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The ancient language of gods and seers. Sanskrit. Letters and calligraphy “Hatha Yoga Pradipika” by Swami Swatmarama

Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language group and is one of the most ancient languages ​​of the world; it is the language of classical Indian literature, sacred texts, mantras and rituals of Hinduism, Jainism, and partly Buddhism.
The Sanskrit Devanagari alphabet is also the alphabet of Hindi and other modern languages ​​of northern India.

Sanskrit is also one of the 22 official languages ​​of India. Despite the misconception, Sanskrit is not a “dead” language and is spoken not only by high-born Brahmins, but also by ordinary residents, for example, in Kerala and Karnataka (in southern India) there are villages whose residents communicate in Sanskrit with each other; newspapers are published in Sanskrit in India.

Sanskrit was rightfully considered the language of the educated population, used for religious and scientific debate and liturgics, and like Latin in Europe, Sanskrit is also a scientific language, on its basis all the terminology of Jyotish, Ayurveda, and other Vedic sciences, which have survived to this day, is built. It is also assumed that the modern languages ​​of northern India, such as Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, etc., were formed on the basis of mixing Sanskrit and Prakrit (local languages).

Self the word "Sanskrit" means "enriched", "purified" and "sanctified" as opposed to Prakrit - dialects.
Just as any Sanskrit language developed and underwent changes, so Sanskrit, in the course of its development, went through several periods from the hymns of the Rig Veda, dating back to approximately the 2nd millennium BC to the Upanishads (period) to the epic, which was written, to the classical - modern Sanskrit, which has developed as a result of the activities of the ancient Indian linguist Panini (around the 5th century BC), who systematized Sanskrit and published a grammar textbook that is used to this day.
In its development, Sanskrit used several types of writing based on the proto-language Brahmi; it was in Brahmi that the inscriptions on the columns of Emperor Ashoka were made.

Sanskrit uses Devanagari alphabet, which is also used in modern languages ​​Hindi, Marathi, Radhasthani, etc., Pali (Buddhist language), Nepali (official language of Nepal) and others.

Here we will focus on the Devanagari alphabet, which means “writing of the Gods” or “city writing”.

I wanted to write an article about Devanagari for a number of reasons:

1. there is a common belief that everything written in Devanagari is Sanskrit, but this is not so;

3. Having mastered Devanagari you can get closer to learning both Sanskrit and other languages ​​​​of northern India, South Indian languages ​​​​(Dravidian) use a different writing system, although it also originated from the ancient Brahmi, the difference in graphemes (writing of letters) is so great that it is difficult to read does not work;

4. and finally, Devanagari is simply a beautiful alphabet, and once you learn it, you will experience crazy delight from the fact that you can read;)

My goal is not to teach you to read, I just want to interest you in this amazing alphabet. However, if you simply print out this article with graphemes, it may help you along the way. I myself always print out the alphabets of the states I travel through, sometimes they save me in difficult situations.

Devanagari alphabet.

The worst thing, that is, unusual for a Russian person:

1. in Devanagari classical Sanskrit 36 letter-phonemes, some of them have different durations and combinations; in Devanagari Hindi there are several more additional letters, or rather letters with dots on the side.

2. in Devanagari there is ligatures- combinations of letters, depicted as an independent symbol, which are used often and which also need to be known along with consonants, and there are quite a few such ligatures;

3. Devanagari uses syllabary, that is, when a vowel is not written after a consonant, it is still assumed that there is an “a”, unless there is a viram icon, a sort of horizontal comma at the bottom of the base stick of the letter. In Hindi, this rule does not apply to the last consonant in a word, that is, nothing follows it by default; in Sanskrit there is a default if there is no virama.
The rest of the vowels can stand not only after the consonant in a row, as in Russian, although there is such a thing, for example, the long “and”, but also above or below the consonant too.

4. in Devanagari there is 3 more icons - anusvara and anusika- a dot and a dot above the crescent, the latter is known to everyone who has seen the sacred syllable aum. In different situations, the dot can be read as "m" or "n", although the difference is not very significant, and people understand both saNskara and saMkara.
The third icon - looks like a colon at the end of a word - is visarga, it is read as an aspirated, voiceless x, that is, an exhalation with almost no sound.
Visarga, virama, anusaika and anusvara look almost familiar;)

Consonants are arranged in groups depending on their pronunciation

Devaganagari vowels

Vowels are listed in line 1; the second row shows how the consonant “pa” changes when a vowel is added to it

Devanagari syllable formation and phonemes

This figure shows the construction of sounds, or rather syllable formation, depending on the position of the vowel and consonant - the stroke on top indicates a long vowel, IMHO, very clearly

Eat several phoneme options, which you may encounter in dictionaries

The Devanagari alphabet uses the following basic ligatures

Numbers in Devanagari

Numbers according to the rules of reading in Sanskrit, in Hindi they are read differently

That's all the wisdom;)

A simple text in Sanskrit is Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights and Freedoms


looks like in English transliteration
Sarvē mānavāḥ svatantratāḥ samutpannāḥ vartantē api cha, gauravadr̥śā adhikāradr̥śā ca samānāḥ ēva vartantē. Ētē sarvē cētanā-tarka-śaktibhyāṁ susampannāḥ santi. Api ca, sarvē’pi bandhutva-bhāvanayā parasparaṁ vyavaharantu.

You can listen to the text in Sanskrit on Google Translate.

For the keyword Sanskrit, there are several more interesting articles on the Internet on the topic of Sanskrit and commonality with Russian, etc.

PS And below this article you can say the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian), stylized as the Sanskrit Devanagari alphabet.

The article was written in Moscow.

Sanskrit is the language of oral communication, and this traditional form is characteristic of the entire period of early classical Sanskrit literature. India was not familiar with writing until Sanskrit evolved into Prakrit; the choice of writing system at that time was influenced by the various variants of regional writing used by the authors of that time. In fact, virtually all the major writing systems of South Asia have been used to produce Sanskrit manuscripts. Since the late 19th century, the Devanagari alphabet has been considered the de facto script of the Sanskrit language, perhaps due to the fact that Europeans printed Sanskrit texts using this script. In Devanagari there is no division into lowercase and uppercase, it is read from left to right and is recognizable by the horizontal line above the letters, which seems to connect them.

Below is the standard Devanagari alphabet:

Devanagari is a syllabary, that is, each sign for a consonant is read as a syllable with a vowel A To indicate the same consonant followed by another vowel, extra strokes are added to the letter, as seen in the following example:

In addition, Sanskrit uses several other diacritics at the end of words. To indicate the nasal [-am], a dot is placed above the letter, more like the letter /am/. Similarly, to write [-ah], two dots are placed to the right of the letter, like the letter /ah/.

If a consonant is at the end of a word, it is necessary to indicate that the last letter does not have a vowel sound. To do this, a diagonal line is drawn under the letters - virama. This letter is called khalant.

To represent a group of consonants, letters are combined with each other in various ways, a process called samyoga (translated from Sanskrit as “connected with each other”). Sometimes individual letters can be recognized in such combinations, despite the fact that the combinations sometimes form new forms. The range of possibilities is quite large. Below is an example illustrating this principle.

Sanskrit, one of the main ancient Indian languages ​​of the Indo-European language family, which received literary treatment. Distributed in Northern India from the 1st century. BC e. It is distinguished by a strictly normalized grammar and a unified system of rules. Sanskrit is opposed to Prakrits as a language brought to formal perfection (samskrta, literally - processed), the Vedic language, archaic and little unified, as well as other ancient Indian dialects that gave rise to Prakrits. Works of fiction, religious, philosophical, legal and scientific literature are written in Sanskrit, which have influenced the culture of Southeast and Central Asia and Western Europe.

Note: If you do not display certain characters of the Sanskrit language, then you need to change the encoding or browser.

Sanskrit(written in Sanskrit): संस्कृतम्

Sanskrit influenced the development of Indian languages ​​(mainly in vocabulary) and some other languages ​​that found themselves in the sphere of Sanskrit or Buddhist culture (Kavi language, Tibetan language). In India, Sanskrit is used as the language of the humanities and cult, in a narrow circle - as a spoken language. There are epic Sanskrit (the language of the Mahabharata and Ramayana, archaic and less normalized), classical Sanskrit (the unified language of extensive literature, described by ancient Indian grammarians and occupying a central place among other types of Sanskrit), Vedic Sanskrit (the language of later Vedic texts, influenced by contemporary Sanskrit), Buddhist hybrid Sanskrit and Jain Sanskrit (Middle Indian languages ​​of Buddhist, respectively Jain texts).

Sanskrit uses different types of writing dating back to Brahmi: Kharosthi, Kushan script, Gupta, Nagari, Devanagari, etc. Phonetics and phonology are characterized by three pure vowels ("a", "e", "o"), two phonemes having vowels and consonants allophones (i/y, u/v), and two smooth ones (r, l), which could act in a syllabic function. The consonant system is highly ordered (5 blocks - labial, anterior lingual, cerebral, posterior lingual and palatal phonemes; each block is formed by the opposition of voiced/voiceless and aspirated/unaspirated). Prosodic features are characterized by differences in the place of stress, the pitch of the stressed syllable and longitude - brevity. Numerous sandhi rules determine the behavior of phonemes at the junctions of morphemes and words. Morphonological feature - the presence of 3 types of roots depending on the number of vowels. The morphology is characterized by an eight-case name system, 3 genders and 3 numbers. The verb has a developed system of tenses and moods.

Syntax depends on the nature of the texts: in some there is a wealth of inflectional forms, in others complex words, analytical forms of tense and voice predominate. The vocabulary is rich and stylistically diverse. The study of Sanskrit in Europe began at the end of the 18th century. Acquaintance with Sanskrit played a role in the early 19th century. a decisive role in the creation of comparative historical linguistics.

Vowels(vowels)	अ	आ	इ	ई	उ	ऊ
	a	aa	i	ii	u	uu
	ए	ऐ	ओ	औ
	e	ai	o	au
	ऋ	ॠ	ऌ	ॡ
	RRi	RRI	LLi	LLI
	First group(sparsha)
Consonants(consonants)	Deaf		Voiced		Nasals
	क	ख	ग	घ	ङ		Rear lingual(Guttural)
	ka	kha	ga	gha	~Na
	च	छ	ज	झ	ञ		Palatal(Palatal)
	ca	cha	ja	jha	~na
	ट	ठ	ड	ढ	ण		Cerebral(Cerebral)
	Ta	Tha	Da	Dha	Na
	त	थ	द	ध	न		Dental(Dental)
	ta	tha	da	dha	na
	प	फ	ब	भ	म		Labial(Labial)
	pa	pha	ba	bha	ma
	Second group of consonants non-nasal sonants (antaHstha)
	य	र	ल	व
	ya	ra	la	va
	Third group of consonants noisy fricatives (uShman)
	श	ष	स	ह
	sha	Sha	sa	ha

In Sanskrit there are special symbols for the so-called weakened consonants:

• visarga- a graphic representation of the sound H arising from s (less often r) at the end of a sentence and at the end of a word or prefix before some consonants: taH तः, maH मः, vaH वः.
• AnusvAra- a graphic representation of the nasal sound.n, occurring after a vowel from m or after vowels at the end of a word before a word beginning with a consonant, except for labial consonants: taM तं, naM नं, paM पं.
• AnunAsika- graphic representation of a nasalized long vowel: tA.N ताँ, vA.N वाँ, dA.N दाँ (rare).
• virAma- stop, if the word ends in a consonant, then the sign ् (.h) is placed at the end, indicating the absence of a.

Devanagari alphabet

Devanagari	Latin	Russians	Internal
अ	a	A	a^
आ	a_	A_	a~
इ	i	And	i^
ई	i_	And_	i~
उ	u	at	u^
ऊ	u_	y_	u~
ऋ	r.	ri	r`
ॠ	r._	pp	R
ऌ	l.	l.	l~
ॡ	l._	l._	L
ए	e	uh	e^
ऐ	ai	ah	y~
ओ	o	O	o^
औ	au	aw	w~
ं	m~	m~	x
ः	h.	h.	q`
क	k	ka	k
ख	kh	kha	k^
ग	g	ha	g
घ	gh	gha	g^
ङ	N.	N.	N
च	c	cha	c
छ	ch	hha	c^
ज	j	ja	j
झ	jh	jha	jh
ञ	n~	n~a	n~
ट	t.	t.a	t`
ठ	t.h	t.ha	t~
ड	d.	Yes	d`
ढ	d.h	d.ha	d~
ण	n.	on	n^I
त	t	that	t
थ	th	tha	t^
द	d	Yes	d
ध	dh	dha	d~
न	n	on	n
प	p	pa	p
फ	ph	pha	p^
ब	b	ba	b
भ	bh	bha	b^
म	m	ma	m
य	y	yea	y
र	r	ra	r
ल	l	la	l
व	v	va	v
श	s`	sha	s^
ष	s`.	sh.a	s~
स	s	sa	s
ह	h	ha	h

Additional letters and signs

Devanagari	Latin	Russians	Internal
़	nukta	nukta	x`
ा	a_	ahh	a`
ि	i	And	i
ी	i_	II	i`
ु	u	at	u
ू	u_	uh	u`
ृ	r	R	r`
ॄ	rr	pp	R`
े	e	uh	e
ै	ai	ah	y`
ो	o	O	o
ौ	au	aw	w`
्	halant	virama	a

Examples

The endings: न and क - attached to the base of the word, change its meaning in the first case to a certain “totality”, and in the second case they indicate belonging to something.

जन jana- Human.
जनन janana - creation, creation.
जनक janaka- creator, creator.

गण gan.a - a bunch of.
गणन gan.ana - check.
गणक gan.aka - mathematician.

राजीव rājiva blue lotus
राजन् rājan raja, king
महा mahā (combined with other words) big, strong, noble.

महाराज mahā-rāja maharaja, great king. A more significant or more respectful title than simply राजन् rājan.

िपतर् pitar father.
मातर् mātar mother.
सुत suta son.
सुता sutā daughter.

In Sanskrit the prefix सु su- gives the word the highest degree of quality.
That's why:

सुजन good man.
सुसुत good son.

A careful examination of Hindi and Sanskrit reveals that the only difference is that in Sanskrit all words are written in one line, and in Hindi they are separated by a space. Therefore, you can combine the study of these two languages ​​and consider them as a whole.

Consonants that do not cause difficulties:

J M P B K T D N L R V G H J S W W X

य म प ब क त द न ल र व ग च ज स श ष ह

Note: Ш and Ш are two different sounds, but the difference in their pronunciation is practically insignificant.

PH BH KH GH HH JH TH DH

फ भ ख घ छ झ भ ध

Consonants (only in Hindi), which are used to transcribe borrowed words: ZF (the spelling is no different from DZH and PH) except for the dot at the bottom:

Cerebral:

T TX D DH R RH

ट ठ ड ढ ड़ ढ़

Cerebral have no analogues in the Russian language, so they can simply be classified as one of the spelling options for the letters already discussed above.

Another “inconvenience” of the Sanskrit and Hindi alphabets is that they have several phonetic variants of the H sound:

ङ ञ ण

So, the final version of the correspondences of the Russian-Devanagari alphabet:

A अआ E ए AND इई ABOUT ओ U उऊ B ब BH भ IN व G ग GC घ D दड

DH धढ J ज JH झ Z ज़ Y य TO क KH ख L ल M म N नङ ञ ण P प PH फ

R रड़ RH ढ़ WITH स T तट TX भठ F फ़ X ह H च CH छ Sh शष

Pronunciation:

अ|प| - |a|a| Unstressed a (schwa), like o in water.
आ|पा - |ā|A| like the shock and in dog, stick, only long.
इ|पि| - |i|i| More closed than Russian and shorter.
ई|पी| - |ī|I| Long version of the previous one.
उ|पु| - |u|u| Like Russian u, short.
ऊ|पू| - |ū|U| Long version of the previous one.
ऋ|पृ| - |R| Like the English r in red, bread.
ॠ|पॄ| - |RR| double version of the previous one.
ऌ|पॢ| - |LR| L with tongue curved back. Exotic sound, found in Telugu, Norwegian.
ॡ|पॣ| - |LRR| A double version of the previous one.
ए|पे| - |e|e| diphthong like a in English bane. (ee).
ऐ|पै| - |ai|ai| Diphthong like i in English mite (ai).
ओ|पो| - |o|o| Diphthong like o in English bone (ow).
औ|पौ| - |au|au| Diphthong like ou in English house (ау).

प्रेम (prem) - Love(Sanskrit)

It turned out to be a very large post about Sanskrit, Devanagari and calligraphy. If you’re not too lazy to read a lot of letters and look at just a huge number of pictures, then click

Sanskrit is the religious and literary language of India and most of the key texts on yoga are written in it. Sanskrit is the liturgical language of religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism and one of the 22 official languages ​​of India. Despite the fact that it is the primary basis of several modern Indian languages, Sanskrit is now practically not used in spoken form, but continues to be a Brahminical language. In fact, it took the place of Latin and ancient Greek in European culture. It should be noted that in recent times, attempts have been made to revive it as a spoken language, for example in Mattur. For those who don't know, Mattur is a village near the city of Shimoga in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It is located on the banks of the Tunga River and is known as a center of Sanskrit learning, most of the village families use Sanskrit as the language of daily communication. This village is also famous for its Vedic and Vedanta school.

Sanskrit is written using the Devanagari alphabet. Devanagari (literally "script of the city of the gods") is a type of Indian script descended from the ancient Indian Brahmi script. It developed between the 8th and 12th centuries. In addition to Sanskrit, it is used in languages ​​such as Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Marwari, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Newar, and sometimes in Kashmiri and Romani. A characteristic feature of the Devanagari script is the top (base) horizontal line, to which the letters “hanging down” are attached.

In Devanagari, every sign for a consonant by default also contains a designation for a vowel sound (a). To indicate a consonant without a vowel, you need to add a special subscript - halant (virama). To indicate other vowels, as in Semitic writing systems, diacritics are used (these are different icons for changing or clarifying the meaning of other signs, placed above the letter). Special symbols are used for vowels at the beginning of a word. Consonants can form combinations in which the corresponding vowels are omitted. Combinations of consonants are usually written as fused or compound signs (ligatures).

Now I will give you the entire Sanskrit alphabet. In Devanagari, letters are arranged according to their pronunciation.
The first row consists of vowels. They look like this (click on the picture to enlarge)

The letters are quite complex and there are special writing rules that make their writing similar to Chinese calligraphy. Next I will give the letters themselves and the rules for writing them.

Consonants are a little more difficult. The first row of consonants consists of velar consonants according to the place of formation and stops according to the method. So, here are the letters

All consonants of this series are pronounced the same way as in Russian.

Next row - semivowels

Our bhajan collections were made from English versions of bhajan collections that were compiled by Indian devotees. But neither our 33-letter alphabet nor the Latin 28-letter alphabet is enough to reliably reflect the 45 basic sounds of Sanskrit (there are even more letters), and there are even more of them in Hindi and Telugu. However, for an Indian user, a speaker of one of the Indian languages, these collections were absolutely sufficient, because they were like a reminder of the text of the bhajan, and the singer would automatically substitute all the missing, undisplayed sounds. A native English speaker would already have some minor pronunciation errors. But after the English versions became the basis for Russians, many more pronunciation errors crept in.

Let's go through all the problems in order.

The first problem is the absence of long vowels in the Russian language. In fact, we pronounce the stressed vowel longer, but the stress in Russian is dynamic and can change. Stress in Sanskrit can also change, but it is not related to longitude, as in Russian.

In Sanskrit, only the sounds /a/, /i/ and /u/ can be short or long. In transliteration, a straight line is usually drawn over long sounds. The sounds /e/ (or /e/) and /o/ are always long in Sanskrit. It's worth remembering. There is a rule in Sanskrit - a long sound is twice as long as a short sound. This rule is mostly followed in bhajans. If a syllable with a short vowel lasts one eighth, then a syllable with a long vowel will last two eighths, or one fourth, exactly twice as long, this is not difficult to notice when listening. Sometimes long lasts three times longer (that is, three eighths versus one eighth for short). Therefore, it is also important for our soloists to try to copy the singing of Indian singers, without embellishing with such variations that lead to the reduction of long sounds to short ones, such as, for example, singing a line earlier or later.

There are also a couple of long sounds called diphthongs: /ay/ and /ay/. They do not present any particular difficulties, but Russians, due to this type of spelling, tend to pronounce /ау/ as the sum of the sounds a+y. Thus, one of the names of Parvati’s mother /Gauri/ is pronounced by us as /Gaa-uri/, as a three-syllable word with an emphasis on the syllable /aa/. In reality, this diphthong should be pronounced as one syllable and sound, without stretching, and closer to /ou/. Let's remember the sound /Om/ for example, which also consists of /a+u/, but is pronounced as /o/.

And I would also like to mention one point that I learned about quite recently from a professional Indian musician, a devotee of Baba Dru Nankoe. Short sounds /a/ are pronounced with a very closed mouth, so that in an unstressed position they can even resemble the absence of sound, and in a stressed position it is indistinct /ae/. Everyone knows the word “victory”, which sounds like /jay/, but it is written as “jaya”. The stressed /a/ short turned into /e/, and the unstressed one was completely reduced. (if you get acquainted with the alphabets of India, this becomes more understandable and logical, since a consonant letter without additional vowel sounds means that it is pronounced with a short /a/, i.e. as if this letter does not have a vowel, and also the short /a/ sound, which represents the so-called middle stage, has a weak stage - the complete absence of sound, any Sanskrit textbook will tell you about this. So this phenomenon of reduction of the short /a/ can be conditionally called a gravitation towards the weak stage - sorry for the impromptu pseudoscientific digression).

Now let's talk about consonants. Firstly, Sanskrit and Indian languages ​​use aspirated sounds. In our writing they are displayed as the corresponding unaspirated sound plus /x/, for example, /bh/, /ph/, etc. A common mistake we make is dividing these sounds into two, after which /x/ itself becomes a syllabic. For example, /jagadoddhaarini/ (who protects the world - an epithet of Goddess Durga) becomes /jagadoddhaarini/. The second variant of the error is simply the omission of the aspiration - /bhajo/ (honor, worship) becomes /bajo/.

Perhaps the following idea will be useful for understanding the nature of aspirated sounds. One of my Hindi teachers classified these pairs of sounds as simple and musical. In fact, aspirated sounds can be extended a little; they are no longer just plosive and stop-like, they become a little melodious.

The next inconsistency between our language and the Indian language family is the presence of a group of cerebral sounds. These are cerebral /?/, /?h/, /d/, /dh/ and /?/, this also includes the sounds /p/ and /sh/. They are distinguished by the fact that the tip of the tongue is curled back and touches the anterior palate. The sound of /?/ and /d/ is somewhat similar to the alveolar English t, d. In turn, dental /t/ and /d/, which are similar to our /t/ and /d/, are similar in tongue position to English dental sounds, denoted by the letters th (there are three readings - interdental voiced and voiceless and the usual English t for words borrowed from Latin). But Indian speakers of English usually completely replace these English sounds with their own, which is also reflected in the transliterated writing. We all know that Bhagavan's name "Satya" is written in English as Sathya, in which the combination th does not denote the aspirated /th/, but emphasizes the lack of cerebrality, that is, the usual dental /t/. But such a spelling th often in bhajans turned into Russian /th/, for example, if we take the well-known bhajan /Manasa Bhajore Guru Chara?am, Dustara Bhava Saagara Tara?am/, the word /tara?am/ (crossing over, overcoming, salvation from - the ocean of worldly existence) is erroneously reproduced as /thara?am/, although in Sanskrit there are practically no words beginning with /th/. This word also uses cerebral /?/, this occurs in Sanskrit word formation with the usual /n/ in a position after /r/, and sometimes even if /r/ is not in the adjacent syllable. That is, physically, for simplicity and convenience of pronunciation, the tongue seems to freeze in the /p/ position, touching the palate, and then, without changing the position, the sound /?/ is pronounced. Examples: /chara?am/ (foot), /tara?am/ (crossing), /chara?am/ (refuge), /karu?a/ (compassionate), /raamaaya?a/ (path, wanderings of Rama). The same phenomenon occurs after cerebral /sh/: /bhuusha?a/ (decorated), /K?sh?a/ (black, dark, Krishna). There are very few words beginning with cerebral /t/ and /d/; more often these sounds can occur within words: /damaru/ (drum), /dam/ (beat, drum sound); /badaa chittachora... / (a ​​big fan of stealing hearts; here the cerebral d is not of Sanskrit origin, in Hindi it is pronounced almost like /p/), /shirdi/ (Shirdi, geographical name); /vi??hala/ (an epithet of Krishna), /venka?esvara/ (the name of the Deity represented in the sacred place of Tirupati), /na?araaja/ (king of dance), /na?avara/ (best of dancers), /ha ?else/, /ga?apati/ (lord of the army (Shiva), Ganesha, Ganapati), /jagadoddhaari?i/ (protector of the world - epithet of Goddess Durga), etc.

A few words about /sch/ and /sh/. Just like in Russian, there are two varieties of this sound in Sanskrit. The sound /sch/ is palatal, close to the Russian soft short /sch/ in the words community, accomplice (Kochergina V.A. Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary. Moscow, 2005, p. 789. Grammar essay by A.A. Zaliznyak) He found in the words /shchiva/ (benevolent, kind, Shiva), /shankara/ (bringing good), /shambhu(o)/ (compassionate), /shata/ (one hundred, just like in Russian), /schukla/ (light ), /shrii/ (beauty), /shaaradaa/ (epithet of Sarasvati, /sharana/ (protector, refuge), /shyama/ (black), /shankha/ (shell), /shaanta/ (peace), /shaambhava/ ( sacred), /shesha/ (the king of snakes on which Lord Vishnu reclines), /shaila/ (stone, rock), as well as /saai sch a/ (Lord Sai), /ii sch vara/ (best of the lords, epithet of the deities of the Hindu trinity), etc. In our literature, it is customary to write words using this letter with a sh. However, when performing bhajans, it might be worthwhile to deviate from this tradition established by scientists. In modern Indian languages, /sch/ is pronounced even softer, which makes it similar to /s/, but it should not be completely likened to the sound /s/, you just need to pronounce the sound /sch/ softly, with some whistling. The letter denoting the cerebral sound /sh/, with the tip of the tongue curved back, sounds very similar to our Russian /sh/ (Kochergina V.A., ibid.), usually found inside words /bhuu w a?a/ (decorated), /K? w?a/ (black, dark, Krishna), /sche w a/ (the king of snakes on which Lord Vishnu reclines). Only words associated with /shash/ (six, akin to Russian) and its variants /shat/, /shad/ in words like /shanmukha/ (six-faced), numerals sixteen, sixty, etc. begin with it. Sometimes /shirdii/ (Shirdi, geographical name) is also written through /sh/, but more often through /sh/.

Ultsiferov O.G. claims that in Hindi the difference between the sounds denoted by the mentioned letters of Devanagari (Sanskrit alphabet) is minimal, and they both resemble the Russian “sh” (Ultsiferov O.G. Textbook of the Hindi language. First year of study. Moscow, 2005, p. 27 ). But we can hear from recordings of bhajans performed by speakers of Indian languages, including Hindi, that this is perhaps not entirely true.

The sound /l/ is pronounced softly, but the body of the tongue does not rise completely upward, as in Russian /l/, but partially. Reminds me of French /l/ (Kochergina V.A., ibid.).

The /r/ sound is less booming than in Russian. It is similar to the Russian /r/ sound in words such as “fish”, “goods”, “peas”, although it is pronounced less loudly. (Ultsiferov O.G. Textbook of the Hindi language. First year of study. Moscow, 2005, p. 17). Zaliznyak A.A. claims that the pronunciation probably resembled English (Kochergina V.A., ibid.). You can get the idea of ​​all this by making a general conclusion that the tip of the tongue is placed more back than in Russian, closer to English, automatically creating less rolliness than in Russian, closer to the completely non-rolling English /r/.

Very often the sound /j/ is pronounced in our country as a combination of the corresponding Russian sounds - /d/ and /zh/. In fact, it sounds much softer, and in order to pronounce it correctly, you need to reproduce our sound /ch/ in a voiced form. We have pairs of voiced-voiceless sounds /b/-/p/, /g/-/k/, /d/-/t/, and in /ch/ the voiced pair has been lost, passing in some cases into our /z / ( j nanny - h knowledge). But it remained in Sanskrit and Indian languages. By the way, Sanskrit does not have the letter /z/, but it was borrowed into the Hindi language with words from Persian, Arabic and English. It is written as the letter /j/ with a dot at the bottom. Therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes you can hear in bhajans instead of /zorashtra/ (Zoroaster) /jorashtra/ with the same meaning. For native speakers of Indian languages, these sounds are approximately identical.

All that remains to be said is about the syllable-forming p /?/ (and theoretically there is also a syllable-forming l /?/, but practically does not occur). I think many people have come across the spelling of the name “Krishna” without the “i”, and under the “r” there is a dot. Basically, the pronunciation of the syllabic /?/ as /ri/ occurs, and is more common in the north and west of India. And in the south and east of India you can hear “Krusha”, and this will also be correct. In fact, there was originally a rolling r /?/ there. It still remains as a syllabic in some Slavic languages, for example, in Czech. It is also found in the words /hridaya/ or /hrudaya/ (heart), /brindavana/ or /vrindavana/ (Brindavana), rishi (sage), mriti (death), /prakriti/ (nature), etc.

Even in Hindi, and also to a small extent in Sanskrit, there are nasalized sounds (pronounced through the nose). In English writing, the words /mein/ (postposition corresponding to our preposition “in”), /main/ (I) are sometimes found. But there is no sound /n/ in its pure form, there is only nasalization, both sound simply like /me/ and /mei/, pronounced through the nose. Sometimes the combination of English letters /ey/ in words like /Harey/, /Ley Lo/ also causes errors. You need to understand that in these cases it is just the sound /e/ (or /e/), that is, it will sound like /hare/ (Oh, Hari! - Sanskrit), /le lo/ (accept - Hindi). It’s just that if you write it in English in a different way, you can confuse it with other English words (hare-hare) or read it according to the rules of the English language in a completely different way (le as /li/, compare with the words to be, me, we). Or the double English spelling e /ee/, which simply means long /i/.

What should we do in this situation? Let it be as it is? The simplest and most acceptable option. Let's draw out the vibrations through the feeling, the heart. Should everyone take up the study of Sanskrit and Hindi? A sacred, but labor-intensive task. Here, the corresponding abilities are also desirable. And if you spend this time on service, then the main goals - opening your heart and people's hearts, as well as comprehending God - will most likely be achieved faster. Or a compromise option: perhaps soloists should take a more specific look at their favorite bhajans, since they usually have from 2 to 10 lines and a dozen words that need to be pronounced correctly. For those who would like to achieve perfection in performing Indian bhajans, it would be worthwhile to memorize all the necessary words in the bhajans performed correctly. There are also collections of bhajans in the Latin alphabet in full adequate transliteration, published by the Sai Organization in other countries (for example, Italy), where all the necessary additional sounds are indicated by super and sub-letter dots and lines. We can try to do something similar, more complete, in Russian transliteration. To get rid of English-language “mediation” when transliterating bhajans from Sanskrit and Indian languages ​​into Russian. Make a word-by-word translation of the bhajans to improve understanding.

And in general, maybe that’s why Bhagavan asks us to sing more in our own dialects, so that we don’t distort bhajans in divine Sanskrit and Indian languages? This is a joke, of course, but I think that in mantras we should definitely pay attention to short, long and special sounds that are “alien” to the Russian language, and they are there too.

I hope I haven’t tired you with the flight of thoughts of my crazy monkey mind :).

Jay Sai Ram!