you have to know how to use a book like this. it's dense and assumes some general linguistic knowledge, so you may need to skip back and forth as particular aspects become clear. [the author in fact expects you to do this -- in order to keep related info together, he often includes advanced info, denoted with parentheses, that you are not expected to tackle until you handle later chapters.] you definitely need to keep referring to grammatical and sandhi tables. but the fact is, sanskrit is *not* an easy language by any means. if you haven't already learned another language, you really shouldn't be starting with sanskrit. this book does a remarkably good job of covering the essentials of sanksrit given its size -- something that would not be possible if it had to spend a lot of time on detailed explanations of basic linguistic concepts.

imo, this book does a lot of things right:

[1] it does not force devanagari down your throat. i have nothing against devanagari, but having to learn even a simple language while dealing with an unfamiliar alphabet makes it orders of magnitude more difficult. i speak from abundant experience here. e.g. recently i also tried tackling ancient greek, and soon gave up because of this -- and the greek alphabet is far easier than devanagari. [for one, you're already familiar with it; and it lacks the complex ligatures and variant letter shapes of devanagari.]

[2] the explanations are clear and concise, but do not omit essential details in a misguided attempt to "simplify" aspects of grammar that are inherently complex.

[3] compounds and sandhi forms are carefully analyzed into their components. [one reviewer actually complained about this; but imo it's far better to have this info and not want it than vice-versa -- you can always ignore the extra diacritics.]

[4] there are many useful tables.

my main complaints are [1] the cheap binding; [2] i'd like more reading passages, not just sentences; [3] i'd like to see more systematic presentation of vocabulary, esp. in groups of related items -- basic adjectives [good/bad, big/small, etc.]; basic verbs; kinship terms; the 100/200/500 most common vocabulary items by frequency; etc. [unfortunately, very few language books of any sort do this well, and i simply don't understand why.]


Affordable   May 10, 2001
 1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Actually, very affordable. A large book with enough exercises with answers. Of course, it is not precisely an easy book... no Sanskrit book is easy. A slight drawback is that the font is a bit hard to read (that goes for both the roman and the devanagari letters).


rewarding but irritating in spots   January 20, 2001
 21 out of 22 found this review helpful

I have a real love-hate relationship with this book. On the positive side, it is a pleasure to appreciate Coulson's obvious love for the language and its esthetics: just read his Introduction and groove on his lusty and generous enthusiasm. Also note the fullness with which he covers (in Chapter 15) two very essential topics which are usually omitted from primers: how to use Sanskrit commentaries, and how to recite and enjoy Sanskrit verse (with examples of the different meters). All this is wonderful and removed lots of scales from my eyes.

The negatives, and they're major, are: (1) he constantly and infuriatingly interrupts his task of language teaching in order to go on disquistions about conparative indo-european phonetics and other linguistic issues; (2) he not only transliterates everything, making it much too easy for the student to be lazy about learning the script, but incredibly he stops using the script altogether, halfway through the book, relying on transliteration alone; (3) most unconscionably, he unnecessarily enhances the reputation of Sanskrit as a difficult language by (a) using a convoluted system of diacritics and punctuation in order to analyze compounds to death, and (b) making incredible statements like "The devanagari script is complicated, and most students need several weeks, even months, to read it with complete fluency." Bless your heart, the script is quite regular and logical, and every Sanskrit student I've talked to finds it quite simple once it's tackled.

It's a real pleasure to note Coulson's devotion to Sanskrit drama. He's absolutely right when he says the drama is attractive and accessible. But why in sam hill does he have to draw ALL THE SENTENCES IN HIS EXCERCISES verbatim from the drama, and delay treating the past tenses until the final chapter just because his beloved Sanskrit drama doesn't use them much? What if the student is more interested in Sanskrit epic, in which those tenses are used all the time? Without doubt, Sanskrit students need a lot more training in the past tenses than they get from Coulson.

Want my advice? Xerox Coulson's introduction, his sandhi grids, and his chapter on commentaries and verse forms, and use them with a straightforward, un-eccentric text like that of Walter Harding Maurer.


A Masochist's Dream   November 20, 2000
 14 out of 16 found this review helpful

Sanskrit is not for the faint-hearted, regardless of any text you use. TY Sanskrit, like all the other Sanskrit materials I've discovered, assumes that you have studied at least one other classical language and/or have some serious linguistic background. It's a language which operates very differently from English and most likely anything else you've studied. It is a dead language used by a culture and society radically different from our own (making for some real difficulties in translating or understanding certain concepts and terms). The grammar is on the one hand remarkably free, yet on the other extremely complex and rigorous. Sanskrit is also written in a different script, posing difficulties in understanding, but TY Sanskrit uses lots of transliteration so this is not as big of a problem as it might be.

That said, Sanskrit is an incredibly beautiful language with an economy of expression unmatched by English, and was a fitting vehicle for classical Indian literature as well as sacred Buddhist and Hindu texts.

You would be at an advantage starting out with a knowledge of any contemporary northern Indian language (Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, etc.) because of the large number of cognates, a highly inflected language (such as the Slavic languages), or better yet a Western classical language like Latin or Ancient Greek, as they will already give you a good sense of how Sanskrit works grammatically. If you don't have any of these langauges under your belt, you might want to double this book up with Jan Gonda's "A Concise Elementary Grammar of the Sanskrit Language." Unless you already know what dual number, locative case, the predicative instrumental, or the reduplicated aorist are, you should probably find something that can explain these features to you as well, as sometimes TY Sanskrit sometimes presupposes your understanding of this stuff. Stick it out though, and you'll be rewarded with the ability to understand some of the world's most exquisite writings.


An excellent, though challenging, book   October 20, 2000
 33 out of 36 found this review helpful

Teach Yourself Sanskrit by Michael Coulson is, in my opinion, a thoroughly excellent method to learn sanskrit. From the beginning of the book to the end, information was presented in a straightforward manner and provided relevant information about Indo-European history and linguistics. The biggest problems that I had with this book was the sheer amount of information presented per unit: in order to complete the exercises, one must first spent quite a long time with the material contained within that respecive unit. This book is not for everyone, however, as it assumes that its students already will have quite a large background in linguistics. Its language and method of presentation would be, I think, unintelligable without prior studies in Latin or Ancient Greek. Altogether, this book is an excellent book if you are already moderately accomplished in this or related fields. It is definitely not for the beginner.