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Post by madanmohandas on Jun 25, 2011 5:54:07 GMT -6
Nay, I can't think of any narrative illustrations of Upanisadic doctrines, but as you say there are citations and references here and there. The doctrine about two birds of beautiful plumage perched on the tree of the body is mentioned more than once. I may think of some later and yet I have not read the Upanisads much and some not at all.
We have not addressed the motive behind the acknowledgment or otherwise of the Brahma mohan episode. I have heard that scholars of the Madhva school were not happy with the idea of Brahma suffering bewilderment. That is a possible motive for ommitance. Seems far fetched though.
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Post by Nitaidas on Jun 25, 2011 13:30:23 GMT -6
Nay, I can't think of any narrative illustrations of Upanisadic doctrines, but as you say there are citations and references here and there. The doctrine about two birds of beautiful plumage perched on the tree of the body is mentioned more than once. I may think of some later and yet I have not read the Upanisads much and some not at all. We have not addressed the motive behind the acknowledgment or otherwise of the Brahma mohan episode. I have heard that scholars of the Madhva school were not happy with the idea of Brahma suffering bewilderment. That is a possible motive for ommitance. Seems far fetched though. What about the Rasa Lila? Is there any Upanishadic passage or teaching that we can associate with it? Or, the story of Puranjana? There must be other examples. The Madhva school never controlled the production of manuscripts of the Bhagavata. Manuscripts were made all over India from Kashmir down to the South. There are at least two rescensions, a Northern and a Southern one. No single person or group could have controlled the manuscript production enough to have left out parts they didn't like. Manuscripts in other parts of India and made by other people or groups would still contain them. |
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Post by malati on Jun 25, 2011 18:39:52 GMT -6
Nitaidasji said: One can clearly learn about and cultivate prema and taste rasa in the Bhagavata without believing that it has any connection with historical truth. It is timeless and placeless.
I agree.
My point is that no one now can truly isolate the most original of the original version of the Bhagavat.
This is just my suggestion: why dont you just translate the Bhagavat as you see it now in its order. Then for every Skandha, at the start of the book, you can write your introduction and state, all you want, your suspicions and quandaries. Check the Ramakrishna edition, they have beautiful introduction for each skandha.
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Post by madanmohandas on Jun 26, 2011 0:51:44 GMT -6
Just a quick reponse to your point Nitai, that it would be difficult for person or group to leave something out, I would suggest on that logic even harder to get away with adding something.
Where are the Upanisadic doctrines, you tell me.
And Malati, when you refer to Ramakrishna edition, Tapasyananda Swami is the translator. We are well aware of his edition and have been recomending it as well as the Motilal edition translated by a board of scholars, the latter is the more critical edition. To suggest that Nitai translate it as it is now is missing the point due to the fact that there are variant manuscripts. As I keep mentioning there are about 400 more verses in the 10th book. Are they additions or were they left out?
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Post by madanmohandas on Jun 26, 2011 1:12:09 GMT -6
Perhaps looking for Upanisadic doctrines in the Bhagavat is a bit like looking for wood in a forest. Where one can't see the wood because of the trees.  |
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Post by malati on Jun 26, 2011 2:03:52 GMT -6
Madanmohandas: To suggest that Nitai translate it as it is now is missing the point due to the fact that there are variant manuscripts. As I keep mentioning there are about 400 more verses in the 10th book. Are they additions or were they left out?
If that's the case then, I still see the wisdom of translating the overarching version; putting them all together. Nitaidas can, as I have suggested earlier, make his commentary on the sections that are controversial, giving us a summary of the pros and cons regarding the controversy. It will make his version all the more interesting. It will be Nitaidas' definite contribution to the community of Bhagavat current readers and for the succeeding generations. How his particular edition of the Bhagavat might have developed and evolved. That is, if Nitaidas does not find the task too time consuming.
"spelling corrected now, overarching"
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Post by madanmohandas on Jun 26, 2011 3:05:23 GMT -6
'overaching', sounds painful. ;D Without doubt a definitive edition would include everything with expanitory notes.
I think the most important thing for anyone wishing to gain ever more knowledge and love about Krsna is to read intensively again and again because life is short and the Bhagavat is long.
I recently met a young man who it turns out was a very nice gentleman of good lineage i.e. Sandilya brahman, yet a certain teacher told him that being a brahaman made him proud and therefore he was not qualified to read the 10th Book. I advised him not to heed such nonsense and read it as he was probably more competent than the teacher advising him. Anyway the point was that is how I was tought to read it; again and again forever. muhuraho!
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Post by Nitaidas on Jun 26, 2011 12:31:09 GMT -6
Just a quick reponse to your point Nitai, that it would be difficult for person or group to leave something out, I would suggest on that logic even harder to get away with adding something. Where are the Upanisadic doctrines, you tell me. At some point there was only one manuscript of the text. Someone made a copy and then there were two. The various copies of copies thus branch off like the branches of a tree and spread throughout India. At some point, on one of those sub-branches, the three chapters in question were added. That is why they do not appear in all the branches or in all manuscripts. That is the clearest indication that they were added later. Also, in the copying of manuscripts sometimes margin notes in the manuscript being copied are mistaken for parts of the text and get included in the new copy. Many interpolations happen in this way. The copyists, too, are sometimes not very good at Sanskrit and so they make mistakes which again adds to variant readings and problematic verses which seem to make little sense. Given this situation, we really need every bit of help we can get. That is why a critical edition is so important. We could just say that we will accept whatever Sridhara recognized, but that is really just a snapshot from about the 14th century, nearly a thousand years after the text was composed. And besides, sometimes Sridhara hasn't a clue what a particular verse means. He just makes a wild guess. The version of the Bhagavata that was dominant in Bengal probably came from Karnataka, which means it shares many of the characteristics of the version that Madhva had available and Viraraghava. Yes, that Ramkrishna Mission version is a nice version and the Motilal Version is less nice in its use of English, but better in terms of its awareness of the history of the text and its interpretation. The critical edition recognizes over 2000 interpolations of varying lengths. Any translation with scholarly pretensions (as mine would inevitably have) would have to recognize them and if possible comment on them. The trick would be to strike a balance between readability and doing justice to the complex history of the text. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Jun 26, 2011 12:46:41 GMT -6
Madanmohandas: To suggest that Nitai translate it as it is now is missing the point due to the fact that there are variant manuscripts. As I keep mentioning there are about 400 more verses in the 10th book. Are they additions or were they left out?If that's the case then, I still see the wisdom of translating the overaching version; putting them all together. Nitaidas can, as I have suggested earlier, make his commentary on the sections that are controversial, giving us a summary of the pros and cons regarding the controversy. It will make his version all the more interesting. It will be Nitaidas' definite contribution to the community of Bhagavat current readers and for the succeeding generations. How his particular edition of the Bhagavat might have developed and evolved. That is, if Nitaidas does not find the task too time consuming. it is a daunting task. I don't know if I am up to it. The trick would be to take it in small steps: 1. a multi-volume translation of just the text with notes drawn mostly from Srinatha Cakravartin and Sridhara. Srinatha Cakravartin is the first CV commentator. His commentary would give us a snapshot of early CV thinking. 2. A longer multi-volume translation with the full comms of Srinatha and Sridhara. 3. A longer multi-volume translation with the full comms of Srinatha, Sridhara, and Sri Sanatana Goswami on the 10th Skandha. 4. A longer multi-volume translation with the full comms of Srinatha, Sridhara, Srijiva, and sri Sanatana Gosvami (on the 10th Skandha) 5. The longest multi-volume version with the full comms of Srinatha, Sidhara, Srijiva, Srivisvantha, Sri Baladeva, and Sri Sanatana (on the 10th Skandha). I would add a new piece at each step and of course my own notes (clearly marked and separated from those of the traditional commentators) discussing things like interpolation and variant versions and the development or differences in interpretation we will surely discover as we move through the views of the various commentators. It is a huge undertaking. I don't think I am up to it by myself. To complete it all, I need help with it. I wanted to try to get people like Jagat and others to help on this. But that has not been successful. We are all bull-headed and frankly I don't want to work with anyone from IGM. It would lend them a legitimacy that I don't believe they deserve. Still, there should be a committee in charge of the translation like there is for the best of the English translations of the Bible (the New Revised Standard Version). Anyway, I am relatively sure I can accomplish at least step one and perhaps steps two and three with perhaps a little help from my friends. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Jun 26, 2011 13:01:15 GMT -6
Perhaps looking for Upanisadic doctrines in the Bhagavat is a bit like looking for wood in a forest. Where one can't see the wood because of the trees. Well,this would be the myth. We should see if it is true. Taking a closer look would tell us many interesting things. Which Upanisads are favored and which parts? Each of the main Upanishads belongs to a different branch of the Vedas and those are preserved by different families. They were not all available to everyone as they are today. Studying the Upanisadic connections could give us a clue as to which family the author or authors belonged to. It would also inform us as to how interpretation of those passages had changed over the centuries. My theory about the connection of the Purana with the milieu or zeitgeist of Sankara could be tested I came across a book when I was working in the U of Chicago library called Mantra-bhagavata. It connected many of the passages of the Vedas (Samhita, Brahmana and Upanishad) with various passages of the Bhagavata. it was done by a pandit from Gujarat, I think, in Sanskrit who knew both corpii well. That would be useful in getting this sort of study off the ground. Moreover, there is the relationship of the Purana to the Brahma-sutra, itself an interpretation of the Upanisads. There have been several works done on this that would be useful, including one by Haridas Sastri Maharaj. |
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Post by madanmohandas on Jun 27, 2011 3:56:27 GMT -6
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Post by malati on Jun 27, 2011 21:49:49 GMT -6
It is a huge undertaking. I don't think I am up to it by myself. To complete it all, I need help with it. I wanted to try to get people like Jagat and others to help on this. But that has not been successful. We are all bull-headed and frankly I don't want to work with anyone from IGM. It would lend them a legitimacy that I don't believe they deserve. Still, there should be a committee in charge of the translation like there is for the best of the English translations of the Bible (the New Revised Standard Version). Anyway, I am relatively sure I can accomplish at least step one and perhaps steps two and three with perhaps a little help from my friends. Nitaidas I would be interested to help anyway I can. Obviously not in the translation work per se but in other ways. BTW, what happened to VKaul, gone away? He's been quiet for sometime now. Also, I have sent you an email about the cookbook. If you have time please have a read. Thanks. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Jun 28, 2011 14:10:37 GMT -6
Nitaidas I would be interested to help anyway I can. Obviously not in the translation work per se but in other ways. Thanks, malatidi. There are many ways to help, encouragement being one of them and you have been very encouraging. He is still around. He has been very busy with work. I owe him some response to postings here and will get to them soon. Yes, I will be replying soon. A storm knocked my power for a few days and I have not been able to access the internet. I always respond if I can. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 4, 2011 16:20:46 GMT -6
I would like to start a translation fund for the translation of the Bhagavata with the commentary of Sridhara Swami. It is a big and important project. It will take years and money to achieve. As I mentioned in another post, a have a friend who was a fellow student at the U of Chicago who wants to work on the project, but he wants it to be funded. He is a CV who is initiated by Prabhupada Prankisor Goswami, a wonderful man I met many years ago in Calcutta. It would be great to have his help on the project and the help of anyone else who would like to participate, either by giving money or in some other function.
This project could easily lead to the later translations of some of the other important comms (Sri Jiva, Visvanatha, Sri Sanatana, Baladeva, etc) on the Bhagavata.
What do you all think?
I will set up a separate account for it at PayPal and keep track of contributions, carefully watch expenditures, and give progress reports to those who have contributed.
Also I am happy to announce that I have more copies of the Gita Press translation of the Bhagavata (2 vols). I ran out last summer and ordered more. It has taken many months to get them. It is a good translation and the text is included. The price for the set has risen to $60 because of the absurdly high cost of shipping. It anyone wants a copy send me a note. I also still have the four volume translation published by the Ramkrishna Mission. It is an excellent translation. Four volumes, $80.
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Post by malati on Dec 6, 2011 2:28:52 GMT -6
I make this post to make this thread gets noticed again.
Sure this Bhagavat project is very good. You and your friend's objective is very congratulatory.
Of course the funding would be a problem. In our community, funding would be hard to find because we are not in the hundreds compared to other GV groups. (I don't even know that the number of GV trad devotees in the west reach 100,; we are not many and a big percentage are not actively interacting with each other. Do they even visit this site?) Do some institutions in the U.S. or elsewhere would have grants for this kind of project?
Anyway, I would like to call the attention of devotees who have the same sentiment as ours to please make a contribution to this worthy project. Any amount will be appreciated and put to good use, I'm sure. (I know Nitaidasji, he's a very kind person because when I bought books from him, he offered discounts even if I didn't ask for it). Please think of this project when making a list of gifts to send this christmas season.[/b]
Please put a link to where donations can be sent.
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