Abstract
I have gathered and studied these Sanskrit and Telugu writings by South Indian poets, and I’ve thought about them, and researched them for a few years. My highest priority in this piece is not to make the most simple literal word-for-word translation. I am trying not only to be faithful to the original texts, but to find a way in English to tell the detailed century-old stories more naturally, conveying them in a way that gives them a flow and literary charm. I want to make a new attempt to convey these century-old stories which suggest the rich feelings of human life, in refreshing ways. I hope people who are not professional Indologists, but who are humanists, can enjoy the nuances of the topic. So this article based on translations is literary and frankly experimental; it is about natural experiences told in natural language. Often, translations from centuries ago seem stilted, dry and archaic, literally correct and academically adequate, but lacking such touchstones of basic humanity’s life as inner feelings and visceral intuitive sensations. I am exercising a hope of offering a fresh telling, and a chance to provide some imaginative reflections on this topic I have chosen. The theme is sweat—and other natural human responses. Why explore sweat? This is a pertinent question. For one thing, I’ve been struck by how the experience of sweat meant something different centuries ago in India, in comparison with what it means to many people today. As reflected in Sanskrit literature, it had associations with desirable feelings—thrills, soulful exertions, arousal, passionate intensity. It is distinctive, and I seek to know what it might tell us about life, both to Hindus and non-Hindus. It offers a chance to contemplatively play around with beauty, too. It is an aesthetic exploration, an artistic challenge, an alluring human mood, of loving joy. The longer texts I am working with are Tirumalamba’s Sanskrit text Varadambika Parinaya Campu and Pingali Surana’s Telugu text Kalapurnodayam. Shorter texts I refer to include a verse from the Sanskrit Bhagavad Gita, and Jayadeva’s Sanskrit Gita Govinda, and a Telugu song by Annamacharya.
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Notes
I am indebted to the work of the translator Suryakanta, for his important work in making the English rendering of this text, Varadambika Paranaya Campu of Tirumalamba, Varanasi: Chowkamba Sanskrit Series, 1970. This text is now also available as an ebook. There is an inscription in the Shrirangam temple that Achyutaraya visited that place with his two principal queens, Varadarajamma and Oduva Tirumalamba, and also with the young prince Venkatadri. http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/96028/6/06_chapter%202.pdfp. 12–13. Accessed January 18, 2018.
Daniel H.H. Ingalls, tr., Sanskrit Poetry, Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1972, p. 1.
Suryakanta, Varadambika Paranaya Campu of Tirumalamba, p. x.
Panchama means “the fifth.” The fifth note of the Indian gamut is associated with the sound of the cuckoo and is said to be produced from five parts of the body; Panchama is also the name of a raga sung in that note.
Varadambika Paranaya Campu of Tirumalamba, p. 67.
Ibid., p. 67. The birth of an important person is often announced by a dream in Indian literature. For examples of patterns in saints’ lives, see my book Tyagaraja—Life and Lyrics.
Varadambika Paranaya Campu., p. 67.
Ibid., pp. 72 and ff.
Ibid.,. p. 94.
Ibid., p. 96. I have selected only a few parts of description, which is much more detailed in the original. I re-phrase and reword Suryakanta’s translations.
Ibid., p. 99.
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., p. 105. “A woman’s breasts bear the paradoxical burden of being esthetic organs. They are modified sweat glands that secrete what is essentially enriched sweat, a lactational charge without which the human race, until very recently, could not have survived. At the same time, breasts in Western culture have long been considered the paired centerpieces of female erotic beauty, a woman’s ‘natural jewels,’ in the words of culture critic Anne Hollander…” Natalie Angier, “Goddesses, Harlots, and Other Male Fantasies.” The New York Times, February 23, 1997. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/02/23/reviews/970223.23angiert.html?mcubz=0. This is a large-scale theme. I paraphrase here from Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain: “Life is a female with swelling breasts and half-closed eyes—she challenges us.” Jung’s discussion of the Anima archetype is relevant to this.
Ibid., pp. 106–107.
Ibid., pp. 109.
Ibid., p. 112–113. For musings on the belly in Indian life and culture, see Sharanya Manivannan’s article, “Of concave and convex mirrors,” in Kindle Magazine, March 6, 2013, http://kindlemag.in/belly/
Suryakanta, Varadambika Parinaya Campu, p. 73 and ff.
Ibid., pp. 117–123
Ibid., pp. 123 ff.
Varadambika Parinaya Campu…, p. 131 and ff.
Kesara. Flowers known in the West as Rottlera tinctoria, Mimusops elengi, and Mesua ferrea.
Varadambika Parinaya Campu…, pp. 137–138.
Ibid., p. 142.
Ibid., p. 119–150.
Pingali Surana, Kalapurnodayam, Vijayawada: Jayanti Pablikesansu, 1967. Also, G.V. Krishna Rao, Studies in Kalapurnodayam: Literature and its value in life, Tenali: Sahitikendram, 1956. See pp. 27–29, and p. 172.
As the Telugu proverb says, “If it rains, it rains--we are not seeds that will germinate and sprout in a little moisture!” “Tadiste tadistam, moka molichipom, kadaa!”
Jayadeva, Gita Govinda, #24. See Barbara Stoller Miller’s translation, Lovesong of the Dark Lord, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977, p. 124
Barbara Stoller Miller, tr., Lovesong of the Dark Lord, # 14, p. 99.
Skirmishing loveplay—war imagery in erotic literature—is discussed by Lee Siegel in Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions as exemplified in the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1978, 1990, pp. 82–83, 100–101, 131–133, 163–165.
Barbara Stoller Miller, tr., Lovesong of the Dark Lord, #12 p. 95.
Ibid., #20 p. 115, and # 19 p. 111.
Bhagavata Purana, III.15.25.
See Daniel H.H. Ingalls, Sanskrit Poetry, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1972, pp. 151–153.
Ibid., # 518 p. 144.
Lee Siegel, Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions... pp. 27, 177.
Annamacharya’s kirtana, Paluka tenela talli, is a good example. I translate it in my book, Songs of Three Great South Indian Saints, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 62
Emily Dickinson wrote “I like a look of agony,/Because I know it’s true;/Men do not sham convulsion,/Nor simulate a throe./The eyes glaze over, and that is death./Impossible to feign/The beads upon the forehead/by homely anguish strung.”
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Jackson, W.J. Sincere Praise of Honest Sweat: Tirumalamba’s Varadambika Parinaya Campu and Pingali Surana’s Kalapurnodayam. DHARM 1, 69–83 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-018-0015-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42240-018-0015-3