Learning Sanskrit via Vagyoga. Mnemonic fun techniques vs. Rote-Learning

Note: 
Please add comments below this blog I'll reply back when possible (maybe a long gap).
I'm unable to reply to individual queries on private email-ids.

Need to restart my learning as I'm busy with some work right now. 
This time I'll be maintaining a wiki to take down points to remember from each lesson.

I've now reached Varna Padam Lesson7 of 'Vagyoga Sanskrit Mnemonic Technique'

It's absolutely delightful to re-discover old words and see them in a new light.

Need breaks between lessons to assimilate so much information into useful knowledge.

To find links to barely-understood words, phrases and stories.

Just started with Word-based examples in Lesson6 of Varna Padam.

Already the much improved approach of 'sandhi-vichhed' is showing results.

It allows to get at core meaning of words (used blindly or by-habit till now).

'Sanskrit Made Easy' book with clear diagrams and additional examples helps reinforce the core concepts. It also helps makes the meaning stick in one's mind.

How I started on this journey to learn Sanskrit in a totally different way:

My dear late father used to explain many words based on 'dhatu's to us even as children.

Words would be from Konkani, Marathi, Hindi, Telugu or Sanskrit words.

As a child he'd learnt Sanskrit the traditional way.

But as a grown up he relied more on his intuition of dhatu's than on memorized grammatical rules. And that's how he taught us to look at words and languages.

He had a good enough knowledge of Sanskrit having studied for Pandit exam.

He would come up with intuitive hints by just dipping into his experiences.

Lately I've been digging into spiritual meanings of Yoga terms.

Naturally I was missing my father's insight into 'dhatu's of these esoteric words.

A few books would explain some terms in akshara/dhatu forms but the majority of terms remained unexplained. Some other books chose particular English interpretations of terms - sometimes completely out-of-context with the subject matter. Not wanting to rely on someone else's skewed interpretation left me with little options.

With my limited knowledge of Sanskriti I didn't the knowledge-base that my father did.

Understanding Vagyoga technique is made much easier because of the foundation my father laid in my childhood. All this in a very 'sahaj' and natural way.

For a long time I asked myself 'How to learn Sanskrit in this intuitive and delightful way?'.

What I needed was a natural, scientific yet intuitive way to understand Sanskrit - from roots to leaves.

Given the number of masters in any field there had to be someone out there who had already brought this art to full bloom?

Yet, internet searches only yielded small nuggets of information on 'akshara' meanings etc.

What I really admire in Vagish-Shastri-ji's method of teaching Sanskrit:

Thank God that I was lucky enough to find a person who had already done this - Shri Vagish Shastri. Someone who was not only intuitive enough to understand the 'rasa/bhaav' in the 'akshara's and 'shabda's, But he'd also invented and perfected the method over many years.

Someone who could explain the technique to even foreigners in a systematic, step-by-step and scientific way. Even as an Indian I find myself having to re-think or correct some incorrect pronounciation or conceptual understanding of languages.

In many places I'm forced to think why Shri Vagish-ji is stressing on some fine-points in the video.

When I think it over for some time I see why it's required - to understand the language clearly and not to by-heart some rules.  Esp. the part about Chhandas, as it's not stressed at all in teaching Hindi .

Sanskrit being a Mantric language is superbly precise, evocative of various bhaavas and supremely flexible to accomodate any idea.

As a loose analogy - Aksharas are like elements in Periodic Table. When they join together they form Molecules and compounds. Adding pre-fixes and suffixes changes the properties of the root word (dhatu) in predictable way. So if you know the chemistry of the language (Rasa-Shastra) then you can make any combination of 'shabda', 'vakya' and even 'kaavya' exactly as you like.

As Shri Vagish-ji explains so simply and elegantly - what binds them together is 'Natural Law'.

Today I understand what a priviledge and supreme advantage it is to know Indian languages to study Sanskrit. I'll be doing all I can in ensuring that I pass on this knowledge to my son and daughter over time.

There is so much more that I would like to convey but I'll put a running commentary as I do the course on my blog for future reference.
============
The video courses(http://vagyoga.co.in/Sanskrit_at_home.pdf) are available from the contact number at the vagyoga website (http://vagyoga.co.in)http://www.vagyoga.co.in/aboutus.htm 

Video VagYoga Video Mnemonic method to learn sanskrit : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4-Ew6Ie6M

Books on learning sanskrit easily : http://www.vagyoga.co.in/publications.htm

Note : Please be sure to mention if you are an Indian as you'll get the videos at special price of Rs. 350 or so. You can download from link sent via email (vagyoga at hotmail.com)

15 videos Varna Padam (book available)
27 videos Pada Padam (no book)
no video Vakya Padam (book available)
Bhagvat Gita (70 audio cassettes in mp3 files

Guruji Vagish Shastri received Honour from President of India for his contribution towards Sanskrit : https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=579289488830632

 

============

See Also : 
0) Amazing insight into "Why Sanskrit is so special" : http://uttishthabharata.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/sanskrit
1) Learning Sanskrit Videos : http://vimeo.com/user4149423/videos
2) Learning Sanskrit without memorizing huge number of rules. Instead stories and principles behind why the rules are so : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff4-Ew6Ie6M
3) Learning Sanskrit in a new easy to remember Mnemonic method :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zynGfJv_ElY
4) Wikipedia Picture shows evolution of Akshara written form from Brahmi :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Skriptit-plain.svg
5) Some information on evolution of Scripts in Indian Languagages.
For example why is Telugu script so different from Hindi?
http://www.kamakoti.org/hindudharma/part6/chap5.htm