Talk:Dhai Aakhar Prem Ka (ढ़ाई आखर प्रेम का)

There seem to be a number of variations on the words of the title, both in the Devanagari and transliterations, not so much in connection with this book but with Kabir's doha. We have Dhai and Dhaai, Aakhar, Akhar and Akshar, and Ka and Ke. Whether one search term will find another is quirky, so try a few to find everything.

The "two and a half" refers to the number of characters in the word Prem in Devanagari, an entirely different sense of "letters" than you might expect in the title of a book of letters, but there you go. It is not known whether this ambiguity in meaning exists in Hindi or if the play on words depends on English meanings. Kabir's doha, or one rendition of it, goes like this:

Pothi Padh Padh Kar Jag Mua, Pandit Bhayo Na Koye,

Dhai Aakhar Prem Ke, Jo Padhe so Pandit Hoye

Reading books everyone died, none became any wise,

One who reads the word of Love, only becomes wise

Aside from the title stuff, all the information for this page can be found in the e-book at Osho World and other sites which have copied it. There are quite a few anomalies in it which may even amount to errors. Possibly the e-book is based on a rough edit. Consideration of its anomalies here will be concerned with dates and numbers.

First, numbers: The book purports to have 150 letters, or perhaps it would be better to say it aims at that, as that's how many Prem Ke Phool (प्रेम के फूल) has. At any rate, the last one is numbered 150, but there are two places where the counting goes off the rails: There are two number 38s and nothing from 81 to 90. Thus, at this point, the actual count is 141.

And dates: There is a basic chronological progression in the e-book, with three significant exceptions. The first eleven are fairly jumbled chronologically but all from the late 60s. Similarly, the last nine are jumbled but all of their own same vintage, late 1970 to Mar 1971. In between, they observe chrono order perfectly (Jan 1966 to Mar 1971) except that when we get to Jan 1971, there are 31 instances of the year suddenly changing to 1972 and back and forth (out of 84 letters total in those twenty days which would be in perfect order except for what appears to be this wrong year). The otherwise tight order suggests 1972 is just wrong. There are within January's prodigious output some date typos as well which are relatively easy to discern.

There is no comparable collection of Hindi letters aside from Prem Ke Phool, so it is somewhat inexplicable why Dhai Aakhar has languished unsung. Many of the letters' addressees are well-known in the world of sannyas but many are not. It is a varied collection. One interesting fact that emerges is that Osho wrote three letters to Ma Anand Madhu and Ma Dharm Jyoti using those names before he actually "officially" gave them sannyas in Manali in September of 1970. In Madhu's case, one of the letters was as early as Jan 1970, so Osho's movement towards giving sannyas must have been both more nuanced and open than the previous "Big Bang" model of a sudden event in Manali presented. Perhaps lots more is waiting to be discovered in these letters, say by actually reading them. -- doofus-9 (talk) 23:23, 24 December 2014 (PST)