South Asian Poets in Vernacular Millennium: Seeking Refuge South of the Sanskrit Border

In ‘A Cloud Turned Goose’, Sanskrit in the Vernacular Millenium, Yigal Bronner and David Shulman (Henceforth B-S) offer an analysis of the Vedanta Desika’s Hamsasandesa. This poem is, as you know, composed in Sanskrit and modeled after Kalidasa’s Medhasandesa. However, unlike the classical Sanskrit corpus, this work is highly localized, catering to a specific cultural audience, comprised of various specific cultural references and themes. Localization in composition, for B-S, is inversely proportional to depth of composition, meaning, the more concentrated in space (i.e. localized) a work is, the more deeply it embodies the culture of that geographical region. Yet this work is written in Sanskrit, a language quite removed in time and place from its themes. This begs, for the authors, the crucial question of why this seventeenth-century Tamil poet would chose to compose his masterpiece in Sanskrit, particularly one that is so intimately tied to his a time and space, from which Sanskrit is clearly quite removed. His is not the only such regional work composed in Sanskrit. B-S argue that the fact that many authors of the past (“vernacular”) millennium chose to write regional works in Sanskrit constitutes evidence that the language does not in fact “die” after 1000 AD as argued by Sheldon Pollock. I’m not that the argument presented here – against the effective ‘death’ of the language – Is entirely convincing. To extend the analogy, regarding the lifespan of living, compositional Sanskrit, works like Hamsasandesa operate more like ‘resurrections’ than ‘continuations’ of the linguistic life of the Sanskrit language.

B-S argue against the Pollockian notion that vernacular millennium South Asians do not in fact ‘continually re-imagine the world’ by citing works such as Hamsasandesa as evidence to the contrary. It can be argued, however, that these poets (e.g. Vedanta Desika) do not in fact ‘continually re-imagine the world’ since theirs is the regional and not the universal domain. It is not ‘the world’ they are concerned with, so much as ‘their world’. Pollock argues that Sanskrit literature since this juncture in history, is in fact employed for the sake of repetition. Again, B-S attempt to argue against this in their essay, emphasizing the creative novelty of this poem. However, is the object of study here, Hamsasandesa, not closely modeled after Kalidasa’s masterpiece, Medhasandesa? In light of this, can it really be said to be full of “boldness, originality, and intensity”? Clearly this work is far more than a mechanical reproduction, but can it really be considered new, and indeed a viable example of the continuation of the Sanskrit compositional bloodline?

I am really not sure of how to make sense of why Vedanta Desika (and Southern regional poets like him) elect Sanskrit as their linguistic medium. It seems problematic when one considers that Sanskrit is Northern in origin. The epics, and kavya culture at large, appear to valorize the North over the South. Consider the very plot of the Ramayana where Vishnu’s incarnation, the hight of auspiciousness, resides in the North, and is forced into the South in order to rescue his abducted wife from the southern abode of the demon-king. To further complicate matter, this valorization aligns with ritual and cultural sentiments throughout the subcontinent that North is considered ‘auspicious’, where South is treated as ‘inauspicious’. For example, one is forbidden to face South when performing ritual sacrifices, and is required instead to face North. Also, Yama, god of Death, is considered to lord over the southerly direction, which itself is associated with inauspiciousness, impurity, and death. Rama’s mission is to journey south, rescue his wife, and return to the north, victorious. Ayodhya, in the North, is the home of Rama. Lanka, in the South, is the home of the demon-king Ravana. Interestingly the poem is focused only on the journey southwards, not the journey back. Why does the author chose this story? Why does he choose Sanskrit? Would these themes not problematize a celebration of Southern culture?

Perhaps the very problem here (the privileging of North over South) is the very basis for the author’s selection. Vedanta Desika writes:

Fly to the South.
It has plenty of fantastic temples.
Beatiful sandalwood groves.
It’s the birthplace of peals
And the mother of the Malaya breeze.
Go there and save the life of Janaka’s daughter.
Do it for me.
There’s only one little I should mention:
It’s crawling with Raksasas.

The demons are mentioned almost tangentially, aside from which the verse is laden with images of purity and auspiciousness. Aside from the Raksasas, this appears to be a beautiful and sanctified region. Indeed, one may argue that without the demonization of the South, it, too, would be associated with auspiciousness and purity. Indeed the Ganges flows in the North, but must it be the only source of purity? These cultural tensions may be what the author is addressing. In composing in masterful Sanskrit in order to glorify the South, he demonstrates parity between the two. The goose, in flying Southwards, passes various landscapes, divinities, places of pilgrimage, temples, yogis, etc., all of which are emblematic of purity and auspiciousness. This subverts the notion of Northern superiority or dominance, especially since this southern villager enjoys competent mastery of the Sanskrit language. The author’s linguistic power succeeds here in holding dominion of Sankritic cultural domination.

Indeed Sanskrit provides the author linkage to a “wider literary universe [one encompassing] pan-Indian epics, cosmopolitan and local Sanskrit kŒvya, scientific discourses, and vernacular poetry”, but that wider universe is not accessible in these regional works themselves, nor to their audiences. The authors are aware of the Sanskrit universe, but short-circuit it by emphasizing the regional. Regional Sanskrit works (e.g., Sakala Malla’s Udasa-raghava, Nilakantha Diksita’s Sivalilarnava) are preoccupied with regional features, including metric schemes , syntax, idioms, geography, topography, cultic practice, historic tradition, etc (7) which serve to affirm a local reality. Sanskrit may offer the poetic license to enter the realm of “worldwide potential”, but in emphasizing specifically regional themes, these author consciously refrain from partaking in, and perpetuating, that “universal” domain. I agree with Pollock’s notion that the space crafted by Sanskrit literature was intended “precisely to occlude local differences, or rather, to make the local universally standard” (6). This is how and why these regional poems are different. They employ in the Sanskrit language, but shy away from ‘Sanskrit cosmopolitan culture’. These regional works, after all, were not intended to travel far and wide. As B-S argue regional Sanskrit works are geared towards a local audience, “not meant to travel the length and breath of the cosmopolis”. B-S argue also that Sanskrit served, along with vernaculars, “in the project of inventing and elaborating distinctive regional cultures and identities”. However, these regional identities, once established, succeed in eclipsing the cosmopolitan feature of ‘living’ compositional Sanskrit. Sanskrit serves their culture, they don’t serve Sanskrit culture. They thus effectively collapse the cosmopolis. Such works as these, therefore, are only residual resurrections of ‘living Sanskrit’: The Sanskrit language is not employed here because its supremacy is assumed, but, rather, it is masterfully employed in protest of that linguo-cultural supremacy.

Raj

PS - This was a GORGEOUS poetry. I would love to be able to read it in Sanskrit! Perhaps we can hear some of it in class.