A dictionary of names and terms in the Mahabharata

This is a dictionary of names and terms in the great Indian epic the Mahabharata. I compiled the vocabulary in Microsoft Excel. Devanagari script was transliterated into "romanized" script using the International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST). I inserted a pivot table to  put the content into a dictionary format. I saved the file as PDF, which was uploaded to Scribd. 

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Names and Terms in the Maha... by thebahuofbengal

The "Fire Temple" of Baku, Azerbaijan

 The Baku Ateshgah, often called the "Fire Temple of Baku", is a religious temple located in a suburb in Baku, Azerbaijan. "Ātash" (آتش) is the Persian word for fire.

The complex, which has a fire altar in the middle, was built during the 17th and 18th centuries. A vent from a subterranean natural gas field located directly beneath the complex fed the fire. The temple ceased to be a place of worship after 1883, with the installation of petroleum plants. The natural eternal flame went out in 1969, after nearly a century of exploitation of petroleum and gas in the area. Today, gas piped in from Baku feed the fires and the fires are only turned on for the benefit of visitors.

Attribution: painter from Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary (between 1890-1907), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Persian and Indian inscriptions suggest that the temple was used as a Hindu, Sikh, and Zoroastrian place of worship.  Inscriptions on the Ateshgah are in either Sanskrit (in Nagari Devanagari script) or Punjabi (in Gurmukhi script), with the exception of one Persian inscription. Below is an inscription in Sanskrit from the temple that I used as a cover for my course in Sanskrit.

Attibution: Wikifex, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1925, Zoroastrian priest and academic Jivanji Jamshedji Modi went to Baku to determine if the temple had been once a Zoroastrian place of worship. Modi observed that after examining this building with its inscriptions, architecture, etc., any Parsee who is familiar with Hinduism or Sikhism and their temples and their customs would conclude that this is not a [Zoroastrian] Atash Kadeh but a Hindu Temple.  The trident (Trishula) mounted atop the structure is a distinctly Hindu sacred symbol.

Source:

En.wikipedia.org. n.d. Ateshgah of Baku - Wikipedia. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateshgah_of_Baku> [Accessed 16 August 2022].

Five places of articulation in Sanskrit

Sanskrit has five different classes of word [that is, five places of articulation] — Kaṇṭhya कण्ठ्य (Guttural), Tālavya तालव्य (Palatal), Mūrdhanya मूर्धन्य (Cerebral), Dantya दन्त्य (Dental) and Oṣṭhya ओष्ठ्य (labial).

Adapted from:

Kadamb, V. (2021). Hindu Activist Venkatesh Kadamb - Consciousness, Yoga, Vedanta Scholar. Facebook.com. Retrieved 17 March 2021, from https://www.facebook.com/hinduactivistvenkateshkadamb/posts/3741324205981893.

Sanskrit , a magical language or a very advanced scientific language. A very advanced scientific language..

Sanskrit declension table

नमस्ते I created some tools to help you learn Sanskrit declensions.

Below is a template that I uploaded to SlideShare:
 

Sanskrit declension table 

You may clip this slide from SlideShare and print so that you can practice declensions.

Alternatively, you may download a template in PDF from Google Sites.

I have also created a study set on Quizlet so that you can learn the Sanskrit declension cases.

Ten useful sites for learning Sanskrit

I've been taking online courses in Sanskrit through the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, and here are ten sites that have been helpful in my studies:

1. Glashoff, K. (n.d.). Sanskrit Dictionary for Spoken Sanskrit. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://spokensanskrit.org/
2. Google Input Tools. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.google.com/inputtools/
3. Huet, G. (n.d.). The Sanskrit Grammarian. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/grammar.fr.html
4. Huet, G. (n.d.). The Sandhi Engine. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://sanskrit.inria.fr/DICO/sandhi.fr.html
5. Jha, G. N. (n.d.). Computational Linguistics R & D at J.N.U. New Delhi. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://sanskrit.jnu.ac.in/index.jsp
6. Kurumathur, P. (2018, February 07). Lesson 2 – Declension. Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://oursanskrit.com/2016/12/11/lesson-2/
7. Sanskrit. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Sanskrit
8. Sanskrit Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from http://sanskritdictionary.com/
9. Sanskrit verb conjugation. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.verbix.com/languages/sanskrit.html
10. Wiktionary. (n.d.). Retrieved January 9, 2019, from https://www.wiktionary.org/

Invocation to the Isopanishad ईशोपनिषद्

This video presents the invocation in Devanagari, translation to English, declension table, and analysis of cases used in the invocation. Audio is included.

More work needs to be done.

OCR tool for Sanskrit

Hi all,

This update from the Sanskrit at SOAS Facebook group showed up in my Facebook feed:

Sources:

SanskritCR. (n.d.). Retrieved August 10, 2018, from http://ocr.sanskritdictionary.com/ 

Wojtczak, L. (2018, August 10).  A new OCR tool for devanagari! Retrieved August 10, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/groups/705791296265189/permalink/1069377789906536/

A Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

I adapted the glossary for the online course Introduction to Hindu Philosophy – Vedanta and Samkhya from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.  I added renderings in Devanagari, created cross-links, and grabbed an image showing a map of creation according to Samkhya, which I embellished with Devanagari renderings.

Glossary of sanskrit terms from Julie Binder Maitra

This session is almost over, but a new session begins on April 22, 2018.  For more offerings, see https://ochsonline.org/

A kind note about my Sanskrit page

Namaste, 

Before I started this blog and adopted the screen name of Bahu of Bengal, I maintained a web site on India and Hinduism on Yahoo! Geocities.  After Yahoo! Geocities closed, I got a dedicated web site http://merabharatmahanonline.com, but didn't update it.  I had practically forgotten about it.

Saraswati - in her lowered hand, she is holding the Vedas

Recently, I received this nice note from a teacher who did a unit on world cultures on my Sanskrit page:

Hello there, My name is A ___ and I'm a teacher for some lovely students out at a charter school out in Northern California. I hope I'm not a bother, but I just wanted take the time to send you a quick thank you note on behalf of my class and myself for providing the resources on your site (http://merabharatmahanonline.com/sanskrit.htm). They just completed a "Cultures around the World" project and your page was such a great reference for their assignment, so from all of us, thank you! 


As a small token of our appreciation, we thought we'd send along another helpful site that one of my students actually came across: http://languageshome.com/ It has a plethora of Indian language resources from Hindi to Awadhi, and was so great in teaching my students to basics of the different languages. Just thought it could be helpful to other students as well.


And if you wouldn't mind adding it to your other resources, I'd love to show my student who went above and beyond to find the site that her work was appreciated (maybe a little extra credit). Let me know what you think. Thanks again. And I hope you have a wonderful holiday! 


Sincerely, Mrs. H___' class