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Sanskrit Tidbits-2

 

Sanskrit Tidbits by Bibek Debroy

The easiest way to learn a language is to begin to use it.  Even if I don’t know the words to form a complete sentence, Sanglish is fine.  I tweetaami and wait for the time when I will be able to use proper Sanskrit.  There are several mantras we are familiar with in everyday life. Usually, though not always, they are simple to understand.  Problems arise because Sanskrit has this tendency of a word flowing over into the next, through rules of grammar.  Once one knows how to break them up into individual words, it becomes simpler to understand.  After having broken up, I have always found it easier to pinpoint the verb first.  Everything else follows then.

वक्रतुण्ड महाकाय सुर्यकोटि समप्रभ
निर्विघ्नं कुरु मे देव सर्वकार्येषु सर्वदा !!

This is one you must have seen in various places.  Where is the verb?  The only thing that remotely approaches being a verb is “kuru”, except that it is a form of the verb “to do” that we don’t know yet.  Sanskrit has several tenses and several “moods”.  We are still on the present tense and have not begun to talk about “moods”.  Pending that, “kuru” is imperative in the sense that someone is being asked to do something.  Who is being asked?  A god, deva.  Actually, deva shouldn’t be translated as “god”.  It means someone who is shining.  Vakra is bent and tunda is trunk.  The god has a bent trunk.  Kaaya is body, which is how we get the word “kayastha”.  Kayasthas are those who form the body.  Mahaakaaya is simply large in form.  And he has the splendor of one crore suns.  We are asking this god to always (sarvadaa) free us from impediments in all our tasks (sarva kaarya).  It is a prayer to Ganesha, Ganapati, Vinayaka.  Wasn’t that difficult to understand, was it?

वक्रपुच्छ  श्वेतकाय ळम्बकण॔॑शुनीपुत्र

पृच्छामि त्वाम पृच्छामि त्वाम वद तव माता कुत्र​

I am sure Ganesha won’t be offended.  I decided to have a little fun with this and messed around.  We have a dog.  He has a bushy and curved tail.  His complexion is white.  And his ears are long.  By the way, “shuni” is a female dog.  So far as our dog is concerned, my wife regards him as her son.  That explains what you see above.  I am sure you can understand the rest of it now.  The point is, you use a language and you begin to learn it.  You think in a language and you begin to learn it.

I found the following floating around on the Net, in Roman, not in Devanagari.  What an utter disaster!!  This is a prayer to the sun, Divakara, the giver of light.  Sticking to the second line, he is the enemy of darkness, he is the destroyer of sin and I am lying down prostrate before him.  Question:  Why does this say “pranatosmi” and not “pranamaami”?  “Pranamaami” also means to bow down in worship.  Perhaps we will revisit this question at some future date.  Moving on to the first line, backwards, the sun is immensely radiant.  The gods, and all of us, are descended from the rishi Kashyapa.  The disaster is in the first three words.  The correct rendering is javakusumasankasham, since the sun has the complexion of a rose (javaa).  (Javaa can also be translated as red hibiscus.)  Clearly, these people on the Net had some vague notion that this has something to do with meditation (japa) and offering flowers (kusuma).  Once you begin to read and understand mantras, you will find many such instances of murder.

Japa kusuma sankasam kashyapeyam mahadyutim
Tamorim Sarva paapghnam pranatosmi Divakaram

The mantra all of us should start with is the one given below.  This has verb forms we do not know yet.  And it also has sandhi forms we do not know yet.  So let me give a very loose translation.  There is a teacher and a student involved.  May you (the god) protect us together.  May you (the god) provide enjoyment to us together.  May we (the teacher and the student) endeavor together.  May our studies be energetic.  May we not hate each other.  A good prayer before Sanskrit studies, or any studies for that matter.

ॐ सह नाववतु। सह नौ भुनक्तु ।

सह वीर्यं करवावहै । 

तेजस्वि नावधीतमस्तु मा विद्विषावहै ।

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

The prayer then ends with the familiar shantih shantih, shantih.  We have a yoga teacher and he ends his session with this also.  Not the prayer, but the shantih shantih shantih bit.  This shantih shantih shantih bit figures towards the end of many mantras.  However, our yoga teacher doesn’t say shantih shantih shantih.  He says shanti shanti shantih.  I asked him why he says shanti shanti shantih and not shantih shantih shantih.  Of course, he didn’t know, despite being a yoga teacher.  Most people don’t know and they don’t know because they don’t ask.  (I hope you will continue to ask questions.)  This was a simpler question and you will know the answer in the course of your lessons.  At one level, both renditions are correct.  At another level, following the rules of sandhi, the visarga disappears, so to speak, though not at the end.  Hence, shanti shanti shantih.

The second question I asked him was more interesting and I didn’t expect him to know the answer, though being a yoga teacher, he probably should have known.  Why do we say shantih 3 times?  Why not once?  Why not 7 times?  There are three kinds of forces – adhibhoutika (natural), adhidaivika (divine or destiny-determined) and adhyatmika (spiritual).  There are complicated philosophical interpretations about what these three kinds of forces mean, but let’s keep it simple now.  These forces can be good, they can also be evil.  A bad adhibhoutika force can be something like being bitten by a rabid dog.  A bad adhidaivika force can be something like a drought.  A bad adhyatmika force can be something like negative emotions.  If you are really interested, read shlokas 7.30 and 8.4 of the Bhagavad Gita, though BG also uses adhiyajna as a synonym for adhyatmika.  We say shantih 3 times (and not once or 7 times) because we wish to be protected from 3 types of evil forces.  There’s your answer.

 

Sanskrit Tidbits

Bibek Debroy
Chapters
Sanskrit Tidbits-43:Exploring Sanskrit Bharati’s Sanskrit Wikipedia Sanskrit Tidbits-41:Vedic Sanskrit and wisdom of Upanishadas Sanskrit Tidbits-40:The brilliance of Sanskrit poet Magha Sanskrit Tidbits-39:Kalidasa anecdotes Sanskrit Tidbits-37:Valmiki’s Poetry Sanskrit Tidbits-36:First Shloka of Valmiki Ramayana Sanskrit Tidbits-35: Durga Saptashati famous hymn sung by Gods for Goddess Durga made easy Sanskrit Tidbits-34:An introduction to Maarkandeya Purana Sanskrit Tidbits-33:Shivaashtakam made easy Sanskrit Tidbits-32:A shloka by Vivekananda in honour of Paramahansa Sanskrit Tidbits-31:Spiritual aspect of Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-30:Manusmriti on crimes,punishments,penances and intercourse Sanskrit Tidbits-29:More on different Varnas-Brahman,Shudra as per ManuSmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-28:Manusmriti and Position of Women Sanskrit Tidbits-27:18 Types of cases dealt by kings as per Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-26:Duties of a king as per Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-25:Strictures on different kinds of food as per Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-24:Brahmin and Sanatan Dharma as per Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-23:Different types of Marriages as per Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-22:An introduction to Manusmriti Sanskrit Tidbits-21:How Sanskrit is a two-way flow Sanskrit Tidbits-20:More about the sanskrit thesaurus Amarkosha Sanskrit Tidbits-19:An introduction to Amarkosha,the Sanskrit Thesaurus Sanskrit Tidbits-18:Jayadeva’s Geet Govind and erotic undertones in Radha-Krishna’s love Sanskrit Tidbits-17:Exploring Jayadeva’s Geet Govind Sanskrit Tidbits-16:Metres in Sanskrit,Fibonacci Series,Pascal’s Triangle and Binomial Theorem Sanskrit Tidbits-15:Poetry,Kalidasa,Jaideva and Sanskrit Sanskrit Tidbits-14: Deeper Nuances of Sanskrit Poetry Sanskrit Tidbits-13:An introduction to Vedangas Sanskrit Tidbits-11:Rules, Formulae and Aphorisms Sanskrit Tidbits-10: Fun with riddles in Sanskrit Sanskrit Tidbits-9:Sanskrit alphabets,phonemes and mathematics Sanskrit Tidbits-8: Myth behind different names of Lotus in Sanskrit Sanskrit Tidbits-7: Myth behind most commonly used words in hymns Sanskrit Tidbits-6:How innovative is Sanskrit! Sanskrit Tidbits-5: The Importance of Pronounciation in Sanskrit Sanskrit Tidbits-4:Can you detect anything wrong in this picture? Sanskrit Tidbits-3 Sanskrit Tidbits-2 Sanskrit Tidbits-1