[Advaita-l] saMkShepa rAmAyaNa 10 - phalashruti

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2022, Venkatesh Murthy via Advaita-l wrote:

> I have seen many discussions about the translation of 'Vanara'. Many people
> feel it should not be translated as 'Monkey'. Vanaras are not the same
> species as monkeys. They are closer to humans than monkeys.
>

vAnara literally means "forest man" but the conventional meaning is 
monkey.  The rAmAyaNa itself using kapi (see shloka 77) and harI (shloka 
68) as synonyms for vAnara and both mean monkey.  Furthermore the Gujarati 
word vAMdro and the Hindi word bandara which both derive from vAnara both 
mean monkey.

A sufficiently enterprising person can "interpret" any word into any other 
but when there is an accepted common-sense meaning it should be accepted 
instead of torturing texts.

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