sanskrt pronunciation and other questions

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Hare Krishna!

 

Dear Vaisnavas,

Please accept my humble obeisances.

 

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!

All glories to Their Lordships Sri Sri Gaura Nitai!

 

I hope someone here will mercifully answer the following questions.

 

1. Visarga (H). I have heard different opinions and examples of how this

sound is pronounced. So I am a bit confused. Some repeat the vowel before

it, sometimes even stressing it, others do not do it. Taking in

consideration the problem this causes to the meter of the verses, I would

rather prefer the second option, or add just a short, weak, nonstressed

version of the vowel. So please clarify this for me.

 

2. Anusvara (M). Also different opinions. Somewhere it is stated that it is

the nasalization of the previous vowel, but other sources say that anusvara

is assimilating to the consonant it precedes, e.g. turning to 'm' before 'b,

bh, p, ph', and to 'n' before 'd, dh, t, th' etc. So, what is the actual

situation?

 

3. 'hm'. I have heard on the tapes Srila Prabhupada pronouncing 'brahma' as

'bramha', i.e. 'm' and 'h' trading places. My understanding is that it is

bengali influence, not natural for sanskrt. Am I right?

 

4. The misterious 'jn'. It is usually pronounced as 'gy' with no explanation

of the reason at all. I suspect something similar to the question 3, i.e.

bengali or hindi influence. Moreover, sometimes it meets with the consonants

of the same palatal group, in which case it is quite hard to pronounce it as

'gy', since 'g' is definitely guttural, not palatal. So, any comment would

be appreciated.

 

5. Long syllables. As far as I have heard and experienced ('pratyaksa' is

imperfect, I know, but that's all I have, and that's why I am asking,

right?), a syllable is considered long, if

(1) it contains a long vowel (i.e. long 'A, I, U', or 'e, o, ai, au')

or its vowel is followed by

(2) the cluster of more than one consonant (anusvara and visarga counted,

aspiration - not), or

(3) pause.

I have also noticed that in practice the 2nd clause is accomplished by

making a short pause after the 1st consonant of the cluster. But again, it's

my imperfect experience, which needs to be authoritatively confirmed or

refuted.

 

6. This one is rather theoretical. I had once glimpsed into Sri Jiva

Goswami's Samksepa (shortened) Hari-namamrta-vyakarana. There in the Chapter

1, in the section classifying the vowels, I have found the following:

(6) pUrvo vAmanaH - the short ones are called 'Vamana'

(7) parastrivikramaH - others are called 'Trivikrama'

(8) trimAtro mahApuruSaH - those sounding for 3 matras (1.5 longer than the

long ones, as far as I inderstand) are called 'Mahapurusha'.

So the question is what kind of vowels are these Mahapurushas? I suspect

they may be 'ai, au' and/or vowel+anusvara clusters.

 

So, these are the questions I managed to recollect just now, I suspect I

have forgotten some issues, as usually. And I am sure there are some other

similar peculiarities in the sanskrt pronunciation worth mentioning (if you

know any - please share).

 

Any comments are most welcome, especially with the authoritative references.

 

Oh, and I just remembered: does anyone have an electronic bengali-only

version (no latin script) of Bhaktivinoda Thakura's Saranagati, or at least

where in Vrindavana is it possible to buy it, and what is the price (USD

equivalent if possible)? Also the same for his Gitavali book.

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Your insignificant servant,

bh Denis