To all my Indian friends out there: how hard is it to start learning Sanskrit when I have no prior knowledge of any of...

To all my Indian friends out there: how hard is it to start learning Sanskrit when I have no prior knowledge of any of the Indian languages? I do have a fairly decent background in ancient Greek and Latin though, if that counts anything at all

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Start by learning some basic hindi. then you can learn Sanskrit relatively easily

Someone suggested that I should try to get some Tamil basics, but I don't really get why Tamil should be more helpful than standard Hindi

Tamil is much more taditional but fucking impossible to lean it is actually more difficult to learn than sanskrit, so I suggest hindi as your training wheels

Are you Indian?

Its pretty easy, but better learn writing the hindi alphabets

Tamil in speaking is similar to sanskrit but hindi in writing is very similar to sanskrit. I suggest you to know the basics of hindi because Tamil in writing is very different from sanskrit/hindi in writing. Which basically makes you learning Tamil pretty useless if you wanna read sanskrit scriptures

Also sanskrit in speaking is very similar to Latin

Is Sanskrit actually useful in India or just a meme?

Nobody speaks it, it's a dead language except for its historical value

Who tf even spoke it? First time hearing about it.

We have to speak it to please our gods, so not so dead/meme language.

From a googling only 14,000 people in the entire fucking country of a billion speak it.

Nice religion.

Is this the equivalent of telling someone to learn French, so they can learn Latin more easily?
I would say just skip the middle man and learn it directly. Learning Hindi won't be much easier than learning Sanskrit, i'm sure

We have to speak it to please our gods, its like Latin.

Those 14 thousand speak it as their first language, we have over 1600 languages in our country, we register the speakers who speak it on the daily basis or use it for communication. Sanskrit is taught compulsory in North India

youtube.com/watch?v=a5oGpRzlPO0

Learn Devanagri script, don't bother with learning Hindi etc, go directly for Sanskrit.

What's the deal with Sanskrit, then? Can't it be replaced with Hindi?

What are the coolest Indian/Paki/Bangladeshi/Sri Lankan (?) Empires to read up on my poo friends?

Was the Mughal empire Afghani btw? I thought it was Paki.

It has been replaced with Hindi but you know how they use latin verses for exorcism?
We still have to use sanskrit for special worship of a specific deity.

Mughals were Neither Pakis nor Afghani. They were the Persian descendants of Mongols

Also try Nanda Empire (The guys even Alexander's army feared of fighting), Mauryan Empire (the guy that defeated Alexander successor and then married his daughter), Gupta Empire, The Cholas, Maratha and SIkh Empire (Guys who BTFOed Mughals), The Chauhans (Prithviraj Chauhan) etc. etc.

Also Check out Maharana Pratap, he was a pretty baddass king.

Ancient religious texts are all in Sanskrit. Vedas, Upanishads, Purans etc.
Hindi translations do exist, but Hindi is not common to all Hindus. All Hindus, bengali, punjabi, gujarati, kannada, bihari will use Sanskrit despite having different mother languages.

Was Emperor Ashoka based and a great man or is he viewed as some kind of a tyrant?

Thanks senpai.

How did India fall so hard? From then to now.

Asura's Wrath is the best game about Indian Mythology

He was a great emperor.
He is praised in our history books for realising the folly of his ways after witnessing the destruction caused by him during the Kalinga campaign. Dude converted to Buddhism and went deep into the whole non-violence thing. I don't know if that is a good thing for a emperor, giving up violence.

Usually Sanskrit versus are deemed powerful it is believed that the vibrations produced while speaking those versus in proper sanskrit affects your body in a positive way.

youtube.com/watch?v=hMBKmQEPNzI

Ashoka was very based and also a pretty cruel guy. The dude basically tricked his 100 step-brothers (co-contesters of the throne) in a bloody pit of fire and burned them alive.

He maintained a huge army and fought countless wars but since he accepted buddhism during his last days, buddhist portray him as some kind of saintly and godly person who never intended to harm anyone

See you are mistaking to consider India as one country instead of a sub-continent.
It was never a one country, even mughals had a system like fuedelism where there were independent kingdoms under the dominion of mughal empire.
I mean its basically a wonder that India is a one single country and managed to be one for 70 years (democratically) after being so fucking diverse

As far as I know his Empire didn't fare well after his death. Also I read that India wasn't as united until during the British Raj. Correct me if I'm wrong.

>. I don't know if that is a good thing for a emperor, giving up violence.

Protip: it's not.

Just thinking about it, if he never went as soft as he did and India remained a bloodthirsty battlecontinent then you could have fought off any Islamic invaders that came afterwards.

You wouldn't have a Pakistan problem then either. Currystan would remain united as one big place (whether you think that's good or not).

>See you are mistaking to consider India as one country instead of a sub-continent.
>It was never a one country, even mughals had a system like fuedelism where there were independent kingdoms under the dominion of mughal empire.
>I mean its basically a wonder that India is a one single country and managed to be one for 70 years (democratically) after being so fucking diverse

Do you think India will Balkanize eventually?

>Do you think India will Balkanize eventually

I don't think so. People are becoming more nationalist day by day. There's a right wing govt in power. The idea of India as a motherland has been firmly established.

Mughals conquered almost all of India.
So the Mauryas, Mughals and modern India are the only times when the subcontinent has been politically united. (Also maybe the Guptas?)

When Russia eventually steamrolls Europe and China steamrolls the entire SEA peninsula- will you steamroll Pakistan/Bangladesh/Sri Lanka to unite the motherland together again?

>Pakistan/Bangladesh
>Wanting more Muslims in my country
If only there was a way to get land without getting the people.

Why can't India just pull a China 2.0 and suppress everything?

Ashoka conquered the most of the subcontinent (Afghanistan to Modern Indian + Bangladesh), in his old age, after denouncing violence and his death, his successor were left with a huge standing army in a vast land and were inexperienced in both warfare and managing the state.

Nah, we have a too huge of standing army and too much Nationalism to ever let that happen. 80% of India is pro-nuking and wiping out Pookistan, Also under the British rule India was basically nothing, if it wasn't for being 1 single country, people would have barely noticed history (like they most of the world still overlooks our history).
I mean people know more about the red Indians than the actual Indians, if it wasn't uniting and accomplishing things like (our space program) we would have been just terror prone shithole and our people know that.

China suppresses Gooks, they don't have the tendency to blow themselves up under pressure like mudslimes

> his successor were left with a huge standing army in a vast land and were inexperienced in both warfare and managing the state.
If his successor was accomplished do you think they could have pushed forward into the ME/Europe?

>(like they most of the world still overlooks our history).
And that's a real shame senpai. I enjoy looking through your history n shieeeet as I have a fondness for ancient everything. It's true that when your average dude in the anglosphere thinks of India he thinks of a poverty infested shithole, creepy/smelly IT dudes and a snake charmer flute-blower.

Your country needs to set its PR better.

I don't know about nuking Pakistan tho. Or even countries like Iran/Turkey. They were forced into being Muslim and I feel like they can still be 'saved' as well as having a lot of history/culture within them. I'd hate for that to disappear on top of never being able to visit those countries.

Is the Indian press/media pro nuke Porkistan or pro peace talks?

Middle-east yes, Europe - I don't think so. Also as Himalayas and the Thar desert acted as a strong wall for India against its invaders it also kept India's (Tropical) need for conquesting foreign lands (Also Chandragupta Maurya grandfather of Ashoka did managed to spread his influence in middle-east (then Greek vessel states) by ending his war with them and marrying Helena.)

We are trying to improve our PR thanks to PM Modi and efforts like sahapedia.org/

And the reason why we have a space program even though massive poverty. It is annoying to see how even African history is taught more in the west (people who barely came of stone age in 21st century) than ours who are have so many significant contributions to mathematics

>(people who barely came of stone age in 21st century
There were some African empires that are great dude. Of course that's not to say all of Africa was fantastic but some areas during certain periods of time were pretty gud to live in.

Of course they'd regress shortly after.

>And the reason why we have a space program even though massive poverty. It is annoying to see how even African history is taught more in the west (people who barely came of stone age in 21st century) than ours who are have so many significant contributions to mathematics
Africans have had more of an impact on people in America than any other Indian desu.
And it's not really 'the west' its more America- its because of global Americanization that we see them more.

For example- Ghandi did a lot for India but he held pretty shitty view towards nigs (before he got 'woke' is SA) so you tend to hear the negative side of him more than any positives in America/the west/the world. Not to mention that he was a pedo.

A vague unknown website isn't much desu. And pls answer me
>Is the Indian press/media pro nuke Porkistan or pro peace talks?

* in SA

I only know about the Egyptians, sure there were other tribes who were fierce warriors but they were still way behind the rest of the world in terms of civilizations

See let me explain my anger towards niggers user, India and China had proper civilizations with proper empires and currency and influence in the world.

Niggers did basically nothing the whole human history, there greatest accomplishment was being sold as slaves by their own people.

They landed in the west and after the abolishment of slavery they got free citizenship and equal status as whites (instead of sending them back to Africa like Indians were left in India and Chinese were left in China).

And yet Africans cry about slavery (like there buddies who were not sold by their other buddies to whites and were left in Africa are doing so great themselves). Only great African country on the continent is SA and even that's basically half white. We don't cry like them and play the race card, its not like colonism treated us better, Indians and Chinese were also treated like shit but we don't whine about it like them.

We stick to our country to make it better or worse.

Indian media is mostly 90% nationalistic and pro nuking Pak and anti- China

Hello

Look for grammars and start with the cases, it will be easier if you already manage inflected IE langages like those. The practice with texts (vedas, etc). At least worked for me.

t. Sanskrit pto

>I only know about the Egyptians, sure there were other tribes who were fierce warriors but they were still way behind the rest of the world in terms of civilizations
- Mali civ
- Songhai empire
- Kingdom of Gana

>Niggers did basically nothing the whole human history, there greatest accomplishment was being sold as slaves by their own people.
M8 you can't be srs. That's literally dumb Sup Forumsack talk.

There are some teachings that are done in sanskrit like some astrology schools.

Blown away here.

Argentinian bro, can you read and speak Sanskrit?

italian, born and raised

thanks for replying indian bros, i think i'll dive directly into sanskrit and maybe pick up hindi later on the way, for now my main focus is reading the Bhagavadgītā without relying on someone else's translation. Hindi still looks like something very useful to learn though, considering the fact that india is one of the fastest emerging markets.

is there any textbooks you'd recommend?

I think i've read something about people working at NASA writing some algorithms in Sanskrit, due to the remarkably detailed grammatical structure of the language. Pretty cool

Mostly read

I had a torrent with over 9000 pdfs from which I sticked to one from some british university. Sadly I don't have it here and never paid attention to the title.

I then used some indian book in english that came from the first google results. If you re just beginning, most books are useful if you start just with grammar.

I'll see if I can find the title