New publication - second edition of Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam

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Nityanand Misra

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Feb 16, 2013, 1:16:38 AM2/16/13
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Namo Bhārgavarāghavābhyām

यन्मत्सद्गुरुभिः कृतं सुकविभिः श्रीरामभद्रैर्मुदा वृत्तं पञ्चपुमर्थयुक्तममलं ह्यंशांशिनो रामयोः।

तच्छ्रीभार्गवराघवीयसुमहाकाव्यं मया भक्तिमत्प्रीत्यै सङ्गणकीकृतं कुमतिना प्रस्तूयते चाद्य भोः॥


Shri Tulsi Peeth Seva Nyas, Chitrakoot, is pleased to release the second Saṃskṛta-only digital edition (attached) of Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam (श्रीभार्गवराघवीयम्). This edition comes almost four years after the first edition which was released in 2009. Key features of the second edition are
  • Many typographic and orthographic errors that existed in the first edition have been fixed
  • The typesetting is done using Ulrich Steil's Sanskrit 2003 font, a marked visual improvement over Charles Wikner's skt package
  • Along with the digital publication, the entire epic is now also available online for reading in both Devanāgarī and IAST under this link.
  • The Anvaya and Ṭīkā of the single-consonant verses (Ekākṣariślokas) in the twentieth canto are included
  • The Nāndīvāk by Triveṇīkavi Abhirāja Rājendra Miśra is included
  • The Samīkṣā by Devarṣi Kalānāthaśāstrī, published in the January 2003 edition of Bhāratī magazine, is included
  • The Purovāk by the Mahākavi is included
A great word of thanks goes to Dr. E R Narayanan, senior member of this mailing list, for proofreading the entire epic in a very short time and helping with many corrections.

A brief summary of the epic and reviews by some scholars follow below.

Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam in brief

Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam is a Mahākāvya (epic poem) in Saṃskṛta which was composed by Jagadguru Rāmānandācārya Svāmī Rāmabhadrācārya during his sixth six-month Payovrata (diet of only milk and fruits) towards the end of 1990s in Chitrakoot, Madhya Pradesh. The epic was published in 2002, along with the Kṛpā commentary in Hindi (also composed by the Guru), by the Jagadguru Rambhadracharya Handicapped University. The book was released by the illustrious statesman-poet and then Prime Minister of India, Pandit Atal Behari Vajpayee, at his Racecourse Road residence in New Delhi on October 30, 2002. The work has been widely acclaimed by the fraternity of Saṃskṛta scholars and readers. In addition to numerous other awards, the epic has adorned the twelfth Śrīvāṇī Alaṅkaraṇa Puraskāra (2005, Ramkrishna Jaydayal Dalmiya Foundation), the thirty-eighth Sahitya Akademi Award in Sanskrit (2005, Sahitya Akademi), the Bāṇabhaṭṭa Award (2006, Madhya Pradesh Sanskrit Board) and the sixteenth Vācaspati Puraskāra (2007, K. K. Birla Foundation).

Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam consists of 2,121 verses in 40 Saṃskṛta and Prakṛta metres, and is divided into 21 cantos (Sargas) of 101 verses each. The epic presents the narrative of Lord Paraśurāma and Lord Rāma drawing from several sources including Vālmīkīya Rāmāyaṇa, Śrīmadbhāgavatam, Brahmavaivartapurāṇa, Prasannarāghavam, Satyopākhyāna and the Śrīrāmacaritamānasa. The incarnation of Lord Paraśurāma, his learning from his Guru Lord Śiva on Kailāsa, his execution of Jamadagni's command to behead Reṇukā and her subsequent resurrection, his slaying of Sahasrārjuna and the annihilation of Kṣatriyas 21 times from the earth, and his battle with Lord Gaṇeśa form the first nine cantos. The next five cantos cover the incarnations of Lord Rāma and mother Sītā. The last seven cantos describe Viśvāmitra's journey to Ayodhyā, the slaying of the demons by Lord Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa, the redemption of Ahalyā, the meeting of Lord Rāma and mother Sītā in Janaka’s garden, the breaking of Śiva bow by Lord Rāma, the confrontation between Lord Paraśurāma and Lord Rāma, the surrender by Lord Paraśurāma to Lord Rāma and the marriage rites of the four sons of Daśaratha in Mithilā.

For more details, please visit the Wikipedia article.

Accolades by Saṃskṛta scholars-

Abhirāja Rājendra Miśrā (Triveṇīkavi) –
“श्रीभार्गवराघवीयाभिधमिदं सकलसाहितीसद्गुणनिकषभूतं महाकाव्यम् ... संस्कृतरामगाथापरम्परायाः प्रत्यग्रतमं सारस्वतपुष्पम् ... महाकाव्येऽस्मिन् प्रसादगम्भीरपदे सौशब्द्यार्थगौरवमण्डिते प्रतिसर्गमेव किञ्चिदभिनवं परिलक्ष्यते ... महाकाव्यमिदमार्षपरम्परां पुष्णाति ... कवेर्ऋषित्वमेवात्र प्रभवति ... धन्यतामुपयाति रचनयाऽनयाऽर्वाचीन­संस्कृतसाहित्यम्।

Devarṣi Kalānātha Śāstrī –

“प्रौढायां प्राञ्जलायां हृदयावर्जिकायां च शैल्यां विविधेषुच्छन्दःसु निबद्धमिदं विशालं महाकाव्यं तत्प्रणेतुर्विपश्चिदग्रगण्यस्य महाकवेर्बन्धनैपुण्यं वर्णनकौशलं न्दःशास्त्रीयमनिर्वचनीयं नैपुण्यमपि प्रमाणयति।

मैं रातभर में उसे पढ़ गया क्योंकि उसके भावपक्ष के साथ उसकी काव्यकला, छन्दो-वैविध्य और भाषादक्षता के चमत्कारजनक नमूने भी अभूतपूर्व लगे ... यह काव्य जगद्गुरुजी के यशःसौध का एक शिखर है जिसे इतिहास कभी नहीं भुला सकेगा, ऐसा मेरा कहना है

Śrīrāmāśīṣa Pāṇḍeya –

कम्रं यस्य वपुस्तथाऽत्र शुभदं पीताम्बरं शोभते

वक्षे लम्बितमालिका सुखप्रदा पुष्पैर्नवैर्निर्मिता।

तं रामं मनसा स्मरन् स मतिमान् श्रीरामभद्रो महा-

काव्यं भार्गवराघवीयमतुलं चक्रे सुधावर्षकम्॥


Brajeśa Dīkṣita (Mānasamṛgendra) –
संस्कृत महाकाव्यों की सुदीर्घ शृंखला में श्रीभार्गवराघवीयम् मुकुटमणि है ... सनातन संस्कृति के मूल्य संरक्षण हेतु प्रतिबद्ध इस महाकाव्य में भारवि के द्विनायकत्व (किरातार्जुनीयम्), श्रीहर्ष के काव्य-वैशिष्ट्य एवं छन्द-योजना (नैषधीयचरितम्), तथा माघ की बृहत्ता (शिशुपालवधम्) का संयुक्त दर्शन एक साथ हो जाता है।

Yogeśacandra Dvivedī –

माघे किराते ननु नैषधीये रघौ कुमारेऽपि च ये विशेषाः।

तेभ्योऽधिका जाग्रति रामभद्राचार्योद्भवे भार्गवराघवीये॥

Thanks, Nityanand

--
Nityānanda Miśra
Vice President, Equity Markets, Citigroup, Hong Kong SAR
Member, Advisory Council, JRHU, Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India
http://nmisra.googlepages.com

JR2002Sribhargavaraghaviyam.pdf

Nityanand Misra

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Feb 16, 2013, 3:36:46 PM2/16/13
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2013/2/16 Nityanand Misra <nmi...@gmail.com>

  • The typesetting is done using Ulrich Steil's Sanskrit 2003 font, a marked visual improvement over Charles Wikner's skt package
Correction: Sanskrit 2003 font was developed by Omkarananda Ashram (http://omkarananda-ashram.org/Sanskrit/itranslator2003.htm) and not by Ulrich Stiehl. The inadvertent error is regretted. 

Ashok Aklujkar

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Feb 17, 2013, 1:11:53 PM2/17/13
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A general comment applicable beyond the present publication:

Availability of cheap labour and profusion of skilled font-makers allowed the nineteenth-century publishers to come up with special fonts for almost all the ligatures that were seen in handwriting. In many instances, this also made the figuring out of the consonants involved in a ligature difficult for those who did not already know the language or the word involved. Indian scripts were the best technology in the age of handwriting, efficient through a judicious combination of alphabetic and syllabic writing. Unlike other ancient scripts such as the Greek and the Semitic, they represented the sounds accurately and unambiguously. As printing through typesetting was introduced, the scripts made a few compromises. With the coming of the computer age, we may need to make a few more compromises or compromises of a different sort. Therefore, there would be nothing wrong in using the viraama a bit more frequently if so doing we preserve the great ability of the scripts to reproduce speech accurately.


Dear Shri Misra,

I am delighted to get the good news that the extraordinary epic Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam of ;Srii-raama-bhadraacaarya is now available in electronic form.

I have one suggestion to make regarding text composition. Words such as buddhi and a:nghri should not be printed as बुिद् ध and अिङ् घ्र The printing should be बुद्् धि and अङ् घ्रि, ** unless, of course, one can print the ligatures in the normal way with the preceding consonant shortened or placed in the upper part of the resultant sign.

**(Please ignore the spaces in between. The Devanagari-Qwerty keyboard I have to use here does not enable me to print the viraama/halanta sign without leaving a space after it vacant; maybe this is my ignorance about that keyboard),


Reasons: The sound followed by the viraama sign, d or :n in the cases under discussion, is pronounced before the i-sign. The basic principle in Devanagari writing is that that which is pronounced first is written to the left, if it cannot be written with the following sign in such a way as to indicate its priority in pronunciation. Secondly, viraama indicates absence of a vowel. It is contradictory to have a viraama and a vowel like i in the same syllable.

I am aware that the practice you have followed is now found in a number of Devanagari publications. It should be discouraged.

I very much appreciate the contributions you make to the BVP forum.

a.a.

Nityanand Misra

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Feb 17, 2013, 7:44:24 PM2/17/13
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Dear Prof Aklujkar


On Monday, February 18, 2013 2:11:53 AM UTC+8, Ashok Aklujkar wrote:
As printing through typesetting was introduced, the scripts made a few compromises. With the coming of the computer age, we may need to make a few more compromises or compromises of a different sort. Therefore, there would be nothing wrong in using the viraama a bit more frequently if so doing we preserve the great ability of the scripts to reproduce speech accurately.


Truly said, in fact to date I find the typesetting in old Sanskrit books much better - right from late 19th century publications of Vedas (e.g. the commentary by Jwalaprasad Mishra on Shuklayajurveda), the Nirnay Sagar Press titles and even Sanskrit books published as late as 1990s when computers were not used for typesetting. For digital publications, LaTeX is by far the best typesetting system (even though it is daunting for those used to WYSIWYG editors like Word) but until recently there were hardly any options for typesetting Hindi/Sanskrit documents. Typesetting in Adobe InDesign or Corel with non Unicode fonts like APS-DV family produced more beautiful options. But things are changing and with XeLaTeX one can now compose the text using Unicode and fonts like Sanskrit 2003 are a great improvement from Wikner's skt package.

I agree with you about use of viraamas, and I am also in favour of not using Western punctuation like commas,  semicolons, quotes, et cetera. In fact if I had my way, I would typeset even without space which is a Western  import in Indian writing - and have both gadya and padya compositions typeset like the Sanskrit inscriptions at Dilwara temples, Adalaj step-well, etc.
 

Dear Shri Misra,

I am delighted to get the good news that the extraordinary epic Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam of ;Srii-raama-bhadraacaarya is now available in electronic form.

 I have one suggestion to make regarding text composition. Words such as buddhi and a:nghri should not be printed as बुिद् ध and अिङ् घ्र The printing should be बुद्् धि and अङ् घ्रि, ** unless, of course, one can print the ligatures in the normal way with the preceding consonant shortened or placed in the upper part of the resultant sign.

**(Please ignore the spaces in between. The Devanagari-Qwerty keyboard I have to use here does not enable me to print the viraama/halanta sign without leaving a space after it vacant; maybe this is my ignorance about that keyboard),


As the underlying text in my XeLaTeX source files is Unicode (no font), this is in reality a font issue rather than one of text composition. The typesetting is in Unicode, and as is the advantage with Unicode, it can be used with a wide range of fonts and easily converted to IAST, Howard Kyoto, ITRANS, et cetera. I would not need to change the text, but only the display font to fix the above. If you are able to download the PDF, the font Sanskrit 2003 being embedded in it, the conjunct ligatures are printed perfectly with the preceding consonant placed in upper part - see verses 1-2 and 1-14 on page (page 9) in PDF.

For the online HTML version, I have set the font as "Arial Unicode MS" since it is installed by default on Windows machines and most of our website viewers are on Windows platform. This shows "buddhi" properly but not "aghri" on Windows machines. As you have mentioned you are using Apple MacBook Air, they may not display correctly. I am yet to address this problem. One option I have is to list a set of fonts for the HTML version in order of priority, starting with Sanskrit 2003 and others which display the conjunct ligatures properly, and then keep Arial Unicode MS at end. Then we may advise users to install Sanskrit 2003 for best display results. Other option, of which I am not sure of, is to embed the Sanskrit 2003 font in our website as a web-font so that readers do not need to install the font. I will discuss this issue with other website volunteers and come up with a solution. It will take some time as we will use the same solution for all our HTML pages, so please bear with us. In any case, we will not need to change the composed text as it is in Unicode, which is independent of the display font or platform.

Till we resolve this, may I suggest using the PDF for best viewing results?  Or please use the IAST version for online reading. I have not accessed Google Groups from MacBook Air, so I am not sure how you can download a PDF posted here, but you can download it under

http://jagadgururambhadracharya.org/pdfs/JR2002Sribhargavaraghaviyam.pdf
 

I am aware that the practice you have followed is now found in a number of Devanagari publications. It should be discouraged.


I agree. It is a lot to do with font selection. For example, see the third foot of the Mangalacharana of the Gītarāmāyaṇam (download under http://jagadgururambhadracharya.org/pdfs/JR2011Gitaramayanam.pdf, the verse is at the bottom page number 3 in PDF which has Devanagari page number १). The text is

ऐश्वर्याद्यैः षडङ्घ्रिर्भजनजनिरसं रातु रामानुगेभ्यो
aiśvaryādyaiḥ ṣaḍaṅghrirbhajanajanirasaṁ rātu rāmānugebhyo

The rendering of aṅghri has the problem you mentioned. Gītarāmāyaṇam was typeset using the "APS DV Stardust" form. It is a beautiful font doubtless, and is popular with printers along with Kruti Dev and Chanakya, but has limited conjunct syllables ligatures - hardly any with the nasal consonants. In this age where Samskrita speakers are rare, typesetters and printers who know Samskrita are even rarer and they do not want to move from fonts like APS DV or Kruti Dev or Chanakya for the fear of losing business of Hindi books. These fonts are more than sufficient for Hindi which substitutes half nasal consonants with the Anusvara.
 
I very much appreciate the contributions you make to the BVP forum.


Likewise.
 
a.a.


Regards, Nityanand

Nityanand Misra

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Feb 17, 2013, 8:19:12 PM2/17/13
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As an addition, in Unicode, the Devanagari text composition is completely scientific, and characters are ordered the same way as their pronounced order. For example  Unicode अङ्घ्रि has the hexadecimal representation 0905 0919 094D 0918 094D 0930 093F

The characters standing for

0905 अ
0919 ङ
094D ् (combining halant)
0918 घ
094D ् (combining halant)
0930 र
093F ि (combining maatra)

The maatraa is on र and not on ङ or घ, which is how it is pronounced. One may refer http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0900.pdf for Unicode Devanagari chart and http://rishida.net/tools/conversion/ for converting between Unicode and HTML/Hexadecimal.

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