[[Mohan K.V 2014-05-20, 23:42:26 Source]]
सदास्वादरोमन्थः
Dear readers,
We reached the milestone of 60 posts last week, and thank you for your continued support. There were some delays in the last few editions owing to personal exigencies, but we should be back on track.
First, a blast from the past! Several chapters ago, we had featured a funny verse about a naughty mendicant:
“भिक्षो मांस-विषेवणं प्रकुरुषे?” “किं तेन मद्यम् विना!”
“मद्यं चापि तव-प्रियं?” “प्रियम् अहो वेश्याङ्गनाभिः सह!”
“वेश्या द्रव्य-रुचिः; कुतस् तव धनं?” “द्यूतेन चौर्येण वा”
“चौर्य-द्यूत-परिग्रहोऽपि भवता?” “भ्रष्टस्य कान्या गतिः?”
“bhikṣo māṃsa-viṣevaṇaṃ prakuruṣe?” “kiṃ tena madyam vinā!”
“madyaṃ cāpi tava-priyaṃ?” “priyam aho veśyāṅganābhiḥ saha!”
“veśyā dravya-ruciḥ; kutas tava dhanaṃ?” “dyūtena cauryeṇa vā”
“caurya-dyūta-parigraho’pi bhavatā?” “bhraṣṭasya kānyā gatiḥ?”
“Monk, are you eating meat?!” “Yes, but what fun is it without wine?”
“What?! You’ve developed a drinking habit as well?!” “Yes, though I’d really like some courtesans to come as well.”
“Where do you get the money for this?!” “Oh well, by gambling or theft…”
“My God! You’re into those as well?” “What else do you expect from a depraved man?”
It turns out, this ancient verse was adapted into a comedy scene in the hit movie Sholay! Here is Jai trying to get his friend Veeru into Mausi’s good books: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKA01mE2K4Y (Here is a nice translation with some notes: http://www.epw.in/blog/vinayak-razdan/sholay-comic-causation.html )
Coming to recent events, in Chapter 57 on the Meghadūta, we had translated the highlight line as follows:
स्वल्पी-भूते सुचरित-फले स्वर्गिणां गां गतानां /
शेषैः पुण्यैर् हृतम् इव दिवः कान्तिमत् खण्डम् एकम्
svalpī-bhūte sucarita-phale svargiṇāṃ gāṃ gatānāṃ /
śeṣaiḥ puṇyair hṛtam iva divaḥ kāntimat khaṇḍam ekam
“When those in heaven start running low on puṇya, this is the place they choose to retire to, because it’s almost a piece of heaven itself!”. Śatāvadhāni Dr. R. Ganesh noted this latter half can be better translated as, “this is the place they choose to retire to, as if taking a piece of heaven itself with them”. What a beautiful way to say that Ujjain was like heaven!
In the introduction, we had compared a Sanskrit metre to a musical instrument, in the kind of artistry that is possible in it. We think you might enjoy this presentation of the invention of a real musical instrument, and the challenges involved in including it in a work of art: http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2341.htm
In the same edition, several readers mentioned that the verse pradyotasya priyaduhitaraṃ is not considered part of the canonical Meghadūta by some scholars. Indeed, there is considerable debate on what exactly makes up a ‘critical’ edition, and we shall leave that issue to the domain of scholars.
We also wanted to bring your attention to a very thoughtful gesture – the Indian Government released a commemorative stamp on the Meghadūta in 1960:
One can imagine a very fulfilling derivative of the Meghadūta being about the journey of a love letter in the days of post. One could talk about the endless number of drafts discarded in the hope of getting the letter just perfect; the hours of imagination going into choosing the all-important salutation and closing lines; and all the emotions that go around the senders mind when he finally affixes the stamp (perhaps this very one!) and drops it into the postbox!
One of the unfortunate consequences of the bald efficiency of modernity is that opportunities to carve in delightful spandrels like this one are lost. Or perhaps we’re being too negative here; can you think of ways to reference the Meghaduta in our daily lives?
Moving on, in the Parting Thought for that chapter, we had presented a verse that succinctly echoes the disdain Sanskrit poets held towards dependence. The poet was saying “…O Shame, turn away for a minute. O Thirst, come to the fore. All so that I, vile sinner that I am, can bring myself to meekly say to the rich man that wretched word, ‘Give’”. We wonder how this attitude would fare in today’s world, where fundraising is possibly the single most important activity in any project. Far from being shameful, it is widely regarded as a very valuable skill, and everyone is advised to learn at least its basics – who to ask, how to effectively put your message across, how to ignore individual failures and concentrate on large numbers of attempts, etc.
Now granted, the poet was speaking of asking an actual person in front him, probably someone he knew and held in contempt; even the most seasoned fundraiser would squirm if he had to personally ask his college crush for help; why, the entire premise of Breaking Bad was a man who wouldn’t accept anything if it was mixed with the least shred pity; all that is granted.
But we still wonder if there’s an element of the poet’s mindset which is looking at things ‘wrongly’. Virtually the entirety of the reluctance to ask is internal. The rich man’s sneering expressions or pointed words (if they ever come to be) can be forgotten just like we forget so many things, but the internal fire of shame and humiliation keeps them alive. What purpose is that shame serving, really? It’s easy to praise it as a virtue just because it exists and is hard to get rid of; but it’s clear that it’s certainly not helping the poet in any way, and is even preventing the rich man from getting an opportunity to help. There’s an insightful idea called the Asker/Guesser duality:
We are raised, the theory runs, in one of two cultures. In Ask culture, people grow up believing they can ask for anything – a favour, a pay rise – fully realising the answer may be no. In Guess culture, by contrast, you avoid “putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes… A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.”
Neither’s “wrong”, but when an Asker meets a Guesser, unpleasantness results. An Asker won’t think it’s rude to request two weeks in your spare room, but a Guess culture person will hear it as presumptuous and resent the agony involved in saying no. Your boss, asking for a project to be finished early, may be an overdemanding boor – or just an Asker, who’s assuming you might decline. If you’re a Guesser, you’ll hear it as an expectation. This is a spectrum, not a dichotomy, and it explains cross-cultural awkwardnesses, too: Brits and Americans get discombobulated doing business in Japan, because it’s a Guess culture, yet experience Russians as rude, because they’re diehard Askers.
Self-help seeks to make us all Askers, training us to both ask and refuse with relish;
Malcolm Gladwell touches upon this as well in his book Outliers, in a chapter titled The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes. His theories may not quite hold water, but the anecdotes make for fascinating reading. Anything to make sense of this crazy world and our crazy selves!
Moving on, we received many compliments about Chapter 58 on the first half of Bāṇa’s famed Śukanāsopadeśa; many thanks for writing back. Chapters 58 and 59 have been the longest in Sadāsvāda’s history, and we’re glad they were received well. As we mentioned there, our own journey into appreciating Sanskrit poetry started with Bāṇa, and it was profoundly satisfying to write about him after all this time.
About a century ago, the Śukanāsopadeśa in its full form was part of the text for the BA Sanskrit course. This offers an interesting perspective into how degrees become diluted over time. It is unquestionably true that a BA today by itself means very much lesser than a BA from a hundred years ago – be it in terms of effort required, the standards expected, or in what can be inferred about the holder; but this ‘dilution’ is offset by vastly improved awareness and accessibility. A person who’s never heard of Bāṇa before, but has the right aptitude, can today access in a few seconds what would have taken months just decades ago. In the relentless march of progress, it appears that individual capacity constantly decreases, but individual productivity constantly rises.
Moving on, Bāṇa begins his oration with the words, ‘tāta Candrāpīḍa’. This is best translated into English as ‘My dear Candrāpīḍa’, but tāta literally means ‘father’. Many South Indian languages have retained this affectionate mode of address to this day – it’s perfectly normal to hear an elder cajole a child with the words, ‘noḍappa, neenu jaaṇa alva?’ or ‘chooḍu nana’ or ‘pārappa’. Curiously, this practice has dropped out in Hindi, though a weak variant using ‘Baba’ is used in some cases! We’d be very curious to know what other languages still retain it.
Bāṇa concludes the first half by saying, [Lakṣmī] ‘ālekhyagatā api calati’ ‘Even when drawn in a picture she moves away’. A wholly new angle on this line is provided by observing the market for art. Here is a fascinating account of how the art world values its prizes: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-13/reviews/on-sothebys/ Among other things, we learn that the ‘provenance’ of a piece of art – who has owned it before – is far more important than what’s in it. Given the overwhelming reliance on the fickle fashions of the elite, it is no wonder most of us can make neither head nor tail of most modern art!
Prof. Pramod Viswanath made a very interesting comment on the Lakṣmī-svabhāva-varṇanā – he asked, does it not seem that in the last few decades, there appears to be a truce between Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī in the developed world? In particular, in a highly meritocratic society like the US, investing in Sarasvatī inexorably seems to attract Lakṣmī as well.
While certainly acknowledging this observation, we think that one of the effects of the modern world has been a re-definition of roles for Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī. In Bāṇa’s mind, and indeed in pretty much all of Sanskrit literature, time is cyclical. Nothing fundamentally new was expected. Sons did as the fathers before them and their lives had a high degree of similarity. Social roles were static – that is to say, what people could become was common knowledge, just who became what was the degree of freedom. In a village there were the farmers, the teachers, the poets, the headmen, the merchants… occupations that have been known forever. This is why when Bhallaṭa writes his allegories, they can work for any period, at any time before the industrial revolution. Ditto with the Pañcatantra. In such an ecosystem, the paths of Lakṣṃī and Sarasvatī are very different, and indeed opposed.
In sharp contrast to this, the time after the industrial revolution has been defined by creative destruction. Only in very few fields, like teaching, has there been any semblance of stability and continuity. Sons live in completely different worlds than their fathers. Almost nothing in their lives is similar – not their pastimes, not their hobbies, not what they study, not even what they fall sick with. Time is imagined to be an arrow pointing toward progress. In such a scenario, Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī appear to have exchanged many qualities! We had written sometime ago that we have developed and demonstrated systems where money is no longer a zero-sum game, and vyāpāro is no longer necessarily drohacintanaṃ; A prudent investment in a developed country is likely to yield rich dividends over time, with very little chance of catastrophe. The best universities of the world also boast of the highest endowments, carefully nurtured for decades or even centuries. In contrast, it is very hard to decide what to direct one’s education in – most ‘knowledge’ of 20 years ago is today almost completely useless. How do we reconcile this change with the fact that the Śukanāsopadeśa still appeals to us in a deep, moving way?
In Chapter 59, which focused on the ‘second half’ of the Śukanāsopadeśa on the antics of those in power, one of the metaphors Bāṇa had used was:
चामर-पवनैः इव अपह्रियते सत्यवादिता,
cāmara-pavanaiḥ iva apahriyate satyavāditā,
“their inclination towards the Truth is blown away as if by the winds of the cāmara fans, [cāmaras are wide fans made from a yak’s tail hair, again a very ancient symbol of royalty]”
‘Wide fans’ is a mistake – cāmaras are actually fly whisks, used to drive away insects. We were curious as to their origin, and asked Śatāvadhāni Dr. R. Ganesh about it. Why would anyone take the trouble of finding a yak, shaving its hair and making a fly whisk out of it, and how in the world did it become a symbol of royalty of all things? He gave an answer that was very comforting to our modern ears – just because it’s rare! The combination of rarity (at one point in time, at least) and the amazing power of precedent have ensured that even today, cāmaras play a role in ritual settings, even though much simpler materials exist!
While on the topic of royal coronations, we came across an interesting book that detailed the procedure for the coronation of Śivāji: https://archive.org/details/ShriRajyabhishekPrayog
Later in the chapter, we had mentioned that Bāṇa in all his denouncements was still at worst a realist, and linked to some contemporary stories. The Maharajas of our Princely States were no better than our politicians today: some edifying reads are this 2003 Tribune article on the lavish weddings of royal dogs:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2003/20030524/windows/main2.htm
A fascinating article on the negative and positive acts of the Maharajas by Prof. Mark Wahlgren Summers of the University of Kentucky:
http://www.uky.edu/~msumm2/empire/1890Maharajas.pdf
An article in the April 1947 edition of Life Magazine:
http://books.google.com/books?id=ck0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA114#v=onepage&q&f=false – The tone of the American writer, the advertisements, the ingenious products – it looks like nothing has changed in seven decades in America, whereas India is unrecognizable from that time!
The countably few good Maharajas we had, like Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV and Sayaji Rao Gaekwad, stand out in sharp relief!
Even though we took over 30 pages to cover the oration, we are certain that we missed a number of features that the poet intended, like puns, cultural references and high-level similarities. We can be sure that even if we read it a hundred times, there’ll be something we’d have missed – that is the density of Bāṇa’s writing. We are reminded of a verse by Bhallaṭa:
बद्धा यद् अर्पण-रसेन विमर्द-पूर्वम्
अर्थान् कथं झट्-इति तान् प्रकृतान् न दद्युः ।
चौरा इवाति-मृदवो महतां कवीनाम्
अर्थान्तराण्यपि हठाद् वितरन्ति शब्दाः ॥
baddhā yad arpaṇa-rasena vimarda-pūrvam
arthān kathaṃ jhaṭ-iti tān prakṛtān na dadyuḥ |
caurā iva ati-mṛdavo mahatāṃ kavīnām
arthāntarāṇi api haṭhād vitaranti śabdāḥ ||
“How will they give up their well-concealed goods easily without a struggle! The words of great poets are like clever thieves – when you force them the right way, they’ll not only reveal their stash, they’ll also lead you others you didn’t even suspect!”
Bhallaṭa makes a pun on ‘artha’ here – meaning ‘wealth’ or ‘goods’ when it comes to thieves, but ‘meaning’ when it comes to poets’ words.
In chapter 60, we had featured a muktaka on selfless love. We had not given much of an introduction to the muktaka genre there, but we can recall one from an earlier chapter:
Given Sanskrit’s enormous literary history, verses like these abound, with neither a name tag nor any context, just concentrated capsules of a poet’s flash of creativity floating quietly in the floods of time. No one has any idea when they were written – any guess before the first reference is fair game; no idea of the social customs of the time; no idea if it was written on a war-front, or a bucolic countryside; no idea if gratefully written with a full belly in a strong, prosperous kingdom, or as a means to divert one’s mind from disappointments; no idea if it was intended it as a crowning jewel of a longer arc, now lost. All that stands is a deft use of Form, which provides just enough of a frame for the poem to make sense and shine.
We had mentioned that one of the key features of that chapter’s verse was the deft use of anaphora, a figure of speech involving repetition. One of the most rousing examples of its usage in English is Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech; it appears in many sections of the speech, but the finale takes the cake:
http://youtu.be/smEqnnklfYs?t=15m28s
And this will be the day – this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!
We’d be very keen to hear from you about examples of inspiring speeches by Indian leaders.
Moving on, in chapter 60 on the muktaka, we had mentioned three verses known by their signatures – ‘kālāya tasmai namaḥ’, ‘satyaṃ paraṃ dhīmahi’, ‘premṇā calaṃ mañjulaṃ’. We have discussed the first in great detail; the second is the signature of the first verse of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam:
जन्माद्यस्य यतो ऽन्वयाद् इतरतश् चार्थेष्वभिज्ञः स्वराट्
तेने ब्रह्म हृदा य आदिकवये मुह्यन्ति यत् सूरयः ।
तेजोवारिमृदां यथा विनिमयो यत्र त्रिसर्गो ऽमृषा
धाम्ना स्वेन सदा निरस्तकुहकं सत्यं परं धीमहि ॥
janmād yasya yato anvayād itarataḥ cā artheṣu abhijñaḥ svarāṭ
tene brahma hṛdā yaḥ ādikavaye muhyanti yat sūrayaḥ |
tejovārimṛdāṃ yathā vinimayo yatra trisargo ‘mṛṣā
dhāmnā svena sadā nirastakuhakaṃ satyaṃ paraṃ dhīmahi ||
“That from which all this is created, sustained, and destroyed; That which is absolutely independent;
that which was the first teacher to the Creator himself; that which eludes even the wise;
that in whom this threefold creation attains reality,
that which is forever free of illusion – let us meditate on that superior Truth”
It is always fascinating what a poet chooses as the first verse of his work. It’s another plane altogether when the poet is Vyāsa, and the work one of the most studied philosophical treatises! Of course, every syllable of this verse has been analyzed so many times that it reminds us of a lovely short story by Isaac Asimov, “The Immortal Bard”:
http://www.angelfire.com/weird/ektomage/otherwriting/bard.html
The third is a sublimely beautiful verse from Līlāśuka’s Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛtam; why, we might even hazard a suggestion that it is the most beautiful specimen of the whole work:
गोपालाजिर-कर्दमे विहरसे विप्राध्वरे लज्जसे
ब्रूषे गोकुल-हुङ्कृतैः स्तुतिशतैर्मौनम् विधत्से विदाम् ।
दास्यम् गोकुल-पुंश्चलीषु कुरुषे स्वाम्यम् न दान्तात्मसु
ज्ञातम् कृष्ण तवाङ्घ्रि-पङ्कज-युगम् प्रेम्णा चलम् मङ्जुलम् ॥ 2.83
gopālājira-kardame viharase viprādhvare lajjase
brūṣe gokula-huṅkṛtaiḥ stutiśatair maunam vidhatse vidām |
dāsyam gokula-puṃścalīṣu kuruṣe svāmyam na dāntātmasu
jñātam kṛṣṇa tavāṅghri-paṅkaja-yugam premṇā calam maṅjulam ||
“You delight in playing in the dirt with cowherds, but shirk from the chaste rituals of learned men;
you respond instantly to even the mooing of cows, but stay silent at a hundred scholarly praises;
you fall at the feet of the Gokula courtesans, but won’t accept the lordship of sages who have conquered their mind;
I know it all, Krishna – you are moved by love alone!”
Prof. Pramod Viswanath sent us a nice verse from the Mukunda-mālā, that resonated with the lead verse of chapter 60 from the Bhakti perspective:
नास्था धर्मे न वसु-निचये नैव कामोपभोगे
यद् यद् भव्यम् भवतु भगवन् पुर्व-कर्मानुरूपम् ।
एतत् प्रार्थ्यम् मम बहुमतम् जन्म-जन्मान्तरे ऽपि
त्वत्-पादाम्भोरुह-युग-गता निश्चला भक्तिर् अस्तु ||
nāsthā dharme na vasu-nicaye naiva kāmopabhoge
yad yad bhavyam bhavatu bhagavan purva-karmānurūpam |
etat prārthyam mama bahumatam janma-janmāntare ‘pi
tvat-pādāmbhoruha-yuga-gatā niścalā bhaktir astu ||
“I have no interest in righteousness; nor in earning money, nor in lust.
Let whatever that should happen take its course.
I have only one thing to wish for, in this birth and every other:
May I forever have this unwavering devotion towards you!”
Isn’t this kind of self-surrender the pinnacle of feeling safe with a person? Isn’t it the same hankering that leads novelists to wish via their characters,
But oh! the blessing it is to have a friend to whom one can speak fearlessly on any subject; with whom one’s deepest as well as one’s most foolish thoughts come out simply and safely. Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person – having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.
…Or is it not also the pinnacle of abdication, of abandoning the last vestiges of spirit, of vigor, of self-esteem, of pauruṣa, going against the foremost teaching of the Gīta, klaibyaṃ mā sma gamaḥ (“Do not yield to weakness”)?
As always, we welcome any thoughts, feedback and suggestions from you all. Please email us at kvm….@gmail.com and shree…@gmail.com
Parting Thought
Thinking again of the idea of a recent apparent truce between Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī, consider this famous verse from the Śṛṅgāra-prakāśa:
बुभुक्षितैर् व्याकरणं न भुज्यते
पिपासितैः काव्य-रसो न पीयते ।
न विद्यया केनचिद् उद्धृतं कुलं
हिरण्यम् एवार्जय निष्फलाः कलाः ॥
bubhukṣitair vyākaraṇaṃ na bhujyate
pipāsitaiḥ kāvya-raso na pīyate |
na vidyayā kenacid uddhṛtaṃ kulaṃ
hiraṇyam evārjaya niṣphalāḥ kalāḥ ||
“Hungry men can’t eat Grammars.
Thirsty men can’t drink the sweet nectar of poetry.
No one raised himself up just by learning something.
Earn money – everything else is useless”
The grammatically advanced form ‘bubhukṣu’ ‘those who wish to eat, i.e those who are hungry’ makes for a delicious irony in the first line.
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