Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Sanskrit Complete Course (Teach Yourself Language)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

i read the reviews and then purchased this book, and so far i'm extremely happy with it. but i'm perhaps close to the "ideal" audience for the book -- i have experience with latin and linguistics. [in fact, i very much appreciate the linguistic explanations, which annoyed another reviewer so much, as it has helped me make sense of a lot of otherwise very confusing aspects of sanskrit. if you don't like the info, you can always ignore it.]

you have to know how to use a book like this. it's dense and assumes some general linguistic knowledge, so you may need to skip back and forth as particular aspects become clear. [the author in fact expects you to do this -- in order to keep related info together, he often includes advanced info, denoted with parentheses, that you are not expected to tackle until you handle later chapters.] you definitely need to keep referring to grammatical and sandhi tables. but the fact is, sanskrit is *not* an easy language by any means. if you haven't already learned another language, you really shouldn't be starting with sanskrit. this book does a remarkably good job of covering the essentials of sanksrit given its size -- something that would not be possible if it had to spend a lot of time on detailed explanations of basic linguistic concepts.

imo, this book does a lot of things right:

[1] it does not force devanagari down your throat. i have nothing against devanagari, but having to learn even a simple language while dealing with an unfamiliar alphabet makes it orders of magnitude more difficult. i speak from abundant experience here. e.g. recently i also tried tackling ancient greek, and soon gave up because of this -- and the greek alphabet is far easier than devanagari. [for one, you're already familiar with it; and it lacks the complex ligatures and variant letter shapes of devanagari.]

[2] the explanations are clear and concise, but do not omit essential details in a misguided attempt to "simplify" aspects of grammar that are inherently complex.

[3] compounds and sandhi forms are carefully analyzed into their components. [one reviewer actually complained about this; but imo it's far better to have this info and not want it than vice-versa -- you can always ignore the extra diacritics.]

[4] there are many useful tables.

my main complaints are [1] the cheap binding; [2] i'd like more reading passages, not just sentences; [3] i'd like to see more systematic presentation of vocabulary, esp. in groups of related items -- basic adjectives [good/bad, big/small, etc.]; basic verbs; kinship terms; the 100/200/500 most common vocabulary items by frequency; etc. [unfortunately, very few language books of any sort do this well, and i simply don't understand why.]

Although Coulson's 'Teach Yourself Sanskrit' is, in many ways, an excellent and extremely thorough textbook, it is hardly suited to the average beginner. Most of us are drawn to Sanskrit because of a prior interest in The Bhagavad Gita, The Upanishads, The Mahabharata, The Ramayana, even The Hitopadesa. Coulson, however, has chosen - perversely it seems to me - to draw all of his examples from Sanskrit drama, a branch of Sanskrit literature which is of minimal interest to most readers. Even worse, he seems to have designed the book primarily for exceptionally gifted students, and for those who are already competent in an ancient inflected language such as Latin or Greek. His procedure, in other words, betrays an elitist attitude that has resulted in a book which, rather than teaching anyone Sanskrit, is far more likely to put them off for life. I gave up in despair about halfway through the book, and so have many others.

This is a pity, as Sanskrit is an exceptionally beautiful language, but there is a remedy at hand. Instead of wasting one's time with Coulson, the beginner would be far better off acquiring a copy of Thomas Egenes Introduction to Sanskrit, Part 1 and, once having worked through that and to practise your reading, his Introduction to Sanskrit, Part 2. Almost all introductory treatments of Sanskrit have been produced for linguists and philologists, but here finally is a truly practical and useful primer of Sanskrit for ordinary folks and human beings. After working one's way through it (and finding out why India really loves its sacred literature, epics, and wisdom stories), Coulson might be tackled with profit ... but not before.

Another possibility newcomers to Sanskrit might consider is Charles Wikner's 'A Practical Sanskrit Introductory' (1996).

This is an extremely useful 146-page Sanskrit tutorial in 15 lessons which, besides teaching Sanskrit pronunciation, Devanagari, and some basic principles, has also been designed, as Wikner says, "to lift the English-speaking student who knows nothing of Sanskrit to the level where he can intelligently [use] Monier-Williams' A Sanskrit-English Dictionary."

He explains that Lessons 12-14 "penetrate Monier-Williams' dictionary through its four levels of alphabetical order, and suggest strategies for finding difficult words." After studying these three lessons, users should have no further difficulty with the dictionary; in fact, it will become a real pleasure to use.

The author has generously made his book freely available and it can be downloaded from: http://sanskritdocuments.org/learning_tutorial_wikner/index.html

Coulson's text is a nightmare to use if you don't already know some Sanskrit. I highly suggest starting off with Thomas Egenes "Introduction to Sanskrit, Part I." Egenes text consists of 18 concise but simple lessons which provide one with a foundation in basic Sanskrit for building upon with more a thorough text. (In fact, Egenes states that his text is a "pre-primer;" I have to say, it is a most excellent one.) Coulson's text becomes much easier to comprehend.

I also recommend taking a look at Devavanipravesika, the text used by Berkeley for its Sanskrit course. It is very thorough and not as difficult as Coulson's.

Teach Yourself Sanskrit by Michael Coulson is, in my opinion, a thoroughly excellent method to learn sanskrit. From the beginning of the book to the end, information was presented in a straightforward manner and provided relevant information about Indo-European history and linguistics. The biggest problems that I had with this book was the sheer amount of information presented per unit: in order to complete the exercises, one must first spent quite a long time with the material contained within that respecive unit. This book is not for everyone, however, as it assumes that its students already will have quite a large background in linguistics. Its language and method of presentation would be, I think, unintelligable without prior studies in Latin or Ancient Greek. Altogether, this book is an excellent book if you are already moderately accomplished in this or related fields. It is definitely not for the beginner.

I have a real love-hate relationship with this book. On the positive side, it is a pleasure to appreciate Coulson's obvious love for the language and its esthetics: just read his Introduction and groove on his lusty and generous enthusiasm. Also note the fullness with which he covers (in Chapter 15) two very essential topics which are usually omitted from primers: how to use Sanskrit commentaries, and how to recite and enjoy Sanskrit verse (with examples of the different meters). All this is wonderful and removed lots of scales from my eyes.

The negatives, and they're major, are: (1) he constantly and infuriatingly interrupts his task of language teaching in order to go on disquistions about conparative indo-european phonetics and other linguistic issues; (2) he not only transliterates everything, making it much too easy for the student to be lazy about learning the script, but incredibly he stops using the script altogether, halfway through the book, relying on transliteration alone; (3) most unconscionably, he unnecessarily enhances the reputation of Sanskrit as a difficult language by (a) using a convoluted system of diacritics and punctuation in order to analyze compounds to death, and (b) making incredible statements like "The devanagari script is complicated, and most students need several weeks, even months, to read it with complete fluency." Bless your heart, the script is quite regular and logical, and every Sanskrit student I've talked to finds it quite simple once it's tackled.

It's a real pleasure to note Coulson's devotion to Sanskrit drama. He's absolutely right when he says the drama is attractive and accessible. But why in sam hill does he have to draw ALL THE SENTENCES IN HIS EXCERCISES verbatim from the drama, and delay treating the past tenses until the final chapter just because his beloved Sanskrit drama doesn't use them much? What if the student is more interested in Sanskrit epic, in which those tenses are used all the time? Without doubt, Sanskrit students need a lot more training in the past tenses than they get from Coulson.

Want my advice? Xerox Coulson's introduction, his sandhi grids, and his chapter on commentaries and verse forms, and use them with a straightforward, un-eccentric text like that of Walter Harding Maurer.

I'll state the most important fact first: Sanskrit is NOT an easy language. Coulson notes this in his introduction by clarifying the differences among "living", "dead", and "learned" languages and by stating that Sanskrit belongs in this last category.

The Coulson grammar was the first grammar I purchased, and I still find it to be a well-written introductory grammar (emphasis on Introductory!) True, the book does have its faults; but the same criticism can be leveled at any textbook. For those experiencing difficulty with the Devanagari script, there are excellent writing primers for learning just the script. Some of these primers also that explain idiosyncracies (like variant letter forms). For those students exasperated at the density of material, I suggest moving more slowly through the difficult sections: furthermore, one is not prohibited from re-reading (several times, if necessary) particularly intractable sections. Learning Sanskrit in a self-teaching course is not an Olympic time-trial; patience and hard work will open these things to our understanding.

Finally, if you still find the going difficult, set the material aside for consideration or find another primer: Coulson's paedagogical technique is his own and will not work for everyone.

Om mani padme hum.

This book is not meant for anybody to learn Sanskrit. It covers too many topics in too few pages. To make matters worse, quality of paper used in this book is really bad. Also, binding of the book is that of a cheap thriller and it is really hard to keep it open while reading.

One good thing about this book is that, all Exercises have their Solutions, and in my knowledge Egenes's "Introduction to Sanskrit" is the only other book on Introductory Sanskrit which provides the key to exercises.

If someone wants an inexpensive book to learn Sanskrit, one can get Charles Wikner's book "Sanskrit Introductory" available as a free download. Although it does not cover all the material in an introductory Sanskrit course, it is better than this book to get started.

I gave this book a try and didn't get anywhere. Maybe ok if you've good a background in classical languages or Indian tongues. The printing quality is poor and makes reading more difficult. I would urge anyone interested in the language, particularly those working alone, to spend the money on Walter H. Maurer's texts. Much more support for the newcomer, clear text, excellent reading exercises, and a support text with all paradigms and other assorted good things.

I am sure this book serves a very good purpose (Academic research etc).

However it is not for a layman trying to learn Sanskrit.

An Appreciation Without Apprehension by Bharat S. Shah is such a nice book for an absolute beginner.

Among things that I don't like in this book are that the Author does not use devanagri scrip uniformly throughout the book. It would be nice to read it in the script in which the language is actually written.

However, Sanskrit resources are not that easily available and I have certainly learned some valuable things from this book. So this is a good book to have in your library. Just know that this is a very technical book (and when I say technical, I really mean it). Unless you are in langage research, you will find this book hard to decipher.

But there are sections that are helpful. Its a good addition to collect. Just not a book for laymen trying to learn Sanskrit.

There are other grammar books which are targeted towards beginners and might be more relevant.

Not for beginners. I'm writing this review only now because I've finally gotten around to looking for a better introduction to Sanskrit. I've tackled this book several times over the past few years only to find myself hopelessly bogged down about a third of the way through and I've learned to read German, Russian, Latin and Classical Greek without much difficulty! I find myself escaping to the appendix of grammatical paradigms where pure memorization seems like a relief! If you haven't studied a morhologically complex Indo-European language, preferably Classical Greek, definitely forget this book till you've acquired some mastery of basic Sanskrit. If you have, then the first fourth of the book should be easy enough but soon after it's as if the author were writing the last part of a book some three or four times longer than Teach Yourself Sanskrit. Coulson seems to take especial delight in the language's affinity for creating long compounds though a real feel for how to interpret these probably can only come gradually after considerable reading of simpler Sanskrit. The phenomenon of sandhi should probably only be described and then ignored (sandhi resolved) for beginners but Coulson seems to be completely oblivious as to how daunting this phenomenon is for beginners. After the first few chapters most examples of syntactical features are illustrated using sentences from more difficult literature. To follow these examples and do the exercises a huge vocabulary must be memorized and Coulson, incredibly, doesn't include any information on the sense of the numerous adverbially derived prefixes that play the most fundamental role in Sanskrit word formation. Without this information building a Sanskrit vocabulary is well nigh hopeless. The treatment of the verbal system is ridiculously brief and, if you haven't studied the roughly similar system of Greek, I can't imagine that Coulson's glance at it could make any sense. This whole book simply doesn't make sense. It's as though the author tried to cram three or four books of equal length to this one in the last two-thirds of this one. As a friend of Kant's said of the Critique Of Pure Reason - it wouldn't be so difficult if it weren't so short. A worthwhile puchase, elegantly written by the way, but only after the student of this difficult language has mastered the basics and read a bit of the simpler literature.