How can Vishvanatha Chakravarti say that scriptural verses are grammatically inaccurate?
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So, how can Chakravarthipada say that said verses in the Bhagavatam hence it was spoken by Krishna this is a poetic license or this is not grammatically correct or something like that See, first thing is Sridhar Swami, I think right at the start of his Bhagavatam commentary he states that scripture does not necessarily give a literal account of the exact conversations and it’s in one sense common sense Chaitanya Charita Amrit Chaitanya Mahaprabhu met Prakashananda Saraswati in Uttar Pradesh, no in Varanasi they were not speaking Bengali at that time Prakashananda Saraswati did not even know Bengali or when he met the Brahmana Udupi they will speak in Sanskrit, they will not speak in Bengali but the conversation is reported in Bengali so scripture does not give a literal account of everything that has happened or for that matter if you see the Mahabharata is full poetry now we may say Bhagavad Gita Krishna can speak poetically, Arjuna can speak poetically but is it that all characters throughout are speaking poetically where they are not having any verbal conversations at all and then if you go further in the Ramayana Ramayana is also poetry so it’s not only humans or even Rakshasa speaking poetry or even Jatayu speaking poetry even Kabaddi speaking poetry is everybody speaking poetry? No so he says that actually the essential message is assimilated by Vyasadeva and it is put in a poetic form and because Vyasadeva is a literary incarnation so nothing is lost in this transition but it is not that scripture is a literal record it is not like we record a lecture and replay the lecture it is not like that it is a events are historical but they are presented in a poetic format and that is a part of what makes literature literature is presented according to literary formats so now according to literary formats even if it is Vyasadeva or Valmiki or whoever it is it is not that everything that they are going to do is going to be grammatically perfect grammar is such a thing that I know more about English than Sanskrit but in English even there are people who find issues with the way Shakespeare has written something or words whatever now that is just the way it is so sometimes when we say something is a poetic license it need not necessarily be a wrong thing a poetic license can also become an ornament it becomes a beautiful thing so sometimes many idioms or phrases that come up they may not be grammatically correct but they convey something in a very powerful way so a poetic license is not necessarily a defect sometimes it can itself become a trend this is how it is done, this is how it is done afterwards or that was what was done at that time but later on it has fallen out of place and that is why we feel this is not right now so it is not that the scriptures have to be have to be precisely accurate grammatically in terms of the rules of grammar today or at the time when language is also in a state of flux so the scriptures are written at a particular time in history and Vishwanath Chakravarthy is commenting Sanskrit has also evolved over thousands of years so he is explaining that in terms of the Sanskrit of his times so it can very well be that it can be an ornament or it can be something which was thought right at one time and is now thought right another time or in the ultimate case in an extreme case it may also be a small minor defect so again we see the Ishwara Puri pastime with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that there is a grammatical mistake first he said there is a mistake and then he said no there cannot be any mistake then he pointed a mistake and then he again accepted that there is no mistake the point is we cannot have a material conception of perfection when we approach scripture so that was the question thank you