Other Sanskrit Documents

In 1991, James E. Agenbroad published his collection "Difficult characters: A collection of Devanagari conjunct consonants and consonant + vowel matra combinations". Agenbroad's collection is a compilation of 1018 combinations (mainly conjunct consonants and a few matra combinations) quoted from various other books. Yet, more than 300 of the approx. 1000 conjunct consonants, i.e. roughly 30% of the collection by Agenbroad, are entirely fictitious. These hundreds of conjunct consonants were invented by modern Sanskritists such as Wilson, Monier-Williams, Gonda, Lambert, etc. etc. in the same strange and unscientific manner as ancient Sanskritists such as Panini invented hundreds of verbal roots.

Example: Charles Wilkins (1808), Alix Desgranges (1845), M.R. Kale (1894), Richard Fick (1922), A.A. MacDonell (1926), H.M. Lambert (1953), Michael Coulson (1973) and Madhav M. Deshpande (1997) invented the conjunct consonant "bn". If "bn" were no invention, then a Sanskrit word would exist containing "bn". But there does not exist any such Sanskrit word. Therefore "bn" has been invented. Yet "bn" could occur in a foreign-language word, e.g. in "abnormal", inserted into Neo-Sanskrit texts. But serious scientific research on Sanskrit conjunct consonants must dismiss such "abnormalities".

The book Conjunct Consonants in Sanskrit (see Preview) is the first scientific treatise which does not invent conjunct consonants, but proves which conjunct consonants really occur in original Sanskrit texts. This scholarly treatise designed for linguists and typographers contains comprehensive statistics of conjunct consonants of the Sanskrit language, sorted by alphabet and by frequency with quotations from original Sanskrit texts. Based on these statistics, font designers can decide which ligatures they should include into their Devanagari fonts for typesetting Sanskrit texts.

Bislang konnte ich 807 Konsonantenverbindungen für das Sanskrit im engeren Sinne (ohne Hindi usw.) in Originaltexten nachweisen. Für die Entwicklung von Devanagari-Fonts stellt sich im Hinblick auf die Gestaltung von Ligaturen die mathematische Frage:

1. Wieviele Konsonantenverbindungen sind in Sanskrit generell möglich?
2. Wieviele Konsonantenverbindungen sind in Sanskrit phonetisch möglich?

Ich bin dem holländischen Mathematiker Maarten te Boekhorst sehr dankbar, daß er sich dieser Frage angenommen und diese kombinatorische Aufgabe gelöst hat. Der entsprechende mathematische Beitrag kann unter Mathe.pdf (4 Seiten, 36 KB) geladen werden.

The large document TBsvaras.pdf (1.2 MB, 207 pages) intended for designers of Devanagari typefaces and also for linguists and phoneticians contains complete statistical data of all accented orthographic syllables of the entire Taittiriya Brahmana. These data are sorted both by alphabet and by frequency, and attested quotations from the original text for each accented syllable are also included.

The Story of Savitri is found in the third book of the Mahabharata. This beautiful story comprising only 300 verses is ideal reading matter for students who have already finished a Sanskrit textbook and now want to read a medium-sized original Sanskrit story.

The file Ganguli.pdf (175 KB, 32 pages) contains the original Sanskrit text and the English translation by K.M.Ganguli.

For readers with bad eyesight, the file Savitri.pdf (193 KB, 53 pages) is available containing the Devanagari text typeset in 20 points and the English translation typeset in 14 points.

There are many translations and adaptations of the original story from the Mahabharata. Examples:

- Hermann Camillo Kellner translated it into German as "Savitri oder der Triumph ehelicher Treue".
- Edwin Arnold made a versified translation into English contained in his collection "Indian Idylls".
- Sri Aurobindo wrote his own "Savitri" as an allegory. See http://savitribysriaurobindo.com.
- The composer Gustav Holst made a chamber opera "Savitri". See http://www.gustavholst.info.
- Aaron Shepard authored a picture book for children entitled "Savitri. A tale of ancient India".

This large-print Devanagari edition also including the transliterated text and downloadable as Gita-big.pdf (560 KB, 117 pages, 1 column) is designed for (a) readers with bad eyesight, (b) learners of the Devanagari script, (c) designers interested in Devanagari calligraphy. The Devanagari text of this large-print edition is typeset in 24 point "Sanskrit 2003" on 32 point body.

Readers with better eyesight may download the file Gita-2up.pdf (630 KB, 54 pages, 2 columns) with same contents as file gita-big.pdf. The Devanagari text of file gita-2up.pdf is typeset in ca. 17 point, due to format reduction to ca. 71% from DIN A4 to DIN A5.

For comparison, we also offer the Devanagari-only file Gita-dev.pdf (290 KB, 22 pages, 2 columns) typeset in 12 point Devanagari. Europeans with normal eyesight, who are accustomed to the Latin script, usually consider 12 point Devanagari as "very small print", whereas they consider 12 point Latin as "quite normal print".

The Story of Nala and Damayanti is often studied by Sanskrit students. The Nala files presented here can be used for this purpose, but they are also designed as typesetting specimen and as test text for the font "Sanskrit 2003" and for the converter Itranslator 2003.

1. Nala-d.pdf is the entire Nala story typeset in Devanagari using the OpenType Unicode font "Sanskrit 2003".
   This file can be used as a reader for Sanskrit students and also serves as an OpenType typesetting specimen.

2. Nala-t.pdf is the entire Nala story typeset in transliteration using Adrian Frutiger's famous typeface "Serifa".
   This file of the transliterated text can be used by students who are not yet familiar with the Devanagari script.

3. Nala-i.itx is the Itrans encoded 8-bit (!) text file for Itranslator 2003 (it could also be used for Itranslator 99).
   This file, if opened and converted by Itranslator 2003, results in the Devanagari text shown in nala-d.pdf.

4. Nala-d.txt is the 16-bit (!) text file to be opened with suitable text programs and to be marked up with "Sanskrit 2003"
   This 16-bit Unicode file, if opened with Word XP or OpenOffice 1.1 Writer, results in the text shown in nala-d.pdf.

5. Nala-1.htm is the first chapter of the Nala story that can be opened with Internet Explorer (IE versions 5.5 and 6.0).
   If you have installed "Sanskrit 2003" and if you click on the htm file with IE, you see the first chapter in Devanagari.

In 2008, I managed to buy a precious full-leather edition of a translation of the New Testament from Greek into Sanskrit, made by William Carey and Bengali Sanskritists in 1808 and published again as a second edition in 1851. The file Matthew1.pdf (650 KB, 7 pages) contains the facsimile of the Sanskrit translation of the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Furthermore, for beginners of Sanskrit, the text was re-typeset in Devanagari and transliteration, and grammatical notes and vocabulary were added for learners.

The file Matthew.pdf (770 KB, 134 pages) contains all 28 chapters of the Gospel of Matthew in Sanskrit translation, newly typeset in Devanagari and in transliteration, accompanied by translations of the Gospel into Latin and English.

(High-resolution color scans of all 28 chapters of the Gospel of Matthew in Sanskrit formerly downloadable were removed due to lack of interest.)

The huge scan file John-Facsimile.pdf (14 MB, 40 pages) contains the color scans of all 21 chapters of the Gospel of John in Sanskrit translation.

The combined text file John.pdf (850 KB, 179 pages) published in June 2012 contains the newly typeset Sanskrit text of St. John's Gospel in both Devanagari and transliteration and is accompanied by translations in English, German, and Latin.

The small file John-skt.pdf (320 KB, 63 pages) contains the Sanskrit text only (without the translations in English, German, and Latin).

The file Ecclesiastes.pdf (1,1 MB, 27 pages) contains Ecclesiastes (Prediger) in Latein und Sanskrit.

Typesetting of transliterated Vedic texts with floating accents is of poor typographical quality, as floating accents cannot be properly centered on vowels with varying set widths (e.g. wide "a" versus small "i"). This quality problem can be overcome only with a font featuring dozens of precomposed accented letters for Vedic typesetting, e.g. my private slab-serif font "Sanskrtv":

The Taittiriya-Upanishad downloadable as Taitt-Up.pdf shows the high quality of typesetting with precomposed accented letters.

These monographs treat of phonetics of Vedic Sanskrit, especially of the Taittiriya Krishna Yajur Veda (TKYV). In these PDF files, precise symbols of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) are used:

1. The paper Svaras.pdf (4 pages) by Shriramana Sharma explains the svaras (udatta, anudatta, svarita, pracaya) by examples drawn from TKYV texts. For understanding this monograph, the reader must have a good command of the IPA symbols.

2. The paper Anusvara.pdf (4 pages) by Shriramana Sharma describes the various forms of the anusvara (shuddha-anusvara, agama-anusvara, lupta-agama-anusvara etc.) by examples drawn from TKYV texts and by using IPA symbols.

Note: A chart of the sounds of Classical Sanskrit with explanation of IPA symbols is available at the German page of Sanskritweb.

At www.valmikiramayan.net the Sanskrit-English edition of the Valmiki Ramayana by Sri Desiraju Hanumanta Rao et al. is offered as html files. These html files were created using the old fonts "Sanskrit 98" and "Translit 98" of the former "Itranslator 98". While the Ramayana html files were readable with old versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, they are not readable with the latest versions of Internet Explorer due to Microsoft's faulty new IE font handler expanding zero-width characters to spaces:
 

Internet Explorer 6.0 - Faulty display:	Internet Explorer 3.0 - Correct display:

Note: The faulty new Microsoft IE font handler affects all fonts with zero-width characters: Devanagari fonts, Latin fonts, etc.

For those who cannot read the html files at the Valmiki Ramayana site, I converted all 77 html files of the entire Bala Kanda to a large self-contained and consolidated PDF file with all fonts properly embedded: Balakanda.pdf (2 MB, 594 pages).

Sanskritists interested in the poetic works of Kalidasa etc. may wish to visit the Girvani Website of Sri Desiraju Hanumanta Rao, which also offers the original text of Jayadeva's Gitagovinda with explanatory Sanskrit vocabulary. For Germans, a facsimile of the famous German translation published by Friedrich Rückert in the year of 1837 in the "Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes" is downloadable here as Gita-Gowinda.pdf (7,5 MB, 56 pages).

Searchable transliterated PDF file of the entire Bhagavata-Purana available as PDF file BhagPur.pdf (2 MB, 539 pages).

If you want to extract a chapter from this PDF file into your text program, install "URW Palladio S" from our fonts site.

The new PDF file using "Sanskrit 99" for copy & paste purposes is available as Bhagpur99.pdf (2 MB, 880 pages).

This text was encoded and proofread by Mr. Abhiram Lohit. The file is downloadable as Visnusahasra.pdf (60 KB, 18 pages).

Note: The file of this hymn was encoded using the fonts of the Baraha program. For the original text of this hymn see chapter 149 of the Parimal edition (= chapter 135 of the BORI edition) of book 13 (Anushasana Parva) of the Mahabharata. Shankara's commentary on this hymn is published in "Complete Works of Sri Sankaracharya", vol. 5, page 1-168, Samata Books 1982.

A few days before his sudden death in March 2007, Sreenivasan Natesa published a printed 38-page booklet of the famous Sanskrit text "Aditya-Hridayam" (contained in the Ramayana, Book 6 Yuddhakanda, Chapter 105), which has been translated by Sreenivasan Natesa into Tamil and provided with a comprehensive word-by-word Sanskrit-Tamil vocabulary and with a general introduction.

In November 2006, I discussed with Sreenivasan Natesa via email a few linguistic details of the Sanskrit text (e.g. that verse 06-105-27 contains the regular verb form vadhiShyasi in some editions and the irregular verb form jahiShyasi in some other editions), and therefore it was a great shock to learn that Sreenivasan Natesa met with a sudden death in March 2007.

Sreenivasan Natesa's children have given me permission to upload the electronic version of the printed booklet to my Sanskrit website as Aditya-Hridayam (140 KB, 38 pages) for the benefit of all Tamil speakers interested in the Tamil translation and the word-by-word explanations of this famous text.

- The Reverse Dictionary of Sanskrit is available as Reverse1.pdf (2.2 MB, 551 pages). For instance, if you are looking for all Sanskrit words ending in the suffix "...mat", you can easily find all these words on one page in this reverse dictionary, whereas in an ordinary dictionary, the words ending in "...mat" would be scattered all over the dictionary.

- The Reverse Dictionary of Pali is available as Reverse2.pdf (270 KB, 76 pages). For instance, if you are searching for all Pali compounds ending with the word "...kamma", you can easily find all these words on one page in this reverse dictionary.

If you want to extract a word list from these PDF files into your text program, install "URW Palladio S" from the fonts site.

Das Dokument Zahn.pdf (63 KB, 1 Seite), das sich zum Aushang im Warteraum der Zahnarztpraxis eignet, erläutert unterhaltsam die Herkunft des Wortes "Zahn".