Nerd Alert - an Endless Series

Last night I came home to a very pleasant surprise (well, not much of a surprise because I had ordered it), the Uttarakanda, the 7th and final volume of the Critical Edition of the Ramayana had arrived in the mail.  This volume alone is 1522 pages, two-thirds of which are fine print footnotes.  Yes, it is scholarship heaven.  I've been fortunate to swap a few emails with Dr. Robert Goldman, the General Editor of the Ramayana translation project, who has been working on this massive project since 1970 - let that wash over you.  Amazing.  He very kindly answered some of my questions about the Indian epic, and I know that as he was finalizing the Uttarakanda for publication that he had more pressing issues than answering questions from anonymous professors at obscure colleges.  It is one of the peculiarities of life that the scholars who have the most clear reason to not be pleasant are the most pleasant, and those that have the least reason to be haughty and insufferable are the most haughty and insufferable.  Dr. Goldman could not have been more gracious.  I suggested in an email to him that since the Ramayana was finally complete he could probably turn his attention to the Mahabharata, which is actually much longer and more confusing.  He gracefully dodged the assignment.  Now I can get back to tackling my clumsy research on the epics.  I was waiting for the completion of the Critical Edition so that I had a consistent voice throughout the chapter on the Ramayana.   It's nice to bring in the complete set of the Critical Edition on the first day of class so the students don't have the opportunity to grouse about the five-hundred page short retelling of the Ramayana that they are assigned to read.

Looks like my holiday reading time is booked.