The ultimate reality, God or Brahman, may well be said to outstrip the reach of thought; but if we do not try, as thoughtfully as we possibly can, to get at what Guru Nanak really says in this seminal work Japuji a daily prayer book Þ how will we be able to benefit from his teaching, as he surely wanted fervently? In the entire history of mankind very few men have been so acutely sensitive to our multifarious suffering, and so keen to show us the way to transcend it for good, as Guru Nanak was. This makes the authors approach this holy work in a new perspective.
This volume tries to interpret Mul Mantra in such a way that the celestial attributes listed in it come to be interrelated, as they must be taken to be. It also attempts wherever possible to explain the order of Guru’s prolific utterances, be they invocatory or just eulogistic. However ebullient the Guru’s utterances may seem to be, they are always significant vehicles of some profound meaning; and also warranted by the running context.
Guru Nanak’s Japuji is a great work, yet this volume is expected to do some good to every thoughtful reader. At the end, the entire text of Japuji in Punjabi, Devnagari with Roman transliteration is given, making the text accessible to the masses who live outside India and need this prayer to be read in English.
This collection of essays, a thoroughly revised and enlarged version of its first earlier edition (1979), is a pioneering treatment of the Hindustani rhythm in the way of contemporary (Western) aesthetics. It seeks, on the one hand, to determine and distinguish the meaning of such key words as laya, matra, bol, theka, sama, and layakari, and, on the other hand, to seize the details and aesthetic semblances of live rhythm as they appear to contemplation.
Some wider aesthetical questions have also been addressed in this book. How, if at all, can rhythm be regarded as an autonomous art? What are the elements of its winged form, and how can it yet appear steadfast and virtually motionless? Is it proper to speak of the art of rhythm as symbolic in its significance or as expressive in some distinctive way? Or, can it be said to embody what it signifies?
Insofar as rhythm is fast becoming a vital subject of aesthetic reflection in the West today, the book also seeks to weigh the conflicting views of two modern aestheticians, Susanne K. Langer and Philip Alperson, against the theory and practice of Hindustani rhythm.
Every lover of this specific genre of rhythm stands to benefit from a reading of this book. It would prove to be of value also to those who are interested in Kathak dance, for no other classical dance of India depends so manifestly on rhythm.
The ultimate reality, God or Brahman, may well be said to outstrip the reach of thought; but if we do not try, as thoughtfully as we possibly can, to get at what Guru Nanak really says in this seminal work Japuji a daily prayer book Þ how will we be able to benefit from his teaching, as he surely wanted fervently? In the entire history of mankind very few men have been so acutely sensitive to our multifarious suffering, and so keen to show us the way to transcend it for good, as Guru Nanak was. This makes the authors approach this holy work in a new perspective.
This volume tries to interpret Mul Mantra in such a way that the celestial attributes listed in it come to be interrelated, as they must be taken to be. It also attempts wherever possible to explain the order of Guru’s prolific utterances, be they invocatory or just eulogistic. However ebullient the Guru’s utterances may seem to be, they are always significant vehicles of some profound meaning; and also warranted by the running context.
Guru Nanak’s Japuji is a great work, yet this volume is expected to do some good to every thoughtful reader. At the end, the entire text of Japuji in Punjabi, Devnagari with Roman transliteration is given, making the text accessible to the masses who live outside India and need this prayer to be read in English.
This work may well be expected to serve as an introduction to the study of aesthetics, suitable alike to the needs of our students and the general reader. A fair part of it deals with some of the more difficult concepts and problems one encounters in contemporary Western philosophical discourse on art. At the same time, the book is studded with illustrative references to contemporary aesthetic practice in India. This is true of almost every individual chapter; and the close is provided by a critical and comprehensive, yet intelligible account of the Indian theory of rasa, to which some eminent Western aestheticians, such as Susanne K. Langer and Harold Osborne, have referred admiringly in some of their basic writings.
What should make this book specially attractive to enquiring readers is its consistent attempt to reflect on teasing aesthetical questions with clarity.
