At the end of a Long Sanskritic Journey

Almost there, grammar in hand, one is ready to leap from the nest, and a vast ocean of writings, of ideas, awaits.

This is a lovely poem really, full of twists and turns, plot twists, and many clever yamaka rhymes.

The Ghaṭakarpara will surely help you break out of grammatical analysis unto a free flowing comfortable reading.

To arrive at the fundamental level of just reading a Sanskrit book at ease, many secondary barriers have been put in the background. Afterwards, when one feels comfortable, the original form is available to read.

A lexicon and concordance is herein provided. One might see therein a bit of scientific process. How one might, as a working Sanskritist, proceed to analyze a text.

External sandhi has been placed as a superscript above the words. The information is not lost. One can practice reconstructing the sandhi forms. For surely that is what awaits, but it belongs really to spoken speech.

This version of the Ghaṭakarpara is a ’critical’ edition, using three sources of original manuscript. This is a most important process, and one of the main occupations of Sanskritists. To clean up centuries of errors and interpolations puts the document on a scientific foundation, ready for all future reference. Each critical edition saves a document from obscurity, preserving it basically for all time forward.

Metre is often neglected, but is actually important when reading most of Sanskrit. Each verse is shown here with its metric form. There are two systems of notation for metre, so both are shown. Often Europeans describe metres based on the two other classical languages of Indoeuropean, Latin and Greek. A reference chart is provided here to compare the terms to our Sanskrit ones, though the text will not use them.

The days of a lone scholar sitting in a library turning dictionary pages are over. We have vast resources accessible by computers. The digital tools of a Sanskritist are immense and powerful. A set of reference links are provided here, though the field is ever growing more vast.

One can use this website, either alone for self study, or as a course work of about one semester duration.

Well, enjoy the reading then, and its cast of characters: an estranged couple in love, and a lonely cloud. Poets do so like to write of “love in separation”, for perhaps it is the most pristine form. Please do find also the humor, of which this writing abounds, for it is not a serious endeavor, but rather to show a skill at Yamaka. The author is considered unknown, but there is a hidden reference, of which I will leave it a mystery for each of you to discover. The commentary is attributed to another poet named Amaru, who writes in a prose style that one should also practice to read. Prose text will make one a well balanced reader of Sanskrit, and also give a closer glimpse of the possibilities for a spoken form of the language.

Best wishes then to all.

Please do contact at the website: taracandra@taracandra.org