IK Shukla

Mr Indu K Shukla, in the USA, is a respected poet, writer, literature scholar and activist. He sent me his Hindi sonnet Teerth Purnima, on Buddha Purnima, in response to my earlier post on that subject. On my request he has translated this. Teerth (Sanskrit) means pilgrimage.

Budhha Purnima is the full moon (Taurus full moon) commemorating the birth, attainment of enlightenment, and decease / liberation of the Buddha, in the 5th-6th century BC. Buddhists celebrate this as the festival of Vesak (from the Indian Vaisakh month, which is also celebrated as the onset of spring and the start of the new year in several parts of India).

In the terms of the great scholar-poet AK Ramanujan, this poem is about bhava, feeling, and anubhava, experience: a poetics of personal feeling rather than aesthetics.

“Their pilgrimages, their legends and their hymns map a sacred geography of the land, fashioning a communal self-image that cuts across class and caste. Involving myth and ritual, they create and share a special idiom, a stock of attitudes and themes, and a common heritage alive to this day.” (AK Ramanujan, Hymns for the Drowning: Poems for Visnu by Nammalvar).