The beloved who is near and hidden

It’s been far too long since I translated any Persian, so here’s a poem by the master of masters, Mawlana Rumi, in the simple but beautiful rajaz muthamman meter:

ay bā man-o penhān cho del, az del salām-at mīkonam.

ای با من و پنهان چو دل از دل سلامت می کنم
تو کعبه‌ای هر جا روم قصد مقامت می کنم

Hey you, who’re with me and are yet hidden, like my heart—
my heartfelt greetings to you!
You’re the Ka‘bah: wherever I go, I head straight for your place.

هر جا که هستی حاضری از دور در ما ناظری
شب خانه روشن می شود چون یاد نامت می کنم

Wherever you are, you’re present, as the supervisor within us from afar;
The bed-chamber is flooded with light when I remember your name.

گه همچو باز آشنا بر دست تو پر می زنم
گه چون کبوتر پرزنان آهنگ بامت می کنم

Sometimes I briefly alight, like a friendly falcon, upon your arm;
Sometimes I head for your roof, like a pigeon fluttering its wings.

گر غایبی هر دم چرا آسیب بر دل می‌زنی
ور حاضری پس من چرا در سینه دامت می کنم

If you’re absent at every moment, then why do you injure my heart?
And if you’re present, then why do I try to ensnare you in my bosom?

دوری به تن لیک از دلم اندر دل تو روزنیست
زان روزن دزدیده من چون مه پیامت می کنم

You’re far from me physically, but there’s a window from my heart onto yours;
From that stolen window, I send you a message, like the moon.

ای آفتاب از دور تو بر ما فرستی نور تو
ای جان هر مهجور تو جان را غلامت می کنم

O sun, from afar do you shine your light upon me;
O you, who are life to all abandoned by you, I serve you as a slave.

من آینه دل را ز تو این جا صقالی می دهم
من گوش خود را دفتر لطف کلامت می کنم

I give to the mirror of my heart your lustre;
I make my ears a record for your delicate words!

در گوش تو در هوش تو و اندر دل پرجوش تو
این‌ها چه باشد تو منی وین وصف عامت می کنم

In your ear, in your mind, in your exuberant heart
Whatever may be, you’re mine—
thus do I generally describe you.

Looking back in space and time

The 17th-century Syrian poet Fatḥ Allāh Ibn al-Naḥḥās (فتح الله ابن النحاس) was regarded as one of the two best poets of his time. Although this particular period of Arabic literature has been ignored and disregarded as an age of decadence, prolixity, and baroque ornamentation (the so-called ‘aṣr al-inḥiṭāṭ, عصر الانحطاط), it is becoming increasingly clear that this is a case of people selectively rewriting history by privileging certain parts and certain elements over others. 

I’m not taking a definite stance here because I don’t know enough about both sides, but after having read Ibn al-Naḥḥās’s beautiful qaṣīdah “He saw blame pouring in from all sides, and it scared him” (ِرأی اللومَ من كلِّ الجهات فَراعَهُ), I think we do ourselves a great injustice by writing off a giant period of time as entirely lacking in poetic merit. This one line, where Ibn al-Naḥḥās talks about how he is forced to leave Aleppo after a scandal involving him and his (male) beloved, is just gorgeous:

فَرُحْتُ وَسَيْري خَطْوَةٌ وَالْتِفاتَةُ ❊ إلى فائتٍ مِنْهُ أُرَجِّي ارْتِجاعَهُ

So I left; and every for’ard step was a glance backward

Looking for a lost past, whose return was the thing I craved.

I’ve committed the cardinal sin of trying to emulate the rhythm of the ṭawīl meter in English, which I fear has straitjacketed my translation. But perhaps this may give you some sense of how cleverly, and poignantly, Ibn al-Naḥḥās is able to play with the ideas of looking backward in space—towards a city he loves, in which dwells the young man he loves, who has chosen not to come bid him farewell; and in time—towards a past when they were together, when all was well. And, perhaps most interestingly, with the idea that looking vainly backward in space for his missing beloved is also looking vainly forward in time for a lovers’ reunion that will never be. 

Appayya Dīkṣita on figurative language

(This post is a draft, and I will likely edit my translations below, multiple times.)

In his Vṛttivārttika (“An Explication of Linguistic Operations”), Appayya Dīkṣita briefly outlines his theory of semantics, focusing on the processes by which words give rise to different meanings. As befits a good ālaṅkārika, literary theorist, in the post-Ānandavardhana universe, he accepts three such operations: 

• abhidhā, “denotation”,
• lakṣaṇā, “figuration” or something similar, and 
• vyañjanā, “suggestion”. 

This work of his, though, only defines abhidhā and lakṣaṇā. Does that mean the Vṛttivārttika is incomplete? Or is it the case that Appayya wanted to focus only on these two, postponing discussion of the often-problematic vyañjanā? Things are unclear, but what we do know is that in his other works (see the many articles by Yigal Bronner on Appayya) Appayya wants to reduce the role taken up by dhvani in poetics, and it is possible that this also means he wants to give abhidhā and lakṣaṇā more importance than post-Mammaṭa alaṅkāraśāstra permits.

Now, Appayya Dīkṣita argues that there are seven subtypes of lakṣaṇā. (This is one more than Mukulabhaṭṭa defines in his Abhidhāvṛttimātṛkā. One reason Mukulabhaṭṭa was so expansive was because he entirely denied the existence of a separate linguistic operation called vyañjanā, trying instead to bring it entirely under the domain of lakṣaṇā. I wonder what this says about Appayya’s intentions?) He offers examples for each of them, and some day I will try to list them all out systematically. For now, though, I restrict myself to his last two subtypes of lakṣaṇā, both of which he exemplifies using the single verse offered below.

ā pādam ā cikura-bhāram aśeṣam aṅgam 
ānanda-bṛnda-lasitaṃ sudṛśām asīmam |
antar mama sphuratu santatam antarātmann
ambhoja-locana tava śrita-hasti-śailam ||

śuddha-sâropa-lakṣaṇā yathā ‘ā pādam’ iti | atra bhagavad-aṅgeṣv ānanda-kāritvena ānanda-padasya sāropa-lakṣaṇā | ānanda-karaṇe itara-vailakṣaṇya-dyotanaṃ phalam |  ānanda-kāriṇi viṣaya-nigaraṇena “ānando ’yam” iti prayoge sâdhyavasāya-lakṣaṇā | ānandâvyabhicāra-dyotanaṃ phalam  ||

From feet up to thick, curly locks,
May Your entire body
        shimmering endlessly with clusters of pure bliss
        for those with blessed sight,
shine resplendent eternally within me,

O Indweller of my soul,
Lotus-eyed Lord 
         who lives atop Elephant Hill!

Śuddhā sâropā lakṣaṇā is exemplified in the verse that begins with the words ā pādam. Here, the word ānanda (“bliss”) refers to the Lord’s limbs through sâropā lakṣaṇā, because of their being causers of bliss. The result is the illumination of the impossibility of any other thing being an instrument of bliss.

The word ānanda refers to a causer of bliss through sâdhyavasāya-lakṣaṇā via the usage “it is bliss”, because in that case the topic at hand (i.e., the causer of bliss) gets wholly subsumed by the description (i.e., bliss). The result of this is the illumination of the total non-deviation of bliss from the causer of bliss.


What Appayya Dīkṣita does not mention is the source of his example verse. It turns out to be the 105th, and last, verse of the Śrī Varadarāja Stava, his long, highly poetically ornate praise-poem dedicated to Lord Varadarāja, the form of Viṣṇu manifested in the temple icon at Elephant Hill in the city of Kanchipuram, Appayya Dīkṣita’s hometown.

“Two things stand like stone”

The words of the Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon ring especially true in these times:

Life is mostly froth and bubble;

Two things stand like stone—

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.

Lightness and heaviness

Re(re)ading Gwendolyn Lane’s translation of Bāṇabhaṭṭa’s masterpiece Kādambarī, I suddenly recalled a fascinating anecdote about how Bāṇa decided to permit his son Bhūṣaṇa to complete the work. I fear I cannot remember the source of the tale.

The story goes that Bāṇa was on his deathbed without having completed the Kādambarī, and wished to entrust one of his sons with the job of finishing it. But how to decide which one would be worthy of the challenge? He called them both to his bed, and, pointing to a small stack of firewood nearby, asked them to describe it.

The elder son (whose name escapes me, and perhaps history too) said: 

śuṣkaṃ kāṣṭhaṃ tiṣṭhaty agre

“A dry piece of wood stands in front.” 

The younger, by name Bhūṣaṇa, came up with this: 

nīrasa-tarur iha vilasati purataḥ

“A sapless tree manifests itself before me.”

Both statements are factually correct, but only Bhūṣaṇa’s possesses the lightness (lāghava) and multiplicity of meaning that Bāṇa so prized in his work. Specifically:

• The two statements are both 16 morae long, but Bhuṣaṇa’s version crams 14 syllables in by using light syllables throughout (except at the beginning and the end). His brother’s, on the other hand, uses 8 syllables, each one heavy.
• The elder brother’s statement attempts to repeat ṣ in three consonant clusters, but two of these are the same, being the heavy and somewhat unattractive ṣṭh cluster. Bhūṣaṇa does not have any clusters at all, but lightly dances amidst repetitions of s, t, l, and r.
• Bhūṣaṇa’s first word, nīrasa, evokes the literary concept of rasa (about which Amazons’ worth of paper and Superiors’ worth of ink have been spilled).
• Bhūṣaṇa’s statement can be understood as referring not just to the firewood that his father has asked about, but also to his elder brother who lacked literary judgement but who stood before him in time and in the hierarchy of the Indian family.

Bhūṣaṇa was given the privilege of completing Bāṇa’s work. Scholars hold, however, that his effort lacks the mastery of his father’s. History is the harshest critic of all.

On hunting birds and God

I just came across Galway Kinnell’s beautiful To Christ Our Lord on this blog post by Alan Jacobs:

The legs of the elk punctured the snow’s crust

And wolves floated lightfooted on the land

Hunting Christmas elk living and frozen;

Inside snow melted in a basin, and a woman basted

A bird spread over coals by its wings and head.

Snow had sealed the windows; candles lit

The Christmas meal. The Christmas grace chilled

The cooked bird, being long-winded and the room cold.

During the words a boy thought, is it fitting

To eat this creature killed on the wing?

He had killed it himself, climbing out

Alone on snowshoes in the Christmas dawn,

The fallen snow swirling and the snowfall gone,

Heard its throat scream as the gunshot scattered,

Watched it drop, and fished from the snow the dead.

He had not wanted to shoot. The sound

Of wings beating into the hushed air

Had stirred his love, and his fingers

Froze in his gloves, and he wondered,

Famishing, could he fire? Then he fired.

Now the grace praised his wicked act. At its end

The bird on the plate

Stared at his stricken appetite.

There had been nothing to do but surrender,

To kill and to eat; he ate as he had killed, with wonder.

At night on snowshoes on the drifting field

He wondered again, for whom had love stirred?

The stars glittered on the snow and nothing answered.

Then the Swan spread her wings, cross of the cold north,

The pattern and mirror of the acts of earth.

Reading it on the first clear night after the first real snowfall of this winter, I could not help but think of the beginning of the Rāmāyaṇa and of the birth of poetry in Sanskrit. The great seer (and composer of the Rāmāyaṇa) Vālmīki witnesses a hunter killing one of a pair of birds mating. Appalled, and overtaken by grief, he curses the hunter with what forms the first poem in Sanskrit:

mā niṣāda pratiṣṭhāṃ tvam agamaḥ śāśvatīḥ samāḥ |

yat krauñca-mithunād ekam avadhīḥ kāma-mohitam ||

I wrote about this poem and about its ingenious re-reading by the medieval Śrīvaiṣṇava commentator Govindarāja earlier on this blog.

“To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

These lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses are recited by M (played by Dame Judi Dench) in the recent James Bond release, Skyfall. The whole poem, available here, is gloriously recited here by Sir Lewis Casson.

Alfred Lord Tennyson - Ulysses - Lewis Casson by poetictouch

Appayya Dīkṣita on pratīpam (“upstream”)

Continuing our series on arthâlaṅkāras from Appayya Dīkṣita’s Kuvalayānanda, let’s look at the figure called pratīpam. It’s usually called “reversal” or “contradiction” or, perhaps most accurately, “inversion”, but I’ve chosen the etymologically accurate “upstream” instead. “Against the flow”, “against the grain” would all fit in with what the name means. But why is it used here?

[pratīpam]

[1]
pratīpam upamānasyôpameyatva-prakalpanam |
tval-locana-samaṃ padmaṃ tvad-vaktra-sadṛśo vidhuḥ ||

[2]
anyôpameya-lābhena varṇyasyânādaraś ca tat |
alaṃ garveṇa te vaktra kāntyā candro bhavādṛśaḥ ||

[3]
varṇyôpameya-lābhena tathânyasyâpy anādaraḥ |
kaḥ kraurya-darpas te mṛtyo tvat-tulyāḥ santi hi striyaḥ ||

[4]
varṇyenânyasyôpamāyā aniṣpatti-vacaś ca tat |
mithyā-vādo hi mugdhâkṣi tvan-mukhâbhaṃ kilâmbujam ||

[5]
pratīpam upamānasya kaimarthyam api manyate |
dṛṣṭaṃ ced vadanaṃ tanvyāḥ kiṃ padmena kim indunā ||

The figure called pratīpa has five different, but related, definitions:
[1] When the yardstick of comparison is imagined to be the thing being described. Thus: “the lotus is like your eye; the moon like your face.” Here the natural order of things (i.e., the thing being described is compared to the yardstick) is inverted.

[2] When the thing being described is treated with contempt because of another (i.e., the yardstick) being obtained. Thus: “Enough of your arrogance, o Face; the moon is your rival in terms of beauty.”

[3] When the other (i.e., the yardstick) is treated with contempt because of the thing being described. Thus: “What’s is your cruelty, Death? Women are your rivals.”

[4] When the impossibility of the other being a yardstick is established by the thing being described. Thus: “O girl with lovely eyes, it’s totally false that the lotus is like your face.” (This essentially comes down to negating an assertion of the type [1].)

[5] When the pointlessness of any yardstick is indicated. Thus: “when the slender girl’s face is seen, who cares about the lotus? who cares about the moon?”

The highest reality of all

vaṃśī-vibhūṣita-karān nava-nīradâbhāt

pītâmbarād aruṇa-bimba-phalâdharôṣṭhāt |

pūrṇêndu-sundara-mukhād aravinda-netrāt

kṛṣṇāt paraṃ kim api tattvam ahaṃ na jāne ||

This is an oft-recited verse in praise of Kṛṣṇa, but I stumbled across Pandit Jasraj’s version of it for the first time recently. The verse is quite straightforward, but possesses great beauty in its simplicity. Here is an attempt at a translation.

A hand ornamented by a bamboo-flute,
A complexion like a fresh monsoon rain-cloud,
A yellow garment,
A lower lip, red as the red bimba fruit,
A face, beautiful like the full moon,
A pair of eyes, like lotuses

        ——greater than that Kṛṣṇa,
        there’s simply nothing I know.



I was pleasantly surprised to learn that this verse was by the great Mughal-era Advaita scholar Madhusūdana Sarasvatī. Digging a little deeper, I found this verse to be part of his upasaṃhāra (conclusion) to his Gūḍârtha-dīpikā (“Lamp for Hidden Meanings”), a commentary on Śaṅkarācārya’s commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā. It turns out that Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, in addition to / despite his Advaitic leanings (depending on which way you swing), was a fervent devotee of Kṛṣṇa and held that bhakti to Kṛṣṇa was a path fully equal to, and distinct from, the renunciatory path leading to the Advaitic ideal of kaivalya. 

A dialogue between Man and God

This is another one of the songs from the hauntingly beautiful soundtrack of the movie Bab'Aziz, interleaving verses in Bengali (from a Baul song, according to a friend) and verses in Persian by Muhammad Iqbal. I don’t know any Bengali, but I can translate the Persian here. It’s part of his Payām-i Mashriq, a collection of Persian poems that is among the last works composed by South Asians in Persian that achieved renown in Iran and Afghanistan.




The original actually begins with three verses in the voice of God, after which follow the three verses that are sung in the video by Salar Aghili, in the voice of Man.

خدا:

جهان را ز یک آب و گل آفریدم

تو ایران و تاتار و زنگ آفریدی

من از خاک پولاد ناب آفریدم

تو شمشیر و تیر و تفنگ آفریدی

تبر آفریدی نهال چمن را

قفس ساختی طائر نغمه‌زن را

“The most beautiful verse in Sanskrit”

Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Years of Rice and Salt, towards its end, cites a verse from Kālidāsa’s Abhijñānaśākuntalam, accompanied by the Merton & Moussaief translation. The original Sanskrit reads:

ramyāṇi vīkṣya madhurāṃś ca niśamya śabdān

paryutsuko bhavati yat sukhito ’pi jantuḥ |

tac cetasā smarati nūnam abodha-pūrvam

bhāva-sthirāṇi jananântara-sauhṛdāni ||

In the words of Merton & Moussaief:

Even the man who is happy glimpses something

Or a thread of sound touches him

And his heart overflows with a longing

he does not recognize

Then it must be that he is remembering

a place out of reach people he loved

In a life before this their pattern

Still there in him waiting

I would translate it slightly differently:

    Seeing something beautiful,

    Hearing something sweet,

He begins to yearn for something—

although he was happy before this.

Surely he remembers something,

if only subconsciously:

        Loves from lost lives

        Indelibly imprinted in Being

We may call it nostalgia; the Germans, Sehnsucht; the Portuguese, saudade; the Persians, دلتنگی; Proust, a remembrance of things past that draws you into une recherche du temps perdu.  Kālidāsa sees in this form of recognition (which, not-so-incidentally, is fundamental to the plotline of the Śākuntalam) something deeply and fundamentally part of being human. Our old loves are never really lost; if they were true loves, sauhṛdāni, minglings of hearts, then they transform who we are for eternity. (And for Kālidāsa, it really is eternity!) They are fixed points within the flux of Being—within human beings, and within Being itself, shot through with human experiences.

What Kālidāsa does not say in this one verse is what we should do with this insight. We may choose to cling on to these points of stability, and to thus anchor ourselves in the past. Or we may choose to cast ourselves into the flow of being, while nonetheless retaining our knowledge of these fixed points, using them like stars to help us navigate uncharted waters.

“A Hymn to Śrī”: The Śrī Stuti of Śrī Vedānta Deśika

It is said that Śrī Vedānta Deśika composed his famous Śrī Stuti when a pious but poor young man came to him for help: he wanted to get married, and needed some money to convince his father-in-law-to-be that he was worth it. No sooner had Śrī Vedānta Deśika finished reciting the Śrī Stuti than a shower of gold coins poured down from the heavens, making the young man rich and making Śrī Vedānta Deśika even more famous than he had been.

What follows is a first draft at translating this most beautiful of hymns praising the Goddess Śrī. All that is good in this comes from the beauty of the original; whatever isn’t, stems from my own deficiencies. May I be forgiven my myriad faults!

|| Śrīḥ ||

The noble Veṅkaṭanātha,

        blessed with śrī,

        saffron-maned lion among poets and philosophers,

        teacher of the Vedānta—

may he be enshrined in my heart forever!

|| 1 || 

Magnificent beyond all measure,

Auspicious even to all things auspicious,

Resting on the chest of Madhu’s conqueror

Ornamenting it by Her lustre,

Felicity personified for all people

        who seek material and spiritual prosperity—

        to you, o Śrī, do I,

                who have no other refuge,

        surrender!

Appayya Dīkṣita on śleṣa (“paronomasia”)

We continue with our examination of select arthâlaṅkāras from the Kuvalayānanda of Appayya Dīkṣita. This time, we look at one of the greatest features of Sanskrit: śleṣa.

[XXVI. śleṣa]

nānârtha-saṃśrayaḥ śleṣo varṇyâvarṇyôbhayâspadaḥ |

[XXVI.1. varṇyâspada-śleṣa]
sarvadomādhavaḥ pāyāt sa yogaṃgām adīdharat ||
[XXVI.2. avarṇyâspada-śleṣa]
añjena tvan-mukhaṃ tulyaṃ hariṇāhitasaktinā |
[XXVI.3. ubhayâspada-śleṣa]
uccarad-bhūri-kīlālaḥ śuśubhe vāhinī-patiḥ ||

Appayya Dīkṣita on atiśayokti (“hyperbole”)

Continuing the Kuvalayānanda series: atiśayôkti , usually translated as “hyperbole”.

[XIII. atiśayôkti]

[XIII.1.a rūpakâtiśayôkti]
rūpakâtiśayôktiḥ syān nigīryâdhyavasānataḥ |
paśya nīlôtpala-dvandvān niḥsaranti śitāḥ śarāḥ ||

[XIII.1.b sâpahnuvā rūpakâtiśayôkti]
yady apahnuti-garbhatvaṃ saîva sâpahnavā matā |
tvat-sūktiṣu sudhā rājan bhrāntāḥ paśyanti tāṃ vidhau ||

[XIII.2. bhedakâtiśayôkti]
bhedakâtiśayôktis tu tasyaîvânyatva-varṇanam |
anyad evâsya gāmbhīryam anyad dhairyaṃ mahī-pateḥ ||

[XIII.3. sambandhâtiśayôkti]
sambandhâtiśayôktiḥ syād ayoge yoga-kalpanam |
saudhâgrāṇi purasyâsya spṛśanti vidhu-maṇḍalam ||

[XIII.4. asambandhâtiśayôkti]
yoge ’py ayogo ’sambandhâtiśayôktir itîryate |
tvayi dātari rājêndra svar-drumān nâdriyāmahe ||

[XIII.5. akramâtiśayôkti]
akramâtiśayôktiḥ syāt sahatve hetu-kāryayoḥ |
āliṅganti samaṃ deva jyāṃ śarāś ca parāś ca te ||

[XIII.6. capalâtiśayôkti]
capalâtiśayôktis tu kārye hetu-prasaktije |
yāsyāmîty udite tanvyā valayo ’bhavad ūrmikā ||

[XIII.7. atyantâtiśayôkti]
atyantâtiśayôktis tat-paurvâparya-vyatikrame |
agre māno gataḥ paścād anunītā priyeṇa sā ||

Appayya Dīkṣita on utprekṣā (“poetic fancy”)

More Kuvalayānanda here. (Earlier figures of speech: apahnuti and rūpaka.)

[XII. utprekṣā]

sambhāvanā syād utprekṣā vastu-hetu-phalâtmanā |
uktânuktâspadâdyâtra siddhâsiddhâspade pare ||

[XII.1. vastûtprekṣa / svarūpôtprekṣā]

[XII.1.a. uktâspadā vastûtprekṣā]
dhūma-stomaṃ tamaḥ śaṅke kokī-viraha-śuṣmaṇām |

[XII.1.b. anuktâspadā vastûtprekṣā]
limpatîva tamo’ṅgāni varṣatîvâñjanaṃ nabhaḥ ||

[XII.2. hetûtprekṣā]

[XII.2.a. siddhâspadā hetûtprekṣā]
raktau tavâṅghrī mṛdulau bhuvi vikṣepaṇād dhruvam |

[XII.2.b. asiddhâspadā hetûtprekṣā]
tvan-mukhâbhêcchayā nūnaṃ padmair vairāyate śaśī ||

[XII.3. phalôtprekṣā]

[XII.3.a. siddhâspadā phalôtprekṣā]
madhyaḥ kiṃ kucayor dhṛtyai baddhaḥ kanaka-dāmabhiḥ |

[XII.3.b. asiddhâspadā phalôtprekṣā]
prāyo ’ñjaṃ tvat-padenaîkyaṃ prāptuṃ toye tapasyati ||

Kṛṣṇa and the “field of vision”

cetaś cañcalatāṃ tyaja priya-sakhi vrīḍe na māṃ pīḍaya
bhrātar muñca dṛśau nimeṣa bhagavan kāma kṣaṇaṃ kṣamyatām |
barhaṃ mūrdhani karṇayoḥ kuvalayaṃ vaṃśaṃ dadhānaḥ kare
so ’yaṃ locana-gocaro bhavati me dāmodaraḥ sundaraḥ ||

Heart, stop fluttering;
Dear friend, stop torturing me!
Brother, let me see, just for a moment;
Cupid, spare me, just for a second:

        A peacock’s feather in His hair,
        water-lilies in His ears,
        bamboo flute in His hands—

He’s all I can see,
        Dāmodara the handsome.

This gorgeous verse, from the Rasamañjarī of Bhānudatta, has also been translated by Sheldon Pollock, although I cannot find my copy of the book right now.  What I love most about this verse—and what I find impossible to translate—is the compound locana-gocara. 

In terms of pure sound: its two halves are almost exactly identical prosodically, differing only in the third and sixth syllables (and that too only because the sixth must bear the added weight of the -sU case ending). Furthermore, the repetition of the -oca- sounds makes it delightfully delicate to recite. (Think “cellar door”.)

And in terms of meaning too, the two halves of the word work beautifully. The first, locana, can mean either the seeing organ, “eye”, or the sense itself, “eyesight”. It is also connected with such meanings as “illumination” and “lighting up”. The second, gocara, is even more fascinating. Etymologically, it is in fact a compound, go-cara, literally meaning “cow-pasture”. Through some considerable semantic drift, it comes to mean “field”, first literally and then metaphorically, encompassing such meanings as “scope”, “range”, sometimes even “topic”. A smart translation for locana-gocara would therefore be something like “range of vision” (taking into account the associations of “range” with cattle rearing).

But in the particular context of this verse, I really wanted something simpler. Kṛṣṇa isn’t just in the nāyikā’s range of vision, He becomes it. He is the pasture in which the cows that are her eyes roam, coming to rest at a few particularly succulent grazing spots—His peacock-feather, His ornaments, His flute. He is, simply put, all she can see.

Appayya Dīkṣita on apahnuti (“denial”)

More kārikās from the Kuvalayānanda of Appayya Dīkṣita, this time on the arthâlaṅkāra known as apahnuti, which translates to “denial”. As before, my translation is loose and aims only to capture the sense, the artha, of the verses.

[apahnuti]

[1. śuddhâpahnuti ]
śuddhâpahnutir anyasyâropârtho dharma-nihnavaḥ |
nâyaṃ sudhâṃśuḥ kiṃ tarhi vyoma-gaṅgā-saroruham ||


[2. hetv-apahnuti]
sa eva yukti-pūrvaś ced ucyate hetv-apahnutiḥ |
nêndus tīvro na niśy arkaḥ sindhor aurvo ’yam utthitaḥ ||


[3. paryastâpahnuti]
anyatra tasyâropârthaḥ paryastâpahnutiś ca saḥ |
nâyaṃ sudhâṃśuḥ kiṃ tarhi sudhâṃśuḥ preyasī-mukham ||


[4. bhrāntâpahnuti]
bhrāntâpahnutir anyasya śaṅkāyāṃ bhrānti-vāraṇe |
tāpaṃ karoti sôtkampaṃ jvaraḥ kiṃ na sakhi smaraḥ ||


[5. chekâpahnuti]
chekâpahnutir anyasya śaṅkātas tathya-nihnave |
prajalpan mat-pade lagnaḥ kāntaḥ kiṃ na hi nūpuraḥ ||


[6. kaitavâpahnuti]
kaitavâpahnutir vyaktau vyājâdair nihnutaiḥ padaiḥ |
niryānti smara-nārācāḥ kāntā-dṛk-pāta-kāitavāt ||

“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?”

From the Choruses of TS Eliot’s The Rock:

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,

The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,

O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.

Where is the Life we have lost in living?

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries

Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

“The Splendor of the Great Hero”: Śrī Raghuvīra Gadyam aka Śrī Mahāvīra Vaibhavam

Among the most remarkable compositions of Swami Śrīman Nigamānta Mahādeśikar is the Śrī Mahāvīra Vaibhavam, also known as the Raghuvīra Gadyam. In about 90 lines, it summarizes the entire story of the Rāmāyaṇa, paying special attention to the glory and heroism of Rāma. I have attempted to translate the work here while paying close attention to the poetic effects of the original.

|| Śrīḥ  ||

śrīmān veṅkaṭanāthâryaḥ kavi-tārkika-kesarī |
vedāntâcārya-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!

jayaty āśrita-saṃtrāsa-dhvānta-vidhvaṃsanôdayaḥ |
prabhāvān sītayā devyā parama-vyoma-bhāskaraḥ ||

He conquers all,
His dawn dispelling the darkness of His devotees’ dread;
Luminous,
Inseparable from the Goddess Sītā, 
The Sun of the Supreme Heaven!

jaya jaya mahāvīra! 
mahādhīra dhaureya! 

Victory, victory to the great hero! 
to the steadfast, resolute, bearer of all burdens!

Appayya Dīkṣita on rūpaka (“metaphor”)

Among the works of the great 16th century savant Appayya Dīkṣita is the Kuvalayānanda (“Joy of the Water-lily”), which became the standard introductory textbook on figures of speech throughout India, particularly in the South. The Kuvalayānanda focuses entirely on arthâlaṅkāras, “ornaments of meaning”. My non-existent knowledge of Western rhetoric prevents me from translating the term precisely, but I suspect it may correspond to trope.

Prof. Yigal Bronner has a series of articles on Appayya Dīkṣita’s prodigious œuvre in literary theory, of which “Back to the Future: Appayya Diksita's Kuvalayananda and the Rewriting of Sanskrit Poetics” describes the structure of the Kuvalayānanda. Specifically, the text is organized in three layers: (1) kārikās, around 170 easily memorizable verses in the anuṣṭubh meter that define and exemplify exactly 100 alaṅkāras; (2) examples of these alaṅkāras drawn from kāvya; and (3) an auto-commentary of sorts, in which Appayya Dīkṣita explains his motivation for defining the alaṅkāra in that fashion and sets it into its context of over a millennium of alaṅkāra-śāstra. I shall draw solely from layer (1), the kārikās, here.

For now, I want to focus on just one trope, rūpaka, usually translated “metaphor”. Its definition takes up one verse; examples of its subtypes each take up half a verse. I’m not going to translate the definition literally, because the compactness of Sanskrit technical writing does not render well in English. In what follows, [the stuff inside brackets] isn’t part of the Kuvalayānanda itself.

[rūpakam]

viṣayayy-abheda-tādrūpya-rañjanaṃ viṣayasya yat |
rūpakaṃ tat tridhâdhikya-nyūnatvânubhayôktibhiḥ ||