Sanskrit Tidbits-6:How innovative is Sanskrit!
In the last tidbits, I promised to revisit the word श्वपचः. If you look it up in a dictionary, you will find various meanings given. One of these is the one I gave you last week, श्वपचः is someone who cooks and eats dogs, since श्वा is a dog and पच is the act of cooking. A beauty about the Sanskrit language is that words can have multiple meanings and you can also be innovative about how you to choose to interpret a word. Just because the words dog and cooking come together, does it necessarily mean that श्वपचः is someone who cooks and eats dogs? Not necessarily. It can equally well mean someone who cooks for dogs, that is, someone who keeps dogs, is in the company of dogs and possesses dogs. Dogs were looked down upon and so were those who kept dogs. They were regarded as outcastes. Hence, श्वपचः also means an outcaste. You will also find such people described as चण्डाल and sometimes people also use the word शूद्र. I can’t say I like this. A शूद्र was inside the caste system, a चण्डाल was outside it. The two terms are different.
Most people have heard about the sage विश्वामित्रः and his quarrel with the sage वशिष्ठः It is by no means obvious that these were individual proper names, as opposed to family names, so that there may have been several sages named विश्वामित्रः and several sages named वशिष्ठः There are many stories about Vishvamitra and he was prone to anger. However, in all these stories, we are never told what the word विश्वामित्रः means. If I asked you to guess, you would probably think that it has something to do with विश्व (universe) and अमित्र (enemy). That is, he was so named because he was an enemy to the entire universe and had no friend in the universe. Perhaps, but his anger and feud with वशिष्ठः apart, Vishvamitra never did anything to warrant such a description. (In fairness, you can also interpret Vishvamitra to mean that he was a friend to everyone in the universe.) I have already told you that श्वा is a dog and मित्रम् means friend. A friend to dogs will therefore be called श्वामित्रः We now come to something in Sanskrit known as उपसर्ग. These are prefixes and there are 22 of these. We will learn about them later. उपसर्ग-s are delightful things. Sometimes, they reinforce the meaning of the original word. Sometimes, they change the meaning of the original word. Sometimes, they reverse the meaning of the original word. Anyway, one such upasarga is वि and this means distinct, different, special. Hence, विश्वामित्रः is a special friend of dogs. When I have mentioned this to Sanskrit scholars, and I am not one, they are aghast. Yet, no one has told me why I am grammatically wrong and why my speculation is impossible. And so that you are convinced, Shanti Parva of Mahabharata has a story about Vishvamitra cooking, though not actually eating, dog-meat. And so that you are convinced even more, his sons were named शुन:पुच्छः (dog’s tail) and शुन:शेपः (dog’s penis). Whether you agree with me about my meaning for विश्वामित्रः is irrelevant. You will have to agree that I have proved that you can be extremely innovative with Sanskrit.
शुष्कं काष्ठं तिष्ठति अग्रे !
A dry piece of wood is in front. I have mentioned the great poet Kalidasa earlier. There are many legends about him. It has been impossible to date him satisfactorily. He was a poet in King Vikramaditya’s court. Many kings named themselves Vikramaditya, so we don’t quite know which King Vikramaditya this one was. This was probably a king who ruled in Ujjain. Some others say that the king in question was King Bhoja, whose capital was Dhara (Dhaaraa). Whichever king it was, the king loved Kalidasa and his poetry and this was resented by other poets who wished to challenge Kalidasa’s supremacy. One day, King Bhoja (or Vikramaditya) pointed to a dry piece of wood in front and asked one of the challenger-poets to describe it. The sentence above is what this challenger-poet produced. When it came to Kalidasa’s turn, he produced नीरसः तरूवरः पुरतः भाति. The words have exactly the same meaning. But you can see how they have got transformed. One is poetry, the other is not.
There is a story that once, King Bhoja and Kalidasa had a disagreement and Kalidasa left Dhara and went to live somewhere else. While he was there, a message was brought to him that King Bhoja had died. Kalidasa was distraught and composed the following shloka. Though they had quarreled, Kalidasa still retained a lot of affection for King Bhoja.
अद्य धारा निराधारा निरालम्बा सरस्वती
पण्डिताः खण्डिताः सर्वे भोजराजे दिवं गते
Today, Dhara is without a foundation (aadhaara). The goddess Sarasvati is without support (aalamba). All the learned men are disappointed or abandoned (khandita). King Bhoja has gone to heaven.
A beautiful shloka, but there was a problem. King Bhoja hadn’t actually died, that was wrong information. When Kalidasa realized that he had been misled, he rejoiced. As for the shloka, did it have to be abandoned? Not quite. Kalidasa changed it to the following. A little bit of tweaking and the entire meaning changes. With King Bhoja having gone to earth, Dhara always has a support and the goddess Sarasvati always has a support. All the learned men are adorned.
अद्य धारा सदाधारा सदालम्बा सरस्वती
पण्डिताः मण्डिताः सर्वे भोजराजे भुवं गते
You will say that it needed a Kalidasa to do this. That’s undoubtedly true. But you also needed the Sanskrit language to do this. There are very few languages in the world where you could have done this. That’s the beauty of Sanskrit.