[Reader-list] Bird-not-free in Kashmiri folk song

[Inder Salim]

Thanks dear Jatasundri devi ji

suberbly reflected piece, and  ' sodur'
too eloquently intrepreted .

it is infact because of these liberated meanings hidden inside each
word, that we are hopeful of some change, and that is why i am not
even afraid of '  plagiarism ' , . or if i go by oscar wilde, then
only genius is privileged to plagiarize.

times are too ripe to delve into anything that strikes the mind, and
that is why this man called Zia-ud-din Nakshabi sahib was too brave
and too conscious about the the times he lived in, and yet he ventured
into the unknown. who cares about the sources, as long as the person
'haunted' churns out something interesting.

the post, as we know started with BIRD NOT FREE in kashmiri folk and
the discussioin veered into Tote Name and other nauances around
parraot and other details. That is what really is the reward of
veturing, because i never expected such a response. thanks again.

love and regards
inder salim


On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 6:13 PM, Comet Media Foundation
<cometmediafdn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Inder, Ananya and Kshmendra,
>
> I'm tossing myself right into your conversation because Zia-ud-din Nakshabi
> once did me a great favour or let's say I did myself a favour by relying on
> his work so I have to defend him.
>
> Kshemendra
>
> 1. Why are you getting after my man Zia, calling him a plagiarist? He lived
> in the 14th century, when such concepts did not exist and he must have
> thought he was sharing his delight and augmenting the reputation of the
> works he was translating, re-contextualising and re-telling for a wide
> Farsi-culture-influenced Central Asian public.
> Incidentally, it's my reading that he cut the Tota's tales from 70 to 52
> because he couldn't explain the cultural practices / references in some of
> them to his readers, and with some other stories, he was afraid of getting
> into trouble with the ulema. Apart from his literary work Zia was a hakim
> and contributed to the incorporation of Indian ingredients into the Unnani
> tibb. Call him a self-censoring coward or a bad translator, but such a
> prayog-karta and rasik (man of science and art) cannot be labelled a
> plagiarist!
>
> 2. The two weblinks you gave to the US National Library of Medicine are
> nonsense. Even if he could do calligraphy and miniature paintings (though
> it's not inconceivable) Zia could not have been painting in the18th century!
> And if the word Kashmir in this ahistorical citation got you excited, let me
> tell you he hung about in the shadow of then new Qutub Minar the whole time
> he lived in India, in a mango garden and house of a nobleman patron in the
> Mehrauli area who gave him the leisure to carry out his research and do his
> compilations and translations.
>
> 3. Please write 'shuka' and not 'suka' when referring to the Shuka Saptati
> (Seventy Tales of a Parrot). "Spashta uchcharan etc..." or at least as far
> as we can take it Romanic letters.
>
> Inder Salim
> Can I speculate about sodur / sodras ? I think it is the metaphysical
> concept of sudoor (सुदूर) -- a faraway, unknown, desirable and inaccessible
> place -- that Lalleshwari was yearning for. Think of it as the sea, the
> cloud-filled sky, the turbulent Wular in the monsoons. The pre-fix 'su'
> indicates a positive attitude to the place, not a fearful one as in the
> English notion of the 'unknown'. Rabindranath Tagore wrote "Ami
> shudoorer-o-piyashi" or "I'm a seeker after the sudoor".
>
> Ananya
> Sharp, sharp! Slam on and provocate without inihibitions!
>
> They say in my mother tongue, "Beshi katha, baaje katha", so I'll try to
> stop my rotten kathas at this point.
>
> With love to all
>
> Jatasundari Devi (writing sneakily from some friends' office mail ID to
> avoid detection)
>



-- 

http://indersalim.livejournal.com