Call for Poetry Submissions

Rasāla, a new Sanskrit publishing venture I have just set up, will be bringing out an anthology of poetry on the night, entitled ‘Śarvarī’.  For this, we would like to invite all Sanskrit enthusiasts to submit verses – either their own compositions of those of their favourite poets.

The best 108 verses submitted will be published in the 2012 Rasāla anthology. Those whose verses are selected for the anthology will be duly credited; they will also each be given a free copy of the book.  Those verses not selected will be published on Rasāla’s website.

 

Full details are given in the announcement below (in English and in Sanskrit). Please visit the Rasāla website for more details and to see the verses submitted so far.

 

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Call for Poetry Submissions

 

Rasāla is a new Sanskrit publisher which publishes India’s most beautiful forgotten poems alongside contemporary English translations.  We would like to invite you to submit verses – either your own compositions of those of your favourite poets – for the annual Rasāla anthology. This year’s anthology is entitled ‘Śarvarī’ or ‘Night’.

 

Submitted verses should be on the theme ‘Night’ – for instance descriptions of the sunset, moonrise and onset of darkness; the meeting of lovers by night; the blooming of waterlilies and so on.  You are encouraged to send verses which are artistically beautiful – imbued with rasa and rich in figures of speech – as opposed to those focused more on morals or instruction.

 

Please send your submissions either to venetia@rasalabooks.com or, by post, to Rasāla, A303 Raheja Regent, 35 Coles Road, Fraser Town, Bangalore 560 005.  Phone: +91 997230 5440. Please note your name and contact details and also include the name and any other details of the poet whose verses you are submitting.

 

The best 108 verses submitted will be published in this year’s Rasāla anthology. Those whose verses are selected for the anthology will be duly credited in the book; they will also each be given a free copy of the book.  Those verses not selected will be published on Rasāla’s website.

 

For more information, please visit www.rasalabooks.com.

सूचना

रसालाख्यं नूतनसंस्कृtतप्रकाशनं भारतवर्षस्यादृष्टपूर्वाणि विस्मृतानि सुन्दरतमानि च काव्यान्यांग्लभाषायानूद्य प्रकाशयति । भवन्तो रसालप्रकाशनस्य पद्यावल्याः कृते स्वरचितानि पद्यान्यन्येषां कवीनां (प्राक्तनानामधुनातनानां वा) च पद्यानि प्रेषयेयुरित्यस्माकं सविनया प्रार्थना । अस्याः पद्यावल्याः ’शर्वरी’ति नाम अस्माभिर्दत्तम् ।

पद्यानि रात्रिसम्बद्धानि भवितुमर्हन्ति – यथा सुर्यास्तचन्द्रोदयतिमिरादीनां वर्णनम्, रात्रौ कामिनोः समागमः, कुमुदादीनां विकास इत्यादि । पद्यानि रसमयानि अलङ्कारचमत्कारयुक्तानि भवेयुः । यथाशक्ति नीत्युपदेशसहितानि पद्यानि वर्जनीयानि ।

venetia@rasalabooks.com प्रति पद्यानि प्रेषयेयुः | aअथवा Rasāla, A303 Raheja Regent, 35 Coles Road, Fraser Town, Bangalore 560 005.  Phone: +91 997230 5440  प्रति पद्यानि प्रेषयेयुः | स्वसन्देशपत्रे नामसङ्केतसम्पर्काणां सूचना दातव्या । कवेर्नामाद्यपि तत्रैव दातव्यम् ।

 

एतेषां प्रेषितानां पद्यानां मध्ये १०८ उत्तमानि पद्यानि शर्वरीनाम्न्यां रसालपद्यावल्यां प्रकाशितानि भविष्यन्ति । येषां पद्यानि पुस्तकार्थं चितानि तेषां नामाद्यपि पुस्तके लिखितं भविष्यति । तेभ्यः पुस्तकमेकमपि दीयते ।  यानि पद्यानि पुस्तकार्थं न चितानि, तान्यपि रसालप्रकाशनस्य अन्तर्जालस्थाने प्रकाशिष्यन्ते ।

इतोऽपि विज्ञप्तिप्राप्तये www.rasalabooks.com कृपया पश्यतु ।

 

Kokila Sandesha Bonus Post

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

लक्ष्मीजन्मस्थितिमनुपमैः पूरितां रत्नजालै-

र्भूभृद्गर्भां प्रकटितकलेशोदयश्लाघ्यवृद्धिम् ।

पाथोराशेस्तनुमिव परां मन्यमानो विशालां

यामध्यास्ते स खलु निगमाम्भोजभृङ्गो रथाङ्गी ॥ १ ॥

Discus-wielding Viṣṇu himself,

bee to the Vedas’ lotus,

lives here

seemingly in the belief that this sprawling city is another vast ocean.

For both are the birthplace of Wealth herself,

both are filled with jewels that know no comparison,

both are home to the pillars of the earth,

and while the rise of its artists magnifies the city,

it is the rise of the moon that magnifies the ocean.*   Uttarabhāga – Verse 1

*Lakṣmī, the goddess of wealth, was born in the ocean and it is full of the jewels produced when the ocean was churned to produce amṛta.  Bhūbhrt, literally ‘that which bears the earth’, is often used to denote a mountain or a king; both are meant in this case.  The ocean swells at the rise of the moon.

By Uddaṇḍa’s account, the city to which his wife belongs, Chendamangalam (Sanskritised as Jayantamaṅgalam), is not only as vast as the ocean but also its match in wealth.  Whether or not Chendamangalam, pronounced Chennamangalam, was ever quite as grand as the poet describes it is today one of those quiet Keralan villages with almost as many people as temples.

In fact, Chendamangalam’s most famous residents date from after Uddaṇḍa’s time.  The Paliath Achans, who were appointed as hereditary prime ministers to the Kochin kings and ruled much of this area in their own right, lived here in the large Paliam Palace.  The palace and other parts of the Paliam ancestral home are currently being renovated – in a project undertaken partly by the large Paliath family, several of whom still live here – and will soon be opened to the public.

Uddaṇḍa doesn’t mention the Paliath family – writing as he was a couple of hundred years before it rose to prominence – but he does describe the Viṣṇu temple which is one of the many temples now under the Paliam trust.  Local report has it that this temple moved Uddaṇḍa so much that he raised his hands to pay his respects to God – one of only two occasions when he did this, the other being at the Rajarajeshwara temple in Taliparamba.

Uddaṇḍa describes the temple as being “on the bank of the Cūrṇī river” (now the Periyar) but the river is now some distance away.  Local historian Mr Manoharan believes that the river used to run alongside the temple, just to its north, but changed its course to move further north.

The site of the home of Uddaṇḍa’s wife, Śrīdevī, is also uncertain.  The Mārakkara household, or Mārakkaḷ as it is now known, is still recognised as the family into which Uddaṇḍa married.  Family tradition holds that one of the reasons the scholar-poet came down to Chendamaṅgalam was because of the report of the Mārakkara family’s great learning.  The other reason cited is that Uddaṇḍa’s friend, another of the poets from the Zamorin’s court, Chennas Namputiri, was from this area and indeed gave his name to the town.

According to the poem, the house lies to the south of the temple.  Today’s Mārakkara family is based south-west of the temple, but at a little distance.  Instead, a plot adjacent to the temple, which now hosts a recently built house, may have been the original site.

The Kokila Sandeśa has a detailed description of the house and its grounds. It has a jewelled fence that encloses a golden central building; an ornamental pond lined with rubies; mango, champaka, sandal wood and kuravaka trees; and an emerald apartment where the poet’s wife loves to be.

Not much of that would have survived even if the description owed less to poetic licence, although the present Mārakkara house does have two ponds – one for bathing, and the other a yakṣī- or nāga-kolam (pond) – and an aśoka tree housed alongside shrines to propitiate the nāgas.  (Nāgas or snakes play a very important role in Kerala. The current residents remember how the local astrologer, when consulted about moving one of the shrines, told them that according to the snakes it was the family who were guests living upon their land.  One owner ignored the traditional nāga-worship to his peril;  he was eventually chased out of the house by them.)

The house’s owners tell the story of how Uddaṇḍa came to write the Kokila Sandeśa:

Uddaṇḍa used to travel a lot, even after marrying, to participate in debating competitions and visit his scholar-friend. Perhaps towards the end of his life he went back to his village near Kanchipuram and was, due to failing health, unable to travel back to his wife in Chendamangalam.  It was then that he composed the Kokila Sandeśa as he pined for her.  Whether the couple was ever reunited – whether they ever did enjoy full days of each other’s company against a backdrop of roaring monsoon clouds – is not recounted.

तीर्णप्रायो विरहजलधिः शैलकन्याप्रसादात्

शेषं मासद्वितयमबले सह्यतां मा विषीद ।

धूपोद्गारैः सुरभिषु ततो भीरु ! सौधान्तरेषु

क्रीडिष्यावो नवजलधरध्वानमन्द्राण्यहानि ॥ ६१ ॥

By the grace of Pārvatī, daughter of the mountain,

we have almost crossed this sea of separation.

Only two months remain.

Be strong, my little one,

don’t give up!

Then we shall pass whole days in play

upon balconies steeped in incense,

my timid thing,

days ringing with the deep murmur of fresh rainclouds. Uttarabhāga – Verse 61

Rasāla, a kāvya imprint I have just set up, will be bringing out its edition of the Kokila Sandeśa alongside an English translation in the next couple of months.  Please click here for more details or get in touch: venetia@rasalabooks.com

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Many thanks to Narendran Paliath and his parents; Mr Sreekumar and the residents of Mārakkara; and Mr Manoharan for showing me round Chendamangalam and bringing alive the koel’s final destination.

Mahodayapuram – Kokila Sandesha 8

This post is part of a series on the Kokila Sandeśa of Uddaṇḍa Ṥāstri, to read the introduction click here. An edition of the poem with an English translation will be released shortly by Rasāla, a kāvya imprint I have just set up. Please click here for more details or get in touch: venetia@rasalabooks.com

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.