Learning Sanskrit for Buddhist sources

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Javierfv1212
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Learning Sanskrit for Buddhist sources

Post by Javierfv1212 »

I've recently started learning Sanskrit, using Ruppel's Cambridge Introduction.

I was wondering what people's experiences with Sanskrit learning (specifically for Buddhist texts), their recommendations for a beginner and what online resources or books they would recommend.

Also, has anyone used K.L Dhammajoti's Reading Buddhist Sanskrit book?

To my surprise, I have found there is a lot of stuff online that is available. One of my favorite sites is https://www.saugatam.org/ and they also have a youtube page with many videos chanting / breaking down some Sanskrit Buddhist passages. Very nice stuff.

There is also a lot of stuff on youtube, which helps with listening and chanting and could be used to create some sense of immersion.

I've also been editing and expanding the wikipedia article for Sanskrit Buddhist Literature. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_ ... literature

Also, there's a subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/SanskritBuddhism/

:namaste:
It is quite impossible to find the Buddha anywhere other than in one's own mind.
A person who is ignorant of this may seek externally,
but how is it possible to find oneself through seeking anywhere other than in oneself?
Someone who seeks their own nature externally is like a fool who, giving a performance in the middle of a crowd, forgets who he is and then seeks everywhere else to find himself.
— Padmasambhava

Visit my site: https://sites.google.com/view/abhayajana/
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Zhen Li
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Re: Learning Sanskrit for Buddhist sources

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Javierfv1212 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:29 pm Also, has anyone used K.L Dhammajoti's Reading Buddhist Sanskrit book?
Yes, went through it twice. It's good overall, best to go through with a teacher. The nice thing is that it is all Buddhist content, but it doesn't have enough irregular "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" to really equip you for all Buddhist texts. It's a good intro, though.

Two issues: 1. The exercises are short extracts without context, so can be taken in too many ways. 2. It doesn't use Devanagari—this is okay but it's important to familiarise yourself with Indic scripts at some point so you can jump easily from Devanagari into whatever script your manuscripts are in (Pracalit, Ranjana, etc.).
Javierfv1212 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:29 pm I've recently started learning Sanskrit, using Ruppel's Cambridge Introduction.
I haven't gone through Ruppel. I have gone through Goldman's Devavāṇīpraveśikā and Egenes' 2 volume Introduction to Sanskrit. Of the three I went through, Egenes was the best (and its available for free on Archive). I heard that Deshpande's Saṃskṛta-Subodinī: A Sanskrit Primer is good, and will probably go through it next.
Javierfv1212 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:29 pm I was wondering what people's experiences with Sanskrit learning (specifically for Buddhist texts), their recommendations for a beginner and what online resources or books they would recommend.
For absolute beginners, don't be afraid to go through textbooks a couple times, and try a few different ones. Every textbook has its own strengths and you might grasp a concept better when explained by someone else. It's good to get the foundations down.

For dictionaries, you can search most of them on this site. For the dictionary box, most English speakers use AP90 (Apte) or MW (Monier-Williams), but the latter is cribbed off PWG (Grosses Petersburger Wörterbuch). For Buddhist texts, it can be helpful to check BHS (Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary), which has specifically Buddhist terms. For Edgerton's grammar, you can find it here (this is necessary for looking up forms that aren't found in Paṇinian Sanskrit).

For reading, here is Edgerton's Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Reader. This will give you a chance to use the grammar and dictionary and prepare you for reading actual texts. You kind of have to train yourself to unlearn grammatical formality that you will have trained yourself in when you were introduced to Sanskrit. Sometimes rules just seem to drop away.

For some other somewhat assisted reading, I suggest checking the Digital Corpus of Sanskrit. It doesn't work well on Firefox, so I suggest another browser. When you click on a line of text, it will have a drop down bar with the grammatical forms, non-sandhi forms, and if you mouse over the non-sandhi forms it will give you a preview of definitions. For Buddhist texts, it has a completely annotated Acintyastava, Bodhicaryāvatāra, and Buddhacarita. Personally, I suggest reading the Buddhacarita as a beginner—it's both beautiful and fairly regular Sanskrit.

To read alongside English or other languages (kind of like the Loeb Classical Library style), I can suggest Thesaurus Literaturae Buddhicae. A lot of their texts are incomplete, but you can do a very zoomed-in sentence-by-sentence or even clause-by-clause view.
Javierfv1212 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:29 pm To my surprise, I have found there is a lot of stuff online that is available. One of my favorite sites is https://www.saugatam.org/ and they also have a youtube page with many videos chanting / breaking down some Sanskrit Buddhist passages. Very nice stuff.

There is also a lot of stuff on youtube, which helps with listening and chanting and could be used to create some sense of immersion.
Looks nice. It's great to learn to recite chanda with melody. With this website you input any verse and it will identify the chanda and give you an audio of how that chanda is usually recited. Reciting with a melody really helps a lot to keep track of the long and short vowels, and helps you to recognise when the meter is broken or changes.
Javierfv1212 wrote: Wed Jul 06, 2022 5:29 pm I've also been editing and expanding the wikipedia article for Sanskrit Buddhist Literature. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_ ... literature
Wonderful, I will read through it today. I have a suggested source: "Sanskritic Buddhism as an Asian Universalism" by Iain Sinclair.

I am involved in a small effort to promote Sanskritic Buddhism, with it's focal point being Nepal of course. Please email me and I can put you in touch with someone else involved. I think the people responsible for Saugatam would also be interested, so I will reach out to them.

Also, if you want to go through any texts or Dhammajoti's book together, I am happy to arrange for regular Zoom calls.
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