ProVoc is free software for OS X. If you have a Mac and you need or want to memorize things, I recommend it. It is, basically, smart flashcards, and it is very customizable: quiz yourself from either “side” of the card, make it multiple choice or not, change the number of choices, make a delay before the choices appear, and so on. It will keep track of which cards you consistently get right and which you consistently get wrong, and you can adjust your studies accordingly. It will keep shuffling the cards you get wrong back into the pile until you get them right some given number of times. It’s really excellent. And it will let you print paper flashcards if you really want to.

I stopped bothering with paper flashcards altogether when I discovered iVocabulary for the iPhone. It replicates all of the major functionality of ProVoc in an iPhone app, and it can take all of your data directly from ProVoc. All your flashcards, all the time, in your pocket. Have a minute in line or in a waiting room? Quiz yourself real quick. It’s currently $5.99 on the App Store, and it’s a steal.

And in case anybody out there wants to use my Sanskrit materials:

The following files are viewable with ProVoc or iVocabulary, and they follow the order of introduction in Beginning Sanskrit: A Practical Course Based on Graded Reading and Exercises, second edition, by Dermot Killingley.

First, all of the vocabulary, with Sanskrit in Devanagari.

Second, I created a transliterated version (IAST) for use with iVocabulary, since the implementation of Devanagari on the iPhone—which renders the characters beautifully—is just flawed enough to be maddening. I hope Apple fixes it soon. (I also put up a test page to check quickly if a system is making this mistake or not.)

Lastly, I made one just with the Devanagari characters (no words) as a sample, which might be useful to anyone just learning the script.

I do emphatically recommend the software regardless of what you’re studying.

In our (the Roman) alphabet, the order of the letters roughly follows that of the Greek alphabet, which itself follows that of the Semitic alphabets. Thus, a-b-c from alpha-beta-gamma from aleph-bet-gimel. But in all of them, this order is to all appearances arbitrary. Not so in India.

All of the consonants in Devanagari, as in most (or is it all?) of the other Indian scripts, are divided into five groups called sthānas—which literally means “standing,” or “position”—according to the place of articulation in the mouth, and the sthānas are themselves arranged according to distance from the throat.

Thus, the first group is articulated nearest the throat: the ka-sthāna.
The second is forward slightly: the ca-sthāna (“ca” being pronounced as what in English we would write “cha”).
The third is not necessarily further from the throat, but uses a further-forward part of the tongue: the ṭa-sthāna. (This is the “retroflex” sthāna, pronounced with the tip of the tongue straight up in the palate. It’s the stereotypical feature of Indian speech mocked in fake Indian accents.)
The fourth is at the teeth: the ta-sthāna.
The fifth is at the lips: the pa-sthāna.

Now, within each sthāna the letters are arranged according to prayatna (literally, “effort”). These begin with the unvoiced, unaspirated consonant, so the first letter in the pa-sthāna is “pa.” Next is the unvoiced but aspirated form, so the second letter in the pa-sthāna is “pha” (pronounced the same as “pa,” but with more breath). Next is the voiced and unaspirated: “ba.” Then the voiced and aspirated: “bha.” Then the nasal: “ma.” This pattern is repeated for all of the sthānas.

Some of these distinctions can be hard for English-speakers to hear and produce, since we pay less deliberate attention to them. For instance, we do have aspirated and unaspirated consonants, but we don’t distinguish them in writing, and most of us are usually unaware of the difference though we hear people who get them wrong as somehow vaguely foreign-sounding. The “p” in “pot” is aspirated; the “p” in “spot” is unaspirated. If you’re a native speaker, you’ll put more breath into the former, though you might not realize it, and you’ll think people sound non-native when they get it wrong.

It also looks like we don’t have so many nasals in English; but we have more than you might think, and just use “n” as a generic nasal-marker. For instance, people sometimes refer to “dropping” the letter “g” from words ending in “ing”; but nothing is being dropped, only replaced. “Talking” ends in a nasal of the ka-sthāna (a “velar nasal”); “talkin” ends in a nasal of of the ta-sthāna (a “dental nasal”). The place of articulation of the sound has changed, but neither form has more sounds than the other. You might say we’re using “ng” to indicate a single sound, which would be indicated with a single letter in Devanagari.

So the consonants in Devanagari are arranged like so:

k — kh — g — gh — ṅ
c — ch — j — jh — ñ
ṭ — ṭh — ḍ — ḍh — ṇ
t — th — d — dh — n
p — ph — b — bh — m

Each row is a different place in your mouth; and then within each row, all of the letters are pronounced with your mouth in the same position, but changing the manner of enunciation. So with your mouth in the position for the “k,” add breath to get “kh,” add voice to get “g,” add breath and voice to get “gh,” and make it nasal to get “ṅ” (which is the “ng” in our “-ing” words).

(The vowels and other letters come before the consonants, and are similarly—though perhaps less obviously—arranged according to manner of enunciation.)

One consequence of this ordering is that, whereas when looking up a word in an English dictionary I find myself singing the alphabet song in my head, when looking up words in Sanskrit I find myself moving my tongue through the different positions in my mouth.

When I first learned this, it seemed like something Tolkien would have used for Elvish. And it’s the main reason I think Devanagari is awesome.

—

संजय उवाच ।
एवमुक्त्वा ततो राजन् महायोगेश्वरो हरिः ।
दर्शयामास पार्थाय परमं रूपमैश्वरम् ॥ ९॥

अनेकवक्त्रनयनमनेकाद्भुतदर्शनम् ।
अनेकदिव्याभरणं दिव्यानेकोद्यतायुधम् ॥ १०॥

दिव्यमाल्याम्बरधरं दिव्यगन्धानुलेपनम् ।
सर्वाश्चर्यमयं देवमनन्तं विश्वतोमुखम् ॥ ११॥

दिवि सूर्य सहस्रस्य भवेद्युगपदुत्थिता ।
यदि भाः सदृशी सा स्याद्भासस्तस्य महात्मनः ॥ १२॥

तत्रैकस्थं जगत्कृत्स्नम् प्रविभक्तमनेकधा ।
अपश्यद्देवदेवस्य शरीरे पण्डवस्तदा ॥ १३॥

ततः स विस्मयाविष्टो हृष्टरोमा धनंजयः ।
प्रणम्य शिरसा देवं कृताझ्जलिरभाषत ॥ १४॥

अर्जुन उवाच ।
पश्यामि देवांस्तव देव देहे सर्वांस्तथा भूतविशेषसंघान् ।
ब्रह्माणमीशं कमलासनस्थमृषींश्चसर्वानुरगांश्च दिव्यान् ॥ १५॥

अनेकबाहूदरवक्त्रनेत्रं पश्यामि त्वां सर्वतोऽनन्तरूपम् ।
नान्तं न मध्यं न पुनस्तवादिं पश्यामि विश्वेश्वर विश्वरूपम् ॥ १६॥

किरीटिनं गदिनं चक्रिणं च तेजोराशिं सर्वतो दीप्तिमन्तम् ।
पश्यामि त्वां दुर्निरीक्ष्यं समन्ताद्दीप्तानलार्कद्युतिमप्रमेयम् ॥ १७॥

त्वमक्षरं परमं वेदितव्यं त्वमस्य विश्वस्य परं निधानम् ।
त्वमव्ययः शाश्वतधर्मगोप्ता सनातनस्त्वं पुरुषो मतो मे ॥ १८॥

अनादिमध्यान्तमनन्तवीर्यं अनन्तबाहुं शशिसूर्यनेत्रम् ।
पश्यामि त्वां दीप्तहुताशवक्त्रं स्वतेजसा विश्वमिदं तपन्तम् ॥ १९॥

द्यावापृथिव्योरिदमन्तरं हि व्याप्तं त्वयैकेन दिशश्च सर्वाः ।
दृष्ट्वाद्भुतं रूपमुग्रं तवेदं लोकत्रयं प्रव्यथितं महात्मन् ॥ २०॥

—

Saṃjaya said:

Having spoken thus, the Great Yoga Lord Kṛṣna
Showed Arjuna his highest lordly form,

Many mouths and eyes, many marvelous sights,
Many divine ornaments, many divine weapons upraised,

Wearing divine garlands and garments, divine scents and oils,
A God composed of all wonders, endless, facing all directions.

In a sky of a thousand suns that have at once arisen,
Such light would be as the light of this Great One.

In the body of the God of Gods, Arjuna saw
The whole world standing there together, divided in many ways.

Then, in amazement, hair standing on end, Arjuna
Bowing his head to the god, making reverent gesture said:

“I see gods in your body, O God, and all kinds of beings come together,
Lord Brahmā in a lotus-seat, and all the seers and divine snakes,

“Many arms, bellies, mouths, eyes— I see you in all directions, endless form.
No end, no middle, no beginning of you do I see, O Lord of All, O Form of All.

“With crown, with club, with discus, a mass of splendor, shining in all directions,
I see you who are hard to see completely, shining immeasurable light as sun or fire.

“You are the imperishable, the highest to-be-known, you are the highest refuge of all,
You are unchanging protector of eternal dharma, you are the Eternal Person, I understand.

“Without beginning, middle or end, with endless power, endless arms, eyes of sun and moon,
I see you, with mouth of burning fire, lighting all this with your splendor.

“All between heaven and earth is filled by you alone, and in all directions.
Seeing this, your marvelous and awful form, the three world tremble, O Great One.”

Our tutor, Mr. Mark Singleton, has been kind enough to chant a great deal of the paradigms from this helpful little book, and to be recorded doing so by our classmate Matt Robertson.

You can download the .zip archive of the complete audio in AAC (.m4a) format here (37.4mb), which is recommended since the files are smaller and the quality better; or, if you can’t play audio in that format, you can download the .zip archive of the audio in .mp3 format here (55.4mb).

You can also download individual .mp3 files or listen to them in your browser below.

Complete archive in AAC (37.4mb)

Complete archive in MP3 (55.4mb)

1 Vowel-stem nouns

2 Consonant-stem nouns

3 Pronouns

4 Some common verbs

A programmer-y person with a linguistic bent, or a language-y person with a computer-y bent, or someone else who might in some ways resemble me but with more free time (or the greater technical skill to diminish the requisite quantity of time), who will take a look at this, scour the web for digital copies of old dictionaries and lexica that are in the public domain, and start cranking out new modules for Apple’s Dictionary.app.

Look, there is no reason why I should not already be able to open Dictionary on my Mac and be able to search at least the Liddell & Scott Greek Lexicon, the Gesenius Hebrew Lexicon, the Lewis & Short Latin Dictionary, and the Monier-Williams Sanskrit Dictionary. In respective unicode fonts, of course. (I mean, obviously: transliteration is for philistines.)

Why can’t I do this yet? We’re not talking flying cars, here; so how about it, Internet? I mean, is this the future or isn’t it? My thumbs are getting tired from all this page flipping.

In the meantime, I took a StarDict version of the Monier-Williams, and ran it through DictUnifier, and came up with this (it’s a doozy at about 40mb — don’t download it frivolously). Unzip it, and put the resultant folder in Macintosh HD >> Users >> YourUserName >> Library >> Dictionaries . If the “Dictionaries” folder doesn’t exist, create it (and make sure to spell it right).

After that, if you open Dictionary.app you should find that you have the Monier-Williams as one of your dictionaries, though it’s not as pretty as it should be (the digitization was apparently made with an old console dictionary application in mind), and it uses the Harvard-Kyoto transliteration scheme (blech).

Anybody know where I can find any sort of unicode Devanagari version? I know I can search online lexica, but it would be nice to have such quick access when offline.

I inherited this ring. I know very little about its provenance.

It might have been my grandmother’s. She was Argentine, and if it was hers it probably comes from Argentina.

It might have been my grandfather’s mother’s. She was a Jew who emigrated to Argentina from Eastern Europe in the late 19th or early 20th century. If it was hers, I have no idea where it originally came from. (She was born in Bessarabia; my great-grandfather in Podolia.)

My great-grandmother was a Yiddish speaker, and though I can strain to construe a few of these characters as Hebrew letters, nothing very convincingly.

Can anybody help?

(There are more photos on flickr.)

(Killingley: “This story, like other Pañcatantra stories, became known in Europe through an eighth-century Arabic version. The well-known version about the Welsh prince Llewellyn and his dog dates from the end of the eighteenth century.”)

Once a Brahmin lived in a village. The Brahmin’s wife and son and mongoose* lived in the house. The Brahmin’s wife nurtured the mongoose like a son with food and milk. And the Brahmin was fond of the mongoose as of a son. Now once, the Brahmin’s wife said: “Āryaḥ,** in the morning I am going to the lake to bathe.” The Brahmin said: “Then I will stay in the house and watch our son.” So in the morning the wife went to the lake for a bath. Now, later on, the king’s messenger approached the house. And the messenger said to the Brahmin: “Āryaḥ, today the king offers gifts. So if Āryaḥ goes to the palace then the king will offer gifts to Āryaḥ.” So the Brahmin thought: “If I go, then who will watch the boy? But if I don’t go, then how will I get gifts? What do I do?” So he said to the mongoose: “If you stay here and watch the boy, then I will go to the palace.” The Brahmin thus left the boy in the house and from greed went with the messenger. And the mongoose stayed in the house and watched the boy.

Now, in the Brahmin’s house is a hole, and in the hole lives a snake. And when the brahmin left the house, the snake left the hole and approached the boy. But when the mongoose saw the snake, he thought: “If he touches the boy with his teeth, the snake will kill the boy.” And so for a long time the mongoose fought with the snake. Then the mongoose defeated the snake in the fight and killed it with his teeth. The mongoose thus protected*** the boy from the snake. Now, when the Brahmin’s wife again came from the lake, she saw the snake’s blood on the mongoose’s mouth****. So from folly she thought: “Surely the mongoose ate the boy.” So from anger she killed the mongoose with a stick.

* There is something of a translating frustration here, similar to the one I alluded to in a note to an earlier translation: this Sanskrit word refers to a specific animal, and we know that animal, and have an English name for it, but whether for the sound of the word itself or from cultural associations with the creature, it sounds stupid or comical or inelegant in English, and not in the original. The haṃsaḥ (हंसः) is a beautiful bird with mystical connotations in India; in English it’s a goose. The nakulaḥ (नकुलः) is an intelligent mammal that can be kept as a pet, taught tricks, and keeps away pests; in English it’s a mongoose (with no etymological link to goose, incidentally). A translator might just change them into swans and dogs, privileging cultural and emotional connotations over biology, but what can I say? It’s a mongoose. We’re all adults here.

** Āryaḥ is a term of respect, especially for a Brahmin, sometimes translated as sir or your honor. Its root has a wide range of meanings, mostly having to do with goodness or nobility. It or a related form is (strangely) the origin of the English word aryan, and is probably related etymologically to the Greek aristos, arete, ortho-, etc.

*** The verb, literally to guard or to protect (rakṣati / रक्षति), is the same one translated several times above as watch (as in, to watch the boy). Here he is thus performing exactly the duty he was given.

**** Or face. (mukham / मुखम्)

I’m not sixty pages into the Mahābhārata, I’ve so far had one conversation about it, and there’s already an inexhaustible amount to say. Mr. Venkatesh told us that his advice to those just setting out with this book is to take a flashlight, a sleeping bag, and plenty of water; because you’ll get lost and have to stay the night.

For now, a contextless paragraph:

Thereupon the man said to him, “I am pleased with this your song of praise. What favor can I do for you?” He said to him, “The Snakes shall be in my power!” The man replied, “Blow into this horse’s arse.” He blew the horse in the arse, whereupon from the blown-up horse smoking flames billowed out from all the orifices. With them he smoked out the world of the Snakes. Frenzied, desperately afraid of the hot power of the fire, Takṣaka seized the earrings, fled at once from his dwelling, and said to Utanka, “Sir, take back these earrings!”

Mahābhārata, 1(3) Pauṣya, 155 (Trans: J.A.B. van Buitenen)

–Adapted from Pañcatantra and Hitopadeśa (Killingley: Lesson 16, page 117)

–Adapted from Hitopadeśa, chapter 3 (Killingley: Lesson 15, page 109)

*Sanskrit has no definite article, so this and other instances can be translated as “the king” or “a king.” And the word here translated as king is mahārājaḥ (महाराजः).