A dream - real one this time

It was shortest dream I ever had probably (concrete part of it was exactly two words long) but before I come to that, need to give some (obviously long) background.

T - few months: I google 'Panini'. After reading/listening to few people, each one sounding fascinating (i.e. even as I didn't understand anything, I felt like THIS is something I want to understand), one among them even generated that feeling in stomach which you get during a 'free falling ride' when he pronounced tip-tas-zee-sip-thas-th- and su-au-jas-am-auT-shash without any prior warning. in fact, the way he was going about speaking anyone would only expect to hear something very obvious, familiar and reassuring and then came this - that's why a sudden free fall feeling.

Few days/weeks later: I again remember the subject, I type Ashtadhyayi in google. again many interesting pages, one of them had audio lectures. Within seconds I knew my search ends here. and so next task was to find that search which had just ended was about what.

a-e-u-n ril-ri-k.. but this time I had my seat-belt fastened, and navigator knew how to not send students in free fall. plus, I was already familiar with it due to previous searches. So, the journey started.

Sanjna-Vidhi-Paribhasha, panchami - se pare, shasti- ke sthan main, saptami - pare rahete.. it was smooth going. it-sanjna-lop. varnas disappear! strange but if Panini wants it that way, so be it.. (its a too early stage to see any utility of those disappearances. still, you soon become comfortable at making things disappear. good going.)

making sense of sutr is not THAT difficult (after someone has done padchhed, expanded samast pads, clarified vibhakti, translated to hindi etc etc. but so what?) Right?

Wrong. Why it still doesn't make sense? oh, its because not all words you need to read in it are written there. but no problem, just borrow words from the one above- you are told. and with that your confidence that was about to launch itself soaring, decides to postpone it for now.

Now you know what anuvrutti is. you even know what Adhikar is and also that anuvrutti can come from not just immediately above sutr and can travel with gaps. its a small matter that each successive learning came at exact points where your confidence was just about to soar which then had to be postponed. but anyway, now you know that you can pick up words from left right and centre and stuff into what you need to read (ok, only from above, but you get the point).

ah and did I mention, saptami is pare rahete - just as you become sure of it, you are told it can be interpreted in two other ways too. how do you know which interpretation to use? 'you just know'. (which of course must be correct, except that at this point you just do not know if YOU will ever reach that point) and few things like this. by now, your confidence has learned to wait a while before preparing to soar.

after going through the loop again and again, you know at which exact point your confidence can confidently soar. Its after finishing Ashtadhyayi fully, in few years may be. but you are sure about one thing. If Panini says it, you regard it as indisputable. As if on cue, you are told 'our Rishies didn't work that way'. on the other hand everything needs to be questioned, requestioned, challenged even attacked and one must come out of all that proving himself on the criteria of truth and logic before being accepted. and even once accepted, the moment an improvement comes in light, if it passes the same tests, is accepted enthusiastically. yes, you have hit your first Vartik.

After some time, attention then somehow shifts to other things, few months pass.. besides basic concepts, most things are forgotten.

time T: I don't know yet that its a dream. I see there is this sutr, which says 'Its proven'. 'Its proven'? what is proven? how? where? and then I 'know' that with anuvritti, adhikar, adhyahar.. it means that it is proven that a particular way of holding camera is most efficient grip. I am in complete disbelief - never heard it before. how can I be so stupid? 

I wake up. and realise that I had not doubted why Panini was talking about camera grip. I only regretted how I missed it completely so far. I guess, the dream conveyed that I was missing learning Ashtadhyayi.

I again started to learn it from the scratch. 

(P.S. Above re-start derailed in just few weeks, and 2.5 more years later, I need to exactly do the same again - need to start from the scratch.)

Sanskrit learning resources

I was searching for something in Sanskrit that meets below criteria.

1. Reliable Sanskrit (Because I don't know the language in first place, didn't want to read things that may end up teaching me incorrect things.)

2. Written in form not too difficult to read (i.e. not one pad per para) + hindi translation available to make sense of even that 'not too difficult'.

3. Doesn't suffer from limited vocabulary (this was a major concern after somewhat burning my hands.. neurons... previously elsewhere). 

4. Interesting (Reading it should be enjoyable, shouldn't feel like learning 'work')

5. Arisen/written originally in that form, not translation of something that has arisen in non-Sanskrit Sanskriti. (Language cannot be separated from culture without destroying both, No?)

6. Available in both audio and text (flexibility to slow down to understand).

Landed at Mahabharat. 

Audio: https://archive.org/details/mahAbhArata-mUla-paThanam-GP

Text: https://archive.org/details/Mahabharata04SanskritHindiPanditRamnarayanGitaPress


and regarding learning the language, here is everything from Varnucchararan to Mahabhashya.. (honestly, I am so awestruck finding all these at one place that it s yet to occur to me that I should start going through it.)

https://archive.org/details/AshtadhyayiBhashyaCollection

and if you thought I probably don't deserve above finds if I cant even start putting minimum effort to make use of it, well, even I tend to agree with that thought, but, seems there is extra concession available for very uninitiated like me..

these lecture audios...
https://archive.org/details/Ashtadhyayi-Prathamavritti 

(if you like to always know what's going on, start from lecture one, but if you are extra lazy like me, who, even when faced with something where you have no idea what's going on, can still simply close eyes and keep listening till clarity emerges on its own, I recommend - highly recommend you start with lecture numbered zero.)

Story

We don't know what was his age. We don't know which part of the country he came from or where he was. We don't know if he was born in wealthy family or otherwise. Whether circumstances were favourable or he faced obstacles at every step, we do not know. All we know that he was.

There was something else too. A problem. A problem that had shown signs of having established strong roots some 6000 years ago. It, at that time was fought back strongly – very strongly, with what can be easily called a mini world war. That war, scariest war of the humanity thus far, was won then. but unfortunately, after taking some time (probably thousand or two years) to regroup, adharm had steadily gained again. It had not lost many battles after it. Darkness had thickened even more in last 1000+ years. Now, the task of getting rid of अधर्म simply appeared mind numbing.

Darkness was spread so widely and yet, it was further going to thicken at a rapid pace due to what was happening. It was Vikram Samvat 1814 and current developments were going to make it 1757 CE for those born couple of centuries later. 

Some one and half century after first arriving on our shores, east India company was now successfully enslaving Bharat.

and, at that point, he was. He did not worry about what he could not do. He simply did what he could. He gave every bit of his existence in gaining knowledge that was still not completely erased. He did not know when, how, he may find next keeper of this knowledge or that if he even would. But that too did not bother him. For, he did not worry about things he could not do. He simply did what he could. So, he gave every bit of his existence to gaining and preserving the fire of knowledge and he patiently waited without wasting even a single second to 'act of waiting'.

Twenty years later, a child is born. He too is a likely candidate to accept the baton of knowledge preservation like any other child born anywhere in history. Will he succeed? How things will unfold with the child? Will he turn up deserving? Willing and able to give what it takes to keep the fire from being extinguished? And even if everything goes well, even if he turns out to be rare able someone, will fire be still burning when he grows up and is ready to take the charge?

Child loses his eyesight when he is five. At 12, parents. Finds himself with non caring caretakers and not happy with the situation, he runs away from the home. Nature apparently repeats patterns endlessly. Odds of the problem spanning thousands of years, encompassing nearly whole of humanity looked eerily similar to the problem of 'He about whom we know nothing but that he was', trying to preserve yet unerased knowledge. The blind, orphaned child that had ran away from home reaches him.

Some six-seven decades later, that child, now an 82 year old, sees a seeker of knowledge approaching him.

Fire was preserved.

Part-2

Yes, that was a short story covering some 125 years. Treacherous, seemingly hopeless, endless fight by nameless, selfless many - three of them featuring in our story, with the third one ending the hopelessness, ensuring that we were back in the fight.

As stories often demand, it was ended at a logical end point.

But then, that attack on Adharm almost out of the blue was crushed as swiftly. Our hero after surviving many assassination attempts in very short two decades of active life, was finally fallen in nth attempt. His jivanjyoti ended on the day of Dipawali but by then he had lit enough diyas that would keep our hopes alive, even if war was nowhere as fierce to even be called a battle now.

Almost a century later, a frailish teenager village child with somewhat big tummy and slim legs, suffering from facial paralysis due to which his had no control on his one eye, learns that our state's education system is designed to make us slaves and refuses to submit himself to it.

He walks in a Gurukul, guided by the fire that was preserved a century back, determined to do what he can, not worrying about what he cant.

No marks for guessing what anyone like him must face to survive. From street bullies to global ones and all varieties in between. Yet even flag bearer of them, the Wikipedia ends with describing him as someone whose 'face has become ubiquitous'.