Ramopakhyana - The Story of Rama in the Mahabharata: A Sanskrit Independent-Study Reader 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

Best suited for Students with at least a year of University level Sanskrit Training who want to "independently" study during the Summer break! Not specifically for self taught, independent students like me- but it will work.I struggled with this book until I could grasp the the detailed grammatical analysis which is right at your fingertips as you work through this beaughtiful Epic Story. Best treatment on compounds I've found.I'm more at home interpreting, digging out the meaning of the Family Books of the Rig Veda. If you want to nail down some grammatical analysis with a good story to boot- this ain't bad either.

In addition to the other reviewers I would like to say something about the general set up of the book.The core of the book is the text of the Ramopakhyana (the story of Rama as it appears in the Mahabharata). There is one page (sometimes two) for each verse. Apart from a high quality Devanagari text of each verse you get:- A transcription of the Sanskrit text in the Latin alphabet.- The resolution of the sandhi used, with an interlinear annotation giving the exact grammatical classification of the word in question (for instance: "third person, dual. active, perfect" in case of a verb).- A glossary, containing all the words that appear in the verse, including the complete derivation (compounds, nominal derivates etc.).- A Sanskrit prose paraphrase.- Grammatical, textual, contextual and other notes.- An English translation.It would seem that you need to be a Sanskrit scholar to be able to appreciate the book, nothing is less true. If you are only able to decipher Sanskrit from a text presented in a Latin transcription, maybe using some grammar and/or dictionary and want to go ahead "doing something", this is your book. If you want to practice reading Devanagari, this is your book. If you want to practice resolving sandhi, this is your book. If you ... , well, there is a chapter in this book called "Suggestions for Use", anyway, this is your book!Apart from the text there is an extensive Introduction covering all kind of aspects connected to the text.The Devanagari text contains some typos. The most obvious one is on page 71, the title page of the text part. The "o" has changed into an "a", resulting in "ramapakhyana" instead of "ramopakhyana". As up to now, this is the only typo I found I don't expect the text to be overloaded with them. Because there is also a latin transcription and a resolution of the sandhi, typos will not be difficult to detect and resolve.

This is a great academic resource. I got it for my husband for Christmas, who has been studying Sanskrit for several years at a university. He was thrilled with it!

Great work. Just what I was looking for.For serious sanskrit enthusiasts.

Readers, scholars and admirers of the Indic epic "Ramayana" and students and scholars of the Sanskrit language must offer profuse thanks to Prof. Peter Scharf, for putting before us a "Labour of Love" in his publication : Ramopakhyana, the Story of Rama in the Mahabharata. The work comprises chapters 258 to 275 of the Aranyaka Parvan of the Indic epic "Mahabharata". But apart from the Ram saga, the book serves as an independent-study resource for students who have completed a basic survey of Sanskrit grammar. Following in the linguistic traditions set forth in the bench mark publication of Sargeant Winthrop's, The Bhagavad Gita, Dr. Scharf provides a liguistic apparatus thatwill delight and amaze even the most astute of Sanskrit scholars.The Devanagari and Roman fonts and the layout of other materials is simply superb on each page. The press of RoutledgeCurzon must be congratulated for bringing forth such a finely edited text. Needless to add such a massive work must include some typographical errors, notably an outstanding one on page 71, but the typographical errors may actually serve to sharpen the astute thinking of students and readers alike. I have no doubts this work will serve as a standard reference source for many years and I hope and pray that other Indic and Sanskrit scholars will emulate this work, to provide in a similar format the entire translations of the the four Vedas, the Mahabharata and the 18 Mahapurans.

This book is best suited for someone who has at least some Sanskrit, but for the student who has the basics, but is weak on vocabulary, this is an excellent text. The layout is similar to Sargeant's edition of the Bhagavad-Gita, but S gives a more complete syntactic overview and each verse has a prose retelling (in devanagari only), which is quite good for the intermediate student to practice vocabulary, grammar, and reading.With over 700 verses, this is an extensive text. There are some typos, but they should not trouble the average student.

This is an excellent and extremely useful resource for those who know some Sanskrit and want to keep working on it. Very well produced.We are indebted to the author.

Sanskrit is a rather difficult language to learn and any help that the beginner gets will be useful. This book is very good, in fact I'd go so far as to say that it's ideal - everything that the learner needs is on the page, so there's no need for you to be thumbing through dictionaries or slaving over grammars. You can make rapid progress through it and at a rate of ten or so verses a day, you'll be finished it in a couple of months. I wish all foreign language reading books were as good as this. If you're thinking of learning the lingo, get The Sanskrit Language by WH Maurer first, as you can't go wrong with this one either.

A perfect book, a perfect seller