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RELG 299 2008--2009 WLU
Elementary Sanskrit
Sanskrit, a sister language to Greek and Latin and 'aunt' to most of the languages of Europe, is the most ancient classical language of India. Most of the major Hindu and Buddhist religious and philosophical works were composed in it, including the Rig-Veda, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics, the codes of Dharma, methods of yoga and meditation, the Buddhist canon (except for that of the Theravada), the Jataka tales, etc. The Sanskrit literature also includes lyric poetry, drama, fables, and treatises of poetics, logic, political theory, law, various exact sciences, and even the erotic arts. The discovery by Western scholars of the remarkably systematic ancient grammar of Panini (5th or 4th c. BC) led to the development of the modern science of linguistics.
The elementary course will present all the basic grammar of the language over the course of the year. From the very first day, students will begin reading. Simple spoken Sanskrit will be used to perform grammatical and semantic analysis in the traditional way. The course will also discuss the role of Sanskrit in religious history and in Indian society up to the present.
There are no formal prerequisites, although prior study of another language is very helpful. Meeting times to be arranged.
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 Sanskrit written in two different scripts:
Sharada (from Kashmir in the north) and Grantha (from Tamil Nadu in the south).
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On-Line Sanskrit Resources:
SanskritPradipika ("The Little Lamp of Sanskrit") - a downloadable e-tutor
Although instruction in Sanskrit was not part of the curriculum at Washington and Lee University until I first taught it here in 1999, I am not the first Sanskritist on the faculty. A century earlier, from 1893 to 1899, Edwin Whitfield FAY, a student of Maurice BLOOMFIELD's at Johns Hopkins University and author of The Treatment of Rig-Veda Mantras in the Grhya Sutras (1899), taught here as professor of Latin before moving to a post at the University of Texas, Austin. Fay ensured that the W&L library acquired a number of works on Sanskrit and Indic philology, including a copy of his mentor's now rare 1901 facsimile edition of the unique Sharada manuscript of the Paippalada version of the Atharva-Veda, The Kashmirian Atharva-veda (school of the Paippaladas). By a happy coincidence, my own work partly follows in the footsteps of Fay's 1899 book. For more information on Fay, see: http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/FF/ffa17.html Even before, Sanskrit may have had a presence here. I have been informed that Rev. George JUNKIN (1790-1868), president (1848-1861) of Washington College, as it was then called, and father-in-law of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, is said to have taught Sanskrit in the evenings, outside of the regular curriculum. For more information on Junkin, see: http://www.frontierfamilies.net/family/junkin/family/C7GJ.htm or http://www.geneabios.com/lafayette/junking.htm or http://www.lib.muohio.edu/my/miamiyearsVI.html
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A Note on Sanskrit at Washington and Lee