This Second Book of Sanskrit has been prepared under instructions from Sir A. Grant, Director of Public Instruction. Its plan is nearly the same as that of the First Book, which the student is supposed to have read and mastered. Each lesson consists of four parts: - 1st Grammar: 2nd Sanskrit sentences for translation into English: 3rd English sentences for translation into Sanskrit – both intended to exercise the student in the rules of Grammar given at the top of the Lesson; and 4th a vocabulary.
This and First Book together contains as much Grammar as is needed for all practical purposes, perhaps more. I have adopted the terminology of the English terminology of the English Grammarians of Sanskrit but have strictly followed Panini, as explained by bhattoji Diksita in his siddhantakaumudi. Most of the rules are mere translations of the sutras. Besides the terms, guna, Vrddhi, and a few other, which have been adopted from Native Grammarians by nearly all European writers on the subject, I have found it necessary to appropriate two more viz, Set and anit. The prejudice against mere Native terms, in deference to which professor benfey seems in his smaller Grammar to have discarded even the words guna and Vrddhi, without substituting any other, is, in my humble opinion, very unreasonable, when it is difficult to frame new words to designate the things which they signify. It is very inconvenient to have to describe the same thing again and again whenever on has occasion to speak of its. It will at the same time be somewhat difficult for the learner to make out, when a thing is so described in a variety of cases, that it is the same. Words adapted to express a particular meaning are as necessary here as in other affairs of human life. What are amount of inconvenience would it, for instance entail, if whenever we had to speak of the human race, we were instead of being allowed to use the world man must not elevate an ordinary truism to the rank of a newly discovered truth.
The general rules of grammar, and such exceptions as are important, have been given in this book, those of the least render a book liable to the charge of inaccuracy. But it is unavoidable in an elementary work, and after all it will produce little or no practical inconvenience.
There is one point in Sanskrit Grammar, in my explanation of which I have departed from ordinary usage, though I think I do agree with Panini and his commentators. It is the sense to be attached to the so-called Aorist.
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