[[Mohan K.V 2014-02-02, 00:42:20 Source]]
सदास्वादः
54
शेषस्येहोपकाराणां भवाम ऋणिनो वयम्
(śeṣasya iha upakārāṇāṃ bhavāmaḥ ṛṇino vayam)
Meaning
“And for the rest [of your helpful deeds], I will [forever] remain in debt”. bhavāmaḥ is actually in plural; it is quite common to see the ‘Royal We’ in Sanskrit.
Context
This phrase is from the Uttara-kāṇda of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa, in the chapter relating the farewell to the monkey army and other allies after the successful war. The Uttara-kāṇḍa has long been infamous for several elements that don’t gel with the rest of the work, and it is widely believed that it was a later addition. What is a modern reader to do when faced with the challenge of accommodating such inharmonious portions of an epic, a widely revered one at that? For sure, it has to be something with which one can make peace with oneself — after all, as Kālidāsa has Duṣyanta say in the Abhijñāna-śākuntalaṃ, सतां हि सन्देह-पदेषु वस्तुषु प्रमाणम् अन्तःकरण-प्रवृत्तयः, satāṃ hi sandeha-padeṣu vastuṣu pramāṇam antaḥkaraṇa-pravṛttayaḥ, “When the noble-minded are in doubt, the inclinations of their hearts are the authority to decide”. We think the best way is to gratefully accept what is beautiful, and cherish it.
Consider this chapter’s phrase. It appears in some editions of the Uttarakāṇḍa (but not all) near the half-way point, when Rāma is settled in after his coronation, and bids farewell to the monkey army and other allies. Rāma gives lavish gifts to the monkey leaders like Sugrīva and Aṅgada, and expresses his gratitude to each and everyone who helped. He also bids farewell to Vibhīṣaṇa, and goads him to rule his subjects well — not a whit of desire for the hard-won ‘svarṇamayī’ Laṅkā is seen in Rāma here! Then, in a very poignant moment, it is Hanumān’s turn to say goodbye. He humbly says this:
स्नेहो मे परमो राजंस्त्वयि तिष्ठतु नित्यदा ।
भक्तिश् च नियता वीर भावो नान्यत्र गच्छतु ॥
sneho me paramo rājan tvayi tiṣṭhatu nityadā |
bhaktiḥ ca niyatā vīra bhāvo na anyatra gacchatu ||
“My King, may my friendship and devotion to you stay forever. May my love not be directed anywhere else.”
After all the help he’s given, after all the service he’s done, the only thing Hanumān thinks to ask at this moment is that their friendship should go on. As we read this on our electronic screens, gentle reader, we may be a thousand times more sophisticated than the poet who first scrawled this down on a palm leaf; but the power of simple goodwill and tenderness to move us to tears will ever remain the same.
Rāma of course is the perfect vessel in which to repose such selfless love; He says in turn,
एकैकस्योपकारस्य प्राणान् दास्यामि ते कपे ।
शेषस्येहोपकाराणां भवाम ऋणिनो वयम् ॥
ekaikasya upakārasya prāṇān dāsyāmi te kape |
śeṣasya iha upakārāṇāṃ bhavāmaḥ ṛṇino vayam ||
मद्-अङ्गे जीर्णतां यातु यत् त्वयोपकृतं कपे ।
नरः प्रत्युपकाराणामापत्स्वायति पात्रताम् ॥
mad-aṅge jīrṇatāṃ yātu yat tvayā upakṛtaṃ kape |
naraḥ pratyupakārāṇāmāpatsvāyati pātratām ||
“For a single one of your helpful deeds, my friend, I am ready to give my very life.
For all the rest of them, I am in your debt [forever].
Let that debt age with me, my friend.
Only in times of great need does one seek a return favour [and I don’t ever want to place you in a situation of needing to ask]”
What a profound sentiment! If a favor is returned, it is like an account settled, and the parties can walk away as equals. It is a mere transaction, just like the tens we conduct every day with nary a thought whether the other end is a man or machine. It is only when a debt is unpayable that a human relationship comes into play. David Graeber elaborates on this idea (among many others) at great length in his book Debt: The first 5000 years:
[Danish writer] Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition [with the Inuit in Greenland], he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
“Up in our country we are human! " said the hunter. “And since we are human we help each other. We don’t like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.”
The last line is something of an anthropological classic […] Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began “comparing power with power, measuring, calculating” and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.
What’s more, Rāma goes a step further: he doesn’t want Hanumān to be placed in a position where he needs to ask for a return favour! How would a mother feel if a child wanted to ‘pay her back’ for raising him, expecting that somehow that payment would resolve the relationship? How would she feel if she had to ask the son for something in return for raising him? Rāma recognizes that trying to repay Hanumān’s selfless love is equally abhorrent, and beautifully resolves it by lowering himself into eternal debt.
This verse, and in particular the phrase ‘भवाम ऋणिनो वयम्’, appears to have taken a life of its own. It shows up in innumerable contexts involving gratitude in virtually all regional languages. For many scholars, this verse is one of the defining keystones of the very character of Rāma (the other keystones include ‘सकृद् एव प्रपन्नाय…’, ‘मरणान्तानि वैराणि…’ and ‘अपि स्वर्णमयी लङ्का…’. The last one is not to be found in the original Rāmāyaṇa, but is very consistent with Rāma’s character, and is justly popular.). And finally, this verse is a shining example of an eternal ‘shared context’ that we have often spoken about — generation after generation of rasikas have delighted in the beauty of this verse, and a google search throws up many nostalgic memoirs of well-loved professors of the past era holding students in thrall when explaining it. The same verse that a grandfather was moved by is cherished by his grandson, and it forms a knot between vastly different life experiences; why, we think we can confidently say that if we built a time machine and went back in time to any point in India in the last couple thousand years, we could quickly find someone with whom we can have a hearty conversation about this verse, as if we’d known them all our life!
Parting Thought
It is a common religious belief that just uttering the name ‘Rāma’ will lead one salvation. There are many cute legends in local languages — for example, in Kannada, a famous story is about a dumb fool (Vālmīki himself in some versions!) who could only say the word ‘mara’ (‘tree’). A sage comes by and tries to teach him rāma-nāma-saṅkīrtana, but in vain. But the fool is determined, so he just repeatedly chants what he knows, and it turns out that the unintentional ‘Rāma’ sound in repetition (marā-marā-marā…) was sufficient to save him! We were delighted to find this equivalent in Sanskrit:
वने चरामो, वसु चाहरामो, नदीस् तरामो न भयं स्मरामः ।
इतीरयन्तो विपिने किराता मुक्तिं गता “राम”-पदानुषङ्गात् ॥
vane carāmo, vasu ca āharāmo, nadīḥ tarāmo na bhayaṃ smarāmaḥ |
iti īrayanto vipine kirātāḥ muktiṃ gatāḥ “rāma”-pada-anuṣaṅgāt ||
“ ‘We’ll go to the forests’, ‘We’ll bring back some stuff’, ‘We’ll cross rivers’, ‘We won’t be afraid’ —
just by their daily speech, which had the sound ‘rāma’ in it, the hunters of the forest attained salvation”
What can we say of Pāṇini’s benevolent foresight, which ensured that most descriptions of collective activities were marked by Rāma’s name? (‘-āmaḥ’ is a common first person plural suffix) :-)
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