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A History of Sanskrit Literature c12.s1: 1. Bhāravi

A History of Sanskrit Literature c12.s1

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English

Contents

1. Bhāravi

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OF Bhāravi's life we know nothing whatever, though he ranks as second in magnitude among the constellations of the Kāvya. External evidence proves that he was older than A.D. 634 when he is mentioned with Kālidāsa in the Aihole inscription, and he is cited in the *Kāçikā Vṛtti*; on the other hand he manifestly is influenced by Kālidāsa, while he strongly affected Māgha.¹ Bāṇa ignores him, so that he can hardly have preceded him long enough for his fame to compel recognition. It is, therefore, wiser to place him *c.* A. D. 550 than as early as A.D. 500.

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¹ Cf. Jacobi, WZKM. iii. 121 ff.

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His *Kirātārjunīya*² is based, as usual, on the epic. The *Mahābhārata*³ tells us how, when the Pāṇḍavas with their wife Draupadī have retired under their vow of twelve years' banishment to the Dvaita forest, Draupadī, with truly feminine faithlessness, urges the heroes to break their pledge. A council is held; Yudhiṣṭhira pleads for the bond; Bhīma controverts his contentions. Vyāsa counsels retirement from the Dvaita forest, and the brothers go to the Kāmyaka wood, where Yudhiṣṭhira takes the prudent course of bidding Arjuna, as a preliminary to war, to secure from Çiva divine weapons. Arjuna obeys, practises in the Himālaya severe penances, meets and struggles with a Kirāta, who proves to be Çiva himself; he grants the boon desired, to which the other gods add further largesse. This theme Bhāravi has chosen to expand and illustrate with all the resources of a refined and elaborate art. The opening shows at once the hand of the artist; in the epic the discussion of the brothers arises merely from the dreary plight in which they are placed; Bhāravi begins instead with the return of a spy whom Yudhiṣṭhira has sent to report on the deeds of Suyodhana—as he is always styled; he bears the unwelcome tidings that the king is walking in the ways of virtue and charming the hearts of the people. Hence, naturally, Draupadī, anxious for the future, taunts Yudhiṣṭhira with his inglorious plight and urges swift battle (i). Bhīma adds his support;

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Yudhiṣṭhira, the unready, has scruples of honour (ii), but seeks counsel from Vyāsa, and the sage admits that war must be, but, since the foe is so strong, urges that Arjuna should by penance in the Himālaya win Indra's aid. He vanishes, but a Yakṣa appears to lead Arjuna on his way, and they depart, cheered by the good wishes of the remainder of the party (iii). At this point the poet's invention displays itself in elaboration; just before, by omitting all mention of the move to the Kāmyaka wood, he had shortened the narrative, improving greatly the effect; now he takes the opportunity to display the poet's command of language. In Canto iv the Yakṣa leads Arjuna on; and a brilliant picture is drawn of the autumnal scene, partly in narrative, partly in the mouth of the Yakṣa. Then follows (v) the description of the Himālaya itself, the Yakṣa lays stress on the mystery which guards it and on its close kinship with Çiva and Pārvatī, and vanishes after bidding Arjuna do penance on Indrakīla. The penance of Arjuna terrifies the Guhyakas, the spirits who haunt Indrakīla; they appeal to Indra to aid them, and he sends Gandharvas and Apsarases to disturb the asceticism which menaces the quiet of his mountain (vi). The heavenly host speeds through the air to Indrakīla and makes there its camp; their elephants merit special description (vii). The Apsarases now leave their palaces, just made by their magic power, and wander in the woods to pluck the flowers;

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then the Ganges invites them to the bath, and the bathing scene is described with much charm and beauty (viii). Evening comes, the sun sets, the moon arises—the banal theme wins new effect through the poet's skill; the nymphs and their lovers drink and seek the pleasures of love; the day dawns (ix). The Apsarases now turn their minds to their task; aided by the seasons who now appear six in number to second their efforts, they expend, but in vain, all their charms on the young ascetic (x). Seeing his minions thus foiled through Arjuna's constancy, Indra appears himself in the guise of a sage, admires the fervour of the penance, but contends that to bear arms and practise asceticism are inconsistent; Arjuna admits the logic of the censure, but asserts that he will do all to save his family's honour. Indra is touched, reveals himself, and bids him win the favour of Çiva (xi). Here ends the poet's invention, and we again find the epic as his source. Arjuna continues his penance in order that Çiva may bless him; the seers in distress appeal to the great god, who expounds to them Arjuna's divine nature as an incorporation of Nara, a part of the primeval spirit; a demon Mūka in boar form plans to slay him; therefore Çiva bids his host follow him to guard the prince (xii). The boar appears to Arjuna; it falls pierced by his own and Çiva's dart; the prince advances to recover his arrow, but is challenged by a Kirāta who claims it in his master's name (xiii).

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Arjuna rejects the demand in a long speech; the Kirāta returns, and Çiva launches, but in vain, his host against Arjuna, who endures unscathed the shower of their arrows (xiv). The host is rallied from flight by Skanda and Çiva himself, who then begins a deadly battle of arrows with Arjuna (xv). The two then strive with magic weapons, the hero is beaten (xvi), but grasps again his bow, and with sword, mighty rocks, and the trunks of great trees assails the god, but all in vain (xvii). They box, at last they wrestle; Çiva reveals his true form, and the hero, humbled at last, praises the greatness of the god and begs him for strength and victory; the god and the world guardians, who come to the scene, accept his devotion and give him the magic weapons that he craves.

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² Ed. NSP. 1907; trans. C. Cappeller, HOS. 15, 1912; i-iii, with Citrabhānu's comm., TSS. 63.

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³ iii. 27-41.

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The introduction of Çiva's host, of its struggles under Skanda's leadership with the hero, and the whole episode of the contest with magic weapons are the fruit of the poet's imagination. One difficulty is obvious; it is made necessary to duplicate the episode of the force of the penance causing fear and evoking divine intervention, and the prolongation of the conflict results in some repetition of ideas. Duplication also results from the description of the amours of the nymphs with the Gandharvas and their attempts on the prince. The poet's skill led him, we must confess, to exhibit it too freely, and the introduction of magic weapons leaves us cold. In this regard Vālmīki has a fatal influence on Sanskrit poetry; the mythical background of the Rāma legend produced the unreality of his combats, which every epic poet felt bound to copy. Another influence seen strongly in the first two Cantos is that of the political principles of the day, which have ample opportunity of illustration in the record of Suyodhana’s rule and in the arguments by which Yudhiṣṭhira seeks to justify the keeping of their faith by his brothers.

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There is no doubt of the power of Bhāravi in description; his style at its best has a calm dignity which is certainly attractive, while he excels also in the observation and record of the beauties of nature and of maidens. The former quality is revealed repeatedly in the first Canto, the very first line of which strikes the true note of high policy; then follows:

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*kṛtapramāṇasya mahīṁ mahībhuje: jitāṁ sapatnena nive-
dayiṣyataḥ*
*na vivyathe mano na hi priyam: pravaktum icchanti mṛṣā
hitaiṣiṇaḥ.*

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‘When he bent low in homage his mind wavered not, though he had to tell the king that his realm had been won by his foe, for men who seek one’s good care not to speak flattering words.’ In the same strain Suyodhana is praised:

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*na tena sajyaṁ kvacid udyataṁ dhanuḥ: kṛtaṁ na vā tena
vijihmam ānanam*
*guṇānurāgeṇa çirobhir uhyate: narādhipair mālyam ivāsya
çāsanam.*

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‘Never has he raised his bow to shoot, never has a frown distorted his face; loving his virtues the kings bear as a garland on their heads his royal orders.’ The setting sun and the rising moon are happily portrayed:

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*aṅçupāṇibhir atīva pipāsuḥ: paṅkajaṁ madhu bhṛçaṁ
rasayitvā*
*klībatām iva gataḥ kṣitim eṣyañl: lohitaṁ vapur uvāha
pataṅgaḥ.*

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‘Ruddy glowed the sun as he hastened to rest, as though overdeep he had drunken with his rays, in his thirst, the sweetness of the lotus.’

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*samvidhātum abhiṣekaṁ udāse: Manmathasya lasadaṅçu-jalaughaḥ*
*yāminīvanitayā tatacihnaḥ: sotpalo rajatakumbha ivenduḥ.*

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‘For Love’s consecration the lady night raised aloft the moon with its shimmering sea of beams and its spots full in view, like a silver chalice decked with lotuses.’ The advent of the cool season is thus greeted:

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*katipayasahakārapuṣparamyas: tanutuhino ’lpavinidrasinduvāraḥ*
*surabhimukhahimāgamāntaçaṁsī: samupayayau çiçiraḥ smaraikabandhuḥ.*

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‘Then came the cool season, Love’s one friend, lovely with its mango blooms here and there, when frost is rare and but a few Sinduvāras awake from sleep, the harbinger of the end of winter and the coming of spring.’ The bathing scene is rich in prettinesses:

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*tirohitāntāni nitāntam ākulair: apāṁ vigāhād alakaiḥ prasāribhiḥ*
*yayur vadhūnāṁ vadanāni tulyatāṁ: dvirephavṛndāntaritaiḥ saroruhaiḥ.*

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‘Hidden by their long hair in utter disorder through plunging in the water, the maidens’ faces seemed like lotuses covered with swarms of bees.’

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*priye ’parā yacchati vācam unmukhī: nibaddhadṛṣṭiḥ çithilākuloccayā*
*samādadhe nāṁçukam āhitaṁ vṛthā: viveda puṣpeṣu na pāṇipallavam.*

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‘Yet another, face upturned and eyes fixed on her lover as he spoke, gathered not together her garment, though the knot slipped and fell, nor realized that her tender hand had missed the flowers it sought.’ Characteristically, the same idea is varied later in the canto:

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*vihasya pāṇau vidhṛte dhṛtāmbhasi: priyeṇa vadhvā madanārdracetasaḥ*
*sakhīva kāñcī payasā ghanīkṛtā: babhāra vītoccayabandham aṁçukam.*

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‘As her hand, full of water, was laughingly grasped by her lover, ’twas her kindly girdle which the water had stiffened that saved from falling the garment of the loving maiden, for the knot that held it had slipped.’ His play of fancy is constant and extensive; he acquired the style of parasol-Bhāravi from his comparison (v. 39) of the lotus dust driven by the winds to the goddess Lakṣmī mirrored in a golden parasol. Still less attractive to our taste is a simile¹ based on the mute letter (*anubandha*) between stem and ending in grammar.

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¹ xiii. 19; cf. xvii. 6. Cf. Māgha, ii. 47, 95, 112; x. 15; xiv. 66; xvi. 80; xix. 75.

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Bhāravi, however, is guilty of errors of taste from which Kālidāsa is free. Especially in Canto xv he sets himself to try *tours de force* of the most foolish kind, redolent of the excesses of the Alexandrian poets. Thus one verse has the first and third, second and fourth lines identical; in another all four are identical; one has practically only *c* and *r*, another only the letters *s*, *ç*, *y*, and *l*; in other stanzas each line reads backwards the same way as the next, or the whole stanza read backwards gives the next; one stanza has three senses; two no labial letters; or each verse can be read backwards and forwards unchanged. One sample must serve:

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*na nonanunno nunnono nānā nānānanā nanu*
*nunno ’nunno nanunneno nānenā nunnanunnanut.*

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‘No man is he who is wounded by a low man; no man is the man who wounds a low man, o ye of diverse aspect; the wounded is not wounded if his master is unwounded; not guiltless is he who wounds one sore wounded.’ But at least he eschews long compounds, and, taken all in all, is not essentially obscure.

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Bhāravi sets a bad example in his fondness for showing his skill in grammar, and he is in many ways the beginner of mannerisms in the later poets. The ridiculously frequent use of the root *tan* begins with him;² he is fond of passive perfect forms, including the impersonal use; the adverbial use of prepositional compounds is a favourite form of his; many of Pāṇini’s rules of rare type³ are illustrated by him, as *çās* with double accusative, *darçayate* in the same use, *anujīvisātkṛta*, *stanopapīḍam*, the double negative as a positive, and *na* compounded as in *nanivṛtam*; it occurs also with the imperative. Most interesting in his elaborate care in the use of the narrative tenses, which Kālidāsa and the other poets treat indifferently. In Bhāravi the imperfect and the aorist are not tenses of narrative use; they occur only in dealing with what the speaker has himself experienced (*aparokṣe*), and the imperfect denotes what happened in the more remote past (*anadyatane*), the aorist the immediate past (*adyatane*), exceptions being minimal; the aorist hence is extremely rare, occurring only ten times to 272 times in Māgha. The perfect is the tense of narrative, save in the case of the present perfects *āha* and *veda*. The present occurs with *sma* not rarely in narrative as a past; the participle in *tavant* is used in speeches only, that in *ta* in both. Both the imperative and the aorist with *mā* are found in interrogations beside their normal uses, and *labdhā* is used in the passive, the periphrastic future having always its precise sense of a distant event. Errors in grammar are few, but *ājaghne* seems indefensible.

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² Walter, *Indica*, iii. 34 f.

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³ Cappeller, pp. 153 ff. On the perfect cf. Renou, *La valeur du parfait*, p. 87.

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In metrical form Bhāravi is as developed as he is in the use of the figures of speech, of which scores can be illustrated from his poem. Only once does he condescend to use a single difficult metre, the Udgatā, for a whole canto (xii), a single Praharṣiṇī terminating it. In v he uses sixteen, in xviii also sixteen different forms. The Upajāti of Indravajrā type predominates in iii, xvi, and xvii; Vaṁçasthā in i, iv, and xiv; Vaitālīya in ii; Drutavilambita in xviii; Pramitākṣarā in vi; Praharṣiṇī in vii; Svāgatā in ix; Puṣpitāgrā in x; Çloka in xi and xv; Aupacchandasika in xiii. Of the other metres few save Vasantatilaka¹ have much use; Aparavaktra, Jaloddhatagati, Jaladharamālā occur, like Candrikā, Mattamayūra, Kuṭila, and Vaṁçapattrapatita, once only. The Rathoddhatā is a good deal used in xiii; but Çālinī, Mālinī, Prabhā, and Çikhariṇī are all rare.²

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¹ The final syllable is ᴗ in three cases in line *a*, in one case in line *c*.

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² Thus Bhāravi has eleven or twelve principal metres to six of Kālidāsa and sixteen of Māgha.

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In the Çloka Bhāravi conforms in general to the same rules as Kālidāsa. But he never uses the fourth Vipulā form, and in his 250 half-stanzas he uses the first three Vipulās respectively fifteen, eight, and two times; Kālidāsa, on the contrary, likes best the third Vipulā.

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