Bronner, Yigal Extreme Poetry Simultaneous Narration in South Asian Poetry

  

E XT R E ME P OET RY

  

SOU TH ASI A ACROSS THE DISCIPLINE S

edited by dipesh chakrabarty, sheldon pollock,

and sanjay subrahmanyam

  Funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and jointly published by the University of California Press, the University of Chicago Press, and Columbia University Press

  Extreme Poetry: Th e South Asian Movement of Simultaneous Narration by Yigal Bronner (Columbia)

  Th e Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab by Farina Mir (California)

  Unifying Hinduism: Th e Philosophy of Vijnanabhiksu in Indian Intellectual History by Andrew J. Nicholson (Columbia)

  Everyday Healing: Hindus and Others in an Ambiguously Islamic Place by Carla Bellamy (California)

  South Asia Across the Disciplines is a series devoted to publishing fi rst books across a wide range of South Asian studies, including art, his- tory, philology or textual studies, philosophy, religion, and the inter- pretive social sciences. Series authors all share the goal of opening up new archives and suggesting new methods and approaches, while demonstrating that South Asian scholarship can be at once deep in

  

 

    

   

  

Yigal Bronner

  

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York Chichester, West Sussex

Copyright © 2010 Columbia University Press

  

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Bronner, Yigal.

Extreme poetry : the South Asian movement of simultaneous narration / Yigal Bronner.

p. cm.—(South Asia across the disciplines)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

  

ISBN 9 78- 0- 231- 15160- 3 ( cloth : a lk. p aper)— ISBN 9 78- 0- 231- 52529- 9 ( electronic)

1. Sanskrit poetry— History and criticism. 2. Puns and punning in literature.

  

PK2916.B72 2010

891'.21009—dc22 2009028171

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid- free paper.

  

Th is book was printed on paper with recycled content.

  

Printed in the United States of America

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References to Internet Web sites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the

author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or

  

For my parents,

Dina and Fred Bronner

  do ārat sabad jis kavit mem na hoi do ārat sabad bāj rījhe na koi A poem that doesn’t have Dual- meaning words, Such a poem does not Attract anyone at all— A poem without Words of two senses.

  

— Ma{navī Kadam Rā’o Padam Rā’o of Fakhr- e Dīn Niz āmī, p. 133, translation

¨ by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi

  

Figures and Tables xiii

Ac know ledg ments xv

A Note on Sanskrit Transliteration xvii

  % 1 &

  introduction 1

  1.1 Ślesa: A Brief Overview of the Mechanisms of Simultaneity 3

  1.2 Th e Many Manifestations of Ślesa: A Brief Sketch 6

  1.3 What (Little) Is Known About Ślesa 7

  1.4 Th e Anti-Ślesa Bias: Romanticism, Orientalism, Nationalism 9

  1.5 Is Ślesa “Natural” to Sanskrit? 13

  1.6 Toward a History and Th eory of Ślesa 17 % 2 &

  experimenting with lesa

in subandhu’s prose lab 20

  2.1 Th e Birth of a New Kind of Literature 20

  2.2 Th e Paintbrush of Imagination: Plot and Description in the Vāsavadattā 25

  2.3 Amplifying the World: Subandhu’s Alliterative Compounds 33

  

%x& contents

  3.6 Flowers and Arrows, Milk and Water: Responses to Nītivarman’s Ślesa 78

  4.4 Lineages Ornamented and Tainted: On Ślesa’s Contrastive Capacities 106

  4.3 Dhanañjaya: Th e Poet of Two Targets 102

  4.2 Dandin: A Lost Work and Its Relic 99

  4.1 Th e Mahabalipuram Relief as a Visual Ślesa 92

  

the early attempts 91

  3.8 Conclusion 88 % 4 & aiming at two targets:

  3.7 Sarasvatī’s Ślesa: Disguise and Identity in Śrīharsa’s Naisadhacarita 82

  3.5 Embracing Twin Episodes: Ślesa and the Refi nement of the Epic 75

  2.5 Teasing the Convention: Th e Targets of Subandhu’s Ślesa 44

  3.4 Embracing the Subject: Ślesa and Selfi ng 71

  3.3 From Smoldering to Eruption: Draupadī’s Ślesa and Its Implications 64

  3.2 Th e Elephant in the (Assembly) Room: Nītivarman’s Buildup 60

  3.1 Kīcakavadha (Killing Kīcaka) by Nītivarman 58

  

lesa enters the plot 57

  2.7 Conclusion 55 % 3 & the disguise of language:

  2.6 Bāna’s Laughter and the Response to Subandhu 50

  4.5 What Gets Conarrated? Dhanañjaya’s Matching Scheme 112 4.6 Ślesa and the Aesthetics of Simultaneity 115

  

contents %xi&

  % 5 &

  bringing the ganges to the ocean:

kavirja and the apex of bitextuality 122

  5.1 Th e Boom of a Ślesa Movement 123

  5.2 Th e Bitextual Movement and the Lexicographical Boom 128

  5.3 Sanskrit Bitextuality in a Vernacular World 132

  5.4 Kavirāja’s Matching of the Sanskrit Epics 140

  5.5 Amplifying Epic Echoes 148

  5.6 Conclusion 153 % 6 & lesa as reading practice 155

  6.1 Th e Imagined Ślesa Reader: Repre sen ta tions and Instructions 156

  6.2 Th ings Th at Can Go Wrong with Ślesa: Th e Th eoreticians’ Warning 159

  6.3 Seeing Shapes in Clouds: Diff erent Readings of Meghadūta 1.14 169

  6.4 Old Texts, New Reading Methods: Th e Commentaries on Subandhu 176 6.5 Ślesa and Allegory in the Commentaries on the Epic 181

  6.6 Double- Bodied Poet, Double- Bodied Poem: Ravicandra’s Reading of Amaru 183

  6.7 Th e Ślesa Paradox 192 % 7 & theories of lesa in sanskrit poetics 195

  7.1 Th eorizing Ornaments: An Overview of Alamkāraśāstra 196 7.2 Ślesa as a Th eoretical Problem 203

  7.3 Speaking Crookedly and Speaking in Puns: Ślesa’s Role in Dandin’s Poetics 214

  

%xii& contents

  % 8 &

  toward a theory of lesa 231

  8.1 A Concise History of the Experiments with Ślesa 231 8.2 Ślesa as a Literary Movement 234

  8.3 Ślesa and Sheer Virtuosity 239 8.4 Ślesa and the Registers of the Self 242

  8.5 Ślesa and the Refi nement of the Epic 246

  8.6 Playing with the Convention: Ślesa and Deep Intertextuality 250 8.7 Ślesa and Kāvya’s Subversive Edge 254

  8.8 Extreme Poetry and Middle- Ground Th eory: Th e Challenges Posed by Ślesa 257

  

Appendix 1: Bitextual and Multitextual Works in Sanskrit 267

Appendix 2: Bitextual and Multitextual Works in Telugu 272

Notes 277

References 315

  

Index 331

FIGURE S AND TABLE S figures

  Th e Svayamvara of Damayanti/Damayanti Carried to the marriage choice xx

  4.1 An Overview of the Mahabalipuram Relief 93 4.2 Śiva Grants a Boon to an Ascetic: Detail from the Maha balipuram Re lief 94

  4.3 Center of the Mahabalipuram Relief: Th e River Ganges 96

  4.4 Th e Bull- Elephant: A Motif from the Jalakantheśvara Temple in V ellore 98

  tables

  4.1 Triads of the Jain Epic Narratives 106

  5.1 Bitextual and Multitextual Sanskrit Works by Period 123

  5.2 Bitextual and Multitextual Telugu Works by Century 135

  6.1 Diff erent Readings of Meghadūta 1 .14 175

  6.2 Diff erent Readings and Interpretations of a Go- Between’s Message in Subandhu’s Vāsavadattā 180

  7.1 Dandin’s Simile, Vyatireka, and Ślesa-Vyatireka 226

  

AC KN OW LED G MEN TS

  his book was a long time in the making, and along the way I have incurred many debts. It is my pleasant duty to thank all those who helped me in the pro cess of researching, writing, and editing it and

T

  bringing it into its current shape. First and foremost, I wish to thank my two lifelong teachers: Sheldon Pollock, who encouraged, facilitated, and im mensely enriched my work on this project in its many incarnations; and David Shulman, who introduced me to the fi eld of Sanskrit poetry and poetics and who has off ered endless support and invaluable feedback in the pro cess of completing this book. My debt to these two men and their intellectual and personal generosity would be impossible to repay.

  For their guidance, patience, and generosity I am grateful to many other teachers as well. Th ese include H. V. Nagaraja Rao in Mysore, as well as N. R. Bhatt, K. Srinivasan, and the late S. S. Janaki in Chennai. Although they were never offi cially my teachers, Lawrence McCrea and Gary Tubb have taught me a great deal, and their comments on this book as it evolved were simply priceless. Special thanks are also due to V. Narayana Rao and Vimala Katikaneni, who, together with David Shulman, helped me with the Telugu materials, and my colleague Sascha Ebeling, who enriched my understanding of Tamil ślesas. I am also indebted to Steven Collins and Wendy Doniger, my former professors and now colleagues, and to the many colleagues at the University of Chicago who off ered crucial intel- lectual and moral support. Finally, I wish to convey deep gratitude to my beloved and much- missed Tamil teacher, Norman Cutler, who died pre- maturely in 2002.

  Many people helped me in the pro cess of gathering materials. In par tic-

  

%xvi& ac know ledg ments

  Chicago’s amazing Regenstein Library; Dr. V. Kameswari, Hema Varada- rajan, and the entire staff of the Kuppuswami Research Institute in Chen- nai; Professor Saroja Bhate in Pune; Dr. E. R. Ramabai and Dr. M. Visal akshi at the University of Madras and the New Cata logus Cata logorum offi ce; and Dilip Kumar, who was in charge of sending endless packages of books from Chennai to my various addresses. Th anks also to Michael Rabe and Anna Seastrand, who kindly shared with me their photography of and thoughts about Indian art, and Jonathan Bader, who did the same with regard to the hagiographies of Śa]kara.

  I am deeply indebted to all those who helped me revise and prepare this book for publication: Catherine Rottenberg and Neve Gordon, friends and partners in many ventures, who carefully read many of my drafts and who were always there for me whenever I needed any help or advice on the intricacies of the academic and publishing worlds; Daisy Rockwell and Daniel Wyche, who both read through the entire manuscript and made extensive editorial suggestions; and Jeremy Morse, who has been a one- man tech team and without whose help I could not have formatted the bibliography and footnotes. Th anks also to Alicia Czaplewski for all her assistance. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their many useful suggestions and corrections and to Avni Majithia- Sejpal, John Donohue, Charles Eberline, and the outstanding editorial team at South Asia Across the Disciplines and Columbia University Press.

  Several institutions and foundations contributed to my research and writing: Th e U.S. Department of Education Fulbright- Hays Doctoral Dis- sertation Research Abroad program, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, the American Institute of Indian Studies, and the Committee on Southern Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. Special thanks to the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, which generously hosted me several times during the past years.

  Finally, I wish to express my deep appreciation to my family. My par- ents, Dina and Fred Bronner, and my sister, Sharon Bar- Shaul, have always stood by me, even as my academic work took me far away from them. To my beloved children, Amos, Naomi, and Rivka, all three of whom were born at a time when their father was working on ślesa, and, last but not least, to my wife Galila, my best friend and better half: I thank you for bearing with me.

  

A N OTE ON SANSKRIT TR ANSLITER ATION

  uotes from Sanskrit are given in roman transliteration accord- ing to standard rules. I have usually standardized the spelling of the original and corrected obvious typographical errors. Where

Q

  it seemed helpful or pertinent to the discussion, I have introduced indica- tions of word boundaries within compounds, such as hyphens and circum- fl ex marks. However, in passages involving ślesa I have avoided boundaries and marks of the sort that might preclude entertaining par tic u lar choices of meaning. To give a simple example, the sequence dāsyasītyuktvā could be carved into words in two ways: dāsyasîty uktvā (saying [to myself] “you will give!”) and dāsy asîty uktvā (saying “you are [my] slave”), depending on the intended meaning. So as to not privilege one meaning over the other, I kept the sequence undivided (for the full text of this par tic u lar example, see chapter 3, note 30). I have used the same method in translit- erating texts whose ślesa nature is doubted, but which some readers sought to read twice (as discussed in chapter 6).

  E XT R E ME P OET RY

  

Th e Svayamvara of Damayanti/Damayanti Carried to the marriage

choice, Rajput, Pahari, Kangra, about 1790–1800. Nainsukh family, Punjab

Hills, India. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ross-Coomaraswamy Col-

lection, 17.2394. Photograph © 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. See

  

[  ] INTRODUCTION

  magine a poem of large or even epic proportions, say, the Iliad. Now try to imagine that the language of this poem is constructed in such a way that it simultaneously tells an entire additional story. Suppose, in

I

  other words, that each verse of the Iliad could simultaneously be read as narrating the Odyssey as well. It is hard to imagine that language could sustain such an eff ort and still be intelligible, let alone beautiful. We can conceive of punned words or even proverbial utterances that are doubly readable, such as “Gladly the cross- eyed bear” for “gladly the cross I’d bear,” but a large- scale poem that is consistently “bitextual” seems inconceivable.

  Now try to imagine the eff ort required to put together such a work. As a preliminary step, the poet would probably need to go through a whole set of dictionaries and systematically record all homonyms (e.g., cross, bear). Our poet would also do well to list as many homophones as possible (eyed/I’d; night/knight), which an ordinary dictionary would not indicate. In addition, the poet might need to study special lexicons of scientifi c or other jargon, because the daunting task of making every line in a text convey two diff er- ent meanings may force him or her to draw on less- than- common linguistic registers. Th e author would also have to gain a perfect knowledge of syntax and its possible ambiguities (e.g., “visiting relatives can be tedious,” where “visiting” can be either a verbal noun with “relatives” as its object or an adjective modifying “relatives”), as well as the intricacies of grammar. And, of course, he or she would have to be very familiar with phonetics, because it is useful in the creation of homophonous utterances (e.g., “the stuff y nose can lead to problems” for “the stuff he knows . . .”). Only then could the poet

  

%2& introduction

  Even if there were a person qualifi ed to compose such a bitextual poem— a master linguist, philologist, literature specialist, and gifted poet in one— it would be far from easy to establish a readership for it. Th e de- coding of such poetry would require a reader just as knowledgeable as and no less capable than the poet. Th e reader would have to master the same dictionaries and lexicons as the poet and go through the same linguistic and literary training. He or she would have to be an equal partner in the act of making double sense of a single text.

  However, it is not just the im mense diffi culty of composing and reading such poetry that makes it so hard to imagine. Th e very idea seems alien to modern aesthetic values and to our notions of how literature should be enjoyed and how language works. Why, one might ask, would poets invest such eff ort in composing a bitextual poem? Why would readers take the trouble to read it? What possible enjoyment could one fi nd in the conar- ration of the Iliad with the Odyssey besides marveling at the actual feat of combining them?

  At the very least, it is diffi cult to imagine that such poetry would be the result of a sudden, inexplicable burst of creative energy. Had we been asked to believe that a few dozen Iliad-Odyssey works actually existed, we could only assume that they were the product of prolonged cultivation by a large group of authors, readers, language specialists, and critics. Only then could we envision a variety of bitextual works, including not just double- epic poems but also, say, “an Iliad where every line and every word should bear a secondary reference to Napoleon’s campaign in Upper

  In South Asia the phenomenon I have described here does, in fact, ex- ist. Th e creation, consumption, and study of doubled texts using the liter- ary device called ślesa was a robust literary movement that lasted over 1,000 years throughout the Indian subcontinent. It is primarily associated with Sanskrit, but it existed in several other languages as well. Ślesa was used for many purposes, but most productively to conarrate the two great South Asian epics, the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata. But despite the central place this phenomenon occupied within the Sanskrit tradition, the existence of ślesa is wholly uncharted in modern scholarship. It is often ignored or deplored and at times even denied by researchers. Some of its manifestations are treated as if they never existed, while others are pre- sented as the result of a sudden outburst of individual creativity that re- quires no explanation. On the whole, it is a phenomenon viewed today as

  

introduction %3&

  too peculiar to be taken seriously and, at the same time, something natu- ral to India. It is an aberration, but it is also normal.

  As a result, this fascinating literary movement has been left in utter obscurity. No one has ever bothered to examine when and how bitextual ślesa poetry was composed, let alone why. Not a single bitextual poem has ever been studied analytically by modern academics. Many Indologists have only a faint idea that this productive genre exists, and those inter- ested in South Asian culture more generally typically know nothing about it. Similarly, Western literary theorists, who have only recently begun to consider wordplay and puns as a worthy object of serious interrogation, are totally unaware of the existence of ślesa, undoubtedly the greatest ex- periment with such poetic devices in the history of world literature.

  Th e purpose of this book is to begin fi lling this wide lacuna. It is an at- tempt to underscore and examine the various literary goals and contribu- tions of the ślesa movement. Th e book charts the major phases in the evolution of the movement and off ers a close reading of several central poems from each subgenre in its history. Attention is also given to the readers of ślesa poetry, as well as to the extensive theoretical discourse dedicated to it in Sanskrit. My ultimate objective in this work is to address two crucial questions: Why was South Asian culture so fascinated with the possibility of saying two things at the same time? And what does this literary phenomenon teach us about poetry in general, and about the ways texts generate meaning?

  

1.1 les.a: a brief overview of the

mechanisms of simultaneity

  A. K. Ramanujan, the famous poet and scholar of South Asia, once told the following story: A man was traveling on a train from Bombay [now Mumbai] to Delhi. He made a reservation for the upper berth, where he sat and slept during the long journey. At one of the many stops on the way, he stepped down to the platform in order to refresh himself with a cup of chai. Th e man took his time at the tea stall, and in the meantime his train departed. In its place appeared another train, traveling in the opposite direction— from Delhi to Bombay. Not noticing any of this, the unsus- pecting traveler again embarked on the train. He was surprised to fi nd that “his” upper sleeper was now occupied. Fortunately, though, there was an empty berth just beneath it, which he inhabited. Th e train took off , and

  

%4& introduction

  he happily relaxed in the bottom sleeper. It was a while before he began to sense that something was not in order. He turned to his neighbor and asked, just to be on the safe side, where they were heading. “Bombay,” came the answer. For a long while the man felt puzzled. Finally he ex- claimed: “How amazing is modern technology! In the same train, the up-

  2

  per berth travels to Delhi and the lower to Bombay.” Ramanujan used this story to illustrate a kind of mental fl exibility on the part of the puzzled passenger. In his view, that the passenger could think in two opposite ways simultaneously is symptomatic of his thesis regarding an “Indian way of thinking.” Th e subject matter of this book also demands such mental fl exibility on the part of its writers and readers alike. In the following pages we will examine a literary train that does in- deed travel in two directions; and we will take a look at its engine. Th e literature in question was created by Sanskrit poets using a variety of techniques, some more familiar to the Western reader than others. Th ese techniques were cata loged by Sanskrit literary thinkers under the heading ślesa (embrace), a term that underscores the tight coalescence of two de- scriptions or narratives in a single poem.

  Let us look at a couple of simple examples: Here’s a king who has risen to the top.

  He’s radiant, his surrounding circle glows, and the people love him for his levies, 3 which are light.

  Th is poem depicts moonrise as a king’s rise to power. Th is dual eff ect is achieved by the careful juxtaposition of lexical items that lend themselves to the portrayal of both the lunar and the royal: udaya refers to the eastern mountain, over which the moon ascends, as well as to a king’s rise to power; mandala means a circle, like the moon’s disc, but has a more tech- nical sense in po liti cal discourse of a king’s circle of allies; karas are the moon’s rays, but they also denote the taxes a king levies; and the moon itself is conventionally thought of as the king of the stars. Th us the poem is consistently dual, and both its registers are instantly audible to the trained listener.

  In cases like this opening example, the ślesa seems to be based on the diff erent meanings of the same words, although whether these are indeed the same words remains a highly contested issue within the tradition.

  

introduction %5&

  4

  we can fi nd similar homonyms in the target language. But Sanskrit poets have other, more sophisticated ways of creating linguistic embraces that can be reproduced only by resorting to a set of two parallel translations. Consider the following example:

  Having secured an alliance with that vicious king, whose conduct is far from noble, is there anything to stop this villain from tormenting his enemy— me?

  A villain made an unholy alliance with a corrupt king in order to harm his nemesis. But the portrayal of this dubious po liti cal deal can also be read as describing the rising moon. Read diff erently, the cruel knight is the night, always tormenting the lonely:

  Now that he’s joined by that nocturnal king, who resides among the planets, is there anything to stop the eve ning from tormenting me—

  5 separated from my beloved?

  For pining lovers, the moon is indeed a vicious king who joins forces with their dreaded enemy, nightfall, in a scheme to torture them.

  Each “translation” considered separately obviously misses the poem’s main objective, namely, the simultaneous depiction of a king and a moon. Th is special eff ect is achieved by the poet’s carefully crafted oronyms, those “strings of sounds that can be carved into words in two diff erent

  6

  ways.” Take a very simple oronym. Th e word naksatra means “planet,” but it can also be read or heard as two separate words, the negative particle na and the word ksatra (warrior). Th us, depending on how we carve words from the poem’s string of sounds, it can portray either the moon “who resides among the planets” or a king who does not follow the warriors’ code of conduct.

  Th ese specifi c lines are by Dandin (c. 700), a poet and critic to whom

  7

  we will return in later chapters. Here it is important to emphasize that a ślesa, at least in some cases, is not solely an “embrace” of the signifi ed (e.g., a king and the moon), which it certainly is, but also, and perhaps primar-

  

%6& introduction

  is not an allegory or an insinuation based primarily on extralingual fac- tors, but a unique manipulation of language itself with the aim of making

  8

  it consistently double. Th is manipulation very often involves the con- struction of the utterance so as to allow it to be segmented into words in more than one way. Such “resegmentable” utterances rarely appear in Western literature. In Sanskrit poetry, however, they are numerous and follow highly elaborate patterns, often exploiting the ambiguous resolu- tion of Sanskrit’s euphonic combinations. Th us our opening examples only scratch the surface of ślesa.

  

1.2 the many manifestations of les.a:

a brief sketch

  Sanskrit belles lettres, or kāvya, started to emerge around the beginning

  9

  of the Common Era. During the fi rst few centuries of Sanskrit literary production, the pun seems to have been but one among many rhetorical devices at the poet’s disposal. But around the sixth century poets began to experiment extensively with punning and bitextuality. Th us in the prose poetry of Subandhu and, to a lesser extent, his follower Bāna, ślesa be- came the major medium of long descriptive passages. Other poets were soon attracted by the possibilities of using ślesa to depict specifi c situa- tions and specifi c types of characters. In this capacity ślesa came to oc- cupy sections and even whole chapters of poems, which treated those parts of the plot that seemed particularly suitable for the use of a dou- ble language (e.g., when the heroes are disguised or confl icted). Finally, there are the full- fl edged bitextual poems dedicated to narrating together the two great South Asian epics, the Rāmāyana and the Mahābhārata.

  Ślesa was a dominant literary mode not just in mainstream kāvya but also in the related inscriptional poetry, which accompanied offi cial notices of kings and served to eulogize them. It came to dominate royal inscrip- tions throughout South Asia and in more remote areas of what Sheldon Pollock has termed the “Sanskrit Cosmopolis,” such as Southeast Asia (es-

  

10

  pecially among the Khmer), as well. In par tic u lar, it was used to conar- rate stories and descriptions of the king and the deity, a trend that ex- tended, around the turn of the fi rst millennium, to epic- sized ślesa poems depicting the royal and the divine at the same time. Ślesa also began to appear in poetry that simultaneously described binary opposites, such as sensual love and renunciation. Several full- fl edged collections of verses

  

introduction %7&

  shorter poems. Th ere are also ślesa verses (and possibly works) dedicated to the complementary yet antithetical relationship between Śiva and Visnu, the prominent South Asian gods, as well as the dialectic relation- ship between Śiva and his wife, Pārvatī.

  Th ere are also cases of ślesa in which a single passage is able to pass for both Sanskrit and one of its Prakrit sister languages. Other ślesas are bilin- gual in the sense that two diff erent narratives in two diff erent languages are embraced in one utterance. And although ślesa was primarily com- posed in Sanskrit, it was adopted by South Asian poets writing in a wide variety of languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Persian, and Urdu.

  Finally, ślesa was not limited to the linguistic medium but extended to other artistic domains, such as sculpture and architecture. Th ere are im- ages combining Śiva and Visnu, as well as Śiva and Pārvatī, which the cor- responding ślesa poetry seems to verbally iconize. Th ere are temples and other architectural buildings that include various kinds of “puns.” In the ancient South Indian port city of Mahabalipuram there is a gigantic nar- rative sculpture panel, dated to the middle or second half of the seventh century CE, that can be interpreted as a kind of visual counterpart to “double- epic” poetry. Examples also exist in dramatic works, a genre more closely associated with poetry. Several bitextual plays were composed, and actors were trained to play two roles simultaneously.

  In this context it is also crucial to mention the large body of commen- tarial work accompanying ślesa poetry, the numerous lexicons and manu- als for composing it, and the vast ślesa- related discourse in the tradition of Sanskrit poetics. Ślesa is therefore much more than just a narrowly de- fi ned technical term or a specifi c rhetorical ornament (alamkāra). Rather, it denotes a cultural phenomenon of major proportions— a large and self- conscious literary movement. No other contrivance listed by Sanskrit rhetoricians has ever enjoyed such an extraordinary career. How can one explain the profound fascination with what is, technically speaking, a sin- gle poetic device?

  

1.3 what (little) is known about les.a

  Surprisingly, the fi eld of Indology lacks any systematic treatment of the literary and cultural phenomenon in question. A good number of Sanskrit specialists are familiar with the existence of ślesa as an isolated ornament of speech in poetry and a topic of discussion in Sanskrit poetics, but few

  

%8& introduction

  living scholars have actually read a bitextual poem, and no modern scholar has seriously analyzed one. Bitextuality as a phenomenon is, simply put, off the scholarly radar.

  Th e most important extant work on this topic remains a rather terse essay by Louis Renou (fi rst published in 1951 and reprinted in 1978) that alludes to the size and importance of ślesa literature without mapping it in

  11

  any detail. A few editions of ślesa works have appeared with informative

  12 introductions, but the vast majority of ślesa poems remain unpublished.

  Sanskrit literary historians from M. Krishnamachariar to Siegfried Lien- hard dedicate only a few pages to ślesa poetry and relegate it to the status

  13 of an oddity.

  Th e little that has been written on ślesa poetry is of a descriptive, non- analytical nature. Th is is true of introductions to printed poems, of literary histories (e.g., A. K. Warder’s monumental Indian Kāvya Literature), and

  14

  of the handful of essays that directly address bitextual poems. Perhaps the only exceptions are David Smith’s note on ślesa usage in Ratnākara’s Haravijaya, an article by David Shulman regarding its use in Harsa’s plays, and an article by Christopher Minkowski on Sanskrit verses that can be

  15

  read from both left to right and right to left. But even these important essays do not discuss ślesa works per se.

  Some attention has been paid to the use of ślesa in identifying the king

  16

  and the god, particularly in inscribed panegyrics. But beyond a generally utilitarian approach that highlights the po liti cal benefi ts of such identifi - cation, there is very little literary analysis of these inscriptions and no study at all of the large- scale king- god bitextual poems, such as the Rāmacaritam of the eleventh- century poet Sandhyākaranandin, which conarrates the deeds of King Rāma of Bengal’s Pāla dynasty with those of

  17

  the Rāmāyana’s Rāma. Similarly, no research whatsoever has been car- ried out on bilingual ślesas, with the exception of a single essay by Michael

  19

  alone studied. Very little, if any, attention has been paid to bitextual works combining eroticism and asceticism, a genre that usually takes the

  

20

form of collections of short poems.

  Th e state of aff airs is slightly better in the study of Sanskrit poetics. Ed- win Gerow and Marie- Claude Porcher have summarized important por- tions of the ślesa- related discussion within this tradition, and scholars such as Madan Mohan Agrawal and J. A. F. Roodbergen have shed light on some specifi c passages. But the reasons that rendered ślesa the “most dis-

  

introduction %9&

  21

  the theory and the poetic practice have not been adequately assessed. To the best of my knowledge, nothing whatsoever has been written on the readership of ślesa poems.

  It is important to mention that several art historians of India have be- gun to recognize the importance of ślesa in their respective fi elds. For example, there are studies of ślesa in temple architecture in general, by Michael Meister and Devangana Desai, and works on the Mahabalipuram

  22 relief in par tic u lar, most notably by Michael Rabe and Padma Kaimal.

  Th ese art historians, however, fi nd few interlocutors among scholars of Sanskrit literature and culture.

  In short, Indology has yet to conceive of ślesa as a general cultural phe- nomenon that is worthy of charting and understanding in its own right. What exactly is the project of ślesa poetry? How does it stand in rela- tion to other cultural productions? And what theoretical insights can it engender? Th ese are questions that have never been asked in modern scholarship.

  

1.4 the anti-les.a bias: romanticism,

orientalism, nationalism

  Th e prevalent disregard for this literary movement has partly been the result of a strong distaste for ślesa among modern scholars, both Western and South Asian. Th e vast amount of energy Indologists have invested in writing against ślesa is quite remarkable, particularly when it is compared with the relatively small amount of scholarly work that has been pro- duced about it. Take, for example, the following passage describing Sub- andhu, the author of the ślesa- dominated pathbreaking prose work, the Vāsavadattā:

  Th e author is always very verbose and never cares for the plot. He is fond of using all kinds of similes— unnatural and disgusting though some of them are— for the purpose of giving free scope to his ex- treme partiality to slesha [ślesa] or pun upon words. Th e introduc- tion traces the origin of this deceased imagination which appears to have exercised so much infl uence on Subandhu as to make him not to care for anything else except the use of a string of words and phrases full of slesha. From this it will be clear how the pro cess of deterioration has proceeded and how the story, the necessities of the

  

%10& introduction

  were all set aside for the author’s inordinate love of profuse verbosity

  23 and dry pun.

  Subandhu is not the only ślesa poet to draw such harsh criticism. Nītivarman, the author of the KǬcakavadha (Killing Kīcaka)— one of the many important ślesa works that this book attempts to resurrect— is said to have been “not a great poet in the proper acceptation of the term, nor even a mediocre poet.” His writing amounts to “strained eff orts at mere verbal jugglery, with the result that the story is embellished out of all recognition.” Th us “his theme is slender and no attention is being paid to

  24

  its really poetic possibilities.” Nītivarman, though, is still considered much better than other authors of the “class of factitious compositions,” like the famous Kavirāja. Indeed, Kavirāja, the most celebrated ślesa poet, has come under severe attack. His work is fl atly decried as an “incredible

  25

  and incessant torturing of the language.” Even harsher is the critique of a poem of seven concurrent narratives by the poet Meghavijayagani, a

  26

  work that one critic has dubbed “nothing short of a crime.” Th is is only the tip of the iceberg, and what is particularly interesting is that many of these comments appear in introductions to printed editions of the very poems they discuss. Th us they serve as labels warning any potential reader: “Beware! Th is is terrible poetry!” Th is approach has had an im mense and lasting infl uence on the study of Sanskrit: academic insti- tutions tended to remove ślesa works from their curricula, and scholars

  27 and readers were actively dissuaded from studying them.

  Th e omnipresent characterization of ślesa as unnatural— an extravagant display that necessarily comes at the expense of the plot and is therefore “de cadent,” “torturous,” “disgusting,” and even “indecent” and “criminal”— is indicative of the infl uence of Romanticism, which dominated Eu ro pe an literary criticism in the late eigh teenth and nineteenth centuries and still seems to reign in Indology today. According to this approach, which can be traced back to poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge, a poem has to be composed spontaneously, as a result of the inspiration of a muse or of  nature. Its plot should be “simple,” “natural,” and “unembellished.” Complex and ornate works, of which ślesa serves as an extreme example, are deemed de cadent. Th is critical view has prevailed not only in relation to ślesa poetry, however. Major parts of the Sanskrit canon suff er from similar criticism. Th e same has been true of Urdu poetry, as Ralph Rus- sell and Frances Pritchett have demonstrated, to say nothing of the way

  

introduction %11&

  modern critics have dealt with embellishments in Indian architecture and

  28 sculpture.

  Indeed, as shown by Frederick Ahl, scholars of Hellenistic and Latin literatures tended to display a similar “discomfort with fi gures of speech that pluralize meaning.” Th ey formulized what Ahl describes as the “as- sumption of explicitness”: “ ‘classical’ texts are (or should be) sincere, spare and restrained.” When wordplays or puns suggest themselves, the critic’s fi rst strategy is to ignore them and assume that their appearance is coinci- dental. Th is strategy is meant to protect the poet, to allow him to remain classical. For if the poet nonetheless “resists explicit interpretation, he is

  29

  de cadent, post- classical, or, as we like to say nowadays, ‘mannered.’ ” Th e condemnation of “manner,” “style,” and ornamentation is ubiquitous. Iron- ically, even the poetry of Wordsworth himself later became subject to

  30 similar criticism.

  Th is universal approach had a unique local manifestation in the study of South Asia by serving as part of the ideology legitimizing colonialism. Th is ideology portrayed India as in decay and wild, a civilization long past its golden age and much in need of Western values. Th is master narrative of Orientalism— which Edward Said fi rst charted in general and Ronald Inden and others have demonstrated in the Indian case— was used in a wide variety of discourses on South Asian po liti cal and cultural forma-

  31 tions, including Indian literatures.

  Kālidāsa, the fourth- century Sanskrit poet and playwright, was cele- brated in nineteenth- century Eu rope as natural, simple, humane, and ex- pressive. His poetry was seen as giving voice to “the true spirit of the In- dian people” and was identifi ed with the tradition’s brief moment of glory, while later literary developments, consisting of the vast majority of what constitutes the Sanskrit corpus, were considered indicative of India’s pu-

  32

  trefaction. It was in the context of this Orientalist narrative that ślesa works were often characterized as a “real Indian jungle” (ein wahrer in- discher Wald) and their authors dubbed “no better, at the very best,

  33

  than . . . specious savage[s].” Th ere are probably several reasons that this colonial approach has had such a lasting impact. Th e most important of these is that India’s national- ists adopted major components from the Orientalists’ master narrative. Th us they too viewed their true national spirit and original culture as vic- tims of a lengthy pro cess of deterioration and hence in need of being re-

  34

  vived. What ever the specifi c reasons for this approach, it is still a pervasive

  

%12& introduction

  view that “little occurred in Sanskrit poetry that was really new after Kālidāsa[, when] poetry grew convention- ridden and unnecessarily diffi -

  35

  cult [and writers] seem . . . to be lacking in sensitivity.” Th is is not to say that the Orientalists have entirely invented a canon of kāvya, with Kālidāsa at its center. Representatives of the tradition itself— theoreticians, poets, compilers of anthologies, and commentators— all regard Kālidāsa as one of kāvya’s dearest sons, quite possibly its preemi- nent author. Likewise, the notion of a lost golden age in itself is not wholly alien to the tradition. Th e poet Subandhu, in a famous verse, bemoans the loss of kāvya’s “nine gems” (which probably included Kālidāsa) and

  

36

  the rise of the lesser “modernists.” More specifi cally, the tradition oc- casionally raised its own concerns about ślesa and similar devices in comparison with the poetic ideal of evoking emotional “fl avor” (rasa). Th us some theorists may have considered ślesa poems part of an inferior category of poetry when compared with poems informed by models such

  37

  as those provided by Kālidāsa. Still, the Orientalist system of canoniza- tion within kāvya is far removed from the traditional view. Th is is as true of the exaggerated attention to Kālidāsa as the last worthy poet— the San- skrit tradition, by contrast, hails numerous subsequent poets— as it is with respect to the uncompromising criticism of ślesa. Th e poetry dis- cussed in this book was widely read, intensively commented on, and in- cessantly copied before the colonial era. Poets from Subandhu in the sixth century to Kavirāja in the twelfth and Śesācalapati in the seven- teenth took im mense pride in their bitextuality, and many critics hailed ślesa as the hallmark of learnedness and poetic power. Even theorists like Ānandavardhana (c. 850), who argued that poetry should evoke emo- tional “fl avors,” did not abstain from composing ślesa. Th us even if we fi nd some ambivalence in the emic approach to ślesa, it is nothing like the adamant dismissal of it in the last 250 years to be found in the etic.

  So blinding was the impact of this bias that the authoritative Sanskrit literary histories still fl atly deny the very existence of ślesa poetry in the