Learn Sanskrit: Sanskrit alphabet chart and letters
Learning Sanskrit Language
About Sanskrit
Sanskrit is one of the 22 languages in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India and a second official language of Uttarakhand (since 2010) and Himachal Pradesh (since 2019). The 2011 Census counted 24,821 people in India whose mother tongue it is. It is written in mostly in Devanagari today. The Government of India declared it a classical language in 2005. Few speak it as a mother tongue, but it is studied in schools and universities across India and is the language of the Vedas, the epics and much of India's classical literature.
Links
To go further: Bharatavani, the portal of India's languages run by the Central Institute of Indian Languages, has dictionaries, primers and books in Sanskrit.
- Central Sanskrit University: New Delhi: Sanskrit teaching across India, including free courses for beginners
- Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University: New Delhi: a central university for Sanskrit
- National Sanskrit University: Tirupati: a central university for Sanskrit
- Sahitya Akademi: India's national academy of letters (Ministry of Culture): books, translations and the yearly awards in Sanskrit and the other languages of India
Sources: Census of India 2011, Language (Paper 1 of 2018), speakers of the scheduled languages; the Constitution of India, Eighth Schedule; classical languages, Ministry of Culture (Press Information Bureau, 3 October 2024).