[[Mohan K.V 2013-09-10, 20:30:01 Source]]
सदास्वादरोमन्थः
Dear readers,
It’s time for our eleventh reminiscence. It appears we have a great fan of P. G. Wodehouse in our midst – in episode #41, Dr. Phani Kumar noticed that the mathematician’s dedication was very similar to PGW’s dedication of “The heart of a goof”: “To my daughter Leonara without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time” :-)
In episode #42, many of you wrote in with surprise that the topic was the Atharva veda. The text has somehow gained a reputation of being associated with black magic, and we’re glad to have done our bit to debunk that myth.
We received a torrent of feedback on #44, on the Veṇīsamhāra. Śatāvadhāni Dr. R. Ganesh commented that Bhaṭṭa-nārāyaṇa’s diction stands resplendent in all of Sanskrit, and the power of his prologue is equaled only Viśākhadatta, the master playwright of the Mudrārākṣasa. Another fact he highlighted was that in the intervening acts, the spirit of civil war is truly brought out in the squabblings of Aśvatthāman and Karṇa. Kannada readers familiar with the famous line of Karṇa in Pampa – ‘kulam kulamaltu…’ – that decries the idea of measuring a man by just his birth, first appears here in Karṇa’s powerful words:
सूतो वा सूतपुत्रो वा यो वा को वा भवाम्यहम् । दैवायत्तं कुले जन्म मदायत्तं तु पौरुषम् ॥
sūto vā sūtaputro vā yo vā ko vā bhavāmyaham | daivāyattaṃ kule janma madāyattaṃ tu pauruṣam ||
(Aśvatthāman has just derided him as a ‘sūtaputra’ – the low-born son of a charioteer. Karṇa explodes:)
“I may be a low-born charioteer, or I may be someone else. [But know this] – Fate may have determined my birth, but my valor is mine own!”
‘pauruṣa’ is so many things – literally ‘manliness’, it signifies everything considered noble in a man. It is a curious quirk of the play that the ‘villains’ mouth some of the most elevated sentiments (we had earlier seen Duryodhana rightly dismiss superstition)
Ms. Prabha Pillai brought our attention the Malayalam novel Randamoozham by M. T. Vasudevan Nair. This well-loved book also has Bhima as the central character, and has the magical elements of the Mahābhārata rationalized. It appears to be an extremely popular work in that language, and has spawned an ecosystem of sorts: Mr. Vikram Gakhar pointed us to a “Twitter style” Mahābharata by Chindu Sreedharan, which itself is based on Prem Panicker’s English transcreation of the same work in a blog format. Here is the twitter version:https://twitter.com/epicretoldand the blog version: <http://prempanicker.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/bhim-complete-and-unabridged/
As always, we welcome any thoughts, feedback and suggestions from you all. Please email us at kvm….@gmail.com and shree…@gmail.com
Thought for today
From whatever angle we look at it, one cannot miss sensing a deep sense of tragedy in the Mahābhārata. Perhaps this verse will offer some solace:
प्रिया दुहितरो धातुर्विपदः प्रतिभान्ति नः ।
गुणवत्यः कुलीनेभ्यो दीयन्ते कथमन्यथा ॥
priyā duhitaro dhāturvipadaḥ pratibhānti naḥ |
guṇavatyaḥ kulīnebhyo dīyante kathamanyathā ||
“Misfoturnes must be the Creator’s favourite daughters. Why else would he so carefully marry them off only to good people?”
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