Sanskrit Dictionary

There are a lot of good books on Vedic Astrology in Hindi and other languages, as compared to the quality and quantity of books in English. The books in English are directed towards Western countries and to expose them towards this ancient science. These books are frequently written on basic topics, like how to cast a chart, how to interpret signs, planets and houses, and how to use the predictive methods. There are very few astrologers who have both the command on astrological principles as well as command on language. Shri David Frawley and Shri PVR Narsimha’s books are brilliant. Frawley’s book “Astrology of the Seers” is superb for its philosophical angle and Narsimha’s book is great for its application, being written by his students as class notes. In my very humble opinion, they are *the* books to start learning astrology.

Many other astrologers, while being great astrologers they are, have excellent command on their mother tongue, but probably use other translators to translate their work in English language. I am not citing any facts that I know of, but it is very clear from typographical errors, cut-paste syndrome and grammar problems that occur in these books. In some cases, it completely changes the meaning of the topic being explained. I will explain using an example – I came across a book on muhurta and financial astrology recently and it changed the definition of Vishnu Sthana and Lakshmi Sthana in the horoscope. It mentioned quadrants houses 1, 4, 7 and 10 in a horoscope as Lakshmi Sthana and trine houses 1, 5 and 9 as Vishnu sthana. I am very sure that an astrologer of his stature would not make such a mistake – this is something that a translator and proof reader would have missed.

For all the budding astrologers, my advise would be to learn astrology and the quickly move on their mother tongue. You will find excellent work in all languages in India – Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam. etc.. This is very easily blogged than done, because these books in our mother tongues are not very easy reads either, especially due to their obscure language. For example, a leading book on financial astrology and how to make a horoscope uses terms like शर and क्रांति, that mean longitude and declination of a planet respectively. Even if someone is a good student of Sanskrit in school, he/she would recognize शर as “arrow” and  क्रांति as “uprising” or “revolution”, depending on scale. As I said before, these astrology books are not an easy read.

What helps here is a good Sanskrit to Hindi or English dictionary that will help us get in the right direction. The meaning of words are overloaded in Sanskrit – as in शर and क्रांति itself, but once you get the idea and even partial meaning, things make much more sense.

For almost all the uses, this dictionary may be used –  http://spokensanskrit.de/. Ironically, the best Sanskrit dictionary that I have come across is hosted on a German server and under a German domain name. There is no other information provided on the website about any university or college affiliation. I would recommend this site for everyone.