Just a place to jot down my musings.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Godā Stuti, 24

ārdrāparādhini jane ’py abhirakṣaṇārthaṃ
raṅgeśvarasya ramayā vinivedyamāne |
pārśve paratra bhavatī yadi tatra nāsīt
prāyeṇa Devi vadanaṃ parivartitaṃ syāt || 24 ||

When even those people
        who have committed offenses recently
communicate their desire for protection
to the Lord of Śrīraṅgam through Lakṣmī

You, o Lady,
stand by Him on the other side;

if You weren't there,
He would likely turn His face away!


Notes
In the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition, Lakṣmī is given the all-important role of intercessor. Nārāyaṇa, as Supreme Being, metes out justice impartially, but it is Lakṣmī who turns Him towards mercy. In this verse, Śrī Vedānta Deśika extends this idea to argue that even for those people who appeal to Lakṣmī to intercede on their behalf with Viṣṇu, it is in facy Godā's presence next to Viṣṇu that softens Him enough to grant mercy.


This is an innovative way of addressing the eternal theological question of justice versus mercy: an All-Merciful God cannot typically be just, whereas an All-Just God cannot really show mercy. The Viṣṇu-Lakṣmī-Godā complex is able to navigate these complicated waters.

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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”