Bhavabhuti on finding a reader

Bhavabhūti, the 8th-century author of the very moving play Uttara-rāma-carita, has in one of his other works these lines, any author’s consolation that even if your work receives not enough praise today, someday the right sort of reader will come along, who will derive great joy or meaning from it.

ये नाम केचिदिह नः प्रथयन्त्यवज्ञां 
जानन्ति ते किमपि तान्प्रति नैष यत्नः ।
उत्पत्स्यते तु मम कोऽपि समानधर्मा 
कालो ह्ययं निरवधिर्विपुला च पृथ्वी ॥

ye nāma kecit iha naḥ prathayanti avajñām
jānanti te kim api tān prati na eṣa yatnaḥ |
utpatsyate tu mama ko api samāna-dharmā
kālo hi ayaṃ niravadhiḥ vipulā ca pṛthvī ||

Those who deride or ignore my work —
let them know: my efforts are not for them.
There will come along someone who shares my spirit:
the world is vast, and time endless.

This verse has become a favourite of many. It appears already in the first known anthology of Sanskrit verses (subhāṣita-collection), Vidyākara’s Subhāṣita-ratna-koṣa. (It’s numbered 1731 (= 50.34) in the edition by Kosambi and Gokhale, and translated by Ingalls.) Ingalls writes and translates (1965):

Of special interest are the verses of Dharmakīrti and Bhavabhūti, two of India’s most original writers, which speak of the scorn and lack of understanding which the writings of those authors found among contemporaries. To such disappointment Dharmakīrti replies with bitterness (1726, 1729), Bhavabhūti with the unreasoning hope of a romantic (1731). If the souls of men could enjoy their posthumous fame the one would now see his works admired even far beyond India, the other would see his romantic hope fulfilled.

Those who scorn me in this world
have doubtless special wisdom,
so my writings are not made for them;
but are rather with the thought that some day will be born,
since time is endless and the world is wide,
one whose nature is the same as mine.

A translation of this verse is also included in A. N. D. Haksar’s A Treasury of Sanskrit Poetry in English Translation (2002):

The Proud Poet

Are there any around who mock my verses?
They ought to know I don’t write for them.
Someone somewhere sometime will understand.
Time has no end. The world is big.
— translated by V. N. Misra, L. Nathan and S. Vatsyayan [The Indian Poetic Tradition, 1993]

Andrew Schelling has written of it in Manoa, Volume 25, Issue 2, 2013:

Critics scoff
at my work
and declare their contempt—
no doubt they’ve got
their own little wisdom.
I write nothing for them.
But because time is
endless and our planet
vast, I write these
poems for a person
who will one day be born
with my sort of heart.

“Criticism is for poets as ornithology is for the birds,” wrote John Cage. Bhavabhūti has scant doubt that future generations will honor his work. The reader who will arise, utpalsyate [sic], is somebody of the same faith, heart, or discipline, samānadharmā.

Just now also found it on the internet, here (2014) (misattributed to Bhartṛhari):

There are those who
treat my work with
studied indifference.
Maybe they know something,
but I’m not writing for them.
Someone will come around
who feels the way I do.
Time, after all, is limitless,
and fortune spreads far.

Finally, in Sadāsvada, written by my friend Mohan with some comments from me, this was included in one of our our very first posts (2012):

In his play Mālatīmādhava, he makes a point that deserves to be the leading light of anyone wishing to do something of value and is put off by discouragement. Standing beside the words attributed to Gandhi (“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”) and Teddy Roosevelt (“It is not the critic who counts…”), Bhavabhūti’s confidence in the future stands resplendent:

“They who disparage my work should know that it’s not for them that I did it. One day, there will arise someone who will truly know me: this world is vast, and time infinite.”

The quote by Roosevelt is:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

[Note on the text: in Vidyākara’s compilation the verse ends with “विपुला च लक्ष्मीः” (vipulā ca lakṣmīḥ) instead of “विपुला च पृथ्वी” (vipulā ca pṛthvī), but the actual source work Mālatī-mādhava has the latter, as do all quotations of this verse elsewhere (e.g. the काव्यप्रकाशः of Mammaṭa, the Sahityadarpana of Viśvanātha Kavirāja, the रसार्णवसुधाकरः of श्रीसिंहभूपाल), and that is what Ingalls uses: “For lakṣmīḥ, which utterly destroys the line, read pṛthvi with the printed texts of Māl.” Actually, most quotations have “utpatsyate ‘sti” in place of “utpatsyate tu”: “either will be born, or already exists…”.]

Advertisement

“Every good theorem must have a good counterexample”

Abhyankar[1] attributes the quote to Severi.

[1]: Historical Ramblings in Algebraic Geometry and Related Algebra, Shreeram S. Abhyankar, The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 83, No. 6 (Jun. – Jul., 1976), pp. 409-448. Also available here, because it won a Lester R. Ford Award (“articles of expository excellence”) and also a Chauvenet Prize (“the highest award for mathematical expository writing”).

Abhyankar, after distinguishing between the flavours of “high-school algebra” (polynomials, power series), “college algebra” (rings, fields, ideals) and “university algebra” (functors, homological algebra) goes on to present his fundamental thesis (“obviously a partisan claim”):

The method of high-school algebra is powerful, beautiful and accessible. So let us not be overwhelmed by the groups-ring-fields or the functorial arrows of the other two algebras and thereby lose sight of the power of the explicit algorithmic processes given to us by Newton, Tschirnhausen, Kronecker, and Sylvester.

Perhaps for this reason, Dr. Z calls Abhyankar (“one of my great heroes”) “the modern prophet of high-school-algebra”.

Anyway, enough rambling. Back to “Every good theorem must have a good counterexample”. Discuss.

[Edited to add: The statement in its original context was referring to a phenomenon where a pleasing conjecture is found to have counterexamples, until it is resolved by realising that we must, say, count multiplicities the “right” way—the right way turning out to be whatever makes the conjecture true. Thus Bezout’s theorem, etc., and the quote just means, as he paraphrases, “don’t be deterred if your formula is presently invalid in some cases; it only means that you have not yet completely deciphered god’s mind”. On the other hand, what I (mis?)remembered was that one must know “counterexamples” to a theorem in the sense that one must know why the conclusion is not true if the hypotheses are weakened: thus one doesn’t really understand a theorem till one knows at least one “counterexample” (and at least two proofs).]

Mathematics and notation: the Hindu-Arabic numeral system

Quick: What is CCXXXVII × CCCXXIX?

From page 15 of The Life of Pi by Jonathan Borwein:

The Indo-Arabic system came to Europe around 1000 CE. Resistance ranged from accountants who didn’t want their livelihood upset to clerics who saw the system as ‘diabolical,’ since they incorrectly assumed its origin was Islamic. European commerce resisted until the 18th century, and even in scientific circles usage was limited into the 17th century.

The prior difficulty of doing arithmetic is indicated by college placement advice given a wealthy German merchant in the 16th century: “If you only want him to be able to cope with addition and subtraction, then any French or German university will do. But if you are intent on your son going on to multiplication and division — assuming that he has sufficient gifts — then you will have to send him to Italy.” (George Ifrah, p. 577)

[The rest of the pages of the slides are also great and worth reading!]

Just to give some context of the time: The Hindu-Arabic system was introduced into Europe by Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) — an Italian — in his Liber Abaci, written in 1202. Gutenberg (in Germany) invented the printing press around 1450. In Italy, Tartaglia lived 1500-1557, Cardano 1501-1576, Sturm 1507-1589, Giodano Bruno (1548-1600), and Ludovico Ferrari (1522-1565). (And outside Italy, Robert Recorde (as we’re talking about notation) (1510-1558) in Wales, François Viète (1540-1603) in France, etc. See this image.) Of course Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was Italian too, but came later, as did Newton, Fermat, the Bernoullis, and all the others.

While on the topic of mathematics and notation, see also this post: Visual Clarity in the Naming of Variables.
[And while not exactly notation, Donald Knuth’s Calculus via O notation]

Indian music in the west: Ravi Shankar

Indian Express article on India in the west, including the “disastrous” Woodstock.

The disastrous “non performance” was at Woodstock, the greatest pop jamboree ever. But, alas, it was too noisy for classical music. Worse, the flower children closest to the stage took their clothes off and proceeded to make love in the spirit of hippie freedom, even as Allah Rakha closed his eyes and covered them with his hands.
On this, the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death, it is worth our while to remember the distinction between cultural “fusion” and cultural “confusion”. Ravi Shankar at Woodstock represented the latter.

From Wikipedia:

Ravi Shankar has been critical of some facets of the Western reception of Indian music. On a trip to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district after performing in Monterey, Shankar wrote, “I felt offended and shocked to see India being regarded so superficially and its great culture being exploited. Yoga, Tantra, mantra, kundalini, ganja, hashish, Kama Sutra? They all became part of a cocktail that everyone seemed to be lapping up!”

From an interview with Rolling Stone:

What did you think of “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”?
To tell you the truth, I had to keep my mouth shut. It was introduced to me by my nieces and nephews, who were just gaga over it. I couldn’t believe it, because to me, it sounded so terrible.

Did you like the Monterey Pop festival?
I was shocked to see people dressing so flamboyantly. They were all stoned. […] Then I saw Jimi Hendrix. I saw how wonderful he was at the guitar, and I was really admiring him, and then he started his antics. Making love to the guitar. And then, as if that was not enough, he burned the guitar. That was too much for me. In our culture we have such respect for musical instruments, they are like part of God.

Do you miss the big audiences you had in the ’60s?
When George became my student, I got a new audience: the younger generation. And, of course, they came like a flood because the whole thing happened together with the hippie movement and this interest in Indian culture. Unfortunately, it got all mixed up with drugs and Kamasutra and hash and all that. I was like a rock star. The superficial people who just came because everyone else was going dropped out. Those who stayed are still there. They’re in middle age, and they don’t have beads or long hair, and they’re free from drugs. I never said one shouldn’t take drugs or drink alcohol, but associating drugs with our music and culture, that’s something I always fought. I was telling them to come without being high on drugs. I said, “Give me the chance to make you high through our music,” which it does, really. I think it’s good I made that stand, and that’s why I’m still here today.