The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit

WHY LEARN SANSKRIT?

There are many good answers to this question. Sanskrit is studied by scholars of language, religion and literature, by historians, sociologists and anthropologists and anyone else with an interest in India's cultural heritage.

Sanskrit as a language is quite simply beautiful, its structure complex enough to be interesting, but straightforward enough to be manageable. Knowledge of Sanskrit grants access to an enormous body of literature. Literary writing uses the means of a language to not just express a thought, but to express it in an interesting, appealing, artful way. Thus it always is more rewarding to read a work of literature in its original language. Yet the fact that much may be lost in translation is especially true in relation to Sanskrit: the breadth of meaning of Sanskrit words, and the way this breadth is used in Sanskrit poetry (especially in the form of puns and word play) sometimes make expressions or even whole sentences or texts nearly impossible to translate. Only in the original can one truly enjoy them. Furthermore, Sanskrit literature offers a wide window onto India: Sanskrit is the language not just of the sacred writings of Hinduism (and some of Buddhism and Jainism), but also of many other texts that have greatly influenced Indian culture and society over the course of more than two millennia.

This book aims to teach Sanskrit by following two principles. First of all, it attempts to minimise the need for rote memorisation by maximising understanding of underlying structures, patterns and similarities. As will become clear from Chapters 3 and 5, both nouns and verbs in Sanskrit have large numbers of different forms that need to be memorised. Throughout this book, parallels will be pointed out between new forms to be studied and forms that are already known, and various other hints will be offered that should facilitate memorisation. Chapters dedicated to the introduction of new forms alternate with chapters and sections explaining the processes by which the great variety of forms comes to be (such as Chapters 7 on vowel gradation, 14 on compound nouns, 17 on noun formation); others recommend ways of handling e.g. the abovementioned multitude of meanings that a single word may have.