Saturday 9 September 2017

Purushottama Lal's Indian irony

P. Lal wrote-
Sanskrit has no word for “irony,” either. The use of words to express something other than or the exact opposite of their literal meaning is more associated with clever city-based civilizations than with the sentimental forest-based ones. English is so charged with irony that I constantly have to be careful when choosing words to translate sacred and secular Sanskrit or other Indian texts.

Ironically, a Google search shows that Sanskrit had over a dozen words for irony.


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