Love or Leave Bhartuharis Dilemma

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan

Page 26

अनुसंधान - १७•26
I myself was passing on.
Greed didn't grow old and leave my body, I myself grew old."
24. Kosambi reads tanute at this point. However, he also indicates that the objective support for the reading is not as in the case of the other words to the stanza and that manute can also lay a claim for being the authentic reading. An idiom of the form drstih tri-bhuvanaṁ brahma tanute seems less than probable in Sanskrit. Furthermore, in most Indian scripts ta is more likely to result from ma (through some parts of the written syllable becoming faint) than the other way
round.
25. I am not certain about the sense of sami-bhūtā intended by the poet. Normally, an anjana cures the eyes or makes them stronger (for the latter, recall references in literature to ointments that enable a hero etc. to see in the dark or to see a hidden treasure.) In view of these associations and the context, sami-bhūtā should mean 'one which has come to its normal state' or, much less likely, 'one which has become equal to the task to be performed to the challenge to be faced.*
26. The readable translations by Ingalls (1965:423), Miller (1967:7, 1990:31) and Bailey (1996:203) have helped me in my choice of words, but I found them all to be unnecessarily diffusing the dramatic contrast in the original.
27 (a) The translatins by Ingalls (1965:421-422), Miller (1967:135, 1990:96) and cort (1983:36) deviate too much from the original. (b) Kosambi's (1948: introducton p. 81) comment on the stanza ("No king who had renounced would have advised his soul to renounce if it could not taste the pleasures of royalty.") misses the point. 28. Translation as in Fitzgerald 1859 (first edition), rubai 11. 29. I have taken some help from Miller (1967:87 = 1990:72) in offering this translation. I had to set aside her translation because she misconstrues the original here to an extent that cannot be overlooked.
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30. Alos, partially or indirectly in stanzas 27 (maṇinā bhūṣitaḥ sarpaḥ kim asau na bhayaṁkaraḥ "Does a serpent cease to be dangerous because it has a diadem hood ?"), 37 (sva-mahima yady asti kim mandanaiḥ "If one has a majestic personality, what need is there of embellishments ?"), and 68 (vibhūṣaṇaṁ maunam apaṇḍitānām "Refraining from speech is the ornament of fools").
31. (a) Miller 1967:69 has swelling bosses" instead of “swelling temples." In other respects her earlier translation is identical with the one reproduced