JOST A MON

The idle ramblings of a Jack of some trades, Master of none

Apr 28, 2010

The Socioeconomics of Toilet Seat Positioning

In 2002, Jay Pil Choi wrote a neat little paper1 on the economics of the position of a toilet seat. It is a remarkable tour-de-force, very tongue-in cheek but also filled with insight. He investigates whether there is any economic rationale for women insisting that men leave the toilet seat down after use. His use of the word 'economic', of course, is rather general - the cost of inconvenience to women is not merely financial, but also, very likely, hygienic and psychological.

It is fairly clear that the perpetually 'down' position is not efficient over the entire population of toilet users. Men will have to raise the seat and lower it after use, whereas women don't have to touch the seat at all. (We ignore the horrible consequences of flushing without closing the lid.) An alternative formulation is the 'selfish' one (Choi's usage), where men leave the seat up after use, and for women to leave it down. The inconvenience cost applies only when the previous user was of the opposite gender. The worst case scenario is for the toilet to be used alternately by men and women, with each incurring the operational cost of moving the seat up or down. If we assume that men and women use the toilet at random, the overall inconvenience cost is less. The selfish strategy is better than the perpetually 'down' strategy.

Choi goes on to show that the 'selfish' strategy is in general the best possible strategy for toilet users - if the inconvenience cost of changing the toilet seat position is the same for both genders.

This assumption may appear to be a rather big one. There are some hidden inconvenience costs involved, which Choi helpfully lists: "unwittingly placing one's bottom directly on the bowl"; "risk of falling in by sitting down without looking when the seat is up"; "leaving sprinkles on the seat when it is down." Women may accuse men of that last inconvenience, but as Ellen Degeneres has pointed out, women are not exactly saints in this matter either. (I wish I could find the video where she announces this finding.) Men might claim they are better aimers of the stream, but let's face it - the aim is not always great and anyway we do it from a greater height, and the spray is not always deterministic in direction. And inebriation does not help.

Choi shows that if the proportion of male users in any given period is α, and the inconvenience cost of lowering the seat for women is cf, and the inconvenience cost of raising the seat for men is cm, then the women-friendly perpetually 'down' rule is better than the men-friendly perpetually 'up' rule if and only if
Further, he shows that the perpetually 'down' rule is better than the 'selfish' rule if and only if
So if men and women visit the toilet with the same frequency (α = ½), the inconvenience to women should be three times higher than that to men to justify the 'perpetually' up policy.

When you consider that men are afflicted with nocturia more commonly than women, it makes sense that - at night, at least - the 'down' rule is patently unfair.

Choi goes on to try variations on the policy governing the toilet position, and shows that the selfish rule outperforms all of them.

In all this analysis, Choi misses out one glaring fact: the reason for the toilet visit is the chief determinant for the seat position. After all, men do lower the seat to poop. So we have need for a finer discrimination in our analysis. This is provided by Richard Harter2.

If we assume that men and women perform toilet actions at the same frequency, but perform one operation (which he euphemistically calls #1) with probability p, then the cost to a bachelorette is 0, because she'll always leave the seat down, whereas for a bachelor, the cost is
where C is the inconvenience cost to the bachelor.

If the man and woman are living together, both of them will find their inconvenience cost jump. Harter studies the 'why does it matter if the seat is up or down' strategy proposed by the man, and the perpetually 'down' strategy, and determines the cost (M, for men, W for women) under each:

The marginal costs (difference between bachelorhood and cohabitation) then are

Clearly, the woman's cost is greater than the man's for any p less than 1. She therefore objects.

Under the perpetually 'down' strategy, the woman incurs no incremental cost at all, whereas the man faces
In the interests of marital harmony, therefore, neither strategy is fully satisfactory. The only via media is for both parties to equalise the respective incremental costs. Harter shows that this can happen only if the man leaves the seat up after performing operation #1 with a frequency
He goes on to say that since p is not readily measurable, we can assume p = 2/3;, in which case f = ½, and so the man should follow the simple strategy: in the morning, after performing operation #1, leave the seat up; in the evening, put it down.

This is not the end of the story, of course. As Hammad Siddiqi points out3, if the woman finds the seat up, she will yell at the man, leading to an incremental cost to him of D over and above the inconvenience cost C he incurs in moving the seat down. The yelling is somewhat shrill, so we can assume that D is much, much greater than C.

In this case, the Harter approach of a cooperative game is flawed, and Siddiqi proposes a non-cooperative game, and determines its Nash equilibrium. He finds, to his dismay, that the social norm of always leaving the toilet seat down after use is not only a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies but is also trembling-hand perfect. So, we can complain all we like, but this norm is not likely to go away.

Fortunately, though, all hope is not lost. Siddiqi notes that an important part of social norms is to improve social welfare. He is able to show that the perpetually 'down' strategy decreases social welfare, and makes a strong plea that this particular social norm be quickly amended.

This is why I think the Eastern-style squat toilet is the answer to all these ills.


References

1. Jay Pil Choi, "Up or Down? A Male Economist's Manifesto on the Toilet Seat Etiquette", Michigan State University, November 2002.

2. Richard Harter, A Game Theoretic Analysis of the Toilet Seat Problem, Science Creative Quarterly, Number 4, January 2006.

3. Hammad Siddiqi, "The social norm of leaving the toilet seat down: A game theoretic analysis," MPRA Paper 856, University Library of Munich, Germany.

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Apr 26, 2010

Gole the Victorious

So there I am, minding my own business, you know, my business of ploughing that putrid piece of land that his freakin' feudal lordship allows me, when Blossom is enveloped by a storm of midgets, and he twitches and moans in pain, and all I could do is snap my whip, and I do it so well that thirty leeches fall off him, fat and dead, and midges die in their thousands. Well, I say to myself, this is a satisfying day. I may be small, but I'm good. So I unhitch Blossom from the plough, and lead him towards the city road, and spit at the freakin' feudal lord (may the leeches consume him), and walk a bit, and, boy, is it hot.

I stop for a brief break, and Blossom is pleased, I think, for he nibbles on some grass, and I ponder great things. I chop down a little tree with my faithful axe, and I shape it into a signpost, and I carve out a message.
This way went Gole the Warrior, vanquisher of Saracens, thirty knights undone by me, and countless forces of infantry.
And I clamber onto Blossom, and whisper to him, and he waggles his ears at me, and we are back on the road.

And then we hear frantic clip-clops approaching us from behind, and a great knight stops us, and says, "Have you seen Gole the Warrior?" and I say, "That's me, buddy." and he nearly falls off his destrier. "Ride on my right," I say, nudging Blossom on, and the knight obeys, and I can see his brow is furrowed and his nose is wrinkled, for I haven't washed in days, and I am fairly ripe, and Blossom's scarcely much to look at, and he is thinking, "Can this be? A stinky peasant on a half-dead horse? Is there some enchantment?"

"Who are you?" I say, and the knight shakes himself alert, and bows from his saddle.

"Bova, the king's son," he says, and rides beside me, thinking deeply.

And then we hear frantic clip-clops approaching us from behind, and a magnificent knight stops us, and says, "Bova! Have you seen Gole the Warrior?" and Bova points silently at me, and the knight is so surprised that a prince is riding with a peasant that he bows to me, and says, "Yeruslan, at your service."

I bid him ride on my left, and he does so, and raises his eyebrows at Bova who shrugs. They think I don't notice. I do, but do I care? They are warriors of legend, and many a tale is told of their doings in Rus, but I'm no less after all. I am Gole the Warrior.

And then we hear frantic clip-clops approaching us from behind, and a young knight overtakes us, and, recognising Bova and Yeruslan, he bows to me and exclaims, "Churila, sir, at your service," and I reply, "Gole, at yours." and he takes Bova's side, and we go on for some miles, and I don't speak much except to say, "I'm grateful for your company, my brothers," for that is how I fancy knights talk among each other.

And we come across fine meadows and lush pasture and there are fine cows too many to count, and I direct Blossom towards them when Bova shouts, "Stop, Gole. These are the domains of the Saracen Queen!" and I say, "Long has she menaced Rus. Let us rest and refresh ourselves on her lands."

And Yeruslan turns to me, and I can see he is worried, and he says, "The Saracen Queen's forces are mighty - twenty-two knights, and Zilant the Undefeated."

And I say to him, "Mere mosquitoes! Are they too much for you?" and he is struck dumb. The knights follow me onto the meadow, and I let Blossom graze, and I take my sweaty shirt off, and I lie down beneath an ancient oak, and the knights bestir themselves to do battle with each other, to test their strength and mettle. To each his own, I think, and I close my eyes.

And the knights chase the shepherds away, and the meadow is pummelled into mud under their war-horses, and they come back to sit near me, to wonder at my calm.

For the bells are pealing and the gates to the Saracen Queen's city are opening, and trumpets are blaring, and Churila is shaking me awake, saying, "Gole, there's a force sent against us."

I open one eye, and I say, "A force? Three knights - three leeches. And a division of infantry? All mosquitoes. Go on, Churila, deal with them, and send one to the queen with a message to marry me."

Off Churila goes, and fights hard, and cuts down one knight and then another and he spares the third, who drags himself back to his queen, and she, clearly is not happy, and she sends six champions against us with three divisions of infantry. Churila is exhausted but he shakes me awake, and I take a look, and I say, "Six knights? One blow and they are dust. Go on, Bova, surely you can manage?" and I go back to sleep.

And Bova fights long and hard, and he takes them apart, and sends one man to tell the Saracen Queen to marry me.

But she sends twelve knights now against us, and six divisions of men-at-arms, and they blow their horns and wave their maces and make a godawful din.

"Yeruslan," I say, "Sort them out, there's a good fellow."

"If you can't," I add, "We'll help you."

And he is as good as they say, for he charges the enemy and fights them like a lion, and though they are so many, he outdoes himself, until he crushes the lot, and, barely able to stay up on his saddle, sends one man to the Saracen Queen, demanding that she marry me.

And then appears Zilant, a giant of a warrior clad in iron. The earth shakes as he emerges from his iron nest that is stretched across twelve trees that bend under the strain.

Zilant roars and the grass flattens before him, and I awaken again.

My brothers are exhausted and there is nothing for it, and I put on my shirt and I'm sweating again, and I clamber onto Blossom, and he staggers forward, and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, and I cross myself, and I think, "Here I go to my death, and it is an honourable one."

And I wave my axe over my head, and I whisper to myself, "Fathers and brothers, remember my name." and later they tell me that Zilant cannot believe his eyes and roars, "Is this for real? A silly peasant? Against me? A flick of a finger and he'll fly a furlong!" and he crouches close over his horse's neck for a better look, and then Blossom jumps, and I rise on my stirrups, and I chop hard against Zilant's head, and he goes down pole-axed, and I strike him as he lies stunned on the ground, and I cut him as I would an oak, and then I shrug, and Blossom limps back to my friends.

And they gape at me unbelievingly, and meanwhile the Saracen Queen is filled with grief and foreboding, and she can do nothing other than to open the gates and come out herself and bow to me. And she is puzzled by me and shakes my hand and crushes it so hard that I have to clench my mouth shut not to shout, and I jump from the agony in my breaking fingers and jerk my hand back. And she says, sweetly, "I've always honoured courage." And she puts her hand on my shoulder, and I can scarcely withstand her strength, and I stagger, and she says, "Protect my kingdom! You are our defender now."

So I bow to her and worry how I am to save my head.

And she throws a feast in our honour, and she brings out her best mead thinking to muddle our heads, but I refuse, and I say, "After a day's hard work, I drink nothing except the Water of Champions."

And the Saracen Queen says, "We have a little of the mighty water."

And I say, "How much of it do you have?"

And she says, "A bottle full."

And I say, "Is it any good? The usual variety is no better than beer."

And she orders it brought before me, and I pour myself a glass and swallow it in one, and she says, "How is it?" and I say, "I have hardly got a taste."

And I pour myself out another glassful and I down it, and then I down three more, and the queen shouts, "Enough, enough! You'll leave none for me!"

And I say, "Excellent water. How strong am I now?"

And I ask that a length of ship's cable be brought, thick as an oak tree, and order it tied into a knot, and I take a destrier from the stables, and I ride him full pelt towards the rope, and the knot slips over my head, and I tear it open, and all who see it, fall onto their knees in awe, and raise their hands to the heavens, and praise my name.

And soon I am known far and wide as the Gole the Great, and the Saracen Queen marries me, and she gives me two daughters, Luck and Fortune, and I look upon them and am proud.

And nobody can doubt again that I once felled thirty knights with one terrible blow of my hand.

[Based on the Russian folk tale.]

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Apr 23, 2010

Missionary

Fra Junípero Serra spent years of his life hiking north from Mexico, determined to convert local Indian tribes to Christianity, and establishing a chain of missions, each no more than a day's hard hike from the previous one. Having set up nine, he arrived at the foothills of the Santa Ynez mountains aiming to create the tenth. He died before he could do so, and it was his successor, Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, who raised the cross here in 1786.Old Mission, Santa Barbara224 years later, here we are, gawking at this example of neoclassical monasticism, the Old Mission in Santa Barbara. Its lovely lines belie the brutality of the Spanish conquest and conversion of California. The Franciscans who lived and worked here introduced agriculture to the local Chumash; at the same time, they brought virulent disease that decimated the local population, destroyed the local culture, and flayed the survivors into submission.

The Chumash used to be hunters both on land and on river in their tolmols (plank canoes). Their villages were led by hereditary leaders. Early encounters with the white man indicated that their artistry in handicraft and manufactures was much appreciated. After Serra and his cohorts arrived, the Chumash were forced into settled lives, and taught agronomy, carpentry, masonry, and European music in an effort to 'civilise' them. They learnt to cultivate oranges and olives and vine. A large aqueduct to bring water for irrigation from the moutains was constructed, along with a storage reservoir.

Church cupola, Old Mission, Santa BarbaraWhat we see today are not the original buildings, which were adobe and unpretentious. The last adobe church was destroyed in an earthquake in 1812, after which the present church was planned. It was finished in 1870, wrecked in another earthquake in 1925, restored in 1927 and reinforced in 1953.

After the evangelisation of the Chumash successfully concluded in the 1830s, the mission was secularised, and the Indians fell under the civil administration of Mexico (which had taken over California from Spain only 8 years earlier). Both the lifestyle of the occupants of the friary and the condition of the mission began to suffer under civilian neglect. While other missions in Southern California were deconsecrated and converted to bars, or abandoned, the Santa Barbara mission's church continued to offer prayers.

Skull and Crossbones at entry gateway to cemetery, Old Mission, Santa BarbaraThere is a cemetery within the mission grounds. Various worthies are buried here, and nearly four thousand Indians, including Juana Maria, the Lone Woman of San Nicolas island, the last survivor of her Nicoleño tribe. Her grave is lost among the many in the grounds (there is a plaque, however, raised in her honour).

In the post-evangelical period, the mission buildings were alternately a school and junior college, and seminary. Today, the church is part of the parish of St. Barbara, and used enthusiastically by the largely Hispanic underclass of the area.
Philippine Crucifix, Old Mission, Santa BarbaraBaby Jesus Baptismal Doll, Old Mission, Santa BarbaraThere is a multitude of cultural influences in the Santa Barbara mission. We saw a Philippine cross, vestments of Chinese silk, Chinese porcelain, California Indian basketry, Mexican art works. A lovely baptismal Christ doll rounds off the list of little treasures.

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Apr 22, 2010

Driven Around The Bend

You may scoff and await news of staggering contretemps (as Veena did) when I say that I planned a holiday in Los Angeles and didn't arrange a rental car. Expectant schadenfreude simply rolls of you, I see. Well, boo. We spent nine days in Lalaland and its environs, and managed admirably on public transport.

I must confess that we took cabs the first couple of days. Major sticker shock. A jaunt down 3rd Street from Downtown to that shopping Mecca of the Grove set us back nearly $30. And this was on a Sunday with hardly any traffic. Then, trying to be clever, we took a cab from Hollywood to Beverly Hills. Big mistake. To atone for our sins, we grabbed the fast shuttle bus back Downtown. For the princely sum of $1.25 each, we got back in 45 minutes. The little fellow was beside himself with glee. "A bendy bus! In America!" he was heard to exclaim.

You can even get around from town to town in the greater LA area on public transport. And I don't mean Greyhound with its stinky buses and sticky stations. The Pacific Surfliner is a convenient, if slow, way to get about Southern California. It runs from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, stopping at points of interest such as Santa Barbara. For the most part, the view out of the windows north of LA is of industrial wasteland. Then the Pacific Ocean appears. There are hills to the starboard. It's all pretty as a picture.

Sometimes the trains smell a bit like sweaty underwear. After a while, the brain tunes the odours out.

The Los Angeles Metro is rather good, too. Off-peak, there are only four trains an hour. Not ideal with an impatient little fellow like our little fellow. He loved the trains, though. They fairly zip from station to station.

I'd have loved to take the Gold Line to Pasadena. Jet Propulsion Labs, here I come, I thought. The thought was nixed with alacrity by the rest of the clan.

When the metro system extends to LAX, the airport, it should make life easier for car-despising Luddites such as us.

We weren't always thus. For the seven years of my life in the US, I drove everywhere. I loved it. (I loved it so much that rumours circulated about my having driven from DC to Nashville for a pizza. All lies. (It was actually for whisky. Ssh.)) But who needs a car in London? No one. Even trips out of the city are conveniently achieved by train.

Trains do stymie us. When we lived in Islington, Eurostar trains went to the Continent from Waterloo station. By the time, they switched termini to St. Pancras, a mere 10 minute walk from our old flat, we had moved south of the river. Eurostar can get me to the centre of Paris in about 2 hours or so. But I have to add another hour to get to St Pancras. Net-net, as financial professionals like to say, I'm stymied.

Trains are convenient - generally. Except during public holidays, of course, when the train network seems to shut down for maintenance. And so it is that in seven years in the UK, we haven't been to the Lake District. Or Cornwall. Or Dorset. Or Norfolk. Sure, there are railheads in each of these areas. But once you get there, you need a car to get around.

The wife has been hinting that we should throw in the towel and buy a vehicle. My excuse is that all my driving licences have expired. 15 years after I passed my driving tests, I'm now forced to retake them. The thought fills me with the heebie-jeebies. I passed one exam by bribing the examiner, and another by the skin of my teeth. My hero Bill has managed to get a licence on his eighth attempt. Or possibly his twentieth, I don't know. But I'm running out of excuses. The provisional licence mocks me every time I look at it.

It felt very peculiar to be in the heart of America's driving culture and not driving. And, looking back, I'm not entirely sure why I'd been so blasé about being unable to drive in California. I guess we were just lucky to get away with it.

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Apr 21, 2010

Haraprasad Ray, French Idiom, And So On

Being somewhat at loose end, and to limber up my understanding of somewhat idiomatic and idiosyncratic French, I translated Denys Lombard's 1994 review of a Haraprasad Ray monograph on Sino-Indian trade and diplomacy. Check it out if you like.

Denys Lombard uses such expressions as "Les commentaires de M. Haraprasad Ray, qui est lui-même d'origine bengalie, ne laissent pas d'être précieux." This baffles not merely me, but also two automatic translators and several native French speakers, before, finally, succumbing to one colleague who explains that this is a literary expression rarely used in common speech. It means, as you might guess, something like "The observations of Mr Haraprasad Ray, himself of Bengali origin, are surely invaluable."

I'll try this out on some unsuspecting Frenchman one day. "Vos commentaires," I'll say, "ne laissent pas d'être précieux."

I'll be sure to report the results of said pronouncement.

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Apr 20, 2010

Usurer? Sinner!

While I'm not clued up on why there is a prohibition against usury (the taking of interest) in the Abrahamic faiths, I am fairly certain that there have always been workarounds, obfuscations, economy with the truth, and considerable ingenuity on the part of lenders to extract their pound of flesh. As it was considered a mortal sin to take any interest on a loan, lenders no doubt twisted themselves into knots to avoid the damnation of their eternal souls. Borrowers, of course, could affect a superior tone.

The usual answers to why a lender would charge interest are: the human desire for immediate gratification implies that a rupee today is worth more than a rupee tomorrow; inflation depreciates the value of a rupee over time; it is likely that repayments in the distant future are risky owing to unforeseen circumstances such as the death or the flight of the borrower, and this risk ought to be priced into the loan.

In the medieval English period, inflation appears not to have been a serious concern. Default risk, on the other hand, has always been a matter of worry for lenders. Loaning money to kings would have appeared particularly fraught - not only could the sovereign refuse to pay, he might also confiscate the lenders' assets and put them to death, just because he could.

How was the poor lender to protect himself, and yet avoid consigning his soul to the Devil? Specific examples of financial cleverness can be found in economic history1.

One way around usury was for the borrower to sign a document stating that he had borrowed a larger amount than he actually received from the lender. The borrower might agree, for instance, that his loan was £100 to be paid off in a year, whereas he obtained £66 13s 4d in hand. (This worked out to 50% annual interest. No wonder the lender was not held in particularly high esteem.)

Another way around would be for the borrower to bestow 'gifts' upon the lender at some future date, in gratitude for the lender's assistance. As long as there was no intentional connection between the loan and the gift, this was eminently acceptable to religious figures in the Middle Ages. King Edward III of England granted gifts of £11,000 to the Italian bankers, Bardi, for their loan of £42,000.

Yet another way was for the lender to issue a series of claims of damages - penalties for not repaying the loan - after setting an infeasibly early date for repayment of the original loan. Italian lenders in the 13th century used to impose a penalty every two months of one mark for every ten marks lent, equivalent to an annual interest rate of 60%.

Naturally such obfuscations also needed to be mirrored in the official accounts:
A large-scale example of the massaging of figures to produce a predetermined outcome can be found in the audits of the accounts of the Ricciardi with Edward I in 1276 and 1279. In both cases, the king was left owing a suspiciously round sum to the Ricciardi, namely £13,333 13s 4d (or exactly 20,000m) in 1276 and £23,000 in 1279. It seems likely that the Ricciardi and the king had agreed on a reasonable figure to cover the Ricciardi’s costs and leave them in profit. In order to justify this within the Exchequer system of accounts, it was necessary for the payments made by the Ricciardi to exceed their receipts by exactly the figures agreed. In the case of 1279, we can catch the Exchequer clerks in the act of ‘cooking the books’. The 1279 account follows the standard format, first listing all the Ricciardi credits and then all the Ricciardi discharges. The total received by the Ricciardi was £178,478 19½d, while their expenditure and allowances listed in the account come to £189,797 19s 6d. Thus we can calculate an actual Ricciardi surplus of £11,319 17s 10½d. This meant that, in order to reach the ‘correct’ figure of £23,000, the Exchequer clerks had to either reduce the Ricciardi receipts or inflate their expenses. They seem to have chosen the latter course but, fortunately for us, the clerk responsible for the account muddled his sums. When calculating the total advanced by the Ricciardi to the king, he deducted the agreed £23,000 from the total Ricciardi receipts, instead of adding it, thus making a total of £155,478 19 ½d for expenditure by the Ricciardi. As a result, the Ricciardi appeared to owe £23,000 to the king. This mistake was corrected and the ‘right’ figure of £201,478 19½d supplied below. This is simply the most egregious example of a practice that must have been widespread.1


References

1. A. R. Bell, C. Brooks, T. Moore, 2008. Interest in medieval accounts: Examples from England, 1272-1340. ICMA Centre Discussion Papers in Finance, DP2008-07, Reading.

2. Credit Finance in the Middle Ages.

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Apr 19, 2010

Solving The World's Ills: Attempt #41

It appears that dieting is harmful to your health. The stress induced by forcing a change in your diet results in heightened levels of cortisol, which eventually leads to heart attacks and cancer.

Surely this just goes to show that there's really no clear road to health. Exercise? Forsooth. Consume fewer carbs? Bunkum. Yoga? What for? Lifestyle illnesses will eventually consume us, and for all the blandishments of gyms and sculpted bodies, our systems will go down sooner or later, and there is no possibility of a reboot.

The reason for all this quite simple: a human's life is supposed to end early! It's only artificial measures such as medical care, and petroleum-fuelled rescue apparatuses, and a taboo against nose-picking that have led to multi-decadal lifetimes and pollution. In the good old ages until Alexander Fleming started mucking about with fungi, diseases and wild animals kept our populations in check. There was little existential angst. Our footprints on this planet were short-lived.

So here is my solution to all of the world's ills: environmental degradation, voracious capitalism, the pensions shortfall. Every human's life should end at 40.

How does this help? Well, for one thing, knowing from early childhood that our life is limited to four decades will either instil a powerful drive to overachieve, or stunt us into a shadowy existence of ennui and fatalism. People with the former quality will work wonders in our understanding of life, the universe and everything; everybody else can become managers. No need for pensions, no need to accumulate wealth, no boom and bust, and the constant demand for immediate gratification should work wonders for production. People can procreate in their teens, consolidate their achievements in their twenties and thirties, look after their grandkids till they are 40, and then go quietly into the void, after, preferably, handing over the keys to their apartments to the nearest stranger.

Good plan, eh? What's not to like?

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Apr 14, 2010

Afanasii Nikitin, Continued

You may recall I translated Afanasii Nikitin's medieval account of his journey from Rus to India. It turns out that owing to some carelessness and also because of my lack of knowledge of old Russian, there are some errors in my translation. Professor Sebastian Kempgen was kind enough to read through it and point out the lacunae. (I should make the corrections shortly, but the caveat still remains that my version still can't be considered complete as I'm unable to match it with the original old Russian.)

Of course, the only reason he knew of my blog-post was that I had written to him, having seen that he is the author of several works analysing Nikitin's journeys. In a set of three papers, Professor Kempgen reveals the actual places behind Nikitin's names. Remarkably, several cities Nikitin visited and named had not been previously identified by scholars. Concluding his investigation, he was able to produce a map of the Nikitin's itinerary through India.

As it turns out, Professor Kempgen's papers are in German, but he has provided an English synopsis to two of them, and those, along with Google's Translate toolbox, serve me in this brief summary.

Professor Kempgen shows how it is possible to solve philological, historical, or geographical problems1 by using Google Earth and other web sources. In the first paper, he traces the route Nikitin took from arrival in India at Chaul to Pali, Umri and Junnar.

There is no mystery about Nikitin's town of Pali. Using Google Earth, Professor Kempgen identifies Umri with Pimpri Chinchwad by showing that any other candidates en route from Pali were either too close to Pali or too close to Junnar to agree with the travel times Nikitin mentions in his text. It is possible to discern a route following the Amba river and passing close to the Western Ghats, both of which are alluded to in the text. Why Chinchwad, though? Professor Kempgen reveals that a great temple was established there, in honour of Morya Gosavi, a worshipper of Ganesh, and the Ganesh Chaturti festival would have coincided with Nikitin's journey on the pilgrim route thither from Pali.

Junnar is the next stop on Nikitin's itinerary. While this is readily identifiable today, Nikitin's assertion that it is on a stone island created by God and reachable only via a mountain path so narrow that two people cannot walk together on it, serves to confuse the geographer. He is a writer notably accurate in his notes, so what does he mean by this business of a stone island? Professor Kempgen suggests that Nikitin was referring to the fact that Junnar is situated on a rocky plateau, and the narrow path is the Naneghat pass, much in favour for trekkers today.

And where is the port of Sabat? There has been controversy regarding its location, some scholars even placing it in Indochina. Professor Kempgen believes that this coincides with Sopatma, itself either Mylapore in present-day Madras, or Markkanam, a spot 30km south. This great port on the Coromandel has been listed in, amongst others, documents such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, and previous travellers, such as Marco Polo and Niccolò de Conti, had made references to it. In addition, the journey times Nikitin quotes to Sabat from Dabhol or from Ceylon do make sense.

In his second paper2, Professor Kempgen tries to identify Nikitin's return path through India as he planned to go home to Tver. In this instance, the mapping of Nikitin's names to actual place names appears trickier, and can only be made 'probabilistically.' The endpoints of the route, Sheikh Aladdin and Daby have been long known to be Aland and Dabhol respectively. Another known site en route is Kollur, which came to be famous for its diamond mines in later centuries, but going by Nikitin, already productive in the 15th century. Comparing the travel times for the onward route that criss-crossed the Western Ghats, and the travel times on the return route, Professor Kempgen is able to offer a simple yet plausible possibility for the unidentified towns of Kamendri, Naryas, and Suri. Kamendri, he says, could be Chandrabhaga, not only because Nikitin's Russification of the name would have modified the 'Ch' to 'K' and so on, but also because the Russian 'kamen' - meaning 'stone' - might have helped Nikitin memorise the name. (I am no philologist and very likely Google Translate is playing tricks, but this makes no sense at all to me. I really need to get a German speaker to interpret this correctly.) Chandrabhaga is the older name of present-day Pandharpur, situated on a half-moon shaped bend of the Bhima river and where the famous Vithoba temple is sited. As for Naryas/Kinaryas, Professor Kempgen speculates on the common root 'nar' in these names: does it stem from the Sanskrit 'nar' meaning 'man', or the Arabic 'nar' meaning 'fire'? Is there a Mewari influence on these names? The only large town in these parts is Satara, and it's difficult to glean any connection between Nikitin's names and this. The puzzle remains unsolved, as far as I can see. Lastly, what of Suri? Again, the simplest possibility for Nikitin's route suggests the town of Chiplun, but how this squares with 'Suri' defeats the good professor, and, I readily confess, me as well.

The third paper3 investigates Nikitin's round-trips from Bidar, where he visits Kulongir, Parvat, and describes (from hearsay) Vijayanagar. The two unidentified place-names here are Kulongir and Parvat. Professor Kempgen suggests Basavakalyan for the former, based on an analysis of the distances and traversal times Nikitin reports for his trip between Bidar and Aland. Basavakalyan was the capital of the 12th century Kalyana Chalukya kingdom and, indeed, a pilgrimage site during Nikitin's time. Professor Kempgen points out that Kulongir could be Kalyangiri or Kalyangarh, the latter meaning 'fort of Kalyan', and indeed there is a fortress in Basavakalyan dating from the 12th century. But what is one to make of Parvat, according to Nikitin a major Hindu temple? The temple is said to be near the river Krishna, far from any major city, in the middle of a densely wooded area. Professor Kempgen suggests Srisailam for Parvat: the Mahabharata, for instance, alludes to Srisailam as Sri Parvata, the blessed hill.

And there you have it. The complete Indian itinerary of Afanasii Nikitin with modern identifications can be summarised in this map, which Professor Kempgen created for his third paper. Good stuff, what?


References

1. S. Kempgen (2008). Zu einigen indischen Städten bei Afanasij Nikitin: die Hinreise (Chaul - Pali - Umri - Junnar, und Šabat). In: Brehmer, B., Fischer, K. B., Krumbholz, G. (Eds.): Aspekte, Kategorien und Kontakte slavischer Sprachen. Festschrift für Volkmar Lehmann zum 65. Geburtstag. Hamburg, 249-263.

2. S. Kempgen (2009). Zu einigen indischen Städten bei Afanasij Nikitin: die Rückreise (Scheich Aladin - Kamindrej - Kynarjas/Narjas - Suri - Dabhol). In: T. Berger et al. (eds.), Von grammatischen Kategorien und sprachlichen Weltbildern – Die Slavia von der Sprachgeschichte bis zur Politsprache. Festschrift für Daniel Weiss zum 60. Geburtstag. München-Wien 2009, S. 319-333.

3. S. Kempgen (2009). Zu einigen indischen Städten bei Afanasij Nikitin: die Rundreisen (Kulonger, Parvat) und Vijayanagara. Die Welt der Slaven LIV, 2009, 150-164.

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Apr 13, 2010

Maritime Jātaka

In the Bāveru-Jātaka1 is a tantalising story of trade between India and the land of Bāveru. Indian merchants took birds with them to Bāveru. Showing off a crow to the Bāveru natives, who had never seen a bird before and clamoured for it, they negotiated a price of a hundred pieces of money for it. On their next trip to Bāveru, the Indians showed off a peacock. The natives of Bāveru, staggered by its beauty, offered a thousand pieces for it. They then abandoned the crow, which went and settled on a dung-hill.

The Master used this story to illustrate some moral or the other, which I shall not bore you with. More interesting are three questions: 1) Where was this Bāveru, and 2) How did the Indians get there, and 3) Is there any supporting evidence to this sort of trade?

Various scholars have identified Bāveru as Babylon2 (although I find it hard to believe the Babylonians had never seen a bird before. Perhaps they hadn't seen a bird as shiny as a crow, or as graceful as a peacock?). There is some speculation that when the Indians called the crow 'useful', they may have meant they could use it for navigation: release it mid-sea, and if it returned, then there was no land nearby, and if it didn't, then there was land around (In fact, the Kevaddhasutta of the Digha-nikaya, a section of the Sutta-Pitaka dated to the 5th century BC, states exactly this navigational claim3.)

Now, of course, these birds could have been brought overland from India - across Sindh and Iran. Or, the merchants could have coast-hopped along the shores of the Arabian Sea. Another possibility is of blue-water journeys, and indeed there are stories in many Jātakas about long sea crossings, implying that such trips were not uncommon.

What evidence, if any, exists for such trades 2500 years ago? Well, it appears that the Tamil words for Indian commodities were used west of India as early as the 5th century BC: the Tamil togai (for 'peacock') became the Hebrew tukki, and the Tamil arisi (for 'rice') became the Greek ορυζα. Still, there appears to be little physical evidence for such maritime commerce in the period prior to Alexander.4


Notes

1. (tr.) H.T. Francis, R.A. Neil, 1897. Bāveru-Jātaka, The Jataka, Vol. III.

2. J. Kennedy, The Early Commerce of Babylon with India, JRAS (1898), pp 246-47.

3. (tr.) Thanissaro Bhikkhu, 'Conversations with the Gods', Kevatta Sutta: To Kevatta, Digha Nikaya.

4. M.A. Smith, 1995, The Development of Maritime Trade Between India and the West from c. 1000 to c. 120 B.C., Master of Arts Thesis, Texas A&M University.

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Apr 12, 2010

Burn 'Em All

I recall reading somewhere that the reason ancient documents of the lives and administrations of various kingdoms of India haven't survived the years is that, in keeping with the Hindu/Buddhist doctrine of life, death, and rebirth, archivists tended to destroy records when one ruler or dynasty was succeeded by another.

There are parallels elsewhere in the world, even if the destruction is due to different reasons. The first emperor of China, 秦始皇, Qin Shi Huang, is said to have feared that access to histories of his land would undermine his legitimacy, and ordered the wholesale purge of books predating his rule. And, of course, there are any number of examples of book-burning inspired by some ideology or the other, including religion. Egregious cases would include the burning of the Maya sacred books by evangelical Spaniards, the destruction of the library of Nalanda by Muslim invaders, sundry excesses by the Nazis, and the wholesale extirpation of Iraq's national library after the US invasion in 2003.

This is not to covertly imply that Hindus have been any more enlightened than the other zealots. From Manipur's history, we have a good example. [1] From about the 16th century onwards, Sanskrit scholars from Bengal began to settle in Manipur, and, having influenced the then monarch, Kiyamba, proselytised amongst the people in that land. The people had been worshippers of an animist faith of Sanamahi, and some of them converted to Hinduism. Kiyamba's successors allowed still more Sanksritists to preach, until in 1704, the king, Charai Rongba, was formally initiated into the faith.

The local language, Manipuri, already had a long and energetic literary tradition. It had its own script, called Meitei Mayek, and one of its great texts was the Cheitharon Kumpapa, the Court Chronicle of Manipur, tracing the genealogy of the monarchs from 33 to 1763 (more recently extended to 1955). [2]

After Charai Rongba, his son Gareeb Niwaz fell under the influence of the Chaitanya school of Vaishnavism. He decided to no longer support the Meitei Mayek script, and - fearing that the old texts would undermine his efforts to establish Hinduism among the Manipuris, and quite probably encouraged by his Brahmin adviser Shantidas Adhikari - ordered the burning of documents written in it. Large numbers of histories and texts of the old faith were publicly set aflame. In view of the supposed prestige of the languages of the incoming new faith, Manipuri began to be written in the Bengali script, which along with Sanskrit, assumed greater importance in ritual matters.

One consequence of this was the translation of sacred Sanskrit texts such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and their publication in Manipuri's new script. Furthermore, a large number of Indo-Aryan words were adopted in Manipuri, a Tibeto-Burman language.

Despite Gareeb Niwaz's efforts, Meitei Mayek didn't entirely die out, although it was largely displaced by the Bengali writing. It continued to be used in secular documents, being much more suited to its language. With the advent of printing, Manipuri texts were almost all published in the Bengali script. The trouble ever since has been that not all the Bengali letters are used, and there are several Manipuri sounds that do not correspond to any Bengali characters.

Recently, there has been an attempt to revive Meitei Mayek among school-children, and to promote it in public signs. Simultaneously, there have been woefully inevitable outrages. When linguistic chauvinists decide that one script is superior to another, inevitably there's burning of books. Linguistic terrorists of the MEELAL organisation (Meetei Erol Eyek Loinshillon Apunba Lup, or the United Forum for Safeguarding Manipuri Script and Language) in 2005 decided to 'reverse' Gareeb Nawaz's book-burning. Demanding the immediate restoration of the old script, they set the Manipur State Central Library on fire, with the ensuing destruction of more than 145,000 books. [3]

What goes around, evidently, doesn't fail to come around.


References

[1] Devi, Hajarimayum Subadani. 2004. Loanwords in Manipuri and their impact, Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Volume 27, No. 1, pp. 29-60

[2] Parratt, Saroj Nalini. 2005. Court Chronicle of the Kings of Manipur: Cheitharon Kumpapa: 1 (Royal Asiatic Society Books). Routledge, London.

[3] Pradip Phanjoubam, An Incendiary Script, Outlook Magazine, Apr 26, 2005.

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Apr 9, 2010

Tauroid Tales

It has been a long, long time since I've seen the stars. I'm probably of the last generation of urban dwellers that recalls ever having seen the stars atwinkle in a clear night sky. And the only reason that I saw them at all was that in the late 1970s, what with load shedding in Delhi, entire swathes of the city went dark, and cloudless and unpolluted skies meant that the constellations appeared near enough to touch, and the Milky Way truly was Hera's breast milk streaking across the firmament.

Because Taurus is my zodiac, I've had a particular attachment to the stars in this constellation. The Bull squared off against Orion in an eternal battle. Mighty Aldebaran shone orange-red, fiery eye of the Bull, and the nymphly Pleiades clustered playfully. I used to wonder why all the star tales we were ever told were Greek myths. Didn't any other people ever look up at the night sky and see patterns and tell legends that mirrored their lives?

As it happens, they did, and we now have a treasure trove of stories from varied cultures around the world. Among the earliest depictions of Taurus is in the cave paintings at Lascaux, where the painted bull is depicted with a markings that might represent the Seven Sisters or the Pleiads. For the Chinese, Taurus was not a bull but a white tiger, and Aldebaran then became the eye of that tiger.

Take a look at the name Aldebaran, though. This is an Arabic word, الدبران, meaning the follower, as the star appears to follow the Pleiades. Many of the brightest stars in the sky have names that come from the Arabic - Achernar, Betelgeuse, Fomalhaut, Mizar, Algol ... - tribute to the great astronomers of the Islamic Middle-East. Aldebaran's Hindu incarnation is Rohini, the ochre-red wife of the Moon.

The Pleiades were called Kṛttikā by Indian astrologers, thought to be ruled by Agni, the Vedic fire god. Kartikeya, the warrior god, was born as six babies from the flaming seed of Shiva, and cared for by the six Kṛttikā, and merged into one infant with six faces by Parvati. For the Hindus, as for many other cultures, there were only six Pleiads; the Greeks claimed there were seven, daughters of Atlas, but one of them, Merope, was shamed into dullness for having married a mortal. They were chased by Orion and Zeus saved them by placing them in the night sky; when Orion himself was catasterised, he was set behind them, in tribute for that great chase.

There is another tale of a chase that resulted in the Pleiads: among the Kiowa of North America, it is said that seven girls went out to play, and were attacked by bears, and they ran up a rock and prayed to the spirit of the rock to save them, which it did by raising the rock to the heavens and placing the girls there as stars. The bears chased the girls onto the rock and left deep gouges on its sides as it became too steep for them to climb. That rock, they say, is the Devil's Tower, in Wyoming.

For the Mungulkabultu of Queensland, the Pleiads were the disastrous consequence of the loosening of the taboos of marrying within the clan. The king, Yunguipan, an emu man, continued to consort with Wakolo and her sister, both emu women, despite the advice and warnings of his priests. An insurrection against him resulted in various ills and chases and magics, and he and seven women found themselves entrapped in a log, and raised to the skies, where they became Aldebaran and the Pleiads. Wakolo, injured as she was in the tribulations on Earth, became the faintest of the seven stars.

Recently, I came across a Manipuri tale of the Pleiads in Medieval Indian Literature: An Anthology, edited by K. Ayyappapanicker. A 14th century poem, Khongjomnubi Nongaron, tells of six girls who went to the lake to buy fish, and met six youths who begged them to stay the night, which they did unwillingly. The next day the girls were turned out of their homes by their parents for the shame they had brought to the families; upset because they couldn't find their lovers, they climbed a lofty mountain and prayed to the Sky God Soraren to save them. He turned them into the Pleiades, and the youths who had been in pursuit of the girls were turned into stars as well. The girls and the youths were allowed to descend to earth to consummate their relationships only once a year, and their children became cicadas.

If you know any other tales of Taurus, do shout.

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