Learn Sanskrit the easy way

Innovative approach to teach beginners the fundamentals

GOOD GUIDE The exercises and stories in the set of seven books help pupils master the language.
S. S. Kumar

Sanskrit is Fun The Story of Rama The Stories of Krishna (Edited by Warwick Jessup and Elena Jessup) Sanskrit is the mother tongue of only a handful of Indians (the 2001 census gives a gure of 14,000), but its signicance as a classical and liturgical language cannot be overstated. William Jones, the inuential British scholar, wrote of Sanskrit in 1786: more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely rened than either Apart from the wealth of religious and philosophical texts in Sanskrit, such as the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas and Aranyakas, it also has some of the greatest collection of literature in any language; the Sanskrit ep-

ics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata, are among the crown jewels of human literary accomplishment.

Learning package However, Sanskrit is often considered a difficult language to learn; far too often, stress is laid on learning by rote, without any real feel for the structure, rhythms and underlying meaning of the language. Given this, the effort by the Sanskrit teachers of St. James Schools in London, to put together a new learning package to help students learn the language is very welcome. This set of seven course books a threepart Sanskrit is Fun, which introduces the beginner to the Devanagari script, including showing them how it is written, and grouped together under different heads; the workbooks and daily reading charts should provide a good grounding in reading

Sanskrit texts [the use of animal characters provide both relief and is a good teaching device]. One of the characteristics of Sanskrit is conjoined (joined letters, according to a set of rules), which is generally difficult for the learner (even Indian students), and this series does a good job of progressing from the basic vowels and consonants to more difficult joint, or compound, consonants. After this, comes word and sentence formation.

Progression Sanskrit is Fun should ideally be read with a second grouping of books, The Story of Rama (2 vols), and The Stories of Krishna (2 vols), which take up common noun and pronoun declensions (variations), verb conjugations (how verb forms change according to tense and person), gerunds (a noun formed from a verb, ending in ing),

transliteration (converting a text from one script to another, in this case from Devanagari to English) to expand the students grammatical grasp. The Stories of Krishna also include 12 tales based on Krishnas childhood; Rama in 16 episodes tells the story of the Ramayana. A diligent study of the seven course books should give learners a good grasp of Sanskrit, including its vocabulary, structure and grammar. The emphasis throughout is on teaching in a simple and systematic way in the words of Prof. Satya Vrat Shastri; the idea being that Sanskrit is not that difficult, and is indeed, fun to learn. The books, brought out by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, are very attractively priced: the three-part Sanskrit is Fun costs Rs. 75 apiece; the 2-part Rama and Krishna books are Rs. 350 per set.