[INDOLOGY] A distraction from the Coronavirus

Roland Steiner steiner at staff.uni-marburg.de
Mon Mar 30 14:38:49 UTC 2020


> The version I pasted seems to have many spelling /typo issues. But the
> verse is a well known one.

Indeed.

prasahya maṇim uddharen makaravaktradaṃṣṭrāntarāt
samudram api saṃtaret pracalad ūrmimālākulam |
bhujaṅgam api kopitaṃ śirasi puṣpavad dhārayet
na tu pratiniviṣṭamūrkhajanacittam ārādhayet //

(Bhartṛhari, /Nītiśataka/, ed. Kosambi 1946: 1.4; ed. Kosambi 1948: 1.9)

My revered teacher Michael Hahn, myself and other colleagues in  
Marburg had started sometime in the early 1990s to translate selected  
Bhartṛhari verses into German, including this one:

  Gewaltsam mag man einen Edelstein
    dem Maule eines Krokodils entreißen,
  Den Ozean selbst überqueren,
    von ungestümen Wellenkränzen aufgewühlt,
  Und auch die zornentbrannte Schlange
    wie eine Blume auf dem Kopfe tragen --
  Nicht aber wird man je
    das Herz verstockter Narren überzeugen.

With kind regards,
Roland Steiner


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