Week 01, 2023

Summary

This week, I focussed on getting the ball rolling by gathering some resources and actually starting to work on them.

Resources

From talking to people I know who have some association with Sanksrit, I would classify Sanksrit learning resources into these categories:

• A practical approach by using spoken Sanksrit as a starting point through the well-known organization Samskrita Bharati or Vyoma Samskrita Pathashala.
• An academic approach through text books written for Sanskrit (like this and this). There are some more textbooks too, I’m sure.
• YouTube based courses like these ones from IIT Roorkee’s Sanksrit Club.
• Samskrita Bharati also offer a certification program for Sanskrit.
• There are some enticing digital tools that I would love to explore eventually like
  • Sanskrit Coders
  • leansanksrit.org, where they have extensive guides for beginners and advanced learners,
    • their very interesting new resource called Ambuda, which looks promising for reading the main texts.
    • their Sanskrit short story collection called Amarahasa.

I also realized that Northwestern’s Religious Studies department is offering an Introduction to Reading in Sanskrit course this quarter. The course is being offered for the first time, so I’m very excited by the timing!

Plan

Based on the information I gathered, I decided that although I want to eventually complete the certification program by Samskrita Bharati, I don’t have the bandwidth for that the next few months (till around June 2023). Until then, I don’t want to wait, but get going on something lighter (and less intentional). The idea is to get familiar with the basics through various resources, in different contexts. That way, my further learning will be made a little more accessible. So, I’ve decided to attend the lectures in the course at Northwestern (not for credit since I’m not sure if my academic workload will allow that). The Cambridge Sanskrit textbook will be the primary material used for the course, so most of my learning over the next few weeks will be based on what we do in the course and what I read.

Parallely, a small group of like minded people (including me) are also planning to start a Sanskrit Interest Group which meets weekly and discusses Sanksrit in context. This is with a help of a friend who knows Sanksrit. The plan is to meet and speak in Sanskrit to gain familiarity with the language, and also understand some of the common shlokas. This would be an informal setting to explore Sanksrit while staying accountable.

Progress

I like well-organized and well-formatted books, and I particularly like books that have a lot of exercises that I can patiently work through. The Cambridge textbook falls beautifully into this category. Although I didn’t work through a lot of the book yet, I was able to get a head start ahead of next week’s class: I skipped the intro to sounds and scripts chapters because I was okay with them and jumped straight into the Verbs chapter. I love the grammar and the rules and how there seems to be a neat system for expressing everything quite effectively. Best part: I skipped along and actually read my first few sentences and I was able to work out the meanings with time. The textbook also has some Brainscape flashcards which I find helpful. It’s been a great start and I’m looking forward to this journey.