Sanskrit

I’m starting to study Sanskrit (in the Eastern Classics graduate program at St. John’s College, Santa Fe) and was told earlier this month to learn the Devanagari script (including a bunch of the more common or irregular conjuncts) and to complete the first five lessons of the Killingley text before our first meeting next week.  While doing that, I re-discovered Mac OS X’s implementation of international keyboard layouts, and marveled at its Devanagari functionality.  Skip the next paragraph if you’re not interested in that.

(In Leopard, go to Apple Menu >> System Preferences. Click “International”. Click “Input Menu”. On the bottom, check “Show input menu in menu bar”. Check “Keyboard Viewer” (it can come in handy) and any character sets you want. In this case, check one of the Devanagari options, I recommend “Devanagari – QWERTY” for the intuitive layout. If you want to do Roman transliterations, you’ll also want to select “U.S. Extended,” since it has extra diacritics.  Now you should have a flag next to the clock on the menu bar.  Click it to change your keyboard layout.  In Devanagari-QWERTY, the keys correspond to Devanagari characters about how you would expect according to sound, and where Devanagari has several characters corresponding to one Roman letter, they are typed by holding shift or option or both while pressing the corresponding key (aspirated forms generally by holding shift; retroflex forms generally by holding option; aspirated retroflex forms generally by holding both).  Visarga (or unvoiced aspiration — the unvoiced h-sound) is shift-h (or H).  The virama (which cancels a character’s inherent vowel) is made with the f key.  Conjunct consonants are formed automatically (and very logically) by typing the first character, then the virama (f key), then the next character.  The important things to know for Roman transliteration in the U.S. Extended keyboard are that (1) dots under characters are made by typing option-x, then the character; (2) that macrons over long vowels are made by typing option-a, then the vowel; and (3) that acute accents (including over s, as ś) are made by typing option-e, then the character.  Be aware that these are unicode typefaces, so software that is not unicode-friendly won’t be able to use them.  All modern Apple software seems to work fine, including Safari.  And Google even indexes and searches in the Devanagari script.)

I had been hand-writing flash cards of the vocabulary terms at the end of each lesson, but in light of the above I decided to remake them much more nicely.  And since I will have classmates trying to learn the same stuff, and since there are many other people throughout the world undertaking the difficult and noble work of learning Sanskrit, I decided to put them all here as .pdf files.

Each .pdf is two pages: the fronts of the cards on one page, and the backs on the other.  You can print them on separate sheets and paste them onto index cards, or (as I did) print them double-sided.  With most printers the front and back should line up tolerably well.  The cards are in the order that the vocabulary is introduced in Beginning Sanskrit: A Practical Course Based on Graded Reading and Exercises, second edition, by Dermot Killingley (revised by Dermot Killingley and Siew-Yue Killingley), and the filenames include the lesson(s) from which the terms are drawn.  I plan to add more files here as I progress through Killingley’s several volumes.  Though the cards are thus connected to the text that I and my classmates are using, they may be helpful to other learners of Sanskrit as well.

Be advised that I am new to Sanskrit and to Devanagari, and these cards may suffer from limitations in OS X’s implementation of the script or from my own mistakes.  Please contact me if you find any errors and I will do my best to correct them.

NOTE: All nouns and adjectives are declined in the masculine singular, unless they generally occur in another form; all verbs are conjugated in the third-person singular present-tense. As of this writing, vertical conjunct characters beginning with ङ do not seem to occur in (at least) OS X’s implementation of unicode Devanagari. Thus, words that might otherwise have such a conjunct, in these flash cards instead have ङ with virama (as in kaṅkaṇam / कङ्कणम्, which occurs in sheet 35).

Sanskrit Flash Cards 1 (Lesson 1)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 2 (Lesson 1)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 3 (Lesson 2)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 4 (Lessons 2 & 3)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 5 (Lessons 3 & 4)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 6 (Lesson 4)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 7 (Lessons 4 & 5)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 8 (Lessons 5 & 3) (includes word left out from 3rd lesson)

–added 8.Sept.08:

Sanskrit Flash Cards 9 (Lesson 6)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 10 (Lessons 6 & 7)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 11 (Lesson 7)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 12 (Lesson 7 & 8)

–added 20.Sept.08:

Sanskrit Flash Cards 13 (Lesson 8)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 14 (Lesson 10)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 15 (Lessons 10 & 11)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 16 (Lesson 11)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 17 (Lessons 11 & 12)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 18 (Lesson 12)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 19 (Lessons 12 & 13)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 20 (Lesson 13)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 21 (Lessons 13 & 14)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 22 (Lesson 14)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 23 (Lessons 14 & 15)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 24 (Lesson 15)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 25 (Lesson 15)

–added 28.Sept.08:

Sanskrit Flash Cards 26 (Lesson 16)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 27 (Lessons 16 & 17)

–added 18.Oct.08:

Sanskrit Flash Cards 28 (Lesson 17) NOTE: The word snānam (स्नानम्), which occurs in lesson 17, is omitted from this sheet of flash cards because it is an exact duplicate entry from lesson 16.

Sanskrit Flash Cards 29 (Lessons 17 & 18)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 30 (Lesson 18)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 31 (Lessons 18 & 19)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 32 (Lesson 19)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 33 (Lessons 19 & 20)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 34 (Lessons 20 & 21) NOTE: The word anantaram (अनन्तरम्), which occurs in lesson 20, is omitted from this sheet of flash cards because it is an exact duplicate entry from lesson 18.

Sanskrit Flash Cards 35 (Lesson 21)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 36 (Lessons 21 & 22)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 37 (Lesson 22)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 38 (Lessons 22 & 27)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 39 (Lesson 27)

Sanskrit Flash Cards 40 (Lessons 27 & 28)

UPDATE: I stopped making these flashcards when I discovered ProVoc, the excellent (and free) Mac software; and iVocabulary, an inexpensive way to use ProVoc files on an iPhone. There is information about both of them and all of my files available to download over here.

August 27, 2008 · Education, Language, Sanskrit · 7 comments

Como Now

Anderson H. pointed me to Como Now, a new a cappella gospel album by Daptone Records, recorded in (North) Panola County, Mississippi.  My first year teaching was at North Panola High School in the town of Sardis, about ten minutes of cotton fields south of Como; my students came from all of the county north of the Tallahatchie River, which means Sardis, Como, and Crenshaw.  A few of the “Jones Sisters” (Chapter VIII) came and sang for us Mississippi Teacher Corps people in Oxford over the summer.

The text of the promotional site (and the narration of the videos) has some clumsy generalizations and a touch of exoticism (“Folks in Como believe that…,” “In Como, everybody sings and everybody prays,” etc.) but the singing is wonderful, and with the photographs that are displayed in the videos evokes the place where I lived and worked for a very difficult year better than anything else I could suggest.  I will be buying the album.

August 27, 2008 · Links, Music, The South · (No comments)

Haiku

Sometime in my first year as a teacher, I gave a lesson on haiku.  My students needed to learn what syllables were, and how to pay enough attention to them to be able at least to count them, and I figured that since haiku were simple and short, and since you can’t hardly write a bad one, they’d make an ideal introduction.  I hoped that by manipulating English into an expressive template they would take the opportunity to become more analytical about and also more playful with the language, that they would take ownership of it and pay more attention to some of its parts.  This was probably one of my most successful lessons, and many of my kids started writing haiku all the time.  I eventually decided that on every test students would be able to earn five bonus points by composing an original haiku, on any theme or subject (sometimes — say, around holidays — I might make suggestions, but usually not).  

So I’ve compiled quite a collection of my favorite student haiku.  The organization of my papers and miscellanea is still suffering from the recent move, but I will try to post at least the highlights here eventually.

But for now, something related and different: since I was reading hundreds of haiku most every week, I had haiku on the brain, and it started to spread.  Sometimes — always, I admit, in meetings and classes — friends and I would write collaborative haiku, one person writing a line and passing it on, the other writing a line and returning it for a resolution.  What follows are the haiku that Molina and I wrote in this fashion while compulsorily attending the Jackson Public Schools “convocation” for teachers and administrators in the gymnasium of Jackson State University in August of 2006.  Most of them pertain to what was being said or done by the speaker or presenter in the moment they were written.  A few of them might make more sense if you have some familiarity with the particular wasteland that is professional pedagogical theory, or if you know some of our friends.

 

So many speeches

And yet so little is said

I pledge to the flag

 

Ten teams, three tigers

Grambling’s view of the pine bluff

Putting shine on shit

 

Graves for the justice

Not to mention for reason

Listen forever

 

How much bullshit fits?

As long as you tickle them

It goes easier

 

I have a goatee

You do, too: goatees for all!

What would Jacob think?

 

Orange tie, power

How  can I find his tailor?

The clothes make the man

 

[After some comment about church]

Yep, I’m a heathen

Heathenism sure is fun

Let’s go eat some pie

 

[After a (black) speaker made a joke about white people not sending their kids to the public schools, and the (mostly black, but also white) audience laughed]

Laugh at racism

Just refrain from eye contact

It can be fun, too

 

Let’s get on the bus

That’s not a euphemism

Like your mom’s euphemism

 

[During performance of The Battle Hymn of the Republic]

We love our Jesus

Who needs an eternal soul?

Can truth even march?

 

Take it from the top:

Jesus is a good buddy

Bad taste in music

 

Whose truth is marching?

Whoever sings the loudest

Loudness equals truth

 

Teacher discount, please

Can discount refer to time?

Just keep your receipts

 

Teachers pat own backs

Student achievement today

We love each other

 

Neither good nor great

At least we’ve been entertained

What good teachers do

 

Learning is free lunch

But there’s no such thing as that

Just keep your receipts

 

School starts on Monday

It continues Tuesday

Same shit, different day

 

What is he saying?

What is truth, Pontius Pilate?

What isn’t truth, man?

 

My truth is bigger

Doc says I’m a late bloomer

It lasts longer, too

 

Eat my doctorate

It’s Doctor Asshole to you.

Want to play doctor?

 

[Name expunged] plays doctor

[Name expunged] has his own office

Pee-aitch-deed your mom

August 17, 2008 · Haiku, Teachering · (No comments)

Dissonant Synchronicity

Reading about restrictions in Beijing, and also about King Li of the Chou (or Zhou) dynasty, who reigned in the 9th century B.C.E.:

The king acted cruelly and extravagantly.  The people in the capital spoke of the king’s faults.  The Duke of Shao remonstrated, saying: “Your people can no longer bear your orders.”  The king was angered.  He found a shaman from Wey and had him watch for criticism.  Whomever he reported was killed.  The criticism subsided. [But] the feudal lords stopped coming to court.  In the thirty-fourth year [of his reign], the king became even more stern.  No one in the capital dared to say a word, but only glanced at each other on the roads.  King Li was pleased.  He told the Duke of Shao: “I was able to stop the criticism.  Now they dare not speak.”  The Duke of Shao said: “This is [merely] blocking up criticism.  To block peoples’ mouths is worse than blocking a river.  When an obstructed river bursts its banks, it will surely hurt a great number of people.  People are like this, too.  For this reason, those who regulate rivers dredge them and let them flow; those who regulate people broaden [channels] and let them talk.  Thus, when a Son of Heaven presides over the government, from dukes and ministers [down] to [high-]ranking patricians, he makes them offer poems, [he makes] the Blind Musician offer songs, the Scribe offer records, lesser tutors offer admonitions, the blind offer rhapsodies or recitations, the hundred officers offer remonstrations, the common people pass their messages [to the king], close subjects present their corrections, and relatives amend or look into [the king's mistakes].  After the Blind Musician and the Scribe have given their instructions and the elders have ratified them, then the king deliberates on them.  Because of this, things can be put into practice without opposition.  People having mouths is similar to the land having mountains and rivers, from which the daily needs are drawn; and [it is also] similar in that there are highlands, lowlands, swampy lands, and irrigated lands, from which clothes and food are produced.  When mouths are made to express words, [both] good and degenerative [ideas] will arise.  To put the good ones into practice and to guard against the degenerative ones are the ways to make daily necessities, food, and clothing abound.  As people have thoughts in their minds and express them through their mouths, if [the ideas] are constructive, you should finish them and put them into practice.  If you gag their mouths, how many of them would support [you]?”  The king would not listen.  Then no one in the capital dared to say a word.  Three years [later], they joined each other in rebellion, and attacked the king.  King Li fled to Chih.

Ssu-ma Ch’ien (Sima Qian), The Grand Scribe’s Records, Volume I: The Basic Annals of Pre-Han China (ed. Nienhauser), Shiji 4 (142).

August 11, 2008 · China, Culture, Politics, Quotations · (No comments)