MUSEUM POETICA: TRANSLUCINE

Subandhu’s Vāsavadattā is, in some sense, a love story about a prince and a princess. But this description belies the true nature of the poem, for the plot itself — the actual love story — is not the main focus of attention. It is, rather, a thin trellis that Subandhu uses, like a skilled gardener, to cultivate a verdant and flowering tangle of descriptions, tropes, and word play, behind which, at times, it almost disappears. This tangle — the true subject of the poem — presents numerous difficulties to the translator. The immediate difficulty is that, because of the reading culture of his time — so different from our own — Subandhu could expect his readers to remain patiently and happily attentive to descriptive sentences that go on for many pages without advancing the story at all. Added to this is the fact that Sanskrit grammar allows Subandhu to build up descriptions for many clauses before finally revealing the noun that confirms what is being described, but which the reader has long since begun to suspect. In the sentence translated here this is reproduced at the level of sections (see, for example, the description of the waning lamps at dawn, or the description of the women bidding goodbye to their lovers), and also at the level of the entire sentence, in which the actual grammatical object of the verb, the young woman, and the verb itself, prince Kandarpaketu’s “seeing” of her in his dream, are only named in the final three words of the sentence, though the reader has long since understood that what is being described concerns Kandarpaketu, takes place at dawn, and is directed towards a young woman. For a trained reader this would have had the effect of building up an almost erotic level of expectation and eagerness, as one leans forward into what one knows is coming but is withheld just beyond reach. The sentence itself, as well as the poem as a whole, are premised on this eagerness, and on the notion that true beauty can only exist within the tension of delayed gratification, and disappears when that tension is released. For an untrained reader, however, this dynamic runs the risk of losing them in the verdant tangle and thus boring them, spoiling the tension that Subandhu’s poem requires.

Another, even more pronounced difficulty is that Subandhu’s word play, which takes a wide variety of different forms, is simply impossible to reproduce in English. The most common way to approximate it is to use some sort of punctuation, so that when Subandhu uses a word that means both “sun” and “moth”, one would translate: “the sun|moth” or “The sun (moth).” I have chosen not to do this, and one of the resources available to me in this experiment is that Subandhu’s word play is rarely mere word play — that is, something deeper than just lexical coincidence is at stake. For example, when the lamps grow duller at dawn because they use up their “oil”, the comparison to flatterers is an actual comparison (happily captured by the English word “unctuousness”) and is part of Subandhu’s delightful personification of the lamps. When he puns that the sun setting over a mountain is a moth drifting into a flame, this is not an idle joke but a beautiful evocation of the slow and inevitable drift towards final consummation that is his theme. So, I have taken the liberty of “unpacking” the puns, reproducing not the clever linguistic mechanisms on which they are based but their air of meaningfulness, which would have been more organically present and pleasing to Subandhu’s readers than elaborate punctuation allows. I have also attempted to preserve the rhythm of Subandhu’s long sentence, with its mood of expectation and delayed gratification helped along by his alliteration and his tempo, the latter of which, not coincidentally, speeds up in pace and intensity as it builds towards its “climax”, after which it finally collapses in satisfaction. Though I have broken the sentence up into numbered sections and shortened it a bit by excising some of them, the scent of the flowers on Subandhu’s vines is, I believe, still present.

— James D. Reich

Subandhu wrote in Sanskrit somewhere in India, likely in the 6th century. His prose-poem, Vāsavadattā, tells the story of prince Kandarpaketu and princess Vāsavadattā, two lovers who meet in a dream and then, after setbacks and arduous effort, are united in real life. The poem is famous for its pioneering and sophisticated use of wordplay. Below are excerpts from the longest single sentence in the poem.

1

Then, early one morning, as the night was thinning out; as — like a ball of alms rice whitened with yogurt in the hand of the mendicant called Time; like a lump of foam on the dark river of the night sky; like a fragment of the celestial nymph Menakā’s white crystal nail file; dappled as beautifully as a honeycomb; like the round silver earring of the young lady Night as she gently lays her head  on the pillow of the western mountain; or like her silver goblet with a few dark streaks of wine left in it — the moon, lord of night lilies, was sinking into the waters of the western ocean as if longing for the loveliness of its shells; 

2

as the feet of the bees were sticking to the pollen in lotuses, dampened as it was with cold drops of dew; as Maina birds with their gentle chatter startled young women from sleep in their secret trysting places; as religious schools filled with the diligent recitations of students who had just awoken, and the carriage roads rang out with praises of Venus as it rose, sung by pilgrims in a morning rāga; 

3

as — seeming to spit up in the form of soot all the darkness they had swallowed in the night (unable to keep it down because it was so thick); worn out from flickering their necks up over and over to catch a glimpse of the couples playfully making love; silent witnesses to the game of love with all its tangled contortions; seeming to protect the mass of darkness that cowered beneath them as if seeking shelter there; growing duller and slower as they used up their unctuousness, like the speech of flatterers; coming to the end of their vigor, like the elderly; with nothing left but their bowls, like noble kings come to ruin; placed in the middle of houses, like demi-gods wandering about in the twilight — the lamps looked like the peak of the western mountain lit up fiery red at sunset, the sun drifting irresistibly into it like a moth; 

4

as, humming with clouds of bees drunk from the rapture of relishing their ceaseless stream of nectar droplets, the flower garlands in the bedrooms were starting to wilt; as — with jasmine petals dropping from their curly locks like tears born of painful separation from their lovers, and anklets tinkling on their flower-bud feet as if saying “don’t go don’t go don’t go” to block their lovers’ paths; with drops of sweat gently dried by the breeze from the wings of bees eager for the perfume of the half-opened Malabar jasmine in their braided hair (disheveled from intense love in the waning night); or beautified by the jingle of their bangles as their forest-vine arms writhed about; in bedrooms lit up by rays of light from milk-white teeth bared as they hissed in pain removing the hair that had stuck to fresh scratches their frenzied lovers had made; their girlfriends, tired of their anxious questioning, serving as go-betweens and traipsing back again and again to see their lovers; suddenly embarrassed by the delicate speech of pet parrots reminding them of the shameless words they had uttered the night before while carried away by love; their breasts, as lovely as a cloudless autumn day, decorated with fresh love scratches; gazing at their lovers like those on their death beds gaze at the city of heaven; their anxious yearning blooming like a forest in spring — young women were given a farewell embrace by young men;

5

and as — gently waving the filaments of the flowers back and forth; stealing sandal and vermilion powder from the tresses of beauties the gems of whose anklets were jingling; caressing sweet clusters of still-open night lilies and gently sprinkling their pollen over lonely girls abandoned by their lovers as if it were ash left over from the fire of the Love God’s arrows — the morning breeze carried far the cries of Brahminy ducks calling out for their mates; then, just then,

6 

wearing jewelry that jingled her praises as if she were a man measured and found faultless by the crowd; her eyes extending back to her ears like the warrior Duryodhana’s gaze drawn joyfully to his dear friend Karṇa; displaying three lovely folds on her belly like Viṣṇu’s dwarf-incarnation playfully destroying Bali with three steps; surpassing all other women like the sun moving into the house of Scorpio; as joyful to behold as Uṣas to her husband Aniruddha; her eyes causing as much joy as Śacī takes in Viṣṇu’s pleasure gardens; eyes and ears flashing like the snakes Śiva wears during his terrible Tāṇḍava dance; nipples as dark and high as the breadfruit trees in the Vindhyā mountains; beautified by armlets and a graceful neck like Hanuman’s army was strengthened by Sugrīva and Aṅgada; with jewelry bright as the sun, a moon of a smile, a lower lip red as Mars, a glance as gentle as Mercury, hips round and wide like Jupiter, as ravishing as Venus, stepping slowly and gracefully as Saturn, hair as dark and heavy as the north lunar node, and the south lunar node for her blossomed lotus eyes, and so seemingly made of all the planets; like a painting on the smooth wall of birth and death that is the backdrop for the theater of the cosmos, the elixir of life formulated by the great yogin Youth, the fulfillment of love’s designs, the repository of all longing, the Love God’s victory banner, passion’s battlefield, grace’s trysting place, pulchritude’s playground, home of charm, beauty’s birthplace, a narcotic concoction, potent love potion, a wizard’s magic herb, a creation to beguile the world — a girl, just barely eighteen years old, appeared to the prince in a dream.

1.

atha sa kadācid avasannāyāṃ yāmavatyāṃ dadhidhavalakālakṣapaṇakapiṇḍa iva niśāyamunāphenapuñja iva menakānakhamārjanadhavalaśilāśakala iva madhucchattracchāyamaṇḍalodare paścimācalopadhānasukhaniṣaṇṇaśiraso rājatatāṭaṅkacakra iva śyāmāśyāmāyāḥ śeṣamadhubhāji caṣaka iva vibhāvarīvadhvāḥ aparajalanidhipayasi śaṅkhakāntikāmuka iva majjati kumudinīnāyake

2. 

śiśirahimaśīkarakardamitakumudaparāgamadhyabaddhacaraṇeṣu ṣaṭcaraṇeṣu kalapralāpabodhitacakitābhisārikāsu śarikāsu prabuddhādhyayanakarmaṭheṣu maṭheṣu vibhāsarāgamukharakārpaṭikopagīyamānakāvyakathyāsu rathyāsu 

3. 

sakalanipītanaiśatimirasaṃghātam atanīyastayā soḍhum asamartheṣv iva kajjalavyājād udvamatsu kāmimithunanidhuvanalīlādarśanārttham ivodgrīvikāśatadānakhinneṣu vividhavibhramasuratakrīḍāsākṣiṣu śaraṇāgatam ivādho nilīnaṃ timirasaṅgham avatsu durjanavacaneṣv iva dagdhasnehatayā mandimānam upagateṣv ativṛddheṣv iva daśāntam upagateṣu vipannasadīśvareṣv iva pātramātrāvaśeṣeṣu dānaveṣv iva niśāntamadhyacāriṣv astagiriśikhareṣv iva patatpataṅgeṣu pradīpeṣu

4.

anavaratanipatanmakarandabindusandohāsvādamadamugdhamadhukaranikurumbajhaṅkāraravamukhariteṣu mlānimānam upagacchatsu vāsāgārakusumopahāreṣu vigalatkundarair alakaiḥ priyatamavirahaśokāt bāṣpabindūn iva visṛjadbhiḥ priyatamagamananirodham iva kurvadbhir vācālitatulākoṭibhiś caraṇapallavair vilasitāsu rajaniśeṣasuratapariśramavigalitakeśapāśadaradalitamādhavīmālāparimalalubdhamadhukaranikurumbapakṣānilapītanidāghajalakaṇikāsv udvelladbhujavallīkaṅkaṇajhaṇajhaṇātkārasubhagāsu nakhapadasaṃsaktakeśapāśavinirmokavedanākṛtasītkāravinirgatadugdhamugdhadaśanakiraṇadhavalitaboghāvāsāsu punardarśanapraśnavidhurasakhījanānukṣaṇavīkṣyamāṇapriyatamāsu kṣaṇadāgatasuratavaiyātyavacanasaṃsmārakagṛhaśukacāṭuvyāhṛtikṣaṇajanitamandākṣāsu śaradvāsaralakṣmīṣv iva nakhālaṃkṛtapayodharāsv āsannamaraṇāsv iva jīviteśapurābhimukhīṣu vasantavanarājiṣv ivotkalikābahulāsu priyair āliṅgyamānāsu kāminīṣu

5. 

āndolitakusumakesare kesareṇumuṣi raṇitanūpuramaṇīnāṃ ramaṇīnāṃ vikacakumudākare mudākare saṅgabhāji priyavirahitāsu rahitāsu sukhena murmuracūrṇam iva samantād arpake darpakeṣudahanasya dūraprasāritakokapriyatamārute mārute vahati 

6.

jayaghoṣaṇāpannajanamūrtim iva tulākoṭipratiṣṭhitāṃ suyodhanadhṛtim iva karṇaviśrāntalocanāṃ vāmanalīlāṃ iva darśitavalivibhaṅgāṃ vṛścikarāśiravisthitim iva atikrāntakanyātulām uṣāṃ ivāniruddhadarśanasukhāṃ śacīm iva nandanekṣaṇaruciṃ paśupatitāṇḍavalīlām iva ullasaccakṣuḥśravasaṃ vindhyāṭavīm ivottuṅgaśyāmalakucāṃ vānarasenām iva sugrīvāṅgadaśobhitāṃ bhāsvatālaṅkāreṇa śvetarociṣā smitena lohitenādhareṇa saumyena darśanena guruṇā nitambabimbena sitena hāreṇa śanaiścareṇa pādena tamasā keśapāśena vikacena locanotpalena grahamayīm iva saṃsārabhitticitralekhām iva trailokyacittaraṅgasya rasāyanasamṛddhim iva yauvanamahāyoginaḥ saṅkalpasiddhim iva śṛṅgārasya nidhānam iva kautukasya vijayapatākām iva makaradhvajasya ājibhūmim iva madanasya saṅketabhūmim iva lāvaṇyasya vihārasthalīm iva saundaryasya ekāyatanaśālām iva saubhāgyasya utpattisthānam iva kānteḥ stambhanacūrṇam iva indriyāṇām ākarṣaṇamantrasiddhim iva manasaḥ cakṣurbandhanamahauṣadhim iva manmathendrajālinaḥ tribhuvanavilobhanasṛṣṭim iva prajāpater aṣṭādaśavarṣadeśīyāṃ kanyām apaśyat svapne.