A Sanskrit Reader: With Vocabulary and Notes (Classic Reprint)

Sanskrit, if it be accurate so far as it goes, is of great service to the classical teacher in making his instruction interesting and effective. As independent disciplines, moreover, Sanskrit and comparative philology, and the literatures and religions of I ndia, are constantly gaining in importance, so that, for example, Sanskrit is now taught at all but one of the twenty universities of the German Empire. The design of this work, then, is twofold. In the first place, it is to serve as an introduction to these subjects for the students of our colleges and universities. The excellent Chrestomathy of BOEHTLINGK has no vocabulary; and few persons can be expected to buy the costly dictionaiy of WILLIAMS or that of BOEHTLINGK AND ROTH, at the outset, when the}7 are uncertain whether Sanskrit will be of sufficient interest or use to them to warrant their continuing its study. What the beginner needs is an elementary work comprehending both text and vocabulary in a single volume. And accordingly, this Reader is meant to furnish ample material for about fifty weeks reading, in a course of three hours a week, and, with the text, the appropriate lexical apparatus. The Reader is made as a companion-volume to WHITNEYS Sanskrit Grammar, and these two books supply all that is needed for the first years study. This Reader is designed, in the second place, to render a knowledge of Sanskrit accessible to the classical teachers of high-schools, academies, and colleges. These teachers, if they pursue this study at all, usually do so without the aid of an instructor. And it is especially the requirements of unaided private study that I have taken constant pains to meet. I state this fact thus explicitly, because, both here at Cambridge, and during my connection with the Johns Hopkins University (where the plan for this work was formed), numerous inquiries for such a book have
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