Editor,
It interesting but not surprising that the president and artistic director of Vienna Boys Choir Mr. Gerald Wirth is going to a guide our proud Shillong Chamber Choir (SCC). But what is another proud fact is that their new project this time is the performance of an opera based on Shakuntala. Needless to say, this play proclaims itself to be one of the literary brilliance of the East. Probably authored between 4th and 5th century CE by Mahakavi Kalidasa, this Sanskrit drama, soon after its translation into Latin by Sir William Jones in 1789, had fascinated most of the European scholars. Based on the story of a fraction part of Mahabharata it bears the rare attributes less known to the western world. So much so that many critics stood up challenging Aristotelian dramatic theory as they discovered the eastern literature with more literary adornments and philosophy.
To what extent Sir William Jones had been able to render this play from the language which he had just learned from a person who did not know English is astonishing. However, the avid scholar linguist, Sir Jones learned the oldest language of the world. And, many believed this opened the doorway to hitherto less known Eastern wisdom. True, when he had first begun to study this play by Kalidasa it occurred to Sir William Jones that this drama might dwarf other literary works of the European scholars. The conviction instantaneously inspired the British linguist to translate the work first into Latin. Without further ado he had taken upon himself the challenge of the translation. Not very long after the publication the book captivated the imagination of many top scholars of Germany, Britain, Italy and France. The rational romantic thinkers who had not been fettered by the shackles of prejudice and prevailing dogmas had burst out their passionate applause. Immediately after, in 1791, another noted scholar George Forster translated this play into the German language. Forster hastened himself to present his translation to a prominent philosopher and critic of the time Johann Gottfried Herder. After having immersed in the play Herder finally concluded that the philosophy of the West seems “narrow and cold” in comparison to India literature. He quipped in praise of Shakuntala “I cannot easily find a product of the human mind more pleasant than this, a real blossom of the Orient, the first and the most beautiful of its kind…, something like that, of course, appears once every two thousand years…”. So, Herder was impelled to introduce the book to the literary giant of the era – Johann Goethe. The father of German literature was so spellbound that he decided to learn Sanskrit himself.
There is a very significant disclosure made by Goethe when another French Scholar Antoine Leonard de Chezy presented Goethe with his French edition of Shakuntala. In a letter of gratitude to Antoine Chezy, Goethe opened up himself before the European world : “The first time I came upon this inexhaustible work, [Shakuntala] it aroused such enthusiasm in me and so held me that I could not stop studying it. I even felt impelled to make the impossible attempt to bring it in some form to the German stage. These efforts were fruitless but they made me so thoroughly acquainted with this most valuable work, it represented such an “epoch in my life”, I so absorbed it, that for thirty years I did not look at either the English or the German version. It is only now that I understand the enormous impression that work made on me at an earlier age.”
While intellectuals like Goethe, Herder, Heinrich Heine, Schiller… passionately lauded Indian drama, even by writing poems, Friedrich Schlegel exclaimed with conviction “ India is superior in everything – intellectually, religiously…, even Greek heritage seems pale in comparison”.
Best of luck to Shillong Chamber Choir! Hope this musical project will be instrumental in inspiring the people across the country to shed their past prejudices and seriously go deeper into the literature of the home country too as they study Odyssey, Macbeth, Paradise Lost, David Copperfield, Harry Potter,…
Yours etc.;
Salil Gewali,
Shillong-2
Our future in the hands of NEHU
Editor,
As the first batch under- graduate student of the new Semester System of NEHU who appeared in the 6th and final semester examination, I would like to voice some common concerns of students belonging to my batch.
Firstly, the above examination only concluded in the last week of May2018 and based on our experience of the previous 5(five) semesters, we expect our results to be declared after a long gap of 4(four) to 5(five) months. For example, our 5th semester examination concluded in October 2017 while the results were declared in March 2018.
Secondly, as many of us have also appeared in the Entrance Examinations of several universities, we are apprehensive that if NEHU takes as much time as it did in declaring the results of our previous 5(five) semesters, then our chances of continuing with our studies would be futile. There is every likelihood of us losing one year of our academic lives. This is because many of the universities outside our state usually undertake counseling and admission exercises for Post Graduate studies from the last week of June till the end of the second week or third week (at the latest) of July and if NEHU declares its results after this time window, then our worst fears would come true. If what we fear really comes to pass, then it would be a sad repetition of what the parents and students of MBSOSE Class 12 students of previous years had to go through when several of them had to endure the pain of seeing their careers derailed.
I have one humble suggestion which I hope is realistic. In this regard, I venture to suggest that NEHU requisitions the services of more examiners/evaluators and ensure that these examiners devote maximum time in evaluating the answer scripts of the 6th semester students only, so that the future of these students is not put in jeopardy.
Yours etc.,
Name withheld on request