The Little Love Book: 267 Words for Love in Sanskrit

Elyse Poppers Little Love Book is a treasure. A beautiful translation of the sacred language of Hinduism. Love is the answer.

Beautiful book and project by an artist who studied the languages with the most words for love. Sadly, English has the least words for love. Fun and touching to learn about the many words for love in Sanskrit and their translations.

Elyse's book is a reminder that love is boundless in its intricacies and manifestations. Everyone should have a copy of this book.

So beautiful

Fascinating little book .

An eye opening look at how cultures with ancient roots view love. It would be a perfect Valentine or wedding gift!

Beautiful contemplations and expressions of many concepts of love. What is love. Love comes in so many flavors and forms and Elyse Popper inspiringly points out. Read and be inspired, touched, and deepened.

As a philosopher who works in Sanskrit, I was tickled by the premise of this book, purporting to "[show] us the depth and diversity of a feeling we have but a single word for in English." This last claim is demonstrably false, since poets writing in English have been finding synonyms and metaphors for love since time immemorial. A simple glance at a thesaurus would tell you we have more than one word for love (affection, attachment, ardor, amorousness...). The book is, then, a way to show the depth of Sanskrit, which is, according to this author, some "system of codifying poetry." Again, that's the case for English, too, though to define the language in those terms would be unduly restrictive.So the premise is silly. What of the contents? Well, it contains a list of 267 words and compounds that have to do with, but are not necessarily synonyms for, love. Sanskrit is a language that has the capacity to do what English does, but in a much more sophisticated manner: make compounds. English speakers may say "blackbird" to mean "a bird that is black" but Sanskrit speakers could say "dharmādharmajñānaphalābhyudayaḥ" to mean "success that is the result of knowing dharma and non-dharma" (to take an example from Gary Tubb and Emery Booses' "Scholastic Sanskrit"). There are longer compounds, much longer. But should we say that this long compound is a single word for "success" that we don't have in English? I don't think so.In the book, the author has taken (from what source we are left to wonder, as she cites none of the definitions clearly lifted from dictionaries elsewhere) a selection of such compounds to illustrate a "nuanced definition of love." Unfortunately, some of the terms, interesting as they are, are not synonyms of, nor definitions of, love: see "vigatasnehasauhṛda" or, as the author puts it, "one who has relinquished love and friendship." Having the Devanāgarī script above that phrase tells us nothing new about love. It's something someone can relinquish (which I'm confident speakers of other languages also know).Does the fact that the author has lifted some phrases from other sources without attribution, cobbled them together to show a pseudo-spiritual "fact" about languages and love mean this book is not worth buying? I suppose that depends on what you want out of it. If you are genuinely interested in the Sanskrit language, the beautiful tradition of Sanskrit kāvya, and the lengthy history of philosophical and linguistic reflection done in Sanskrit and about Sanskrit...then don't buy this. There are other excellent books on these topics you should read.But if you want to flip through a plagiarised book of some 267 love-related phrases that are not entirely wrong in their translation from Sanskrit, then go for it. (Though, as an example, note on page 26, "pratinṛt" is a verb root and the author gives verbatim the definition from the Monier-Williams dictionary, but "pratiharyati" is a conjugated form, from the verb root "pratihary" which means "to love" or "to accept" but not "accept love gladly", which seems to be a muddled reading of Monier-Williams. In fact, just read Monier-Williams, which seems to be where the author has gotten her definitions from. It's free online.)

It's a concise but very insightful look into love in Sanskrit ('Smskrtam'). Can really recommend anyone who likes cultures, and wants to know more about love from an Eastern perspective.