Clouds and geese

Yigal Bronner and David Shulman's " 'A Cloud Turned Goose': Sanskrit in the Vernacular Millennium" is an absolutely fascinating journey through a new phase of Indian intellectual and literary production in Sanskrit and in the vernaculars in the last thousand years. Their argument is important and complex, and I will not do it injustice by reproducing it here. All I wish to do is to present one short portion of their analysis of Vedānta Deśika's Haṃsasandeśa, a messenger-poem (dūta-kāvya) that consciously takes as its model Kālidāsa's famous Meghadūta or Meghasandeśa while simultaneously surpassing it in multiple ways. 

As background, Kālidāsa's original depicts a yakṣa, a semi-divine being, who is separated from his beloved and thus recruits a cloud as his messenger to take his love to her, just as Rāma sent Hanumān as a messenger to Sītā when they were separated. Vedānta Deśika applies this idea to Rāma himself, who recruits a majestic haṃsa, a goose (translated as "swan" in earlier English versions because the goose is an unfairly maligned bird in English culture!), to fly south to Laṅkā and convey his love to Sītā after Hanumān has returned with news of her. This sets the stage, as Bronner and Shulman beautifully show, for a virtuoso performance of spatial, temporal, and intertextual layering.

This verse, from which their paper takes its name, is as follows in the original:

lakṣmī-vidyul-lalita-vapuṣaṃ tatra kāruṇya-pūrṇam
mā bhaiṣīs tvaṃ marakata-śilā-mecakaṃ vīkṣya megham |
śuddhair nityaṃ paricita-padas tvādṛśair deva-haṃsair
haṃsī-bhūtaḥ sa khalu bhavatām anvavāyâgra-janmā  || (Haṃsasandeśa 1.33)

Lakṣmī, a streak of lightning, graces a body
full of compassion and dark as emerald.
Don't be afraid when you see
a cloud, at whose feet
great seers, birds of your feather,
cluster in worship.
It's a cloud turned goose—
the firstborn in your line.

If it sounds strange to you, so it should. The cloud in question, at least on one level, is the dark icon of Varadarāja-svāmi / Viṣṇu in Kāñcīpuram, where our travelling goose arrives as a pilgrim at Rāma's suggestion. On the breast of this image we find Lakṣmī, who is thus appropriately likened to a flash of lightning within the dark monsoon cloud. At the feet of this emerald-coloured Viṣṇu lie the most accomplished Śrīvaiṣṇava devotees, the nitya-sūris, who have been granted the honorific title of deva-haṃsa, 'heavenly geese' (haṃsa or paramahaṃsa are common titles for advanced ascetics or seers). What is more, the cloud-cum-god himself has become yet another goose in the sense that he is identical to the supreme reality, refereed to already in the Upaniṣads by this same word, haṃsa. As such, he must be the First Goose, and hence the founder of the entire species of which our messenger is the latest representative. So, as the modern commentator S. Narayana Iyengar remarks, there are three conspicuous meanings for the word haṃsa in this one verse: 'a swan [sic], a pure ascetic, [and] the Supreme Spirit.' But there is a fourth one as well: for clearly Kālidāsa's cloud is once again invoked in the most direct metapoetic manner conceivable. The cloud-messenger has truly become a goose, after serving as the firstborn in the line or genre of messenger-poems … It is also very striking that a description of the current iconic image of the god in Kāñcīpuram is given to us as a future projection from out of the past which is the poem's present. 

I want to briefly sort out the complex chronological references that Vedānta Deśika is playing with in his poem. There are three conceptually distinct chronologies here, which are all being merged into one through a variety of strategies. 

The first is the historical sequence in which the major texts were composed (i.e., in our world): first comes Vālmīki's composition of the Rāmāyaṇa; next comes Kālidāsa's Meghasandeśa; subsequently come the Tamil devotional compositions of the Āḻvārs and Kampaṉ's version of Rāma's tale, the Irāmāvatāram; and finally, nearly a thousand years after Kālidāsa, comes Vedānta Deśika's Haṃsasandeśa.

The second is the internal sequence of time within Kālidāsa's work. His yakṣa hero is aware of the actions depicted in the Rāmāyaṇa, and as Bronner and Shulman show, depicts a geography in which mythic and historical past all blend in.

The third is the internal sequence of time within Vedānta Deśika's work. Hanumān has just returned from his reconnaissance mission to Laṅkā and has just told the whole story to Rāma, who now pines even more for his beloved and thus recruits a goose as yet another messenger to fly south. 

These are all tied together by both literary conceit and narrative skill. In the Sanskrit universe, Vālmīki is not just the composer of the Rāmāyaṇa but an actual character in the story, who composes the work well after Rāma's coronation. Consequently, as Vedānta Deśika sees it, the point of time at which his work is set is actually earlier than the act of the composition of the Rāmāyaṇa itself. His work thus acknowledges its debt to Kālidāsa while also inverting the chronological sequence between the two, thus giving rise to "future projection[s] from out of the past which is the poem's present."

What is the message that Rāma wants to give Sītā? An incredibly beautiful, poignant message of love, whose power is heightened immeasurably by the recognition of the fact that for Vedānta Deśika, this God speaking of God's love for God, giving the devotee a glimpse of the ever-present nature of Divine love.

deha-sparśaṃ malaya-pavane dṛṣṭi-sambhedam indau
dhāmaîkatvaṃ jagati bhuvi câbhinna-paryaṅka-yogam |
tārā-citre viyati vitatiṃ śrīvitānasya paśyan
dūrī-bhūtāṃ sutanu vidhinā tvām ahaṃ nirviśāmi || (Haṃsasandeśa 2.40)

I will not provide Bronner and Shulman's beautiful analysis of this verse, and will leave you only with their translation. (p. 26)

Our bodies touch
in the southern wind.
Our eyes meet
in the moon.
We live together in a single home—
the world, and the earth
is the one bed we share.
The sky scattered with stars
is a canopy stretched above us.
Think of this, my lean beauty:
However far you may be,
I still find my way
into you.

Reference

2006. Yigal Bronner and David Shulman. "A Cloud Turned Goose: Sanskrit in the Vernacular Millennium." The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 43.1.