The Wisdom of Poets: Studies in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit

by David Dean Shulman

The classical literatures of Sanskrit, Tamil, and Telugu are among the richest in the world. These essays explore major issues and themes in the poetry and poetics of these three literatures, focusing on the role of the poet as making present an experience of the divine, and addressing the problem of the self and its processes of disintegration, disguise, and recomposition.

Hardcover

First published November 29, 2001

About the author

David Dean Shulman is an Indologist and regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on the languages of India. His research embraces many fields, including the history of religion in South India, Indian poetics, Tamil Islam, Dravidian linguistics, and Carnatic music. He is also a published poet in Hebrew, a literary critic, a cultural anthropologist, and a peace activist. He has authored or co-authored more than 20 books on various subjects ranging from temple myths and temple poems to essays that cover the wide spectrum of the cultural history of South India

In 1967, on graduating from Waterloo high school, he won a National Merit Scholarship, and emigrated to Israel, where he enrolled at Hebrew University. He graduated in 1971 with a B.A. degree in Islamic History, specializing in Arabic. He gained his doctorate in Tamil and Sanskrit. Shulman is a peace activist, and member of the joint Israeli-Palestininian 'Life-in-Common' or Ta'ayush grass-roots movement for non-violence.

Reviews

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every occasion of reading David Shulman is yet another opportunity to fall in love with him even more intensely. To embrace the lust of experience and accept the shortcomings of cognition. Even though I do not understand him, the vetala of language, memory, and time haunt me without end. For days. Till I wish to become him. Become Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Annamayya!