Dear Jan,

     Beautiful verses and an informative message.  My only correction to your verses is मनुष्यानां > मनुष्याणां.  With best wishes,

Madhav

Madhav M. Deshpande

Professor Emeritus, Sanskrit and Linguistics

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

Senior Fellow, Oxford Center for Hindu Studies

[Residence: Campbell, California, USA]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 8:56 AM Jan E.M. Houben via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

कश्चिद् गोमूत्रमादत्ते   ‘ वैटामिनाञ् ’ च कश्चन ।
हरिद्राप्रचयान् कश्चित्   सर्वे कोरोणकातराः ॥

तिष्ठन्त्यभ्यन्तरे सर्वे   कोरोणाख्याणुभीरुकाः ।
इदं दुःखं मनुष्यानां   किं भवेद् भूमिभूतये ? ॥
 
उपप्लवेऽस्मिनायान्ति   भिषजादय ऊतये ।
नमस्तेभ्योऽस्तु ये नूनं   लोकत्राणसमुद्यताः ॥

Dear Madhav and Christian (and dear Walter), 

As the impact on our daily lives is only growing, and as long as worldwide the mortality curves are, although perhaps slowly flattening, not yet really coming down, it is difficult to get distracted for long from the "coronavirus"... 

Your verses with epic and mythological references are fascinating even in translation; since the ślokas I have composed simply describe the current situation and what people do and believe, I guess a translation will neither be interesting nor required. 

Incidentally, the first professor of Sanskrit in Europe (the continent having a name which perhaps suggests it should have a "broad outlook", urvī prekṣā), Antoine Léonard (de) Chézy (partly latinized name: Apud-y), specifically appointed for the academic study and teaching of Sanskrit in Paris in 1815, was also, or so it seems, the last one for whom Sanskrit was not only an object of study but also a medium of scientific expression: in his Théorie du Sloka, Paris, 1827, he summarized his conclusion on Sanskrit metrics in a Sanskrit verse which illustrated the theory he had extracted from his large reading samples. 

For the last few centuries, however, "expressive Sanskrit" and "functional and communicative Sanskrit" constitute glaring lacunae in the occidental Sanskrit teaching of interested students, even though a little training in these domains can contribute significantly to a basic mastery of Sanskrit and even to the critical study of "archival Sanskrit".   

To conclude, for those who have not yet rushed away from my longish message, I would therefore like to commemorate in a simple descriptive sragdharā, also by way of distraction away from the corona virus, this forgotten pioneer, de Chézy, who passed away prematurely 188 years ago due to the cholera pandemic in 1832:

प्राद्यौत् शाकुन्तलात्मा  यदुपकृतितया  शोधिते शास्त्ररूपे    

श्लोकस्यौघान् पठित्वा  रचनविधिमकार्षीत् कवीनां प्रसिद्ध् यै ।

वाचः प्राध्यापकत्वे  प्रथमत उपदेष्टाभवत् संस्कृतायाः

  सोऽ“न्त्वन् लेव् नार्द् द शेज़िः”  “परि”- नगर “उरुप्रेक्ष”-खण्डे समस्ते ॥

Stay well, 

N.B.

Dear Christian, Thanks for your verse with special qualities. 

Apart from स्पृशतु in the first pāda, 

or else मा पिस्पृशत् but then you have to give up न which you obviously like to keep after करो, to harmonize with the current Hindi orthography of कोरोन ,

I would suggest for the second line: कोरोनाख्यातदेवारिः  कामदेवेन हन्यताम् ॥ 

--

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

https://ephe-sorbonne.academia.edu/JanEMHouben

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