A fool’s hindsight: reading for the plot

Fortune (Lakṣmī) gravitates towards eminent men who work hard;

Only cowards say it depends on fate (daiva).

Forget about fate and be a man – use your strength! (ātma-śaktyā) Then, if you don’t succeed in spite of your efforts, what is there to blame?

(Hitopadeśa, prologue v. 31) ¹

Ah! If this ignorance of mine is engendered by the adversity of fate

then why did you do that?

Or what does it matter, for indeed the future is not otherwise!

(Hammīramahākāvya, 13.166, Hammīra’s moment of tragic recognition)²

From the ninth canto onwards HMK becomes more story-like. We enter an intricate but intelligible chain of tragic, interconnected events of cause and effect, spread over five cantos (9-13), which eventually culminate in the hero’s moment of tragic hindsight. (The last, fourteenth canto will be discussed in the next chapter as a meta-poetic/historic reflection on the emergence of the Hammīra tradition itself.) The outcome is known from

1 Translation by Judit Törzsök in the Clay Sanskrit Library edition (2007: 69).

2 prātikūlyād vidher jātā mamêyaṃ yadi durmatiḥ |

āś cakrithâitat tat kiṃ tvaṃ yadvā bhāvyaṃ hi nânyathā ||166||

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the outset, hinted at several times: the death of Hammīra, leading to the widowhood of the goddess of fortune Lakṣmī (14.2), and the complete destruction of the (once) illustrious Śākambharī line of the Chauhan dynasty. But the chain of events itself may be less clear. We don’t read a tragic story – or any well-known, great story - to know how it ends, but to reexperience the whole tragic process anew. We may want to rediscover how the tragic chain is connected, why and how it unfolds, if the tragic outcome could be prevented, who or what is to blame, and whether – despite our familiarity with the plot outcome – it might happen differently than we imagined beforehand.³ We want to rediscover how or whether the tragic hero confronts or fulfills his fate with courage, bravery, nobility, wisdom – or not. For sure, the story of Hammīra’s tragic fate was considered great, exceptional and admirable. But is it really worthy of emulation? Is he an example to be followed or avoided?

Arguably, some of the above questions play a less central role in triumphalist stories which follow - or try to adhere to - the more satisfying narrative logic of the ‘good guy wins, bad guy loses’ story. This idea of so-called happy endings, in fact, was central to the ethical-aesthetic ideal of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya).⁴ Tragic story lines, by contrast, complicate our (natural) craving for this satisfying feeling of ‘poetic justice’.⁵ We want literary characters to get what they deserve - just like in real life we want life to be governed by justice. The law of universal justice expounded by karma theory meets this need. And if it doesn’t seem to work, when we appear to be suddenly, unexpectedly and undeservedly struck by misfortune, we can always blame the capriciousness of Fate, or transfer blame or accountability on something or someone else. HMK can be said to be deeply preoccupied with such troubling, unsettling questions, with teasing out the problem of ‘poetic justice’ in relation to the tragic heroism of historical heroes, the views and values they seek to defend, and the problem of fate (and good and bad luck).⁶

For my discussion of HMK’s plot it is important to elaborate on the concept of ‘fate’.

Because our familiarity with the tragic plot – everything will eventually lead to death of

3 This may be especially the case when a poem, like HMK, self-consciously presents itself as a new version (in 14.43). The audience thus expects a familiar set of narrative elements and characters that make up the traditional Hammīra story: the Mongols taking refuge in Ranthambhor, Hammīra’s heroic vow, the Sultanate’s envoy with an offer for a truce, the treason of Hammīra’s two generals, the military skill of Ulugh Khan and the death of Nusrat Khan, the danger of a famine in the Chauhan fort, etc. But depending on the author’s vision, these elements can be treated differently, their order changed, or ‘traditional’ significance radically altered to create subversive effects, as I explain at length in the next chapter.

4 See Pollock (2001: 222 ff.) for a discussion of this ideal in Sanskrit poetic theory.

5 On this point I’m highly indebted to Adrian Poole’s insightful introduction to (Western) tragedy (2005) where he repeatedly highlights the always recurring problem of blame and guilt in tragic writing, and the many troubling questions that emerge from it relating to the problem of poetic justice.

6 As I explain in the next chapter, all this, of course, relates to a context, in which such heroes are glorified as historical role models, and perhaps appropriated to legitimate certain political agendas. But our poet may not want to underwrite the ideas represented by famous, celebrated heroes like Hammīra.

the main hero and complete destruction of the kingdom – there’s a striking and somewhat unsettling sense of inevitability, which we are constantly reminded of through clues, predictions, ominous imagery, etc. Put differently, everything is already ‘fated’ from the outset. Therefore, from the tragic hero’s perspective there’s no real hope or possibility to change the outcome. This doesn’t mean that the poem itself presents a ‘message’ of fatalistic determinism. Quite the contrary, opportunities constantly arise where the protagonists are given a ‘chance’ to alter their fate, or at least respond to it.

How to make sense of these two seemingly opposed conceptions about the fated nature of events in tragic stories? On the one hand the hero has no choice whatsoever to change his fate, and therefore seems to have no real agency, on the other hand the poem is tied together by moments where he is given the opportunity to act and make choices (which will determine his fate). Alf Hiltebeitel’s observations on fate in epic stories are instructive in this regard. He speaks of how we can use the complex and highly debated notion of fate (daiva) open-endedly. The stories of (epic) tragic heroes imply, in the words of Hiltebeitel “a sort of crystallization of fate”:⁷

the heroes face the conditions that “determine” human existence, that “shape” human destiny.

(…) [T]he hero who faces up bravely to the conditions which will bring on his death, is responding to, or fulfilling, a personal fate.” ⁸

This is a useful way to look at what happens throughout HMK. However, the dramatic effect on the reader does not depend on a sense of fulfillment, but on what we can call tragic gaps - or ‘temporal gaps’ to use Shulman’s term.⁹ As indicated earlier, such intervals open up regularly in the poem. It is at these moments that the Chauhan kings are given the ‘chance’ to respond to their personal fate. In this chapter I will highlight how in the story of Hammīra these gaps widen to an extreme, together with the dramatic effect of tragic irony – the irony of fate, as it is often called – which also deepens as the plot progresses.¹⁰ We may note that this important literary effect also depends on experiencing an incongruous gap. Nayacandra thus consciously exploits the unsettling distance between the reader’s superior knowledge of the plot and the hero’s ignorance of his fate.

7 Hiltebeitel 1990: 35

8 Ibid. emphasis added.

9 See my discussion in the previous chapter, referring to Shulman 2004: 53. In this regard worthy of note too is how the kaliyuga is indeed imagined to be dreadful in the sense of its ‘gaping’ (karāla), like an open mouth, as implied in 14.4 (kāle karāle kalau), and made explicit in 8.129 where Time’s dreadful mouth (ghora-vaktra) is said to swallow everything.

10 I discussed this earlier in chapter two, referring to Colebrook 2005: 14-15.

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We could say a tragic story like that of Hammīra only appears to revolve around a hero who has no agency, but in fact presents a message quite opposite to the idea of fatalism.

It does this by telling a story in which the sleepy protagonists are repeatedly urged to wake up and act wisely - much more than bravely. Unlike the shortsighted characters, the reader is able to oversee the whole complex chain of cause and effect, and witness the tragic conditions that allow Time to ‘swallow up’ the heroes of the poem. The hero’s blindness to his past and future makes him confer blame on the adverse workings of the

‘Creator’ (vidhi, dhātṛ, kartṛ, etc.) who appears to determine his personal fate. In some sense Hammīra is ‘fated’ to subscribe to a fatalistic idea about the workings of time. His future within the story is, more or less, fixed, and cannot be altered. He will resort to a

‘whatever will be, will be’ perspective on the course of his life. Importantly, this perspective gets criticized as a passive, ‘sleepy’ relation to the workings of time. Claiming that the future is fixed is typically raised to justify one’s idleness and non-action, as in the passage from Hitopadeśa quoted above, which is preceded by an explicit denunciation of the ‘whatever will be, will be’ perspective on life.¹¹

In this chapter I will zoom in on those moments where Hammīra is given the chance to ‘actively’ respond to his fate. Often, this happens quite literally when Nayacandra makes Hammīra voice the Chauhan king’s – typically short-sighted - perspective on the events. I will demonstrate how in Nayacandra’s poem Hammīra’s legendary bravery and fearlessness is clearly just one aspect of how the Chauhan king fulfills or responds to his fate. In Nayacandra’s epic the quality of ‘courageousness’ (sattva) may ultimately only apply to the hero’s love for combat and war. I will suggest that Hammīra’s traditional (kila, 1.9) sattvic nature suffers heavy blows in the tragic process.

Instead of emphasizing how the earlier triumph-turned-defeat stories repeat themselves throughout the rest of the poem in ever new variations – as demonstrated earlier – I will highlight the growing tragic intensity of the poem through the lens of gaps, silences, opposing perspectives, paradoxes and troubling questions. It is not only important to be attentive to meaningful details, phrases, episodes that repeat themselves,

11 V. 29-30 in the prologue. The following translation is from Judit Törzsök in the Clay Sanskrit Library edition, (2007: 69):

“What is not to happen will never happen, and what has to happen will not be otherwise.

Why don’t you use this as an antidote against the poison of worry?”

Some people, unable to act, say such words to justify their idleness. However,

One should not give up one’s efforts, even when acknowledging the role of fate; without effort, one cannot obtain oil from sesame seeds.

but also to the significance of characters who are introduced and suddenly left out, or appear to assimilate into someone else. This also happened earlier, for example, with the disappearance of Hammīra’s elder brother Suratrāṇa, the “Sultan” and expert in good governance (naya), who would have been the better husband to Royal Fortune. Although his name never shows up again, the character of Suratrāṇa might be suggestive of the role played by the ‘real’ Sultan in his poem, namely Alauddin, who indeed turns out to be a master in the political game of fortune.

I will show how something similar happens in the cantos of Hammīra’s tragedy. For example, Hammīra unjustly blinds and castrates his minister “Dharmasiṃha”, or “Lion Dharma”, after which he gradually assimilates into the mentally blind and de facto impotent Hammīra. The blinded “Lion Dharma” disappears from the narrative as soon as his role is ‘finished’, but clearly leaves some tragic traces in later cantos. I will suggest that this fading out of characters extends to the equally striking silence about Lady Royal Fortune, rājya-śrī. She almost literally appears to fade out from the poem, since the beginning of Hammīra’s reign in the ninth canto, from the moment he expresses his longing to obtain Heavenly Fortune (diva-śrī), perhaps the ‘wrong kind’ of Fortune, as I will suggest in the next section.

In addition to exploring Nayacandra’s masterful play with silences, I will highlight the importance of being attentive to the constant interplay of opposing perspectives. Similar to my analysis of the constant interplay between eulogistic and tragic modes, it can be useful to see this juxtaposing of perspectives in terms of a game of balance, in which one perspective might outweigh the other. Different truths do not have an equal weight. And to understand the truth value of each perspective we have to be attentive to the tone of the arguments, and how they are contextualized. Some perspectives, for example, are literally uttered in delusion. Similar to how the tragic pole has the effect of hollowing out the idealistic descriptions of the panegyric mode, the perspectives raised by Hammīra’s opponents and his own subjects tend to cast a shadow on the Chauhan king’s perspective.

The reader is invited to evaluate the (truth-)value of all the raised arguments and perspectives.

Let me repeat my view that HMK is a poem about delusions (moha) and whirling confusions, the always recurring themes which can be said to structure the poem at every level. Hammīra is cast as someone who repeatedly mistakes friend for foe and vice versa.

He insults and mutilates his wise ministers, who will take revenge, and he supports those who act recklessly, without thinking. This fatal tendency, Hammīra’s complete lack of discernment (viveka), culminates to a point of no return in the tragic chain. Hammīra will fail to recognize that his Mongol refugees are not intrinsically bad or low because of their foreign “otherness” or “hostility” (paratvam, 13.143). The whole poem can be said to build up to a scene where the Mongol warrior Mahimāsāhi shocks Hammīra into reaching his long-awaited moment of self-recognition by ‘heroically’ slaying his own family. It is at

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this moment where Mahimāsāhi, the Mongol “other” (para) proves his ‘exemplary’

warriorhood, that Hammīra becomes the man he deemed to be a potential enemy “other”.

Apart from the Mongol ‘other’, many other characters appear to assimilate into Hammīra’s own character, or become mirror images of the Chauhan king. This includes his favorite general Ratipāla “Protector of (Sexual) Pleasure”, who will betray him, or the

‘fool’ Jāhaḍa, who tries to save the kingdom by lying to the king about the real amount of food stored in the fort. Hammīra will appoint this man as the scapegoat and hold his foolishness responsible for the destruction of his clan. This, at least, is Hammīra’s perspective.

This chapter stresses the importance of understanding and appreciating the intricacies of HMK’s plot by paying attention to the poem’s intriguing play with silences, opposing (waking and sleepy) perspectives, processes of assimilation, inversion and other mirroring effects. The whole tragic process eventually culminates in Hammīra’s moment of insight or hindsight about his ignorance (dur-matir, or wickedness). From the reader’s perspective, however, Hammīra’s moment of insight remains the short-sighted vision of a fool, blind to the actual chain of events that set to motion his tragic story. We see through the eyes of a tragic character who tries to avoid responsibility by – once again – blaming the capriciousness of fate, and then, upon the discovery of Jāhaḍa’s lie, changes his mind, and points to him as the scapegoat deserving all blame for the destruction of his clan. In short, this chapter shows that the tragic plot is far more complex, interesting and subversive than it is presented in earlier readings of Nayacandra’s poem.