Sanskrit is often seen as a self-referential tradition that looks only to itself, but often it is forgotten that almost from its Paninean beginnings, Sanskrit (as opposed to Vedic Sanskrit) has been in symbiosis with other languages that were spoken natively by the people who used it. Sanskrit words were borrowed into other languages as tadbhavas or the like, and in common speech, they acquired connotations and even meanings that they do not have in Sanskrit (kṣaṇi- means “invite” in Malayalam). When people speaking those languages wrote in Sanskrit, they no doubt transferred the acquired connotations back into Sanskrit, and in this way Sanskrit, held rigid by the rules of the grammarians, still acquired new connotations and even meanings. At the same time, in spite of this, Sanskrit words for the most part did not have the breadth of connotation and emotion that words of a spoken language have. Years ago, Ingalls pointed out that Sanskrit, unlike natural languages, has perfect synonyms. Still, I think it is wrong to think of Sanskrit as self-referential and unchanging. I remember years ago attending a bharatanāṭya performance which the dancer began with a rather stiff Sanskrit śloka, followed by a padam by the great Telugu writer Kshatrayya in which a woman, speaking to her lover, says, “vāstavamā?” “is it true?” and the whole sequence drips with emotion, catalyzed by that one word. “Vāstavam” is used in South Indian languages, and it has a plethora of connotations. If a Telugu writes a Sanskrit verse and uses that word, he/she will certainly bring its Telugu connotations into Sanskrit. In any event, I think Sanskrit is a language that has constantly changed and evolved, with its evolution catalyzed by its symbiosis with other languages. Even in Sanskrit, the meanings of words change. George Hart


On Apr 6, 2020, at 1:04 PM, Camillo Formigatti via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Strictly speaking, as Antonia pointed out already, yuddha and yudh mean both "battle" and not "war", unless we'd like to take them as a synecdoche, so I don't think they apply in the case of the scene in Arrival. When I watched it, my first impression of the scene in which the linguist Louise Banks says that gavisti means desire for cows was that she was trying to make precisely the point that Antonia made in her tweet. I don't think the meaning of the whole scene is that if you know the Sanskrit word for war you are a better linguist, it is more about how you should think about language. On the other hand, I might be reading too much into it.

Sincerely yours,

Simon Moon



From: Robert Goldman <rpg@berkeley.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 5, 2020 11:21 PM
To: Antonia Ruppel <antonia.ruppel@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk>
Cc: Jeffery Long <dharmaprof108@yahoo.com>; Indology <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] Gāyatrī and Scifi
 
Right on Antonia. Once could come up with a dozen or more words in Sanskrit for  war. battle etc.
Dr. R. P.  Goldman
Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor in South and Southeast Asian Studies
Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies MC # 2540
The University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2540
Tel: 510-642-4089
Fax: 510-642-2409

On Apr 5, 2020, at 1:14 PM, Antonia Ruppel <antonia.ruppel@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

That scene from Arrival (and much of Arrival) got my goat from a linguistic perspective, and given how many people were talking about it back then, I tweeted the attached as an attempted Public Service Announcement. (Feel free to share, should the need ever arise!)

–Antonia

For anyone on gmail who also doesn't receive attachments, here's the text:
The Sanskrit Word for ‘War’
If you watched the recent science-fiction movie Arrival, you may remember the question asked to test a linguist’s usefulness for a military enterprise: ‘What is the Sanskrit word for ‘war’?’ The answer provided: ‘A desire for cows’. Is it? Well – yes and no. Sanskrit is a literary language. Literature tries to say what it says in ways that are interesting, appealing, aesthetically pleasing. If a text about a war were to only ever use the word ‘war’ (and not also, say, armed conflict, battle, clash, bloodshed, strife, misery, excitement), it would soon get boring. Sanskrit literature, furthermore, takes the use of alternative expressions even further than other literary traditions. War is called ‘a coming together of chariots’, ‘a stirring’, is evoked by referring to ‘the battle  call’, ‘the battle prize’, ‘excitement’ and, yes, in the poetic language of the Rigveda, the word gav-iṣṭi- ‘cow-desire’ is used to mean ‘desire’ in general, a ‘desire for fighting’, and, finally, ‘fighting’ in general. – So, is ‘a desire for cows’ the Sanskrit word for war? More or less to the extent that ‘shock and awe’ is ‘the English word for ‘war’’.

(The Sanskrit word that means ‘battle’ and nothing else is yuddham. Whether knowing an ancient word for ‘battle’ makes you more useful to the military is a question we will leave undiscussed here!)




On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 at 20:56, Robert Goldman via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
There is, of course Roger Zelazny’s 1967 Scifi novel, Lord of Light and, perhaps tangentially, there is the 2016 sci-fi film “Arrival”in which  the actress Amy Adams plays an expert linguist and translator, Louise, who, because of her earlier assistance to the military with a translation from Farsi, is recruited by an army colonel to decipher the language of some extra-terrestrial visitors. When asked about other experts who might help, she says of a colleague at Berkeley, “Ask him the Sanskrit word for ‘war,’ and its translation.” When the colonel reappears, he says the other linguist said “gavisti” means “an argument,” whereas Louise translates the same word as “a desire for more cows.”

Bes to all. Be safe Stay well. 
Dr. R. P.  Goldman
Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor in South and Southeast Asian Studies
Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies MC # 2540
The University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-2540
Tel: 510-642-4089
Fax: 510-642-2409

On Apr 5, 2020, at 11:02 AM, Jeffery Long via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:

Dear Antonia,

Yes, I think you are correct.  The Gāyatrī mantra and other features of the show are no doubt meant to create an "atmosphere" as much as anything, and to build up to the idea that several ancient cultures of earth could plausibly have been descended from the culture of the humans who fled the Cylons.  (I think I just dropped a huge spoiler!  But the show is absolutely worth viewing to see how all of its various themes and character arcs play out.)  And yes, it is definitely significant that Glen A. Larson, the creator of the original series, was Mormon, and consciously included aspects of Mormon thought in it.  (The important planet Kobol, for example, is a clear anagram for the planet Kolob described in a Mormon text called the Book of Abraham.)  The re-envisioned Galactica series is much less tied to Mormonism than Larson's original, but certainly contains nods to it.

As I argue in my piece on Hinduism and Star Wars, the creators of most of these successful sci-fi series are typically not trying, consciously, to communicate specific religious themes so much as they are trying to tell an interesting and entertaining story, with at least as many hints of a deeper cultural background as needed to evoke what Tolkien called the "inner consistency of reality."

Cheers,
Jeff

Dr. Jeffery D. Long
Professor of Religion and Asian Studies
Elizabethtown College
Elizabethtown, PA


Series Editor, Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical
Lexington Books

"One who makes a habit of prayer and meditation will easily overcome all difficulties and remain calm and unruffled in the midst of the trials of life."  (Holy Mother Sarada Devi)

"We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." (Carl Sagan)



On Sunday, April 5, 2020, 01:30:36 PM EDT, Antonia Ruppel <antonia.ruppel@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk> wrote:


Michael's post made me google around a little bit, and the answer to how we got the gāyatrī mantra in the credits may lie not with the creator of the show, but with the composer of the score, Bear McCreary. It seems that he likes the trope of 'ominous Latin [sic] chanting', and has used it in a variety of languages: 


Go to https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/BearMcCreary for links to each of those languages in action.

That does not explain the non-musical Sanskrit/Indic elements in the show, but given that there is copious Greek mythology present as well, I suppose maybe the unifying theme here is 'ancient' (and thus 'mysterious' etc), rather than a specific culture? After all, the series as a whole is meant to be taking place in an ancient past. 

(And then of course there are the various Mormon bits inherited from the original series, which one could argue are 'ancient' or at the very least 'old' by US cultural standards.) 

Antonia

On Sun, 5 Apr 2020 at 18:47, Jeffery Long via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
P.S. Vasudha Narayanan's following article is also of great interest in regard to the larger question of Hindu influence on Western popular culture, as of course is Philip Goldberg's American Veda: 

Americans may not know it, but they’ve long been embracing Hindu philosophy

Vasudha Narayanan

The story of America’s relationship with Hinduism is long and complex.




Dr. Jeffery D. Long
Professor of Religion and Asian Studies
Elizabethtown College
Elizabethtown, PA


Series Editor, Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical
Lexington Books

"One who makes a habit of prayer and meditation will easily overcome all difficulties and remain calm and unruffled in the midst of the trials of life."  (Holy Mother Sarada Devi)

"We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." (Carl Sagan)



On Sunday, April 5, 2020, 12:43:18 PM EDT, Jeffery Long via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:


I am delighted that the topic of science-fiction, my favorite genre, has come up on this list!

Michael, the Gāyatrī mantra, or a version of it, is indeed used in the opening credits of the re-envisioned Battlestar Galactica (a series which is a huge improvement on the original, on which I grew up in the seventies, but for which I still have a sentimental fondness).  The word pracodayāt is mispronounced as prakodayāt, presumably because the creators of the series were not aware of how the unaspirated 'c' is pronounced in the standard international transliteration system for Indic languages.  But it's clearly an attempt to sing the Gāyatrī mantra.

The series is rich with fascinating themes, including a problematizing of monotheism.  The mainstream human culture depicted in the series has multiple deities, and other interesting resonances with non-Abrahamic faiths.

Though it diverges from the topic fo the Gāyatrī mantra, others have posted on relations between aspects of Hindu thought and ideas found in popular sci-fi series.  My own humble contributions to this discourse are as follows:

A piece on Hindu themes in Star Wars.  It's the second part of a two-part series, the first being on Hindu themes in the music of George Harrison and the Beatles:


Hindu Themes in Western Popular Culture: A Tale of Two Georges, Part Two

By Jeffrey D. Long Introduction In the first part of this two-part series on the ‘two Georges’–Harrison and Luca...


A live early draft of the previous article, presented at the Vedanta Society of New York in May, 2017, and called 'The Yoga of Yoda.'  I have updated and expanded both of these as I have given them repeatedly in various speaking venues:


The Yoga of Yoda by Dr. Jeffery D. Long

Guest Speaker Dr. Jeffery D. Long speaks on “The Yoga of Yoda” at the Vedanta Society of New York on May 28, 201...
I owe the title, 'The Yoga of Yoda,' to Swami Sarvapriyananda, of the Vedanta Society of New York.  He knew this was a favorite topic of mine and was the person who first encouraged me to speak and write about it.

A further developed series of reflections on this topic are going to be in my forthcoming Hinduism in America: A Convergence of Worlds, due to be published later this year by Bloomsbury.

Though Game of Thrones is technically not sci-fi, but fantasy, I have a piece on Hindu themes in Game of Thrones that is also going to be in a forthcoming edited volume by Matthew Brake on religion in Game of Thrones.

May the Force be with you!

Jeff

Dr. Jeffery D. Long
Professor of Religion and Asian Studies
Elizabethtown College
Elizabethtown, PA


Series Editor, Explorations in Indic Traditions: Theological, Ethical, and Philosophical
Lexington Books

"One who makes a habit of prayer and meditation will easily overcome all difficulties and remain calm and unruffled in the midst of the trials of life."  (Holy Mother Sarada Devi)

"We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself." (Carl Sagan)



On Sunday, April 5, 2020, 07:10:21 AM EDT, Nagaraj Paturi via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:


There is this book:

The Jedi in the Lotus: "Star Wars" and the Hindu Traditionhttps://www.amazon.in/dp/1907166114/ref=cm_sw_r_em_apa_i_wMrIEb1A00P8Q 

,.........    ........ .......... .....

Look at the first Matrix movie,” says producer Peter Rader. “It’s a yogic movie. 
It says that this world is an illusion. It’s about maya – that if we can cut through 
the illusions and connect with something larger we can do all sorts of things. 
Neo achieves the abilities of the advanced yogis [Paramahansa] Yogananda described, 
who can defy the laws of normal reality.”  

How movies embraced Hinduism (without you even noticing)

.......     .......... ............

On Sun, Apr 5, 2020, 1:44 AM Antonia Ruppel via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear Michael,

There are various bits of Sanskrit throughout Galactica - at the end of the mini-series, Elosha chants the 'asato mā sadgamaya' (helpfully subtitled as 'priestess chanting in foreign language':-)); the surname of Roslin's aid Billy is Keikeya (close enough to Kaikeya to make me think:-)); Roslin's medicine is kamala extract - and so on.

I've long been wondering how this made it into the series - so far to no avail. Ron Moore, the creator of this Galactica remake, was a Cornellian, and Cornell has long had a fairly solid Sanskrit tradition - but beyond that I have no idea. If anyone on the List can contribute to this, I'd be most grateful!

(And for what it's worth, I hear the intro as svaḥ, over two notes, rather than svāhā.) 

All the best,
     Antonia (outside the US, hence syfy's generosity does not reach me:-(!)

On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 at 22:01, Witzel, Michael via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote:
Dear All,
We have been talking about the Gāyatrī a lot.

As it is the weekend, for your amusement:

The Scifi TV channel is streaming (free) all 50+ episodes of their old "Battleship Galactica" series now:

Did anyone notice that the theme song of each episode is the Gāyatrī:  
"oṃ bhūr bhuvaḥ svāhā(!).  Tat savitur … pracodayāt"

Cheers!
Michael


Michael Witzel
Wales Prof. of Sanskrit, Dept. of South Asian Studies, 1 Bow Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
ph. 1 - 617 496 2990
witzel@fas.harvard.edu
www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/mwpage.htm



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Author | The Cambridge Introduction to Sanskrit
Lehrkraft für besondere Aufgaben | Institut für Indologie und Tibetologie
LMU München
Researcher 'Uncovering Sanskrit Syntax' | Department of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics
Junior Research Fellow | Kellogg College 
University of Oxford

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