Week 37, 2025

08 Sep 2025

Summary

Over the past month or so, my approach to learning samskritam has shifted once again. The main change is that now I feel confident to approach samskritam through self-study and other online resources. I attended the Jaahnavii Shibiram in NJ, and met many people who have influenced me in the process. I registered for S2 level and then de-registered as well. More details follow.

Progress and Thoughts

The original plan was to get through the four levels of s2s and thereby get to a point where shAstram can be approached easily. So, I registered for S2 classes, and also for the NJ shibiram. During my lead up to the camp (had to plan a refresher of sorts to be able to appreciate the camp better), I focussed entirely on only what would be “done” according to S1 level, hoping to learn the next steps in S2. For instance, if I saw a word with a vibhakti table I hadn’t studied yet or if I saw tvam or the dvivacanam, I’d just casually skip it. In retrospect, that’s not a good attitude. I caught up on the basics of विभक्ति प्रयोगः, and “taught” a class at home for the basics. I thought I would be working on a post to recap S1 before moving to S2, but right now, that won’t be necessary. Why you ask, read on.

In the camp, I registered for a level higher than what I’m comfortable with (and ended up being humiliated as one of those with the least amount of existing samskritam knowledge, but that’s a different better not said again kind of story?). During the classes, I pushed myself to learn things haphazardly (since learning with a clear presentation or a book never works in a class that’s primarily meant to be learnt through listening and observing). If among everything the teacher said, I understood three things, I would use them as a nucleus around which I built other things. My learning was quite organic, even if it’s currently filled with holes. I am hoping that with these seeds sown, a systematic learning as a follow up is going to work wonders. Our teachers completely dispelled my fear of old type-writer kind of documents because I have a strategy regarding how to approach these kinds of texts. Our peers were nice as well, although some of them were a bit like Hermione and made their presence known in the class. Overall, there is now a lot of motivation, and an interest to continue to work on my samskritam. I am also confident that fluency will come soon, and the ability to understand most tenses (based on various लकाराः) in other people’s speech.

I have purchased the गीता सोपानम् & गीता प्रवेशः series of books (there are five), and I have also obtained copies of भाशा प्रवेशः series (two books). I started with गीता सोपानम् 1. After the experience of self-learning for a few days, I attended the orientation for S2. I found it exciting (homework to start with, and a regular and systemmatic syllabus, which are all green signals for me.) But, I also found it limiting in the sense that perhaps I can make faster progress by myself and with the help of a pure samskritam based approach instead of the one filled with rules and English translations? Perhaps, my biggest learning is that while I am a bookish learner, I don’t want to be someone who remains only bookish. I want to be independent of crutches that form due to translation and other shortcuts. So, I decided to drop the course, and instead joined an online class by one of my teachers in the camp.

After this shift, I also went on another round of searching for resources. I found a lot of them, some of which I’ve listed under resources. There’s still a lot to do in terms of learning, but progress is being made. I’ve made a plan. It’s a start! I am excited.

Plan

I plan to use Anki to learn the different forms. I am working through the Gita books first, and looks like after the first two levels, the next ones are just reprints of the Gita, along with padacchedaH and avyayaH. Indeed, after finishing the first two books, I think I will have enough knowledge to start teaching for real. I have also acquired a few other books (various self-study books, readers, and so on). I really like the Reader series linked below because it kind of gets you through everything in stages, so I really want to do that in parallel to the Gita series. Once I complete the Gita series, I will go through the new and updated NCERT text books, which have become awesome now (I’ve talked about this before). Then, I will go through Pancatantra in its full form. Then, I will sort through the other resources I have found (including various readers and other books). I think at some point here, I will be ready to go for Ramayana and Mahabharata! Ambitious, maybe? Yes! But, Yay!

Future Projects

I have started reading one story a day from the repositories of stories from Daily Samskritam story session by SBUSA. I will work on rendering the stories in my own words, in samskritam to improve my speaking skills. These may not be published anywhere for now, but eventually, I would like to post them so that they can be recorded versions of the daily online calls, except with more clarity and refreshing to listen to later. These can also follow the audiobook I plan to make for the panchatantra kathAH book!

Resources

1. Hrishim’s Sanskrit Notes
   1. Reader’s translation attempts for which the actual PDFs can be found here.
   2. Notes from a primer.
2. The folks at learnsanskrit never fail to impress me. For example, check these out:
   1. A collection of various computational sanskrit resources here.
   2. A website to practice various declensions and conjugations here.
3. Sanskrit.Today has various free classes that work through all the relevant parts of Gita Sopanam series and the Bhasha Pravesha series, they also have a related YouTube channel.
4. There are a few Telegram channels that are extremely helpful. Reach out if you want my list.