Nan Yar: kaaNtakkal in para 33

[gabriele]

The message has been deleted by mistake - so I write it again.

A small matter which is not essential for understanding, but an interesting detail.
It is about the translation of kaaNtakkal in para 33 of Nan Yar prose version.

I am giving the text from the Words of Grace-Version:

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Not from any desire, resolve or effort on the part of the rising sun, but merely due to the presence of his rays, the lens emits heat, the lotus blossoms, water evaporates, and people attend to their various duties in life.
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kaaNtakkal is verbally: magnetic rock, lodestone, what I have heard from a lesson with John.
In "Words of Grace" it is translated as: lens
We find different versions:
Michael James translates it as: crystal stone (or magnifying lens)
and you, Rob, translate it as: sunstone.

How to deal with that? What does the Tamil text of the Q&A-Version say?

kind regards
Gabriele

[vasudevaram]

Gabriele,
Rob is indisposed at the moment.
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English has as its entry for "sunstone":

Aventurine feldspar. See under 'asventurine. And for 'aventurine' we have:

[F. aventurine: cf. It. avventurino.]
1. A kind of glass, containing gold-colored spangles. It was
produced in the first place by the accidental (par
aventure) dropping of some brass filings into a pot of
melted glass.
[1913 Webster]

2. (Min.) A variety of translucent quartz, spangled
throughout with scales of yellow mica.
[1913 Webster]

Aventurine feldspar, variety of oligoclase with internal
firelike reflections due to the presence of minute
crystals, probably of hematite; sunstone.
[1913 Webster]

Easy to envisage how under extreme heat, silica quartz would form glass globules which would refract and concentrate sunlight causing ignition to dry leaves etc.

As we said the other day, the point is that in the sun's presence all sorts of wonderful processes occur automatically, without there being any idea of doership.

anbudan

John