Sanskrit Lessons: An Introduction

Welcome to this experimental project to help people learn Sanskrit from the comforts of their home, at their own pace.

The idea is as follows. There is a daily Sanskrit newspaper, Sudharma, published from Mysore. (Yes, unbelievable though it may sound, there is a Sanskrit daily; only two pages of tabloid size; but nonetheless, it is as amazing endeavour. The annual subscription of this newspaper, in India only, is just Rs 400. It is also freely available on the Internet here.)

Using one news article from this newspaper, I would write a periodic email / a blog which will 

• provide a Hindi and / or English translation,
• pick just five words or concepts from that article and explain them. I would love to (and tried to) include more examples of the same, include some exercises, with solutions posted in the next mail / blog, but realized that that is too much work and I would not be able to sustain that.

Link to the first sample lesson

A sample post, as the first lesson, is available here, for you to comment on. 
For an alternative structure of the lesson (I am more inclined towards this now), click here.

This is the first attempt, and based on readers' feedback we may refine its structure, presentation, depth of coverage, etc.

I am not sure whether the format and presentation I have in mind will work for people who are absolute beginners in Sanskrit. in fact, I am doubtful if it will. But it should, I hope, work well with people who have some exposure to Sanskrit, perhaps in their school days in India as the "third language", or through some other means. They may have lost touch with it for years but if they have had some foundation of Sanskrit, I think it would work better for them compared to people who have never learned any Sanskrit in their life earlier.

In the current format, it will certainly not work for people who are not familiar with the Devanagari script. I am not, as of now, fluent with, comfortable with, or keen on the phonetic transliteration of Sanskrit text in the Roman script.

The idea for this experiment had been there in my mind for a long time but it was dormant; it got a boost during a chat I had with my American friend in the virtual world, sometime a student, and a keen Sanskritophile, Mark Bordelon late last week.

If you haven't lost interest yet, and have looked at the first post, I would request you to provide me your detailed feedback, including the following:

• ·         Feedback on its structure, presentation, content, etc
• ·         Are interested in learning Sanskrit through this initiative? If yes, then why?
• ·         Will you be interested in mails / blogs as per this first draft? If yes, then why?
• ·         What would be a suitable platform for such lessons: an email group / a blog / a free site like Google Site / some other?
• ·         Do you think the lessons should be in Hindi / English / both? Writing them in both the languages, of course, means that much more work for me, though it widens its reach at the same time. Also, there are more typing related challenges when the text uses two languages, in switching from one keyboard to another, or in converting from a Hindi font to Unicode for proper rendering on a webpage. If I have to type only in Hindi, I can type at a higher speed using MS Word and then convert it to Unicode using a free web-based tool. But if the text contains both Hindi and English, then I have to convert each chunk of Hindi separately.
• ·         What frequency of such mails / blog posts do you think would be appropriate?
• ·         What is your current level of familiarity with Sanskrit?
• ·         Any suggestions on how to make this initiative popular?
• ·         Would you be willing to take some responsibilities if we try to build a community of people interested in this experiment? Such as translating my lessons from Hindi to English or the other way round?
• ·         (To the three in this list who are masters of Sanskrit: any additional feedback from you? Would you / somebody else you know be willing to take up responsibility for at least some such lessons?)

After running the pilot with this small group for a few lessons, we may take this initiative public using an appropriate forum.

I look forward to hearing from you, even if to decline.

Thanks.

Pradyumn

PS: Just in case, you are cusious. The genesis of the idea came from a variety of sources. Oneof them was reading about some work done by FC Kohli, former Chairman of TCS, reproduced in his own words below (http://courses.wcupa.edu/rbove/eco343/040Compecon/S.%20Asia/India/040920tech.txt):

Q: Tell me about your computer-aided adult-literacy program. What made you       pursue it?

      A: [For years,] the Indian government has been spending a lot of money and

      resources on adult literacy. It has been using conventional methods. While

      there has been some progress, it's inadequate, considering that about 250

      million adults in India are still illiterate. There are constraints: You

      need 200 hours of instruction for full literacy, and you need trained

      teachers to teach. If I'm 25 and working in a field or as a housewife, how

      will I find those 200 hours? As for teachers, we need 500,000 trained

      teachers to come to 500,000 villages. Where will they come from?

      So I started thinking: How can we learn, recognize images, retain, recall.

      I found that we usually look at images and icons -- pictures, faces, and

      words are all icons -- and relate it to a sound pattern. Then it sticks.

      Maybe someone in the world has tried this out, but not in this manner. The

      key was, when done with the program, the person should be able to read a

      newspaper in their own language.

      It needed a vocabulary of 400-600 words. So, starting in early 2000, three

      or four of us -- three TCS engineers and a linguist -- prepared a

      vocabulary of 500 words. And we prepared the lessons in a month or so.

      Then we experimented, and the first lesson was in a village called Medak,

      outside Hyderabad. We upgraded the keyboard in Telegu [the local

      language]. And we got 20 volunteers for lessons, thrice a week for 1.5

      hours each. After 8-to-10 weeks, people started reading the newspaper. Our

      major experiment was in Guntur, again in the same state. We had the same

      results.

      We have experimented in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, and Bengali with the same

      results. Our experiment was complete. We've told the government to take

      over. We've shown what we can do with a sampling of 50,000 people in five

      languages.

      We have a social message: We want people to not just read the newspaper,

      but read their land records, the political manifestos -- not just hear

      speeches during election time. People are reading their children's books

      now.

Another inspiration was the site: www.mindurmarathi.com. And some other mailing lists and FB groups on somewhat similar lines.