Sanskrit tatoo fail

[Dominik Wujastyk]

I suppose the Aśvamedha ritual is an ancient Indian case of "going with the
flow."  :-)  (Until you meet an enemy!)
Dominik

On 4 September 2011 01:06, George Hart <glhart at berkeley.edu> wrote:

> There's already an Indian proverb for "go with the flow."  A Malayali
> friend used it yesterday.  They translated, "If your cows go where you don't
> want them to, just keep hitting them and go where they go anyway."  I don't
> know the Malayalam -- people speak the language too fast to catch the words,
> though I did hear aṭiccu.  In any event, if anyone wants to use this (as a
> tattoo or slogan), I'll ask and get back with the original.  George Hart
>
> On Sep 3, 2011, at 7:25 AM, Herman Tull wrote:
>
> > Yes. Of course. Reading it late at night I ignored the prefix on the
> root. The widely reported translation is "go with the flow.".
> > Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert Zydenbos <zydenbos at UNI-MUENCHEN.DE>
> > Date: Sat, 3 Sep 2011 13:54:38
> > To: <INDOLOGY at liverpool.ac.uk>
> > Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Sanskrit tatoo fail
> >
> > On 03.09.11 07:25, Herman Tull wrote:
> >
> >> [...]  A better image, however shows that it is not pravaaha, but
> >> "pravaaham"-the tattoo artist used (improperly) the anusvara to
> >> indicate the final of the accusative.  The grammar is still creaky:
> >> "One must go to the river"???
> >
> > The grammar is all right, since anu-gam "to follow" is construed with
> > the accusative (cf. Boehtlingk and Roth's dictionary for examples): thus
> > anugacchatu pravaha? translates as "let one follow the flow" (though I
> > think "pravahamanugaccha" comes closer to GWTF).
> >
> > On 03.09.11 09:22, Dominik Wujastyk wrote:
> >
> >> See, Sanskrit is important and useful.
> >
> > Tathastu.
> >
> >> What interests me most about all this is that they don't want to know
> >> something from the Sanskrit tradition. [...]
> >>
> >> Is it that putting it in Sanskrit gives it some charm, or even
> >> authority, that it wouldn't otherwise have?  Or do they want, rather,
> >> to suggest that "go with the flow" (henceforth GWTF) is really a
> >> Sanskrit saying?  Or that if Sanskrit is the Language of Truth, then
> >> something true (?) must have been said in Sanskrit, somewhere.
> >
> > That seems to be what many of my students expect. They come to class
> > expecting to learn more about 'what is good', and if don't tell them
> > what is 'good' according to their wishful thinking, then I must be
> > 'wrong'. (Fortunately they sometimes explicitly say so, which leads to
> > amusing discussions and gives me the opportunity to set things straight
> > and to be a greater guru than their gurus.)
> >
> > In any case, Sanskrit is cool. My wife actually made a little bit of
> > money through a tattoo: a fellow wanted to have some rather
> > un-Sanskritic phrase tattooed on his arm, and he asked her to translate
> > the phrase and give the translation in "Sanskrit script" (sic). She
> > wrote back that she would do it only for a fee since, after all, she had
> > spent a good deal of time learning the language and wanted to see her
> > skill rewarded. He was decent and paid.
> >
> > RZ
> >
> > --
> > Prof. Dr. Robert J. Zydenbos
> > Department fuer Asienstudien - Institut fuer Indologie und Tibetologie
> > Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet Muenchen
> > Tel. (+49-89-) 2180-5782
> > Fax  (+49-89-) 2180-5827
> > http://www.lrz-muenchen.de/~zydenbos
> > Deutschland
>


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