[[Mohan K.V 2013-01-10, 22:51:21 Source]]
सदास्वाद
अगूढभावापि विलोकने सा न लोचने मीलयितुं विषेहे
(agūḍha-bhāvāpi vilokane sā na locane mīlayituṃ viṣehe)
Meaning
“Even though her look hid no secrets, [Draupadi] couldn’t even bear to blink”. This is a classic contrast set-up, with one half of the contrast being described with an adjectival noun, and the second half with a normal verb. “vilokane agūḍha-bhāvā” is literally “[She whose] look hid no emotion”. The emotion was unrestrained in expression, but the person feeling it was so restrained that ’locane api na mīlayituṃ viṣehe’ (“couldn’t even bear to blink”). Why? Read on!
Context
Today’s phrase is taken from the work Kirātārjunīya of Bhāravi. This is one of the five canonical mahākāvyas (a specialized kind of epic poetry). In a way, it forms a ‘golden mean’ of the genre: The first two by Kālidāsa (Raghuvaṃśa, Kumārasaṃbhava) are held to be of a completely different, higher, more original kind of creation, and it is sometimes wondered if themahākāvya genre was inspired by them instead of the other way round; the later two (Māgha’sŚiśupāla-vadha andSriharṣa’sNaiśadha-carita) are clearly written with an intent of surpassing then-extant works (like Kirātārjunīya) in mind, and are sometimes overly artificially ornate.
We’re forced back into the familiar grounds of ignorance when it comes to the poet. He’s placed at roughly a millennium-and-half behind our times, and no other work of his has survived. Except for a few apocryphal anecdotes here and there, everything we know of him is in this work.
Before we get to a precis, it is apt to review the epic tradition in Sanskrit. There are three wellsprings of epic narration that tradition draws from – the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābhārata, the Bṛhatkathā. Of these, the former two are quite well known and well preserved, while the last is available only in fragments via derivative works. At their core, these streams consist of a narrative with hundreds of characters, with only about a few tens of them playing central roles. A later epic poet picks up a particular event in one of these streams, and builds up a more detailed story with more events and side-narratives. Usually, this particular event is of minor consequence in the main epic stream, and so the additions of the later poet simply adds more detail without any loss of coherence. For example, the names and broad outlines of the story of Duṣyanta and Śakuntalā first appear in theMahābhārata; however, they are of no consequence to the main story and are just distant ancestors of the main characters.Kālidāsa picked up this minor story and built a magnificent masterpiece around it. One can ‘click through’ the story in the Mahābhārata, readKālidāsa’s masterpiece, and ‘pop back’ into theMahābhārata and proceed as if nothing except a happy excursion happened. The epic poet, of course, introduces his own set of minor events and characters, and the tradition is all set to grow recursively.
This kind of growth produces a fundamentally different universe than the one we’re used to in modern times. Our modern reading can be likened to the study of a TV screen. Its very nature is dynamic, and there is neither an expectation nor an effort to make any image last. The impressions of those images on us is the only element preserved to any degree, and any universality, shared experience or discussions happens around them. One cannot even recall the last 5 articles (the staple unit of present consumption) one has read, because it’s probably 5 out of 50 just last week. There is some accumulation, although it remains to be studied how exactly it happens.
The epic tradition, on the other hand, is like the night sky seen from a dense forest. Works of poets likeBhāravi are eternal stars which have remained the same for millennia. It is no less intricate, beautiful or profound than the most well-tuned TV screen, but there’s a fundamental element of staticness to it. The same stars were observed by generations of connoisseurs, and they referred to them and built a shared context that gave great depth to the simplest feature. A line from an epic would have appeared in hundreds of ‘quotable contexts’, anthologies, commentaries, reviews, parodies, letters, and diaries; some continue to modern times, with a line from the Rāmāyaṇa serving as an editor’s clever rebuke to the government at a time of severe censorship; many sections would have been translated verbatim into the canonical great works of regional languages. Forget each work, each phrasehas a dense story behind it, the collected reflections of one facet of one star in millions of thought-pools. Some of these stories are themselves stylized, and become great works on their own – the Bhojaprabanda, for example, is a collection of imagined anecdotes of great Sanskrit poets till the 10th century, and is a fascinating work in its own right.
With this framework in mind, let’s consider the present work. TheKirātārjunīya picks up from theMahābhārata the story of Arjuna getting divine weapons from Indra andŚiva. The Pāṇḍavās have lost everything in the game of dice, their wife Draupadī has been inhumanly humiliated and they’ve been exiled to the forest for 14 years. They still take it in their stride, and go about their lives waiting for the period of exile to end, after which they expect to go to Hastināpura and get back their rightful share of land. However, their spies tell a different story. One day in the middle of their forest-stay, the preceptor, Sage Vyāsa, arrives and warns them that the Kauravas don’t intend to concede even an inch of land. He suggests that they spend their time preparing for war, and recommends that Arjuna go to the Himalayas and perform austerities to acquire divine weapons. The story continues from there, but we pause here for today’s verse.
It sinks into everyone that Arjuna would have to leave them for several years, and all are sad. Everyone eventually comes to terms with the fact that it’s for their best – everyone exceptDraupadī. It was she who was most anxious about winning back her honor and the kingdom in war, but the consequences of that terrible revenge mean separation from her dearest husband for an indefinite period. The poet says, “ekaugha-bhūtaṃ tad aśarma kṛṣṇāṃ vibhāvarīṃ dhvāntam iva prapede” – “sadness left [the four brothers], and descended on her as a concentrated darkness”:
तुषारलेखाकुलितोत्पलाभे
पर्यश्रुणी मङ्गलभङ्गभीरुः ।
अगूढभावापि विलोकने सा
न लोचने मीलयितुं विषेहे ॥
tuṣāra-lekhā-kulitotpalābhe
paryaśruṇī maṅgala-bhaṅga-bhīruḥ |
agūḍha-bhāvāpi vilokane sā
na locane mīlayituṃ viṣehe ||
(upajāti metre, 11 syllables per line)
“Like a water lily covered with dew,
her eyes filled with tears; however, fearing bad omens,
even though her look hid no secrets,
she couldn’t even bear to blink”
Shedding tears when one’s beloved is about to leave is considered very inauspicious. Poor Draupadi is worried that if she blinks, her tears will fall as a bad omen to Arjuna!
The greatness of a poet is how he captures the smallest of actions and identifies its universal elements. Just consider all that’s going through Draupadi’s mind now: rage at the humiliation she’s suffered; the burning desire for revenge; and yet, the sad, sad prospect of separation; a recourse to superstition at a weak moment; the feeling that she’s brought all this on herself, and all the internal struggles between her emotions and intellect that follow – all this in a precariously perched tear drop :-)
Thought for today
Perhaps the only counterpoint in intensity in the Sanskrit ethos to the acrimony between a woman and her mother-in-law is the respect and adulation of the husband by his in-laws. There’s even a ditty that goes, “asāre khalu saṃsāre sāraṃ śvaśuramandiram –haro himālaye śete, hariḥ śete mahodadhau!” (In this joyless world, there is but one source of solace – the father-in-law’s house. Why, even the gods agree: Shiva lives in the Himalayas (his consort Parvati is the daughter of Himalaya) and Vishnu lives in the ocean (his consort Lakshmi was born of the ocean)!). An apocryphal anecdote attributes to Bhāravi a special awareness of the limitations of this concept: onceBhāravi was so angry with his father for not recognizing his talents and instead constantly chiding him as a fool, that he decided to kill him. Just as he was about to do so, he overheard his father praising him with great critical appreciation to someone, and commenting that he didn’t want to spoil his son with direct praise.Bhāravi was very remorseful, and went to apologize. His father smiled, and as expiation, asked him to stay at his father-in-law’s place for six months. Bhāravi thought he got off easy – till his experiences made him pen this verse:
श्वशुर-गृह-निवासं स्वर्ग-तुल्यो नराणाम्
यदि निवसति दिवस-त्रीणि वा पञ्च सप्त ।
मधु-दधि-घृत-धारा-क्षीर-सार-प्रवाहः
तदुपरि दिनमेकं पादरक्षा-प्रहारः ॥
śvaśura-gṛha-nivāsaṃ svarga-tulyo narāṇām
yadi nivasati divasa-trīṇi vā pañca sapta |
madhu-dadhi-ghṛta-dhārā-kṣīra-sāra-pravāhaḥ
tadupari dinamekaṃ pādarakṣā-prahāraḥ ||
“The in-laws’ place is heaven indeed,
If one stays three days or five.
It’s milk and honey and every need –
One day more and the boots arrive.”
Perhaps it was for the best –Bhāravi can now enjoy gems like, “I bought my Mother-in-law a chair for Christmas, but she wouldn’t plug it in.” :-)