bhandudatta.pdf

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T H E C L A Y S A N S K R I T L I B R A R Y

F O U N D E D B Y J O H N & J E N N I F E R C L A Y

G E N E R A L E D I T O R

Sheldon Pollock

E D I T E D B Y

Isabelle Onians

www.claysanskritlibrary.com

www.nyupress.org


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B O U Q U E T O F R A S A &

R I V E R O F R A S A

b y B HN U D A T T A

T R A N S L A T E D B Y

Sheldon Pollock

N E W Y O R K U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

J J C F O U N D A T I O N


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Copyright by the CSLAll rights reserved.

First Edition

e Clay Sanskrit Library is co-published byNew York University Pressand the JJC Foundation.

Further information about this volumeand the rest of the Clay Sanskrit Library

is available at the end of this bookand on the following websites:www.claysanskritlibrary.com

www.nyupress.org

ISBN-:----(cloth : alk. paper)ISBN-:---(cloth : alk. paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataBhnudatta Mira.

[Rasamajar. English & Sanskrit]"Bouquet of rasa" ; & "River of rasa" / by Bhanudatta ;

translated by Sheldon Pollock.p. cm.Poems.

In English and Sanskrit (romanized) on facing pages.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-:----(cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN-:---(cloth : alk. paper). Bhanudatta Misra.--Translations into English.

. Sanskrit poetry--Translations into English.. Rasas--Poetry.. Poetics--Poetry. I. Pollock, Sheldon I.

II. Bhanudatta Misra. Rasatarangini. English & Sanskrit.III. Title. IV. Title: River of rasa.

PK.BR '.--dc


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C O N T E N T S

CSL Conventions viiAcknowledgments xvii

Introduction xix

BOUQUET OF RASA

Description of theNyika

Description of theNyakaand Related Matters

RIVER OF RASA

First Wave Description of the StableEmotions

Second Wave Description of the Factors

ird Wave Description of the Physical

Reactions

Fourth Wave Description of the Involuntary

Physical Reactions

Fifth Wave Description of the Transitory

Feelings

Sixth Wave Description of Rasas

Seventh Wave Description of Rasas Continued

Eighth Wave Miscellany

Notes


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I N T R O D U C T I O N

B the most famous Sanskrit poetcertainly the most famous Sanskrit poet of early

modern Indiawhom no one today has heard of. Althoughaccorded little more than a footnote in standard Indianliterary histories, the two texts edited and translated inthis edition, the Bouquet of Rasa (Rasamajar; on typesof female and male characters in poetry) and the River

of Rasa (Rasatarangi.n; on Sanskrit aesthetics) attractedan astonishing amount of interpretive attention from thesixteenth to the eighteenth century, including commen-taries from a dozen of the periods most celebrated scholar-exegetes. No other Sanskrit poet exercised anythingremotely approaching Bhanudattas influence on the de-

velopment of the Hindi literary tradition between and, the Epoch of High Style (riti|kal). No literarywork, at least of the non-religious, lyrical sort, made a big-ger impact than the Bouquet of Rasa on the new art ofminiature painting that burst onto the Indian scene in thelate sixteenth century. When Abu al-Fazl, the leading intel-

lectual at the court of Akbar, presented a review of the artsand sciences of the Hindus to the Mughal emperor in thes, he turned in part to the work of Bhanu to describethe nature of literature. And two centuries later, when thefirst Europeans began to study Sanskrit, this poets works,among others now more celebrated, were presented to themas exemplary by their Indian teachers.

Bhanudattas extraordinary influence was not the resultof any truly revolutionary break-through he achieved on

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the conceptual plane. It was due, rather, to his consum-mate skill in summarizing the thousand-year-long traditionof Indian aesthetic theory more clearly and engagingly thananyone had previously and, more important, to his talentfor crafting illustrative verses of far higher literary caliberthan anyone had offered before him. It will be helpful toreview what we know about Bhanu himself and the genreof science-poetry he helped shape and to offer some as-sessment of his literary accomplishment in these two cele-

brated and charming works, before briefly describing theircontentthe nature of rasa and Sanskrit aesthetics, and thetypology of literary charactersBhanus central place in theminiature painting tradition, and the principles adopted forthis edition and accompanying commentary.

Who was Bhanudatta?As is commonly the case with Sanskrit poets, howevergreat the literary influence they exerted (and Bhanudattasinfluence can be detected already within a few decades ofhis death), there is considerable uncertainty about Bhanustime, place, and identity. One must start of course withwhat the poet-scholar himself tells us. He was from Vidha(todays northern Bihar), a member of the highly learnedMithili brahmin community, and he was the son of a poetnamed Ganshvara (or Ganapati). He speaks of himself asSanskrit poets usually do, in the third person:

His father was Ganshvara,

brightest jewel in the crown of poetry,his land, Vidha country, where wavesof the holy river ripple.

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With verse of his own making Shri Bhanuthe poet arranged this Bouquetto rival the flower of the coral treeat the ear of the Goddess of Language.

(Bouquet of Rasa v.)

Unfortunately, given the reticence also typical of Sanskritpoets, this is all he says directly about himself. Bhanu pro-vides only one other reference to his lifethis time an in-

direct hint. In a poem in the Bouquet of Rasa illustratingthe different involuntary physical reactions, Bhanu offersthe single historical allusion in the two works (and so far asI can tell in his entire oeuvre, aside from a brief genealogyin hisKumrabhrgavya.):

Her voice breaks, tears well up in her eyes,

her breast is beaded with sweat,her lips tremble, her smooth cheeks grow pale,goosebumps cover her body,her mind absorbed, the light in her eyes dying,her legs paralyzeddid she, too, chance to glance at the royal highwayand see King Nijma?


e very rarity of such references in his poetry makes thisone a little suspectif Sanskrit poets speak of their patronsatall,theyusuallydosoinafarmorecopiousifnotfulsomeway. On the other hand, it is hard to see why such a line

should ever has been interpolated, and it alone, in the entirecorpus (and in the middle, not at the beginning or end).One manuscript from Kerala and one commentator from

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Tamil country make mention instead of the god Krishna,but that reading seems spurious. Moreover, Venidatta, themost learned commentator on the River of Rasa, who is avery careful reader of Bhanu, cites the verse with the Nijmareference.

On the assumption, then, that the dominant manuscriptand commentarial tradition is credible in connecting Bhanuto a King Nijma, to whom could this refer? One com-mentator on the poem, Anntapndita, who lived in the

early seventeenth century and hailed from Punyastambha(Puntambem, near Ahmadnagar) in Maharashtra, identifiesNijma as the king of Devagiri. Devagiri was the town,not far from Punyastambha, that after the defeat of the Y-davas around the beginning of the fourteenth century wasrenamed Daulatabad (and later Aurangabad). And it was

this celebrated stronghold that, after repeated attempts, Ah-mad Nizam Shah, founder of the Nizam Shahi dynasty of

Ahmadnagar in, finally captured in.e worksof Bhanu cannot have been written much after this date,since one of them, the Bouquet of Rasa, was adapted ina Hindi text of.

It seems probable, then, that the Maharashtrian com-mentator Anntapndita, who was more likely to have hadaccess to authentic tradition about his region than a copy-ist from Kerala or a commentator from Tamil country, haspreserved the truth here. But does it seem credible that abrahmin poet from the far northeast area of Mthila shouldhave made his way to a southern, Muslim court at that pe-riod? We know of many Sanskrit poets over the centurieswho traveled vast distances in search of royal patronage:

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Blhana, one of the great poets of the twelfth century, jour-neyed from Kashmir to the Deccan, and four centuries laterthe Andhra poet-scholar Jagannatha sojourned in Delhi,

Assam, and Udaipur. Why should Bhanu not have soughtpatronage in the south, especially in a new and ascendantpolitical context where other Sanskrit intellectuals, such asDalapatiraja, author of a great work on law (c.) andwho describes himself as minister and record-keeper of Ni-

jma Saha, overlord of all Yvanas [Muslims], were enjoy-

ing royal support? Moreover, a Deccani provenance for atleast the Bouquet of Rasa would go some way in explain-ing the impact of the work on poets at other southern sul-tanates, such as Golconda in the mid-seventeenth century,where the work was deeply studied (a fact also reflectedin the large number of manuscripts of the work in Telugu

script), as well as the presence of a relatively early paintingtradition at Aurangabad, where an illustrated Bouquet ofRasa was prepared for a Sisodia Rajput in.

In addition to the two texts edited and translated here,Bhanu produced at least one other treatise on rhetoric,the Forehead Ornament of Figures (Alankratilaka); the

Gtgaurpatikvya, a short poem on Shiva and Gauri mod-eled on the Gitagovnda; a mixed prose-verse work, theKumrabhrgavyacamp, narrating the story of the deityKartikya; and an anthology of his own and his fathers po-etry called the Heavenly Tree of Rasa (Rasaprijta). Sev-eral other attributed works have not survived. e Bou-quet of Rasa is an early composition; it certainly precedesthe River of Rasa, which refers to it (.), and hence thetwo texts are presented in that order here.

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Bhanudatta and the Blurred Genreof Science-Poetry

e two works of Bhanudatta presented here are rep-resentatives of a somewhat blurred genre in Sanskrit liter-ary history. Although Indian thinkers always viewed science(stra) as fundamentally distinct from literature (kvya),at a relatively early date poets began experimenting witha form of text that mixed the two categories. One vari-ety, science-poetry (stra|kvya), as the genre came to becalled, makes use of a well-known narrative, say the storyof Rama, to illustrate the rules of grammar or rhetoric;Bhattis Poem (Bha.t.tikvya) from the early eighth centuryis a good example. Another is the purely scientific trea-tise that aspires to the condition of poetry, such as Varhamhiras mid-sixth-century astronomical work, the Great

Compendium (B.rhatsa.mhit). Yet a third type is consti-tuted by treatises of literary theory or rhetoric (alankra|stra), where the rules of literary art are set out and illus-trated with poems. Or more justly put, this third variety,which we might call rhetorical science-poetry, became anew genre in its own right thanks to the efforts of poet-

scholars like Bhanudatta, who achieved a degree of literaryexcellence in the form that few earlier authors equaled. Abrief review of the formal history of Sanskrit rhetoric willshow this and at the same time permit me to say a wordabout its conceptual history.

In texts on Sanskrit rhetoric from the earliest period,such as Dandins late seventh-century Mirror of Litera-ture (Kvydara), the illustrative poems were of the au-thors own making, writtenad hocand entirely pedestrian.

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Within two centuries, poeticians had begun to draw illus-trations from their own literary works; dbhata (c. ),for instance, took all his examples from his own courtlyepic (theKumrasambhava, no longer extant). When, how-ever, in a momentous transformation that took place inmid-ninth-century Kashmir, the focus of literary theorysuddenly shifted from how to write poetry to how to readit, scholars began to use citations from existing literature,almost exclusively, in making their theoretical arguments.

Bhanu thus represents something of a throwbackthoughalso a harbinger, since many later Sanskrit writers were tofollow his examplein producing new poetry of a veryhigh order to illustrate the aesthetic and rhetorical practicesof Sanskrit literature. He thereby fired the imagination ofvernacular poets who were seekingas Joachim du Bellay,

a contemporary vernacular writer half a world away, wroteinat once to defend and illustrate [i.e., ennoble]their emergent literary languages. For them the science-poetry of Bhanus sort offered the perfect vehicle.e po-etic oeuvre of many Old Hindi poets in particular cameto include what they called a definition work (lak.sa.na|

grantha)often marked by extraordinary literary finessebased on Bhanus Bouquet or River.

ese two works, viewed from one angle, function some-thing like user manuals for Sanskrit literature, of a sort es-sential for readers of the CS L.Aswewillsee momentarily, understanding the characterology, so tocall it, of Sanskrit literature, to say nothing of rasa, or theemotion produced through the literary work, is crucial toour capacity to appreciate the presuppositions and goals of

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Sanskrit writers. Viewed from another angle, Bhanus textsprovide a glimpse into the workshop of the Sanskrit poet,his tools and materials and ways of composition. ereare other types of Sanskrit texts that bring us even deeperinto that workshopthe so-called instruction manuals forpoets (kavi|ik.s), which set forth, for example, how tochoose the best Sanskrit word for king from among thescores of synonyms to fit a certain complex Sanskrit metri-cal pattern. But Bhanu not only informs, he delights with

far more accomplished poetry than that which we find ininstruction manuals.

Even a few examples suffice to show this. Take the poemthat Abu al-Fazl found worthy of translating into Persian(it was also known to and imitated by the great Telugu poetKshetrayya a century and a half later):

You stayed awake all night, and yetits my eyes that are throbbing;you were the one who drank the rum,and yet its my head thats splitting;and in the bower buzzing with beesit was you who stole beautys fruit,

yet Im the one the Love God woundswith his arrows that burn like fire.(Bouquet of Rasa v.)

e poem illustrates the nyik, literally the leadinglady or heroine, who is average unsteady, whose desireand modesty are in balance and who, when confronted with

infidelity on the part of her lover, does not mince her words.Bhanu deftly reveals the sorrow her lover has caused byshowing how each of what are fleeting pleasures for him

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transforms into enduring pains for her. Another poem,about the same average nyik, perfectly embodies herdefinition as one whose desire and modesty are in preciseand, as the poet shows, impossible balance:

She thought, If I fall asleep right nowIll lose the chance to seemy loves face; and if I stay awake,his hands might start to roam.Over and over she thought it through,that girl with lotus eyes,and finally decided to go to sleepand to stay awake.


Yet a third poem, showing the same averagenyikcon-fronted by lipstick on his collar, expresses her constitutiveambivalence by reflecting on the ambivalence, so to put it,of the material world itself:

When she saw her husbands cheststained with cream from anothers breasts,she didnt heave a long, deep sighand didnt say a single word;she only began to wash her face

just as she did every morningand with the water hid the waterthat came pouring from her eyes.


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Contemporary readers who might be disappointed bythe conventional nature of these poems do well to under-stand that such is in fact their whole point. Bhanus pur-pose is to show what poets can do when working within thetightest of constraints. He uses straboth to explain andto defend this tradition of voluntary self-limitation whileexemplifying the especially intense pleasure that can comefrom inventiveness within narrow boundaries.is is notto say that Bhanu cannot produce something entirely new,

either in pure play, as when he manufactures Sanskrit wordsin a way that some of his more fastidiously grammaticalcommentators found scandalous:

My figure shows no curvitude,my breasts no altitude,

my body has no pulchritude,my hips no amplitude,my walk suggests no gravitude,my eyes no magnitude,my charm reveals no plenitude,my speech no aptitude,and my laugh no latitudewhy in the world has my lover givenhis heart to me and me alone?

madhye na kraimstane na garimdehe na vkntim

ro.nau na prathimgatau na ja.dimnetre na vvakrim

lsye na dra.dhimna vci pa.timhsye na vsphtim

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pr.n|asya tath pi majjati manomayy eva ki.m kra.nam?


Or in aspiring almost to the condition of music, withsomething like the rhymes so characteristic of the new ver-naculars:

tamo|ja.tle harid|antarlekle niys tava nirgaty.hta.te nadn.m nika.te vann.m

gha.tetat|dari ka.h sahya.h?

When nighttime lets down its thick black hairall around and you leave your house, slender girl,who will be there to stand by your sideon the riverbank at the edge of the forest?


All in all, Bhanudatta does represent something of thereturnad fontesthat is characteristic of much early modernSanskrit culture. He does so not only in the formal dimen-sion of his work as described earlier, but also in the ideas

that inform it. I examine first the broad theory of literaryart in the River of Rasa, before going on to discuss thesubset of that theory constituted by the characterology ofthe Bouquet of Rasa.

Rasa, or How Literature Creates Emotion

From the beginning of their systematic reflection on lit-erature, Indian thinkers were preoccupied by the questionof how human emotion comes to be produced by words

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inscribed on a page or recited on stage accompanied bygestures and other physical expressionsand not just howemotion was produced, but what kinds of emotion, andwhy those kinds.e foundational work in this domain isthe Science of Drama (N.tyastra) of Bhrata (perhapscomposed in the third or fourth century, but subject to sub-stantial revision up to the ninth century), and the analysisit set out was never fundamentally contested.

In accordance with the widespread tendency in Sanskrit

culture toward schematic thinking and the simplificationof complexity in the interests of orderly analysis, Bhrataand all later Indian aestheticians promoted a theory of lit-erary representation that reduced the vast welter of humanemotions to a set of eight (a ninth would be added in latercenturies).ese eight aesthetic emotions they called rasas,

tastes, analogizing from the sense of taste on the groundsboth of the physicality of emotionit is something we feel,not something we thinkand of the blending of ingredi-ents that complex tastes and aesthetic moods both evince.e basic ingredient is called a stable or primary emo-tion (sthyi|bhvas), such as desire in the case of the erotic

rasa, to which are added underlying factors (lambana|vi-bhvas) such as the beloved, stimulant factors (uddpana|vibhvas) such as a moonlit night or swinging earrings,transitory feelings (vyabhicri|bhvas) such as longing orworry or shame, and physical reactions (anubhvas) suchas perspiring or weeping. A stable emotion, when fully de-veloped or matured by these factors, transforms into arasa. Such a transformation was originally thought to besomething that comes about in the main character of a

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poem or drama; it is Rama who feels the stable emotion ofdesire for Sita (not you or I) and who eventually relishes theerotic rasa that develops out of this desire. On this view,the readers or viewers response to the emotion is of littleor no concern. On the contrary, rasa theory arose to en-able literary analysis to grasp, as the American New Critics

Wand Bput it in their famousessaye Affective Fallacy, how poetry fix[es] emotions, mak-ing them more permanently perceptible. And this purpose

would reign unchallenged for six or more centuries afterBhrata.esuddenshiftofperspectivethatledKashmirithinkers

such as nandavrdhana (fl. )tofocusonreadingratherthan writing (and therefore to cite already existent poetryrather than to create itad hoc), concomitantly led them,less than a century later, to turn their attention away fromhow the literary text or the dramatic performance producesemotion and toward how readers and viewers respond tothat emotion. Why do we not leap from our seats in thetheater and rush the stage the moment Rvana reveals him-self and prepares to abduct Sita? Why do we not shun sadstories like the Ramyana, as we shun sorrow in everyday

life? In other words, how precisely does literary emotiondiffer from the non-literary? I say from the non-literaryrather than from real emotion, since the emotions of fear,sadness, and so on that we experience when watching aRamyana play are certainly real. After all we do feelthem; they are just different from the emotions we experi-

ence outside the theater. Clearly, these are core questionsnotjustofliteraturebutofhumanexistence:theverycapac-ity to distinguish aesthetic from pragmatic emotion, even

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to respond to aesthetic emotion, is one of the things thatmake people cultured, perhaps even human. And they arequestions that took Indian scholarship by storm in the latetenth century, transforming Indian aesthetic thought onceand for all time.

At least this is what most scholars believe. In factandto register this fact is to record a historical truth, and notof course to denigrate the profound insights of the in-novatorsmany later Indian literary theorists appear to

have been entirely indifferent to the new ideas originat-ing in Kashmir. Bhanudatta is most certainly one of themthroughout his exposition in the River of Rasa. His arelargely the old concerns of how literature creates emotion,the concerns of, say, King Bhoja, the great encyclopedistwho synthesized the normal science of aesthetics in the

mid-eleventh century. Only rarely does Bhanu departfrom the classical doctrinehence his close dependence ontheN.tyastraand the few times he does so, he revealsthat he is far more a poet than a thinker. (His distinctionbetween ordinary and extraordinary rasawhich dif-ferentiates between a rasa that arises for a character from

normal contact with the underlying object and a rasa thatarises for a character in dreaming, imagining, or witnessinga mimetic representationdoes mark a noteworthy if un-developed advance.) It is for the poetry we should enterinto the River of Rasa, not the sciencethough of coursehaving the science clearly in our heads, as Bhanu makes itvery convenient to do, is the only way to fully engage wththe poetry.

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Casting according to Type

As with his River of Rasa, it is above all for the poetry

that we enjoy Bhanus Bouquet of Rasa, though the doc-trine of the work and its systematicity and (if such is con-ceivable) completeness were found impressive in their ownright and were everywhere imitated.

e catalogue of character types with which the Bou-quet is concerned fits, of course, perfectly into the thoughtworld of rasa; indeed, it is its necessary complement. Rasais all about typicality: A young mans desire, upon seeing abeautiful young woman with swinging earrings on a moon-lit evening, will typically develop or mature into the eroticrasaor to put this more strictly, for the erotic rasa to de-velop in literature, the nyaka, literally the leading man orhero, must be young, thenyikmust be beautiful, and so

on. Atypicalityan old woman in love with a young man,for examplewould have been considered vi|rasa, or taste-less. Such themes would not become the stuffof literatureuntil modernity; one can even say that what makes a liter-ary text modern is precisely its violation of the expectationsof the traditional social text. (us, in the iconic drama of

early modernity, CorneillesLe Cid, one of the things thatenraged critics inwas the marriage of the heroine toher fathers assassin, in violation of what the French critics,in an idiom remarkably similar to that of their Indian coun-terparts, called propriety and probability). Sanskrit po-ets were interested in exploring typicality and, accordingly,

needed to master it across the whole universe of emotion.How were women expected to act when first falling in love,when confronted by an act of infidelity on the part of their

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lovers, when desiring someone other than their husband?To answer such questions a discourse arose that aimed toconstruct a typology of characters.

Again, Bhanu enters this discourse after a millennium ormore of its cultivation by dozens of writers. Bhrata hadalready discussed eight types of women (and five types ofmen) in the erotic setting. An important late-tenth-centurytreatise on dramaturgy, the e Ten Dramatic Genres(Daarpaka) elaborated further, as did Bhoja half a cen-

tury later in his Light on Desire (.rngrapraka). In thesame epoch, it seems, a writer named Rudra (or RudraBha.t.ta) composed the Forehead Ornament of the Erotic(.rngratilaka), the first systematic account of the subjectprior to Bhanu, who knew the work well and adapted it tohis purposes, which were, however, far more ambitious.

Just as in the case with his rasa theory, Bhanus own con-tribution to the discourse on character types, aside frombeing the first entirely independent treatise on the subject,is relatively modest and consists largely in identifying newsubtypes of heroines. Yet the work was viewed as originalenough to provoke serious critical comment in the follow-

ing centuries. At the court of Abul Hasan Qutb Shah ofGolconda in the last quarter of the seventeenth century,the Bouquet of Rasa was answered by the Bouquet ofthe Erotic Rasa (.rngramajar), composed (or commis-sioned) by Akbar Shah, one of the intellectuals who formedthe sultans remarkable literary circle.

Readers of the Bouquet will again be struck in the firstinstance by what will appear to be Bhanus taxonomic ob-sessions. When he concludes his overview of female charac-

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ters by stating, is makestypes. All these can be fur-ther distinguished as excellent, average, and low, whichthus gives types, our jaws are likely to fall slack atthe hypertrophy of categories. We certainly feel a sense ofrelief when he spares us further elaboration, saying, I re-

ject the argument that there can be a further subdivisionaccording to whether the nyikis divine, not divine, orsemidivinewhich would give us,types (Bouquetof Rasa ). Newcomers to such a style of analysis are

likely to react with the same incomprehension and impa-tience of the colonial officer surveying native educationins Bengal, who rebuked Indian scholars for wastingtheir learning and their powers in recompounding ab-surd and vicious fictions, and revolving in perpetual circlesof metaphysical abstractions never ending still beginning

(B :).Yet as I have tried to suggest, Bhanus typological think-

ing is an essential adjunct to the aesthetic theory in whichit is embedded, and that theory does a better job of dis-secting literary emotion than any other on offer. Its fault,if fault it is, lies in the excess of detail in the attempt to

follow out every possible permutation to its logical conclu-sion. What ancient Indian scholars realized, and most of usmodernsto our surprise and sometimes repulsionhavenot, is that we can bring analytical order even into realmsthat seem constitutively anarchic, the world of human feel-ing, for instance, or the apparently infinite ways, ways ofpleasure and of pain, in which men and women interactwith each other.

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Bhanudattas Words Painted

Another indication of the importance of Bhanudattas

work is the impact it made on the emergent painting tradi-tions of early modern India. e Bouquet of Rasa was oneof the best-loved poems in the sub-imperial realm of minia-ture painting that arose with the consolidation of Mughalrule at the end of the sixteenth century. e poem was il-lustrated in Mewar perhaps as early as the s, in theDeccan in thes, in Basohli betweenand ,in Chamba about, in Nurpur in thes, and else-where.e earliest album, from Udaipur, is an uneven as-semblage from various artists (or, in some cases, evidentlyart students), but a number of paintings strongly suggest,to an inexpert viewer such as myself, the atelier if not thehand of the celebrated painter Shibdn. e commen-

tary provided in this CSLedition refersto surviving folios of this early and largely hitherto unpub-lished album.

What accounts for the remarkable appeal the Bouquetof Rasa held for early modern artists? Its attractivenessmay partially lie in the new and intriguing challenges of

capturing complex and subtle verbal narratives in visualimagery. In the preceding century and a half (little In-dian painting is extant prior to), the almost exclusiveobjects of painterly attention were narratively uncompli-cated religious or epic texts such as Jain sutras, the Mahabhrata, and theHariva.ma. As Sanskrit poetry began tobe illustrated, the texts chosen were also largely straightfor-ward in their narrativepoems like the e Fifty Stan-zas of aief (Caurapacik) or the Gitagovnda.

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e Bouquet of Rasa, by contrast, offers the fascinationof whats difficult in representing in the medium of line andcolor the subtle emotional situations that Bhanu depicts insophisticated and often oblique or indirect language. (esame is true of the Rasikapriy, Keshavdass great Hindipoemof,whichpresentssomeofthesamekindsofin-terpretive challenges and was painted in Udaipur betweenand.)e creators of the Udaipur album cer-tainly took the challenges of Bhanus text seriously.e po-

ems themselves appear on the front of the painting, not,as in later periods (Basohli, for example), on the back, andwere accompanied by an Old Gujarati translation (on theverso). If it is true that later artists often painted what theywished to paint regardless of the text of the poem theywere illustrating, this was decidedly not the case in the early

Udaipur album. How the artists met the narrative challengestill has the power to charm, as well as to instruct as if theywere commentaries in paint.

Text and Annotation

e texts that form the basis for my editions of the

Rasamajarand the Rasatarangi.nare found in the col-lected works of Bhnudatta published by TJ in . J in fact only reprints already publishedtexts for the two works, and I chose his edition merelyas the most recent and convenient starting point for myown work. In the case of the Rasamajar, nothing ap-proaching a critical edition has ever been produced. I wasable to make use of collations from two manuscripts inMalayalam script (Triv. A and B) and, occasionally, the Old

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Gujarati translation on the back of the Udaipur album.For the Rasatarangi.n it was possible to supplement Jwith the edition of US. Sassembles agood deal of additional textual material (on the basis of tenmanuscripts), though some editorial judgments are decid-edly odd and the number of misleading typographical er-rors surprisingly large.

e transmission of the two poems has in fact beenhighly stable, with no substantial variation, let alone the

development of regionalized recensions that characterize somany Sanskrit literary texts. When I depart from JandS, I do so on the evidence of readings offered by oneor another of the dozen commentators I consulted. Many ofthese commentators were also editors and frequently com-ment on and weigh variants, and I have taken their argu-

ments into account. I supply the evidence for my editorialdecisions in the critical apparatus to the text; however, I re-frain from reporting information already available in earliereditions and also omit variants that have no real bearing onthe sense. Occasionally, even if I do not accept the com-mentators readings, I record them if they seem worthy of

further consideration, especially if they are not noticed ineither Jor S, neither of whom made use of severalof the still-unpublished commentaries to which I have hadaccess.

Even a truly critical edition of Bhnus works, howeverrigorously prepared, would never enable us to make edito-rial choices with anything approaching the ideal of stem-matic necessity. We would still be exposed to the potentialdelusions of our own subjectivity, assuming, of course, we

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are aiming for something approaching authorial intention,an aim that no contemporary theory leads me to entirelydevalue. But this subjectivity becomes somewhat less unre-liable to the degree it is disciplined by the commentators,ideal readers if there ever were ones. eir commentariesoffer some of the most learned reflections on any Sanskritliterary text from the early modern periodsome approx-imate veritable treatises on aesthetics in their own righteven as they provide further evidence of Bhnudattas aston-

ishing popularity. A few of the more accomplished exegetesand poeticians I draw upon, among the ten who wrote ontheRasatarangi.nand the fifteen on theRasamajar, in-clude (in chronological order): e.sa Cintma.ni, youngerbrother ofe.sa K.r.s .na, the most celebrated grammarian ofthe late sixteenth century (Kanpur/Varanasi,this is

within a generation or two of Bhnu); Gopla Bha.t.ta (sonof Hariva.ma Bha.t.ta), a direct disciple of Caitanya andteacher of the renowned Bangla poet K.r.s .nadsa Kavirja(place unknown,); Anantapa.n .dita, grandfather of thelogician Mahdeva, and commentator on therysaptaatandMudrrk.sasa(Ahmadnagar/Varanasi, ); Ve .ndatta

Bha.t.tcrya, author of theAlankracandrodaya(Bareilly, c.); Ngea Bha.t.ta, the most remarkable polymath ofthe early eighteenth century (Varanasi,); Gangrma

Ja.de, pupil of theMahbhratacommentator Nlaka.n.thaCaturdhara, and a scholar learned in both alankra|straand logic (Varanasi,); and Vivevara, author of the

Alankrakaustubha, the last of the important independentworks onalankra|stra(Almora, d.).

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e most insightful of these commentaries for theRasa-majaris without question Vivevara, probing the poemsas he does with a very learned eye. In a category by himselfis Anantapa.n .dita, who clearly has pretensions to be morethan mere commentator: he appears to want to claim forhis exegesis a status of expressivity almost equal to that ofthe poet himself, producing what at times approaches art-prose, though often with more heat than light. e mostknowledgeable ofRasatarangi.ncommentaries is undoubt-

edly the still-unpublished work of Ve .ndatta, and I havefrequently profited from his deep knowledge of Sanskritpoetry. Space is available in the annotations to record onlysignificant commentarial alternatives to the preferred trans-lation.

ere are several earlier translations of these two works

of Bhnudatta.eRasamajar, or at least its verses, hasbeen rendered several times by Indian translators; a re-cent Italian dissertation offers a version as well. eRasa-tarangi.nwas translated only once, and only partially, intoFrench by PRin, as part of a study of theN.tyastra.e present volume represents the first com-

plete translation of both works to be published together andon the basis of texts established and interpreted with thehelp of the most important extant commentaries.

Notes

See discussion of the commentators, Hindirtiliterature, and thepainting traditions that follows.[] (missed by the translator),[], and [] are cited in the Ain-i Akbari(vol. , pp.

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; Bhnudatta is not named but the verses are unmistak-ably his).e European mentioned is SWJ, whowrote in reference to the RM, I have read this delightful book

four times at least (: vol.:); he attractively translatedthe title as e Analysis of Love.

V cites the verse in RT.(f.v).

K.rprms Hittarangi.n,thefirstworkonthetypologyofheroinesin Brajbhasha, is dated (the interpretation of the chrono-gram has been questioned, but unpersuasively), borrows from the

RM, and thus supplies a definite terminus ante quem(AB, personal communication).is would be corroboratedby the date ofe.sa Cintma.nis commentary on the RM,,assuming that early date is indeed correct.

See also D and K :. An argument for aterminus ante quemofis based on a false dating of a com-mentaryontheRM(DandD : ;the Rasama-

jarpraka, which exists in a single MS., seems in fact to be theRasikarajanof Gopla Bha.t.ta, which was also composed in). An argument for aterminus ante quemofis basedon the false attribution to Bhnu of a lawbook called Prijtacited in another text dated(Bhnudattas literary anthologyRasaprijtais confused with thedharmastra Prijtaby G:(the verses cited are actually from the former) whois also unaware of the verse on Nijma).

K :; M :. We cannot be cer-tain that the Nizam in question was not Burhan Nizam Shah(r.) rather than Ahmad Nizam Shah, as some assert. Ipass over here arguments identifying Bhnudatta and a much an-thologized poet named Bhnukara, whose references would link

Bhnudatta with other Muslim rulers such as Shershah. (e ev-idence is collected in C :, though not siftedcritically; see also D :.)

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On Golconda, see the remarks on Akbar Shah that follow; San-skrit manuscript catalogues list a large number of Telugu MSS.of the RM, with only two (incomplete) MSS. in Mithiland very

scanty holdings elsewhere in the northeast. D :discusses the Aurangabad RM.

Forthcoming in the CSL, translated by OF.

For the changeability of the category literature in Sanskrit lit-erary history, see P :.

His only real peer is Jaganntha (fl.). Southern writers used

their own poetry for illustrations at least from the time of Vidy-ntha (c.).

e list of such works is long and their authors distinguished.It includes, in addition to K.rprmsHittarangi.n(based on theRT), NanddsRasmajar(c., based on the RM); RahimsBarvai Nyikbhed(c. , based on the RM); Sundars Sundar-.rngr(,basedontheRM);Mahkavi Devs Bhvvils(,

basedontheRT).Bhnus influence continued well into the eigh-teenth century. (I owe this list to AB.)

NotetheechoinKshetrayya(R etal. : ), thoughthe Telugu poet emends to beautiful ironic effect: the lover usedto tell her that their bodies were oneand now she knows why.Kshetrayya was patronized by the same Golconda court at whichthe

.rngramajarwas later produced (R :).

See P .

See RT.. Another significant if under-argued innovation con-cerns the possibility ofntaconstituting a ninth rasa (RT.).

For the earlier history see Nch.; DR ch.;P ch..

e work itself has an interesting history, being first written in

Telugu and then translated into Sanskrit (the latter version beingadopted into Hindi by the celebrated poet Cintma.ni Trip.th).See R :for a detailed review of Akbar Shahs

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critique of the RM. is critique is itself answered by one ofBhnus later commentators, Trivikrama Mira.

e paintings are themselves undated and have been placedeverywhere between and . ebestofthemstronglyre-semble the rgamlworks of Sahibdin of, perhaps evenanticipating him. Compare, for example, B and G:; Kand D :; W: pl.(with which compare RM pl. ). On the Basohlipaintings, see Rand B , B :;for Nurpur, A : plates.

e original album has been dispersed. Some seventeen imageshave been published, while more than forty remain unpublishedin a variety of private collections and museums. A number of thelatter have been made available on the CSL website.

See CSL editions prepared by R G and LS, respectively.

For discussions of particular paintings, see the notes to[], [], [], [], [], [], [], and[].

ere are thorny problems of dating that I must ignore in thisbrief notice; I offer best guesses.

A copy of his unpublished commentary, theRasikarajan, has

been made available on the CSL website, with the kind permis-sion of the British Library.

For the former, see, e.g., Rand B ; for thelatter, R (unavailable to me).

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Abbreviations

DR =DaarpakaJ = Trilokanatha Jha, ed.KavirjabhnudattagranthvalKS =KmastraN=N.tyastraRM =RasamajarRT =Rasatarangi.nSD =Shityadarpa

.na

M =.rngramajarof Akbar ShahT =.rngratilakaof Rudra Bha.t.taa,b,c,d= first, second, third, fourth quarter verse respectivelypl. = platev. = versev.l. = varia lectioReferences in the notes are to CSL paragraphs, unless accompanied

by v.

A = Commentary of Anantapa.n .dita (Vyangrthakaumud)B = Bangla recension of Vidysgara (inKvyasa.mgraha)G = Commentary of Gopla Bha.t.ta (Rasikarajan)

J = Jha edition (Kavirjabhnudattagranthval)N = Commentary of Ngea (Praka)OG = Old Gujarati translation (on verso, Udaipur album)R = Commentary of Rangayin (moda) (extracts printed in Tripathi

)= Commentary ofe.sa Cintma.ni (Parimala)Jha = Commentary of Bhadrinath Jha (or Sharma) (Surabhi)

T = Commentary of Trivikrama Mira (Rasmoda)U = Udaipur albumTriv. A = Trivandrum MS. no.

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Triv. B = Trivandrum MS. no(breaks offin the middle of v.)V = Commentary of Vivevara (Samajas)

.B = Commentary of Bhagavadbha.t.ta (Ntanatar)G = Commentary of Gangrma Ja.de (Nauka)J = Jha edition (Kavirjabhnudattagranthval)N = Commentary of Nemasha (sometimes Nemiha) (Kvyasudh)O = Commentary of Jivanathaji Ojha

= Sharma editionV = Commentary of Ve .ndatta Bha.t.tcrya (Rasikarajan)

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Kmastra of Vtsyyana. Edited by D S. Varanasi:

Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office,.Kavirjabhnudattagranthval. Edited by T J. Dar-

bhanga: Mithila Institute,.Kvyasa.mgraha,vol .EditedbyJVB.

Calcutta: Sarasvatiyantra,.Kvyasudh(commentary on the Rasatarangi.n) of Nemasha. University

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N.tyastra of Bharata. Edited by M.R. K et al. Baroda: OrientalInstitute,

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Rasamajarwith the commentary Surabhi of Bhadrinath Jha. Editedby NS. Varanasi: Shri Hari Krishna NibandhaBhawan,.

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Rasmoda (commentary on the Rasamajar) of Trivikrama Mira. Editedby RST. Aligarh: Viveka Publications,.

Rasaratnapradpikof Allarja. Edited by R.N. D. Bombay:Bharatiya Vidyabhavan,.

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.rngrapraka of Bhoja, Part. Edited by V. R. Cambridge:Harvard University Press,.

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Ain-i Akbari of Abu al-Fazl, vol.., Trans. H.S. J; reprint

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Indian Miniature Paintings. Tenth Annual Exhibition, NovembertoDecember,. Doris Wiener Gallery, New York.

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Appendix on Literary Allusions

Bhanudattas original audience would have been familiarwith a wide range of stories that most contemporary readersare unlikely to know.

He makes frequent allusions to the avatars or embodi-ments of the god Vishnu.ese include: the Fish, wherebyhe saved the Vedas; the Tortoise, upon which Mount Mn-dara rested when it was used as the stick to churn the pri-

mal milk ocean (which produced the goddess Lakshmi,Vishnus wife, and his cosmic jewel, the Kustubha); theBoar, on whose tusk he hooked the Earth and raised itfrom the ocean; the Dwarf (in this form Vishnu receivedfrom the demon king Bali as much territory as he couldcover in three strides, and he crossed all earth, the atmo-

sphere, and heaven); the Man-Lion, a form half man, halflion, whereby Vishnu killed the demon Hirnyakshipu,who could not be slain by god or man or beast; Prashurama, or Rama with the Axe, a brahmin who slaughteredthe kshatriya clans twenty-one times; and Krishna, who asa child lived among the cowherds (the majority of the allu-

sions here concern Krishnas beloved, Radha, and his otheramorous exploits).e avatar to which Bhanudatta most frequently refers is

Rama, son of Dasharatha, immortalized in the epic poem,the Ramyana. Rama was set to become king but was sentinto exile with his wife Sita (also known as Jnaki [daughterof King Jnaka], Vaidhi [princess of Vidha], and Mithili[princess of Mthila]) and his younger brother Lkshmana.During his sojourn in the forest his wife was abducted by

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Rvana, the ten-headed king of therkshasas, who took herback to Lanka, his island fortress. Rama made an alliancewith the monkeys, chief of whom was Hanumn, and hav-ing found his way to Rvanas kingdom killed therkshasasand their king. Vibhshana, Rvanas brother, lent his sup-port to Rama and was crowned king of Lanka.

Reference is also often made to the second great Indianepic, the Mahabhrata, above all as a repository of heroicdeeds.e warring factions were the sons of Pandu and the

sons of Dhritarashtra. Among the former were the greatwarriors rjuna and Bhima, among the latter, their half-brother Karna, who was also a paragon of generosity.

e stories associated with the Great God Shiva (alsoknown as Hara and Shambhu) supply material for manyallusions as well. Central to his biography is his marriage

with Prvati (Daughter of the [Himlaya] Mountain, alsoknown here as Bhavni). Shiva fell in love with Prvatithanks to the efforts of the god of love Kama (literally, de-sire), but in the process Kama was incinerated by a flamefrom Shivas third eye, and was mourned by his wife Rati(passion). Shivas accoutrements include a snake necklace

and a tall headdress in which the crescent moon is fixed.

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