Chitrakaavyas!

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 7^th or 8^th 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 7^th 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.