How a sitting works

Index · How to read the grammar · 1.1

Sanskrit and the Yoga (योग) Sūtra (सूत्र) are one course. The case ending does the work an English word would do. In 1.12, abhyāsa-vairāgyābhyām (अभ्यासवैराग्याभ्याम्) means “by practice and by dispassion,” and -ābhyām (आभ्याम्) is the word “by.”

One sitting

1. Read the Devanagari aloud, slowly, three times.
2. Read the transliteration. It is the same line, still joined.
3. Undo the joins. Hyphens in the lessons are teaching marks. They are not in the manuscript.
4. Take each word: the form, the grammar, the sense. Do this before the English of the whole line.
5. Gather the words into the phrases.
6. Say the line in one sentence of your own. Then read the lesson’s sentence and see what you dropped.
7. Keep the one Sanskrit fact the line needed.
8. Cover the English and read the Devanagari again. A word that goes blank is the review.

Before a new line, recite the previous line and gloss its heaviest words from memory.

The companion commentary is Vyāsa (व्यास)'s bhāṣya (भाष्य). A list or a picture the sūtra (सूत्र) does not contain, when the sitting uses one, is his, and the sitting says his name. The line is still the sūtra (सूत्र).

The signs in these sixteen lines

A consonant sign with no extra mark already says consonant plus short a. The mark ् cancels that a. A vowel sign replaces it. ः is ḥ, ं is ṃ, and ऽ marks a dropped a.

The consonants in these sixteen lines are क ख ग च ज ट त द ध न प ब भ म य र ल व श ष स ह.

What 1.1–1.16 teach, in order

How to read the grammar · Begin with 1.1