The Wisdom of Poets: Studies in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit

E WISDOM OF POETS

Studies in Tamil) Telugu, and Sanskrit

1

THE WISDOM OF POETS Studies in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit

David Shulman

OXFORD U N I V E R S I T Y I'RESS

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For Micky and Kay, Joe, and Anita who shared the poetry

Introduction

I.

AUTHORITY, STRUCTURE, VOICE 1. Toward a Historical Poetics of the Sanskrit Epics 2. The Yaksa's Questions

3 . Poets and Patrons in Tamil Literature and Literary Legend

4. From Author to Non-Author in Tamil Literary Legend

11. SELVES, MEMBERED AND REMEMBERED 5 . On Being Human in the Sanskrit Epic: The Riddle of Nala 6. Embracing the Subject: Harsa's Play within a Play

7, The Prospects of Memory 8. Dreaming the Self in South India

111. METAPHYSICS OF PRESENCE 9. Bhavabhfiti on Cruelty and Compassion 10. Fire and Flood: The Testing of Sita in Kampan's Ircirncivar&rarn 1 1. First Man, Forest Mother: Telugu Humanism in the Age of Krsnadevariiya 12. Does God Have Moods?

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The following chapters in this volume are reprinted with kind permission from Kluwer Academic publishers: 'On Being Human in the Sanskrit Epic: The Riddle of Nala', Journal of Indian Philosophy 22 ( 1 994), 1-29. 'Embracing the Subject: Harsa's Play within a Play', Journal oflndian Philo.~ophy25 (1997), 69-89. 'The Prospects of Memory', Journal ofIndian Philosophy 27 (1998). 'Towards a Historical Poetics of the Sanskrit Epics' is reprinted with the kind permission of Dr Venetia J. Newall, editor, from Intenzational Folklore Review (199 I), 9-17. The following two essays are reprinted with the kind permission of Oxford University Press, New York: 'The Yaksa's Riddles', in G. Hasan-Rokem and D. Shulman (eds), Unh,ing the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes (New York: OUP, 1996). 'Dreaming the Self in South India', in D. Shulman and G . Stroumsa (eds), Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York: OUP, 1999). 'From Author to Non-Author in Tamil Literary Legend' is reprinted from the Journal of Asian Studies (Tiruvanmiyur) 10 (1993), 1-23,

In poetry as in lifc, nothing is more deceptive than the norm. How many living worlds are hidden by the intricately fashioned surface, with its rules and habits, its descriptive grammars of perception, its brilliantly illuminated but always inherently reduced and conventional maps? Great literatures produce their own protocols, crafted images of themselves as they, or their erudite mediators, would like their finest efforts to be understood and known. Inevitably, theories of reading or listening crystallize, often in competing poetics, which are always located in a concrete ecology of forms, social contexts embodied tastes and fragrances. Surprisingly, such maps and grammars seem inevitably to relate only obliquely, with vast distortion, to the living texts they purport to organize and explain. This is no less true of the grandiose schemes of the Sanskrit cllarikclrikas, intent on probing 'suggestion' and 'resonance' to the end, than it is of the medieval Tamil grammarians of love or, for that matter, of Aristotle and his imitators in relation to, say, Sophokles. In another sense, of course, the richly mapped and textured surface is, in fact, the depth, and what is most accessible to touch and experience is no different from the hidden and most elusive, most generative forces. One can, that is, reach the active intuitional metaphysics of cultural form no less through its poetics than in its poetry; though one may have to work harder in the former case, somehow inuring oneself to background noise. Grammar, when privileged and fi~llyelaborated. always tends to be noisy in this sense. Thcy taught me 'I(' was neuter. su I scnt o f f my mind lo my girllricnd Now it's making lovc 10 licr

2

Thr Wr.~dorn(?/P o c ~ t . ~

and worl't comc back. Ncvcr lrusl a ling~~ist.' In any casc. whether we casl our lo1 wilh Ihc poeticians and linguists or with he poets. understanding-which 1 understand as mostly an cmotion born o f relating, with relative economy and precision, seemingly disparate domains-is mainly a matter of listening hard or well. prererably from within a supple, pliant, and at least partially unstructured space. This is what I have attempted to do. not always very selfconsciously. in the various essays collected here. They are attempts to hear as well as I was able. I have some hope that, contrary perhaps to nature's process, my hearing has improved somewhat over time. But there is also the question of what I have been listening for, so to speak. Let me try to give some indication of this. First, there is always the voice-the musical, usually distinctive, embodied. expressive but non-semanticized timbre that tells us that a poet is singing; always, of course, at a singular moment within time, a moment that can become history. Indeed, if possible, and for our own reasons, we always rush to historicize this voice, filling in the temporal and spatial coordinates which provide a frame for meaning. Perhaps we cannot sustain the anxiety of sheer musicality for long, nor do we easily trust its distinctiveness. Notice that to identify voice is not usually a matter of stylistic analysis, for style, in the South Asian poetic universe, is at once too limited and too heavily formulaic a parameter. It would be relatively fruitless, for example, to attempt to distinguish the styles of the three Tamil T e v a r a m poets, Tiruiiiinacampantar, Appar. and CuntaramOrtti, though some 200 years separate the latter from the two former; these poets, in fact, can be said to share a largely uniform, genre-specific style, immediately apparent in its major formal markers. And yet a distinctiveness in voice may well exist. and may be susceptibie to formulation, on the basis of what I will call ' t e x t ~ r e ' Here. .~ again, we meet the surface

' napumsakam iti jiiZtv2 priyayai presitam manah/ [at l u talra~varamaic hatah paninina vayanlil in V. Narayana Iiao and D. Shulman, A Poem trt tlic Ri,q/it Moment (Berkeley and New Delhi, 1998 and 19YY), 69. Daniel H . H . Ingall>. J.M. Masson, and M . V . Patwardhan somellniex tra~lsl~lw thc3 S;un>kr~rtrltrrik(iru rerm sc~ri,qhntulrcias 'texture': sce their rranslalion ol II/r~,ci~r\ -ti/oktr .3 5-6. w i ~ hthc I,oc trrrti 01' Ahhina\!apup[a ( Tl~c,

as rich in dcplh, and we can also list (in no par~icularorder) cerlain o f the Statures that make this depth prcsenl to our awareness-fal~~rcs such as iconicity in language. reproducing the primary Sealures of the 'objccl' or 'meaning' embedded in ~ h cauthor'> sentences and words; syntactical, lexical, and phono-aesthetic considerations;" metrical patternings, conscious or unconscious: cloquent silences and hiatuses: figtlration, broadly understood; framing and other reflexive measures; the conflation of levels, styles. and moods, or, conversely, their suggestive disjunctions; relations of authority, necessity, power: exigencies of genre; thematic and metacommunicative forces and their relative foregrounding or diminution. And so on--this list is but a beginning. and an artificial one at that. In a more integrated manner, we could say that texture entails the mutual resonance and recurrence of theme (or narrative or plot), aural surface, and context (social, historical: or ecological in the widest sense). Note the distinction in level: which could be said to follow a prevalent South Asian ~ e m i o s i s : ~ on the one hand, texture is the aural surface available for analysis; on the other hand. it is the integration of this surface with the domains of theme and context, the latter in effect subsumed w~thina higher-order application of the term.

One knows at once when it works-when

the goddess is present in a

--- Dhvanyciioka qf ~ n a n d a v a r d h a n awith the Lncana of ADhinuvagi(pta,

Cambridge, Mass.. 1990: 400--18). However, they also translate this same term as 'arrangement', 'style', and 'compounding'; and Anandavardhana himself seems to use it as a synonym for racand., 'composing' (or even 'structure'). I fear we cannot use this term in a generalized mode for what I mean hy texture. On sung/ia/atra,see, recently. L.J. McCrea, 'The Teleology of Poelics in Medieval Kashmir' (Ph.D. dissertation. University of Chicago, 1998). 268ff. AS is wcll known, the great s1udt:nt of westen) literature, Erich Aucrbach, argued that syntax aione ernbodies the structure of a 'represented' world of perception. complete with its inherent aspects of secluence, ellipsis, and cause. BUIcf: 1 x 0 Spitzer. I,inpuis~i~:t ~lrltlLiter-urx Hi.stot~~: E:rsctv.t it7 St~1i.stic.s (Princcton, 19d8). for a differen1 understanding of the relations herwecn meaning and style. See C'harles M;ilamoutl. Crtit-c, Ic rnoritlc: Ritc ct /)c,r7.\ic, tlurr.\ I ' i t ~ c / c , atrc.ienrir (P;ir~s.1989). 1 77--01

poem. Olic know5 through the cxpericncc of texture. a tactile. bodily knowlcdgc thal prcccdcs. and certainly nccd not be translated into. thc abstract categories 1 havc mcntioned. Emily Dickinson offers a simple description: If 1 rcad a hook and ir makes my whole body so cold no fire can never warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are (he only ways 1 know it. Is there any other way?" I am sorely tempted to stop here. Learn thc languages, acquire the sensibilities, and begin to read. At thc same time I am aware of a fascination with dist~nctivemoments and of an enigmatic urge to formulate their differences. So let us study a small example and see where it takes us. I offer two clearly aligned verses on a single, culturally privileged theme, but separated in time by some 400 years. The theme is the luxurious monsoon floods that sweep through the alluvial plains each year, regenerating life, ravaging boundaries, mixing categories in a violent and transforming flux. The great Tamil poet Kampatj (probably twelfth century) begins his version of the Rdnlayana with a chapter devoted to this theme; and the mid-sixteenth-century poet Ativirarama Pantiyar similarly starts his strangely neglected masterpiece, Nrritatum-a complex kav-ya on the Nala story, loosely related to ~ r i h a r s a ' s Naisadhi.ycl-carita. In both cases the first verse of this introductory essay on the flood begins with a set of similes of iconic or mythic register. Here is Kampan's poem: nir aninta kutuvu ' flirutta vcin ur anintu cFnr' cirkali meynt' akil cey' a~lintc~ mulait tirunzarikai rntl vir ' anintavun rneniyin miniave ( I . 1.2)" The cloud, wearing while on white like ~ i v a , making beautiful thc sky o n his way from the sea grew dark Dick~nson.as cited by Thomas W. Higpnson. Atltrn/ic.Monthly, 1891. circ the cclilion of rhc 0.Vc. Caminat'aiyar I>ihrary(Tiruvanmiyur, 1967). (' I

as thc face of thc Lord who wears with pride on his right the Goddess of the scented breasts.'

Her breasts are scented with aloe paste; and the poet speaks not so such of the face as of the body (meni) of Lord Visnu, dark as the now heavy monsoon cloud. But first the cloud was white, like the ashsmeared body of another god-some would say, the hidden patron , normally red or deity of Kampan's long poem-that is ~ i v a whose fiery figure is visible to us only through the veil of white ash. Ramanujan's translation nicely brings out the central movement or transition implicit in this verse, one of drinking or internalizing the heavy waters of the sea and thereby 'growing dark', pregnant with rain that will soon unleash the flood. The hint of fiery redness ( ~ i v a ' s hidden body) gives us the full spectrum of white-red-black and at the same time suggests the presence of a latent, perhaps liquid, fire somewhere within the emergent flood of dark water. So really we can sense a movement from fire to water, which is also the movement from ~ i v to a Visnu-the ostensible hero of Kampan's work-although the full sequence, in the Tamil, proceeds via the goddess Laksmi who lives on Visnu's breast (the English perforce places her in the final slot). Fire to water, male to female to male: this is the path (&u) the cloud traverses, and this path is also, by homonymy, the river or flood (ciru) that the poet will later compare to life itself, 'filling and emptying a varity of b o d i e ~ ' .Incidentally, ~ the process concludes with a verb of return (mintave)-the cloud that has drunk up the heaviness of the ocean, thus mixing or inverting the cosmic domains, no,w heads back to land. It is striking that Ativirarama Printiyar seems to quote the Kampan verse directly: he describes a similar transition, focuses the poetic movement around the moment of 'drinking7(meyntu) the ocean, and concludes with the same verb of return (minta): karuvi ma rnalai kalaimukal uruv' Fna vilariki iru vicump' itaip pafarntu ct?o?ly'ina nluni kdlikkum ' A.K. Ramanujan, 'Three Hundred Rcimdyanas: Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Translalion', in Paula Richman (ed.), Many Rcirnu~anas:The Diversirv ofa Narrative Traditior~in Soudl Asia (Berkeley and New Dclhi, 1991), 41.

Kanlpan. Irun~rj~~~rrritzlrn I . I .3 1 ; see Chapter 10 in t h ~ svolumc.

6

The '#~sdorn uf Poet3 11ura~aivPn tirai mrynt' uyur pani ~ ~ a rujirttu ui uruvuL8ot ' urit tutari kancil uruk kdtu mittta ( I . I . 1 )

Luminous as the body of the white goddess of art, great clouds that come to serve mcve through wide black skies to drink white waves that wash perfect blue sapphires to the shore and, now bearing the form of a dark goddess with eyes piercing and long, streaked with rcd, the goddess brought to life by the tall mountain of ice, they gravely return. Despite the quotation from the earlier model, or perhaps through deliberate contrast enabled by direct quotation, this verse brings into being a cosmos far more convoluted than Karnpan's. An Auerbachian analysis would immediately highlight the involved hypotaxis. A series of non-finite verbs culminates in the compressed and final 'return', but most of these non-finites are endowed with relatively extensive, amplifying clauses (always left-branching, as in all Dravidian speech): the clouds come to serve, the waves wash sapphires to the shore, the goddess has been brought to life by her father, the ice-bound Himllaya, and she is invoked primarily though her long, penetrating eyes. These enticing eyes, by the way, so dominate the climax of the verse (the opening of the fourth line in Tamil) that we have an almost Rilkean effect: the goddess suddenly seems to be staring back at us from out of the poem. What began as a compressed lyrical essay on the chromatic shift in rain clouds, or the sweeping, cyclical movement of water from ocean to sky to land. has turned into an eerie vision of the goddess who enters us with her piercing gaze. But there is more to this surprising sequence. The mythic analogies a way to dark have been transposed: instead of the white ~ i v giving Visnu with his consort ~ a k s m i l ~ rwe i , now have Sarasvati. white goddess of poetry and speech, transformed into dark Parvati, ~ i v a ' s left half. But Siva himself, along with all other male deities, is absent; thc cloud is a mostly feminine entity; a touch of maleness survives only in the glancing reference to Himslaya, icy father to the goddess. The theme, however. of bringing this godly presence into being-a fundamental notion that I will call 'aliveness', and to which I will return--is powerfully evoked by the participial form uyirtta, strategically placcd at the end of the third line in the Tamil. This

goddess has becn 'brought to life'-first, literally. by hcr I'ather, thcn, once again. by the poet who calls her into consciousncss. In a certain perspective, this is, perhaps, the real aim and purpose of this highly purposeful poem. For just as the rain clouds 'come to serve'-literally, they are an instrument ( k a r u v i ) to be used toward a definite goal, that of regenerating a dessicated, pre-monsoon world-the kuvya poet is hard at work on reality, similarly reviving and de-automatizing it, sucking the vital and fluid forces that fill the world into his poem in order to release them back in a reimagined and intensified form. This contrary movement of going and returning seems to find its corresponding expression in the rich chromatic patterns that unfold within the poem: the spacious (iru) skies are also black (iru), the white waves of the ocean wash up dark blue sapphires, the snow white mountain has given birth to a dark daughter with red- or gold-streaked eyes. We find the same fundamental range of white-red-black that we saw in Kampau's verse, but here all that is bright seems imbued with its own shadowy underworld, the white surface containing and emitting blue-black gems, and so on. So the overall movement is no longer quite so simple as in the earlier verse, where light turns dark: here light, in its depths, is dark and thus naturally. through inner backand-forth oscillation, emerges as dark, as the brilliant dark goddess takes shape out of the snow and ice of the mountain. A similar complexity characterizes the structure of the extended similes (viri uvamai) that weave between subject and ob-iectof comparison, filling the image of the moving clouds with attributes of vision, breath, colour, but actually bringing out the living and seeing goddess herself in the process. This strong personification, literally conceived, concretely envisaged, produces the figure called pata-po'ruf-klitciy-a?ti,'a vision of the meaning of the words'. We would not be far from the spirit of the verse were we to insist on this embodied and tangible perspective as its central node. Remember that this stanza is the opening statement in a highly visible and elastic frame within which the nuanced lyrical states and self-mirroring emotions of Nala and Damayanti. the two protagonists of the story, will gradually emerge. We could pursue the expressivity of this frame much farther, noticing especially its delight in mixing and confi~sion,~ in violent transitions, in ~ h cparticular exuberance Ct. Chapter 1 1 In this vulumc.

that inheres i n colnplcxity and suhtlc shading. And 1 havc said nothing of nictrc. of ellipsis and 'silcntial relations',"' of thc highly unusual lexical ranyc thar this poer commands. ant1 so on-nor, most important of all, of'contcxtual rcsonancc. I will stop here: these two profoundly different textures havc at least becn touched. The critical notion I want to elaborate on is that of 'aliveness', with its related theme o f inducing a living presence.

To a large extent, the drive associated with this process activates and organizes the poetic worlds o f rnedieval south India. In general, there is much less description, in the classical sensc with which we are familiar. than a ritualized acting through the word-ven within the elaborate courtly genres, including rnahrikuvva. To miss this is to lose a central part of what this poetry is about and also to skew our understanding o f the poetics i t inspired. I have gathered several of the chapters in this volumes in a section devoted to this 'metaphysics of presence', which I scc as rooted in a very ancient stratum of the south Indian, especially Decoan, tradition, with offshoots in classical Sanskrit drama (Bhavabhuti) as well as in the praxis of much Tamil bhakti poetry after the formative 'rhapsodic' stage of Tevriram and the Divya-prabandllam. One could also describe the mature poetics that crystallized in Telugu in the seventeenth century as, in part, a meeting between the son~ewhatabstract and heav~lytheoretical world of classical Sanskrit alarikirm-Sastra and the ancient Deccani world of 'magical', divinatory, and generative poetic speech, keyed to an emerging presence. A similarly complex interpenetration took place in Tamil somewhat earlier, but without corresponding theoretization in the great rnedieval works on poetics. As we read the poetry of medieval south India. again and again we find a fascination with the business of becoming more alive, or of bringing somconc or somcthing. some part of self. to life, deob.jcctifying, liberating l'rom stasis and stony surfaces-like thc goddcss who is said in the poem just cited to have emerged from the fro/.cn, rocky mountain. J L I Swhal ~ [his 'aliveness' mcans. of course,

"' A.1-. Rccker. Rcvorrtl 7't-(rri.slcrrrorr:E,\.scrvsro~,crr-dtr Moclc8t-riPhilolo,g, (Ann Arbor. 1995). 186.

varies greatly I1.on1 poct to poct, or text to (ex(. 1 adducc a sllol-[ example, once again from Ka~npan.who very ol'tcn seems to cxchatngc his role as the ingenious kGuya-poet, telling a compelling story with constant interruption 1.01lengthy description, for that of the theatrical [magician primarily concerned with bringing divir~ityto life. To this end he suborns certain of thc classical tropes and figurcs. as in the following passage, where Rama. Sita. and Laksmana first enter the wilderness beyond the Ganges: Spring: like the heart of a common woman who makes love to anyone, however low. time may, or then again may not, have kept some cool and liquid space within it. You couldn't tell for surc. But when he carne, there were signs of cool showers, like dark clouds massing over the wilds. (2.693) The season is ilcl\>rnilthe beginning of the hot season that bakes and dessicates; perhaps a trace of the cold months still lingers-the poet is far from sure. The world is rapidly heating up and drying out, especially in the cruel wilderness region that the god is entering. Yet he himself is dark as the rain cloud." and his presence has the remarkable effect of cooling and enlivening the bleak surroundings of his exile. In effect, this opening verse simply literalizes thc usual simile: if R a m a appears, rain has come, albeit in the form of a promising sign or trace (kuri). But this is not enough, for the sign has to play out its potcntiality. according to its innate dynamism and patterned scqucncc; and this means. above all, that Sita. the female embodiment of this playful divinity, will cmerge fully into presence. T o achieve this effect. the poet puts sixteen striking verses into Rama's mouth, :ill o f them an apostrophe to Sita, whom Rama exhorts to notice the amazing beauty of thc wilderness. As a psychological tactic aimed at cushioning the stark impact of exile, this passage speaks to the god's cornpassion and rcsc~urccfulness.Often in Kampan's Ramtlvrycr, Rama remains curiously, even noisily, silent; this is what happens when we suddenly find ourselves in the presence of a god who is so likc us. so paradoxically human, vulncrablc. and confused.'*

But in the present contexl. the normally laciturn deity turns voluble, and it is Sita. thc immediate partner lo his 'conversation', who remains totally silent. absorbed, perhaps, in the process that is overtaking her as the untamed cxternal landscape makcs its way in. W e can only hopc she is listening to the poetic tourdeforce these verses containfor ncarly all of thcrrl are about her, drawing on her own natural r various sights loveliness and graces as standards o f comparisan f ~ the and sounds that present thcnlselyes to Rama's eyes. Here are a few sclect cxa~nples: Look, my love, with your eyes. so full of light and shadow, of understanding, long as a spear glistening with ghee: studying the elegance of your movement and your gentle eyes, peacocks and deer are approaching. certain you are them. (2.697) You are sweeter than the goddess of this forest:I2 See how the wind blows fragrant pollen from thick flowers on to rounded stoneslike golden love-spotsI4on your breasts, graced with a necklace of pearls. (707) Look: the trees are sprinkling our path with flowers, for they fear your feet won't bcar the heat, while the vines and fragrant branches quiver and bend like your walst, thin as the hourglass drum, (708) See with your eyes. sharp as swords: bees enfolded in the leafbuds could be jewels on your feet. See the rainclouds. like your braid, black as darkness, black as lies. See the clusters of young bamboo, soft "

See Chapter I0 In this volume.

as your arms. (709) Branches heavy with flowcrs. laden with birds here and therc, cool vines bright with colour, flawless and full. herds of deer, peacocks. cuckoos strung out likc garlands: look at this wilderness. a painted screen luminous as fire. (7 10) T h e wilderness burns with colour a n d shirnmcring movemenl: peacocks spread their tails as if to sce thc goddess with all their gleamingeyes (696); the v e ~ ~ kand a i koriku trecs scatter their flowers in her hair, as if determined to learn the art of decorating young girls (706); male bees arc so drunk on honey that they can no longer open their eyes, so they staggcr and swervc like blind men, guided only by the musical buzzing of thc fcmalcs (705). But in this s c ~ t i n gof intoxicating, pulsing movement, ncarly each item is a part of Sita, intimately related to her physicality, as i f externalized and thereby separatcd from her own autonomous (and silcnt) sclf. In gcneral. of course, these identillcations simply invert the familiar metaphors-for it is her eyes thal are likc thc deer's, her walk that is likc thc peacock's, her arms that recall bamboo, and no1 vicc versa. Such inversions are a standard form of play, c a t a l o g ~ ~ eby d the pocticians as lyatireka or, if an element of supercilious excess predominates, as pratipa. The subject of con~parison(uparncva) exceeds, dwarfs, and otherwise deflates the object (upanzuna).15 Still, in the present instance a certain dynamic quality with a stable directionality can be seen. as if this unimaginably lovely goddess were reclaiming parts of her self that had been scaltercd, drawing them back within her orhit. reidentifying them as hers. On the one hand. as in the N~ri!nturrivcrsc above. i r i h all a matter of seeing: the i~nperativck a ~ ~'LooA!'. a ~ , recurs consistently in cacli of the poems. What at first might sccln a withered wilderness is. on closerinspectio~l,tccming will-! lifee.It is Ranla's task to point this oul to Sits, forcing her lo see, just as the poet compels his audience to startling visualizations. One could alxo classit'y the process as a manner

kigurn i~livciy.

LL~ZLI~

'" c.lcrlcltiXu = i m l u l , the pule spols that tippear on the breasts of a love-sick woman. according to the Tamil naturalist cc~nvention.

" I have discusxetl these i ~ ~ u r in e s 'Mlrl.ors ant1 Metaphors ir; Classic'. Wchrcrl, l irlt ~,c.,-.\.it\, Srrct1ic.c it, L ~ r t ~ r c l t l i r8c( I OSO ). 224--5.

'l':iln~l

ol'lxtying attention, which may very well be what is meant by a word likc 'prcscncc'. But in the languages of south India. the more usual term for 'prcscncc' is .s~~tiiiidhi or ~unt1idlla11am-efPectively and literally a mattcr of integration. a placing or gathering together. Inverting the trope is one. rather charged way of doing this, collecting the pieces and recomposing the singular divine person to whom they belong. A hint of energizing doubt or hesitation may also be necessary to this process, as is seen in the strong opening versc about the season-is there anything cool and liquid left alive at this moment, in this heart? For the self to become present to itself and to others, a certain uncertainty is generally useful, as I have argued in the chapters collccted in Section 11. Under conditions of self-doubt, seeing generates the depth that moulds and informs a visible surface. But what is i t that is really seent?Eachpart of the wilderness recalls or imitates SitB, manifesting herself to herself, revealing her presence as her and to her through the paradoxical movement of inverted coniparison. Rama is the one who can see this and, more than that, achieve i t by speaking it. The whole passage reads as if he were gradually bringing her to life in the nalural world outside her, which mirrors her. part by part. thereby creating her in that space and time. At a deeper level, of course, she herself is the real mirror. out of which the landscape can be seen to be emerging-a mirror that does not reflect so much as it generates an entire universe of living creatures and the intensity of presence needed to sustain them. In so far as these buds and rocks and bees are Sita--her feet, her breasts. her hair l~paincj similes o r r u p a k a identifications o r or eyes-the superimpositions follow the standard logical sequence. emerging from her directly on to the landscape which they map as extensions of her being and form. But in so far as her aliveness is at issue, needing the active linguistic intervention of Rama as they move through this frame, the figures require the intricate inversions that culminate in verse 709, with its repeated. explicit words of comparison. 'like' or 'as' (mostly purai i n the Tamil), and its strangely embedded or nested image of the rain cloud-our point of departure for the entire passage. The rain cloud is likc the braid of thc goddess that is itself likc darkness. or like lies. Where does this simile begin? Who is looking at what'? We watch i t unfold loop by loop. just as Sita is guided to a vision of the (rather ~~nscasonablc) cloud above her, mirroring her hair--which she cannot see--and at the same time evoking [he darker parts 01' her own hiddcn. silcnt being. By this point. we can scnsc that

Sit%has been conjured. and thc next versc conl'irrns lhis with its and summation ol the progression as densely rcllcctcd from yet another mirror-like screen, the glowing painting that is allnost aflame. From this point on, the poet can lapse back. temporarily at least, into his narrative (the threesome's arrival at the ashram oi' BharadvBja), which now seems to punctuate a rilual sequence very close to what might happen on a stage. It is all, incidentally, classed by the poet as a kind of play, a game that Rarna is playing with the 'simple' or 'innocent' goddess ImatavcIlot' itlitinin vilaivuti . . . poyinan. 71 1-the verse that concludes the passage). An intensity, possibly dangerous, inherent i n such a vision permeates the texture of its telling: Sita's eyes, not by chance, glisten like well-oiled spears or swords. As for the poet, is he not a magician, as the later literary tradition about K a m p a ~insists?I6In the oral milieu alive with stories and selected single verses ( c a t u / tanippcjtal), Kampan is a low-caste temple drummer (uvaccan) with an intimate relation to the goddess Ka!i, who comes each night to hold a burning torch above him as he composes his Ircjmuvararam. He is, in other words, capable of calling this goddess into being with his words. just as he evokes SitB's reality and produces a living, tactile body for her in the verses cited abovc.

Articulating or intensifying a presence means opening up a space; the emergent presence is, in fact, such a space. never fully structured or constricted. The poet's task is to make possible this contact with a fuller reality, never entirely external. By the same loken, however, a tension exists between the living openness of such experience and the elaborate grammars developed by the pocticians and theoreticians to explain, and to cclntain. this experiential dimension. Grammaticalization follows close on the poets' heels in all three of' the linguistic universes studied hcrc. It is partic~~larly powerful, from a very early point. in Tamil, which produced the well-known grammars of' love and war. trkrrrn and puram. out ot'thc implied. shared conventions of the :incient Caliknm corpus-although i t is important 16

Scc discuss~or?~ r iNarayana Rao and Slrul~nan.:I I'oc,rrr

Moptzenr: 18-20, 14X--58.

(11

~llc,Ri,ylri

lirtrorluc.tii)t~

to rcrnc~nbcrthat Tamil poetic grammar has 11sown upcn (especially wildcrncss) :spaces, hcautirully integrated into the highly bounded and lucidly dcfincd map i t oI'l1.s I.oI.the whole range of human feeling. The tension I have cinphasizcd hclps explain a startling lacuna. It is of some importancc that this matter of' inducing presence-of working upon the inner composition of a deity in relation to the levels 01' proximity, attention, and awareness of this same deity and of the poct or libtcner in search of conta~t-seems never to have been fully theorized as such in Tamil. In the northern science of poetics, Abhinavagupta specifically removes uveia, 'possession', from the arena of proper aesthetic experience. despite the profound connection between his poetics and the ~ a i v a ~ a n t rworld i c to which he belonged. In Telugu, Appakavi in the seventeenth century formalizes the domains of a poetry working through charged syllables that have immediate effects upon the world. invoking deities, blessing or cursing, harnessing the natural elements to the transformation the poet is attempting. In this respect, the grammarians' synthesis of the seventeenth century, or the expansive articulation of a poetics rooted in the Deccani understanding of the poet's magical powers, emerges out of the primary concerns of the living, oral folk milieu, which has also provided perhaps the most trenchant form of literary criticism that the medieval tradition can offer. The poet may thus create his god; or, in the still more daring example provided by Annamayya in thc fifteenth century, poet and god creatc one another through the medium of the linguistically potent poem." As we saw in the Kampan passge, there is an element of playfulness that pervades this process, with the 'self' of the various players at stake. The poeticians for the most part watch this game from the sidelines: as 1 argued at thc outset, poetic theory is always obliquely situatcd in rclation to its texts. Yet what I have called 'granimaticali~ation' is not a simple matter but a long, interactive evolution rich with dialogic meditations on thc poems. Let me say, in conclusion, a few words about these interlocking worlds. The most complete poetic grammar we have is surely the Tamil onc. already I'ully elaborated in TGlkuppiyam. Powcrful and precise correlation\ arc cstablishcd between outcr and inner domains. and I.LIICS l'or tt-;~niitio~l~ I'rom onc to another al-c worked o ~ with ~ t unu\ual I-icIirics\ 01 ~n\ight:indccd. o n clo\c rnspcction thc classical categories L

"

Scc

('li,~plcr12 In t h ~ \iolumc

15

of akam and p u m m , 'inner' and 'outer' expericncc. turn out to be largely directional signposts for pocms that are vcry much in movement. 1 have argued elsewhere that it is only whcn such movements. internal to the poerns, are fully recognized--morc precisely, when 'insets' from one of the major catcgorics arc normatively embedded in the other-that an ecology of true genres comes into being in Tamil, perhaps in the second half of the first rnillenium CE.I8Still, one can ask just what i t is, in experiential terms: that is being classified and explicated in thcse terms by the poeticians with their elaborate grammatical schemes. 1 have spoken of 'presence' and adduced a representative example from Kampan, and I have argued for strong continuities between Kampan's surviving text and the imagc of this poet in the oral tradition as conjurer or magician. But this same image suggests a baseline experience that is closer to absence than to presence, as if the poet were starting from an arid surface in need of e n l i ~ e r ~ ~ n g - asurface in which the deity or, for that matter, the self, is largely inaccessible, perhaps lost or frozen, fundamentally remote. Nearly all scholars of classical Tamil poetry have stressed the evident preoccupation with themes of absence and separation-both in the ancient Cankam tcxts with their accompanying grammars and in the bhaktigenres that are oriented towards the god.lq And while these matters cannot be explored at greater length here, several of the chapters in this volume deal with spec~ficinstances of what may be called a 'grammaticalized absence' as the point of departure for poetic effect^.^" Stated very generally. what we sense in many medieval Tamil genres is the presence of a structured gap between the poet or listener and the deity who constitutes the subject of the poem; in the more complex forms, such a s k o v ~ i iand kalampakam, verses cumulate in a linked, tcleological sequence that aims at moving through this space, perhaps by drawing both divine and human subjects into a funnel-like interrnediatc arella that binds '"ee my essay, 'Suga be-suga asuyah', i n a volumc edited by N. Wasscrman on the formation of genres in classical literatures (in Hebrew, in prcss). IYF. Hardy, Virnllrr-bhukti:The Ec~rly Hisrot-yofK!-.rtzriDc>~,oriorl I / ? .Sorrth India (Delhi, 1983); Martha Ann Selby, 'Toward a Grammar of Low: A Comparative Study of Interpretive Modes in Classical Indian Pocky' tPh.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1994): N. Culler. .Sntixs of Etl)errc,~lr.e: The Poetics o,!'Tritnil Devotion (Bloomington, 19x7). '"See especially Chapters 4 and 12.

them together and enhances their mutual dependence. Such devices arc the stuff of poclic grainmars in thc far south, and their effects arc. again, in some sense ritualized and d e t e r n ~ i n e d . ~ ' But developments in this direction always imply a transformation of inherited grammatical norms. In a genre such as kovai, for example, the interweaving of a k a m andpurum modes is so radical, so pregnant with paradox, that we can speak of a non-grammatical use of the ancient grammars. Indeed, the subversion of the classical categories is perhaps the single most consistent feature of the new poetic universe with its rich proliferation of genres that crystallized in the late Chola and post-Chola periods among Tamil literati. W e see it clearly already in a maverick work such as Kallafam (perhaps tenth century), with its highly original reconceplualization of the akarn a n d p u r a m conventions. And we see the whole issue of the limits, exigencies, a n d self-transformative potential of poetic grammar explicitly thematized in narratives such as the story of Nakkirarmatkira, from Maturai and Kalahasti, studied in Chapter 3 in this volume. Nakkirar, president of the Academy of Poets, a stark embodiment of the grammarians' ethos, is placed in opposition to the god, ~ i v awho , is himself a poet; but unlike the god, the crusty academician is impaled on the rigid rules of his own system, unable to contain with his own resources the internal process by which this system periodically moves beyond itself, renewing itself through indeterminate experience or by what I have been calling 'presencc'. In effect, the poet-scholar has to be released from his own rules; while the grammar he defends, to his cost: turns out, in the end, to be poised rather precariously between normative and self-subverting, or self-transcending, vectors. Here the systemic is at its core a mode of transition, and grammar is an initial frame to be either shattered or stretched to incorporate newer spaces and perception^.^' The place of poetic grammar in Sanskrit and in Telugu is rather different, although this same tensile quality of the norm characterizes the evolution of theory in both these traditions as well. I d o not wish in any way to minimize the autonomy of 'pure' aesthetic experience

as conceived. for exaniplc. by the great Kashmiri ulurikarikus and as internalized by thc rncdicval Deccani poeticians. The wide r a n g 01' critical poetics is in no way exhausted by notions of coming into being, of becoming manifest upon a visible or audible surfacc, or of the creative. healing. and divinatory potential latent in the poetic word. The great Telugu kuvyu works of Lhc sixteenth century occasionally make room for the refined ideational aesthetics, rich in cognitive content, that we associate with Sanski-it poetics at its height. What needs to be stressed, however, is the remarkable autonomy and individuality of the south Indian poetic universes, each of which follows a developmental logic of its own, and the uniqueness of thcir major voices. Let me repeat: to no small extent these poetic worlds reflect the meeting between the vigorous discipline of Sanskrit alarikcira-s'd.stru and local Tamil or Deccani conceptions of poetry as oriented largely to regulatiiig contact with various existential and experiential domains, in varying degrees of accessibility, some of them internal to the experiencing self. These conceptions, as I havc said, may g o back to the most ancient strata of south Indian culture.23 The interpenetration of such diverse traditions was long, complex, and often volatile. In the course of this process, critical distinctions emerged-to name but one example, that between the insistence on the fictive nature of aesthetic experience by the rasa-dhvani school, and the contrasting, implicit poetics of the early Tamil bhakti corpus, as Norman Cutler has shown.2" poetics of presence cannot be premised upon illusion even in relatively mild modes or forms. Voice, self, emergent presence: these are the thematic concerns that run through each of the following essays. I have organized the chapters around these three focal perspectives, ~ a k c nin turn; but it should be clear that the three are deeply interconnected and will recur together in different patterns and emphases. I am interested in development over time, in differentiated contexts, and in the logic of grammar and form that helps structure this development. An inluitive metaphysics always energizes the works of both poets and critics, as it structures the habitually uneasy meeting ground between them.

See M. Trawick and D. Shulman. 'Outside Inner Spacc: The Ritual of Tamil Poetry' (in press). " My thanks to Bruce Kapferer for discussion or this story; and see the t ~ V. Narayana Rao. For afterword by V. Narayana Rao, to Hank H c ~ f e and rhc Lord of thc. Animu1.r: Pocw1.s from the Te/ir,qu (Berkeley. 1987).

I refer to recent work by Nikita Gurov on the Telugu Kafun~anijuknrha. We also need to re-examine Georgc Hart's suggestion, (The Poems oj'Arrcienr Tamil, their Milieu and tiiclr Sun.skrir Counterpurts. (Berkeley, 1975: 2 5 2 4 ) of a link bclwccn I'amil ('ai~karnpoetry and thc Deecan Neolithic cultures. l4 Cutler. . ~ o t i ~oj'Eq~crirncc~. .r

''

Sometimes it can be formulated, as hypotheses, in words; sometimes the mutually reinforcing levels of texture secm to confirm or refute thesc theories. W e listen together, in so far as we are able, for what is unexpected, singular. distinct.

I. Authority, Structure, Voice

Toward a Historical Poetics of the Sanskrit Epics* Do the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and thc Rameyana, constitute a paired set of closely interrelated compositions, reflecting and illuminating one another'? Can we properly speak of a shared epic world, expressing either the fundamental world-view of the genre or the historical conditions of what is essentially a single stage in the evolution of Hindu thought'? The two epics are still thought to be roughly-very roughly-contemporaneous, as products of the final centuries BC and early centuries AD'-although the Indian view, of course, draws a clear chronological line between the two eplcs, with the Ramtlyana describing events in the Tretayuga, thousands of years before the MahabhLirata war, which is placed in the juncture between Dvapara and Kali yugas (4th millennium BC!). What is more to the point, perhaps, is the common classification as epic; both works would doubtless fit a definition such as Heda Jason's: [An epic is] a narrative in verse or prose, or a combination of both, essentially set in the realistic mode, but elements of all other modes occasionally appearing in it. The epic presents a confrontation between societies, human or fabulous, on the plane of physical prowess which is brought about by their representatives (warricr-her~es).~ We could follow Jason further in distinguishing the 'historical epic' such as the Muhubhdraru from the 'universal epic' such as the Ramay~zna;still, we are dcaling with external, analytical definitions that remain rather at variance with the Indian tradition's own view of these works. For in India the MahLihharat~zand the Rurnayancz have

* First published in Inter-rlutiotlal Folklore Review ( 1991 ), 9-17.

' Robert Goldman has recently argued lor an earlier datc for the RurnLivurlcr: see his introduction lo T/w Rrirncivuno o?f Vulrniki (Princeton, 1984). Heda Jason. Et/lnopoc,tic,.c-(Jerusalem. 1975)Israel Ethnographic Socicty Studies, No. 3 .

21

The, Wi.srlotn c?/'Poc~l.s

always been placed i n clifl'crcnt clasacs: thc l'irst is 'itihbsri' or. as i t calls itsell'. ' i t i l z f i . s r i l ) ~ t t - ~ t ~(sec ( i ~ I . I . 16-20: also 'ukh~rit7ri'). while the second is 'ku1,yrr'( 1.2.35,31 1. This distinction has many important implications: lor example, ' i t i l ~ u . s t ~ ~ ~ uis r ~always t l u ' attributed to a theoretically omniscient sage who 'speaks' rathcr than 'sings' (throughout the Mahuhhurczta. the various narrators are said to have told the story. e.g. 'Vaiiampayana uvaca'. ctc.); 'kcivya', on the other hand. is 'sung'. to the accompaniment of music. as the text itself repeatedly states, and is composeti by a kavi-poet. (We might note that it is this singing style of the Rciniuyat~athat survives in Indian folk epics to this day, even when the actual content of these works more closely approximates to that of the Mah~ibhcirata.)~ I shall have more to say about this distinction, but let us return to our initial question. Would the difference in genre, in the Sanskrit classification, preclude a relationship of pairing? Not necessarily, especially when we note that there is in any case a degree of interpenetration between these lexts. More precisely, the Malzabharata tells the whole story of the Ramayana. with certain minor but interesting divergences, in the episode called 'RamopakhycZna' in the third book of the epic (Vanaparvan, 3.257-75). Western scholarship has laboured valiantly to make the relationship between this resum6 and the text of Rcimayana intelligible-but there is still no consensus. Did the Mahcibharata borrow the story from the Rcimriyana as we know i t , or from some earlier version? Whatever answer we give, the significant fact remains that one epic cites at length the story of the other. Moreover. this long citation beautifully illustrates the striking difference in tone in the two texts: the tale of Rama as told in the Mahahhcirata no longer sounds very much like the same story as told by Valmiki. the reputed author of the Ramriyana--despite the essential duplication of the plot. the shared Sloka-metre, the similarity in style. Anyone familiar with both texts would have no great difficulty identifying a given passage as belonging to one or the other. But here we touch upon the more profound aspect of our problzm: What are the differences, and how do they relate to one another'? How can we define the contrasts'? Are they, perhaps. i n some sense also complementary? I a m indchled to Velchzru Narayan;~Rao for rcmarks on 7'clugu lolk cpics and for noting Ihc calcgorical distinc.[ion belwccn sung and spokcn epics.

Toward a Historic.ril Portit..~of tlrr Satlskrit E11ic.r

23

such is clearly the case with pairs of folk cpics still cul-l-cnt in south India: the Telugu Palnuti virlrlu kutha and k'citamaru;rr katha; and, perhaps, the Tamil Annunmat- katui and Kuttuvar&clr_l katui.' These works offer distinct but complementary visions; each of the pair helps to complete the other. And, of course, this doubling pattern is extremely familiar to us from the prototypical epic poems of Homer. We many citz in this connection an interpretation of the Homeric epics by Franco Ferrucci: 'The representation of reality is the greater claim to glory of a work of art. But when it is later challenged by another work, reality temporarily becomes a battlefield where two models confront one another.15 Ferrucci discusses the Iliad and the Odjls,~ey as two such opposed models, one offering a vision of life as the endless siege, the other holding out the dream of the return, of 'recapturing lost h a p p i n e ~ s ' . ~ We cannot follow this interpretation here. But we can attempt to clarify the relations between the two Sanskrit epics on grounds other than those of alleged textual borrowings or imitations, or of the fruitless search for an absolute chronology. I would like to suggest that the two works can be analysed in terms of a contrastive poetics, which may help to explain both something of the conspicuous difference between them and the nature of their combined impact on subsequent Indian literature. We might begin with the two stories, in some ways strikingly alike. The MahrIbhcirata tells of a tragic, fratricidal war and of the Pyrrhic victory won by the heroes, the five Pandava brothers and their common wife Draupadi, who survive to rule a desolate world. The Rdtnayana describes the exile in the forest of its hero, Rama, at the reluctant command of his father; there his wife, the virtuous Sita, is kidnapped by the demon Ravana and imprisoned on the island of Lanka; Rama. together with an army of monkeys and bears ant1 with his brother Laksmana, crosses over to Lanka, slays Ravana, and frees Sita Alf Hiltebeitel suggested to me that the Kdttavuraya~karui might be seen as the doublet of the Annannzur kalai in a way sirnilar to the relat~onof the two Telugu folk epics. See the essays on Kattavaraynn by Eve!ine Macilamani- eyer and myself in A. Hiltzbeilel (ed.), Crimitzal G'orl~and Demon Devotees (Slate IJnivcrsily of New York Press, 1988). Franco Fermcci , The poetic..^ o f 0i.c.gui.c.e:The Aulobiogro/~llo f the Work in Homer, Dante, and .Shakr.cpeorc (Ithaca. 1980). 32-3. "bid.

34

The Wi.sdorrr c.f Poc.r.s

(through she will later be cr~~elly abandoned by Rama in response to slanderous attacks on her purity). Both works arc largely structured around the forcst exile of their warrior heroes; both give ample space to the heroic battles at their heart. There is, howcver, a telling difference in attitude: the Muhabhuruta views the battle with persistent doubt, hesitation, and ambiguity-its heroes have great difficulty in deciding to fight at all-whereas Rama. ever the exemplary hero, fights without qualms and achieves a clean, clear-cut victory which ushers in a golden age. In pu'rely personal terms, howcver, Ranla, too, experiences life as tragic-his unwavering acceptance of his royal duty leads to a final separation from his beloved Sit%-yet this is tragedy of a very different type from that of the MahabhcIrata. The Rrimaya7la (treated here as a whole, that is including the supposedly later 1st and 7th hooks) illustrates the tragedy always consequent on perfection or the search for perfection, just as the work as a whole could be characterized by what 1would call the 'poetics of perfection'. It creates a sustained, lyrical universe peopled by idealized heroes whose very perfection involves them-and [he audience-in recurrent suffering. The Mahabhurara's heroes. by way of contrast, are any thing but perfect; they are deeply flawed human beings, tom by terrible inner conflicts, confused by reality, and driven by a combination of forces towards ultimate disaster. The poem that tells their tale is equally ambiguous and unresolved, with an open-ended quality, on many levels, that distinguishes it from the other epic. I shall refer to the Mahabhciratu's design as the 'poetics of dilemma'. Let us now see if these two poetic approaches can be systematically juxtaposed. There can be no poetics without semantics; but I would like to skirt the problem of meaning and concentrate instead on certain formal features that are particularly suggestive for our purposes. A convenicn~ place to start is with the frames within which the epic tales are set. Both works begin, as is customary in the Indian tradition, with detailed synopses of their contents. But these synopses arc placed in radically different opening contexts. Let us look first at the opening chapters of the Mahcibharara. Here we meet the bard, UgraSravas (whose very name suggests the terrible nature of his tale). as he arrives in the Naimisa forest and encounters the sages i n the midst of a twelve-year saciificial rite. He has just come, we discover. from another sacrificeKing Janame-jaya's attempt to destroy all thc serpcnts in thc sacrificial fire--and there he heard another sage, Vaiiampfiyana: recite the Mahahhcit-urtr ~,iles[ha[ hacl f.irst becn ~olclby Krs~laDv~tipfiyana

7i)u'ur-d( 1 Hi.stot.ic,rrl Portlt,.s

I I I P Strti.rkt it Epil,ic..v

. 25

Vyasa. The bard is now asked to repeat this recitation. and he agrccs: '[ shall tell you'. he says, 'the whole tho~ight01 that brilliant Vyasa; poets have narrated i t before, others repeat i t now, and still others will tell i t in the future' ~ p r a v u k . ~ 6 mrnatatp i krr.st~um ~ y ~ s u s v & m i r r ~ t e j a s a ~ u kavavah c a k I ~ ~ke ~ h(,itsamprary acuk.yat~.pure /akhy&.syanti tarhaivrit~yaitihcisutn imam bhuvil 1.1.23-24; cf. 1 S0.3; 1.5 1.12).' Note the clear line of transmission: UgraSravas, the bard, is repeating the performance of Vaiiampayana. Vyiisa's pupil. who heard the text from the 'author'. But what is the nature of the text we are hearing? The bard offers us not a literal repetition of the original epic, if such an original ever existed-for all we hear of is the stories (kuthah) 'relating to the Mahabharata (rnahirbharutasamSrituh, 1.10) that poets of past, present, and future transmit-bu~ rather the 'whole thought' of the great Vyasa. Already we can sense the fluidity and open-ended quality of this textqualities still very much in evidence when the Mahabharata is recited in India in the traditional manner. We are dealing less with a fixed text than with a message couched in a specific poetic idiom and reflecting a specific range of vision and perception. (We might note in passing that when versions of the Mahcibharura were composed in the regional Indian languages, they sometimes claimed to reproduce precisely this message, not a given text: Villiputtorar, author of the Tamil Mahabhurata, is asked by his patron to tell the story 'in the puriinic manner'; Nannaya, first of the Mahubharara poets in Telugu, is ordered to convey the meaning of the work I j a n a n u t a k r s ~ a d v a i p ~ n a m u t z i v y ~ a b h c ) b bharatubrzddhanirupitartham rrpad6, 1.161). Still, we do have some sort of a text: the first chapter speaks of a Mahabharata of 100,000 verses (roughly the size of the printed version today). which Vyasa himself compressed, by eliminating the various minor stories (updkhyana), into a merc 24,000 verses: and then a summary in 150 verses (the synopsis of Chapter I ? ) is mentioned. On thc other hand, we are told that the book has at least three different beginnings (from Manu, i.e. Chapter I as we have i t ; Astika, 1 . 9 4 8 ; and Uparicara, 1.53), all of them apparently equally acceptable ( 1.1.54). The attempt to pin down a precisely delimited text does not appear too promising. despite the existence today of a so-called 'critical edition'. But this need not trouble us. Other defining 'Citations are to the Southcrn Reccnsion (SR) of the Mahtibhuratu. cd. P. P. S. Sastry (Madras. 193 1-3 ).

pararncters are stable throughout the va~.iousregional rcccnsions. For example. no mattcr wherc we choosc to bcgin the tcxt. wc cannot fail to noticc its encyclopacdic charactcr: this. the first chaptcr announces. is, indccd, thc outstanding charactcristic (lak.yana, 1.52) of the Mahahhurclra. 'Everything has been incorporated [arranged. ordered] hcre' (ihu sarvarn anukrantam); or, in a morc I.amous formulation (BORI 1.56.33), 'whatcvcr is herc may he found elsewhere. but what is missing hcre does not exist anywhere'. Vyasa. i t is said. left behind jagat sanlarn). So him (in his work) the entire worl'd (vydsoccl~ist~zm the Muhuhhuratu is conterminous with the world-not a modest claim. perhaps, but one that does help to clarify the aims of this text. There is no escape built into i t from its relentless, bleak vision. It presents itself not as a work of art but as reality itself. No boundary marks off this text from the world. Even in recitation, i t functions not as a purveyor of dramatic illusion, nor as an imaginative venture in narrative, but as the vehicle of what might properly be termed 'realistic' insight. And i t is no accident that this insight, or series of insights, presents itself to us in the context of intractable dilemmas and hopelessely frustrating ambiguities. Moreover, given this same 'realistic' properlsity, i t is not surprising that the text opens its narration with myth-more precisely, with cosmogony. (As we shall see, the Ramayana, by way of contrast, begins with an anthropology.) We hear in Chapter 1 the tale of the world's unfolding out of primeval darkness. and also of its periodic destruction; and this brief account concludes with the somewhat austere vision characteristic of puranic cosmology: 'So the wheel of lifc turns, without beginning and without end. producing hordes of creatures'(] .41). This is the truc setting of the great tale that is about to be told. Men agonize, hesitate. proceed to act, but 'everything is rooted in time [kula]to be or no1 to be, to be happy or not; time cooks all creatures, and timc crushes them: only time quenches thc fire of time that burns living beings ... ; time moves in all creatures ceaselessly. impartial to a l l ' ( 1.1.230-233). This lament. which concludes the introduction t o the text and the initial synopsis of the story, will ~ C C L I Ialmost . at the very end of thc epic. i n the Book of Sctting Forth (17.1.3). when the Pandava hcrocs. having survived thc apocalyptic hattlc. and having witnessed the deaths of thcir own w n s . abandon the world and bcgin thcir long walk up to hcavcn. W e rnrght. i n I'LIc~. rcgard t h ~ swholc epic as an cxtcntcd essay.

T O W C JuI H~sroric~iI -~~ P O C ~ I of C Sthe S ( I I I S ~E1)ic.s ?-~I

27

carried along on a complex narrative frame, on timc and its tcrrors. One can see onc aspect of this pcrvasivc theme. and something of its complexity. in the way that the epic conceives thc figure of its supposed author, thc sage Vyasa. As we have seen, Vyasa appcars already in the opening chapter. at the head of thc line of transmitters of the work he is said to have composed. This is not his only role: as his very name indicates, he is the 'arranger', who is said to havc set the Vedic hymns in their present order. But this somewhat shadowy presence behind the Vedas can hardly compare with his concrete, physical presence in the epic. For Vyasa is not only the author of the text but also the immediate ancestor of all the major protagonists and heroes. He wanders in and out of his own story, observing and affecting the lives of his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons. This genetic aspect of the author's role, which is surely one of the most striking aspects of the text's frame, has a rather gruesome colouring wholly suited to the 'poetics of dilemma1-for Vyasa fathers the epic families in a somewhat irregular manner, which in itself contains the seeds of their future ambiguous rivalries. He is brought in by his mother, Satyavati. to impregnate the widows of his unfortunate halfbrothers; but neither of these two women can bear the sight or smell of this ugly, wild ascetic, and the result is disastrous. The first, who closes her eyes in disgust while having intercourse with Vyasa, gives birth to a blind child, Dhrtarastra; the second turns pale with shock at the sight of her forbidding brother-in-law and as a result gives birth to the pale (ultimately impotent) Pandu. Both children are impaired and thus unfit for kingship; their descendants will devastate the earth in their struggle for the throne. And when i t is all over-after Vyasa had watched the apparently ineluctable destruction of his family, all but one of whom he survives as a lonely witness - then. as we learn, again from the opening chapter of the epic, he reveals this story to the world: 'After his sons had grown old and departed on the final way, the great sage spoke thc Bharata in the world of men' (tesv fimajesu vrddhesu gate.yu parum gatim / abravid Ohdratam loke Winuse, smin mahur~r,!.iW/ 1.60). So the Muhdhh~ratcris thc work of a survivor and presents itself as such in its initial statement. This opening intimation of thc tragic ending. secn as thc precondition of the story's very existencc. is clcarly sonlewhat disconcerting: 'In my beginning is my end'-although the Mc~hul)huratupoet would no doubt also agrce with the sccond axiom, cchoing the cosmogony in Chapter I : 'In my cnd I \ ~ n yhcginning.' Still. dcspitc thc iiitl-oduction'\

28

7 ' h ~Wisdom cf Poets

explicit harking backwards, as it wcrc. to thc end, and despite the appearances in his own talc, time narrator-author's own ~~nsettling essentially unfolds forward, remorsely 'cooking' all the characters, in this epic. In the perspective of the Mahabharara, time may ultimately be cyclical, but our experience of it, like that of the heroes, is of a steady progression (actuqlly a degeneration) that both works through the terrible human strugkles recorded here and then destroys the struggling actors themselves.,And, again. this progression is part of the work's essentially realistic mode, which is also expressed in the fact that Vyasa produces 'real' physical offspring within the work, as part of the story, and by the further fact that these children must die 'real' deaths before the story can be told. In this area, the contrasts with the Rrirnayana are particularly salient. So far we have observed several conspicuous features articulated through the Mahabharata's frame and subsequently extended and developed throughout the epic-its essentially unbounded character as a text and the related encyclopaedic drive; the thematic concern with time, a concern anchored in myth but worked out in relation to the narrative 'history' ('itihdsa' clearly comprises both terms, much to our surprise); and the self-portrait of the author as poet as well as progenitor of the major actors, whose disastrous experience he witnesses and documents. Many other features of the text are clearly related to the above. We should note, for example, its dialogic and agglutinative character (functions, perhaps, of the Indian encyclopaedia). This is not a text that presents a single, unambiguous truth; rather, as one finds in the 'puranic' genre generally,Vt brings a variety of often conflicting viewpoints into play, studies their points of congruence and tension, and usually fails to resolve them into any unilateral position. No doubt the text expanded over time partly as a result of this basic tendency. It refuses to exclude any experience as wholly alien (and let us recall that the Rarndyantl. too, finds a natural place within the Mahubharata). At the same time, the endless dialogues tend to feed into the structure of ongoing dilemmas, a structure that is amazingly supple and absorptive. to the point where the world i~selfis seen as held within this frame. Should one live within the world or. re.iecting it, seek to transcend ir'! Is the latter

('I. Don Handclrnan, 'Myths ol Murugan: Asyrnlnclry and Hierarchy in South I n d ~ a nPuranic Coslnology'. I-ir.srorv (J/ Rcli,qiotl.s 27 ( 1987), 170. I horrow tlic term 'di;~logic.'liom Bakhtin. :I

Tort,ar.d( I Hl.srot-ic.alPoetic.~o f ' r h ~San.~kritEpics

.

29

possibility real'? Arc human actions free or totally determined? In either case. can one c h ~ o s cto fight for an earthly kingdom? Can we ever know truth'? Are we helplcss victims of time, or can we escape its power? Why is goodness so bound up with, indeed dependent upon, evil? Above all, what is one to do with one's life? (Note the emphasis on conscious action!) Questions such as these, which recur constantly in ever changing form, provide the epic with its coherence. It is the coherence of doubt and ambiguous riddles (the latter, incidentally, are an important feature of this text), extending even to self-parody (as in the Virataparvan. Book IV), and it produces no convincing synthesis or stable set of answers. Quite the contrary: the epic remains, to the very end, an unbalanced, imperfect vehicle for unanswerable questions. This work was recited, so we are told, in the intervals of a great sacrifice aimed at destroying all the world's serpents; between chapters or sections, the sacrifice went on. One tells the story in the midst of sacrifical destruction, a ghastly process of violence that is always in some sense primary to the text, providing its proper setting as well as a symbolic restatement of its themes. This sacrificial background is drawn at length and in great detail in the first book of the epic, the Adiparvan (which gets to the epic story proper only after 52 chapters, and then immediately departs from i t again to develop other stories and themes); we thus find the main narrative emboxed within multiple frames, each of which is at least partly autonomous and endowed with its own dynamics and internal necessities. Indeed, 'emboxing' is a major technique of the Mahabharata: X, telling the story of Y, recalls how A once told the tale of B to C... At times, the dizzy listener feels he is trapped i n an infinite regress of narrative, just as he remains tom by the unresolved dilemmas that the text presents. We need not look here for balance and harmony and safety: the Mahabharata glories in an imbalance which both reflects and, perhaps, generates and fuels a dangerous power. To this day, this text is not recited (or even stored) inside a house, lest i t consume the building and its inhabitants; one reads i t outside, on the porch-and even then not from beginning to end, since that progression, too, is felt to he potentially disastrous. The Mahahhdrara is fire, never wholly contained by the accumulation ol' frames that hind it; impartially burn~ngand cons~l~ning its hcrocs. its own claims to autonomy and the articulation of explicit truths. i t also manif'csrs throughour a c o n s c i o ~ ~thematic s c.onccrn with I'iery destruction as transcendent

Towar-d (I Historir,al Poc~ticsqf'thr Sanskrit Epics

power, as an aspect, pcrhaps the most cruc~alaspect, of God. and as the paradoxical means of connecting onesclf w ~ t hhim.' Its wholeness, never cut off from the outside world, is that of the serpent swallowing its own tail-a totality based on a kind of creative entropy, an innerly motivated process of self-destruction and regeneration, with concomitant elements of self-discovery, which the epic refers to repeatedly as 'daiva' (usually, and all too weakly, translated as 'fate'). Vyasa fathers an entire universe and watches i t consume itself in fire; the frame shares the general prdcess enacted by the main epic story, within which the listener or reader is also entirely subsumed. The reality the text offers us is thus palpably condensed. immediate, and dramatically imperfect. The imperfect 1s our paradise. Note that in this bitterness, delight, since the imperfect is so hot i n us, lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds Perhaps this view helps to explain the strange verse that concludes the opening chapter of the text: tapo na kalko 'dhyuyanam na kalkah svfibhaviko vedavidhir nu kalka(d prasahya vittrilzaranam nu kalkas tany eva bhavopanatdni kalkah//

'Austerities are not dregs; study is not dregs, nor are the natural rules of the Veda or [even] the forceful plundering of riches-but they all become dregs when they are overpowered by reality.' It is existence. undefinable, overdetermined and elusive, that matters here; the restand that seemingly includes all that is conventionally conceptualized, named, and ranked-is no more Lhan (also no less than) viscous residue. When we turn to the frame of the Rcirnu.vana, we are immediately aware of a changed aesthetic ambience. The dialogic and agglutinative features of the Mahubhrirata have disappeared, and we find ourselves confronting a bounded text transmilted, according to its own testimony. by memory. This text has an author who remains essentially oulsidc i t (or at its margins), unlihc Vyasa w i ~ hhis active. See. For example. rhc hymn to Agn~In the 'khandavadahana' section of Book I .

31

indeed hyperactive role within the Mahahharata; and this author, vglmiki. is credited with having produced a self-conscious work of art which, as we shall see, makes its own ontological claims. Let us follow the framc-story of Valmiki as we find i t in the opening four chapters of the Ramfiya?za. Chapter 1 opens with a questionVglmiki's question to Narada about the existence of some person 'in today's world' (asmin sarnpratam loke) who is truly exemplary, full of power ( v i q a ) , aware of dharma and truth (satyavrikya). And this question (unlike those of the Mahabharata) has a single, clear-cut answer: there is such a perfect being, King Rama, whose story Narada poceeds to summarize in seventy verse;. NBrada even offers a conventional phala.r'ruti, a promise of future rewards to whoever studies this tale. And that is that-as we might expect from this kind of situation, the omniscient sage. having passed on the information sought from him, without, we should note, having given it any particular form, can now disappear (he flies through the skies). The content (artha) is all that occupies Narada (and Valmiki, too, at this stage). But in the second chapter. which comprises the opening text in the long history of Sanskrit poetic theory, we watch Valmiki undergo a striking transformation. He has gone with his pupil Bharadv+ja to bathe in the Tamasa river, flowing through the forest near his hermitage; he extols the clarity and beauty of the water'lucid as the mind of a good man'-and, in this happy mood. is about to enter the river when suddenly he witnesses a murder: a cruel hunter shoots a male Kraufica bird before the horrified eyes of the bird's mate. Valmiki is overcome with compassion (karunya) and, quite unaware of what he is doing, utters a verse-the first Sloka, so we are told, in the Sanskrit language: ma nisada pratisfham tvam agclmah Srisvati/l samaW yat krauficamithunacl ekam avadhill klimamohitam//

'You shall never again know peace, 0 hunter, since you slew one of this pair of Krautica birds as i t was overcome with passion.' No sooner has Valmiki produced this verse than he himself is overcome by surprise: 'What is this that I have ultered?' His poem has been produced through an ur,conscious process involving the transmutation of strong emotion into an aesthclic form-a perfect form, as Valmiki at once recognizes, balanced. cven, and capable of being sung Lo music ( ~ ~ n t r i l a v a . ~ u m a ~ ~The v i r utransformalion ). described herc prefigures descriptions 01' the aesthclic cxpericncc by Lhc mediev:~l Sanskrii

pocticians (the rcc.vrl theory); but for our purposes the main elements o f the story are the I'ollowing: the emotional origins of poetry (Valmiki's griel', s'oka. hecame s'lokrr, as thc text states); the poet's spontaneous inner movement; the perf'cction of form embodying this movement; and, as V. Narayana Rao remarks, the fact that an audiencc is already present in the form of Bharadvaja, Valrniki's disciple, who hears his master rccitc the verse and then memorizes i t himself (pratija,gr&ha).The text, beginning with this single, famous verse, is transmitted whole, unchanged. 'to the great satisfaction of both poet and pupil (see verse 19). Now Valmiki can take his bath and return, still rather moved and amazed, to his hermitage. Already he is conceiving other stories (kathas)in a state of meditation (dhyuna)when Brahma, the Creator, suddenly arrives and has the chance to hear the verse-for Valmiki is still absorbed inwardly with this matter, and still filled with grief (antargatamanu bhlihsu Sokaparuyunah). Brahma smiles: the Sloka was composed by his will; and he commands the sage to sing in this manner the entire tale of Rama, just as he heard i t from Narada. Whatever Vdmiki does not know will become known to him (in the telling); there will be no false utterance in his kavya: the Ramayana story will thus endure as long as the mountains stand and the rivers flow. Brahma disappears; but the sage and his pupils, still amazed, continue to sing thc Sloka over and over, achieving the emotional alchemy of grief into poetry. Valmiki can now proceed to the composition of the entire tcxt. He does so by entering a state of deep meditation (dhamena yogam asthitah). in which he sees with his inner eye. through a process of visionary insight. the epic story in its essence (tattvuto)and in detailincluding everything that had not yet happened to Rama (anagatam c.a !at kitg cid rama.~,vavasudhatule. 3.39)! The vision incorporates all, whether past, prcsent. or future; and Valmiki turns it all into poetry. Having thus produced a work of 24,000 Slokas, the poet wonders who might recite it. At that very minute the two sons of Rama, KuSa and L.ava. how at VSlmiki's feet-they are growing up in Valmiki's hermitage. for reasons that we learn only towards thc end of the entire epic. in Book VI1-and the poet decides on the spot to teach thc poem to them. They learn it verbatim. with its musical accompaniment, and they slng i t to audicnccs ol' Brahmins and sages. On one such occasion-perhaps thc first-thc sages wcep with joy at hearing the work pcrl'ormcd: '0 the sweetness 01. t h ~ ssong, and cspeciall y u f the

poetry; even thoi~ghit has all liappcned Ion? :(go. it is as i f we had been shown i t right heforc O L I ~eye\' ( 4 . 1 7 18 ) . Such is the power of v2lmiki's art: the story has come ;~livc.Hut this power of the poet's achieves an even more poignant expression. For the hero ol'the story himself, Rama. onc day finds thc two f'amous pcrformer~o f the Rbmayana, KuSa and Lava-his own sons, whom he fails to recognize-and brings them hornc to his palace to sing their song; and, as they begin. Ranla. in the mitist of his courtiers, slowly loses himself completely i n a longing to experience his own story (sa cup1 rbrwhpari.yadgatcth Srcrrair h~rhhu,sr~yu saktaninna hahhliva ha, 4.36). Thus ends the upodghatt~,the introductclry 'frame' in four chapters; now the Rarnuyar~cl story propcr can unfold, beginning with a description of the KoCala country and the city of Ayodhya, the righteous rule of Ranla's father Daiaratha, and the complex circumstances of Rama's birth. I shall not enter here into an analysis of the main Raindyutza narrative. But notice how differently this introduction presents us with the text: the Muhahharr~ta'.~ frame shows us Vyasa as witness to and survivor of the epic's dramatic events; only when i t is all over, and his sons and grandsons have died, does he decide to tell the story as hc knows it."' The RrSmayana'.~frame depicts the genesis of the tcxt in a totalistic, visionary experience. in a timeless moment of yogic contemplation, and concludes with the epic hero himself entranced by the beauty and power of the story, in the perfect form in which he encounters it. We hear the story just as Rtima, its protagonist, hears it. Or, more precisely: we in effect overhear a story intended for its own protagonist. In fact, there is an impressive aesthetic disjunction in this case between Rama, the listener inside the text. and the external audiencc eavesdropping. as it were, on the narration." For, as we shall see, R a ~ n a ' sexperience of the text of his life is largely predicated on a kind of learning, or of an unforgetting, markcd by acute personal pain; in a sense, he 15 remarkably akin to the unhappy Nisada-hunter of the upnd,qhatu, c u r d by the Poet, in the first ever Sloku. to a life of disquiet and unease--except 111 A passage 111 S R 1. I .9-95, clcarly cornpoxcc]under the inllucnce 01' ~ h c Rarnavut,~frame story, has Brahrnri visrl Vy,'Isa jusl as he is haid to h a ~ c Come to Valmik~:hut cvcn this attempt lo hring Lhc MahLihlltimlu In line w ~ l h the kavjw (radrtron fails to rlisturh thc ha51c rculism and chro~iologrcal Orderliness 01' the I'ranic. " I am agnrn inclchtcd to V. Narayarin l i a o I'or this I'orrnulation.

34

The Wi.sdnrrz qf Ports

that i n Kiima's case, the pcrkctly craftcd curse. which he hears as a facinated but also forlorn captivc audience, lasts for not one hut for 24,000 ilokas! The frame-far more autonomous and differentiated in this case than in that of the Mahabharata, where there is arguably no significant distinction between internal and external listeners, where we, the audience, are properly and entirely absorbed within the text. which has no limits - turns out to embody, in essence a small-scale model of the main sLory: for, what the hero-listener has, it seems: forgotten, what, among other things, he must recover through the retelling, is the horror of his own gratuitous cruelty to the wife he has exiled. There is thus an existential dimension to the presentation of this story which is already actively at work in the composition of the frame. While Vyasa meanders in and out of his own text, the Ramayana succeeds in taking its hero out of his own life, or in substituting its own powerful. artistic reality for his immediate, perceived experience. In fact. the story turns out to be more powerful than any ordinary reality. We see this especially clearly at the point where the frame seemingly resumes its role, at the very end of the Ramayana's final book, the Uttarakanda. Let us briefly sum up these final chapters of the epic, which I see as crucial to any understanding of the poetics of the work as a completed whole. The war is long past: Rama rules in Ayodhya. But he is alone-he has forced himself to exilc Sita to the forest because of his subjects' slanderous slurs upon her character (though Rama, of course, knows these accusations to be false). His sons, the twins KuSa and Lava, have grown up in Valmiki's hermitage; their father does not know them. Rama is performing the great aivamedha sacrifice, which has already gone on for a whole year. At this point Valmiki, our poetauthor of the text, commands KuSa and Lava, who, as we know, have learned i t by heart, to sing the Ramdyana, twenty chapters at a time. to the sages and sacrificial priests at the gate of Riima's palace. And, once more, Rama hears the poem and is moved. During an interval in the sacrificial rites, he convenes scholars and sages and has the two singers perform in their presence. Everyone notices their resemblance to the king-but for their matted locks and garments made of bark. there is no difference between the two boys and Rrima. At the conclusion of twenty chapters, the king orders the singers to bc rewarded with gold; but they refuse payment, as instructed by Valmiki. They reveal the poem's author and promise Riima that he can hear more oP thc work during the intervals of the sacrifice. And. as the

.

T o ~ u t - (Id Histot-i(.(llPoetic..\ c?f'tlir Scrtl.sX-I-itEj~i(,s 35 king listens over many days. surrounded by other kings and monkeys, he at length recognizes his own sons (ttc.srtzit~gite tu 1,ijfi~yu .situputrau kujj-lavau, 7.95.2).What is more, he is suddenly propelled into action: the story has worked its power upon him, and he knows what he must do; he sends messengers to bring Sitri before him. that she may again demonstrate her innocence by a public oath. She appears the next day in the company of Valmiki himself; the latter proclaims his knowledge of her innocence, and Ralna accepts this as true. But Sit%, at last given the chance to speak. asks that if she has indeed been wholly faithful to Rama, the Earth open up and give her entry. At once the Earth-Sita's mother-opens and swallows the queen, now tamed off on a throne supported by serpents. Rama reacts with a predictable, all-too-human outpouring of grief and anger; he threatens to destroy the Earth unless she returns Sit2 or allows him, too, to enter the nether world with her. But Brahma suddenly appears with an amazing message: 'Rama, Rama, do not grieve. Remember your former existence; remember your origin in Visnu. Sita has reached the world of the serpents, but you will undoubtedly be reunited in heaven. You have heard this excellent poem, which will tell you everything-from your birth onwards, your joys and sorrows, and all that is still to be. Listen to the rest of it, all that regards the future.' Indeed, the sages are eager to hear the end of the poem (Rama himself seems by now rather indifferent to the future); so, when the night has passed, Rama brings his two sons back to sing the remaining part of the story, comprising the final events of his own life and death. Listen to the way our text presents this crucial point of junction: 'When dawn had come, Rama gathered the sages together and said to his two sons, "Sing without fear." And KuSa and Lava sang the remaining part o f the poem [bhavigad uttaram kavyam] while the great sages were seated there. When Sit2 had entered the Earth through her faithfulness, at the conclusion of the sacrifice, Rama, deeply depressed, not seeing Sita, thought the whole world empty ...' (99.14). And so on: we learn that the forlorn king set up a golden image of his beloved wife and continued to rule his kingdom for 10,000 more Years, until Death came to him one day and announced that he must return to heaven; and that Riima, accompanied by the bears and monkeys and his faithful subjects, happily entered the Sarayu river and was thus transported to the celestial realm. The story is over. But the shocking and moving fact is that we experience thcsc final chapters as Rama doeb-not in thc backwards movement of story. but

36

7'/1(, Wistlo~nof Poc~t.\

rathcr-with past interwoven with prcscnt or luturc (and futurc presented as past). There is no visible seam separating the text's statement that KuS;I and Lava sang the end of the pocln from thc actual content of this cndrng--the description of Rama's depression, the golden image of Sit%,and so on. The frarne has meltcd away, our scnsc of timc is confused, past conflates with future-as i t does already at the very beginning of the epic, in V a l r i k i ' s proleptic visivn of past and futurc combined-and we find oursclvcs once again listening with Rama to the story of his own life, but at this point to that part of it that is still to unfold. We might ask ourselves if the 'actual' narrator, Vrilmiki, is continuing his narration through the mouths of his pupils, or on his own, as i t were-but does it matter'? Valmiki can in any case kriow the end of the story only through his yogic meditation, for he lives on in Rrima's kingdom during Rama's rule, as we know from the opening chapters of the cpic. It is too easy, and, indeed, utterly at odds with the peculiar poetics of the text as we know it, in its obvious integrity: to try to 'solve' this issue by peeling away parts of the work and condemning them as later than others. The transition we are observing is intended and aesthetically cogent. In effect, the story itself, or the work of art that embodies it, has finally taken over and substituted its reality for the 'external' or 'objective' one within which the audience live thcir usual lives. The story. that has held us, like its hero, captive for thousands of verses, in a lyrical universe of perfect form, ends by presenting an implici t ontology more powerful than our own. There is another aspect to this movement which is of primary importance to the comparison we have been making. If the pervasive theme of the Mahabhar-ata is that oPtime and its terror. the Ramriynna deals, by way of contrast. with memory-and that, too, in a rather specific manner. W e may be reminded of Borges' remark that timc cannot be grasped, becausc 'time is made up of memory, and memory is made up largely of Sorgetf~lness'.'~ Thc Rd.mayana collapses time: the future is rclatcd in the past tcnsc in the course of a single, extended moment thar is rcally a kind of etcrnal present (as is typical ofkavya); and thc expcricntial content of this moment, structured by the story. is thar oI' anamncsis. in the literal scnse of the word-a non-forgetting, a negation of thc negative proccsq ol'amncsia. Rama recognizes and '"~ohcr~l Alilhno,

Mass., 1984). h?.

7'n.e11ry~four C'or~\~cr,~orio~~.s a,irh Ror,qa.c (North Aclarns.

recovers his sons-through their- sinzing oi' his story. What is cvcn more striking is the fact that he is askcd (by Brahma) to rccoyni/.c and recover his own f'ormcr sell'. and that this renewal of memory is carried through by the continuation of' the story-into the hero's still ,,,,lived future. Rama is divine. a form of Visnu, but, in thc central books of our text, he seems to have forgotten this aspect of his identity; he has to be reminded of it in a sudden (and in the first case. transient) expansion of awareness, by Brahm3-once in Book VI ( 1 19; Baroda 105), after the trauma of Sit5's initial repudiation and trial; and then again, at the end of the cpic in the scene I have summarized. Rama: to know himself, has to hcar his story out to the end (not to live i t out--that is V y b a ' s mode); in particular, he has to confront the hidden aspects within i t , those crucial elements that he has 'forgotten' but can now retrieve. They arc all there: the story presents them to him. and to us; and it is the story. the vehicle of anamnesis. that counts. In the Mahabharata, the story is the world-seen, no doubt, with a particular insight (dar.iana); in the poetics of the Rhma.vann, the story replaces the world with an alternate, lyrical universe within which we discover our lost sclves. The sustained, autonomous, visionary power o f the poet supersedes time, e n c o m p a s s e s death. and reconstitutes memory (hence also identity). W e listen to the poet recounting the future and discover, or rediscover, who we truly are. Note that the story thus takcs on an almost redemptive aspect even as it takes over our awareness. R%maregains his sons, and, in a sense, his self in this way, via thc talc. which has a life of its own. Elsewherc, too, in the text, the story itselC rushes in to the rescue: in a marvelously delicate and suggestive section of Book V, the monkey Hanuman, who has at last discovered the captive Sit3 in the ASoka grove in L a k ~wonders , how to make his prescnce known to her-if hc speaks to her in a human voice and in Sanskrit, she will scream out in alarm at this strange spectacle (or she will think the monkey is her captor, the magician Ravana, capable of assuming many guises); but hc must Speak to her, lest she die in her terror and grief. A1 length. hidden above her in a trce, he begins to recite in a soft, melodious voice the Story of the R(irnaya~u-i.c. thc story of her own life: .Once thcrc was a king, Dafiaratha by name. who had a son named R3ma ...' (5.3031). Sita, hearing this story and sccing thc srrange apparition above her7 fears she has dreamed up this S:~nskrit-speaking monkcy: or. since her heart rs wholly given ovcr to longing for Rfma. pcrhaps she and sees only what can bc rcl;~tcdto him (rrr,sviir,irrGpi,?~(,o

karhurri tar11crrtllurr~).She prays that the vision she has just seen be real--and. indeed. i t is.just that. perhaps even more real than anything else. Again, [he story sades its listeners. rc-establishes the lost connections. renews memory, offers hope that is bound up with its own inner dynalnism and autonomous reality. (This episode also contrasts nicely wilh the Mr~hublzarura'shabit of cmboxing other tales; the Rumui).anu does this as well. but it also tends to embox itself. to retell its own tale ralher than another. just as its frame merges wholly, at the end, with the 'framed' narrative.) Rama hears his life's slory as i f it were already over-and thereby remembers his real self. Vrilmiki, the poet-author, gives birth not to flesh-and-blood characters (as does Vyas:~)but to a poem, generated whole in a single moment of intense inner conception. This poem lives its own life, imbued with the reality that inspired the poet's vision. Hanuman tells this same tale to SitB who is active within it, and thus restores her inner balance and self-knowledge. And we, the listeners, slip into the story ourselves at the moments when its apparent past merges with our future, or when its frame recedes and leaves us with memories rendered immediate and wholly present. To know the story is to know ourselves. But this process is possible only because of the self-conscious and self-contained beauty of the poem. This is not the death-dealing beauty that earlier Indian texts warn us against, but rather the beauty of perfect form that is timeless. subtle, and infinitely refined. The poem is equivalent not to the world but only to itself. As the farnous non-simile of Book VI puts it:

'The ocean resembles the sky. and the sky is like the ocean; but the battle of RBrna and Ravana is like the battle of Rama and Ravana.' Although thc Rumayarza already exemplifies most of the classical figurcs and tropes of the alarikura-.idstrci, this verse, a favourite of the poeticians, nicely conveys the sense ol'thc autonomol;s, bounded, and self-contained universc within which these figures arc set. The contrasts between the two epics can bc developed much further, but certain of the main lines, ;it least, should be clear. In one case we have an open-ended text whose riddles, douhts. and insoluble dileln~nascxpand to the limits of reality. which is condensed and defined by the story with i[s grimly powerful vision. I n thc other

case, a boundeJ. self-sufficien~ text. prcscrvcd as such, grows out of its 'author's completely autonomous initial vision. which achieves a of corm in the telling, and which ultimately presents us with a sustained inner world that is ontologically superior (by its own devices) to any other. (It is not by chance that a later work such as the yogdvasistha, a classic c.f narrative ontology, calls itself a m a h f i r a m r i y ~ ~The ~ ~ . )Mahubhurf~tais unbalanced, chaotic, dangerously expansive, and stubbornly reluctant to come to terms with the world and, above all, with its familiar cultural order; the Ramdyana offers a balance, refined limits (within which the text can replicate itself infinitely, in self-reflecting images), and a somewhat tragic *ortrait of cultural ideals i n the near stillness of their presumed But what of the question with which we began--do these two works constitute a set? I have not answered this question here. Some, perhaps. would see an important complementarity, well represented in other Indian cultural modes, in the contrast I have outlined--corrosive doubt joined to the ideal, 'open' retraction and a 'closed' delimitation of cultural norms, nivrtti and pravrtti, selfdestructive and self-transcending reality and a supreme investment in refined and exclusive cultural forms. The Indian tradition is, in any case, clearly right to class the two epics separately, in different genres reflecting very distinct visions-ven if to us both are surely 'epic'. We can also follow these two epic traditions further, into ihe classical and medieval literatures of India, where, indeed. we can observe a contrastive complementarity in their effect-but that is the subject of another study.

The Yaksa's Questions* Let us assumc, for the moment, that the world is impenetrably cnigmatic; that blindness is far more than a metaphor for human pcrception. the question bcing mercly one of the degrec of its actualization in each person; that any defined path, any conception of absolute values, any statement of identity-all incvitably and insidiously subvert themselves i n real cxpcrience; and that language, at least in its referential mode, is consistently shown to abet this subversion, Assume, too. that lifc is a dice game. govcrned by rules known to be deceptive. in which the least experienced, least adequate player is nevertheless pushed to the point of staking everything he has, including, in the cnd?himself, with the certainty of losing. Assume a world in which cach of thc players in this gamc must be seen to die, in most cases violently and unfairly; in which. moreover, the poles of life and death arc prcsent in every move, with the death pole always strangely privileged, cognitively and metaphysically. so that dehth is, in effect. the only possible outcome of the game. In such a world, one mostly fights for tinic. Fighting for time, in such a world, is a way of fighting with or against time; and this is a largc and constant part of Yudhisthira's strugglc in the Sanskrit epic. This ccntral figure among thc five Piindava heroes pils himsclf again and again against thc forces of k'cllu (Tirnc or Dcath). wliich~the M U / ~ L ~ ~ I ~isLfond ? ~ LofI ~telling (I us. is always 'cnoking' LIS ( k a l ~ ~pr~cuti li hhlitfir~i.sctn,fini. 1 7.1.3). The strugglc tnkcs various fbrms. Thcre is, first Yudhisthira's protest gain st the outragc of un,iust dying. as in the Abhimanyu episode (whcrc thc myth of thc hirtli of Dcath is told lo assuage the king's gl-ref).This prorcsr is. howcvcr, p;lrl of a Inore general stance in thc world. which cr~tailsccrt:~indcfinite ethical assertions-Yudhisthira'u , . 1 7 h i c.11aptc.r first appcarcd In (i.Ila\:~n-Rokcm ;mcl I ) . Shulman (eels). 1 i ~ ~ / ~ !/I(, , ~ KIIOI ~ , y 0 1 1 /4j(/(//~,~ OII(/01/1(,rE I I I ~ I I I ~. MI 0/( I/ 1~, \ . (XL,WY ~ r k O[.:P. :

I ')Oh) .

The Yuk.ya '.s Quc,stiotr.~ 4 1 mode of awareness. And the problem of meaning-. what is the point of all the suffering?-lurks in the background, surfacing at critical moments of debate. This is a battle in which there are only occasional, always temporary, victories. This chapter explores one of the most conspicuous of these victories, which we might also see as an important discussion on the expressive forms and powers of language. It comes at a major point of transition, at the very end of the third parvan, the Forest Book, when the Pandavas are completing the last days of their twelve-year exile in the wilderness. What lies immediately before them is the thirteenth year, to be spent in hiding and disguise, at the court of VirBla. In these final days in the forest, a crisis.suddenly occurs. A deer, rubbing against a tree, catches in its antlers the firesticks that a Brahmin had placed on orie of the branches. The deer runs off with these implements, and the Brahmin comes to Yudhisthira for help. The five brothers set off at once in pursuit of the deer, but it eludes them. Exhausted, depressed, and tortured by thirst and hunger, they tak(, shelter beneath a large banyan tree, where the accumulated frustration of twelve years of suffering seems suddenly to prompt Nakula to ask, again, the unanswerable question: 'Dharma never sinks low in our family .... We have no equal among living be.ngs; why, then, are we in this strait?' Yudhisthira responds first: 'Disasters have neither limit [maryada] nor cause; dharma distributes meaning to good and evil [dharmas ru vibhajaty artham ubha-yohpunya-papa-yoh, 3.3 12.11.' This somewhat detached announcement is less than satisfying for the other brothers, who offer simpler explanations: Bhima says i t is all because he failed to kill the usher who dragged Draupadi into the Kuru court; Arjuna blames himself for not killing Karna, and Sahadeva regrets that he did not slay ~ a k u n i Yudhisthira . then asks Nakula to climb the tree and search for signs of water. When Nakula reports that he sees trees and hears the screeching of water birds, Yudhisthira sends him to bring water from the pond that must be near. The pond, indeed, exists; hut as Nakula approaches, a disenlbodied voice calls to him: 'Do not act rashly; I have a prior claim. You may drink only after answering my questions.' He pays no heed to this voice, tastes the water. and falls down dead. When. hecausc of the long delay, the rcrnaining hrothcrs arc scnt onc by onc by Yudhisthira, each suffers thc same Sate. At lcngth Yudhisthira himself arrivcs to find the hodics of his brolhe~.sand a strange. onc-cycd, llcry crcature

42

The,

Wi.stlom of Poc./.s

slanding o n a log beside [he waler. The crealure identifies itself as a Yaksa; and oncc morc demands answers to ils questions. Unlike his brothers, Yudhisthira accepls this demand. The Yaksa, wc discover. is Dharma, Yudhis~hira'sfather: and the questions he asks constitute a moment of tcsting for the dharmic hero. Before wc examinc these questions, Ict us note several features of thc context. There is. for example, the pro~ninencegiven to the question of evil. that comcs into play immediately before the brothers confront the Yaksa. Nakula's question is the perennial 'why' of unmerited suffering, clearly a central issue in the epic; it may not be too much to assume that this qucstion continues to inform the evolving verbal exchangc. Than we may wonder whether the Brahmin's firesticks, the precipitating cause of the whole dramatic scene, carry any particular significance, or was it usual for Brahmins to hang them casually on trces in the forcst? We should, perhaps, think of the role of the arani, the two sticks, one 'male' and one 'female', in producing through friction the fire that connects this world and heaven. Our cpisode is usually refcrred to in the texts as the ~ r a n e y a ~ a r v athe n, 'section relating to thc arani'. The image seems too specific to allow us to speak o ~ l in y gencral terms of a pervasive symbolism of sacrifice. There is also a strong sense of symbolic reversal at this crucial narrative juncture. The brothers are literaily dying of thirst, but the water they find brir?gs only death. The world is out of joint: the good undergo the punishment of exilc and sudden death, the expected source cf life is poison. The only hope lies in words, in the answers Yudhisthira can formulate to the Yaksa's queries. This preocupation with language is also evident in the prelude to the trial, as when Yudhisthira speaks of the process of giving meaning to good and evil, or when he mourns his fallen brothers: 'Human utterances may go wrong [ma~zu.yasambhavul'aco vidhtirrni17vc1h pratis'rutuhf, but what of the promises of the gods'?' (3 13. 6--7). (Sec also Nilakantha ad 3 1 1.21 .) Finally, wc should allow oursclvcs to feel the dreamlike, sui-realisric setting of this ordeal and to cxpcricncc something of what Yudhisthira must fee! when, parched by ~hirst.slill in thc shock of having discovered the corpses of his hrolhcrs. he finds hiinself inlerrogated by the one-eyed spirit of the walcr: 'What make\ thc sun rise'?'

.

Tire Yok.vtr '.s Q~tr..stiotl.s 43

The Language of Survival As we turn lo [he qucslions. let us bear in mind that they arc classed precisely as such. as pra.fr1rr--not 'riddlcs' in a strict sensc (with two exceptions), but verbal p u ~ / . l c sof various kinds. Thc cpic is fond ol. such praillas: this is the term Draupadi uscs when she trics to save herself and her husbands at the dice game. by asking if Yudhisfhira was master of himself whcn hc staked her. There. as elsewhere in the text, t h e p r a i n a points to a baffling, ultimately insolublecrystallization of conflict articulated along opposing lines of interpretation (similarly with the major issue of the succession; the identification of the Pandavas at the end of the thirteenth year; and so on). But the major formative element in the Yaksa's questions isl as a wholc line of M a h a b h u r a t a interpretation culminating in the late medieval commentator Nilakantha has rccognizcd, the Upanisadic speculativc tradition.' Both question and answers tend to the metaphysical, with the latent centre of meaning-the ultimatc rcality that is thc true object of the qucst-usually present only as a suggested powcr situated somewhere between the two explicit poles of the contcst. Only the first question manages to elicit a straightforward reference to [his centre: 45. What makes the sun rise? What things move around it? What makes i t set'? In what is it fixed? 46. Brahman makes the sun rise. The gods move around i t . Dharma makes it set. It is fixed in Truth. 'See Nilakantha ad 3.313.45: kin1 svid ciditvum unnavarir?~cidipra~ftlottarun7dIikririrrnarlns tattvatr1 nirnetunz ciwhdha, 'The series of questions beginning "Whal makes the sun riae'!" sets out to ascertain the truth of the Self.' [ I cite, in the following discussion, the Vulgate text of Mbll with Nilakantha's commentary. edited by Rarnachandrashastri Kinjawadekar (reprinted Delhi, 1979).] The pruitlns which concern us in this essay stand in contrast to riddlcs proper, sludicd, c.g. by Durga Bllagwa~,Rrcltllt~itr Irrclitrn LVe, Lore anrl Litclraturr (Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1955): Kalipada Mitra, 'Enigma in Fiction', Jolrrtlcrl o/'t/~c Bilzur rind Ori.s.scl Kcscar-c.11Srwiet~. 14 (1928). 83-137; V. Elwin and W.G. Archer. .Extracts l'rom a Riddlc Notebook: A Note on thc Ilsc, o f R~dcllesin India'. Morr irc Itrtliu 73 (1041). 316-4 1 : hut c l . Mauric~cHlooml.ic.ld. 'Brahm:~nlc;~IKidcllc\ ancl the. Origin of Theoophy. In H.1 Rogc.5 (cd.) <'o~c:
44

The Wisdom of Poets

So one begins with Brahman, the ultimate; in a sense, the answers to all the subsequent questions are set out in advance. Still, the game1 trial is far from over; what remains is the cunning and potentially deadly linguistic duel in which Yudhisthira will fight for his brothers, lives, and his own, by formulating answers at a level somewhere below, or within, the ultimacy that he posits in his first reply. All his answers should probably be seen as subsumed by this starting point, and this may lead us to wonder just how seriously, or how literally, to take Yudhisthira's statements. For now, let us simply note the interesting assertion that Dharma produces the sunset-the daily moment of reabsorption-and also the concluding affirmation of the sun's fixation bratistha) in Truth. Each satisfactory answer leads to another question or series of questions. Wisdom, or survival, then appears to lie, at least at this stage: in the ability to produce an answer, properly couched in metrical form, to each individual query. Silence on Yudhisthira's part would be fatal. Everything depends on movement. the offering up of a linguistic countermove brativcikya) to block the Yaksa's primary move, with its everpresent hint of possible destruction. In a contest of this sort, the actual content of the answer may matter less than the simple existence of the verbal response; or the explicit content may stand in a skewed o r oblique relation to a more fundamental perception, perhaps resistant to verbal formulaltion. Nonetheless, the level of explicit utterance does matter: clearly, not just any answer will do, and there is a certain integrity a n d coherence a b ~ u t Yudhisthira's replies. Knowledge, jiiana, is being tried, through verbal means. W e can, then, hardly avoid an attempt to come to terms with the content of the utterances at the level on which they appear. Thus as we read through the passage, a rough typology begins to emerge. First. we notice the general framework of categorical questioning. with strong cosmological reference (including social cosmology). Having begun with thc sun and its daily course. the Yaksa quickly moves into questions relating to the placement of Brahmins and Ksatriyas with reference to the categories 'human' and 'divine': 49. What is the divinity [devatva] of the Brahmins, what is [their] dharma, like that of the good [satam iva]? What makes them human [manuso hhnva(~].and w h a ~do they share with thosc who are not good [a.~atuml? 5 0 . Vcdic study is thcir divinity; they share penance [tclpa.~] with the

The Yaksa 's Questions

.

45

good; death makes them human: they have blame in common with those who are not good. The Yaksa repeats question 45 in connection with the Ksatriyas,

and Yudhisthira replies: 52. The bow is their [the Ksatriyas'] divinity; they share sacrifice with the good; fear makes them human; they have desertion in common with those who are not good. s o both Brahmins and Ksatriyas belong, in some sense, in both worlds; they are both human and divine; as human beings, they have powers ofUanscendence-Vedi~ study (and tapas) for the Brahmin, the bow and sacrifice for the Ksatriya. Yudhisthira is a Ksatriya: apparently, he knows that his path to divinity leads through sacrifice and/or war. This answer thus bears a rather special burden. Once sacrifice has emerged in its traditional role as providing cosmic linkage, the Yaksa seeks to explore it further: 53. What is the one sacrificial chant [sciman]? What is the one sacrificial formula [yajus]? What among these veils [or envelopes, vmute] the sacrifice, and what does the sacrifice never exceed? 54. Breath is the one sacrificial chant; mind is the one sacrifical formula; the Vedic verse [rk; v.1. vak = Speech, BORI text] veils the sacrifice, and the sacrifice never exceeds it. We feel at once the presence of the Upanisadic speculative model of esoteric identifications, with the common tendency to translate elements from the ritual into internal equivalents (breath, mind, and, with special force here, language, seen as subsuming and also 'veiling' the sacrifice). This prasna is perfectly suited to the tone of many Upani~adicdiscussions; we might also want to consider the possibility that for some, at least, of Yudhisthira's answers, what we are hearing is the reproduction by the 'riddlee' of a fixed and memorized text. In any case, by now it appears that Yudhisthira's conversation with the Yaksa fulfils all three of the major conditions for what might be called, abstracting and generalizing to some extent, the classical Upanisadic riddling' scenario: (1) the situation of the contest on the border between life and death, so that wrong answers (and also other wrong moves, such as excessive questioning) may prove faial; (2) the Presence, within the contesl, of a concealed ultimacy, often perceived terms of the individual's underlying identity (the related problem 6

.

'"

46

The Wisdorn qf Poets

then being one of somehow capturing and stabilizing this identity in language); and ( 3 ) a fascination with cognitive mapping-the delineation and separaiion of categories and cosniological levels, and the simultaneous articulation of links and possible identifications between them-this being the basic form that the whole process of questioning and answering a s ~ u m e s It . ~ is within this inherited programmatic scheme that the warrior-riddlee of the epic is forced to speak. Given the primary focus on the categorical definition of levels or domains and on the possibility of movement between them, it becomes easier to understand why this peculiar catechism plays repeatedly with the boundaries between 'humanfnon-human' and 'livingldead': 57. Who experiences the objects of the senses, has understanding, is honoured in the world, respected by all beings, goes on breathingbut is not alive? 58. He who offers nothing to the fiveAeities, guests, dependents, ancestors, and the Self-though he breathes, is not alive. [See also 83-4.1 61. What does not close its eyes when asleep'? What does not move when born'?What has no heart? What increases by running away [vega]? 62. A fish does not close its eyes in sleep; an egg, when born, does not move; a stone has no heart; a river increases by running away. The latter example follows the 'dehumanizing' or 'dis-animating' direction of many riddles: the question suggests a series of paradoxical human images which the answer transfers to another, alien register (heartless stones and profligate river^).^ This praina must have been part of a fixed repertoire, since it (alone among the questions of this section) recurs in the story of Astavakra's riddling session (3.133.2829; see below). It. together with the pras'na that precedes it in verses 59-60, may be said to constitute the only true riddle-like example in this passage. See, for example, Brhadd.ranvuka Upanisad [BAU] 3.1-9; Chd.ndogyu Upanisiid 1.8.On the notion of 'over- questioning', which leads the questioner to lose his head, see BAU 3.6 and 3.9. 'Nilakantha notes this movement and refers i t to his metaphysical concerns: 'The inanimate world of uhatikrira etc. [the Sankhya rntr\~u.c.] is put into motion by Purusa.'

The Yaksn's Qur.c.tions

47

59. What is heavier than the earth'? What is tallel- than the sky'? What is faster than the hind'? What is more numerous than grass [v.l.~irridr,i. th-n men]? 60. The mother is heavier than the earth; the father is taller than the sky; the mind is faster than the wind; worries are more numerous than grass. This time the movement is t o w a r d s the animate and the human; but even here, in an atmosphere of iiddles with s~ngular.cleverly encoded (and evidently familiar) answers, the cosrnological colouring of the interchange is retained. From 'riddles' of this typs, i t is a short step to the 'monk's riddles' with their rote answers, in this case with a moral or ethical c~lmination.~ 63. What is the friend of the traveller, the friend of the one at home, the friend of the sick, the friend of the dying'? 64. A caravan is the traveller's friend; a wife is the friend of the man at home; a doctor is the sick man's friend; charity is the friend of the dying. Once the moral direction has opened up, there is no stopping it; from this point, in addition to what might be called 'identification puzzles' ('What is the self of a man? Who is the friend made by fate (daiva)'--Answers: a son; a wife ... 71-2), which may also reach towards an ethical finale (as in this same set. 7 1 -2), most of thepra.Snas elicit reponses on the level of values and moral conduct (see 70, 74, 76, 78). Clearly the most central, most meaningful set is 75-6: 75. What is the highest dharma in this world'? What dharma always bears fruit'? What must one restrain to be free from sorrow? Which bond is never worn away? the Vedic dharma 76. The highest dharnia is non-injury (cinrs'unz.~ya); always bears fruit; ~f one restrains the mind, he is free from sorrow; the bond with good people is never worn away. Yudhisthira is summing up his life's wisdom; he will repeat the essential first part of this response later, when the purely verbal part of the trial is over. The Yaksa. satisfied with Yudhisthira's answers See James W. Fernandez. Per~s~.ra.vions ~lritlP~~t~f'ot~r~iur~ce.c.: T / I PP/LI\,of' Tropes iri Culrurc, (Bloo~ninyton:Indiana llnivcrsily Press. 1986). 178-9.

48

77ze Wisdom

clf Poet.,

(we will observe this trans~~ion more closely i n a moment) offers to revive onc of his fallen brothers. Faced wilh t h ~ sexcruciating. seemingly impossible choice, Yudhisthira does not hesilare: lie asks that Nakula be revived. When the Yaksa wonders at this-Why not A j c n a or Bhima, born from the same mother as Yudl:isthira?-the latter explains that this is the very logic of his decision: his father had two wives, whom he, Yudhisthira, regards as equal; let each of them have at least one surviving son. And, in further explanation: 'AnrSarnsya is the highest dhaima, which I regard more highly than the highest truth; anrSamsya is what I seek to do .... Everyone knows that my character is dharma' (313.29). What could be more persuasive than this confession of faith? The Yaksa responds by reviving all the dead brothers. We know the further results of this move: the Yaksa reveals himself to Yudhisthira as his heavenly father--actually his 'real' father, so to speak-i.e. Dharma, whom Yudhisthira has never known.5 He also offers his son three boons, and Yudhisthira chooses: first, that the Brahmin's fire-kit be restored to him (despite everything that has intervened, this initial difficulty is not forgotten: the debt still not discharged); second, that the Pandavas pass the crucial thirteenth year of exile safely, in disguise, unrecognized by anyone; and finally, that he conquer greed, delusion and anger, and that his mind be always fixed on charity, penance and truth. The final boon is, as Dharma immediately states, tautological or tautidentical: Yudhisthira's character is in any case exactly as he asks that it be. Note the way this cruel trial evolves into a final statement of identity, after the disclosure and meeting of father and son.6 But let us return to the moment of transition and to the subtle play with language that produces it. What is the actual mechanism of reversal'? Something is happening here. in the unfolding verbal contest. that should make us a little uneasy. I assume, again. as a working hypothesis, that the content of the cxchange is not entirely random and that the role of linguistic articulation is actually seen by the text as endowed with serious. effective power. Listen to the answer Yudhisthira gives, after the final sequence of questions, when the

The Yak.sa's Questions

49

yakSa asks him to define a man (yurusa): d;var?zsprsati I~humir?zcn subdu?l punyenu karrnanci/ yavat sa jabdo bhavati tdvat purusa ucyate//(I20)

The word [or sound] touches heaven and earth together with [in association with, through] a good deed; as long as that word exists, one may be called a man. Language is linked to deed, and the two together form a reputation (thus van Buitenen, translating the above: 'The repute of a good deed touches heaven and earth; one is called a man as long as his repute lasts.") But the formulation is also suggestive. One might almost the verse, in line with the cosmological and categorical concerns that we have seen to inform the entire question scenario, as stating that a human being is someone who, through language, connects disjointed domains. If we follow the consequent analogy with the arani firesticks, language might also be thought to have a fiery and partly destructive aspect in this work of establishing

connection^.^ But how does it work? And do the suggested linkages inhabit the verbal space we think they do? A pandit's reading of the Yaksapraina section would, I think, take things optimistically on the level of their assertion: Yudhisthira passes the test with flying colours; his ideal of cinriamsya is the perfect answer to the question he is asked; death is thus reversible, and things will turn right in the end. Real knowledge exists, is available through exemplary figures (who speak the truth), and always contrasts in ultimate terms with illusory experience, including that of mundane loss and suffering.' Another possibility, not too far removed from the former, is to follow Nilakantha's method, thus spiritualizing and consequently allegorising the entire dialoguean dhycitmika reading of Mcihabharata. I do not wish to deny the possible validity of either of these readings, but it does seems to me that the text itself suggests another possible approach, in which an implicit archaeology of linguistic utterance plays a major part. If we listen well, both questions and answers begin to echo significantly

"ate that the Yaksapraina section is imincdiatcly preceded by the parallel 'J.A.B. Van Buitenen. The Md.habharata vol. I1 (Chicago: University of self-revelation of the sun to his son, Kama. Chicago Press, 1975). 803. "The text refers to thsentirc episode, which we know as the L i r ~ ~ q r \ c ~ / ~ i l r - ~ ~ c i ~ r 'On fire and speech, see. e.g. BAU 3.9.24. as 'the great revival 2nd meeting oi Ihther and son' ( s u n ~ u t t / ~ c j ~ ~ n s t r ~ ~ ~ d ~ a ~ ( ~ 'See ~~ the somewhat different perspective of Gail Hinich Sutherland, The ttiukut p i t r ~ i(.(I ptctrclsvcr c.u. 3 . 3 13.38) Disguises o f the 3erno1,(Albany: SUNY Press. 1991 ). 8 6 9 3 .

50

Tllr Wi.s[/onl of Poets

wi!hin the wider narrative and experiential context of the epic; and it is thesc echocs, rather than the surl'acc verbal exprcssions with which wc are presented, that really matter most. Take lirzr.tar?zsya itself-'non-injury'. hence 'kindness' o r 'compassion' ('un-cruelty' in van Buitcnen's translation), Yudhisthira's proclaimed ideal. There is no doubt that this is a moving and 'true' formulation of dharmic value, and one cannot but identify with the hero who insists so unequivocally upon i!. Absolute unequivocation, in this case, embodies a believdble truth which no event, it seems, can vitiate. There is surely a level at which this statement of Yudhisthira's is the only right answer, sanctioned by the text. But let us excavate something of the word's surroundings, to expose its embeddedness in contexL. For one thing, we may note that the declaration of 'non-injury' as highest value comes only about halfway through the ordeal of questions. If the point of the ordeal was primarily to elicit this answer, and to stress it as the proper conclusion, then the remaining questions would be rather superfluous. Something apparently remains unsaid. More to the point, Yudhisthira, whatever he may believe to be the proper way, is a prime actor in a violent disaster or1 a universal sczle-as, indeed, he himself repeatedly tells us, especially when it is too late to reverse the consequences of his decisions. He fights, kills, makes demands, including the possessive claims inherent to kingship, and colludes. however reluctantly, in the general progression towards devastation. 'The dissonance between his values and his actions is not merely cognitive but truly existential, and the result can only be an accretion of irony to his proclamation in favour of non-injury. The warrior committed to such an ideal is surely. in some sense, an ironic figure. This contextual irony, moreover, deepens dramztically at the end of the epic, in the passage that, as I will argue later, is the narrative twin to the Yaksapraina section. When Yudhisthira, still pregnantly described as &nrs'am.s.~asarnayukta (endowed with non-injury/compassion, 17.3.32), arrives in heaven, he sees only his Kaurava enemies there; his brothers and Draupadi are suffering torments in hell. Such are the fruits of his ilrzrs'umsya; or, more precisely, what Yudhisthira perceives. in a flash of insight. is thc shocking lack ofcorrelation between his moral stance and the structure of the world. Daivu, 'fatc'. has produced this result ( I X.2.42), which l c a v c a glaring gap in consciousness. Yudhisthirz's response, which will clear away t h i b I'inal trial. is LO curse dharrna and the gods.

The Y(lk.sci'.s L)ur.vtiotl.v

51

1 will have rnorc to say a b o u ~this curse. For now, we might simply note Nilakantlia's gloss of Ntlr.Crn.s.va, in its second appearance in the Y a k s a p r a i n a , aa a v u i . y u m ~ ~(ua d 3 . 3 13.29). T h e suggestion is app~-opriate;we know the term vrii.samya, literally 'unevenness', from [he Nala story. where i t functions as a kind of key to the hero's of his disastrous inner development.'" A~~uisamyci is the opposite. a non-unevenness: thus an abstraction of symmetry and balanced order. There is excellent reason to believe that this notion is well suited to Yudhisthira's particular craving. He hungers after a world of balance and evenness, without remnants, where goodness is met with goodness and where words perhaps lead to truth. Krsna, too, speaks of such a world when he tells Utanka (hypocritically) that he tried his best to create 'evenness' (sausamya)between the Kauravas and the Pfindavas (14.53-55). But we know that Krsna is lying: the god works in a world that the Mahabharata constantly discloses to us as basically and essentially visama, uneven, inherently off balance, always spiralling downward towards destruction. Krsna himself consistently feeds this imbalance, fosters disorder, undermines surface symmetries. S o the overtones of arzriarnsyu, in Yudhisthira's statement, seem not a little disharmonious, if we listen well. While we need not exaggerate or take too literally the suggestive power of their situation within the narrative, these are not simple statements. T h e truth level of their utterance exists in a framework of potential disjunction. Indeed, the dissection of language levels now begins to seem part of the overall thrust of this section. To put the matter differently, we might imagine that the trial that begins with a statement of u!timacy'Brahman makes the sun rise',-entails a process of entropic unwinding, in which gaps open up in language, in the relation of language and intentionality, and in the relation between language and the world. Perhaps the process should be seen as a downward spiral concluding with the identity statement-Dharma to Yudhisthird Dharmaraja: 'You are who you are'-which reproduces the initial ultimate identification. But. however we picture it, the play wilh language in this conversation on the edge of life and death has a certain unexpecied twist built into it. The twist produces its own peculiar expressivity. Lct me conclude this part of the cssay by looking at one more cxample: thc verses that (at lcast in Soulliern Kecrnsion ' " S c c discusx~onIn Chapter 5

below

52

Thr Wisdom oj' Ports

and the BORI text) apparently induce the Yaksa to put an end to the trial and to grant Yudhisthira his boons. It is striking that these verses Lake us back to the theme of death. The Yaksa asks:

83. How can a man be dead? How can a kingdom be dead'? How can a Sraddha ceremony be dead? How can a sacrifice be dead? Yudhisthira's replies follow a prledictable, fairly obvious logic: 84. A poor man is dead; a kingdom without a king is dead; a Sraddha ceremony without a learned Brahmin is dead; a sacrifice is dead without a gift [daksina]to the priests. The Yaksa continues in the mode of the identification questions, though we note that he returns to the theme of the Sraddha: 85. What is a (proper) direction [dikj? What is water'? What is food, and what poison? Tell me the time [or death, kdla] for a Sraddhaand then you may drink and take away. Food, drink, poison, a cardinal direction-the language is overloading the verse, simultaneously crowding and fragmenting it; for the first time, the final pada offers hope of release. Yudhisthira also exceeds his prior model for reply: 86. Good people are a direction; space [cikaSa]is water; the cow is food; a request is poison; a Brahmin is the time for a Sraddha--or what do you think, Yaksa? Again, a mixture of moral and cosmic-symbolic identifications, and it works-the questions cease. Perhaps it is the fact that Yudhisthira, at last, turns the question back on his interrogator, that he asks a question himself, that effects the reversal. Or perhaps the series has culminated in some way that deserves probing. although the Vulgate continues with several further questions before reaching its own interesting closure, as we will see. The final query of the verses cited points to the Sraddha ceremony for dead ancestors, while the penultimate verse of praStlas builds toward the paradoxical image of a 'dead' .fr(lddha. Yudhisthira's answers are reasonable and acceptable: as far as they go. But if we read these replies in the light of the story i n which they are embedded, they take on an uncanny proleptic quality. On the one hand, thcy deny 'real' death in favour of metaphoric transpositions: a man is dead when he is impoverishcd. for example. This, one might almost say, is Yudhisthira's own

The Yaksa's Questiorls

53

problem, which is played out in the conclusion: alone among his brothers, and almost alone in the epic generally, Yudhisthira is unable, both physically and psychologically (also, perhaps, metaphysically), to die." His final loneliness, the natural correlate of his intellectual and moral stance, speaks eloquently of his predicament. But on the other hand, each of the metaphors he marshals has its own suggestive power. Yudhisthira will experience the death of poverty, cr of loss, in extreme form-when he is left to ivle an empty world. His kingdom, and the other kingdoms of the earth, will, in effect, die the death of kinglessness. And what Sraddha could be more dead than one which has no survivors to perform it? The metaphors extend the bounds of narrative eventuality, but only slightly. The Pgndava kingdom will, just barely, have a king; the Pwdavas will perform the exhaustive Sraddha of Book XIII. The point is the specific aptness of the imagery and Yudhisthira's innocence of what he says. The war will issue into the threnodies, the rites and visions of mourning, just as the trial-by-question issues into riddles of S r d d h a and death. Such is the closure that this text provides. Yudhisthira's world is already coming to an end. But he does not know this, and he will never accept it. His statements, unintentionally proleptic, embody a truth that is still as hidden from him as is his divine identity. In this sense, and because wc know the story, we can hear beyond the overt level of his speech. We hear the echoes from other strata which complete, without abrogating, the force of his language. Daiva resonates in his words.

Toward Understanding Yudhisthira's Curse Even if we prefer to take Yudhisthira's answers, including the final sequence just discussed, at face value-without putting undue stress on the associations they arouse, or their relations to elements outside the immediate context-we will still have to deal with the narrative parallelism between :he Yaksapraina section and Yudhisthira's final trial in hell. Moreover, even a minimalist approach to the dialogue with the Yaksa will reveal a certain typological stratification within the exchange. Before turning to Yudhis!hira's later experiences, let " The Javanese tradition of the Mullahhat-olu offers graphic images of this lonely hero at the end oT his lifc but still unable to die.

The Yak.m'.c.Qur,.\rion.~ 55

mc lry lo formali~clhc above discusion hy positing the prcscncc o f ' a1 leas1 lhree levcls in the language ol'prc1.Cnu and response. The first is ovcrt. discursive. and dcl'initc. 1 call [his thc rGrrrti Ic\~el,following [he Vulgate which brings this lcrm lo the forc in ir.v conclusion to the ordeal: 1 14. Who is happy'? What is amazing? What is thc path and what thc simple truth [varttiku]'!Answer these four questions, and your dead kinsmen will live. 1 15. That man who cooks vegetables in his own home, on the fifth or sixth day, who has no debts and is not an exile-he is truly happy.

116. Day by day, living creatures go to Yama's world, while the rcst [Sesa]keep looking for something stable. What could be more amazing than this? 117. Reasoning [tarka]is without foundation; the sacred texts are a[ odds with one another; [here is not even a single sage whose opinlon could be considered aulhoritative. The truth about dharma is hidden in a cave. The way the great have gone-that is the path.I2 The latter verse, which is well known in a Sanskrit tradition, leads Yudhisthira to a final, extended metaphor: 118. In this cauldron fashioned from delusion, with the sun as fire and day and night as kindling wood, the months and seasons as the ladle for stirring, Time [or Death, kala] cooks all beings: this is the simple truth [vurtta]. The Yaksa concurs: 'You have answered my questions in accordance with reality (yathatathyam).' Now comes the definition of man through language, followed by the further test as to which of the brothers will be revived. Vartta is 'information', 'news'. Yudhisthira's exposition is, surely. realistic and whally appropriate to Lhe epic world. Logic is no use. even the Veda and the sages offer mutually contradictory opinions (thus Nilakantha ad 1 17); the truth of dharma is hidden and enigmatic. perhaps ultimately beyond recovery; the world's crealures die bcforc our eycs day al'ter day, and we still pursuc flimsy illusions of securily.

~i~~ cooks us minute by minulc. Even the rnc:aphor scrves essentially to give graphic force to this dirccl and informalivc description 11 is interesting that, for the Vulgate text. this stark statement caps thc series ofprajnar and leads to the revcrsal. as if the Yaksa wcre simply wailing for a direct and lucid formulation of an obvious truth, laken rather literally. But the answers proffered by Yudhisthira in the course of the ordeal are equally capable of being understood on this same. u n a m b i g ~level. ~~ A second level articulates programmatic conclusions, often of a moral type, though perhaps sustained by symbolic equations and statements of identity, in ternis that also appear-but only appearto be unambiguous. I will call this the level of dharma, ~ n d e r s t o o das Yudhisthira wants to understand it. His formulation of iinriamsya as supreme value is a prime example. In light of the discussion in the section, let me say merely that this level, which is surely the most conspicuous and has generally been identified with the positive purport of the whole passage, need not be taken entirely literally. The surface can be deceptive, and is in any case not the whole story. Potential ironies abound. The third level, which I refer to as that of daiva because of its links with wider thematic issues in the Mahabhcirata, is always implicit a n d context-dependent, although the context need not be the immediate setting of the trial. Rather, this level establishes relations between our episode and other similar or otherwise associated ones from the larger epic frame. Here the text. as it were, allows its protagonists to play out their viewpoints to their logical conclusions." T h i s c o n t e x t u a l i z i n g o f t e n has s t r o n g i m p l i c a t i o n s for o u r understanding of Yudhisthira's statements, seen not simply through his conscicusness bur through that of the epic's narrator-poets. Here neither the referential content of the answers nor their cumulative force as a single, relatively cohesive set can exhaust for us their expressive power. I am not, however, suggesting that this strtification represents a simple hierarchy, or that the daiva level, as I read it, is more 'true'. 'I'he point is rather the potential openitig up of multiple viewpoints, Perhaps expressed through thc same linguistic utterances and "Cf. Don Handelman, 'Myths of Murugxn: Asymmt:try ancl Hitrarchy in South Indian Puranic Cosmology'. Hi.%tor\, of Rc1igion.c 27 ( 1987), on a Purrinic mode of examining theorich ancl contrasling points 01' vicu.. a

56 *-The Wisdom of Poets coexisting by means of an internal dynamic that probably reflects a latent theory of knowledge in relation to language. To illustrate something of how this works. I want to follow through the structural parallel already noted. As we have seen, the Yaksa section concludes a critical stage in the unfolding of the epic storythe end of the forest exile (arguably the most creative and fluid period in terms of the heroes' exploration of their situation, their world). Our passage is thus the bridge lo the year of disguise and, following this, to the coming war. More than a technical lapse of time comes to an end with Yudhisthira's successful answers to his father's puzzles. But the test recurs, again at a moment of closure, in the final chapters of the Mahabharata. Indeed the text recognizes this parallelism and continuity: Dharma himself mentions the ordeal with the Yaksa as the first of three trials to which he has put his son-the second and third both emerging out of the svarghohana, the final ascent to heaven (18.3.33; see also 17.3.19-20). It is almost as if, within the internal perspective of the text, Yudhisthira's ordeal were being replayed in the light of the further experience and knowledge he has acquired. How will his answers fare this time? Can he still believe them? Repetition, as A. K. Ramanujan has eloquently shown, is one of the keys this text offers us to perceiving its unity and range of meanings.14 Let me quickly summarize the narrative events relevant to this particular instance of such replication. The five brothers and Draupadi have started out, on foot, for heaven, now that Krsna is dead and the dreadful Kali Age-our present erabegun. On the way, one by one, Draupadi and the brothers fall and die, with the exception of the lonely Yudhisthira (who also explains at each death the one flaw in character that made this final loss inevitable). An unclean dog-Dharma in disguise-follows the surviving hero to the gates of heaven; Yudhisthira, insisting again on his ideal of anriamsya, refuses to enter unless this faithful (bhakta) creature be allowed in with him. This is the second trial, also successful; Dharma reveals himself and praises his son. Once inside heaven, as we have seen, Yudhisthira is shocked by the presence of his former enemies and the absence of his brothers. The gods send him with a messenger (dlitapagain, Dharma in disguise-to hell where, in the midst of the most appalling visions, he discovers his

'' A.K. Ramanujan, 'Repetition in the Mahdhhdrata'. in A. Sharma (ed.), Essavs in the Mnhabhrirata (Leiden: Brill, 1991 ).

Thr Yuk,yu'.s Qur.~tion.v 57 dead brothers and his wii'e. Thcy beg him to stay. ii' only Por a moment more. This is too much for Yudhisthira: angrily, he contem'plates (vimarnri~)what has happened, this lerrible deformation (vikur-a), the disaster produced by daiva (dai1:akarita). Overwhelmed by grief, anxiety. and anger, he curses the gods and dharma and sends [he messenger back to heaven to announce that he. Yudhisthira, will stay in hell with his brothers. At this, the hellish vision dissipates: i l was all a trick (maya) of Indra's, and another test by Dharma. This perception is the prelude to the brothers' final loss of their human condition (manuso blza~ah,18.3.34) and to the reabsorption of all the heroes, including the Kaurava antiheroes. in the divinities from which they had originally emerged into the world. I cannot discuss here the ontology of this episodc-in other words, the status and meaning of the illusion or trial and its replacement by another reality. What matters to us is the fact that Yudhisthira finds himself back in the same, familiar situation, where he must struggle again for the lives of his fallen brothers, in a context of seemingly incomprehensible injustice, against the same disguised fatheropponent, with the same questionable linguistic means. We have already observed the difficulty that emerges in his consciousness with respect to his chosen ideal of dnriamsya. Indeed, he is shown, for once, as totally confused and distressed: 'Am I asleep or awake'.? I am in pain, my mind disoriented.' And for excellent reason: the old conceptual plan, already badly battered by the world, has now entirely collapsed. It is noteworthy that this time he makes no attempt to reclaim the lost vision. A change occurs. he thinks hard, and is at last led, as if trapped in a blind alley, to the curse-a curse which must also, since he is Dharmaraja, include himself. How are we to understand this move, which, after all, does achieve a result similar to the successful conclusion of the Yaksa ordeal'? I have no easy solution to the question. Let me, however, suggest a few possibilities. I have heard a fine Sanskrit scholar explain thc curse as a form of calculated innocence: far from having his convictions undermined by the cxperience of hell, Yuddhisthira holds firmly to them; the curse is only a clever manipulative gesture, a way offorcing dharma. or Dharma, to give in. That, one might say, is why i t works so well. Dharma simply cannot survive this frontal attack by its one Incarnation and spokesman.'-'Closely relalcd to [his view is one that

''

J . Prahhakara Sastl-i, Matlrson. Wisconsin. April 1988. perhonal

58

Thr Wi.sdorrl c?f'Poet.s

makcs Yudhil;lhira the uncomprumising vchiclc ol'cxislential protest: he cannot and will not accept the way o f thc world, the darkcr sidcs of dharma. In this he is consistent from the vcry beginning. and the end only confirms his position, which is also an effective one i n terms of reversing the unacceptable reality he sees (including the existence o f death). The reversal apart, this image has a Grcek tragic colouring to it. In any case, it is surely fair to say that Yudhisthira is throughout a tormented and embattled figure. Extending this line of interpretation, one might see the curse as still more extreme, as a rejection, at the end of the day, of the whole world of dharma with its contradictions and cruelties, its 'subtle' meaning now exposed as little more than a veil for unbearable suffering. In other words, to put the matter starkly: the somewhat theoretical answers offered to the Yaksa, when played out to thc end in the context of human living and dying, turn out to be surprisingly inadequate; to reject them is to transcend the condition of which they are pan. But in what sense could an ideal of non-injury and compassion be inadequate? I t seems absurd to think of rinriamsya as somehow 'wrong'. At most, we might feel that there is a dimension missing, unarticulated by Yudhisthira's explicit formulations. Were this the case, the final reversal could also make sense. For the curse works: the blatant injustice evident in the reality of the test gives way to a process of reabsorption-that is, to the transition from human to divine. 'I'he path to this goal-the ultimate, if unconscious goal of the Pandava heroes all along, as we know from the myth of the five Indras in Book I-leads via testing and disguise to a moment of contemplation and insight. Yudhisthira seems to experience a switch in consciousness. As we might expect, given the axiology of this text, the epistemic change immediately entails an existential one. To rcject the world of dharma would thus not necessarily negate dharma itself. The level of linguistically motivated conceptualization may give way to a wider experience. rich with daiva content. Translated into language, this enriched understanding takes the form of a curse which is. perhaps, itself the answer, a fullllment of the daivic process of violent reabsorption. But i t is truly a case of translation-no less than in the case of the praSna.s and their answers. The curse. too. has

com~nunicalionSomewhat sirniliil- is rhc view oi R.('. 2achncr. Hi11drri.vll (l>onclon: O L P 1966). 1 1 2 4 .

features of obliquity and partiality. Its advantage lies in coinciding with negation: unlike the conventional proccssual movement of the riddle, from paradoxical superimposition of levels to their lucid separation, Yudhisthira's curse moves through the irreparable rupture of the surface toward a final fusion of the disjointed. The hero's last linguistic act-he speaks no more after addressing the messenger in this vein+onjoins dharma and its negation, transforming human to divine. Where the Yaksa's categorical puzzles, properly answered, led only to more disjunction, and to a temporary reprieve from the terror of time, the curse completes, by way of this negation, the necessary cycle of violent reintegration. Languagc bccomes sacrifice; Dharmaraja becomes dharma, at last; the world destroyed becomes a non-world that is immortal and restored.

Postscript: Crooked Wisdom Such a view suggests a particular structuring of language in relation to what is seen as real. For one thing, language that connects with ultimacy cannot operate in the same way as language that answers questions. One looks for the negative movement, away from separation and demarcation, toward paradox and fusion. Still, truth also has its place within language. 'Language veils the sacrifice, which never exceeds it', as Yudhis~hirainforms the Yaksa. There seems to be a way to use language not only to express truth, but also to make i t work upon the person and/or the world. We might think of the Tree of Truth as the Aitareya Aranyako describes it: what is apparent, the trunk and branches. is satya, truth, but its roots are embedded in anrta, untruth. Therefore one should speak truth, so as not to dry up the source.'Vf we take this image seriously, then truth, in its concrete and externalized linguistic embodiments, is a phenomenon of the surface, whereas 'reality' is a matter of wholeness. Language probably encompasses both domains and allows for linkage between them. 16 Aitareya Aran?;uka 2.3.6: Ch. Malamoud, Cuire lu Monde (Paris: La Dkcouverte, 1989). 252. Cf: B h d , ~ n v a t u p u r d ~8.19.39-40: ~u .satva~

PuS~aphalamvid)ldd utma clrksusvu ,qivute/i~rksej i ~ ~ ufurl f i nu sy ud unrtnnr mulam citmanah//tad vr~rl~ci ~arksuunmlila/? .iu.yvutr' urlwrtate 'cirui/rc'ul!r nast~nrtahsaciya drnui .
60

Thr Wi.rdom q/' port.^

But the linkage is indirect, implicit, 'crooked'. The third book of the epic, the same book that concludes with the YaksapraSna. tells us of another riddling contest, in some ways highly reminiscent of Yudhisthira's trial: Ast~vakra-'Eight-times Crooked3-was the son of Kahoda, a student of the famous master Uddiilaka. The latter gave his pupil both all his learning and his daughter, and she became pregnant with a fiery child. One night during the pregnanky, this embryo spoke from out of the womb to his father: 'You have been studying all night, but you're not yet even close to getting itright!' Ashamed before his pupils, the father cursed the child to be crooked in eight ways. B U Ieven before the boy was born, Kahoda went to the court of King Janaka to try to win wealth in a riddling contest with Bandin, the great riddier [vcidavid]; Kahoda lost and was drowned by his opponent i n the sea. Astiivakra grew up thinking that Uddalaka was his father, until one day, when he was twelve years old, he discovered the truth from Uddalaka's son, ~vetaketu.Together with ~vetaketu,Astavakra went to challenge Bandin. The gatekeeper at Janakx's palace tried to prevent the young boy from entering, but Astavakra successfully answered three riddles of the king's [including the one that recurs in the Yaksapraina] and was allowed to confront Bandin. The contest took the form of a continuing series of number statements. Bandin: 'There is one fire kindled in many places; one sun that illuminates this world; one heroic king of the gods: one lord of the ancestors. Yama.' Astiivakra: 'Two friends, Indra and Agni, go together; there are two divine sages, Narada and Parvata; there are two Aivins, two wheels to a cart; the pair, husband and wife, were ordained by the Creator'. Each such verse [vakya] was answered by a counterverse [urrara] until Bandin became stuck in the middle of the series relating to the number 13. When Bandin fell silent. Astavakra completed the verse. As the victor, Astavakra demanded that Bandin be drowned in the sea, like all Bandin's former victims. Bandin disclosed that he was the son of Varuna, god of the sea, and that a twelve-year sacrifice had been going on under the ocean, parallel to Janaka's rite: for this reason, Bandin had sent so many learned Brahmins to their watery deaths. They would now return, while he. Bandin, would rejoin his father in I\ emerged from rhe ocean ro gl-eer his son, while rhc sea. T ~ L Kahoda Bandin rook [cave of Janaka and drowned hrmsclf. ( 7 . 1 7 2 1 74). As in the yak;:^ section. fathers and son\ rnecl through the verbal

contest ( ~ i l ~ u d uB)U. Ithe story of Bandin is one of perfect symmetries; each of the contcstanta regains his father, again by crossing cosmic domains; and the verbal contest at Janaka's court, in this world, turns out to be the mirror-image of a submarine rite, with its own necessary riddlers. T o be drowned by failing to answer Bandin's questions was thus, in fact, to be transposed to another (hidden) contest; both rites achieve conclusion, an end to the riddles, only when the 'crooked' twelve-year-old boy c o n ~ p l e t e sthe thirteenth verse. By doing so, he the earthly ritual to superior status, as the defeated riddlers returning from the sea announce: Kahoda reveals that the gods have honoured Janaka's rite above others. Astavakra has rescued (or 'raised up') Speech (vacam a r h o ~ ~ a h a rhis a , boast to Janaka after the contest); Janaka recognizes his language a s divine (Sflomi vacam tava divyarGparn amanusim) and declares the child, too, to be superhuman (divyarlipo 'si .rciX-.rrir).Note the close parallel to Yudhisthira's achievement through answering the Yaksa's questions. Here, too, the exchange clearly has a metaphysical tenor (brahmadvaita, 'nonduality with the Absolute' is the name Astavakra offers for the riddling). The dialogue built around counting also suggests a certain symmetry, a s if the two parties were standing on opposite sides of a chasm, the inaccessible locus of reality, toward which they were reaching out with their metrically and verbally perfected numbers; one draws life up from the chasm, the other ends by falling in. As in the dice game, counting offers a mechanism for articulating esoteric connections in the cosmos. But it is no accident that the loser breaks down in the middle of the thirteenth verse or that Astavakra wins by completing this verse; thirteen is a number for the whole, especially the whole seen in relation to time (the twelve months); it is, moreover, a whole that both contains and exceeds its parts, just as the language of such a contest is more than the propositions that seem to comprise it. Speech offers its master a way to encompass the real-to conclude the set of thirteen, thus attaining totality. But the master of speech is a child, born with wisdom achieved in the womb17 and an exterior that, by his father's curse, is wholly crooked. This is one model of the riddler. whose crookedness is correlated to a wholeness the exceeds verbal truth. Yudhisthira's case is We have here another instance o f rhe repcrir~onlinvcrsiondynamic of the epic. Bandin's intrauterine srudks echo rhoat nf Ahhimanyu who, however. 1s prevented from cornplering rhern-and pays l'or rhis lack wirh his lilk. 17

62

The Wisdom of Poets

somewhat different. When the Yaksa asks, Yudtlisthira responds truthfully. but the truth is not nearly enough. One has to go through the riddle, through its verbal embodiments, to reach a different, more encompassing goal. Unlike Oedipus, unlike Herakles, whose optimistic answers to their riddles are based on fundamental misreadings, Yudhisthira speaks the truth: the dharmic knot is resolved, but at the same time dharma continues to unravel into disaster. Even Yudhisthira's words-especially Yudhisthira's words, with their confident identifications and lucid demarcations of values and domains-are only 'footprints of this All' (BAU 1.4.7). O r they are moves in a deadly game, which evolves toward the negation evident in the final curse. They both express and disguise an identity carrying a powerful destructive charge, which the self-identifying subject resists. For the epic hero, and above all for the epic poets, the language of answers, however 'real' or 'true', merely marks the surface of a deeper, enigmatic design.

Poets and Patrons in Tamil Literature and Literary Legend*

Kings win renown by seeking out poets; poets attain success by relying upon kings. A poet has no patron equal to a king; a king can find no better friend than a poet.' H o w s i m p l e , straightforward, a n d harmonious it all s e e m s ! RiijaSekhara's verse depicts an ideal relationship between two closely linked, indeed interdependent parties-the royal patron and the poet he favours, who in turn eulogizes his protector. The two sides seem about equally in need of one another and equally capable of satisfying the other's need. The poet wins fame as well as tangible rewards (prasiddhi can have both these meanings) from his association with the king, while the latter takes the poet for his friend and companion (sahfiya) and depends upon him to establish his properly regal identity or to spread the fame which the Indian king so compulsively seeks to achieve. A certain symmetry informs this idealized relationship. One is forcibly reminded of the serene, 'iconic' images of the dharmic king 'wedded' to his Brahmin purohitu. as we find them in the normatjve literature of dharma-although there the relationship is seen as asymmetrical, with the Brahmin's superiority theroretically guaranteed.'

* This chapter first appeared in Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.), The Powers of Art: Patronuge iri Indian Culture (Delhi: OUP, 1992). lKiivyamin~~ysa of RiijaSckhara (Varanasi, 1964), 6.3 I : Khyiitii naridhipatayah kav~sambraye~la rzij36rayella ca garnh itatrayah prasiddhlm/ r%.jRii salno 'sli n a kaveh pa~.amopah.iri rjljfio na c9sti k a v i n a sad!-
On the ochcr hand. cvcn Manu recognllej that a Brahm~n[~urc~il/ttr serving

64

The CZ/i.sdot?~ of Port.c

Ports and Patrons in Tamil Lltet-uturr

11.. howcvcr, wc look a little more closely at the connection bctween king and poct---in the history of Sanskrit iitcrature or, I bclicve. in the rcgional Hindu traditions-the picture becomes considerably more complcx. Again a.; in the casc of thc king's relations with Brahmins, frustrations. tcnsions, and ambiguities crack open the fragile image of iconic harnlony. The apparent symrnetry also breaks down, to be replaced by a rcality of competing claims to superiority, and in some cases by a dcterrnined effort t? deny the bonds of interdependence. For both kings and poets, patronage may become less an ideal solution to complementary needs than a complex and unsettling problem that engenders a range of varying responses. In the following pages, I shall attempt to chart the major patterns and responses in a single literature, that is, Tamil, as it developed from the earliest period up to and including Nayaka times. As it happens, literature of the Nayaka period presents a particularly interesting set of problems in this respect, for this is a time when a series of new genres became prominent in Tamil; I shall examine a sample of this literature in the light of the patron-poet relation during this period. The historical context of literary patronage, and the corresponding variation in the perceptions of patronage in different periods, are central to the rudimentary typology offered below. Another general rcmark by way of introduction: although I shall attempt a chronological depiction of the development of literary patronage in Tamil, it is important to bear in mind that the basic patterns outlined here are cumulative in effect: earlier types (e.g. the 'heroic' patronage of Cankam times) persist well into medieval and even Nsyaka times, side by side with newer types and responses. Each of the major periods offers a living archaeology of patron-poet relations, even as emphases and basic attitudes are being transformed.

Let us begin, for oncc, in the middlc-with

a verse that epitomizes

a k~nghas dcbaxcd himxell': see 3.04, 153; 4.85-86 (to accept presents from a king I S a crime; a king is equal to 100.000 slaughter houscs). Sce Robert Ling;~I,Tlrc Cltr.s.tr~tr1 I,trw c!flrlrlitr (Bcrkelcy, 1973), 215-18. The superior Brahmin i h thc clcritchcd vtrirliktr, in theory uncontaminated by the king's g ~ l i s .SCCI). Shul111;tn.'Kinship and Prex~ationin Svu~hIndian Myth and 1 . 1 1 1 I 4 9 ( 8 ) . 3 - 1 18.

65

the poet's power in the Tamil tradition. In Kampan's Tamil retelling of the Rarnayana (Chola period--perhaps twelfth century), wc find a description of Riivana at the end of his first day's fighting with Rama. The battle has, of course, gone against the dcmon-hero, and the culmination of the latter's disgrace comes when Rama's arrow knocks the crown off Ravana's head. At this point we are told: The furious demon just stood there, bereft of his crown that was inlaid with perfect jewels like a lonely man-greater, perhaps, than any other in all the worldswho forfeits all his fame when a poet mocks him with clever words.' What is the essence of Ravana's loss and humiliation? The simile is emphatically clear: he is like someone-a hero, no doubt-who has Iost all his pukal, his fame and glory, the persistent goal of the Tamil warrior-king. As a somewhat anachronistic embodiment of this heroic ideal, Rgvana is, indeed, deeply concerned with pukal, and the comparison suggested by Kampan is very much to the point. Ravana lives out the compelling ethos of violent, heroic power (maram), although this ancient concept must n o w function within the transformed moral universe of medieval ~ h iN la d ~The . ~ surprisingly positive image of this demon in Kampan's poem can be at least partly explained in terms of this strong element of continuity with the ancient ideal. For our purposes, however, the most salient point is the poet's role vis-A-vis the hero: simply by singing a mocking satire (arikatam uraippa), the poet can deprive the great hero of all his pukal and leave him forlorn, uncrowned, in the face of his foes. Note that the simile is quite prepared to allow the mocked hero his true staturehe may well be a great man, greater even than any other in the entire universe-but he remains nevertheless utterly at the poet's mercy, and quite alone (o'ruvan, 'a single man'). Pukal, in short. is vested in the poet, who is free to choose his path, to crown or to dethrone the

'Iramavataram 6. I2 l I . On maram, see D. Shulman, 'On South Indian Bandits and Kings'. Indian Economic and Social Hi,rrory Rer~iru'17 ( 1980), 293-306.

66

The Wisdom o f P o ~ t s

royal subject of his verse. One feels at once the heavy burden that the relationship of poct and king can be made to hear.' On the other hand, the reality is one of acute dependence of the poet on his patron, and the unhappy results of this dependence are only too clear. Some five centuries after Kampan, Nilakantha Diksitar excoriates poets who are always ready to praise, ' with or without a reason: if they go for long without praising, their tongues hang loose and start to tremble.6 The conjunction of lying and flattery leads to wealth, but the combination of truthfulness and wisdom produces only poverty.' Cowardice, crudeness, stinginess, idiocyall these the poets wipe away for a handful of rice.8 Such sentiments are far from rare; indeed, they become something of a cliche, a recurrent, sour note in the poetry of p a t r ~ n a g eThe . ~ poet's vaunted prowess, so evident in Kampan's verse, has here degenerated to a helpless sycophancy. The patron, it seems, need hardly worry: there is no dearth of flatterers and hypocrites. The poet's deadly power of satire is here turned back against him, by another poet, and the potential loss is at least as great as in the case of the hero's pukalfor what the poet stands to lose is his unique relation with the truth ( s a ~ a )the , ultimate source of his power and skill. The tensions between these two viewpoints-that implicit in Kampan's verse, and Nilkantha Diksitar's explicit statements-are See below, section 5, on Kampau's relation to his own patron. Cataiyappan. Kalividambana 34, in Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat (ed.), Oeuvres poe'tiyues de Nilakan?ha Diksita (Pondicherry, 1967), 9: na karanam apeksarlte kavayah stotum udyat5h kim cid a s t u v a t a q t e s i m j i h v j phuraphuriyatel

' Ibid.. 32. Ibid., 33

kataryam durvinitatvam karpanyam a v ~ v e k a t a ~ n sarvarll rnarjanti kavayah salinam must~kimkarahl

' See also MudruruAsu.tu

3.16.

Poets and Patrons in Tamil Literature

67

clear enough. It is not, however, simply a question of reality as opposed to an ideal, for the Tamil poet's power continues to be very tangible indeed, even in modern times. Both viewpoints find their place within the spectrum of attitudes toward the poet-patron relation, a relation which, we may begin to suspect, is easily overburdened by either of the two sides or, indeed, by a third-party observer. Let us now try to draw in the main outlines of this spectrum, with its major types, beginning with the earliest period of Tamil poetry that has survived.

Cankam poetry of the early centuries AD is a bardic corpus created and maintained through the relationship of patrons and wandering poets; as Kailasapathy has demonstrated in detail,'" this relationship is in many ways reminiscent of patron-bard relations in other 'heroic' cultures, notably that of Homeric Greece. The bard is entirely dependent upon the patron for his survival, as many rather pathetic descriptions show us: Our oven is never used for cooking, its sides are not worn down, toadstools grcw on it. My wife is thin from hunger. Every time he sucks on her ugly, milkless breast, its skin withered, its duct closed up, our child sobs. She sees his face, and her cool, wet-lashed eyes fill with tears. I saw her suffering, thought of you, and came, Kumanan of good battle. Now that you know my state, I will not relent until you give, even if I must force you, for you were born in a line that always met the needs of musicians.

"' K. Kailasapathy, Tamil Heroic poetry (Oxford. 1968),especially Chapter 11, 'Singers and Patrons', 55-93.

68

The Wisdom of Poets whose good hide-covered lutes have strings tuntcd for each ragu, whose drum hcads are smeared with mud. (Puyand~uru164; translated by George Hart")

Thc patron--in this case Kumanan, who has been dispossessed of his kingdom and is living in the forest-is the bard's only hope; hence the eulogy and panegyric characteristic of the puram ('outer', heroic) genres. The poet praises his patron as the finest, most generous, most heroic of men. An important g e h e known as arruppatai formalizes this tcndency and conventionalizes it: in these poems, a bard directs his desperate colleagues to a patron who has richly rewarded himwho, in fact, outshines all other potential patrons. Bardic patronage subsists on superlatives. Nevertheless, the relation of bard and patron is not really asymmetrical at all. The hero. to be a hero, needs the bard no less than the latter needs his patron's support. We find a hint of the poet's hidden advantage toward the end of the poem just quoted, whcre the poct, PEruntalaiccSttangr, considers 'forcing' (t6futturi) Kumanan to fulfil his obligation to be generous. The threat is a moral one: the poet, by his very presence, by his professional skills, and perhaps above all by his neediness, evokes in the hero what the poems refer to as pun katarr, 'duty toward the minstrels'.12 One of the outstanding signs of the hero is his readiness to accept this duty, to lavish gifts on the poet. The hero partly defines himself in this way. At the same time, he wins the poet's unique gift-fame that lives on, beyond the hero's death, in song. The bard has a monopoly of sorts on the major values of his society; he, perhaps only he, can determine whether a man achieves pukal-the glory sought by the hero, as we saw in Kampag's verse above--or is saddled with pali, 'blame', the very opposite of puka!. The bard is a broker of fame, his currency the linguistic magic of the poem with its accompanying music. If we add to this picture the mantic quality that clearly distinguishes the poet from other men.13 we begin to understand the constraints that could bend a patron to the poet's will.14 "George L. Hart, 111. Poets of the Tanzil Anthologies (Princeton, 1979), 175. "See Purancie~iru201, line 14; 203, line 11; the translation of the term is Kailasapathy's (Tamil Heroic Poetp, 56). " Ibid., 61-9. l 4 We know of several instances where the poet intervened actively in public affairs. e.g. by pleading for the lives of an enemy's captured children (Puyclricinliyu 46).

.

P o ~ t .und s P(ztron.7 in Tamil L2itc~rutul-e 69 It is, therefore, not surprising. given the forces that propcl these two figures towards one anothcr, that thc bond between patron and poet could be a very warm and intimate one. When Nakkirar comes to visit PEruricSttan, the hero welconics the poet. call his wife, and orders her, 'Honour him just as you honour me' (Purananuyu 395). A famous instance is the poct Mocikiranar's unwitting crime of lying down on the bed where the royal drum (muracu) was usually kept; this violation of the sacred spacc could have cost the poet his life, but the king instead approached the sleeping poet and fanned him with his own arms (Purancinuru 5 0 ) . Mocikiranar even offers an explanation of his patron's compassionate behaviour. as he concludes the poem describing this incident: You must have heard, victorious lord, that no-one lives in that great other world but those whose fame fills this wide earth. Again. the logic of immortality: the king's gracious act achieves renown through the poet's celebration in verse, and with this earthly fame comes the promise of a home for the king in the celestial world. The poet's gift is hardly less valued than the king's. That is the positive side of the relation. There is also, however, a very real negative potential. The king or hero who crosses the poet may be exposed to the latter's power to curse, to mock, even to destroy. Let us look, for example, at Puranduliru 202. where the great poet Kapilar obliquely threatens the king Irunkovel. The background to this poem is as follows. After the death of his beloved friend and patron, Pgri, Kapilar took upon himself the responsibilily of finding husbands for Pari's daughters (note this striking example of the intimate tie between poet and patron). He offered the girls to Irunkovel: but the latter refused to marry them. Here is Kapilar's biting response: Fleeing the hunters who raid the forests, an elephant in rut seeks refuge on this jewelled slope; and, as he climbs, the gold he scatters flashes on the hills,

70

The Wisdom ofpoets

famed and feared like your ancient clty with its two parts where riches were piled up by the millions for you and yours. This town of Araiyam is long established: but hear how once it was ruined, Pulikatimal with your dense garland, worthy scion of your fatherone of your ancestors, brilliant like you, scorned Kalattalai's fine words of praise, and that was that, master of lovely chariots. Sc. please, great lord, bear with my stupid phrases about these girls' ancient lineage and their father Pari's largesse. I'm going now. Good luck to you, ruler of this doL.;ain of mountain villages where rocks covered with bright black petals of the flowering verikai might also be fierce tigersI hope you win your battles. Kapilar informs the king of his own family history-one of his ancestors failed to respect the poet Kalattalaiyar, and the result was the kingdom's ruin. This succinctly stated information is framed on both ends by several lines of landscaping, although the ironic tone of the poem extends to the final passage as well, as the medieval commentator has noted: verikai means both 'tiger' and the kino tree, and a rather common trope tells us that stones covered with verikai blossoms resemble tigers (when seen at night, or at a distance);'' here the mistaken perception suggests that something wholly innocuous has been seen as powerful and fearsome-like the unworthy king Irunkovel? The ironic blessing that concludes the poem becomes a striking and recurrent feature of later Tamil poetry as well, as we shall see; and, in general, we may see in this short satire an early specimen 01' an attitude, and a reference l o a specific part of the poet's l5

See also K~rrrrrircikoi47; Aknncitrliru 12

professional powers, that develop to new limits in the later medieval period in south India.IL

The bardic poetry of the Cankam period grows out of a relatively limited. bilateral nexus of poet and patron, who are in effect mutually dependent and seemingly independent of other, outside factors. True, the Cankam poet may, at times, compare his patron to a god (or, indeed, to several gods at once);" but the deities mentioned here are in no way active partners in the relationship of poet and lord. This situation changes dramatically in the Pallava-Pantiya centuries that follow upon the demise of the old bardic culture (or, rather, its translation to, and encapsulation in, a different social and geographical setting).I8As F. Hardy has noted, a major shift occurs in patronagefrom kings or heroes to the temples that now, in Pallava-Pantiya times, attain a new importance and new forms of organization.lY Indeed, this shift is part of a much wider process of transformation in south Indian civilization in this period; many of the basic institutional features of medieval Tamil Nadu take shape for the first time in these centuries (roughly the fourth to early ninth centuries AD). T h e transformation in Tamil society and culture seems to reflect the breakdown of the ancient, primordial units of social organization and the extension of the community, both physically-through constant e n c r o a c h m e n t o n the wilderness-and socially, through the incorporation of new groups into the polity; at the same time, the boundaries of collective (Hindu) identity were redefined. largely in relation to the bhakti gods and their saints, with the consequent ' T f . Puratlanuru 196: a patron's lack of truthfulness and disrespect to a bard cause 'misery to supplicants and a loss of honour to patrons (purappor)'. Other ironic poems of this kind exist in the Carikum purczm corpus. l7 This is known as puv~zitlilui in the medieval grammars; for example, . see Kailasapathy. Tunril Heroic P o e r r ~ 74-5. "The heroic ethos of the Cankam age appears to survive in south India in the milieu of folk eplcs such as Paltlciri vir~tlrrkutha and Ant~nnmcirkatcri: see discussion of the medieval hero in D.Shulmnn, The Kin3 clnd f l ~ eC1orr.n in South l t ~ t l i u t M i j v k aticl Porrt.\. (Pr~nccton.IY85), Chapter V11. I Y F. Hardy, L'irclhu-h11trkr1(Del h ~ 1983). , 225.

72

The Wisdorn (!/'Poets

exclusion of the Buddhist and Jain c o m r n ~ n i t i e s . ~A" new form of kingship came into being, as we can see from its classic expressions in works such as the Cilappatikdram and Manimekalai (despite the Buddhist colouring of the latter work)-a kingship that entailed both a far greater accountability than in the heroic kingship of earlier times a n d a profound problematization of the king's authority and l e g i t i m a ~ y . ~The ' new dynamic of kingship finds expression in the institutionalized patterns of rpyal endowment, in d a n a of many kinds-to Brahmins, to temples, to poets. Suddenly, the king needs his poets, and other recipients of his gifts, even more desperately than did the Cankam hero, for the Pallava or Pantya rulers achieve the rather minimal security of their position largely through the transactional processes of dcina-and the poet as kingmaker, as dealer in images of authority and propriety, has an increasingly conspicuous and powerful role.22 And yet it is at this moment in south Indian history that we find, for the first time, overt hostility on the part of major poets-:hose who sing of the bhakti god-to the very idea of human patronage. Not only is the rirruppatai genre mentioned earlier now transformed into a hhakti format-in the Tirumurukrirruppatai, where the poet guides the devotees not, of course, to a patron of flesh and blood but rather to the god Murukan-but this same ancient genre is even selfc o n s c i o u s l y p a r o d i e d by p o e t s s u c h a s N a m m % ! v ~ r a~n~d Cuntaramorttinayanar: You can praise them, coax them lovingly. cleave to them as servants, but they will still give you nothing, those fakeslisten, you poets, don't sing to them: The nayanmar stories in the PPrrva Puranam often depict the-bhakti hero's triumph over these 'heretical' groups. "See discussion in Shulman, The King and the Ciowr~. ' I On ddr~ain this period, see N. Dirks, 'Political Authority and Changc in South Indian History'. Ir~riiunEc.r~rlomic r~riclSoc.ia1 Histon: Revieic 13 ( 1 976), 125-57 (arguing for a transition from sacrifice t o d d ~ ~inuPallava hmes). Tiruvuyr~~ri!i4.1 I : scc A.K. Rarnunujan, Hvmr7.c. for the D r o w ~ r i n ~ ( f'rinccton. I98 1 ). 59.

Poet.s rrr~rlPrrtrorzs in Tanzil Liter-ature sing o f our father's Pukalur. You will have in this world rice and clothes, a cclcbration, even an end to sorrow, and in that life without doubt you will rule Siva's world. (Cuntarar Tevcimm 34.1)

73

Cuntarar follows the arruppatai pattern of praising ono patron over others, but his choice is now built into the opposition between temple and king, god and human hero-donor. To praise the latter for one's living is both ineffective and hypocritical, a conscious complicity in deception: Even if you call some weaking 'Bhirna' or 'mighty Vijaya with his bow' or praise a miser as a latter-day Piiri, they will still give you nothing! (34.5) You can call him a saint, that deceitful liar, that fraud, that foul and faithless criminalbut he will still give you nothing! (34.5) If a sesamum seed falls into a pond, they will search for it; but they wouldn't give anything even to a flyeven if you praise such people as great patrons and protectors, they will still give you nothing! (34.8) The god, on the other hand, pointedly referred to in the concluding verse of this patikam as ceeelvan, the 'wealthy lord', offers real, lavish gifts to his servants: rice and clothes, a celebration, an end to sorrow, and-the still active dream of the Cankam period-a regal life in heaven; but here it is not the hero and patron who wins a celestial reward. through the instrumentality of' the bard. but rather the poeid e v o ~ c e sthemsclvcs who will 'rule Siva's world'. In any case. the superiority of thc temple god ovcr any human patron is amply a f f i r m e d . in both mundane and 'othcr-worldly' t e r m \ L a ~ c l -

74

The Wisdom of Poets

gcncriltions wo~llddevelop this theme further, beyond the explicit statements of thcpatikanz. When Cekkiliir in the twelfth century came to discuss this poem as part of his hagiography of Cuntaramurtti, he gave it a specific narrative context: Cuntarar went to Tiruppukalur to a celebrating the Parikuni uttiram festival at request gold from ~ i v for Tiruviirur: he went to sleep in the courtyard of the temple. with a pile o l mud bricks for his pillow; when he awoke, the bricks had been changed to gold.Z4The story is, part of a long series in the Cuntarar hagiography in which the importunate and indigent poet manages to extort or otherwise extract gold from his god. Even if we leave the Chola period hagiography aside and remain within the confines of the Tevdram poems themselves, we can easily see how the older patron-poet relation of the bardic period survives, soniewhat transformed, in the relation of the bhakti poet to his deity. The same intimate connection that we noted with respect to Cankamperiod patronage recurs in the bhakti context; only now the puram frame of panegyric is mixed with the contents of akam love poetry. The poet is in love with the deity he extols, and the latter is no longer wholly outside him-like the Cankam hero-but has penetrated the poet a n d taken up residence within him. Still, poets such a s Cuntaramurtti treat this partly internalized patron as someone who, like the Cankam patron, can be manipulated by emotional means. Indeed. the bhakti poet's power in this respect seems by far to outweigh his Cankam-period predecessor's: You feed me bitter margosa mixed with sweet sugar-cane. I ask you for my subsistence, and you go away to Turutti: did you think you could scare me off with your charlatan's show of snakes and tangled locks? I've been around too long for that. Fire-hued lord who entered Tiruvarur, where cempu and ka!urzit- gleam in the cool moat-give me, in your mercy, the silken clothes I need, you who live in Nakaikkaonam by the sea. (Cuntarar Tevriram 46.2) The initial tone of complaint in thispatikan~soon gives way to detailed shopping lists: Lct hardship cease: when will you give us that bar of gold? (4h.4) Plcase ordcr for me from your treasury

.

POPI.\ a n d Putt-o1r.t Ln Ttrmil L~rc~r-ilturt~75 swcet pcrfumcs. clothch and ornaments; therc is, after all, the cxaniplc of old. (46.5) You offer no response; you just sit there, impassive. You promised rnc lifc when you enslaved me, your servant as of old. You have plenty of riches, you have never been poor. Of all [he treasures (hat keep pouring into graceful ~ r u r , I want one part out of three-after all, there is so much! If you won't give this to me, I won't let you take another step, not even for a secondand then I also need a horse, swift as the wind, you who dwell in Nakaikkaronam, by the sea. (46.8) PeeeruntaNote the threat the poet makes in the last verse-like laiccattanar's talk or 'forcing' Kunianan to help him. Though his patron is divine and, in theory at least, supremely powerful. the poet seems to retain the power to bend him to his desire. Eventually. by the later medieval period. the devotee's actual supremacy is clearly acknowledged: pakavdnibtm mcmpattavar pakavatar, 'the devotee is higher than his god'-no doubt by virtue of the supreme gift of love that the human devotee brings to his deity, with the inevitable consequences of such a gift." Something of this peculiar power of the poet-worshipper already attaches to Cuntarar, who goes on, in the next verse of this patikam, to make a n even harsher threat: Since you won't give me anything solid to sustain my body, I will besiege you until your body suffers: just don't call me pitiless, hard-hearted, blind, you who live in Nakaikkaronam by the sea! (46.9) There seems to be no limit to Cuntarar's sarcastic chutzpah. which culminates here in his ironic injunction to the god not to call him, the poet, by the angry epithets that Cuntarar habitually applies to ~ i v a . In the case of this poet, the intimate relation existing between bard and patron tends normally toward a n g r y , satirical, and ironic expression. Cuntarar offcrs ~ i v the a same kind of ironic blessing that we saw in the case o r Kapilar and Irunkovel:

21C1'. D. Shulman, Turnil TcrnplPMyths (Princeton, 1985),333-5; Margarel Egnor, 'On Thc Meaning o f Sakti to Women in Tamil Nadu,' in Susan S. Wadley. (cd.). The Power,\.cf Tat~zilWnnzrn (Syracuse, 1980), 19-20.

76

Thr Wisdom c?fPort.s

. I hose who have become your servants

,

In irrevocable bondage

necd no othersye1 their hearts go on smouldering within them like a fire contained. 'Their faces grow thin. For though they are your own servants, whenever they speak of their sorrow you just sit there, impassive, (1lord of 'Tiruv8rarwe wish you luck: go away! (95.1)

Poets a n d Patr-otls it1 firtrzil I.itc~rcitut-e

77

of the earlier conLours o f the poet-paLron relaLionship, and a concomitant emergence af poetry abusing and deriding Lhc old paltern of interdependence between human palrons and poets. This last feature remains a standard theme in south Indian poetry, in Tamil, Telugu, and Sanskrit, right up to modern t i m e ~ . ~ V is tparticularly prominent in Telugu literature, where many stories and verses describe how poets-Potana, the authei of the Telugu Bhagavata. for exampleindignantly refused to serve kings or to praise them in their works. But we must recall that this theme coexists. uneasily, with a continuing courtly tradition of panegryic with roots going back to the Cankam age, as we have seen. We must now examine this courtly poetry more closely in the light of our concerns, as we find it mainly in two subsequent periods-Chola and Nayaka times in Tamil Nadu.

Finally, there is the ultimate sanction available to the poet whose patron has disappointed him: Not just once am I yours, but in all the seven kinds of birth 1 am your servant and your servant's servant. 1 belong to you by right; even my heart melts in loveyet you still won't show me your feet decked with flowers. If our lord of Paccilacciramam, who has mercy on those blessed with precious fame, talks big and then acts low, can't we find some other god'? (14.1 I) From verses such as this it might well seem that the god in his temple needs the poet no less than the human patron does-to secure his fame and, in the case of the deity. to win, again and again, the longedfor gift of human love. We thus find in this period aconspicuo~~s displacement of the poet's focus Irom human patrons to the god, or to the temple where he is established: within this new framework, a perpetuation and extension

The king needs his poets' encomia; the court poets, at least, need the king's support; and yet a rival centre has emerged, the temple, with its own resources for patronage (many of them, of course, of royal origin) and with a poetic ideology that is largely hostile to the traditional heroic or courtly panegyric. Moreover, the king needs the authority of temple deity and of the latter's servants in order to maintain his own tenuous claims. How did the medieval poets respond to these various, perhaps conflicting constraints? I must stress again that in many cases the older patlerns we have outlined simply continued unchanged: both heroic panegyric and the temple poets' antipathy to the courts persist throughout the medieval poelry o f Tamil Nadu. Yet neither of these patterns can be said to predominate i n Tamil poetry of the Chola period and later. At Limes, the older type of poetic praise becomes subordinated to a new end: thus Kampao, in the course of his long version of the Rumayu~aan outstanding bhakti work dedicated, as its opening verses indicate, E.g . Dhurjati, Kri(nhnstii~,ar~~.Mrakurnu, yu.csirn;Narciwnr?.oof Nrirciya,?~ Bhatta, 99.3; many verses of Tyagarija Lake up this theme. See discussion by Indira V. Peterson, 'In Praise of the Lord: Thc Imagc. o f the Royal Patron in the Songs of Saint Cuntaramurttj and thc Composer Tyagiirrija'. in Barbara Staler Miller (ed.), Thr Powcr.s o f A r f : Pnrrot~c~ge it1 Itlclic~tlC'rrlrro-c (Delhi: Oxford University Preas. 1992). 1 2 0 4 1 .

Poets and Patrons in Tutnil L~rernrure to ihe god il celebrates-menlions his patron, Calaiyappa~]of VEnnEynallur, in ten scattered verses. ViSvamirra gives Rama and Laksinana weapons unerring as 'the word of Calaiyan, lord of VEnney. the healing medicine for the disease of poverty for all inhabitants of the world' ( 1.4 12). Or the moon rises, spreading its silvery rays 'like the fame (puka!) of Cataiyan from VE~lneywith its well-walered fields. that seemed to devour heaven and earth and all the quarters of space' (1.628-puka_l, o n e should note, is convenlionally seen as white). Here, unlike the common Cankam pattern of directly eulogizing the patron, the latter is praised only obliquely, through the metaphors that the poet brings to his main narration. Somewhat similar is the case of VarapatiyatkGntan, who supported Villiputturar, the poet of the Tamil Mahdhhurata (c. 1400): in a preface (cirappuppayiram) composed by Villi's son Varantaruvrir, the patron is praised for his prowess, his loyalty to his (Chola) overlord, his generosity, and. above all, for his love of Tamil: he is said to have commanded Villi 'lo tell the great tale of the Bhilrata in Tamil verse, ambrosia to the ears of the great, so that the land where you and I were born will be celebrated forever' (v. 22). That is the most that we hear of this palron; Villi fails to mention him even once in his long poem. There are other forms of indirect or subtly complicated panegyric: in the important kovai genre, for example, the patron-king, hero or deity-appears in conjunction with another, fictive hero and erotic exemplar (kilavi talaivan). Much of the kovai's effect depends on maintaining the distinctiveness of each of the two figures, however much they may seem to mirror one another in the verses. Indeed, the collapse of this distinction in works of a later period is an important indication of cul~uralchange, as we shall see. But for the moment we must concentrate on patterns of poeiic response to the exigencies of patronage that emerge with full force in the Cholacourts, in the context of the hislorical rivalry between king and terriple deity over the 'Tamil poet. Two such patterns may be isc~latedhere: the first turns the king himself into the most humble of the god's devoteeb. thereby reconsiructing the whole nexus of patron and poel; the second explores and plays wilh he king's own proximity to the divine. L ~ usI lake ihese patierns one by one. The t.11-SLis in many ways the simpler ol' the two. The medieval Iiinisell'as an ardenl worshipl,er ul' his god, and as such king rmrtr~~ys J h i court poets 1'1111s Rlijar+ja I a p p e a r s i n is jusily p ~ a l s ~ .hy

79

inscriplions as ~ i v a ~ a d a i e k h a r'crowned a, by ~ i v a ' foo~'~'-an s image of humility which, in itself, helps to define a regal identily. Submission to the god is the most kingly act of all: Cuntaramdrtti heaps scorn on the two gods. Brahma and Visnu, who did not know how to approach Siva 'with regal surrender' (koventiya vinayattotu. 82.8). T h e legendary prototype for such an attitude is the pious Cera king Ceraman PErumBl, as we see him in Cekkilar's P d r ~ y aPuranam (twelfth century): this king is said to have prostrated himself at the feet of a low-caste washerman (vanndn) whose body was covered with white salt-soap (uvar), simply because this man reminded tthe king of the white ash sacred to Siva. This same king received a palmleaf letter composed by ~ i v himself, a asking him to enrich the lowcaste bard Pattiranar, who had arrived o n a visit from Maturai; Ceraman PErumB!, in characteristic overreaction, emptied out his storerooms and offered everything he owned to the bard, including the kingdom i t ~ e l fIf! ~this reminds us of the extreme acts of generosity attributed to the Cankam heroes, we must also note the entirely new context of Siva hhakti surrounding the selfless gesture; by now the king's largesse is seen as a function of his devotion. The royal devotee makes a career of pilgrimage and sacred song i n the company of his friend, the poet Cuntaramnrtti; only in the thinnest of senses could Ceraman PEruma! be called a patron of this poet-rather, the bond between the two figures grows out of their common passion for the god. Taken to an extreme, the king's attitude of worship can thus destroy the very basis of the traditional patronge relationship. It could, of course, be argued that Ceraman Peeerumal is not really paradigmatic (most of the extremist heroes of the Pgriya Plirunam are clearly not), and that he merely illustrates an ideal carried to its limit. Still, we can observe the case of Cekkilar himself, who praises his patron, the Chola king Kulottuliga I1 (1 133-50) as 'Anapayan of enduring fame who decorated the great hall (per-ampalum-~iva's shrine at Cidambaram) with gold'.2YIt is the king's act of devotion at 27

E.p. South Indian Inscriptions 11, no. 66.

PBttva Puranariz 3773-85: discussion in Shulman, Tlzr k'ill,q ctizd tlip Clowtl, 246-56. z v PEriyn Purd!zam (pd\'irn)n) 8. Umapati Civacarlyar in 111s TiruttB~ztar~uranavaraI~ir~~ gives the well-known slory o l (he Cliola king's love for thc Jain work Ci~~akrzciiitarnu~i, CekkiJar'a objectlc~nto (his and consequent composition o f the PPi-iycl P~trcinc~riz. lR

80

T l ~ rWisdom of'Poer.s

Poets atld Pntr-or1.r rn 7ilrnil Liter-ututu

the outstanding Tamil ~ a i v ashrine that wins hirn his poet's praise. This is obviously a different kind of panegyric from the older bardic style! Thc poet's first loyalty is, in this case, to his god (whom he praises in the opening verses of the work); in a sense. the deity has become the primary patron of the poem. no matter who actually paid for its composition; and the king is honoured only in so far as he serves this same divine lord. Kingship has become primarily a vehicle for devotion. Where once, in bargic poetry, we had a bilateral relation of interdependence, we now find a configuration of three-king, poet, and god, ranked, perhaps, in this same order, from lowest to highes~. It is no longerclear thal the poet even owes service to his royal patron, for it is the poet who determines the king's proper position within a devotional context, with a transcendental object of worship, that has subsumed the old bardic relationships and reorganized them on its own terms. In a sense, the royal patron has become almost transparent: the poet who praises him-as Cekkilar praises Anapgyan several times in the course of his work3'-seems actually to be looking through him towards the god whom both patron and poet now see as their ultimate support. W e could cite many more examples of this extremely prevalent pattern, but let us look at only one more story, again about Chola times, though it comes to us in the fourteenth-century version of Umgpati Civacariyar's Tirurr~uraikantapuranar~z. This is the story of the 'rediscovery' of the sacred poems of the Tevaranz, which had allegedly been lost in the centuries after their composition by the three poet-saints, Tirufianacampantar, Appar, and Cuntaramurtti:

persuaded this deity to recite sections 01. the Vedic texts to h i m The king soLlghtout this gifted youth and told him of his quest for the lost poems. 'Wait,' said the boy, 'Vinayaka will tell us where they are.' And, indeed, at Nampi's request. the god revealed that the hymns were kept in ~ i v a ' temple s at Cidambaram, in a room behind a locked door marked with the hands of the three saint-poets. SO the king hastened to Cidambaram and told the priests of what Vinayaka had said. They said to him; 'Only if the three saints come here together can this door be opened.' The king then celebrated a festival-procession with the images of the three poets, which were carried through the streets around the temple and then brought before the door. When this door, with the sign of their hands evident upon it, was opened, the palm-leaves containing all the old hymns were found to be hidden under an anthill. After the palm-leaves were carefully cleaned with oil, it became clear that most of them had been ruined beyond recovery. The king was sick at heart with grief at this loss. But a voice from heaven rang out: 'Though we had these songs covered with dust, we have allowed those that the world needs to survive.' The king, now overjoyed, had the poems arranged in seven volumes (rirurnu_rai),while other works were compiled in four more volumes. He also found a female descendant of the musician, Tirunilakantayalppanar, whc had originally set the poems to music, and with her help the system of pans used to sing these hymns was restored.

8

The Chola king Rajaraja3' once heard a few verses from the poems of the three Saiva saints. He wept at their beauty; his hairs stood on end; he decided to seek out the whole text of their works. But. though he looked everywhere, such a text could not be found. Then one day hc heard of an AdiSaiva Brahmin boy, Nampi Antnr Nampi, who, by the sheer force of his devotion, had made the imagc of the god P6llappillaiyar (Vinayaka) in Tirunaraiyilr actually consume the offering of bananas he had brought him. Moreover, the boy had E.s. PPrivrr Puranuw~8 5 ; 3954. ' Perhaps RBjardja I. though therc is sonic. controversy over this identification: see S.R. Balasubrahnianyum. Mi~ldlrt'l~oluT o r n l ~ l ~Rrijlr~ja .~: I to A'nlott~tr~~u 1 (985- 10713) ( Faridahad, 1975). 3"

81

g t'

1

The story falls into an important class of tales about texts-usually sacred texts, including the Vedas themselves-that are lost and then at least partially recovered.32The assertion of partiality is a sure indication of sanctity in the south Indian tradition. But for our purposes the striking theme is that of the king's active roie in this process: Rajaraja actually initiates the entire process of recovery, although he needs the collaboration of the AdiSaiva Brahmin boy, the somewhat Possessive and reluctant temple priests. and, of course, the gods (both Vinayaka, remover of obstacles. and ~ i v himself a in the final episode). 32 I have discussed this theme at length in 'Sage. Poet, and Hidden Wisdom inMedie~alIndia', S.N. Eisenstadt and llana Fricdrich Sliver (eds), Culturul

and Worlcls of K t ~ o ~ j l e c lE~,~loratiot~s ~~,: it? t/le Sociology of Kmw[edge,Knowledge and Society VII (C;reenwich.Conn. and London: JAI hss,1988) 109-37.

$2

The Wi.rdorn qf Poets

In effect, the story portrays the crucial inlerrelationships of court, temple, and hhakti poets in this period. Again we find the king as most ardent of devotees, intent on finding the lost poems from the corpus after being moved by surviving fragments; the king is an emotional figure capable of shedding tears over beauty and of mourning the loss of the poetic texts; he also has the wit to devise a solution to the technical problem presented by the Cidambaram priests (a solution which, like the motif ,of the hungry image of Vinayaka at Tirungraiyur, explores the relation of image to reality-for the three Trvaram-poets are shown to be truly present in their icons at the Cidambaram festival celebrated by the king). W e should also note that the king's intervention extends to the editing and arrangement of the poems in the Tirumulai (by Nampi Antar Nampi, whom the king now supports) and to the search for the musical tradition accompanying the T e ~ , a r a mtexts. This is a tradition which, in its own view, owes its survival and present textual form to royal patronage. The pattern we are observing is, at this stage, strongly suggestive of harmony and resolution of tension: king, poet, and god have sorted out their relative positions, and the human patron has found a perfectly acceptable place in this devotional scheme of things. The poet has no difficulty in praising him in this manner. The second pattern appears, by way of contrast, to perpetuate an existing tension between king and deity by exploring their actual or potential similarities, to the point of implying an identity between them. This is not the place to attempt an analysis of the complicated issue of divine kingship in south India. but certain broad lines of development may at least be briefly noted. As we have already seen, the Cankam poet is quite capable of comparing his patron to a god or gods (though this does not, in my view, justify a reading of Cankam-period kingship as essentially sacred and divine). By Chola times, the court poets extend this practice much further even as they narrow its focus-the king's basic affinity is now with one god, Tirumal/Visnu, whom he may be said to incarnate (this despite the overwhelming ~ a i v orientation a of the Chola kings)." This affinity seems to go beyond the traditional p u r a g i c identification of the Hindu king as an a m i a , a partial manifestation, of Visnu (although the vision of the king as Visnvamia is clearly relevant to Chola court poetry). In the Iracurtlcacolan ula

" Hardy, Viruhu-Bhakti. 155. 189-9 I , 610-1 3, points to a close relationship bctween the Pantiya kings and Mayoflirumal.

Poets

trtld patron.^ irl

Tumll Lrteruture

83

of ~ t t a k k u t t a r .t ) r example, the king perrorms his usual procession (&) past rows orcrazed, love-sick women. including the tc?rivai (aged 26-31), upon whom he somewhat uncl~aracteristicallybestows lavish gifts reminiscent of those given by a prospective bridegroom to his bride; he then marches off-the hero of the ula is neccessarily cold, controlled, and remote, in stark contrast with the frenzied women who are in love with him-while the tgrivai returns to her home, summons the p6rurlar and p a n a r bards, and, in lieu of any real connection with the beloved king, watches them perform the songs and dances of Krsna's youth among the cowherds. The bards assert U s n a ' s identification with the Chola king ('Krsna's arms and legs are the a r m s and legs of the Chola lord', 685-6, e t ~ . ) . T ' ~h e identification recurs in the concluding verses of the ula, which are, however, usually regarded as the compositions of later poets. Yet even here o n e wonders how seriously or literally to take these statements of identity; the overall sense of the passage just noted seems to depend on the poet's use of a mythic model-Krsna's relations with the gopis-to suggest the powerful presence of his hero, without actually destroying the distinction between the two figures. The effect of articulating a divine identity grows out of the initial, everyday awareness of difference. W e are dealing more with hints and with non-literal suggestion than with hard, 'factual' equations. The same subtleties are present in another major Chola work, Cayahkbn!gr's Kalirikattupparagi, on the Kalinga campaign of Kulottunga I (1070-1 122). This macabre work, replete with comic touches, gives us a view of the Kalinga war as seen by the demons and ghouls who enjoy its consequences by feasting on the corpses left to rot on the battlefield. In the course of narrating the tale of the campaign, the poet inserts a fascinating account of the Chola genealogy as well as a long canto on Kulottunga's birth (avataram) and youthful exploits. This latter section seems to leave little room for doubt about the Chola king's true identity: That one who once, long ago, fought against Lank% and destroyed it and who later brought the war ot'the Bharatas to an end J4See discussion of thls passage in Shulman, The King and tllc Clo\~,n. 3 17-22.

84

Poets and Patrons in Tomil Literature

The Wi.sdorrz of Poets

appeared again as Vijayadhara (= Kulottunga) whose command brings victory! After NEtumal (Visnu), responding to the gods' plea for help, came down to the womb of Devaki, Vasudeva's wife, as all the three worlds bowed in worship, he came down (avataritttin) o w e more, that lord manifest on the banyan leaf, in the womb of the queen married to the family of the moon that destroys all darkness, the daughter of Rajaraja (= Rajendra I) from the family of the victorious sun. ( 2 3 2 4 ) Kulottunga I united the Eastern Chalukya and Chola dynasties (claiming descent from the lunar and solar kingly genealogies, respectively); what is more to the point, his birth is seen as a new avatar (vant' aruli avatcirari cFytalum, 235) of the god Visnu, mentioned first as RBma and then, repeatedly, as Krsna (who was present at the Mahabharata war and who lies, as a baby, on the banyan leaf in the midst of the cosmic ocean). We have this on the authority of the goddess Kali herself, who narrates this canto to her demon followers. The Chola king, in short, is none other than the great god Tirumal. Or is he? If we turn to the opening invocations in this same poem, we seem to find an intriguing double register: While Krsna, dark as a raincloud, poured water, and Brahma, on his flower, performed the rite, the god ( ~ i v ajoined ) with the Mountain's Daughter in order to establish the proper way of life on earth. We meditate on himas if to celebrate that Apayan (= Kulottunga), best of two families, who took the hand of the goddess Earth, Brahma's child, by right, as guardian of the world, i n ordcr to reveal the Vedas' way. ( I ) He who is never born in a woman's belly was born as a child

85

whose belly holds the whole world. Let us praise his narneas if to celebrate the parasol of gracious Apayan which, like the belly of that god. NEtumBI, holds within i t the wide world. (2) And so on-the pattern continues i n the invocations to BrahmB, the Sun, Ganapati, Skanda, Sarasvati. UmB, and the SaptamBtrkBs.Perhaps the most striking feature here is the doubling-the blessing and celebration begins on the level of the god and then reduplicates itself with reference to the king or to one of his attributes. But this doubling works in two directions at once, by establishing an affinity, if not more than this, between the deity and the king, but also by quite explicitly separating the two levels. We worship the god-as if to celebrate the king (apayan valkav &re). The poet's investment in that 'as if' is crucial. There is no reason to attempt to efface the distinction. The king is, indeed, very much like the god; he may even, in some sense, be the god, but he is also separate and different from him, to the point that we must meditate on the one, primary figurethe god-in order to celebrate the other. Moreover, this doubling remains constant with reference to the various deities mentioned, to each of whom the king has his peculiar linkage. It is, of course, significant that the first invocation is to ~ i v athe , Cholas' kuladevatrithough even here the verse starts with a reference to VisnuIQsna (puyalvan~an).Kulottunga has married the earth, just as ~ i v manied a PBrvati in order to serve as an example for householders; in both cases, the marriage is exemplary in aim.35But, not surprisingly, the closest relationship is intimated in the second verse, on NEtumB1; even the verbal resonances of this poem support the suggestion of closeness between the two figures-'that NEtumal' and the king whose parasol holds within it the 'whole wide earth' (ne'tu ma nilam anaittum). The Chola court poet establishes a playful, suggestive link of identification between the king and the god Tirumal. I hesitate to adopt a literalist reading of this connection. On the other hand, as we shall see, the potential for a much more far-reaching identification has definitely been established. The pattern as a whole exists alongside another major vision, that of the king as the god's humble, even 35

Cf. Tiruvdcakarn 12.9. 13.

Ports oncl Putrori.~it7 7ilr11iII,itt)r(~tur~ K7

humblest. scrvant. In both casch. we can scc an attempt to deal with the tension that has opened up bctwcen human and divine patronage of the Tamil poct; one either raises the king higher, towards the god (but without resolving the complcxitics of their relat~on),or lowers him to the postion of a wholly human, sadly limited devotee. Both responses, we should note, find expression within the sphere of the royal court itself, in works of poets directly dependent on the king.

A third pattern becomes prominent in the poetry of the centuries following the demise of the Chola court. W e now find a hypertrophy of the satirical powers vested in the Tamil poet and triumphant statements of the poet's absolute superiority over his patron. Let us begin with a simple example which reveals the image the Chola king and court displayed to the eyes of a much later generation, looking backwards to this moment of great poetic achievement in Tamil: Once Kampan and Kulottunga Chola were walking in the king's luxuriant gardens when the king laughed. The poet asked him the cause of his laughter, and the king replied, 'Is not the whole world, with its inhabitants, subordinate to me?' 'Yes', said the poet, 'and you are ruled by me!' The king was angry and desolate: 'This scholar (vittuvdn) who lives by my gifts thinks he is a king. If anyone else were to speak to me like this, I would cut off his head.' Angrily, without speaking to the poet, the king returned to his palace. The queen brought him food. but he would not touch it. She called his concubine (vuippdfti),the dancing-girl Pbnni, and sent her to the king. and Pbngi coaxed the story out of him. 'Why waste thought on this?' She said. 'Stay here, eat your food. and I will show you that Kampan is my slave.' She went home and sent another dancing-girl to wait for the poet. Kampan waited for the king i n his garden until the hour of lighting the lamps; then he returned in his palanquin, when the dancing-girl called to him and told him that her mistress wished to see him. He went i n and saw P6nni lying naked, writhing in desire, on her bed. 'I am bewitched by you', she called to him, 'come and satisfy my desire.' 'You arc the king's wife. and therefore I must regard you as my daughter.' Kampan said. 'Ask anything elsc and 1 will give it.' She

askcd h ~ mto sign a documcnt saying that he was her slave. He wrote out the following sentence: 'Kampan is the slave o f the danc~ng-girl P b n ~ i (hcippcinnikku ' kaml~aratimai). The next day, when Kampan came to the court, the king was waiting for him with this document in hand. 'Is this your signature?' he asked. in front of all the courtiers. When Karnpan verified it, the king read the sentence out, to everyone's amazement. Now the king laughed in triumph: 'Aren't you ashamed, great scholar that you are, to be the slave of a dancing-girl?' 'You are rnis-reading the sentence', said Kampan, and proceeded to explain i t differently: td(y) cipdnniku kampar atimai, Kampar is slave to the goddess ~ r i l ~ a k s m i'Who :. can doubt', he added, 'that I am the goddess's slave?' The king was furious: 'One can never believe these scholars. If you are generous to them, they praise you as Indra or Candra. If you are not, they call you a fool and a cheat. and then re-interpret these verses to make them sound innocuous. Poets are more cruel than Death.' He ordered Kampan to leave his country at once, leaving behind all the gifts he had been given. Kampan mocked him: 'You tell me to leave your country. 0 kingdoes your country extend farther than 24 katanis? Are there not other kings and kingdoms just beyond this? IF you are angry, have I no other refuge? Have you uprooted the mountains and thrown them into the sea, or fixed a limit to the wilderness? Was i t because I saw you that I composed Tamil verse? Can the mouth that sang of the Velala also sing of a King'? And he left, after swearing to return with the Chola's superior as his, the poet's, servant carrying his pouch of betel.M This story, which continues at some length and culminates with the poet's victorious return to the Chola court with thc Cera king carrying his betel pouch, is recorded in the Vinotaracamaricari, a nineteenthcentury prose work containing rich material from the later medieval period in Tamil Nadu. Many of the traditions that appear there in full are attested earlier, at least in part, in the verses of the Tamil navalar caritai, which is a mine of information on popular literary legend in late medieval times. For our purposes, the central issue is the apparent transformation of king-poet relations, to the p o i n ~where the poet's superiority over his patron is seen as certain. In this view, the king is at best a useful companion for. if not indeed a scrvant o f , his poct,

" Vinotarucarnufic~urrofviracrirn~CZttiySr (Madras, n.d.). 124-9.

Pact\ und Prrttorr.\

who graciously allows his patron L O support him. P u t of thc story behind this story lies in thc severe reduction attributed to the king's actual powcr: Kampan mocks the Chola king by sarcastically rcfcl-ring to the lim~tedterritory he controls-almost as if he had rcad Burton Stein on the segmentary state. 'There is a clear appreciation here of the king's restricted grasp, and a sense-properly articulated by the poet, who has the wisdom to perceive it-of the hollowness hidden by the court's grandiose display. We can also hear in this story the medieval patron's side of thin'gs, in the king's undoubtedly realistic lament: poets praise the patron who is generous but ridicule the one who is not in their ambiguous verses, which can always be interpreted to sound harmless. This statement harmonizes well with the bhakti poet's depiction of his colleagues' hypocrisy in panegyric, as we saw above. We can thus observe a significant change in the balance of relations between patron and poet in post-Chola times. For this story is not an isolated indication; many other texts reveal the same tendency to glorify the poet and his power, especially his power to curse, over the much more limited situation of the patron. Take, for example, the case of Kalamekappulavar, the satirical poet par excellence in Tamil (from the mid-fifteenth century). Many of the single stanzas attributed to Kglamekam are connected by the later tradition to magical featstoppling the image of Visnu at Kannapuram, driving snakes away from a village. e t ~ . But ~ ' these powers are also specifically directed against a recalcitrant patron named Tirumalairsyan, king of Tirumalairayan pattanam (near Nakapatlinam). We have the verses attacking Tirumalairayan and his town;3s the story told about them is, again from Vinotaracamanlcari: Atimaturakavi, the court poet of Tirumalairjyap, was determined to keep Kalamekappulavar out of the court: he was supported by 64 other poets (tantikaippuluvar) at this site. They instructed the king not to honor Kalamekam, and especially not to offer him a seat or to call to him to approach the throne. Kalamekam. hearing of this, took a lime in his hand and. holding it before him and uttering blessings, entered the court. 'The courtiers all gave way before h ~ m Tor . who could stop a Brahmin from giving his blessing and his gift'? He placed the fruit in "

See K.V. Zvelebil. T(~rni/Lirrruturo (Wicsbadcn, 1974). 5 3 1 .

'W. Viraver Pillni (rd.), Ta!irp/xituy rir-crrtlc (Vadras, 1940). 67:e e

translation below.

III

I u r ~ 1Literature 1

89

the king's Iliind; still the latter would no1 offer the poet a seat. Now Kalanickam tu1.11cd i n thc direction of the great shrine o r J~mbukcivara~n, praycd to the goddess there, Akilantavalli, and sang a verse asking Sarasvati to givc him a seat with the king; then he composed his poctii called the Carusvati nialai in 30 verses. By the grace of the goddess Sarasvati, the throne grew on one side, of its own accord, and made a place for the poet." What more graphic illustration could we want of the poet's new powers? The king who tries to deny the poet honour ends up sharing his throne with him, against his will. The setting here is one of rivalry between two kinds of poets, no less than between patron and bard: on the one hand, we have Atimaturakavi, the traditional court poet who sings panegyric along with sixty-four helpers; o n the other, K2lamekappulavar, who seems to represent a new type of peripatetic poet improvising verses-often sarcastic or bitterly satirical verses, but also technically sophisticated citrakavi poems and similar pyrotechnic verbal feats. 'This type of wandering poet, who looks at first glance rather like a reversion to the most ancient Carikam prototype of wandering bard, seems to achieve a new prominence at roughly the same time in Tamil and Telugu literature; we often find him, as in the present case, involved in poetic contests. especially with the settled court poets. To continue with Kalamekam's story: the confrontation in Tirumalairayan's court develops into a Iife-ordeath poetic competition called yarnaka~~tarn, which Kalamekamsuspended by a contraption of nets and ropes over a pot of boiling ghee-wins by improvising verses on topics chosen for hini by his rivals. Nevertheless, the king still refuses to give him a gift. The poet's final response is to sing two verses of scorn (vacai) containing a curse on the king and his entire city: City of liars, school of deceit where men bellow like oxenmay the skies First bleach it dry and then blacken i t with a rain or dust. 0 lord Hara, torture the evil people or this city where Tirumalall-ayan has done what should never be donc

and. ;IS you burnt M;ldan;r with a rain of Iirc. br1n2 I-11inwith a rain o l dust.

LI. Vc. Crl~ninataiyar.at the beginning of this century, somewhat disingcnously reports that the former site of'Tirumalairiiyan pat&q~am is, indeed, still a desolate ~ a s t e . ~ " Kiilamekam's total triumph over the king may havc something to do with his Brahmin identity; but his power to curse. or to produce other 'magical' effects by his'vcrse, is not unusual in poets of this type during this pcriod. Note that Kiilanickam, like other wandering poets, in effect manages without any particular human patron. He lives by his wit, and by the grace of the goddess Sarasvati and of the various local deities in their temples whose praises he sings. The hhukti poet's traditional hostility to human patronage continues to find expression in this way. through the wandering bard's mordant comments on the various patrons he encounters; at the same time, the bardic model of restless movement from one patron to another holds for this poet's relations with the temples and their gods. We might also note that the vein of satire that is so pronounced in Kalamckam's verses applies to some of his bhakri poems as well: this is a period in which nindcistuti, 'praise-though-blame', flourishes in the context of divine w ~ r s h i p . ~ ' 'Thus, by the fifteenth century, we havc a newly prominent type of poet who conventionally defeats and humiliates both his human patrons and their sycophantic court poets. The poet's gifts now guarantee him a power beyond that of the human king, who has also lost something of the Chola ruler's magnificence and, in many cases. diminished to the level of a purely local 'little king'. Yet the patterns discussed above with reference to an earlier pcriod persist in this new context and even deepen their contours. By Nayaka times. we find a new genre, ~ i r u p p a ~ i m a l uini . which the patron's devoted service to the god in his temple is extolled at length (in connection with construction or repairs to the shrine that the patron has financed)." The king or ruler is, more than ever, the humble servant of the god. But he [nay also be rendered divine by a poet's verse. in a manner far

,

more explicit and concrete than was the case with the Chola court poets. The process culminates with works zsserting the patton's actual superiority over the rather helpless temple deity: a lace ninctcenthcentury work, Vi I l i yappa Pillai's Paiirnlak.~uizurirnmi~kclvilnc~um, describes a severe famine which the god, ~ u n d a r e i v a r a - ~ i vata Maturai, admits he can do nothing to alleviate; he gives the people a letter to a local lord, Turaicirika Tevar of Sivagangai. asking the latter to solve the crisis. This poem might well be said to mark the limit of one major line of development. How do these disparate patterns coexist in the poetry of a single period'? Can the king be. at once. divine and the abject servant of a god? Can heroic panegyric of the older type survive in the context of the poet's vaunted superiority? Can we explain any of the changes that we have noted? In order to arrive at tentative answers to at least some parts of these questions, I must turn now, in concluding this chapter, to the study of two Nayaka-period works. But before analysing these poems, let us note that in their background are farreaching changes in the social and economic structure of Tamil Nadu, changes still very imperfectly understood. The poems themselves bear witness to the altered order of things. We can perceive here the emergence of a new class of patrons, some of them of Andhra origin, immigrants under the aegis of the Vijayanagar conquest of the Tamil area; others. perhaps, possessed landed property inherited from the period in which large private landholdings were consolidated (during the latter part of Chola This class of landowners, widely distributed through the Tamil region, became a major constituent of the nriyaka system of rule and the major purveyor of patronage from at least the fifteenth century on-though other institutional foci 01' power and resources, above all the temples and the mutts (the latter institutionalized in their present form in the NByaka period) continued to be active during these c c n t ~ r i e s . But ~ " i t is the scattered zamindartype of patrons that arc of particular interest to us here as the sponsors of a new kind of Tamil poetry expressed in a reniarkahle series of 17

'"I:. Vc C31ninataiyar.Ni~1tri\~rlti7trfic.nri 11 (M;~dr;~s. 1035). 60. ' FOI-;In cxamplc. scc Zvclcbil. 7'trtrrilLi/c,rtr/trt.o.54. Thih is not. ol.coursc. a n 111novariontrl' his pcriod. ' \cch I< 3a;axwalnv. Sirctlic,.~r r r /ltrt.ic,t~/itrtr~il/.((it. trr7tl Soc.ict! MaclrL~s 1978). 1 I 2 IS

Y. Subbarayalu, 'The Peasantry o f thc Tiruchirapalli District Irom thc

13th to 17th Centuries'. in Nohoru Karashi~na(cd.)..Socio-Crtltrt,.trl C11rrt1,yr in Vi1lage.v in Tiruc.l~irtrl~c~lli Dr.stt-it.r.T t ~ t ~ ~ i l / i t rIndia. t I ~ c . Par1 I . P t - ~ ~ - t ~ i o ( l t ~ r ~ r Periorl(~okyo,1983)125. " See N. Karasliima. 'N;~yakasa \ Le;~scholclcrsol Trniplc I.nnds'. .Jo~1t.trtrI offhe E(.ot~otliic.trtitl ,SO( icrl H ~ . v i o / .o\ ./ ' r h [ ~O t - i t ~ t I0 ~ / ( 1070). 22' -12.

.

Ports arid Putrons irl Turn11I,iternt~*re 93 new genres-ku~uvuiici, ntintirlcltukum, pnllu, krital, viruli vitu tutu, and others. These genres, many ol' thcm close to folk sources and to the stratum of popular Tamil culture, spring up in Nayaka times; they show us the world of the late medieval 'little kingdom', which is little only i n our name for it, certainly not in its complexity, its sophistication, its creative impulses, or its outrageously grandiose pretensions.

In the early part of the eighteenth century, Cupratipak Kavirayar composed two poems, belonging to the genres of kutal and virali vifu tutu, for his patron, Nakama Kiilappa (or Kiilappa) Nilyakkan, the local lord of Nilakkottai. The poet may have been a student of the famous Pararicotimunivar, and is also known as the Tamil teacher of the missionary-poet Beschi; and while he was by no means the inventor of these relatively new genres,45his works are often regarded as outstanding examples of their ~ l a s s . "Both ~ are erotic works-a taste for sensual poetry is clearly an important feature of this period, no doubt in part, at least, because of the demands of the new class of patrons we have mentioned. The katal poems portray romantic scenarios of various kinds; the virali vitu tutu are a specific variety of the wider category of 'messenger-poems' (tutu), in which the hero sends someone or something (a cloud, a heron, a bee, the south wind, his heart. etc.; but in this case, a female bard and dancer) on a mission of love. The virali vifu tutu follow a more standardized format than the kutal poems, and their tone is far more ironic and satirical. In a sense, however, these two works of Cupratipak Kavirayar function as an integrated set; to some extent, they reflect one another and, in so doing, bring a single vision, with both positive and negative poles, to completion, They also offer a fascinating. synoptic expression of The first viral; vitu tutu known is TCy\lut.c.ilarn.tir viyali vitu tutu of Kumliracuv~miAvalani, c. 1600. See the tine introduction by R. Nagaswamy to his edition o f Muvaruiw~lvi!-uli vitu tutu (Madras, 1983).on the history o f this genre and its representative works. 46 I am gratrful to Professor K. Zvclcbil for making the texts of these two works ;tvail;thlc to rnr ( i n the edition of Pirema P~racurarn.Madras, 1958---a howdlcri;.ccl cd~t~on, as \tatcd hy thc p r ~ n l c r ' snotr o n tlic copyrighl page'). jS

the predominant patterns of patron-poet relations at this period, an expression in which we will have no difficulty recognizing the various legacies of the literary past. Let us begin by brieily reviewing the main lines of the Kulappa nayakkan krital. The plot is relatively straightforward (and very close to the simple story line of some of the Telugu yaksagana poems from this period and this region). After the invocations-which include mention of Akopilamal, Visnu at Ahobilam, the isfadevat&of the poet's patron (3)-and the standard apology for his poem's imperfections, the poet describes the area of Nilakkottai, with its mountain and river, and then Kulappa Ngyakkatj himself, as he sits i n state at his court. Tributaries from ~ r Lanka i and even from China send their offerings to him; beautiful dancing girls perform upon the threshold of his throne room; suppliants are rewarded with clothes, food, gold, and the justice of Manu. The Vedas might betray the truth, the seas might dry up, the sun and the moon might fail-but he will never be false to his promised word (31). He is compared to the gods' wishing tree, to the wish-granting cow (kcimadhenu), to an unfailing rain cloud. Let us note his epithet: ma1 pZriya nakentran (24), the great lord Nggendra; but there is a resonance here with the divine name Ma1 (Visnu), as we shall see. One day, after bathing in the waters of the Vaikai and praising the feet of Narayana (35), this king announces that he wishes to go hunting. The court explodes in feverish preparations for this expedition; flags, horns, drums, weapons, and horses are assembled; the various members of the excited entourage begin to fantasize about the coming hunt. One hopes to kill a tiger and win a prize from the king; another wants to bring back the tail of a yak for his second wife (59). As the party emerges from the palace with their muskets ready, the wild hunters of the forest salute them. There are good omens, soon borne out by results: a tiger is caught and killed (85); a deer falls prey to the teeth of the hunting dogs. 'like an upright person (ce'vvi~~on) writhing in the grasp of a courtesan' (870). Peacocks, hearing the noise of the hunt, take flight, 'likc the poverty of poets who sing of a generous patron' (88). So successful is thc expedition that the hare residing in the moon that is carried in ~ i v a ' shair and the dcer held i n ~ i v a ' s hand take flight in terror (91). Suddenly, a brilliantly beautiful deer tlccs from a trap, and the king himself chases after him, 'just as Rglna did long ago' (95)-but whereas thc golden dcer tllar R8nia pursued scparatcd h ~ n iI'roni liis

94

The Wi.tdon2 c!fPoct,r

bclovcd. thisdeer would bring about a union of the king with a woman (knrun kuyil. 97). The comparison with Rama is hardly f ~ r r u i t o u s , ~ " but the poet still finds a way to draw in the basic distinctian in the two stories! The unfortunate deer eventually falls victim to the king's shot. Now KulappaNayakkan is thirsty, and he goes looking for water in a luxuriant garden. where parrots sing poems and the bees hum music, as if sent by their mistresses on a love mission (tutu). But sorncone else is already in the garden-the lovely Navarattinamalai, elaborately described in conventional hyperbole. who has come with her companions 'to stage a raid on K3rna7s camp (pulaiyam, 150)', i.e to pick flowers from this garden of love. But she has become separated from her companions as she wanders from tree to tree, looking for flowers; and now our hero catches sight of her and is stunned: is she a goddess, he wonders, o r a Nagini, or an a p s a r a ? But her eyes blink, her feet touch the ground-so she must be a woman. He asks her name and her village; is she, perhaps, Mohini, Rati, Damayanti? He praises her: did Brahma, like a poet who has to practise before performing his k a q a in public (ararikerrutul), create coconuts, golden pots, and mountains like golden Meru before he came to complete your breasts'? Or arc there, perhaps, two Brahmas-one to assert that your waist exists, a second to deny it (200)? And so on, at great length-but the lady says not a word. He asks her: 'Is this silence of yours that of the Vedz, o r is it the silent m a n t r a of ~ i v a Daksinatnurti (207)?' Now comes the declaration of love: ' ~ j v placed a a woman in half his body, Mal put Laksmi on his breast, Brahma has a woman on his tongue---but I have set you down in the middle of my mind (208-c)).' He infers from her continuing silence that she already feels compassion for him, and he announces that he won't leave without making lovc to her: Murukan united with Val!i, and Arjuna with Subhadra, without asking permission from the girl's parents (2 15-1 6); as is customary in such circumstances, the useful category of gundharvu marriages is cited (kdnrarva rziyayam, 214); and, at Inst. the lovesick hero remembers to introduce himself-he is -" It ~ C C I I ~inS the cornpanton pocm, as we shall see; and we may recall the arlaptation of this aanrc episode from thc Rfirrtdyuna-Rama's pursuit of the ~oldcnilecr sent to draw him away from Sit%-in the Kanyakumari inscription 01 Vir-ar.'lcndra Chola 11. whcrc it hclps t o explain the migration southward 01an eponymous ancestor. 'Cola'-- Trc~i;anc,ore Arc.hueologic,c~l Series 3, pt. 1 . n o . 74: scc discuss~onby B. Stein. PPU.Y~III~. Sfute un[f So~ief\:jn Medie~~zl . S o r i r / ~III(/I(I (Delhi, l980), 322- 3.

the king of Nilakkotlai, lord of Navnpuri. Hc rakes hcr hancl--still not a word has passed her lips-and thcir lovemaking is described in an explicit. delicate, and immediate manner. They are one spirit trapped in two bodies, but with a singlc desire, a single heart, a single way (campratayam, 23 1 ). It has all happened rather suddenly, and almost as quickly it is over: the army, looking for its royal master. soon comes marching into the garden with the noise of a roaring ocean (235); the king abandons the girl there-now it is his turn to be silent-and returns to his royal duties. The hunting party returns home. On entering the town, the king first worships his chosen deity, Akopilamiil, in his shrine, and receives the god's prasuda; he then mounts his elephant and rides towards his palace. W e are now treated to a greaily telescoped ula-procession like the Chola ulas cited earlier: as the royal servants call out the king's titles-king of PEficai, great Malla, patron of the poet Cupratipa (!), destroyer of enemies1-the women thronging the streets go mad with desire for him: but he fails even to see them (254). Like the traditions1 hero of thc ula, he is indifferent to the lovesick women; but in this case, the rcason is clear enough--he has his mind on someone else. Indeed, some of the womcn norice the scars on his lips, from Navarattinamalai's love-bites, and they bite their own lips in bitter disappointment. Let us notice in passing how the earlier formar of the ulu has been trasformed; though the hero remains detached, thc whole context is suffused with the immediate memories of his erotic adventure with Navarattinamalai. I will return to this point. It is also noteworthy thal Kulappa Nayakan is nowhere said to suffer the pangs of separation (viraha) from his new beloved, a s does the classic romantic hero. She, on the other hand, now undergoes a standard viraha vtgnette: deserted in rhc forest, she frantically runs from one rrce to another, asking them if thcy have seen her beloved; she hallucinatcs. bows down to an imaginary vision of him, asks him why hc is angry at her; shc talks to herself: 'If I'd known he would leave me. I would have madc him swear three times to stay; was he Indra, or a gandharva? How could he just disappear without telling m e his secret? Did hc think my heart was as hard as his own'?' Eventually. she collapses in a taint. Her companions find her in this state and rcvivc her. but she cannot tell them what happened. 'rhey take hcr homc to bed and rry to cool her raging lovc fever: when thcy fall her. i c is like thc burn~nghcal of sunilncr: whcri [hey open the window to g c the ~ rnountaln b r c c ~ c .slic feels as i l a tigcr

(It?

7'/1c, W i . \ ~ / ~(?/ ~ lI'lWl.\ l~

1i,1~1 I I I I I I I >011 ~ ~ 11~1( 2 9 3 ) :arid hul- rnlncl r-i\\lst\ t l ~ i , \ i ' attempts to i.ool the 11!11c\s~ 11kctlic ~ i i i ~ 0i1d >I wllc who li:~\\ c ~ i t01 1. Ilcr l i ~ ~ h l to ~ ~:I ~ i d cx,urtccnn ( 2 9 8 ) . Finally. her L.onll,:irilons 111101-m her n~othcr,u h o cli:~glioccsthe disease u.ith prci.l\ion: .lt Ilr\t tllc mother 1s angry :~iid s ~ ~ s p i c ~ o ~ l \ - k- ~ ihoew s01 the k111g'sI i ~ ~ ~ i t ~ ~ i ; - c ~ ~ )how c d i Ct O~LoI nI ~. Nakcntirarj cml~t.accher daughter and tlicn ahandon hcr'! Ancl dld she not know that t h i h klng had a tnr/llr,-r/that allowcd him Lo hcwirch beauliful worr~cn:' Did~r't5hc know tl1a1 lie already hris a thousand women'? 9 1 ' c.ou~..sc.her daughter's heauty M,(I.\. properly suited lor a king ...Perhaps. in going out to pick Ilowers. she h;~d: ~ c t ~ ~ a I'ound Ily a hidden trc:lsLlrc. Now she hlesscs the girl: 'May you live in hlias with Kglentiran and give birth to children!' As these meditations are proceeding. a regal palanquin suddenly arrives at the door-and Navaratti~>amalaiis promptly carried away to join her lord in the palace. So thc kdr~lcnds-a teleological romance along convent~onallines. hut beautifully articulated in a polished and easily accessible dict~on thai s c c n ~ sto hovcr on thc brink o f irony. The poet tells a fa~niliar story. with a foregone conclusion. but precisely because of this familiarity hc seems almost to watch himaelf singing. and his patron 1istc.ning: this 'reflexive' quality o f the text is also apparent in other ways*e.g. when the poet mentions himself through the mouths of the king's heralds (calling to the 'patron of Cupratipa'). Another side to thiq self-consciousness is the recurring refercllce. usually negative in tone. to courtesans-who, as we shall see. play a key role in the c o m p a n i o n poem by C u p r a t i p a k Kavirayar. But perhaps the outstanding feature of the work as a whole is the ~lnabashcdsensuality of its hero. who almost imnicdiatcly attains his ob-jcct (the fact that the king can cvcn dispense with rhc usual period 01' ~xit-trhtrtorment is also In line with this perspective): this marks a signal contrast with earlier portraits o f ~ h ~(-111th c Indian king." We have seen the dil'fcrcnce in thc ~rlu.once :I conspicuous vehicle for the clnotlon\ of 1.ir-ohtr. with its Iro/,cn. ~mpassivchero--hut. in our poem. recontextuali/.cd as 3 hric~l'cpisodedom~natcdby the knowledge 01'thc king's eroticism. ['le:~rly. our poet wcks to Ilattcr Ili\ patron by portrayirlg hirn as the conil~lcringroniantlc hero. In d o ~ n s\o. lic al\o i,or~llatest h o C : L I C ~ O rrc.\ Illa~;~r.ctlcllhc~atclyk c ~ \cparatc t i n the \rorkj 0 1 orhc.1- pcriodh ( : I \ i \ c , I I ~ I L \ ~L Y I ~ ~ 1 ~ rc\lxbcr 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 ~ ~ o ! Y / I ) . 1 1 1 pt~tl-(111 ~ (11 tlic uork

(pN!t~lt(u lo/ciriii~liIlx\ llou [2ccomc lully lclelltlIlcd ir'lth Illc I I L ~ I I V C r~jrnaiiti~. l1c1.0/ A / / ( / \ I ~(/I(I/L,(ILI). 'The two tiiiv~L.O:IIC>L.C~ i131o;I \ ~ ~ i g l c fig~11.c. the ~ ~ a t r o n / c ~ -[xiragon: o t ~ c : the old cli\~inction.with 11sc~~ggcativc tension tuid Ih~l~It-in ilist:~ncc hctwccn the 1'1-:~~ncwork (11' patronaye and the imaglncd world of the poem. !la\ hccn obliterated. What is morc, this coliIl;~tioliI S part of;) gcncral procc\s ofcolnhining liltherto distinct actors. a proccss which is orlc 01 the Ilallrnarks of thc Nayaka period: the crilical distinctions between king and delty, palace and temple, co~lrtc5ana ~ i d(l~i,atlri.sT.have hy now nearly collapsed, and we can ohscrve 'ln amazing pattern 01 as\in~ilutiontoward single. complex hut unitary types.'" The royal patl.on3sdivine attributes are one sure sign otthis process. But to explore i l lurther. and. in particular. to fill i n the mis5ing half of the erotic perspective embodied in the kcital, we n i ~ ~turn s t to the Ku1npl)n t ~ a j , n k k ( ~1,irnli a ljitu tutu. This is a rnuch longer poem (1085 couplet? in the expurgated edition I have L I S C ~wc ) ; shall have to he content with a very brief summary, that will surely fail to do j ~ ~ s t i ctoc the rich sat~ricaltone of the work. The pocnl opens with an address to the 17irali singer, whom the hero wishes to carry his message of reconciliation to his wil'e; he then proceeds to narrate the circulnstanccs that have hrought him to ask her intervention. It has all happened cluring the happy reign of Klijappa Nayakka13-this opening gives Lhe poet an opportunity to praise his patron extravagantly. in terms very similar to those we have seen in the prcvio~lswork."' including mention of his daily devotion to Ahobilcsa (62); this time, howcvcr. the divine identity of the king is far more explicit, for hc is Navakoli Narayana, that grerlt Nagendra (rntrlpPrij,a t~dkrr~tt-an) who said to Vihhisana. '1 will give you the kingdom with a single arrow' ( i t . he is equated with Ralna); he is Nagendra. like thc great serpent with n tllo~is:~ndheads who bears thc whole world as i l ' i t were a pillar (87-%;). His rule is onc of merit and mercy: rain fall\ plcntlllllly. the hou\choldcr'\ lilc flour~\hcs. the king gives gift3 of food (r/nac~rtir,rl~n). ttrpci.\ is auccc\.;iul. During this halcyon ;igc. a Brahmin 1 5 born i n ~ r i r a r i ~ a Already m. 3s a young Tlic C ' X ; I I I I ~ I ~ \ ~ I \ C > IIlCrc ~ arc b\ no incan\ cr;ha~1\11\c: ;lnd u c lnlgh~ also mcn~ionI11c rrlc.r.r:i\lrlFi-onllal~onol ~IIL. roli,k 01 hrnp ;rnd poi.1 during this perloel. Irl ~ , l l ~ i\ l3i\ , 1 h a bins\ anil prlni,c, i.o~npo\cclInm! \ti~llLhnoun works. 31 %ole. 1li,r1 1 1 1 ~ . h ~ n Is \ \ , ~ I c I t o 211i.~ ~ x ~ L ~ I 1I 0~ III LI ~ .C 'IL; Il nIl~~ l 'I ( , I I I ( / I I I / / J W l I I i 111~-! I \ C \v1\I11112 I I . L Y ~ 01 ~ I I C . ~ I \ L . I ~ ~ ~ I - L . \ L , I I I111 Ill\ I I \ ~ . ! 1 1 1 , ~ ~ ~I ii) 1.~

98

771r Wistlomr of' Poczr.s

man. his learning and accomplishments arc great enough to win him thc title Aslavatani-he who can givc his attention simultaneously to cighl differenl matters. Hc bccornes a Tamil poet. and in due course he marrics. Bul one day he sees a dancing girl in the tcmple of ~ ~ v v a n t i c a r l ~alTiruccir2ppalli: iva he goes to visit her, rathcr foolishly taking a yoling boy with him for company; his lad hurries back to Astavatani's wifc and tells hcr of her husband's liaison with the dancing girl, in great delail. Thc ~esultingquarrel between the Brahmin and his wife ends with his exile from home. He wanders from shrine to shrine until he reaches Tirunialiruiicolai, near Maturai, where a wise man befriends him. When Astavatani expresses a desire to visit the temple of Sundareivara in Maturai, his friend warns him against doing so: there are dangerous women in Maturai, including the bewitchingly beautiful Matanapisekam, a dancing girl learned in music, Sanskrit, Kannada, sweet Telugu. and Tamil, who performs in the thousand-pillared hall i n ~ i v a ' sshrine. She has been meticulously trained by her unscrupulous mother. the old hag Manikkamalai (whose advice to the young courtesan. her daughter, at the start of her career is reproduced at great length). Few can resist her charms; suitors throng to her door, and she controls them all easily: She makes yogis and sages dance like leather puppets (po'mmal atfu\~ikkumto1 uru, 310); she has sucked up the wealth of kings, as Agastya swallowed the ocean (31 1). Men display her favour as a badge: some wipe the marical powder from her face with a cloth which they then proudly wear over their shoulder as they walk through the streets (332). A young Brahmin from Kalahasti, who had fallen in love with her and lost all his money on her before being casl out. penniless and sick, now spends his days, still mad with desire, howling like a cat as he lies on a neighbour's pourch (379-88). In short. the woman is a clever and almost irresistible temptress. But these cautionary tales and sound advice make no impression on our hero. who insists on going to Maturai: 'Can white ants damage an iron pillar?' Reluctantly. his friend accompanies him to the Lown. where hc turns out to be madc of rather softer stuff than iron: as we might expect. he becomes a victim of Lhe 'demon of desire' (ucaip pev. 422) and is mercilessly exploited by the wily Mataniipigekam and hcr hidet-rusmother. Quite aparl Irom her cxorbi~an~ charge for a night of love (which is also explicitly depicted). Mat;~nnpischamhas cxpen.;ivc tastc. which her innoccnl It)\;cr mu.;[ sati\l'y-----for;I new wardrohc. lot spices 2nd pcrlume5. I'ot niilh and ghcc and hctcl. And

she is no1 ahovc resorting to ruses: she complain 01. a stvmachachc hat can only be cured by making an image of her k ~ l u c f ~ v u twhose a, legs must be adorned with golden anklels-lo he supplied by her lover; or. on an outing to Alakarmalai, she prctcnds lo have been robbed of all her finc jewellery (including, we should note, a goldcn bracelet given her by Kulappa Nayakkan himself! 630), and the hapless Astavatani has, of course, to purchase for her an entire new set of ornaments. Still, hc is not unhappy, for he is deluded by the fantasy that she loves him: he is like a crow perched on the mast of a ship at sea (549); he has given up all his Brahmin prayers and rituals; the only linga he now worships is the nipple of her breast, adorned with sandalpaste (594). But the end is already in sight: as soon as he reaches his last coin, he is rudely insulted by the heartless old veiyrimritr and evicted from the house. He calls the old woman ungrateful, and she screams back at him: 'What have you ever given us? Go away! Did you think you tied the tali on this woman? Is a devadlisi (tevafiyril) ever private property? (738)' The quarrel becomes more and more violent, and soon they come to blows; she grabs his top-knot, he pulls her hair and strikes her; a crowd gathers around them in the street. She calls out for justice: 'Help me! A Brahmin demon (phrpprirappe.~)has possessed my daughter!' They take their case to the temple officials (koyir ralattrir), who listen to both sides-to the old cclurtesan's frantic lies and to the impoverished Brahmin's 1ament.j' But the case is clear enough, and the judges say to AstAvatagi: 'You want your wealth returned by this courtesan-can a frog swallowed by a snakc come back? Look on it as the price you had to pay to rid yourself of delus~on(cintai mayal). You are a Brahminhow could you let your mouth, tha~recites the Vedic mantras, sip the rasa of her honeyed mouth?A Brahm~nwho sees a courtesan s h ~ u l d distance himself from her by a league. Go back to your village, earn wealth by your wisdom.' But Astrlvatani is slill misei.able and forlorn; his hear1 pulls him hack toward the courtesan's house, despite the humiliation he has undergone. He goes into the temple and witnesses the elaborate rites

'' I n the zoursc o f Astavstnni's prcsontat~on,he narrates the (ale of' Paja~yanurNili. the hloodthirsly d~.~nonccs who lied to a cour! oJ'Ve!a!as in order to k ~ l al m;rn.

100

Tlze Wisdom of' Poefs

of worship being performed by the priests, at Kulappa Nayakkan's expense, as they inform him. At this cn~cialjuncture, his wise friend miraculously reappears and gently comfort! him: 'Who can escape desire? Was not Indra's body disfigured by a thousand yonis? Did not Ravana lose all his heads because of a woman. and Murukan turn himself into a tree? Don't worry about the wealth you have lost; your learning is your true wealth; a wise man is far superior to a king.' Thus encouraged, our hero decides to approcah the court of Kulappa Nayakkan. The patron's city is portrayed in florid lines (which, ~redictablv emphasize the beauty of the women of Navapuri); . perhaps, is admitted, as a Tamil poet, to the court, where he praises -Astavatani -. -.... the king and is lavishly rewarded. The king gives him the title kavicakravarti, 'emperor of poets'. Now a wealthy man again, our hero turns to the virali and sends her to his home with the task of appeasing his wife and bringing about a reunion. Thus the poem ends-obviously a work of bardic praise for a rich patron, after all. But is it not a strange way to flatter and to praise? This picaresque poem, with its pathetic Brahmin anti-hero, is framed by the initial and concluding passages of traditional 'heroic' panegyric. Why, then, did this peculiar combination take shape? Does it have a logic of its own? The viraP vifu t a u is not, indeed, alone in this style of praise: another Nayaka period genre. the n&[indtakam ('drama ahout a cripple'), extols the munificence of the patron (human, divine, or b ~ t k in~ connection ~) with the equally picaresque escapades of an incompetent horse thief. We may admire the ingeniousness of the Ngyaka poets, who found ways io please their patrons at the same time as they composed poems on seemingly autonomous subjects of their but the structure of these poems has its own integrity -.- - - - choice: . and deserves to be studied as a whole. Let us briefly note the major features of the work just summarized. First, like the katul, this is a poem of explicit eroticism-but this time of a negative character, bitterly satirized in several hundred brilliant verses. We see the predatory sensuality of the courtesan, a striking contrast to the winsome innocence of the katal's heroine. But are the two wholly divorced from one another'? The veiled ironies of the k d u l have, it ~

--

ndntinatnkam in Shulrnan, The Kir7g See the analysis of the Tit-uc,c.tnt~ir and the Clown, 377-79.

Poets and Pcltj-ons in Turnil Literc~ture I0 1 would seem, become blatantly present in the mordant satire of the (ti-ulivitu tlitu. Moreover, our same heroic patron, the ardent lover of the katul, is surprisingly present in the story of the second poem as well: Matanapisekam sings his praises along with those of Cbkkecar~ i v and a Minaksi at her recital, where she is first seen by AstBvatarji (489-90); she also, it appears has worn a bracelet given her by Kfi!appa Nayakkan (630)-in appreciation of her art, or of her sexual charms? One wonders if the seemingly legitimate, even necessary seduction described in the k&al has not left echoes, of a very different tone, in the other poem. The two erotic adventures, Kulappa Nayakkan's and AstBvatBni's, seem to reflect one another. This suggests that we may need a somewhat wider perspective on the forms of satire present in our poem. On the one hand, of course, the principal butt of the story is the self-deluding Brahmin who narrates it; satirical portraits of Brahmins are, indeed, an important feature of this period's literature. It might even be argued that such comic travesties of the Brahmin provide compensation of sorts for the increasing seriousness and stabilization of the royal image in this period-as if the king's comic aspect, which is quite pronounced in earlier times, had gravitated to the Brahmin.53On the other hand, we may expect that the satirical tone of our poem extends somewhat beyond the confines of AstBvatB~i'stravails, to the point where it may even contaminate the 'pure' panegyric. This is a possibility that should not be ignored. Satire proceeds via displacement: 'In satire the necessary displacements of history-the cover-up rituals-are represented by the more overt forms of the violations they are supposed to replace." The obliqueness of the panegyric frame in relation to the main story of the poem may allow for an oblique irony that impinges on the patron's image. The erotic hero of the katal is juxtaposed with telling effect with the erotic anti-hero of the virali vifu tutu.

We cannot push this theme too far without doing violence to the texture of the poem, but neither can we neglect the overriding ironic mode that pervades it. This is particularly important in view of the extreme extension of another theme in this poem-that of the patronking's divine identity. As we have already observed, this is a

" See discussion, ibid., passim. Michael Seidel, Satiric Inhrritance: Rabeluis to Sterne (Princeton, 1979), 21. 54

102

The Wisdor71 qf' Poets

characteristic Nayaka-period perspective which finds even more trenchant expression in Telugu works from the Nayaka courts. Here, however, it exists within a satirical setting that partly corrodes the conviction it carries. The satirist, it is said, seeks 'to debase metaphors of false conveyance'.j5 But, by Ngyaka times, the king's divinity is no longer a metaphor; the most the poet can achieve is the insertion of a measure of self-conscious, critical distance. And even this inay be too much: the amazing fact is that we find within the literature of the Nayaka little kingdoms, and sometimes within the confines of a single work, the simultaneous development of seemingly opposite trends-the complete identification of the king with the god; the continued portrayal of the ruler as the humble devotee of the god in his local shrine (this element, too, is conspicuous in the two works we have surveyed); and a residue of the older hostility to the human patron as such, now perpetuated in satirical undertones or in the poet's subtle self-praise (the learned poet, Aslavatani discovers, is always superior to the king!), in the context of the virtual merger of the poet's formerly rival patrons into the figure of the god-hero in his palaceshrine. In this way Nayaka poetry serves as a palimpsest for the history of Tamil patronage. It incorporates all the earlier patterns-heroic panegyric of the bardic type; the poet's suspicion of the demanding and egotistical human patron; the playing with divine attributes of the king, alongside his reduction to the status of the lowest among the god's servants; and, in the relative freedom inherent in irony, the poet's claim to a certain superiority despite the reality of his dependence. For his part, the patron, for all his pretensions to divine status. is no less dependent than his Calikam prototype on the good graces of his poet. His most conspicuous gain, if such it is, seems to lie in his graduation to an open, even voluptuous eroticism, in contrast to the more circumspect patrons of earlier periods. But the two parties remain all too uncomfortably intertwined in a complex relationship of mutual need, potential distrust, and somewhat transparent harmonies, with clear lines of continuity reaching back as far as the Calikam age while incorporating the major transformations in attitudes in the poetry of medieval Tamil Nadu.

55

Ibid., 23

From Author to Non-Author in Tamil Literary Legend* If we attempt to abstract a broad typology of authors from the mass of medieval1 Tamil literary works, five major classes initially come into view: the erudite Sastra author: the bhakti poet (clearly the most inclusive and complicated type);' the kavi or court poet; the anonymous, or wholly absent, author (of ballads, folk-epic, etc.); and-a relatively late type, perhaps reflecting deveiopments further north, in Andhra-the itinerant improviser of stray verses, who may also compose slightly longer works. Let us characterize each of these groups briefly and, of necessity, in very general terms. ( 1 ) Learned texts of the SListra type almost always have a known author, who is named-traditionally by others, e.g. a pupil or sonin the preface to this work (cirappup p e i r a r ~ )The . ~ same preface usually tells us other facts as well-the name of the author's patron, his home village, and the 'history' of the composition, including the ever important question of the author's motivation. Commentaries on other learned texts also fall into this category, as do even those sacred works, such as the Civakinapotam of MEykant%, which claim to embody teachings of truly divine origin ( ~ i v a ' ssecret instruction to Nandin). Legend may discover an immediate divine author for First published in Jnurrzal ofAsian Studies (Tiruvanmiyur),lO,25 ( 1 993), 1-23. ' I use the term with deliberate vagueness to refer to post-Cankam works. from Pallava times up to and including the Nayaka period. See discussion by Normal Cutler, Songs of Experience: The Poetics of Turnil Devotio~z(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987). 'Nagnu1 3.5 1 statcs that a cirappupp~virarnshould be composcd by the author's teacher, his fellow student, his pupil, or by a commentator. Nir!zuul itself is a typical csample of the Sristra-type; its author, Pavananti, is introduced to us in the preface, along with details of his family, home. patron. and object In composing lhe work.

104

The Wisdotn c!f'Poer.s

such texts: thus Siva himself is said to have colnposcd the lyaiyanrir akappcinrl, a treatise on poetic conventions, after earlier knowledge o f this discipline had been lost.4Or a sage-Agastya, T6lkBppiyagarmay be invoked as the ultimate authority behind the text as it is presented to us.5 Yet even in the latter case, the author mentioned in the preface assumes responsibility, at least, for the teaching in the form he has given it. Each restatement of a discipline is 'signed' and thereby endowed with the authority of the most proximate teacher. This type of author will not concern us further in this paper, although it should be noted that these works, too-like others discussed belowcan innovate in the direction of the bhakti-author category. (2) This group could no doubt be subdivided into several distinct types, but for our purposes it will suffice to emphasize certain basic, shared features. A Tamil bhakti poem normally needs an author, whose image can be palpably sensed, and utilized, in the unfolding of the poem's meaning.6 But the author's presence is not a simple one. His emotional experience of the god is part of a continuing process of revelation and transformation, in which the poet's autonomy i s frequently put in question. His task, as devotee and singer, is to open himself to the god, to become his vehicle. Thus one often finds in the bhakti traditions an aversion to claims of technical mastery and learning-such as the kcivya poets must have-an aversion, indeed, to anything that smacks of premeditated, 'artistic' effort. Although the bhakti poets d o seem to boast, at times, about the beauty of their language or their metrical skill,' the whole subsequent tradition insists, Commentary ascribed to Nakkirar on Zyai~andrakappdrul,first sutm. E.g. Puyappbrul vinpamdfai of Aiyanaritanar, ciyappuppa~~iram; NatnpivnkappGrul of Nackaviraca Nampi, ciynppuppaj~iram. %s enacted, also, in a ritual context, where 'the saint takes on palpable f o t m ~ f .Cutler , 70. ' E.g. Cuntaramurti, Tevciram 4.10; 73.1 1 . The more hostile attitude to poetic technique is evident in the Virasaiva vacanas, e.g. Basavanna 949: I don't know anything like timebeats and metre nor the arithmetic of strings and drums; I don't know the count of iamb and dactyl. My lord of the peeting rivers. as nolhing will hurt you I'll sing as I love. , Books, 1973, 37). (trans. A.K. Rarnanujan, Speukit1,q of ~ i v aPenguin j

Frotrz Aurlzof- to N o t i - A ~ ~ t l r o112r Turn11l ~ r c , ~ ~Legend crv

105

as a rnatter o f principle. that thc major canonical poems, a1 least, wel-c itnprovi.srr1. usually durins a pilgrimage to a shrine. The poems are I'clt to represent a spontaneous outpouring of divinely inspired emotion. I t makes little differencc that texts such as the Tevuram and the Tiru\~uvm6lihardly seem to bear out this view; the point that conccrns us is thc consequences it has for the conceptualization of thc bhakti author. The poet who signs his name in the final verse of verse known as the tirukkataikkuppu, the Tevciram patikam.r-the 'closing the gates', the symbolic 'seal'R that guarantees the poem's authenticity within the tradition and that specifies the rewards for givcn voice to a supposedly unconventionalized, singing it-has divine impetus towards song. Hence the many stories which make the poet. h r f o r e the start of his career, a deaf-mute (Kumarak u r ~ p a r a r ) a, ~simpleton or idiot,"' a young child," and so on-the god opens the lips of these poets and sings through them. A variation o n this theme is the common motif in which the poet, struck dumb by some unexpected and unsettling revelation by the deity, has to be given the first word o r phrase of his poem by the god himself: thus Cuntaramurtti, who has cursed ~ i v as a a madman when the god in disguise interrupted Cuntarar's wedding ceremony, is later told to begin his first hymn to Siva with this same word of abuse.'* On the notion of the poet's 'seal', see John Hawley, 'Authors and Authority in Bhakii poetry of North India'. Journal ofAsian Studies 47 (1988), 269-90. K. Zveleb~l,Tanlil Literature (Leiden. 1975), 230. I" Such as the innocent cook, VEn~imiilaikkavirayar: see D. Shulman, Tamil Temple M ~ t h (Princeton: s Princeton University Press, 1980),34-6. A variation on this pattern is that of the dissolute lecher-turned-poet (Arunakirinatar, Kalamekappulavar). " Tiruiiarjacampanrar (and for the Vaisnavas. :he infant-gnostic NammaJvar). PFrjya Purirciatn 216-20 (Cuntarar's Tevaratn begins with the cry, pittci!-'Madman!'). A similar prompting is necessary when Cuntararcomes to sing his most famous poem, the Tiruttcintattdkai listing the sixty-three ~ a i v asaints; Sivn has to give him the openins line (343-5). Arunakirinatar has the same experience when Murukan saves his lik~-the dissolute poet-lobe had jurnpcd otf a tcmplc Lqo/~urczr~r in self-disgust. only to bc caughl by the god-and commands h ~ mlo slng. Kacciyappacivjcar~yarrcceives the opening phrase of his k'Nntuplo.tit~c~t~l ( w i l h ils unuwill .vtr~rdill)1.1-on1Murukan in a dream. CI'. ~ h ccomrnand ol'?'clu;r~~-Vallabhitr:iyc~ ( V I S I ~ to L I K!.snaclcvarriva ) to compose the ~ n ~ r ~ k t t r r ~ ~( 1c. iI /I v--I ( 7). ~~I~~

100

1'110Wi.sclorrr of P o r t s

Onc c.an casily scc. I'ro~n[his poinl. how llle mcdiev;ll con11ncntators wcrc ;thlc to colnparc ~ h T:tlnil c c:ulonical poems lo the Vedic hymns. and ~ h c i raulhors lo the r.\I.\; in bolh cases. authorship is a kind of vision (tlc~r-.
" Sce discussion by Cutlcr, Sorrgs ofE.x/~erience. See Abhinavagupta on the r-asr~r~i.ypcrtris~irr-a: text in R. Gnoli, Tile Aestlietic Experic~irceAccot-clitrg to Ah/zi/~nvuglrptu(2nd ed.. Varanasi: Chowkhamt~aSanskrit Series, 1968), 13. l5 Prcciscly o n this point the k c i \ l y ~ court-poets , come in for bittcr ridicule by tile hhakti pocts: see Curlcarar. Tvvclrarn, llatika~n34; Nammrllvar. I'iru~ir\,rr1ci/i 3.9.7 ([he I;~ttcr,Lranslatcd by A.K. Ramanujan. lf,vnlns,fir-the Dr-orr,rlirl,q.Pr~nc,~[on: I'r~ncclonlinivcrsity Prcss, 198 1, 165). I" Nclskill5 ( ' I : I n dchatc or cx)ntcst with ollicr scholars: a n d wl;cn ~nxultecihy a r ~ v a l .

Obvious examples ol- this type arc the Chola pocts dllakkilttitr itnd C?yanki,nlar. Pukalcnti. and, signil'icantly, [he Jaina ~naslcl-sof Tamil poctry hest represented by Tirutlakkatevar. (4) Thcrc is a considerable litcralurc in Tamil of Solk ballads and folk cpic. a litcraturc still sung by low-caste village bards in ritual performancc." Thcsc works charactcristically havc no author. l X Many of t h e m h a v e . nevertheless, a d o p l e d a n aulhor-invariably Puka!entippulavar, a poet of, perhaps, the thirteenth century. Why Pukalenti should have merited this honour is not clear, hut thc use of his name evidently helps to lcgitimate the text and. perhaps, to elevate its status. A similar process operated in Andhra with respect to the Telugu epic, Palnati virula katha, which appropriated [he famous ~ r i n a t h a(late fourteenth+arly fifteenth centuries) as its author; here, a s V . N a r a y a n a R a o has s h o w n , " the attribution to ~ r i n a t h a accompanies an attempt by higher-caste, landowning groups to claim the epic as their own. In any case, a sound instinct propels the folk source toward the kavi-author rather than the bhakti poet; the need, clearly, is for the image of an elite author whose authority is linked to his personal responsibility for his work. Other popular works-for example the medieval niri collections of aphoristic verse-also claim lor themselves a distinguished author (Auvaiyar); such claims are 'substantiated' by many popular stories linking the selected author with specific verses from the work.2" These works are surveyed in M. Arunachalam, Ballncl Poetrv (Tiruchitrambalam: Gandhi Vidyalayam, 1976). See the recent study by Brenda E.F. Beck, Tlle Three Twirls: The Telling of u South I~rdiar~ Folk- Epic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1982); and. for Telcgu, Gene H. Roghair. Tlze Epic of Pulncidu, A Sfuriy rrnti trans la ti or^ of Palnati Virlrla Katlza (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). '%s Arunachalam notes (49-5 1 ). this does not apply lo ballads composed during the n~neteenthcentury. ;iflcr the widespread adoplion of printing; for most of these works, there arc. known authors. The earlier situalion recalls that of the Sanskrit Epic, which claims Vyasa as eponymous author. Velchcru Narayana Rao, 'Epics and Ideologies: Six Tclugu Folk Epics', In A.K. Ramanujan and S. Blackburn (uds) Anotllcr Hurriiorl;: N P H .EI.\(I;.Y on 1l1r Folklor-c,of'hrdirr (Berkeley: linivcrsity of California Prcss, 1986). 21) A cornplete [ypology of folk au[hors and their images would recluirc a separate study. The emcrgcnce of popular genres such as ~)rrlluand klc!.uvrrr?i i in Tamil cour~poetry 01' Lhc prc-~nodcrnpcr~odalso al'lbclcd the range ol. authorla1 roles.

108

The Wi.rciom o f ' Ports

(5) Kalaniekappulavar. the Irattaiyar. Antakakkavi. and niany other poets of the later medieval period exemplify this type-peripatetic poets equally at home in court and temple. though it is the latter that tends to receive their ultimate loyalty. Their names are associated with hundreds of single verses ( t a n i p p a t ~ l )as ~ 'well as with a varicty of relatively short poetic works; richly developed folk legends about them have been recorded in works such as the Tumi~rlavalarcaritai and modern prose collections (VinotaracarnarZcari of Viriicanii Cirttiyfir, 1876). In niany ways, the careers of these poets recall that , first truly to bridge the gap in Telugu of the Telugu poet ~ r i n j t h athe between the elitist kavya of the courts and the devotional poetry of the temples; this protean figure may well have served as the prototype for a pattern which later became prevalent throughout the Tamil and Telugu regions.22 Having distinguished these five types of author, looking at the niedieval literary sources from the outside, we may now observe that they are nowhere defined distinctly as such, in contrastive terms, by the Tamil literary tradition itself. Why was this the case? Are the types truly distinct and autonon~ous?A partial answer to these questions lies, it would seem. in the tendency for the types to merge under the impact of the predominant and most prestigious type-that of the bhakti poet. It is this category, the most closely linked to the ultimate values of medieval Tamil culture and to its 'incorrigible assumptions', that becomes largely paradigmatic for the perception of poetry generally. We thus find in literary legend an internal dynamic of compression at work among the various types: our fourth class, the anonymous author, is assimilated to the third, as we have seen; the fifth type is largely subsumed under the second. But the more radical transformation. and the most consistent in popular conceptions. is that from kavi to bizakti poet-a transformation that tends, in effect, to collapse the entire range of types, thereby undermining the very notion of a sophisticated, self-conscious, wholly autonomous author. That. in any case, will be the argument presented here. Moreover, this transformation is itself, as we might expect, the subject of reflexive stories that explore its meaning. We shall examine "Like the CC~~LI-verses ~n Telugu: see V. Narayana Rao and D. Shulman,A Poen, at the Ri,y/tr Moment (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998). LL One should also nok. however, {hat the itinerant poet of N2yaka times has affin~tieswith the ancienr Catikam poets.

two well-known stories about the kavi and his works, and his relation to the Allakti pod; hut first let us obscrvc something of the process of innovation w~itizinthose poetic works whose authors have themselves 'graduated' from court kavi to single-minded devotee.

Of Cats, Dogs, and Captured Elephants One of the standard features of a 'Tamil kavya is the avaiyatakkam, the author's preliminary confession of l'ailure and inferiority before the judgement of the truly 'great' poets. The avaiyatakkam follows the benedictory verses and precedes the beginning of the story proper; i t allows the author to pre-empt criticism by blaming himself, in conventional style, for the work's deficiencies; but it also occasionally gives voice to a telling personal remark, or to a striking and significant image. Look at the following example. from Pukalenti's introduction to his NalavPtipu (verse 2): Like someone trying to bind a violent and fearless elephant with a lotus-stalk-that is how I have sung this divine tale of Nala with his lresh garland of flowers filled with singing bees. The author's role is suggested by two images, one explicit, the other concealed. The verse ends with the i~nplicitparallelism between two 'singers'. the poet and the bees; like the latter, the author haunts the hero's outel adornments without ever attaining the heart of the story or encompassing his experience. But the more powerful image is the explicit simile of lost control: the story is a rampaging elephant which the poet somewhat pathetically tries to contain by the paltry means of language, verse, ornament. We will return to the notion of the subject as exceeding its artistic embodiment; but let us note the wholly characteristic emphasis on restraint and control, albeit a ludicrously inadequate control-an emphasis in line with the kuvya's general attempt to create a sclf-contained. pcrf'ected, somewhat frozen world of its own. The same image appears. this time to more positive efSect, in one of the introductory verses (tnrjij,c~~) to Kampan's Rumayuntr (these

illat 110-one cl\c 11oi1~1;1r;1 \\,i~'ti~ I I L , I < I \ C I ~ :11ii1\11:1hc>In hi\ II:III-. 11ot 131-;111111fi.no! ;LII) 01 the o111c1god\. 1101 y o g ~ snor- rliose \ L I I O ; I I C g1.ci1t in i l i i ~L\oI-ICIc o ~ ~ lhc ~! n d;111dliolcl. The t i r ~ j i \ ~verses r ~ j re\,erse rhc apologclic ihl.l~sto1'1lic tr\~~r\~nttrX.X.im: ~ l i cX.rr13iis iinabashcdly culog~/ed--in (hi5 c i ~ s c1 0 1 - ha\.ing s ~ ~ c c c c d e d precisely \ v l i c r ~I)uh;~!e~iti;ldl~lit\l':~ili~rc. 111 't;~rili~ig' the s~ibjectmatter of hi\ pocni. T h e k f i ~ , ~ ,ist r seen as liavlng w o ~ irhc slrugglc f'or pcrl'cction: i~noilicrrir~ji\.n~j intr-oducing Kalnpan' poem compares i l ( ( I a f'i le (i11.fi131i111 i117111r)t l i i ~\er:~pcs ~ away all riiisiakcs in Tamil m a d e in tliis w o ~ l c l Yet . ~ ~ anoihcr verse compare5 Kampnn lo hi5 godVis~lu/TirurnLilplanted the gl-cat r l l o ~ ~ n t s i(Miuidiu-;I) n In ~ h ocean c ol' milk and. churning ihal ocean. produced o111rli1for the gocls: Kanipan. the Emperor of Pocts ( X i ~ i , i c , r . r r k k ~ - t r \ ' r ~ churned ~.tti). wilh liis langue ancl hroi1~1ii irr~~t-rn io Iiurnan t ~ c i n g s . O ' ~n e cannot go rn11c.h farilier in clcvaling the poei to su~~crliiiriian slatu\ i ~ n din c x l o l l i n ~ .indeed worshipping. his pot~iii. 3 u i when o n e [urns io K : ~ n i p a ~ j ' so w n prcl'ace (tii~ci!.tlppii/~/ ? i i \ , i l - i r ~ilic ~ ~ )customary . agologics are. n:~ii~raily. \ I I I I ihcre. in cleganl k f i g c l phraxc\: Likc a cai trying lo lap 1113 thC cntil-e ocean 01' nillk. I . 111 niy J e ~ i r e . ll:L\,e lo111 tI1c i:Llc 01 l < ~ l l l l i l . ill'

11"-kct bingxliip. ( 4 )

I , c ; I \ . I I ~ ~ ; ~ \ i d cllie x~iyycstlvcmention o l dc\ii-c (rii.irr) a h p:u-I ( 1 1 the ~ c i c l ' \riioli\alion in c o m p o \ l n y hi\ work. \\.c Iila\ p o n d c ~ -I'ol- ;I mollli.nl tlic 1'orc.c 01' Ihc~\ I n i l lc. 7.11~u holc cl:~l~or-atc~ Xtii.\ r i ha\

Tlic world w ~ l lc : i p ~ s cr ~ c . a11cI 111e r;Llllt \ \ i l l Lie 111i11e. Why. ilicn. did I si112 [ I I I ~sorig" !)nly ro mahc k n o n n tile splcndour ol' 11iedivillc talc tc:lcl hy the \age (7,. 11nc.1-r ing wisdom. T h e Tariiil poet thuh d c r i \ c s his :~uttiorityI'rom V;ilmiki: the o ~ . ~ g ~ i i ; i I Epic was an c.ipre\sion o f 'i~ncl-ringw i ~ d o m ' while . ilic Tamil \:cr\ion is. in its author's pcrspcctivc. riddled with error, a c ; ~ u s cI'or critic'iil bl:ime. W e ni;~yremark in passing i h ; ~a ~aimrlar mcion:/mic \uzgc\lron api?eara i i i Cckki!r?r's 'apology' l'or liis I i a g ~ o g r : ~ p l icncycloi,acdia, ~c the P ~ l - ; ~ ~ i ~ l , r i i t - ~ i ~ l n ~ ~ ~ : '

I Il;~vcI-claicdthe inco~i:l~:~r:tblc glory (11' tht. dc\.olcc\. w.ho\c grcatnes? no-ol;c can kno\\'-like a dog eagcl lo ~ i c \ ~ c i i l ~ ~ rlic Ilocicling clit,an (of ~ i i i l k ) . ' ~ 11' K ~ i m p awas ~ :I car. Cckkijar Ilccomc\ ihc c,:~:rl 1llo1.c clcsl3i\cil. u n c l c ; ~ nclog- in pel-fcc.i a c c o r d wiih tlic i7lritl-ri pcr\cilia. corlspic~lousi l l Saiva [ex:\. of. !he dcvoicc w l ~ os c r \ h~niscll'ax llic g o d ' s la~ihl'iil.lowly. cloy-like scr-van1 In horll case\. rile rio~.r~ially rarcficci X-fiv\.il ~b!)rldII;IS I ~ c c in\.adccl ~i 1)y a s ~ a ~ t l i nullCrly g. liur~~blc iniafc of the ;111!1i:ir. TO SC~LII-11 to Kii11117~i1~: 1101 C O I I ~ C I I I\! it11 Ill\ I 1 1 i t i ~ 1\el l l ~ L : ~ l ~ i ~ \ e ~ i i ~ ~ ~ i ~ .

1 12

771r Wi.rdotn of' Poets

thc p o c ~goes on to compare the prohahle efl'ecc of his work on properly cullivatcd cars to that o f a dl-urnheal upon Lhc rnythicsl ur.utlutn heast. whose cars are attuned to [he s o h music of the lute (yal)-the drum so traumatizes this sensitive animal chat i t immediately swoons or even dies (7). And then: the truly learned will no more despise his crude unlettered verses than professional builders (taccar) would be angered by children who sketch buildings in the sand (9). By now we may be starting to wonder if these required hyperboles of humility are not simply another kind of boast.'7 But another crucial elernenc has already entered in, at once extending and rationalizing the poet's apology:

I would say something to those superior poets who have studied in full the ways of Tamil: Who would look closely at the utterances of madmen (pittar), fools ( y P t a i ~ a r ) , or devotees @attar)? (8) Here is the theme that finally atones for all faults and errors, and that reveals the kavva's transposition to a new category. K a n ~ p a r j ' s IramavatcSram is surely one of the most impressive of all Tamil kavyas, but its author denies premeditated craftsmanship and control: the poem is one long stream of mad, inipassioned ravings, redeemed only (though completely) by the fact that they are inspired by love. The kavi, trained to brilliance and to convention, has been transfornied in the direction of transparence; the god sings through him, effortlessly and spontaneously creating his own song. A very s i m i l a r p i c t u r e o b t a i n s for VilliputtOr2r's T a m i l Muhabharata. The author is praised in the ci!.appuppayiram ascribed to his son as 'a single incarnation of all the ancient masters of Tamil' (16) who used his poetic gift to sing to Visnu (15). 11 is the latter theme thar is taken up by Villiputtnr2r himself, in his preface: after the customary self-criticism-whal won't the learned say about him, this ignoramus who has cried to produce a version of Vyasa's tale (S)? Is i t not like something heard by a mute, or seen by a blind man A simrlar problem ariscs with Dame: scc Franco Fen-ucc~.Thc, Portic,s Di.cqlrr.\c: TIIP Alt[ohio,y~.(rl)li\of the Work in Hotlzc.r. Dtrtlrc,, atrd S/ra!ie.~l)rc~r.r. lranslalcd by Ann Dunnrgan (Ithaca and London: Cornell [Jniversily Press, 1980), 98- 102. Trlugu kci~~yel pocls rcfulnr-ly praise themsclvcs and hcap scorn on otl~crh( ~ thc n krlktr~~itiirrclcr). 27

of

Ft-onz Autlror to Non-Author in Tanzil L,itrrclt-v L~gencl 1 13 (6)"-the

poet explains his motivation:

My concern is not w ~ t hthe greacncss of the Bhcirutil. its Sine words praised by Vedic sages, gods, and others. My desir-c to weave in the stol-y of the eternal lord2" led me to sing this song (8). Desire (acai). the devotee's passion, has again produced a kavya, in this case a lengthy, baroque composition which can nevertheless still be seen by its author as simply another bhakti poem.

On Letting Go: The First Reading of the Iramavaturam I turn now to popular literary legend and its perception of the process by which Kampan's renowned kavya achieved its place in Tamil one should say his literature. T h e kavya author's fate-perhaps predicament-is nowhere more striking than in this story recorded, no doubt from oral ~ o u r c e s , ~in' the Vinotaracamaficari (1876). T h e story d e s c r i b e s the slow but s e e m i n g l y necessary p r o c e s s of expropriation-of the finished poem from its author's hands. Earlier events mentioned in the story-specifically those concerning the con~positionof the X-rivya,in the milieu o f t h e imagined Chola courtcannot detain us here;"' we take up the thread of the story from the moment Kampan has finished his work and wishes to have it recited in public for the first time (ararikerram) at the great Visnu temple of ~riranprn. The trouble begins when (he somewhat arrogant and fastidious

'' As Zvelebil remarks, Tanzil Literature (215 n. 65). this phrase (nzn[i~1ur,tdta~1al1) I S ambiguous: ~t could refer either ti, Visnu or to ~ i v aThe . deliberate pun is wholly characteristic of Villiputturir's ornate, complex style. "Stories such as this fall into the category that V. Narayana Rao has aptly called 'folk literary criticism'. The prescnt instance is pp. 15 1-78 of Viracjmi Cettiyar's Virrdturacamaficari (Madras: Vittiya Ratnakararn Prrss, 1876). >" Wc might note, however. that the motif of the lost lext and its fragmentary remnants appears in lhis slory, too: Karnpa~jand 6 l t a k k ~ ~ t awere r bolh commissioned by the Chola krng lo produce a Tamil Runziiyutzci, but Ottahkuttar deslroyed his own texl alter hearing one of Kampan's verses. Kampan ~nnnagcdto salvage <)ttakkuttar's Urmrakd~ldcz,which he appended to rlie six k~i~el1r.r of hrs (Kampan's)poem. (The Utmrclkurrda is still universally rcgardecl a s having becn composed hy someone other than Karnpar~.)

Ft-om Author to Not/-Authot-it/ Tutn~l1,ltrrat-\ Legotld

Srivaisnavas at Srirai~gamread the poem ancl I>ccomcjcalous-among other things. they notice that Kampan has committed the k~rvi-poet's traditional sin ol't~urn.stuti,praising a human being (Kamparj's patron, Cataiyappan. who is praised once in every thousand verses). They therefore demand additional assurances before they can agree to a public reading: 'If the poem was in Sanskrit, we would have no cause for concern; but as i t is in Tamil, we cannot pronounce upon your competence. You must get the approvai (kaiv6ppam) of the learned Brahmins (the three thousand Diksitars) of Cidambaram.' S o Kampan, like many other unhappy authors, goes, manuscript in hand, to get a second opinion-it-onically, in this case, rrom the Srivaisnavas' sectarian rivals, the ~ a i v priests a in Cidambaram. There, however, he spends his time uselessly trudging from one expert to another; everywhere he is told that unless the three thousand priests come together to take a collective decision on his request, his effort will have been in vain-he could easily go on making his rounds for an entlre yugn! That night the poet takes what can be seen, in retrospect, as a highly significant first step in transferring control over his poem's fate: he prays to Govindara-la, the incarnation of Visnu in Cidarnbaram, to help him-for should it not be the god's own wish that his kuvya become famous in the world'? In any case, can the poet act in any way-say by composing a poem--except through the god's gracious design'? Govindaraja answers his devotee in a dream: the next morning a Brahmin boy will die from snakebite. and the three thousand Diksitars will come together for his funeral .sut?~sX-ura; at that point K a m p a n is to recite s e v e r a l verses from t h e Nakupucappatulatn of his YuddhakGndu, and the child wil be revived. The next day Kampan awakes and finds the Brahmins assembled around the dead child's hody, just as the god has promised. 'I must recite my Ranrd\:uqa.' he says to them. rnuch to their astonishn~ent; they point out to the single-minded poet thal this is hardly the proper moment for such matters. Kampan then suggests a bargain: if he brings the child to life, they must do as he desires. They readily agree to these terms. The poet at once opens the palm-leaves of his manuscript to the verses descl-ihinf Garuda's intcrvcntion on behalioSLaksrnana and the monkeys, who have heen bound by the t~figustrtr(6.22 IS-16): he ~.ecitcsthese verses and then three others addressed to AdiSesa--;uid suddenly a serpent emerges from a nearby anthill, bites the dead child again whcre he had been hittell bcf'ore. draws the polson Iback o ~ ol' ~ his t hody, arid dies. The child awakes as 1 1 from sleep.

1 15

The Brahmin spectators, by now deeply ashamed of their disrespect to the poet. cry out in amazement: 'This is Lord siva himself, who carries poison in his neck, come to earth in human form!"' So our poet has already been promoted to divinity, albeit a divinity somewhat in disrepute among the austere srivaisnavas of ~ r i r a r i ~ a m . But Kampan's first triumph is, at any rate, secure: he answers several queries that the Diksitars raise about his text and then leaves with their signature endorsing his poem as the finest kavya ever composed in Tamil. The Brahmins at ~ r i r a r i g a mare amazed at the poet's success, but they are still not ready to give in; this time they demand that he bring an e n d o r s e m e n t f r o m t h e l e a r n e d J a i n s of t h e v i l l a g e of Tirunarunk6ntai-who, they say, will certainly comb the work in the hope of finding some fault, given their animosity towards Hindu belief. And, indeed, although they feel honoured by Kampan's visit, the Jains do find several problems with his text. For example, they are unhappy with the very first verse of the poem, its invocation: Creating all worlds, caring for them, destroying themthese are the enduring endless games of that Master who is our refuge. One can easily understand the Jains' failure to appreciate this theistic, devotional opening, but they articulate their opposition only in terms of severe propriety and respect: how dare the poet describe his deity as if H e were a little child playing games (viluiya~tu)?It is a point which, in fact. penetrates deeply into the spirit of the lrutnavatrirnm, which is permeated by the characteristic Tamil hhukti notion of the god's ' a m u s e r n ~ n t s 'but ; ~ ~Kampan answers somewhat casually that the idea here is simply the effortlessness of the god's cosmic activities. Other casuistic obJections are similarly swept aside-our folk text

'' Kampan's identification with ~ i v here a is, perhaps, not wholly Fanciful but may retloct his poem's very real, if solnewhat surprising affinities with the Tamil ~ a i v atradition. ' I As noted by George Hart. 'The Relation between Tamil and Classical Sanskrit Literature'. In J. Gonda (cd.),A History of'h~diiznLiteruture. Vol. X Fasc. 2 (W~eshaden:( I t t o Harrassowilz. 1976). 350-1.

I lh

The Wistlom elf' Ports

From Author to Non-Author it1 Tamil Lirrrclt;\~Lcrgend

puts answers in Kampan's mouth which nicely parody the Jain predilection for pretcntious Sanskritic diction-and the Jains are left with but one request: can the poet reveal their presence in the poem? Kampan happily recites a verse (6.3 129) in which the gods, stripping themselves in mindless joy at Indrajit's death, are compared to Jain ascetics. The Jain pundits, now completely satisfied, sign their approval of Kampag's text. This is not, of course, the end of the poet's travails. He still has to win, in a series of finely argued encounters, the endorsement of a of his own blacksmith, a prostitu~e,and-a poignant touch+ven son, the poet Ampikapati. Each of these individuals has to find himself-or rather, the community to which he b e l o n g ~ ~ ~ - i n Kampan's poem. The progression itself is intriguing: the text appears to expand into a set of incorporative ellipses, so that in the end i t includes, as both audience and subject matter, groups such as the ~rivaisnavas'sectarian rivals (the Cidambaram Diksitars), a definitely heretical community from beyond the Hindu pale (the Jains of Tirunayunk6ntai), an artisan caste, the ambiguous, symbolically central category of c o u r t e ~ a n sand, , ~ ~ in the end, the poet's own core group of family and profession, suitably combined in the figure of his poet son. Notice how at each step. as the ellipses reach out to incorporate another community, the poem itself slips farther from the author's grasp. It is not a question of his having created a work, for which he is uniquely responsible, nor of his having reached out to observe and the process record the details of his social and cultural e~perience;~' is rather one in which the world, in its profusion of colour and form, discovers itrelf in the text and thereby claims it, appropriates it, effectively 'authorizes' i t as true. This process of acceptance can take place only when he poem's representative character is demonstrated over and over; the 'real' is revealed in the perfect kavya microcosm, On this point, see D. Shulman. 'The ClichC as Ritual and Instrument: ~ i r ~ ~ 25 t ~ (~1978), 148-55. Iconic Puns in Kampag's I r u t r u i ~ ~ ~ t Nunzerl .74 Like Kalidasa. Kampag. is closely assoc~ated with the vejgas by popular legend; see Tatrli! t~u~~ula~~c~uritu~ 94-8. On the symbolic role of the vejyas in the medieval court, see D. Shulman. Tile King atldrllr Clown in South Indian Myth cttul Poetn. (Princeton. 1985). 3s The contrast is particularly pronounced in relation to the nineteenthcentury European novelist. consumed by a passion for individual detail; see Shulman, 'The Cliche as R ~ r u a and l Instrument'. I,

<

1 17

which exists here primarily in relation to its audience-the author has merely externalized this relation, and his task is now simply to help the audience in the search it conducts for itself in his text. Reai authority is thus no longer his but, far more truly, theirs. At length. the list of signatures is complete. Kampan takes his a s~ r i r a n ~ a m i n ,particular to the great work back to the ~ r i v a i s ~ a v at teacher Niithamuni. The latter, perceiving the poem's perfection in word and meaning (cotcuvai, pdrutcuvai) and its divine content (pakavatvisayam anataiyum-a pregnant phrase which. in effect, assimilates Kampag's poem to the ~ r i v a i ~ ~ acanon), va recognizes that Kampan's poetic ski11 is superhuman (ivarutaryapulamai kevalam manusikamav irukkavillai). The poem belongs to the deity, and i t is the ~rivaisnavas'duty (katamai) to make it famous. A day is set for its first public reading. And at this point the god himself suddenly intervenes, speaking through the mouth of a possessed priest. The work is about to be transferred to &ranganatha but, He announces, He will accept i t only if Kampan will sing the praises of the Vaisnava saint Catakdpan (Nammiilvar). At once Kampan sings the hundred verses of the CafakGpar antati. beginning with a verse that says: He may go beyond the Vedas. He may go beyond the flame of perfect knowledge of the truly wise-Brahma and all the rest. But can He-primeval Light--ever go beyond a single llne of verse by that ocean of wisdom. our pure poct of Tenkurukur? The verse proclaims the final victory of the bhakti poet, whose verse successfully contains the god in all of his transcendence. To drive home this point, another story is inserted here: when the members of the Cankam in Maturai-the 'academy' of Tamil scholars and poetsobjected to the fact Lhat the image of Nammalvar was carried in procession in Tirukkurukor as if the poet were a deity, the ~rivaisnava devotees lay down on the floor of Nammalviir's shrine and demanded that the arrogant scholars be taught a lesson; they stopped eating, drinking, bathing. reciting the Veda, and worshipping the god. Nainmalvar himself appeared before them and asked il'lhey had gone mad; they replied Lhat they would not gel up unless their demands were fulfilled. He then inslrucled hem to place a single verse of the Tiruvavmdli on the famous 'plank' (carikappalukai) on which the

I 1X

The Wisdorn qf'Poets

Cankam scholars were seated, in the midst of the Golden Lotus Tank in the Maturai temple. When they did so, the plank immediately sank into the tank, ignominiously dumping the presumptious scholars into the water. They swam, sputtering, to the shore, wherc they observed that the plank had again risen to the surface carrying only the small piece of palm leaf on which Nammalvar's verse had been inscribed. Upon reading the verse, they understood that the plank, which made room for a poem 'containing the god's feet,' had no room for them, with all their learning-and, moreover. that their learning was not worth one-hundredth part of the divine wisdom (teyvikamana panfittiyarn) which Nammaivar had, intuitively, without ever having been taught Veda or Sastra, at birth.)6 What is the point of this short tale? Why has it been inserted here, in Kampan's story? There is the obvious attempt to depict the superiority of the Vaisnava canonical poems over the classical literary tradition represented by the Cankam-though it is important to note that a relation between the two must be established, and that NammBlvar's triumph can only be demonstrated within the symbolic means associated with the Cankam (the plank floating in the water of the tank). We shall return to this theme. But the real importance of this episode in its narrative context here seems to lie in the suggestion of a crucial transition. Modern critics may puzzle over the question of Kampan's putative authorship of the Cafakopar ~ n t a t i , ~but ' the folk tradition has its own concerns: by singing the glories of Nammalvar, indeed by asserting this poet's power even over his own god, Kampan is himself brought into the category of the poet-saint. The transition from khyya poet to bhakti poet is now complete. There is, however, a final test that seals this transformation. Karnpan reads his long Ranzayana in the presence of an august assembly of Sanskrit pandits, Tamil poets and scholars, Smartas, MHdhvas, and Vaisnavas, kings and local lords, and Nathamuni. in a thousand-pillared mugfapa of the ~ r i r a n ~ atemple m complex. In the course of the reading, various questions are raised, and Nathamuni himself deigns to answer them on the poet's behalf, or i n his defence. But when the poet recites the Iraniyan vataippatalam-an innovation which Kampau has introduced into the Yuddhakrinda. relating the 'h This episode. p p . 165-7 of Vinorurat~umuricuri. is followed by several other anecdores o l this pattern (omitted in my summary). 'See Zvclcbil. Tuniil Litcrcztlrre. 185 (rejccringthe attriburion to Ka~npan).

.

Ft 0171 AutI~ot-to Notl-Author irr Tamil Litcrar, 1~)grnci 1 19 myth ol' Vi;;nu's Man-Lion avatar at the court of Hiranyakaiipu-the learned audicnce protests vociferously: 'Thcre is no precedent for this story in the Ramaynnu; is it not something new?' 'It is in the puranus.' Kampan rcplies. 'Even if it is in the p u r e a s , how can we acccpt something which was never mentioned in Valmiki's text or in other Sanskrit Ramayanas? We must have some proof. IfMottalakiya Cii'kar (Narasitpha at ~ r i r a n ~ a m gives ) us a sign, then we will accept it.' To this, Nathamuni. significantly, remains silent. Kampan, for the first time since the beginning of the story, is shaken and irritated: 'From the day I began composing this kavya. it has been nothing but one obstacle after another! There must be some divine intention here jr?.vvacarikaypam ullapatiy akiratu).' But he proceeds to recite several verses from the climax of this section, depicting Narasimha's dramatic emergence from the pillar and Prahlada's ecstatic response. The effect is immediately evident: the god himself, Mottalakiya Cinkar, overcome by emotion, stretches out his hands (on his stone image in the temple); shakes his crown, and utters a deafening, happy roar. The greatness of Kamparj's kavya is now plain to all, established beyond doubt by a moment of revelation in which the boundaries between poetry and 'fact'. myth and ritual recitation, are clearly brea~hed.~" Kampan still has to defend himself against the charge of narastuti, the arch-crime of praising mere men-a slightly ironic charge, in this case, given the Ramayana's interest in the fate of god-turned-man. Nathamuni again takes part in resolving this issue in Kampan's favour; the poet is proclaimed kaviccakkaravartti, 'emperor of poets'. He still retains the external appurtenances of a regal status and the courtly milieu: in his old age, we are told, Kampan moved about only with a vast retinue of servants and animals+lephants, camels, horses, and oxen, all given to him by various rulers-taking whatever caught his fancy i n gardens. groves. and fields. Kings would set aside a part of their annual income to make good the losses incurred by their citizens i l l this manner." Perhaps the court kavi can never quite free himself from his prescribed role. But the whole tenor of the story I have just 3X.I11csto~ythus follows the gencral pallern outlined by Cutler-the 'ritual perforniancc of hliclkti-poetry'..And scc Wendy Don~gerO'Flahcrty. 'Inside and Outside rhe Mouth ol Gotl: Tl~cBoundary between Myth and liealily'. Dtrctirlr~~109 ( 19x0). 93- 125. 3y Vitiot(11.(1( C I I I ~ ~ I2I I ~S.( . ~ I ~ I .

120

The Wisdom qf Poets

From Author to Non-Author in Tamil Literary Legerzd

recounted points away from the image of the poet as creator ant1 rnastclof his work; here the knvi surrenders control, readily and without egotistical resistance, of a work which he knows to be only a gift graciously placed in his heart and on his tongue-a gift ruled. inspired. and in the end recovered by the god. As we shall see. not all krivyu poets were equally prepared to acknowledge such a claim.

Pedantry versus Poetry: Nakkirar Meets his God If even Kampan, the accommodating hero of the above story, can be allowed an outburst of frustration and impatience-the process of producing his krlvya or, to be more precise, of 'converting' it to its proper category, seems to him to be 'nothing but one obstacle after another'-then we need not be surprised when other, less exemplary figures resist the required transformation with all the means at their disposal. In fact, resistance of this kind helps to focus attention on the inherent problems of defining categories and of ranking them, as the literary legends appear to do. The most famous story dealing with these issues in medieval Tamil tradition is undoubtedly that of Nakkirar's clash with ~ i v ain the Maturai Ca"kam-the same venerable institution of classical poetry and erudition that was mentioned briefly above, in connection with Nammalvar's verse. W e shall examine this story briefly, in two major versions which offer us, among other things. a medieval perspective on the legendary origins of Tamil culture; it should be noted that Nakkirar (or simply KiranIKirar), whose name is associated with a number of outstanding classical poems,"' appears here a s the President of the Carikam Academy and thus as the supreme representative of the classical literary culture as such. Let us begin with a version from Maturai, the actual setting of the story, as told by Paraficdtimunivar in his T i r u ~ i l a i ~ a t a y p u r ~ m . ~ ' 4"Including the

long

devotional

classic

on

Murukan,

Tirumur~rkayyuppafa~, included in thc elevcnth volume (tirurnnyoi) of the ~ a i v canon. a On the identity of Nakkirar, and the number of poets bearins this name, see K. Zvelebil, The Smile ofMuru,ycirl (Lcidcn: E.1. Brill. 1973), 27 n. 1 ; and his 'The Earliest Account of the Tamil Acadcmies', ft~r/o-fr~liiinrl .fournal 15 (1973). 109-35. 4 ' Tir~vila~vatn~p~ratzani (Madras: South Ind~anSaiva Siddhnnrn Works.

I2 1

T h e opening scene is a kavya set-piece perfectly suited to the kavi's court milieu: we find the Pantiya king strolling with his wife in gardens filled with luxuriant sights, which are described in exhaustive, endlessly embellished detail. The king becomes aware of a powerful fragrance-not, he discovers, that of the sweet south-wind, but rather of his wife's long hair. An idle thought strikes his fancy: d o the bees also recognize this fragrance? Is it natural or artificially produced'? Kings, it seems, must be allowed to work through their impulses to the end: this king decrees that he will give a thousand gold pieces to any poet who can divine his thought and express it in verse. A bag of gold is sent forthwith to be hung over the entrance to the poets' place of meeting. All the poets of Maturai search through their minds, with all the knowledge they have accumulated-like wares stored in a ship's hold-but they are unable to discover there the king's hidden thought. Meanwhile, an Adiiaiva temple priest named Tarumi, who wishes to get married but has no parents to help him with the marriage expenses, prays to ~ i v for a help: 'Lord, you know everything; you must know what is in the king's mind. Please compose a verse and give it to me.' ~ i v at a once composes a Tamil verse-it is, in fact, the poem we know as Kurutlt6kai 2, ascribed to Iraiyanaf2-and gives it to Tar-mi, who rushes into the poets' assembly (kulakam) like someone who has discovered an ancient treasure. T h e poets study the poem with interest, marvelling at its richness of expression and meaning; they take it to the king and expound its import, and the king, too, is impressed-the composition perfectly 1965), 52-4. This version belongs, perhaps, to the seventeenth century. An earlier version from Maturai, quite close in essentials to that of ParaRcoti's, is PEtrumpa~appuliylirNampi, TiruvdlavEyutaiyar tiruvilaiyatay purcinam (3rd edition, Tiruvanmiyur: U. Ve. Caminataiyar Nulnilaiyam, 19721, 16. 421yaiyanarmeans 'the lord.' The poem reads You who spend your life in flight, seeking a hidden sweetness: don't tell me what I want to hear, tell me what you really see. I love a woman, love everything about her-the way she walks, just like a peacock; her teeth, her long dark hair, more fragrant, I think than any flower-but only you can say.

I 22

I//(,

I\'

\(loll/ 0 / '/'O(,l,\

~ I i o ~ ~ yHe I i t order\ . llic h;lg olgold to IJC* given to T~lrurni. But , I L I \ I ; I \ 11ic 1i~ttc11 3 ~1ho11t to c r ~ t~ l o \ v ~tlic i ha:. Nakkirar. the PI-csidcnlo l tlic C'aiiha~n.cries o ~ ~'Stop! t . Thcrc is a I'law (kii!-!.rii~~) ill t h ~ svcr\c.' Tal-11rni---l'ccling Iihc a Iiumishcd pcrion w h o is stopped just ah he is ; I ~ O L I Lto Ixgin eating-sadly takes the pocln back to Siva in the ~ c i ~ l p l' cI .;1n1 n o [ colnplaining ah0111 Ioiing all that money'? he say? 10 the god. 'but il'thosc I'oolish poets find fault with your poem. who will think \vcll ol'yc~uin the future'? Why did you give me an impcrlect pocin'l This reproach affects you. not me.' As usual. ;Lrgllincnts 01' this sort dri vc the god IO immediate action. ~). with ornaments, with a hag for Drcsscd as a poet ( p ~ t l ( 1 1 . ucovcrcd his hctel-liut and (.uuzar(/.~ waving on citllcr side. he strides into the poets' hall :rnd demands. 'Who has i ' o ~ ~ nfault d with my poem?' N;tkkira~-proudly answers. 'I have.' 'What fault?' asks the god. Nakkirar superciliously explains: 'It is not a fault of language (ciil) hut of meaning (pZirir1); hair can have no fragrance unless one puts flowers in it.'

C S ~ I . ~ \ I ? I LI "l \ i ~

~ i v a .Is : that true even for lovely / ? ~ d ~ ? l women'?' bli Nakkirar: 'Precisely .' S i v a : ' A n d what about the divine w o m e n w h o belong to ~ l a v a y ~ l p i y(Siva a ~ at Maturai)'?' Nakkirar: 'They, loo. put nlun~ldruflowers in their hair.' siva: 'And fianapplirikot:ii. who is held within the body of the god ~ O Lworstiil~. I he lord (Siva) of Kalatti?'43 Nakkirar: 'Her case. too. is the same.' At this point ~ i v opens a slightly the eye in his forehead. which burns tlic obstinate academician; hut the 1:itter is still ~~npcrturbcd: 'Even if you were all eyes. likc Indra, the (law in your verse would still he a llaw!' A hravc hut doomed attempt-hy now ul~ableto hear the terrihlc hc:~t.tlic leiu.ncd p o c ~jumps into the Golden Lotus Tank. and the god disappears. T l ~ cC:a~iknmpoets arc distres\cd: without N;tkkTrar. they arc like ;I groll], o I ' \ ~ i l l : ~ without ~cs a ruler. or like knowlcdgc gained hy peclple l a c k ~ n sin true wisdoiii. 'It will he ;I miracle rf thih mistake-arguing with thc god o l ~ l a \ a ~ - - - w iClVl C I . hc Iic;~Icd.'they I'ccl. Ncvcr~lieless. Kal'tlag. I'at-iu>a~~. ~rndthe cilhcr f;imou\ pacts b c Siva ~ to forgive

Nakkiral- lor arguins \villi h ~ mU L I I 01 tlic arrosirlicc 0 1 Ici~rning.S i \ a and tlic goddcsx j o i n thc ~ S O L I I of I poets ;I[ tlic cdgc 01. the tank. ;lnd Nakkirar. lookins up Ironi within the w:ilcl.. itch only ~ l i cgod: Sivn pervades all his senses. and he. the crusty old sc.holar. turnx into love. Floating in the Lank. he composes an ui~rurrpraising Kr?l;~tLias Kailasa: s i v a extends his hand and p ~ ~ lhim l s out o!'thc water. Nakkirar. glow with inspiration, sings sevcral more poems in praise ol'the god;4athe latter reinstates him in the Cankam; Tarumi, at last. is given his gold. Naidiirarcontin~icsto spend nis days in worship, but as ~ i v knows. a his knowledge of' grammar (ilrtkkun~rrtz)is still I'ar from complete-Nakkirar is unable to distinguish good words f r o ~ nfaulty ones. 'The s o d therefore sends him to study, once again, the basic sciences of Tamil langu:ige at the feet of the sage Agastya. Once he has mastered thehe disciplines. Nakkirar re-examines all his old composilions wid. to his horror. discovers many mistakes. He is even more horrified hy thc memory of his argument with Siva: 'The proverb is right,' he realizes. ' T h o r with only a little knowledge are the most arrogant (ciriya keli~iyorkaliyavuti c@rukkufuiyor,53.27). It wasn't the god's eye that burned me--I was scorched by my own heart. Like a mothcr who rnakes her child take bitter medicine. the god has taught me through hostile acts.' Thus Nakkirar ends up with a perfect synthesis-devoutness. humility, poetic gifts. and deeper erudition (the new knowledge of Tamil grammar that tie brings back from Agastya), Othcr versions of the story, from Ka!atti/Ka!ahasti, describe a rather difierent ending following upon a poignant episode of exile: here Siva is so enraged by Nakkirar's stubborness and pride, and by the insult to the goddess's hair, that hc curses him to hccomc a lepcr wandering over the earth. Nakkirar must leave Maturai; he bids a sad iarcwcll to his i'sicnds in the Carikam. begs them not to forget him. and c o n o l e s them with a quotalion from 7?rukk~r!.c// 17x5): 'Friendship depends no1 on physical closeness but upon shared feeling.'" He is ovcrcoine hy longins: will he ever see Mat~lraiagain. o r Sundi~rcJvam.'~ or the g o d d c ~ s or . the Pantiya king. or his poet friends: will he ever lii~vcthc joy nf These arc i~lcl~lded rn ~ h cclcvcnth rit-util~r!-cli. rtitj/ t~ir//)tirlr~r!trriltr~/ itit-rrii!. In lhe pur~iti(i( \ , . 76).i l l 1 5 I - C L I L I ~ : " ' I I ( I / / ) I I ~ I ~ L L /I 1( r/1I1 1 0 1 1 ~ I I I I / ) i 1 1 ~ 1 L l i /L , ( , I ! I ( ~ I I I I ~ ; ~ ~ I n(.~/l~~trltt-~~c.i / [ i ~
" Put1c11-c.cI pajc/irrrci/ ~.(,tirti~ c t r r r t - cc.1

1 24

/ / I ( ' \\/1.\(/11//1 ( ~ Ff ' 0 6 ' / \

~ . c c ~ ~.l-am~l i ~ i y ~>octry o~icc,mol-e ' I'hcn lie i \ ol'l'iin 1115 M.C;II-> rr:~\.el<. 13~11olic cla!. \cared ~111clc1. ;I I>;~rly;lriIrce h c \ ~ d c;I I;lkc-. 11'' \ L \ L ' ~ ;I 1e;lf Irom ~ h c~ r c cla11 hall Into the u a ~ c l -h;~ll'on , the \]lore: the I'lrst hall hecome\ ;I I'i\li. rlic wcond hall' a bird. ;lnil they pull In dll'l'crcnt dircc.tlon\-l~kc a mind torn bctwccn rcliunc~atiorland the world. As Nakkirar watches this strange srglit lic 1 5 capru~.cdhy a demon and locked in a cave with 9 9 9 other ~nLcndcd victims; he prays to Murukan-his prayer I S the f'amou\ 7lr-1rt?r1o-ltkri_r~-1~~~/)~11~ii-and this god comes to slay the demon. Muruhun then scnda the poet to bathe in the river at KBIatti. which b c c o r ~ i cthe ~ site o f anothcr insprrcd song. Nakkirar's body is healed of i ~ dirI ~ \ ~ I I I I ~ I .

Ac~aclc~iiy l3y rlic \ c c ~ ~ ~ cc\r:thli5Iicd, ~l! c o m l i i o ~ ~ lac~e~cp[c~cl v no[-nls 0 1 1I1e cl;l\5lc~:llli~:lcillloll.\ \ l l l C l l c~ll\llrillcsI~lllg~lLlgc~ ll~\cll~. :I,\ L ~ L ~ I ' I ~I)>~ L ~ ~ I thc ;Inclclir :r;~rnrn;~r~c.,~l dr\c.il>Iincs,as 5uprcmc. L ; ~ n g ~ l : ~1ncl~1dr112 gc. the \ > mholic I:mgu;~gc 01 ~~~~~~y. p:~rtakc\ 01. meaning. ordcl-, and c o n ~ r o l rc:rli~). : external 3\ well ;IS internal, 15 amenable to cxprcxslon and inc.orlx>rat~on hy p1.opc.r. poetic dixcouric. The ultimacy a5crihcd to langu;rgc I S scrIou\ .incl clcmnncls suhniission. On the other hand, we o b s c ~ - v ra f ~ 1 ~ 1 1 1 Khi) ~ ~ n d c r m i n cthe s prcniiscs o l this classical universe o f d~scourscand w ho plays with its cc~rivcntions:S ~ v apl)ears a from O L I I of Iiis own ~ I ~ ~ ~ O I ~ O \plicre-the I I ~ O U S temple--with a poem ta~lol-cdto the norrnatlve convention\. c x e ~ i i p l i f y ~ nthem. s but also serving as a means 01' 'exposing' and a1 leas\ partially superseding theni. The god plays the poets' game only so long as 11 serves his purpose. Moreover. he participates at firs1 only vicariously. through his u n l e t t e r e d v e h i c l e . Tarumi-a perfect a n t i t h e s i s to t h e soph~stlcated,smugly tlisdarnl'ul scholar, with his rationally ordered. self-contained world. At one level, Nakkirar's redemptic~nlies only in approaching the innoccr:~greatness of Tarunir. the god's humble. wholly 'transparent' servant. Here we should notice that what. in poem Tarunii another culture. m ~ y h tbe classed as f'orgcry-the presents to the Caiikam I S . alter all, in no way his own-is in this case a .sign ol' authent~city!The poem has a 'real' author. the god. who nevertlieles\ c.lairns this prerogative only under duress. The opening verse of rhc c.las\ical antliology, Kut-~rntiikai.thus come to share something o f ~ l i cluallry e ol'thosc other poems, from the mcdicval tradition, which claim to embody a divine presence, a divine voice. Of course. Tarurnj's pocni remains somehow inferior to those because 01. Nakkirar's pedantic explicitly of the hllrrktr type-not object~on.~ L I [simply bccausc 11 belongs to the secondary order ol' convcntionali~cdI'ccI~nga r ~ d\pccch. The god h,l\ n o dilliculty in i m p r o v ~ \ i n s:I verw long C I : I \ S I C ~ I I~rics-j~~\tit\ lie l;~tcmedieval hhukti poet is thought to irnprovisc natui-ally. spontaneou\ly. even unthinkingly, pocms aclol-ncd \\ it11 traditional ~ r l r r t r k r i t - ~ ~ s ~ ~ tlicrc ---b~~t is n clear. i l ' ~ ~ n \ p o k e prcl.crcncc n. in the stories l'or t!iosc devotional v r r s c compcisccl on 1mpul5c by tlic now-humhlcd Nakkirar. These work\. we arc lccl to l ~ c l ~ e \con5tltlitc c. this poct'5 true, mo5t v:~lucd legacy. 7'licy 21-crn5plrcd. imhucil u ~ r hpalp:thlc enlotion--always a virtue in \o~111l111c11;1 ;1i1i1 C ' \ C I I C ~ I I C C I I \ C 111. the rc;~Iworld. ;IS tllc11-

i i ~ ~ i h o rcxlxt~-i~,lli.c 'i ;I[ thc Ilalld\ 01 tllc. ril~-calcri~ng demo11 <.all ;\t[c\t. 1'11cy a(-c..ill a \\.orti. nlorc ' t ~ ~ l tliarl c ' any c~ontrc~llcd and c o n \ ' c l ~ [ i c ~ ~ ~ , ~ l c o n l l ~ o s i i ~j oi ~~\~tas . the cspcriericci that protlucc thcln-- N:~hki~.:ir.\ suhnii.~.sionIn 1 1 1 ~tank. his sull'cr-ing. I - l i i.onl'~-ontatior~s u'ilh c l i s c ~ ~ s c and i m m l n e n ~clea[li--:lppc:lr to transcend ihc comf'ortahlc world of poclic rccita~ionin the llalls o f M a l ~ ~ r a111 l . this conncctio~l.i t is probal~lyimpol-t:in[ that Nakkirar's trans!'orma[ion takes pl:icc In the watcrs of'thc ~ e ~ n ptank; l c i [ is almost as itl lie classical poct had io he drowilcd l>e!'orc the hhtrkti poet could he horn. jut as [he mo\l !~rec~ious works ofthc l'aniil tr~rditionarc seen a \ remnants rclricvetl ( h y Nandin. with ~ i v a ' shelp) Irom devouring flood.." Thi\ is not to say that the importance o l language. and indeed of literary conventions. is simply abrogated. In the Tamil tradition. at least, the story of' Nakkirar cannot he reduced to a head-on collision t>etween a s t ~ ~ l t ~ l 'k&r.~.n i e d associated with the courts and a poeiry of living expcricncc. (in relri~ion to the god)-as Dhtirjati's Telugu version of this story may suggest."' The Tam11Kal;~liastigersion moves the learned poer t h r o ~ ~ g h:trld . heyond. the constric[ing grammar to which he clings rather blindly; in the process his own inner d ~ v i s i o n is starkly rcvcaled, like the leal torn between sky and sea. In the end this aa]iie tensloll saves him, o r heals h ~ r n :from the depths of his captivity. on [hc verge o f extinction. he finds the words of the great p o c t ~ cprayer. Thus even if Nakkirar as [he petrified pedani is easily A'' T i r ~ ~ c 1 ~ i l o i ~ c i t c r ~ 1 ) 157 ~ r ~(the i n ~ 1~,oicztlill 171 recovered from the sea): Surcnciranath Ila\gupra. A Hi.rtnp (4 Ir~diutiPl~ilosoph\,V T11r Sou/lrer-n Sc,'rool of .\:cli\,i.\rn (Cambridge: Cambridge Glliversiry Press. 1969). 18 (the ~ a i v j ~ : r r n :\~asl ~ : r ~ efrom d u flood). Mat~lraiIS. of course. frlmous for iis Ilood myths: tlic C'nilkam tex( the~nselvwarc scr:n as surviving fragmenis of ;I corpu\ largely dc\tl.oyed by Ilood. "3ec V . Sarayana Kao'\ afterword !o the tranblation (with H. Heifex) of Ktil~rlrir.vtii~~trrrric~rcrkrrrrrrr:For-iitc,L~)t-tlc?t thc.At~inrul.~-Poetl~s,frorll the Tf,I'tc,yu (Berkc!cy: Linlvcl-.;it) of Calilomia PI-cas. 1()87~. Narayan:~Kao describes thc 111re1-play(,S threi. types: tllc V c d ~ c\ccr.. srnging with hei~htened C O I ~ S C I O L I S Irile ~ ~ ~i j:~ r \ ' \ . c r poet 0 1 the court. who is rtot 3 wer bur rarher a cralthnlan. ;I ~ c l l - c c ~ n z c 'maker' ~ o ~ ~ s ~ h r-c~fa\i~ion\ o raw material ~akcnfrom isl\cullc~-c:nil 1hi3 hlrciijti poct. who r c c c i ~ ~ \ r ~ ~something i~tcs of rhc. Vedic p;llic!-n.; ~ i l t ltl~~c.r~,Iorc ; ~ r ~ a c [lit k \ couri k t r ~ , i .( l ' h u k s ~ \ . ; I attack; Sakkirar in I K I ; l l l l \ t i l l \ J 1 1 1 1 ~ 1 1 1 \lc l \ I l l c l I l \ c o l l l t o 111111 r 5 - Lllc (';111k;1111(>0~'1 ;1111111(~(! 1 0 i . O l > \ ~ ' l l l l O l lllI1cl ~ ; I I I ~ I I ; L ~illl(i C. t h ~ \ O I l l C M ~ 1 ; 1 ~~ 1 1 1 ~

/ ~ / l ~ / A i1 )/ ] > L ~

1:~111poo11cd 111 tllc ' I ~ : i ~ l l tlcxts. l the \ t o ~ - ~ ;i I, I\ ~ ~ I ~ ~ L I LII ;I.c\;II I ~ ~ ~tc11\101i\\ ii1c.11 i i nc\:cl- fin;~Ilyi-i.\c~i\ctl-~~ot e\c11>I,! I . : L I I L I I the ~ ~ i111t1ki1poci115 O V ~ I . all other. Iiidecd. c\.c11thc i ~ l i p l i c tassurillltloil ~ that 111c11lr~ci;ti\illgel-. improvising in in\pil.cJ statc. is I c s sul).jccl to collvcntiorl 1h;!11lli\ Caiikam co~lnt~rl>ar.t" C:III h:~rcIIy be P I I S I ; ~ C I to C X ~ ~ C ' I I ~ C; iSj . the niedicval tradition ~ t s e l lmust havc known. The hlrtrkii pocrn docs, incleed, collapse distinctions hclwccn 'now' m d 'thcn.' l'ic[i\,c' and 'real'; hut cvcn tlic rcf'o~.mcdSakkiral- Lsorks t h r o ~ ~ g1.11~ h nlcdiunlin some s e n w s . clearly a 'divine' nieclium--01' tllc Tamil language with its prcscrjhcd norlns. 111effect. the two I'ig~lrcsconfronted ill ~ h c story-the hilrl>ho~.nCaiiha~n-poet(N:~hLiral,)and ~ h c~rrcprcssihlc. nun-conformist goci--arc hotll present in thc tran\lorlncd hhi~ktip o c ~ (Nakkir~rr,),the ~ i ~ l t h oofr the devotioni~lpocrns L>II M ~ r r u h a nanil ~ a 1 a h a s i i . - ~ hinilia1 c opposition I S evcnt~l:~lly ~nediatedhy a hyhricl figure who assimilates and t r a n s l o r ~ n iboth sides o f his inheritance. In the perspective oltlic t o r y . Nahkirar, has d c f i n ~ t cadvant:rgcs over d has. in Iiict. iidvancecl io a new his fornicr. u n r e c o n s t r ~ ~ c t csell---he kind of awareness. wh~cl:he expreshch in his pocms--yet at ttls ialnc time he emhodics a cont~nuityhetLs.ccn two type'; of poetry. These two types remain oppoicd iund yct connec.ted--cvcn appcan!Ig. at [imes. a s partial aspects (11'onc another. In the end. Tamil hllnXtr l>octry acknowledges its debt io the earliel- classical Iraditions. which i t seeks to rcf:lshion and adapt to ~ t own s concerns, ,rot LO rc.ject. But t'or O L Ipurposes. ~ the \tory'\ lesson corrohoraics the i y p ~ I o g ~ c : ~ l compression w ~ t hwhich we began. T h e Xti~\rrpoct is not allowcd io survive in isolation I'rom the overriding hl~cikticlhos; if lic Jclcnds the autonomy ol'his III-[. his rules. he will incvita1)lq I,c pairll'~~lly 'ovc~.ruled' hy the gocl. 111thc end. i l is latter who sings. to hiinself. 1 l i r o ~ 1 ~ 1 1 his poet: Golden god: i t i \ for poets to sing y o ~ wI'arnc. yet you iu-c light. sell-crcatccl tI1;tt s111gs lt\cll~, :~lonc.....~~

" F(>ri \ ~ 1 ~ ~

hi. nor Iclt to hi, i1ci.i-ilxny :I 'sc;~l'r \ ~ , l ~ r\I%: ' ( ' L I ~ I L > I - SOI,:;\ 01'

""~y. c\,c*n ~ I ' i lol-lglnalc\ 111 Lhc' co~lr'l~ r i ~ l l couf the c,onnolacurs, exrslc. ~ ~ l ~ i l n a l c111 l y .11s own r ~ g h ~ t; sauthor c.:uintrL easily hc said 10 have 'procluced' 11 or Lo hxve r ~ g h t \ovcr il of ;my hind: h ~ I'unclion s is ralhcr [hc ~ o r n c u h asupcrnumcrary ~ orlc 01' cil'lkririg i t (lo ~ h cgod or his corn~nunily).or of hclping the world cntcr Inlo il, of mxking i t aud~hlc.prcscnt. known. In t h ~ capacitys almost rnorc a witncss ihan a creator-thc ideal poel-author oS the tradition siyns his name. 'TllC I X I C I ' \

X,i~,\.(i

11. Selves, Membered and Remembered

On Being Human in the Sanskrit Epic: The Riddle of Nala* Mag auch die Spieglung im Teich oft uns verschwimmen: Wisse das Bild.

Erst ir? dem Doppelbereich werden die Stimmen ewig und mild.' One night Kabir was dreaming His being seemed to break: Two people when he's sleeping But just one when awake.2 All in all, one would probably prefer to have a self. Something minimally integrated and not wholly discontinuous, where memory, or its more powerful and personal multiform, forgetting, could reside. Something to hide and veil, if need be, in the interests of preserving ultimacy in some residual, individual form. Even a fictive self might do-for however quixotic the investment in this nebulous entity, the anxiety attendant on denying its existence is, for most of us, surely worse. But there may be other possibilities, seemingly exotic conceptualizations of what lies at the core of any living, active sub-ject. This chapter is about a story of a man who lost his 'self'-along with everything else that was his. For its own time and place, it is, in fact,

* This chapter was first published in the J o ~ ~ r n uofl b ~ d i a nPhilosophy (1994), 1-29. ' Rilkc, Orpheus 1.9 Kabir 15.47. trans. D. Gold. in Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Texruul Source.rfi~r[lie Sruclv o f H i t d ~ t r . r r r(Manchcsler: i Manchester linivers~tyPress, 1988).

1 32

Tlie Wzsdorn of' Pocts

a paradigmatic story, which touchcs on t'undamdntal issues relating to the uses and limits ol'ling~~islic exprcsxivity. I'or cxamplc, and also on notions of personal 'fate' in relation to 'chance'. For this man speaks mainly in riddlcs. and hc loves to play dice. His name is Nala-the hero of many, if not most, first-year Sanskrit students in the West over the last 150 years-and the story is by no means only about him but at least equally about his famous wife and saviour, Damayanti, one of the great modcls of Hindu womanhood. We know this tale first from the classic version embedded in Book 3, the Forest Book, of the Mahubharata; and it is both the explicit declaration of the storyteller there, within the narrative frame, and the commonplace conclusion of modern scholarship that the story illuminates from its own perspective certain of the central themes and events of the main epic narrative. One south Indian folk retelling of the story-one of an astounding number of later versions of this most popular and generative of Indian tales-boldly and simply describes itself a s the s u r a , the ' e s s e n c e ' o r ' p i t h ' , of the Mahiibh~irata.~ I propose to take this statement seriously, if not entirely literally, although its implications will not be systematically set out here. There is, indeed, a striking series of recapitulated motifs: both stories proceed through svayamvara-the Indian royal bride's ritual choice of husband-to a disastrous dice game after which the hero or heroes, bereft of wealth and status, must depart for the wilderness; in both there is a crucial period of hiding and disguise; both speak of recognition and restoration in an agonistic mode (the holocaust of battle for the Epic as a whole; another, climactic, dice game for Nala). In fact, thesc surface similarities are, in my view, epiphenomena, expressions of a much more deeply rooted affinity in meaning and internal debate. And there are also important contrasts and apparent inversions in shared or similar narrative motifs. But for the present, having posited, with the text itself, a hypothetical relation of parallelism or, more profoundly, of cncapsulation, we must limit ourselves to pursuing the inner logic of the shorter, embedded tale; perhaps at the end of this attempt to understand Nala in his own terms we will sec a path opening up toward morc distant goals. I start from the Sanskrit text of the Muhuhhuruttr (from the Vulgate. not the BORI 'critical' edition). The Nalopgkhwinu, as the story is known thcrc, tclls us all that wc rcally need to know: this essay will NuIuc.c~trkkirc~r~crriti kutui (Madras: R.J. Pali Co.. I973), 3

The Riddle of'Nulu

133

not attempt to trace its development through the Indian literary tradition. Nevertheless. I havc consultcd, and will occasionally quote, a number of other versions. each of which shcds its own light on the central, shared themes. Lct me list thesc versions briefly, in rough chronological sequence: (1) Nannaya's eleventh century Telugu version, from the Telugu MBh; (2) the well-known Sanskrit courtly kavya, Nai.yadhiyacarita, by the medieval poet ~ r i h a r s a (3) ; ~ the e x q u i s i t e fourteenth-century Nalave'npa, by the T a m i l poet Pukalentippulavar; (4) an eighteenth-century Kathakali script from Kerala, Nalacarita, by Unnayi VariyBr; ( 5 ) an undatable Tamil folk version printed in chapbook form as the Nalaccakkiravartti kutai. Each of these texts, like so many other reworkings of this story, merits individual attention and analysis; my attempt to draw from them .synthetically, in the interests of probing basic issues invoked by the story throughout its narrative history, is not meant to substitute in any way for such individual studies. Now, after these opening remarks, let me tell you the story of Nala: There was once a king, a perfect man, named Nala, endowed with every virtue, expe;t in handling horses, fond of dice (or beloved And there was an equally perfect young of the dice-aksapriya). woman, Damayanti, born through the gift of a sage. They heard about one another and fell in love secretly, from afar. A golden goose became their love messenger; through the mediation of this goose, they determined to wed. Damayanti's father announced her svayumvara, and all the kings and princes of the earth came to take part. S o did four gods, Indra, Agni, Varuna, and Yama, who had also fallen in love with this loveliest of women. On the way they met Nala and made him their messenger, to plead their case with Damayanti; by their magic. he entered Damayanti's palace unseen and delivered the god's message, but she indignantly rejected it and affirmed her love for him, Nala, which she was determined to fulfil at any cost. At the svayal?zvaru, the four gods appeared in Nala's form, so that five identical images of Nala stood before Damayanti. Or nearly identical: discerning. by virtue of hcr faithfulness, that the four divine Nalas On [lie pertinence of [he N~zisudl~iyac.urittr h r issues of direct concern to us here+specially [he metaphysical implication\ ol [he composition o f the c~nclA,;qr~rr~er~t in Lute VrcldrltLi: ~ rHur.scz i '.v self-see P.E. Granotl.,Pl~ilo.~oph, K h a n ~ u i i ~ k l z u r z ~ l u k I ~(Dordrechl: dd~u D. Reidel Puhlishiny Company. I 978),

2524.

1 34

The Wisdotn qf Port.\-

did not blink or sweat. that their garlands remained pcrt'cctly fresh, and that their feet did not quite touch the ground, she was able to choose the human Nala for her husband after all. They married. had twins, and lived happily for twelve years. But there was one more god, a fifth, who had fallen in love with Damayanti-Kali, the spirit of strife and of our present moment of time, the Kali Age. (The Tamil folk text replaces Kali with the . was late to the svayurpvara, and he inauspicious planet ~ a n i ) Kali continued to resent its outcome; he waited for the moment when he could revenge himself on Nala. O n e day that moment came: when Nala failed to wash his feet before prayer (according to the folk text, only a tiny spot the size of the tip of a thorn remained dry on his ankle), Kali slipped into him; at the same time he incited Nala's brother, Puskara, to challenge Nala to a game of dice, while Dvapara: the spirit of the previous era. loaded the dice against him. Nala lost, and kept on losing; crazy with the dice, oblivious of Damayanti's pleas to him to stop, he staked his whole kingdom, and lost that, too. Only when Puskara demanded that he stake Damayanti did Nala desist. Excommunicated by order of Puskara, the new king, Nala and Damayanti left for the forest. For three days they ate nothing. O n the fourth day. Nala tried to throw his cloak-his last possession-over s o m e birds, in the hope of trapping them for food; but they flew up with the cloak into the sky and announced from there that they were the dice (ak.yah) come to strip him naked, since so long as he retained even a single garment their joy was incomplete. T h e couple now wandered t o g e t h e r , c l o t h e d in D a m a y a n t i ' s s i n g l e c l o t h . N a l a u r g e d Damayanti to leave him, to return to her father's court, where the twins had already been sent. S h e refused; but when she fell asleep in an enclosure (suhha) in the forest, Nala took a sword that was fortuitously lying there, used it to cut her dress in two, and. covered with that half a cloth, his heart divided but driven by Kali from within, abandoned her to her fate. Damayanti awoke to find herself alone in the forest; anguished and angry, she cursed the evil being who had caused her husband such sorrow. (The curse immediately began to burn Kali, embodied in her absent husband.) A great serpent seized her, but she was saved by a passing hunter: whcn the latter tried to take her for himself, she killed him with a curse. Eventually arriving at the Cedi k ~ n g d o mstill , dishevelled. dirty. and clothed in only ha1t.a garment.

Tlzc, Riddle of'Nala

.

135

she became a hairdresser (srrit-andhri) to the queen. There she was recognized by a Brahmin sent by her father and brought back to his court at Vidarbha. Nala. meanwhile, wandered in the forest, where he saved the serpent Karkotaka from death in a fire. In recompense the serpent bit him: from this moment on, poison burnt Kali continuously within Nala, while the latter's form was changed to that of an ugly, shortarmed dwarf. Karkotaka also gave Nala a pair of garments and promised to change him back to his original form whenever Nala desired this. Following the snake's advice, Nala took service, under the name of Bahuka, as cook and charioteer to Rtuparna. king of Ayodhya. Damayanti sent out Brahmins to scour the land for Nala, with a riddling verse with which to elicit his response: 'Where are you, gambler that you are. still loved. who left a beloved and devoted woman asleep in the wilderness after cutting her dress in half?'One of the messengers, Parnada, came to Ayodhya, sang the verse. and was addressed by the dwarf Bahuka: Even in the face of disaster, women of good family save themselves by themselves, thereby conquering heaven. Even if they are bereft of their husbands, they are never angry .... And if such a woman was deserted by her fool of a husband, fallen into trouble, she will not be angry at him, for he was seeking a way to survlve. burning with anxiety, after losing his clothes to the birds. This was enough: when the speech was reported to Damayanti, she sent word to Ayodhya that a second svayamvara was to be held for her on the next day. Rtuparna demanded that Nala take him there in time, despite the vast distance; superb horseman that he was, Nala accomplished this great feat. On the way, Rtupama demonstrated to Nala his skill at numbers by enumerating at a glance the leaves and fruits of an enormous vibhitaka tree.j Nala offered to teach the king the science of controlling horses in exchange for this skill in counting, which was the secret of the dice game. No sooner was this exchange accomplished than Kali, vomiting snake poison, issued forth from Nala's body. At Vidarbha, the charioteer continued to arouse Damayanti's 51t i s of some importance thal in ancient I n d ~ a dice . were made from the nuts ol the ~~ihllitr~k
136

/7/0 1C'l\clo,,r

of Prlt,t.\.

s~rspiiio~lk 1111~1 lie WLIS 1io11co t l i c ~tl1;11iN;tl:~i l l d ~ g u i s eShe . d c v ~ s c da hcrlcs 0 1 ~ c \ t x :hcl. servanl obscrvcd 1115 ~ i i i r a ~ u l o uskill s in cooki~ig. and I):~may;~nriI-ccogni~cdthe flavo~lro l his h o d : shc sent their c1irld1-en~o Iiim ;uid heal-d. through hel- servani. of his tcarful ~rcactlon: '1. too, havc 1wins.just like these iwo.' Finally sheconfrontcd Bah~tha i n the palace with another vcrsc: 'What man would abandon ;I wife who is g ~ ~ i l t l ~beloved. ss, e x h a u s t c d e x c c p t Punyagloka-Nala'l' Nala had to confc>s his identity; he resumed his old form. was reunited with his Samily. and rcturi~cdto h ~ kingdom s to challenge his brother to one final 111rowof the dicc. This lime he staked Damayanti. too. on the throw; ;111dthis time Nala won and was reinstated on his throne. SO--a happy cnding after all Lo this talc of separation. exile. and disgu~sc.And we may as well remark af the outset that. generically. the story is clearly a Miirehen, a Fairy talcl in the analytic, crosscultur-al classil'ication of the Solklorists. All the major indicators[he l'eaturcs ol' time and space (clironotopos. in the Bakhtinian ~ ~ s a g c ) and the ~mplicirclaim on rcality-place the Nalopcikhyutzu squarely in this clot. On the other hand, I will argue that our story is also a salicnt exarnple vfthc limits of this kind of analytic definition-for if this is a fairly talc. happy cnding and all. ~t is surely a somewhat ~ ~ n u s u aand l . wholly Indian, version of the genre. This is a fairy tale with a sting to it. a sting that twists hack to poison its own body. Like its hcro, rhc story wears a mask, an iconic disguise which all too readily deceives its lislencrs. lulling then1 into a d a n g e r o u s colnplaccncy. Indeed. we can witness precisely this effect upon the prototypical listcntr to this particular story, within the narrative context of the Epic which contains it: Yudhisthira. the hcro of the epic. who. as we have seen. is told of Nala's s u f e r ~ n g by s [lie sage I3rhadagi.a as a k ~ n dot'didactic therapy, is indeed somewhat cheered by ~ l i cstory: he is consoled by the similarity In his and Nala's fate and encouraged hy hTa1a.s cve11tu:~Irestor:~tion. Yet how pointedly ironic is this consol~ltlon,how falsely conslituted thc ani~logy--for Yudhisthil-a. roo. will be restored to his kingdom, hut only at the cost o l a near urlivcrsal dcstrucrlon. in which hi< own ch~ldrcn.along with the rcst ol' h i \ I'aniily. w ~ l he l consumed Act~rally.the Nal:~malerials thcmsclves point to t h ~ irony. \ to the ~ ~ ~ - u h l ~ i iil~ant di~c~ n h n i s l i ecl~~i~lily d ol-the la~ry-taleresolurion. There iirc \ ~ L ~ I - \ I O I 01'~ . ~ t l ~ c, , t ~ ~ ~- y; l i r c htell 115 ~ r ~ i i ~ ~ ~ i b t~l i ig~ ~tS:IILI'> ~ousl~ dcl>~..c'\\ioil \ \ a \ not C.LII-C-~Ih y Iiis I ~ ~ % \ ~ O ~ ; I I tlli~r. I ~ I I I indccd. i l dccpc~lcd a11cI I)L,L.:II~IC rrlo~~c ~ I I I . C ; I I ~ I I I I I ~ . ~ I w ; I \ ~ \ o ~ i i cl.t~rthcrr ~ i o \ c ~ ~ iIcS ~ i t

I'he Riddles Wlicrc, tlicn. clo M.C sti~rt'? 7'licrc is ; I ~ W ; I ~tS h di~ngcl~ that. in c.~~tting the stor! opcrl. I-e:tching in tow;~r-eItliis s[r:ind 01. that, we shall i m p l y discmbo\$cl i i to no 1)LIrposc: [he s ~ o I al'tcr - ~ . all, docs SIIC:LI\ 1.01. il~clf'. ccrtainl!, nlorc clei~rlyancl wisely rhun we call. O L ~itsk I ~ is to listen to it, no[ to dis]~l:~cc it. In the ~ntcrcstsof I'urtlicring tliis ac,t of'lisrcnlng. I \vant to s o hack into the s ~ ~ somewhat r y obliquely by rcfcrrir~sto three morc gcncral. qu;~siphiIosophicalprohlcms 3h0~1twhich Nltla might havc something to say--the hot~nclariesol'tlic scII'(and. w i i l i i ~ ~ this arena. the problen~ol'thc locus ol'cvil); the meaning ol'liuman agency and autonomy (the issue 0 1 I'i~tc):and thc possih~lrticsand implication\ of rcal sclf-knowledge. I begin with rhc lalcr. which at l'irst glance m i ~ h tseem to be the most optimistic theme aroused hy our story. Nala. \vc may well assume. niakcs p i n s prcciscly in this area. jndccd. only in [his ar-ca. How else. indccd. 21-cwe to understand his drcadl'~11 ( I - i i ~ l \ ' !Could Ilc undcrgo h i cxpericnccs (31' loss and dcspair witliou~cmcrging wiscr and morc whole? Surely he is wiscr at the end-has he not Icarncd to niastcr the dicc. so that he can challenge and defeat his bmthcr Puskara in one final. all-or-nothing throw? And obscrve how gencruusly and compassion:~rely he treats his defeated rival: who is sent away wilh honour and wealth. Wc instinctively rejoice in this new Nala. no lo~:gcr victim 0 1 ' his o w n or orlicrs' passion.;. We adniirc his regained confidcncc and ci)llr:lge. We cun rejoice. too. conlrrmcd i n our romantic liopc ~ h : ~such i sui't'cl-ing as his has mcalilng. at Ici~srin tcr~iis of knowledge gained. consolid~~ted. cnli~rgcd. But pcrliaps a drstinction is, al'tcr i111, in order hctwccn two (11I'ICrcnt sorts o l knowledge. Thcrc is. indeed. the {ccrct 'heart 01- ~ l i cdice,'. a sccminyly tcclinic:~l cxpcrtisc that Nala aciluires in a \ymnictrical cxchangc'. soon ~ L I Lto L I \ C i l l the l.inal morncnt o I ' ~ ~ l i ~ ~ l l cI nwill yc. havc niorc to \a)' ol t l i ~ \ secl-ci. But docs this knc~wlcdgcinipingc upoll his ~lllclcr-\lilllclilly01' lll1ll\cll~.111sp:lsl. 111s ~ I ~ ~ I ~ 'l.llcrc L ~ " . ~ I \ ill1 ~ l \ ~ ~ ' l l 1l 0l l~~ i l l ~~ l l ~ l l l \ ~ ~l \l 'l i~ I ~ easy \\';I! 1 0 1 7 1 ~ 0 /[1! l~l h L ~ L I L ' \ I ~ O I-17) ~ lllolllcrlt O I ' l l l \ \cll~-rc\cl:1ri011.1I1c~ 1 ~ 1 ~ 7 ; l ~~1ll:ly~lori\i5 ~L~lll \\ 11~11I l1c 1;1yc1.\ of cIi\glll\c ill-C 1 i l l ; l l I ~ :ll1~lllclollccl. ' l , l l l \ I \ M l l < l l IlL, \ ; I > \ ( I l l I I l C ]?l~c~\L~llce

I 38 01'

Thc Wi.rilotn of' Poc~rs

the rcarl'ui and still accusing Damayanti): 11 was not my fault that my kingdom was loyt; Kali perpetrated that, and also caused me to abandon you. Moreover. that wrelcli was afflicted by the curse you set upon him when in the forest, while. in your misery, you were sorrowing for me. Kali, hidden within my body, was burnt by your curse. like fire kindled in fire. He has been defeated by my determination and my ascetic practice-this, then, must be the end of our suffering (24.17-20).

The good news arrives in slippery and perhaps paradoxical form: Nala was not the actor, not responsible for his deeds while possessed. although his determination and asceticism, tapas, a r e responsible for the final triumph. S o when was Nala in command of himself and his actions'? Surely Damayanti may still have some questions, as well might we. Let us also note the image Nala has of his recent inner life-'fire kindled in fire'+ven as we ask ourselves j ~ ~how s t far we can accept his explanation. At the very least, we have a loaded and problematic statement of peculiar disembodiment and dislocated consciousness. Moreover, as if to add to our doubts, Nala, at this awkward moment, attempting to defend his seemingly indefensible conduct, voices his own complaint: 'How can a woman cast off a devoted and true husband and choose another, as you seem to be doing?' (22). This more or less extricates Nala from his embarrassment by transferring the more immediate guilt to Damayanti. She will now have to explain that the second svayapvara was only a ruse (upriya) to get Nala himself to return, and that she never intended to choose another husband-although the person standing before her is still, at least externally: an 'other' man, hardly the Nala she knew. In fact, Damayanti's great gift is precisely here, in refusing to regard as other (anya) the disguised person she seeks,%hile Nala's hostile question rings. like so many of the things he says, a little hollow, on the surface lcvel, and, as we g o deeper into it, more than a little ironic and intriguing. How can a wife reject her loving husband and choose 'an other' (varayed anyam)'?-here, at the end of the story, Nala, hoping to save himself and whatever might be left of his good name. stumbles over a stubborn thematic figment that has bcen lying in wait for him almost from thc beginning.

" See Nannaya, Ntrlo,,cikh~.dnnt~~~~ (Madras: V a v ~ l l aRjmasvarnl ~astrulu, 1967). 204.

I do not mean to my\r~f'y, 01-to hc overly literal with the text. or to ovcrload innoccnr sl;ilcmcnl< wrtl~d ~ r h ~ o urncanings; s and rhcrc is also no nccd to t'ollow any of thcsc I'~~tilc courses. Thc little exchange just quotcd simply rcsumcs a critical discourse that informs thc cntil-c episodc of Nala's d~sguiscand unveiling. and that rcachcs farther back to the carlicr. romantic opening of the tale. Damayanti. after all, has searchcd for her lost husband by means of a question, which I see as a kind o f riddle, asked rcpcatedly in the various courts and households of India until onc day it elicits a response, an o b s c ~ ~and re obliquc solution. Here is Damayanti's insistent question: strangely Where are you, gambler that you are, still loved, who left a beloved and devoted woman asleep in the wilderness after cutting her dress i n half? She is waiting for you as commanded, on fire, covered only by half a dress. Have mercy on her as she weeps in that grief: give her a response! (1 7.37-39). This is the message that thc Brahmins carry from court to court. Like Nala's statement, this one. too, has its fiery image; here i t is Damayanti who is 'on fire' as she waits, half-clothed, unwashed. continually weeping, for Nala to reappcar. And it is this same message, slightly expanded, that Daniayanti utters herself at the moment of denoument, beforc the still disguised and altered Nala, as the final test of his identity: 'Bahuka, have you ever seen a man who knew dhat-nzcr forsake a sleeping woman in the wilderness'? What man would abandon a wife who is guiltless, bcloved, exhausted-except Punyailoka-Nala'?' (24.10-1 1 ) . She is taunting him with a question that has only one answer, although enfolded within this answcr is the other, perhaps unanswerable question: 'why'?' Only Nala would act as he has acted-at that level the idcntification is utterly securebut, she wonders, does the fatal momcnt of his abandonrncnt have any meaning'.' Did she offend against him in any way ( I 2 ) ? How could that onc man whom she chose after re~ecringthe god.< havc deserted her, thc mothcr o f his children, the woman who lovcd and desircd him ( 13)') What happcned to the vow that hc took bcfore thc fire, the vow to be there, with her or for hcr-or. pcrhaps. simply to be (hhavi.~\~umiri sutwzm tu prariit-~i~vcl kl,n rczd guttltn, 1 4 ) ? Thcse arc thc questions which clicit Nala's def'cnsivc conrcsslon. which we havc quotcd. with its attcmpt to transl'cr the balamc to Kali while still claiming cl-cd~tI'or thc v~rtucsol'pcrsevcrancc and asccllc practice. I t is d~lTicultnot to 5cc the answer as \I~glitlyaskew. altho~~gli

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i t docs. a1 Icast implicitly, can-y an assertion of the speaker's self: I

discourse is not healed by the removal of Nala's mask. Danlayanti's

am Nala. i t i b truc; you have discovered me at last; hut I am not the onc who lcrt you-Kali did that; I did, however, subduc Kali. largely by niy own efforts. (Notc that herc Nala is distorting a little; Kali's defcat was, aftcr all, a collective effort, with Damayanti's curse, Karkotaka's bite, and Nala's knowledge of horses all playing their part in pcrsuading Kali to depart. He acknowledges the first of these factors but still claims the rnajor share of credit for himself.) And, anyway, you, Damayanti, should hardly accuse me. since you are aboui to choosc another husband-how can you speak of fidelity in his high-handed manner'? I, too, am aggrieved ... and so on. Always, it appears, in Nala's eyes the emphasis and the onus are on her actions or awareness. Similarly in the case of his earlier answer to Damayanti's riddle, an answer which, like the riddle, perfectly prefigures the eventual dialogue in the court:

positive identification of her husband, aftcr a scries of intclligcntly conceived anad poignant trials, only confirms and externalizes thc gap in their communication. She will. of course, dutiful Indian wifc that she is, bow at his fee(; she will even shcd tears of joy-or are they of joy?'-at his recovery, at her recovery of him. at the victory over Kali. But her question: replete as i t is with an existential challenge, goes unanswered or, at best, half-answered. Verbally, at least--and, I believe, not only verbally-there is a space between them that is never crossed. In this sense the riddling speech of thc period of searching and disguise is the proper paradigm for their communication. The riddle also embodies just such an open space, a 'nowhere' that should somehow be bridged by the answer, even if the answer has the paradoxical effect of veiling or disguising again even as it brings [he hidden solution to the fore. Couched in codc, the riddle rings true: Damayanti's question is the right one for Nala, not merely in the literal way in which it is conceived but in the much more pervasive sense that the story as a wholc seems to suggest. It is the answer that is the locus of difficulty, for everyone-riddler, respondent, the eavesdropping audience outside. 'Where are you, beloved gambler?' T h e simple answer should be: 'Here.' Or, rather, 'I a m here.' Or, better still (this is the oath Nala swore, as Damayanti reminds him): 'I am.' All the more striking, then, that Nala shirks these answers, that he resorts to oblique responses until the very end, when he says, in effect, 'Not I'--the antithesis of everything the context leads us to expect. Given this response, what remains of the riddle is then primarily its inner core, the now unbridgeable gap. Nala would appear to have failed the test, as he fails so many others in the course of his story. But i t is perhaps time for us to move beyond this soincwhat hostile attitude to our hero, to stop badgering him (as Damayanti does) and complaining of his inadequate responses, and, instead, to ask ourselves if, unexpectedly, Nala might not be speaking the uncomfortable truth. 'Not 1'-this is, perhaps, a stronger statement than we might think. It may even explain why Damayanti can love this pcrson as shc does,

Even in the face of disaster (vaisamyam), women of good family save themselves by themselves. thereby conquering heaven. Even if they are bercft of their husbands, they are never angry; they hold on to life, guarded by their proper conduct. And if such a woman was deserted by her fool of a husband, fallen into trouble, she will not be angry at him, for he was seeking a way to survive (pranayatrrim pariprepsu), burning with anxiety, after losing his clothes to the birds ... (18.8-12). There is clearly enough here for Damayanti to make a tentative identification-ven the mere fact of a response might have been enough-but again the answer itself evades the question. 'Where are you, beloved gambler?'--such was the riddle; to which Nala answers, 'A good woman should not be angry at her husband, even if he has left her.' The same obliquity obtains that we noted above. This couple speaks to one another in a strangely disconnected way (and not only at this stage of their life-1s not their courtship equally oblique and indirect?). Damayanti has the more powerful and more explicit queries-Where are you? Who would do such a thing? Who, that is, but Nala-and, perhaps (the undcrlying issue), who is he'? Nala speaks in shil'ty tones, worried always about her response: It wasn't I; he, whoevcr hc may hc. was ,jus~trying to find his way; there is a fire h l a ~ i n ginsidc me: and. perhaps (the undcrlying implication), I am not wholly myself, 11 is importan1 f o r 115to hce ~liatthis basic disjunction in thecouple's

I

1

I

1

'N C I / ( I L ~ P(Adyar: I ? ~ C ~ IT. Ve. Cjminataiyar Nill Nilaiyam, 19h0) 186 makes us wonder: at the moment of Nala's transformation. Damayanti's 'poisonlike cyes' hide lrom her, hy their [cars, thc man 'who cul licr dr.cs\ and abandoned her in that other placc'

141

7'hr Wisdom

of

Poc~t.c

Ibr all her resentment at his deeds. And i t is not a casual answer offcrcd callously. in cxtrcmis, but seems rather to express so~nething ot Nala's ongoing experience of'himself. He has had excellent reason to wonder about himself during the three years o f his disguise. Reason, too, to accuse himself repeatedly, In the midst of his lonely exile. Listen to the question he asks-not himself. but the void-each night of his separation: Where is she lying. tortured by hunger and thirst, exhausted, still remembering that fool? Whom, now. does she serve'? This is Nala's riddle, the precise equivalent of D a m a y a n t i ' ~ ,and, ~ like hers, never really answered. Yet, in keepir?g with what we know of Nala, here, too, we find an indirection. The verse is entirely in the third person-while she asks, 'Where are you?', Nala's question is 'Where is she ... ?'-and, most strikingly, the speaker h~mselfis distanced, again a n other, tasya m a n d ~ ~ s y that a , fool. Even when Nala's companion Jivala, who hears this verse night after night. finally brings himself to ask Nala for whom he is mourning in this way (kam inzclm i n c a s e nityam)-an intimately direct query in the second person-Nala can only respond at one remove: 'Some fool had a wife, and his word, too, was inconstant; and, for some reason or other, that fool became separated from her. Now he wanders around miserably, burning with grief day and night; and as he remembers her each night, he sings this one verse (15.13-15).' One verse, an unanswered riddle, sung by the unhappy man it describes. whom his companion obviously recognizes as such, who yet insists on speaking of himself as an anonymous other acting in indeterminate, seemingly inexplicable ways. Not even the exigencies of his disguise can explain this persistent alienation, which, moreover, as we saw, sustains itself past the moment of Nala's self-dislosure. It is this theme of the alien self that we must pursue if we are to understand Nala's experience. One might, of course. try to limit its scope to that part of the story in which we are explicitly told that Nala is inhabited by another being; the vindictive Kali. This is the aspect that Nala himself eventually highlights. that he will use in attempting to explain his past. But here the text is far less constrained than its hero. If anything, it seems to regard the state ofalien possession and diffuse identity as an intensification of a much more basic and enduring condition. which afllicts Nala--and not only Nal~~--I'ronl eal-ly in the narrative. One might be e x c ~ ~ s cl'or d regardin? thc \tol.y 'Thi, opening yucry is iden~ical.Kl'cl

1 7 1 1 r ~ : c l .r ~. ~: X t , i i

rrlr ,ti

not as a fairy tale with a happy ending but as an intimate, s c h i ~ o i d nightmare. Notice. for example, the consistent way in which major of the text are repeated. There are two dice games, two svqamvaras, two-fiddles (and two riddling moments). two snakes in the forest, two charioteers, two sabhus; Nala and Damayanti naturally have twins; according to the Tamil folk version, infected by this mania for Damayanti is herself a twin;y there are two critical appearances of the hamsa birds (first as love messengers, then as the dice); Nala plays not against an outsider but against his own brother, pu+ara, and the latter is aided by Dvapara, 'the Second (throw)'; Karkotaka gives Nala a p a i r of matched garments; even on the level of naming, as Biardeau has recognized,"' the story seems to play at doubling (ParnBda and Rtuparna). Almost nothing that the text mentions manages to remain intact, unsplit. or singular, although thematically there is also a countervailing drive towards unity-this is, after all, in the most general sense, a love story about two people uniting as one. Perhaps the most trenchant symbolic expression of this problem is the almost obsessive focus on the single garment (ekavastra)--the garment used to clothe both Nala and Damayanti after the geese make off with Nala's own single cloth, and which Nala cuts in two as he abandons Damayanti in the forest. Here is how the Tamil poet Pukalenti describes this decisive moment:

Taking hold of that single garment, he cut it in two, so that one spirit split in two and his love was cut at the root." They have been wandering together, body against body, under the same cloth (ekavastrasu~nvitnu,10.4), and Damayanti at least finds nothing terrible in this: in the Tamil folk text, she rebukes Nala for mourning the loss of his own clothes: 'After losing your entire kingdom, you feel sorry about a single garment""* But the single

'Nalaccakkiravarrti knt~li.18. M. Biardenu. 'Nala et Dnlnayanti. hCros Cpiques, IN&-lrcr~~iarrJournal IO

1

27 ( 1984). 268. I ' Nalavtnpa 270. 12 Nalaccakkiravarrti !icltcli. 80.

TILORicldle garment is not an innocent loss; thih is the ~ ~ l t i m astage t c in the proccas of Nala's reduction I'ron~king to hcggar. to a state of insupportable nakedness-and not only in an external. visible sense. He has no clothes ir;rvu.c.tr-ti,10.5) when Darnayanti lies down to sleep, and he has to divide their remaining cover bclorc he can leave her. Clearly. this act ofdivision goes deeper, as the Tamil poet hints; Nala is making a single being into two, and at the same time destroying his love. Half a garmcnt will now cover each of two beings who are, at best. but half ihcmselvcs. A single existence has broken open into two isolated and unhappy parts. But in Nala's case the process of bifurcation conlinucs unabated: he can hardly bring himself to leave. his heart is torn i n t o t w o parts ( d v i d h e v a h r d a ~ a mt a s y a duhkhitasyubhav~~t tad& 10.27), he swings back and forth until Kali, from within, drags hi nl away (dolevu muhur civdti yati caiva subham prati/avakr.srus tu kalinu mohitu!~ prudruvan nalah, 10.27-28). Leaving Damayanti-in the most psychologically devastating moment of their joint life-Nala appears to us as a sundered, fissile, selffragmenting being, stripped to the thinnest of coverings, not even aware, yet, of the alien presence that has taken over part of his inner existence. He is mad: nusttitma, gutucetar~a( 10.29, 19). He has just told her he would sooner abandon himself than her (tyajeyarn aham atmanam nu caivam hiurn. 9.30)-and perhaps this is what has really happened, His self, such as it is. has hardly survived intact from the rupture. This statement is not meant to be ironic: who could vouch for the wholeness of Nala's self up to this point? This is not the first time he has experienced a far-reaching fracture. Rather. the scene in the forest, which splits him internally as the prelude to a still more extreme transl'ormation ol' idcntity is, in a sense, no more than the internalization of a process previously encountcred on the outside. This is a mwn who has seen himself reproduced in quadruplicate. who has stood beside four palpable mirror images of himself, whose identity boundaries have been subjecled to one shock after anothernot only al [he time of the .svayamvuru, when his humanity surprisingly saves him. but also in the course ofthc ncgot~ationsleading up lo [his event. The fiss~p~u.ous, despairing hcro of the I'orest who severs the last cmbodi~ncntol'wholcncss in h i life is living out an inescapable and persistently divisive process inilintcd. we may well I'ecl, 21 the moment hc first heard 01' the lovely Daniay:unti, and fell in lovc. Nnla's primary cxpcricncc, enaclccl in varying manner-\ at d~l'lcrcnt

of Ntrltr

115

p i n t s in his career. is that of watching rcality-his reality, inner and outer-splintcr and reproduce itself. His recurrent complaint, the word most often associated with his reduced or transfigured stale, is 13ai.yamva--literally 'unevenness', non-sameness, the asymmetrical division and replication of the shattered Initially the most 'even' and 'same' of men, a veritable paragon of static symmetry and perfection, uncnlivened by even the least individual failing or flaw. Nala is driven into a series of utterly alien dislocations, of disjointed vaisamya states. This series, surely. lies at the heart of the story and its fascination; it is this that the Epic narrator, Brhadaiva, seeks to communicate to Yudhisthira by way of comforting him in his own all-too-similar course. Here is the sequence: Nala is whole. a properly composed accumulation of all virtues (upapanno gunair istuih, 1.1); he falls in love--the first intrusion of the other and the unbalanced into his inner world, which begins slowly to disaggregate; he is co-opted by the gods into speaking on their behalf, against his own voice-the first, only seemingly abortive movement of alienation, soon to he resumed; he stands beside his replicated self at the svajlarnvara. and is recognized and thus temporarily saved from inner dissolution by Damayanti; because of a ritual error, he becomes possessed by Kali and is soon divested of all he owns; now the process of inner fissure accelerates, he splits the remaining token of unity and. unable to hold his proliferating selves together, departs in the direction of utterly alien disguise. However exotic the setting of this story, the underlying experience is, perhaps, not so remote from us as we might wish: Imagine now a man who is deprived of everyone he loves, and at the same time of his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself.14 Thus the late Primo Levi, referring to a different catastrophe. The difference lies in the fact [hat for the N(l1opukhyantr. such losscs arc less a singular, aberrant horror than a kind of norm, and in the perception [hat Nala's erosion of sclr actually begins considerably before the chain of his e.xternal losses. I3 l4

Sec, e.g., 8.13. 9.20. 10.1. P ~ I I TIIXO V I . If 771i.si.5 u M(irr ( N e w York: Summit Booka. 1 Y86), 16.

1 46

Tlzc. Wi.\do/n c?\' Poets

Inside the Mirror YOLImay ob.ject that all this is, after all. rather spcculative: that the text nevcr explicitly connects thc svayarn1'clru nightmare to Nala's later inner divisions and disguise; abovc all, that I am ignoring the principal explanation that the text itself offers fbr Nala's bizarre behaviour, i.e. his takeover by Kali. And, you might say, this, too, has a simple, external, technical explanation, the ritual mistake Nala madc which left a tiny point of his ankle dry when he washed.I5 Sohad it not been for this inadvertent error, Nala's perfect existence could have continued forever; the story documents a needless interruption in an ongoing realization of thc human ideal. This is a little like reading the Iliad as an unexpected by-product of the unfortunate fact that Achilles' mother, Thetis, had to hold on to hini .romewhere while dipping him in the Styx. 1 will nevertheless have something to say about Kali in a few moments. You may, of course, still be right-perhaps this is a story about possession and how to avoid it, or. at the least, what attitude to adopt if it comes over you despite your best efforts (Yudhisthira's recommended position); or. taking a somewhat wider perspective, about the determinism of fate, which overpowered even so perfect a person as Nala, but which also balanced itself in the end by restoring him, willy-nilly, to his former estate (the perspective, perhaps, of the frame-story of the Book of Job). But I doubt it, and I am not quite alone in doubting it. Much of the Indian literary tradition, which has been so taken up with this story over so many centuries, also focuses on Nala's peculiar problems of identity, of knowing or recognizing himself. Take, for example, sriharsa's famous kdvya, the Naisadhiyucarira, which is interested only in the early part of the story (it breaks off betbre the dice game). When Nala enters the assembly at the time of the svuyarnvaru and encounters the four gods dissembling themselves in his own form, this is what he says: nobhriv ilahhuh kim u darpaka.$ cu/ hhutaunti nu;totva\.rlfc~ubhuvcrntuh Just who are you-Pururavas and Kama together with the two Aivins? 10.45). Staring at his own i~nagt..lic sees only tlic tl.aditio~lalexemplars of niale heauty-and, char:~ctcristically in my view, I'ails to recognize

''Thus Nc~luc~i~c~Xkirc~~~~~t-III kcllcli. 65

Ilrc, Xiddlr

of

Nmlu

147

himself. The .s~~c~ye~rnr.nr-u itself will correct this lnistahe (in devious ways. appropriate to kdvlei) and. at the same tirnc. set thc stage lor the far more scvcre identity crisis still to come. I would like to highlight two aspects of this early, preparatory stage of the story in so far as i t rclatcs to the question of Nala's selfperception and the articulation of his identity. First is thc fact that herc, as later, this identity depends, in lrioments of doubt, upon the outside voice of Damayanti. From thc onsct of thcir love. Nala is oriented, for purposes of his own self-recognition. towards her. It is Daniayanti who must pick him out from the series of five identical images; Nala can make no move to help her. This dependence will be re-enacted at the end of his period in disguise, as we know. She puts him through the various trials of anagnorisis. and she will be the one to force an ultimate confession of identity. This, apparently, is how things should be. It is as if Nala spends his life not in the mode of thc Socratic imperative-gncirhi's autntl-but in cpistemological hunger for the woman outside him. to whom he cries: 'Please know me!' This dependence is more than a little meaningful in the context of the identity confusion which is Nala's constant affliction. Secondly, the notion of mirroring is relevant here in a specific way. T h e early chapters of the text, up to the svujunzvara. show us the heroes in l o v e from afar, a love mediated by the geesemessengers. T h e world is still perfect and utterly symmetrical; one paragon falls in love by hearsay with another. So patterned and conventional is this sequence, and so closely related to the alleged perfection of each of the two lovers. that one would be tempted to say that, at this stage, each has fallen in love primarily with an Image of his or hcr own self. The two passions mirror one another to perfection. But Nala already suffers from the specific deficiency of the mirror image-not merely a generalized lack of autonomy, but the more individuali~edand critical inability to speak for oneself. H e speaks to Damayanti. at thcir first meeting, with the words of the gods. However honourable, his behaviour expresses an inner falseness, which Damayanti characteristically perceives and immediately rcjccts. Nala has not yet learned to speak whcn the ~ r ~ ~ ca~day ~ ~ cwholly l given over to crucial day of the . s ~ ~ a y c ~ ~arrives. mirrors and reflections-indeed. the last such moment in thc story. since at this po1n1 Nala. the mute image, conl'ronced with his own unsettling rcl'lcctions. bcgitls his ('all t l ~ r - o ~the i ~ lcognitively ~ crippling and disor-icnting mirror into :I 171-okcn.dis~ntcgr:~t~ng world.

148

The Wisdom qf'Port.\

Nala enters into the looking glass before falling from his throne. It takes time. of course: in thc meantime lovc-in-unity will Ilourish, the twins will be born; Kali, as we know. is lurking restlessly in the wings. It would be.quite wrong for us to trivialize thc romance of these two lovers, even to corrode it with skepticism. But neither should we assume that all is entirely as it should be with our protagonist. The story documents a process and has a teleology. It revolves around a double mystery, the mystery of two beings become one, and of a supposedly single person splitting into two. The same mystery informs the riddle, with its essential two tiers, its imagistic unifying of normally ' ~ story separate realms, which then diverge again in the ~ o l u t i o n .The seems to pose Nala as the question, Damayanti as the answer (this is Nala's own demand): 'Who am I?' 'You are (the person, the human being) Nala.' Through all her travails, she remains lucid and conspicuously undisguised (although she is reduced to the soiled, dishevelled state of the woman/goddess in exile, so reminiscent of Draupadi), in poignant contrast to her husband. She embodies faith and continuity, while he seems an exercise in discontinuous evolution: at all levels+xternally, in terms of the inner moulding of his identity, and at the level of his self-experience and awareness. The only aspect of his existence that is never in doubt is his humanity, i.e. that aspect which guided Damayanti's choice. In this respect the story stands out as an antithesis to the pervasive Indian pattern of upward marital mobility, with a god or goddess as preferred spouse or lover (however problematic such marriages may turn out to be." Nala is chosen as a man, and appears to exemplify a certain understanding of what it means to be a man.ls But if this is the case, if Nala shows us man as a riddle. as a conundrum of fractured, multiple identities, then we may well wonder about the adequacy of Damayanti's 'solution'. The doubt ' V e r y often, as Peter Claus remarks In an unpublished paper, there is an erotic level which become:<present in the posing of the riddle and is obscured by its solution. l7 E.g.?the Puniravas model. Nala is not alone in the counter-tradition (of choosing thc mortal spouse over an ava~lahlcimmortal one): there are cases such as that of Cyavana (whom Sukanya prefers to thc ASvins: ~ u t a ~ o t h o Bruhnrunu 4.1. S . 1 - 13: Jairninivtr Rrrilzrnurirz 3.121)-128: MBh 3.122-1 23) and. in the Tclugu tradition, the Manucaritrtrnrrr of PEddana. ''Here wc may cite Biardeau's persuasive argument [hat Nala's nanw I S associatlvcly connected with Nara, 'Man'. 'Nala et Damayanti, hCros Cpiques'. 25 1

articulated by the story gocs beyond the mystery ot'thc lovers' union; the text articulates not only thc obvious and difficult question of whether two can ever be onc (as the riddle falsely suggests), but also the even more troubling and rooted problcm of whether one can ever be one. The aspect of the riddle that is most saliently made present by this story is not that of coding and decoding, of concealing and revealing-though Nala's cycle of iconic paragon to naked beggar to disguised dwarf to paragon again does embody this aspect as wellbut rather that of alienation and identity, the integrating or disintegrating potential of the individual, self-questioning being. All of this may m a k e Nala's seemingly evasive answer to Damayanti-'not I', or 'not only 1'-more intelligible. He has, after all, learned something from his experience. But here we must be cautious to avoid an overly romantic view of his inner evolution. I have spoken of a certain teleology implicit in the unfolding of Nala's career. It seems clear to me that the romantic prelude, up to and including the svayr?lvara,is highly relevant to all the subsequent events of the story, seen in terms of Nala's innerness and self-awareness. But it would b e too simple to regard the disguised Bahuka's con~ciousnessas more 'true', more essentially aware, than that of the noble king before his intoxication and fall. Nala in disguise is no more himself than Nala on his throne.lYIt is not merely a question of expanding identity to incorporate some initially excluded aspect or aspects, although such a development does take place in this, as in so many stories from the Epic. The more basic theme has to do with the nature of human identity as such, with the meaning of having a self. This is the teleological thrust of which I have spoken. T o understand it, we have to look, at last, at the role of Kali and of fate.

Daiva, Devana, and the Sacrifice tasya daivut prasarigo 'Dhud atimutrar?rsma devanr

Because of fate, he became excessively attached to the d ~ c e . (Damayanti to thc Cedi Queen-Muthcr, 13.57)

'

A temptation of this sort I S particularly appealing in dealing with the Pandava heroes in the period o f their disguise. at Virita's court (MRh. Book 4)

1 50

Tllr Wi,yclo117qf'Poct.r

Nala is presented to us. and presents lii~nscll'to others. as having bccn posscsscd hy the evil Kali. i.c. thc present dcgcnerate period 01' time; the possession transpires because o f 21 ritual oversight hut is immediately dircctcd toward thc dice match that will determine Nala's experience; Nala is dispossessed only after acquiring the sccrct knowledge calcd ak.yuhrduyu, 'heart of the dice'. We must ask ourselves what this knowledge really is. and how it differentiates the results of. and no doubt also the process of playing, the two dice games. Aiid there are other questions: what is the relation between ) fate (daiva), dicing and possession? Between dicing ( d e ~ a n aand frequently juxtaposed by our text, indeed by the epic as a whole?"' Just what does possession meanL?Are there identity boundaries that survive Kali's invasion of Nala's body and mind'? The answer to the last question is clearly, yes-Nala is certainly aware of himself, at various points, as distinct from the dark forces within him. Not, perhaps, during the first dice game, when he is described as wholly mad; perhaps not even in the forest, when Kali manages to drag him away from Damayanti, though only after a furious inner struggle; but definitely later. during his exilic period. for example when he sings, night after night, the single verse of mourning that contains the essence of his loss. It is not Kali who mourns in this way. Nala is also said to experience his inner world as on fire-a double flame, with Kali burning him even as Karkotaka's poison and Damayanti's curse burn Kali. This awareness surely places Nala beyond any simple identification with his possessing demon, as does the fact of his ongoing inner conflict ovcr the course he follows. That said. we can return to our earlier intuition that would counter any reading of this story as the account of a good man's temporary defeat by purely external forces (Kali. time. fate). Nala is overpowered and driven, but nor from outside; and even internally, there are parts of him that cscapc Kali's tyrannical grip. The Kathakali version of the story even has Kali himself say something to this effect. at the critical moment when hc, Kali, is forced out of Nala's body: You humiliated Indra and thc gods by marrying Damayanti, and you have paid thc price-losing the dice-game. suffering in the forest. forgetting Damiiyanti, bodily disf~gul-erncnt.loss o f reputation.

The Riddle of Nalu 15 1 servitude to another. You blame m e for all this-what can I say to someone l ~ k cyou. who always tries to blame an~ther'?~' Nala rightly objects to this speech as disingenuous, but its very presence in the story, at this juncture, suggests that i t is not without a certain force. Equipped with his new knowledge, Nala can bully Kali into submission; Kali's parting argument hangs, unanswered, in the air. We are faced again with the central problem of Nala's responsibility as refracted through the broken prism of his identity. Who has acted here? How much of Nala has been present all along'? How much remains of him in the end? We should notice that this series of issues, together with the dominant narrative focus on the theme of possession out of which they emerge, constitutes a separate axis from the series relating to Nala's love for Damayanti and its recurrent trials. The latter series revolves around the hero's horizontal bonding with a clearly distinguished 'other', however we may understand this other person's self-definition and assumed roles. I will refer to this set as the 'axis of otherness', noting that such an axis need not be entirely limited to the love attachment but may extend also to relationships such as that between the rival brothers. Nala's transformation through possession follows a rather different logic and direction, which I shall call the 'axis of innerness', since it transpires entirely within Nala's own self or selves in what we might imagine, if we need a graphic image, as a 'vertical' mode. As is the case with the horizontal axis, the axis of innerness never shows us a single, perfectly integrated 'fit', or a clear progression from one lucidly articulated state to another. It is more of an evolving series of partially overlapping self-images. The two axes obviously share certain features. As we shall see, they are also capable of intersecting. They may also make use of the same symbolic means: thus the Nalaccakkiravartti karai explicitly asserts that the golden birds; whom we first meet as messengers of love responsible for motivating the heroes' action and feeling along the axis of otherness, reappear jn the story-another conspicuous instance of the drivc towards doubling-in a remarkable transformation. as the aksas, the dice. come to complete the process of despoiling the erstwhile king by Unnayi Vjriyar,

CI'. Ilhr~ar-aslra LO Vidura. 2.5 1.25

1981) 3.13. 101.

Nalur-ariram Affukatha

(Trivandrum: Valsa Prin~ers

Tlzr Riclrllr c?/'Nulr~ 1 5 3

removing his o n c remaining garmcnt.12 This time they a r c messengers of ~ a l i l ~ a nbyi ,now comrortably ensconced Inside Nala, and thus they emerge from and move along the inner, vertical axis. It is perhaps significant that in this case thc emblem of connection (the golden hamsa as matchmaker) is also the harbinger of separation and destruction. 11' we wish to understand thc dynamics that rule the axis of innerness, and, in particular, to explore the transition that takes place within Nala with the acquisition of the ak.yahrdaya, we have to understand something of the ancient Indian game of dice. Our knowledge of the game, as i t was originally played, is unfortunately incomplete. Nevertheless, several major aspects are clear enough.13 In all likelihood, Nala's dice game, as distinct from the earlier, Vedic types, was akin to the game known today as chaupar in north India (the source of our game of pacheesi or parcheesi). Here the board is constituted by two intersecting axes, divided into squares; each player is represented by several pieces, the object being to move these pieces-in accordance with the fall of the dice, and the player's tactical considerations-into the empty space where the two axes meet. That player wins who first brings all his pieces into this empty centre. It is undoubtedly wrong to imagine that this game is either one of pure chance or entirely an artful exercise of skill; rather. what comes into play is some combination of knowledge, of a specialized kind, and the externalization of those powerful and structured forces operating within the player and affecting his every move. (It is in this sense that the dice game is dependably related to divination.) Chance, in the 22 Nalaccakkiravartti katai, 76-8. This identification is also perhaps implied by the Sanskrit original, which speaks of the birds' golden plumage (9.12). 2"ee H. Liiders, 'Das Wiirfelspiel im alten Indien', Abhandlunget~rier koniglicher~ Gesellsch~lfider Wi.rsenschafrer~:u Gottigen, Philologischhistori.rche Klasse, tleue Folge, Band I X , 2 (Berlin. 1907);J. C. Heesterman, The Atlcient Indian Royal Corlsecrarion (The Hague: Mouton, 1957). 15 1 ff.; G . J . Held, The Multabharata, a n Ethr/ological Study (Amsterdam: Uitgeversrnaatschappi.~Holland, 1 9 3 5 ~256-79; J. A. B. van Buitenen. The Muhuhhurara. Vol. I1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 27-30. A more recent sludy by Harry Falk clearly goes beyond the early scholarly conccplualizations of the game: Rrur/er.schuf/ ~ l n dWiirfrlspiel (Freiburg: Hedwig Falk, 1986): and see David White. 'Dogs Die', Hisron~of Rc.li,eior~ 28 ( 1 989). 283-303; Don Handelrnan and David Shulrnan, Gocl Insi(1~Our: . $ i v c l ' . ~Gnrur of'Dicr. (New York: Oxford ljnivers~tyPress. 1997).

modern scnsc. probably does not exist at all within this sphcrc (01.. indeed. within the E p ~ cunivcrsc that contains and highlights the game)-but neither is the dice game wholly detcrmincd; quite the contrary is the case. Much uncertainty attends thc working out ol'thc player's inner states, especially in so far as they arc characterized by the drives towards Sragmcntation. confusion, sclf-alienation, and, abovc all, madness.= The dice allow these forces to operate within thc structured, modular cosmos established by the frame and rules of play. T h e striking point, for our purposes, is that this cosmos is constructed around certain primary. generative tensions. We might think of the pieces moving through the modellboard as embodying the aspect of fragmentation and discontinuity always consequent upon the entry into play. Like the sacrifice, the dice game takes the world apart before allowing for its reconstitution. On the other hand. the dice themselves, with their numbered 'eyes', are a condensed form of connectivity: knowing the combinations, the coincidences and resonances between any given 'throw' and the numbered and hierarchically ordered elements in the cosmos (the cardinal directions. the arrangement of syllables in metres and mantras, the aeons which mark the unrolling of time, and so on) is a way of re-composing a disarticulated universe. thereby also bringing under some semblance of control the processes of dispersal and category confusion, inside and TO pursue the sacrificial analogy: the ritual should end, in both cases, with the universe in place, each plane of existence in perfect alignment, the relations between levels crisply articulated, all limits and boundaries lucidly defined. The spring of existence, which normally unwinds in an unavoidable entropic spiral, is rewound to its initial position of pure potential and perfect form. Dispersal, the empirical state of our being, is countered by a gathering and a reconstruction. Let m e put this a little more concretely. One of the major elements of this process in the Brahminical sacrificial system is the knowledge of.the b a n d h u s , the hidden interconnections of disparate orders or levels of existence. 'The sacrificial stake is the sun.' These bandhus assert not a literal claim for identity but a ranked relationship normally obscured, which the sacrifice articulates and stabilizes in place-the process being one of dividing and separating no less than of' "Already in R,qVt~rlcl10.34.1I , the dice drive the gambler mad (rndtlilycjriti). Z5 This lormulation lollows upon an insight o l Don Handelrnan'a.

connecting.'" Planes of cxistcncc arc brought into alignment so that the possiblli~yo f communication bctwecn them can exist. Moreover, each planc scclns to rcplicatc the higher (or subtler. or more inner) onc hcyond it; we can imagine a concentric superimposition around a central point shared by all Icvels. In the dice game, the role of the hundlius seems Lo be takcn over by the counting wisdom of the successful player, thc conqueror of time. This wisdom also has immediate practical uses in terms of the calculations the skilled player nceds to make in order to achieve his goal of reassembling the scattered parts of himself in the empty centre square. Herc thc nature of the model points inescapably to the latent vision of both cosmos and self. There is, no doubt, a sense in which Nala's new-found expertise-thc knowledge of numbers that must comprise the 'heart of the dice'-is understood as a form of yoking or control, somehow equivalent to the equine skill that Rtupama is given in exchange. And yet these images of yoking, counting, winning mastery, ordering, are, for all their c e ~ t r a l i t yonly , part of the story. They have a price, or an inner logic, which Nala exemplifies perhaps more clearly than any other classical hero. For the violence, the destructive cnergy necessarily implied by the rituals-by both sacrifice and dicing-inhabit the Nala story, indeed Nala himself, in persistent and graphic form. W e sometimes speak of the evolution of Brahminical sacrifice as entailing a process of internalization, the sacrificer becoming in himself, a self-sufficient locus for the entire ritual. Nala shows us something of what this might mean. 'Divine coals cast upon the dicing board, they (the dice), though cold, burn up the heart'-thus the Rgvedic gambler ( 10.34.9), but i t could just as well be Nala speaking, even, or especially, after he has acquired tbe gambler's wisdom. Here destruction, initially evident in thc madness of the game. actually enters into the player. Put somewhat differently, the inner experience of that person who can succcssfully re-calculate the entire world, who is no longer victimized by the madness of the game but is rather its master and controllcr. who has brought himself' into perfect alignment with a pcrf'cctly ordered univcrsc-that cxpcriencc is a kenosis transpiring within a self-consuming nowherc-space.*'

'"

Scc Brian Smith, 'Gods and Mcn in Vetlic Ritualixm: Towart1 a H~erarchy 01' licscrnhlancc'. Hi.c.torv of Rc1igror1.s24 ( IOXS), 2 9 1 3 0 7 . - . I'hc l'amil chaphook has ~ [ own z slr~tiihlytransl'ormerl symbol o l the 1-

This is the point where the two axes of which I have spoken, of jnnerness and othcrncss, intersect, the point where innerncss is itself a kind of otherness, and vice versa. Nala has learned what he needs to know if he is to reverse the downward spiralling course of his life; he knows the correspondences, can count, estimate, divide; he can rearrange reality, in a small, modular fragment of itself, without remainder or further impurity, and can thus rid his inner space of Time; but he also continues to say, at the moments that matter, no doubt as part of this same experie~tialknowledge that is uniquely his, 'not 1', or 'riot wholly 1', or 'I am, or have been, other than myself'. Like the riddle itself, still unresolved. that formulates the search for his identity, Nala acts from within a structure that embodies an empty, motivating g a p z X

Out of the Looking-Glass, Through Fate and Time Let us recapitulate by looking again at the entire course of Nala's development. When we first meet Nala and Damayanti. they are mirror images of perfection-surface images at that, untested, without foreground or depth. They fall in love. Nala speaks not for himself, but for the gods; Damayanti reveals, already at this early point, her steadfastness and gift for recognition. This will remain her necessary role; Nala will be, or rather become, himself only through her. At the s v a y a F v a r a , the mirror cracks open; thanks to Damayanti's persistence and clarity of purpose, Nalais saved by his very humanity and mortality, the determining elements of Damayanti's choice. This choice has the paradoxical effect of forcing his humanity truly to take effect-or, we might say, of forcing Nala into time (although .-

dice game model: here Rtuparna shoots a single arrow at the immense tcinyi tree (=Skr. vibhitcka), grown 'as big as the universe' (pirumcinfumatturn valarntu);the arrow pierces each one of the tree's vast number of leaves. 'The knowledge the king gives Nala is now described as a form of archery @~wppirayo!uzmpannukiya virtar, 130);but the underlying concept ofa model of the cosmos, with an empty hole at the centre, survives i n the image of the cosmic tree pierced in every leaf. 'Vn this sense Nala is not unlike Oedipus. who, as Vernant has so perceptively shown, is hi~nsclfthe answer to the riddle xked of him: set J.P. Vernant, 'From Oedipus to Perrantler: Lameness, 'Tyranny, Incest in Legend and History', Ar.rtl~usr~15 ( 1982). 19-38,

the tcxt i.har:~ct~ri.;~lc;~Ily cxprc.\\c\ [ h i \ the other \+;I! ro~~liil. , I \ I'imc cntcsili? illlo h ~ m )Like . Oclys\c11\ O I I Kul>'pso's iala~lil.I)arll;~!al~ti opls lor a I I I O I ~ ~ ~ ;lnd I I impel-l'cct \ I J O L I Y C . and gel\ prec~\cl! t l l i \ . Nilla sturnl~lcs.is po\scsscd. goes nlk~ct.cxrccns wildly ancl I o c ~ l ~ ~ I'rom hly onc rcr~-~hlc. mistake to the next. From the tinielcssnc\\ ! ) I his cal-licr mirror cxlhlcncc. the Z~r~r.\c.lrc,~~i-ii~~~iio rl(31-Zoic. as Kilhc hays 01. mirrors.'" Nala has moved into ;I new. mor-c prr>l~cslyI~lrmansphere. Now, as the Tcluyu version 01' tlic ,lory has i ~ 'll;~ws . ;~cc~~m~~late inside hrln.'-"l It 1s an internal proccbs. charactcri/cCI hy co~iscious alicna~ion.!lie perceived prcscncc 01' alien I~cin?\vitliin. B L I [his ~ process is ~ilsoIhc condition 01 Nala's c v c n ~ ~ ~ rccovcry. al Having graduated, as i t were, from the shadowy mirror state to a kind o f pcrsonhoocl. N:rla will cvcnlually find his way hack out ol'tirne. or towards controlling tirnc-but only by \ 11-tuc(11' ha\,ing tlrnc alive within him. This process is also tllc working of I'atc. dtri,.(r. as the text tells us scpcatcdly. in various way\. Damayanti says it. r)cshaps. ninst siniply ancl cloclucntly. 'Kothing human beings do In this world is devc~idof /loil,o' (110h\ urir~il~tm kr-trrr?~ kir!~ rrrrr-trtitivr ilzu ~.ir/~cltc' 13.40).Or. as her maidservant reports on the eve of Nala's anagnorisis: 'This is the crurh QIUI-cartdr-t/rrrirz(~): m e can speak ol'hin~only as r l n i ~ ~ r ' (urtirrirri d c i i ~ ~ n Lr tZ~~ I Uv u l r r ~ ~ N;lnn;~y;~ ~~. 193j. Or. in Nala's f'inal summalion to his ministers. after his rcstor:~tion:'Sani was angry at me and tricked me, without my knowins it: wc have lived out our own action (krrrttllr); each of us must experience what Brahma has determined lor us."' Note the triple causaliry evident in !hi< last stalclncnt. from the folk source. and how i t a11 works tagethqr to unclcrlinc the neccssiry ol'thc I I S O C ~ S SNilla has undergone. It is an inner process, the inevitable concomicanr ol'being h ~ ~ t n a n : a$ SLICII. 11 is dil-ficult to see i t as something ~rnpuscdl'roni ~ v i t h o ~ ~ t . or. irldretl. :I.\ wholly dclcrniincd ~ r o n the i star[. O n tlic contrary: rlr/i~,rr retains solncrhlng 01' the inherent yet non-random uncertaintl, i ) S dc~.cirlo.[lie g;~riic.of dicc. T h ~ sis a process o l inrcrnal unl'oldlng. with major cpi\~cmologic.:ilimplications for the ~ul't'cringsubject. whose notioll., ol'seltcupwid ~~ncoml'ortably in i t 5 cour\c. NaIa corncs to hno\b hlmscll ax othcl-. perhap\ as a conl-usin: scrics olothcr\ who inllui:ncc 111s:letion\ and help cxpli1111 rlic~irincolicrcnce. rhc~~.upparc:lr

Ill(, Krrlrllo ( 1 1 .Y/I/(I I i7 C I - L I ~ I I \ . 11ic:ir L L I I I ) I ~ ~ ~ \~vIi I~ ~l ic\ \v ~ l .l'his. . Loo. 1 ~ r01.1 l ~ c i ~ IiI gI I I ~ ~ : I I ~ . E L I [ \\Ii~ch. . Ilkc 1i111c. I \ 1 1 1 1 ! 1 ~ 1 l lO y L I ~ S I [he ~ C IIL,I-O. ;III ; I I I C I ~ rc11111;111t. i \ he]-c.in(c.1-nali/ccl.a\sli~liIatcd.al)sorhcd. From nobr. o n . 11s 1oc~1\ is ~ o m c u h c r cin Ilic sllilling conl'ig~lration01 N ; I ~ ~ \cl\rcs. 'Y 13ul ~ i l c l ~ r ( ~ wc,ncla h s hy thc aplx~rclltc x c l ~ ~ s i oorn dcl'cat ol'cvil In thc context 01' Nala's ncw hllou.lcCIyc. Thih. too. 111;tkcs scnsc in rhc I~_eli!01'oLlr u r i d c 1 1 1 1 i i 1 1 01'1 y Ihc dicc ganic: liaving rc;~sranycd the ~ ~ n i \ . c r , c , ilicluding the component 01. dcgcncs:~tivc rime. aro~lndthe ccnrral axis 01' inncrncsh. Nala colihurncs the cvil o l Kali in his own inncr hpacc. His world is alignccl cc~thall orlies worlds. wirh the burning space 01' ullima~c011ic~1-ncss successfully intcrnali~cdas well: cvil, too, is swallowed u p in this dark hole. indeed c;lnnor survive its idcntil'ic;~tionwith chis polnt that is. perhaps; the true uk.srrlr~r/a)~a. the hcart 01' the clicc. But [he 'hcart 01' thc dice' is alsci. i t sccms, ~ h c final locus ol'thc sell'. N a l a ' ~earliest discoveries are o l ' ~ h o s celerncncs of sclfhood which arc elsewhere. alien, and beyond (:und. as such, outsidc the tinicless mirror exlstcncc froln which he departs); hut the completion of Ihis proceh , of intcrnal ~lnfoldingand recognition takes him beyond cvcn this pcrccplion. towards an cxpcricncc of rhc sclf as rich in being bur ultimately empty of identity. Only such :In existence can transccncl cvil and tlme. The sell. :is Na1:i knows i t , I.; a . at his best. niost knowledyablc. is :I sclfpoint o f c o n t l a ~ r a l i o nMan, consuming. hence self-transcending being. In this system. the words 'not I' arc the strongest possible al'l~~rniation." 01'Nala i t is probably correc.1 to say that in an impc)rtant scnsc he is not rerilly there. and that his not lieins there is fundamental to the story's vision. We might define his drama mure generally as that o f ' the composition 2uid decomposition ol' the fragmented sell; and I [ is this theme. esl>cci;~llyin rclalion lo the dc\tructivc aspccl of 1I1c process. that Nala cpitomi/cs I'os the Epic as a whole. In [hi\ scnsc. [tic Nrilol~riA/i\~irlcr 11iight indeed hc seen as n kind 0 1 syniholic prCcis 01' the ILII-gcru.ork. wh~clir \ sil l'ascin;~tcdwith the notion 01- :I sell'consuming I'irc h~lrning the c,cntrc 01' existence. Othcr paths also open LIP:I[ this p o i n ~ .WCcan see the ~ ~ r i k i ndil'l'crencc g I'roni our western notlonx o t personhood: our in\tincts. ccrrainlj rho\c 01' [lie p.syc-l1o:!1~:!l\ticI ~ : ! L ~ ~ I ~ o I I~.1 1 1 1 7ill r c c J ~ ~ r r ~ : ~:)I ~~i -oLn~.C O V C I -[Ilow ~ I I ~ p:tr[j of the bell' u.hic.11 ~ I I - C lclt to l ~ cIc\h acces\ihlc to c.on\cio~ls~lc\\.

atrophied, or '1o:;t'. To reclaim is to achieve greater wholeness, greatcr unity and cohesion. a more pervasive and ha!anced integration. For Nala, or for the poets who sang his story, the self itself is other; possession by Kali is not a moment to be reclaimed or integrated but an awakening, through intoxication and madness, to this fragmented alienness within us and to the process of self-consummation. in a double sense, that is felt to be constitutive of human experience. Fate, for these poets, allows this process to take place and offers the hope of transcendence; no wonder it is linked by etymology with a sense of the divine (daiva from deva, god). For them, 'not I' rings truer than '1, driven by an unknown impulse that is yet wholly mine'. We may also think of the primordial, lonely Purusa-Person of the U p a n i ~ a dwho, , ~ ~ in the beginning, looked about him but saw nothing other than himself ( s o 'nviksya nanvad iitmano 'paiyar), and who then uttered the first of all sentences couched in language: 'I am' (so 'ham asmi).Nala. too, we should recall, uttered just such a statement, as the promise to Damayanti that he pointedly fails to keep. For him, at the end of his evolution, to say 'I am' must ultimately proceed from the opposite pole, perhaps from a statement such as 'not I am'still a strong assertion. And where the Purusa saw in the vastness of the universe, still uncreated, nothing other than the self, Nala learns to see the self in the created world as only other. Only in their relation to the existence of evil, and to the inner reality of fire, do these two figures converge: sa yat purvo 'srndt sarvasmat sarvan pdpmana ausat, tasmcit purusah.

Being prior 10 all this, he burnt up all evils; that is what makes him Purusa-a person.

Embracing the Subject: Harsa's Play within a Play*

If one is looking for evidence of subjectivity-which I am prepared to define, in as neutral a manner as possible, as the coagulation of semantic space within the limits of a single affcctivc consciousness-then Sanskrit drama would seem to be a most improbable arena for the search. Generations of Sanskritists, both Indian and western, among them solnc of the finest representatives of the tradition, have taken their stand on the alleged impersonality, the utter absence of subjectivity, in nearly all extant Sanskrit literature. For some. such as D.D. Kosambi-bitterly conflicted amalgam of connoisseur and ideologue-this impersonal quality is mostly negative, a fateful diminution in expressive power. Others, such as Ingalls, felt compelled to apologetic defence.' Ironically, both views are heavily coloured by an anachronistic romanticism, which made expressionistic lyricism the touchstone of quality in the mainstream of English and German poetry from the late eighteenth century on, and which regularly filtered down into scholarly judgements of non-European literatures as well. As always, an entire epistemology, or an epistemic psychology, is implicit in this sort of poetic choice. In fact, the problem is much wider, by no mcans limited to issues of framing and evaluation. 'Self' and 'subject' are terms rrom a familiar, if f u ~ z y series, , which also includes, at the vcry icast, 'person', 'persona', 'psyche', and 'individual'. Important questions of integration and multiplicity arc always present in relation to such terms and. it sho~11dbe emphasized. have clicited serious answcrs

* First publisliccl in thc .lo~rr-r~c~l of Irltlitrr~Phrlo.sopl~\:3-5 ( 1097). (79-89. 'Daniel H.H. 1ny;rlla. A I IAritl~olo,q\.c!f.YorrtXrt~C'orlt-fl'octr\. (C'amb~.idge. Mash.. 1965). 3-2-7.

Embracing the Suhjoct: HNI-.~(I's Play within

from wilhin all rhe major classical lndian philosophical traditions.' To pursuc thcsc competing notions of. say. the person would take us far bcyond the scope of this exploratory essay. I am not, moreover, certain that it would solve our particular quandary about Sanskrit sub.jccts. For our purposes, wc are going to have to let the poetry speak morc or less directly of its own concerns. Nor, of course, without interpreting it, highlighting and selecting in a frankly analytic mode. Still, our method is empirical, a kind of careful listening, based on the assumption that a culturally constructed inner world finds its voice in language that reflects, in non-accidental ways, its primary intuitions. I excludc, at the outset, the interesting question of individualism, as irrelevant to our main focus. Similarly, although I dislike thinking about Sanskrit as an isolated world separate from the vernacular milieus, I will not deal here with analogous problems in other Indian literatures (where, in fact, living 'subjects' of a type more familiar to us may be more conspicuous). Within these limits, I would like to state my hypothesis in a deliberately provocative manner: the problem of sub.jectivity, in a highly specific sense, is actually one of the great themes of classical Indian culture, rich in consequences, embodied in powerful and recurrent images and narrative patterns of diverse genres, including Sanskrit drama. Let me now try to demonstrate the way we meet this problem, and several active subjects, in two famous plays by the seventh-century king and playwright Harsa.

The Priyadariika and Ratnavali are courtly dramas of an erotic (one hesirates at the tag 'ron!antic') type very close to one another in structure and heavily dependent upon the prestigious model of Kalidasa's Mcilavikcignimitra. The Ratncivali in particular is favoured by Sanskrit poeticians, who sec i t as lucidly embodying the scheme "ee, for example, the fine study by Steven Collins, SeZfless person.^: Inlri,qrr\, arid Tllought in Theravada Rllrldtlisrn (Cambridge, 1982); also, M. Carrithcrs. S. Collins. and S. Lukes (eds), The Cntegorv of the Person (Cambridge. 19x5); W . Halbtass, 'Man and Self in Traditional Indian though^‘, in Trnditiorl rrtirl RyfTrc,trorr: Erl~lnrutiori.~ in Itrdia~iThougtit (Albirny. 1'99 1 ) . 265-80.

ti

P l u ~ . 16 1

of sandlzis, s r r n d h ~ ~ a r i g aand . ~ ~zrthrn~zrakrti.r cnshrined in classical dramaturgical theory. 11 has also. necdlcss to say, hcen t'nrccd into the all-encompassing mode of rasa poetics. None of this. howcver cogent, is very useful to us in this context. and we will havc to gct along for the moment without the supporr of Indian poetics, including its standard typologies of nayaka heroes and nayika heroines. What does concern us is the naturc of the process that the hero-in both plays, the beloved Udayana Valsaraja-must undergo, its effects upon his consciousness, and the composition of his inner self. A similar concern attaches to the development experienced by the two main heroines. Thematic, linguistic, and narrative elements, taken seriously as carrying a burden of meaning, will help us re-imagine this Sanskrit poet's motivating world. We might begin by noticing that the two dramas are variations on a single, apparently rather simple plot. A new, innocently alluring girl turns up at the royal court and becomes part of the queen's retinue; she falls in love with the king, and he with her: thc expected alarms and excursions unfold, propelled in particular by the clown's ineptitude, which imperils above all the lovesick heroine; a crisis is ultimately reached which leads the queen to fear for the heroine's life, thereby producing a reversal and allowing for the girl's painless integration into the harem as anew co-wife, married to the king. The ostensible 'problem' that has to be resolved, in both plays, is queen Vasavadatta's hypersensitivity to any potential rival; the king's new love is a threat to her. a trigger for hostile reactions ranging from pique to fury. Vgsavadattfi must thus. in each case, be made to undergo a change of heart, which can come only from a perception of mortal danger threatening the heroine; in the Ratnavali, the more complicated of the two dramas, the royal minister Yaugandharayana (who is attempting to engineer his master's union with the heroine, Sagarika) devotes all his efforts to achieving precisely this changc of heart in the queen. Still. this surface difficulty is. for all its poignancy, very far from constituting the real mainspring of the dramatic action; and we can probably assume, as already hinted, that both plays present us with a vision of the intra-psychic process that both the hero and the heroine must live through to the end, in a highly ritualized. selfreplicating experien~ialmode. This process has certain dependable and rccurrcnt features. as we shall see. Lel me now introduce the two heroines: Sagarika. 'sea-borne' in the Ratnavali. is actually the daughter of the Simhala king: a prophelic

1 62

Thr Wisdom od Poets

Siddha had promised that whoever ~narricdher would become King of All the World. On her way 10 marry Udayana Vatsaraja, hcr ship is wrecked, but she survives by floating on a plank of wood; a merchant from Kaubamhi recues her and delivers her to the minisler Yaugandharayana; the latter, who knows her identity, plants her incognito in the queen's retinue until such time as he can find a way to overcome Vasavadatta's predictable resistance to the marriage. In this state of disguise, Sggarika catches sight of the king and falls in love. When Vasavadatta discovers this. as well as her husband's answering infatuation, she binds the poor girl in chains and keeps her prisoner in her apartments; eventually a magician sent by Yaugandharayana creates the illusion of a fire in the harem, and the king rushes in to save the bound and captive Sagarika; Vasavadatta is suitably repentant and becomes reconciled to the girl's.new status (she also conveniently turns out to be the Queen's cousin). Priyadariika shows us a heroine of that name, originally promised by her father to Udayana, but trapped and traumatized by martial conflict on her way to the king; she ultimately arrives alone at the court under the assumed name of Aranyika ('Sylvia,' in Warder's quaint calque3). Here the love between the king and the pubescent newcomer is revealed in the course of aplay within the play, in which Udayana plays himself while Aranyikaplays her main rival, the queen; the play breaks down, and once again Vasavadatta carries away the threatening upstart and imprisons her in her chambers. There, in despair, Aranyikii attempts to poison herself, but is restored by the king, who has expert knowledge of antidotes; this close call, and the revelation of her real identity (another of Vasavadatta's seemingly ubiquitous cousins), appease the irascible Queen. Such are the plots, reduced to their minimal skeleton forms. The replicated structure is also evident in a host of minor details, for example in the patterned behaviour of the Vidusaka-clown, or in the shared (and relatively conspicuous) background of military campaigns in the service of cynical Realpolitik. or in the contrived sequence of accidental meetings and infatuations and consequent confusions. And so on: we can all too easily exhaust this overt level of the plot without ever reaching down to the level of its acting sub.jects. Matters become more interesting only when we start looking more closely at the correspondences in theme or thematired components of structure.

' A.K. Warder. indian Kavbrz Liercrtnr-(2,Vol. IV (Ilelhi, 1083 ). ht>-8.

Take, for example, the queslion of time. Both plays unfold within the context of ritua!ized festival: Rarnuvali in the spring-time Festival of Desire (madarlamulzotsava), Priyadar.Sikriin the autumnal Full-Moon rite (ka~rmudimahotsavain ASvina-~arttika). The play-within-a-play, not surprisingly, is a part of the latter holiday's proceedings. Although the two festivals are quite different in tone and meaning. they both represent the replacement of what we might call 'standard time' by a very different temporal mode, with its own processual features and distinct causality. The events of the drama thus take place in a kind of 'time outside of time'. an abrogation of normative temporality. This is important: we might already surmise. in terms of our primary concern, that the sub.ject we are looking for can only appear in such an 'atemporal' or non-normative context; that standard time in its dependable sequencing is somehow inimical to the very existence of this kind of subject. In support of this seemingly rather wild surmise I cite the prominent motif in Ratr~avalicfthe special jasmine creeperpeculiarly beloved by the king, who lavishes attention on it and has even availed himself of the services of an itinerant Sadhu-botanist to experiment on it-which finally, through these attentions, achieves an early blooming, an 'untimely' unfolding (nk&lakusumasamjrznadohada, 11. pmveiaka). This in the context of a general vernal riot of flcwering, along the lines of the usual notions about such matters in Sanskrit poetry (the ASoka blooms when kicked by a beautiful woman, the Campaka when smiled at, the Bakula when showered with liquor spit from a girl's mouth, etc.-I, v. 18). This blossoming ou! of time is a clue-an iconic suggestion that points to the similarly 'untimely' opening or unfolding that the Nayaka himself is about to experience. And since we have already noticed something of the quality thac attaches to this vernal exuberance--the real context of ali the topsy-turvy events of this play-we might try to define a little more closely the major features of this festive process. In chron~aticterms, this is a moment when the royal city turns a brilliant golden-yellow-red (gaura), as iC, as the king says, its inhabitants were purified by liquid gold (Sutakumbhndravakhacira, 1.10). The liquid quality is also crucial: the flood of gold (in various forms, such as coloured watcr sprayed Crom syringe-like devices, irrigaka, or powdered dyes, putuvci.ru, showered in profusion on everyone In the ytrecls. or lhe golden-red ASoka blossoms. or the

, \ / / t ( / t i / I~> ;~I IiI I I L I ~ I ~ ~ ~I I >. O I ~I> I\,% ~ ~ ~ I > I ~ I I : .I ~\ C \ I I I [ O [Ilc I ~ ~ ~ I c I L IC!O L I S ~ >~ I I ' L I 1\ 1, :I \1g11 tI1;Lt u l l < l t u;1\ l l l t l l c ~ ! - l , l \ , l l i c l . \Loll!. ;111cI L . O I ~ II \ lllcllillg cIo\s11 irl tllc Iic;11 01' a w a h c n ~ n gIc.cling. T h i \ i h :in 1nllc.i. nlo\clncnl a l j o p e ~ ~ - c ~ ~;I\~ rccl. \ ~ e cal I~inllniru\c~-ot~cisrli ( I i1;<1i) tI1;1t I \ ; 1 1 \ 0 gIo\sccI ;I\ 'p1;1y' (XI-illii.I . \er-\c I I ) \ 4 i t l i i l i tllc general cal.n~\.;~lc\cll~c atlllo\phcrc 01 Ioo\c.ning t>ouncl\. l ' h c \trcct\ arc ~ ~ l i vwith c tl;incc~-4.playrng. sirlgln?. \1rayilig one a~lotllc*rwith gold. T h i \ I \ thc c t t i n g I'or the hcro's internal m o \ c m c n t . Iic & . i l l hc rnoving O L I ~01' coli.;tri~ting. coldly congealed time. a hc:l\.ily o h i e c t i f ~ c dsLatc in morc way., than the merely Lcmpo~-al. t o u : ~ r d s a morc hcatcd ancl liquid. ruhesccnt rcalrt!, that wc rnighr II11nk 01'. t c ~ ~ t a t i v c l ya .\ m o r c ' s u b - j c c t i ~ c ' ,in w a y s st111 to Ilc I'ormulated. Hcrc is one I'airly predictable 1'ot.mula~ion.that I ' o l l o ~ s i r n m c d i a t c l y u p o n t h e h i n g ' s d e s c r i p t i o n of t h e city' f c \ t i \ , c transl'ormalion: ilrtr / I I ~ ( I ~ / ~ ~11~~1dlrt11~1(?\o I I ~ ~ ( I I I I j(111ti\\.(i/ ~ ~ . ( l ( t \k(it.oti . ~ r ~ i rll!.(lii/(l~~i /1(1,?c~i(/ ~ ~ i ( / I ~ jk21uii ~ ( r t i l ~ i / ~ ( I / t ( ~ / ~ t - ( k~~, vi \~~rir~u~i /~~( r / ~ ( ? r t ~ r i I r First. this month ol' 4p1-1ng sc~l'tensyour hearl-then Llcsir-c selLc\ tllc* opportunity lo cut right through 4 OLI w ~ t hhis f o w e ~ - - a ~ - ~ -(1. o w15\ 1. 1n1e1-nal mclting and softening arc an o p e n i n g Lo d c s ~ r c .with i t \ d c p c ~ i d ; ~ h languish. c W e could. in fact. state this more jtsongly. in a manner thaL ~ r a n s c c n d sthe hackneyed trope: the protagvnisL who ha\ c n k r e d t h e l'cstival d o m a ~ n - o f w h i c h [ h e dl-ama itself ( o r i t \ pcl.i'ormancc) surely con.;tiLutcj a ~ O ~ S ~ I C L I Omasher-\sill LI\ hcyrn to 'liclucfy' in ~ h cIicated stale 01' i n c i p i c n ~csoLic. rnadnc.44. uhicll tur.i1\ hlm \;ulncrablc, somc\shaL Iiclplc.;~.; ~ n d\~lhlcc.t\ hirn to palrl. Anti what o f hi4 ; ~ w a r c n c s;it~ thi4 ~ L I I I C I U S C ' . Here. ' Loo. ;I ( S ; I I I ~ ~ L I O I ~ 1 4 t;~kingpI;~ce.T h e king. \taring happily a[ t h c i . h a o t ~ c\ccnc o ~ l t \ l d c . (ell\ the clo1s.n t h : ~[hi4 ~ world 01' Io\reri; ( o r 0 1 \crpcrlt\. l~lrlr;i~rl;l.c\i'lll t7y 1 1 1 \~\~\ t e ~ l l l ; 1 l l L ~\ c ~ l l e ~01\ ~7lllllllllyc~ll;llll~lrl-\: I \A 1 1 1 ll'l\r 11~0l-cto

a \ , o ~ ~I t~ I \ Lcc'Ilil~i[~lc' ;111d I [ \ 11111711~;111011\101. 1 1 1 ~c \ ~ ~ l \ l l l\ tgl l > l i ' ~ I . T h e I o \ c r \ \ialidcl-111ythe \trcct\ 21-c rlli~illcntarllh ~ J c r ~ t i l i c c lI>y . ] i n g ~ l \ l l i~ 1 1 ~ ~ ~ r l l l l ~ ~ O \31111 ~ l t i O1111' 1 1 . 4C't.]7Cllt ~ C I I I / C I I \ 01 t l l ~11cl.llCl~ world-a~ld I:cla\arl,l-\ v,ol-ld ii, t1111s itjell I71-icl'lbrcl'asliioncd In [hi\ S L l t > t ~ ~ . r ; 1111,1ge. ~ ~ ~ e , ~;I nrc;~InloI'dasknc.;4 :inel ccrlc I ~ g h t and s \wayins hoods. T h e ~ l ~ l l ~ , ~ \.cs11;~1 ~ h c c ic~.oticisnl[urn\ '41700hy' l.or ;I nlomcnr. and w e lia\,c a 4~1gyc>ti(ln o l ' ; ~111ddc11. darhcxr s ~ d cEven . niosc .;~r-iking. however. i \ the ~ y n i t ~ o01'n 'lncmol-y' ( ~ h tsaditiorl c ha\ i t th;~t.in hlh youtll. IJday;uia \,i\ltccl the nctlier wol-Id and lcnrncd these the art 01. healing p o i \ o n o l ~ bite\). j O n e h c s i ~ a ~ Lcos ~ ) \ c r l o a tlic J verse. but w e can a n y w a y note in pas4ing tllat Lhe \ c ~ l >he ~ l ~ e 5 - - - \ i 1 / ? 1 , \ t 1 1 ( 1 1 ~ ( 1 ~ ( 1 t i - - is, i l ' w c \\ant to he pedantic. pr.opcrly l ~ n k c dto :I 101-m01' I'ccllng or cognition th:lt 1s dclincd by the cla\\icnl Icx~cogr.aphcrsa y c a r n i ~ l g o r longing (rrtkil17tlriip~i/-1~t1ki11?1 s ~ t l t l t - ( ~ / l ( Mcriiory ~~n). ignitch. in ;I playful niodc dolnlnatcd by ling~listichpli~ting.c;Lrrylny \s,itli i t a subtle burden of d c s ~ r clor a I o s ~o r at>.;cnt clornain. This 1 4 (he scttlng ot'rhc Rtrrrrri~.c~li: we have abstracted the featurcs of festive hcatilig. melting. tlo\s.ing. ~ 1 1 1~~55ociatcd with ~'OSIIISO f ~ l i ~ y ; his soflcs inncrnc.;~aclivatci, o u r hero and at the same time nlahcs him 1-7". to d c ~ i l - cand . to longing. which he expresses in pasonomastic games. Lcr us tahc a m o m e n t to e x a m i n e morc c~losclytllia particulalforrn of' playing.

t whicli In thc highl:; cllarged atnio.;phc~-cpropel- to the S a n ~ h r idrama. must also be ~sclatcdLO its parLic~llarriL~lalc t t l n g . the poet'\ I i r i g i ~ l \ ~ l c choice4 are n c \ c r entirely innoccnL. Sccn alone. ~11 niay 9 alJpc;LrSO many \,arlatlon\ o n a l a ~ r l >rc\tric.tc~d range ol tlic~iic\;11id l i y u r - c (and y c ~~ l ~ \rt11;1t101i c ~ r in the L ~ I ~ I C ' IoI';ln ~~nl'oldirlg \ C C I L I C I I ~ \llo~~IcI C always t7c cxanlincd): ill tlicir c ~ ~ i r n ~ ~ limpact, a ( ~ v c t h c ~Lend to nlo\;c the I i s ~ c n c r / o h \ c r ~ .t~iwal-dh cr some Iorm oI internal \hll't ill ;luarcnczz in line \vitli thc ci~~t\t;lncl~ng thcniatic ~ S \ L I C01 ~ ;LII>I ) ; I I . I I C L I ~ pl;ly.' ~ ~ ~ - IL 1s thu.; ( > I ' \ c i l l l C Intci.c\c L O 11, I I I ~ L O~ L I I - a u t l l o ~I'il.st ~ n t r o d ~ ~LcI \ ~toc \his

Etnht.cic~irlgtile, Suh1rc.t: H u t - . s o ' s

hero, Vatsaraja, in a verse that is already divided by a paronomastic dou ble-take: Like Love. he is disembodied strife-and full or plcas~rc. He hides in people's hearts. Moreover, Springtime is his friend (but unlike Love, you still can see him). This vernal festival of Love is really his, and he can't wait to see i t (1.8).5

1

Verses structured around Slesa are generally impossible to translate, f ~ obvious r reasons, and one should prohahly give up trying: but without some sense of their effect, we can hardly begin to enter into the process set in motion by the performance. Nearly all good Slesa verses are sustained by a series of doubled attributes, equally appropriate for either register: thus the king is the friend of the clown Vasantaka, just as Love has spring fvasanra) for his companion; the king has done away with strife (vigraha), just as Kama is without form (vigraha): both these figures lurk invisibly in people's hearts or minds. Both are linkcd to sensual pleasure (rati)-the king brings it to his suhjects, Kama is married to ilher. None of this is at all unusual, but neither is it without meaning, since Udayana's incarnation of the Love-god recurs with intensifying impact at later stages of the dramawhen Ratnavali first sees him, for example, and mistakes him for this deity whom she recognizes from rituals of worship in her home; and when she paints his picturc from memory arid then somewhat shamefully tries to pass i t off as image of Kama iil the presence of her teasing and knowledgeable friend (Act 11, initial dialogue after the pral.zeSaka). These are playful moments, which we would be wrong to trivialize simply because they arc so predictable. The point. surely. has something to do with what is happening, or about to happen. to this king in the heated context 01' 'his' festival. There is, perhaps. a 5vi,~rut~~u~~r,qr~~/~ukc~//~o ru~~tt~e ,UJI
in Sanskr~tcourt poctry, sec Da\'id Smith, Rtr/ttclkerru's /h(' I'OIA E/)il)i(. ~ I (Dclhi. 1985) 2'42-

H ~ ~ r u v i j u ~A11 ( i :[ T I I ~ ~ ( / ~ A10 C / I O .Yut~.sX.ri/ I~

304.

167

sense in which the hero really will embody the disembodied Lovegod. in a mode not far removed from what the Sanskrit poeticians rupaka (for us. a form of 'metaphorical identifi~ation'~). Udayana assumcs thc rripu-the visible contours and identifying features--of someone else (a divine someone. as i t happens). In fact as we will see, one could use almost the same words to describe the way he assume his own native I-lips, and the roles that go with it. But we are getting ahead of ourselves; let us put aside, for the moment: the question of ritualized rupaka and return to the poet's paronomastic urge. Here we may notice that Slesa appears with a certain regularity with respect to individual voices in the drama. Most perspicuous of all is the way i t tends to overwhelm the hero's consciousness and consequent linguistic expressivity. Although .ile.ya can. naturally, crop up anywhere, it is Udayana who is most susceptible to this type of splitting-in particular, from the moment he begins to fall in love. Thus in the PriyadariikG, as he gropes for words adequate to the beauty he has suddenly perceived, he marvels that the lotus flowers fail to fold at the touch of her delicate hands-for these hands (kara) are really like moonbeans (kara again), just as she is like the moon (her breasts, payodhara, emerging, radiant, from behind her upper garment, as when clouds,pa~indhara,clear to reveal the moon, etc.11.7). It is not the well-worn double entendres themselves that are of interest, hut their sudden emergence at this juncture, and their persistence (see, e.g., 11.10. poignantly closing the second act in precisely this mode). In the Ratnavali, the royal propensity for lovesick punning is even more pronounced: Udayana enters in Act I1 with a proleptic Slesu verse (4);then, newly infatuated with 'Sagarika'l R a t n ~ v a l ihe , unconsciously names her in a deftly crafted play on the li~ woman who is like a lost necklace ( r a t t z a ~ ~ a19): Miraculously found. and lun~inous with feeling, my bcloved has slipped away, a brilliant necklace lost before it could hang upon my neck.'

c i t ~ L J U . ~ U P/ II r l ~ l l l ~ ~ ~ \ tllcl ~ l l 7 / ~ k ~

, ~ ~ ~ , S ~ ! / J I~ U ~ ~i ~V~~z .~ ~t ~~ u~/ /~ ~o ~/ ,Os ~~ ~~U~~ ~. S~( ~~, <~Ll~~u~C ~tI T.- SU, I~
P l c ~ yw i t l r i n u Plu?;

jy~~

' E. Gerow. A G1~1.s.rut-Iof IIILIIUIIF I R I A ~(C? f(' .S l ~ e e ((The . l ~ Hague. 1971 ). 239, continuing: 'a Ilprc In which the uhjcct ot' comparison i j identil'icd with its object hy a apec,il'ic p r o c e ol'gran~rnat~cal hubordinu~ion.' prupfd k u / f ~ e r w ~ ( ~ ~ /O. )II I J k(1r1/17(1tt1 ( ~ I u

~ t i / ( ~ Ixi~ ~ /)reik(i/(i~.(i,q(i/ (i

r ~ ~ t u i ~k ( ~ i r l~ / ( i li t ti( r ~ i i t c~ i l~ i i ~i s / u (ld11.(1117,ii/(i l />It(i~~(r/ci//

finhi-nc.ii~gthe Suhj!jec.t:Hor.yrr's Play within a Pluy

This is the culmination of the sccoiid act. which produces the royal niadncss and its fissiparogs poctic articulalions, always informed by loss and the ecstasies of dissociation: by the time Acl 111 opens, our hero will himself be lost, his mind adrift in an oceanic surgc of richly emotional puns (3, 5-6, 12-1 3). T o restate this sequence more abstraclly: once thc sub-ject is activaled or enlivened by emerging desire, his world seems to split inlo at lcast two perceptual tracks or spheres, linkcd or conflated by paronomastic devices. Indeed, we can probably also reason backwards from this indication, inferring the presence of a living subject from thc moment Slesa predominates in his or her discourse (among other related indications, to be named below). The one really striking exccption lo this pattern, in Udayana's he has finally case, appears when he thinks-inis~akenly--that achieved a happy rendezvous with Sagarik3 ([I. 1 1): here, surprisingly, he rattles off a series of standard ~netaphorice q u a t i ~ n s('your face is the moon, your eyes are lotuses', etc.) and then demands an embrace, as if his fragmenting inner world had suddenly come back together in a moment of dramatic integration, whcn such comparisons can become literal realities, fleshed out and grounded in an act of love. This is not the place to develop a theory of Sle.yr-though we badly need one more attuned to the nuances and complexities of usage, and to the affective and cognitive components of the richly varying contexts, than what we find in the ularikbrikas' d i s c u ~ s i o n sFor . ~ this figure, formal or logical analyses simply do not sufficc. For present purposes, let us simply note that there are issues here relating to ( I ) a split in consciousness within the hero heated by desire, perhaps to the point of madness and (23 a latent notion of literalizing metaphor, or of speaking literal truth, precisely in the context of an intensified engagement in erotic 'illusion'.' I want to takc a moment to explore this latter theme a little further, beforc we return to Udayana's misconstrued rendezvous with Sagarika. Remember that the interplay --

-- -

-

-

-

The verse is a complaint addressed to thc clumsy Vidusaka, who is blamed for this loss. 'See now Yigal Bronner. 'Poetry at ~ t Extreme: s The Theory and Practice of Bitcxtual Poetry (Slesa) in South Asia', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago. 1999. " I note Mamrnata's pcrceptivc. I'ormulalion ol' the power of Slesa (in a given verhc) as dcrivccl i-roll1 ‘unrestricted denotation' (crhlridhu\ti r:ni\.r~t~/t-r~!rd/). hi~.vn/,t-r~kfi.icl10.43.

169

of lilcral-minded, ralhcr crude truthfulness and high-flown lyrical fantasy is structured into Sanskrit drama in thc intimate relationship between hero and clown. Thcse two deeply divided characters always comprisc a n incongruous unity. which in itself speaks LO the composition and representation of any real subject. In the Rarnuvali, the clown has the unfortunate role of describing in slark and convincing terms the character of ViisavadattB, Udayana's main , queen: she is, the Vidtisaka says, 'ever irascible' ( n i ~ a r u s f u )and given to caustic and insulting utterance (111, after v. 11). Udayana himself never goes this far; and yet we several times detect a tone of frustration, complaint, and even something bordering on vindictive ridicule when he thinks or speaks of his queen. Here, for example, is the first verse-again, divided by Slesa-that he devotes to her: Freshly bathed and gleaming with [hat special light. your red dress fluttering at the edges as you worship the god of Love, you could almost be, my dear, a quivering and vividly vital arboreal vine ... (I.20)."' This, in contrast to the crude but forthright praise he offers Sggarikii (see above), is perfunctory flattery, at once precious and ironic, as one can sense from the slightly ludicrous conglomeration of alliterating labials in the final line (b~lapravulavifapiprabhav~ lareva-feebly imitated in my translation). The verse culminates in a bubbly verbosity that seems calculated to offend without undermining the external pretence of innoccnce. Any further doubts about Udayana's true feelings are put to rest soon after this initial meeting, in the spiteful verse in which he imagines VisavadattB's face, purple with rage, after she sees the premature flowering of his bcloved creeper (which he compares to another woman-11.4). So, in effect, the clown, as often, deserves our thanks for stating the obvious: he has cxternalized in a literal mode the hero's own feeling and perception. Languagc. p~tchedat the level of hyperbolic

"'Pru~~urgru~~u~~j~~t~n~~i~ie~s~~vi~~ik~c~k~intiI ktrro.~mtbh~~rcigun~irm~~/t~~rtulc~<~~ \~ibIirujasemakarnkrtonanr arc.rivi~~tti hdlr~/~rc~vuln~~itt~~~i/~rnbIio~~ci /ate\~a//

The descrip1i:)n could also apply lo a vine, its borders illuininatcd by rays of lighl from the ku.rumbhn flower, freshly watered and gleaming. and so on.

/:,lll)i,ll

L~oilc~clt. I \ i l L ~ l ' l : l l c ~ c l e l ( ) \ \ Il\! :11.il\ Iou;ll~il!? t11c l i l c l ~ : l l . B111 tIlC clo\\ l l . \ role I \ liarilly cxl!;~~~\rcil 1 ). this ilc\c~-il)l~on. l'liit-c arc olhcr \\ ays in wIiic.li lie i \ ~ ~ n i - ; ~ n l~.c,la~ccl i ~ l y to :I ~ > i ~ \ \ c ~ r l]>c~.c.cption ril 0 1 ' ~ h creal. I.'Ol c,<:llll~2lc. i l I \ 111c c~lo\\.ll\ ~ I l i l . :it 1I1e ~~lll11:lx01 111e !,111g.\ rlrsc I I I C C I I I : will1 ~ h i \ 11c\\:IhcIo\~cd.:1~1\\~,;1rdly intcl.r~lpt\wilt1 the comment thi11 ,Iliis g11-1( S ; I ? ; I I - ~I ~\ ?rc:~lly ~ ) ~ L I :~ ~L ~ i o t l V i ~?rI S : I ~ ~ ~ : I(11. L L ;;~i'tcr I verse 18). 7'llc i ~ i ~ m c d i ; ~el~i'cct lc 01' tlii.; sl:ltenlcnt is that the girl clisal)]>ears---~wli~k Vfis:~\aclalta licrsell. as i f ~ v a i ~ i i iI'or g t h i ~cue. comes on \t:~yc.ti1 thc k ~ n g ' sacucc crnharr:~scrnenl.Thc clown was. pe~.lial)s.'onlv' p1:~ying;hut liic wol-d\ have changed ~ h cwol-Id. M~~lccivcr. si\ e ~ ~i I i cI'III-LIICI. C . ~ L I01 ~ S(he C plot. orie C ; I I ~ hardly avoid the hcnse hat ~ h clown c ha\ i~ladvcrtcncly\turnhlcd upon an impnrcant t ~ u t l i Thc . two womcii :~rc.a1 some Icvcl. split and replicalcd images ol' cach o t l ~ c r :in Hars:~'i inncr i ~ n i v c r s c .thcrc sccnlh lo he no po\sthility 01' ;~cliicviiig:III ~dcntilythal i \ not, in l'acc, on one Icvcl. d i v ~ d e d~~ci'lcctcil. . partly diaplaccd. and sell.-parodic. Uncovering this level is. i n a hen\?. \he iri~tialmove in the intricate process of selfex~c~rnali~atiori tr~gpercdhy [he ritual dralna. Think. again, of (he recurring plo!-structure: ~ w owomen, forccd inlo ernburrassing sit~~atioi?s ol'rc\eniblancc and conru\ron. reveal the hero's conflic~ccl 1ong111gs. which ~ c ~ i to c l become i'i>cuscd upoil-or. more precisely. cnibcdded uitliin-the dcceptivc. superimposed surfaces that hc this proliferating series in s li~cral, pcrccivcs. l'l~cclown. ~_.rnundirig enlbodicd re~llitywhich nevertheless acknowlcdgcs the perceptual do1.1hlirlg. tI111srcpl-escnls the linguist~carticul:~lionof a fund:~nicntal 'fact' (11' inncr cxpcricncc. '1s [hiat expcricncc is pcrccived hy at Icasc olie mutually \l~pl>i)rIiveccglnelit ( p o c ~and audience) of a scvenlli-ccntul.y S;~ri\krit-educatedclitc Hcrc we ; ~ r c~ o ~ ~ c l ion ~ i tlie i g most S U ~ ~ C S I I V C 01' 1111 the thematic noclc\ ill tlicse I \ \ O pla).\. I'ai~onomasi;~ O I ~ C I LLIP S ii riiuch deepel- vein 1 1 1 doul)ling. c~ridits I X ) ~ C I I I I ; I I evolution. within the :~rticulate~l \elf. 1 . 0 \i,c i h ~ c\ l c a r l ~ .\\ c li;~\.eonl) l o rc\.ic\i ~ h ct u o 1lurallcl sct.ric\, c ; ~ c hccriIt-a1 10 I [ \ r c \ l ~ c c t ~ \clrarna, .c in \~.hicIithe roy;ll p a s i o n is l~i11;1llvc,\~lo\L~Cl.

111:

llil

i i t i 1 / 1 , ~ l - .l l ( i 1 i l l ' i I 1 I i i \

11 i / I l l l l 11 / ' / ( I \

I7 I

l h ~ Cl l l l l l i ' 1 0 [ l l c I 1 I I t l ~ l t l\ ~ l ~ ~ l l MI11 [ ~ I ; L c c 01. ~ r c ~ l i l ~ / \C ! I ~ L ~' I\\ \ ~L) ~L I~CI~ \ \I' LI I \ ; I \ ; I ~ I ; I I I ; I 1 O ~ ~ L I I ~ : I I L ~ ~ \ . q ~ ~ c clC:1i l i 11\ I ~ ~ I - o I I ~ l\ iIc , ~ -111;11cl\ oi'lI11h111ot: l l l i l :II.I I \ ch he1.ot.c lie1 r i ~ : ~ l .Ni)tlcC t l i ~i1.0111i. II:I\\II.C 0 1 ' IICI. ; I I ) I > C ; ~ ~ - ; ~ I I L . L ' l h i \ I \ \:fi\;~\ ; ~ i I : ~ t l f i impci-sc~~l:~lir1~ Sfig;~i-ihl~ 111il2~1-\e)ll:1l1liy C';I\;I\,ILI;II[;I. -1'lic LIIICCII. in bCj[ig ~ i c ~ - s cI \ ~ 111;1y11iy ~'. ; i t /1c111s a1111thc1. \vllo I \ ;I\ h c r \ c l ~ ~-1.hls . threefold \upcrirnllc~,itioli I \ :I t ~ ; ~ s iI1:Lllcr.n c lor Hal-?:I. its n c h a l l see. The clown 21.i.cihlie!-. d~~cl:u-i~iy ~nnoccrltly(hilt. :I\ I I ~ L Icorrectly) ;~!. [ha[ 'this u:i1m;11i100k\ ; l l \ r I ~ h cV5savad;ile~'.He Icads lies to Udxyana. who proccctl, to g ~ \ . e\ o ~ c ct i ) his love lo1 ' I l c r ' -:~ssurning i l l 1 the time (ha1 \Ilc is reall! Sag;([-ik,;li l l c l ~ \ g ~ ~Wlicn ~ s c . tllc cIilccn c:ul stand the characlc 111) longer. \lie rc\,cal\ 1ic1.sell \ \ ~ t l the i hiller stalcnicnl lh:lt she is 'rc:~llySag:rrihl~---~s~~lce \ ; ~ Ilily I . lorel. \LT he(-c\~erywhcre. your lici~l-lIlcing c t i ~ i ~ . ill e l !icr ~ grip'. 111 ;I p;uiic.. ~ h king c lamely tries to pacif 1 i 1 h I'LII-io~i, \ ~ i l c ~. L I I[ I ) no cl'l'cc~:\he take\ her le;~vc.71'lic clown is relieved: llic tiso ~iicriha\.c at lea\^ ,111 \ ~ v c d\ v i ~ h o ~coming lt 10 bodily hat-ni. Sou.. I~o\\t.\,cr. S3garikA l i e ~ c l l ' c o ~on r ~ stage. c~ in a slate o r dcspail-. she i\. 0 1 c o ~ ~ r sdi\guiscd c. Lr,'l\a\:adaIlC but \lie d o e s ~ i ' lril~lclilike 111cwhole sol-did scc11a1-ioa ~ i dI \ (riglitly J ul'raid of the y u c c ~ i her . nli\tl.c\\. So \he dctcl-rn~nchih;~tthis is Ilic rnonicnt 1.01 her to take her 0 ~ 1 11 1 1 ~ . sllc tics a crccpcr :~roundher neck. Bul the clown sees her- and calls tlic king--l?oth oi'thcm convinced. logically enough, that this I \ the 'real' Vuhavadattll, reduced to suic,idc hy the Iraurnatic encounter die has jilst unclcrgone. l'hc hing c u ~ saway thc crecpcr and disci)vel-h Il;at he has sa\,cd h t \ hc\ovcd, not his wii'c. Ovcrioyed. Iic sing, I O Iicr oI'lii\ love. a5huri11g11~1tlia~.although lie respects Vfis:~\acl:itta loi- Iicr ~iolltlit) ol cha~.:~clcl.. Ihc ilnly Lr~ic affectiori Iic l'ccl\ I,l'o~tlic woman lie now holcl\ i n his al.iiis. AI tliis dclicatc lurictul-c. V:l\;i\.acli~ttarctul.ri\. Iccli~ig\lie has. p c ~ . l i a ] ~ \ . ovcrreac~tc~l: ill~cnill~lg to l'ot.gi\c~Iier cr.l.:uil liri,l>;~nd.she litid\ him c ~ n h r a c i ~ Sc~~;li.i!,[l ig i l ~ i c lI ~ ~ - ~ ~ l lo\ ' ~ e\ oiil! ~ i ~ 1i 0 y1 1101.. Tile ~16I~;IcIe i\ coriiplcte: t l i i 1 1 L 1 1 1\.;I\[. ~ Liil;~! ;LII;Itell\ Vfi\'~\':rcl;~~tC 11i;tt lie \&;IS :lct~~:~lly concer~)cdi1t10111 / I ( ' , \i,tlcli lie i : l \ cil c!ic ~i1icit1:~I \~~i1111:111: thih Ii:~ppc~ls to he Iruc. ;I, llic L , ~ O \ \ I I co11111-111,. 1111~1 1 111;ikc\ I I O e l i ! ' l e ~ ~;lily ~i~c more. The t1111ti i \ 011t. ; l ~ i c I tlic ijnccli. I ' ; I I I I ~ I L I I 10 1 1 ~ 1I-~ ; I I I I I - C Ie:~cls . LIw~iyhot11 t h i , I ~ ~ * ; L I I ~ I I ' S~ I ;I I ~ ; I I;111il . I ~~lir., ~ ~,lic~~pi\li ~ . l o \11 i ;I\ ~ I - ~ \ o I ~ L ~ I P FOI-IIIL> ~ I I ~ o I . I $~ 1 I1 ~S
f ] O l l . l

. \ ~ I / I ( /11~1-e ~ I I . one I'~nd\I>otIi the 171-omit ol'cvcnlu;~li'ullilmcnt arid i t \ t c ~ i i ~ ~ o s a1.1-ustration. ~-y wo\.cn together in conll7icx ancl mo\ ing way\. Buc In Lerms o f the cl~lcstionswe arc asking. I [ i \ pcsliap\ Inorc ~~scl.ul to ohscl-vc thc way (his lahyrintli o f s e l l - i m [ ) c r \ o ~ i ~ t i oisi s I-csurncd i l l rhc Pri~rrdur-siku.unclcr similar conditioni. This time i t is thc h ~ n gwllo undcrgocs triplication. As part of thc autumn holiday, a pl:~y---'The L ~ f eor Udayana'-is being performed at court: its plot app'irenrly tocuses on IJdayana's wooing of V2savad:irra. long ago. Ar:lnyikii. rhc upstart rival to thc queen. is to play the part of V3savadattii. Once again. i t is the clown who cnginccrs (upon the suggestion of the girl's i'riend Manoramii) a way lor [he lo\,ers to meet. Manoram3 is meant to play the part (:f Udayan:~in this perlormance; instead. Udayana will secretly play h~msclf.Thus the drama unrolds on stage, with the king ~ltteringwords from his past and constantly closing in on Aranyikii, holding hcr hand, seating her beside him, singing to her of his lovc. Whrn you touch me with your hand tho! \teals rubescence from hs~ghtcoral, a rush of redness, that is lovc. stcals through my heart." ~lc..sc~ again: the 'rubescence' (rdgu) is the bright rcdness of love. Here. a~ the vcry cpntre of thc play within the play. language oncz again superin~posesand identifies two distinct levels. Udayana, disguised as himsclf. sarely knows what he is saying. playing at both levels, hut perhaps subtly privileging the non-metaphoric one. where 'lovc'. I'or once. means 'lovc'. Aranyikii, however. remains strangely innocent: she sccms not io recognize the king (for 'he' should he Manorama). nor to penetrate behind thc verses allegedly addrexscd I O her as Vfisavadattii. And yet her body unmistakably t e l l her the truth: Ara11~ik;i:WII;LIis tI11sstranfc fccling rn Iny wholc body. ~harcomes froln t o u c l i ~ nM;inor;~ma'! ~ 7Tlic rlictoric.;~lclilcstion goes unanswered: Aranvikfi's conscious a\\ arcncih I \ n o t really the is.rlic at this point. Still. therc I S \omcone In thc : t u ~ l r ~ n cwho c scii\c\ rlic undcrlyiny tr~lrli:thih is Va\avaciatta

hel-\cll'. with her o w n nicmoric\ o l what 'rcali)' lial>pcnccl 111 1lc.1c o ~ ~ r t \ l i iiind p : she l ~ - o ~ c ~.epc;~tcclly \is lo t!ic pIa.u~.ight( s i ~ ~ i 17c\i(lc ng her) at lhcse libcr.~ic\(ahen n ~ t hthe. story. l'hc playwright I-C~CCL:, these ~ n t c r v c n ~ i o n s'\1'o111. : Highness, poct~-yis alway\ like t h ~ s ' (dv~c,yrnrltiir11.Strm eL.0 kiir.\,or?rhilu\,l.\.>.uii). Moreover. i t is wl-orig thus again the play\vrigh~-to break up the delicious state o l Ikcling induced by the play (by Icavillg in protest. ('or example: tclr1 rlu yuktctrrt u s ~ h d n er-u.su-hizafig~~tr~ Xrt~.ilgutltunl). B U Irhc queen knows therc is morc to this than thc integrity of an aesthetic illusion, and. exiting rhc theatre. she discovers thc trulh from the clown, who has. naturally. fallen aslecp. A rather different play is bcing enacted--this is Vasavadat~a'sindignant conclusion-one ~ n o r cproperly titled 'The Adventures of Aranyika'. The king. exposed. pleads that i t was all only a form of playing. meant to amuse ViisavadaltB; she. however. is not amused. Aranyika is led away as a hapless prisoner. a victim o f the clown's contrivance and thc king's reckless self-indulgcncc. Who is this king'! In this ccntral scenc. he is himscif impcrsonating Manoramg impersonating him. By now we should be wondering about these conflated images. Is this as close as he can ever be to himselfplaying his fictive; reinvented pcrsona in a coul-tly drama'! From within this set of concentric frames, his words finally ring truc--words of love and longing for the woman heside him. Like Viisavadatta in thc Ratndvuli, Udayana plays at someonc elsc playing himsclf. He is a walking rupaka. endowed. as it were, with his own metaphoric form, a displaced re-embodiment of his own being. a schizoid tropc i n the flesh. The theme of literal~zcdmetaphor. which emcrged carlicr in connection with paronomastic splitting, is enacted a1 the heart of both these plays. It is n o longer only a matter of a split, tragmcnling consciousness that seeks expression in doubled speech. as wc initially assumed; here thc vcry construction of the dramatic iubjcct sccnis t o require fissure :ind supcrimpositioti. n coalescence within tlic conrcxr of an imagined poetic univcrse of self-replicating yclclearly separated parts or forms of the self. Another metaphor from [he Rutnfi\~c~liscenis beautifully suited ro this conclusion: there arc. says Kiincanciniiilii. one o f Vasavadatta's servants. occasional in\tancch of accidental resemblances (as. for example. ~ v h c na Lvonian all too siniil:~r to Sagarika is discovered painled o n a wooden hoard iiexl Io a p : ~ i n ~ e d Image t r i IJdayan,~!r: t h l ~ \the ,qllurfrr wor-ln bore\ holes ill \\'oc)il ~I1,1( look like ~ r i t t c nlct~c>~.\ ~ I ? ( / / r ~ ( i11~ iil'tcr ~ l i . \ . 10: , ~ / ~ ~ ~ I ~ ( ~Tlic ~\~II-(IIIIJ. sign or l i ~ u r - c~'cc.ap~~ulatc\. a\ i l by accidcn~.a di\l>lacccl ( a n d 1111-

sell'-conscious) original. Or. as Wiltgcn\tcrn tclis LIS, with a n eye to thc conscc~i~cnccs for a theory ol perception: 'One thinks [ha[ one i s tracing the o ~ ~ t l i n01'c the thing's naturc over :~ildover ag:~in.and one is merely tracing round the frame Lhro~~gli which we look at i t . ' 1 2 Such l'igures of replication, as I would like to call them. are always rich in meaning. Triplicate framcs enclose a subject actor constructed out of a defined movement of internal transiormation (probably reexperienced at another level by the audience of listcners/spectators). Let us go back, for a moment. to the term Slesrc which we have so [ar limited primarily to linguistic levels. ~ l e j ameans, literally, an embrace: two normally distinct registers or levcls arc brought together, their outlines superimposed by a linguistic trick-'accidental' homonymy, in most cases, assuming a variety of possible forms (rather like the accidental emergence of Sanskrit characters frcm the glzuna worm's blind meanderings).13 We have been thinking about this figure as revealing a split in awareness-and it is surely the case that the listener o r observer proceeds to disentangle the two interwoven registers in his mind, just as the 'liquefied' hero. within the play, maintains some residual trace of his former. normative, solidified self or selves-but we might be closer to the forces motivating the poet's choices if we imagine Slesa as a mode of hyper-identification, an expansion that assimilates a more immediate level to a more visionary one, thereby literalizing and literally 'embodying' or 'informing' the latter. Not schizogenesis, but a vivid reconnectednessfrequently eroticized in tone-is the true mark of this figure. 'There will be a sense in which the heroine's hand (kara) does incorporate the dimension of radiance (kara), as the poets insist: nothing, in language. ever simply leaves things as they 'are' (as if they could 'be' without langauge). Indeed. i t is the special gift of language that it enables us to see beyond the un-figured surface, which is at the same time transfigured by our words. ~ l e . s athat , is, has existential implications. The king is a re-embodied Love-god within the context of Kama's festival: a more narrow and delimited identity has been melted down. its boundaries dissolvcd In

''I>. W~ttgens~cin, P/~~lo.copl~ic~irl I~r~~c.s/i,yo/lori.s (New York.

10% 1. 1 14: scc also remarks by A.L. Rcckcr. 'Aridlinnna: Framing an Old Javancsc F:thlt.'. in A,[>.Bcckcr (cd.), Wriri11,yor! /hr To~lyui,(Ann Arbor. 1989). 703. '"1 I S , howcver. by no means certain thal I:~nguagcis capabic ol ;rcc~dcnl wltliin a rltuall/cd arcna like 111;lt ol. Sanskrrt driuna.

I I

to 'embrace' a divine role f.roln a n o ~ h c rs[,lcrc. At the r ; ~ l r e time. o v e r h e a t e d perception e x p a n d s to include such wider generally, as the newly generated suhjcct undergccs the hallucinatory sequences of compelling desirc. As usual, externalized language is correlated to some internal process-call it affective, or epistemic, or even ontic, as we shall scc. In terms o f this process, the play within a play assumes a highly specific purpose: embodying the metaphoric figure. the king is expanding into himselfsubject bursting out of the constricting borders of his earlier. heavily determined roles. At the same time, he secms to be retracing an image of his own form; playing at himself, he is. as i t were. becoming more and more like himself, impersonating his own impersonators, merging with his own infiguration. As I have already suggested, this is probably as close as he can get to something like a self. Moreover, there is always an 'as-if' quality to this kind of subjectification, especially since the distinction in levels is never entirely forfeited in the course of their superimposition. Both Slesa and rupaka actually require this awareness of ultimate difference.'"If we wanted to push the poeticians' terminology to a limit, we might now speak of the subjecdhero as a jlesdira-ya-rupaka, a metaphor with a body, fashioned out of the fusion of normally separated worlds. It is very striking that this simultaneous expansion and embodiment of the self takes place in the most deeply 'inner' or embedded mode, the play within the play. As so often in Indian systems, it is the apparently contained, internalized, or internally framed level of being that is least constricted. widest in resonance and range, most free and alive. More correctly, we could say that the 'contained' inner space is really the most encompassing level, in fact containing or subsuming its own frames. In this sensc, the play within the play, like the story within a story, o r the dream within a dream, naturally contains the deeper truth.15 It is not by chance that our hero becomes 'himself', so to speak, only here, at this most embedded moment. It is a moment of great seriousness, as well, as Udayana in fact says to the clown, whom

,

t

I4Thus Mammata 10, kdrikus 7-1 0. I50n the dream within a dream, sec my cssay. .Dreaming the Self in South India', in G. Stroumsa and D. Shulman (eds). Drrtrr~r-Cul/,trrs: Er/~lo~-ir/rori,s in the Cornparati~,eHislo17.of Drcc~~,iiri,y, (New York: OUP. 1999) (C'hap~cr 8 below]. See also Wendy I)onlgcr, 'Thc Drca~nsand Ilrarnas ol a Jc:~lous Hindu Queen', i n Stroumaa ;untl Shulman. D~-~~urr~-CrtI/~o-t..\, 74-84,

176

The Wisdonl c?f'Pocts

he sends away (to slecp, to dream): 'This is no tirnes for Joking' (nuisu kulah p a r i h a . ~ a s ~ uThis ) . sentencc immediately precedcs the king's entrance into the play within the play. For it is here, in the .
'" note in passing the strong contrast with the metaphysics of the play within the play in Hamlet, for example, wherc the further embeddedment deepens the ;ilienation of ~ h hero c from 'himself', and further isolates him in non-action. '' Herc we can follow the comment;itors' pleasant habit of looking for proleptic slatemenis of thematic relevance in the opening verses of a play.

Gtlhr-uc.~tl,q the Su1~joc.t:Hur.sa '.s Play within. a P1a.v

177

she cast [he flowers in the air where. naturally, they fell apart And yet-that scattered garland mlght protect you (1).18 She is eager, so very eager, but inborn modesty restrains her, so she keeps turning away, while her friends use words, the same ones, over and over, to coax her forward towards her husband. She can see him smile for the first time, when everything is still new. Thrilling with fear and love, held, now, in his embrace may she bless Him and you. (2)lY The second verse itself ends in a half-articulated Slesa: Slista Sivaycistu " a h , 'May she, embraced, act for your good fortunelbe for Siva, for your sake.' There is, after all, some question about her ability to sustain this union with its consequent commitments and disorders. Even more striking, however, is the progression traced, in outline, by these two verses: there is the garland that falls apart (vi-Slisyan, from the same root Slis that gives us Slesa), its individual flowers disarticulated and lost in space; than the hesitant goddess moving shyly toward the ultimate Slesa, the god's e m b r a ~ e . By ~ " this point, we can easily read this sequence, in expanded and concretized form, in the internal

''

padrigrasthitaya muhuh ~tanabharendnita~a namratam Snmbhotl sasprhalocnnatravapatham yantya ta&radhane/ l ~ r i m a ~Sirasihita!~ d. sapulakasvedodgatnotkatr~papLi viilisyar~kusumdiijalir girijaya ksipto 'ntare pcitu vaW/ autsukyena krtatvara sahabhuvd vyavartamarui hriyd tais tair handh~c\~adllu~arla.tva \ucanair- nirabhimukhyam punaW drstvagre vnratn a t r a s c i d h v a s i gauri navc7.sarigame .mmrohnrl~lrlakriharctla ha.satci Slista .fivayri.rtuvaW/ "The second opening benediction of the Priyc~~kl~fikd similarly builds up towards a participle I'rom this root: here ~ i v ais ci.Slistanz~irti.'embraced by

the frightened goddess'.

178

Thc Wi.vdonl c!f'Pocts

dcvclopmcnt of the characters in thc two plays-f'rom the initial movement of disintcgl-ation and identity dissolution as the festival begins to 'cook'thcm. to the assimilation (.Slc.!.u)in erotic longing of the further rcachcs of'thc sclf, which plays at itself as divine existence feeling its way into form. The initial disun~onand f'usion ( v i i l e s d s'1e.y~)envisioned in the benedictions point thc way to the intimate disturbance which. in both works, generates a self.

Before we recapitulate our understanding of this process. we have to look briefly at one last, critical component. Act iV of the Ratnavali focuses on magic (indrajnla): as the characters remain trapped in their frustrations-Sagarika a prisoner of the relentless queen, Udayana unable truly to appease the latter or to reach out to the former-a magician appears at the court. After a few impressive but predictable conjuring feats. he is interrupted by the triumphant entry of various politicos, who demand the king's attention; but the magician insists that he has onc more trick to perform. Suddenly a fire breaks out in the women's quarters. Udayana, to his credit, first thinks of Viisavadattii-but she is there beside him, filled with terror at the danger to Sagarika, whom she has tied up in her chambers. The king rushes in to save the girl, followed by the remorseful qucen and the clown. For her part, the despondent victim Sjgarika is quite prepared to die in the blaze, until the moment the king appcars; now, suddenly. there is a reason again to live. In the general panic, no one notices, at first, that the tire has failed to burn anyone or anything. This surprising fact could be the result of Sagarika's innately cooling and soothing i t is more likely, Udayana soon concludes. that it is presence-but either a dream or the magician's handiwork. The latter surmise proves to be correct, as the clown is, of course. the first to acknowledge. The pseudo-crisis then produces a general anagnorisis and reconciliation: Sagarika is revealed as Vasavadalta's lost cousin. a Lankan princess. and her marriage to the king can take placc with the full consent of. the now repentant queen. So we end with reintegration, a gcncral resolution to the carlicr conflicts. as is typical of' Sanskrit courtly drama. A similar conclusion is reached in the Priycidcir.lnc'hnear death by polson is luckily avcrtctl by Udayana's m a ~ i c a lhcaling art-and.

Etnhrtic.irl,q rhr Subject: H(ir.!.u'.s Pkiy ~ i t h i r u! P/w

.

179

again. crisis gives way to 'recognition'. Most studies of these plays, including the analyscs of the ulatikurikrts thcmsclvcs, have strcssed this achievement of harmonious closurc, the tinal 'fruition' and flowering of the seeds sown in the initial scenes. But we might also describe it as a kind of awakening. a disenchantment that closes off the process of the hero's heated self-revelation and leaves him, and all the other characters, in the statc of cooling and congealing back into their conventional, rather opaque and constricted set of roles. The festival fires seems to reach their peak in this penultimate moment of magical illusion, out of which the reversal back towards realityif one can use this word-is generated. In fact, the illusion reveals the true inner state of all the figures far more clearly than any disenchanting disclosure possibly could. In a way, this magical fire is the direct continuation. or intensification, of the poetic infiguration and reflexive recourse to an active sclf that we have seen throughout the drama, as the players give themselves, in madness and everincreasing confusion, to love. Udayana's desire can probably be fulfilled only through just such a creative illusion. Or, stated more generally: only magical illusion can burn away the illusion of reality, that frozen solid state that imprisons the normative, dangerously objectified self. That is why one needs festivals. with Sanskrit plays at their heart. In other words. a certain ontic wavering, a problematization of the real in relation to modes such as dream, magic, or figuration, seems to form part of the process in which a subject is born.

'It is hard to delineate one's self' (utnla kila duhkenriliki~~ate).~' This is the clown speaking, as if he were addressing our issues directly. He is referring to the technical act of painting a likeness-another act of mirrored self-replication-but, as so often, his statement is resonant within a much wider range of perception. The subjectivity we have been studying is contingent. context-sensitive. elusive, and the drama itself seems to end with its foreclosure. Let me try. in summary. to restate some of its more conspicuous features. There is. f'irst of all. a process, ncvcr a stable presence. The process

" Kotrr6~~ali11. hctorc vcrsc 20.

I X()

The W i s d o m of' Porrs

unfolds, in thesc two dramas. in a ritual setting and i n ri~ualtime, which is by dcfinition ‘untimely' (akalika). outsidc everyday calculations. Probably a disparity in time frames, or a positive disjunction in the experience of sequence, will normally precede the emergence of a subject.22 In all probability, the ritual aims at transformation, and this requircs heating, melting down the congealed exterior and the boundaries of the self in the directibn of fusion with other, perhaps divine forms of being. clearest sign of emergent This expansion of the self-the subjectivity of this sort-thus initially proceeds through disintegration (viilesa), a mode of self-loss and inner d i s t ~ r b a n c ewith . ~ ~ concomitant featurcs of splitting, anxiety, and powerful sensations of separation and longing. The subject makes his or her presence known precisely through these sensations, especially the persistent schizoid cleavages that are expressed in paronomastic speech. This constant doubling (Slesa), however, also reveals the subject in reflexive play, mirroring the self in various secondary and tertiary forms; such a subject is always in some sense at stake, a presence to be negotiated through replication (or, more characteristically, triplication) vis-a-vis the receding object of its desire. The course of play entails embodiment, the grounding of a figurative (and conventional) reality in literal forms of experience-which is to say that the living and active subject effects the rupture of existential planes, thereby establishing a critical connectivity between discrete domains. As the transforming heat intensifies, he or she will probably also wander back and forth between 22 G. Motzkin has argued in this vein for the eighteenth-century European pioneers of subjectivity: Time atad Transcendetlce (Dordrecht, Boston. London, 1992) 45-8, 79-8 1 . 23 Here we can note that the Rattzcivuli is saturated with suggestive usages of the verb ksip (literally 'to throw') and its derivatives, from the firs1 verse of the play on (see translation above). The king is g~rvanurci~otksiptuhyduva. 'disturbed at heart in his inlense infatuation' (111, before verse 5; the same expression is applied to Sagarika al the beginning of Acl 11). Laler, Vasavadatta rightly describes her husband as . ~ c i , ~ u r i k 6 r k ~ i ~ 1 t a h'his r d ~hcart u , troubled by SBgarika (111. after verse 13).11 would be tedious to list all [he instances of k.~ip/nrrk.ril~/utksip/ciksip/ni~peasily some two dozen In this play: suffice i t to say [ha\ this lexical choice constantly brings to the surface ~ h csense o f internal ag~tationw~lhinthe characrcn.

Ett~hrtrc.iirgrl~r'Srrhjec.r: Hnr..sa '.v Plrr?, wirhin a Play

1X I

ontic levels until the monicnt when visionary illusion, on he boundary of lifc and death, produccs a re-ordering of both cognitive and affective-experiential understanding. As the proccss unl.olds, thc nasccnt sub-jectmay reach toward forms of internal realignment, or self-coalescence, which suspend the discontinuities implicit in his or her consciousness outside this embedded depth of being. Elsewhere, I havc spoken of this state as one of momentary 'tautology'-tcidcitmya, to borrow a Sanskrit term-produced by a ritual process that is implicitly 'teleological', moving the subject into an identity modc in which a persona crystallizes and fully coincides with its own contours, surface fused with innerness, and then ultimately moving this 'tautidentical' subject through the self and out again into the non-coincident reservoir of potential, non-crystallized s e l v e ~ . ~We " have noticed the linguistic and temporal aspects of this process-the appearance of disjunction in speech (dividing the literal from the figurative) and in time (an incongruity in sequence, or between the ritual-festive time and normative time)-and also the drive toward healing these gaps and discontinuities within the embedded state, the play within the play: here the literal and the metaphoric coincide without eliminating the initial awareness of distinction; here, too, longing, intensified to the point of madness-the madness of selfhood-closes the internal spaces within the desiring subject, now fluid with feeling and, in this sense, continuous and fused. The two plays we have examined seem to aim at achieving preciscly this kind of subjective moment, ritually determined, and then at unravelling i t again. Tadarmya-tautology is never, in this genre, an end-state. Self-loss, playing, splitting and fusion, ontic uncertainty, selfcoincidence, and, finally, renewed constriction or petrification: this is surely not the subject we might expect if we start from expressionist presuppositions, or even from Shakespeare. where the process of comic perturbation ~~ltimately leads, it seems, to lucid reintegration and restructuring of the agitated self or selves.25The Ratncivali goes in another direction; hcrc reintcgration would appear to shrink and "See D. Shulman and Deborah Thiagarajan (eds),Bchitlrl t l ~ cM a ~ k DUIKC. :

heal in^ atlrl Pos.~c~.s.siotl it1 Sorlth Inrliutr Rituul, in press. 251must rehist thc templalion to pursue this particularly compelling in Shukcsl?c>ure comparison herc; but scc RuLh Nevo. Cotnic. Tt-c~tr.sfort~~uriot~.s (London. 1980).

182 The Wisdom of Ports free1.e the festive and expansive, self-replicating subject. But 1 claim no gcneral applicability for this conclusion, not even with reference to other Sanskrit dramas; there is, obviously, a remarkable thematic range, and rather different notions of transformative process, as we move from Harsa to other classical or medieval poets. Nor have I dealt with related issues, such as conceptions of agency and, especially, hierarchy in relation to the newly revealed and activated self. Perhaps i t is enough, for now, if we can reformulate the terms of discussion with respect to these plays, which are by no means as self-contained as the tag 'classical' might suggest; if, that is, we can ask new questions, having extricated ourselves both from our own biases and from [he intellectual stranglehold of the tradition. As Harsa reminds us in the concluding verse shared by both these dramas: wrong words (or notions) have a way of sticking incorrigibly, like mortar @iSunajanagiro durjayi vajralepah).

The Prospects of Memory* You say, 'After I know what lies ahead, I'll forget what wen1 betbre.' Can you know what lies ahead'? How can you forget what went before?'

1. Recognition It is springtime, a sad and lonely spring; Dusyanta. amnesiac hero of KalidBsa's masterpiece, the Ahhijria~zaSakunrala.is going home. He has completed his most recent mission in heaven, destroying Indra's demon foes; this latest feat has temporarily extricated the king from the forlorn and self-pitying state lo which his own forgetfulness had reduced him. This act of forgelting was the central, defining episode of Dusyanta's career; and his story, now cyclically moving toward closure in the final act of Kalidasa's play, is undoubtedly the most famous meditation on memory and forgetting in the whole classical literature of India. It is this aspect of the work that I wish to explore, togelher with a glance at related themes in the linguistic domain as forn~ulatedby Bhartrliari in the Vakya-padiya, perhaps some decades after Kalidiisa. Lel me remind you of the main lines of the story. Some six or seven years before, Dusyanta, hunting in the wilderness, had stumbled on the innocent and ravishing ~akunlala,whom he eventually Icft. pregnant with child and with hope, to return to his kingdom. Unfortunately. ~akuntalii,heedless with longing, was then cursed hy the irascible sage Durvasas to be forgotten by her lover-until [he First published In the Jorri-rrol 01 Itldinti P h i l o . ~ o /26:( ~ l ~ 1998). ~ 309-33. ' A n t ~ r m i i i ~ . c i rkirrrrt~c~l~c, ~ ~ ~ I ( ~ c ~ l r l ~hyd PAnna Lil3vaLanima (Madras. 1068). 6 I ( k r ~ & ~ l ~ ).~ l ~ / ) t

The certain indicator of consciousness and its contents is, we note, the body, which cannot lie. We are firmly within the paradigm of knowledge tht dominates this drama: the boy, of course, is Dusyanta's own son by ~ a k u n t a l the ~ , son he has never seen but whom he nonetheless recognizes without realizing it. He knows but does not know that he knows. The next few minutes supply him with several more hints about the child's identity, and his hope swells to the point where he can say, 'This story seems to be aiming at me' (iyam khalu kathb mam eva laksi-karoti). Notice the wording: there is a story, which seeks a target or a subject; the king may turn out to be the one who supplies this need. Soon hints give way to certainty: the child is Dusyanta's, and ~akuntalais nearby; the lovers are reunited, not without an initial moment of doubt and confusion; the king's cruelty has evolved-so he optimistically asserts-into a harmonious conclusion, now that he has been recognized by her (krauryam api me tvayi prayuktam anukiila-parinamamsamvrttam yad aham idanim

7Xe Pr-o.sptv.rs of Mrrnoq 185 t v ~ y j)ruty(~hlzij?iutar)~ u arn~u~zum pasyclmi). Naturally, thcre are some tears. and something akin to apologies: thosc whose minds are unclear act even in normally happy circumstances as Dusyanta did, just as a blind man throws o f f a garland in panic lest i t be a snake. Such, in any case, are the analogies and excuses the king offers the woman he has offended. There is a slight contretemps over the love token, the slippery ring that was missing at the crucial moment of forgetting and rejection and that only turned up later, too late to prevent the disaster. ~akuntala notices it on her husband's finger; he explains that this is how his memory returned, and tries to give i t back to her. She, however, refuses to accept it: for one thing, she is all too conscious of the 'crooked twist' (vi.sarnam) i t caused; moreover, she doesn't trust it ( n u se vissasaml/lidsmai viivasanli). This is a remarkable enough statement, which should suffice in its own right to demolish any reading of the story in terms of the technical or mechanical unfolding of a curse. ~ a k u n ~ ahas l a excellent reason not to trust the workings of memoryhers or his-with or without the ring. It is also striking, and rather moving, that the little boy, who has just met his father for the first time, continues to doubt and suspect him throughout this entire scene. 'Let me go to my mother,' he cries when Dusyanata first embraces him;3 and later he complains to ~akuntala,'Who is this man who keeps calling me his son?' The certainty that Dusyanta slowly attains eludes the boy who has triggered it. Still, this is a moment of what another tradition would think of as anagnorisis, with the concomitant clearing up of all residual queries and hesitations on the part of all concerned; the great Kaiyapa himself will shortly confirm the tale of the curse and its effects, thus relieving Dusyanta ofthe crushing burden of guilt. It was not. after all, his fault; by his words Durvasas had created the mental confusion that made the ki'r.g forget; ~akuntala should let go of anger (this IS KaSyapa's recommendation). One would think-indeed, the scholastic tradition of commentary on this play had always asserted-that the conflict embodied in the play has now been fully resolved, and lasting harmony achieved. And yet at precisely this concluding juncture both ~akuntalaand Dusyanta respond in unexpected ways. ~ a k u n t a l aaccepts the

7.19. I follow the edition of Celamacerla Rangicaryulu,with commentary of Kataya-vema (RPddi), Abhijfidna-Srikunralam(Hyderabad:Andlua Pradesh Sahitya Akademi. 1982).

'A medieval tradition [ells us that Kalidiisa, on his deathbed, was prepared to see all his poctic works lost with the exception of this one line; see Lee Siegcl, Laughir~gMutrcnc.: Conzic. Trrrclition in Inrliu (Chicago, 1987),258.

1 83

Tlze Wisdom qf'Poers

moment when lhat lover would see again a concrete token of their love. In due course ~akuntalharrived in Dusyanta's court, only to be publicly rejected by the king, who, of course, had no recollection of ever meeting or loving her. Only later, when the ring he had given her, engraved with the syllables of his name, miraculously turned up in the belly of a fish, did Dusyanta recover the memory of a love now cruelly lost. Despairing, heavy with remorse, he has submerged his sorrows in the military campaign just mentioned. Now, descending through the skies towards the earth, Dusyanta pauses to pay his respects to the divine Kaiyapa on Hemakuta Mountain. But here he encounters a young boy, fearlessly playing with a lion cub; and the king unexpectedly feels a strange kinship with this child, and a sense of eager hope (sprhayami khalu durlalitLiydsnzai). He touches him, and his body thrills: He is someone's child: yet my body delights in a touch that must overwhelm the awareness of that happy man, his father.2

1 8h

Tllr Wisttoiii r!f'Poc,ts

explanation oflercd, but she still insists. cloqucntly and correctly. that shc herscll' has no mcmory ol'having hccn cursed. How striking that in thc context of t h ~ ssupposcdly final restoration of mcmory the heroine is left in a state of 'forgetting'! Onc might go so far as to see this slight line as actually expressing something uf the hidden metacommunication of KA1idrisa.s play. Moreover, ~ a k u n t a l ahas her own exprcssivc explanation of what happened: her heart was 'empty' or distracted because of her longing for Dusyanta (vit-ahu-.iut~?;a-hrda9), so she simply failed to notice the curse as i t was uttered. It is a convincing statement. once again far removed from any mechanical rationale; ~akuntalriis speaking, out of experience, of an emptiness that is paradoxically 'full' of absence. Equally imprcssive is the verse that Dusyanta now sings-surely the culminating articulation of the enlire epistemology propcr to this drama:

L ~ k esomconc who, staring at an elephant, inqists, 'There is no elephant'; who then, as it moves away. feels a certain doubt and, on seeing its footprints, is certain: 'An elephant bar been here'-such is the aberrant working of my mind. (7.31) The verse is synoptic and precise, as well as paradigmatic in every sense; we need have no doubt about its intended applicability to all human minds. The king speaks of what he calls vikara-the 'aberrant working' of consciousness, an active mode that seems to produce memory only in the context of traumatic forgetting. The word, or its synonyms and allied derivatives, recurs throughout our text.4 In the following pages, I will attempt to explore this paradigm of aberration, seen, evidently, as constituting human awareness. identity, and selfknowledge through the internal processes that this drama personifies and displays. In con.junction with this theme, I suggest a particular understanding of what i t means to tell or live within an evolving story that is wedded to a name. a telos. or a sign.

."l'hu\ I . al'ler vcrsc 22 (p. 10):2.5: 3. al'tcr v c n c h ~p 59): 4, aflcr vcrse ? (p. 70): 7. after vcrse 20 (p. 168). clc.

Tllr Pro\j,clc.t\ of Mpmor\

I87

2. Undoing and Restoring I f t h e mind w o r k s through v i k a r a if r ~ i k n r u is built inti) consciousness-then it is perhaps misleading to call it an aberration. Looking at the root, vi-kr, we might spcak of an 'un-making', a 'taking [or doing] apart', perhaps cven a 'de-formation' (but a deformation that is actually the major component of 'formation'). There is also reason to think in terms of a process of displacement, which opens space, especiaily in so far as this process is heavily linguistic. In any case, assuming this vikara to be a central narrative theme enactcd by the king's expressive act of forgetting, we would surely be justified in describing the plot as a whole as a movement through this deforming dislocation of consciousness in the direction of a restoration or relocation.' It is. then, somewhat remarkable that one of the opening verses of the play seems to adopt precisely this language, proleptically laying down the major thematic premises of the work (just as the Sanskrit critics so often insist these initial verses are meant to do).h W e first meet Dusyanta as he is hotly pursuing a deer with his chariot, at the same time admiring the effect of the vehicle's velocity on his alert perception of the landscape: yad dlokc sLiksmam vrajati suhasd tad vipulutam yad ardhe vicchitznam bhavati krta-sandhanarn iva tat/ prakrtya yad vakrat?~tad api sama-rekham nayunuyor na me dure kim-cit ksananz api na prirs've ratha-javcit// [ 1.91

What ac first glance seems minute rapidly extends to vast proportions. What is cut in two is soon reconstituted. Whatever is naturally crooked straightens its lines

A.K. Ramanujan, in his unfinished paper on ~ak~tntuia. 'The Ring of Memory: Remembering and Forgetting in Indian Literature' (1993), speaks with some hesitation of 'reintegration'; but I will avo~d[his rather loaded term. take heart from thc i;uhllcanalysis oflcrcd hy Viivanatha Satyanfirayana of verse 1.8 (directly preceding the verse cxplorccl bclow) as onci~psulating the entire subxqucn[ coilrsc ol' thc play: ~ t i k , ~ t ~ t c ~ l n n u t v c trhll~'jtiirt~rctrr i~-k(r (Vijayavada, 1969), 26-8: on 1.0, scc 29fl.

"

I 88

.

The Wisdom of' Pocr.\

before my eyes. Nothing remains far from me even for a moment, just as nothing stays near. Rapid movement magnifies whatever is small or subtle (suksmnm), unifies the disconnected, levels the twished or bent or uneven (vakranz), and contlates the distant and the near (seen in temporal context). A violent (sahasa) progression sustains a present rich with self-unifying perception. Note in particular the term saizdhana, the 'reconstitution' that is achieved by whatever has been broken in half (from the root sum-dha, 'to place together', 'synthesize'). I note in passing that this verse resumes. syntactically and metrically. the basic structure and texture of the opening invocation, with its cosmological concerns, and of other verses still to come--for example, one describing Dusyanta's rapid descent in his chariot from heaven toward earth at the beginning of Act VII (7.8). As others have noted. an evocative recursivity is powerfully and deliberately embedded in the structure of this text.' Texture cannot be paraphrased. Nonetheless, it may be possible to state, in a tentative way, something of the thematic potential of the chariot verse. Perception seems to incorporate a gap, one that can be bridged by movement. This gap gives rise to a certain distortion in dimension, in contour, in spatial sensation generally. Both the distortion or dislocation and its subsequent levelling are important, as is the directionality implicit in the movement. An initial disalignment or incongruity gives way, through rapid moveoment, to sandhann, 'realignment'. A similar process may take place within awareness-particularly in relation to issues of memory and forgetting. Moreover, we would do well to bear in mind that this opening description arises out of the hunt; the king's entrance into 'On the question of recursive structures ill the play, see below; Ramanujan. 'The Ring of Memory; E. Gerow, 'Dramatic Theory and Kalidasa's Plays'. in Barbara Stoler Miller (ed.), Thec1tr.r of Mrn~or\i:The P1ay.s c?f K d i d a s a (New York, 1983),58-9. Sheldon Pollock has also stressed the cxpressivity of structure in the play: 'The structure of .~cikuritalamay thus he seen as an oh-jectificationin narrative form of the cleterminatc cosmic plan i~nclerpinning the story.' 'Whal Happens rn ~ r i r l - l l ~ ~ r tunpublished ~ln', crsity. (1983). 14.

The Prospc.c.t.s of Mrr~ior:\. I 89 Sakuntala's wilderness space is mostly, in itself. violent and heedless; and if, as the verse suggests, issues of perception and knowledge are implicit already in the beginning, then there may be an aspect of knowing and seeing that is no less violent than what happens in the spatial domain.Qusyanta's rapacious intrusion into the wilderness is the first stage of a necessary extrusion of self, a self that is cognitively rather primitive. even impaired; the following stages lead through desire and love to self-forgetting, and thence to painful recovery. Sakuntala, naturally, will go through her own, perhaps complementary process, which we first contemplate under the rubric of consequential 'ripening'.

3. On Changing Direction These complementaries have been noted many times. Rilghavabhatta, the doyen of Sanskrit commentators on the ~dkuntala,is also incisively aware of an ongoing, muiLlally reflective process unfolding within the two main figures of this drama. I cite the penetrating analysis by E. Gerow, which is informed both by rasa theory and by structural concerns proper to the Nci[yaJ'ustra t r a d i t i ~ nBut . ~ my primary concern is with issues of forgetting and knowing, and for this purpose i t may suffice to concentrate on the pressing contrasts between these two lovers in their oddly non-synchroni~edmovement-within a slightly wider context of enveloping seasonal, thermodynamic, and psychochromatic changes. Here the most striking element is, perhaps, the reversed directionality of their respective development. To put it bluntly: Dusyanta seems quite incapable of forward movement. He is always in reverse, obsessed with retrograde or regressive unravelling. Even the most trivial examples embody this theme to perfection. Look. for instance, at the verse that closes Act I. Dusyanta has by now met The verse at the very end of Act I (30) describing the rampage of a mad elephant within ihe bounds of the ashram-the verse that first separates Dusyanta from the newly discovcrcd ~akuntala-beautifully re-articulates this notion. E. Gerow. 'Plot Strucrure and the Development of rci.sa in the ~~iklcrlttrla '. Jourrial of' tllc An:erir,rrti Oric~r~tal .Soc.ic.ry 99 ( 1079). 559-72; 100 ( 1980). 267-82.

190

Th(1 Wi.vr/o?nof Poels

~ a k u n t a l aand fallcn in love; he can, in fact, no longer 'turn himself hack' (rjtrrza~~unr ~zivmrtayitum)from a swiftly developing obsession with this young woman (note that this verb, ni-vrl, 'to turn back', servcs as a semantic leitmotif in the play). ~ a k u n t a l too, ~ , for her part, has been reluctant to leave the scene; she finds'a pretext-her foot, she says, has been pricked by a thorn, and her dress is caught on a branch--to linger, looking back at the king. Always the backward glance: Dusyanta will later revert to it again and again in his mind, as he tries to decide whether or not his love is reciprocated (see 2.12). As she finally extricates herself and leaves, the king finds himself caught up in antithetical movement: My body moves forward. while my mind, out of step, turns back like a silken flag flapping in the wind. (1.31) Such is this lover's habitual situation; something within him is aIways pulling him backwards, effectively immobilizing him in terms of forward development. Earlier in this same act, he has an impulse to touch ~ a k u n t a l a but , he checks himself: I wanted to follow the sage's daughter but was rudely held back by the rules. I haven't budged, though I seem to have gone and returned. (1 .26)1°

But is this not the common fate of lovers, especia!ly in the early stages of thcir meeting? For all that, Dusyanta seems to have a special penchant for this kind of immobility which, as the plot progresses, may also reflect an internal conflict in this man caught between desire for ~ a k u n t a l aand the public (dharmic) exigencies that his forgetting brings to the fore." Ultimately, it appears to be a strange case of arrested development which, by the time we observe its deepening 'Rprlrrncel' = pt-~rtini~v-rrtlh, again < J L I - I ~ - I . I ' T.he dharmic component i n the king's action is discussed hy Raghavnhha!!a: sec also Gcrow, 'Plot Structure and the Development of rasa' ancl V1
effects under conditions of scparatiun (in Act VI), has sprcad lihc a contagion from thc king to the cntire natural world: The mango has budded long ago. but still holds back its pollcn. The kuralaku, eager to unfold, remains bound up in bud. Tht: cold season has past: still, the cuckoo's soft moan dies in its throat. Will Memory, god of desire. fail to release his half-aimed arrow? (6.4) It is spring, when love should flourish, when every flower and tree should flow with the fertile juices of desire; Manmatha, lord of desire-here pointedly called by another of his titles, Smara, Memoryl2-should be discharging his flower arrows with abandon. Instead, all of these energies are sympathetically blocked because of the king's thwarted and frozen inner state. We can articulate this condition more precisely: the natural processes of ripening, flowering, maturation have come to a halt under the pressure of a certain retrograde vision, a backward glance that is now suffused with traumatic memory and remorse. This, it seems, is this lover's real illness-not merely the self-reproach that e m e r g e s o u t of his episode of involuntary forgetfulness (which was bad enough), but, more powerfully and paradigmatically, a driving, unilateral force of retrospective memory, a mental paralysis suffused by fixed images from the past. But is not all memory retrospective? Definitely not. W e can, in fact, distinguish several types or modes of remembering (and forgetting) in Hindu narratives, variously evoked in varying contexts by the Sanskrit root smr. There is the common variety of retrospective memory, roughly similar to Platonic or other western notions linked to this term-although there is some question as to whether the past, which does not exist and may never have existed in any sense independent of our construction of it, can in fact be 'remembered', or for thal matter 'forgotten'. by any continuous subjccl.13 More to the I Z Sec Charles Malamoud, C'ltit-c Ir rrzoriclc~:r~rpet pc,nsc;e clczti.\ I ' l n r k anc.ic,nric(Paris. 1980). 295-106. '"his more lamiliar type ol'nic~noryshould also prohahly he d ~ v ~ d cinto d at least two suh-type$.one rccursivc. thc scxond discursive; hut this is ;I inalter li)r another essay.

192

The W i s d o m ($Poets

point in the context of the ~ a k u n t a l a the , operation of this form of memory seems to rcquire a re-cognition, the reapplication of an experienced or cognitively pre-existing pattern to a present percep1ion.l4 Love, in this light. is actually the memory of prior l o ~ i n g .A ' ~more powerful understanding of memory in classical texts is, howcver, oriented not backwards but rather, as it were, forwarda prospective form of knowledge, usually only partly conscious, and thus linked with distinctive and often destructive varieties of forgetting. Here there is always something real, and important, that can be forgotten by a subject who is caught up in the process of his or her internal maturation.lh Very often the only remedy for this type of forgetting is the presence of another person, who recognizes the subject and somehow conjures up his or her story-just as Dusyanta recovcrs his balance only when he sees himself as having been recognized (pratyah/ztjiid.ta) by SakuntalB, in the scene summarized above. Such prospective memory, together with its correlate, expressive blocking or proleptic forgetting, is closely related to the notion of vikara, that prevalent variety of mental dislocation or aberration with which we began. Sanskrit smr also has another important meaning, or range of meanings, connected to modes of making someone or something present; this usage is frequent, for example, in stotra texts directed to a deity." In some sense, all forms of memory share this propensity to create, or re-create, an experienced presence. I cannot explore this range more fully here; there is, however, a latent connection between the problem of becoming or being made present and the proleptic This understanding is richly elaborated in Kashmir ~aivism(the theme of Pratyabhijiifina)and in ~ r i h a r ~Iahope ; to discuss these sources in another essay. See Malamoud, Cuire le monde. ' T f . the fine discussion by ViSvanatha Satyanariiyana,~dkuntalamuv6kka abhijzdnafa 8C-9, distinguishing two components of butldhi, understanding: anubhuti 'experience', and smrti 'memory': the latter may be rooted in nonlinear forms of jficina. 'knowledge'. Panini 3.2.1 12 permits the use of future lense forms tbr past events in connection with a word of recollection (abhijiicil4

r~acnrlej. " See discussion by Aditya Malik. Di~'ine Testirnot~v:The Raja.~thaniOral Nor-rclfl~~e c?fDevncirdw~~?, (Habilitationschift,Universitat Heidelberg, 1998). 1:22-5; Malamound, cuit-c Ic mon~lr,297, defining Tnlr as 'fixer avec

I'intensitt son esprit sur u n obiel ( ~ L I In'esl pas ~na~Cr~ellemenL present)'.

T h e Prospects of Memory

193

type of memory just mentioned. 'Forgetting', that is, may well mean a vanishing of the subject's presence. When ~akuntalapresents herself at court, is Dusyanta there? But we are gctting a little ahead of ourselves. So far we have noticed that our lovclorn hero is strangely subject to processes of epistemic, or emotional, or even perhaps existential regression, in the sense of a predilection for matters or movements backwards, toward the retrospected past. His natural mode, not surprisingly, i s p a i c a t t ~ p a one of his favourite words-literally, a 'backwards burning', an 'afterburning': that is, something akin to remorse. And of course this noble and sensitive man has excellent reason to feel this way, since he so heartlessly, if unknowingly, cast off his beloved wilderness bride. But was this truly an act of un-knowing? In the moment that marks the effective culmination of the dreadful rejection scene in Dusyanta's court. the king is unsure, confused (sandigdha-buddhihl-unwilling to acknowledge the story that ~ a k u n t a l ahas told, but far from easy in his own mind about this stance. For one thing, his body seems to recognize the woman and to want her (as later, in Act VII, his body tells him that he is in the presence of his son); despite everything, ~ , more than Dusyanta is quits unable to turn away from ~ a k u n t a lany the bee can detach itself from the frost-bitten jasmine it cannot enjoy (5.19). He describes himself, with what we might take for real insight, as vismarana-driruna-citta-vrttih, 'one whose mental activity has become cruel through forgetting' (5.23). That is to say: Dusyanta knows that he has forgotten something; he knows that h e does n o t know.

T o put the matter a little differently: there seems to be some difficulty here with Dusyanta's experience of sequence. Looking backwards, he is trapped and arrested, unable to advance. At the same time, a certain, half-conscious knowledge is involved; either he knows without knowing that he knows, or else he senses that he is forgetting what he somehow or somewhere knows-apparently in another part of memory or self. In this respect, his forgetting may serve some unsuspected purpose. Perhaps for Dusyanta, retrograde movement is the only way forward. He himself poignantly plays with this notion of a confusion in sequence in the verse that directly precedes the 'paradigm' verse about pcrception (7.30) with which we began: normally, he says. the flower emerges bcfore the fruil, and the cloud precedes the rain; such is thc usual progression OF cause and effect (nimitta-r~aimittikavora y a m kramal7). But the divinc Kaiyapa has

195 leave of the wilderness and her childhood friends, is the true height of Kalidgsa's construction. Seen from her perspective, the play is focused precisely on this transition and its emotional realities--the sarne transition that a flower undergoes when it unfolds. Such, indeed, is ~akuntala'spower, the secret of her hold over the world-wise king, as he tells us in the famous verse (2.10) comparing her beauty to a flower that no one has smelled, an unplucked shoot, an untouched jewel, untasted honey .... He will be the first to touch her, to awaken her, then cruelly to enlighten her, even as he himself undergoes the opposite movement of. as it were, falling asleep. And this is the point. Dusyanta wavers in his orientation. While Sakuntala emerges from the wilderness in increasing self-evolution and self-awareness, he goes back and forth, never fully aligning himself with either the wilderness or the city mode, with past or future, with retrogression or advancement. with sleeping or waking. He is, as we have seen. more or !ess suspended between these possibilities. More precisely, in terms of the formation of his consciousness, he appears to be driven in the first instance towards the wilderness. He enters i t in the aggressive style of the hunter, quite unaware of what the violence he is inflicting might mean (not merely for its animal victims but, more to the point, for his own internal state); he is then captivated by its beauty and enlivened by desire; he abandons i t in order to return to his capital, his duties, his cantankerous haremand there, in the audience that constitutes the very heart of this ordered, normative domain, he is afflicted by the fatal forgetfulness that will change his life. Can we then deduce that in his case, forgetting actually reconstitutes something of what he has lostthat, whatever else is there, this amnesia is also a strange, displaced, and unanticipated way of re-entering the wilderness mode with its untouched potentialities'? If ~ a k u n t a l aripens into wakefulness, Dusyanta ripens into sleep. He is moving backwards-trapped in retrogression, on the one hand, but also apparcntly very much in need of such reversion to the forest idiom. which offers the only viable alternative to the life of the convention-bound city. No wonder he continually looks back with longing! There is a sense in which forgetting is not only expressive-perhaps in ways that remembering can never be-but also paradoxically pregnant with the incipient discovery of a fuller form o f being. This discovery will always be glossed as a 'recovery'. It requircs vikaru, an aberrant 'un-doing'; and i t can also fail. which i s to say Tlic Pm.spects of Merrzor):

reversed this order; the result-the working out 01. the king'x unfulfilled desire-has preceded Dusyanta's vision of the sage. In our terms: an oddly retrograde movement has unconsciously enacted the teleology implicit in an untold story. Dusyanta's interest in the linked notions of sequence (kruma)and cause is full of meaning. We could ask, taking him as our primary exemplar: what exactly does one forget when one forgets the self? Is this always an act of retrospective amnesia? Or, on the other hand: what is it that we remember when we remember, or recover, ourselves? Does the forgetful self exist i n alien form, in guise or disguise'! Can the self exist in any other mode? What does it mean for a man to say, 'My name is Dusyanta-and I have forgotten the woman I love'?' Or even worse: 'My name is Dusyanta, and I remember now-because of this token engraved with my name?'

4. On Ripening One way to begin to answer these questions is to look at the other side of the process-~akuntala's side. Here, in marked contrast tu Dusyanta's story, we scem to find a relatively straightforward, indecd linear sequence. The term best suited to her-one she uses herself to describe her suffering, seen at the moment of final reuniting with her loverI8--is parindma, which we translate as 'ripening'. 'evolving', 'maturing'. Sakuntala undoubtedly undergoes changes as the story develops, and these changes move her from her initial, rather unselfconscious situation in the wilderness towards the city, the royal court, and finaily, following her rejection, to the Himalayan hermitage where she will raise her child. As has often been noted, she is, in the wilderness, an embodiment of natural simplicity, innoccncc. caremore particularly, of purc. still unexternalized potential. She issues slowly and shyly out of this state. gaining, to her sorrow. cxpcrience and awareness, rather as if the holistic wilderness creature were being seduced into the generative but inherently painful partiality of the 'civilized' city.IYNot by chance, the Sanskrit tradition had always declared that Act IV, the central moment when ~akuntalatakes her 7, aAer verse 24 rp. 17 1 ). ln~agcsof Laming wild natural forccs recur In the final a z l , whcre wc find ~akuntalii'.son. SarvadSrnanaAIl-7'amer---playing w ~ t ha lion cub. In

la)

196

The Prospec-ts of Memory

The Wisdom qf Poets

thal consciousness can all too easily remain mired in retrogression. This is a real danger for Dusyanra. the dark underside of the great opportunity that he has been given. Bur there is a d e e p e r aspect Lo this process. As the story progresses, we see that his obsession with retrospective memory actually hides a more profound act of prospective forgetting. H e has forgotten a story that has not yet fully unfolded-the story that 'aims at' him, as he says in Act VII, but that might just miss him. He is perfectly suited to the curse that ~ a k u n t a l a unwittingly brings down upon him. the curse ostensibly directed at her, in Durvasas's relentless but also brilliantly evocative formulation: You were thinking of some man. focused wholly upon him, so you failed to know me when I came near. He, then, will remember you not, no matter how you jog his mind, like an idiot who can't recall a story told before. (4.1 )20 The story is actually 'made' (kathdm ... kr1ri.m). not simply toldperhaps made by the very fool or madman (pramartah) who can no longer recall it. As so often, the simile is meant to apply precisely, and remarkably literally, to the main subject; ~ a k u n t a l awill pay the emotional price of her lover's wandering away from his own story. On the other hand, ~ a k u n t a l a ' s'empty' heart, overfull with dreamy longing, is also implicated in the cognitive dCb2cle about to take place; for her, too. consciousness may. indeed must, sometimes slip, skip, or stumble. But how can a person wander our of his o r her own story'? What can this mean, apart from the suggestion of madness or, at leasr, of wanton heedlessness? Look again ar the time-frame of this curse: Durvasas, who utters it, knows what will happen and, knowing it,

"' There is reason to look closely at the syntax of this key verse. Curses and blessings arc always carefully, almost legalistically formulated. Note how in the thlrd line of the original--smarisvati rvam nu .sci boclhiro 'pi .Tan-the absent lovcr seems almost cursed to rert~err~ber. before thc negativc overtakes him in the middle of the line ('he will remembcr you ... not!'). This fits Dusyanta's mental state all too well: hr doe? rcmemhcr. at leas[ enoilgh to know that he has forgotLen something.

1 97

effecls it verbally; the whole sequence is pitched in the determinate future; cven Dusyanta himself will feel obscure but powerful hints of what is about to happen, in the disquieting reaction he notes in himself to the song sung in the palace before ~ a k u n t a l a ' sarrival, a song ~' there is the sense of a latent, pregnant with lovers' ~ e p a r a t i o n .Again unrealized form of k n o w l e d g e directed towards the future, a knowledge not available to the subject except on the level of knowing about knowing-the troubling sensation of seeing or feeling what is not fully there (and not seeing what is). But all of this suggests a powerful paradox that lies at the core of this text and provides it with structure: for if Dusyanta has forgotten his own story, the text of his life as his intentionality and conscious agency had formed it, on another level this act of forgetting must actually constitute his story. Dusyanta is the man who forgets-who must forget-the one he loves, just as ~ a k u n t a l a ' s'fate' is to be forgotten within her own story. Yet this view must also mean that the story itself changes: by the time memory is restored, neither Dusyanta nor ~ a k u n t a l ais living out quite the same narrative, nor is their experience of self. or of self-awareness, what it was before. In this they are no different from any of us, when w e remember. Kalidasa has taken the Mahabharata's tale of a somewhat egotistical king's manipulative rejection of a woman he has loved22and transformed it into aprofound essay about knowledge of self and other (in this sense the ~clkuntalais the closest analogue we have in Sanskrit to Sophokles' Oedipus plays); and for Kalidasa, it seems, self-knowledge may include forgetting as a fundamental component or stage of epistemic experience. la with amazing subtlety and insight, around T h e ~ r ~ k u n t adevelops, this central point of tension, suspended between the countervailing movements of the two main protagonists-the linear, transformative advance of the heroine and the complex oscillation, mostly a reverse progression, of the hero. Together, they describe a complementary choreography of maturing awareness, with the ambiguous 'token'-the lost ring-deeply implicated in their separate processes of selfknowledge and self-forgetting. ~ a k u n t a l aas , we have seen, is, by the end. very suspicious of the ring, while Dusyanta seems still to depend

" See discussion below in section 7. "This obviously beloved epic verslon of the story lives on in many later Pillalamarri Pina-Virabhndrakavi's ~r,i~circl-

~dkunta1a.s. t.or example Sukurlralatnu ( i n Telugu).

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The Wisdorrz of'Poers

on it. Their cerily asymmetrical choregraphy reveals, upon inspection, other closely rclated features. Look. for example. at the temporal or seasonal progression the play portrays. Dusyanta arrives in the ashram in ,qri.yma, the hot season, as we learn from several passages (the prologue to the play also appropriately praises gri.yma). This is a somewhat unexpected point at which to begin: in Sanskrit one normally thinks of dawning passion as related to vasarzta, the spring months of Caitra and VaiSakha (roughly March-April) that follow the cold season and precede grijma. The ~akurztala,however, traces a course from gri.yma through the rains and the cold months to vasanta, which provides the seasonal setting for the final two acts. In general, the hot season is a moment of blockage, dessication, overheating: the world impatiently awaits the coming of rain. For ~akuntalii,this external heating seems an indication of her parinama-ripening: she is ripe even beyond the springtime flowering, truly ready to mature in love, almost bursting with her opening selfhood. For Dusyanta, on the other hand, another regression seems called for: from grisma he will, in effect, have to reach backwards towards another vasanta, toward a ripening that is, in his case, tortuous, retrograde, and indirect. He will have to sleep, to forget, to lose himself--all movements that usually accompany the rains that lie in storez3-before he can love. ~akuntaliiripens into the full heat of an erotic efflorescence, while Dusyanta's love withers in the bud as he himself cools internally to a congealed cloudiness. a frozen unknowing. In chromatic terms, she is a brilliant red throughout, a fiery bud emerging from the creeper: he is a confusing oscillation of red and white, heating and cooling, forward and backward movement, but on the whole tending toward the remorseful pallor of Act VI. It is striking that only the conclusion, when a certain mutuality in self-knowledge and desire creates a modicum of symmetry, allows the suspended springtime of lovers' union (or reunion) finally to enfold this couple. for the first time, from without.

5. Triggers and Traces So there are two lovers. in certain ways disastrously out of step w i ~ honc another, evolving in seelningly opposite directions, so much 23 Thus the god Visnu sleeps on his cosmic serpent dunng Lhe monsoon months and the early autumn.

The Prospec,t.s of' Memory 19') so chat a great gap opens between them-~a gap that is filled with longing. utkatlt!au cjrparyutsukatva, in various modes, the necessary of 'remembering', smczranu." Once again, this may seem afairly normal and predictable situation: longing is exactly what lovers are meant to feel, and not only in ancient India. Still, there is something particular and unusual about this specific case. We can, I believe, characterize this love-sick longing in terms relating to the epistemic focus so evident in Kalidasa's work and in the philosophical traditions bordering upon it. Here we need to look more closely at the role and meaning of the 'token' that seems to hold the key to knowing or remembering. A passage in Act VI states the issue very simply and directly. An apsara named Siinumati is flying over Dusyanta's capital and hovers low in order to overhear a pathetic conversation between the king and his clown-companion. The king is full of despair: he has by now, with the help of the rediscovered ring, fully recovered his memory, and with it an agonizing sense of shame as he thinks back upon the moment of his cruel rejection of the pregnant ~akuntalii.Much of the agony is apparently irrationally (for the king is mad, or close to madness, as the clown observes) diverted towards this hapless token whose loss supposedly triggered the collpse of memory-the same ring which Dusyanta had given to ~ a k u n t a l aas emblem of his love, and which was marked with the letters of his name. (We should note that i t is the initial revelation of this ring that discloses Dusyanta's identity to the innocent girls in the ashram; so central is the role of this eloquent object that the play is, after all, named after it.) In his helplessness and sorrow, Dusyanta speaks to the ring first in feigned commiseration. then in anger: its karmic store of merit must have been very slight, since it slipped so readily from the paradisiac situation it had attained on ~akuntalii'sfinger-or perhaps the ring was careless and foolish, thus worthy of blame .... The king would like someone or something else to bear this burden, at least in part. He is, however, still (barely) sane enough to rccognize the illogicality of this yearning: How could you exchange the gentle, undulating fingers

" As the grammarlan\ In
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The Wisdorn of P o ~ t s

of her hand for the watery depths'! This is the question, posed in the first half of the verse, answered by the same speaker in the second half: Unconscious, one fails to notice goodnessas I, for no reason, scorned my love. (6.13) Dusyanta and the ring have fused into a single unhappy class, that of inanimate objects (acetanam) who cannot 'notice' or 'aim at' any quality such as goodness (acetuna.? nama gunai?l nu laksayet). The hero is (or was) one with his token, equally dumb and heedless. Still, the poet finds further scope to explore the necessary role of the ring: he makes Dusyanta remember, very painfully, how he had given this token to ~ a k u n t a l abefore leaving her in the ashram, with the instruction that she count day by day the Sanskrit characters of his name, engraved upon it-until the great day arrived when she would be led off to her husband's court. Then, of course, the unimaginable had happened: Dusyanta, in a state of confusion (moha),did not keep his part of this bargain. At this point, Sanumati, speaking to herself-but is she not the hidden voice of the poet-storyteller?-punctuates the royal moans and lamentations with an incisive remark, audible only to the audience outside the play: 'that delightful prospect was disarticulated by fate' (ramanio khu avahi vihina visamvadido/ramaniyah khalv avadhir vidhina visamvaditah). Notice the choice of words: a boundary or limit (avadhi) has been 'un-spoken' (visamvadita), removed or diverted from the anticipated unfolding of proleptic speech. This clearsighted comment is then, however. followed by an even more direct and penetrating question: 'Why [after all] should passion of such intensity require any kind of token' (iriso anurao ahinnanam avekkhadi kaham via edam/idrSo 'nurago 'bhGiianamapek~atekatham iv4itat. 137)'?There is a sense, surely, in which this question echoes through the entire story. It goes unanswered in this passage. Sgnumati has offered it. unwittingly, to us. the audience; neither the king nor the Vidusaka can hear i t . The latter, indeed. slips immediately into his usual oral concerns-he is, he tells us, 'eaten up by hunger', a suggestive

The Prospects of M e m o p 201 formulation of the dizzying spatial inversion that properly accompanies the temporal confusion evident throughout this act. A hungry emptiness has swallowed the always ravenous clown, just as the tricks of retrospective memory have driven his alter ego, the king, to the brink of madness. But for our part we might consider Sanumati's question seriously, since i t is left dangling, in tantalizing clarity, in the overheated air. This is, perhaps, one of those moments when a text reveals its own 'autobiography' by a suggestive gap or d i s c o n t i n ~ i t yWe . ~ ~have already seen that the technical explanation, linked to Durviisas's curse, is highly inadequate. And there is definitely no need to doubt the reality or force of these lovers' hunger for one another, as it is enacted before our eyes in the first three acts of the play. Why, indeed, then, should such passion be in any way dependent upon an object or sign, however charged with feeling, however laden with memory such an object might be? We can attempt an answer both on the basis of the amazingly coherent textures of the Sanskrit text and in the light of somewhat more general concerns about the working of consciousness and, in particular, the function of language in relation to awareness. From the latter perspective, it seems that the token (abhijfiana)that sustains memory is, in fact, more like a trigger.26 It is, indeed, a necessary trigger present in all linguistically informed awareness. Moreover, the memory that is being triggered is only superficially and partially retrospective in nature. What is really at stake here is the story that is, as we have seen, 'aiming at' (laksi-kr) our hero, and which he continues, at certain levels, to evade or deny. But then, as I have argued, his act of forgetting is profoundly integrated into that unrealized story, as are all such moments of antimnemic displacement or deformation in the course of reaching toward self-knowledge. One remembers in order to forget, just as one must forget in order to know. But perhaps we are once again losing touch with the so very human figures who exemplify this process, and its price. Recall the paradigm verse about the elephant: the human mind works through a vikara movement of displacement which makes 25

See F. Femcci, The Poetic7 of Disguise: The Aurobiographv qfa Work

in Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare (Ithaca, 1980). Ramanujan, 'The Ring of Memory', 12, spcaks of memory as always requiring 'a token, a mark, a sign'. In Dravidian, 'to remember' is usually to

'note the mark' (Tam. kuyi, Kannada gurutu, etc.).

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The Wisdom c?f'Porfr

recognition dependent on the 'traces' or 'footprints' (padani) left behind by something real, but initially denied. Elsewhere, too, in this play the poet shows an interest in such suggestive footsteps. For example, at the very climax of Act IV-the moment always recognized by the Sanskrit tradition as the central node of this masterpiece-Kanva bids farewell to the weeping ~ a k u n t a l aby begging her to restrain her tears, which obstruct her vision. asminn alaksita-natonnata-hhlimi-hhcige marge padcini khalu te visami-bhavanri. (4.15) Your footsteps wil! go astray on this path, with its hidden pitfalls Again the verb of aiming/perceiving/noticing,laksaya, this time in the context of the steps, or traces, or words, that may go astray (literally, 'become uneven', visama). In general, one observes such traces-or footprints-and detects a presence. In Act 111, Dusyanta, in the throes of overpowering desire, knows that ~akuntalamust be near because of the llne of impressions (pada-parikti) in the fresh sand--light in front, heavily depressed in the rear, because of the weight of her buttocks (3.5). He follows these footprints until he achieves nirvana-the vision of his beloved (aye labdham netranirvunam). The erotic domain unabashedly raids the lexicon of metaphysics. In truth, these arenas are in any case deeply intertwined." Recall the Upanisad's claim that 'this same self (citman) is the trail (padavi) to this entire world, for by following it one comes to know this entire world, just as by following their tracks one finds [the cattle]'.2s Perhaps even more to the point is the semantic development that takes us from pada, 'foot' to 'line of poetry'l'throw of dice' to 'word' to 'object' or 'thing' (padartha)." An object is thus a 'meaning' or 'target' of a word-or, better, a 'word trace', a footprint, as in the casc of our now familiar elephant. An object is the trace left behind by a word. Or we might say that i t is the target that the word is aiming at. In another sense, it is an

" See

Lee Siegel, Fire5 of Love, Warers of Peace: Passion and Rer~~rr~ciarior~ irl Indtai? Culture (Honolulu, 1983I. 'Vrhacl-ciranvaka-Upanisad 1.4.7; translation by Patrick Olivelle, U p u n i ~ n d(New .~ York, 1996), 15. 'Y See Harry Falk. Brudc.r.rc/zuft und WitrfPlspiel. Unter.~uc.h~rn~en zur E r ~ r r r ~ i c . k ~ u r ~ , ~ . sclr~ ~ ~ ~Verlr . ~ c ~~/c~hiecnOpfrrs ~ ~ ~ t ~ ~(Freihurg, 1986). 122-3.

.

c ? f ' M e ~ l l o ~ :203 ~

externalization of a process or lcvcl of be~ng-pcrliaps a s~ory-that pre-exists within some inncr vcrbal or l i n g u i s ~ i cdornain. Externalization and objectification go hand in hand, and always lead frorn the sign (vacaka) to the signified (vacva). The tokcn or trigger always precedes the objectified or concretized 'meaning'. To reach back toward the token, to recognize i t , is thus to approach the v~sible reality by way of its latent and determining causes. The same process applies to the formation of consciousness (within which memory has its necessary place), and to the consequent emergence of a living subject, and this process is linked to the verb laksaya,just mentioneda verb of aiming at a target whose contours are predefincd, hcnce of observing or perceiving this target, which is, in general, not stationary or stable but constantly shifting in movement away from its source. This verb, together with the root of return (or retrospcction) ni-vrt and the familiar verb of de-formation vi-kr, sets up the essential semantic skein within which the narrative of ~akuntalais told. We have already seen how Dusyanta's story 'aims' at him (luksi-karori), having once missed him-and this is but one instance of a rather rich application of this root and its derivatives."' The drama is onc of aiming, that is perceiving, in the context of thc headlong rush of language and awareness towards objectification, by way of displacement and forgetting." If one wants a graphic example, a no doubt unconscious condensation of this primary theme, one has only to look again at the opening image of the fleeing deer and the hunter pursuing it-over (once again) uneven paths." Later, in Act 11. the king's general unwittingly enhances the image and makes i t more precise in his joyful praise of the hunt: 'a fine archer hits unerringly a moving target' (utkarsah sa ca dhurlvit7um yarl isuvut~siddyanti laksje cale).The self-objectifying world is never still, and its hiddcn rcgistcr, an internal or mental process, is predatory and lethal: A wilderness grew in the sky In that wilderness Thus I , after verse 26 (p. 27); 2.5; 5 , afler 23 ( p . 1 12). etc. Within this frame bodily awareness, b o r e verbal artrculallon, has 11s own logic and space, as when the lovers firs1 meet in Acr I. and whcn Dusyanta recognizes his son i n Act VII. " Thus the chariolccr: utlihcitr)~~hh~i)n/r/ti nsa~rir r ~ . r ~ ~ ~ i - s c ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r r ~ o rathasva n~urrdi-krto~ ' e ~ ( aI , haftcr v. 7). 31)

3I

204

.

Thp Wlsdom of Poets

a hunter. In the hunler's hands a deer. The hunter will not die [ill the beasl is killed. Awareness is not easy, is it, 0 Lord of Caves?33 The problem concretized so poignantly by KBlidBsa's disconnected lovers is addressed in other ways by the philosophers of language, from Bhartrhari through the earlier alarikfirikas. I allow myself a slight digression. Once again the root 1aksAakjaya is useful: for we are told that cosmogony, an externalization of linguistic being, proceeds through laksand, 'transferred meaning'. This is process which can be looked at from either end of its dynamic, and from at least two vantage points-as a movement within god, in which parts of her or him assume definition; and as a movement within consciousness, an epistemic crystalization by means of speech. We tend, to our loss, to observe it from the 'lower' end, after the unfolding (in so far as sequence is meaningful here)-and it is in this context that we find ourselves trapped in retrospective memory. Let me try to reconstruct, somewhat crudely, Bhartrhari's understanding of what actually is taking place each time anyone speaks, or, for that matter, hums, cries, or thinks. The linguistic trace pre-exists-as bhdvanli, a potentiality that is, in effect, a form of feeling.)4This is language in its most subtle mode, which is also an internal (antara) mode, inherent in all consciousness, even that of babies before they have learned to speak. Moving outwards-we might also describe this as the ripening of a seed35language assumes the contours of a sign ( v a c a k a ) . At this point, however, there is also space, a gap, a rapid movement away-the gap that takes us toward the vacya, the 'signified' as externalized '"llama Prabhu 3 19. translated by A.K. Rarnanujan, Speaking of ~ i v a (Harrnondsworth, 1973), 156. See Kirin Narayan, "'According to their Feelings": Teaching and Healing with Stories', in Carol Witherell and Nel Noddings (eds). The Lives Stories Tell: N(trrccti~:eund Dialogue in Educution. (New York, 1991), 123. '' See Vah\czpcldivu 1 . 84.

'

The Prospects qf Mrrrzor-p 205 speech, already fully implicit in the sign. Within this opening space, there is room for aspects of abstraction, universalization, and causal sequence (linked to action, kriyu); more important, the movement from vdcaka to vcicya requires laksatla, the definition-by-aiming, a 'secondary' form of being that Bhartrhari calls upaccira or aupacariki sattd. Literally this means a 'moving a r o u ~ d ' a, kind of oral or mental circumscribing of what will eventually become an object by means of these processes of displacement and abstracting universalization. Language, that is, in its self-objectifying and conceptualizing drive proceeds via forms of displaced or secondary existence-what we might think of as metaphoric usage-towards the reification that leaves us with the target already blueprinted by the original trace, i.e. the padGrtha or object. The critical point, as B.K. Matilal has noted, is that we are dealing with generation as transformation: 'words are transformed into objects.'% In fact, it would perhaps be closer to Bharqhari to say that this transformation-which may have greater or lesser degrees of 'reality', according to how we choose to understand it-expresses the ultimately linguistic nature of the world, of consciousness, and of the self. All phenomena, from the most interior and subtle to the most external and objectified, are composed of and motivated by (and not merely framed or defined by) the divine vibration that is speech. It is perhaps worth emphasizing that, in this view, words never 'stand for' something; if anything, it is the fully externalized 'objects' that 'represent' the primary word-traces, and not vice versa. Yet, having gone through this exercise in reconstruction, we now have to extricate ourselves from its compelling hold. Indeed, to no small extent our habitual suffering derives from just such a description as the previous paragraph contains. In 'truth'-here we are still following Bharqhari-there is no temporal sequence at all. The very description, with its images of stages and process, is pervaded by the fatal force of objectification. Worse, our awareness almost always gravitates to this pole: we are, as it were, imprisoned in traumatic and repetitive objectification, to the point where much of ourselves, the living and moving subjects of awareness, is sacrificed to this false substantialization, a petrifying and deadening reduction to the state of an unconscious 'thing' (ucetanam)-the state Dusyanta describes,

Birnal Krishna Matilal. Perceptton: An Es.c.nv on Clus.~ic~crl Indicln Theories o f Knowledge (Oxford, 1986),397.

206

Tllr Wisclorr~of Poc,t.s

by analogy. as his own. And all this despite the fact that a living, inner self docs cx~st.and persist. as spccch or sound or language (.itrh&~ ).37

6. On Realignment An object is the trace left behind by a word. The full potentiality lies in the linguistic token, never in its realization across the gap. A person is the lifc left over by a name. A story is a frame, or a direction, within which a person-trace, speaking word-traces, leaves footprints. The story, l i ~ ea word, likc a name, unrolls towards a future that exists already in its hidden seeds. In another sense, the mere existence of this progression is suspect, a gravitating to the most diminished end of the continuum. Token and trace may eventu: 'ly, or at moments, coincide. If the very notion of sequence in consciousness and language is misleading, what can we say about those parts of consciousness that remain transfixed in a backwards vision, as Dusyanta is obsessed by regression and retrospection? For him, once the token has turned up, the present no longer has any real power; i t can be experienced only in terms of the now-remembered past, which, being remembered, is also painfully lost. True to his character from the start, Dusyanta is paralysed by this retrograde vision, which he eventually articulates in thc paradigm verse analysed above. For him, there are only footprints. which can only indicate a perceived absence. He is, we might say, at the very bottom end of the subjugating process that Bhartrhari describes (before he subsequently negates it)-a consciousness heavy with objects, oriented outward, that crystallizes and petrifies word-transforms. This is precisely where retrospective memory comes into play, forcing the past into object status. Bhartrhari will suggest that only the prescnt is real; both past and future are constructs, constructed mentally through secondary (metaphoric) uses of languagc (upacura).38Dusyanta shows us a consciousness lost in this fictional displacement backwards. pathologically concretized and

Bharlrhnr~I 7 0 . K . A Suhrahmania lyer. Rlrorlrhuri: A S/~lc/v c?fl/rr Vcikvupudp[l irr the , L i K l ~,J/ / /It(, Aric.rc,rir ('orrrrrror~~trric,~ (Poona. 1969). 2 1 I : also 1 15-19. ."

The Prosprc.ts of Memory

207 r e g r e s s ~ d . ~Memory, ' if focused on the past i n hypcrtrophied retrospection, is a kind of madness. Anothcr way to say this would bc to suggest that Dusyanta's story is, just at this point, missing its aim. Is there another way'? Apparently so: Linguistic potentiality exists [everywhere] in latent form; by the same token, nothing can be achieved by means of knowledge that is nonconceptual [and therefore non-linguistic],even if d~rectedtoward welldefined objects. For example, a person may be walking quickly, and he will know that his feet have made contact with grass and soil. Nevertheless, you could not call this a situation of real knowing unless the seeds of that linguistic potentiality are beginn~ngto sprout and the meaning-revealing powers of sounds, whether explicit or implicit, are focused on their proper objects. It is only then that the inner being of a thing becomes accessible to knowing through an energized form of knowledge that is riddled with language; one can then speak of knowing the thing in its visible and externalized form. This [form of knowing] casuses memory (smrti] to operate once the seeds of sound have become perceptible for some other reason. That is why some teachers see the process of knowing as similar to thc process of awakening from sleep.4u Any real knowledge, Bhartrhari asserts, is riddled with or penetrated by language (anuviddharn ...Sabdena); and it is only in the context of such linguistically active knowing that 'memory' is sparked. What is still more striking is that this activity of remembering both activates an apparently pre-existing knowledge and orients itself towards the present/future: Just as it is in the nature of fire to give off light, and of inner being to have awareness, so all knowledge is entirely formed by language. Even in a state of unconsciousness there exists a subtle texture of language. The first vision that falls on external objects illuminates them as distinct in form without grasping their causes, in an undefinable mode of perceiving; but when memory comes into play,and one is faced with the seeds of such perceptions, a kind of embodiment [ar~ipu]conducive

" Or. as the sa~aciousSanumati puts it: 'past and prescnt are all jumbled up in this unprecedented state [of longing]' (puvvur~clruviro/ric~puvvoc.so vih~namag,qo/p~irvapnru~~iro~II~\ crpurvn e.rn r,relhtir~c~-n~dr,yui. Vukyapu~liya,vrlli on 1.123.

to manil'estation takes place within the understanding-as one calls to mind verses or chapters previously heard, for ~ x a m p l e . ~ ' In other words, the definitive moment in any 'knowing event' is one in which mem-ory comes into play-not by retrospective projection of the already familiar on lo the screen of the present. but by a selfmanifesting embodiment which is somehow akin to the sprouting or unfolding of a hidden seed. This process has an aspect of restoring or recalling something previously known or heard (perhaps overheard); the acl of perception operates within the cognitive contours of what is in some sense aIready known. But the image of the buried seednot a mere analogy, certainly not a metaphor-points to the directionality implicit in this description: memory makes perception manifest in the way any organic unfolding transpires, in a present that contains a preconceived teleology of maturation. Once we begin to think of memory as an epistemic movement in the present, with prospective force, other aspects of the problem (Dusyanta's problem, and ours) become clearer. 'What is yet to be is thought of as already being there.'12 Maturation makes manifest an existing, structured reality. This has important implications for the notion of forgetting. It is one thing to forget the past, quite another to lose the knowledge of one's necessary unfolding. As already stated, Dusyanta's retrospective gaze, so laden with pain and longing, may we11 mask this far more consequential form of forgetting. No wonder his self-awareness is so heavily dependent on the token, the eloquent memory trigger that, like the subtle sound slowly externalizing itself as story, contains the syllables of his name. Not so ~akuntala,by way of contrast: she flowers, ripens, awakens fully, gives birth to the auspicious child she has been promised, without ever being lost in retrogression. If there is anything she cannot remember, it is only something she truly cannot have known-for example, the curse that she never heard uttered. She is, however. subject to a fog of inattention and flooding feeling, within which the curse can operate freely--even if she knows nothing of this; but [hen in her case no less than her lover's, the curse externalizes somelhing of an inner process, with its peculiar discontinuities and breaks in awareness. And as we saw. she has her own score to settle with the

The Prospects of Memory 209 elusive token. Still, Dusyanta knows when he forgets and, at some level, even knows ~ . hhe~,has t forgotten, just as he always knows'in advance, without being told, the answers to crucial questions of identity that concern his course.43 A more general formulation of this point would allow for the movement of desire within the interwoven processes of linguistic exfoliation, cosmogenesis, and subjective remembering. Desire propels the word from pregnant trace to perceptible utterance, vcicaka to vcicya. In the language of the poeticians, creation-whether of a world of defined objects, or of a living consciousness-is vivaksa. the wish to speak or be spoken. This utterance, which is the subject's self-manifestation, is already there in the seed, awaiting the trigger to begin to germinate and sprout. The living subject is a vivaksita-a desired or intended articulation. Language is internally driven towards this external e x p r e s s i ~ nBut . ~ I hesitate to go farther in this direction for fear that the ~ a k u r ~ t a might la be taken as somehow allegorizing these notions, when such is clearly not the case. What we can see in the ~cikurztala,in the painful process that Dusyanta undergoes, is the gap hidden within knowledge: forgetting is integral to the self and to awareness. We also see that knowledge contains its own frame-knowing that one knows or, better remembering that one has forgotten-and that this frame can be detached from its contents. Dusyanta is aware of his forgetting even as he looks blindly at the woman he wants to remember. Language is woven into this same process in the surprising form of the trigger or token that gives rise to a latent reality. A story aims at a moving telos, all too easily forgotten, though to forget i t is, perhaps, to find it via a necessary detour. Memory has direction: when moving forward, it may create a presence. Moving backwards, it falls into a gap. Thisbackwards-is how human beings often, or even usually, think. In these conditions, hope would seem to lie in some form of re4'Thu~in Act I. he knows that ~akuntalais available to him, a Ksatriya; in Act VII he identifies his son before this knowledge becomes explicit. Note the symmetry in these two examples, in line with the general recursive structure of the play (Acts I and VII frame the text in parallel episodes, as has often been noted: see Ramanujan, 'The Ring of Memory'). j4 Bhartrhari speaks of the inner linguistic acti~ity'awakening' with the untuh-.Sc~hdu-vrttau): VU~VLIurge to speak, pru/~tn-~~i~:t~k.~a-pr~~tih~dhavam padiva 1.51 . 11,-tti.

2 1 0 Thr W ~ s d o m(?f Poets alignment. ( a n u ) sandhana ,45 as we saw at the outset: What is cut in two is soon reconstituted (krta-sandhanarn) Whatever is naturally crooked straightens its lines .... ( 1.9) 'Translated' forward into the story, the verse suggests that the hunter's violent movement into the ashram initiates a process of tortuous realignment already implicit, in n u c e , at the start. The hero, overwhelmed by 'crooked' retrospection in the middle of his progress, may finally come to 'be' himself or to 'speak' himself-still a paradoxical act. He has slipped back into his own story from the penumbra seemingly cast outside it, although this story has itself meanwhile changed; it is no longer the same story, though it is still Dusyanta's. The difference, for him, lies in the new act of re-cognition that effectively expands the limits of the story and also allows Dusyanta, perhaps for the first time, to see the woman who stands before him. Perhaps we can now answer the question posed earlier with reference to this progression: to say, 'I am Dusyanta (and I love this woman, whom I remember)' is actually to say, 'I now coincide, or am realigned, with the linguistic trigger that bears my name.'

7. On Longing There is an affective component to this process of knowing and perceiving. The ~ ~ k u n t aisl aamong the most moving of all Sanskrit plays. Kalidasa states the issue in another strong, insightful verse, one of the best known and most discussed in all of this poet's works.46 The context is important: this is the opening of Act V, before ~akuntala'sarrival at Dusyanta's court. Already the king is ill at ease, for he has been listening to the haunting singing e c h ~ i n gfrom within the women's quarters (a song whose subject, naturally, is forgetting). Longing ( u t k a t ~ t h a )floods his heart--a mysterious, object-less

'' I cannot explore here the subsequent history of this term, especially in Abhinavagupta and the ~ a ~ Tantra. va "See. e.g.. the comments hy Ahh~navagupla,in R. Gnoli, The. Arsrhrric Expenen(.e ac.cording to Ahhirln~,c~,quptcr. (Varanasi, 19h8), 14.

771cProspects (?f'Mrrnorv

longing-and

21 1

he sings:

Any l~vingbeing, however happy, seeing beauty, hearing sweet sounds, is overcome with longing, for memory brings to mind what was unrecognized beforeloves left over from other lives, still dense with feeling. (5.2) The doubt that has sparked the verse-doubt rooted in a wave of inexplicable yearning-is somewhat distanced by the explanation thc king puts forward: one's karmic memories are ignited by aesthetic experience, and one then feels, without being fully conscious, ancient losses, loves unresolved and unsatisfied, that still live on in some deeper part of our minds. But this hypothesis hardly does justice to Dusyanta's inner state, so heavily blanketed by the expressive forgetfulness that he is about to reveal in relation to ~akuntal2-hardly a 'left-over' love. Helpless longing is, i t seems, what forgetting feels like (at least in the case of this particular type of forgetting); in this, it is remarkably like remembering. The striking element here is that this longing, this disquiet or dis-ease, emerges out of a state of fullness, an internalization of visual or (perhaps above all) auditory excess."' We know this fullness: i t belongs to vivaksa, the drive within language, the drive of the self to coincide with its name. In Dusyanta's case, forgetting is part of this same drive and retains something of its promise, even as i t engenders the predictable mode of restless yearning. But Dusyanta also shows us the point at which memory turns back upon itself, congealing as retrospection. This distortion, endemic to conciousness, informs vikara, the 'undoing' with which we began and which Dusyanta claims as the characteristic habit of his mind. A vast pathology lies waiting here, its contours intimated by Kalidasa's play, where the normative effects of dislocation in perception-the displacement inherent in any awareness 'riddled with 1anguge'-are at once emblematized and exaggerated by the sufferings of this engaging couple. Look again at the paradigm. The lovers have been reunited, the circle closed; sandhanrr is the order of the day. Still, Dusyanta is filled with a kind of horror:

';I wish to thank Velchcru

Narayana Rao for this observation

2 12

Thr W~.sdotu (!/ Ports

L ~ k csomcorlc who. ctal-ing at an elephant. insists, 'There is no clephant'; who then, as i t moves away, feels a certain doubt and, on seeing its footprints, is certain: 'An elephant licrs been there'such is the aberrant working oS my mind. Why this longing'? Because we cannot see what is right before usalthough we know that i t is there. Why do we fail to see? Because perception requires an opening, the space of temporal and linguistic displacement and deformation. These features are normative, structured into thinking. Within this space there arise the disquiet that is born of beauty and the subjectivity that lies between the subtle ecrmination of sound and the enacted story. This disquiet. this u yearning, are dependable signs that the subject is present. At moments, in certain contexts, under the influence of the proper token or trigger, we do manage miraculously to re-coincide, remembering forward once again. These are the rare moments when we notice the elephant before us; when we hear ourselves echoing, however subtly, with the resonance of a self that is this sound, this potential, irreplaceable story.

Dreaming the Self in South India*

Once there was a city that was swallowed up by the sea. The disaster was not entirely unexpected, for a conditional curse had long before been laid upon the place, a curse connected to the dependable human potential for forgetting: if the king were ever to forget to celebrate the festival of the god Indra, the city would be flooded and destroyed. Close to the event, there were signs4reamlike announcements and prophecies-that the condition was about to be fulfilled. But in the end it was, as usual, a matter of too much loving, and longing, and the inevitable sorrow that they entail. The city was PukBr, also known as KBverippllmpaninam, an ancient Tamil seaport on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. The king was the great Chola who fell in love with a woman from the nether world of the serpents-an impossible union, consuming in all ways. She left him to return to her mysterious domain, promising only to send him one day the son who would be born out of their love. And so she did: the baby was entrusted to a ship of merchants sailing the sea, but the ship was wrecked and the baby lost. When the king heard the tragic news, he was so overcome with grief-a double loss, doubly unbearable-that he forgot his duties, forgot to celebrate the festival. So Indra ordered the goddess Manimekhala, deity of seafarers, to drown the city. There is an important sequel to this story. Though Pukiir was lost forever, the child was eventually washed ashore not far to the north, where he became the king of Kiificipuram-one of the great historic centres of south Indian civilization and, in the middle of the first millenium AD, an important site for Buddhist cult and learning. So

* First published in D. Shuiman and G. Stroumsa (eds). Dream Cultures: Exploratiorzs in the Comparative History of Drrurtzirlg (New York: OUP, 1999).

2 14

The Wzsdonz c?f Poets

Drrurning the Self in South lndia

the origin of kinship in Kaficipuram was somehow bound up with the flooding of the older royal capital to thc south, and with the notion of another king's passion and forgetting. Kaficipuram was also, it seems, the place where the long Tamil narrative poem called Manimrkulai, which will concern us here, was composed, perhaps in the sixth century, to tell the story of the flood and another, more complicated story as well, about a young courtesan who, in effect, dreams her way toward the Buddhist path. Manimekalai is a book of dreams and dreamlike modes. It is attributed, almost certainly by expressive retrojection on the part of the Tamil tradition, to a poet named Kolavanikan Cattanar, known to us from the ancient anthologies of shorter poems. W e will have more to say about this attribution and the role played by the alleged author. It is also the only Tamil Buddhist work to survive, and one of the most lyrical and moving of all classical Tamil poems. In the background one senses, throughout, the impending destruction of Pukar, for the reason just described; this is both leitmotif and backdrop to the story of the heroine's unfolding. Since her story is so intricate, told in a strange forward-backward oscillation, filled with flashbacks to earlier lives-and since the dream logic it embodies is intelligible only in the context of this narrative-I will begin with a rough and much reduced summary of its major contours. The reader should bear in mind that the story also branches out continuously into various secondary and embedded narratives, some of them highly resonant with the central drama. Manimekalai, the heroine, named after the same goddess of seafarers (Manimekhala),' was the daughter of the courtesan Matavi and her lover Kovalan. Kovalan had been killed, through. tragic mistake, by the king of Maturai in the far south of the Tamil country; his wife, Kannaki. enraged at the loss of her husband, tore off her left breast and hurled it at the city of Maturai, burning it to ashes. Kannaki then became a goddess worshipped in a temple far to the west, Vafici.' I distinguish throughout the goddess Manirnekhala (Sansknt spelling) from her namesake Manirnekalai (Tamil spelling). For the cult of Manirnekhala, attested in early Buddhist literature and still widespread in South East Asia. see Sylvain Levi, 'Manirnekhala, divinitk de la rner', in P. Hartmann (ed.), Mkmorial Svlvain Levi (Paris, 1937), 37 1-83. Today she is worshipped at KBdungallur in Kerala as ~ ~ a i m u l a i c cthe i, the famous Goddess with a Single Breast. This is the story ofCilup/~utikurum,

215

These events were known to the young future courte$an Manimekalai as she was growing up in Pukar, and the vast sorrow they represented turned her heart away from the world, towards renunciation and the search for truth. She was a beautiful woman, and her metaphysical bent was deeply disturbing to the courtesans, and others, in Pukar (especially to her grandmother Cittirapati). Moreover, the Prince of Pukar, Utayakumaran, was passionately in love with her. O n e day he pursued her into the public garden, where she had gone to pick flowers with her companion, Cutamati. T o escape the attentions of the prince, Manimekalai took shelter in a crystal pavilion, where she could be seen but not touched. In despair, the prince went home. But that night the goddess Manimekhala herself spirited the sleeping Manimekalai away to an island called Manipallavam in the middle of the sea. At the same time, the goddess appeared to the prince and urged him to renounce his passion for the girl. She also woke u p Cutamati and informed her o f Manimekalai's disappearance, explained that the time had come for Manimekalai to follow the Buddhist path, and promised that the young woman would return to Pukar in disguise. Later on this same night of eerie revelations, a painted pillar in the public hall began speaking, telling Cutamati the story of her former life. O n the island, Manimekalai discovered a Buddhist shrine; approaching it, she suddenly remembered all that had happened in her previous life. Soon the goddess Manimekhala herself appeared and confirmed these memories; she also taught Manimekalai mantras that allowed her to fly through the air and to take on whatever form she wished. The guardian goddess of the island, Tivatilakai, also materialized before Manimekalai; at her instruction, Manimekalai received from a pond in the shrine a magical bowl, Amuta-curapi, which produced inexhaustible supplies of food. This bowl had once belonged to a renegade Brahmin named Aputtiran, who was abandoned by his mother and nursed by a cow. When Aputtiran died, after many adventures, on Manipallavam Island, the bowl vanished

I

i I

twin composition to Manimekalai, attributed to Ila~ikovatika!.The mythic history of Kannaki, and the great text that tells it, have been studled in detail from various perspectives; see, in particular, Gananath Obeyesekere. The Cult of Pattini (Chicago, 1984): also David Shulrnan, Tamil Temple Mvths (Princeton. 1980). 20&10.

2 16

The Wisrlom of Poets

into the pond. This samc put ti ran was now reborn as the King of Cavakam (Java). with no mcmory of his past. Manimekalai took the magic bowl back to Pukar with thc aim of fceding all who were hungry. First to bc fed was a divine woman named Kiiyacantikai, who had been cursed with the disease of 'elephant's hunger'; no food could ever satisfy her craving. (She had tripped over, and unintentionally destroyed, a magical naval fruit, which ripened only once every twclve years' and which a sage had set aside for his meal-also a once-in-twelve-years, event; in his anger, he cursed her to suffer a hunger equal to his own.) One mouthful from Manimekalai's bowl satisfied Kgyacantikai, and redeemed her. She flew off to rejoin her husband in the land of the Vidygdhara musicians, but on the way, she inadvertently flew over the mountain of the hungry goddess DurgB, who seized her shadow and used it to drag her down and devour her entirely. Now that Kayacantikai was gone, Manimekalai-still intent on avoiding the unwanted attentions of the lovelorn Prince Utayakumaran-assumed Kgyacantikai's form (by means of the magical mantra) and went through the streets, giving food to the hungry from her bowl. She transformed the city of P u k a by her loving kindness, and persuaded the king himself to turn the prison into a place of teaching and charity. But disaster was lurking: Kayacantikai's husband, the Vidyadhara Karicanan, unaware that his wife's curse had come to an end, came to KBAci to look for her. He saw Manimekalai in KByacantikai's form, and watched as she spoke at length to the prince, whom she urged to renounce his passion; but the VidyBdhara wrongly assumed that he was seeing his wife in a romantic liaison with another man. He therefore hid himself in the public hall, at night, when Manimekalai returned there to sleep. When the prince also appeared, still intent on winning her love, KBncanan emerged and killed him with his sword. No sooner had he done so than a painted pillar in the hall-a divinity locked in stone-spoke to KgAcanan and explained his terrible mistake; he also informed the unhappy husband that his wife had been swallowed by Durga on her way home. Now Manimekalai awoke and overheard this conversation, even as she saw the dcad body of her would-be lover lying before her. She grieved over the prince, called out to him as her beloved. But again the pillar deity spoke, explaining to her that the prince had been her husband in many previous livcs and had suffered his present fate

Dr(>clr?lirr,y/lrc. .Sc~l/' irr .Soutll Irrtlrri

2 17

bccausc of an acl ~~I'violcncc committccl in his last human incarnalion. The pillar also spokc o f Mi3nimckalili's futurc cnlightcnmcnt through the words of thc grcat Buddhist sagc Aravana ALikal. The quccn. Utayakumaran's mothcr, sought LO have Manimckalai killcd, sincc shc had caused hcr son's dcath; but Manimekalai survivcd all attempts to harm her. and taught wisdom to the gricving qucen. She then left Pukar to seck out the sagc. On the way she found Punyaraja. the King of Ciivakam (and the original owner of the magical bowl). She took him to the Buddhist shrine on thc island of Manipallavam, where he, too, rcmembcrcd his former lifc and cvcn exhumed his own former body, a buried skelcton. as final proof of this rcdiscovered story. The goddess of the island also revealed to thc two pilgrims, Manimekalai and the Javanesc king, that the city of Pukar had just been flooded and dcstroycd-for the Chola king, overcome by grief for his infant son lost at sea, had forgotten to celebrate Indra's festival, as had been foretold. Manimekalai made her way to Kaficipuram via the city of Vaiici, where teachers of various sects and schools expoundcd their truths to her. At Kafici she found Aravana Atikal and learned the ultimate wisdom of the Buddhist path. Herc, too, shc entrusted the magical bowl to a newly created shrinc, where it continues to feed the hungry, to bring rain to the fields, and to heal all those in need. Such is the story. unusual in Buddhist literature on several countsthe presence of a female protagonist who cmbodies the scarch for freedom; the eeric intricacies of remembering and fdrgetting that occupy nearly all the main characters; the lyrical and wistful portrait of human consciousness, in its various modcs; and thc striking connections belween thc metaphysics of sclf and sclf-knowledge and the external drama of dcstruction that involvcs thc flooding of Pukar. But Manimekalai, for all its uniqueness, docs not stand alone, It is, in fact, a twin. As cven the above crude summary reveals, the Manimckalai story is closely intertwincd with carlier events relating to Manimekalai's parents. Kovalan and Matavi. and to Kovalan's properly weddcd wife. Kannaki. These evcnts are told in thc lamous Tamil narr~tivcpoem, Cilappcrtikurtrm. attributed to a Cera princepoet, Ilankova~ikal.The Cilnppatikut-urn i a probably roughly contemporaneous with Matlitti~kalai(and Lhc attribulion to thc Ccra princc ia no morc convincing than lhal ofMri!rittrrk(iltriLo ~ h mcrchant c Callanal-).Thc ~ w oworks ccho onc ;~nolhc~rcpc;llcclly. to Lhc poinl

218

The Wisdorr~cf! Poets

of sharing small tcxtual segments. though for the most part wc arc

dealing with a dcnsc wch of intertextual corrcspondcnces, as thc Tamil tradition h a s a l w a y s r e c o g n i ~ e d .O n c should note that t h e Cilappatikuram also climaxes in a dreadful act of' destruction. Kannaki's vengeful burning of thc city of Maturai. Thc tradition has its own way of asserting this linkage, tying thc two texts intimately together. It tells us that the two poets actually composed their works initially for one another-an audience of one. This assertion serves to provide a frame within which the two poems can be situated, and which itself comments upon their meaning. W e must take a moment, before turning to Manimekalai and her dreams, to address this traditional frame, which comes to us in thc form of two patikam prefaces, apparently prefixed to the two works in the early medieval period. The patikam to Manimekalai tells us, rather simply, that Kalavanikan Cattag composed the thirty cantos of Manimekalai-ruyavu ('Manimekalai's Renunciation', perhaps the original title of the work) for Ilariko (lines 95-8). Rather more striking is the story offered by the preface to Cilappatikuram: here, when the Kuravar hill tribes came to Ijanko with reports of an amazing vision of a goddess or woman (tiru mri pattini) with only one breast, it is Cattan, ljatiko's companion, who can explain what happened-by summarizing, in effect, the entire Cilappatikriram story, which Ilanko will then embody in his thirty chapters. How does Cattan know this long, sorrowful sequence and, more important still, what it means in terms of karmic causality (vieai-\iiiaivu)? He knows because he was lying down-perhaps sleeping-in ~ i v a ' stemple in Maturai when the goddess of Maturai herself appeared there before Kannaki and informed her of her previous life and the tragic karmic preconditioning of her husband's death in [his life (lines 39-54). Now we know, from the tcxt of the Cilappatikriram itself, just whcn this revelation took place: it was right after Kannaki had torn her fiery breast from her body and cast it at the city of Maturai. which was consumed in the conflagration. All of this has its own suggestive important---even granting thc assumption that theparikan~is a latcr appendage to the text. In cffect, [he two prefaces recapitulate an 'internal framing'.' incorporated

' For this term, which I owe to Drnitri Segal. see David Shulman. 'Remaking a Purana: Thc Rcscuc ol Gnjendr:~ I n Poriinir'.~ M i r l r t i h l ~ t i ~ t r ~ ~ i r / c r in t ~ z W. c i ' , Donigcr (ctl.).Prrr-cigtr Pt,t.t-c~ii~.~: Rtjc.i/~t-oc.i/~ trlit! ~ ' I - O ~ ~ , ~ / O it1 ~ -H111tlu I I I O /~IiO i(I / ,~ / t r i ~ r Tt~11j c~ (Allx~ny,1 0 0 3 ) . 147.

Dreamrtlg the Sclf lrr South I17d1ir 2 1 9 already into the Ciluppatikaram itsell-: there, too, Cattan, 'the great master of Tamil' (ttrn furnil acar_i cattan), fillcd with a joyous and baffling scnsc of wonder and desire, explains Kannaki's story to King CEnkuttuvan when the Kucavar hill people rcport a vision of this goddess with a single breast (25.65-66). But the prefaces also give the frame a special twist. They specify the first audience for each of the books, making these two single listeners, bound together in companionship, internal to what is really a single story in two instalrnents-and also creating, by the same token, a ccrtain disjunction between this internal hearing of the poems and o u r experience of them, outside the frame. This sets both works firmly in the kavya mode of elaborate poetic narrative, as the traditior~has ~ current usage. neither Cilappatikaram always r e ~ o g n i z e d :despite nor Manimekalai is in any sense epic. O n the other hand, i t now transpires that Cgttanar's vision, whatever i t was, precedes llanko's education in the events he is soon to describe. Moreover, this vision is set in the stark and fearful night during which Maturai was burning. Our story-Manimekalai's story too-comes to us, then, via the visionary poet, amidst the flames. Just what was the nature of Ciittanar's experience, as the patikam would like us to understand it? The verb is ambiguous: he was 'lying' in the temple, in deep darkness (nallirut kitantee, 41). Perhaps, in this state, he simply overheard the conversation between the city goddess and Kannaki. (Poetry, as A.K. Ramanujan used to say, is never heard, only overheard.) But Atiyakkunall2r. the nicdieval commentator, says that Cgttanar was asleep. In this case, the whole conversation-indeed the entire story of our two intertwined textswould be a dream.5 Of course, the two nced not be mutually exclusive. Our poet could have overheard the goddess in a dream. and in any case, I a m not sure that we need to resolve this question by opting for one unequivocal reading. What matters, in terms of the thematic drive I will emphasize below, is the tradition's sense of Crlttanar's initial experience, the penetrating illumination, on the edge of extinction, that gives birth to two great poems. It happens at night. in the dark, in the presence of startling visual and auditory images highly reminiscent See above. Chaplcr I . Againsl this, sce discushion by Pi). Vc. C'ornacunlaran%rin his cc)~n~~icnl;~ry on this passage (Ilanko\,a!~kal,C ~ l t i / ) / ~ t r / i X r i rcclilcd - t ~ ~ ~ with ~, colnmenlarY by P6.Ve. Comacunlaranar (Madras. 1970). 15.

220 Thc Wi.sclorn ofpoets of the dream state and powerfully kcyed to the dream textures that consistently inform our text. For the Manin~ekulailargely moves from one dream to another (sometimes one inside another). and i t is not by chance that the literary culture around i t classifies its composition as a dreamlike act. Such statements, an implicit literary criticism on the level of the living use of the classical texts, are never misleading.

So Cattanar, in this perspective, has given us a kind of dream text originating in a moment of fiery destruction. Let us see how the poem itself supports this reading. In what follows, I will trace certain powerful, interlocking themes, integrated by a stable set of linguistic and poetic means and by a common affinity with dreaming, broadly understood. I assume, as a working hypothesis, that the domains of theme, figuration. narrative structure, framing, and poetic language are all. in some way, mutually reinforcing. We will thus l w k briefly at the textures and syntactic patterns that are so characteristic of this book and of its specific expressivity. Let us begin with what could be considered a master trope, emblematic of the whole. Manimekalai has gone to the public garden with Cutamati, to pick flowers (for she has ruined the garlands she was weaving earlier by her tears, generated by hearing the story of her father's death). Utayakumaran, the prince who loves her (although one wonders, already at the outset, whether this is really the right word), is out in the streets; he has just brought a wild elephant back under control. Now, as he passes the courtesans' houses, he sees through an open window a young man of the merchant class, standing beside his lover in a state of apparent bewilderment. One hand clutches a vina, but the man is frozen into stillness, like a painted picture (vattikaic ctytiyin varaintaprival. 4.57). The prince is interested, and asks the man what is wrong (~Ljrun i yucca itukkun). The young merchant hastens to bow to the prince and to explain: Like a flower hidden in a vasc. Manimekalai. MGtavi's daughtcr, her beauty fading, was on hcr way to thc garden. I saw hcr pass. and thc tcrriblc \orrow

that overtook her I'athcr. Kovnlan, over whelrned me. My heart lost its centre. lily hand strayed to the wrong string o f the virzri. A wrong note rang out: that is what distressed me. (4.65-71)

t

The prince, predictably, finds this story a cause for rejoicing: he now knows where to find Manimekalai. But if the force of the image is lost on him (as nearly everything he hears and sees throughout this story fails to truly touch him), it need not be on us. The lover has seen a disturbing vision of a striking young woman fading, her beauty hidden and denied; this vision calls up in him an empathic identification with her father's suffering, and the result is a strident, unconscious disharmony. The wrong string is unintentionally sounded, a false note disturbs the setting of love. This is enough to turn the young merchant to stone. We should observe the somewhat unusual, indeed oblique, causal nexus: vision connects to emotion. which decentres concentration and produces the false note, and the latter then freezes body and mind. Here causality-in a profound sense, always felt to be ultimately incoherent in a Buddhist metaphysicshas the same zigzag quality, the same slippery movement from conditioning frame to dependent result, that we find in so much Buddhist theory, for example, in the analysis of 'conditioned origins' (see below). In this sense, our slight example is entirely appropriate to its wider setting of primary perceptions. Moreover, once again in accordance with a ma.jor strand within this wider setting, the ultimate, contextualizing level-the level of potential resolution-is essentially an aesthetic one.6 Imagine a world very delicately attuned, so much so that a single wrong note can inflict deep pain in the heart or mind, but also labile, emotionally vibrant, and, in particular, rich in the varieties of desire. Here sorrow, ignited suddenly by memory, produces an immediate displacement, a glaring gap in the superficially smooth texture of experience. The merchant lover has remembered a story-in this case. someone else's story-and. for a single pregnant moment, his world has come to a halt. There is a sense in which this kind of opening--the unexpected displacement, or discontinuity, that is signalled by the jarring note and that is somehow connected to

"

wwi~lito thank Ilina Stci!i for insightb that havc contrihutccl to this formulation.

D I - ~ L I I Ithe I I Self I I ~ 111 South Incmo1.y. to story, and to sorrow-is, lor our poet. characteristic of consciousness per sc. As :~lrcacly statcd, this is a book about the structure, the inner dynamics. and thc potcntialities of awareness. Moreover, the poignant imagc just cxamined recurs in a remarkahlc passagc in Canto 7 , which we [night call, in our own shorthand, 'Nigh~fallin Pukar'-perhaps thc most powerful attempt we havc in classical Tarnil to find extended lyrical embodiment for the subtle textures of night (and this in a literature that was particularly fascinated with nocturnal images and thcmes). Herc is thc sctting: Cutamati, Manimekalai's friend, has been visited, her sleep disturbed, by the goddess Manimekhala, who has already spirited ncr namesake Manimekalai away to Manipallavam Island; now the goddess returns to inforrn Cutamati of her friend's disappearance and to send her with this news to Matavi. All this transpires in the burning ground, with its gruesome sights and sounds. Cutamati. still half asleep, is appropriately fearful, lonely, bewildered, and the manifold sounds of the night only enhance her fears. The town is asleep. yet the night is alive with murmurs, movement, strange cries: Dancing girls wcrc sleeping soundly beside their sleeping instrumcnls. Gentle fingers blindly stroked, in sleep, thc untuned strings, an3 false notes filled the night. Wives whose husbands had just returned from their mistresses were still angry, unappeased, their eyes red as they feigned sleep, but full of wanting, too, embracing these false men as i f from sleep. Little children, worn out from play. from pulling their toy chariots, slept peacefully beside their sleeping nursemaids, enveloped in incenhe of whitc mustard. House pigeons and water b i r d and birds of the groves slept deeply, their beaks enfolded in their bodies. Thc whole city, full of the festival, had seulcd into slecp. Bur still [here werc noises: warc:hmcn calling out the hour\ accordin lo rhc warel--clock i n the palace. h~~ngr-y elcldiants tr-~lmpcringI'roin their \tables.

111dlu

223

drumbeats of the guards who werc prowling lanes and alleys. the drunken songs o f the shipbuilders, too lull of rice toddy, women splashing in the dark ponds to purify thernsclvcs after childbirth, as others wafted smoke of margosa and white mustard, heroes fierce as tigers scrcamlng 'Victory to the King!' as they cut off their heads in sacrifice to the ghoul at the crossroads, spirit-charmers singing mantras as they offered animals to demons to protcct new mothers and young children and pregnant women from grief-and many other sounds, too, softly spreading through the night .... (7.44-86) First, again, is the dissonance of unconscious musicality, the false notes struck from the untuned vinfi-and to these unsettling resonances are added the irregular growls and rustlings and cries that, together, make up this strange nocturnal symphony. The tenor of the night is mixed, and somctimcs violcnt: thcrc is hungcr, thcrc is intoxication, there are the death screams of sclf-sacrificing warriors (apparently a regular nocturnal expcriencc, at least during festival days). there is ritual activity of various kinds. In many ways, as I can attcst from my own experience, this description feels uncannily appropriate to the texture of midnight in any Tamil city, even today. What is more to the point, the tcxture is that of dreaming itself, and as such meaningful in the c o n t e x t of this first e x t e n d c d dream narration in t h e Manimekalai. 'Nightfall in Pukar' is the background to the goddess's self-revelation to Cutamati, to the prince, and to Manimekalai's own disappearance, still asleep, from her home. We hear Pukar as the dreamers hear it, unaware, in slcep. Can we characterize this texture inore precisely? Thematically, we have already noted the clement of unconscious disharmony. At the same time, we cannot but fecl the luxuriant profusion of noise and image; drcam texture is agglutinative, cumulative. uneven. It also includes, within its own internal pattern, the transition in statc that is built into drcaming per sc: cxistcntial domains are rninglcd, demons wander through the strccts, warriors movc from this worlcl t o thc next. Morcovcr. this haunting. daunting rnorncnt of potential is suggestivcly coded, its irnagcs dark and hidden. reduced to invisihlc sound. Thcir intcrnal links arc gcntly. hut also tenuously, marked hy the standard syntactical devicc ol'classic;~lTamil poetic narratives. :I .;cemrngly cndlcss scqrlcncc 01' non-finitc verbs

224

7 ' 1 1 ~Wi.sclorn c!f Poets

occ;isioi~allyi~~te~.spc~-scd with adverbial t~nlemarkers. Thc scnsc is of a chain o l contifuous clcmenls. looscly rclatcd, discrete. yet cum~~l;tlivc in cf'l'cct. Within this chain there 1s the constant recurrence ol'ccrla~nkey ur~ils.li)rcxarnple, ~ h rcpcalcd. c explicit statement that ' X ' or ' Y ' or indccd 'the whole cily' is asleep. The repetilion provides the assurance, perhaps [he illusion, of coherence among a strangely discontinuous assortmcnl of individual elements. There is a sense in which this syntax is moi~ldedprcciscly to generate the consciousness or. lo use anothcr term, the experiential tcxtures, i t seems to describe. It could nlmost bc a lullaby, mesmeri~jngthc lislener into dreaming. Let me repeat: the Mal~imekalaiis a kind of dream book, its textures apparently close to a culturally specific sense of dream experience. The awarcness at the centre of this dark and moving work is also closely linked to dreaming. As Acavana Atika! tells Manimekalai in the concluding canto, where the Buddhist teaching is made explicit, UIIU~*IL-'consciousness','awareness'. 'feeling'-is 'the sleeper's stale' ( u ~ l a r v 'u;gap patuvat' urarikuvor unclrvirpuriv' inr' akip pulan kolritcztuvr, 30.83-84). Of course, unanzu is a technical term here, the third in the sequence of Lhe nidOrrn.s, 'links' in a theory of conditioned origins (pratitya samutpada). the well-known Buddhist chain of psychocosmology which we examine below: we should be careful not to load ~t with any extrinsic significance. Still, I will argue that this Tamil traslation of vijiiana is meaningful within the more general metaphysical system of this book. and I will assume that this system is present not only in the philosophical/logical conclusion of the final cantos but also throughout the interlocking narratives that make up most of the text. We are searching here for those intuited, deeply embedded perccplions that have given birth both to the amazing story and to the explanations it offers of itself. We will return to the chain of conditioned origins and to the place 10 unarvu as dream. For now, let us noticc only that, as the dream is dispelled-as clay breaks in Pukar-a powerful doubling seeps into language (and. apparently, perception as well)

Drrurtli~r~ tllr, Self' in South Irr(1rtr

. 225

11anai niluil, put-al'i puluv ;!r~nt' ulul, p a ~ a niluil, i pullutn l ~ a l a vt?!r~nt'aluj) purn po_lil cirkaip pull bli ciyappup purikdfiyar kaip pu(( bli ciyappu .... Now the watchmen could go lo sleep, but lovers in their soft beds would awake: there were conches sounding, with no meaning, and poets singing artful blessings, elephants trumpeting, cocks crowing. horses restless in their stables, birds crying on the branches as they shook off rest so Lhe groves were full of their wild music, like the bracelets chiming on women's arms .... (7.111-120)

I

Translation can hardly reflect the yamaka chiming that forms the true substance of these lines: the poet plays on the double meanings of vciranam ('elephant' as well as 'cock'), panai ('stables' and 'branch'), and so on, deftly alliterating and reconfiguring the repeated phonematic series. In a way, it is 'only' play, not to be overly burdened with interpretation. At anothcr level, we have here another feature integral to our theme-a salient marker of the transition between dream and non-dream. The dream state points in two directions and incorporates a strangely doubled code, which both superimposes and displaces its basic units of meaning. Before concluding this section, I would like to look at one more image, which seems to me to lead us toward the deeper logic of this narrative and its dream modes. Canto 5-still very much part of the same sequence with which we have been dealing, Manimckalai's visit to the garden and its consequences--concludes with a lengthy description of evening. The two girls are still in the garden, the prince has temporarily given up his quest and gone home; soon both Manimekalai and Cutamati will be asleep. At lhis point the city of Pukar itself is portrayed in an extended, tragic metaphor as a newly bereaved widow leaving the battlefield and going back to her parents' house. Note the direction: the regression backward. or even. wc might say, inward, into the home or womb out of which this woman had emerged. Thc lxzysu goose. however. surprisingly reverses lhc sense of entropic self-enfolding. When the I'cmalc goose is caught within the lotus flower that i a closing as evening comes. thc male rushes in

Lo (car opc11 tllc l t ~ t i ~:iri~l s lrcc Iicr.' Niylit i h l;iIliriy. ~I~-ci~riitiri~c~ iq>pro:~cIii~ig: :I pr-occ\s o I ' c l o \ i ~ ~iri\v;~rd. g 111 d e s ~ r - ~ r ~ .ci~-clcs ti\c or spir-als. i \ disr~ll>tcd'~nclhlochcd. This, i l l a \viircl, is the prolnlhe 01 thc dl-cani.

This drclim logic can t)c simply and alxtl-actly \tatcd. Imagine ;I large s point, if circle spiralling inward In concentric patterns. At ~ t central and whcn 11 is I-cached,thc1.e is an in~plosion:this is the point of sell'destruction which. bccausc the circle is inl'initc in scope, actually repeals itself uithout end. Individual lives. or the lives ofcitics. or 01' thc cosmos. lollo\v this course of inevitable and recurrent sellannihilation. The energy rhat fuels the dreadful process has a name. Call i t 'rorgctting'. here synonymous with 'not knou,ing'-in short, our normal consciousness. Thus [he grief-stricken Chola king forgets to celcbratc Indra's festival-and Pukar is lost to the flood. At [he individual level. the lcrhal cycle or spiral is ha^ olconditioncd origin. prirfif~,ri.rc~nzufpritlm. dcscribcd hy Ala\,:~naAlikal at the hook's close. Here is the chain [ha1 pmduces a given lif'e, or a world. Firs1 there is ignorance, petain~ni--actual1 y qualiricd by the participle trztryar~fr~. that is '[he ignorance that is forgetting'. Then there is ac~ivityor, more precisely. agency-cg~rrl tkarrnrt). Agency. following upon forgetting. condition awareness (urirtri,rr, see above), lollowed by name and rorm (crriii.irrii1. sensual activarion (i~?!~l, riyu, riukrrri'rr). and then, of coursc. the truly destructive drives of craving (i:rtkrri) and a t t a c h ~ n e (per!-!-id). ~l~ which provide thc nccccs:lry preconditions for becoming (put'ut?~). birlh (to!-!-artl). sicknc\s. old ugc. and death (pir~i,rtruppii, c.rri,u) The lisl i i ~ ~ i c e lsratcd y in 30.159-169. which alho divide\ the <[ages into lime categories: forgetting and agency belong to lllne pas[: awiircncss and subscqucnt S ( ; I ~ C through S. hccon~ingand hirth. hc>lollgto Lime prewnt; the ~ L I ~ LI \I ~the C pr~ie~-ve oldi.;cnsc. old age. ,ind death. The spiral rhus rnovc\. Inc.\itahl!. tou.ards death. u hicli is n c \ c r a rc:il cndirly I>ut only the c.c~t:~iric~o~~clusjori o l caili r\s iilcd whorl.

eacli 11c\\ hir-tli. c:ic.Ii ac.1 i l l I'o1.gctt111~. None 0 1 t h i h is new (11 I I I any way unic1~1~. to Mtrt,~i~~zc~X~rIti~. I t i \ a \ ~ c l l - h r ~ o \I ~~ IrIiC I C ~ I I viiiilii. I~L congcni:~lly ;ldapted into the* Tamrl moclc. I31rt tllc Tanlil licroinc 01' our work docs Inaniigc t o c\c:lpe the 5l)iral: ; I \ w c have s a r d ~thc primary thrust ( 1 1 the n:irrativc I \ loward cxplorirlg the rncchar1isni and modes ollicr acllicve~ncnt.In cl'lbct. the cl~icstionis liow 10 l>rlng ahout a iigriil'icant hrcah or rupture ~ . i I I i i r tllc i circ111;irsystc11101'~cIl'~ destructive. entl.opic hecoming. W1i~:r.cthere I > dcadl!~contirl~r~ty ol' dependent conditioning--the Jirturc clc:irly cmhctidecl. iind indecd determined. within tlic prcscnt and tllc past-one seeks space and .I counter-rnovenicnt. :I transition no1 I'or\s.ard tow;ircl dyirlg hut hackward. toward (and hcyond) I'orgctting. In the prcscnt case, the essential instrun,ent o f this reiJcrse movement is the drcani. ivhlch becomes a mode ol' mcinory. How dncs i t work'? There arc- actually hcveral parallel possihili~ies that we need to examine hriclly. The drcani mode is, in a wnsc. nicrcly emblematic nf a larger category o t mantic or an:imnestic scmiosis. Manimckalai is transported in her slccl, to llic i\lnnd of M a ~ ~ i ~ x ~ I l a v a m . where s!ic will learn o f her former life. Is shc t l r e a m i n ~or awake'! Technically. the latter. bul she hcrsclf is unsure. '1s this waking reality or a dream'!' is the first question she asks hcrscll' upon l~wakingon the island beach ( n c i ~ i ~ ikcitiai.o i~o gtlr)tifai tici\.rtl, 8.2 1 ). This quanilary, intrinsic to the dream onlology. is lalcr intcnsilied hy the expansion in identity she undergoes as her rorrner life is revealed to her a1 the Buddhist shrine on the island. She discovct-s [hat in her previous c of Kaliula. who died of snakebite incarnation bhe was Laksmi. ~ h wife and was rehorn as Utayakuniaran---the same prirlce of Pukar who is. undcrstandahly now. still in love w i ~ hthis same woman. All of this is. of course. somewlia~distul.hing. Thus whcn the guardian goddess of thc island. Tivatil;~h;ii.conic\ 10 Marl inichalai i ~ n dasks ihc deccptivcly \implc cluc\tion. 'Who arc yo~i'!'. Ma11imckalai~--;rlready irrevoc:il>ly allcrcd i i i her ~lntlcrs~antling o l hcrsclt---can only answer. logically C I I O L I ~'WliicI~ II. 11icdo y o i ~rnenn?' ( I 1.8--9). This proy~.cssionc;111he sccn as par.adigma~ic101- major figures in . i i 111;1ytakc cltllcr l.or11;s. Kin: , ~ p u r t i r ; ~ ~ ~ l P u ~ ~ y ; ~ r a j ~ . our 1 ~ x 1iil!ho~lyh for csa~iiplc~. goes 1111-o~igIi rhc \tiigC\ ol'\clI'-r.ccovcr-yrn ;I still nlilrc ~ I ~ ; I ~ ~ I\v;I!,: I ~ C I > ~ O L I ~ I I tI i ) t h ~\' ~ I I I I C~ \ I : i t i i l L I I ~ L I ~ * I ~ ~ ~ ~ L I ~~ LII I ~I I ~L I L~ L ~' . A ~ I I ~ L I ~ ~ he is 111;1clcto cxc.;i\.atc,. ill \lic~ci:iri{i \\c~rldc~l-. I i i \ i1\v11Io~.riicrhc)cly C ' L I ~ ; I I I ~ ;I L~~I ~I .~ I I ~ ~ LI ' r~r 1 ~L1 1~i l;i hL> iIi r;r ~I \ 0I1 ' ~ 1\ 1 ~ ' I>I.C\ ~ I ~ I I I \ l ~ i ~ l'l.0111 ~ t l ~ ~ I I cC I O L ~ L I L ' I ~ I i i ~ ~ III! i ~ l \ ~ L ~ I . I ~ . ~!~III'II. LI\ I I ~ ! ~ I ~ /L /' ~ ~ I I /I~ / (I j/ \ . oit1 i) ~1.ci11

228

T11r Wi.\-clorlr

Poc~r.\.

public hall in Pukar known as Ul~tka--211avi. to thc cast 01' the goddess shrine. 'The p~llarImage is divinc*,and he tcnds to spcak at night. i n a rcalrn 01' consciousness somcwhcrc betwcen waking and sleeping, Hc is also suggestively described a\ capable of explaining causes surviving from the distant pas[. Manimekalai also has an important exchangc with this divinity. in thc coursc of which he tells her his own intriguing story: I an1 one of the many gods, Tuvatikan hy name. As of old, this pillar has hcen appointed as my place by Mayar?,the divine artisan. I never leave il. Listcn to my story: human beings know what even gods don't know. I have a friend, Oviyacceuar_l,a close companion. Someone or other must have told them in this city, so they always paint us together, in all the places we play, as if we were as close as flower and fragrance-though it is me whom they praise until their tongues become exhausted .... (21.130-140)

The context of this self-revelation is suggestive, in several ways. The immediate preface is a general statement. In Pukgr, so the pillar image tells Manimekalai, there are images everywhere, in public halls and meeting places. at the seaside, in groves and shrines, wherever some conceptualized or envisaged divinity could be captured and held in place by a painted form, on clay or stone or wood or wall ( I 19-1 28). All these images arc meant to offer protection (kaval); Tuvatika~, perhaps the most articulate and prominent of them all, also presumably performs this function-although, no doubt like the rest as well, he seems to be concerned even more powerfully with removing amnesiac blockages in the awareness of those who come near him. Indeed, the cntirc series might bc seen as inspired by the anxiety of forgetting, fbr reasons we are beginning to understand. Beyond this general context. however, is the specific. lurid moment in which the pillar speaks rhc prince has just been cut down. because of a mistaken perception, by the Vidy2dhar.a husband of Kriyacan!ikai, in whose lorm Manimckalai was disguised; Mallimckalai awakcns to discover a corpse at her fcct; thc dialogue with the pillar imagc cnsues. I will return. in greater detail, to t h ~ sccnc \ (scc scction 4 below), but it is important lo heal- in tnind thal rhc ~cvclationvolunlccrcd by t h ~ deity s ernergcabout of- yct ~~notlicr characteristic motncnt of dcstructivn. inio~.nicdhy notiorl\ ol'dangcl-011sIorycl[inp and nlispcrccptioii.

I)rrt~rrl~trg tllr SPI/ ~ r rSorrth Itrclrrr

229

The pillar image secnls 11-appcd.condcmncd to endless ages in Ihc confines of a singularcondcnscd space. Evcn marc strlking. cspccially since i t appears superficially so unmotivated. is the strangc doubling that Tuvatikan finds necessary LO strcss as he tclls his slory. He has a friend, who is as close to him as fragrance to the flower: the two are always depicted together in the profusion of. imagcs that seems the n o m in Pukar. Everyone-at lcast everyone human-knows that thesc two are somehow one, two shadow-selves combined: yet the pillar alone is praised. Oncc again, there is a poignant quality to this selfawareness, a disturbing sense of thc ambiguous link betwcen self and shadowy other, especially in the context of the hidden knowledge that becomes available through this captive divinity's speech. In so far as the pillar's disclosures replicate the structure of the dream revelations-and the two modes are structurally and functionally alike, both recurring regularly to the samc effcct-then we might imagine that this theme of doubling runs parallel to the strange doubling in language and perception t h a ~we have seen in the transition from dream to waking, and that is, more deeply, integral to dreaming itself. There are other analogous examples. A painted picture in the goddess shrine speaks to the prince, warning him (after the fashion of an earlier nocturnal vision in which Manimekhala herself had appeared to him, telling him to forget Manimekalai. 7.3-14). He finds both of these communications wondrous (tippiyam=divya),although he is unable to internalize their practical and personal implication. Indeed, the prince is. in this matter, less fortunate than other major actors in the book. His consciousness of himself never expands to include the distant past. and the result is the obvious and necessary One-a pathetic death. In general, however, throughout the Manimekalai, we encounter a world whcre fragmentary revelations of the lost past kecp opening up to rhosc who are attuned. or ripe, to hearing them. They have certain stable features: an anamncsis that both extends the bounds of personal identity and. by the samc token. undermines the integrity of thc prescnt, ego-framed self: a retrospective orientation that moves lhc sub-jcctbackward. lhus away from the entropic point of futurc implosion: and a paradoxical Perception of radical discontinuity in thc present that is rootcd in thc experience or identity cxpansion backward through time. 21s i f thc subject wcrc bcing simuliancously filled with and crnplicd 01' his or her various sclvcs. In this scmioticnlly chargccl ~~nivcrse. rcple~cwilh hints and pieccs of past cxistcncc. one is I'rcqucntly bomhardcd by

llrrrcrnii~grho Self it1 Sorltli I r ~ r / i r r

uncxpectcd mctamessagcs that speak to overriding questions: Who arc you'! Where are you? And---much more rarcly--why arc you ? ~ ability to piece togcthcr a coherent who you arc (or seem to b ~ ) Onc's picture out of thcse qucries and partial answers is always, in principle, in doubt. The total frame is never present; nothing stands complete in itself; therc are jarring notes and disharmonies at every step: but thcre is also a dependable potential for internal rnovemcnt out of the destructive spiral. If the latter is energi~cd.above all, by forgetting, then escape must Ije in various forms of remembering, forms such as dreaming and the knowing voices of divinities trapped in paint or pillar.

Therc is also, however, another essential component to this process, which we might call 'emptiness' or 'hunger', strikingly evident in the same narrative unit just discussed-the pillar's nocturnal speech, heard or overheard by Manimekalai in the public space where the princc lies dead. Let us draw in, briefly, the narrative contours. Manimekalai has returned to Pukar with the magic bowl that produces endless food. She uses the bowl to satisfy the 'elephant hunger' (tantit t i ) of Kayacantikai, who had unintentionally tripped over a marvellous naval fruit that ripens once every twelve years and that was meant to satisfy the hunger of a Brahmin sagc. He cursed her to suffer from unappeasahle hunger until the next such fruit ripened, for his next meal, twelve years later-and also to lose her ability to fly through the sky. The curse ends as Manimekalai feeds the grounded and insatiable Kayacantikai who, now happily sated, flies away-only to makc the temhlc niistakc of overflying the Vindhya Mountains. where the hungry goddess VintakatikaiDurga seizes travellers' shadows, pulls them in, and devours them. Meanwhile, in Puk2r. Maninickalai has assumed the form of Kayacantika~In ordcr to cscape the still lovelorn prince. But the latter is notcntircly taken in by this disguise. Seeing 'Kayacan!ikai' fecding the hungry with the miraculous howl. IIC 5uspects that this is rcally his bcloved in another form: [his susplclon grows stronger as she 1 thank Don llandclman i'or iemarks pc3rllricnllo (hi\ passage. and discussion 01 thc conccplual worltl o l M~rr~r~rrc~l~llirr.

Iirr

23 I

spcaks to him. trying to instruct him in thc transience of hcauty (espccinlly femalc hcauty) and to turn his heart away from dcsire. The prince hot11 knows and fails to know that he is looking at and spcaking to Manimckalai-or perhaps he fails to know that hc knows. In any casc, he briefly lcaves to return to the palacc, intending to resume his search late at night. But he has, unfortunately. been observed in this interchange with 'Kayacantikai' by the real Kayacantikai's Vidyadhara husband, who has come to Pukar to find his wife; the husband draws the obvious but entirely incorrect conclusion that his wife is in love with this prince. He then decides to lie in wait, in the Ulaka-ayavi hall, for the prince's return. 'like a scrpent in its anthill home' (20.80).When Utayakunlaratj does, indeed, come back to the hall, in the middle of the night, the Vidyadhara cuts him down with his sword. At this point the pillar speaks, explaining to the Vidyadhara his dreadful error and also informing him that his wife, though relieved of her hunger and the curse, has already been swallowed up by the hungry goddess of the Vindhyas. Now Manimekalai, who has been sleeping in the goddess shrine to the west of the Ulaka-acavi hall, wakes up. The prince lies dead before her; the Vidyadhara stands horrified at his deed; and she has somehow overheard-perhaps still in sleep-the long speech of the pillar, gruesome with the reality of all that has happened. She is overcome with grief for the man who was her husband in many previous births-as the pillar now proceeds to inform her, filling in the gaps in the knowledge she gained on Manipallavam Island. It is at this point that the pillar also tells Manimekalai his own story, cited and discussed above. Clcarly, this extended passage is, in many ways, the real core of the entire book. Everything builds up towards this tragedy, and the remaining cantos deal with its emotional and cognitive aftermath. This I S thc moment in which the entropic spiral is cut, irrevocably, for our hcroinc. just as her suitor and former husband is literally cut in two. He, as we know. is still lost in entropy and prospective selfdestruction, clncrging out of ignorl~ncc,that is l'orgctting, presumably activc in his next birth: but Manimekalai will go on to adecper wisdom and cnhanccd f~.ccdoni.purchased partly through experience (her continued dit'ficulties in Pukar) and partly through long lccturcs on logic and metaphysics. ( I t i \ slriking that cvcn Buddhist logic hecomcs a malor thernc in this hook ol'di-canis: logic i:, nor Icarned hut drc:umt.) In any C.;I\C. the paradigm ol'anan~ncsticsem~osiss~illholds good: i t

Dt-c>urnirr~ thr Sclf'ir~South Ir~clirr 7 3 3

is m~dnight;perception is occluded; destruction lurks and unfolds; the heroine sleeps. wakes. overhears; a revelation occurs through the eerie medium of the paintcd pillar image, who takes his listeners backward, and then forward, through time. This is not. of course. a dream. Manimekalai wakes. this time, to learn the truth. almost as if the waking reality (nanavu) were, for once, privileged over the dream world (kanavu). A closer look, however, dispels this impression-for Manimekalai is still very much caught up in the midnight world of altered consciousness. She is, in effect, dependent upon, and transformed by, the pillar's mantic speech, including those parts that she only overhears, perhaps in sleep. This theme of overhearing is. as we know, significant. Recall the earlier instance of the poet Cattanjr's dreamy eavesdropping on the conversation between Kannaki and the goddess of Maturai, with the city burning outside. Indeed, in a formal sense the present narrative sequence, at the centre of the book's reported events, reconstitutes the major features of the general frame within which our text situates itself-in the patikam preface as well as the associated passages from Cilnppatikuram, as discussed above. Nocturnal destruction. mistaken identity and consequent crime, a revelation half-dreamt and overheard-both the poet and his heroine experience precisely this configuration, to a similar lyrical-noetic effect. Why overhear? The missing details-always there is yet another linkage waiting to be restored-emerge from the retrograde process of recovery, the antidote to forgetting. The aim. in theory, would be to reach the point of beginning. Alas. the zigzag chain of interdependence has no ultimate beginning. There are only momentary insights that can come from almost anywhere-dreams, pillars, voices-each of which constitutes a kind of as-if beginning, hence a significant break in the entropy. But each such moment is no less partial than i t is precious: one can, in truth, only overhear the whispered truth, never hear it fully, never reach the end. Another way to think about all this emerges from the strand of the story connected to Kayacantikai. s o intricately interwoven with Manimckalai's own story, to the point where these two wonicn arc given the same external form. Kayacanlikai ernbod~cs literally, the problem of hunger, which we should probably ~ c as c an arialugous cxtcnsion ol'the problcn~or awarcrless--or. perhaps, botl~arc varianls 01' (he sanic deeper issuc relating to lack and discontinuity. I11i)rgetting I'ucls 111cspirxl ol d y ~ r ~ hy ~. ~ n g ci.; r i t 5 cxpcricnt~;rl content. Stated

simply, the Munirnc~kalrii is a book abolrt hungcr and fced~ng; concomitant with the heroine's recovery of memory fragments I S her acquisition of the magical bowl that will feed lhe world. She is, at base, always filling a hungry gap. within herself or in others. She saves Kaficipuram from the drought that threatens to destroy it; she frees Kayacantikai of the impossible hunger that has bound her to the earth; she continually feeds the prisoners, the i l l , the weak. the ignorant. Hunger here is not simply the need to take in food; it is more akin to a state of mind (like nearly every other component and process in this nietaphysic) in which the primary awareness is one of empty space. The heroine's entire effort seems aimed at overcoming the breaks in the world, its discontinuities and emptinesses, its jarring displacements, its aching spaces of pain and need. Escaping entropy means, in this case, bridging the inner space-backward. toward the receding beginning. Yet even this movement is both ironic and dangerous in its own way, and i t is a major part of the poet's achievement that this potentially lethal aspect of remembering. recovering, becoming full is also seen and explored. Kfiyacantikai, the insatiable-all empty holes-docs become full, at last, and capable of movement. only to be swallowed up herself, via her shadow, in a still bigger emptiness, the belly of the goddess. This is a bold and plaintive statement, also strangely resonant with the musical image of the false and painful note. There is clearly a sense in which satisfying hunger fully is no less deadly-indeed, i t is more deadly-than staying hungry. To fill the gap to the full. in this Buddhist world of discrete and flowing phenomena, habitually misperceived. is to be swallowed up, to disappear. Similar, we must assume, is the mind in search of its beginnings, listening to its story. Could one close the gaps entirely. could one hear the story through, rolling i t backward, as it were. to the place before forgetting, one would Cind oneself in the nowhere place of no-self, and no knowing. A no-place, really, and I'ully emply.

Somewhat surprisingly, we find o~~r.selvcs in the ambiguous t l i ) ~ r ~ a ~ r ~ o f a precarious but eagerly s o u g h [ - a l t e r connectivity The Mcltlimrkrrlrri, a:, Paula Kichman has shown so incis~vcly.is a B ~ ~ d d h ~ s t

work t h r o ~ ~ gand h r l ~ r o u ~ hc o. r i l n ~ ~ r ~toe dcxernplil'ying Rutidlir~t

Drrurnlrin the .Yrlf rrr Sourlr lrrtlitr values and undcrctandings. Stabil~ty.here. is always false. Fullness ncvcr lasts. I>iscrctcdisj~~ncturcs arc thc stuff of cxpcrience. There is n o substralum olcon~in~lous sclthood. and no sclf that is not disguised. All dharmas arc tlccling and elusivc. Living is lethal. Onc generally moves i'orward toward thc waiting implosion. And yet, within this clippcry world of oblique and incohcrent causes, we observe, in passage after lyrical passage, thc deep dcsirc, thc hunger, and the possibility of reconnection. This, after all, is what nidana really means--a link. pcrhaps mysterious and hidden from normal seeingarid the Mai~imektllcricloscs with the long exposition of the niddnas in terms of the chain of dependent origins, prativa .ramutpada, as we saw abovc. Rccall that awarencss, unarvu-the critical third nidana and thc first movement in present time-is the slecper's state, the state that ineluctably follows upon forgetting and action. The drcam mode we have been exploring thus must comprise, in certain specilic ways, that tenuous tissue of connectivity with which the tcxt is so powerfully concerned. L e t mc try, in conclusion, to restate the major features and the motivating logic of this theme. Its centrality should, by now, be clear. The point is nicely made by yet another remark, to Manimekalai, by the prescient pillar: in the course of her metaphysical wanderings from tcachcr to teacher in Vafici, she will, the pillar assures her, encounter a hard-core 'realistlskcptic' (bhirra-vddin) who will try to convince her that all she has lcarncd-that is the precious recovery of knowlcdge about her former lives-is no more than a 'deluding dream' (ariliu nir kot!arnta arun tG.y:vvam mayakka ... kana mayakk' urrunai, 2 1.109-1 10). This arrogant and misleading view will not, howcver. pcrsuade her. The pillar is certain that she will, instead, give duc weight to the dream. obviously the locus of transformative truth (cf: 27.28 1-1 287. where this prophecy comes true). Thc drcam. or any of its analogues, offers a way back. It is a subtle and ambiguous state. oSten encoded. It is, however, an 'earlier' form of consciousness than waking, which is given to externalizcd and objcctifjed fixa~ions."In this scnsc. one does not actually 'wake up' to enllshtenmcnt. or cvcn Lo relatively less profound forms of truth; o l ~ crx rnorc likcly to move toward Insight by releasing oncself into dscanl The drcam. gcncrally, acts lrhc mcmory-a memory lost and

' 1lc.t-c. I!ie Rurlclllr\t ~llcoryi \ clo\c 1 0Ilinclu notions of the psllnacy of'the Inncar ovcr ~ h ohlcc~~l'~cd c a n d cI~\conll~iuous outsrclc. Cf. Don Handelman ;lnd l> Shulm;~n.(;otl Irl.crtl~,0 1 t r Srt'cl ' c (Jo~~cs 01 1)lc.e (Ncw York. 1997).

235

restored. Its basic dircction is backward, toward a beginning. 11 expands identity. o n thc one hand, by literally dis-closing its rupture with earlicr livcs and forgotten cxperience, but also by loosening thc tight grasping of prcscnt idcntity boundaries, on the other. It sccms to fill up the porous and forgetful mind as food fills the hungry body or rain fills the fields. It thus also heals, at least in part. the dissonancc of aesthetic displaccment, as in thc recurrent image of thc vina's falsc note. But the dream routc backward has its own complexities. Thcre arc advantages to wakefulness, as Catuvan hints to the Naga king in the lovely branch tale of Canto 16."' Sometimes the 'drcam' instructs thc dreamer to forget further-as whcn the goddess Manimekala comes to Utayakumaran in the night and urges him to put aside his passion. to forget Manimekalai. Emerging from dream sometimes offers the wider view, the more encompassing revelation, as when Manimekalai awakes in the temple in the presencc of the dead prince and the loquacious pillar. And very often thc anamnestic vision or divine pronouncement focuscs on yet another terrible loss, flowing out of an act of forgetting, past or impending. This certainly applies to the moments when Cittirapati, Manimekalai's grandmother, predicts the destruction of Pukar, and when Manimekalai herself hears from the goddess in Manipallavam, not long thereafter, that the city has in fact been destroyed under thcse same foreseen circumstances (75.176204). As stated earlier, this flooding of Pukar is, at one level, the ominous backdrop and narrative telos of the whole long poem. Distraction, grief. forgetting: as these intensify. reinforcing one another, the world of collective experience is imperiled. as is the individual who, flooded by forgetfulness, is borne along within the self through ever-widening gaps. The dream, at best. thus offers a vulncrablc linkage to appeasc the human craving for continuity. Its textures, as wc have secn, arc strangely discrete, sometimes jumblcd. loosely cuniulating in a haunting web of partly familiar sounds and voices. Nearly always there is a blending of thc known and the entirely foreign, as Sormcr selvcs arc broughr to llghl and reclaimed. Indeed, the drcam psychology of thc Murlirnrkulai could be said to be onc of uncasy

"' 'Dying and being born are lihc slecping and awaking' (pi!.rlrrrmt~rrr ccitalurn irtlrrtavt~rpirt~ttall~rt~/uyarikdi~~~rll t,rIittr~lurn ponyrlt ' untnmrvrg, 16.86-87).

236

The Wisdom of P o e r . ~

activation ol' lost or forgotten selves, or parts of self, within a metaphysic of non-perduring. never-cumulating selfhood. One never knows, in this unsettling world, when another retrospective expansion of iden~itywill take place. A dream may force former personae into consciousness, or a painted picture on the wall, a carved pillar, may suddenly speak to you, telling you your own lost story. But identity as such remains a mode of displacement, a frayed and discontinuous thread; the harder one pulls at the thread, and the farther one stretches it, the more tenuous and frail i t becomes. Thus each attempt to reestablish connection with the past, however compelling, will always be marked by the double-edged quality of dream knowledge, its duplicated and disguised or encoded nature. The pillar speaks openly of his hidden double; the poet slips naturally into yamaka chiming and double entendres at the boundary of sleep or dream. Indeed, the doubling inherent in dreaming may well be the secret of its power in the context of a cosmology in which nearly everything in life is doubled, and half of the double, perhaps the more important half, is always missing. The dream looks in two directions-back toward a beginning, and forward to a destructive ending. Poised between these directions, i t offers hope of rupturing the devolving spiral. But the dream is also not unlike the dark shadow self that allows the goddess of the Vindhyas to grab hold of passersby and to devour them. The dream moves the dreamer back toward disappearance. Subtler and more inner than waking, it replicates the paradox of continuity through kenosis: emptyfull, full-empty. Usually consistent with itself and with parallel forms of self-revelation, it nonetheless is marked off from the outer world, where waking consciousness works according to its own delusive law. There is a gap between dream and externality: as one sees from the standard emotions-amazement, fear, disbelief-that accompany the transition from one domain to the other. Sometimes this gap is also internal to the dream itself; thus we find dreams embedded in other dreams (in a manner similar to what is sometimes called 'lucid dreaming' in the West)." Here the dreamer knows he or she is asleep I ' See Hany T. Hunt. The Multiplicity of Dreams: Memop, Imagination. and Consc.iou.c.nes,r(New Haven and London. 1989). 7&6; Barbara Tedlock, 'Sharing and Interpreting Dreams in Amerindian Nations' and Dennis Tedlock. 'Mythic Dreams and Double Voicing,' in D. Shulman and G. Stroumsa (eds), Dreanl Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative Hisfor?; c?f Dreaming (Ncw York: OIJP. 1999).

Dreuming the Self

LTI

Soutl? Ittd~tr 237

and may. in this state, make contact with another dream-usually, in our text. with sonzeone e l ~ e ' .dream. ~. For example, Manimekhal2. speaking with Cutamati at night in the burning ground, speaks of Matavi's dream at the time of Manimekalai's birth, when the goddess informed the new mother that hcr daughter would eventually renounce the world (7.33-38). The context of that dream was Kovalan's insistence that his daughter be named Manimekalai, because of an ancestor of his who was saved by the goddess Manimekhala from drowning. This dream had a clarity and certainty that were unmistakable; the goddess spoke to Matavi from withir; a dream 'that was like waking realityl(nar_tuve polak kanavakatt' uraitten). Cutamati is now asked to go to Matavi and remind her, if she has forgotten. of this dream. As i t happens, we also know about this context-the naming of Manimekalai-from the Cilappatikararn, where it is connected to yet another dream, that of Kovalan, with the same manifest content: this is the proleptic knowledge that Manimekalai will one day renounce the world (Cil. 15.95-106).L2 The same configuration-Manimekalai's naming, Kovalan's dream with its announcement of her future renunciation, and also the added and encompassing theme of the destruction of Pukar because of the Chola king's distraction-recurs yet another time, in Canto 29.1-336, when Aravana Atikal explains it, in much the same language, to Manimekalai herself. The striking element here, apart from the consistency of the components and their internal relations, is the stress on certainty: the embedded dream, i t seems, is even more convincing and real than a simple, non-embedded one. It functions almost as an impersonal object that can be passed from hand to hand, or from mind to mind (in marked contrast to our modern notions of the dream as ultimately subjective); and it is suggestively linked, in all three contexts, with the heroine's identity. in so far as the latter is meaningfully associated with her name. This is the last feature of Manimekalai's dream world that I wish to study here. Apparently, the more internal, the more deeply embedded, a narrative fragment is: the greater conviction it carriesand the more 'true' it must be. The same principle applies, in our texts, to the story within a story. or to the play within a play. In this IZThesetwo passage are closely intertwined. repeating the same formulae; Kovalan, too, sees a dream that is as vivid as waking. nanavu-and that foretells his death a1 Maturai.

sense, an ernhedded narrative stands opposed to I~nearnarration, from chronological or biographical beginning to consequent end. Linear tcllings of this type belong to entropy; thcy unl'old away from the initial impulsc, the generative forgetting, anti thus propel the spiral further in its consuming course. Thus the story actually embodies the whoie process of forgetting, so that each $ubscquent episodc in the linear sequence is, in fact, still more deeply missing or forgotten. Each time one tells i t forward, in this logical manner, one loses i t more. Linear narration is, in short, another delusive mortal mode. As the dream is embedded in waking, so the lucid dream is embedded within dreaming; such encapsulation, for all its complexity, its doublirig within consciousness, is the major mode of liberating insight. In this light, moreover, we can now understand the corresponding encapsulation of the text as a whole within the frame offered by the patikarn preface. Mbirnekalai is the second; selfcompleting segment of the poet's encompassing dream. The whole story and. indeed, all gradations of realicy present in it, are internal to Cattanar's metadream. the overheard nocturnal revelation in the temple with which we began. The entire book is thus. in effect, a dreani within a dream-and, as such, presents its claim to truth. Entering the story, releasing the self in dream, would thus be (not in any abstract sense, but through the poet's creative working upon a mind that is not cut off from cosnlos, that generates cosmos, that is cosmos) a practical and immediate mode of dreaming oneself free. Hunger and fullness, forgetting and recalling. waking and dreaming, drought and rain-these are the alternate, but interpenetrating, antinomies of Cattaniir's poem. In general, hunger, wakefulness, and forgetting seem to have the upper hand. At best, there are momentary victories, as when Manimekalai leaves her begging bowl in drought-stricken Kafici, thus reversing the imminent disaster; but Pukar is still destroyed out of the king's forgetting. Deeper and unresolved are the issues relating to the nature of that existential connection that, under rhe best conditions, may come into play. Could one hear the story through to the beginning and not be swallowed up'? Can one dream one's way back to a point before forgetting and not wake in the destructive regression towards present-furure? Is there a way out of the disguise that unintentionally brings death to the forsaken lover? Questions such as these, implicit in the compositional logic of the narrative, point to a delicate sense of discrete linkages that somehow touch withou~touching. wilhout ever constituting

or restoring continuity in experience. Not cven the subtle, double-faced dream can fill an innerness that has 'nothing' as its deepest truth. Nor can the ramified story, seeking restlessly for its point of origin, reach its own coniplction--espcciaIly when told in the wrong direction. from ctart to 'finish', as if outside the dream.

1 have tried to tease out the logic of dreaming, broadly defined. in one south Indian Buddhist text. The exercise assumes the existence of a Buddhist sensibility, accessible to us no less through narrative and poetry than in explicitly metaphysical works. To our surprise, this sensibility seems concerned, to some degree. with issues relating to discontinuity within the devolving self, with its unhappy habit of linear narration. Dreaming. in this slippery and mostly destructive world, is largely retrospective, and in this mode helps the fragmenting and linearized subject to achieve a tenuous, perhaps liberating continuity within an expanded range of remembered expcrience. By the same token. the dream can be said to repeat experience, no doubt in subtler forms of awareness, thus both undermining the sub,ject's identification with his present. n o r e limited persona and blocking the future implosion in being and selfhood that self-forgetting must inevitably produce. Buddhism disappeared entirely in south India; for somewhat mysterious reasons, in the medieval period. The ascendant mainstream, which we now call Hindu, was largely motivated by a different set of deep intuitions, within which dreaming, once again, finds a meaningful and expressive place. I cannot even begin to address here the vast topic of Hindu dream culture. or cven of south Indian Hindu dreaming and its implicit logic. All I can do is to point, by way of conclusion, at the seemingly quite different set of notions that emerge from two short texts, chosen for the suggestive centrality that they give to the dreanl within wider contexts of poetic creativity. The first is a single. remembered (orally circulated) ver.se attributed to the greatest of the medieval Tamil poets, Kampan. and to his son; the second is a striking dream ,journey. vicariously conceived. from thirteenth-century Kcsala. For present purposes, this tiny and not necessarily represcntativc sample-from a literature of iminensc scope and richness-must sull'icc,

240

7hc Wi.\doni of Ports

First. I allow myself to posit a k w hypotheses ol a nlore general cast, rclating to Hindu drcam culture t h r o ~ i g h o ~ the ~ ts~~hcontincnt. In contrast to tlic Buddhist materials seen above, Hindu dreams seem to be mostly present- or future-oriented. Rctrospcction is not thc favoured mode. Dreaming finds an honoured place in a lengthy series that includes divination, mantic prophecy. poetic knowledge, and similar expressive states. Within this serics, drcam interpretation and dreaming itself arc frequently subjected to a kind of empirical verification: many stories insist on the dreamer's search for his drcam in the world outside (where he or she invariably finds it). There is a sense in which dreaming has an ontic and epistemic advantage over other forms of consciousness, though for reasons diatinct from those that apply in the Buddhist sphere; in another sense, dreaming is strangely devalued, though not as impoverished as wakefulness. Now to Kampan's poem. Like most such isolated stanzas (known as tauippatal or catu), orally circulated and integrated into a wider system of popular literary culture, this verse is contextualized by a story that motivates and explains its primary expressive features. One night the Chola king was prowling the streets of his city (as Tamil kings, curious and anxious, tend to do at night), when he came upon the temple of the gruesome goddess Kali-presumably on the outskirts of the town, where Kali usually lives. Peering through the door, hc saw the demon servants of the goddess busy grating sandalwood on stone to make the cooling sandal paste with which she is adorned. Kali is a hot and terrifying goddess. always in need of cooling. Somehow, by chance or forgetfulness. or perhaps in impudent selfconfidence, one of these demons fingered the paste that was meant for the goddess, even lifting i t to his nose to smell its strong fragrance. A fellow demon, working beside him, warned him not to do this. but i t was too late-.there was no way for him to hide the subtle fragrance that adhered to his fingers, What else could the companion do, intent on safeguarding the rights of the goddess. except to cut off the offending hand'? All this the king witnessed, and was amared, But somehow the surrealistic midnight scene required corroboration, or articulation. such as only the poet could give. There is another dimension to the king's need. that of a tesi or trial: would the court poet Kampan. the very c p i ~ o m c()/'thesupremely gil-tcd singer, be able to divine what had happened w i t h o ~ ~h te ~ n gtold'? A poct sho~lldknow everything I-rom lxrsonal cxpcl-lcncc. o r I'rom an Inner v i s ~ o n ,or I-rom the

pro~nptingol'thc god or goddcss who speaks through 11im or hcr. So the king went straight to K;imlwn's ho~lseand knocked o n his door. First to answer was the poet's son. Ampikapati, a poet In his own right. Sleepily-for the king had woken him-hc sang thc llrst half of a Tamil poem: kat-uikklr 1:alakk' irukkum kdlikkd lur~lmaikk' araittu ~a!icd.ntaitcitf cippeyIn Kali's tcmplc, on the northern shore, they were grinding sandalwood on stone ~l to a iine paste. A g h o ~ heedless, touched it-

This was as far as Ampikapati could go-a precise but rather prosaic account of what the king had seen. As so often in stanzas of this type, a break occurs in the middle. leaving the poem initially incomplete, dangling tensely in the air. The pressure to find completion, a linguistic and thematic closure. is immense; neither the mind nor the ear can endure a half-finished poem. Someone, another poet, another voice, simply must step in to extricate the listener from the limbo of the open gap, just as the demon's act of half-unconscious transgression requires a complementary and closing act to contain and complete it. The king waits, restless and unsure. At his point Kampan, poet and father. awakes and groggily sings the final two lines. as if describing his own dream: uraittum mayc~ikkuvariycitavut~peyinkaiyuik kuraikkumuri kurkuni k61)tu though he had been warned. A sharp knife cut off the hand that could not hide such fragrance.

The primary image deserves to be restated and emphasired: there is an act of touching, which produces violent amputation and yet leaves a subtle and powerful residue of the original. unsevercd whole This. in a way. is the ironic miracle that the king needed to hear in wc)rds, an experience of mangled continuity across a break. Needless to say, thc p o c ~ shave passed the test. recapitulating in words thc vision that only thc kiny had sccn. Did they speak from out ol a drcam'? Or was the king h ~ n ~ s e l f

drcaming as he wandered rhe midnight strccls'?Tcchnically speaking, wc must answer 'no' on both counts. Thc king was. i t seems, awake, though the nocturnal eye sees differently I-rom the cyc of day. (This is one reason thc king always goes out on these investigatory missions at night.) The pocts had emerged from slcep, although they are still so close to i t as to establish the link bctween poetic and oneiric forms of knowing. I t is not by chance that the story insists on thc sleepful setting, the rudc awakening, the words that flow through the uneven transition from sleep to waking. Already we are in a different world from that of Manimekalai and her dream memories. A considerablc part of the energy at work in both story and verse focuses on thc correlation betwcen an extcmalized reality and its internal re-experiencing by the poet, who then translates it into words. Indeed, this triangulation-objectified externality. internalization in dream or vision, and linguistic moulding-might be said to structure the entire field of medieval south Indian dream culture. Within this field, the experiencing subject is conceived in terms quite different from the Buddhist case. Yet here, too, the dream comprises a special kind of linkage that we can attempt to define analytically. Perhaps the organ~zingprinciple is one of conccntric recapitulation and mutual encompassment: each vector of the triangle is seen to repcat and reconstitute the other two, so that what is true of one will always be true of the others as well. This formulation also applies to the direction and forms of encoding, central to all three areas-the objectified act of transgression and mutilation, its dreamlike re-expericncing on the part of more than one subject. and the way language works to hold it. Each of the vectors is necessary and privileged in its own way. If there is anxiety present in this contcxt. as therc seems to be, it is not that of linear narration with its destructive closure but rather of potential failure to tie the threads together. to substantiate the mutual reinforcement of a single reality repeated across thc apparent, and apparently broken, space. In this sense, the dream becomes a mode, or an arena, for a kind of crealivc, expansive, and only partly conscious tautology (or, better. tautidentity), in which the dynamic re-coincidcnce of levels. closing the gaps between them, becomes the major move. Or, put differently. we could say that thc disparate levels seem to convcrgc in the dream or in drcnming. which binds thcm togcther in symmetrical sell'cncapsulalion. at a single p0111t.Therc arc rcasons for thc facility o f [he dl-cam in this re\pcct. not lc;~sl among them thc fact that i~ is

inhcrcntly morc inrcrnal. lhcncc highel- and Inorc cnconipassing. rhan waking pcrccption. (The samc or s~milarcffccts can be achieved, by the way. in this Hindu cosmos, by s:arirly in a mirror.) Also rclcvant are thc componcnrc of holism and its t'ragmcntcd cncodings in the dream which, in its 'lucid' and self-conscious modc. ]nay clearly revcal the code (the dream within a drcarn). But thcsc abstract formulations havc taken us too far from Kampan's clight tcxt: to illusrralc thcm at work, we have to look morc closely at the way the poem is built. There is, to bcgin with, thc rcsonancc in theme bctwccn the re,olstei-s we havc outlined. Somcthing is lcft over--cut off, but still fragrant, impregnated with the original sign of transgression. Thc drcam, too. cut harshly in the middlc, might be seen as anothcr fragrant residue-as might the pocm. There is. in this casc, aquestion as to what releases the fragrance. In the poem, it is the act of grinding sandalwood into paste. Oddly enough, this very act has its parallel in the domain of language, for the first word that Kanipan, the fathcr and master poer, utters o n being awakencd is uraittum-literally 'speaking' (or 'warning'; that is the words spoken to the transgressing demon by his companion). but also, overlapping with a homonymous root, 'grinding' or 'rubbing'. The poct, then, through a paronomastic devicc inherent in his art and in his vision, is somchow imitating the subject of his pocm. Paronomastic joinings of this typc are called Slesu" (Tamil ciletai) and always involvc the superimposition or interweaving of semantic levels, triggered by phonetic collapse; we have already seen the affinity that exists bctween such linguistic doubling and the dream. Thc spccific homonytnous play with the root urui recurs in other Tamil poems. I cite the following example from the devotional poet Cuntaramortti Nayaniir, who addresses the god Siva: Now the gray miseries of age will be upon me: intent upon ungrateful deeds, I have worn myself thin, seen fine-ground turmeric grow slale. Death frightens me. Grating and grind~ngmy way to your bright feet,14 "

See Chaptcr 6 , ahnvc.

''~ ~ ~ I / I / I ( I11,i!1 L I /,[I c . c , i , o / i

(.(,/-(I:

Tc~,cjt.<,t,~ 01 ( ' u ~ ~ i : i r a ~ ~ ~ ~ r t tt)i 15 ~~~y~~rjii,

214

7'Ae Wisrior~lof' Pocts

I whcc~eand sputter, confused. know~ngnothing of the life of feeling. Show me in your mercy some way to be saved, father, lord dwelling in Itaimarutu.

If we take the doublc entendre seriously, as the poet requires us to do. we would have to conclude that speaking is a kind of grinding, the transforming of a crude or raw substance into its more subtle and more powerful (and fragrant) form. The process is not, apparently, a very gentle one, nor is it lacking in painful breaks. This much is clear also from the manner in which the poem-we have returned to Kampan--is composed. One poet, the less experienced, speaks and falls silent: there is acute danger, at this point, that the coalescence in levels will not be reached. that subject and oh-jectwill both remain suspended in a no-man's land of incompletion. Thc older poet then fills in the gap (with the act of speakinglgrinding) and goes on to speak of a failure to hide the telltale sign, and of the consequences of this failure. By now the identification of poet and dcmon accelerates-this, i t seems, is how the poet knows what he knows--so that the act of amputation becomes internal to the poem, with its acknowledged break By the time Kampan has finished and can go back to sleep, the royal listener in the story as well as we, the listeners outside it, can easily fill in the remaining contours. The poet, too. must touch upon some precious but forbidden substance, an offering to the goddess, and the price he pays for this will be part of the poem. In effect, what has happened is that the king and poet now share the visionary dream. This is not surprising: the dream, being internal, is more. rather than less, real--it is a truth quite capable of being shared by more than one observer. Hindu dreams are not the stuff of subjective experience, in o u r sense of the word. Indeed, the pocm itself shows us a remarkable ambiguity or confusion in the subjective personae that i t presents. It is difficult to capturc this in translation. hut the reader should know that the place where Ampikapati. the son, gets \tuck---at the word upprv, 'that demon'-has no clear referent. At no placc in the pocm is the subJcct of the tc;ucliing. warning1

Drc.urnir7,q the Solj'in S o ~ l t llildir~ ~ 245

grinding or cutting explicitly and simply stated. Thcrc is a dcmon. 'that onc', whocver he may be; one dcduccs the naturc of the transaction through its unfolding, without cvcr entirely unravelling the actors' separatc roles. The 'self' that dreams. in this framework. includes all the dramatis personae of the drcam as well as thc p o c ~ who reconstructs or reports their action, which runs parallel to, or within, both poem and dream. We could say more about this little verse, but we have comc far enough to sum up, roughly, certain fundamental perceptions. There is the objectified nature of the drcam vision, which exists outside but can be experienced internally as well, thanks to the correlative contours that tie together these domains. There is a somewhat slippery subject, who simultaneously dreams, acts, and sings poetry, and who shifts roles within each of these modes. There is the focus on very immediate. essentially present-oriented experiencc, which the dream or poem restates. And there is a critical doubling in language, which splits into two homonymous registers at precisely the point of bridging the open space. enabling this connection through a subtle encoding or superimposing of domains. Whatever has been broken or spokenand each of the three vectors we have isolated reveals analogous discontinuities or ruptures in structure and process-survives i n a bitter sweet residual form, carrying over something of the initial fragrance. Sometimes we can see the dream encoding set out for us with surprising precision; my final example addresses this issue more directly, and also points in the direction a more complete analysis might take. The Suka-sandeia of LaksmidBsa, a Sanskrit poem of 164 ornate verse composed in Kerala, apparently in the thirteenth century, belongs to the class of 'messenger poems' (sandeia-kav~a) in which the protagonist/speaker sends someone or something with a message of love to his or her distant beloved. The classical prototype for the entire class is Kalidasa's great work, Megha-dlita ('The Cloud Messenger'), in which, as the name indicates, the unlikely envoy is a cloud. Other candidates for such missions include various species of birds, bees, the moon, the Tamil language. the wind. and so on. There are ancient roots to the entire paradigm in both Sanskrit and Tamil. but the classical format, already fixed in Kalidasa's work. requires certain stable features: thc lover. lrcqucntly anonymous, fastcris upon some potential messenger. whom he addresses ~ncntallywith thc long lyrical cxposltion that constitutes the poem: he hcgs or demands that

Drrumirlg rhc~Self

the messenger agree to the mission and then describes. in elaborate detail (and gcncrally in a highly croticired fantasy mode), the route to be taken across the subcontinent. with its rivers and sacred mountains and othcr shrines; he offers an imaginary scenario that the messenger wili I'ind upon arrival, and that will allow him to identify the beloved, always in a state of acute, nearly fatal lovesickness; he then specifies the exact message, inevitably including words of comfort and the promise of a speedy end to separation, that the messenger is to deliver. These final verses, comprising the wishedfor, wholly imagined message, often provide a swelling crescendo, rich i n pathos, to the entire lyrical progression. For obvious reasons, this genre offers some of the most useful description we possess of the geography of medieval India. to say nothing of the wealth of incidental information about social formations, local rituals, language, and regional traditions. Some parts of India developed a particular vogue in sandeia-kcivyas; Kerala was one of these, and the ~ u k a sancJeSa is the earliest example of the genre from this region. Here the messenger is a parrot, and the mission is framed by a drcam. It is a remarkable work. couched in striking language that is stretched to the point of saying thiligs never said before, or thought before, in Sanskrit. Before we examine that aspect of the poem that is directly related to dreaming, we should note that this class of poems is, in general, the 'as if' genre par excellence in the mirror world of Sanskrit court poetry. Here the self, in its loneliness, imagines an articulate messenger into existence, humanizes it or him along with the entire landscape (now permeated by human emotion). and then entrusts this messenger with an imaginary message and describes the imagined circumstanccs of its delivery to an internalized image of the distant beloved. On the face of it, this format allows one part of the self to send a message to another, split-off part, so that what we, as listeners and readers, overhear is a richly textured polyphonic monologue, sometimes apparently on the edge of madness, and in any case ~ssuingfrom a state of heightened intensity and altered awareness. We could call this state 'love'-in poetic selfpresentation-and we can also begin to appreciate the logic of having i t all transpire in a dream. The dream framework is set out for us in the opening verse of Laksmid2sa3s tcxl: I>~enc.hedIn autumn mc>onligIi~

In

South Irldia

247

on the stage of delight, on the open roof of a tall palace, they slcpt, exhausted by the games of love. Is there a door to lock out fate'? For he was dreaming, and i n his dream was driven far from her. ( 1 . 1 ) His beloved is a dancer, and the palace roof and bedroom a stage, illuminated by the moon, a fitting setting for the histrionic adventure that is overtaking the hero in his mind. The messenger poems prefer anonymous and prototypical lovers-thus an unnamed 'he' dreams of 'her'. As if to reinforce the dimension of a heavily aestheticized spliting within consciousness, the messenger dreamt up by the sleeping hero is the echo bird, a parrot (Suka) who can be relied upon to repeat, verbatim, the latter's address. The lover begins with a series of pathosladen verses describing his unhappy state, relative to the remembered past: Suffused by love, and uneasy in its flow. we suffered agonies of separation whenever either of us could not be seen, if only for a moment. Now whole oceans, rivers, cities lie between us, as if forever. (1.8) But as we, the listeners, know, the present agony of separationviflesa, literally a disjoining-is actually caused only by the lover's dream. His beloved lies asleep beside him, though in his dream he is certain that she is far away, with a crowded continent between them. He cannot tolerate this dreadful disunion and seeks out a messenger to close the gap. For our purposes, it is important to see that it is the dream that splits the couple in two, or rather. that divides the lover's mind into two and removes him from the state of unbroken loving. Or is i t really unbroken'? Part of the eloquence of this dream sequence derives from the implication that separateness. explicit in the dream, inheres in the normative condition and experience of love-in-union. At the same time, we cannot escape the sense of doubling that emerges fully in drcam. The poem's propression will then be from an initial (dreamed, illusionary) disjunction to various forins of sub\cqucnt (drcamcd)

248

The W~sdorno f Poet.)

reconnection, via the parrot messcngcr, Na~urally. thCrc will bc room for the poet to play with this fi-acturcd trame. so rich in echoes and reflections. Dreaming thus appears at times ~ ~ i t l ~the i r lhero's message, that is, within his dream: I see you over and ovei- i n my t~cart, I see you sitting, slowly walking. speaking, laughing, Joyfuland 1 am tortured a thousand times for every such image that melts away when 1 opcn my eyes. (2.70)

Hc is visualizing her in his mind, in the dream, and also opening his eyes, still in the dream: waking-in-dream turns out to be a painful state. unlike the sweet comfort of the dream within a dream. As we saw earlier, the more deeply embedded mode is usually privileged in crucial ways, although the present instance is not. I think, a case of lucid dreaming." To look for instances of this type, which expose the dream code in relation to its frame, we have to turn to moments in which the poet a!lows himself to play with figuration in consistent patterns. [n lieu of a long discussion, one example will have to do, from the passage in which the hero is trying to help the parrot identify his beloved, a1 the end of the journey: You will know her by her crystal teeth, her lips of ruby, her sapphire hair. her diamond lustre, her smile of white pearl. God created her to be a jewel of a woman, and that is what she is-not Jusl because she is so beautiful, but because, for once, words mean what they say. (2.29) W e can, perhaps, put aside the qucsrion of practicality: since all women in Sanskrit poetry have smiles of pearl and hair dark as sapphire, the parrot may still have some difficulty in making the identificatio~~. The point lies rather in the ironic literalization of the conventional metaphors (morc precisely, in terms proper to this tradition, the teeth of crystal and lips of ruby arc rupr~kas.the superimposition o f one form upon another without erasing the l q n the following vcrst., he complain\ that he cannot sec his beloved even In a dream. since he can no longer lall aslecp--not hccausc. 2 4 We know. hc: i \ nlrcady alwep. hut hecause hc 1 5 too Iovczic.k

Dreaming the Self ill .South Indiu

249

difference between them). This should, of course, be a series of similes, all too predictable. But the poet has twisted the technique to suit his purpose. What looks like little more than a linguistic habit, with no existential power behind it. becomes an identity statement on the level of denotation (mukhya-vrtti, in the poet's usage here): words actually mean what they say. The beloved really is ajewel. This highly unusual eventuality effectively closes off the always open space in language belween the verbal token (vacaka) and its referent (vclcya)--the gap that recapitulates the broken structure of both external experience and internal vision, as we have seen with reference to Kamparj's poem. Another way to fcrmulate this, without overloading the verse beyond its expressive limit, is to observe the temporary collapse of the space between the subject and object of the simile (the upameya and upamana, in the Sanskrit terminology). The figure has, as it were, folded in on itself, in a kind of downward drift toward the literal and the concrete. Our poet has a conspicuous fondness for this move, which sometimes involves the play of paronomasia (Slesa) such as we saw in the Tamil verse.I6 W e cannot pursue this theme to the end, but perhaps a formulation can be attempted in terms of the dream logic present in this work. The dream begins with disjunctionvis'lesa-which brings two operative levels into awareness: within himself, the dreaming protagonist marks a division and a lack. This splitting inheres in dreaming, as it does in language and all experienced reality. But within this spIit and doubled world, coded by familiar figures, there is a countervailing movement toward rejoining or superimposing the separated domains, toward Slesa-literally, an 'embrace' o r 'junction'-or a literalized and embodied metaphor (rupaka), in which two levels are made to coincide. There is a sense in which the dream itself is the primary locus of S1e.y. a paronomastic superimposition and reintegration of disparate elements (or words. '"or a striking example, see 2.82, where the hero teases his beloved, in a remembered vignette reported to the parrot, by a double entendre built around the phrase bintbBd11ar-a-a woman whose lower lip is red as the hinzhu fruit. or the bimba tree itself, with its fruits hanging low. 'Just as dear to me as you are is this binzbhdharu'-by this point in the sentence, the beloved is already weeping in rejection and jealousy. but the hero concludes-'to the parrot' (parrots love to peck at binzbn fruits). Incidentally, this verse belon_gs to an unusual set of several instance in which an utterance is hrokcn off, blocked, or distorted. and recognized as such.

250

T h e Wisdom o f P o e t s

or things).17It is not so much that dreams are 'tropes', as Patricia Cox Miller has claimed for another tradition,'Qut that they cncode the parallel discontinuities in language, vision, and experience in consistent patterns of figuration, tending 'downward' o r 'backward' to the concrete and thus narrowing or even temporarily rcmoving the ever-present gap. Stated more simply, the dream is now, it seems, less of a message (from the past, from the gods, from an unrealized future) than a coded promise of self-coincidence, where words might even mean what they say, and visions could be as they scern. Such coincidence spills over into the imagined-dreaming and speaking-self. What does the lover request the parrot to repeat to his beloved? In our love, you're even more me than 1 am, and people know I'm more you than you. There's no distinction. Let my words, right or wrong, born from the turbulence of separation, swell to a sea deep with joy for you. (2.88) Separation (vijlesa), with its turbulence, has produced the total coincidence (Slesa) of personae, experienced and acknowledged in the dream (but only, it seems, in the dream). And it is, perhaps, telling that the final benediction, the wish that brings closure to both dream and poem, takes the form of litotes, a double negation that first articulates the gap or absence and then verbally abrogates it: May the two of us never again be disjoined, not even in a dream. Think, then, of thc doubly negated statement of the dream: a point of fusion, where the d o u b l i n g and dislocation inherent in consciousness are momentarily collapsed in an objective inner mode; We may note here another powerful dream text, Katikal Muttuppulavar's eighteenth-centuryTamil work, the Carrzuttira-r~ilucam.in which a love-crazed heroine speaks a hundred verses to the ocean, all of them in Slesa. '' Patricia Cox Miller, Dreanls in Late Anriquitv: Stutlirs in the Itttu,qination ? f a Culrure (Princeton. 1994). 3.

l l ~ . o ~ ~ ti lt7~~. iS ~~ ll111 j ~ .Soit111I I I ( / I ( ~

25 1

whcrc thc shifting worlds 01' experiencc, language. and vlslonal-y imagc arc sul,erimposed. pin~lcdtogether in paronomasia o r crnhodicd metaphor. theil.contours allowed to coincide through the suhtlc power of fig~~ration and a repeatedly clnheddcd code. ~lesa--rccoincidcncc, refiguration-is thc primary drcaln I'ig~~rc. a promisc of conncction. Even more than language ilsclf, dreaming suggests the momentary focus of the mulliple and displaced self in a multiple and dislocated cosmos. 'As leaves are stuck togethcr on a pin, the worlds are held together by this syllable,"Y this dream.

111. Metaphysics of Presence

Bhavabhtiti on Cruelty and Compassion* 1. When Two Become One Sanskrit poets often sing of love, in many modes and names-sneha, anuruga, premarz, priti, priti-yoga-but who a m o n g them has ventured to define this most refractory and compelling of human states? What we call desire fares, it seems, a little better in this respect, neither demanding nor resisting definitive formulations-though here, too, the animating structures and subtleties of texture deserve, and receive, attention. Desire--or is it lover?-bears, among other titles, that of smara, i.e. memory;' and remembering, the grammarians tell us, is what follows upon longing (utkantha-plirvakam smaranam). This triple nexus is richly explored in the classical texts, including, of course, the Ramayana literature from Valmiki on: Sila and Rama love, desire, and mostly long for one another throughout a narrative saturated with painful forms of separation, some of them self-induced. As w e know, these paradigmatic, or ideal, lovers move through isolation, loss, war and reunion to the harsh events of the Uttarakcinda, when RSma sends his pregnant wife to permanent exile in the wilderness. It is his choice; he claims his duty as a king demands it, for his subjects have been slandering the innocent Sita; the king cannot let his personal feelings endanger the integrity of his perceived perfection. But is this love? At least one highly unusual voice in the classical Sanskrit tradition offers an answer to our (possibly somewhat exotic) question, at the same time boldly setting out not one but several potential definitions and addressing or, better, questioning. the inner meaning and experience of loving. The voice is that of Bhavabhuti, probably

* First published in Paula Richman, Questioning Ramcivanus (OUP, 2000).

' See Ch. Malamoud, Cuire Ie monde: Rite erper~sieduns 1 'lnde clncienne (Paris: Editions La Decouverte, 1989), 295-306.

256

Tlw Wisdom of Porrs.

belonging to the first half 01' thc eighth century, and to the Gangetic plain-perhaps to Kanauj at thc time of YaSovarman, though he links himsclf to a site known as Padmapura, probably in Vidarbha.z Here is Bliavabhfiti's first formulation, put in the mouth of Rams himself, as Sita lies asleep on his lap: 'That state when two hecome one in joy as in sorrow, where you find rest together and feelings never age but deepen and ripen as you move through the layers of time, .that rare state of human fullness is real. You may find it, once, in life. ( 1 39)" It is an optimistic statement, hardly meant to be exhaustive, certainly rooted in experience. Love exists, and, when found o r attainedsomehow or other (kathamapi) and, apparently, only once (ekam)abrogates duality in a continuous way. There is stability in it, and restfulness. Temporality infuses it, at least at a certain level, in which there is a gradual peeling away of veils (avarana), but also an apparently crucial aspect of 'ripening' o r self-transformation (parinemu), that affects the very core of this emotion. And all of this belongs to being human. perhaps even constitutes humanity at its fullest ( s u r n a n u ~ a )Hence .~ its place in the awareness of Rama, the god who has chosen to become a man. S o much for definitions: this one is, after all, placed within a certain dramatic context, in the first act of Bhavabhuti's play known as the On BhavabhOti's date and location, see M. Coulson, Three Sanskrit Plays (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981), 295: Shripad Krishna Belvalkar, Rritnct '.F Lrrrer History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1915). I .xxxc-xlvi. "dcaitam sukha-duhkhayor anugatanl sarvasv avasthdsu yad viirutno hrdavus~uvutra jurasa vasminn aharyo rasaW kalcnci~~czratziryayar puritza:e yat sneha-sure sthitam hhutlrup tasya .sutricinusasyakathan~apy ekanl hi tatprupvate//This verse was tr;inslated together with Velcheru Narayana Rao. I cite the edition of the Ilttura-t-unlu-c,t~t-itu edilcd by P.V. Kane (Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1971). 1 read tus\ltr .sun~cinu,sasvct as correla~iveto yad, yatra, vasmin, yat in the I.~rstthree I~nes.For hharlrcr with genitive, see Panini 2.3.73.

Bhavabhuti

(.)?I

Cruelty a n d Compu.ssion

. 257

urrara-rarna-carita-The End of Rama's Story. What is set out, at different points in the text. as a declarative statement, is elaborated and also problematized by the work as a whole. We will attempt, in what follows, to test the deeper meanings and understandings of this theme in the hands of one of the master poets of the Sanskrit literary tradition, as embodied in this work of remarkable lyrical precision.

2. Paintings, Reflections, and a Play within a Play k t me fill in the initial context of the verse I have quoted, and then briefly summarize the rest of the narrative structure of this play and outline the context of performance. The verse comes towards the end of the first act: the great war in Lanka is over, and RBma has been crowned king in AyodhyB; the palace has, however, been emptied out, for the queen mothers have gone off to the ashram of RsyaSmga to take part in a long sacrificial ritual, and Janaka, Rama's father-inlaw, has returned home to Videha. Sita, heavy with child, is saddened by all these departures and, unwittingly and with moving simplicity, strikes at the very outset one of the central notes of the entire play: 'It is painful', she says to Rama, 'when people you love go away.' H e agrees: such is life in the world, a series of states which pierce the heart (ere hi hrdaya-marma-cchidah samsrlra-bhavah); that is why s o many people renounce all desires and seek fulfilment in the wilderness. Laksmana enters, happy to announce that a series of painti~gson the Ram@ana story, which he has recently commissioned for the walls of one of the royal galleries, has been completed. Perhaps they will divert the attention of the melancholy Sita? Thus the same threesome that had once? long ago, left together for the forest now begins to inspect the newly painted gallery. The early scenes are relatively happy. A painting of the divine weapons that Rama inherited from ViSvamitra leads Rams, recalling this moment, to utter a blessing to the effect that these same weapons will someday serve Sita's children. These are weighty words, already charged with potential reality. Then comes the breaking of thc bow at Mithila and the joyful multiple wedding that followed. The painting must be powerful and real, for Sita, ovcrwhelmed, says that she is. as it were, back at that very moment, experiencing again the first touch of her bridegroom's hand. s the spectators toward the Soon. Ilowever. the p i c t ~ ~ r cdraw

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traumatic evcnts of exile, the journey to the forest, and then the torment of separation. Rama, solicitous of his wife's emotional state. tries to spare her the worst of these memories; he also dwells lov~nglyon the joyful memories of the nights they spent in the Paiicavati forest. Whispering wonderful whatevers in any which order. cheek touching cheek, arms totally enmeshed from so much loving, we never knew the hours passing when suddenly night itself was over.' (1.27) But as the three advance along the course of the murals, the memory of loss and suffering becomes too much for them; it has all come flooding back, in the present; in a poignant intervention, Rgma cuts into the middle of a verse that Laksmana-the museum guide at this exhibition-is singing about Mount Malyavant (in I s k i n d h a ) and begs his brother, 'Stop, stop, I can bear no more. The whole loss is happening to me again!' (1.33) Qim api kim api mandam matidam dsakti-yogddl a-viralita-kapolamjalpator akramenal a-s'ithila-parir ambha-vyaprtaikaika-dovior/ a-vidita-gata-yamd rdtri reva vyaramsiti/.

On the story connected to this verse (and its inferior variant reading i n the final line, evam,for eva), see V . Narayana Rao and D. Shulman, A Poem at the Right Moment: Remembered Verses from Premodern South India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998): When Bhavabhiiti had composed the Uttara-rdma-carita, he sent a version to be recited before the

great poet Kalidasa, to win his approval; Kalidasa listened to the work while playing chess. In the middle of the game, and the recitation, he sent for betel from the market. When the recitation was finished, Bhavahhuti's servant returned to report. 'What did Kalidasa say?' asked Bhavabhuti. 'Nothing,' said the servant. 'Nothing at all?' asked Bhavabhuti. 'He said there was a llttle too much sunnam,' replied the servant. Sunnam is Telugu for lime-paste, to be eaten with the betel; but it also means a nasal consonant. Bhavabhuti understood that Kalidasa was telling him that there was one nasal too many in the play, and removed the rn from evam in this verse.

Bhavclbhuri on Cr~celtyand Compa.ssior~ 259

Laksmana sees that Sita is exhausted and suggcsts that she rest. First, however, she has a request-and the wishes of a pregnanL woman are not to be denied. 'I would like to bathe again in the limpid waters of the Ganges and delight in the profound and peaceful landscapes of the forest.' Rama immediately orders Laksmana to prepare a chariot for this expedition. 'You are coming with me, aren't you?' asks the queen. 'Is there any need to answer that?' he innocently replies. Laksmana leaves, and RBma and Sit%seat themselves within the wide space of a window-well (variiyanopakantha). Soon Sita, resting upon RBma's body, is fast asleep. He sings, as she sleeps, of the unique texture of her touch, resistant to simple articulation: Is it happiness, or sorrow? How can I know? A wildness, a sleep, the creeping numbness of poison, or a maddening joy? Each time I touch you, my body is bewildered, and awareness wanders, lost in itself. (1.35) Next he utters the verse with which we began, defining love. It is the penultimate moment, and the last taste of happiness, before disaster occurs. Even as she sleeps restlessly, murmuring in her dreams, Rama sings another verse of love, ending with a break and the asyndetic phrase: 'Separation from you would be unbearable' (asahyas tu virahah). Suddenly the doorkeeper, unconsciously revealing the future unfolding from this point, from these very words, announces: 'Lord, it (something, someone) has come.'6 The transition is focused, heavy with suggestion, unbearable. Durmukha, the king's spy, has arrived to inform Rama of the state of affairs in the city. After a little prodding, he reveals the terrible truth that RBma's subjects have not accepted the proof of Sita's innocence during the course of her nine-month sojourn in Ravana's captivity. Rama is pierced to the quick, as if by a lightning bolt made of language (vag-vajra). Suddenly he is facing a tragic conflict: as dharmic king, scion of the Iksvakus, he has, he thinks, no choice but to send Sita away forever; but as a man, a husband and lover, he "he

technical term for this device of unconscious double entendre is

patdka-sthanaka.

260 The Wisdom qf Poers knows that she is completely innocent. Hc takes the decision in a flash. sacrificing her, and his own happiness; he orders Durniukha to inform Laksniana that the queen is to be abandoned, alone, in the forest. Rama assumes that this means Sit2 will die, the prey of wild beasts. Guilt floods him: in a second, hc says, he has been transformed into a loathsome demon. The world is upside down (viparyastah samprati jiva-lokah), emptied out like a wasteland (Sunyam adlluna jir~lriranyamjagat), and there is no further meaning to his life; it is, moreover, all his fault; he is polluted and polluting, a kind of untouchable who shouId not even speak the names of his former friends and benefactors. He bows, touching the sleeping SitB's feet with his head, for one last time: he begs the earth to care for his beloved wife, her daughter. Fortunately, at this point news arrives of a demon who is tormenting the sages on the bank of the Yamuna, so R2ma can rush off to take care of this external threat-leaving Sita to awake, from a nightmare, without him. Although she does not yet know this, her nightmare of separation is about to be realized in fact. Act 11. Twelve years pass between this moment and the opening of Act Two. Vasanti, goddess of the Dandaka Forest, meets Atreyi, who has left Valmiki's ashram, where she was studying, largely because the sage has been too busy composing poetry-the Rdmayana. In passing: she also tells the famous tale of Valmiki's transformation into a poet and his inspired utterance of the first iloka.' We also learn from this conversation that Rama has commenced an aivamedha sacrifice, performing the ritual with a golden image of Sita in lieu of the living person beside him, and that Laksmana's son, Candraketu, is following the sacrificial horse as it roams the world. Soon Rama himself enters: he has gone in search of a Slidra who had the temerity to engage in tapas; he attacks this impudent Yogi, ~ a m b u k awith , his sword, releasing him from his low-caste body and sending him off to heavenly realms. Before he leaves on this astral journey, ~amblikainforms Rama that he has unintentionally arrived at Janasthana-Paficavati, where, before the kidnapping, Rama had lived the unencumbered forest life with Sita-perhaps the happiest moment in all of Rama's experience. The king, still guilty and tormented, is overcome with longing and grief upon re-encountering the familiar sights and sounds of this idyllic wilderness-which the

depal-ling ~ a m b i i k adescribes for him with Pisarro-like vcrvc and penetration. in a series o f clcvatcd and allitcrative verses. Act 111. 'The Shadow/Rcflection' (Cllaya). Rama continues his nostalgic tour of Paiicavati. on his way to Agastya's ashram. He is in danger: the sites of his former happiness trigger an overwhelming sadness; at ncarly every step, he falls or swoons. Having anticipated this eventuality, the river Ganges has brought Sit2 to this same spot, also rendering her completely invisible; her task wilI be to revive the weakened hero by her touch. With her is another, smaller river, the Tamas2 (on whose banks Rama, Laksmana, and Sita spent their first night in the forest, in the distant past).' Meanwhile, Rama is joined by Vasanti, the goddess of the forest. In a series of intimate confessions, he speaks of his burden of guilt, and of his love for the wife he wronged; all this is overheard by the hidden Sit% who, in her heart. now forgives him. Rgma, palpably feeling her touch, sensing her presence, is both restored and bewildered: Sit2 must be right there, but he cannot see her; he has every reason to assume that she is dead; he is amazed, and rather angry. that he himself is still alive after all this suffering. Was Sita's touch a dream? But then mental torment never allows him to sleep. Yet he knows she is there, and his heart is breaking. His present state is truly unendurable: before, when she was in Ravana's power. he had a goal, and a plan to put an end to this state of separation; but this unbounded present-future, without hope, is of a different order altogether. Sit2 is gone, lost in some domain which even Laksmana's arrows. or the indomitable Hanuman, can never reach. Through all this, the audience can see Sita visibly before them. In fact, the stage is as if split in two: a shadow half, where Sita and Tamas2 are hidden, and the overt, illuminated half, where Rania and Vasanti walk, weep, converse. The symmetry is palpable and evocative, even as the shadows wander among their mirror-like reflections. invisible to them but fully and audibly present to us. As the act ends, these mutual'reflections converge i n a surprising movement of integration. Rams climbs into his tlying chariot, the Puspaka-vimana. In order to leave Paiicavati; now the two secondary characters-both divine interlocutors and eavesdroppers. that is the Tamasa River and the goddess Vasanti-join in singing a single verse

' On Valmiki and the krauAca birds, see J.L. Masson, 'Who Killed Cock Kraunca'?',Journal of thr Oriental In.stitutc, of Barodu 18 ( 1969).

See Ran~ci?oltla2.46. 11 cite the edition edited by K. Chlnnaswami Sastrigal and V.H. Suhrahmanya Sastr~(Madras:Ramaratnam. I9SX).\

Bhnvclbhuri otr ('I-ueltyutzci Cornpcc.,.siorr

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of blessing: may the earth and the Ganges. the first poet (Valmiki), Vasistha, and Arundhati. all bring goodness to you, that is to Rama or to Sita, as the case may be, but also implicitly to each spectator at the play (48). It is perhaps worth mentioning, at least, that the rich emotional tone of this act slowly intensifies to an almost unimaginable pitch (surely resistant to translation). Within this swelling tide of feeling, each of the characters, in turn, approaches the limits of consciousness and needs to be cooled down and restored. The audience, or any sensitive reader, undoubtedly undergoes a similarly moving experience, perhaps akin only to the slow culmination of a musical performance in the state of cognitive and emotional melt-down that the texts call laya. Act IV. Valmiki's ashram in the wilderness is celebrating another holiday from study, for honoured guests have amved-Arundhati and Vasistha, Janaka (Sita's bereft father), and the Ayodhya queens, who have refused to return to the unhappy capital after the completion of RsyaSmga's twelve-year rite. The meeting of Janaka and Kausalya, Rama's mother, after so many years is heavy with bitterness and tears; since SitB's exile and presumed death. life itself, says Janaka, has become hell (ghore 'smin mama jil~a-loka-narakepapasya dhig jivitam, 17). Kausalya confirms this: she, too, would rather be dead, but some cursed, dogged quality keeps her going. So dreadful is the lachrymose atmosphere that Arundhati, who is present during the conversation, actually advises the Queen: 'My Lady, maybe you should take a short break from weeping' (rajaputri baspa-viirclmo 'py antare kartavya eva). In the midst of all this misery, they catch sight of the young boy Lava, one of Rama's two sons, whom they have never seen or known. They call him over: something about this child uncannily reminds them all of both Rama and Sit%,and Janaka begins to toy with the wild notion that the child might even be his grandson; Kausalya, too, thinks her heart is going mad, murmuring to her something incredible, but of enormous import. She asks the child if he has a mother, and if he remembers his father. 'No.' he replies, to both questions. So whose child is he? Valmiki's. That is as much as he knows. Suddenly a horse appears in the ashram-the ritually consecrated horse protected by Candraketu, Laksmana 's son, whom we know about from Act 11. Lava (like his playmates) is fascinated at the sight of this animal. and even more su when hc learns the identity of

Bhavubhuti on Cruelty and Corr~pussion 263 Candraketu-for he knows of Laksmana and Rgma from the Ramayana, the text that Valmiki has composed and taught the twins. His evident familiarity with this text prompts Janaka to ask him about the existence and fate of other children of Rama and Laksmana, but Lava can only say: 'This is as far as the story is known.' 'But has not the poet composed the rest of it?' asks Janaka. Indeed he has, Lava announces, but he has so far not published i t (pranito nu prakaiitah [karha-vibhugah]); Valmiki has, however. sent a copy of this concluding section of the R&mayana, written by his own hand, to the sage Bharata, who will perform it on stage with apsaras actresses. So precious is the text that KuSa, Lava's twin, has been sent, armed with bow and arrow, to protect i t from mishap on this journey. All this arouses intense interest on the part of Janaka, who also wants to know just how far the story goes. Lava can answer this question: i t breaks off when Laksmana has abandoned Sits, about to give birth, in the wilderness. No sooner does he mention this tragic moment (the end of the text as known to him) than both Janaka and Kausalya are, once again, swept away by violent feelings, as if they were witnessing, or re-experiencing, the actual events of Sitti's exile. Act V. Meanwhile, a violent combat has developed: Lava, insulted by the challenge that Candraketu's soldiers have rudely announced-'This horse is the indomitable banner of Rama, hero of all seven worlds' (4.27)-pits himself, alone and on foot, against the whole of Candraketu's army. After massacring most of the latter, including vast numbers of elephants and horses, the young child finds himself facing Candraketu himself. The two cousins, who do not, of course, know one another, feel a powerful but inexplicable attraction to each other, which they express in three stunning verses, sung together as a duet-as if both contain, within their hearts, this pre-existing text. They sing of love, and a mysterious connection (nijo va sambandhah), unconscious but rooted in the structure of reality (vidhi-vaiar); their bodies are literally thrilling in the presence of one another; still, as warriors they are driven to battle, for the violent 'taste' (diiruna-rasa) of heroism overrules affection (5.16, 18-19). Sumantra, Candraketu's driver and counsellor (sutu), sees what is happening and sings of love, that 'thread of feeling that weaves together the innermost, hidden parts' ( s a hi snehcitmakas tantur antar-marnlani sivyati, 5.17). Despite their hesitation, the two young heroes rouse themselves to battle; Lava is still seething from the initial insult, and when Candraketu tells him that what is

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at stake is Rama's extraordinary prowess, which is in a class of its own, Lava responds with mockery: Do you think there is anyone who does not know Rama's story? I could, however, if I wanted to, say something more about it .... But perhaps it is best not to investigate too deeply the deeds of old men. After all, we all know about how he killed a women [TatakB], and about the three steps he retreated when faced with Khara, and about that splendid feat of destroying Valin.Y(5.35) Once again, the story of the Ramayana surges up from within the text which is somehow meant to complete it; and in this case what emerges is the all-too-familiar and embarrassing series of Rama's less-than-heroic moments, rather brutally enunciated by Rama's own son. This passage alone would place Bhavabhoti firmly in the tradition of 'questioning Ramayanas'-though it would, perhaps, be closer to the mark to say that the Ramrjyana tradition in itself is nearly always, by definition, self-questioning. In any case, Lava and Candraketu are now set on a collision course. Act VI. Their ferocious battle is described in richly onomatopeic langzlage as seen from the air: a flying Vidyadhara couple watches the two evenly matched cousins hurl missiles at one another in a close approximation to Doomsday. At this point Rama himself-still, as we know, in the forest, on his way back from Paficavati-arrives and intervenes; both boys desist out of deference to this authoritative presence. This means that Lava has to call back the divine weapons he has been using, with remarkable success, and Riima, watching him do so, is surprised: he himself received these same weapons, with their associated mantras, from ViSvamitra; how did they come into the possession of this young boy? He asks Lava about this, and the boy says that the weapons spontaneously revealed themselves to him and his twin brother, KuSa. At this very moment, KuSa arrives (returned from his mission guarding Valmiki's text on its way to production by Bharata); Lava introduces him to Rama, the hero of the story both boys know so well, and tells him to behave himself in Rama's presence. As Rama embraces KuSa, he feels a mysterious In combat with the demon Khara, Rama is said, by Vslmiki. to have given way at one point by two or three steps (Rumavunu 3.30.23). He killed Valin unfairly, in an ambush: see D. Shulman, 'D~vlneOrder and Divine Evil in the Tamil Tale of Rarna', in Journal of Ar.ian Stud1e.v 38 ( 1979). 651-9.

Bhcwnbhuti on Crueltv and Compassion

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sense of kinship and joy-as i f his consciousness (cetanndhatu) had somehow emerged from his body and taken shape outside him, in the body of this twelve year-old child. But Rama also notices that the boys look remarkably like Sitii. Those blue eyes (mixed with red, a touch of heroic volatility), those lips-it is almost as if he were seeing her again, in the flesh. By now Rama is beginning to suspect the truth. The boys are right here, i n the same part of the forest where Sit2 was abandoned; there is the stunning physical resemblance; they have control of the divine weapons with which, he suddenly remembers, he blessed Sita's still unborn children (while viewing the paintings in Act I)-and these weapons have never served anyone except those who received them through the direct line of transmission in which he, Rama, is the final link. He also remembers. suddenly, that he was the first to notice that Sita was pregnant with twins (he describes this almost forgotten discovery in a tender verse of exceptional lyricism, 6.28). So he probes a little further, asking the boys to recite a verse or two from this book everyone is talking about, he Rarnrjyana, Valmiki's history of the Dynasty of the Sun. They do so, to overwhelming effect: Rama is paralysed, adrift in feeling, reliving within himself the truth captured in the verses they have sung; visualizing Sita in his mind, he dreads, above all, the terrible moment when this text-induced hallucination will be dispelled, when the world will, again, become a desert. His heart is burning, 'cooked', as it were, in a slow fire of dry husks. Suddenly Viilmiki, Vasistha and Arundhati, Janaka, and the queenmothers are upon him, curious at the news of the battle that has just taken place, and shocked at the sight of Rama-after twelve years of absence-in his pale and forlorn state. For his part, he can barely face them; he wonders why he does not explode in a thousand fragments, under the pressure of his horrendous guilt; somehow he pulls himself together, for, as he says bitterly, 'there seems to be nothing that Rama is incapable of doing' (athavrj rrjrnena kirn du.ykarurn). Act VII. A play is about to be performed on the banks of the Ganges-Valmiki's composition, enacted by celestial dancers; the whole world has been invited to this drama. Laksmana has seen to the seating arrangements; he now takes his place beside Rama. The Sntradhiira-Director begins: Let the audience pay heed to this work, richly flavoured by compassioli (kurunddbhuturasam), which Valmiki has composed through his divine insight. In the audience, Rarna

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whispers to L s h m a n a : 'It is true, great sages can make reality visible.' A voice announces from behind the curtain that Sita. about to give birth. has, in despair, cast herself into the river. Rama cries out from his scat: 'My love, stay a moment!'"' Laksmana rebukes, or reassures, him: 'It is only a play.' R2ma replies: ' I am entering a dark place, with no foothold or support.' Now Sita appears on stage, supported by her mother, the goddess Earth, and the Ganges, who tell her that she has given birth to twins within the river. This is the first news that Rams (in the audience!) has of the birth of his sons. and he begins to weep. The goddesses comfort Sit%,who wants only to die; she can no longer bear the vicissitudes of life in this world (nu sakkanzhi idisam jia-Ioa-parivattam anubhavidu~n);she begs her mother to re-absorb her, finally, melting her body into earth. Earth has some angry words to say about her son-in-law, the 'noble' Rama. as she sarcastically calls him, who gave no weight to anything or anyone-the hand he had taken in marriage, the Earth, his father-in-law Janaka, Sita's goodness and perseverance, the future of his line-when he rejected Sita. From his seat, Rama fully agrees with this judgement. 'Such, indeed, a m I' (idrio 'smi). Gariga, however, defends him: What was he to do, given the Iksvakus's commitment to keep the entire world content? But there is also a practical problem: What of the new-born twins? Who will teach them the Ksatriya lore? The Ganges puts Sita's mind at rest: as soon as the boys are weaned, she will hand them over to Valmiki. Meanwhile, part of the problem is already solved, for the divine weapons-which Rama inherited from ViSvamitra, and which he had directed to SitB's children by a blessing during the tour of the painted pavilion in Act I-suddenly appear and offer themselves to KuSa and Lava. All this floods Rama with waves of feeling (karunorrnayah), which include amazement (vismaya) and joy (ananda)-altogether some strange, n~iraculousstate (kam upi das'am, 12).11Rut at this point Sita again asks her mother to enfold her, forever, in her depths. As she disappears from the stage, Rama faints: 'You are gone forever, lost in another world!' Laksmana, alarmed, cries out to Vglmiki for help: 'So this is the point of your poem!' (esa te kav,vcirtha!z). Rama has stopped breathing. And suddenly another voice announces. from Rcading kstrtzclin uvt~ksa.tvrr. Thc indcfinitc kim-up, and its ar~alogues.in this play, tend to point to 'something' remarkahlc, wondrous, [ranscendenr-as in 1.27 (see above). I"

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behind the curtain: 'Clear the orchestra. Valmiki has produced something surpassingly strange.' Now Sit3 herself is there. with !he two goddesses beside her. She touches Rama-as she did. hidden and invisible, in the forest scene-and now, as then. he revives. He opens his eyes and sees her, Arundhati, and the queen mothers. As he gropes for consciousness. both the Ganges and the Earth remind him of the blessings he spoke while viewing the paintings. committing ~ j t ato their care; they are now free of this debt. He is amazed that, despite his terrible guilt, they have shown him compassion. And, as husband and wife are reunited, and united for the first time with their two sons (formally introduced to their parents by Valmiki. poet and magician), Rama literally comes out o f the text to conclude the drama with a blessing: This story purifies from evil and enhances all that is good. like the Earth-mother of the worldand GangB, who charms the mind. Connoisseurs may ponder it, for. as enacted, it embodies the voice of the poet who has ripened into wisdom, tying truth to words.

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Such is the conclusion to Rama's story, the 'ultimate talc'--Utturartim-carita-about this hero, so tragically torn between love and a totalitarian notion of duty, or responsibility, or whatever else might fit into the elastic but binding notion of a king's dharmu. Bhavabhuti has completely transformed the story as we find it in the Uttnrah d a of Valmiki's Rarnliyana: there the final moment of re-encounter between Rama and Sita ends with an irreversible, bitter separation of the Iovers, as Sita is swallowed up by her mother. the Earth. Rama survives for another 60,000 years. ruling the earth in a state of unbearable loneliness and grief. with only the golden statue of Sit2 to comfort him. Bhavabhnti's text contains other innovations as wellfor example the theme of Sita's attempted suicide in the river, nowhere hinted at by Valmiki; the temporal sequencing of the Utturu-kcitzdu has also been altered (the ~ a m b u k aepisode. Rama's revisit to Pahcavati, the a.Cvc~n~c,rfhu battle--all now dertly interrcla~cd).But these details, likc (he qucstion of Bhavabhuti's ' s o ~ ~ r c c s ' InatLcr .'~ l2 Perhaps including a vcrslon like that of Ptrrlrilcr-/)rlrritjo (Annndnsrama Sanskrit Series, 1804)3. I -68; scc Bclvalkar. Rtitr~o'.s I~ltct//r.\tor\..Ivi 1 1 111.

268 The Wi.rdorn of Poets much less than the nature of the aesthetic transformalion achieved by the poet: it is !.his issue lhat will primarily occupy us here. I may remark, in passing, that I d o not share the common thesis that would remove the Uttara-kdnda, or its essential narrative elements, from the allegedly earlier core of the epic (a core in which Rama would be 'merely' human, not yet an avatar of the god). As I have argued e l ~ e w h e r e . 'the ~ problem of RBma's composite identity, with the related themes of inner conflict and epistemic wavering, is central to the whole of Valmiki's text; and these themes continue to be worked through in the Uttara-kanda as integral parts of the heroes' evolving presence and personal fate. Another major element should be taken into account as we begin our exploration of this text. The Uttara-rarna-carita,like Bhavabh~ti's other two dramas, was, as the prologue informs us, performed at the festival (vcitra) of Siva in his guise as Kda-priyg-natha (or Kalapriya-natha),I4 'Husband to the Bride of Time [or Death]', i.e. husband to his wife, Parvati-since Kala is Siva himself. Leaving aside the suggestive name for the god, and the tantalizing question of the location of his shrine,15 we need to bear this performance context in mind as we read through the play. Many Sanskrit dramas are explicitly linked to ritual settings, and such contexts always need to be imagined in relation to the verbal text which is, after all, only a kind of 'score'. Whatever happens to Rama and to Sit& or to the audience watching their story, is part of a wider ritual scenario. now lost beyond reconstruction, though not without leaving behind traces relevant to our analysis.

3. The Structure of Embedding

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1

W e have no record of the original ritual context; we know nothing of the specific progression of the yatra to Kda-priya-niitha, or of its meanings for the spectator-participants; yet there is reason to believe "See below, Chapter 10: and see S. Pollock. The Ramdyuna of Vrilmiki Vol. III, Aranyu Kan&z (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 1521, 63. I 4 0 n these names, both atlested in the manuscripts, see the sources cited in note 2. 'Verhaps in Padmapura, Bhavabhuti's own place; but possihly U;.jayini, the site of the great ~ahakaleivara-~iva shrinc.

that this contexl moulded the dramatic work in critical ways. For example, we may wish to think of Siva in his temple as the first listener to our text.'"n other respects, we may need to extrapolate from what we know of other. still living ritualized performances in India. One way to approach, at least, an understanding of the determining forces at work in the ritual frame specific to this text is to examine the resonance, or replication. of structure, texture, and theme. These levels, once defined, turn out to be mutually reinforcing to an astonishing degree. Look, first, at a single micro-unit, particularly revealing in terms of structure. W e are at the subtle moment of semi-recognition in Act VI, where R i m a is facing his two sons. He does not yet know, for certain, who they are (or, for that matter, who he is). But he is deeply moved, and also full of despair: 'Life', he says, 'always ends up in some temble, illogical inversion, and in separation.' This is followed by another of his attempts to formulate the experience of love, in a way that echoes, somewhat eerily, the earlier definition: Where is it, that immense happiness, rooted in perfect trust'? Where is the mutuality of loving, the profound curiosity about one another, the unity o f hearts in joy as in sorrow? Where has it gone while I go on breathing? (6.33) Love has fled, leaving him only technically alive. But this unhappy awareness has been triggered by an encounter with the text of Rrima's Story, existing in some seemingly objectified form. Rama has asked KuSa to recite some small portion of this tent: Rama: Everyone keeps talking aboul this RLimciyana book by Valmiki, that tells the genealogy of the royal dynasty of the Sun. 1 an1 really curious to hear some piece of that work.

SOthe boy, who does not know that he is singing to his own father about that father's own story, brings up two rather pointed verses on love, that somehow spring to his mind ( s m r t i - p r a ~ u p a s t h i r u u )froin . the end of what he calls the Bdlucurira /=Brila-kanda]:

1

16 As the goddess Bhagavati is the primary audience lor the shadow puppet performers of the Kerala RdmLi?:ugu tradition of to/-puvu-klirru: see S. Blackburn, In.sirlr the Dr~~ma-Hou.sc~: Rdmu Storir.~and Shadow PU/J/)PI.F in South India (Berkelev: Llniversity of ('alitorn~a Press, 1996).

270

The Wi.edorti of Ports

Rama loved Sics-lust likc that, naturally, without causc. but she nourished thac. love by all that was hers. And Just like that, Sita loved Rama, more than life itself. Only the heart knows the real bond that Joins two lovers to each other. (6.31-3 1) These verses pierce Rama to the heart, galvanizing memory in the conscious mind. He tells us this, in a variation on a phrase that is repeated almost incessantly in this play: the words 'wound the As the verses innermost recesses of the heart (hrdaya-marmodgl~atah). themselves suggest, and the hero now confirms, love is a matter of some deep and hidden innerness. Notice the sense of a potential veil within the mind, dividing active from latent memory-and the hurt that comes from penetrating the veil. Somehow all of this is densely interwoven with the state that is named 'desire' (madana, 6.35). Memory clearly plays a role: in a sense, this play is all about the composition, modes, and dynamic processes of memory, as a component of loving, seen in relation to temporal states that are not necessarily linear or sequential. In fact, the very notion of linear progression is frequently challenged in surprising ways as the play proceeds. In this respect, the Uttara-rrimacaritu is situated firmly within the Rrimavana tradition, where the 'story', or the text that embodies it, always has an autonomous quality superseding any external reality;17 at critical points, the overt reality of the narrative tends to fuse mysteriously into its own frame, which thereby swallows up sequential notions of time. W e can see this defining feature of the tradition at work even in the small passage we have been following: Rarna hears, or overhears. his own story, which brings to the fore a partly forgotten fragment of his own experience, as embedded in a text both internal to, but also encompassing and framing, the reality he inhabits; inside the play, he recalls the existence of a Rdmuyatta and asks to hear a piece of it, almost as if he were recalling the existence of a person named Rama, whom he has, amazifigly, forgotten. Seemingly framed by a more external levelthat is by Bhavabhuli's play, where he is both actor and spectator-

BhtrvuDhuti otr C r u r l t ~clticl Cornpu.s.siotz

27 1

he actually embeds himself within the embedded inset of his own story. where once again he will appear as both actor and spectator, embedding himself still deeper ...and so on until infinity. T h e Rama);a~zuframe evokes the Russellian paradox ol' the set that is a member of itself. It is thus no wonder that Bhavabhuti's text will end with a play within a play, in which the boundary between play and some external reality. or between play-time and present time, will ultimately vanish. The great English psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott, once claimed that Hamlet's true misfortune was that he could not go to watch Hamlet: 'Shakespeare had the clue [to Hamlet's distress], but Hamlet could not g o to Shakespeare's play.'" Rama, by way of contrast, must always, or ever again, watch himself be re-enacted in one form or another of the Ramriyana.

4. Coinciding with Self Already we can abstract two central structural features of his play: a tendency toward non-concentric, asymmetrical embeddedment, with unsettling transitions between levels (the frame merged in with what it purports to frame); and an astonishing drive toward repetition, as elements of the text consistently echo or reflect or engage one another, o r even repeat themselves verbatim.19 These two processes are themselves intertwined-since pointed repetitions often enact the embeddedment and the dizzying interconnection of levels. For example, in Act 111 Rama comes to a rocky slab on which. long ago, he would lie with Sita; the forest fawns always haunted this spot, where she used to feed them (3.21). In Act VI, in the passage we have discussed (6.36),Lava. as if by chance, recalls a Sloka from the Rrimayana about just such as stone slab (this one on the banks of the Mandakini), where the lovers lay together.'" T h e young boy is.

'9 Winnicott, . Ps~choat~alvfical Explorations. edited by Clare Winnicott. Ray Shepherd, and Madeleine Davis (Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard Universily Press. 1989). 18 1. IYThus 2.19=0.5. 2" This Sloka is missing from llur Ratncivana text: see note by Nadinc Stchoupak in her flnc annotation to the text, Uttururanzuc~trrifu(LA Drrnii.t-e Adventltr-r de Rutna) (Pari.5: SocictC d'kdition 'Les Belles Lettrcs', 193.5). 126.

272

The Wi.sclnm of Po~t.s

perhaps, innocent of the erotic atmosphere attached to this ' o b j e ~ t ' ; ~ ' but lor us. eavesdroppers on the play, there is a strong and immediate resonance with the earlier mention in Act 111. Of course, the stone o f Act I11 is itself embedded in Rama's memory of another time, and only as such brought forward into the outer action of the present moment. But i t then turns up again, as i t were. in a poetic fragment supposedly extracted from the master text of the Ramdyana, the allencompassing frame submerged and then rediscovered from within the action of this scene. In this manner, various fragments of the story--often unconscious memory pieces or half-known, half-recalled experiences-keep floating up to centre stage, as the drama unrolls itself like a convoluted scroll. It is also striking that the particular instance just cited comes at the moment when father and sons are beginning to recognize onc another, for the first time. Such encounters in the embedded-repetitive mode occur regularly. One might generalize from this pattern a wider statement about personal recognition (pratyahhijriana, a term no less crucial for BhavabhDti than for Kalidasa)." T o identify or to know another (intimately related) person is to experience that person through the multiply embedded, and recurring, fragments of his or her presence, including those fragments embedded in the mind or memory of the experiencing subject. But these fragments have to be loosened or activated in a certain way. as we shall see. The problem of recognition goes still deeper in our play, to the point where it begins to seem like the central axis of the heroes' consciousness, as a subtle and powerful example from Act III makes clear. Rarna is hallucinating; he thinks he sees Sitieverywhere, though she continues to elude him: still, he blows she is near; his agony is cruelly intensified by the forest goddess Vasanti, who keeps pointing out the signposts and traces of the joyful period in Paficavati, now alive only in memory. There is a fire burning inside him, and outside everything is scorched and desolate: My hcart is cracking. my body will soon fall aparl. The whole world is a wilderness. and inside 1 burn " Discussion in V.V. mi rash^, R I U I I Y I ~(Dclhi: I I U ~ ~MoLilal Banarasidass, 1974). 253. "SCC 3.7l'S.: 3.81'1' ; Act VI i.; known i n the colophons as k u m d r t r /~t-utv(ihllr;fititz~~. 'Rccogninng rhc Boy\'.

Bhavuhluiti on Cruelty a n d Corrpassion

273

without cease. The deepest part of me is drowning, blind. in darkness. Vision veiled, I know despair, and know not what to do. (3.38) Soon he cannot brcathc, until the invisible Sita touches him w ~ t hher hand, which brings both inner and outer domains back to life. Now he is sure she is there beside him, as he asserts to the doubting Vasanti: 'Can't you see, she is right in front of us?' 'These are the ravings (pralapa) of a madman,' says Viisanti, pouting, but Rama indignantly mocks her and begins a verse, which is interrupted in the middle by Sits: Rams: Ravings? What ravings?

Held, long ago, covered with bangles, at the wedding, and always cool as flooding moonlightSita: My love, now you are, at last, yourself (so evva ddnint si tumam).

or gleaming snow, slight as the Lavali vine, your hand is now. again. mine. H e grasps it, alarming Sita. He, too, is completely out of control (parczivin) with mixed delight and panic (anarzda, scidhvasa)--so much so that he asks Vasanti to hold 'her', the transparent Sita, for a moment. N o w VBsanti is certain that Rama is truly insane (kaslam unmdda em)-and Sita. in a flurry, withdraws her hand, thereby at once generating an even more serious attack of despair in her forlorn husband, who sings a pointed and poignant versc about the tragedy of one hand slipping out of another (41 ). In a striking reversal of.the overt reality of his own story, he even pleads with his lost wife not to abandon him; she sadly notes this ironic inversion (vipr-atipam),one of a sel-ies of strange twists and shifts which sccm to be endemic to consciousness in Bhavabhuti's world. of this inner structure ol' ironic I-evcrsal In Indeed. the ~~nveiling

274

The Wisdom ofpoets

thought and feeling proves integral to the poet's art. Once again, we find repetition: for the bifurcated verse about Sita's hand closely echoes an earlier verse, from Act I, spoken by Rama to Sita in front of a painting of their wedding: That moment is happening again, when your hand. with ringing bangles, a veritable carnival in flesh, was placed by Gautama, the priest, in mine. ( 1.18) Past wholly merges into present , as it does, in a sense, in the forest scene, when Sit2 truly touches her lover in the same external setting as before-though he cannot see her. At the moment of contact, in the very middle of a verse whose grammatical subject has not yet even been mentioned, she interrupts to tell him (in a whisper he cannot hear) that he is now, once again, himself. Perhaps the mere fact that he has broken into poetry of a complex, elevated character and staggered syntax (and in the richly emotional Sikharini metre) is reassuring to Sita. who takes it as a sign that a more familiar presence is re-emerging; in her relief and joy, she cuts into the still unfinished, still incomprehensible poem. Bhavabhoti has a certain penchant for such divided verses, which always reflect some inner dynamic (as, for example, when one character begins a verse and stops, and another then concludes it):23i t is as if the open space flowing out of the hidden centre of the verse creates something new and unexpected, which then moulds its conclusion in a fresh pattern. This same rich transitional space at the centre produces Sita's paradoxical statement of R a m a ' s selfcoincidence at this pcint, rather as if until this moment, in her eyes at least, he was not fully himself, or somehow out of f o c u ~ . ~ T cooling, he healing touch, a reassertion of connection across an empty gap. brings this subject into a transient state of full self-possession. He will soon lose this sensation once again, under the force of renewed loss and separation, so that. toward the end of this act, Sita will need to repeat her statement: Rama tells Vasanti he wants to g o back to the ritual performance of the usvumedha, for which he has, after all, produced

'' See example discussed

above. 1.33; discussion of this pattern by Stchoupak. IJttararat~rrrc~trrirtr.xli. and see Naruyana Rao and Shulman. A Poem ut the Right Mo~nrtit.I 59M8, on parrr-purrttr verscs. 24 On the thclnc o f tautological self-identification. scc above, Chapter 6.

a substitute wife; Sita, alarmed, wonders aloud who this might be; Rama completes his sentence-he is referring to the golden image of Sita that he has commissioned, and that he now wishes to see again, in lieu of the lost; living woman. Relieved, in tears, Sita says (again): 'My lord, you are now truly yourself' (ajjautta danim s i trlmatn). She also tells us that the barb of shame, tormenting her heart ever since her banishment, has been removed. In this process of recognition, R a m a sees through the veil, mysteriously reconnecting to his hidden wife; Sit2 finds, again, the genuine goodness and faithfulness of her husband, as if watching a blurred photograph slowly emerging into focus. She also seems to find herself, or some part of herself in the process, for as she now praises this same golden image 'which offers hope for continued existence ( a s a - n i b a n d h a n a m j d d a jia-loassa)', she is-as her companion Tamas2 immediately notes-in fact praising herself (ayi vatse evam artnu stuyate). None of this could happen without the recurrent structures of repetition-always, in fact, a kind of reexperiencing in present time of a pre-existing paradigm of feeling or cognition. Bhavabhuti's language itself iconically reproduces this p a t t e r n : t h e U t t a r a - r d m a - c a r i t a a b o u n d s in w h a t S a n s k r i t grammarians call rimredita, the literal repetition of a word to express either a continuous and permanent state, or the quality of pervasiveness (nitya-vipsayoh, Panini 8.1 Language repeats, feeling repeats, touch retouches and reconnects, the mind re-cognizes its remembered realities, and reenacts them; within these parallel processes and homologous levels, one can also see the persistent workings of an entropic blurring o r forgetting, a falling away from self or selfpossession and, at moments, a sharp break or twist that reverses entropy and creates the condition for what might be seen as 'healing'. Before we attempt to examine this process a~~alytically, we need to look again at the theme of self in relation to memory, a s it 25 See, e.g. 1.27 and I .35 (both translated above); 3.36; 6.38 etc. This stylistic trait is also noted by Stchoupak, Uttarar&rzacarita,xlvi-xlviii. The oral (cdtu) tradition parodies this distinctive 'signature' of Bhavabhuti's, ascribing to him the following verse in which he challenges Kalidasa: Kcilidcisa-

kuver vcini X-odd-cit~mad-girci salzo/kalavat~ac1.v~scimyam ced bhitci bhitu pade pudr.// 'If Kalidasa's words ever compete with mine, they'll be afraid, very afraid, step by step. word by word.' Bkoja-caritra of Ballala. edited by

KO. Subruhmanyu ~ a s t r i(Madras: Prabhakara mudrsksara-ialii, 1895) [=Bhojolwaba?~cll~u], verse 249.

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The Wisdonl of' Poets

crystalli7.e~in Act 111. This time Sita states the theme with eloquent pathos. Here, in Paficavati, with Rama in front of her eyes, memories flood her heart; but she feels as if something is dreadfully unreal in these circumstances: Sita: This is my husband; I am in the Paficavati forest; here is Vgsanti, my same old friend; I am seeing the same wooded banks of the Godavari, that witnessed so many intimate moments; the animals and birds and trees are no different than they were, just like my own children; and here am I, the very same me. And yet, though I can see i t all plainly, it is as if none of it really exists for me anymore. The world has been transformed. The term she chooses for transformation-p~rincirna,~~a kind of 'ripening' or 'cooking'-might characterize the entire ritual-dramatic process. What is it that drives a person in particular a suffering person, to insist that 'I am (still) me'? Clearly, there is a sense of a latent and unending fludity of experience, that alters the world, and perhaps the self, even as one experiences life anew through familiar patterns; a painful gap thus opens up between the remembered self/world and its re-encountered contours. But Sita's words g o still deeper, resuming one of the classic problems in Indian religion and resonating with an ancient formula. In Brahmana sacrifical rituals such as the daria-pirna-mdsa offering (the new and full moon sacrifices), the ritual subject undertakes a vow (vrata) which entails a far-reaching existential transformation; in effect, he moves from a human identity to a divine one (complete with a divine body, daivcitman, created through the performance). Another way to describe the process is to think of an ascent to the world of the gods, followed by descent and re-entry into human life. In any case, a delicate boundary must be crossed, and much attention is given to the transition out of the heightened ritual mode. How does one release oneself (vi-srjate) from the transformed state achieved through the ritual? There is a formula to be uttered: idam aham ya evrisrni s o 'smi, 'I am just who I am.'" There is something deeply paradoxical about this statement. which resembles Epimenides'

26

v.1. purivurtu; cf. bivurtu in 6.6.

27

See .$uruL~c~tl~o Rrrihrnu?ia (Banaras: Kashl Sanskrit Series 127. n.d.)

1.1. 1.6.

Bhavuhhuti o r 1 Cruelty and Cornpussion

277

paradox ('All Cretans are liars, and I am a Cretan');ZXfor the formula is meant to substitute for a statement to the effect that 'I', the ritualist, have now returned from the dimension of truth (saQa) to a dimension of untruth ( a n r t a ) . T o state the latter fact baldly is felt to be i n a p p r ~ p r i a t e ;one ~ ~ therefore makes the above identity statement. but from within a world ruled by untruth, in which every utterance must, apparently, be untrue. 'I am just who I am' must also, therefore, be untrue. I would like. again, to insist on the ritual frame within which Bhavabhuti composed his play. W e might also consider that the B r a h m a n a problematic just outlined is at the heart o f the entire Rarniiyana literature (perhaps of kavya generally, exemplified by this ('first kavya'): Rama is, after all, a god who has made the transition to being human, and who has, in the course or this transition,,forgorten his divine ~ d e n t i t y . ~The ' root problem that our text, like so many Ramayana texts, sets out to address, or even to solve, is precisely this awareness of the gap embedded within the experience of self in time (or of language in time, which amounts to much the same thing)the gap that makes Sita claim that the familiar Paficavati world does not really exist for her, and that makes Rgma habitually amnesiac. Longing, and perhaps a certain empathic imagination or compassionkaruna, another term central to our text-inhabit this space, where memory also comes into play. W e could also argue that this gap gives rise to the problem of loving, which seems. in the context of this drama, to encompass a dimension of cruelty, inner conflict, and a loss of focus, or of presence, on the part of the loving subjects. Why,

" On the liar's paradox and allied forms of self-referential riddles. see llan Amit, 'Squaring the Circle', in Galit Hasan-Rokem and D. Shulman (eds), Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). 284-93. I thank Yohanan Grinshpon for discussions on this point. 2Y na hi tad nvakalpate vad br~iyadidam aham satyddarlrtam apaimiti tad u khalu punar manuso bhavati tasmid idnm nhnm va evcistni so 'smity eva vratam visrjate (ibid.). 'It is not right for him to say, "I have come from truth

into untruth." Since he becomes human again, let him release himself from the ritual by saying, "I am just who I am." See J. Heesterman, "I am who I am": Truth and Identity in Vedic Ritual', in G. Oberhammer (ed.). Beirriige zur Hernleneutik itldi.rcker urzduhetid~atidischer. K~~ligiot~~truditionet~ (Vienna: Osterreichische Akadcmit. der Wisscnschaften, 199 1 ). 147-77. '"See Pollock, The Ranl&ancl; below, Chapter 10.

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T h r Wisdom c?f Poots

after all, has Ranla acted as he has, i n a manner Lhat engenders such massive guilt-more, perhaps, than in any other consciousness within the whole of Sanskrit literature? And what is the truth-motional, epistemic, existential-working itself outward Lowards concrete expression through this volatile mixture of sensations, in which the identity of the suffering subject is continually slipping away from awareness?

5. Remembering the Present: On Karuna There is a deep music in Bhavabhuti's text, perhaps aricher and more evocative musicality than in any other Sanskrit poet, some of it highly structured, like the internal processes undergone by the protagonists, in lucid and repeated patterns. We might isolate a 'fugue' comprised of the haunting alternation of Sikharini and malini meter^;^' the fugue creates an eerie familiarity and an insistent rhythm of discovery, or, perhaps, recovery (in more senses than ~ n e ) ~ ~ -recognition, a inexorably fulfilling itself, for example, in Rama's slow identification of his sons and the subsequent recovery of Sita from within the play within the play.33This gentle and moving rhythm is itself a form of memory; and memory (smrti), in relation to love, is, as I have said, the mainspring of the dramatic action. Throughout the play-beginning in the first lines of dialogue after the stage-manager's prologue-we keep hearing the anxiety of forgetting, just as we witness the tensions implicit in remembering. 'Does he (Rsyairriga) still remember us?' Sita asks at the outset. 'Do you, my love, remember those places?'-this is Sita again, to Rama, as they study the paintings of their life in the forest. Riima throws the question back at her, this time repeating the verb

" E.g. 1.24-30; 1.35-38: 5.13-1 6 (With intervening Sdrd~ila-vikridira); 6.2630 (with intervening indravajru);the subtle variation and transrtion from one metre to another, often via a third. merits attention and careful study. Bhavabhuti is the great master, i n the classical tradition, of both these metres, which again comprise a kind of 'signature'. ~ i k h c l r i ~ has i the highest distribution in this play (30 examples). I wish to thank Nita Shochct for suggest~ngthis link with the theme of heal~ng,so deeply relevant to th~stext. " There, however. the dominant mt.!re is the epic iloku. in I ~ n ewith Valmiki's tcx~.

Blzuvnhhilri on Cruelty utrtl C'ornprr.\sron srnarusi-'Do

you remember'?'-three

279

times in four lines:

Do you remember. my dcar, how Laksmana cared for u s all those days on the mounlain, and how happy we were'? Do you remember the pure taste of Godiivari water? Do you remember how we played there on its shores?34(1.26) The danger of forgetting always hovers over these characters; to counteract it, they resort to a remarkable range of experiential and literarylartistic devices-the paintings in the royal pavilion, the text composed by Vglmiki and memorized by KuSa and Lava. the return visits to Paiicavati. the mirror-like physiognomies of the two boys, the play within aplay. All of these modes trigger some sort of memory, usually painful and burdened with longing. In most of them there is a directionality that may seem surprising, given the rhetoric of retrospection that fills the surface level of their statements. In general, the movement is toward a present or future moment, in which the remembered experience is relived or, even more surprisingly, anticipated. In a way, i t begins with the S~itradharastage-manager, who first tells of being translated to another time unfolding in the present-future: 'I have become a citizen of Ayodhya, from that time,' he tells us, setting the stage for the play that is about to appear.35Then as Sit2 gazes at the paintings, she confesses: 'I seem to be in that very place, and in that time' ( a h m ojanami tassim jevvapadese rassim jevva kclle vattdmi). Then Rama repeats the thought: 'All the events of Janasthana seem to be taking place in the present moment' (hanra vartamana iva janasthana-vrttdntah pratibhati). So vivid is this feeling that, as we have seen, Rama interrupts Laksmana's verse, describing the period on Mount Malyavant, in the middle: '4 srilarasi sutanu tasnzitz parvate laksrnanrna prati-villita-.raparvci-si~st1iavo.r tanv aliciizi/ smarasi .sarasa-nirdm tatra ,eodavarim 1~a smarasi ca tad-up6ntr.y~avc~vorrartr~tldnif/ This is the immediate prelude l o the verse of whispered nights (1.27, above). P.SO '.rnli korvavciSdd uvodlz\~ukc~.s tudcinitntut~c~.$ c.u .sc~rtlvrftc~?l.

''

280

The Wisdom ($Poets

'Stop, stop. I can bear no more. 'The whole loss is happen~ngto me again!' (1.33) So memory. for the characters in this play-and what of its spectators?-happens now, making present, in the present moment, a ~ s or veiled some previously expericnced state or e ~ e n t , ' ~ e r hblocked by normal consciousness. Something-the play, the painting, the story-tears away the veil, and the effect is overwhelming. Memory of this type is not 'about' absence or loss; if anything, it is about an overriding presence. Neither a question of recollection. nor a narrativized abstraction, it involves the actual reliving of an emotional reality, though sometimes with ajarring note of temporal or cognitive disparity.% Often, however, the entire experience unfolds again, as if an embedded capsule, patterned along condensed, paradigmatic lines, were detonated within the mind. Very similar to this mode is proleptic memory, oriented toward future events that are already, it seems, known to the subject. Sitii, weary, troubled by the paintings of her history, says to her husband: 'I would like to bathe again in the limpid waters of the Ganges and delight in the profound and peaceful landscapes of the forest.' She uses the simple future: viharissam, ogahissam, 'I will delight, I will bathe .... The idiomatic expression of the wish proves ironic, for Sita is about to be cruelly exiled to those landscapes; she seems somehow to know this, unconsciously, in advance, just as the doorkeeper in the palace unconsciously announces the onset of separation while Sit2 still lies sleeping in RBma's lap, and just as Rama himself seems to sense, in advance, something of the tragedy that is in store. There is good reason to think of this knowledge as a kind of remembering, exotic as the idea may seem to us, for such memorics of the future are, in fact. one of the major forms that memory takes in the epistemic universe of ancient India." And although this type is not predominant in Bhavabhuti's play, it is of a piece with the notion of the unpublished part of the text-actually, the ending of the Rgma story-that VBlmiki has already composed an@ent ahead to be performed in the presence of the very characters whose story it portrays. The story, in other words, could be said to exist before its characters, as latent potential, Cf.Malarnoud, Cuire le Mondc,, 297: ' ... le verbe [sttzr]lui-rnCrne ne signifie pas purernent et sirnplernent 'se rappeler'. rnais plutcit 'fixer avec intensltk son esprit sur u n objet (qui n'est pas rnateriellernent present)'. " See above, Chapter 7.

the~rconsclousness and thcir d e e d . slowly externalizing itsel I' thro~~gh In this sense it can also be rcmembcred in advance. Ir is this same sort of'knowing that activates the recognition scenes, especially Act VI. whcn Rama fccls thc unexpectcd rush of love for the sons he does not fully, or consciously, know as his. Here memory appears not as a cognitive act propcr, in which both knowledge and as a the knowledge of knowing tcnd to be intimately ~ombincd,~%ut more opaque and sometimes doubt-ridden intuiting of a felt presence. Thus Sita, in a flurry of mixed sensations in thc Paiicavati forest, at once angry at the grief-strickcn Rama and ready to forgive him for everything. tcrrificd both of revealing herself to him and of letting him go, can still proudly assert to hcr friend Tamasa: 'I know his heart, and he knows mine' (aham edassa hiaar?ljanarni mamrivi eso; after 3.12). This dcep innerness. utterly without rcason or cause, is what Bhavabhuti identifies as love, extending his earlier definition ('when two become one') in the direction of a mutuality of knowing of this kind. It can be more closely characterized: 'This is a major part of being alive, this liquid love that someonc suddenly has for someone else. People may spcak of "love at first sight", or of a match that was "in the stars", but what they mean is that loving feeling that cannot be quantified or explained, that has neither reason nor remedy, this thread of feeling that weaves together the innermost, hidden parts.' (5.17) So speaks Sumantra, the charioteer, in Act V. referring to the suddenly apparent affection of the two cousins, Lava and Candraketu. We should notice the motif of weaving or sewing together the inner parts (marmani); it is precisely thcse vulnerable inner parts that are constantly being cut, punctured, woundcd, poisoned, or burnt. throughout the whole drama, as the characters repeatedly complain. Memory of the type we are exploring, active in the prcscnt or future, encompassing the liquid sensation of love and what we have called 're-cognition', has this healing power to reconnect the severcd or discontinuous flux of inner feeling. Certain other features are dependably linked with this experience. Sita, in the passage just quoted, prefaces her statelncnt about the '"ee Birnal Krishna Malilal, Percrpliotr: An E s s q on Clu.s.s~cnllndiarr Theorles r y " K t ~ o ~ ~ l e (Oxford: rl,~e ('larendon Press. I YXh), 14 1-79.

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knowledge o f ~ h heart c with a self-reproach: she is. she says, hard as diamond (vajt-u-may[), and without compassion (nit--anukro.v'u).This solid stalc. rocky and blocked, melts when she sees, or, rather, empathically imagines, her husband. Sita's riverine friend eloquently iormula~esthis complex process at this same juncture: Tamasa: I know, I know, my friend. Numb with despair, yet still aching, stirred by this sudden meeting within an endless separation, naturally lucid and kind, but feeling deeply the sorrow your lover must feel, this heart of yours, in a second, has turned to water in your love. (3.13.) This is, again, the mournful Sikharini metre, iconically melting down the listener-like broken-hearted Sita-with its innate pathos. Hurt, sad, numb, Sit2 is still, above all, capable of empathic imagination and a shared universe of feeling: the verse, moving toward a crescendo in the third line, uses the loaded term karuna (more often translated as 'compassion' or 'pity') for this notion.39 A s a considerable secondary literature on BhavabhCiti rightly insists, karuna provides the leitmotif of this play. This verse makes at least one of its components very clear-because of karuna, triggered at the sight of Rama, and mixed with other emotions, Sita's heart is now fluid, 'turned to water' (dravi-bhiram), freed, it seems, from the encrusted, adamantine state she earlier describes. 'Even a stone would weep,' says Laksmana, remembering Rama's travails in the wilderness as vividly portrayed in the palace paintings (1.28). Throughout this play, as in so many Indian texts (especially from the deep south), we find a preference. even a powerful yearning, for statcs of melting, flowing, flooding, heating, softening, depetrifying, weeping, bathing, soaking through a frozen or calcified surface. 'What a gift it is', says Tamasa, referring to Rams, 'to be able to cry!' (nanu labho hi r ~ d i t a m ) .The ~ ' real danger lies in the drift, within consciousness, towards rockiness. or, more abstractly, towards various forms of self-objectification and externalizationjY I wish to thank V. Narayana Rao for discusaions of this term. J " 3 . 3 0 ; weeping here is a vital sign that Rarna is \ t i l l capable of breathing. For rlrc,,~r,'flux', as the state of thc emot~on-ladenheart. cl'. 3.25.

Bhavabhuti on Cruelty a n d Corn~~assiotr 283 for 'melting' always. in these texts, implies a movement inward or from withim4' Such are the preconditions for karuna. the underlying, internal state of fluid empathy. This state is also closely linked with images of 'ripening' or '~ooking'.In a striking verse at the opening of Act 111, Rama's own potential for karuna is likened to a process of preparing medicines through prolonged 'cooking': Too profound to be revealed, unbroken, dense with suffering, and deeply hidden, Rgma's capacity for compassion is like a compress of healing herbs cooked in a clay oven.42(3.1) The clay oven appears in medical texts of ~ v u t v e d a puta-paka ; is 'a particular method of preparing drugs, in which the various ingredients are put in a vessel covered with a plaster of clay or wrapped up in the leaves of some tree which are then covered with a plaster of clay and the whole is then roasted in fire'.43 S o this ability to flow with compassionate feeling, or with empathy, must mature within a person through the painful and fiery stages of suffering; the physical body serves as the oven, containing and cooking the compacted emotional, non-solidified stuff of selfhood; the healing end-product is deep, continuous, unbroken, unblocked, and unimaginably dense. It must also be, in a profound sense, unitary and whole, as Bhavabhoti tells us in a much-quoted verse: The flow of compassion is always one, though it seems, for many reasons, to break into distinct and separate formations, just as whirlpools, These themes are discussed at length in Don Handelman and David Shulman, God Inside Out: ~ i v a ' Gume s of Dice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), in the light of the original insights by Margaret Trawick Egnor, 'The Sacred Spell and Other Conceptions of Life in Tamil Culture', Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1978, 32-64, 82-7. 42 anirbhinno gabhiratvad antar-g~idhu-ghatla-vynthald PW-pdka-pmtikaso rati~cl.ryakuruno ru.\a/d/ 43 Kane 1971 :78. on this verse. 41

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Bhuvnhlzuti otl Crucltj utld Cortlpa.~.~ion 285 in the play within the play. 'Who can close thc doors Lo falc (daivasva d v d r d n i ) for the crcattire who is beginning to ripen?' @&kiibhimukhas?;ajutztor, 7 . 4 ) . But rather than attempting a further mapping of these notions, wc can sum up what we have learned by examining one more versc. Here is Arundhati explaining to Janaka why Kausalya, R%ma'smother, is so distressed at meeting him again:

wavcs, and huhhles are, in the end. all watcr. (3.47) A whole litcraturc of modern commentaries sces a kind o f aesthetic theology in this statcrnent about karuna-rasa. the 'taste' or 'flavour' of compassion. supposedly transcending or completing thc series of other r a s a ~but ; ~ i t would perhaps bc closer to Bhavabhuti's vision to think of a ripening faculty of empathy which is the necessary substratum for all other forms of emotional or aesthetic experience, and for understanding other pcople, including those closest and most loved. We began this section by speaking of memory, which led us to 'recognition' and, then, to 'empathy'; all three concepts are bound together by the imagery of flow and maturation and tied to the soft internal organs referred to as murmcini, the sccret and vulnerable parts of our being, susceptible to all kinds of verbal, cognitive, and emotional assaults. These images are differentiated and complex: 'ripening', i n particular, can also mean, for Bhavabhuti, the slow poisoning of the inner subject by suppressed, unhealed forms of grief. R%maspeaks in the first act of a fiery sorrow 'cooking in the mind' (manasi punar vipacvamanah, 1.30)-referring to the kidnapping of Sit%--long after the occasion of its first appearance, when it could, more or less, be endured because of the necd to act and the hope of revenge. Bhavabhtiti uses the analogous image of a wound or sore still festering inside the hardened scar tissue that has grown up around it (2.26; 1.30). This is, perhaps, the difference between what is called 'bad ripening/cooking' (dur-vipaka, often daiva-dur-vipaka, the unhappy ripening of divine fate)45and the often positive notion of ripening generally (vipciku, ~ i p a k t i )Such . ~ ~ 'cooking' includes a divine aspect as well, a structured process of maturation through suffering that is located deep inside the individual: as the goddess Ganga asks 44 See, e.g., R.D. Karmarkar, Bl~avubhuti(Dharwar: Karnatak University. 1971),64; also the essay by Lalita Pandit, 'Patriarchy and Paranoia:ImaginaV Infidelity in Uttararunzacarita and The Winrer's Tale', in Patrick Colm Hogan and Lalita Pandit (eds),Litera? lndia: Conlparutive Studies in Ae.sthetics. Colonialism, and Culture (Albany: S U N Y Press, 1993).129, offering a veV different perspective on this issue. 4s 1.40, 1.46 (both connec(cd ~oimages of poiwning), 7 (following Verse

That king-that happinessthat child-those day sit has all come back to her, visible in memory, on seeing you again. Things ripen and go wrong: no wonder your friend is in distress. Awareness, in a woman, is fragile as a flower. (4.12)

I

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'Things ripen and go wrong'-sorrow has cooked Kausalya, as it has nearly everyone else in this play, to the point where awareness is now soft, pliant, vulnerable to deep feeling. Memory allows this to happen; or, more precisely, memory here seems like a mirror, somewhere in the mind, in which objects and sensations are made present again, though not, or not primarily, through retrospection. The mirror discloses a state of feeling that exists now, or in the future, but one fashioned in the mould of an earlier, structured paradigm. Within this paradigm, gaps may emerge as a result of the ripening subject's internal evolution, or of the processes of displacement inherent in consciousness, or in the world-as we can see from the rather unintegrated, dangling series with which this verse begins ('that king-that happiness-that child-those days...'). The halting syntax enacts Arundhati's rathcr conventional conclusion. At this juncture, very close to the spatial mid-point of our play, memory animates an unfocused, not wholly continous subject very much in need of healing.

6. Guilt, Dispersion, and the Meaning of Love We can now turn to the momcnt of ultimate healing. Bhavabhiili is no means the only Sanskrit pact to create a play within a play

2 ).

E.6. 3.3; but cf. 4.6.

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(garhhcirik~i),~~ b u ~nowhcre is the device more powerfully expressive of an entire semantic universe encompassing each of the ma.jor characters. and moving them toward the full flowering of the seeds they carry in their minds. As so often, confusion about boundaries dominates the scene: Laksmana has to remind Rama, who is stricken at the dramatization of Sita's fate, that he is 'only' watching a play. The profound irony of this statement is almost immediately apparent. For in the end the 'real' Sita turns up on the stage and proceeds 'really' to revive the unconscious Rama. The embedded play becomes fully congruent with its external setting which, for want of a better word, we might call 'reality'. This moment clearly echoes another instance of congruence or, better, confluence, when the unfocused contours of Rama's own 'self' suddenly coincide, again under Sits's benign touch, in the forest. At such moments, apparently discontinous and incongruent levels or domains come into alignment. Once again we are dealing with a classical restatement of a very ancient p r ~ b l e mImagine .~ the world, including the emotional world of lovers and the psychic universe of the self, as inherently entropic, with a tendency to split and separate into disconnected realms and disparate experiences. Imagine dispersal of this sort to be constant, and to be translated constantly, experientially, into sensations of rocky encrustration, crystallization, blocking, and the fragmenting of presence. As we have already seen, the counter-movement requires melting, a restoration of flux, and the birth of that empathic imagination that we have been calling karunti. In formal terms, to reverse dispersion and disconnection is the real function of dynamic embeddedment, as Bhavabhuti so lucidly reveals to us. The play within a play is an embedded piece of reality; and embedded in it are references to other, less deeply embedded levelsto the divine weapons, for example, that Rsma has seen and commanded ai the time of the exhibition of paintings, explicitly mentioned in the text of the encapsulated play; and also to Valmiki, the poet-author of the spectacle/story as a whole. Valmiki has, moreover, composed this conclusion to the story, in advance of the events it describes, just as his Ratnayanu predates the living out of the story by its characters, who may even quote his text at various 47 See above. Chapter 6, and Act V I of the Naln-vilasa-nutaka of Rzmacandrasut-i, where Nala watches a troupe of actors playing his own story. 4X See above. Chapter 5.

points within Lhc play. We could take this Kurr~u?'artalext to kc the outermost Crame of the (variously rc-enacled) story. encompassing it, as a totality, from the start. But in Bhavabhtiti's slructure, this outermost frame is the most decply cmbcdded-hence, also. it seems, most deeply real. It is this frame [hat is quoted back to the principal hero himself: within the drama, and that has generated a conclusion to his story. It is this frame which shines through the play within the play. And i t is this embedded frame that enables the full, lhough perhaps transient, coalescence of ontic and existential levels, complete with full-hearted recognition of one another by the major dramatis personae, in the final act. Sita walks oul of the embedded play to touch Rama with her living hand-this physical touch, .rparSa, is always essential for Bhavabhuti, the true test of reality-and now, at last, the heroes are, in all senses, reconnected, with themselves. with each other, and with the story that is theirs. The contours of this tragic tale of guilty rejection and separation are, for once, perfectly aligned. All this, as we arc told several times, is the work of the poet, who knows the visionary truth that can be literally embodicd-in bodies and in words. Indeed, the two categories seems to be alloCorms, each enacting what the poet sees in his inner eye, each moving loward the goal of coalescence. And as i t happens-as the frame and its embedded levels become one-the drama melts away, even as time disappears into a Limeless present. Rgma-is he still anywhere within the text'can now bless us, the audience, and all future connoisseurs, and the story that is his own purifying tale. At this final moment, clearly, the drama can, or must, end, since it no longer disposes of a frame; note that at this point, we, too, have merged with the audience internal to Act VII, as Bhavabhuti, the master poet. seems to have been subsumed within the persona of the first poet, Valmiki, and as Bhavabhuti's Uttara-rama-carita has merged into Valmiki's texl of the same concluding section of the story. Rama's blessing is thus, ullimately and fully, a matter of the present, certainly not of any conceivablc or theoretical past. The healing memory (smrti) which Ihe charactcrs keep seeking, in the midst oC constant anxiety about forgetting-the memory of a connected and present self in which all levels, all parts of the story, arc combined and realigned-is accessible precisely at this moment or Car-reaching Pusion that abrogates all earlicr. painful gaps. It is this state that kurunu, Lhe Iicarl's compassion. he crnpathic knowing of anothcr Prom wi~hinthe self. has initiated. efl'cctcd. and sustained.

Bha~,crl~huti on Crurlty crnd Cotnpcc.ssiorr

Thcrc are carlicr momcnts in this play when such a state of superimposition or coalcsccncc is briclly attained: for example, at the end of Act 111, when Vasanti and Tamasaioin. from their separate domains, in singing a verse of blessing [hat beautifully adumbrates Rrl~na'sfinal verse. Similarly, the two cousins. Lava and Candraketu, sing, togcther, thrcc verses on the mystery of love. as if guidcd by a consciousncss alive in a singlc. unconsciously inccrnalized text. The same process leads to thcsc verscs which one character begins and another continues, from across the empty but dynamic gap in the middle. In a system structured like this play, such flashes occur naturally from time to timc, and eventually movc toward more radical forms of realignment. Let me restate thc main systemic features that are at work: ( I ) a text, or story, that exists, as an embedded frame, before i t is lived out or enacted; (2) a sub.ject. who both is and is not himself, poised somewhere near the outer layers of the frame, watching himself within the morc dceply embedded laycrs of this text; (3) internal movements, of psyche, or of affective parts of the seIf, that loosen the calcified or petrified segments of experience, thereby dissolving linear sequence and retrospective time. Therc is a restless quality incvitable when the external frame is so deeply blended into its own text, to the point of becoming its most internal element: we can see this in the pIay within the play, when the embedded frame rises up through its encircling outer layers, binding them together rather as the ancient texts say the worlds are impaled-likc leaves on a pin--on the single syllable Om.49 Such a system, by no means limited to the Rama literature, is nonetheless hightly characteristic of it: Somewhere Rama is always watching himself play himself, or overhearing himself overhear his sons speaking of himself, telling him his own story: he is thus partly heteronomous, in that he depends upon yet another, outside listener, if self-knowlcdgc is to occur; but these are patterns not primarily of splitting and displaccment. as we might expect. but of far-reaching wclding and melting in the mind. It is in this mode that Rama also knows love, which now encompasscs his own cruelty and its forgiveness. Rcmembcr. now, that all this happens in a specific context of pcrl'ormancc. the fcstival of ~ i v as a Kala-priya-natha. I t is within this ritual sctting that thcsc radical statcs of rccognition and internal

289

reconfiguration occur. Rccall the Sutradhara-Director. in thc opcning words of the play, as he survcys the cnipty spacc before him: 'I have bccome a citizen of Ayodhya, from that time'-words marking entry into the hcightcned world of the ritual drama, where new identities will arise and grow. I have elsewhere spoken ol' tautological states, in which an assunicd persona or idcntity-oftcn a divine self-becomes isormorphic with thc person cnacting a given (ritual or dramatic) ro1e.j" For a moment, from out of an infinity of potential masks or faccs, part-selves and multiple sclves, a whole being is crcated, continuous with his or hcr inner world, which he or she temporarily subsumes. Such a moment is an achievement, perhaps possible only within the intense ritual modes of heated play, and not meant to last: the ritual itself always and invariably moves the tautological subject back into a more spacious and less focused form of existence, in the everyday, normative domain. Nevertheless, this state of powerful, integrated self-possession, in a time that can only be the present, may reproduce itself within the drama performed on festival nights: something of great significance thus happens to the god, within the play, and to the audience, as i t were 'outside' it, but in reality contained-perhaps we should say 'cooked'-within the ritual order meant to produce an existential change. There are more powerful ways to state this thesis, though we cannot begin to work out their implications here. Recognition (pratyabhijiiana), memory (smara), tautological self-coincidence (tadatmya)-all of these are, in a sense, subsidiary parts or stages of a larger dynamic process, though in another sense they constitute the culminating achievements of this process on the level of the individual spectator at the drama or the character within the play. What is really being accomplished, through these and other, ritual means, is the creation of the divine sub-jcct-in our case, Rrima andlor Sit%.By creation we mean not an ex rzihilo production of living being but the making nianifcst of a latent, potential presence, as the flowering tree unfolds from the restless and compacted seed, or as the visible image emerges in contact with the projecting, imagining eyc. The ritual maps and controls this process. ensuring its result. just as the Rumuyuna (in each of its distinct versions) may be said to creatc Rarna. and as Bhavabhuti's play literally produces thc re-composed or reintegrated consciousncss of this

"' Sec above. Chaprcr h

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complcx, double entity, at once human and divine. To crcatc this intensity of prescncc. at various lcvcls, and latcr to dispel it. is integral both to the entire rit~lal systcm and to its acsthctic concomitants and means. Clearly. we need a new thcory ol' poetics and aesthetics that would be capable of addressing such a process, and such a goal, which Bhavabhuti has taken, perhaps. to an ultimate e x p r e s s i v e limit-though s u c h , a p r o c e s s , i n f o r m e d and contextualized by ritual concerns, is by no means limited, in the field of Sanskrit drama, to his works. We may ask again, from this new perspective, about the meaning of RBma's actions, now that the problem of Sita's banishment has shifted into a different, rather more internal mode. It is all too easy to say that RBma, in so far as he is committed to his royal dharmic duty, is cruel-or that dharma itself, in this public context. belongs to the hardened, surface crust of existence. The conflict that Rama feels is a real one, not really resolvable at $1, as we are reminded by the Ganges in the final play within a play. Yet the guilt that RBma feels, and that he identifies as truly his. a profound statement of self ('Yes. that is who I am.' he says in response to the Earth's words of reproach), seems to g o beyond this overt conflict; so overwhelming is this burden that one is almost tempted to wonder if there is not some more hidden aggressive force driving the hero, a force that comes into play at all those neuralgic points in the story when this god-turned-man is revealed as weak. wanting, or even tainted by evil. 'There seems to be nothing that Rama is incapable of doing.' Certainly, in the light of everything we have seen in Bhavabhiiti's text, we can conclude that Rama's treatment of STta cannot be simply condoned. The Uttara-rarna-rnrita is, among other things, a long, complex, and poignant J ' a c c u s e . Its subtlety, however, lies in the revelation of a hero who is internally struggling with the blocked, objectified, and petrified pieces of his own consciousness, and who, in the course of watching his own play enacted before his eyes, eventually melts into a more unified existence. T h s is an inner drama of water at war with stonc, And what of love'? We have an cxtrapolatcd dcfinition of empathy. karuna, as the imaginative connection to the implicit story that exists before it is fully lived; as such kurrtna binds the scvcred lcvcls 01' existence together and hcals thc inncr wound. Lovc has sorrlcthing of this same gift. as Ranla tells u \ in Act VI. in h1.c particular defini tion:

Rams: Love and logical causality are. after all, totally at odds.-"

Some inner reason connects one thing to another. Loving feelings have no relation to outer forms. The lotus blossoms each day at sunrise. The moonstone melts when the moon appears. (6.12) The world is alive with transformative movement and mysterious interconnections that, however arbitrary they may seem, always reflect an intimate inner tie. And it is this interweaving of seemingly discrete entities, this making of connections at a level of soft, internal, intangible flow, unrelated to externalities but richly enacted within the heart or mind, that our poet identifies with the various forms of love (pritayah). W e have come full circle. Rama's definition in Act VI, in the context of his dawning recognition of his sons, reflects and expands upon his earlier statement in Act I-the classic definition with which we began. Advaita, 'that state when two become one/in joy as in sorrow', requires empathy, karund, the true energizing force of connection. It also needs to 'ripen' over time, cooked deep inside the containing body of the lover: and this cooking, as we now know, removes the intervening veils (avarana) in awareness, allowing for lucid perception of the beloved in the ripening, loving core (snehascira). This state encompasses ambivalence: recall that this verse immediately precedes Rama's cruellest act; and Bhavabhuti shows us over and over how, among the connections that love enables, one often finds those between grief and joy, or insult and delight, or confusion and clarity .j2There is even a somewhat sinister resonance, throughout this play, between the chiming notes of karuna-all that is compassionate and empathic-and ddruna, 'harsh, terrible, almost as if these domains were intrinsically interwoven in the initial, experienced modes of loving-before the slow, transformative ripening romoves the veils. It is, it seems, the poet's business to make this happen, by magically fusing the levels of perception in a work of visionary and creative remembering, ouside of time: as Laksmana athava snehui ca tzimitta-.mvvap~~ksai cefi vipruti~iddharnetat. See, e.g., 3.13 with its prcceding prose passage. 53 E.g. 3.34 [leading up to 3.471: cf. prose following 3.25. Thejuxtaposition of these terms is particularly compelling In Act 111, which begins with the Powerful statement of Rarnn's karund but then proceeds through vanous accusalions and reproaches relaring to his daruna acts. 52

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cries out 10 Viilmiki, though without comprehending, as yet, what the drama is aclually achieving. e.!.a te kav.~iirthah,'This is the point of poetry!' And, despite thc metaphysical tone of these formulations, and the understanding they convey of lovc as an extraordinary, rare state of almost transcendent connectedness, the process that cngages this poet so deeply is expressly defined as ultimately human-indeed as situated at the very heart of the human being, this precarious ability to touch and to weave, 'the mysterious knot of feeling, so disturbing yet common to all who have consciousness, the inner thread of life'."

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Fire and Flood: The Testing of Sit%in Kampag' s Irlimdvatriram*

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Even perfection has its problems. Especially vulnerable are those unfortunates who have to live beside or in relation to some paragon. No doubt Rams, exemplary hero that he is in the major classical versions of the story from Valmiki onward, attracts the love and utter loyalty of nearly everyone with whom he comes in contact, especially the members of his immediate family. As Kampag, the twelfth-century author of the Tamil Rbmciyana. puts it: Just as Rama is filled with love of many kinds for all the living beings of this world, so, in so many ways, do they love him.'

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And it is, of course, no ordinary love: elsewhere we are told-this is Sit2 speaking to Laksmana-that 'those who have known him for even a single day would give their lives for him' (111. 8.13). Still, statements such as these by no means exhaust the range of emotions generated by Rama's presence. Moreover, in at least two contexts this idealized model of humanity is explicitly problematized by the Rdmayana tradition: first, in the painful case of his cowardly and unfair slaying of the monkey king Valin; and second, in his relat~ons with Sit2 after the war and her restoration to him.' The latter context

* First published in Paula Richman (ed.), Manv RLimd?.atg.r: The Diversitv of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (University of California Press, 1991), 89-1 13.

\an(/ vd .swn~a-.c.a~/\~drano h v esu munu.so moha-granthir dntaru.i ca c.etatlti~'clt~irn I I ~ ( I / I I U I , L I I I(v.1. a n ~ q ~ l ~ l vsuni.stir~~-tunt~ih: ah) 7, hefore verse 4 (spoken hy he Ganges to the Earth). 14

! i t

' IrLimavutdrarn 11. 1.83. 1 cite the edition wilh commentary hy Vai. Mu. K ~ p a l a k i r u s n a m ~ c ~ r iKr~tnparfin~tivrzna,r~ ~ar. (Madras: V n i . Mu. Kop~lakirusnama~~ri~ar Kampeni, 1971 ). 'See David Shulman, 'Ulvine Order and Divine Evil in the Tamil Tale ot Rams', Jo~rrnulqf A.ritrn Stur1ic.s 18, 4 (Auguat 1979).65 1-69.

Fire orzd Flood

is even, in a sense, doubled. Rama initially rejects Sita in Lanka, requiring her to undergo a test of fire (agnipariksa),which she passes. Only later, in the seventh book, the Uttarakanda, does Rama take the more drastic and apparently final step of exiling his wife in response to continuing slanderous rumours about her faithfulness to him during her stay at Ravana's court. The Indian literary tradition has explored the tragic dimension of Rama's action and has offered various solutions to the problems i t raises-since there is no doubt that Sita's punishment is entirely unmerited, as Rama himself clearly knows.3 Modern Indological scholarship has, since Jacobi? tended to attack the problem by a characteristic act of stratigraphy: the Uttarakbnda is declared later than the 'central core' of Books 2 through 6, so Rama's final repudiation of Sit2 is reduced to the status of an accretion. For reasons that I cannot develop here, I feel that this 'solution' is ~ n a c c e p t a b l e In . ~ any case, our present concern is with the earlier trial, in Lanka, primarily as it appears in Kampan's Tamil version. In K a m p a ~this is the only such moment of overt hostility on the part of Rama toward Sita, for the Tamil work concludes with Rama's happy return to Ayodhya; there is no Uttarak&nda.sThe Tamil poem thus achieves an outwardly pacific closure-which should not, however, mask the inherent turbulence of its emotional universe. Reading Kampan, one should never be wholly taken in by surface idealizations. StilI. the relationship between Rama and his wife is generally idealized in the Tamil text; thus Sitft's ordeal by fire. with its bitter overtones, 'See, for example, Bhavabhuti, Uttflrarcin~acarita,Act I, where Rams calls himself a 'monster' and an Untouchable because of what he must do to Sitain order to preserve the good name of his family and his kingship; moreover, 'the world itself is upside down' and 'Rima was given life only in order to know pain' (v. 47). In Kalidisa's Raghuvargia. 14.31-68, Rama says he simply cannot bear the libel spreading among his subjects. 'like a drop of oil in water'. and the poet adds that those who are rich in fame (yaias) value i t more than their own bodies, and a fortiori more than any object of sense perception (35). Although this reduces Sita's status considerably, Rarna is said to he truly tom as to the proper course; and the poet allows Sita to express (lo Laksmana) something or [he horror and protest that his dec~sionentails. T h c argument is de\eloped in part in Chapter I , above. A Tamil i/tt~rukLir~d(z. attributed to c)tt;ikkuttar. Kampa~j'slegendary rival, does exist; thc tradition (which is quite prepared to credit Kalnpan with various inferior works such as c'r@!~pot~c) insisls that t h ~ sdoe\ not helong Kampan s oeuvre. .'

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an intriguing singularity. In many ways, this is a critical and culminating momcnr in the narrative. W e will study this episode as a particularly revealing illustration of certain basic thcmcs and tensions embedded within Kampan's poem, and also as a striking condensation of the cultural distinctiveness of this Tamil Rarnc)yana, especially vis-a-vis the earlier text of ~ j l m i k i By . way of introduction, let me say merely that however we may seek to understand Rama's status in the Sanskrit text, there is no question that for Kampan he is God in visible and earthly form. Kampan rarely lets us forger this identification-though, as we shall see, its implications for the hero's own consciousness are rather different than in the case of Vglmiki's presentation of the avatar. The Tamil R6rnriganrr is a devotional ku\lya, replete with the poses and values of Tamil bhakri religion and marked by the general cultural orientations of the Kaveri delta during the Chola period, when it was composed. This means, among other things, that it has the power of subtlety as well as the volatile movement of internal compIexity; and that it builds, in sometimes surprising ways, on the earlier foundations of Tamil poetry with its inherited modes of classifying the world and its typical understandings of human identity and experience.

The Cost of Self-Knowledge: Vdmiki's Vision

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I begin with an overview of the episode in Valmiki's text. The great war is over, and Ravana slain. Vibhisana: Ravana's righteous brother, has been crowned king of Lanka and, at Rama's magnanimous insistence, has performed the funeral rites for his dead brother. Now Sita, who has heard from Hanuman the happy news of her deliverance, is brought into R3ma's presence by Vibhisana. This is he beginning of the trial. Even before any direcr contact can be made between the ~ W Gbeparated lovers. an unseemly and somewhat inauspicious commotion breaks out. Clearing a way for Sit& Vibhisana's servanls violently push aside thc curious crowd of bears. monkeys, and demons-thcsc arc. al'ler all, the consrant witncsscs of Rama's career-at which they clamour indignantly. Rgma, too, is indignant: these arc his. Rarna's. pcoplc now. hc informs Vibhisana; they should not bc iniurcd. Morcovcr. there is absolulcly no harm in their seeing Sit2 directly. for women ( . t r t r he secn in he context o f disaslcrs. wars, a bridegroom choice. si~crif'iccs.and weddings. There i s therefore no

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nccd t o protcct STl%-especially, hc notes, 'in my presence' (VI. 1 17.28)).Wanum%n.Laksmana. and Sugriva quite rightly detect a sinistcr notc in this spccch. Thcy arc disturbed. afraid that Rama is somehow unhappy with Sit%;and indced thc poet-narrator has already indicated to us that Rama is filled with conflicting emotions at this point, specifically joy, misery, and anger (har.70 dainyam ca rosaS ca, 117.16). Sita now stands before him, her eyes raised hopefully to his face. She is a little embarrassed and hides her face with the edge of her sari. She is weeping, repeating over and over, 'My lord' (aryaputru). It should be a moment of joyful reunion, but to everyone's shock Rgma procecds to speak his 'inncr-most thought' (hrdayantargatam hhavum, 1 18.1 ), articulated in a speech that is horribly cold, formal, and aloof. 'So I have won you back by defeating my enemy; I have acted as a man should, wiped out the insult to my honour, revealed my prowess. Today I have fulfilled my promise and can control my life. Your misfortune in being carried off by that fickle demon, as fate (daiva) decreed. has been overcome by me. a mere mortal' (1 18.2-5).

As an afterthought, he adds that the heroic feats performed by Hanuman and Sugriva, as well as Vibhisana's decision to abandon his wicked brother, have also been vindicated by this success. Sit2 appropriately bursts into tears at this unexpected welcome. Looking at her, Rama becomes still angrier, like a fire fed by oblations of butter. (Some manuscripts add that he is afraid of public opinion. and that his heart in split in two.j7He launches into an outright attack on his wife: she should know that he fought not for her sake but simply in order to remove the insult to himself and his famous family. Now thcre is some doubt as to her conduct (caritra) during this period, and as a result she is repugnant to him. like a lamp to a person whose eyes are diseased. 'Go, then, with my permission. wherever you may wish. The world is open before you; but I will have nothing to do with you, nor have I any attachmcnt to you any more. How could I take you back. straight from Ravaila's lap'." I c ~ t c.~ritrzcltlVcilmikirtirnciycln(~. ed. by K . Clllnnaswarn~Sastrigal and V.H. Subrahmanyn Saslri (Madras: N. l<;unaralnaln, 1958). which generally

Sollous lhe Soulhem recension. ' No~eI'ollowin~VI. 118.1 la.

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It is a brutal outburst. perhaps calculatcdly so. if we adopt the perspcctive that thc Rr)muyatlu tradition oftcn proposes, and that Valmiki himself may finally hint at. In any case, thc listener, no doubt like Sita herself, rcels under thc impact of the simile Rama chooses for himself: hc is likc a man half-blind in the prcsence of a lamp.x Certainly, Rama does appear at this point quite unablc to perceive the truth. So Sita replies, choked and weeping, in words of protest that are, at least at first, strikingly restrained: 'Why are you speaking to me so harshly and inappropriately, like a common man to a common woman? I am not as you imagine me; yc~u must believe me, I swear to you. Because of the conduct of some lowly women, you cast doubt on the entire sex. Put asidc this doubt; I have been tested! I could not help it if my body was touch(:d by another, but there was no desire involved; fate is to blame. That part of me that is wholly under my control-my heart-is always focused on you. Can 1help it if the limbs of my body are ruled by others .' If, after our long intimacy, you still do not know me. then I am truly cursed forever.' She marshals a trenchant argument: If Rama were delermined to repudiate her, why did he bother sending Hanuman to find her when she was a prisoner? Had he so much as hinted at his intcntion, she would have killed herself at once, in Hanuman's presence. This would surely have saved everyone a good deal of trouble and risk! Sarcasm is creeping into her speech; it seems she is getting angry after all, to the point where she allows herself one truly biting line: 'By giving in to anger Iike a little man, you, my lord, have made being a woman altogether preferable' (tvayu ... laghuneva manu.7yena stritvunl evatn puraskrtam, 1 19.14). Rama reacts to all this with silence, and Sita takes command. Turning to Laksmana. she dcniands that he light a pyre for her. Entering the fire is. she says, the only medicine for this illness; she will not go on living i f her husband is dissatisfied with her virtue. Deeply distressed, Laksmana looks to Rama for a sign and gets the equivalcnt of a nod. So thc firc is lit: Sita quietly circu~namhulates her husband-who will not cven raise his head to look at hcr-bows to the gods and Brahmins. and. calling on the firc, the witness of all that happcns in the world. to protect hcr. leaps into the Ilamcs. Thc 'See lhc discuss~ono l [ h i \ ~nc~dcnt In Wendy Don~gcrO'FlahcrLy. Ili~lclli (Harrnondsworlh: Pcngu~nR o o k \ . 1075). I 98.

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Fire u r ~ dFlood whole world, includ~ngall the gods, is watching; the monkeys and demons scream. Thc moment of terror contains its own redemption. Riima, the cmbodimcnt of dharma (dharmarmci), is thinking (dad/ij1au),his eyes clouded with tears. He must? in fact, have rather a lot to consider: has his life, with its unwavering commitment to dharmic ideals, inevitably brought him to this painful point? Such moments of reflection in the context of disaster are often points of transformation in the Sanskrit epics: one thinks of Yudhisthira's final act of bewildered reconsideration (vitnars'a) in hell, where he has just discovcred his brothers and his wife.9 And Valmiki does indeed seize upon this juncture to effect a powerful and integrative transition, which brings us back to the frame of the Rcimayana as a whole and to one of the central issues of the text. For, as Rama meditates on the situationt the gods swoop down upon Lanka, crying out to him in sentences that must strike him as wholly surrealistic and confused: 'How can you, who are the creator of the entire world and the most enlightcned being, ignore Sit2 as she is falling into the fire? Don't you know yourself, best of all the gods?' At this, Rama, clearly unsettled, turns to the gods with an iinpassioned plea: 'I know myself as a human being, Rama, son of DaSaratha. Who am I really'? To whom do I belong? Whence have I come? Let the Lord [Brahma] tell me!' The questions are by no means trivial or accidental, nor does it help to see them as the interpolations of a later generation interested in Rama only as avatar."' 'Who am I really?' In a way, this latent cry has pursued Rama through the whole of his story. The Ramayana is the portrait of a consciousness hidden from itself; or, one might say, of an identity obscured and only occasionally, in brilliant and poignant flashes. revealed to its owner. The problem is one of forgetting and recovery, of anamnesis: the divine hero who fails to remember that he is god comes to know himself, at least for brief moments, through

' See discussion in Chapter 2. above. "'I cannot agree u ~ ~ Robcrt rh Goldman, who explains the wide attestation of this section in thc ~nanuscripttradition and its conscqucnt incorporation into the Critical Edition as the result of its being a 'latc and sectarian passage accepted with lilllc change by all scribes': Robert P. Cold~nan,Tlle Rci,ncivng(, of V(ilrr~iki,vol. I : 8cilak(it?!ln(Princeton:Princc'ton University Press. 1984), 44-5. n.85.

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hearing (always from others) his story." This is what happens now: responding to his cry. Brahmrl tells him the 'facts' of his existence. He is none other than Narayana, who is the imperishable Absolute; he is supreme dharma, Krsna, the Purusa, Purusottama, the world's creator, the sacrifice, and so forth. As to the more immediate circumstances. Sit2 is Laksmi and Rama is Visnu, who has entered into human form for the purpose of killing Ravana. Now that this has been accomplished, Rama can return to heaven. Note the course of development through this passage: Rama sends for Sita and addresses her harshly; she responds by denying his insinuations and protesting his repudiation, and jumps into the fire; the world clamours in outrage, and RBma is led to reflect upon matters and to inquire as to his 'true' identity; Brahma then reveals the mythic and metaphysical components of his nature and the cause of his human incarnation. The sequence is carefully worked out and saturated with meaning. If one feels. as I do, that the issue of Rama's self-awareness is basic here (as it is in related episodes, such as the scene in the Uttarakanda when Sita a: last returns to Rama, only to disappear forever), then one discovers that Sita's trial by fire is actually more a testing of RBma than of her. By undergoing this ordeal, she precipitates the momentary switch in levels that presents the hero with his own divinity. His anamnesis proceeds directly from her suffering, the cost of his obsession with dharma as defined, rather narrowly, in wholly normative and human terms. Of course, this is only a temporary recovery of knowledge on his part-if not on ours (the listeners outside the text) or on the part of other participants in the story (within it). For now Agni, who has heard Brahma's hymn to Rama as Visnu, can appear in visible, embodied form, holding in his hands the radiant, golden Sit%,unsinged and unscarred, even her garlands and ornaments as fresh as before. He speaks the obvious moral of this passage: Sita is pure, totally devoted in word, thought, and sight to Rama; she maintained this purity throughout her time in Lanka, as Ravana's prisoner, despite all threats and temptations; Rama should take her back. He does so readily, and now he, too, breaking his silence for the first time since the revelation by Brahma, can offer an excuse. People would have blamed him as foolish and ruled by desire (krimrittna) had he taken Sita back without purifying her (avi.iod/iva); it was all meant simply to establish her faithfulness before the eyes of "

This point is taken up in greater deta~lin Chapter I , above

300 The Wistiorn qf Poct.s thc world (prurj~t~wirthum tu lokanum trayanam. I2 I . 16): he. Rama, could no morc abandon hcr than hc could abandon his own fame (kirti). for hc knows that she remained true, protected by her innate radiancc (tejas). Ravana could not touch her. How much of this is post facto rationalization? Thc text gives no clear- indication, although the language is, once again, eloquent: Rama's kirti is precisely what is in question, both here and i n his later decision to send Sita away. It is easy for the tradition to take at face value the hero's assertion that he was only staging a dramatic public vindication by ordeal. Rut however we might see this, i t is clear that a reintegration has taken place-first, of the two separated lovcrs; then. on another plane, of their mythic counterparts, Visnu and Laksmi! and, internally, of Rama with his divine self. The spectators and listeners witness this as well. The whole epic drama has reached a point of (still temporary) closure, which is reinforced by the immediate aftermath to Sita's trial. DaSaratha, Rama's father, descends from heaven and is reunited with his sons. He expresses this sense of happy closure: 'Those words uttered by Kaikeyi, which meant exile for you, have remained in my heart until now when, seeing you well and embracing you together with Laksmana, I have been freed from sorrow, like the sun emerging from fog.' DaSaratha restates the conclusion proffered earlier by Brahma as to Riima's mythic identity; he reminds both Laksmana and Sit2 that Rama is the highest god and begs Sit%not to be angry because of the ordeal she has been put through, which was for her own purification. This scene of family reunion not only heals one of the bitterest wounds opened up by Rama story-that of DaSaratha's grief and premature deathb"t sets the pattern for yet another closing of the circle. When Indra, before returning to heaven. offers R2ma a boon. Rama asks that all the monkcy warriors who died for his sake in the battle of Lanka be revived. They immediately arise, as if from sleep. The Rumd.yana. true to its ideal vision and in cogent contrast to the Mahabhrirata, reverses death itself and leaves behind a living, restored, reintegrated world--even if the shattering tragedies of the C'trarakriti~astill lie ahead.'* Let us sum up the main lessons of this passage, so beautifully and carcfully articulated by the Sanskrit poet. At the centre lies the revelation to R2ma by thc gods, with the consequent transformation "-The corresponding (and contrasting) passage in the Muhdhhumru 1s [he

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of his consciousness through the momentary rccovcry ol'a lost, othcr self. Sita's trial produces doubt and confusion in Rama and outrage on the part of the world, whereupon the gods intervene with the shocking message 01- Rama's mythic identity. STta's restoration can follow oilly upon this epistemic intervention. This theme relates directly to the Ratnayaria frame story, where we find Rama lis~ening intently to his own story as sung by his as yet unrecognized sons, KuSa and Lava. We, the listeners, know Rama as god, but he clearly lacks this knowledge, which comes to the surface only in exceptional moments of crisis and breakthrough. The basic Rarnuyatza disjunction between the text's internal and external audiences sustains this play with levels of self-awareness. SitB's trial is one such critical moment, and thus, as we noted, the test is really more Rama's than hers. It remains unclear just how calculated and premeditated his initial statements are; the issue of 'testing' in this sense-Rama's wish to demonstrate Sita's faithfulness publicly and also, apparently, to purify her by passing her body through fire-is expressed but never fully resolved. Her own response to his angry words is relatively restrained, though there are flashes of sarcasm and irony as well as one impassioned assertion of women's superiority. The passage concludes with a generalized reintegration and healing: Rams is at peacc with Sit2, DaSaratha is reunited with his sons, the slain monkeys are revived. The tensions that produced the avatar and generated conflict within the cosmos have been eased, and, at this metaphysical level at least, and for the moment, harmony is restored. On all these counts, Kampau's Tamil version presents us with radical contrasts.

Karnpan: the Metaphysics of Reunion i

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'Can good fortune give rise to lunacy?' (pakkivam pe'rirtn pitturn payakkumo: . VI. 37.26). This, according to Kampan, is Sita's response to Hanuman when he brings her the news of her deliverance. At first she is too moved to speak. and he is forced to ask why she is -~ ~-

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final chapter of the Svurgdrohanapnrvar2 (XVIII. S), in which each of the heroes regains his divine self-but only after an apocalyptic war and the violent deaths of most of the dramatis personae. Therc i t is death in battlc that closes the cycle and allows a kind of negative reintegration, albeit not in this world but in the divinc sphere.

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silent: is it because of an excess of joy. or does she doubt the messenger? She answers with the above question, followed by a beautiful set of verses in which she speaks of her inability to reward this messenger in any commensurate way. Note the important theme of silence because of a sensed inadequacy of language in the face of strong emotion. But Sita's first, rhetorical question might almost serve as a motto for the entire highly charged episode to come. Pittu, 'lunacy', is not too stong a word for the confrontational experience awaiting her, especially after the hundreds of earlier verses in which the idyllic relations between the two figures of Rama and Sit2 have been set forth. It is almost as if the orderly progression of this story, so closely linked in Kampan to the examination and enactment of orthodox social ideals, had to proceed through a zone of 'crazy' inversion before the end. We might also remember Kampan's own proclaimed identification with this same notion of lunacy in one of the introductory verses (avaiyatakkam) to the Iramcivatd.ram, where, as is customary, he apologizes to the connoisseurs and great Tamil poets for his supposedly flawed or inferior work: I would say something to those superior poets who have properly studied the ways of Tamil: who would study closely the utterances of madmen, fools, or of devotees?I3

The poet, by implication, has something of all three; he is, in his own eyes, a madman and an idiot and, above all, explaining all, a devotee. His devotion breaks out of any sane limit; moreover, much of Kampan's text will be devoted to exploring the operation and limitations of this same unruly, 'mad' quality, based on flooding feeling, in the terrestrial career of his god. Sita's question sounds a note that will continue to echo through the description of her ordeal. Let us see how Kampan chooses to present her situation. Here the setting, if not quite lunatic, is at least suitably lurid. Sita is brought before her husband as he stands, still, on the battlefield-so beloved of Tamil poets-where he has generously arranged a feast of corpses to assuage the hunger of the kites, vultures, and demons (parunt6tu kalukurn peyum, 55). Against this stark backdrop Sita gets her first glimpse, after so Inany months

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of separation, of her husband, with his dark body. lips red as coral, his bow in his hand. The poet reminds us firs1 of her earlier feelings, during the period of loss and captivity: this is the same flawless woman who had thought. 'My body is polluted; my life's breath has gone; there is nothing I want any more' (57). These were suicidal thoughts, born of despair: yet now. as Sita stands before Rama, they are strangely echoed by the metaphor the poet summons to describe her state, a metaphor grounded in the notion that the physical body alone is always potentially impure and subject to the inherent confusions of sensory experience: As when the false body that has lost the breath of life sees it, and reaches out to steal it back again, she touched the ground as she unveiled her face. 58) By seeing Rama, she is reclaiming, 'stealing back', the life that she lost. She expresses her feeling in a single verse: Even if I must be born again, or if I leave forever the great suffering of being born; if I forget, or if I fall and die in some other way, still all is well now that I have worshiped this husband, this lord. (59) She still has reason to be afraid-not only of rebirth and dying, but also, we might note, of forgetting-but at least this moment of reunion promises to relieve the cumulative burden of anxious anticipation and potential despair. The sight of her husband induces in Sita an illusion of closure and containment. Meanwhile, he sees her too. pregnantly described as 'that queen of chastity' and also 'like merciful dharma that had been separated from him' (60).This is essentially all we are given before Rgma's tirade: having caugh~sight of her, he at once begins to abuse her, 'like a snakc raising iLs hood'. Before we

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pursuc this spccch, though, let us notice the way Kampan has introduced thc ni:*jor metaphysical and psychological themes 01. this section in these three simple, hard-hitting verses. Most salient is the image of life separated from and rejoining the body. Indeed, this image may be said to condense the entire issue of union and separation, so basic to Kampan's poem (as to all Tamil hhakti). It is not by chance that Kampar) opens the episode with just this simile: this moment that ends the period of separation also recalls, perhaps deliberately, the very instant of its beginning, its first intrusion into the hero's consciousness. When Rams races back to the hut in the forest where Laksmana has so reluctantly left Sits alone and finds it empty-for Ravana has meanwhile abducted her, as the audience well knows-he is compared to 'the breath of life that has been separated from its containing body (kutu) and has come in search of it, but cannot find it' (111. 8. 158).14If we apply the metaphor literally, in both cases Rgma is compared to the breath of life (uyir) while Sit2 is like the body; in the forest, the uyir panics at the loss of its corporeal container, while in Lanka the body reaches out to recover its lost vital force (as Sits glimpses RBma). The separation that informs so large a part of the epic story is thus, metaphorically and also metaphysically, the shattering of a longed-for and necessary symbiosis at the level of the composition of the human individual. This symbiosis is not that of body and soul, inert rnatter and spiritual substance (and thus the temptation to allegoresis is easily resisted for the Ir(rmavatcSram);indeed, it is not truly dualistic at all. Rather, it reflects the interlocking relationship between two dynamic, equally living and substantial entities that together create a unity of perceived experience. This unity of body and life-force has, in Kampan, several associated characteristics and implications that are invoked at points throughout the Ir~rnuvatararnwhen this recurrent metaphor breaks through the text. It is, first of all, a unity based on flux, resistant to stasis and stable definition. The fluid quality that pervades the relation of life to body is nowhere clearer than in the introductory canto to the poem as a whole, the rirrupparalam or 'Chapter on the River'. This opening replaces the entire RiirnQana frame story as given in Valmiki; in its stead, we have a striking description of water flooding down from Some scholars read this image i n reverse: see the note h y Kopliakirusnamacanyar on this verse (Kumparamuvu!zun2. 666). l4

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the Himalayas, violently jumbling together thc elements of hitherto distinct landscapes: Turning forest into slopc, field into wilderness, seashore into fertile land, changing boundaries, exchanging landscapes, the reckless waters roared on like the pasts that hurry close on the heels of lives. The rushing water is translated into the register of rushing lives (with their burdens of past deeds and memories), a metaphoric conjunction that becomes even more powerful as the description reaches its climax: Like a life filling and emptying a variety of bodies, the river flowed on." Uyir again, the vital breath that moves endlessly through one body after another, always seeks but then separates from these partial vessels. The life-force clearly enjoys an ontological superiority of sorts-it is the 'false body' that reclaims its lost uyir in the verse describing SitB's glimpse of RBma-yet this animating power can never dispense with embodiment, even as it can never be entirely contained by it. This is the second characteristic to be stressed, one directly relevant to Sits's situation in Lanka: the unity of life and body is always unfinished. No final integration is called for; the restless flux has no teleology beyond its own process. The body that reclaims its uyir, as we are told Sit2 wishes to do, will doubtless lose it again. Sits's emerging confrontation with Rama thus fits naturally into the underlying metaphysics of flux, in which separation is no less necessary than union. A jarring narrative episode inherited from VBlmiki is integrated into a conceptual constellation specific to the Tamil literary and philosophical universe. The prevalent Tamil hhakti otiyav utarnplr torum uvir Ppa: translated by A.K. Ramanujan, in Paula Richman (ed.), Man" Rcimavapas: The Diver.rity ofa Narrative Tradition in South Asia. (University of California Press, 1991). 42-1.

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characterization o f the relalion between god and his human devotee as troubled, even tot-mented, also fits this pattern, and it is thus not surprising that in Kampan, too, one 'regains' Rama only to be immediately re-iected by him. But the potential for union is also crucial to this set of images, especially in so far as it includes the dimension of loving enlotion. Thus when Rama and Sit2 first catch sight of one another in Mithila, before they are married, they become one breath of life in two different bodies. When the two lovers separated from their bed on the dark sea found each other again, was there need for words? (I. 10.38) Uyir is unitary, even as it flows in and out of an endlessly fragmented series of distinct bodies; when two embodied beings feel love for one another, they experience this underlying unlty of the life-force. In the case of R%maand Sit%,there is also a mythic dimension, evident in this passage, hovering somewhere in the background of awarenessfor the two lovers are Visnu and Laksmi, who have become separated from one another and from their proper cosmic setting, the serpentcouch floating upon the 'dark sea' of milk. They find one another again, in moving silence, when Rgma and Sita fall in love. And having found one another, they then proceed to lose each other, to experience at great length the impatient longings and confusions inherent in separation, ultimately to confront one another again, in our scene at Lanka. We begin to see why this meeting must have something of the quality of the uyir's unstable meeting with the body. Dynamic flux, instability, emotional excess and imbalance, the flooding of memory, the mingling of past and present, an inner experience of potential unity, the hesitations of language-this is the range of associations that Kampan calls up at the outset of Sita's ordeal.I6 Schematically stated, this episode is made to embrace three 'q cannot explore here the relation between the notion of fluid uvir filling endless bodies and the Tamil ideal of 'liquefaction', of melting and mingling in love: but see the fine discussion by Margaret Trawick Egnor, 'The Sacred Spell and Other Conception of Life in Tamil Culture' (Ph. D. diss, University of Chicago. 197X), 13, 20-1. 50, 104-6.

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forms of movement along a thematic continuum: an oscillation between separation and union, a t the most fundamental experiential and metaphysical level; an interplay of speech and eloquent silence, at the external linguistic level; and an unfolding tension between forgetting or lack of feeling and memory or intuitive understanding, at the cognitive and epistemic level. The opening verses already bring these issues to the fore. Now comes RBma's speech, which is even more cruel to Sits, and more outspoken, than in Valmiki's text: You took pleasure in food, you didn't die for all your disgrace in the great palace of the devious demon. You stayed there, submissive, wholly without fear. What thought has brought you here? Did you imagine that I could want you? (VI. 37.62) Kampau's male heroes have the somewhat unpleasant habit, at difficult moments, of blaming their women for not dying (thus Daiaratha to Kaikeyi, 11. 3.222). Rama will return to this theme, as he does to the oral obsession with which the whole diatribe begins: You abandoned us. All this while, you have been relishing the flesh of living beings, sweeter than ambrosia, and happily drinking strong liquor. So you tell me: what proper feasts are in store for me now'? (64) A nice inversion: Sit2 is held responsible for having 'abandoned us'. T h e kidnapping has become irrelevant, and the focus is on her hedonistic delight in the carnivorous cuisine of Lanka. Can a wife so corrupted ever serve the fastidious Rama another meal'? (South Indian vegetarian values have by this point superseded any dim memories of Rama's habitual Ksatriya diet of game.) T o make things crystal clear, Rama also informs her, as he does in Vglniiki's version, of the real reason for his campaign:

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It was not to save you that I dammed the sea, cut off at the root these demons with t h e ~ gleaming r weapons, and overcame their enmity: it was to redeem myself from error that I came here, to Lanka. (63) Pilai, 'error', is also a lack or deficiency. or some more serious mistake, even a crime. Rams speaks with the hero's egoistic concern for his own honour, and without intentionally implying that he is now enacting a mistake of greater magnitude than any previously connected with his story. His attack gathers force, becoming more and more personal and unfair: Sita was, after all, born not in a family distinguished by goodness but, like a worm (kitam pol), from the soil (65; here Kampan has lifted a theme from Sita's speech in Valmiki, intensified it, and placed it in Rama's mouth).17It is no wonder, then, that womanhood, greatness, high birth, the power known as chastity, r ~ g hconduct, t clarity and splendour and truth: all have perished by the mere birth of a single creature such as you, like the fame of a king who gives no gifts. (66) Sita has become the total antithesis to the exemplary figure Rama had always recognized in her. Her survival alone is enough to impeach her: well-born women in her situation would have embarked on a regimen of rigorous austerities; and if disgrace (pali)came, they would wipe it out by wiping out their lives (67). (Again, the male complaint at his wife's refusal to disappear.) Now Rama can conclude (again rendering Valmiki's formulation more extreme): Sce VI. 119.15 in thc Sanskrit text: 'I received my name hut not my birth from Janaka; I came from the earth. You devalue my conduct, you who are a judgc o f goor1 conduct.' "

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.

309

What is the point of talking? Your conduct has destroyed forever all understanding. The thing to do is to dieor, if you won't do that. then go somewhere, any where, away. (68) The demand for death is Kampan's innovation, to be seized upon at once by Sit% But this verse also introduces. for the first time in this episode, t h e important c o n c e p t of urzarvu, the intuitive, felt understanding that is the normal medium of connection between individuals and, across existential levels, between human beings and god. It is this form of communicative understanding that Rama claims Sita has destroyed through her conduct; her survival is beyond his unarvu, and she should therefore die or disappear. W e shall soon see how Sita takes up this important statement and develops it in crucial and suggestive ways. S o far we notice an impressive exacerbation of the bitterness inherent in Rama's speech as set out in Valmiki. Rama lashes out at Sit2 with horrific accusations, ridicules her miraculous birth, and even tells her she should die. This extreme heightenting of tone continues into Sita's reply, as we shall see. But before she begins to speak, her inner state is summed up in another graphic metaphor: Like a deer on the point of death, tortured by terrible thirst in the middle of a desert thick with kites, who sees a lake just beyond reach, she grieved at the barrier that rose before her. (7 I ) Perhaps most striking here is Kampan's use of imagery drawn from classical Tamil love poetry, the akam or 'inner' division structured around conventionali~edlandscapes with their associated emot~onal states. A Tamil rcader immed~atelyidentifies this verse as a pdlai

3 10

The Wisdorn of' Po6,t.c

or wilderness poem calling up a scnse o l traurnalic separation.lx T h e image of the predatory kite, which helps to specify t h e landscape, also points to something in the dramatic situation-no doubt something in Rama's menacing attiude and conduct. Sita's inner reality is indeed a p a l a i experience at this moment: she has entered a wilderness zone of re.jection and loss. This suggestive use of the classical conventions is a constant element in Kampan's art. Seen in relation to the central story of RBma and Sita's common fate, the entire Iramavatarum might well appear a s an extended love poem in the bhakti mode.lY Like earlier Tamil blzakti poets, Kampan conflates heroic o r panegyric themes b u r a m ) with akam o r 'interior' elements, largely subordinating the former to the latter in non-explicit ways. But in Kampan the narrative follows the prescribed structure of the Sanskrit epic, with the result that the classical love situations of Tamil poetry-premarital courtship and stolen union, the several forms of separation and longing, as well a s later quarreling and conflict-are now scattered s o m e w h a t unpredictably, without orderly sequence, throughout the text. They emerge from time to time, usually with very powerful implications: thus Rama's crossing of the wilderness as a young man recallspalai themes; premarital passion, kalavu, is suggested in Mithila; Sit%, pining in Lanka, appears as the impatient heroine of the n5ytal coastal landscape; and here the p a l a i atmosphere is again present at the moment of reunion. In itself, this is instructive, f o r p a l a i , the landscape of separation at its most severe, embodies that aspect of

IROn palai, see George L. Hart, The Poems ofAncient Tamil: Their Milieu cmd Their Sanskrit Counterpurts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975),221-9; Paula Richman, U'on~en,Branch Stories, and Reli~iousRhetoric in a Tamil Buddhist Text, Foreign and Comparative Studies, South Asia series no. 12 (Syracuse: Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Syracuse University. 1988),62-8. Cf. David Shulman. 'The Crossing of the Wilderness: Landscape and Myth in the Tamil Story of Rama', Acta Orientalia 42 ( 198 1 ), 21 -54. I y In this respect, it bears a surprising resemblance to another Tamil genre, the kovai, a collection of love verses sonlewhat artificially arranged in preordained narrative sequence, from the lovers' firs1 sight of one another until their final union. See Norman Cutler. Songs of Expcriencr: The Poetics of Tumil Devotion (Bloomington: Indiana Un~versityPress, 1987). 83-91. In Kampan. of course, (his orderly sequence I S ruled out.

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31 I

the love experience felt to inhere in all others. including union.'" Lovc. even in union, is largely predicated on thc scnse of separateness and separation. W e can see how appropriate this classical element is to the underlying metaphysics of Sita's encounter with Ramrt-an encounter structured around rejection-and we observe the delicate and calculated artistry of the poet who, following Namrna!vBr and other Vaisnava bhakti poets in Tamil, turns the ancient conventions to his devotional purpose.

Tirade and Trial Sita's response is of a different order altogether than in VBlmiki. It resumes and extends themes that have already been broached by the Tamil text, and it does s o in the context of a complaint aimed directly at Rama, both as husband and, implicitly, as god. Irony is the least of Sita's weapons. More than in any other passage of the Ir(lmavataram, she blasts Rama directly and with literal intent." T o those familiar with the Tamil tradition, she calls up the image of the bereaved Kannaki from the classical kavya Cilappatikciram (especially cantos 18 and 19)-a woman crying out bitterly against an unjust fate. But, closer to home, there are also affinities between her outburst and Kampan's major formulation of the problem of theodicy in the outraged speech by the dying VBlin, shot by Rama from an a r n b u ~ h . ~ ' Like Valin, Sit2 is both angry and bewildered; she feels betrayed, and wholly justified in her own prior actions, which have nonetheless

'"

Tclkdppiyam, pdrulatikararn I. 1 1 : cf. Rm. Periyakaruppan, Tradition and Talent in Cankam Poetty (Madurai: Madurai Publishing House, 1976). 168-73. There are other points in the Iramavatdram where Sita complains, ironically, about Ranla. For example, at V. 5.7, Sita cries out from hercaptivity: 'You told me to stay home in the great city, not to come to the forcst; you said you would return in a few days. Where is that vaunted compassion (aruf)of yours now'?I am all alone. and you are consuming my lonely life!' But verses such as these. reminiscent of the laments at unbearable separation in NammaJvir (e.g., Tiruv~iynliili5.4), are not meant to he lakcn at face value; they are a way of giving voice to the herome's impatience and despair. For a detailed discussion ol'th~sepisode, see D. Shulman, 'Divine Ordcr and Divine Evil in the Tamil Talc o l Rima', J o u r n ~ ~(~fA.sitrn l Strrdic..t 38 (1979). 65 1-9.

''

3 12 Tllr Wisdom of Poets Icd to this unacceptable conclusion; hcr anger is entirely focused on Rama, its compelling. propcr target. One fccls from the fury and precision of her words that the poet is largely speaking for himself through her mouth. It is not a long speech. She begins by mentioning Hanuman, who came to Lanka, saw her, and promised her that Rams would soon arrive. Did he not then inform Rama of her dreadful suffering? Next she addrcsses Rama's preposterous claim that she, Sita, had ruined the world's finest ideals, especially those relating to womanhood, simply by being born:

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that sees for everyone, should deny this, what god could teach him otherwise'? (75)

All that I suffered, all the care with which I kept my chastity, my goodness, and at what cost, and for so long a timeall this seems crazy now, a futile waste. since you, 0 best of beings, don't understand it in your heart. (VI. 37.74) Pittu, lunacy, again: her earlier, unwitting prophecy, couched as a rhetorical question, has come true. Tidings of good fortune have led unexpectedly to this taste of madness. She preserved her precious chastity, karpu, with such scrupulous, even ferocious, care, but it was all for nothing, a futile waste (avam). a kind of mistake (pilaittatu, echoing Rama's term, pilai. above). As impressive as this conclusion is the logic behind it: the true failure is Rama's, at the level of feeling arid understanding (unantu, again echoing Rama's earlier statement). Lacking unanu, he-the god--can make only aberrant and inhuman claims; and the effect is to translate human notions of right or goodness into lunacy. This question of knowledge or understanding becomes more and more ccntral: l'hc whole world knows thar I'm a faithful wifc (pottitli): not cvcn Brahinl on his lotus could changc my foolish mind. But if. my IorJ, who is likc thc cye

3 13

I

Everyone knows the truth except Rama, who should be ablc to sec it outright, for he is the universal eye, kan~zclvae-punning, pcrhaps, on kanavan, husband, as well as on Kannan, or Krsna. The pun takes up RBma's simile-the diseased eye squinting in the light of a lampin the Sanskrit text. The god sees without really seeing, and surely Sits is right: there is no god above him to teach him otherwise. Her own stubborn mind, intent on faithfulness as an act of inner autonomy, is thus truly foolish (petaiyeg;petai can also mean simply 'woman')the second quality,.after lunacy, that Kampan seems to claim for himself in the introductory verse we examined.23The coordinates laid out in that verse are uncannily retraced in this one; only devotion, bhakti, is still missing. Having laid the blame where i t belongs, Sita can conclude with an ambiguous eulogy of womanhood (again following V2lmiki's Sita). The trimurti, BrahmB, ~ i v aand , Visnu--called, no doubt sardonically, dhannamurti, the incarnation of dharma-might be able to see the whole universe 'like a myrobalan in the palm of the hand', but 'can they know the state of a woman's heart?'" Obviously not, judging by her own husband's conduct-and he is that Dharmamurti himself. All that is left is for her to execute RBma's command: there is nothing better now, she says, than dying. She asks Laksmana to light the fire; he does so 'as if he had lost his own life' (79). after receiving a sign from Rama's eyes. As Sita approaches the pyre. the world goes into crisis: not only the gods, all other living beings, and the cosmic elements, but also the four Vedas and Dharma cry out in horror. Shc worships hcr husband and demands that Fire bum here if she has errcd in thought or word. Thcn as if she were going home to her palace on thc lotus "The insistence on autonomy in the form of service or devotion. and in a context of rejection, i s a ~oposknown also trom NammaJv2r.Thus Tir.u\~i?~tn(?li 1.7.8: 'Though he looses his holtl on me, not cvcn he can make my good heart let go of him.' " The myrohalan In he hand is a proverhl;~limage s ~ g n i l y ~ n~ntilnalc g clmeness.

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that rises up from the llooding waters, she Jumpcd in; and as she entered, that fire was scorched by hcr burning faithfulness (karpu), as milk-white cotton goes up in flame. ( 8 5 ) She is, after all, the goddess LaksmiIPadma. who reigns in state upon the lotus. For her, the experience inside the pyre is drenched in watery associations, as if she had plunged not into fire but into a flood. But for the unfortunate god of fire. Agni, who has to receive her, the momcnt is one of excruciating. fiery torment. This is yet another innovation in K a m p a ~Fire : is burned by Sita's fire. Karpu--chastity, self-control, faithfulness-is no abstract ethical virtue but a substantial and dynamic reality that suffuses the woman's inner bcing. The effect of the trial is thus even more dramatic than in Valmiki. Not only does Sita emerge unsingcd, but shc actually scorchcs thc god of firc himself, who screams out in pain and protest @ucal itt'ararrum, 86) to R2ma. Lifting Sit2 in his hands, Agni points out thal the beads of perspiration. formcd on her body by her anger at her husband ( u t i ~ acirrattril, 87), were not dried up by his flames, while the flo&ers she wears in her hair still drip honey and are fillcd with bees, 'as if they had bcen steeped in water'. Sita's ordeal has been something akin to a refreshing bath, but Agni's eye detects the still evident traces of the rage that drove her to undergo this test. In terms of Tamil poetics, the confrontation has become an instance of utal, the lovers' quarrel, heightened to an almost lethal degree. Now Agni is angry at Rama: 'You did not think about this divine flame of karpu, and so you have destroyed my power; wcre you furious with me, too?' This prompts another cutting statement from R2ma. fbr whom the tcst is still. clcarly. not over: 'Who are you. appearing in this tirc, and what are you saying'! Instead of burning this vile woman (puc~maical drutti), you praise her!' (90). He insists on Sita's mcan and lowly character. even at this late stage. Apni must thcreforc spell our thc [ruth for him, first prcsenting his credentials: 'I am Agni: I came here bccausc I could not bcar the blazing firc ol' l'aithlulness In this woman. People get married hefore me. rcsolvc their doubrs bcforc me.' And. at lasl. ;i vcrsc no Icss biting than Rfinla's: Didn'r you hcar

I

3 15

when the gods and sages and all that movcs and is still in the three worlds screamed, as they struck their eyes? Have you abandoned dharma and resorted to misery instead? (94)

Rams accused Sita of 'abandoning us'; Agni throws the expression back at Rama and. in a manner that goes far beyond anything in Vglmiki, illuminates thc real import of Rama's attitude. This god incarnate has 'abandoned dharma' and, in the gloss of one modern commentator, resorted to adharma.I5The consequences are, according to Agni, potentially disastrous: Will rain fall, will the earth still bear its burden without splitting in two, will dharma go the right way, or can this universe survive if she becomes enraged? If she utters a curse, even Brahm2 on his lotus will die. (95)

k

To the moral issue is now added an overriding argument from identity. Sita is the great goddess herself-though Riima hardly seems to know this. He does, however, bow to Agni's verdict and accept Sita back, welcoming her with a surprisingly laconic, almost grudging acknowledgment: You [Agni] are the imperishable witness for this whole world. You spoke words I can't condemn. You said she is wholly without blame. Blameless, she must not be sent away. (97) That is all: Ral-na docs not address Sita direcrly. Still, Kampan gives Rama an epithet here: he is kor-unrti! ullc~ttun,a man whose heart is

3 16

The Wisdonl of Poets

compassion. Has a transformation taken place'? Or has the underlying compassion of the god been relcascd: at last. back into the world? Or is the poet simply enjoying the irony he has built into this context? Let us briefly take stock before we turn to the final section of the narrative. There is no doubt that this couple's reunion is far more embittered, in the Tamil text, than in its Sanskrit prototype. They speak to one another with shocking verbal abandon. Rama's doubts and suspicion have turned irlto a violent denunciation, an a priori pronouncement of guilt that focuses on Sita's alleged hedonism and lowly birth. Her reply incriminates him: he stands condemned, in her eyes, for a terrible failure of understanding that has led to blatant injustice. The ordeal itself assumes a watery rather than fiery character for Sit& while Agni, tortured by her superior power, becomes her advocate. As such, he still has to argue with Rama about Sita's purity of character; somewhat reluctantly, or at any rate uneffusively, Rama gives in. There is as yet no hint at all that the entire scene is only a trial to persuade an external audience (the world, or Rama's subjects) of something Rama already knows. On the contrary, his lack of unarvu-the knowledge that is a form of feeling. of empathic understanding-is a major issue, still unresolved, and one that has implications at the divine level, where Rgma as god is implicitly accused of acting against dharma. Finally, and perhaps most conspicuously, the logical sequence of the Sanskrit narrative has been disturbed. There Agni appears with Sita in his hands only after the revelation by Brahmg of Rama's divine identity. It is the revelation, with its dramatic epistemic consequences for the hero, that breaks through the calculations and anxieties that have constrained him and paves the way for Sita's restoration. Here. however, Sita is restored, on Agni's pleading, before Brahma speaks. Why this reversal? How does i t fit into the overall transformation that Kampan has worked on this passage?

The Silence of a God In the Tamil text, it is not Ranla who provokes the revclalion with agonized quehtionx about his identity, but the gods who dccide to do so for their own inscrutable I-casons:'The timc ha\ come to tell Rfirna thc t r u t h ' (98). Brahina \peaks. addl-cssing R;lma~-as haw many

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3 17

others, at various points throughout the text-by a clear epithet of ViSnu's, n$iy?;ov ('Long One' = Trivikrania). Hc uttcrs fourteen verses of the familiar stotra type--a short hymn of praise, again like others scattered through the poem. Perhaps most remarkable, in comparison with the epiphany described in Valmiki, is the largely inlpersonal content of these verses: they are an exercise in the application of orthodox cosmological and philosophical categories, drawn especially from Sankhya, to the bhakri context of worship. The type is familiar from other south Indian bhakti narratives, especially the Bhrigavara Purana and its vernacular de~cendants.~Thus the incarnate god, Rgma in this case, is repeatedly identified with the Vedantic absolute. 'Do not think of yourself', Brahma says, 'as a man born into an ancient royal family; you are no other than the truth spoken as the conclusion of the Vedas' (i.e., Vedanta, 99). Similarly, Rama is told that he is the primeval Purusa, the twenty-sixth tattvu, higher than all the evolutes of matter (pakuti = prakrti), the supreme truth (paramdrtha, 101); he cannot be measured by the usual criteria of knowledge, and sensual perception is no u:;e; but the Upanisads proclaim his existence (105-6); those who are sunk in the illusion of having parents, who do not know their own selves, suffer endlessly, but those who know Rgma as father achieve release (103). It is Rama's illusion, mayai, that produces the world, though he himself, like others, does not fully understand this state (99); he also preserves the world with his own form (as Visnu) and destroys it (as ~ i v a )A . single verse introduces the avatar concept: he comes to destroy pride, to rout the demons, and to make the gods take refuge with him. All this leads up to the practical conclusion, which is something of anon sequitur: 'This being the case,' Brahma says, 'do not hate our mother (Sita), who gave birth to us and to the triple world and who has demonstrated the glory of married life' ( 1 12). Perhaps the argument is wholly based on this affirmation of identity: as the goddess, Sita is hardly to be judged by human social standards, and Rama must in any case take her back. But the hymn does not quite suffice, for now Sivaalso puts in an appearance (though

"

See Friedhelm Hardy, Viruha-bhakti: T i ~ rEarlv Hi.slory o j Krsnu Devotion in So~ttlzIndia (Delhi: Oxford UniversiLy Press, 1983). 5 2 t A 7 ; David Shulman, 'Remaking a Purina: Visnu's Rescue olGajendra in Potana's Teiugu Mu/~nbhd,qava/trrrru'.in Wendy Donigcr (ed.) Purcina Pererttli.~ (Albany: Stale [!n~vcrs~ty of New Yurk I'rcss. 1993).

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there is no preccdcnt for this in Valmiki) in order to present the message more forcefully and more simply. 'I1 seems', he says. hat you do not know yourself (unnui niy dnrurn unarntiluij; you are the primordial dcity (milrttij, and this Sit%,mothcr of the three worlds, resides upon your breast' ( 1 13). ~ i v a ' sintervention thus confirms thc mythic identity of R2ma as Visnu and reiterates the notion of his a that if one errs with respect ignorance. For good measure, ~ i v adds to thc goddess who gave birth to the worlds, many living beings will die; Rama should thus forget the aversion or scorn (ikalccij he has fclt for her. On this note of recomlnended forgetfulness, the divine revelation abruptly ends. And Rama is silent. He makes no acknowledgement whatsoever of a!l that has just been said. Indeed, he will have nothing more to say until, somewhat later, Daiaratha asks him to name his boon. Here, in fact, it is Daiaratha alone who makes the important statement-to Sita-that the ordeal was meant only to demonstrate publicly her chaste character, 'as onc passes gold through fire to reveal its purity' ( 1 23)." Rama utters nothing to this effect. Silence has engulfed him, despite the tremendo~lsannouncement he has just heard. In Valmiki's vcrsion, we may recall, the revelation is followed by Agni's restoration of Sita and then, immediately, by a voluble, self-justifying outburst by Rama, who wants to make clear to everyone that he acted only pru/yuyartharn tu lokfincim-to establish Sita's innocence in the eyes of the world. But in the Tamil text, where a dialogic loquaciousness is something of the rule.ZRthe hero who has just been told he is god offers no response at all. It is a pregnant silence, well suited to the subtleties and tensions of the moment, as Kampan sees it. In a reunion that proceeds via rejection and renewed separation, speech easily issues into silence. Clearly, the fundamental theme of loss and recovery has taken a new form in Kampan's poem. Anamnesis-the hero's regaining of memory DaSaratha speaks to this effect in Valmiki, too, but only after Rama himself has announced that the trial was only intended to convince the world. "Targc parts of the Irun~uvatararnread like dramatic dialogues that seem lo assume a context o f performance; the an of the dialogue in Kampan deserves a scparale study. All m;!jor cvents spark extended comments t'rorn nearly cvcry potential speaker. In this regard. sce the insightful remarks by Stuart B lackburn, 'Creating Conversations: The Rama Story as Puppet Play in Kerala', In Paula Richman (ed.). Mrrnv Runla\:uriu.c.: The Diver.sity ( ? f a Narrative TI-r~tlrltorr rtr .Sorrth A.sitr ( linivcrs~lyol ('alifomia Press. 1991 ) 156-62.

3 19

through perceiving his divinc idcntity-is not, I'or Kanipa~l,the esscnlial point. In facl. i t is in a sense quitc bcsidc thc point: thc embodied god's consciousness of himself a s god is ncvcr what is at stakc in the Tamil text. When ~ i v tells a Rama that he docs not know himself, he is pointing to a very diffcrent content of unknowing than that intended by Vglmiki in this same context. On closer inspection, we find this pattern-Rama rccognized as god and praised as such in a stotra like that sung by Brahma, which elicits nothing but silence from its divine object-recurring lrequently in the Irarnavataram.zy Each time it happens, Rama ignores the eulogies showered upon him. It is always as if the text shifts levels, for a passing moment, opening up the dimension of discovery and celebration of explicitly recognized divinity before reverting, after the hymn, to the ongoing narration. Or as if, once the intimation of Rama's divinity is externalized, oncc it is articulated in language (usually by one of his victims), Rama's own task is finished. One wonders if he even hears the stotra that others offer to him. This aspect of his awareness-the god-hero's own recognition of his 'true' identity, apparently veiled by his humanity-is not presented to us by Kampan and seems not to constitute one of this poet's concerns.'" W e might formulate this observation somewhat differently. What we see in Kampan is a shift away from the psychology of recovery and the play of memory to a different thematic, which seeks to map out in detail the actual human experience of the god in the world. This works both ways: many passages in Kampan explore the god's own experience of human limitations, and above all of human emotions, generally those of loss, shame, helplessness, but also occasionally of wonder and joy. If he forgets, it is not SO much his IY A good example is the demon Virridha's stotra to Rama, who has just dispatched him, at 111. 1.47-60. Similar passages accompany the deaths of Kabandha, Valin, and other of the avatar's victims; they occur as well. in shorter forms, when various sages encounter Rams. We should also recall thatthe poet consistently keeps Rama's true identity before our eyes by using divhe-mythic epithets for him and his entourage. "' Cf. the similar conclusion by George Hart and Hank Hcifell in their introduction to Tlre Fore.r/ Rook rf//ze Runzciva~zur$Kanlyan (Bcrkelcy and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 198X), 6: 'Again and again. he [Rama] is recognized as an incarnation of Visnu by those who meet orconfronl h ~ m but . Rams rarely shows a direct awareness of h~rnselfas thc supreme god.'

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identity that becomes hiddcn as some much more immediate and interpersonal conccrn-Sitri's sufferings, for example. although at times the problem is quite the opposite, when Rama evinces a very human inability to forget somc troubling anxiety or hurt. (Thus, as we saw, Siva begs him to lcarn forgetfulness, 1 14.) But in the episode of Sita's trial, as so often in this poem, the real centre lies in our response-in the experience that we, as devotees, as listeners, have of Rama's nearness. The god acts cr speaks, and the world around him somehow assimilates his presence. It is, almost by definition, a frustrating and often enigmatic presence, marked by strong tendencies on the part of the god to withdraw into silence, to block connection, to toy capriciously with those around him, to hide. And the result can be angry protest. In our episode, Sit2 speaks like any of R2ma.s other victims. She has reason to be angry: his conduct seems perverse to the point of cruelty, even if he is axiomatically a hero of compassion, as the text so often states. She protests a real failing on the level of unarvu, the god-man's capacity to feel and understand what she, or any other human being, must know or undergo. She says that Rama does not truly know what she has suffered and is suffering now, and that without this knowledge on his part her endurance becomes an exercise in futility. Since R2ma is no ordinary husband-since Sit2 knows, at some level, his cosmic and mythic identity3-she is expressing a frustrated demand that the god share fully our essential perceptions and our sorrows. But in contrast to the Viilin episode, where the revelation of R2ma's own broken heart turns the tide of V2lin's bitterness (IV. 7.11 8), here he unfortunately fails to comply with this all-too-human expectation. Again a transformation has taken place, from the notion of a clouded and temporarily forgotten self-knowledge, in Valmiki, to the god's actual unfeeling ignorance, in Kampan. The content of the missing knowledge is quite different in each case. In Kampan, Sit2 speaks of a failure of the divine imagination, a failure that informs, at this moment, her own experience of R2ma. (It is also striking that, from this point onward, Sita has very little to say in Kampan's text.) At another levcl. by not expressing Sita's truth publicly, by allowing the ordcal to proceed out of an apparent lack of feeling, Rama demonstrates again the inhercnl asyrnmctry in thc relations between Thus (at V. 5.6. lor cxamplc,) Sila may even address Rama, in absentia, as 'Narayana'.

32 I

the divinc and thc human. This imbalance in the intensity and content of unarvu is surely part of what Siva is rererring to when. in the

t

Tamil text, hc tells Rama that he docs not know himself. The process of discovery has also, been, in a sense, rcverscd: whereas Vrilmiki's hero is a man who finds himself to be god by hearing and living out his story, and is graced by moments of anamnesis, Kampan's protagonist is a god who discovers repeatedly, often to his own amazement, the painful cognitive and emotional consequences of being human. Silence, separation, and the failure to feel or to understand: these are the undercurrents surging through the story of Sita's trial in Kampan's text. Like other points in this great love poem. this episode highlights the conflicts rather than the serenities or certainties of passionate feeling. In this way, the final meeting of R2ma and Sit2 follows the more general paradigm of the lovers' thorny career in Tamil poetry and its extensions into the sphere of bllakti devotionalism. Lovers, like devotees, are not meant to be at peace. But this is by no means thc only conclusion to be drawn from Kampan's treatment of this passage, for the two versions we have examined reveal outstanding contrasts in theme and structure. In addition to Kampan's careful exploitation of the conventionalized language of Tamil love poetry (espccially as reformulated by Nammalvar), there are four major points of divergence and transformation: 1. In Vglmiki, the real test is Rams's, while STt2's ordeal is proclaimed a show for the benefit of a skeptical world. In Kampan, her trial seems altogether real: her love and commitment to Rams, despite his verbal hostility, and her readiness to die for her truth, are put to the test-and Sita wins, like the devotee who so often triumphs over the god. 2. Her rejection is thus equally real in the Tamil text, which offers no space for the notion of a public demonstration or trial until Daiaratha's late commentary on the events. Rama himself never mentions this possibility. More important still, his repudiation of Sit2 has metaphysical implications: union, whcthcr of lovers or of a devotee with god. presupposes separation. 3. Valmiki's sequencc is ovcrlurned in Kampan: Agni restores Sita before Rama hears Brahmii's rcvclation of his, Rama's. divinily (which thus serves no pressing function as far as Sila's slalus is concerned; shc has alrcady hccn rcintcgralcd into Rsnia's lire. and

no great upheaval in consciousncss is required to facilitate the move). Thc sense of this change in sequence, as of Rama's subsequent silencc in the facc of Lhe gods' impressive news, becomes clear from the conlrasting axiology and problcmatics of Kampan's text. The central thematic concern of the episode in Sanskrit-the transition in Rama's sell'-awareness in the facc of S i t a ' s suffering a n d his o w n responsibility-is almost irrelevant to Kampan's discourse. There is no point at which Rama has to ask himself, 'Who am I?' Instead, the R a ~ n aof the Irumcivaturum, who is clearly god for the Tamil poet, for his audience, and probably for himself, is caught up in the emotional complexities of human experience: this is what he must come thoroughly and intimately to know, as others come to perceive him through their responses to his embodied presence and puzzling deeds. Sita's ordeal is yet another richly articulated opportunity for this course of asymmetrical mutual exploration. 4. Finally, Valmiki's description of the ordeal returns us, together with the epic hero, to the frame of the work, in which the themes of the hero's self-awareness and self-forgetfulness are so subtly and powerfully embedded. The glimpses he gets of his divine nature develop logically out of the structure of that frame. But this frame is wholly absent from Kampan's work, which opens instead with vivid images of flux-of rushing water, and of lives. Significantly. the Tamil poet reverts to these images as he begins to narrate the episode of the ordeal, and they spring to mind again with the oxymoronic depiction of Sita's fire as a cool, liquid bath. Kampan's poem has traced a course from the initial deluge to a culminating fire that is itself another kind of flood. These metaphors are imbued with meaning. If in Valmiki, Sita's trial by fire sparks the flash of recovered memory in Rama, in Kampan it re-presents the experience of the divine river of life flowing mysteriously through and out of bodies. playing with awareness, infusing and transcending these fragile vessels. The god both propels this movement onward-perhaps through the elements of his unknowing (%-and overflows with it himself into and beyond human form. He also remains paradoxically subject to the concomilant law of continuous separation. with the inevitable ensuing sensation ofrecurrent, indeed continuous. loss. Perfection is a process, magical, unfinished. flawed.

'

First Man, Forest Mother: Telugu Humanism in the Age of Krsnadevaraya* Joined in love, through the cunning play of fate, they still recall the sorrows endured.'

In the early decades of the sixteenth century, Telugu poetry achieved a moment of surpassing richness, when innovation in language and form permitted a crystallization of fantasy and theme in works canonized by subsequent generations as setting 'classical'~standards. Perhaps not by chance. this crystalline moment is associated with the high point of social and political development in medieval Andhra, the expansive restructuring of the Vijayanagara state by the famous king, Krsnadevaraya (1509-29). For Andhra culture generally, this brief period has become an emblematic golden age, and we rightly look to its courtly literature for expressions of major cultural and existential concerns. Within the set of eloquent compositions produced at or in relation to Krsnadevaraya's court, surely the central work, the pinnacle of classical Telugu poetry, is Allasani PEddana's Manucaritramu, the 'Story of Man'. It is, again, no accident that PEddana's great poem deals with what *First published in D. Shulman (ed.), Svllnhles c$Skv (Delhi: OUP, 1995), 133-64. ' Mnnucnritrnrnu of Peddana (Madras: Vavilla Rama\vami Sastrulu and ratiri ... pusinu ~'Ptultulopiri~uc~u. The Sons, 1909). 3.62: virlhicdrur-i~Lidiyur~ verse refers 10 the cakravaka birds, rcun~tcdal dawn after a night of pa~nful separalion. Set: below, seclion 4.

324

The Wis~lornc?f'Ports

we might call 'anthropogony', the genesis of the human being (implying the still wider issues relating to anthropology. the conceptualization of human life within a deeply internalized vision of the universe as a structured whole). We cannot know for sure, and the poet does not tell us, what motivated his selection of the ancient myth of Manu from the Sanskrit Markandeya PurannZ-one of a wide spectrum of classical creation myths-as the subject of his courtly kavya in Telugu. Possibly the existence of an earlier Telugu version of this story, by Marana, was a factor. What we can say, ex post facto, is that PEddana turned the story into an expressive frame within which basic issues of human identity, purpose, generativity, psychic formation, and self-awareness could be lyrically articulated and addressed. The following pages attempt to sketch in the contours of this classical Andhran poetic vision, accessible to us above all through an attentiveness to texture, tone, and theme. Here is the story in its barest outline, which PEddana has faithfully reproduced from his source. A young Brahmin named Pravara, from the city of Arunaspada, lives a life of ritual performance, study, and family duties. His real longing, however, is to travel: a frustrated wanderlust drives him to interrogate every pilgrim or wayfarer who happens by. One day a magician (siddha) comes to town and, in return for Pravara's hospitality, smears a magical ointment on the Brahmin's feet which enables him to fly over vast distances. Pravara takes off for the snowcovered Himalayas, the first stop on his projected tour. At first he is supremely happy, filled with delight and amazement at the vistas that have opened up. All too soon, however, he discovers that the magical ointment has washed off his feet in the snow; he is thus stuck, unable to return to his wife and children, his aged parents, and his disciples. In a panic, he wanders helplessly over the hills. Suddenly, a gentle fragrance enters his consciousness-something feminine and enticing in the inidst of the frozen snowscapes. Following it, he comes upon a divinely beautiful woman, a celestial apsaras playing the vlqa alone. lost in the bewitching music. She sees him in all his Brahminical beauty. is captivated by him. and desires him. She introduces herself as Varuthini, an expert in love. Pravara is aroused, embarrassed, and afraid; he wants only one thing. so he says-some help in returning home. Can Varuthini show him Murkunde?c~P u r ~ ~ t(Bombay: .u Venkatesvara Steam Press.). n.d. 58-63

F ~ r s Mair. t Forest Mother-

325

the way? As the depth of his shyness and rcsistancc becomes clear. she becomes increasingly aggressive; she assures him that thc embrace of a apsaras is the real fruit of all his endless rituals and acts of renunciation-that the joy of love, as the Upanisads confirm, is God (anando brahma). Now Pravara turns from her in scorn: her Vedic quotations are, in his reading, parodies of the texts while she is q i t e incapable of understanding the real source of happiness, i.e. the satisfaction of a ritual properly performed. This is correct: she does not or will not understand, and instead throws herself bodily upon him; he pushes her away with some force. Ashamed and angry. she speaks bitterly of compassion-the underlying movement of the heart that should inform any ritual performance, a quality that this hard Brahmin so conspicuously lacks. He pays no heed to her. Praying to Agni, the god of fire, he asks that this deity transport him home-if he, Pravara, has truly kept faith with the sacrificial fires. and if he has never desired another man's wife. This prayer, an Act of Truth, is s u c c e ~ s f u lPravara :~ returns home and disappears from our story. Vanithini, however, cannot forget him. Forlorn and aflame, she now wanders over the mountain slopes, her mind filled with the absent fantasy-lover. She envies mortal women their ahility to commit suicide if their lovers reject them, while she, alas, is immortal, thus doomed to endless pain. Soon, however, a gandharva-a divine being expert in the arts of music and love-who had once seen Vartithini and failed to attain her, comes upon her in her supine state and intuits its cause. Magically he assumes the form of the now-distant Pravara. Vanithini sees him; hope is reborn in her heart. Coyly, the gandharva speaks of a conflict in his mind: he should really go back to his wife and hold fast to his vows; on the other hand, he is prepared to 'sacrifice' his body if it removes another person's suffering ... In short. he will make love to her on two conditions: that she keep her eyes closed during the act of love-making. and that she fully satisfy his desires. The compact made, the two give themselves over to sexual delight. But this joyful phase is transient. Soon Varuthini is pregnant and the masquerading gandharva a little restless: his desires have been met, the woman is exhausted, and he is afraid that if she discovers his deception she will curse him. He takes his leave. a little brutally: 'See W Normdn Brown. Thc Bavs for thc Hindu Acl of Truth', R ~ ' V I E N of R e I q r o t ~5 ( 1940). 1 6 4 5

Fit-.\r Marl, Fort~brM O ~ ~ I P 327 I.

'Ncither union nor separation are permanent states. Don't lovers come and go? If I go. will my dcvotion to you also disappear'." And he is off-for, the poet tells us, once our debts to the past have been paid. even a love as dear as life itself will fall away. Varuthini, now twice abandoned, gives birth to the gandharva's son. whom she names Svarocis. This boy becomes a powerful hunter, living in the wild mountain regions. One day he saves a young woman, Manorama, from a rapacious ogre (rak,yasa) who has been pursuing her for three days; no sooner does Svarocis shoot the ogre with an arrow, in the light of the new knowledge of archery that the young woman has quickly taught him, than he discovers that he has thereby liberated the girl's own father from a curse. The curse, like all others, has a history: once this man, the gandharva Indivaraksa. had sought to learn the science of healing, Ayurveda, from a teacher who refused to accept him as a pupil; when the teacher discovered that Indivaraksa had managed to overhear his lessons after all, he cursed him to pursue his own daughter. In the wake of this traumatic encounter, Svarocis receives from the now-transformed ogre both his daughter and the wisdom of healing. He needs this wisdom: two of the girl's close friends are afflicted with leprosy as a result of another curse (from a meditating sage whom they had disturbed and mocked). Svarocis is in a position to cure them and, once they are restored to their true beauty, to marry them as well. The happy foursome spend their days in erotic exercises in the forest. But there is another encounter in store for Svarocis. One day while he is hunting a boar, a wild doe speaks to him in human language, begging him to kill her in place of his intended victim, for, she explains, it is preferable to die rather than watch one's beloved playing with other women. 'Who is your beloved?' he asks, and receives 'You' in answer. It will be enough for her, says the doe, i f Svarocis embraces her; as he does so, she is'transmuted in his arms into a young woman of matchless beauty. She can now introduce herself a5 the goddess of the wilderness (vanadevar&), sent by the gods to produce a human son. Manu, by Svarocis. So now there is a fourth wife, who in due course gives birth to a boy known as Svarocisa Manu. the First Man of his cosmic age. This child is born with renunciatory tendencies; he prays to Visnu. asking to be reabsorbed into the god. Visnu insists. however, that this eventual reintegration be postponed. so that Manu can rule ovcr thc world and all its living beings. Thc child, thus appointed to the rolc of Man~dmanhood

(manutvatnu, 6.130). remains in this universe. which luxuriates in his care. Such, then. is thc descent of Man, a paradigmatic first human being in another cosmic age, whose story forms part of a wider scries of such human prototypes leading up to, and including, that of the Manu of our own time, VaivasvataManu. Even on the basis of this schematic summary, the convoluted nature of the genealogy stands out: Manu is the son of a transmuted goddcss and her human lover, and the of a deluded apsaras and a masquerading gandharva; in the background hovers the figure of thc naive but wholly human Brahmin Pravara, a kind of spiritual alter ego whose prcsence is critical to the anthropogony. W e will see in a moment how Pcddana treats this thematic sequence. Before entering into that discussion. however, we would do well to notice the relations between our purcitlic story and its Vedic antecedents. The myth of Svarocisa Manu belongs to a series of anthropogonies, well attested in the classical p u r b n a s (and specifically in the Mrirkandeya Purana, upon which PEddana drew); within this series, it is by far the closest in theme and vision to the Vedic myth of human origins. Central to that ancient myth is a profound sense of distance and splitting as necessary features in the genesis of Manu, the first man. T h e immortal Saranyfi-the Flowing-was given in marriage to Vivasvant, the Sun; she bore him a son, Yama, who was the first to travel the path of the mortals. Then Saranyu was lost (nanaia); the gods hid the immortal woman from mortals (apciguhcinn anlrtcim martebhyah) and put in her place a substitute, Savarna. 'a female of the same class'(Rgveda 10.17.1-2). Manu, the father of humankind, is apparently the son of this substitute-m~ther.~ Already in this earliest stratum of the myth, a tendency toward doubling or splitting is clearly in evidence: the divine mother exists in two forms, one immortal, the other an imitation once removed; there are two sons, one born from the immortal mother, the other from her replacement; the first of these sons is, moreover, a twin, as his very name indicates (in the R ~ v ~ d a . he has a twin sister, Yami). Yama contains in his nature a basic 4Rgvcda, 10.62.9 and 1 1 ; confirmed by Yiska. Nit-uktn (B,ombay: Government Central Press, 1918), 12.10: scc also Rrhtrdde\utri of Saunaha, Harvard Oriental Series (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard I.lnivcrsiry Press, 1904) 6.162-3, 7.1-6. For a full discussion o l these sources, see WcndyDonigcr, Splittir~,~ tlrc, Diffcrcrlc.c.: C;r,~rlc,r( l i l t 1 Mxtll

rtl

(Chicago: Univcrsily 01' Ch~cagoP r c ~ 1998.) ,

Atlc.it'tr/ C;r.c'cc.c/trtltl Jiltlicl

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The Wisdorn qf Poets

duality-though he points the way tu death, he h~rnsclfrcignsforever, like the deathless source from which he derives. over the world of the dcad.j This Yama, familiar both from Indian and Iranian sources, has enjoyed considerable scholarly a t t e n t i ~ nwhile , ~ his no less fascinating half-brother, Manu, has, for some reason, been largely ignored. Manu's story, later dramatically expanded in the HarivamSa7 and the purcinas, emerges out of a metaphysical stance nicely.stated by Stella Kramrisch: 'Between Saranyu who withdrew from creation and her image Savarna there is a difference for which only the gods can account but which man endeavours to make up for ... When Vivasvar knows Savarnii, man is born with the imperfection and memory of his descent." Manu also seems connected to notions of linear devolution, an open-ended expansion from the initial point of rupture and alienation (perhaps in contrast to Yama, who is tempted toward incest with his sister, Yami, i.e. toward the internal self-replication or infinite regress of a circular generativity, the bodily reamalgamation of twins; but Yama resists his sister's advances). In any case, Manu is definitely trapped both in involuntary mortality and in a kind of second-hand, derivative selfhood, always riddled by perceived absences. The longing that accompanies this perceptionperhaps the fundamental emotion of Vedic men and womenexpresses itself in narrative form in stories of ever increasing fragmentation. In the puranas, Savama, the replica, becomes Chaya, literally a 'shadow' or 'reflection'; Saranyu, the flowing immortal, is now Samjfia. the 'sign' or 'designation1-a name that is itself, as Wendy Doniger suggests, perhaps indicative of substitution or i l l u s i ~ nMoreover, .~ Manu himself is now split or doubled: there is See Rgvedu lO.135.l,.10.14.2. "ee Geoges DumCzil, 'La sabha de Yama' Jourru~lAsiatiqlie 253 ( 1 965). 161-5, and his Mvthe et e'pope'e (Paris: Gallimard, 1974);R. Goldman 'Mortal Man and Immortal Woman: An Interpretation of the Three Akhyana Hymns of the Rg Veda', Journul ofthe Orient01 hr.~tituteof Baroda 18, 4 (1969): 273-303; U. Schneider. 'Yama und Yami (RV X 10)'. Inrlo-Iranian Journal I0 (1967) 1-32. ' Htrrivum.iu (Pcmna:Bhandarkar Oriental Rescarch Institute. 197 1 ), 8.148. Stclla Kramrisch. 'Two: Its Significance in the Rgvcda'. in E. Bcndcr (cd.), 111rk)lo,yic t r l Srlir1ie.c in Honor of W. Norttlc~rrBro\t,ti (Ncw Havcn: American Or~cnlalSociely, 1962). 135-6. Lhnigcr. . S / ~ l i t f i r i , rf: l ~ Diffrrrnc.e. r j

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339

an earlier Vaivasvara Manu, the son of this Samjfia (the original 'Sign'), and a second Manu-the ruler of the coming cosmic ageborn from the Shadowomage. 'Thus we are descended not only from a mother but from a shadow Manu as well."(' Doubles upon doubles: once the rule of schizogenesis (here the active principle of psychogenesis as well) applies, there seems to be no limit to its range. Like this Manu, we wander in shadows. In questions of ultimacy, the locus of immortality and of the ultimately real, there are, in essence, two domains: that of the lost or hidden original, the vulnerable primordial whole, bursting with anxiety and tensions; and our world of proliferating divisions, where perception, identity and selfawareness are, by definition, broken, dynamic, incomplete. Against this background and these presuppositions, the more recent myth of Svarocisa Manu-another instance of the exilic exfoliation of human consciousness-is enacted in the Sanskrit Markandeya Purana and, still later. in the Telugu version of Marana and then in PEddana's masterpiece. The following remarks focus only on PEddana and his rich reworking of the mythic model in the context of early sixteenth-century Andhra and its rather different modes of yearning.

We might begin by establishing a tone, repeatedly resonating in a single poignant image. We meet this image for the first time in the opening section devoted to praising the poet's king and patron, Krsnadevaraya: Killer elephants scrape deserted walls with their tusks, and diamonds fall, flickering like the fireflies birds use to light their nests. That's where you'll find them today--out of place, made into la,mps nestled in trees all through thc parks where lovers met, i n cities wrecked by our king. It is the adamantine lamps ( d i p i k a l ) that interest us, those fallen

"' Ibid. See MLirku~irl~~\~(rl)lir~itz~~ 74-5; !03-5; Hurii~ayStr8.1 4

8

330

Tho Wisdom of P(7c.t.v

diamonds that Lhe weaver birds mistakenly assume to be fireflies and therefore appropriate for thcir homes in the now-empty parks and gardens. The mistake in perception is classed by the poeticians as a figure, hhrantimat-one of the liveliest in the classical repertoire of standard tropes. Note this theme, and the way it is framed in this early verse by a more general, and more powerful, context of desolation. The poet praises his patron's prowess in war, as demonstrated by the devastated cities he has left behind him-wealthy cities, of course, with walls once lined with diamonds. All that is left of this former richness is the displaced illumination in the birds' nests littering the empty parks. The lovers are gone, their wealth dispersed, their whole world reduced to ruin; even the conquering king himself, KrsnadevarBya, is gone, his presence a mere suggestion, a memory inferred by the traces of destruction he has left behind him. It is striking that this scene of violence and loss is rather playfully and gently presented, so much so that at first one hardly notices its true meaning. There is light, there is beauty, a hint of love, of opulent splendourbut the initial articulation of assault (the killer elephants scraping the walls) is resumed in the final words of the verse, when the ominous setting is, at last, made explicit. The king who has caused all of this is also given an epithetmahikanta, 'beloved of the Earth'. KrsnadevarBya, like all kings, is married to the Earth-Goddess. The verse immediately preceding this one descr!bes this union in terms of healing: the sores and blisters that The Earth received from being carried by the great Boar (Visnu), or by the snake Adiiesa, who rubs against her with the jewels on his hoods, or by the stony mountains, are cured at the touch of the unguents applied by KrsnadevarBya's caressing hands." Still, the sequence of images is eloquent: the caress is followed by our suggestive configuration of lamps, destruction, and confused cognition. We can find this configuration recurring at various critical junctures in the text. Take the following example, from the passage where Vanithini's sense of abandonment and despaiz; is most extreme: The really lucky ones are human women, born mortal through ancient merit. If their lover slights them, they at least I'

This verse

IS

cited in full at the conclusion of this chapter.

First Mut?, Forest Mother

33 I

can relinquish their bodies. As for me, I am. alas, immortal-a prey to endless sorrow and shame, my deathless beauty like a flame that flares in an empty home. (3.8) Her love-the passionate openness ignited by the Brahmin's fortuitous arrival-bums, self-consuming, in a void. Like the domesticity of the deluded weaver birds in the previous verse, the home Varuthini imagines is framed by destruction and a deprivation so profound as to make death itself seem a form of privilege. In the eyes of the burning and abandoned demi-goddess, mortal women are to be envied precisely for this reason. A latent vision animates this verse, part of a long series of lamentations that will end only with the sudden appearance of the masquerading lover. The sequence is expressivedesire bursting into flame, then frustration, a kind of autistic selfcontainment in sorrow, a sense of endless desolation, then temporary fulfilment in or through delusion. Such, it seems, is erotic love, which is also, in this same contorted progression, the condition for human generativity. I will have more to say about this sequence in a moment. Here is the other side of the coin, again shaped around the same thematized image. At the height of her unsuccessful attempt to seduce the timid Pravara, Varuthini articulates her deepest values: When the heart unfolds in love, when it finds release, from within, in total oneness like a steady flame glowing in a pot, when the senses attain unwavering delightonly that joy is ultimately real. You should meditate in your heart on the ancient verse, dncrnck, hruhmu, God is j o y f ~ l n e s s (2.62) .~~ Love, in its sensual mode. is the only Absolute. Pravara hastens to IZ

For the image o f the unllickcrin~lamp, see R/~trg(ri~trrIyitri 6.19

dc~iytI11s. I ~ L Lllc I ~ 1 ~ 1 c tP. ? ~ ~ : I I I l: ~I .> a \ c11s s 111 little d o ~ ~ ;is h t 10 111s own s q n ~ p a l l i ~ cAs .l ~ c rPravara's sucldcn cscapc. (he sun hcg~lis1 0 scl. almo\t as 11' i t wcrc itscll' alivc wilh h~iln:~n i'ccling:

exisrcntial component\ o f dcsirc arc pervaded by :ill inner qualily 0 1 ' separation. I n the ancicnl ( ' a i ~ k ; ~ work\. n~ thc carly stolen love (kalavu), a1 midnigh1 in thc mounlains. swil'tly givcs way to more or "l'li(~ughshc loves no othcr m2lti. less tolcrahlc statcs of' longing and I'rualrarion. The Iovcr is kriowrl. (ha1 cruel, sell‘-ccnlcrcd sensed. wantcd, cssciitially through hls ttbscncc. The normative poetic scoundrel ol' a Brahmin g r a m m a r acknowlcdgcs this 'fact' by defining ~ h cwildcrncss has yone away landscape of pulai--the most extrcme embodiment of' scparationand Icfr her prey as underlying or infusing 311 thc othcr phusts of' l ~ v c . Tnrnil '~ to [he tortures of Dcsirc. devotional pocts take this perccption a sicp furthcr by insisting on he1 body liclplc\s against his lethal that aspcct of separation which informs cvcn the most powcrlul Ilowcr-arrows.' moments of ~ ~ n i oinn lovc; always therc remains within intimacy a As if in rage and terror residue of' absence and loss. a skcwcd transition across an always at this thought. real and ultimately divisive bordcr. Indccd, Lo approach this residual the sun, heaven's glowing jewel, boundary bctween lovers is also. ai the salnc time, to rcaff'irm i t and rurncd red. (3.10) its consequences for emotional experience and awarcncss. Bhakti poetry cxplorcs these manifold consequences with inexhaustible This is urpr-rk.s~?. a metaphoric transposition of feeling or quality to fascination. an alicn ob,ject or domain, and in this casc i t makes a point of sorne PEddana's lyric krivya, howcver. follows a different course. The general significance. The Telugu poet celebrates desire and mourns ancient teleology of separation no longcr holds. Hcre desire can, in its frustration, cvcn as hc contcxtuali~csi t within a widcr field of fact, be fulfilled-though only through illusion. It is no longer a (partly dcstructive or deforming) forces. Sunset itself, when the world question of simultaneous presencc and absence, with the inevitable is plunged into blackness, is, for PEddana. no more than a recurring frustration-a kind of infinite regress within consciousness-that such cosmic replication of the by-now-familiar image-perhaps (for lover is entirely present an amalgam must producc. The gmr~dhan~a perception is uncertain) the glow of a lamp held up by Lady Night as to Varuthini, whose lovc is enacted and satisfied along thc lines of ~ i v begins a his Cierce dance of destruciion ( c a ~ ~ d i i a - r a ~ ~ d a v a r . s a ~ ~ a the credo shc quotes: there is no reason to doubt for a moment that . s r r m h h ~ t n - k . ~ a p r t - h a a ~ ~ B g r u - d i ~ ~ a - ~ a h ~ 3. ~ ~l i7 )..~I 3t ~ - c a ~ a m 6 ~ for her, and probably for him as well, sensuous full'ilmcnt embodics Somewhcrc hcre-or perhaps wherever there is love-a flickering the Absolute. Listen to how PEddana describes this couplc's first lovclight is envclopcd by darkness. making:

In cflcct. wc lla\c hcforc us the lineaments of a theory. which wc can now makc nlol-c cxpl~cit.South Indian lovc poetry. l'rom its roots in Tamil Cunkam works to its rcl'c)rm~~larion in devotional tcrms by thc T~unilA!\ and Nay:unmar and thcir medic\~alsuccessors (in Si~nshrit and T ~ I u ~;I\L well I j . f ' o c ~ ~ s ei ts, prillliiry alrcntion o n themes of xcp;~~-arion (~,ir-o/icl 111Sanskrit. ~ ~ I I ~ I iIn~ Tamil I I j . The expcrienr~;~l and

In a rush of passion. she hcld him with her burning breasts. and thcy kissed. searching for the very roots of their lips; flooded by desire. she hit him, fell. exhausted, to the bed. 'JTijlktil,l,i\~u~~ I'ii~-~rlotiXrit-(~~~~, ( bI;~~lr.;~s: Vavilla R;II~:I,\n n l i Sasll.~lluand Sons. 1954). t ~ k t ~ r I rI:~ \ce ~ ~P~: ~l l ~ lli~clirn~~n. a Il'orrrr.~~. l j r - c i ~ i c . / i .~ror-;~,\ oriti Rrli,yrort.\ Rllr~or~c. ;,I i i I,rrriri /~rctltiiri~/ 7;c\ (Syr;~cusc:L l ; ~ \ wi.11 Sc~hool. Syracuse I ' ~ ~ ~ v c r \ i1088). ry.

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The Wisclotn qf Poets

First Mull, Forest Mother

and now she was begging him as gcntly he slapped her cheeks to draw out her moans, and there was anguish still, and absence, given voice in words though her whole body thrilled to his touch, and her mouth was crying out in joy, until slowly, little by little, the sounds of praise grew softer and she lay quiet, eyes closed, cheeks glistening, her movements now controlled, while her jewels and bangles also ceased their wild ringing. That was the first time: he flowed like water in her love. (3.11 6) So she has lived out her credo: arranda, sensuous joy, has been taken to the limit, as we know from Peddana's description of her moans and cries (dnanda-krta-hciravananabjamu).We note in passing that PZddana's erotic lyricism (here as elsewhere) also constitutes a kind of limit, unsurpassed by any other Telugu poet. It is also important that, even within this moment of ultimacy, a trace of anguish and absence (viraha) remains. This element of absence or longing is not, however, seemingly very central. The only difficulty here, if st all, is that the lover is other than he seems-at least from our perspective, which allows us to pronounce on Varuthini's mental state. She is mistaken about her partner's identity, though he is fully aware throughout. If there is a splitting here, it is certainly not within her mind but rather somewhere outside it, in a 'reality' that operates consistently by means of replicas and substitutions. Again i t is important to strcss Lhat we are dealing here with a paradigm, not merely an accidental configuration of themes-with a latent theory, certainly ncvcr lranslated into propositions, that nonetheless emerges spontaneously from PEddana's lyrical transformation of his inherited narrative. In (his sense. we can already formulate a hypothetical conclusion based not so much on the simple narralivc sequencc as on (he wider constellation of texture, exposilion. and themc. Statcd ;thstrncLly: dcsire, in i ~ generative s mode, transcends separation and rcachch towards fullilment. which nevertheless depcnds upon

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unconscious displace men^. Or more crudely: the beloved, who occupies the placc whcrc life itself is situated (pru~upadumuirra valapunu, 3.140), is altvays someone else. This somewhat unsettling conclusion p u ~ sus in a world quite from the quandaries and ambivalences of traditional south Indian devotionalism. As PZddana tells us in the verse just quoted (3.140),there is always a debt (mcinubandhumu)waiting to be paida debt to our pasts, to our bodies, to the most intense of our fantasies. When this debt has been covered, or lived through, then 'even a love that is equal to life itself will fall away'. The debt is endowed with existential urgency, demanding a literal enactment, although its perception is riddled with metaphoric dissociation and displacement. Note, also how the Vedic mythology of Manu has been extended and partly reversed: there the prototypical human is the child of SavamB, the 'model' or 'image' who has replaced the divine mother Saranyii, hidden in transcendence; human desire thus constitutes the path of return to the lost source via a longing that follows upon, and may heal, the original fracture in being. In PEddana, by way of contrast, both mother and grandmother-the wilderness divinity and Vanithini-are truly divine, and truly active in the downward direction that points towards human existence; but desire itself enfolds a form of delusion or self-alienation, a mode of Jisplacement issuing into loss in the course of its self-realization. In the Vedic case, human beings can only transcend themselves upwardly, toward the absent but partly remembered divine reality, with which they seek to reconnect; in the Telugu anthropogony, divinity generates humanity through exotic processes of indirection, which literalize, in the flesh, the metaphoric delusion of sambhoga-love experienced in selffulfilment. That generativity itself is intimately bound up ivith such indirection, some seemingly inevitable displacement, is made clear in :he famous verse describing Varuthini's impregnation: munilu viprrikaramun&guduco Sank5 ganumliya banir2n ci khacar~z-Dhartay avvarurohayun' usakta guvunun iccalon utu seyun iyjak0niyFn ri prutijna-purtiy ayy2 danantan ui~vunirukurati-/7ciruvaS)~a-patiman apudu tat-pruvaru-dehu-.srm~icldhcr-.\:ikhi-di~~ti-.iumhuri-muhimuc.e saiigrahificinatti-gand\lurilu-murti-.vuukhj~inuhhuti

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Tlzr Wisdom c?f'Poer.s

Firsr Man, For-r.rr Moriter-

Her celestial lover, who made love to her in that Brahmin's form, had ordered her to close her eyesfor he was afraid. She. clinging to him in the fullness of her desire. had agreed-so this condition was fulfilled, in an overpowering excess of joy. And through that experience of deep delight, the flame that was burning in Pravara's body became magically kindled in the gandlzarva's form, now held fast in her unwavering mind. Thus the child, a glowing fire, was conceived and grew to ripeness during nine months in her womb. (4.3) Sarnbhoga requires, it would seem, a kind of wilful blindness, the

lover closing his or her partner's eyes. But there is a more substantial point at issue here. As Viivanatha Satyanarayana has remarked in a perceptive monograph on PEddana the child, Svarocis, is nor the gandharva's son at all; in any real sense, judging by this verse, the boy is Pravara's child, born through a mysterious process of transfer that leads from the chaste body of the innocent Brahmin to the magical disguise of the celestial lover, and thence to Varuthini's now-quieted ~ n i n d . ' ~ T actual he generative life-force is, as we might by now expect, a kind of fire, a hidden flame burning. firsr, inside the Brahmin. but finally implanted-by magical means ( S a m h a r i m a h i m a c e ) i n Varuthini's consciousness: it is this flame that becomes the radiant ' I ViSvanatha Solyanrlrayana, Allrr.runivcir~i Allik(qig~bi,qi(Vijaywada: V.S.N and Sons. 1967), 1 1-12.

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e m b r y ~ . ' T h itakes ~ us a step beyond our earlier observations on desire as fulfil ling irscl f through displacement andlor disguise: these observations still hold true, but the point herc has to do with the relation between sexual gencrativity (clearly no simple technical matter) and the internalized presence of the fantasy-lover. The whole process now depends on Varuthini's receptivity to this fantasy, or, to put it differently, on her ability to transfer the fantasy-image on to the body of the impersonator, which then enables this same image to find its resting place in a pleasure-sated mind. Without such a fixation, which can apparently take place only in the tortuous series of stages we have outlined, and in the context of an ecstatic bodily union structured around a false perception, there would be no glowing embryo, hence, ultimately, no first human being. Generativity, played out in the body, is largely a state of mind. Note, too, how Peddana's characteristic theme of the flame burning in desolate displacement is, once again, resumed at a critical moment of transition. There is another side to this development, an aspect implicit in the above statements. Varnthini, as we have seen, is envious of mortal women because of certain specific advantages of mortality (evident in moments of despair). In fact, however, this is a much deeper prejudice, which the poet clearly shares. We can see PEddana's 'humanistic' or anthropocentric bias at several points. First, there is the narrative theme of choosing the human spouse in preference to an immortal one, as in the well-known case of Damayanti's choice of Nala." Generally speaking, Indian mythology tends to prefer the opposite: the self-transcending human being marries an immortal, usually with tragic consequences. This is the type symbolized by the ancient tale of Pururavas and Urvasi. But in our kavya. Pravara "'he Sanskrit Mrirkattdeyapurana says that Vanithini became pregnant 'through the masculine energy of the gandilarva and through thinking about the Brahmin's (i.e. Pravara's) form' (gandllarvavir~atorapam cintanac ca dvijanntana!l, 60.4). In Marana's Telugu version (M~irkat~devupurunu~rz~~, Hyderabad: Telugu Vijfianapitham,n.d.) Vanithini thinks only of the Brahmin. his body blazing like fire, during her lovc-making (with eyes shut) with the gandharva (tla/lanufili/~ui~is~~i~u~-itaiarirund uRIcn d dharartisurakatmurut~dtmu dalacCrlu, 5.20); ai'tcr some days of this, she conccivcs. Clearly. throughout these sources we find a notion of conception as a translcr of firc through the agency of the fantasy-driven mind. " Sec Chapter 5 above. Cf. Oth'.s,sey 5.20420 (Ociysscus chooses Pcnclopc over thc imniollal Kalypso)

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The Wisdom of Poets

explicitly and consciously rejects the seductive divine courtesan in favour of his earthly wife. PEddana devotes a long series of verses to explaining the faithful Brahmin's choice. As we have seen, however, the poet also sccms to support Varuthini's stance in this debate-but again in ways that indicdie the very real advantages that lie in being human. Here is Variithini as shc is beginning to fall in love with the hapless mortal who has strayed into her path: Fluttering glances healed her inability to blink, and for the first time shc was sweating. Even her surpassing understanding was healed by the new confusion of desire. Like the beetle that, from ever concentrating on its enemy, the bee, becomes a bee, by studying that human being she achieved humanity with her own body. (2.33) This is a portrait of ontic transformation, which makes a goddesswho, like all her species, has no eyelids and therefore cannot blink, just as she cannot sweat or even properly touch the ground-into a mortal woman. The change is clearly regarded by the poet as an achievement, replete with aspects of healing: the verb rnanpu, which carries this connotation, recurs throughout, even with reference to the fact that the divine understanding (bodhakala)with which this creature is endowed has given way to the confusion of desire (rnohavibhrarzti). All in all, such confusion is apparently preferable to the reduced inner state of an immortal, and 'humanity' (rnrinu.:atvarnu)emerges as the richer, better goal. PEddana's statement in this verse is, in fact, one of the strongest and most explicit anthropocentric pronouncements known from medieval south Indian literature.'" To sum up: the Manucuritrurnu presents us with a distinctive lyrical Sce discussion in D. Shulman "The Anthropology of the Ava~arin Kampan's Irrinrdvrrr~itnt?~', in Shaul Shaked, D. Shulman, and G. Stroumsa (eds). Gilgul (Festsc~hr~fr R.J.Z. W~~rhlow.sk\~), (Lridcn: E.J. Brill. 1987). 7 7 G 87.

F,r.>tMarl, Forest Mothrr

139

humanism, which focuses attention in scveral ways on the advantages and potentialities of being human. Human beings have the grcat gift of inhabiting a sensually vital body, which is the vehicle for transcendence and the experience of ultimacy; at the same tlme, the realization of this potential has affective and cognitive consequences that are bound up with notions ofdelus~on,splitting, and displacement. Love is an arena not merely, or primarily, for separation in any of its various modes; it rather bears the existential power always latent in the human state, which becomes generative precisely in the context of the inherent obliquity of fulfilled desire. In some sense, this generativity seems also to be bound up with transformation, the movement between ontic planes or states, and a literalization of something initially or essentially figurative. Let us now try to flesh out this last point with reference to issues ofperception and awareness.

It is striking that these issues are already explicit in the opening invocations of PEddana's text: Black glistens on his chest, smeared with musk from Laksmi's breasts, so his devotees-Sanandana and othersmight wonder if he hasn't put Dark Earth in Laksmi's place. May this god favour with his lotus-eyes Krsnargya, our king. ( 1 ) The first verse sets the tone, and intimates something of the thematic range the poet will explore. He blesses his king, Krsnadevaraya, in the context of an unexpectedly confused perception of the deity, Lord V i s ~ uThe . latter is envisaged with his broad chest radiant with black musk rubbed off the breasts of Laksmi: his proper, high-caste consort; but this darkness-once again, the natural chromatic setting of desire. as we have seen from the poetic descriptions of Varuthini's lovesuggests to those devotees who are granted the vision of the god thal Laksmi, normally at home on Visnu's breast, has becn replaced by the god's other, 'lower' consort, the dark Earth, Bhudevi. Even perception of this order-a divine revelation-seems lo be bedcvillcd

340

Fir.vr Man, Forest Mother

The Wisdom c$ Poets

by such doubts. Note. too, both the downward movement--from the high-order goddess Laksmi/Kamala to the Earth, the home of mortals-and the incipient interest in possibilities of displacement and substitution in the workings of desire. By now we can recognize both themes from their later expansion in the central narrative.IY Look now at the fourth invocation verse, directed at GaneSa: Here sits the god with an elephant's head, on the lap of the Mountain's daughter, drinking milk from her breast. Unsated, just like a child, he gropes for the other breast with his trunk but finds nothing-only a garland of fine snakes which he takes to be soft lotus stems. He is the god I worship to fulfil desire. Like her husband, Parvati, GweSa's mother, is adorned with slithering snakes, which the probing child accidentally encounters. By now there is double misperception-snakes for breasts (a 'real' substitution) and lotus stems for snake (a false deduction). The latter mistake nicely expresses Ganeia's oral obsessions; but the fact remains that even in this context of loving nurturance and care, the protagonist, driven by an always unappeased and probably unappeasable hunger, somehow IY ViSvanatha SatyanafiyanaAllusaniv6niAllikajigibigi,8-15, also remarks on the linkage between these opening invocations and the themes of deluded perception that are so central to this work. For him, the first verse just cited sets up a parallel between Vanithini and Sanandana (together with the other , sages). Verse 2, on the other hand, shows us Parvati teasing ~ i v a the 'illusionary hunter', for the heartfelt compassion that supposedly produced his gift of the PaSupata weapon to Arjuna; this is an example of visamLilarikdra, which suggests the 'uneven' or aberrant union of Vanjthini and the gatdharva (thus fitting the category of vir~ipakcir.yotpatti,'incongruous causality', properly associated with this figure; see E Gerow, A Glossatyoflndia Figures of Speech (The Hague: Mouton. 197I ) , 275-6. Despite these overly formal explications of suggestion, the basic insight retains its power. It is not, however, a mattcr of Mzranti. 'delusion', alone but of the general and paradigmatic character of this association of illusion with love and generativity.

14 1

gets things wrong. Confusion governs desire and its fulfilment cven in the casc of a god-and. prcsumahly. for the poet as well. who prays to this amusingly deluded deity for the sakc of his own satisfaction. Thus already here, in thc opening sequence. we find a striking recognition of conflated delusion as constituting the very ground of human hope. These invocations present us with one of this poet's major tropes, which also functions as a synecdochal prefiguration of the central narrative. Exquisite bhrantirnat verses thus dot the text at frequent intervals. Let us look at one last example, from the passage describing sunset and nightfall during Varuthini's love-sickness for the absent Pravara. W e see and hear the female cakravciki bird, famous in Indian literature for being cruelly separated each night from her beloved mate: As the sun set, the cakravaki. grieving for her absent lover, called out, over and over, to every bird she saw and rushed to embrace him and, in this headlong rush, as she discovered her error, she would crane her neck, searching the skies for a sign. As she searched the skies, tears filled her eyes, and she would turn back, perching herself on a lotus, and dip her face in water, but, as she drew near, unable to drink, what she saw was always her own reflection that should have been his-so, in confusion, she would plunge in to meet him only to move on, wings now soaked, to another flower. drawn by the drone of the bees that hovered there, drawn to attack them with her beak before moving on again in the endless searching. (3.16)

First Man, Foresr Mother

This, as many commentators have rcmarkcd, is the c.akravuki as Varuthini: a lovc-lorn woman abandoned by her bcloved, whom she cannot rclinquish in her mind. The result, not surprisingly, is varying but pcrsistcnt forms of mental confusion: she mistakes every bird she secs for her husband (the cakravaki cannot see well after dark. or in the twilight moment of blurring shapes and boundaries); each time the error becomes clear, she follows another confusing sequence that entails mistaking her own reflected image, in the water. for him. In short, she sees her absent beloved however or wherever possible, and always in error. Judging from our earlier discussion, this state could almost be PEddana's definition of love. Two additional elements deserve emphasis. Note the progression from mistaking a wholly alien other for the lost lover, to the experience of mistaking oneself(or one's own reflection) for the beloved; clearly, there is a sense in which two ends of a cognitive spectrum are articulated here. As we have seen, the one thing we may be sure of is that the longed-for lover is elsewhere, though he may be momentarily represented by someone else-or by an image of oneself. Ultimately, the locus of delusion lies in the fantasy pro-jections of one's own mind; this process may culminate in the identification of the self, or its reflections, with the missing object of yearning-a false or inverted narcissism in which self-love is the final, most devastating form of illusion. Secondly, there is the matter of recurrence or repetition: this verse is built around a syntagm recognized as aclassical poetic device in Dravidian. i.e. the repetition in non-finite form of an immediately preceding finite verb. (Thus taru ... tari, arayu-arasi, etc."). Each line of the early segment of the verse begins with such a non-finite, so that the verse as a whole is tightly woven together in a chain of self-replicating verbs.21This device beautifully captures the underlying sense of driven or obsessive repetition, fuelled by longing and its dependable by-product, delusion. So we see again the dependable building-blocks of PCddana's universc-a world where desire flourishes through displacement, somctimes with magical or illusionary effects, often oriented in a 'downward', this-worldly direction; where the light of love burns 'I' For Vedic parallels, see Saul Migron, 'Caretla and Clrtnnr in Vedic Prosc', Die Spruclic~35,l ( I 99 1-3), 7 1-8 1 " Thc Iranslat~onattempts lamely to im~tatethis cftcct by repcating several ol thc prrniary vcrhal units.

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most dependably in a desolate void; where the reality of substitution, or self-delusion, is the constant concomitant of any form of fulfilment. The mind, baffled by longing and the confusion consequent upon loss, generates this potential for fulfilment, which IS. in gencral, entirely physical and concrete. Delusion, mapped in figures such as bhrarztimat and utpreksa, is the well-worn, and costly. coinage of love.

Let me take the last point a little farther. In effect, we have already seen something of its implications. If love is realized through processes of corporeal displacement, unevenness, and obliquity, then the poetic enactment of this perception might logically entail the literalization of the figurative (where displacement and obliquity are the rule). Here is another way in which texture and style acquire powerful thematic burdens. PCddana develops the notion of literalized figuration almost to the level of a metatextual semantics. A work suffused by elegant bhrantimat verses, playing with misperception, easily moves into a mode of ontic transformation via literalization. From among several striking illustrations of this d e v e l ~ p m e n tI, ~choose ~ the most salient in narrative terms-the climactic verse in which Svarocis, Manu's prospective father, embraces the goddess of the wilderness disguised as a talking doe: The inner loveliness of forest vines took outer form, in her perfect limbs, as the soft richness of unfolding flowers shaped her rounded breasts, the tenderness of leaves congealed as gentle hands while the promise hidden in every bud was now a gleam of fingernails or two glistening eyes when the doe who was the Forest Goddess became, in his embrace, wholly a woman, shimmering like lightning. (6.96) 22

Cf. 5.24 (on becoming a demon).

j4-t

liecall I I I \ \Ituat!orl: tlic doc 11:~sIII~;ILIL.LJ \+ 1111 S\ ,it-i~c.~s lo \Iroc~rIIL:I- i r 1 place of' his ~ri[cndcd\ , i ~ i ~ n i(oI.. - - shc c.oirlc\sc\. she 1 5 C O I ~ ~ I I I I with passion: she [hen idenl.il'~cshim ;I\ hcl- hclovcd. and says sllc u,i!I he contcnf with a 5inglc crnhr-acc Out oI'\onlc inncr opcnncj5 !o this ~ i p p ~ r cat)surdity, ~it liic hunter hold\ her in his arms. Now the tr;~nsI'orniatio~iis c f l c c t c d . sccrni~igly1 1 1 t w o c o m p l e n ~ c n t ; i ~ y niovcmcnts: on the one hand. thc tradi~ionalvegetational rnctaphors that cqualc lhc woman's hody with v ~ t a ll'orccs of'tlie forest (hrcasts arc llowcrs, hands arc shoots or leaves) arc rcvcrscd :uid concretely enacted (tlowcrs turn literally into breasts. etc.); on the othcr hallti, abstract concepts o l hcauty, tendcrncs\. luxul-i:uit richncss Liscume l i v ~ n gand delimited bodily f o r n ~ . 'T~h e goddess hcrselr is thcn explic~tly'renietaphori~cd'(upclmific,~) at thc cnd of the process that turns the wilderness into a woman who can now be compared, again. with a standard drawn from another register ur domai~i-[he brilliant lightning, itself a n cnfiguration of movement and connection. Still. the process of concrcti/ation I'ollows thc corlsistcnt teleology of transformation in PEd(iana. in which the figurative or the fantastic tends to be displaced downwards toward s(>nictliing living, mortal. and other than i t acemcd or s c c ~ n s ;and once again, there I S the suggestion of a more gcncral conception inhcrcnt in this movement. Figuration, which rcquires a spaciousness opening up inric/cl l a n ~ u a g c and awareness, consistently concretires itself in visihlc ( o r otherwise perceptible) forms. Should we risk another cxt~.apolatcdf'[>rm~llation? Perhaps love itself is precisely this, u metaphor moving toward c~nhoclinicrit.Every human being is, by dcfrriition, the sorr o r daughter of such a sell-embodying metaphor. and the granddaughter or gr;indson of displaced dcsirc for an always ahscnt aim. This moment in the text also prcscnls us with an additional essay on passion Illat stands in partial contrast to the visio~lwe havc extrapolated from Cantos 2 and 3 . To create Manu. Svarocis must embrace the f'orest. a I'crnininity that is a kind of wildncss or wilderness, alive wilh l'celing and forcc5 of orpanic growth." Part of

' Thu x

/.'it-.\./i l l ~ ~F?)I-~JYI t/. hlfr,t//c,/- 345 I ~ ~

this gcncr;iti~cdl-ivc X C C I I I S to depend uI7on the coric.rcti/atIon 0 1 t h ~ I'igura~~vc-tlic mirid'.; magic. c ~ s s ~ ~ nhodilv ~ i n g lornl--as i I I the \:c>rcc we 1iavc just ~ ~ S C L I S S But, C ~ . as i t happens. this happy and crca~ivc union is scl in opposition to thc rather t i i i n d l c s ~ .a n d endless. experience o f sensual ah:~n~loti(hlro,qcl)that Svarocis ha\ hccn pursuing l'or many years with his first three wives. A sharp critiquc of this overpowering scns~lalityis articulated in the I'orm oI'a dialogue hctu,cen a goose ( / 2 ~ 1 ? 1 . 5 ~ iand ) ;I (.l~kt-(l~~ciki bird. bolh o l t h ~ ~witnesses ii to [he way Svarocis has hecn carrying o n in the l'orcst. Thc goose. drunk on the ,joy of riding the waves in a pond. praises the happy foursc~mc:they n i ~ ~havc s l pcrSormed great :icls 01' rlcllus in ~licirfornicr livcs ~o be able to achieve so much joyful ;iffeclion together in this birth. No. rcplies thc r~ikror~ciki(always, as wc have seen. an exemplar of I'aithl'ul lovc); that one man could love many women. or vice versa, is unlikely to the point of being considered a kind of miracle (adhhuramu):it would be like the affection (unurdgrrrrrrr)that a king has for his sycophantic retainers. These women (of Svarocis's) arc no more than courtesans (diisinikurarnli).certainly not to be praised. Goodncss (rnrlrr) lies in the exclusive lovc of one man and one woman (6.65-74). T h e cntirc spccch reminds us, to sonic extent. ofpravara's self-righteous sermon L O ~ h lovc-sick c Varuthini; and we notice that the rukrurdki has nothing to say about the possihlc contents of any 1ovcr.s mind. But i t so happcns that Svarocis-here called, with good reason, 'Varuthini's son' (75)- understands the language of animals and. hearing this lesson. feels shame ( s i g g u ) . Still, his desire is unabating: lie continues his lovemaking with his three wives for hundreds o f years. Each of tlicse women eventually gives birth to a son-but not to the longccl-for Manu. the First Man who will rule t h r o ~ i g h o this ~ ~ t aeon. Sec. thcn, how ulti~natclystcl-ilc is the state o f unrelenting sexual satiety whcn ~ ~ n c n l i v c n cby d thc s~lhtlctwists. thc incommensurate exchanges 01' d c l u d i n ~spccch.

Pf ddana

1\ \ of " / t i I trlr \ . i c . s t i ~ ~r~~.rrttlh~c, cl * . r o ~ r / ~\.rrt~rhir. l~d,~~ ~ Sanskr~~ l l ~ ~ ~riounb ~ ~ ~01.t ah~tractio~r. ~ ~ l ~ ~ r - - ~ ~ l l Wc: rnigh~conrparc I ~ L . ; ~ h o \ c\ , c ~ - su~i ,~ h he n o l i c ~ n x ol. thc \111Sl~-;~~~slorrn~rig hod!'. \I'L'I~ in term 01' \,cge~ai~on;~l ripcnlng (11. ~~nfolding. 111 Tclugu \~-tl::.~ir-trXtii \ [ I \ r j l t h e * \ a y ; ~ h ;pcr:ocl ~ \e.t. Vc\lc,l~c~-u Nar-;\!.;un:~l i a o . I>av~dSh~rlrr~arl. arid S~lnla! .Suhral~rnanj;~rn. . Y L I I I ~ ~ , , o('.Srrhrrt~trt /\ (,: {'<,I(,./ ( r 1 1 i 1 S l l / / ( , I I I i V i ~ \ i ~ l . /', [ i t.io~/li1r1111 ' L ' ~ I , / I I ( l ) e ~ l l i( )~L ~i f ' . I O[J2]. I O i 0. " ( i t r ~ ~ l ~ ~ ~ t~i ~~ ~~~ ~ r t tt ii ~, ~~ ~ c~ ~ .

''

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T / I ( ,Wi.rrlort/ o f /'ooi.\

This chapter has focuscd on Peddana's vision of lovc o r Jcsirc in relation to Sour major vectors: the pcr\i\tcnt disl~laccmcnto l t h c love ob.ject; the niiapcrccption or illusion t h : ~accx)rnpanics ~ this mo\.c: [he literal r c a l i ~ a t i o no l rnctap11~)rt l i : ~ t ~ ~ n d c r l i c os .r c n a h l c > . tlrc t:an\fornlat~vc experience 01 ~ i ~ l l ~ ldl ec\di ~ - cand : thc ~ ~ o \ s i h r l i l l'or ~e\ generati\ ity tlrat c ~ ; i ~ , ~oilr - g col this l > a r . ~ r c ~c~ol a~~r -l ~ f i u ~01; ~I'orccs. t~(~i

First Mun, For-rst Mother

To somc cxlcnt, this configuration expresses the narrative structure of the anthropogonic myth Peddana has chosen; but mostly it secms to express the highly specific universe of this Telugu master poet, and of the courtly milieu in which he worked in early sixteenth-century Vijayanagara. Syntax, figuration, style. the elusive but always dominating domain of texture-these are the real constituents of that world as i t exlernalizcs itself in words. Indeed, as we look closely at the Telugu text, we are struck by how far we have travelled from the Vedic and classical put-cinic souces that provided its story. Let me now restate this difference in somewhat wider terms, before concluding with a brief remark on the remaining fcatures of this Andhran anthropology. In the Vedic myth of Manu, son of the Replica, human existence derives from an act of substitution, which also constricts the range of human choices. There was an alternative to this unhappy mode: Yami's incestuous call to her brother, Yama, a turning inwards in recursive and regressive cycles. By denying Yami, Yama allows for the unfolding of non-recursive time and for love which proceeds out of un-alikeness; by the same token, he opens the world to death, even if he himself is a paradoxically immortal mortal. Unlike Yama, his half-brother Manu cannot choose death but must simply suffer through it willy-nilly. His path is infinite, non-regressive, but structured to incorporate infinity in various death-ridden forms, heavy with counterfeits and replacement. Part of him is always missing, hidden like the real mother; and the other parts are mainly a facade, a shadowplay of similarity mixed with illusion. Even in memory Manu holds cnly a mother who was hardly herself, who could only masquerade as herself-so that love, too, for this man, is a derivation, finally an act of self-deformation or self-dissection, always an expression of further distancing, self-deception, and inner cleavage. Not so for PEddana's heroes or for their descendant, the First Man. His mothcr, the Forest, is no ersatz being, nor can his grandmother, Variithini, be seen as exiled or internally divided. She is, at most, deluded, her love achieving itself through error. Here the opening of creative space requires displacement, the llame of fantasy burning from within the enveloping darkness of confusion.25But such "See the discussion on the Vedic ontology of openness. as opposed to the ontology of essence, in W. Halbfass. 0 1 1 Being and What Tl1c.t-c. 1.7: Cla.~.sir.cll VoiSc~.~ika unrl the Hi.rtnrv ~f'lndicinOntology (Albany: Starc IJnlversity of Ncw York Press, 1992). 3 G 3 .

347

displacement, which can be distinguished from s~~bstitu~ion in the Vedic sense. is in itself only half the story; thc other half allows for the fullness of samhhoga, a sensual realization that, while riddled with error, is also the ground for a new birth, new forms of being. Displacement is now akin to a self-embodying or self-enacting metaphor, no mere loss or painful denial but ra:her the quintessentially creative quality of the mind. The gap, inevitably, remains, indeed structures the field of experience i n which the creative movement takes place. Here, perhaps, lie the roots of memory-not in temporal distancing, as we tend to think, but in acts of splitting and fantasy reconstitution that bridge the yawning space opened up by desire. Let us invoke, one last time, the cakravcika birds that we have seen to be subject to traumatic hallucination, night after night, in the wake of their consistently reenacted separation. PEddana allows them to reunite at sunrise: Calling out softly, they hold one another, looping their necks like restless snakes, body on body twined in every unimagined way, drying their tears on each other's neck in consuming joy as, joined in love, through the cunning play of fate, they still recall the sorrows endured. (3.62) Temporarily intertwined again, the lovers are still internally preyed upon by memory (though consumed by joy).% At least these birds seem to recognize each other, more or less, for who they are. But the genesis of human consciousness follows an even more contorted course of intertwinings, which we might restate as a fiery inner progression across normally separate ontic levels (human, gandharva, divine) and through shifting constellations of disguised or misleading penetrations by other embodied psyches. The critical point is that this element of disguise or displacement-the tangible fantasy enacted 'Wn love, smara, as remembered experience, incorporating distance, see Charles Malamoud, Cuire le Mortde: Rite el pensCe duns I'Inde ancienne (Paris: La Decouvertc. 1989), 295-306.

i r l c r r o r - h i ~ cxtcrnalized s cf'l'ccts. The rnisrcprcscntal~orli n ~ p l i c in i~ cvery 'makin3 prcscnt'. cvcry rcpl.cscntation through schism and replication. clcklrly conslitulcs a causal acclucncc--somcthi~lg akin to thc '~ncongruouscausality' (i.ir/il~ukfirj.otpc111i) ~ncntioncdcarlicr. as dcl'incd by thc poeticians-that also works upon thc 1 ~ o r l d . 2Indccd, 7 this i~ndcrstandingof causality. sccn primarily as a structure o f I'iguration motivated by internal division, delusion. linguistic fissure, and rcpctilion. is deeply wovcn into the cosmology in which the Tclugu poet is at home. Within this framework. and always allowing for the skewing of perspective that it seems to require, the universe is anthropocentric, mortality is privileged. and human beings are gifted with active, magical, and heroic potentialities. I can spell out these latter powers only in a very schematic fashion. Magic should perhaps come first: PEddana hints at his fascination with i t already in the second verse of the invocation (to ~ i v as a the Illusionary Hunter, Sdmbari bhilludu), and he returns many times to this theme.*%agic is, after all, the other (positive) side of delusion, which we have seen to be a structural component of this visionary universe. It has. at times, a destructive or evcn demonic colouring, as when the gatldharva Indivaraksa magically disguises himself as a student of medicine and is therefore cursed by his outraged teacher to become a ruk.~asa-apparently, the proper punishment for misusing this demonic form of deception (cisuriy-ugu-muya, 5.14 and 19). Yet evcn in this context--one of the major branch stories in this workmagical transformation is directly tied to the art of healing (
The moon moved through a world d~cnchcdwhlte by ~ t rays s a\ ~f Dark T ~ m were e a doctor who had perfected plll of transmutation from mercury. processed and condensed, ,~ndlet 11 d~\solve,so 11 could be \wallowed.

'' SCCnolc 19. ''See. c.g. 3.19 and 3.2 1 , and the verse dcscnhing Vamthini's imprcgnatlon 14.3).

lranslalccl ithovc in sccrion -3.

in a vessel of milk-

to givc lovers potcncy and youth unending. (3.25) White moonlight emerges out of darkness, induced by time: i n this instance, the fire is contained in a tiny pill produccd by Siddha alchcmy or medicine, dissolving in the curved space of a universe that is f l o o d e d with milk-whitc rays. The image is far from incidental. Recall, too, that our entire story, the phantasmagoric prehistory and genealogy of the human, is ignited by the visit of a magically potent Siddha t o the home of Pravara, Lhc Brahmin consumed by yearning for all t h a t is distant and strange. Siddha medicine and transmutational p o w c r are thus deeply present in the very frame of our story; the versc just cited articulates this latent motif, later to re-emerge in the explicit f o c u s on the secret wisdom of Ayurvedic cure. If we follow the rcrr~rek.7~ through to its natural limit, and contextualize it by Varnthini's heartbreak and despair, we might conclude that healing. like love. has inherent magical properties that operate through displacement, i n t e r n a l i z a t i o n , transmutation, and the creative movement within perception. Such movement could also be described as the dynamic or a c t i v e heart of the heroic, as we can see from the way the career of S v a r o c i s unfolds in the later cantos of PEddana's poem." Here the hero, born out of the convoluted losses and fantasy reconfigurations we h a v e traced, learns the esoteric art of healing in the context of his struggle with an illusion-bound demon and thc latter's shocking i n t e r n a l transformations. Heroism thus becomes a kind of softening and g e n t l c figurative transition. Although, once again, this structure is p a r t of the original mythic narrative, its elaboration in Telugu kuvq.a expresses highly specific elements of the medicval Andhran cultural universe, above all the conlunction of well-defined heroic valuesx' with the ZY

In conformity with the preference of the Telugu literary tradition itscll'.

1 have focused here on the first three cantos of PEddana's poem; but it should be remarked that the final cantos arc, in general, integrally related to the major themes set forth in the description of Vanithini and her dissociated lovers. A separate essay would be nceded to dcscribe these linkages in detail.

Note, too, that the br:~nch-storyof Indivaraksa. his demonic sell', and his daughter contains very anclcnl Vedic thcmes (Prajapati's pursuit o f ' his daughter and Vi6vartipa's I'a~ledcrc.a(ion).translbrmcd In harmony w i t h thc still more radical reworking ol rhc Vcclic myth of Manu. 30 As in the Decc:ln \'ir-c, cull\. thc Palnudu lolk-cpic ancl thc hcrcrodox ViraSaiva stream.

350

The Wisdom of Poets

vital currents of esoteric healing, magical and alchemical practice, and Tantric-Yogic inner cultivation, that seem to have survived from ancient times (posssibly from an originally Buddhist milieu) in this part of south India. In this sense too, PEddana's text embodies a cultural expressivity beautifully suited to its time and place; in his reworking, the myth of Svarocisa Manu resonates, on all the levels we have noted, with the implicit metaphysics that shaped the history of the Vijayanagara system under Krsnadevariiya. Imagine, then, this most famous king enacting the wisdom of his Telugu poet in pursuit of the incongruous magical or figurative transformations of desire-in his case, perhaps, the urgent desire to heal the Earth itself, thereby surpassing or refashioning all the traditional supports and standards of this world: Earth's body had lost its beauty, blistered and scarred from constant rubbing against the Boar's sharp tusk, the jewels set in the Serpent's hoods beneath her, the rocky peaks on which she rests. But held in the arms of Krsnaraya, Narasa's son, salved with musk and civet, she is healing now into softness. (1.35)

Does God Have Moods? 1. The Padam Corpus It may seem an unsettling question. A philosopher's god probably would not stoop so low. Indeed, he-the philosopher's god is surely male-may have no recognizable personality at all, no faults, no weaknesses, no sense of growth or development, no need ever to learn anything new, no taste, no form, no overwhelming feelings, no vulnerability, no past, no future. At most he might be caught up in some internal, theoretical contradiction, for example between his omnipotence and his goodness (since there is suffering-outside him, of course), or between his alleged transcendence and his accessibility to us (parafva and saulabhva, in the language of the south Indian Vaisnavas). Such internal tensions are probably capable of resolution, by hard and logical thinking. Contrast this with Visnu-Venkateivara, the god at the famous temple of Tirupati (some 150 kilometres north of Madras). We can see him in his temple, in the form of a remarkably supple, expressive, and visually striking dark rock. He stands in this form for nearly all hours of the day, welcoming the tens of thousands of pilgrims who come to visit him: morc precisely, he stands, at their disposal, from 3.00 a.m until 2:30 a.m the next morning, when he is allowed a half hour's rest. It is not an casy job, and this god is sometimes said to be sad. More than that: i l we follow what his poets say about him. or the manner of their singing, we will have to conclude that this god is subject to an intense and restless process of varying moods. In part, these moods reveal the unfolding of a richly textured sensibility, which is the medium of thc god's connectedness to his devotees. In another sense, we could say that the moods the poet conjures up are a means of awakening him inlo a fuller presence. The same process is active within the poet in relation to lhis god he worships. Indeed, holh parties to the relationship. with its inheren~awkwardness and asymrnerrics.

Dor,.c.Cot/ H I I V PMOO^.^..^

arc activcly caught up in a subtlc ncl of' sensation. mood. and meditation. Their sliarcd inncrncss is, pcrhaps. yogic or mcdi~ativc. not in thc scnsc of dc~achmcnlfrom outcr expcrience but because o f thc profound attention given within it to the shifting and delicate flow of inlpulse, idcation, breath, and feeling. Let us first look at an example by the fifteenth-century Telugu poet Tallapaka Annamayya, or Annamscarya, who lived at Tirupati and served this god in his temple. In what follows, I will try to introduce this poet and to address the innovative sensibility that he brings into play in late medieval south India. We will look at the literary materials relating to his life and career and at the rich textual world that he and his family, the Tdlapaka poets, created at Tirupati. I will argue for the emergence of a new image or understanding of the individual, at this point in the history of southern India, and I will attempt to outline the bcginning of an analytical characterization of this new 'subject'. Central to this attempt is the concept of what I have called 'mood', which I will attempt to distinguish from related terms such as 'feeling' or 'emotion'. In addition to the poems of Annamayya, which will constitute our primary corpus, I will cite parts of thc unusual biography of the Tirupati god-for this biography, as we have it in the extremely rich collection of narrative texts from Tirupati, is yet anothcr locus for the articulation of the new theology of mood. Here, then, is 'Annamayya, addressing this god: You're both inside and outside, leaving no gap. You keep searching, inside and out You are the wind that breathes. You are the life of pouring moonlight. You r~pplcover the deep black ponds. Soaked in the fragrance of unfolding jasmine, you seem like water far away. You clrc the wind tllat breathes. You hold cou~-(in thc mango grove. You drink up thc honey from the lotuh pond. You are whcrc all coolness rests. hut you rain clown heal on us. Yorr trrp ~ I Iwind P tllclr hrc~czrhes.

353

You live LIPthcrc o n thc hill, like a lord. You makc couplcs happy. aftcr lovc. You tickle womcn between thcir breasts. Don't fan the fircs of loneliness. You are the wind thctt I>rearAr.s.' First, a word about the form, which is called padizm. W e know this generic term from other Indian literatures, including Sanskrit (Jayadeva's Gird-govinda), but its fullest dcveiopment in Telugu took place from the period of Annamayya on. In late rnedicval Andhra and Tamil Nadu, padams became the primary vehicle, or genre, for the poetry we call 'devotional'. This is a musical form, meant to be sung, of course, and not read or recitcd, bcginning always with a refrain (pallavi) followed sometimes by a secondary refrain (anupallavi) and then, usually, three verses (caravlam). each of which is syntactically linkcd to the refrain. The lorm is thus internally intcgratcd, rccursivc, and entircly self-containcd. Wc might think of the padnm as a 'light classical' mode (though this term is somewhat problematic), perfectly suited to the articulation of a single, unique moment with its particular configuration of mood.2 Annamayya is said to have composed some 32,000 of these pndams, which were engraved, apparently not long after his death, on copper plates kept in the temple-possibly the most costly publishing venture in the history of southern India. Each one is unique, a single poem standing alone, giving voicc to a certain, irreducible, irreplaceable tone. The entire corpus is divided into two categoriesSrrigura, the erotic, and adhyatmika, the metaphysical. Although the distinction appears already in the copper plates themselves, it often strikes us as rather artificial. We might restatc it, or. indeed, attempt to recategorize the corpus. following Velchcru Narayana Rao, hy dividing the poems into thosc in which the poet sings to the god about god (Srrigara), and those in which he sings of himsclf (adhyatrna), often in a gnomic or meditative vein. The above padntn belongs to this latter (metaphysical) class. As such, i t nccd no1 surprise us thal thematically i t is linkcd to a I ~!-ij~di-cc-.snrikirt~ziInllr Vol. XII. cditcd GauripCdrli Ramasuhhaiar~na (Tirupati. 1976). All translations l'rom Annamayya in this chapter arc hy Velchcru Naraynna Rao and D. Shulman. Ser V. Narayana Rao, A.K. Ramanulmn, and D. Shul~nan.Wl~erlC;(?cl is u Custorilrr (Bcrkclcy. 1993). 1-40.

354 The Wi.~dnnlo f ' P o ~ t . \ kind of yogic experience of thc brcath as it entcrs and Icavcs thc body: this brcath, continuous and subtlc. is idcntiried as thc god. At this point, however. there is something new and a littlc surprising, The god who is 'the wind that breathes' also has a personality. a subjective presence, a temperament that plays, wants. feels: hc searches inside and out; he tickles women after love-making: he is. i t seems, capable of deepening or exacerbating the feeling of loneliness and longing-indeed. he may well know such feelings himself. Certainly, the poet knows them: and very often this inner experience of the padam-poet-his shifting landscape of mind or heart-is explicitly shared with the god he worships. The two parties to the relationship are, on the one hand. very much alike; on the other hand. in a sense they actually bring each other into conscious being precisely through this interplay of deep mutual imagining. It is this subtle process of interweaving and unfolding that so often produces a powerful poignancy, which is itself a form of closure, as in the final line of this padam: 'Don't fan the fires of loneliness.' Having achieved living contact with this god, Annamayya feels a nced to temper or moderate the force of feeling-a feeling of partial absence-that this presence implies. And yet we are a long way from the older Tamil poetry of separation, viraha, the unendurable and irreparable knowledge of the divine lover's ultimate distance and of the terrible asymmetry built into this love relationship. I will return to this theme, with some examples to show the contrast. For now, notice how the loneliness expressed in Annamayya's padam is gently woven into the sense of mood, which is conveyed in a light and rather playful manner, In general, the Tiillapaka corpus is, to our surprise, not a poetry of longing and inevitable separation. Something new has happened in the teinplc and in the pilgrims' approach to the god who lives there. Look at another example, again from the udhyutmikn or 'metaphysical' category-this time directed inwards to the poet's own memory and sense of personal self: Where is my wisdom? Time is lost, an offering poured in the dust. I t h i n k I nced this thing. or maybe that thing. I ncver gct beyond such hopes. I keep on waiting. and time lures mc

Does God Have Moods?

355

l ~ k ea deer behind a bush, an offering poured in the dust. There's always this plan, or maybe that one, and my problems will be over. I go through trick after trick, trapped in thoughts and hurt. Time melts like butter next to fire, an offering poured in the dust. I'm sure 1'11 be happy here, or maybe over there, so I keep moving from place to place. I don't even see the god right next to me. Time goes, like empty talk, an offering poured in the dusP Another moment, another mood-skeptical, ironic, self-deprecating, exasperated at the vagaries of self. Yet how strong is the integrity of this self-defeating self, how clearly it seems to present us with lucid boundaries, with consistent and conscious patterns, almost as if some systemic unit were emerging into visibility through the tonal mood. Notice, also, how the time-frame of this padam is basically biographical and linear, a progression from a continous past into a structured present-the real and ongoing time-experience of the poem-in which time itself is seen to be precarious, sub.ject to constant waste and loss. This notion of time, which is foreign to other south Indian temporal modes, is another indication of the altered awareness which Annamayya is shaping or expressing.

2. Building an Empire: The Poet in Temple and Court Before we look at other poems, let us briefly examine the life of Annamayya, as we know i t from a hagiographical work, Annamdcarya-caritramu, composed by the poet's grandson, Cinnana (Cinna TiruvengalanBthudu). The mere existence of this work shows us something of the process by which the Tallapaka revolution, if I may use this word, was institutionalized and fixed in form at Tirupati3Anna1n6ca~ulakirtanalrl, edited by Pbnnri Lilfivatamrna (Madras, 1988), no. 99.

356

T l ~ rWisdom c?f Ports

for no1 only do we have the engraved coppcr plates as witness to a vcritablcpc~dnmindustry in the tcmple, wc can also see the burgeoning literary production. in a wide range of genres, over the course of several generations, even as the T2llapaka fanlily itself achieved a strong economic presence in thc Tirupati area (in the Mankapuram a g r a l r ~ r a m ,around the shrine of the goddess Padmavati). Thus we find parlams, vacana prose poems, hagiographical works, puranic materials, donatory inscriptions, and even a Scistra-the Sarikirtana1ak.sat~amu-setting out the aesthetic norms for padam composition, all parts of the vast Tdjapaka corpus, which still awaits scholarly synthesis. Here is a synopsis of Cinnana, Annamayya's grandson, describing the poet's life and works: Annamayya was born in a family of Nandavanka Brahmins in Tallapaka, in the P6ttapi Nadu, in the month of Vaiiakha, under the ViSakha star.4 Visnu himself told the child's father to name him Annamayya, after the Upanisadic verse: annam brahmeri r~yajarzat. Already as a baby, Annamayya was focused on the god; he would cry, no matter how many lullabies were sung to him, until he heard Visnu's name. He sang to the god from a young age. One day his sister-in-law sent the young boy to bring grass for the cows. Taking a handful of grass in his hand, he cut it with a sickleand at the same time cut his little finger. He cried out, 'Hari Hari!' This was the moment of transformation. Throwing away the sickle. and cutting his bonds to his family and teacher-for God himself was both teacher and relatives to him-Annamayya joined a band of pilgrims headed for Venkatam hill. With them, he walked to Tirupati and began to climb the hill. It was late morning, and he was hungry, actually blinded by hunger: he had never left his mother before. He sat down, wearing his sandals, under a bamboo bush. on a flat slab of rock. The goddess of Tirupati, Alumelmangas came to him, for she knew he was hungry; milk oozed from her breasts, and she offered him a stream of delicious compassion (krpcimrta-dhrira). She told him to remove his sandals, since the mountain was covered with sulagruma stones. As he did so. he saw the mountain fully, in its deep golden hue. She 4Thesame birth-asterism as that ot Namrna!var, supposedly Annnniayya's former birth. =Tamil cilur mrl rrlarikui.

t

fcd him from the prasada that she and Vil;nu atc together in the Lemple. Was i t all a dream'? In any casc. poctry now came to the boy. and he composed a Sataka (100 verscs) for Alumelmanga. He bathed in the Koneru and the Svami-Puskarini tank, bowed to the god in his shrine, and offered him a coin ( a kasu tied to his dhoti); he then sang another Sataka, this time to VenkateSvara himself, whose twelve names were inscribed on the boy's body. When Annamayya recited his long poem M o r e the locked doors of the temple, they opened to admit him. Inside, he recited the Sataka again in the presence of the Nambi priest; a pearl necklace fell from above, a gift of the god. In the temple Annamayya received initiation from a Vaisijava renouncer. to whom the god had appeared in a dream, announcing the arrival of this dark young boy to receive the Vaisnava signs (the conch and discus). Thc sage then sent Annamayya back home, where soon h e was married to two young girls, Tirumalamma (=Tirumakka) and Akkalamma. The girls' relatives at first objected to this match: 'How can one marry a daughter to someone so unworldly?' But the god came in a dream to the girls' parents and arranged the match. After the wedding, the god of Ahobila-Visnu as Narasimhaarrived in the form of a guru and gave the bridegroom the discus and a mantra. The god Hayagriva also appeared before him. From another teacher, ~ a t h a k o ~ a - m u n w i , h o f o l l o w e d the tradition o f Vedfintadeiika,6 Annamayya learned Vedinta. He studied the Vdmikiranzavana with deep feeling. Gradually he became known beyond his home. The king, Saluva Narasimha, ruler of Tankuturu (before he assumed high position in Vijayanagara), sought out the young man and asked him to join him and support him-as Krsna supported Arjuna. Annamayya followed this king, first to Tankuturu, with its Keiava temple, then to PEnug6nda. The king showered gifts upon him-a headdress, bracelets, a spittoon. a house next to the king's. One day, in the royal court, the king invited Annamayya lo sing, and the poet sang the famous padatn 'emo'ko' cigurutadlraramuna ': These marks of black musk on her lips red as buds, what are they but letters of love

356

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7 ' 1 ~Wisdorn oj' Ports

I'or not only do we have the engraved copper platcs as witncss to a vcritablcpud~1117 industry in thc temple, wc can also sec the burgconlng literary production, in a wide range of genres, over the course of several generations, cvcn as thc T;ll!apaka family itself achieved a strong cconomic presence in the Tirupati area (in the Mankapuram agrukar~im,around the shrine of the goddess Padmavati). Thus we find paclams, vacuna prose poems, hagiographical works, purunic materials, donatory inscriptions, and even a Scisrra-the Sarikirtanalak.sat~amu-setting out the aesthetic norms for pudanz composition, all parts of the vast Tallapaka corpus; which still awaits scholarly synthesis. Here is a synopsis of Cinnana, Annamayya's grandson, describing the poet's life and works: Annamayya was born in a family of Nandavanka Brahmins in Tgllapaka, in the P6ttapi Nadu. in the month of VaiSakha, under the ViSakha star." Visnu himself told the child's father to name him Annamayya, after the Upanisadic verse: annam brahmeri ~1-yajanar. Already as a baby, Annamayya was focused on the god; he would cry, no matter how many lullabies were sung to him, until he heard Visnu's name. He sang to the god from a young age. One day his sister-in-law sent the young boy to bring grass for the cows. Taking a handful of grass in his hand, he cut it with a sickleand at the same time cut his little finger. He cried out, 'Hari Hari!' This was the moment of transformation. Throwing away the sickle, and cutting his bonds to his family and teacher-for God himself was both teacher and relatives t o him-Annamayya joined a band of pilgrims headed for Venkatam hill. With thcm, he walked to Tirupati and began to climb the hill. It was late morning, and he was hungry, actually blinded by hunger: he had nevcr left his mother before. Hc sat down. wearing his sandals, undcr a bamboo bush, on a flat slab of rock. The goddess of Tirupati, Alumelmangas camc to him, for she knew hc was hungry; milk oozed from her breasts, and she offered him a stream of delicious compassion (kr/?dnlrta-tihara).She told him to remove his sandals. since the mountain was covered with snlagrtima stones. As hc did so, he saw the mountain I'ully, in its deep golden hue. She The samc birth-as~crismas that oi'Namm3!v;ir. supposedly Annamayya's former hirlh. =7'i1tn1Icllar r 1 ~~1I I O I ~ ~ L I I .

f

D o ~ God s Have Mood.c :) 357 fcd him from thc prusadu that shc and Visnu atc logether in the tcinplc. Was i t all a dream? In any casc. poctry now came to the boy, and he composcd a Sataka (100 vcrscs) for Alumelmanga. Hc bathcd in the Koneru and thc Svami-Puskarini tank, bowed to the god in his shrine, and offered him a coin (a ku.ru tied to his dhoti); he then sang another .Smtaka, this time to Venkateivara himself, whose twelve names were inscribed on the boy's body. When Annamayya recited his long poem bcfore the locked doors of the temple, they opened to admit him. Inside, he recited the Sataka rzgain in the presence of the Nambi priest; a pearl necklace fell from above, a gift of the god. In the temple Annamayya rcccivcd initiation from a Vaisuava renouncer. to whom the god had appeared in a dream, announcing the arrival of this dark young boy to receive the Vaisnava signs (thc conch and discus). Thc sage then sent Annamayya back home, where soon he was married to two young girls, Tirumalamma (=Tirumakka) and Akkalamma. The girls' relatives at first objected to this match: 'How can one marry a daughter to someone so unworldly?' But the god came in a dream to the girls' parents and arranged the match. After the wedding, the god of Ahobila-Visnu as Narasimhaarrived in the form of a guru and gave the bridegroom the discus and a mantra. The god Hayagrivaalso appeared before him. From another teacher, ~ a t h a k o ~ a - m u n iwho , followed the tradition of VedintadeSika.6 Annamayya learned Vedinta. He studied the Vdmfkirumavana with deep feeling. Gradually he became known beyond his home. The king, Saluva Narasimha. ruler of Tankuturu (before he assumed high position in Vijayanagara), sought out thc young man and asked him to join him and support him-as Krsna supported Arjuna. Annamayya followed this king, first to Tankuturu. with its KeSava temple, then to PEnug6nda. The king showered gifts upon him-a headdress, bracelets, a spittoon. a house next to the king's. One day, in the royal court, the king invited Annamayya to sing, and the poet sang the famous padam 'enzcikci cigur~~tadhurumutza ': Thcse marks of black musk on hcr lips red as buds, what arc [hey but letters of lovc

358

The Wisdom o f Ports

sent by our lady to hcr lord? Her eyes the eyes of a c a k o r ~bird, why are they red in the corners'? Think i t over, my friends: what is it but the blood still staining the long glances that pierced her beloved after she drew them from his body back to her eyes? What are they b ~ l letters t of love?

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7

Whcn they put you in chains, or order you killed. when your creditors squeeze you. only His name will get you out. Stubborn as you are, there is no other way.R

How is it that this woman's breasts show so bright through her sari? Can't you guess, my friends? What are they but rays from the crescents left by the nails of her lover pressing her in his passion, rays now luminous as the moonlight of a summer night? What are they but letters of love? What are these graces, these pearls, raining down her cheeks? Can't you imagine, friends? What could they be but the beads of sweat left on her lotus-face by the Lord of the Hills when he pressed hard, frantic in love? What are they but letters of love?' The king asked him to sing the padam again and poetry.' But in his blindness and pride. he then poet compose a padam like this one-about horrified. covered his ears; in the mode of total

again: 'This is true demanded that the him. Annamayya. faithfulness that is

7Ant~umcicri~~ulu .sarihirmriolu.edited Kiim~fiEtti~rinivasulu~~tti (Tirupati. 1982). no.7. Ser Narayana Rao. Rarnanu-jan,and Shulrnan, When God i.5 rr Ci~sfon~er. 49-50.

cxemplificd by a good w i k , he said to the king. 'The tongue that sings to God will not praise vou. You arc like a girlfriend (cPliycrlu) to me; singing to you would bc incestuous, like sleeping with a sister. I cannot accept your friendship.' So the king had his soldiers arrest him: '1 brought you hcre and gave you riches, because you are my childhood friend. Now I asked for one word, and you're upset.' Annamayya was sent to jail, bound in three strong chains. The poet sang to the god: .'

I

The chains fell away. The guards hastened to inform the king, who came to the jail and ordered Annamayya chained again, in iron so heavy that two guards had to carry it. Again the poet sang his poem, and the chain broke in pieces around his toe. The king wept, bowed at his feet, and sought forgiveness; he gave gifts to Annamayya and carried him himself in his palankeen. Annamayya left PEnugbnda and returned to Venkatam, where he sang, over the years, 32,000 sarikirtanalu to the god-some in Yoga, some in the erotic Srrigdra mode, some in the vairdgya mode of renunciation. He also composed a R a m a y a n a , in d v i p a d a ; a Verikat6dri-mcihcltmya. in Sanskrit; 23 Satakas and many prabandhas in various languages. He raised his own family to be poets. He had the gift of ble5sing or cursing, for he had acquired purity of the tongue; people put his sandals on their heads to win relief from distress. The god himself appeared to him and said: 'When Krsnamacfirya [the author of the Simhagiri-vacanamulu]. sang to me in the metaphysical genrc (adhydtma), I became detached (virakta); but when you sang the love-songs of Srrigdra, I became a young man ( m a i i c i pr@ampu~vidu).'~ rikari-velalun... sarikelal' iduvela: Adhyrjmzrz-sarikit-mlulu, V, edited by Vetnri Prabhakara Sastri, copper plate 26, przdrzrn 100, p. 64. ~rifrillrl~xik~ ~ ~ t i r ~ ~ ~ t n C iJivifa-curitrurnu, c(i~uIu edited with introduction ; hy Gauripeddi RBrnasubba<arma by Vetari Prabhakara ~ a s t n re-edited (Tirupatl, 1978).The text concludes with various miraculous achievements of the poet, and also ~nentionsthat he treated the Kannada poet Purandara-

360

7'111, Wi.stlorn c?j'P o r t s

Thcre is a nielal image of' Annamayya in [he Mailkapuram shrine, alongside an irnagc of thc god thal his grandson Cinnana inslallcd there, and thosc of thc twelve Alvars and of Riirnrinu~a.lhc bhLl.yyakaru. One can sce here, in compressed sequence, thc lilerary evolution of Tirupati Vaisnava religion. from thc Tamil poets who first sang to the god, through the major revolulion associated with the emblematic figure of RSmrinuja and thc introduction of Paficaratra institutions into the Tirupati cullic world (in the twelfth-thirteenth centuries), to our innovative composer from Tallapaka, founder of a dynasty of [poets (in t h e fifteenth century)."' T h e tradition r e c o g n i z e s Annamayya's central role by identifying him first with Namrniilvar, the greatest of the Tamil VaiSnava poets, and also with Nandaka, Visnu's sword." The historical contribution of the Tallapaka dynasty to thc Tirupati temple and its economic empire is manifold and complex, beyond the purview of this chapter. What can be said in a general way. at least, is that Annamayya seems to have given voice to a new understanding of person, self, and world, as the balance of power in the Tirupati region was shifting into what we might think of as a 'left-hand' configuration, with strong Brahminical and merchant (or merchant-warrior) components as well a s a movement toward monetarization and the management of fluid resources by the temple administration. T h e shift is also evident in the late medieval crystallization of the Tirupati puranic or narrative tradition, as we shall see. It is this 'left-hand' sensibility and the newly integrated subject who lived it out that come to the fore in the poems. At the same time, our story-from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, the so-called Nayaka era+learly reveals [he way the hitherto distinct domains of royal politics and temple politics were restructuring themselves along similar but competing lines. From the point of view of both the small-scale local and the somewhat grander translocal royal figures. the courtly world was in fact coterminous with that of the deities, and lhey themselves could claim to bc, and were indeed eventually seen as, gods.'? In this arena, Tirupati stands out as a case dasa as an incarnation vfVi!thala/Visnu (at Pandharpur); Purandara-dasa sang of Annamayya, althougli i t is not clear if they are though1 to have met. "' Annamayya's dates are given. in the aka era, on the J'mgura plates: 1346- 1424. I ' Nammijvar, however, is an umsei ol the kaustubha gern. " Onc could also say that Annamayya fulfilled for the temple wvrld the

D o e s God H o l ~ Moocls , V

36 1

of successful rcsislancc lo royal cncroachmenl and of rcmarkablc resilience and aulonomy-a1 once physical, that is cconomic and political, and nletaphysical.

3. Mysteries of Mood Annamayya knew hc was doing something that had not been done before. Almost alone among Telugu poets, he claims originality that is personal and individualistic, and he mocks his imitators: If lhey steal my stylc and add a few words of their own, won't God laugh?" Style, then, is for Annamayya almost a matte; of personal property, closely identified with the poet who has innovated in this manner. Moreover, various distinctive features sustain this vision, including the pcrhaps shocking staterncnt that thc ncw padanr stylc is so private. or so intimate. that one can freely use even obscene words in the poems.14 There is also a distinctive manner of speaking about this literature, for example, in the description in the normative padam-grammar, the Sarikirtana-laksatiarnu, of the poems as the 'intimate secrets of the God who plays at love on the Venkatam Hill' (verikata-iaila-r~ullabha-rati-krida-raha~~yambulu, 12). This word, 'secrets',-the secrets the poet knows about the god and his manner of loving-may be as close a s we can get to a term internal to the tradition for what I have been calling, rather loosely, 'mood' or 'tone'. But this is not a matter of terms and titles. It is time to lry to define analytically what I mean by 'mood', or, if you prefer, 'secret'. For kind of role assumed by his older contemporary, the great poet Sfinatha. for the wider political sphere. Srinatha wandered from patron to patron, almost single-handedly creating the underpinnings for a new and universal notion of kingship. On the Nayaka Fusion of king and divinity, see V. Narayana Rao, D. Shulman, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Svmbols qf Substat~ce:Court and Tatnil in NLiyuku-Period Tan111Nudu (Dclhi, 1992).

l%~haybpulu~n~n~u c ~ s ku u tcirnu nzdlrr g ~ i r r i claivatt~~i t~ tlagudd. [Adl~yutnzusarikirtunnl~c.Vol. 7, copper-plate 196. l~nrlurtl260. p. 1741; cf. Ant~urt~iic.cir\~ujivitu-cc~ritrurrzu.p. 102. ''p~iclatnulu< t - ~ ~ q ~ i t - o - ~ ~rtzr~/~c-tt~c~c/l~urc~-tt~~it~~~fi~~-~~~ikvci-tnr.
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The Wisdom of Poets

Does God Have Moods?

this purpose we can look at another padam, this time from the socalled erotic domain: When I'm done being angry, then 1'11 make love. Right now, you should be glad I'm listening. When you flash that big smile, I smile back. It doesn't mean I'm not angry. You keep looking at me, so I look, too. It isn't right to ignore the boss. When I'm done being angry. You say something, and I answer. That doesn't make it a conversation. You call me to bed, I don't make a fuss. But unless I want it myself, it doesn't count as love. When I'm done being angry. You hug me, I hug you back: you can see I'm still burning. I can't help it, Lord of the Hill, if I'm engulfed in your passion when I'm done being angry.'5

What can we say about such a poem? One is, of course, immediately struck by the independent, almost insolent tone of the devotee, speaking in the female voice, in total confidence of possessing an autonomous self that is subject to constantly fluctuating feelings, some of them contradictory. More than this, even the asymmetry in power and freedom that one might assume to hold for this relationship is here apparently in abeyance: it is the speaker who seems to have the upper hand. But it is also important to notice the internal integrity of this poem, which offers us a compact and nuanced articulation of a coherent moment. The lovers are quarrelling, at odds, and at the same time playing at love, emotio~ally,sexually, psychologically. And since one of the partners is God, we might well conclude that the love relationship wilh the deity includes tensions of this sort, intrinsic to l5

~rt~~rira-.ratikirtanc~ll* 32, copper-plate 16 17, padam 109 (p. 78).

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363

the very acts and attitudes of loving. And yet these tensions arc not in any sense uncontainable, maddening, a source of despair-as they might be in a Tamil poem, from an earlier point in the evolution of the tradition. Rather, the speaker seems at ease, and not unhappy; she also moves in the poem toward some culminating moment of real union (again in marked contrast to the world of Tamil devotion, with its fascination with separation). God and his poet seem to get along, here, rather well. The poem needs no further movement, no wider linkage. It is not part of a cycle but exists rather as a self-contained, self-sufficient statement. In a sense, i t is not going anywhere and thus lacks the latent anxiety of movement. On the other hand, the light tone, the glancing touch of the poet suggest that the 'state' that is being expressed is itself hardly objectified. and in transition. We might do well even to avoid a word like 'state', which already sounds relatively congealed or crystallized. It is a moment, rich in sensation, rich in mixed textures and strong colours, a little paradoxical-like most such moments in Annamayya-on the level of explicit, denotative statements, but entirely consistent and somehow familiar in terms of tone and feeling. Here is a crude parody of the denotation, displaced into paraphrase: 'I am angry at you; I might play along with your wishes, but it isn't really worth your while-only love freely given counts as love-but my anger will pass, no doubt (especially if you make love to me), and I d o actually want that now.' Putting denotation aside, we have a subtle and direct statement of love flowing through or into 'burning' anger. It is rather like listening to a rippling stream, not even 'captured' but somehow musically re-enacted in an ostensibly verbal mode. The discursive aspect needs to be explored further, for it is of a special type, indicative of the reorganized poetic persona who is singing these songs. Moreover, I would be prepared to argue that the poetic texture that conveys i t is in no sense a function or phenomenon of the surface, as opposed, for example, to the hidden depths: in the padams, surface is depth, and what is spoken discursively is, on the whole, the very energy that animates the feeling subject or persona from within. Moreover, this persona is alive in a temporal present not disconnected from, but also not too heavily depcndenl upon, other such singular moments, that mav constitute a linear biographical sequence. The presence of the god is the necessary condition for this persona's expressivity, which is intersubjective, or, perhaps, mutuaily

364

The Wisliorn r?f Poets

formative for bolh parlners to the cvolving love relation. A ccrtaili complexity or even paradoxicality inheres in the form, b u both ~ form and the speaker's voice seem integraled to he point of an unexpectcd tautology-one of thosc all-too-rate experiences of self-coincidence. the subject beautifully and strangely focused in or on the normally elusive self. Or, to use another image, we could say that the contours of a bounded bul manifold innerness are. for this passing nioment, neatly superimposed, almost without spill~ngover into various residues and excesses. This, incidentally, is a feature of mood, in the sense in which I would like to use the word: generally speaking, as we all know from our experience, you cannot subordinate mood to any teleology, any progression toward further states. At best, you can be in it, submitting, exploring, passing through. The real contrast, here, is with the mode of feeling that I will call 'emotion'-and that we know so well from much earlier parts of the south Indian tradtion. In Tamil one speaks of unarvu o r unarcci, usually a non-cognitive (even anti-cognitive) rush of deep feeling and intuitive perception. Surprisingly, 'emotion' of this sort tends to be almost impersonal; it floods the subject and makes his or her assumed personae redundant, a false self that exists mostly as the failed and fractured remnant of some deeper potential. And in these Tamil poems there is a teleology: each 'tautological' moment, if you will, is both formally (poetically) and psychologically linked to an ongoing series aimed at melting down the harsh, concrete, externalized self in the interests of bridging the painful gap between 'us' and 'him'. Let me give you three short examples. taken from Nammiilvar, the central figure in the Tamil ~rivaisnavaliterary tradition-and a former avatar of our poet, Annamayya, as we have seen. Naminiilvar is addressing the same god as Annamayya-Velikateivara at Tirupatiin these Tiru\,irurram verses, which are connected by the antati (Skt. antadi) device, the final syllables of each poem forming the opening of the next in sequcnce. The speaker is a young woman sent to guard the growing millet in the fields on Venkatam Mountain, together with her girlfriends, to whom she speaks of her despair:

S~nuousa5 vines on our dark god's home on norlhcrn Vcnkatam Hill. you won't spcak lo mc. And it' I speak of niy illness,

Does God Ha\v Mood.\:'

365

you won.1 listen. Is it you!. mouth thal tormenls me. heavy with deeds, is it the hoarse rasp of your throat hurling me away like a parrot driven from the fields by your raucous cry? How hard and rare i t is to know. You can hear the lorment, the whole illness of love, suffused with the lover's absence; the poem as a unit is itself something like the parrol's 'raucous cry', that takes the place of any certain knowledge. It is hard, the poet says, to know-hard especially to know the lover experienced as not present. The situation is one of longing, viraha; the god is mentioned, as is usual in these verses, only obliquely, as the lord of northern Venkatam hill. The next verse, however, brings this sense of an oblique presence, that is really an absence, LO a much more concrete and decisive moment of actual departure and loss, for the lover is really going away:

l

f

Hard and rare is what we see. When he says, 'You're like heaven itself, Lord Kannan's home, to me, and still I have to go many miles in search of wealth', then her two eyes, each one wide as the palm of your hand, flashing like fish, are suddenly worth the world, dripping bright pearls, fugitive as gold. She is weeping, shc is l o s ~ helpless, . abandoned, shauercd. Now wc can hear her voicc directly. for oncc identifying thc rcal sub.ject of her passion:

366

The Wis(1on1of Poc1t.s

Does God Huve Mood.\.?

Fugitive is thc black body's glory, pallor sceps through everywhere, and every night is long a5 centuries. These are the gifts, lonely treasures, my good heart offered, drawing near to dark Kannan of the murderous wheel, the enticing cool basil, as it fled away . I 6 In what form is the poet present'? The voice is a female voice, as is common in Tamil hhakti forms-the voice of a lovesick young woman at home on the god's mountain, singing in longing and complaint in a manner that conjures up the god for us, eavesdroppers outside the poem. In this unusually innovative text, subtle indirection is the rule. The poet does not address his god directly, but only via the imagined and internalized beloved; and even she, caught in another loop of this tangled skein, cannot speak about the deity but instead mentions his mountain, his dark colour, and other iconic traits, all this in the overt context of hcr love for the classical hero, in a sense the god's surrogate presence in the poems. In the third verse, it is true, this series of displacements suddenly gives way to what almost amounts to a confession, a more immediate link to the true beloved, who is the god-although the Tamil syntax here is deliberately ambiguous, and we can still read the verse as calling up the absent human lover. And even hcre the 'heart' (nFficu)that has, as i t were, given gifts is somehow not there, like the longed-for lover himself, like the displaced devotee who seeks him; moreover, the heart has a strange autonomy, as if it were some separate part of'the speaker's innerness that leads a detached and rather confused or confusing existence on its own. The emotional power of these verses is, I think, clear. and could be characterized in specific ways: they are tough and unrelenting, filled with reeling that has almost swept the fccling subjcct away, leaving

''

TFrui2irutttrm. ediled by LlLtarnhr T. Virar3kav2c3ryag (Madras, 1971), verses 1 C!- 12

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I

167

behind that 'raucous cry' or. 'the hoarsc rasp' thal echoes ~hroi~gh (he first verse. For our purposes, wc havc to recognize ho* strangely remote this sub-jectis, how littlc is left of him or her after the disturbing contact with the missing god. Even hislher tears. the bright pearls of the second verse, are somehow fleeting, 'fugitive as gold'." This fleeting subject, afloat on n powerfui flood of feeling, becomes remarkably familiar to us as we read through Namrna!vfir's poems, for the voice recurs in recognizable patterns; and the feeling lends itself well to typification and even abstraction. Always there is the absent divine lover, who holds the real power and freedom to act; always we find the human lover, asymmetrically dependent upon, and usually yearning for, this god, who in a deep sense remains unknown, perhaps unknowable (even to himself). Yet the urge to know, to have, to contain, to hold, sets up a tension, never resolved, that animates nearly each verse. The Tamil poet moves step by step through a painful gap or space that the poem at once discloses and seeks, in vain? to bridge. This is the always frustrated or suspended teleology of which 1 have spoken above, that fits the classical poetic grammar of love in separation, and that contrasts so strikingly with the tautological trend of the Annamayyapadams. Note, too, that the padams are in no way susceptible to typification: if feelings can be typified, 'moods'-in the highly textured and tluctuating patterns we have observed in Annamayya-cannot. Each padam stands distinctively alone (and we should remember that there are some 16,000 surviving padams by Annamayya). The contrast is also very clear in the closely related features o f time and memory: for Namma!v2rl time is recursive, repetitive. intensive, perhaps 'mythic' in its depth of structural patterning: for Annamayya it is biographical and discursive. Narnma!vBr's speaker often complains about forgetting; memory is sporadic and precarious, disastrously linked with the refractory, surviving ego. The padam poet, by way of contrast. seems to know himself by remembering himself through the cndlcss series of his moods. Undcrlying these differences, which I have represented, I am afraid, rather crudely and schematically, lies a newly organized subject with a rather different sell-awareness than is attested in earlier south Indian

''On Tirl~virlittatn,\ec the remarks by F. Hardy. Virc~hu-hhukti (Delhi. 1983).3 15-25, noting the rzlalion to Tir-rrkkovui~cir and ol'fc:ring a fn~mcwork for interpretation that prescrvcs the ~ntcgrityof ~ h caesthelic slructurc.

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4. On Creditors and Loans I l c 11:~sa n;lmc: Cortr /?r/gutl~/~i;t.l~t~rUl ( i n 'Tamil j . 'The lord w h o pays interest.' T l ~ >tory c tliar cxplainc this iiamc. \vhich w e l'inti in i ~ ni,iLurc s Iorm c~nlyin the latc ~ncdicvalp~lt-(itlir. 5011rces I'rorii Tiru1);lti (prol);~bly n o c:lrlicr- ~11a1i Annarnayya), tells us that Visnu c a m e to TirupaLi in a aymcnts A s lo ~hc:princ.il>al ol. tlic loan. i t \ repayment will c o m e orlly in some I ' u t ~ ~ r; ~c g c . ' " 1 nccd hardly poirlt o ~ the ~ tover-l nlcrccnar! theme5 o l thl\ s t o ~ - 4 . IS 111 ' ~ ' I I - I I ~ ; I ~O I~ L I > I I ( I \ ~ LO,I -\~ I~I ir;idilit~~i ~. I I I \ ~ \ I \ [li:i~ llic IO;III L . A I I ~ L11.1)1ii ~ V ~ * n h a i ~ , < \ a clcl~.r ~ - ; ~ ' .hro[lic.~-. , (;o\ln~l;~rfij;~ r\\Iio\c 1c'111pI~~ i \ s i ~ ~ ~ i ~ l 111 c ' c1l1 1 ~ ' 1 o \ \ 1 i oi 'l'1rupar1 al 1 1 1 ~ .I ~ O ~ I O I I I oI'1lic~I I I I I ) . I 'I 1'111sL ~ I ) I ~ I ~ I ~ ~ \ \ C\ ~ Y I~ i . s i 01o ~ i11ei \ I O I ~ ! 01 V L ~ I ' I L ~ I ! C \ \ ; I \I\ ,~c (II '( \I I I I ~ 111 ' I I I . I I ~ , I I I I I I ! I O \ \ ~ I ~ , I ~ Ii I ~I .I I01\ I I I C ( L , \ I ~ I I : I I I~:IC.IP 1 0I I \ ~ , I , ~I \ \ I I I I I ~ I ~ : (([/(I~ I

~ l l 1 c . 1 1;11111~)\1L , L - I . ~ : I I I ~ ~~ ~r c l i c c t \ t ] ) ~ , \ o c i ; \ I , ~ 1 1 c l ~ > ~ I ) ~ I , ! I ~ . I I c . [r;~li\l'c~r.iil:~tion\ 0 1 I ~ L . I ~ r I l c c ~ i la!l ~ t l ~ I X I C LC . ~ I~I !~ ~L I, AI \. I10~ ~ \ 1~~1dniC1v:tti. slit h a s h e r o u ~ !t c ~ ~ l l 111 > l '~~ I ~ L I ~ ; kIi t ~ ~ I . ~ I : L I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I I ( T i r ~ ~ c c u n u l;I[- ) t h e I'oot 0 1 IIIL' ~ i i o ~ l n t ; ~ i l(i1-) -~ . \;111t<\ 5 i L ~ tile Tfilal%d-,;l rrct-rll~ilt-r~trl. L o c ; ~ ltr-:lclition c s p l : ~ i n \ u h y she, 1ivc.s a1 t I 1 ~ b:lsc. ol'tIl~\hill. when hcl- huxballtl irlli;~[?rhtlic h c ~ g h t \ ~n~!lic.~liaicly : al'ter the wedcling. Vclika!c\var-a 1.5 said to h ; ~ v c5p1; o n il?c gr-o~lnd an(! then to [lave asked his b n d c to hl-in? him hi.[(. I-nut I'r:)iil tIh(: 1~1;1rkl:i LO d o 50 b e f o r e his saliva drlcd. She. I I L I I T I C ~ ~oi'l. O L I Li~ I S YCI-! ht)! i l l Tirupati. a n d s h e ret111-ncdtoo latc.. I l c then cc>ndcnl~ic.tl he1 to i i l i h cxis[cncc :lpal-L ( s o m e , howelcl'. say Ihr~tshe (./lo.\-(,I 0 I I \ ~ C cllillS! ; ! I indignation 31 the humiliating tcsl). E:lch !light h e \ . i \ ~ l \ her. ~j:!lk:~iy down the mount;iin. a n d climbing i l again bcft,rc da\\:n: Iicnccx~-\111:.c i l is rather a long walk. ancl liis sancials wear O L I I c~;icliiimc he. tlk:i.\ it-lrc is give11 ;i n e w pair ol' sandals L,\cry ~ n o r n i n\lilic,n ~ hc I \ awakened from sleep. In ihc p o d r ~ t ~i t. ~is, Alu1nelniaiiga--Vc11ki1~c
tn(i/lrirttlv(i :,\ conLaincci i n Hlirrr~r\.\.ot/(~t~o-/)lo.ti,~ci. l'!ies I;I~[CI attr~h~~tie)n 15 arhitr3ry. ;~nd[hCL C X L S C C ' I I ~ S10 belong to ~ h clil'~c.cnLtir)r six~zi:ll~h accl-lury. i l is posslhle. thoush no[ certain. that i~ is llic r c c c l i ~ lconlpcl\c.cl {~ltolcii:/lt-illlrl mcnticlncd in an inscription o l 1491. 1 c ~ l ctllc c'ciiLio11p~lt~listlcci I ' I I I I ~ : I ~ I . alc,ny with a grval nunihc'r oSunrela[cd Sanhhr~ltlltilt~iiti~\il ICX[\ O I I 1 1 i 1I~~ I I I P ! C . ti-om \':~rio~ls pc.rlocl\. Ihy (tic 'lirupari clc\i~\~h.an;~ni in I X-17 i~ri:h~r1 1 1 ;*c~r[~l;ii ~ 111lc. ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ t j k ( , ( ( ~ ( ~ ~ ~ / o1 -:in; t t ~borkiilg ~ i / / ( j i ~oil ) ~c~. ~' (~, I, ; ~ h ~ 1 ' ~L!-:~L~~rilpti) ~~~li~l~ 01. thc\c lirupati / ~ i o . ( i t ~Lc\I\. i( ?'I ' r r [ ~ i p1-0~ g ~ ~rrb: I ~ I I ~ I ~ \ ~' ( //I , ~I . I I I I /C ? I ' I I / O L,it!11(7 I (,;;/IL I I I !I?([ A : ~ ~ I ; ~ I I / / I ~ , I i,cidi. 21 \I \I~ll,l\\\~l111~ ~.llL~ll!. T/l~/,ll;ll/i!/ ' i ~ ~ ~ , / l l ! : / l l SI / ~,,~lLOt,,\.l~. illl, ,, )!Ol c111t1Mti/~tr!\ci~~i ( \ I L 1. ~ . I ' I I . L I ~ ? J I I 11.111. 57 (1. t

Doe.r God H u ~ , eMood.s;?

Let us take this last statement as our starting point. Venkateivara, earlier present as flesh-and-blood, remarkably human-as the texts constantly remind us--has retreated into a petrified silence, seemingly out of an inability to tolerate the disharmony between his wives. Imagine that you have come to Tirupati to see this god, whom you encounter in the form of the imposing dark rock standing in the sanctum. Imagine that you are a poet, deeply implicated in the god's inner life, as he is in yours. Your hope, your most persistent effort, may be to find a mode of enticing him out of the total, dense state of holism that is his presence within the rock.22In effect, this is what the padam attempts. Its materials are the evanescent textures of affect and sensation; the poet works with what he has, above all his attentiveness to his own inner states and his knowledge, from within, of the god's experience. The padam poet sings to the god about godsings of all the details of the deity's love-life, which, as the Sankirtanalaksannmu tells us, form the proper substance of padams (venkataSaila-vallabha-rati-krida-rahasyatnbulu: see above).23The poet knows how the god loves, and whom he loves, and the amazing nuances and complexities of feeling that both he and his partner experience. Singing to the god of these matters, Annamayya seems almost to tease him into being: the gentle voice of the poem draws out one facet after another from the compacted, inaccessible fullness of the stone, leading him into a personal and more mundane mode. The poem, in this sense, is like the mirror that shows the deity his own self, and that calls him up out of its depths. But this poetic mirror is never static; it is always flashing seemingly minor glances, suffused with the tremulous tones and hues of a passing manner, the shades of mood. The same mirror, directed inwards, reveals the poet to himself, in similar flux. Annamayya has an ironic, self-conscious grasp of this role of his vis-A-vis the god: You give this world and the other. and I think I've won them myself. You're not finished with me yet. " See Don Handelman, 'The Guises of the Goddess and the Transformation of the Male: Ganyamma's Visit to Tirupati, and the Continuum of Gender', i n D. Shulnlan (ed.),Svllables ofSkv: Stucii~sin South Indian Civilizutiot~in Honour of Velcheru Nut-uvanu Rao (Delhi, 1995). 293-37. '" wish LO thank V. Narayana Rao for this formulation.

37 1

I'm the great expert on God.24 Along with the tone of self-irony. we also find bold statements of the interdependence of the two parties to this relationship-perhaps even of an asymmetrical dependence of the deity on his poet, in complete reversal of the classical Tamil pattern of bhakti poetry: Imagine that I wasn't here. What would you do with your kindness? You get a good name because of me. I'm number one among idiots. A huge mountain of ego. Rich in weakness, i n giving in to my senses. You're lucky you found me. Try not to lose me. Inzagine that I wasn ' t here. I'm the Emperor of Confusion, of life and death. Listed in the book of had karma. I wallow in births, womb after womb. Even if you try, could you find one like me? Imagine that I wasn't here. Think it over. By saving someone so low, you win praise all over the world. You get merit from me, and I get life out of you. We're made for each other, Lord of the Hill. Imagine that I wasn't here.2s Poet and god are 'made for each other1-as they seem actually to make one another in the kirtana frame of celebration and concretized imagination. Each may be said to emerge in this way from the rock. At the same time, each somehow constitutes a separate unit, bounded, emotionally autonomous, and intact. Each has memory, reflexivity, and a non-objectified surface texture that is discursively connected to a fluctuating world inside. Each has a body. senses, moods, which he uses to love. 24 Adhyatm-saizkirtullall~11, edited Gauri pzddi Rimasubbaiarma (Tirupat~. 198I ) , Copper-plate 163, no. 304, pp. 2 0 3 4 . The poet ironically refers to himself by his title acar~ya,'master' (in the Vaisnava tradilion). 25 Arlhvatn~cl .surikirtano/uVIII, copper-plate 208, pp, 12-3.

Docs God Huvr Moods:)

Given this vision of deep n~atualityand interdependence. we might want to ask ourselves again about the issue of connectivity-how, that is. these two bounded subjects. in constant movement. are thought to be linked. Wc began with a padum on breath ('You are the wind that breathes'), that spoke to the yogic-meditative sensibility alive in these poems. I would like to conclude this section with a yet more elaborate meditation on this same theme: If you don't forget what's outside, there is no inside. If you have the outside in you, you forget the inside. If you keep at it, hour by hour, you'll find joy. When you see only the light outside, you miss the dark inside. A man of the world has no knowledge of himself. If you keep staring at the darkness, the outside turns into light. Look steadily inside, and you'll see God. Ifyou don'tforget. Just as sleep eludes you when you keep vigil. on and on, if you keep spinning i n the senses, your mind knows no rest. If you sleep inside yourself, you won't know the world outside. Forget-forget your mind--and in the solitude you'll see God. Your sighs, from the space inside, merge with the space outside: birth and death take place only there. The breath of God inside is the only link with the space outside. Steady the winds. going in and out, i n the self, and you'll see God. Ifyou don't forget.*" Feel the texture, that of a strangely poignant intellection, or of a discursivity which somehow manages to evade the ob.jectivity of its own declarative syntax. This is a felt discursivity rich in apparent paradox and utterly inimical to syllogism-something more like a whisper than a lecture, or, to use the Rilkean image. like a 'gust of god' blowing through the mind. The wind is alive, moving. generating space; the poem seems almost to expand. to open ever wider. in its recitation, as if it were a mantra meant to cleanse the restless inncrness of its dichotomies. to blow away obstruction. It isn't easy to tease out a coherent metaphysics from such a poem. although there does seem to be a d~stinctionbetween two kinds o P outside and two kinds of

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inside-in each case, a disturbing element together with a spacious, enveloping element. The 'outside outside' would be ultimate spaciousness, as would the 'inside inside'. Breath-God's breathconnects these two domains. Bringing the spaciousness outside into the inner world of thought and feeling allows one to see God-and this movement toward the subjective deity, at home in the heart and on his mountain, provides the natural culmination of the verse. In another sense, however, this deity has become transformed in the poem: emerging out of what might be called a Yogic mood, the god's presence is now said to be a fine tissue of connectivity: 'The breath of God inside is the only link with the space outside.' God is the subtle movement that connects existential domains--above all the truly real and living domains that are non-objectified, uncongealed, uncrystallized, here brought into relation with the heavy but ultimately empty forms of conventional experience. Even the paradoxical boundary dividing inside from outside is literally blown away by this animate presence, the breath of -becoming', which is another way of speaking about mood or the feeling of fullness. Emptiness, in this world. would be a possible description of the ontology of objects, while fullness, wholeness, and presence belong to the space between.

5 . Playing with God T have concentrated on the emergence of a living subject. of a rather new type, in the Telugu poems of Annamayya at Tirupati. One should remember that the Annamayyapadam.~are but the earliest stratum of an immense corpus, which developed and changed over time; and we have examined only a tiny handful of these poems, from a single, focused perspective, though they lend themselves to many others. Especially in terms of the implicit metaphysics of these poems, there is much here that is unique-a meditative, yogic sensibility that is at the same time profoundly individualistic and centred in experience, including sensory experience, and that often describes itself as 'play'. We might ask ourselves what i t means to frame the poems, from within, in this fashion (as even the grammar of padarw.~.tile S a r i k i r t a i z a - l a k ~ a ~ t r m udoes: . recall its phrase, I - u t i - k t - i d & raha~~yambulu). Something of the paradox that always inheres in the entrance into play can be felt in these poems that are so playful. tantalizing, teasing, enticing. There is morc to say. analytically. ahout

374

Thc Wistlom of Ports

this mode of understanding the pc~d(~m.s: but pcrhaps it would be better, in conclusion. to Ict two pad(1m.r spcak lor thcmselvcs lrom within this expressly stated. internal frame: We can't know where we belong. Still, we come to Visnu. It seems the curtain is wide open. If you know that, you have knowledge. If you forget, or lose interest, he disappears. Karma catches you like a noose. It comes off if you pull it. They entice us, the games he plays. Where do we belong?

It's all part of this passing gamc The past clings to our body. When we cross the doorway, there is truth. Badness never ends, and there's never enough good. In the end, time is a game. High on the mountain, God is king. Higher than heaven is t r ~ t h . ~ "

Heaven is waiting for you, if you're rich in goodness. Hell lies on the way, rooted in cvil. If you just touch them, they catch you. The skill is in crossing over. They entice us, the games he plays. Where do we belong? If you are determined, God shows himself. If you get entangled, he tightens the noose. If the Lord of the Hills won't take care of us, they'll entice us, the games he plays. Where do we belong ?*' Life day after day is a game. To find what you cannot see is truth. Coming is real. Going is real. What happens in between is a game. Right in front of you lies the world. At the very end is truth. W e eat food. W e wear clothes. 27 Ad/zylydtma-sa~ikirtaml~lXI. edited Ananthakrishna Sarma (Tirupati, 1055). copper-plate 381, no. 179, p. 121.

Zn Anr~t~t~~acarvula kirtantrlu.

edited Piinna Lilavatarnrna. no. 30