Customer Reviews

Introduction to Sanskrit, Part 1

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If you're interested in the Sanskrit language, whether for linguistic or philosophical reasons, this is the book you should start with.

It introduces the script and the grammar in slow, gentle steps. After about 7 lessons, you ease into the different kinds of external sandhi (sound changes and assimilations from one word to another). By the end of the first volume, you've learned a suprising amount: most of the major declensions, and been introduced to the verb, and the principles of compound formation.
Every lesson has plenty of exercises, both English to Sanskrit and vice versa, to test your comprehension and to give you practice. The answers to the exercises are given in the back of the book.

Just a great, great introduction to the language. After finishing Book I, you can continue with his Book II, or pick up, with confidence, any of the standard academic introductions - Maurer, Goldman and Sutherland, Deshpande, even (gasp!) Coulson.

I wish every ancient language had an introductory book like this.

Egenes' book is excellent as a pre-primer. It presents enough information in its 18 lessons to give the beginning Sanskritist a firm foundation for progressing to a more difficult Sanskrit primer.

Covered are the basic uses of Classical Sanskrit's 8 cases; paradigms for 9 nominal declensions; a small list of verbs showing present, imperfect, future, and gerund forms; tables for external sandhi, and coverage of two internal sandhi rules.

The introduction to the Devanagari script is excellent. It goes beyond other primers and shows you how to actually write the characters. Plus, the text is large and very easy to read.

It is well-worth the price.

I think I have looked at most of the available Sanskrit introductory books - Coulson, Goldberg, Apte, Rapid sanskrit method, etc, first as a student and now as a teacher. Egenes is the best that I have seen. It is clear, simple, well thought out. It uses English grammatical terms. The exercises are good, and the answers are at the back if you need them. The devanagari is big and clear.

My only reservations are that in the earlier edition, Egenes uses the nom. masc. singular ending -s, then has to explain it away a few chapters later.

If you are learning or teaching Sanskrit, this is definietly the best choice.

This was an excellent introductory book on Sanskrit. It was obviously written by someone experienced in teaching Sanskrit, and sensitive to student input. It was easy to follow and repetitive enough to give the beginning student a certain sense of mastery as each new piece of information would build on the last. I highly recommend it for any beginning student who may have found the Colson text entirely too overwhelming and confusing.

This book is wonderful. The chapters are manageable enough for me to do one a day, and there is a considerable amount of vocab introduced for a pre-primer. If you want to learn Sanskrit, this is the book to get!

Originally I had picked up Coulson's intro sanskrit book. I found it very difficult to understand, and as a result I gave up on learning Sanskrit. When I received Engenes book, I felt releived and motivated because it was so clear and simple. When your learning a new language, it is important to keep things simple and to work in baby steps. Engens book is simple and clear!

Don't look any further. There are two alternatives: the book by Coulson Teach Yourself Sanskrit Complete Course (Teach Yourself) (it is uncompromising towards beginners, just look at the reviews) and the one by Deshpande that I don't know much about Samskrta-Subodhini: A Sanskrit Primer (Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia). The book by Egenes is really the best you can get. It presents a very gentle way of learning the principles of a difficult language.

The first problematic thing about Sanskrit is that is uses a script that, although beautiful if you have an eye for it, is fiendishly complex. An ordinary person could be up and going into Greek after spending an afternoon on the Greek script. Learning Sanskrit is different. You need at least a week or more. Egenes solves this by starting with Latin script and gradually introducing the Devanagari script. After seven lessons you have mastered the script and learned a lot of Sanskrit along the way.

The second problem is sandhi. In Sanskrit the pronunciation of words in a sentence is different from the pronunciation of the words standing on their own. This is regulated in the sandhi rules. The sandhi rules tell you how to pronounce all the combinations of all the possible word endings with all the possible word beginnings. The problem is that all these sandhis have to be written out. After working through the next eleven chapters you know these rules and how to apply them and you feel confident enough to start reading (for instance) a well annotated edition of the Bhagavad Gita (like Winthrop Sargeants' one, The Bhagavad Gita (Suny Series in Cultural Perspectives)).

After this you can go on to book two or maybe to Coulson.

I bought this book a few months ago. I have found it to be very clear and well organized. I'm enjoying learing Sanskrit very much. I also bought Coulson's book and I am a bit confused as to the differences in the devanagari scripts used in the books. Both claim to be teaching Classical Sanskrit so I don't understand why there are such huge variations. I've tried to find explanation for this on the Internet and other places, but I can't seem to find one.

I fully agree with those reviewers that say this is the book to start with. Sanskrit can be a complicated language to learn because it has many parts to it - verb endings, tenses, moods, etc. and noun endings, word order, and of course, the devanagari script. However, Thomas Egenes in his two books has put together an introduction to this wonderful language that takes the student in small steps and without overwhelming them with the material or complexity. Each lesson is kept simple in its presentation of the material. The student will have success from the first lesson on, and will be translating with ease. All languages should be taught this way! If you have ever wanted to learn something about sanskrit but have put it off because it looks too complicated, wait no longer - anyone can learn sanskrit using Egenes' books. Even if you have floundered in another foreign language, you can do this!

I adore languages and am always looking for books that will allow me to learn a language without having a teacher available. After reading the reviews for this book I decided to purchase it. I am amazed at how wonderful it has been. I have only just started but with no experience at all in Sanskrit I am learning quickly and honestly I believe that I will retain the knowledge that I am learning.

I recommend this book to anyone who has even considered learning Sanskrit.