[[Mohan K.V 2016-04-10, 01:01:55 Source]]
सदास्वादः
81
कपयश् चेरुर् आर्तस्य रामस्येव मनोरथाः
(kapayaḥ ceruḥ ārtasya rāmasya iva manorathāḥ)
Meaning
“The monkeys searched [the forest for Sītā], like the anxious Rāma’s thoughts”. 80 chapters on, we feel comfortable in dropping any pretense of balance or restraint: this is the best upamā we have seen, in any work, in any language.
Context
This verse appears in the 12th sarga of the Raghuvaṃśa. Each verse in this sarga is a summary of many sargas of Vālmīki’s Rāmāyaṇa — and knowing Kālidāsa, it turns out to be a virtuoso’s playful masterclass in saṃksepa. One may very reasonably think that it is impossible to say anything more after Vālmīki, especially when given just a hundredth of the space; but of course, Kālidāsa laughs at such silly notions of reasonableness, and sits a daśāṅgula apart from anything our minds could imagine. In spite of the fixedness of the content, his genius—his unique fingerprint—is manifest in nearly every other verse. After reading so much original thought, we almost begin to wonder why we ever thought the story of Rāma was told already.
As if to pay homage to Vālmīki’s style, almost all verses are in the endearing śloka metre, with simple constructions that are intelligible immediately. Not a wasteful word, or even a wasted filler syllable (like ‘ca vai tu hi’), is to be found. Each line almost magically fits the metre with very little rearrangement, making metrical Sanskrit seem so natural and effortless. Smoothly flowing samāsas often occupy entire quarters, making the sentence syntax very simple, at times just four nouns!
Content-wise, most incidents in the Rāmāyaṇa are briefly mentioned, and summarized by Kālidāsa’s famous upamās (similes). The very best of the lot, in our view, is this one:
इतस् ततश् च वैदेहीम् अन्वेष्टुम् भर्तृ-चोदिताः ।
कपयश् चेरुर् आर्तस्य रामस्येव मनोरथाः ॥ 12.59
itaḥ tataḥ ca vaidehīm anveṣṭum bhartṛ-coditāḥ |
kapayaḥ ceruḥ ārtasya rāmasya iva manorathāḥ ||
“Prompted by their master [Sugrīva], the monkeys searched for Sītā here, there and everywhere, like the anxious Rāma’s thoughts.”
Thousands of monkeys frantically clambering around; almost palpable are their urgency, their fickleness; their fear, their tentativeness; their nervousness and their rash boldness; the mortal perils that some of them will surely encounter, and their unsung tragedies; their getting lost following a trail, some finding their way back, some others not; their exhilarating moments when they encounter something that looks like a clue; their dips in energy, and the situational pep-talks they’d get to press on; their unwilling, fitful rest at night, and their starting each day with renewed vigor, with an ethereal confidence that this day will be the one; their complete lack of plan; and as we zoom back to reveal the full picture, their pitiable smallness in a vast, dense, dark forest; the impossibility of them finding any success, which makes their energy even more striking, and paradoxical; all this, congruent at every single level with the flurry of anxious thoughts of Rāma pining for Sītā. How is it even possible to create such a perfect simile!!
The broader half-verse has even more delights in its very sound. ‘Kapayaḥ’ rolls off the tongue quickly, as if imitating the monkeys’ alacrity. ‘Slower’ synonyms like ‘vānarāḥ’ or ‘plavaṅgāḥ’, even though they fit the metre, don’t have the same effect. The long ‘e’ in ‘ceruḥ’ gives a break, as if they searched long and deep. But an even longer and more solemn break comes from the long ‘ā’ in ‘ārtasya’, a word that tilts the verse to an unknown, new direction. The final object of the simile, ‘manorathāḥ’ is delayed till the last possible moment. When it does appear, it occupies four whole syllables and the maximum allowed 6 mātrās, bulging and straining at the hard constraints of laghus in the 5th and 7th syllables that are pinning it down. The long ‘āḥ’ at the end seems to stretch on forever, only slowly fading out of earshot, with no sharply defined end. It almost seems to be telling us in an unspoken language of dhvani that the mass of poor Rāma’s thoughts was similarly bulging forth, and far exceeded the monkey army in vastness.
–
When we first decided to write a chapter on this upamā, we wondered if we could also talk about some other famous upamās of Kālidāsa (because they are genuinely delightful, not because of any regard for the verse ‘upamā Kālidāsasya…’: at least half of that verse is a lie). We went through portions of his original works, and some excellent recent work [1, 2] on collecting his best upamās together. We tried to triage the mass of upamās and select the best few. But all that simply fell flat: this one upamā stands miles above the rest, and it feels almost like a disservice to it, and an embarrassment to the others, to talk of it in the same breath as anything else. We then tried to see if we could at least talk more about this particular chapter 12. There too, while we found many delights, they seemed to almost beg to not be placed together with this one out of modesty.
–
To be frank, gentle reader, we don’t yet fully understand why Kālidāsa is held in such high regard, consistently for nearly two millennia now. Certainly, we have greatly enjoyed his linguistic skill, his breath-taking knowledge, and his delicateness, and we’re sure this list will continue to expand. But still, the unanimous best of all time in the teeming mass of genius that is Sanskrit? What does it take to get there? It doesn’t help that we stoutly disagree with almost all conventional praise of him, starting with the title of ‘Dīpa-śikhā’ Kālidāsa. ‘sañcāriṇī dīpaśikheva rātrau…’ is a good upamā, no doubt, but certainly not a crown fit for the king of Sanskrit poetry.
This chapter’s half-verse sets all such niggling doubts aside. It doesn’t matter if Kālidāsa didn’t write an anusvāra beyond this. For this one upamā alone he deserves to be the king of upamās, and for this pādārdha alone he deserves to be the king of Sanskrit poetry. Indeed, to those with the taste for it, this is not a verse at all, but a veritable bequest of eternal, undiminishing joy, an act of magnanimity in response to which we can offer only mute, wonderstruck gratefulness.
Parting Thought
In this ‘parting thought’ section of every Sadāsvāda chapter, we’ve usually mentioned one or two verses related to the main subject of the chapter as an aside, tangent or counterpoint. Sometimes they have been verses by the same author, sometimes from the same work, but they’ve always been ‘lighter’ and somehow ‘less important’ than the main content. With that assurance, some of the diffident delights of the 12th sarga we mentioned above could probably be convinced to come out from their hiding spot below the bed for a furtive peek!
When Rāma gracefully left for the forest:
स सीता-लक्ष्मण-सखः सत्याद् गुरुम् अलोपयन् ।
विवेश दण्डकारण्यम् प्रत्येकम् च सताम् मनः॥ 12.9
sa sītā-lakṣmaṇa-sakhaḥ satyād gurum alopayan |
viveśa daṇḍaka-araṇyam pratyekam ca satām manaḥ||
“To keep up his father’s promise, together with Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa,
Rāma entered the Daṇḍaka forest, and the hearts of all good men”
What a smooth sahokti (syllepsis)!
When Sītā continues to follows Rāma deeper south:
बभौ तम् अनुगच्छन्ती विदेहाधिपतेः सुता ।
प्रतिषिद्धापि कैकेय्या लक्ष्मीर् इव गुणोन्मुखी॥ 12.26
babhau tam anugacchantī videha-adhipateḥ sutā |
Pratiṣiddhā api kaikeyyā lakṣmīḥ iva guṇa-unmukhī||
“As the daughter of the king of Videha followed him,
it seemed as if Lakṣmī (wealth) was following Virtue, against the express orders of Kaikeyī”
Kaikeyī may have temporarily delayed Rāma from gaining the hand of the Ayodhyā-rajyalakṣmī, but seeing the regal Sītā follow him, it became clear that he had gained something far greater: the hand of a Lakṣmī who actually valued guṇas (virtues), a trait contrary to the bitter observations of every Sanskrit poet and poetaster since Lakṣmī’s rise from the churning of the ocean!
When Śūrpanakhā sees them:
रावणावरजा तत्र राघवम् मदनातुरा।
अभिपेदे निदाघार्ता व्यालीव मलयद्रुमम्॥ 12.32
rāvaṇa-avarajā tatra rāghavam madana-āturā |
abhipede nidāghārtā vyālī iva malayadrumam ||
“When Rāvaṇa’s sister saw Rāma, she was overcome with passion. She approached him like a sun-scorched serpent to a cool sandalwood tree”
This simile is surprisingly kind to Śūrpanakhā. While it recognizes her wickedness (‘serpent’), it is also clear that she was suffering (ārtā) with passion. ‘Abhipede’ has connotations of devoting oneself to something; she almost took refuge in Rāma to escape the heat of her passion. The hallmark of some passions is a kind of dependence, where one needs the object of the passion not for gaining happiness, but just to stop feeling tormented. Note also the word, ‘avaraja’. It means ‘younger sister’, but also ‘low-born’ – she ultimately caused the downfall of the great Rāvaṇa.
When Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa encounter Jaṭāyu:
स रावण-हृताम् ताभ्याम् वचसाचष्ट मैथिलीम् ।
आत्मनः सुमहत्-कर्म व्रणैर् आवेद्य संस्थितः ॥ 12.55
sa rāvaṇa-hṛtām tābhyām vacasācaṣṭa maithilīm |
ātmanaḥ sumahat-karma vraṇair āvedya saṃsthitaḥ ||
“With his words he told them of Rāvaṇa’s abduction of Sītā,
While his wounds spoke of his great act.
And then, he lay still.”
We’d written earlier of the unspoken language of dhvani; here it is the unspoken language of action and bravery, expressed through mortal wounds.
[A curious peculiarity: in the original Sanskrit, the second line is literally “he informed them of his great act by his wounds”. The sense of course is that the wounds did the talking, and he was silent (which is how we’ve translated it). Somehow, the active voice in English appears to automatically gives the doer a conscious intent—totally against the spirit here!]
When Trijaṭā convinces Sītā that the severed head of Rāma that Rāvaṇa showed her earlier was fake:
कामं जीवति मे नाथ इति सा विजहौ शुचम्।
प्राङ्मत्वा सत्यम् अस्यान्तम् जीवितास्मीति लज्जिता॥ 12.75
kāmaṃ jīvati me nātha iti sā vijahau śucam |
prāṅmatvā satyam asyāntam jīvitāsmīti lajjitā ||
“Although she quickly abandoned her grief thinking, ‘Ah, my lord is alive!’,
she immediately felt ashamed : ‘I truly believed he was dead, yet I continued to live’.”
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