[Advaita-l] Gayatri mantra

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Thu, 11 Aug 2011, Sunil Bhattacharjya wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> Vyakarana is very important but even more important probably is to 
> derive the right meaning. I can give you more than one example, where 
> the learned scholars of Sanskrit goofed up the meanings. Kindly permit 
> me to cite one example.
>
>
> The Suryasiddhanta (1.12-15) says 30 Ahoratras make one Saura masa and 
> 12 Saura masas make one Divyavarsha. Thus  the Divyavarsha is equal to 
> 360 Ahoratras. One Chaturyuga consists of 12,000 Suryabdas or 
> Divyavarshas and the number of Ahoratras in it are 4320,000. The 
> Puranas, the Manu Smriti and the Mahabhatarata also say that one 
> Chaturyuga is 12,000 Solar years. Vayu purana even says that 2700 
> Divyavarshas (solar years) is equal to 3030 Lunar (Sidereal) years. Yet 
> due to wrong translation of the Sanskrit verses the Siddhanta scholars 
> are interpreting the Chaturyuga to be 4320,000 years and that has been 
> going on for the last two centuries, despite the fact that there were 
> many learned Sanskrit scholars invcolved in the Suryasiddhantic studies. 
> Initially I also wondered as to how can the Siddhanta write something 
> different from what is given in the Fifth Veda (ie. the Puranas and the 
> Itihasas). When I checked the Sanskrit verses myself I found that the 
> Sanskrit verses have been misinterpreted.

This is not an example of Sanskrit scholars "goofing up the meaning" this 
is a case of you trying to insert your crackpot theories by making excuses 
like "misinterpreting"  This is what you get when you abandon objective 
standards like vyakarana and history, random subjective and unsupportable 
pet theories of no use to anyone except their author.

Advaita-l is not a social club for people to pontificate at each other. 
Stop wasting hundreds of peoples time with this nonsense.

>
>
> What I mean to say is that the knowledge of the language is complete 
> only when one can interpret the language properly. Panini (followed by 
> Patanjali, Katyana and others) came quite sometime after the Buddhists 
> misused the Sanskrit language and I believe that prompted Panini to do 
> something so that for the future there will be his guidelines for 
> teaching the Sanskrit language free from any distortions and that is the 
> advent of the Classical Sanskrit period. But the million dollar question 
> is did Panini make any retrospective corrections in the Vedic texts to 
> fall in line with his Vyakarana. In my opinion the Vedic Sanskrit was 
> beyond the scope of panini, though Panini derived help from that it 
> formulating his grammar.

These are the words of someone who quite obviously has never even read a 
book on vyakarana.  I am not even going to bother telling you why you're 
wrong.  Your homework is to figure out for yourself why you are wrong. 
Do not bother responding until you understand why.

I am beginning to wonder if those who ask for more hands-on moderation are 
right.  It's sad really.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>