| Username |
Post |
| Gokul |
Posted
on 13-Mar-01 12:29 PM
Just to cool down some of the heat:
Shaila in Sanskrit means Mountain.
Hima-shaila -> Snow capped mountain
Shailesh = Shaila + Isha = God of mountains (not God of good manners).
Perhaps Shailesh is the name of Lord Shiva.
Ashutosh (too quickly pleased) is another name for Lord Shiva.
Hence, Shailesh = Ashutosh.
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 13-Mar-01 01:38 PM
Gokul:
your Sanskrit knowledge is really impressive.
I used to fill crosswords correctly & regularly in Gorkhapatra and
Yuvamancha until my ISc, but my Sanskrit vocabulary is diminishing
sharply. I think it is sad, because Nepalese vocabulary is not
very rich(I mean Pure Nepali vocabulary only), and mastery of
Sanskrit is necessary not only to write some good imagination in
papers but also to understand Lekhnath, Somanath, Laxmi Pd,
Mahabharata, Ramayana etc.
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| rajendra |
Posted
on 13-Mar-01 05:22 PM
It's interesting to observe the results of your decoding. Have you seen the recent movie called Fight Club? I don't want to give it all away, so I'll stay mum. An excellent movie, worth watching till the end!
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| Hom Raj |
Posted
on 13-Mar-01 10:40 PM
I agree that rich vocabulary is so necessary for the development of our literature and language (as long as it does not remain the property of a few, like Sanskrit used to be in the old days).
It's true that Nepali has a limited vocabulary, but on the other hand, the Brihat Nepali Shubdakosh has about 75,000 words (I think) and how many people do you think know half or even 25 percent of them? It's true that dictionary writers also choose a lot of words that are obscure, but it's a shame to see that a lot of people don't know our own language. The reading level, at least in my experience, is so bad.
Maybe we can't blame our parents and people of that generation for having not as good a vocabulary as possible, but I'm talking about educated people! To be called a truly educated person you have to have functional ability in your original language. Can you imagine an American who is in graduate school not knowing how to read a simple novel? I have seen several Nepali in American universities who are PhD candidates stumbling over words in Nepali. And not exactly difficult words.
In America I think a typical educated person has a fairly small "use" vocabulary but a "recognition" vocabulary of about 10,000 words. (Don't quote me on this please!) Of course maybe most people don't use any more than 500 or 1000 words in their everyday conversation, probably not much different than Nepalis, but they don't fumble and mumble reading a children's book.
By the way, to put my two cents in (two rupees?) about Shailesh, it could be argued that Shailesh might not equal Ashutosh. He might equal Ashutosh's father-in-law, since Shailesh would be lord of the mountain, which is Parvati's dad. However among the 1008 names of Shiva maybe Shailesh is one of them; Hindu gods and goddesses are so entangled anyway, maybe he's both father and father-in-law! Which isn't very "polite" of Shailesh--the legendary one. Not our Curious George Narayan Shailesh Nath. Given his name Curious George, though, maybe we could suggest Hanuman? (Anyone who reads books to their kid will get this joke, in America anyway).
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 13-Mar-01 11:22 PM
Hom Raj ji:
I consulted the Royal Nepal Acadamy (kamaladi) published Nepali
Brihad Shabdakosh several times when trying to fill crosswords.
It was edited by really great philologists and authors. I actually
thought its contents to be superfluous a lot of times, since it
obviously contains almost every words from Sanskrit except,of course, Pratyabhooti(take as a joke!).It also considers English
words like water to be Nepali word. May be the writers have a
basis for including Water in Nepali dictionary, but I don't
understand it!
However,the dictionary is really a good one, affordable one ,
(Rs 200.00 that time) and certainly deserves collection. We don't
need to be 'Kuhirako kaag' while reading Tarun Tapasi if we
have decent literature interest and Shabdakosh with us.
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