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- From: pjn+@cs.cmu.edu (P J Narayanan)
- Subject: Re: plagiarism
- Message-ID: <By6o77.8rz.1@cs.cmu.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.culture.kerala
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- Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
- References: <Qf3gHL200iV183kWxf@andrew.cmu.edu>
- Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 19:16:16 GMT
- Lines: 62
-
- In article <Qf3gHL200iV183kWxf@andrew.cmu.edu> Prathapan Sreedharan <ps4e+@andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
- >Why is it that Malayalees have always been accused of plagiarism? For
- >example, when Kumaranasan wrote
- >
- >"Pranayaparavase subham ninakkunaruvathondorudhikkil nin priyan
- > Gunavathi nedumohanidhra vittunaruka njan nin sakhi Madhavi"
-
- Aah, the opening slokam of Asan's beautiful Leela! How many years has
- it been since I thought of this slokam! Thanks, Prathapan, for
- bringing it up. On repeated attempts, I could recollect a version of
- it and it was slightly different from the above. I think this slokam
- is: (only two differences, in the second line and the last part)
-
- PraNayaparavashE shubham nina-
- kkuNaruka undoru dikkil nin priyan
- GuNavati, neTu mOha nidravi-
- TTuNaruka, njan sakhi ninTe MAdhavi.
-
- [Anyone know the name of this vr~ttam? A viShama vr~tham, with
- na na ra la ga and na ja ja ra]
-
- Poets often get similar ideas, they often adopt similar ideas.
- Accusations of plagiarism can be made if the adopted idea is central
- to the piece. In this case, this slokam happens to be one of the xxx
- number of slokams in Leela (100? 150?) and in no way critical to
- either the story or the style. I think adopting ideas should be
- encouraged in poetry, with due credit given to the original, for,
- poems have very different flavours in different languages.
-
- >There was wide criticism that his "Chandalabhikshuki" was inspired by
- >Tagore's Chandalika.
-
- This could be more serious, but I don't know enough about it. Doesn't
- KumAran Asan attribute the chandAlabhikshuki story to someone else?
-
- Hollywood movies are adapted to (read stolen) Malayalam (and Hindi,
- etc.) too often, particularly many bad ones. In most cases, the source
- is quite obvious from the chronology of the events. Worse are copying
- of the tunes from the west and from other Indian languages without
- attributing it to anyone else. I am not aware of the move "Ghost" or
- the Malayalam movie mentioned, but I think the overwhelming direction
- of stealing is definitely from the west to India. Maybe because they
- have a history of related litigation (and a wider distribution of
- films and songs that it is impossible to "hide" the copying) that they
- do not dare to plagiarise blatantly.
-
- >Prathapan
-
- Those who have seen the fantastic Hindi movie "Masoom" (acted by
- Nasiruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi) might want to know that it is a
- "copy" [I don't think the movie acknowledges it] of the movie "Man,
- woman and the child". Why I mention this? Because, I think Masoom is a
- hundred times better than the original! It is a "good" instance of
- copying, though I wish they admitted it was adopted.
-
- PJN
-
- --
- ---
- Robotics Institute, CMU pjn@cs.cmu.edu
- Pittsburgh, PA 15213
- ---
-