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Sanskrit Language Study
concentrate on learning to "think them” in the Sanskrit verse order, checking the construal with the accompanying translation. Time spent on this is likely to be more productive in learning to read Sanskrit than the same time spent on using the dictionary. As to Annie Besant's translation, it should be recalled that it passed through the hands of some of the best pandits of Benares: Pramada Das Mitra, Ganganatha Jha, Kali Charan Mitra, Upendranath Basu, and lastly Bhagavan Das. Thus, while it makes no claims to be literally accurate like Franklin Edgerton's translation, to characterize it as “unreliable," as done by some scholars and even other Theosophists, is mere blind prejudice.
Simplified Sanskrit Grammars
A Sanskrit Grammar for Students, by Arthur A. Macdonell. 1st ed. 1901; 2nd ed. 1911; 3rd ed. 1927; reprint of 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950, etc.; reprint of 3rd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1974, etc. A Concise Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language, by Jan Gonda, translated from the German by Gordon B. Ford, Jr. (of Kurze Elementar-Grammatik der Sanskrit-Sprache, 4th ed., Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1963). University, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1966, etc.
Macdonell's Sanskrit Grammar for Students was written to eliminate what the author had found to be unessential in an elementary grammar. “It was also partly due to my conviction that the existing Sanskrit grammars, being too much dominated by the system of Pāṇini, rendered Sanskrit unnecessarily hard to learn. ... the native Indian system is incompatible with the practical methods of teaching and learning in the West. ... All such matter has been eliminated in the present work, not from any prejudice against the Indian grammarians, but solely with the intention of facilitating the study of the subject by supplying only such grammatical data of the actual language as have been noted by scholars down to the present time. Vedic forms have also been excluded. ... I made it my guiding principle to leave out all matter that is found exclusively in Vedic literature or in the Hindu grammarians, the aim I had in view being to describe
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