Saying the letters
| a · ā | short a as in “sofa”; long ā as in “father,” held twice as long |
| i · ī, u · ū | “bit” and “beet,” “put” and “pool”; the bar means hold it longer |
| e · o | always long: “they,” “go” |
| ai · au | “aisle,” “house” |
| ṛ | a vowel r, lightly rolled: kṛpā ≈ “kri-pā” |
| kh gh th dh ph bh | one sound each, with a puff of breath: th as in “hot-house,” never as in “thin” |
| c · ch | c as in “church”; ch the same with breath |
| ṭ ḍ ṇ | tongue curled back to the roof of the mouth |
| ś · ṣ | both near “sh”: ś with the tongue forward, ṣ curled back |
| ñ · ṅ | “canyon,” “sing” |
| ṃ | a nasal hum taking the colour of the next sound |
| ḥ | a breath with a faint echo of the vowel before: namaḥ ≈ “namaha” |
Heavy and light
Sanskrit verse is measured in syllables that are guru, heavy, or laghu, light. A syllable is heavy if its vowel is long, if ṃ or ḥ follows it, or if two consonants follow before the next vowel. The word for a heavy syllable is the same word as the text’s subject.
Almost every verse here is a śloka: four quarters (pādas) of eight syllables. In each quarter, syllables five and six run light then heavy; the seventh is heavy in the first and third quarters and light in the second and fourth, which gives the recitation its swing. Metre draws each quarter as its numbered syllables, underlines the cadence (five to seven), and names the few quarters that use an accepted variant cadence (a vipulā). Some hymns inside the text change to longer fixed metres, each built from traditional three-syllable feet (gaṇas); the page names the metre wherever this happens.
A syllable marked with an asterisk is an accepted departure from the metre: either it counts against its natural weight by a recognised licence, or the verse keeps a cadence the classical rules do not allow, as in quotations of older Vedic verse. Tap it to read why. A tie (‿) under a syllable means its sounds come from two words.
A dot inside a word (tac·chṛṇuṣva) marks where two words have fused in sound. Hyphens join the members of a compound.
The marks
Traditional reading. A meaning the tradition teaches (a letter-by-letter derivation, a yogic or Śaiva reading) that is not the word’s history.
Variant or irregular. The editions differ here, or the grammar bends, usually for the metre.
Uncertain. An etymology or parse that scholars dispute, or a place where the grammar allows more than one reading.
√Root. The sign √ marks a verbal root (dhātu), the bare verb a word grows from: dhyāna, meditation, from √dhyai, to meditate; bhava, becoming, from √bhū, to be. Sanskrit grammar names words by their roots this way.
Moving around
Study opens one verse to its words; tap a word to open its entry. Read runs a whole section as it is chanted; tap a verse number to study that verse. ← and → move between verses (between sections in Read), / searches, and on a wide screen j and k step through the words. Contents lists the text’s sections and the verses you have marked; marks stay in this browser. Where a verse has narration, ▶ plays it: on the leaf in Study, under its number in Read; p plays and pauses. Each recording reads the Sanskrit, then the translation, then the commentary. The Mandala (the lapis coin at the centre of the bar, or of the header on a wide screen) chooses which of the three play, for Read and Study alike, and holds Play on (the next verse follows and the page turns with it) and Repeat (off, this verse, this section).
Method: the analysis works from the Devanagari with a grammar, not from any published translation. Where a reading comes from tradition rather than grammar, it says so.