DEIVATHIN KURAL #195 (Vol #4) Dated 26 May 2011

DEIVATHIN KURAL #195 (Vol #4) Dated 26 May 2011

(These e-mails are translations of talks given by Periyaval of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, over a period of some 60 years while he was the pontiff in the earlier part of the last century. These have been published by Vanadi Padippagam, Chennai, in seven volumes of a thousand pages each as Deivathin Kural. Today we are proceeding from the second para on page number 1,101 of Vol 4 of the Tamil original. The readers may note that herein 'man/he' includes 'woman/she' too mostly. These e-mails are all available at http://Advaitham.blogspot.com updated constantly)
88. When there is competition between poets and they are not able to decide as to who is the winner, then it used to be the custom for the King to leave it to the divine decision. The King will go to the Temple with all the poets and pundits, when a simple procedure is used to decide as to which poet was better and had the divine sanction. The procedure was to tie some strings of flowers of equal length that had been adorning the God’s form till then. Normally one would expect that the set with more poems and or palm leaves would be heavier. But in an ambient atmosphere in which people had trust and faith without being corrupted by devious mind sets of agnosticism, the works of superior literary merit will be seen to outweigh others! When ThirukkuraL was kept on the Sangap Palagai, all the poets seated on it till then, slided down and when the board regained its balance, only ThrukkuraL was seen to be on it! As we have seen (early in this 4th Volume of Deivathin Kural), Thiru Gnaana Sambandar won over the Jains through ‘Anal (fire) Vaadam’ and ‘Punal (flood) Vaadam’, as I have described some time back. Basically the idea is to leave it to divine force when a decision is beyond human capabilities!
89. KaaLidaasa and AmbaaL. There was an occasion when they had to decide as to who is a greater poet, between KaaLidaasa, Bhavaboothi and Dhandi. No decision could be arrived at by way discussions and debates. So Bhoja Raja decided to seek divine interference. So they all went to the Sanctum Sanctorum of AmbaaL nearby. AmbaaL gave her decision by a bodiless voice known as ‘asareeri’ heard by all the assembled. The ‘asareeri’ went like this, “kavir dhandi – kavir dhandi bhavaboothisthu pandita: I”. That means, ‘Dhandi is a poet, I repeat Dhandi is a poet while Bhavaboothi is a pundit’.
90. To be a pundit means a person with vast amount of knowledge about many subjects, languages and grammer. But that is different from poetic ability and literary acumen. To be able to go deep into an idea or concept and say it with beauty of expression with decorative language using rhyme and rhythm is poetical expertise. That may not mean a vast knowledge base. If both these abilities are there in the same person, that would be a special endowment. So some are poets and some are scholars. Here Dhandi was declared as having poetical ability and Bhavaboothi was declared as a great Pundit! There was no mention of KaaLidaasa in that declaration by ‘asareeri’!
91. “So, what does it mean? Am I supposed to be neither a poet nor a Pundit, is it?” KaaLidaasa wondered thus. That is when, KaaLidaasa posed a question to all the people assembled as well as addressed it to AmbaaL, the Presiding Deity! He said, “Then what do you mean? Ko aham”, to mean, “Who am I?” He just jumped the gun so to say! AmbaaL’s judgement was not yet over. Before completion of the ‘asareeri’ pronouncement, he had just interjected. Having heard that one is a poet and the other a Pundit, without even giving time for the ‘asareeri’ declaration to be over, he had asked about himself in a flippant manner. But, AmbaaL did not get angry!
92. When we are busy preparing some nice eats for the child, we may fail to listen to what the child has to say. The child may get annoyed assuming itself as being ignored. Later we go to the child and offer the eats and the child may blurt out, “I do not want anything from you!” or some such complaint. Do we get annoyed with it? We only end up saying, “Is the baby so annoyed? Here, soundly beat this Mother of yours who has ignored you like this”, do we not? AmbaaL did not feel bad with this baby KaaLidaasaa’s violent outburst. For his question, “Then, who am I?” she gave a reply, “tvamevaaham, tvamevaaham, tvamevaaham na samsaya:”, meaning, “You are myself only, without a doubt”, the first phrase repeated three times!
93. Had he not interjected, we do not know as to what AmbaaL would have said. May be, after having said, “Dhandi is a real poet, Bhavaboothi is a scholar”, then may be, She could have added that “KaaLidaasa is poet’s scholar and a scholar among poets” or words to that effect! But, as he had interjected in anger, She lifted him to the pinnacle of glory to total identity with Herself!
94. All the knowledge, all the worthwhile knowable is all in her. She is the ultimate of all knowledge. She is ‘Gnaanadaa’ the giver of Gnaana, ‘Gnaana Vigraha’ the very form of knowledge. She is the root of poetic essence. She is ‘Rasagna’ the knower of the essence and ‘Rasa Sevadhi:’ the appreciator of the essence of the sweetness; says the Lalitha Sahasranaama. Thus to be the knowledge, knower and the subject worthy of knowing is She and her equal She says is KaaLidaasa!
95. By this praise instead of some occasional pride, the risk was for KaaLidaasa to get imbued with haughtiness! So as to avoid her favourite baby from such a risk, on another occasion AmbaaL deflated his ego. On this occasion the comparison was between KaaLidaasa and Bhavaboothi only. Bhoja Raja told both the poets to write on a particular matter and no one could decide as to whose work was superior of the two. So the consensus was for a divine decision and accordingly everybody assembled before the sanctum sanctorum of AmbaaL’s Aalayam. Bhoja Raja himself wrote the poems on palm leaves of equal weight.
96. At the first look it seemed as though KaaLidaasaa’s side of the balance was going down and Bhavaboothi’s was going up. That is, KaaLidaasa was about to win. A simple judgement purely based on the relative value of the two poems could lead to injustice in another plane, AmbaaL thought. I suppose AmbaaL’s analysis could have been on the following lines. “If KaaLidaasa wins again he may get too much pride and become intolerable. Similarly this Bhavaboothi with much worth may be feeling the hurt already, as he has had to remain content with being called only a scholar in comparison to a poet and a further loss of face may lead to disappointment and mental depression,” AmbaaL feared. All this analysis could have been only like a flash I suppose! So, she decided to do something to correct the imbalance.
97. She is the one who adds beauty to the sense of beautifulness! She is the one ever decorated all over with fragrant flowers of all colours and hues. There would be a flower inserted just above her ear too on either side. There is a description of this in Lalitha Sahasranaama. In Her hair she has ‘champakam, asokam, punnaagam, sowgandikam etc.’, ‘champakaa – asoka – punnaaga – sowgandika – lasat – kachaa’. Then most endearingly she is having the ‘kadamba’ flower adorning her ears: ‘kadamba – manjari – klupta – karNa poora – manohara’! At the time of the incident being described, she was having ‘kalhaaram’ on her ears.
98. When Bhavaboothi’s plate came up, as though to adjust the decoration on her ears, (a gesture that women often do after all), she pressed the flower ever so slightly. She caused a drop of honey from the flower to shoot out and fall on the plate in the balance containing the palm leaf of Bhavaboothi’s poem. That was enough to tilt the balance in his favour. When we say ‘Kavita Rasam’ we mean the essence of poetical sweetness. When that one drop of nectar from the flower on the ears of this personification of sweetness AmbaaL, made up for the difference, causing the plate containing Bhavaboothi’s poem to become heavier and so, go down and win!
99. KaaLidaasa was quick to catch this trick and at once composed another poem describing this event, since all said and done AmbaaL Herself had said that he is none other than Herself! He did not feel the least perturbed. Even had he become ever so slightly irritated, he could not have been faulted! Instead he said, “How lucky I am, that I am witness to what AmbaaL did!” This is the full poem:-
“aho! me soubhaagyam mama cha bhavaboothechch paNitam
tadaayaam aarobhya pratipalati tasyaam laghimani I
giraam devi satya: sruti – kalita – kalhaara – kalikaa
maadooli – maaduryam kshipati paripoortyai bhagavati II
100. As KaaLidaasa could look at it with equanimity devoid of jealousy, he realised that AmbaaL was intending to save him from his pride and conceit. So, he considered the event as his great luck. Bhavaboothi responded with, “Oh! Is that how it happened? My Namaskaarams to you”! KaaLidaasa recommended that Bhavaboothi may be presented with 100 elephants, it seems. It is pleasing to note that two great poets who were competing with each other with ‘one-up-man-ship’ suddenly became friendly after this incident!
(To be continued.)
Sambhomahadeva.