[INDOLOGY] A new Sanskrit Reader

Wed Jun 14 19:26:37 UTC 2017

Dear Dominik,

You (and Patrick) are absolutely right, and thoughts along the lines of
what you just said made up a considerable part of the proposal I submitted
to the publisher. (Below is some of what I said there.) Those thoughts are
of course going to limit which texts I can include in the Reader; but I am
hoping that annotating text passages in the same way I did in my textbook
means I will still be able to introduce a fair breadth of texts.

Again, thank you so much for taking the time to reply in such detail!

All the best,
    Antonia

>From my proposal:

A Reader of the kind we propose has two functions: one is to introduce
students to a variety of texts and textual genres; the other is to help
them build up reading stamina. Gaining such stamina can be a painful
process; and while there is much to be said for the ‘proper’ philological
approach (reading slowly and meticulously, with nothing but a dictionary
and a grammar for help, not going on to the next line or stanza until every
grammatical detail and its context have been fully understood), one can
actually acquire a very good understanding of the grammar of a language
(and a certain intuition for its literary styles!) by reading faster and
thus reading more. This latter option is possible whenever texts are
straightforward. Yet many interesting texts are not straightforward, and
for them, this Reader will offer more notes than would, strictly speaking,
be necessary. Irregularities will of course always be explained; but
especially in the first half of the book, regular phenomena that
nevertheless are potentially tricky will also be annotated: instances of
infrequently occurring sandhi and long chains of words connected in
writing; verbs taking their objects in cases other than the accusative, and
generally case usage that is non-intuitive for speakers of English; AblGen
Sg of i-, u- or ṛ-stems, instances of -ati or -anti that are not Pres 3rd
Sg or Pl, respectively, and other noun and verb forms difficult to
recognise; infrequent pronoun forms; and so on. For the very first
readings, we are considering following the Clay Sanskrit Library
conventions in not combining words in writing. In a nutshell: while the
readings are meant to be challenging, they should also be enjoyable.

Furthermore, it is not just the number and contents of annotations that
matter, but also their accessibility. Instead of making students constantly
leaf back and forth and/or keep their fingers in several places of the book
at the same time, the Reader will offer all crucial information –
grammatical notes, key vocabulary – on the page where it is needed. Thanks
to the better quality of Sanskrit fonts now available for print as well as
greater flexibility in book formats, the Reader should be able to keep
Lanman’s very legible font size and still combine text, annotations and
space for students’ notes on one page.

 Finally, there will be an introduction to each text and a complete
vocabulary in the back. It would be ideal if the publisher provided the
possibility to store a file with the vocabulary (perhaps in a slightly
condensed layout) on their website, for students to print out and use
together with the book. (Again, the less leafing back-and-forth, the
better.) We would also like to look into the possibility of creating some
continuity between our textbook and this Reader (e.g. by giving brief,
systematic references to the chapters in which a grammatical phenomenon was
first introduced); but we are aware this may not be possible with two books
from different publishers.

On 14 June 2017 at 19:13, Dominik Wujastyk via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Dear Antonia, we've already discussed this, and like others I produced a
> list of favourite texts.
>
> But thinking about this discussion, and Lanman, a bit more, may I make a
> more general point? (If the answer's "no," stop reading now :-)
>
> I remember vividly how hard I found beginning Sanskrit, how I wrote out
> all those individual words (āsīd rājā...) and looked them up in
> dictionaries and struggled to see how it all tied together to make sense.
> I think that experience is mostly good, and necessary, and just a part of
> the bundle of learning a challenging new language.  But I was in an
> exceptional, privileged one-to-one teaching situation, which smoothed over
> deficiencies in the course materials.
>
> What I'd like to say now is that in designing your Reader, it would be
> good to hold in mind the idea of giving the student a lot of small
> experiences of success.  Your Course does that, so this won't be a new idea
> for you.  There are already a lot of chreostomathies and readers out there
> that do an adequate job of flinging chunks of "important" text at
> students.  So a reader "for the 21st century" should embody modern progress
> about language learning and teaching amongst professionals.  I believe that
> many small experiences of success is at the heart of building technical
> ability and building emotional commitment for the long term.
>
> So, more important that which texts are chosen will be how you package the
> texts, and what teaching support you provide alongside the particular texts
> you choose.
>
> It's common for student attrition to be 50% or more in second-semester
> Sanskrit classes.  Why should we accept that?  If we care about the future
> of the field, we should be thinking hard about that challenge.  Excellence
> in pedagogy and pedagogical support materials must be at the heart of the
> response.
>
> I think I've just written in five wordy paragraphs what Patrick said in
> five words: " useful from a student’s perspective.."
>
> Best,
> Dominik
>
>
>
> 
> --
> Professor Dominik Wujastyk <http://ualberta.academia.edu/DominikWujastyk>
> ,
>
> Singhmar Chair in Classical Indian Society and Polity
> ,
>
> Department of History and Classics
> <http://historyandclassics.ualberta.ca/>
> ,
> University of Alberta, Canada
> .
>
> South Asia at the U of A:
>
> sas.ualberta.ca
> 
>
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-- 
A N T O N I A   R U P P E L
The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit
Out Now: www.cambridge-sanskrit.org

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