III.9 Dvaipāyana, ‘The Island Born’, is another name of the ancient sage Vyāsa who is attributed with the authorship of many texts including the Brahma Sūtras, the Mahābhārata and the Bhāgavatam.
‘God’ īśu and ‘Truth’ tattva are equated in this context. The phrase ‘everlasting bliss of consciousness’ is sukha saṁvit tattva, very similar to the often quoted sat-cit-ānanda. ‘God Viṣṇu’ is actually viṣṇutvam, literally ‘Viṣṇu-ness’.
Viśiṣṭa Advaita is the school of ‘Qualified Non-Dualiam’ founded by the renowned 11th century South Indian Vaiṣṇava philosopher Rāmānuja. Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya was a staunch follower of this philosophy as it was closely associated with the development of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava faith. The other major schools in this group are the Advaita ‘Non-Dualism’ of Śaṅkara and the Dvaita ‘Dualism’ of Madhva.
III.10 ‘Oneness’ is ekākita. ‘both sentient and non-sentient beings’ is cit dvayambu. Śiva has three eyes because of his extra yogic eye; Brahma has eight eyes due to his four heads; and Indra has a thousand eyes because he was cursed by the sage Gautama.
The beginning of this poem greatly resembles the famous Nāsadīya Sūkta (Ṛg Veda 10.129) which begins na asat, or ‘not non-existence’.
III.11 The first part of this verse is described in Vedārtha Saṅgraham, Rāmānuja’s exegesis on the Upaniṣads, and is further evidence of the poet’s familiarity with Viśiṣṭa Advaita (TKR 193).
‘miraculous attributes’ are guṇa-bhūtulu, glossed by VVS 146 and TKR 192 as aiśvaryamulu, the eight supernatural powers, viz. the ability to become small (aṇima), become big (mahima), become light (laghima), become heavy (garima), obtain anything (prāptiḥ), do anything (prākāmyam), control others (īśatvam), and control one’s own senses (vaśitvam). ‘Form beyond forms’ is svarūpa-rūpa.
‘The Aruṇa Section’ refers to a portion of the Chāṇḍogya Upaniṣad in which the sage Uddālaka Aruṇi instructs his son Śvetaketu about the nature of reality. He is well known for the famous mahāvākyam or ‘great saying’—tat tvam asi, literally ‘that you are.’
III.12 The full citation is from Subāla Upaniṣad 7.1:
eṣa sarva-bhūtāntar-ātmā apahatapāpmā-divyodeva eko nārāyaṇaḥ
He is the soul inside all beings.
He is without sin, the one divine god Nārāyaṇa.
‘only the one Nārāyaṇa’ is actually nārāyaṇa padame, literally ‘only the word nārāyaṇa’, which reinforces the more abstract concept, already introduced in the previous verse, that God, or in essence the universe, is śabda (word or sound), a principle sometimes referred to as nāda-brahma.
III.13 I have edited out part of this long vacanam. There are several obscure references to various mytho-philosophical stories that detract from the flow of the passage, and only serve to highlight the poet’s depth of Vedāntic arcana.
The ‘bodies’ of Viṣṇu/Nārāyaṇa are referred to as śarīrambulu. For dharma, artha, kāma and mokṣa, see Note II.82. ‘permanent connection between God and our consciousness’ is īśvarunaku cetasunaku nitya-sambandham. ‘everyone’s ultimate refuge’ is samastambunaku parāyaṇambu, glossed by TKR 196 as paramāśrayam.
CHAPTER IV
VIṢṆUCITTA’S VICTORY
IV.1 Another poem in pure Sanskrit that describes the multifaceted image of Lord Viṣṇu (cf. Note III.1). The arrogant asura Naraka defeated the devas, occupied their capital Amarāvati and perpetuated many evils upon the women of heaven, imprisoning 16,000 of them and stealing the earrings of Aditi, the celestial mother of the gods. Naraka was finally slain by Viṣṇu during his Kṛṣṇa avatāra. Śrīnivāsa is literally ‘the abode of Śrī’.
IV.3 This poem begins with balimin trĕmpagan polĕn, ‘as if broken by a force/power’, reinforcing the suggested presence of Lord Viṣṇu. The phrase ‘broke every string’ is bhaṅgambugā kala nūlu ellan, possibly a subtle pun based on the Tamil word nūl which can also mean ‘book’. The onomatopoeic word puṭukku is used to describe the snapping string.
IV.4 ‘multi-coloured garland for the Goddess of the Earth’ is gotra citra mālyambu, a beautiful foreshadowing of Goda Devi’s appearance.
IV.5 ‘the truth revealed in the Vedas, the Truth of Viṣṇu’ is veda-vedyam-aina viṣṇu-tattvam. ‘immersed … in the waters’ is based on the verb olalāḍu, or in this case the causative olalārcu meaning to make someone bathe or play in water. A. K. Ramanujan cites the Tamil verbal root āl ‘to immerse or dive’ as the etymological base of the word Ālvār (see Ramanujan Hymns for the Drowning, ix).
IV.6 The gods (vibudhambulu), saints (siddhalu) and departed souls (kavyāhāra, i.e. ‘those who feed on the oblations made to ancestral spirits’) use the following interjections respectively—addhā, āha and aho. The celestial musicians (kinnaralu) and demigods (vidyādharalu) speak in pure Sanskrit.
“‘This Age of Darkness has turned into a Golden Age!’” kṛtatām gataḥ kaliḥ is based on the cosmological division of time into four yugas or aeons—Kṛta (or Satya), Treta, Dvāpara and Kali which last for successively shorter periods of time and correspond to the physical and moral deterioration of the world.
IV.7–8 These two poems have been combined for chronological clarity. The end of verse IV.8 has been shifted to the beginning of IV.9.
‘partial to that slave’ is pakṣa-pātamu ā dāsariki. A Viṣṇu bhakta is often referred to as a servant of god, but these ousted scholars use the term dāsari (slave) as a word of insult. ‘distanced himself from discernment’ is a rather literal translation of vimarśa dūram-aina.
IV. 10 The description of Garuḍa’s purple wings offers an interesting description of medieval dyeing techniques. A cloth of double-weave (rĕṇṭĕmu, TKR 263 jaṇṭa-neta vastramu) is dipped (taḍipi ettu, literally ‘soaked and raised’) in vats of water, coloured with iṅgilikam (Skt hiṅgulam meaning vermillion or cinnabar) and kasīsam, glossed by TKR 263 as mailu-tuttam or blue vitriol.
The Milky Ocean is an important geo-mythical component of Hindu cosmology. There are believed to be six other types of oceans composed of salt-water, curd, ghee, sugarcane juice, liquor and sweet water.
Garuḍa is referred to here as khaga-rāja as well as pĕn-tiru-(v)aḍi, a Tamil epithet meaning ‘the Great Holy Servant’ (Periya Tiruvaḍi) as opposed to Hanumān who is known as ‘the Lesser Holy Servant’ (Siriya Tiruvaḍi).
IV.11 Compare this fantastic appearance of Lord Viṣṇu to the poet’s own visionary experience in verse I.12.
The Wish-Fulfilling Tree is the famous kalpa-vṛkṣam of heaven. Jewels are Lakṣmi’s playmates (TKR 265 cĕlikattelu) because they all come from the ocean (cf. I.55). The actual phrase used here is puṭṭiṇṭi nĕccĕlulu, or ‘dear friends from her birth home’, given as an araṇam or wedding gift from father-in-law to son-in-law, in this case from the Ocean to Viṣṇu.
IV.12 The parasol or umbrella (Skt chatra, Tel gŏḍugu) is an important symbol of Indian kingship (cf. I.18) and the gods close them out of respect for their king.
IV.13 Another example of precise imagery based on common village activities, in this case the post-harvest beating of grain stalks. kaḷḷam is the designated place for this work (i.e. a threshing floor), śūrpa (Tel ceṭa) is the fan used to blow away the chaff, and pŏlla-kaṭṭu are the pithless or blasted grains. Garuḍa is the Snake-Eater ahi-bhuk.
IV.14 sāma-gānam are songs from the Sāma Veda, a collection of hymns known for song-like recitation. It is one of the three original Vedas along with the Ṛg and Yajur.
THE TEN DESCENTS
IV.16 This song-like poem is written in the rhythmically repetitive Kavirāja Virājitam metre of 23 syllables. It is described with trika gaṇas as na-ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-ja-va. This analysis belies the underlying rhythmic structure of this verse which is parsed more like na-la-bha-bha-bha-bha-bha-ha-ha, making it appear like a Telugu metre composed of six Indra gaṇas and two Sūrya gaṇas. An example will cl
arify:
jaya jaya dānava dāraṇa kāraṇa śarṅga rathāṅga gadāsidharā
For more information on the possible South Indian origin of certain vṛtta metres see Reddy 2005.
jaya is an exclamatory interjection meaning ‘Hail!’ or ‘Victory!’ and the phrase jaya jaya begins each pāda of this praise poem. An almost identical version of this verse appears in Allasāni Pĕddana’s Manu Caritramu.
The River Gaṅga is believed to carry the consecrated waters from the feet of Lord Viṣnu and is also known as Viṣṇupadi. Today people visit the town of Haridwar, literally ‘the Gateway to Viṣṇu’, the sacred spot where the Gaṅga reaches the plains of North India.
VVS 197 and TKR 268 offer an interesting etymological derivation for the epithet Keśava which usually refers to Kṛṣna with beautiful hair. keśava = kaḥ (Brahma) + īśa (Śiva) + va (origin?) which translates to Viṣṇu as the father of both Brahma and Śiva. The Yādava Śūra is Kṛṣṇa’s grandfather.
IV. 17 The following 15 poems are in reference to Viṣṇu’s ‘descents’. The word avatāra is often translated as ‘incarnation’, literally ‘to enter the flesh’, but the true etymology is from the prefix ‘ava’ + the root ‘tṛ’ which means to ‘cross down’ or ‘descend’. The traditional number of descents is ten (daśāvatāra), but this list often varies in both number and character. The ninth avatāra is the most variable, usually Balarāma but in later lists often the historical Buddha Śākyamuni. Here the poet pays homage to both, technically taking the number to eleven. There are however countless other purāṅic and regional forms of Viṣṇu, like the central deity of this work for example, the god Śrī Vĕṅkaṭeśvara at Tirupati.
I have used the capitalized ‘You’ and ‘He’ to reflect the heavy use of the honorific plural form of Sanskrit pronouns such as aṣmat and yuṣmat that appear frequently throughout these verses.
The first three poems in this section are about the matysa avatāra or descent as a giant fish (cf. Note II.47). There are various readings of this rather ancient myth, but here the source seems to be the Bhāgavatam.
The asura is referred to as divija-dvesi, a hater or enemy of the gods. TKR 269 and NRS 180 identify him as the demon Somaka, but VVS 198 cites Hayagrīva. Here Brahma is vedha and his bhavanambu (‘abode’) is Satya Loka, ‘the Land of Truth’.
Interestingly, the ‘letters’ here are described as caukapu (TKR 269 caturasramaina) or ‘squarish’, and most definitely apply to the Devanāgari lipi (script) of the Vedas as opposed to the circular letters of the Telugu syllabary.
IV.18 ‘Murāntaka’ is an epithet of Kṛṣṇa as the killer, or ‘ender’ of the demon Mura. ‘waters at the End of Time’ is yugānta-vāri. ‘victory drum’ is jaya-dundubhin.
IV.19 This poem seems to be based in part on the Hindu political theory of matsya-nyāya or the Law of Fishes, very akin to the English ‘the big fish eats the little fish’.
‘grew bigger and bigger’ is edhanaidhanai and ‘smaller and smaller’ is alpatālpatan.
IV.20 Viṣṇu transformed into a giant tortoise (kamaṭha-svāmi) in order to hold up Mount Mandara which was used as a churning rod when the devas and asuras churned the Ocean of Milk. This poem is based on a similar image found in the Manu Caritramu.
IV.21 As Varāha the boar (cf. III.1), Viṣṇu rescued Mother Earth from the bottom of the ocean. ‘Cosmic Egg’ is ajāṇḍamu (cf. I.4), a common image of the universe as the Creator God’s egg. The generative image here is furthered by a reference to the Earth Goddess as adaḥ para sphurat prakṛti, ‘Nature shining beyond that [i.e. the universe]’. TKR 272 adds that Nature is mūla prakṛtiyaina śakti, the feminine force that is the root cause of the physical world’s existence.
IV.22 The asura Hiraṇyakaśipu performed great tapas and gained the favour of Lord Brahma. When denied immortality, he asked that he should not be killed by man or beast, during the day or night, inside or outside, on the earth or in the sky, with weapons or with fists. So in order to destroy him, Lord Viṣṇu appeared at dusk as the ferocious Nara-siṁha or Man-Lion. He placed the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu on his lap in the middle of an atrium and disembowelled him with his claws.
IV.23 ‘redder and redder … deeper and deeper, and deeper still’ is a translation of dūra dūra mari kĕmpun vĕṇḍiyun dūra.
The idea of the Trinity or mūrti trayī, i.e. Brahma, Viṣṇu and Śiva is mapped onto the three guṇas or qualities, viz. sattva, rajas, and tamas which are associated with the colours white, red and black respectively. The image is also a representation of lion claws that are white at the tip, red underneath and black at the paws (TKR 275).
The last phrase of the poem is the rhetorical question ‘mithyā harī?’ a play on the word hari that means both Viṣṇu and lion.
IV.24 Long ago, the honourable but overly ambitious demon King Bali conquered the entire universe. Viṣṇu descended to Earth as a brahman dwarf (vāmana) and approached Bali with a request for just three paces of land (hence the epithet Trivikrama). When the king readily accepted, Vāmana grew and grew into a humongous figure, covering the Earth with one step, the heavens with another, and finally crushing King Bali’s head with the third.
This story is very popular among the South Indian Vaiṣṇṣava poets. Often the poems focus on Vāmana’s fantastic growth as in Nammālvār’s 7.4.1 ‘First, the discus rose to view …’ (see Ramanujan 1981,4), or Potana’s famous intintai vatuḍintayai…, or ravi bimbam upamimpa…, which is very similar to the imagery of Nammālvār. Here however, Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya focuses on the idea of light and darkness, a representation of King Bali’s conflicting nature as both demon king and obliging bhakta. His ultimate demise at the feet of Lord Viṣṇu grants him instantaneous salvation (cf. ‘God of Three Paces’ in VI.98).
According to TKR 275, ‘the constellation called Crocodile’ Śiṁśumāra is a crocodile shaped asterism that lies beyond the nine planets (nava-graha). Monier-Williams 1069 and 1076 list Śiṁśumāra as a porpoise, in particular those indigenous to the River Gaṅga, and śiśumāra as an alligator, or dolphin-shaped collection of stars held to be a form of Viṣṇu.
IV.25 Paraśurāma is a well-known figure in Hindu mythology with many diverse associations. Here he is the axe-wielding form of Viṣṇu who descends to Earth in order to rid her of evil kings. In his rage he kills the kṣatriyas 21 times over (cf. V.47).
Paraśurāma uses an arrow (ambakam) to cut a pass through the Himālayan Mount Krauñca. The word krauñca also applies to a heron. The swan is a symbol of fame and is explicitly referred to in this verse as kīrti haṁsamu (cf. II.42).
IV.26 Rāma is the ideal man, born to kill the demon Rāvaṇa. Rama is another name for Lakṣmi, and Raghu is an ancestor of Rāma, hence his common epithet Rāghava, or in this case raghu-kula-svāmi.
The basis for this poem is a test of skill found in Chapter XII of the Kiṣkindha Kāṇḍa of the Rāmāyaṇa. In order inspire confidence in the monkey king Sugrīva, Rāma fires a single arrow that pierces seven sāla trees, disappears into the earth, and reappears to return to his quiver. The ‘seven organs’ are actually the seven bodily constituents or sapta-dhātuvulu viz. plasma (rasa), blood (rakta), muscle (māṁsa), fat (medas), bone (asthi), marrow (majja) and semen (śukra).
sāla or arjuna trees (Tel maddi) are Indian River Trees. TKR 277 offers a variant reading of sapta-tāla, i.e. tāṭi cĕṭlu or palmyra trees. This verse is also found in the Manu Caritramu.
IV.27 The Telugu onomatopoeic sounds used here are ‘jhāt’, ‘chyūt’, and ‘ṭhāt’. Indra’s charioteer Mātali (biḍaujaḥ kṣattṛ) is sent to aid Lord Rāma in his battle against Rāvaṇa.
IV.28 This uniquely beautiful verse makes reference to several mythological events. In a drunken stupor (hence ‘no self-control’ avaśa-ātmatan), Balarāma once diverted the river Yamuna with his plough. TKR 280 cites a story (from the Mahābhārata?) when Balarāma attempts to rescue his nephew Sāmba from Hastināpura b
y rerouting the Yamuna. Here, however, he is supposedly searching for his wife from his previous Rāma avatāra. Sīta (literally ‘furrow’) was found when King Janaka ploughed the earth as preparation for a religious rite. Later, at the time of her self-willed death, Sīta was swallowed by her mother the Earth.
The word kṣiti (‘earth’) is repeated four times in this verse and the use of repeated gutturals in the line kṣiti-hala-kṛṣṭi puṭṭi aḍagĕn kṣiti expresses Balarāma’s violent digging (cf. II.90). His separation pains (virahārti) becomes the cause (hetu) of his paleness (pāṇḍimamu) and functions as a unique hetu alaṅkāra.
IV.29 During his childhood in Vṛndāvana, Kṛṣṇa lifted Mt. Govardhana like a giant umbrella, shielding the villagers and their livestock from a violent rainstorm conjured by Lord Indra. This verse seems to be based on the Nārāyaṇa Kavacam, or the Armour of Viṣṇu, a praise poem sung for protective purposes, and the Viṣṇu Sahasranāma, a popular hymn that enumerates the thousand names of Lord Viṣṇu.
Yadu is the name of an ancient king, the eldest son of Yayāti and Devayāni (cf. Note I.16). He was the progenitor of an entire clan known as the Yādavas, who came to be ruled by Lord Viṣṇu in his Kṛṣṇa avatāra.
IV.30 Although this verse ends with a vocative to Nārāyaṇa (keśavā), this poem is a clear but subtle reference to Viṣṇu’s descent as the historical Gautama Buddha (circa 500 BCE). The ‘pentad of arrows’ or bāṇa pañcakamu corresponds to the Buddha’s control of the five senses, and the lines ‘Why did You move so fast? Ah, yes, your intentions are Known!’ is a fairly literal translation of tvara kāviñcitivi eṭiko ahaha buddhambayyĕ nī bhāva. The theme of women’s chastity is referred to as śīla. Manmatha is referred to in this poem as tvat-suta, ‘your son’.
The Giver of the Worn Garland KRISHNADEVARAYA'S AMUKTAMALYADA Page 15
