Monday 3 November 2014

Persona Research - names


So I've been part of the SCA since, um, 2003? In 2009 I stayed with William and Kim while visiting  my co-supervisor in Brisbane and William prevailed upon me to register my heraldry and name. In fact, it was the requirement of his wonderful family hosting me for the week. I knew what I wanted as my heraldry but had no idea about my name. I settled on Travaillie because it sounded like traveler (sort of) and meant something like trouble in French matched the region of my first name which I could then retain. As I'd already spent far too much time without a persona name, I'm sort of got stuck with Ant.

For the last couple of years I've been researching Indian personas and garb and wear Indian to almost every event (weather and fighting permitting) so I've decided I'm going to register an Indian name and device for my eventing persona and retire Antoinette to the back corner with the ceramics.

I want to incorporate 'Ant' because that's what most people call me these days and the lovely Margavati posted a link to a digital translation of The Rajatarangini. Originally written in Sanskrit in 1200 in the Kashmir region, it's recently been translated into English and can be found here. Rather than read the whole thing (577 pages) this weekend I auto-searched for 'ant' and scrolled through tons of "antiquities" and "wants" to find:

60 - "To appreciate Kalhava's merit in this respect it is enough to corn are the pictures he glves us of
personages like Tuiga, Ananta, Harsa, Sussala,"

67 - "Equally impressive is thediscription of Ananta's funeral and the Sati of his consort Sfiryamati" (page 67) - Bugger Ananta is male. (Ananta1s reign (AD. 1028-1063))
123 "the capital of a district of Bellgal, he attracted by deed of great prowess the attention of its king, Jayanta"
124  " Etatnilrara is distinctly mentioned by the poets who obtained fame in the reign of Avantivarman (A,D. 1355-883),"
130 - "Unmattavanti (the mad Avanti ), another son of Piirth~,w ho mas next raised to the throne, appears to have done his best to justify his name."
?? -  "Seventeen ladies of the royal household, among them the chief queen Vasantalelrhs who was a princess of the S'ihi"
117 - "He lived under King Anantadew (10'141064 A.D.) and his son Kasala (1088 A.D.)."
361 - "When one of the Brahmans, instelld of saying, "Well done, 0 king," in his joy spoke unceremoniously, [' Well done, 0 Avantin," he received [from the king] many handfuls."
430 - "Eamantaka, who, in spite of this, had yet for a short time struggled on in the fight, fell from his horse with his sword broken, and was caught alive."
438 - "Also Sumaltomantalra and the other Brahmans, who had taken the gold[of Diddij, were all caught and put into prison by Tunga."
454 - "With praiseworthy brbvery, Anantadeva attacked in person Tribhuvana in the fight, warding off his unerring darts with his sword."
516 - "Vasantalekhri, the king's wife, who belonged t,o the S'ahi family founded Mathas and Agrahkas in the City and at the holy Tripureivara.


And that's it, in 577 pages, two female names containing "ant" and I'm fond of neither.

No comments:

Post a Comment