Bhakti List Archives

Re: chitranchiru kaale!!

From the Bhakti List Archives

GOPALAN SRINIVASA SAMPATH KUMAR • Thu Sep 19 2002 - 14:05:09 PDT 


Dear all.,

granted tiruppavai was not scripted during the time.
But, lateron we have several publications (over the past
centuries)., all of them uniformly (edited by scholars) 
have the ! punctuation. 

And both in sanskrit and tamil grammar the bhAvam - 
vilithal or azhaithal or koovuthal is well known. the 
concept is very much there - as an inherent part of 
origin of a language and its development 
(may be the denoting sign -!- was not in general use).

(Sanskrit: hey rAma! hey rAmou! hey rAmaah! etc.. in the 
rAma sabdha - table; the first lesson in sankrit)

and thiruvadi - usually refers to a pair., but
I am not sure if kaale can imply a pair.

also if one looks in combination with Nachiar thirumozhi,
the immediate continuation of thiruppavai -

velvaraippadhan munnam thurai padindhu (Nachiar thirumozhi 1.2)

velvaraippadhan munnam - before dawn - which is also
chitranchiru kaalai pozuthu.

so, the meaning should not be taken out of context - that
is margazhi paavai nonbu.

kaale, as leg, may be a grammatically acceptable meaning, 
but is not apt and is out of context.

hope it is convincing enough..

- arulmari.


On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 20:14:25  
 Mani Varadarajan wrote:
>--- In bhakti-list@y..., "GOPALAN SRINIVASA SAMPATH KUMAR" 
> wrote:
>> Dear All.,
>> 
>> No problem with describing 'chiru kaale' as thiruvadi.
>> 
>> But, in general, if it is a vocative address it will be 
>> followed by exclamation mark (!) (vilithal in tamil) 
>> e.g. sridhara! maaya! vaamanane!
>
>Most ancient Tamil poems including Divya Prabandham were
>not written with punctuation, and I don't think Tamil 
>even had such a concept in the old days. This being the
>case, the presence or lack thereof of exclamantion marks
>is proof of nothing other than the modern publisher's
>idea of the intent of the words.
>
>> so, please let us stick to the traditional vyakhyanams 
>> which are a treasure and also to the simple literal
>> meanings. (sva- upadesam is entitled only to 
>> poorvacharyas and not to us who are least qualifed
>> not just in terms of anubhavam but also by the grammatical
>> knowledge of tamil..)
>
>The traditional vyakhyanams are certainly a wealth of information
>and must be studied by anyone who wishes to come to a firm
>understanding of the meaning of the paasurams, but I would
>be hesitant to restrict the freedom of others' to find new
>meanings in them. After all, is this not yet another anubhava?
>
>And it appears, contrary to what I thought earlier, that
>in this case 'ciRu kAlE' can very well grammatically refer
>to Kannan's tiruvaDi.
>
>regards,
>Mani


--------------------------------------------------------------
           - SrImate rAmAnujAya namaH -
To Post a message, send it to:   bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com
Group Home: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bhakti-list
Archives: http://ramanuja.org/sv/bhakti/archives/
 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/