[[Mohan K.V 2016-06-12, 00:22:12 Source]]
सदास्वादः
84
अवजानासि मां यस्माद् अतस् ते न भविष्यति
(avajānāsi māṃ yasmād atas te na bhaviṣyati)
Meaning
“Because you disrespect me, you will not have [children]”
Context
This chapter’s phrase is from the first sarga of Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa. We have written at length about the various facets of greatness of Kālidāsa in many previous chapters (phrase artistry – 1, genius at all levels from sound to structure – 57, tonal artistry – 74, genius of comparisons – 81), so we’ll do something different: we’ll highlight a section that some readers may be unhappy about, and explore whether we can still find joy in it.
King Dilīpa is a very worried man. He has everything a man could wish for – inner and outer strength, a great kingdom, a loving wife – but he has no children. The lack gnaws at him till it becomes unbearable, so he heads out to visit Sage Vasiṣṭha, the family preceptor, for help. After a long conversation where he pours out his woes, Vasiṣṭha meditates for a moment, and speaks thus:
पुरा शक्रम् उपस्थाय तवोर्वीं प्रति यास्यतः ।
आसीत् कल्प-तरु-च्छायाम् आश्रिता सुरभिः पथि ॥ 1.75
purā śakram upasthāya tava urvīṃ prati yāsyataḥ |
āsīt kalpa-taru-cchāyām āśritā surabhiḥ pathi ||
“A long time ago, you had just met Indra and were returning to earth.
Along the way, in the shade of the Kalpa tree, the divine cow Surabhi was resting”
No biggie, just a day in the life of a busy king, chilling with his buddies in Svarga. The Kalpa is the famous wish-giving tree of heaven. Surabhi, ‘the fragrant one’ is the divine cow. Note the deft use of the ṣaṣṭhī vibhakti to establish context: essentially, “In your way was Surabhi”
धर्म-लोप-भयाद् राज्ञीम् ऋतु-स्नाताम् अनुस्मरन् ।
प्रदक्षिण-क्रियार्हायां तस्यां त्वं साधु नाचरः ॥ 1.76
dharma-lopa-bhayād rājñīm ṛtu-snātām anusmaran |
pradakṣiṇa-kriyārhāyāṃ tasyāṃ tvaṃ sādhu nācaraḥ ||
“You were preoccupied thinking of your queen, Sudakṣiṇā,
[and so] didn’t approach the venerable Surabhi to pay your respects”
It was an oversight: Dilīpa was preoccupied, and simply didn’t notice Surabhi. ‘Pradakṣiṇā-kriyārhā’ ‘one who deserves a pradakṣiṇā’. Going around something clockwise is a living practice of offering respect that we see every day in temples everywhere.
अवजानासि मां यस्माद् अतस्ते न भविष्यति ।
मत्-प्रसूतिम् अनाराध्य प्रजेति त्वां शशाप सा ॥ 1.77
avajānāsi māṃ yasmāt ataḥ te na bhaviṣyati |
mat-prasūtim anārādhya prajā iti tvāṃ śaśāpa sā ||
“ ‘Because you disrespect me, you will not have children unless you worship my child’ – she cursed you thus.”
Whoa there! That escalated quickly! To make matters worse,
स शापो न त्वया राजन् न च सारथिना श्रुतः ।
नदत्याकाश-गङ्गायाः स्रोतस्युद्दम-दिग्गजे॥ 1.78
sa śāpaḥ na tvayā rājan na ca sārathinā śrutaḥ |
nadati ākāśa-gaṅgāyāḥ srotasyuddama-diggaje||
“Neither you nor your charioteer heard the curse,
because of the roar of the celestial Gaṅgā [which drowned it out]”
This is great imagery – the celestial Gaṅgā is the milky way, which presumably Dilīpa was following on his trip back to earth. This celestial Gaṅgā is frequented by the diggajas, the guardian-elephants of the eight directions.
ईप्सितं तद् अवज्ञानाद् विद्धि सार्गलम् आत्मनः ।
प्रतिबध्नाति हि श्रेयः पूज्य-पूजा-व्यतिक्रमः ॥ 1.79
īpsitaṃ tad avajñānād viddhi sārgalam ātmanaḥ |
pratibadhnāti hi śreyaḥ pūjya-pūjā-vyatikramaḥ ||
“Therefore, what you desire is being hindered by that [incident of] disrespect.
A lapse in honouring what must be honoured always hinders welfare.”
This arthāntaranyāsa (reference to a generalization) is very famous, and the term pūjya-pūjā-vyatikrama has been a favourite of scholars for centuries. Note how the single samāsa snugly fits a śloka quarter: just using this phrase gives speech an innate musicality.
Vasiṣṭha then goes on to suggest that Dilīpa and his queen both tend to Nandinī, Surabhi’s calf, to atone for their mistake. The story continues on in the next sarga.
Upon seeing this, some readers may be dismayed by the abuse of power by Surabhi. Poor Dilīpa was just passing by, engrossed in thought, and just didn’t notice her. In legal terms, there was no mens rea: neither was there any intention to commit a crime, nor any knowing lapse, nor any recklessness where consequences were known but ignored, nor even any negligence whose consequences a reasonable man could have foreseen. Surabhi was tucked away in the shade of the Kalpa-taru. If you don’t cut some slack for a chap who was so distracted that he didn’t even stop by the celestial wish-giving tree, what is the meaning of tolerance in this world!
No one was harmed, not even if we consider reputational harm (where considerations of respect may arise). People talk of active and passive disrespect – active, when an explicit action is taken to demonstrate disrespect, like Śiśupāla did with Kṛṣṇa, and passive, when actions are deliberately neglected, like when Duryodhana did not stand up to receive Kṛṣṇa during the peace negotiations. Here, there was neither.
It may seem, then, that this is simply a power-trip by Surabhi. Like some official in a hinterland government office, she became offended that poor Dilīpa did not salaam her, and cursed him. The mechanism of delivery of the curse is also highly reminiscent of government office functioning: Dilīpa did not even know he was cursed until years later, and he had to seek a lawyer (Vasiṣṭha) to discover that he was convicted of a crime and was in fact being punished for it all this time! And what unspeakably cruel, severe punishment: anywhere in the world, at any time, being denied the ability to have children is a profoundly soul-crushing suffering. It robs a major chunk of the very meaning of life, and many people are willing to go to any lengths to see if they have a chance. What can we say of poor Dilīpa, with his tender classical Indian sensibilities?
This may leave some readers with a bad taste in their āsvāda for Surabhi. It is very un-cow-like, mean behaviour. It also projects onto Nandinī, who seems to deserve worship now for the single reason that her mummy was powerful. We’re saturated with so much political nepotism in real life that to have to endure it in kāvya too is a straw too many. What is worse, the all-knowing, all-wise preceptor, Vasiṣṭha doesn’t remark one word about the injustice. This is a world in which jealous, vengeful and wrathful gods with great power are lurking in the shadows everywhere, and might curse us without warning anytime for imagined slights we did not even know we committed!
Kālidāsa’s beautiful phrase pūjya-pūjā-vyatikrama may thus seem to be poorly supported by his own example, but it holds much promise elsewhere. Consider an engineer designing a bridge. There are dozens of factors to consider: geometry, materials, labor, construction safety, costs, schedule, … It is very easy for even a competent engineer to miss a major element. Therefore, responsible engineering calls for a sense of ‘chronic unease’. An engineer must always be mindful of the opportunity for improving an element of safety, and must never be cavalier about even the smallest of features. In essence, a sense of sacredness and respect toward the work is called for. The slightest pūjya-pūjā-vyatikrama will likely result in calamity.
Likewise for a surgeon performing even a routine operation, a doctor making a seemingly trivial diagnosis, a regulator approving a new drug, an official approving a policy… everywhere, a sense of humility, respect and seriousness about one’s decisions and their consequences – a sense of sacredness, in short – is crucial for individual and societal success.
What would have been a more harmonious plot, something akin to what a Bhāsa would have done? Consider an alternative where verses 77 and 78 didn’t exist, and the argala (hindrance) in verse 79 come as a surprise to Surabhi as well:
धर्म-लोप-भयाद् राज्ञीम् ऋतु-स्नाताम् अनुस्मरन् ।
प्रदक्षिण-क्रियार्हायां तस्यां त्वं साधु नाचरः ॥ 1.76
ईप्सितं तद् अवज्ञानाद् विद्धि सार्गलम् आत्मनः ।
प्रतिबध्नाति हि श्रेयः पूज्य-पूजा-व्यतिक्रमः ॥ 1.79
dharma-lopa-bhayād rājñīm ṛtu-snātām anusmaran |
pradakṣiṇa-kriyārhāyāṃ tasyāṃ tvaṃ sādhu nācaraḥ ||
īpsitaṃ tad avajñānād viddhi sārgalam ātmanaḥ |
pratibadhnāti hi śreyaḥ pūjya-pūjā-vyatikramaḥ ||
“You were preoccupied thinking of your queen, Sudakṣiṇā,
[and so] didn’t approach the venerable Surabhi to pay your respects.
Therefore, what you desire is being hindered by that [incident of] disrespect.
A lapse in honouring what must be honoured always hinders welfare.”
This way, everyone wins. The true idea that even inadvertent actions or non-action can lead to harm is emphasized. The link between our actions and their consequences can be obscured by no less a noise than the roar of the elephants guarding the Milky Way! That is a splendid analogy to the complexity of our world, where actions and consequences are very hard to link. Meanwhile, Surabhi has no personal animosity with Dilīpa, and it is simply a fact of nature that disrespecting her led to problems for him – just like a poorly designed bridge has no personal animosity against its engineers or wayfarers, it simply follows the laws of physics and collapses. Vasiṣṭha is a revered sense-maker, who is able to see the subtleties of action and consequence, and gives insight about the functioning of the world. In this world, divine beings don’t go on power trips. They in fact are sympathetic and try to help us get by as much as they can. There are rules, breaking which will have consequences, but there is no personal animosity, and instead considerable personal support.
Nothing else in the story has changed. In essence, this is akin to gently correcting a verse for an aberrant few syllables so that it fits the metre and flows smoothly, and yet retains (most of) its content. Except here, this is happening in the language of plot, where the ‘words’ are characters and their actions, and the judge of smoothness is not the ear, but a mind with the sensibilities of a different time.
Parting Thought
The great mathematician-poet Bhāskara penned a verse on disagreements:
शास्त्रार्थान् तत्त्वतो ज्ञात्वा चरिष्यामो वयं सदा ।
न नो व्यसनिता काचिद् विमति-प्रतिबोधने ॥
śāstrārthān tattvataḥ jñātvā cariṣyāmaḥ vayaṃ sadā |
na naḥ vyasanitā kācit vimati-pratibodhane ||
“We move forward by understanding principles well.
We have no itch to argue with people opposed to us.”
‘vyasanitā’ and ‘vimati’ are delightfully difficult to translate: vyasanitā carries whiffs of temptation, addiction, vice, misfortune and badness. ‘Vimati’ isn’t just someone who is opposed; it is also used in the sense of stupid, obstinate or disliked. For poetry, and perhaps life itself, ‘bhāvārthān’ might be more appropriate than ‘śāstrārthān’.
Of course, even a Brahma-jñānī cannot hope to have this kind of a tranquil mindset all the time. We’d bet that even Bhāskara had something or someone who’d push his buttons and get him upset. A more reasonable view may be to treat arguments just like itches – scratch them in the moment for the pleasure they give (not that we have much choice, anyway), but devise means to avoid irritants in the long run.
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