> There is a textbook on Finite Element Methods (the title
> is just that, I think), authoured by a Dr. Reddy (I can't
> recall his complete name), that starts with a telugu quote
> in the Preface. When I first saw this book with my Civil/
> ps: Does anybody recall the book by Dr. Reddy and the poem
> therein?
I have a personal copy of this book and the title is _An Introd. to FEM_.
Its not a Telugu quote but a Sanskrit one:
tEjaSwinaa vadheetamastu (May what we study be well studied). A more
complete version of this quote ("sahaanavavatu, sahanau bhunaktu...."
from taittareeyoepanishat) can be found in another book by M. Vidyasagar
(Control System Synthesis: A Factorization Approach, MIT press, 1985).
And its NOT in Telugu script.
In recent years quite a few monographs were published under Prof. JN Reddy's
authorship. I don't know whether they also contain some Telugu/Sanskrit
quotes.
Here are a few excerpts from the discussion on the same thread in SCIT in
Summer '93.
-------------------------------------------
Prof. Vidyasagar wrote:
But I want to answer PVNR's question. Mine is NOT the first book
to have a Telugu-scripted saying in the front matter.
In the book "Error Coding for Arithmetic Processors" by T.R.N. Rao
(Academic Press, 1974), Prof. Rao (of the Univ. of Southwestern
Louisiana, Lafayette) has put the following saying:
"vividha janula valana vinnanta kannanta
teliya vachchinanta te'Ta parutu"
bammera po'tara'ju
He DID NOT write it in his own hand (as I did). Instead, he just
photocopied the text from somewhere. He also gave the following
translation:
What I have heard or seen
from many a scholar,
a pious hope it has been
to render it crystal clear
Translated from Bammera Pothana's ``Bhagavatham.''
I didn't like that translation. I would have preferred
Whatever I have heard, seen, and learnt from scholars,
I will make clear.
Coming back to my own quotation, I vacillated between the poem
I actually quoted and the following poem. This is an "Enugu Lakshmana
Kavi" translation of one of bhartRhari's Sanskrit poems.
Unfortunately my reference book is back in Bangalore, so I can't
post the Sanskrit original. The Telugu translation is:
telivi yokinta le'niyeDa tRptuDanai kari bhangi sarvamun
telisitinanTu garvitamatin viharinchiti tolli, ippuDu --
jvalamatulaina panDitula sannidhi ninchuka bo'dhaSaalinai
telivaaDanai melagitin gatamayye nitaanta garvamun
.......
others like him, here is a translation into English:
Before, when I was absolutely lacking in knowledge, I went about
contented, like a wild elephant, thinking I knew everything.
Now I have become a little knowledgeable at the feet of
brilliant "pandits" and I realize my ignorance;
my erstwhile pride is gone.
But I thought it was too long to fit on a single page.
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 1993 19:06:08 GMT
From: pvr@rice.edu (PVR Narasimha Rao)
Subject: Bammera Potaraju (Re: Telugu Quotation etc.)
:) "vividha janula valana vinnanta kannanta^M
~~~~~~~
I remember reading it in some versions of Bhagavatam as "vibudha" (vibudha
janulu means learned people. (Mercury (the planet) gets tis name budha from
this. Mercury is supposed to be the Lord of learning, math, philosophy and
logic.) Though both "vividha" and vibudha" make sense in this context,
vibudha seems better.
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Regards,
Sreenivas