I have stayed in Visakhapatnam for a little less than a month and I am going to leave tomorrow. I was first exposed to Sastry's first-year textbook when he taught it in Wisconsin in the Spring of 2005. I sat in some of the classes. At that point I was doing my fourth-year Sanskrit, but by the end of the semester (second-semester Sanskrit) some of the students in the class already had a better grasp of the grammar than I did. I thought what I witnessed was an unusual event.

I think there are a number of factors that contributed to the success. One is the thoroughness of Sastry's textbook. It is firmly based on the Paninian system—in its grammatical categories, in the rules (he would sometimes cite a passage from Panini to show that the rule that he has given is just a restatement of a Paninian sutra in plain English), in the derivation of the forms and so on. Second is the sense of mastery that he is able to convey to students. He told me that when students see that an Indian teacher can do it, they would feel that they can do it as well. Third, I think the success of that particular class has to do with the quality of the students as well.

What I have covered in a little less than a month here is what is meant to be the content for the first semester (less than 500 pages), and there is much more in the second semester. It is still a mystery to me how he managed to cover so much in one year in a regular university course. He tries to convince me that Sanskrit is an easy language since everything is explained. The different sequence in which he presents the materials makes interesting comparason with the first-year textbook that I was taught. At one point we also discussed the possibility that his method of teaching Sanskrit might be reletively painless.

One salient feature of Sastry's teaching method is that it is above all memory based. He emphasizes that all the derivations and explanations are just an aid to memorization and that memrorization alone is learning. Memory of the paradigms should become one's second nature—one should be able to say them very fast without even resorting to the rational/thinking process.With such firm memory, he says, the text that one reads breaks into pieces; one also becomes unconcious of the words and only takes cognizance of the sentences or just the paragraph. The way to get to that point is to recite the paradigms hundreds of times. One time I didn't recite one paradigm well, he asks me to go back and do it fifty times. Of course I didn't even come close to reciting paradigms thoughtlessly, but every once a while he reminds me when I obviously don't do well. He would say just to leave it now and come back and do it tomorrow.

He also says when one is learning grammar, one should repeat everyday everything one has learned previously. He gives the metophor that the larger a document is, the longer it takes to save. And even after one has learned the grammar one has to do daily review for one year (the other time he says six month) before one comes to the point that one never forgets them for the rest of one's life.

I also asked how long would it take for him to teach me Panini's _Astadhyayi_, he says if he teaches it the text has to be memorized, and it will take three years.

In many of the previous posts what you find is a pictorial commentary on the descriptions of the town of Sarnath that Xuang Zhuang left in his _A Record of the Regions to the West of the Great Tang Dynasty_ after his trip to India in the seventh century. There are also a few pictures of the procession of Buddha's relic on elephant! There is also a picture of the river Ganga. I have intentionally used Chinese to write, but later I learned that my blog was blocked in China. And now I heard it is visible again, so in the future you might find more pictures of the Buddhist sites in India with Chinese commentary.

I left the States in mid-August, and after spending two months with my parents in Shanghai, I made my first trip to India on Oct. 27. I have adapted to the new environment quite well, and I find people to be very friendly, and I have made some new friends, some of whom have been especially helpful. The first month was spent in Sarnath near Varanasi, and I was able to attend a Tibetan class on the "Perception" chapter of Dharmakirti's Pramanavarttika. I also arranged some Sanskrit classes as well.

I then came to the town of Visakhapatnam to review Sanskrit grammar with my teacher Sastry. Instead of reviewing, I should say I am learning the grammar/language again following his book. He told me that I am supposed to learn the grammar/paradigms in a way that I will never forget for the rest of my life. My idea of memorization is to be able to repeat something without looking at the book, but his is that when one says the paradigm no thinking should be involved, and one must recite very fluently. So this will go on for about a month ...