Rūpa Gosvāmī’s Dūta-kāvyas: (7) Towards an objective assessment

Towards an objective assessment

So far, the gist of my argument has been that the problem of poetry appreciation is mainly one of subjectivity—and that an unsurpassable distance separates the modern person, the uncultivated person, and the non-devotee, from the poetry of Rūpa Gosvāmī. But such arguments, though not without validity, do an injustice to both Professor De and his capacity to make legitimate criticism as well as to Rūpa Gosvāmī by failing to establish what I feel is his rightful claim to a place of honor in the history of Sanskrit literature. It is a real slap in the face to consider him a mere technician, without fully acknowledging the deep feeling and ultimate concern he had for his subject matter, what to speak of his ability to transmit these in his work. I may also have undermined my argument by intimating that the devotee's ability to criticize is impaired by a favorable bias toward any poetry, good or bad, dealing with Kṛṣṇa.

But we have also argued that we must know Rūpa by the standards to which he would have been held by his peers, not by our contemporaries. The rarity of poets of exceptional talent is admitted even by those within the Sanskrit tradition—Caitanya offered solace to the Digvijayī that flaws can be found even in the works of masters like Bhavabhūti, Kālidāsa and Jayadeva.[1] So, how can we objectively judge Rūpa? Is he the uttama-kavi described in the Karṇapūra verse cited earlier?

Perhaps a useful starting point is the following verse in which Mahāprabhu expresses his appreciation of Rūpa's talents. It is clear that when Kṛṣṇadāsa quotes his short statement summarizing the characteristics of Rūpa's poetry, it is of some significance.

madhura prasanna ihāra kābya sālaṁkāra

aiche kabitba binu nahe rasera pracāra

Rūpa's poetry is sweet, pleasing, and filled with literary ornaments. Without such poetry, the dissemination of rasa will not be possible. (CC Antya 1.198)

The privileged place given by Mahāprabhu to poetry in the preaching of the bhakti movement is stated directly in this verse. It is also evident that the distribution of rasa, or “sacred rapture,” is the goal of such preaching. But most clearly, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī uses Mahāprabhu's own words to confirm Rūpa's leadership in this literary aspect of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.

Here, Mahāprabhu specified three characteristics of Rūpa's poetry, madhura, prasanna, and sālaṅkāra. Madhura and prasanna refer to two of the guṇas, or virtues, by which the poeticians judge Sanskrit verse, i.e., mādhurya and prasāda.^{^[2]} Mādhurya is defined as ukti-vaicitryam, or a grace of style characterized by the absence of long compounds and sandhi. It is a style of composition that contains alliteration or similar sounds and is free from vulgarity. Mammaṭa calls it “the excellence that brings delight (āhlāda) to the mind and makes it melt (druti-kāraṇam).”[3] It is a style considered especially appropriate for the compassionate and peaceful moods, as well as the erotic mood in separation. The “unpedantic eloquence” of Kālidāsa, unusual in its relative simplicity compared to the work of many other classical Sanskrit poets, is mādhurya. Rūpa handles meters effortlessly and his syntax is straightforward. His use of alliteration is sufficient for euphony, but never distracting by its excess.

Prasāda is again defined in Sāhitya-darpaṇa as artha-vaimalyam: “lucidity, perspicuity or clarity of style.” Mammaṭa describes it as a quality that is all-pervading in a poem like fire in dry wood, by which he means that all superfluity is avoided, as is structural laxity—no element of the verse does not contribute to the poetic mood.[4]

Alaṅkāras, or literary ornaments are of two types, śabda and artha. Sabdālaṅkāra refers to the various types of alliteration and other sonorous effects, while arthālaṅkāras are the rhetorical tropes that embellish any poetical work: metaphors, similes, periphrasis, hyperbole, etc.^{^[5]} These embellishments had been so analyzed and differentiated by the poeticians that by the 14th century, 77 were enumerated in Sāhitya-darpaṇa.^{^[6]} If we consider their various subdivisions and combinations, there are several hundred of these tropes.

Mahāprabhu stated significantly not only that Rūpa had mastered these three characteristics, but that without them, rasa can neither be effectively produced nor distributed. Karṇapūra also stated that the uttama-kavi is one who not only is capable of assembling the necessary stylistic components, but who can produce that rather more elusive sign of the creative talent, aesthetic mood. If boiled down, the essence of De's critique is that this is not so, that the rasa in Rūpa's work is obscured by complex ornaments, whereas Mahāprabhu and his followers would hold that the opposite is in fact true. Rūpa's verses are lucid, even when he uses elaborate figures and apparently obscuring elements like śleṣa (paranomosia).

Interestingly enough, one of the types of Sanskrit that has been much praised from the time of Ānandavardhana in Dhvanyāloka takes the form of suggestive (dhvani) stanzas known as guṇībhūta-vyaṅgya śṛṅgāra, “in which the charm of the suggested sense is not more striking than that of the expressed one.” Puns are an integral feature of this type of poem, and we find several verses in Uddhava-sandeśa (51–62) written in this style.^{^[7]} These verses in the Uddhava-sandeśa are examples of flirtatious humor compatible with the erotic mood. Though not strictly following the classical situation of guṇībhūta-vyaṅgya śṛṅgāra (i.e., that of a subtly-hinted proposition), a similarly delightful use of śleṣa is found in the verses to Kṛṣṇa's ten avatāras found in Haṁsadūta (128-137).

Surprisingly, De has himself referred to such a verse using śleṣa (Haṁsadūta 136) in a positive light as “a specimen of witty application of the motif of the ten incarnations to the particular context of Rādhā's condition and the kind-hearted Kṛṣṇa's apparent indifference.” The question we will ask ourselves is whether the desired mood has been successfully created by the author or whether it has been dimmed by his use of wit:

na rāgaṁ sarvajña kvacid api vidhatte rati-patiṁ

muhur dveṣṭi drohaṁ kalayati balād iṣṭa-vidhaye

ciraṁ dhyānāsaktā nivasati sadā saugata ratis

tathāpy asyāṁ haṁho sadaya-hṛdaya tvaṁ na dayase

O Buddha, O omniscient one!

Rādhā has no attachment to anything;

she is inimical to the god of love

and opposes everything that interferes

with the attainment of her desired goal.

She has long been attached to meditating on you,

her only pleasure the path you have taught.

You are always merciful to all, O Lord,

yet you are not sympathetic to her. Why?

First of all, a favored source of bhakti-rasa, as has been mentioned above, is the interplay of Kṛṣṇa's mādhurya and aiśvarya. That Lalitā addresses the Lord according to his ten incarnations is an immediate recognition of his aiśvarya. She calls Kṛṣṇa sarva-jña, “all-knowing,” reminding him that he is not unaware of Rādhā's condition, for which he is to blame.

As the Buddha at this late date is known to the Hindu world primarily as a teacher of renunciation and non-violence (ahiṁsā), Rādhā is pictured trying to please him by concentrating on these qualities, even though she has in fact achieved them without any effort as the consequence of separation from her lover. She is detached (na rāgaṁ kvacid api vidhatte), she “hates” rati-patiṁ, the god of love, for everything that awakens the romantic mood is another thorn in her side, deepening her awareness of Kṛṣṇa's absence. She hates her own desire, which cannot be fulfilled in his absence. Lalitā, as Radharani's representative, sarcastically transmits an undertone of ambivalence to the lover who has deserted her, as Kṛṣṇa is often identified as the transcendental Cupid (rati-pati).

There is a certain mockery of the practice of austerities to reach the supreme goal: Rādhā's meditation on Kṛṣṇa is uninterrupted and helpless, not forced through diligent efforts. A god normally rewards such diligent penance by giving spiritual rewards, especially a merciful deity like the Buddha. Why then does he not do so? And how much more should Kṛṣṇa be merciful to Rādhā whose love is spontaneous and unmotivated? The concluding line with its triple repetition of the consonants da-ya (sadaya-hṛdaya tvaṁ na dayase) effectively drives the point home.

A single item of paranomosia is sufficient to maintain this double sense throughout the verse: sadā saugata-ratiḥ (“always devoted to the Buddhist path”) which can be read sadāsau gata-ratiḥ “she has forever lost any pleasure in life”).

Though the verse creates an overall mood of vipralambha-śṛṅgāra, there is still an element of the humor that characterizes the gopīs’ relations with Kṛṣṇa. The suggestion of a wistful recollection of the days when they enjoyed bantering with him on a regular basis wafts in the background of the verse, rendering it more poignant, like an old femme fatale putting on makeup and dressing up to relive the days of her youth.

We will give one more example, allowing the reader to enter directly into Rūpa's verse. Earlier it was mentioned that S.K. De had cited a stanza from the Uddhava-sandeśa as an instance of all that was wrong in Rūpa's poetry. It might do well to examine this verse more closely to see whether the rasa has been obscured by Rūpa's use of an elaborate metaphor based on the double-meaning of the word jīvana, taken either as “life” or “water.”

akrūrākhye hṛtavati haṭhāj jīvanaṁ māṁ nidāghe

vindantīnāṁ muhur aviralākāram antarvidāram

sadyaḥ śuṣyan-mukha-vanaruhāṁ vallavī-dīrghikāṇāṁ

yāsām āśā-mṛdam anusṛtāḥ prāṇa-kūrmāḥ vasanti

When Akrūra suddenly stole me, their life, away,

like the summer sunshine

evaporating the waters of a lake,

they searched for me,

calling out for me in such a way

that it split their hearts in two.

Their lotus faces quickly dried up;

their life airs, like turtles burrowing

in the mud of a dried up lake,

survive on hope alone.

In the above translation, I have rendered it as a series of similes, perhaps a tacit agreement with De that it is difficult to sustain a metaphor that has six different points of comparison: Kṛṣṇa as water, Akrūra (separation) as the sun, the gopīs as the lakes, their faces as the surrounding vegetation, their will to live as turtles, and hope as the mud in the bottom of the lake. However, despite the complexity of the idea, it is conveyed clearly. More importantly, the overall picture of the pond drying out and cracking in the summer sun, and the turtles burrowing in the patches of remaining mud is a delightful one. It draws on the resources that nature provides—the natural image (svabhāvokti) is strong in the context of Bengal with its annual cycle of rainy and dry seasons which leave many water creatures trapped and struggling to survive in drying-out waterholes.

The name akrūra never ceases to have its mocking sense of “non-cruel” or, as some pundits have explained “one than whom no one is crueler”—an apt epithet for the relentless summer sun. The use of both the word haṭhāt (“forcefully, suddenly”) and sadyaḥ (“immediately, suddenly”) suggest the rapidity with which the onset of the hot season evaporates the waters that have remained fairly stable throughout the colder season with its dews.

Rūpa has played with the image of hope as a sustenance for life in several verses throughout the two works and seems to be searching for an image which clearly conveys the tension between hope and hopelessness that is at the heart of lengthy separation. Here, the suggestion is that the hope is rapidly fading—the little water that moistens the turtles' refuge will not last much longer in the continued onslaughts of drought. Whether the metaphor is so complex or farfetched that the aesthetic mood has been destroyed, the reader will have to decide.

[1] CC Ādi 16.101.

[2] The literary qualities which they admit as an embellishment of the principal sentiment of a composition under three broad categories: ojas (energy), prasāda (lucidity), and mādhurya (sweetness). Kāvya-prakāśa (8.68). Sāhitya-darpaṇa (8.1).

[3] Kāvya-prakāśa 8.3.

[4] Kāvya-prakāśa 8.5-6.

[5] Devotees can get an idea of this by looking at the chapter on Digvijayī Paṇḍita (CC Ādi 16.721ff) where Mahāprabhu lists live virtues, of which the first two are śabdālaṅkāras, the last three, arthālaṅkāras.

[6] Bhakti-rasāmṛta-śeṣa, which is attributed to Jīva Gosvāmī, follows Sāhitya-darpaṇa except in its examples.

[7] One can look at the endnotes to these verses to get an idea of the way this functions. See S.K. De, History of Sanskrit Poetics, vol. 2. 157-9 re Dhvanyāloka. Sāhitya-darpaṇa devotes a large portion of chapter four to the subject. The different verses of the Uddhava-sandeśa correspond to the different subdivisions of guṇībhūta-vyaṅgya.

Rūpa Gosvāmī's Dūta-kāvya

(1) The sources of Rupa Goswami’s Authority

(2) Dating Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa

(3) The Dūta-kāvya Genre

(4) Separation in Rūpa Gosvāmī's writings

(5) Modern and Classical Literary Tastes

(6) Rasa: From aesthetic to sacred rapture

(7) Towards an Objective Assessment