Crossing the ocean, playing in the sky: intertextual games

When moving from the verse about Sarasvatī to the introduction of Hammīra in verse 1.8, we may not really experience a break. The author (temporarily) abandons the use of word puns (śleṣa) but the ambiguity takes on new forms. Moreover, the thematic elements of splendor (śrī), delusion (moha), playfulness, and purification continue. In other words, the cumulative effect of HMK’s monumental ‘benediction’ goes on in the next verses. Every individual verse introduces something new, while reinforcing the imagery of what precedes. Sometimes there’s a clear twist, as in the turn from 1.8 to 1.9, where we get the purposeful repetition of Hammīra’s exemplary goodness or luminous courage (sattva), followed by the conspicuous word kila “as they say”. This small but significant word reinforces the ambiguity of the all-important thematic question in verse 1.9 about Hammīra’s relationship to Śrī, whether he values her or not. The word kila repeats itself in the next verse to again undermine the idea of what is literally said. We could view a somewhat ironic “as they say” as a defining characteristic of Nayacandra’s poetic project as a whole. HMK clearly reads as a playful, creative engagement with tradition, both with the Sanskrit poets of old and with how the story of Hammīra was told in his time.

Let us start with a quick reading of verses 1.8 to 1.13, which clearly form a new unity.

Like the great kings Māndhātṛ, Sītā’s husband and Kaṅka how many have there not been on this earth?

But in the age of Kali,⁵² king Hammīra alone

52 I choose to translate the variant from the (older) manuscript K, which has kalau, “in the kaliyuga”, instead of teṣu “among these”. The commentary also has teṣu, but also makes explicit that in the last line is meant kaliyugôtpannaḥ “risen in the kaliyuga”. An undated and incomplete manuscript I obtained in Jodhpur also has kalau. The temporal framing, as I explain below, is indeed of some significance.

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is worthy of praise because of the quality of goodness (sattva). (1.8) ⁵³

He lived only by virtue of his goodness, as they say (kila).

So when he did not give away his daughter and those refugees to the Śaka, were his life and even the playful charms

of Royal Splendor (rājya-śriyo) of any value to him? (1.9)⁵⁴

It is therefore that I want to tell just a little

about his life story, out of a desire to purify the warrior class.

I was nudged, as they say (kila), by the heaviness of this and that quality of him, after they plunged deeply into the root of my ear. (1.10)⁵⁵

How huge is this gap between the good and great deeds of this king and this tiny intellect of mine?

I am a fool therefore, who out of extreme delusion

wishes to cross the great ocean with only one hand. (1.11)⁵⁶

Yet, by the grace of my guru I have the power to turn his life into a eulogy (stavanaṃ).

Isn’t it so that the antelope, due to his affectionate bond with the moon’s lap, can gracefully play in the sky? (1.12)⁵⁷

That king Hammīra became the gem

on the crest of the brilliant Chauhan dynasty.

I will tell, from the beginning and according to history (aitihyato) about his rise, which generated joy and frivolity. (1.13)⁵⁸

A quick reading of these verses would support the widely held idea that HMK’s author is out to tell a glorious story about exemplary rulers, an unambiguous eulogy (stavanam, 1.12) about Hammīra, who is emphatically introduced as the only (eka) praiseworthy king

53 māndhātṛ-sītā-pati-kaṅka-mukhyāḥ kṣitau kṣitîndrāḥ kati nāma nâsan | kalau stavârhaḥ param eṣa sattva-guṇena hammīra-mahī-bhṛd ekaḥ ||1.8||

54 sattvâika-vṛtteḥ kila yasya rājya-śriyo vilāsā api jīvitaṃ ca |

śakāya putrīṃ śaraṇāgatāṃś câprayacchataḥ kiṃ tṛṇam apy abhūvan ||1.9||

55 ato ‘sya kiñcic caritaṃ pravaktum icchāmi rājanya-pupūṣayâham | tadīya-tat-tad-guṇa-gauraveṇa vigāhya nunnaḥ kila karṇa-jāham ||1.10||

56 kvâitasya rājñaḥ sumahac caritraṃ kvâiṣā punar me dhiṣaṇâṇurūpā | tato ‘ti-mohād bhujayâikayâiva mugdhas titīrṣāmi mahā-samudram ||1.11||

57 guru-prasādād yadi vâsmi śaktas tadīya-vṛtta-stavanaṃ vidhātum | sudhā-karôtsaṅga-saraṅga-yogān mṛgo na khe khelati kiṃ sakhelam ||1.12||

58 śrī-cāhamānânvaya-mauli-maulir babhūva hammīra-narādhipas tat | aitihyato vacmi purā tadīyām utpattim utpādita-harṣa-helām ||1.13||

of the present, degenerate age of kali. He is indeed presented as the very epitome of sattva, that quality (guṇa) signifying everything that is good, pure, illustrious, bright, courageous.⁵⁹ The praise about Hammīra’s greatness continues up to the point we reach the (temporary) conclusion that he was - or perhaps rather was remembered as - the greatest ruler of the illustrious (śrī) Chauhan dynasty (śrī-cāhamānânvaya, 1.13). On the surface, these verses thus continue the line of thought of the preceding benedictive verses. Like the Hindu deities and Jain ford-makers are credited with dispelling darkness and ignorance, the poet now evokes the sattvic Hammīra, another bright ideal whose famous story has the potential to illuminate us and bring us purification. Nayacandra indeed makes explicit that he wants to tell Hammīra’s exceptional story out of a desire to purify the royal class (rājanya-pupūṣayā, 1.9). This class of people - we are invited to assume - is generally not so virtuous, or pure, and therefore in need of purification.

Before looking a bit closer to the intertextual make-up of these verses, it is worth noting that this eulogistic tone of course continues in the rest of the introduction. We first get a short exposition on the ancient solar origin of the Chauhan dynasty (1.14-1.25), after which we reach another (temporary) conclusion in verse 1.26.

In this dynasty there were born many kings, endowed with a mass of bursting valor, who scared away their burden of sin through their pure and wonderful deeds when combining the three ends of man.⁶⁰

Here we read that many Chauhan kings were so perfect and pure in harmoniously combining the three ends of man (trivarga-saṃsarga) – pleasure (kāma), power/wealth (artha) and religious-moral duties (dharma) - that they managed to ‘scare away’ the burden of sin (pāpa-bhārāḥ) that naturally accrues to the self, especially in the profession of kingship.⁶¹ Nayacandra thus ends his introduction by presenting a hopeful

59 Although sattva means most generally “goodness (of conduct, being)”, here it clearly derives its meaning from its position in the three quality (triguṇas) theory of Sāṅkhya philosophy, according to which everything and everyone is constituted of the qualities of sattva, rajas (“passion”, typically associated with energy, virility) and tamas (“darkness”, associated with delusion). Hammīra, supposedly, is the hero who mostly consists of the luminous quality of sattva.

60 tasmin sphurad-vikrama-cakravālā vaṃśe babhūvur bahavo nṛpālāḥ | trivarga-saṃsarga-pavitra-citra-caritra-vitrāsita-pāpa-bhārāḥ ||1.26||

61 For an insightful discussion of the puruṣārthas, see Malamoud 1981. I will occasionally come back to the significance of the puruṣārtha framework – or the trivarga, “the group of three”- as a meaningful interpretative framework. Ultimately Nayacandra’s poem of Hammīra – like many great works of literature – is not just about an individual character (historical or fictional) but about the tragedy (and comedy) of

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forward to the Chauhan past: the history of this illustrious dynasty and their ideal kings will be a story of perfection. And as he explained in verse 1.13, he will tell the glorious story of Hammīra as the pinnacle of the illustrious (śrī) Chauhan dynasty from the very beginning (purā) and supposedly according to remembered history, “how it was”

(aitihyato),⁶² reassuring the reader that this will be a story about a rise (utpatti), which brought forth joy and frivolous fun (utpādita-harṣa-helām).

There is clearly something weird about this framing. How indeed, can Hammīra’s story be a story of a rise (utpatti, or the udaya of the opening verse), with a generative force (utpādita)? The inflated heroic rhetoric might be somewhat ‘see-through’. The audience knows that Hammīra’s tragic story will not and cannot be a story about the rise (utpatti) of the Chauhan dynasty. Indeed, the extravagant, hyperbolic praise and tone of these verses contrasts sharply with what the audience knows about the fate of that other well-known tragic Chauhan ruler, Pṛthvīrāja, Hammīra’s infamous predecessor who was clearly remembered at the time as an example of bad ‘sleepy’ kingship.⁶³ Put differently, in the fifteenth century, when Nayacandra composed his poem, the history of the Chauhans of Ranthambhor (Hammīra) and Ajmer (Pṛthvīrāja) was not imagined as a story of upward movement (ut-patti, udaya, ut-pādita) and harmony, balance and fortune (saṃ-sarga, sam-pad). It was a story of downfall, destruction, collapse, unbalance, separation (vi-nāśa, vi-patti, vi-ṣama, a-pad, etc.). I will highlight in the next chapters that these are indeed the structuring motifs throughout the poem, which nevertheless remain in a constant tension with the eulogistic format and rhetoric of the poem.

I want to suggest that this tension can already be felt in these opening verses. There are indeed several elements, or clues, which betray not only the hollowness of the inflated rhetoric but reveal the author’s concern with questioning the ideal Hammīra is supposed to represent. Again, like in the preceding seven verses we need to read slowly and pay close attention to the words chosen and tone created. Only then it becomes possible to see through the fragile (and illusory) nature of the ideal.

First, the surface ‘truth value’ of these verses gets undermined by the deep intertextual make-up of the whole introduction. An audience familiar with the Sanskrit literary tradition would immediately hear how the whole prologue is modeled on what Lawrence

being human, about the difficulty or de facto impossibility of navigating harmoniously (saṃ-sarga), in balance, through the different spheres of human endeavor.

62 On various uses of aitihya, as “history”, see Rao et. al. Textures of Time (2001), where it is observed (p.93) that aitihya may be taken as “a remembered past that has features of singularity, localisation, causal sequence, and authoritative transmission.”

63 See my discussion of Pṛthvīrāja’s story in chapter two (2.2 “Falling Asleep”), as well as my more contextualized discussion of this episode in chapter five (5.7 “Playing with memories”) where I highlight Nayacandra’s concern with mixing and inverting historical memories and narrative templates.

McCrea has called the tradition of “patron-centered court epic”, Sanskrit poems where the poet’s patron figures as the protagonist of the poem.⁶⁴ In this sub-genre of the Sanskrit court epic (mahākāvya) poets link their patron’s dynasty to the mythological solar and lunar dynasties in story lines that revolve around – as the titles of the poem often suggests- their rise (abhyudaya) to success, their romantic and royal adventures (vilāsās) or heroic victories (vijaya). Nayacandra’s epic shares these thematic features, clearly adopting or playfully mimicking the style of the patron-centered epic, even though the subject is clearly not the poet’s patron. I would argue that Nayacandra’s HMK has a parodic relation to this sub-genre of mahākāvya, which suddenly rises in popularity in the beginning of the eleventh century, and according to McCrea extended “at least into the thirteenth”.⁶⁵ This tradition, indeed, remains yet to be studied more systematically as a whole, in relation to the dramatic shifts in power with the emergence of the Delhi Sultanate, and its decline in the fifteenth century when we see a new resurgence of patron-centered historical poetry.

The point I want to emphasize here is that Nayacandra was well familiar with this tradition, of which Bāṇa’s seventh-century Harṣacarita and Bilhaṇa’s eleventh-century Vikramāṅkadevacarita constitute the best-known, influential and most-studied examples.

Moreover, in the year 1365, Nayacandra himself, as a young disciple (muni), had made the first copy of the historical poem Kumārapālabhūpālacarita about the Jain Chaulukya king Kumārapāla (r. 1143 – 1172 CE), composed by his guru Jayasiṃha Sūri.⁶⁶ This poem could be placed more generally in a growing narrative, poetic, and devotional tradition surrounding king Kumārapāla and the later minister-patron Vastupāla at the early thirteenth-century Chaulukya-Vaghela court in modern Gujarat. Curiously, nearly all of the first twenty verses of Nayacandra’s poem on the Chauhans allude to this poem about the Chaulukya king. But the tone is strikingly different.

For example, his guru Jayasiṃha Sūri thus introduces Kumārapāla as the foremost among kings, according to fact (vastu-tas, 1.11), because of his glory which was like the moon among the stars. In Nayacandra’s poem, by contrast, the introduction of the subject is followed by a verse which qualifies the attributed quality of goodness (sattva) with a particle of doubt: kila, “so it is said”. I return to this point soon. Jayasiṃha Sūri’s speaks about how he wants to tell Kumārapāla’s life story “out of a desire to purify oneself” (sva-pupūṣayā, 1.12), whereas Nayacandra wants to purify the warrior class (rājanya-purpūṣayā, 1.9). So when Nayacandra says that by the grace of his guru (guru-prasādād, 1.12) he is able

64 In McCrea 2010.

65 McCrea 2010: 506.

66See the Hindi preface in the edition of Jinavijaya 1993 [1968]: 26. In the epilogue of HMK Nayacandra praises his guru (14.23), and also mentions him as the author of a poem on king Kumāra(pāla) (14.24). The text is edited by Ksantivijaya Gani 1926, from which the Sanskrit text is quoted in this chapter.

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to compose a praise poem (stavanaṃ) about Hammīra, he is both alluding to what Jayasiṃha Sūri said himself in 1.14 , but also literally saying the truth.⁶⁷ It is indeed Nayacandra’s great familiarity with this tradition of poetry, ‘taught to him by his guru’, that allows Nayacandra to put Hammīra’s story in the frame work of a eulogistic biography.⁶⁸ But it looks almost like a parody. Even though Nayacandra frames Hammīra’s story by adopting almost the same turns of phrases from the biography of Kumārapāla - and makes the praises come out even more splendid – his verses do not express the message itself with the ‘certainty’ from the adopted model.

More can be said about the way Nayacandra playfully inflates the heroic rhetoric. The tradition of patron-centered epic had its own models, most importantly perhaps the work of Kālidāsa, and especially his Raghuvaṃśa, which was the kāvya classic on kingship. By adopting this model, we could say that poets put their historical heroes and their dynasty on pair with the illustrious Raghu dynasty, which brought forth heroes like Rāma. It is thus partly in accordance with the tradition of historical biography (carita) that in verse 1.10 and 1.11 Nayacandra alludes to two of Raghuvaṃśa’s introductory verses, and in 1.12 he alludes to a verse from Kālidāsa’s Kumārasambhava, another important intertext as I show in the next chapter.

Importantly, Nayacandra doesn’t just emulate Kālidāsa’s imagery, but deliberately intensifies it, making the heroic rhetoric come out even more strongly. Thus, Kālidāsa famously proclaimed that he composed his poem on the Raghu dynasty because he was

“driven to rashness on account of their qualities when they reached his ear” (tad-guṇaiḥ karṇam āgatya cāpalāya pracoditaḥ).⁶⁹ Nayacandra intensifies this imagery by speaking how he was impelled or nudged (nunnaḥ) by the heaviness (gauraveṇa) relating to this and that quality (tat-tat-guṇa), after they plunged deeply (vigāhya) into the root of his hear (karṇa-jāhaṃ). In the next verse Nayacandra similarly intensifies the imagery from yet another introductory verse from Raghuvaṃśa. Whereas Kālidāsa underlines the rashness of his effort by comparing himself to a fool who out of delusion wishes to cross the ocean with a raft (mohād udupenâsmi sāgaram),⁷⁰ Nayacandra says he’s like a fool who out of utmost delusion (ati-mohād) wishes to cross the great ocean (mahā-samudram) with only one hand (bhujayâikayâiva). In the following verse, he doubles the alliterating word-play he

67 Thus, Nayacandra’s verse 1.12 almost ‘plagiarizes’ verse 1.14 in the poem from his guru: guru-prasādād īśyate yadvā tad-vṛtta-varṇane | kuraṅgaḥ kiṃ vidhûtsaṅga -saṅgataḥ khe na khelati ||14||. This extreme borrowing happens in nearly all Nayacandra’s verses from the prologue. But he gives these verses a new twist, playfully and creatively.

68 Accordingly, the origin myth of the Chauhan dynasty too is fashioned in the same style as the Chaulukya myth.

69 Raghuvaṃśa, 1.9, quoted from edition of Kale 2014 (reprint).

70 Raghuvaṃśa 1.2, (ibid.)

borrowed from a verse in Kālidāsa’s Kumārasambhava. Whereas Kālidāsa has khe khelati “he plays in the sky”, Nayacandra has na khe khelati kiṃ sa-khelam “doesn’t he play playfully in the sky?”.⁷¹

I want to suggest that these intertextual nods to Kālidāsa and the more general modelling on the patron-centered epic direct the attention from the poem’s heroic subject to that of the form. The general effect of the introduction is intertextual. We hear a skillful poet who is playing intertextual games by ‘crossing oceans’ and ‘playing in the sky’. Put differently, one not only hears the introduction of Hammīra and the ancient Chauhan origins, but one hears playful nods to Kālidāsa or the tradition of patron-centered poetry. It is the (proud) recognition of the intertext that draws the attention.⁷² His poem is not only about Hammīra, but about poetry itself. The emulation of the rhetoric of patron-centered epic might border on being a parody. I believe this is especially evident in the prologue, epilogue, and the eighth canto (discussed in 1.4).

Nayacandra deliberately exploits the incongruity between the adopted eulogistic format of the patron-centered carita and the tragic content of his poem. There’s something odd about presenting Hammīra’s story in the traditional frame of a carita, which is typically concerned with describing the protagonist’s rise to success, his acquisition or consolidation of Fortune (śrī), and to present the protagonist and his royal family, in the words of Daud Ali, “as beacons of virtue in dark times”.⁷³

The potentially parodic effect does not depend on ridiculing earlier poets and their poetic imagery, but in exposing the mechanisms of and contradictions within the eulogistic carita genre itself.⁷⁴ This, however, may have been an integral part of the tradition of historical poetry itself, as for example shown in recent close readings of Bilhaṇa’s seminal epic by Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea.⁷⁵ They show how this work is characterized by what Bronner calls a ‘poetics of ambivalence’. It is ‘poetry beyond good and evil’ in the words of McCrea, who explains that

Bilhaṇa not infrequently evinces a dark and altogether cynical vision of the nature of politics and of royal power which stands in profound tension with the ostensibly panegyric orientation of his work, and of patron-centered mahākāvya more generally. This emerges most clearly in Bilhaṇa’s

71 Kumārasambhava, 7.49, in edition of Kale 1981 (reprint). Jayasiṃha Sūri’s Kumārapālabhūpālacarita also has this allusion with the single alliteration khe na khelati, 1.14.

72 I owe this view to my reading sessions with Vidwan H.V. Nagaraja Rao, who would immediately and proudly point out that “This is Bilhaṇa, this is Kālidāsa, Māgha, etc.”

73 Ali 2012: 90.

74 This becomes clear in the eighth canto, as explained in the third section of this chapter.

75 Bronner 2010 and McCrea 2010.

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own remarks on the nature and importance of poetry, and specifically of royal panegyric—a topic to which he devotes considerable attention, in both the opening and closing sections of his poem.⁷⁶ I will show that HMK is driven by a similar profound tension between eulogistic format and tragic content. But his ‘critical’ and subversive treatment of Hammīra’s story will go far beyond the poetics of ambivalence discussed by Bronner and McCrea. Nayacandra’s poem, indeed, is not a patron-centered epic. He will make it clear in his epilogue that he

own remarks on the nature and importance of poetry, and specifically of royal panegyric—a topic to which he devotes considerable attention, in both the opening and closing sections of his poem.⁷⁶ I will show that HMK is driven by a similar profound tension between eulogistic format and tragic content. But his ‘critical’ and subversive treatment of Hammīra’s story will go far beyond the poetics of ambivalence discussed by Bronner and McCrea. Nayacandra’s poem, indeed, is not a patron-centered epic. He will make it clear in his epilogue that he