Talk:Hansa To Moti Chugain (हंसा तो मोती चुगैं)
Older Meanderings
There are two items here to consider, first, "Lal," and second the title, [both updated below].
"Lal" is unfortunately a very common name in Indian culture, and without other identifying details, it may be well nigh impossible for someone not of the culture to nail him down ("him" presumed, could be Lalla, i suppose and now wonder). I looked around for plain Lal, Sant Lal and the like but the most promising candidate, a Sikh saint, Baba Lal Ji, did not seem quite worthy of a whole book's worth of Osho's attention. I apologise if wrong about this. If anyone reading this knows who the Lal guy is, or if it's Lalla, or whoever, please let us know.
Second puzzle is the book's title: In the old version of this page that was here for years, the last word was "Chugain." When one searches around the net for this book, this word is used very little,and Chuge comes up by far the most frequently in places where they oughta know, Osho World and so on. So i went with Chuge. But there are a couple of significant instances of Chugain, one is its citation in India My Love, compiled by Sw Satya Vedant, who is not given to sloppy usage, and the other the book cover itself, ie of the 2014 Dynamic Books edition, where one can see clearly it is written as चुगैं, not चुगे. Weighing against that latter instance, we have the publisher's page on the book, which renders it as "Chunge" in the text.
Whatever, i'm just reporting what i found. It is not a much-published book, so info is a little sparse. -- Sarlo (talk) 21:17, 5 April 2014 (PDT)
Update June 2017
Shailendra has come to the aid of the party regarding both the above conundra. About "Lal", he says it is Shree Lal Nath, and his story as told by Osho is mostly the usual disclaimer about biography being meaningless but we have at least this bio-snippet, boiled down and processed from Osho's words:
- Shree Lal Nath was a poor young man, born in Rajasthan. When he was returning home after marriage, he went to get blessings from a saint Kumbhnath, in a village called Likhamadeshar. [That village returning zero hits in G**gle.]
- As it happened, Kumbhnath was about to leave his body. He declared to all, "I have distributed prasad [on the material level a gift of sweets] to all, is there anyone left to receive prasad [on the spiritual level, his grace]?
- At that moment, Lal came before him, bowed down ... and some mysterious transmission happened, as it took place between Buddha and Mahakashyapa.
- Lal realized his inner lal [a word of many meanings, here along the lines of precious ruby]. His transformation was so striking, that his new wife also took initiation. Both became Kumbhnath's sannyasi, in his last moments of life.
And about Chuge / Chugain, he says:
- Hansa = Swan, Symbolic of ATMA, Consciousness
- Moti = मोती Pearls, Symbolic of OMKAR, divine melody
- Chugain = Eat (process of birds eating something - this verb is pronounced as chuge in singular number and chugain in plural number)
- Poetic meaning = Birds of consciousness eat only pearls of divine sound.
Ordinarily in the wiki, correctness is not necessarily the highest principle of transliteration, but all things being equal, nothing wrong with it. So in this case we have up to now stayed with Chuge, and as Hansa is ambiguous regarding number, it could even be grammatically correct.
But the forces of Chugain are gathering strength. Another cover has shown up on further research, with चुगैं clearly there. The coherence of the info associated with this cover though does not inspire confidence. The two sites that display this cover match nowhere in any publishing details. Osho World supplies only its own good name as a publisher (Osho World Foundation) and an ISBN 9789384657239. Hindibook.com names no publisher but has all the other publishing details (entered in the edition data on the article page). AND, its ISBN is slightly different, 9789384657222.
I have taken the liberty of combining the data from these two sources, choosing hindibook's ISBN. The important thing here relevant to the current discussion though regards Chugain-vs-Chuge. Hindibook is CONSISTENT in its Romanized title, using Chugain, while OW still goes with Chuge. In fact, as Chugain has been gaining ground, Chuge has been appearing less supportable. Osho.com in its audiobook section -- it doesn't have a hard copy for this one -- goes to further lengths of incoherence with Chuge and चुगै (transliterates as Chugai). And in the very page where OW is trying to sell its book, the descriptive paragraph includes चुगैं (Chugain).
The final straw is that in searches, both versions find each other, so nothing is lost in this case by being correct, so correct it shall be. And meanwhile, while we're on the subject of correctness, there has been a glaring Devanagari error all along which Shailendra pointed out. मोटी and मोती both transliterate as Moti, so it went unnoticed, but Moti as Pearl wins over Moti as Fat Lady, so there ya go. -- doofus-9 20:24, 14 June 2017 (UTC)
And a couple of minor corrections in the TOC today, per the 1979 contents image. -- doofus-9 17:28, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
