Sanskrit Documents
Learning Tools
Click For Pop-Up Sanskrit Sentences (IExplorer only)
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Learning Sanskrit
Sanskrit can be called as a "language of consciousness", may be because it
opens the door to India's rich spiritual literature. Sanskrit is not
restricted to spirituality & religion, however, but also encompasses a vast
literature of many genres; and for us to understand the beauty behind those
copious beautiful texts, learning the Sanskrit language is a must.
Sanskrit, which was a primary language of communication in ancient India,
lives on in modern India, though not in its full form: it survives in bits
and pieces, in one way or another, in the various Indian languages that have
descended from it. For natives of India, therefore, it is a matter of
recapitulation of a language, which is present in them and merely seeking a
proper channel.
Unlike English and other modern European languages, Sanskrit seems somewhat
difficult to understand for most Westerners. This is true not only because
of its script (devanagari), which is quite foreign to Western & European
countries, but also because of its grammatically complex structure and
highly inflected forms, which can be more richly inflected even than Greek
or Latin, particularly the verbal conjugations.
The links below present an introduction to the Sanskrit language and a little motivation to joyously pursue it to one's own capacity.
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Sanskrit dictionary
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Online Sanskrit Dictionaries
The online Sanskrit dictionary is intended to build
a repository of Sanskrit words/meanings in a simple,
easy-to-extend format.
We hope you find it useful and also contribute in
adding more words to the collection -
-
Search
for words in the dictionary.
- The complete text of the dictionary is available in -
- For more information on the dictionary see -
-
Sanskrit dictionary efforts
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Tutorials & documentation:
- Sanskrit Tutorial - Charles Wikner -
Read Charles Wikner's reply on the purpose of the document
here.
His FTP url is
ftp.nac.ac.za/wikner/.
He advises - "Beware: there is a very thin piece of wire to
South Africa, and it is stretched rather taut, so the best
time to ftp would be Sunday morning local time (GMT+2:00)".
- Sanskrit Tutorial translated in French by Yann Leglise -
Please read notes about this translation. Email: Yann.Leglise@wanadoo.fr for more information.
- Excellent "Introduction to Sanskrit series" at Sringeri Vidya Bharati Foundation (SVBF) : Units 1 through 16. They are recast in a newer site format and are available at http://svbf.org/svbf_journal.php. Unfortunately some links are broken.
- The Le
arn Sanskrit Series is developed by Mr. Vasudeva Bhat on ourkarnataka site. There are 39 lessons (Nov 2003) whic
h are also translated in Kannada. For Kannadigas, this is an excellent site.
- Samskritapriyah
- and the Samskrit Education in Chennai, India.
Information relating to Sanskrit and set of basic lessons
to learn the language through self study.
Devanagari Script via browser (without having to install any Fonts) ,
This site has a useful multilingual editor developed by
Indian Institute of Technology Madras, at Chennai, and is available at
http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/software/iitmed.html
It may be used in a number of ways to prepare
documents in Sanskrit and all the Indian languages.
Inline images for the tutorial are generated from special text files
prepared using the Multilingual Software. Contact Professor
Kalyana Krishnan
for additional information.
- Learn Sanskrit using Marathi from sanskritdeepika.org as one of the major activities of Dnyanadeep foundation, in Sangli, Maharashtra.
.
- Kalidasa Samskrita Kendram in Chennai presents "Teaching Sanskrit Through Web" series of lessons. The center offers diploma courses in Sanskrit. The founder V.C. Govindarajan vcgrajan at yahoo.com has also initiated a Kalidasa group on yahoo where the lessons are first posted and discussed. The Kendram site also holds "Articles on History of Sanskrit Literature."
- Master Sanskrit Easily written and presented by Dr. Narayan Kansara of Ahmedabad. This is an extensive 301 page tutorial and is well formatted for two sided booklet printing. The entire text is in Roman with Diacritics. Its details are summarized in the Preface text file. Get the PDF files as Title, Parts 1, 2, and 3.
- A step by ste
p lessons in Sanskrit are provided at http://www.chitrapurmath.net/. A registration (free) is needed to access all the lessons.
- Spiritual Seeker's Essential Guide to Sanskrit prepared by Dennis Waite dennis.waite at virgin.net .
- Dr. Sudhir Kaicker, Director, Computer Centre, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, has coordinated development of a Sanskrit tutor called SanskritaPradipika for PC-Windows. It is available for download (after free registration) at http://www.sanskrit-lamp.org. The file size is over 20 Mb.
- Gabriel Pradiipaka and Andres Muni have compiled a procedure to Learn Sanskrit Language Step by Step. The FAQ written by Gabriel may be inspiring for new students.
- aravindAshrame sa.nskR^itam
at http://sanskrit.sriaurobindoashram.org.in/ is a site for various
online display and audio of Sanskrit tutorials, magazine from Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. The publications can be ordered from SABDA, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Puducherry - 605 002, India. For Ordering Information http://www.sabda.in.
- Vedic Accents:
- Notes on Vedic accents by Charles Wikner.
Postscript and
PDF-Acrobat files. (July 1997).
-
ITX |
PS |
PDF |
XDVNG |
GIF
- svaramaJNjarii or vaidikasvarapaddhati text + trans. on Vedic accents
grammar rules related to accents (by Tryambak B. Abhyankar)
- A slide presentation with audio clips on Question Making for Sanskrit learners. (password for read only part is 12345). Prepared by S K Mishra.
- A comment on svaras by L. Aravind. Also see a simple guide to the anusvAra (the vedic nasal) and Bhrigu Smriti.
- The Tâittirîya-Prâtiçâkhya and commentary tribhAShyaratna by William Dwight Whitney has an elaborate presentation on svara system, alphabets, use of anusvAra et cetera.
Other pratishAkhya-s available at Digital Library of India, namely
atharva-praatishaakhya,
Riktantra Sama Veda,
Shukla Yajurveda,
Taittiriya,
Vajasaneyin.
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Grammar
- Some Simple Sanskrit stories -
- Sanskrit learning/speaking camp experience notes -
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Conversational Sanskrit (lessons and
documents)
Sanskrit Bharati, based in
Bangalore, India (Bharat) has been instrumental in promoting conversational
Sanskrit on world-wide basis. The program has been circulated through camps, publications,
correspondence courses, studies through personal contacts, and by various
means suitable to individual's needs. The following books are some of their publications.
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Software:
-
Bhagavadgita - A verse a day PC/DOS utility by Ajaya Durg.
- Technology Development for Indian Languages, TDIL, a program launched by Department of Information Technology, Govt. of India in 1991, has developed excellent tools related to word processing and analysis of Indian languages. The tools can be downloaded freely with simple registration from
http://tdil.mit.gov.in/. Some of
the software include
Indian Language Keyboard Driver and Fonts
iLEAP an Intelligent, Internet ready Indian language word processor on Windows
Desika: Natural Language Understanding System for Sanskrit
Shabdhabodha:to analyze the semantic and
syntactic structure of Sanskrit sentences.
Geeta Reader
Apex Language Processor (ALP) is a character mode Wordprocessor
Akshar (Word processor) for Windows
Punjabi SpellChecker
Speech Synthesizer
- Sivananda Org -
- http://www.sivananda.org/misc/anim/anim.htm
Chakras
- Animated ShockWave of the Chakras with pronunciations of
the Biija aksharas.
- Ulrich Stiehl's sanskritweb.net has an
http://www.sanskritweb.net/deutsch/ipa_sans.pdf>International Phonetic IPA chart of Sanskrit alphabet pronunciations.
- A research paper The use of Sanskrit, an ancient language, as a tool to evaluate cleft palate speech problems by Kalpesh Gajiwala surprisingly in an Internatinal Journal of Plastic Surgery! "Inherent advantage of this arrangement of Sanskrit alphabets to effectively analyze defective cleft palate speech and provides a tool for surgeons to decide a course of action in their routine clinical practice."
- Sanskrit Pronunciation Audio Utilities for PC/Dos/Win -
- Audio-utility by Dennis Waite -
- Guide to pronunciation of Sanskrit with International phonetic alphabet pronounciation (IPA) prepared by Yves Codet, Toulouse communicated by Sylvain Lavoie, Québec, Canada. (In French) Also see associated International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration.
- Sanskrit pronunciation notes from Theosophical society. Good suummary. Should expand to include a note on using nasals of the following letter group for word ending anusvaara.
- Tilak Pyle's neatly arranged tilakpyle.com has several sections related to Sanskrit and Yoga. The Sanskrit pruninciation guide provides basic information such as list of alphabets, names and graphical postures/Asanas, mudras, numbers et cetera.
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