[Advaita-l] Need information on learning Vedas online

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

I'm a supporter of samskrta bharathi. The volunteers stay at our place in India. I think scholars should improve their methods rather than criticise samskrta bharathi. Also, traditional scholars should be open to criticism from scholars such as Dr. Bhardwaj, whose intention is right.

Even if I heard it wrongly due to inattention, I will be able to correct it my self if I knew the roots and derivation. Is that not right? We can also develop spelling and grammar checkers as we have for English. You may have noticed the errors in my sanskrit mail to Mani Dravid Sastrigal and Lance. I had to use Sanskrit as it is the only common language between them. Let's understand why I got it wrong? a. I'm of low intelligence or b. negligent or c. it genuinely takes hard work to get sanskrit right or d. we don't have the right tools. I think it is the last. 

Scholars also need to understand rules and apply them correctly to create new words. How do we really talk about fracking, chocolates, boson, iPad, scooter etc. If I have to say scooteryanam, its weird. 
 

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

-----Original Message-----
From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 14:56:43 
To: Rajaram Venkataramani<rajaramvenk at gmail.com>; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Need information on learning Vedas online

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 1:48 PM, <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

> I went to Samskrta Bharathi's kshibhiram for a few days and it is very
> good pedagogy. My parents completed up to Kovida and speak, read and write
> fluently. My mother taught me to speak family matters in just one week flat.
>

It is not the mistake of Samskrita Bharati if you have not even got the
name of the course you attended right :-) It is 'shibiram' and not the
word/spelling you have invented.  If you did not care to even put that much
effort how can you fault the institution and their method?  I was awestruck
to hear a homemaker, a Tamilian, address us in fluent Sanskrit at the end
of the ten-day course.  She reported to us how she saw the Ad for the
course a year ago in the newspaper, joined the course and was deeply
impressed and started speaking at home with her three year old daughter and
husband.  To my knowledge she did not take up advanced courses.  She stands
as a model for others to emulate since SB invited her to address us.  I
urged upon her to post her talk on the YouTube so that many can get
influenced.

As Ajit said in his last (latest) post, most people do not move forward.
In my own case, even if I did not go the paNini-text learning way, the
two-year course of SB was of immense use.  I had the opportunity to pursue
the Vedanta bhAShya-s and texts and the SB course contributed to the
understanding.  As it is the case with acquiring skills in any discipline,
here too the student's effort in exploring newer opportunities to express
himself in Sanskrit is a must.  He should try writing, speaking in whatever
ways possible and learn that way.

Coming to getting expertise I have seen scholars trained and teaching
grammar for decades too use certain prayoga-s cautiously, often checking
with others in the audience openly if their usage is 'sAdhu'.  I have
reported here earlier that the Sringeri Jagadguru has corrected the usages
of such scholars who come to make presentations.  Just like any other
discipline, senior scholars disagree among themselves about certain usages
and the application of the pANinian rules.  Perfection is a lifelong effort
and not easily achieved.

regards
subrahmanian.v



> But one of my friends who is a paninian expert thrashed my confidence in
> speaking and  termed it as "prakrtam". I didn't pursue samskrta bharathi
> further because he convinced me that I will have to unlearn a lot.  My
> parents are of the view that I am at a loss because of that.
>
> My friend's view is that sanskrtam is a created language and therefore we
> should first learn panini. We should learn usage only as an example of
> paninian sutras.  Couple of friends are teaching through texts such as BhG,
> Ramayana etc. All these
>
> IMO, scholars should come together to support samskrta  bharathi
> correcting any flaws they may have.
>