washes out the stain of death!: a reference to the Sufi experience of fanā, self-annihilation on the path. The triumph over death refers to the stage of subsistence after annihilation, baqā.
over seven oceans: see note to p. 6 above.
the secret syllables of spiritual power: a reference to letter-mysticism, in which the Arabic letters of the ninety-nine Names of Allah encode a system of visualization and interior discipline.
Kali age: last and worst of the four yuga s or ages, the Kali yuga is characterized by widespread sin and degeneracy as well as social, political, and environmental chaos. At the present time the Kali yuga has been in effect for approximately 5,000 years and will continue for another 425,000 years, at which time Śiva will destroy the universe and then begin a new cycle of yugas. See note to p. 3 above.
it’s simplicity: this verse also makes extensive reference to the system of interior discipline, in which the letters of the alphabet signify particular divine Names. The disciple has to empty his self of all worldly emotions and fill it with the qualities embodied in the Names, gradually transforming his body into a mirror for the divine Essence.
leave aside all the mind’s arguments; know him!: among the Shaārīs, as among other orders of Sufis, annihilating one’s being in the teacher fanā fi-’l-shaikh) was an important step along the Sufi path.
but few recognize his secret nature: here, as elsewhere, the Sufi distinction between the interior (bāin) meaning and the exterior or literal (āhir) meaning of the Qur’ān is invoked to comment on the double reality of the spiritual guide. The Shaikh has a visible worldly form and an invisible significance in the spiritual cosmos of the Shaārīs, where he serves as the conduit of divine grace and mercy and enables the disciple to achieve closeness to God.
All the pandits … shaved their heads to learn from him: a pandit (
and imbibed the nectar of pleasure, enlightenment: this line makes clear the link between austerities and the ultimate pleasure (mahāras) of divine union in the Madhumālutī. The term mahāras refers simultaneously to the fruit of Sufi austerity, the goal of erotic mysticism, and the aesthetic pleasure of reading the text. In the Sufi poetics of the text, divine grace can grant the same plenitude as the years of self-mortification along the path, and both these can be appreciated only by the connoisseur (rasika) who understands the multiple meanings of the erotics of union.
Khizr Khān: Khizr Khān was a prominent noble at the Sūrī court and muq (governor) of Bengal. He revolted against Sher Shāh Sūr in 1540 and was disciplined by him, but was subsequently reinstated in royal favour. On Khizr Khān Turk and his temporary rebellion against Sher Shāh, see I. H. Siddiqui, History of Sher Shāih Sūr, 107.
flees like mice: our translation is only an appromixation for the Hindavī phrase mūu udāsā, which remains a puzzle for us.
In Praise of the Word: the ‘word’ which is the subject of address in the following three verses is simultaneously the sacred word which set the world into motion in the Qurānic narrative of creation (‘kun!’) and the word which makes up human language and is the unit of speech and story. The doubleness or paradoxical nature of the word, its place in the human heart as well as its divine imperishability, represents a view of language which contains the identity-indifference of human and divine nature which is fundamental to Ibn ‘Arabī’s theory of wuḥdut ul-wujūd. The word is also the basis of the poetics of double meaning which is at work in the Madhumālutī, since events in the story are understood to have multiple significances through the allusive power of words.
Huri’s mouth: ‘Hari’ is one of the epithets of the god, Viu. Viu is one of the supreme deities of Hinduism, and is characterized as the sustainer of the universe. In his numerous incarnations on earth (including as Rāma and as Ka) he acts as the saviour and protector of humanity.
then the world came into existence: this refers to the famous tradition popular among Sufis, ‘I was a hidden treasure, and longed to be known.’ From God’s love for seeing His own beauty, the universe came into being as a mirror for God’s face (cf. v. 6). Love and beauty are also central to the aesthetics of the Madhumālutī, in which the heroine becomes an exemplification of the process of the self-disclosure of the divine. Her beauty incites love within the seeker, while viraha, the condition of being separated from his beloved, drives him onwards along the Sufi path. The narrative logic of the romance hinges on this polarity between love (prema) and separation (viraha), as the hero and heroine try to consummate their desire by overcoming their separation and uniting in love.
the simple mystery: sahaja bheda, here used to represent the easy internalization of the Sufi paradox of the identity, yet radical difference, of the being of God and man.
To the Soul: this verse plays ambiguously on the paradoxical identity between God and the soul to refer to the Sufi notion of the reality of man (ḥuqīqut-i insānī) as encompassing all of creation in microcosm. Man contains within himself all the stations and ranks of created things, the divine Names, the planets and stars and angels. Within Shaari cosmology, man acts as the second intermediate state or burzu between God and the world, analogous to the nūr-e muḥummudi (the light of Muḥammad), the first visible manifestation of God’s self-disclosure.
Why do you destroy yourself with pride?: a reference to the nufs-i ammārah or lower soul, the seat of pride and carnal desire, which it is part of the Sufi’s quest to destroy.
Some Spiritual Advice: the following two verses use the imagery of Nāth-yogic practice to refer to the appropriation of Indian yoga into their own Sufi practice. Thus, Shaikh Muḥammad Ġhau Gvāliyāri translated the Sanskrit Amtukua (‘The Pool of Nectar’) into Persian under the title Buḥr al-ayāt, and this manual was widely circulated among Shaārīs and other Sufis. See Carl Ernst, ‘The Pool of the Water of Life’ (forthcoming), for a translation of the text.
sound: the dhuni or nādu referred to here is part of the theory of the human body as a microcosmic universe. The practitioner has within him an analogue of the sacred sound which sets the world in motion (O, kun), and has to tune his inner ear to that sound in order to move along the Sufi stages of ascent and descent.
That is the light of your inner heaven: the inner heaven (kabilāsa) referred to here is an internal bodily analogue to the Islamic paradise (jannat), which is later represented as the mango grove in which Pemā (Love) plays with her companions.
He dwells … in the circle of emptiness: in the Baḥr al-ayāt and other texts on spiritual practice, the Śūvyu-mual (‘circle of emptiness’) is an inner stage on the yogi’s path close to the pool of nectar between the eyes, at the head of the spinal column.
In Praise of Carnāihi: Carnāhi or Chunār was the Bihari town outside which Shaikh Muḥammad hau meditated for twelve years, until he moved to Gwalior in 1523.
It must be seen to be appreciated: a reference to the mystic body, which contains within it a symbolic geography wherein the three rivers Gagā, Jamunā, and Sarasvatī flow. Conquering this fort signifies the Sufi conquest of the self, which the verse implies is above the power of any earthly king.
O lustful parrot … many birds!: this is a reference to the tradition that the semala or silk-cotton tree (Salmalia malabarica or Bombax heptuphyllum: śālmuli, Skt.) attracts birds with its beautiful red flowers, but its pods only produce a worthless cotton. The silk-cotton tree is thus used as a metaphor for anything that is sensually attractive but of no lasting spiritual value.
the man of truth abandoned this Kali age: a reference to the accidental death in 952/1545 of Sher Shāh Sūr, the patron’s father, by an exploding cannon on the battlements of the fort of Kalinjar. The date of the accident is supplied by the Persian chronogram, z’āitish murd (‘he died by fire’).
Only a fool hears exquisite verse in silence: since the Hindavī mystical romances were written to be read aloud to select audiences
at courts and Sufi hospices, the listener’s pleasure was an important part of the poet’s aesthetic purpose. A particularly good verse would be appreciated by the audience verbally, and poets and performers would take such accolades as proof of their success. Manjhan implies here that only a fool would fail to appreciate exquisite verse by not praising the poet aloud.
Such juicy matters only connoisseurs know: rasa is the pleasure which listeners or readers take in stories as well as the lovers’ consummation of desire in the savour or juice of love (prema). The transcendent dimension of rasa allows the premākhyān narratives to refer allegorically to the relation of mirrored desire between God and creatures. This verse indicates the importance of rasa, a term adapted from Sanskrit aesthetics to support a triple aesthetic purpose: to allude to the circulation of desire between divinity and humans, to characterize the narrative/erotic consummation of desire between the lover and beloved of his story, and to construct the relation between his poetic text and its audience. Rasa thus signifies the allusive interplay of these three kinds of desire and their transformation into a divinely sanctioned love, prema or ‘ishq, which is the goal of Sufi practice as well as the central symbolic value of the Hindavī premākhyāns.
Dvāpar: third in the degenerative cycle of yugas or ages, the Dvāpar yuga is the time period when many mythological and literary events are believed to have taken place. See note to p. 3 above.
who gives rice-balls for the ancestors?: this is a reference to the sap-iikurau ritual which is a form of śrāddhu (ritual for the spiritual welfare of deceased family members) to be completed on the 12th day after death. The son of the deceased must make an offering of balls of rice (piu, Skt.) mixed with water and sesame in order to ensure the entry of the spirit of the deceased (preta, Skt.) into heaven. Only sons are allowed to perform this ritual and so having one is necessary for the soul’s eternal happiness.
God of Love: Kāamadeva, the Indian god of love, is portrayed as a beautiful youth riding on a parrot and armed with a bow of sugar cane, which is strung with a row of bees, and arrows tipped with flowers. Once he caused Śiva to have amorous thoughts of the goddess Pārvatī while he was meditating. Furious, Śiva incinerated Kāmadeva with fire from his third eye, and thereafter Kāmadeva was known as anagu, the ‘bodiless one’. It is significant that although Manjhan feels free to invoke the traditional Indian God of Love in telling his story in polished and conventional imagery, he nowhere mentions Kāmadeva when he is defining his notion of love in the Prologue (verses 27–30). There, he prefers to recast the Sufi notion of divine love into a Hindavī aesthetics and metaphysics of prema-rasa, the juice or savour of love.
On the sixth night … birth: this is a reference to ai, the ceremony on the sixth day after the birth of a child. The child is given a name and it is believed that Brahma, the god of creation, writes the child’s fate on his forehead on this day.
all thirty-six serving castes: traditionally, the low-caste servants (divided into thirty-six groups, such as barbers, dhobis, and shoemakers) connected to a household receive gifts upon festive occasions, such as marriages and births.
bodies anointed with sandal and aloes: the word used for the unguent in the original is catursama, a traditional perfume made of: (1) sandalwood (Santalum album, candana, Skt.), the oil extracted from the sweet-smelling wood of the sandal tree; (2) aloes (Aloe perfoliata, sthūlādalā, Skt.), a fragrant wood much used in incense-making and cosmetics; (3) musk, a fragrant substance extracted from the scent glands of the musk deer (Moschus moschiferous, kustūrī, Skt. and Hind.); and (4) saffron, from the Arabic za’furān, which comes from the stamens of the crocus flower (Crocus sativus, keśara, Skt., kesar, Hind.), which yields a brilliant yellow colour when used as a spice or a cosmetic. These four substances were mixed into a paste and then smeared on the body as a cosmetic.
lips stained with betel: betel is a preparation of leaves, areca nut, and spices which is chewed as a stimulant. Betel juice leaves a red colour on the lips, and beautiful women are frequently described as having lips tinted red from chewing betel.
vermilion on their heads: red lead or vermilion powder is known as sindūr. Husbands first put it in the parting of their wives’ hair during the marriage ceremony, and thereafter women apply it to their partings as a sign of their married status.
Dhrupada and Dhruva: a particularly rich and stylized courtly mode of singing songs in Hindi or Braj, popular during the sultanate and Mughal periods and distinct from the lighter style of Khyāl singing that was invented by Sultan usain Shāh Sharqī of Jaunpur in the late fifteenth century. The name is derived from the Sanskrit dhruva-pada, ‘fixed verse’. The introductory stanzas of the dhrupada, sung repeatedly as a fixed refrain or chorus, are called dhruva.
five well-born nurses, and seven maids to play with the baby: the numbers five and seven have a special significance in practice, there being five jewels of discipline on the mushrib-i Shuar, and seven stages/planets/faculties in the self, matching the six cukrus (‘wheel’, Skt., a nerve centre in the body) and the amtkua (‘pool of nectar’, Skt.) of the yogic self. See note to p. 15 above for amtakua.
that each word had several meanings: the position which Manjhan advances as a fundamental of knowledge, the multiple meanings (artha) of each word (bacana), is a view of language which is basic to the polysemy of the text. Later in the verse, the levels of mystery of scriptural texts are taught to the Prince as a basic interpretative strategy. This ‘ilm-i bāin, or knowledge of the inner secrets of Being, is fundamental to the Sufi poetics of the Madhumālutī, since the text may be seen as the translation of divine mystery into a concrete, culturally specific poetics. The process of signification which is the-matized here allows for polysemy as a condition of meaning.
the true meanings: this half-line introduces the term sat-bhāva (‘true meaning/essence’, Skt.), which works as a structuring principle for reading and referring to double or multiple meanings in the text of the Madhumālutī. The ‘true meanings’ of the literal events of the narrative are obliquely referred to by the poet, and the cosmological manuscripts provide the larger ideological framework from which elements are taken and adapted into the text’s poetics of oblique reference.
Yogūsitru: a philsophical text composed in the second century BC by Patanjali, the Yogasūtra is a manual explaining the disciplined mental and physical activity required for the practitioner to attain perfection and eventually liberation from existence.
Amarakośa: the most celebrated and authoritative lexicon in the Sanskrit language, it was compiled in the first century BC by Amarasiha, a scholar in the court of the legendary king Vikramāditya (see note to p. 7 above). Indisputably the most memorized dictionary in the world, a study of it was considered essential for a mastery of Sanskrit.
Kokaśāstra: another name for the Ratirahasya, composed in the twelfth century AD by Kokkoka, a royal pandit. Richard Burton describes in his edition how the pandit came to recite the śāstra before the king: ‘A woman who was burning with love and could find none to satisfy her inordinate desires, threw off her clothes and swore she would wander the world naked until she met with her match. In this condition she entered the levée-hall of the Raja upon whom Koka Pandit was attending, looked insolently at the crowd of courtiers around her and declared that there was not a man in the room. The king and his company were sore abashed, but the Sage [Kokkoka, joining his hands, applied with due humility for royal permission to tame the shrew. He then led her home and worked so persuasively that well-nigh fainting from fatigue and from repeated orgasms she cried for quarter. Thereupon the virile Pandit inserted gold pins into her arms and legs, and, leading her before his Raja, made her confess her defeat and solemnly veil herself in his presence. The Raja was, as might be expected, anxious to learn how the victory had been won, and commanded Koka Pandit to tell his tale, and to add much useful knowledge on the subject of coition. In popular pictures the Sage appears sitting before and lecturing the Raja, who duly throned and shade
d by the Chhatri or royal canopy, with his harem fanning him and forming tail, lends an attentive ear to the words of wisdom.’ (Quoted by Alex Comfort, in The Koka Shastra: being the Ratirahasya of Kokkoka and other Medieval Indian Writings on Love, pp. 54–5.)
Gītā: the Bhagavad Gītī (‘Song of the Lord’, Skt.) is a section from the epic Mahābhārata relating a conversation on the battlefield between Arjuna, one of the Pāava brothers, and his charioteer, the God Ka. Arjuna has been paralysed by remorse at the thought of the impending battle when he will be required to fight and kill his teachers, friends, and kinsmen. Krsna explains to Arjuna in a series of arguments how he can fulfil his duty and still remain morally virtuous, namely by devoting himself to the ideal of selfless action. Ka then reveals himself to be God by appearing to Arjuna in his cosmic form. Arjuna, duly impressed, accepts his duty and enters the battle. The Gītā is one of the central sacred texts of India and is commonly read and quoted.
the month of Caitra: this is the lunar month corresponding to March–April. Kāmadeva is also called Caitrasakha (friend of Caitra) as he is associated with the season of spring.
the sixteen adornments: these are the traditional Indian soluh sigār, the sixteen ways that a woman could adorn herself to look beautiful. The sixteen kinds of make-up are: (1) dāntun, ‘tooth-brush’; (2) manjun, ‘tooth-powder’; (3) uban, ‘cosmetic paste’ made of gram flour or barley meal for softening and cleaning the skin; (4) sindūr, ‘vermilion’ for the forehead and parting of the hair; (5) kesur, ‘saffron’, also for the forehead; (6) anjan, ‘antimony’ or ‘collyrium’, kohl for the eyes; (7) bindī, ‘dot, mark, or spangle ornamenting the forehead’; (8) tel, ‘hair-oil’; (9) kaghī, ‘comb’; (10) argujā, ‘perfume’; (II) pān, ‘betel’ for reddening the lips; (12) missī, ‘dark paint for the teeth and lips’; (13) nīl, ‘indigo’ for tattooing; (14) mehdī, ‘henna’ for the hands and feet; (15) phūl, ‘flowers’ for the hair; (16) āltā, ‘red dye’ or ‘lac’, an insect-based extract used to paint the feet red.
Madhumalati Page 30
