text:
# WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT

# SANSKRIT FOR SEEKERS

My humble _praNAms_ and congratulations for a fantastic work done. It is going to be useful as long as humans live on this earth.

**Professor V. Krishnamurthy** , well-known Advaita scholar

It is a pleasure to acknowledge Dennisji's 'labor of love' and his trusting me with the task of making a few helpful hints along the way. As the Gita assures us, no good deed ever goes to waste, and even if human beings ignore this work, Dennisji will be blessed for it.

**Sunder Hattangadi** , moderator for Advaitin Elist, Sanskrit scholar

What a great work!

**Alan Jacobs** , president, Ramana Maharshi Foundation UK, and well-known author

This lovely book provides two levels of Sanskrit instruction. It is a wonderful guide to all those individuals that would like to know the basic Sanskrit religious vocabulary and how to read, write, and pronounce Sanskrit terms. The book introduces the transliterated Sanskrit alphabet and secondly, it teaches the Devanagari script/alphabet. The second level also teaches the main rules for combining Sanskrit letters and words – which is often a headache for the beginner. Many examples are provided from the Hindu scriptures to illustrate these two levels of teaching. As well, there is a comprehensive glossary of the most commonly encountered spiritual terms. This useful book will appeal to all serious spiritual seekers interested in the Hindu scriptures and Sanskrit terminology. Its aim is to teach the reader so as to be able to look up Sanskrit words in a dictionary and to write and pronounce them correctly. I am sure that all 'beginners' or even more advanced seekers of Hindu wisdom will find this a wonderful guide.

**John Grimes** , author of _A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy_

First published by Mantra Books, 2014
Mantra Books is an imprint of John Hunt Publishing Ltd., Laurel House, Station Approach,
Alresford, Hants, SO24 9JH, UK
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For distributor details and how to order please visit the 'Ordering' section on our website.

Text copyright: Dennis Waite 2013

ISBN: 978 1 78279 227 7

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publishers.

The rights of Dennis Waite as author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

We operate a distinctive and ethical publishing philosophy in all areas of our business, from our global network of authors to production and worldwide distribution.

# CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

General Introduction to the Language

Level 1 The Transliterated Alphabet

A. The Five Basic Vowels

B. The Five Main Groups of Consonants

C. The Long Vowels

D. The Complex Vowels and Additional Sounds

E. The Semi-Vowels

F. The Sibilants

G. h, h

H. The Complete Alphabet

Level 2 The Devanagari Script

A. The Five Basic (Simple) Vowels, Short and Long

B. The Five Main Groups of Consonants

C. The Remaining Vowels

D. Table Showing the 16 _mAtRRikA_

E. The Remaining Letters (semi-vowels, sibilants and _h_ )

F. The Complete Alphabet

G. Conjunct Consonants

H. Some Special Characters

I. The Numerals

Level 3 Some Practical Examples

A. _shivasUtrANi_

B. Words and Sandhi

C. The Four _mahAvAkya_ -s

D. Some Vedic Prayers and Quotations

Resources on the Internet

A. General Resources

B. Learning the Language

C. Dictionaries and Grammar Tools

D. Documents in Sanskrit

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Dictionary of Common Sanskrit Spiritual Words

Appendix 1 Transliteration Schemes

Appendix 2 Alternative Letter Forms

Appendix 3 Vowel Forms, with and without Consonants

Appendix 4 Writing the Script

Appendix 5 Answer to Final Example

Bibliography

Index

# Acknowledgments

I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Peter Bonnici, a dear friend who died on 22nd June 2013. Peter carried out a thorough review of the first edition of this text and made many corrections and suggestions. These changes have improved the book very significantly.

# Introduction

So, why would you want to learn Sanskrit? Unless you are one of those fortunate few who have a genetic disposition for language learning or unless you are unfortunate enough to have a masochistic streak, why on earth would you want to tackle such an apparently formidable language? It shares with Latin the characteristic of having to change the ending of words depending upon the role of a noun or upon who is the subject of a verb and its tense. In fact, it is even worse than Latin. In Latin there is only singular and plural number, whereas Sanskrit has singular, two, and more than two!

It really must be almost impossible to learn this language unless you begin at school. I only wish that I had had the opportunity and studied it instead of Latin! Unfortunately, I didn't and it's certainly too late to start now; I often have difficulty remembering what I read yesterday!

Before continuing, I may as well confirm the implied and appalling admission above: I know very little Sanskrit! I cannot construct sentences or even decline nouns or conjugate verbs. I can just about read the script. I can sometimes split words into their parts or put them together – but would almost always have to refer to other sources for assistance in this. I could write the script, very clumsily, if I had to, providing I could refer to a list of the characters or to this book. But, let's face it, why would I want to? You need not just any italic pen, but one with a sloping nib, for goodness' sake! With free software on the Internet to convert transliterated Roman characters into the Sanskrit script, there is not really any need. What then, you may justifiably ask, gives me the credentials (or temerity) to write a book about Sanskrit? Well, I hope that by the time you finish reading this short introduction, you will know and accept the answer. Basically, I was – and to a degree still am – in the same position that you are.

Sanskrit is a very beautiful language. You only need to look at the flowing, cursive, perfectly proportioned script to see this, even if you cannot yet even determine where one word ends and another begins. And, when you learn about some of its other peculiarities, you will appreciate this even more. For example, once you learn how to pronounce a particular letter, you will know how to pronounce it in every word you will ever encounter. There are not many languages which could make that claim!

Perhaps the most amazing aspect is the almost mathematical precision with which letters and syllables combine. One name that you will find invariably associated with the language is Panini – he constructed a complex set of rules, which may be memorized through short 'sutras'. These enable one to work out how to assemble words and syllables into sentences. So impressive and logical is this set of rules that NASA have apparently proposed it as the basis for a new computer language (see <http://post.jagran.com/NASA-to-use-Sanskrit-as-computer-language-1332758613>).

But none of this addresses the original question. What prompted you to pick up this book (and me to write it)? If it really is the case that you want actually to _learn_ the language, then please put this book back on the shelf. There is an excellent two-volume work for learning the language written by Thomas Egenes (Ref. 6). What is more, Part 1 is available for free at <http://www.scribd.com/doc/32874508/Introduction-to-Sanskrit-by-Thomas-Egenes> so that you can try it out before committing.)

I suggest (hope) that your interest in this book comes from the fact that your actual interest is in Hindu scriptures such as the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita and maybe even the works of Shankara and other writers on non-duality. The fact is that, up until a few hundred years ago, all books and academic texts in India were written in Sanskrit. In this respect, it is similar to Latin in the West, except that Sanskrit is much more tenacious. Whereas Latin really could be said to be dead now, Sanskrit is still very much alive in the field of spiritual study. Although it is not really spoken any longer (apart from the odd commune-style efforts), it is still written. Even today, books are being published which are entirely in Sanskrit!

The point is that traditional teaching (certainly in the philosophy of Advaita, which is my own specialization) always refers back to the original scriptural texts for its authority. This is because those scriptures are the actual source of knowledge for key truths regarding the nature of reality and of ourselves. This knowledge is simply not accessible by any other means. We cannot _see_ God or infer that the visible universe is not in itself real but depends upon something more fundamental. These things have to be told to us, by someone in whom we can trust, until such time as we can realize those truths for ourselves.

Scriptures have an inherent problem – their brevity. For several thousand years, some of the oldest texts – the Upanishads and the Vedas of which they form a part – were passed on orally; there were no written versions. Accordingly, they had to be relatively short and memorable. They were chanted aloud repeatedly to ensure that they were passed down the generations without distortion or loss. Even today, traditional teachers and their disciples chant the mantras before the guru translates and explains their meaning.

Accordingly, some interpretation is almost invariably required by the seeker before he or she can grasp what is being said. And, as you may know, there are not merely different emphases in meaning by different teachers but totally different schools of philosophy claiming to be supported by the same scriptural texts. It follows that one is certain to encounter different translations of the same text. An obvious example is that the Bhagavad Gita is regarded as the 'bible' of the Hare Krishna movement, which is essentially dualistic (dvaita). Yet this same text has an authoritative commentary by Shankara and is revered by Advaitins.

Ideally, of course, one would only study Advaita, or any other philosophy/teaching methodology, under the guidance of a competent teacher who fully understands the scriptures and how to 'unfold' them (and is also fluent in Sanskrit!). Practically speaking, however, few seekers in the West have access to a qualified teacher and so are obliged to read such material themselves. Without any knowledge at all of Sanskrit, one simply has to hope that one has selected an 'appropriate' translation, and will not be misled by the choice of words. Unfortunately, this can be dangerous!

It would be possible, and maybe both interesting and instructive, to take a single verse from an Upanishad and examine the translations given by a selection of different authors. But it would also take quite a lot of space (and time and effort) to do this in detail. Suffice to say that, for example, the commentaries of a teacher from the lineage of Swami Chinmayananda will almost certainly differ in some key areas from those written by a teacher in the Ramakrishna/Vivekananda lineage. This is because the latter has incorporated elements from outside of Shankara's Advaita school. For example, they will maintain that profound meditation ( _samAdhi_ ) can lead to enlightenment, whereas Shankara would insist that meditation is an action, which is not opposed to ignorance, and that only Self-knowledge can bring enlightenment.

Consequently, if one is reading a particular translation and commentary, and one encounters a statement which seems not to be in accord with one's prior understanding, it often becomes necessary to check the meaning of key words and see if the particular translation given has been biased. In order to be able to do this, a certain minimum level of understanding is needed.

This book provides that 'minimum level' (and no more!). You will not be able to read, write or understand Sanskrit _sentences_ after reading this book. But you will, with a little effort, be able to read and understand Sanskrit _words_. And that, hopefully, will allow you to read commentaries on scriptures and look up the meaning of words with which you are unfamiliar. With this ability, you will hopefully move forward more quickly on your chosen spiritual path.

And even if you only read the postings of discussion groups on the Internet, or articles or blogs at my own website for example, you will find that some writers invariably take it for granted that you will be familiar with certain Sanskrit terms and they will use them gratuitously without providing any translation. If you have the patience and really want to follow such writing, you will have to look up the words that you don't know. Mostly, the Sanskrit in such cases will be transliterated so you just have to be familiar with ITRANS or the use of diacritical marks on letters (all explained within). But sometimes, a writer will expect you to know the Devanagari script itself and not even bother to provide transliteration, let alone translation. Probably you will give up at that point and simply feel sorry for (or irritated by) the author's superior attitude but, if you really want to proceed, this book should provide the help you need to persevere.

As an example, what would you make of the following two words if you encountered them?

Presumably not a lot. Yet, if you are a 'spiritual seeker', such words will be central to your life – the very goal of your existence. In addition, most of the original source material about them will have been written in Sanskrit. The first of these words usually appears as 'moksha' in English books on the subject. It literally means 'release from worldly existence', liberation from the ignorance that binds us to the illusions of our lives. In the context of Advaita, a better translation is simply 'freedom from Self-ignorance' or even 'gaining of Self-knowledge'. But how do you pronounce it? Probably, as I once did, you will say 'mocksha', with the 'o' sounding as in the word 'clock'. In fact, one should sound it like the 'oa' in 'cloak'. The second word is the goal of Buddhists, usually written 'nirvana'. It means 'absolute extinction of individual existence or of all desires and passions'. Probably your pronunciation of this is not too bad – you may have come across the 1970s pop group of this name. The accent is on the second syllable, which is a long 'a', as in 'bar', while the final 'a' is short as in 'cat'. If you are British as opposed to American, however, the 'v' may well be pronounced as 'w'.

Ideally, you would like to know all of these things but without actually having to learn the language. Up to a point, this is possible and it is the purpose of this book to provide the necessary background. This claim is possible because these were precisely the requirements that I had and which I have achieved to my own satisfaction.

This book effectively provides for three levels of attainment. First, it will teach you the two most commonly used 'transliterated' forms of the language. This word refers to an 'Anglicized', or more correctly 'Romanized', form of Sanskrit i.e. one that uses the alphabet with which we are already familiar. True Sanskrit is written in a script that bears no resemblance to English, has quite different letters, and requires rather more effort to learn. One of these transliterated forms – usually just called 'Roman' – is used in many books that utilize Sanskrit terms. This form has dashes and dots over or under letters to indicate how to pronounce them. They actually _are_ different letters in the Sanskrit! As these are not available to the average typist, the second transliterated form, most frequently used on the Internet, is called ITRANS. (Unfortunately, quite a few books do not use any formal transliteration at all. These, instead, make crude attempts to reproduce Sanskrit words phonetically and often do not even bother to do this.)

With the knowledge of these two, it will be possible to look up words in any dictionary that does not use the actual Sanskrit script. The glossary of this book aims to provide explanations for many of the terms that you are likely to encounter in Western books on Eastern philosophy. You will also be able to use (or download) dictionary facilities on the Internet to look up words that are not provided here, and an explanation will be given as to how to go about this.

For those whose ambitions are a little higher, whose need is to be able to use a full Sanskrit–nglish dictionary to look up words, it is necessary to learn the Sanskrit alphabet, together with the original script that is used to reproduce it, and some basic rules for combining letters. This is the second level of attainment that will be addressed. While the first level may be achieved very easily, this higher level requires rather more effort. Suggestions are made as to how to achieve this, and pointers are given to free resources on the Internet that will prove helpful.

If the word that you wish to look up is actually in the dictionary, these first two steps will be adequate. Unfortunately, there are two main reasons why the word that you want to look up will not be in the dictionary:

1) The word in the text will have the ending appropriate to its part of speech or tense, whereas the dictionary only lists the forms before they have been declined or conjugated. (Unfortunately the scope of this book does not include the topics of declension or conjugation.)

2) Words in Sanskrit combine with adjacent words in many situations and the letters at the join frequently change. The consequence of this is that the separate words that make up a 'word' found in a book may not be immediately recognizable. In order to be able to separate out the book word into its constituent parts, a third level of attainment is required – to learn the rules for joining. The last part of this book will introduce you to some of the main rules of so-called 'sandhi'.

The principal problem of course is the alien nature of the script. In order to be able actually to learn the alphabet in its original form, it is necessary to learn to recognize the form of each letter. Ideally, you would practice writing these yourself in order to help commit the letters to memory. None of this is intrinsically difficult but it does all take time.

In order to achieve the 'level 1' ability to pronounce and look up Romanized words in a glossary, you can expect to have to spend just a few hours reading the relevant parts of this book a couple of times. In order to be able to achieve 'level 2' ability, reading the actual script and looking up words in a Sanskrit–nglish dictionary, you must expect to spend several hours per week for a few months, with serious practice most days. You need not see this as a chore, however. This book aims to introduce the letters very gradually and present words for practice at the earliest opportunity. If you choose to use writing as an aid to learning, the script has great beauty and giving one's full attention in calligraphy is itself a useful practice for stilling the mind. If you wish to go further and learn all of the rules for joining words, this will require serious study, together with the assistance of someone who can provide the solution after you have given up! This book will only provide you with a good idea of what is involved – far more interesting and rewarding than crosswords or solving cryptograms!

Any genuine spiritual aspirant will want to make this effort. Your reward will be to be able to verify for yourself the correct pronunciation and meanings of words. You will no longer be at the mercy of the authors, translators or editors of the books you read. You will no longer be worried that you have misunderstood the meaning of a term used in an Internet email discussion group or heard from a teacher. You will be able to check the original source material for yourself and look up the meanings of key words.

This book will not address anything beyond these simple aims. It will not tell you how to decline nouns or conjugate verbs. These terms are not even defined, in case you do not know what they mean! You will not discover how to construct sentences or all of the rules for combining words. In other words, this book will not teach you the language in even its most basic form. Suggestions will be given, however, to those daring few whose ambitions do stretch that far.

# General Introduction to the Language

True Sanskrit uses an alphabet quite unlike ours. For a start, it contains nearly twice as many letters overall, with more than three times the number of vowels. These letters can look quite different depending upon where they appear in a word and which other letters are adjacent. The language is written in a script called 'Devanagari' (meaning 'city of the gods').

It is an extremely interesting language and amazingly logical. There are many rules but, once you have learned them, there are none of the tiresome exceptions found in most languages. In addition, once you have learned how to pronounce a letter, it is _always_ pronounced in that way.

It is interesting to note in passing that there is a close parallel between the structure of the language and the Sankhya-related myth of the creation. Indeed, some schools of thought, notably in the north of India and Kashmir, believe that the universe was 'spoken' into existence. Though this 'primordial' language is beyond ordinary sound, Sanskrit is its earthly manifestation, as it were, and embodies many of the 'universal principles'. The language itself is believed to embody the truth of the unity of the Self.

The entire language evolves from a fundamental sound. The laws governing the way that words are constructed, and the grammar used to join them, are strict. It is amazing that the language, though the most ancient known and no longer in general usage, remains true to its original form. Someone learning it now would be able to communicate perfectly well with someone who spoke the language thousands of years ago.

# Level 1 The Transliterated Alphabet

Before introducing the Devanagari script, we will learn the basic alphabet in its transliterated form. All of the words in the 'Dictionary of Common Sanskrit Spiritual Words' (provided towards the end of this book) are given in this form and ordered as if the letters were English so that there is not actually any need for you to learn the real Sanskrit characters or alphabet order if you do not wish to. Rather than presenting this section twice – once for each of the transliterated forms – I will give both forms now for each letter, as it is introduced. These are, in any case, often the same. Note, however, that I will generally only show the ITRANS form when giving examples of Sanskrit words.

As was noted in the Introduction, the Romanized form is still used in most written material. This includes serious books and documents on the Internet held in, for example, postscript or Adobe® 'PDF' format. The reason that ITRANS was developed is that the Romanized form uses various 'diacritical' marks that are not easily available to someone typing on an ordinary computer keyboard. He or she must make use of the ordinary fonts provided with word processors, for storing and communicating the resultant data on or via computers. 'Diacritical' marks are modifications to basic letter forms. An example outside of Sanskrit would be the accents used in French – acute, grave, circumflex, and cedilla – é, è, ê, and ç. In the Romanized transliteration of Sanskrit, there are a number of special marks, such as lines (called macrons) over vowels, for example – ā. In order to be able to type and send this character easily, ITRANS writes it as 'aa' or 'A' but I will use 'A' throughout as this has now become the favored option of Internet users. The ITRANS scheme uses only the usual letters of our alphabet, together with the occasional special character such as the tilde ~. The special characters of ITRANS always appear as separate characters, however, and not over or under other letters as they do in Romanized transliteration.

In the last few years, it has become easier to reproduce the Roman forms via computers. For example, the Wordpress system, commonly used for hosting blogs on the Internet, has free plugins such as IndicIME (<http://www.vishalon.net/IndicResources/IndicIME.aspx>) to make entering languages with diacritical marks easy. Also the changeover to Unicode character encoding systems on websites has vastly expanded the number of different letter forms possible. This has meant that Romanized transliteration is found increasingly frequently in articles and web pages online. Nevertheless, because ITRANS has been used for so long now in emails and discussion groups, and because it is so easy to use, it is likely to remain popular for a long time yet.

It must also be noted that the pronunciation I will be describing is principally that recommended by the School of Economic Science, which represents the largest body of Sanskrit students in the UK. The development of their system is very clear and logical and therefore easy to learn and understand. Although all traditions generally agree in most respects, there are key differences regarding some elements. Since the vast majority of any communication you are likely to have will be written rather than verbal, this should present no problem, however. The main difference that would be noticed by anyone learning the language in the USA is that the 'v's are pronounced as 'v' there, whereas the logically correct pronunciation is 'w'. This will be explained in due course!

**A. The Five Basic Vowels**

1. a, a

The first letter of the alphabet forms the fundamental sound from which all others are derived simply by moving the tongue and lips. You make it by opening the mouth wide and letting the vocal cords operate. The sound which emerges sounds like a cross between the short 'a' in 'cat' and 'u' in 'but'. It is written as ' _a_ ' in both of the transliterated forms but the correct letter in the Devanagari script is:

** **

(I will not show the Devanagari for any of the other letters, until the second part of the book.) In this first section, on the transliterated alphabet, I will show each letter as it is introduced in first the ITRANS form and then the Romanized form. Thus, the first letter is:

a, a

i.e. there is no difference for this letter. The fonts used in this book are: normal 11 point Times New Roman font for the basic text; 11 point Arial Unicode MS for the ITRANS and Romanized transliteration. The fonts used for the Devanagari script are 18 point Sanskrit 98 and 18 point ancientsanskrit99 for some special characters. Note that any special fonts used in the manuscript for this book, including the Devanagari script, may be downloaded free of charge from the Internet. Information about this will be provided later.

This, then (a, a), is the first letter of the alphabet and the first vowel or, to use its correct term, _svara_ , meaning 'sound'. Its literal meaning is 'self-shining', to indicate that these are the only letters with sound. The consonants have no sound of their own and need to be combined with vowels to be 'manifest'. Unless we attach a vowel, the consonant is only throat and tongue position combined with an inner effort – there is no actual sound. By convention, _a_ is always pronounced after each consonant (when we are speaking it as a letter) so as to enable the consonant sound to be manifest.

When we speak an English consonant, we also have to introduce a vowel before or after it in order to make a sound. For example, when we speak the letter 'm' we effectively say 'em'. It is never possible to speak a consonant without doing this, however slightly. When we speak the letter 'b', the expressed vowel comes after the word and we say 'be'; with 'k', we say 'kay', and so on. (Note that Sanskrit consonants are not invariably sounded with _a_ when they occur in a word. Obviously they can be followed by other vowels! Also, a consonant at the end of a word or at the beginning of a conjunct consonant will not be sounded with _a_. These will be explained later.)

A word such as _aham_ , meaning 'I', is an example of the use of _a_. (I will give a simple or useful example with each letter to help put it into context and aid memory.)

2. i, i

If the back of the tongue is now raised slightly towards the back of the roof of the mouth, keeping the front of the tongue down against the back of the lower teeth, and the same short movement of the vocal cords is made, a slightly different sound emerges. This sounds a bit like the short 'i' in 'bit'. It is written:

i, i

The word _iti_ , meaning 'thus', is an example. It is frequently used in the scriptures to add stress to what has just been said.

3. R^i or RRi, ṛ

The next two vowels may seem strange but follow the logic of the development. The underlying sound for both of these is the ' _i_ ' sound just covered but the tongue is first moved further forward in the mouth. If you raise the tip of the tongue until it is almost touching the roof of the mouth and then make the 'i' sound as before, the next vowel sound emerges. Modern students often actually flick the tongue downwards as the sound is made so that the result sounds something like 'ri' in the word 'rip'. Strictly speaking, the rolling 'r' beginning is not clearly enunciated because the tongue never actually touches the roof of the mouth. However, this articulation is not correct. The way in which it is written in the two forms of transliteration now differs clearly. In ITRANS, the special character '^' (caret) was used in the early versions, but is one which is nevertheless easily produced from the normal typewriter keyboard. In Romanized form, a dot is used beneath the letter:

ṛ

In the latest version of ITRANS, an alternative form is available that does not use any special character, namely:

RRi [Note that the free software utilities mentioned later, for generating Devanagari script, recognize both forms but RRi is the preferred form in the digital dictionary referred to later, so I will use this form preferentially.]

One of the oldest, if not the oldest, of the Upanishads is the Brihadaranyaka. This is a typical Anglicized spelling, which is in fact quite inaccurate. I will not jump ahead by giving you the full, correct spelling (look in the Glossary if you must!) but the first vowel in the word is this one so that the beginning is _bRRihad-_. Incidentally, it is convenient to tell you at this point that there is no distinction between capitals and lower case in Sanskrit – there is just the one case. In the Roman alphabet, having learned 26 lower-case letter forms, you then have to learn another 26 for the same letters in upper case. There is none of this in Sanskrit, which makes up to some extent for the fact that there are nearly as many _different_ letters altogether and these often change their form in different situations!

4. L^i or LLi, ḷ (Note that the Roman form here is a lower-case letter 'el' with a dot under, not a capital I, nor a number 1, nor an exclamation mark !)

For the next of the principal vowels, this procedure is repeated but now the tip of the tongue moves further forward still, to just behind the front teeth, before the 'i' is sounded. Again, modern speakers often flick the tongue up towards the roof and down so that the sound that actually comes out is 'lri'. Again, this is not strictly correct but it hardly matters since there are very few words in the language that use this letter! The ITRANS form again may use the '^' symbol and the Romanized form the dot below the letter: LLi, ḷ

As before, the more recent releases of ITRANS allow the form ' _LLi_ ' to be used and this is the form that will be used here, subsequently. The word _LLi_ means 'mountain'.

5. u, u

Continuing the development, the emphasis finally shifts to the lips (labial position), having begun in the throat (guttural position), moved to the back of the mouth (palatal), then to the roof of the mouth (cerebral) and then to the teeth (dental). If a circle is formed of the lips but without any tension and the basic sound is made, a short 'oo' sound comes out as in 'soot' or 'put'. This is the last of the simple vowels and is written the same in both transliterated forms:

u, u

This is, of course, the vowel that begins the word 'Upanishad' but this word is an Anglicized version since, as you will discover, the 'sh' part is actually a single letter in Sanskrit. Also remember, there should not actually be a capital letter. You should not worry too much about this latter aspect though. It is normal to use a capital where one would be used in English. This is especially the case (no pun intended) where a proper name is involved. It would be most unusual to come across the name Arjuna or, even more so, the name of a god, given in transliterated form without a capitalized first letter. If you are using Devanagari script, of course, the need to be aware of this etiquette disappears.

**B. The Five Main Groups of Consonants**

Before continuing to describe the other vowels, I will now switch to tell you about some of the consonants. The five vowels just described with their characteristic mouth positions effectively head up the five main groups of five consonants in each group. Consonants all effectively still sound the basic 'a' but 'stop' it from coming out in that simple way by varying the position of the tongue and lips in the way dictated by the vowel at the head of the group. The Sanskrit term for consonants is _vya~njana_ , meaning a 'decoration' (of the basic vowel sound) but you will have to wait until later to find out how to pronounce this word.

I will attempt to describe how to sound the letters in each of these groups by appropriate positioning of the tongue and lips and use of the throat. However, a reviewer of this book pointed out a much simpler and more general 'rule' to bear in mind. That is to consider the mouth positioning required in order to pronounce English words beginning with the corresponding semi-vowel. (These will be described later.)

Thus, one can pronounce the guttural letters by having the tongue in the position required for pronouncing the 'h' of 'happy'. When the tongue is in the position needed for pronouncing the 'y' of 'yellow', it is also in the position for pronouncing the palatals. The tongue positioned to say the 'r' of 'rat' accounts for the cerebrals; the 'l' of 'love' positions the tongue for the dentals; and the position of tongue and lips to pronounce the 'w' of 'watch' is correct for the labial group.

1. The first group of consonants (guttural)

The first group uses the mouth position of the 'a' for forming its five consonants so that this all takes place at the back of the mouth where it becomes the throat – the 'guttural' position.

a) k, k

The first consonant of this group is written ' _k_ ', sounded 'ka' as in ' _ka_ rate'. An example of a commonly used Sanskrit term using this letter is ' _karma_ ', literally meaning 'action'.

Clearly a consonant can occur at the end of the word, as with 'k' in 'rack' for example. Here, we do not want to sound an _a_ with it. If we were to do so, we would end up with a different word – in this example it would become 'racka'. When this happens in Sanskrit an additional mark is added under the letter, called a _virAma_ , literally meaning 'cessation', 'termination' or 'end', and is understood to mean 'don't make any vowel sound after this'. Consonants appearing at the end of a word, without a following vowel, are also called _halanta_. This means that a consonant, which for reasons I won't go into at the moment is represented by the abbreviation _hal_ , is at the end, i.e. it is not followed by a vowel. Because of this, the _virAma_ sign that indicates this is also called a _halant_. Thus, a _k_ at the end of a word used to be written ' _k.h_ ' in ITRANS, where the ' _.h_ ' after any consonant means that it is followed by a halant and 'a' is not sounded after it. In fact, it is no longer necessary in ITRANS to do this – if the letter is written on its own at the end of a word, the halant is inserted automatically. The Devanagari letter for _k_ , sounded 'ka' is:

** **

And, when this appears at the end of a word and we do not want to sound the 'a' that is associated by default with the letter, a _halant_ is added and it looks like:

** **

There is no corresponding mechanism in the Romanized transliteration scheme for differentiating between the two. It is simply assumed (as is the case now with ITRANS) that, if no vowel appears after a final consonant, then none is sounded. All of this is common sense really and it might be seen as an unnecessary complication. If you intend to go on to the second level, however, you will need to know why the form of a Devanagari character frequently looks slightly different when it appears at the end of a word.

b) kh, kh

The second consonant in the guttural group is written ' _kh_ '. Its pronunciation is much like the preceding one but with the addition of a slight breathy sound caused by actually letting out some air immediately following the 'k' sound. This method of uttering the sound is called 'aspirated'. It is often sounded like 'k-h' in 'cloa(k-h)at' but there is too much emphasis in this – it is really more subtle. Consonants such as ' _k_ ' are said to be 'with little breath' ( _alpaprANa_ ) while ones like ' _kh_ ' are 'with much breath' ( _mahAprANa_ ). Again, I am giving you the correct Sanskrit terms for these but I have not yet introduced all of the letters so you will not know precisely how to pronounce them. On the second and subsequent readings, of course, there will be no problem.

The word ' _khaga_ ', meaning 'bird', is often used in textbooks teaching beginners of Sanskrit.

c) g, g

The third in this group is written ' _g_ ', sounded 'g' as in 'gap' (sounded without any additional breath following the consonant, i.e. _alpaprANa_ ). A well-known word beginning with this letter is ' _guru_ ', used to refer to a spiritual teacher, though its literal meaning is 'heavy'. In Sanskrit pronunciation, syllables that are emphasized (e.g. in reading poetry) are called _guru_ as opposed to unstressed ones, which are called ' _laghu_ ', meaning 'light'.

d) gh, gh

The fourth is written ' _gh_ ' and, like ' _kh_ ', is sounded with a superseding expelling of air – _mahAprANa_. It sounds like 'gh' in 'doghouse'. The word ' _laghu_ ' just given above uses this consonant.

e) ~N, ṅ

The final consonant in this group introduces a new term – _anunAsika_ , meaning that the sound is made through the nose as well as the throat. It is written using a tilde followed by a capital N in ITRANS format ' _~N_ ' or with a dot above the lower case 'n' in Romanized format. There are four n-related sounds; hence the need for the special characters. This one has the sound of 'ng' made at the back of the throat and sounding through the nose, like 'sing' but with the ending further back in the throat like someone who is being strangled rather than singing!

The word _~Na_ itself means 'an object of sense' or 'desire for any sensual object', though, in the dictionary, it is designated as 'L', meaning 'lexicographers' rather than as a masculine, feminine or neuter noun. This means that no one has ever found the word being used in any scripture or other historical text.

**2. The second group of consonants (palatal)**

This second group forms the sounds in the back part of the mouth but not the throat. Based on the ' _i_ ' vowel, these use the back of the tongue and the rear of the mouth and are thus called 'palatal'. As noted above, a good guideline for this is to position the mouth and tongue for saying the _y_ in ' _y_ es'. They follow the same pattern as the previous group (as do all five of these groups of consonants, you will be pleased to know!). The first and third members are _alpaprANa_ , the second and fourth are _mahAprANa_ , and the fifth is _anunAsika_.

a) c or ch, c

The first is written ' _c_ ' or ' _ch_ ' in ITRANS and it is sounded like 'cha' in 'chap'. Whereas English pronounces this by using the _front_ of the tongue near the _front_ of the roof of the mouth, Sanskrit uses the _rear_ parts.

It is likely that you are going to be confused over the choice of representations here when we look at the next letter in this group. ITRANS allows either of these forms to refer to the same letter, whereas Romanized transliteration insists on the first alone. It is perhaps understandable that ' _ch_ ' should be allowed since this is effectively how it sounds. There is no equivalent of the hard 'c' in English, as in 'tin can' – this would use the ' _k_ ' from the first group. Nor is there an equivalent of the soft 'c', as in 'cervix' – this would use the ' _s_ ' that we will look at later. Therefore, there is actually no confusion in just using ' _c_ ' to refer to this 'ch' sound. However, many sources do use _ch_ and, since this is how it has to be sounded, I will use this form henceforth and _Ch_ for the next letter.

An example that you will probably have encountered is ' _chakra_ '. It refers to the points in the spinal cord through which energy is supposed to flow and is particularly relevant in kundalini yoga.

b) chh or Ch, ch

The second character in this group used to be written ' _chh_ ' in ITRANS but, unfortunately, ' _ch_ ' in Romanized. More recently, ITRANS has introduced ' _Ch_ ' as the preferred option, which avoids the confusion somewhat, so that it might be best for you to learn this from the outset and ignore the ' _chh_ ' version altogether. Certainly, you need to decide which scheme you are using in any given document and stick to it!

Since I have already said that the pattern of the first group is repeated in the others, you might guess that this is sounded much like ' _ch_ ' but with some added breath – and you would be right! Just remember not to make it too pronounced so that it comes out like 'mat(ch-h)ot' and it should be fine. If you are familiar with the Upanishads, you will know that one of the main ones is called the Chandogya. (Again this is not the correct transliterated spelling but the commonly used Anglicized one. I will always use normal font for these examples. If the font is italicized, you will know that it is the correct ITRANSliterated format.) The 'Ch' part of the word is this character.

c) j, j

The third is written ' _j_ ' and pronounced more or less as we would expect, like the 'ja' in 'jam'. It uses minimum breath again as for all in this third 'row' of the main consonants. (The full table will be presented at the end of this section on the five main groups of consonants.) If you meditate using a mantra, you will probably know that the practice of mental repetition is called ' _japa_ '. This is a nice simple word pronounced exactly as you would expect, but remember to keep the vowels as short as possible – much shorter than typical English or American diction.

d) jh, jh

The fourth is written ' _jh_ ' and you can work out now how it should sound – like 'j-ha' but not too much so. The frequency of letter occurrences in Sanskrit is very widely spread and there are quite a few letters that hardly occur at all. As noted above, the vowel _LLi_ is very infrequent. (A longer version of it that will be discussed later is effectively non-existent!) _jh_ is one of the less common consonants. An interesting example of a word that does use it emphasizes the need for care. In English there are words which, with just a slight variation in spelling, mean something quite different. Perhaps because there are so many more vowels in Sanskrit, this seems to happen much more often. The word _jhalA_ , with a long 'a' sound at the end (which we have not yet discussed), means 'girl'. Spelling this with a short _a_ at the end and two _l_ 's gives _jhalla_ , which means a 'prize-fighter'.

e) ~n (or JN), ñ

The final letter in this group is the second of the _anunAsika_ characters (the 'n' type sounds made through the nose). It has a sort of 'ny' sound (as in 'canyon'). To pronounce this, put the tongue into the position in which you are about to say 'yes' and, without changing position, say 'nya'. This mouth movement is very alien to Westerners and, ideally, you should endeavor to listen to someone who knows how to pronounce the letter correctly. This applies to all of the letters but especially to ones such as this.

The only word listed in the dictionary beginning with this letter is another lexicographers' word, _~na_ , meaning a 'singer' or 'jingling sound' (or 'heretic' or 'ox'!). A common word that uses it, however, is _j~nAna_ , as in jnana yoga, meaning 'knowledge'. This word is often confusingly represented in books, appearing sometimes as 'gyana' or 'gnana', and is very rarely pronounced correctly. This is not helped by the fact that the Itranslator Software permits _GY_ to be used for the conjunct _j~n_ so that _GYAna_ is an allowable form of the ITRANS for this word. (The reason for this is that another transliteration scheme uses this form of representation – see Appendix 1.) The ITRANS _JN_ is a more recent change, which is now recognized by the latest version of Itranslator software.

**3. The third group of consonants (cerebral)**

This third group has now moved the mouth position another step forward so that the roof of the mouth is used, with the tip of the tongue pointing up to it, as when you say 'rat'. To construct the main consonants, the tongue actually touches the roof. It is called the cerebral position.

a) T, ṭ

In ITRANS, all of this third (middle) group are written as capital letters to differentiate them from the fourth group, which appear very similar and also sound similar, simply moving the tongue nearer towards the front of the mouth. In the Romanized transliteration, the letters have a dot beneath them. ' _T_ ' is pronounced as the 't' in 'tub', having the tongue pointing up to the roof of the palate as you say it. That should have been spoken 'with only a small breath' as usual ( _alpaprANa_ ).

All of the letters in this group are infrequent. If you encounter a word with a sound that might be in this group, it is far more likely that it will in fact be in the next group. If your philosophy is that of Advaita, you are very likely to have heard of the sage Astavakra, born deformed because of a curse from his father while he was still in his mother's womb. (Astavakra means 'twisted in eight ways'.) The 'Astavakra Gita' records how he taught King Janaka the truths of Advaita. The 't' in Astavakra is actually this one.

b) Th, ṭh

The second letter is the aspirated form, sounded the same as ' _T_ ' but with more breath as you make the sound ( _mahAprANa_ ), a bit like 'po-th-ole' (pothole) – but remember that the tongue must point to the roof of the mouth, i.e. not how we would normally sound this combination.

c) D, ḍ

The next letter is pronounced like 'd' in 'dot' but as before, with the tip of the tongue right up in the roof of the mouth. Most spiritual seekers, whether or not they belong to the Advaita school, will have heard of the philosopher Adi Shankara, who systematized the philosophy of Advaita in the eighth century AD. The teacher of Shankara's teacher was Gaudapada, who is famous for writing a verse-commentary ( _kArikA_ ) on one of the Upanishads – the Mandukya Upanishad. Unfortunately, all of these Sanskrit words are incorrectly represented, as you will discover later. But, for the moment, we can improve on this situation by acknowledging that the first 'd' in 'Gaudapada' and the one in 'Mandukya' are in fact this character, ' _D_ ' _–_ the cerebral form of the 'd' sounding letter.

d) Dh, ḍh

The fourth letter sounds the same as the third but with more breath (e.g. go-dh-ead). An example is _Dhola_ , which is a large drum.

e) N, ṇ

The last in the group is another 'na' sound but with the tongue in the roof of the mouth. The word _guNa_ uses this letter – and here is the first complete word consisting completely of letters you have now met. Instead of writing it (incorrectly) as 'guna', you can now use the correct transliteration of _guNa_ or _guṅa_. It refers to the three 'qualities' of nature in Sankhya yoga – _sattva, rajas_ and _tamas_.

**4. The fourth group of consonants (dental)**

This group of consonants is sounded with the tongue positioned just behind the teeth, as though to say 'love', and called, unsurprisingly, dental. The sounds are essentially the same as those in the cerebral group but sound much more natural to Western ears and are very much more common. If you are ever in any doubt as to whether a sound should be cerebral or dental, guess this one!

a) t, t

The first member of the group is ' _t_ '. It is sounded with the tongue actually touching the back of the teeth. This is further forward in the mouth than is normally used in English and is better represented by a word such as the French 'petite'. A simple example, or even two examples, is _tat_ as in the _mahAvAkya_ ('great saying' from the Upanishads) _tat tvam asi –_ 'thou art that'. It means 'that' and both t's are this dental character (in fact, this word begins its life as _tad_ , as you will discover later). The final 't' is the _halanta_ form, meaning that there is no vowel sound following it and the Devanagari character will have a halant sign beneath it, whereas the first one will not.

b) th, th

Then comes the equivalent aspirated letter, with more breath ( _mahAprANa_ ), ' _th_ ', pronounced as in 'butthead'. (Another way in which this letter is pronounced – and those who do so would maintain it to be the correct way! – is as the English 'th' in 'path', for example. It has to be said that it seems easier, and more consistent, to pronounce the word _sthita_ , for example, as is indicated in the main text.) The adjective _sthita_ means 'standing' and is used in the sense of 'steady' and 'firm' in the word _sthitapraj~na_ in the Bhagavad Gita, where it means 'a person of steady wisdom' or someone who knows the Self.

c) d, d

Next is ' _d_ '. This is essentially the same as in 'dog' but with the tongue starting out immediately behind the teeth. Perhaps the French 'donner' might be a better representation. The word _dama_ means 'self-restraint', understood as control over the senses. It is one of the six qualities specified by Shankara as prerequisites for the spiritual seeker.

d) dh, dh

This is the breathy equivalent of the previous character and is pronounced as the 'dh' in 'adhere'. A similar word to _dama_ , as just described, is _dharma_. This word is possibly more familiar to many readers. It is commonly used to speak of such things as recommended practice, duty or conduct, and to refer to absolutes of justice etc. More appropriately, in a spiritual context, it means essence or essential quality or nature. Our own _dharma_ refers to what we ought to be doing with our lives in order to move forward on some path towards realization of our Self.

e) n, n

Finally, in this group, is the one sounded through the nose ( _anunAsika_ ). This is pronounced just as in English, as for example in... er... 'nose'. The word _nAma_ is a simple word, meaning 'name', as in the phrase _nAma-rUpa_ , the 'name and form' of the creation that is, in reality, non-dual, not separate from ourselves and not actually created, according to Advaita.

Quite often the 'n' at the end of a word will be replaced by the nasal in the same group as the consonant that follows. This is because the rules that govern how letters combine are designed so that sound flows smoothly without gaps or stutters. It would be extremely difficult to make the correct sound of one of these _anunAsika_ consonants, immediately followed by the correct sound of another consonant, unless the two are in the same group – try it later!

Thus, an example of a word with which you are likely to be familiar, and which uses this letter, is 'satsa~Nga'. This would typically be written as 'satsang' in books for the Western market. It refers to the 'good company' of associating with like-minded people, and especially with ones who are Self-realized. It is used for the question-and-answer sessions provided by the teachers who currently tour the Western world. The _anunAsika_ used has to be '~N' because it is combined with the immediately following 'g' and, since this is in the first, guttural, group of consonants, so must the nasal letter be.

**5. The fifth group of consonants (labial)**

The final group of the main consonants is sounded at the lips. They are called 'labial' and pronounced with the lips in the position as if to say 'woo' (or, as some say, as if to kiss a baby).

a) p, p

The first is ' _p_ ' just like our 'p', as in 'put'. The theory of _karma_ tells us that we are effectively 'rewarded' as a result of 'good' or unselfish acts and 'punished' by 'bad' or selfish ones, if not in this life, then in future ones. The result of good action is called _puNya_ ; the result of bad action is called _pApa_. Both begin with this labial character.

b) ph, ph

Then comes the corresponding breathy ' _ph_ ', as in uphill. In respect of the karma just mentioned, books will often speak of the 'fruit' of action being either good or bad. The Sanskrit for 'fruit' is _phalam_ , beginning with this letter, and 'fruit of action' is _karmaphalam_. You have to remember not to pronounce this as 'falam', thinking that the 'ph' sound is the same as in English!

c) b, b

Next is ' _b_ ', as in 'bad'. _buddha_ means 'awake' or 'enlightened'. (Note that this word also contains both _d_ and _dh_ from the dental group, in a compound consonant.)

d) bh, bh

The _mahAprANa_ ' _bh_ ' is pronounced as in 'abhor'. The Bhagavad Gita begins with this letter. _bhagavat_ means 'prosperous, happy'. _gItA_ , when correctly spelt, does not in fact contain short vowels but long ones, which we will look at in just a moment – it means 'sung'. A _gItA_ is usually a philosophical or religious doctrine in the form of a sacred song or poem. Note that the ' _t_ ' at the end of _bhagavat_ becomes a ' _d_ ' when it joins with _gItA_ to become _bhagavadgItA_.

e) m, m

Finally, the _anunAsika_ in this group is ' _m_ ', pronounced as in 'man'. An example of its use is the word _manas_ , which strictly speaking means 'mind' in its widest sense, including intellect, understanding, perception, conscience etc. In Hindu philosophies in particular though, it is used in a much more specific sense. It refers to that part of the mind responsible for transmitting information from the senses to the part responsible for discrimination and judgment ( _buddhi_ ) and then sending instructions back again to the arms and legs etc. Unfortunately, _manas_ tends not to restrict itself to these proper functions but gets involved in 'thinking' – and this is the cause of many of our problems!

**6. Table of basic consonants**

The table of the five groups of consonants, with the corresponding vowel shown in Column 1 for reference, is as shown below:

Table 1 – The Basic Consonants

This table will be expanded later to show the entire alphabet.

**C. The Long Vowels**

The five simple vowels that we looked at above are all _short_ vowels – _hrasva_. This means that, when pronounced, the sound is made as short as possible while still being distinguishable – quite short! Each of these vowels can be sounded long and each long form is treated as effectively a separate vowel. The duration of the spoken sound is very precise. If the short form is treated as one measure, then the long form should be two measures. (A measure is called a _mAtrA_ in Sanskrit.) The long form is called _dIrgha_ and the ' _I_ ' here is an example of the _dIrgha_ form of ' _i_ '. In ITRANS, the vowel is shown as long either by putting two of them, as in _diirgha_ , or by capitalizing it thus: _dIrgha_. In Romanized transliteration, the long form is represented by a macron above the letter, i.e. _Ī_ in this example. To maintain the format of the presentation, we will look at each vowel in turn, giving an example.

1. aa or A, ā

When the vowels become long, the pronunciation naturally changes slightly, too. Thus, the short ' _a_ ' becomes ' _aa_ ' or ' _A_ ' and sounds like the 'a' in 'car'. The difference between short and long vowels can be appreciated by comparing 'cut' and 'car'. The word _Atman_ , referring to one's true nature, the Self, which in Advaita is the same as the universal Self, _brahman_ , begins with a long 'A', while the second 'a' in the word is short.

2. ii or I, ī

The short ' _i_ ' becomes ' _ii_ ' or ' _I_ ' and sounds like the double 'ee' sound in words like 'beet'. The difference between short and long vowels can be appreciated by comparing 'bit' and 'beet'. The _gItA_ , meaning 'sung', has already been mentioned. It is a common abbreviation for the _bhagavadgItA_ , though there is also the other famous Advaita text – the Astavakra Gita. (The correct transliteration of this would be _aShTAvakra gItA_ but we have not yet encountered some of the other letters.)

3. R^I or RRI, ṝ

The short ' _R^i_ ' or ' _RRi_ ' becomes ' _R^I_ ' or 'RRI'. Here there is no option of having two small i's. The Romanized version follows the same rule as for the other vowels, simply adding a macron. The _dIrgha_ vowel is sounded as for the _hrasva_ but with an 'ee' ending instead of 'i'. This vowel normally only occurs in the endings of some parts of some nouns and since this book is not addressing grammatical aspects, we can safely ignore it.

4. L^I or LLI, ḹ

Similarly, the short ' _L^i_ ' or ' _LLi_ ' becomes ' _L^I_ ' or 'LLI' but, since there are no words at all known to contain it, this hardly seems to matter! Its existence seems merely to satisfy the need for logical completeness.

5. uu or U, ū

Finally, short ' _u_ ' becomes long ' _uu_ ' or ' _U_ ' and sounds like the double 'oo' in 'root'. The difference between short and long vowels can be appreciated by comparing 'put' and 'root'. The word _sUtra_ uses the long form. It literally means a 'thread' or 'string'. It is usually used to refer to the terse verse-form used in scriptures to formulate the essence of some philosophical thought. Here the sense is of a thread that holds everything together like the beads of a necklace. Note that verses in the Vedas are usually referred to as _mantra_ -s, since they are often used as objects of meditation. You should also note here the practice of adding an English '-s' to a Sanskrit word to make it into a plural. This is to avoid having to learn the endings of nouns, which would depend on declension, gender and number. Here, for example, the correct plural of _sUtra_ should be _sUtrANi_.

6. The even longer vowels

The vowels can be sounded for longer than two measures, in which case they are called _pluta_ , meaning 'prolonged'. In this case, they are written with a number '3' below and just to the right of the letter, both in Devanagari and in the Romanized version: ' _a 3_'. _a3_ in ITRANS generates the Devanagari character with a (Devanagari) 3 adjacent to it rather than as a subscript. Having noted its existence, you really do not have to remember it; it is not usually encountered in words, being more relevant to chanting etc.

The well-known Sanskrit word 'OM' does employ a _pluta_ sound for the 'o' but ITRANS uses the capital letters shown (OM) for this character and not the number 3.

One use of the prolonged vowel is similar to the corresponding usage in English, namely when calling someone from a distance. When _rAma_ is down the road and we want to catch his attention we might call 'rAAAAAmaaaaa!' or _ra3ma3_.

D. The Complex Vowels and Additional Sounds

We have not quite finished with vowels yet, as you will probably have realized, if you are at all familiar with Sanskrit terms. There are four vowels that result from combining the sounds of the three simple vowels: _a, i_ and _u_. In some grammar books you will see them referred to as diphthongs.

1. e, e

When _a_ is allowed to continue sounding beyond its natural, short measure, you get the prolonged ' _a 3_' sound. If this is allowed to continue sounding and you then raise the back of the tongue towards the ' _i_ ' position, but stop before you get there, you should hear the sound of the first compound vowel, ' _e_ '. It's a bit like the 'a' in 'mate' but not so open as speakers of British English would usually pronounce this. ' _e_ ' can be regarded as the combination of ' _a_ ' and ' _i_ '. It is sounded with the _dIrgha_ measure, as are all of these four compound vowels, since they are effectively two vowel-sounds combined. It occurs in the word _deva_ , meaning 'god' and, no, we haven't yet met that 'v' character!

2. ai, ai

If, after making the above sound for ' _e_ ', you relax the tongue back towards the ' _a_ ' position but again stop before you get there, there is another sound formed as a compound between ' _a_ ' and ' _e_ '. It sounds like the 'ie' in 'pie'. It is written ' _ai_ ' and it occurs in the dualistic philosophy _dvaita_ , and of course the non-dualistic one _advaita_. The letter ' _a_ ' in front of a word always negates it. Thus, _vidya_ means 'knowledge' and _avidya_ means 'ignorance'. ('v' and 'y' will be dealt with in the very next section.)

3. o, o

If the sound ' _a_ ' is made and allowed to continue to sound while the mouth is slowly closed, the sound made before the lips come together is ' _u_ '. If these two sounds are made together or, more practically speaking, if the sound corresponding to the mid-point between these two is made, the sound that emerges is ' _o_ ' (as in 'boat'). Since you are reading this book, you are presumably a spiritual seeker and your aim in life is therefore Self-realization, enlightenment or liberation. The Sanskrit for 'liberation' is _mokSha_.

4. au, au

In a similar way to that described above for _ai_ , if the mouth moves from the ' _a_ ' (open-mouthed) position to the ' _o_ ' (partially closed) position but stops halfway, there is a sound similar to 'ow' in 'town'. This is written ' _au_ ' in ITRANS. Gaudapada was mentioned above as being the author of the Mandukya Upanishad but I did not give the full transcription. Since we have now covered all of the letters in his name, here it is – _gauDapAda_ , giving an example of this compound vowel as well as a long and short 'a' and the two types of 'd'.

5. M or .n, ṃ or ṁ

All of the 14 vowels have now been covered but there are two final letters to be added to complete the group of 16 so-called _mAtRRikA_ (literally meaning 'divine mothers' but used in the sense of written characters that have magical powers. The 16 vowels are also sometimes called _shakti_ , which also means 'power' or 'strength'.) These are not really vowels themselves but act as modifications to a preceding vowel. Note that, because of this, if they are talked about as letters in their own right, they assume an 'a' before rather than after.

The first of these is called an _anusvAra_ , meaning 'after sound', and is represented in Devanagari by a dot positioned above the preceding vowel. It is written as ' _M_ ' or '. _n_ ' and is sounded through the nose alone (whereas the other nasal sounds are made with nose and throat). In Romanized methods, it may be represented with a dot either above or below the 'm'. The best-known Sanskrit–nglish dictionary, by Monier-Williams, uses the 'below' variant, while the Itranslator software mentioned later uses the 'above' variant.

The 'overdot' is produced in ITRANS by either _M_ or _.n_ but the latter should be used when the symbol is required in the middle of a word and the following letter is a consonant other than a labial one, where the former should be used. This helps us remember to sound it with the correct nasal. I will normally use _M_ in all cases, however, since the dictionary software utility which I will tell you about later, for example, does not recognize the _.n_ construction.

The _anusvAra_ is not a letter in its own right but a replacement for the letter _m_ at the end of a word or in special cases for _m_ or _n_ in the middle of a compound. For the sake of euphonic harmony (called _saMdhi_ , and discussed later) the _anusvAra_ is replaced by the nasal of the family of the consonant that follows it. So the _anusvAra_ at the end of a word will change to _~N_ if the word following begins with a guttural letter, to _~n_ if followed by a word beginning with a palatal letter, _N_ if followed by a word starting with a cerebral letter, etc. There are three letters that do not require a change in the _anusvAra_ : _sh, Sh_ and _s_. If these follow, the _anusvAra_ remains in the form of an _anusvAra_ and is sounded through the nose only.

An example with which you will almost certainly be familiar is _saMsAra_ , referring to the 'eternal round' of birth and death that we apparently endure in the phenomenal world.

6. H, ḥ

The other special letter that is not really part of the alphabet is called a ' _visarga_ ', which means a 'sending out', 'emission' etc. It is represented by two dots (like a colon) placed to the right of the associated letter in Devanagari script. It is written ' _H_ ' and it has the effect of adding a brief, breathing out, 'unvoiced' sound after the vowel.

The _visarga_ is a replacement for the letter 's' at the end of a word and is often changed to another letter depending on what precedes or follows. In particular, you will find a _visarga_ at the end of a sentence or before the letters _sh_ , _Sh, s_ as well as _k_ , _kh, p, ph_. In a number of traditions the _visarga_ is sounded as an echo of the vowel that precedes it so _rAmaH_ will be pronounced 'rAmaha', _hariH_ as 'harihi', _guruH_ as 'guruhu etc. Before a _p_ or _ph_ , it takes on the sound of a gentle 'f' so that _pUrNamadaH pUrNamidam_ is sounded 'pUrNamada-f-pUrNamidam'. Before _k_ or _kh_ it takes on a sound a bit like hissing or gently clearing the throat.

The Sanskrit for the overall 'organ' of mind, referring to the seat of thought and feeling, is called _antaHkaraNa_. It consists of the intellect ( _buddhi_ ), responsible for discrimination and judgment; the memory ( _chitta_ ); the function ( _manas_ ) responsible for transmitting information from the senses and back to the organs of action; and the ego ( _aha~NkAra_ ).

So, to recap, the 16 _mAtRRikA_ are as follows:

Table 2 – The 16 _mAtRRikA_

**E. The Semi-Vowels**

There are two small groups of consonants left. The first of these is the group of four so-called 'semi-vowels' or _antaHstha_. They are formed by combining the sound of each of the four main vowels other than 'a' with the sound of 'a' itself. Each should be sounded at the appropriate mouth position, corresponding to the vowel that forms its starting point.

1. y, y

If you sound ' _i_ ' and then immediately change the mouth position to that of the ' _a_ ' sound while still making the sound, what emerges sounds like 'ya' and this is the first semi-vowel: ' _y_ ' as in 'yes'. This is the semi-vowel at the palatal position. There is none at the guttural position since this is the position of 'a' itself. Everyone will know the word _yoga_ , even if not spiritually inclined.

2. r, r

If you sound the vowel ' _RRi_ ' in the cerebral position, with the tongue towards the roof of the mouth, and combine it with the 'a' sound, you get ' _r_ ' as in 'rat'. _rajas_ is the second of the three _guNa_ ; the quality associated with activity and passion.

3. l, l

If you sound the vowel ' _LLi_ ' in the dental position and combine it with the ' _a_ ' sound, you get ' _l_ ' as in 'love'. The idea of God's creating the universe in order to 'play' or 'amuse' himself is called _lIlA –_ two 'l' semi-vowels together with _dIrgha_ versions of 'i' and 'a'.

4. v, v

Finally, if you sound ' _u_ ' in the labial position and combine this with an ' _a_ ', you get ' _v_ ', which is sounded as the 'w' in 'wag'. Note that Americans seem to prefer to ignore this logical derivation and pronounce it as 'va' in 'van'. But then it is also somewhat illogical to write it as 'v' while sounding it as 'w'. I must confess that, having started out pronouncing it correctly, I now usually pronounce it as 'v', since most people don't understand you otherwise. (Not that most understand anyway!)

The word _vedAnta_ , often written with a capital 'V', literally means 'end' or 'culmination' ( _anta_ ) of the Vedas, since that is where most of the Upanishads will be found. The four Vedas are the documents that form the essence of Hindu philosophy. The first part of the Vedas – called _karmakANDa –_ relates to ritualistic teachings, which are given primacy by _pUrvamimAmsa_ philosophy. The last part is called _j~nAnakANDa_ and it is this that brings enlightenment according to Advaita. _veda_ itself actually means 'knowledge' but it is not really correct to say that _vedAnta_ means 'end of knowledge'. The four Vedas are the documents that form the essence of Hindu philosophy.

F. The Sibilants

Almost last of all in the Sanskrit alphabet are three sibilants or sss-sounds. A sibilant is called _UShman_ in Sanskrit, and the 'Sh' in the middle of this word is the second of these three letters. They are in the palatal, cerebral and dental positions, respectively. In theory, there are also ones in the other two positions but these are so rare that they are invariably ignored.

1. sh, ś

In the palatal position, there is ' _sh_ ' sounded by making a shh sound in that mouth position. It sounds like the 'sh' in 'cash'. I have just mentioned the Vedas as being the main source for Hindu philosophies. These are often referred to as _shruti_ , which literally means 'hearing' and refers to the fact that they are essentially orally transmitted wisdom, passed on from generation to generation.

2. shh or Sh, ṣ

The second, in the cerebral position, is ' _shh_ ' or ' _Sh_ ', similar to the 'sh' sound in 'shall' but with the tongue up to the roof of the mouth. Continuing the theme of the Vedas, these ' _shruti_ ' are said to be ' _apauruSheya_ ', using this second sibilant in the middle of the word. This literally means 'not coming from human beings' but is usually translated as 'unauthored'.

3. s, s

Finally, there is the dental 's', sounding like the normal 's' in 'sand'. The spiritual disciplines that we follow in search of our goal of Self-realization are called _sAdhana_. This means 'leading straight to a goal' and is used to talk about any sort of spiritual path in this sense.

G. h, h

This brings us to the last letter in the alphabet, _h_ , sounding as you would expect, as 'h' in 'hat'. It is sometimes considered another sibilant and is also called _UShman_ , which literally means 'heated'. The word ' _aham_ ', meaning 'I', uses this letter. Note that in most Anglicized words where an 'h' appears _after_ another consonant, such as dharma, Shankara, chakra, Katha Upanishad, there will not be a letter 'h' present in the Sanskrit word. In these examples, the actual letters are ' _dh_ ' in _dharma_ , ' _sh_ ' in _sha~Nkara_ , ' _ch_ ' in _chakra_ and ' _th_ ' in _katha_. It is in those words where the 'h' appears, either on its own as in _aham_ or _before_ another consonant, as in _brahma_ , that it really will be a ' _h_ '.

It should be noted that this letter also has characteristics of the semi-vowels and is sometimes listed with those rather than with the sibilants. You will see later that, in the _shivasUtrANi_ , it is actually grouped with the semi-vowels: _ha-ya-va-ra-T_.

**H. The Complete Alphabet**

The order of the alphabet, if you want to look up a word in the dictionary, is as follows. The 16 _mAtRRikA_ are at the beginning, in the order as shown in Table 2 earlier. Next come the five main groups of consonants, in the order guttural, palatal, cerebral, dental and labial. Then come the four semi-vowels, the three sibilants and finally _h_ , 49 characters in total. Table 3 summarizes the alphabet in columns of similar sounds.

Table 3 – The Complete Alphabet

The ' _a_ ' sounds, made almost in the throat, are called 'guttural' or _kaNThya_. The ' _i_ ' sounds, made a little further forward using the hard palate, are called 'palatal' or _tAlavya_. The ' _RRI_ ' sounds have the tongue beginning near the roof of the mouth and are called 'cerebral' or _mUrdhanya_. The ' _LLI_ ' sounds are made behind the upper front teeth and are called 'dental' or _dantya_. The ' _u_ ' sounds are made with the lips pouting in a small circle and are called 'labial' or _oShThya_.

# Level 2 The Devanagari Script

This level will now repeat the previous material but introduce each of the Sanskrit letters in the correct Devanagari script. We will also look at some of the ways in which letter forms vary depending on their position in the word and upon the nature of any adjacent letters.

**A. The Five Basic (Simple) Vowels, Short and Long**

1. a, a; aa or A, ā

(The heading here is the format that I will use for each letter in this level. It should be understood as: **a** in ITRANS, **a** in Roman; aa **or** A in ITRANS, ā in Roman)

The Devanagari form of this letter was shown earlier, the only one that we have met so far. When it appears at the beginning of a word or when being written as a 'stand-alone' letter, it is written as follows:

** **

This is the simple, short ( _hrasva_ ) form. The long ( _dIrgha_ ) form looks very similar:

** **

You will probably have seen Sanskrit script at some time. If not, it would be surprising that you are reading this book. This being the case, you will have realized that, when characters are joined together to make a word, there is a continuous line at the top of the word spanning all of the characters. If you have looked at the scriptures, you may have thought that some of the words are exceedingly long! In fact, words are frequently joined together, depending on the nature of the sounds ending one word and beginning the next. Also, many words are formed as compounds, similar to those in the German language. In Sanskrit, this is called _samAsa_ and can result in very long words that are effectively a mixture of nouns and adjectives.

Written Sanskrit is very efficient in its use of space and 'shorthand' is frequently used. Accordingly, in the _dIrgha_ form of _a_ here, all that is done is to add an extra downstroke to the _hrasva_ form and extend the bar at the top. Thus, you can see that the _hrasva_ form has a single downstroke and the _dIrgha_ form has two downstrokes.

It has already been noted that all consonants, when sounded on their own, are sounded with the vowel ' _a_ ' by convention. In fact when writing the consonant 'm' it is strictly written as follows (with the _halanta_ stroke beneath):

** **

This cannot be pronounced until the letter _a_ (or any other vowel) is added. The effect of this is for the _halanta_ sign to be removed. So _ma_ looks like this:

** **

Thus, the word _maha_ , for example, meaning 'great', 'strong', 'abundant' etc., is made up of the letters _m_ \+ _a_ \+ _h_ \+ _a_.

** **

It is the word that forms part of _maharShi_ in Ramana Maharshi, for example. Here, _maharShi_ means _maha RRiShi_ or 'great sage or saint'. The letters in _maha_ will be sounded _ma_ and _ha_.

The character for _ma_ is: ** **

and that for _ha_ is:

so that the word _maha_ is written:

Another letter ahead of its place in the development is _y_ or _ya_. This is written:

To return to the discussion of _a_ , we can now see the use of the extra downstroke to lengthen the vowel in the word _mAyA_. This is usually just written 'maya' in Anglicized texts. It refers to the force that is supposedly wielded by Ishvara to create the universe. The Devanagari representation is:

** **

which should be understood as consisting of:

The single downstroke following a consonant (or a combination of consonants) means that it/they is/are sounded with _A_ , instead of just _a_. Appendix 3 looks at each of the vowels and how a consonant changes when used with them.

Before moving on, it must be mentioned that the principal Sanskrit–nglish dictionary, by M. Monier-Williams, uses a rather different version of this character. It is unfortunate that the very first letter to be encountered should occur in variants but it is as well that you be warned that this does occur for a few letters, though this does not usually cause any problems. This alternative character for ' _a_ ' looks like this:

And it adds a second vertical line at the right in just the same way when made into the _dIrgha_ vowel. Appendix 2 lists those letters that may be found using alternative forms to those used in this book and shows these different forms for comparison. In the main text, I will only show variants where these are found in Monier-Williams, since this is a likely reference for readers. The other source of variants is the School of Economic Science in England. They do have a few variations on the letter forms most commonly used elsewhere.

2. i, i; ii or I, Ī

The Devanagari form of the _hrasva_ form of this character is:

  = _i_ and the _dIrgha_ form is   = _ii_ or _I_.

The short form is like the letter 's' hanging from the top bar, with a curl in its tail. For lengthening the vowel, a 'hook' shape, open to the right, is added to the top of the letter. It is this element that is taken and modified in order to represent the use of this letter when it combines with a consonant. An example of the short _i_ in a word is _milita_ , meaning 'met, encountered' or 'connected, combined with'.

In combination with a consonant, short _i –_   **–** is written as   and placed _in front of_ the consonant.

Thus, _milita_ is written:

The three consonants in this word – _m, l_ , and _t –_ will be encountered later.

The significant point to glean from this example is the representation of _mi_ and _li_. What is done is to put a vertical line _before_ the consonant, and then join the top of the line to the top of the consonant by a 'hook' form similar to that which distinguishes the long vowel on its own.

There might be some concern at the apparent reversal of the symbols here – the symbol of _i_ being written before the symbols of _m_ and _l –_ so that the _mi_ and _li_ appear to be read from right to left, as it were. The simple explanation for this is that we need to distinguish the short _i_ from the long _I_ in combination.

In combination   is written as   and placed _after_ the consonant.

The word _jIva_ is used to refer to what is often called the 'embodied Self', the mistaken identification of our true nature with a limited body and mind.

The letter _j_ is obviously

After this is added an extra vertical line which is then joined back to the top of the _j_. Since the _j_ is now sounded with a vowel, the halant sign is dropped. The letter   is a simple ( _halanta_ ) _v_ joined to a short _a_.

3. R^i or RRi, ṛ; R^I or RRI, ṝ

The Devanagari forms of the _hrasva_ and _pluta_ versions of this letter are:

** **

Here, the key part to remember is the 'hook' (or double-hook for the _dIrgha_ form) hanging down at the right of the letter. It is this part alone that is used when the vowel appears in combination with a consonant. Thus, if the vowel is attached to the consonant _k_ to become _kRRi_ , for example, the Devanagari form changes as below:

  changes to

i.e. a simple hook is added to the bottom of the vertical line of the main character, _k_ (and the _halanta_ symbol dropped). The word _kRRita_ means 'done', 'performed', 'made ready' etc. and is written:

** **

The letter _t –_   – appears with _a_ following (and its _halanta_ sign dropped), while the 'hook' at the bottom of the _k_ indicates that it is sounded with _RRi_.

It would be useful to add a warning here, incidentally. The vowel _RRi_ must not be confused with the semi-vowel _r_. There is a word _kriyA_ for example, which means 'doing', 'performing' etc. It has no _RRi_ vowel present at all but uses the consonant _k_ and semi-vowel _r_ together with the vowel _i_. If ever in any doubt, this latter form is the more likely. Remember that the vowel _RRi_ is not very common, _RRI_ is even less common, _LLi_ is hardly ever seen and _LLI_ is never seen.

4. LLi or L^i, Ị; LLI or L^I, ḹ

The Devanagari forms of the _hrasva_ and _dIrgha_ versions of this letter are:

** **

but, given what has been said above, I will not provide any examples. It is sufficient to say that, in the unlikely event of these vowels appearing in combination with a consonant, the entire letter is used beneath the consonant. Thus, in combination with the letter _k_ , for example:

** –** _k_ becomes   **–** _kLLi_

5. u, u; uu or U, ū

The Devanagari form of the _hrasva_ form is:

** **and the _dIrgha_ form is:

Here is another way of modifying the basic letter form to signify a different vowel sound. When it comes to using this vowel in the middle of a word, following a consonant, again we do not use the letter itself but a shorthand version. The short _u_ sound is represented by a '9' shape, lying on its back, as it were, beneath the preceding consonant. If it is a long _U_ sound, then the shape is inverted.

I will use the word _guru_ as an illustration here because you will have to find out eventually that the letter _r_ does not always behave itself and follow the rules. In the case of sounding with _u_ (and _U_ ), instead of adding the symbol beneath the letter like all of the other consonants, it forms its own specially modified symbol. Thus, the _gu_ part of the word is as expected.

The letter _g_ looks like:   as a pure consonant

and   if combined with _u_.

The letter _r_ is written   as a pure consonant

but   with a _u_.

Thus the word _guru_ is written:

The classical five gross elements (ether, air, fire, water, earth) are called the _mahAbhUtAni_ (plural), with any one of them being a _mahAbhUta_. The Devanagari for this is:

with the '9' shape lying 'face down' underneath the _bh_ character,

It is worth noting at this point the similarity of the symbol for _halanta_ and the symbol for long ' _U_ '. The former doesn't have a curl –   – whereas the latter has:

So make a note of the distinction between the pure consonant

and the _bh_ combined with long _U –_   – in which the _halanta_ sign is dropped and replaced by the symbol for _U_.

**B. The Five Main Groups of Consonants**

The Sanskrit term for consonants is _vya~njana_. One of the meanings of this is simply 'a consonant' but it also has the sense of an 'indication' or a 'decoration' (of the basic vowel sound). They are formed by positioning the mouth (throat, tongue or lips) in such a way as to 'stop' or modify the sound of the vowel in various ways. These are called the 'outer efforts'. There are more subtle changes to the body involved in modifying the vowel. These are the 'inner efforts'. To be able to discern the difference requires very fine observation of the changes to the body. Try this experiment:

Shut your eyes and get poised to make the sound _ka_. Without making even the slightest sound, note the slightly pinched state of the throat; note how the tongue lies flat but is also tensed in anticipation. Now observe the slight tension between the eyebrows and forehead, and also observe what's happening in the areas of the chest and belly – how they are tensed in preparation for making the sound.

Relax, breathe out...

Now, without making a sound, change the set-up as though to make the sound _ga_. Note the comparative relaxation of forehead and tongue. Note how the bottom of the throat and chest seem to come into play and the belly relaxes.

Relax, breathe out...

Go from _ka_ to _ga_ in this way until you are clear about what is different.

The very set-up _is_ the consonant. Looked at this way, we understand the consonant to be merely the bodily condition through which we sound the vowels. The consonant has no sound of its own. That's why it should strictly be written with the _halanta_ or _virAma_ symbol. Without this symbol, we know that the short ' _a_ ' has been added so that the consonant can manifest.

**1. The guttural or** **_kaNThya_** **consonants**

The first group uses the same mouth position as _a_ and takes place at the back of the mouth where it becomes the throat – the 'guttural' or _kaNThya –_ position.

a) k, k

The first consonant of this group is written:

** **(or  when a is added) – An example is _kAma_ , meaning 'desire' or 'longing':   (Note the extra vertical line for the long _A_.)

Although it cannot be sounded on its own without a vowel, it could occur at the end of the word (as 'k' in 'rack' for example). In this case, it would have the _virAma_ sign after it. This looks like:

** –** The verb _lak_ means to 'taste' or 'obtain':

This use of the _virAma_ applies to all consonants. Note, incidentally, that it is the form of the letter + _a_ that is used for a consonant being pronounced when sounding the alphabet – this is by convention only and has no other significance. From here on we will write the letters with the 'a' added (and the _halanta_ sign dropped).

b) kh, kh

The second consonant in the _kaNThya_ group is the _mahAprANa_ 'k' sound, written:

** **

An example of its use is given in connection with the next letter.

c) g, g

The third in this group is written:

** **

The word _khaga_ was given as an example of _kh_ in Level 1. It means 'moving in air', or more specifically, 'bird':

** **

Strictly speaking, when referring to nouns, account ought to be taken of the fact that Sanskrit nouns have gender. _khaga_ is in fact masculine and would be written _khagaH_ in the nominative case, with a _visarga_ (see Level 1 Section D 6):

It has to be recognized that Sanskrit is similar to languages such as Latin, in the sense that nouns change their endings according to the part of speech being played in the sentence. Verbs, too, conjugate in a similar way with endings dependent upon tense and number (which can be 'one', 'two' or 'more than two'). But I will not be addressing any of these aspects in this book.

d) gh, gh

The fourth guttural consonant is written:

We have already met the word _laghu_ , meaning 'light' or 'short' (and the opposite of the more frequently encountered _guru_ ). It is written:

e) ~N, ṅ

The final consonant in this group is the nasal, _anunAsika, ~N_ , and it is written:

The word that is used to give a name to the way in which our true Self becomes identified with something (object or idea) in the outside world is usually written 'ahankara' in Anglicized texts. It is often used interchangeably with our word 'ego'. In fact it derives from two words – _aham_ meaning 'I' and _kAra_ meaning 'doer' – the effective interpretation being 'I am the doer'.

Now you will see if you look at some Sanskrit sentences that many of the words seem very long. This is because individual small words, adjacent to each other in a sentence, are combined together unless a spoken syllable naturally coincides with the end of a word. Also, there are a number of rules governing the way in which various sounds combine when they appear next to each other. These prevent, for example, the situation where one word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with one, by merging the two. For example, if the first ends in _a_ or _A_ and the next begins with _a_ or _A_ then the two words are joined with just one _A_. These rules are comprehensive and logical so that the sorts of problems encountered in other languages are avoided. I will mention a few of these rules later.

Accordingly, in this example, when _aham_ and _kAra_ come together, it would not sound natural to make the 'm' sound and immediately follow it with a 'k'. The Sanskrit _k_ is sounded at the back of the throat and it sounds far more natural to sound the _kaNThya ~N_ since it is the same position. Try sounding them both and see. The resulting sound of the two consonants combined is similar to the Egyptian 'ankh' sounded at the back of the throat. So the resulting word is sounded _aha~NkAra_. In fact, the Devanagari script is not usually written to reflect this, even though it is, strictly speaking, the correct representation. This is because of the _anusvAra_ that was dealt with in Level 1 Section D 5. This is often used in the middle of a word whenever we want to make an _anunAsika_ consonant whose precise sound will depend upon the consonant that follows. And regardless of this sound, it can always be represented by the dot placed above the preceding consonant. Devanagari is very economical! Thus, this word appears as _ahaMkAra_. (ITRANS allows you to represent this instead as _aha.nkAra_. This generates exactly the same Devanagari but reminds us that this is an internal _anunAsika_ followed by a consonant which is not a labial.)

** **

The first letter is _a –_

which this time appears in its full glory since it is the first letter in the word.

The next letter is _h_ , briefly met earlier –

followed by   giving us

Next we have

This is replaced by _anusvAra_ and   gets a dot above:

** **

The next letter is _k –_   which is followed by _A_ to give _kA_ , written:

** **

Finally, the last letter, also encountered earlier, is the semi-vowel _r_ , followed by _a_ and written:

** **

which completes the word –

** **(replaced by _anusvAra_ ) +   = _ahaMkAra –_

This then completes the first column of the 25 main consonants, the _sparsha vya~njana –_ the guttural or _kaNThya_ family.

**2. The palatal or** **_tAlavya_** **consonants**

The second group forms the sounds in the back part of the mouth but not the throat. Using the same tongue and mouth position as for the _i_ vowel, these use the back of the tongue and the rear of the mouth; they are called 'palatal' or _tAlavya_. They follow the same pattern as the previous group (as do all five of these groups of consonants) in that the first and third members are _alpaprANa_ , the second and fourth are _mahAprANa_ and the fifth is _anunAsika_.

a) ch (or c), c

The first, with the letter _a_ appended, is written:

** **

The word _chit_ refers to pure awareness or Consciousness, as in the word _sat-chit-Ananda_ , more correctly written _sachchidAnanda_ when the rules for combining words are taken into account, referring to the being-consciousness-bliss nature of the non-dual Absolute of Advaita. The word _chit_ is written:

The _ch_ is followed by _i_ and the _virAma_ after the letter _t_ indicates that it is a pure consonant.

b) Ch (or chh), ch

The second character in the _tAlavya_ group, _Cha_ , is written:

** **

In 'everyday' speech, even by those who actually have some knowledge of Sanskrit, the difference in pronunciation between _ch_ and _Ch_ will probably be indistinguishable. _Ch_ should have a little more breath following the un-aspirated 'ch' sound. _Chid_ is spelt with a _Ch_ and means 'to cut'.

** –** _Chid_

c) j, j

The third letter in this group (followed by _a_ ) is written:

** **

A simple example is the word meaning 'moving' or 'living' but more often used for 'world', 'humankind' or even 'universe' – _jagat_. This is written:

Here you see _ja_ and _ga_ (both sounded with _a_ ) and a ' _halanta_ ' _t_ (i.e. with a _virAma_ since this is not sounded with _a_ ).

d) jh, jh

The fourth letter, not a very frequently occurring one, is written (with _a_ added):

** **

and the example used in Level 1 was _jhalA_ , meaning 'girl':

** **

The letter form used by the Sanskrit–English dictionary looks rather different:

– as used in Monier-Williams' dictionary. [ _Note that there are a few letter forms for which no computerized font could be found. This is one of them. Accordingly, they have been hand-drawn and scanned as image files and will not match the quality of the other characters_.]

e) ~n (or JN or J), ñ

The final letter in this group, with _a_ appended, is the nasal:

** **

This is another infrequent letter. It is also one which rarely exists, except in conjunction with another consonant. We can have the word meaning 'the letter ~ _n'_ as earlier:

** –** ~ _nakAra_

Although there is a separate section later on devoted to conjunct consonants, it will do no harm to introduce one here. The word _kA~nchana_ means 'gold', 'money' or 'wealth' or, as an adjective, it means 'golden'. It is written:

** –** _kA~nchana_ and the structure is easily seen:

** **( _kA_ ) is followed by   (~ _n_ ) on top of   ( _cha_ ) and then   ( _na_ )

The _~n_ appearing above _cha_ is pronounced _~ncha_. (If the _ch_ were on top of the _~na_ , then it would be pronounced _ch~na_ ).

**3. The cerebral or** **_mUrdhanya_** **consonants**

The third group forms the sounds with the tip of the tongue pointing up to the roof of the mouth. With mouth and tongue position similar to that for pronouncing the _RRi_ vowel, they are called 'cerebral' or _mUrdhanya_.

All of this third (middle) group have a dot underneath the Romanized character including the ṋ vowel if you remember – this makes it easy to recognize the letter is _mUrdhanya_. None of the cerebral consonants are very common. Two pages of the 1300+ pages of Monier-Williams cover all of the words beginning with them. If ever in any doubt as to whether a 't', 'th', 'd' 'dh' or 'n' sound is cerebral or dental, put your bets on dental every time!

a) T, ṭ

This (together with _a –_ definitely not going to repeat this for later consonants!) is written:

** **

This is more common in the middle of words and especially after the sibilant, _Sh_. Since the enjoyment of conjunct consonants is being reserved for later, however, here is a word without any:

** –** _Tagara –_ three simple letters,   ( _Ta_ )   ( _ga_ ) and   ( _ra_ ), joined together. Not a terribly useful word, though; it means 'squint-eyed'.

b) Th, ṭh

This character is:

** **

The Katha Upanishad, one of the ten major Upanishads, has this letter, and its correct transliteration is _kaTha_ and the _Th_ is, in fact, a single letter and not two. _kaTha_ literally refers to the name of a sage and founder of a school of philosophy. It is also worth mentioning here that, when we speak of this document, it should not strictly be 'Katha Upanishad' at all. It is normal for several successive words to be joined together in Sanskrit and if a Sanskrit word ending in a vowel is followed by one beginning with a vowel, there will usually be a change of some sort. Here, the 'a' and the 'u' combine to make an 'o' sound and the correct title is _kaThopaniShad_. The representation of this vowel will be dealt with in the next section, when we have completed the five main groups of consonants.

_kaTha_ is written:

** **

c) D, ḍ

This is written:

** **

If you are extremely alert, you will immediately notice that this character looks exactly like that for the nasal _~N_ in the first group ( _kaNThya_ ) except that the dot to the right is missing. The word _Damaru_ is a sacred drum, shaped like an hour glass, used by the god Shiva:

** –** _Damaru_

d) Dh, ḍh

This is written:

** **

The word _DhAla_ means a 'shield' –

e) N, ṇ

This is written:

** **

Note that it has its own 'built in' vertical to the right, which has nothing to do with its being sounded with an _a_.

  _N_ ;   **–** _Na_ ;   **–** _NA_ ;   **–** _Ni_ and so on.

The word _kaNa_ is an adjective relating to anything very small, such as 'a grain of dust', 'a flake of snow', 'a drop of water' or 'a spark of fire':

** –** _kaNa_

This is another letter having an alternative form. Though less frequently encountered, it is the one used in Monier-Williams so you should learn to recognize it:

**4. The dental or** **_dantya_** **consonants**

a) t, t

This is written:

** **

and was seen earlier in _jagat_ and _tagara_. The word _tad_ means 'that' and, because a _d_ frequently changes to a _t_ at the end of a word (as will be discussed later), this word often appears as _tat_ :

  – _tat_

b) th, th

The _mahAprANa tha_ is written:

** **

The word _thUthU_ means 'the imitative sound of spitting', while _thaithai_ means 'the imitative sound of a musical instrument' (one wonders which!). We will meet the Devanagari representation for the complex vowel _ai_ in a minute but here it is shown in combination with a consonant:

** –** _thUthU_ ;   **–** _thaithai_

c) d, d

This is written:

not to be confused with the cerebral

** **_Dh_

We have had the word Devanagari so many times now that it is about time you saw the actual Devanagari for it!

Although we have not yet dealt with _v_ and _r_ in this section, we had _v_ in _jIva_ and _r_ in _guru_ and _kAra_.

d) dh, dh

This is written:

** **

and must not be confused with _gh_ :

If you inadvertently close the loop, joining it up to the bar at the top, thereby producing a _gh_ when you really wanted a _dh_ , then you can make a little 'knot' or circle at the junction with the horizontal line and this is then understood to be a _dh_. Some texts may use this variant, too, since it can avoid confusion if the ink becomes smudged, for example.

The word _dhana_ means 'a prize' or 'any valued object':

** –** _dhana_

Thus, _dhanakAma_ , for example, means 'desirous of wealth' or 'covetous' ( _kAma_ meaning 'desire', if you recall).

e) n, n

Finally, in this group, the _anunAsika_ (sounded through the nose and throat) _na_ is written, as you know:

** **

and I think we have already had sufficient examples of this already. However, you might like to see what the word _anunAsika_ looks like:

**5. The labial or** **_oShThya_** **consonants**

a) p, p

A very common letter. It is written:

The word _para_ is translated as 'far, distant, remote' etc. and _parama_ is the superlative, meaning 'most distant, remotest' etc. or 'best, most excellent' (or, somewhat incongruously, 'worst'). It appears in words such as _paramAtman_ , meaning the supreme spirit.

** –** _para_ ;

** –** _parama_ ;

** –** _paramAtman_

(the _tm_ bit will be explained later).

b) ph, ph

This is written:

** –** a logical extension of _p_ (for a change).

** **_phala_

Pedantically, this means 'fruit' (though it can also mean the seed of a fruit) but it more generally refers to 'outcome' or 'consequence' etc. This example was used in the first level, where it was given as _phalam_ , with the additional example of _karmaphalam_ , meaning specifically 'fruit of action'. Lest there should be confusion over endings here, it is worth mentioning a little about gender, although I do not intend to go into any detail.

There are three genders, as in languages like Latin and German – masculine, feminine and neuter – and, as in Latin, the endings change according to the part of speech. If you look up a word in the dictionary, the gender ending is not given. Thus, _phala_ is spelt thus and indicated as 'n.' for 'neuter'. The 'nominative' case ending for this (i.e. the ending taken if the noun is the subject of a sentence) is, in fact, _am_. So, if you want 'fruit' to be the subject of a sentence (in the singular), the word to use is _phalam_.

c) b, b

This is written:

** **

An important word in Shankara's Advaita philosophy is _bAdha_. This is the process whereby a previously accepted point of view or way of thinking is supplanted by a quite different one. The word used to translate it is usually 'sublation' or 'subration'. The classical example in the scriptures is that of seeing a piece of rope in the dark and believing it to be a snake. When a torch is brought to bear on the subject, the mistake is realized. Realizing the lake in a desert to be merely a mirage is an example of sublation:

** –** _bAdha_

d) bh, bh

This is written:

** **

This is another of those letters without a complete bar across the top. The word _bhagavat_ means 'fortunate, prosperous, happy' or 'glorious, divine' or 'holy' when applied to gods etc. ( _bhagavad_ , as in _bhagavad gItA_ is the comparative form).

  – _bhagavat_

As with _dh_ above, there is an option here to have the bar continuing across the top (thus joining up and making the letter look like a _m_ below) and then drawing a loop or circle at the top. The presence of the circle would make it clear that this is _bh_ and not _m_.

e) m, m

Finally, the _anunAsika_ in this group is written:

** **

We have seen this in several words, such as _maha, mAyA_ and _Dam_.

6. Table of main consonants and corresponding vowels Here is the complete list of the five groups:

Table 4 – The Five Main Groups of Consonants (Devanagari)

**C. The Remaining Vowels**

The Sanskrit term for the complex vowels ( _e_ , _o, ai, au_ ) is _saMyukta svara-_ s _. saMyukta_ means 'joined together' or 'combined'.

**1. e, e**

If you look back to the first level to remind yourself, you will recall that five more compound vowels are formed by combining the sounds of the three main ones, _a, i_ and _u_ . The first of these, _e_ , is formed when _a_ combines with _i_. It is written:

** **

and the word _eka_ , meaning 'one', as a (declining) adjective, is:

You can probably guess that, like the other vowels, this changes its appearance when following a consonant. With _i_ and _I_ , an extra vertical line was added to the left or right respectively and joined up to the preceding consonant. With _u_ and _U_ we had the figure 9 lying prone or supine respectively underneath the letter, and so on. In this case, the sign used to indicate _e_ is a single left-tending mark above the letter, often called a 'flag'. _ke_ , for example, is:

** **

The _kena_ Upanishad, then, is:

** **

**2. ai, ai**

The further combination of _e_ with _a_ gives rise to _ai_ , written:

which can easily be seen as being identical to the character for _e_ with the addition of a single 'flag'. It can further be seen that this 'flag' is identical to the one used in conjunction with a consonant to indicate that it is sounded with _e_. It is logical therefore that, when we want to sound a consonant with _ai_ , we simply use **two** flags. _kai_ is then formed as follows:

** **

The word _shaiva_ means 'relating to or belonging to the god Shiva' or 'a worshipper or follower of Shiva'. We haven't met the Devanagari for _sh_ yet but it should pose no obstacle as long as you note that the single vertical on the right of the letter is part of the letter and not an indication that it is sounded with _A_ :

**3. o, o**

This is the vowel resulting from the combination of _a_ with _u_ and is written:

** **

(Note that, because this letter uses the same basic character form as for _a – A_ , it appears differently in Monier-Williams, having the different version of _A_ with a flag added.) The letter is rarely seen in this form since there are few words beginning with _o_. One obvious exception might be thought to be the word _om_ , which most people, not just 'spiritual seekers', will have heard of. Occasionally, this will be seen in this form:

Strictly speaking, this ought to be written:

with the

sign indicating that the _o_ should be sounded as 'prolonged' ( _pluta_ ) and not simply as two measures but you are unlikely to meet it in this form. This word is so important that it actually has its own symbol, called the _praNava shabda_ ( _shabda_ means 'word' or 'sound'):

You will probably recognize it (certainly Indians will since it is prominently displayed in India on all of the buses, among other things!). This symbol is generated in ITRANS by the characters _OM_.

_praNu_ means 'to make a humming or droning sound'. If you have heard monks repeating it, you will understand why – the 'm' sound at the end is continued with a resonating humming sound. _OM_ is the symbol for God and its purpose is to convey the sense of God's universality. Names are used to represent those objects, concepts etc. about which we wish to speak. All words are necessarily limited – after all, they invariably contain only a few letters of the alphabet. The name we give to God would ideally contain all letters and all ways of sounding them. _OM_ achieves this by utilizing the scientific way in which the Sanskrit language is constructed. As has already been pointed out, all of the sounds originate with the basic sound of 'a', sounded by simply moving the vocal cords with the mouth wide open. All of the remaining letters use this with the mouth, tongue and lips being progressively modified. In fact, only the vowels actually sound; the purpose of the consonants is to curtail the sounding of the vowels in different ways.

Now, if the sound 'a' is made and continues to sound while the mouth is slowly closed, the sound made at the 'mid-point', as it were, is 'u'. If these two sounds are made together or, more practically speaking, if the sound corresponding to the mid-point between these two is made, the sound that emerges is 'o' (as in 'boat'). If the mouth continues to close while still making the basic sound, the ultimate sound when the lips come together is 'm'. Thus, bringing all of these aspects together, the sound that encompasses the entire range of possible sounds is _'a_ – _u – m'_. When sounded in practice, this is 'OM'.

It is not just a word, devised by someone in antiquity to represent a concept so that he or she could speak about it to another. It is THE word, as in 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (Gospel of John 1:1). One of the major Upanishads – the _mANDUkya –_ has the whole of its few 12 verses about this word. It says that the syllable _OM_ **is** Brahman, reality itself. Each part of the word is identified with a different aspect of consciousness. _a_ is the waking state, _u_ the dreaming state and _m_ the deep-sleep state. Together, _OM_ represents that consciousness that forms the substratum of all three, effectively a fourth 'level' of consciousness called _turIya_. The word also represents the union of the three gods _vishNu_ (a), _shiva_ (u) and _brahmA_ (m) in the Hindu religion.

Because the sound includes all possible sounds, it is present in or behind all other words – it can be regarded as the source of all other words; the seed from which they arise. This single word has the capacity to create all other words and thus represents the capacity of God to create all things in the world. It is a universal sound, not restricted to any religion. It is the 'AMEN' in Christianity. If you listen to the word being correctly sounded, the vibration continues after the sound of the word itself ends. This 'unspoken' sound is always there in the absence of other sounds (and of mental activity of any kind!) – _prANa_ , the basic vitality of life itself. It is the sound at the end of meditation when the mind is perfectly still; the sound to which T. S. Eliot refers in his magnificent work 'The Four Quartets' (Ref. 13):

_At the source of the longest river_

_The voice of the hidden waterfall_

_And the children in the apple-tree_

_Not known, because not looked for_

_But heard, half-heard, in the stillness_

_Between two waves of the sea_.

But what happens when _o_ appears in the middle of a word, as is much more common? Well, in common with what has been found throughout the language so far, we look for the distinguishing feature of the letter on its own. This looks like the letter _A_ but has a single 'flag' added. We know how to make a consonant sound with the vowel _A –_ we add a single vertical line to the right. Therefore, in order to make it sound with _o_ , we add a single vertical line and a single flag.

** **

We mentioned the word _yoga_ in the first level as an example of the letter _y_. The Devanagari for this is:

**4. au, au**

This results from the further combining of _o_ with _a_ and, in just the same way as _ai_ was a sort of 'step further' than _e_ , so _au_ is formed by further modification of _o_. This modification is done in exactly the same manner – a second 'flag' is added to the character:

** **

(Again this uses the different form of _a_ in the Monier-Williams dictionary.)

** **

means 'aquatic' or 'watery'.

Following the example of _e – ai_ , it should come as no surprise at all that, when _au_ is joined to a consonant we drop the _virAma_ sign and add a vertical bar and **two** 'flags' after the consonant to represent the _au_ :

** **

The word _mauna_ means 'silence':

**5. M or .n, ṃ or ṁ**

_aM_ and _aH_ , the _anusvAra_ and the _visarga_ , though two of the 16 _mAtRRikA_ , are not really vowels but neither are they consonants. They are sometimes called _ayogavAha_ , which means 'not belonging to', though paradoxically, since they actually need another 'real' letter in order to be able to sound them at all, they are also sometimes called _yogavAha_ , 'belonging to'.

The _anusvAra_ is written:

** **

When it appears in conjunction with a consonant, this dot is how it is represented:

** **

The _anusvAra_ which is pronounced through the nose only is a replacement for _m_ at the end of a word when the following word begins with a consonant other than the sibilants – _sh_ , _Sh, s, h_. Sometimes it replaces the ' _m_ ' within a compound.

The word _saMyoga_ , for example, meaning 'conjunction' or 'combination', began as _sam-yoga_. The _m_ is replaced by an internal _anusvAra_ and is written as a dot above the _sa_ :

(We met _y_ in _mAyA_ and _s_ in _anunAsika_ but will deal with them more fully shortly.)

Remember from Level 1 that the _anusvAra_ is optionally replaced by the _anunAsika_ from the same family as the consonant that follows. Thus, if the consonant is _p, ph, b_ or _bh_ it will be replaced by _m_. If the consonant is _k, kh, g_ or _gh_ , it will be replaced by _~N_ ; if _ch, Ch, j, jh_ , it will be replaced by _~n_ ; if _T, Th, D, Dh_ , it will be replaced by _N_ ; if _t, th, d, dh_ , it will be replaced by _n_. If the next word begins with a sibilant, then the _anusvAra_ stays as it is, and when followed by _y, l, v_ has the effect of nasalizing these consonants. The correct ITRANS representation is _.n_ for all cases except the dental consonants.

The _anusvAra_ is also a replacement for ' _n_ ' when it is followed by _ch, Ch, t, th, T, Th_. Thus, it is not an independent nasal sound – it is an alternative sound for _m_ or _n_ in the circumstances described above.

**6. H, ḥ**

The _visarga_ is written as a colon, usually after a vowel. Here it is shown after the letter _a_ :

It was mentioned earlier that the ending of many masculine nouns, in the nominative case, is _aH_. Thus, the word _bAlaka_ , for example, meaning 'child, boy or youth', is written _bAlakaH_ if it is the subject of a sentence:

_visarga_ , like _anusvAra_ , is not an independent sound. It is essentially the replacement for the final letter _s_ of a word in certain circumstances – always, for example, if the word is the last in the sentence. Or you see it if the word is followed by _sh_ , _Sh, s_ as well as _k, kh, p, ph_.

**7**. **_guNa_** **and** **_vRRiddhi_**

When an _a_ is 'added' to a simple vowel ( _a, i, RRi, LLi_ or _u_ ) the resulting vowel is said to be 'stronger' and is called _guNa_. [It is actually more complicated than this but the detail is beyond the scope of this book.] We saw above how _i_ became _e_ when added to _a_ , and _u_ became _o_. We also saw these being combined a second time with _a_ to give _ai_ and _au_ , respectively. These second forms are even 'stronger' and are called _vRRiddhi_. The other simple vowels also have _guNa_ and _vRRiddhi_ forms, as shown in the following table. These become important when considering how part-words combine to form words. (This so-called 'internal _saMdhi_ ' is discussed shortly.)

Panini tells us that _guNa_ is the name of the letters _a_ , _e_ and o; and _vRRiddhi_ is the name for the letters _A, ai, au_.

Table 5 – _guNa_ and _vRRiddhi_ Form of Vowels

D. Table Showing the 16 _mAtRRikA_

Table 6 – The 16 _mAtRRikA_ (Devanagari)

The Devanagari letters appear in the first row in the form in which they would be written on their own or if appearing at the beginning of a word. In the second row is the ITRANS equivalent. In the third row is how they normally appear, when combined with a consonant, in this case _k_.

E. The Remaining Letters (semi-vowels, sibilants and _h_ )

I will not repeat the discussion of the sounding of these letters and most of them have now been encountered earlier as part of other words. Instead I will simply give the Devanagari form of each letter and provide some more examples of their use. The Sanskrit for the semi-vowels incidentally is _antaHstha_ and for the sibilants _UShman_ , which also includes the letter _h_ (which is called the 'aspirate'). _antaHstha_ means 'being in the midst' or 'between', i.e. standing between the vowels and the consonants. _UShman_ means 'heat', 'steam' or 'vapor', perhaps because these letters sound like escaping steam.

1. y, y

This is written:

** **

We have seen this in words like

_yoga_

and _mAyA_

2. r, r

This is written:

** **

and it behaves very well some of the time as in, for example, the word meaning 'delighted':

** **_rata_

There are a number of situations, however, in which it insists on forming special forms of its own. When sounded with _u_ or _U_ , it does not use the '9' shape underneath the letter as other consonants do. Instead, it takes new forms:

** **

Note that the _virAma_ appears underneath the _r_ since it would cause confusion if attached directly to the ending of the _r_. The additional ornamentation to signify the _u_ ending is similar to that used to change the vowel _u_ to _U –_ this may help you to memorize this special character.

** **

Here, the extra element added to _r_ is the same as that used to signify _U_ endings for other consonants (i.e. the prostrate '9') but moved up to the right of the letter instead of being underneath. An important concept in Advaita philosophy, applied to the visible, material universe, is that it is only 'name and form', _nama_ and _rUpa. rUpa_ is simply written:

** **

(This noun is neuter, so you will also sometimes see it given as _rUpam_.)

_r_ behaves the same as other consonants when followed by other vowels.

3. l, l

This is written:

** **

and we saw it in _laghu_ and _DhAla_ and _phalam_. The word _laya_ means 'dissolution'; _pralaya_ refers to the destruction of the world at the end of the Hindu _kalpa_ (4320 million-year period):

** **

Note that, in _kalpa_ , some of the right-hand section of the distinctive part of _la_ disappears when it forms a conjunct with _p_. We will look at the topic of conjuncts very soon now. This is a foretaste!

4. v, v

This is written:

** **

We saw it in _shaiva_ and Devanagari. The name given to the character that appears under _halanta_ consonants is _virAma_ and is written:

5. sh, ś

The first of the sibilants, in the palatal position, is written:

** **

and it is another of the letters that has a vertical line as part of the letter, not as an indication that it is sounded with _A_. It was seen in _shaiva_ and is the _halanta_ character in the verb 'to see, look at or observe':

6. Sh (previously shh), ṣ

This cerebral sibilant is written:

** **

_ShaSh_ is the number 6 –

** **

This means 'sphere' or 'territory', 'period' or 'duration' but is used in the scriptures in the sense of the five 'objects of sense': _shabda_ , sound, for the ears; _sparsha_ , touch, for the skin; _rUpa_ , form, for the eyes; _gandha_ , odor, for the nose; _rasa_ , taste, for the tongue.

7. s, s

The last sibilant, in the dental position, is written:

** **

and is a very common letter. The word _sat_ is the present participle of the verb _as_ , 'to be', and is translated as 'being', 'existing', etc.

** –** _sat_

8. h, h

The last letter of the alphabet, the 'aspirate', is written:

** **and it is seen clearly in

  meaning 'I'.

F. The Complete Alphabet

Table 7 – The Complete Alphabet (Devanagari)

G. Conjunct Consonants

As we have seen above, consonants have no sound of their own and need to be joined to a vowel in order for a sound to become manifest.

The pure consonant _k_ cannot be heard on its own, but here are the various vowels when sounded through the consonant _k_ :

_k_ (no sound), _ka, kA, ki, kI, ku, kU, kRRi, kRRI, kLLi, ke, kai, ko, kau_

** **

The consonant can also become manifest in two ways without being followed by a vowel: it can be preceded by a vowel or it can be followed by another consonant. Examples of the first of these are: _ak, it, uk_ , etc:

** **

This section provides some examples of the second type.

When two consonants combine without an intervening vowel, we need to write the combined letter in such a way as to know which of the consonants is 'pure' ( _halanta_ ).

There are two main ways in which consonants join together. In the first of these the _halanta_ consonant is 'cut' and positioned first (i.e. to the left); in the second way, it is placed on top.

When it is positioned on the left of the combination, it loses a bit of its right-hand side. Those consonants which have a vertical bar on the right-hand side simply lose this. Look at Table 7 to see how many this covers. In the first column, for example, we have _kha, g, gh_. When they lose their right-hand vertical, they look like this when combined with another consonant:

Guess what the following are:

Those without right-hand verticals are just chopped off if possible. Examples of this truncation are _k, ph_ :

** **

Thus, you see, it is not nearly so bad as you might first think! Many do not change at all and, once you have realized which are the distinguishing features of each letter, you will easily see how just those parts are used in letter combinations. (Note that semi-vowels, sibilants and _h_ are all regarded as consonants in this context.) If you have learned the basic letter forms, there is not much more to learn. You do not have to remember all of the possible conjuncts. If you are translating from Devanagari, you can see the conjuncts and work out what they are without too much difficulty. If you are writing Devanagari and using a tool such as Itranslator, it will generate the conjuncts for you.

Examples of the second type are where the _halanta_ letter is placed at the top of the stack. See the following:

** **

You can recognize two consonants, _k_ and _l –_ one without the vowel _a_ and the other followed by _a –_ but you need to know how to pronounce it. Is it _kla_ or _lka_? The answer is _kla_ because the _halanta_ consonant goes on top.

**1. Vertical conjunct –** **_pa~nchadashI_**

As an example of the second type of consonant conjunction, we will look at _pa~nchadashI_. This is a philosophical treatise on Advaita, based upon the Upanishads. The word itself literally means 'fifteen', because that is how many chapters it contains. The letter _~n_ is immediately followed by a _ch_ so the characters combine to form a conjunct consonant. The Devanagari for this word is therefore:

This may look very complicated initially but is really quite straightforward. The first letter is

  sounded after it. Then comes the conjunct.

You can see the letter

~ _n_ ,   on top and

_cha_ ,   beneath.

The conjunct is followed by _a_ and sounded _~ncha –_ because the _halanta_ consonant is the one on top, namely ~ _n_. Next comes the letter _d_ followed by _a_ :

Then comes _sh_ , which you recall has a vertical line that does not mean it is sounded with _A_. This letter is joined by a 'hook' to another vertical line, meaning that it is sounded with _I_ instead of _a_ , i.e. _shI_.

At this juncture we can make another point about pronunciation. This is easier to do using the transliterated form of the word, _pa~nchadashI_. Break up the sound into its individual component letters as follows:

_p a ~n ch a d a sh I_

As we have said many times, the pure consonant needs to be appended to a vowel in order to be manifest. So far we have assumed that this can only take place if the vowel follows, but it can be achieved with a preceding vowel too. Looking at the letters above, we can join the _p_ with the _a_ to give _pa_. Then we have ~ _n_ which is not followed by a vowel, so the only option is to join it to the preceding _a_. This now gives us _pa~n_. The next three consonants are each followed by a vowel to which they join; so the overall pronunciation is:

_pa~n cha da shI_

**2. Vertical conjunct –** **_sha~Nkara_**

The name of Shankara has been mentioned several times now. His name begins with the _sh_ just mentioned. Though usually written as above in Anglicized form, the 'n' is not the dental variety. Since it is followed by _ka_ (without an intervening vowel), it is going to be the _anunAsika_ in the same group – the guttural _~N_ :

** **

Note that the _~Nka_ conjunct has a vertical format, with the _halanta ~N_ on top of the _ka_ and the natural form of both characters still visible. Also note that this word is quite often found in the form _shaMkara_ , which is not strictly accurate. Though it is probably encountered more often in this latter form, it does not tell you how to pronounce it correctly. To stress the pronunciation rule, the nasal _~N_ will need to join its nearest vowel, which happens to precede it, to become manifest as a sound. So we pronounce the word:

_sha~N ka ra_

**3. Horizontal conjunct –** **_mithyA_**

As an example of conjunction, where the _halanta_ consonant appears to the left instead of above the consonant that is followed by a vowel, look at the word _mithyA_. This literally means 'incorrectly' or 'improperly' and is often used to refer to objects in the world. According to Advaita philosophy, we take these as being real and existing in their own right when, in fact, their assumed separate existence is the result of our imposing name and form upon what is really the undifferentiated Self. So they do exist at one level but are dependent for their existence on the existence of something else; i.e. they are not _absolutely_ real. A metaphor often used is our thinking of a wave and water. Does the wave exist? Yes. Can it exist apart from water? No. Can water exist apart from the wave? Yes. Water is real; wave is _mithyA_.

_mithyA_ is written   in Devanagari.

_mi_ will be recognized at the beginning of the word from the example of _milita_ that was given when the letter _i_ was introduced. The conjunct that follows is:

i.e. the upright supporting the characteristic part of the letter _th_ is dropped and the remainder of the letter is attached to the side of the next letter.

Although, from a visual perspective, the _th_ is joined to the _yA_ , from a pronunciation perspective it needs to be attached to the preceding ' _i_ ':

**4. The special case of** **_r_**

It was seen earlier how _r_ does not follow the rules when used with the letters _u_ and _U_. That is not its only exceptional behavior. When it forms conjuncts in which it is the final letter of a group of consonants, it indicates its presence by the use of a short right-sloping diagonal under the left-hand side of the adjacent letter, e.g.

** **

For example, _prANa_ , meaning literally 'breath of life' and encountered in the breathing exercises called _prANayAma_ , is written:

Note that, although in this combination the _p_ looks 'full' and the _r_ looks truncated, it is the _p_ (being the letter 'on top') which is the _halanta_ consonant and it is the _r_ which is followed by the long vowel _A_. Lesson: don't be tricked by appearances!

When _r_ forms a conjunct with t, both letters get adjusted from what one would expect. Take the example of the word _putra_ , meaning 'son':

It is pronounced _put-ra_. The _t_ is _halanta_. If we remember the above rules regarding the form that _halanta_ consonants take when they join other consonants, we would expect the _t_ to simply drop its right-hand vertical and appear:

But it has had to be truncated even further in order to be on top of the letter _r_ with which it is conjoined:

** **

This is a good point at which to mention that _halanta t_ does sometimes truncate in this way when followed by _ta_ , as in _sattva_ , meaning 'truth':

Note that, here, there are three consonants joining: _t, t, v_ (see point 5 below). Accordingly, _sattva_ will be pronounced:

_sat tva_

With some letters, this simple diagonal is deemed insufficient or liable to lead to ambiguity, so another slight variant is used that looks like a French circumflex with the point touching the bottom of the conjunct. Examples are:

** **

When the _r_ is the **first** letter of a conjunct consonant, there is another non-standard behavior. We met the word _kAma_ when we looked at _k_ in the first level of the book. It means 'desire' and should **not** be confused with the word _karma_ , meaning 'action' (although _kAma_ undoubtedly often does leads to _karma_ in many cases!). The conjunct _mra_ is written:

** **

as in _dhUmra_ :

meaning 'smoky', as you would have expected from what we have just discussed. The conjunct _rma_ , however, is written:

** **

and the word _karma_ is:

** **

the _r_ part is signified by the 'curl' shape, open to the right, above the consonant that follows it.

**5. Conjuncts with more than two letters**

The technical term for a conjunct consonant is _saMyoga_ , which literally means 'joined together'. Although all of the ones encountered so far have been formed from just two consonants, there can be more than this. The same principles are used in constructing them. Thus, _achintya_ , for example, meaning 'inconceivable', contains the conjunct _nty_ , which is written:

** **

The significant part of _n_ is attached to that of _t_ , in turn attached to the _y_ , which is the consonant followed by _a_.

To return to the discussion of the letter _r_ , if it begins a conjunct of more than one other consonant, the 'curl' appears over the final one:

** **

If the _r_ appears in the middle of a group of consonants, the short, diagonal stroke or 'circumflex' is used in the appropriate place:

** **

It is worth noting, incidentally, that a tool such as Itranslator will not always produce the conjunct form that you expect. There are some that are really quite complicated, such as that for _~Ngya_ , for example:

It is understandable that there were insufficient codes available in a single, non-Unicode font to cope with all possible combinations. Accordingly, what was done was to break the conjunct up into parts. This one is reproduced as:

instead of a single character. The conjunct _gya_ is simply preceded by _halanta ~N_.

An example of a word with more than three consonants conjoined is _kArtsnya_ , which has five. It means 'entirely':

** **

**6. Special conjunct forms**

A few letter combinations do not follow the general rules outlined above. Instead they form a unique character of their own.

We had the word _j~nAna_ in the first level. It is one of the words encountered very frequently by the spiritual seeker, and one of the most important ones, so we will look at it in more detail now. It means 'knowledge'. It is found in the 'yoga of knowledge' – _j~nAna yoga –_ in, for example, the Bhagavad Gita. It is also found as _j~nAnI_ , referring to one who practices _j~nAna yoga_ or, more generally, to a 'person of wisdom' or 'sage', meaning one who has realized the Self.

** **

ITRANS also allows you to represent the _j~n_ conjunct by either _GY_ or dny. Thus _j~nAna_ may be written _GYAna_ or _dnyAna_ if you prefer. This is probably because some people actually pronounce the word in that way. Because _~n_ can also be represented by _JN_ or _J_ , there are two more ways of writing this word: _jJNAna_ or _jJAna_. (Note that Itranslator Software 1.2.0.83 will not translate this last form correctly.)

_bhakti yoga_ is the spiritual path whereby a god is worshipped and one who follows this path is called a _bhakta. bhakta_ can mean 'served' or 'worshipped' but in this context means rather 'serving' or 'worshipping'. The _bha_ part is straightforward but _k_ and _t_ form another special conjunct consonant. We have already seen _t_ as the first half of a conjunct, where the left-hand part was simply tagged on to the following letter. Thus, if the conjunct here were _tka_ , it would be written:

** **

However, this is the wrong order for _bhakta_ and the conjunct must be different:

** **

This is not altogether intuitive and it is one of the conjuncts that just have to be remembered. The reason is simply that the right-hand curve of the _k_ would interfere with the left-hand curve of the _t_ if it were constructed in the usual horizontal combination and _t_ does not lend itself to a vertical construction. Fortunately, although you might not be able to remember what the character is if you are trying to translate from Roman to Devanagari, when you see the word in Devanagari, you can usually work out what the character must be. Anyway, the complete word _bhakta_ is written:

** **

c) Conjuncts of _sh_

As with _g_ and _N_ , the Devanagari form of _sh_ has a vertical line at the right so it would not be surprising to find that, when in conjunction with another consonant, it drops this vertical in the same way. Thus, in _shyAma_ , meaning 'dark', this is what it does:

Unfortunately, this is one of the few situations where this happens ( _shsh_ is another). More frequently, it assumes a single 'twist' shape as a 'characteristic part' and uses this in its conjuncts as shown below:

** **

which means 'lame' or 'limping'. NB: It would not be wrong, however, to write this:

one of the schools of Jain philosophy. This shape is retained when combined with _ra_ , too, where the diagonal line form of the latter is used:

** **

the 'revealed' truths of the Vedas, and with _na_ :

** **

meaning 'pierced' or 'transfixed'. Note that here the horizontal bar of the _na_ has been pushed downwards. You may also see this with the bar still horizontal but lower down the stem. This script was, after all, handwritten and not generated by computerized typefaces when it was current and variations were inevitable. Again, the normal format, just dropping the vertical from _sh_ , would not be wrong:

d) Conjuncts of _Sh_

The key part of _Sh_ is quite distinctive and it forms a number of conjuncts where the diagonal line simply fills in the 'unused loop' of the other character:

which means 'eight':

** **

But _Sh_ is also another one of the characters that forms special conjuncts in some cases, which cannot be worked out using the usual rules – you simply have to learn them. One of these occurs after _k_ :

the warrior class of the caste system in ancient Indian tradition. If this conjunct added another consonant, it would then drop the right-hand vertical:

Another well-known example of the conjunct _kSh_ is in

** **

meaning 'enlightenment' or, more accurately, 'liberation' in the sense of release from worldly existence. Because the conjunct sounds a bit like 'x', ITRANS allows you to use this instead and the word can be written _moxa_.

e) Conjuncts of _h_

Some of the conjuncts of _h_ follow the usual pattern:

** **is _hma_ , and   is _hya_ for example.

However, because of the unusual shape of the letter, it is clearly possible to put some 'key' letter elements _inside_ the lower part of _h_ to create some special 'vertical' conjuncts:

** –** _hNa_ ;   **–** _hna_ ;   **–** _hva_ ;   **–** _hra_.

You may also see _hra_ with the diagonal to the left of the letter in the more usual way but this should pose no problem by now.

7. Table showing some common conjuncts

Table 8 – Some Examples of Conjuncts

Initial Letter Some Conjuncts

**H. Some Special Characters**

There are several special characters that you will also see when you look at Sanskrit texts. Two of these have already been dealt with, namely the _virAma_ to signify a ' _halanta_ ' consonant and the _praNava shabda_ as the mystical symbol 'OM'. The single dot of the _anusvAra_ above a consonant sounded with _M_ and the double dot of the _visarga_ after one sounded with _H_ may also be regarded as special characters.

The _praNava shabda_ itself is produced in ITRANS by either _OM_ or _AUM_. The latter has the advantage of reminding us of the origin and symbolism discussed earlier when introducing the character _o_.

The sign over the OM symbol

which looks like a shallow concave bowl containing a dot, is called a _chandra-bindu_ , meaning literally 'moon-like spot'. It is a sign that the vowel over which it appears should be nasalized, e.g.

which is written _a.N_ in ITRANS and aṃ in Romanized transliteration. The concave shape on its own may also sometimes be seen in old manuscripts where it functions the same as the _anusvAra_. It is called an _ardhachandra_ , meaning 'crescent-shaped', and can be generated in ITRANS by writing '.c'. For example:

** **(Note that this second word uses a different font – Mangal – because the one used for everything else (Sanskrit 98) will not reproduce the _ardhachandra_.)

The _chandra-bindu_ is also used (in Panini's book of grammar, the _aShTAdhyAyi_ ) in conjunction with the first letter of one of the five groups of consonants to indicate that the whole group is being referred to. Thus,

** –** _tu.N –_ is an abbreviation used to refer to

** –** _pu.N –_ is an abbreviation used to refer to

** **

A special case of the _chandra-bindu_ occurs in conjunction with a _virAma_ , with no apparent associated letter at all. This is called the 'Vedic _anusvAra_ '. An example of this is found in the first sutra of the Isa Upanishad ( _IshopaniShad_ ):

I will not translate this in detail here. You will be able to work out the beginning, however – _OM IshA –_ and the next word appears to be _vAsyamida_ followed by a peculiar symbol. In fact, the ITRANS code for this word is _vAsyamida{\m+}_ and the '{\m+}' code generates the _chandra-bindu_ over a _virAma_ instead of an _anusvAra_. This signifies a special pronunciation – the 'Vedic pronunciation' – and, instead of pronouncing the word _vAsyamid aM_, if we simply used an _anusvAra_ , it is pronounced _vAsyami dag~N_, i.e. the word is sounded with the _halanta_ , guttural nasal sound instead of the generic, labial 'm'.

You should also note the single vertical line at the end of the first line of script and the two sets of double lines at the end of the second. The single line is called, somewhat confusingly, a _virAma_. It marks the end of a sentence or half-verse of a _sUtra_. The double line is called a _pUrNavirAma_ and it marks the end of the _sUtra_ or the end of a paragraph. These lines are generated by a full stop in ITRANS (i.e. one full stop produces one line). These are, in fact, the **only** punctuation marks in Sanskrit. There are no equivalents of semi-colons, question marks, exclamation marks or even quotation marks.

The complete ITRANS for generating the above _sUtra_ is:

_OM IshA vAsyamida{\m+} sarvaM yatkiJNcha jagatyAM jagat_.

_tena tyaktena bhu~njIthA mA gRRidhaH kasyasviddhanam.h .. 1 ._.

You can see now that the other symbol that you probably did not recognize, between the two sets of double lines on the second line, is simply the numeral '1'. These are dealt with in Section I. (Note also that it is an accepted convention to use the '.h' variation of ITRANS to indicate a _halanta_ consonant, when this occurs at the end of a sentence, even though the same Devanagari script is generated.)

The other special character, which you will see occasionally, is called an _avagraha_ and is written:

** **

The _avagraha_ indicates that an _a_ letter has been dropped, in the same way as the apostrophe in English indicates that either 'o' or 'i' has been dropped, e.g. don't or it's. Observation will show that the letter preceding the dropped _a_ is likely to be _o_ or _e_. This is due to the requirement for euphonic flow, which will be dealt with later. The Roman transliteration in Sanskrit uses an apostrophe in just the same way as English to represent the _avagraha_. An example of an _avagraha_ is found in the second line of the next _mantra_ of the _isopaniShad_ :

On the second line, you should be able to read the words quite easily now. The first three are _evaM tvayi nAnyatheto_. Then there is an _avagraha_ followed by _sti na karma lipyate nare_. Then there are two sets of double lines either side of the character for '2', identifying that this is the second _sUtra_. The reason for the _avagraha_ is that the word actually following this symbol is _asti_ , the third person singular of the verb 'to be' or 'to exist'. It means <the subject of the sentence> 'exists'. Because the preceding word is _nAnyatheto_ , Sanskrit, always striving for the optimum efficiency in sound, does not want to sound _o_ followed by _a_. There is no option available for combining the sounds, since _o_ is itself already a combination. Accordingly, the _a_ of _asti_ is dropped and, to signify in the written version that this will occur when it is spoken, the _avagraha_ is inserted. [Note that the word _nAnyatheto_ began its life as _na anyathA itaH_ but the words merge and the combined letters are forced to change as you will find out on the next Level when we discuss _saMdhi_.]

This second line, then, is written:

_evaM tvayi nAnyatheto.asti na karma lipyate nare .. 2._. in ITRANS, with the '.a' generating the _avagraha_. In Romanized transliteration, it would be written:

evaṃ tvayi nānyatheto'sti na karma lipyate nare || 2 ||

A point to note here is that, just as one does not pronounce the missing 'o' in 'doesn't' so too one does not pronounce the missing ' _a_ ' in the above verse. That's why the apostrophe route is preferable in transliteration to prevent the temptation to reinsert the missing ' _a_ ' sound.

**I. The Numerals**

Roman numerals actually derive from the Sanskrit originally so that some similarity of the figures can easily be recognized. The principal situation in which they will be needed is in Devanagari references to _sUtra_ -s in some scriptural texts. They are shown in the following table:

Table 9 – The Devanagari Numerals

# Level 3 Some Practical Examples

**A**. **_shivasUtrANi_**

(These are also sometimes called the ' _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ '.)

* * *

Do not be apprehensive about the Sanskrit text that appears below! There are no words or pronunciation to be worked out. Each verse only contains a short string of the letters that you have just learned in Level 2 but in a particular, meaningful sequence. And all will be explained! Furthermore, you do not need to know anything about the _shivasUtrANi_ in order to learn the Sanskrit language. If you prefer, you may learn the rules for sandhi as a list of do's and don'ts. I am introducing these partly because they are a useful reinforcement for letter recognition and partly for interest.

* * *

Another very helpful way to gain familiarity with the alphabet is to learn by rote a set of short verses ( _sUtra_ -s) that contain all of the letters. These are very special verses in that the ordering of the letters within them enables groups of letters quickly and easily to be identified in a shorthand way. Then it is possible to apply a set of rules that determine such things as how letters at the end of a word will combine with those at the beginning of the next.

This is best understood by seeing (and learning!) the _sUtra_ -s and seeing how they operate. Otherwise, the abstract concept may be difficult to grasp. The sheer ingenuity and cleverness with which they and their associated rules were constructed is quite staggering. The system was developed by the Sanskrit grammarian Panini in his book _aShTAdyAyI_ , about 2,500 years ago. There are about 4,000 sutras covering the entire grammar. The specific verses relating to the letter groupings are called the _maheshvarANi_ sutras because Panini is supposed to have had a dream in which _maheshvara_ , referring to the 'great Lord or God' was playing the sutras on a drum. There are 14 sutras or _sUtrANi – sUtrANi_ is the plural of _sUtra_. They are all very short, since they are made up not of words but of the letters of the alphabet. Two of them contain only two letters. Consequently, they are relatively easy to learn. (The word _maheshvara_ is itself a good example of the application of one of the rules to be described below regarding the changing of vowels at the end/beginning of words when they are adjacent. It derives from the two separate words _maha_ , meaning 'great' and _Ishvara_ , meaning 'Lord'. When _maha_ joins with _Ishvara_ , the _a + I_ becomes _e_.)

Each _sUtra_ consists of one or more 'active' letters of the alphabet and terminates in an 'inactive' letter, referred to as an ' _it_ ' _varna_ ( _varna_ means 'letter' or 'sound'). The key feature of these _it_ letters is that they are not seen (although still exerting some influence). For this reason, they are also called 'indicatory' letters – they indicate something, but are distinct from what they indicate.

1)   – _a-i-u-N –_ i.e. the main vowels ( _a_ , _A, i, I, u, U_ ) (active) terminating in the (inactive) _halanta_ cerebral nasal _N_

2)   – _RRi-LLi-k –_ i.e. the (active) vowels at the cerebral and dental positions terminating in the (inactive) _halanta_ consonant, _k_

3)   **–** _e-o-~N –_ i.e. the two (active) compound vowels, made by combining _a_ with _i_ and _u_ respectively, terminating in the (inactive) _halanta_ consonant _~N_

4)   **–** _ai-au-ch –_ i.e. the remaining compound vowels (active), made by combining _a_ with _e_ and _o_ respectively, terminating in the (inactive) _halanta_ consonant _ch_

5)   **–** _ha-ya-va-ra-T –_ i.e. three of the four semi-vowels, together with the 'aspirate' _h_ (all active), terminating in the (inactive) _halanta T_

6)   – _la-~N –_ i.e. the remaining semi-vowel (active), terminating in (inactive) _halanta ~N_

7)   – _~na-ma-~Na-Na-na-m –_ i.e. the five _anunAsika_ consonants (active), terminating in (inactive) _halanta M_

8)   – _jha-bha-~n –_ i.e. the second _mahAprANa_ consonants in the palatal and labial groups (active), terminating in (inactive) _halanta ~n_

9)   **–** _gha-Dha-dha-Sh –_ i.e. the second _mahAprANa_ consonants in the other three groups (guttural, cerebral and dental) (active), terminating in (inactive) _halanta Sh_

10)   – _ja-ba-ga-Da-da-sh –_ i.e. the second _alpaprANa_ consonants in each of the five groups of consonants (active), terminating in (inactive) _halanta sh_

11)   – _kha-pha-Cha-Tha-tha-cha-Ta-ta-v –_ i.e. the first _mahAprANa_ consonants in each of the five groups and three of the first _alpaprANa_ ones (active), terminating in the (inactive) _halanta v_

12)   – _ka-pa-y –_ i.e. the remaining two first _alpaprANa_ consonants (active), terminating in the (inactive) _halanta y_

13)   **–** _sha-Sha-sa-r –_ i.e. the three sibilants (active), terminating in the (inactive) _halanta r_

14)   – _ha-l –_ i.e. the aspirate (active), terminating in (inactive) _halanta l_

Learning this will take some effort but can be used to great advantage for those wishing to study Panini's grammar, because he used this version of the alphabet to create a shorthand way of expressing his grammatical rules. If written, it will help tremendously in learning the alphabet. If spoken, it will quickly be realized that this requires considerable agility of the tongue and is excellent for learning correct pronunciation. Naturally this does necessitate that you have at least a recording of how it **should** sound and preferably someone who can listen to you and correct mistakes.

Below is the complete set of

** **( _shivasUtrANi_ ) or   ( _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ ):

and now we'll have a brief look at the purpose of combining the letters in this way, and the role of the indicatory ' _it_ ' letters.

Specific groups of letters can be identified by a two-letter code. Thus, for example:

a)   **–** _aN_ is shorthand for the first three primary vowels. It is derived from the first _maheshvarANi sUtra_ , ' _a-i-u-N_ '. The first letter of this sUtra is _a_ and the last is _N_. Thus the whole batch can be indicated by the shorthand, which starts with the first and ends with the last letter of the batch: _aN_. As we have said, the letter _N_ is called ' _it_ ' and this means that it is not seen. What this unseen letter means is that the batch being indicated are the letters _a, i, u_. That is how it comes to be a shorthand for 'the three principal vowels'. NOTE: there are seven syllables in saying 'the-three-prin-ci-pal-vow-els' and only one in saying 'aN'. We have therefore saved six syllables by using this shorthand. In Panini's day, the grammarian's art was to express their rules in the most succinct way and so the saving of even a single syllable was valued; it is said, as highly as the birth of a son! Saving six must be a great achievement.

b)   – _ak_ similarly is shorthand for 'the five simple vowels'. The batch starts with ' _a_ ' and ends with the unseen indicatory letter ' _k_ ' with the unseen indicatory letter ' _N_ ' in between. So, discounting the unseen letters, _ak_ is the shorthand for _a, i, u,RRi, LLi_.

c)   – _ach –_ identifies all vowels. The letter _a_ begins the first _sUtra_ and _it halanta_ ' _ch_ ' occurs at the end of the fourth _sUtra_. Discounting all of the 'inactive' or 'it' letters (i.e. those at the end of each _sUtra_ ), the (active) letters are: _a, A, i, I, u, U_ (first _sUtra_ ); _RRi, RRI, LLi, LLI_ (second); _e, o_ (third); _ai, au_ (fourth).

d)   – _al –_ identifies all of the letters from _a_ at the beginning of the 1st _sUtra_ to _h_ in the last (excluding all inactive letters). The shorthand ' _al_ ', therefore, stands for the whole alphabet.

e)   **–** _hal –_ identifies all of the consonants, from _h_ at the beginning of the fifth _sUtra_ to _h_ (again) at the beginning of the final _sUtra_ (again, as always, excluding inactive letters). Now you can see the reason for the word _halanta_. This refers to the situation in which a consonant (i.e. _hal_ ) occurs at the end (i.e. _anta_ ) of a word.

f)   – _yaN –_ refers to the semi-vowels, from _y_ as the second letter in the fifth _sUtra_ to _l_ as the only active letter in the sixth.

g)   – _ech_ identifies the compound vowels, from _e_ as the first vowel in the third _sUtra_ to _au_ as the last active letter in the fourth.

h)   **–** _shar –_ identifies the three sibilants, from the thirteenth _sUtra_.

i)   **–** _shal –_ identifies the four _UShman_ letters (three sibilants + _h_ ).

j) And so on! Each of these two-letter abbreviations is called a _pratyAhAra_ in Panini's book on grammar and there are 42 of them altogether. In fact, another name for these sutras is _pratyAhAra sUtrANi_.

(If you are inordinately alert, you may have realized that _aN_ could refer either to _a_ , _i, u >_ or to _a_ , _i, u, RRi, LLi, e, o, ai, au,h, y, v, r, l>_. In fact, Panini explains, in a note to one of his sutras, that it should always be interpreted as the former, except in the sutra to which the note refers.

Also, if alert, you will notice that one 'active' letter occurs twice: the letter ' _h_ '. This might explain its double status – sometimes grouped with the semi-vowels and sometimes with the sibilants.)

**B. Words and Sandhi**

**1. Words**

All Sanskrit words derive from short 'root' words, each of which is called a _dhAtu_ , and there are only about 2,000 of these. When looking up a word in the dictionary, its origins will often be identified as a _dhAtu_ and this will be specified by a 'square-root' sign √ appearing in front of it. The _dhAtu_ itself appears in the Monier-Williams dictionary in slightly larger, bolder font than other words and is in Devanagari form (whereas derived words are shown in Roman transliterated form). The _dhAtu_ -s are quite fundamental and many of our own English words can be traced back to them. An example is _sthA_ , meaning 'to stand', 'take up a position', 'remain', 'persevere' etc. If you know Latin, you will probably recognize _sto, stare, steti, statum –_ the verb 'to stand'. English words such as 'stay', 'station' and so on derive from this.

In order to form meaningful words from the _dhAtu_ , 'affixes' are added – i.e. prefixes and suffixes – usually only of one or two syllables. These endings (prefix or suffix) are called _pratyaya_ -s. How these syllables are added, and what effect this has on existing vowels, is very precisely codified in the grammar.

The _dhAtu-s_ are grouped into ten families, and the way in which the evolution of each _dhAtu_ takes place will be according to the rules applying to the family in which they occur. For example, in some families the vowel is replaced by its _guNa_ or _vRRiddhi_ form before the addition of affixes. In other cases there is a duplication of a particular letter, and so on. These changes to the _dhAtu_ produce the stem form of the word, the _prAtipadika_ , the form that will be found in the dictionary. It has also been mentioned, however, that these stem forms need to go through one more set of changes before they become a word, _pada_ , which is a meaningful unit in a sentence.

Words are formed by adding further endings to the _prAtipadika_. These endings are of two types: one set of endings gives us verbs and their derivatives, and the other set gives us nouns. Here is where the proliferation begins!

Let us start with nouns: These are divided according to gender (feminine, masculine and neuter), according to number (singular, dual, plural), and according to case, i.e. the role in the sentence.

There are seven case endings accounting for the noun's role in the sentence. The noun could be the subject of the action (doer), object of the action, instrument by which the action is accomplished, that to which the action is directed, that from which it proceeds, that in which the action is located, or it could be that which possesses another noun in the sentence (as in the student's headache, where the headache created by all this proliferation is possessed by the student).

This is not where the proliferation ends. The fixed set of 21 case endings will depend not only on the gender of the noun, but also on the letter with which the _prAtipadika_ ends. In respect of basic noun endings, if the _prAtipadika_ ends in _a_ , the noun is likely to be masculine, in which case the standard ending will be modified in a particular way. The nominative (subject) endings of these nouns, for example, are likely to be _aH_. If, however, the _prAtipadika_ ending in _a_ happens to be neuter gender, then the nominative form will end in _am_. Thus, _phala_ is _phal am_ (neuter) while _nara_ (meaning 'man' and clearly masculine) is _nar aH_. The _prAtipadika_ -s (in the dictionary) ending in _A_ or _I_ are almost always feminine, e.g. _mAyA, nAdI_ (a river). The nominative singular of _mAyA_ is _mAyA_ and of _nadI_ is _nadI_ so there is no confusion here at least. Then we can also have _prAtipadika_ -s ending in _i_ or _u_ or _RRi_ , which could be any gender. And, of course _prAtipadika_ -s can end in a variety of consonants: _Atman_ is an example of the _prAtipadika_ ending in _n_ , where the nominative singular is _AtmA_.

If we next turn to verbs, we have an equivalent list of factors that influence the verb endings. First, there are number (singular, dual, plural), and person (first, second, third). These two in combination give us a table with 3 × 3 = 9 forms. This then doubles to 18, because verbs can be in two main classes: directed towards the other, _parasmaipada_ , or directed towards oneself, _Atmanepada_. These 18 forms will then vary according to time (present, past and future – plus subtle variations of these latter two) and mood (e.g. command, request, option, etc).

This is how, with a handful of seeds and a handful of laws, Sanskrit manages to grow a vocabulary that is massively rich in meaning and lawful in its development.

Incidentally, the 21 case endings of nouns are called _sup-vibhakti_ or _namavibhakti_ (name-endings) and the 18 verb endings are called _ti~N-vibhakti_ or _kriyAvibhakti_ (action-endings).

As an example, the _dhAtu_ ' _nI_ ' means 'lead, guide, direct' etc. The preposition (called an _upasarga_ in Sanskrit) ' _apa_ ' means 'away, back, off'. Thus the verb _apanI_ means to 'lead away, lead off' or 'rob, steal' etc. If this occurs in a sentence such as 'he leads away' for example, it then adds the appropriate _kriyAvibhakti_ ending and becomes ' _apanayati_ '. Thus _rAjAnamapanayati –_ 'he leads away the king'. _rAja_ is the _prAtipadika_ form found in the dictionary, meaning 'king'. Since it is in the accusative (the king is the object of the leading away), it adds the second, singular _namavibhakti_ ending and becomes _rAjAnam_.

This book assumes that you really do not want to go into this level of detail. The section on 'Resources on the Internet' will provide information on how to pursue this study further.

**2. Pronunciation**

Having learned how to pronounce each letter, the pronunciation of words follows naturally. Letter sounds do not change when they are part of a word as they often do in English. The sounds are always distinct and discrete even when in combination with other letters. Thus, for example, there are no situations such as an 's' sound and a 'h' sound becoming a 'sh' sound when they occur together. They will retain their own unique sound and simply follow one another.

Stressing certain syllables within words when they are spoken is as critical in Sanskrit as it is in English. The rule is straightforward and depends upon whether a syllable is 'light' ( _laghu_ ) or 'heavy' ( _guru_ ). Long vowels ( _dIrgha_ ) or any vowels immediately preceding a cluster of consonants, a _visarga_ or an _anusvAra_ are heavy, and the stress is placed on these. Short vowels that are not one of the special cases just mentioned are light and no stress is placed on them. Thus: _anúsvÁra, visárga, sáMyúkta, prátyÁhÁra, prÁtipadika, mahéshvara, avágraha, upániShat_. To understand the difference, take any of these words and pronounce them according to your inclination; then pronounce them by laying the stress on the syllables with the acute accent. One way to get the textural variation is to sound the unstressed syllables softly and the stressed ones loudly one at a time and then, once you have the stresses in the right places start to close the gap, e.g.

_A nús vÁ ra, vi sár ga, sáM yúk ta, prát yÁ hÁ ra_.

Other commonly mispronounced words are:

_ar ju na, ma hA bhA ra ta, pra kRRi ti_ (no stresses at all)

When a mantra text is chanted, a secondary factor is added, namely accent. There are three main accents: high, _udAtta_ ; low, _anudAtta_ ; raised, _svarita_. Below is an example of an annotated text. The underlined letters are sounded low ( _anudAtta_ ); the unmarked should be sounded higher in relation to them ( _udAtta_ ); and those with a single vertical line above them are the highest of the three notes ( _svarita_ ). In some places there is a double vertical above a letter ( _dIrgha svarita_ ): this is sounded with a high followed by a low note. The safest way to understand all of this is to work with a traditional teacher.

** **

** **

**3. Joining words and part-words**

When speaking or writing Sanskrit, words are joined wherever possible within a sentence or line of poetry. Pauses in speech or breaks in written words within a sentence normally only occur when a word ends in a vowel, a _visarga_ or an _anusvAra_ and the next word begins with a consonant. Go back to the invocation mantra above and note where the breaks are. A good example is the famous saying ( _mahAvAkya_ ) from the Chandogya Upanishad ' _tat tvam asi_ ', meaning 'that thou art'. The first word ends in a consonant, the second begins with a consonant; so no break. The second ends in a consonant, the third begins with a vowel; so no break: it is therefore written:

** –** i.e. as one continuous expression, _tattvamasi_.

Note that the word for 'that' is actually _tad_ but for the sake of euphonic flow, _saMdhi_ , it is changed to _tat_ because it is followed by _t_.

Sandhi (actually _saMdhi_ ) refers to the way in which letters (i.e. sounds) change when they are joined together in a continuous flow of speech. It is also sometimes called 'euphony' because the purpose of the whole exercise is to end up with a harmonious-sounding sentence. Panini also uses the word _saMhitA_ for this, defined as 'the closest drawing together of sounds'.

If the letters in question are at the end of one word and the beginning of the next, the joining is referred to as 'external sandhi'. If they refer to the joining of parts of a word, it is called 'internal sandhi'. Unless you are studying the language seriously, it is the external variety that is most important, since written words can be difficult to decipher without an understanding of how the component words may have changed. There can also be sandhi of vowels or of consonants. The former is called _ach saMdhi_ ( _ach_ being the _pratyAhAra_ for all the vowels, as explained above); the latter is called _hal saMdhi_ , since _hal_ identifies all consonants. A third set of rules come into play when a _visarga_ is followed or preceded by various letters.

It is worth remembering that the sole purpose of sandhi is to make the language sound as harmonious as possible. This is not a phenomenon restricted to the Sanskrit language. In English, for example, it is so much easier to say 'an apple' than 'a apple'.

Internally, too, English has sandhi. The letter 's' is pronounced 'sss'. When appended to the word 'cat' – cats – it retains its 'sss' sound. But when appended to 'dog' – dogs – the s is pronounced 'z': dogz. When appended to horse – horses – not only is the 's' pronounced 'z' but the 'e' of horse is sounded as though it is 'i': horsiz. In English we make these changes in pronunciation only and not in writing. In Sanskrit, we change both the spelling and the pronunciation. If the English grammarians were formulating spelling rules, they might have one that says: when 's' follows 'd', it is replaced by 'z', but retains its true nature when following 't'.

Where the conjunction of two letters makes the words difficult to pronounce or if the result sounds awkward, there will be a rule for combining the letters to get around the problem. Knowing this can sometimes enable you to make a good guess at what is needed, if you are forming the word, or at what has happened, if you are trying to read it. Not all of the Sanskrit rules of euphonic harmony are being given here – there are quite a lot of them, including exceptions and special cases. But, unless you are seriously studying the language, it is not necessary to learn them anyway. Once the principles have been understood, much of it becomes common sense. Very often, you can hear what the result should be simply by speaking the two separate words quickly in succession.

Sandhi can be analyzed into three categories: vowel, _visarga_ and consonant. In each category, a number of rules can be specified to enable one to determine what will happen when a word or part-word ending in a specific letter joins with another word or part-word beginning with a specific letter. Many of the rules have sub-rules to cover special cases and exceptions. After a particular rule has been applied and the end character of the first word, say, has been changed accordingly, it may then happen that another rule comes into play for this new character and a further change must take place. Thus, several stages may be involved in the progressive modification of endings until a result is reached which sounds 'harmonious'. For you to learn all of these rules and become familiar with their operation is not the intention of this book. The following paragraphs merely offer a flavor of the topic and a later section will refer you to other resources that you can follow up if you wish to.

The WebPages on Rules of Sandhi, from the Argentinian site (see 'Resources on the Internet', Section B) list 7 primary and 7 secondary rules for the joining of vowels, 10 rules involving _visarga_ endings and 24 rules for joining consonants, some of which have anything up to 6 sub-rules. (Incidentally, I cannot recommend these WebPages too highly. Although Panini is not mentioned, all of the rules are presented in a very methodical and detailed manner with many examples. It is very readable and easy to understand.)

**4. Some examples of vowel sandhi**

a) Coalescence of similar vowels

This is the simplest form of sandhi, showing what happens when a word ending in one of the five main vowels (short or long) joins a word beginning with the same vowel. There is a sutra in Panini's book of grammar to describe this: _akaH savarNe dIrghaH_ (Literal translation: 'In place of _ak_ when followed by _savarNa_ there is a long measure.')

It says that whenever an _ak_ sound (i.e. _a, A, i, I, u, U, RRi_ , _LLi_ ) is followed by a _savarNa_ sound (meaning 'of the same family' i.e. a **similar** sound), the two vowels are replaced by the _dIrgha_ form, i.e. the long form of the vowel. Thus, if a word ending in _a_ or _A_ is followed by one beginning with _a_ or _A_ (the 'similar' sounds), they are joined and both of the joining vowels are replaced by a single occurrence of _A_. If a word ending in _i_ or _I_ joins one beginning with _i_ or _I_ , both joining vowels are replaced by one _I_. And so on. Thus _kapi_ means 'monkey' and _indra_ means 'prince' (among other things). These join to become _kapIndra_ (lord of monkeys), with the two _hrasva i_ -s becoming a _dIrgha I_. Similarly, _kuru_ refers to an ancient country or region, probably north of the Himalayas, and _uttama_ means 'best, highest, greatest, chief, etc.'. These two combine to produce _kurUttama_ with the two _hrasva u_ -s becoming a _dIrgha U_.

b) Coalescence of dissimilar vowels when the first is _a_ or _A_

Providing that the last vowel of the first word is _a_ or _A_ , coalescence with a beginning vowel of the second word occurs in a similar manner to the table of _guNa_ and _vRRiddhi_ discussed earlier, except that, as in a) above, the length of the two vowels does not matter. Thus _a_ or _A_ joining with _i_ or _I_ produces _e_ as in _mahA_ (great) + _Isha_ (lord) = _mahesha_ (great lord). _a_ or _A_ joining with _RRi_ or _RRI_ produces _ar_ as in _mahA_ (great) + _RRiShi_ (sage) = _maharShi_ (great sage). _a_ or _A_ joining with _e_ will produce _ai_ , and with _o_ will produce _au_. If _a_ or _A_ joins with _ai_ or _au_ , it will produce _ai_ and au, respectively, since these are the 'full extent' of coalescence, as it were.

c) Coalescence of dissimilar vowels when the first is **not** _a_ or _A_

This is covered by the first of the sutras relating to the joining of vowels in Panini's book of grammar: _iko yaNachi_. (Literal translation: 'In place of _ik_ letters there are _yaN_ letters.') Its meaning is as follows:

If a word ending in _i, u, RRi_ or _LLi_ is immediately followed by a word beginning with any vowel other than itself (in the same sentence or in the same line of a poem), then the _i, u, RRi, LLi_ is replaced by _y, v, r, l_ respectively and the two words will then be written and sounded as if they were one. Thus, _vi_ and _a~njana_ combine to form _vya~njana_. The _i_ is replaced by the semi-vowel in the same group (palatal). If you sound the two words together, the _i-a_ naturally turns into a _y_ so it is all perfectly logical.

d) Coalescence when first vowel is complex

The first Panini sutra relating to this situation is _echo.ayavAyAvaH_.

This is similar to _iko yaNachi_ but now refers to a word ending in _ech_ , i.e. _e_ , _o_ , _ai_ or au, joining a word beginning with _ach_ , i.e. any vowel. The ending vowel of the first word is replaced by _ay_ , av, _Ay_ or _Av_ , respectively. This is essentially what happens if this situation occurs within a word, i.e. at the joining of two parts of a word. It is a little more complex if there are two separate words. As has already been seen, for example, if a word ending in _e_ or _o_ is followed by one beginning with _a_ , the _a_ is dropped but the words remain separate and an _avagraha_ is inserted. Also, y's and v's produced as a result of this coalescence can optionally be dropped.

Something very noticeable about the sutras in Panini's grammar is their extreme conciseness. This frequently seems to occur to an extreme of complete unintelligibility. The brevity is intentional, the incomprehensibility presumably not! The situation is not actually as bad as it appears at first sight. What happens is that many of the sutras occur in groups, each of which is called an _adhikAra_ , meaning 'topic' or 'subject'. The elements of the topic are introduced logically, one bit at a time but, once a point has been made, it is not repeated. Entire words introduced in a sutra earlier in the topic are assumed still to apply and we have to mentally 'bring them down' from the earlier ones as necessary. The principle is called _anuvRRitti_ , which means the 'continued course or influence of a preceding rule on what follows'. The same principle applies to Vyasa's sutras in the Brahmasutras, for example.

5. Some examples of consonant sandhi

As mentioned above, there are many more of these. We will look at just six main ones. These are applied in the order given so that, if after applying one, a subsequent rule also becomes applicable, then it is applied too. (We never go back to the beginning on reaching the end, you will be glad to hear!)

The purpose of all of these rules of sandhi is to maximize the harmony and avoid any inharmonious conjunction of sounds. Vowels and consonants, in addition to the various categories already given earlier, are said to be either 'soft' or 'hard'. Another word for 'soft' is 'unvoiced', as compared to the 'hard' ones, which are 'voiced'. This categorization refers to the fact that the vowels (except for the _visarga_ ) and consonants in the first two rows ( _k_ , _ch, T, t, p, kh, Ch, Th, th, ph_ ) do not make the sound of a syllable. There is no soft resonance; they make a hard, clipped sound and are therefore 'unvoiced' or _aghoSha_. The remainder of the consonants (last three rows), together with _H_ , all sound like short syllables, soft or 'murmuring', and are said to be 'voiced' or _ghoSha_. It is an aim of these _saMdhi_ rules that conjunctions of hard and soft should be avoided. For example, if a word ending in a hard sound is followed by a word beginning with a soft one, the hard letter has to be changed to a soft one so that the resultant joining sound is harmonious.

a) Word ending in any consonant other than a nasal or a semi-vowel

The _pratyAhAra_ for 'any consonant other than a nasal or a semi-vowel' is _jhal_ , if you look back at the discussion of the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_. The rule relating to this is that, when a word ending in a _jhal_ consonant joins another word, the _jhal_ consonant is replaced by the corresponding _jash_ consonant. _jash_ is the _pratyAhAra_ for _j, g, b, D or d_ i.e. a consonant from the third line of the five groups of consonants, the second set of _alpaprANa_ consonants. The sutra is:

** –** _jhalAM jasho.ante_

An example would be:

Here, the first word ends in the dental _t_ , which is a _jhal_ consonant. Since it is followed by another word, we have to replace it with the corresponding _jash_ consonant, i.e. the one in the same group as the _t_ , namely the dental _d_.

b) Joining of a dental consonant with a palatal

The Panini sutra relating to this situation is _stoH shchunA shchuH_ and, expanded into something vaguely meaningful, it says the following:

A   ( _stu.N_ ),

when this joins with a   ( _schu.N_ ),

is replaced by another   ( _schu.N_ )

The meaning of these terms was explained when we discussed the _chandra-bindu_ in Level 2 Section H:

** –** _tu.N –_ is an abbreviation used to refer to

Therefore, _stu.N_ in Panini's system of abbreviations means 'either an _halanta s_ or any of the _tu.N_ letters', i.e. any _halanta_ dental consonant _t, th, d, dh, n_. Similarly, _shchu.N_ means _halanta sh_ or any of the _halanta_ palatal consonants ( _ch, Ch, j, jh_ or _~n_ ). So, if a word ending in _halanta s, t, th, d, dh, n_ is followed by a word beginning with _sh, ch, Ch, j, jh, ~n_ , the dental consonant is replaced by the corresponding palatal.

e.g. _tapas_ (religious austerities) + _shivaH_ (favorable, auspicious) = _tapashshivaH_

The dental _s_ , being followed by the palatal _sh_ , is replaced by the corresponding palatal, i.e. _sh_.

c) Joining of a dental consonant with a cerebral

The corresponding rule when a dental (including _s_ ) meets a cerebral consonant (including _Sh_ ) is analogous. The Panini sutra is even more terse, using _anuvRRitti_ as discussed earlier: _ShTunA ShTuH_. Following the same principle as before: when a word ending in _halanta s, t, th, d, dh, n_ is followed by one beginning with _Sh, T, Th, D, Dh, N_ , the dental consonant is replaced by the corresponding cerebral one. (Note that the dental consonant is not mentioned at all in the sutra – this part is the one that is 'brought down' from the earlier one. Note that it is the 'meeting' of the consonants that is being described. The same principle is followed if the first word ends in a cerebral and the next word begins with a dental.)

For example, _rAmas_ \+ _TIkate_ (Rama moves) becomes _rAmaShTIkate_ with the dental _s_ being replaced by the cerebral _Sh_.

d) When the second word begins with a nasal

The sutra here is _yaro.anunAsike.anunAsiko vA_. Remember that the '.' in the middle of a word in ITRANS refers to an _avagraha_ , which means that the 'a' following the '.' is not sounded. This sutra states that, if a _yar_ letter occurs at the end of a word, when the following word begins with a nasal consonant ( _anunAsika_ ), then it can be (optionally) replaced by another nasal. _yar_ is the _pratyAhAra_ for all consonants except _h_.

Thus, _etad_ (this) + _maya_ ('made of, consisting of', not to be confused with _mAyA_ ) = _etanmaya_ ('consisting of this'). The _d_ at the end of the first word is a _yar_ consonant so is replaced by the nasal in its same group (i.e. dentals: _t, th, d, dh, n_ ), _n_.

e) When a _jhal_ letter is followed by a _khar_

This sutra is _khari cha_ and is understood as 'Replace a _jhal_ letter with a _char_ if it is followed by a _khar_.' The _jhal_ is 'brought down' from the earlier sutra. _khar_ refers to consonants excluding nasals, semi-vowels and _h. char_ covers _ch, T, t, k, p, sh, Sh_ and _s_.

** **

_etad_ (this) + _saMdhi_ ('joining' business that we are investigating) = _etatsaMdhi_

The _d_ of _etad_ is a _jhal_ consonant and is followed by _s_ , which is a _khar_. Accordingly, it is changed to _t_ (being the first letter in the group to which it belongs).

There was an example of this in Level 2 Section B 2a), when we saw that the three words _sat_ and _chit_ and _Ananda_ became _sachchidAnanda_. The combination of the first two words is an example of the successive operation of rules. Here, the _t_ at the end of _sat_ is a _jhal_ letter (consonant other than a nasal or a semi-vowel). Accordingly, it has to be replaced by the corresponding _jash_ consonant. The _sat_ \+ _chit_ then becomes _sad_ \+ _chit_. Now the second of the above rules comes into play. The _d_ is a _stu.N_ consonant while _ch_ is a _schu.N_. So the _d_ has to be replaced by the corresponding letter from the palatal group, which is _j_. Thus, _sad_ \+ _chit_ has now become _saj_ \+ _chit_. Finally, this situation corresponds to that covered by the sixth rule. _j_ is a _jhal_ letter and _ch_ is a _khar_. Therefore, the _j_ must be replaced by a _ch_ , the first letter of the (palatal) group. Thus the complete sequence is:

  becomes

becomes   becomes

6. Samasa ( _samAsa_ )

This was mentioned briefly at the beginning of Level 2, to give one of the explanations for the very long 'words' that are often found in Sanskrit. The word actually means 'throwing or putting together' but also 'succinctness, conciseness'. In the context of grammar, it is understood to mean a 'compound word' but it probably has elements of both the literal aspects. It is very common, to the extent that possibly most sentences will contain at least one _samAsa_.

It may sometimes seem that many words, adjectives and nouns, are 'thrown together' to make an artificial new word but the fact that this can be done freely makes the language extremely versatile and able to express the most subtle ideas of an imaginative mind. The resultant word can summarize exactly what the author wishes to say in a concise and apt manner. And the resultant compound is treated as a word in its own right, with only the part at the end of the compound (which is always the principal word) needing to decline and change its endings.

Because all endings other than that of the principal noun (or adjective) are dropped, it is the word order within the compound that determines the relationship of one word to another, rather than the 'part of speech'. Normally just the 'stem' forms of words other than the principal one are used. (Of course, the part-words join together following the principles of sandhi.) An example given by Goldman and Sutherland (Ref. 4) is as follows:

  _janakatanayAsnAnapuNyodakan_

This word will not be found in Monier-Williams! It is actually made up of five words as follows:

** –** _janaka_ ,

the famous king in Hindu mythology;

** –** _tanayA_ ,

daughter ( _tanayaH_ is son);

** –** _snAna_ ,

bathing, washing, anything used in ablutions;

** –** _puNya_ ,

auspicious, pure, holy;

  – _udakan_ ,

water.

'Water' is the last word in the compound so this is the 'principal' word. The order of 'importance' or applicability of the other words then passes back one at a time. Thus the type of water that is being spoken of is 'holy' water; the type of holy water that is referred to is 'that used for bathing'. The provenance of this holy bathing water is 'that belonging to the daughter' and, finally, it is 'Janaka' about whose daughter we are speaking.

If this compound occurs in a sentence as an object, as for example, 'He drank the holy bathing water of Janaka's daughter', then only the last bit of the word would change its ending to the accusative ( _-udakam_ ). All of the rest of the word would remain unchanged.

C. The Four _mahAvAkya-_ s

_mahAvAkya_ means 'great saying' – _maha_ = 'great', _vAkya_ = statement or assertion, and _maha_ adds the extra _a_ since _vAkya_ is a feminine noun and the endings have to agree. There are four 'great sayings' from the Vedas that are said to encapsulate the teaching of Advaita Vedanta. This is the non-dualistic philosophy that claims that there are 'not two things', that there is only Brahman, the Absolute or Consciousness, and we are that.

a) The first of these, from the _aitareya_ Upanishad in the _RRig_ Veda, is:

** –** _praj~nAnaMbrahma_ –

Consciousness is Brahman

_praj~nAna_ is a neuter noun, hence the _m_ ending (which changes to an _anusvAra_ because the next word begins with a consonant). _brahma_ is 'Brahman' obviously. The two words are joined since the first does not end on a syllable. The verb is omitted from the 'sentence' and, this being the case, the word 'is' ( _asti_ ) is understood.

b) The second, from the _ChAndogya_ Upanishad in the _sama_ Veda, has already been mentioned in B 3:

** –** _tattvamasi_ –

Thou art That

The three _pada_ -s _tad_ (that), _tvam_ (you), _asi_ (second person singular present indicative of the verb 'to be', i.e. 'you are') are joined into a single spoken and written word. The use of the pronoun _tvam_ is for emphasis – **You** are That (i.e. Consciousness)

c) The third quotation is from the _mANDUkya_ Upanishad in the _atharva_ or _AtharvaNa_ Veda:

** –** _ayamAtmA brahma_ –

This Self is Brahman

_ayam_ (this one), _AtmA_ (the nominative singular ending of the masculine noun _Atman_ meaning the 'individual self'). Again the verb ( _asti –_ 'is') is omitted – this is very common in Sanskrit.

d) The fourth of the sayings is from the _bRRihadAraNyaka_ Upanishad in the _yajur_ Veda:

** –** _ahaMbrahmAsmi_ –

I am Brahman

_aham_ (personal pronoun 'I'), _asmi_ is the first person singular present indicative of the verb 'to be' – 'I am'. The use of _aham_ is for emphasis – **I** am Brahman. Again, the _m_ of _aham_ changes to _M_ because the next word begins with a consonant.

D. Some Vedic Prayers and Quotations

For practicing reading Sanskrit, any of the Upanishads or scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita are suitable. Many versions of these contain the original Sanskrit, together with a transliteration and a literal translation. Some even contain a breakdown of the Sanskrit with the meanings of individual words.

(To my knowledge, there are several versions of the Bhagavad Gita which provide word-by-word breakdown – Refs. 14, 15 and 16 but only 14 has the Devanagari; the others only provide transliteration. Refs. 14 and 16 only give translations, whereas Ref. 15 also has an extensive commentary.)

It may be that you would prefer to study and learn a few key passages of especial beauty and/or philosophical meaning. If this is the case, there are quite a number of these and, of course, different people will point you to their own favorites. Below are a few of my own favorites.

1. 'Lead me from the unreal' from the _bRRihadAraNyaka upaniShad_

** **

Lead me from the unreal to the real,

Lead me from darkness into light,

Lead me from death to immortality.

_sat_ has been met before. It is an adjective and means 'real, being, existing, true etc.' The prefix _a_ always negates the noun so that _asat_ means 'unreal etc.' 'From' the unreal means that the adjective has to take the fifth case ending (called 'ablative', for those who studied Latin), which would make it _asataH_. The personal pronoun _aham –_ 'I' – changes to _mAm_ or _ma_ in the accusative – 'me', the object of the verb 'to lead', _gam_.

Because _asataH_ is followed by an _m_ , which is a 'soft' consonant (see under B. 5 above), the _visarga_ is changed to _u_ , which immediately combines with the preceding _a_ to become _o_.

Accordingly, _asataH mA_ becomes _asato mA_.

The verb is in the imperative – 'Lead!' and I want to be led 'to the real', which is usually indicated by using the second case ending (i.e. indirect object having the same ending as the direct object for verbs expressing motion). 'To the real' is therefore _sat_ but, this being followed by _gamaya_ , the _t_ changes to _d_ in accordance with the rule _jhalAM jasho.ante_ as described above. Thus _asato mA sadgamaya_.

_tamas_ means 'darkness, ignorance, illusion etc.' I want to be led out of this, so the noun takes the ablative case ending, _tamasaH_. This changes in exactly the same way as did _asataH_ above. This time I want to be led 'into light'. The Sanskrit for 'light' is _jyotis_. The accusative case is _jyotiH_ but a rule of ( _visarga_ ) _saMdhi_ states that 'when a _visarga_ is preceded by any vowel (except _a_ or _A_ ) and followed by a vowel or a soft consonant, it has to be changed into an _r_ '. Accordingly, with the _jyotiH_ being followed by _gamaya_ , the combination becomes _jyotirgamaya_. Thus _tamaso mA jyotirgamaya_.

The (masculine) noun for 'death' is _mRRityu_. Again this has to go into the fifth case ending, which is _mRRityoH_. Thus, following the same rule as before, when this combines with _mA_ ('me'), it becomes _mRRityormA. amRRita_ means 'immortality'. This is a neuter noun and the accusative case ending is – _am_ so the _pada_ is _amRRitam_. It has been mentioned earlier that an _m_ is usually changed into an _M_ when it occurs at the end of a word. The relevant Panini sutra is _mo.anusvAraH_. There is some _anuvRRitti_ involved as well, obviously, and the complete instructions are that, in place of _halanta m_ at the end of a fully inflected word when the next word begins with a consonant, _anusvAra_ is substituted. Since the following letter is the _g_ of _gamaya_ , the _m_ of _amRRitam_ is therefore changed to _M_. Thus _mRRityormA amRRitaM gamaya_. In addition, it is pronounced the same as the _anunAsika_ of the same group as the letter beginning the following word, i.e. ~ _N_. Because _mRRityormA_ ends in _A_ and is followed by a word beginning with _a_ , the _a_ is elided and an _avagraha_ is inserted to show that this has happened.

2. 'That is perfect' from the _IshA upaniShat_

This is the very famous introductory 'invocation'. The Upanishad occurs in the initial section of the Yajur Veda, which is unusual in that Upanishads normally occur at the end (hence _vedAnta – veda anta –_ 'end of the Vedas'). The first sutra begins _IshA vAsyamida{\m+}_ , if you recall (the text was given in Level 2 H, when we looked at the _chandra-bindu_ ), and the document is also sometimes called the Isavasya Upanishad.

** **

This, then, is the 'invocation'. It is often referred to as the 'Perfect Prayer', for reasons that will become apparent.

There will be no difficulty with the first word, _OM_. This was described in Level 2, C3 and H. The second word is _pUrNamadaH. pUrNa_ means 'complete, entire, fulfilled etc' and is often translated as 'infinite' or 'perfect', though neither of these words is actually given in Monier-Williams. _adas_ means 'that' as opposed to _idam_ (which occurs in the next word), which means 'this'. As usual, the verb 'to be' is omitted throughout and understood to be present wherever necessary, so that this second word is translated as 'this is complete' (or 'perfect' or 'infinite'). The first rule of _visarga saMdhi_ is that words ending in _s_ can be changed to an _H_.

The next word, then, is _pUrNamidaM_ and, as just explained, this means 'that is complete'. The _m_ , being at the end of a word, is changed to _M_ , as was explained in _asatoma_ above. (The _m_ ending on the adjective _pUrNa_ is the neuter ending in the absence of any qualifying noun.)

The next word is _pUrNAt_. This is another example of the fifth ( _pa~nchami_ ) or ablative case, this time for the adjective _pUrNa_ , in the singular, masculine, meaning 'from the complete'. Now perhaps we can see why writers choose to use a word like 'perfect' or 'infinite' – 'from perfect' will sound much better.

The last word on line 1 is _pUrNamudachyate_. The verb _ach_ means 'to go or move'. The prefix _ud_ means 'up' or 'upwards' in the sense of superiority, so that _udach_ would mean something like 'to promote'. The ending, however, is the passive voice, so it is translated as 'is manifested' or 'comes out of'. The clause therefore means that _pUrNam_ or 'perfect' is manifested from perfect.

The next line begins with _pUrNasya_ , the genitive case, meaning 'of the complete or perfect'. This is followed by _pUrNamAdAya. AdAya_ at the end of a word has the sense of 'taking or seizing' so the two words together literally mean 'taking the perfect of perfect'. Next comes _pUrNameva –_ just or exactly ( _eva_ ) that same completeness or perfection ( _pUrNam_ ). _avashiShyate_ comes from the verb _avashiSh_ , meaning 'to remain' and means 'it remains', being in what is called the 'middle voice' ( _Atmanepada_ or 'word for one's self'). This clause therefore means that, when the 'perfect of perfect' is taken, perfect remains.

Altogether, then, the prayer can be translated:

This is perfect. That is perfect. Perfection is manifested from the Perfect. When this perfection is taken from the Perfect, the Perfect still remains.

3. 'I do nothing at all' from the _bhagavadgItA_

** **

These are the eighth and ninth verses from chapter 5 of the Bhagavad Gita. The length of the 'words' in the second and third lines might seem to be enough to put anyone off the study of Sanskrit. In fact, they are quite straightforward, as will be seen, and the overall profundity of these verses makes them worth the effort.

The first word of line 1 is _naiva_. This is simply a combination of the words na, meaning 'not' and _eva_ , 'truly' or 'even'. Then comes _ki~nchitkaromIti. kim_ \+ _chid_ becomes _kiMchid_ , meaning 'somewhat' or 'a little'. The alternative representation is because the _M_ is spoken as though it were the _anunAsika_ of the same group as _ch_ , i.e. _~n. karomi_ is the first person singular present indicative of the verb _kRRi_ , 'to do'. _iti_ means 'thus', if anything, and is very frequently used in Sanskrit simply to stress what has just been said or instead of quotation marks, since these do not exist. Putting these together, _karomi + iti = karomIti_ and _kiMchid + karomIti = kiMchitkaromIti_. The _d_ changes to a _t_ in accordance with the sutra _khari cha_ as discussed in B 5e) above. The first two words therefore translate as 'I do not even a little'.

The next word is _yukto_ , from the adjective _yukta_. This comes from the same root as _yoga_ and can mean 'yoked' or 'joined'. Here, however, it means 'absorbed in abstract meditation' and refers to a sage. It is the subject of the whole sentence, in the nominative masculine singular, _yuktaH_. The _visarga_ changes to – _u_ , because it is preceded by an _a_ and followed by a soft consonant, and then _au_ changes to _o_ , producing _yukto_. Then comes _manyeta_ from the verb _man_ , 'to think', and is the 'optative' tense, meaning 'he should think'. The next word is _tattvavit_. We have already seen _tad + tvam_ (that + you) in _tattvamasi_. Here, _tattva-vid_ means 'knowing the true nature of'. The 'hard' or 'voiced' _d_ of _tad_ has to be replaced by the corresponding 'soft' or 'unvoiced' one, i.e. _t_ since the next word _tvam_ begins with a soft consonant. _tattvavid_ becomes _tattvavit_ for the same reason (this is the end of the sentence) and the rest of the first line is therefore _yukto manyeta tattvavit –_ 'the sage, knowing the true nature of (the Self), should think'.

The second line, though appearing as a single word, is obviously not. The transliteration is:

_pashya~nshRRiNvanspRRisha~njighrannashnangachChansv apa~nshvasan_

In fact, it is just a succession of present, active participles of verbs describing what the speaker is (outwardly) doing when, in fact, the Self is not doing anything at all. Each one is rendered in the masculine, nominative singular:

_pashyan –_ seeing ( _n_ changes to _~n_ on joining according to

_stoH shchunA shchuH_ )

_shRRiNvan –_ hearing

_spRRishan –_ touching ( _n_ becomes _~n_ on joining according to

_stoH shchunA shchuH_ )

_jighran –_ smelling

_ashnan –_ eating

_gachChan –_ going

_svapan –_ sleeping ( _n_ changes to _~n_ on joining according to

_stoH shcunA shcuH_ )

_shvasan –_ breathing

The double 'n' at the end of _jighrann_ results from the following rule of _saMdhi_ : When _~N, N_ or _n_ are at the end of a word and preceded by a short vowel, they must be doubled if followed by a vowel.

The third line continues this list of 'activities':

_pralapanvisRRijangRRihNannunmiShannimiShannapi_

_pralapanan –_ talking

_visRRijan –_ sending or letting go

_gRRihNan –_ seizing (with the mind)

_unmiShan –_ the act of opening the eyes

_nimiShan –_ closing the eyes

_api –_ (emphasis) even or also

The double 'n' at the end of _gRRihNann_ and _nimiShann_ results from the _saMdhi_ rule given above. That at the end of _unmiShann_ results from the rule: 'If a consonant (other than _h_ ) comes after a vowel and is not followed by a vowel, it is optionally doubled.'

The last line is:

_indriyANIndriyArtheShu vartanta iti dhArayan_

The first part-word is _indriyANi_ , the (nominative) plural of _indriya_ , referring to the five sense organs. The remainder of the word is from _indriyArtha_ , meaning a sense object. The ending is the seventh case, plural (more than two, _bahu-vachana_ ) and indicates where the action of the verb takes place, being translated as 'in', 'at' or 'among' etc. The next word, _vartanta_ , is the _saMdhi_ change from _vartante_. Because _vartante_ is followed by a word beginning with a vowel other than _a_ , the _e_ changes to _ay_ and then the _y_ is (optionally) dropped. _vartante_ is the third person plural present indicative from the verb _vRRit_ meaning 'to surround or enclose', usually referring to armies. Here, the subject of the verb is _indriya_ , the five sense organs – they are 'surrounding' the sense objects. The role of _iti_ , meaning 'thus' etc., has already been mentioned earlier. _dhArya_ means 'maintaining, holding or possessing (the belief that)'. Therefore, the Sage (who thinks 'I do nothing at all') maintains the belief that the senses surround the sense objects.

Therefore, the complete translation is:

Believing that it is merely the senses surrounding the objects of sense, though seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, breathing, talking, mentally grabbing or letting go, even just opening or closing the eyes, the Sage, knowing the true nature of (the Self) should think, 'I do nothing at all.'

4. 'You are not the body' from the _aShTAvakra gItA_

** **

This is chapter 15, verse 3 of the Astavakra Gita, an uncompromising treatise on Advaita Vedanta. Most of the words end on a syllable, so there is much less _saMdhi_ apparent than in the earlier examples.

** –** _na tvaM deho_

_na_ : not, nor, neither etc., used especially in repetition, as in this sentence, 'neither this, nor this etc.'

_tvaM_ : _tvam_ is the nominative singular of the personal pronoun 'you', already met several times. The letter _m_ at the end of a word is always changed into an _anusvAra_ when it is followed by a consonant.

_deha_ is 'the person or individual', the 'outward appearance or form'. In the nominative singular, it is _dehaH_ but, as was noted above, when the _visarga_ is preceded by _a_ and followed by a soft consonant, it changes to _u_ and then the _a_ and _u_ combine to form _o_. This, then, simply means: 'you (are) not the body'. The verb _asi_ is, of course, omitted as usual.

** –** _na te deho_

_te_ is the sixth (genitive) case of _tvam_ and means 'of or belonging to you – i.e. yours'. _na_ and _deho_ translate as before. This, then, means 'nor (is) the body yours', _asi_ again being understood.

** –** _bhoktA kartA na vA bhavAn_

_na vA_ is translated as 'neither... nor' though, unlike in English, _vA_ doesn't usually come before the word to which it refers. _bhoktA_ is the nominative masculine singular of the word _bhoktRRi_ , which means 'one who enjoys or experiences'. Similarly _kartA_ is from _kartRRi_ , 'one who makes or does'. _bhavAn_ is another word meaning 'you', again nominative singular, from _bhavat_. It is a much more formal version, though, often being translated as 'your honor' or 'your worship'. Perhaps there is an intentional irony here. You, who think yourself an important 'doer' or 'enjoyer', are in fact not even a body. I'll translate it with artistic license as 'Sir, you are neither an enjoyer nor a doer'.

** –** _chidrUpo.asi_

_chit_ means 'pure thought, spirit, soul' but in the context of Advaita is usually translated as Consciousness, in the sense of Brahman. _rUpa_ means 'form, outward appearance etc.' The _t_ at the end of _chit_ becomes a _d_ in accordance with _jhalAM jasho.ante. chidrUpa_ means 'the Universal Spirit as identified with pure thought' and the nominative singular is _chidrUpaH. asi_ means 'you are'. When the two words combine, the _visarga_ , being preceded and followed by an _a_ , changes to _u_ and, since this is (still!) preceded by _a_ , the _a_ and _u_ combine to form _o_. The _a_ of _asi_ is now elided when speaking, but to show that it is still effectively present, an _avagraha_ is inserted when it is written. The phrase is translated as 'you are Consciousness itself'.

** –** _sadA sAkShI nirapekShaH_

This is a continuing description of what you are. _sAkShI_ is the masculine nominative singular of _sAkShin_ , meaning a 'witness' and this is qualified by _sadA_ , meaning 'always, perpetually' and _nirapekShaH_ , meaning 'desireless, indifferent'. _asi_ is understood again. Overall translation: 'you are the eternal, disinterested witness'.

** –** _sukhaM chara_

_sukha_ means 'comfortable, happy, prosperous'; the nominative singular ending _m_ is converted to _M_ as before. The verb _char_ can mean 'to move or travel through, to follow, behave, act, live etc.' and _chara_ is the imperative. Exercising a little artistic license again, I would translate this simply as 'be happy!'

The complete translation, then, is:

You are not the body, nor is the body yours. Sir, you are neither an enjoyer nor a doer; you are Consciousness itself – the eternal, disinterested witness. Be happy!

5. 'All beings exist in me' from the _bhagavadgItA_

No apologies for this second extract from the Gita – this is another famous passage. It is one constantly being quoted by a friend and I am taking this opportunity to examine it in more depth!

** **

This is chapter 6, verse 29.

The verb of the sentence is   **–** _IkShate –_ third person, singular, present indicative of the verb _IkSh_ , 'to see'.

** –** _sarvabhUtasthamAtmAnaM_

There are only two words conjoined here, _sarvabhUtastham_ and _AtmAnaM. sarva_ means 'all, every, manifold' etc. _bhUta_ is 'that which is or exists, any living being (divine, human, animal or vegetable)'. _stha_ means 'standing, staying, abiding, being situated in etc.'. There are not, however, three separate words here. (If there were, you would be wondering why the endings of words did not agree with apparent adjectives or why nouns appeared to be in the wrong case.) The single word _sarvabhUtastha_ simply means 'present in all elements or beings'. _Atman_ has been met already. _AtmAnam_ is the singular, accusative, the object of this clause; the - _m_ ending changes to - _M_ , as usual. So, the ending of _sarvavhUtastham_ indicates it applies to _Atman_ and the translation is therefore: 'the Self, abiding in all beings'.

** –** _sarvabhUtAni chAtmani_

Here there are four words, _sarva, bhUtAni, cha_ and _Atmani_. This time, _Atmani_ is in the seventh case – 'in the Self'. _cha_ means 'and, also, moreover etc.' _cha + Atmani = chAtmani_ , in accordance with _akaH savarNe dIrghaH_ , the first rule of vowel sandhi given above. _sarvabhUtAni_ could have been either nominative or accusative plural. In the context of the sentence, it is clearly the object of the verb 'sees' and translates as: 'and all things (abiding) in the Self'.

** –** _yogayuktAtmA_

This is the subject of the whole sentence. _yogayukta_ means 'immersed in deep meditation, absorbed in yoga'. _AtmA_ is the nominative singular of _Atman_ , used here in the context of the 'individual soul'. Again, _a + A = A_ when the words join.

** –** _sarvatra samadarshanaH_

_sarvatra_ means 'everywhere, at all times'; _sama_ means 'like, similar, equal' (our English 'same' clearly derives from it); _darshanaH_ is the nominative singular masculine of the participle 'seeing, observing, noticing etc.' Again, however, there are not two separate words here. If there were, _sama_ would be expected to be in the accusative, being 'what is seen'. In fact, _samadarshanaH_ is a single (compound) word, meaning, when used with _sarvatra_ , 'looking on all (things or people) with equal or indifferent eyes'. There is a great danger when trying to translate in this way. We try to break up a word into its component parts when, in fact, the whole word itself has a specific meaning and its components do not separate into individually declined words.

The total translation is thus as follows:

In deep meditation, the sage, looking dispassionately on all things, sees the Self abiding in all things, and all things abiding in the Self.

And that should be sufficient to give you the general idea. Internet references are given in the next section for obtaining full details of the rules of _saMdhi_ and for downloading your own free digital Monier-Williams, along with pointers to many other resources. With all of these at your disposal and with the knowledge you have now gained, you should be perfectly able to set off on your own path of discovery. To end with, here is a further example for you to practice on, without any clues as to its source or meaning other than to say that it is a sentiment that we would all do well to feel towards our fellows on the planet, whatever spiritual persuasion they may have.

If you really cannot work it out or want to check your answer, the ITRANS and translation are provided in Appendix 5.

# Resources on the Internet

**A. General Resources**

If you intend to utilize what you have learned from this book on your computer in any way, e.g. incorporating Devanagari script into your own documents, then you will need appropriate fonts and tools for generating the script.

The ITRANS scheme was devised by Avinash Chopde. The software, and details about the system, may be downloaded from the website: <http://www.aczoom.com/itrans/>. It should be noted that the site is no longer maintained or supported. The latest version is 5.32 as of Feb. 2011.

For easy ITRANS representation of Sanskrit, I recommend the use of the excellent software package 'Itranslator 2003', developed by the Sannyasis of Omkarananda Ashram Himalayas, Rishikesh, India. This program, compatible with Windows XP onwards, is freeware, downloadable from

<http://www.omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/Itranslt.html>. Words can be typed in ITRANS and converted into Devanagari and Roman diacritical forms. These can then be copied and pasted into any Windows package. This version uses 16-bit Unicode-compatible fonts. Itranslator 99 is still available for 8-bit, non-Unicode, True Type fonts and works with earlier versions of Windows.

Another utility for converting to Devanagari or Romanized transliteration from ITRANS (and vice versa) has been provided from the Argentinian site (see below). This also includes a Monier-Williams Dictionary facility. <http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/essentials-software-english-home-software-1/697>.

<http://sanskrit.gde.to/> is one of the main, general sites for Sanskrit-related information. Many documents may be downloaded in a variety of formats: PDF, PS, ITX, GIF, TXT, Sanskrit98, XDVNG. There are links to dictionaries and grammar-related tools and many exercises relating to conversational Sanskrit. Fonts etc. are available for download and links are provided to ITRANS and postscript tools. Finally, there are links to many other academic and personal Sanskrit-related projects around the world. There are even news broadcasts in Sanskrit, in Real Audio format.

Gerard Huet hosts the 'Sanskrit Heritage Site' site at <http://sanskrit.inria.fr/> though many of the resources, including a dictionary with HTML-browser search facilities, are in French-Sanskrit. Many links are provided to other sites.

Finally, my own site has a section devoted to Sanskrit and many resources are listed there – <http://www.advaita.org.uk/sanskrit/sanskrit.htm>.

**B. Learning the Language**

As you will certainly have realized quite early in this book, in order to learn how to sound the letters and how correctly to pronounce words, you really need to listen to someone who knows. Since it is unlikely that you will be sufficiently interested to go into it this deeply, however, just follow the instructions and don't worry about how it feels. We are unused to making full use of our mouth and tongue in speaking and, since Sanskrit makes almost scientific use, we will find much of it peculiar and initially uncomfortable. If you want a more thorough introduction to the language, including writing and pronunciation, with little in the way of expense or commitment, there is a truly excellent one available from the Internet. You can download this free of charge and the only cost is the subsequent printing. It is called 'A Practical Sanskrit Introductory' and was produced by Charles Wikner. Numerous versions of it, in different formats, may be downloaded from the site mentioned above – <http://sanskritdocuments.org/>. This page has dozens of links to related resources for learning – tutorials, grammar, dictionaries etc. I have not looked at most of these so there are doubtless some gems to be found!

The site in Argentina – <http://www.sanskrit-sanscrito.com.ar/en/> – is simply excellent. It takes you from the basics, of learning to write and pronounce the letters, up to a very comprehensive set of instructions and examples for combining letters (vowel, visarga and consonant sandhi). There are translations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and other scriptures and audio files of Sanskrit pronunciation. A tremendous amount of effort has clearly gone into this project and it shows. It is well presented and easy to read.

There is a very comprehensive set of online lessons to be found at <http://acharya.iitm.ac.in/sanskrit/lessons/lessons.html>. These were produced between Oct. 1997 and Oct. 2001 by the Systems Development Laboratory at Chennai, India. Alternatively, lessons may be downloaded for offline study. There is also a free multilingual editor, for use in generating web pages containing Devanagari (and other) scripts. This is needed in order to be able to make full use of the lessons. [Note that, as of Feb. 2013, there is a warning that the site is in the process of being relocated but the resources still seem to be there.]

If you want to go on courses to study the language, there is the American Sanskrit Institute in Connecticut – see <http://www.americansanskrit.com/>. There is a 14-hour weekend workshop, but I could not find the cost given on the website. They also offer various courses on CD for home-study. For example, 'Sanskrit by CD 1 & 2' is $295, as at Feb. 2013.

In the UK, courses are provided by <http://www.sanskritcourses.co.uk/> in London and Cambridge. There are beginner and intermediate levels and study for GCSE Sanskrit is also possible.

Finally, if you are really serious about learning the language, I have already mentioned the two-volume work by Thomas Egenes, Ref. 6. Just to repeat, Part 1 is available for free at <http://www.scribd.com/doc/32874508/Introduction-to-Sanskrit-by-Thomas-Egenes>.

**C. Dictionaries and Grammar Tools**

Gerard Huet's 'Sanskrit Heritage' site, mentioned in the first section, provides an online tool whereby you can specify the stem of a noun ( _prAtipadika_ form), together with its gender, and it will provide you with a tabular listing of all of the cases. There is also a 'sandhi analysis' utility that will attempt to break a sentence into words. <http://sanskrit.inria.fr/>. Declensions of nouns and conjugations of verbs can be found at <http://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/grammar.html>.

The University of Cologne has done an incredible job of digitizing much of the Monier-Williams Sanskrit-to-English dictionary. This may be used online at <http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/scans/MWScan/tamil/index.html>.

However, it may be downloaded in its entirety (19Mb compressed to 7Mb) together with a superb utility for accessing the content. This facility has been provided by Louis Bontes at http://members.chello.nl/l.bontes/. NB: This has not been maintained since 2002 and is only in Beta form – but it works!

**D. Documents in Sanskrit**

(In addition to sites already mentioned above, which may also contain downloadable documents.)

Bhagavad Gita:

The Sanskrit original, together with verse-by-verse translation into many languages, is available at <http://www.bhagavadgita.org/> (with audio output too if you have the RealPlayer addon for your browser).

Upanishads:

There are word-by-word translations, together with the original Sanskrit, for a number of the main Upanishads at <http://www.vidyavrikshah.org>, although you may have to install some fonts in order to see them. You can download all of the ITRANS for these from <http://sanskritdocuments.org/>, and convert them to Devanagari using the resources mentioned in Section A.

Chants:

If you would like to hear some Sanskrit being chanted, there are a number of sites which offer such facilities, e.g. <http://sanskrit.safire.com/>. There are a huge number of documents in PDF format which can be followed while you listen to them being read.

Miscellaneous:

Many additional and other resources, together with any updates or corrections to these links, may be found at my own website – www.advaita.org.uk – under the Sanskrit menu.

# Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Note: A word will normally be given in typical English spelling (non-italic) followed by the ITRANS representation (italic) in brackets, e.g. **'Devanagari** (Devanagari)'. For some definitions, no Sanskrit equivalent is appropriate. In some cases, a word will never be encountered in 'English' form and only the ITRANS representation will be given, e.g. **_ach_**.

**_ach –_** the _pratyAhAra_ , from the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , used to identify all the vowels.

**_ach saMdhi –_** (the rules relating to) the joining of vowels at the end of one word and the beginning of the next. _ach_ is the _pratyAhAra_ for 'all vowels'.

**_adhikAra –_** means 'topic' or 'subject'. The sutras in the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , for example, occur within chapters. The main subject is introduced at the beginning. Key words are assumed to apply to sutras in the rest of the chapter and are not repeated. They have to be mentally 'brought down' from the earlier sutras as necessary ( _anuvRRitti_ ).

**_aghoSha –_** refers to those letters that make a hard sound in their pronunciation and could not really be regarded as sounding a syllable. (By contrast, letters such as 'b', for example, might be written 'ba' or 'bu' or actually something in between the two). Monier-Williams defines them as 'non-sonant', having 'an absence of all sound or soft murmur'. They are sounded by opening the mouth and allowing the basic _a_ sound to emerge, modified as necessary by altering the mouth (tongue, lips) as necessary. The unvoiced or _aghoSha_ letters are all the vowels (except for the _visarga_ ) and the first two rows of the main set of consonants, i.e. _k, ch, T, t, p_ and _kh, Ch, Th, th, ph_ ), plus the sibilants ( _sh_ , _Sh_ , _s_ ). See _ghoSha_ , unvoiced, voiced.

**_akShara –_** syllable or letter of the alphabet. The word literally means 'imperishable'.

**_al –_** the _pratyAhAra_ , from the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , used to identify all the letters.

**Alpaprana (** ** _alpaprANa_** **)** **_–_** describes a consonant that is sounded without any additional expelling of air. It means 'with little breath'. Specifically, it is used for those consonants on the first and third rows of the main groups, namely _k, ch, T, t, p_ and _g, j, D, d, b_.

**Antastha (** ** _antaHstha_** **)** **_–_** the Sanskrit term for the 'semi-vowels': _y, r, l, v_. These are formed by combination of _i, RRi, LLi_ and _u_ , respectively with the vowel _a_. The word literally means 'stand between'.

**Anunasika (** ** _anunAsika_** **)** **_–_** refers to one of the letters that is sounded 'through the nose', i.e. the last row of the main groups of consonants: _~N, ~n, N, n, m_.

**Anusvara (** ** _anusvAra_** **)** **_–_** This literally means 'after sound'. It is represented as ' _aM_ ' but is not actually a letter and does not occur on its own. It changes the sound of a letter, causing the associated vowel to be sounded through the nose. In ITRANS, it is represented by _M_ or _.n_ and in Romanized transliteration by a dot, above or below the preceding consonant. The precise nature of the sound is determined by the consonant that follows. It will take on the sound of the _anunAsika_ in the same group as this consonant. E.g. in _saMdhi_ , the sound will be that of _n_ while in _shaMkara_ , it will be that of _~N_.

**_anuvRRitti –_** literally means 'the continued course or influence of a preceding rule on what follows'. The sutras in the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , for example, occur within chapters. The main subject is introduced at the beginning. Key words are assumed to apply to sutras in the rest of the chapter and are not repeated. They have to be mentally 'brought down' from the earlier sutra as necessary.

**Ardachandra (** ** _ardhachandra_** **)** **_–_** the concave shape sometimes used in old manuscripts instead of the _anusvAra_ but performing the same function. It looks like the _chandra bindu_ but without the dot. It means 'crescent-shaped' and can be generated in ITRANS by putting _.c_ after the related letter.

**Ashtadyayi (** ** _aShTAdhyAyl_** **)** **_–_** the classic work on Sanskrit grammar produced by Panini, circa 500 BC.

**Avagraha (** ** _avagraha_** **)** **_–_** the special symbol used between a word ending in _e_ or _o_ and one beginning with _a_ to indicate that the _a_ is not sounded. It is similar to elision in French and is shown in Romanized transliteration by dropping the _a_ and inserting an apostrophe, again similar to French. In ITRANS the _a_ is left unchanged but a single full stop is inserted instead of the space between the two words.

**_avyaya –_** 'indeclinable', applied to those _prAtipadika-s_ that do not add _vibhakti_ endings.

**Ayogavaha (** ** _ayogavAha_** **)** **_–_** term for the _anusvAra_ and _visarga_ , which are not really vowels but are not consonants either. The word means 'not belonging to'. See _yogavAha_.

**_bahu-vachana –_** 'plural', with respect to 'number' of nouns or verbs.

**_chaturthI vibhakti –_** the fourth, dative case of nouns, i.e. the indirect object, as in 'he gives the letter _to the postman_ '.

**Cerebral –** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the _mUrdhanya_ group, with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth – _RRi, RRI, T, Th, D, Dh, N, r, Sh_.

**Chandra-bindu (** ** _chandra bindu_** **)** **_–_** the name for the special symbol (shallow, concave bowl, containing a dot) that sometimes appears above a vowel. Its most frequent usage is as part of the special _praNava shabda_ symbol for _OM_. The literal meaning is 'moon-like spot' and it indicates that the vowel over which it appears should be sounded through the nose. It is represented in ITRANS by _.N_ after the vowel.

**_chu.N –_** an abbreviation used to refer to the _halanta_ palatal consonants, i.e. _ch, Ch, j, jh_ and ~ _n_. The _.N_ inserts a _chandra bindu_ above the _chu_ and causes the _u_ to be sounded through the nose.

**Complex vowels –** refers to _e, o, ai_ and _au_ , so-called because they are formed by combining the simple vowels _i_ and _u_ with _a_. The Sanskrit term is _saMyukta svara_.

**Dantya (** ** _dantya_** **)** **_–_** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the dental group, with the tongue touching the back of the teeth – _LLi, LLI, t, th, d, dh, n, l, s_.

**Dental –** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the _dantya_ group, with the tongue touching the back of the teeth – _LLi, LLI, t, th, d, dh, n, l, s_.

**Devanagari (** ** _devanAgari_** **)** **_–_** the name given to the script used for Sanskrit. It means 'city of the gods'.

**Dhatu (** ** _dhAtu_** **)** **_–_** the 'root' of a word. There are only about two thousand of these and all Sanskrit words are derived from one or more. Words are formed by adding prefix/suffix endings, called _pratyaya_ , to form stem-words, called _prAtipadika_. These are the form encountered in the dictionary. They then add the appropriate endings (for nouns and verbs), called _vibhakti_ , to form actual 'words', called _pada_.

**Diacritic or Diacritical (marks) –** the correct name for the special accents used in the Romanized transliteration of Sanskrit. They include lines above some letters and dots above or below others. They are needed because the Sanskrit alphabet has many more than the 26 characters of the English alphabet. See Transliteration.

**_dIrgha –_** refers to the _long_ vowels: _A, I, RRI, LLI_ and _U_ , sounding for two 'measures'. The short form is _hrasva_. The complex vowels _e, ai, o_ and _au_ are necessarily long since they combine other vowel sounds with _a_.

**_dvitIyA vibhakti –_** the second, accusative case of nouns, i.e. the direct object, as in 'he opens _the box_ '.

**_dvi-vachana –_** dual, with respect to 'number' of nouns.

**_eka-vachana –_** singular, with respect to 'number' of nouns.

**External sandhi (** ** _saMdhi_** **)** **_–_** the joining of letters at the end of one word and the beginning of the next.

**_ghoSha –_** refers to those letters that could be thought of as sounding a syllable in their pronunciation. The voiced or _ghoSha_ letters are all of the consonants except for the first two rows of the main group, plus the _visarga_ and semi-vowels. i.e. _g, j, D, d, b_ ; _gh, jh, Dh, dh, bh_ ; _~N, ~n, N, n, m_ ; _sh, Sh, s, h, H, y, r, l_ , _v_ ). See _aghoSha_ , unvoiced, voiced.

**Guna (** ** _guNa_** **)** **_–_** term used to refer to the 'stronger' vowels, formed by adding _a_ to the simple vowels. _a_ remains as _a, i_ becomes _e, u_ becomes _o, RRi_ becomes _ar_ , and _LLi_ becomes _al_. When a further _a_ is added, the _guNa_ forms become _vRRiddhi_. This principle becomes important when considering how part-words combine to form words (so-called 'internal _saMdhi_ ').

**Guru (** ** _guru_** **)** **_–_** In the context of Sanskrit pronunciation, this is used to refer to a syllable that is stressed. _guru_ means 'heavy'. An unstressed syllable is called _laghu_.

**Guttural –** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the _kaNThya_ group, involving the throat – _a, A, k, kh, g, gh, ~N, h_.

**_hal –_** the _pratyAhAra_ , from the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , used to identify all the consonants.

**_hal saMdhi –_** (the rules relating to) the joining of consonants at the end of one word and the beginning of the next. _hal_ is the _pratyAhAra_ for 'all consonants'.

**Halanta (** ** _halanta_** **)** **_–_** a consonant that is not sounded with a vowel after it. It is marked as such by the use of a _virAma_. The term derives from the _pratyAhAra_ ' _hal_ ', which refers to 'any consonant', and _anta_ , which means 'end', since such consonants normally occur at the end of a word.

**_hrasva –_** refers to the _short_ vowels: _a, i, RRi, LLi_ and _u_ , sounding for one 'measure'. The long form is _dIrgha_.

**Internal sandhi (** ** _saMdhi_** **)** **_–_** the joining of letters at the end of one part-word and the beginning of the next within a single word.

**It (** ** _it_** **)** **_–_** the term given to the final, _halanta_ letters at the end of each sutra in the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_. They are used as indicator letters only and are not themselves included in the letters defined by a _pratyAhAra_. The correct term is _it varna_ , where _varna_ means 'sound or letter'.

**ITRANS –** the transliterated form of Sanskrit most commonly encountered on the Internet. It uses only those characters that may be typed easily on a computer keyboard so that Sanskrit words can be communicated via email etc. See Transliteration.

**_jhal –_** the _pratyAhAra_ for 'any consonant other than a nasal or a semi-vowel'.

**Kanthya (** ** _kaNThya_** **)** **_–_** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the guttural group, involving the throat – _a, A, k, kh, g, gh, ~N, h. kanthah_ means 'throat'.

**_karman –_** the direct object of the verb in a sentence.

**_kartRRi –_** the 'agent' of the verb in a sentence, i.e. 'subject'.

**_kriyA –_** the verb in a sentence.

**_kriyAvibhakti –_** number and tense endings added to verbs as part of conjugation. Also called _ti~N-vibhakti_.

**_kriyA-visheShaNa –_** an adverb.

**Labial –** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the _oShThya_ group, involving the lips – _u, U, p, ph, b, bh, m, v_.

**_laghu –_** In the context of Sanskrit pronunciation, this is used to refer to a syllable that is not stressed. _laghu_ means 'light'. A stressed syllable is called _guru_.

**Lexicographers (L) –** the term used in the Sanskrit–English dictionary of Monier-Williams to indicate that the related word has never actually been found in any scriptural or historical text and is really only of academic interest (to those who compile dictionaries).

**_li~Nga –_** gender of nouns.

**_madhyama-puruSha –_** 'middle person' of verbs – equivalent to English second person, i.e. 'you'.

**Mahaprana (** ** _mahAprANa_** **)** **_–_** describes a consonant that is sounded with additional expelling of air. It means 'with much breath'. Specifically, it is used for those consonants on the second and fourth rows of the main groups, namely _kh, Ch, Th, th, ph_ and _gh, jh, Dh, dh, bh_.

**Maheshvarani Sutrani (** ** _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_** **)** **_–_** a set of 14 sutras, each of which is actually just a group of letters from the alphabet. The shorthand term of a single letter, together with one of the letters at the end of one of the 14 groups, is then used to specify all of the letters (excluding group terminating letters, which are called _it_ ) between those two. In this way, collections of letters with specific properties may be defined e.g. all consonants, all semi-vowels etc. The combination of two letters used for this purpose is called a _pratyAhAra_. The system was defined by Panini about two and a half thousand years ago. _maheshvara_ means 'great lord'.

**_mAtrA –_** 'measure', in respect of the length of a vowel. Short ( _hrasva_ ) vowels such as _a_ are sounded for one _mAtrA_ , long ( _dIrgha_ ) for two _mAtrA_ , and _pluta_ vowels for three or more.

**_mAtRRikA –_** the name given to all of the vowel sounds plus the _anusvAra_ and _visarga_ : _a, A, i, I, RRi, RRI, LLi, LLI, u, U, e, o, ai, au, aM, aH_. The word literally means 'divine mothers' but is used in the sense of written characters that have magical powers.

**_mUrdhanya –_** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the cerebral group, with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth – _RRi, RRI, T, Th, D, Dh, N, r, Sh_.

**_nAman –_** a noun.

**_nAma-vibhakti –_** number, gender and case endings added to nouns and adjectives; also called _sup-vibhakti_.

**_napuMsaka-li~Nga –_** neuter gender of nouns.

**_oShThya –_** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the labial group, involving the lips – _u, U, p, ph, b, bh, m, v_.

**Pada (** ** _pada_** **)** **_–_** the term for a word that has added all necessary endings for nouns/verbs, so that it can be used without further alteration in a sentence. See _dhAtu, prAtipadika_.

**Palatal –** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the _tAlavya_ group, with the back of the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth – _i, I, ch, Ch, j, jh, ~n, y, sh_.

**_pa~nchami vibhakti –_** the fifth, ablative case of nouns, indicating 'from' or 'out of' etc., e.g. she walks _from the house_.

**Panini (** ** _pANini_** **)** **_–_** the Sanskrit grammarian, circa 500 BC, who collated all of the rules for sandhi and grammar in a book called the _aShTAdhyAyI_.

**_parasmaipada –_** active voice of verbs.

**_pluta –_** refers to a prolonged vowel (i.e. longer than the two measures of _dIrgha_ ). It is represented by writing the (Sanskrit) number '3' below right or immediately after the letter to be sounded prolonged.

**Pranava shabda (** ** _praNava shabda_** **)** **_–_** term for the special symbol for the mystical word _OM_.

**_prathama-puruSha –_** 'first person' of verbs – equivalent to English third person, i.e. 'he, she or it'.

**_prathamA vibhakti –_** first, nominative case of nouns, i.e. the subject of a sentence.

**_prAtipadika –_** the 'stem-form' of words, as found in the dictionary, i.e. without endings for gender, number, case, tense etc. See _dhAtu_.

**Pratyahara (** ** _pratyAhAra_** **)** **_–_** the term given to the two-letter (single syllable), shorthand identifier used to define a group of letters in the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_. (The same technique is also used elsewhere and is given the same name.)

**_pratyaya –_** prefixes or suffixes, added to a _dhAtu_ , to form a _prAtipadika_.

**_puM-li~Nga –_** masculine gender of nouns.

**Purnavirama (** ** _pUrNavirAma_** **)** **_–_** the double vertical line used to mark the end of a paragraph or verse of a _sUtra_. It is generated in ITRANS by two full stops or two 'shift + \'.

**_puruSha –_** 'person' in respect of verb-endings.

**Romanized –** the transliterated form of Sanskrit most commonly encountered in books and, for example, PDF (portable document format) files downloaded from the Internet. It uses the 'English' alphabet together with 'diacritical marks' or accents such as dots above or below letters. See Transliteration.

**_samAsa –_** a compound word. The word literally means 'placed together'.

**_saMbodhana –_** vocative case of nouns. Nouns are generally regarded as having seven case endings but this is effectively the eighth. It is used when addressing someone directly, e.g. ' _Boy_ , come over here!'

**_saMhitA –_** Panini's alternative word for sandhi. It is defined as 'the closest drawing together of sounds'.

**_saMj~na –_** a proper noun.

**Samyoga (** ** _saMyoga_** **)** **_–_** term for a conjunct consonant, i.e. two or more consonants joined together without an intervening vowel sound. The word literally means 'joined together'.

**Samyukta svara (** ** _saMyukta svara_** **)** **_–_** term for the complex vowels, _e, o, ai, au. saMyukta_ means 'joined together' or 'combined'.

**Sandhi (** ** _saMdhi_** **)** **_–_** a comprehensive set of rules governing the way in which sounds combine when they appear next to each other. These prevent, for example, the situation where one word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with one, by merging the two. There are three 'classes' of sandhi: vowel, consonant, and _visarga_.

**_saptamI vibhakti –_** seventh, locative case of nouns, referring to the time or place where the action takes place, e.g. they ate their picnic _on the lawn_.

**_sarva-nAman –_** a pronoun. The word literally means 'name of all'.

**_ShaShThI vibhakti –_** sixth, genitive case of nouns e.g. the _dog_ ' _s_ bone (the bone _belonging to the dog_ ).

**Savarna (** ** _savarNa_** **)** **_–_** refers to a 'similar sound' in the context of sandhi. The word literally means 'of the same family'. E.g. _a_ and _A_ are _savarNa_.

**Shakti (** ** _shakti_** **)** **_–_** another name (see _mAtRRikA_ ) given to all of the vowel sounds plus the _anusvAra_ and _visarga_ : _a, A, i, I, RRi, RRI, LLi, LLI, u, U, e, o, ai, au, aM, aH_. The word literally means 'power' or 'strength'.

**_shar –_** the _pratyAhAra_ , from the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , used to identify the sibilants.

**Sibilant –** refers to the 'ss' sounds _sh, Sh_ and _s_. The Sanskrit term is _UShman_ , though this also includes the letter _h_.

**Sparsha (** ** _sparsha_** **)** **_–_** term for the 25 consonants, i.e. excluding semi-vowels, sibilants and _h_. The term literally means 'touching' or 'contact' and refers to the fact that the underlying vowel sound is modified by contact in the mouth in such a way as to 'stop' it in some way.

**_strI-li~Nga –_** feminine gender of nouns.

**_sup-vibhakti –_** number, gender and case endings added to nouns and adjectives; also called _namavibhakti. sup_ is a _pratyAhAra_.

**Svara (** ** _svara_** **)** **_–_** Sanskrit term for a vowel, literally meaning 'sound'.

**_tAlavya –_** mouth position used for speaking one of the main groups of letters, the palatal group, with the back of the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth – _i, I, ch, Ch, j, jh, ~n, y, sh_.

**_ti~N-vibhakti –_** number and tense endings added to verbs as part of conjugation. Also called _kriyAvibhakti. ti~N_ is a _pratyAhAra_.

**Transliteration –** a representation of the Sanskrit alphabet using letters of the English alphabet, together with other special characters. See Romanized, ITRANS.

**_tRRitIyA vibhakti –_** the third or instrumental case of nouns, e.g. 'he writes _with a pen_ ' or 'she travels _by bus_ '.

**_tu.N –_** an abbreviation used to refer to the _halanta_ dental consonants, i.e. _t, th, d, dh_ and _n_. The _.N_ inserts a _chandra bindu_ above the _tu_ and causes the _u_ to be sounded through the nose.

**Unvoiced –** refers to those letters that do not sound like a syllable in their pronunciation. A hard, clipped sound is made by opening the mouth and allowing the basic _a_ sound to emerge, modified by altering the mouth (tongue, lips) as necessary. The unvoiced or _aghoSha_ letters are all the vowels (except for the _visarga_ ) and the first two rows of the main set of consonants, i.e. _k, ch, T, t, p_ and _kh, Ch, Th, th, ph_ ), plus the sibilants ( _sh, Sh, s_ ). See _aghoSha, ghoSha_ , voiced.

**Upasarga (** ** _upasarga_** **) –** a preposition. Often occurs as a prefix to a verb and is separable.

**Ushman (** ** _UShman_** **) –** the Sanskrit term for the sibilants, _sh, Sh_ and _s_ , together with _h_. The word itself literally means 'heat, steam or vapor'.

**_uttama-puruSha –_** 'last person' of verbs – equivalent to English first person, i.e. 'I'.

**_vachana –_** number of a noun, singular, dual or plural.

**Vedic** **_anusvAra –_** the symbol of a _chandra bindu_ together with a _virAma_ appearing at the end of a word but not over/under a specific letter. It means that the preceding word is not pronounced in the usual way but in so-called 'Vedic pronunciation', presumably in order to satisfy metrical requirements of the poetry. See example in Level 2 Section H.

**Vibhakti (** ** _vibhakti_** **) –** number, gender and case endings added to nouns and adjectives are called _namavibhakti_ or _sup-vibhakti_. Similarly, verb endings for tense and number are called _kriyAvibhakti_ or _ti~N-vibhakti_. Only when all such endings have been added to a _prAtipadika_ do we get a 'word' or _pada_.

**Virama (** ** _virAma_** **) –** the diagonal mark underneath a consonant to indicate that it is not to be sounded with a vowel after it. The literal meaning is 'cessation, termination or end'. (All consonants are sounded with 'a' by default, unless indicated otherwise.) A consonant with such a mark is called an _halanta_ consonant. _OR –_ the single vertical mark to indicate the end of a sentence or single line of a verse of poetry.

**Visarga (** ** _visarga_** **) –** this literally means 'sending out' or 'emission'. It is represented as 'aH' but is not actually a letter and does not occur on its own. Its effect is to add a brief, breathing out sound after the vowel sound associated with a consonant. It is represented by two dots placed to the right of the associated letter.

**_visheShaNa –_** adjective.

**Voiced –** refers to those letters that make a syllable in their pronunciation; a soft 'murmuring' sound unlike the hard, clipped sound of the unvoiced letters. The voiced or _ghoSha_ letters are all of the consonants except for the first two rows of the main group, plus the _visarga_ and semi-vowels. i.e. _g, j, D, d, b_ ; _gh, jh, Dh, dh, bh_ ; _~N, ~n, N, n, m_ ; _sh, Sh, s, h, H, y, r, l, v_ ). See _aghoSha, ghoSha_ , unvoiced.

**Vriddhi (** ** _vRRiddhi_** **) –** term used to refer to the 'strongest' vowel sounds, when _a_ has been added a second time to the simple vowels. (When _a_ has been added once, the _guNa_ form results.) The _vRRiddhi_ form of _a_ is A, of _i_ is ai, of _u_ is au, of _RRi_ is _Ar_ and of _LLi_ is _Al_. This principle becomes important when considering how part-words combine to form words (so-called 'internal _saMdhi_ ').

**Vyanjana (** ** _vya~njana_** **) –** Sanskrit term for a consonant, meaning a 'decoration' (of the basic vowel sound).

**_yaN –_** the _pratyAhAra_ , from the _maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , used to identify the semi-vowels.

**_yar –_** the _pratyAhAra_ for all the consonants except _h_.

**Yogavaha (** ** _yogavAha_** **) –** term for the _anusvAra_ and _visarga_ , which are not really vowels but are not consonants either. The word means 'belonging to', since they need another 'real' letter in order to have any meaning. See _ayogavAha_.

# Dictionary of Common Sanskrit Spiritual Words

[Each word is given in the following format:

**Typical English Spelling (** ** _ITRANS representation_** **, Devanagari Script)** – meaning

(Words appear in order of the English (Roman) alphabet, not the Sanskrit alphabet.)]

**a (a,  )** – as a prefix to another word, it changes it into the negative. e.g. _vidya –_ knowledge, _avidya –_ ignorance.

**abhidharma (** ** _abhidharma, _** **)** – the metaphysical scriptures of Buddhist philosophy.

**acharya (** ** _AchArya, _** **)** – a spiritual guide or teacher. See Shankaracharya.

**achintya (** ** _achintya, _** **)** – inconceivable or beyond thought.

**adhyaropa (** ** _adhyAropa, _** **)** – erroneously attributing one thing to another.

**adhyasa (** ** _adhyAsa, _** **)** – used to refer to the 'mistake' that we make when we 'superimpose' a false appearance upon the reality or mix up the real and the unreal. The classical example is when we see a snake instead of a rope, which is used as a metaphor for seeing the world of objects instead of the reality of the Self. This concept is fundamental to Advaita and Shankara devotes a separate section to it at the beginning of his commentary on the Brahmasutra.

**Advaita (** ** _advaita, _** **)** – not ( _a_ ) two ( _dvaita_ ); non-dual philosophy.

**agamin (** ** _AgAmin, _** **)** – that type of sanskara which is generated in reaction to current situations and which will not bear fruit until sometime in the future. It literally means 'impending', 'approaching' or 'coming'. Also called _kriyamANa_ , which means 'being done'. See prarabdha, sanchita, sanskara.

**aham (** ** _aham, _** **)** – I am.

**aham vritti (** ** _aham vRRitti, _** **)** – the thought 'I am' as opposed to thoughts about objects, feelings etc. – idam vritti. See vritti.

**ahankara (** ** _ahaMkAra, _** **)** – the making, kara ( _kAra_ ), of the utterance 'I', aham ( _aham_ ); this is the equivalent of what we would call the 'ego' but specifically refers to the identification or attachment of our true Self with something else, usually the body or mind but can be much more specific e.g. I am a teacher, I am a woman. It is one of the 'organs' of the mind in classical Advaita – see antakarana.

**ajati (** ** _ajAti, _** **)** – _a –_ no or not; _jAti –_ creation; the principle that the world and everything in it, including these mind-body appearances, were never created or 'brought into existence'. Most clearly stated by Gaudapada in his karika on the Mandukya Upanishad.

**ajnana (** ** _aj~nAna, _** **)** – (spiritual) ignorance. See jnana.

**anadi (** ** _anAdi, _** **)** – without any beginning, often used to describe 'ignorance'.

**ananda (** ** _Ananda, _** **)** – 'true' happiness; usually called 'bliss' to differentiate it from the transient variety that always alternates with pain or misery. It is an aspect of our true nature and is often combined with the other elements of our real nature – sat and chit – into a single word, satchidananda. See sat, chit and satchidananda.

**anatman (** ** _anAtman, _** **)** – something other than spirit or soul (not Self or atman); perceptible world. See atman.

**anirvachaniya (** ** _anirvachanIya, _** **)** – unutterable, indescribable, not to be mentioned. Used to 'describe' the nature of reality etc.

**anitya (** ** _anitya, _** **)** – transient. Also **anityatva (** ** _anityatva_** ,  ) – transient or limited existence (mortality).

**anta (** ** _anta, _** **)** – end, conclusion, death etc.

**antakarana (** ** _antaHkaraNa, _** **)** – used to refer to the overall 'organ' of mind; the seat of thought and feeling. It consists of a number of separate functions – see manas, buddhi, chitta and ahankara.

**anubhava (** ** _anubhava, _** **)** – perception, understanding, experience; knowledge derived from personal observation.

**anumana (** ** _anumAna, _** **)** – inference (in logic); one of the six means of obtaining knowledge. See pramana.

**anupalabdhi (** ** _anupalabdhi, _** **)** – non-perception, non-recognition; one of the six means of obtaining knowledge. See pramana.

**apaurusheya (** ** _apauruSheya, _** **)** – literally 'not coming from human beings'; used to refer to the shruti – scriptural texts passed on verbatim from generation to generation since their original observation by realized sages. See shruti.

**artha (** ** _artha_** ,  ) – acquisition of wealth. See purushartha.

**arthapatti (** ** _arthApatti, _** **)** – inference from circumstances, presumption; one of the six means of obtaining knowledge. See pramana.

**asat (asat, ** – non-existent. See sat.

**asparsha (** ** _asparsha, _** **)** – intangible, 'touchless'; name given to the 'contentless' yoga of Gaudapada in the Mandukya Upanishad.

**Astavakra (** ** _aShTAvakra, _** **)** – the eponymous Sage of the Astavakra Gita (or Samhita). The word literally means 'twisted' ( _vakra_ ) in 'eight' ( _aShTan_ ) ways. Astavakra was so called because he was born severely deformed after being cursed in the womb by his father (because the unborn child had criticized him for making mistakes while reading the scriptures!). (Later in life, after he had secured his father's release through defeating the court philosopher in debate, his father blessed him and, after swimming in a sacred river, he was cured.) See gita, samhita.

**astika (** ** _Astika, _** **)** – literally 'there is or exists'; used to refer to one who believes in the existence of God or, more specifically, one who defers to the authority of the Vedas. See nastika, veda.

**atma (** ** _Atma, _** **)** – see atman.

**atmabodha (** ** _Atmabodha, _** **)** – knowledge of Self; a book attributed to Shankara.

**atman (** ** _Atman, _** **)** – the Self. Usually used to refer to one's true (individual) nature or consciousness but Advaita tells us that there is no such thing as an 'individual' and that this atman is the same as the universal Consciousness, Brahman. See also jiva.

**atmavicara (** ** _AtmavichAra, _** **)** – _vicAra_ in this context means reflection or examination; upon the _Atman_ , the Self. See atman.

**avacheda-vada (** ** _avachCheda-vAda, _** **)** – theory that the Self is limited by ignorance in the forms of upadhis. See upadhi.

**avarana (** ** _AvaraNa, _** **)** – the 'veiling' power of maya. In the rope–snake metaphor, this power prevents us from seeing the reality of the rope. See maya, vikshepa.

**avidya (** ** _avidyA, _** **)** – ignorance (in a spiritual sense) i.e. that which prevents us from realizing the Self. See also maya.

**avrita (** ** _AvRRita, _** **)** – covered or concealed.

**badha (** ** _bAdha, _** **)** – sublation or subration. This is the process by which an accepted point of view or understanding is superseded by a totally different one when some new information is received. An example is seeing a lake in the desert and then realizing that it is only a mirage.

**bandha or bandhana (** ** _bandha_** **or** **_bandhana_ ,  ** **or  )** – bondage, attachment to the world.

**bauddha (** ** _bauddha, _** **)** – in the mind, related to the intellect; related to (the teaching of) Buddha.

**Bhagavad (** ** _bhagavad, _** **)** – in the context of Bhagavad Gita (on its own, the _d_ would change to a _t_ ) it refers to the god Krishna, and Bhagavad Gita means Krishna's Song. (Bhagavat means 'prosperous, happy' etc.) See gita.

**Bhagavad Gita (** ** _bhagavadgItA, _** **)** – the scriptural text forming part of the Hindu epic, the Mahabarata. It is a dialogue between Krishna, the charioteer/God, and the warrior Arjuna, representing you and me, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra prior to the commencement of battle. The scripture is regarded as smriti. See Bhagavad, smriti.

**bhakta (** ** _bhakta, _** **)** – one who practices bhakti yoga. See bhakti yoga.

**bhakti (** ** _bhakti, _** **) yoga** – devotion or worship. See also karma and jnana.

**bhashya (** ** _bhAShya, _** **)** – explanatory work, exposition or commentary on some other scriptural document. Thus Shankara, for example, has written bhashyas on a number of Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahmasutra.

**bhava (** ** _bhAva, _** **)** – condition or state of body or mind; continuity of the thread of existence through successive births (Buddhism)

**bhoktri (** ** _bhoktRRi, _** **)** – one who enjoys; an 'experiencer' or 'feeler'.

**Brahma (** ** _brahma, _** **)** – God as the creator of the universe in Hindu mythology (the others are Vishnu, _viShNu_ , the preserver and Shiva, _shiva_ , the destroyer). NB: Not to be confused with Brahman!

**brahmacharya (** ** _brahmacharya, _** **)** – the first stage of the traditional Hindu spiritual path, in which the Brahmin begins his life as an unmarried, religious and chaste student. ( _charya_ means 'due observance of all rites and customs'.) See also grihasta, sanyasa, vanaprastha.

**Brahman (** ** _brahman, _** **)** – the universal Self, Absolute or God. There is only Brahman. It derives from the Sanskrit root _bRRih_ , meaning to grow great or strong, and could be thought of as the adjective 'big' made into a noun, implying that which is greater than anything. See also atman, Brahma, jiva, jivatman, paramatman.

**Brahma Sutra (** ** _brahmasUtra, _** **)** – a book (in sutra form, which is terse verse!) by Vyasa. This book is the best known of the third accepted source of knowledge (nyaya prasthana). Effectively, it attempts to summarize the Upanishads. It has been extensively commented on by the three main schools of Vedanta philosophy: dvaita, advaita and vishishtadvaita, and the proponents of each claim that it substantiates their beliefs. Shankara has commented on it and provided extensive arguments against any interpretation other than that of Advaita. See bhashya, nyaya prasthana, sruti, smriti.

**brahmavidya (** ** _brahmavidyA, _** **)** – knowledge of the one Self . See brahman.

**Brihadaranyaka (** ** _bRRihadAraNyaka, _** **)** – one of the major Upanishads (and possibly the oldest). See Upanishad.

**buddhi (** ** _buddhi, _** **)** – the organ of mind responsible for discrimination and judgment, perhaps nearest equated to the intellect in Western usage. See also, ahankara, antakarana, manas and chitta.

**chakra (** ** _chakra, _** **)** – literally 'circle' or 'wheel'; one of the points in the spine through which energy is supposed to flow in kundalini yoga.

**chatushtaya sampatti (** ** _chatuShTaya sampatti, _** **)** – the fourfold prerequisites specified by Shankara as needed by a seeker before he or she can successfully seek Self-knowledge. _chatuShTaya_ means 'fourfold'; _sampatti_ means 'success' or 'accomplishment'. See sadhana, vairagya, viveka, mumukshutvam.

**chetana (** ** _chetana, _** **)** – consciousness, intelligence etc.

**chit (** ** _chit, _** **)** – pure thought or Consciousness. See ananda, sat, satchidananda.

**chitta (** ** _chitta, _** **)** – the organ (part) of mind responsible for memory. See antakarana, ahankara, buddhi, manas.

**dama (** ** _dama, _** **)** – self-restraint but understood as control over the senses; one of the 'six qualities' that form part of Shankara's chatushtaya sampatti. See chatushtaya sampatti.

**darshana (** ** _darshana, _** **)** – audience or meeting (with a guru); viewpoint; system of philosophy (the six classical Indian philosophical systems are: purvamimamsa, uttaramimamsa, nyaya, vaisheshika, Sankhya, yoga).

**dehatmavada (** ** _dehAtmavAda, _** **)** – materialism.

**deha (** ** _deha, _** **)** – person, individual, outward form or appearance (body).

**dharma (** ** _dharma, _** **)** – customary practice, conduct, duty, justice and morality. The favored meaning of most traditional teachers is, however, 'nature, character, essential quality', which they often translate as 'essence'. Our own dharma ( _svadharma_ ) is what we ought to do with our lives in order to dissolve our accumulation of sanskara. See sanskara, karma.

**drishtanta (** ** _dRRiShTAnta, _** **)** – 'the end or aim of what is seen', example or instance.

**drishti-srishti-vada (** ** _dRRiShTisRRiShTivAda, _** **)** – the theory that our mistaken view of the world arises from a mental image (based on memory and sense data) superimposed upon the reality. _dRRiShTi_ means 'seeing'; _sRRiShTi_ means 'creation'; _vAda_ means 'thesis' or 'doctrine'. See also adhyasa, ajati, srishti-drishti-vada.

**dukha (** ** _duHkha, _** **)** – pain, sorrow, trouble.

**dvaita (** ** _dvaita, _** **)** – duality, philosophy of dualism; belief that God and the atman are separate entities. Madhva is the scholar most often associated with this philosophy.

**Gaudapada (** ** _gauDapAda, _** **)** – the author of the commentary (karika) on the Mandukya Upanishad. He is said to have been the teacher of Shankara's teacher. See karika, Mandukya, Upanishad.

**gita (** ** _gItA, _** **)** – a sacred song or poem but more usually refers to philosophical or religious doctrines in verse form ( _gIta_ means 'sung'). The most famous are the Bhagavad Gita and Astavakra Gita. If the word is used on its own, it will be referring to the former. See Bhagavad, Astavakra.

**grihasta (** ** _gRRihastha, _** **)** – this is the second stage of the traditional Hindu spiritual path, called the period of the 'householder', in which the Brahmin performs the duties of master of the house and father of a family. See also brahmacharya, grihasta, sanyasa, vanaprastha.

**guna (** ** _guNa, _** **)** – according to classical Advaita, creation can be said to be describable by three 'attributes': sattva, rajas and tamas. Everything – matter, thoughts, feelings – can be described as a mixture of these three in varying degrees and it is the relative proportions that determine the nature of the thing in question. In Sankhya philosophy, these are actual substances, together constituting the total _prakRRiti_ or _pradhAna_ that makes up the material universe. See sattwa, rajas and tamas for more details.

**guru (** ** _guru, _** **)** – literally 'heavy'; used to refer to one's elders or a person of reverence but more commonly in the West to indicate one's spiritual teacher.

**hetu (** ** _hetu, _** **)** – cause or reason; the logical reason or argument in a syllogism.

**idam vritti (** ** _idam vRRitti, _** **)** – thoughts of objects, concepts, feelings etc., as opposed to aham vritti – the thought 'I am'. See vritti.

**Ishvara (** ** _Ishvara, _** **)** – the Lord; efficient and material cause of the phenomenal universe. See saguna Brahman.

**jagat (** ** _jagat, _** **)** – the world (earth), humankind etc.

**jagrat (** ** _jAgrat_ ,  ** **–** the waking state of consciousness. The 'waker ego' is called vishva. See also sushupti, svapna turiya.

**japa (** ** _japa, _** **)** – the simple repetition of a mantra; usually associated with the initial stage of meditation. See mantra.

**jiva (** ** _jIva, _** **)** – the identification of the atman with a body and mind; 'reflection' of the atman in the mind ( _chidAbhAsa_ ). See atman.

**jivatman (** ** _jIvAtman, _** **)** – another word for atman, to emphasize that we are referring to the atman in this embodied state, as opposed to the paramatman, the 'supreme Self'. See atman.

**jnana (** ** _j~nAna, _** **) yoga** – yoga based on the acquisition of true knowledge (j~nAna means 'knowledge') i.e. knowledge of the Self as opposed to mere information about the world of appearances. _j~nAna yoga_ is the process of _shravaNa, manana_ and _nididhyAsana_ as part of Self-inquiry. See also bhakti, karma, shravana, manana, nididhyasana.

**jnani or jnanin (** ** _j~nAnI_** **or** **_j~nAnin_** ** **, or  **)** – one who has attained Self-knowledge (enlightenment) as a result of practicing jnana yoga. ( _j~nAnin_ is the _prAtipadika_ ; _j~nAnI_ is the nominative singular _pada_.) See jnana yoga.

**kali yuga (** ** _kali yuga, _** **)–** the present age (Iron age) in the cycle of creation. See kalpa.

**kalpa (** ** _kalpa, _** **)** – one 'day' in the life of Brahma, the Creator; equal to 994 cycles of ages and 4,320,000,000 years (if you're really interested).

**kama (** ** _kAma, _** **)** – desire, longing. Not to be confused with karma. See purushartha.

**kanda (** ** _kANDa, _** **)** – part or section, division of a work or book, especially relating to the Vedas.

**karika (** ** _kArikA, _** **)** – (strictly speaking) a concise philosophical statement in verse. The best known is that by Gaudapada on the Mandukya Upanishad. (Not to be confused with _karika_ , which is an elephant!) See Gaudapada, Mandukya, Upanishad.

**karma (** ** _karma, _** **)** – literally 'action' but generally used to refer to the 'law' whereby actions carried out now will have their lawful effects in the future (and this may be in future lives). Note that karma yoga is something different – see below. See also sanskara.

**karmakanda (** ** _karmakANDa, _** **)** – that portion of the Vedas relating to ceremonial acts, the rituals we should follow, sacrificial rites and so on.

**karma yoga (** ** _karma yoga, _** **)** – the practice of acting in such a way as not to incur karma, by carrying out 'right' actions, not 'good' or 'bad' ones. See bhakti, karma, jnana.

**kartri (** ** _kartRRi, _** **)** – one who makes, does or acts; the agent of an action.

**Katha Upanishad (** ** _kaThopaniShad, _** **)** – one of the 108+ Upanishads and one of the ten major ones. _kaTha_ was a sage and founder of a branch of the Yajur Veda. See Upanishad.

**Kena Upanishad (** ** _kenopaniShad, _** **)** – one of the 108+ Upanishads and another one of the ten major ones. _kena_ means 'whence?' ('how?', 'why?' etc.) and is the first word of this Upanishad. See Upanishad.

**kosha (** ** _kosha, _** **)** – literally 'sheath' as in the scabbard of a sword; one of the five layers of identification that 'cover up' our true nature.

**lakshana (** ** _lakShaNa, _** **)** – indicating or expressing indirectly; accurate description or definition.

**laukika (** ** _laukika, _** **)** – worldly, belonging to or occurring in ordinary life. _laukika anumAna_ is inference by scientific reasoning, based on observation.

**laya (** ** _laya, _** **)** – literally 'dissolution' (and the last stage in the cycle of creation, preservation and destruction of the universe). It is also used to refer to the four-stage process for dissolving ignorance described in the Astavakra Gita. See Astavakra, Gita.

**lila (** ** _lIlA, _** **)** – literally 'play', 'amusement' or 'pastime'; the idea that the apparent creation is a diversion for a creator – a means for Him to enjoy Himself. He plays all the parts in such a way that they are ignorant of their real nature and believe themselves separate.

**loka (** ** _loka, _** **)** – world, universe, sky or heaven etc.

**madhyama (** ** _mAdhyama, _** **)** – relating to the middle; central ( _mAdhyamika_ is one of the principal schools of Buddhism.)

**mahavakyas (** ** _mahAvAkya, _** **)** – _maha_ means 'great'; _vAkya_ means 'speech, saying or statement'. The four 'great sayings' from the Vedas are: 'Consciousness is Brahman', 'That thou art', 'This Self is Brahman' and 'I am Brahman'.

**manana (** ** _manana, _** **)** – reflecting upon what has been heard (shravana). This is the second stage of the classical spiritual path, to remove any doubts about the knowledge that has been received via shravana. See also jnana yoga, samshaya, shravana, nididhyasana.

**manas (** ** _manas, _** **)** – the 'organ' of mind acting as intermediary between the senses and the intellect (buddhi) on the way in and the intellect and the organs of action on the way out. These are its primary functions, and 'thinking' ought to consist only of the processing of data on behalf of the intellect. Unfortunately, it usually tries to take on the role of the intellect itself and this is when thinking becomes a problem. See ahankara, antakarana, buddhi and chitta.

**Mandukya (** ** _mANDUkya, _** **)** – one of the major Upanishads and possibly the single most important, when considered in conjunction with the karika written by Gaudapada. See Gaudapada, karika, Upanishad.

**mantra (** ** _mantra, _** **)** – a group of words (or sometimes only one or more syllables), traditionally having some mystical significance, being in many religions an actual 'name of God'. Often used in meditation (always in Transcendental Meditation). See japa.

**maya (** ** _mAyA, _** **)** – literally 'magic' or 'witchcraft', often personified in Hindu mythology. The 'force' used to 'explain' how it is that we come to be deceived into believing that there is a creation with separate objects and living creatures etc. See also avarana and vikshepa.

**mayakara (** ** _mAyAkAra, _** **)** – a maker of magic i.e. a conjurer or magician. See maya.

**mimamsa (** ** _mImAMsA, _** **)** – profound thought, reflection, examination. See purvamimamsa, utteramimamsa.

**mithya (** ** _mithyA, _** **)** – literally 'incorrectly' or 'improperly'. Ascribed to objects etc., meaning that these are not altogether unreal but not strictly real either i.e. they are our imposition of name and form upon the undifferentiated Self. See adhyasa.

**moksha (** ** _moksha, _** **)** – liberation, enlightenment, Self-realization.

**mukti (** ** _mukti, _** **)** – setting or becoming free, final liberation.

**mumukshutvam (** ** _mumukshutvaM, _** **)** – the desire to achieve enlightenment, to the exclusion of all other desires. See sadhana, chatushtaya sampatti.

**Mundaka Upanishad (** ** _muNDakopaniShad, _** **)** – another one of the 108+ Upanishads and also one of the ten major ones – but not to be confused with the Mandukya. _muNDa_ means 'having a shaved head' and the Upanishad is so called because everyone who comprehends its sacred doctrine is 'shorn', i.e. liberated from all error. See Upanishad.

**nama-rupa (** ** _nAma-rUpa, _** **)** – name and form.

**nastika (** ** _nAstika, _** **)** – atheist, unbeliever; strictly speaking, refers to one who does not recognize the authority of the Vedas.

**neti (** ** _neti, _** **)** – not this ( _na_ – not; _iti –_ this). From the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (2.3.6). Used by the intellect whenever it is thought that the Self might be some 'thing' observed e.g. body, mind etc. The Self cannot be anything that is seen, thought or known. See Brihadaranyaka, Upanishad.

**nididhyasana (** ** _nididhyAsana, _** **)** – meditating upon the essence of what has now been intellectually understood until there is total conviction. The third stage of the classical spiritual path. See also shravana and manana.

**nidra (** ** _nidrA, _** **)** – sleep.

**nirguna (** ** _nirguNa, _** **)** – 'without qualities'; usually referring to Brahman and meaning that it is beyond any description or thought. Since there is only Brahman, any word would imply limitation or duality. See Brahman, saguna, Isvara.

**nirvikalpa (** ** _nirvikalpa, _** **)** – (referring to samadhi) 'without' division – not seeing the world as separate or different from oneself. See savikalpa, samadhi, vikalpa.

**nirvishesha (** ** _nirvisheSha, _** **)** – making or showing no difference. _nirvisheShaNa –_ attributeless.

**niyama (** ** _niyama, _** **)** – restraining, controlling; any fixed rule or law; necessity.

**nyaya (** ** _nyAya, _** **)** – literally, 'that into which a thing goes back', a 'standard' or 'rule'; one of the six classical Indian philosophical systems, whose principal exponent was Gautama in the third century BC. It is so called because the system examines all physical and metaphysical subjects in a very logical manner.

**nyaya prasthana (** ** _nyAya prasthAna, _** **)** – refers to logical and inferential material based upon the Vedas, of which the best known is the Brahmasutra of Vyasa ( _nyAya_ can also mean 'method', 'axiom', 'logical argument' etc.). See pramana, prasthana-traya, smriti, sruti.

**Panchadashi (** ** _pa~nchadashI, _** **)** – literally means 'fifteen' because it has this many chapters – a book written by Vidyaranya ( _vidyAraNya_ ), based upon the Upanishads. It discusses many Advaitic truths and uses some original metaphors to illustrate the concepts.

**pandita (** ** _paNDita, _** **)** – literally 'wise' (as an adjective) or 'scholar, teacher, philosopher' (as a noun) and used in this way in the scriptures.

**papa (** ** _pApa, _** **)** – literally 'bad' or 'wicked' but used in the sense of the 'sin' that accrues (according to the theory of karma) from performing 'bad' actions, i.e. those done with a selfish motive. See also punya.

**paramatman (** ** _paramAtman, _** **)** – the 'supreme Self' as opposed to the atman in the 'embodied' state, the jivatman. See atman.

**paramartha (noun), (** ** _paramArtha, _** **);**

**paramarthika (adj.), (** ** _pAramArthika_** **(adj.),  )** – the highest truth or reality; the noumenal as opposed to the phenomenal world of appearances (vyavaharika). See pratibhasika and vyavaharika.

**parampara (** ** _paramparA, _** **)** – literally 'proceeding from one to another'; 'guru parampara' refers to the tradition of guru–disciple passing on wisdom through the ages. See also sampradaya.

**phala (** ** _phala, _** **)** – fruit; often used in the context of the consequences that necessarily follow as a result of action ( _karmaphala_ ).

**prajna (** ** _praj~nA, _** **)** – (verb) to know or understand, find out, perceive or learn; (noun) wisdom, intelligence, knowledge. Not to be confused with _prAj~na_ below.

**prajna (** ** _prAj~na, _** **)** – the 'deep sleep ego' in the deep sleep state of consciousness, sushupti. Literally, 'wise, clever' (adj.) or 'a wise person' or 'intelligence dependent on individuality'. See also vishva, taijasa.

**prajnana (** ** _praj~nAna, _** **)** – consciousness.

**pralaya (** ** _pralaya, _** **)** – the destruction of the world at the end of a kalpa. See kalpa.

**prakarana (** ** _prakaraNa, _** **)** – subject, topic, treatise etc. but especially opening chapter or prologue.

**prakriti (** ** _prakRRiti, _** **)** – literally the original or natural form or condition of anything; generally used to refer to what we would call 'nature'. In Sankhya philosophy, it is one of the two principles – _puruSha_ and _prakRRiti_ (or _pradhAna_ ) _–_ and is an actually existent, though not conscious thing. In Advaita, it is _mithyA_.

**pramana (** ** _pramANa, _** **)** – valid means for acquiring knowledge. There are six of these in Vedanta: perception ( _pratyaksha_ ), inference ( _anumAna_ ), scriptural or verbal testimony ( _shabda_ or _Agama shruti_ ), analogy ( _upamAna_ ), presumption ( _arthApatti_ ) and non-apprehension ( _anupalabdhi_ ). The first three are the major ones referred to by Shankara.

**prana (** ** _prANa, _** **)** – literally the 'breath of life'; the vital force in the body with which we identify in the 'vital sheath'.

**prarabdha (** ** _prArabdha, _** **)** – This literally means 'begun' or 'undertaken'. It is the fruit of all of our past action that is now having its effect. This is one of the three types of sanskara. See agamin, sanchita, sanskara.

**prasthana-traya (** ** _prasthAna traya, _** **)** – _prasthAna_ means 'system' or 'course' in the sense of a journey; _traya_ just means 'threefold'. It refers to the three sources of knowledge of the Self: nyaya prasthana, sruti and smriti. See nyaya prasthana, shabda, sruti, smriti.

**pratibhasa (noun) (** ** _pratibhAsa, _** **);**

**pratibhasika (adj.) (** ** _prAtibhAsika, _** **)** – 'appearing or occurring to the mind', 'existing only in appearance', an illusion. See paramartha, vyavahara.

**pratibimba-vada (** ** _pratibimba vAda, _** **)** – the theory that the jiva is a reflection of the Atman, similar to the reflection of an object in a mirror.

**pratyaksha (** ** _pratyakSha, _** **)** – 'present before the eyes, clear, distinct etc.' but particularly 'direct perception or apprehension' as a valid source of knowledge. See pramana.

**pratyaya (** ** _pratyaya, _** **)** – belief, firm conviction, certainty; basis or cause of anything.

**punya (** ** _puNya, _** **)** – literally 'good' or 'virtuous'; used to refer to the 'reward' that accrues to us (according to the theory of karma) through the performing of unselfish actions. See also papa.

**purna (** ** _pUrNa, _** **)** – full, complete, satisfied, perfect.

**purushartha (** ** _puruShArtha, _** **)** – the general meaning of this term is 'any object of human pursuit' but it is used here in the sense of human (i.e. self) effort to overcome 'fate', the fruit of one's past actions. See karma, sanskara.

**purva (** ** _pUrva, _** **)** – former, preceding.

**purvapaksha (** ** _pUrvapakSha, _** **)** – the first objection to an assertion in any discussion or, more generally, the 'objector' in a debate.

**purvamimamsa, (** ** _pUrvamlmAMsA, _** **)** – the philosophical system based upon the first part of the Vedas and attributed to Jaimini. It relates to enquiries into the nature of dharma or right action. See mimamsa, uttaramimamsa.

**rajas (** ** _rajas, _** **)** – the second of the three gunas. Associated with animals and activity, emotions, desire, selfishness and passion. Adjective – rajassic or rajassika. See guna.

**rishi (** ** _RRiShi, _** **)** – author or singer of sacred Vedic hymns but now more generally used to refer to a saint or sage.

**sadguru (** ** _sadguru, _** **)** – the ultimate guru – one's own Self (sat = true, real). See guru.

**sadhana (** ** _sAdhana, _** **)** – literally 'leading straight to a goal'; refers to the spiritual disciplines followed as part of a 'path' towards Self-realization. See also chatushtaya sampatti.

**saguna (** ** _saguNa, _** **)** – 'with qualities'. The term is usually used to refer to Brahman personified as the creator, Ishvara, to symbolize the most spiritual aspect of the world of appearances. See Brahman, Ishvara, nirguna.

**sahaja sthiti (** ** _sahaja sthiti, _** **)** – Once Self-realization has been attained, there is full and lasting knowledge of the Self. ' _sahaja_ ' means 'state' but this is not a state – it is our true nature. It is permanent (' _sthiti_ ' meaning 'steady' or 'remaining'), unlike the earlier stages of samadhi. See nirvikalpa, samadhi, savikalpa, vikalpa.

**sakshibhava (** ** _sAkshibhAva, _** **)** – 'being or becoming' ( _bhAva_ ) a 'witness' ( _sAkshI_ ).

s **amadhana (** ** _samAdhAna, _** **)** – contemplation, profound meditation; more usually translated as concentration; one of the 'six qualities' that form part of Shankara's chatushtaya sampatti. See chatushtaya sampatti.

**samadhi (** ** _samAdhi, _** **)** – the state of total peace and stillness achieved during deep meditation. Several 'stages' are defined – see vikalpa, savikalpa samadhi, nirvikalpa samadhi and sahaja sthiti.

**samhita (** ** _saMhitA, _** **)** – a philosophical or religious text constructed according to certain rules of sound. There are many of these in the Vedas. The reference in this book is in conjunction with the Astavakra Samhita or Gita. This book is not part of the Vedas. See Astavakra, gita.

**Sankhya (** ** _sAMkhya, _** **)** – one of the three main divisions of Indian philosophy and one of the six darshanas; attributed to Kapila.

**sampradaya (** ** _sampradAya, _** **)** – the tradition or established doctrine of teaching from master to pupil through the ages. _paramparA_ refers to the general principle, whereas a _sampradAya_ relates to a specific historical sage, such as Shankara. See also parampara.

**samsara (** ** _saMsAra, _** **)** – the cycle of death and rebirth, transmigration etc. to which we are supposedly subject in the phenomenal world until we become enlightened and escape. _saMsArl –_ one who is bound to the cycle of birth and death.

**samshaya (** ** _saMshaya, _** **)** – uncertainty, irresolution, hesitation or doubt. See manana.

**sanatana (** ** _sanAtana, _** **)** – literally 'eternal' or 'permanent'; in conjunction with dharma, this refers to our essential nature. The phrase _sanAtana dharma_ is also used to refer to the traditional (also carrying the sense of 'original' and 'unadulterated') Hindu practices or as a synonym for 'Hinduism'. See dharma.

**sanchita (** ** _saMchita, _** **)** – one of the three types of sanskara, literally meaning 'collected' or 'piled up'. It refers to that sanskara which has been accumulated from past action but has still not manifested. See agamin, prarabdha, sanskara.

**sanga (** ** _sa~Nga, _** **)** – assembly, association, company. See satsanga.

**sanskara (** ** _saMskAra, _** **)** – Whenever an action is performed with the desire for a specific result (whether for oneself or another), sanskara is created for that person. These accumulate and determine the situations with which we will be presented in the future and will influence the scope of future actions. There are three 'types' – agamin, sanchita and prarabdha. The accumulation of sanskara dictates the tendencies that we have to act in a particular way (vasanas). This is all part of the mechanism of karma. See agamin, karma, prarabdha, sanchita, vasana and karma.

**sanyasa (** ** _saMnyAsa, _** **)** – the final stage of the traditional Hindu spiritual path; involves complete renunciation. The word literally means 'putting or throwing down, laying aside'; i.e. becoming an ascetic. One who does so is called a sanyasin ( _saMnyAsin_ ). See also brahmacharya, grihasta, vanaprastha.

**sat (** ** _sat, _** **)** – existence, reality, truth (to mention a few). See also ananda, chit, satchitananda.

**satchitananda (sat** – **_chit – Ananda_** **or** **_sachchidAnanda_** **,  )** – the oft-used word to describe our true nature, insofar as this can be put into words (which it can't). It translates as being-consciousness-bliss but see the separate bits for more detail.

**satsanga (** ** _satsa~Nga, _** **)** – association with the good; keeping 'good company'; most commonly used now to refer to a group of people gathered together to discuss (Advaita) philosophy or, increasingly, 'self-help'.

**sattva (** ** _sattva, _** **)** – the highest of the three gunas. Associated with stillness, peace, truth, wisdom, unselfishness and spirituality, representing the highest aspirations of humankind. Adjective – sattvic or sattvika. See guna.

**sattvapati (** ** _sattvApatti, _** **)** – the (fourth) stage on a spiritual path, after which there is no longer any need for effort to be made (so called because there is now an abundance of sattva). _Apatti_ means 'entering into a state or condition'.

**satya (** ** _satya, _** **)** – true, real; _satyam –_ truth.

**savikalpa (** ** _savikalpa, _** **)** – (referring to samadhi) with division – still seeing the world as separate or different from oneself. See nirvikalpa, samadhi, vikalpa.

**shabda (** ** _shabda, _** **)** – sound, word or speech. _shabda pramANa –_ scriptural or verbal testimony. See pramana, nyaya prasthana, prasthana-traya, sruti, smriti.

**shama (** ** _shama, _** **)** – literally tranquillity, absence of passion but more usually translated as mental discipline or self-control; one of the 'six qualities' that form part of Shankara's chatushtaya sampatti. See chatushtaya sampatti.

**Shankara (** ** _shaMkara, _** **)** – eighth-century Indian philosopher responsible for firmly establishing the principles of Advaita. Though he died at an early age (32?), he commented on a number of major Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahmasutras, as well as being attributed as the author of a number of famous works, such as Atmabodha, Upadesha Sahasri and Vivekachudamani.

**Shankaracharya (** ** _shaMkarAchArya, _** **)** – the title given to one of the teachers (see acharya) following the tradition in India established by Shankara (see Shankara). He established these positions, to be held by realized individuals who would take on the role of teacher and could be consulted by anyone having problems or questions of a spiritual nature.

**sharira (** ** _sharIra, _** **)** – one's body divided into gross, subtle and causal aspects).

**shastra (** ** _shAstra, _** **)** – order, teaching, instruction; any sacred book or composition that has divine authority.

**shraddha (** ** _shraddhA, _** **)** – faith, trust or belief (in the absence of direct personal experience); the student needs this initially in respect of what he or she is told by the guru or reads in the scriptures; one of the 'six qualities' that form part of Shankara's chatushtaya sampatti. See chatushtaya sampatti.

**shravana (** ** _shravaNa, _** **)** – hearing the truth from a sage or reading about it in such works as the Upanishads; first of the three key stages in the traditional spiritual path. See also manana, nididhyasana.

**shruti (** ** _shruti, _** **)** – refers to the Vedas, incorporating the Upanishads. Literally means 'hearing' and refers to the belief that the books contain orally transmitted, sacred wisdom from the dawn of time. See nyaya prasthana, pramana, smriti.

**siddhanta (** ** _siddhAnta, _** **)** – final end or purpose; conclusion of an argument.

**shubhecha (** ** _shubhechChA, _** **)** – 'good desire'; the initial impulse that starts us on a spiritual search. _shubha_ means 'auspicious', 'good (in a moral sense)' and _ichChA_ means 'wish', 'desire'.

**smriti (** ** _smRRiti, _** **)** – refers to material 'remembered' and subsequently written down. In practice, it mostly refers to books of law (in the sense of guidance for living) which were written and based upon the knowledge in the Vedas, i.e. the so-called dharma-shAstras – Manu, Yajnavalkya, Parashara. In the context of nyaya prasthana, it is used to refer to just one of these books – the Bhagavad Gita. See pramana, nyaya prasthana, sruti.

**srishti-drishti-vada (** ** _sRRiShTidRRiShTivAda, _** **)** – the theory that the world is separate from ourselves, having been created (by God or the big bang) and evolving independently of ourselves, i.e. the 'common sense' view of things. See also adhyasa, ajati, drishti-srishti-vada.

**sthitaprajna (** ** _sthitapraj~na, _** **)** – meaning one 'standing' ( _sthita_ ) in 'wisdom' ( _prajna_ ); a person of steadiness and calm, firm in judgment, contented. The name is used in the Bhagavad Gita to refer to someone who is Self-realized.

**sthula (** ** _sthUla, _** **)** – large, thick, coarse, dense; the gross body ( _sthUla sharIra_ ).

**sukha (** ** _sukha, _** **)** – comfortable, happy, prosperous etc. _sukham –_ pleasure, happiness.

**sushupti (** ** _suShupti, _** **)** – the deep-sleep state of consciousness. The 'sleeper ego' is called prajna. See also, jagrat, svapna, turiya.

**svadharma (** ** _svadharma, _** **)** – one's own dharma. See dharma.

**svapna (** ** _svapna, _** **)** – the dream state of consciousness. The 'dreamer ego' is called taijasa. See also, jagrat, sushupti, turiya.

**taijasa (** ** _taijasa, _** **)** – the 'dreamer ego' in the dream state of consciousness, svapna. See also vishva, prajna.

**tamas (** ** _tamas, _** **)** – the 'lowest' of the three gunas. Associated with matter, and having characteristics such as inertia, laziness, heedlessness and death. Adjective – tamasic or tamasika. See guna.

**tarka (** ** _tarka, _** **)** – reasoning, speculation, philosophical system or doctrine.

**tarkika (** ** _tArkika, _** **)** – logician or philosopher.

**titiksha (** ** _titikShA, _** **)** – forbearance or patience; one of the 'six qualities' that form part of Shankara's chatushtaya sampatti. See chatushtaya sampatti.

**trikalatita (** ** _trikAlAtIta, _** **)** – that which transcends past, present and future (describing the Self).

**tripitaka (** ** _tripiTaka, _** **)** – the 'three baskets' or collections of sacred writings of the Buddhists viz. _sUtra, abhidharma, vinaya_.

**turiya (** ** _turIya, _** **)** **_–_** the 'fourth' state of consciousness (turiya means 'fourth'). It is actually not a state at all but our true nature, which is prevalent throughout the other three. The waker is not the dreamer is not the deep-sleeper but I am all three. See vishva, taijasa, prajna.

**upadana (** ** _upAdAna, _** **)** – literally 'the act of taking for oneself'; used to refer to the 'material cause' in logic.

**upadhi (** ** _upAdhi, _** **)** – Literally, this means something that is put in place of another thing; a substitute, phantom or disguise. In Vedanta, it is commonly referred to as a 'limitation' or 'limiting adjunct' i.e. one of the 'identifications' made by ahankara that prevents us from realizing the Self.

**upamana (** ** _upamAna, _** **)** – comparison, resemblance, analogy. One of the six pramanas.

**upanishad (** ** _upaniShat, _** **)** – one of the (108+) books forming part (usually the end) of one of the four Vedas. The parts of the word mean: to sit ( _Shad_ ) near a master ( _upa_ ) at his or her feet ( _ni_ ), so that the idea is that we sit at the feet of a master to listen to his or her words. Monier-Williams (Ref. 5) states that, 'according to native authorities, upanishad means "setting at rest ignorance by revealing the knowledge of the supreme spirit"'. Note that the _d_ changes to a _t_ at the end of a word. See Vedanta.

**uparama (** ** _uparama, _** **)** – See uparati.

**uparati (** ** _uparati, _** **)** – desisting from sensual enjoyment; 'reveling' in that which is 'near' i.e. one's own Self; also translated as following one's dharma or duty; one of the 'six qualities' that form part of Shankara's chatushtaya sampatti. See chatushtaya sampatti.

**uttaramimamsa (** ** _uttaramImAMsA, _** **)** – the Vedanta philosophy, based on the latter (uttara) part of the Vedas rather than the earlier (purva). Its founder was Badarayana, who authored the Brahmasutras. There are three main schools – dvaita, advaita and vishishtadvaita. See Brahmasutras, mimamsa, purvamimamsa, Veda.

**vada (** ** _vAda, _** **)** – speech, proposition, discourse, argument, discussion, explanation or exposition (of scriptures etc.)

**vairagya (** ** _vairAgya, _** **)** – detachment or dispassion; indifference to the pleasure that results from success or the disappointment that results from failure. See sadhana, chatushtaya sampatti.

**vaisheshika (** ** _vaisheShika, _** **)** – one of the six classical Indian philosophies, a later development of nyaya by the theologian, Kanada; named after the nine 'essentially different substances' believed to constitute matter. See darshana, vishesha.

**vanaprastha (** ** _vanaprastha, _** **)** – the third stage of the traditional Hindu spiritual path, in which the Brahmin retires from life and becomes a 'forest dweller', living as a hermit. Traditionally speaking, 'a properly initiated _dvija_ or twice-born'. See also brahmacharya, grihasta, sanyasa, vanaprastha.

**vasana (** ** _vAsanA, _** **)** – literally 'desiring' or 'wishing' – latent behavioral tendency in one's nature brought about through past action (karma) and the sanskara that resulted from this. See karma, sanskara.

**Veda (** ** _veda, _** **)** – knowledge, but the word is normally only used to refer to one of the four Vedas (see Vedanta) and vidya is used for knowledge per se. See vidya.

**Vedanta (** ** _vedAnta, _** **)** – literally 'end' or 'culmination' ( _anta_ ) of the Vedas. Veda in this context refers to the four Vedas, the Hindu equivalents of the Christian Bible (called Rig, _RRig_ Veda; Sama, _sama_ Veda; Atharva, _atharva_ Veda; Yajur, _yajur_ Veda). Traditionally, the last part of the Vedas is devoted to the Upanishads. See upanishad.

**vidya (** ** _vidyA, _** **)** – knowledge, science, learning, philosophy. _Atma-vidyA_ or _brahma-vidyA_ is knowledge of the Self.

**Vidyaranya (** ** _vidyAraNya, _** **)** – author of the Panchadashi ( _pa~nchadashI_ ).

**vikalpa (** ** _vikalpa, _** **)** – doubt, uncertainty or indecision, division. See savikalpa, nirvikalpa, samadhi.

**vikshepa (** ** _vikShepa, _** **)** – the 'projecting' power of maya. In the rope–snake metaphor, this superimposes the image of the snake upon the rope. See avarana, maya.

**vinaya (** ** _vinaya, _** **)** – the rules of discipline for Buddhist monks; school of Buddhist philosophy emphasizing conduct as the means to the end of suffering.

**vishaya (** ** _viShaya, _** **)** – object of sensory perception; any subject or topic; the subject of an argument.

**vishesha (** ** _visheSha, _** **)** – literally 'distinction' or 'difference between'. The Vaisheshika philosophy believes that the material universe is made up of nine substances, each of which is 'essentially different' from any other. See Vaisheshika.

**vishishta (** ** _vishiShTa, _** **)** – distinguished, particular, excellent.

**vishishtadvaita (** ** _vishiShTAdvaita, _** **)** – qualified non-dualism; the belief that God and the atman are distinct but not separate. Ramanuja is the scholar most often associated with this philosophy. See advaita, dvaita.

**vishva (** ** _vishva, _** **)** – the 'waker ego' in the waking state of consciousness, jagrat. See also taijasa, prajna.

**viveka (** ** _viveka, _** **)** – discrimination; the function of buddhi, having the ability to differentiate between the unreal and the real. See sadhana, chatushtaya sampatti.

**vritti (** ** _vRRitti, _** **)** – In the context of Vedanta, this means a 'mood of the mind'. In general, it can mean a mode of conduct or behavior, character or disposition, business or profession etc, or simply a 'thought'. See aham vritti and idam vritti.

**vyavahara (noun) (** ** _vyavahAra, _** **);**

**vyavaharika (adj.), (** ** _vyAvahArika, _** **)** – the 'relative', 'empirical', or phenomenal world of appearances; the normal world in which we live and which we usually believe to be real; as opposed to paramarthika (real) and pratibhasika (illusory). See paramarthika and pratibhasika.

**yoga (** ** _yoga, _** **)** – literally 'joining' or 'attaching' (our word 'yoke' derives from this). It is used generally to refer to any system whose aim is to 'join' our 'individual self' back to the 'universal Self'. The Yoga system pedantically refers to that specified by Patanjali and is one of the six Indian philosophical systems, closely associated with Sankhya. See bhakti, jnana, karma.

**yuga (** ** _yuga, _** **)** – one of the four ages in the cycle of creation. See kalpa, kali yuga.

# Appendix 1 Transliteration Schemes

Table 10 – Transliteration Schemes

Note: The characters '. _h_ ' may also be added after any consonant in ITRANS to generate a _virAma_ ; however, since this will happen regardless if the consonant is not followed by a vowel, it is usually omitted. E.g. _k_ is the same as _k.h_.

# Appendix 2 Alternative Letter Forms

As has been noted in the text, some of the letters have two or more differing representations in Devanagari. A given source will normally be consistent in its use of a single variant but other traditions and books may use one of the alternative forms. E.g. the Monier-Williams dictionary uses the different variant of the letter _a_.

Table 11 – Alternative Letter Forms

# Appendix 3 Vowel Forms, with and without Consonants

Table 12 – Vowel Forms

Table 12 summarizes the use of vowels (+ _anusvAra_ and _visarga_ ). Column 2 shows how they appear when used on their own or at the beginning of a word. Column 3 shows how their presence is signified when they appear after one or more consonants. Column 4 shows how the letter _k_ appears when used with that vowel.

# Appendix 4 Writing the Script

You will have to learn the alphabet if you wish to become sufficiently familiar with the forms of the letters to be able to read the words in the scriptures. This really means practicing writing the letters as well as reading them. You will have seen that the Devanagari reproduced in this book has been written in an italic script. Obviously it is not necessary to write it in this way in order for it to be understood. (But then this is, after all, the prime purpose of any written language.) However, if you are to learn the formally correct construction of each of the letters, you ought really to practice it as an exercise in calligraphy.

Unfortunately, an ordinary italic nib on a fountain pen or even in a calligraphy set is unlikely to be the correct shape. The edge of the nib should be angled. The pen is then tilted so that the edge is flush with the page as characters are written. This generates the necessary angular finish to the script. The nib must be cut away to the right for right-handed users and to the left for left-handed ones.

With care, an ordinary italic nib could be filed down in this way, finishing off with fine 'wet and dry' sandpaper. The width of nib depends upon the intended size of writing. If practicing only, a broad tip is probably best (? 2.5mm); if you expect to write a lot at normal size, it will need to be narrower since the proportions of the letters are important. It is possible to obtain fountain pens with the correct nibs.

In the UK, fine or medium italic pens may be purchased from <http://www.sanskritcourses.co.uk/>. A number of books (including Monier-Williams), CDs and a pack of Sanskrit Alphabet Cards may also be purchased here. (This latter is invaluable for helping you to learn the letters. You can also make them yourself from the freely downloadable Charles Wikner book mentioned above.)

The proportions of the letters can be seen by dividing them into three as shown below:

The order in which the parts of each letter are constructed will depend upon the source of instruction. I was taught (in England, by SES) that the top line of the letter should be constructed first in all cases except for _a_ , where the left-hand part should be produced first. Next, any vertical line is drawn and finally, the key parts of the letter are drawn onto these. The American style insists that the distinctive part of each letter should be drawn first, then the vertical line, and the top line should always be done last, i.e. the exact opposite! Logically, the latter method seems more sensible, since you cannot know how long the top line should be until a word is complete. The Internet resources described earlier all recommend the latter style.

If you do seriously want to learn how to produce the script neatly and accurately, you should seek out a school or someone who is skilled in the art. This is really an exercise in calligraphy and cannot easily be learned from a book. If you are not interested in strict accuracy, just get yourself an appropriate pen and modify the nib as shown above. (While searching for sites earlier, I came across one which suggested that a right-handed person could use a left-hand italic pen. Presumably the reverse also applies. I do not know first hand how well this might work.) Then practice producing the letters in whichever way you like until you get a result that you find acceptable. Finally, if you are not interested at all in the calligraphy element and are unconcerned if the letter proportions are not strictly accurate, just dig out an old fountain pen or even a felt-tip or ballpoint and practice. Above all, however, _practice_. This will prove invaluable in helping you to learn the alphabet.

# Appendix 5 Answer to Final Example

_sarve bhavantu sukhinaH sarve santu nirAmayAH_.

_sarve bhadrANi pashyantu mA kashchid duHkhabhAgbhavet_ ..

Let everyone be happy; let them be free from illness.

May they experience prosperity and let sorrow not be the lot of anyone.

# Bibliography

1. Transliteration of Devan?gar?, D. Wujastyk, 1996 <http://indology.info/email/members/wujastyk/>. No ISBN.

2. A Practical Sanskrit Introductory, Charles Wikner, 1966. No ISBN.

3. _laghusiddhAntakaumudI –_ The Laws of Grammar: A Short Elucidation, School of Economic Science, 1997. No ISBN.

4. _devavANIpraveshikA –_ An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language, Robert P. Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland, Center for South and Southeast Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 1987. No ISBN.

5. A Sanskrit English Dictionary, M. Monier-Williams, Motilal Banarsidass, 1995. ISBN 81-208-0065-6.

6. Introduction to Sanskrit Part 1, Thomas Egenes, Motilal Banarsidass, 1989. ISBN 978-81-208-1140-9. This is also available electronically at <http://www.scribd.com/doc/32874508/Introduction-to-Sanskrit-by-Thomas-Egenes>.

7. Introduction to Sanskrit Part 2, Thomas Egenes, Motilal Banarsidass, 1999. ISBN 978-81-208-1693-0.

8. Sanskrit Manual: A quick-reference guide to the phonology and grammar of Classical Sanskrit, Roderick S. Bucknell, Motilal Banarsidass, 1994. ISBN 81-208-1188-7.

9. The Student's English-Sanskrit Dictionary, Vaman Shivram Apte, Motilal Banarsidass, 1920. ISBN 81-208-0299-3.

10. A Concise Dictionary of Indian Philosophy: Sanskrit terms defined in English, John Grimes, Indica Books, 2009. ISBN 81-86569-80-4.

11. The Wonder That Is Sanskrit, Sampad and Vijay, Sri Aurobindo Society Pondicherry, 2002. ISBN 1-890206-50-4.

12. Language and Truth: A study of the Sanskrit language and its relationship with principles of truth, Paul Douglas, Shepheard-Walwyn, 2010. ISBN 978-0-85683-271-0.

13. The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot, Faber and Faber, 1944. ISBN 0-571-04994-X.

14. The Bhagavad Gita, Winthrop Sargeant, State Universtity of New York Press, 1994. ISBN 0-87395-830-6.

15. Bhagavad Gita, Nitya Chaitanya Yati, D. K. Printworld (P) Ltd, 1981. ISBN 81-246-0010-4.

16. Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Kailash Nath Kalia, New Age Books, 2008. ISBN 978-81-7822-306-3.

# Index

Note: **bold** page number = main entry;
 _italic_ page number = definition

.h, _18_

~n: Devanagari, **56;** transliterated, **23**

~N: Devanagari, **52;** transliterated, **20**

a: Devanagari, **42;** transliterated, **13**

A: Devanagari, **42;** transliterated, **31**

ach, _103_

_achintya_ , 87

_adhikAra_ , 113

_advaita_ , 34

_aghoSha_ , 114

_aham_ , 14, 40, 52, 78

_ahaMbrahmAsmi_ , **120**

_ahaMkAra_ , 52

ai: Devanagari, **66;** transliterated, **34**

_akaH savarNe dIrghaH, 111_ , 131

_al, 103_

_alpaprANa, 19_

Alphabet: order, 41; table, Devanagari, **79;** table, transliterated, **41**

Alternate letter forms, **179**

_amRRita_ , 122

_antaHkaraNa_ , 37

_antaHstha_ , 38, _74_

_anunAsika, 20_ , 53, 62, 116

_anusvAra, 35_ , 53, **71;** ITRANS

representation of, 72

_anuvRRitti_ , 113

_apauruSheya_ , 40

_ardhachandra_ , **_95_**

_as_ , 78

_asat_ , 121

_aShTAdhyAyi_ , 95, 100

_aShTan_ , 91

_aShTAvakra gItA_ , 31, **128**

aspirated sound, 19

_Atman_ , 31, 131

au: Devanagari, **70;** transliterated, **35**

_audaka_ , 70

aum, **_67_**

_avagraha_ , 96, 116

_avidya_ , 34

_ayamAtmA brahma_ , **120**

_ayogavAha, 71_

b: Devanagari, **63;** transliterated, **29**

_bAdha_ , 63

_bAlaka_ , 72

bh: Devanagari, **64;** transliterated, **29**

Bhagavad Gita, 125, 130, 136

_bhagavadgItA_ , 29

_bhagavat_ , 29, 64

_bhakta_ , 89

_bhavat_ , 129

_bhoktRRi_ , 129

_bhUta_ , 130

_buddha_ , 29

_buddhi_ , 30

capital letters, 17

case (endings of nouns), 105

ch: Devanagari, **54;** transliterated, **21**

Ch: Devanagari, **55;** transliterated, **22**

cha, 131

_chandra-bindu._ , **_94_**

chants, 137

_char_ , 130

_Chid_ , 55

_chidrUpaH_ , 129

_chit_ , 55, 129

complex conjuncts, 87

complex vowels, _65_

compound words, 42, **117**

conjunct consonants, **79, 80**

conjuncts: complex, 87; _h_ , 92;

horizontal, 83; _j~n_ , 88; kt, 89; _sh_ , 90; _Sh_ , 91; special, 88; vertical, 81

Consonant sandhi, **113**

Consonants: cerebral, Devanagari, **57;** cerebral, transliterated, **24;**

conjunct, **79, 80;** _dantya_ , Devanagari, **60;** dental joining with

cerebral, **116;** dental joining with

palatal, **115;** dental, Devanagari, **60;** dental, transliterated, **26;**

guttural, Devanagari, **50;** guttural, transliterated, **18;** _kaNThya_ , Devanagari, **50;** labial, Devanagari, **62;** labial, transliterated, **29;**

_mUrdhanya_ , Devanagari, **57;**

_oShThya_ , Devanagari, **62;** palatal, Devanagari, **54;** palatal, transliterated, **21;** table of basic, transliterated, **30;** table, Devanagari, **65;** _tAlavya_ , Devanagari, **54;** word ending in (sandhi), **114**

creation myth, 10

d: Devanagari, **61;** transliterated, **27**

D: Devanagari, **59;** transliterated, **25**

_Dam_ , 59

_dama_ , 27

_dantya, 60_

_darshanaH_ , 131

_deva_ , 34

_devanAgarI_ , **42** , 61; software for

generating script, 15

Devanagari, _10_

dh: Devanagari, **61;** transliterated, **27**

Dh: Devanagari, **59;** transliterated, **26**

_dhAla_ , 59

_dhana_ , 61

_dharma_ , 27

dhArya, 127

_dhAtu, 104_

_dhUmra_ , 86

Dictionaries, 44, **136**

Dictionary of Spiritual Terms, **150**

_dIrgha, 31_ , 107

Documents in Sanskrit, **136**

_dvaita_ , 34

e: Devanagari, **65;** transliterated, **34**

_ech, 103_

_eche.ayavAyAvaH, 112_

_eka_ , 65

_etatsaMdhi_ , 117

euphony, 109

g: Devanagari, **51;** transliterated, **20**

_gam_ , 121

gauDapAda, 25, 35

gender, 51, **63;** endings of nouns, 105

gh: Devanagari, **52;** transliterated, **20**

_ghoSha_ , 114

_gItA_ , 29, 31

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms, **146**

Grammar Tools, **136**

_guNa_ , 26, **73**

_guru_ , 20, 48, _107_

_GY_ , 24

h: conjuncts, 92; Devanagari, **78;**

transliterated, **40**

H: Devanagari, **72;** transliterated, **36**

_hal, 103_

_halanta, 18, 103_

hard vowels and consonants, 114

Harvard-Kyoto, **174**

_hrasva, 31_

i: Devanagari, **45;** transliterated, **14**

I: Devanagari, **45;** transliterated, **31**

_iko yaNachi, 112_

_IkSh_ , 130

_indriya_ , 127

_indriyArtha_ , 127

Internet Resources, **133**

Isavasya upanishad, 123

_ISha upaniShat_ , 95, 123

_Ishvara_ , 100

_iti_ , 14

ITRANS, 133, **174;** representation of

_anusvAra_ , 72

Itranslator 99, 15, 133

j: Devanagari, **55;** transliterated, **22**

_j~n_ , 88

_j~nAna_ , 24, **88**

_jagat_ , 55

_janakatanayAsnAnapuNyodakan_ , 118

_japa_ , 22

jh: Devanagari, **56;** transliterated, **23**

_jhal_ followed by _khar_ , 116

_jhalA_ , 23, 56

_jhalAM jasho.ante, 114_

_jhalla_ , 23

_jIva_ , 46

Joining words, **108**

_jyotis_ , 122

k: Devanagari, **50;** transliterated, **18**

_kA~nchana_ , 57

_kalpa_ , 76

_kAma_ , 50

_kaNa_ , 59

_kaNThya_ , 25, _50_

_kapIndra_ , 111

_kAra_ , 52

_karma_ , 18, 86

_karmaphalam_ , 29

_kartRRi_ , 129

Katha Upanishad, 58

_kena_ , 66

kh: Devanagari, **51;** transliterated, **19**

_khaga_ , 51

_khari cha, 116_ , 125

_kriyA_ , 47

_kRRita_ , 47

_kSh_ , 91

_kShatriya_ , 91

_kt_ , 89

_kurUttama_ , 112

l: Devanagari, **76;** transliterated, **38**

_laghu_ , 20, 52, _107_

_lak_ , 50

_laya_ , 76

learning Sanskrit, **134**

Letter forms, alternate, **179**

lexicographers (L), _21_

ligatures, **79, 80**

_lIlA_ , 38

Lli: transliterated, **16**

LLi: Devanagari, **47**

LLI: Devanagari, **47**

LLI: transliterated, **32**

m: Devanagari, **64;** transliterated, **30**

M: Devanagari, **71;** transliterated, **35**

_maha_ , 43, 100

_mahAbhUta_ , 48

_mahAprANa, 19_

_maharShi_ , 43, 112

_mahAvAkya_ , 108, **119**

_mahesha_ , 112

_maheshvara_ , 100

_maheshvarANi sUtrANi_ , **_99_**

_mam_ , 121

_manas_ , 30

_mANDUkya_ , 69

Mandukya Upanishad, 25

mAtrA, _31_

_mAtRRikA, 35_ ; table, **74**

_mauna_ , 71

_mAyA_ , 44

_milita_ , 45

_mithyA_ , 83

_mo.anusvAraH, 122_

_mokSha_ , 5, 34, 92

Monier-Williams, 44

mouth position, 16

_moxa_ , 92

_mRRityu_ , 122

_mUrdhanya, 57_

n: Devanagari, **62;** transliterated, **28**

N: Devanagari, **59;** transliterated, **26**

_na_ , 129

_na tvaM deho_ , **128**

_naiva ki~nchitkaromIti_ , **125**

_nAma_ , 28

_nirapekShaH_ , 129

_nirvAna_ , 5

nothing, I do, 125

number (endings of nouns), 105

Numerals, **98**

o: Devanagari, **67;** transliterated, **34**

OM, **_67_**

_oShThya, 62_

p: Devanagari, **62;** transliterated, **29**

_pa~nchadashI_ , 81

_pa~nchami_ , 123

_pANini_ , 100

_pApa_ , 29

_paramAtman_ , 62

_pash_ , 77

Perfect Prayer, **123**

ph: Devanagari, **63;** transliterated, **29**

_phala_ , 63

_phalam_ , 29, 71

_pluta, 33_

_praj~nAnaMbrahma_ , **119**

_pralaya_ , 76

_prANa_ , 84

_prAnava shabda_ , **_67_**

_prAtipadika_ , 105

_pratyAhAra_ , **_103_**

prolonged vowels, 33

pronunciation, 12, **107**

Pronunciation, 5

_pu.N_ , 95

_puNya_ , 29

_pUrNamadaH pUrNamidaM_ , **123**

_pUrNavirAma_ , 96

_putraH_ , 85

r: Devanagari, **75;** in conjunct, 84; in

conjunct with many letters, 87;

transliterated, **38**

_rajas_ , 38

_rAmaShTIkate_ , 116

_rata_ , 75

Resources on the Internet, **133**

Roman, **174**

Rri: transliterated, **15**

RRi: Devanagari, **46**

RRI: Devanagari, **46;** transliterated, **32**

_ru_ , 75

_rU_ , 76

_rUpa_ , 76, 129

s: Devanagari, **78;** transliterated, **40**

_sachchidAnanda_ , 55, 117

_sadA_ , 129

_sadguru_ , 115

_sAdhanA_ , 40

_sAkShin_ , 129

_sama_ , 131

_samAsa, 42_ , **117**

_saMdhi_ , **109**

_saMyoga_ , 72, _87_

_saMyukta_ , 107

_saMyukta svara, 65_

Sandhi: consonant, **113;** _jhal_ letter

followed by _khar_ , **116;** joining a

dental and a cerebral consonant, **116;** joining a dental with a palatal

consonant, **115;** second word

beginning with nasal, **116;** vowel, **111;** word ending in _jhal_ , **114**

Sanskrit Terms, **138**

_sarva_ , 130

_sarvabhUtasthamAtmAnaM_ , **130**

_sarvatra_ , 131

_sat_ , 78, 121

_sat + chit_ , 117

_savarNa, 111_

_schlavana_ , 90

_schnathita_ , 90

School of Economic Science, 12

Semi-vowels: Devanagari, **74;**

transliterated, **37**

SES, 12

sh: conjuncts, 90; Devanagari, **77;**

transliterated, **39**

Sh: conjuncts, 91; Devanagari, **77;**

transliterated, **40**

sha~Nkara, 25, 83

_shaiva_ , 66

_shal, 103_

_shar, 103_

_ShaSh_ , 77

_shchu.N, 115_

_shivasUtrANi_ , 99

_shruti_ , 39, 90

_ShTuna ShTuH, 116_

_shvetAmbara_ , 90

_shyAma_ , 90

Sibilants: Devanagari, **77;**

transliterated, **39**

soft vowels and consonants, 114

_sparsha, 49_

Special Characters, **94**

special conjuncts, 88

_stha_ , 130

_sthA_ , 104

_sthita_ , 27

_stoH shchunA shchuH, 115_

Stress, **107**

_stu.N, 115_

sublation, 63

_sukha_ , 130

_sUtra_ , 32

svara, 13

t: Devanagari, **60;** transliterated, **26**

T: Devanagari, **57;** transliterated, **24**

_Tagara_ , 58

_tAlavya, 54_

_tamas_ , 122

_tat_ , 26, 60

_tattvamasi_ , 108, **120**

_tattvavid_ , 125

th: Devanagari, **60;** transliterated, **27**

Th: Devanagari, **58;** transliterated, **25**

_thUthU_ , 60

Transliteration, 6; ITRANS vs

Romanised, 11

Transliteration Schemes, **174**

_tu.N_ , 95, **_115_**

u: Devanagari, **48;** transliterated, **16**

U: Devanagari, **48;** transliterated, **32**

unvoiced vowels and consonants, 114

Upanishads, 136

_UShman_ , 39, 40, _74_

v: Devanagari, **77;** transliterated, **38**

_vA_ , 129

_vartante_ , 127

_vedAnta_ , 39, 123

vedic anusvAra, **95**

Vedic Prayers, **120**

Vedic pronunciation, 95

Velthuis, **174**

_vidya_ , 34

_virAma, 18_ , 50, 77

_visarga, 36_ , **72**

_viShaya_ , 77

voiced vowels and consonants, 114

Vowel forms, **180**

Vowels: basic, Devanagari, **42;** basic, transliterated, **13;** coalescence of

dissimilar, **112;** coalescence of

similar, **111;** coalescence when first

vowel complex, **112;** complex, Devanagari, **65;** complex, transliterated, **33;** long, transliterated, **31;** pluta, **33;** sandhi, **111**

_vRRiddhi_ , **73**

_vRRit_ , 127

_vya~njana, 17, 49_ , 112

Words, formation of, **104**

Writing, **182**

y: Devanagari, **75;** transliterated, **38**

_yaN, 103_

_yar_ , 116

_yaro.anunAsike.anunAsiko vA, 116_

_yoga_ , 38, 70

_yogavAha, 71_

_yogayukta_ , 131

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