(2) When before sandhi the previous word ends in t and the following word begins with s, after sandhi the last letter of the previous word is c ________
and the following word begins with ch: syac chastravit represents presandhi syat sastravit.
(3) Where a word begins with h and the previous word ends with a double consonant, this is our simplified spelling to show the pre-sandhi form: tad hasati is commonly written as tad dhasati, but we write tadd hasati so that the original initial letter is obvious.
compounds
We also punctuate the division of compounds (samasa), simply by inserting a thin vertical line between words. There are words where the decision whether to regard them as compounds is arbitrary. Our principle has been to try to guide readers to the correct dictionary entries.
Exemplar of CSL Style
Where the Devanagari script reads:
Others would print:
We print:
And in English:
May Ganesha’s domed forehead protect you! Streaked with vermilion dust, it seems to be emitting the spreading rays of the rising sun to pacify the teeming darkness of obstructions.
(“Nava·sahasanka and the Serpent Princess” 1.3)
Wordplay
Classical Sanskrit literature can abound in puns (slesa). Such paronomasia, or wordplay, is raised to a high art; rarely is it a cliche. Multiple meanings merge (slisyanti) into a single word or phrase. Most common are pairs of meanings, but as many as ten separate meanings are attested. To mark the parallel senses in the English, as well as the punning original in the Sanskrit, we use a slanted font (different from italic) and a triple colon (⋮) to separate the alternatives. E.g.
It is right that poets should fall silent upon hearing the Kadambari, for the sacred law rules that recitation must be suspended when the sound of an arrow ⋮ the poetry of Bana is heard.
(Someshvara·deva’s “Moonlight of Glory” 1.15)
J
aya·deva’s “Gita·govinda” (Gitagovindakavya) is one of the classics of Sanskrit literature, and like all classic works, it must be read through its two histories. The first history places it in the culture of its own time, the second explores how, although it was of that world, it came down to us with undiminished splendor: why it was of its time, and also of all time.
The “Gita·govinda” began its life as a classic work for the great Vaishnava literary tradition; but its audience spread beyond the religious to all who loved Sanskrit literature. It became one of the defining texts of literature and music in some regions of India. The “Gita·govinda” is, at one level, what it says it is: a song of Govinda—in many senses. Its being a song to Govinda implies that the emotion that the devotee feels for his god is in excess of ordinary language: only a song—the enhancement of ordinary language by poetry—can express the devotee’s emotion. This implies that God could not be reached without that language: we, ordinary people, may have a feeling of fullness towards the world, and towards God; but we do not possess a language which can carry that fullness and bring it to a flowering expression. This can only be expressed by poetry.
But this is also a song about Govinda, with very interesting features. At the center of its poetic world is Krishna, but worshipped in a significantly new form. The “Gita·govinda” represents a crucial extension of the narrative scope of the story of Krishna. In earlier, conventional texts, Krishna was primarily admired for qualities of invincible valor or states-manly wisdom. These qualities make the figure of Krishna ________
dominant in the “Maha·bharata” story—although he is one of its least active figures. Drawing on another tradition embodied in the Puranas, Jaya·deva’s “Gita·govinda” instigates a fundamental transformation of this heroic figure into a different figure which is erotic and aesthetic. The story shifts in space from Kuru·kshetra and Dvaraka to Vrinda·vana, in biographical emphasis from his maturity to his adolescence, and in his character from a warrior and statesman, concerned with the order of the world, to a lover, concerned with an aesthetic enjoyment of the world. In a subtle expression of this change, he is now worshipped as madhur’/adhipati, “the sweet lord,” rather than Mathur’/adhipati, “the lord of Mathura,” the city where Krishna had slain the evil king Kansa; he has unrivaled dominion of all beautiful things. “Gita·govinda” is the great celebration of this transference in the narrative, the defining text which ensures that at least in some regions, the name of Krishna would be inextricably linked not to the grimly dark battlefields of Kuru· kshetra, but the blooming forest in full moon nights on the leafy banks of the Yamuna. Although the narrative connection with the Krishna of the “Maha·bharata” was retained, the “Gita·govinda” wrought the most astonishing transformation in the way devotees imagined godliness.
This is a text of a very different rasa, of a different rhetorical orientation towards the world. The “Maha·bharata,” on its most sophisticated readings, is meant to produce a drying up of desire (trsna/ksaya/sukha); the “Gita·govinda” is a celebration of desire, although as a great text it maintains a witty ambiguity regarding its meaning. An early invocation invites an ideal reader who should be someone whose mind ________
is drenched by remembering Krishna (yadi Hari/smarane sarasam mano, 1.3) and who has a curiosity about the in-exhaustible playfulness of worldly love (yadi vildsa/kalasu kutuhalam, ibid.). Readers, in this imperfect world, might come with only one intention; but there is a subtle suggestion that his poem has the transformative capacity of transferring the reader whose curiosity is mundane to the higher curiosity about god’s nature; and against conceptions of ascetic devotion, it also promises that devotees with a mere dry reverence for Hari might also thrill at the joys of worldly love. Against the anemic visions of asceticism, the devotee is taught the central place of erotic love in human life, and its appropriate settings in a blooming nature, describing acts of love with the immense naivete common to all great art. The love between Radha and Krishna is described as if it were happening for the first time, and as if this happening will go on for ever. There is a strange spareness to the story: nothing much happens except for Radha’s suffering at being separated from Krishna, Krishna’s realization that without Radha he was unfulfilled even when surrounded by hundreds of gopis, his contrite return to Radha (tatyaja Vraja/sundarih, 3.1), his celebration of her beauty, and their union. The poet wants to leave them an eternity to enjoy themselves on the banks of the Yamuna (Yamuna/kule rahah/kelayah, 1.1). By this shift, the “Gita·govinda,” with other Vaishnava texts, achieves a fundamental transformation of how Vaishnavas conceived of God: instead of a single male figure, godliness is vested in the dual figure of Radha and Krishna.
The only adequate expression of the fullness of this devotion is a song. Actually, it is a song in two senses: first, by his poetic enhancement of ordinary language, the figural (alankaric) virtuosity of Jaya·deva takes the language as close to music as possible; second, in some regions of India like Orissa, the poem became inextricably associated with singing. Accordingly, the “Gita·govinda” is a festival of words. It is an enchanted garden, not primarily of sights, but of sounds: it is a world of the ultimate aural enchantment. Reading the text makes it increasingly clear that this is a work that devotes extraordinary attention to its own language, and constantly draws attention to it. What is happening in the poem—the expression of Radha’s anguish, of Krishna’s desire, of the joy of their union—is happening in its language, in the manner in which sounds are chosen, strung,
