"Sanskrit Fused with the Vernacular"

Bronner and Shulman’s “A Cloud Turned Goose”,\ illustrates how Sanskrit has remained a powerful expressive tool in the second millennium of India, as it interacts with vernaculars (which have their own expressitivity) and is able to transcend regional borders as well. Therefore, they show how the “local” becomes “universal” through this phenomenon and they show how the Hamsasandesa poem illustrates this. These poems are rich with local linguistic materials in which the reader can identify with. These regional Sanskrit poems are thus, not understood in depth by those outside of the region. Does this mean that the outsider is not able to realize the bigger meaning behind these poems? (this being the relationship of God with his lovers who in reality share one universe). How can this poem be universal if all cannot understand it? If it is than has Sanskrit died (Pollock) because it is unable to raise feelings of aesthetic pleasure in any person, but it has to be a specified person? Bronner and Shulman offer a sound argument on the survival of Sanskrit poetry in the second millennium, but it is not as convincing as Pollock’s. When Bronner and Shulman say that Sanskrit has survived through the interaction of it with the vernacular, it seems that they are discussing a different Sanskrit, which has lost its “pureness”. Thus Pollock refers to (I believe) the death of the Sanskrit language that was universal and beyond cultural distinctions. Shulman and Bronner clearly show this exclusion by stating: “such activation anticipates an audience well-versed in and sensitive to the rich intertexts”. (28) This excludes any other individual who remains outside of this context. Therefore, can we say that aesthetic experience is dependent upon context? This interesting to me because when I first read the Hamsasandesa I never got any of the directional, time and space references out of it, which the authors go in depth to explain. Therefore, I was not able to relate to it and hence, I did not get any experience out of the poem.

Interesting enough, Shulman and Bronner also state that “depth” in a poem “reflects the fusion organic fusion of scholar and poet”. (28) Thus, the need to study poetry in order to get something out of it. This is funny because Abhinava totally disregarded this, as the scholar and the study of poetry, was a way of belittling the genius of the poet. The interesting thing here I noticed is the emphasis on rasa in classical Sanskrit poetry and the definitions of the alankara’s have changed according to time and space. The poetic devices that Bronner and Shulman discuss, such as repetition and experience, reflect poetry as we know it today. Does this mean that classical Sanskrit poetry discusses a different aesthetic enjoyment, than poetry in the vernacular Sanskrit? Or that aesthetic theories and experiences no longer existed after Classical Sanskrit? Is localized poetry really universal, if a universal audience remains in the dark in accordance with the meaning? I have a hard time following Bronner’s and Shulman’s argument, I guess its because of the interpretation of Hamsasandesa that they stress, what seemed to be a simple poem in my eyes, turned out to be more complicating than I expected.

Finally, I guess the “language of the Gods” becomes open to other cultures or more inclusive with the incorporation of the vernacular, opening it up to a wider audience. I believe the poets chose Sanskrit because of its classical status and changed it into regional pieces of genius. The poet, in this case Venkatanatha is a genius not only because he created genius poetry, but he created a tradition as well.