[Advaita-l] Beginners Sanskrit Classes Online

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2026, Jaishankar Narayanan via Advaita-l wrote:

> I am planning to follow the Samskrithasri Pathamala text books and the book
> A Sanskrit Manual by R Antoine.

This is a worthwhile endeavor and I wish you and the students well. 
But May I suggest you don't use the Antoine book?  Antoine was a Christian 
missionary.  While there is no explicit proselytization it is not rooted 
in our culture (e.g. generic references to God rather than specific 
devatas.)  Also it ia patterned on Western grammars originally designed 
for Latin or Greek not our own grammatical tradition.

On the other hand going straight to Panini might be too overwhelming to 
novices unfamiliar with shastras.

A happy medium in my opinion is the "Enjoyable Sanskrit Grammar" series in 
4 volumes by Medhika Brahmacharini a shishya of Swami Dayananda.  It is 
designed for beginners but introduces concepts from vyakarana. The volumes are
accompanied by exercise workbooks and answer keys.

(See https://arshaavinash.in/index.php/books-on-sanskrit-grammar/)


I have also heard good things about Bhashankura 
(https://sanskritseva.org/initiatives/bhashankura/) but that one isn't free.


-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>