Sanskrit: Definition and Much More From Answers.com

San·skrit (s?#131;n'skrĭt')
n.

An ancient Indic language that is the language of Hinduism and the Vedas and is the classical literary language of India.

[Sanskrit saṃskṛtam, from neuter of saṃskṛta-, perfected, refined : sam, together + karoti, he makes.]

San'skrit'ist n.

WORD HISTORY Like Latin in Europe and elsewhere, Sanskrit has been used by the educated classes in India for literary and religious purposes for about four thousand years. It achieved this status partly through a standardization that resulted from a long tradition of grammatical theory and analysis. This tradition reached its height around 500 B.C. in the work of the grammarian Panini, who composed an intricate and complex description of the language in the form of quasi-mathematical rules reminiscent of the rules of generative grammar in modern times. The language thus codified was called saṃskṛtam, ?#128;œput together, artificial,?#128; to distinguish it from pr?#129;kṛtam or the ?#128;œnatural, vulgar?#128; speech of ordinary people. Sanskrit thus became a fixed literary language, while Prakrit continued to develop into what are now the modern spoken languages of northern and central India, such as Hindi and Bengali.

Sanskrit (s?#131;n'skrĭt) or Samskrtam , the language belonging to the Indic group of the Indo-Iranian subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see Indo-Iranian). Sanskrit was the classical standard language of ancient India, and some of the oldest surviving Indo-European documents are written in Sanskrit; however, Hittite is probably the earliest recorded Indo-European tongue with at least one text dated c.17th cent. B.C. The oldest known stage of Sanskrit is Vedic or Vedic Sanskrit, so-called because it was the language of the Veda, the most ancient extant scriptures of Hinduism. The Veda probably date back to about 1500 B.C. or earlier, many centuries before writing was introduced into India. Vedic Sanskrit was current c.1500 B.C. to c.200 B.C. However, Sanskrit in its classical form, a development of Vedic, was spoken c.400 B.C. as a standard court language. It became the literary vehicle of Hindu culture and as such was employed until . 1100 (see Sanskrit literature). Even today Sanskrit survives in liturgical usage. Sanskrit is not a dead language as is alleged by many Western Indologists. It is a living and vibrant language with about 5 million people speaking conversational sanskrit and many more capable of chanting it as well as reading it.

Study of grammar by Indian scholars began early. The oldest existing Sanskrit grammatical work was written by the Indian grammarian Panini (dated by Western Historians to the 4th cent. B.C. But we believe he is to be dated much earlier to the 17th century BCE. Interestingly he is also credited with the invention of the zero which is to be found in his works)), who perceptively analyzed and commented on the Sanskrit language. Grammatically, Sanskrit has eight cases for the noun (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, instrumental, vocative, and locative), three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), three numbers for verbs, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives (singular, dual, and plural), and three voices for the verb (active, middle, and passive). The language is very highly inflected. The ancient Indian scripts known as the Brahmi and Kharosthi alphabets have been employed to record Sanskrit. Both Brahmi and Kharosthi are thought to be of Semitic origin. The Devanagari characters, which are descended from Brahmi, also were, and still are, used for writing Sanskrit. The comparison of Sanskrit with the languages of Europe, especially by Sir William Jones, opened the way to the scientific study of language in Europe in the 18th cent.

Bibliography

See J. Bloch, Indo-Aryan, from the Vedas to Modern Times (rev. ed., tr. 1965); R. P. Godman and S. J. Sutherland, Devavanipravesika: An Introduction to the Sanskrit Language (2d ed. rev. 1987).

Sanskrit

The language of ancient India, and one of the oldest languages of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs.

Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun Sanskrit has one meaning:

Meaning #1: an ancient language of India (the language of the Vedas and of Hinduism); an official language of India although it is now used only for religious purposes
Synonym: Sanskritic language

Sanskrit

Sanskrit (स?#130;स?#141;?#149;?#131;तम?#141; sa?#131;sk?#155;tam)

Spoken in: India and some other areas of South and Southeast Asia; many Buddhist scholars in the countries of East Asia such as China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam are also able to communicate in Sanskrit.

Total speakers: 6,106 (1981 census)
194,433 second language speakers (1961 census)

Language family: Indo-European
Indo-Iranian
Indo-Aryan
Sanskrit

Official status

Official language of: India (one of the scheduled languages)

Regulated by: no official regulation

Language codes

ISO 639-1: sa

ISO 639-2: san

ISO/DIS 639-3: san

This page contains Indic text. Without rendering support you may see irregular vowel positioning and a lack of conjuncts. More...

Sanskrit (sa?#131;sk?#155;tam स?#130;स?#141;?#149;?#131;तम?#141;) is an Indo-European Classical language of India and a liturgical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It has a position in India and Southeast Asia similar to that of Latin and Greek in Europe, and is a central part of Hindu tradition. It also has the prestige of being one of the oldest Indo-European languages in use in the world. Sanskrit is one of the 22 official languages of India. Sanskrit is taught in schools and households throughout India as a second language. Some identify it as their mother tongue. According to recent reports, it is being revived as a vernacular in the village of Mattur near Shimoga in Karnataka.

Sanskrit is mostly used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals in the forms of hymns and mantras. Its pre-Classical form of Vedic Sanskrit, the liturgical language of the Vedic religion, is one of the earliest attested members of the Indo-European language family, its most ancient text being the Rigveda. It is also the language of Yoga.

The scope of this article is that of Classical Sanskrit as laid out in the grammar of Panini, roughly around 500 BC. Most Sanskrit texts available today were transmitted orally for several centuries before they were written down in medieval India.

History

Devimahatmya manuscript on palm-leaf, in an early Bhujimol script, Bihar or Nepal, 11th century.

The adjective sa?#131;sk?#155;ta- means "refined, consecrated, sanctified". The language referred to as sa?#131;sk?#155;t?#129; v?#129;k "the refined language" has by definition always been a 'high' language, used for religious and scientific discourse and contrasted with the languages spoken by the people. The oldest surviving Sanskrit grammar is P?#129;?#135;ini's Aṣt?#129;dhy?#129;yī ("Eight-Chapter Grammar") dating to ca. the 5th century BC. It is essentially a prescriptive grammar, i.e., an authority that defines (rather than describes) correct Sanskrit, although it contains descriptive parts, mostly to account for Vedic forms that had already passed out of use in Panini's time.

When the term arose in India, "Sanskrit" was not thought of as a specific language set apart from other languages (the people of the time regarded languages more as dialects), but rather as a particularly refined or perfected manner of speaking. Knowledge of Sanskrit was a marker of social class and educational attainment and was taught mainly to Brahmanas through close analysis of Sanskrit grammarians such as P?#129;?#135;ini.

Sanskrit is almost a direct descendent of the Proto-Indo-European language. It belongs to the Indo-Aryan sub-family of the Indo-European family of languages. It is part of the Satem group of Indo-European languages, which also includes the Iranian branch and the Balto-Slavic branch. The categorization may be shown as:

Indo-European ?#134;’ Indo-Iranian ?#134;’ Indo-Aryan (i.e., Sanskrit and its descendents).

Technically, Sanskrit is the oldest of the Old Indo-Aryan languages. Its "daughter languages" include the Prakrits of ancient India, Hindi, Bengali, Kashmiri, Urdu, Marathi, Gujrati, Assamese, Nepali, Punjabi and Romany (spoken by the European gypsies). It is no wonder that Sanskrit shows stark similarities?#128;”to varying degrees?#128;”with Latin, Ancient Greek, Avestan and even Persian and German.

Vedic Sanskrit

Main article: Vedic Sanskrit

Sanskrit, as defined by P?#129;?#135;ini, had evolved out of the earlier "Vedic" form, and scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or "Paninian" Sanskrit as separate dialects. However, they are extremely similar in many ways and differ mostly in a few points of phonology, vocabulary, and grammar. Classical Sanskrit can therefore be considered a seamless evolution of the earlier Vedic language. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a large collection of hymns, incantations, and religio-philosophical discussions which form the earliest religious texts in India and the basis for much of the Hindu religion. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, composed by many authors over centuries of oral tradition. The end of the Vedic period is marked by the composition of the Upanishads, which form the concluding part of the Vedic corpus in the traditional compilations. The current hypothesis is that the Vedic form of Sanskrit survived until the middle of the first millennium BC. It is around this time that Sanskrit began the transition from a first language to a second language of religion and learning, marking the beginning of the Classical period.(ed.note - we believe that classical sanskrit evolved with Panini during the beginning of the second millennium BCE circa1700 BCE

Orthodox Hinduism believes that the language of the Vedas is eternal and revealed in its wording and word order. Evidence for this belief is found in the Vedas itself, where in the Upanishads they are described as the very "breath of God" (nihsvasitam brahma). The Vedas are therefore considered "the language of reality", so to speak, and are unauthored, even by God, the rishis or seers ascribed to them being merely individuals gifted with a special insight into reality with the power of perceiving these eternal sounds. At the beginning of every cycle of creation, God himself "remembers" the order of the Vedic words and propagates them through the rishis. Orthodox Hindus, while accepting the linguistic development of Sanskrit as such, do not admit any historical stratification within the Vedic corpus itself.

This belief is of significant consequence in Indian religious history, as the very sacredness and eternality of the language encouraged exact memorization and transmission and discouraged textual learning via written propagation. Each word is believed to have innate and eternal meaning and, when properly pronounced, mystic expressive power. Erroneous learning of repetition of the Veda was considered a grave sin with potentially immediate negative consequences. Consequently, Vedic learning by rote was encouraged and prized, particularly among Brahmins, where learning of one's own Vedic texts was a mandated duty. On the social side, the need to preserve the error-free nature of the Veda served as a justification to prevent teaching and propagation of the text to those considered "unworthy" of receiving it, by virtue of caste and gender.

Vedic Sanskrit differs from Classical Sanskrit in to an extent comparable to the difference between Homeric Greek and Classical Greek. Some differences are:

Phonology
- Vedic Sanskrit had a voiceless bilabial fricative (/ɸ/, called upam?#129;dhamīya) and a voiceless velar fricative (/x/, called jihv?#129;mūlīya)?#128;”which used to occur when the breath visarga appeared before voiceless labial and velar consonants respectively. Both of them were lost in Classical Sanskrit.
- Vedic Sanskrit had a retroflex lateral approximant (/ɭ/), which was lost in Classical Sanskrit.
- Vedic Sanskrit had a pitch accent which could fall freely within the word, but Classical Sanskrit as described by P?#129;?#135;ini had only a stress accent where the placement of the accent was restricted to the last three syllables. Today, the pitch accent can be heard only in the traditional Vedic chantings.
Grammar
- The subjunctive mood of Vedic Sanskrit was also lost in Classical Sanskrit.
- There were more than 12 ways of forming infinitives in Vedic Sanskrit, of which Classical Sanskrit retained only one single form.
Nominal declinations and verbal conjugation also changed pronunciation, although the spelling was retained in Classical Sanskrit.
Vocabulary
- Many lexemes attested in the Vedic texts became lost, while others were contained a considerable amount of polysemy.

Classical Sanskrit

There is a strong relationship between the various forms of Sanskrit and the Middle Indo-Aryan "Prakrits", or vernacular languages (in which, among other things, most early Jain and Buddhist texts are written), and the modern Indo-Aryan languages. The Prakrits are probably descended from Vedic, and there is mutual interchange between later forms of Sanskrit and various Prakrits. There has also been reciprocal influence between Sanskrit and the Dravidian languages.

A significant form of post-Vedic but pre-Paninian Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of the Hindu Epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. This dialect includes many archaic and unusual forms which deviate from Panini and are denoted by traditional Sanskrit scholars as aarsha or "of the rishis", the traditional title for the ancient authors. In some contexts there are also more "prakritisms" (borrowings from common speech) than Classical Sanskrit proper. Finally, there is also a language dubbed "Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit" by scholars, which is actually a prakrit ornamented with Sanskritized elements, perhaps for purposes of ostentation (see also termination of spoken Sanskrit).

European Scholarship

European scholarship in Sanskrit, begun by Heinrich Roth and Johann Ernst Hanxleden, led to the proposal of the Indo-European language family by Sir William Jones, and thus played an important role in the development of Western linguistics. Indeed, linguistics (along with phonology, etc.) first arose among Indian grammarians who were attempting to catalog and codify Sanskrit's rules. Modern linguistics owes a great deal to these grammarians, and to this day, for example, key terms for compound analysis such as bahuvrihi are taken from Sanskrit.

Phonology and writing system

Note: This page contains
IPA phonetic symbols
in Unicode.

Classical Sanskrit distinguishes 48 sounds. Some of these, are, however, allophones. The number of phonemes is smaller, at about 35, see below.

The sounds are traditionally listed in the order vowels, diphthongs, anusvara and visarga, stops and nasals (starting in the back of the mouth and moving forward), and finally the liquids and fricatives, written in IAST as follows (see the tables below for details):

a ?#129; i ī u ū ?#155; ?#157; ḷ ḹ ; e ai o au

?#131; ḥ

k kh g gh ?#133;; c ch j jh ñ; ṭ ṭh ?#141; ?#141;h ?#135;; t th d dh n; p ph b bh m

y r l v; ?#155; ṣ s h

An alternate traditional ordering is that of the Shiva Sutra.

Vowels

Devanagari script is the one traditionally and most popularly associated with Sanskrit. Modern Hindi also uses the Devanagari script (its alphabets are truly speaking, alpha-syllables). Devanagari, being an abugida script, non-word-initial vowels are expressed by diacritics; see Devanagari for details. The vowels of Sanskrit with their word-initial devanagari symbol, diacritical mark with the consonant प?#141; (/p/), pronunciation (of the vowel alone and of /p/+vowel) in IPA, equivalent in IAST and ITRANS and (approximate) equivalents in Standard English are listed below:

Alphabet	Diacritical mark with ?#128;œप?#141;?#128;	Pronunciation	Pronunciation with /p/	IAST equiv.	ITRANS equiv.	English eqivalent
?#133;	प	/?#153;/	/p?#153;/	a	a	short Schwa: as the a in above or ago
?#134;	पा	/?#145;?#144;/	/p?#145;?#144;/	?#129;	A	long Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father
?#135;	पि	/i/	/pi/	i	i	short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit
?#136;	प?#128;	/i?#144;/	/pi?#144;/	ī	I	long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine
?#137;	प?#129;	/u/	/pu/	u	u	short close back rounded vowel: as u in put
?#138;	प?#130;	/u?#144;/	/pu?#144;/	ū	U	long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school
?#143;	प?#135;	/e?#144;/	/pe?#144;/	e	e	long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong), or é in café
?#144;	प?#136;	/?#153;i/ or /ai/	/p?#153;i/ or /pai/	ai	ai	a long diphthong: approx. as ei in height
?#147;	प?#139;	/ο?#144;/	/po?#144;/	o	o	long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)
?#148;	प?#140;	/?#153;u/ or /au/	/p?#153;u/ or /pau/	au	au	a long diphthong: approx. as ou in house
?#139;	प?#131;	/r̩/	/pr̩/	?#155;	R	short syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: approx. as American Eng. bird or meter
?nbsp;	प?#132;	/r̩?#144;/	/pr̩?#144;/	?#157;	RR	long syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: a longer version of /r̩/
?#140;	पॢ	/l̩/	/pl̩/	ḷ	LR	short syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: approx. as handle
ॡ	पॣ	/l̩?#144;/	/pl̩?#144;/	ḹ	LRR	long syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: longer version of /l̩/

The long vowels are held about twice as long as their short counterparts. Also, there exists a third, extra-long length for most vowels, called pluti, which is used in various cases, but particularly in the vocative. The pluti is not accepted by all grammarians.

The vowels e and o continue as allohonic variants of Proto-Indo-Iranian /ai/, /au/, and they are phonologically (conceptually) /ai/ and /au/ still in Sanskrit, and are categorized as diphthongs by Sanskrit grammarians even though they are realized phonetically as simple long vowels.

Additional points:

There are some additional vowels traditionally listed in the Sanskrit/Hindi alphabet. They are :
- ?#133;?#130; (called anusv?#129;ra), pronounced as /?#153;?#139;/ (IAST: ?#131;). Its diacritic (the dot above) is used both for nasalizing the vowel in the syllable and for the sound of a vowel-like /n/ or /m/. (प?#130;).
- ?#133;?#131; (called visarga), pronounced as /?#153;h/ (IAST: ḥ).
- The diacritic ?#129;}} (called chandrabindu), not listed in the alphabet, is used interchangeably with the anusv?#129;ra to indicate nasalization of the vowel (प?#129;).
If a lonely consonant needs to be written without any following vowel, it is given a halanta/vir?#129;ma diacritic below (प?#141;).
The vowel /?#145;?#144;/ in Sanskrit is more central and less back than in English.
All vowels in Hindi, short or long, can be nasalized. All vowels can have acute grave or circumflex pitch accent.
Note that the ancient Sanskrit grammarians have classified the vowel system as velars, retroflexes, palatals and plosives rather than as back, central and mid vowels. Hence ?#143; and ?#147; are classified respectively as palato-velar (a+i) labio-velar (a+u) vowels respectively. But the grammarians have classified them as diphthongs and in prosody, each is given two m?#129;tr?#129;s. This does not necessarily mean that they are proper diphthongs, but neither excludes the possibility that they could have been proper diphthongs at a very ancient stage. These vowels are pronounced as long /e/ and /o/ respectively by learned Sanskrit Brahmins and priests of today. Other than the "four" diphthongs, Sanskrit usually disallows any other diphthongs?#128;”vowels in succession, if occur, are converted to semivowels according to predetermined rules.
In the devanagari script used for Sanskrit, whenever a consonant in a word-ending position is without any vir?#129;ma (ie, freely standing in the orthography: प as opposed to प?#141;), the neutral vowel schwa (/?#153;/) is automatically associated with it?#128;”this is of course true for the consonant to be in any position in the word. Word-ending schwa is always short. But the IAST a appended to the end of masculine noun words rather confuses the foreigners to pronounce it as /?#145;?#144;/?#128;”this makes the masculine Sanskrit/Hindi words sound like feminine! e.g., shiva must be pronounced as /?#131;iv?#153;/ and not as /?#131;iv?#145;?#144;/.

Consonants

Devanagari and IAST notation is given, with approximate IPA values in sqare brackets.

Semivowel				v व [?#139;]					y य [j]
		Labial		Labiodental	Dental		Retroflex		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Stop	Unaspirated	p प [p]	b ब [b]		t त [t]	d द [d]	ṭ ?#159; [?#136;]	?#141; ड [?#150;]	c ?#154; [c]	j ?#156; [?#159;]	k ?#149; [k]	g ?#151; [g]
Stop	Aspirated	ph फ [pʰ]	bh भ [bʱ]		th थ [tʰ]	dh ध [dʱ]	ṭh ?nbsp; [?#136;ʰ]	?#141;h ढ [?#150;ʱ]	ch ?#155; [cʰ]	jh ?#157; [?#159;ʱ]	kh ?#150; [kʰ]	gh ?#152; [gʱ]
Nasal		m म [m]			n न [n]		?#135; ण [ɳ]		ñ ?#158; [ɲ]		?#133; ?#153; [?#139;]
Liquid					l ल [l]		r र [r]
Fricative					s स [s]		ṣ ष [?#130;]		?#155; श [?#149;]				ḥ ?#131; [h]	h ह [ɦ]

The table below shows the traditional listing of the Sanskrit consonants with the (nearest) equivalents in English/Spanish. Each consonant shown below is deemed to be followed by the neutral vowel schwa (/?#153;/), and is named in the table as such.

	Unaspirated Voiceless	Aspirated Voiceless	Unaspirated Voiced	Aspirated Voiced	Nasal
Plosives
Velar	?#149; /k?#153;/; English: skip	?#150; /kʰ?#153;/; English: cat	?#151; /g?#153;/; English: game	?#152; /gʱ?#153;/; Aspirated /g/	?#153; /?#139;?#153;/; English: ring
Palatal	?#154; /c?#153;/; ?#137;ˆEnglish: chat	?#155; /cʰ?#153;/; Aspirated /c/	?#156; /?#159;?#153;/; ?#137;ˆEnglish: jam	?#157; /?#159;ʱ?#153;/; Aspirated /?#159;/	?#158; /ɲ?#153;/; English: finch
Retroflex	?#159; /?#136;?#153;/; American Eng: hurting	?nbsp; /?#136;ʰ?#153;/; Aspirated /?#136;/	ड /?#150;?#153;/; American Eng: murder	ढ /?#150;ʱ?#153;/; Aspirated /?#150;/	ण /ɳ?#153;/; American Eng: hunter
Apico-Dental	त /t̪?#153;/; Spanish: tomate	थ /t̪ʰ?#153;/; Aspirated /t̪/	द /d̪?#153;/; Spanish: donde	ध /d̪ʱ?#153;/; Aspirated /d̪/	न /n?#153;/; English: name
Labial	प /p?#153;/; English: spin	फ /pʰ?#153;/; English: pit	ब /b?#153;/; English: bone	भ /bʱ?#153;/; Aspirated /b/	म /m?#153;/; English: mine

	Palatal	Retroflex	Dental/ Alveolar	Labial/ Glottal
Non-Plosives/Sonorants
Approximant	य /j?#153;/; English: you	र /r?#153;/; American Eng: tearing	ल /l?#153;/; English: love	व (labio-dental) /?#139;?#153;/; English: vase
Sibilant/ Fricative	श /?#149;?#153;/; English: ship	ष /?#130;?#153;/; Retroflex form of /?#131;/	स /s?#153;/; English: same	ह (glottal) /ɦ?#153;/; ?#137;ˆEnglish home

Phonology

The Sanskrit vowels are as discussed in the section above. The long syllabic l (ḹ) is not attested, and is only discussed by grammarians for systematic reasons. Its short counterpart ḷ occurs in a single root only, kḷp "to order, array". Long syllabic r (?#157;) is also quite marginal, occurring in the genitive plural of r-stems (e.g. m?#129;t?#155; "mother" and pit?#155; "father" have gen.pl. m?#129;t?#157;?#135;?#129;m and pit?#157;?#135;?#129;m). i, u, ?#155;, ḷ are vocalic allophones of consonantal y, v, r, l. There are thus only 5 invariably vocalic phonemes,

a, ?#129;, ī, ū, ?#157;.

Visarga ḥ ?#131; is an allophone of r and s, and anusvara ?#131;, Devanagari ?#130; of any nasal, both in pausa (ie, the nasalized vowel). The exact pronunciation of the three sibilants may vary, but they are distinct phonemes. An aspirated voiced sibilant /zʱ/ was inherited by Indo-Aryan from Proto-Indo-Iranian but lost shortly before the time of the Rigveda (note that aspirated sibilant are exceedingly rare in any language). The retroflex consonants are somewhat marginal phonemes, often being conditioned by their phonetic environment; they do not continue a PIE series and are often ascribed by some linguists to the substratal influence of Dravidian. The nasal ñ is a conditioned allophone of n (n and ?#135; are distinct phonemes - one has to distinguish a?#135;u "minute, atomic" (nom. sg. neutr. of an adjective) from anu "after, along"; phonologically independent ?#133; occurs only marginally, e.g. in pr?#129;?#133; "directed forwards/towards" (nom. sg. masc. of an adjective) and can thus be omitted). There are thus 31 consonantal or semi-vocalic phonemes, consisting of four/five kinds of stops realized both with or without aspiration and both voiced and voiceless, two nasals, four semi-vowels or liquids, and four fricatives, written in IAST transliteration as follows:

p, ph, b, bh; t, th, d, dh; ṭ, ṭh, ?#141;, ?#141;h; c, ch, j, jh; k, kh, g, gh; m, n, ?#135;; v, y, l, r; s, ṣ, ?#155;, h

or a total of 36 unique Sanskrit phonemes altogether.

The phonological rules to be applied when combining morphemes to a word, and when combining words to a sentence are collectively called sandhi "composition". Texts are written phonetically, with sandhi applied (except for the so-called padap?#129;ṭha).

Some additional features of the Sanskrit phonological system are given here, as well as some useful tips for those whose native language is English but are interested in learning Sanskrit language.

No other nasal consonant except /m/ and /n/ can start a word in Sanskrit.
The distinction between the aspirated and the unaspirated consonants is really very strong, not only in Sanskrit, but also in Hindi and all other Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages of India.
The distinction between the dental plosives and the retroflex plosives is also very stark in all Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages.
The number of allowable consonant clusters of Sanskrit is limited, but still very large as compared to other IE languages.
The "r" of Sanskrit may be as in Standard American English. In modern Sanskrit pronunciation, the vowel "?#155;" is pronounced as /ri/. The oldest ?#154;ikṣ?#129;s (general phonetic texts) and Pr?#129;ti?#155;?#129;khyas (phonetic studies of particular branches of Vedas) vary significantly in descriptions of these sounds; this may be due to different dialects and/or traditions their authors belonged to.
There is no retroflex flap in Sanskrit. In modern Hindi and other Indo-Aryan languages, they have sprung up as the allophonic flap variants of Sanskrit's simple voiced retroflex plosives. The /ɳ/ (?#135; or ण) in Sanskrit is not a flap but a simple nasal stop, although it is pronounced by modern pundits while chanting as a nasal variant of the voiced retroflex flap.
Aspiration is actually a puff of breath that may follow a plosive consonant. English speakers could try pronouncing the words "kite", "take", "chip" and "pat" with a greater-than-usual puff of breath after the first consonant. The corresponding unaspirated plosives must be pronounced with no significant puff of breath at all.
For practicing the voiced aspirates, one could try: "drag him", "said him", "enrage him", "grab him". The voiced aspirated plosives (also called as murmur stops) are extremely important and frequent in Sanskrit. Sanskrit (and its daughters) is the only language that has faithfully preserved these original Proto-Indo-European stops.
The dental consonants in Sanskrit are as in Spanish or French. They can be pronounced by pronouncing /t/ and /d/ (of English) by pressing the tip of the tongue against the back of the teeth rather than against the back of the alveolar ridge as done by English speakers. The normal "t" and "d" in IAST transliteration are the dental stops; and they occur much, much more frequently than the retroflex stops.
The retroflex consonants are the most difficult to pronounce. They are pronounced by curling the tongue such that its tip touches the roof of the mouth, like how the Americans pronounce their "r". However, bringing the tip of the tongue a bit above the normal alveolar ridge would also work fine. The normal alveolar plosives of English /t/ and /d/ do not exist as such in Sanskrit.
The palatal plosives of Sanskrit do not have a sharp frictional sound following them, as what happend in English chips and jam. These are more of pure plosives than affricates.
Sanskrit has no /v/. Its nearest equivalent is /?#139;/, which is very close to /v/, but does not a friction or buzzing sound associated with it. But in consonant clusters, this may allophonically change to /w/.
The palatal sibilant of Sanskrit (IAST: ?#155;) is very close to like the English sh in ship (although the Sanskrit phoneme is the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /?#149;/) while the English phoneme is the voiceless postalveolar fricative /?#131;/ with lip rounding). Today, speakers of Sanskrit vary the palatal fricative from /?#149;/ to /?#131;/.
The retroflex sibilant /?#130;/ is pronounced like /?#131;/, but with the tongue curled upwards towards the roof of the mouth. In M?#129;dhyandini branch of Yajurveda, this phoneme is allowed to be pronounced at certain places as /kʰ/.
The Sanskrit /ɦ/ is a voiced allophone of the normal h.
Although any consonant may come in the word-final position in an uninflected word-stem, the number of word-final consonants in any inflected word (or verb or particle) standing freely by itself is severly limited and determined by the rules of Sandhi. Only the following consonants may come in the word-final position: /k/, /?#136;/, /t/, /p/, /l/ (rare), voiceless /h/ (i.e., visarga), and all nasals except /ɲ/. Any vowel may come at the word-final position.

Pitch

Vedic Sanskrit is a pitch accent language. Native grammarians define three tones (svara): ud?#129;tta = 'raised', anud?#129;tta = 'not raised', and svarita = 'sounded'. The ud?#129;tta syllable corresponds to the original Proto-Indo-European stress. The svarita is usually the next syllable after an ud?#129;tta. Probably when the Rigveda was written down, the pitch of speech rose through the ud?#129;tta and came back down through the following svarita. A svarita which is not preceded by an ud?#129;tta is called an "independent svarita". In transliteration ud?#129;tta is marked with acute accent (´) and independent svarita with a grave accent (`). Independent svarita occurs only where its ud?#129;tta was lost because of vowel sandhi.

Classical Sanskrit is usually pronounced with a stress accent decided by the syllable length pattern of each word.

Script

Kashmiri Shaivaite manuscript in the Sharada script (17th or 18th century)

Sanskrit historically has had no single script associated with it. Since the late 19th century, the Devanagari (meaning "as used in the city of the gods") script has become the most widely used and associated with Sanskrit, yet this was by no means the case earlier. Each region adapted the script of the local vernacular, whether Indo-Aryan or Dravidian. In the north, there are inscriptions dating from the early centuries B.C. in the Brahmi script, also used by the king Ashoka in his famous Prakrit pillar inscriptions. Roughly contemporary with the Brahmi, the Kharosthi script was used. Later (ca. 4th to 8th centuries AD) the Gupta script, derived from Brahmi, became prevalent. From ca. the 8th century, the Sharada script evolved out of the Gupta script, and was mostly displaced in its turn by Devanagari from ca. the 12th century, with intermediary stages such as the Siddham script. The Bengali and other scripts were also used in their respective regions.

The devanagari alphabets (alpha-syllables) for the vowels and the consonants have been discussed in the sections above. The next table gives the system of combining two consonants, ie., making a consonant cluster. To write a consonant cluster /XYa/ from /Xa/ and /Ya/ syllables, Sanskrit usually converts the alphabetic symbol of the initial consonant X into the corresponding half-consonant (sic)?#128;”mostly achieved by cutting the right-side portion of the alphabet. Similarly for a cluster /XYZa/, both X and Y would be "halved". There are many variants for this consonant cluster writing in devanagari script. The most common system is shown below for the traditional table. Here the second vowel is taken to be /n/, followed by the schwa.

ka-group	?#149;?#141;न /kn?#153;/	?#150;?#141;न /kʰn?#153;/	?#151;?#141;न /gn?#153;/	?#152;?#141;न /gʱn?#153;/	?#153;?#141;न /?#139;n?#153;/
cha-group	?#154;?#141;न /cn?#153;/	?#155;?#141;न /cʰn?#153;/	?#156;?#141;न /?#159;n?#153;/	?#157;?#141;न /?#159;ʱn?#153;/	?#158;?#141;न /ɲn?#153;/