Description of {S}abdabrahman: A linguistic introduction to Sanskrit. By Peter M. Scharf. 2022.

This new textbook provides a linguistic introduction to Sanskrit for university students and adult scholars. While it assumes no prior knowledge of the language, linguistics, or Indian culture, yet it provides thorough sophisticated introductions to each aspect of the language including its linguistic relation to Indo-European, Sanskrit literature, phonetics and phonology, Devanāgarī script, grammar and morphology, syntax, and discourse structures. The material is appropriate for a thorough first-year university course at either the undergraduate or graduate level, or for independent study of educated adult scholars.

The product of the author's thirty years of experience in teaching Sanskrit at Brown University, various technical institutes in India, and most recently on-line through The Sanskrit Library, the book incorporates the best practices in language instruction. In Volume I: Text and exercises, topics are dealt with in a logical and comprehensive fashion progressing in a deliberate order from phonology, script, and sandhi, through verbal and nominal morphology to syntax, discourse structure and compounds. Information is presented in visually helpful tables, and access is provided to associated digital audio files to accommodate multiple learning styles. Points are illustrated with thoroughly explained examples drawn from original Sanskrit works. The vocabulary is carefully selected to include the most frequently occurring words to exemplify the various new grammatical points. Each lesson includes copious exercises that provide practice with new material. With the exception of the initial chapters, each exercise set culminates in a narrative adapted from Sanskrit literature.

Volume II: Appendices contains the appendices referenced in Volume I. The appendices include an overview of Sanskrit literature, a list of all conjunct consonants that appear in the exercises, simplified annotated tables demonstrating sandhi, illustrated Pāṇinian sandhi rules, tables of verbal semantics, annotated tables of verbal morphology, detailed exemplified descriptions of case meaning, tabular derivations of nominal forms, plentiful verbal and nominal grammatical paradigms, tables summarizing participles and pronominal adverbs, a list of principal parts and a glossary. While explanations are provided using the terminology current in modern second-language instruction, an appendix provides lists of equivalent Pāṇinian terminology. An index of Pāṇinian sūtras explained in the appendix of Pāṇinian sandhi rules is provided at the end of the volume.