Kāvyārth - Encounters with Hindi Poetry Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship kavyarth.hindiurdu"agship.org
— SERPENTINE ENTANGLEMENTS — Four poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Metre
Here and there in the wide landscape of Braj Bhasha literature one encounters the serpent-metre called ‘kuṇḍaliyā’. It takes its name from kuṇḍalī, a coiled snake, because the stanza coils upon itself, with its last word or phrase repeating the first word or phrase. A further coil occurs in its third line, whose first foot repeats the second foot from its second line. Here is an ad hoc English lakṣaṇ verse to demonstrate the form (its repeats italicized):
Heads ’n’ tails become as one in kuṇḍaliyā’s coils As serpentine entanglements reward the poet’s toils. Reward the poet’s toils now with praise in fullest part, For constantly he concentrates on his poetic art. Yet while our finer poetry the heart itself assails The artifice of kuṇḍaliyā only heads entails.
My doggerel is a little unkind (and these days the critic is not supposed to criticise); and in fact my tendency to view this metre as lightweight – as a remote parallel to the limerick, perhaps – derives more from its primary exemplar Giridhar than to the broader contexts in which it occurs. We will look at two samples from Giridhar and from two other poets’ use of the metre in exegetical expansions of couplets by Biharilal.
But first, a note on translation. Though all premodern Hindi poetry rhymes, using rhyme in translation is highly unfashionable, and the best-regarded translators of poetry from Indian languages avoid it assiduously. The kuṇḍaliyā’s unique structural features, however, are so essential to the raison d’être of this metre that a translation in unrhymed free verse seems hardly worth the candle; so in these four examples I have tried to be somewhat faithful to the structures as well as the mood of the originals – with apologies to the poets for the licence I have taken in so doing. I have experimented with
Questions? Comments? Email us at resources@hindiurdu!agship.org © Hindi Urdu Flagship, !e University of Texas at Austin Serpentine Entanglements - Four Poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship different line lengths, settling on a pentameter line for all but the first of the four, which called for a longer structure.
Giridhar Kaviray For many people, mention of the kuṇḍaliyā brings to mind the poet Giridhar, or Girdhar, an obscure 18th-century practitioner of the form who bore the title kavirāy, ‘prince of poets’ or ‘poet of princes’ – an apparent laureateship bestowed by some patron or merely assumed by the poet himself (though some scholars explain it as a title of the Bhat caste, which they assume for him on this basis alone). Giridhar’s verses are individual autonomous compositions; they are much anthologized, though their history is unclear and collections vary quite widely in the number and content of their verses. Whatever the historical case may be, Giridhar writes with wit and panache; he would have been good company. Here is a Giridhar kuṇḍaliyā from Lallu Lal’s Fort William anthology, Sabhā Bilās (Gilbertson 1900:312).
!"का ब&'यौ फ+ट - न/ गह2 लीनी हाथ । च7 राह - जात ; ब<धी तमाक? साथ ॥ ब<धी तमाक? साथ ग/ल कौ ध<धा भBCयौ । गई सब चE त ा Fर आग Hखत मन फ?Cयौ ॥ कह ग2 र ध र कव2राय जK जम कौ आयो M"का । जीव ल/ गया काल हाथ - रह गयौ !"का ॥
His hand, it held the mouthpiece firm, with hookah sashed & stored; Tobacco bound in heart and belt, he ambled off abroad. He ambled off abroad and was to journey’s task full blind, His cares all flew off, far away; a flame would charm his mind. Then came, says Poet Giridhar, a chit from Yama’s land: Death bore away his life while lay the hookah in his hand.
This is not quite a premodern warning of the risks of smoking (though Yama is the god of Death, and his ‘chit’ is certain in both content and delivery), but the verse may mark the first whiff of तमाक% (Persian tambākū) in Hindi writing. Elsewhere in Giridhar’s corpus we find some of the first recorded loanwords from English in Hindi poetry:
2 Kāvyārth: Encounters with Hindi Poetry Serpentine Entanglements - Four Poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship words such as ड' स मि स ‘dismiss’ (rhyming with क' स मि स ‘raisin’; Gupta 1977:116) presage the tsunami of English that would one day arrive on Hindi’s shores. The stanza’s message, a memento mori wrapped in whimsy, is typical of the few hundred verses attributed to Giridhar, in whose writing spiritual homilies rub shoulders with observations on the world and its works; this kind of variegated subject- matter is often designated by the catch-all genre title Nīti, ‘prudent counsel’. Such a designation denotes in part a contradistinction from Bhakti and Rīti – complementary genres in which devotional and mannerist predominate respectively – rather than a clearcut range of topics or topoi, and in fact Giridhar’s gaze is quite wide-ranging. A fascination with the world competes with an alleged desire to transcend it; Giridhar relishes the aesthetic delight of verse composition even as he writes pieties designed to erode the very legitimacy of worldly pleasure. Many of Giridhar’s verses read like observations of worldly circumstances that the poet had himself experienced, perhaps in the courts that gave him patronage. Did he have British powers in mind when describing the Wellsian usurping donkeys, crows and jackals below? (Gilbertson 1900:307)
साइO घोड़न R अछत गदहन आयौ राज । कौआ लीज/ हाथ - Fर कीिजय/ बाज ॥ Fर क? जिय/ बाज राज ऐसो ही आयौ । सX ह कYद - क2 य ो Zयार गजराज चढ़ायौ ॥ कह ग2 र ध र कव2राय जह& यह बBझ बड़ाई । तह& न कीज/ स&झ स]र हX चलिय/ साइO ॥ ३५
Sir, steeds abound, yet donkeys rule the land; Put off the hawk, and take the crow to hand! Take crow to hand! The crown is cheaply gained, The jackal’s jeweled and the lion’s enchained. Says Giridhar, where people thus aver, Stay not till even – leave at morning, Sir!
3 Kāvyārth: Encounters with Hindi Poetry Serpentine Entanglements - Four Poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship
This is one of several of Giridhar’s poems to circumvent the structural rule of the kuṇḍaliyā by opening and hence closing the poem with the vocative साइ+, a vernacular derivate of ,वामी meaning ‘sir, sire, sirrah’. (An unsubstantiated tradition attributes these साइ+ verses to Giridhar’s wife!) True, this stratagem upholds the letter of the compositional law – in that the same word does indeed appear at both beginning and end – but surely not its spirit, which involves combining the same word into two different syntactic and/or semantic contexts rather than just throwing in a particle that would fit in anywhere. One feels cheated, rather as by Lear’s limericks whose final line repeats the opening rhyme.
Kuṇḍaliyā as Commentary Few poets except Girdhar attempt more than momentary forays into kuṇḍaliyā territory (a rare example is the Bhajan Kuṇḍaliyā līlā of the 17th-century Rādhāvallabhī poet Dhruvdas: Swami Hit Das 1996); but the structure of the kuṇḍaliyā gives the metre an interesting new life as a medium for poetic commentary. The first couplet of the kuṇḍaliyā is a dohā, while the second and third couplets are in rolā metre, whose first foot matches in length the second foot of the dohā (thus accommodating the repeat exemplified by Giridhar’s /र की जिए बाज above). This formula of ‘one dohā couplet + two rolā couplets’ allows an original dohā by one poet to be extended by another poet in a four-line exegetical variation. The repeated foot yields a seamless transition between mūla and commentary; and the final-word repeat in line six brings the commentator back, willy-nilly, to the word(s) of the original poet! This is such a perfect exegetical device, and the dohā such a favourite metre, that one might have expected the convention to be widely used; but in fact it is quite rare. However, among the dozens of commentaries on the Satsaī of Bihari (featured elsewhere in this का4या 6थ series), at least two – Harishchandra and one ‘Pathan Sultan’ – have employed kuṇḍaliyā metre in the method just described.
Harishchandra of Banaras sat on the cusp between traditional and modern modes of literature. Among the contributions that he made to the Braj tradition in his short life
4 Kāvyārth: Encounters with Hindi Poetry Serpentine Entanglements - Four Poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship
(1850-85) was a series of kuṇḍaliyās based on 85 couplets of Bihari’s Satsaī, producing between one and five kuṇḍaliyā versions for each dohā. Here is an example, in which he takes a nostalgic miniature and expands its narrative and descriptive horizons. Bihari’s original dohā is colour-coded as a reminder of its status as a poem in its own right.
सघन क`<ज छाया सKखद सीतल मaद समीर । मन b/ जात अजc व; वा जKमKना R तीर ॥ वा जमKना R तीर सोई धK न2 आd खिन आव/ । कान eनK धK न2 आन2 कोई औचक जि मि नाव/ ॥ सK ध2 भBल त2 ह र2च<द लखत अजgd वh<दाबन । आवन चाहत अब हX न2 क स2 मनK Zयाम सरस घन ॥
In groves’ sweet shade, where breezes softly blow My mind once more on Jumna’s shore would go. On Jumna’s shore there flows the stream serene; May none dive in and flout the fluted scene. Vrindaban’s visions haunt my mind in droves; My heart with cloud-dark Shyam delighting roves!
Harishchandra uses a device that playfully works a variation on the statutory last- line repeat of first-line words, refashioning Bihari’s original सघन as (सर-) स घन; my translation seeks to emulate this by reworking ‘In groves’ as ‘(delight-) ing roves’ – though this succeeds as an eye-rhyme only, as the auditory qualities of the two English phrases differ. The rhyme in turn requires some license in the penultimate line also, as rhymes for ‘roves’ do not exactly come along in … er ... droves.
The Satsaī commentator known as ‘Pathan Sultan’ is much less well-known than the celebrated Harishchandra. George Grierson (1896:10) dates the commentary to ‘about A.D. 1700’, and adds that Sultan Pathan, alias Nawab Muhammad Khan, is ‘said to have been Nawāb of Rājgaṛh, Bhūpāl’. Grierson quotes the following feisty stanza from the Nawab, who takes one of Bihari’s gems and strings in onto a necklace of his own design. In Bihari’s dohā, the heroine is far too delicate to bear the weight of any
5 Kāvyārth: Encounters with Hindi Poetry Serpentine Entanglements - Four Poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship ornament, and seems to stagger under the burden of her very beauty alone (whereas her unsteadiness is in fact attributable to the effects of love-making – an example of the classical apahnuti trope, in which one cause of a symptom or characteristic ‘denies’ another). The Nawab expands this idea in new directions. (Source: Ratnakar 1953:209.)
भBषन भार सdभा र2; "यj इहX तन सKक`मार । सBधk पाइ न धर परm सोभा ही क+ भार ॥ सोभा ही क+ भार चलत लचकत कट2 खीनी । Hnयौ अन2लK उड़ाइ जौ न होती क`चपीनी ॥ कह पठान सKलतान तासK अdग अ<ग अFषन । नरी क2 a न र ी सKरी आद2 त2 त की त2 य भBषन ॥
A jewel’s weight’s not borne by one so slight; with falt’ring step she lugs her lustre’s freight. She lugs her lustre’s freight, flex-waisted maid; The breeze would waft her, but she’s bosom-lade. No blight or blemish ripples beauty’s pool: ’Midst nymphs of all the worlds, this one’s a jewel.
To extend Bihari’s already-perfect miniaturist poetic vision onto a larger scale is an exercise in gilding the lily; and Pathan and Harishchandra take almost as much liberty with Bihari’s dohās as I, as translator, take with their kuṇḍaliyās. Harishchandra’s addition of a geographically specific ‘Vrindaban’ grounds the aerial poem with an unwelcome literalness, and his insistence that none should spoil the scene by bathing is as disruptive as the noisy plunge itself. The Nawab’s trope of ‘breasts as ballast’ lacks subtlety, though the taking of baroque-like imagery to rococo-like extremes is an accepted and often effective part of Rīti rhetoric. But whatever the limitations of their attempts to engage with the greater genius of Bihari, both poets have contributed to the realm and range of the kuṇḍaliyā, which readers may encounter again in their explorations of Braj poetry, here and there.
- Rupert Snell
6 Kāvyārth: Encounters with Hindi Poetry Serpentine Entanglements - Four Poems in Kuṇḍaliyā Rupert Snell, Hindi Urdu Flagship
Sources
Hit Das, Swami (ed.) Bayālīs līlā [of Dhruvdas]. Vrindaban, 1996.
Gilbertson, G.W. The Assembly of Mirth...the Sabhá Bilás [compiled by Lallu Lal]. Benares, 1900. (This edition is available online through Google Books.)
Grierson, G.A., ed., The Satsaiya of Bihari, with a commentary entitled the Lala-Candrika [of Lallu Lal]. Calcutta 1896.
‘Ratnakar’, Jagannath Das, Kavivar Bihārī. Benares 1953.
Gupta, Kishori Lal (ed.), Giridhar Kavirāy granthāvalī. Allahabad, 1977.
Sharma, Hemant (ed.), Bhāratendu samagra. 3rd edn. Varanasi, 1989.
7 Kāvyārth: Encounters with Hindi Poetry