When I was studying Sanskrit in college, I was really taken by the vocative case. I think that the vocative case is partly what gives Sanskrit its unique feel when it is translated into English. This is probably because sentences with vocative elements don’t really have an exact equivalent in English, which makes them stand out as being a bit unusual in a translated text. Anyhow, I think they make for wonderful reading.

After Sanskrit class, in the pub, I would joke with my classmate that I was going to write a novel in the vocative case. Fast forward to Nanogenmo many years later, and now I have my chance! I downloaded the entire Mahabharata, pulled out all the sentences with vocative elements, and mashed them together into one text. The result is a Nanogenmo entry themed around the vocative case. You can see the code and the completed “novel” on GitHub.

This is my second Nanogenmo entry for 2021. You can read more about my Nanogenmo projects here and here.

This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.