Learn Sanskrit through self study
Greetings from Samskritapriyah, Chennai, India.
In
these pages you will find information relating to Sanskrit and also
a set of basic lessons to learn the language through self
study. The lessons have been presented in a unique manner
allowing you to read the Devanagari script easily without having
install any special font or software. Almost any browser on any
system (Microsoft Windows, Linux, Macintosh or other Unix machines)
will be able to correctly display the text of the
lessons.
Please
enable the display of inline graphic images in your browser to
be able to view the lessons properly. Please see the note at the
end about enabling the images.The inline images for the Sanskrit
lessons are generated on the fly from special text files prepared
using the Multilingual Software developed at the Indian Institute
of Technology Madras, at Chennai, India. This approach more
or less guarantees error free display of the text on almost all the
systems running a web browser.
Apart from the lessons, these pages also carry interesting
information relating to Sanskrit that is generally not known
outside India.
About the
Lessons
The series
of twelve lessons is aimed at giving the student a reasonably good
introduction to the language. The student will be able to frame
sentences relating to daily activities in life and thus will gain
enough confidence to converse in Sanskrit though with a smaller
vocabulary to begin with. The structure of the lessons is
quite different from that of lessons found in conventional Sanskrit
primers. It is hoped that the twelve lessons would provide enough
details for the student to understand the basic grammar of Sanskrit
and sentence formation rules.
Background required for following the
Lessons
The approach
taken here does not assume any knowledge of Sanskrit on the part of
the student. The student is also not required to know the
Devanagari Script. It is assumed that he/she is familiar with
the terminology of English Grammar. Children may also be able to
follow the lessons, if parents are able to explain to them the
meaning of the grammatical terms used in the lessons. The
Devanagari text will be shown along with Roman Transliteration using
standard diacritical marks to help understand the pronunciation
of the letters and words.
Interaction with
Samskritapriyah
If you would
like to interact with the Samskritapriyah group either to seek
clarifications on the lessons or to address other issues relating
to Sanskrit, you are welcome to send your requests via email to the
address given in
contacting IIT.
Inline
images
In most
browsers, the default setting permits viewing images. However,
almost all Browsers provide a feature to disable viewing of images.
Inline images are often disabled to prevent them from being
downloaded and displayed, often for reasons of excessive download
times. Images have the advantage that they will be properly
displayed on almost all browsers. This is the reason for sending
the contents of the lessons in the form of
images.
These lessons
were first made available on the web in the year 1997. Over
the years, we have received warm messages from thousands of readers
who have benefited from the presentations here at the Acharya site.
We would appreciate hearing from you about the usefulness of the
presentations. Please send your views to contacting IITM.
