Sanskrit Hindi. P. Oleksenko. Artifacts of ancient India. Sanskrit - the language of the gods - Earth before the flood: disappeared continents and civilizations. Sanskrit: languages ​​and writing

The ancient Indo-European peoples attached great importance to memorizing sacred texts, so they developed writing relatively late. And every nation has its own.

The Persians created their writing in the fifth century BC, following the example of the Assyrian cuneiform. The Germanic runes arose in the first century AD, the Ogham script of the Irish - in the fifth century AD. The Slavs, apparently, also had their own writing, but it has not survived to this day.
Most modern writings arose on the basis Phoenician script: Devanagari, Cyrillic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, etc.

The Sanskrit script is Devanagari.

Devanagari is a syllabary that was formed by the 12th century AD from the Brahmi script (which also originated from the Phoenician script) and is used to this day in modern Indian languages: Hindi, Marathi, Nepali and others.

Features of Devanagari:

  • letters are written under one horizontal line
  • the text is written from left to right;
  • all letters are the same size (there is no division into lowercase and uppercase);
  • syllabary writing (one character for a consonant is read as a consonant sound with the vowel “a”);
  • each symbol corresponds to only one pronunciation option (it cannot be that the same symbol is read differently (compare, this is not the case in English: in fat and fate the same letter “a” sounds differently));
  • the letter displays all the nuances of pronunciation (we write as we speak, the letter fully reflects phonetics)

According to the sound set of Sanskrit, Devanagari has symbols for vowel sounds:

The given spelling is typical for the beginning of words.

Since Devanagari is a syllabic writing system, it does not have symbols to indicate single consonant sounds; in it, all signs for consonants are read as a consonant sound with the vowel “a”. Consonants:

Rear lingual

Midpalatal

Cerebral

To have experience, you need to practice. Therefore I suggest you right now complete the simplest task that will allow you start reading and writing Sanskrit.

The first thing you will need for this is. Download them, print them and fill them out to learn how to write Devanagari characters correctly.

Exercise

Write the words in devanāgarī script:

ka - who? which?
kha - air, sky
ha - walking
ya - which

kara—doing; hand
gaja - elephant
jana - person
jala - water
lady - house, dwelling

How to complete the task:

1) Take Blank sheet paper, write the first word first in Russian letters: ka.
2) Now find in the table for consonants the Devanagari symbol, which reads as ka.
3) Find this symbol in the copybooks to spell it correctly. And write it large to the right of the Russian letters: ka.

4) That's it, you wrote the first word. You can move on to the second one.
5) To write a word consisting of more than one character, you need to write the first character in sequence, then the second. By doing this, the vertical bar will combine the two characters into one word. For example, the word punishment: writing ka we have already found it, write it down first, then look for it ra and assign to the right of क so that they are combined into one word.

Complete the entire task in this way, take a photo or scan and send it to me by email. [email protected]. I will check and respond with the necessary recommendations and comments.

Be sure to do this task. It is necessary not only to gain knowledge (which will be forgotten without application), but get a skill.

Do you want to quickly and easily master Sanskrit writing and learn correct pronunciation? .

Our bhajan collections were made from English versions of bhajan collections that were compiled by Indian devotees. But neither our 33-letter alphabet nor the Latin 28-letter alphabet is enough to reliably reflect the 45 basic sounds of Sanskrit (there are even more letters), and there are even more of them in Hindi and Telugu. However, for an Indian user, a speaker of one of the Indian languages, these collections were absolutely sufficient, because they were like a reminder of the text of the bhajan, and the singer would automatically substitute all the missing, undisplayed sounds. At the carrier in English Some small errors in pronunciation would already appear. But after English versions became the basis for Russians, many more pronunciation errors crept in.

Let's go through all the problems in order.

The first problem is the absence of long vowels in the Russian language. In fact, we pronounce the stressed vowel for a longer time, but the stress in Russian is dynamic and can change. Stress in Sanskrit can also change, but it is not related to longitude, as in Russian.

In Sanskrit, only the sounds /a/, /i/ and /u/ can be short or long. In transliteration, a straight line is usually drawn over long sounds. The sounds /e/ (or /e/) and /o/ are always long in Sanskrit. It's worth remembering. There is a rule in Sanskrit - a long sound is twice as long as a short sound. This rule is mostly followed in bhajans. If a syllable with a short vowel lasts one eighth, then a syllable with a long vowel will last two eighths, or one fourth, exactly twice as long, this is not difficult to notice when listening. Sometimes long lasts three times longer (that is, three eighths versus one eighth for short). Therefore, it is also important for our soloists to try to copy the singing of Indian singers, without embellishing with such variations that lead to the reduction of long sounds to short ones, such as, for example, singing a line earlier or later.

There are also a couple of long sounds called diphthongs: /ay/ and /ay/. They do not present any particular difficulties, but Russians, due to this type of spelling, tend to pronounce /ау/ as the sum of the sounds a+y. Thus, one of the names of Parvati’s mother /Gauri/ is pronounced by us as /Gaa-uri/, as a three-syllable word with an emphasis on the syllable /aa/. In reality, this diphthong should be pronounced as one syllable and sound, without stretching, and closer to /ou/. Let's remember the sound /Om/ for example, which also consists of /a+u/, but is pronounced as /o/.

And I would also like to mention one point that I learned about quite recently from a professional Indian musician, a devotee of Baba Dru Nankoe. Short sounds /a/ are pronounced with a very closed mouth, so that in an unstressed position they can even resemble the absence of sound, and in a stressed position it is indistinct /ae/. Everyone knows the word “victory”, which sounds like /jay/, but it is written as “jaya”. The stressed /a/ short turned into /e/, and the unstressed one was completely reduced. (if you get acquainted with the alphabets of India, this becomes more understandable and logical, since a consonant letter without additional vowel sounds means that it is pronounced with a short /a/, i.e. as if this letter does not have a vowel, and also the short /a/ sound, which represents the so-called middle stage, is a weak stage - the complete absence of sound, any Sanskrit textbook will tell you about this. So this phenomenon of reduction of the short /a/ can be conditionally called a gravity towards the weak stage - sorry for the improvised one. pseudoscientific digression).

Now let's talk about consonants. Firstly, Sanskrit and Indian languages ​​use aspirated sounds. In our writing they are displayed as the corresponding unaspirated sound plus /x/, for example, /bh/, /ph/, etc. A common mistake we make is dividing these sounds into two, after which /x/ itself becomes a syllabic. For example, /jagadoddhaarini/ (who protects the world - an epithet of Goddess Durga) becomes /jagadoddhaarini/. The second variant of the error is simply the omission of the aspiration - /bhajo/ (honor, worship) becomes /bajo/.

Perhaps the following idea will be useful for understanding the nature of aspirated sounds. One of my Hindi teachers classified these pairs of sounds as simple and musical. In fact, aspirated sounds can be extended a little; they are no longer just plosive and stop-like, they become a little melodious.

The next discrepancy between our language and Indian language family- presence of a group of cerebral sounds. These are cerebral /?/, /?h/, /d/, /dh/ and /?/, this also includes the sounds /p/ and /sh/. They are distinguished by the fact that the tip of the tongue is curled back and touches the anterior palate. The sound of /?/ and /d/ is somewhat similar to the alveolar English t, d. In turn, dental /t/ and /d/, which are similar to our /t/ and /d/, are similar in tongue position to English dental sounds, denoted by the letters th (there are three readings - interdental voiced and voiceless and the usual English t for words borrowed from Latin). But Indians who speak English usually replace these completely English sounds their own, which was also reflected in the transliterated letter. We all know that Bhagavan's name "Satya" is written in English as Sathya, in which the combination th does not denote the aspirated /th/, but emphasizes the lack of cerebrality, that is, the usual dental /t/. But such a spelling th often in bhajans turned into Russian /th/, for example, if we take the well-known bhajan /Manasa Bhajore Guru Chara?am, Dustara Bhava Saagara Tara?am/, the word /tara?am/ (crossing over, overcoming, salvation from - the ocean of worldly existence) is erroneously reproduced as /thara?am/, although in Sanskrit there are practically no words beginning with /th/. This word also uses cerebral /?/, this occurs in Sanskrit word formation with the usual /n/ in a position after /r/, and sometimes even if /r/ is not in the adjacent syllable. That is, physically, for simplicity and convenience of pronunciation, the tongue seems to freeze in the /p/ position, touching the palate, and then, without changing the position, the sound /?/ is pronounced. Examples: /chara?am/ (foot), /tara?am/ (crossing), /chara?am/ (refuge), /karu?a/ (compassionate), /raamaaya?a/ (path, wanderings of Rama). The same phenomenon occurs after cerebral /sh/: /bhuusha?a/ (decorated), /K?sh?a/ (black, dark, Krishna). There are very few words beginning with cerebral /t/ and /d/; more often these sounds can occur within words: /damaru/ (drum), /dam/ (beat, drum sound); /badaa chittachora... / (a ​​big fan of stealing hearts; here the cerebral d is not of Sanskrit origin, in Hindi it is pronounced almost like /p/), /shirdi/ (Shirdi, geographical name); /vi??hala/ (an epithet of Krishna), /venka?esvara/ (the name of the Deity represented in the sacred place of Tirupati), /na?araaja/ (king of dance), /na?avara/ (best of dancers), /ha ?else/, /ga?apati/ (lord of the army (Shiva), Ganesha, Ganapati), /jagadoddhaari?i/ (protector of the world - epithet of Goddess Durga), etc.

A few words about /sch/ and /sh/. Just like in Russian, there are two varieties of this sound in Sanskrit. The sound /sch/ is palatal, close to the Russian soft short /sch/ in the words community, accomplice (Kochergina V.A. Sanskrit-Russian Dictionary. Moscow, 2005, p. 789. Grammar essay by A.A. Zaliznyak) He found in the words /shchiva/ (benevolent, kind, Shiva), /shankara/ (bringing good), /shambhu(o)/ (compassionate), /shata/ (one hundred, just like in Russian), /schukla/ (light ), /shrii/ (beauty), /shaaradaa/ (epithet of Sarasvati, /sharana/ (protector, refuge), /shyama/ (black), /schankha/ (shell), /shaanta/ (peace), /shaambhava/ ( sacred), /shesha/ (the king of snakes on which Lord Vishnu reclines), /shaila/ (stone, rock), as well as /saai sch a/ (Lord Sai), /ii sch vara/ (best of the lords, epithet of the deities of the Hindu trinity), etc. In our literature, it is customary to write words using this letter with a sh. However, when performing bhajans, it might be worthwhile to deviate from this tradition established by scientists. In modern Indian languages, /sch/ is pronounced even softer, which makes it similar to /s/, but it should not be completely likened to the sound /s/, you just need to pronounce the sound /sch/ softly, with some whistling. The letter denoting the cerebral sound /sh/, with the tip of the tongue curved back, sounds very similar to our Russian /sh/ (Kochergina V.A., ibid.), usually found inside words /bhuu w a?a/ (decorated), /K? w?a/ (black, dark, Krishna), /sche w a/ (the king of snakes on which Lord Vishnu reclines). Only words associated with /shash/ (six, akin to Russian) and its variants /shat/, /shad/ in words like /shanmukha/ (six-faced), numerals sixteen, sixty, etc. begin with it. Sometimes /shirdii/ (Shirdi, geographical name) is also written through /sh/, but more often through /sh/.

Ultsiferov O.G. claims that in Hindi the difference between the sounds denoted by the mentioned letters of Devanagari (Sanskrit alphabet) is minimal, and they both resemble the Russian “sh” (Ultsiferov O.G. Textbook of the Hindi language. First year of study. Moscow, 2005, p. 27 ). But we can hear from recordings of bhajans performed by speakers of Indian languages, including Hindi, that this is perhaps not entirely true.

The sound /l/ is pronounced softly, but the body of the tongue does not rise completely upward, as in Russian /l/, but partially. Reminds me of French /l/ (Kochergina V.A., ibid.).

The /r/ sound is less booming than in Russian. It is similar to the Russian /r/ sound in words such as “fish”, “goods”, “peas”, although it is pronounced less loudly. (Ultsiferov O.G. Textbook of the Hindi language. First year of study. Moscow, 2005, p. 17). Zaliznyak A.A. claims that the pronunciation probably resembled English (Kochergina V.A., ibid.). You can get the idea of ​​all this by doing general conclusion that the tip of the tongue is placed more back than in Russian, closer to English, automatically creating less rolling than in Russian, closer to the completely non-rolling English /r/.

Very often the sound /j/ is pronounced in our country as a combination of the corresponding Russian sounds - /d/ and /zh/. In fact, it sounds much softer, and in order to pronounce it correctly, you need to reproduce our sound /ch/ in a voiced form. We have pairs of voiced-voiceless sounds /b/-/p/, /g/-/k/, /d/-/t/, and in /ch/ the voiced pair has been lost, passing in some cases into our /z / ( j nanny - h knowledge). But it remained in Sanskrit and Indian languages. By the way, Sanskrit does not have the letter /z/, but it was borrowed into the Hindi language with words from Persian, Arabic and English. It is written as the letter /j/ with a dot at the bottom. Therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes you can hear in bhajans instead of /zorashtra/ (Zoroaster) /jorashtra/ with the same meaning. For native speakers of Indian languages, these sounds are approximately identical.

All that remains to be said is about the syllable-forming p /?/ (and theoretically there is also a syllable-forming l /?/, but practically does not occur). I think many people have come across the spelling of the name “Krishna” without the “i”, and under the “r” there is a dot. Basically, the pronunciation of the syllabic /?/ as /ri/ occurs, and is more common in the north and west of India. And in the south and east of India you can hear “Krusha”, and this will also be correct. In fact, there was originally a rolling r /?/ there. It still remains as a syllabic in some Slavic languages, for example, in Czech. It is also found in the words /hrdaya/ or /hrudaya/ (heart), /brindavana/ or /vrindavana/ (Brindavana), rishi (sage), mriti (death), /prakriti/ (nature), etc.

Even in Hindi, and also to a small extent in Sanskrit, there are nasalized sounds (pronounced through the nose). In English writing, the words /mein/ (postposition corresponding to our preposition “in”), /main/ (I) are sometimes found. But there is no sound /n/ in its pure form, there is only nasalization, both sound simply like /me/ and /mei/, pronounced through the nose. Sometimes the combination also causes errors English letters/ey/ in words like /Harey/, /Ley Lo/. You need to understand that in these cases it is just the sound /e/ (or /e/), that is, it will sound like /hare/ (Oh, Hari! - Sanskrit), /le lo/ (accept - Hindi). It's just that if you write it in English in a different way, it can be confused with others in English words(hare- hare) or read according to the rules of the English language in a completely different way (le as /li/, compare with the words to be, me, we). Or the double English spelling e /ee/, which simply means long /i/.

What should we do in this situation? Let it be as it is? The simplest and most acceptable option. Let's draw out the vibrations through the feeling, the heart. Should everyone take up the study of Sanskrit and Hindi? A sacred, but labor-intensive task. Here, the corresponding abilities are also desirable. And if you spend this time on service, then the main goals - opening your heart and people's hearts, as well as comprehending God - will most likely be achieved faster. Or a compromise option: perhaps soloists should take a more specific look at their favorite bhajans, since they usually have from 2 to 10 lines and a dozen words that need to be pronounced correctly. For those who would like to achieve perfection in performing Indian bhajans, it would be worthwhile to memorize all the necessary words in the performed bhajans correctly. There are also collections of bhajans in the Latin alphabet in full adequate transliteration, published by the Sai Organization in other countries (for example, Italy), where all the necessary additional sounds are indicated by super and sub-letter dots and lines. We can try to do something similar, more complete, in Russian transliteration. To get rid of English-language “mediation” when transliterating bhajans from Sanskrit and Indian languages ​​into Russian. Make a word-by-word translation of the bhajans to improve understanding.

And in general, maybe that’s why Bhagavan asks us to sing more in our own dialects, so that we don’t distort bhajans in divine Sanskrit and Indian languages? This is a joke, of course, but I think that in mantras we should definitely pay attention to short, long and special sounds that are “alien” to the Russian language, and they are there too.

I hope I haven’t tired you with the flight of thoughts of my crazy monkey mind :).

Jay Sai Ram!

Devanagari alphabet


Indian alphabets, including Brahmi, Devanagari and others, are the only ones in the world where the order of signs is not random, but is based on an impeccable phonetic classification of sounds. This sets them apart from all other alphabets, imperfect and chaotically constructed: ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Georgian, etc.
We do not know of any centuries-long development of the Devanagari script in India itself. This letter is considered a divine revelation. Indian Brahmin priests claim that Sanskrit is the language spoken by the Indian gods. According to one legend, Shiva presented sacred sounds. From them Sanskrit was later created.
According to another legend, the ancient enlightened yogis, who listened to their bodies in silence, caught fifty different vibrations that emanated from the chakras, and each of these subtle vibrations became one of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, that is, Sanskrit is internal energies expressed in sounds. For example, many people know the sacred sound OM in the East, which is also a mantra, and at the same time a letter of the Devanagari alphabet.
 The Sanskrit word “Devanagari” itself is translated differently by different experts:
- writing "in the dialect of the Devas " or " spoken by the Devas ( over)";
- "writing of the city of the gods" , writing of the Heavenly City (Deva-Nagari).
 Devas - these are demigods, half-people (what tales, legends and traditions of not only the Indian epic report ). Devas appear in human form. Can also be translated as divine, (same root words "diva ny", "y diva ative")
"Naga" Nagas are a people of snake people who, according to legend, lived in India in ancient times. Nagas could be gods, demigods, or close associates of gods.
"Ri" - (same root wordrewhose) speech, writing, law, order, ritual.
Thus, we get Deva-Naga-Ri" - the Divine Nagas letter (or speech).
It's funny, isn't it? Nagas are a people considered a mythical fiction, and their writing is quite material object, which has been around for 5,000 years. And this despite the fact that in the legends of the ancient Indians many other mythical races are mentioned: Siddhas, Charans, Gandharvas, Rudras, Apsaras, Uragas, Guhyakas and Vidyadharas, Danavas, Nagas, Maruts, Rakshasas, Nairrits, intelligent monkeys and others. But the fact is that the Indians themselves consider the Nagas to be their ancestors and still worship them. In many temples scattered throughout India from north to south, we find images of snake people from the Naga family.
The cult of snakes is also found in some myths, which are given in the collection of ancient Mayan religious texts, the Book of Chilam-Balam. It says that the first inhabitants of Yucatan were the Snake People. It is also interesting that in the Old Testament tradition the biblical serpent-tempter is called “nachash” in Hebrew, in With in Anskrit the sound of snake is "naga", and in some Indian dialects (Achuar and Auahun): “napi” and “naka-naka”.
There is another translation option for the word Devanagari. It is the language of communication between Nagas and Devas. Nagas are the indigenous inhabitants of our planet, they represent the Lunar Dynasty. Virgos, representatives of the Solar dynasty, are aliens. Thus, the sounds and script of Devanagari formed the basis of the language in which the gods and intelligent beings, former inhabitants of our planet.

Is Sanskrit the language of the Naga snake people?


All of the above is confirmed by the following interesting observations. Experts involved in the study of fonts and alphabets believe that when writing symbols or letters, the image of a mouth making a sound from left to right is almost universally accepted (except for the letters “O” and “Ö" , drawn from the front).
Let us assume that each Devanagari sign represents, as in Cyrillic and other alphabets, a schematic representation of the mouth and organs of speech at the moment of pronouncing a sound. This results in a schematic side view of the mouth. The upper palate is a horizontal line, the lower jaw is a vertical line. The mouth is always open. At the same time, teeth in this font are not depicted in any character. And some of the letters are either very distorted or depict the positions of the mouth not of a human being, but perhaps of Naga, a snake-man, since these symbols depict long tongue, forked at the end.
 The language of the creators of Devanagari did not contain a single dental letter. It can be assumed that these creatures had no teeth at all. This is exactly how Indian sculptures depict nagas.But in Sanskrit and Hindi there are many sounds, with exhalation through the nose, and not through the mouth, i.e. aspirated sounds ha, dha, jha, bhra, etc. For other human languages ​​this phenomenon is extremely rare. Why complicate things so much when our mouth and lips allow for so many different pronunciation variations? Moreover, in classical Sanskrit, these same “exhalation” sounds are also pronounced through the mouth, but with aspiration. It seems that the creators of the language did not have such a mobile mouth, but the nasopharynx was overdeveloped.

In India, the strange custom of cutting the base of the tongue is still widespread. Many yogis use special training to stretch their tongue in length (sometimes even very much). Mentions have been preserved of brahmins cutting the tongue lengthwise in ancient times so that it resembled a snake's.
Why such seemingly very artificial operations? This, of course, is just a hypothesis, but isn’t it for the completely pragmatic, rational purpose of making it easier to speak the Naga language? Perhaps people sought to speak the Naga language correctly, and for this purpose changed their speech organs.

If we look at the distribution map of similar languages ​​with aspirated sounds, we will find that the language of the Nagas, Snake People and Dragons was distributed in the territory South-East Asia, (Hindustan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, Korea). This fact is consistent with the legends of the mentioned countries that these intelligent beings, representatives of the Lunar Dynasty, lived precisely in this territory. And as the legends say, they taught the first people to read and write, agriculture, craft and other knowledge. They also conveyed intimate knowledge about the structure of the world and man, so that man could develop and improve...

The article was written in Moscow.

Sanskrit is the language of oral communication, and this traditional form is characteristic of the entire period of early classical Sanskrit literature. India was not familiar with writing until Sanskrit evolved into Prakrit; the choice of writing system at that time was influenced by the various variants of regional writing used by the authors of that time. In fact, virtually all the major writing systems of South Asia have been used to produce Sanskrit manuscripts. WITH late XIX centuries, the Devanagari alphabet was considered to be the actual script of the Sanskrit language - perhaps due to the fact that Europeans printed texts in Sanskrit using of this letter. In Devanagari there is no division into lowercase and uppercase, it is read from left to right and is recognizable by the horizontal line above the letters, which seems to connect them.

Below is the standard Devanagari alphabet:

Devanagari is a syllabary, that is, each sign for a consonant is read as a syllable with a vowel A To indicate the same consonant followed by another vowel, extra strokes are added to the letter, as seen in the following example:

In addition, Sanskrit uses several other diacritics at the end of words. To indicate the nasal [-am], a dot is placed above the letter, more like the letter /am/. Similarly, to write [-ah], two dots are placed to the right of the letter, like the letter /ah/.

If a consonant is at the end of a word, it is necessary to indicate that the last letter does not have a vowel sound. To do this, a diagonal line is drawn under the letters - virama. This letter is called khalant.

To indicate a group of consonants, letters are combined with each other different ways, this process is called samyoga (translated from Sanskrit as “connected to each other”). Sometimes individual letters can be recognized in such combinations, despite the fact that the combinations sometimes form new forms. The range of possibilities is quite large. Below is an example illustrating this principle.

It turned out to be a very large post about Sanskrit, Devanagari and calligraphy. If you’re not too lazy to read a lot of letters and look at just a huge number of pictures, then click

Sanskrit is religious and literary language India, most of the key texts on yoga are written in it. Sanskrit is the liturgical language of religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism and one of the 22 official languages ​​of India. Despite being the basis of several modern languages India, Sanskrit is now practically not used in spoken form, but continues to remain a Brahminical language. In fact, it took the place of Latin and ancient Greek in European culture. It should be noted that in Lately attempts are being made to revive it as colloquial, for example, in Mattur. For those who don't know, Mattur is a village near the city of Shimoga in the southern Indian state of Karnataka. It is located on the banks of the Tunga River and is known as a center of Sanskrit learning, most of the village families use Sanskrit as their language everyday communication. This village is also famous for its Vedic and Vedanta school.

Sanskrit is written using the Devanagari alphabet. Devanagari (literally "script of the city of the gods") is a type of Indian script descended from the ancient Indian Brahmi script. It developed between the 8th and 12th centuries. In addition to Sanskrit, it is used in languages ​​such as Hindi, Marathi, Sindhi, Bihari, Bhili, Marwari, Konkani, Bhojpuri, Nepali, Newar, and sometimes in Kashmiri and Romani. A characteristic feature of the Devanagari script is the top (base) horizontal line, to which the letters “hanging down” are attached.

In Devanagari, every sign for a consonant by default also contains a designation for a vowel sound (a). To indicate a consonant without a vowel, you need to add a special subscript - halant (virama). To indicate other vowels, as in Semitic writing systems, diacritics are used (these are different icons for changing or clarifying the meaning of other signs, placed above the letter). Special symbols are used for vowels at the beginning of a word. Consonants can form combinations in which the corresponding vowels are omitted. Combinations of consonants are usually written as fused or compound signs (ligatures).

Now I will give you the entire Sanskrit alphabet. In Devanagari, letters are arranged according to their pronunciation.
The first row consists of vowels. They look like this (click on the picture to enlarge)

The letters are quite complex and there are special writing rules that make their writing similar to Chinese calligraphy. Next I will give the letters themselves and the rules for writing them.

Consonants are a little more difficult. The first row of consonants consists of velar consonants according to the place of formation and stops according to the method. So, here are the letters

All consonants of this series are pronounced the same way as in Russian.

Next row - semivowels