The stories that genes tell

Almost a decade ago, I gave myself a gift. I paid to have my Y chromosome analyzed as a part of a global study: "The Genographic Project was launched in 2005 as a research project in collaboration with scientists and universities around the world with a goal of revealing patterns of human migration."

It was about the old story of migration out of Africa, and not about uncovering any mysteries in my heritage.  There isn't any mystery about my people.  I was glad to help researchers figure out the migratory paths our ancestors took while moving out of Africa into the different corners of the planet that we now inhabit.  And, incidentally, find out the geography of my own genes.

Only a man, who has the XY chromosomes can pass the Y chromosome on to a new generation.  I opted to get this Y chromosome mapped.  Back then, the technology was expensive and I didn't want to spend a lot of money on this in order to map the X chromosome too.

The result did not surprise me.  My people have lived in the Subcontinent for a long time.

The man who gave rise to the first genetic marker in your lineage probably lived in northeast Africa in the region of the Rift Valley, perhaps in present-day Ethiopia, Kenya, or Tanzania, some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago. Scientists put the most likely date for when he lived at around 50,000 years ago. His descendants became the only lineage to survive outside of Africa, making him the common ancestor of every non-African man living today. ...

Your ancestors, having migrated north out of Africa into the Middle East, then traveled both east and west along this Central Asian superhighway. A smaller group continued moving north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country.

The man who gave rise to marker M20 was born in India or the Middle East. Your ancestors arrived in India around 30,000 years ago and represent the earliest significant settlement of India. For this reason, haplogroup L (M61) is known as the Indian Clan.

But--and this is important--my ancestral father who came to India about 30,000 years ago was not among the first people to come to the Subcontinent.

Although more than 50 percent of southern Indians carry marker M20 and are members of haplogroup L (M61), your ancestors were not the first people to reach India; descendants of an early wave of migration out of Africa that took place some 50,000 to 60,000 years ago had already settled in small groups along the southern coastline of the sub-continent.

By the time he arrived in India, he was an immigrant in a land that was already populated, and this was about 30,000 years ago!

When we take such a long view of where we come from, we will lead humbled lives.  We won't care to think about whether we are different from others, and whether there are some who are inferior or superior to us.  We will recognize our shared past and work together as one.

In this big story, there are millions and millions of subplots.  One of those is told in this fascinating essay in The New Yorker.  It is about skeletons in a high altitude Himalayan lake, Roopkund, that is frozen for most of the year.  Who were those people?

In the process of describing how genetics is helping uncover the mystery, the essay discusses how science helped piece together a story of Europeans by looking at the Y chromosome evidence of the Yamnaya.  The "power of ancient DNA to reveal cultural events":

In the Iberian study, the predominant Y chromosome seems to have originated with a group called the Yamnaya, who arose about five thousand years ago, in the steppes north of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. By adopting the wheel and the horse, they became powerful and fearsome nomads, expanding westward into Europe as well as east- and southward into India. They spoke proto-Indo-European languages, from which most of the languages of Europe and many South Asian languages now spring. Archeologists have long known about the spread of the Yamnaya, but almost nothing in the archeological record showed the brutality of their takeover.

I was born into a family of Brahmins whose Vedic beliefs was orally transmitted and later written down in Sanskrit, which was derived from the language spoken by the Yamnaya.  How did this happen, and when did this happen?  What happened to my ancestral people who arrived in the Subcontinent more than 20,000 years before the Indo-Europeans arrived from the Caucasus?  How do all these stories square with the civilized human being that I am?

Some day, we will understand many such mysteries of how we came about. 

... to the Tamil of today

The only problem that I have with David Shulman's biography of Tamil is that for a book authored by a person of his caliber, and for a book published by Harvard University Press, there are quite a few inconsistent spellings throughout.  Even Tenkasi is spelled as Tenkaci in one context.  In the opening pages, the pallavi of the Carnatic music is written as pallava.

But, otherwise, what an awesome learning experience it has been for me!

Shulman writes that the Tamil world had changed almost beyond recognition by the middle of the nineteenth century.  Manonmaniyam Sundaram Pillai played an integral role in the revival and revitalization of Tamil.  I recall his Tamil Thai Vazhthu from the school days.  Shulman lists many more who worked on recovering the old Sangam texts and providing commentaries about them.

In the early 20th century, the struggle to get rid of the bastard raj also became a struggle to re-establish Tamil.  Unfortunately, this became entangled with anti-Brahmin and anti-caste issues, which were also extremely important, and are important even today.  But, the co-mingling of these issues led to a political movement to also get rid of the Sanskrit--associated with Brahmins--words from the Tamil language.

Shulman writes that "the very intensity of anti-Sanskrit feeling that we see in the Pure Tamil fanatics is itself a sure sign of the deep interdependence of the two languages."  But, politics does not care for such nuances.  And despite the maniacal efforts of the fanatics, "Tamil today, like the Tamil of yesterday, indeed like nearly all major living languages, remains saturated with borrowed vocabulary."  The language lives on.

Shulman ends the book with a contemporary Tamil poem, by Manushya Puthiran.

Dandin, the bestselling Pallava author

I had always wondered about the Sanskrit in the names of the big time Tamil kings of the past.  Like Mahendravarman and Narasmimha among the Pallavas, and Raja Raja and Rajendra Cholans.  I mean, these figures loom large among the Tamil imagination and yet they have Sanskrit names?  In comparison, the great Tamil poet and grammarian had a "real" Tamil name--Nakkiran.

David Shulman writes that "modern spoken Tamil is astonishingly rich in Sanskrit loan words.  Indeed, there may well be more straight Sanskrit in Tamil than in the Sanskrit-derived north Indian vernaculars."

The usage of "modern" does not answer the question about Mahendravarman, who lived 1,400 years ago.

Even as I think about all these, Shulman throws me a curve ball.  A googly, to use a cricket equivalent.  He offers an interesting theory, which perhaps the Indologists and Tamil scholars have been arguing it out.  As this reviewer in NYRB notes:

Likely to ruffle some scholars is Shulman’s insistence that this remarkable literary culture was, since its inception, deeply in dialogue with Sanskrit, and that a great many (perhaps most) of its poets partook of the Brahmanical culture that already spanned all of South Asia by the Common Era’s early centuries.

I am willing to buy into this idea.  Shulman writes:

What we can say with confidence is that speakers of Vedic Sanskrit were in contact, from very ancient times, with speakers of Dravidian languages, and that the two language families profoundly influenced one another."

Dandin helps me understand such a possibility.

I had no idea about a historical character named Dandin until I read this book.  Seriously, how did a fellow who was born in Waterloo, Iowa, who immigrated to Israel, manage to understand all these, and then write in a delightfully simple prose so that even idiots like me--born a Tamil--can understand and appreciate the richness of the language and the people going back centuries?

Shulman writes:

Dandin, a native Tamil speaker, chose to compose his work on poetics in Sanskrit, the cosmopolitan language accessible to scholars throughout India and beyond--and indeed, the Kavyadarsa became one of India's bestsellers, known throughout Asia and eventually translated/adapted into Tamil (Tantiyalankaram, possibly twelfth century), Tibetan, and other languages.  The Pallava court was clearly open to the pan-Indian world of erudition and artistic production couched in Sanskrit and also eager to contribute to that world.

There is only one way to respond to this: Mouth wide open!

Now, when I look at the photos like the one above that I have from my visits to Kanchipuram, I wonder about the backstory is of this person who could very well be a scholar from China visiting the highly cosmopolitan Pallava capital!

In terms of political and social dynamics, a northern-oriented, highly Sanskritic state centered in Kancipuram and the Tondai plain complemented the southern kingdom of Pandya Madurai with its Tamil-centric ideology.  Powerful literary works in Tamil appeared a little later in the Pallava north than in the Pandya south, though we should not forget a great narrative poem such as the Perumpanatrupatai, from the Ten Songs.

They never even hinted about any of these in my high school history!

Verse 72 from
The Tiruviruttam of Nammāḻvār
Source

Asti अस्ति

I knew I had no choice but to exit and take a look when I read the name of the community: Asti.

What's the big deal about "Asti," you are wondering, right? If you guessed it sounds Italian, you are absolutely right.  But, if you thought that I exited because of that Italian connection, you are dead wrong ;)

My mind played with how the word "asti" sounded and I was reminded of the Sanskrit classes decades back in the old country.  अस्ति means "to be."  It is.  It exists.  Asti.

If only the teachers and the system back then had provided us with a wonderful exposure to the humanities--and to languages, in particular.  Whether it was Sanskrit or Tamil or English or Hindi, the teachers did not teach us how to appreciate the beauty of the language.  Even worse, they failed to convey the rich history that comes with any language.

Instead, all they drilled into us was about learning the mechanics of whatever language they wanted us to learn.  Now, looking back, all I can do is smile at how ironical it was that one of the essays that we read for the English class was Winston Churchill's piece on his learning Latin as a schoolboy.  it is a long tradition of making languages unappealing to students!

Thus, Asti as अस्ति in my mind was why I decided to exit.  I knew there was a story waiting for me.

But then, I suppose stories are never waiting for any of us.  It is up to us to tell stories.  A story is in the eye of the beholder.  Let me tell you what story I saw there.

Asti is named for the Italian town for a reason--this is in California's wine country.  There are vineyards everywhere, and it should surprise nobody that a small community here is named after a place in Italy.  Off the exit ramp, I turned right, and drove slowly admiring the scenery.  A cop car passed me. Otherwise nothing.  It did not seem like there was any story.

I turned around.  I drove past the exit.  There was my story.

I was tempted to park, get down, and take a few photographs.  But, what if I upset them in the process?  Did I really want to mess around with people walking around spraying chemicals that are apparently so powerful that they have to wear Ebola-fighting outfits?  I am, after all, a wuss.  I reached out for my camera, which was lying on the passenger seat, and clicked without even lowering the window.  What they didn't know won't bother them, right?

We seem to do bizarre things in the name of progress, like using chemicals that are so powerful that we need to protect ourselves from them.  While wrapped up  in protective suits, we spray those chemicals on produce that we eventually consume!  We certainly are fucked up. I wonder how I might say "fucked up" in Sanskrit; I wish Pattabhiraman "sir" had taught me that back in the old country! ;)

Pissed off I am ... because ... who cares!

The human that I am, I, too, bleed when pricked and feel that tinge of revenge when wronged.  But then the insignificance of my existence means that even that tinge of revenge is not worth any damn thing.

A long time ago, a colleague who taught literature remarked that poetry is how we deal with all kinds of emotions--I assumed it includes the emotion of being pissed off.  I was reminded of her comment as I picked up a valuable collection that I own: Poems from the Sanskrit.  I was certain that the poets of the old country, who used the mother-language of many languages, would not let me down.

They lived up to my expectations.

Varahamihira comforts me with:

The fire of envious critics' tongues
Refines the true poetic gold.
Should we not celebrate in cheerful songs
Poor fools who give us benefits untold?

Here is Bharavi:

To quarrel with them is a loss of face;
To have their friendship is a sad disgrace;
A man of sterling judgement realizes
What fools are worth, and foolish men despises.

Finally, Bhartrhari speaks for me in this:

I am not actor, nor a prince's jester,
No king's musician, nor a scheming courtier.
What place at court, then, for a man such as I am?
For neither am I a young attractive woman.

As I appreciated how much these verses consoled and encouraged me, I came across the following by Bhavabhuti, which seems appropriate as an ending to this post:

If learned critics publicly deride
My verse, well, let them. Not for them I wrought.
One day a man shall live to share my thought:
For time is endless and the world is wide.

A big salute to the poets from the old country!  I owe much to the scholar-translator John Brough for that wonderful collection.

Where do men find happiness?

Asked Bhartrihari, in one of the verses in his Shatakas:

The span of a man's life is a measured hundred years;
    Yet half is lost to night
    And of his waking time,
    A portion each claim callow youth and hoary age;
    His prime is spent in servitude, suffering
    The anguish of estrangement and disease.
    Where do men find happiness
    In life less certain and more transient than the waves?

Turns out that even back then the thinking people of India inquired into where we find happiness.  A thousand and five-hundred years ago!  The question is not one we ponder over in this post-industrial age alone.

In the few years of Sanskrit that we learnt in high school, we did read and memorize a few verses.  And understood even fewer, I would think.  The older I get, the more I feel shortchanged in my education--it did not convey to me the phenomenal richness of the literature in Sanskrit and Tamil.  Even the little bit that I managed seemed to have been out of my own initiative.  They did drill quite a bit of science and math into our curriculum though, as if life was all about science and math.  What do mathematicians know about where men find happiness!

But, no point blaming the old school or the old country. Or anybody at all.  The system is messed up. Education systems all over the world seemed to be messed up.  Instead of viewing education as a path towards a greater understanding of this universe and our own place in this vastness, we have equated schooling to the cheapest possible aspect of life: earning money. As if making money is the raison d'etre!  There is really only one way to describe this--Situation Normal: All Fucked Up :(

Oh well ...

In my penultimate year of high school (the junior year in the new country) two classmates managed to convince me to go with them for special coaching in math in order to prepare for the selection exams to the country's elite engineering institutes. But, my heart wasn't in it. I started skipping those classes.  Soon, it was time to pay the fees. I walked up to the tutor to give him the money. He remarked about my absence and wanted to know the reason.  I told him the truth--that I was not interested in the exams or the institutes.  The tutor, who was perhaps in his late thirties, said that it would not be fair for him to collect the fees from me when I had skipped so many classes.  I was impressed with him for not simply pocketing the money.  I never went there after that and life became easier.

The more I think about that incident, I realize that life has been a sincere pursuit of doing only things that truly appeal to me. Even if it has meant that I walked away from attending prestigious institutes. And, therefore, from earning more money. No amount of math and money could have ever brought me happiness.  After all, as Bhartrihari noted, I would have spent my prime--well, my life--in servitude. Serving everything and everyone but myself.  I shudder at that; you, too, should.

Why I owe my friends nothing. Yep, nothing at all!

One friend messaged me inquiring why I hadn't blogged for more than a day.  I know it is not really the blog post itself as much as it to make sure that I was alive and well.

Another "concerned friend," as he signed off in the email, issued an all-points-bulletin on me as a missing person, which deserves special recognition here:

Missing – Sriram Khé
Has a professorial air and sports a beard (sort of)
Last seen 2 days ago with two women
Missing from the blog for 48 hours which is highly unusual
Last seen wearing T shirt of indeterminate colour although it was – 20 outside
Is likely to discourse on the origins of life if wished Good Morning
Possibly lost meandering along the Willamette chasing goslings
Could also have got lost driving on a country road
He’s a nice bloke; so if anybody sights him anywhere, please Tweet “All hail Congoboy”

48 hours? When all I skipped was one day of blogging!!!

How can I ever complain about life with friends like these (and more,) right?

Yet, in the title of this post, I make it clear I don't owe them a damn thing.

I am not being heartless.

Allow me to explain by drawing on the following wonderful words of wisdom from the old country.

मय्येव जीर्णतां यातु यत्त्वयोपकृतं मम ।
नरः प्रत्युपकारार्थी विपत्तिमनुकांक्षति ॥

- सुभाषितसुधानिधि

I do not wish to repay the help that you have done to me.
Any person who wishes to do so, is actually wishing that you get into trouble so that he can help you back.

- Subhashitasudhanidhi

Aha, you say now!

Patience, dear reader, have patience.  Do not ever judge a blog post by its title!

Friends who would worry about your welfare. They wonder if everything is alright with you.  They worry.  They even nag the crap out of you all because they care.

To them, I owe nothing. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

And now you know why.

BTW, will you now please cancel that missing person report? ;)

A cosmic dance gave birth to Sanskrit. But, we have no sense, anymore!

One day, perhaps I should ask my father point-blank on whether he has ever paused to think about how much I am able to engage him in conversations about Hindu philosophy and mythology, even though I am a confirmed atheist.

Maybe he has, and he is practicing the old Hindu (Asian?) virtue of not praising the child (yes, I am a child!)

In my recent conversation with him, father noted that a traditional brahminical ritual would be observed on Tuesday.  (Be warned that this post might be too much of an inside-baseball for those not interested in such matters!)

He agreed with my comments that most people--even back then, and I bet more so now--simply go through the motions of the rituals without understanding what they mean.

"I always recall the sastrigal emphasizing that the day was to begin learning the sacred vedas .... "वेदाराम्बम  करिष्ये" " I told him.  (am hoping I haven't forgotten the Sanskrit script!)

"Yes, you are right" father replied.  "One is supposed to begin to learn the vedas, or re-read them all over again.  But, people simply rush through the ritual and go home to eat payasam"

There was nothing to disagree with there.

Even as a kid, I was usually pissed off at those putting on a show and behaving in ways that were contradictory to what they mouth off.  Actions, to me, have always spoken way, way louder than words.  And, unfortunately, whether it is in such rituals, or in professional lives, or every day living, it is awfully annoying, to the point of puking, when there is that Grand Canyon-like divide between the talk and the deed.

"And I remember that it was also the initiation to Sanskrit and its grammar ... the sounds 'a i un rlk e on ai auc  ..." I said.

"Yes, the sounds from the cosmic dance, which formed the basis for the sounds for the language of Sanskrit" father added.

Meanwhile, I was thinking to myself, "gimme some credit, man."  Hey, I am a mere mortal, who loves to hear compliments from teachers and parents :)

Image from Wikipedia

Sanskrit, which is a mother to so many languages, even has a story of how it was born.  How many languages can claim to have a birth story, right?  The Lord of all Dance, Nataraja, the mythology goes, danced holding a small drum in his hand, which produced those sounds 'a i un rlk e on ai auc  ...'  Those sounds became the basis for the vowels and consonants and, much later, the grammarian, Panini (not to be confused with the Italian sandwich!) worked out the complex syntax for the language. So goes the story.

Thus, the language was born. And with it, came thinking.  After all, can one think without a language?  Think about it! ;)

"I suppose all those were written for a time period when brahmins lived as brahmins.  Not as engineers and doctors" father--a retired engineer--said, while noting that even his father-in-law (my grandfather) was an engineer son of a a very traditional and orthodox vedas-reciting brahmin.

"But, people do not care to know about those things."   After a momentary pause, he added "maybe ignorance keeps people happy, when they don't have to think about things."

"Yes, ignorance is bliss" I chimed in.

Most of my stress in life comes from my thinking.  If I didn't think for myself, by now I would be a much richer man. A lot more professionally accomplished man.  I think, therefore I screw up!

After the phone call, I returned to my reading and ... thinking!

What a coincidence that a favorite site that I check in with every day had a link to an essay on the Indian-American poet/intellectual AK Ramanujan (not the math Ramanujan) which includes this poem, ‘Prayers to Lord Murugan’, which was, apparently, read out at his funeral:

Lord of the headlines,
help us read
the small print.
Lord of the sixth sense,
give us back
our five senses. 

Yes, please, give back us humans--brahmins and the rest alike--our five senses.
Immediately.
Or else!

On Mothers ... wisdom from the old country

A continuation of sorts of the posts over the years.

Growing up in India, there was no concept of a special day for mothers.  Or fathers.

In my initial years in the US, the concept of wishing mother or father seemed strange.  Very odd.  The idea of wishing on a designated day is the strange part that is, not the idea of recognizing the mother's importance in life.

I would imagine that mothers were way up high in pretty much every culture's list of important people, and the old country emphasized it in so many different ways.  A long, long time ago, we learnt a verse in the Sanskrit class in high school:

राजपत्नी गुरोः पत्नी मित्रपत्नी तथैव च
पत्नीमाता स्वमाता च पञ्चैता मातरः स्मृताः
- चाणक्य नीति

Transliteration:
raajapatnI guroH patnI mitrapatnI tathaiva cha
patnImaataa svamaataa cha pa~nchaitaa maataraH smRutaaH
- chaaNakya nIti

Meaning of the subhAShita:
The king's wife, the teacher's wife, friend's wife, wife's mother and his own birth mother - these 5 should be deemed as mother figures

The source from where I copied and pasted it has a commentary on the deeper meanings of this verse.

I have had an incredibly lucky life with wonderful motherly women.  As I noted in this post, my mother, grandmothers, and aunts, made sure that my life was sweet--literally as well.  Older friends here in the US sometimes treat me as their son.  Life can't be that bad then.

Incidentally, another verse advises to keep mothers, fathers, and teachers also happy.  I hope students in my classes are reading this post ;)  It is from Manusmriti--the Laws of Manu--which is about 2,000 to 2,500 years old.  Manu wrote:

तयोर्नित्यं प्रियं कुर्यात् आचार्यस्य च सर्वदा ।
तेष्वेव त्रिषु तुष्टेषु तपः सर्वं समाप्यते ॥

- मनुस्मृति

One must do all he can to keep his parents and teacher happy. 

If they are satisfied it is equivalent to any (all) penance.

- Manu Smriti

It has been thirty-plus years since my last Sanskrit class.  It has at least served one purpose--I continue to remember and value the verse on the five mothers.

Wondering how to live your life? Like so!

दृष्टिपूतं न्यसेत्पादं पस्त्रपूतं जलं पिबेत् ।
सत्यपूतां वदेद्वाचं मनःपूतं समाचरेत् ॥

- मनुस्मृति

One must set foot only after seeing (cleared after an inspection by the eye).
One must drink water only after passing through a cloth.
One must utter words that pass through the truth filter.
One's actions must pass the conscience test.

- Manu Smriti

Truth filter.  Conscience test.  If only!

Or, how about the following one?

प्रथमे नार्जिता विद्या द्वितीये नार्जितं धनम् ।
तृतीये नार्जितं पुण्यं चतुर्थे किं करिष्यसि ॥

- सुभाषितरत्नभाण्डागार

If you did not:
    Study in your early life,
    Earn wealth in your youth,
    Do noble deeds during old age –
then how are you going to face death honorably?

- Subhashitaratnabhandagara

Of course, I select only the secular ones, and leave out the religious from this wonderful collection. (I have reformatted the translations.)

Eavesdropping is fun--if only I could understand Sanskrit!

As is my habit when I visit India, I walked over to the nearby Natesan Park even before the Sun came up.  It was a careful walk to the park though--not only had I to watch out for garbage and stray dogs, but had to also avoid stepping into any number of puddles that were seemingly everywhere, thanks to the heavy rains.

With each lap around the park, the people count increased.  With the hour approaching, it was time to call it quits.  Instead of simply walking back home, I chose to sit on a bench for a few minutes and think.

As I wondered whether I should untie my shoe laces for a few minutes, I heard some strange words coming from two people seated on the bench to my right.  The tone sounded familiar, but the words were not.

I was glad that they were on my good side--the good ear side, that is.  Because, it turned out that they were conversing in Sanskrit!

Perhaps my old Sanskrit teacher from the high school days will be happy to know that I could recognize Sanskrit words even after all these years.  He was always worried that while a dog could be taught to shake hands, we students were worse :)

The man on the bench, dripping with sweat from exercising, I imagine, looked about 55-ish, while the woman was a few years younger.  He was on one end of the bench, while the woman was at the other.  I figured that this meant they were not a married couple.

But, their conversation wasn't anything clandestine--it was evident that these were practicing their language skills.  Conversing in Sanskrit.

A couple of minutes later, a much younger man--about thirtyish--walked towards them.  The older man forgot to welcome him in Sanskrit, and spoke in English instead.  And then invited him to sit down in the space in between, and the young man did.

The Sanskrit conversation resumed, with the younger man also participating.

What a wonderful experience out of the ordinary!  Early birds do get some tasty worms.

Suddenly, the woman spoke in English. "That is the possessive form of the word" she said.

These three were quite serious about the old parent of many a world's languages.

I listened in for a couple of more minutes.  And when I heard one of them say "Aham (अहम्,)" I got excited enough to go through in my mind the singular, dual and plural forms of the first person, second person, and third person pronouns:

अहम्  आवाम्  वयम्
त्वम्  युवाम्  यूयम्
सः तौ  ते

And, of course, the female and neutral versions, which I am now tired of typing in a different script :)

As I started walking back home, I heard one guy yell at another, "you want to go to Dubai with us?  There is a deal. Only 25,000 rupees for the flight and four days there."

This sounded so harsh after being lost in a Sanskrit conversation.

No money, no respect? Even from family?

The verse I have borrowed from this blog reminds us that things now are not all that different from a long time ago.  Am not sure whether this is a good thing or otherwise!

यावद्वित्तोपार्जनसक्तः
    तावन्निजपरिवारो रक्तः ।
पश्चाज्जर्जरभूते देहे
    वार्तां कोऽपि न पृच्छति गेहे ॥

- भजगोविन्द स्तोत्र

As long as you are earning money,
your family loves you.
When you stop earning and the body becomes weak,
no one in the house want to hear about you.

- Bhajagovinda Stotra

As a kid growing up in a fairly traditional/religious family, I recall memorizing the "Bhajagovindam" verses that were rendered as music by the late MS Subbulakshmi.  But, I don't recall reading along with a translation of what those Sanskrit words meant.  So, it was more a rote memorization of 1,200 year old verses by Adi Shankara!

There was a great uncle, "RM"--a mixed-bag like all of us--who was at ease in quoting many of these ancient words of wisdom.  Well, he could quote and recite--from an understanding, not mere memorization--verses from Sanskrit, Tamil, and English.  Dad too does that to quite an extent.  I suppose there has been quite a generational shift since then.  Yet again, I am reminded of Tennyson's "knowledge comes, wisdom lingers."

On life and death: A couplet from Kalidasa

All I have been able to do is merely sample Kalidasa's works, and that too in translations and not in the Sanskrit.  It will be a lot more wonderful a world if only the poetry and observations of Kalidasa's were widely appreciated.

The following couplet is from Kalidasa's Raghuvamsha via Subhashitani... Evey time I come across a verse authored by Kalidasa, I never cease to be amazed that such a prodigal poet lived and wrote 1600 years ago.

In the few years I learnt Sanskrit, while in high school, we barely picked up a few aspects of the language.  But, I do remember well the teacher's comments praising Kalidasa's epic poems, including Raghuvamsha and Kumarasambhava. 

Here is the couplet from Raghuvamsha:

मरणं प्रकृतिः शरीरिणां विकृतिर्जीवितमुच्यते बुधैः ।
क्षणमप्यवतिष्ठते श्वसन् यदि जन्तुर्ननु लाभावानसौ ॥

- रघुवंश

Death is the natural steady state of nature. Life is an aberration. Wise men realize this.
Even if one is alive for just a second, he must consider himself in profit.

- Raghuvamsha

Yes, go ahead and celebrate the fact that you are alive. Kalidasa said so.

Ban "W" in India?

In case you thought this is about the "W" as in President Bush, well, far, far from it!

If any reader finds this of interest, and has explanations to offer: the Sanskrit language and its offsprings, and the Dravidian languages too, do not have a "w" sound. Thus, many Indians tend to pronounce, say, "went" as if it were "vent."  That is understandable.  But, what I don't get it is this: when writing a town name, for instance, in English, a "w" gets introduced.

Ok, let me give an example for this puzzle that has bugged me for a long time.

The board in the photo on the left is the sign at a railway station.
Notice the "w" in the name? 
But, then if you look at the name written in Hindi, it is a "v" sound; the Hindi letter corresponding to the "V" in Vijayawada.

 I would think that this then ought to be "Vijayavada," which is how it is referred to in Hindi and Tamil and Telugu ....

Unless it is a word imported from a foreign language, there is no place for "w" in India?

BTW, if you thought I butcher up the English pronunciations now, you ought to be happy you did not meet me when I was fresh off the boat decades ago :)

The "five mothers" mystery is solved :)

So, a few days ago I blogged about searching for the Sanskrit verse about five mothers in a person's life.  I noted there that I could not locate the original verse.

A helpful reader emailed me a note earlier today:

Sanskrit Pearls has put up the verse that you were looking for:

And included the URL of that one.  My thanks to the reader for that feedback.
(Hey editor: see, we have proof on consecutive days that there are people reading this blog.  Pay me now, will ya!)

Here is the verse I was looking for:

राजपत्नी गुरोः पत्नी मित्रपत्नी तथैव च
पत्नीमाता स्वमाता च पञ्चैता मातरः स्मृताः
- चाणक्य नीति

Transliteration:
raajapatnI guroH patnI mitrapatnI tathaiva cha
patnImaataa svamaataa cha pa~nchaitaa maataraH smRutaaH
- chaaNakya nIti

Meaning of the subhAShita:
The king's wife, the teacher's wife, friend's wife, wife's mother and his own birth mother - these 5 should be deemed as mother figures

Hey, my memory was not bad, after all ... Score!  The site has a commentary on the deeper meanings of this verse.

Poverty, generosity, and respect

Another gem from Subhashitani:

दाता लघुरपि सेव्यो भवति न कृपणो महानपि समृद्ध्या ।
कूपोऽतः स्वादुजलः प्रीत्यै लोकस्य न समुद्रः ॥

- पञ्चतंत्र, मित्रसंप्राप्ति

Even if a generous person is poor, he is to be treated with respect. A miser deserves no respect even if he is rich and prosperous. People like water from a small well but not from the mighty ocean.

- Panchatantra, Mitrasamprapti

Keep teachers happy!

I did not say that; it is from Manusmriti--the Laws of Manu--which is about 2,000 to 2,500 years old.
Manu wrote:

तयोर्नित्यं प्रियं कुर्यात् आचार्यस्य च सर्वदा ।
तेष्वेव त्रिषु तुष्टेषु तपः सर्वं समाप्यते ॥

- मनुस्मृति

One must do all he can to keep his parents and teacher happy. If they are satisfied it is equivalent to any (all) penance.

- Manu Smriti

It was not this verse that I was searching for though.  I was trying to recall a Sanskrit verse about "five mothers" a person has and, well, I was at a loss.  So, I googled it, but was unsuccessful.  However, I landed at this site with a wonderful collection of verses along with their translations.  Spent some time there trying to read the originals in Sanskrit, and the thirty-plus years since my last Sanskrit class definitely showed :(

Anyway, the "five mothers" is, if I recall correctly (and I wish I could write it out in Sanskrit):

Gurupathni rajapthni jyeshtapathni thathaiva cha
pathnimaatha swamaatha cha panchai the maathara smrithaha

which translates to:

The guru's wife, the king's wife, along with the eldest brother's wife
Wife's mother, and own (birth) mother are to be treated as five mothers

I am all the more curious now whether listing the birth mother at the end was for poetic placement purposes, or whether the poet intended a hierarchy in such a listing.....