The Spiritual Path          

of Advaita

There are four areas in this section of the site.

The first area provides a brief introduction to the Sanskrit language and then a more detailed description of the ITRANS facility that is widely used on the Internet for representing the letters in the Sanskrit alphabet.

*****

The second area contains a dictionary of commonly encountered spiritual terms in Sanskrit. These pages are reached directly from the 'Terms' menu button at the top of each page. The list of pages is as follows:

• a - ahaM
• aham vRRitti - antaryAmin
• antaHsthA - artha
• arthApatti - avyapadeshya
• bAdha - buddhi
• chaitanya - dveSha
• ekAgra - Ishvara
• jaDa - kANDa
• karaNa - kUTastha
• lakShaNa - mAtRRikA
• mAyA - nirupAdhika
• nirveda - paramAtman
• paramparA - prameya
• pramiti - pUrva mImAMsA
• rAga - sAMkhya
• sampradAya - sattvApatti
• satya - shiShya
• smRRiti - svechChA
• taijasa - uttara mImAMsA
• vAchArambhaNa - vibhUti
• vichAra - vivarta
• vivarta vAda - yukti

*****

The third area contains an extract from the book 'An Essential Guide to Sanskrit for Spiritual Seekers', which provides an introduction for the complete beginner.

It teaches you just the fundamentals that you need to know in order to enable you to read and pronounce the letters (and write them if you wish) and to break down the words that you find in books such as the Upanishads so that you can look them up in a dictionary.

The book was published by Black & White books in Jan 2005. The ISBN for the Hardbound edition is 8189320009, list price $21, currently $19 from Sundeep Prakashan with free shipping by airmail. The softbound version is ISBN 8189320068, list price $19, currently $18.

Review in 'Mountain Path' journal, Feb. 2006:

This lovely book provides two levels of Sanskrit instruction. It is a wonderful guide to all those individuals that would like to know the basic Sanskrit religious vocabulary and how to read, write, and pronounce Sanskrit terms. The book introduces the transliterated Sanskrit alphabet and secondly, it teaches the Devanagari script/alphabet. The second level also teaches the main rules for combining Sanskrit letters and words – which is often a headache for the beginner. Many examples are provided from the Hindu scriptures to illustrate these two levels of teaching. As well, there is a comprehensive glossary of the most commonly encountered spiritual terms. This useful book will appeal to all serious spiritual seekers interested in the Hindu scriptures and Sanskrit terminology. Its aim is to teach the reader so as to be able to look up Sanskrit words in a dictionary and to write and pronounce them correctly. I am sure that all ‘beginners’ or even more advanced seekers of Hindu wisdom will find this a wonderful guide.

John Grimes

Endorsements to date:

"My humble praNAms and Congratulations for a fantastic work done. It is going to be useful as long as man lives on this Earth." - Professor V. Krishnamurthy (well known Advaita scholar)

"It is a pleasure to acknowledge Dennisji's 'Labor of Love' and his trusting me with the task of making a few helpful hints along the way. As the Gita assures us, no good deed ever goes to waste, and even if human beings ignore this work, Dennisji will be blessed for it." - Sunder Hattangadi (moderator for Advaitin Elist, Sanskrit scholar)

"What a great work!" - Alan Jacobs (Chairman Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK, books published on Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita)

"I am glad to inform you that your book reached me on Thursday last week. It was in excellent condition as the packing had been made very carefully, which is unfortunately not always the case with deliveries from India.

"I went through the whole book several times and even started to read in detail the first chapters and even some of the other chapters of special interest to me.

"My first global impression is very positive and there is no doubt that the book fully covers the objectives you mention in the beginning.

"Personally, I wish I should have had such a book at my disposal a long time ago; it could have prevented me to learn alone, the hard way and to do time-consuming search both in a lot of books and more recently on the Internet.

"Although not a specialist nor a scholar, but an average seeker with no authority, this is definitely a book that I can strongly recommend to all spiritual seekers and to everyone interested in Sanskrit, not only beginners, but also to more advanced learners who could wish to brush up their knowledge of the language." - Guy Werlings

"Your Sanskrit book has arrived, I have read Level 1 and most of Level 2 and to my surprise noticed its 'alive' wow. This discovery has deepened my interest as I feel it drawing me in. Its fascinating and very moving. I bought an Italic pen yesterday and have started drawing some of the letters...
This is great; your book is like a walk in the park, light, chatty and methodical. Steering the reader through like a leaf in the breeze." - Susanna

*****

See the fourth area, the Resources page, for Sanskrit tools and other websites containing guidance on the language.

N.B. In order to be able to view the Devanagari script on the other pages of this section, you will need to have the appropriate Sanskrit font installed on your computer.

Look at this table:

`

If the character in the right hand cell looks like the picture in the left hand cell then you already have the font installed. Otherwise, follow the instructions below.

Download the 'Sanskrit99' font. The file downloads as a 'zip' file. Use Winzip or other program to extract the file Sanskrit99.ttf. Then, with a computer running MS Windows, select the 'Fonts' program from the Control Panel. Then select, 'File, Install New Font' and select the 'ttf' file just downloaded. The font will be installed and the Devanagari script will then be visible.