[[Mohan K.V 2014-02-22, 07:06:43 Source]]
सदास्वादरोमन्थः
Dear readers,
Thank you for your continued patronage and support. This is our first review of the new year, and of the new cycle of Sadāsvāda’s posts.
Chapter 53 detailed the Gṛdhra-Jambuka-Samvāda from the Mahābhārata. This passage is one of the most powerful ones we have seen in all of our reading. An acquaintance of ours, when he came to hear it the first time, was so struck that remarked, “This story I will remember for the rest of my life.” Our reactions were very similar, and we’re glad many of you wrote in to say you enjoyed it.
Śatāvadhāni Dr. R. Ganesh, who recently completed a magnificent milestone in the form of his 1000th Aṣṭāvadhāna, kindly wrote in with his regards. He mentioned that the literary theorist Ānandavardhana uses this very story as an example of Prakaraṇa-dhvani in his work Dhvanyāloka. We thank Dr. Ganesh for this pointer, and will explore this soon.
One of our most supportive and regular readers, K. R. Srikanth, wrote in with his appreciation of the idea that rituals help give us a trusted action plan to follow in difficult times. He wrote that they bring peace in the sense that they still the restlessness of not knowing a particular answer to life’s events.
This is very much in line with a major learning in psychology in the 21st century, “Structure hunger”. One of the most fundamental of our drives is to create and sustain patterns in how we go about our lives. The most stressful question at any phase of life is, “What should I do now?”. Surprisingly, once that is clear, the task of doing it is actually quite simple! The eminent psychologist Eric Berne writes about it thus:
We all know that we have a certain amount of time in which to live our lives and want it to make sense. We find comfort in the regular passing of the years, of celebration days from birthdays to new year.
We fret about wasting time and worry about not having enough time. We plan and want to know what is going to happen, and when. We also want to have space in which to be relaxed and less ordered, though we often still want to organize this space.
And so we fill our lives with things to do. We go to classes, we book holidays. We keep diaries and calendars. We create careers with explanatory resumés trailing the past to make sense for the next job.
There are also many accounts of solitary punishment which say that the hardest part to deal with was the lack of any structure in life.
Several commentators from all over the world have made similar observations. For example, the philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb observes that if we consider religion and ritual as a means to explain the working of the world, then they seem quite silly and backward. Day by day one or the other advance of science will make them seem even sillier. But if we consider them as tried-and-tested practical actions to deal with eternal human issues, like death, separation and loss, then they appear in a very new light. They have stood the test of time for centuries, and have much to offer us.
Moving on, in Chapter 53 on the Rāmāyaṇa, reader Vasu Srinivasan noted how the phrase ‘bhavāma ṛṇino vayam’ is present almost identically in multiple Indian languages. He also marveled at how the Rāmāyaṇa pervades the Indian psyche. Indeed, Dr. Ganesh often remarks that the ‘national language’ of India are the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata!
We worry that Chapter 54 was a little too successful in its stated aims! We were only jesting when we said we wanted to scare you! We received requests for audio recordings of the verses, and will try to provide them as soon as we can. We have wanted to include that feature for all the verses we write about, but the logistics have thwarted us so far.
Dr. Phani Kumar wrote in with a correction. We had mentioned in parentheses that Mandākinī was an alternate name for the Gaṅgā, but that is only an approximation. He kindly pointed out that the Mandākinī is technically a tributary of the Alakānanda, and joins with the Alakānanda at Rudraprayāg and Bhāgirathī at Devaprayāg to form the Gaṅgā. We thank him for this correction. We also note that the Mandākinī (‘the soft flowing one’) acted violently against her nominal characteristic last year, which led to the horrific floods.
In the same edition, reader Prakash noticed the similarity between the Sanskrit ‘sūpa’ and the English ‘soup’ (they both mean the same). Indeed, there is a very high likelihood that ‘soup’ is a cognate of ‘sūpa’. There are hundreds of words like this, that show deep links between Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and all their derived languages. The field of Comparative Linguistics (itself brought into being by the West’s encounter with Sanskrit) studies them in great detail. There are several articles available on the subject (1, 2)!
In edition 56, on the Aṣṭādhyāyī, we had made an elementary error: राज ऋषि (rāja ṛṣi) becoming राजर्षि (rājarṣi) is not an example of the yaṇ sandhi! The yaṇ rule would apply only if the ik vowel (i u ṛ ḷ) come first, not second. We regret this oversight, and thank Vishvas Vasuki, Dr. P. Narayanan, and Priya N. for alerting us to it. We’ll take solace in the fact that much smarter people have made much simpler errors :-)
The ‘parting thought’ for that chapter, the first verse of Śaṅkara’s Bhaja Govindam, was really what brought the whole chapter together. There, we had mentioned the legend we had heard about the poem, about how Śaṅkara was inspired to write it after he saw a tyrannical grammar master torturing his students to make them learn the Dhātu-pāṭha. We have a modern analogy: one of Prof. Richard Feynman’s admirers, Marcus Chown, requested him to write a birthday note to his mother so that her interest in science could grow. Feynman promptly wrote one that said, “Dear Mrs Chown, Ignore your son’s attempts to teach you Physics. Physics is not the most important thing, love is.” :-)
There were several instances in that chapter where we had hinted at the notoriety of grammarians; indeed, there is a very long tradition in Sanskrit of making fun of śābdikas (grammarians) and their (often estranged) brothers, the tārkikas (logicians) :-) They’ve been compared to everything from bears who pounce upon unsuspecting travelers in the dense forests of Sanskrit, to Brahma-rākṣasas who eat up people whole if they don’t solve samasyās involving Pāṇini sūtras!
Of course, all this is in jest. Vishvas Vasuki, an ardent student of grammar, put up a spirited defense of the Aṣṭādhyāyī. In his view, while some may find its structure to be daunting, if one puts in the effort to understand it, the simplicity and brilliance behind it comes through. A lot of what a beginner identifies as bugs may appear to the expert as features. Once it is understood, it is very intuitive. We are reminded of a joke from another field where such a phenomenon frequently occurs:
Two mathematicians are discussing a theorem. The first mathematician says that the theorem is “trivial”. In response to the other’s request for an explanation, he then proceeds with two hours of exposition. At the end of the explanation, the second mathematician agrees that the theorem is trivial.
:-) This is funny, but it holds in it great profundity. What does it mean to say something is ‘trivial’ or ‘easy once you learn it’? When is something truly ‘difficult’? Hardly simple questions!
Vishvas went on to give a great analogy: think of the Aṣṭādhyāyī as a cheat-sheet. It is an extremely compact and efficient way of storing information. If you put in the effort to learn how it’s organized, it can be of great help. He has created several very useful Google Spreadsheets, available at his website.
“Cheat-sheet” reminds us of an anecdote from our college days, and we’ll end with that. Anyone who’s studied mechanical engineering will sympathize with us when we say that the Internal Combustion Engines course was one of the most painful boring pointless philosophically instructive experiences of our lives. :-) Our professor had taken the concept of nityatva (timelessness) to unimaginable heights: he insisted that we not only study antiquated automobile technology that was already obsolete in his time, but also that we plough the same furrows of emotion that he experienced when he discovered that fact.
Anyway, what to do? The night before the exam came, and after finishing other more important activities, we sat down after dinner at around 10 PM to open the prescribed textbook. We thought we’d make some bullet points to help us prepare. But we quickly figured out to our horror that the textbook author had already done all the bulletizing possible (and of course killed the subject), and what was left was only very hard, irreducible bone! Waves of panic set out, and every Xerox machine within a 5 mile radius of the hostels was strumming with the sound of copying the class notes of the one or two kindly souls, the selfless ādi-kūrmas who bore the burden of the academic world, who had taken the trouble of writing them. Our hopes were that if we minutely examined the notes, some clue would emerge as to what the professor would ask in the exam.
After much decryption, there was an epigraphic breakthrough at around 2 AM. Empirical evidence came to light that the professor had a soft corner for a monster called the Solex carburettor. Those versed in the omens saw it all — his nice mood that day when he had explained it, the care with which he had drawn its gargantuan schematic in multi-colored chalks, the tear at the tip of his eye (nayanānta-lagna) when he finished explaining … of course he would ask for that schematic in the exam, hopefully for a hefty 20-point question!
All of us prayed to our favorite god for strength, and started furiously understanding the fuel flow dynamics of the system. “See, what happens is, when the driver hits the accelerator, … gravity will pull the petrol, and…”…
All, except The One.
Everyone knows someone like The One. The One was above all this. He was a Man Of The World. He was a living embodiment of the Holmesian principle that one ought not to load one’s brain with unnecessary stuff. “What the deuce is it to me?” Sherlock says, “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
Accordingly, The One promptly made 3 chits — one on his left palm, another in his trousers’ waist on the inside of the cloth, and another on the back of a currency note in his wallet. No single one of these looked suspicious, but together, they’d complete the full schematic. The chit on his palm was actually mirrored, so he didn’t even need to copy— just press down on the paper, and the outline would be stamped! Ingenious!
As luck would have it, the Solex carburettor schematic was indeed a big part of the exam! We all did well, and imagined that The One was particularly happy.
We bumped into him after the exam, and he seemed to be somewhat in a disturbed mood. Rather shaken, like a man who has violated his own governing ethics.
“Hey, you cracked it right?”
“It was ok, but … "
“But what?”
“I put so much effort into those chits that I didn’t need to use them. I’m very pained — the chits were useless, AND I remember this damned carburettor schematic now.”
:-)
As always, we welcome any thoughts, feedback and suggestions from you all. Please email us at kvm….@gmail.com and shree…@gmail.com
Parting Thought
Another of Śaṅkara’s famous verses from the Viveka-cūḍā-maṇi seems to echo Feynman:
वाग्-वैखरी शब्द-झरी शास्त्र-व्याख्यान-कौशलं ।
वैदुष्यं विदुषां तावद् भुक्तये न तु मुक्तये ॥
vāg-vaikharī śabda-jharī śāstra-vyākhyāna-kauśalaṃ |
vaiduṣyaṃ viduṣāṃ tāvad bhuktaye na tu muktaye ||
“The flourish of words, the flood of sound,
the power to explain, without bound;
The skill of the learned and their tales of yore,
Might all be some fun, but not much more.”
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