Giver of the Worn Garland KRISHNADEVARAYA'S AMUKTAMALYADA , livre ebook

‘And below her hair, she would put on a garland and spend a few minutes just gazing into a pond, seeing her reflection and satisfying her desire before turning away and returning the worn garland to her flower basket’
The emperor Krishnadevarāya's epic poem Āmuktamālyada (Giver of the Worn Garland) depicts the life of the medieval Vaisnava poetsaint Āndāl, or Goda Devi as she is also known, and her passionate devotion to Lord Viṣṇu.
Krishnadevarāya's unique poetic imagination brings to life a celestial world filled with wonder, creativity, humour and vibrant natural beauty. The mundane is made divine and the ordinary becomes extraordinary; the routine activities of daily life become expressive metaphors for heavenly actions, while the exalted gods of heaven are re-imagined as living persons. The poet's ability to seed ivinity in the most common place activities is an extension of his powerful belief that god is every where, in everything, at all times. Āmuktamālyada is one of the best examples of bhakti-kāvya —a genre that imbues the stylized characteristics of Sanskrit ornate poetry with the religious fervour of South Indian bhakti.
Translated with an introduction by SRINIVAS REDDY
Cover: Tanjore painting of Saint Āndāl by Raghu and Prabu Team.
PENGUIN CLASSICS
GIVER OF THE WORN GARLAND
Sri Krṣṇadevarāya became king of the fractured South Indian empire of Vijayanagaram in 1509. During his reign he expanded his empire to more than double its original size and contributed, both as patron and poet, to a flourishing age of artistic and literary creativity. Known as sāhitī-samarāṅgaṇa-sārva-bhauma , emperor in the fields of war and literature, he is remembered as an iconic god-king.
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Srinivas Reddy graduated from Brown University with a BA in South Asian Studies. He is a professional concert sitarist and has given numerous recitals in the US and India; he is also a teacher and educator and has taught several classes on Indian literature and music.
Giver of the Worn Garland
Krishnadevarāya’s Āmuktamālyada
Translated with an introduction and notes by Srinivas Reddy
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First published by Penguin Books India 2010
This translation copyright © Srinivas Reddy 2010
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-01-4306-446-6
This digital edition published in 2011.
e-ISBN: 978-81-8475-305-9
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
Translator’s Dedication
For my grandfathers:
Pammi Venkata Ramana Reddy & Gudimelta Subbi Reddy
C ONTENTS
Copyright
Map of South India
Note on Transliteration
Acknowledgements
Foreword
I. Introduction to Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya’s Āmuktamālyada
II. Giver of the Worn Garland
Invocation
The Dream
C HAPTER I—Ś RĪ V ILLIPUTTŪR
Śrī Villiputtūr
Viṣṇucitta
C HAPTER II—M ADHURA
Madhura
The King
The Summer
The King’s Contest
C HAPTER III—T HE D EBATE
The Debate
C HAPTER IV—V ICTORY
Viṣṇucitta’s Victory
Viṣṇu’s Descents
C HAPTER V—G ODA
Goda
Goda’s Beauty
Goda’s Love for the Lord
Goda and Her Friends
Goda’s Devotion
C HAPTER VI—Ś RĪRAṆGAM
Śrīraṅgam
Raṅganātha
The Wedding
III. Notes to the Poems
Glossary of Names and Places
Glossary of Terms
Glossary of Texts
Appendix I: Index of Verses
Appendix II: Telugu Prosody
Bibliography
Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya with his wives Tirumala Devi and Chinna Devi Śrī Kṛṣṇadevarāya Maṇḍapam, Tirupati
N OTE ON T RANSLITERATION
The comprehensive Telugu syllabary employs all the sounds of the Sanskrit language along with several Dravidian phonological forms.
Throughout this work I have adopted a transliteration scheme that accommodates Sanskrit, Telugu and Tamil words. Per Telugu tradition, Sanskrit words of feminine gender ending in ‘-ā’ or ‘-ī’ are rendered in their shortened form as ‘-a’ and ‘-i’. Standard Roman spellings are used for modern people or places like Telugu and Āndhra.
In the Notes to the Poems I have most often broken the sandhi or ellision within compounds in order to highlight their etymological derivations.
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The making of this book has been a labour love. During my many solitary hours of translation I felt as though I had three wise scholars sitting by my side. C. P. Brown’s exhaustive classical Telugu-English Dictionary, and the meticulously detailed commentaries of Vedam Venkata Shastri and Professor T. Koteswara Rao were my constant companions and indispensable guides throughout the translation process. I was also encouraged by the scholarly work of Professor Velcheru Narayana Rao and Professor David Shulman who have been prime contributors to the study of classical Telugu literature in Western academics. In addition I had the good fortune to meet many knowledgeable scholars while I was in India. Professor P. Ramanarasimham’s recitation and commentary on these verses made them come alive in a whole new way, and Dr. G. Indira and V. Lavanya, my teachers from AIIS, were enthusiastic and helpful as always. Dr. Ramavarapu Sharat Babu and Professor Dattatreya Shastri of Āndhra University were also very generous in offering their interpretations of some difficult stanzas.
My love and thanks to my family and friends in India from Kolkata to Delhi, Vizag to Hyderabad, Chennai to Madurai and the many devotees I met in Srirangam, Cidambaram and Bobbili.
Throughout this project I have had the support of my advisor, teacher and friend Professor George L. Hart who has always been an inspiration, both as a scholar and a human being. I owe much thanks to the remarkable poet and translator Hank Heifetz who read through early drafts of my translations and offered many important critiques and suggestions. I would also like to thank my brother Zachary Culbreth for the beautiful map of South India, and R. Sivapriya for finding me and giving me this amazing opportunity.
None of this could have been possible without the love and support of my family–Munni, Chinna, Nitin, Zac, Karthik and Siddhartha, and of course Amma and Nanna who gave me life, love, and the belief that I could do anything.
Srinivas Reddy Rhode Island
F OREWORD
The 16 th -century poem Āmuktamālyada by the great Vijayanagara king Kṛṣnadevarāya is one of the major works in Telugu and is renowned for its poetic excellence and felicity of expression. The present translation by Srinivas Reddy is a wonderful evocation of the original, carefully following its meaning and conveying its rhythms and poetry. Of the many translations made from premodern India, Reddy’s ranks among the few that read like modern poetry in an English unmarred by stiffness and archaism.
Groups of temple courtesans play games on their verandas and as they shake the dice with one hand, their braids come undone so when they lift the other hand to fix their hair their tight silken blouses and perfectly firm breasts are revealed like the soft round pillows of the God of Love. And as they throw the dice, the mere jingle of their bracelets is enough to stir the hearts of solitary sages.
( Āmuktamālyada I.59)
In translating this stanza, Reddy brings across into flowing English a milieu foreign to most English readers in a way that seems natural and compelling. The scene is a complex one: the courtesans shaking their dice, their saris suddenly moving aside and revealing their blouses and breasts, the jingle of their bracelets awakening desire in ascetics (because, the poem hints, the bracelets also jingle during the act of love). The translation makes this complicated tableau, which could very well appear unnatural and contrived, seem natural. As the reader moves through the beautiful story of Āṇḍāḷ/Goda, Reddy’s translations are full of scenes like this that are arresting and delightful.
Telugu is a South Indian Dravidian language, allied to Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Traditionally, it has looked to Sanskrit, to which it is genetically unrelated, for a substantial portion of its vocabulary and for its poetic techniques. The present work breaks with this model by telling a story from the Tamil Śrī Vaiṣṇava canon and deliberately looking to the the Tamil tradition as well as that of Sanskrit. Not only does it tell a story that it regards as historical, unlike the mythological narrative that characterizes most of Sanskrit, it is also marked in almost every stanza by a real, concrete awareness of everyday village life. In reading Krṣṇadevarāya’s work,