Bhavabhūti on language

The Sanskrit dramatist Bhavabhūti is reckoned second only to Kālidāsa in his command over the Sanskrit language, his exquisite depiction of the emotions, and his mastery over the art and the science of literary composition. His Uttararāmacarita is a fascinating and powerful retelling of the seventh chapter of the Rāmāyaṇa, the Uttara Kāṇḍa. This powerful, even tragic, chapter is in fact not included in many versions of the Rāmāyaṇa, in particular Kampan's Irāmāvatāram (also known as the Kamba-ramayanam).

One of the things that makes Bhavabhūti so fascinating is his self-conscious reflection on the power of language and art. While Sanskrit literature in general abounds in such reflection—indeed, there is a Ṛgvedic verse on speech uttered in the voice of Speech personified, which promises to bestow speech upon those Speech favors—Bhavabhūti seems to take it to a whole new level in his work. One verse in particular struck me, because of its self-contained meaning, its particular signification in the immediate context of the play, and its more general meaning in the context of literary works as a whole.

laukikānāṃ hi sādhūnām arthān vāg anuvartate |
ṛṣīṇāṃ punar ādyānāṃ vācam artho 'nuvartate ||

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Given the eagerness with which it is quoted and re-quoted (often without attribution), there surely must be some truth to Benjamin Disraeli's complaint against that body of knowledge which takes as its subject the analysis of aggregates of information. (Perhaps this can be proven statistically!) 

Now I have no problems with the actual content of the discipline; on the contrary, I am deeply fascinated by the complexity and the power of statistics, even given how little I know, and am always interested in learning more about the field. Nevertheless, it seems true that human beings are simply not hard-wired to intuit probability and statistics; we would much rather deal in hard certainties than in fuzzy likelihoods. (Think about how easy it is to catch a ball, and about how complicated the actual physical model has to be to explain it!) This is perhaps why there is such blatant abuse of statistics everywhere, from tabloids to otherwise-respectable economic journals. Were this field of knowledge a living creature, tender-hearted defenders would have undoubtedly established numerous Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Statistics throughout the world by now.

சுட்டும் விழி ("Suttum Vizhi")

தமிழ் மொழி என் தாய்மொழியாக இருந்தும் எனக்கு அதில் எழுத படிக்க தெரியாது. 'ர'-வுக்கும் 'ற'-வுக்கும் வித்தியாசம் அறியாத எனக்கு பாரதியார் போன்ற மஹாகவியின் கவிதைகளை பற்றி பேச ஒரு அதிகாரமும் கிடையாது. ஆனாலும் இன்று நான் அவர் இயற்றிய ஒரு கவிதையின் பொருள் ஆங்கிலத்தில் தெளிவிக்க முயற்சி செய்ய போகிறேன். தமிழர்களே! என்னை மன்னிக்கவும்!

சுட்டும் விழி சுடர் தான் கண்ணம்மா சூரிய சந்திரரோ

வட்ட கரிய விழி கண்ணம்மா வானக் கருமை கொலோ

பட்டு கருநீல புடவை பதித்த நல்வயிரம்

நட்ட நடு நிசியில் தெரியும் நக்ஷத்திரங்களடி

சோலை மலர் ஒளியோ உனது சுந்தர புன்னகை தான்

நீல கடல் அலையே உனது நெஞ்சின் அலைகளடி

கோலக் குயில் ஓசை உனது குரலின் இனிமையடி

வாலை குமரியடி கண்ணம்மா மருவக் காதல் கொண்டேன்

சாத்திரம் பேசுகிறாய் கண்ணம்மா சாத்திரம் எதுக்கடி?

ஆத்திரம் கொண்டவற்கே கண்ணம்மா சாத்திரம் உண்டோடி?

மூத்தவர் சம்மதியில் வதுவை முறைகள் பின்பு செய்வோம்

காத்திருப்பேனோடி இது பார்! கன்னத்தில் முத்தம் ஒன்று.

For the preservation of the Oxford / Harvard / serial comma

As part of my drive towards the use of logic-driven punctuation, I must heartily recommend this post on why it is "vitally necessary to prevent the extinction of the serial comma". As with everything else, it cannot be blindly used: there are cases where a blindly applied serial comma can create, not resolve, ambiguity. I repudiate such reprehensible misuse of punctuation. However, in most cases it serves to disambiguate lists and to clarify information, and in general I prefer to err on the side of too many, rather than too few, commas.


The purpose of punctuation in a language like English must be to convey something of intonation and reading pauses, which are critical to conveying meaning and which cannot be indicated in the language itself, since English lacks the kind of particles that German or Sanskrit possess. Punctuation is like salt: everybody has their preferred levels, but there is always such a thing as too much, and such a thing as too little, of it.

Incredibly beautiful

I don't have words to express how beautiful I find this. So calm, serene, soothing, uplifting. And the music too!

autumn by the lake from Bart van der Gaag on Vimeo.

I was half-expecting Elrond to come riding out of the mist. Take a few minutes out of your day and watch this, full screen, headphones on, cellphones off. Truly stunning.

<UPDATED>
I found the words sung in Stelka Sabotinova's haunting voice here:

"Magic numbers"

Daniel Gilbert, the Harvard psychologist, asks a few simple questions: Why are drug prescriptions typically given for seven days? Why are items priced at $9.99 and not $10.00? What effects do the names we give numbers have on our attitudes towards them?

A curious, but interesting, NYT op-ed.

History, fiction, myth, narrative, social science, et cetera

Note: I began writing this post a while ago, and then forgot about it. I figured I'd post it for now, with the enormous caveat that it's a very very rough draft written very very long ago. I need to continue thinking hard about these issues.

I've been reading a number of articles by Hayden White recently, which have gotten me thinking once again about a question that I pondered about, piecemeal, a while ago: What are the relationships that bind fiction, history, and myth together? In particular, four of his articles really got my attention: "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality" [1], "Interpretation in History" [2], "The Rhetoric of Interpretation" [3], and "The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory" [4].

To superficially summarize my superficial readings of White: to value the form as well as the content, as White wants us to do, is not the same as insisting that the form is in fact the content. White's point, as the title of one of his books amply illustrates, is that the form of a historical work itself has content, and that the content of the form is distinct from the content of the work. To put it differently, a text comprises of a content and a form (setting aside questions about context for now); the content is often heavily governed by structures that may or may not be culture-specific; the form possesses an additional level of content that is related to the content of the text in a complicated fashion. Furthermore, this form has a history of its own, independent of the history of the content of the work or of the history being narrated in the content of the work; and this is intimately connected to the literary production of the particular culture and social setting in which this work came to be written.