[[Mohan K.V 2015-06-04, 07:43:41 Source]]
सदास्वादः
76
बलि-कर्म-कुसुमान्युद्धरन्त्याः सीतायाः करतलाद् इव संक्रान्तो
यत्र रागः स्फुरति लता-किसलयेषु
(bali-karma-kusumāni uddharantyāḥ sītāyāḥ karatalād iva saṃkrānto
yatra rāgaḥ sphurati latā-kisalayeṣu)
Meaning
“Where the tender shoots of creepers glisten with redness, transferred as if from the delicate hands of Sītā who was plucking flowers for worship”. The seeming nonchalance in placing the ‘iva’, the late arrival of ‘yatra’ which heightens the punch and the rich density of verbs even in one prose phrase – you know where we’re going!
Context
This chapter’s phrase is from Bāṇabhaṭṭa’s Kādambarī, which we had touched upon in one of our first chapters, as well as in greater detail later on [The Śukanāsopadeśa: Part 1, Part 2]. Bāṇabhaṭṭa’s style is so striking, intense and unique that we’re starting to believe that it needs a certain kind of madness to enjoy it. To those who possess that madness, his genius is joy incarnate; to those who don’t, it’s mind-bogglingly boring.
In the story, the parrot Vaisampāyana begins to tell its tale. It begins with a 4-page-long-sentence describing the Vindhyā forest – a description as dense with wordplay as its subject’s vegetation, as variegated in its branching thoughts as the forest’s streams and as rich in its sound and meaning as the mighty biome’s collective voice. After describing the forest, the parrot begins to describe sage Agastya’s āshrama:
तस्यां च दण्डकारण्यान्तःपाति सकल-भुवन-विख्यातम्, उत्पत्ति-क्षेत्रम् इव भगवतो धर्मस्य [… महामुनेः अगस्त्यस्य …] आश्रमपदम् आसीत् ।
tasyāṃ ca daṇḍakāraṇya-antaḥ-pāti sakala-bhuvana-vikhyātam, utpatti-kṣetram iva bhagavato dharmasya [… mahā-muneḥ agastyasya …] āśramapadam āsīt |
“In the interior of that Daṇḍakāraṇya forest, there was the āshrama of the famous sage Agastya, who was like the fount of Dharma incarnate, [… more describing sage Agastya, recalling many legends about him like his drinking the ocean, Vātāpi and Ilvala, crossing the Vindhya mountain, cursing Nahuṣa …]”
(One of the first ‘tricks’ we were taught about reading long sentences in Sanskrit was, “Look for the verb, then the subject”. Accordingly, we’ve colored the verb in orange and all words that refer to same thing in the same color (e.g. red for the ‘subject’). This should be obvious from the vibhakti pratyayas, but our poet’s flights of fancy are so wild that such seatbelts can help one from getting too dizzy!)
A sage’s āshrama seems to be held in the same reverence as we’d hold a great university campus today. Legends and puranic stories are inseparable from that reverence:
यत्र च दशरथ-वचनम् अनुपालयन् उत्सृष्ट-राज्यो दश-वदन-लक्ष्मी-विभ्रम-विरामो रामो महामुनिम् अगस्त्यम् अनुचरन् सह सीतया लक्ष्मणोपरचित-रुचिर-पर्ण-शालः पञ्चवट्यां कञ्चित्-कालं सुखम् उवास ।
yatra ca daśaratha-vacanam anupālayan utsṛṣṭa-rājyo daśa-vadana-lakṣmī-vibhrama-virāmo rāmo mahā-munim agastyam anucaran saha sītayā lakṣmaṇa-uparacita-rucira-parṇa-śālaḥ pañcavaṭyāṃ kañcit-kālaṃ sukham uvāsa |
“Where Rāma, following Daśaratha’s words and having discarded his kingship, [being fated to] end the frolic of Rāvaṇa’s fortunes, serving the great sage Agastya with Sītā for a short while, residing in a cozy reed hut built by Lakṣmaṇa in Pañcavaṭi, was happy for a short while.”
At its broadest reach, this line of thought demonstrates a quintessential Indian element, the living epic. There isn’t a village in the country that doesn’t have some monument or temple that (per the village’s legends) appears in the Rāmāyaṇa or the Mahābhārata. “Rāma rested here when searching for Sītā”; “Arjuna prayed to Narasimha on this rock”; “Hanumān did a penance here” – such umbilical cords to the epics play a central role in establishing the region’s identity. Bāṇa’s mind more than a millennium ago thinks in the same patterns!
Focusing on the line itself, the reference is not just a link to the past, it contains an insightful observation in itself: ‘kancit-kālaṃ sukham uvāsa’ : ‘was happy for a short while’. Rāma’s and Sītā’s time in exile was the last time they were happy together. Some commentators even mention that Sītā’s 12-odd years in the forest were the only happy ones in her life. Bāṇa obviously holds Rāma and Sītā very close to his heart, and there is a touch of deep poignancy in this line.
The artistry holds up even under a microscope: the sequence of compounds describing Rama seems haphazard as written text – starts in the past with Daśaratha, jumps into the future with Rāvaṇa, and brings up the reed hut as an afterthought. But in speech, and in particular emotional speech, its logic holds together. Daśaratha’s word was what got him there, and Rāvaṇa’s destruction is where he’ll go next. Both are events of turmoil and fate; as a minor detail, just like the reed hut, is that short period of peace. We can almost feel it in the cadence of the sentence, when the last couple phrases almost dangle loosely. The intricacy in constructing the bahuvrīhis, of course, is a joy we’ve come to expect of Bāṇa at every corner.
Bāṇa takes it further:
चिर-शून्ये ऽद्यापि यत्र शाखा-निलीन-निभृत-पाण्डु-कपोत-पङ्ग्क्तयो ऽमल-लग्न-तापसाग्निहोत्र-धूम-राजय इव लक्ष्यन्ते तरवः ।
cira-śūnye adya api yatra śākhā-nilīna-nibhṛta-pāṇḍu-kapota-paṅgktayo amala-lagna-tāpasa-agnihotra-dhūma-rājaya iva lakṣyante taravaḥ |
“Where even today, even though long deserted, the rows of grey pigeons sitting mark the tree branches like the lines of smoke from the holy yāgas of the āshrama’s monks.”
बलि-कर्म-कुसुमान्युद्धरन्त्याः सीतायाः करतलाद् इव संक्रान्तो यत्र रागः स्फुरति लता-किसलयेषु |
bali-karma-kusumāni uddharantyāḥ sītāyāḥ karatalād iva saṃkrānto yatra rāgaḥ sphurati latā-kisalayeṣu |
“Where the tender shoots of creepers glisten with redness, transferred as if from the delicate hands of Sītā who was plucking flowers for worship.”
This is the kind of reverence and dearness we reserve for the memory of a lover or a child. That Bāṇa – the bombastic, overly intellectual, will-he-ever-stop-talking Bāṇa – can write with such tenderness is itself a wonder! The description goes on in this vein for several more lines, centering around Rāma’s stay there.
Meanwhile, this style of describing a place seems to be evergreen: a popular song by Gulzar follows it almost to the dot. Happily, we think even Bāṇa would have approved of the first verse!
Parting Thought
Perhaps no other character in the Rāmāyaṇa played a more important role than Hanumān in sustaining the bond between Rāma and Sītā. Even if our lives’ story arcs are nowhere as dramatic, anyone who has been in love can vouch for the absolute necessity of a messenger. Circumstances come about where some of the most vital messages simply can’t be delivered one-on-one – every couple has its sea of separation, and needs a Hanumān to cross it. When one is found though, the delight in receiving a message from him (or her) is palpable:
कथय निपुणे कस्मिन् दृष्टः कथं नु कियच्चिरं
किम् इव लिखितं किं तेनोक्तं कदा स इहैष्यति ।
इति बहु-विध-प्रेमालाप-प्रपञ्चित-विस्तराः
प्रियतम-कथाः स्वल्पे ऽप्यर्थे प्रयान्ति न नष्टतां ॥
kathaya nipuṇe kasmin dṛṣṭaḥ kathaṃ nu kiyat ciraṃ
kim iva likhitaṃ kiṃ tena uktaṃ kadā saḥ iha eṣyati |
iti bahu-vidha-prema-ālāpa-prapañcita-vistarāḥ
priyatama-kathāḥ svalpe api arthe prayānti na naṣṭatāṃ ||
“‘Tell me my dear, where did you see him? How [did you find him]? How long did you talk to him?
What did he write? What did he say? When will he come?’
– thus, with their contents far extended by the endless curiosity of love,
stories of the beloved never cease, even though there might be nothing much to tell!”
The message itself might be trivial, but the insatiable curiosity surrounding it – the curiosity, the suspense, the excitement, the eagerness, the hope, the worry, the fear, the longing, in short, the love – takes it to another world.
Bāṇa himself is like this: his entire magnum opus could be written in 5 pages if the intent were to just tell the story; thank god for his madness, which made him stretch it across 500.
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