Kill The Wabbit

Here are some materials found trawling on the web that are useful for a small project I have been working on. Might be useful in full view to others. From A Study by Karl Heckel (Bayreuther Blätter, 1896, pages 5-19)
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Prose Sketch for Die Sieger


Note
his drama, which never seems to have progressed beyond this short sketch (if Wagner wrote a prose draft, then it has not survived) was to be based on an avadana (a tale of heroic and miraculous acts performed by the Buddha in any of his incarnations) from the collection Divya avadâna, called Sârdûla karnavadana. [Editor's note]
Persons of the Drama
Shakyamuni [the future Buddha]
Ananda [his disciple]
Prakriti [an outcast or Chandala girl]
Her Mother
Brahmins
Disciples
Folk


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Introduction
In the autumn of 1854 Wagner had been introduced by Georg Herwegh to Schopenhauer's Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation). Thus stimulated, and parallel to this important new influence, he began to occupy himself intensively with India, especially with the teaching and legends of the Buddha. On 30 April 1855, he wrote from London to Mathilde Wesendonk, describing his reading of Adolf Holtzmann's Indische Sagen [Stuttgart, 1854] as his only joy here ... What a shameful place our entire learning takes, confronted with these purest revelations of noblest humanity in the ancient Orient. In the following winter, he studied Eugène Burnouf's monumental Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien (Paris, 1844). Both works can still be seen today in Wagner's library in the Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth. Burnouf provided Wagner with the legends which formed the basis of The Victors. As late as 1868 he lent the book to King Ludwig II as an elucidation of the plan for the drama, which he had obviously described verbally to the king a short time before. We possess a short sketch of the project, which Wagner put on paper in Zürich on 16 May 1856, at a point between the composition of The Valkyrie and Siegfried:
[Richard Wagners Buddha-Projekt "Die Sieger": Seine ideellen und strukturellen Spuren in "Ring" und "Parsifal", Wolfgang Osthoff, Arkiv für Musikwissenschaft 40:3, 1983, p 189-211.]

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Synopsis
he Buddha on his last journey. Ananda given water from the well by Prakriti, the Chandala maiden. Her tumult of love for Ananda; his consternation. --


rakriti in love's agony: her mother brings Ananda to her: love's battle royal: Ananda, distressed and moved to tears, released by Shakya' [the Buddha]. --


rakriti goes to Buddha, under the tree at the city's gate, to plead for union with Ananda. He asks if she is willing to fulfil the stipulations of such a union? Dialogue with twofold meaning, interpreted by Prakriti in the sense of her passion; she sinks horrified and sobbing to the ground, when she hears at length that she must share Ananda's vow of chastity.

nanda persecuted by the Brahmins. Reproofs against Buddha's commerce with a Chandala girl. Buddha's attack on the spirit of caste. He tells of Prakriti's previous incarnation; she then was the daughter of a haughty Brahmin; the Chandala King, remembering a former existence as Brahmin, had craved the Brahmin's daughter for his son, who had conceived a violent passion for her; in pride and arrogance the daughter had refused return of love, and mocked at the unfortunate. This she had now to expiate, reborn as Chandala to feel the torments of a hopeless love; yet to renounce withal, and be led to full redemption by acceptance into Buddha's flock.--

rakriti answers Buddha's final question with a joyful Yea. Ananda welcomes her as sister. Buddha's last teachings. All are converted by him. He departs to the place of his redemption.

Zurich. May 16, 1856. [tr. William Ashton Ellis]

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Burnouf's summary of the story, which was obviously the basis of Wagner's sketch above, is this:

Çâkyamuni se présente en effet, et il apprend de la bouche de la jeune fille l'amour qu'elle ressent pour Ânanda et la détermination où elle est de le suivre. Profitant de cette passion pour convertir Prakriti, le Buddha, par une suite de questions que Prakriti peut prendre dans le sens de son amour, mais qu'il fait sciemment dans un sens tout religieux, finit par ouvrir à la lumière les yeux de la jeune fille et par lui inspirer le désir d'embrasser la vie ascétique. C'est ainsi qu'il lui demande si elle consent à suivre Ânanda, c'est à-dire à l'imiter dans ca conduite; si elle veut porter les mêmes vêtements que lui, c'est-à-dire le vêtements des personnes religieuses; si elle est autorisée par ses parents: questions que la loi de la Discipline exige qu'on adresse à ceux qui veulent se faire mendiants buddhistes.
Eugène Burnouf, Introduction à l'Histoire du Buddhisme Indien, Paris, 1844.

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Prakriti, Ananda and the Buddha
ess than a year later, Wagner had changed the name of the Chandala girl from Prakriti to Savitri:

... in the Victors what will happen is as follows: the girl (presumably Savitri) who, while waiting for Ananda in the second act, rolls in the flowers in utter ecstacy, absorbing the sun, the woods, the birds and the water -- everything -- the whole of nature in her wanton pleasure, is challenged by Shakya, after she has taken her fateful vow [in the third act], to look around her and above her, and is then asked what she thinks of it all? -- Not very beautiful -- she then says gravely and sadly, for she now sees the other side of the world.
[Letter from R. Wagner to Marie Sayn-Wittgenstein, 4 March 1857, tr. Spencer and Millington]
The plan underwent some modifications and additions in the following years. No doubt the most important was Wagner's entry in the Venetian Diary for Mathilde Wesendonk on 5 October 1858; this agrees with the sentences quoted [as the last item below], written just before his death:
[Osthoff, ibid]
Shakyamuni was initially opposed to the idea of admitting women into the community of saints. He repeatedly expressed the view of them that, by nature, women are far too subject to their sexual identity, and hence to whim and caprice, and far too attached to worldly existence to be able to achieve the composure and deep contemplativeness necessary for the individual to renounce his natural inclinations and achieve redemption [Erlösung]. It was his favourite pupil, Ananda, -- that same Ananda to whom I have already allotted a part in my The Victors -- who was finally able to persuade the master to relent and open up the community to women.
Without any sense of unnaturalness, my plan has been vastly and hugely expanded. The difficulty here was to make the Buddha himself - a figure totally liberated and above all passion - suitable for dramatic and, more especially, musical treatment. But I have now solved the problem by having him reach one last remaining stage in his development whereby he is seen to acquire a new insight, which - like every insight - is conveyed not by abstract associations of ideas but by intuitive emotional experience, in other words, by a process of shock and agitation suffered by his inner self; as a result, this insight reveals him in his final progress towards a state of supreme enlightenment. Ananda, who is closer to life and directly affected by the love of the Chandala girl, becomes the agent of his ultimate enlightenment.
[Letter from R. Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonk, 5 October 1858, Wesendonck-Briefe 108-10, tr. Spencer and Millington]
During the years that followed, the project appeared continually in letters and reports. The Munich Festival programme prepared for Ludwig II in 1865 included The Victors in firm plans for August 1870, August 1871 and August 1873, alongside Parsifal, which was at that stage similarly without libretto or music, and the still incomplete Ring and Mastersingers. In the above-mentioned letter to the king in 1868, Wagner was aware that his source -- Burnouf's book -- contained only a very short extract of the real legend [which Burnouf had translated from Sanskrit but not published in full] -- and to what extent his own fantasy had already been used to fill out thin material. Sometimes Wagner expressed a wish to write The Victors as a drama without music and to have his son Siegfried then set it to music. We have a remark of Cosima's, a few months before his death, that he would not compose on the subject of the Buddha, for the reason that the images -- mango-tree, lotus-flower, etc. -- were not ones familiar to him, so that the poetry inevitably would turn out artificial. He had already foreseen similar difficulties in 1881 ... That completing Parsifal blocked a realization of The Victors can be inferred from the denial that Wagner felt he needed to make on 10 July 1882:
[Osthoff, ibid]
Dear friend, it amuses me to put your Berlin journal [Allgemeine Musik-Zeitung] in order on certain matters. Here is another report, not a word of which is true -- which looks particularly impertinent given the tone of great assurance, as though the report were that of a close friend. More than 25 years ago I sketched out a scenario on a single side of paper and gave it the name: the Victors. Since conceiving Parsifal, I have altogether abandoned this Buddhist project -- which is related to the former only in a weaker sense -- and since that time have given no further thought to elaborating the sketch, still less of reading it aloud.
[Letter from R. Wagner to Otto Lessmann, editor, 10 July 1882, tr. Spencer and Millington]
It is a beautiful feature in the legend, that shows the Victoriously Perfect [der Siegreich Vollendete] at last determined to admit the woman. [In the margin:] Love -- Tragedy.
[R. Wagner, On the Womanly in the Human, February 1883. The very last words that Wagner wrote.]

A Picture Holds us Captive

In Vogue, August, this year:

An old woman missing her upper front teeth holds a child in rumpled clothes — who is wearing a Fendi bib (retail price, about $100).

A family of three squeezes onto a motorbike for their daily commute, the mother riding without a helmet and sidesaddle in the traditional Indian way — except that she has a Hermès Birkin bag (usually more than $10,000, if you can find one) prominently displayed on her wrist.

A toothless barefoot man holds a Burberry umbrella (about $200).

To all of you who are about to pick up pens and write the manager (Sorry--Editor), here she is, Vogue India editor Priya Tanna, with a message to critics of the August shoot:

"Lighten up," she said in a telephone interview. Vogue is about realizing the "power of fashion" she said, and the shoot was saying that "fashion is no longer a rich man's privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful," she said.

She said, she said.

Got that? That is the Vogue India editor. Priya. And she is, in her own way, a visionary. "Anyone can carry it off and look beautiful." Anyone. That is why the persons photographed do not have names. They are 'old man', 'a woman', 'the urchin' (oh why didn't they have the guts to say it?).

Actually, Oracular Priya says: "Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful."

"It"???

'This is a question of conceptual grammar," says Alex Kimbel, a local Wittgenstein impersonator who cuts a profile eerily reminiscent of the popular philosopher; he does a good bit of business attending Wittgenstein workshops on the philosopher's birthday at Tier One U. S. Universities. We caught up with him by a coffee shop in Hyde Park under the tracks, and asked for his comments. He turned his chair around, sat side-straddle and intoned, with his back to us:

"Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever withfresh life."

The oracle added, on hearing Priya's comments: 'One wants to say: 'Have you no Decency, at long last, you Silly Cow, Have you no Decency?' But here, our menchlichkeit leads us astray. And we must reach for the flypaper thin enough to fit the fly-bottle, and help put the proverbially refreshing metaphor out of its cynicism."

"A picture has held us captive...," he said, before asking us to buy him a second espresso.

Thank you Priya, and A. Kimbel (also Tagore, in a guest role), on behalf of all the farmers who committed suicide earlier this decade. If only they had known you were thinking of them. That, if not the good life ala Martha Nussbaum, then at least high fashion is not a rich man's privilege. And see, we could have shown them, the urchins and old women without teeth and old man laughing. A picture. Farmers in India do not laugh enough, experts say.

Announcing: "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish"

The University of Chicago Press is pleased to announce the forthcoming book by J.F.A. Flodigarry, Senior Junior Lecturer at The Center for Horticulture, Hatcheries, and Agro-Business at the University of Hull: "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish," finally, a book without a subtitle, because printing costs are being diverted to imminent lawsuits for copyright infringement.

Contents

Introduction:

The Obligatory Historiography Section: From Lord Macaulay’s Note to the £5.99 Curry Lunch Special.

Chapter 1:

The Obligatory Theory Chapter: The Slippery Slope from Metrapole to Province.

Chapter 2:

Natives and the Datives: the Public Sphere and Dialogues in the Songs of the Mechuya.

Chapter 3:

Habitat, Habitus, Halibut: Reconstructing the urban landscape of Imperial fisheries.

Chapter 4:

Fried Print: The Reading Habits of Fish Consumers, Humble Functionaries in Her Majesties Services, and Post Property Zamindaris and Memsahibs (Not in that Order).

Chapter 5:

Provincials Educating the Natives: The Transliteration of Irish Sea Shanties and the Formation of the Indian National Congress.

Chapter 6:

Fisherman’s Wife, Fisherman’s God: Re-Enscribing the Matsya Avatar.

Post Script:

Edo Ergo Sum: of the Migration of Indian Taste and Manners to post Imperium London (No Empire, No Longer).

Appendices Include Recipes. (Its a Surprise).

Initial Reviews:

“The greatest Subaltern Studies book written since ‘Provincializing Europe,’ a must read for all serious South Asian Scholars. It shows us a way beyond nationalism and Imperialism in modern Colonial History.” – The Journal of Social Theory.

“The most important work of Imperial historiography to be written in the past twenty years. A souring peace of theoretical rhetoric, which thoroughly historicizes the object of its inquiry. –The Journal of Subaltern Studies.

“I Don’t Speak Indian, Eat Spicy Food or Like Fish. Never before has a book been so clearly focused on theory and lacking in historical facts. It would have been better had it remained trees.” J.V. Nybster, University of Texas, Austin.

“I Don’t Speak British, Read Imperial Historians or Like Fish. Never before has a book been so devoid of theory and overburdened with facts.” –B.S. Debjoti, University of Chicago.

“A Wonderful First Blush at the topic. One misses the omission of the representation of Bombay Duck in orientalist narratives of the period and the glossing over of theatrical tradition of seafaring heros in Lollywood epics.” R.M. Huna, Memsahib and Cook-Book Writer.

Dedicated, naturally, to the coldest fish of them all...

Someone is Listening to my Prayers, says Boy

On being informed of a news item entitled "Rare India documents 'go missing',"
By Subir Bhaumik for BBC News, Calcutta, a still youthful A. B. C. E Appuradai, (to your right, not left), a young IAS officer stationed in the state formerly known as Madhya Pradesh, heaved a sigh of relief, sipped his tea, and said: "Someone is Listening to my Prayers."

"Astonishing as I am an atheist, a thousand times over (in India, you see, you have to be very insistent). But that is a small price to pay."

The young man had a Penguin copy of Marcus Aurellius in his pocket.

The article by Bhaumik is reproduced here in summary below:

"Tagore composed the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. India's national audit agency says many rare manuscripts and documents have gone missing from the National Library in the eastern city of Calcutta. A senior official with the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) office said that the early works of renowned writer Rabindranath Tagore were missing. So too were letters and paperwork of independence heroes Subhas Chandra Bose and Sarojini Naidu.

The library has denied the charges and said the allegations are untrue.
"We have found readers complaining that they cannot get most of the rare books and manuscripts they like to read for research purposes," a CAG official - who did not wish to be named - told the BBC. "Almost 40% of the rare books and manuscripts are not available. Even inventories have been lost." "We have an inventory for rare books and it is surely not true that Tagore's early works have gone missing," he said. The worst such case was in 2004, when Rabindranath Tagore's original Nobel medallion of 1913 was stolen from a museum in West Bengal's western town of Shanti Niketan.

Tagore, often referred to as Bengal's Shakespeare, is the first and only Indian to win the literature prize.

He wrote poems and short stories and composed both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. He died in 1941."

Mistaking the boy's sense of relief after we finished reading the article to him, we wondered if he meant that now he could actually access the rare works of Tagore, India's Shakespeare (Robindronoth having stolen that mantle, hotly coveted, from Kalidasa, who could not be reached for comment at this time. Bangla, in some circles, being India, especially where literature is concerned, allows us to say that Indian is Bengali, and Bengali Indian, so the 'Shakespeare of Bengal is the Shakespeare of India. Appadurai thought this a good enthymeme, one all too true to conventions of writing about Indian Literature. The two represented languages being Bengali and English. We do not, of course, agree with this enthymeme, nor the facts behind it. There are several Indian languages, if not on your bookshelves, or the local Borders. Urdu, Marathi, Tamil, Telegu, for example, have some fine pieces. Modern. Very Modern. Good luck with those languages then...)

The youthful official shook his head vehemently.

"No. Now We can destroy them. I could have been a great scholar. Perhaps a writer myself, you know. I have been studying Haikus. But I was ruined by Tagore. And Naidu," he shuddered, "the nightingale. But Tagore was the worst. It dripped piety. Like Tolstoy. But in verse. Imagine if Tolstoy preached at you without the epic backdrop of early modern warfare.

First the National Anthem. They made us sing it, day in and day out, and I did not understand a word of it. It felt like a warm-up to our Geography class, right before Calculus. You know, all this 'Sindh and Himachal and Yamuna..., Dravida something something. A very confused Geography class. Echoes of Italian Nationalism, where the land is a perfect unity and such. List its attributes, and the unity shows itself. Where were the people I thought? You see" he said apologetically, "I do not speak Bangla. Nobody does. Outside Western Academe and Bengal and Bangladesh, you see. But still we sang for India. Day in and Day out. in Bangla. There are still parts I do not understand. Let us misunderstand each other in several languages I say. Or in English. A language no one can claim anymore. But not like this."

He poured himself another measure of sickly, sweet tea.

"And there was that terrible Tennysonian poetry. How many bright minds we lost this way. How many undiscovered poets, and artists, who will never write in English now? The boy stood up and began intoning:

"Oh Lord, when thou didst commandest me'est to sing, I felt my heart would burst for pride, and I didst spreadest my wings of song, about yea wide, and how I didst fear the rustle and bustle of the feathered sonority would displease thee, in whose presence I had flown...a silence rimmed in light, at no extra price...

and it went on and on like this. Terrible. We could have read In Memorium and been done with this sort of thing. But no. We had to go on to read everything by Tagore. Anything. No Whitman. No Crane. No Larkin. I am only now getting over the mental cramp I used to feel on encountering iambic or free verse. I cannot see indents in a page and not squirm. All because of the Indian Shakespeare."

He sipped his cup of tea, and smiled a toothy smile...

"Maybe they will get his prose poetry next."

On being informed that the likes of Wittgenstein were known to read from Tagore to their students, the youthful official shrugged.

"Wittgenstein, correct me if I am wrong, was also known to prefer detective novels over Joyce. And he had a habit of keeping a few less chairs so that his students had to stand, or leave. It could have been another way for him to skimp on teaching and vacation by the fjords, where I am told he liked to be. In the dark. Alone. This is what I felt like as well on reading of the holy rustle and bustle of wings. It takes the wind right out of you. Trust a philosopher to pick it right up"

Shocked, we asked him whether he thought there was a Shakespeare of India.

"Yes," said Appadurai. "William. That was good enough for the World. I think it is quite good enough for us. Have you read Julius Ceasar? Friends, Romans, and the like, no bloody wings. Not even a single "burstet"; healthy pre-Victorian participles. Now thats the stuff. And haikus. Here, I can try one:

Tagore

Amid stacks of paper, a few less.
A fan shudders
alone

He smiled a little sheepishly.

"Perhaps now they can write a history of modernity in Indian literature without having to scamper over to half-digested letters written by Tagore to Mr and Mrs. Mahatma."

When we asked him what in today's literature he liked, he stood on the chair.

"It was the choice he forced on us: either simper, in sentences even American high school children can understand, or write weighty magisterial blither in mock Tennysonian idioms or in tone-deaf Bombaya. Why not serious and demotic? In Several languages? Not stupid. Not artificial half remembered mannerisms of a city now lost, confected for auditory tourists. But demotic. One's time in thought, and the like. We have given up seriousness, because of what it looks like. Big beard. No shoes. And dozens of students dressing like you. And what it sounds like. Oh God. Sonorous aviaries....wings spread yea wide. But now we write novels about arranged marriages in English. Any old fanny can get a Pulitzer. Throw in a green card, a samosa and a dowry, and wring your hands. Wear a sari on weekends. Talk about gods under stairs, a cow, a little cricket, or a bloody trip back home in the boonies. And caste. Mention caste. Or Hindus and Muslims falling in love, falling out of love. Why can't they fall out of autorickshaws? Joyce could have done it. It is the hand-wringing in second rate forms that is our Shakespeare's real legacy. Either Tennyson or daft Suburban American, mangled in translation. He left us in the swill: our best minds for generations becoming chartered accountants, software engineers, businessmen, doctors, because they can't put up with the drivel of serious, the sheer bloody mindless tedium of the humani....

We left him, standing on the chair, gesticulating at the ceiling fan, with his tie tied securely around his head, no longer smiling. We did not think appropriate to ask him about the prospects for an Indian Nobel. Or whether Bangla looses something in translation, or whether it was true, as famous Chicago based humanists have claimed, that Tagore's poetry contains the seeds for the regeneration of the liberal democratic tradition in India.

Words for My Biography

ELY (n.)
The first, tiniest inkling you get that something, somewhere, has gone terribly wrong.

WEMBLEY (n.)
The hideous moment of confirmation that the disaster presaged in the ely (q.v.) has actually struck.

SCOPWICK (n.)
The flap of skin which is torn off you lip when trying to smoke an untipped cigarette.


AHENNY (adj.)
The way people stand when examining other people's bookshelves.

SOLENT (adj.)
Descriptive of the state of serene self-knowledge reached through drink.

FARNHAM (n.)
The feeling you get about four o'clock in the afternoon when you haven't got enough done.


CHICAGO (n.)
The foul-smelling wind which precedes an underground railway train.

PELUTHO (n.)
A South American ball game. The balls are whacked against a brick wall with a stout wooden bat until the prisoner confesses. (Extended figurative Usage (American): Graduate School, Years 3-4; Specifically, for encounters between second most senior professor on dissertation committee and oneself in Chicago).

TREWOFFE (n.)
A very thick and heavy drift of snow balanced precariously on the edge of a door porch waiting for what it judges to be the correct moment to fall. From the ancient Greek legend 'The Treewofe of Damocles'.
(*am on lookout for word which means the same, but with a raccoon (with a limp) perched on said snowdrift).

SHOEBURYNESS (abs.n.)
The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom.

VENTNOR (n.)
One who, having been visited as a child by a mysterious gypsy lady, is gifted with the strange power of being able to operate the air-nozzles above aeroplane seats. (Also of Greyhound buses)

ABERYSTWYTH (n.)
A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.

ABILENE (adj.)
Descriptive of the pleasing coolness on the reverse side of the pillow.

ALLTAMI (n.)
The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.

TAROOM (vb.)
To make loud noises during the night to let the burglars know you are in.

SIMPRIM (n.)
The little movement of false modesty by which a girl with a cavernous visible cleavage pulls her skirt down over her knees.

SITTINGBOURNE (n.)
One of those conversations where both people are waiting for the other one to shut up so they can get on with their bit.

GREAT WAKERING (participial vb.)
Panic which sets in when you badly need to go to the lavatory and cannot make up your mind about what book or magazine to take with you.


ADLESTROP (n.)
That part of a suitcase which is designed to get snarled up on conveyor belts at airports. Some of the more modern adlestrop designs have a special 'quick release' feature which enables the case to lip open at this point and fling your underclothes into the conveyor belt's gearing mechanism.

WIMBLEDON (n.)
That last drop which, no matter how much you shake it, always goes down your trouser leg.

WINKLEY (n.)
A lost object which turns up immediately you've gone and bought a replacement for it.

NUBBOCK (n.)
The kind of person who has to leave before a party can relax and enjoy itself.

AINDERBY STEEPLE (n.)
One who asks you a question with the apparent motive of wanting to hear your answer, but who cuts short your opening sentence by leaning forward and saying 'and I'll tell you why I ask...' and then talking solidly for the next hour.

FIUNARY (n.)
The safe place you put something and then forget where it was.

OBSBASTON (n.)
A point made for the seventh time to somebody who insists that they know exactly what you mean but clearly hasn't got the faintest idea.

OSHKOSH (n., vb.)
The noise made by someone who has just been grossly flattered and is trying to make light of it.

RIPON (vb.)
(Of literary critics.) To include all the best jokes from the book in the review to make it look as if the critic thought of them.

NIBSTER (n.)
Sort of person who takes the lift to travel one floor.

FARRANCASSIDY (n.)
A long and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to undo someone's bra. (If the biography goes far back enough).

SLIGO (n.)
An unnamed and exotic sexual act which people like to believe that famous films stars get up to in private. 'To commit sligo.' (I wish)

GLASGOW (n.)
The feeling of infinite sadness engendered when walking through a place filled with happy people fifteen years younger than yourself. (If I live five more years)

GODALMING (n.)
Wonderful rush of relief on discovering that the ely (q.v.) and the wembley (q.v.) were in fact false alarms.


(From 'The Meaning of Liff'; go increase descriptive resources for your story....)

caturanga

Chaturanga

The Sanskrit name Chaturanga means 'quadripartite' (divided into four parts) and was also used to describe the Indian army of Vedic times in which a platoon had four parts: one elephant, one chariot, three soldiers on horseback, and five foot-soldiers. The board was known as the 'ashtapada' (eight-square) and is believed to have been adopted from an older race game related to parcheesi.

The date of the game's origin is uncertain, but documentary evidence exists from c. AD 620 in the form of a Sanskrit document, Vasavadatta from Subhandu which describes what could be chess pieces. Another document, dated from between 750 AD and 850 AD is Chatrang-namak by Pahlavi which describes the arrival of Chatranga to the court of Persia with an Indian embassy. The authenticity of the latter account is doubted by some.

The pieces were raja (king), mantri (counsellor, ancestor of the ferz), gaja (elephant, later called fil), asva (horse), ratha (chariot, later called rook), and pedati (infantry or pawns).

(
Sources:

The Oxford Companion to Chess (second edition), David Hooper, Kenneth Whyld

The Oxford History of Board Games, David Parlett

The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, D. B. Pritchard)


Scientists [=? ed. note: surely not] generally assume that Chaturanga, played in India, in or before the 7th century after Christ, is the oldest known form of chess. Resemblances, both with the current chess, and with Chinese chess are remarkable. The rules below are after Murray and Gollon.
Opening setup

The game is played on an uncheckered board of eight by eight squares.



White
King e1; Counsellor d1; Rook a1, h1; Knight b1, g1; Elephant c1, f1; Pawns a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2.

Black
King d8; Counsellor e8; Rook a8, h8; Knight b8, g8; Elephant c8, f8; Pawns a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7.
Moves of pieces

The king moves as usual king, but additionally has the right to make one knight-move during the game, provided that he hasn't been checked before he makes his knight-move. Castling doesn't exist.

The counsellor moves one square diagonally.

The elephant moves two squares diagonally, but may jump the intervening square.

The knight moves as a usual knight.

The rook or chariot moves as usual rook.

The pawn or soldier moves and takes as a usual pawn, but may not make a double step on its first move.
Promotion

Pawns can promote when they arrive at the last rank of the board, but only to the type of piece that was on the promotion-square in the opening setup, e.g., a white pawn that moves to b8 can only promote to a knight. Additionally, promotion is only possible when the player already lost a piece of the type, so the pawn moving to b8 will only promote to a knight, when the white player already lost a knight during the game. A consequence is that pawns never promote on e1 or d8.
Mate and stalemate

Object of the game is to mate the opponents king. The player that stalemates its opponent loses the game.

(Additional notes:

An early reference to a chess-like game is sometimes attributed to Subandhu in his Vasavadatta (c. 600):

The time of the rains played its game with frogs for chessmen which yellow and green in color, as if mottled by lac, leapt up on the black field squares.

The word translated as chessmen, nayadyutair, is not specific to the Chess and can indicate the pieces of any boardgames. The colors are not those of the two camps, but mean that the frogs have a two-tone dress, yellow and green. Note that the chess-boards used by the Indians were unicoloured.

Banabhatta's Harsha Charitha (c. 625) contains the earliest reference to Chaturanga:

Under this monarch, only the bees quarreled to collect the dew; the only feet cut off were those of measurements, and only from Ashtâpada one could learn how to draw up a Chaturanga, there were no cutting off the four limbs of condemned criminals....

If there is little doubt that Ashtâpada is the gaming-board of 8x8 squares, the double meaning of Chaturanga, as the four folded army, may be controversial. There is a probability that the ancestor of Chess was mentioned there.)

c. 1030 - Al-Biruni's India describes the game of Chaturaji.

1148 - Kalhana's Rajatarangini (translated by MA Stein, 1900)

The King, though he had taken two kings (Lothana and Vigraharaja) was helpless and perplexed about the attack on the remaining one, just as a player of chess (who has taken two Kings and is perplexed about taking a third).
(Note: This refers to the game of Chaturaji.)

kahwa

So riddle me this. Our word 'coffee', as everyone seems to know, derives from:

>>1598, from It. caffe, from Turk. kahveh, from Arabic qahwah "coffee," said originally to have meant "wine," but perhaps rather from Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant (Coffee in Kaffa is called buno). Much initial diversity of spelling, including chaoua.<<

So Arabic Qahwah, from Turkik Kahveh. But why, oh why, is a Kashmiri tea named kahwa?
And it is not, I think, out of some broad semantic change, where the word is used as something like "invigorating liquid" and so can slide from coffee to tea. For the dictionary seems to record:

kahwa

kahwa कह््व । चव्यरसः m. coffee (roasted, or roasted and ground, or the decoction); in Kāshmīrī, sweetened tea (the liquid) (L. 254, 464).[Grierson, A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language].

I don't know quite if this means that in Kashmiri the only use for "kahwa" is the tea drink. But perhaps it is. If so, why? For one assumes that if the word could travel, so could the beans and the drink via the trade routes. Why did coffee not arrive, but the word for it did?

There is, however, something to be said for traditional lexicography. If it is true that Arab lexicographers took the root meaning of qahwah to be not simply "wine", and so spiritous liqours of some kind, but also dark brews that have the right properties, perhaps the invigorating Kashmiri drink is aptly so named. Kahwa is, after all, dark, almost wine-dark (as the impossible description goes).

(See: The Etymology of "Coffee": The Dark Brew, Alan S. Kaye, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 106, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1986), pp. 557-558)


Now, the other think I should like to know why "kahwa" is not used with "chai" when speaking of the drink. It is recognized that this drink is something distinct from just chai, hence the phrase mogali-chai in Kashmiri.

. mŏgȧli: (page 552)

(= ) adj. c.g. of or relating to a Mogul. -- cāhy -- चाह्य् or -- cāhi -- चाहि&below; or -- cāy -- चाय् । पानविशेषः f. a kind of tea (the drink). According to El. (s.v. chái) it is prepared as follows:-- For every tōlā (half-ounce) of tea five cups of water are poured upon it in the bahugun or teapot. It is then boiled for half an hour, when more cold water is added, along with condiments and sugar, after which it is boiled for half an hour

I wonder if it has to do with the fact that though the method of preparation looks like chai, the lack of milk makes it more like drinks called qahwah. Except that "cha", as we all know, lies behind the chai, and "cha" does not require milk.

>>1655, earlier chaa (1598, from Port. cha), from Malay teh and directly from Chinese (Amoy dialect) t'e, in Mandarin ch'a. The distribution of the different forms of the word reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern Eng. form, along with Fr. the, Sp. te, Ger. Tee, etc., derive via Du. thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). First known in Paris 1635, the practice of drinking tea was first introduced to England 1644. The Port. word (attested from 1559) came via Macao; and Rus. chai, Pers. cha, Gk. tsai, Arabic shay and Turk. çay all came overland from the Mandarin form<<