फॉसबोल साहेबांना जर्मन म्हटलेल बहुदा आवडल नसत!...V. Fausboll's Ten Jatakas, 1872

 

आधुनिक काळात किमान तीन ग्रेट (आणि माझ्या आवडत्या) लोकांनी मराठीत जातक कथा आणल्या आहेत: धर्मानंद कोसंबी, चिं वि जोशी,  दुर्गा भागवत.... 

 

कै. धर्मानंद कोसंबी त्यांच्या पुस्तकाच्या प्रस्तावनेत म्हणतात: 

 

"...जातकट्ठकथा प्रसिद्धीला आणण्याच्या कामीं ज्यांनी परिश्रम केले त्यांत व्ही. फॉसबोल (V. Fausboll) ह्या जर्मन पंडिताला अग्रस्थान दिलें पाहिजे. जर्मनी कोठें आणि सिंहलद्वीप कोठें ! पण 'किं दूरं व्यवसायिनाम्' ह्या न्यायानें या गृहस्थानें तेथून सिंहली ताडपत्री पुस्तकें गोळा करून त्यांच्या आधारावर, दुसर्‍या कोणाचें साहाय्य नसतां, रोमन अक्षरांनी जातकट्ठकथा छापण्यास १८७७ सालीं आरंभ केला; व १८९६ साली हे काम संपविलें..."

 

पण फॉसबोल (1821-1908) तर डॅनीश होते. ते कोपनहेगन मध्ये संस्कृत शिकवायचे. 

 

अर्काइव्ह.ओआरजी (archive.org) येथे फॉसबोलांचे 'Ten Jatakas. The original Pali text with a translation and notes', 1872 हे पुस्तक उपलब्ध आहे. त्यात मला कुठेही जर्मन किंवा जर्मनीचा उल्लेख सापडला नाही. त्यात इंग्लीश आहे आणि रोमन लिपीत लिहलेले पाली आहे. 

 

विकिपीडिया डेन्मार्क बद्दल म्हणतो : 

"...A nascent Danish liberal and national movement gained momentum in the 1830s; after the European Revolutions of 1848, Denmark peacefully became a constitutional monarchy on 5 June 1849. A new constitution established a two-chamber parliament. Denmark faced war against both Prussia and Habsburg Austria in what became known as the Second Schleswig War, lasting from February to October 1864. Denmark was defeated and obliged to cede Schleswig and Holstein to Prussia. This loss came as the latest in the long series of defeats and territorial loss that had begun in the 17th century. After these events, Denmark pursued a policy of neutrality in Europe...."

 

फॉसबोल साहेबांना जर्मन म्हटलेल बहुदा आवडल नसत!

 

 

Animal knowledge is such-and-such, so ours is, too...

Anthony Gottlieb:

"...Then there is (David) Hume’s naturalism, by which I mean something different from the Greek “naturalism” mentioned earlier. Here I mean Hume’s determination to see man as wholly a part of nature and fundamentally similar to other creatures—that is, as an animal among other animals. This type of naturalism informs his treatment of our cognitive faculties, our moral sense, and, in a way, of the phenomenon of religion, which is, for him, something to be explained rather than justified. In the case of our cognitive faculties, his approach is, tellingly, the opposite of, say, that of Hobbes or Leibniz. They say: well, such-and-such can’t count as knowledge, because even animals can do that. But Hume says: animal knowledge is such-and-such, so ours is, too..."

c 1909

Artist: Clarence F. Underwood (1871 - 1929)

In The Room- Elephant or Whale?

Elephant or Whale

Artist: Peter C. Vey, The New Yorker, July 2018

The Thousand and One Nights is a Marvel of Eastern Literature... Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami, ‘Kafka On The Shore’,2002:

"... The Burton edition has all the stories I remember reading as a child, but they’re longer, with more episodes and plot twists, and so much more absorbing that it’s hard to believe they’re the same. They’re full of obscene, violent, sexual, basically outrageous scenes. Like the genie in the bottle they have this sort of vital, living sense of play, of freedom, that common sense can’t keep bottled up … Slowly, like a movie fadeout, the real world evaporates. I’m alone, inside the world of the story. My favourite feeling in the world..."

Orhan Pamuk, 'Other Colors: Essays and a Story', 2007:

"... This brings us to the real subject: The Thousand and One Nights is a marvel of Eastern literature. But because we live in a culture that has severed its links with its own cultural heritage and forgotten what it owes to India and Iran, surrendering instead to the jolts of Western literature, it came back to us via Europe...

...I would still like to use this book to say something about reading and death. There are two things people always say about the Thousand and One Nights. One is that no one has ever managed to read the book from start to finish. The second is that anyone who does read it from start to finish is sure to die. Certainly an alert reader who has seen how these two warnings fit together will wish to proceed with caution. But there’s no reason for fear. Because we’re all going to die one day, whether we read the Thousand and One Nights or not …"

 

 

पाण्याचे मद्य झाले...The Wedding Feast at Cana, 1562 by Paolo Veronese

 ना. गो. कालेलकर , 'भाषा आणि संस्कृती', १९६२-१९८२, पृष्ठ ४७:

"... ख्रिस्ताच्या शेवटच्या भोजन प्रसंगी पाण्याचे मद्य झाले अशी कथा आहे..."

विकिपीडिया मधील लास्टसपर (शेवटच्या भोजन प्रसंगी) च्या वेळी अशी कथा असल्याचा उल्लेख नाही. 

माझी एक पूर्वीची (जून १५, २०१०ची) पोस्ट पहा. कालेलकर सांगत आहेत ती कथा "Marriage at Cana" च्या वेळी घडली. येशूचा तो एक (पाण्याची वाईन करणे) सुरवातीचा चमत्कार होता. 

  The Wedding Feast at Cana (1562) by Paolo Veronese

ह्या चित्राची आजवरची कथा Plunder: Napoleon’s Theft of Veronese’s Feast by Cynthia Saltzman  ह्या पुस्तकात सांगितली आहे. त्याचे परीक्षण मी मार्च २०२१ मध्ये The American Scholar मध्ये वाचले.

Global Recycling Day....Conversations

#GlobalRecyclingDay

Artist: Bruce Eric Kaplan, The New Yorker, December 2015

Kafka Back To Arabian Nights

 Haruki Murakami, ‘Kafka on the shore’:

“…I head off to the reading room and back to Arabian Nights. Like always, once I settle down and start flipping pages, I can't stop. The Burton edition has all the stories I remember reading as a child, but they're longer, with more episodes and plot twists, and so much more absorbing that it's hard to believe they're the same. They're full of obscene, violent, sexual, basically outrageous scenes. Like the genie in the bottle they have this sort of vital, living sense of play, of freedom, that common sense can't keep bottled up. I love it and can't let go. Compared to those faceless hordes of people rushing through the train station, these crazy, preposterous stories of a thousand years ago are, at least to me, much more real. How that's possible, I don't know. It's pretty weird….”

 

Paying Bills of Savile Row tailors- M. Nehru, Jinnah, Churchill

Hannah Furness wrote in Telegraph, UK on December 3 2015:

“...Sir Winston Churchill was not so adept, it appears, at paying his bills. The archives of Henry Poole & Co, the Savile Row tailors who dressed the young Sir Winston, have revealed how the politician repeatedly refused to pay for his suits, leaving a £197 bill outstanding.  He became so infuriated by requests for payment, it discloses, that he “took umbrage and quit” their patronage, claiming it was good for “morale” and the tailor’s business for him to be dressed well.  His last order was placed in 1937, for minor repairs to a yachting cap, according to the Henry Poole & Co archives, which stretch back to 1865 and are to be made public today....”

The Savile Row tailors played such a big part in the history of 20th century. Here are a couple of more examples from the history of subcontinent.

Katherine Frank, 'Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi', 2001:

"...Anand Bhawan was not merely an elaborate replica of an English country estate. The Nehru household was actually bifurcated between East and West, India and Britain. Motilal Nehru wore expensive suits ordered from Savile Row tailors (though contrary to rumour his linen was not shipped back to Europe to be laundered). He eschewed religion, drank Scotch whisky, ate Western food (including meat) prepared by a Christian cook, and insisted that only English be spoken at his table. He employed British tutors and governesses to educate his children and, after Harrow, sent his son to Cambridge..."

Nisid Hajari, ‘Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition’, 2015:

“...Jinnah had a cold, relentless courtroom style that earned him enemies but also victories; by 1916 he had become a force at the Bombay Bar. At the beginning of the twentieth century, politics on the subcontinent was a matter for gentlemen—successful lawyers, doctors, and wealthy industrialists—who gathered under the auspices of the Indian National Congress, established in 1885, to debate how to move the country gradually toward self-government within the British Empire. Jinnah fit right in with this crowd. If anything, his Savile Row suits were better tailored, his pants more sharply creased, his two-toned shoes even shinier than those of more established figures. Within the Congress, he quickly became known as a man to watch...”

And I am also sure that Mr. Nehru and Mr. Jinnah paid their bills unlike Mr. Churchill.  Nehru and Jinnah would eventually stop wearing the western clothes.

 

Artist: Helen E. Hokinson (1893-1949), The New Yorker, May 17 1947

Artist: Peter Arno (1904-1968), The New Yorker, March 28 1942