[[Mohan K.V 2013-06-06, 20:00:46 Source]]
सदास्वादः
नीचः श्लाघ्य-पदं प्राप्य स्वामिनं हन्तुम् इच्छति
(nīcaḥ ślāghya-padaṃ prāpya svāminaṃ hantum icchati)
Meaning
“An inferior man, after obtaining a good position, tries to destroy his benefactor”. An easy construction that demonstrates how smoothly the śloka metre blends with Sanskrit. Where does this equivalent of “biting that hand that feeds you” come from? Read on!
Context
Today’s phrase is taken from the Hitopadeśa of Narāyaṇa. It is hard to date Narāyaṇa precisely; the best we know is that he was a poet under the patronage of King Dhavalacandra of Bengal about 800-1000 years ago. Some other minor works are debatably attributed to him, but none so famous as the Hitopadeśa.
The Hitopadeśa is a “retelling” of the Pañcatantra, and appears intended to have a simpler ‘moral structure’ than its inspiration. It is composed with inputs from mainly the Pañcatantra and didactic verses of the Kāmandakīya Nītisāra, and borrows short passages and stories from a variety of epic works.
When one encounters a situation like this, one becomes curious to know what the exact composition of this work is. How much is borrowed from the Pancatantra? How much from other sources? What is the correlation table? How exactly has Nārāyaṇa changed the form, content, and import of the stories? Trying to answer questions like these leads to the realization of a peculiar fact: English today is inseparably entwined with Sanskrit study, and any growth in the latter necessarily involves a large role of the former. Consider the very set of questions we just raised. The first step to finding answers is to google for them. Very quickly, one zeroes in on extensive studies conducted by Western researchers, published in English and available on resources such as the Internet Archive, Google Books and the Digital Library of India. Following references there, and correlating with the originals that are also readily available as modern, searchable sources in GRETIL, TITUS, or Pandanus, one starts to piece together the puzzle.
What is conspicuous is the absence of regional-language works related to Sanskrit in any modern medium. In some ways, this is lamentable: regional languages have a much more organic connection with Sanskrit than English does, and translations and discussions flow much more freely. Further, the huge cultural barriers that are the source of so much difficulty and error don’t exist. For example, one Albrecht Weber lamented about Bana’s Kadambari:
“Kadambari compares most unfavourably with Dasha-kumara-charita by a subtlety and tautology which are almost repugnant, by an outrageous overloading of single words with epithets; the narrative proceeds in a strain of bombastic nonsense, amidst which it—and if not it, then the patience of the reader—threatens to perish altogether: a mannerism, already apparent in the Dashakumaracharita, is here carried to excess: the verb is kept back to the second, third, fourth, nay, once to the sixth page, and all the interval is filled with epithets and epithets to these epithets: moreover these epithets frequently consist of compounds extending over more than one line; in short, Bana’s prose is an Indian wood, where all progress is rendered impossible by the undergrowth until the traveller cuts out a path for himself, and where, even then, he has to reckon with malicious wild beasts in the shape of unknown words that affright him.”
Such a reaction is natural, just as a sumptuous buffet of another culture frustrates us with tremendous choice and yet doesn’t satisfy our familiarity-governed palate. In contrast, to someone who has grown up in the tradition through all stages of one’s life, many of the ‘bugs’ Weber petulantly complains about are ‘features’, providing great joy. Weber’s tautology is our multi-faceted portrait; his overloaded epithets-to-epithets are our eternally celebrated phrases; his bombastic nonsense is our fascinating imagination; keeping the verb back till the end is exhilarating to us, and compounds longer than a line are our holy grail. In short, his impossible Indian wood is our pleasure garden, its path challenging us in a joyous game of conscious and unconscious memory, and his malicious wild beasts are our gentle pets which delight in reunion.
There is a manifest difference between the proud child of a tradition writing about his own heritage, and even a very sincere student but from a different cultural, geographical and societal space offering his academic, clinical view. An element of ownness and ownership subtly influences the intentions of the former.
In other ways, the intertwining of the fates of English and Sanskrit is inevitable. First, the sheer quantity of work done in English in the general public sphere vastly outstrips that done in any regional language. The weight of history inevitably causes us to shift English-ward. Second, technology is strongly biased towards English, purely because of how commonly used it is, and it will be years, perhaps decades, before even the catalog of a language like Kannada is searchable online. Thirdly and most importantly, English appears in every way to be the language of the current. Tapping into this life-force is inevitable if we want to maintain the nitya-nūtanatā (evergreenness) of Sanskrit (In another time, this place was held by Sanskrit – it could be very well argued that it was Sanskrit that brought India together, offering a common platform for the most brilliant minds of the land to communicate. For the longest time, the best of Indian thinking was to be found expressed in Sanskrit, and this is a very important reason why Sanskrit is worth learning even today). This is made easier by the rapid rise of Indians using English as their primary language, and this is a trend that will only get stronger. Perhaps this may assuage all the concerns of the last paragraph.
Coming back to the Hitopadeśa, its kind of retelling may seem odd to us. When we have the Pancatantra, why must we care about a rearrangement with some additions to it? Isn’t this like a ‘remix’ of sorts?
Indeed it is, but unlike certain other areas where remixes often help their creator more than their audience, literary remixes are absolutely vital for a tradition to thrive. The Hitopadeśa was compiled several centuries after its source works were written. Society’s memory is notoriously short, and unless constantly replenished, even monumental works are quickly shunted to the lumber room of social memory, in Saki’s words “consigning them to dust and damp by way of preserving them”. Remember that we had forgotten virtually everything about Bhāsa, Cāṇakya, Aśoka and even of the history of Bodh Gaya and Kalady till a couple hundred years ago. Remixes serve to bring classics back into public attention, and thus contribute to their immortality. Besides, as every sales manager knows, the secret of all success is repetition, reiteration, restatement, … :-)
Remixes also allow to highlight segments which may pale to the background in the original. Consider today’s phrase. It appears in the beginning of the fourth chapter of the work, titled ‘Sandhi’ (Peace), and is at the head of a retelling of story from the Mahabharata. In the ocean of 100,000 verses of the Mahabharata, this little animal story of a few verses would not even register as flotsam in the first several readings. But because Nārāyaṇa made it a point to talk about it in his work, our ears perk up when we hear it anywhere else. Ultimately, it is this constant exposure that gives true knowledge.
With that, let us go to our sample story, Chapter 4, Story 5.
अस्ति गौतमस्य महर्षेः तपोवने महातपा नाम मुनिः । तत्र तेन आश्रम-संनिधाने मूषिक-शावकः काक-मुखाद् भ्रष्टो दृष्टः । ततो दया-युक्तेन तेन मुनिना नीवार-कणैः संवर्धितः ।
asti gautamasya maharṣeḥ tapovane mahātapā nāma muniḥ | tatra tena āśrama-saṃnidhāne mūṣika-śāvakaḥ kāka-mukhād bhraṣṭo dṛṣṭaḥ | tato dayā-yuktena tena muninā nīvāra-kaṇaiḥ saṃvardhitaḥ |
“In the grove of Mahaṛṣi Gautama, there was a sage named Mahātapa. One day near his āśrama, he saw a baby mouse that had fallen from the beak of a crow. The kind sage took him as a pet, and fed it grains.
With kindness comes love, with love comes attachment, and with attachment comes responsibility:
ततो बिडालः तं मूषिकं खादितुम् उपधावति । तम् अवलोक्य मूषिकः तस्य मुनेः क्रोडे प्रविवेश । ततो मुनिनोक्तम् – “मूषिक ! त्वं मार्जारो भव” । ततः स बिडालः कुक्कुरं दृष्ट्वा पलायते । ततो मुनिनोक्तं –“कुक्कुराद् बिभेषि, त्वम् एव कुक्कुरो भव” । स च कुक्कुरो व्याघ्राद् बिभेति ततस् तेन मुनिना कुक्कुरो व्याघ्रः कृतः ।
tato biḍālaḥ taṃ mūṣikaṃ khāditum upadhāvati | tam avalokya mūṣikaḥ tasya muneḥ kroḍe praviveśa | tato muninoktam – “mūṣika ! tvaṃ mārjāro bhava” | tataḥ sa biḍālaḥ kukkuraṃ dṛṣṭvā palāyate | tato muninoktaṃ –“kukkurād bibheṣi, tvam eva kukkuro bhava” | sa ca kukkuro vyāghrād bibheti tatas tena muninā kukkuro vyāghraḥ kṛtaḥ |
“One day a cat tried to eat the mouse. The mouse ran into the sage’s bosom in fear. [To give it some security] The sage said, ‘Become a cat’ and the mouse was transformed. Another day, the cat ran away afraid of a dog. The sage said, ‘You fear this dog. Alright, become a dog yourself!’. Another day, the dog became afraid of a tiger. The sage in turn transformed it into a tiger.”
(Note that in the original, the tense is quite fluid. It switches frequently between present, implied present and past. This is so much like normal speech: “Then a cat tries to eat it. The mouse ran to the sage’s bosom. The sage said something. The cat then runs away from a dog.” etc. )
This may seem simple, but it holds in it a profoundly deep observation. A simple correspondence is with how generation after generation, parents spoil children. P. J. O’Rourke’s observation is apt: “Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.” :-)
At a deeper level of correspondence, this reflects how we deal with ourselves. Call it ‘competitiveness’, ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’ or dress it up as ‘ambition’, we willingly place ourselves on an accelerating treadmill hoping to go somewhere, and yet spend all our energies running to stay in the same place.
In the idiom of industrial safety, there is a spectrum of behaviours that is very insightful. The lowest level is ‘pathological’, a level of maturity captured as “Whatever it is, I don’t care. ” The next level is ‘reactive’, where thought and response occur only in reaction to an incident. The next is ‘calculative’, which makes a first step into thinking of a system to solve problems. The next is ‘proactive’, where systems are well-tuned and actually anticipate problems before they occur. The final step is ‘generative’, the fullest development of systemic thinking, honesty in commitment to the goal and a willingness to learn. Most of society is stuck at the ‘reactive’ level, like the sage was, and true growth is in advancing higher, not changing roles in the same system.
Quite naturally, then,
अथ तं व्याघ्रं मुनिः मूषिको ऽयम् इति पश्यति । अथ तं मुनिं व्याघ्रं च दृष्ट्वा सर्वे वदन्ति – “अनेन मुनिना मूषिको व्याघ्रतां नीतः” ।
atha taṃ vyāghraṃ muniḥ mūṣiko ‘yam iti paśyati | atha taṃ muniṃ vyāghraṃ ca dṛṣṭvā sarve vadanti – “anena muninā mūṣiko vyāghratāṃ nītaḥ” |
“The sage saw the tiger only as the mouse he originally was. People, on observing the two, stated saying, ‘This mouse is a tiger only because of this sage’” [and disparaging it].
The sage helped the mouse, but by doing so, in his mind, the mouse became utterly obliged to him, to the point that he did not even appreciate the state it had reached. Such patronizing behavior is easily picked up on by others.
Helping someone and yet not assuming superiority or power over them is the very essence detached service, the highest of Sanātana Dharma’s goals. One of the greatest of modern Kannada poets, D. V. Gundappa, wrote in his famous poem ‘Vanasuma’:
“upakāri naanu ennupakṛtiyu jagakemba
viparīta matiyanuḷidu
vipulāśrayavanīva suphala-sumabharita
pādapadante naijamādoḷpinim bāḷvavolu
vana-sumadolenna jīvananavu vikasisuvante
manavananugoḷisu guruve he deva”
“ ‘I am the benefactor of this world, my pity uplifts it’ – may I shed such false pride, and become a welcoming, all-supporting tree which does service by its genuine goodness. May I become a flower in a forest, [contributing its fragrance to the world with no hankering for being in the limelight]. Please, O Wise one, grant me this boon”
Naturally, the sage’s attitude causes distress in the mouse-tiger:
एतत् श्रुत्वा सव्यथो व्याघ्रो ऽचिन्तयत् – “यावद् अनेन मुनिना स्थीयते, तावद् इदं मे स्वरूपाख्यानम् अकीर्तिकरं न पलायिष्यते” इत्यालोच्य मूषिकः तं मुनिं हन्तुं गतः । ततो मुनिना तत् ज्ञात्वा – “पुनः मूषिको भव” इत्युक्त्वा मूषिक एव कृतः ।
etat śrutvā savyatho vyāghro ‘cintayat – “yāvad anena muninā sthīyate, tāvad idaṃ me svarūpākhyānam akīrtikaraṃ na palāyiṣyate” ityālocya mūṣikaḥ taṃ muniṃ hantuṃ gataḥ | tato muninā tat jñātvā – “punaḥ mūṣiko bhava” ityuktvā mūṣika eva kṛtaḥ |
“On hearing this, the tiger became worried. ‘As long as this sage lives, the taint of my past will not go away’ – thinking thus, it tried to kill him. The sage saw its intention, and transformed it back to a mouse.”
Really, can you blame the mouse? As the saying goes, “Hate the game, not the player” ;-)
Today’s phrase appears in the ‘hyperlink’ verse to this story from the frame story, and serves as a kind of short “take-away” to remember the story by:
नीचः श्लाघ्य-पदं प्राप्य स्वामिनं हन्तुम् इच्छति ।
मूषिको व्याघ्रतां प्राप्य मुनिं हन्तुं गतो यथा ।4.14।
nīcaḥ ślāghya-padaṃ prāpya svāminaṃ hantum icchati |
mūṣiko vyāghratāṃ prāpya muniṃ hantuṃ gato yathā |4.14|
“An inferior man, after obtaining a good position, tries to destroy his benefactor, like the mouse which got tigerhood and tried to kill the sage.”
There is a similar story in the Pañcatantra that focuses on the fact that tastes rarely change as fast as fortunes do. It is useful to observe the subtlety and humor which makes the Pañcatantra superior to the Hitopadeśa. Once again, a kind sage finds an orphaned baby she-mouse, and out of love transforms it into a human girl. He cares for her, and in time she grows into a young girl. He wants to find her a match, but is blinded by his paternal love for her, and goes way beyond her league. But he’s a very powerful sage, and he better not be offended even by the gods. He summons the Sun God, and demands that he marry the mouse-girl. The Sun God squirms, and tries to escape by saying, “O Holy Sage, I am not a worthy match for the daughter of a great one like you. Consider the Cloud God, which can cover me anytime he wishes. Surely he is more powerful, and so more fit.” To the Sun God’s relief, the mouse-girl doesn’t seem much attracted to him, and agrees. The Cloud God is summoned, and the same demand is made. He tries to get out by saying, “The Wind God can sway my path whichever way he chooses. He is surely a more deserving match”. The mouse-girl doesn’t care for the Cloud God either. The Wind God is summoned next, and he escapes by saying “The Mountain God can stop me still in my tracks. He’s the man for you”. The mouse-girl is fine with that too. The Mountain God then says, “My lord, It’d be an honour to marry your daughter, but I am not the most powerful. Consider that tiny mouse over there. He can bore through me however he pleases. Surely he is the most powerful being in the universe”. The mouse-girl takes one look at the furry rodent, and is instantly smitten. “He’s the one, father!” she says, and promptly falls in love. The sage finally realizes the power of instincts, transforms the girl backs to a mouse, pairs it with the other mouse, and everyone lives happily ever after :-)
Thought for today
Nārāyaṇa remarks at the beginning of the work,
अजरामरवत् प्राज्ञो विद्याम् अर्थं च चिन्तयेत् ।
गृहीत इव केशेषु मृत्युना धर्मम् आचरेत् ।3।
ajarāmaravat prājño vidyām arthaṃ ca cintayet |
gṛhīta iva keśeṣu mṛtyunā dharmam ācaret |3|
“A wise man should think of [acquiring] learning and wealth as if he was immortal and ever-youthful. In contrast, he should follow Dharma, right conduct, as if Death itself holds him by his tuft”. “gṛhīta iva keśeṣu”, “as if held by the hair”, is a beautiful idiom.
From Vyāsa to Marcus Aurelius to Nārāyaṇa here to Steve Jobs, men have spoken about a spirit of rectitude that recognizing one’s own mortality brings. Here is Jobs in his famous commencement speech in 2005 at Stanford:
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
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