Bronner, yigal extreme poetry simultaneous narration in south asian poetry

EXTRE ME P OETRY

south asia across the disciplines


SOUTH ASIA ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

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: The South Asian Movement of Simultaneous
Narration by Yigal Bronner (Columbia)
The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British
Colonial Punjab by Farina Mir (California)
Unifying Hinduism: The 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 first
books across a wide range of South Asian studies, including art, history, philology or textual studies, philosophy, religion, and the interpretive 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
expertise and broad in appeal.


extreme poetry

the south asian movement

of simultaneous narration

Yigal Bronner

columbia university press

new york


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.
ISBN9 78-0-231-15160-3( cloth: a lk.p aper)—ISBN9 78-0-231-52529-9( electronic)
1. Sanskrit poetry—History and criticism.
I. Title.

PK2916.B72

891'.21009—dc22

2. Puns and punning in literature.

II. Series.
2010
2009028171

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book was printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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
changed since the manuscript was prepared.


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 Nizāmī, p. 133, translation
¨
by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi



CONTENTS

Figures and Tables xiii
Acknowledgments xv
A Note on Sanskrit Transliteration

1

introduction

xvii

1

1.1 Ślesa: A Brief Overview of the Mechanisms of Simultaneity
1.2 The Many Manifestations of Ślesa: A Brief Sketch
1.3 What (Little) Is Known About Ślesa

6

7

1.4 The Anti-Ślesa Bias: Romanticism, Orientalism, Nationalism

1.5 Is Ślesa “Natural” to Sanskrit?

3

9

13

1.6 Toward a History and Theory of Ślesa 17

experimenting with lesa
in subandhu’s prose lab 20
2

2.1 The Birth of a New Kind of Literature

20

2.2 The Paintbrush of Imagination: Plot and Description
in the Vāsavadattā 25
2.3 Amplifying the World: Subandhu’s Alliterative Compounds
2.4 Showcasing Ślesa: The Opening Lines of the Vāsavadattā

33
38


x

contents

2.5 Teasing the Convention: The Targets of Subandhu’s Ślesa
2.6 Bāna’s Laughter and the Response to Subandhu

44

50

2.7 Conclusion 55

3

the disguise of language:
lesa enters the plot 57

3.1 Kīcakavadha (Killing Kīcaka) by Nītivarman

58

3.2 The Elephant in the (Assembly) Room: Nītivarman’s Buildup

60

3.3 From Smoldering to Eruption: Draupadī’s Ślesa
and Its Implications 64
3.4 Embracing the Subject: Ślesa and Selfing

71

3.5 Embracing Twin Episodes: Ślesa and the Refinement

of the Epic 75
3.6 Flowers and Arrows, Milk and Water: Responses to
Nītivarman’s Ślesa 78
3.7 Sarasvatī’s Ślesa: Disguise and Identity in
Śrīharsa’s Naisadhacarita 82
3.8 Conclusion

88

aiming at two targets:
the early attempts 91

4

4.1 The Mahabalipuram Relief as a Visual Ślesa
4.2 Dandin: A Lost Work and Its Relic

92

99

4.3 Dhanañjaya: The Poet of Two Targets

102

4.4 Lineages Ornamented and Tainted:
On Ślesa’s Contrastive Capacities 106
4.5 What Gets Conarrated? Dhanañjaya’s Matching Scheme
4.6 Ślesa and the Aesthetics of Simultaneity
4.7 Why Conarrate the Epics?

119

115

112


contents

xi

5 bringing the ganges to the ocean:
kavirja and the apex of bitextuality 122

5.1 The Boom of a Ślesa Movement

123

5.2 The Bitextual Movement and the Lexicographical Boom
5.3 Sanskrit Bitextuality in a Vernacular World

132

5.4 Kavirāja’s Matching of the Sanskrit Epics
5.5 Amplifying Epic Echoes
5.6 Conclusion

6

128

140

148

153

lesa as reading practice

155

6.1 The Imagined Ślesa Reader: Representations and Instructions

156

6.2 Things That Can Go Wrong with Ślesa:
The Theoreticians’ Warning 159
6.3 Seeing Shapes in Clouds: Different Readings
of Meghadūta 1.14 169
6.4 Old Texts, New Reading Methods: The 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 The Ślesa Paradox

7

192

theories of lesa in sanskrit poetics

7.1 Theorizing Ornaments: An Overview of Alamkāraśāstra
7.2 Ślesa as a Theoretical Problem

203

7.3 Speaking Crookedly and Speaking in Puns: Ślesa’s Role
in Dandin’s Poetics 214
7.4 Dandin’s Discovery in Its Context

226

195
196


xii

8

contents

toward a theory of lesa

231

8.1 A Concise History of the Experiments with Ślesa
8.2 Ślesa as a Literary Movement
8.3 Ślesa and Sheer Virtuosity

231

234
239

8.4 Ślesa and the Registers of the Self
8.5 Ślesa and the Refinement of the Epic

242
246

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

254

8.8 Extreme Poetry and Middle-Ground Theory:
The 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

250

FIGURES AND TABLES

figures
The 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
theMaha balipuramRe lief 94
4.3 Center of the Mahabalipuram Relief: The River Ganges

96

4.4 The Bull-Elephant: A Motif from the Jalakantheśvara Temple
inV 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 Different Readings of Meghadūta1 .14

175

6.2 Different 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 KNOW LEDG MENTS

T

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 process of researching, writing, and editing it and
bringing it into its current shape. First and foremost, I wish to thank my
two lifelong teachers: Sheldon Pollock, who encouraged, facilitated, and
immensely enriched my work on this project in its many incarnations;
and David Shulman, who introduced me to the field of Sanskrit poetry
and poetics and who has offered endless support and invaluable feedback
in the process 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. These 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 officially 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 offered crucial intellectual and moral support. Finally, I wish to convey deep gratitude to my
beloved and much-missed Tamil teacher, Norman Cutler, who died prematurely in 2002.
Many people helped me in the process of gathering materials. In particular, I am grateful to James Nye, Chief Bibliographer for South Asia at


xvi

ac know ledg ments

Chicago’s amazing Regenstein Library; Dr. V. Kameswari, Hema Varadarajan, and the entire staff of the Kuppuswami Research Institute in Chennai; Professor Saroja Bhate in Pune; Dr. E. R. Ramabai and Dr. M. Visalakshi
at the University of Madras and the New Catalogus Catalogorum office;
and Dilip Kumar, who was in charge of sending endless packages of books
from Chennai to my various addresses. Thanks 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 oneman tech team and without whose help I could not have formatted the

bibliography and footnotes. Thanks 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: The U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation 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 parents, 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 NOTE ON SANSKRIT TRANSLITERATION

Q

uotes from Sanskrit are given in roman transliteration according to standard rules. I have usually standardized the spelling of
the original and corrected obvious typographical errors. Where
it seemed helpful or pertinent to the discussion, I have introduced indications of word boundaries within compounds, such as hyphens and circumflex marks. However, in passages involving ślesa I have avoided boundaries
and marks of the sort that might preclude entertaining particular 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 particular
example, see chapter 3, note 30). I have used the same method in transliterating texts whose ślesa nature is doubted, but which some readers
sought to read twice (as discussed in chapter 6).



EXTRE ME P OETRY


The 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 Collection, 17.2394. Photograph © 2010 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. See
section 3.7 for a discussion of this episode.


[  ] INTRODUCTION

I

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
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 effort 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 effort 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 scientific or other jargon,
because the daunting task of making every line in a text convey two different meanings may force him or her to draw on less-than-common linguistic
registers. The 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
attempt a merging of the two epics—word by word, scene by scene.


2

introduction

Even if there were a person qualified 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. The decoding of such poetry would require a reader just as knowledgeable as and
no less capable than the poet. The 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 immense difficulty of composing and reading
such poetry that makes it so hard to imagine. The 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 effort in composing a bitextual poem? Why would readers take the
trouble to read it? What possible enjoyment could one find in the conarration of the Iliad with the Odyssey besides marveling at the actual feat of
combining them?
At the very least, it is difficult 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
Italy.”1
In South Asia the phenomenon I have described here does, in fact, exist. The creation, consumption, and study of doubled texts using the literary 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 presented as the result of a sudden outburst of individual creativity that requires 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 natural 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 interested 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 experiment with such poetic devices in the history of world literature.
The purpose of this book is to begin filling this wide lacuna. It is an attempt to underscore and examine the various literary goals and contributions of the ślesa movement. The book charts the major phases in the
evolution of the movement and offers 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. The 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 unsuspecting traveler again embarked on the train. He was surprised to find
that “his” upper sleeper was now occupied. Fortunately, though, there was
an empty berth just beneath it, which he inhabited. The 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 exclaimed: “How amazing is modern technology! In the same train, the upper berth travels to Delhi and the lower to Bombay.”2
Ramanujan used this story to illustrate a kind of mental flexibility 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.” The subject matter of this book also
demands such mental flexibility on the part of its writers and readers
alike. In the following pages we will examine a literary train that does indeed travel in two directions; and we will take a look at its engine. The
literature in question was created by Sanskrit poets using a variety of
techniques, some more familiar to the Western reader than others. These
techniques were cataloged by Sanskrit literary thinkers under the heading
ślesa (embrace), a term that underscores the tight coalescence of two descriptions 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,
which are light.3

This poem depicts moonrise as a king’s rise to power. This dual effect 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 technical sense in political 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. Thus 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
different meanings of the same words, although whether these are indeed
the same words remains a highly contested issue within the tradition.
Such poems may occasionally be translated in a single text, assuming that


introduction

5

we can find similar homonyms in the target language.4 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 political deal can also be read as
describing the rising moon. Read differently, 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 evening
from tormenting me—
separated from my beloved?5

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.
This special effect is achieved by the poet’s carefully crafted oronyms,
those “strings of sounds that can be carved into words in two different
ways.”6 Take a very simple oronym. The 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). Thus, 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.
These specific lines are by Dandin (c. 700), a poet and critic to whom
we will return in later chapters.7 Here it is important to emphasize that a
ślesa, at least in some cases, is not solely an “embrace” of the signified (e.g.,
a king and the moon), which it certainly is, but also, and perhaps primarily, a union of two sets of signifiers, each with its own signified. Ślesa, then,