Ebook: A Sanskrit Primer

Centers for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, 2007. - 480 p.
ISBN 0-89148-078-1
ISBN 0-89148-079-XDedicated to Late Professor Shreedhar Ganesh Jinsiwale (1852-1903) my great-grand-mother's maternal uncle who was the first Professor of Sanskrit (at the Free Church College, Bombay) in our family and whose stories inspired me since my childhood to follow in his footsteps I started working on this book around 1976 and almost twenty generations of my students at Michigan used its successively improved versions before the book was finally officially published in 1997. During its long pre-publication life, this book received attention and assistance from a number of my students, especially Ann Wehmeyer, Sandy Huntington, Brian Akers, Patrick Pranke, and Jonathan Silk. Professor Gudrun Buhnemann (Wisconsin) and Professor Stella Sandahl (Toronto) have also offered suggestions for improving the book. Professor Thomas Hudak (Arizona) offered invaluable help in preparing the camera-ready copy of the book and made suggestions for formal consistency. Besides these students and colleagues, I also want to thank (Late) Pt. N.N. Bhide and Professor S.D. Laddu of Pune for their extensive comments. The current fourth reprint of the book incorporates corrections pointed out by Dr. Gary Tubb (Columbia). With all this help, I still bear the ultimate responsibility for the final shape of the book.
This book looks at Sanskrit as a productive language, rather than as a dead language which can only be deciphered. I have not insisted on each Sanskrit example being a citation from a classical text, though many examples are versions of classical passages modified to fit the level of grammar covered in a given lesson. I have personally contributed poems, plays, and serious writing, and have participated in literary and Sastric debates in Sanskrit. Therefore, I have not felt shy in composing Sanskrit passages myself, though I have deliberately kept modernisms of modern Sanskrit at a minimum and have emphasized the classical patterns. The book is expressly designed to be introductory. That means it does not pretend to cover and explain all possible nuances of Sanskrit grammar, and does not go into every possible exception to its rules. It deals with the standard classical language, and does not deal with Vedic Sanskrit, or with peculiarities of the epic, Buddhist or other non-standard varieties of Sanskrit.
The book is oriented toward learning and teaching Sanskrit as a language, and does not aim at teaching Sanskrit linguistics, either in its Indo-European or Paninian dimensions. In this regard, I have been influenced a lot by the textbooks of English, German and French I used to learn these languages. Those students who need more direct access to Sanskrit linguistics should be directed to specific works in that category. Similarly, the book is not intended to teach Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism. The examples are inclusive of these traditions, but they also include Sanskrit poetry and satire, and are intended to teach Sanskrit as a language, rather than as a moral, religious, or a mystical code.
Each introductory book ultimately needs to make a choice of facts, explanations, and the order and the amounts in which these facts and explanations should be provided to the student. My choice is guided by my own experience of teaching Sanskrit for the past thirty-two years. The book is not designed for self-study, and assumes that the instructor knows a great deal more Sanskrit than what is contained in this book and can provide more detailed explanations if demanded by students. I hope that the publication of this book will advance the cause of Sanskrit instruction.
I have myself composed the bulk of stories and exercises in this book. A few of them are direct quotations from classical works, and others are altered versions of classical passages modified to fit the level of grammar known to the student at a given point. I have not consciously and deliberately excerpted examples from other Sanskrit textbooks. However, there will necessarily be a certain amount of shared examples. I studied Sanskrit since the age of ten, using a wide variety of teaching materials in Marathi, Sanskrit, and English, and these materials have an enormous overlap in cited examples. As a result, it is not possible to attribute a given example to a specific source. I wish to acknowledge my general indebtedness to all the teaching materials I have used over the years to acquire the knowledge of Sanskrit.
I am extremely pleased to see that this book is now going into its fourth printing in a short span of seven years. Its success as a basic textbook for teaching Sanskrit is by now self-evident. In this fourth reprint, I have made additional corrections for the minor typographical and other errors which I noticed myself, and also those which were pointed out to me. However, except for these very minor corrections, the book remains identical with the first three printings.
Madhav M. Deshpande