Mahodayapuram – Kokila Sandesha 8

This post is part of a series on the Kokila Sandeśa of Uddaṇḍa Ṥāstri, to read the introduction click here

रम्यां हर्म्यध्वजपटमरुद्वीजितब्रध्नयुग्या-

मग्रे पश्याञ्जनखलपुरीमाश्रितां शङ्करेण।

यत्राश्लिष्टो वरयुवतिभिश्चुम्बति स्विन्नगण्डं

चूर्णीवातः प्रिय इव रतिश्रान्तिमास्यारविन्दम्॥1.88

Up ahead you’ll see the charming city of Añjanakhala where the mansions’ fluttering flags act as fans for the sun’s horses and which is home to Ṥaṅkara.  The breeze from the Cūrṇī river returns the embraces of the city’s beauties, kissing their sweat-streaked cheeks as a lover the lotus face of his beloved, creased with exhaustion after their love-making.

The koel is to fly slightly inland after crossing the Nīlā or Bharatapuzha river.  His first stop is the home of Uddaṇḍa’s scholarly friends, the Payyūr Bhaṭṭas, to whom he should offer a poetic composition as a gift – possibly this very poem itself. (This echoes the offering Lakṣmīkdāsa’s messenger in the Ṥuka Sandeśa makes to Kālī at the Kodungallur temple; the Ṥuka Sandeśa, which was written a little before this poem, covers the southern half of Kerala before ending just north of Kodungallur and there is thus considerable cross-over in the two poems’ description of this area.)  After the Payyūr Bhaṭṭas’ house, which is in a village today known as Porkulam, the koel visits in rapid succession Vṛṣapura, Valāyālaya and Saṃgamagrāma – Thrissur, Urakam and Irinjalakuda respectively.

The koel’s penultimate stop is Mahodayapura, the ancient capital of Kerala under the Kulaśekhara kings, the second Chera empire.  Mahodayapuram must have been a grand city – the Ṥuka Sandeśa describes its mighty army and overlordship of other Kerala kings – but it is surprisingly hard to establish where exactly it stood.  

The two sandeśa kāvyas both describe a Kālī temple, Mahodayapuram and the Cūrṇī or Periyar river on whose banks the city stands.  From the order in which the two messengers – who are flying in opposite directions, the parrot of the Ṥuka Sandeśa is travelling from southern Kerala up the coast – cross these three, it is clear that the temple is north of the city, which is itself north of the river.

In the Kālī temple just before the city Uddaṇḍa describes how Ṥiva’s attendants the bhūtas are prevented from sacrificing a bull by Vijayā.  This is the Bhadrakālī temple at the centre of Kodungallur. Animal sacrifice used to be a large part of the worship here but was latterly banned, although tethered goats still bleat just outside the main entrance. 

Although in the Kokila Sandeśa the temple is clearly outside the city, the Ṥuka Sandeśa is more ambiguous and some locate Mahodayapuram in Kodangallur itself, a largeish town 30 odd kilometres above Kochin.  Others say that the lost port city of Muziris was Mahodayapuram. Muziris, which has attracted so much attention of late that there is now a Muziris Heritage Project run by the Kerala government, was a huge trading port frequented by the Romans, Greeks, Arabs and Chinese.  Recent archaeological evidence though places it about 10 kilometres south of Kodungallur in a village called Pattanam – perhaps shortened from Muziripattanam.  Recent finds from a site there include a plethora of amphora fragments, and a Tamil-Brahmi inscription that seems to indicate early Jain influence.  The port’s importance though seems to have suddenly diminished, perhaps due to an earthquake or as a result of the flooding in 1341 of the Periyar which changed the river’s course.   It is exciting stuff and has already been spun into a Michael Wood BBC documentary.  Most probably, though, Muziris was distinct from Mahodayapuram, acting as the empire’s major port city rather than its capital just as it had for the earlier Cheras.  At any rate, following the Chola king’s attack on Mahodayapuram in the 12^th century, the entire Kulaśekhara empire fizzled out.  So by the time of Uddaṇḍa and Lakṣmīdāsa, both Mahodayapuram and Muziris must have been shadows of their former selves. 

Unni identifies Mahodayapuram as Tiruvanchikulam, which seems to fit with the description in both the poems.  The Tiruvanchikulam temple is about two kilometres south of Kodungallur.  It is a quiet Ṥiva temple – thus “home to Ṥaṅkara” (verse 1.88 above) – said to have been built in the 11^th or 12^th centuries and thus accorded protected-monument status by the government archaeological department.   The Cūrṇī river is about a kilometre south of the temple.  It is hard to imagine this little hamlet – which has almost become a suburb of Kodungallur – as the Kulaśekhara kingdom’s capital but as Herodotus notes the fortune of cities is in perpetual flux. 

The Cūrṇī, which features prominently in both the sandeśa poems, is a massive river crossed by means of two long bridges; there is an island in the middle.  Chinese fishing nets stand alongside the river’s banks, at the edge of the dense palm trees that flank all water bodies in this part of India.

सा च प्रेक्ष्या सरिदनुपदं यत्र कल्माषितायां

मज्जन्माहोदयपुरवधूकण्ठकस्तूरिकाभिः।

रक्ताः पद्माः कुवलयवनीसाम्यमापद्यमाना

विज्ञायन्ते स्फुटमहिमधामोदये जृम्भमाणे ॥ 1.89

And that river is worth seeing.  In her waters, slowly mingling with the musk washed off the necks of Mahodayapura’s girls as they bathe, red lotuses are transformed into clusters of blue water lilies. It is only when the sun starts to spread its warm light that they can be seen for what they are.

The koel’s final stop lies across this mighty river at Jayantamaṅgalam known today as Chennamangalam.

तीरं तस्याः प्रति गतवतो दक्षिणं तत्क्षणं ते

देशः सर्वातिशयविभवो दृक्पथेतः प्रथेत।

तां जानीया दिशि दिशि जयन्ताख्यया ख्यायमानां

प्रत्यादिष्टत्रिदिवनगरप्राभवां प्राप्यभूमिम्॥1.92

The moment you cross towards the river’s southern bank, the richest of all lands will stand revealed.  That is your destination, the city which eclipses the city of the gods in her splendour, known the world over as Jayanta.

The Viṣṇu temple in Chendamangalam (mentioned several times in the poem) - reproduced with kind permission from Paliath Narendran.

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Thus ends the koel’s journey and this series of posts.  Thank you to all those who helped, including Dr Shankar, Professor Unithiri, Professor Rajendran, Harunga Isaacson, Isaac Murchie, Mr Lakshman and all those who helped me at the temples.

Kshemendra: Three Satires from Ancient Kashmir

 

Translated by AND Haksar

The ancient Kashmir of the title is a strange land peopled by swindler goldsmiths descended from the rats whose destructive burrowing drove the golden Mount Meru to abandon the world of mortals and ascetics so intent upon gazing at the sky that they keep tripping over.  It is nevertheless not unfamiliar to those campaigning with Anna Hazare against a rotten bureaucracy nor to those who grumble about India’s increasing moral bankruptcy. 

These three satirical bhanas, or “causeries”, are the work of Kshemendra, a cosmopolitan scholar of the 11^th century who studied under the famous Abhinavagupta.  Kshemendra’s contribution to Sanskrit literature has only recently been fully appreciated: the first of the 34 works attributed to him was discovered in 1871.  Eighteen have been found in total, of which several are technical and devotional works and four satirical.  AND Haksar, who translated these three satires, has already done much to establish the poet’s reputation beyond the academic community with his translation of the Samaya Matrika or The Courtesan’s Keeper, a sustained satirical narrative about a shape-shifting pimp.  These three satires, also set in Kshemendra’s native Kashmir, paint a similar picture of a society in hot pursuit of money and sex, preferably combined. 

Although the first work, Narma Mala or A Garland of Mirth, takes a narrative form, the other two, Kala Vilasa (A Dalliance with Deceptions) and Deshopadesha (Advice from the Countryside), are more a string of well executed vignettes.  The story, at any rate, is of secondary consideration.  It is in the details that Kshemendra’s pen cuts most deeply, particularly in his fresh and often shocking similes.  The guru whose mouth twitches “like the cunt of an old she-buffalo” is not quickly forgotten, and Mr Haksar does justice to the often filthy language of the original; you have to wonder how the Victorian translators would have handled this.  But the humour is not all bawdy.  The foreign student for whom “even a river is considered insufficient for his purificatory rites” but who happily tucks into the leftover dinner and drink of the harlot he has engaged for the evening, has a glow “like that of an unlit lamp”. 

No one, not even a Buddhist nun, not even poets themselves, is spared.  At times, Kshemendra can seem a little old-fashioned: working wives and women who enjoy a good party are among those he condemns as “demons of a thousand deceptions in the dark night of this degenerate age”.  But his castigation of cheating officials resonates loud and clear:

Plundered by the bureaucrat,

the state’s afflicted prosperity

weeps dark tears, which seem to be

ink drops dripping from his pen.

At times Kshemendra relents and gives us more standard poetic fare but his wit and cynicism are never far from the surface.  A beautiful description of Ujjain at dusk mixes the conventional with his own particular style; “the sun…disappeared slowly from the sky like a gambler stripped bare by cheats”.  For the most part we are invited to mock as well as condemn the doctor who must kill thousands of patients with experimental concoctions before establishing his reputation, the astrologer who consults “knowledgeable fisherman” about the likelihood of rain and the man about town who gives himself love bites and smears lipstick on his collar before going out.  Would that Kshemendra were alive and writing today.

This review first appeared in the New Indian Express here

To buy this book or for more details, click here

Triprangode and Tirunavaya – Kokila Sandesha 7

This post is part of a series on the Kokila Sandeśa of Uddaṇḍa Ṥāstri, to read the introduction click here

Sixty five kilometres down the coast, the koel reaches the land of Prakāśa, literally the ‘bright’ land, from which Kālī herself has been tamed by the continuous Vedic recitation.  This is the stretch in between the towns of Tirur and Ponnani, through which the huge Nīlā or Bharatapuzha river flows out into the Arabian ocean. 

There are three temples that the hero bids his messenger visit as he flies through.  The first is the temple of Ṥiva which the poet calls Ṥvetāraṇya and is today known as Thripangode temple. Ṥiva is worshipped as Mṛtyuñjaya, ‘conqueror of death’, because it was here that he dispatched Yama, god of death, in a towering rage, as the local priest explains:

The sage Mṛkaṇḍa, who lived next to the nearby Tirunavaya temple, was a great devotee of Ṥiva’s and in response to his prayer for a son, he was offered the classic choice – a boy glorious but short-lived or ordinary but long-lived.  Like others, he chose the former and was blessed with a perfect son, Mārkaṇḍeya, who was destined to live until the age of 16.  On his 16^th birthday, Yama came to take Mārkaṇḍeya.  The boy first ran to Viṣṇu in the Tirunavaya temple but Viṣṇu urged him to turn to Ṥiva for protection.  He ran the three kilometres to the Ṥiva temple – right through the centre of a huge al tree that stood in front of the temple and which split in half to let him through – and embraced the Ṥivaliṅga. Yama, in hot pursuit, hurled his deadly noose which settled around the liṅga Mārkaṇḍeya was hugging.  Incensed at this attack on his devotee and his very form, Ṥiva rose in terrible anger out of the liṅga to slay Yama with his triśula or trident. Mārkaṇḍeya was saved – and lives on eternally as a 16 year old youth – and four new Ṥivaliṅgas sprung up to mark the three (large judging by the distance between each) steps the god had taken after killing Yama and the place where he then settled, which thereafter became the main temple. 

To the right, just outside the temple gate, is a moss-covered pond in which Ṥiva washed his bloody triśūla.

The poem describes his blood-stained feet:  

सेव्यं शम्भोररुणमुरसस्ताडनाद्दण्डपाणेः

पादाम्भोजं शिखरितनयापाणिसंवाहयोग्यम्।

येनाक्रान्ते सति गिरिपतौ लोष्टमानास्यचक्र-

श्चक्रन्दाधःकृतभुजवनो रक्षसां चक्रवर्ती॥1.71

Worship Ṥambhu’s lotus feet, stained red from trampling on Yama’s chest, which Parvatī massages with her hands. It was these feet which made the rakṣasa king cry out, squashed as he was beneath the mountain lord, his many heads heaped up in a circle and his clustering arms crushed to the ground. 

The Mṛtyuñjaya-homa remains one of the two most important rituals at the temple.  It is perhaps to this rite that the poet refers when he talks of how a glimpse at the god’s face here secures a devotee freedom from death. 

The last shrine devotees visit as they do their circuit of the temple is dedicated to Navamukunda, the Viṣṇu of the neighbouring Tirunavaya temple.  Here they give thanks to Viṣṇu for directing Mārkaṇḍeya to Ṥiva.

The Tirunavaya Navamukunda temple – which Uddaṇḍa calls Nāvākṣetra – is next on the koel’s route.  This spot is called Trimūrtisaṅgamasthāna – the spot where all three forms of God come together – because in addition to the Viṣṇu temple there is a (rare) Brahma temple and a Ṥiva temple on the opposite bank of the river, both of which are clearly visible from Tirunavaya. It is also an important spot for pitṛ-karman rites (as was Thirunelly) which are held on certain days of the year and attract lakhs of pilgrims, but the temple’s main claim to fame is the Mamankam festival that used to be held here.  The temple stands right on the northern bank of the Nīlā river, just a few kilometres from the river’s mouth, and was thus perhaps a logical place to hold a festival whose mythical origins and divine significance pale in comparison to its influence on trade and politics. 

The festival traces its roots back to a 28-day concord of the gods, convened by Bṛhaspati once every 12 years.  It was at originally called Mahāmāgha, the great (festival) of the month of Māgha, which in the vernacular became Mamankam.  An article written by the current Zamorin of Calicut (see Calicut post) in 2006 notes that it is difficult to ascertain the date of the first festival.  At any rate by the 9^th century AD, when the famous Ceraman Perumal divided up his kingdom and ran away to Mecca, the festival seems to have become a sort of royal election in which the surrounding kings would meet, discuss the performance of the last ruler’s 12 year term, and pick a new leader.  The Valluvanad kings inherited the temple overlordship, and thus control of the festival.  According to the current Zamorin’s account, his forbears, despite their great power and wealth, were unable to beat the Valluvanad king and sought to discover the source of his great strength.  On learning that it was the royal family god at Angadipuram who rendered him invincible, the Zamorin prayed to this same god and was soon victorious in what are now referred to as the Tirunavaya wars in the fourteenth century.  Thus the Zamorins won control of this temple and the politically and commercially important festival. 

Instead of coming to pay his respects to the Zamorin as overlord as other local leaders did, the defiant Valluvanad raja sent four leading men to kill the Zamorin.  They were duly killed by the Zamorin’s guards but it became a tradition for the men of these families to attempt this assassination at every festival, both to avenge their fathers’ and grandfathers’ deaths as well as to reclaim overlordship from the Zamorin.  British accounts of these attempts – which never succeeded – describe the tragic suicide missions.  The festival continued until the 18^th century when Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan attacked Kerala and sacked the Tirunavaya temple.  The temple was rebuilt by one of the Zamorins – both the Tirunavaya and Tripangode temples still fall under the Zamorins, along with 30 other temples in this region. 

For the hero, though, the Mamankam festival of his patron (which he suggests will be in full swing when the koel visits; although Māgha is in śiśira, the season that precedes vasanta, so even if it happened to be the right year the timing is slightly off) is of mainly of interest because it will have brought his wife here, along with many other Keralan ladies. 

साकं कान्तैर्मिलति ललितं केरलीनां कदम्बे

मत्प्रेयस्याः प्रियसख महामाघसेवागतायाः।

पायं पायं मुखपरिमलं मोहनं यत्र मत्ताः

प्रायोऽद्यापि भ्रमरकलभा नैव जिघ्रन्ति पद्मान्॥ 1.73

As a gaggle of Kerala ladies tremblingly meet their lovers, I know that right now the boisterous bees, driven wild as they drink again and again of the intoxicating scent of my wife’s mouth – for she too will have come for the Mahāmāgha festival – won’t even notice the lotus’ fragrance. 

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The original Ṥivaliṅga at Triprangode is said to have been constructed in the 9^th century and is decorated with beautiful but crumbling murals – restoration would cost 4 lakhs so they are being left to deteriorate.