Gita Govinda. Jayadeva

      guildhall

      now

      pill

      upheaval

      before

      abhorrent

      mind

      yes

      trilled, resembling the Ita-

      lian pronunciation of r

      linger

      word

      shore

      retroflex sh (with the tip of the tongue turned up to touch the hard palate)

      hiss

      hood

      CSL Punctuation of English

      The acute accent on Sanskrit words when they occur outside of the Sanskrit text itself, marks stress, e.g., Ramayana. It is not part of traditional Sanskrit orthography, transliteration, or transcription, but we supply it here to guide readers in the pronunciation of these unfamiliar words. Since no Sanskrit word is accented on the last syllable it is not necessary to accent disyllables, e.g., Rama.

      The second CSL innovation designed to assist the reader in the pronunciation of lengthy unfamiliar words is to insert an unobtrusive middle dot between semantic word breaks in compound names (provided the word break does not fall on a vowel resulting from the fusion of two vowels), e.g., Maha·bharata, but Ramayana (not Rama·ayana). Our dot echoes the punctuating middle dot (·) found in the oldest surviving samples of written Indic, the Ashokan inscriptions of the third century bce.

      The deep layering of Sanskrit narrative has also dictated that we use quotation marks only to announce the beginning and end of every direct speech, and not at the beginning of every paragraph.

      CSL Punctuation of Sanskrit

      The Sanskrit text is also punctuated, in accordance with the punctuation of the English translation. In mid-verse, the punctuation will not alter the sandhi or the scansion. Proper names are capitalized. Most Sanskrit meters have four “feet” (pada); where possible we print the common sloka meter on two lines. The capitalization of verse beginnings makes it easy for the reader to recognize longer meters where it is necessary to print the four metrical feet over four or eight lines. In the Sanskrit text, we use French Guillemets (e.g., «kva samcicirsuh?») instead of English quotation marks (e.g., “Where are you off to?") to avoid confusion with the apostrophes used for vowel elision in sandhi.

      SANDHI

      Sanskrit presents the learner with a challenge: sandhi (euphonic combination). Sandhi means that when two words are joined in connected speech or writing (which in Sanskrit reflects speech), the last letter (or even letters) of the first word often changes; compare the way we pronounce “the” in “the beginning” and “the end.”

      In Sanskrit the first letter of the second word may also change; and if both the last letter of the first word and the first letter of the second are vowels, they may fuse. This has a parallel in English: a nasal consonant is inserted between two vowels that would otherwise coalesce: “a pear” and “an apple.” Sanskrit vowel fusion may produce ambiguity.

      The charts on the following pages give the full sandhi system.

      Fortunately it is not necessary to know these changes in order to start reading Sanskrit. All that is important to know is the form of the second word without sandhi (pre-sandhi), so that it can be recognized or looked up in a dictionary. Therefore we are printing Sanskrit with a system of punctuation that will indicate, unambiguously, the original form of the second word, i.e., the form without sandhi. Such sandhi mostly concerns the fusion of two vowels.

      In Sanskrit, vowels may be short or long and are written differently accordingly. We follow the general convention that a vowel with no mark above it is short. Other books mark a long vowel either with a bar called a macron (a) or with a circumflex (a). Our system uses the ________

      macron, except that for initial vowels in sandhi we use a circumflex to indicate that originally the vowel was short, or the shorter of two possibilities (e rather than ai, o rather than au).

      When we print initial a, before sandhi that vowel was a

      ’, before sandhi there was a vowel a

      When a final short vowel (a, i, or u) has merged into a following vowel, we print ’ at the end of the word, and when a final long vowel (a, i, or u) has merged into a following vowel we print “ at the end of the word. The vast majority of these cases will concern a final a or a. See, for instance, the following examples:

      What before sandhi was atra asti is represented as atr’ asti

      Finally, three other points concerning the initial letter of the second word:

      (1) A word that before sandhi begins with r (vowel), after sandhi begins with r followed by a consonant: yatha” rtu represents pre-sandhi yatha rtu.

      (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)

FOREWORD

      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