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This glossary contains Sanskrit words, people, places, and literature that appear in the fifteen Vahinis and Sandeha Nivarini, all written in Telugu by Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba and translated into English by N. Kasturi. If you would like a copy of this glossary on your own computer --for personal use only, not to be sold or commercially distributed in any way-- click on the download link in the left column to obtain a zipped file. The Vahinis use standard spellings for Sanskrit. In addition, this glossary provides phonetic spellings, in parentheses after the standard ones, to help you pronounce the Sanskrit. Below, we provide a short explanation of the phonetic spelling. However, keep in mind that Sanskrit has more phonemes than other languages, while English has only 26 letters, so pronunciation based on English spellings will be deficient. Still, it's better than nothing! Vowels The most frequent short and long vowels are spelled and pronounced as
follows.
For example, the spelling aanandha (bliss) alerts the reader to the fact that the first syllable is long, as in father, so that the accent is on the first, and not the second, syllable. Consonants Phonetic spelling of Sanskrit consonants is difficult, because there
are more consonants (as well as vowels) in Sanskrit than in English. Also,
there are several d's, s's,
and t's in Sanskrit, which are aspirated differently.
In the examples of consonants given below, the examples for bh,
dh, and th are
slightly misleading, in that they may give the impression that two sounds
are said separately when they are not. The idea of the examples is to make
it clear that the h is distinctly aspirated.
In the glossary, some Sanskrit compounds have been hyphenated between their constituent words to aid those who want to analyze the meanings of individual words. In the service of Sai, D.G., E.G., G.V.S.R.. |