nāge śayaḥ sutanu pakṣirathaḥ kathaṃ te
jātaḥ svayaṃvara-patiḥ puruṣaḥ purāṇaḥ |
evaṃ vidhāḥ samucitaṃ praṇayaṃ bhavatyāḥ
saṃdarśayanti parihāsa-giraḥ sakhīnām || 13 ||
“O lovely-limbed girl,
How did this Ancient Man
sleeping on a snake
riding on a bird
become your self-chosen husband?”—
Thus do these teasing words
of Your beloved friends
show their entirely appropriate love.
Notes
This verse presents a cute picture of Godā's friends teasing her for having chosen Lord Raṅganātha as her bridegroom. Such teasing, of Godā and of Viṣṇu, is in fact meant to demonstrate their deep love for God(ā). (I can't believe I've lasted this long without having said that!)
Just a place to jot down my musings.
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Why pearls, and why strung at random?
In his translation of the famous "Turk of Shiraz" ghazal of Hafez into florid English, Sir William Jones, the philologist and Sanskrit scholar and polyglot extraordinaire, transformed the following couplet:
غزل گفتی و در سفتی بیا و خوش بخوان حافظ
که بر نظم تو افشاند فلک عقد ثریا را
into:
Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung.
The "translation" is terribly inaccurate, but worse, the phrase is a gross misrepresentation of the highly structured organization of Persian poetry. Regardless, I picked it as the name of my blog for a number of reasons:
1) I don't expect the ordering of my posts to follow any rhyme or reason
2) Since "at random strung" is a rather meaningless phrase, I decided to go with the longer but more pompous "pearls at random strung". I rest assured that my readers are unlikely to deduce from this an effort on my part to arrogate some of Hafez's peerless brilliance!
Blog Archive
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2010
(70)
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▼
December
(30)
- Godā Stuti, 20
- Godā Stuti, 19
- Godā Stuti, 18
- Godā Stuti, 17
- The Ashes
- Godā Stuti, 16
- Godā Stuti, 15
- Godā Stuti, 14
- Godā Stuti, 13
- On freedom, choice(s), and democracy
- Godā Stuti, 12
- British architecture, urban planning, and decay
- The beautiful innocence of childhood
- Godā Stuti, 11
- Godā Stuti, 10
- Godā Stuti, 9
- Godā Stuti, 8
- Godā Stuti, 7
- More on truth and fiction and myth
- Godā Stuti, 6
- Godā Stuti, 5
- Godā Stuti, 4
- More stunning nature
- Stunning nature
- Godā Stuti, 3
- Godā Stuti, 2
- Godā Stuti, 1
- Godā Stuti
- True wisdom
- Vois Sur Ton Chemin (Look to Your Path)
-
▼
December
(30)
About Me
- Gokul Madhavan
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
- What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
—W.H. Davies, “Leisure”
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