remain

DhP Aasa A Aa sea Aasa opaveaZanea

Lesson

mwa Upavesana n the act of sitting down a seat the b eing devoted to or

engaged in

ca avyaya ca

mwa ca ca ind and b oth also moreover as well as

Reections The following p ersonal reections are oered as illustrativeofthis

pro cess of study they are neither right nor wrong neither go o d nor bad they

are simply what were presented to the mind in considering the passage

In all languages the rst letter of the alphab et is A The primacy of its p osition

at the head of the alphab et reects its role as the source of the whole alphab et

In Sanskrit this is easy to demonstrate the gure given in A summarizes the

core role of A in forming all the vowels and from the ve mouth p ositions of these

vowels are derived all the consonants All words are formed from sound and all

sounds are derived from A they are all but a mo died form of that A whichis

their source and supp ort

In resp onding to Arjunas question Krsna gives many examples of b eing the

foremost of several classes and here the illustration is b eing the A of letters Here

the allusion is also to Consciousness as b eing the underlying Source and Supp ort of

p

the manifest creation asa bhuvi in this world

The sounds of the alphab et are imp erishable aksara they may b e manifest they

maychange they may b e unmanifest but are not sub ject to absolute destruction

If the sounds of the alphab et are imp erishable how then do es one describ e their

source and supp ort the everpresent A This may b e understo o d as referring to

the immutable Consciousness underlying the whole creation

The mark of the dvandvasamasa is that there is an equalitybetween the

joined elements and each retain its individuality see B Giving this as the

foremost of the samasa where there is no dierence in imp ortance b etween the

elements places the emphasis on that which links them together By analogy it

is Consciousness that underlies the everchanging variety of creation holding it all

together as one yet allowing the elements to retain their individuali ty

By way of illustration the attention at the moment is on the words on this page

on their signicance and meaning But what of the letters which form the words

Or the ink that forms the letters And what ab out the pap er that holds the ink in

place The plain white pap er which is taken for granted is like Consciousness and

all the words which are deemed imp ortantandinteresting are like creation

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Study Practice

As a practice in using the dictionary and DhatuPatha in studying the scriptures

the other half of this verse from the Bhagavad Gta is oered together with its

grammatical division down to the pratipadika level

Examine eachword in the dictionary tracing it to its dhatu where p ossible then

nd the artha in the DhatuPatha and examine those words in the dictionary

Having done this mechanical work consider the passage in a universal or spiritual

sense and write down what is presented to the mind There are no right or wrong

answers here so do not lo ok for clever results the exercise is one of stretching the

mind to larger issues than those that daily life normally oers There is no rush

with this part of the exercise let the scripture come to mind over a p erio d of a week

or so and then write down your understanding in clear readable English As with

all exercise a little p erformed regularly has the greatest b enet in the long term

AhmeavaaayaH kalea DaataahM avaataeamuaKaH

Iamverily Time inexhaustible I am the Disp enser facing everywhere

Removing the sandhi from this line wehave

Ahm a Ova AayaH kal H Daataa AhmaavaataeamuaKaH

Ahma prathamaekavacana of p ersonal pronoun I

Ova avyaya verily indeed

AayaH prathamaekavacana of aksaya inexhaustible

kal H prathamaekavacana of kal time

Note from the information given in the dictionary it is not p ossible to select which

of the entries in the DhatuPatha index is the correct one one needs to examine

the artha for the three p ossibiliti es and compare that with the meaning given in

the dictionaryThelastentry is the most appropriate

Daataa prathamaekavacana of dhatr disp enser

avaataeamuaKaH prathamaekavacana of visvatomukha facing everywhere

Note the verb Aasma used in the rst line of this verse is implied here

Suggestions for Further Study

There are many reasons for studying Sanskrit from comparative linguistics to

lib eration from p o etry to philosophy from simple chanting to mythology Whatever

the reason the next obvious step is further study of the grammar

A p ersonal bias needs to b e declared here myinterest in Sanskrit lies in studying

the scriptures therefore translating from English into Sanskrit is irrelevant and the

building of a vo cabulary detracts from the p enetration of the scriptures b ecause

of the limited worldly asso ciations with familiar words Furthermore the range of

grammar needs to b e very wide from the full etymology of eachword including

the signicance of each ax to the gurative use in the most sublime writings

There are a wide range of b o oks on Sanskrit grammar available ranging from the

intro ductory level to academic tomes the ma jority of these approach the sub ject

as they would any other foreign language ie with a view to translation rather

than treating the study as a means to p enetrate writings which express ideas and

concepts foreign to the Western mindset

Despite the ab ove qualications the general reader will nd the rst ve b o oks in

the list useful to further study of the grammar

a The BhagavadGita translated by Winthrop Sargeant SUNY pages

pap erback

The Gta is written with simple and straightforward grammar which together

with its magnicent philosophyandwealth of practical advice makes it an ideal

work with which to b egin This translation is esp ecially suited to the Sanskrit

student as it expresses the grammar of the text as well as giving a wordbyword

translation

b Sanskrit Manual A Quickreference Guide to the Phonology and Grammar

of Classical Sanskrit George S Bucknell Motilal Banarsidass pages

hardcover

As the title implies it is a reference w ork containing many tables of noun

declension and verb conjugation with indices linking noun and verbendings

and verb stems to the paradigm tables A useful to ol to determine the

pratipadika forms of nouns tense etc of verbs from inected words

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

c TeachYourself Sanskrit Michael Coulson Ho dder and Stoughton pages

pap erback

This covers the grammar of Classical Sanskrit in some detail Eachchapter has

translation exercises into and out of Sanskrit with answers given at the backof

the b o ok As a parttime student studying alone this is a hard b o ok b ecause

of its style depth and large vo cabulary It is useful as a semireference b o ok

when examining a particular concept in depth the next two b o oks are a lot

easier for general study

d Devavanpravesika An Intro duction to the Sanskrit Languge Rob ert PGold

man and Sally J Sutherland pages pap erback

Divided into twentytwo lessons each sub divided into several topics this

universityentrylevel textb o ok gives a broad understanding of the language

without getting b ogged down in details and exceptions Each lesson has

translation exercises in b oth directions but answers are not provided

e Sam skrtasub o dhini A Sanskrit Primer Madhav M Deshpande pages

pap erback

A university textb o ok similar in level and structure to the previous one while

neither of these b o oks are designed for selfstudy to the selfmotivated student

they can provide a wide grasp of Sanskrit as a language

f LaghukaumudofVaradaraja translated by James R Ballantyne Motilal

Banarsidass pages hardcover or pap erback

This contains approximately one third of the sutra sof Panini s As tadhyay

gathered together thematically to exhaustively explain word formations in

Classical Sanskrit the text and commentary are in devanagar with English

translation This is an exacting workandnottobetackled lightlybutis

essential study to p enetrate to the full spiritual signicance of words

For further scriptural study the Bhagavad GtawithSam karas commentary in

translation by AMSastry is published by Samata Bo oks the ma jor Upanis ads

are published with wordbyword translations of Swam Sarvananda etc bySri

Ramakrishna Math or with Sam karas commentary by Advaita Ashrama Eight

Principal Upanis ads and Chhandogya bySwamGambh rananda Brhadaran yaka

by SwamMadhavananda

Answers to Exercises

Answers Lesson

Bd You stand and I sp eak I stand and he sp eaks

He stands and you sp eak You sp eak and I stand

I sp eak and you stand I stand and sp eak

Be tis thati vadami ca vadasi tis thati ca

tis thasi vadati ca tisthami vadati ca

vadasi tisthami ca vadami tisthasi ca

Answers Lesson

Bc They pl stand and they two sp eak

You two stand and wetwo sp eak

We pl sp eak and they two stand

You s stand and you two sp eak

You pl stand and you two sp eak

They two sp eak and we pl stand

He stands and they pl sp eak

You s stand and wetwo sp eak

Bd tisthavah vadatha ca

vadathah tisthanti ca

tisthathah vadathah ca

tisthanti vadami ca

tisthati vadatha ca

vadatah tisthati ca

tisthamah vadathah ca

vadatha tisthasi ca

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Answers Lesson

Bc The horse leads the man

The man and horses two are standing

The horses two lead the man to the trees pl

The horse stands and the man sp eaks

The man and the horse are leading

We pl lead the men two to the trees pl

Bd narah asvam nayate

asvau naram nayete

narah vadanti nayante ca

asvah naram vrksam nayate

vrksah asvah ca tis thatah

narah asvan nayante

Answers Lesson

Bd The horse carries the man to the tree

The man go es to the tree by horse

You pl take the trees pl from the horse

The horse carries the tree for the man

The man and the horse go from the tree

He leads the horse from the tree for the man

Be asv ena gacchati

asvam narayanayethe

vrksan asvaih vahanti

asvan vrksat gacchamah

vrksam narat asvena labhavahe

asvah naram vrksebhyah vahanti

Answers to Exercises

Answers Lesson

Bd O man you are standing on the horse

The horses pl of the men pl are standing

The man takes the tree from the horse

The mans horses pl are standing among the trees pl

The horses two carry the trees pl for the man

He takes the man from the tree by horse

The horse go es to the man from the tree

He stands on the horse and sp eaks

Be asvayoh tisthati

vrksesu narah asvah ca tis thatah

narayoh vrksah tisthanti

narasyaasvah naram vrksebhyah vahati

asvau naram vrksam vahatah

he a svavrksam narayavahasi

narasyaasvan vrksat labhate

naram asvam vrksat vahathah

Answers Lesson

Bc The girl leads the horse to the tree for fruit

The horse carries the man and the girl to the tree

The mans horse takes the fruit from the girl

The men two take the fruit pl of the trees pl to the horse

The girls pl lead the men pl to the fruit pl by horse

The girls two stand among the trees and sp eak

I go to the trees two and take the fruit pl

The man carries the fruit two from the tree for the girl

The girls two take the fruit pl from the mans tree The girl and the man carry the tree to the horse

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Bd narah tisthati ca balavadati

asvam nayethe ca phalam labhe

narah balacavrksesuasvabhyam gacchatah assume two horses

naram balam ca asvam vrksat labhavahe

narah vrksan asvena phalebhyah gacchati

bala phale vrksat asvebhyah labhate

alam narayavahati asvah vrksam b

narah asvam phalena nayate

asvah phalani balah narayavahati

bale asve tis thatah ca phalam vrksat labhete

Answers Lesson

Be balam vrksat narasyaasvam vahavah

narah bala ca tis thatah vadatah ca

asvah vrksasya phale balabhyah labhate

b alayah asvah phalani narayavahati

narah vrksasyaphalambalayai labhante

narasyabalaasvan vrksan nayate

Bf Wetwo carry the girl from the tree to the mans horse

The man and the girl stand and talk

The horse takes the trees fruit two fromfor the girls pl

The girls horse carries the fruit pl for the man

The man takes the fruit s of the tree for the girl

The mans girl leads the horses pl to the trees pl

Bg phalani vrksat asvena vahatha

balayah asvau phalani naram labhete

asvam vrksasya phalani nayethe

narah vrksam a svat balayai labhate

balaasvah ca vrksesu phalebhyah gacchatah

asvah vrksan narebhyah vahanti

Answers to Exercises

x

Bh Plaana vaaataAeana vahTa

baalayaaH AaEa Plaana namalBeatea

x

Aamavaaya Plaana nayeaTea

x

na H vaamaAaata baalayEa lBatea

x

baala AaH ca vaeaSua Ple ByaH gacCtaH

x

AaH vaaana nae ByaH vahanta

Answers Lesson

Bc bala agnim sundarat narat gacchati

narah alpam vrksam b alam agnayesghram labhate

sundarbala alpam asvam nadm nayate

narau sundaran i phalani alpat vrksat labhete

guravah alpam sundaram asvam nadyau nayante

alpah vrksah sundare agnau tis thati

Bd The girl go es to the re from the handsome man

The man quickly takes the small tree to the girl for re

The b eautiful girl leads the small horse to the river

The men two take the b eautiful fruit from the small tree

The teachers pl lead the small b eautiful horse to the rivers two

The small tree stands in the b eautiful re

Be narasya guruh nadm asvena gacchati

bala alpam phalam narasya gurum vahati

ayam nadyam tis thati balayah guruh alp

guroh bala sundare asvetisthati

sundarbala naram alpam gurum sghram nayate

guruh alpasyavrksasya sundares u phales u tisthati

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Bf naya gua H nad amaAeana gacCata

baala Apama Plma naya guama vahata

baalayaaHgua H Apaayaama nadaam aataata

guaeaH baala suande Aeaataata

suand a baala nama ApamaguamaZaaGrama nayatea

x

gua H Apaya vaaya suande Sua Ple Suaataata

Answers Lesson

Bc narah phalani labhate iti bale vadatah

he guro bale nayase iti alpah narah vadati

asvah vrksasya phalani balayai vahati

phalam vrksayat asvena narayavahatah

vrksam alpau agnasvaih sghram vahami

nad alpam vrksam sundarm balam vahati

Bd The man is taking the fruit pl the girls two say

O teacher you are leading the two girls the small man says

The horse carries the fruit pl of the tree for the girl

They two carry the fruit s from the tree by horse for the man

I quickly carry the tree to the small res two by horse pl

The river carries the small tree to the b eautiful girl

a gurum vadati Be phalani asvam labhe iti bal

vrksam nadm vahami iti narah balam vadati

balayah phale naram sghram labhadhve

phalani balayah vrksat labhavahe

narah bala ca sundaram gurum nadyagacchatah

sundarbalaasvam alpan vrksan phalebhyah nayate

Answers to Exercises

Bf Plaana Aama lBeaIata baala guamavadata

x

vaama nad ama vahaama Iata na H baalama vadata

baalayaaH Ple namaZaaGrama lBaDvea

x

Plaana baalayaaHvaaata lBaavahe

na H baala ca suandmaguama nadaa gacCtaH

x

suand a baala Aama Apaanavaaana Ple ByaH nayatea

Answers Lesson

vyana de vyaanand

satyaanand avaSNa Aaya

saaDvaaZa pamaatmana

ktRXaka neaata

AEava apaaanand

Bvaaad paavak H

AanandE tad maDvaacaayRa

kpaand mahe nd

mahaSRa or mahaSa kaRanand

he YTa ke yama

x

Zaantyamatama nEava

nad aZa aZavaEadnama

mahe a guaveRaktvama

maayEava pame aa

htea Yata pratyeakma

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Answers Lesson

x

naavapMavaamaagnamaaadhtaH

The men two carry the small tree to the re from the horse

x

baalaMa naM ca vaaaBatea

The girl takes the horse and the man from the tree

PlanyaMa vahtaaata guabaRala vadata

I carry the fruit pl to the horse the teacher says to the girls pl

x

gua ApManaM vaaayaacC aGrMa gacCtaH see Ab

The teachers two go quickly to the small man from the tree

x

naeavaamaagnMa baalayaa Aeana vahata

The man carries the tree to the re for the girl by horse

x

baalaamapaManad Mavaaaayatea

The girl leads the horse to the small river from the tree

x

naave aaanPle Byaea Yeana gacCata

The man go es to the trees pl for fruit pl by horse

guaagnMa naa cCtaatyapaa baala vadata

The teacher is going to the re from the man the small girl says

cCtaH baalapaeaYa aaagnMa naa

The girl and the small horse go to the re from the man

x

ApeaByaH Ple ByaH suande SuavaeaSua gacCavaH no sandhi

Wetwo are going among the b eautiful trees for small fruit pl

Answers Lesson

The words are given in the form found in the dictionary

Aatmana a brana c puaSa a

Hetu c gua b Manas c

yaeaga b Ra jas b Za a c

Prakriti a Citta c Bhakti a

Jnana a aSa c Ananta a

x

Ananda c avaSNua a kSNa b

Vyakarana c hridaya c or Krishna a

Answers to Exercises

Answers Lesson

Anvaya vyatireka b Mano bhava sasana b

lGua sattva ta b Viveka c

Vivaha kala b Samyoga b

Samskrita c Dhyana yoga a

kal yuga a Adhyaropa b

Mud ha b Sraddhatri c

Samgama man i c Hiran ya garbha c

Kshatriya dharma b p UavRa paksha pada c

baal rupa dhrik b Mleccha jati c

Bhagavad gta a Agrihta a

Answers Lesson

mwc ABaya abhayamfan n absence or removal of fear

mwa A a having a negative or privativeorcontrary sense

p

mwa Baya bhaya n bh fear alarm dread

mwa Baa bh cl P to fear b e afraid of

mwa Purn a mfn n fulness plenty abundance

p

mwa pUa pura pr Caus

X

mwa pa pr cl P to ll to sate cherish nourish

mwb Pratyahara m drawing back abstraction

p

mwb prayaa pratya hri P harati to withdraw

mwc Praty in comp b efore vowels for prati ab ove

mwb praata prati ind as a prex towards back

mwa Aa a as a prex near near to towards

mwa hri cl PAharati to take b ear carry

Note It is not the second dhatu b ecause of its meaning in translation

this is conrmed by the conjugational form harati giv en at b

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

mwc Acapalya am n freedom from unsteadiness

mwa A a having a negative or privative or contrary sense

mwa Capalya n agitation unsteadiness ckleness

o

mwa caapal capala n from cap mobility unsteadiness

p

mwb capal capalamfan kamp shaking trembling

mwb kpa kamp cl A to tremble shake

o

mwb Citrakarman rmavid mfn skilled in the art of

painting

Note See B on page if the pratipadika ends in an

then the n is dropp ed

mwb Citrakarman n any extraordinary act painting

mwa Citra mfan conspicuous excellent distinguished

mwb acata cit cl to p erceive x the mind up on attend to

p

mwb kmRana karman a n kri act action p erformance

x

mwc k kri clP to do make p erform accomplish

x

Note It is not the second dhatu k on a b ecause its meaning given

in translation is not appropriate to that given for karman

mwc Vid mfn knowing understanding a knower

mwb avad vid cl Ptoknow understand p erceive learn

Note This has a more appropriate meaning than Vid on page a

or its dhatu avad vid on c

o

mwb Naa ti manin nita f Bhag

Naa ti manin mfn not to o proud or arrogant

Na a ti for na ati not very much not to o

mwa na na ind not no nor neither

mwb Ati prex excessive extraordinaryintense to o

mwb maaanak manika manitamanin See p cols and

mwb Mani ta f ifc fancying that one p ossesses imaginary

Mani in comp for manin

p

mwc Manin mfn fr man or fr mana haughty proud

p

mwa maana manam man opinion selfconceit pride

mwa mana man cl A to think b elieve imagine

Answers to Exercises

Answers Lesson

mwb Ahma nom sg I

mwb Ova ind just so indeed truly really

mwb Aaya akshaya mfan exempt from decay undecaying

mwa A a having a negative or privativeorcontrary sense

mwa kshaya m loss waste wane dimunition destruction decay

p

mwa aa kshi cl P to destroy corrupt ruin kill injure

DhP aa Bvaa pa A aa ayea

p

mwa kal kala m kal to calculate or enumerate time in general

p

mwa kl kal P rarely A to imp el incite urge on

Note Of the four entries for kl the rst may b e eliminated b ecause it is

atmanepada and for the others the artha must b e examined The last is selected

as b eing most suited to the dhatu meaning given in the original word kal

DhP kl cua pa sea kl eapea

DhP kl cua o sea kl Aavaadnea

DhP kl cua o sea kl gataEa sa aanea ca

mwa Kshep e mathrow cast moving to and fro sending dismissing

delay pro crastination insult invective abuse

mwa Asvadana n the act of eating tasting enjoying

mwa Gati f going moving gait movement in general

mwb Sam khyana n b ecoming seen app earance reckoning enumeration

calculation measurement

mwa Dhatri m establisher founder creator b earer supp orter arranger

p

mwb Daa dha cl PA to put place set direct or x the mind or attention

up on app oint establish constitute to make pro duce generate create cause

o A qu DaaVa DaaNapaeaSaNayaeaH DhPqu DaaVajua

mwa Dharan a mfn holding b earing keeping preserving maintaining

n the act of holding b earing immovable concentration of the mind up on

mwb paeaSa na mfn nourishing n the act of nourishing keeping supp orting

mwc Visv atomukha in comp for visvatas mfn facing all sides one whose

face is turned everywhere

mwc Visv atas ind from or on all sides everywhere all round universally

p

vis to p ervade all everyeveryone mwb avaa mfan probably from

whole entire universal allp ervading allcontainin g omnipresent

p

mwa avaZa vis cl Ptoenter p ervade to b e absorb ed in

DhP avaZa tua pa A avaZa praveaZanea

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

mwc Pravesana n entering entrance or p enetration into

mwc muaKa mukha n the mouth face countenance op ening ap erture

entrance into or egress out of

IntheWest time is viewed linearly as b eginning in some remote past Reections

and continuing to some unimaginable future in the East however time is viewed

cyclically the cycle of day and night the phases of the mo on the rotation of the

seasons the cycle of birth and death and so on up to cycles lasting billions of years

That Time is indestructible is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that these

cycles keep on tirelessly rep eating

In daily life time is viewed as a sub division of some convenient cycle eg time of

day or as a multiple of cycles eg years this is the measurementorreckoning

asp ect Time is inextricably linked with movement if there was no movement there

would b e no time for time is a measure of the change of p osition or state relative

to some more durable constant

In one sense time can b e viewed as an eect of movement as a measure of the

movement in another sense time can b e viewed as the cause of movement as the

underlying constant relativetowhichmovementtakes place In the light of the

Vedic teaching the latter view would b e more appropriate thus here Krsna

represents the Absolute Unmoving Consciousness within which all movement takes

place

In the second half of the line Providence may b e a b etter word to use than

Disp enser the latter has a sense of purp osive action ie seeking a result whilst

the former is more an imp ersonal principle This is more in k eeping with the artha

of the dhatu as nourishing supp orting rather than the active role of creator

arranger given for dhatr and more appropriate to the universal asp ect implicit

in visvatomukha The allp ervading Consciousness thus provides the space

intelligence and fo o d for all b eings indeed It provides for their total sustenance

and nourishment even their very existence

Taking mukha in the sense of mouth it represents a twoway op ening through

which food enters and sp eech exits taking it in the sense of face it maybe

interpreted as symb olizing all senses Thus sarvatomukha could b e viewed as the

sum total of all senses b oth active and receptive through which all creation is

nourished and through which Consciousness Itself is nourished

Or again sarvatomukha could refer to Consciousness as the Witness and dhatr

to the manifest app earance of that Consciousness

English Grammatical Terms

On the assumption that the reader can sp eak correct English but is unfamiliar with

formal grammar the technical terms will not b e strictly dened but briey describ ed and

followed by illustrative examples where appropriate These terms are gathered together

thematically under three headings Sentence Elements Parts of Sp eech and Finite Verb

Forms and then followed by an alphab etical list of other common terms that do not t

under these headings

NB These notes are ab out English Grammar the grammar of Sanskrit is rather

dierent do not confuse the two The purp ose of these notes is to briey illustrate

the technical terms and concepts of English grammar whichmay b e used to demonstrate

similar or contrasting concepts in Sanskrit grammar

Sentence Elements

A sentence comprises one or more of ve elements each of whichmay comprise one or

more words

a Sub ject S in English grammar this is considered the main element or fo cus of the

sentence and the rest of the sentence the predicate is considered to b e a statement

ab out the sub ject It expresses the agentofanactiveverb For example

Jack and Jill S went up the hill predicate

b Verb V this expresses the activity of the sentence it agrees with the sub ject in

p erson and numb er It is the most essential word and every grammatically complete

sentence must have one explicitly stated even the sub ject may b e implied as in the

command Run For example The children S are playing V

c Ob ject There are twotyp es

i Direct Ob ject O expresses that which is directly acted up on by the verb

d

ii Indirect Ob ject O is the recipient or b eneciary of the activity

i

She S gave V the fo o d O to the dog O

d i

He S built V the dog O a kennel O

i d

d Complement This completes the sense expressed by the verb There are twotyp es

i Sub ject Complement C used with intransitiveverbs or transitiveverbs in

s

the passivevoice expressing an attribute of the sub ject

ii Ob ject Complement C used with transitiveverbs in the activevoice and

o

expressing an attribute of the direct ob ject of the sentence

Love S is V blind C The judge S set V the prisoner O free C

s d o

He S b ecame V a do ctor C They S elected V him O chairman C

s d o

e Adverbial A these express a wide range of meaning time place manner etc

related to the activity of the sentence as a whole Unlike the other elements there

may b e several of these in one simple sentence

Again A it S rained V steadily A all day A

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Parts of Sp eech

There are nine typ es of word called Parts of Sp eech These are

a Noun used to name a p erson or thing There are twotyp es

i Prop er nouns name a p erson place etc and are usually written with an initial

capital letter John and Mary wenttoLondon on Tuesday

ii Common nouns name general things b oth concrete and abstract

The love of money is the root of all evil

b Pronoun used instead of a noun to designate a p erson or thing without naming it

He kissed her when they met she enjoyed it

Note nouns and pronouns are categorized according to numb er gender and case

c Adjective qualies a noun or pronoun

The happy dog wagged its long tail at the familiar gure

d Article a name for the three adjectives a an the

A boygave an apple to the teacher

e Prep osition governs a following noun or pronoun expressing its relation to another

noun or pronoun or to the verb

As the sun rose in the East the girl stepp ed from the house into the garden

f Conjunction connects one word or phrase or sentence with another

Jack and Jill wanted to go but were detained

g Interjection an exclamation expressing emotion Alas Oh Ah Ahoy

h Adverb qualies a verb or adjective or another adverb

The very tall man sp oke quite softly

i Verb expresses the activity of the sentence

He built a house They dig a hole She was here

Finite Verb Forms

The activity of the sentence is expressed by the verb There are three typ es transitive

intransitive and auxiliary

a A verb taking an ob ject is called transitive the energy of the activity is transferred

to the ob ject as it were and one that do esnt is called intransitive Verbs are

typically one or the other but some may b e used either way

the drum I live The children are playing a game He beat

b The main verb may b e accompanied by one or more auxiliary verbs used to express

tense or mo o d

I had slept I wil l sleep I must have been sleeping

c The verb is the dynamic part of the sentence animating the relatively static nouns

etc As such it is the most exible of the parts and app ears in a wide variety of forms

to express its manifold p otential Among these are

English Grammatical Terms

i Person the verb form indicating the grammatical p erson rst second third of

the sub ject of the sentence

I am here You are there He is everywhere

ii Number the verb form indicating the grammatical numb er singular plural of

the sub ject of the sentence

He stands here They stand there

Note the verb agrees with the grammatical sub ject in p erson and numb er

iii Tense the verb form indicating various times past present future at which

the action is p erceived as taking place

He stoodHestandsHewil l stand

iv Asp ect the verb form expressing the activity as

a Indenite the degree of completeness of the action is not sp ecied

b Continuous the action is not yet complete but still continuing

c Perfect the action is in a completed or p erfect state

d Perfect Continuous combining the force of the previous two

These four are shown in order in the past present and future resp ectively

He sto odHewas standingHehad stoodHehad been standing

He standsHeis standingHehas stoodHehas been standing

He wil l standHewil l be standingHewil l have stoodHewil l have been standing

v Mo o d the verb form indicating an emotional quality or manner of the activity

There are three basic mo o ds

a Indicative asserts a statement as a fact it may also express a condition or

question He standsIfhestands Did he stand

b Imp erative expresses a command advice or entreaty

Go Fol low the instruction of your teacher Help me

c Sub junctive expresses an action not as a fact but as a condition desire

or purp ose Were he here May you live long He eats that he may live

vi Voice the verb form indicating the relation of the sub ject to the activity as

a Activ e eg He opened the do or

b Passive eg The do or was opened by him

Continued overleaf

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

More Grammatical Terms

Ax averbal element joined to a word I op ened the do or when John rang the b ell

to form a new word for example heroine Compare with Complex Sentence

un happy See Prex Sux

Concord the agreementbetween words

in case numb er gender and p erson and in

Agent one who instigates or causes or

particular b etween the grammatical sub ject

p erforms the activity of the verb the role

and the verb Eg The window is op en

of the semantic sub ject of the sentence

The windowsare op en cii

Agreement see Concord

Conjugation thechange of form of verbs

App osition a noun or pronoun is in

to express tense mo o d etc

app osition with another when it refers

Declension the change of form of

to the same p erson or thing and is

nouns and pronouns to express dierent

mentioned immediately after it often oset

grammatical relations See Case

by commas to identify or describ e it Eg

John my neighbour called to see me I

Etymology the facts relating to the

sp oketomy neighbour John

formation and derivation of words the

exp ounding of the elements of a word with

Case one of the forms of a noun or

their mo dications of form and sense

pronoun which expresses its relation to

some other word and lo osely the relation

Exclamation See Interjection g

itself English uses two cases the unmarked

common case and the genitive case For

Finite Verb expresses the activityofa

just six pronouns the common case is

clause or sentence b i

split into sub jective and ob jective Ime

Gender in English nouns and pronouns

weus hehim sheher theythem and

express natural as opp osed to grammatical

whowhom

gender ie the masculine gender denotes

Clause a combination of words having a

amalefeminine denotes a female neuter

sub ject stated or implied and a predicate

denotes neither sex and common denotes

See also Comp ound and Complex Sentence

either or b oth Examples of this last are I

doctor committee

Complex Sentence a construction

having more than one clause one b eing the

Genitive a grammatical form of a noun or

main clause and the others sub ordinate

pronoun expressing its relation to another

clauses which form sentence elements of

word as source p ossessor etc The form

the main clause Eg Show S me O

usually manifests with an ap ostrophes

i

what O you S did VO Compare

eg the b o oks author the authors b o ok

d d

with Comp ound Sentence

It may generally b e rephrased with the

prep osition of eg the author of the b o ok

Comp ound Sentence a construction

the b o ok of the author

having more than one clause whichare

co ordinate ie two or more simple sentences Gerund a nonnite verb form that

linked together with conjunctions to form functions as a noun It usually ends in ing

one larger complex sentence Eg Eg Writing a textb o ok is more dicult

John rang the b ell I op ened the do or than teaching orally

English Grammatical Terms

Phrase a group of words which op erate Grammar the rules describing the b est

together as an element of a sentence use of language The two primary areas of

Eg turning left participial phrase on study are morphology and syntax

a hill adverbial phrase b ecause of

Innitive A nonnite verb form that

prep ositional phrase

functions as a noun or adjectiveoradverb

it names the activity in the most general

Prex averbal element joined to the

sense It is usually preceded by to Eg

b eginning of a word to qualify its meaning

he likes to readYou need not read this He

eg im p ossible anti septic hyper sensitive

considered the matter to have been settled

Reexive describ es transitive verbs

Inection the change of word form

where the sub ject and direct ob ject refer to

to express dierent grammatical relations

the same thing or p erson also pronouns so

including the declension of nouns and

used usually ending in self Eg He saw

pronouns the conjugation of verbs and the

himself in the mirror

comparison of adjectives and adverbs

Semantic relating to signicance or

Morphology the study of word structure

meaning F or example with a passive

primarily axes and inection English

verb the grammatical sub ject expresses the

makes little use of this to express grammat

semantic ob ject

ical meaning

Sentence acombination of words forming

Nonnite Verb A verb whichhasbeen

at least one clause It is meaningful by itself

turned into another Part of Sp eech it may

See also Complex Sentence

express asp ect and voice See Gerund

Innitive Participle

Simple Sentence a series of words

in connected sp eech or writing forming

Number the prop erty in words of

the grammatically complete expression of

expressing that one singular or more

a single thought Acombination of words

than one plural p erson or thing is sp oken

forming only one clause See also Complex

of

Sentence

Participle a nonnite verb form that

functions as an adjective It participates in Sux averbal element joined to the end

the nature of a verb expressing asp ect and of a wordtoformanewword eg shortly

voice and maytake take an ob ject and in faultless friendshipcareful

the nature of an adjective in qualifying a

Syntax the study of sentence structure

noun Eg Having heard this he wentaway

primarily the conventions of arrangement

Person The three classes of pronouns

by which the connection and relationship of

and corresp onding verb forms denoting the

words are shown

p erson sp eaking rst p erson the audience

Verb See Finite Verb and Nonnite Verb

addressed second p erson and the rest of

the world third p erson b ci

Word a minimal elementofspeechhaving

meaning as such By itself it expresses a

Phonetics the science of vo cal sounds es

universal concept in a sentence it denotes a

p ecially of a particular language that deals

sp ecic thing attribute relation etc

with their pro duction and representation

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Sanskrit Glossary and Index

Eachentry word is given a simple translation in single quotes where it is literal

followed by a brief description and page references to where the word maybe

more fully describ ed or applied

Akara the sound or letter a Avasana cessation of sound eg at the

end of a line of verse

Aghosaunvoiced characteristic of those

consonants that are uttered with the vocal Avyaya indeclinable that class of words

cords not vibrating that do not have vibhakti endings

Anga stem that part of an inected word Avyaybhava Samasa an adverbial

that remains unchanged except for sandhi comp ound the rst word of which is the

in the pro cess of inection more imp ortant

Anudatta not raised one of the three Astaneight the cardinal number the

pitches or tones svara ofthevowel accent gure eight

system of Vedic Sanskrit

Atmanepada expression for oneself

Anunasika nasal characteristic of those verbal voice

sounds uttered through both nose and

Atmanebhasa expression for oneself

mouth

verbal voice synonymous with atmane

Anubandha b ound along with a letter pada

or syllable attached to a dhatu and marking

Abhyantaraprayatna inner eort the

some p eculiarity in its inection

metho d within the mouth of articulating

Anusvara after sound a nasal sound sounds

following a svara sandhi substitute

Itaretara Dvandva Samasa the basic

for an m b efore a consonant

copulative comp ound whose numb er is the

Antahstha stand b etween general name sum of its memb ers

for the semivowels ya ralava

Itithus used as inverted commas or

separating a word from its denition Artha meaning the words provided in

the DhatuPat ha as the sense of the meaning

tact the inner Isatsprst a slightcon

of a dhatu

eort applicable to the semivowels ya ra

la and va Ardhasprsta halfcontact the inner

eort applicable to the us man consonants

Isadvivrta slightly op en the inner

sa sasaand ha

eort applicable to the us man consonants

sa sasaand ha Aluk Samasaasamasa wherein the rst

word do es not lose its vibhakti

UttamaPurusa last p erson grammat

ical p erson distinction in verb endings Alpaprana little breath characteristic

denoting the agent of the verb English of those consonants uttered with minimal

rst p erson breath

Udatta raised one of the three pitches Avagraha Y symb ol for the elision of

or tones svara ofthevowel accent system A at the b eginning of a word due to

in Vedic Sanskrit sandhi

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Upadhmanya the rare half visarga the members would have the same case

b efore pa or pha ending

Karman the immediate ob ject of the

Upapada Tatpurusa Samasa determi

agent expressed in dvitya with an active

native comp ound having a dhatu derivative

verb or prathama with a passiveverb

as its nal memb er

Kavarga kagroup the group of stops

Upasargaverbal prex a prex to

b eginning with ka ie ka kha ga gha

verbs to qualify or change its meaning

na

one of the four typ es of words

kara action sux app ended to a

Ubhayatobhasa expression for b oth

Sanskrit lettersound to name it eg ka

verbal voice dhatu conjugation in parasmai

kara

bhasa or atmanebhasa

Kriyaverb fully inected form of

Usman heated general name for the

the verb one of the four typ es of

group of four consonants sa sa sa and

word

ha

Kriyavisesan a adverb an indeclinable

Eka one the cardinal numb er the gure

that qualies a verb

one

Ksa pronunciation

Ekavacana onesp eaking grammatical

singular numb er the word sux denoting

Gana class there are ten classes of

that one p erson or thing is referred to See

dhatu

also dvi bahuvacana

Guna quality the secondary form of

Ekasruti single hearing the neutral

vowels

sound of Classical Sanskrit as contrasted

Ghosavoiced acharacteristic of those

with the tonal accentsvara system of

consonants that are uttered with the vo cal

Vedic Sanskrit

cords vibrating

Osthyalabial the mouth p osition used

Catur four the cardinal number the

with the pronunciation of u pavargaand

gure four

va

Caturth Vibhakti fourth case dative

Kant hatalavya guttural and palatal

ax of nouns and adjectives

the mouth p osition asso ciated with the

pronunciation of e and ai

Candrabindu mo ondot the symbol

placed ab oveavowel or ya la or va to

Kant hosthya guttural and labial the

indicate that the sound is nasalized

mouth p osition asso ciated with the pronun

ciation of oandau

Cavarga cagroup the group of stops

b eginning with ca ie ca cha ja jha

Kant hya guttural the mouth p osition

na

asso ciated with the pronunciation of a ka

varga and ha

Jihvamul ya a rare halfvisarga b efore

ka or kha

Kartr the agent of the verb expressed in

prathama with an activeverb or trtya with

Jnapronunciation

a passiveverb

Tavarga tagroup the group of stops

KarmadharayaTatpurusa Samasade b eginning with ta ie ta tha da dha

terminative comp ound which if dissolved na

Sanskrit Glossary and Index

Tatpurusa Samasa determinativecom Dvivacanatwosp eaking grammatical

p ound in which the rst word qualies the dual number the word sux denoting that

second two p ersons or things are referred to See

also eka bahuvacana

Tavarga tagroup the group of stops

Dhatu ro ot rudimentary meaningful

b eginning with ta ie ta tha da dha

verbal element from which words are

na

derived

Talavya palatal the mouth p osition

DhatuPat ha recitation of ro ots name

asso ciated with the pronunciation of i ca

of a b o ok giving the sense of meaning

varga ya and sa

and grammatical information ab out each

TinVibhakti verbal sux the sux

dhatu

of the kriya indicating purus a and va

NanT atpurus a Samasa determinative

cana

comp ound with a negative particle as its

Trtya Vibhakti third case instrumental

rst memb er

sux to nouns and adjectives

Napumsakalinga neuter one of the

Tri three the cardinal numb er the gure

three grammatical genders

three

Navannine the cardinal numb er the

gure nine

Dantost hyadental and labial the mouth

p osition asso ciated with the pron unciation

Namadhatu nominal verb a verb

of the English f and v

derived from a noun

Dantya dental the mouth p osition

N aman name a noun one of the four

asso ciated with the pronunciation of l ta

typ es of word in Sanskrit

varga la and sa

Nipata particle one of the four typ es of

Dasan ten the cardinal numb er the gure

word in Sanskrit

ten

Pancanve the cardinal numb er the

Drgha long the long measure or vowels

gure ve

having this measure

Pancam Vibhakti fth case ablative

Devanagar city of immortals the

sux to nouns and adjectives

name of the Sanskrit script

Padaword traditionally divided into

variations in symb ols used in

four typ es general name for

dictionary

a fully inected word verbal

Dvatwo the cardinal numb er the gure

voice see atmanepada and parasmai

two

pada

Dvandva Samasa copulative comp ound

Parasmaipada expression for another

atyp e of comp ound in which the words are

verbal voice

of equal imp ortance

Parasmaibhasa expression for another

Dvigu Tatpurusa Samasa a determina

verbal voice synonymous with parasmai

tive comp ound having a numeral or word

pada

denoting direction as its rst member

Pavarga pagroup the group of stops

second case accusative ie pa pha ba bha Dvitya Vibhakti b eginning with pa

ax to nouns and adjectives ma

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

Panini a grammarian circa bc whose Bahuvrhi Samasa a descriptivecom

work the Astadhyay fully describ es the p ound a comp ound forming an adjective

grammar of Sanskrit in minute detail No qualifying an external noun

other language to this day has b een so

Bahyaprayatna outer eort the metho d

p erfectly describ ed

external to the mouth ie the throat of

Pumlinga masculine one of the three

articulating sounds

grammatical genders

Bindu dot the anusvara mark ab ovea

Purusa p erson grammatical p erson

vowel

distinction in verbal sux denoting the p er

son or thing sp oken of prathamapurus a

Bhasaspeech verbal voice see atmane

sp oken to madhyamapurus a and the

parasmai ubhayatobhas a

p erson sp eaking uttamapurus a

MadhyamaPurusa middle p erson the

Purnavirama full stop indicates the

second grammatical p erson distinction in

end of a verse or end of a paragraph

verbal sux denoting the p erson sp oken to

English second p erson

Pragrhya to b e taken separately excep

tions to sandhi rules

Mahapran a great breath a character

istic of those consonants uttered with extra

Pranava Sab da a name applied to the

breath

mystical sym bol

Matrka name applied to the rst sixteen

Pratyaya sux general name for anytyp e

sounds of the Sanskrit alphab etical order

of sux

PrathamaPurusa rst p erson gram

Matra measure the length or duration

matical p erson distinction in verbal sux

for whichavowel is sounded these maybe

denoting the p erson or thing sp oken of

hr asva drgha or pluta

English third p erson

Murdhanya cerebral the mouth p osition

Prathama Vibhakti rst case nomi

asso ciated with the pronunciation of r ta

native sux of nouns and adjectives

varga ra and sa

and vo cative

Repha traditional name for ra which

Prayatna eort the metho d of articulat

unlike other sounds do es not use the kara

ing sounds divided into abhyantara and

sux

bahyaprayatna

Lakara laxes a common term for the

Prana breath see alpaprana and maha

ten primary tenses and mo o ds of Sanskrit

prana

verbs

Pratipadikaword stem the stem form

Lat a technical term for the present

ie without any case ending of a noun or

indicative simple present tense one of the

adjective as found in the dictionary

lakara

Pluta prolonged the prolonged measure

Linga grammatical gender there are three

or vowels having this measure

genders pum str napum sakalinga

Bahuvacana manysp eaking the gram

Vacana sp eaking grammatical numb er matical plural number the word sux

the word sux that one two or more two indicating that many more than

p ersons or things are referred to See eka p ersons or things are referred to See also

dvi bahuvacana eka dvivacana

Sanskrit Glossary and Index

Varga group grouping of consonants Sandhi placed together the system of

according to some common qualityeg ka euphonic changes that arise when sounds are

varga pavarga uttered in proximity it is the tendency to

ease of pronunciation

Vibhakti common term for the case

endings used for nouns and adjectives sup

Sandhi Vigraha separation of sandhi

vibhakti as well as the p ersonal endings for

removal of the sandhi between words

verbs tinvibhakti

in a sentence so that the words stand

separately

Virama stop symbol indicates a

consonant without a following vowel

Sandhyaksara comp ound vowel general

symbol indicates the end of a half

name for eaioau

verse or end of a sentence

Saptanseven the cardinal numb er the

Visesana adjective it has the same case

gure seven

numb er and gender as the noun that it

Saptam Vibhaktiseventh case lo cative

qualies

sux to nouns and adjectives

Visarga emission unvoiced breath after

SamanadhikaranaTatpurusa Samasa

avowel

determinative comp ound which if dissolved

Visarga Sandhi euphonic changes arising

the memb ers would have dierent case

with the visarga

endings

Visarjanya emitted unvoiced breath

Samasa placed together a comp ound

after a vowel synonymous with vis

word

arga

Samahara Dvandva Samasa copulative

Vrddhi increase strengthened form of

comp ound whose memb ers are taken collec

vowels

tively as a unit the comp ound is treated as

a neuter singular noun

Vyanjana emb ellishment general name

for any consonant

Samprasarana the pro cess wherebyan

antahstha is replaced by a simple vowel

VyadhikaranaTatpurusa Samasa de

terminative comp ound which if dissolved

Samb o dhana calling addressing case

the members would have dierent case

ending of nouns and adjectives variation of

endings

prathamavibhakti

Sakti name applied to the rst sixteen

Sarvanaman name of all pronoun

sounds of the Sanskrit alphab etical order

Savarna homophonic categories of sounds

Sassix the cardinal numb er the gure

having the same mouth p osition and inner

six

eort

Sast h Vibhakti sixth case genitiveax

Supvibhakti case endings used for nouns

to nouns and adjectives

and adjectives

Samyoga b ound together a conjunct

Strlinga feminine one of the three

consonant consonants not having a sepa

grammatical genders

rating vowel or pause

Samjna prop er noun p ersonal or place Sthana p osition the various mouth

whose meanings name technical terms p ositions used in uttering vowels and

cannot b e etymologically derived consonants

A Practical Sanskrit Intro ductory

pitchesortonessvara of the vowel accent Sparsa contact the general name for the

system of Vedic Sanskrit group of stops ka through ma

Sprst a contact the inner eort for the

Hal technical term referring to any

sparsa ka through ma

consonant

Svara sound or tone a general term

Halanta consonantnal ending in a

for the vowels a term for the tonal

consonant without a following vowel

accents udatta anudatta svarita ofVedic

Sanskrit

Hrasva short the short measure or

vowels having this measure

Svarita mixed tone one of the three