[INDOLOGY] (still) no distraction from the coronavirus...

Sun Mar 29 09:44:49 UTC 2020

On 29/03/2020 10:20, Jan E.M. Houben wrote:
> Dear Jean-Luc,
> This is as fascinating as it is puzzling.

Dear Jan,

here is an example of avai-y-aṭakkam, taken from the Vīracōḻiyam, with 
the (unpublished) expanded English rendering by the late scholar T.S. 
Gangadharan

_āyuṅ kuṇattava lōkitaṉ pakka lakattiyaṉkēṭ
ṭēyum puvaṉik kiyampiya taṇṭami ḻīṅkuraikka
nīyu muḷaiyō veṉiṟkaru ṭaṉceṉṟa nīḷvicumpil
_īyum paṟakku mitaṟkeṉ kolōcollu mēntiḻaiyē.

The Apology (Avai-y-aṭakkam)

If I am questioned: "Can you speak on that Tamil grammar, the work 
wrought for the benefit of them that live in the world where abides his 
immortal fame, the work which is so cooling to the mind, the work of 
Akattiyaṉ who is endowed with clarified intellect, the work of the chēla 
(pupil) of Avalōkaṉ whose cultural attainment is hailed by many 
discerning scholars", I will answer thus: "The fly too wings the 
spacious sky expanse where flies the Brahminy kite! In this is the 
fitness of things? What does the world say? (Does the world approve of 
this?) If this can pass muster, so can my work also."
[reproduced VERBATIM, without trying to do further investigations]

Concerning Zvelebil's Tolkāppiyam translation, it appeared in small 
sections in the JTS but he does not seem to have finished it.

Here is what is available (extracted from the bibliography in my Ph.D. 
thesis):

Zvelebil Kamil, 1972-1975, «Tolkāppiyam Eḻuttatikāram», Journal of Tamil
Studies, n° 1, p. 43-60 [chap. 1 à 3]; n° 2, p. 13-29 [chap. 4 à 6]; n° 
3, p. 17-27 [chap. 7]; n° 4, p. 13-23 [chap. 8]; n° 5, p. 34-36 [chap. 9
(14 sutras)]; n° 7, p. 62-66 [chap. 9 (42 sutras)]; n° 8, p. 8-11 [chap. 
9 (21 sutras)], Madras, International Institute of Tamil Studies 
[traduction en anglais du premier livre du tolk.].

Zvelebil Kamil, 1978-1985, «Tolkāppiyam Collatikāram», Journal of Tamil
Studies, n° 13, p. 79-86 [chap. 1 (30 sutras)]; n° 20, p. 5-14 [chap. 1
(31 sutras)]; n° 21, p. 9-19 [chap. 2]; n° 28, p. 67-80 [chap. 3], 
Madras, International Institute of Tamil Studies [traduction en anglais 
du second livre du Tolk. qui couvre pour l'instant les trois premiers 
chapitres]

Best wishes to you too

அன்புடன்

-- Jean-Luc (spontaneously rendered in Tamil script as ழான் லூய்க் 
செவ்வியர் inside a "dédicace" written on the title page of a book 
(யாப்பருங்கலம், பழைய விருத்தியுரையுடன்) gifted to me on 25-6-2000 by my 
long-time Pondichéry friend ச.மதனகல்யாணி, whom I have known since july 
1981; as you can see, French "Luc" becomes "லூய்க்" [lūyk]

https://twitter.com/JLC1956

https://tst.hypotheses.org/author/jlch

https://www.google.de/maps/@53.49484,10.57238,19z

> Have the translations of (parts of) the Tolkāppiyam by K. Zvelebil ever 
> been published?
> See his announcement of a translation in his /The Smile// Of Murugan/, 
> Leiden, 1973, p. 131.
> Stay healthy and well in Müssen,
> Jan
> 
> P.S.
> for the children in Müssen, during the corona-crisis:
> 
> म्युस्सनित्यत्र किं कुर्यात्   हसनं न तु चुम्बनम् ।
> 
> This one I will translate, freely, into German:
> "Was kann man machen in Müssen?
> Nur lachen, nicht küssen."
> 
> P.P.S.
> Did anyone ever try to transcribe into Sanskrit -- into Devanagari -- 
> the German "ü" or French "u" or Dutch "uu"?
> Max Müller sanskritized his name simply as मोक्ष मूलर according to my 
> teacher Prof. Henk Bodewitz in order to suggest to his Indian readers 
> that he can bring them liberation, but in that way M.M. skipped the 
> problem of the transcription of this phoneme that is absent in Sanskrit 
> and in Hindi and in most other Indian languages I know of (but a similar 
> sound is there in Tibetan, if I'm not mistaken).
> 
> 
> On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 at 09:51, Jean-Luc Chevillard via INDOLOGY 
> <indology at list.indology.info <mailto:indology at list.indology.info>> wrote:
> 
>     அவையடக்கியலே அரில் தபத் தெரியின்
>     வல்லா கூறினும் வகுத்தனர் கொண்மின் என்று
>     எல்லா மாந்தர்க்கும் வழி மொழிந்தன்றே.
> 
>     "/Avai-y-aṭakku/ is, if well examined, one's modest expression to
>     all to
>     discriminate what is good in his unworthy sayings and take it"
> 
>        (1936 translation of Tolkāppiyam Poruḷatikāram 419 by P.S.
>     Subrahmanya
>     Sastri, as read on p.180 in the 2002 reprint by the Kuppuswami Sastri
>     Research Institute, Chennai)
> 
>     -- Jean-Luc Chevillard (confined in Müssen, Schleswig-Holstein)
> 
>     https://twitter.com/JLC1956
> 
>     https://tst.hypotheses.org/author/jlch
> 
>     https://www.google.de/maps/@53.49484,10.57238,19z
> 
> 
> 
>     On 27/03/2020 19:28, rainer stuhrmann via INDOLOGY wrote:
>      > "Practising Sanskrit as the Epitome of laughableness"
>      >
>      > Cheers
>      >
>      > Rainer
>      >
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> 
> -- 
> 
> *Jan E.M. Houben*
> 
> Directeur d'Études, Professor of South Asian History and Philology
> 
> /Sources et histoire de la tradition sanskrite/
> 
> École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE, Paris Sciences et Lettres)
> 
> /*Sciences historiques et philologiques */
> 
> /johannes.houben [at] ephe.psl.eu <mailto:johannes.houben at ephe.psl.eu>/
> 
> /https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben/
> 