The great sixteenth-century intellectual Appayya Dīkṣita opens his introductory treatise on Sanskrit poetics, the Kuvalayānanda or the "Joy of the Water-Lily", with three beautiful benedictions, or maṅgalācaraṇas, dedicated to the Devī, to Śiva and Pārvatī, and to Kṛṣṇa / Mukunda. I'm trying to read this work right now along with my friends BW and MS, and we worked out rough-ish translations for these verses. The opening verse, in particular, is beautifully structured both in terms of its aural effect and in terms of its coherence of meaning.
As befits a work that attempts to (re)define the hugely complex world of Sanskrit formalist literary theory, this opening verse is worthy of deeper analysis, in order to figure out precisely how it depicst a fully coherent poetic image. In particular, Nirañjan Miśrā's twentieth-century Hindi commentary on the Kuvalayānanda sheds some useful light on the poetic images here.
Grammatically, the verse is a single sentence with an imperative verb, dūrīkarotu; indeed, it is the second line of the verse that contains agent, verb, and patient. The whole first line is a single compound that modifies the subject of the verse, Gaurī-caraṇa-paṅkajam, which is in fact the last word of the entire verse.
Now, poetically speaking, there are two complex images in this verse. The first dwells inside the compound adjective; the second is the subject of the verse itself. Let's begin with the second image.
The equation of Gaurī's feet to lotuses is one of the most common tropes in Sanskrit poetics, but the image of the goddesses of heaven bowing down, their braids cascading over her feet, is more complex than that. There are other poetic references to kings so exalted that the dust from their feet occludes the gems on the crowns of their rivals, implying that they have bowed down to him. This is a similar image, but without any sense of humiliation on the part of the goddesses.
Now in English, "lotus-feet" is a straight-forward, if tired, metaphor; however in Sanskrit literary theory, the words pāda-paṅkajam uttered in this verse are not a straight-forward rūpaka alaṅkāra (the standard figure of speech that is translated as "metaphor" into English). Nirañjan Miśrā explains that "in the rūpaka alaṅkāra, there is an unbroken relationship between the object [upamāna] and the subject [upameya] of comparison." Here, however, "it is the feet that have the power to dispel sin, and this power does not relate to the lotus." This is therefore not a straight-forward rūpaka alaṅkāra, but a different alaṅkāra called pariṇāma (meaning "transformation", I suppose), since "the lotuses that are the object of comparison must be transformed into the feet that are the subject of comparison in order to effect the action" described in the verse.
What about the first image? This is a bit trickier because the compound, like all compounds, can be understood in different ways. Word for word, it reads "goddess-braid-dense-bee-making buzzing", and so it is not clear whether there are actually bees that are located inside the dense braids of the goddesses (not implausible given that these goddesses are usually depicted as having lots of fragrant flowers in their hair), or whether the bees are in fact the dense, black braids themselves. In order to sustain the coherence of the image, Nirañjan Miśrā reads this image also as an example of the pariṇāma alaṅkāra, but with a twist. So why is it a pariṇāma alaṅkāra? "The superimposition of the bees onto the goddesses' braids may be a rūpaka alaṅkāra. But further thought shows this to be the pariṇāma alaṅkāra too, because buzzing is a property of the bee, not of the braids." And what is the twist? "The braids that are the subject of comparison need to become the bees that are the object of comparison in order to buzz."
Thus the image portrayed in the verse coheres quite beautifully; the two figures of speech used are both "transformations", and further, they are "inverses" of each other. Notice how well they map onto each other: the two upamānas are "bee" and "lotus", while the two upameyas are "braids" and "feet". The physical proximity of the braids to the feet mirrors the logical and natural proximity of bee and lotus. Furthermore, each upamāna-upameya pair effects some sort of change, but whereas in the first case it is the upamāna that is the bee that causes the change, it is the upameya that is Gaurī's feet that is responsible.
[As an aside, I always find the English terms "object of comparison" and "subject of comparison" to be terribly confusing. I prefer using the Sanskrit terms for the two, upamāna and upameya, respectively. Stemming from the root upa√mā, meaning "to compare", the word upamāna means, literally, "the instrument of comparison", that is to say the yard-stick or standard that is used for the comparison; in other words, the "object" of comparison. Similarly, the word upameya literally means "the thing to be compared", which is to say the "subject" of comparison.
In alaṅkāra-śāstra, every simile has four components: (1) upameya, the "subject", the thing that is being compared; (2) upamāna, the "object", the standard of comparison; (3) dyotaka, the "indicator" of comparison, usually a word like iva or yathā that can translate to "like" or "as" in English; and finally (4) sādhāraṇa-dharma, the property shared by upameya and upamāna that makes it possible for them to exist in that sort of relationship. A complete simile must have all four components, but it is often the case that one or more things are left unstated, often for poetic effect. In this verse, for instance, the sādhāraṇa-dharmas that enable the two metaphors are not mentioned.
The naked root √mā has as its base meaning the idea of measurement, which is extended to this idea of comparison (which, after all, is what measurement is all about!). With the addition of a different prefix, we obtain the root pra√mā, which means "to know", "to cognize correctly". By an analogous process of derivation, we obtain the two words pramāṇa and prameya; the former is "an instrument of correct cognition", or in other words, a valid source of knowledge, whereas the latter is "a thing to be correctly cognized", or in other words, a proper object of knowledge, something worthy of epistemological investigation. The Sanskrit words are just cleaner and more logical than their usual English translations.]
amarī-kabarī-bhāra-bhramarī-mukharī-kṛtam |
dūrīkarotu duritaṁ Gaurī-caraṇa-paṅkajam || 1 ||
|| 1 ||
May the lotuses that are the feet of Gaurī,
resonant with the buzzing bees that are the dense, braided locks of goddesses,
dispel impurity!
As befits a work that attempts to (re)define the hugely complex world of Sanskrit formalist literary theory, this opening verse is worthy of deeper analysis, in order to figure out precisely how it depicst a fully coherent poetic image. In particular, Nirañjan Miśrā's twentieth-century Hindi commentary on the Kuvalayānanda sheds some useful light on the poetic images here.
Grammatically, the verse is a single sentence with an imperative verb, dūrīkarotu; indeed, it is the second line of the verse that contains agent, verb, and patient. The whole first line is a single compound that modifies the subject of the verse, Gaurī-caraṇa-paṅkajam, which is in fact the last word of the entire verse.
Now, poetically speaking, there are two complex images in this verse. The first dwells inside the compound adjective; the second is the subject of the verse itself. Let's begin with the second image.
The equation of Gaurī's feet to lotuses is one of the most common tropes in Sanskrit poetics, but the image of the goddesses of heaven bowing down, their braids cascading over her feet, is more complex than that. There are other poetic references to kings so exalted that the dust from their feet occludes the gems on the crowns of their rivals, implying that they have bowed down to him. This is a similar image, but without any sense of humiliation on the part of the goddesses.
Now in English, "lotus-feet" is a straight-forward, if tired, metaphor; however in Sanskrit literary theory, the words pāda-paṅkajam uttered in this verse are not a straight-forward rūpaka alaṅkāra (the standard figure of speech that is translated as "metaphor" into English). Nirañjan Miśrā explains that "in the rūpaka alaṅkāra, there is an unbroken relationship between the object [upamāna] and the subject [upameya] of comparison." Here, however, "it is the feet that have the power to dispel sin, and this power does not relate to the lotus." This is therefore not a straight-forward rūpaka alaṅkāra, but a different alaṅkāra called pariṇāma (meaning "transformation", I suppose), since "the lotuses that are the object of comparison must be transformed into the feet that are the subject of comparison in order to effect the action" described in the verse.
What about the first image? This is a bit trickier because the compound, like all compounds, can be understood in different ways. Word for word, it reads "goddess-braid-dense-bee-making buzzing", and so it is not clear whether there are actually bees that are located inside the dense braids of the goddesses (not implausible given that these goddesses are usually depicted as having lots of fragrant flowers in their hair), or whether the bees are in fact the dense, black braids themselves. In order to sustain the coherence of the image, Nirañjan Miśrā reads this image also as an example of the pariṇāma alaṅkāra, but with a twist. So why is it a pariṇāma alaṅkāra? "The superimposition of the bees onto the goddesses' braids may be a rūpaka alaṅkāra. But further thought shows this to be the pariṇāma alaṅkāra too, because buzzing is a property of the bee, not of the braids." And what is the twist? "The braids that are the subject of comparison need to become the bees that are the object of comparison in order to buzz."
Thus the image portrayed in the verse coheres quite beautifully; the two figures of speech used are both "transformations", and further, they are "inverses" of each other. Notice how well they map onto each other: the two upamānas are "bee" and "lotus", while the two upameyas are "braids" and "feet". The physical proximity of the braids to the feet mirrors the logical and natural proximity of bee and lotus. Furthermore, each upamāna-upameya pair effects some sort of change, but whereas in the first case it is the upamāna that is the bee that causes the change, it is the upameya that is Gaurī's feet that is responsible.
[As an aside, I always find the English terms "object of comparison" and "subject of comparison" to be terribly confusing. I prefer using the Sanskrit terms for the two, upamāna and upameya, respectively. Stemming from the root upa√mā, meaning "to compare", the word upamāna means, literally, "the instrument of comparison", that is to say the yard-stick or standard that is used for the comparison; in other words, the "object" of comparison. Similarly, the word upameya literally means "the thing to be compared", which is to say the "subject" of comparison.
In alaṅkāra-śāstra, every simile has four components: (1) upameya, the "subject", the thing that is being compared; (2) upamāna, the "object", the standard of comparison; (3) dyotaka, the "indicator" of comparison, usually a word like iva or yathā that can translate to "like" or "as" in English; and finally (4) sādhāraṇa-dharma, the property shared by upameya and upamāna that makes it possible for them to exist in that sort of relationship. A complete simile must have all four components, but it is often the case that one or more things are left unstated, often for poetic effect. In this verse, for instance, the sādhāraṇa-dharmas that enable the two metaphors are not mentioned.
The naked root √mā has as its base meaning the idea of measurement, which is extended to this idea of comparison (which, after all, is what measurement is all about!). With the addition of a different prefix, we obtain the root pra√mā, which means "to know", "to cognize correctly". By an analogous process of derivation, we obtain the two words pramāṇa and prameya; the former is "an instrument of correct cognition", or in other words, a valid source of knowledge, whereas the latter is "a thing to be correctly cognized", or in other words, a proper object of knowledge, something worthy of epistemological investigation. The Sanskrit words are just cleaner and more logical than their usual English translations.]
absolutely wonderful analysis, really makes one want to learn more about this beautiful poetic tradition. good job gokul!
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