tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post531143963929481430..comments2023-11-05T01:05:38.453-08:00Comments on chespeak: Narayaneeyam and the Lord of GuruvayurAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-435395724468157692008-11-05T07:46:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:46:00.000-08:00K Satchidanandan writes:Thanks,KGK,I understand yo...K Satchidanandan writes:<BR/><BR/>Thanks,KGK,I understand your plea- if I have understood it rightly- for transparency in prayers.You may recall , in many Indian churches Latin has been replaced by the local language for the same reason- that the devotees were blindly repeating what the priest would chant.In fact one of the radical aspects of the Bhakti movement , as you know, was this shift from Sanskrit to the local languages and dialects -a shift with deep social implications, as it empowered the languages and freed them from the hegemony of Sanskrit with very positive literary-linguistic consequences ( Think of all the Bhasha Ramayanas, and the later secular poetry that emerged in the languages of India). I cannot predict how would the pious respond to a Gitagovinda sloka in Malayalam,(we do have the ashtapadi singing in the sopana tradition though in Sanskrit) but Malayalam is not without its own little erotic tradition as in the Venmani poets-that some times went beyond the erotic to the pornographic.Kesadipadavarnanam is common to the Indian Saguna Bhakti tradition: not in the Nirguna tradition- we do not find a Kabir or the Sufis describing the body of God as their gods had no body or gunas.In short I suspect when the body is part of the description , whether in devotional poetry or secular poetry, no organ is spared!<BR/><BR/>Satchi.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-50199913440165717162008-11-05T07:45:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:45:00.000-08:00K Govindan Kutty replies;thanks, satchidanandan, f...K Govindan Kutty replies;<BR/><BR/>thanks, satchidanandan, for your learned response. i have nothing against sex nor for its expression in art, or, even in religion.<BR/>in a new neuro-aesthetic approach, it may be possible to see delightful convergences.<BR/><BR/>what i wished to focus was one, the language of prayer, and two, physical details of love play<BR/>of the usual and not so usual kind. if certain sex slokas of the revered narayaneeyam<BR/>and gitagovindam were recited in a language people know, would they have contributed to the sense of salvation of the people who stand before the deity, hands folded and eyes closed and the lord's name on their lips? or would those naked slokas carried them to certain other planes of pleasure? are they not invoking a false sense of spirituality because they are cloaked in the obscurity of sanskrit? <BR/><BR/>the next step is to translate them into malayalam and recite equally sonorously.<BR/><BR/>i shudder to think of the result, though i do believe the language of prayer, which is a very<BR/>intimate act, should be a language in which one laughs and cries and screams.<BR/><BR/>i recall once seeing a short and unsophisticated man with curly hair and swarthy complexion in mookambika temple being asked to repeat an invocation, atoning for the murder of the brahmana.<BR/>the man who struggled to repeat it was hardly aware that he was making a confession of a crime he had not committed. translate that prayer into a language known to the<BR/>man who says it, and there would be screams of protest.<BR/>and those slokas of atonement and admission,<BR/>karmavipakaprayschitham karishyami...,<BR/>people are asked to recite when they perform the obituary rituals on the stone steps of nila at thirunavaya..<BR/><BR/>the same nila which you once found being auctioned in your<BR/>obituary to vailoppilli...<BR/><BR/>what would become of those sloka in sanskrit if translated into malayalam and recited for rituals?<BR/>karunanidhi once attempted translating some hymns for chanting<BR/>in temples under the government's control.<BR/>his minister in charge, thamizhkudimagan, was equally enthusiastic. i do not know what eventually came of it. some cynics made a fetish of it by introducing the names of the twosome in one or two temples: along with the lord's name, they also chanted:<BR/>muthuvel karunanidhiye potti<BR/>thamishkudimagane potti...<BR/><BR/>KGKAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-37172677154423115582008-11-05T07:42:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:42:00.000-08:00K Satchidanandan writes:Vallathol's well-known poe...K Satchidanandan writes:<BR/><BR/>Vallathol's well-known poem Bhaktiyum Vibhaktiyum is a critique of the false sophistication of Melpathoor and the simplicity and honesty of Poonthanam that their hero Krishna himself admires.Poonthanam and Cherussery-through Jnanappana and Krishnagatha- were two poets who shaped a new Malayalam idiom that was poetic and at the same time close to spoken language; they absorbed folk modes into their verse structures and even their vocabulary, thus making their idiom sweet and accessible.<BR/><BR/>Satchi.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-50157747780733759812008-11-05T07:41:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:41:00.000-08:00K Satchidanandan writes:Like all Indians who have ...K Satchidanandan writes:<BR/><BR/>Like all Indians who have read their literature and seen their temple art, I know that eros and devotion, the sacred and the profane, have gone hand in hand in the tradition we are dealing with here.Look at the erotic sculptures of Khajuraho or Konarak, which are not in Sanskrit and hence accessible to all.It is only the Hindu fundamentalists with their puritanism(rem.the attack on Husain's Saraswati, the criticism of the kiss episode,opposition to Valentine's day etc)-which strangely is a very Western attitude- who have begun to separate what used to be a non-dualistic approach to the spirit-body relationship. The bhaktas saw nothing obscene in Gitagovindam which is a deeply erotic text for many as, for them, it was all part of a larger spiritual whole where the body and its pleasures were no taboo. You find this also in a lot of secular writing as in Sangam love poetry and the Prakrit love poems like those collected in King Hala's Gathasaptasati.(beautifully rendered into English by Arvind Mahrotra in the book Absent Traveller.)Of course one can read these texts in secular ways,or homoerotic ways,(If one has read the anthologies of gay /lesbian writings in India, one can see a lot of legends and mythological tales- even that of the birth of Ayyappa or 'Hari-Hara' in what seems a gay relationship between Vishnu and Siva-also find their place there.)Let us not forget there is a whole tradition of erotic-devotional poetry in India, even outside these texts.(Where would you place Kalidasa's Kumarasambhavam, the 6th Sarga where the love-play between Siva and Paravati on the first night is described in lurid detail? And think too of Kamasutra supposed to have been written by a maharshi and other Indian treatises on sex.A Victorian puritanical approach is not going to help us understand/appreciate these texts that came from a society where the practices of the body were not opposed to the practices of the soul or 'the technologies of the self' -if you want a Foucauldian term- and Gods, eg, Krishna,or Siva, were skilled not only in performing miracles, but in the art of love too.<BR/><BR/>Satchi.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-15453668910341518062008-11-05T07:36:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:36:00.000-08:00K Govindan Kutty replies:yes, this melpathur needs...K Govindan Kutty replies:<BR/><BR/>yes, this melpathur needs a rude re-evaluation. the gentleman's hackneyed metaphor has been elevated to sublime poetry.shorn of its erudite figures of speech, his poetry may seem contrived. <BR/> <BR/>mind you, he compares upanishads to sundaris, not the other way round. that was after he attained salvation in his own time. consider one figure of speech.<BR/>he likens the arch of the lord's foot to the archetypal tortoise which held up a sinking earth.<BR/> <BR/>fifteen hundred years after that master of metaphor, kalidasa, for anyone to trot out such puerile figures of speech is a crime. for anyone to purvey it as sublime poetry is abetment.<BR/> <BR/>all this atrocity became possible because sanskrit was held back from the people. that is a historic, also historical, blunder.<BR/> <BR/>yes, poonthanam is such delight, sheer delight. because he is transaparent and immediate, our pundits have bundled him out of the gallery of greatness.i have often felt that one good thing k karunakaran has done is to quote<BR/>poonthanam in every conceivable context. <BR/> <BR/>KGKAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-14998537047247047012008-11-05T07:33:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:33:00.000-08:00What makes me wonder is why Melpathur still holds ...What makes me wonder is why Melpathur still holds sway? Go to Guruvayur and you are sure to notice it is Melpathur, the Sanskrti poet, much more than Poonthanam, who wrote in our own language, who has edge in the god's precincts even today. <BR/><BR/>Is it part of a cultural legacy of being subservient to a language which has always been the exclusive preserve of a small group of people, namely the Brahmin? Does it say something about our past, our history?<BR/><BR/>And by the way, why do we have to look at the descriptions in Melpathur or Jaydeva of rati, as lewd? Has rati been actually alien from culture in any time in our history except when decadence set in at various times, say for example, as a reaction to some real or perceived threat?<BR/><BR/><BR/>N P ChekkuttyAnonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-4641448309182806272008-11-05T07:30:00.000-08:002008-11-05T07:30:00.000-08:00K Govindan Kutty writes:there is a chapter of nara...K Govindan Kutty writes:<BR/><BR/>there is a chapter of narayaneeyam popularized through the voice of p leela. i have heard it recited from<BR/>many temples. it dwells on a spritual fulfillment, vouchsafing a certain vision of divinity. divinity, naturally,<BR/>cannot avoid being human. as bhattatiri describes the shape of divinity from top to toe, his gaze rests on below the hip,and devotes a full four-line stanza to the praise is of the lord's thigh. <BR/><BR/>the description is pretty elaborate, the soft thigh,<BR/>the oily thigh and so on. the thigh is so sensuous(?) that the lord's consort covers it, at a point of time, so that it will<BR/>not tempt others. the stanza begins: OOROO CHAROO TAVOROO...<BR/><BR/>i am sure many of you have heard this stanza sonorously sung, duly amplified at the four gates of many temples.<BR/><BR/>it is supposed to inspire deep devotion, and strike a new note in poetic imagination. what is that supposed to mean?<BR/><BR/>if you break it down into comprehensible components,it may mean nothing much more than a verse on being gay.<BR/><BR/>i am yet to associate an acute interest in the thigh with poetry or spirituality. bhattatiri was a great vendor of words,<BR/>exploring new nuances of grammar but it was a good deal of lewd stuff. it was not probably the lord but a sensitive listener who anonymously declared that he would rather have the other poet's devotion than this poet's grammar.<BR/>yet we celebrate bhattatiri's thigh-fixation--and many other things--in temples. why?<BR/><BR/>the other doubt relates to another poem sang with gusto in krishna temples. nheralath rama poduval raised it to sublime heights.i picked up a copy of the work of this utkal poet of the thirteen century from a pavement in front<BR/>of a temple. it cost me fifteen rupees. well composed, rising in its effect when sung loudly, laden with what we may call alliterative abuse, enlisting buddha as one of the ten avataras, jayadeva's gitagovindam is a popular recital.<BR/>i do not know whether the whole of it is sung in temples or only some sections.<BR/><BR/>i have not read changampuzha's translation, though i am familiar with his rendering of the lines on the lord caressing the gopis' breasts. jayadeva had his wife padmavati dance to his tunes. it is a different matter that usually it is the other way<BR/>round. anyway, it will be useful to examine whether gitagovindam inspires piety or passion. we have been handed down a good deal of literature on the comparability of the union consummated in sex and the communion attained as spiritual bliss.<BR/><BR/>we may even accept it up to a point. my doubt erupted like a poisonous mushroom when i went to jayadeva's later parts.there he waxes eloquent, naturally with his alliterative obsession, on sex in a very physical, and less than usual, form.<BR/><BR/>he has a full stanza devoted to the glory of reverse sex. his term is vipareeta rati..<BR/><BR/>now, when that part of gitagovindam is sung, whether by a venerable nheralath or someone with a more sensuous voice,<BR/>whether in the portals of a temple or an unspiritual venue, it cannot inspire any emotion other than what jayadeva intends to<BR/>convey--if of course those who hear it know what they hear. why should that be reciteed , almost with a religious fervour,<BR/>in places where the visitors and the workers are committed to becoming less willing victims of their libido than elsewhere?<BR/>i suppose the answer is that it is sung because it has been sung for a long time. <BR/><BR/>another answer can be that more people sing it more often because they do not know what it is. interest in the thigh and<BR/>reverse sex can morph into spirituality and poetry when cloaked in the inaccessibility of sanskrit.i am not hazarding a conclusion, only raising a doubt in the form of an assertion.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1023809150725835717.post-26129543594286941832008-11-05T05:50:00.000-08:002008-11-05T05:50:00.000-08:00K Govindan Kutty writes:very good. best wishes fo...K Govindan Kutty writes:<BR/><BR/>very good. best wishes for balendu.<BR/><BR/>i have read narayaneeyam here and there, and found its yamakam etc quite interesting. i have seen many publications giving meaning<BR/>of each sloka. panmana rendered it into prose recently.<BR/><BR/>i began to get a different idea of narayaneeyam when i read kesadipadam slokas with the help of the elaborate elucidation given by b c balakrishnan.<BR/>mediocre poetry. contrived metaphor.<BR/><BR/>when experience is intense and sincere, it does not appear in such a contrived manner.<BR/>erudition and devotion are often bad companions.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08922847649122074587noreply@blogger.com