vAgartha: - वाच: अर्थ: |

Art of complexity

2012-01-07T00:07:00.000-06:00

In the Journal of Indian Mathematical Society, Srinivasa Ramanujan posed a few very interesting puzzles. One of the first problems he posed and a very intriguing one belongs to recursive category.

Upon persuasion, Ramanujan himself gave the answer: 3

Most beginner students are put off by the complexity of Sanskritam language. The way Sanskrit is taught in schools and the text books that start off with all conjugation combinatorics are mostly to blame. Complexity probably does not daunt them when the students opt for French, German or Spanish as their "second" language. When studying these languages, the students start out with a tabula-rasa, if I may borrow from Immanuel Kant. They are not exposed to the literature there of right away. But in Sanskritam, in our everyday life we are already exposed to several subhashitam-s, sloka-s and stotram-s. There are literally tens of thousands them, not to mention the maha kavyas and other works. Obviously one cannot know them all. But the sheer volume can intimidate the students right away. Apart from that, there are the pre-concieved notions and biases about Samskritam. Every Indian state, region and individual have an opinion on Samskritam.

During the Austin Yamunotrii 2011 Samskritam Family camp , Smt Sharada Varadarajan mahodayaa gave an interesting speech about how a same idea can be represented in simple or complex language.

"Boy eats food"

can be translated as "baala: annam khaadati", which is simple enough to understand. (a-karanta: + a pan-Indian shabda 'annam' + a parasmaipada verb)

Or it can be translated as "shishu: odanam ashnute" (u-kaaranta + rice-food + a non-inituitive aatmanepada verb).

Coming to think of expressing ideas in complex terms, why was complexity deliberatey favored by Sanskritam poets? The Darwinian evolution of intellect does not seem to apply to the Indian experience. In the Indian lore, the ancients were always considered people of vastly superior intellect. I am not talking about the divine beings, but the maharshis, muni-s, siddha-s, poets - ordinary people who elevated themselves to a much higher level of consciousness. If evolution means man becomes more intellectual, how could the ancient Indians think in complex terms, thousands of years earlier? What was the need for creating complex tongue-twisting shlokas, stotram-s, stuti-s or those that would read meaningfully back-to-front, while a simple "namami", "vande", "nama:" would suffice? Does the "phala" of shloka depend on the complexity of the recited ?

The reason is the same as George Mallory gives on why would somebody go through a difficulty of climbing a mountain: "Because its there."

Why would the ancient poets conjure up some of the most complex and intricate shlokas, chandas and poetry? Just because Sanskritam allowed them to.

The structure of the language let them run amok, at times wildly, in the forest of intellectualness. The fluidity of the language let them soar their imaginations in all directions without compromising the school-teacher like strictness of the grammar. The richness of the language yielded the fruit of satisfaction, that in turn enriched the language like a feedback amplifier.

Complexity can also be humorous: Harshavardhana's Naishadiyacaritam is supposed to be so complex, that Harsha himself rewrote it a few times to make it simpler.

A poet asks Harsha: kim cikIrShasi ? [What do you want to eat?]
Harsha: shemuShImuShimAShamUShe [I want to eat urad dal to become dull]

Harsha's mind was probably genetically wired to think in complex terms. He wanted to eat urad dal to make him dull, to think in simpler terms. But he could not express his wish in a simple way! Urad dal is supposed to make one dull of intellect. Harsha wanted that to make him dull to think in simpler terms!

Like it or not, the Ramanujan's formula is beautiful and the recursiveness mesmerizing. We may dislike complexity, run away from it or curse it, but it is out there. If we learn to appreciate complexity, it may not daunt us no more.

The relativity theory of superiority

2011-12-16T21:54:00.001-06:00

Everybody knows that Hanuman is very humble and always considered him only a daasa of Rama. But how humble was he? Can his humbleness be mistaken for weakness or lack of confidence?

Valmiki establishes the character of Hanuman in such a way that whatever action he took, that was possibly indeed the only best course of action. Throughout the course of sundara kanda, Hanuman makes numerous instant decisions that lead the story from one thrilling frame to another. The whole sundara kanda, frame-to-frame, is about how to take right decisions at the right time.

One such scene is when Hanuman takes departure from Sita. A simplistic retell of the story is just that Hanuman gets the cUDAmaNi from Sita and promises her that he will be back with Rama to free her. But in the details, Valmiki establishes a very deep analysis of human emotions in sorrow. Every dialog of which is something we can relate to easily in our lives.

In foreign lands, especially in remote towns, desis easily get excited by seeing one of their own. One may be from a remote village in South and another from Punjab. But in a foreign town of ten desis, language, religion and other barriers are forgotten and everyone instantly feels 'bhai-bhai'. After a long time, Sita has finally met someone who is acquainted with her husband. She naturally pleads Hanuman to stay secretly nearby for one more day, for it will console her to have someone nearby in the dreaded ashoka vana. Inspite of knowing Hanuman's exploits, she then carefully places a doubt whether Sugriva and his army of monkeys are capable of crossing the ocean and taking on the might of Ravana.

A very tricky question indeed. He has just crossed the ocean after a long journey, seen how huge, glorious yet intimidating Lanka is. He knows Rama is superior, he believes in his own strength, but he does not know the full strength of Ravana and his company yet. There is no indication he had given thought about how other monkeys can cross the ocean. Hanuman cannot say something like 'Yeah ma'm, we will try our best'. He has to completely reassure Sita of the capabilities.

The sequence of arguments he puts forth is very logical. He first mentions the leader, Sugriva is completely committed to the cause (of freeing her). Then he mentions the number of monkeys in his army (thousands of crores of monkeys). That sheer number should give confidence to Sita. Then he mentions their overall qualities - power, perseverance and loyalty to Sugriva. He finally puts forward a statement thats unbelievably astonishing, that silences any doubt of not only Sita, but even the reader.

मत् विशिष्टाः च तुल्याः च सन्ति तत्र वनौसः ।
मत्तः प्रत्यवरः कश्चिन् न अस्ति सुग्रीव संनिधौ ||

mat vishiShTaaH ca tulyaaH ca santi tatra vanausaH |
mattaH pratyavaraH kashcin na asti sugrIva saMnidhau ||

अहम् तावत् इह प्राप्तः किम् पुनः ते महाबलाः ।
न हि प्रकृष्टाः प्रेष्यन्ते प्रेष्यन्ते हि इतरे जनाः ॥

aham taavat iha praaptaH kim punaH te mahaabalaaH |
na hi prakRuShTaaH preShyante preShyante hi itare janaaH ||

All other monkeys are either equal to me or above me in valor. There is no one inferior to me in Sugriva's army. If I could come here in one leap, what to say about others? Superiors are not sent for errands, only the inferiors are, isn't it?

Hanuman was hand picked for this task by none other than the great Jambavan, further entrusted personally by Rama, purely on the basis of his most superior ablities. Yet Hanuman turns it around completely the other way, quoting that only inferior people are sent for errands, which for a moment makes perfect sense to console Sita. He does not say he is the most inferior - that would have shown lack of confidence. He says there is no one else inferior than him. He is humble, yet there is absolutely no lack of confidence.

Simply put, there is no other statement that would have quelled the doubt of Sita, than how Hanuman put it.

The power of dsl

2011-12-15T22:50:00.000-06:00

When I started the samskritam-dsl project, one of my goals was to develop a domain-specific language that will allow to interact with the system using a natural syntax. Not just a programmer, but a samskritam pundit with a basic computer knowledge should be able to interact with the system. While that interaction is still a long way, I feel there are some foundations in place. The sandhi-s as described in ashtaadhyayI are very arithmetic like, yielding consistent results, so a program model should be able to simulate that.

For eg

assert 'a' + 'a' == 'A' //akaH savarNe dIrghaH sandhi

instead of

assert new Varna('a').add(new Varna('a').equals(new Varna('A')) == true

The former is obviously easier to understand as it follows mathematical conventions, instead of being bound by rigid programmatic syntaxes.

Static programming languages like Java just do not allow this kind of flexibility. But dynamic languages like Groovy/Ruby/Scala having special features for creating such constructs.

Let's go a step further than the above simple sandhi:

assert 'bhU' + 'sap' + 'tiG' == 'bhavati'  //bhU dhatu, kartari sap, prathama, parasmai-padam, eka vacanam, prathama purushaH

Is the above possible?

Before we answer that, does the above assert statement make sense at all? How do you know, or how do you make the computer know, that bhU is the dhaatu, sap is the vikaraNa pratyayaH, and tiG is the padam pratyayaH ? They are all straight strings and not objects. How do you tell the difference? Now lets say we rewrite the above assert slightly differently --

assert 'bhU'.dhatu + 'sap'.pratyaya + 'tiG'.pratyaya == 'bhavati'

Now, that reads better! A simple domain knowledge is now converted into a programmatic construct, yet it almost reads just like samskritam! As you read the sentence, it seems very natural.

That, mon ami, er, mama mitrANi, is the power of dsl.

Here are the implementation details:

@Category(String)
class Samskritam {
  def getPratyaya() { return new Pratyaya(this) }
  def getDhatu() { return new Dhatu(this) }
  }
}

class Dhatu {
  def name
  
  Dhatu(String _name) { name = _name }
  
  @Override
  String plus(Pratyaya p) { name + ' ' + p.toString() }
  
  @Override
  String toString() { name }
}

class Pratyaya {
  String value
  String realValue
  
  Pratyaya(String _value) {
    value = _value
    realValue = value?.tasya_lopaH()
  }
  
  @Override
  String toString() { realValue }
}

So what sutram-s are involved here? Lets skim through the important ones -

bhU + shap -> p gets dropped due to halantyam; sh gets dropped due to lashaku ataddhite
bhU + a -> bhO + a; due to aad guNaH
bhO + a -> bhav; due to eco ayavaayaavaH
tiG -> the G gets dropped due to halantyam
bhav + a + ti -> bhavati

Here is the complete test case:

use (ch8.lang.Samskritam) {
  def a1 = 'bhU'.dhatu + 'shap'.pratyaya + 'tiG'.pratyaya
  def a2 = sandhi.apply(a1, sandhi.aad_guNaH)
  def padam = sandhi.apply(a2, sandhi.eco_ayavaayaavaH)
  assert padam == 'bhavati'
}

The sandhi methods aad_guNaH and eco_ayavaayaavaH also obediently follow Paninian technique of replace the varnas using respective rules.

Once again, the full code is in github.com/vasya10/samskritam

sthAne antaratamaH

2011-12-11T03:12:00.005-06:00

A Functional Approach

It is very interesting to observe that Panini's approach to sandhi-s is thoroughly function oriented and very algebraic in execution. Sandhi-s in Samskritam are profound sophistications. We shall see how functional programming naturally fits into Panini's approach. Once again I'm not describing theories, but real testable executable code and assertable outputs.

For the samskritam-dsl project, I was trying to come up with a simplistic representation of sandhi-s. The famous iko yan aci sandhi belongs to the purva rupa sandhi (the first word gets modified) and Panini's general technique can be functionally written as:

f = sandhi(sthana, adesha, vidhi, purva, para)

This is understood as: "The adesha (substitute) replaces the sthana (substituted) of the purva shabda when vidhi is true on the para shabda"

Panini uses natural linguistic approach and places sthana in 6th vibhakti, adesha in 1st vibhakti and vidhi in 7th vibhakti.

So lets rewrite this in functional programming notation -

  //purva rupa sandhi sutra - closure
  def purvaRupaSandhi = {sthana, adesha, condition, words ->
    def (purva, para) = words.tokenize()
    if (condition(para)) {
      def k = sthana.substitute(adesha, purva.lastVarna())
      purva.replaceLast(k)
      purva + para
    } else {
      words
    }
  }

Here sthana is the list of substituted varnas (eg ik), adesha is the substitute varna (yaN). Condition is not a list but something that evaluates to true or false based on the para shabda. So its a closure again.

  def aci = { word -> word.varnas()[0].svara() }
  def jshi = { word -> word.varnas()[0] in sivaSutra.jsh }

Basically the above closure evaluates to true if the first varna of the shabda is a svara.

Remember we defined the purvaRupaSandhi as a completely generic closure. It will take any sthana, adesha and condition. How do we apply this to iko yaN aci or say, jhalaam jash jhashi?

Groovy provides the "currying" feature --

  def iko_yaN_aci = purvaRupaSandhi.curry(sivaSutra.ik, sivaSutra.yN, aci)
  def JalAm_jash_Jashi = purvaRupaSandhi.curry(sivaSutra.Jl, sivaSutra.js, jshi)

Real functional programming stuff here. aci and jshi are closures/functions which are passed to purvaRupaSandhiwhich evaluates it based on the para shabda.

Now for some more beauty. How do we substitute sthana with adesha? Panini defines a really brilliant sutra 'sthAne antaratamaH' - the closest phoneme of the adesha to the sthana, must substitute the sthana. Now how do we find the closest ? When pronouncing it is easy to realize that i is close to y or u is close to v. But how does that translate to programming terms? This is when it dawns upon us that Panini's approach is extremely methodical.

Recall the definitions of phoneme-sets?

akUhavisarjaniyanaam kanTaH | icuyashaanaam taalu | RturaShaaNaam mUrhda | Ltulasaanaam danta | upUpadhmaanIyaanaam oshta |

So if a varna from sthAna exists in one of the above sets of phonemes, then the common varna between that phoneme-set and the adesha will substitute the sthana !!!

Illustration: jhalaam_jas_jashi

example: ap + dhi

purva shabda - ap (varna is p), para shabda - dhi, satisifies condition jashi (dha). Good.

sthAna - p, adesha will be one of jash = [j, b, g, d, dh] -- now which to pick?

p exists in oshta phoneme-set; so we have to pick one from pu = [p, ph, b, bh, m] - but which one?

Remember jash adesha is [j, b, g, d, dh]. So intersect oshta with adesha, which will result in b -> that substitutes 'p' - resulting in abdhi !

Can you now appreciate the functional beauty of maheshvara sutra?

So the formula is

  
  def ku = [k, kh, g, gh, ~n]
  def kanta = ['a', 'A'] + ku + ['h'] + [':']
    Closure sthaneAntaratamaH = { x, adesha ->
    for (def phonemeSet : [kanta, taalu, murdha, danta, oshta, dantoshtam]) {
      if (x in phonemeSet) return phonemeSet.intersect(adesha)
    }
  }
 }

That's it!! The 2 closures basically take care of any purva rupa sandhi rule! Only the additional conditional closures (aci, jashi etc.) must be provided as required.

Finally we verify

assert iko_yan_aci("iti api") == "ityapi"
assert jhalaam_jash_jashi("ap dhi") == "abdhi"

As usual the code can be found at github.com/vasya10/samskritam.

PS: Post this blog, I tried to verify purvaRupaSandhi closure by adding another rule "stoH shcuna shcu:" and it worked just fine. But there is a catch. The shcuna in the rule is not in 7th vibhakti, but is in instrumental case. And there is a reason why Panini uses 3rd vibhakti. The 7th vibhakti indicates the rule to be applied with respect to what follows, while the 3rd vibhakti implies just the contact of two varna-s are sufficient to produce the sandhi. The closure does not take care of that yet.

The functional programming approach of Panini makes me believe that universities should include ashTAdhyAyI as a course in Computer Science, instead of just being a research subject to elite academicians.

Chapter 8 DSL in GitHub

2011-11-29T22:47:00.001-06:00

The chapter 8 dsl project is now available at github at https://github.com/vasya10/samskritam. It is just in very early stages and I will be updating whenever I get some free time.

The Chapter 8 DSL

2011-11-17T19:50:00.000-06:00

Domain Specific Language is fast becoming a popular way to describe a problem or a solution for a specific domain. The quality and readability of code using DSL is magnitudes above the regular "technical" code (using Java/C# for eg). Since information about DSL can be googled amply, I am not going to spend time writing on what a DSL is.

In many of the previous posts, I had used pseudo-code, demonstrating parallels in programming to Panini's techniques. Time to call the bluff now. Presented below is a seriously tested code. Here is a DSL that closely models some basic techniques of ashtaadhyaayI, specifically the maheshvara-sutra-s and those darning "it" rules. I'm using Groovy for the implementation, as I feel that it's syntax is more natural to read than that of Scala or Ruby.

Let's define some classes.

[Listing 1: SivaSutra.groovy]

package ch8

import java.util.List

/**
 * Implementation of Maheshvara Sutra using SimpleScript transliteration scheme
 * The table itself can be moved to a groovy configuration file to allow a different scheme like HK, ITRANS or AST
 * 
 * @author vsrinivasan
 */
@Singleton
class SivaSutra  {

  //siva-sutraani
  List table =
  [
    ['a', 'e', 'u', 'N'],
    ['r.', 'l.', 'k'],
    ['E.', 'o', 'n'],
    ['i', 'O.', 'c'],
    ['h', 'y', 'v', 'r', 't'],
    ['l', 'N'],
    ['n.', 'm', 'n', 'N', 'N.', 'm'],
    ['J', 'B', 'n.'],
    ['G', 'D', 'D.', 's.'],
    ['j', 'b', 'g', 'd', 'd.', 's'],
    ['K', 'P', 'C', 'T', 'T.', 'c', 't', 't.', 'v'],
    ['k', 'p', 'y'],
    ['s', 's.', 'S', 'r'],
    ['h', 'l']
  ]

  List list = table.flatten()

  int indexOf(String varna) { list.indexOf(varna) }

  @Override
  Iterator iterator() { list.iterator() }

  //eShaam antyaaH it
  List itMarkers = table.collect { it.last() }

  /**
   * is this iT-marker?
   * this finds only 'pratyahara iT' is defined, for other it-s see ItRules.groovy
   * 
   * @see ItRules
   */
  boolean isIt(f) { itMarkers.contains(f) }

  /**
   * expands a given pratyahara, including all the iT-s
   * not for practical purposes, but good for testing
   * 
   * @param pratyahara
   * @return
   */
  List expand(String pratyahara) {
    def (begin, end) = pratyahara.varnas()
    list[begin..end]
  }

  /**
   * returns the real pratyahara varna-s, excluding the intermediate it-markers
   * very procedural implementation, need to make it groovy-like
   * 
   * @param pratyahara
   * @return
   */
  List collect(String pratyahara) {
    def (begin, end) = pratyahara.varnas()
    boolean start = false
    def result = []

    table.each { line ->
      line.each { item ->
        if (item == begin || start) {
          if (item != line.last()) {
            result << item
            start = true
          }
          if (item == end && item == line.last()) {
            start = false
          }
        }
      }
    }
    return result
  }
}

[Listing 2: ItRules.groovy]

package ch8

@Singleton
class ItRules {

  //#(1.3.2) upadeshe ajanunaasika iT, anunAsika-s are denoted by a "-" at the end,
  //  may be M would be a better option?
  def ajanunasika = 'aAeEuUr.R.l.E.IOO.'.varnas().collect { it + "-" }

  //cutU
  def cu = 'cCjJn.'.varnas()
  def tu = 'tTdDN'.varnas()

  //s.asca, denoting as "sha" for convenience
  def sha = ['s.']

  //lasaku (ataddhite)
  def ku = 'kKgGn'.varnas()
  def lasaku = 'ls'.varnas() + ku

  //some more to be defined

  //#(1.3.3) halantyam - check if the last char is hal
  SivaSutra sivaSutra = SivaSutra.instance
  boolean hasHalantyam(String pratyaya) { pratyaya.varnas().last() in sivaSutra.hl }

  //allItMarkers except hal, which is applicable only to last letter
  def allItMarkers = ajanunasika + cu + tu + lashaku

  boolean isAnunasika(String varna) { varna.endsWith('-') }

  boolean isItMarker(String varna) { varna in allItMarkers }

  String tasyaLopah(String pratyaya) { (pratyaya.halantyam().varnas() - allItMarkers).join() }
}

[Listing 3: Main.groovy]

package ch8.tests

import java.util.List

import ch8.ItRules
import ch8.SivaSutra
import ch8.schemes.SimpleScriptScheme
import ch8.Samjna

/*
 * DSL: varnas() closure - tokenize the script into individual varnas (list)
 */
String.metaClass.varnas = {
  new SimpleScriptScheme().tokenize(delegate)
}

/*
 * DSL: halantyam() closure - remove the last hal iT and return the modified String
 */
String.metaClass.halantyam = {
  ItRules itRules = ItRules.instance
  def varnas = delegate.varnas() as List
  if (itRules.hasHalantyam(delegate)) {
    varnas.remove(varnas.size()-1)
  }
  varnas.join()
}

/*
 * DSL: tasyaLopah() closure - remove all the it-markers from a pratyaya
 */
String.metaClass.tasyaLopah = {
  ItRules itRules = ItRules.instance
  itRules.tasyaLopah(delegate)
}

/*
 * DSL: Direct exposition of a pratyaya or a pratyahara!
 */
SivaSutra sivaSutra = SivaSutra.instance
sivaSutra.metaClass.getProperty = { String pratyahara ->
  def metaProperty = SivaSutra.metaClass.getMetaProperty(pratyahara)
  def result
  if(metaProperty) {
    //if there is an existing property invoke that
    result = metaProperty.getProperty(delegate)
  } else {
      //inspect the property and convert it to varnas
    //taparastatkaalasya rule; need to formulate in a better way
        if (pratyahara.endsWith('t.')) {
      result = (pratyahara - 't.').varnas()
    } else {
        result = sivaSutra.collect(pratyahara)
    }
  }
  result
}

void testSivaSutra() {
  SivaSutra sivaSutra = SivaSutra.instance

  sivaSutra.table.each { println it } //print the maheshvara sutrani
  println sivaSutra.list //print a flattened version of the maheshvara sutrani
  sivaSutra.each { println it } //another way to print flattened maheshvara sutrani
  println sivaSutra.itMarkers //print only the it markers

  assert sivaSutra.isIt('n.') //check if n. is an it marker

  assert sivaSutra.expand('ak') == ['a','e','u','N','r.','l.','k'] //expand pratyahara including the it
  assert ['a', 'e', 'u']== sivaSutra.collect('ak') //pratyahara excluding iT
  assert ['a', 'e', 'u']== sivaSutra.ak //another way of getting the pratyahara! Meta-programming in play!
}

void testItRules() {
  ItRules itRules = ItRules.instance

  println itRules.ajanunasika //prints all the ac anunasikas
  assert "lyut".varnas() == ['l', 'y', 'u', 't']}


void testHalantyamRule() {
  //print the pratyahara-s after the halantyam rule applied
  ["kt.va", "Gan.", "kt.vat.", "sap", "lyu-t", "saN", "sat.r."].each { println it + " = " + it.halantyam() }

  assert 'kt.va' == 'kt.va'.halantyam()
  assert 'kt.va'  == 'kt.vat.'.halantyam()
  assert 'Ga' == 'Gan.'.halantyam()
}

void testTasyaLopahRule() {
  ["Gan.", "kt.vat.", "sap", "lyu-t", "saN", "satr."].each { println it + " = " + it.tasyaLopah() }

  assert 'a' == 'Gan.'.tasyaLopah()
  assert 't.va' == 'kt.vat.'.tasyaLopah()
}

void testSamjnaSutras() {
  SivaSutra sivaSutra = SivaSutra.instance
  
  def vruddhi = sivaSutra.'At.' + sivaSutra.ic
  def guna = sivaSutra.'at.' + sivaSutra.'E.n'

  assert ['A', 'i', 'O.'] == vruddhi
  assert ['a', 'E.', 'o'] == guna
}


testSivaSutra()
testItRules()
testHalantyamRule()
testTasyaLopahRule()
testSamjnaSutras()

[Listing 4: SimpleScriptScheme.groovy]

package ch8.schemes

/**
 * A simple script tokenizer
 * 
 * @author vsrinivasan
 */
class SimpleScriptScheme implements ScriptScheme {

  // hyphen denotes anunasika
  static List NotationMarkers = ['.', ':', '-']

  /** 
   * split/tokenize a given word into a list of varnas
   * the word could be a pada, shabda, pratyaya or pratyahara
   * needs to handle anunasika properly
   * 
   * @calledby String.metaClass.varnas()
   * @param word
   * @return list of varnas
   */
  @Override
  public List tokenize(String word) {
    def varnas = []
    word.eachWithIndex { c, i ->
      c = ((i < word.length()-1) ? ((word[i+1] in NotationMarkers) ? (c + word[i+1]) : c) : c)
      if (!(c in NotationMarkers)) varnas << c
    }

    varnas
  }
}

Now some observations and analysis:

To do this in a regular Java/C# would require several objects, wrapper-classes and utility methods to be created. But using meta programming techniques and defining a clean DSL makes this a very interesting implementation.
Ability to work directly on strings, lists and maps makes a huge difference, as opposed to wrappers around strings and creating objects like pratyahara, it, pratyaya etc.
The Main.groovy is self-explanatory in what's given and what's expected. This is not pseudo-code anymore! Note the direct method invocation like varnas(), halantyam(), tasyaLopah() on Strings. And also observe the direct reference to a pratyaya (sivaSutra.ac will expand to a list of vowels). Metaprogramming, awesome or what?
Also observe the testSamjnaSutras() definitions. The only reason I have to quote the properties is due to the usage of dot in the schema. A symbol-less scheme like AST would make a very readable code.
The code uses the SimpleScript for devanagari transliteration. As I had mentioned in a previous post, parsing the script is trivial, because of a strict 1:1 mapping between English and Sanskritam letters. Took less than 5 minutes to write it.
However the code allows to use any transliteration scheme, if one can come up with it, by implementing the ScriptScheme interface. Harvard-Kyoto, ITRANS or AST or even Unicode - as long as the individual varna-s are correctly tokenized, the program will work fine.
Any script scheme can be supplied via a groovy configuration and read by ConfigSlurper!

Obviously this is just the very beginning and some areas are still unpolished. But imagine being able to write code like

assert "bhavati" = bhU + sap + tin //1st gana

assert "kasca" == 'ka:' + sca //scutva sandhi

Imagine being able to work out sandhis just by using the plus sign! (eg ) Wouldn't that be really really cool? And that's not really impossible. It will only take a little more effort to expand the DSL to include anga, guna, operator overriding for sandhi rules etc.!

Imagine similar DSL-s can be implemented for parsing shlokas to determine chandas! The potential for a Samskritam DSL is huge.

Read, Restore and so forth

2011-11-15T23:40:00.000-06:00

My first sight of a computer was in 1983 in a remote town in India, the deity of the city is a representation of "Conscious-Ethereal Grand Cosmic Nothingness". Our science teacher somehow got hold of somebody who had a Commodore 64. About 40 students from our class (India was that less populous 30 years ago) walked about 5 kilometers on a rainy day to that computer guy's house. We were allowed in a batch of 10 into a room dimly lit and were seated on the floor. A girl, sitting on the chair, was holding a joystick (or a mouse?) and a keyboard and making a noisy typing sound. On the small monitor some rectangles and squares of different colors were jumping around. She was playing some game. She said something about BASIC and thats all we learnt.

Almost 10 years forward. It was the onset of the Russian winter, I was walking with a senior towards the university. He was a smart guy, everybody respected him and was always an A-grader. We were talking about programming language theories. C++ was just getting popular. He said "Hey, I know Pascal and C. And this year we are learning some AI using Prolog. I've also been learning C++...". He paused. Then suddenly said, "You know BASIC right? Can you teach me that?". I didn't know what to respond, but just said "Sure". I was a bit confused but elated to 'teach' a senior. That opportunity never came though.

Current times. Studying Ashtadhyayi's several techniques which are an illuminating parallel to programming - there is one that is intriguing. It is the word "aadi" given in a context. When Panini wants to mention a group of information, he would just use the first value of the group and suffix it with "aadi" or "aadya:". The reader is obviously either expected to know the list by-heart or refer to it. No big deal, when the average Sanskrit student is expected to know amarakosha by-heart anyway. So the first value of the list itself is used as the "head" to reference the list. This way Panini feeds by a pointer to an array of data using a very simple technique.

A pseudo code may clarify:

/* The list of verbs called as dhaatu paatha */
static Map DHAATU_PAATHA = [bhU:sattaayaam, ... ]

/* pointer to the list of the dhaatu paatha; trying to mimick naturalness - intentionally not referring via the static variable but via the head-value of the list */
char *list_of_verbs = ["bhu"]

Look at some of the sutra-s -

bhUvAdayo dhaatavaH (1.3.1) | By this statement Panini refers to about 2000+ verbal roots in Sanskritam, starting with bhU
sanaadyantaa dhaatavaH (3.1.32) | Refers to the list of derivational roots, the list starts with a verb that ends with suffix "-san"
praadayaH | Refers to the 22 prepositions that start with "pra"

Obviously this technique of "aadi" reference is pretty common in Sanskritam and other Indian literature. Tyagaraja in his siddharanjani kriti naadatanumanisham says "sadyojaataadi pancha-vaktra" referring to the five faces of Shiva starting from sadyoja. Obviously one who is not aware of the details will not know what the rest are, but aadi is just what it is - a pointer to a list of information. If Panini was the one who invented it (lets assume for sake of argument, because Panini had predecessor grammarians too and there were obviously other literature before him), it is a brilliant technique. The technique is not perfect though, because overtime somebody could come up with a modified list with the head-value being the same. But still its a great way to abstract information where the uniqueness of the head-value serves as an emphasised indicator to the contents following it.

Back to programming after the detour. Even after several years in programming, BASIC continues to fascinate me. Given all kinds of high level languages, there is one feature I think I sorely miss from BASIC. It is the "READ...DATA" statement. The READ...DATA statement allows for feeding data to the program in the shortest possible way without having to assign random values individually.

10 FOR I = 1 TO 10: READ X(I): NEXT I
20 DATA 1,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29
30 RESTORE 20

10 READ NAME$, PHONE$, PI, BASERADIX
20 DATA "James Bond", "555-1212", 3.14, 8
30 DATA "11/11/2011", "All the world's a Pre-Production."
50 READ DATE$, WS_QUOTE$

The DATA statement could be anywhere in the program and the READ statement would sequentially read-off the data, like popping off a stack. The RESTORE statement acts like just like the "aadi" of ashtadhyayi - it points to just the beginning of the data. The simplicity of the bootstrap data feed is appreciated when you do not care where the DATA is set. Several high level languages have been invented after that, but not many provide such an easy way to feed bootstrap data to the program variables. Of course there is enumerators and similar stuff, but somehow the simplicity of READ statement stands out. Just like Panini's aadi technique.

nandI mukhI

2011-09-28T09:12:00.000-05:00

नन्दीमुखी

असहाय मेघो इव आटम्
प्लवतर्योऽद्रीनाम् मध्ये
सहसा तदा अपश्यन्
नन्दीमुखीपुष्पगुच्छम्
सरोवरतटे तथा तरूणाम् अधो
समीरे लुटन्ति नट्यन्ति च ।

प्रसिद्ध कवे: रचना एषा । कस्य?

The Bidi Messenger

2011-09-16T16:26:00.000-05:00

Pretty much everybody has a friend from their college days who was a smoker. A typical college guy, he would stylishly pull a Wills cigarette, fix between his teeth half-biting it, take out a "cheetah" match-stick, almost bringing it towards the cigarette, but slightly bending the neck to reach it, protect it from the winds with the other hand, light the cigarette, all the while making some unintelligible sentences with cigarette in half-open mouth and finally looking up the sky, let out a satisfactory smoke and a sigh, with thoughts lost in a philosophical world. He also would oblige his friends, by letting out "rings". Smoky Rings, especially let out in incremental diameters and one following another in perfectly equal time intervals, was considered the ultimate accomplishment in smoking.

The first time when I came across the text of Meghadhutam, The Cloud Messenger, it was bewildering, to say the least. The loooong shlokas in the mandakraantaa meter (17x4=68 syllables) seemed to have an unhurried pace of its own. The meaning had to be understood from English translations, which painted the idea, but not quite the subtlety. Later I started doing anvaya-s of the shlokas. anvaya-s are exactly like solving jigsaw puzzles. You already know what the final picture is (ie the translated meaning) but the challenge is in getting there: find the most important piece - the dhaatu, group similar vibhakti-s, figure out the kaaraka-s, fill-in the avyaya-s and suddenly a sense appears out of nowhere. The pleasure of anvaya is magnitudes above the pleasure of just reading the translation.

Even the harshest critics of Kalidasa (if any) agree that Meghadhutam is one of the finest and most original works of human mind. It has influenced several poets, both Samskritam and non-Samskritam. Poets have imagined a variety of messengers for whatever purposes. Venetia Asnell blogs that there are about 70 known-so-far messenger-poems in Samskritam alone. Literary gems like Hamsa sandesha, Kokila sandesha being aside, there are also poets who use this technique for ninda-stuti. One poet took it to a new level and composed "Donkey Messenger" (kazhudai-vidu-thoodu, கழுதை-விடு-தூது, in Tamil) to disgrace another poet.

In olden days, smoking was not known to be injurious to health. There was a poet with a pen name "seeni sakkarai pulavar" (funny name, because both seeni and sakkarai mean sugar in different Tamil dialects). It is known that he was born in the family of great poets in Ramanathapuram district. Being a great bhakta of Subrahmanya, he imagines a lady sending the cigarette smoke as a messenger to Subrahmanya in his புகையிலை விடு தூது ("pugaiyilai viDu thoodu", tobacco-smoke-messenger). Out of 59 verses, 53 praise the cigarette and the last 6 contains a message to Subrahmanya svaami of Pazhani (Balasubrahamanya).

கற்றுதெளிந்த கனபர பலவான்களும் உன் சுற்றுக்குள்ளாவதென்ன சூழ்ச்சியோ

kaRRuteLi~nda ganapara balavaangaLum un chuRRukkuLLaavadenna chUzhcchiyO

O Cigarette! Whats the trick that you make even the scholars slave to you?

வாடை பொடிக்கதம்பமனவெல்லம் உன்னுடைய சாடிப்பொடிக்கு சரியுண்டோ

vaaDai poDikkadambamanavellam unnuDaiya chaaDippoDikku chariyuNDO

Can the good smell of Kadamba powders match the smell of yours kept in a jar?

In the course of praising cigarettes, the poet also Indianizes the history of tobacco, giving it an interesting puranic twist. Once the gods gave a bilva leaf, tulasi leaf and tobacco leaf to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma respectively and asked them to bring it the next day. The cigarette mentioned here is not the modern filtered cigarette, but the local bidi aka suruttu, which is made with tobacco leaf. The vilva leaf was taken away by Ganga (residing on Shiva's jaTa). Tulasi leaf was taken away by the milk ocean (where Vishnu resides). Smart Brahma had given the tobacco leaf to Sarasvati who resides in his tongue. The next day the gods ask the leaves back, while Shiva and Vishnu could not return, Brahma says மற்றவர்கள் பத்திரங்கள் போயின, என்னுடையது போகயிலை ("mattravargal patthirangal poyina, ennudaiyadu pogayilai, others' leaves are lost, mine is not lost), takes it from his tongue and returns. The poet plays on the word "போகயிலை" ("pOgayilai", not lost) which later morphed into புகையிலை ("pugayilai", tobacco). With the story having strong references to purana-s and also a tight etymological derivation, anyone would hardly dispute its origin!

If only this poem had been taught in schools, the smoke rings from those college friends would have served as a more meaningful messenger!

The full text in tamil can be downloaded here.

Lost in Transliteration

2011-08-24T22:45:00.000-05:00

Transmogrifier is a device into which a person goes thinking of becoming of something and comes out thinking being exactly that. (Invented by Lord Calvin and Sir Hobbes).

Transliterator is a device, where a sound goes into it in one script and comes out the same in another script.

I never understood the spelling-bee contests. Young kids producing words out of infinitely bewildering phonetics. "trouvaille" (meaning: finding) goes one word, pronounced "truva" as many as 4 letters are silent. These spelling bees are only gonna get tougher, and in three years from now we may have the announcer keeping mum and the poor student will have to find the word, because, er.. all the letters are silent. Kudos to the effort and memory power of the students though.

The whole spelling bee concept is based on the platform of arbitrary and artificial phonetics. If there were a one-to-one correspondence between sound and script, the spelling-bee will become a drone-bee. If we rule that English be written phonetically from tomorrow, spelling assignments would disappear. What you say is what you hear is what your mind interprets. WYSIWYHIWYMI.

This reminds of artificially created problems and equally artifical solutions. A good analogy is some of the Java design patterns like Iterator (where you write elaborate classes) "disappear" in dynamic languages like Groovy. The Java design patterns have been elevated into language features of Groovy, so there is no "problem" to start with!

So how many times in life will you ever use that word again? That thought makes me nostalgic about those toefl and gre vocabularies where I crammed words to better the neighborhood guy whose veneer impressed my folks, while I stood exasperated. How many of those words am I using now? How many of those words are being used by native English speakers? And I'm told that I should use simple language while writing emails to clients. If I use the words appoggiatura or roscian, the client will simply take the business elsewhere, because I am hard to communicate with. The fact is, for effective communication you just need around 1000 words in any language. The rest are for poets and dictionary makers who just want to intimidate us ordinary folks and to float themselves in business :-)

Sanskritam students often wonder what is the best way to type in Sanskritam. There are a few great tools - Baraha, Google Transliterator etc. There are also a few english transliteration schemes available for the devanagari script. Which one to choose? I feel each of them try and have their own quirks. Lets examine some of those:

The Harvard-Kyoto is mostly used in academic circles. The most jarring usage in this scheme is that of uppercases for anunasikas (G/ङ्, J/ञ्) and z for fricative श. Try however, I could not pronounce z as श while reading. Just like the Tamil zh/ழ doesn't make any sense, but we just adapted it.

IAST is more confusing with multiple latin alphabets for the same devanagari akshara (k, K -> क, kh, Kh -> ख). Do you ever substitute one letter for another in English? Then why such karakter overdoz for transliterashuns?

ITRANS is even crazier. Doubled or uppercases (aa vs A), exponent symbol (R^i), doubled uppercases followed by lowercases (LLi), tilde before, power after, dot before, dot after - its hard to write in ITRANS unless you are already a mathematical genius. It could have also used integral and sum symbols - one could learn advanced calculus simultaneously while writing saMskR^itam.

The other side of the text is parsing into comprehensible data structures. Writing parse routines for such schemes involve quite a bit of effort. So the question is, can there be a simpler, consistent scheme, with fewer things to remember while typing?

Here is one such minimalistic transliteration scheme and it uses only 4 main rules and 3 corollaries:

Rules

1. lowercase 2. uppercase 3. possible dot after a letter 4. semi-colon for visarga; jihvamuliya; upadhmaaniya

Corollaries

1. uppercase for dIrgha
2. krama -> lowercase; lowercase+dot; uppercase; uppercase+dot
3. 1:1 mapping in the transliteration

a A e E u U r. R. l. E. I O O.

k k. g g. n
c c.j j. n.
t t. d d. N
T T. D D. N.
p p. b b. m
y r l v s s. S h
M :
a. (avasarga)

The principles behind the scheme are:

A devanagari letter is either ONE char or ONE char + dot.
The scheme is almost consistent (lowercase, lowercase+dot, uppercase, uppercase+dot, uppercase for dIrgha svara). This is why we get an orderly (n, n., N, N.)

Parsing or tokenizing such a scheme is also easy. There is only one if condition to determine an akshara - if a dot follows letter, they form one akshara, if not, that letter is the akshara.

In other words, converting a sentence into unicode is just one-line, assuming the unicodeMap[:] is defined already.

def toUnicode(s,i => return this.append(unicodeMap[s.charAt(i+1) == '.' ? s.substring(i,i+2) s.substring(i,i+1)]);

Q & A

Q. Why favor the 1:1 mapping? After all isn't it good to have options and easy to write in different ways?
A. It sure is, but do you really substitute one letter for another letter in English or Sanskritam? Can you say "sha" is close enough to "sa" and use it for "savam"? A 1:1 mapping allows no options and eventually it gets streamlined in a person's thought process.

Q. viDE.he -> isnt this hard to read than vaidehi ?
A. Yes it is, no doubt. But how did you learn to pronounce it as "vaidehi" with "d" as द while the most common pronunciation of d is ड ? It will be hard read at first, but didnt we all start with guessing what a dot, dash, tilde, apos mean on top and bottom of the letters :-). If one is already used to a scheme the mind resists a change.

Q. So whats really easy about this scheme?
A. If you are well versed with the devanagari krama, it is probably easier to apply the transliteration. Also there is only the extra character dot to remember.

Q. Whats really difficult, then?
A. Reading will be unnatural for those who are used to different scheme (eg nAraayaNa vs N.ArAyaNa). We are so much used to N being murdha nakara! But even the existing schemes were originally unnatural, so the unnaturalness just shifts to a different section.

(Note: This article is not to challenge existing schemes, but to show a minimalistic scheme ie a scheme with minimum fuss is possible from a parsing perspective. In any art form, the prevelance rules over theories).

Bodhi learns Sanskrit

2011-08-19T20:34:00.001-05:00

बोधि: संस्कृतं पठति

Amar Chitra Katha. The printed granny of Indian kids. That and its cousin Tinkle have been a source stories for a few decades now with a lot of nostalgia for my generation. From puranic to folktales to heroes, it has remained a valuable source of stories in compact format. I wish ACK brings out a full edition of Kathaa-sarit-saagara and similar Sanskrit works, which contains some great stories. Obviously there are already some stories published from it, but not a complete edition.

Though ACK/Tinkle has a lot of stories based on Sanskrita literature, rarely there are stories with Sanskritam itself as the theme.

The below is a translation of a funny story "Bodhi learns Sanskrit".

कस्यांश्चित् पाठशालायाम् बोधि: संस्कृतं पठति । अध्यापक: सर्वान् छात्रान् पाठयति ॥

अध्यापक: वदन्तु । ... राम: ... रामौ ... रामाः ॥
(छात्राः पुनरुच्छारयन्ति)
अध्यापक: ... रामं ... रामौ ... रामान् ॥
(छात्राः पुनरुच्छारयन्ति)

....

अध्यापक: अथ अङ्ग-पाठः । ... मम शिरः । (स्वशिरः स्पृशन्) ... मम शिरः ॥
छात्राः ... मम शिरः । ... मम शिरः ॥

तदनन्तरम् सर्वे स्वगृहम् गच्छन्ति । बोधि: अपि गृहम् गत्वा अभ्यासम् करोति ॥

बोधि: मम शिरः ... । मम शिरः ... । मम शिरः ... । इत्युक्ते अध्यापकस्य शिरः ॥

(बोधेः पिता तत् श्रुण्वन् तत्र आगच्छति । कोपेन तर्जयति)

पिता: अरे मूढ ! एतादृश: वा भवतः संस्कृत पठन लक्षनम् ? ’मम शिरः’ इत्युक्ते अध्यापकस्य शिरः न । (स्वशिरः स्पृशन्) मम शिरः । (पुन: स्पृशन् उच्चैः) मम शिरः ॥

(पिता उक्त्वा निर्गच्छति)

बोधि: (किञ्चित् कालं चिन्तयित्वा) । ... आ ... आ ... आम् । इदानीम् अवगतम् । पाठशालयाम् ’मम शिरः’ इत्युक्ते अध्यापक: शिरः । गृहे ’मम शिरः’ इत्युक्ते पितु: शिरः । अवगतम् । अवगतम् ॥

Six degrees of Sutras

2011-08-09T18:05:00.002-05:00

One of the memorable humour tracks of Tamil movies is from arivAli (The Intelligent) made in early 1960s. A black white film, with simple clean humour. Very likely such movies were made in other Indian languages too. The husband asks his wife to make puri. Wife does not know how to make it, so husband gives instructions to her:

Husband: Take a vessel and put some wheat flour in it
Wife: Yeah, I know that!
Husband: Pour some water and salt and mix with flour
Wife: Yeah, I know that!
Husband: Make it into small round balls
Wife: Yeah, I know that!
Husband: Flatten it and make it round like appalam
Wife: Yeah, I know that!
Husband: Then what?
Wife: Aah, I dont know that...

In an earlier post we saw how a sutram's definition can be applied to naming convention of variables in modern programming context. A natural question arises - what are the types of sutram-s? As I have mentioned before, classification is ancient Indians' forte. There are six types of sutram-s which is defined, yeah you guessed it, in a shloka:

संज्ञा च परिभाषा च विधि: नियम एव च ।
अतिदेशो अधिकारश्च षड्विधम् सूत्र-लक्षणम् ॥

A lot has been described about this classification in wiki articles and elsewhere. Here we will just look at the parallels between this classification and programming concepts. संज्ञा - definition; परिभाषा - interpretation; विधि- rules; नियम - restriction; अतिदेश- extension; अधिकार - header/domain.

संज्ञा is a definition sutram. It gives a meaningful name for one or more symbols. Do you remember your early programming days where you are told that a good practice is to give a name for constants? (Do you still follow that?)

वृद्धिरादैच् | [1.1.1] {a, e, o} are called vRuddhi |

In programming terms, this is like the classic C #define statement or final static/const statements in Java/C# world.

#define PI 3.14
#define IK_PRATYAHARA {i, u, Ru, Lu}

परिभाषा sutram is an interpretation or meta-rules sutram. Its function is to tell how to interpret other sutram-s.

तस्मात् इति उत्तरस्य | [1.1.67] When a sutra has a word in panchamI vibhakti, then the word next to it will undergo some modification.

A very good equivalent to interpretation rules is Annotations. This example will make it clear:

@WebMethod(POST)

public void updateUser() {

}

The annotation says that the method updateUser() must respond to only a http post call. It helps the runtime interpret the method in a certain way.

विधि sutram: What is the fundamental difference between a calculator and a computer? The calculator (a regular) deals with numbers only, while the computer can make logical decisions.

विधि sutram is the classic if-else-condition. In fact, the way पाणिनि has applied it - its closer to aspect-based rules than just a vanilla if-else condition. There is a slight difference between "if do this" and "when apply this". While the if-condition has to be encountered during the execution process thread, a when-rule applies anytime during the happening of a certain condition. "if" is thread-execution based, while "when" is time based, a trigger with an "if".पाणिनि defines several rules in his अष्टाध्यायी. For example there is a famous sandhi rule with just three words, that covers a matrix of sandhi-s.

इको यण् अचि | [6.1.78] When a vowel follows, the letters i, u, Ru, Lu change to y v r l.

Obviously any if-else condition would be a vidhi sutram. If we were to follow paaNini's technique, we would not write it as a simple if condition. Instead we would define all "when rules" in a separate section of the code, and provide aspects of applying. When code executes, the aspects will monitor the code and "apply" a rule when those conditions are satisfied. For eg the (now) Oracle's Haley is one of the very popular Rules Engine products, in which Rules can be defined in simple English.

नियम sutram
If programming was based on socialistic ideologies, rules would apply uniformly to all cases (except the political class, of course). But reality is somewhat capitalistic, so there is always some case which disagrees to agree. Remember the business requirements like "should apply to all but one or two cases" and the complex if-conditions you would have to write to handle just the boundaries?

Restriction is not Exception. Exception is an alternative flow, but restriction is about applying a rule to a lesser number of or rarer cases. In general, it is achieved by if-else conditions, but doesn't always have to be so.

अतिदेश sutram-s are extensions. They qualify a pre-existing rule with another property, not originally possessed.

Using pratyaya-s vat and mat, paaNini extends the behaviour of one rule and applies to another rule.

लोट: लङ्वत् | [] would mean "लोट् vibhakti-s are to be conjugated just like लङ्"

Imagine that लोट्, लङ् etc implement an interface called "ल". Panini's technique essentially casts लोट् as लङ्.

Class extensions are very common in OO languages. Using the Extension mechanism offered by Ruby, C# etc, one can improve the functionality of an existing class. For eg, String class does not have intrinsic methods to check if the value is null or empty . One could add a IsNullOrEmpty(this String) method and operate directly on a string instead of a new helper class.

It does not end there. Imagine two objects User and LockedUser:

User user; //normal user behaviour
LockedUser lockedUser; //a locked user behaviour, imagine a Trait (see Scala which allows partially implemented interfaces)
if (user.failedAttempts(3)) { user.setBehaviour(lockedUser)); } //user now behaves like a lockedUser

Instead of changing the state of the object (commonly via isLocked() or status = LOCKED), the behaviour of the object itself is changed. Upon certain conditions, the regular user adapts the behaviour of a locked user. We do not directly deal with properties and state changes, instead work with behaviour changes. For eg, Scala offers Traits, with partially implementable methods, which are much more than interfaces. In a way you are describing or coding to the behaviour of an object rather than the states.

अधिकार sutram: If you have done database modeling, you know Subject Areas. In programming terms, think of package, namespace etc. They all define a domain underwhich certain rules/classes/tables are grouped. Thats exactly what adhikara sutram is. More information on adhikara sutram can be found in this post.

संहितायाम् | [] "During the closeness of words"
प्रत्यय: | [3.1.1] "Affix"

package com.microsoft.office;
namespace Com.Sun.Oracle.Java;
//ok, I was being facetious :-)

Apart from these core sutram-s there are a few more.

निषेध sutram-s are negation rules of other rules. While niyama sutram-s are positive restrictions, nishedha can be seen as negative orientation.

हलन्त्यम् | (consonant endings are it-markers)
न विभक्तौ तुस्माः | (but letters t, th, d, dh, s, m are not it-markers if it is used for conjugations)

In programming, we can come up with a validation rules engine like this:

1. All Address Fields Required
2. Not if Address Line 2

Imagine the simplicity of a program using such a validation engine!

विभाषा sutram is an optional rule. For eg think of the sentence "I would like to goto a movie". You can also say it as "I'd like to goto a movie". The shortening of "I would" to I'd does not change the meaning, and is optional to use. पाणिनि uses this technique to provide alternative usages of words and grammar by using the shabda-s vaa, vibhaaShaa, anyatarasyaam. Optional rules are very common and are done using if conditions.

Besides these, some of the paaNini's techniques also strike a chord with modern techniques. For eg, there is an interpretation sutra विप्रतिषेधे परम् कार्यम्, which means "In case of rule-conflicts, the latter rule prevails". Virtual override feature?

Another unique technique is called स्थानी भाव where a substituting suffix can retain the characteristics of a substituted suffix. Heard of Liskov Substitution Principle? Yeah, something like that.

Panini also uses recursive techniques for some of the rule operations. We will see that in a subsequent post.

Yet another ingenious technique is seen in the last 3 pada-s of अष्टाध्यायी where every previous rule is oblivious to all the latter rule. The rules are arranged in such a way that every rule "thinks" that it is the last rule of the book.

So what is the benefit of comparing modern programming with a 2500+ old text book of grammar? Let it be पाणिनि:, Capellini or Linguini founded algorithms. As a software engineer, what do I care? I do not have an answer. After all, a programmer consultant in US writes a for-loop for $75 an hour, while the same for loop is written by some one in China for a few Yen. Can you judge which for-loop is better?

If several of modern programming concepts have indeed parallels in अष्टाध्यायी, how about some concepts in अष्टाध्यायी not yet formulated into modern programming theories? What if they could create a fundamental change in theory of programming?

What would पाणिनि: think about modern programming concepts? To find out, we shall send Donald Knuth back in time as our representative.

Knuth: Programming is about definitions, rules and algorithms.
पाणिनि: आम्, जानाम्येव !
Knuth: Using algorithms we derive and solve various equations.
पाणिनि: आम्, जानाम्येव !
Knuth: In object oriented programming, we do abstraction, polymorphism and other cool things.
पाणिनि: आम्, जानाम्येव !
Knuth: With functional programming, we define functions, recursions and closures.
पाणिनि: आम्, जानाम्येव !
Knuth: Then we create programs to play games like Grand Theft Auto all day long.
पाणिनि: अहो ! तदहम् न जानामि !!

Better than the best

2011-07-29T17:44:00.017-05:00

श्रेष्ठेभ्यो श्रेय: |

In the superhit 1965 Tamil movie Thiruvilayaadal (Divine Sport), there is a classic scene where the poor poet Dharumi brings a poem for a prize announced by the Pandya king. Nakkeeran, the court poet, happens to doubt the authenticity of the composition. (It was indeed given to him by Shiva and was not Dharumi's original). Dharumi reacts sarcastically -

"பாட்டெழுதி பேர் வாங்கும் புலவர்கள் இருக்கிறார்கள். குற்றம் கண்டு பிடித்து பேர் வாங்கும் புலவர்களும் இருக்கிறார்கள்"

"There are poets who become famous by their own effort. And there are poets who just criticize others and become famous".

But then the world owes much to artists whose claim to fame is only critiquing/commenting somebody's work. Take Mallinaatha for example, without his significant and monumental commentary it would be impossible to understand meghadhUtam or shishupaalavadha. So much so that Mallinaatha says "माघे मेघे वयम् गत:" (Life's gone in reading maaghakaavya and meghadhUtam). There are geniuses who create phenomental stuff and then we need mediators to such geniuses to expound it for us ordinary mortals. Or take Panini vs Patanjali. Panini's pataakhi-sounding pratyaahaara-s like ढक्, डुप्, दप्, घञ्, क्ङित्, तिप्, थस् sounds could only be expounded by a genius like Patanjali. We need a Hardy and several more, just to decipher us the genius of Ramanujan. Some cant stand that - like George Polya, the Hungarian mathematician who refused to get caught in Ramanujan's theorems, for the fear that he would spend his life just proving them, and never discover anything of his own.

शिशुपालवध is no doubt one of the greatest mahakaavya-s. Among the pancha mahaakaavya-s it is considered the greatest. A famous subhaashitam says that माघ has the exceptional qualities of all three poets कालिदास, भारवि and दण्डिन्.

Think about shishupaala for a moment. Forget that he is a villain, thats a simplistic view. He consistently challenged Krishna's superiority, for whatever reasons. He showed scant respect for Krishna, repeatedly insulted him and asked others during the raajasUya-yajna "Isn't there one person who is worthy of honor than this shepherd?". People like shishupaala are not incidental, and are not coy to challenge superiority, no matter who it is. Similarly, Nakkeeran challenged the poem of Dharumi. From Dharumi's point of view, Nakkeeran criticized him. But Nakkeeran challenged the poem, the one written by Lord Shiva himself. The greatness of art is strengthened only if it can withstand any challenges. So it is only natural someone challenged the superiority of Maaghakaavya. And such a challenger was Vadiraja Tirtha.

Like several Sanskritam literature works, this one too is hardly heard of, except in a few elite circles. I had earlier mentioned that it is only our loss not savoring the Sanskritam language of scriptural literature. There appears to be a lot of noise around "secular" Sanskritam literature, whatever that means, side-lining the beauty of the language shining in other fields.

Vadiraja Tirtha is no ordinary poet. He has produced a prodigious amount of work in several fields - kavya, stotra, stuti, travelogue, commentaries, logic, cosmology and a lot more. Some of his works run into thousands of verses. And yes, living for a full 120 years (1480 to 1600 CE) helped him too! And he ensured a productive life. This event is recorded in the biography book shri vaadiraaja guruvara-caritaamRuta:

तत: पुण्यपुरीम् प्राप्तो भेरीताडनपूर्वकम् । काव्यश्रेष्ठं माघकाव्यं गजमूर्ध्नि पूज्यते ॥
इत्याघोषितमाकर्ण्य सभापतिमवोचत । अस्मत्पुरे महाकाव्यमेकम् श्रेष्ठं प्रकाशते ॥
दीयते समय: कश्चित् दर्षयिष्ये परीक्ष्यताम् । अङ्गीकुर्वति विज्ञौघे गुरु: एकोनविंशता ॥
दिवसै: एकदिवसे हि एकसर्ग क्रमेण स: । रुक्मिणीश महाकाव्यं निर्ममे सुरसाकरम् ॥
अवेक्षणाय विदुषां संसदं प्रैषयेत् सुधी: । परिषत्सा परीक्षाय विस्मित आनन्दपूरिता ॥
रुक्मिणीश महाकाव्यमुत्तमं माघतोऽपि च । इत्याघोष्य च सम्मान्य प्रार्चयत् कविसत्तमम् ॥
कवीनाम् कुलमध्ये हि तिलक: अयम् इति प्रथाम् । ख्यापयामास विदुषां परिषद्गुणमोदिनी ॥
(श्रीवादिरज गुरुवर चरितामृतम् ३.४.१०)

The verses are very simple and pretty straight-forward to understand.

"Once in पुण्यपुरी (modern Pune), the best of kaavya namely Maghakaavya was about to be honored on elephant's head. Hearing this, Vadiraja said to the scholars there "Before you honor the kaavya, listen to one kaavyaa written in our place. If some time is given, I will show you and you can verify it yourself. Vadiraja wrote one sarga per day for the next 19 days and completed the work rukmiNIsha vijaya ("The Victory of Lord of Rukmini"). The scholars read and were stunned and filled with joy. They declared रुक्मिणीश विजय to be better than माघकाव्य. They declared Vadiraja as a "tilaka" (foremost) among the poetic society."

An important contention of Vadiraja was that the title of the book is about "killing" shishupala and invokes negative thoughts, while Rukminisha vijaya is about the "victory" of Krishna, which evokes positive feelings. The name of the kavya itself is mangala. One cannot argue with that point though.

Replete with अलङ्कार, अनुप्रास, यमक, चित्रपद, a variety of छन्दस् and lot more that a tiny mind like mine cannot comprehend, Rukminisha Vijaya is as delightful to read as shishupaalavadha.

When India loses in a close match, commentators have a cliche for consoling - "cricket is the winner". Borrowing that, we could say whatever may be the reason behind the two kaavya-s, Sanskritam is the winner :-). जयतु संस्कृतम् |

nakShatra yuddhaaH

2011-07-25T18:09:00.000-05:00

नक्षत्र युद्धा:

Yoda is the most powerful Jedi of the Galaxy, and probably because of that, he has a different way of communicating.

Meditate on this, I will.
Powerful you have become, Dooku. The dark side in you I sense.
Much to learn, you still have (Dooku)

Who hasn't wondered about his pensive mood, superior intellect, fast reflexes, and measured delivery? Which Jedi fan hasn't admired and mimicked Yoda's speech? He sure sounds funny.

Or does he?

Let us translate his quotes into Samskritam.
अधिकम् अस्ति ज्ञातुम् भवता इतोऽपि ।
चिन्तनम् एतस्य अहम् करिष्यामि ।
बलवान् त्वम् असि Dooku | कलिम् त्वयि पश्यामि ।

Before we see whats all the fuss is about, lets look at this sentence:

"I am going to the temple and then will go to a movie"

First, translate that into an Indian language, preferably mother tongue.

Now translate that same sentence, only now preserving the syntax order as in English.

Did you sound funny? Or poetic? You will notice that the first time you naturally placed the verb automatically following the object - mein mandir jaaraahan hoon, uske baat movie jaaoonga. Second time you had to make a conscious effort to preserve the syntactic order - mein jaaraahaan hoon mandir, uske baat jaaoonga movie. (You will surely sound a shaayar if you say this twice).

Lets get back to Yoda's wisdom. The translation is purposefuly preserving the syntactic order. Even though translating as "bhavataa itopi adhikam asti jnaatum" sounds natural, saying "adhikam asti jnaatum bhavataa itopi" does not sound funny at all. So all Yoda does is use the syntactic order "Object-Subject-Verb" (OSV) instead of the regular "Subject-Verb-Object" and suddenly we find academicians writing thesis over Yoda's constructs. Samskritam in fact allows all the combinations (not always, but more often), yet none of them tickle our ribs. Such variations are found in shlokas aplenty and that does not evoke laughter!

Students who wish to learn Samskritam can be broadly camped into one or more of:

I studied in school (for easy marks), forgot everything, I want to learn now
I want to understand the meaning of shlokas
I am really passionate about Samskritam
I feel I should learn Samskritam, because my grandpa spoke so
I am easily impressed by people who fluently converse in Samskritam, so I want to learn too

Students with other ambitions tend to lose interest after a few attempts. Most of the time, time, or lack of it, is blamed. That reminds me of a quote by Swami Vivekananda "In the West, a man would goto any length to find gold; in the East, a man would climb any high mountain to gain knowledge". One may recall Homer Simpson climbing all the way, along with Apu, to a high mountain to ask a Rshi three questions. (Are you really the head of Kwik-E-Mart? "Yes"; Are you? "Yes"; Really? - "Yes, Thank you come again!").

A frequent folly committed by beginner Indian students is trying to think in English. The structural and syntactical differences just dont match. Thinking in mother tongue will yield richer dividends and I am not talking just about word similarities, but the syntax itself. This is a very important point to grasp but infact a hard rule to follow. But what about the people with English as their mother tongue? Easy-breezy. Start thinking like Yoda!

I cannot be sure if George Lucas intended or not, but Yoda in Samskritam means Warrior (yodha:). Lazy googling suggests he was influenced by Joseph Campbell who in turn was influenced by Oriental stories. I hope some day Star Wars will be translated into Samskritam. Only suddenly Yoda will not be funny anymore. May be he is the one who talks correctly and we all talk funny. You see, English is surely a phunny language. Only if that way not necessarily Yoda speaks.

Paninian Blues

2011-07-10T17:04:00.001-05:00

The brevity of Panini's अष्टाध्यायी has been widely read, wondered, appreciated, criticized, discussed, commented and treatised over the past couple of thousand years. On one end of the Sanskritam literature spectrum are such extremely, almost ridiculously, laser-like focused and concise treatment of subjects in sutram format. On other end stand the lengthy and wordy mega-serial type works from kaadambarI, kathaasaritsaagara, yogavasiShTha (32,000 verses), raamaayaNa (24,000 verses) upto the granpa and granny of all - the mahaabhaarata (100,000) and bhaagavatam. In between are the short-stories focusing as much as possible to the main theme.

Interestingly while raamaayana contains 24000 verses, it has been retold in different variations in a wide variety of formats in different languages, since vaalmIki. In fact the very first 100 slokas contain an abridged version of raamaayaNa by vaalmIki himself. There is a Swati Tirunal's kriti "bhaavayaami raghuraamam" - the story of raama in few stanzas set in different ragas. Very recently was released a visually stunning retell of the story by Sanjay Patel. There is even a eka-shlokI-raamaayaNa which tells raamaayaNa in just one shloka!

आदौ राम तपोवनादि गमनम् हत्वा मृगम् काञ्चनम् ।
वैदही हरणम् जटायु मरणम् सुग्रीव सम्भाषणम् ।
वाली निग्रहणम् समुद्रतरणम् लङ्कापुरि दहनम् ।
पश्चात् रावण कुम्भकर्ण निधनम् तु एतत् हि रामायणम् ॥

The transformation of a few verses to a delightful and an exquisite kaavya (eg. shaakuntalaa by kaalidaasa) or crunching a big story to a few lines like the above seems to have fascinated Sanskritam poets.

One of the most fascinating पञ्चतन्त्र story is The Blue Jackal. Hunger, sympathy, cunningness, fear, imposture, divine invocation, regality, anger, violence - so much characteristics are packed in a few verses. One can quote several movies on this pose-as-somebody-else-and-take-others-for-a-ride theme and variations. While movies of every language seem to have this kind of comedic setup, the evergreen classic Golmal (Amol Palekar) comes to my mind immediately.

But what if, instead of विष्णु शर्म, पाणिनि had written the पञ्चतन्त्र ? May be he would have reduced the pancha-tantra to pancha-paragraphs.

Lets imagine the blue jackal story, Panini-style. Let paNDita-s forgive me for such a blasphemy.

अरण्ये ।
शृगाल: ।
- वने कश्चन शृगाल: वसति स्म ।
प्रत्याहारम् भुभुक्षाया: ।
- स्वस्य भुभुक्षा-कारणत: आहारम् प्रति स: अन्वेषणम् अकरोत् ।
तत्र । (2.1.56)
श्वपदानुसारणात् नीलभाण्डपतितोऽपिसन् ।
    - शुनकै: खेतित: धावित: श्रुगाल: नीलभाण्डे अपतत् ।
परश्च । (3.1.2)
प्रतिपथमेति । (4.4.42)
    - तत्परम् स: वनम् प्रत्यागच्छत् ।
अज्ञाते । (5.3.30)
आत्मने चण्डरव: इति ।
दूतस्य भाग-ब्रह्मणि । (4.4.120)
    - मृगा: तम् न ज्ञातवन्त: । स: शृगाल: "अहम् चण्डरव:, ब्रह्मण: दूत:" इति कथितवान् ।
राजा च । (6.2.59)
वृन्दारक नाग-सिंह-कुन्जरै: पूज्यमान: । (2.2.62)
प्रसंशावचनैश्च । (2.2.66)
    - स्वयम् राजानम् मत्वा सर्वेषु मृगेषु भीति: उत्पादितवान् । मृगा: तं शृगालं प्रशंसवचनै: पूजितवन्त: ।
वृष्टिरादैच् ।
    - एकदा वृष्टि: आकाशात् आगता ।
अन्यैश्च टंकार: ।
    - अन्यै: शृगालै: टंकार: कृत: ।
स्वं रूपम् शब्दस्य (1.1.68)
    - तं शब्दं श्रुत्वा शृगाल: स्वस्य रूपं विस्मृतवान् ।
स्वयं तेन । (2.1.25)
    - तेन शब्देन स्वयं पुर्व-रूपं स्मृत: नीलशृगालेन अपि टंकार: कृत: । मृगा: तस्य शब्दस्य अभिज्ञातम् कृतवन्त: ।
हनस्च वध: । (3.3.76)
     - मृगा: चण्डरवम् मरितवन्त: ।

तस्य लोप: । (1.3.9)
- शृगालस्य लोप: स्यात् ।
तदर्हम् । (5.1.117)
- स: तद् अर्हति एव ।

The sutram-s with indicated numbers are either a direct lift or lousy modifications of the अष्टाध्यायी sutram-s. The वृत्ति is in blue.

The said unsaid

2011-07-05T08:09:00.001-05:00

उक्तमनुक्तम्

After the defeat of DMK and company in May 2011 elections, the Tamil satire journal Thuglak ran a funny cartoon, where the DMK chief laments "We did what we said, we also did what we did not say (still got defeated)". While the common man chides "Yeah right, but they did not say what they did", refering the 2G spectrum scam.

Translating this humor to Samskritam is interesting, using the "ktat" pratyaya for past-tense. Though it is blasphemous imagining the DMK chief speaking in Sanskritam, we can sense the brevity of the language here. (Paranthesis are author's additions for emphasis)

DMK प्रमुख: - उक्तम् कृतम् । अनुक्तमपि कृतम् । (हन्त! तथापि वयम् जिता:!)
कश्चन जन: - परन्तु (यत्) कृतम् (तत्) न उक्तम् खलु ।

Conveying the meaning not in so many words may not be a Bollywood technique, where heroes and moms dole out tiring breathless dialogs, but is pretty common in speech. Writing or reading between the lines, so to speak. That skill comes in handy in the corporate world whether to blame someone or pass the buck.

Sanskritam literature offers a lot of delightful examples in various degrees of "being left unsaid". Anandavardhana, in his masterpiece dhvanyaaloka (11th century CE) classifies it as a "suggestive technique". We shall look at a few instances.

One of the most beautiful is from kumaarasambhava, a shloka of which we saw in an earlier post about the penance of Parvati for Shiva. But if you go back and read it again, what is left unsaid in that shloka is equally fascinating. Follow the way the raindrop falls on Parvati and moves about. The described kinetics of the raindrop is possible only if Parvati was sitting in a perfect yogic posture. Kalidasa indeed suggests how Parvati is seated just by describing the movement of a raindrop. Perhaps this was the shloka that inspired Jakanachari shilpi to come up with the masterpiece Darpana-Sundari in Belur.

त्रिविक्रम पण्डिताचार्य, whom we referred in an earlier post composed a stuti called hari-vaayu-stuti, where he praises hanumaan (vayu), bhIma, madhvaacaarya and viShNu. It is set in a fascinating meter called srag-dharaa ("worn as a garland") with 21 syllables per paada. That makes 21x4 = 84 syllables per shloka, with a total of 41 shlokas! (The same in anuShTubh meter would have had 84*41/32 = 108 shlokas!). Sri Madhvaacaarya said that a stuti must begin with a praise to hari and instantly composed two shloka-s (some say it is just one) praising just the nails of narasimha (narasimha-nakha-stuti). These shlokas are recited at the beginning and end of hari-vaayu-stuti. But the beauty of these shloka-s also lies in what he did not directly say. The narasimha-nakha-stuti is in two different meters - a rare instance in Sanskritam literature. The first two paada-s are in a meter called "shaardUla vikrIDitam" (= play of a Lion) and the second two paada-s are in srag-dharaa, the same as that of hari-vaayu-stuti. So he also conveys the story of narasimha avatara - play of a Lion and wearing of a garland (hiraNyakashipu) - just by selecting the aptly named Chandas.

In the above instances, its the author who uses indirect suggestive techniques. In hanumannaaTaka we find sItA conveying her thoughts without saying any words. On the way to sItA's svayamvara, her friends enquire that 'if that blue-bodied man' will be her husband. sItA does not say anything, yet conveys the acknowledgement by the mere blushing of cheeks and movement of her eyelids. A superb shloka in maalinii Chandas:

पथि पथिकवधूभि: सादरम् पृच्छ्यमाना कुवलयदलनील: कोऽयमार्ये तवेति ।
स्मितविकसितगण्डं व्रीडविभ्रान्तनेत्रम् मुखमवनमयन्ती स्पष्टमाचष्ट सीता ॥

पदच्छेद:

पथि पथिक-वधूभि: सादरम् पृच्छ्यमाना कुवलय-दल-नील: क: अयम् आर्ये तव इति ।
स्मित-विकसित-गण्डं व्रीड-विभ्रान्त-नेत्रम् मुखम्-अवनमयन्ती स्पष्टम्-आचष्ट सीता ॥

आर्ये! क: अयम् कुवलय-दल-नील: तव? इति पथिक-वधूभि: पथि सादरम् पृच्छ्यमाना सीता, स्मित-विकसित-गण्डं व्रीड-विभ्रान्त-नेत्रम् मुखम् अवनमयन्ती, स्पष्टम् आचष्ट ।

Beginner Sanskritam students can recognize the question form "kim etat bhavata:? - Is this yours?". Obviously there are many more such fascinating examples in the gamut of Sanskritam literature.

Elementary, my dear Vidushaka!

2011-05-26T17:35:00.003-05:00

In the small corner of the very busy North Usman road in T Nagar, there is a library called Raviraj library. To me, my brothers and cousins it was one of the favorite haunts during school days in the mid 80s. In less than 500 sqft, it carried a variety of books and introduced us to the best of literature: comics like Tintin, Asterix, Archies; Tamil novels of Kalki, Sandilyan, Akhilan, La Sa Ramamrutham, Balakumaran, Na Parthasarathy; and a large number of modern English novelists like Sheldon, Ludlum, Eric Segal, Harold Robinson, Leon Uris, Mario Puzo, Forsythe and so on. It was a matter of pride to discuss them and outright shame to even not know them. Around this time, the Sunday morning national TV shows were becoming popular - Star Trek, Cosmos, Famous Five, Old Fox, and the unforgettable Sherlock Holmes played by Jeremy Brett. Funny enough, though we mostly did not follow the highly-accented(?!) stylized dialogs of Holmes, the library books filled the accent-gap.

In the vast unimaginable compendium of Sanskrit Literature, it almost feels like every topic has been dealt with conceptually. The Mahabharata concludes

यत् इह अस्ति तत् सर्वत्र यत् न इह अस्ति तत् न कुत्र चित् ।
Whatever is here is everywhere, whatever is not here, is not found anywhere else.

Sometimes I am assured that any story or plot of the movies can be traced to a plot or a concept in Mahabharata, Ramayana or the Purana-s. Brothers fighting each other? Yes, Pandavas vs Kauravas; Best brothers? Rama and Lakshmana; Coveting others wife? Ravana. Unconditional Friendship? Can't beat Duryodhana and Karna; A very just hero exhibhiting selfishness? Yudhishtra hesitates sending Bhima to Bakasura; Transgender character? Shikhandi; Partial love to son by father? Think Dhruva; A boy taking revenge on his father's humilation (of knowledge) - Ashtavakra; And any type of revenge stories would easily fit the various sub-plots of Mahabharata. In the non-itihasa, non-puranic literature too, there is plenty to refer. Flashback stories? Kadambari would pale them in comparison; Multiple sub plots meeting at a common take-off? Kathasaritsagara; Man married woman and forgot about her? Sure there is Shakuntala (though it is part of Mahabharata itself);

Given all these, there seems to be one type of story which I feel has not been dealt exclusively in Sanskrit literature: Murder mysteries. May be there is one and I have not read. But no doubt, the landscape of the modern mystery stories is heavily influenced by Sherlock Holmes. His science of deduction spectacularly captured everyone's imagination.

In one of the famous works of Bhasa - Svapna Vasavadatta ("Vasavadatta, who appeared in dreams"), there is a remarkable scene. The context is this: King Udayana is in deep love with his wife Vasavadatta. But in order to defeat his rival king, he is compelled to make friends with a Magadha king by marrying the latter's sister Padmavati. But since Udayana would not forget Vasavadatta, his minister YaugandharAyana (what a name!), along with her approval sets up that both himself and Vasavadatta are dead. So the King is now forced to marry Padmavati. Once when he hears that Padmavathi is having a severe headache, he goes to meet her along with his companion Vidushaka (court jester). Upon entering the anta:pura (queen's chamber), they don't find Padmavathi there. What follows is a very enthralling Sherlock Holmes-esque dialog.

विदूषक: : तत्र भवती पद्मावती इह आगत्य निर्गता भवेत् । (Padmavati must have come and went away)
उदयन : वयस्य! अनागतया भवितव्यम् । (Friend, She has not even come to this room)
विदूषक: : कथम् भवान् जानाति ? (How do you know?)
उदयन : किमत्र ज्नेयम्? पश्य (What is there to know? Look -- )

शय्या नावनता तथास्तृतसमा न व्याकुलप्रच्छदा न क्लिष्टम् हि शिरोपधानममलम् शीर्षाभिघातौषधै: ।
रोगे दृष्टिविलोभनम् जनयितुम् शोभा न काचित् कृता प्राणी प्राप्य रुजा पुन: न शयनम् शीघ्रम् स्वयम् मुञ्चति ॥

The bed is not pressed down and evenly spread; (शय्य न अवनाता, तथास्तृत समा)
its cover is not ruffled; (न व्याकुल प्रच्छदा)
the clean pillow is not soiled with the medicines applied for allying headache; (न क्लिष्टम् शिर उपधानम् अमलम् शीर्ष अभिघात औषधै:)
nothing charming is arranged that would engage the eye where is illness; (रोगे दृष्टिविलोभनम् जनयितुम् शोभा न काचित् कृता)
a person having gone to bed through pain does not leave it again quickly (प्राणी प्राप्य रुजा पुन: शयनम् शीघ्रम् स्वयम् मुञ्चति)

The parallels are extremely striking. Watson is the vidUShaka:, Holmes is udayana. Lets imagine this in Watson's own terminology.

Holmes and I entered the Queen's quiet chamber. I looked around and observed "Well, well. Padmavati seems to have come and left". Holmes replied nonchalantly "My dear Watson, I'm afraid the lady has not even been here!". I turned to him with a quizzical look "How can you possibly know that?". Inspecting the bed closely, he reeled off, "Elementary my dear Watson! The bed is even and there is no dent with the weight of the body. The bedsheet appears not ruffled. And if you recall, we are here on the account of Padmavati having a severe headache, and since you know of my exceptional olfactory abilities, I do not smell the applied headache ointment on the pillows. The room is singularly devoid of aesthetics to please of a sick person. Anyone with a headache would not lie down and get out quickly. Hence the facts present to me that Padmavati did not even enter the room".

Also observe that the approach to sickness is holistic - that the aesthetics must be pleasant to evoke positive feeling during a depressed state. We also conclude that "kimatra jneyam" is the Sanskrit-speak for "Elementary".

Like Spock would say, "Fascinating...".

Text and translation taken from MR Kale's Svapnavasavadatta.
Bhasa is estimated to have lived before 500 BC. Kalidasa and others have paid tributes to him.

यमुनोत्री २०११ - संस्कृत भारती शिबिरम्

2011-04-27T17:09:00.002-05:00

Click here for English version.

बृहत् वृक्ष: एकेन अङ्कुरेन । महती ज्वाला एकया विस्फुलिङ्गया । कार्य सफलम् एकया साधु चिन्तया । अपि च अनुरागेन ॥

वर्ष पूर्वम् वसुवज् महोदयेन सूचितम् Austin नगरे संस्कृत शिबिरम् करणीयम् इति । तदा मम किञ्चिदपि विश्वासः नासीत् यत् तत् साफल्यते इति । Austin नगरे तु एक: एव वर्गः प्रचलन् अस्ति । यथा अन्येषु क्षेत्रेषु वर्गाः प्रचलन्ति तथा अत्र कदापि न अभवत् । अहम् "आम्" इत्युक्तवान् अपि कथम् एतत् साधयेत् इति स्वप्ने अपि न चिन्तितम् ।

जनवरी मासे पुनः यमुनोत्री शिबिर-विषये चर्चा उत्पतिता । Austin, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, College Station, Arkansas संस्कृत भारती केन्द्र कार्यकर्तृभिः बर्साना धाम् मध्ये शिबिरम् चालयेत् इति निर्माणम् कृतम् । बर्साना धाम् मध्य Texas राज्ये Hill Country प्रदेशे न अनति सुन्दरे क्षेत्रे अस्ति ।

मया इतः पूर्वम् कोऽपि शिबिरं न गतम् । अत: मया किम् अपेक्षितव्यम् इत्यपि न ज्ञातम् । मधु पिल्लै महोदयस्य साहाय्यकेन यमुनोत्री पञ्चीकरण-जालपुटः निर्माणः कृतः । पौनपुन्य-परीक्षानन्तरम् जालपुट: पञ्चीकरणाय सिद्ध: अभवत् । न अहम् पञ्चीकरणाय प्रथम: परन्तु अजय: Raleigh नगरत: ।

तत: परम् नि:स्वप्नरात्रय: आरब्धा: । ५० जनेभ्य: न्यूनम् भवति चेत् किम्? किमु १५० जनेभ्य: अधिकोऽस्ति चेत्? किमु व्यवस्था न रोचते जनेभ्य:? किमु शिक्षक-छात्राणाम् अनुपातम् न समीचीनम्? किमु Austin नगरत: एव न अधिकाः जनाः आगमिष्यन्ति? किमु तस्मिन् सप्ताहन्ते वर्षम् भविष्यति? किमु अत्युष्णम्? वर्श चतुष्टय पूर्वम् एवम् एव April मासे १०२ गतम् खलु । किमु भोजनस्य अपर्याप्तम्? किमु भोजनस्य अरुचिकरम्? केवलम् प्रश्ना: न तु उत्तराः ।

हरिहर महोदयेन युक्तम् उक्तम् यत् यद्यपि जनाः संस्कृतम् न पठेयु: सम्यक् भोजनम् खादित्वा गच्छेयु: इति । रामकृष्ण परमहंसस्य सुभाषितम् स्मारयति एतत् ’ज्ञानम् न शुष्कोदराय’ । अपि भोजनार्थम् अनेके नियमा: । ननु केवलम् शाकभोजनालयत: आनेतव्यम् । न पलाण्डु, न च लशुनम्, सात्त्विक-भोजनरूपम्, रुचिकरमपि, ततो न बहु मूल्यमपि । हरिहर महोदय: अहम् च उभौ किञ्चित् चर्चयित्वा रोटिकाः, पराठाः, ढोक्लाः, गुलाब् जाम्बोलनानि, मिश्र रुचिप्रदानि, जहाङ्गिरानि, अन्यानि पदार्थानि च आदिशतवन्तौ । दक्षिण-भारत भोजन पदार्थानि न लब्धानि, ततापि भानुवासरे उप्मा (लवण पिष्टम्) आदिशतम् । वसुधा भगिनी भक्षणानाम् संस्कृत अनुवादम् कृतवती ।

शिक्षक विषये अपि अस्माकम् सौभाग्यम् एव प्रतीक्ष्यते । शारदा वरदराज: महोदया, सौम्या भगिनी, विद्या भगिनी, गोविन्द, मुरली, अविनाश महोदयाः आगमिष्यन्ति इति निर्माणम् कृतम् । अन्ते तु नरेश महोदयः अपि आगमिष्यति इति श्रुत्वा हार्ष्यमेव अनुभूतम् । यदा अहम् श्रीकान्तम् उक्तवान् यत् एते शिक्षका: आगाच्छन्ति इति स: प्रत्यवदत् ’गच्छतु रे । न मयि विश्वास: यत् ते सर्वे शिबिराय’ इति ।

शिबिर दिने आगच्छन्तान् जनान् सुधी महोदय: स्वकीयम् प्रकोष्टम् प्रति अनुप्रेषितवान् । बालकाः अधुना एव क्रीडामग्नाः अभवन् । स्थले सुन्दराः मयूराः अपि आसन् । रात्रिभोजनानन्तरम् (शिबिरे तु सर्वाणि कार्याणि भोजनानन्तरम् एव), सौम्या भगिन्याया: सप्रार्थनम् शिबिरम् आरब्धम् । गोविन्द महोदय: संस्कृत-भारती विषये उक्तवन् । अपि मया सर्वे जनाः यमुनोत्रीम् शिबिरम् प्रति स्वागतीकृताः ।

तस्मिन् समये एव केनापि बालकेन कोऽपि सर्पः दृष्टः। छात्राणाम् मध्ये काचित् भीति: दृष्टा । अथ किम् करवाणि? सर्प वा, नाग वा, सर्प-महोदय वा - यद्किमपि आह्वयतु - सर्पात् सर्वदा भीतिरेव ननु । यत्र मयुराः सन्ति तत्र सर्पाः सन्ति एव । तथैव जीवनम् । तदनन्तरम् भोजनकोष्टे एका स्थूला गोधिका दृष्टा । अनन्तरे दिने अपि श्रीकान्तेन त्रय: वृश्चिका: मारिता: । नानाविधा: गोधिका: पक्षिण: अपि दृष्टा: । वन्य प्रदेशम् एतत् खलु ।

शनिवासरे छात्रा: ५:४५ वादने एव उत्थितवन्त: । योगाभ्यासम्, स्नानम् च कृत्वा आगतवन्तान् भोजनालये काफी च continental breakfast अपेक्षितम् । तत्परमुन्मत्तमेव । वर्गाः, कथम् अस्ति भवान्, विराम:, काफी, भवान् कुत्र वसति, वर्गाः, माध्याह्न भोजनम्, काफी, छायम्, वर्गाः, अहम् कुशलिनी अस्मि, वर्गाः, अन्यच्च अन्यच्च । दिनान्तरे केनचित् उक्तम् श्रुतम् "मम नाम किम्?" इति ।

शिबिरस्य MVP - अन्मोल् महोदयेन भोजनालयत: भोजनम् आनीतम् । नरेन्द्र महोदयेन अपि साहाय्यम् कृतम् । पुस्तक-भाण्डारिक-रुपेन शर्मा महोदय: कार्यम् कृतवान् । श्रुति: बालकान् पालितवती । एतस्मिन् समये मया अपि एक: वर्गः गतः ।

सायङ्काले सर्वैः छात्रै: मनोरञ्जन-कार्यक्रमम् अतीव उत्साहेन कृतम् । बालकाः मृगान् अनुकारितवन्तः । का अङ्गुली श्रेष्टा इति एकम् लघुनाटकम् । "दोसा धाम्" इत्यपि एकम् लघुनाटकम् । हितोपदेशस्य "लुब्ध-ब्राह्मण-कथा" आधारीकृत्य नाटकम् अपि अस्माभि: कृतम् ।

भानुवासरे अपि तथैव । योगाभ्यासम्, उप्प्मा (लवण पिष्टम्), उपसेचनम्, क्वथितम्, काफी च । बर्साना धाम: मध्याह्न भोजनम् संस्कृत-भारत्या प्रायोजकम् कृतम् । समारोपन-कार्यक्रमे शारदा महोदयाया: संस्कृतसेवा आराधिता । सर्वेभ्यः वन्दनार्पणम् मया कृतम् । तदनन्तरम् group-photo कृत्वा, भोजनम् समाप्य सर्वे स्वगृहम् प्रति प्रस्थानम् कृतवन्त: ।

शिबिरस्य अन्ते ८ वर्षीया: मनीषा माम् प्रति आगत्य उक्तवती "कदा भविष्यति अग्रिमम् शिबिरम्? अहम् आगन्तुम् इच्छामि" इति । शिबिरस्य सफलम् तदेव इति मम अभिप्राय: । भगवदनुग्रहेन सर्वम् सम्यक् अप्रचलत् । परन्तु मम पुन: रात्रौ नष्टनिद्रा एव । इदानीम् तु अन्यविचारात् । मनसि अविरतम् गीतम् एकम् श्रूयते ।

अविनतलम् पुनरवतीर्णा स्यात् संस्कृत गङ्गाधारा ।
धीर भगीरथ वंशोऽस्माकम् वयम् तु कृत निर्धारा: । वयम् तु कृत निर्धारा: ।

संस्कृताय अस्माकम् आवश्यकता, यथा स्वयं ज्ञातुम् संस्कृतस्य ।

Yamunotrii 2011, Austin, Samskrita Bharati Residential Camp

2011-04-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

One seed is all that is required for a tree. One spark is all that is required for a raging wild fire. One thought is all that is required for success. Yeah, plus ofcourse that thing called passion.

Almost an year ago, Apr 2010, when Vasuvaj-ji mentioned about holding a Samskrita residential camp at Austin during summer that year, I was very skeptical. We do not have a big group here, we have so far been conducting only beginners classes and we do not have a solid presence compared to other Samskrita Bharati centers like Dallas, Houston, East coast or West coast. Personal life improvements and other commitments took over and the July camp did not happen. The yet-to-be-fire remained a pilot.

Around January 2011, the spark came again and this time, time was ready. The Yamunotrii team was formed with the kartyakarta-s of Austin, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans and College Station. The place was decided to be Austin. There wasn't much choice except Barsana Dham, a picturesque setting in the Hill Country of Central Texas. We decided to check that place out. One unknown question among the Austinites was what to expect in a camp? Despite his extremely busy schedule, Dr. Venkat Raju from College Station came over and helped us set the expectations of rooms, classes, food etc. We were able to now somewhat visualize how the camp could be conducted there.

I had not been to any camps before and I just did not know what to expect. The Yamunotrii registration page was setup soon with several hours of work from Sri Madhu Pillai and his team of Sreyo. Yamunotrii was the first camp on the new version of Jhoomla. After several rounds of testing, the page went live on March 8th. I wasn't even the first to register, but it was Ajay from Raleigh. The registration started ticking on with a very slow progress.

Sleepless nights started with that. What if there are less than 50 people? What if there are 150+ people and there is no place for some to stay? What if we could not get enough teacher-to-student ratio? What if not many people from Austin itself come to the camp? What if it rains on that weekend? What if it is too hot? What if food is not enough? I had only questions and no answers.

One of the practical points that Hariharan brought up was even if people don't come to "learn" Sanskrita, they should atleast go back home saying that the food was good. Reminds me of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa's saying - education is not for empty stomach. There were several rules: Food should be from a vegetarian-only restaurant, no onion, no garlic (mainly sattvic), tasty, a lot of variety and most important of all - not expensive. Curry n Hurry was the only restaurant that met all the requirements and its owner Jinesh Gandhi did everything what we wanted. Though we could not get a sumptuous South Indian food -- I would have wished for a finger-licking rasam -- but we compensated with Uppma for Sunday morning breakfast. We set a few rules ourselves - alternate with appetizers and sweets, ensure coffee was available always, juice, cookies and ice-cream for kids. Thus came dhokla, spring rolls, gulab jamoons, mixtures and jahangirs. Vasudha bhaginI helped with Sanskrit-izing some of the food names to be displayed next to each food item.

We were lucky to have the best teachers visit the camp even though it was for only two days. Starting with Smt Shaaradaa Varadaraajan, Sowmya bhaginI, Vidya bhagini and then Govinda, Avinash and Murali mahodayaa: - we had an impressive list of teachers. And finally we roped in Naresh too (vaak.wordpress.com). When I mentioned this to Srikanth, he was like "Get outta here! I don't believe we are getting all those for the camp..."

The checkins went fine, most people arrived on time with Sudhee guiding them to rooms. After the dinner (everything starts after some food in the camp), the camp commenced with a prayer by Sowmya bhaginI. Govinda mahodaya gave the initial speech and later I welcomed everyone to Austin on behalf of Samskrita Bharati.

And then the first trouble started. Someone spotted a snake near the rooms. It was a bit of a flutter, but later it turned out to be a non-poisonous rat snake, but a snake is still a snake, whether you are going to call it sarpaH, nAgaH or even snake-mahodaya, it still scares you. But where there are peacocks, there are snakes. Such is life. And then we saw a huge lizard in the dining room. Later Srikanth killed 3 scorpions near the rooms. I did spot a few colorful lizards and birds. This place is wild!

On Saturday morning, students were up at 5:45 am, greeted by a very pleasant weather and a cool breeze. Morning Yoga with some recitation of Yoga sutras of Patanjali followed. After the bath, the smell of fresh coffee and a continental breakfast was awaiting in the dining room. And then it was just frenzy. Classes, breaks, vargaaH, katham asti bhavaan, bhojanam, classes, viraamaH, bhavaan kutra vasati, mixture, kakshyaa, jaangiri, aham kushalinI asmi, tea, more classes and finally at the end of the evening I could hear someone ask - "mama naama kim?". Whew.. what a crazy day it was!

The MVP (most-valued-person) of the camp, Anmol brought both the lunch and dinner for Saturday and Narendra helped with the arrangements. Meanwhile the bookstall was setup. Sarma became the official bookstore owner and with Sruti taking care of toddlers, I was finally able to sneak into one of the classes. Avinash mahodaya was teaching about chandas and gaNa. Binominal stuff, I mean, phenomenal stuff.

The evening manoranjana kaaryakramaM was presented by both kids and adults with several creative skits. Kids mimicking animals, a skit about which finger is the best finger, another called Dosa Dham, a dumb-charade in Sanskritam and finally an almost extempore skit adapting the Brahmin and The Tiger hitopadesha story to modern setting of Austin to Dallas, Rest Area, Google stocks, Chronicles of Narnia and Nigerian scam. That was total fun.

The next day began with a similar note, morning yoga followed by Uppma with chutney and sambar. The Barsana Dham lunch was sponsored by Samskrita Bharati for Sunday and quite a few volunteers came out and helped prepare the food. A couple of more classes and finally the closing ceremony honoring Smt Shaaradaa Varadaraajan for her years of service. She gave a wonderful speech ending with Samskritam rakShitam rakshati. It was already 12:45 and I could see the long queue for the lunch and I hurried a bit thanking every one. One final group photo, lunch and the camp was already over.

Just a few minutes before everyone were leaving, 8 year old Manisha came and asked me "When is the next camp? I would love to come again". And that I define as the success of the camp. Everything had went fine, well, except one thing. I spent yet another sleepless night after the camp, but this time it was due to a tune that was ringing in the background of my mind all night long --

avanitalam punaravatIrNa syaat samskrita gangaa-dhaaraa | dheera bhagIratha vamshosmaakam vayam tu kRuta nirdhaaraaH | vayam tu kRuta nirdhaaraaH |

Samskritam needs us, as much as we need her to know ourselves.

Lie to me O Vibhishana

2011-03-28T22:38:00.002-05:00

Recently I have started to watch an interesting TV serial called Lie to Me by Fox network. (yeah, I hear you, how ironic!). Its about a detective agency, Lightman Group, led by Dr. Carl Lightman, finding truth via applied psychology predominantly studying facial expressions. The facial expressions, or microexpressions to be precise, of protoganists are butted with the help of similar expressions exhibited by celebrities and politicians, which are pretty convincing at times, not to mention the good humor. The script is really sharp as well as the apt references to the celebrities and politicians capturing the moment of rubbing their noses or twitching their ears. Obviously there are espisodes with unnecessary elements that feels like "filling up" the one-hour episode, but most of the time the script manages to keep one's attention.

"A demon kidnaps a Queen. The King and his army destroy him. If only Ramayana were that simple."

This is how Amar Chitra Katha advertises its illustrated story book Ramayana. What a lovely one-liner! Of course the book has to cut several corners to make the story simple and to confine in 60 pages, but the original Ramayana (in whatever form we have now, I am not getting into the debate of what was the original-original version by Valmiki) contains fascinating descriptions of human tendencies.

Growing up, no kid can be not awed by Hanuman's superhuman strength, bravery and exploits. Be it the ever-entrenched image of Hanuman carrying the mountain in the APT parcel trucks, leaping to Sun thinking of it as a mango, or setting Lanka to fire with his tail - his exploits form a fertile core of any child's imagination. But after a while, the "Santa Claus" reality sets in, and one starts to look beyond the superhuman strengths. Only now, a more powerful picture begins to emerge as one reads through the original slokas, oozing with juicy details - that of Hanuman's supreme intelligence. Time and again, even in the smallest of incidents, his intelligence sparkles like a diamond and uplifts the story to a new level.

One such relatively minor, but very important incident is the surrendering of vibhIShaNa to rAma. Various accounts simplify this incident so much that it appears like vibhIShaNa came and begged Rama and the latter just accepted him. ACK for eg, devotes 3 pictures for this incident. But in the original story, this incident runs upto 149 slokas, with various monkey counsellors offering different insights and advices to Rama. Rama listens patiently to everybody and makes his own decision, justified by his own dharma. Reminds me of the Hindi proverb, "suno sab ki karo man ki".

After all the monkeys give their opinions and tell Rama "do this, do that", finally speaks Hanuman and gives a brilliant analysis of vibhIShaNa. His thought process is so unobtrusive with striking clarity, it makes me wonder why this is story is not part of MBA courses. If I were a tenured MBA professor, I would ask the students to do a comparitive psycho-beneficial analysis of a merger with a rebel following a breakout in a familial company. Just kidding. No, I was serious.

But our main focus is the beauty of Sanskritam, so I'm going to present a few beautiful sloka-s. While the original sloka is provided, I have rewritten a few of them into prose format, to show that Ramayana, as they say, is indeed atIva saralaa and madhura manjulaa.

न वादान् न अपि संघर्षान् न आधिक्यान् न च कामतः ।
वक्ष्यामि वचनम् राजन् यथा अर्थम् राम गौरवात् ॥

हे राजन्, हे राम, न वादान् न अपि संघर्षान् न आधिक्यान् न च कामतः वचनम् वदामि । गौरवात् यथा अर्थम् (वचनम्) (अहम्) वक्ष्यामि ।
O king! O Rama! I am not talking for arguments sake, nor for competition, nor for superiority, nor out of passion but on account of importance of this matter.

अर्थ अनर्थ निमित्तम् हि यद् उक्तम् सचिवैस्तव ।
तत्र दोषम् प्रपश्यामि क्रिया न हि उपपद्यते ॥

तव सचिवै: यद् उक्तम् अर्थम् अनर्थ निमित्तम्, तत्र दोषम् पश्यामि । अत: न क्रिया उपपद्यते ॥
I am perceiving an error in what was advised by your counselors assigned to look into advantages and disadvantages. It is not possible to judge his character that way.

ऋते नियोगात् सामर्थ्यम् अवबोद्धुम् न शक्यते ।
सहसा विनियोगो हि दोषवान् प्रतिभाति मे ॥

नियोगात् ऋते सामर्थ्यम् अवबोद्धुम् न शक्यते, (परन्तु) सहसा विनियोग: दोषवान् इति मे प्रतिभाति ।
Without entrusting any work, it is not possible to understand his ability. Also one cannot entrust a work sooner to a stranger.

अशक्यः सहसा राजन् भावो वेत्तुम् परस्य वै ।
अन्तः स्वभावैर् गीतै: तै: नैपुण्यम् पश्यता भृशम् ॥
O king! Without possessing a high skill of reading his diversified tones, it is not possible to understand his intentions.

न त्वस्य ब्रुवतो जातु लक्ष्यते दुष्ट भावता ।
प्रसन्नम् वदनम् च अपि तस्मान् मे न अस्ति सम्शयः ॥
I am not seeing any bad intention at all in his talk. His face is bright. A deceitful person does not approach so fearlessly and confidently. His expression too is not bad. Hence, I have no doubt in him.

आकारः चाद्यमानो अपि न शक्यो विनिगूहितुम् ।
बलाद् हि विवृणोति एव भावम् अन्तर्गतम् नृणाम् ॥
It is not possible to hide the facial expressions, even if it is concealed. The internal intent of the person certainly gets revealed by itself.

One interesting word here is bhaavam. From the root bhU - being, bhAvam means "the state of being". Hanuman observes that it is not possible for one to hide one's own internalized state of being.

Thus Hanuman studies two important details - voice modulation and facial expression, which no other monkeys observe. He does not go by words of vibhIShaNa, but goes right into his heart. Finally he concludes his speech in style, second to none of modern software consultants:

"O Rama the best among the wise! I have told this to the best of my ability about vibhIShaNa. After hearing my words, you are indeed the final judge of the issue."

Hanuman's approach is very clinical - first he states the purpose of his own speech, points out the logical errors of others, digs vibhIShaNa's presence, throws in a few quotes, examines his real purpose (ie to become King of Lanka), studies his body language, presents the facts to his manager and finally allows him to make a decision!

Citations:

Source materials have been taken from the valmikiramayan.net website and the Gita Press edition of Valmiki Ramayana.

Oru oorile oru raja

2011-01-30T18:12:00.001-06:00

Kids throw tantrums. There are a few ways to handle it - shout them down, calm them down in nice words, bribe them with iPhone or Wii games or divert their attention. The last is probably the most effective because kids' attention span is so less but comes with boundless energy, it is just easier to deflect that energy than to confront it. I have one effective way of diverting a kid's attention - say "Once upon a time...". The tantrum stops and I get back the question: "Are you going to tell me a story now?..."

Whom doesn't a fairy-tale delight when begun with "Once upon a time there was a princess..."? But have we ever been tired of listening to "Once upon a time there was ..."? Upanishads recourse to hilite very powerful concepts of Brahman, Atman using stories like that of Nachiketas and Shvetaketu. Some stories like Panchatantra and Hitopadesha are very simple. Some stories, like modern soaps and mega-serials just try too hard to impress. All the wealth of the showtime industry is based on just one thing: people's willingness to give an ear to hear a story, isn't it? Whatever be the case, its hard to resist the tagline "Once upon a time...".

Once upon a time in India lived a poet called Bana Bhatta. He probably must have listened to "Once upon a time..." a thousand times and got tired of the same gag. So he starts his Kadambari with a stylish introduction:

आसीत् अशेष नरपति-शिर: समभ्यच्चित्त शासन: पाकशासन: इवापर: चतुरुदधि माला मेखलया भुवो भर्त्ता प्रताप अनुरागवानत समस्त सामन्तचक्र: चक्रवत्तिलक्षणोपेत: चक्रधर इव करकमलोपलक्ष्यमान शंखचक्र लाञ्छन: हर इव जितमन्मथ: गुह इवाप्रतिहतशक्ति: कमलयोनिरिव विमानीकृतराजहंसमण्डल: जलधिरिव लक्ष्मीप्रसूति: गङ्गाप्रवाह इव भगीरथपथप्रवृत्त: रविरिव प्रतिदिवसोपजायमानोदय: मेरुरिव सकलोपजीव्यमानपादच्छाय: दिग्गज इवानवरतप्रवृत्तदानाद्रीकृतकर: कर्त्ता महाश्चर्य्याणाम् आहर्त्ता क्रतूनाम् आदर्श: सर्वशास्त्राणाम् उत्पत्ति: कलानाम् कुलभवनम् गुणनाम् आगम:काव्यामृतरसानाम् उदयशैलो मित्रमण्डलस्य उत्पातकेतुरहितजनस्य प्रवर्त्तयिता गोष्ठीबन्धानाम् प्रत्यादेशो धनुष्मताम् धौरेय: साहसिकानाम् अग्रणीर्विदग्धानाम् वैनतेय इव विनतानन्दजनन: वैन्य इव चापकोटिसमुत्सारितसकलारातिकुलाचलो राजा शूद्रको नाम ।

आसीत् there was
अशेष नरपति-शिर: समभ्यच्चित्त शासन: bowed by all the kings without any exception
पाकशासन: इवापर: like a second Indra (Indra killed an asura named paaka, so he is called paakashaasana)
चतुरुदधि माला मेखलया भुवो भर्त्ता husband of the earth who is encircled by four oceans as a garland
प्रताप अनुरागवानत समस्त सामन्तचक्र: always in the company of warm-friendship of neighboring princes
चक्रवत्तिलक्षणोपेत: with the lakShaNa of a cakravarttI
चक्रधर इव करकमलोपलक्ष्यमान शंखचक्र लाञ्छन: like Vishnu, with a comparable lakShaNa of cakra and shaMkha(discus & conch) in the hands
हर इव जितमन्मथ: like Siva, the conquerer of manmatha
गुह इवाप्रतिहतशक्ति: like kaarttikeya, undefeated in might
कमलयोनिरिव विमानीकृतराजहंसमण्डल: like Brahma,
जलधिरिव लक्ष्मीप्रसूति: like the Ocean, who is the source of lakshmI
गङ्गाप्रवाह इव भगीरथपथप्रवृत्त: like Ganga, who followed Bhagiratha
रविरिव प्रतिदिवसोपजायमानोदय: like Sun, who rises freshly everyday
मेरुरिव सकलोपजीव्यमानपादच्छाय: like the Meru mountain, his foot honored by all living beings
दिग्गज इवानवरतप्रवृत्तदानाद्रीकृतकर: like the elephants, always a stream of generosity
कर्त्ता महाश्चर्य्याणाम् one who offers sacrifices
आहर्त्ता क्रतूनाम्
आदर्श: सर्वशास्त्राणाम् a mirror of all the Sastras (ie one who follows Sastras)
उत्पत्ति: कलानाम् a creator of all arts
कुलभवनम् गुणनाम् abode of virtue amongst his scion
आगम:काव्यामृतरसानाम् a spring of nectar of poetry
उदयशैलो मित्रमण्डलस्य the brightest sun among all the suns
उत्पातकेतुरहितजनस्य a comet to his enemies
प्रवर्त्तयिता गोष्ठीबन्धानाम् founder of poetic or literary societies
प्रत्यादेशो धनुष्मताम् a terror to archers
धौरेय: साहसिकानाम् chief among the brave men
अग्रणीर्विदग्धानाम् prominent among the wise
वैनतेय इव विनतानन्दजनन: like the Garuda who brought happiness to his mother
वैन्य इव चापकोटिसमुत्सारितसकलारातिकुलाचलो
राजा शूद्रको नाम a king called shUdraka.

The main point constitutes the beginning and end of the sentence -

"aasIt raajaa shUdrako naama - Once there was a king called Sudraka".

The rest forms the attributes of the king in complex samasa-s and beautiful alankara-s. This is a free translation and is bound to be inaccurate. I have even given up translating a few as the metaphors are just not translatable.

Thus goes Kadambari, a fascinating story, with multi-hierarchical-flashbacks, delightful puns and plot-twists and a fairy-tale ending with some of the longest sentences written in Sanskrita literature.

Notes:

I tried not naming this blog in Tamil, but I could not feel the effectiveness in any other language. "Oru oorile oru raja" roughly translates to "Once upon a time there was a King", "Ek gaon mein ek raaja thaa", "Ondu oorinalli ondu raja idda" etc. - Pick the one of your mother tongue that delights you the most!

Trivikrama Panditacharya

2011-01-26T22:11:00.003-06:00

Anyone who scouts the streets of India to buy cheap reprint books, be it Mumbai Churchpark, Bangalore Jayanagar, Connaught Place in Delhi or Mount Road in Chennai, would surely have come across the hugely popular "A brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking. Although it contains several interesting theories, it had one dampening remark: "in modern times, to do something in Physics, one has to be already at the top". In other words, if one wants to make a name in Physics, one has to thoroughly know pretty much all fields - mechanics, thermodynamics, electricity, magnetism, optics, relativity, astronomy, cosmology, plus the word 'quantum' randomly prefixed to any of the above. If you create a new theory, there is just too much scrutiny from fellow Physicists waiting to fire-drill it.

Rewind to the period of 7th to 14th centuries in India. Europe may have been in dark ages, but not India. She was a cauldron of richness in physical, financial and intellectual wealth. Sanskrita literature was fluorishing with some of the greatest minds ever, each with their own sobriquets. On one hand were the dramatists and poets - be it Captain of similies Kalidasa, Word-player Dandin, Master-blaster of meanings Bhaaravi, All-rounder Magha, Word-machine Bana bhatta and more. On other hand were great aachaarya-s like Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva and a host of others who are known more for their philosophies than for the mastery of Sanskrita, that is taken for granted. If we look at only the religious meaning and not understand the beauty of the language handled by them, we will be missing something very important. The carrier is as compellingly fascinating as the content.

During these times, to be declared as a Pandita, one had to be knowledgeable in several fields - the four veda-s, all the six angas of veda (siksha, kalpa, nirukta, vyakarana, jyotisha, chandas) vedanta, nyaya, mimamsa, kavya, alankara and what-not. Just like the difficulty to be recognized in field of Physics these days, it would have been hard for one to be recognized as a kavi, let alone be called maha-kavi, vara-kavi, kavi-ratna, kavi-raja, kavi-sekhara, kavi-kesari and not the least kavi-kula-tilaka "the foremost among the society of poets".

One such luminary was Sri Trivikrama Panditacharya. You wont find his name mentioned among "Classical Sanskrita literature", but poets like him made significant contributions to the language. He was born near Mangalore to Subrahmanya Suri, around 13th century. His elder brother was Shankara Panditacharya. His son Narayana Panditacharya wrote the grantha sumadhva-vijaya, of which we saw one spectacular sloka earlier. Not for no reason Trivikrama Panditacharya holds the distinction of being called as kavi-kula-tilaka. Even as a young man he had written a maha-kavya called "Usha-haraNa". His mastery of Sanskrita seems to be inborn as can be seen from the following story:

Once a bhikshuka (beggar) came to his house for alms. As a boy, Trivikrama replied with the following sloka:

एक क्षपणक शाक कर्ता बहव: क्षपणक शाक दादा: ।
यत्र क्षपणक बहु शाकादा: तत्र क्षपणक शाक शाक ॥

eka kShapaNaka shaaka kartaa bahava: kShapaNaka shaaka daadaa: |
yatra kShapaNaka bahu shaakaadaa: tatra kShapaNaka shaaka shaaka ||

Meaning: Only one mendicant (his father) is the money-maker; Other mendicants (relatives) are there just to eat. Where there is one money-maker and many to eat, in that place what food are you really expecting?

In other words, we ourselves are like beggars, what are you begging us for?

Trivikrima Panditacharya became a disciple of Sri Madhvacharya following a 15-day debate in which the former accepted the superiority of Madhva's tattva-vada. His famous work is Harivayu stuti (a stuti on Sri Madhvacharya) which consits of spontaneously composed 41 slokas. It is in a fascinating meter (vritti) called sragdharaa (srak = garland, dharaa = wearing/moving). It has 21 syllables per quarter, with a pause after every 7th syllable, making it 84 syllables per sloka! Sri Vedanta Desikan has also handled this meter in his Tatva mukta kalaapam and Nyaya Vimsati. Kalidasa (abhijnana shaakuntalam) and Bhartrhari (trishataka) also have handled this meter.

Notes:

Source of the quoted sloka: Vayustuti Pravachana by Sri Vyasanakare Prabhanjanachar,

a

2011-01-17T00:17:00.005-06:00

अ

If you observe the Sanskritized words in regional Indian languages, you can see specific modifications to word endings, which can usually identify the speaker's state orientation. Tamilians say rAman or kriShNA with a "an"-ending or elongation of a. In Telugu it becomes rAmudu. North Indians say it as rAm, with the last "a" disappearing altogether. Bengalis prounounce "a" with a tendency towards "o", so pArtha becomes pArtho, ajay becomes ajoy. But what is the correct pronounciation of अ itself in Sanskrita? What is the effort put to say अ ?

अथ शब्दानुशासनम् । This is how Panini begins his aShTaadhyaayI. His work revolves around word formations. Panini's work relies on earlier literature of Vedanga called शिक्ष or प्रतिशाख्य that deals with phonetics. Two factors influence production of each varNa: aasya (place of sound) आस्य and prayatna प्रयत्न (effort). Prayatna in-turn is classified into aabhyantara-prayatna आभ्यन्तर-प्रयत्न (effort during origination of sound) and baahya-prayatna (effort during ending of sound). aahbyantara prayatna is of 5 varieties (स्पृष्ट: touched, इषत्-स्पृष्ट: somewhat touched, विवृत: open, इषत्-विवृत: somewhat open and संवृत). baahya prayatna is of 11 varieties, we will see those some other time.

Consonants are classified as "touched", because the toungue touches other parts of the mouth during pronunciation. All vowels are classified as vivRuta - "open" because the mouth is open during pronunciation. That is, all vowels except "a". "a" should be pronounced with the same time taken to prounounce the a in "cut", "but", but not as in "fast", "mask". This effort is called saMvRuta. It singularly belongs to the varNa अ.

If you have the Vaman Shivaram Apte's Sanskrit-English dictionary, check out the very first meaning of "a", which itself is the very first entry.

Meanwhile let us look at a sloka.

याम: श्रयति याम् धत्ते यैन यात्याय याच्च या ।
याऽस्य मानाय यै वान्या सा मामवतु पादुका ॥
That which viShNu takes up, that which bears viShNu on itself, that which moves about because of viShNu, that which is for viShNu, that which originated from viShNu for his purpose, that which secures respectability for viShNu, that which is attainable to us at viShNu, may that pAduka protect me.

Notice in the sloka that there is not a single mention of the word viShNu or even any other name of the Lord, yet the sloka seems to refer the Lord continuously. Is the word viShNu hidden? Really? Hmm...

The key to any sloka is in splitting the sandhi-s correctly. Slokas like this need commentaries. Let's first split the sloka and then analyse.

याम् अ: श्रयति या अम् धत्ते या एन याति आय या आत् च या ।
या अस्य मानाय या-ए वान्या सा माम् अवतु पादुका ॥

Once we split the sandhi, the sloka is pretty straight-forward in meaning. All the yaa's refer to "that which" which is qualified later by "saa paaduka". Sri Vedanta Desikan, the creator of this sloka, plays on the letter, actually a shabda in this context, अ and conjugates different vibhakti-s on it. Sanskrita students may remember the vibhakti-s of अकारान्त पुंलिङ्ग एकवचन राम शब्द: as राम:, रामम्, रामेन, रमाय, रामात्, रामस्य, रामे etc. Now instead of राम शब्द, conjugate just for ’अ’ शब्द. The vibhakti-s are अ:, अं, एन, आय, आत्, अस्य, ऐ ! Since we know that अ means viShNu, the conjugations simply mean viShNu (subject), viShNu (object), by viShNu, for viShNu, from viShNu, of viShNu, in viShNu respectively.

Meanwhile, vishnu sahasranama mentions a thousand names of Vishnu. So is अ one of the names there? You betcha! The 25th sloka says:

आवर्तनो निवृत्तात्मा संवृत: संप्रमर्दन: ।
अह: संवर्तको वह्नि: अनिलो धरणीधर: ॥
From this we can extrapolate the meaning of saMvRuta: as one whose prounounciation is that of अ who is viShNu !

So much for a simple अ ! Those who are interested, may pursue why paaNini ends his ashtaadhyaayI with a mind-blowing sUtra with just two characters:

अ अ ।

Sources:

Meaning of Sri Vedanta Desikan's sloka is sourced from Paduka sahasram.
More information on pronounciation of a and other varNa-s can be heard in Sri DJ Vaidya's audio blog.

The Ashtadhyayi Framework

2010-11-09T22:06:00.000-06:00

In Software Programming, namespace is a very important concept. It is a context for identifying something uniquely. I strongly believe if a proper namespace or naming convention is not conceived, the ideas conveyed within the namespace will also be poor. Some examples are: domain names, namespaces in xml/xsd, package names in java which are mandatorily related to a folder hierarchy. In .Net also there are namespaces, though its not correlated to folder hierarchy, which I believe allows for ample confusion. The more the conventions, the lesser the code complexity.

Over the years I have reviewed how programmers have used package naming conventions in the Java world. In general there are two flavors of naming conventions: type-based and feature-based. Some used both conventions at the same time, I'm ignoring them as mutants.

Some examples of type-based conventions are com.acme.data, com.acme.controllers, com.acme.service, com.acme.exception. Here all the classes are grouped under "types" of the classes. While its easy to create and maintain such a structure, its really hard for a new-comer (or even for a revisit) to understand the functionality, unless all the classes are fully scanned and understood.

Imagine a "Purchase Order" functionality, which has the following classes:

com.acme.data.OrderInfo, com.acme.data.PaymentInfo;
com.acme.controllers.OrderForm, com.acme.controllers.PaymentForm;
com.acme.service.OrderService, com.acme.service.PaymentService;
com.acme.exception.OrderException, com.acme.exception.CreditCardException, com.acme.exception.StockUnavailableException

To understand the Purchase Order functionality, one should scan the whole hierarchy and associate the objects mentally. In a complex project, this would take several days to understand the code when there are several controllers, services etc especially if the classes themselves are named poorly or ambiguously.

The feature-based approach will define namespaces like: com.acme.order, come.acme.payment. So the classes will be

com.acme.order.OrderInfo, com.acme.order.OrderForm, com.acme.order.OrderException, com.acme.order.StockUnavailableException;
com.acme.payment.PaymentInfo, com.acme.payment.PaymentForm, com.acme.payment.CreditCardException.

Such grouping immediately draws focus on understanding the functionality. It is also easy to reverse-engineer the code into subject areas. One is not better than other as both techniques have merits. Every programmer would have written some kind of framework code. In a typical non-business framework code type-named conventions make more sense. For eg, the Spring-framework is arranged based on type-based packages. If I need to extend from a controller, it makes most sense for me to search for a "controller" package. In an application, feature-based package makes a lot of sense.

Now, what does pANini have to do with all this? Its illustrative to infer that there exists a very similar structure parallel in the sanskrita grammar literature. pANini's ashtadhyAyI is known for its outstanding brevity. However one cannot understand its application without pretty much scanning the whole work. Take for example the formation of word "rAma:"

arthavat adhAtu apratyaya: prAtipadikam (1.2.45)
svaujasamautchhastaabhyaamngebhyaambhyasngasibhyaambhisngasosaamngyossup (4.1.2)
upadeshe ajanunaasika it (1.3.2)
tasya lopa: (1.3.9)
sa sajusho ru: (8.2.66)
kharaavasaanayo: visarjanIya: (8.3.15)

Just to form the word rAma: ("application") one has to understand 1, 4, 8 chapters, pAda-s and several sutra-s and anuvritti-s within. Why? Because pANini has grouped his sutras based on "types". Package is called "adhikAra" in sanskrita. Each adhikAra is a namespace: pratyaya, samasa, samhitaayam, paribhasha etc. The order of these sutras are extremely important. Just like the folder hierarchy: com.acme.order is not the same as com.order.acme. Changing of the order sutras will invalidate the structure and the meaning too. There are no examples within Ashtadhyayi, just like you wont find an example within a framework itself.

The sanskrita vyAkarana literature that followed (a big list including Katyayana's vartika, Patanjali's Mahabhashya, Kasika vritti, Siddhanta Kaumudi, Laghu Siddhanta Kaumudi, Paribhasha indusekhara and so on) attempted to re-arrange sutras according to functionality or "prakriya". They also supplied numerous examples ("test cases") and counter-examples ("negative test cases"). There are fantastic precise examples and counter-examples in Siddhanta Kaumudi by bhattoji dIkshita.

As a good programmer, lets end with good comments. If pANini had to write a javadoc header for his grammar, this is pretty much how it would have looked:

/**
* The Ashtadhyayi Framework
* vyAkaraNa.sUtrapATha.ashtAdhyAyI.framework
* @author pANini
* @since 1500 BC
* @version १.०.०
* @see SAkalya, SAkatAyana, SphotAyana, yAska etc. frameworks
* @see Siva-sutra, dhAtupATha, gaNapATha, uNAdi, Chandas
*
* This framework provides a complete set of base sutras, definitions, interpretations, sandhis, rules and exceptions for generating an infinite number of sentences in natural language using a finite set of rules.
*
*

* WARNING: Do not modify the order of the sutra-s without understanding the complete framework.
*

*
* Code Metrics:
* Number of lines of code: 3986
* PMD index: 0
* Cyclomatic complexity: 1000
*
*/

The c(o)urse of events

2010-07-19T15:42:00.003-05:00

The Puranas are a great source of stories, generally counted as 18. Unfortunately these are wrongly refered as "Mythological stories". The context of "mythology" is more of Greek and Roman origin. The puranas were named "mythology" based on comparison of other cultures. Even Amar Chitra Katha, a pioneer in Indian story comics, categories these stories under "Epic and Mythology", which is according to me a misnomer. People who narrated the puranic stories to others are called paurAnikas and commanded great respect. If Puranas are mythology, can we call the paurANika's as mythologists? Several Puranas seem to be based on actual historical events, of course with a great flight of imagination, that took place in and out of the land of Bharata. I make a conscious effort to never call these 'mythology', instead call them as puranic.

In the fables like panchatantras, jataka and hitopadesha the story moves towards establishing or concluding a certain moral. While in purAnas, moral is not central, though the overall moral-base is "good triumphs over evil". The purAnic stories may not have any logical beginning, proceeding or an ending. Events happen due to fate, somebody's wish or just because it is so. There is a lot interplay, connections, tangential references between stories, yet there are plenty of contradictions too.

But There is one fundamental theme that occurs throughout the puranas and itihasas. Before we getting into that, lets try to answer a few questions:
Why did

Vishnu take 10 avatars?
Krishna die ?
vAli die at the hands of Rama ?
Dushyanta forget Shakuntala ?
Hanuman hesitate to cross the ocean?

The answer is a simple "Because of a curse". Every little incident that happens in a Purana has a story behind it and it usually begins or ends in a curse. Curse makes fiction or adaptation very easy, I wonder why the modern writers do not use it effectively; it could be used as an effective tool for turn of events.

Let us pause for a moment and think about the word "curse". It does not even come close to convey the meaning of the actual word used in Samskrita - "shApa". The word shApa has so much overloaded context in it, the word 'curse' simply does not carry that. Just like dharma, papa, punya, guru do not have any direct translations, it is hard to bring out the complete meaning of shApa in "curse". I will try to use the word shApa throughout this blog.

In saying "Im giving you a curse" vs "Im giving you a shApa", the latter definitely sounds effective and more realistic. Try and say it in different Indian vernaculars. And try to use a mega-serial heroine (or a truly filmy mother) tone: 'mein tujhe shAp deti hoon, tum vinAsh ho jaoge'; 'unakku shAbam kodukkaren, nI nasamai povai'; 'ninage shApa kodtini, nI nAsavagi hogu'. All these certainly sound effective and make good one-liner cliches for mega-serials.

In the PurAnas every one or other is found to be giving shApa to others. To some extent one is lead to believe that ones fate is not in one's hands but in the mouth of others. There are certain characters in the purAnas, whose only job is to just give shApa to somebody.

The famous among them is durvAsa, who literally has a "template shApa" in his mouth. If somebody sneezes and he doesnt like it, poof, there is a shApa. If he comes for alms, and you are little bit late in giving it, poof, he lets another one. He is a very interesting character though; lot of stories would not have happened without him. Do you know the actual birth of durvAsa? Once Shiva was just getting angry at silly things. Parvati was getting very uncomfortable at Shiva's behavior. So she says to Shiva "durvAsam bhavati me" (Your presence is very difficult to me). Shiva realises it, feels ashamed and does a classic "spin off" of this anger into a new person and thus durvAasa is born. He appears in several purAnas, the primary aim being to give shApa to someone. The puranic writers have a convenient character in Durvasa where he is summoned at-will to alter the fate of any character.

Sometimes the shApa is very complex, other times the reasons are plain ridiculous. In general the rules of a shApa can be categorized thus:

A shApa can be given for the silliest of reasons
Every one - all mortals, gods, asuras, rakshasas, even the Supreme Lord are subjected to shApa; there is literally no-one guaranteed to be shApa-free.
Once given, the shApa can never be taken back
shApa-s cannot be amended directly, but an escape route can be provided, or 'eased-out' in phase
- All shApa-s have a mandatory expiration date and ends in shApa-vimochana.
At the end of the expiration period, the receiver can either be restored to original state or become somebody new
In most cases, the shApa can be redeemed only by the giver, others cannot change this
A shApa can be counter-shApa-ed. The reciever can in turn give another shApa to the giver

There are cases where A curses B and B curses A in turn. This is called a shApa-deadlock. They really have to timeout each other to obtain the shApa-vimochana. There are also cases where a subsequent shApa renders a previously given shApa ineffective (although temporarily) because of the impossibility of the event. Once Silavati was carrying her leper husband Ugratapas. Sage Mandavya sees the amorous state of Ugratapas and curses that he will die at sun-rise the following day. Silavati, now curses that sun will not rise the next day, thus making the first shApa impossible to happen.

Most purAnic characters are prompted to act only because they are given a shApa. In fact we see this even in Samskrita literature. The most original of Samskrita works, Kalidasa's mEghadhUta, starts off with a brilliant line: "A certain yaksha, because of some shApa put upon him, was separated from his love and lives in the foothills of rAmagiri in the vindhyA mountains". KalidAsa doesnt bother to say what is that shApa, but just a passing mention of it was sufficient enough to convince us that the yaksha had indeed done something miserable and is suffering from it. Think about it: just one word puts the whole poetry on course. If the concept of shApa was not that powerful, kAlidasa would either have to explain why that yaksha got stuck there, or give some other logical reason behind it.

Even though we think that shApa can be effecitvely given only by rshis, there are stories where any Ram, Shyam and Hari gives shApa to anybody. Were people's words that really powerful in those times? Why were the rishis the primary shApa-givers? Was their life-long meditation not helping them to restrain heir anger? And where is all that power now? Why is shApa not that effective in kali yuga?

Here are some of the popular shApa-s and the course of events:

Giver - Receiver - Course of events

Durvasa - Sakuntala - Sakuntala forgets to invite Durvasa; Dushyanta forgets Sakuntala
Gautama - Ahalya - Indra seduces Ahalya; Gautama turns her into stone; Rama rescues her
Durvasa - Airavata - Airavata tears Durvasa's garland gift to Indira; Durvasa curses Gods will become old; Leads to finding of Amrutam
Vasishta - Apa (Dyau) - Ashtavasus took cow Nandini by force; Vasishta cursed 7 would be born as men and die immediately except the main thief, who would live long (Bhishma)
Bhrgu - Vishnu - Vishnu kills kAvyamata, mother of Sukracharya in a battle; Bhrgu curses Vishnu to have countless incarnations to atone the sin of killing a woman
Some sages - Yadava dynasty - Yadavas make fun of some sages; they curse the whole dynasty will be destroyed, including Krishna
Srngi - Parikshit - Parikshit puts a dead snake around a rishi; Rishi's son curses that Parikshit will be killed by snake Taksha in 7 days
Matanga - Vali - Matanga curses Vali cannot enter RshyamukhA mountains; so it becomes a safe place for Sugriva

Avatar 9.5

2010-02-26T09:29:00.007-06:00

Narada, the celestial sage was restless. It has been ages that he had done any "kalaha" in devaloka. I don't think that there is any better word than "kalaham" to describe Narada's acts. The closest I can come to translate is "mischief" though that word carries more connotations to it than just "mischief". If you know of any such word in English, let me know. But I bet there isn't.

Sage Narada is a composer and singer. Just as Lord Kartikeya got a favorite raga Shanmukhapriya, just as Goddess Lakshmi has a favorite raga Ramapriya, just as Nandi has a favorite raga Rishabhapriya, just as Lord Shiva has a favorite raga Rudrapriya, and Vishnu has a favorite raga Shri, Narada too has a favorite raga - "Kalahapriya". I dont know its arohana or avarohana - but I can take a guess to say that it has too much of vakra sancharas in it. He probably is the creator of this raga and therefore he is sometimes called as "Kalahapriya Narada".

When was the last kalaham he did? He couldnt even remember it. It was probably in Thiruvilayadal. But now he was determined. But the most difficult part is: "Where shall I start?".

"Ah! By the way Indra is throwing a party tonight. They had won a cricket match against the Asuras. In Krita yuga, devas and asuras fought over each other by churning the milky way. Now that those galaxies are already much dispersed and left with reduced density, there is nothing much to churn. As far as Kali yuga is concerned, a simple one day match could decide who won. Yugas have really changed. Whoa! That was a really exciting and gripping match. The Asuras fought really well, I should admit. Their coach Kripacharya is really shrewd one. And their tail-end is really good. The last pair of tail-enders, Rahu and Ketu batted out the final five overs. For the Devas, Agni was the best pick of the bowlers. His fiery first few overs stands a class apart. And Varuna's spell is worth mentioning.

"The devas chase really interesting. The physiotherapist Danvantri was around to heal the wounds if any caused by asura bowling. Anyway the devas have won and have a reason to celebrate. It would only be proper to imagine that they are all getting drunk over the victory". Thinking thus Narada reached the hermit of Tumburu.

Tumburu wasn't home. What happened to this guy? Has he gone to party out? He too has changed a lot in recent yugas. Earlier he used to be a lonely singer roaming in Himalayas. Now he has got a band! Imagine the nerve of him to form a band! It has a funny name too - "The Band Harvas".

The sound from the Indrasabha hall was loud and garrulous. Chanting the mantra "Narayana! Narayana!!" Narada reached the party. He stood in a corner and started observing the dancing devas and devis. Thumburu was on a podium with his Thambura, joined with a couple of Gandharvas from Chitrakoota. One had a veena attached with a strap hanging around his shoulders. Another was carrying a dholak on one hand, a WinZipped version of dumru on the other hand and some flute like instrument was in front of his mouth. Don't ask me how he was holding it. It is a gandharva magic. Chitrakoota, the capital of Gandharvas has now got a new sobriquet - "The Gandharva Motown". The people born there are prenatally skilled in music. When the citizens rise in music, take bath in music, go to bed in music and give birth in music, it is no surprise that everyone is skilled in music. "The Band Harvas" were singing a song that was hardly legible. Is the song really in Sanskrita? wondered Narada.

The devis were dancing in the center of the hall. Fresh faces were seen apart from the traditional Ramba, Urvasi and Thilothama. The Devas were also dancing scattered around the hall, some with devis and some alone. There in the corner is Indra, seated in a table, all alone. He had a large pitcher in his hand and seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the soma rasa. Well, his enjoyment is going to be short-lived, as Narada approached him.

"Narayana, Narayana, Congratulations on your win O Indra", Narada began in his inimitable style.

"Oh! Is it Sage Narada I see? Pranam O venerable sage! What is a sage doing in a party for Devas?" Indra too wasn't less political in his reply.

"Just checking on you, in case I have anything to report to Shiva, the God of Gods". Narada said in his inimitable sarcastic tone. Indra now realized that he was talking to Narada, the unbeatable in creating kalaham-s and is a favorite of Lord Vishnu. He thought to himself "If this guy reports to Lord Vishnu about the fun the other devas are having in this party, I could be in trouble. I better not mess with him". What he didn't realize was he had already fell for the sage's plot.

"What can I do for O veritable Sage" asked Indra.

"Nothing Indra, I just came to congratulate you. Your captain's knock helped the team win the trophy! I could not have imagined what would happen if the Asuras had won..."

"You are right! It is because of your support we won..."

Narada hadnt yet finished his previous sentence: "...especially when the stakes are high !"

Indra willing to change subject said: "Victory is all that matters! O Narada"

"You are right O Indra! But aren't you getting a little selfish?"

"Wh... what .. what? Can you explain me O Celestial Singer?" Indra stumbled a bit.

"Your bhaktas in Bharatavarsha are getting humiliated with defeats. The weakest teams, when they meet the Indian team on the field, emerge the strongest with greater self-confidence. Is it enough if you win against the Asuras? Should you not help the Indian Cricket team? They pray you and Agni for helping them. They even pray Varuna to bring rains when they are on the edge of defeat! But nothing seems to happen. If I may say so, Lord Vishnu is a bit upset that bhaktas are ignored..."

Indra was frightened. He remembered how Vishnu protects his bhaktas at anybodys cost. If this guy complains to Vishnu that he is ignoring the bhaktas and partying out, he may find himself in trouble. He quickly wanted to amend for that.

"O Narada, the giver of generous boons! It is due to my ignorance that I am in such an ignorance. Could you please advice me on what can I do?"

"I don't really know O the best among Devas! But I think its time for Indian cricket team to have some person who can really win matches. May be you can think something along those lines..."

Indra became cautious. What is this guy getting at? If I send some deva to play in the Indian team and if the team still loses, because of other 10 members, he would yet be blamed. If he didn't send any deva to join the team he would be blamed again for not taking care of bhaktas. A catch 22 situation. This Narada is very clever. But wait a minute, here is an idea...

"O Sage Narada! The Indian team loses consecutively and the commentators are heard saying that 'only Bhagavan can help them'. Why dont we ask Lord Vishnu to take an avataar to play for Indian team?"

Narada was smarter than Indra on any account. "O Indra! That is a fantastic idea! But dharma hasn't really been defeated yet. Vishnu is scheduled to take the Kalki avataar only at the end of the Kali Yuga. Measured in bhuloka-years there are about 427000 years left... But if you along with other devas can convince Vishnu to take a temporary avataar for the protection of his bhaktas, he may concede to your request. After all he is the all merciful Paramatma..."

Indra got the hint. The next morning he summoned all the devas and briefed them about the mission. The devas hadn't recovered from hang-over and so didn't have much to object. And so they all marched to "Kshirasagara" chanting the thousand names of Vishnu.

The dvArapAlakA-s were surprised to see the devas' sudden visit. Indra approached them and offered salutations "Pranam to dvArapAlakA-s"

"Pranam O Indra" they said in unision. "And congratulations on winning the trophy!"

"Why thank you" replied Indra. "I have come to offer my prayers to Lord Vishnu and talk to him about a burning issue."

The dvArapAlakA-s said "You are very welcome O King of the Devas"

Indra followed by other devas reached the sanctum sanctorum. "Namo Narayana" said the devas in unision.

"Welcome O Indra and Devas! I congratulate you on winning the trophy..."

"Its all your mercy O Lord! Without you can a ball swing or reverse-swing? Without you can a bat be wielded? Without you can a wicket be taken? Without you can the umpire raise his finger? Without you can a fielder catch a catch? Salutations to you whom the ball cannot beat, whom the bat cannot miss, for whom there are no boundaries. Salutations to you the effulgent one, who is neither the game played nor the game not played nor both, neither the victory nor the loss nor both! Salutations to you O Existence-Knowledge-Bliss!"

Lord Vishnu smiled and said "What brings you here O Indra?"

Indra said "O Lord! It is said that the wise ones should not lose their head on their victory. Even though we won against the asuras we still are not rejoicing. We are worried very much about how our bhaktas are being defeated day-in and day-out against all the opposition teams. We have come here to request you to help our bhaktas in re-strengthening the team and instilling confidence in them. We would like you to take an avataar to play for Indian cricket team"

Lord Vishnu smiled again and said politely "O Best among Devas! I take avataar only on purpose of defeating adharma and not because of the defeat of Indian cricket team. The Indian team doesn't win because they don't bat well, bowl well or field well. They are paying for their own karma. It is nothing that I can do about!"

Indra didn't relent "But is it not in your realms to take care of the suffering and the anguish of the bhaktas? If not for the Indian team you should at least take an avataar for the cricket fans. It is aching to see the fans spend money and cheer up for the team, but return back from the stadium disappointed. Is it fair? Even poor Indian families buy new TV sets to watch their team play, yet they are disappointed by their team due to lack of application? Is it not disheartening? At least for the sake of the fans you should take an avataar and play in Indian team! Only you can take an avataar so that not only will the Indian fans relish your game, but every cricket fan in the world would love to watch your game. It is possible only by you, O Lord of Lords, O Purushottama, not by us, mere devas!"

The All-merciful Paramatma was moved by the pleading of Indra and other devas. "Your wish will be granted O Indra! Even though I am scheduled to take Kalki avataar only by the end of the Kali Yuga, for the protection of the Indian cricket, and the defeat of other teams, and to establish the Cricket Dharma, I concede to take an avataar".

The Devas were pleased. They showered flowers on the Lord. They chanted mantras to please Lord Vishnu and shouted "Om Peace be with all Om".

As always, Narada's kalaham has ended in a good note. For Vishnu now has a job to do. For the Indians the Lord himself has arrived to save Indian Cricket.

And for the rest of the audience in the world - well, they simply have to watch Sachin Tendulkar bat.

(Note: I wrote this article almost 12 years ago when Sachin made a superlative century against Australia in Sharjah. I think the article still holds true and is a tribute to him for his 200 in ODI).

Fonetiks

2010-02-23T09:40:00.009-06:00

Recently when I was driving my kid to school, I thought of playing on phonetics with him. With my increasing frustration and disillusionment with the amount of effort one has to put to spell English and remember the alphabet-sequence and my increasing understanding of Sanskrita, I wanted to see how kids react to phonetics of something they have not heard so-far.

The experiment contained of pronouncing a letter and finding out the origination of the letter in the position of the mouth. It also helped he was not seeing my face and just hearing the sounds. The SikSha SaStra (lit. science of phonetics) goes very deep into the subject and literature has been written around it over the span of 2500+ years.

The conversation went like this (all his responses were after some thought).

Me: Tell me where does the sound 'a' come from?
He: (after some thought) throat.
Me: Tell me where does the sound 'ka' come from?
He: throat
Me: Whats the difference?
He: the tongue touching.
Me: Tell me what happens with 'ca' ?
He: the tongue goes and touches up.
Me: Now repeat after me ka kha ga gha ~nga (like the ng in sing)
He: (repeats)
Me: Where does the sound ~nga come from?
He: throat
Me: where else?
He: (does not catch on first, then very doubtfully) nose?
Me: Tell me what happens with Ta (like T in Patrick)
He: tongue rolls up.
Me: Whats the difference? Stop the tongue at T and tell me
He: (thinks a bit more) tongue rolls back
Me: Now repeat ca, cha, ja, jha, nya, Ta, Tha, Da, Dha (I stop).. What comes after ?
He: (Repeats, keeps rolling the tongue backwards and pronounces Na) (Like the N in Pundit, Mandala, but not navy, nine)
Me: Now tell me what comes after pa.
He: (catches on to the pattern and says) pa pha ba bha ma.
Me: Finally now just repeat 'ka ca Ta ta pa'
He: (tries it, but does not catch on)
Me: Do you observe that the tongue travels from throat all the way to the lips?
He: (Nods, but i hardly think he understood)

But the point is how natural it is - I only make half the effort for him to understand the 'alphabets', he just latched on to others naturally (or analytically). I was not fully convinced about placement of varNa-s in Sanskrita, but I think I'm slowly beginning to see the originality and superiority. I still have confusions about Ra, La, Sa, zed, zha -- about placement/omission of these in the scheme, but that's only due to my very limited knowledge of phonetics.

The retro-flex is probably the most important and obvious difference between a "desi" pronunciation and a Westerner's pronunciation. Even among the Indians, you can see the Tamilians use the retro-flex a lot more than other South Indians because of the presence of the Ra and Zha, both of which are not present in other Indian languages. In fact there is even a Tamil adage that says the tongue has to roll for proper pronunciation. Sri DJ Vaidya-ji in his audio blog on phonetics mentions that Sanskrita retro-flex is most likely the effect of Dravidian languages on her.

kaalapramaaNa

2010-01-18T20:10:00.017-06:00

Much is being made of 2012 as the end of the world. In the Hindu literature, the perception of time is completely different. There are various accounts of time with slightly differing measurements, but here is presented what is probably the most accepted. I also consulted the book Puranic Encyclopedia by Sri Vettam Mani.

Carl Sagan in his hugely successful and influential book/TV Serial Cosmos, mentions about how the early Hindu sages were thinking in terms of billions, when the rest of the world did not yet begin to count numbers. Clearly, the table goes from 1/3600 of a second to several billion years.

For the end of Kali yuga in the current cycle, we have about 427,000 years to go! And we are in the 28th cycle of the 7th manvantara. For this manvantara to end, we have 43 cycles to go. And for this kalpa to end, we have about 7 more manvantaras. The current manu is vivaSvata. We will see the future manu-s in the next post.

At it does not end here. When the lifetime of current Brahma expires, a new Brahma takes over.

count	of this	is 1	equal to this of	in modern units	Comments
30	alpakala	truti	1/3600	second	~ 0.3 milli seconds
30	truti	kalaa	1/120	second	~ 8.3 milli seconds
30	kalaa	nimisha	1/4	second	~ 250 milli seconds
4	nimisha	ganita	1	second
60	ganita	vinadi	1	minute
60	vinadi	ghatika	24	minutes
60	ghatika	ahoratra	24	hours	Day + Night
15	ahoratra	paksha	15	days	1 Moon cycle
2	paksha	chandramasa	1	month	1 Lunar month
12	chandra masa	varsha	12	months	1 Solar year
1	varsha	deva aho ratram	1	Deva day	1 Human year
360	varsha	devavarsha	360	human years
4800	devavarsha	kruta yuga	1,728,000	human years
3600	devavarsha	treta yuga	1,296,000	human years
2400	devavarsha	dvapara yuga	864,000	human years
1200	devavarsha	kali yuga	432,000	human years
12000	devavarsha	catur yuga	4,320,000	human years
71	catur yuga	manu	306,720,000	human years
14	manvantara	kalpa	4,294,080,000	human years	Deluge
1	kalpa	Brahma's night	4,294,080,000	human years	No action
1	kalpa	Brahma's day	4,294,080,000	human years	Creation
2	kalpa	Brahma ahoratra	8,588,160,000	human years	Brahma's day + night
360	Brahma ahoratra	Brahma varsha	3,091,737,600,000	human years	1 Brahma year
100	Brahma varsha	End of Brahma	309,173,760,000,000	human years	100 Brahma years

The intellectual devotee

2009-12-14T22:26:00.011-06:00

No matter how much ever one tries to embrace and love it, grammar of any language always remains a dry subject. At some point of time, the mind wants to stop analyzing and start to take things as-is. Panini's grammar rules, no doubt is a great tribute to human intelligence. At the same time, another extra-ordinary intellect, Adi Shankaracharya asks "What is the point of studying grammar, when the real liberation is achieved only by chanting the name of Govinda".

Chanting the names of Vishnu is a sure way to moksha especially in Kali yuga - Vyasa emphasises this in several of his works. The more you call his name the more the chances of liberation. So, of what use is memorizing and repeating the undecipherable technical terms of Panini - most of which does not even sound like a proper word, when the mind can be repeating the thousand names of Paramatma? Do the words like ShtunoShtu:, k~giti ca, ikoyanachi get a person any closer to moksha?

Thus the bhakta is at cross-roads with jnana. Should one study the intricacies of grammar or just chant the names of mAdhava? And why can't he do both?

A variety of literature has followed AshtadhyayI. While the SutrapATha (AshtadhyAyI) remains the ultimate focus of these literature, the literature itself spans several dimensions - vritti (gloss), vArtika (notes), bhAshya (exposition), siddhAnta (theory). Sutra was extremely concise, so vritti was written to supply missing elements. vArtika expanded the sutra, while mahAbhAshya was an extensive treatment, leaving no gaps. Kasika vritti, siddhantakaumudi, laghu siddhanta kaumudi have treated AshtadhyAyI extensively. In between there are novel attempts like BhattikAvya which attempts to teach Paninian grammar via Ramayana.

In the juggernaut of the Bhakti movement started around early 8th century (?) with Azhwars/Nayanmars and gained prominence throughout India by 15th century, someone snaps, why do I have to read all these grammar rules while I can be chanting the name of Hari? Of what use is this grammar when nitya sukham is in repeating the names of Krishna! And thus Jiva Gosvamin creates a brilliant work - 'Harinamamruta vyAkaraNam' - literally "The Grammar of Nectar of Names of Hari". It is based on Panini's grammatical rules, but every technical term is replaced by a meaningful facet of Vishnu.

Let us look at some of the parallels of Panini's technical terms and Harinamamruta vyakarana

vowels/varna/svara (ac) - sarveSvara:
first 10 vowels (ak) - daSAvatAra
each pair of vowel (hRsva and dIrgha) - ekAtmaka
hrsva - vAmana
dIrgha - trivikrama
pluta - mahApurusha
anusvara - vishnuchakra
anunAsika - vishnuchApa
visarga - vishnusarga
ka ca Ta ta pa - hari-kamalam
kha Cha Tha tha pha - hari-khadga:
ga ja da Da ba - hari-gada
Gha Jha dha Dha bha - hari-ghosha:
Adesha - virinci
Agama - vishnu
pumlinga - purushottama
strIlinga - lakshmI
napumsalinga - brahmajna
avyaya - alinga
lopa: - hara:

and so on. All the technical terms are carefully replaced by equivalent meaningful facets of Vishnu! Thus Jiva Gosvamin creates about 3192 sutras - a devotional parallel to Panini's AshtadhyAyI.

The intellectual devotee fulfils two purposes immediately - learn grammar by chanting the names of Vishnu. Talk about direct ascendency to moksha by bhakti through jnana!

From raama to raamaha

2009-12-09T18:35:00.009-06:00

In a previous post we saw how a programming language can be written effectively in a natural language using Paninian sutra style.

In this post, let us do the exact opposite: converting a set of Panini-sutras to programming language style syntax to understand the rules of Sanskritam. The aim of the post is to kindle interest in Sanskrita studies for a typical software engineer to see the parallels of concepts of programming in Paninis methods. Statements and researches on Panini's methodology and how it is close to programming can be found plenty googling around. But as the ancient saying goes the proof of code is in the compiling. Of course I wont be delivering a code here, but hopefully a pseudo-code should convince any software engineer. Much of the pseudo-code can be polished and implemented in languages like Groovy/Ruby that supports expando, reflection etc.

Beginner Sanskrita students are often confused between rAma and rAma: (pronounced raamaha). Why do we add a visarga? Does the addition of visarga change the meaning?

The short answer is: Yes, the addition of visarga does add meaning.

In non-inflexional language like English, the prepositions provide the purpose of the noun. For eg by Rama, to Rama, from Rama, in Rama: in these cases "Rama" stays constant, while the prepositions provide the notion. Hindi also exhibits non-inflexional properties (rAm ne, rAm ko, rAm se, rAm par). In inflexional languages, the noun itself is modified to denote the purpose.

So what does this have to do with rAma: ? The word rAma: can be split into rAma + visarga. Here rAma is called the "stem" or "nominal stem". In Sanskrita its called prAtipadikam (प्रातिपदिकम्). prAtipadikam is defined as "arthavat adhAtu apratyaya" (अर्थवत् अधातु अप्रत्यय प्रातिपदिकम्) -- that which has meaning, and not a root, and not a suffix is called prAtipadikam. This stem will undergo modifications (inflexions) to fulfill the purpose of the noun.

Panini provides the methodology of modifying stem "rAma" to "rAma:" in a few sutras.

su aujasamauTChasTAbhyAmbhis~gebhyAmbhyas~gasibhyAmbhyas~gasosAm~gyossup
upadeSe ajanunAsikA it
sa sajuSho ru:
kharAvasanayo: visarjanIya:

The same in devanAgarI:

सु औजसमौट्छस्टाभ्याम्भिस्ङेभ्याम्भ्यस्ङसिभ्याम्भ्यस्ङसोसाम्ङ्योस्सुप्
उपदेशे अजनुनासिका इत्
स सजुषो रु:
खरावसनयो: विसर्जनीय:

Forget the tongue-wrecking, memory-bending first sutra for now. We will see its utility in the future posts.

Lets do some pseudo-code now.

//purpose of the noun - what do we want? singular/plural, masculine/feminine etc.
def purpose
//the stem to use, based on the purpose, this stem will now change
def stem = "rAma"
//anunAsika vowels for #2 (using single quotes to denote nasalization)
def nasalVowels { a', A', i', I', u', U', R', R.', e', ai', o', au' }

//Requirement: create a nominative-singular-masculine form of rAma -- prathamA vibhakti, ekavachanam, pumlinga from prAtipadikam rAma

def create_nominative_singular_ masculine_noun_from_stem(stem) {

if (purpose.isMasculine()  && purpose.isSingular() && purpose.isNominative()) stem.append("su'") //sutra #1: rAma -> rAmasu'
if (stem.endsWith(nasalVowel)) stem.removeLast(nasalVowel) //sutra #2: rAmasu' -> rAmas
if (stem.endsWith("s")) stem.replace("s", "ru'") //sutra #3: rAmas -> rAmaru'
if (stem.endsWith(nasalVowel)) stem.removeLast(nasalVowel) //sutra #2: rAmaru' -> rAmar
if (stem.endsWithAnyOf(KHAR)) stem.replace(stem.findLast(KHAR), ":")) //sutra #4
return stem //rAma:
}

Following the algorithmic steps, when the intention of one rAma is to be in nominative case (or as a subject), the end result is that a visarga is appended. Just 'rAma' does not denote anybody. "rAma:" denotes one masculine person in nominative/subject form.

Naturally, a question arises - Why dont we just add a visarga at the end instead of going thru all these rules? Note that this visarga is only for a masculine form. For neuter and feminine nouns, a su' will be added, but other rules from prevent them into morphing into a visarga. So Panini adds a common suffix and specifies rules on how it is applied in various situations.

In the next post, let us look at making the above method efficient.

Sutra based Programming

2009-11-19T15:12:00.013-06:00

Haven't software engineers had enough of programming languages? C and C++ were there for a while unchallenged. Then Java took over C/C++ pretty quickly. Even though you could create complex applications using Java and run on any platform, there is no dearth of new languages. Scala, Groovy, Ruby and very recently Go from Google.

All high-level programming languages do 4 basic things:

Assignment
Condition
Loop
Function/Procedure.

Loop and Function/Procedure/Subroutine are essentially glorified Goto.

Everything else is syntactic sugar.

Galileo has influenced us heavily to think math in terms of symbols. A mathematical symbol expresses an idea very concisely and effectively. Much more than a language could do.

So

x = 1

is more concise than saying "let x equal to 1".

Let me rephrase the above bereft of assumptions --

The mathematical expression "x = 1" is more concise than saying it in English "let x equal to 1".

But what if we could express "x = 1" much more concise in a natural language?

For e.g., let me just say

x 1

I just dropped the symbol "=". One symbol less! Whohoo! I also established a convention that whatever on left side is receiver and on the right side is provider. In a language like Sanskrit, for e.g., the "is/happens" is implicit (asti/bhavati). So no other verb is required. (There are other languages that exhibit this property too).

People think that just because ancient Sanskrit mathematicians did not use symbols, the works are not scientific. Symbol is just a convenience; if language could be more powerful than symbols, who needs them? As a side note, Sanskrita almost does not use punctuations (except for end of sentence - the pipeline character |). In contrast, English just can't be "communicated" without appropriate punctuations' usage.

To demonstrate the power of the language, let us look at a simple program using a pseudo-language.

//Pseudo-code to produce a random number and determine if its odd or even
s = 100;
r = (int) rand(s);
if (r % 2 == 0)
return "even";
else
return "odd";

The question is, can this program be expressed using natural language? Of course, we can write the whole program in plain English, but it wont be concise. (COBOL anyone, hello?)

Now lets apply the Sanskrit grammarian Paninian rules. I am going to keep the function names as is (in bold), but conjugate the variable names per Sanskrit rules (taking them to be consonant ending variables).


1: aSeSha: SUnyam  // No remainder 0 (No remainder equals 0)
2: s Satam         // s Satam asti (s is 100)
3: sa: rand r      // of s random is r (r is random of s)
4: int ca          // int also (r is also int of random of s)
5: even ra: aSeshe dvibhAjane  // "even" is of r during division of 2 when no reminder happens (on division by 2 of r has no reminder, it is even)
6: odd SeShe       // "odd" when there is a reminder

Here are the sutras in proper Sanskrit:

अशेष: शून्यम् |
स् शतम् |
स: वृथा र् |
अभिन्न: च |
समं र: अशेषे द्विभाजने |
विषमं शेषे ||

As you can see there are absolutely no mathematical symbols! A program is written purely by the expressive power of language. So what happened? How are they equal?

Using nominative case and the implicit "is", Panini eliminated the need for equals sign. Functions are defined via genetive case. Using the locative case, Panini provides the if-else condition. In effect, mathematical expressions are substituted by simply conjugating the variables.

That is the genius contribution of Panini to Sanskrita! Now a skilled poet could come and rearrange the above 6 sutras into a sloka format, and lo! there is sloka that tells us how to determine an even/odd number!

Let me attempt a half-baked sloka (May Sanskrita enthusiasts forgive me for such a blasphemy).

अशेषो शून्यं भूयात् सेकशतं वृथा रेफ: स: ।
अभिन्नश्च द्विभाजने विषमं समं शेषोऽशेषे ॥

Due to the occurrence of words like SeSha, SUnyam, aSeSha, dvibhAjane, abhinna the above can be mis-interpreted to refer Adisesha, SUnyavAda, Vishnu, Dvaita, Advaita etc. Now we have an example of a sloka referring to the gods and a mathematical algorithm encoded in it!

The Panini Certificate

2009-11-10T15:03:00.006-06:00

Ever since Panini has written his monumental ashtadhyAyI, there have been plenty of commentaries on it and still continues to follow. Katyayana's Vartika, Patanjali's Mahabhashya, Kasika Vritti, Siddhanta kaumudi, Laghu kaumudi, Laghu siddhanta kaumudi are a few Sanskrit commentaries. When the West discovered Sanskrit, more commentaries sprang up.

For some reason, whosoever has tasted a little bit of Panini (not the Italian sandwich) feels so compelled to write a commentary on it. In modern days blogs have replaced commentaries. Whosoever even just heard about Panini, is compelled to write a blog about him. Just like me.

Kalidasa describes this feeling in a beautiful poem:

मन्द: अपि अमन्दताम् एति संसर्गेन विपश्चित: । (मालविकाग्निमित्रम् 2.7)

The company of the intelligent brings respect even to the dumbwitted. (Malavikagnimitram - Ch 2, verse 7)

The human mind tends to super-impose the characteristics of an associative object with the associating subject. So whoever reads Homer is a literat. Whoever likes Homer Simpson is dumb. Whoever loves Bambi is cute, whoever appreciates legumes are nuts. During a Panini study, a student undergoes one or more, usually all, emotions of bewilderment, amazement, overwhelmingness, stunning and finally dumbfounded, in any order. By this time he/she figured out that he/she got smarter just knowing Panini.

Ignorance shadows smartness. Ankle deep into ashtadhyAyI, the student now questions Panini's sutras and methodology. 'This sutra does not make sense', 'This sutra could have been avoided and put elsewhere', 'This is an unfortunate sequence of sutras' etc - so the student passes judgement like my wife's hand distributes neighbor's ghee to everybody.

When does this feeling stop? When does the student hear the inner-voice 'Oh, shut up'? The post-Panini period was a cauldron of grammatical activities. It has been told that several grammarians attempted modifications, additions of sutras to ashtadhyAyI. In midst of all this, one great intellectual, one that the human mind has since not surpassed, stood up and proclaims "ashtadhyAyI is perfect beyond your pea-brained comprehension faculties".

And that brings this quote from that Great Rishi Patanjali himself, who drank ashtadhyAyI as easily as soda from a can and gives an 'Outstanding' certificate to Panini.

tatra aSakyam varNena api anarthakena bhavitum, kim punariyatA sUtreNa |

तत्र अशक्यम् वर्णेन अपि अनर्थकेन भवितुम्, किम् पुनरियता सूत्रेण ।

Even by a single letter (varNena api) is not possible (tatra aSakyam) to exist (bhavitum) meaningless (anarthakena), what to say about a whole sutra!

Myths and Facts about Sanskrit

2009-11-07T13:11:00.016-06:00

Myth 1: Sanskrit is a dead language.
Myth-buster: Define dead
Myth-annhilator:

Both the 'elite' historians of India and pseudo-Sanskritists of the West have delighted themselves in the propaganda of calling it a dead language. So much so that its a fashion to call it so, even by the educated. Is Latin dead because nobody speaks it? Sumerian and Egyptian languages are dead. Is Sanskrit dead the same way?

A 'dead' language has a few advantages:

It remains in exclusivity of a few (of those believing the dead language theory).
It creates a certain aura around it, of being something special, thereby making the people who know it also 'special'
Ordinary folks will not attempt to learn it.

Lets travel back in time any period between 500 BC - 1600 AD and see the facts.

Sanskrit remained in exclusivity of a few (Brahmins)
Sanskrit was treated special, so were the Brahmins special
Nobody else except Brahmins attempted to learn

So all the above were true even before this dead-language theory (except now Brahmins are replaced by historians and pseudo-Sanskritists). So was Sanskrit dead all the time? If it was dead, why there are several thousand Sanskrit works available?

Myth 2: Sanskrit is a difficult language to learn.
Myth-buster: Define difficult
Myth-annhilator:

Which language is not? German has several conjugations. Mandarin and Japanese have too many lines. French has the 'r'. Fact is every language is difficult until your perspective is adjusted.

In fact, the toughest of all these languages is English. The alphabet is not phonetical; each letter is represented by different shapes (capital and small); each word should be learnt phonetically independently; the grammar does not have a analytical approach that can be universally applied and not the last - if you do not punctuate the sentence, you practically puncture the meaning.

None of these anomalies apply to Sanskrit. There is a deep science (SikshA) behind phonetics. There are no capitals and small letters. The science of Sandhi is perfected just to facilitate natural flow of speech. It adheres to philosophy of WYLIWIR - What you listen is what you read. Once the alphabets are learnt, the words can be read without any additional references, ie there is absolutely no guess work when reading or listening. Imagine how the complexity of text-to-speech systems will be reduced. You feed the meta-data of letters + pronounciation of each letter/compound to the system. And the system can read any word without additional effort. Any word! And all those spelling-bee contests, where students cram and rote completely arbitrary spellings can be replaced by something more analytical. The grammar is very analytical and algorithmic. Every technical term in grammar is very meaningful. In fact the word grammar itself is vyAkaraNa - which is split into vi + aa + karaNa = (vi) separate + aa (analyze) + doing (karaNa), ie "separation and analysis".

We learnt English as kids, when we never questioned logic, so it seems easy. I know some of my friends who came from non-English medium (ie learnt all subjects through regional language and exposed to English only around 5th grade), who have dreaded the English exams.

Myth 3: There is no benefit from Sanskrit.
Myth-buster: Define benefit.
Myth-annhilator: There is no action without an effect.

Monetary Benefits:

Pseudo-Sanskrit academicians benefit by researching ancient Sanskrit books, habitually or purportedly misunderstanding the text, write books on it and do a Sanskrit-love-hate tango after the books are published.
"South-asian" pundits benefit from it with their half-baked Sanskrit knowledge (just because they were born in India) and feed the above group.
Vedic priests benefit from it as most rituals can be done only by them and not by anybody else

Ego-boosting benefits:

Elitist historians benefit by not letting any academicians challenge their pet theories, also called as history.
Students benefit it from learning it and showing-off to their lesser intelligent mortals
Bloggers benefit from it by belonging to an exclusive club and making sure no one understands what they write or turned off by lengthy blogs in these days of tweeting.

There are always benefits learning a new language. Its up to the person to figure out the weight of the benefit.

Myth 4: Sanskrit is the perfect language, mother of all languages and best suited for computers.
Myth-buster: Define perfect
Myth-annhilator:

This is a favorite of the overzealous right-wing enthusiasts. See this picture, where Sanskrit is one corner of the Indo-european languages. Academic opinions are pretty muddled regarding the theory of PIE, most of them peddaled by funding rather than facts. Several people have claimed that Forbes has claimed that computers have claimed that Sanskrit is best for themselves. I am not sure how much of this is misquoted. What is suitable for computers is the approach that Panini took to define a natural language such as Sanskrit, as derivable from formal rules. No other natural language is buffered by such formal rules. That method is very algorithmic, not the language itself.

Myth 5: Is it Sanskrit, Samskrit, Samskrita, Sanskrita, Samskritam?
Myth-buster: Define is it.
Myth-annhilator:

The British anglicized it to cool-sounding Sanskrit, just because they never learnt anything to pronounce properly, including English. The North-Indians pronounce it as Samskrit (chopping-off the final vowel, per Hindi rules). Tamilians pronounce it as Samasgridam (adding the Dravidian grammatical touch to it). Somewhere in between these are the pronounciations Sanskrita, Samskrita etc, pretty much because of being unsure how to say it.

The correct pronounciation is sanskRitam, where n is nasalized, just like 'song'. The Ri is the most problematic and misunderstood. It should be pronounced thus: Say i (ee, as in tweet) first and then slightly roll the tongue upwards to touch little bit before the teeth.

The subhAshita-ratna-bhandAgara

2009-11-03T11:59:00.008-06:00

When you think of Samskrita, one of the several things that come to mind immediately is subhAshitA. Literally it means "something well said", the english equivalent of which is 'proverb' or 'saying'. Proverbs are generally pithy sentences that reflect a truth of what happens, what should happen or sometimes a simple generalization. Many proverbs are advises, intended to correct the course of human behaviour, moral, ethical etc.

But subhAshitA-s are not just proverbs. subhAshitA-s come in very different flavors and cover a wide range of topics. There are subhAshitA-s for pretty much every occasion, every behaviour and on every natural thing that we see around. There are subhAshita-s that praise, denounce, praise and denounce at the same time (so called ninda-stuti), make fun, sarcastic, plead, humorous and exhibhit a range of other emotions. Some are philosophical, some are just down-to-earth. In fact there is a subhAshitA that makes a mockery of subhAshitA-s. Several poets have saved their heads by appeasing their kings with an appropriate subhAshita.

Throughout Samskrita literature (vAngmaya), there have been attempts at compilations of subhAshita-s too. Prime among them is the subhAshita-ratna-bhandAgara (SRB) which is a collection of almost ten thousand subhAshitAs on various topics. It consists of 7 chapters (prakarANa-s) - namely: mangalacharana, sAmAnya, rAja, chitra, anyokti, navarasa and sankIrNa. While there are so many wonderful verses there are some really stunning ones. One of them I quoted in my last post alluding to the Ocean's son-in-law selection process.

Here is another one from the navarasa (art) category. It again shows the poet's out-of-the-box thinking.

एकवस्तुम् द्विधा कर्तुम् बहव: सन्ति धन्विन: ।
धन्वी स मार एवैको द्वयो: ऐक्य: करोति य: ॥

eka vastu dvidhaa kartum bahava: santi dhanvina: |
dhanvI sa mAra evaiko dvayo: aikya: karoti ya: ||

Lets look at word by word:

eka vastum - one thing
dvidhaa - into two
kartum - to do
bahava: - many
santi - are
dhanvina: - archers
dhanvI - archer
sa mAra - (is) that manmatha (Lord of Love)
eva eka: - alone (only one)
dvayo: - of two
aikya: - into one
karoti ya: - he who does

There are many archers who can split one thing into two. But there is only one archer, Manmatha, who unites two into one.

This alludes to the fact that the Lord of Love sends an arrow to unit two people's heart. So the poet takes something that is meant for a singular purpose and uses it in the context of getting an entirely opposite result.

A Sutra for Naming Conventions

2009-10-27T19:27:00.005-05:00

Many have heard of Patanjali's yoga sutra, Brahma sutra, Panini sutra etc. Literally it just means 'a thread'. But what is it really? What qualifies as a sutra? When does a sentence become a sutra?

It turns out, there is a definition of sutra. A sutra must exhibhit all 6 characterists to be called so. What are they? As usual the Sanskrit grammarians have come up with a verse that defines a sutra.

alpAkSharam asandigdham sAravat vishvato mukham |
astobham anavadyam cha sUtra: sUtravido vidu: ||

अल्पाक्षरम् असन्दिग्धम् सारवत् विश्वतो मुखम् ।
अस्तोभम् अनवद्यम् च सूत्र: सूत्रविदो विदु: ॥

Source: vaayu puraaNa (anytime before 500 BC)

alpAksharam - Concise
asandigdham - without any doubt ie unambiguous or should have a singular meaning that is conveyed
sAravat - meaningful, ie should not contain gibberish
vishvatomukham - Properly applicable
astobham - devoid of 'stobha' (kind of fillers in Vedic chanting) like hA hU
anavadyam - irrefutable (na avadyam - that which cannot be refuted)

people who know a sutra, know it so.

Now, how does this apply to a programming style?

One of the hardest thing to do in software development is to understand others' code. Every developer would have come across some body else code and claimed it as 'the ugliest piece of code ever seen in life'.

What is an ugly code actually? In general, a hard to understand, spaghetti type code can be considered an ugly code. Typically lot of confusion arises from what the developer is trying to convey by means of the names of variables, classes, methods etc. A novice developer names a variable based on what he or she thinks. An experienced developer names a variable as how a novice would understand it without effort. In general the Shakespearean quote "Whats in a name?" just does not apply to programming. A rose may smell the same even if its called dog-poop, but its definitely a code-smell if naming conventions are poor.

Lets see how each characteristic of this ancient definition sutra applies to naming convention.

alpAksharam: Must be concise.
For eg. age, firstName, addressLine1 etc.

asandigdham: Must be unambiguous.
Eg. temp: What does it denote? A temporary variable? temperature? template?
Eg. Either use 'login' or 'logon' everywhere, but do not mix.
Eg. getReg(): What does it return? Registration? Registry? Regular Expression?
Eg. code, date: What kind of code? What kind of date?

sAravat: Pithy; Meaningful; Should not contain gibberish
eg. clr; tmpk; fru; stp, lzp. Combining this with the alpAksharam and asandigdham rules - will give a proper meaningful name.

vishvatomukham: Properly applicable
For eg, a variable name must have a proper scope. Eg. avoid local method variables having same name as member variables.

astobham: Devoid of unnecessary characters.
Bad eg: intx, a_b_c; Believe me, there are programmers who do this just to confuse others.

anavadyam: Flawless; Irrefutable
A naming of a variable or a class must describe exactly what it says. Another developer should not be given a chance to say "Why didn't you name this differently such that it is understandable?"

2009-09-22T19:40:00.006-05:00

Dressing up

Does dressing up really change the perception ? How often we have seen movies wherein the characters living in poverty themselves, just dress up nicely for an occasion and impress their affluence on others and take everyone a ride ! In 'Wedding crashers' Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson play such characters with hilarious consequences.

Dressing up really seems to have benefits. People do notice that and form opinions based on that. Here is a beautiful verse from the "ocean" of Samskrita that emphasises that.

किं वाससा तत्र विचारणीयं वास: प्रधानं खलु योग्यताया: ।
पीताम्बरं वीक्ष्य ददौ स्वकन्यां चर्माम्बरं वीक्ष्य विषं समुद्र: ॥

Meaning:

The root vAs (10th gana) means to scent, to make fragrant.

What is there to enquire/discuss about pleasant appearances? Isn't making oneself pleasant only appropriate! The Ocean gave his daughter Lakshmi to Vishnu, but gave poison to Shiva.

This refers to the fact of churning the ocean by Devas and Asuras. The Ocean King (samudra:) had two extreme things with him to give away during churning - Lakshmi and halAhala poison.

He gave his daughter (svakanyAm dadau), ie Lakshmi to pItAmbara (dressed in yellow attire - Vishnu). Have you ever seen any pictures of Vishnu dressed up badly? And when the hAlahala visha had to be given, he gave it to charmAmbara (one dressed with deer skin)

Its a known fact that Shiva himself came to accept poison and Vishnu accepted Lakshmi. But the poet turns the story completely inside out and still manages to make sense of it. It appears now as if Ocean gave these two away and weaves the mentality of a father on how he would select his son-in-law.

What an imagination!

Source: subhAShitaratnabandAgara # 180.

A Himalayan journey of a Raindrop

2009-07-02T13:48:00.001-05:00

At this point of time, there are exactly 3 people whose very mention of the name gives me goosebumps. One of these is Kalidasa, the other two I will reserve for a later post.

The language is the vehicle of expression of human feelings. We often hear "I cannot express the feelings in words". Isnt it merely a limitation of the language? Suppose there is a language that would facilitate the expressions in a very precise and articulate manner. Would that be sufficient? Not necessarily. The human being who converses in that language must also be good enough to communicate it effectively.

Fortunately Panini 'established' a language called Samskrita which provides a medium to express pretty much everything a man could think of in terms of communication. But is that enough? Several playwrights, poets come along write great literature that enhances the language by their own small capacity. Several hundred years after Panini, comes Kalidasa and writes such a brilliant poetry which outshines all the other gems put together. Often Kalidasa is compared to Shakespeare. This is so wrong on several accounts. Kalidasa embellished what is only already a perfect language. Shakespeare had to deal with a less-than-so-perfect language like English and brings the beauty out of it. In that sense, Shakespeare's effort is like that of ant's ability to carry 700 times its own weight. (I am writing about Kalidasa, how can I not do similies!) But unlike Shakespeare, Kalidasa lived during the times of the giants of Samskrita literature, who unanimously recognized his greatness. Reminds of me a subhAshita: It is easy to find a great man, but it is hard to find a man who acknowledges the greatness of another man.

Here is a fantastic piece of poetry from kumArasambhava.

sthitA: kshaNam pakshmasu tADita adharA: payodhara utsedha nipAta chUrNitA: |
balIshu tasyA: skhalitA: prapedire chireNa nAbhim prathamoda bindava: ||

Lets rewrite this in prose order:

prathamoda bindava: kshaNam pakshmasu sthitA:
(ata:) tAditA: adharA:
(ata:) payodhara utsedha nipAta chUrNitA:
(ata:) tasyA: balIshu skhalitA:
(ata:) chireNa nAbhim prapedire |

prathama oda bindava: - The first drops of rainfall
kshaNam - for a while
pakshmasu - on eye-brows
sthitA: - rested (then)
tAditA: - lashed
adharA: - on the lips (then)
nipAta - fell
payodhara - on the breast
utsedha chUrNitA: - and pulverized into several droplets (then)
tasyA: - of her
balIshu - belly
skhalitA: - skidded down (then)
chireNa - after a long time
nAbhim - navel
prapedire - surrendered.

The description is about Parvati meditating in the Himalayas on Shiva to attain him as her husband.

See the verbs picked so appropriately for each action of the raindrop.

Rested on the eye-browse, lashed the lips, pulverized into droplets, skidded down the belly, surrendered to the navel.

Everytime I contemplate on this piece, it gives me goosebumps because of its unmatched precision in bringing out the beauty of the language. I just cant express my feelings in words :-)

Aryabhatta's pi value

2008-09-10T08:13:00.003-05:00

The mathematical value pi has always been a curious number throughout history.

Here is Aryabhatta's version of the value of pi:

Lets split the words and understand the meaning:

चतुरधिकम् शतम् - Four more than hundred (=104)

अष्टगुणम् - multiplied by 8 (104 x 8 = 832)

द्वाषष्टि = 62

तथा सहस्राणाम् = of 1000 as such (=62000; totalling 62832)

अयुत द्वय = 10,000 x 2 (=20,000)

विष्कम्भस्य = of the diameter

आसन्न: - approximately

वृत्त परिणाह: - to the circumference.

In effect, 62832/20000 = 3.1416!

It interesting to note the large numbers he has used to arrive at Pi and the remark that pi is only an approximate value.

Aryabhatta's numerical encoding

2008-09-09T17:50:00.002-05:00

The devanagari alphabets have been used in different fashions to denote mathematical numbers. A very popular such scheme is the katapayAdi sAnkhya notation, where a number is denoted by the formula

कादि नव टादि नव पादि पञ्चक याद्यष्टक ।
kAdi nava tAdi nava pAdi panchaka yAdyashtaka |

The katapayAdi scheme has been credited to vararuchi - वररुचि (author of chandra vAkya - चन्द्र वाक्य). Literature for this scheme is widely available on the net.

Another popular scheme is using commonly existing materials as representing numbers. For example, moon (चन्द्र / इन्दु) = 1; eyes (नेत्रे) = 2; rishi (ऋषि) = 7 etc. A more comprehensive list can be found here.

The katapayAdi scheme was probably not in vogue during the times of Aryabhatta. In his monumental work AryabhatIya, he introduces a very different scheme, specifically suited for representing astronomical numbers. His scheme was flexible while representing large numbers, which is especially true for astronomical calculations.

In his very innovative scheme, he successfully combines positional system with the devanAgarI-vowels and effortlessly represents large numbers upto 10^17.

Aryabhatta classifies the devanAgarI alphabets as varga (square) and avarga (non-square). This is purely his own classification based on positional system and has nothing to do with the alphabets itself.

Lets look at some definitions:

Defintion #1 - varga (square) consonants - वर्गीय व्यञ्ज्न

The vargIya consonants are represented like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
क् ख् ग् घ् ङ् च् छ् ज झ ञ ट ठ ड
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
ढ ण त थ द ध न प फ ब भ म

Defintion #2 - avarga (non-square) consonants - अवार्गीय व्यञ्जन

The avargIya consonants are represented like this:

30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
य र ल व श ष स ह

Definition #3 - Position of vowels

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
औ औ ओ ओ ऐ ऐ ए ए लृ लृ ऋ ऋ उ उ इ इ अ अ
Definition #4 - Position of varga-s

Remember, 10th power := 10 ^ (#position - 1).

Varga positions are at squares of 10, namely 1, 100, 10000 etc (#position = 1,3,5 etc)
Avarga positions are at non-squares of 10, namely 10,1000 etc (#position = 2,4,6 etc)

The usage of vowels for positioning/notational system is a very striking feature of this scheme. The simplicity of denoting large numbers will become evident as we explain the scheme.

With such a system in place, the following can be established:

Numbers take their positional life when a consonant is combined with the vowel.
The avargIya consonants can go only into positions of 2,4,6 etc.
The vargIya letters can go only into positions of 1,3,5 etc.
The length of vowel does not influence the number (ka क and kA का) are one and the same.

Finally, remember that in Samskrita math tradition, the numbers are read from right to left. This is by the rule अङ्काणाम् वामतो गति:। (Numbers go from right)

Before we jump into deciphering numbers, lets recap on what letters should go where.

18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
यौ यो यै ये य्ल्रृ यृ यु यि य
30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30 30

Now lets look at some real world examples:

Simple examples
Well, 100 is pretty much pre-defined (ha - ह)

Eg: khi (खि)

kh = 2, varga, i (इ) denotes position 3 = 10^2, so khi = 200

Eg: ju (जु)

j = 8, varga, u (उ) denotes position 5 = 10^4, so ju = 80,000

Eg: yRu (यृ)

y = 30, a-varga, Ru (ऋ) denotes position 8 for avarga = 10^7, so yRu = 30x10^7 = 3x10^8.

So a simple यृ denotes 3x10^8! (think of speed of light in km/s in a vaccuum).

Some more larger numbers:

nu (नु) = 20 x 10^5 = 2,000,000 (2 million)
mau (मौ) = 25 x 10^17! (2.5 billion billion)

Lets look at other numbers:

Eg:
Number Number in reverse Scheme
125 = 25+100 ma-ha
225 = 25+200 ma-khi (2*10^2)
5335 = 5+30+300+5000 = ङयगि
432,000 = 2000 + 30000 + 400000 = ख्युघृ

Aryabhatta gives several such numerals based on this scheme including number of rotational years of planets and moon, sine tables etc.

But his scheme did not gain popularity. One reason could be the difficulty in pronouncing the words as a result of such an encoding. Another reason could be the katapayAdi scheme, which could blend beautifully with the poetry.

Comparison of katapayAdi and Aryabhatta's scheme:

An easy difference between katapayAdi and the Aryabhatta's scheme is, whereas the former uses 1:M mapping of numbers:letters (one number can be represented by several letters; for eg 1 can be represented by ka-,ta- or pa-), Aryabhatta's is pretty much a 1:1 mapping. The flexibility of the former yields itself to great poetry.

In katapayAdi scheme, vowels do not carry any significance (all vowels are either ignored or equated to 0). Also the half-consonants are ignored. But in Aryabhatta's scheme, vowels play a major part, in fact it "powers" the numbers.

Who is equal to Kalidasa?

2008-09-02T17:48:00.000-05:00

That mahAkavi kalidAsa is one of the greatest poets is perhaps already a cliche. From Bhavabhuti to Goether several personalities have paid very rich tributes to him. In the history of world literature, from time to time one finds a gem that lauds him to the sky. Here is one such a beauty.

पुरा कवीनां गणनाप्रसङ्गे कनिष्ठिका अधिष्ठित कालिदासा ।

"Long ago when poets met together, they agreed that KAlidAsa is equal to the pinky finger."

Very insulting indeed! How could one equate Kalidasa the greatest of poets to a pinky finger?! Isnt it preposterous? Has this guy even read any of Kalidasa's works?

Well here comes the unassuming punch line as the next part of the subhAshita:

अद्यापि तत्तुल्य कवे: अभावात् अनामिका सा अर्थवती बभूव ॥

"Even today due to the absence of a poet of equal stature, the next finger remains meaningfully to be called as "anAmikA" (Unnamed)."

(In Samskrita, the ring finger is called "anAmikA".)

What a master stroke!

Kalidasa or Bhavabhuti - who is better?

2008-08-29T08:05:00.000-05:00

कैलाशे शिवपार्वत्यो: एकदा एक चर्च: उत्पत्तित: । पार्वती पृष्टवती शिवं यत् किमर्थम् भवान् कालिदासं भावभूतॆ: श्रेष्टम् मन्यते इति । शिव: उक्तवान् यत् उभौ परीक्षाम् कृत्वा पश्यतु इति ।

अथ पार्वती एकां सामान्यां स्त्रीं भावयित्वा कुमारम् मृत्युं शिशुं इव धारयित्वा भॊजराजस्य प्रासादं गतवती । तत्र राजानं धृष्ट्वा रुदित्वा उक्तवती यत् भॊज महाराज । शिशु: मम मृत्यु: जात: । महर्षि: कश्चन उक्तवान् यत् यदि कोपि ’पुरा नि:सरणो रणा:’ इत्यस्य स्लोकस्य समसपूरणम् करोति चेत् शिशु: सजीवनं प्राप्नोति इति । उज्जयिनीसाम्राज्यॆ नवरत्नकवीनाम् श्रेष्ट: कोपि न अस्ति इति जगत्प्रसिद्ध: एव । अत: कृपया मम साहाय्यं करोतु भवान् इति ।

भॊज महाराज: तस्या: स्थितिं धृष्ट्वा करुणापूर्णेन अवदत् ’इदानीम् कवि: भावभूति: आगच्छति, तं पृच्छतु’ इति । पार्वती भावभूतिम् उपगत्य रुदित्वा पूर्वं भॊजराजम् यदुक्तम् तत् पुनरवदत् । भावभूति किन्चित् विचिन्त्य श्लोकस्य समसपूरणम् इदनीम् क्रुतवान् ।

परन्तु शिशु: न सजीवित: एव । भावभूति: पार्वतीम् उद्दिश्य ’क्षमाम् क्रियताम् । यावत् मया ज्नातम् तावत् प्रयत्नम् कृतम् । इत:परम् कोपि युक्ति: न मया ज्नातम् । अपि भवती कालिदासम् पृच्छतु । स: साहाय्यम् कुर्यात्’ इति ।

किन्चित् कालानन्तरं महाकविना कालिदासेन वेगेन प्रासाद: प्रवेशित: । पार्वती तमपि एवमेव उक्त्वा साहाय्यकं पृष्टवती । कालिदास वरकवि: अस्ति खलु । क्षणमपि तेन न चिन्तितम् । समासपूरणम् इदनीम् कृतम् ।

पार्वत्यै महत् आश्चर्यम् । भावभूतिना अपि एतदेव समसपूरणम् कृतम् । परन्तु कालिदसेन उक्तम् अपि शिशु: न उत्तिष्ट: । पार्वती अवदत् ’भो कालिदास किमर्थम् मम शिशु: न सजिवित: । तदा कालिदास: प्रत्यवदत् यत् एतस्मात् समासपूरणात् शिशु: न उत्तिष्टति चेत् शिशु न मृत: स्यात् इति । अथवा अपि अन्येन केनापि एतादृश: समासपूरण: कर्तुम् न शक्यते ।

पार्वती कैलाशम् प्रतिगतवती । महेश्वर: विवरणम् कृतवान् । कालिदासभावभूतयो: कवित्व रुपॆन भॆद: नास्ति । परन्तु भावभूत्यौ स्वकृत्यौ संशय: अस्ति । कालिदेसे परिपूर्ण self-confidence अस्ति । यदि तेन न क्रियते तर्हि केनापि न क्रियते इति ।

पार्वती अङ्गीकृतवती ।

A spatial palindrome sloka

2007-10-24T10:43:00.000-05:00

It is often not hard to imagine in a seemingly infinite compendium of Sanskrit Literature, there are some gems just lying hidden only to be discovered.

Such gems may be simple yet attractive alliterations, double/triple or even quadruple meanings for each word, split-word meanings or the most amazing - containing some mathematical pattern.

My dad recently gifted me the सुमध्व विजय महा काव्य (Sumadhva vijaya or The Successful Travel of Sri Madhvacharya) book by a great scholar named श्री नारायन पण्डित (Sri Narayana PaNdita). This book must have been written around 13th century CE. This book has about 1008 slokas, but the same content has been briefed to 32 slokas by the author himself. I thought it must be a routine Sanskrit text, with plenty of slokas in it. But to my surprise, among several others, I found one gem of a sloka which just shines like a brilliant diamond. See for yourself.

समानया यानमास मायया ततयायमा ।

नयासना नासयान यातनाललनातया ॥

Interpreting a Samskrita verse can be a daunting task. The main reason being Samskrita sentences, broadly speaking, do not have implicit order. This characteristic is very typical of inflexional languages. Add to that a poetic license that could let one place in any place they want to fit the metres (chandas).

However for understanding the sloka, there are a few simple rules. The first and foremost is called the पदच्छेद (padaccheda, lit. cutting of words). The next is to find the verb and then the associated subject. When a verb is not present, an "is"/"exists" is assumed implicitly. Then one should find the accusative object(s). Third is to find the qualifying attributes of the object. These are adjectives. Finally, one could dissect the rest of the cases and make a meaningful sentence.

Lets start with the word splitting.

समानया या अनमा आस मायया ततया अयमा ।

नयासना न आस या न यातना अललना अतया ॥

And here is the word by word meaning:

या That philosophy (of Sri Madhvacharya) which

समानया is established with the true propositions (yukti)

ततया vyAptamana

मायया by the illusion (mAyA)

अनमा आस cannot be refuted.

अयमा This incomparable philosophy

नयास is true by itself

न आस न and is not unexisting (that is, it is true for sure)

अतया By the opposing philosophies

अललना unhappiness (misery)

यातना the tamas causing

(भवति) happens

Whew! I say. I need his help for my GRE to pass the logical tests. Ok, lets not go into the actual philosophy perse. We understand in general that Sri Madhvacharya's philosophy is superior to Maya theory. Lets not go further for now, but just appreciate its beauty. At first glance, it pretty much looks there is some poetry going on. A few repeated syllables could be a good indication of some alliteration. But there is more to it.

The first thing to notice is that in each quarter, the second word is the syllabic-reverse of the first word. That is,

samAnayA := syllabic_reverse(yAnamAsa).

Same applies to other quarters. Which means, each quarter is a palindrome. "samAnayA yAnamAsa" is a palindrome by itself.

No big deal, you say. There are thousands of Sanskrit examples like this! Good, I'm glad there are :-).

Now let me write each quarter of the verse in a row, and then repeat the same in reverse order.

स मा न या या न मा स

मा य या त त या य मा

न या स ना ना स या न

या त ना ल ल ना त या

न या स ना ना स या न

मा य या त त या य मा

स मा न या या न मा स

Now read the verse, in the following order:

Start from top-left, horizontally, going left to right. (then move to next row)
Start from top-left, vertically, going top to bottom (then move to next column).
Start from top-right, horizontally, going from right to left.
Start from top-right, vertically, going from top to bottom.
Start from bottom-left, horizontally, going from left to right (then move to previous
row)
Start from bottom-left, vertically, going from bottom to up (then move to previous
column)
Start from bottom-left, horizontally, going from right to left.
Start from bottom-left, vertically, going from bottom to top.

You should be seeing the pattern now. It reads same in every direction!

Now what do we call such a 'palindrome' ? A symmetric spatial palindrome is probably an apt description!

Well the real question is "what else is out there?"