Poetry’s waking power: “good mornings” (suprabhātam) with a twist

This chapter attempts to give insight into HMK’s concern with modelling a certain vision of time. I will do this through a close reading of the crucial eighth canto. It is one of those cantos that is dismissed in Kirtane’s influential paraphrase of Nayacandra’s epic, for not containing ‘historical information.’ Thematically speaking however this canto is of pivotal significance. It is in this canto that Hammīra obtains Royal Fortune. It therefore signals the tragic point of no return in the tragic decline of the Chauhan’s fortune. I hope to demonstrate how Hammīra’s obtainment of Royal Fortune is subtly presented as the result of Jaitrasiṃha tragic and stubborn choice to entrust his symbolic wife to the wrong son. This choice is inspired by a dream-vision in which the god Viṣṇu tells Jaitrasiṃha to give the kingdom to Hammīra, and not to his older brother. I will explain how this episode reads as another playful nod to the tradition of patron-centered poetry, to which Nayacandra’s epic displays a somewhat parodic, inversive relationship. Jaitrasiṃha’s tragic choice itself, however, is fully in line with the recurrent, structuring theme of mental sleepiness or blindness, which haunts all the main Chauhan characters throughout the poem. Meta-poetic concerns too reach new heights in this canto. The whole canto is thus purposefully sandwiched between two episodes in which the royal court poet must intervene to wake up the Chauhans.

Let me start this discussion on HMK’s temporal vision by recalling that Nayacandra deliberately started his poem with framing Hammīra’s story within the cycle of successive eons (yuga). Time, in this framework, is said to follow a degenerative and play-logic, in line with the declining numbers of the dice in a gambling match. Hammīra, then is presented -somewhat ambiguously – as the model of kingship in the kaliyuga, the only luminous ideal worthy of praise in the present dark age of moral decay. As such, Hammīra is also presented as the brilliant ‘end point’ of a long history of Chauhan rule, going back to the very beginning of a time cycle. This beginning is introduced in 1.14, right after the

114

prologue, when Brahmā, the Creator god, was said to roam around (bhṛmataḥ) the earth to perform a sacrifice and found an auspicious place in Pushkar (1.14).¹ The poem gradually takes us from the more mythological past to the remembered histories of kings like Pṛthvīrāja, in the process adding more historical detail to finally arrive at Hammīra’s kingship in the eighth canto and his death in the penultimate thirteenth canto.² As I show in the next chapter, the highly dramatic second half of this canto is purposefully presented as two long, sleepless days, in which an exhausted, sleepless king makes several fatal decisions that eventually culminate in his death and the destruction of his clan. The first part of the last and fourteenth canto somewhat ironically deplores Hammīra’s death, and the widowhood of Lakṣmī (14.2), on the Chauhan side.

In short, thematically speaking the whole poem, between verse 1.14 and 14.21, can be read as an epic about the rise and especially about the fall of the Chauhan dynasty. This is metaphorically expressed as a gradual process of falling asleep (losing consciousness), drying up (losing vital ‘juice’), waning (losing shine). This degenerative process took off in verse 3.1 with the tragic shift in or of Pṛthvīrāja’s story. All this has clearly something to do with Time, the supposedly dark force enabling such transformations. In the eighth canto Nayacandra speaks about how Time (kāla) roams around (bhramati, 8.128) in this world, invisibly, moving back and forth, to take away the lives of people. And evidently, Time is doing precisely this in Nayacandra’s poetic world. ³

However, there’s a larger, overarching temporal frame and meta-poetic undercurrent, confronting the tragic temporal logic itself. Thus, enclosing this tragic decline of the Chauhan’s Fortune (śrī), we have the thematic and meta-poetic frame of Śrī as a playful and discriminating Splendor (1.1), who is always (sadā) there, enjoying herself somewhere and with someone (raṃramīti). As Lakṣmī she will choose to remain with the most virtuous and playful royal husband, the one who is most active and aware. And as Sarasvatī this active principle is always there to bestow her brilliance on the creative and playful poet (1.7). Unlike the worship of Hindu gods or Jain ford-makers, the power of Sarasvatī’s purifying flow – and true play (nālīka-līlā) in the commentator’s reading - may truly provide the fording place (tīrtha) to reach fortune, awareness and joy. It is certainly not a

1 The commentary makes explicit that ādau means yugādau or kalpādau, “at the beginning of a yuga or kalpa”.

2 Worthy of note is that Hammīra’s history is enclosed by the mention of two precise dates (the only ones in the poem) in 8.56 – VS 1339 (CE 1283, verse 8.56), in which Hammīra obtained sovereignty – and in 13.196 – which doesn’t mention a year, but only that Hammīra prepared for the final battle on Sunday, the sixth day in the bright half of the month Śrāvaṇa.

3 A swinging or whirling back-and-forth movement is connoted by the verbal root bhram, especially when prefixed with vi. I will suggest in the conclusion that it might not be a coincidence that the final word of the poem, vibhrama (14.46), makes a point about a ‘confusing’ back-and-forth movement as a major poetic effect of Nayacandra’s poetry.

coincidence that HMK concludes with a verse (14.46) about how his poetry produces the liquid ambrosia (amṛta) and generates an experience of vibhrama, a confusing, though pleasurable back-and forth movement. This is unlike the Creator god Brahmā, who is also said to roam around (bhṛmataḥ, 1.14) in this world, but who never grants anyone the boon of immortality. He is indeed typically cursed by the people for the creation of purposeless suffering and cruelty. However, this process of blaming the tragic appearance of time (or fate, or fortune), may be a sign of sleepiness and delusion. I want to suggest that the eighth canto can be read as a replication of HMK’s overarching temporal and meta-poetic frame, about poetry’s potential to activate the eternally present principle of Śrī.⁴

The eighth canto can be read as a ‘pause’ in Nayacandra’s epic, where some thematic principles become fleshed out before the story of Hammīra’s tragedy takes off (canto 9-13). But it also contains yet another story about the dangerous transfer of Fortune from father to son. Although the canto is titled “description of Śrī Hammīradeva’s obtainment of the kingdom” (śrī-hammīradeva-rājyâpti-varṇano) we could read it as the description of Jaitrasiṃha’s tragedy. It thus introduces another dangerous temporal interval or gap, to borrow a term used by Shulman in his discussion of how Kālidāsa models temporality in Raghuvaṃśa.⁵ Within HMK as a whole this canto marks both an ending and a beginning, functioning both as a retrospective analysis of Hammīra’s pre-history, and a prediction of the upcoming darkness when Hammīra takes over the burden of kingship. It reads both as flash-back and flash-forward, making it appear as though the distinction between past-present-future collapses. This is not unlike the ominous stories of Hammīra’s predecessors. The difference is that Nayacandra’s concern with temporality becomes more explicit. Quite fittingly the canto concludes with several verses on Time (8.127-129), making explicit, for example, how this all-pervasive force operates through the creative and deceitful power of māyā, Illusion, and her playful gestures of delusion (moha-lalitaiḥ).

(These verses will be discussed in the final section of this chapter.) This is the only time in the poem where Hammīra – and the reader – is explicitly urged to wake up from Time’s deceit (8.128). Indeed, the progress of Time seems to have a numbing effect on the senses of the Chauhans. Fortunately, there is the power of poetry, which may have a wakening effect, at least for those who listen attentively. Unfortunately, both Jaitrasiṃha and his son Hammīra won’t emerge from Nayacandra’s poem as good listeners.

I hope to demonstrate that Nayacandra plays with the employment of the literary device of the suprabhātam “good-morning poetry”, partly as an engagement with earlier textual models, like Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa. In order to make this point, I will first briefly

4 In addition, Jaitrasiṃha’s delusional dream-vision in this canto, may resonate in Nayacandra’s statement at the end of his poem, where he explains that he was nudged by Hammīra himself in a dream to retell his life story. I discuss this verse in section 5.4 “Nayacandra’s dream-vision” in chapter five.

5 Shulman 2014: 40-44.

116

recapitulate how David Shulman discusses the meta-poetic rationale behind the suprabhātam in kāvya literature.⁶ In Kālidāsa’s poem Raghu’s son Aja has fallen asleep before attending the svayaṃ-vara “self-choice” ceremony of princess Indumatī. At this ceremony Indumatī– who symbolizes Śrī - has to choose the most virtuous husband among a number of competitors. Aja has to wake up and attend this ceremony.

Fortunately for Aja, and the continuation of the Raghu dynasty, the royal bards manage to wake up the sleepy prince. Shulman emphasizes how the suprabhātam is not merely describing the process of waking from sleep but is meant to effect this transition. And the verses do this by inserting “slight stings”, that are meant “to jibe” at Prince Aja, “to shame” him into waking.⁷ The royal poets make Aja abandon his mistress Sleep and direct his attention to his proper lover: Regal Splendor (rājya-śrī). The bard’s intervention thus secures Indumatī’ choice or love for Aja and the continuation of the Raghu line. Shulman suggests that the bard’s verses can be understood as an “expansive movement” across dangerous, temporal gaps which repeatedly open in the poem, threatening the continuation of the Raghu line.⁸ The poetic intervention of the bard helps the Raghu dynasty overcome this gap and restore Śrī’s natural brilliance. Importantly, although these gaps tend to get wider and more dangerous, the heroes from the Raghu dynasty each time manage to cross over them.

Most interestingly, Shulman explains how in Kālidāsa’s poetry the dangerous temporal gaps or empty spaces that open up through episodes of sleepiness, rupture, forgetting, etc., figure as “mode[s] for incipient fullness”.⁹ They are necessary conditions for wakefulness, restoration, a deeper remembering, etc. Ultimately, Raghuvaṃśa is thus concerned with modelling time as a regenerative force. Shulman suggest that this dynamic also applies to Raghuvaṃśa’s problematic ‘tragic ending’. The poem thus ends with the death of king Agnivarṇa, who wasted away because of his pleasure-addiction.

Even though the Raghu line seems beyond restoration – Agnivarṇa is dead and has no sons -, the concluding verse indicates that the Raghu dynasty will restore itself: the queen is pregnant. Shulman explains the poem’s concern with regeneration as follows:

In general, the richness or fullness that is drained away or expended (…), by whatever twists or turns of royal fortune will be restored out of the very emptiness it leaves behind.¹⁰

And regarding the meta-poetic intervention of the suprabhātam:

6 Shulman 2014: 48-61.

7 Ibid. p 50, 59.

8 Ibid. p53.

9 Shulman 2014: 37.

10 Ibid. 39

The more general pattern of emptying and filling thus assumes a new form in the potential space between sleeping and waking, a space naturally aligned with poetry and poetic visions.¹¹

A crucial difference with Raghuvaṃśa is that in HMK the dangerous, temporal gaps– which similarly open up in various modes - will widen to an uncrossable extreme. Drawing on Kālidāsa’s own imagery Shulman refers to these temporal gaps or spaces of emptiness as the ‘antara’ (interval) position. In the suprabhātam in the thirteenth canto, Nayacandra too uses this word (13.144) to announce the threatening interval in which the sleepless Hammīra, in the moment of twilight, goes through a delusional stream of thoughts. In HMK these gaps are also presented as a “potential spaces”. However, Nayacandra presents this middle moment as a moment of fatal confusion, at least for the characters themselves.¹² In Nayacandra’s verses the suprabhātam doesn’t have the intended effect of generating a real transition from sleep to waking, and thus secure a safe transfer of Fortune from father to son.

HMK, indeed, is much more tragic. The suprabhātam signals a point in the narrative where the Chauhans will no longer manage to cross over the threatening gap or rupture, opening up with the transfer of Fortune from father to son. In the fourth canto such ruptures also opened and were miraculously crossed or fixed. Thus, after the death of Pṛthvīrāja and Harirāja we learned how the banished prince Govindarāja had secured the continuation of the Chauhan line in Ranthambhor. Similarly, the wise minister-turned-king Vāgbhaṭa managed to restore the Chauhan’s brilliance, which was about to fall after kingship was bestowed upon his reckless nephew Vīranārāyaṇa. In the eighth canto the problem of dynastic succession is re-introduced. Although it seems that the suprabhātam is meant to awaken prince Hammīra before his coronation, in effect it may read as a wake-up call for Vāgbhaṭa’s son Jaitrasiṃha, Hammīra’s father, who is about to give Royal Fortune to the middle son, Hammīra, and not to his elder brother Suratrāṇa.

Interestingly, the canto culminates in yet another set of suprabhātam-like verses – about time/death (kāla) – meant to wake up king Hammīra after his coronation. This time not from sleep, but from a delusional sorrow and the accompanying (delusional) idea about the horror of Fate (as the Creator god) whom Hammīra holds responsible for the

‘unexpected’ death of his father, and everything else that is bad in this world. The eighth canto is thus sandwiched between two significant meta-poetic interventions, poems within the poem that urge us – the reader and characters – to wake up from delusional perceptions. However, unfortunately– quite literally indeed – these verses do not manage

11 Ibid. 49.

12 Recall how Pṛthvīrāja too was caught in the confusion and turmoil during the enemy’s attack taking place at twilight, as discussed in chapter two (2.2 “Falling asleep”).

118

to bring the intended awakening for the Chauhan characters. By handing over the throne to Hammīra Jaitrasiṃha falls into the dark temporal gap. Everyone but Jaitrasiṃha knows this, his ministers, the reader, and even his son Hammīra himself.