The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit

Purchased this to accompany a course taught by the author. Reading first few chapters it looks like a great systematic teaching with lots of printable online resources and exercises in the book.

Awesome book for beginners who want to learn sanskrit, you can even email the author with your questions and she replies!

An introductory yet scholarly book. I am not qualified to comment on it, but to me it appeared as a concise but comprehensive text book. I am happy about the purchase.

Worth buying

It’s a well printed book but not well structured. Not suitable for self study. Not recommended.

Not for Indians.

Sanskrit has been taught like other western languages... Sanskrit has been westernized😄 Doesn't sound like authentic संस्कृत. Not meant for Indian knowledge like yoga, nruthya and music

Devanagari を読める・学ぶ予定がある方に向けられたものです。 当面 alphabet 表記で済ませようと思っている自分には不向きでした。

Pedagogisk lärobok med bra övningar efter varje kapitel, tillsammans med videos på YouTube väldigt bra.

Great for beginner to intermediate students. I have worked through the book with quite good results. It has many positives, a few negatives. The greatest strength of the text is its insightful presentation of the grammatical structure of sanskrit, and the reasons behind this structure. It fills a gap in presenting grammar in a modern way. Though it gives a good concise understanding of the structure of sanskrit, sanskrit has really really complex grammar, and just reading it over is not enough to master it. For average students like me, Thomas Eugenes I is more digestible in the beginning and gives a better guide to writing devanagari, so this is a better choice for raw beginners. Eugenes II becomes a bit more pressured and unravels towards the end, so at this point Ruppel is probably a better choice. But occasional passages in Ruppel are difficult to digest, and there are a lack of simple examples. Despite claims for self teaching, Coulson, Eugenes, and Ruppel were all designed around university academic years, rather than around simple digestible learning steps. The exercises have two problems. Firstly there is an absence of drills, so there is no solid reinforcement. Secondly there are no answers to the exercises. The readings given are stimulating and fairly advanced, but she likes you to play a guessing game. This is stimulating but difficult and there aren't any translations. I understand that there are answers to the questions if you know where to look or if you seek the right connections online. Beyond this beginner-intermediate level the next step is to start reading original texts. For this there is a Ruppel reader. Again there are guessing games, but fortunately a full vocabulary for the reader can be found online via her websites, and the reader is truly great in helping the extremely difficult transition from text book to understanding texts.

हरिः ॐ As an autodidact, I've been studying Sanskrit for about 4.5 years now. I purchased this book because I want to start reviewing previous chapters with new vocabulary (in order to keep advancing), and because whenever I check for a grammar concept online (in order to expand it to fully internalize it), the excerpts that pop up contain very approachable explanations. I can only say that this course-book is the perfect compliment for my Sanskrit für Anfänger Course-book (by Heidelberg's Prof. Thomas Lehmann). As I've continued to study this wonderful language that is मम प्रियं संस्कृतम् through this marvelous book, I can only find its content very accessible and helpful. I've been looking for a book like this for four years now and I never found one. Other courses were simply not appealing: Many of the expensive course-books I checked back then only offered a few lessons per course-book with very limited/lacking explanations. Making money seemed more important than teaching. This course-book offers 40 chapters, which is around 3-4.5 years of study. It has a lot of exercises. If you're interested in India's ancient sacred teachings, and that's mainly why you're learning Sanskrit, you can read excerpts of the Bhagavad Gītā, the Mahābhārata, etc. right from the beginning (Chapter 2, page 23) which is an amazing treat for every Sanskrit student. A final note: You can't "learn Sanskrit fast". I know of Sanskrititians who have been learning Sanskrit for 15 years. Once you start learning Sanskrit, the more you learn, the more you'll realize how little you know. The more reverence and humility you will feel when approaching each lesson. Sanskrit's grammar is as vast as a shore; each grain of sand is a concept, an explanation, a declination. It takes time to pick them all. But the journey is totally worth it. Anyway. May Lord Gaṇeśa bestow one-pointed concentration on you. May Mātā Sarasvatī bless your studying endeavors. May you unite with The Absolute. ॐ नमः शिवाय ॐ

This is the text we are using in our introductory Sanskrit class, so far it's been very good. It covers everything in a mostly accessible way, and has a lot of very useful tables in the back with various paradigms, summaries of sandhi, and consonant conjuncts which make a convenient reference. The majority of the grammar is explained very clearly even for people who have no background in ancient languages, and there are interesting and useful notes on stylistics which help prepare for translating. The only real criticisms are that in the actual main body of the text, the author sometimes seems a little reluctant to show things in a "visual" way using too many tables or diagrams, and instead tries to focus on explaining it through prose. Unfortunately some of these topics are just easier to see than to write about, and so some of the written explanations end up being quite long and unnecessarily confusing as a result! Additionally while there are a lot of short exercises and drills, but so far as we have been using it maybe not quite so much in the way of longer passages for translation. As a mainly language focused (as opposed to readings) introduction though, this is fine. You just may need to find some collection of readings to practice translations with separately (and I understand the author might be developing a readings book to go along with this one anyway!). Overall, I've liked using this book a lot, especially as a lot of the alternatives are quite old and are beginning to show it! This is a nicely laid out, modern textbook, and the layout and typesetting being clear and modern help keep the focus where it should be, the language and grammar! My only other complaint is that the hardback version costs so much - I use it constantly so my paperback cover is getting a little worn where I'm always holding it while flicking through!