Jokes in the Ramayana?!
All right, this is a PJ, but still it's a first, and gives me a kick to think of the so-serious Valmiki with a twinkle in his eye:
Ravana to Sugreeva (Yuddha kanda, 40): Till you met me you were Sugreeva (one with a good neck). Now you will become Hinagreeva (one with no neck)!
And then there's this really strange similie about Ravana and Sugreeva fighting:
The two combatants moved back and forth, sideways, and in an arc like an ox's urine.
I checked another translation. No mistake! I generally like the way Valmiki's similies and metaphors are all to do with nature, but this one takes the cow-pat!
Ravana to Sugreeva (Yuddha kanda, 40): Till you met me you were Sugreeva (one with a good neck). Now you will become Hinagreeva (one with no neck)!
And then there's this really strange similie about Ravana and Sugreeva fighting:
The two combatants moved back and forth, sideways, and in an arc like an ox's urine.
I checked another translation. No mistake! I generally like the way Valmiki's similies and metaphors are all to do with nature, but this one takes the cow-pat!
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Shobana
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Sep 19, 2014 08:17AM
sanskrit has several such. I don't remember them all or even a few, not even one. Nut I do remember enjoying them while it was on in college.
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Note: I am reading your blogs in your voice to enjoy them fully, also the humour.
Shobana wrote: "Note: I am reading your blogs in your voice to enjoy them fully, also the humour."Thanks, Shobana, you made my day!
I really wish someone would compile all these funny, colourful expressions from Indian languages. I love some my mother-in-law used to use, like calling the brinjal's calyx a 'pavadai', and the one about the vannan, the vannathi and the kazhudai. And my grandmother would say a pori-urundai was laughing when it split open. And the proverb about ammi-kals flying in the Adi-masam wind. Love that one, and keep thinking about it when we're on the farm because we have such a wild wind blowing all the time. I think you have such a good knowledge of both Sanskrit and Tamil, you should really record some of these things. Just randomly put down whatever you remember.
In Snaskrit there are the pictorial verses written in different shapes like snakes, birds, animals, etc. They are called Chithra Bandham - "enclosing pictorially". My uncle taught himself Sanskrit and wrote 4 books on them. One shape is cow's urine shape!
That's amazing -- both your uncle and the cow's-urine-shaped poem! Just reinforces how obsessed our ancestors were with cows!
with strange analogies, similes and metaphors.
My dad used to collect sayings like that. He would hear one from a total stranger in passing on the street and it would become a part of his regular speech. He said things like, "It's raining like a cow, pissing on a flat rock in a windstorm." or "Don't just stand there, with your teeth in your mouth and your elbows halfway up your arms."
That's such a good idea, Dixie! That's what keeps a language alive and vibrant! (And amazing that cow's urine is a universal similie!) I love looking at the new words added to the Oxford dictionary each year, but always wonder, who's going to do it for the less widely-spoken languages?
less widely spoken languages may not grow in the same way or at the same rate. that's why they are less spoken. they are diminishing everyday and we are losing out on the richnesss of languages, culture and human thought.
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