vedāntācārya-varyo me sannidhattāṃ sadā hṛdi ||
The noble Veṅkaṭanātha,
endowed with śrī,
(saffron-maned) lion among poets and philosophers,
supreme teacher of the Vedānta
—may he be established forever in my heart!
The noble Veṅkaṭanātha, often referred to within Śrīvaiṣṇava circles with the greatest of reverence as Śrī Vedānta Deśika, the Teacher of the Vedānta or, more grandly and formally (as my grandfathers always referred to him), as Swāmī Śrīman Nigamānta Mahādeśika, was easily one of the most brilliant individuals to have ever lived. He set his formidable intellectual powers to work in service of the Śrīvaiṣṇava community, establishing a philosophical, theological, and poetic edifice upon the foundations that had been laid by other intellectual giants before him (such as Śrī Rāmānujācārya, who is perhaps the best-known of the early thinkers, at least outside the community). What has fascinated so many people, both within and without the Śrīvaiṣṇava community, is the depth and breadth of Śrī Vedānta Deśika's work; as Steven P. Hopkins puts it,
"Along with working in three major languages of his southern tradition—Sanskrit, Tamil, and Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit—Veṅkaṭeśa was a master of many genres of philosophical prose and poetry. He wrote long ornate religious poems (kāvyas) in Sanskrit; a Sanskrit allegorical drama (nāṭaka); long religious lyric hyms (stotras and prabandhams) in Sanskrit, Māhārāṣṭrī Prākrit, and in Tamil; as well as commentaries and original works of philosophy, theology, and logic in Sanskrit and in a hybrid combination of the Sanskrit and Tamil languages called maṇipravāḷa ('jewels and coral')." (p. 11, An Ornament for Jewels: Love Poems for the Lord of Gods by Vedāntadeśika)Work is now being done in the Western academy on Śrī Vedānta Deśika not just as poet or philosopher alone, but as someone who combines the two, who uses the creative tension between these two poles of human intellectual capacity to explore more fully the limits of human thought and to convey in language some truths about the universe, God, and man. This combination of poetry and philosophy is particularly interesting in Śrī Vedānta Deśika's stotras, which are devotional poems of short-to-medium length (anywhere from four to a hundred verses) addressed to different manifestations of the Śrīvaiṣṇava conception of the Divine.
In this month of Margazhi (mārkali), when it is customary throughout the Tamil lands to sing, recite, and listen to the Tiruppāvai hymns of the saint-goddess Āṇṭāḷ, I hope to translate the Godā-stuti of Śrī Vedānta Deśika, twenty nine verses in Vasantatilakā and Mālinī meters that are addressed to Āṇṭāḷ (whose name was Godā in Sanskrit, written as Kōtai in Tamil). I will be using the beautiful LaTeX version prepared by Sunder Kidambi, generously made available at this site. This will be my first attempt at translating a short-ish devotional poem, and I hope to constantly update and refine my translations over the course of the month. I beg you to indulge me, to forgive me for my mistakes and to not take offense at my missteps, and to correct me so that I may produce the best work I can.
<UPDATE>
I found this link at the old Bhakti-list archives to a person's account of Sri Velukkudi Krishnan's exposition of the Godā-stuti and of its connections to the Tiruppāvai (and to other texts held sacred by the Śrīvaiṣṇavas).
Thanks to more Googling I found this complete, excellent translation of the Godā-stuti online. I will avoid referring to it as far as I can so that I can claim some level of originality, but it certainly seems like a very useful resource to draw upon when stuck.
</UPDATE>
not just as poet or philosopher alone, but as someone who combines the two, who uses the creative tension between these two poles of human intellectual capacity
ReplyDeleteActually, the idea of them as two poles seems to be a Western notion that does not quite hold in the Indian context. (Consider Walt Whitman's much-quoted "When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer", an example of anti-science poetry, and Feynman's question "What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?") In the Indian context, we have, besides Vedanta Deshika, Adi Shankaracharya (Moha Mudgara (Bhaja Govindam) and Saundaryalahari), Appayya Dikshita, Abhinavagupta, Bhartrihari, etc., etc. (In Bhartrihari's case, earlier Western scholars were convinced that the poet and the philosopher were different people, but slowly most of the reasons for considering them distinct have broken down.) In talking of Bhartrihari and the philosopher-poet combination, Ingalls writes: "The combination is rare in Europe but common in India as the examples of Dharmakirti, Śaṅkarācārya, Śrī Harṣa, and many others will show. In fact it is unusual in India to find an important philosopher who was not also a poet." And in Kshemendra's Kavikanthabharana, he says what a poet must be:
With his own
eyes a poet
observes the shape of a leaf.
He knows how to make
people laugh
and studies the nature of each living thing.
The features of ocean and mountain,
the motion of sun, moon and stars.
His thoughts turn with the seasons.
He goes among
different peoples
learning their landscapes,
learning their languages.
(Translation by Andrew Schelling)
As is clear (even more so in the original), Kshemendra expects the poet to be a keen observer of nature: be a naturalist, astronomer, sociologist, linguist. And most poets (say Magha) accordingly do exhibit a deep understanding of several shastras.
This — the poet-philosopher combination — is just one instance of what would be considered a "contradiction" in Western thought but is in harmony in Indian thought. :-)
I largely agree with the idea that the Indian tradition does not necessarily perceive a sharp distinction between the poet and the philosopher. (This is also true of the Islamic intellectual tradition, where too you find poet-philosophers: Ibn ‘Arabī is perhaps the greatest name that comes to my mind.) To my mind, the line between the two as is commonly drawn today is excessively sharp, and is one of the negative effects of modern civilization's otherwise-commendable commitment to rationalism.
ReplyDeleteThat does not mean, however, that there is in fact no distinction between poetry and philosophy. They are different ways of communicating something about the world (even if someone scientistically-minded would claim otherwise)—and it is not immediately obvious to me that they communicate the same thing in different ways. This is why I think there is a real tension between these two different ways of thinking about the cosmos, although I fully agree that this tension is not necessarily a contradiction. (All the more reason why intellectual giants like Vedānta Deśika and Appayya Dīkṣita deserve all the respect they can get and more!) Classical Indic and Islamicate intellectual cultures got it right, I believe, when they used this tension fruitfully.
I agree with you completely. I didn't mean anything like saying that poetry and philosophy are the same, or even that they express the same thing in different ways. I only meant that the human nature/spirit needed for them is not incompatible (though not identical either), and in an ideal world one wouldn't be too surprised to encounter both in the same person.
ReplyDeleteLet me blur the distinction between philosopher and scientist for a moment, and go back to Feynman's comment and C P Snow's "Two Cultures" observation: many people who see themselves on the "poetry" side today often happily say that a scientific education kills the poetic spirit, or that not much creativity is needed to be a scientist (even, or as they may say especially, a mathematician)! :-)