भर्तृहरी यांचे नीतीशतक आणि ओपेनहायमर यांची ट्रिनिटी स्फोटा आधीची मनोवस्था...Did Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin Confuse Bhartṛhari's Śatakatraya with Gita?

आपण ऐकत आलो आहोत आणि आता गाजलेल्या सिनेमात (सेक्सच्या नंतर असो वा चाचणी स्फोट पाहिल्यावर असो) पहिले सुद्धा असेल की ओपेनहायमर यांच्यावर गीतेचा प्रभाव किती होता ते, पण त्यांच्यावर अनेक संस्कृत पुस्तकांचा प्रभाव होता. 

Kai Bird & Martin J. Sherwin त्यांच्या 'American Prometheus: The Triumph & Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer', २००५ पुस्तकात म्हणतात;

"... With his facility for languages, it wasn’t long before Robert was reading the Bhagavad-Gita. “It is very easy and quite marvelous,” he wrote Frank. He told friends that this ancient Hindu text—“The Lord’s Song”—was “the most beautiful philosophical song existing in any known tongue.” Ryder gave him a pink-covered copy of the book which found its way onto the bookshelf closest to his desk. Oppie took to passing out copies of the Gita as gifts to his friends...

One of his favorite Sanskrit texts was the Meghaduta, a poem that discusses the geography of love from the laps of naked women to the soaring mountains of the Himalayas. “The Meghaduta I read with Ryder,” he wrote Frank, “with delight, some ease, and great enchantment. . . .”

Bird & Sherwin पुस्तकात पुढे म्हणतात;

"... That evening, in an effort to relieve the tension, Oppie recited for Bush a stanza from the Gita that he had translated from the Sanskrit:

 In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains

On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,

In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,

The good deeds a man has done before defend him..."

हे गीतेतील नसून  भर्तृहरी यांच्या नीतीशतकातले आहे!

 विकिपीडिया म्हणते:
"... Two days before the Trinity test, Oppenheimer expressed his hopes and fears in a quotation from Bhartṛhari's Śatakatraya:

    In battle, in the forest, at the precipice in the mountains,

    On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows,

    In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame,

    The good deeds a man has done before defend him."

वने रणे शत्रुजलाग्निमध्ये । महार्णवे पर्वतमस्तके वा।।

 

सुप्तं प्रमत्तं विषमस्थितं वा । रक्षन्ति पुण्यानि पुराकृतानि।।९७।। 

 

( भर्तृहरी यांचे सार्थ नीतीशतक, पृष्ठ ४७)

कलाकार: वसंत सहस्रबुद्धे , वरदा प्रकाशन, १९९४-२०१०

 

It is very clear from following passage that Oppenheimer never confused Bhagavad Gita with Bhartrihari’s Three hundred poems.

In 1960s, "...Oppenheimer received a letter dated 1 February from The Christian Century, a non-denominational magazine, asking him to ‘jot down – almost on impulse’ a list of up to ten books ‘that most shaped your attitudes in your vocation and philosophy of life’. The list he sent them was as follows:

1. Les Fleurs du mal

2. Bhagavad Gita

3. Riemann’s Gesammelte mathematische Werke

4. Theaetetus

5. L’Éducation sentimentale

6. Divina Commedia

7. Bhartrihari’s Three hundred poems

8. ‘The Waste Land’

9. Faraday’s notebooks

10. Hamlet

As an exercise in polymathic showing off, the list is peerless. In just ten titles Oppenheimer has managed to include works of drama, fiction, poetry, mathematics, physics and Hinduism, written in a total of no fewer than six languages: Sanskrit, Greek, Italian, French, German and English..."

(Ray Monk, 'Inside the Centre: The Life of J. Robert Oppenheimer', 2012)