काव्ये विश्वासटिप्पन्यः

[[Mohan K.V 2013-11-12, 19:36:27 Source]]

सदास्वादः

रथ्या-पार्श्वे शकुनि-शकुनं वक्ति मुक्ति-प्रसक्तिम्

(rathyā-pārśve śakuni-śakunaṃ vakti mukti-prasaktim)

Meaning

“By the roadside, it speaks of good omens and freedom (mukti) to passers-by.” śakuni-śakuna is a kind of omen associated with birds, for example a parrot picking out a card from a stack. ‘mukti’ can refer either to ‘freedom’, as in freedom from daily troubles like angry creditors or moody spouses, or to ultimate liberation. The beautiful śabdālaṇkāra is self-evident: ‘śakuni-śakuna’ ‘vakti mukti-prasaktim’. So what’s with this bird and these unspoken aspirations? Read on!

Context

Today’s verse is taken from the enormous āśu corpus (impromptu verses) of Śatāvadhāni Dr. R. Ganesh. As mentioned before in the Romanthās, Dr. Ganesh has been a highly energetic patron of our humble efforts right from the first edition, and we thought it fitting to express our gratefulness by dedicating the landmark 50th edition to his works. Quite naturally, it is impossible for us to write about him in a detached, academic fashion, especially when he has been an inspiration for us to take up Sanskrit studies in earnest (one result of which has been Sadāsvāda); our confidence in bringing forth this edition stems from a conviction that even in our state of passionate admiration, we are far from overestimating his prolific talents. :-)

Ganesh is known to most people as an avadhāni; an avadhāna is a kind of literary olympic event, where the performer’s skills are brought forth and challenged in composing verses, solving constrained-writing problems, lateral thinking, and demonstrating mastery over the classical literary canon. A great avadhāni, in turn, composes not mere versified thoughts or merely fit-for-purpose solutions, but poetry; his lateral thinking opens up avenues of thought in us, and the demonstration of his mastery inspires us to commune with the canon ourselves. These are self-evident to anyone who has attended one of Ganesh’s performances. Here is a general description of an avadhana, and here is a record of one particular avadhana by Ganesh.

Performing an avadhāna, in terms of what it demands in the way of the long-term accumulation of skills, experience and knowledge, is perhaps equivalent to publishing multiple scholarly works, giving a music or dance recital at the national stage or higher, or successfully completing the construction of an important monument starting from a blank sheet. In that context, we will leave the gentle reader with the fact that Ganesh recently completed his nine-hundred-and-ninetieth aṣṭāvadhāna (8 simultaneous challengers), and has four Śatāvadhānas (one hundred simultaneous challengers) under his belt. :-)

Indeed, it would even be fair to say that Ganesh has reinvented the several-hundred-year-old art of avadhāna itself, in all of its facets from highbrow scholarship to ‘mass appeal’; for example, it was he who introduced the very scholarly citrakāvya (poetry in constrained writing) as a regular challenge in avadhānas, being the first to show that it is possible to compose Citrakāvya in a contest setting on stage. At the same time, his generous attention to the entertainment portion is also very unique: some avadhānas appear adequate and scholarly in paper archives, but in real time actually have the feel of a classroom when a random student has just been asked to recite the multiplication tables of 17 backwards as punishment. Ganesh’s avadhānas, in contrast, have so much of mirth and laughter that they’d resemble the joyous, chaotic classroom before the teacher stepped in and meted out that penance. :-) The art of Avadhāna herself would nod in agreement if we described her transformation under Ganesh’s influence with Bāṇabhaṭṭa’s words at the end of his Śukanāsopadeśa:

…प्रक्षालिता इव, उन्मीलिता इव, स्वच्छीकृता इव, निर्मृष्टा इव, अभिषिक्ता इव, अभिलिप्ता इव, अलङ्कृता इव, पवित्रीकृता इव, उद्भासिता इव…

…prakṣālitā iva, unmīlitā iva, svacchīkṛtā iva, nirmṛṣṭā iva, abhiṣiktā iva, abhiliptā iva, alaṅkṛtā iva, pavitrīkṛtā iva, udbhāsitā iva…

[The art of avadhāna was] “..as if bathed, as if brought forth anew, as if cleansed, as if purified, as if enthroned, as if anointed, as if decorated, as if made sacred, as if brightened…” :-)

Many Kannada-speaking folks also know him through his lectures at various venues, such as the Gokhale Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA). These lectures are works of art in their own right, mixing erudition, wit and oratory in an incomparable form. Even a cursory glance at the range of topics would reveal another remarkable fact about Ganesh’s scholarship: not only does it have a firm foundation in Sanskrit and Indian thought, but freely envelopes and enjoys Western thought as well. References to Homer, Shakespeare and Dante flow as freely, and as heartily, as those to Kālidāsa, Bhartṛhari and Gangādevi; the allusions to Chandas-śāstra are made with the same legerdemain as those to the principles of modern metallurgy (Ganesh holds graduate degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Metallurgy/Materials Science); and finally, one need have no concern that such erudition might make the tone very academic and ivory-towerish: every talk is alive and suffused with relations to current affairs, be it a poke at a politician’s foreign-made wig that is the topic du jour on Page 3, or an ancient Sanskrit joke that accurately describes a film-star’s domestic antics.

Speaking personally, we would not even be approaching the frontiers of modesty if we said that a major portion of Sadāsvāda is but an echo of Ganesh’s masterly lectures, reflected off our own still-developing sensibilities, learning and experiences. In our minds, he would be a worthy subject of a verse spoken by Nīlakaṇṭha Dīkṣita about Appayya Dīkṣita:

यं विद्म इति यद्ग्रन्थान् अभ्यास्यामो ऽखिलान् इति ।

यस्य शिष्याः स्म इति च श्लाघन्ते स्वं विपश्चितः ॥

yaṃ vidma iti yadgranthān abhyāsyāmo ‘khilān iti |

yasya śiṣyāḥ sma iti ca ślāghante svaṃ vipaścitaḥ ||

‘ “I know him!” “I’ve read all his books!” “I was his student!” – [He is] the man in terms of whom scholars praise themselves.’

On reading all this, it may appear to a casual observer that an in-born giftedness is at play here; while there is certainly some of that, a short conversation with Ganesh will displace one’s wonder at his achievements from ‘inscrutable genius’ to ‘inscrutable energy’. The sheer amount of plain old hard work that has gone into developing his erudition is best understood by listing the sources which he has cited with extensive quotations in his works:

All of the Vedas, Vedāngas and Upaniṣads, with all famous commentaries like the ones by Sāyana (adds up to several hundred thousand verses); all Dharmaśāstra literature, from Yājnavalkya to Dr. P. V. Kāṇe, covering several hundred thousand pages.
All of the Rāmāyaṇa, the Mahābharata, the Bhāgavata and the 18 purāṇas (500,000+ verses).
All of the classical Sanskrit canon starting from Aśvaghoṣa to Jagannātha (100+ works total, several thousand times as many verses) and all modern Sanskrit poets like Sridhar Bhaskar Warnekar.
An expertise that far surpasses mother-tongue-level familiarity with Kannada and Telugu, to the point of performing several avadhānas in them. This, built up by reading all of the Old Kannada, Middle Kannada (100+ major works) and Modern Kannada (1000+ works) canon; likewise with Telugu, covering all major literature of 1000+ years.
Tamil Sangam literature and later works, modern Hindi literature and Bengali literature.
A major portion of the Western classical literary canon: all of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides; all of Virgil and Ovid; all of Dante, Milton and Shakespeare
…

Now then, there’s the matter of his many scholarly lectures (with performances) on Carnatic and Hindustani music; writing, directing and acting in tens of plays; the classes he teaches on Bharatanātyam performance; his vast array of pencil drawings, paintings and mud sculptures; his cooking recipes specializing in South Indian thalis, …at this point, it is exigent that we make an allowance for the parvitude of our energies :-), by slightly modifying a famous Kālidāsa verse:

महिमानं यद् उत्कीर्त्य तस्य संह्रियते वचः ।

श्रमेण तद् अशक्त्या वा न गुणानाम् इयत्तया ॥

mahimānaṃ yad utkīrtya tasya saṃhriyate vacaḥ |

śrameṇa tad aśaktyā vā na guṇānām iyattayā ||

“Our speechlessness when it comes to recounting his achievements arises from incapacity on our part, not their limitedness.” :-)

In spite of having achieved such towering heights, Ganesh remains humble and modest to a fault; not only is he absolutely accessible to anyone at all, he makes an active effort at getting to know people who are interested in the classical arts and mentoring them. One is reminded of Sir MV, who used to scour the newspapers in Mysore daily for articles by sincere and passionate journalists whom he would later go on to mentor. Indeed, unstructured, free-flowing time is the greatest gift an expert can give a novice.

On our part, easily the single greatest learning from him has been simply how much is possible for one man to know. Remember the time when we were kids, when we looked at the textbooks that our elder cousins were reading, and went wide-eyed at how big they were? This stopped about the time we went to college, and some unconscious, unspoken norms were set: a textbook about yea big for a one semester course, of which maybe 10% would actually be read and may be 1% of the exercises solved; a John Grisham-sized novel for a train ride home; maybe 4-5 Sanskrit verses from the Raghuvaṃśa “when time permits” on a weekend. Witnessing one avadhāna of Ganesh completely blew away these unconscious constraints, and opened up new perspectives on what we could do.

Coming now to a sampling of Ganesh’s work, his most distinct, signature poetry is āśu-kavita, impromptu poetry. We quickly see that many oceans of learning have needed to be boiled for these impromptu dewdrops to be formed. Let us consider a few examples. During one of his Śatāvadhānas, he was asked to compose onstage a few verses on some of his favourite deities. He instantly composed this one on Krishna:

विस्रब्धं नवनीतम् आशु सुचिरं हृत्वा क्व लीये द्रुतम्

माता हन्त समस्त-गोपन-विधीन् जानाति बृन्दावने ।

इत्थं कृष्ण वृथा विषीदितम् अलं मत्कां मुदा हृद्गुहाम्

अज्ञानान्ध-तमो-वृतां विश सकृत् सर्वैः अवेद्यो भव ॥

visrabdhaṃ navanītam āśu suciraṃ hṛtvā kva līye drutam

mātā hanta samasta-gopana-vidhīn jānāti bṛndāvane |

itthaṃ kṛṣṇa vṛthā viṣīditam alaṃ matkāṃ mudā hṛdguhām

ajñānāndha-tamo-vṛtāṃ viśa sakṛt sarvaiḥ avedyo bhava ||

“Where will you hide, O Krishna, after stealing butter?

Your mom knows all your usual tricks and hiding places.

Come into my heart –

filled with the darkness of ignorance, no one can find you there!”

Note the deep dhvani offered by the last line – “no one can find you there”. This may include the speaker, as well, making an allusion to the idea that we are separated from God only by our ignorance. This verse is epic-class, and worthy of mention among the very best gems of Sanskrit. It hits all the right notes perfectly – humility, devotion, simple cleverness in allusion, and a strange quality that seems to echo across Sanskrit literature. This verse resembles, but is distinct from, a verse by Śankarācārya (mā gaccha tvam itastato giriśa bho…) and several in the famed Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta. Why, this could be easily added to the Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta and no one could tell the difference. :-)

In another instance, he was asked to describe some of his favourite poets. He composed this on the spot:

अस्तं जगाम रविः आङ्ग्ल-विनिर्जितेषु

देशेषु तद्-बल-पराक्रमवत्-क्रमेण ।

अस्तं प्रयाति न कदाचन शेक्स्पियर् ते

कीर्तीन्दुकान्तिः अमला भुवनत्रयेऽपि ॥

astaṃ jagāma raviḥ āṅgla-vinirjiteṣu

deśeṣu tad-bala-parākramavat-krameṇa |

astaṃ prayāti na kadācana Shakespeare te

kīrtīndukāntiḥ amalā bhuvanatraye’pi ||

“The sun eventually did set on the British empire,

following its fortunes downard.

But O Shakespeare, the moon of your Fame

shall always glow resplendent!”

There’s a subtle hint also at play here – the sun is powerful, but ‘utilitarian’. One looks at the sun only as important or useful. But the moon is almost entirely associated with beauty. The contrast between the transient glories of the powerful, worldly Empire sun and the permanent coolness and beauty of Shakespeare’s Fame moon is very apt.

This also reminds us of a famous saying of Horace – Rome conquered Greece by her armies, but the captive captured the fierce conqueror by her culture. How widely this applies, even today!

When composing poetry during routine daily activities like taking a bus ride or walking in the market, Ganesh delights in describing objects which many would refuse to even accept as proper poetic subject matter. For example, once he was walking with a friend and saw a roadside tourist horse-ride owner preparing to saddle his horse. The friend, who was also a poet, asked him, “Can you write a verse about that saddle? It is one of the most utilitarian, unaesthetic and unpoetic things imaginable”. Ganesh immediately came up with this:

तावन् मात्रं तव खलु सुखं पारसीकाश्व-पृष्ठे

तिष्ठामीति भ्रमणरसतापूर्ण! पर्याण! यावत् ।

धाटीदृप्तो लटभ-सुभटो वारवाणी कृपाणी

प्लुत्यारुह्य त्वदुपरि पुरो यात्यसह्यातिभारः ॥

tāvan mātraṃ tava khalu sukhaṃ pārasīkāśva-pṛṣṭhe

tiṣṭhāmīti bhramaṇa-rasatā-pūrṇa! paryāṇa! yāvat |

dhāṭīdṛpto laṭabha-subhaṭo vāravāṇī kṛpāṇī

plutyāruhya tvadupari puro yātyasahyātibhāraḥ ||

“O Saddle! Your joy at sitting on a fine Arabian horse,

proud that you’re going around on a tour as a lord,

will last only till a rider, handsome and bedecked with armor,

jumps on you and crushes you under his weight.”

This is an anyokti (allegory) about power. The saddle represents those who hanker for positions of power, lusting for the comforts it brings. But if they ever manage to get power, they quickly learn that even a king is a puppet, controlled by forces far stronger than what appeared to be associated with the throne when looking from below it. There’s insult added to injury here: the rider is ‘handsome’ (either for real or by perception), so people won’t even see the saddle supporting his heft in agony.

In another instance, Ganesh saw a roadside astrologer with a caged parrot predicting the fortunes of passers-by. He instantly composed this verse:

शीर्यत्-पक्षो गलित-मसृण-स्वच्छ-कान्तिः विपुच्छो

हीनाहारो बहुपरिमिते पञ्जरे पञ्जरीकः ।

मिथ्या-कार्तान्तिक-वश-गतो राजकीरो जनेभ्यो

रथ्या-पार्श्वे शकुनि-शकुनं वक्ति मुक्ति-प्रसक्तिम् ॥

śīryat-pakṣo galita-masṛṇa-svaccha-kāntiḥ vipuccho

hīnāhāro bahuparimite pañjare pañjarīkaḥ |

mithyā-kārtāntika-vaśa-gato rājakīro janebhyo

rathyā-pārśve śakuni-śakunaṃ vakti mukti-prasaktim ||

“Its wings weakened, its smooth plumage withering, its tail broken,

cold and hungry, and stuck in a tiny cage,

under the cruel ownership of fake astrologer, the poor parrot

speaks of good omens and freedom (mukti) to passers-by.”

A tragic allegory, but brilliantly true! Sometimes, we’re the passers-by, looking for hope, inspiration and wisdom from wholly meaningless sources. Books like “How to make money from the stock market and retire in 2 years” are roaring successes every year, and their authors flaunt their credentials by claiming they are “financial strategy authors for 30+ years”. If one could retire in 2 years by following the book’s principles, why don’t the authors enjoy the fruits of their own well-established genius? :-) Sometimes though, we’re the parrot, completely helpless and even unaware of the incongruities of our own position. We see the consequences of our choices and options only very dimly, and can only go by the pokes and commands that our immediate masters give us, whoever they be – a boss, a paycheque, a dream or an illness. And sometimes, we’re the fake astrologer, using someone and deceiving someone else. In his effulgently brilliant talk titled “The Uniqueness of Humans”, Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky mentions this:

“….Let me give you an example of a way in which humans can damage each other of which the world has never seen the likes of before.

Every day, outside of Las Vegas, there are people who get up in the morning and they are rushing off to work, and their spouse reminds them to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home, and they say goodbye to their kids, and they rush out, and they get caught in traffic, and they get all anxious they’re gonna be late at work, and they luck out and get a good parking spot, and they get to work and sit down in a flight simulator, and what they spend the day doing is operating a drone bomber in Iraq that drops bombs and kills people. People sitting there, spending their work days operating drone bombers in the other side of the world. And at the end of the day, having finished your day doing that, you get up, and rush off, because you wanna be there for your daughter’s ballet performance and you hug her afterward, and you can’t believe it’s possible to love someone that much, and the next day you sit in this dark room and kill people on the other side of the planet. And there’s nothing out there in the animal world that has a precedent for that.”

A great poet’s words seem to find echoes everywhere!

Thought for today

One of Ganesh’s own aspirational verses describes his humility best:

न जानामीति वक्तुं मे देहि श्रद्धां च धीरताम् ।

जानामि चेत्यपि प्रोक्तुम् नम्रतां च कृतज्ञताम् ॥

na jānāmīti vaktuṃ me dehi śraddhāṃ ca dhīratām |

jānāmi cetyapi proktum namratāṃ ca kṛtajñatām ||

“Please grant me the courage and faith to say, ‘I don’t know’.

And humility and gratitude to go with the occasions I’m able to say, ‘I know this’ ”

With the first adjectives in both lines, the verse is good; the second adjective takes it to greatness. Courage to say ‘I don’t know’ is a very valuable trait; but the poet also asks for faith, faith that being honest about one’s ignorance will be treated gently and positively. Similarly, humility adjoining knowledge is a long-praised trait; but the poet also wishes for gratitude, because he doesn’t want to forget that he is but a link in a long chain of goodwill.

Please join the Google Group to subscribe to these (~ weekly) postings: https://groups.google.com/group/sadaswada/subscribe?hl=en