What is the significance of the fact that the influential story of Hammīra – arguably the first true Rajput hero - finds its first fully-fledged epic rendering in the format of a Sanskrit mahākāvya, a ‘great poem’, written by a Jain monk in the early fifteenth century, more than hundred years after the historical events? Why are there no earlier versions extant, composed in a vernacular idiom, which was clearly becoming an accepted medium for literary expression? There is something significant about the fact that a ‘popular’
regional and tragic story finds its first epic expression in a prestigious Sanskrit mahākāvya, a genre known for its cosmopolitan character and perhaps also for its predominant preference for ‘happy endings’.19 For one thing, it says something about the extraordinary vitality and resilience of the tradition of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya), and the continued prestige of the ‘epic’ mahākāvya genre, whose origins go back 1500 years earlier. What does it mean to write a Sanskrit historical mahākāvya in the fifteenth century? And how does the entrance of the Hammīra legend into this great genre effects the treatment of his story? These questions may tell us something about how literary innovation in Sanskrit literature takes place in conversation with an emerging vernacular tradition, rather than that the latter replaces the vitality of literary expression in Sanskrit, as argued by Sheldon Pollock in a controversial article about the ‘Death of Sanskrit’ (2001).
In the case of North Indian literary culture, Pollock situates this dramatic cultural shift around the middle of the fifteenth century. He does this precisely by discussing the case of Tomar Gwalior, and the pioneering role of the vernacular poet Viṣṇudās, a generation after Nayacandra presented his Sanskrit epic at the Tomar court under Vīrama Tomar, a king who had also commissioned one of the first vernacular inscriptions, under the name of ‘Bīraṃmadeva’.20 Could we then see Nayacandra’s Sanskrit court epic as the ‘last’ vain attempt to compose a Sanskrit court epic, signaling an endpoint of a slow and gradual process of literary decay? Does the poem fit into what Pollock classifies - in the context of Sanskrit literature in South India - as “imperial documents”: state plays and epic poems about royal victories and successes (carita, vijaya, abhyudaya)?21 Pollock’s thesis on the
19 See Pollock (2001: 222 ff.) for a discussion of this ideal in Sanskrit poetic theory.
20 Thus Pollock’s (2006: 394-5) discussion of the emergence of the vernacular in Gwalior. He discusses the vernacular inscription of Vīrama Tomar (Bīraṃmadeva) from 1405 as symptomatic of the vernacular transformation in Gwalior (292) as evidenced by the ‘vernacularization’ of the two Sanskrit epics by Viṣṇudās a generation later.
21 Pollock 2001: 403.
waning vitality and creativity of Sanskrit applies more generally to what he famously labeled the ‘vernacular millennium’:
For reasons that in each case demand careful historical analysis, it had everywhere become more important—aesthetically, socially, and even politically more urgent—to speak locally rather than globally. During the course of this vernacular millennium as I have called it, Sanskrit, the idiom of a cosmopolitan literature, gradually died, in part because cosmopolitan talk made less and less sense in an increasingly regionalized world.
In my earlier work – my MA thesis - on Nayacandra’s HMK I have partly underwritten Pollock’s thesis, and classified Nayacandra’s work as a vain attempt to revitalize a dying Sanskrit literary tradition. Now I am inclined to disagree.
Let me start by making clear that my current understanding of Nayacandra’s great poem is deeply inspired by two stimulating articles on Sanskrit kāvya. One is by David Shulman (2014) on Kālidāsa’s influential masterpiece Raghuvaṃśa “The Dynasty of the Raghus”, which provided a model for many later ‘politically themed’ historical kāvyas.
The other article is by the same author, co-written with Yigal Bronner (2006), on literary innovation and creativity in post-1000 AD Sanskrit literature, which powerfully responds to and convincingly negates Pollock’s thesis on the dying vitality of Sanskrit literature in the ‘vernacular millennium.’ Let me start with the latter article, titled “A Cloud Turned Goose: Sanskrit in the vernacular millennium.”
Arguing against Pollock’s thesis Shulman and Bronner postulate several theorems about the significance of post-1000 AD Sanskrit literature. One of them is as follows:
‘‘Sanskrit of the place’ is almost by definition an essay in depth, and as geographical extent shrinks—sometimes to the space of a single, minute royal court—there is a corresponding deepening and complexity”.22 They demonstrate that many Sanskrit poems, which remain largely unread and undervalued, achieve an extraordinary temporal richness through their profound and playful engagement with earlier Sanskrit textual models and vernacular traditions. They demonstrate their point through a close reading of a fourteenth century Sanskrit poem from South India, the Haṃsasandeśa,
“Goose-messenger” belonging to the highly meta-poetic and lyrical genre of ‘messenger poems’, of which Kālidāsa’s fourth century Meghasandeśa “Cloud-messenger” was the seminal model. The depth in this poem, they show, is achieved by making “three
22 Bronner and Shulman 2006: 9. It is worth noting in this regard that Nayacandra’s choice to compose a Sanskrit epic about Hammīra, an historical king widely celebrated across North India and Western India, may have been conceived as a deliberate move to make a transregional appeal and ensure the spread of his poem outside its original context. And it clearly did. This may also explain, as I demonstrate at length in chapter five, why Nayacandra is purposefully ambiguous about the context of patronage.
12
intertextual canons” come together: the great Sanskrit epic Rāmāyaṇa, the Sanskrit classic of Kālidāsa, and a local tradition of vernacular poetry.23 The essay highlights that the relation to such intertexts is not mere emulation. For example, through “acts of meaningful and purposeful inversion” the poet seeks to outdo earlier models, making
“clouds become history”, and achieve a literary complexity that goes beyond the possibilities of vernacular poetry.24
This dissertation underwrites several postulations in their article by demonstrating that Nayacandra’s poetic project can similarly be understood as an essay, or competition in literary depth, which is also explicitly thematized in his work.25 In Nayacandra’s Sanskrit poem depth, literary complexity and innovation, is similarly achieved through an engagement with other texts. I will foreground how HMK achieves its complexity and dynamic movement through the intricate coming together of at least four dominant
‘canonical’ literary models: the great Sanskrit epics Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa (especially the former), Kālidāsa’s two major Sanskrit epics Raghuvaṃśa and Kumārasambhava (especially the former), the Jain prabandha literature (the thirteenth and fourteenth century collections of historical prose narratives), and an emerging vernacular tradition of martial literature about historical heroes, like Jayacandra, Pṛthvīrāja and of course Hammīra.
I will argue that the effect of this deep intertextual engagement generates a restless (capala) or playful back-and-forth movement between these different layers. This movement, and its somewhat ‘confusing’ (vibhrama, 14.46, the last word of the poem) effect on the reader, is ingeniously ‘conceptualized’ or articulated at the end of his poem, as play, a being “shaken by a play of restlessness” (cāpala-keli-dolita, 14.43), which is clearly meant as a nod to a famous verse from Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa. As I explain in the first chapter, this important verse not only evokes the context of composition or alludes to Kālidāsa, but can be said to thematize the topic of intertextual play, innovation, and the
23 ibid. p. 22.
24 ibid. 12, and 21.
25 In his play Rambhāmañjarī this happens in an episode involving a poetic contest between the jester and a ‘servant maid’ (ceṭikā) called Karpūrikā (a clear nod to his intertextual model, Rājaśekhara’s Karpūramañjarī). It is the servant-poetess Karpūrikā who wins the contest with her verse on the moon rise, earning the approval of king Jayacandra who proclaims that her poem “has such a depth of poetic meaning that it makes even the heads of great poets ‘shake’ when they plunge deeply into it, because it pierces through the soft core”.…kavitvam īdṛg artha-gambhīraṃ yad avagāhyamāṇam marma-vedhitayā dhūnayati-tamāṃ mahākavīnām api kṣaṇam śirāṃsi Sanskrit quoted from the edition of Poddar 1976, p.29. (The translation is my own). It is then that the king utters the verse quoted in the beginning of this introduction, saying that a poem, like an arrow, is only of use when it strikes the heart, and makes the head shake (ghūrṇayati) or nod (in approval).
restless ‘shaking’ and playful back-and-forth movement underlying the poet’s vision on what poetry is and does.
Remarkably, this is almost exactly how Bronner and Shulman define the metaphor of
‘depth’ in their essay on Sanskrit poetry in the ‘vernacular millennium.’ They explain how Depth suggests movement—or a particular kind of restlessness—within a space open to experience, some of it probably unpredictable, waiting to be explored, perhaps including a strong personal element.26
and further:
We experience depth in reading when we meet with certain types of complexities - for example, when the mind is thrown backwards and forwards simultaneously, or when it swerves, swivels, or loops as it follows the paradoxical directionalities of time and space. Depth results from the superimposition of the universal on the particular, of the macro on the micro, and from their strong interweaving. Depth is created by the concurrent existence of several literary canons, activated and brought into resonant relation with one another. Such activation anticipates an audience well-versed in and sensitive to the rich intertexts. It also reflects the organic fusion of scholar and poet - two roles that were occasionally, but not commonly, conflated in earlier periods.
In the literature we are examining, such a merger is perhaps normative.27
Unmistakably, much of these observations apply to the aesthetic of Nayacandra’s great poem of Hammīra, as I try to demonstrate throughout this dissertation. It is perhaps what makes the genre of mahākāvya literally great and prestigious, and much more than poetry of kings and their glorious or vainglorious deeds. For the modern reader, however, this complexity makes it extremely difficult to pin down what a great poem like HMK is about.
I will show, for example, in the first chapter, that already in the prologue, or indeed in the very first verse, meta-poetic, thematic, religious-philosophical and intertextual levels become deeply intertwined. To fully understand and appreciate the extraordinary sense of (temporal) depth emerging from such verses, one needs to have a thorough understanding of all these levels. One needs to know how things are said or modelled in a great range of intertexts.28 This is a major challenge for the modern reader, or the beginner student of Sanskrit kāvya, unfamiliar with the whole range of Sanskrit poetry
26 Bronner and Shulman 2006: 28.
27 ibid.
28 In other words, the text constantly invited me to go back and forth between Nayacandra’s verses and those of Kālidāsa, the prabandha literature, the story line of the Mahābhārata and the story of Hammīra in other sources. Obviously, for the trained fifteenth century reader or listener this confusing but delightful back and forth movement (vibhrama) must have happened spontaneously; it is durvāraḥ ‘irresistible, without restraint’ as we learn in the final verse (14.46).
14
that appears to constantly resonate in Nayacandra’s verses. These insights were initially triggered during the highly stimulating reading sessions I enjoyed with Vidwan H.V.
Nagaraja Rao in Mysore, who would often instantly point out that ‘This is Kālidāsa, this is Bilhaṇa, this is a Vedic expression, etc.’29
In addition, my understanding of HMK is deeply influenced by a recent article of David Shulman, where he offers a close reading and revalidation of Kālidāsa’s influential masterpiece Raghuvaṃśa “The Raghu Dynasty” (ca. fourth century). This poem appears to have had an important modelling function for later poems on kingship, like the many historical kāvyas, as also observed by others.30 It is therefore instructive to elaborate on the significance of this text. Shulman starts by pointing out that “our understanding of the workings of mahākāvya in general is still very limited and conventional.”31 For example, complicating scholarly views about Sanskrit poetry’s idealizing function, Shulman notes how, in his view, “Kālidāsa’s kings are rather darker and unstable”.32 Generally speaking, the poem deals with the shifting fates and fortunes of the most famous lineage of kings, the ‘mythological’ Raghu dynasty. It is the dynasty which brought forth Rāma, the great epic hero and model of kingship. The story of Rāma is told in the middle of the poem, where his kingship, however, is far from idealized.33
Shulman’s article offers many interesting insights about the aesthetic goals of Kālidāsa’s epic poem. He argues that the poem is much less meant to reveal something
‘about’ its major themes – like time in relation to fortune, or the difficult pursuit of the aims of men (puruṣārtha) – than to make audible and thus actualize time’s pulsation, expressed through the rhythm of Raghu kingship.34 His article is called “Waking Aja”, a reference to one of the Raghu heroes, who is urged to wake by the royal court poet or bard, after he has fallen asleep at a critical moment in the poem, namely right before the wedding ceremony of princess Indumatī. Shulman highlights, among other things, how meta-poetic and thematic levels intertwine. For example, important episodes like the
‘good-morning’ (suprabhātam) poems within the poem exert a powerful call to the reader’s attention. The poet intervenes to wake up his characters – like Aja -, and the audience.
This dissertation similarly highlights the importance of being attentive to imagery of
‘waking and sleeping’ – and other temporal imagery, like remembering and forgetting -,
29 I’m extremely grateful to Vidwan H.V. Nagaraja Rao for these readings sessions on two different occasions, on December-February, 2017-2018; and February 2019.
30 Satya Vrat, in his “Glimpses of Jaina Sanskrit Mahākāvyas” (2006: 14), mentions Raghuvaṃśa’s influence to be the case for nearly all the Jain mahākāvyas discussed by him.
31 Shulman 2014: 36.
32 ibid. p. 37.
33 See Gary Tubb (2014: 81) on this point.
34 Shulman 2014: 67, speaking about the poem as an “actualization of the consistent pulsation of temporality as experienced in a culturally specific mode.”
if we want to make sense of Nayacandra’s poetic project on Hammīra, and its over-arching concern with expressing a certain vision of temporality (and history). It is beyond my intention – and far beyond my capacity – to approximate Shulman’s analysis of how Kālidāsa’s models reality, rather than ‘describes’ or just represents it. He thus demonstrates how Kālidāsa’s verses achieve a remarkable level of isomorphism.
Thematic, metrical, semantic, phono-aesthetic, and syntactic features are purposefully aligned to make audible and felt what Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa is predominantly ‘about’ in Shulman’s reading of the text, namely to express or activate the uneven flow and rhythmic pulsation of time. A reading more closely attuned to such isomorphic features of poetry may reveal whether Nayacandra’s poetry shares a similar concern. I will occasionally highlight where I found cases of isomorphism to be striking, often at turning point moments in the narrative, when the Chauhan dynasty’s fortune is at stake, at the verge of breaking. Through careful semantic and syntactic choices, we can often actually hear moments of rupture, or the tragic process of ‘falling asleep’.
Despite HMK’s purposeful modelling on Kālidāsa’s work and its shared concern with making temporality audible and felt, this dissertation attempts to show how in Nayacandra’s poem the rhythm of time and fortune is modelled in its own specific, arguably innovative tragic-historical (and intertextual) mode, with deep ironic undertones.I will propose that a story about the heroes of the present dark age, the kaliyuga, is indeed bound to sound more tragic, more real, ‘historical’ and less ideal. I will argue that Nayacandra’s heroes are meant to be more unstable, more ‘shaky and sleepy’
than those in Kālidāsa’s poetry. This is partly because other textual models – like the deeply tragic Mahābhārata template, or the critical prabandha template - also merge into Nayacandra’s version of Chauhan history, and thus playfully confront the application of textual models like Kālidāsa’s poetry.
Why are such features almost never considered in recent readings of HMK? Why do texts like HMK remain undervalued as works of poetry? Crucial structuring episodes like the meta-poetic interventions of ‘good-morning’ poetry have been literally left out in modern readings of HMK, even though they are inserted at critical moments in the poem.
In fact, basic thematic analysis – identification of recurrent motifs and patterns - is virtually absent in recent discussions of Nayacandra’s poem. This has something to do with the modern historiographical outlook on historical poems like HMK.
Historiographical analysis of HMK and other related historical poetry is typically driven by questions pertaining to what Cynthia Talbot in her work on the Pṛthvīrāja tradition calls “the “social logic” of texts about the Indian past: who commissioned them and for what purpose”.35 Such questions are also central in recent readings of HMK by historians
35 Talbot 2016: 7.
16
like Michael Bednar and Ramya Sreenivasan, which I will briefly review in the next section.
As an act of counterbalance, this dissertation stresses the importance of paying attention to the ‘literary logic’ of historical texts. Moreover, it is important to not over-emphasize the patron’s role in shaping the narrative. Recent close readings of several biographical epics show that the poets’ often critical or ambivalent voice tends to surface in these poems, as in the work of Yigal Bronner, Lawrence McCrea, Cynthia Talbot, Bihani Sarkar, Phyllis Granoff, Allison Busch, and Heidi Pauwels.36 This is, of course, not unique to Indian literature, as it is also dominant, for example, in the chivalric and historic literature at medieval European courts.37 The prevalence of such features in premodern historical or heroic narratives is intriguing and requires more scholarly attention. As the famous poet Bilhaṇa put it in the preface to his biography of the Western-Chaulukya king Vikramāditya VI (r.1076-1126), the fact that we praise Rāma and not Rāvaṇa rests on the efforts of the primordial poet Vālmīki alone: a king should better not anger his court poet.38 Scholars like Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea have drawn attention to such striking introductory verses, demonstrating that a poet like Bilhaṇa infuses his biographical epic with ambiguities and ambivalences to “unimagine the political” and implicitly question the heroic stature of his patron. Poets make use of poetic devices like
‘ironic’ trick praise (vyāja-stuti) – blame in the form of praise, and vice versa -, a figure of
36 Thus for this attitude in Sanskrit kāvya, see Bronner (2010), McCrea (2010), Sarkar (2013) and Talbot (2012: 347) and the observations on the poetic attitude of cynicism in Jain prabandha literature by Granoff (1995: 354) and in vernacular historical poetry by Busch (2005: 41; 2012: 311-15) and Pauwels (2009: 199-200).
37 For example, in his highly acclaimed Herfstij der Middeleeuwen (“Autumn of the Middle Ages”) the famous Dutch historian and cultural critic Johan Huizinga observes something similar as one of the defining characteristics of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French chronicles composed by poet-historians in
37 For example, in his highly acclaimed Herfstij der Middeleeuwen (“Autumn of the Middle Ages”) the famous Dutch historian and cultural critic Johan Huizinga observes something similar as one of the defining characteristics of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French chronicles composed by poet-historians in