On Bharata’s repeated use of ‘bhāva’ in words such as vibhāva, anubhāva and vyabhicāri-bhāva:
It should be noted that Bharata has coined all these technical terms retaining the core-term bhāva to emphasize the role of imagination on the part of the spectator. (Indian Literary Theories, p. 146)
Freedom is the hallmark of beauty:
“ಮೇಲೆ ನೋಡೆ ಕಣ್ಣ ತಣಿಪ ನೀಲಪಟದಿ ವಿವಿಧ ರೂಪಜಾಲಗಳನು ಬಣ್ಣಿಸಿರ್ಪ ಚಿತ್ರಚತುರನಾರ್?” ಎಂಬ ಪದ್ಯವನ್ನು ಮಾಧ್ಯಮಿಕ ಶಾಲೆಯ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಯಾಗಿ ಉರುಹೊಡೆದಾಗ ನನಗೆ ಪೂಜ್ಯ ಡಿ.ವಿ.ಜಿ. ಅವರ ಮತ್ತು ಅವರ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯದ ಬಗೆಗೆ ಅಪಾರ ಆಕರ್ಷಣೆ, ಆಸಕ್ತಿ ಮತ್ತು ಗೌರವಗಳು ಆರಂಭವಾದವು. ನಾನು 1965ರಲ್ಲಿ ಕಾಲೇಜಿನ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಯಾಗಿ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರು ಸೇರುತ್ತಿದ್ದ ಹಾಗೆಯೇ ಬೆಳಸಿಕೊಂಡ ಒಂದು ಅಭ್ಯಾಸವೆಂದರೆ ಗೋಖಲೆ ಸಾರ್ವಜನಿಕ ವಿಚಾರಸಂಸ್ಥೆಯ ಕಾರ್ಯಕ್ರಮಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ತಪ್ಪದೆ ಹಾಜರಿರುವುದು. ಆಗಲೇ ನನಗೆ ಶ್ರೀ ಪದ್ಮನಾಭನ್ ಅವರ ಪರಿಚಯವಾದದ್ದು.
We learn the following from a treatise authored by M Gopalakrishnayya, published by the Mysore Electrical Department in 1932 – apparently, during the last decades of the nineteenth century, the possibility of power generation had been shown to the British engineers and there had also been a few bilateral correspondences regarding this between the Resident and a few business organizations. The details of the proposal, however, had not been examined.
Krishnamoorthy has expounded on an English sonnet composed by Wilfred Owen using Indian literary principles.[1] His analysis of Thomas Gray’s famous poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is fascinating:
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Translations form a major part of Krishnamoorthy’s oeuvre. His English translations of Sanskrit works include Dhvanyāloka, commentary by an anonymous author on the first chapter of Locana, Vakroktijīvita, Yaśodharacarita, Kavikaumudī and a few sections in Ancient Indian Literature (vol. 2) published by Sahitya Akademi.
Alongside his reputation for proficiency at work, there is another trait of Seshadri Iyer that needs to be mentioned as a corollary. He was never a person who yearned for people’s endorsement. A German historian defines the term ‘people’—one of the elements of the State—in the following manner:
The people is that part of the State which does not know its own interests.
Sir K. Seshadri Iyer was a native of Madras. He hailed from the region of Palghat (Palakkad). He wasn’t, in fact, someone the British authorities had summoned. I have heard that it was Rungacharlu who brought Seshadri Iyer into government service. When Rungacharlu was in the government service of the Madras Presidency, there were occasions when he had to visit places such as Coimbatore, Wayanad, and Palghat on government duty. On one such official trip, he got introduced to the family of Seshadri Iyer and came to realize that young Seshadri was a brilliant intellectual.
Krishnamoorthy joined the Sharada Vilas College in 1949 and worked there until 1952. During this time, at the behest of A R Krishna Shastri, he wrote an elaborate introduction to Ānandavardhana’s aesthetic method and translated Dhvanyāloka into Kannada. In the introduction, he outlined the concepts of kindred subjects that are essential to understand Dhvanyāloka, summarized the contents of the text and explained them with apt examples chosen from Kannada poems, both ancient and modern.