The Student's English-Sanskrit Dictionary

About The Book (516 Pgs.):

The present dictionary is a practical exercise in word compilation to facilitate the study of the Sanskrit language. Based on Webster's complete English dictionary includes general terms of all sciences and such technical terms as could be duly represented by Sanskrit equivalents actually existing in that language. Besides the general vocabulary quotations from the works of famous authors have been inserted to render the connotation of a word easily intelligible. It is also designed to help scholars translate any passage from English into Sanskrit.

It covers a very large field-Epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Puranas and Upapuranas, Smrti and Niti literature, Darsanas or Systems of Philosophy, such as Nyaya, Vedanta, Mimamsa, Sankhya and Yoga, Grammar, Rhetoric, Poetry in all its branches, Dramatic and Narrative literature, Mathematics, Medicine, Botany, Astronomy, Music and other technical or scientific branches of learning. Thus, it embraces all words occurring in the general post-Vedic literature. It includes most of the important terms in Grammar. It gives quotations and references to the peculiar and remarkable meanings of words, especially such as occur in books prescribed for study in Indian and foreign universities. It also renders an explanation of important technical terms occurring in different branches of Sanskrit learning. To add to its usefulness the work includes three appendices.

About the Author(s):

Vaman Shivaram Apte came from a well-to-do family in Konkan. In the Marathi Stats of Sawantwadi, in the small village of Asolopal (Banda Pets) his father was known as a noble-minded Pandit of high integrity of character. But his obliging nature brought the family to straitened circumstances at the time of his death, for standing surety for a friend. Vaman was then only eight years old. He was born in 1858 in the same village and had his primary education there. His mother, a brave lady, saw no future for the family in that native place and came to Kolhapur with her two sons (Vaman and his elder brother) and with great difficulty brought up her children. But she and her first son succumbed to death within three years and Vaman was left an orphan. However, his sharpness and brilliance won him the favour of Shri. M.M. Kunte, the Head Master of the Rajaram High School and a reputed scholar and hence Vaman's school career was completed without much hardship. He passed the Matriculation examination and secured more than 90% of the total marks, with the unique Sanskrit scholarship, named after Jagannath Shankarshet. Prof. Kielhorn wanted him to study in the Deccan College directly under him. There too Vamanrao showed his brilliance in all examinations and won the Bhau Daii Sanskrit Prize for the BA examination (1877) and the Bhagawandass Scholarship for the MA examination (1879). With these distinctions Government service of a very high grade would have been very easy for him. But he had kept before his eyes the patriotic ideas, some of which had already been brought into practice by Vishnu Shastri Chiplunkar, the father of the modern Marathi and of national education. Apte decided once and for all to devote himself to the cause of national education by joining the founders of the New English School in 1880, in its first year. Of course, the institution (New English School) made a most precious acquisition in getting the services of V.S. Apte, at the very beginning of its career. His was a most precocious and penetrating intellect and the record of his academic achievements was most distinguished. Sanskrit was his special forte. He was a born teacher and a strict disciplinarian. The founders of the institution recognised his pre-eminent merits and invested him with the office of the Superintendent, while the patriarch Chiplunkar himself worked under him as the Head Master. Apte's labours bore speedy fruit in as much as the school carried off one of the two Sanskrit scholarships at the Matriculation examination, even in the first year.