TAMIL
Eminently readable
C.L. RAMAKRISHNAN
YAMAKA BHARATAM: Madhvacharya; Translated by K. Sreepada Rao, Pub. by Mulupagal Sri Padaraja Swamigal Mutt, Tansi Nagar, Velachery, Chennai-600042. Rs. 50.
ACHARYA MADVA’S ‘Yamaka Bharata’ (Sanskrit), which is believed to be a summary of his ‘Mahabharata Tatparya Nirnaya’, briefly recounts the epic in 81 slokas.
‘Yamaka’ is a figure of speech (sabda alamkara) where a letter or a word is repeatedly used, but with different meanings, in a sloka. This work is replete with applications of ‘Yamaka’ and hence the title.
For instance, the words ‘manasa’ and ‘vilayam’ occur thrice in the first and third padas of the 54th sloka. The compositions of a number of slokas (Slokas 71 and 72, for example) are what may be called a feat of literary engineering. They reveal the Acharya’s mastery over the vocabulary and grammar in Sanskrit. This genre of composition, known as ‘citra kavya,’ is perhaps a forerunner to the literary style called ‘bahu sadhana kavyas’, where the story-lines of two different epics could be read into the text by subtly varying its construction.
In this book, Sreepada Rao has given the Sanskrit text, its transliteration in Tamil, word-split in prose order, and the meaning, with an index to the slokas. The word-split and the meaning of the text are simple and straight. Eminently readable and handy, the publication
should serve to extend the reach of the original work.
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