Intermediate Sanskrit I
SANSKRIT 102AR
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
In the first two months of intermediate-level Sanskrit, students continue to develop foundational skills in reading comprehension and grammar analysis (alongside the supporting skills of writing, speaking, and listening). These include the recognition and formation of perfects, futures, gerundives, causatives, desideratives, and aorists. In addition to completing short assignments that refine these discrete skills, students interpret longer reading passages, including selections from the Rāmāyaṇa. The final month of the semester looks more like a traditional reading course. Using a dictionary to look up unfamiliar words, students read, analyze, and discuss the story of the encounter between Arjuna and Śiva in book 3 of the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata. Students continue to read this story (and one of its poetic retellings, with commentary) in the spring semester. Overall, the intermediate-level Sanskrit course enables students to interpret Sanskrit texts in three major genres: epic, poetry, and scholarly prose. Students expand and strengthen the skills in reading comprehension, grammatical analysis, and vocabulary
retention that they developed during the first year of study. Students will be able to dissect and describe nominal compounds, verbal forms, poetic meters, and morphological and syntactical features of Sanskrit words, sentences, and verses in greater detail. As a whole, the course prepares students to participate in Sanskrit language and reading courses at the advanced level. Most lessons involve collaborative work among students. No auditors will be permitted. Enrolled students must take the course for a letter grade. Please note that this course includes a required weekly review session with the Teaching Fellow at a time to be determined within the first two weeks of the semester.
Course Notes
No auditors will be permitted. Enrolled students must take the course for a letter grade.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
