At the end of the last tidbits, I left you with two shlokas from BG.
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णान्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही
नैनं च्छिन्दन्ति शस्त्राणि नैनं दहति पावकः
न चैनं क्लेदयन्त्यापो न शोषयति मारुतः
Break them up in accordance with aksharas. I will continue to use Roman for this, as it is easier.
va sam si jir na ni ya tha vi ha ya na va ni grih na ti na ro pa ra ni
tat ha sha ri ra ni vi ha ya jir nan yan ya ni sam ya ti na va ni de hi
nai nam chin dan ti shas tra ni nai nam da ha ti pa va kah
na chain am kle da yan tya pa na sho sha ya ti ma ru tah
I asked you, which is अनुष्टुभ् and which is त्रिष्टुभ? If you remember, I also told you that in addition to number of aksharas, there are additional restrictions, such as on L and G, that are imposed on metres. Let’s ignore those finer nuances. They get into too much of detail on prosody. At an elementary level, अनुष्टुभ् mumumust have 16 aksharas in every pada. Therefore, 2.23 is अनुष्टुभ्. Simple. Now look at 2.22. It has 22 aksharas per pada. That can’t be अनुष्टुभ्. It is त्रिष्टुभ. Let me be more accurate. त्रिष्टुभ doesn’t have two padas. It has four padas of 11 aksharas each. I repeat, त्रिष्टुभ has additional L and G kind of restrictions, but we are avoiding that level of detail. We are only sticking to the basic syllable count. So 2.22 is त्रिष्टुभ and I should actually write it as the following. It will help if you take out of your copy of BG. You will also understand why some shlokas are written with four lines and some with two.
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि
तथा शरीराणि विहाय
जीर्णान्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही
But wait a minute. That can’t be right either. This is breaking the syllable count required in the four padas, in the third and the fourth pada specifically. Hence, the shloka will be written as the following.
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा-
न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही
As I have said earlier, many people write on and about BG. Some are great religious leaders and have produced fabulous interpretations. One such famous edition and famous commentary of BG (I won’t name it), writes 2.23 as the following. All I can say is that, no matter how good the understanding of philosophy and religion, the understanding of Sanskrit poetry is bad. The rendering below has broken the metre.
वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णान्य-
न्यानि संयाति नवानि देही
The choice of metres by poets was a conscious and important decision and depended on what kind of poetry one was trying to write, that is, on the subject. Do you recognize the following shloka? Unless you have dabbled in Sanskrit poetry, there is no reason why you should. This is the first shloka from Kalidasa’s famous “Meghadutam”, translated as “Cloud Messenger”. It is beautiful lyrical poetry. The plot is very simple. A yaksha, one of Kubera’s servants, has been banished from Alakapuri, the capital city of Kubera, where all the yakshas live. He has been banished for one year and is pining for his beloved. At the onset of the monsoon, the yaksha sees a cloud and sends the cloud as a messenger to his beloved. The first part of Meghadutam, Purvamegha, is when the cloud goes to Alakapuri and the second part, Uttaramegha, is when the cloud returns. By the way, the beauty of Meghadutam was one of the triggers for my getting interested in Sanskrit. The beauty is in the description of nature. As a story, there is nothing else. As the cloud proceeds, Kalidasa makes the cloud stop and pause, so that he can describe nature and the geography. Then he makes it rush forward again and stop again. Pause, dash forward, pause, dash forward, that kind of thing.
कश्चित्कान्ताविरहगुरूणा स्वाधिकारात्प्रमत्तः
शापपेनास्तंगमितमहिमा वर्षभोग्येण भर्तुः
Let’s do our standard breaking up into aksharas. I am only doing it for the first pada, the second pada will be similar. The first observation is that the pada has 17 aksharas.
Kash chit kan ta vi ra ha gu ru na sva dhi ka rat pra mat tah
Let us do our LG bit now and the pattern is GGG GLL LLL GGL GGL G. In that mix of G and L, guru and laghu, long and short, do you see how the metre itself captures that sense of pause, dash forward, pause, dash forward? This is known as mandakranta chhanda. Poetry is very difficult to translate. It is even more difficult to do this for Sanskrit poetry. How on earth do you capture the metre? I have been remiss. How can I give you a shloka without giving you its translation? I won’t give you a word-for-word translation. Perhaps I will do that in the future. For the moment, let me give you some sense of that shloka, not just the first pada. There was a yaksha (Don’t look for the word yaksha in the first shloka. We will know that it was a yaksha only in the second shloka, which I have not quoted.) who was distracted and derelict in functioning of his duties. He was therefore cursed by his lord (Kubera) that he would be banished for one year and lost his glory. He suffered severely because of separation from his wife.
Let me leave you today with a bit from another great poet. This is Jayadeva’s ”Gita Govinda”, written in the 12th century. The translation of this bit is his (Krishna’s) dark body is smeared with sandalwood paste. He is attired in yellow garments. I can translate Vanamali either as Krishna’s proper name, or as someone who is garlanded with wild flowers. Once you do the L-G, do you notice a certain langurous quality about the metre chosen? I do. After all, this is erotic poetry, after a fashion.
Chan da na char chi ta ni la ka le va ra pi ta va sa na va na ma li
LLL LLL GLL LLL GLL LLL LGL
