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A History of Sanskrit Literature c15.s4: 4. Jayadeva

A History of Sanskrit Literature c15.s4

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English

4. Jayadeva

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To the reign of Lakṣmaṇasena¹ in Bengal belongs the last great name in Sanskrit poetry, Jayadeva, son of Bhojadeva of Kindubilva, and with Govardhana, Dhoī, Çaraṇa, and Umāpatidhara, one of the five jewels which adorned the court. We have preserved of him one tiny Hindī poem, a eulogy of Hari Govind, claimed to be the oldest in the *Ādi Granth* of the Sikhs, and many legends are told in the *Bhakt Mālā* of his devotion to Kṛṣṇa, who himself aided him to describe the loveliness of Rādhā when his mortal powers failed. It is strange that we should have nothing else from a man so talented, but at any rate he achieved in its own way a perfect and very novel work of art in the *Gītagovindakāvyam*, or *Gītagovinda*,¹ the poem in which Govinda, Kṛṣṇa as lord of the herdsmen and their wives, is sung. The fame of the author is attested by the fact that in his honour for centuries there was held each year at his birthplace a festival, in which during the night the songs of his poem were sung. Pratāparudradeva in 1499 ordered that the dancers and Vaiṣṇava singers should learn his songs only, and an inscription of 1292 already cites a verse. Hence his own claim that he is over-king of poets (*kavirājarāja*) has been justified in his own land, while even through the distorting medium of Sir William Jones’s version his high qualities attracted the praise which Goethe² also lavished on Kālidāsa’s *Meghadūta* and *Çakuntalā*.

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¹ Cf. EHI. pp. 419 ff., 431 ff. ; M. Chakravarti, JPASB. 1906, pp. 163 ff. ; R. C Majumdar, JPASB. 1921, pp. 7 ff. (1175–1200); above, p. 53 n. 4.

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¹ Ed. C. Lassen (1836); NSP. 1923; trans. F. Rückert, ZKM. i. 128 ff.; G. Courtillier, *Paris*, 1904.

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² *Werke*, xxxvii. 210 f.

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The form of the poem is extremely original, and has led to the belief that we have in the poem a little pastoral drama, as Jones called it, or a lyric drama, as Lassen styled it, or a refined Yātrā, as von Schroeder preferred to term it. Pischel and Lévi, on the other hand, placed it in the category between song and drama, on the ground *inter alia* that it is already removed from the Yātrā type of dramatic performance by the fact that the transition verses are put in definite form and not left to improvisation, but Pischel also styles it a melodrama. The facts are, however, satisfactorily clear and allow of greater precision of statement. The poet divides the poem into cantos, which is a clear sign that he recognized it to belong to the generic type Kāvya, and that he did not mean it to be a dramatic performance with the division into acts, interludes, and so forth. On the other hand, he had before his mind when he wrote the Yātrās of Bengal, where in honour of Kṛṣṇa in a primitive form of drama dances accompanied by music and song were performed, and in inserting as the most vital element in his poem such songs he doubtless foresaw the use that would be made of them both in the temples and at festivals. The songs are given to us in the manuscripts with precise indication by technical terms of the melody (*rāga*) and time (*tāla*) of the music¹ and dance which they were to accompany, and the poet definitely bids us think of songs as being performed in this way before our mental eyes. To conceive of writing such a poem was a remarkable piece of originality, for it was an immense step from the popular songs of the Yātrās to produce so remarkably beautiful and finished a work.

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¹ Soma, son of Mudgala, in his *Rāgavibodha* gives the music for the songs; cf. S. M. Tagore, *Hindu Music* (1875), i. 159.

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The art of the poet displays itself effectively in the mode in which song and recitative are blended and the skill with which monotony of form is avoided by not restricting the recitative to mere introductory verses explaining the situation, while the songs express in their turn the feelings of the personnel of the poem, Kṛṣṇa, his favourite Rādhā, and the faithful friend, who is the essential confidante of every Indian heroine. Recitative is used for occasional narrative verses to explain the situation, but also in brief descriptions, and, as a mode of securing variety, in speeches which serve as an alternative to songs as the mode of intimating the sentiments of the characters. There is thus no stereotyped form; the recitative and the song, narrative, description, and speeches are cunningly interwoven, all with deliberate purpose. The first canto, which contains four of the twenty-four Prabandhas, songs, into which the poem is also divided, exhibits in perfection the complex structure. The poet begins with four verses, in the last of which he celebrates himself and his fellow-poets; then the first Prabandha begins, consisting of a hymn in eleven stanzas sung in honour of the ten incarnations of Viṣṇu, and ending with a mention of the author, whose hymn Kṛṣṇa is entreated to hear; each stanza ends with the refrain, ‘Conquer, o lord of the world, o Hari.’ This closes the Prabandha, and a single stanza, doubtless recited, follows, in which the poet sums up the forms of Viṣṇu which the hymn has glorified. Prabandha ii opens with another hymn in nine stanzas sung in honour of the god, each ending with the refrain, ‘Conquer, conquer, o god, o Hari.' At the close of the Prabandha and before the next is a recited stanza invoking a benediction from Kṛṣṇa. Prabandha iii consists of a recited verse telling how Rādhā's friend spoke to her in the spring and then sings in eight stanzas¹ how Kṛṣṇa is dancing with the cowherdesses in the groves. Three stanzas in recitative follow, describing the spring, and ending with the statement that Rādhā's friend once more addressed her, and Prabandha iv consists of a song in eight stanzas in which she describes how the loving maidens flock to Kṛṣṇa and embrace him in their passion. Then three stanzas of recitative follow, the first two descriptive, the last a benediction. Canto ii tells us first of Rādhā's dejection and gives her song of complaint against her lover (Prabandha v), followed by a stanza of recitative, introducing another song (vi) in which she expresses her deep longing for the god. Then in two recited stanzas she celebrates the god, while the poet in the last stanza invokes the usual benediction.

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¹ This is the normal number, and hence the poem figures as *Aṣṭapadī* in the south. Cf. Śeshagiri, *Report*, 1893–4, pp. 60 ff.

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In Canto iii Kṛṣṇa appears in person; remorse and longing for Rādhā have seized him; two recited verses describe his state, and Prabandha vii gives his song of love. This is followed by recited verses addressed by him, first to the god of love, and then to Rādhā herself, and the poet closes the canto with a prayer to Kṛṣṇa as the lover of Rādhā to confer fortune and happiness on the hearers. In Canto iv Rādhā s friend addresses Kṛṣṇa and in two songs (viii and ix) depicts the yearnings of her mistress and her deep sorrow at separation from her beloved. A benediction ends the canto. In the next two we find Rādhā's friend urging in three fine songs (x–xii) reconciliation of her mistress with Kṛṣṇa. But in Canto vii we find that the faithless god has not come, and the moon's rising heightens Rādhā's love, to which she gives expression in four passionate songs (xiii–xvi). He appears, but she addresses hím again in a song (xvii) expressing her resentment, followed by recitative in the same sense (viii). Her companion seeks by a song (xviii) to console her (ix), and Kṛṣṇa himself appears and sings (xix) to her (x). There still remains Rādhā's reluctance and shyness to be overcome in three songs by her friend (xi); but all is secure at last, and the poem closes with songs in which Kṛṣṇa addresses his beloved and she replies.

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The poet invokes the usual benediction, and extols his own knowledge of music, his devotion to Viṣṇu, his delicate discrimination of sentiments, and his poetical charm and grace.

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Efforts have been made to establish that the poem has a mystical significance and to interpret it in this sense. The desire in part at least has been prompted by the feeling that the loves of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā are too essentially of the body rather than of the mind, and that to ascribe them to the divinity is unworthy. But this is to misunderstand Indian feeling. The classical poets one and all see no harm in the love-adventures of the greatest deities, and what Kālidāsa did in the *Kumārasambhava* was repeated by all his successors in one form or another. But, on the other hand, it must not be forgotten that the religion of Jayadeva was the fervent Kṛṣṇa worship which found in the god the power which is ever concerned with all the wishes, the hopes and fears of men, which, if in essence infinite and ineffable, yet expresses itself in the form of Kṛṣṇa, and which sanctions in his amours the loves of mankind. In this sense Jayadeva’s work is deeply touched with the spirit of religion, and stands like the *Bakchai* of Euripides utterly apart from the attitude of the Alexandrine poets or Propertius and Ovid in their treatment of the legends of the gods. To Kallimachos as much as to his Roman imitators the gods and goddesses were no more than names, at best elegant symbols of a higher reality, but without real life of their own. Roman poets could here and there catch the tone of seriousness as in the atheist Lucretius’ famous exordium to the mother of the Aeneidae, darling of gods and men, increase-giving Venus, and still more in Catullus’ extraordinary if repellent picture of the adorer of Cybele who becomes as Attis. But neither Lucretius nor Catullus was himself a believer, and all doubt, all scepticism are far from Jayadeva, to whom alike in his play with others and in his more abiding love for Rādhā Kṛṣṇa remained not merely divine, but the embodiment of the highest of gods.

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Jayadeva’s work is a masterpiece, and it surpasses in its completeness of effect any other Indian poem. It has all the perfection of the miniature word-pictures which are so common in Sanskrit poetry, with the beauty which arises as Aristotle asserts from magnitude and arrangement. All the sides of love, save that of utter despair and final separation, are brilliantly described; all the emotions of longing, of awakened hope, of disappointment, of hot anger against the unfaithful one, of reconciliation, are portrayed by the actors themselves or Rādhā's friend in songs which are perfect in metrical form and display at its highest point the sheer beauty of words of which Sanskrit is pre-eminently capable. There can be no doubt that in their wider range of interests, in which love plays a part important indeed but not paramount in human affairs, Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides can attain in their choruses effects more appealing to our minds than Jayadeva, but their medium is not capable of producing so complete a harmony of sound and sense. We are apt to regard with impatience the insistence of the writers on poetics on classing styles largely by the sounds preferred by different writers, but there is no doubt that the effects of different sounds were more keenly appreciated in India than they are by us, and in the case of the *Gītagovinda* the art of wedding sound and meaning is carried out with such success that it cannot fail to be appreciated even by ears far less sensitive than those of Indian writers on poetics. The result, however, of this achievement is to render any translation useless as a substitute for the original; if to be untranslatable is a proof of the attainment of the highest poetry Jayadeva has certainly claim to that rank.

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The poet's effects are not produced by any apparently elaborate effort, nor is he guilty of straining language; his compounds are often fairly long but they are not obscure; in poems which were to be sung and to be used at popular festivals artificiality was obviously out of place, and, though they can never have been intelligible to the mass of their admirers without the readily given aid of vernacular interpretations, the songs are such as, once explained, would doubtless easily be comprehended and learned. Canto ix exhibits the poet's effective simplicity:

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*Harir abhisarati vahati madhupavane: kim aparam adhika-sukhaṁ sakhi bhavane*
*Mādhave mā kuru mānini mānam aye.*
*tālaphalād api gurum atirasasam: kiṁ viphalīkuruṣe kucaka-lasam: Mādhave*
*kati na kathitam idam anupadam aciram: mā parihara Harim atiçayaruciram: Mādhave*

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*kim iti viṣīdasi rodiṣi vikalā: vihasati yuvatisabhā tava sakalā: Mādhave*
*mṛdunalinīdalaçītalaçayane: Harim avalokaya saphalaya nayane: Mādhave*
*janayasi manasi kim iti gurukhedam: çṛṇu mama vacanam anīhitabhedam: Mādhave*
*Harir upayātu vadatu bahumadhuram: kim iti karoṣi hṛdayam atividhuram: Mādhave*
*çrījayadevabhaṇitam atilalitam: sukhayatu rasikajanaṁ Haricaritam: Mādhave*
‘Hari cometh, as the spring wind bloweth; what joy more perfect hast thou in thy home, dear one? Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. Why dost thou waste the fairness of thy bosom, lovelier far than the palm fruit? Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. How often have I not told thee, at every moment? Reject not Hari who is exceeding fair. Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. Why art despondent, tearful and dejected? All the young company doth make mock of thee. Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. On the couch cooled by the soft lotus petals gaze upon Hari, give thine eyes their fruition. Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. Why dost kindle in thy mind deep sorrow? Hearken to my warning that seeketh not to part you. Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. Let Hari come and speak to thee long and tenderly. Why dost thou so harden thy heart against him? Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava. May this tale of Hari, spoken by Jayadeva, by its sweetness delight all men of taste. Noble one, be not wroth with Mādhava.’

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Not less pretty is the invitation to Rādhā by her companion to enter into the grove where Kṛṣṇa, pining for reconciliation and the fruition of his love, awaits her:

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*mañjutarakuñjatalakelisadane: praviça Rādhe Mādhavasamīpam iha*
*vilasa ratirabhasahasitavadane.*
*navabhavadaçokadalaçayanasāre: praviça Rādhe Mādhavasamīpam iha*
*vilasa kucakalasataralahāre.*
*kusumacayaracitaçucivāsagehe: praviça Rādhe Mādhavasamīpam iha*
*vilasa kusumasukumāradehe.*

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‘In his playground neath the lovely thicket, come, o Rādhā, to Mādhava, thy face all smiling with the eagerness of love. In his grove with young Açoka shoots as thy couch, come, o Rādhā, to Mādhava, play with him, as thy necklet quivers on the cups of thy bosom. In this bright home wrought of many a flower, come, o Rādhā, to Mādhava, play with him, thou whose body is tender as a flower.’ Equally brilliant is the picture drawn by her friend of the delights of Kṛṣṇa with his loving maidens around him in the grove, though the effect is produced by the accumulation of long compounds:

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*candanacarcitanīlakalevarapītavasanavanamālī*
*kelicalanmaṇikuṇḍalamaṇḍitagaṇḍayugasmitaçālī*
*Harir iha mugdhavadhūnikare: vilasini vilasati kelipare.*
*pīnapayodharabhārabhareṇa Harim parirabhya sarāgam*
*gopavadhūr anugāyati kācid udañcitapañcamarāgam: Harir*
*kāpi vilāsavilolavilocanakhelanajanitamanojam*
*dhyāyati gopavadhūr adhikam Madhusūdanavadanasarojam:*
*Harir*

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‘His black body sandal-bedecked, clad in yellow, begarlanded, with his earrings dancing on his cheeks as he sporteth, smiling ever, Hari here midst the band of loving maidens maketh merry in the merriment of their sport. One of the maidens claspeth Hari fast to her throbbing heart, and singeth in the high Pañcama key. Yet another doth stand deeply dreaming of Madhusūdana’s lotus face, whose sportive glances have caught and won her heart for its own.’

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It has been claimed¹ that the work goes back to an original in Apabhraṅça, and the ground adduced is the use of rime. This, however, clearly overstates the position; it is utterly improbable that the original of the poem was ever in anything but Sanskrit, and the most that can be said is that the use of rime which is regular in Apabhraṅça poems may have influenced the author of the *Gītagovinda*. But in Sanskrit poetry such rime² as we find probably is to be derived from the fondness for Yamakas, the repetition of groups of syllables; when this repetition takes place at the end of lines in a stanza we have an approximation to rime. Yamakas are dealt with at length by the older school of poetics, and they are frequently found in Prākrit; indeed, Hemacandra prescribes for the Galitaka metre, frequently used in Prākrit poems, the use of Yamakas at the end of the lines. In Apabhraṁça poetry Yamakas seem to have been allowed also. True rime, that is when the consonant preceding the corresponding vowel differs, is ignored by the earlier writers on poetics and is first defined as Antyānuprāsa, alliteration at the end, by the *Sāhityadarpaṇa*; Hemacandra, however, in his *Chando'nuçāsana* has occasion to mention it and to distinguish it as Anuprāsa from the mere Yamaka. When used in Sanskrit poetry, it is in the main more or less accidental and is not regularly employed, nor is it common in Prākrit. The frequency with which it is approached in Jayadeva may, therefore, be due in some degree to Apabhraṁça influence. It may be noted also that the metre of the poem is essentially based on the Gaṇa system¹ in which the determining principle is the number of feet of four *morae*, substitution of a long for two shorts and vice versa thus being permitted and freely resorted to.²

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¹ Pischel, *Die Hofdichter des Lakṣmaṇasena*, p. 22.

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² Jacobi, *Bhavisatta Kaha*, pp. 51 f. Cf. Vāsudeva's Yamakakāvyas (chap. iv, § 7), *Ghaṭakarpara*, *Nalodaya*, Ānandatīrtha's *Yamakabhārata* (*Madras Catal.*, xx. 7954); Çrīvatsāṅka's *Yamakaratnākara* (*ibid.* 7797), &c.

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¹ Jacobi, ZDMG. xxxviii. 599; SIFI. VIII. ii. 87, 94, n. 1, 113, n. 4.

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² The effective use of the refrain is doubtless borrowed from religious verse; it is found in the *Ṛgveda*, and in the classical religious lyric, in which also is found rime (*e. g.* the *Mohamudgara*). See the *Dakṣiṇāmūrtistotra*, *Nirvāṇadaçaka*, *Hastāmalakastotra*, and *Carpaṭapañjarikāstotra* ascribed to Çaṅkara.

Cites (17)