Selected Poems (Tagore, Rabindranath)
Page 27
Srāba (124, 132, 144) Bengali month, mid-July to mid-August; second of the two rainy months.
Tāla (95) Term for the metrical cycles used in Indian music. Originally it meant ‘handclap’, which probably indicates that the rhythm of the music was punctuated by hand-claps, as it still is in South India.
Tamāl (51, 98, 158) Medium-sized hardy tree with dark-green leaves, and blackish bark and timber. Because of its dark colour it is often compared to Ka.
Tānpurā (54, 55, 133) Simple stringed instrument that maintains the ‘drone’ in Indian music, i.e. the tonic and another medial note (usually the fifth or fourth). It normally has four strings.
Udayana (180, 181) Legendary King of Vatsa, whose romance with Vāsavadattā, treated many times in story and drama, was popular with the people of Avantī (Ujjain).
Ujjayini (Ujjain) (50, 51, 180, 182) Capital city of Avantī; one of the Seven Sacred Cities of the Hindus; where Kālidāsa is supposed to have received patronage.
Umā(90, 151) Name of Śiva’s śakti or consort; she appears under this name in Kālidāsa’s Kumāra-sambhava.
Ustād (54, 173) A Persian and Urdu term for a master-craftsman or teacher, often applied to distinguished musicians in North India; comparable to ‘Maestro’.
Vainava (97, 158, 180, 182) A follower of Vaisnavism, a religion based on intense personal devotion to Vinu and his incarnations Rāma and Kna and their consorts. It was the main religion of medieval Bengal, and inspired numerous songs and manuals on the love of Rādhā and Krsna. Pious Vaisnavas are supposed to weep at the mention of Rādhā’s name (q.v.).
Vāsavadattā (180) See Udayana.
Vetravati (51, 180) River flowing from the Vindhya mountains to the Jumna.
Vidiśā (180) The capital city of Daśāra.
Vikramāditya (120) Legendary king of Ujjain; Kālidāsa is supposed to have been one of the ‘nine gems’ of literature who graced his fabulous court.
Vīā (60, 61, 90, 95, 99, 107, 156, 159) Generic term for a number of stringed instruments, now applied to those of the lute-type. The viā is supposed to have been invented by Nārada, chief of the Gandharvas or heavenly musicians, and mythical author of some of the hymns of the Rg-veda.
Vindhya (51, 180) Name of a mountain range across the middle of India.
Viu (45, 46, 128, 129, 138, 176) Second god of the Hindu triad, known as ‘the Preserver’; he is not such a powerful presence as Śiva in Tagore’s poetry, though many Hindus acknowledge him as supreme deity. He has four arms, carries a gadā (club or mace), a conch called Pāñcajanya (see Conch), a cakra or discus (Viu’s sun-symbol), a lotus, a bow and a sword, and has a famous jewel on his breast called Kaustubha. Laksmī, goddess of prosperity, is the most important of his wives; Ka his most celebrated incarnation.
Yaka (116, 117, 169, 170, 180, 182) Name of a class of semi-divine beings attendant on Kubera, god of wealth, whose home was Alakā. In Tagore’s writings Yaksas take on a distinctly mortal character.
Yaman-Kalyā (54) Musical rāga, sung in the first quarter of the night, often at the beginning of a concert. It is a soothing, luck-bringing and benedictory rāga, distinguished by a sharpened fourth.
Yūthi/ Yūthikā (131, 156, 171, 181) A kind of jasmine-creeper, with small white flowers, sweetly scented, especially profuse in summer.
Zamindár (56, 84) Persian term for a landowner that became standard in Bengal.
1. See notes to ‘Yaka’ (p. 169).
2. The Beloved is called an abhisāriī, one who waits for a tryst. The word immediately reminds Bengali readers of Rādhā pining for Krsna. See Vainava in the Glossary.
3. Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta II.44
O my perfect one, those winds
off the Himalayas that suddenly open
the budding deodar shoots and now blow
southward scented with the ooze of their resin,
I hug close to myself, thinking
maybe they have touched your body.
(trans. Leonard Nathan, University of California Press, 1976)
4. ‘They weep in each other’s arms when they think of separation.’
5. mānasa-lok: ‘mind-worl’. Tagore may be punning here with the Mānasa lake on whose shore the Beloved dwells.
6. ‘Who brought (you) out from inside the heart?’
7. ‘Because of that, the heart of Balarām’s lord (Ka) is restless.’
8. See notes to ‘The Meghadūta’ (p. 131).
9. acetan: ‘non-conscious, inanimate’, perhaps corresponding with ‘Earth’ above. We are bound to earth and to material existence, however far consciousness and imagination may strive to reach.
1. bti part lāpur-iupur, nade ela bā: Tagore used to call this rhyme āmār śaiśber a megh-dūt, ‘my childhood Meghadūta’.
2. Hindu myths.
3. Writing in the very early days of the cinema, Tagore may be striving here for a Bengali expression for a cinema-screen (acetan pat: ‘non-conscious, inanimate screen’). Present-day Bengali would simply use the English word ‘screen’.
4. meyeli charā: ‘rhymes such as women (meye) use’. meyeli is hard to translate: it is neither ‘womanish’, nor ‘womanly’, nor ‘effeminate’.