mama vyaeVtagata Aeva\krNapa*amaÎ

Kalidas composed this small collection of poetry, most probably, at his young and formative years. He is describing six traditional seasons of the Indian lunar calendar year. Kalidas describes most lyrically, in details, the changes these seasons bring about. The contents are, however, dicey and downright derogatory to women.

I started this series on Sanskrit Digest. The Sanskrit stanza was in itrans format. The translation and commentary was in English. The difficulty of translation of a poetical piece written in a language that is not currently spoken was a daunting task in itself. People are still not familiar with itrans transliteration scheme. There were numerous typos in my postings. The readers were not satisfied because I chose not to give definitions of the words and expressions. Sanskrit is a difficult language as it is. Mere word definitions do not, automatically, solve one's problems in understanding and appreciating Sanskrit. Definitions help a person with a little background in basic Sanskrit .

Readers on Sanskrit Digest come from various linguistic backgrounds. I, therefore, thought worthwhile to give definitions in three major Indian languages, Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. In addition to that I decided to give synonyms for Sanskrit terms to increase reader's vocabulary. If enough free fonts are available, I may take this project to include Bengali, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, and Malayalam, soon. If you don't know these Indian languages, this is the opportunity for you to learn them, provided you can read their unique scripts. English definitions help only English speaking people. The interest in Sanskrit is growing. I may, therefore, introduce French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese definitions, one of these days.

Sanskrit must be freed from its religious and sectarian shackles. It is not owned by anybody that I can think of, except the people who would like to bring it to the modern world. Anything and everything helps.

vasaöta

Bhasa was yet another Sanskrit author who wrote extensively. Even Kalidas admired Bhasa's style. "Charudattam" is a stage play. Due to the caste system taboo imposed upon the society by the Brahmin class, the characters in this play speak different languages. Male characters of accepted social standing alone speak Sanskrit, the others, including women, speak Prakrit. There goes the theory that everybody spoke Sanskrit in ancient India. For practical purpose Prakrit is translated into Sanskrit.

Mr. C. D. Deshmukh was the first Indian Governor of The Reserve Bank of India and was an avid Sanskritist. Later, he became the first Finance Minister in the Jawaharlal Nehru cabinet. His career was both illustrious and luminous. He was an excellent poet too. He wrote Marathi and Sanskrit poetry in his spare time, busy as he was in his important job. Mr. Deshmukh translated Kalidasa's "Meghadutam" in Marathi in 1941.

He was a president of All India Sanskrit Literary Conference held in 1955. He discussed the status of Sanskrit and made some observations, which are worth reading. You can read them here. Since Omkaranand Himalaya Ashram released their new editor utility, I mixed Ninad's font via Prashant's utility and new Itranslt utitlity and their new font in this article. You must have both of these fonts to view the article.