 Welcome, I welcome you all to this introductory video of the course Sandhi in Paninian Grammar. In this introductory video, I will introduce you to the aim of the course and the topics that we shall be dealing with in this particular course. Sandhi is considered to be very important in Paninian Grammar. When we learn Sanskrit, we come across Sandhi at a very early stage. Given any string of Sanskrit, the first task that we have to do is to split this particular string into its constituents or its components and in order to do so, we need to have knowledge of Sandhi rules. For example, if we take the very famous verse from Srimad Bhagavad Gita, namely, which was recited by me just now at one go. Now the first task that we undertake is to split this one utterance into its constituents. If we know the rules of Sandhi, it would be easier for us to mark such constituents and split them and then we proceed to understand the content of this particular string. So, Sandhi splitting is the primary task in order to understand the content of any string. After the knowledge of Sandhi rules, we split this particular string in its constituents in the following manner, karmani, eva, adhikaraha, te and so on. And then we proceed to understand the meaning of this particular verse. This is the significance of Sandhi rules. Sandhi is considered extremely important in Paninian grammar, high level of significance. Sandhi is considered to be the mark of the finished, completed, finally derived form of the sentence fit to be used in the usage. In the Paninian grammatical tradition, Panchasandhi prakarana is very popular. In the later Paninian grammatical tradition, in the 17th century celebrated text composed by the great Bhattu Jivikshita called the vayakarana siddhantakamati, Panchasandhi prakarana is introduced right after the saudhna and the paribhasha prakarana. There are five chapters which make this Panchasandhi prakarana, ach sandhi, hal sandhi, visarga sandhi, swadi sandhi and also prakriti bhava. Ach sandhi deals with the vowel sandhi, hal sandhi deals with the consonant sandhi. Prakriti bhava is unique primarily because it states the sounds remaining in their own form without getting any modification. This is actually not a sandhi but this is a contrastive description related to the sandhi and that is why this is also included in the Panchasandhi prakarana. In this course, we shall study sandhi in the light of this Panchasandhi prakarana which collects sutras from ashtadhyayi together and classifies them according to these classes. We shall also study examples and we shall also train ourselves in splitting the constituents using the sandhi rules from actual Sanskrit sentences. We hope that this course will be useful for those who want to learn Sanskrit, who want to decipher the constituents of a given sentence on their own using the knowledge of sandhi rules. This will also help those who want to develop sandhi splitters and sandhi generators. Thank you.