gIrvANI (Spoken sanskrit in realaudio)

Most of this website's content can be downloaded. Just right-click on "rm" or "mp3" link and select "save target as" on the menu.

The man who remains bound by personal or social ideas of duty, necessary as they are for the ignorant to tame their clamorous desires, will be indeed a "good" man, but he will never attain to the fulfilment of this yoga [taught in the Gita]. He will only replace the desire for one kind of fruit by the desire for another kind; he will strive, even more passionately perhaps, for these higher results and be more bitterly grieved by not attaining them.

There is no passion so terrible as the passion of the altruist, no egoism so hard to shake as the fixed egoism of virtue, precisely because it is justified in its own eyes and justified in the sight of men and cannot see the necessity for yielding to a higher law. Even if there is no grieving over the results, there will be the labour and strife of the rajasic kartA¢, struggling nd fighting, getting eager and getting exhausted, not trigunA¢tI®ta, always under bondage to the gunas.

It was under the domination of these ideas of personal virtue and social duty that Arjuna refused to fight.

gIrvANa priyAH! susvAgatam! (Sanskrit Lovers! Welcome!)

This webpage gives you a feel for sanskrit as a spoken language. Here we present a collection of audio renderings of simple spoken sanskrit in the form of short stories, speeches and other literature by various people for your listening pleasure.

In general, people are accustomed to hearing sanskrit only in Hindu devotional hymns (stotras). This webpage attempts to present another side of spoken sanskrit.

If you have any recordings of sanskrit in spoken form (anything other than stotras and devotional songs), or are willing to read out interesting articles/stories and record them, please let me know.

We inaugurate this webpage on the auspicious occasion of makara sankranti, Jan 14, 2002.

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