Poem: Lokayat
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An aphorism is, in a way, Lokayat :
People’s science, a path designed for people
“A watched pot never boils” – Perhaps the best companion to the
Copenhagen interpretation
All knowledge, if looked closely
Comes from life and its
Unknown troubadours
Colloquial wisdom can
Defeat even the most learned
Surgery evolved through
The work of artisans
Potters, barbers, craftspeople, and such
Later codified and expanded in the
Sushrut Samhita by the
Venerated king
If Sanskrit is older than Prakrit,
Why is it called Sanskrit; the polished one?
You can’t refine something that doesn’t exist
(If you say Sanskrit was made by the Gods,
Did thieves make Prakrit? )
Even the Vedic Sanskrit
Which some say predates the Prakrits
Was built on some common tongue
Prakrits were called such since they
Existed, organically
Wise men and women later refined them
Into a crisp new Sanskrit dialect
Only for books; never the streets
Much as I adore Sanskrit, Prakrits
Are roaring rivers with sharp bends
Replete with liquid sounds
Rough at the edges
Beautiful inside
(If you must go in details
Haalaa’s “Gatha Sattasai” is at places so erotic
It could make
Fifty shades blush)
The Maharashtri Prakrit
With its lilt and grace was
Tailor-made for songs
Kalidas borrowed from it,
So his Sanskrit plays could croon
Dnyaneshwar refused Sanskrit
Much to the priest's dismay
“I will write in Marathi – sweeter than the
Heavenly nectars”
Mahadamba, Namdeo, Eknath, Tukaram
Founders, poets, rebels
They chose the people’s tongue
With deliberate resolve
Aristophanes wrote his plays in
Street Greek, and
Chaucer scribbled his tales
In oure tonge
Peter Bruegel the Elder
Drew the commoner
In their language
In the times of Mir and later Ghalib
People freely spoke in Urdu
Or Rekhta, as it was called then, the
Scattered dialect of commoners
While the gentry postured in Farsi
The language of the Darbar
The elites and the rich
No wonder Urdu became the
Ever-giving
River of poetry
And no wonder
William Carlos Williams
Sought to perfect
The American idiom – people’s way
Of saying things
Most knowledge comes from people,
The common folk
Intellectuals rearrange it
And become immortals
In the gilded pages of written history.
-Anant Dhavale
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