Read Book Online : http://www.archive.org/stream/birthofwargodpoe00kaliuoft#page/n27/mode/2up

Downoad pdf Book : http://ia360633.us.archive.org/3/items/birthofwargodpoe00kaliuoft/birthofwargodpoe00kaliuoft.pdf

You really dig up treasure troves.

This is the back cover. Could you plz show pix of the Front cover

This is just an image for visual appeal. The original 1879 edition does not have any image on its cover.

I went through the introduction and parts of the translation. It is a bit old fashioned, obviously. I would recommend a recent translation published by Rupa ( done by Rajendra Tandon). It has the Sanskrit shloka along with the translation. Among others. Penguin has published Kalidasa, The Loom of Time which does not have Kumarasambhavam but a great selection of his other poetry with a really useful Introduction, Appendices and Notes. A problem with 19th and early 20th Century translations by Europeans I find is that they are completely out of sync with the culture. There is a mixture of disparagement ( mandatory given their Greek and Latin education and inculcated feeling of superiority to a native culture) , reluctant admiration and a defensiveness about it. They also gloss over much that they feel will offend a primarily European audience of the 19th century. A prime example is the translation of the Kamasutra by Burton which ended up being a caricature, a grotesque one at that. @ Sushil Kumar Would you like to rethink your statement of thanks to the British? It seems richly ironical to me that you are thanking the very people who are responsible for the final demise of traditional education in India for its revival. The Muslim invasion dealt a blow to the state patronage of Sanskrit but not a fatal one. The traditional systems survived, even flourished specially under some of the Mughals. Akbar, Shahjahan and Jahangir. Dara Shikoh was one of the flowers of this system. Aurangzeb upset the balance., a bit. The British subverted the traditional systems of knowledge and education in a very calculated way, to build a race of clerks and subservient brown Englishmen; as I call them, Macaulay's Tragic Children. The so called Sanskrit experts among the Europeans, not all but a good number, usually sat down with a Sanskrit pandit and wrote down their 'translations'. Their knowledge of the language was often imperfect but of course they had an old boy's club of mutual appreciation of scholarship. They then presented English translations of Classical Sanskrit literature successfully severing the natal link between the people of India and their own language. We are forever condemned to read that which belongs to us and springs from our own roots through an alien prism. I speak from a personal sense of sorrow in all this as I am equally a tragic child of the modern education system in India in which the traditional was deemed useless and thrown out. So, do think a bit before you spread your thanks around.

@Sumedha: Don't you think that our scholars are also to be blamed equally if not more than the British? The British as any other ruling power would look to serve its own interests first. But everyone did not have to become a babu in their service. Our pandits to could have displayed the tenacity and perseverance that some of the Goras from England did by way research. Even today, you have to admit that we Indians have no sense of history and we merrily desecrate and destroy whatever remains above ground. What lies beneath, we have not even bothered to ask. If the English have made mistakes in interpreting our culture and heritage (for whatever reason), we at least owe them for having conserved some of it. Most of the pictures put out by RBSI are taken from the British Museum. The other day I visited a so-called museum in Madikery (Coorg). There were some manuscripts kept in a dirty glass cupboards with a board about their antiquty but without a single word about what those contained. It looked like a lump of mold to me eyes. This in independent India !

Ah...Shekar. Reality bites !!

@ Shekhar Sathe The venality of an invading force is in no way an excuse for our own failures which are numerous. I offer no excuses for ourselves. We are notoriously uncaring and disrespectful of our own priceless heritage. That , however is a separate issue. I am commenting here on whether gratitude is the feeling which should spring to our mind when we consider the actions of the British/Europeans specially in the cultural and literary field. As for conservation, facts will not really bear this out universally, two examples off the top of my mind: The ruins of the Indus Valley Civilisation were broken and used as ballast by the Railways; Ashokan pillars were merrily rooted up and transported by Cunningham.... Gratitude does not really spring to my mind because activities in the cultural, social and literary field were not being conducted for your benefit or understanding or the preservation of heritage. If this happened this was an unintentional fallout of 'Empire Building' activities which were financed for the benefit of the Empire , not of India or Indians. I wonder, have you been to the British Museum? The loot from China, India and Egypt displayed there would perhaps change your mind about the benign attitude of the British. Ditto for the Louvre, the Berlin Museum and any other major European Museum you would like to name. Again, museums which are excellently maintained in all of Europe are business not altruism. 'David' is a wonderful sculpture but you are not going to be able to take even a peek unless you shell out a minimum of about 900 rupees. Entry rates are exorbitant and cities and countries fight for artifacts so that they get money from the rates they charge. It is big business. Witness the undignified fight between Rome and Florence for the statue of David. In the 19th century historical artifacts from colonised countries were exhibited, for example in London , to further the idea of Empire amongst the common people who came to gawk at exotic stuff and preen themselves as being superior to the queer set of natives, congratulate themselves on being English and therefore turn a blind eye to the way they themselves, the common people, were being exploited by the aristocracy and the elite. A history of the labour movement in Britain helps to understand these issues. The 'museum' culture was therefore encouraged. Many countries which have been looted of their cultural history because they were poor, powerless or colonised are now protesting against it. Greeece and Egypt are twp prime examples. Dr Zahi Hawass of the Cairo Museum has been leading a global movement highlighting these issues. Therefore, I may probably choke if you stuff gratitude down my throat.

Take the case of Indian mathematics. The man who took the lead in presenting this to the world was G.R. Kaye. He could not and would not accept the fact that India made any original contribution to mathematics and somehow managed to explain... every single Indian achievement via the Greeks. This remained the accepted view in the English speaking world till very recently, so much so that I have heard even Indian physicists and mathematicians denounce ancient Indian mathematics as nothing but 'some very inadequate sutras'. French and German scholars gave a much fairer view of mathematics in ancient India. The Raj casts a long shadow, which is still touching us today. I have spent long hours researching the advent of the British in India, reading many books, memoirs, journals and letters in an attempt to understand this period of history. It is very very interesting to watch the transition of the English from a small, uncertain group of traders anxious to adopt local dress and food so as not to stand out as aliens, to the swaggering armies of Robert Clive. It is even more interesting to watch how history was molded by the English to suit their own ends - take for example, the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta. This event never happened, not the way it was described by the English. Yet it has been taught to generations of school children in India, and taken as a historical truth, as recently as the last decade. It suited the English to present Siraj ud Daulah as an unprincipled cruel savage, and they did so without compunction. The fault is ours, that we accepted what was told us without question. Even today, I find that the best analyses of the Raj come from Canadian and American scholars, not from the British. Sometimes, though, there were individuals who tried to do things correctly. Take for example an initiative in the 1800s to collect examples of every single art form in India. These samples/examples were not lifted or looted, but actually commissioned by and paid for by the V&A museum. I am not sure how successful the initiative was, but I have seen the collection of ganjifa taash the V&A holds; the collection is a result of that initiative and it is a treasure. Sumedha, you mention Dr Zahi Hawass. He is a man I admire greatly, and wholly support his efforts to bring back Egypt's heritage to Egypt. On a visit to Luxor, I met a German archaeologist who felt exactly the opposite - in her opinion Dr Hawass was a meddling nuisance who was not allowing ancient treasures the care that they deserve. She gave the example of Nefertiti's bust, which is displayed in the Berlin Museum. The bust, she said, has an entire room to itself, while the artefacts in the Cairo Museum were thrown higgledy piggledy one on top of the other!! Perhaps she had a point, though I couldn't see it very clearly.What came through very strongly was the arrogance of the colonising powers, that somehow they knew better, and they knew best. But then, take the disaster that is the National Library in Calcutta. The so-called new wing, which houses the Rare Maps room. I went there in search of a map dating from Akbar's time. The Library catalogue said the map was held by the Library, and the staff very helpfully pointed me to the right floor and the right room. When I got there what did I find? The room was unmanned, so that I could have walked away with any of the unlocked mansucripts there. Not only that - along the floor was spreading a slow flood, a leak from the loos across the landing, so that very soon i was standing in a large and growing pool of water! Hardly the most congenial environment for the preservation of rare manuscripts. So what can we really say? The British did what suited them, and mostly what they did didn't suit us. Sometimes they did good things too. Now we've had more than 60 years to repair the damage, but we haven't always shown either interest or initiative in doing so. Thus I often find myself unable to reach a clear conclusion about the rights and wrongs of history. History is a bit like reality - it changes the moment we look at it, and I suspect, behaves differently when no one is looking.

I have no qualms in saying that the British and their meticulous methods of conservation, classsification and presentation of the world heritage and culture is probably the best there is ! I only wish the rest of the world emulated and learnt from them...their sincerity, respect and regard for heritage in general.

The French are good too, as are the Americans and the Germans. :) I don't know about the world, but we can definitely learn a lot from the British. The British Library for instance - wow!

Alas...I guess its only us who have a long way to go. If only we could extricate ourselves from our delusions and face the reality....

Uh RBSI The Brits have fallen far behind nowadays specially in harnessing modern technology to showcase old treasures. There is no comparison between for example, Italy's newly opening or even old art museums and the venerable old BM. The BM is not a leader in the field. Interactive tools of learning using 3D animation for instance which gives you the entire history, geography and cultural and social parameters of a particular painting with visual and subtly shifting perspective take art appreciation to a new level in Italy. The catch word in many of Italy's museums is conservation, conservation and more conservation coupled with how best culture can reach the masses. I have never visited the US so cannot say anything about the museums there. However, with the financial crunch in Europe a cutting of costs may become necessary. This has already happened in Britain where a lot of stuff is already crumbling ( from my critical Suisse view perspective, perhaps. I go there quite often and find that the a lot of the public institutions are a shadow of their former selves. the country is crumbling to bits). And, please its a murky world out there in the rivalry between museums so sincerity, respect, regard...I would use these words with some circumspection. Today, a lot of it is just big money. @ Rohini Chowdhury Beautifully and succinctly put. I loved your last bit about History! Dr Zahi Hawass is a person who evokes strong reactions. If there are two opposing sides I am firmly on his. Since I suffer from an undying passion for Egyptian history I have spent a lot of time reading up the details of ' Egyptology' ( a very demeaning term by the way) and being horrified by what went on and how priceless treasures were looted and carried off by the Brits, French and Germans. For every Champollion and Petrie there were scoundrels who can only be called thieves. The country became one voyeuristic delight to hordes of ignorant and newly able to travel people form Europe who came to gawk and trample. Egypt became a hobby of the rich European who put in money but retained the right to exploit , thieve and transport treasures away from their roots where they could be understood much better. Is the right place for Egyptian artifacts a glass case in London? My answer is No. As for historical truth I wonder if such a thing exists, I think nothing illustrates Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle more than the study of history. I wonder what we can do to improve the state of museums in India. I have lived in and visited many small places in the country. Most of them have museums which are monuments to neglect but contain priceless treasures. Whenever I visited them the curators would almost fall on my neck weeping with gratitude for the interest ( Since I happen to be a bureaucrat in private life!) shown by anyone. Mind you, the same even went for the National Museum in Delhi. A grass roots movement to change perceptions?

Sumedha and Rohini : This is a fascinating new perspective ...of bringing Heisenberg's principle on 'observation' into this discussion of history !! Somehow makes a lot of sense. I guess the only way out for redeeming ourselves is...as you have rightly said : a grass-roots movement to change perception which can come about only by education and by the generous funding of the Goverment for world-class facilities. Of course we have all the money in the world...just look at our daily newspapers.

We don't lack money - that is for sure! If anyone out there is listening, or somehow magically reading this thread: two museums I know of that are craving attention are the Bishnupur Museum in West Bengal, and the Mathura Museum. The Bishnupur Museum is a tiny but amazing collection of terracotta and local excavations. It is being kept alive by the enthusiasm of its curator. The Mathura Museum, which I visited some 25 years ago, is the one which holds the famous headless statue of Kanishka. It also has innumerable examples of the Kushan school of art. But they were lying outside, unprotected from the rain and wind. Changing perceptions is key - we still think of a museum as an 'ajayab ghar', not as a repository of knowledge or a centre of learning.

Have just read Rohini's and Sumedha's discussion once again....powerful and articulate arguments ! Very interesting..

There is so much that can be done. Where does one start? Museums in India are state run so one cannot even donate money to them. Maybe I will try. I want to try and rejuvenate the Patna Museum...I have not been there since i grew up in Patna but I have been told it is in a bad shape as is the excavation of the Mauryan royal palace in Kumhrar. PS- RBSI; When a certain event I am waiting for happens and if I earn something from it maybe I can use it for such a purpose! :)

Sumedha Verma : Your inspired commitment is the contagion this country badly needs. I hope more of us feel strongly enough to involve the educated masses to bring about this necessary change. When that something happens...I think you should give that well deserved reward to yourself ! : )

Gloom all over! May be we should have a central ministry of museums. May be we have only future and no past.