musings 166

Finding books is not a big issue in the digital world.. and we are luckiest in that matter with respect to Sanskrit..

But then one should know what book to choose..

The books are too voluminous and difficult to comprehend.. and even a dozen of books may take one year just to read..

So if we chose the wrong books, we are done in..

For example all can acquire as a beginnig, Shabda Manjari, Dhaturoopa manjari, Siddha roopam, etc..For alankaram we have Kuvalayanandam of Appayya Dikshita..

We have the Laghuvrittaratnakara for Vrittas..

Laghusiddantha Kaumudi is there..

May be all these books are not available free from the web.

But any standard Publishers in Sanskrit would have all these.. and the total investment will not exceed couple of hundreds of rupees.

Personally I do not believe in learning from tablet forms, and guides, where we learn the language without knowing the logic of the language..

We simply lose the beauty and romance of the mother of languages..

A language which is some five thousand years old and is still pure cannot be learnt through shortcuts..

If we think of Upanishads, we should think of Shankara, Madhva and Ramanuja and not some  funny ananda swami who appeared recently with a lot of weird  make up..

And when we want to study Vedas we should remember Sayanaacharya and Bhattabhaskara.

Great Kavyams should take us to Mallinatha suri.

We should approach Valmiki Ramayanam throug Govindaraja.. and such greats..

Srimad Bhagavatam has to be approached through Sridharaacharya..

The canvas is vast.. But if we choose pellet forms and shortcuts, we can get some external and temporary glow or shine, and popularity in social media, but there ends our study..