We know a little something of Go·vardhana’s time and place. He was a member of a celebrated group of poets which included the great Sanskrit religious lyricist Jaya·deva, author of the “Gita·govinda: Love Songs of Radha and Krishna” (Gitagovindakavya),1 and the “messenger” poet Dhoyi, author of the “Wind Messenger” (Pavanaduta),2 who wrote at the court of Lakshmana·sena of Bengal at the end of the twelfth century. He also tells us something of his family in his introductory poem. But what we really care about is the poet himself, or rather, what the poet himself cared about: his poetry.
Fundamentally, Go·vardhana explores human relation- ships, particularly between the sexes, and on this basis also enters the realm of the gods and religion. His is a vision of universal love (which to him almost always means passion), with its messy, irrational, and fleeting vicissitudes. Even by Indian cultural standards, he can be outrageous, shocking, and subversive, revealing a remarkable degree of ironic (or other) distance from nominally hallowed tradition. To us, who have been conditioned to extract the “religious” from Indian culture and to discard as “irrelevant” the realities of ordinary human life, this will be most disconcerting. But he can also be very funny, perceptive, sympathetic, and moving, with a wonderful eye and ear for fine detail and nuance. Above all, he is immensely imaginative. He is conscious of this: what he has created contains “the essence of the three worlds” (v. 699). But this “essence” is not that of a philosopher or theologian, no grand theory: it is wonder-struck contemplation of passion pulsating in the cosmos.
Layout
All the verses of the “Seven Hundred Elegant Verses” (Aryasaptasati) are single stanzas in the same meter, Arya. The names of meters in Sanskrit are feminine and have meanings appropriate to describing an often attractive woman. The word arya means “noble lady” and thus has connotations of class and style. Since Go·vardhana is so fond of puns and suggestion, we have chosen to bring out this suggestion in translating the title of the collection. Indeed, nothing about Go·vardhana is simple. The title indicates that the collection consists of “seven centuries”; this echoes the similar collection of “Seven Hundred” (Sattasai) by Hala which is Go·vardhana’s model. Confusingly, however, Go·vardhana’s collection has more than seven hundred verses, for the “seven centuries” are preceded (for no obvious reason) by fifty-four verses; these we have numbered separately and called Prelude.
Like Hala’s Prakrit “Seven Hundred,” the bulk of this Sanskrit “Seven Hundred Elegant Verses” is only formally ordered. The seven hundred stanzas are divided into thirtyfour groups merely on the basis of their initial syllables or vowels. (Eleven letters of the Sanskrit alphabet are not used to begin a stanza, although only three of these cannot actually appear at the beginning of a word: n, n, and n.) To the Indian audience familiar with the genres and conventions of Sanskrit poetry, this juxtaposition of unrelated material would not have caused any problems. However, from this chaotic arrangement groups of verses can be extricated that share similar situations, people, or ideas (some such groups could be called “genres”), and this will throw further light ________
on the significance of the individual stanza. At the begin- ning, I was tempted to break up the whole work into such groups (which often allow for a “narrative” presentation). But for two reasons I abandoned the idea. First, a large number of shared themes cut across each other, overlap, or use logically different criteria, resulting in repetition. Sec- ondly, Go·vardhana intended the arrangement to be ran- dom.
An exception to this randomness is the Prelude. The first half or so consists of poems in praise of the gods; Go·vardhana then moves on to praising his predecessors, poetry in general, and finally himself. At the same time, the majority of these stanzas (as in the rest of the collection) have erotic themes; and the close affinity between literature and love is a major topic.
People in Go·vardhana
Go·vardhana is fundamentally a poet exploring people. Even when he is talking about gods and epic heroes, it is primarily their human characteristics, particularly their involvement in sex and love, that provide the focus. When he refers to nature, it is almost always for some metaphorical feature relating to human behavior. On the other hand, we witness a total absence of proper names; only gods and epic heroes have names. But this does not mean that his people are merely types or ciphers. For example, when the wife undresses in front of her husband and neighbor and points at the bruises the former has inflicted by beating her (v. 73), we are dealing with a totally unique episode.
Often people are referred to merely by a universal “she” or (less frequently) “he.” Nevertheless, the context tends to allow us to identify a particular type of individual. But context here means more than the hints contained in a single stanza; in fact, it is the whole of the “Seven Hundred Elegant Verses” from which an interpretative framework has to be extricated. In some verses, Go·vardhana uses markers for particular types of people and specified scenarios. It is with these solid pieces of information in mind that less obvious verses can be approached and imaginatively read in a similar light. For example, once we have read stanzas that specifically refer to a man’s go-between, other verses, in which a man is praised to a girl, can be located in that same context.
We can distinguish a variety of such person markers. The most obvious one is that of profession and social group. But there are dangers lurking here. Albrecht Weber, the first scholar who worked seriously on the Sattasai, mistakenly thought that Hala’s collection represented “peasant poetry” merely because farmers are spoken of in some of the verses. In fact, the opposite is true: in Hala, peasants are specifically marked because they are outside the poets’ own milieu. The same applies to Go·vardhana.
A Note on the Translation
No doubt, the translations offered here will be criticized for their clumsy syntax. I would agree with this criticism. In fact, perversely as it might seem, many of my earlier versions, which aimed at smooth, elegant readability, have been discarded, in favor of the versions printed here. Why ________
have I been prepared to pay such a heavy price? Let us look at what Go·vardhana himself does:
In the real life context for which the poetry was intended, someone would slowly recite to an audience, bit by bit. Thus we start with, suka iva, “like a parrot.” Something, as yet not introduced, is compared to a parrot. The next element, daru/salaka/panjaram, “the cage made of wooden twigs,” logically connects with “parrot,” and (simplifying matters somewhat) the listener will assume that the parrot does something to its cage. Next comes anudivasa/vardhamano, in itself unambiguous: “growing bigger day by day,” which appears to be a meaningful description of a parrot. So far so good; but the word me at the end of the first line breaks the smooth flow of ideas or images. This “of me” or “to me” has to be retained in one’s mind in isolation (with “my parrot” as one possibility). The krntati at the beginning of the second line tells us now what the parrot does to its cage: “it tears it apart,” though how it does so remains unsaid so far. With the next phrase, dayita/hrdayam, “the heart of the beloved,” an entirely new feature is introduced. All that can now be said is that possibly the me belongs to it, viz. “my beloved,” and that the heart is set in parallel to the cage, that the something which is compared to a parrot, breaks it apart. This now is revealed to be sokah, “grief.” Finally we have a complete sentence, and what otherwise might appear ______________
as a most incongruous simile, grief resembling a parrot, is logically justified, as well as being embedded in wordplay: suka ⋮ soka. Moreover, both can be said to be growing bigger day by day. Yet the poet has a few more syllables left, so he can add Smara/visikha/tiksna/mukhah, in order to explain the nature of the grief: “with the arrows of Kama as its primary painful cause” (various other interpretations are possible). This is a slightly odd phrase, which makes us think back to the parrot. Indeed, we find that the parrot can break the cage because it has “a beak as sharp as Kama’s arrows.” This now cements the simile of parrot and grief, for the single phrase, analyzed differently, characterizes both the bird and the woman’s emotions. So what Go·vardhana does, here and in a large number of other verses, is to challenge the listener, by offering