Ebook: A Dictionary of Sanskrit Grammar

Third Edition. — Oriental Institute, 2000. — 448 pages. — (Gaekwad's Oriental Series).The first edition of "A Dictionary of Sanskrit Grammar" by Mahamahopadhyaya Professor Kashinath Vasudev Abhyankar was published in 1961 as Gaekwad's Oriental Series No. 134 by the Oriental Institute under the authority of the M. S. University of Baroda. In 1977 its second revised edition by MM. Professor Kashinath Vasudev Abhyankar and Dr. Jayadevbhai Mohanlal Shukla was published with an addition of "about three hundred new entries" (Preface to the second edition by Dr. J. M. Shukla) as Gaekwad’s Oriental Series No. 134. Within a very short span of time the edition went out of print indicating its importance and utility as a reference-book.There has been an incessant demand for this book and we are happy to bring out its third edition.No apology is needed for undertaking the compilation of the present ‘Dictionary of Sanskrit Grammar’, which, although concise, is expected to meet the needs of Sanskrit scholars and research students of Vyākarana and other Śastras by serving as a useful reference book in their study of, and research work in, any branch of Sanskrit learning. The many independent treatises in the several Śastras and the learned commentaries upon them, as also the commentaries on classical poems and dramas, are, in fact, full of grammatical explanations of words and constructions, involving a liberal use of grammatical expressions and technical terms at several places. The elementary knowledge of grammar which a scholar of Sanskrit possesses, is not found sufficient for his understanding fully the grammatical references in these books, especially so at present, when the practice of sending young boys to the Sanskrit Pāţhaśālās to study the standard classical works with commentaries along with some standard elementary treatises on grammar, has already stopped. The number of Sanskrit Paņḑitas and Śāstrins, who had to obtain a sound footing in grammar before they undertook the study of the higher texts of the several Śastras, and who, therefore, could be consulted by young scholars and research workers in the several Śastras, has also diminished considerably. The usual Sanskrit Dictionaries such as those of Monier Williams, V. S. Apte and others are found of no avail in supplying explanations of the grammatical technique, which confronts modern scholars at every step in their critical reading of the several Sanskrit texts. Under these circumstances, it is only the technical dictionaries of the type of the present ‘Dictionary of Sanskrit Grammar’ that can render a valuable assistance to scholars and research workers in their reading of the higher Sanskrit texts in the Several Śastras,