Dear Deepak,
Also welcome to the group and to the wonderful world
of Pali!

I recommend the following 3 books (in the order
below):

1. Start with the Pali Primer by Lily de Silva. This
is a very accessible introduction to the language, and
provides lots of exercise sentences for translating
Pali to English and also English to Pali. It's
limitation is that it does not use examples from the
suttas in its exercises and it's presentation of
material in the later chapters lacks a little depth.
I believe this book is available for free download,
and
a set of solutions to the exercise has been posted to
this
group's web-site.
Alternatively start with one of the other basic books
like Narada's
Elementary Pali, which is also freely available on the
web, and Yong Peng is currently posting all his
solutions.

2. "The New Course in Reading Pali" by Gair and
Karunatillake is an excellent book too, but I wouldn't
recommend it first off for someone with
no Pali experience at all. I have worked through
it entirely and found that having completed the Pali
Primer beforehand helped a lot. All the exercise
material is directly taken from the suttas, which is a
very good feature. My own answers for the exercises
have been posted to the list, and are maintained on
Yong Peng's web-site.

3. The standard textbook "Introduction to Pali" by A.
K.
Warder covers all the basics in a very thorough way,
and
I would consider it a must for all Pali students
eventually.
The exercise material is also right from the canon,
and very
useful in that respect. But he presents so much
detail on
each topic that this book is not recommended as a
starting
point for a beginner. However, after tackling some
other
elementary texts, it becomes a lot easier to handle.
As with the Gair, I have been sending my answers to
this
list for people to follow along as they wish - and
provide
feedback and suggestions for improvement.

See also
//www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bullitt/learningpali.html

for excellent guidance.

Those are my thoughts. Good luck!
With metta,
John

--- In Pali@yahoogroups.com, Deepak Dhawan
<d_dhawan2000@...> wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> As my first mail in this group. I would like to take
> this opportunity to convey my regards to the senior
> members of the group and introduce myself to all.
> I have keen interest in learning pali but i have
> absolutely no idea where to start. The content on

the

> group is quite advanced and beyond my comprehension.
> I request you all to guide me where to start at a
> very basic levels and chalk out a path for my dhamma
> studies.
>
> With regards and thanks
> deepak dhawan
>