19 Aug 2022
Sator Square
Continuing from the introductory post with another सर्वतोभद्र, let’s now look at a Latin one
sator arepo tenet opera rotas
The farmer Arepo has (as) works wheels
It’s not perfect, for there’s a slight grammatical error here, but it’s passable enough to be treated as a worthy सर्वतोभद्र, for the symmetry is horizontal, vertical, and also both, even in reverse!
| S |
A |
T |
O |
R |
| A |
R |
E |
P |
O |
| T |
E |
N |
E |
T |
| O |
P |
E |
R |
A |
| R |
O |
T |
A |
S |
Extended Rhymes: यमक
One of the easiest forms of patterns would be the end-rhymes, which is also common in English as well as modern poetry across Indian languages. Though it’s not quite common in Sanskrit, we can see extended-rhymes, where instead of rhyming the last couple of syllables, entire phrases are rhymed.
This verse from देवीदानवीयम् (1.1), in आर्या metre, is a good example, while its translation is by one of the great contemporary Sanskrit poets, Shri. Shankar Rajaraman -
प्रशिथलयतु मे दुरितं
प्रणमद्-अमर-मौलि-कुसुम-मेदुरितम् ।
अरुणोत्फल-चारु चिरं
पद-युगम् ईशस्य निगमवाचा रुचिरम् ॥
Let the feet of Lord shiva that are resplendent with Vedic sayings, as beautiful as red lotuses and bathed in the nectar that drips from flowers adorning the heads of many deities that bow to Him, eternally slacken my sorrows.
The meanings of Chitrakaavyas usually tend to be prosaic, like describing a God / a lotus / a war / the Spring season - all of which are common in Sanskrit poetry, because as the constraints get severe, it’s harder to choose challening topics, while it eases the effort by picking well-established topics, as they already have much vocabulary attached.
As the name goes, a Holorime is a form of rhyme where two very similar sequences of sounds can form phrases composed of different words and with different meanings.
Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze has this cheeky verse
Scuse me while I kiss the sky.
Scuse me while I kiss this guy.
These were so influential and widespread that these are found even in the Javanese version of Ramayana, written in the Kakawin, modelled on the Sanskrit भट्टिकाव्य. Similar ones are also found in चित्रबन्ध’s in Tibet, which no one has written about, but are known to exist.
This brilliant verse from सुभाषितरत्नभाण्डाकारम् takes the यमक further, wherein both lines look just the same, but mean different, making one wonder if it’s a case of copy-paste gone wrong!
तमाखुपत्रं राजेन्द्र भज माज्ञानदायकम् ।
तमाखुपत्रं राजेन्द्र भज माज्ञानदायकम् ॥
O King! Do not consume ignorance-causing tobacco.
Meditate upon Ganesha, who bestows both knowledge & wealth.
It would be a severe understatement to call the wordplay here clever.
तमाखु पत्रं = tobacoo leaf; अज्ञान दायकम् = causing ignorance; मा भज = don’t consume
तं आखुपत्रं = Ganesha (accusative); मा = wealth/knowledge; दायकम् = giver; भज = meditate upon
And if that was clever, this is genius, once again from Kirātārjunīyam (15.25)!
विकाशमीयुर्जगतीशमार्गणा:
विकाशमीयुर्जगतीशमार्गणा: ।
विकाशमीयुर्जगतीशमार्गणा:
विकाशमीयुर्जगतीशमार्गणा: ॥
The arrows (मार्गणा:) of the king (जगतीश) Arjuna spread out (विकाशं ईयु:)
The arrows (मार्गणा:) of the lord of the Earth (जगतीश) (Shiva) spread out (विकाशं ईयु:)
The Gaṇas (गणा:) who are the slayers of demons (जगतीश मा:) rejoiced (विकाशं ईयु:)
The seekers (मार्गणा:) of Shiva (जगतीश) (i.e. the deities & sages) reached the sky (विकाशं ईयु) (to watch the battle)
An amazing description of the portent battle between a God and the son of the king of Gods, watched by the sages & deities alike. No wonder it’s called a Mahakavya!
Two in one
Here’s a bench at Mesopotamia Walk, Oxford, UK, with a seemingly Latin inscription, but what is instead Dog Latin (i.e. fake Latin)!
ore stabit fortis arare placet ore stat
O! Rest a bit for ‘tis a rare place to rest at
Such phrases are called भाषाभास:, i.e. one giving the impression of another language. Try reading this masterpiece by the great contemporary poet Shri. Shankar Rajaraman, preferably aloud.
गोविन्द वार्दव यूनो
मैत्री-संसार-वेशिका ।
रसासरोबालार्कोऽसि
हरीशोऽसूनवेट्दरम् ॥
O Krishna! O Lord! O you that put out the forest fire as if you were water to it!
Know that the youth of today has a fondeness for what is materialistic.
O you that are the rising Sun to the lotus-lake that is Sri (Lakshmi)!
O you that are the master of Indra even! Please offer some protection, at the least.
Now, expand this & read it aloud!
Go! Win the war the way you know
My three sons are away shikar
Amass a robe, all are cosy
Hurry! Show soon, await the rum.
Since they sound the same in multiple languages, they’re called भाषासम - quite straightforward, one should admit. Similar ones have been written for Italian-Latin and even Italian-Latin-Portuguese!
भाषाश्लेश
Another classical Two-in-One from antiquity is the entire Chapter 19 of कप्फिनाभ्युदय by शिवस्वामी of Kashmir, which can be read in both Prakrit & Sanskrit, and also mean different.
अहतोसावुद्धोरणवहेपहूतं मिथोवधीरेण।
पुरिसवरेणखमंसेदूरादूढोसभासाहि॥
Read in Sanskrit, it means
He [Buddha] is unsurpassed in again setting in motion him [who has been] humiliated by invectives [by his adversary Kapphina].
He [Prasenajit] was carried by the most excellent one in the city [Buddha] whose splendour is incomparable, far up into the sky on his shoulders.
And in Prakrit,
The Lord Buddha became strengthend [in his reputation] by the best among men [King Kapphina] who in the battle course had shown only little power on account of his contentment, by his own words.
This amazing feature was completely unknown until Michael Hahn discovered it in 2007. A manuscript with a commentary on this work is said to be preserved in China, which might help us unravel these better.
Chess enthusiasts or students of Computer Science might be familiar with this - given a knight on a chessboard, the challenge is to traverse the entire board, visiting every square only once.
Swami Vedanta Desika, a prolific multi-linugual poet-saint of the 13th c. CE, employs this in his Paduka Sahasram - an epic poem with 1008 verses on the sandals of Lord Ranganatha of Srirangam! The verses 929 & 930 are composed of the same letters, but mean different before & after the tour.
स्थिरागसां सदाराध्या विहताकततामता ।
सत्पादुके सरसा मा रङ्गराजपदं नय ॥
Oh, the sacred sandals of the Brahman, you are always adorned by those who have committed unpardonable sins; you remove all that is sorrowful and unwanted; you create a musical sound; (be pleased) and lead me to the feet of Lord Rangaraja (Rama)”
Tracing the route, we get
| स्थि |
रा |
ग |
सां |
स |
दा |
रा |
ध्या |
| वि |
ह |
ता |
क |
त |
ता |
म |
ता |
| स |
त्पा |
दु |
के |
स |
र |
सा |
मा |
| रं |
ग |
रा |
ज |
प |
द |
न्न |
य |
…meaning
The sandals which protect those who shine by their right attitude, whose place is in the center of the blissful rays, which destroy the melancholy of the distressed, whose radiance brings peace to those who take refuge in them, which move everywhere— may those golden and radiating sandals of the Brahman lead me to the feet of the Lord Rangaraja (Rama).
The earliest such work is found in Kāvyālaṅkāra from 9th c. CE Kashmir! Donald Knuth, a renowned computer scientist & mathematician, has also written not one but two such in English. Divided by millenia, united by brilliance!
चक्रबन्ध
Imagine a verse, which looks inconspicous by all means, but has a hidden message - an easter-eg, if you will - when represented as a wheel! देवीदानवीयम् by Shri. Shankar Rajaraman has the author’s mark, quite literally, in its final verse
ततोऽसौ शर्वाणी चरणमुरसि न्यस्य नाकस्य शत्रो
स्तमेणाङ्कज्योतिर्घटितमुकुटा निघ्नती वेपमानम् ।
शुनासीरश्लाघावचनमुदिता दैत्यदौर्बल्यदूती
बभावास्यच्छायाविजितमुकुरश्रीः सुधान्धःपरीता ॥
Goddess Durga, her crown shining in the light of the moon, a messenger of misery and loss of power to the asura folks, then placed her foot on the chest of the demon. She killed him who was trembling in fear, shone all the more as she heard her pleasing eulogy sung by Indra. Surrounded by demigods, she now put a mirror to shame with her countenance that had abandoned anger for serenity.
Hope to get back with another post, very soon. Thanks again to @suhasm for the proof-reading & encouragement, and above all, inspiration.
For any corrections/suggestions/feedback, please reach out to @vrraghy.
10 Aug 2020
This is a humble attempt to elucidate the wonderful world of Chitrakaavyas, starting with this excellent talk by @suhasm.
A lof of us love poetry (kaavya). Chitrakavya is a kind of poem written with constraints, in addition to the existing contraints like meters, etc., due to which they always exceed a reader’s expectations.
Letter constraints: वर्ण-चित्र
It is tradition to start with an auspicious verse, and here’s a chitrakaavya written by @suhasm -
अरातिरतनोरात्तनारीतनुरनुत्तर: ।
तन्तनीतु त्रिनेत्रो निरार्तितां नो निरान्तरम् ॥
May three-eyed Shiva grant us good health. He is enemy of Love God, shares his body with Parvati as Ardhanarishvara, and is supreme.
If you haven’t noticed yet, this contains only 3 consonants: र, त & न!
It only gets increasingly intersting with more constraints, and here’s another, with just 2 consonants - र & त - from Vallabhadeva’s Subhashitavali (34,11)
तारतारतरेरैतैरुत्तरोत्तरो रुतै: ।
रतार्ता तित्तिरी रौति तीरे तीरे तरौ तरौ ॥
The love-sick tittiri bird cries out on every bank, on every tree, again and againm growing shriller and shriller
The choice of these consonants is surely not a random one, for these are some of the most frequent ones in the Sanskrit lexicon, which is why, a similar attempt with the consonants ट / ठ / ढ / घ would not be as easy, simply because there are not as many words with these. So, there’s quite a lot of thought involved in creating one, and even with these calculations, it’s certainly a challenge, nonetheless.
Other languages
Now, Sanskrit takes this art form to heights unknown in other languages, but we do come across such. Charles Carroll Bombaugh’s selections of such whimsical works full of alliterations, anagrams, etc. has a few univocalic verses - where only one syllable is used. e.g.
No cool monsoons blow soft on Oxford dons,
Orthodox, jog-trot, book-worm Solomons!
A group of French writers & mathematicians, in 1960, founded Oulipo - short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, meaning “workshop of potential literature”, seeking to create works using constrained writing techniques, with their motivation being
Only if you constrain the writing, you can understand the true potential of what language can make us do!
And it can’t be said any better, for the human mind is often said to surpass its own expectations, given additional constraints, if not pressure.
Lipograms
A lipogram is one which omits a certain letter, and probably the greatest such work in English is Ernest Vincent Wright’s 1939 novel Gadsby, which contains over 50,000 words but not a single instance of the letter e!
In Sanskrit too, there’s an interesting application of a lipogram, employed not just as a challenge but with a poetic intent in itself, by the famous scholar Daṇḍi who was possibly from the historic city of Kanchipuram, South India.
Written in the 7th or 8th century CE, one of his famous & surviving works, Dashakumaracharita is a tale of 10 young men who get separated for various reasons and later narrate each of their adventures upon reuniting, making for a joyous read. In the 7th chapter, when it comes to be the turn of Mantragupta to relate his adventures, he finds it painful to close his swollen lips as a result of all the nibbling by his beloved, during the passionate lovemaking the previous night, and hence refrains from using any labial consonants (प,फ,ब,भ,म) throughout his narrative!
स किल कर-कमलेन किञ्चित्संवृताननो ललित-वल्लभा-रभस-दत्त-दन्त-क्षत-व्यसन-विह्वलाधरमणिः निरोष्ठ्यवर्णम् आत्मचरितम् आचचक्षे ।
That man (Mantragupta) half-covred his face with his lotus-like hands before beginning his own story. For his ruby lips were in an agony of agitation, perforated with bite marks that this beloved had bestowed in her forceful love-play. Hence he was compelled to speak without the labial lip sounds: p, b and m.
Lipograms as a plot device
अवान्तिसुन्दरीकथासार:, a summary of अवान्तिसुन्दरीकथा, another work by Daṇḍi has a character Somadatta, who gets afflicted by a fever and hence speaks only using the gentle consonants! It also makes one think if the author was alluding to the Tamil alphabets while writing in Sanskrit!
सोमादत्तः सुहृत्प्रेम्णा स्वस्थीभूत: स तै: सह ।
प्रच्छाये क्वचनासीनो निगृह्य ज्वरवेदनाम् ॥
वर्गाद्यन्तान्तस्थै र्ऋऌवर्णविवर्जितै: स्वरैर्मृदुभि: ।
स चतुर्विंशतिवर्णै: स्वचरितमनुवर्णयांक्रे ।।
Pangrams
A sentence that contains all the alphabets is called a pangram, and a lot of us would be familiar with this popular one
A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Manavalli Gangadhara Sastri (1834-1914), a shatavadhani - one who performs a hundred things in parallel (in front of an audience, nonetheless!) - was once given the following line as a prompt
बभौ मयूरो लवशेषसिंह:
where the consonants are in the order their alphabetical order, and he replied
अनेकवर्ण क्रमरीतियुक्त: कखागघाङच्छजझ्रा ञटौ ठ: ।
अडण्ढणस्तोऽथ दधौ न पम्फुल् बभौ मयूरो लवशेषसिंह:
Hidden Fourth Line / गूढचतुर्थपाद:
The constraint here is on the fourth line in that no new letter should be used. The verse 15.43 from Kirātārjunīyam shows how it’s done!
द्युवियद्मामिनी
तारसंरावविहतश्रुति: ।
हैमाषुमाला शुशुभे
विद्युतामिव संहति: ॥
Shiva’s golden arrows went across the sky
like shining lightning, making a loud bang
Palindromes: विलोमकाव्य
Palindromes are those words / sentences which read the same, both forward & backward. Here’s a Greek palindrome which was inscribed upon a holy water font outside the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, giving a splash of poetry & philosophy.
ΝΊΨΟΝ ἈΝΟΜΉΜΑΤΑ, ΜῊ ΜΌΝΑΝ ὌΨΙΝ
Wash the sins, not only the face
In Sanskrit too, such palindromes exist as विलोम काव्य. लॊम meaning hair, विलोम = going against the hair i.e. reverse, and अनुलोम = going along the hair i.e. forward. दैवीशतकम् of आनन्दवर्धन has this verse where each line reads the same when in read in reverse.
सा भावक्षालवर्या नुतविभवितनुर्या वलक्षावभासा
जानानस्याशयप्रा नवनलिनवनप्रायशस्याननाजा ।
सातं वर्माननस्था रहसि रसिहरस्थाननर्मावतंसा
पायादक्ता रणत्रा मतनमनतमत्राणरक्ता दयापा ॥
To better appreciate this, imagine a mirror along the center reflecting one side to the other, with perfect symmetry!
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
| |
10 |
9 |
8 |
7 |
6 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
1 |
| सा |
भा |
व |
क्षा |
ल |
व |
र्या |
नु |
त |
वि |
भ |
वि |
त |
नु |
र्या |
व |
ल |
क्षा |
व |
भा |
सा |
| जा |
ना |
न |
स्या |
श |
य |
प्रा |
न |
व |
न |
लि |
न |
व |
न |
प्रा |
य |
श |
स्या |
न |
ना |
जा |
| सा |
तं |
व |
र्मा |
न |
न |
स्था |
र |
ह |
सि |
र |
सि |
ह |
र |
स्था |
न |
न |
र्मा |
व |
तं |
सा |
| पा |
या |
द |
क्ता |
र |
ण |
त्रा |
म |
त |
न |
म |
न |
त |
म |
त्रा |
ण |
र |
क्ता |
द |
या |
पा |
Another astonishing work, रामकृष्णविलोमकाव्यम् has 36 verses, all with their second lines being the reverse of their first! What’s amazing is that the first lines speak of Rama and the second ones are of Krishna! It starts with
तां भूसुता मुक्ति मुदारहासं वंदेयतो भव्य भवं दयाश्री: ।
I pray to Rama, who rescued Sita from captivity, who has a majestic laugh, who is kind and who is an incarnation of Vishnu!
And the second, a reverse of the first, reads
श्री यादवं भव्य भतोय देवं संहारदामुक्ति मुता सुभूतां ॥
I pray to Krishna, who shines with the Sun and the Moon as his eyes, who liberated Putana by killing her.
A similar work राघवयादवीयम्, composed by Sri Venkatadhvari in the 17th century, has 30 such verses, with each verse read differently talks about Rama & Krishna!
Guarded from all sides: सार्वतोभद्र
Let’s look another seemingly simple verse from Kirātārjunīyam (15.25)
देवाकानिनि कावादे
वाहिकास्वस्वकाहि वा ।
काकारेभभरे का का
निस्वभव्यव्यभस्वनि ॥
O man who desires war! This is that battlefield which excites even the gods, where the battle is not of words. Here people fight and stake their lives not for themselves but for others. This field is full of herds of maddened elephants. Here those who are eager for battle and even those who are not very eager, have to fight.
This extends the symmetry to another dimension, where it’s symmetrical not just horizontally but also vertically.
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
| दे |
वा |
का |
नि |
नि |
का |
वा |
दे |
| वा |
हि |
का |
स्व |
स्व |
का |
हि |
वा |
| का |
का |
रे |
भ |
भ |
रे |
का |
का |
| नि |
स्व |
भ |
व्य |
व्य |
भ |
स्व |
नि |
| नि |
स्व |
भ |
व्य |
व्य |
भ |
स्व |
नि |
| का |
का |
रे |
भ |
भ |
रे |
का |
का |
| वा |
हि |
का |
स्व |
स्व |
का |
हि |
वा |
| दे |
वा |
का |
नि |
नि |
का |
वा |
दे |
To paraphrase @suhasm it’s probably easy to write a Chitrakaavya, but the difficulty surely is in writing a sensible one. Many can only marvel at these works of art, like paintings in a gallery.
I hope you got a taste of the joy Chitrakaavyas can offer, and continue the series soon, for I’ve only covered half the talk! A big thanks to @suhasm for the proof-reading & encouragement, and above all, inspiration.
For any corrections/suggestions/feedback, please reach out to @vrraghy.