Ganga jalam Keshava naari ketu
Mahabharat is a massive work in the Sanskrit language. It is the
biography of the Pandava brothers. Vyasa, the composer of this work, sought
a scribe who could keep pace with the speed of his dictation. Ganesh, the
Deva of the intellect, agreed to be the scribe. However, he placed one
condition. Per this condition, Vyasa had to dictate at the speed of
Ganesh’s writing. Vyasa countered this with another condition. Ganesh could
scribe a verse only after fully understanding it. As a result, Vyasa
composed the Mahabharat in chunks of a few hundred verses. He dictated a
verse with a “knot, a difficult to understand verse at the end of each
chunk. This forced Ganesh had to pause and understand the verse. Vyasa thus
mentally began composing the next chunk. Surely, anyone who knows
Mahabharat also knows about the “knots” in the text.
The narrator quoted a sensible looking sentence from Vyasa’s
Mahabharat It reads गङ्गा जलं केशव नारि केतु (Ganga jalam Keshava naari
ketu). Every word in this sentence is meaningful. The sentence makes no
sense despite the sentence being syntactically correct. The word boundaries
have to be changed to understand the meaning of the line. This knot
definitely forces a reader to pause.
Pitamaha Bhishma standing by his side responds, in Vyasa’s words:
‘Gangajalam keshava naari ketu’
Four words totally unrelated to each other! What sense to make out of them?
Gangajalam = water of River Ganges; keshava = a name given to god Vishnu;
naari = woman; ketu = a planetary god.
Of course, Vinayaka figured it out not before giving Vyasa a much-needed
respite. Here’s how:
Ganga ja: One Ganges gave birth to = Bhishma;
lam kesha = lankesha = Ravana, King of Lanka;
vana ari = one who destroyed the vana (Ashoka vana where Sita was held
captive)
ketu = flag;
Now it reads as: Bhishma (said): It’s one who has on his flag one who
destroyed Ravana’s vana = It’s one who has Aanjaneya on his flag = Arjuna.
So it was Arjuna on a chariot driven by the young prince of Virata!
Vyasa inserted knots in his Mahabharat to slow slow down Ganesh
who had the role of a scribe.
Vyasa inserted knots in his text to make a reader pause and think
Similarity between Vyasa and the Siddhars
Siddhars wrote their works in the Tamil language. They borrowed the idea of
a knot from Vyasa’s Mahabharat and used them generously. In fact, One finds
very few sentences in Siddhar texts without a knot, Firstly, a translator
must locate meaningful word boundaries. In other words, he must untie knots
in the Siddhar text. Secondly, he must locate words which Siddhars consider
to be technical terms. Such words conventionally mean one thing but
something different in Siddhar texts. Siddhar texts describe a)
pharmacopeia preparations, b) ideas related to sorcery, and c) descriptions
of spiritual techniques. Therefore, many words can take a contextual
meaning based on the domain of knowledge. Siddhar Agasthiyar composed a
text which explains such idiosyncrasies in Siddhar texts. It had fun
discovering a few such idiosyncrasies while translating Agasthiyars text.
K Rajaram IRS 10225
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Srinivasan Sridharan <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 2025 at 22:29
Subject: Fwd: Maha Bharatha (4)
To: Patty Thatha <[email protected]>, Gopalakrishnan V <
[email protected]>, Devarajan Subramaniam <[email protected]>
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
*From:* Srinivasan Sridharan <[email protected]>
*Date:* February 9, 2025 at 8:57:52 AM PST
*To:* Srinivasan Sridharan <[email protected]>
*Subject:* *Maha Bharatha (4)*
This is the final section! If it is required by you , i would be glad to
give the hidden meaning aswel!
Sridharan
Sage Dhrona said loudly,
GANGA. JAlAN. KESAVA NAARI KETHU.
None in the Kaurava army except
Pithamaha. Bheeshma understood the hidden meaning!
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