Mytho-Puns
Abhishek Upadhya
- When Vali died, the monkey army Su-grieved for his loss...
- When the ancients wanted a babysitter, did they go to Shishupala? [ I don't know the etymology of this name, correct me if I'm wrong and while you're searching for it, check out this palindrome matrix Sanskrit verse ]
Mahesh Mahadevan
Hermitian matrices as mAgha or shaishupAlya :-D
Abhishek Upadhya
Mohan K.V
I checked up my dictionary, and the etymo is right. I'm sure there's a lovely little legend about how the chap got his name, but my dictionary goes off into the more well-known story of him being born disfigured and all that.
The verse was absolutely astounding! Brilliant find! One legend has it that Kalidasa and Maagha were contemporaries (and competitors), and that Kalidasa's Meghadutam and a few of Magha's works became very popular at around the same time.
[Begin context] Meghadutam was (is) brilliant because there was no protracted plot. In fact, there _is_ no plot. The only context we are given about the story is in the first verse, and after that the poet seems impatient to move on. The _entire_ poem reads simply as a hero trying to describe to a cloud the path it should take across the country to visit his lover, whom he is pining for. There have been many commentaries on the subtle brilliance in which some ideas are expressed: the hero making wry comments about himself and his hopelessly-in-love state; the excessive interpretation of little gestures that is so characteristic of romantic love, etc.
Maagha's works, as the wiki page points out, are known for their remarkable combination of wit and wordplay. They are supposed to have the brilliant similies of Kalidasa, the distinguished calmness of Bhaaravi and the wordplay of Dandi. [End context]
So a lot of their works became extremely popular, and everyone who could conjugate du.kr.ny* was writing reviews on them. Among them, this one-line review became more popular than even the original works, and has found its way into every single Sanskrit grammar book:
maaghe meghe gatam vayah
It's an example of shlesha alankaara (double meaning). The first interpretation is
maaghe == in the works of maagha; meghe == in the meghadutam; gatam == has passed; vayah == life, age.
"(Appreciating) the wroks of Maagha and the Meghadutam takes a whole lifetime."
The second is:
maaghe == in the maagha season, a particularly cloudy season; meghe == in the cloud; gatam == went; vayah == bird.
"In the Maagha season, a bird went by a cloud." (This is essentially the entire story of the Meghadutam. Birds are used many, many times as a metaphor for various things in the poem).
:-)
*For those unfamiliar with this disparaging taunt: du.kr.ny is one of the first verbs one learns in Sanskrit, meaning 'do'. I'm sure all of you have heard this expression in "Bhaja govindam; ...; nahi nahi rakshati du.kr.ny karaNe". "Sing the glories of the lord, you fools! `Du.kr.ny == karaNa ('do')' won't help you when your time has come!"
****
Speaking of absolutely brilliant Sanskrit poetry, I recently came across a few gems from Vedanta Deshika's Paadukaasahasram. That poem consists of 1008 verses, and Vedanta Deshika composed them all in one night. It sings the glory of the paaduka of the lord of Sriranga. Some very good ones, from here. Check out verses 933, 935, 936 and 939. And note, they all strictly confirm to the meter :-)
Abhishek Upadhya
Shreevatsa R
> I checked up my dictionary, and the etymo is right. I'm sure there's a
> lovely little legend about how the chap got his name, but my dictionary goes
> off into the more well-known story of him being born disfigured and all
> that.
It's possible the same story is the etymology as well, in some
passive-voice kind of way: "The child who was babysat"
> *For those unfamiliar with this disparaging taunt: du.kr.ny is one of the
> first verbs one learns in Sanskrit, meaning 'do'. I'm sure all of you have
Is it?
*Demands my money back*
[The "कृञ् करणे" part makes sense, but have never figured out what the
"डु" is, and why it's coincidentally "do" as well :-)
Is "डु कृञ्" the verb? how...]
> Speaking of absolutely brilliant Sanskrit poetry, I recently came across a
> few gems from Vedanta Deshika's Paadukaasahasram. That poem consists of 1008
> verses, and Vedanta Deshika composed them all in one night. It sings the
> glory of the paaduka of the lord of Sriranga. Some very good ones, from
> here. Check out verses 933, 935, 936 and 939. And note, they all strictly
> confirm to the meter :-)
Wow! Those are unbelievable. Wonder if it's possible to decrypt them
without the key, though. :-)
Can you actually understand those BTW? I can't even *read* them, let
alone note whether they conform to the metre :-)
[Whenever I see Sanskrit written in English/Roman, I have a reflexive
urge to convert it to Devanagari, like in the Wikipedia article that
started this thread...] 939 is the only one that can be read
unambiguously :-)
Mahesh Mahadevan
If I did get (some of) it properly, the paadukas have too many layers
of meaning. Although I wonder, how come marA marA did not make it! I
suppose that one still sits with Valmiki :-)
Mohan K.V
Is it?
*Demands my money back*
[The "कृञ् करणे" part makes sense, but have never figured out what the
"डु" is, and why it's coincidentally "do" as well :-)
Is "डु कृञ्" the verb? how...]
The original dhatu is du.kr.ny, thought the 'du' drops out in _every_ case. It's common to refer to it as kri.ny, esp. when a prefix will be added, but the original is du.kr.ny. I don't know why this is so, will try to found out.
Quick one: If Nike wants to market it's shoes to extreme sanskrito-philes with a hobby of collecting vestigial parts of sanskrit verb forms, what would its slogan be? Just डु it :-)
Wow! Those are unbelievable. Wonder if it's possible to decrypt them
without the key, though. :-)
Can you actually understand those BTW? I can't even *read* them, let
alone note whether they conform to the metre :-)
Oh no no, I have to sit with them with a dictionary for hours to even be able to split words correctly. Monier-Williams online makes it a wee bit easier, but they chop out all the etymo and the legends and it's no fun. But I'm amazed that it is _possible_ that such stuff makes sense, even if it is not easy to understand!
Meanwhile, I was disappointed with Wikipedia's explanation of the Shishpalavadha stanza's meaning, and spent a little time decrpyting myself. Will add it to the wikipedia entry after I've confirmed this is right.
My word-split version of the stanza is:
sa-kaara-naana-araka-aasa-kaaya-saada-da-saayakaah
rasaahavaa vaahasaara-naada-vaada-da-vaadanaah
sa - upasarga meaning 'along with'
araka - wheel spoke
aasa - seat
kaaya - body
saada-da - giving a shriveled state, i.e., destroying
saayaka - arrow
ie. "Along with those who destroyed (enemies') chariots with (just) their arrows"
aahava - war
rasaahavaa = "they who rejoice in war"
vaaha - carrier
saara - 'essence', I'm taking this to mean water (a river is a 'sarit', also used sometimes for ocean)
vaahasaara == cloud, "that which carries the essence"
naada-vaada-da == gave the sounds and words
vaadanaah = instruments
i.e "They who had instruments made the sounds of a cloud". (I think this is right because a cloud-sound, ie thunder, is usually associated with armies and aggression)
**
I played around a little bit with the structure and concoted this little problem. Will be of help if you have a linear algebra endterm sometime :-)
Let A = [ sa kaa ra naa;
kaa ya saa da ;
ra saa ha vaa;
naa da vaa da ];
and let F be the 4x4 'flipper' matrix
F = [ 0 0 0 1;
0 0 1 0;
0 1 0 0;
1 0 0 0];
Now the poem is simply,
P = [ A AF;
FA FAF];
[Here's when I realized I have no more hope in life.]
If the eigenvalues of A are e1,e2,e3 and e4 (A is all real and symmetric), what are the eigenvalues of P? There's a nice and elegant way to find them out :-)
[Whenever I see Sanskrit written in English/Roman, I have a reflexive
urge to convert it to Devanagari, like in the Wikipedia article that
started this thread...] 939 is the only one that can be read
unambiguously :-)
Same here, I always write it down. But somehow I've never managed to find a nice transliteration site that gives unicode :-(
Sandeep Makam
Shreevatsa R
> Quick one: If Nike wants to market it's shoes to extreme sanskrito-philes
> with a hobby of collecting vestigial parts of sanskrit verb forms, what
> would its slogan be? Just डु it :-)
A कृञ्geworthy pun.
> Meanwhile, I was disappointed with Wikipedia's explanation of the
> Shishpalavadha stanza's meaning, and spent a little time decrpyting myself.
> Will add it to the wikipedia entry after I've confirmed this is right.
Oh please do. The current explanation is straight from Martin
Gardner's book, a reader letter by some George L. Hart III.
>
> My word-split version of the stanza is:
>
> sa-kaara-naana-araka-aasa-kaaya-saada-da-saayakaah
> rasaahavaa vaahasaara-naada-vaada-da-vaadanaah
>
> sa - upasarga meaning 'along with'
> araka - wheel spoke
> aasa - seat
> kaaya - body
> saada-da - giving a shriveled state, i.e., destroying
> saayaka - arrow
>
> ie. "Along with those who destroyed (enemies') chariots with (just) their
> arrows"
>
> aahava - war
> rasaahavaa = "they who rejoice in war"
>
> vaaha - carrier
> saara - 'essence', I'm taking this to mean water (a river is a 'sarit', also
> used sometimes for ocean)
> vaahasaara == cloud, "that which carries the essence"
> naada-vaada-da == gave the sounds and words
>
> vaadanaah = instruments
>
> i.e "They who had instruments made the sounds of a cloud". (I think this is
> right because a cloud-sound, ie thunder, is usually associated with armies
> and aggression)
Thanks, makes quite a bit more sense now :)
> I played around a little bit with the structure and concoted this little
> problem. Will be of help if you have a linear algebra endterm sometime :-)
>
> Let A = [ sa kaa ra naa;
> kaa ya saa da ;
> ra saa ha vaa;
> naa da vaa da ];
Right, the poem just traverses each row forwards and back, or, as it
is symmetric, each column downwards and back up :-)
> and let F be the 4x4 'flipper' matrix
>
> F = [ 0 0 0 1;
> 0 0 1 0;
> 0 1 0 0;
> 1 0 0 0];
>
> Now the poem is simply,
>
> P = [ A AF;
> FA FAF];
>
> [Here's when I realized I have no more hope in life.]
>
> If the eigenvalues of A are e1,e2,e3 and e4 (A is all real and symmetric),
> what are the eigenvalues of P? There's a nice and elegant way to find them
> out :-)
The poem is just [A AF] :-)
And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
probably a nicer way...
And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)
> Same here, I always write it down. But somehow I've never managed to find a
> nice transliteration site that gives unicode :-(
Ah: http://www.iit.edu/~laksvij/language/sanskrit.html
[or, although it's not in a finished state:
http://web.mit.edu/vatsa/www/sanskrit/transliterate.html ]
Mohan K.V
A कृञ्geworthy pun.
ROFL!
The poem is just [A AF] :-)
You're right, sorry. [A AF; FA FAF] just makes it easier to see the up-down reading.
And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
probably a nicer way...
Very neat! One thing though, the multiplicities are wrong. You see right away that P has 4 repeated rows, and so it must have 4 zero eigenvalues. There other 4 eigenvalues are twice previous one.
I don't know if this is a valid proof: the trace is twice the original, the determinant is 0. We know there are 4 zeros. [begin fuzziness] By symmetry [end fuzziness], each eigenvalue is twice the previous one.
And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)
I'm terrified of complex numbers :-) Reminds me of this line: "I'm scared of numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear." :-)
http://web.mit.edu/vatsa/www/sanskrit/transliterate.html ]
Very strong! You wrote it yourself ?! ^:-)^
Mahesh Mahadevan
Time for another - what do you call a messy transliteration scheme?
Trans-litter-ation.
Abhishek Upadhya
brilliance..
Mara mara was valmickey's creation, dint want to put that here...
Although something to do with the anagrams 'rama - amar ' ... '
vanara - ravana ' should be tried out...
And, one more thing, was 'krishna' a racist term back
then,and would they replace it with 'african - american, or native
dravidian ' instead...?
The etymology, if i remember right, applies to Krishnā , a.k.a
draupadi as well...
Abhishek Upadhya
priya venkateshan
as for transliteration, roman to devanagari is quite okay on quillpad.com. it works rather well for hindi... don't know how it works on sanskrit.
indians never do well in short bicycle races... that's coz they speak sans crit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterium
Mohan K.V
priya venkateshan
i'm sure he fought vali-antly before that.
Abhishek Upadhya
priya venkateshan
it was about twin brothers who like the same girl and one of them killing the other in the end.
Abhishek Upadhya
priya venkateshan
priya venkateshan
priya venkateshan
SAI GANESH
and let F be the 4x4 'flipper' matrix
F = [ 0 0 0 1;
0 0 1 0;
0 1 0 0;
1 0 0 0];
Now the poem is simply,
P = [ A AF;
FA FAF];
[Here's when I realized I have no more hope in life.]
If the eigenvalues of A are e1,e2,e3 and e4 (A is all real and symmetric), what are the eigenvalues of P? There's a nice and elegant way to find them out :-)
Shreevatsa R
>> And Pv = kv with v' = [x' y'] means y = Fx because the second "row" is
>> F[first row]; and FF=I (flip flip) so Ax+AFy=kx means 2Ax=kx, so the
>> eigenvalues are twice those of A, each with multiplicity 2? There is
>> probably a nicer way...
>
> Very neat! One thing though, the multiplicities are wrong. You see right
Ah right. k(Fx)=ky implies y=Fx only when k≠0. :-)
So the only *nonzero* eigenvalues of P are twice the nonzero
eigenvalues of A (and each occurring only once, with even the "same"
eigenspace, "same" meaning x <-> [x, Fx]), and the rank of P is at
most the rank of A (because no new rows in the bottom part of A) so if
A has rank n-m (and assuming A is normal, e.g. Hermitian, e.g. real
and symmetric :)), P has the same n-m nonzero eigenvalues and 0 n+m
times.
>> And I don't think you need A's being real and symmetric :-)
>
>
> I'm terrified of complex numbers :-) Reminds me of this line: "I'm scared of
> numbers that can't be written as a fraction. It's an irrational fear." :-)
The trick is to not care, and simply think of a matrix as a linear
operator on a vector space, until a moment of truth arrives where
real/complex actually matters... and in many cases it never arrives.
Like the one about the mathematician who, when asked by the engineer
how he could possibly visualize the physics lecture about
12-dimensional spaces, says "Easy, think of an n-dimensional space and
set n=12" :-)
> And, one more thing, was 'krishna' a racist term back
> then,and would they replace it with 'african - american, or native
> dravidian ' instead...?
Oh God, I HATE "African American"...
http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=your_stupid_ideas
"[Dave Matthews Band] is the whitest band ever, which is saying
something considering 3 of the members are black, and Dave Matthews is
literally an African American (born in South Africa)."
[And Quillpad and http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic are very
cool, because they use a dictionary to guess what you mean, but that
also means it's rather hard to use them when you mostly want words
that are not in their dictionary...]
Back to topic...
If the bicycle race were held at night under lights, it seems it would
go on without a clear sense of direction or purpose... so would it be
called "lit crit"?
On Sun, Dec 7, 2008 at 2:57 AM, Abhishek Upadhya
<abhishe...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ya, they even made a movie about him.... It was called Wall-E...
>
Indeed. It was even about the stars. Wall-E and Tara.
Why does Vali never have anxiety attacks before going for battle?
Does he take Valium?
Abhishek Upadhya
Tuhina A Vijay
Abhishek Upadhya
priya venkateshan
Mahesh Mahadevan
for Abhimanyu, it turned out to be a vicious circle. Speaking of the
wheel of fortune, even the Pandavas had one with Karna, didn't they?