What does the word भवति mean? Be careful. I did not say भवती. What a question to ask! Everyone knows what भवति means. It means to become, exist, be, is – in the 3rd person singular. स: भवति - he is. सा भवति - she is. And so on. The root is भू, to be. In the 3rd person singular, the stem is ति. भू + ति = भवति. This is quite different from a verb like वदति. Why does भवति have this strange form? Sanskrit is a bit like mathematics. In school, unfortunately, we learn quite a bit of mathematics without understanding it. We just mug it up. (a+b)3 = a3+3a2b+3ab2+b3. We learn that by heart and remember it, years after school. However, if you know how that expression is derived, you don’t need to learn anything by heart. Even if you forget the formula, you can derive it. When we encounter something like भवति, we also tend to learn it by heart. It’s one of those strange verbs. We have to mug it up. That’s not true of course. Much after we have mugged up भवति, we learn the sandhi rules. And then we realize why भू + ति becomes भवति. We then begin to learn the sandhi rules by heart. Take another familiar word like स्वागतम्, meaning welcome. We never stop to think that this is actually सु + आगतम्, following exactly the same rule of sandhi. The word thus means well + come and the meaning is obvious. If I ask you what पावक means, you will say fire. That’s true. However, the word पू means to purify or clean. The word अक means unhappiness or sin. Following the same rule of sandhi, पू + अक = पावक and पावक is not just fire, but anything that is clean, shining and pure. If we know a simple rule of sandhi, it becomes easier to understand things. The more we understand the logic and the patterns, the less we have to memorize. One of the impediments towards learning Sanskrit is the perception that there is a lot of mugging up to do.
Jiva Goswami (1513-1598 ACE) was a famous scholar, philosopher, saint from the Gaudiya Vaishnava Vedanta school. He was the nephew of Rupa Goswami and Sanatana Goswami and he also set up several temples in Vrindavana. He was so famous that even Akbar visited him. Jiva Goswami wrote a lot. There are around 25 literary works that are attributed to him and his works amount to around 400,000 shlokas. This is 4 times the size of the Mahabharata and the total size of the 18 major Puranas taken together. One of these books is called Hari-namamrita-vyakarana-
This isn’t only about sandhi. But let me illustrate how this works, using sandhi.
परमात्मा = परम् + आत्मा
Suppose I get the student to keep chanting परमात्मा. Here are some sandhi rules.
अ+अ=आ, अ+आ=आ, आ+अ=आ, आ+आ+आ, with similar rules for इ and उ. If I can get the student to remember परमात्मा, he probably doesn’t have to remember any of these rules and learn them by heart. Similarly, if I can get the student to chant परमेश्वर, he need not mug up that अ+इ=ए. Thus it goes on. My intention is not to try and teach you sandhi through tidbits. But as you can see, this can be quite a useful idea.
Religion and interest in religion is a useful way to teach a language. Often, when we learn Sanskrit, the lessons are designed to teach us to read Sanskrit texts. They are not meant to teach us conversational Sanskrit. Hence, I am often asked a question – how does one learn conversational Sanskrit? I personally think the Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan courses and NCERT textbooks are very good for this. But that’s not the point I want to make right now.
आख्यामि मे को भबान …न हि प्रजानामि. “Tell me who you are.”..”I do not understand.” These sentences could have come from a conversation I am having with you. They actually come from BG, 11.31. Check it out. किम् अकुर्बत“What did they do?” That’s BG, 1.1. वयं कथं सुखिनः स्याम. “How can we be happy?” That’s BG, 1.36. कथम् एतद विजानीयाम्. “How will I understand this”, BG 4.4. तेषां निष्ठा का. “What is their state?”, BG, 17.1. These are just a few examples and I can give you many more. Contrary to what you think, reading BG is also a good way to pick up conversational Sanskrit. Therefore, Jiva Goswami had a point and as far as I know, this method is still used by ISKCON to teach Sanskrit. If these techniques help you to learn the language faster and reduce or avoid the mugging up, why not use them? The objective is to learn Sanskrit. Knowledge of Sanskrit makes access to religious texts easier. But knowledge of religious texts can also make access to Sanskrit easier. It is a two-way flow.
