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| Wednesday, 10 November 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Letters Sports Obituaries
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Focus on books Creative book promotion endeavour by Prof. Sunanda Mahendra Upali Amarasiri, the Director General, National Library Services and Documentary Services Centre addressing a gathering of librarians and book lovers at the inaugural session of the two-day seminar on book promotions came out with some sparkling ideas. He said it is reported that good books though published widely in the country, have not been available in most libraries. He then commented that this is primarily due to the misunderstanding on the part of the librarians, who select books from book shops and publishers. On the other hand the local book sellers and publishers sometime attempt to pay a handsome fee as a discount if low graded books are purchased for certain libraries. This underhand trivial method may look a possible venture for the librarians concerned as well as the publishers concerned. But this may harm the reader and give way to certain library corruptions. Librarianship according to him should retain high standards of judgement in the selection of books. As such, the National Library Services Board is making arrangements to help build a better climate of purchase to a series of discussions, with the publishers and the librarians. From another point of view some teachers, who are requested to purchase books from booksellers and publishers to school libraries, too get a handsome discount if they succumb to trivial methods. They too get additional revenue by way of low graded publications. Malpractices Whatever said and done these malpractices should be eradicated with the sound understanding of the needs and requirements of the local reader at all levels. Readers, who so come to libraries, who are mostly the school going generation and young employed generation may wish to read books that may help them as instant interest. This factor also has to be looked into from a human point of view. Coming on to the publication of books, we as the humans have achieved a tremendous success technologically. Fast moving printing machines and the computer system has ushered in a new era in publishing. As the history records, books were followed in the seventeenth century in the West by topical pamphlets and then by newspapers and periodicals. Some of the early newspapers were founded to give information about trade, commodities, shipping movements etc. They perform the service rendered necessary by the nascent capitalistic system. Others offered disclosures, scandals and satirical comments on the social and political fields. Some set out to mobilize opinions in support of a popular or democratic cause. Thus, we can trace the origin of types of journalism and types of publishing that we recognize today. Firstly the business threat and publications connected with it. Secondly the sensational press and the publications developed with it. Thirdly the opinion press and the opinion formative serious books connected with it. Fourthly campaigning or crusading press and the investigative publications linked with it. As the UNESCO, MacBride report points out; books are as they have been in the past, an irreplaceable store house of knowledge and of cultural values. Increased production This century has seen a great and accelerating increase in book production, which can be ascribed to growth of the absolute number of literates, advances in education, arrival of paperbacks or popular publications, improvement in production network, distribution technique in management and the spread of libraries and travelling libraries (mobile libraries) to remote places. It is observed that between 1955 and 1975 world book production more than doubled taking the number of titles published annually and tripled in the number of copies printed. Eight billion books and 590,000 new titles now come from the presses every year. However, the high increasing book prices largely due to paper costs, had impeded their necessary growth. The scene is also one of marked imbalance and dependence. Though new commercial techniques are utilized, books remain unevenly distributed both inside and among countries. Developing countries with 70% of the world's population, produce 20% of the books published. And many of these are presented by subsidiaries of firms centred in developed countries. Imported books of various types, sometimes unsuitable in various ways, have to be used in schools, and national literature is poorly represented in bookshops and libraries because of the inadequacy of publishing resources. In the discussions that ensued between the book lovers and book producers it was observed that like films and tele-films books too are now marketed as a commodity. There are various types of market as there are varying types of audiences. Some on a minority nature and some on a mass scale. But perhaps the readership of a particular audience cannot in certain ways be compared to that of the film audience. Books are meant to be read silently. The book reading for a wider audience on the part of an individual is diminishing gradually. Traditional pattern That was the traditional pattern where Buddhist monks were known as 'Bhanakas' or reciters or commentators. The Jataka stories have been read out to audience as a process of listening. Perhaps the same tradition could be revived giving vent to modern methods of reading. UNESCO has recommended that national book production should be encouraged and accompanied by the establishment of a distribution network for books, newspapers and periodicals. The stimulation of works by national authors in various languages should be promoted. Unlike the promotion of films and tele-films, the book promotion should be done sensitively at all levels. Readership survey in Asian countries indicates that books have to be sometimes taken to the reader via mass media channels. The electronic media usage in this direction looks quite backward, while the print media looks much more active than it is felt. Though more could be done via media usage the necessary climate of opinion has to be laid down. ############ The legacy of the rishis of the Himalayas Treatise on Ayurveda, Author: Srikantha Arunachalam - Vijitha Yapa Publications , 2004 - p.p.354
Somewhere down this unsteady line, no one stopped to think that the ancients of both East and West laid their trust in Nature and utilized the herbs and plants of the forests to give them the strength and will to populate the globe. Roots, tubers, seeds and fruit were their sustenance and their medicines. This ancient art - Ayurveda - was held close and propounded by the sages and medicinemen. The old women with their herbal gardens produced near-magical cures that earned them the fear of priests and authorities who denounced them as witches and agents of the devil. And yet, even the Biblical texts tell us of how God first planted a garden! In his preface, Arunachalam reminds that Ayurveda is the oldest codified system of traditional medicine. What he has done is project the TRUE perspective of Ayurveda - to awaken a conscious energy to live in harmony both physically and mentally. The principles of Ayurveda and its practice first came to us from India, written in Sanskrit verses. Arunachalam has laid out his study in four parts - the Samkhya concept of cosmic evolution; the concept of etiology; symptomatology and pathologic physiology in terms of Ayurveda; the principles of treatment; and the basic diagnostic approach. Additionally, he has highlighted the importance of yoga as part and parcel of Ayurveda. Ayurveda is the science of life - life in its totality and believed to be of divine origin, propounded by Brahma. This is no fantasy because we are aware of how close-knit is this sciences of healing and life itself. Whether divine or divinely inspired, the greatest sages and teachers of humankind were also healers. The Christ in his mission, worked many miracles of healing. Arunachalam quotes a Sanskrit verse rendered in English: Neither I desire a kingdom Healing ministry In colonial Ceylon, we saw how this desire to serve the sick was manifest among the religious Orders that came here out of Ireland and England. Our hospitals had entire contingents of "nursing nuns and sisters". This tells us that the practice of religion - any religion - is tied to the care of the body as well as the soul. In Sri Lanka today, the healing ministry of the Seventh Day Adventists is well-known. In Brahamanism, the creator god gave to the world the eternal secret of cosmic awareness - the limitless power of Ayurveda. Ailing humanity needs to be first addressed. This is how the rishis, when in deep meditation, received this "science of life." Punarvasu Atreya sat in meditation with his disciples, guided Agnivesa, codified the system and gave us the Charaka Samhita - the ways and means of establishing good health and longevity, peaceful co-existence, harmony with Nature and that all-important internal harmony of mind and body; above all proclaiming that the entire world is a teacher to they who listen; an enemy to those who close their ears and minds, shut out the divine truth. The author takes us step by step - from the nature of existence and the Ayurvedic identification of the nine entities involved in the overall process of cosmic evolution; then to the Samkhya philosophy of the masculine and feminine principles of Parusa and Moola Prakriti respectively - the first non-material, the other material and the cause of human evolution; then to the five-fold stimuli of sound, touch, light, taste and smell that form the tanmatric structure (matter, space and time). As he says: "Man... is a complexity identified as a conscious agent; he, as an observer and as a participant, responds and reacts to the ever-changing environment.... made possible through the sensory and motor organs... The Samkhya concept... reflects the profound truth of unity in diversity..." With Man as the epitome of the universe - a combination of mind, soul and body - it is the body and mind that are the receptacles of disease and happiness. The body is a result of its food, the nourishment it takes, the intake of wholesome or unwholesome food. Any derangement of the bodily pathways, be they veins, arteries, glands or tracts, tissues or organs, cause disease. When the senses are under subjugation, disorder comes. This treatise is presented in so ordered a manner that it is the finest one could possess as a stairway to a new world of health, longevity and, above all, bodily and mental happiness and equanimity. Mental happiness The author goes very deep. The causation of disease can truncate the 100-year life-span we are inheritors to. The Ayurvedic medicaments must be three-pronged: diet, medicine and way of life. The concept is holistic, caring for the life process and enhancing its quality. To practice Ayurveda in its fullness is to contribute to the happiness of the world at large. The author quotes: "One should have recourse to such means of livelihood as are not contrary to the dictates of virtuous path and should be devoted to peace and studies. Living thus, one attains happiness." You get the point? Religion, ethics, peaceful co-existence, meditation, are all part of this great system. Ayurveda is not simply a curative art but a divine prescription for life and living worthy of all beings. It enshrins the higher values of life. As the author says: "The human system is so designed that each tolerable stimulus... calls forth activities to compensate... nullify or repair the resulting disturbance .... The physiological range of maintaining normality is... a relative state of dynamic equilibrium..." He goes on to the three units in the concept of human physio-pathology-Dosha, which gives the idea of Vata (neural modulators), Pitta (the bio-chemical reactor), and Kapha (the anabolic factor); then Dhatu, which identifies the seven-fold structural components which support the body; and Mala, the waste products excreted as faeces, urine and sweat. This concept is unique to Ayurveda. What is so absorbing about this book is the careful step-by-step way in which this vast subject is presented. To touch on the intricate, yet orderly perfection of presentation will carry this review into the realms of yet another treatise, so I do have to rein in at every bend of the road. But it all makes fascinating and highly revelatory and the true disciple as well as everyone else interested in Nature's way of handling Man as the highest of Nature's creations, will benefit from all that this book holds. What is equally important to keep in mind is, as the author says, the"modern technological advancement and inventions (that) have disturbed the well-being of individuals and their pattern of life... It is the deliberate, willful, unwholesome indulgence in thought, word and action... a state of mental disposition (that) leads to vanity, passion, despair, malice, fears, anger, hatred and misery." The factors that increase Vata, Pitta and Kapha are carefully listed. Such aggravations cause internal functional imbalance. The physiological effects and ill effects are also listed as well as the clinical features. Physiological effects Everything is taken into account and beautifully explained: the hereditary and constitutional disposition; injury; inflammation, infection/infestation; immune deficiency; slow-healing; tumours; abnormal tissue growth; circulatory disorders; fluid imbalance; nutritional deficiency; allergic reactions; disease manifestation and diversity and classification as well as its complications. The principles of treatment are also described within Ayurvedic parameters where a three-fold approach embraces spiritual, psychiatric and rational therapy. The author reminds that failure to observe a healthy regimen results in the formation of Doshas (morbid factors) that spread from the alimentary tract to the periphery. Cleansing and massages with oily substances (vegetable/animal oils, plain/medicated ghee, sesame, castor) and other procedures including dry rubs with medicated powder; heat inducing massage (fomentation, medicated poultices, vapour and medicated liquids); and the manner of application is detailed. I give from the book a diagram on the approach to treatment. The author has given many such diagrams that are most helpful. He also tells of the manner of preparation of infusions, powders, decoctions and inhalants and warns that aluminium utensils must never be used. The most interesting feature in this book is the immense listing of afflictions and their treatment. For example, we have the following: DENGUE - Decoction prepared with Amrita, Devadaru, Kalmeg, Rasana and/or 125mg Hanguleswara Rasa - taken twice daily with 0.05 ml honey. Patient should rest in bed until the rash is gone. Easily digestible nourishing food and plenty of fluids should be given. There should be no stagnant water within the house and in the compound. Use mosquito nets. Liquid diet GASTRO-ENTERITIS - Juice of Palandu 7-15 ml to be given with Mareech 0.01g thrice daily. Ramabana Rasa 125-250mg twice daily with juice of Bilva leaf. Lasunada Vati 250-500mg twice daily with warm water. Patient should be on liquid diet. I can go one and on. Everything from worm infestation to dental plaque; from bronchitis to gaiters; from diabetes to epilepsy to detailed, treatment and management given. However, it would have been of immense value to the bulk of readers if the names of ingredients had been given in everyday language. Even the botanical terms in brackets for the various herbs, plants, etc., do not really help the thousands of readers who have to accept what others say in translation. There is some danger here because any incompetent person can say that, for example, that Paspata is that whereas it is this. This is where the book could deny itself the excellence of its presentation. The saving grace comes in the section on dietetics where the classification of cereals, pulses, vegetables, fruit, yams, nuts, seeds, oils, etc., is given. Here, some identification of the components of the Ayurvedic prescriptions is possible. Should a second printing of this book arise - and I'm sure it will - may I ask that the author gives us, in addition, a complete glossary of terms with everyday Sinhalese/Tamil/English words that will help identify the many ingredients used. This, I feel, will be of immense value to the bulk of the readers. I am certain that this treatise will soon be "off the shelf". All the signs are there and I am told demand is growing. I am sure a second edition will move like mercury if the thoughtful addition of a glossary I mentioned is also in place. Carl Muller ############ The man behind Aesop's fables by Andrew Scott Aesop, whose name is reverently attached to the fabulous collection of the most popular and appreciated fables (short moral tales) of the world, is a person who lived in the 6th century B.C. though his very existence has been doubted from time to time. Herodotus mentions that Aesop's name was famous in about 550 B.C. while Socrates, in 399 B.C. is said to have passed his days in prison transforming the famous fables of Aesop into verse. Other philosophers too such as Aristotle and Plato are believed to have used Aesop's fables in their discourses. However, Aesop type fables antedated Aesop by ages and primitive man who was intimately acquainted with the habits of wild beasts built a rich and interesting lore around the wild animals, attributing to them human passions and feelings. It is also interesting to recall that various types of fables abound in Chinese literature, in Egyptian papyrus, in the Jataka tales and in various forms of early eastern literature. According to a biography written long after his time, Aesop was a slave born in Asia Minor and is described to have been small made, squint eyed and mute for a long time. Nevertheless he had been intelligent and keen witted. Traditional legend The way in which Aesop met his death is clothed in traditional legend and it is said that having won the favour of king Croesus, Aesop was sent to Delphi with a large gift of money for its citizens. In a dispute with the Delphians, Aesop was killed by being thrown down a dangerous precipice. About 200 years after his death a statue to perpetuate his memory was created in Athens. Not a single word of writing by Aesop is known to have existed but today Aesop's name is synonymous with the word fable. His fables were passed on orally from person to person and almost all the fables spread throughout the world today are undisputedly assumed to be derived from Aesop. From time to time early writers have collated these Aesop's fables in books and these are the sources through which modern renderings of those fables have come to us. Particularly because they are brief and simple in form and are couched in an easy language Aesopic fables have become very popular throughout the world. Arresting feature Another arresting feature in them is that many of them teach us a moral lesson. As an early writer has noted: "The vast majority of the Aesop fables embody both the wisdom and the cynicism of mankind, dissecting human rather than animal nature." To begin with Aesop's fables were not intended for the use of the young, even though today these fables are read and listened to by children and they have been translated into many languages, even into Sinhala as 'Esopge Upama Katha'. The influence of Aesop's fables on the thoughts and actions of all mankind has been tremendous and today Aesopic expressions and moral teachings have come to stay with us influencing both the young and the old. Who has not heard of Aespoic expressions such as "Fishing in muddy water.", "Out of the frying pan into the fire", "The dog in the manger", "The boy who cried wolf", "The fox and the sour grapes." Some literary giants too have been inspired by Aesop's fables which represent the earliest stage of literary development. They are also of great appeal for everyone in the modern world. These fables are the essence of the universal experience of man and his wisdom. There is no doubt that the memory of Aesop, the great story teller, will be perpetuated through the medium of his fables for many more years. ############ The heart of the writer can never lie to itself
Recollections - A Collection of Short Stories, Author: Parvathi Arasanayagam, Godage International Publishers, Colombo, 2004, pp. 144 Price Rs. 450 A "learned" man once quipped (long before I began to write of books myself) that when he had finished reviewing the works of our writers, they would be as tame as cats! It seemed to me that this was a typical interpretation of the work of those in "power" (academic power, if you like) to those who suffered their government. The image haunted me. A picture of bespectacled long-nosed "soldiers" with pen-swords and authority, utterly without discipline; of sectarian societies burning and slaying by night, doing their all to fulfil the purposes of this high government, reducing the writer to a state of felinity. There, that's off my chest. People say (some people, that is) that I review without reading. They invest me with some supernatural, even spiritual power to take a book, weight it in the palm of my hand and then write reams about it. Surely the work of a cat that is wickedly ready to strike back, never glossy, well-fed, contented and (perish the thought) domesticated. No. No one is ever going to make a tame cat of me and I can say this one thing to young Parvathi Arasanayagam. Stay that way. Don't allow anyone, be he or she ever so "learned" tame your cougar spirit! Today, I could well begin a Chronology. Subject: Parvathi Arasanayagam. Entry No. 1: "2004-"Recollections". Of course any chronology needs a lot more: Year of birth; literary magazine publications, journal publications, newspaper publications, etc. But all I have is this first entry and a proud one too; for you see, this is Parvathi's first book - fifteen stories that have flowed quietly out of her, a liquid linked with word-melodies that have interpreted her own blush-pink life to her own many-coloured world. Let me admit, also, that Parvathi, daughter of Thiagarajah and Jean Arasanayagam, is a friend. I say so because there is always some one - some cat tamer, perhaps - who will say I review generously because she is my friend. Let me also say this: In the many years I have known her, she has remained a very private person, writing her own pieces accompanied by a rareness of mind; and one only sees a radiance of inspiration when she raises her eyes. Dumb inaction Her opening story, "The Canopy" gives us, shall I say, a corpse on a dissecting table. Girls in the university - another kind of terrorism and it must be met with dumb inaction - a system of brutal corruption that must be endured. Is this the way the youth of a nation are made? They who listen to the silver-veined sentences in the lecture halls also listen to the smouldering venom of the foul-mouths. People say it is only the lesser men who carp and criticize. Yet, even oaks rise among smelly vetches and corpse-grey mushrooms, and the universities absorb it all - the proud trees, the mud-floor scrub and weeds. Ah, but there is also the canopy where life is also lived. Parvathi holds fast to memory and, one senses, love that is also an emptiness of heart and can remain an unforgettable torment in her bones. We wonder at times why we should remember such torturing sentiments. What does a university do but give hunger for more? She walked the roads to the Faculty Block, the WUS Hall, the Halls of Residence. Now they are mysteries to speculate on and the waters of the pond can be as lonely as the poet Ossian after the passing of the fenians. Parvathi tells her stories in her own different words to a wider, different world. In "Recollections" there is an almost shapeless wandering of soul that tugs, full of the sounds of voices speaking out of buried years. Fairies lie, choked, throttled bundles of gossamer, while hatred sups crazily on the tattered remains: Mariese was a passing breath of fresh air, so different today, and yet, no one wanted any commitment in that time and place. Youth was something which one accepted like the changing colours of the sky. Death was now an everyday reality. Life holds its altered visions in "The Walk", swinging almost remorselessly between the promising flower-bursts of Michael's career and the raw, bleeding awareness of what was soon to come when "the roads would soon be filled with a distant silence, interspersed only by the sound of bullets echoing in the night air." Defensive complex "The Door" is as real as a defensive complex when ways of life change and yet, even defence is the worst possible way against the self-styled superiority of those of the "high houses". Mere gun-barrel-mouthed radicals, true, but theirs was the power. They set themselves up to interpret their own and be superior. Outside, doves floated dead on the Mahaweli waters. Doors close and a pained heart whispers: grief cannot be violent when love, ambition and revenge agitate the human heart. "A Look at the Wall" and the other stories all keep telling me that even if the incidents seem to startle, they must hold truth. It is the total absorption in the writing of them - a Parvathi hallmark - that makes the unreal so passionately real. There are, shall I say, unrealities both black and white, all planed into reality. Expressions and recollections, nostalgia and emotion, become avowals with little hesitation, veiled over with exquisite language, thinly disguised with sentiment and put down with that assentation that truth can never be tampered with and the heart of the writer can never lie to itself.
It is as if she has opened her own door into a greener world of future hope where she and all around her can walk some blossoming, melodious path to sing a soft requiem to those who have perished in the hard streets, in the hell-holes of bunkers and torture cellars, crushed by the burdens of life or blinded by the spectacles of devastation. Ways of destiny To Parvathi, even the trivial becomes as full a moment; the most insignificant made to stride the ways of destiny. Her own road, too, has skirted the tragedy of a people, where even beyond the valley, the rainbow did not end but gave her a dark land of crossroad executions and decaying bodies on high, stifling streets. Parvathi Arasanayagam has emerged - never to be herded with the nameless in an obscure corner of some periodical. Nor will she be just some fellow-labourer in literature's soil. She has shown us her mastery over the graphic delineation of life - this slim girl who crinkles her eyes when she laughs, who is so varied, so ingenious, genuine and sensible. "Recollections" is a superb first book that will soon be followed by many more. She has her place now in the past, present and future of Sri Lankan literature. Having read her and marvelled much, can a simple "Congratulations Parvathi" be enough? Carl Muller **** Back **** |
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The global cry today is to go herbal. This island went herbal over
2,500 years ago and yet, in the 18th Century, the West unleashed its own
pharmacopoeia, gave to us the pollution of industrialization, the
"cut and cure" techniques of its practitioners, introduced the
diseases and then its own curative regimes.
Above all, I have found moral purpose - and most effective too.
Parvathi has dealt with practical things, tangible, unquestioned, things
that can be felt and judged.
