Verse for the week – 17th November 2009

क्रमेण धारमुसलप्रहारैः

प्रावृण् मयूरध्वनिबद्धगीतिः।

वियोगिहृत्तण्डुलखण्डनाय

प्रवर्तते लोलतडिद्भुजश्रीः॥

Krameṇa dhāra-musala-prahāraiḥ

Prāvṛṇ mayūra-dhvani-baddha-gītiḥ

Viyogi-hṛt-taṇḍula-khaṇḍanāya

Pravartate lola-taḍid-bhuja-śrīḥ

The rainy season begins by degrees to grind the hearts of separated lovers with the blows of the downpours that form her pestle, as though they were grains of rice.  The song she sings is the call of the peacocks and her glistening arms the flickering lightning.

Dr Shankar Rajaraman

Bangalore

Varanasi to Tibet

When he attained enlightenment the Buddha set off for the city of learning, Varanasi, keen to share his newfound knowledge.  Just outside the city he preached his first sermon at Sarnath and Buddhism was born.  Along with the Buddhist temple and stupas that mark this spot, it is thus appropriate that Sarnath is also home to a Tibetan institute which aims to return to India its Buddhist heritage – thousands of Sanskrit texts detailing the teachings of the Buddha. 

The Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, or CIHTS, was set up as by Nehru and the Dalai Lama a few years after China took control of Tibet in 1959, primarily to provide a centre for students of the Himalayan region – who had previously come to Tibet – to study Buddhism.  In 1981 it started a restoration programme designed to reconstruct the original Sanskrit texts which had travelled to Tibet from the 7^th century AD onwards. 

While Buddhism flourished in its adopted home in Tibet – as well as elsewhere in Asia – it declined in India and many of these Sanskrit texts were subsequently lost.  In many cases, the only extant versions are the Tibetan translations which came out of a large and well organised translation programme in Tibet, sponsored by its kings.  Indian scholars such as Shantaraksita and his disciple Kamalashila, and Atisha – who revived Buddhism in Tibet after in faltered in the 10^th century – travelled to Tibet and took with them the teachings of the Buddha, the canon known as Kagyur, as well as their commentaries on the canon, called Tangyur.  In the 9^th century the Tibetan king created a Tibetan-Sanskrit dictionary, the Mahavyutpatti, to standardise the translation of these many texts by prescribing the particular Tibetan term for each Sanskrit word.  He also set rules which determined which texts should be translated and appointed an editorial board to vet each translation. 

As Dr Pempa, an editor in the restoration department, explains, these efforts to control and standardise the translation into Tibetan greatly help the Institute’s programme to reconstruct the originals.  Tibetan scholars work with Indian Sanskritists; the Tibetans explain the meaning of each text, in Hindi or Sanskrit, to the Indian scholars who then render it in Sanskrit.  The Sanskritists use the metre to ensure that the reconstructed text matches the original exactly, or as closely as possible.  Where a fragmentary Sanskrit manuscript is available, as is the case with some tantra texts where fragments have been found in Nepal, this is also used to rebuild the original.   The Institute’s translation department then works to translate these texts into Hindi, and occasionally English, to make them as widely accessible as possible in India.  As Dr Pempa puts it, “We want to return the generosity of the Indian scholars who first brought these texts to Tibet by bringing them back to India.”

The Institute’s library houses an extensive collection of Tibetan and Indian manuscripts, all beautifully wrapped in yellow cloth. These manuscripts are quite different from the palm-leaf manuscripts found in India. Tibet set up four main printing presses which allowed for the mass production of these manuscripts.  The blocks might take several years to create but once ready they could be used to print many copies.  The Tibetan ones are simply decorated with a Buddha at either end; the ones from Bengal have elaborate paintings of various gods on the wooden boards that hold the folios together and include a series of delicately drawn mandalas.  Tibetan manuscripts were printed on a handmade paper which is remarkably durable – some in the library are over 200 years old.  The librarian, Mr Sunaam, explains that many of these manuscripts were brought to India by Tibetan exiles fleeing the Chinese occupation in the 1960s thus providing the material needed for this restoration programme.  It is thanks to them that the teachings of the Buddha have returned to their original birthplace and can once again make themselves heard in India.   

For more about the CIHTS see their website here

Golden Lotuses in Bangalore

The Foundation for the Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions, or rather more manageably the FRLHT, has a grand vision: “to revitalise Indian medical heritage”.  A large and well-equipped campus spread over 15 acres in North Bangalore and a 100-plus team of medical and horticultural experts suggests that realising this goal is well within the FRLHT’s grasp.

The Foundation is active in promoting the use of traditional medicine systems – including siddha medicine, a system similar to ayurveda but based on mercury (rasa-aushadi), as well as ayurveda – and in re-establishing the traditional methods of transmitting this knowledge.  The executive chairman, Mr Darshan Shankar, distinguishes between the very sophisticated Sanskrit oral tradition and that of other cultures and languages, Indian and otherwise, which focus more on practical knowledge.  “There are tribes in India that are totally illiterate who can set a broken bone, whether of a man or an animal, pretty well; but the Sanskrit tradition is much more than that.”  He stresses the importance of sound for the oral tradition and likens reading a Sanskrit manuscript to reading sheet music – much of the meaning of the notation cannot be brought out without sound.  It is the sound of the words which, he says, engage with the mind.

A large part of the organisation’s work involves conserving the plants used in Indian medicine for thousands of years and the campus is dotted with all manner of trees and flowers each with a particular medicinal quality.  The team has endeavoured to identify and catalogue each plant in several Indian languages, including Tamil, Marathi and Hindi, as well as Sanskrit.  There are perhaps 400 plants on campus out of the 2,000 they have positively identified; another 3,000 estimated species are said to be known to various local traditions.  

Three Ayurvedic doctors, a horticultural expert from Kerala and a Sanskrit poet-cum-psychiatrist reveal just there is to learn from each plant: the different types of medicinal usages, the parts you can eat and how to prepare them, the varieties of the plant and which part of India it comes from, and how to reconcile this reality with the at times fantastical descriptions of flora found in Sanskrit poetry.  Dr Suparna explains how the ishvari, a plant with bizarre purple flowers that resemble a brain (above), cures snakebites; while the nirgundi is used for arthritis.  Dr Shankar, who leads the team responsible for translating Sanskrit texts into English, notes that the names match the plants’ morphology, so the asti-shrnkhala (literarly ‘chains of bones’) is a shrub with small green tubular leaves separated into several joints (below). 

Some take their name from other characteristics, the ugra-gandha for instance is a type of kasturi, or musk, so called because of its fierce (ugra) smell (gandha).  The parijata, one of the five divine trees which were produced at the churning of the ocean and which was later brought to earth by Krishna, is happily found to be alive and well – on the FRLHT campus at least.  Its tiny white flowers have a bright almost fluorescent orange stem, justifying its alias as the coral tree. 

The lotus pond though brings a disappointment as the botanist, Mr Ram, explains that lotuses and water lilies grow only in still water.  The golden lotuses that Kalidasa has growing in the divine river, Ganga, may owe more to poetic licence than botany but nature here reveals so many weird and wonderful that it is easy to forgive the poets their overactive imaginations.

For more about the FRLHT click here