User:Rudrasharman/Notes/Datapoints

Brhaddevata 4.11-15

 * First, the Sanskrit (from Macdonell, pp.38-39).

(Note: Tokunaga has a revised edition with some differences.)
 * Next, Macdonell's translation: full text (pp.128-129)


 * Finally, how (ahem) an Eminent Sanskritist renders it: Google Books

(Wendy Doniger, "When a Lingam Is Just a Good Cigar: Psychoanalysis and Hindu Sexual Fantasies")


 * It's possible that Doniger confused Brhaddevata.4.11-15 with the story of Dirghatamas in the Mahabharata (1.104). But there again, the nature of the complaint, and indeed what got "rejected", isn't in line with the tendentious Freudian thesis Doniger wanted to advance.
 * Macdonell's "at the time of impregnation" is a Victorian euphemism. śukrasyotsargakāle = śukrasya + utsarga + kāle = "semen" (the -sya ending is the genitive case) + "outpouring" + "time" (in locative case) = "at the time of ejaculation". But otherwise the translation is pretty faithful, with due allowance for the difficulties in the last line.
 * Macdonell's translation of maithunāyopacakrame as "approached her for sexual intercourse" seems to be literal, i.e. taking upa+krama as "approach" and maithuna as "sexual intercourse" (which is not the only meaning of the word). Now, it so happens that upakrama can also (albeit rarely) connote "force" or "attack".  However, Monier-Williams has an entry specifically for maithuna, in the dative case with verbal forms upa + √gam or upa + √kram, to mean "to have sexual intercourse", i.e. just a plain statement of the fact, so that maithunāyopacakrame is actually an idiom over-riding any direct interpretation of upa + krama. ( cakrame is the verb in the perfect tense.)