Verses on the Heart of Dharma Options

[Ananda]

I have been working on a Bengali composition illustrating the fundamental unity and essence of all dharmas and religions the world around. These are the current mangalacharanam. Given that I suck in grammar, I'd be grateful if the assemblage of pandits could revise as necessary.

|| prajJA-kavyam : prajJA-krame para-vastura bahu-vidhA gati ||

|| Wisdom Poetry : Many Trails of Greatest Essence on the Wisdom Grid ||

=-=-=-=-

|| oM prajJAnaM brahmaM janmAdi-krama-mUla-kAraNaM rasaM rasatamaM sac-cid-AnandaM paramaM ekAdvitIya-maNDalam ||
|| tat tvaM cAhaM cAtmAm ca sarvam idaM kevalaikaM para-brahma-tattvaM agocara-sattvaM paragatiM nirguNAkSaram oM ||

"Om: Wisdom is spirit, the root cause of life-cycles, the essence of essences, the existence-cognition-bliss, the greatest one without a second. That is you and I and the soul and all this; nothing but the single highest divine truth, the trans-sensory plane of reality, the supreme goal, the quality-less undecaying syllable: Om."

dharmam ekaM pracAritaM vizva-dharmaM sanAtanam /
bhinna-rucir hi lokAnAm sama-dharmasya khaNDanam //

"The dharma is manifest as one, as the universal, eternal principii. In the diverging tastes of the worlds, the uniform system is reduced to fragments."

akhaNDa-dharmaM hRdi-sanniviSTaH
nirbandha-zarmaM manase praviSTaH //
zailena durgam yAta eka-niSThaH
vizvasya zAntiM jagate pradiSTaH //

"The unfragmented principii established in the heart, the unconditioned blissful refuge entered into thoughts; one firmness of focus has fled to impassable mountains, the indicated way of universal peace for world."

anRta tyAjitaM hRde nirmalaM
dhyAyIta tat-paraM satya nirmitam /
pIbita vAstavam dharma-mUlakam
prkRta jIvane sAdhya tat-kSaNAt //

"Forsaking falsehood, spotless in the heart, contemplating beyond, settled in the truth... Having drunk the essence, the root of true principii, in natural accomplished life, fulfillment's the blink of an eye."

[ePiTau]

I didn't get so far, but here is a first installment.

The Bengali passage looks fine:
|| prajñā-kavyam : prajñā-krame para-vastura bahu-vidhā gati ||

I wonder whether "Trails of Greatest Essence" might be stronger if done as "Trails towards/into Greatest Essence"? But you would have to change the Bengali then.

The Sanskrit passage that follows is prose, right?

|| oṃ prajñānaṃ brahmaṃ janmādi-krama-mūla-kāraṇaṃ rasaṃ rasatamaṃ sac-cid-ānandaṃ paramaṃ ekādvitīya-maṇḍalam ||

brahman is a neuter noun. The nominative singular, which you want to use here, since you are simply listing items in apposition, is brahma, no ending: oṃ prajñānaṃ brahma. Since rasa is a masculine noun, not an adjective modifying something neuter, it would have to be rasaḥ (in the sandhi context here raso). But you may want to make it a compound rasa-rasatamaḥ. It is not an adjective modifying brahman (can anything modify brahman????), and should retain its masculine gender. Or, if you like the -m sounds, you could use sāram, since that exist both in masculine and neuter: sāraṃ, rasatamaḥ.

Even rasatama alone is often taken to mean "essence of essences."

In paramaṃ ekādvitīya-maṇḍalam there should be no final anusvāra before eka .... .
Why do you use maṇḍalam in ekādvitīya-maṇḍalam and then leave it untranslated in English? Further, are you meaning to say "the greatest, the one w/o a 2nd" (that is what your Skt. is now expressing), or "the greatest secondless unit", (as in your translation, since it lacks a comma after greatest)?

|| tat tvaṃ cāhaṃ cātmām ca sarvam idaṃ kevalaikaṃ para-brahma-tattvaṃ agocara-sattvaṃ paragatiṃ nirguṇākṣaram oṃ ||

ātman is masculine, and I suppose you wanted to use the nominative singular here? Then it should be cātmā, no final -m. Since you are expressing equality, this is that, is that, is that, is you, is me is everything, etc, you are simply listing stand-alone nouns that retain their proper gender each.

No final anusvāra in para-brahma-tattvaṃ.
Since nirguṇākṣaram oṃ is neuter singular, paragatim cannot have an accusative ending. There is no accusative object it could refer to. You want to say that om is the paragati. Considering the sandhi context here it would have to be paragatir (feminine nominative singular, paragatiḥ).

In general, so far, the main problem in these passages seems to be the mixing up of neuters, often naturally ending in -m, even in nominative, with accusatives. But your construction doesn't use any accusatives, or even adjectives. So you only have nominatives that keep the signs of their genders.

[Ananda]

I didn't get so far, but here is a first installment.

Thank you so much ePiTau.

The Bengali passage looks fine:
|| prajñā-kavyam : prajñā-krame para-vastura bahu-vidhā gati ||

I wonder whether "Trails of Greatest Essence" might be stronger if done as "Trails towards/into Greatest Essence"? But you would have to change the Bengali then.

I took it from the top down, with the essence itself being the traveler that descends into many minds, rather than the paths leading towards the essence. Does that make sense?

The Sanskrit passage that follows is prose, right?

Well if it is a verse, it's one hell of a meter that I am not familiar with! Just made the lines of equal length to keep it pretty.

Since rasa is a masculine noun, not an adjective modifying something neuter, it would have to be rasaḥ (in the sandhi context here raso). But you may want to make it a compound rasa-rasatamaḥ. It is not an adjective modifying brahman (can anything modify brahman????), and should retain its masculine gender. Or, if you like the -m sounds, you could use sāram, since that exist both in masculine and neuter: sāraṃ, rasatamaḥ. Even rasatama alone is often taken to mean "essence of essences."

It should have actually been rasAnAM rasatamam, in a spin from raso vai saH. I would like to keep an overt contrast there between the many and the culmination. They are all intended as perceived attributes of the "whatever it is" that doesn't register at face value in life. If brahman has any relevance, then aspects of it are modified by superimposition. Going strictly without modifiers in the spirit of monistic absolutism, I would have but an empty line surrounded with || ||... which isn't really helpful in communicating anything!

In paramaṃ ekādvitīya-maṇḍalam there should be no final anusvāra before eka .... .
Why do you use maṇḍalam in ekādvitīya-maṇḍalam and then leave it untranslated in English? Further, are you meaning to say "the greatest, the one w/o a 2nd" (that is what your Skt. is now expressing), or "the greatest secondless unit", (as in your translation, since it lacks a comma after greatest)?

Looks like I forgot; now reads as "the one great orb without a second". Still working through tidying up the translations.

|| tat tvaṃ cāhaṃ cātmām ca sarvam idaṃ kevalaikaṃ para-brahma-tattvaṃ agocara-sattvaṃ paragatiṃ nirguṇākṣaram oṃ ||

ātman is masculine, and I suppose you wanted to use the nominative singular here? Then it should be cātmā, no final -m. Since you are expressing equality, this is that, is that, is that, is you, is me is everything, etc, you are simply listing stand-alone nouns that retain their proper gender each.

This of course is an attempt to fuse together a numbr of the mahavakyas; tat tvam asi, ayam AtmA brahma, ahaM brahmAsmi, sarvaM khalv idaM brahma, prapaJca-paJcanasya yadA bADA boom. Looks like I've been liberal with my love for anusvaras!

In general, so far, the main problem in these passages seems to be the mixing up of neuters, often naturally ending in -m, even in nominative, with accusatives. But your construction doesn't use any accusatives, or even adjectives. So you only have nominatives that keep the signs of their genders.

Thank you for taking the time to point out the bugs in this shot at an omglomeration sutra. There are some 60 Bengali tripadis I've been hacking in, and the "mangalacharana" came in as a bit of an afterthought. "Nominatives that keep the signs of their genders" seems to be along the general lines of my thinking; not that fond of accusations or excessive adjectives!


Then, after your revisions, the mother-of-a-blurb becomes:

|| oM prajJAnaM brahma janmAdi-krama-mUla-kAraNaM rasAnAM rasatamaM sac-cid-AnandaM paramaM ekAdvitIya-maNDalam ||
|| tat tvaM cAhaM cAtmA ca sarvam idaM kevalaikaM para-brahma-tattvam agocara-sattvaM paragatir nirguNAkSaram oM ||

"Om: Wisdom is spirit, the root cause of life-cycles, the essence of essences, the existence-cognition-bliss, the one great orb without a second. That is you and I and the soul and all this; nothing but the single highest divine truth, the trans-sensory plane of reality, the supreme state, the quality-less undecaying syllable: Om."

Look about right?

[ePiTau]

date
Fri Dec 31 12:00:08 CET 2010

I am looking at your next passage:

dharmam ekaṃ pracāritaṃ viśva-dharmaṃ sanātanam /
bhinna-rucir hi lokānām sama-dharmasya khaṇḍanam //

This is metric, in general, anuṣṭup, to be specific.
The rules for anuṣṭup require the fifth to be short, and this you followed perfectly. However, the rules also stipulate that no quarter verse begins with short-short-long. The d-segment in your composition violates this rule:

a: 2 1 2 2 1 2 1 2
b: 2 1 2 2 1 2 1 2
c: 2 1 1 2 1 2 2 2
d: 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2

You would need to find another wording to avoid this pattern.

Dharma, in Sanskrit, is masculine gender. You have written an accusative construction here, but it should be nominative. The first half of your stanza should be corrected to read:

dharma ekaḥ pracārito viśva-dharmaḥ sanātanaḥ /

(sandhis: the first Visarga is dropped before e-, the next one is retained before p-, the next one is turned into -o before v-, the next remains unchanged before s-, though you could optionally turn it into -s, if you like).

[ePiTau]

Look about right?

Anusvāra is a nice sound, I agree, but you must not have one before ekādvitīya-maṇḍalam.
Otherwise it looks fine, only it should be rasānāṃ rasatamaḥ, or rasānāṃ rasatamas.

[ePiTau]

date
Fri Dec 31 14:42:37 CET 2010

Next stanza,
akhaṇḍa-dharmaṃ hṛdi-sanniviṣṭaḥ
nirbandha-śarmaṃ manase praviṣṭaḥ //
śailena durgam yāta eka-niṣṭhaḥ
viśvasya śāntiṃ jagate pradiṣṭaḥ //

durgam before yāta should have final anusvāra.
But I am not sure you will want to retain this construction.
This stanza is composed in a triṣṭup variety known as upajāti, since it mixes indravajra and upendravajra:

indravajra: 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2
upendravajra: 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2

your stanza:
a: 1 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2
b: 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2
c: 2 2 1 2 2 2 1 2 1 2 2
d: 2 2 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 2 2

As you can see, it's all well within the rules for upajāti, except for quarter verse c, where your sixth syllable is long while it should be short. That is exactly the long -a- in yāta.

But let's look at the grammar before we fix the prosody.
The niṣṭhaḥ (masc. sng.) is a gone one, yātaḥ, and you have correctly dropped the final Visarga before eka. It has gone to the mountain(s), and that requires mountain(s) to be accusative, or possibly locative. śailena sounds really good, but it is masc. inst. sng., so that doesn't work as a candidate to which niṣṭhaḥ could have gone. (Besides, for durga to agree with śailena it would have to at least be durgena, but this would bust your metre even more severely).

One way to rescue your construction both metrically and grammatically, could be to make it:
śailaṃ ca durgaṃ gata eka-niṣṭhaḥ (the final Visarga here will become -o if you keep you last line).

Let's jump back to the first quarter verse:
akhaṇḍa-dharmaṃ hṛdi-sanniviṣṭaḥ

The dharma is hṛdi-sanniviṣṭaḥ. Here sanniviṣṭaḥ shows the correct masc. nom. sng. ending that it should have, because it belongs to dharma. dharma, however, is sporting an acc. sng. ending where it should be nominative. It would have to become akhaṇḍa-dharmo hṛdi-sanniviṣṭaḥ. But this is unfortunately not the end of it. Since -sanniviṣṭaḥ stands at the end of an odd pāda, the final Visarga here is not in absolute final position and will have to obey Sandhi rules dictated by the initial sound of the even pāda that follows: -n. Thus your first pāda will have to become:
akhaṇḍa-dharmo hṛdi-sanniviṣṭo.

Next pāda:
nirbandha-śarmaṃ manase praviṣṭaḥ //

Not sure where the "blissful" in your English comes from. It is not there in the Sanskrit. The prefix nir- in nirbandha- is not a negation, so the word cannot mean "unconditioned." The meanings this word has do not fit anything you have in your translation.

In the same pāda, manase is the dative of manas (unto the mind/thoughts). The locative, which you probably intended, is manasi (in(to) the mind/thought(s)). You may want to rethink this line.

The third pāda we have already discussed, but you will have to turn the final Visarga into -o if your fourth pāda begins with a voiced consonant (like v- in this case).

In your fourth pāda,
viśvasya śāntiṃ jagate pradiṣṭaḥ,
it is the eka-niṣṭhaḥ, which is indicated (pradiṣṭaḥ), unto the world (jagate, neuter, dative sng.) as universal peace. śānti, therefore, does not deserve to be rendered as accusative. She needs to be nominative (śāntir, considering the Sandhi).