✍ Scribed by J. Moussaieff Masson
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In the last few years, three books have appeared on Jayadeva's Grtagovinda, a work which has always fascinated its readers, whether Western (e.g. Goethe, as well as Riickert who made a translation in 1837, a year after Lassen's first critical edition appeared with a Latin translation), or Eastern (the late S. K. Chatterji wrote a small book on Jayadeva [1973] in the Sahitya Academy Series, attempting to show that the work was originally written in old Bengali as he had already claimed in his monumental Origin and Development of the Bengali Language [ 1926], taking up a thesis of Pischel in 1893). Until recently English readers have invariably quoted the often incorrect and generally dull translation of George Keyt (1940) and it is surprising that we have had to wait until last year for a better and more lively translation. I am referring to Barbara Miller's Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva's Grtagovinda (New York : Columbia University Press, 1977). This book has been widely reviewed (see J. Am. Or. Soc., and much praised, and certainly everybody is grateful to Professor Miller for having produced with such elegance a study of this important text. Although I personally find her language somewhat artificial (I favour a more contemporary, straightforward use of English, with no archaisms) and although there are misunderstandings of the Sanskrit text, there can be no question that this work will supersede its predecessors. Given the wide circulation of this work and its positive reception, I feel that another review is unnecessary.
The other two works are of a different character and require more
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