Hamsa-Sandesha
Hamsa Sandesha | |
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Information | |
Religion | Hinduism |
Author | Vedanta Desika |
Language | Sanskrit |
Verses | 110 |
Hamsa Sandesha | |
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The Swan's message | |
by mandākrāntā | |
Lines | 110 verses |
The Hamsa Sandesha (
Sources
The Hamsa-Sandesha owes a great deal to its two poetic predecessors, Kālidāsa's Meghadūta and
his poem is a response to one of India's most famous poems by its most celebrated poet. Vedanta Desika's debt to Valmīki is perhaps more pervasive but less obvious, and possibly less deliberate too. Where the poet consciously plays with Kalidasa's verse, he treats the Ramayana more as a much-cherished story. Nevertheless, he is clearly as familiar with the details of Valmiki's poem as with Kalidasa's, and he echoes very specific images and details from the epic.[b]The poet
, composing over 100 philosophical, devotional and literary works; the Alagiya-Sandesha is his only work of this kind.Vedanta Desika was born in 1269 CE. One popular story about his birth and childhood runs as follows: His devout parents were childless. One day they were visited in two separate but simultaneous dreams in which they were instructed to go to Tirupati, an important pilgrimage spot in south India, where they would be given a son. Once there, his mother had another dream in which she gave birth to
Vedanta Desika was the chief acharya of
Structure of the text
The poem is divided into two clear parts, in line with Kalidasa's Meghaduta. The first half, of 60 stanzas, describes how Rama sights and engages the swan as his messenger,[4] and then describes to the swan the route he should take and the many places – primarily holy spots - he ought to stop on the way.[5] The second part begins in Lanka where the poet introduces us to the ashoka grove where Sita is being held,[6] the śiṃṣūpa tree beneath which she sits,[7] and finally Sita herself in a string of verses.[8] The actual message to Sita consists of only 16 verses,[9] after which Rama dismisses the swan and the narrator completes the story of the Ramayana. The poem ends with an autobiographical note by the poet.[10]
Alagiya
The messenger in this poem is referred to as a rājahaṃsa' ('royal haṃsa).[11] According to
Genre
The
Metre
The
- mandākrāntā jaladhi-ṣaḍ-agaur-mbhau natau tād-gurū cet
The line means, by way of several technical abbreviations, that the mandākrāntā metre has a natural break after the first four syllables and then after the next six, with the last seven syllables as one group. It is further defined as containing several different gaṇas, i.e., poetical feet consisting of predefined combinations of guru and laghu – long and short – syllables.[16] When each line is scanned it looks like the following:
- (– – –) ( – | u u ) ( u u u ) (– | – u) (– – u) (–) (–)
with the vertical bars representing the natural pauses and the brackets the predefined feet. Each stanza consists of four lines or pādas.
In European terms, the scansion may be written out as follows:
- | – – – – | u u u u u – | – u – – u – x |
Commentaries
Commentaries include one by Agyatkartrik.[f]
Views and criticism
The Alagiya-Sandesha was written during the medieval literary resurgence, long after the classical heyday of Sanskrit literature, and falls into the category of post-1000 CE regional Sanskrit literature. Such literature tended to enjoy less national recognition than its predecessors and in modern India literary works of this type are all but forgotten.[2] The Alagiya-Sandesha too has slipped into obscurity for all but Sri Vaishnavas.
What criticism and discussion there is tends to focus either on the Alagiya-Sandesha in the shadow of the Meghaduta,[17] or on its religious and philosophical significance. Modern Western scholarship on the poem and its author includes books and articles by Stephen P Hopkins,[18] and by Yigal Bronner and David Shulman.[2]
See also
Notes
- ^ Compare for instance the identical position of sa kāmī at the end of a line in Meghaduta 1.2 and Hansa-Sandesha 1.1
- ^ Compare for instance Ramayana 6.5.6 and Hamsa-Sandesha 2.40
- ^ See translation of the Hamsa-Sandesha in Bronner & Shulman 2006
- ^ See translation of the Meghadūta in Mallinson et al. 2006
- ^ For Mallinātha's note on the definition see Meghadūta 1.1 in Kale 1969
- ^ This commentary can be found in the Chaukhambha edition of the Haṃsasandeśa.
Citations
- ^ Hopkins 2002, p. 314.
- ^ a b c Bronner & Shulman 2006.
- ^ As detailed by Hopkins 2002
- ^ Verses 1.2-1.7
- ^ Verses 1.8-1.60
- ^ Verse 2.7
- ^ Verse 2.8
- ^ Verse 2.9-2.23
- ^ Verses 2.31-2.46
- ^ Verses 2.48-50 respectively
- ^ Verse 1.2
- ^ Monier-Williams 1899, p. 1286.
- ^ Ali & Ripley 1978, pp. 134–138.
- ^ Narasimhachary 2003.
- ^ Hopkins 2004.
- ^ Apte 1959, vol. 3, appendix A, p. 8.
- ^ See Bronner & Shulman 2006
- ^ Hopkins 2002 and Hopkins 2004
Works cited
- Ali, Salim; Ripley, Sidney Dillon (1978). Handbook of the Birds of India and Pakistan. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. pp. 134–138.
- Apte, V. S. (1959). The Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Poona: Prasad Prakashan.
- Bronner, Y.; Shulman, D. (2006). "A Cloud Turned Goose': Sanskrit in the Vernacular Millennium". Indian Economic & Social History Review. 23 (1): 1–30. S2CID 145438393.
- Hopkins, S (2002). Singing the Body of God: the Hymns of Vedantadeshika in their South Indian Tradition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512735-8.
- Hopkins, S. (2004). "Lovers, Messengers and Beloved Landscapes: Sandeśa Kāvya in Comparative Perspective". S2CID 144529764.
- Kale, MR (1969). The Meghadūta of Kālidāsa (7th ed.). New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.
- Mallinson, James; Kalidasa; Dhoyi; Rupagosvami (2006). Messenger poems. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5714-6.
- Monier-Williams, Monier (1899). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Osford: The Clarendon press.
- Narasimhachary (2003). The Hamsa Sandesa of Sri Vedanta Deśika. Sapthagiri.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Venkanatha, Acharya (2004). Hamsasandesa of Acharya Venkanatha. Varanasi: Chowkhamba Krishnadas Academy.