SANSKRIT-ROMANCE ONTOPOETICS
L’IMAGINATION DE BAUDELAIRE Sanskrit Correspondence
IDOEMINESCOLOGY
SANSKRIT-ROMANCE ONTOPOETICS
Through an ontologic poetics – and not compulsory Heidegger’s Dasein — we see beyond satyasya satyam (the reality of the real) or superintellectual reality of the mystery, the poet as such, as poet to poet, as Tagore’s personalized upanishadic advaitam (the mystery of one) which is anantam (infinite) and which is anandam (love).
Tagore’ s „O fire, my brother” sounds as Franciscan „il mio fratello sole”. Trans- cribing in Latin the Buddha’s fourth noble truths – suffering, origin of suffering, cessa-tion of suffering, the eightfold way leading to the cessation of suffering as – dolor, doloris ortus, doloris interims, octopartita via ad doloris sedationem Dhamapada -, Artur Schopenhauer has identified morally the bikkhus and mandicant order of St. Francisc. Sometime, the philosopher’s disciple, Mihai Eminescu, took again the way from Latin to Sanskrit, looking to change, for instance, the name of one his Romantic character called Mors (Death) into Nirwana. Significant enough, Jawaharlal Nehru confessed he didn’t know more Sanskrit than Latin. May be what meant Sanskrit creative unity to Tagore was for & as the Latin one for Ezra Pound in whom „Cantos” flows as if same Ganges of Petrarch, while, on the other hand, last century Mirza Ghalib didn’t spend time any more for reading Sikandar’s life. Now, from poetics to poetry as an orderWelt-literature could be observed as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin. Ontologically the mechanism looks freer, the theme of love for example trying to be one either as ecstatic knowledge or as disorder of human rational equilibrium.
Indo-Latin Kavya Purusha. A Latin ecce India still keeping in the beginnings ‘Java’ of „Mahabharata’ resounds from Catullus „India’s arid land’ and Horace’s peace of mind ‘with no gold nor tasks that India yelds’ to Cavalcanti’s chiostra/ Chel’s sente in India ciascun Unicorno’. Camōes’ ‘o illustre Ganges que na terra celesta tenho o berco verdadeiro’ or Góngora, from Baudelaire and Eminescu to Dario, Pessōa, Montale. On a modern Sanskrit ground we can attend – as Pound said about Brancusi – that ‘exploration toward getting all the forms into one form’ – Latin satires, epodes, odes, epistles, sermons continued into Italian sonetto. French chanson, Spanish romancero, Romanian doina, Portuguese redondilha. For, said Michael Madhu Sudan, ‘ cultivated by men of genius, our sonnet would in the time rival the Italian’. With such thought to a Sanskrit-Latin sonnet I published in my book of poems -Ardhanariswara” (International Academy ‘Mihai Eminescu’, Delhi, 1982). Lope de Vega’s Cuando el mejor planeta en el diluvio’. Baudelaire’s Correspondances’ and Eminescu’s ‘Venetia’, in Sanskrit version done together with U. R. Trikha, from Spanish, French, Romanian respectively,
‘Ganga Dnnuvyava saha samgachhati’
Lope de Vega
‘niseva vidyutiva rasarupani
dhvanayah prativadanti parasparam
Baudelaire
‘sthiram jivanam vishla venitsyayah’
Eminescu
One verse by Eugenio Montale,
‘cio che non siamo, cio che non vogliamo’
is transounded as follows into Sanskrit by Satyavrat Shastri,
‘na vayam smo na ca tatha yadvayam kameyawaho’.
- M. Masson confesses also a Sanskriturn-Latin smriti parallelling a Sanskrit sloka with one of Dante’s,
kavinam manasam naumi taranti pratibhambhasi
yatra hamsavayamsiva bhuvanani caturdasa
Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
With only a (half) sloka opening the Hymn of Origin from Rig Veda we face onto-poetry’s source.
Rig Veda („Hymn of Creation” starts):
nasad asin, no sad asit tadanim
Mihai Eminescu:
La-nceput, pe cind fiinta nu era, nici nefiinta
Sanskrit (re-)version by Rasik Vihari Joshi:
adau sampurnasunye na hi kimapi yada
sattvamasinna casi
Hindi, by Usha Choudhuri :
Pranihina. sattarahita. ajiva
Gujarati, by Mahendra Dave:
Tyare natun ko Sat, na asat
Punjabi, by Gurbhagat Singh:
Jadon thakian akhan nal main mombati
bujhaunda han
Malayalam, by O.M. Anujan (Dravidian languages, as Pali, taken with Sanskrit):
Adiyilekku nissunyata nannile
4.8.Tamil,byP.Balasubramanian:
MudhanMudhalil.thodakkathil,
Onrumatra verumaiyil
The Indian poets answer today, rather than old Latin continent, some Latin American creators, themselves looking forward personal Sanskrit poetic myths. Otherwise, the Sumitranand Pant’s inner sorrow keeps the journey in universal Sanskrit.
In the context of the Indian literature, looking upon some trends, spheres of influence amongst groups and generations – beyond the perception of common essences and inspirations summarizing a complex originality—there are new concomitantly universal and Indian personalities; so it’s to be contemplated that creative process, given impulse by the Sanskrit root growing up under the sun of the whole world. The incommunicable inner drama of the poet lets itself be shared through the directness of language, the ideal of beauty and human participation.
All are transfigured within the art, a if divine, and of the Prajapati (creator).
Anthropology of New Recognition. There is no need to say that making literature as anthropology and anthropology as literature one loses one’s chance to be recognized within either of them. But the theme of recognition itself can be a joint topic, on top of it may be Kalidasa’s “Recognition of Sakuntala” (Abhijnan Sakuntalam). Even after some two thousands or two thousands and a half years it seems that Dushyanta recognizes his deserted wife almost for the sake of their child, successor to the throne.
A XIX century’s replica is Cãlin poem by Mihai Eminescu, in which the recognition of the deserted wife, after years, starts by meeting the child.
Philosophy of recognition in modern times includes patterns drawn by Hegel, Pascal or Lacan. An anthropology of recognition would record also discrimination between cultures and their representatives to the extend of cultural cannibalism, colonialism-globalism, localism, etc. To be recognized during or after demise is very little related to one’s will. It seems rather an outer concept. It is quite hard to enjoy the non-recognition, but after all, then it is time to find God. Does God recognize a person unrecognised even by self? Is it possible to get God’s message when all expectations are transformed in lost obsession of Divinity?
Two poems of different ages and others reveal the devotion-recognition to Goddess or simply Woman. Shankaracharya’s Saundaryalahari and Dylan Thomas The Ballad of Long Legged Bite are almost at the antipodes one from the other, yet they may meet either in Shakta cult or in surrealistic mysticism of woman. Sanskrit worshipper makes a cosmic prayer to the Divine Mother on the whole and part by part, while the Welsh balladist thinks of woman in pieces thorn apart by sharks and lovers. While the religion – recognition of Uma, Daughter of Himalaya attracts hotly tantric and advaitin followers, the woman-bite is recognizable only through song recreation of the victim in tune with legions of raped and kidnapped heroines.
The woman is recognized as Goddess and as a bite almost in the spiritual inspiration, once an enthusiastic devotion, twice even still more literary as empathically ballad. The joy and sorrow come together as the characters are concerned, but both works convey either advaita-nondual, or Don’s love recognition in the same move as prayer and chatarsis causes-effects.
From thousand to thousand years, from Sakuntala to Saundaryalahari and ballad Goddess-bite other characters and feelings are transformed or forgotten also as recognition of the fact that recognition is not possible.
Feminine Theoanthropoetics. The anthro-poetry (I have proposed the term in 1970, at the 10th ICAES, New Delhi) may deal with a transcendental deputation of man as creator and of the creator as god but also with the human share of the supreme creation through the poetical cosmogonies. Some Indo-European creative myths are quite separated from the current theories of the universe but not so within poetry. For instance, the cosmic symbolism of woman’s hair grows independently fromKalidasas’s Usha/Dawn (Sanskrit-Romanian trans-soundation: ava yoseva suna/urusa yati prabhunjati/ave ei eva juna aurusa-n pridvor de zi” – George Anca. Ardkanariswara, International Academy Eminescu, Delhi, 1982) in the Veda or the Milk Ocean to Eminescu’s blonde Indian princess or Brancusi’s La negresse blonde.
The ambiguity between divinity and hair-fairness is obvious in the appellations of Krishna as Krishna (derived from ka – Brahma, ica – Siva, vo – one that goes before Brahma and Shiva; or from kesa-hair, and va – who possesses, fair-haired) or as Vasudeva meaning dark-blue or brown (M.N. Dut). And everybody enjoying, reading, commenting, dancing, translating (what be in that case a sort of trans-translation) Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, remembering or not the ten opening avatars of Vishnu will witness differently the climax-reproach of Radha speculating on Krishna’s name (as -‘dark”). While the avatars of Hyperion in Eminescu’s poem are marked in the eyes of moon-like girl, Catalina, just by changing color of his hair. „Thus Rāma banished will be no-Rāma”‘ („not charming”) says Manthara to Kaikeyi” (Rumayana by Valmiki). Sanskrit nymphs, poetesses, characters can be paralleled with blonde avatars in modern poetry, from Kalidasa’s Urvasi to Giraudoux’ Ondine.
- K. Warder, Indian Kavya Literature, vol. 2, Motilal Banarsidas, Delhi, 1974: „The travelers look with unblinking eyes peasant’s daughter made pale with flour. ‘ With desire, as if at Fortune coming forth from the Ocean of Milk” (Maharastri verse from 2 A. D.) „The allusion here is to the myth of the churning of the Ocean by the gods, which produced among other precious things the Goddess Fortune (Laksmi), moreover Fortune is symbolized by the color white. It is a commonplace that the gods’ eyes do not blink, thus the travelers’ stares would suggest that they were gods’ (p. 192). Vol. 3, 1977: From Kalidasa’s Urvashi: – „At the rite of her creation was the Moon the Creator, giving his charm? ‘ Was it Pleasure himself with the sensitive as the one aesthetic experience? Was it the Moon who is the source of flowers?’ – For how could an ancient sage, dull through studying the Veda, his interest averted from sense objects, create this delightful form?” (p. 139).
An almost feminine theoanthropoetics of the vision is retained by Abhinavagupta from a yoga tradition in which the eye is populated by many goddesses differently colored. Kami Chandra Pandey, Abhinavagupta. Chowkhamba. 1963, p. 533; „each eye has four orbits (Mandala) (i) white (ii) red (iii) white-black (iv) black. The first is the abode of the group of sixteen goddesses, the second of twelve, the third of eight and the fourth of four. In each of these four orbits one of the four powers, of creation, maintenance, annihilation and of manifesting itself in indefinable form, respectively predominates and so does one of the four, object (Prameya), means (Pramaaa), subject (Pramata), and knowledge (Pramiti)”.
Rajasekhara’s argument of the blind poet sustaining the theory of poetic imagination, pratibha, meets Eminescu’s blind sculptor as well as Brancusi’s sculpture for the blind.
The feminine rhyme of the Ganges in Romance poetry recalls an endless flowing creation over the human phalanges . Gongora’s (and many other poets’) „el Ganges/falanges” sending to the nritti sequence Ganga springing from the head of Shiva. Pierhyme cosmic dance in Camōes : „Eu sou o illustro Ganges, que na terra /Celeste tenho o berço verdadeiro”. Al. Philipide still baroque „picioroange falange”. Giambattista Marino: „De la vene de Gange il fabro scelse / Il piu pregiato et lucido metallo. Virgil in Georgica: „usque coloratis amnis deuxus ab Indus./ et uiridem Aegyptum nigra fecundant harena” (the river flowing down from the colored Indians / and fertilizes green Egypt with its black sand – tr. David West). Sanskrit-Portuguese rhyming in Mariano Garcias: „Terra de Sabios, e imortaes poetas / Philosophos, videntes e ascotas./Valmiki. Somadeva, e Kalidasa, / Budha, Manu, Panini e Vynssa / Durgavati. Maytreyi e Kalinatha Dvantari e Soma e Aryabratha /. Kaverajah. Jayadeva o Vedanta, E tanto genio, tanta gloria, tanta. Surréaliste natya rhyme in Apollinaire : „L’époux royal de Sacontale / Las de vaincre se rejouit / Quand il la retrouva plus pâle / D’attente et d’amour pâlie/ Caressant sa gazelle mâle”.
L’IMAGINATION DE BAUDELAIRE Sanskrit Correspondence
A few expressions here, like Anandavardhana’s kavi-prajapatih or Baudelaire’s, could be related, somehow, to Kamala Das’ „when you learn to swim do not enter a river that has no ocean”.
With this alliterative modern-maudit Baudelaire, but also acarya or padah, like the old Abhinavagupta we speak of poetry and poetics /metaphysics/science/dandyism, etc. poetry in correspondence /unnaya/ symbol/verse/ prose, etc., poetry within logos/rasa-dhvani etc. Poet, daemon and lecteur/sahrdaya are one, the Swedenborg’s heaven-man. And beyond a Jesuit ballet of forgiving-conviction around, the Parisian poet living between 1821-1867, we see again „Les Fleurs du Mal „, opened in 1857, while Flaubert published ‘Madame Bovary’, Dostoievsky and Tolstoy gathered their momentum, Wagner ended the second act of ‘Tristan’; „such a year matters in the history of spirit” (André Suares).
As kavyapurusha (spirit of poetry) meets sahityavidya (appreciative criticism) making her his bride in Vidarbha and creating Vaidarbhi Riti, the modern poetic mind travels within the temple of the nature – correspondence/ lila (play) of the heaven with the earth – in Cythere, Icaria, Lesbos, to a Limbus, a sunset, a mist mixed with rain, a Paris, a Cocagne Land, a Capua, a Parnassus. But in the island of Venus, the temple is changed in a hanged alter ego. Like following descendita ad inferna of Ulysses, Aeneas, Jesus, Dante, ‘Chaque jour vers l’Enfer nous descendons d’ un pas’, and analogically to Bhavabhuti introducing the scene of Madhava’s selling flesh in the crematory, in the course of development of Rasa of love, Baudelaire contemplates the divine essence in the corpse of Venus. Being the correspondence of the life with the death, of the spleen with the eternal ideal, the journey never ends. Diabolical or paradisaical, the poetic correspondences reveal through the prayoga of the poet a self-poetry as rasavada and sarasvatyastattvam, an alchemy of grief which will be transformed by Rimbaud in an alchemy of verb. Over versed poetics – like in Horace and alamkara sastra -, among dense perfumes, with vaporized and, in its divine momentum – before the loss of paradise -, centralized self, the poet remains the stranger, the mysterious of his first prose poem, the lover as in Kalidasa’s ‘Meghaduta’, of the clouds, the going clouds, the marvelous clouds, clouds which are imitating his life and are thinking through him as also he thinks through the things, the clouds like the perfumes of the ‘Correspondences’, „ayant 1′ expansion des choses infinies”.
Reading Baudelaire within Sanskrit context, beyond the poet as voyant in the temple of clouds, the correspondences are to be felt individually from both Indian and Latin carmen-kavya through the ancient epos, Camoens’ epic India, Eminescu’s rig-vedic romanticism, even if it is said, for instance, about Edwin Arnold’s translation of ‘Gitagovinda’ that is „so unrecognizable baudlerized”. To remember Baudelaire as a translator, „People accuse me, of imitating Edgar Poe! Do you know why I translated Poe so patiently? Because he was like me. The first time I opened a book of his I saw, with horror and delight, not just the subjects I had dreamt of, but sentences I had thought of, and written by him twenty years before”(1864).
In Kalidasa’s comparison of poetry to Ardhanariswara (the symbolic image of Siva representing one half of his body as Parvati) the goddess Parvati is Vak (parole) and god Paramesvara is Artha (logos/conventum), their union as Ardhanariswara signifying, as V.Raghavan reminds it, the greatest ideal of poetry variously emphasized as sahitya, sammitatva, etc. For Baudelaire, the poetry – this fruit of the sensitivity of imagination – is absolutely true only into another world.
The words from the dictionary of external nature, says Baudelaire, have to be selected and arranged by the creative artist using the imagination, „la reine des facultées”, an almost divine faculty, giving to the poet or to the musician the capability of translating the hieroglyphs of the spiritual reality. Only the imagination comprises the poetry. The true imagination of the true poet, who is also always a critic and a reader. As mystery of creation either in written word, music or painting, there is a blank, lacuna, to be fulfilled by the imagination of the reader or listener, which suggests similar ideas in different minds. And through which we can find in different times and spaces Kalidasa’s corresponding imaginative sympathy of the audience, the whole Sanskrit emphasis on sahradaya, – l’ homne de lettres, l’homme d’esprit -, answering „le poète, le prêtre et le soldat, l’homme qui chante, 1′ homme qui bonit, l’homme qui sacrifie et se sacrifie”.
IDOEMINESCOLOGY
Mihai Eminescu’s Rasa-dhvaniah. The Sanskrit correspondence with the Romanian culture and poetry culminates with Mihai Eminescu, a reader of Vedas and Upanishads in original. In Romania, it is taught at school that „The First Epistle” or „The Dacian’s Prayer” (Nirvana) are connected with Rig Veda. Of course the analogy is fundamental but the correspondence lies both in the common or community cosmogony mind and particularly in the universal intuition of real life, of sat (meaning „village” – in Romanian, „truth” in Sanskrit).
Eminescu’s dream of Carmen Saeculare is also of mahakavyas and of mahavakyas, as he entitled a poem ‘Tat twam asi’, and through ‘Eu sunt Luceafarul’ (I am the Evening Star) comes in mind ‘Aham Brahma asmi’. Or his melancholy turns into verse – ‘melancolia-mi (…) se face vers’ – like Valmiki’s soka into sloka. As „Rig Veda” entered even his journalism, one may say, as alamkarika, ‘raso vai sah’.
Indo-rhymes answer chosen words and compounds : „Vede/revede. Gangele/falangele, coline/bramine, carmine/latine, increde-i/Vedei, dat mi-i Atmei, Elorii/norii, ateismul/budismul. iubi-va/Siva, bengalic/italic, predic/Vedic, naframa/Brahma, Kama/ iama, aurora/ Elora’.
A „restituendo’ (Rosa Del Conte) work is the Sanskrit version of Eminescu’s „Luceafărul’/”Divyagraha” by Dr. Urmila Rani Trikha in collaboration with the present author. As the names of Brahma and Buddha are written rhymed in manuscript variants of „Luceafărul” and the association with it of „Katha Upanishad” (Nachiketas-Yama compared with Hyperion-Father) is familiar by now to the eminescologists as well as to the Indian students in Romanian. To „Rig Veda”: Brahma and the identity of everything with god; the feminine Ushas; the young and at the same time ancient twin, brothers Ashvina; Agni as Varuna in the evening; the golden son of the waters Apam-Napat consounding with Romanian Latin apă (water); the king Varuna making path for sun and constellations: the golden bright-rayed Savitr; Yama as the god of death and of life wearing nilāmbara; Purusha as Jivatma separating himself from Virat; Sarama crossing the waters of Rasa. From: „Brahadāranyaka Upanishad”: „O Maytreyi, a wife is dear to her husband not for her sake, but for the sake of his own Atma”. Other correspondences with Kalidasa’s „Raghuvamsam”, „Rtusamhara”, Shakuntalam. „Meghadutam’, with refrains from Bhavabhuti, Amaru, Jayadeva.
Both poetical work and thinking of Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), the national poet of Romania, “the last romantic” of Europe, are connected with Indian culture. The complete series of Eminescu’s Works published by Editura Academiei includes in the XIVth volume – “Philosophical, historical and scientific translations” (1983) – also the translation into Romanian from German of Franz Bopp’s Sanskrit Grammar after Kritische Grammatik der Sanskrita-Sprache in kurzerer Fassung von Franz Bopp, Zweite Ausgabe, 1845. Perhaps most mysterious manuscript of Eminescu, was published for the first time in 1983, after 100 years of its conception, but only in facsimile, due to lack of printing Devanagari letters in Romania, at that time.
The editors, Petru Creţia and Amita Bhose, introduced the researchers and readers in the laboratory, all suprizing for Romanian culture, of Mihai Eminescu, the translator. Preocupation for Sanskrit could appear like a final of work in eternity. Gramatica sanscrită în versiunea lui Eminescu (Sanskrit grammar in version of Eminescu) appeared for the first time in printed devanagari, in 2004, at Bibliotheca Publishing, editors – Dimitrie Vatamaniuc, George Anca, Ina Brat and Vlad Sovarel, under care of Romanian-Indian-Cultural-Association.
I can speak as a translator of ‘Gitagovinda’ into Eminescu’s language and meters. My Romanian version was released within a gathering organized by the Association of Indian Comparative Literature and the Department of Modern Indian Languages on 3rd May 1983 at the University of Delhi. I am grateful to all who were attending the same and to those who commented it always encouragingly. I am grateful, of course, to Jayadeva and Eminescu.
The ‘Gitagovinda’ in Romanian may be compared to the Sanskrit version of Mihai Eminescu’s ‘Luceafarul’ (Hyperion) signed by Urmila Rani Trikha in ‘Latinitas’ published as a book under the International Academy Mihai Eminescu having as a president Amrita Pritam.
Mihai Eminescu’s ‘Luceafarul’ (Hyperion) appeared in 1883, in Vienna. Out of a genuine smriti, we have printed in Delhi the Urmila Rani Trikha’s Sanskrit version. Divyagrahah”. This translation from Romanian has been appreciated by well-known Sanskrit scholars like Satyavrat Shastri, Kapila Vatsyayan, Sergiu Al-George, enjoyed by literary audience and students.
There are many Romanian studies on Eminescu and Rigveda, Katahaupanishad, the Buddha Kalidasa, Tagore, and India as such, which like Max Muller he hadn’t seen physically. ‘Luceafarul’ is the ‘Gitagovinda’ of the Romanians. In both ‘Gitagovinda’ and ‘Luceafarul’ gods speak directly, as Govinda and Demiurgos Radha and Catalina are in love with gods. The ten avatars evoked in one, at Jayadeva are three simultaneous avatars – Demiurgos, Hyperion, Catalin – at Eminescu. The double reading of ‘Jaya jaya Deva Hari’ speaks for, both poems of the belonging of the poet to god or of the belonging of god to the poet.
The translation of Gitagovinda in Romanian was thus done in a very daily life, culture and language in India. In the same very room where we gathered, one afternoon in 1981, October, after Dr. Sergiu Al-George, the translator of the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ into Romanian, had lectured on Rupaka, I’ve asked him why not Gitagovinda. But one week later he was no more. With his death, the Sanskrit became for me not a foreign language any more. So, naturally, my translation is dedicated to Sergiu Al-George. Listening to Dr. Trikha’s translation into Sanskrit from Eminescu, he also told us that it was as if he had heard for the first time ‘Luceafarul’ (Divyagrahah).
Dyachronically, the best spirits of Romanian culture were attracted by Indian thought (Blaga, 1945). There is a confluence (Al-George, 1981), a correspondence with perennial India. Our pre-christian Dacian deity Zalmoxis was interpreted for instance by Keith in connection with the Hindu doctrine of immortality. Alexandria, Sindipa, Varlaam and Ioasaf are amongst fundamental of Romanian medieval readings. The Buddha is represented as Ioasaf in Christian murals. The ‘antibarorea’ synthesizes in the 18th century Ion Budai-Deleanu’s masterpiece Tziganiada the forms of government as envisaged by gypsies claiming their origin from Jundandel of India. (By the way, the ruler patronizing the talkative governants to be is nobody else than Vlad Tsepesh, alias – according to many – Drakula).
Synchronically, during the 19th century, newspapers and magazines from all Romanian provinces wrote on Indian widows (1829), Csomo de Koroszy (1830, 1842 – the death of ‘our patriot’ recorded in ‘Gazeta de Transilvania’), maharaja Ranjit Singh and Martin Honigberger (1838, 1839, 1857), morals of Indians (1840), caves from Ellora (1846), Ostindia (1857), etc. On the old paths of Dimitrie Cantemir or Miron Costin, polihistorians of the same century like Ion Eliade Radulescu and Bogdan Petriceicu Hasdeu have shaped both romantic and Indo-Europeanistic renaissance while the great classical writers – Mihai Eminescu, Ion Creanga, Ion Luca Caragiale, George Cosbuc, Titu Maiorescu – created in correspondence with Indo-universal values. At the same time, the school came into existence – the first course of Sanskrit was begun by Constantin Georgian in 1876 at the University of Bucharest -, and grew up during 20th century trough generations of students in philosophy, letters and Indology having – in the universities of Bucharest, Iassy, Cernowitz, Cluj-Napoca – as professors: B.P. Hasdeu, C. Georgian, N. Iorga, V. Parvan, N. Ionescu, I. Iordan, A. Frenkian, A. Rosetti, L. Blaga, G. Calinescu, T. Vianu, M. Eliade, A. Graur, T. Simenschy, V. Banateanu, N. Zberea, C. Poghirc, S. Al-George, V.P. Dyal, I. Pandey, I.N. Chaudhuri, A. Bhose, S.B. Singh, Y. Tiwary, S.Kumar, G.Anca, L. Theban, M.Itu, N. Samson, S. Fanar, P. Lazarescu a.o.
The second classical age of Romanian culture and literature between the two world wars strengthened a new correspondence through the creations by C. Brancusi, L. Blaga, I. Barbu, M. Sadoveanu, L. Rebreanu, M. Eliade, V. Voiculescu, I. Pillat a.o. In all, the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Buddhism seem to lead to correspondence (through Eminescu, Brancusi, Blaga, Eliade, Galaction, Voiculescu), but epics, natya, lyrics of Sanskrit, Dravidian or modern Indian languages works are shared rather through synchronistic studies and translations. For the future (these are considerations rendered as such from 1970’s), the knowledge and openness to Panini and Abhinavagupta, Bhartrihari, Gunadin and Jayadeva are likely to be correspondingly approached by new comers. (“Future” was –it is – much of Shankaracharya and advaita). Up to this point (bindu?), many translations from Mahabharata for instane have been done by George Cosbuc, Psychora, Irineu Mihalcescu, Theofil Simenschy, D. Nanu, M. Eliade, G. B. Duica, A. E. Baconschi, S. Al-George, I.L. Postolache, C. Filitti – many versions of Bhagavad Gita, one published in 1944, during the war. Tiruvaluvar Tamil’s kurals appeared in Romanian as early as 1876. Traditionally, Eminescology and Brancusology include always larger indological comments. Leading personalities of Romanian culture have written about Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi as representatives of whole Indian and world culture
After years, even psychoanalyzable, above vague hiding concepts of correspondence and school are but fact and desiderata in absence of real possibilities of, with Dandekar’s term, ‘exercises of Indology’. There were a few others, e.g.: natya rhyme, Sanskrit-Latin Onto-poetics, feminine anthropoetry, inverse nostalgia, crawfish… Yet a freedom of Indology like freedom of expression seemed flooding in 1990’s in Romania, with a start of a new Indological school – MA dissertations in philosophy, history, philology on Indian themes, Hindi courses in Bucharest university, Romanian-Indian Cultural Association on the steps on Centre of Indian Studies projected by late Dr. Amita Bhose, broadcastings, publications, Indian Library and so on. International Academy Mihai Eminescu, after being founded in Delhi in 1981 and existing there for three years, restarted in Bucharest after 1990. But old coherence of classicity followed by ‘coherence’ of repression, made room to postmodern destruction or sect brain-washing. Many diaries form already a field Indology confirming diversely chronic views of cultural shock. Confusing enough are rash of some self styled gurus, artificial puja culture, para-psychological Indology. Individual Indology of solitary adventurers of the fields may prove fruitful especially with growing quality leading to solidarity in long run research forming and reforming a genuine school based on Eminescu and Eliade heritage.
This is a very personal outlook, of a writer who preferred to make ‘indological’ novels (the series Indian ApoKALIpse is in 9 volume) and books of poems.
It can work a saying of retiring at time from anything but Indology. There are born Indologists. Wars, jails, repression keep aware that spirit of abhijnan in them. A try of symbolic recognition was the lecture tour in Romnia of prof. Satya Vrat Sastri, in 2001, at our invitation, with award of Oradea University Honoris Causa Doctorate to Indian scholar. In the beginning of the new millenium an option for Sanskrit as leading chapter in further studies became obvious. What a passeist step, at best, some may say.
Sergiu Al-George died in Octomber 1981, one week after he returned to Romania from India where had participated to International Congress of Sanskrit in Varanasi. I said then he was too happy, that happiness killed him. All suffering of his life was dispersed by translating Gita. So may have it been. I discussed many things with him. Or could he have died for Sanskrit?
Notes
Some Indian Writings and Authors in Romanian (apud Latinitas, No 2, October 1982, Delhi):
Vedas (Rig-Veda, Atharva, hymns), Mahabharata (Savitri, Nala and Damayanti, Bhagavad Gita, Bhima, Dasharatas, Tilotama, Urvashi), Ramayana, Upanishads (Kata, Mundaka), Manava Dharma Shastra, Tirukurral, Panchatantra, Hitopadesha, Vetalapanchashatika, Shakuntala, Gitanjali, Discovery of India, Amaru, Sri Aurobindo, Ageya, Mulk Raj Anand, O.M. Anujan, Muhamad Alvi, Manik Banerji, Baren Basu, Vasant Bapat, M.A.Bhagavan, Bhabani Bhatacharya, Lokenath Bhattacharya, Shukanta Bhattacharya, Sisir Bhattacharya, Amita Bhose (Ray), Prem Chand, Margaret Chatterjee, Nirendranath Chakravarti, Rani Chanda, Krishna Chandar, Kamala Das, Nilima Das, Sisir Kumar Das, Prabhu Vidyasagar Dyal, Anita Desai, Maitreye Devi (Sen), Rajlakshmi Devi, Nissim Ezekiel, Nida Faazli, Mahatma Gandhi, Sarath Kumar Gosh, Bimal Chandra Gosh, Ibrahim Gialis, Muhammad Iqbal, Jayadeva, Ali Sardar Jafri, Kalidasa, Humayun Kabir, Prabhjot Kaur, Krishna Kripalani, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ananda Kumarasvami, P. Lal, Prabhakar Machwe, Rupendra Guha Majumdar, Keshav Malik, Pari Makalir, Kamala Markandeya, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Kansal Mishra, Anna Sujata Modayl, Sitakant Mohapatra, Dhan Gopal Mukherjee, Jawaharlal Nehru, R. K. Narayan, Pritish Nandi, Kedar Nath, Amrita Pritam, Palagummi Padmaraju, Anvayiar Ayappa Panikar, Induprakash Pandey, K. M. Pannikar, Deva P. Patnaik, N. Pichamurti, Phanishvaranath Renu, Z. Zahher Sajjad, Vinod Seth, Satya Vrat Shastri, Madan Gopal Sinhal, Shahryar, Harbhajan Singh, Navtej Singh, Anant Gopal Shorey, Pillai Thakazhi Sivasankara, Tiruvalluvar, Rabindranath Tagore, Valmiki, Vyassa, Narayana Menon, Valathol, Mahadevi Varma, Srikanta Varma, Kapila Vatsyayan, T.S.Venugopala, Martin Vikramasinghe, Syed Sajjad Zaheer.
Some Romanian Books on India (apud Indoeminescology, 1994, Bucharest):
Sergiu Al-George: Indian Philosophy in Texts. Bhagavad Gita, Samkhyakarika, Tarka-Samgraha, 1971; Language and thought in Indian Culture, 1976; Archaic and Universal, 1981
George Anca: Indian ApoKALIpse, I-VII, 1997-2003, Indo-Eminescology, 1994; The Buddha, 1994; Mamma Trinidad, 2001; Manuscripts from the Living Sea1996; Sanskritikon, 2002
Tancred Banateanu: Life and Work of Rabindranat Tagore, 1961
Amita Bhose: Eminescu and India, 1978; Bengali Proverbs and Thoughts, 1975
Ion Budai-Deleanu: Tziganiada, 1800
Ion Campineanu-Cantemir: Sati or Pikes of Love, 1928
Al. N. Constantinescu: The Buddhism and the Christianism, 1928
George Cosbuc: Sanskrit Anthology. Fragments from Rig-Veda, Mahabharata, Ramayana. Lyrical Poems and Proverbs, 1897; Kalidasa – Sacontala, 1897
Mircea Eliade: India, 1935; Workshop, 1935;Maitreyi, 6th edition 1946; Asian Alchemy. Chinese and Indian Alchemy, 1935; The Myth of Reintegration, 1939; Yoga, 1936; Patanjali et le Yoga, 1962
Irineu Mihalcescu: The Cosmogonies of Indians, 1907; Bhagavad Gita, 1932
Cezar Papacostea: The Ancient Philosophy in Mihai Eminescu’s Works, 1932
Cicerone Poghirc: Origins of a Civilization: The Ancient India, 1972;
Theofil Simenschy: The Grammar of Sanskrit Language, 1959; KathaUpanisad, 1937, Mundaka-Upanisad, 1939; Bhagavad Gita, 1944; Story of Nala. Episode from Mahabharata, 1937; Panciatantra, 1931/1969
Iuliu Valaori: Elements of Indo-European Linguistics (1924); Main Indo-European languages, 1929
Some topical studies
Le mythe de l’atman; the semiosis of zero, la fonction révélatrice des consonnes;l’Inde antique et les origines du structuralisme; Brancusi et l’Inde (Sergiu Al-George); Tagore – a Skeleton Poem (Tudor Arghezi); le naga dans les mythes populaires roumains (Tancred Banateanu); new contributions on a ‘proto-Indian’ language (Vlad Banateanu); Rabindranath Tagore in Europe; Mahatma Gandhi as I knew him (Lucian Blaga); classical Indian literature in poetry of Eminescu; classical Indian literature in poetry of George Cosbuc (Sergiu Demetrian); carols and Vedic hymns (Aron Densusianu); influence of ancient Indian culture on Romanian contemporary literature (Ion Dimitriu); Indian demonology and a Romanian legend; bi-unite et totalite dans la pensée indienne; la concezione della liberta nel pensiero indiano; contributions to the philosophy of yoga; cosmic homology and yoga ; Durga-Puja; Duryodhana and the Walking Dream; pre-Aryan elements in Hinduism; mystic erotic in Bengal; woman and love; philology and culture; introduction in Samkhya philosophy; introduction en tantrisme; magic and métapsychique; la mandragore et les mythes de la naissance miraculeuse; the metaphysic of the upanishads; religious motives in upanishads; mudra; symbolisme aquatique; il problema del male e della liberazione nella filosofia Samkhya Yoga; erotic rituals; il rituale hindu e la vita interiore; sapta padani kramati; les sept pas de Bouddha; the symbolism of sacred tree; symbolisme indien de l’abolition du temps; Indian humanism; secret languages; vernamala; Bhagavad-Gita in Romanian (Mircea Eliade); Purusa-Gayomard-Anthropos; Greek skepticism and Indian philosophy; la theorie du sommeil d’apres les Upanisad et la Yoga; wherever there is smoke there is fire (A.Frenkian); a Romanian exorcism and an Indian exorcism from Veda; Die philosophischen und religiosen Anschauungen in ihrer Entwicklung; (B.P.Hasdeu); reflection on India in Romanian Popular Literature Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Keith Hitchins); divinites indo-européennes aux populations de l’Asie Antérieure et de la Mediterrannee; the formation of Vedic Pantheon; errors in the analysis of phonetic sequences of primitive Indo-European (G.Ivanescu); Veda, the oldest Indo-European text (Henri Jacquier); due pessimisti romantici sotto l’influssi del pensiero indiano antico; influsso del pensiero indiano antico sull concetto di uomo in Mihai Eminescu; influsso del pensiero indiano sull concetto di donna di Mihai Eminescu (D.Marin); Eminescu and Indian philosophy (Cezar Papacostea); lat. Nubo-nubes et le mythe d’Indra; the morals of Nirvana (Ion Petrovici); Indo-Traco-Dacica; sur les traces du transylvain Martin Honigberger, médicin et voyageur en Inde; Constantin Georgian, the founder of Romanian Indology (Arion Rosu); the origin of universe in the conception of Indians and Greeks; supreme being in Hindu mystic (Theofil Simenschy); researches of Indo-Aryan linguistics; actualité de la Grammaire de Panini; Indo-romanica estruturas sintacticas an contacto (Laurentiu Theban); Romania me hindi; puridhan ka phalahari baba; Romaniya ka yayavar Aleku Ghika (N.Zberea)
Energetic nonviolence and non-possession – main themes of the master course in psychology-sociology (by George Anca);
Exploring social violence. Motivation of violent behavior (protection, „fight or flight”, groups and identity). Conflict prevention – systemic (globalization, international crime), structural (predatory states, horizontal inequities), operational (accelerators and detonators of conflict – e.g. Poverty of sources, affluence of small guns, elections).
Anthropology of nonviolence: Jain ahimsa and aparigraha. Buddhist karuna. Christian pity. Gandhian nonviolence. Principles of anekanta (relativity).
Ancient Mahavira has classified people in three categories: having many desires (Mahechha), having few desires (Alpechha), having no desires (Ichhajayi). The economy of nonviolence, along with poverty eradication, applies also Mhavira’s concept of vrati (dedicated) society. He gave three directions regarding production: not to be manufacturated weapons of violence (ahimsappyane), not to be assembled weapons (asanjutahikarne), not to be made instruction for sinful and violent work (apavkammovades). Following anekanta, the philosophy of Mahavira synthesizes personal fate and initiative.
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George ANCA
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