Teach Yourself Sanskrit Complete Course (Teach Yourself)

Not for beginners. I'm writing this review only now because I've finally gotten around to looking for a better introduction to Sanskrit. I've tackled this book several times over the past few years only to find myself hopelessly bogged down about a third of the way through and I've learned to read German, Russian, Latin and Classical Greek without much difficulty! I find myself escaping to the appendix of grammatical paradigms where pure memorization seems like a relief! If you haven't studied a morhologically complex Indo-European language, preferably Classical Greek, definitely forget this book till you've acquired some mastery of basic Sanskrit. If you have, then the first fourth of the book should be easy enough but soon after it's as if the author were writing the last part of a book some three or four times longer than Teach Yourself Sanskrit. Coulson seems to take especial delight in the language's affinity for creating long compounds though a real feel for how to interpret these probably can only come gradually after considerable reading of simpler Sanskrit. The phenomenon of sandhi should probably only be described and then ignored (sandhi resolved) for beginners but Coulson seems to be completely oblivious as to how daunting this phenomenon is for beginners. After the first few chapters most examples of syntactical features are illustrated using sentences from more difficult literature. To follow these examples and do the exercises a huge vocabulary must be memorized and Coulson, incredibly, doesn't include any information on the sense of the numerous adverbially derived prefixes that play the most fundamental role in Sanskrit word formation. Without this information building a Sanskrit vocabulary is well nigh hopeless. The treatment of the verbal system is ridiculously brief and, if you haven't studied the roughly similar system of Greek, I can't imagine that Coulson's glance at it could make any sense. This whole book simply doesn't make sense. It's as though the author tried to cram three or four books of equal length to this one in the last two-thirds of this one. As a friend of Kant's said of the Critique Of Pure Reason - it wouldn't be so difficult if it weren't so short. A worthwhile puchase, elegantly written by the way, but only after the student of this difficult language has mastered the basics and read a bit of the simpler literature.

Apart from this book you can try the books by Egenes (Introduction to Sanskrit, Part 1 and Introduction to Sanskrit, Part 2), they are much more "gentler". You could also first study "A Practical Sanskrit Introductory" by Charles Wikner, you can find it on line. Wikners' text guides you through the Devanagari writing system and the complex sandhi rules (and also prepares you for the Monier Williams dictionary). Coulsons' book is like a reversed "cold turkey" when it comes to Devanagari and sandhi, the first two chapters will discourage you unless you are really motivated.

The text contains quite a few typos in the devanagari parts, notably in the keys to the exercises. Let's take this positively: it keeps one sharp.

I found Coulson's "Sanskrit" a wonderful book, dense with information. However the title "Teach Yourself" is a misnomer: I cannot imagine someone with no prior knowledge of ancient languages making profitable use of it. Like the reviewer below, I am fortunate enough to know Latin and Greek already, and I'm also familiar with Hindi and the Devanagari script. (I'm also fluent in French, another language with which Coulson also assumes some familiarity). If I didn't already have this background, I don't think I'd be able to make head or tail of this book. Unfortunately, as many other reviewers have said, Sanskrit just is a really hard language (far harder than Latin, Greek or Hindi in my opinion), and there's no getting around that basic fact. Coulson aims to get you up to a very high level by the end of the book, and he has to go at a lightning pace to do that: however I would suggest a more gently-paced introduction to readers who don't already have a substantial linguistic background.

I am sure this book serves a very good purpose (Academic research etc).

However it is not for a layman trying to learn Sanskrit.

An Appreciation Without Apprehension by Bharat S. Shah is such a nice book for an absolute beginner.

Among things that I don't like in this book are that the Author does not use devanagri scrip uniformly throughout the book. It would be nice to read it in the script in which the language is actually written.

However, Sanskrit resources are not that easily available and I have certainly learned some valuable things from this book. So this is a good book to have in your library. Just know that this is a very technical book (and when I say technical, I really mean it). Unless you are in langage research, you will find this book hard to decipher.

But there are sections that are helpful. Its a good addition to collect. Just not a book for laymen trying to learn Sanskrit.

There are other grammar books which are targeted towards beginners and might be more relevant.

What makes this sanskrit primer special is the easy with which you can read it. In contrast to the chippy style of other more "classical" books, you will realy enjoy reading this one - it gives you a lot of interesting background information about the language, which as I found, makes learning the stuff much easier.

Unlike other books, allmost all of the texts in the book are taken from original sanskrit sources. So you are directly confronted with what you most probably intend to do after being able to read in sanskrit - enjoing the sanskrit liteature in its original form.

Anyway, even I'm a newbie in sanskrit, I highly recomend the book - it is one of the best resources on sanskrit I found so far.

I could not exclude, that you are going to need other sanksrit resources also, however you should not miss this one - mainly becuase it is so motivating reading it, and also because of the background information you get, which you otherwise would not find in the more systematicly organized sanskrit primers.
And as I said, you will enjoy it - it is more like a gripping thriller than a boring textbook.