Ayya, Señor, Adonai !

by Anu

Ayya, nee kelidade kelu;

Keledidhare maanu-

This 12th century vacana by the mystic seer Akkamahadevi, is a lovely verse that is beautiful when read, recited or sung. 

The simplicity and musical flow of words tempted us to have its transliteration done into a few non-Indian languages. Chaitanya’s English translation below is followed by a Spanish and Hebrew version.

Lord, if you will listen, listen;


If you won’t, don’t—

I can’t bear to live without singing of you.


If you will look, look;


If you won’t, don’t—


I can’t bear life unless I look at you and be happy.


If you will agree, agree;


If you won’t, don’t—

I can’t bear life unless I embrace you.


If you will be pleased, be pleased,


If you won’t, don’t—

I can’t bear life unless I worship you.
 (Chaitanya Vacana 39) 

------------

Spanish Version

Señor, si estás escuchando, escucha

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir sin cantarte

Si estás mirando, mira

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir a menos que te mire y sea feliz

Si estás de acuerdo, acuerda

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir a menos que te abrace

Si estás complacido, complace

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir a menos que te adore.

-----

Hebrew version

Adonai, im tishma, tishma;

Im lo, az lo –

Ani lo yechola lichyot bli shiratcha,

Im tistakel, histakel,

Im lo, lo

Lo oochal linso et hachaim im lo estakel allecha ve’eheye me’vsheret

Im taskim, taskim,

im lo,lo

Lo oochal linso et hachaim im lo e’ametzcha

Im titratte, hitratte

Im lo, lo

Lo oochal linso et hacha’im esgod’cha


Kannada is one of the Dravidian languages of South India. It is very interesting to note how well the words and the meaning retain their beauty in Spanish and Hebrew, just as it does in English. The speakers and origin of these four languages; Kannada, English, Spanish and Hebrew are separated by large geographical distances but there is linguistic proximity among them. Contrast this with Kannada and Mandarin speakers, who live comparatively closer, yet are separated by greater linguistic distance.

Cavalli-Sforza’s study of human populations, genes and language evolution has some interesting insights into this:

 “Most patterns found in the analysis of human living populations are likely to be consequences of demographic expansions, determined by technological developments affecting food availability, transportation, or military power. During such expansions, both genes and languages are spread to potentially vast areas. In principle, this tends to create a correlation between the respective evolutionary trees (genes and languages). The correlation is usually positive and often remarkably high. It can be decreased or hidden by phenomena of language replacement and also of gene replacement, usually partial, due to gene flow.”

Hebrew, the modern version used here has an Afro-Asiatic origin, English and Spanish (as spoken in Spain) belong to the Indo-European group and Kannada is a Dravidian one. They cluster close together as seen in this evolutionary tree of genes and languages:

We are grateful to Aureliano Gomez and Naama for enthusiastically doing the translation of the above 12th century Kannada vacana into Spanish and Hebrew respectively.

Aure is a biologist-programmer and a writer of Spanish stories. Naama is a biologist-programmer, cyclist and mom of two. Both translators are atheists.

Sources: Vacanas of Akkamahadevi, By Armando Menzes and S. M. Angadi.

PNAS, Vol 94, pg 7719, 1997.

Songs of Shiva. Translated by Vinaya Chaitanya.

Comments

[sphujidhwaja]

> It is very interesting to note how well
> the words and the meaning retain their
> beauty in Spanish and Hebrew, just as it
> does in English.
[snip]
> They cluster close together as seen
> in this evolutionary tree of genes
> and languages.

Without even going into the drawbacks of Cavalli-Sforza's theories, I am afraid your hypothesis can be termed as a bit far-fetched. Linguistic phylogenetic proximity doesn't always correspond to the semantic proximity. For instance, if you consider the Dravidian phylogeny, Tamil is much closer to Kannada than Telugu (Tamil and Kannada belong to SD-I, whereas Telugu is SD-II), but it is easy to see that modern semantics and poetics of Kannada are much closer to that of Telugu (Consider how easy to translate a song like 'caitrada kusumAnjali' of Ananda bhairavi into Telugu). This has much to do with recent common political history of these two regions and how the poetic traditions of these two languages borrowed heavily from the traditions of Sanskrit.

What say you?

[anu]

Hi sphujidhwaja,

Ah, I did not see this comment, there was no hypothesis building, just an observation that it did seem to keep the rhythm in these three languages -visually too-

"It was interesting to note" -is not intended to mean it is always true of closely clustering languages to have similar semantics and poetics.

With this vacana, and the random chance of having translators in languages distant from kannada, there happened a lovely flow of poetic rhythm.

One poem is too narrow a base to validate Cavalli-Sforza's or any other theory, no?

When you say Dravidian phylogeny, do you mean the people or the language? Tamils are closer to Kannadigas than Telugus (geographically too), but in language, script, poetics and semantics Kannada is a lot closer to Telugu. This has been my perception so far, will be interested to hear alternate perspectives.

Recent political history (modern recent or Krishnadevarayya times)?

Also Akkamahadevi finally settled in Srisailam which was erstwhile telugu or kannada region? and are the vacana's also sung in Telugu? Curious to know. :)

[sphujidhwaja]

Boy, a lot of questions, and not being a professionally trained linguist or historian, I shouldn't be venturing into answering them, but let me go out on a limb and give them a shot, anyway.

1. In my opinion, there are no Dravidian people and Aryan people in India. There are only Indo-Aryan languages and Dravidian languages (besides Munda languages, Tibeto-Burmese languages and isolated languages like Burushaski and Nahali etc.) There may have been a small segment of population that carried these languages into Indian subcontinent (esp. Indo-Aryan languages), but they might not have profoundly altered the genetic identity of India -- it is more likely that many locals adopted the "elitist" languages. This is where I think the Cavalli-Sforza's overstatement about language families strongly correlating with genetic families gets him into trouble.

2. The history of scripts has been independent of the history of languages, which is esp. true of Indian sub-continent. We know that India has five different linguistic families, but there is only one family of scripts with almost all of them deriving from the proto-Brahmi script. The similarity of Telugu and Kannada scripts owes its origin to the rule of Chalukya dynasty that ruled the region of Andhra-Karnataka between 6th-12th centuries.

3. There is no dispute among the linguists on whether Kannada is closer to Tamil or Telugu. If we look at the phonology, morphology, syntax and primary vocabulary all of them point to one thing: Kannada and Tamil belong to the same sub-branch and Telugu belongs to a different sub-branch. A few examples of common linguistic feature of Tamil-Kannada branch: addition of -gaL for plural; creation of 3rd person feminine singular forms avaL and corresponding verb conjugations etc.

4. There are no vacana poets in Telugu. Actually, in modern lingo the word vacana is used in Telugu to mean "prose". If there is anybody, pAlkUriki sOmanAtha comes pretty close to being a vacana poet. He wrote in "desi" metres (dwipada) and was a follower of basava, and he attempted to propogate vIraSaiva faith in his writings. Actually, it appears he was also known for his kannaDa works too. Velcheru Narayana Rao's "Siva's Warriors: The Basava Purana of Pakluriki Somanatha" is an interesting read.

You both appear to be enormously talented. I look forward to reading many more interesting topics and translations (including translations into Telugu) on this website!

Thanks,
Sphujidhwaja.