The book An Essential Guide to Sanskrit for Spiritual Seekers 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. Purchase from Amazon.US, Amazon.UK or Infibeam, India.
Alternatively, it is available from Sundeep Prakashan with free shipping by airmail. The ISBN for the hardbound edition is 8189320009; the softbound version is ISBN 8189320068.
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
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Note that the following is an extract from the examples at the end of the book. The rest of the book is much simpler! The idea is that, by the time you have finished reading it, you will be able to appreciate examples such as this one and tackle similar ones for yourself.
4. 'You are not the body' from the aShTAvakra gItA
n Tv< dehae n te dehae Éae´a ktaR n va Évan!,
icÔfpae=is sda sa]I inrpe]> suo< cr. This is chapter 15, verse 3 of the Astavakra Gita, an uncompromising treatise on Advaita. Most of the words end on a syllable so that there is much less saMdhi apparent than in the earlier examples.
n Tv< dehae - na tvaM deho
- na: not, nor, neither etc., used especially in repetition, as in this sentence, 'neither this, nor this etc.'. tvaM: tvam is the nominative singular of the personal pronoun 'you', already met several times. The letter m at the end of a word is always changed into an anusvAra, when it is followed by a consonant. deha is 'the person or individual', the 'outward appearance or form'. In the nominative singular, it is dehaH but, as was noted above, when this is preceded by a and followed by a soft consonant, it changes to u and then the a and u combine to form o . This then, simply means 'you (are) not the body'. The verb asi is, of course omitted as usual.
n te dehae - na te deho
- te is the sixth (genitive) case of tvam and means 'of or belonging to you - i.e. yours'. na and deho translate as before. This, then, means 'nor (is) the body yours', asi again being understood.
Éae´a ktaR n va Évan - bhoktA kartA na vA bhavAn
- na vA is translated as 'neither… nor' though, unlike in English, vA doesn't usually come before the word to which it refers. bhoktA is the nominative masculine singular of the word bhoktRRi, which mean 'one who enjoys or experiences'. Similarly kartA is from kartRRi, 'one who makes or does'. bhavAn is another word meaning 'you', again nominative singular, from bhavat. It is a much more formal version, though, often being translated as 'your honour' or 'your worship'. Perhaps there is an intentional irony here. You, who think yourself an important 'doer' or 'enjoyer' are, in fact, not even a body. I'll translate it with artistic licence as 'Sir, you are neither an enjoyer nor a doer'.
icÔfpae=is - chidrUpo.asi
- chit means 'pure thought, spirit, soul' but in the context of Advaita is usually translated as Consciousness, in the sense of Brahman. rUpa means 'form, outward appearance etc.' The t at he end of chit becomes a d in accordance with jhalAM jasho.ante. chidrUpaH means 'the Universal Spirit as identified with pure thought' and the nominative singular is chidrUpaH. asi means 'you are'. When the two words combine, the visarga, being followed by an a, changes to u and, since this is preceded by a, the a and u combine to form o . The a of asi is now elided when speaking but to show that it is still effectively present, an avagraha is inserted when it is written. The phrase is translated as 'you are Consciousness itself'.
sda sa]I inrpe]> - sadA sAkShI nirapekShaH
- this a continuing description of what you are. sAkShI is the masculine nominative singular of sAkShin, meaning a 'witness' and this is qualified by sadA, meaning 'always, perpetually' and nirapekShaH, meaning 'desireless, indifferent'. asi is understood again. Overall translation: 'you are the eternal, disinterested witness'.
suo< cr - sukhaM chara
- sukha means 'comfortable, happy, prosperous'; the nominative singular ending -m is converted to -M as before. The verb char can mean 'to move or travel through, to follow, behave, act, live etc.' and chara is the imperative. Exercising a little artistic licence again, I would translate this simply as 'be happy!'.
The complete translation, then, is: "You are not the body, nor is the body yours. Sir, you are neither an enjoyer nor a doer; you are Consciousness itself - the eternal, disinterested witness. Be happy!" |
