Just a place to jot down my musings.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Godā Stuti, 6

śoṇā ’dhare ’pi kucayor api tuṅgabhadrā
vācāṃ pravāha-nivahe ’pi sarasvatī tvam |
aprākṛtair api rasair virajā svabhāvāt
Godā ’pi Devi kamitur nanu narmadā ’si || 6 ||


Lady,
With a crimson (Śoṇa) lower lip and auspicious, lofty breasts,
you are Pārvatī,
        the beloved of Śiva (Tuṅga-bhadrā);

Through your multitudes of unbroken streams of speech,
You are Sarasvatī, 
        flowing language;

Through Your own nature You are Lakṣmī, 
        spotless (Virajā), with transcendental nectar;

Although You are the gift of the earth (Godā),
to Your passionate Beloved, You give delight (Narmadā)!

Note
A fun verse, and tricky to translate into English because of all the punning going on with the names of rivers. Śrī Vedānta Deśīka has sketched out a riverine geography of India with this verse. And the incredible polysemy of Sanskrit allows these river-names to have multiple meanings. All of these are taken from the meanings supplied by Apte's dictionary. 


  • Śoṇa: aside from meaning "red, crimson, tinged red", the word also refers to "a male river, rising in Gonḍavana and falling into the Ganges near Pāṭalīputra [modern Patna]".
  • Tuṅgabhadrā: a tuṅga-bhadra is "a restive elephant, an elephant in rut"; furthermore, since tuṅga can mean Śiva and bhadrā can mean "beloved, dear", the phrase could also mean Pārvatī. It is also interesting to note that the river Tungabhadra merges into the Krishna in modern Andhra Pradesh near Dakshina Kashi. Coincidence? And as if all of this weren't enough, the Bhadrā itself is the name of the "celestial Ganges".
  • Sarasvatī: of course the goddess of speech and music, but also the (now-)mythical third river that merges into the Ganga and Yamuna at Allahabad, and the most sacred river in the Ṛgveda. The word itself can also refer to "speech, voice, words", which, when beautiful, flow unbroken like a river.
  • Virajā: the masculine substantive viraja, literally meaning "free from dust or passion; pure", is also a name for Viṣṇu. Thus the feminine form of that noun may be a reference to Lakṣmī. Furthermore, the Virajā is a celestial river, whose waters hence flow with "transcendental rasas"—a word whose meaning ranges from "water" to "nectar" to "essence" to "emotion" to "beauty".
  • Godā(varī): obviously the name of the goddess Godā, but literally her name can mean "the gift of the earth" or "the gift of the cow". The second meaning, although not directly significant here, may also mean "milk", yet another auspicious fluid whose image resonates with the rest of the verse. The Godavari is also the second-longest river in India, second only to the Ganga.
  • Narmadā: in addition to meaning "delighting, making happy", it is a major river that is seen as separating North India from the peninsula.

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Why pearls, and why strung at random?

In his translation of the famous "Turk of Shirazghazal 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!

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Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
—W.H. Davies, “Leisure”