I have been fascinated by languages since childhood. At school, when I read the story of a goddess granting an honest woodcutter three wishes, I said in my head, "My first wish if I were this man would be to know all the languages in the world." I started learning Sanskrit in 2023. I joined a diploma course online and completed it. I am back in a class this year to revise Sanskrit grammar.
“Why learn Sanskrit now?”
I have been asked many versions of this question, often enough to know the concern is not really about me learning the language, but about what I will do with it. It is a question that wants a price on my pursuits. So here is the invoice 😃.
I have been reading books on Indian philosophy and the Puranas in translation for some time now. Sanskrit is what showed me how much of them I had never actually read.
You don’t miss what you never knew was there.
Where I got stuck
My interest in Vedanta started as plain curiosity. I love analysing myself, my changing identities, the people around me, and so on. And I found this concept of a “single source of truth”, unlike my own personality, quite fascinating.
I read some books; I joined an online class for Vedanta; and then I ran into the problem. When I was in the class (for four weeks), I was as bright as the Sun. I understood concepts naturally, until I was left alone to contemplate these texts. I could read Devanagari, so I read shlokas, but the translations, helpful as they were, were just giving me readymade conclusions on a platter.
I come from a Christian family, so I don’t have the necessary tools, teachers, context etc., to help me get started, or any guidance on how to approach a text from the Hindu philosophy called Advaita Vedanta. What I didn’t know at that time was that the absence of the Guru was itself a lesson about the tradition I was trying to grasp. Those texts were never meant to be a PDF in my OneDrive. They were part of a whole, the other part being a teacher, a Guru.
I still pushed through the recorded lectures, the group classes and the books. Most of the time I understood enough to keep going. But every now and then I could feel gaps in my understanding widening. Like something important sliding past me.
The problem
One example of that confusion started from the opening prayer itself in the group class.
oṃ pūrṇamadaḥ pūrṇamidaṃ pūrṇāt…1
Translated as: Om. Wholeness is That, Wholeness is This. From the Whole, the Whole comes forth. Removing the Whole from the Whole, the Whole remains. Om, peace, peace, peace.
At first that’s exactly how I internalised it. Two similar statements placed side by side for emphasis. But a question kept coming back to me. Why does “that” come before “this”? If everything is full, why spell out things, this or that? I nearly let it go. I told myself maybe this was beyond me. I needed a way to meet these shlokas closer to their own terms.
I eventually understood what I needed when I started learning pronouns in Sanskrit class. In Sanskrit, idam and adaḥ are not just “this” or “that” as in English. There is a whole set of “this”es and “that”s (demonstrative pronouns):
idam — this, what is here, present, near enough to point at.
etad — this, what is just in front of you.
tad — that, what has already been spoken of, or what isn’t present.
adaḥ — that, what is far off, distant, beyond immediate reach.
The mantra is using these pronouns on purpose. It begins from what cannot be pointed to, and only then arrives at what can. Adaḥ, then Idam.
The next clause - "From the Whole, the Whole comes forth”, is ablative, so I read it as Source producing Product, using my demonstrative pronouns and their order. Fine that works. Then I was destroyed in the very next line: “Removing the Whole from the Whole, the Whole remains."
My misunderstanding of source and product (from the order Adaḥ, then Idam) is now taken apart with this line. Nothing is diminished, “the Whole remains”.
This internal dialog was completely missing earlier with this or that plainly, although the gist was there in English too. Sankrit grammar made me commit to it. This entire process of applying grammar transformed the mantra from a statement to a movement in my head, an abhyasa.
Order, Creation, Subtraction, Realisation.
This is one such example.
Translation chooses for the reader
I want to be grateful to the translations, don’t get me wrong here. It is essential. Without it most of us would never even encounter such texts. What it misses is giving the reader a choice. It is usually translated for “all”. When a Guru teaches a student, he understands from the face of the student whether a door has opened for her or not, which is one thing the translator is unaware of.
When I read a Malayalam story, my eyes smile a little wider than when I read it translated because I go into a part of my mind with mallu context and experiences. You know that feeling someone calls you yaar, and it feels warmer than “hey, friend”? That was what I was looking for. The closeness to the words, so they can argue with me in my head.
I don’t have a Guru, maybe I have not earned one in this life, but Sanskrit gives me the next best thing. A push back from the text itself.
So why Sanskrit?
Because I simply don’t want to let another profound revelation slide past me without me noticing that it even existed.
Rabia, when you first shared, “You don’t miss what you never knew was there,” I felt that the essay had already begun within that sentence. I am so glad you wrote it.
“It is a question that wants a price on my pursuits. So here is the invoice” made me smile. 😄 But what stayed with me most was your distinction between receiving a translated conclusion and entering the movement through which the text reveals it.
I am presently working closely with the Patañjali Yoga Sūtras through three separate layers: word-to-word meaning, literal translation and bhāvārtha. Again and again, I am discovering that these layers cannot simply replace one another. A translation may tell us what a passage means, while the original words, their order and their relationships allow us to encounter how that meaning moves.
Your description of *adaḥ* and *idam* made this beautifully visible. “That” and “this” may appear adequate on the translated page, yet grammar brought distance, nearness, sequence, emergence and dissolution into an active inquiry. The mantra was no longer merely informing you about wholeness; it was making your understanding move. Your phrase “from a statement to a movement… an abhyasa” captured this wonderfully.
I also loved, “The closeness to the words, so they can argue with me in my head.” Perhaps that is one of the gifts of approaching a text in its own language: it does not automatically guarantee understanding, but it restores questions and possibilities that a translation may already have resolved on our behalf.
Translation remains an invaluable bridge... it allows an encounter to begin. But your essay shows why some learners eventually feel called to examine the stones from which the bridge was built.
And perhaps this is the real answer to “What will you do with Sanskrit?” You are not learning it only to produce something visible afterward. The language is already altering how you read, question, contemplate and recognise what was present but unavailable to your earlier perception.
Thank you for writing the essay you promised. It did not merely explain why you chose Sanskrit; it allowed us to witness what Sanskrit has begun doing within you.
You are darn deep into it!