|
Post by spiritualbhakti on Nov 18, 2009 22:41:09 GMT -6
Wow it must be awesome to get your hands on those books.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2009 2:49:28 GMT -6
Amazing list. BL, the library of dreams...
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 19, 2009 2:56:11 GMT -6
You wrote: Then as the need arises, I can order copies from back home in the boondocks.
How does one order a copy?
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Nov 19, 2009 6:33:07 GMT -6
Wow it must be awesome to get your hands on those books. It is awesome. When I see something that looks interesting I order it to be brought to a reading room. Most of the old CV books are not kept on site. Therefore, it takes about six hours to get them, more or less a day, in other words. Some of these books are even physically beautiful: nicely printed and on good paper and well bound. It is hard to return them at the end of the day. The list I have so far presented is just the tip of the iceberg. As I say, I have only looked at the oldest two catalogs of the Bengali works (and the blue slips). I have done next to nothing with the Sanskrit catalogs. Those catalogs record books from around the beginning of the 19th century and many of those books are Vaisnava texts. The other day I had in my hands what may have been the very first printed edition of Sri Rupa's Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu. It came out in the 1870s as part of a monthly Sanskrit journal, each issue of which had a part of the text in it. Eventually the text was complete and it was presumably published separately, though the BL does not seem to have it. This was before the great work undertaken by Ramanarayana Vidyaratna to publish editions of all of the Caitanyite texts. In fact, he may have gotten the idea of doing it from this Sanskrit journal. Anyway, people who say that Caitanya Vaisnavism had declined in the 19th century have been sitting on their own heads!
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Nov 19, 2009 6:46:59 GMT -6
You wrote: Then as the need arises, I can order copies from back home in the boondocks. How does one order a copy? All one needs is bakshish. They will send them anywhere in the world. One does it by following the right options on the BL website and filling in all the information, including the shelf-list number of the book you want (I have included that on the list for each of the books) and, of course, credit card number and shipping address. The prices are a little steep, about 27 pounds sterling (plus shipping 3-4 pounds ?) for one hundred pages. If the book is less than one hundred pages, it is still 27 pounds sterling. A couple of the books that I want contain 5 or 6 hundred pages, but if the edition is fine enough and well enough done, I guess I don't mind coughing up that much money. Can't do it for them all, but certainly some of the really special works are within reach. The thing to remember is that none of these works is in the online catalog. Thus there is no way of ordering them or even knowing that they exist by searching the online catalog. Maybe that will change some day, but for now this is the way it is. Old Bengali and Sanskrit books are not high priorities at the BL at present.
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Nov 29, 2009 14:25:59 GMT -6
Started attending to my work at the British Library again. I have found some more interesting works listed in the printed catalog for the years 1886 to 1910. I will post that when I have completed the second volume of the catalog. There are just too many works.
I looked at an interesting little work called the Kokila-duta. As I expected it is another messenger poem on the model of Kalidasa's Meghaduta, but in this case relating to Radha and Krsna. So far I have not found who the author is, but it has several early and fascinating features. It is published fairly early, around the 1860s or so. It starts out with a few pages that are hand written in a very stylized Bengali script. It seems to be dedicated to someone whose name I cannot yet read and the first five or six pages are in Bengali with a verse in Sanskrit to start it off. It will take me a while to get used to the script, but I am very curious what it is all about. It may be the work of some CV pandits of Advaitacarya's lineage since it was published from Santipur. I will post more on this text as I figure it out better.
I also looked at Sri Rasikamohana Vidyabhusana's Sri Krsna Madhuri. I had not seen the text before. I discovered that the main portion of the text is an elaborate translation of Vilvamangala's Sri Krsna-karnamrta with a translation of Krsnadasa Kaviraja's commentary thereon. Sri Rasikamohana gives a longish introduction in which he seems to introduce the Caitanya tradition. I will look at it more closely and see if it merits a separate translation.
He offers his praise to someone who lives in a simple kutira who not only encouraged him in producing this book, but who was also instrumental in encouraging Vipinavihari Goswami to write his books. The Dasamularasa is specifically mentioned. This is the first time I have seen the book mentioned in the work of a contemporary. Anyway, this saintly person who not only encouraged the work, but seems to have paid for its publication was someone named Behari Lala Ram. Does anyone know anything about him? Subrataji, are you by any chance related to this mahatma?
Lastly, I looked at a book called Narasimhaparicarya by Krsnadevacarya. The editor says that Krsnadevacarya was an older contemporary of Sanatana and Gopalabhatta and that his work was a source for the Haribhaktivilasa. The latter, of course, goes beyond the former in breadth and scope, but it does definitely bear the marks of having given form to the HBV. More on this later, too.
I will be back at the BL on Monday. Some interesting books have been ordered including an old edition of the Caitanyacaritamrta that looks like it contains Visvanatha's commentary and some other interesting features.
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Dec 1, 2009 12:26:23 GMT -6
The books I ordered last week did not materialize by the end of the day on Monday. That is a problem with working at the BL. The books that I am interested in are all stored offsite and it takes at least six hours for them to be brought to the reading rooms. In this case, it has taken more than two working days. Maybe they will be there on Wednesday when I go back. I may be the only one to look at some of these texts in the last 50 years.
I did get a copy of an interesting little work published in the 1880's called Sri Gaura-gopivallabha-arcana-candrika. It is a manual for the practice of CV like the one that I started translating and posting before coming to England. The only difference is that it is much much earlier and may in fact be the model of the later manuals. The paper is very fragile and so I started inputting the text towards the end of the day on Monday. It is written in simple Sanskrit with a Bengali translation. The author or compiler is one Madhvacandra Tarkacudamani. The details of the book are in the list I am compiling and can be had there. I will translate and post some sections of it as the copy proceeds. Another interesting note is that this book claims to be the 3rd edition. There must have been two earlier editions which would make them quite old.
Not much more to report except that I read part of Rasikamohana Vidyabhusana's introduction to his Sri Krsna Madhuri. He was an amazingly humble man. It is really touching to see such humility in someone so learned.
More adventures in BL land later.
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Dec 11, 2009 9:20:39 GMT -6
I have been continuing my work at the BL and am nearly done with the second volume of the catalog of old Bengali books. One more day is needed to finish, I think. That still leaves volume three which I shall not get to this trip and an additional volume that includes books that did not make it into the main volumes. I expect I can find volume three and its appendix back in the States somewhere, and thus continue my list making there. So, though, I have not been able to finish my list, it is not a huge failure. Realizing this, I have been busy ordering the books and looking at them. I have found some interesting things and some disappointments.
On Wednesday I called up a book called Bhaktirasamrta. It turns out to be an independent work by a writer named Tarakumara Sarma. Several chapters on various aspects of Krsna bhakti composed in Sanskrit verse with versified Bengali translations. It is a very interesting work though it seems to originate outside of Caitanya Vaisnavism. It contains a kind of universality that is kind of refreshing about the sectarian ways of thinking found in works of this sort. I suspect the author was trying to create a sense of harmony between the religious traditions in his range of experience: Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism and within Hinduism between Vaisnava and Saiva groups all centered around the sacred name "Krsna." I don't know quite what to make of it at this point. Anyway, it is there in the updated list if anyone is interested. I will post that updated list in a few days, after completing the little bit left of volume two.
My time in England is drawing to a close. It has been a grand stay and I will be sorry to see it end.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2009 12:18:37 GMT -6
Jay Nitai,
Just curious about you option Nitai Das Ji, to open section "Multimedia Expressions :: Pictures, Arts," to outside non-member area if possible. Would love to know your opinion Nitai Das Ji, As I may upload few pictures etc related to CV which I have currently with me, so I think it may be good to open it for larger audiance.
Jay Nitai
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Dec 14, 2009 19:07:11 GMT -6
Sounds like a good idea, Subrataji. It would be great to have you post pictures and share them with the general public. I will make that change as soon as I can.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 15, 2009 20:43:50 GMT -6
Great Nitai-ji. It seems that you are in London.... Wish you sweet holidays and many thanks for keeping up the torch of divine light.
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Dec 17, 2009 6:05:41 GMT -6
Great Nitai-ji. It seems that you are in London.... Wish you sweet holidays and many thanks for keeping up the torch of divine light. Hi Harisarandasji. It is good to hear from you. I wondered what had happened to you since you had not logged in for a long time. I hope everything is good and you are enjoying some divine light yourself. I don't know if I have any torches of the stuff, but somehow things seem to go on. I am excited about chanting the Bhagavata. Would like to chant the whole text over the next year or so. It would be grand of the whole text were available chanted in the original language which reasonably good attention to meter and proper pronunciation. That is one of the things I hope to achieve, that and some comments on the overall structure of the text, its basic meaning and qualities. Drop by once in a while and see how things are going. Thanks for all you have done for this site in the past. It is much richer and diverse than it would otherwise have been. Please feel free to post whatever strikes your fancy as a contribution to the site.
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Dec 18, 2009 3:35:09 GMT -6
I have completed the second volume of the catalog of Bengali works in the BL and will post my list shortly. This means that I have most of the works up to 1910. It would have been nice to do volume three as well which brings us up to 1920. Ah well, next time if there is one. I have made some good discoveries and can get copies of works that I want to work on once I get back to the US. There are a few things on order that I hope to look at today. Today and perhaps tomorrow are the last days I will have to work in the BL. We return to the US on Wednesday and there is lots of packing and last minute business to keep us busy till then.
Several items published in the old Sahitya-parisat-parika have caught my I. I found a copy of the Radhika-mangala, for instance, by Uddhavananda Dasa. I made a copy of that and there is a small work attributed to Narottama Das called the Deha-tattva. First glance, suggests that it is not really by him, but merely written in his name. Still, I think I will make a copy just to see what people wanted to pass off as his. It may be a Sahajiya text or it may just be a simple text introducing its hearers to the world as conceived in post medieval Bengal (17-18th cents). There are a few other texts and essays on texts that I would like to make copies of before I leave. The old journal is a wealth of information and small Vaisnava texts. My sense is that we hardly know what the Caitanya tradition was like in the 19th and 20th centuries. We've been fed a line of baloney up till now. It was clearly lively and rich, engaged in the present, and looking towards the future with hope and expectation.
|
|
|
Post by Ldd on Dec 18, 2009 5:59:25 GMT -6
what line of baloney they fed you?
|
|
|
Post by Nitaidas on Dec 18, 2009 11:12:37 GMT -6
what line of baloney they fed you? The same kind they fed you: the Caitanya tradition was in decline, was corrupt and polluted, no one knew or cared about the texts, etc., etc. Except for one spotless crusader, of course. I hereby pronounce it alive and well in the 19th century. It was the crusader who tried to pollute it. Here is the most recent version of the list of works in the BL.
|
|