(This post has been borrowed from my own post dated 29 December 2007)
I simply love Lapham's Quarterly's chart on 'Name Calling'.
Read what William Faulkner called Henry James: "One of the nicest old ladies I ever met." or what Margaret Kendal called Sarah Bernhardt "A great actress, from the waist down"!
Using extreme profanity in public is not new to India and prominent Indians.
It probably started with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (बाळ गंगाधर टिळक) 1856-1920 and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (गोपाळ गणेश आगरकर) 1856-1895. In 1893, they fought mother of all wordy duels.
They used terms like leper, dog afflicted with rabies, murderous, rotten brain, arrogant, mean to describe each other.
Agarkar started it.
[Source- “Vyakti aani Vichar”, 1979 by Y D Phadke (“व्यक्ती आणि विचार” य दि फडके)]
In January 1882, Wikipedia says, telephony was introduced in India but Tilak and Agarkar never spoke to each other on phone. By 1891, 15 years after its invention, more than 5 million of the devices were used in the United States. But none connecting Tilak and Agarkar in 1893.
If there were to to be one...
Artist: Whitney Darrow,Jr., The New Yorker, 8 February 1947
I simply love Lapham's Quarterly's chart on 'Name Calling'.
Read what William Faulkner called Henry James: "One of the nicest old ladies I ever met." or what Margaret Kendal called Sarah Bernhardt "A great actress, from the waist down"!
Using extreme profanity in public is not new to India and prominent Indians.
It probably started with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (बाळ गंगाधर टिळक) 1856-1920 and Gopal Ganesh Agarkar (गोपाळ गणेश आगरकर) 1856-1895. In 1893, they fought mother of all wordy duels.
They used terms like leper, dog afflicted with rabies, murderous, rotten brain, arrogant, mean to describe each other.
Agarkar started it.
[Source- “Vyakti aani Vichar”, 1979 by Y D Phadke (“व्यक्ती आणि विचार” य दि फडके)]
In January 1882, Wikipedia says, telephony was introduced in India but Tilak and Agarkar never spoke to each other on phone. By 1891, 15 years after its invention, more than 5 million of the devices were used in the United States. But none connecting Tilak and Agarkar in 1893.
If there were to to be one...
Artist: Whitney Darrow,Jr., The New Yorker, 8 February 1947