Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar’s lifelong dedication was to the development of a human society worthy of the name. To him, a necessary prerequisite for the unfoldment of this vision was a vishva bháśa, a world language that all peoples would study in parallel with their own mother tongues. He considered English most suitable to serve as the world language for the present age, and he laboured tirelessly to promote its use.

One purpose of Sarkar’s English Grammar and Composition was that it would serve as an English textbook for the workers of Ananda Marga, the global mission which Shrii Sarkar established for the development of human society. (As all Ananda Marga workers undergo training in India and have at least some familiarity with the Indian context, many points in this book have been cross-referenced to Indian languages and to the Bengali script of India.) Yet Sarkar’s English Grammar and Composition is more than just a textbook; it will be found to be a valuable reference book for all those who wish to use the English language. And it is more still than that. It is more than just grammar and composition: it is philology, etymology, and comparative linguistics as well.

A yogi-scholar once said, “He who would track language to its lair would end as infinite.” It seems that the author truly wants us to end as infinite, for he tracks language to its lair. Rarely satisfied with derived meanings and usages, he guides us, in this and in his other language books, to the sometimes-forgotten sources of language, that we might taste the purity of the source.

The author had already written extensively on various topics of language prior to the preparation of this book. 1983 had seen the publication of Varńa Vijiṋána (“The Science of Letters”), 1984-1985 Varńa Vicitrá (“Various Uses of Letters”), 1985-1990 Shabda Cayaniká (“A Collection of Words”), 1989 Vyákárańa Vijiṋána (“The Science of Grammar”). In preparing the present book, the author sometimes drew upon passages from those previous books.⁽¹⁾ This was especially true in the case of Chapter 19, “Structural Formula: Suffix and Prefix”. But since on such occasions the author normally made additions or intermingled fresh observations with that earlier material, the editors have not felt that the resulting passages could be referenced to earlier works. Those few passages of this book that can in fact be considered direct excerpts from earlier books, have been referenced with footnotes.

Footnotes by the editors have all been signed “–Eds.” Unsigned footnotes are those of the author.

Square brackets [   ] in the text are used to indicate translations by the editors or other editorial insertions. Round brackets (   ) indicate a word or words originally given by the author.

The author used a certain shorthand for explaining the etymologies of words. Under this system, a minus sign (–) follows a prefix, and a plus sign (+) precedes a suffix. Thus ava – tr + ghaiṋ = avatára can be read, “the root tr prefixed by ava and suffixed by ghaiṋ becomes avatára.”

In the section of Chapter 13 regarding the pronunciation of the letter r, an explanation concerning the time allotted for the pronunciation of r, present in the first edition of the book but omitted from recent editions, has been restored. The editors have also incorporated into that passage, illustrative examples of the same topic as they appeared in a line of the author’s Varńa Vijiṋána, 1984, p. 58.

Other than the one line of Varńa Vijiṋána just mentioned, no material has been added in this edition, nor has any been omitted. The order of the various chapters has been changed somewhat in order to make related material more accessible to the reader. The section on syntax has been shifted from the chapter on Mood to the chapter on Parts of Speech. Within the chapter “Structural Formula: Suffix and Prefix”, the material on Sanskrit suffixes has been brought all together.

The active help and cooperation of Avadhútiká Ánanda Rucirá Ácáryá deserves special mention. She solved the problems of incorporating the Bengali font into our publishing software, and developed some necessary characters not previously available in that font. In addition she did the major work on the layout, on the cover text, and on the Roman Saḿskrta table.

Footnotes

(1) The first edition of Sarkar’s English Grammar and Composition came in 1987, and Vyákárańa Vijiṋána came in 1989; but the author included material from the latter book in the third (1989) edition of the former book.