Re: Another Lojban prayer/meditation

["Jorge J. Llambías" <jorge@intermedia.com.ar>]

i melbi pespemci ki'e doi robin i mi terpinka loi valsi selcu'a

>.i banro .i stodi .i fusra .i mi dunda roda le selpramrai
>
>The last line is a direct(ish) translation of the Sanskrit "Hrim
>srim krim paramesvari svaha" (not that I know Sanskrit, but this
>is what I'm told it means!).

Would you consider {i zenba i stodi i jdika}?
I understand that in English "grow" and "decay" are much
more poetic and have more appropriate connotations here
than "increase" and "decrease", but in Lojban banro/stodi/fusra
are really very incongruous. zenba/stodi/jdika are all of the
same form: increases/remains/decreases in property x2.

Another possibility would be something like banro/taisto/tolba'o:
x1 grows to form x2 from x3.
x1 stays at form x2.
x1 shrinks to form x2 from x3.

Or even if you want: selfre/zilsto/fusra ({zilsto} is meant to be {stodi be
zi'o}.):
x1 flourishes under conditions x2.
x1 remains unchanged under conditions x2.
x1 decays under conditions x2.

>{canlu} is a substitute for "akasha", incorrectly believed to be
>the medium through which sound travels, and usually translated as
>"ether" which was incorrectly thought to be ... etc. etc.  I have
>occasionally seen "space" used as a translation, which struck me
>as the least dubious.  Theosophically-inspired stuff about
>"akashic records" and so on is just a lot of flim-flam grafted
>onto some already misunderstood Indian metaphysics.  But what the
>hell, I needed a fifth element (shades of Luc Besson!).

It's unfortunate that the four (five?) elements have such disparate
place structures, too, but here I have more difficulty in finding good
alternatives. I think {vacri}, which brings in the planet, is the
worst. Of course it sounds better than {gapci} if you think in terms
of the English keywords, but it seems wrong if you think about
the whole place structure.

>I noticed some incongruities in the gismu list while writing
>this.  Compare {viska} etc. to {vrusi}, which has the
>place-structure reversed (and buggers up the metre into the
>bargain!).  "Smell" has two gismu, while "feel" in the sense of
>"perceive through the sense of touch" has none.

I don't think {vrusi} is like {viska} in reverse. I agree that there
is something missing though:

viska    jvinu
tirna    sance
sumne    panci
vu'irga'e    vrusi
pencu?    tengu

Maybe:
te'urga'e    tengu

co'o mi'e xorxes