Just a place to jot down my musings.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Godā Stuti, 25

Gode guṇair apanayan praṇatāparādhān
bhrū-kṣepa eva tava bhoga-rasānukūlaḥ |
karmānubandhi-phala-dāna-ratasya bhartuḥ
svātantrya-durvyasana-marma-bhidā nidānam || 25 ||

Godā!

The contraction of Your eyebrows alone

        destroying crooked sins through its virtues

        well-suited to enjoyment

is the primary cause
        of the destruction
        of the vice of independence
                of Your Lord
                        inclined to present rewards [strictly] in accordance with actions.

Notes
Godā's bhrū-kṣepa (the knitting together of the eyebrows) serves two purposes: it itself (eva) destroys the sins of evildoers, and it also destroys Viṣṇu's "vice" of independence. How? Because of its being suitable to enjoyment by Viṣṇu. And why? Because Viṣṇu by His own nature is just and hence apportions fruits to all creatures based solely on their actions. This is a "vice" because this doesn't allow for the possibility of redemption, and consequently it is Godā who is able to persuade the Lord to overlook (inevitable) human sins and to grant redemption.

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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”