[Advaita-l] Learning Sanskrit

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>namaste...
>
>   dear sri vidyasankarji and other list members,
>
>   i would like to request you to kindly suggest the best way forward for
>   a self-study of sanskrit. the purpose is primarily to be able to read
>   our scriptures in general and shankara in particular, in original.
>
>   i have practically no knowledge of the language but has a rather
>   good familiarity with the vocabulary from my mother tongue and also
>   quite at home with devanagari.
>
>   i have recently actually embarked on this self-study using the CBSE
>   sanskrit textbooks and guides starting from Class V and working
>   my way slowly up. Is this the best way?

I would second Jaldhar's suggestion to try to translate well-known texts 
with the help of a dictionary and a grammar text book. Apte's collegiate 
Sanskrit-English dictionary will be good to start with for the vocabulary 
and any of the textbooks you are using will be good to help with the 
grammar. To the CBSE textbooks, I would add the Saral Sanskrit Sikshak set 
of textbooks from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan.

Best regards,
Vidyasankar

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