One of my classmates drew this wonderful (annotated) Christmas card for our teacher!

I just had my final Sanskrit class of term. In truth I’m ready for a break. I’ve been packing all sorts of extras into my time during the last few months and it’ll be nice to have less on my plate (festive obligations permitting, ha!).

But what a joy Sanskrit has been so far! We raced through a little story in our final class which brought together all the vocab we’ve slowly built up, and integrated some grammar that we’ve learned (still simple stuff — present tense verbal endings, some noun cases with adjectival agreements — but it’s feeling more like a ‘real language’ rather than just words).

The story about the man and his pet bird wasn’t exactly the Bhagavad Gītā (though it did introduce the idea “Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinite”!) but it feels like some solid progress and my reading speed is getting a little less torturous.

I’m looking forward to consolidating over the Xmas break, and also having the time to dabble in some more ‘yogic’ uses of Sanskrit as I practice my reading. I thought I might look at the Hanumān Chālīsā just for practising my Devanagari script reading. I love listening to this sung by Krishna Das. Since we’ve not looked at sandhi yet (how words combine since they’re usually written run together in Sanskrit) I need something that’s written more simply, word by word.

The only downside: I’ve just been given reading glasses. I’m sure Devanāgarī doesn’t help!