Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions: Towards a Liveable Learning [1st ed. 2021] 9811623902, 9789811623905, 9789811623912

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D. Venkat Rao

Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions Towards a Liveable Learning

Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions

D. Venkat Rao

Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions Towards a Liveable Learning

D. Venkat Rao The English and Foreign Languages University Hyderabad, Telangana, India

ISBN 978-981-16-2390-5 ISBN 978-981-16-2391-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To Ashis Nandy The singular voice and gesture in darker times With gratitude

Acknowledgements

This work on Performative Reflections was in the making for some time now. The routine work of academic life staggered and deferred my attempts to put it together. But it is precisely this routine work which impelled the necessity of undertaking this risky work. My own unease with the prevailing teaching, research practices, institutional set-up and curricula pushed me to undertake this work. I owe this work to my classroom and the teaching context. I wish to thank the students who explored along with me during several semesters the themes of critical humanities, which form this work. The other source which sustained this work is the unique collective of scholars which gathered every year at Kochi, India, to think collectively and individually issues of common concern. A part of this work was first presented at the Backwaters Collective on Metaphysics and Politics. I wish to thank Vinay Lal, Roby Rajan, Nizar Ahmed, Milind Wakankar among others who responded to this work with critical sympathy. Let me take the opportunity to thank K. C. Baral and K. Lavanya for their kind response to parts of this book. Working in isolation, one never really knows how one’s efforts get across. I am truly lucky that Springer found a remarkable scholar to evaluate this manuscript. I am most grateful to this anonymous reviewer for reassuring me, through the review, that this work could communicate its concerns to others, despite its idiosyncratic style of thought and presentation. I am deeply delighted by the observations which this learned scholar provided me on the manuscript. I cannot help acknowledging the limitations of this work which the anonymous scholar pointed out. It could be true that the arguments developed in the context of the Telugu literary–cultural domain in this book are neither unique to this region nor are they the inaugural ones. I have no hesitation in accepting the fact that parallels to the Telugu scenario can be found from other regions of India as well. Performative Reflections only aims at affirming such explorative possibilities across other contexts in India (and, perhaps elsewhere). It is my good fortune that my work has begun to receive the kind attention of an unusual contemporary thinker like Ashis Nandy. Ever since I met him as a student on a winter morning in Delhi in 1984, Prof. Nandy welcomed what I was attempting to do with concern and affection. During all the annual conventions at Kochi, where he is a real presence, he keenly paid attention to the emerging work and critically engaged vii

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with my work. For all these years of generosity and concern towards me and my work which he extended, I take great pleasure in offering this work of Performative Reflections as a gesture of my gratitude to Prof. Ashis Nandy. It is Satvinder Kaur’s timely attention and support for this work at Springer which helped this book to come out. I thank Satvinder for her prompt and patient responses and sustained attention. A part of this work was written when I stayed at my daughter, Nikhita’s place in California. I wish to thank Nikky, her husband Pradeep and their darling son Gautam for the festive ambience they created during my time with them. Our younger daughter, Anvita, was a witness to how some of the ideas of this work have taken shape. She was the first one to pay attention to them. I thank her for her time and participation in the development of this work. At a more practical level, she helped me at the end with preparing the glossary for this book. Last but not least: Without Shobha’s kind understanding and support, as always, this work would not have had a chance to emerge. I remain indebted to her for her kind concern.

Coda-Sutra

Roopam visarjitasya bhavato dhyaanena yat kalpitam Stutyaanirvachaneeyataakhila gurordoori krutaayanmayaa Vyaaptitvancha niraakrutam bhagavato yatteertha vaasaadina Kshantavyam jagadeesha tadvikalataa doshatrayam matkrutam1

(I have created/concocted form of the one who lives discarding every form; I have praised in words the one who remains undefinable; by claiming him to live in pilgrimages, I have curtailed the one who spreads across everywhere without form; forgive me Ishwara of this universe for these three wrongs/defects. [attributed to Vyasa]).

1

Attributed to Vyasa, cited in Rani Siva Sankara Sarma, Purana Vedam, (Hyderabad: Palpitta Books, 2010), p. 51. ix

Openings: Inward Receptions

In a composition attributed to Sankara, Vivekachudamani, it is said: Anantashaastram bahuveditavyam svalpascha (Sankaracharya, Vivekachudamani, p. 109).

kaalo

bahavashcha

vighnaah

The discipline of learning is infinite; what is to be learnt or known is enormous. Time at one’s disposal is meagre and the obstacles multiple. Indeed so! Even after thirteen centuries what is said then remains so true. The truth of the observations only got further aggravated and intensified. The Internet stands as an unequivocal testimony to this insight today. Even if the tradition Sankara confined himself to—Vaidika—seems delimited, its range and reach had been quite extensive by the time Sankara began to respond to it: the Vedic tradition has spread across into the Veda, Vedanga, Sutra, Darshana, Itihaasa, Purana, Naatya and Kavya streams and flourished with vigour and vibrancy. Emerging from within this tradition and certainly drawing on it, Nalanda began to initiate penetrating questioning into Vedic tradition by the time Sankara began his meditative polemos. A part of his work evinces his thorough grounding in the Vedanta (Upanishad) and Darshana domains. If one part of his work excelled in the shaastra compositions, another significant part of it (notwithstanding disputes about the modern questioning of authorship) radiated with deeply reflective invocative compositions pertaining to shaastra and purana motifs. These compositions reverberate across temples and households even to this day. Centuries before Sankara, Bharata declared that there is no domain of learning, ‘art’, ‘logic’, yoga or any other formation that the emergent domain called naatya, which he was advancing innovatively, cannot articulate (Bharata 2006). Similarly, a century before Sankara, the literary inquirer (from yet another novel domain), Bhamaha announced a similar claim with regard to the already evolved domain of kavya: given that there is nothing in the world that a kavya cannot bring forth, the burden of learning on the poet is immense (Bhamaha 2004). Centuries before Bharata and Bhamaha, the Mahabharata loftily proclaimed that there is nothing in the world that is not already in the Mahabharata and what is not there in the latter cannot be found in the world (Nannaya et al. 2000). And we are still to see another millennium’s expansive blossoming of reflective creative domains and forms across xi

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what can perhaps only be called the ‘cultural’ spatio-temporal phenomena called ‘India’: the phenomena of Samskruta (not reducible to a language name attributed to the latter centuries after the term was extensively used to refer to an ethos)— cultivable, refined—formations. Samskruta in its two senses (ethos and language) was yet to fecundate other bhashas of the second millennium. Despite the magnitude of Sanskrit, it remained demarcated and even circumscribed. In other words, Sanskrit nurtured its reflective integrity even as it internally differentiated itself and proliferated. It was yet to be exposed to the SemiticAbrahamic religions. The second half of the second millennium of the (so-called) Common Era became the decisive scene of such an encounter between the Vedic (including Buddhist) and the Semitic heritages. By the end of the nineteenth century, the domains of learning by default included Semitic heritages and their technics of retention and transmission of learning, more prominently the European ones. Consequently, by the twentieth century, learning meant essentially European knowledge systems. Every tradition, heritage and its modes of generating and imparting of learning had to be framed in European conceptual and representational structures; only then a domain of learning could gain the designation of knowledge. Such an enframing representation of learning appears completely alien to Sanskrit traditions. It is almost impossible to know whether Sanskrit traditions ever incorporated or responded to any non-Sanskrit forms of learning in its originary formations. It is not possible to know whether the systems of Greek astronomy/astrology, logic or medicine were ever taught at Takshashila or whether Sinitic traditions of learning were ever discussed at Nalanda and other vihaaraas. Sanskrit seemed indifferent to translation but also evinced no particular inclination towards it being appropriated (perhaps, Buddhism may provide a different story) by other languages and traditions. We are yet to know whether post-Nalanda Navya-Nyaya was attracted to any Arabic logic and theology or whether Panditaraja Jagannatha ever responded to Dara Shukho’s syncretistic project; whether Hindavi altered the reflective integrity of the Sanskrit traditions or whether the so-called Bhakti tradition was marked by the Islamic theology or whether the Sufi tradition ever attracted the attention of the Sanskrit poets and shaastrakaaraas. It is difficult to ascertain decisively any of the above issues beyond European forms of inquiry (historical–philological– comparative–religious studies). In a word, one is yet to proclaim with any kind of certainty that the Semitic religions of the second millennium transformed the Samskruta traditions. For no literary and shaastra inquiries of the second millennium (until at least the nineteenth century) demonstrate such an interface. The problem one faces here is not of a historical nature—of evidence and influence. The problem pertains to the question of reflective integrity of traditions. Is there a shared impulse—despite its varying rhythms of modulation—that distinguishes and sets apart one tradition from another? Without such an articulated impulse of singularity, there can be no traditions. The assemblage of cultural constellations of India (say that of Gandhara, Indus, Brahmaputra, Kham, Madhyadesha, Dakshinapatha and Sangam) was most eloquent in its proliferation and persistence vertically and horizontally across the geocultural formations of the subcontinent and beyond.

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It is impossible to sense the vibrant communication of the Sangam Cera Kulashekhara with the Kashmira Anandavardhana, of the Gaudiya with the Alwars, of the Madhyadesha Kalidasa with the Dakshinapatha Mallinatha, of Tibet’s interface with Nalanda, of Sangam with Sumatra (where Itsing learnt Sanskrit before coming to India a century before Sankara), etc., without some commonly shared throbbing impulse relating them. But such a common impulse does not appear to have been configured or thematized in any single work of the tradition before the nineteenth century. In other words, the reflective coherence of the Samskruta traditions has not become an object of any kind of theoretical inquiry under a commonly shared appellation (say, like ‘Europe’) as such. Vaidika simply meant modes of being, ways of going about drawn on the resources of the Vedas. It did not represent any exclusive metalevel theoretical account of the essence of these modes or practices as such. Only the encounter with the Semitic religions—especially with the European one—which provoked such a reactive compulsion to configure something called Hinduism, or Vedic religion, etc. All the isms—such as Vedism, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Sikhism—are the reactive conceptions resulting from Europe’s violent enframing of the Samskruta traditions. The invasive European interface unleashed a plethora of disciplines of thought. The isms referred to above are the products of this interface. The Samsrkuta formations of learning became the anthropological and historico-linguistic objects of European frames of thought; such frames and approaches were completely alien to the Samskruta traditions. Such mélange of disciplines and their purpose, to objectify the learning traditions to be represented, became the decisive vector for disorienting the colonized mind; the mélange aimed at permanently changing the modes of being and forms of reflection of the colonized. Over a millennium earlier, facing even the delimited and demarcated Samskruta traditions, what Sankara said becomes more fitting to gloss or annotate the colonized mind: Shabda jaalam mahaaranyam chitta bhramana kaaranam (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 62, p. 99).

The densely spread mighty forest of noisy verbal maze causes the distracting whirring of the attentive faculty. The way out of the thickening maze, or, even to navigate it, appears impossible. It is precisely in such an impossible scenario, the search for a possible way out of the forest of cacophony must be attempted. Indeed, a path of such a possibility is what Sankara hints at in such a predicament: Yatsaara bhootam tadupaasitavyam hamso yathaa ksheeramivaambu madhyaat (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, p. 109).

Like the (puranic) swan which is capable of savouring milk by separating it from water, one must attain the essence of learning through focused attention and devotion. How does one figure out such essence, if there is any? Resonating the intimations of the entirety of Samskruta traditions—albeit, variedly articulated—Sankara would refer to this essence as paratattva—the thatness of other (in you). Such essence

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would turn all learning—all the disciplines and their domain knowledge, the noisy verbal maze—into barren pursuits. Avijnaate pare tattve shaastraa dhee tistu nishphala Vijnaate pare tattve shaastraa dhee tistu nishphala (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 61, p. 98).

Without knowing paratattva as the (essence of) learning, any discipline of learning is fruitless; once paratattva is learnt/known, all shaastraas are fruitless. The other well-known term that the Samskruta traditions draw on to refer to paratattva is jnaana. This term at once implies and remains irreducible to perceptualcognitive-anamnesic learning. It must be noted, however, that even this jnaana or tattva was also often articulated as the thatness of primal sonance: shabda tattva. That is, if all disciplinary and domain learning is conceived as acoustically enacted and embodied sets of mnemic formations, the essence of sonance remains irreducible to these sonic formulations. For these formulations emerge and dissolve temporally, whereas the primal sonance has neither a beginning nor a terminal. If jnaana or para (shabda)tattva is the essence of learning of Samskruta traditions, what has been the destiny of such learning in the Semitic epoch—especially during the European one? Did the European systems of knowledge respond to the essence of Samskruta traditions? Was there any significant interface or exchange between these traditions and the European heritage? To search for the destiny (or source) of jnaana or para is already to miss the essential intimation of the Samskruta learning. For the essence of learning in these traditions is alluded to as without a beginning or end. Therefore, that which has neither an origin nor an eschaton cannot have a destiny. The question of destiny or destination is intelligible mainly in Semitic religions. European systems of knowledge are nurtured on normative (universal, categorical) principles and laws which are, in turn, rooted in the concept of sovereignty—be it divine or human-rational-secular. All particularities and myriad variations among particulars get subsumed under the normative (universal) categories for building systems of conceptual knowledge. Europe subsumes what it designated as particularities of other cultures under such principles and laws and normative frames that are presupposed to be at work already in these other cultures as well. Indology is such a European disciplinary formation which searches for principles, laws, origin, hierarchy and the end of the Samskruta traditions. In a word, Europe replicates itself through the detour of ‘other cultures’. Whether para (shabda)tattva, jnaana can be subsumed under positive or apophatic theologies or conflated with an all powerful sovereign authority or reduced to some normative code cannot be decided on the basis of the presuppositions implicit in the latter propositions. The Samskruta traditions and the essence of learning they intimate are radically heterogeneous to such Semitic propositions and their assumptions. The culturally essential concepts like the ‘call’, ‘testimony’, ‘covenant’, ‘faith’ and ‘conscience’ remain unintelligible theologemes or philosophemes in the context of the Samskruta traditions. In such a fraught scenario whether there was any significant communication between the Samskruta traditions and European religions, let alone the idea of the latter altering the former, remains deeply questionable; for all inquiries aiming to

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address such a question are initiated mainly from the conceptual basis institutionalized by Europe. A different kind of inquiry is now required which draws on the resources of the Samskruta traditions to unravel the presuppositions that govern European systems of knowledge. Such a work is the task of a whole generation of inquirers convinced about the necessity of reflecting on the resources of one’s traditions. Performative Reflections is a more modest but risky effort at configuring a shared sense among very different domains of learning—developed across differing topotemporal scenarios in India. This work is neither historical nor anthropological, neither philosophical nor literary. Emerging from within the discursive and institutional frames established by the European interface, this work is an effort to find a minimal outside from within these structures—an outside which would be difficult to subsume or would only uneasily fit into and indigestible in the structures it appears to inhabit. Perhaps, that is also the intimation that one senses from the liveable learning imparted by the Samskruta traditions: to live outside in the ‘given’ habitats of one’s existence and relations. Performative Reflections has emerged from the context of teaching and learning in the domain of the humanities in India. This work is a certain kind of response to the whirring of the mind which this domain has unleashed for over a century. The humanities—especially the teaching of literature and philosophy disciplines— domain has played a significant role in educating the colonized mind. Even after the formal closure of colonial governance, the humanities education and inquiry forged during the colonial epoch continue to thrive. This is the measure of the (post) colonial intellectual destitution which prevails even today. The deeper structures of this education require unravelling. If the education—‘studies’—formed during the colonial period can survive and flourish beyond the formal colonial temporal order, the sources of such education cannot be reduced to the expedient colonial period. In such a context, it should not be implausible to assume that even the intimations of the liveable learning traditions of India, howsoever ruined, discarded, displaced they might be, could also survive here and there even after the devastating invasion of the Samskruta traditions by the Semitic ones. But the major game in the field seems to demand translation of such intimations into the codes of the Semitic heritage. The task of critical humanities in this context seems to require unravelling of such translations on the one hand and strive to configure cohering elements of the Samskruta traditions and their intimations on the other. The task involved aims at exploring the possibility of reorienting the humanities teaching and research drawing on the cohering element of the Samskruta traditions. Performative Reflections is not offered as a polemic work nor is it conceived as a critique of colonial or post-colonial positions and personages. This work can be seen more as an idiosyncratic attempt to explore, learn and plunge oneself in search for the intimations of a silenced (or, to distance oneself from the more recent vociferous and distorted) rhythms of a palimpsest of sonances. In the process, the work cannot avoid risks. One obvious risk is that I am not trained in Sanskrit traditions of learning. I am only a ragpicker in some of the widely and deeply spread cultural constellations of these traditions. This work, therefore, can be offered only as a responsive reception

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of/to the Semitic interface with the Samskruta traditions from the domain of the humanities in which I move with unease. There are other risks which the disciplinary expertise exposes one to. Attempting this kind of work only after gaining expertise in the required domains (which ones, though? and where to begin?) is impossible. The only way to sense the possible from this impossible situation is to attend to what Sankara said more than a millennium earlier: to sense the essence of learning from the maze of noisy disciplines of learning. Performative Reflections cannot escape the price of the risks it commits. But the risk may enable one to embrace other horizons which open up some glimmers of a different sense and sonance. The risks yield their own pleasures, and Performative Reflections granted me some flavours of gratification.

References Bhamaha, Kaavyaalamkarah, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 2004), 5.4, p.106. Bharata, Naatyashaastram, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: P.N. Sastri, 2006), 1.116, p. 79. Nannaya, Yerrapragada & Tikkana Somayaji,Kavitraya Virachita Srimadaandhra Mahabharatamu, [also as Mahabharatamu]. 2000–2007, edited with prefaces by G.V. Subramaniam and others, (Tirupati: Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanamulu, 2000–2007), ‘Preface’, p. xxi. Sankaracharya, Sri Vivekachudamani, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 1995).

Contents

Part I

Accented Rhythms

1

Formations of the (Im)Possible: A Prolegomenon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1 Differential Projections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Crossing the Ipse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Actional Apparatus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4 Formational Instants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

3 3 9 15 17

2

Anaakhyaana—I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

25

3

Charaka’s Pharmacia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Ends of Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Therapy Sans Pharmacos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Of the Biocultural Formations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Inherence of the Subtle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Non-positional Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

27 27 30 35 36 38

4

Anaakhyaana—II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

41

5

Vyasa’s Paravisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1 The Enigma of the Non-formational . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.2 Projections of Para . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.3 Performative Assemblages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.4 Constricting Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

43 43 46 49 51

6

Anaakhyaana—III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

55

7

Bharata’s Performative Teleosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 Tamperable Ethos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Teleocultural Mediations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Actional Lokations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Actional Performative Ethos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Gratifying Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.6 Actional Sediments and Flavours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.7 Actional Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57 57 59 61 63 66 67 70 xvii

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Contents

7.8 7.9 7.10

Recursive Dispersals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vulnerable Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Be-Longings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

71 73 76

8

Anaakhyaana–IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

79

9

Sarngadeva’s Primal Sonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Musical Universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Biocultural Sonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.3 Primal Melodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Positive Temptations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

81 81 83 85 87

10 Manu’s Mnemopraxials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 10.1 Cultivable Ethos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 10.2 Elusive Desire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 10.3 Drifts of the Desiring Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 10.4 Actional Residues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 10.5 Articulations of the Heterogeneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 11 Anaakhyaana–V . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 12 (A)Para Poiesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 Figurations of the Literary Being . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Being of the Literary Living . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3 Articulations of the Unsayable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 Affective Probes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.5 Indirectional Intimations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Part II

107 107 109 112 116 118

Dispersed Mnemocsapes

13 Mnemoscapes of Water: The Vaangmaya of Rains and Rivers in Indian Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.1 Weaves of Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.2 Another Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.3 Conceptions of Rain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.4 Inscripted Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.5 Mnemotraces of Emergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.6 Spatio-temporal Confluences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.7 Actional Routes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.8 Sovereign Designs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13.9 Elemental Wonders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

125 126 129 132 135 139 142 145 151 155

14 Teleocultural Mediations: In Performing Traditions of the Ramayana . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1 Performative Inheritance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 Receptive Detours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3 Instantial Wormholes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4 Dispersed Intimacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

159 160 162 163 166

Contents

14.5 14.6 14.7 14.8 14.9 14.10 14.11 14.12 14.13 14.14 14.15 14.16 14.17 14.18

xix

Interanimating Currents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disconcerting Grafts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Violence of Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Technics of the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cultivable Ethos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Voicing Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Performative Virtuosos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Melodic Mnemoscapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enactive Energies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minimal Magnitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irruptive Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Analogue Memories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prosthetic Heritages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irredenta Jeevitha . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

168 169 172 174 177 179 183 185 187 189 192 194 195 196

Part III Inventive Iterations 15 Inventions of the Literary and Affirmations of Inheritance: The Enduring Legacies of Viswanatha Satyanarayana . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.1 Risking the Literary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.2 Inventions of the Other . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3 Facing the Invasive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4 Enduring Disjunctures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.5 Contextures of Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.6 Enabling Demarcations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.7 Paths of Rapture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.8 Experiential Excess . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.9 Musica Ficta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.10 Sensorial Sublimations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.11 Uncanny Intimations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.12 Haunting Melodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.13 Foreclosing Unifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.14 Dancing in the Double Bind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.15 Enduring Legacies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

201 202 203 206 208 212 216 218 220 222 226 229 231 233 236 238

Sendings: Communicating Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Glossary of Sanskrit Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263

About the Author

D. Venkat Rao teaches at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His recent work is Critical Humanities from India: Contexts, Issues, Futures (Routledge, 2018), and his other publications include Cultures of Memory in South Asia (Springer, 2014) and a translation into English of a Telugu intellectual autobiography called The Last Brahmin (2007, 2012 and 2017). His areas of interest include literary and cultural studies, image studies, epic traditions, visual cultures, comparative thought, translation, Indian traditions and mnemocultures. He has designed several courses interfacing areas of culture, technology and literary and cultural studies.

xxi

Part I

Accented Rhythms

Chapter 1

Formations of the (Im)Possible: A Prolegomenon

Abstract Indian reflective (and) creative traditions have spread across in two related but clearly differentiated currents: (i) compositions of the ‘heard’ and (ii) the compositions of the ‘recalled’. Hearing, recalling and mindfully attending are the three essential technics of these cultures of memory. The modes, concerns and the outcomes of these currents are significantly different. But these currents and the technics have unfolded a relational quartet across modes of being and forms of reflection in the tradition—where the addressor and the addressee are not categorically segregated. Is there a reflective integrity across these shared but varied traditions? How do we configure such creative coherence across these currents today? Such an inquiry, which draws from the earliest resources of India to configure Indian performative reflective orientation, is yet to appear. This chapter risks the view that such coherence can be traced in the way these currents articulate the interminable relation between the formational and the non-formational forces; these are designated in Sanskrit as apara (non-other) and para (other). Such an articulation can be explored across several distinct domains such as the poetic (‘literature’), plastic–pigmental (painting/sculpture—‘art’), musical, health/living (medical/pharmaceutical), praxial (‘law’), performative (dance) and many others developed over millennia. This introductory chapter opens up such an inquiry and pursues it in the rest of the book. For the purpose of demonstration and to contrast Indian reflective orientation from European ‘negative theology’, this chapter draws on the work of Derrida and others, on the one hand, and the Upanishads and offers a primal engagement with Sankaracharya’s Nirvaanashatka, on the other.

1.1 Differential Projections Vyasa’s vedana (affective effect) poignantly and most economically declaims the voluminous concern of Indian reflective traditions: the relation between the formational and the non-formational. There is barely, to my knowledge, any serious engagement with this concern in our contemporary intellectual scenario. The contemporary milieu, if it attends to this concern, may reduce it to a sedimented Christian thematic: negative theology. Can Vyasa’s vedana be reduced to such theology? Or, has the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_1

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encounter with the Semitic traditions in the second millennium of the Common Era impacted understanding of this concern? How does one engage with this vedana today? Derrida claims that negative theology—affirming the presence of god through negation of attributes—eventually terminates, in European culture, in hyperessentialism (in Greek and Christian traditions) (Derrida, 1992); this has been contested by Jean-Luc Marion. For Marion, the Christian god is not figured by essence but distance—distance from everything that is created by god, including his Son, Christ (Marion, 2001). Derrida demonstrates his claim by a reading of Augustine, Eckhart and the Pseudo-Dionysius.1 He declares that he would avoid discussing this theme in Judaism and Islam (and including Buddhism).2 In a very subtle account that Derrida sketches, he points out that ‘never has any discourse expressly given itself this title (negative theology, apophatic method, via negative) in the thoughts of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist culture’ (Derrida, ‘Post-Scriptum’, p. 305). Derrida offers a similar account doubting the validity of application of the concept of religion to (non-Semitic cultures) in his ‘Faith and Knowledge’.3 But eventually, he inclines towards Tertullian’s account of religion as trust/faith—and works out its prevalence across cultures—and at least indicates that these themes can be seen in other cultures as well; ‘religion’ as a fiduciary relation is seen as universal (Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge’, pp. 80–82). But in the discussion about negative theology, Derrida very rigorously locates it within Catholic Christian theology. Harold Coward moves Derrida’s declaration (in avoiding a discussion about other traditions) as an invitation or a provocation to excavate negative theology in Hinduism: ‘This chapter [Coward’s] widens that immense empty place to include the via negativa of Hinduism, especially, with regard to the hyperessentiality problem’.4 It is contended here that the thematic of vianegativa, affirming god through negative attributes, has never appeared as such in Indian vaangmaya; it is only in Western accounts about India that such a theme can be found. Coward identifies para/atma as the referent of Indian negative theology and cites Upanishadic passages regarding the unattributive nature of para. Coward would have interpreted Vyasa’s vedana as a testimony to Indian negative theology. In the Dionysius, a major source of negative theology in Catholic Christianity, the divine hyperessential is the most generous, generative source. But none of the Upanishads (and the smriti compositions) represents para to be such a source directly. 1

Jacques Derrida, ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials’ trans. Ken Frieden, in, Derrida and Negative Theology, edited by Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, (Albany: State University of New York, 1992), pp. 73–142. 2 See for an extended debate between Derrida and Marion on negative theology, God, The Gift and Postmodernism edited by John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 1–78. 3 Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone’, trans. Samuel Weber, in Acts of Religion, edited by Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 46, 67–75. 4 Harold Coward, ‘A Hindu Response to Derrida’s View of Negative Theology’, in Derrida and Negative Theology, edited by Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, (Albany: State University of New York, 1992), p. 200.

1.1 Differential Projections

5

Para is not generative at all nor is it agentive. Only the deluded thinks that para (atma) as agent says the Bhagavadgita: Pashyatyakruta buddhitvaat na sa pashyati dushmatih5

[When the factors determining action are identified as specifically five—the body, individuating element, varied faculties, different gestures related to/emerging from life-breath, and gods—] to attribute agentive position to para is only the work of the unrefined and deviant mind. Such a person cannot see clearly. The BruhadaaranyakaUpanishad specifies that there are two forms of Brahma— formational and non-formational. Formational is shown as gross and the nonformational subtle: Dve vaava braahmano roope moortham chaivaamoortham cha martyam chaamrutham cha sthitam cha yachcha sachcha tyachcha6

Brahma has two forms: the one that manifests as a formation and the other which does not and has no formation; the one which is mortal and the other which has no death; and the one which does not move and the other that moves; it has two names: articulate—sat (that which emerges or forms) and inarticulate—tyat (the one which does not form). Sankara describes these two forms as gross and subtle. But he goes on to show that the subtle one too is attributive and delusional. It is these two forms of Brahma that get described, says Sankara. But when the subtle one is freed of all attributes, it will be attribute-less, remainder-less Brahman (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.3.1, p. 168). Coward focuses on the following mantra from the Bruhaadaaranyaka to assert his claim. Athaata aadesho neti neti na hyetasmaaditi netyanyatparama sthyatha naamadheyagam satyassya satyamiti praanaa vai satyam teshamesha satyam (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.3.6, p. 201)

This is the Brahman counsel: not this, not this. There is no other counsel superior to this one. The name of this counsel is the truth of truth. Life breath is truth. This (counsel) is the truth of life breath. How is the not-this, not-this counsel determined, asks Sankara. By rejecting differentiated attributes (such as name, form, action, relation, species, quality distinctions and differences), explains Sankara. Both the locutions Brahman and atma are projections of naming, forming and acting of the heard compositions (shruti). Brahman is sensed by foreclosing these projections—by means of the not-this, not-this mode (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.3.6, pp. 202–203). This atma/Brahman can be known by means 5 Bhagavadgita, trans. Krishnamacharyulu and Goli Venkataramayya (Gorakhpur: The Gita Press, 2003), 18.16, p. 794. 6 Bruhadaaranyaka Upanishad, trans. Swami Tattvavidananda Saraswati (Hyderabad: Sri Sankara Vidyapeethamu Trust, 2006), 2.3.1. p, 167.

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of listening, recalling and mindful attention, says Yajnavalkya in his counsel to Maitreyi (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.4.5, p. 226). Coward seems to miss the point when he sees one of the two Brahmas that the Bruhadaaranyaka describes as non-formable. The two Brahmas are constituted on the basis of two sets of attributes which are apparently opposed ones: formed/unformed, mortal/immortal, fixed/pervasive, truth/of truth. For Sankara both are attributive. One of them is (particular/qualified) gross, and the other (devoid of qualities) is subtle. But both are shelter-based, points out Sankara. Sankara explicitly says that these are the two forms of Hiranyagarbha (gross/subtle). Further, the entirety of signifying apparatus—of name and form—pertains to these gross and subtle Brahmas. The apparatus gets projected on to these two forms, and their difference appears or makes sense only from within the apparatus (Bruhadaaranyaka 2.3.6, pp. 202– 203). Negation of this context suggests that para is not to be conflated/configured by means of these projectional effects (be they gross or subtle). By this, one cannot jump to the conclusion (as Coward does) that para is beyond the signifying apparatus. The mantra and Sankara’s commentary on it only seem to say, on the contrary, that para inhering in every formation is covered in the webs of projections to which it cannot be reduced. In other words, if one wishes to use the philosopheme, para is essentially non-ontological, whereas both the Brahmas (subtle and gross) were caught in the ontological determinations. Thus, para cannot be in some transcendental or superlative topos, as the Christian god is thought to be (Marion’s and also Nancy’s claim is that what is absolutely central to god is the absolute (undissolvable) distance: god is absolute distance in Christian theology);7 whereas in the Indian context no form comes forth without the inherence of para in it. But to insist on the difference among these as forms (para/apara) and induce them to deconstruction is to operate with the projectional play. Para is not constitutive of anything. Constitutive resources can only be the endowments of that which constitutes or is constituted. The constitutive is relentlessly projectional, generative and differentiating; this interminable process—even when infinite in its generative and proliferative resources and manifestations—cannot reduce para to its manifestations and processes. Although para is no-thing (signifying) and yet it inheres in every thing/formation; it is only within the signifying apparatus that it gains the name para—(other); in the ultimate analysis, it is the ‘relation’ between the formational and the non-formational which requires attention. This entire problematic, however, of relation or non-relation between the constitutive and non-constitutive can only be lived (as)/thought from within the matrix of the constituted. And every attempt of the apparatus to figure para, in either attributive terms or non-attributive (na-iti, na-iti) language, can only result in enhancing the projectional and generative resources of the apparatus. The Bruhadaaranyaka mantra (2.3.6) in fact alerts one to the limits of the projectional apparatus and to its 7

Jean-Luc Nancy, Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity, trans. Bettina Bergo, et.al. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008). Jean-Luc Marion, Idol and Distance, trans. Thomas A. Carlson.

1.1 Differential Projections

7

occlusive nature. Similarly, a mantra from the Mundakopanishad announces about all mantras which compose the Vedas: Dve vidye Veditavye… Para chaivaparaa cha8

Know that there are only two forms of learning: para and apara. (The Mundaka includes all the shruthi and smriti vaangmaya under apara-vidya.) Para must be ‘sensed’ through but not by means of the apparatus. Brhadaaranyaka suggests two related ways of this ‘sensing’: (i) through listening/recall/mindful attention and (ii) through ‘darshana’ (not to be confused with the Darsanik schools)— ‘seeing’ for/as oneself/on/as one’s own. Even with the first path which involves listening and reflective recall, it ultimately must culminate into focusing on that which cannot be reduced to what is heard. Thus, the path traversed has neither epistemological privilege nor ontological telos; consequently, it must be pointed out that the path/‘traversal’ does not indicate ‘ascent’ or ‘descent’ as in Christian theology (Jean-Luc Marion, Idol and Distance, pp. 137–195). The path can only be mindfully ‘sensed’ (manasaivaanu drashtavyam says the Bruhadaaranyaka, 4.4.19, p. 385), in the ‘given’ through the ‘given’ (we will return to this). It is precisely this attentive focus, through the formational, on the non-formational which is said to be extremely difficult for the formed, embodied ones, that one tries to sense or ‘see’ para in/as oneself. The formed ones find it difficult to focus upon what is formless, the no-thing. The Bhagavadgita says this—and this has a metonymic relation to the entirety of the Bhagavadgita (and the vaangmaya): Kleshodhikarasteshaam avyaktaasakta chetasaam Avyaktaa hi gatirdukham dehavadbhiravaapyate (Bhagavadgita, 12.5, p. 615).

To be immersively attentive to the formless inarticulable is extremely arduous; for the embodied, engrossed in their body, the path of the formless inarticulate is onerous. Yet, this difficulty does not lead to the sublimation of the mnemocultural symbolizing technics—of the verbal and the gestural/embodied kind (of the body and utterance). Occlusion of the verbal flows is said to be the primary doorway to yoga (mindful and attentive relation).9 If hearing is important—reflective recall (manana) is hundred times better than verbal utterance; but focused attention is considered a hundred thousand times greater than reflective recall. But beyond these is placed the infinite value of the formless mode (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 365, p. 425). For, neither the pulls of the loka, of shaastra, nor the longings of the body can provide the jnaana of the ‘real’ (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 272, p. 355). The ways of the loka, the body and shaastra only reinforce the projectional webs—which need to be dispelled (Sankara, Vivekachudamani, 271, p. 355).

8

Mundakopanishad, trans. B. K. Dakshinamurthy (Hyderabad: Sri Seetarama Adi Shankara Trust, 2003), mantra 4: pp. 43–49. 9 (Attributed to) Sankaracharya, Sri Vivekachudamani, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 1995), 368, p. 427.

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The loka is the scene of the projectional play; like the entities of the scene of play or a painting, loka itself is an integral part of the play. Thus, the loka is the medium for projections and itself is also a projective effect. This ‘logic’ applies to the myriad entities that people the scene/play. The loka is a weave of recursive loops. Symbolization (be it verbal, gestural/or even manasic) is an effect of this relentless weave. The weave appears to be aporetic. Any endeavour to occlude the weave and its projective effects may lend itself to the weave; the endeavour may manifest by means of verbal, visual and the bodily resources: yajna, dana, tapa; shruti, stuti, vidya; and kala, naatya, shilpa, kavya. All these three sets of performative, melopoeiac and imagistic activities foreground the body and discretize it. Neither through repression/denial nor through transcendence, must a response to the weave come forth from the body complex itself; response can only emerge from the embodied existence. The body complex in general is constituted by the formational force which emerges from the non-formational force. In every singular iteration of the complex, this interminable structure reinforces itself and replicates itself. Emergent entities and relations cannot abandon or escape the constitutive structure of the double bind—which is formed of inadequate but apprehensional apparatus and the nontranscendental but inhering no-thing (para); consequently, Indian traditions aim at, in the ultimate reckoning, releasement from this double bind itself, while inhabiting it. But given that the experience of the double bind and that of freedom from it make sense only within the apparent formation of an embodied entity, happiness can be said to result in the suspension of attraction or in cultivating indifference towards the double-pronged experience itself. Thus, freedom or releasement is not in the abandonment of the binds and bonds of the projectional matrix, thus hankering after something free from projections as such; but it is in suspending the relation to either of the inclinations exclusively in existence. Suspension can entail not so much of proliferation of differences but a mode of being that is indifferent to and non-relational to the double inclination of experience. Such mode of being while entirely located within existence (of the loka) can only be asymptotic in relation to the double bind of existence. Even when this mode moves within/through the projectional apparatus, it cannot be conflated with the apparatus. The apparatus will have neither essential nor contingent status—but only that of pedagogical, clarificatory, experimental or testable status; this status is not oriented towards demonstrative spectacles. As suggested earlier, the apparatus in its various manifestations—of utterance, of the body, of manas—can confound the mode and delude one to invest in the emergences of the apparatus. It may be noted that the mode, even as it moves through the webs of the apparatus, is not invested in differentiating itself from the apparatus as such but in being indifferent to the machinations of the apparatus.

1.2 Crossing the Ipse

9

1.2 Crossing the Ipse The apparatus relentlessly differentiates and individuates. Thus, for instance, wind permeates the other primal elements like the sky, fire, water and earth, but it is singular and differentiable from the other elements. Same is the case with the sky, water and fire. The earth too is permeated, moved and enveloped by the other elements, and yet it retains its distinction from them as long as it exists as the earth. And each one appears to operate on its own—and yet impinged upon by the others. The ‘individuating’ inflection is at work in each of their differentiating operations. The Panchatantra story—where a sage turns a mouse into a female child (who eventually turns back into a mouse)—eloquently captures the double movement—of individuating, autonomous and the limits of the autonomy—of elements.10 Without this inflection, there is no srushti or the infinite emergent proliferation of entities and relations. The apparatus is thus formed of the convergence of finite and individuating entities/elements/relations. The critical inflection of individuation is the possessive/genitive element referred to by the minimal syllabic unit—I/mine (aham/mama). Every entity or relation, since it is differentiating and thus individuating, is prone to bubble with the impulse to assert its autonomy and presume itself to be the primal cause of existence and movement of itself and other entities and relations. The Upanishads tell the story of the parts and faculties of the body—how each one proclaiming its own superiority and primality over others and eventually is humbled by the others. The Bhagavata describes the ire of the rain god/Indra and how he was humbled by Krishna with a mountain. Every entity and relation is thus exposed to the contrary valences. When the entity or relation swings and swells towards the assertion of its exclusive primality, such a state of being is designated as aham-kara: ‘I’/me (as) the cause. When it slides towards the other inclination, such state is figured as sharanaa-gati or daasasthiti—the surrender or servitor state. Even as they appear different, both the states articulate a relation to the other: to either master or serve. But how does one configure this other? In the Indian languages, the other is none other than the most pervasive other that inheres in every formation and relation: para. Para is not even a proper name; it has no proper or propriety of its own; nor it can be appropriated, let alone expropriated; it is simply indicative of the other—where the other in question cannot be predicated. Now para as no-thing cannot be configured by means of the designations of master/servitor associated with the individuating inflection referred to earlier. There can be no positivism of para. Nor can there be negativism which essentially posits the other as beyond but nonetheless as an entity/being. For para inheres in everything without ‘itself’ being a thing as such. As the entire projective play—of the relation and non-relation between the formational and non-formational—occurs in and as the formational apparatus of individuated entity (be it a single entity or species), the latter can only operate with its 10

Panchatantram. 2009. Bilingual version translated into Telugu by Jeereddy Balachenna Reddy vol. 2. (Hyderabad: Sanskrita Bhasha Prachara Samiti), pp. 80–82.

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resources even to allude to para by the genitive, possessive acoustic markers. For para appears to be within the entity—thus of the entity, without, however, belonging to it. Hence the prevalence of aham (‘I’ or ‘tvam’) in referring to para. Thus, we get the Chandogya’s celebrated aphoristic formulation: tat-tvam asi—that [para] is you. But the formulation can turn into a teaser and provoke one to figure para (that) through negations of the apara. But such an attempt can only defer figuration through non-reduction: para is not this, not this, etc. Sankara’s Nirvanashatka11 captures this compelling double bind most lucidly. Let us attend to this crucial composition. Manobuddhyahankaara chittaani naaham Na cha shrotrajihve na cha ghraana netre Na cha vyoma bhoomir na tejo na vaayuh Chidaanandaroopah shivo’ham shivo’ham Na cha praana sanjno na vai pancha vaayuh Na vaa sapta dhaatur na vaa pancha koshah Na vaakpaani paadau na chopastha paayu Chidaanandaroopah shivo’ham shivo’ham Na me dvesha raagau na me lobha mohau Mado naiva me naiva maatsarya bhaavah Na dharmo na chaartho na kaamo na mokshah Chidaanandaroopah shivo’ham shivo’ham Na punyam na paapam na saukhyam na duhkham Na mantro na teertham na vedaa na yajna Aham bhojanam naiva bhojyam na bhoktaa Chidaanandaroopah shivo’ham shivo’ham Na me mrutyu shankaa na me jaati bhedah Pitaa naiva me naiva maataa na janmah Na bandhur na mitram . gurunaiva shishyah Chidaanandaroopah shivo’ham shivo’ham Aham nirvikalpo niraa kaara roopo Vibhutvaa cha sarvatra sarvendriyaanaam Na cha sangatam naiva muktir na meyah Chidaanandaroopah shivo’ham shivo’ham

As an unavoidable compromise, the composition can be roughly rendered as follows:

11

‘Nirvanashatkam’, in Sri Sankaracharyakruta Stotramulu, edited by Challapalli Venkata Ratna Prasad (Hyderabad, 2017), pp. 201–03.

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Neither desiring memory, nor discerning resolve, neither individuating impulse nor attentive element am I Neither the listening nor tasting, the smelling nor seeing sense Neither the sky nor the earth, neither the fire nor the wind Intently rapturous form (of) Shiva I am, Shiva I am. Neither the sign of life breath nor the five winds am I, Neither the seven tissues12 nor the five sheaths13 Neither the utterance, hands and feet, nor the gratifying genitals and excretory anus Intently rapturous form (of) Shiva I am, Shiva I am. Neither aversion nor affection, neither greed nor longing have I, Neither blinding pride nor arrogant moods Neither cultivable tenor nor desirable wealth, neither erotic drive nor the ultimate release Intently rapturous form (of) Shiva I am, Shiva I am. Neither virtue nor vice, neither comfort nor sorrow have I, Neither mantras nor pious crossings or waters, neither the Vedas nor the fire ceremonies, Neither edible, eaten nor the eater am I Intently rapturous form (of) Shiva I am, Shiva I am. Neither suspicion of death nor jati difference, Neither father nor mother nor birth have I Neither relatives nor friends, neither teacher nor pupil Intently rapturous form (of) Shiva I am, Shiva I am. I am changeless and formless in form, Everywhere always permeate all the faculties Neither union nor release nor limits have I Intently rapturous form (of) Shiva I am, Shiva I am.

In an acoustic reflective composition, the Shatka (a verse composition of six stanzas) weaves the ‘relation’ of the formational and non-formational most economically. It at once enumerates the factors that compose entities; these factors are the internal and external cognitive, perceptual faculties, the winds, the substances and the actions they induce, the emotions they incite, the ends they aim at, the returns they promise or accrue, the status the entity occupies, the dualities of birth and cessation 12

The human body is composed of seven tissues which result from the source dhaatu of digestive fire (jattharaagni) and these vulnerable (sub)dhaatus are: Rasaasrungmaamsa medhosti majjaa shukraani dhaatavah, fluid/plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, bone marrow and semen are dhaatus (tissues). Cf., Vagbhata, Ashtaangasamgrahamu (with Shashilekha commentary), trans. Panyam Parthasarathisarma (Hyderabad: Telugu Akademi, 2004), 1.1, p. 17. 13 The body complex is said to be composed a set of five sheaths: (i) Annamaya (food-filled), (ii) Praanamaya (filled with life breaths), (iii) Manomaya (replete with desiring memory), (iv) Vijnaanamaya (surfeit with discerning sense) and (v) Aanandamaya (replete with rapturous delight). As can be seen, each of latter sheaths is subtler than the preceding ones. Cf., Taittiriya Upanishad, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Surabharati Publications, 1984), pp. 36–70.

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1 Formations of the (Im)Possible …

and the web of relations the entity is exposed to and indulges. These are the ‘positively’ figured constitutive elements of the formational operation of an entity. Yet in the same figuration, the Shatka radically denies its configured status with regard to para. At the centre of this figural and non-figural weave lurks the genitive/possessive syllabic unit—I/mine/of/aham/tvam. Thus, the same apperceptible, inducive, provocative and relational factors affirm and identify the syllabic unit with the complex they form. Thus, the ‘I’ is the one/which/who perceives, cognizes, relates, receives and enjoys and suffers, etc. In all such reductive conflations, the genitive possessive syllable is little more than each of the discrete and individuated entities; thus, there would be infinite ‘I’s and their infinite possessions. ‘Heterogeneous’ to this affirmative conflation of the perceptual-cognitive apparatus, inheres in the very complex that (para), which is irreducible to the factors and the complex. Wherever the affirmative factors culminate into a figural formation, there reposes the nonformable para. But the fact of the matter is that even this non-formable other too gets designated in the verbal–visual figurations by the genitive pronominal ‘aham’. But such a designation or indicator is without a referent—without predication—which all the posited attributes in the first five stanzas enumerate (and differentiate). The term circulates but it represents no-thing. The implications of this situation are worthy of attention. The structure of the Shatka with its weave of the formational and the nonformational has very deep resonances across myriad compositions in very different domains (this will be elaborated later). Para as aham cannot yield (even through the negative) a positive referential entity. But the anxious effort to name and form that which cannot be will prosper interminably—and one might say, innocently or naively. The replenishing of vaangmaya, the multiplications of plastic and pigmental formations, the spectacularization of the enactive bodies and all such demanding and alluring initiatives and enterprises cannot alter the relation or non-relation between the formational (be it biocultural, verbal, visual or performative) and the non-formational. As every entity comes forth on the basis of this relation or non-relation, every entity is structured by the inherence of the non-formational. Consequently, the non-formational across any and every entity is the ‘same’—it pervasively reposes in all entities: Samam sarveshu bhooteshu tishtantam parameshwaram (Bhagavadgita, 13.27, p. 670).

Among all the (moving and stable) formations equally and firmly resides (or seats) para. Para cannot but be same because it is not a figuration to be differentiated and modified (nirvikalpa). It is precisely this unchanging and formless inhering para that is designated as ‘aham’: This non-formable pervasive aham/para—radically different from the other aham which is reducible to the figurative projectional complex—is always everywhere across all faculties: Aham nirvikalpo niraakaara roopo vibhutvaccha sarvatra sarvendriyanaam I am changeless and formless in form,

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Everywhere always permeate all the faculties Ahamaatmaa goodakesha sarva bhootaashaya sthitah Ahamaadishcha madhyan cha bhootaanaamanta eva cha (Bhagavadgita, 10.20, p. 533).

I am the inhering circulating atma residing in the hearts of all the formations, O the vanquisher of sleep; I am at the beginning, in the middle and at the ending of all the formations (says Krishna through the inescapable verbal apparatus of formations). Para as aham reposes in the heart of every entity and remains with the emergence, prevalence and dissolution of the entities. Yet, it remains unaffected by any of these transformations—as it is changeless no-thing. The apparently two ways of accounting the genitive possessive syllable seem to resonate with positive and negative theologies of the West. Yet, there is nothing common between the Indian sonic idioms and the European inscriptional determinations. There is no assertion, either positively or negatively, of a supreme, superessential, transcendental god as the absolute cause of everything, in the Indian traditions. The Christian god is fundamentally the one who is at a distance, withdrawn and the one who abandons what all he has created. One requires unwavering faith/love in/of that god to receive his attention. Para’s pervasive permeability, and at the same time its non-relationality with everything which is discernible, is projected neither with an essence nor with any absolute sovereign power. Indian accents are fundamentally oriented to working of the given through the given. Yet, the given can never be exhaustively determined by the present—the instant of the manifestation or formation of the given. The given is always already impacted by the remainders from the indeterminable past, and it relays itself into the indefinite future. What puts the given to work or movement is the ineluctable action which the given catalyses, nurtures and undergoes or exposes itself to. Every entity and relation that emerges is on the one hand exposed to the temporal flows of residues and relays discontinuously; every given comes forth through the weave of the formational and the non-formational on the other. The action or activity of the given can occur only under the conditions brought into play by these flows and weaves. Surely, actions can lend themselves to agentive, possessive appropriations. Action can succumb to such appropriations when it invests in the individuated given as entirely autonomous, immune from any flows or weaves, in its instantial existence. Such action gets designated as ahamkaara. But when action is rendered with sensitivity towards the temporal flows and the figural and non-figural weave and when one learns to be indifferent towards the ends or effects of action (na dharmo na chaartho na kaamo na mokshah), such an action occurs more as a play than as an invested agentive strife. The acting entity in this play appears also as an indifferent witness—a ‘position’ or mode of being which is usually attributed to para. Para inheres in the complex of attributes or substances without affecting or succumbing to them. Nor does para generate them: para as no-thing does no-thing. To be sure, the duality of the doing and non-doing has no salience with regard to the pervasive para. These negational projections from the attributional apparatus radically differentiate para from the super-essential sovereign of Christian theology. Para is neither potential nor dynamic,

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1 Formations of the (Im)Possible …

neither virile nor vulnerable—nor is it any superlative being beyond being, as the Pseudo-Dionysius announces. If para is no-thing why should para be ‘there’? What is the ‘point’ of it ‘being there’? But the ‘thereness’ of para inhering in the complex cannot be reckoned in terms of the factors and relations pertinent to the complex; the ‘there’ has neither substance nor relation nor position; nor can it be referred to as being. The thereness of para can be traced only in intimating the limits of the complex of the projectional apparatus. The finitude of the apparatus is forever staggered, and the complex is made thoroughly porous by the punctuation of para’s elliptical intimations. It is this intimate but unfigurable dance of para that makes it impossible for the individuated entity to project itself as an impregnable unified and autonomous consolidation. The non-figurable aham occludes the figurational ahamkaara from proclamations of delusional sovereignty. The occlusion, however, here is neither of an active agentive nor of a passive receiver’s work. Neither being potential nor actual, para neither works nor can it be put to work. Thus, para cannot be accorded the status of any transcendental ideal contrasted with the mundane reality. Given that para is always already everywhere, but it can be reflected upon and sensed only when entities and relations emerge and only in the context of these figural formations. When para gets covered over by the projectional webs as it can happen with the individuated entities, para can get confounded and get projected as a part of the configured complex or apparatus. The projected para can get reduced to the assertive agentive figure. Consequently, the radical genitive syllable aham succumbs to the projection of ahamkaara. In other words, the seductive binds and bonds of the complex obscure the projective aham(kaara) from sensing the limits of the finite apparatus or the complex. This entails the individuated entity to presume itself to be the be all and end all of the present moment of its existence. Consequently, the fear and violence of difference propel actions of the entity which in turn abandon the entity to the vicious cycle of differential emergences and dissolutions without respite. But there is yet another way of moving in the circle. The individuated entity learns to see the work of the projectional apparatus and experiences the impulsions of action that reduce one to the complex and its relentless reiterations. This sense of temporality of the flows and relays provides a chance to release the entity from its fixation or reduction to the (d)elusive present. As the present no longer appears to be the exhaustively determinative cause of action, the entity learns to see the limits of individuated assertive agentivity and the limits of the formational complex that appeared itself to be. Yet, the entity is given as an individuated formation— the singular unit or scene of difference and indifference and the relayed effects of intractable flows—it cannot escape its role in action: the entity has to act or enact or is acted upon. Thus, there appear to be two modes of action open to the formation: (i) actions that delusively immunize it from relays and flows and project the entity itself as the be all and end all of existence; then, the vicious circle reiterates itself, and (ii) actions that sense the work of the circle and they are rendered without investment in their presumed effects. These are indifferent or non-calculative actions. While the first

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mode of differentiation lends to the circle of pain and sorrow—a circle which can absorb joy and pleasure and turn them painful—the other provides the possibility of rendering actions indifferently, unaffectedly. The second mode can turn the actor into an unaffected witness within the actional circuit. Thus, the insulation of the actional impulse on the one hand and the release of the impulse from the pulls and projections of the circuitry on the other appear to be the incalculable pulsations of para itself; even then, it must be indicated that para as such (if one can say this) is free from all pulsations: apathos para.

1.3 Actional Apparatus When shrouded by the projections, the projected para appears prone to the pathos of actional impulses. Here, the reflective resources of Sanskrit language figure the play of para in the most pregnant notion of aadhyaatma. Aadhyaatma alludes to the state and mode of being in/as the complex. More specifically, aadhyaatma is a convergence of the body, manas (the abode of desire and memory) and atma (para that circulates in the formation) in (as) the individuated entity. Here, the attributive and substantial elements of the complex have a tendency persistently to cover and project para (atma) as a part of the complex. Thus, aadhyaatma is the fundamental unit exposed to the challenge of relation: how does (one’s) manas/body relate and reckon para? Aadhyaatma is the medium and the state of the discretized entity to play its role metonymically on the projectional scene. When the entity reduces itself to the attributive and substantiated complex (body and manas), then projectional miscognition entails. Precisely, it is such projectional miscognition which gets described as adhyaasa. The etymological resonance between adhyaasa and aadhyaatma cannot be missed. Adhyaasa is a projective or superimposed cognition or relation—where one thing is projected as another resulting in the miscognition of both as identical. The attributive and substantive elements get superimposed on para and the latter is conflated with the manifestations of the complex of body and manas. Adhyaasa can occur only in the context of or within the contours of aadhyaatma. But the latter cannot be reduced to the former. For aadhyaatma as a mode of being provides the possibility of sensing the delusive projections or superimpositions of the complex. Aadhyaatma is the medium which enables the discernment of the pervasive spread of para and the radical limits it suggests. Aadhyaatma as a state can also provide the condition of (im)possibility of the discrete entity to take part in the scene non-affectedly and indifferently. The apeiron of the formational (apara) (perhaps these two resonant words along with aporia have a common source), its indeterminability, its limitlessness, its nondirectionality and what inheres in it forever spells the finitude and reach of the formational, directional, perspectival, agentive from within and without these projectional manifestations. The entirety of differential impulse—including spatio-temporal variations—is wholly rooted in the projective complex. The complex’s differentiating

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1 Formations of the (Im)Possible …

manifestations operate through spatio-temporal categories. Consequently, the question of finitude or limits is intelligible only within the scene of the projectional apparatus. Therefore, the question of sensing para or the limits of apara too is pertinent only within the projectional scene. Otherwise, we would be succumbing to the metaphysical abyss of dualities (sensible/intelligible, visible/invisible and mundane/transcendental). It would be hasty to take recourse to the duality of real and unreal to designate para and the projectional apparatus of apara, respectively. Such anxious attempts betray themselves by imposing the differential schema on the relation between para and apara. The relation is not even that of an aporia, strictly speaking, where decisionism gets privileged in a presumably paralysing situation. The given of the projectional apparatus—understood in all its complexity and nuance—is the only scene which is the effect and medium of action. The mode of rendering action, the way one learns to play one’s role as an individuated entity, while being with others, matters in this scene. Action is open to the flows and relays of effects. The efficacy of action can be tested only on the projectional scene. The trope of scene is a spatio-temporal category—it spaces occurrences, spectacles and relations temporally. The trope is metonymically related to the biocultural formations that people and move (on) the scene. The biocultural formations, in the Indian context, encompass everything that apara generates and differentiates. The most singular unit of a biocultural formation which is the actional effect and conduit is the discretized body. Therefore, the efficacy of action must be tested in the attunement of such discretized bodies to the temporality (understood in the sense of convergence of flows and relays) of action. The attunement can be sensed only in embodied enactive renderings of action—not through its deferrals or detours. Although the latter detours or deferrals may have a role in clarifying the task, no attunement can be efficacious through the detours of surrogate bodies. No wonder why Indian traditions reiterate the need to suspend the detours and deferring substitutes of nama and roopa in rendering non-affective, non-relational, non-attributive action. It is important to point out here that when such reiterations themselves bring into play the formations of nama and roopa, they are fundamentally enactive in their modes. These mnemocultural modes of singing, recitation, rendering of rituals and ceremonies persistently put the discretized biocultural body to work in order to attune it to action without returns within the scene of projection. As action in the projective scene matters—action that does not succumb to the adhyaasa of the projective apparatus—it is the aadhyaatmic mode that is accorded significance in the Indian traditions. The mode and the state of aadhyaatma are dependent on the relation that gets worked out among manas, body and para— it is a mnemopraxial relation where the intimations of manas are performatively rendered. The entire performative play of aadhyaatma is indifferent to the surrogate bodies of externally retained memory—outside the aadhyaatmic convergence—such as inscriptional formations of books, archives, libraries, museums, databases, etc. Yet, the tradition can account for why recourse to such surrogates (here mainly verbal evocations or/of visible forms) occurs. The embodied entities and the substantial formations find it extremely difficult to get interested in and focus on the inarticulate, the unformed, says the Bhagavadgita (Bhagavadgita, 12.5, p. 615). The bodied

1.3 Actional Apparatus

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or formed bring forth formed entities. But in the Indian traditions, even these generated forms too are conceived, nurtured, celebrated and spread across in essentially performative modes. The finite projective formations are necessarily the ways to sense the infinite; for they can never be impregnable, they are always already pervaded by the nonformational para. Every finite manifestation can open up into the infinite. But there are two ways to see and assume the infinite and confuse them: (i) to assume the proliferative recursive multiplicities as infinite: this would only assert and celebrate the formational apparatus, and (ii) to sense the infinite as the radical limit of the formational in general of any and every individuated emergence. The limit is not something externally marked by which the finite is demarcated. The infinite inheres in the finite and thus implies the possibility of opening it up limitlessly. It is this teasing play of para/apara relationship which stelliferously disperses (Indian) cultural forms and cultural formations limitlessly. Nirvaanashatka figures and forms this with its aphoristic force.

1.4 Formational Instants Indian cultural forms of the smriti tradition—such as Purana, Itihaasa, Kavya and Naatya—disseminate learning and disciplines of liveable knowing in distinctive situations of living. The scene of learning is formed of the learned, the learnable and the learning. These cultural forms, in other words, impart and disperse liveable learning—a learning that nurtures living and enables learning—a praxial knowledge. Every purana would begin with such a scene of learning. Vishnudharmottaramahapuraana, as will be discussed later, thus begins as a dialogue between sage Markandeya and king Vajra. The dialogue expands over innumerable domains—such as architecture, sculpture, music, painting and dance—and distinct practices associated with these domains such as puja, vrata, daana, tapa (ritual acts and mindful ordeals). Through such detailed and contextualized delineations, learning is imparted. As we will see in the second part of this work, a whole range of puranas unfolds and imparts variegated domains of learning (mathematical astronomy, genealogies of formation, actional circuits, generationally imparted practices about rains and rivers, territories and janapadas, curses and boons). Yet, puranas are not the only custodians of such transmission of learning. Shaastraas too excel in generating and imparting such learning. Shaastraas are not necessarily composed with accounts of individuated lives of specific figures (genealogies, royal lineages, etc.) and often focus on a specific domain—be it vyaakarana— formations of language (Bhartrhari), dharma-aachaara—cultivable modes of being (Manu), health and longevity (Charaka) music and musicality (Sarngadeva) or the praxis of literary inquiry (Bhamaha to Jagannatha). Yet, no injunction prevents shaastraas from drawing on the puarnic and itihaasic impulse. Thus, Bharata’s Naatyashaastra begins with an itihasic theme; a concerned group of gods appeals to Brahma to invent a cultural form that would reorient the human

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and other formations form vulgar and degenerate modes of being to which they have succumbed. Brahma invents an unprecedented and playful form of audiovision (naatya) and assigns the task to Bharata to improvise and impart it. A whole set of sages comes to learn this new form from Bharata. The learning scene unfolds a dialogue—and it imparts the most colossal and exhaustively delineated verbal– gestural learning to the sages. Such learning can be enlivened and transformed only in living it—in putting it to inventive practice. Similarly, Manudharmashaastra begins with a direct question from sages desiring to know about the enduring customs and practices of various cultural formations (varnas and jatis). Manu, however, does not provide a straightforward answer to this question but takes a puranic detour and begins recounting the (re)originating emergence of divergent formations and relations among them. Such an account has, as we will see, a deep bearing on the rest of the shaastra. But neither Sarngadeva’s Sangitaratnaakara nor the works of literary inquiries takes recourse to puranic or itihasic mode directly. Nevertheless, the learning of these puranic and itihaasic forms is palpably at work even in these compositions. As a part of the smriti-vaangmaya, they breathe in the puranic–itihaasic milieu. The poet is the Prajapati—lord of biocultural formations—of the poetic family universe (kavireva prajapati) proclaims Aanandavardhana. Sarngadeva’s entire account about marga and deshi musical streams directly refers to the puranic lokas of humans and gods, respectively. Above all, along with such compositional strand, reflective creative work in Indian traditions carries with it a deeper common current—and this current springs from the inquiring impulse concerning the relation between the formational and the non-formational—that is, between apara and para. Here, one may be tempted to configure the compositional strands and the common impulse into some metaphysical conception of form and content. Such a conception is alien to these traditions. This is so for two related factors. Firstly, each of such genres—be it of shaastra, itihaasa, purana or kavya—despite the internal or received characterization of the genre in question, cannot be rigorously submitted to such given characterization. The characterization has no normative status in these traditions. Thus, for example, there are five distinctive characteristics of the puranic genre which puranas themselves reiterate and which Amara specifies thus: Puraanam panchalaskhanam Sargascha pratisargascha vamsho manvantaraani cha Vamshaanucharitam cheti lakshanaanaam tu panchakam14

Purana has five characteristics. Emergence of universe of beings, re-emergence of them (after their partial dissolution), genealogies, the epochs of Manus and royal lineages are the five characteristics. 14

Amarakosha, trans. Tallapaka Tiruvenkataryulu (Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 2006), 1.6.5 (extra verse), p. 126.

1.4 Formational Instants

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But these characteristics are not accorded any status of principles that definitively determine a puranic composition. Each purana—even as it reiterates such features— moves on in its own way and brings forth a varied composition. Mammata’s characterization of kavya can be said to have a deeply reverberating echo across all genres of composition in Indian traditions: Mammata says that a kavya is: Niyatikruta niyama rahitaam… Ananya paratrantraam15

That which is composed in accord with conventions and rules—but abides by no regimen of principles; that which depends on none other [: that is kavya]. No wonder such generic composition cannot be easily fitted into the canonized categories of European tradition. Only a forcible reduction would turn the Mahabharata into an epic, the puranas into mythologies, shaastraas into sciences, kavyas into literature. Secondly, the common impulse concerning the question of relation cannot be turned into some hidden kernel of the compositional shell of genres in these traditions. The question directly concerns the very nature of the form or formation itself. No formation that comes forth can turn itself into a homogeneous totality. Inherent in every formation is that (para) which occludes such individuating unifications decisively. In other words, while attending to generic features compositional species differentiates itself eloquently. What occludes such unity emphasizes the limits of the formationality in general. Therefore, the question of relation has little to do with categorically segregating division of shell and kernel, of form and content. The question of relations pertains essentially to the mode of being of the formation itself. Therefore, the task of learning centres on the praxial mode—on how to. Indian traditions can be said not only to impart a certain learning but to include in it the very question of the mode—how to—as the medium of learning. No wonder we come across interminable queries regarding how to: how to write kavyas (lapses, defects, virtues and distinctions involved), how to invoke gods, how to render puja and daana, how to make images, temples, paintings, gestures, etc. When the modes of doing get disconnected or perverted, they attract curses; or, in other words, the formation in question is exposed to the consequences of its doings or actions. The generic question of how to involves at every moment the test of relation of the formation itself: how does the formation relate it to itself ? It is a tricky question and can be an easy alibi for narcissistic indulgence. The itself is a challenge indeed. When the formation in question is projected as a unified totality and disavows the non-formational it lends itself to indulgence. But when the formation sublimates the non-formational exclusively and spurns and repulses the formational, the itself is still haunted by the formational, though the latter is here configured negatively; for, the non-formational as such, in itself, does not exist, it is no-thing. Nor can the challenge of ‘itself’ be met with the hope of unifying the 15

Mammata, Kavyaprakaashamu, trans. (with commentary) Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Samskrutabhasha Pracharasamiti, 1995), 1.1, p. 1.

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formational and non-formational. In such a case, the question of relation, the task of relating and the challenge of responding to ‘itself’ and in a word, existence as such, will have no place at all. Therefore, the challenge of how the formational relates to itself will have to be faced within the matrix of the formational universe. This is the learning that Indian traditions have imparted in countless number of ways across millennia. The Nirvaanashatka is a fractal of such a liveable learning. Performative Reflections is a preliminary attempt to trace and figure out the cohering element, if any, among Indian traditions. What enabled communication across very divergent geographical, temporal, locational contexts, and among different cultural formations? What made the cultures of Sangam to receive and respond to the learning dispersed from the Gandhara and Kashmira cultural clusters? What prompted the cultures of Dakshinapatha to interface with those of the Gauda and Kashmira? What made a Dandi or Dinnaga from the Tamil region embrace Sanskrit and make lasting contributions in Sanskrit? What prompted Narayana Guru to reach out to Sankara and beyond him to Upanishads to reorient Malayalam in tumultuous times? These exchanges and responsive receptions have been vibrant over centuries. Modern Indian languages and especially their creative and reflective nodes are unthinkable without the intricately woven textures of these interfaces. What is this shareable impulse that pulsates across the domains of shaastra, naatya, shilpa, chitra, kavya, dharma, vaidya, sangita and others? Performative Reflections is an attempt to address some of these questions in a limited and rather indirect way. Limited because it is impossible to track such an impulse exhaustively and definitively; impulses, as is well known, are radically and notoriously shifting. Indirect, because there is no single domain or work that stands out as the essential centre to comprehend the reflective impulse of Indian traditions. European intellectual tradition provides one such privileged centre in the domain of philosophy. Europe is philosophy itself, and philosophy is Europe in the highly regarded European heritage even to this day. Indian traditions provide no such vantage points—let alone conceptualize such reflective identity. Hence the use of tropes of trace, memory and figure in this work. Indian traditions either evinced no use for an exclusive conceptual grid (ontology, truth, essence, soul, eschatology, telos, etc.) or privileged any particular queen of disciplines. Each of the disciplines of learning (shadangas/Vedaangas, shatdarshanaas, varied genres of composition, etc.) was sustained with vigour and vibrancy for at least a millennium. Neither can one think of an exclusive expert authority nor institution that authorized and regulated or commanded these domains and their circulation. Above all, none in these traditions replenished and transmitted the learning of these domains in the name of a unified identity or ideality—of a race, a people, community, clan, family or a nation. Yet, these traditions shared a reflective impulse which is irreducible to any of the factors or referents indicated here. But none ever felt impelled, even in the Islamic epoch, to thematize and configure the reflective integrity or totality of Indian traditions; it was only enacted embodied in the performative renderings of the tradition. It is only in the European epoch that one begins to see the compulsion to project ‘Indianness’, Bharateeyata, ‘Indian philosophy’ and

1.4 Formational Instants

21

‘Indian literature’. These are the reactive formations that Europe spawned wherever Europe interfaced with the so-called non-Europe. While acknowledging such historical compulsion, Performative Reflections aims not so such at reinforcing some putative Indianness; on the contrary, it affirms the conspicuous absence of any explanations about such a theme in these much endured traditions. This work is a responsive reception of/to the Indian context of teaching— a context saturated by the raucous passions of unexamined guilt, incorrigible selfdenigration, moralistic gesture politics and intellectual destitution today. Emerging as a response to such a context, this work is prompted by the sense that the shareable reflective impulse in the Indian traditions has never been in any kind of isomorphic relation with territorial, historical, political or economic grounds or backgrounds; these factors have become the foundation of identitarianist battles and their consequent calamities in our times. This, however, does not at all mean that the reflective impulse that could be communicated in these traditions floated in some universal diaphanous ether. On the contrary, the spatio-temporal and the verbal–visual generic (desha, kaala, naama, roopa) constituents were scrupulously affirmed or are presupposed in the formation of any entity, relation, mode of being and forms of articulation. Yet, these formations and relations remain irreducible to the referential constituents indicated here. The puranas tirelessly reiterate that Indras, Brahmas, Vyasas, temporalities (epochs) lokas, Vedas and vishwas variedly remerge endlessly. These emerging instants, however (not any particular ones, though), are of significance, for the entire ‘logic’ of emergences is contingent upon what gets done with(in) the instant. Brahma of a particular instant (epoch) ceases to be so in the next instant due to the actional circuit he lends himself to in his prevailing formation. Names cannot be reduced to or identified with definitive referents—for no such absolute referents exist—not even a god or gods. Thus, the instant is the medium and effect of a given formation’s operation of the actional circuit. The sense of iterable instants of existence lending itself to actional circuits which in turn compose the instants: such recursivity is an element of the shared impulse across Indian traditions. Performative Reflections aims at figuring out such impulse and explores the possibility of its enduring shareability in distinctive instants of existence and contexts in which we happen to cohabit today in a spatio-temporal formation called the planet. This work unfolds in three parts. The first part is composed of six relatively short chapters. Each of these chapters focuses on a distinctive composition of a demarcated discipline of learning. Thus, the domains and figures engaged with in this part are Charaka (vaidya), Vyasa (chitra/shilpa), Bharata (naatya), Sarngadeva (sangita), Manu (dharma-aachaara) and Dandi, Vamana and Anandavardhana (kavyameemaamsaa—inquiry into the literary). The task here is to trace how the reflective impulse is at work across these differentiated domains of learning. There are at least four prominent compositional threads that weave cultural forms of the strands of shruti and smriti. They can be found across all genres of composition such as Veda, shaastra, itihaasa, purana, naatya and kavya. These threads can be identified as samvaada (‘dialogue’), narrateme (minimal narrative unit unelaborated), narrative (aakhyaana) and non-narrative (anaakhyaana). Quite often, all

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1 Formations of the (Im)Possible …

these four strands or some of them intersperse with others and either stagger any linear movement of the account or lead to extended detours. It is difficult to find a composition which is exclusively devoted to a linear narrative consummation of an account. On the contrary, one can find the non-narrative thread weaving an entire composition (even here narratemes may pop up—as in Panini’s Ashtadhyaayi). In the composition of the Bhagavadgita, it can be said that the non-narrative thread dominates. Saamkhyakaarika explicitly says that it has avoided narratives and dialogues: Aakhyaayikaa virahitah paravaada vivarjitaaschaapi (devoid of stories and without arguments of others).16 Performative Reflections staggers the chapters in the first part with the interludes of anaakhyaanas. These five anaakhyaanas, hopefully, recall and relay the intimations of the tradition in elliptical ways. The second part of the work is composed of two extended chapters. The first of these chapters mainly engages with the domain of puranas, but the theme focused on is the relation between rain and river; the focused theme, however, is articulated more as a relation between the two major strands that compose the entirety of Indian vaangmaya: shruti and smriti. Thus, inquiring into the relation between rain and river is also at the same time an inquiry into the streams of shruti and smriti. This chapter continues the exploration into the reflective impulse and how it pulsates across these strands. As can be seen, the relation between shruti and smriti weaves the connecting, relating and imparting threads of Indian traditions. In a way, rain and river form the metonymic links with shruti and smriti; the specific metonymic figures that get foregrounded in this chapter are the genre purana and the river Ganga. The second chapter in this part turns to the genre of kavya and explores what is received as the primal kavya of Indian traditions—the Ramayana. This inquiry into kavya does not, however, aim at probing into the Ramayana as a ‘literary’ work or an epic composition for interpreting its structure and its poetic virtues textually; such a ‘literary critical’ indulgence is conspicuous in its absence in the literary inquiries of the Samskruta traditions. On the contrary, the focus of attention in this chapter is the mnemocultural performative renderings of the Ramayana in varied cultural locations in differing modes. The chapter shows how such widely differentiated locations, formations, modes and languages continue to nurture a certain shared sense of the smriti composition in all its dispersals. All the performative renderings discussed in this chapter pertain to traditions that are vibrantly circulating in contemporary times—attesting to the enduring transmission of a liveable learning in the enacted kavya form. The last part of Performative Reflections has two chapters. The first one is an extended account of a major twentieth-century Telugu writer. Spread across colonial and postcolonial periods, his work stands out as probably one of the very few creative reflective engagements with the European epoch from the Indian context. It is the irruptive colonial context which impels this writer, Viswanatha Satyanarayana, to sketch the contours of what can be called the reflective creative background of Indian traditions. In order to figure such contours, his life and work exposes itself to 16

Ishwarakrishna, Saamkhyakaarikalu, trans. (Sri Ramachandrula Koteshwarasarma, Hyderabad: Arsha Vijnana Trust, 1996), 73, p. 58.

1.4 Formational Instants

23

the enduring double currents of Indian traditions and question the European projections of itself and of its others. This chapter tries to show how the shareable reflective impulse which the double strand of Indian traditions transmits across widely differentiated contexts animated the work of a remarkable writer even in the European epoch. Viswanatha’s work experiments with the genre of the novel and the entire experimental environment, and the inquiring energy is drawn from the smriti currents (purana, itihaasa, kavya, shaastra and naatya) of Indian traditions. Given that the word tradition is prominently used in this work, a word of annotation is in order here. The word is used in this work mainly to refer to generationally transmitted reflective practices; tradition is a performative learning received from the palimpsests of immemorial pasts and improvised in indefinite but distinctive situations of practice. Tradition kindles, nurtures and imparts liveable learning across what is called India. As mentioned earlier, this work does not emerge directly from any training in Sanskrit traditions. In the course of my teaching and inquiry into the (European) humanities, I found it increasingly important to expose myself to works in Sanskrit in their originals. All my sources of Sanskrit compositions in this work are from the bilingual renderings from the Telugu region. All the renderings of Sanskrit verses and passages in English in this work are my own attempts to provide the import of Sanskrit creative reflections. I do so without claiming to be an expert in these areas. As a non-expert, I have avoided professional correctness in the book and rendered Indian language terms without any diacritical marks. The last, short, concluding chapter of the book is a recapitulation of the traversals of liveable learning imparted in Indian traditions. If the lively currents of Indian traditions continue to endure across irruptive upheavals over millennia, which are stridently disavowed in the teaching and researching contexts of Indian universities, the chapter reiterates the challenge of how to receive and respond to these currents from our contexts today. As we move on in our contexts sensing the shareable, the conclusion emphasizes in close-up the necessity to be inventive in our responsive reception of /to both India and Europe.

Chapter 2

Anaakhyaana—I

The Indian vaangmaya (pervasive utterance) has unfolded in two related currents: (i) compositions of the heard and (ii) compositions of the recalled. Hearing, recalling and mindful attention are the three essential technics of cultures of memoryof India. The heard compositions are mostly aphoristic, elliptical and allusive without elaborated narrative or descriptive detail with evolving plots or consummated counsels; whereas the recalled compositions, while drawing on the features of the heard, depart from the former in their expansiveness, inventiveness, assembling colossal domain-specific detail (about medicaments, gestures, song, music, stars and their movement, acoustic–syllabic units, images, icons, idioms, temples, idols, etc.); they weave labyrinthine narratives, dialogic strands and non-narrative sonic ciphers and thus proliferate in infinitely divergent ways. Above all, the ‘heard’ ones project anonymity—not centred on any conception of ‘being’/ purusha (apaurusheya), whereas the ‘recalled’ ones focus on the purusha (as the subtle being) and often indulge in naming, even while erasing the name/form. Yet, these forays are never severed decisively from the intimationsof the heard. If the recalled compositions provide an enhancive detour, as a responsive reception of/to the heard, it should be possible to configure what is shared among these compositions. Here, the guiding thread that weaves across the vaangmaya can be specified as the indeterminable relation between the formational (that which gets formed) and the non-formational [that which cannot be formed]. One can explore the relation, however, only through the weave of the formations. But every strand of the weave is deeply and persistently retouched by the formless. The formational, in other words, cannot come forth without the non-formational ‘touch’. Thus, every discretely woven compositional formation emerges with the touching inherence of the formless untouchable.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_2

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Chapter 3

Charaka’s Pharmacia

Abstract What is called ‘life’ is an emergence among emergences; it is a formation from among discretized elementary forms (atoms, motes, molecules). Life proliferates as/in a complex formation of entities; it is an effective emergence of centripetal and centrifugal forces. The dynamic of these forces precedes and follows the emergence of the so-called life. The source of these forces or the dynamic as such is indeterminable and unformable. Yet, its infinite effects (forms and formations) can be configured and measured. In such a context can there be a definitive determination of life/living? Can life/living be reduced to its specific instances of existence? What orients or disorients life/living? What is the aetiology of disease? Does one need medicines to cure diseases? What are medicines and how are they prepared and administered? How to sustain salubrity and longevity of life/living in instants of existence buffeted by incalculable and undeterminable forces? In order to address this set of questions, this chapter engages with the work of Charaka, Charkasamhita. The chapter demonstrates that Charaka’s compendium emerges essentially from a shared reflective current and thus contributes to the enduring coherence of Indian performative reflective traditions.

3.1 Ends of Man The aetiology (or what resonates more cognately with this Greek term, itihaasa) of Charakasamhita can be traced back to the Himalayas. The Himalayas embody the renowned nurseries of medicinal and other life-nurturing plants in the puranic delineation of Indian topography (or to be more precise, Bhuloka). Over fifty veteran sages, excelled in fervid ordeals and vanquishers of passional vagaries, gather in the snow mountains to deliberate on the question of the body. Why the body of all the things of the universe? The body, they reason out, is the essential medium for undertaking the necessary task of meeting the four ‘ends’ of ‘man’ (purushaarthaas). Indian traditions specify these four ends as (i) cultivable ethos (endowments), (ii) deserving wealth, (iii) temperable/tamperable desire and (iv) enduring releasement. Given these ‘ends’, the body in question is obviously not a ‘bare’ formation bereft of any reflective mediation; it is primarily a biocultural formation. Given that any © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_3

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individuated body can after all be only a unit of a species, all bodies are already figured as mediated formations (be they mountains, trees, rivers or other stable or moving entities; these themes will be taken up in later chapters). Given that every formation that emerges is exposed to an actional circuit pertinent to that formation, the biocultural formation of the human body is exposed to the task of rendering the actional circuit formed of the four ends of man. Hence the primality of the body in the deliberations of the sages. They are aware that this biocultural formation is vulnerable and ephemeral. Its vulnerability results when it deviates from the task or perverts its actional circuits. Ephemeral because, like any emergent formation, this body is exposed to dissolution and transformation. Under such constraints, the sages reflect on the ways to nurture the body in such a way that it can be reoriented from vulnerable indulgences (as we will discuss later, Bharata’s attempt in the Naatyashaastra was precisely the same) and the ways in which the longevity of such a salubrious formation can be sustained. The Himalayan sages reach a consensus that the only form of liveable learning which meets these demands is the one called Ayurveda—knowledge of longevity of living. They are aware that Brahma has brought forth, like many other similar forms of learning, such a discipline of knowledge. As Indra is currently the custodian of this learning, the sages choose sage Bharadvaja from the assembly and depute him to Indra to learn this discipline pertaining to the salubrious longevity of life. As in the case of Indra, who received this learning from others, Bharadvaja too imparts it to his student sage Atreya who in turn passes it on to six of his students. Agnivesha is one of them who excels in this learning, and he improvises this liveable learning and imparts it to others; it is in such lineage of teaching that Charaka receives this liveable learning pertaining to ‘life’. It is this scene of Agnivesha’s teaching that we get in a dialogue form in Charakasamhita. Given the primacy of the biocultural formation, its actional circuit exposed to the four ends, the first chapter of this work (Charakasamhita) is devoted to the biocultural reflections pertaining to the body and its composition; the body and its exposure to other formations and relations; its reception of elements of other entities—the medicinal substances, seasonal environs, and their moods and tempers. Thus, Charaka’s compendium is not a catalogue of diseases and treatments. Understanding of diseases and specification of treatment are entirely based on the knowledge of ‘life’ forms one is dealing with, suggests Charaka. The life form that is the focus of attention in the compendium is the ‘life-living-being’ (jeeva/jeevi) in general on the one hand and the three sexually differentiated human beings on the other. However, the human does not serve as the exclusive model for the knowledge of ‘life’ forms. Charaka explicitly shows how spurring of the senses (of seeing, touch, taste, smell and sound) is at work among trees, plants and creepers.1 It is known that there are medical treatises

1

Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, trans. Viswhanathasastri (Madras: Vavilla Press, 1935), 1.1.48, pp. 25–26.

3.1 Ends of Man

29

such as vrikshaayurveda, ashvaayurveda and gajaayurveda (disciplines of learning pertaining longevity of trees, horses and elephants) in the tradition.2 Yet, there is no singular concept of ‘life’ as such in Charaka (and probably other treatises on treatment of diseases of life-living-being). None of the three terms— praana, jeevita andaayuh—often used in these treatises is identical to the concept of life. In other words, to put it quickly, one can say that there is no ontology of life in these traditions of reflection. Every term that Charaka works with pertaining to the thematic of living is already in circulation centuries before the compendium was put together. Thus, the Bruhadaaranyaka says: Praano vaa angaanaagm rasah praano hi vaa angaanagm rasa

Praana is the essence of the [bodily] parts. Praana results from the conjoining of the body and its faculties (Bruhadaaranyaka, 1.3.19, p. 153, and also p. 128). Praanohi bhootanaamaayuh Praana alone is the aayuh of elements/beings—

says the Taittireeyaupanishad (Taittiriya Upanisshad, 2.1, p. 45). What is common to all these terms, however, is that they are all involved in movement; they refer to movement. Thus, praana is essentially one of the five types of air (the pancha vaayus referred to in the Nirvaanashatka), which circulate in the body and enable the internal movements within the body and the body’s external movements as well. These different airs/breaths move across different parts of the body. Thus, praana— breath—circulates through the nose and mouth and up to the heart and exhales impurities from these regions (cf., Sankara’s commentary about all the five distinct airs of the body, Bruhadaaranyaka, 3.4.1, pp. 446–447). Now, that which bears and holds praana is referred to as jeevitham: Jeevayati praanaan iti jeevitham (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, 1.1.42, p. 17 [translator’s exegesis]).

Thus, jeevitham also is something that is persistently on the move as long as it holds praana (breath). Receiving the reflective sources already in circulation, Charaka’s compendium opens up and advances a specific kind of response: how to sustain and extend a healthy jeevitha? The first line of the sage Atreya in a samvaada where a whole group of sages was gathered to engage with this concern about jeevitham is as follows: Athaato deergham jeevitamadhyaayam (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, 1.1.2. p. 1.)

Now the study/inquiry into longevity of jeevitham [begins]. But how does Charaka (and the sages mentioned by him) understand this jeevitham? Charaka’s formulation most economically configures the reflective unit 2

Cf., Sri Vishnudharmottara Mahapuranamu, edited and translated by K. V. S. Deekshitulu & D. S. Rao, P. Seetaramanjaneyulu (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arshabharati Trust, 1988), Part II, pp. 63–64 (for Vrikshaayurveda) and pp. 102–117 (for ashva, gaja treatment).

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which must itself be put to work in order to attain and sustain a healthy jeevitham. How is jeevitham? Shareerendriya sattvaatma samyogo dhaari jeevitham nityagaschaa anubandhascha paryaayairaayu ruchyate (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, p.1.1.42, p. 17).

Jeevitham is that which is borne by the conjunction of the body, its internal and external faculties, manas (or) virtuous or serene atma. That which departs every day and which conjoins generationally are synonyms of aayu—where aayu refers to an ephemeral temporal span (Aayu follows the ‘spurs’ in its span (from manas)). Thus, the generationally formed ephemeral body complex holds or bears the transient span of jeevitham. The one who seems to bear the essence of jeevitham in the complex can also be referred to as jeevi—the life-living-being. In Charaka the life-living-being is discussed extensively as sattvaatma or as purusha (we will return to this). Charaka’s compendium explores mainly how to extend and sustain the living in/of this ephemeral complex; it is not aimed at endowing it with immortality. The transience of any and every formation cannot be altered. But why should one strive for this longevity of the ephemeral? This was the original premise with which the Himalayan sages began their deliberations. Dharmaartha kaama mokshaanaam aarogyam moolamuttamam (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, 1.1.15, p. 8).

Health is the most precious source for rendering dharma, artha, kaama and moksha [the four ‘ends’ of man]. These are the four virtuous ends of life-living-being in existence; these are also the modes of going about of the ephemeral span of being in the loka (‘world’). The loka itself stands on the components of the body complex. The body (shareera), sattva (manas/virtue) and atma form the pillars of the loka: Lokastishtati samyogaat tatra ‘Sutrasthaana’ 1.1.46, p. 23).

sarvam

pratishtitam

(Charaka,

Charakasamhita,

From the conjoining of the three on which stands the loka and in the loka everything, action, comfort, sorrow, birth and death operate and stand.

3.2 Therapy Sans Pharmacos The entire compendium of Charaka is an extended praxial reflection or liveable learning on the relation between these singular units pertaining to the concern of living: the finitude of the body complex and the arena of the loka which bears and encompasses (and is borne by) modes of being. Now the body complex, like the loka, is a singularized, discrete entity. But both are composed of dhaatus—substances, tissues, qualities and actions which replenish or

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31

destroy the entities. The dhaatus in this context are specifically numbered three, and they are the primal elements that contribute to the formation of any entity; these are: vaata (wind), pitta (fire) and kapha (water). When there is parity among the dhaatus, health flourishes and comfort and pleasure accrue or entail; disparity among them entails disease and brings along sorrow (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, 1.1.53, p. 31 and 1.9.4, p. 203). Excesses or shortfalls in the functioning of dhaatus result in illnesses. Focused on the individuated entity of the body complex, Charaka identifies diseases as of two kinds: unknown or accidental and manasic. They both are affected by the states of dhaatus. The unknown accidental ones affect the body (and its external faculties) through winds, fire, the departed beings, cognitive–perceptual longings, pishaachas and bhootas. Accidental illnesses are the result of external onslaughts; whereas the manasic ones erupt due to provocation of actional sediments that lie dormant in every body complex. Some of these are envy, jealousy, rage, fear, pride, hatred and sorrow. Bharata, as will be discussed later, specifies these sediments as eight in number. As can be seen, the manasic illnesses are unleashed internally. It is important to note that the compendium does not rush towards its pharmacological almanac to prescribe medicines for these two kinds of disease. In fact, Charaka does not provide any medicines at all in this context. For external invasions, he suggests ritual, tactical practices—such as making offerings to gods, rendering sacrifices and other such enactments of the body; whereas for the internal eruptions the way out is seen from learning/knowledge, putting learning to practice, fortitude, recall/remembrance of the heard and learnt and focused attention freed from vagaries of perceptual–cognitive longings (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, 1.1.58, p. 36 and pp. 1.1.51–53, pp. 171–73). The compendium puts together a bewildering range of medicaments most minutely described, prepared through excruciating processes and regimented with utmost diligence and sensitivity towards seasons, locations, constitutions (of the body and of the medicaments, and their endowments and temperaments); although the bulk of the compendium preoccupies itself with diseases, medicaments and treatment, ‘Charaka’ identifies the root or source of disease (be it external or internal) to be ignorance or nescience (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Sutrasthaana’, 1.1.25–30, pp. 162–164). Nowhere does Charaka isolate and categorically demarcate the biophysical entity from its transgenerational inheritances and actional endowments. It is precisely such categorical division between the vegetal/sensational and intellectual that continues to dominate European thought about life from Aristotle to contemporary medical and genetic sciences. Such a paradigm of thought seems unavoidable as long as the drive for conceptual system building spurs inquiry. Aristotle’s ontological inquiry impelled by default as it were goes on to segregate the concept of life from practices of living—or modes of being: life and living were heterogeneous in their ways of going about. Ontological quest is alien to Charaka’s compendium. Charaka’s account turns living into neither a state nor a process exclusively. It confounds the division between such categories. It turns a given state into a process and a process into a

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state relentlessly. For living is neither a frozen state and object nor is it a seamless continuous flow in Charaka’s work. Let us recall that the individuated discretized unit on which Charaka focuses is a conjunction of the three ‘givens’: the body, its faculties and sattvaatma. This triad is also the basis of loka. The triad is neither resolutely eternal nor is it only decisively presentist/presentive: the given is never reducible to the present nor sublimated into eternity. The body complex (and metonymically, the loka) is an instantial convergence of the flows from an intractable past and their elliptical relays into an incalculable future. The convergences and divergences of the body complex, like that of the loka, are recursive without a definitive beginning or a decisive termination. But how and why do these instantial formations emerge and dissolve? Charaka here draws on the reflective currents and considers ineluctable action as the catalyst of the recursive formations—the body complex and the loka. The flows that converge are the actional residues/effects, and the instantial complex that emerges is the arena and the medium for rendering action with(in) the relayed effects. Precisely focusing on this temporal dynamic of the body complex, the sage Atreya is asked in the samvaada of the sages: does the treatment focus on the present ailments or the future ones? In response, after an extended discussion about the status of the life-being (sattvaatma) in the body complex, the sage (Punarvasu Atreya) replies that since the diseases have a tendency to repeat (they repeat as the dhaatu-parity is variable), the treatment attends to the flows and relays of the ailments.3 ‘Treatment’ here would require knowledge of the relation between action and the work of flows and relays in the instant of their convergence. Sustaining and extending health are conditioned upon attention to the enigma of action. Such knowledge and attention cannot be attained through segregation of the biophysical formation from the complex for some externally induced pharmacological treatment. Charaka’s compendium unfolds the sutra: ignorance entails illness. The Himalayan sages presuppose the body (or any entity in general) as a biocultural formation; what is presupposed is not authorized by any individual authority but essentially transmitted by tradition. The Saamkhyakaarikaa formulates eloquently the bioculturality of the instantial formations: Na vinaa bhaavairlingam na vinaa lingena bhaava nirvruttih lingaakhyo bhaavaakhyastasmaa Saamkhyakaarika, 52, p. 46).

dvividhah

pravartate

sargah.

(Ishwarakrishna,

Emergences unfold in two ways: through actional–reflective sediments (bhaava) and subtle and gross formations. Without the one, the other cannot emerge. (They are co-emergent or mutually constitutive.) Thus, the biophysical as such, according to the reflective traditions Charaka receives and responds to, cannot be segregated from the reflective–actional sediments. Therefore, Charaka’s inquiry is entirely premised on the biocultural formation of the given. 3

Charakasamhita (with Chakrapanidatta’s commentary), ‘Shaareerasthaana’, trans. (with commentary) M.L. Naidu, Rajarajeswara Sarma, Himasagara Chandramurthy (Hyderabad: A.P. Ayurvedic Literature Improvement Trust, 1992), 4.1.86–94, pp. 44–47.

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33

Given that the body complex of the biocultural formation is a conjointure of three components, which of these components renders action? Who—if there is any—gets exposed to the affective effects (vedana) resulting from actions? Is it the body, its faculties or manas (sattvaatma)? The major achievement of Charaka’s composition is not so much in altering the actional–reflective frames of the tradition; it is rather in responding to the tradition in its own unique way in devising treatments, which are simultaneously sensitive to the bioculturality of the ailment and the body that is exposed to it. Prevention of the three types of sorrow—that are inflicted by (i) the godly, by (ii) the elements and the ones by (iii) the converged entity—is the aim of all the major traditions of reflective practice in India (Ishwarakrishna, Saamkhyakaarikaa, 1–21, pp. 1–21). But Charaka probes minutely into the way this sorrow results from ailments and affects the life-living-being. The biocultural body complex that Charaka explores with is the singularized unit where everything occurs: Atra karma phalam chaatra jnaanam chaatra pratishtitam atra mohah sukham dukham jeevitham maranam svataa (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.37, p.19).

That is (in the complex of convergences) where actions and effects of actions, and knowledge (jnaana) are located. That is where affective longing, pleasure and sorrow, jeevitham (living) and cessation take place. The one who knows these dualities and their recursions and all that requires to be known also would know how to attend to them (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.37–38, pp 19–20). It is in this context of the singularity of existence that questions about who gets exposed to the affective effects and how (one)/who responds to this circuit emerge. It is precisely such questions, in a more extended way that the sage Agnivesaa poses to Atreya in their samvaada. A significant part of Shaareerasthaana (the third of the eight parts of Charaka’s compendium) addresses these questions, clarifies the grounds and specifies the recipient of treatment. The entire discussion here, as the title indicates, is of the body—that which is of/in the body—shaareerika. It may also be relevant to point out that Sankara’s elaborate commentary on the Brahmasutras is also called shaareerikameemaamsaa (inquiry into the embodied, what is of the body). In Charaka’s compendium, what is of the body, the shareerika, is figured as sattvaatma in the Sutraasthaana (part one of the compendium) and purusha (to be qualified further) in the Shaareerasthaana. Thus, the discussion is also referred to as Purusheeyam—of or pertaining to purusha. Agnivesha’s questions focus on this purusha/atma. How is purusha differentiated? How does he emerge? How is he the primal cause? Is he learned or ignoramus, everlasting or ephemeral? What are his characteristics? But do not the learned say that atma (purusha) is a non-actional, independent, omnipresent, witness—eternal without birth or death? This inquiry into the who and how, in the context of the biocultural complex, is an ancient one; Charaka’s compendium draws on the tradition and improvises it. Such an inquiry is resolutely located within the context of what appear to be the heterogeneous dualities. This inquiry also indicates who/how can (one) move

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through the dualities and suspend them in cultivating a mode of being within the biocultural complex. As pointed out earlier, the Bruhadaaranyaka identifies these dualities most precisely: Dvevaava brahmano roope moorta, chaivaamoortamcha:

Brahma appears in two forms: visibly formed and subtly non-visibly formed and death-bound, death-less, moving and unmoving. (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.3.1, p. 167). The formed ones are like water, earth, fire and the subtle, and invisible ones are the sky and wind. As can be seen, all these are primal elements—generative and differentiated but surely they are individuated. All those that are generative and differential—be they gross or subtle—are fundamentally formational and relational in essence. It is these five primal elements that embody their subtler essences: the sky’s essence is sound, of the wind it is touch, of fire it is form, of water it is taste and of the earth it is aroma. They also generate (and are metonymically aligned to) the perceptual gross faculties, respectively: (sky) ear, (wind) skin, (fire) eye, (water) tongue and (earth) nose; and their external traits are: hearing, touching, seeing, tasting and smelling; an intricate metonymic relation among the elemental and the formational is affirmed here. Therefore, the Brahmas referred to here are sheltered ones—sheltered by substances, qualities and actions. Now the convergence of these intricate gross and subtle elements and their essences brings forth the singular biocultural formation designated as aadhyaatma. Aadhyaatma is again a convergent formation of the body, its faculties and manas—where manas is also treated as the experiencing faculty: atma (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.3.4, pp. 180–181, and also 1.5.2, pp. 440–442): Manomayoyam purusho… (Bruhadaaranyaka, 5.5.6. p. 559).

The subtler purusha appears as engrossed by the manas. The aadhyaatma is a formational entity. The primal manifestation of this aadhyaatmic entity is discussed extensively as Hiranyagarbha/Prajapati/Brahma in the Bruhadaaranyaka (Bruhadaaranyaka 1.3.1–1.4.6, pp. 93–231, also, 2.1.1– 2.1.20, pp. 4–148 2.3.1–2.3.5, pp. 167–184 [see, especially Sankara’s commentary]). Prajapati manifests in both gross and subtle forms within the aadhyaatma complex. Living, as Charaka resoundingly enunciates, is a convergence of the gross body with its faculties, manas and the subtler atma (sattvaatma). Every formation is structured by this complex. The subtler one that inheres in every formation is referred to variously in different compositions: if the Bruhadaaranyaka refers to it one way (mentioned earlier), the Bhagavadgita reiterates an apparently differentiated structure (of the gross and subtle) appropriately: Dvaavimau purushau loke ksharaschaakshara eva cha Ksharah sarvaani bhootaani kootastokshara uchyate (Bhagavadgita, 15.16, p. 722).

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The loka has with(in) it two kinds of purusha: the dissolving and the unceasing; all formations are prone to cessation, whereas the unceasing one is said to remain constant in the happenings. Nirvaanashatka echoes all these resonances most effectively and singularly accents the shared reflective impulse.

3.3 Of the Biocultural Formations The entirety of Sect. 4 of Charakasamhita offers an intense inquiry of the body; it is indeed a shaareerikameemaansaa. The section begins with a whole set of 23 pointed questions which the learning Agnivesha poses to the serene teacher, Atreya (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.3–15, pp. 1–3). All these questions are focused on that which is of the body, that is, that which inheres in the body. What inheres in the body is here referred to as shaareerika. The other name for shaareerika is purusha; purusha is the one who resides in the body. Purusha literally means the one who is of/in the pura—the locale or the habitat (shelter, abode). Agnivesha’s questions range from the aetiology of purusha, to differences among purushas, ‘his’ status (ephemeral or eternal), ‘his’ relation to actional circuit, actional effects and other such critical issues. The equanimous sage Atreya patiently responds to all the questions of Agnivesha in the dialogue. Like any formation, purusha too is the composition of the five primal elements (panchabhootas) along with an energetic spur (chetana). These six elements are considered here as primal dhaatus (substances) (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.16, p. 5). Given that purusha is a subtle formation, ‘he’ is formed by the subtler essences of the five elements; but purusha is often considered mainly as the energetic spur. This spurring force, however, is found enveloped in the grosser formation of the body. Hence the status of purusha as of the body—the shaareerika. It is the coming together—or convergence of the gross and subtle formations that spurs the emergences and dissolutions. Without their union, there is neither existence nor cessation. Without purusha the subtle one, says Charaka, there would be neither longing and bonding nor release in the loka (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.42, p. 21). The grosser part of the body complex—shareera and its faculties including manas—cannot function without the union with the subtler purusha—the sattvaatma. Yet, this subtle one too, though it has neither the grosser substances nor form, is nonetheless impacted by the attributes and actions of the grosser body. Throughout the Shaareerasthaana, Charaka refers to the subtle one as raashipurusha—purusha of collective attributes (which are numbered as 24 [Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.17, p. 6]) or qualified purusha (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.3, p. 1). In other words, the life-livingbeing that circulates in the complex is differential, differentiating one. He is prone to the union with the gross and its attributes in the biocultural complex (Charaka,

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Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.85, p. 43). He equals—like Hiranyagarbha—the loka. What all the formations manifest, all the reflective–actional sediments that get articulated in the loka have equivalents in this attributive purusha as well; this makes ‘him’ one with the loka and also enables him to claim the loka as his own. In a word, the attributive purusha in the biocultural formation is a simulacrum of the loka with its formations and relations. This attributive life-living-being gyrates like a wheel (in the emergences and dissolutions of the complex) (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.68, p. 34). It is this attributive subtle being who is exposed to the affective effects of actions that ‘he’ indulges in. ‘He’ survives the cessation of the ephemeral grosser body— exposed to the affective effects. ‘He’ survives in the other grosser body like the loka as it is ‘his’ simulacrum. Yet like the formation of the body complex, even the loka is an attributional collective. As such, it too gyrates in machinic circuit of emergence and dissolution, so would be the subtle one. The sage Atreya passes on the enduring reflective currents of the tradition, now articulated in the context of a varied reflective formation pertaining to longevity of living.

3.4 Inherence of the Subtle In his compendium, Charaka is only responding to the imports of the tradition in the context of an unprecedented domain—treatment of illness and sorrow with knowledge and medicaments. The focus of the treatment is the attributive being converging in the body complex. The learned—Vaidya (the one who knows)—treats this subtle being for all its temporal—past, present, future—flows and relays of illness and sorrow (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.86–94, pp. 45–47). Can only a medical/drug-dispenser treat the endemic illness of sorrow of the attributive being? Can such illness and sorrow be treated by drugs at all? Is it fortuitous that the compendium should frame and interweave the colossal pharmacological and diagnostic accounts with the questions of learning and knowledge on the one hand and make the ultimate target of treatment the subtler life-living-being, on the other, so persistently? Who is this being ultimately? Can it/‘he’ be abstracted from the weaves and frames of Charaka’s compendium and arrested as a patient on the diagnostic stretcher? Only violence of abstraction can reduce Charakasamhita to a positive science. But does Charaka’s account of the attributive being exhaust the latter’s mode of being? Is this entirely in consonance with the intimations he received from the tradition? Doesn’t such a characterization reduce the attributive being to the privileged present? The satvaattma that dwells in the biocultural formations circulates under several names such as lingaatma, the subtle body, kshetrajna, saakshi (witness), shaareerika and manomaya and others. All these epithets simply render this figure into a variation of the body with (subtler) faculties. It is also configured with attributes (dhaatu), traits (guna) and actions (kriya). Consequently, it is exposed to the affective effects. When this purusha is taken over by the impulsive, assertive ambitious

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(rajasic) traits on the one hand and those of sloth, indolence and compulsive (tamasic) drive on the other, this attributive being suffers diseases in the complex (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.138, p. 65). The shaareerika can be covered over and be obfuscated by the attributive projections of the body and its faculties. The projections obscure their differences and virtually conflate the gross and subtle bodies. The subtle body too appears open to the actions and responses that are usually associated with the gross body (e.g. all the rituals—of bathing feeding, quenching the thirst, facilitating the traversal of the surviving subtle body after the cessation of the gross one—cross one’s mind). In other words, the entire set of attributes, traits and actions continue to tether its other with inextricable (if invisible) binds and bonds. But this set and its projective embrace need not exhaust the other. When the other is covered over and entangled in cloying relations, the other appears as raashipurusha—the attributive being. But when the other circulates within the complex untouched and unperturbed by the affective set and it sees them with serene indifference, the other gets referred to as para. Para is neither active nor passive, neither formed nor deformed, neither emerges nor dissolves. Para is the radical limit of the projectional set. Charaka is acutely aware of this difference of the ‘same’: Prabhavo na hyaa naaditvaad vidyate paramatmanah purusho raashi samjnastu mohechcha dvesha karmajah (Charaka, Charakasamhita, ‘Shaareerasthaana’, 4.1.53, p. 26).

Para has no birth as ‘it’ is originless. But the one designated as rashipurusha is born of actions resulting from affective longing, urge and animosity. It is sensing this fundamental difference between the work of the projective set and a mode of being unaffected by the set that constitutes knowledge (jnaana). Failure to know the difference—conflating and reducing everything to the projective complex—is nescience or ignorance. But the word difference should not hasten one to conclude that there are indeed two very different entities: purusha and para. When engrossed in projections, what appears as purusha and released from them ‘appears’ as para. Para inheres in every formation pervasively—it is atopal but is always already there wherever differential formations of topos emerge. Para is devoid of differential particulars, and only from such non-differential and formless force (without power) do differentiated particulars emerge. Avisheshaad visheshaarambhah (Kapila, Saamkhyasutra, 3.1., p. 175).4

From the non-particular undifferentiated does the particular [formation] emerge. So does shareera, Kapila adds, Tasmaachchareerasya (Kapila, Saamkhyasutra, 3.2, p. 175).

4

Kapila, Saamkhyasutra, trans. Madan Mohan Agrawal, in Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (Delhi: Chaukhamba Sanskrit Pratishthan, 2001), 3.1., p. 175.

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The particularities of the body emerge from the limitless unformable para and the latter pervades every particular form inside and outside. The emergent particulars, in their strife to protect themselves, aggravate differences, replicate themselves and proliferate. In other words, they strive to consolidate and safeguard their respective topo-temporal unities. In the process, they indulge in approximating para into their own apparatus—and presume to particularize para. The attributive lifeliving-being—raashipurusha—is the effect of such particularization; it is only in the context of such a life-living-being caught in particularized formations does the exposure to/experience of invasive affective effects and releasement from them are seen as a possibility. In a word, jnaana as an experiential mode of being is necessary and relevant only in the context of particularized and discrete formations.

3.5 Non-positional Learning Jnaana enables sensing of the limits of particularities experientially. This does not mean that jnaana is a step towards dissolution of all particularities into the pervasive formless para. The recursivity of emergences and dissolutions is not catalysed by jnaana as such. Jnaana is neither active nor passive with regard to recursions. As in the case of para, jnaana has no place without the discretized formations. Therefore, jnaana cannot be treated as a concerted endeavour to annihilate particularities. Jnaana is essentially an experiential mode of being within the discretized formations; jnaana is praxial in its orientation. Jnaana is knowledge or learning of the peculiar difference of sat–asat and para–apara where the former terms allude to the pervasive, formless limitless force (without power) and the latter to overpowering projective particularities of differential formations. Jnaana is a kind of knowledge whose efficacy is in living a mode of being within/through the myriad and varying biocultural formations. Jnaana is a liveable learning—necessary and possible only in the context of every particular complex. What needs emphasis in Charaka’s compendium is that in the ultimate reckoning it sees the possibility of healthy and extended living mainly through jnaana. Disease is the result of failing to attune oneself to jnaana—it is to indulge nescience. Nescience is privileging of the particular and appropriation of the other by the attributive apparatus; it is a disavowal of limits and para. Thus, jnaana maarga or a mode of being from within particular formations has provided the basis for inquiries into particular domains in the Indian traditions. Charaka’s is one such colossal inquiry which shares and responds to this enduring reflective liveable current. As we will attempt to explore other domains of inquiry—such as image making, temple building, inquiries into formation and the work of languages, compositions of kavya, itihaasa, purana, naatya—many such have emerged from such a path of jnaana. The path comes in the way of turning any particular inquiry (say that of language, compositions of itihaasa, purana, kavya) into an autonomous positive science. Positive sciences inquire into posited/postulated objects—postulated before the inquirer. The inquirer isolates the properties and essences of such postulated

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objects and formulates accounts about their functioning, or, the a priori propositions about the properties enable the inquiry to posit something as an object; an object (a scientific ‘fact’) gets formed only when a thing (a visible entity) conforms to the a priori propositions. Often, the postulated objects are further fragmented to focus attention on a particularized part of such an object. The inquirer projects his prior thought-frame and impels the thing to conform to the frame in a circumscribed way. Thus, the inquirer gains mastery over the (part) object probed into. Scientific inquiry is contingent upon such positing of objects. Such inquiry turns the inquirer and his/her inquiry into an object for precipitating positive inquiries. The particularized object of inquiry in this context is posited as either determined or determinable entity. Determined by what/who? By nature, or god. Determinable by whom—through nature by man the positor of objects by means of the prior thoughtframe. The telos of such a model of inquiry is to grasp the properties, laws, causes and determinations that are at work in the given, fragmented object; or, subsume and determine the given under a presupposed principle; and through such exhaustive grasp to predict, control, orient and design objects henceforth. This would fundamentally involve radically segregating the inquiring subject from the object inquired into. But the same method would be deployed when the inquirer inquires into himself: the thinking subject is the subject and object of thinking. If determinability is the thrust that drives scientific inquiries, its goal is to exhaust the indeterminable and the unformable through particularizing determinations. In other words, such an inquiry is impervious to the play of para—the nondeterminability of the pervasive, limitless other that inheres in all formations that emerge and dissolve into it. When the latter emerge, para inheres in their convergences and formations. Given that all scientific inquiries are after all engaged in particular, posited objects and in generating such objects (in short, immersed in differentiating and generative strife) jnaana maarga has every bit of scope inherently even in such inquiries. But sensing jnaana is what is required from within these particularized inquiries—which positive sciences barely show any signs of. Charaka’s acute sense of jnaana does not let him valorize the pharmacological part or the biophysical part in reflecting on the question of health or treatment. Charaka is unequivocal in affirming the relation between jnaana and longevity of a healthy living. In this regard, it can be said that Charaka’s inquiry does not valorize treatment as the job of a specialized medical man. Vaidya for him is the one who knows or one who is learned in the relation between the particular and the general that inheres in the particulars and attends to them contextually and temporally in treatment. The learned in this sense discussed so far can treat oneself and the other. And the learning that matters here is a liveable learning. Charaka advances such a liveable learning. But today, Charaka’s and other such inquiries are in the grip of positive sciences. They reduce jnaana maarga to some putative Hindu religious dogma and abstract the (‘positive’) medical pharmaceutical part from the former. They categorically segregate the inquirer from what is inquired into: the difference between vidya and avidya (jnaana/nescience). Charaka’s pharmacia has no place for such segregations. Among the many enigmas of the Samskruta traditions, enigmas such as its indifference to translation, its belated turn to writing, its disinterest in theorization and such

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others, stands out yet another puzzling phenomenon: its avoidance of the plastic turn for a very long time. Despite the absence of any injunction against making of graven images, the Samskruta traditions remain consistent in their indifference towards sculpture, architecture and painting for nearly two millennia after their emergence. But what is more intriguing is, notwithstanding such a protracted avoidance of the iconic turn, these traditions seem to immerse themselves in the plastic figurations once they turn to image making. Given the fact that images, icons and architecture belong to inscriptional systems—systems which inscribe their memory externally and retain it outside the body—how did these traditions embrace the interface with the inscriptional? How do mnemocultures receive and respond to the plastic figurations? The next chapter, after the anaakhyana caesura, focuses specifically on the question of image making in the mnemocultural milieu of India.

Chapter 4

Anaakhyaana—II

We are the effects of what we do. Whatever we do can be done only with what we have. What we ‘have’/are ‘given’ is/are neither exhaustible nor definitively determinable. What we can do is only to respond to the cultivable endowments that form us. We are the transformational effects of what we do. The entire process of actions and effects has no beginning or end. Search for such origins and ends and predictive accounts of/from such searches can seduce and entangle us in machinic actions— actions that have no transformative effects. Such actions fasten us to the beehive of passions/gratifications or cocoon us in the webs of the silkworm. Transformational actions are those that enable us to move through and beyond the cocoons and beehives in/of existence. Originary searches can at best be speculative—but the search itself is ineffective in yielding/affecting the transformative process. Transformative action requires putting to work of the transformable formation/complex. But there can be no isomorphic relation between the action and its effect, for every action is affected by the inexhaustible and interminable—the ‘givens’—which constitute the transformational formations. Existence is a relentless transformative process without a beginning and end. The entire transformative action can be discerned only in the instance of existence—where instances are fractilic in their emergences and disappearances. This perhaps is the ‘story’ of ‘existence’ that one can discern in the fractilic ‘episodes’ of Hiranyagarbha and Pradhana-Prakriti of Indian traditions. Whereas the Semitic story of existence and transformative process fundamentally depends on the passionate agent—wrathful or graceful—who is outside or withdraws from existence; or he is ‘inside’ a select species: the human. He alone can transform the actional effect or fate of the humans (all or only anointed or the faithful). Here, the so-called existence is caught firmly between the ominous/graceful beginning and teleological end (judgement). Existence here has to strive to seek the grace (compassion pity, forgiveness and love) of the supreme sovereign agent.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_4

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Chapter 5

Vyasa’s Paravisions

Abstract As is well known, the double strand of the ‘heard’ (shruti) and ‘recalled’ (smriti) learning of Sanskrit traditions excelled in verbal–acoustic performative modes; they flourished in such melopoeiac modes for more than a millennium. Even their spectacular graphic visualization did not take recourse to retaining such imaging in externalized material forms (painting and sculpture and even writing). They have had no use for retaining their learning in externally preserved apparatuses generated by manuscripts, archives, museums and libraries. These strands of performative reflections remained indifferent to such surrogate bodies to transmit their liveable learning for a very long time (almost until the beginning of the Common Era). Yet, these mnemocultural traditions did interface with inscriptional forces (of writing and graphic visualization) when the latter impinged on these traditions. How did the traditions of the double strand respond to inscriptional graphical and pigmental formations? What place do painting, architecture and sculpture acquire in these enduring mnemocultures and how did the ‘iconic’ turn articulate the shared reflective currents of the tradition? This chapter focuses specifically on the question of image making in the mnemocultural milieu of India. For the purpose of demonstration, it engages with one of the most celebrated and perhaps the earliest accounts of painting and sculpture—the Vishnudharmottaramahapurana and the Chitrasutra section of it. This inquiry into the materialization of the visual formations amply evinces how the performative reflective traditions of India assimilate and transform the inscriptional formations (writing, painting, sculpture).

5.1 The Enigma of the Non-formational The Naradeeyamahapurana describes the Vishnudharmottara as ‘sarvashaastrartha samgraham’1 —a composition that contains the essence of all the disciplines of learning. The disciplines in question are the multiple qualified practices, pious stories, ritual ceremonies, rules and conditions of activity, learning pertaining to received practices and gaining wealth, ends of the Vedas, astrology/astronomy, genealogical 1

Naaradeeyapurana cited in ‘Dharmamu, Vedamu, Puranamu’ by Jandhyala Subrahmanyasastri, in the Introduction to Vishnudharmottaramahapuranamu, edited and translated by K. V. S. Deekshitulu & D. S. Rao, P. Seetaramanjaneyulu (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arshabharati Trust, 1988), p. 3. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_5

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accounts, teachings, compositions of invocations, the cycles of Manus and other multiple shelters of vidyas/learnings. Perhaps the Vishnudharmottara is one of the second-largest compositions (after Skaandapurana) in the purana formations. Like most of the compositions of Indian traditions, Vishnudharmottara is also structured as a samvaada between the sage Markandeya (grandson of Brahma) and king Vajra (grandson of Krishna). The sage occasions to visit the king after the great war of the Mahabharata and with the onset of the last of the four yugas (Kaliyuga). It is in this spatio-temporal context that the significant samvaada takes place between these two in the court of the king. The Vishnudharmottara provides a most extended account of painting and sculpture and their relation to other vocal–acoustic and performative cultural forms. Vajra the king raises far-reaching questions, in this context, pertaining to these domain-specific cultural forms; these questions have implications for many other domains as well. Vajra’s fundamental question with which the Vishnudharmottara begins concerns the theme of action in the newer context (Kaliyuga after the war): kim kartavyam manushyena kim kurvan sukhamedhate: What kind of action should man take up/render? An action which accrues pleasure and fulfilment here and hereafter? Or, to put it in other words: action in the context of this here (iha) and there/other (para)—in the body complex and with the unformable? (Vishnudharmottara, 3.1.1, p. 1). Vajra, then, turns attention to more specific concerns of his: by knowing what can I gain an intimate sense of the images/icons of gods made in accordance with the learned disciplines? (Vishnudharmottara, 3.2.1, p. 4). The sage Markandeya provides a graded account of different forms of learning that without the knowledge of which the learning of the features of images and icons (the knowledge of what is called Chitrasutra—aphorisms of the visual—in the compendium) cannot be known. Without the learning of the Chitrasutra, one cannot know the making of the features of idols and icons, says the sage. But one cannot know the features of these plastic forms without the knowledge of the performative form called dance (nrutta). For, says the sage, without both the image making and discipline of dance, there is neither action nor effect in the moving universe (jagat): Jagato na kriyaa kaaryaa dvayorapi yato nrupa (Vishnudharmottara, 3.2.4, p. 4).

But, says the sage, the learning of dance requires a prior knowledge of musical instruments. The king obliges to learn all these disciplines of knowledge. But finally, the sage goes on to add yet another one and declares: without the learning of singing/song first, it is not possible to gain knowledge of musical instruments. Only with the discipline of singing, one learns the rest: singing is at the root of all learning. Thus, in this graded disciplines of learning, singing is the primal one, and sculpture is the last. Markandeya’s gradation reminds one of Hegel’s hierarchy of the arts, but Chitrasutra has little to do with Hegelian metaphysics.2 At the centre of Markandeya’s 2

Interestingly, this gradation reminds one of Hegel’s grave hierarchy of the arts starting with architecture as the lowest one preceded by sculpture, which is after painting, which itself is preceded by music and finally at the top reigns poetry. This order seems to be an inverted version of Markandeya’s:

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gradation is dance—and dance is essentially a performative activity. Thus, performativity—that of gestural action—filiated to acoustic or vocal formations is common to all these cultural forms listed by Markandeya. Though the Chitrasutra does not spell it out—one can see this performativity of gesture and voice as working across and constituting the apparently graded forms. In all these forms, the body—the irreducible (irreducible to any surrogative form, more about this soon) formation—is rigorously put to work. The Chitrasutra forms the third part of the Vishnudharmottara. The third part is the largest component of the purana with 353 chapters. The other two parts gain their relative coherence in rendering the five traditional puranic features—the repeated emergences and dissolutions of the universe, life accounts of Manus and their periods, genealogies of kings and accounts of kings. These features, however, are never rendered in a perfect order to make the purana develop into a ‘well-made’ genre. There are innumerable other themes, about time, lokas, rivers, astrology, animals and their treatment, rituals, rites, ends of man and a whole range of disciplines of learning (mentioned at the beginning above), war and weapons of war and a whole colossus about other matters intersperse the set of features mentioned above. But unlike these two parts, the third one gains its relative coherence through an inquiry into the relation between the apparently heterogeneous forces—of the formational and the non-formational—apara and para.3 Unlike the other two parts of the Vishnudharmottara, the third one explores the play of forms—especially those of the symbolization. Hence, Vajra’s inaugural question: Through which discipline of learning can I gain the complex but lasting sense of making of images and idols? Clearly, the idol/image is a symbolized form if singing is at the root of the sage’s gradation, poetry is at the top of Hegel’s hierarchy. In Hegel’s theorization, the elevation of a particular art is based on its freedom from the material substance. The highest and the superior most is, thus, entirely devoid of material substance (like stone or paint and even music), which for Hegel is poetry. Poetry is the manifestation of spirit freed from material bondage, for Hegel. Cf., Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), vol. I, pp. 75–90. 3 It is important to note here that only in the English language used here that para gets designated linguistically negatively (as non-formational). In Sanskrit and other Indian languages, it is not para but the formational force that is designated negatively: apara that is non-para. That is, that which forms, which emerges in/from/through is designated negatively. This has significant implications in Indian reflective traditions. The visibly invasive, perceptually cognitively concrete, palpably infinite, expanding, and in a word, the entirety of the formational force is ‘negatively’ configured. It would, however, be hasty to impose a metaphysical frame on these apparently heterogeneous forces. For, if the formation is negatively designated, the non-formational cannot be assumed to be positively designated. Para is simply alluded to as para—and never as non-apara. Para cannot be positivized. There is no transparent metaphysical template of the visible but unreal (apara) mundane and the real but invisible transcendent (para) at work in the Indian traditions. The Samskruta traditions offer a play of the ‘differential’ forces in myriad ways outside the metaphysical template and essentially from within the given of the formational. An entire range of cultural forms—the apparently graded ones that the Vishnudharmottara and many others provide—can be engaged with to sense this play. Every form is exposed to and enacts the play—for form in general is brought forth by the play of the formational and non-formational. The metaphysical hierarchy of nature and culture is inapplicable in these traditions.

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outside/external to the formation that brings it forth. It is not treated as an artificial cultural form—as an athropogenic superiority (which Hegel—in contrast to Kant— stresses eloquently). Although these visible material forms are distinct, particular and differentiated entities, they cannot be reckoned as devoid of the non-formational nor can they be sublimated as representation or material manifestation of para (again a Hegelian metaphysical conception of art as the visible or sensible manifestation of the invisible or intelligible—a sort of theology of incarnation—surfaces here). But the ‘logic’ of play implies that every formation—be it of gods or temples of gods, their abodes or lokas—come into being through a convergence of para and apara. Thus, every manifestation perforce is the unfoldment of the play of these ‘contrary’ forces; it is an instantiation of the infinite in the finite. It is precisely this point about the logic of forming the unformable that Vajra later on requests the sage to explain. The resonant imports of this question ripple across every form and formation—not just a peculiarity of symbolized forms: can the radically non-formable be captured by the formational entities, asks Vajra. The relation then between the formational and its other must be other than a representational or mimetic one. Before explaining the distinctive activity of image making, the sage through a detour as it were outlines his apparently graded account of cultural forms. But this seeming detour in essence generically unfolds the forms of symbolization within which alone the question of para can be addressed. These are the verbal–acoustic, pigmental–iconic and gestural–performative formations.

5.2 Projections of Para There is no transparent metaphysical template of the visible but unreal (apara) mundane and the real but invisible transcendent (para) at work in the Indian traditions. The Indian traditions offer a play of the ‘differential’ forces in myriad ways outside the metaphysical template and essentially from within the given of the formational. An entire range of cultural forms—the apparently graded ones that the Vishnudharmottara and many others provide—can be engaged with in order to sense this play. Every form is exposed to and enacts the play—for form in general is brought forth by the play of the formational and non-formational. The metaphysical hierarchy of nature and culture is inapplicable and unintelligible in these traditions. The sage goes on to delineat each of these forms of symbolization in detail— although he cautions that providing an expansive account of forms such as the acoustic–verbal one is: Dustaram vistarashohi vaktum (Vishnudharmottara, 3.3.20, p. 8).

Difficult to tell in an expansive way. Even the ‘brief’ itself shows the ways in which this (acoustic–verbal) form of symbolization spreads across through internal differentiations and the kind of verbal forms emerge. In a word, he sketches the entirety of the internally varied but pervasive verbal utterance. The variations are related to different formations of being—different

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cultural formations (Brahma, Rishis, Gandharvas, Rakshasas, Kinneras, Nagas and humans) (Vishnudharmottara, 3.1.7, pp. 9–10). The Vishnudharmottara devotes 17 Chapters (2–19) to describe the verbal–acoustic forms (including vocal and instrumental music). Then the sage turns to dance. The purana devotes 14 chapters to provide an extensive account of the dance form and the discretized rendering of gestures of various body parts. All these forms of symbolization in their minutest detail are at once a blend of descriptive and practical accounts. They show how these forms can be rendered. They are not theoretical or explanatory systems. Accounts of particular forms are braided with observations of general import: with the offering or gift of dance and music, one can be victorious in the two worlds of heaven and earth, says the sage. They are indeed offerings made to the god (Vishnu) and other gods. Dance with music and song is said to be superior to the offering made of flowers and delicacies. These cultural forms also open up a passage for releasement (from the world of bondage), adds the sage (Vishnudharmottara, 3.34.25–29, pp. 116–117). The basic set of acoustic–verbal and gestural–performative forms of symbolization are the source for delineating the inscriptive pigmental-plastic symbolization. Vishnudharmottara makes dance (in its various manifestations) the crucial model for drawing, painting and sculpture. As he transits from the pigmental inscriptional to the plastic, Vajra raises the fundamental question concerning the efficacy of the attempt to conceive the unformable in terms of a form. In a way, the sequence of forms of symbolization here culminates in the figuration of a deity in visible and tactile forms to whom the series of offerings (acoustic–verbal, gestural–performative) can be made. But this entire activity of figuration itself is seen as an offering. With the sequence of symbolization which the Vishnudharmottara unfolds implicitly, it emphasizes and advances something singular in Indian cultural traditions. If the first set of song music–dance forms can be reckoned as mnemocultural—that is, embodied and enacted forms of cultural memory—the second set, of drawing– painting–plastic forms can be configured as inscriptional—that is, cultural memory externalized and articulated in an objectal form outside the body of the maker and the receiver. In its discussion of image making, the Vishnudharmottara stages an extraordinary moment of the interface between mnemocultural and inscriptional forms of symbolization/articulation of memory. This is extraordinary for the following reasons: (i) as the Vishnudharmottara itself copiously shows, the first mnemocultural mode has pervasively shaped Indian forms of symbolization for millennia. (ii) The inscriptional mode with only one antecedent in the purana (where the sage Narayana draws a female figure of exceeding beauty with mango juice to humble the pride of celestial beauties deployed to distract him from his fervid ordeal (tapas)) has no such pervasive presence in the articulations of memory in the Indian traditions. (iii) The Vishnudharmottara shows the suasive inflow of the inscriptional into the overwhelmingly mnemocultural scape. (iv) What is most noteworthy here is that the inscriptional does not rupture the mnemocultural but on the contrary the inscriptional itself is kindled, nurtured and disseminated by the mnemocultural. The purana thematizes these issues without indulging any theoretical edifice (Hegel is notorious for such a theory as/of history).

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Given the primacy of the acoustic–verbal form, no wonder why the Vishnudharmottara insists on learning the mnemocultural set as the basis for learning the inscriptional set. The inscriptional gets received and permeated and transformed by the rhythms and gestures of the acoustic–verbal cultural memory. The Vishnudharmottara’s (and Nagnajit’s Chitralakshana’s (Goswamy & Dahmen-Dallapiccola, 1976)) distinction is to tacitly weave the interface between the deeper intractable impulses of mnemocultures with the adventitious inscriptional technics. Consequently, what we begin to see is an extraordinary articulation of the mnemoculturally seasoned inscriptional formations surging forth from the early phase of the Common Era (such inscriptional formations were conspicuous by their stark absence for nearly two millennia before the Common Era). It is precisely in the context of this interface that Vajra’s question gains its prominence. The king’s primal question is straightforward and unambiguous: Why give the [plastic] form to the formless and the non-attributive [para]? Roopagandha rasairheena shabdasparsha vivarjitaha purushastu tvayaa proktas tasya roopamidam katham (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.1, p. 153).

Why give form to purusha who is said to be devoid of the features of form, aroma, flavour and free from sound and touch? Tell me. For the sage, however, the question was not an unexpected one; he has already learned enough not only to predict such a question in the context of the particular domain of pigmental–plastic formations but in the more primal context of the emergence of formations in general. The sage’s very first responsive formulation says it all: Prakrutir vikrutistasya roopena paramaatmanah alakshyam tasya tadroopam prakrutissaa prakeertita (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.2, pp. 153– 154).

Para has (or seems) to appear in two forms: prakruti and vikruti. Prakruti is known as devoid of form; it is formless. As is well known, such a formless [para] cannot be focused on. The entirety of the formational universe which is on the move is vikruti—derivative or divergent deviation. It is well known that the formational emerges from the formless. Mindful attention and puja are possible only for the formational entity. The sage goes on to advance (or repeats in a different context) a deeper reflective current with regard to the relation between the formational and the non-formational. He cites an aphoristic line which is a part of a verse formed in a precisely related context elsewhere. The sage utters a sutra which Krishna formulates exactly to refer to the relation of the formed to the unformable (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.4, p. 153 and the Bhagavadgita 12.5). The sage enunciates: Avyaktaa hi gatirdukham dehaabruddhiravaapyate (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.4, p. 153; also, Bhagavadgita, 12.5, p. 615 (the Gita line has ‘dehavadbhi’ rather than ‘dehaabruddhi’)

It is extremely difficult to focus attention on the formless; those who are enamoured by their formed state find it painful to be mindful of the formless.

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In a similar context Shukraneeetsaara too reiterates this point Dhyaana yogasya samsiddhye pratimaa lakshanam smrutam.4

For the most effective results of meditative attention, idols/icons are specified as the medium. Hence the inevitability of forms and formations; they constitute, replicate and proliferate infinitely. Worship and offerings (themselves distinct ways and rendering of forms) can be made only to a formed entity—the deity (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.6, p. 154). The formation of images and idols/icons on walls, with cotton, stone, wood, metal—in short, with any kind of material or on substrates—is an elaborate and demanding activity. The Vishnudharmottara meticulously delineates discretized particularities of such formations. Offerings can be made only to such formations. Yet even after such immersive and distinctive accounts with enumerative detail, the sage reiterates the enduring intimation that no formational substantiality can capture and represent the non-formable para. Vikruti, the (derivative) formational force, manifests as the effect of apara—the non-para. The latter cannot bind para into its bondage. Para can only be reflected upon as non-formational. Thus while identifying the distinctive faculties of the ‘first born’ Brahma, who in turn unleashes the generative power of vikruti, the sage once again emphasizes that para can be contemplated only as formless: Atmanah paramam dhaama roopaheenam vichintayet (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.16, p. 154).

Therefore, (the sage says,) Brahma too is formed/carved in the posture of someone with closed eyes, immersed in contemplation: Drushtyartham jagataamaaste dhyaana sammeelitekshanah (Vishnudharmottara, 3.46.16, p. 154).

5.3 Performative Assemblages The sage’s account goes on prolifically to enumerate the features, measures, properties and decorations of each of the deities—Brahma, Vishnu and Ishwara—each of which is characterized with the prominence of an attributive trait: Brahma with (Braahmee: the generative dynamic) rajas; Vishnu (Vaishnavee: the sustained serenity) with sattva; and Shiva (Raudree: destructive fury) with tamas. (Vishnudharmottara, 3.44.3–4, P. 151). Apart from these three deities and types, there are over fifty other deities and some gardens of gods that get described with precision (Vishnudharmottara, 3.44–85, pp. 153–203). Then the sage proceeds to describe the formation of temples for placing the deities of gods; and here he differentiates a hundred types of temples. The rest of the entirety of the Part 3 is devoted to invocative and invitational activity—the ritual celebratory acts, offerings, and a whole range of 4

Shukraneetisaara, trans. Kandlakunta Alaha Singaracharyulu, (Nallagonda: Sahiti Sanmana Samiti, 2002), 4.4.73, p. 316.

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distinctive kinds of rites, and the timing of their rendering; once again the performative activities distinctive to differentiated cultural formations get described; in a word a colossal assemblage of mnemocultural performative activities that can be rendered in the context of inscriptional formations is delineated in detail by the sage (Vishnudharmottara, 3.89–321, pp. 221–617). Temple building is equated to daana (gift-giving), and temples are mainly for puja, utsava (festive celebrations)—for performative renderings of offerings (Vishnudharmottara, 3.44–49 and 87, pp. 217–219). In a related context, the Shukraneetisaara insists that the king’s task is to get the idols/icons installed in his kingdom and arrange for festivities every year (Shukraneetisaara, 4.4.202, p. 341). But the king should not become indulgent among the dance, music, festivities and desire his personal gratification (Shukraneetisaara, 4.44.203, pp. 341–342). Whatever the festivities that people generationally celebrated must be honoured by the king. The king must take part in the pleasure and sorrows of the people (Shukraneetisaara, 4.4.204, p. 342). It should be clear that howsoever devoutly and rigorously these figures may be carved and celebrated, neither the finitude of vikruti’s formations nor the limitlessness of para-prakruti’s infinitude can be altered. As discussed earlier, the elementally emerged life-living-being or the subtle body enters in every form and every actional sediment of every form. Without the pervasion of the subtlest of such subtle bodies, nothing emerges (Vishnudharmottara, 3.108.1– 7, pp. 289–290). Similarly, in the case of inscriptional forms, mnemocultural forms always invoke and invite the subtle being; such invocation is rendered through the most enduring genre called stotra and stuti which get profusely amplified across puranas and itihaasas. Such invocations facilitate the entry or emergence of the subtle body in these inscriptional forms as well. But in continuity with his earlier question pertaining to the need for forming the unformable, Vajra raises yet another question; this other question pertains to the invocation of the subtle body in the context of the inscriptional forms. If the subtle body is all pervasive and inheres in all the faculties (the Mahendriya), why should one invoke this one in the context of the particular plastic forms? (Vishnudharmottara, 3.108.4–7, pp. 289–290). Please dispel my doubt, pleads Vajra with the sage. The sage reiterates and supplements the earlier point about the difficulty of the bodied ones to focus attention on the formless. Given that the embodied are formed by the faculties—among which one critical internal faculty is manas, says the sage. It is the desiring and remembering/recalling faculty. It is this faculty which inclines towards the projection of figures and the concomitant actions; manas does so as it always operates through embodied formations. It seeks gratifications (and the entailing formations) through figural projections and spurring actions. It is for the gratification of this desiring manas, says the sage that the invocation and invitation of (subtle and gross) formations of para take place in the inscriptional mode. Such manifest para figured through projections has the attributes of the faculties, and they go through the states of beginning, middle and end (Vishnudharmottara, 3.108.8–9, p. 290). Such inscriptions and formations are entirely for the gratification of manas:

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Kevalam kaaranam tatra manasas tushti kaaranam…aavaahanam svatruptyartham purushasya yathaa sthitam… svatushtyartham prayojanam (Vishnudharmottara, 3.108.16– 17, p. 290).

If all projected figures are reducible to embodied entities including the subtlest of the subtle ones—para is entirely irreducible to any of the figural projections; para is the subtle body freed from all projections; but without the form the formless cannot be bound and figured: Anaakaare maharaja laksha bandhastu dushkarah (Vishnudharmottara, 3.108.23, p.291).

The formless cannot be bound in a targeted attention. Hence, the figuration of para in the form of purusha: Paraayaah paurushee moorthih pancha bhoota viraajitaa (Vishnudharmottara, 3.108.10, p. 290).

Para (when projected) as purusha form is the emergent manifestation of the five elements. As in the composition of Charaka, here too para as purusha form is the flourishing of the formational elements (Charaka designates this one as rashipurusha). Such formations and all ritual activities rendered for such forms are open even to those who act without investing in actional effects—even to those who are learned ones (Vishnudharmottara, 3108.30, p. 291). The Bhagavadgita permeates the purana. Thus, the invocation, invitation and the multiplication of mnemocultural performative rites and offerings in the context of the embodied formations are aimed at the gratification of the embodied formations that immerse themselves in such activities. None of these touches or is necessary for the radical para. All these inscriptional and non-inscriptional acts and renderings are of and for the being (the subtle and the gross) caught in the webs of projections, that is to say, to every discretized entity. With the learning or knowing of the work of projections, one can live in/with them non-relationally and unaffectedly (this is precisely what the Shukraneetisaara indicates for the king). The Vishnudharmottara never loses the sight of this ‘differential’ rendering (as purusha and para) of the ‘same’ para.

5.4 Constricting Theory The intimations of the tradition played out in this puranic form as a samvaada between the king Vajra and the sage Markandeya are the possible spurs—spurs to learn/know—for the embodied entity. Neither the purana nor the recipients of the purana in the subsequent generations indulge in isolating the inscriptional– pigmental–plastic form from the tradition of learning to foist a ‘theory’ of Indian art. It is only in the last hundred years that such concerted effort to erect an Indian theory of art—an effort symptomatic of an anxiety resulting from an encounter with Europe— has consolidated itself. Indian traditions did not require such an abstraction of positive

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sciences. Today, art history—which is the only discipline that exists in India—renders the puranic accounts into such positive sciences. None of such works—from Ananada Coomaraswami to Isabella Nardi—tries to examine the selected/abstracted verses of the Chitrasutra within the context of the expansive Vishnudharmottaramahapurana (let alone the latter in the more pertinent context of the reflective integrity of Indian traditions in general). How such interested abstraction is at work can be seen in a recent typical account of Indian compositions on the plastic–pigmental forms provided by Isabella Nardi in her work (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, 2006). In a bold attempt to capture ‘the theory’ of painting lurking in the compositions about painting, Nardi focuses on a set of selected works from the Sanskrit tradition and inquires into the relation between them and the practices of traditional artists today. Nardi contends that a ‘unified theoretical foundation of Indian painting’ (Nardi, The Theoryof Chitrasutras, p. 35) can be built from the Sanskrit works dealing with painting and sculpture. Such a theory can provide an Indian perspective on Indian painting and sculpture, she contends. Although this theory develops within a larger ‘philosophical background’—she avers, it is possible to advance a theory of Indian painting exclusively from these texts. For this purpose, she extracts very specific sections of purana, laakshanika and shaastra compositions (altogether about a dozen texts) and claims a theoretical unity among them. The Chtirasutra sections, Nardi argues, provide the theoretical basis for Indian painting and sculpture. While apparently advancing an Indian theory, Nardi throughout is critical of earlier scholars for their misreadings of the Sanskrit compositions in the last hundred years. Their erroneous readings, Nardi argues, are based on their assumption that the Chitrasutra set provides a prescriptive theory which governed or determined the practice of painting and sculpture. She contends that this continuist account of the relation between theory and practice—where theory precedes and practice simply follows the lead of theory—misses the point: the Chitrasutras only ‘constitute a theoretical position rather than the reality of Indian painting.’ (Nardi, The Theoryof Chitrasutras, p. 15). The relation between reality and theory, Nardi argues, is at variance. Since Nardi’s inquiry is not a comparative one (Indian and Western), one assumes that this relation between theory and reality that she develops is a peculiarity of the Indian context. The Indian ‘theory’ develops a ‘method’, says Nardi, ‘to describe all possible stances in a technical and scientific way’ (Nardi, The Theoryof Chitrasutras, p. 108). And this theoretical method is open to ‘interpretative multiplicity’ (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, p. 104). The Chitrasutra texts provide ‘visual images of the mind’; but ‘given their theoretical quality which [the texts] offer a wide range of interpretations and uses.’ (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, p. 104). Thus, the relation between texts and practices (the so-called theory and reality) in the Indian context ‘is not and cannot be a direct and literal one.’ (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, p. 63). Elsewhere in the book, she describes them (theory and reality), as two ‘dynamic systems that indirectly interact and inform each other.’ (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, p. 15). Though nowhere in the work does Nardi attempt to show

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how the practice of painting and sculpture has informed the ‘theory’ developed in the texts of Chitrasutras. However, as in the case of scholars whom she criticizes, in Nardi’s case also the privileging of theory remains unquestioned. If the earlier scholars treated theory as a prescriptive set of rules followed in practice, she sees theory as a set of interpretable guidelines. But what is the idea of theory that is at work in Nardi’s account? At a merely descriptive level, it turns out that what Nardi privileges as theory is little more than a set of shared terms (for measurements, proportion, painting, sculpture, taste, positions of the body, etc.) based on, for her, a certain religio/mythological account (about divine origin, divine figure, etc.) (Nardi, The Theoryof Chitrasutras, p. 35). At an interpretative level (interpreted by Nardi), theory is said to be the division between absolute/ideal, relative/real and mental/practical. (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, pp. 29, 58). The relation between the two is, Nardi states, such that the former (absolute/ideal/mental) gives birth to the multiplicity of the latter (relative/practical/real). As is well known, this is the foundational metaphysical structure of Western/European intellectual heritage—where the mental/ideal generates the physical/real. European onto-theology determined such a theoretical position. Even this division between theoretical/practical is essentially a legacy or outcome of such a structure (the Biblical text as the testimony of god’s speech/word and the text as a normative order to be followed in practice). If Nardi hoped to criticize and redress the earlier (allegedly) erroneous misreadings of the Indian tradition by scholars who saw a linear relationship between the text and practice, Nardi’s own account squarely roots itself in yet another version of the same model—the genetic one. If the texts provide theoretical genus, the practices unleash variety of (interpretive) species. The bulk of Nardi’s work is devoted precisely to recount this genetic relation between ‘theory’ of the Chitrasutras and the practices of living artists. But her demonstrative endeavour cannot help but show that even this relationship itself can never be transparent; that neither the sutra compositions nor the relation between them and practices can be decisively established. None of the texts works in accord with a standardized measurement, proportion, stance, etc.; none of the practitioners is guided by such canonized ideals: each of the texts has its own ‘ideal of proportion and beauty…[they] appear different in their descriptions…by their differing measurements’. The same gods get described very differently in different texts; often texts dissolve the so-called theory into ‘mere listing of names’ of the body positions. Also ‘sometimes we do not find explanations of their aesthetic representation at all.’ (Nardi, The Theoryof Chitrasutras, p. 104). Yet she searches for similarities across these non-cohering texts (Nardi, The Theory of Chitrasutras, p. 58) and hopes to build an Indian theory about Indian paintings. What all these diverging ‘discrepancies’ go to vindicate is that even the obsessive attention to details of concrete and precise measurements and proportions that the texts appear to foreground—they do not end up erecting a standardized normative system that would determine cultural forms of painting and sculpture. Despite such betraying force of the texts, Nardi continues to assert that the texts are ‘an authoritative view on traditional painting’. What is the value of this authority and which one of such texts (from the dozen she draws on) is accorded such authority in the tradition?

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And by whom? In a context where ‘principles’, if any, have no determinative position, Nardi asserts that the theory from the sutras works as a ‘critical principle’, by which ‘the practice of painting can be judged’. (Nardi, The Theoryof Chitrasutras, p. 158). This concluding claim of her work in fact goes against what she laboriously tried to demonstrate: absence of a universalized standard for practice. In her enthusiasm to derive a theory from the Chitrasutras, Isabella Nardi tacitly tries to force the status of a ‘critique of judgement’ (Nardi invokes this phrase) on these Sanskrit compositions. Nowhere has anyone developed a discourse of judgement on painting or sculpture on the basis of these compositions in the Indian tradition. Indian traditions show a resounding silence with regard to the discourse of the spectator. Nardi’s eagerness to develop an Indian theory for Indian painting and sculpture pushes her to abstract, extract and fixate on the concrete detail about measurable, quantifiable aspects of discrete formations and their aspects—and, in the process obscure and ignore the encompassing weave of these compositions. Not even once does she seem alert to the fundamental question about the relation between the formational and the unformable with which the compositions—say of the Vishnudharmottara or Shukraneetisaara—are concerned with. Although she mentions in passing the graded relation among the various cultural forms (discussed in the Vishnudharmottara), she is barely alert to the performative aspect of the cultural forms and their relation to the inscriptional forms like painting and sculpture. It is only through such avoidance that Isabella Nardi advances her ‘positive’ discourse about ‘the Indian theory’ of painting and sculpture. It should be possible to see such abstractions and theorizations of Indian compositions feverishly at work in different domains (on ‘law’, on ‘literature’, Ayurveda, ‘politics’, etc.). Such a work, however, is yet to emerge from the contemporary Indian intellectual milieu. Indian reflective traditions seem to have bypassed the necessity of theoretical system building. Even when acute and poignant metalevel inquiries and reflections appear to be at work, they do not invite prospective or retrospective theory building. Each composition works with what it receives in its own unique ways. Consequently, they impart more performative responses rather than conceptual–theoretical deliberations. Such praxial reflection can be traced from the Vedic compositions. No wonder such a tradition should bring forth an exclusive composition on the question of performance. As we noticed, the Vishnudharmottara insists that the knowledge of performance (naatya) as essential to acquire the disciplines of sculpture and painting. How does this performative domain relate to the general reflective impulse of the tradition that we have explored so far? The next chapter is devoted to a detailed engagement with Bharata’s Naatyashaastra.

Chapter 6

Anaakhyaana—III

In the Indian traditions one can think of a relational quartet prominently at work in the interface between modes of being and forms of reflection—or reflective practices. The quartet is composed of (i) the formation and (ii) what it articulates, (iii) its consequential effects and (iv) the deserving addressee. If the formation is an embodied being what it articulates is the relation between para and apara (the formational and the non-formational); the consequential effect of this formational articulation is either releasement or machinic repetition of the formation. Finally, the deserving addressee of this reflective play is none other than the formational complex itself: the addressee is the addressor as well. Thus, the two effects of the performative that Bharata shows in the Naatyashaastra—that of the performer-oriented gratification and the other-oriented gratification—converge here in the aadhyaatmic figure where the performer is the spectacular/witness/addressee. Therefore, forms of reflection are also modes of being—they too play out what they address/impart. Perhaps depending on the way the formational articulation of the relation between para and apara, the compositional forms and modes of being can be differentiated. No wonder why the figures of significance in these traditions are aachaarya, guru, bharata (player/composer), suta, yogi, jnaani: reflective performers of mnemocultures. The composers of reflections are also practitioners and performers of it: the suta-bharatasage trio is a performative triad as well in the smriti tradition. The composers of aalamkara/ laakshanika/dhvani shaastras are poets and playwrights primarily.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_6

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Chapter 7

Bharata’s Performative Teleosis

Abstract Indian reflective traditions seem to have bypassed the necessity of theoretical system building. Even when acute and poignant metalevel inquiries and reflections are at work, they do not invite prospective or retrospective theory building. Each composition works with what it receives in its own unique ways. Consequently, they impart more performative responses rather than conceptual-theoretical deliberations. No wonder such a tradition should bring forth an exclusive composition on the question of performance. As we noticed, the Vishnudharmottara insists that the knowledge of performance (naatya) as essential to acquire the disciplines of sculpture and painting. How does this performative domain relate to the general reflective impulse of the tradition that we have explored so far? If existence is a play of ‘contrary’ forces of apara and para, and if life-living-being (jeeva-jeevita-jeevi) is exposed to this play and is required to learn to sense the play of these forces—what place do the Indian traditions accord to the very act of play itself? Is there a comprehensive sense of play which is open to the larger and more general play of existence? This chapter is devoted to a detailed engagement with Bharata’s Naatyashaastra. Bharata’s exhaustive and seminal work most eloquently demonstrates how Indian performative reflective traditions generate and disseminate a liveable learning and how such learning is exposed to ineradicable indulgent and vulnerable pulls.

7.1 Tamperable Ethos If existence is a play of ‘contrary’ forces of apara and para, and if life-living-being (jeeva-jeevita-jeevi) is exposed to this play and is required to learn to sense the play of these forces—What place do the Indian traditions accord to the very act of play itself? Is there a comprehensive sense of play that is open to the larger and more general play of existence? Bharata’s Naatyashaastra1 stands out as the primal praxial reflective composition on the actional type of play from the Indian traditions. The Naatyashaastra conceives of play as two related modes of being or going about in existence—in the loka: one, the ‘given’ and the other, cultivable on the basis of the given. Composed in the puranic itihaasic form (with samvaada, narratemes, 1

Bharata, Naatyashaastram, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: P.N. Sastri, 2006). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 57 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_7

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a very tenuous narrative line and a vastly extended disciplined account pertaining to discretized sets of embodied actional modes), the Naatyashaastra begins with the scene of emergence of the cultivable modes of being. The congregation of sages asks Bharata to explain how (why) this performative form—equivalent of the Veda—has emerged in the first place. Bharata in an allusive narrative refers to how a certain set of virulent actional modes have engrossed the loka—metonymic abode of existence at a certain time in a certain epoch. Bharata calls these modes graamadharma pravrutti— unrefined modes of being—and even specifies what they are, and how they surge up and what their consequences are: Kaamalobha vasham gate eersha krodhaabhi sammoodhe loke sukhita dukhite. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.1.9, p. 60)

Surrendered to miserly possessive urges (eros or lust-driven), seduced by jealousy and rage, the dwellers of the loka suffered pleasure and pain (pleasure turning into pain when the former disappears). The arena of these emotive actional spurs is the body, and the body gets surrendered to these passions. When such actional spurs rage and overpower people, gods with great concern rush to Brahma for a solution. The gods seek a distraction from this indulgent circuit of pain and pleasure—a ‘distractive’ form that is playful/playable and which is visible and audible: Kreedaneeyaka michchaamo drushyam shravyam cha yad bhavet. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra , 1.1.11, p. 60)

That which is playable with interest and which can be seen and heard. Thus, the two kinds of action get outlined at the very beginning of the composition. One is indulgent and detrimental and the other playsome, gratificatory and orientative. The emotive sediments of the body evoke action in existence, and the loka is a formative effect, like the body, of such actions. Although the playable form too draws on actional spurs of the body and the loka, it has the potential to affect and reorient the former in existence through the body. The action involved in the playsome form is virtual and its effect is teleocultural—an affect/effect from a distance. The playsome action evokes teleocultural effect/affect. That is, the playable form unfolds the actional modes of someone else’s life from a remote past (or a distant future) by those who only virtually live and enliven these modes. If the players of the form are unconnected in any direct way to the actions they enact, the receivers of the playful form are also distant and indefinite in their response to the enacted virtual life. The playsome form virtually unfolds the actional sediments of someone else’s life and entails affective effects for unforeseen receivers; it communicates the remote to an indefinite future. This teleocultural communication can potentially affect and transform the indefinite recipients’ actional modes in their existence. This playsome action, unlike the other indulgent one in existence, in its unfoldment is pleasurable, and its communication too is gratificatory to its recipients. The inaugural playsome form that Brahma composes itself is teleoculturally assembled: he elicits recitational component from the Rgveda, song and music components from the Samaveda, abhinaya (actional gestural communication) from

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the Yajurveda and the actional flavour/effect from the Atharvaveda. Along with this set from the heard (shruti) compositions of the vaangmaya, Brahma also gathers itihaasas (episodes from the lives of gods, from the smritis) and composes the playful form, first to be staged before the warring cousins—gods and asuras/non-gods. Although the itihaasic episodes are from a different epoch, the first plays (Devadanava yuddha—the war of gods and the children of Danu; Samudramathana, the churning of the ocean) do result in raking up passions among the cousins—gods are delighted and Danavas feel slighted. That is, the virtual action too can spur the indulgent actional sediments. The embodied beings—be they gods, Danavas, humans and other varied formations of Brahma—can be affected by actional effects which occur to them individually or to some other ones remote from them. The two kinds of action ‘proximate’/‘personal’ and remote/virtual appeal to experience of embodied beings. But the difference between effects of these actions can be significant.

7.2 Teleocultural Mediations How does the teleocultural mediation transfigure the primal generative sediments? Teleocultural mediation involves play on intensities. If culture can be configured as salient or sedimented ways of going about (verbal–visual–gestural actions) in making or dwelling in a habitat, teleocultural mediation selectively re-articulates these ways of going about in a delimited context; such re-articulation discretizes or individuates actional elements and amplifies their manifestation. Cultural forms embody and disseminate such intensities. Cultural forms can be at least of two related kinds: (i) those that provide experiential gratification in rendering them for the performer; and (ii) those that, when they are brought forth, can communicate or share/evoke such gratification with/for others. Such gratification may involve intensive pleasure in the process—yet its ultimate yield of satiation remains inexhaustible. Such gratification results from the evocation of sense of experience and differs fundamentally from the calculated effect emerging from provocative action. Bharata’s colossal reflective praxial composition is devoted to putting to work the teleocultural mediation in bringing forth a cultural form that can provide another orientation to primal actional sediments. The Naatyashaastra perhaps can be said to inaugurate a teleocultural performing tradition by drawing on prevailing cultural forms (the Vedas and the Vedangas; and as will be discussed elaborately later in this work, the Ramayana will be another such form). Bharata’s specific task of teleocultural mediation requires him to attend to the complex of intensities. Given the centrality of the body in mnemocultural traditions, Bharata is drawn to reflect on the possibilities of the verbal–acoustic and visual articulations (shravya/drushya) of the body. Firmly based on (or in) the substrate (as the medium) of the body, these articulations are precisely and meticulously differentiated and individuated in the Naatyashaastra. Thus, for example, Chaps. 8 and 9 of the Naatyashaastra provide the discretized articulation of the components of the face/head as follows: 13 different ways of moving the hand, 36 ways of the sight,

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nineways of the eyeballs, seven ways of the eyebrows, nine ways of the eyelids, six ways of the nose (nostrils), six ways of the cheeks, six of the lower lip and chin and nine different ways of the neck. Similarly, 34 differentiated ways of head movements, five ways of the chest, three ways of the stomach (belly), five ways of the waist, five ways of the thighs and five ways of the calves and feet (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, Chaps. 8–10, pp. 306–397). Bharata shows further how singularized articulations of the discrete body parts can be further combined in diverse ways. These combinations can range from the most minimal gestural-syllabic formulations (called karana) of orchestrating the combined movement of hands and feet in 108 different ways to combinations of these minimal units into performative syntax combining a certain number (6–9) gestural syllables (called Angahaaraas) in 33 diverse ways; similarly, from combining specific syllables of the lower parts of the body in movement—such as waist, thighs, calves and feet—called chaari—in 32 distinct ways (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 10.1–71, pp. 380–392); or, combining movements of neck, hands, hip, feet (called rechaka) to weaving together such sentential gestural combinatoires into relatively larger units of performative forms (called mandalas)—elaborated in 20 different ways (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 11.1–10, pp. 398–399). Similarly, several chapters (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, Chaps. 14–17, pp. 460– 574) are devoted to deal with the verbal metrical compositions deployed in the performative form of naatya. Here the infinite variations in compositions—vrutta— are explicitly demarcated (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 14.136, pp. 468–478). Further, Chapts. 28–34 (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, pp. 798–1088) are devoted to the musical compositions (verbal and instrumental), and the accompanying musical technics is dealt with extensively. With such micrological account of the ways in which the resources of the body can be deployed in actional contexts, the Naatyashaastra goes on to formulate eloquently the distinct ways in which teleocultural mediation can re-articulate the primal (indulgent) actional sediments (graamyapravrutti). That is, actional contexts can be impacted not only by the situations in the moment of one’s existence but they can also be affected by the lives and lived experiences of others from a remote past. Teleoculturality can affect the instantial from immemorial distance. That is, what is generally valorized as the present—the moment of one’s existence and one’s ways of going about (in other words, one’s baggage of actional sediments), can be impacted by the intemporal or the durational, from distance. Such impact can yield gratificatory delight among gods and humans. It is precisely to evoke affect from the distance that Brahma has devised the virtual ethos: Yaschetihaasa vedaartho brahmanaa samudaahrutah divya maanusha ratyartham naatyadharmee tu saa smruta. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.81, p. 458)

When Brahma composes and articulates in performative form—motifs from itihaasa and Veda are brought together for the pleasure of gods and men: such formation is naatyadharmi (performative ethos).

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7.3 Actional Lokations While exploring the relation between life and technics of the body through the mnemocultural performing traditions, Bharata’s theatrical composition intensely concerns itself with the difference between instantial and virtual actional lives. Here the term ‘virtual’ cannot be opposed to some putative real life as such. For, Bharata repeatedly insists that the work of naatya is entirely drawn from the topo-temporal instant called loka. In a word, Bharata’s colossal compendium of performing traditions is essentially a praxial meditation on the relationship between loka and naatya and not of some real and ideal situations. Naatya grapples with loka and naatya is absolutely lokated—rooted in the loka: Naatya is after the loka. In other words, naatya is after the myriad modes of being in existence replete with varied actional sediments, differing states of tension: Naanaa bhaavopa sampannam naanaavasthaantaraatmakam Lokavruttaanukaranam… (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.112, p. 78)

Naatya provides space for all sorts of learning: structured forms and movements of actional life of the lokas of the universe (jagat—that which moves) for genos to see at one place (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 5.56, p. 181 additional verse). For, all shaastras and virtues or structured forms or any other activity has been formed by the ways of the loka and therefore such actions and their effects can and must be shown in the theatre (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 25.124, p. 771.) Naatya embodies the accounts of the lives in the loka(s) (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 37.10, p. 1097). But this changing topo-temporal category called loka cannot be reduced to the human world alone. Where phenomenal entities come forth, wherever/whenever forms and names circulate in relations there the loka comes forth. Loka embodies actional lives of named (and unnamed) formations in time. Thus, when Bharata explores the relation between naatya and loka, he is referring to loka in general and not just the human habitation. Bharata is particular in emphasizing the theatricality of the loka in general. What naatya accomplishes is: Trilokyasyaasya sarvasva naatyam bhaavaanu keertanam. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.107, p. 77) Naatya dramatizes the actional sediments of the entirety of all the three habitats.

That is, the actional lives of gods (in the abode of gods—Devaloka), of humans (in Bhuloka) and those of demons and others (Bhuvarloka) are all graspable and enactable within the domain of the theatre. Every formation (irrespective of its lokation) is fundamentally constituted by the three invisible and interminable elemental actional forces that bring forth material substance: the three gunas (sattvik– temperance; rajasik-volitional/impulsive; taamasik-indolence). The loka is pervaded by the forms brought forth by the vicissitudinal flux of these three actional forces. Naatya is after such loka: Trigunyodbhava matra loka charitam2 2

Kalidasa, Malavikagnimitram, quoted by Pullela in his Introduction to Naatyashaastra, p. 58.

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7 Bharata’s Performative Teleosis Naatya dramatizes the life story of the loka formed by the three gunas, (says Kalidasa in recalling what dance can accomplish).

As is well known, naatya was conceived, composed and perhaps disseminated in a particular topo-temporal instance. Like the Ramayana, the Naatyashaastra too was composed in the reign of Vaivasvata Manu’s reign in the Tretayuga in the Devaloka (svarga). Though it is not entirely clear, the forty-six sages who approach Bharata to know about naatya appear to have met him in Devaloka and not on the earth; for Bharata, after completing his daily ritual performances is said to have sat among all his hundred sons, when the sages approach him. This appears to have occurred before his sons were accursed to take birth on the earth as Shudras. Yet, there is no clear account, as there was in the case of the sages of Charakasamhita, of the place where the meeting between the sages and Bharata has occurred (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.2,8, pp. 59–60). Further, the first experiments in itihaasic theatricality take place in the Devaloka where embodied beings from other lokas (including Bharata and his sons) were present and they even bestow gifts on Bharata after the first performance (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.62–63, p. 70). Thus, the lokas are composed of embodied beings; these beings themselves are in turn composed of elemental actional forces. And these forces in turn determine actional life of embodied beings in existence. No one seems to be completely free from the vicissitudinal effect of actional forces of existence. The compositions of suta-bharata-seer extensively delineate the vagaries of actional life in the instants of being (irrespective of the loka). But Bharata provides us a possibility to comprehend the vagaries of such an actional life at a more general level, while at the same time minutely detailing the ways in which these surges can be brought forth and the ways in which they are affected through the articulations of the body. It is in his inquiry that we get to see the gravity and pervertability of actional life and the possibility of reorienting it (without guarantee and certainty) in existence. But unlike the suta and seer, Bharata’s composition is entirely devoid of attractive seductive narrative accounts that we find in the itihaasa and kavya compositions. The Naatyashaastra is sparsely dotted with narratemes which can be elaborated and expanded. The compendium is woven together by non-narrative liveable learning. The non-narratives are largely semantically dry but effectively impartable and learnable mnemocultural (speech/gestural) compositional units. The entire Naatyashaastra unfolds and elaborates such cultural technics for the evocation of virtual action. For example, nrutta (‘dance’) is an outstanding non-narrative composition of Shiva that supplements Brahma’s naatya form. Nrutta is a performative movement devoid of sense or semantics but efficaciously communicable and reiterable. It is an effective caesura in the seductive itihaasic flow which can pre-empt erasure of difference. Given that the compositional strategies such as narrateme, narrative and non-narrative are constitutive features of Vedic mnemocultures, the work of suta-bharata-seer cannot be free from them. From the intricate weave of these strategies, one can hazard the speculation that the mnemocultural impulse inclines more towards the non-narrative even while intimately braided with the other two compositional modes.

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7.4 Actional Performative Ethos Entrusted with the task of experimenting and enhancing the eventful emergence of the audio-visual playful thing, Bharata extensively and intensively explores the relationship between the actional life of loka and the virtual performative life of naatya. Bharata’s insights here are of extraordinary significance, and they provide the possibility of differentiating Indian cultural forms and the experience they evoke from those of European art and aesthetics. Given that elemental actional forces constitute individuated beings (of any loka or of any species), these elements accrue actional sediments in these beings; these sediments are finite in number and pervasive in spread. Bharata identifies actional sediments as eight (and the tradition supplements it with another one.) These 8 + 1 sediments often express themselves not just in their direct or pure forms but through their (33) transient and (8) substantive forms. Actional life, in other words, manifests by means of altogether 8 + 1 actional sediments and their shifting (33 + 8) articulations (we will return to this theme). The ethos of enactment—the play of intensities—accomplishes teleocultural mediation of the actional sediments. In the entire praxial reflection of Bharata loka and naatya are deeply filiated—but they are clearly demarcated. Naatya emerges from loka and through a detour of the virtual actional life impacts the actional life of the loka. Bharata designates the actional life or ethos as dharmi. Thus, the actional life of loka is called lokadharmi and the virtual actional life naatyadharmi. Lokadharmi refers to actional modes of going about in existence. These are the patterned acts reiterated in different situations in daily life; the actional modes do not involve any exaggerated rendering of deeds nor do they contain any double (or connotational/latent/counter) meaning beyond the visible actions (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.70–71, pp. 456–457). What Bharata designates as naatyadharmi is a kind of performative ethos. Naatyadharmi is the articulation of worldly (of loka) intensities into alaukik formations (irreducible to a particular, present, loka). Alaukik is hastily translated as transcendental or spiritual—in contrast to loka as mundane or material. Alaukik, on the contrary, can be seen as of the loka. But it implies that what emerges in a particular manifestation of the loka need not be fixated or reduced to it. Each such emergence has the possibility of re-emergence across other specific manifestations of topo-temporalities, of its recursivity. What naatyadharmi implies is that which is routinized action and formless flux of repetition in a specific manifestation can be transformed into incalculable performative formations of intensity. Only when such salient but regular actional modes, their residues and their meaningful articulations are emphasized and reiterated by means of amplified and embellished discrete bodily gestures, such artifactual actional modes turn into naatyadharmi (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.84, p. 459.) Theatre requires such emphatic rendering of actional life says Bharata: Naatyadharmee pravruttam hi sadaa naatyam prayoja yet. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.83, p. 459)

Only with naatyadharmi alone that one must always perform dance dramas.

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Bharata’s discussion pertaining to performative styles (vrttis) and their affiliations to specific locations, pravrutti, reinforces once again the relation (of nonrelation; for, they are in no way causally related) of naatya and loka. Naatyadharmi transmutes lokadharmi to evoke teleocultural actional effects. Naatyadharmi has no transcendental status at all in Bharata. As the lokadharmi the actional performative life is always exposed to the threat of contamination by vulgar ethos (graamyadharmi), Bharata’s composition advances naatyadharmi—the virtual actional life, as a differential repetition of actional life (loka can also contain mundane as well) of lived existence; the virtual life brings forth a savourable experience that is not necessarily one’s own but which can be received in one’s own life. As naatyadharmi is a transfigured lokadharmi, the savourable actional effects too are transformed actional sediments of existence: Lokaprasiddham dravyam tu yada naatye prayujyate Moortimat saabhilaasham cha naatyadharmi tu saa smruta. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.74, p. 457)

When the renowned material/motifs of the loka are rendered in naatya, such as formless into formation and disinterested as invested, such rendering is known as performative ethos. Bharata devotes 13 shlokas (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.72–84, pp. 457–459) for naatyadharmi as opposed to 2 (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.70–71, 456–457) for lokadharmi to characterize and differentiate them, respectively, in this chapter. Further, as will be discussed below, by configuring the kakshyavibhaaga (the dance arena) as naatyadharmi-related, the discussion extends to earlier shlokas (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.36, p. 450). As Bharata’s discussion pertaining to vrutti (performative styles) and their affiliation to pravrutti, locations, amply clarifies, the Naatyashaastra persistently affirms the relation (of non-relation) between loka and naatya. In such a searching inquiry, to look for a narrower, regionalized representation of the world or nature is to miss the deeper imports of the inquiry into existence explored in the Indian reflective creative mnemopraxial traditions in general and Bharata’s singular responsive reception of them in particular. Bharata’s primal composition of theatricality, like the melopoeiac performative of the Ramayana, too brings together two kinds of performative traditions in its expansive weave. Before he plunges into defining and delineating multiple aspects of theatricality, Bharata devotes over three chapters of the Naatyashaastra (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, Chaps. 1, 3 and 5) detailing varied kinds of ritual performances that must be rendered in preparing the playfield and in building the playhouse. The ritual performances involve propitiation of multiple deities (gods, daityas, yakhsas, pannagas, rakshasas, bhutas, ancestors—in a word all the celestial and nether world beings who are assigned various roles in upholding the playhouse and playfield) and different kinds of offerings to be made to these varied beings: offerings such as cooked rice, meat, sura (a form of intoxicant), fruit juice, meat mixed with gram for the groups of bhutas; cooked meat, raw meat must be offered to the groups of rakshasas, and they must be propitiated with specific mantras (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, Chap. 3). Similarly, the ritual modes of performance that must be scrupulously rendered at

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various times—during the entry and exit of actors—the setting of lamp, the installation of jati-based poles on the ground and numerous other instances are specified by Bharata in detail. As can be seen, the entire Naatyashaastra is an intense exploration of the relation between loka and naatya in existence. Emerging from the ethos of the loka, naatya can reorient the ethos of the loka. All these ritual performances, however, are largely patron-oriented—the one who builds the playhouse or arranges performances, or even players. The dire consequences of ignoring them are also emphatically disclosed along with the performer-oriented benefits in the composition (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.120–126, 3.94–100, pp. 80–81 and pp. 117– 118.) The ritual performances enumerated above are all instances of immersive actional life. However, Bharata conceives even these ritual performances as rendering performative ethos (naatyadharmi) (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.82, p. 458). The entire Naatyashaastra is an intense exploration of the relation between loka and naatya in existence. Emerging from the ethos of the loka, naatya can reorient the ethos of the loka. Chapter 13 of the Naatyashaastra-Kakshyavibhaga—demarcation of dance arena—specifies spaces for different things and actions on stage. These are the locations of musicians, placing of chariots, spacing of different lokas, entry and exist of different characters; locations of forest, water beds, mountains, etc. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.27–36, pp. 448–450). This entire delineation of spaces and actions associated with them is designated as naatyadharmi (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.82, p. 458). It does not seem from the Naatyashaastra that Bharata proposed any division of performance thematically into realist and idealist as some contend. There is nothing in Chap. 13 that supports such a division and opposition. Lokadharmi (allegedly realist) is not offered as a theatrical form. Bharata’s discussion of lokadharmi is a part of his fundamental exploration of the relation between loka and naatya. The Naatyashaastra, however, clearly differentiates lokadharmi (routinized ethos of going about in the world) from naatyadharmi—where both these modes are differentially concerned with ways of being in the world. Perhaps one can locate the daily practices of rituals (yajna, vrata, puja and all other life cycle rituals) as a part of lokadharmi. In this regard, they already contain a certain element of performance which yields certain entailments for well-being—where the entailment can accrue to the concerned/performing individuals and to other various related beings in the world—human and non-human. In other words, lokadharmi—in its performative nature—is filiated to naatyadharmi, which is a virtual mode of being and going about in the world. As discussed above, lokadharmi and naatyadharmi cannot be rigorously set apart nor can they be opposed to each other; at the same time, they cannot also be unified into one. In Bharata’s reckoning, however, there appears to be yet another mode of being that can always threaten the borders of loka/naatyadharmis. It is precisely to reorient jana (people) from that contaminational threat that gods seek the orientative alternative of visual–verbal play of compositions. And this third mode is what has been termed as graamya pravrutti—the mundane/vulgar ethos (graamyadharmi). Here there is no hierarchy of the three modes. The last one is always already there impinging on

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the other two—where the former has no secure firewall against it. Every formation in the loka is exposed to this perennial threat or its impingement. It may be noted that all the three kinds of ethos (dharmis) are effected by the transgenerational experiential flows. It is these flows that contribute to the formation of actional sediments (or bhaavas) which in turn spur actions in the loka. Bharata’s composition aims at working with this intractable inheritance of actional sediments by means of teleocultural mediations.

7.5 Gratifying Communication Naatya transmutes the events and actions of loka in the loka. Going about in the loka itself is a performative mode—a mode of being and moving in the world. Such a movement is engrossed with salient day-today issues of life and attitudes and responses of beings towards their existence. Such modes are specific to men and women who bring them forth in different situations. They are devoid of any supplemental embellishments. They have no vyanjana—connotation or countersense from the common (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.70–71, pp. 456–57). Only when such generally or commonly endowed modes, attitudes and their meaningful articulation are emphasized and intensified by means of discrete bodily gestures and other embellishments—such re-articulation is designated as naatyadharmi (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.84, p. 459). Without such articulations of discretized body parts how can dance drama go on? With naatyadharmi alone that one must always perform dance drama, says the Naatyashaastra: Naatyadharmi pravruttam hi sadaa naatyam prayojayet. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 13.83, 459)

Naatya (dance) with performative ethos alone must be rendered. Can dance be performed without the movement of limbs in such ethos? As forms of play, varied performing traditions, their naatya forms (such as Bharatanaatyam, Odissi, Kathak) and other performative forms (Teyyam, Lai Harouba, Ojapali, etc.,) provide the enactive spectacle and surging sonance in a demarcated/extended time–space. The visual–verbal–musical surge flows through the instantial beings—the actors—from their everyday life in everyday life. The performative points to the possibility of releasing oneself from the binds and bonds of the worldly being—however ephemerally—in the performative mode of being in the world. That is, it is through the means of the worldly being (embodied existence) that the distancing from worldly binds is realized. The ecstasy and intoxicating possession of the performative figure in certain traditions indicates this most emphatically. What possesses the worldly being within the worldly existence is immeasurable and unfathomable. But this possession of the body by the other frees that embodied performative being from his/her instantial worldly entanglements and announces the possibility of the worldly being turning into the medium for a radical force foreign to the biocultural form as it circulates in a given instant. The fusion of the force with the

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form can take vigorous, vibrant and even apparently violent mode of performative (uddhata taandava); or, it can be a delicate, elegant (lasya) form. In either of these forms, multifarious articulations of discrete elements of the body (eyebrow, eyelids, finger tips, toes, legs, neck, lips, feet, waist, etc.,) spring forth from the instantial biocultural formation. The body elements discretize themselves and spread out. The irreducible biocultural material formation lives on and articulates force which is radically heterogeneous to/in its instantial form. This performative logic can also be seen to be at work even in the emergence and proliferation of plastic forms (sculpture, architecture, icons): the material body as the embodying medium for a heterogeneous and non-material force. In other words, as discussed in the earlier chapter, even when inscriptional or plastic forms appear as surrogate bodies, they too are profoundly infused by mnemocultural performative impulses. They receive and assimilate the lithic prosthetic formations into mnemocultural sonances.

7.6 Actional Sediments and Flavours The Naatyashaastra effectively unfolds how a cultural form of virtual action can impact and orient the actional life of formations caught in demarcated contexts. The theatrical cultural form enacts the generationally imparted life accounts of a diachronically distanced beings; such enactments not only disrupt the narcissistically closed up instant of the mundane actional life and its indulgent pleasures and anachronize it on the one hand; and by synchronizing the diachronic life account, the viewer/receiver gets exposed to (or experiences) virtuous ethos affirmable in existence, on the other. The theatrical event shows the possibility that through the evocation and communication of a lived experience, the virtual actional life can deeply impact the actional life of beings caught in the interminable modes of existence. The Naatyashaastra identifies bhavas (actional sediments) as sources of action in everyday life form. In humans, Bharata specifies these actional sediments as eight (and one more was added later by others). They evoke or generate action; cultural forms like dance and drama (poetry) draw on these fundamental sedimented generative states. The effect of these generative sources in cultural forms is not direct action but evocation of effective experiential flavour of action (or actional affect) among recipients. The experiential flavour gets released as a sort of juice—called rasa. The savourable experience that naatya evokes is analogized by Bharata to two quintessential types of entirely personal, individuated, experiences of loka: the gastronomical and sexual. A cultivated experience alone can savour the delighting flavours of a well-made delicacy; only a connoisseur of the erotic alone can sense the jouissance of sexual experience. Theatricality (which includes the combined domains of song/recital/dialogue/music and performance) evokes such incomparable savourables. Such an evocative experience—although it emerges from virtual actional life—displaces and moves beyond the differentiated relation of loka and naatya. For what naatya evokes is experienced by the receivers in the loka—in their

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everyday actional life. Naatya affirms the communicability and access of such an experience to every one of the loka: Divya maanusha ratyartham naatyadharmi tu saa smrutah (Naatyashaastra , 13. 81, p. 458)

The performative composition, thus, generated through naatyadharmi evokes the (sexual) delight (ratyartham) for gods and men. Such compositions draw on the lived experiences of distanced lives and individuals. The excellence of both these creations—the enacted bhaavas the savourable cuisine and sexual pleasure—can only be measured in the experience of taste. And the absolute locus of this experience is the body. The permutations and combinations of these actional sediments and their varied manifestations remain utterly incalculable and in turn contribute to the heterogeneity of individual beings. Now the burden of theatricality is to evoke these myriad actional effects on the stage through the virtual actions of a lived/imagined life; as the actors in the play are not rendering the actional life of their own lived life, but that of someone else, they enact a virtual actional life. But this detoured actional life has the capability to communicate and evoke actional effects among recipients; these actional effects are experientially savoured as they touch or awaken one’s own actional sediments. Bharata’s account of theatrical delight can be seen as a transmutation of actional sediments (bhava) into savourable actional effects (rasa) through naatya; when such metamorphed sediments are transmitted to the audience, they in turn activate the actional residues of the latter resulting in experiential delight or gratification among the audience. When the actional flavour reaches out to the receiver, it in turn spurs the primal generative sediments lurking in latency in the receiver. The evocation of the latent by means of the actional flavour set in motion by the embodied evocation releases delight in the responding/responsive receiver. Thus, one can say that it is not action per se but the simulacrum (made possible by the cultural forms) of action that releases delight by touching and transforming actional sediments at/from a distance. In other words, the telos of action must be releasement of the incalculable delight. Calculated action (of lokadharmi) seeks only calculated results—repetition of actions caught in a vicious circle. Thus, the delighting effect (rasa) is the morphing of actional sediments, and the experiential delight is the morphing of the savourable flavours. The detour of the primal generative sediments through teleocultural forms results in experiential delight which transposes the sediments beyond the duality of activity/passivity. It brings forth the state of serene satiety in the experiencer. But the locus of such experience cannot be anything but the body—the medium and effect of the intractable primal generative sediments (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, (commentary) pp. 248–250). In the Naatyashaastra, the (brief) account of the savourable flavours (rasa) seems to achieve two things: (i) To elucidate the process of evocation of experiential delight. (ii) More importantly, though obliquely, emphasizing the singular role of kavya/naataka— the verbal–visual cultural forms—the critical role of grappling with and transfiguring the primal generative sediments which are exposed to vulgar/unrefined ethos

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(graamyadharma pravrutti). Consequently, these forms are mainly reception or receiver oriented. But the receivers are indefinite and heterogeneous: Dukhaartanaam sukhaartaanaam shramaartanaam tapasvinaam Vishraanti jananam kaale naatyametadbhavishyati. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.114, p. 79)

[For the] Sorrowful, comfort seekers, labouring and those engrossed in fervid ordeals. naatya provides pleasing respite to all in appropriate times. Naatyam bhinna rucherjanasya bahudhaapyekam samaaraadhakam3 Naatya provides delight to people of divergent tastes.

Further the receivers are also respondents for they receive and respond to what they face or are exposed to. Cultural forms are fundamentally compositions of such responsive receptions. In this regard, the paths of shaastra and kavya/naataka, though different, are certainly paved by the dynamic of responsive reception. If the shaastra path imparts to the pupil the modes of accessing the state of delight by seeing through the binds and bonds of existence as one lives through them—the kavyanaataka form elaborates the modes (verbal–visual) which generate a simulacrum of delight and effectively transmute the primal sediments of action. The latter directly grapple with and immerse one in the generative impulses and affirm the possibility of reorienting one while being caught and constrained by the actional sediments. The ninth savourable flavour which supplements Bharata’s eight denotes the experiential delight of seeing the work of actional sediments and reorienting oneself from them while bound in them. The ninth one is named the experience of shaanta—serene quietude in the loka. What the account seems to emphasize is the experiential nature of orientation—an aspect which shaastras as well reiterate. Desire or urge is the source of savouring experience; only those who are spurred by desire can receive such experience: Vaasanaachenna hetuh syaat sasyaan meemaamsakaadishu4

If the urge (for pleasure) is not the cause (for savouring flavours), then even for the Daarshanik inquirers (like Meemamsakas) too such experience must occur. Generative actional sediments manifest lokadharmi (desire to obtain something). Naatyadharmi transmutes them into teleocultural forms (and also through such forms) and engenders delight. The actional sediments alone when enhanced by external and internal factors (the surrounding conditions and their effects on the beings in the context) with the relevant themes and passing feelings transmute into savourable flavours (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 7:3, p. 260) (additional verses Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 7.1–7.8, pp. 304–305)). The aim of teleocultural mediation is evoking/sharing delighting gratification. One can say that this affecting from distance and receiving and responding to the distanced operates in two ways: (i) it delights the performer (as well) immersed in the embodied activity, and (ii) it 3

Kalidasa cited (from Malavikagnimitram) in Pullela Sreeramachandrudu’s Introduction to Naatyashaastra, p. 58. 4 Cited by Pullela Sreeramachandrudu in his Appendix to Chap. 6 of Naatyashaastra, p. 252.

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communicates the delight from the performer to all other expectant and indefinite receivers. In a word, it emphasizes the communicability of delight. These two effects, however, are not exclusive to each other.

7.7 Actional Effects Indeed, the naatya and its first performances were addressed to the heterogeneous cousins (devas, danavas, yakshas, pannagas, gandharvas, etc.) of different lokas— and they shower gifts on Bharata and his performing sons. If all these gods and their cousins savour the delight of naatya, does not this also imply that their existence— as embodied beings—too is structured by actional modes and sediments which are perennially exposed to perversion and degeneration? Are gods and their loka free from contamination by the graamya—the mundane, vulgar ethos? Perhaps there is little in the compositions of suta-bharata-seer that guarantees any impregnable firewall against the contamination of the actional sediments among the lokas. Being in the loka itself is fundamentally the consequence of nurturing certain kind of actional lives. The gods are said to have no control over their lustful actions; the demons (raakshasas) are indulgent in cruel deeds; and humans excelled in greed.5 No wonder they are the perennial targets of curses—the efficacious performative utterances—that immediately result on actional effect. No loka can be freed completely from the cultivable but pervertible endowments of actional residues—such as rage, greed, lust and jealousy. Is it entirely an accident that the very first play that Brahma conceives deals with the fraternal war—Devadanava Yuddha? There is an interminable rivalry between these cousins that pervades the work of lokas as configured in the Vedic heritage (but more prominently in the itihaasa-purana-kavya-naataka compositions). The second play, Amritamathanam, performed in the Devaloka, to start with, appears to be a collaborative endeavour among the cousins; but it quickly slides into a drama of rivalry, deception and conflict. The fact that the play, that is, virtual actional life, can evoke actional effects is amply demonstrated when the first play was staged, and the defeated and slighted Danava cousins in the audience defy and disturb the play. When they accuse Brahma—the grandfather of all the warring cousins—of being prejudiced, Brahma clearly spells out the relation between loka and naatya: Karma bhaavaanvayaapekshee naatya vedo mayaa krutam. (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.106, p. 77)

The naatya Veda is composed of actional lives and actional sediments. Here in the most economic formulation, Brahma articulates the import of Vedic inheritance—which configures the being as the effect of actions, where actional life is cultivable without finality in any particular formation of existence. This implies 5

BruhadarakaUpanishad, trans. (into Telugu with commentary by) B. S. Ramakotisastri, (Hyderabad, 1989,) V.2, pp. 13–17.

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the perennial possibility of transforming the modes of being and lokations of being in existence. That is, even naatya (the virtual performative ethos) cannot disavow or escape the reflective sources pertaining to the relation between dispersive-converging formations of entities in existence and their actions in such formations. As contaminable actional life often takes recourse to rivalry, fight, war in order to express mundane actional sediments, fraternal war appears to be the primary choice for conceiving theatricality in the Naatyashaastra. But what the naatya stages is not the actual war of the world but a transfigured, virtual actional life of war. This transfiguration is at work at a more fundamental level in Bharata’s account. Bharata, however, does not simply draw on actional (or imagined actional) life and events alone—but quintessentially works on the worldly actional modes in his radially discretized articulation of the enacting body in naatya. It is indeed the actional modes of a primordial fight scene that become the sources for forging all four distinct styles of dance and the entire choreography of Bharata. These styles associated with different regions of the earth are Bhaarati, Saattvaki, Arabhati and Kaishiki. All these paradigmatic styles emerge from the primal (but repeated) fight between Vishnu and the Danavas—Madhu and Kaitabha. But this primal fight is without weapons—it is only a choreographic ensemble where Vishnu forged delicate, vigorous, severe, energetic, forceful combinations of limb movements in his war dance (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 20. 13, 19, pp. 625–626.) Only later when these choreographed movements are incorporated into the Veda that they are deployed in the war with weapons. War without dance of the body was inconceivable until our perverse prestidigital anthropocene epoch in the last hundred years.

7.8 Recursive Dispersals Transgenerational transmissions and teleocultural mediations aim at reorienting the source of actions—that is, of actional sediments. Such reorientation is entirely aimed at by means of what is called affect—the passional impulse. The performative reflections that Bharata composes in meditating on the role of the affect and precisely the deployment of it in the process of reorientation of modes of being differentiate Indian conception and aim of cultural forms from those of the West in its conceptualization of aesthetics. Aesthetics emerged as a rational system to explain the work of the senses in the West from eighteenth century. In other words, aesthetics is a part of philosophical system building. Such a system made possible by a conceptual understanding would move beyond the vagaries of sense perception (‘intuitions’). Such system draws on a hierarchic division between reason and emotion, sense and intellect/intelligence. It is such a system which regulated European heritage over centuries. Cultural forms (like poetry, drama etc.,) become objects of inquiry for such a system of explanation. Bharata (and others) breaches other paths in grappling with the question of affect and its relation to modes of being.

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Only as an ‘aesthetic phenomenon’, says Nietzsche bearing the burden of Platonic heritage, ‘is existence and the world eternally justified’.6 This assertion ironically repeats Plato’s accusations against art. For Plato, art is seduction and falsehood. Yet Plato never plots his accusations with a telos of justifying existence. Plato sought and dreamt or phantasied a rational republic, whereas Nietzsche’s assertion is by default affirms the need for justification of existence. Nietzsche’s claim appears to be grounded in theology (it is Christian theology which demands justification of action in the eyes/presence of god). In complete contrast, the Naatyashaastra’s account of composing naatya does not offer it as a palliative seduction as such. The Naatyashaastra does not and cannot conceive of another world beyond the loka (be it devaloka or bhuloka)—and it does not divide the loka into some transcendental and earthly abodes. All beings with bodies and forms, names and relations inhabit the variously configured lokas. In other words, what are common to all lokas are the named bodily forms. The repeated formation and dissolution of these names and forms go by the name of emergence (srushti). The emergence is recursive as it results from intractable residues which manifest in any emergence as nameable forms in existence. Existence is composed of such forms. The recursive logic is common to lokas in general (whether they are inhabited by gods, demons, humans, demi-gods, inanimate forms, etc.). The emergence of the loka along with the myriad entities is an eloquent testimony to recursivity of life—life that tangles one in embodied existence. The residues of these entanglements reinforce the emergences of beings and lokas—and their entanglements in the machinic pulls of pleasure and pain. All the forms of learning performatively emphasize that the way out of the machinic pulls can be realized only through the loka which is the effect and medium of entanglements. They impart the learning of non-relational relation to the entanglements of worldly existence—a relation that can only be realized within the embodied existence of the loka. It is not a seductive alternative to the misery of the world. The actional flavour of the ninth rasa—shaanta—releases such an affective effect in existence. Traditionally aesthetics configured a work as a totality unified internally and excluded itself from an outside. Aesthetics requires an object that is distanced and independent with regard to the observer and critic. Aesthetic discourse is a metalevel account about an exclusive entity. In the ultimate analysis, aesthetics emerged as a rational model of explanation, rational doctrine, of the working of the senses or sensations.7 Naatyashaastra no where makes such an attempt to offer a rational theory of the senses; Indian reflective traditions seemed to have had no use for such theories. On the contrary, the Naatyashaastra evinces how the ways in which emotions and sedimented effects can reorient modes of being in the world. Cultural forms in performing traditions of memory bring forth and impart a liveable learning 6

Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and OtherWritings, trans. Ronald Speirs, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 33 (italics in the original). 7 Heidegger, What is a Thing? trans. W.B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company,1967), pp. 113–116. Rodolphé Gasche, The Stelliferous Fold: Toward a Virtual Law of Literature’s Self-Formation, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), pp. 213–222.

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which recursively disseminates itself across generations; they are not determined by an a priori logical framework (or a rational theory). In other words, the categorical division between rationality and emotion is alien to these traditions. The cultural forms in question are composed of the deeds of lives of beings distanced by eons and lokas from their particular spatio-temporal instantiation in the indeterminable present. Yet the mnemocultural modes in which they are rendered at once turn the spatio-temporal distance superfluous but do not erase the difference between the lives of beings in their recursive movement. Naatyadharmi—the performative ethos—sustains the difference. The difference cannot be erased as the generative recursivity is perennially at work in the dissemination of mnemocultural impulse across genres. These forms are performatively transmitted across generations. Performing traditions do not totalize and unify compositions. There is no single composition of the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, as will be shown in a later chapter, that regulates the proliferation of these cultural compositions across languages, cultural technologies (from oral to digital), spatio-temporal domains and cultural formations identically. Each of these transfigurations enhances the liveable learning and promises rewarding endowments singularly. Given that promises are incalculable and indeterminable, what these performing traditions affirm is the possibility of reorienting one from graamyadharmi to the effects of naatyadharmi; and this effect itself is the experience of gratificatory delight. These embodied enactments synchronize the diachrony without erasing their difference; they contemporize the remote. In the mnemocultural performing traditions what is embodied and enacted can never become a fully made unified object for either the performer or the partaking audience. The Ramayanas and the Mahabharatas are always rendered as palas—selected segments.

7.9 Vulnerable Circuits The mnemocultural verbal–visual performing traditions precede and survive the lithic turn. Unlike in the context of European cultural history, the Indian (perhaps even Asian and African) mnemocultures subordinate the lithic or orthographic turn to acoustic and performative structures even to this day. No wonder that the orthographic heritage can’t be said to have inaugurated any archive fevers and whipped up passions for centralized archives in mnemocultural contexts. Similarly, the iconic turn, a belated emergence in the Indian context, too does not unleash an urge for the growth of museums and galleries. On the contrary, the passion for the plastic/iconic (sculpture and architecture) multiplied unprecedented range of temples for over a millennium—which, though lithic in manifestation, has little to do with archival passions. An impulse similar to that of the ethos of enactment (naatyadharmi) seems to be at work even in the context of the iconic/plastic turn in the mnemocultural formations. Here too the visual formations—as in the case of performing traditions—seen as lokaanukarana—take after the going about of the loka (lokadharmi). Therefore,

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one can say that what naatyadharmi is to performing traditions, shilpadharmi is to the plastic formations in mnemocultures; here shilpadharmi follows, like Bharata’s first performances, devaloka. Yet unlike the silent (or silenced) objects of gaze that statically stare, the mnemocultural spectacles in principle throb in the acoustic performative traditions perennially. These monuments remain warm in the breath of the lively archives of the thousands who frequent them; or, they get abandoned; museumisation instils no life into them. Monuments in mnemocultures open up space and time for experiential gratification which can be personal and shareable. Like naatyadharmi, shilpadharmi or kavyadharmi too performs teleocultural mediation in another (plastic or verbal–acoustic) mode. Here too the body becomes the absolute epicentre for monumental formations (for the conception of the temple and icons). The rigorous attention to the minutest aspects of the body in its plastic articulations evinces this practice. Here the mode of discretizing the body accomplished in the Naatyashaastra is received and responded to in plastic mode in a composition like the Vishnudharmottara or Shilparatnaakara. The teleocultural mode weaves the itihaasa, purana, kavya, naatya strands and disallows any categorical division between shaastra and non-shaastra modes of reflective praxis. Yet no dharmi—be it naatya or loka—can be rigorously set apart from the graamyadharmi. Naatyashaastra begins and ends with this insight. Bharata begins and ends the Naatyashaastra with the inherent limits of existence: the resurgence and invasion of graamya pravrutti. The entire Naatyashaastra appears to be aimed not at repressing graamya pravrutti coercively but to transmute it into something entirely different from what such pravrutti can indulge: the delightful gratification. No wonder the body becomes the quintessential arena for articulating this transmutation in the Naatyashaastra. It is the teleocultural mediation that transmutes the pravrutti (while drawing on it) to evoke savourable delight. Graamya pravrutti—devoid of teleocultural mediation—recklessly indulges one in primal generative sediments; it results in enslaving the body to immediate gratification alone. The body complex denied the possibility of sensing its heterogeneous composition and its teleocultural intimations. Graamya pravrutti in its indulgences denies the durationality of existence and asserts its mastery over existence. It is precisely in this scenario of desire for the present and mastery, for the discerning, the intimations of performative teleosis open up existence to the interminable, nonmasterable and incalculable recursive relation between the durational and instantial forces. It is precisely in such a situation of perverted graamya pravrutti that the Naatyashaastra brings forth a mnemopraxial composition that opens up the possibility of evocation and experience of delight through teleocultural mediations. It shows the possibility of transforming pravrutti from being a source of carnal indulgence into a shareable, communicable delight. Both the dharmis put the body to work and both aim at delight. There appears to be very thin demarcating line between them—but that breath of difference makes infinite gap between graamya pravrutti and kavya-naatya-shilpadharmis. They all are deeply involved in dealing with the generative impulse—yet there is a radical difference between the two sets. If the graamya pravrutti terminates in a calculated indulgence—immediate formational

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pleasure, the teleocultural mediation intimates the receivers the possibility of incalculable delight and enables them to experience it (even if ephemerally) in modes of existence. Now in Bharata’s hands, the choreographed actional life of a fight scene gets transformed into a teleocultural performative that evokes a delighting experience. The scene of war and violence ends up evoking a joyful sense of eros and other savourables. The unprecedented teleocultural forms brought forth by the sutabharata-seer that impact the actional life through the detour of virtual action (while suspending the distinction between virtual and real) can take recourse neither to coercion nor power of might to evoke the delighting experience. They evince a form without (coersive) force. They cannot erase the distinction between the actional lives which are buffeted by the vagaries of might and greed that disavow the plurality or anachrony of the instant; but they do not impact it in lasting ways by exposing one to the virtuous ethos. Yet neither the virtuous ethos nor the teleocultural perforamtive creations have any power to resist the invasion or implosion of the perverse. On the contrary, this very teleocultural form itself can spawn perversity from within. In a penetrating insight which also reiterates a distancing measure with regard to a certain kind of actional life (composing of cultural forms like itihaasapurana-kavya-naatya), Bharata enframes the colossal compendium within the forces of contaminable perversity. Yet the parergonal frame is not outside the composition. If at the beginning of the Naatyashaastra it appears as an exterior occurrence out there requiring protective measure, at the end of the composition, the virus engulfs the very family of performers who all along have devoted their life to materialize the performing tradition and exemplified its ethos. The hundred sons of Bharata may either have failed to learn and discern the livable learning of the virtuous ethos that the performative traditions impart and nurture or they may have presumed themselves to be the sole purveyors of such ethos to the rest of the lokas. They stage plays ridiculing and insulting the seers—custodians of yet another performing tradition devoted to mnemocultural ardour and virtues. The sages curse them to be born as Shudras who can have access to the Vedic compositions only through a detour of srmiti traditions. The curse entails that the colossal learning of naatya will also perish; and as the degenerate, they would for generations practise actional life pertinent to the Shudras. Bharata is acutely sensitive to the ironic fate of what has been brought forth to ward off, or reorient, the mundane ethos (graamya pravrutti) itself, succumbing to this very perversion when the chosen performers exhibit their vulgar ethos (‘graamya dharmapravartitam’ [Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 36.46, p. 1102.]) Dejected by the curse, gods approach the sages for redressel. The seers and sages relent and condone partially only to save naatya; but the Shudra status of the degenerate Brahmins remains, they declare (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 36.44, p. 1102). The incalculable is intractable and non-masterable. Yet Bharata does not see teleocultural form as sublimation of desire. On the contrary, he shows that no such form can prevent the resurgence and invasion of graamya pravrutti. Indeed, these very forms can be sources of indulgence in graamya pravrutti. This is what Bharata shows when

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his sons are cursed for their perversions in their performances. That is, the assertion of the instantial can—as the body itself can—devour any medium for its existence. If the mundane ethos, lurking in the parergonal frame initially, brought forth the cultural form of naatya in the Devaloka, it is the curse ensuing the penetration of the vulgar ethos into the very prophylactic cultural forms at the end brings forth this teleocultural form on the Bhuloka. The parabasis of this performative scene cannot be reduced in any loka in general. The parabasis sensed in the context of these performing traditions—the solution can itself turn into a problem—seems to differentiate these teleocultural forms from those that sublimate such forms into art and aesthetic creations.

7.10 Be-Longings The Naatyashaastra comes forth as a detour and a critical response to a certain tradition. Certain smritis condemned actors, dancers, singers as contaminated and objected students going to theatre (Apastambha8 ). Not all smritis, however, endorsed this idea. This implies that one cannot hope to devise a monolithic doctrine from these compositions against naatya. On the contrary, for example, Yajnavalkyasmriti celebrates certain singing, music (veena), recitational modes as capable of attaining the highest goal in life. It is to such a varied reception of tradition one finds the Naatyashaastra responding; at the same time, it also explicitly thematizes the reason for its stigmatization in a puranic mode. But it affirms and advances itself as a detour for disseminating the tradition of the Veda—indeed, as it claims, by composing a fifth Veda. The Naatyashaastra unfolds itself as a shaastra concerning the articulation of the body within the porous puranic contours. Brahma refers to what he composed as itihaasa: itihaasa mayaa srushtah (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.19, p. 63). The itihaasa vaangmaya (including kavya, naataka and purana) emerges as a responsive reception to the shruti vaangmaya. In its re-articulation of the Vedic imports, the itihaasa vaangmaya, although weaves the double strand of the mundane and non-mundane experiential currents, amplifies the mundane to emphasize the nonmundane. It spreads the weave by spinning inexhaustible yarns. The yarns cannot filiate time and space that compose and dissolve and transform the beings across all habitats—lokas. The itihaasa vangmaya like the shruti vaangmaya generationally imparts a liveable learning—a learning that enables one to responsively forge modes of being and going about in the habitat; it, thus, foregrounds—without exemplification (for what the Vedic imports offer is a liveable learning for everyone, though in different modes)—life accounts (charitas) of individuals in a genealogy. Thus, the

8

Here it may be noted that Apastambha simply says that only the celibate Brahmin is not to see dance: Anrutta darshee (dance is not to be seen). Cf., Apastamba Dharmasutram, trans. Nallamtighal Lakshminarasimhacharyulu, (Hyderabad: Gayatri Publications, 2005), 1.3.11, p. 15.

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orientation of the entire vaangmaya is learning to differentiate between two kinds of experience and seeking delighting experience in existence. Both shruti and itihaasa currents multiply performative compositions and configure life in performing traditions: hence the centrality of song, recitational and performative cultural forms in the Indian traditions. These cultural forms can be performer-oriented or they can be in addition participant-oriented as well. In other words, they are shareable learnings which can be performatively imparted. Hence, the ubiquity of the trope of play in actional modes of being. These modes are essentially articulations of the body complex. The Naatyashaastra focuses on the ways in which these actional modes at once show the possibility of indulgence of the instantial faculties of the body on the one hand and the significant difference and distance of the faculties on the other. What the play and the gratification that it entails is a radically different kind of experience than the one that is sought through and which ends with the faculties and the immediate pleasure they yield. Yet it must be noted that the recipient of the teleocultural gratification is the subtle body of the lifeliving-being (as well) that inheres in every discretized individuated being. Therefore, it is important to recognize that the delight of the play only highlights the subtle body at the highest—but cannot refer to para. For para is neither the edible–savourable nor the savouring-enjoyer. As the Nirvaanashatka says Aham bhojanam naiva bhojyam na bhokta.

Savouring of rasa is the effect of the prominence of one of the attributive traits: that of the sattva. It is the trait that accrues comforting pleasure and a certain kind of knowledge (albeit unverifiable)—because the actional sediments from which the savourable flavour emerges in the actor are not that of the actor’s own. These flavours are virtual for the actor as well as the receiver, hence unverifiable. The trait of sattva is a serene and effulgent attribute alright; nevertheless, like the other two attributive traits (rajas and tamas), sattva too is a bonding and binding filament: Sukha sangena badhnaati jnaana sangena chaanagha. (Bhagavadgita, 14.6, p. 683) [Sattva] ties one down with pleasing comfort and knowledge, O the blameless.

The trait yokes the life-living-being with comforting pleasure and a certain learning; this learning draws on virtual experience—and it does suggest the possibility of distancing oneself from one’s own harrowing and demanding passions which propel one to act impulsively. The experience of savouring the evocative taste is premised on the prevalence of actional sediments (vaasana/bhaava). What the work of suta-bharata-sage does is precisely to focus on these sediments and indicate the possibility of reorienting their dynamic. This reorientation is sought to be achieved through the subtle effect of distance: distancing oneself from one’s own actional sediments. It is indeed this element of discerning distance that the entirety of vaangmaya—in myriad forms and modes—reiterated relentlessly. The distancing is required for the singularized entity (be it gross or subtle) that evokes and experiences (suffering/pain) actions and their results. Such an entity cannot but be the formation of apara; and the quintessential

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force (without power) of distance—as the designation itself indicates—is none other than para. But there is a peculiar kind of distance that pervasively permeates every genitive possessive formation. The discernment of distance and difference of/from/in oneself, itself unfolds or yields incomparable delight. Sustenance of such delight is contingent upon the cultivation of distance from within the same. It is, however, only in the context of the formational entities does the effect of distance, experience and delight is discernible. The play or the weave of the infinite–finite and the pervasive and non-finite—apara and para—reiterates itself. The work of suta-bharata-sage attends to the formational mode which plays out this subtle difference of the ‘same’ and persistently occludes the homogenization of the formational as the autonomous totality; hence its recourse to the experiential tropes of play, savouring delight, etc. It is only by disregarding the general import of the weave or the play of the vaangmaya that one can extract the minutely and precisely focused details of the discretized actional modes which Bharata enumerates and builds a theory or history of dance forms of Indian culture. Or, one can by exclusivizing the experiential account of the flavours and sediments which Bharata outlines—without bestowing any privileged status to them—shore up an aesthetic theory—‘the rasa theory’. One can positivize these actional modes and their experiential effects and strive to ‘apply’ them to explain or interpret cultural forms. Such a ‘theorizing’ or applicational enterprise is systemically absent in the Indian vaangmaya. Even when the recalled compositional forms—unlike the compositions of the heard (shruti) current—assemble extraordinary detail of concrete substances, actions, attributes and delineate their details in differentiated domains, they are never entirely segregated from the seminal weave that is common across these two sets of compositions: the weave of para and apara. The disciplinary systems and interpretative theorizations of the last one hundred years are blatantly impervious to this play. They indulge disciplinary theoretical passions relayed and regulated from elsewhere. Bharata’s composition is woven with all the threads of samvaada, narrateme, narrative and non-narrative in imparting the imports of its liveable learning. The learning gets vitiated as the custodians of this learning get perverted and indulge in vulgar ethos and thus damage their actional circuit; consequently, they bear the curses of the sages. The puranic aura is palpable in the overall orientation of Naatyashaastra. Yet its unique discipline of knowledge aimed at reorienting modes of being through performative learning remains unequivocal and incomparable in its range and reach across millennia. If naatya is a crucial component of mnemocultural traditions, music or sangita remains another (dis)seminal life line. Mnemocultures are essentially melopoeiac. Although music was a significant part of Bharata’s composition, it gains exclusive attention and is turned into yet another discipline of learning. How does this musical performative learning articulate the shareable impulse in its domain? Sarngadeva’s composition is not directly formed in the itihaasic or puranic mode, and yet it could not have come out in any other milieu than the one unleashed by the smriti strand of Indian traditions. The next chapter inquires into Sarngadeva’s musical sonatic treatise, Sangitaratnaakara, to see how it communicates with what it receives and imparts.

Chapter 8

Anaakhyaana–IV

The imagination is a peculiar faculty in the modern Western thought, which operates to synthesize ‘understanding’ (intelligence/reason) and the ‘sensible’ (nature/body) perception. In other words, imagination is the faculty that mediates the intelligible and the sensible. Understanding can function without recourse to the sensible, and it can build concepts and systems of explanation—which the sensible cannot do. For, the latter gets confined to the immediate and the instinctive; at the most, it can only be a preparation for understanding. Such a formulation is prevalent in the Western heritage at least from the eighteenth century; the latter variedly repeats the much deeper relation between the sensible and the intelligible as conceived from the work of Plato. Once the division of the intelligible and sensible, the visible and the invisible turns into a paradigm of thinking—that is, once the metaphysicalor onto-theological model takes root—every phenomenal entity considered worth examining is put under the frame of this paradigm. This becomes the only valorized model of thinking in general. Consequently, not only existing entities are prised open by this model—but it becomes obligatory on the part of all emerging entities also to reckon their own formation in the light of this paradigm. Thus, the domains categorized by this model as art/poetry are impelled to be ‘thought’ [i.e. conceptual system] driven. It is for the thought implicit in them (i.e. the thought that (got) shaped (as) the form/entity of understanding) and the ways in which this ‘thought’ relates itself to (conforms to, contests or repeats) the domain that is valorized as the thought paradigm (the onto-theological/metaphysical model), which receive attention. Thus, art/poetry is the siblings of the thought paradigm that Europe celebrates or is constrained by even today. Jnaana is neither thought nor knowledge—if these are understood as mechanisms for the determination of the objects (seen). Perhaps jnaana is a mode of being that lives the difference between the formational and the non-formational articulable within the constraints of the formational. This mode of being cannot be abstracted and idealized from its differentiated ‘living’. Jnaana can possibly be subordinated to thought and knowledge but then the efficacy of jnaana cannot be reduced to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_8

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those formations of thought/knowledge. Therefore, there can be no exclusively idealized forms/formations of jnaana (such as art/philosophy in the case of Europe). Yet jnaana’s possibilities are everywhere, variedly accessible. Jnaana is immeasurable and is not an object of thought or knowledge and thus it remains undeterminable. Indian cultural formations—shaastra, itihaasa, purana, kavya, naatya, geya—in short, the entirety of vaangmaya composed of vidyas and kalas—persistently emphasize the mode of being of jnaana—discerning and practising such mode of being. Jnaana is a liveable learning—a certain kind of knowing whose efficacy matters in existence, in ‘living’; this learning passes through the coordinated ‘ends’ of man— purushaarthas. In a way, all cultural forms are the outcomes, which also thematize a certain cultivation, of these ends. The cultivation can take indulgent or discerning paths; the former yields curses and the latter boons; these paths, however, cannot be rigorously differentiated and set apart. Existence—emergence of formations—is an eloquent instantiation of their permeability and their transformability.

Chapter 9

Sarngadeva’s Primal Sonances

Abstract The Vishnudharmottara places dance as the pivot of the inscriptional cultural forms like painting and sculpture and locates song (or singing) as the basis of the entire set of cultural forms. The Naatyashaastra shows that a crucial component of naatya—singing—was drawn from the Samaveda. Mnemoculturality—verbal– acoustic–performative articulation of memory—permeates and forms every cultural formation, either in its emergence (as in the case of dance and ritual) or in its reception (as in the case of temples and painting). Mnemocultures are essentially melopoeiac: music or sangita remains another of its (dis)seminal life lines. Although music was a significant part of Bharata’s composition, it gains exclusive attention and is turned into yet another discipline of learning. How does this musical performative learning articulate the shareable impulse, the connecting current of Indian traditions in its domain? Unlike Bharata’s or Chitrasutra’s work, Sarngadeva’s composition is not directly formed in the itihaasic or puranic mode and yet it could not have come out in any other milieu than the one unleashed by the smriti strand of Indian traditions. Further, it affirms, like Charaka’ with regard to his domain, the primality of music to fulfil the ends of man. This chapter inquires into Sarngadeva’s musical sonatic treatise, Sangitaratnaakara, to see how it communicates with what it receives and imparts from the double strand of Indian cultures of memory.

9.1 Musical Universe The Sangitaratnaakara affirms musicality as the source of all emergences: both the universe on the move and the ephemeral beings that move along with/in it. If musicality (naada) permeates the (individuated) body, it also captivates the universe: naadaadheenamato jagat.1 The originary source of the primal sonance (naada) is the invisible sky, says Sarngadeva. Sonance is reckoned as the subtlest essence inhering in this primal element—the sky. When this essence emerges with other two primal elements that emerge from the sky—wind and fire—the musical prototype naada emerges; here, 1

Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, trans. R.K. Shringy and Prem Lata Sharma (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2013), Vol.1, 1.2.i.2, p. 21. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_9

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the letters naa refers to the invisible wind whose subtle essence is touch (of life) and da refers to fire, the visible element whose essence is form: Na kaaram praanamaanam dakaaramanalam viduh jaatah praanaagni samyogaatteena naadobhidheeyate. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.3.iv.6. p. 113)

The syllable naa alludes to the life wind and da to fire. Naada thus emerges from the confluence of wind and fire. (Here, the allusion to wind and fire recalls the fundamental constituents of the body that Charaka identifies as vaata (wind) and pitta (fire).) The naada in turn comes forth in two distinct ways: the ‘heard’ or ‘struck’ (aahata) and the ‘unheard’/inaudible (anaahata): Aahatonaahatascheti dvidha naado nigaddhate. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.ii.3, p. 23)

Naada is said to be of two forms: produced and unproduced. Although Sarngadeva does not explicitly say this, at one level all these three differentiated ‘soundings’ (primal/aahata/anaahata) are not the makings of any particular being. Musicality/sounding is pervasive, and it permeates every entity that emerges. Sonance is the essence of all emergences—from primal, invisible emergence of the sky, to the discrete recursive formations of the infinite–finites. It is, however, these sonatic emergences that are the focus of extended reflections in the tradition. Sarngadeva lists out about fifty-eight predecessors (divine, human, demonic) reverentially as inspiration for his own composition (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.1.iv.15–21, pp. 8–9). Music touches everyone—gods and their cousins (non-gods, Yakshas, Kinneras, Gandharvas, etc.). Apart from delighting various gods and their cousins with different forms and means of singing/music, gitam (song) delights humans, infants and even animals who are trapped by hunters with their music. Sarngadeva differentiates music cultivated by different constituencies as marga and desi.2 Further, singing enables one to accomplish the four ends of man: Dharmaartha kaama mokshaanaam idamevaika saadhanam. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.1.vii. 30, p. 11)

Gitam is the only medium for achieving the four ends: cultivable endowments, urges, wealth and releasement.

2

Here, it may be pointed out that Marga for Sargadeva is simply the sangita (gita/vadya/nrutta) that which is created by Brahma and performed by Bharata before Shiva and other gods. In a word, Marga is that which is performed in Suvarloka (the loka of gods): devasya puratah (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.5.23, p. 10); whereas that which is performed among various janas is called Deshi: deshe janaanaam yaduchchaa. The latter is rendered in the Bhuloka (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.5.23, p. 10). Thus, this differentiation has little to do with the pair of ‘classical’ and ‘regional’ as the translators imply. This has nothing to do with the usual division projected on these terms such as religious (marga) and secular (deshi).

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Although musicality permeates all the emergent—and although the basic classificatory notes are drawn on differentiated animal sounds (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakar, 3.vii, 45, pp. 147–48), the extended inquiry into musicality as such and its three related modes of articulation are inquired into on the basis of their emergence and movement in the human formation: Tatra naadopayogitvaan maanusham deha muchyate. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.viii.17, p. 35)

There (among the four life forms—born of sweat, sprout, womb and egg), the human body is said to be appropriate for inquiry into music. Sarngadeva devotes several chapters discussing the emergence of the individuated human form (from conception to delivery) along with the inherence of the lifeliving-being in it. This form is composed of elemental substances, tissues, essences, attributive traits and genealogical resources. Most of this extended account resonates with the accounts elaborated by Charaka and Sushruta. The entirety of Part 2 (titled Pindotpattiprakarana—pertains to the emergence of the embryo) deals with the body complex in its varied aspects. In other words, the elemental pervasive essence of sounding is explored in the discretized fractal formation of the human entity. For the fundamental play of the formational and the non-formational—apara and para—gets articulated with the technics of name and form; it is from these very technics, which function as constraints, that the human formation folds or unfolds itself in the infinite series of emergences. Perhaps, the attention to the human may also be due to the difficulty that the human (alone) seems to have in sensing the projective constraints of apara (the formational essence) which indulge the human in the presumption of consolidating its difference in the infinite recursive series. It is by emphasizing persistently the limits of the nama-roopa constraints that the Indian traditions enable the human to sense the limitless non-formational. Hence, the focus on the discrete apara formation called the human (purusha and paurusheya).

9.2 Biocultural Sonances The Sangitaratnaakara unequivocally comes forth from the reflective praxial tradition concerned with the primal play of para and apara. No wonder why Sarngadeva initiates his inquiry into musicality (which combines verbal–acoustic–instrumental music in alliance with dance: sangita) with a detailed account of the emergence of the human. The focus on the human formation is to specify the topos of the musical within this formation and concretely delineate the infinite variations through which the musical gets articulated. Both the articulated and the subtle/unarticulated soundings have their locations in the body. The unstruck or unmanifest one is stationed in the topos designated as Brahmagrandhi (the knot/opening of Brahma) located at the root of the navel (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.ii.145–148, pp. 98–99). Spurred by the manas the confluence of fire and wind draws on this life source and

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moves from this knot upwards through other passages inside the body. The naada— the conjoined force—emerges audibly as it moves through the navel, the heart, the throat, the ‘cerebrum’ (Brahmarandhra—Brahma’s cavity) and the opening of the mouth (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.3.ii.4., p. 111). Sarngadeva associates distinctive articulation of naada as it passes through these biocultural passages: Naadoti sookshmah sukshamascha pushto pushtascha krutrimah iti panchaabhidah dhatte panchasthaana sthitah kramaat. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.3.iii.5. p. 112)

Naada emerges as subtlest of the subtle from the root (Brahmagrandhi) of the navel and becomes subtle (in the heart), loud (in the throat), feeble (in the ‘cerebrum’) and concocted (in the mouth). These are the five sequential modes in which naada travels through its biocultural locations. All these passages are the internal organal locations—from Brahmagrandhi to Brahmarandhra—from ‘perineal’ knot/opening to ‘cerebrum’—and are enmeshed by complex networks of tubular vessels (naadis); they branch out intricately and enhance the body. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.iii.151–153, pp.100–101) As can be seen, the way the gross and the subtle bodies are related, the aahata and anaahata soundings are also connected. Depending on the way the experiencer cultivates his/her endowments, one can revel in the aahata or anaahata music. It may be noted that the heart (and not the brain) is considered the source of actional spurs and is also the abode of manas. Heart is shaped like an inverted lotus and has hollow space inside (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.viii.5.82–83, pp. 68–69). It is also the ‘space’ which orients the being(s) subtle and gross. Now, the heart is also considered the ‘place’ of the invisible sky. The hollowness of the heart is the effect of the primal element—sky (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.v.56–70, pp. 57–59). As pointed out earlier, naada (sounding/sonance) is the essence of the sky. Now it is this cordial ethereal sky which is said to be the location of the subtle body, the life-living-being. This is also the non-physical space of the invisible/unmanifest resonance—the anaahata naada, for the heart is said to contain the circle of the invisible—anaahata chakra—which, as we saw above, releases the subtle music: Hrudayenaahatam chakram. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.i.4.126–129, p. 90)

The unstruck circle resides in the heart. Each of these organal elements and the network weaving them is exposed and responds to the affective effects (vedana) that spur actions. The aahata, however, if one is attentive, can lead one to the anaahata. Though the emergence from subtle to gross seems sequential, access to either or both of these from within the body complex is not necessarily sequential. Access is contingent upon the orientation of one’s endowments. The body of Sarngadeva’s composition from within this reflective weave elaborates the manifestations of the articulated music.

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9.3 Primal Melodies Like the other compositions of cultural forms discussed earlier (Vishnudharmottara, Naatyashaastra, Charakasamhita), Sangitaratnaakara too excels in enumerating and describing an extended range of musical features and performative activities. From the five distinct bodily locations of sonance (from Sanskrit svanah: svaanah svanah (cf., Amara)),3 Sarngadeva proceeds to delineate and classify various melopoeiac features: tones (shrutis), notes, their family, deity, sage, colour, svara, and the uses of varnas, groups of tones, scales, permutations and combinations of notes; sixty three patterns of tonal phrases, sixteen melodic types, different kinds of songs, and various ragas (melodic in form and in their parts); various kinds of composers, voice types, and their qualities, quiver of tones, features of tonal rendering, and various kinds of compositions; temporal acoustic and non-acoustic movements of the hands, styles, musical tempos, instrumental music, effective actional flavours and actional sediments; Sarngadeva enumerates all such musical features in detail. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.1.viii, 31–48, pp. 13–14). The body of Sangitaratnaakara reverberates with these improvised sonances. Yet, the body that is the focus of Sarngadeva’s attention is no mere meat jukebox impulsively disc-jockeying hackneyed numbers. The body in question here is a convergence of intangible flows and indefinite relays. As in the case of all formations—from the elemental to the engrossed—the body too is formed of an inhering essence—the subtle life-living-being. The subtle body gets projected as an aspectual figure of the pervasive non-formable para: Te jeevaanaatmano bhinnaa bhinnamvaanaatmano jagat. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara 1.2.v.11. p. 30)

Neither the life-living-beings (and the grosser ones) nor the jagat is entirely different from para. The subtle body inheres in every entity—but as a discrete formation, constrained by the projectional apparatus. Nescience overpowers and disorients the subtle body (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 2.B-i-ii, pp. 24–27): Anaadyavidyopahitaa…karmabhiranaadibhih …pratijanma prapadyante. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.ii.6–7, p. 25)

Originless nescience [resulting from] actions without beginnings…attain birth (and get exposed to pleasure/pain, pious and impious acts). Sookshamam linga shareeram… sookshma bhootendriya praanaavasthaatmakamidam viduh. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara 1.2.iii.8, p. 28)

The subtle body is made of essences of the five elements, the perceptive faculties and the life breath in its subtle form. (In a word, this life-living-being too is very much 3

Amarakosha, trans. Tallapaka Tiruvenkataryulu (Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 2006), 1.7.1, p. 139.

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like the gross body—but formed by the subtler features/attributes of the components that make the gross body.) The formation itself is the medium and effect of inescapable actions—actions that must be rendered as the formational entity. The gross and the subtle beings are exposed to the affective effects of each action. The body complex is a lair of double binds. It is a source of gratification as well as releasement from the binds and bonds (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.163, p. 103). Perhaps, it is Sarngadeva in particular through his musical exploration who offers a more lucid exposition of what appears to be a three-level projection and ‘(non)appearance’ of para through the apara formations. (This may appear to resonate with Bharata’s account about the three dharmis (graamya, loka and naatya)—but Bharata does not discuss these explicitly as related manifestations of para.) Such a thematization of para, however, was already at work in the Bruhadaaranyaka composition. Sarngadeva recalls intimation of the mantra clearly in the way para (as Brahman)—the formless, unmarked and limitless—is related in a non-relational way to Brahma the ‘divine’ figure who brings forth divergent formations (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.vi.22–25, pp. 31–32). In Sarngadeva’s account, this limitless, pervasive para is alluded to as the sonatic para—naadaBrahma (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.3.i.1., p. 108). This sonatic force (without power) is unchanging and therefore is always already ‘there’ before the sonic division of aahata and anaahata modes emerges. Such manifestations occur and become relevant only in the context of discrete, differentiated entities—that of gross and subtle. If aahata sonance (a confluence of wind and fire) with its myriad variations emerges from distinctive topos of the body, it is audible and accessible to everyone with a body. Such music delights everyone who is exposed to affective modes of response. In complete contrast to the aahata manifestation circulates the anaahata— unstruck, inaudible (to the gross) music; this is accessible only to the subtle body that inheres in the gross body, and this too is exposed to the affective effects of existence. In other words, the subtle body—the life-living-being—is also caught in the dualities of existence (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.iv.9–10, p. 29). Irreducible to these two variations of the formational entities is the non-formative para. As discussed earlier, para as this radical force is related in a non-relational way to the other two formational manifestations. The subtle body is attributive but non-reducible to the gross one; it is invisible but transient nevertheless; it is everywhere but individuated. Whereas, para is non-individuating, pervasive, invisible, non-attributive and unaffected. Yet, the unfoldment of the subtle body and the limitlessness of the radical para can be ‘sensed’ only from within the differentiating complex of the individuated formation. No wonder why, like Bharata, Sarngadeva too turns his cultivated attention to the sonic weaves of the body complex. It is only through and from the context of these infinite improvisations of the sonic resonance that there is a possibility of sensing the inaudible (anaahata) but palpable naada; and only from such singular improvisations that the primal but indivisible sonance can be experienced. Such a differentiation of related levels of musicality/sounding has been already put in place by the sages and

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teachers of yore, says Sarngadeva (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.166, p. 104). Once again, we are drawn to the paradoxical pulls of the formational being which the Bhagavadgita has already discerned and thematized: the embodied cannot retain attention on the non-formational (avyaktaasaktachetasaam). Attending to the attributive, perceptually accessible, entails gratification; focusing on the unattributive leads to releasement. These two modes of articulation (aahata and anaahata), respectively, are open to the formational beings. For: Dhyanamekaagra chttaika saadhyam na sukaram nrunaam. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.164, p. 104)

Focused, contemplative attention is not easily attainable by humans. Therefore, the more comforting mode is to turn to sreemannada manaahatam— to the unstruck, unproduced naada (this reminds one of the sage Markandeya’s observation in the context of making of idols: roopheenam vichintayet, discussed earlier) (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 2.165, p. 104). But even this mode being: Rakti viheenattvanna manoranjako nrunam. (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.166, p. 104)

Devoid of indulgent attraction [this] does not delight (some) humans. Therefore, the need to inquire into the manifest articulates sound which is lokaranjanam bhavabhanjanam (Sarngadeva, Sangitaratnaakara, 1.2.167, p. 104). That which delights the loka and enables releasement [is the aahata mode].

9.4 Positive Temptations Undoubtedly, the question of pleasure and gratification entails the evocation and reception of music. Sarngadeva emphasizes this as the end of music throughout. But the question it implicitly addresses and responds to is: does this experience of pleasure indulge and immerse one in the seductive webs of projective formations and its affective effects? Or, does it enable one to see through the webs even as one inhabits them—and enable one to cultivate an unaffective, non-relational relation to their projections? The sensing of the play of para and apara leads one to cultivate a mode of being within the ineluctable actional formational matrix where one finds oneself. This praxial liveable learning/knowledge gets reiterated in composition after composition—even as such reiteration paradoxically replenishes and enhances the formational compositions—through the work of nama and roopa. True to their learning, each of these compositions orchestrates colossal assemblages of concrete and minutely worked out details pertaining to the very domainspecific substances, practices and relations. But all such distinctive domain-specific assemblages—discrete, fractal formations—are woven within a commonly shared weave of reflective practice—concerning the play of para and apara. Seduced by the detail of say the Sangitaratnaakara to abstract the detail from the performative weave for theoretical, anthropological, historical or aesthetic discourses is to

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disavow or suppress the reflective integrity of the tradition; this integral current is more concerned with cultivating reflective modes of being in general rather than erecting regional discourses about history, culture or aesthetics; this general thrust, of course, is always (especially in the smriti current) articulated within/through the minutely explored domain-specific experience. None of the reflective compositions in the Indian traditions concerns itself with demonstrating in detail any particular musical or dance work that has been created on the basis of the colossal assemblage of the components that they offer. Such endeavours aimed at engaging with a particular work in its totality are systemically absent in these compositions. What these compositions offer is not ‘theories’ based on some principles that can be directly applied or ‘tested’ empirically. Such enterprises to ‘create’ or analyse singular works in their entirety can only force them into metaphysical divisions such as theory and practice, form and content, and norm and fact categories. The Indian vaangmaya, even if it obsessively enumerates rules and practices, undermines rigid categorizations and absolutization of rules. Reflective creative compositional forms like shaastra, kavya, and kala—as modes and forms of performative learning move with—make and unmake their formations. Yet, the entirety of this fundamental dynamic unfolds on the basis of the one and only question that concerns the relation between para and apara. This question—even when it unleashes the formational impulse—requires a praxial response. For all along, the vaangmaya imparted only a liveable learning—a learning that requires to be put to work in modes of being and going about in the specific contexts (lokas) and formations one finds oneself in. How/what does one do with what one has remains an interminable task of liveable learning; the ends of this task remain indefinite without guarantees. Such an intense drama with regard to the intricate gradations of sonance is captured in a singular work of Viswanatha Satyanarayana. We will turn to his work in a later chapter. In this regard, to be sure, neither Sangitaratnaakara nor Naatyashaastra is a privileged, exemplary disciplinary learning which alone can provide access to the general intimations of the cultural learning: jnaana. There is no such privileged discourse in the Indian reflective traditions: all formations of nama and roopa relentlessly reiterate the play of apara and para; they open up the conditions for the impossible possible (dis)avowal of the force (without power) of para. As the congregation of the Himalayan sages deliberated, and as the different disciplines of liveable learning affirmed, what is of critical importance in the Indian traditions is the irreducible performative medium: the body and the actional circuit it is exposed to. Yet, this medium also turns into an effect and contributes to the reformation or transformation of the body complex. The sages sought a salubrious body with extended jeevitha, to render the tasks of the ends of man. These tasks—dharma, artha, kaama and moksha—seem covetable and appropriate; but they themselves can also become trapdoors of a machinic actional circuit. The enigma of the actional circuit can be such that it can provide a delighting opening but it can also jettison one into a cloying and crippling trapdoor. How should one deal with this mysterious actional circuit? What does it mean to escape this circuit? Doesn’t the obsessive desire to escape it ironically rivet one to the circuit itself? As can be seen, all these questions

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are critical for any liveable learning. It is such a set of questions that Manusmriti engages with. The next chapter tracks the cohering thread of the Samskruta traditions in Manusmriti as it addresses the set of questions pertaining to actional circuit.

Chapter 10

Manu’s Mnemopraxials

Abstract Various disciplines of liveable learning in India persistently affirm what is of critical importance in the Indian traditions: the irreducible performative medium— the body and the actional circuit it is exposed to. Yet, this medium also turns into an effect and contributes to the reformation or transformation of the body complex. The sages in Charaka’s compendium sought a salubrious body with extended jeevitha, to render the tasks of the ends of man. These tasks seem covetable and appropriate; but they themselves can also become trapdoors of a machinic actional circuit. The enigma of the actional circuit can be that it can provide a delighting opening but it can also jettison one into a cloying and crippling trapdoor (as it happened with Bharata’s discipline of learning when his children vitiated the learning). How should one deal with this mysterious actional circuit? What does it mean to escape this circuit? Can the very desire to escape it rivet one to the circuit itself? As can be seen, all these questions are critical for any meditation on liveable learning. It is such a set of questions that Manusmriti engages with. This chapter tracks the cohering thread of the tradition in the Manusmriti as it addresses the set of questions pertaining to actional circuit and the enigma of desire.

10.1 Cultivable Ethos The two kinds of composition of the Indian traditions—the heard and the recalled— are inexhaustible in their praxial reflective inquiry. Any of the conceivable domains pertaining to existence, experience and relation has an appropriate place that the domain deserves in the two currents of the vaangmaya. What is common to the entirety of the expanded vaangmaya, however, is its focus on actional learning: a learning that unfolds in actions and an action that puts to work learning. As this kind of learning has generative and orientative effect on life, it can be called a liveable learning. The liveable learning circulates as attributive or qualified action in varied modes of beings; such actions are generationally transmitted. Attributive or qualified actions accrue to one as cultivable endowments. All emergences are the effects of such cultivable endowments; every formation is also at the same time the effective medium for communicating and bearing endowments. It is precisely these cultivable © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_10

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endowments that are the focus of the most enduring and much maligned composition of Manu: Manu Dharmashaastra or Manusmriti.1 Some of the various terms used to refer to the cultivable endowments in this composition are: vidhi, aachaara andanushtaana; they are all interchangeable with the well-known and wholly polysemic term: dharma. What is common to all these differentially nuanced terms is that they refer to rendering of situationally relevant actions by the distinctly specified individuated being or formations: Asmin dharmo khile nokto gunadoshau cha karmanaam chaturnaamapi varnaanaam aacharaschaiva shaashvatah (Manusmriti, 1.107, p. 32).

This composition imparts dharma most comprehensively. It differentiates cultivable ones from the forbidden; their respective effects and defects are enumerated. Further, the lasting aachaaraas (practices) of the four individuated formations are also disclosed. Those qualified actions rendered through the composition of the heard and recalled are the most salient ones: Aacharah paramodharma shrutyuktasmaarta eva cha (Manusmriti, 1.108. p. 32).

Aachaaraas contained in the compositions of shruti and smriti are the most prominent ones. Dharma is the cultivated rendering of karma—action; even the cultivation of its deviation from salient practices unfolds only in actions. Rendering actions in accordance with the endowments will entail the fruit of the Vedic ‘inquiries’; the one who lapses in rendering the qualified action gains no such results. Knowledgeable of dharma’s roots in aachaaraas, sages enunciated that the source of every kind of fervid ordeal (tapas) is aachaara (Manusmriti, 1.109-10, pp. 32–33). There are said to be four sources of validation or four manifest features of dharma. They are the (i) source of shruti, (ii) smriti, (iii) appropriate practice and (iv) what pleases manas (Manusmriti, 2.6 and 2.12, pp. 38–39). But do they all go together seamlessly? When there is a variation in qualified actional modes in two shruti compositions, both must be maintained; two varied attributive actions in a given situation are validated (Manusmriti 2.14, p. 40). When there is a variation between the received compositions (of shruti and smriti) and ongoing practices, the latter must be upheld. But the validating source and the final feature of action—what pleases manas—may be at variance with just everything else. That is an inescapable possibility. But the locution ‘what pleases manas’ is the most complex or aporetic formulation—and in a way the entirety of the actional dynamic seems contingent upon this formulation. We will return to this tricky issue soon. The Manusmriti unfolds as a colossal reflection on differentiated modes of being—orienting and oriented by qualified actions. These cultivable endowments are neither generated, determined, ordained, ordered and maintained by any singular 1

Manusmriti (with Kulluka’s Commentary), trans. Saraswati Venkatasubbramasastri, (Madras: Balasaraswati Book Depo, 1928).

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all-powerful sovereign figure. They are generationally transmitted by the (internally) differentiated cultural formations in distinct locations: Tasmin desheya aachaarah paaramparya kramaagatah …sadaachaara uchyate (Manusmriti, 2.18, p. 41).

In different locations (‘nations’), those practices which are generationally imparted and received are called the appropriate actions. These indeed are the cultivable endowments. Although qualified actions and cultivability of endowments are common to every formation (stable or moving) in the locations that these formations people, they all do not undertake or render a common or homogeneous action. Renderable actions are differentiated variously—in accordance with the places, formations of people (various groups), their age and their sexual difference. The bulk of Manusmriti is devoted to the actional learning pertaining to one particular formation—the Brahmins (Chaps. 1–6 entirely and 10–12 are largely aimed at this formation). In consonance with the other reflective compositions of the tradition, Manusmriti too offers a detailed and minutely delineated assemblage of qualified actions that the Brahmin male and female are required/expected/offered to render. These assemblages are specified in five sets of cultivable endowments: (i) actions pertinent to the singular cultural formation (varna/jati/kula); (ii) actions of life cycle; (iii) life-cycle actions pertaining to different cultural formations; (iv) actions emerging from distinctive formational trait (Kshatriya ruler etc.); and (v) actions pertaining to fervid ordeals (Manusmriti, 2.25, pp. 42–43—based on Kalluka’s commentary). Chapters 2–11 (containing about 2541 out of 2786 shlokas) enumerate varied kinds of action in accordance with the sets indicated here.

10.2 Elusive Desire If there is neither an all-powerful determining authority nor ordaining and impositional force at work, what is the source of action? What induces one to cultivate the endowments with beneficial or detrimental orientation? Without such a decisive force how can formations emerge and sustain themselves? How can the order of things be enforced? Of the four attainable ends of man, which Indian reflective traditions affirm, Manusmriti foregrounds dharma (cultivable endowment) and specifies kaama (urge/drive) as its basis. Kaama is the essential source of action, Manusmriti affirms. No wonder why Manu includes ‘gratification of manas’ as one of the means of validation or characteristic trait of dharma. The other considered sources of dharma—the shruti, smriti and sadaachaara—are all in the ultimate reckoning turn to kaama. The term kaama has differentiated but contextually accented meanings. Kaama can generically be rendered as desire. Desire is a certain force that can be conflated with objects or relations, and it can articulate materially or intangibly. It can manifest in general as longing for something, or it can circumscribe itself to gratificatory union

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with the desired. (Yajnavalkya in the Bruhadaaranyaka says that the only source of all delight (aananda) is the generative source [sarveshaamaanamdaanaa moopastha ekaayanamevagam: for all delights the only or ultimate destination is—upastha— genital–generative source] Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.4.11, pp. 241–42).) But desire as such, in itself, is no-thing. None of the faculties can access desire as such, desire in itself. Desire appears to be a force without form. Every attempt to grasp desire concretely betrays confusion of force with form. Forms are effects of the force of desire, and they may spur desire but the latter cannot be reduced to them. It is this irreducible force which determines action and entails cultivable endowments. But the sensing of this force is possible only through the effects it entails through the formations—tangible and intangible which it leaves in its trail with supreme indifference: Samkalpamoolah kaamo vaiyajnaah samkalpa sambhavaah vrataaniyama dharmaascha sarve samkalpajaah smrutah (Manusmriti, 2.3, pp. 36–37).

Wanting or coveting is (the basis of) desire. (Longing for this or that object is coveting.) Yajnas (fire ceremonies), (women’s) ritual ordeals and pursuit of a regimen of rules all emerge on the basis of coveting/desire. Akaamasya kriyaa kaachiddrushyate neha karhichit yadyaddhi kurute kinchittattat kaamasya cheshtitam (Manusmriti, 2.4. p. 37).

There is no activity in loka devoid of desire. Whatever is done is the result of desire. Even the study of the Veda along with its ancillaries (Vedangas) and attraction towards all the Veda-endowed ritual activities is the effect of desire (Manusmriti, 2.2. p. 36). If desire is the all-pervasive force and if it determines one’s relation to even the sources and activities of dharma, does this mean that the desiring formation—the individuated being and discrete species—can command and control this force? There is no easy affirmative or negative answer to this question in the Indian traditions. To be sure, desire can be sensed only through the effects it leaves behind but the formations themselves are the result of accumulated residues of actions; desire in itself, desire as such cannot be figured in terms of dualities of active or passive effects/affects; it has no substance of its own, whereas actions refer to doings of entities—renderings of substantiated formations. These formations act, or they are acted upon by forces and formations. Thus, desire may spur and catalyse the emergence of formations but it cannot itself take a substantive form. Desire as such is a play sans stakes, or, desire stakes everything without itself turning into a thing. Ultimately, it is the formations in general and as such which are exposed to and result from actions. The force of desire permeates them all—formations, their relations and their actions. Manusmriti—in its intensive and extensive reflections on the qualified actions and cultivable endowments—opens up insight into the enigma of desire.

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10.3 Drifts of the Desiring Memory What kind of compositional formation would figure out this enigma? Manusmriti provides an instantiation of such a composition. A whole group of sages approaches Manu seated without any movement in a singularly attentive reflective mood; their only request releases from Manu (and later, from the sage Bhrugu) the colossal and varied quanta of descriptive, enumerative and differentiated peprformative reflections pertaining to qualified actions. The sages make an apparently simple informational request: Oh the noble one, they say, reveal to us the dharmas of the four cultural formations and of those formations that result from the regular (anuloma) and irregular (viloma) relations among these four cultural formations (Manusmriti, 1.1-3, pp.1–3). In response, the nonchalant Manu does not plunge into some encyclopaedic catalogue to enumerate the dharmas. His opening account—puranic in essence—does not seem to respond to the request at all. He offers them a recursively re-originating account. He begins after an end—an end that totally dissolves the entirety of existence of formations; such radical dissolution results in darkness, where nothing is cognizable or differentiable; no trait, no emergent form; unimaginable—devoid of any perceptible elements—it looked like an engrossing sleep has taken over: the apeironal formlessness pervades. It is from such equilibrial indifference that the process of formational emergences begins, says Manu. How do they come forth? From the non-formational—from the one that is ungraspable by the senses, and inarticulable; in a word, from para. Manu says that this para emerged. But para is not an entity to emerge, not a substance or a relation to get formed. What emerge from the unformable para are the subtle, inarticulate essences which through their intricate commingling and incorporations bring forth formations. Para is not graspable by these essences, but they can be seen as emergent projections from the non-formable. Such elemental and subtle emergent is what Manu qualifies as spurred by the formational (Manusmriti, 1.67, pp. 6–7). Para inheres in these projections and from these in turn comes forth water. As para in its subtler projections inheres in the formational, the water too contained the subtler force. Once this formational process gets initiated, it unleashes heterogeneous formations through multiple permutations and combinations—first as an egg in water, then as a subtle body entering in a gigantic (if gross) generative being. Such emergent being is called Brahma/Purusha (Manusmriti, 1.11, p. 8). It is this primal being—emerging from the egg—who first sensed/grasped the projectional and non-formational faculty of manas; it is from this doubly valenced manas that this being (Brahma/Purusha) grasped the genitive possessive faculty which is skilled in accomplishing activities that are particular to its formation: Manasaschaapyahankaaraam abhimantaaram eeshvaram (Manusmriti, 1.14, p. 8).

In the presence of the subtler body (the primal being) grasped from manas the genitive/possessive aspect that serves itself [emerges]. Such genitive/possessive faculty—called ahamkaara (the ‘I’/‘mine’ factor)—is the individuating, differentiating sense among formations. Desire works on this

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faculty and spurs it to activities. Desire confounds it to presume that through desire it can accomplish all the ends of the particular individuated formation. The particular formation (the given body) is a convergence of the elemental essences (five in number) and the faculty of ahamkaara: Tasmaachchareera mityaahustasya moortim maneeshinah (Manusmriti, 1.17, p. 10).

It is through these converging elements that the transient effect called the ‘world’ (prapancha) emerges. In other words, the world is also a formation that is brought forth by these factors (Manusmriti, 1.19, p. 10). It is through this apparently unconnected account of recursive emergence of formations that Manu moves towards responding to the request that the sages make. As could be seen, emergence in general occurs from that which is indistinguishable, formless and without origin or end. Every emergence is composed of the subtle and gross attributes of which the one that gets emphasized is the genitive/possessive faculty that emerges from the doubly oriented manas. The distinction of this faculty is due to its individuating and differentiating orientation in pursuit of its particular ends. Desire spurs these pursuits, and the ends they achieve have consequences. The consequences manifest in the form of the substantial formation that one accrues in the recursive movement of existence. It is precisely such actional consequences that go into the formation of the primal being—Brahma/Hiranyagarbha (Manusmriti, 1.9, p. 7). This primal being in turn brings forth varied formations. Yathartu lingaanryutavah svayamevartuparyaye Svaani svaanyabhi padyante tathaa karmani dehinah (Manusmriti, 1.30, p. 14).

The ways in which different seasons accrue their traits on their own, all the lively beings gain their traits on their own. Svayam bheje srujyamaanah punah punah (Manusmriti, 1.28, p. 13).

Based on the actional effects Brahma accorded life to different jatis, and the jatis renewed their life forms on their own through their actions. Yathaa karma tapo yogaat srushtam sthaavara jangamam (Manusmriti, 1.41, p. 16).

In accordance with their respective actions, ritual ordeals and focused practices, the stable and mobile formations were brought forth [by Prajapatis—the progeny of the primal being]. Brahma’s formation draws on these traits which are the residues that their actions entail. Thus, the convergence of subtle primal essences, the genitive/possessive trait and the residual traits of action of beings or formations go into the emergence of differentiated individuals and species. Brahma—drawing on the Vedas from the elemental sources (fire, wind and the sun) and on their basis, named all the formations and specified their actions (Manusmriti, 1.22–23, p. 12). Karmaanaamcha vivekaartham dharmaadharmau vyavechayat dvandvaira yojayachchemaah sukhadukhaadi bhih prajaah (Manusmriti, 1.26, 13).

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For (the) discerning, he differentiated beneficial and detrimental actional endowments. He enjoined the dualities of pleasure and pain and affective longing and hatred among the jana (biocultural formations). Thus from his own convergent emergence which itself was an actional effect, Brahma brought forth the four cultural formations and sexually differentiated himself into male and female (Manusmriti, 1.31, p. 14). The ‘logic’, if one can call it that, which brings forth these formations is the ‘same’: the emergent primal subtle essences, the substance-accruing traits resulting from antecedent actions. The axiom here appears to be that there can be no formation without antecedents—and these have neither a beginning nor an end: they are recursive occurrences resulting as effects of actions rendered. As one can see, Manu’s account gradually begins to turn to focus from the reflective puranic weave (of para–purusha–generative spur) to particular assemblages of liveable modes. The movement of this focus is neither linear nor transitional; it is not to be plotted as a movement from abstract to concrete/empirical: the weaves and assemblages traverse together. Nor can the delineated assemblages be treated as models ordained for living. The dynamic current that runs across the weave and/as assemblage is reverberatingly common: desire spurring actional orientation of the body complex towards cultivable endowments. This orientation is of critical consequence in the emergence of formations. Manu thus lays down the most comprehensive context for reflective practice of actions in their relation to endowments.

10.4 Actional Residues Despite appearances, the work of desire and the actional orientation of the genitive/possessive faculty do not valorize any agentive status of the individuated being. This does not negate the genitive/possessive faculty. The faculty is critical in sustaining the individuated entity. But the status of sustained and subtle formation of the being itself cannot be reduced to any particular manifestation of it. The generational recursivity of formations occludes any decisive rooting of any formation in any distinctive convergence or action permanently. Yet, actions are ineluctable in the loka for any formation that comes into existence. It is not possible for the embodied ones to exhaust actional effects without remainders, says the Bhagavadgita (Nahi dehaabhrutaa shakyam [Bhagaadgita, 18.11, p. 789]). It is these generationally accumulated remainders which shape a formation to provide the context for action. Whereas the genitive/possessive faculty aims at serving only the particular formation in its present state without reckoning or heeding to the accumulated residues; such a faculty presumes that desire serves its ends. Ahamkaara tends to see its particular temporal formation as the end in itself and orients its actions towards accumulative, possessive objects and relations. When desire is conflated with objects of desire, it betrays the covetous—and condemns one to machinic existence; for desire is irreducible to objects and formations that it leaves behind.

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Although Manusmriti’s comprehensive context alludes to the formations of the stable (trees, rocks, etc.) and the moving (birds, animals, humans, etc.), it confines itself to the four plus one sets of (the four cultural formations and that of woman) formations and their cultivable endowments. All these sets (like those of others) get involved in actions where desire is presumed to accomplish what is desired for. The actions they render are in a way calculated ones. For Manusmriti affirms, there is no action in this world which is devoid of presumed returns. In demarcating beneficial and detrimental attributive actions, Manusmriti indicates the likely returns of action (be they beneficial or detrimental) and their consequences. Yet, the path across desire, action and its effects is neither determinative nor continuous. One cannot calculate and programme the relation among these recursives; they can only be seen as conditions or constraints of actions. It is precisely in such a context where the constraints are not calculable but are effective that Manu poses the most demanding challenge and opens up an interminable task: action without desire. Given the constraints, abandoning action is not an option, for formations are determined by and entail action. Therefore, it is not action per se, but what propels or spurs action that needs probing. The bulk of Manusmriti is devoted to the work of desire that seduces one to act. Given the force of desire—its insubstantiality, unlocalizability, its delusive projectionality, its non-reducibility and its intractability—one may orient oneself to delink desire from action. The delinking implies not abandoning action but freeing oneself from longing for the effects of action or action with calculated returns: Kaamaatmataa na prashastaa na chaive haastya kaamataa (Manusmriti, 2.2, 36).

[The loka] is not [a] precious place for rendering actions for desired effects. Yet, action without desired effects is impossible in the loka. The impossible condition and context are thus specified. Yet: Teshu samyagvartamaano gachchatya maralokataam yathaa samkalpitaamscheha sarvaan kaamaan samashnute (Manusmriti, 2.5, p. 37).

When qualified actions are rendered without longing for their effects, one can sense the deathless para [para that is devoid of attributes and relations]. Sensing such para [within the actional/attributive loka], one can realize all yearning of manas [without longing]. The apparent paradox of the verse (desire-less action and receiving the yearnings) can be overcome when one attends to the orientation of action formulated here. The impossible, desire-less action seems a possibility only when one’s orientation (samkalpa) is indifferent to the dualities of actional effects: pain/pleasure, affective longing and corrosive rage, etc. Such a mode of being is possible only through the cultivable endowments. The act of cultivation can attune itself to be indifferent to the dualities of effect. Such sensing is described as samyagvartamaana—abandoning the actional effects. Manusmriti flowered from the very soil that nurtured the Bhagavadgita: Yastu karma phalatyaagi satyaageedabhidheeyate (Bhagavadgita, 18.11, p. 789).

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[In a context where the embodied cannot abandon the effects of action without remainders] Giving up the effects of action—unrelated to and unaffected by them—is the true act of sacrifice, and the one who achieves this is the real sacrificer. The Bhagavadgita identifies three major kinds of action here: yajna, daana andtapas (fire ceremonies, gifting, fervid ordeals). Such actions are said to refine man (Bhagavadgita, 18.5, p. 783). But one may strive to attune oneself to be indifferent even to these beneficial activities (Bhagavadgita, 18.11, p. 789). Manusmriti eloquently delineates all these kinds of activities and the grip of desired orientation that directs them. At the very end of the composition, after having received Manu’s response to their request regarding the cultivable endowments of differentiated sets of cultural formations, the sages renew their conclusive request to the sage Bhrugu. Manu entrusts Bhrugu with the task of imparting the learning after his initial opening (of the recursive origination). The sages ask: do tell us about the beneficial and detrimental effects of action that transgenerationally accrue (Manusmriti, 12.1, p. 636). If the response to the first question opened up the colossal reflective–puranic weave (about the unformable, subtle, generative and the actional), the last request seems to reverse this compositional mode. The concluding Chap. 12 moves from the singular embodied entities (specific cultural formations) on which the bulk of the composition focused so far—to the general reflective weave. But what draws attention first is the discrete entity that emerged from the convergence of elemental essences—to be more precise distinct aspects of the body complex that render actions variedly. Shubhaashubha phalam karmamano vaagdeha sambhavam Karmajaagatayo nroonaam uttamaadhama madhyamaah (Manusmriti, 12.2. p. 636).

Endowments cultivated by three distinct modes of the body complex—that of manas, utterance and the body—yield beneficial and detrimental effects. Rendering such actions leads to the noble, medial and lowly births of humans. As pointed out earlier, in the body complex manas has greater prominence. Manas is the abode of desire and memory, and it relates the passing external perceptual– cognitive experience with enduring internal reflective discerning experience. Manas as longing and orienting faculty impels actions. Manusmriti goes further in separating these actions into ten different ones: Trividham cha shareerena vaachaachaiva chaturvidham manasaa trividham karma dasha dharma pathaamstyajet (Manusmriti [extra verse], p. 638).

The bodily acts are of three kinds, of utterance four and of memory three and the orientation of all these ten kinds of action towards detrimental part of cultivable endowments be abandoned. Transformative births are contingent upon the orientation of the cultivable endowments. Focused only on the beneficial effects, one gains gods’ status in birth (as was the case with Hiranyagarbha); mingling of beneficial and detrimental effects leads to the birth of humans; the exclusive attention only to detrimental orientation gives the birth of the animals and birds ([extra verse], Manusmriti, pp. 688–89). But there

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is no neat or rigid bifurcation of these three modes. Even each of these modes gets articulated through the three levels of noble/medial/lowly actions. These various permutations and combinations and levels yield variegated/heterogeneous actional modes of moving and stable cultural formations: Shareerajaih karma doshairyaati sthaavarataam narah vaachikaih pakshi mrugataam maanasairantya jaatinaam (Manusmriti, 12.9. 638).

With the defective orientation of the body, man will be born as the rooted/stable being (tree and mountain); with the defects of utterance that of animal and bird; and with those of manas, the lowly human beings. Given that the circuit of desire, action and effect which is at the root of formational emergences, the orientation of the circuit has consequences for the formations— irrespective of the particular formation they find themselves in. In other words, the relentless iterations of the circuit have no place for a hierarchic ‘chain of being’. In all this intricate delineation, despite appearances, it is not man as such who is the centre of attention, but the actional modes that orient cultivable endowments. Therefore, whatever the kind of formation one ‘finds’ oneself in at a ‘given’ instant—be that of a bird or tree (Manusmriti, 11.240, p. 629)—has the impossible possibility of transforming its formation. Such transformations are possible only through fervid ordeals of qualified action (tapo moolam idam sarvam—Kalluka recites Manu, Manusmriti, p. 630); in the opening chapter Manu counsels the sages that aachaara—the qualified action—is the source of all fervid ordeals (Manusmriti, 1.110, p. 33).

10.5 Articulations of the Heterogeneous Manusmriti recounts two kinds of transformation of the ‘same’. The given formation through its cultivable endowments and fervid ordeals may result in changing the sustained formation (from bird to human or human to god—and, with defective orientation, the other way as well). Along with this kind of mutation, through the same process of orienting the circuit one may sense or access the non-formational, unfigurable para/desire from which all formations emerge. Such a transformation is possible to the one who orients the three kinds of action of the body complex (manas, utterance and the body). Bhrugu here recalls that the body complex itself is a convergence of the elemental essences and the subtle one [which he describes here as bhootaatma—elemental essence and kshetrajna—the subtle being, respectively (Manusmriti, 12.12, p. 689)]. But heterogeneous to this convergent emergence is para—that great one (mahattatva—the apeironal force). It is from this nonformational that the elemental essences accruing the genitive/possessive, perceptual faculties, emerges the subtle body—the life-living-being, reminds Bhrugu (Manusmriti, 12.13, p. 689). Ultimately, it is the convergent being—the subtle and the gross— that is exposed to the transformations and the relentless dualities of affective effects; such a being induces the multiplication and proliferation of itself interminably through its orientational circuit. When, from within the circuit, the formational being

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learns to see/sense the presumptive genitive/possessive faculty and its indulgence in desire knows the logic of the circuit: Akaamopahitam nityam nivruttamcha vidheeyate kaamatastu krutam nityam pravruttamupadishyate (Manusmriti [extra verse], 12. p. 656).

Action oriented towards fruit of action is called effect-seeking (or pathetic) action; action rendered everyday without longing for the fruit of action is called non-affective (or apathetic) action. The first one obviously rivets one in the gyrational circuits—for calculated actions accrue effects in bringing forth substantiated formations. The second one puts to work the circuit in an uninvolved mode. When one learns to sense the logic of formations in relation to modes of being, one knows the play of this logic everywhere. Orientation of one’s endowments to sense this play enables one to live the formations in a nonrelational mode—in an unaffected way. Such path of learning releases one from within the binds and bonds of the formational apparatus. To sense the possible in the impossible is the play of existence. It is this sense of possibility under the condition of impossibility that turns us to attend to the peculiar resonance across desire, para and the in-differential action. When sensed not as a seductive commanding controlling force but more as a substance-less, formless, irreducible, non-relational, pervasive, intractable, indifferent, powerless force, desire reverberates with the intimations of para. Only when para is confused with formational projections, it gets configured as the subtle body, attributive entity and bestower of boons and curses and the deity almighty. Like the desire that gets presumed to serve the genitive/possessive individuated faculty, this formationally configured para as well is caught in the relations of affective effect. The formational one tends to think one can possess desire itself as one tends to conflate para with the gross/subtle body. Para, like desire as such, pervades formations but remains apart in/from them. It is precisely this non-relational relation to para/desire one needs to sense and cultivate from within the formational matrix. Indian reflective practices—of which Manusmriti is a non-exceptional iteration— expose one to this condition of impossibility as a condition of possibility: to cultivate the orientation of one’s endowments without being affected by the actional effects in the loka. Perhaps, it is this very condition of (im)possibility that the Indian compositions seem to bear out in their unfoldment as well. On the one hand, there is an expansive, variegated, micrological detail of the assemblages; these assemblages spin the affective effects of actions and bind and bond the formations within their spin. The staggering detail of the assemblages is a testimony to the predictable immersive absorption in the activities of the seductive/sorrow-ridden loka. On the other, woven through the assemblages pervasively spread out are the intimations of the unaffected, non-relational, non-attributive para inhering in every formation: the impossible– possible scene of modes of being. It is precisely in such an intricate context that one is required to think of the question of the so-called agency on the one hand and that of politics on the other. These questions are today dominated by concepts that attribute complete sovereignty, autonomy and virility of power to the agent and the

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political leader. Nowhere do the Indian reflective traditions celebrate such attributes of individuated entities. Kautilya, Manu and Sukra all singularly configure the king on the basis of his orientation to his cultivable endowments. The singular double weave (impossible/possible) composes every formation with cultivable endowments. Liveable learning imparts such reflective modes of being. The king is not seen as an exclusive and exceptional being—even when he is equated with god (the attributive formation in a loka). Since even the godly king is not the creator or imposer of ‘sanctioned actions’, none of the smriti compositions can be said to institute or impose ‘law codes’ or ‘principles’ for establishing laws for people. For, after all, gods too are formational entities in this tradition and as such they too are exposed to the task of cultivable endowments. These compositions betray positivizing efforts. Recapitulating the entire work of the composition, Manusmriti at the end (as at the beginning) affirms: if there is a gradation among the learners of the Veda, even more precious than the ones who grasped the significant knowledge of the Veda are those who put the learning to work in practice—who praxially respond to the liveable learning (Manusmriti, 12.103, p. 660). Such learning is possible only when one mindfully senses that the formational and the non-formational are at work in the emergence of any formation and learns to orient oneself to rendering action sans desired effects (Manusmriti, 12.118, p. 664). Indian cultural traditions do not privilege a particular discourse or domain as the essential gateway to grasp the ‘essence’ of ‘India’. Europe takes recourse to such a path and foregrounds the discourse of philosophy as the essential reflective source to grasp the European distinction. Such a path is said to have been frayed in European antiquity. The discourse of philosophy preserves its position by subordinating or undermining all other modes of learning and living. The major casualties of such violence are said to be myth and poetry. Thus within European tradition, more prominently, from the late eighteenth century the desire to redress the historical violence took the form of rehabilitating poetry and literature (and art) in general. Thus, by the end of nineteenth century, we begin to see a certain kind of agonistic or antagonistic relation between what have been categorized as philosophy and poetry/literature (art in general) gets institutionalized. It needs to be noted that such a categorization is the work of the discourse of philosophy. Today, this European legacy is turned into a universal experience and other cultural experiences are impelled to explain themselves in or conform to this framework. As we have tried to show, Indian traditions do not valorize any particular discipline as providing the master key for comprehending the culture in its totality (if any). As will be shown later, despite the prominence, even mathematical learning lacks any epistemic privilege in the Indian traditions. Yet, inquiries flourished and lively learning traditions emerged in countless ways. As could be seen from the accounts explored so far, reflective creative forms such as dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, about living and longevity and ethos of living openend up fundamental inquiries. Yet, all these were rendered in a performative milieu aimed at imparting and cultivating a performative impulse. Hence the centrality of the concern for modes

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of being and the medium of performance which come forth as vectors of performative reflections. It is precisely in such a milieu that literary inquiries emerged and vibrantly circulated across millennia. These inquiries were never animated by any kind of agonism or antagonism with regard to some privileged discourse. Rendering a poem or offering an inquiry was seen more as a performative ethos rather than a theoretical venture or virtue. Inquiries into the literary were aimed at how to render this practice effectively and impeccably. Literary inquiries were undertaken by practising poets, and their inquiries were aimed at practising poets. The next chapter explores this domain of performative poetic modes of being.

Chapter 11

Anaakhyaana–V

Jnaana can be sensed, accessed and learnt at any instant through any form by any entity in its instantial existence. There is no privileged moment or medium or mode or formation exclusively aimed to provide such learning. But the moment, mode or medium or formation through which jnaana opens up cannot be sublimated into a normative universal event or passage. There is no Buddha moment/event (Bodhi tree, at Bodhgaya, the age of 35) in the Sanskrit traditions; perhaps, Buddha himself would not have accorded such moments any status. Jnaana is not epiphanic—a lightening moment that transforms what it affects once and for all; it is not figured in heliotropic terms. Jnaana is a possibility of an opening within all emergent formations of apara. Jnaana can be a certain kind of cultivable indifference and a praxial mode of being within/through the pulls and pushes, tests and tribulations, of the convergences of apara. Therefore, the ‘opening’—the praxial indifference—requires nurturing. As jnaana is a possibility only within the matrix of apara—it is indefinitely exposed to the encroachments and attractions of apara which confound seductive indulgences with jnaana; incidentally, these latter kinds of opening too are designated by the term jnaana. Such openings result from the faculties of ‘jnaana’—jnaanendriyas— the perceptual apprehensions. These openings simmer and rage and confusing their effects with jnaana as the cultivable indifference would result in the abandonment of being to a machinic existence; such an existence ignores, disavows, or denies the other opening within the ‘same’. The difference between these ‘two’ appears to be a fraction of hair’s breadth, but the effect is immeasurable and is of radical consequence. Jnaana is at once associated with the instantial and durational. The instantial is engrossed in the momentary: what jnaana-karmendriyas (external faculties— apprehensional and actional faculties) evoke/transmit. Whereas the internal faculties (antahkaranas) weave durational temporality. Jnaana maarga is an opening from within the pulls of the instanital and the durational in the complex made possible by these two vectors—and especially within the context of the instantial.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_11

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(A)Para Poiesis

Abstract Indian traditions do not valorize any particular discipline as providing the master key for comprehending the culture in its totality (if any). Despite its prominence and prevalence, even language or mathematical sciences lack any epistemic privilege in the Indian traditions. Yet, inquiries flourished and lively learning traditions emerged in countless ways. As can be seen from various disciplines of learning, reflective creative forms such as dance, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, of living and longevity and ethos of living opened up fundamental inquiries. Yet, all these were rendered in a performative milieu aimed at imparting and cultivating a performative ethos. Hence the centrality of the concern for modes of being and the medium of performance among the enduring Indian traditions of reflection. What is the place of literary inquiries in the double strand of such traditions? Were these inquiries ever animated by any kind of agonism or antagonism with regard to some privileged discourse (as was the case in Europe between the privileged discourse of philosophy and the displaced or domesticated discipline of art/literature)? Who advanced such inquiries in the performative traditions of India, who were their addressees, and what was the impact of the performative impulse in these inquiries? Above all, how does the literary domain relate itself to the deeper current of shared reflective pulse of the tradition—a pulse that throbs between the forces of para and apara? This chapter explores this most enduring domain of performative poetic-reflective living.

12.1 Figurations of the Literary Being Literary inquiries can be of two intimately related kinds. One that explores the literary in the very act and composition itself; the other explores how the literary can be composed. In the Samskruta traditions, the literary inquirers of both kinds were mostly one and the same: poets and playwrights. Their inquiries were developed in the context of a polyglot cultural milieu. The inquirers were often renowned for their ability to bring forth poetic compositions in more than one language. What is common across these inquiries is that often the composers treated literary composition as a (female) body—kavya shareera: it is an articulate body. Consequently, the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_12

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inquirers were attentive to the constituents that compose the body. The most essential constituent is considered to be shabda—sonance. All the varied manifestations of shabda are the cultivable endowments of the kavya body for these inquirers. The reckoning of these endowments, however, varied from inquirer to inquirer. After configuring the kavya body, for instance, Dandi mainly attends to the cultivable endowments that can radiate the body. The entirety of his work, Kavyaadarsha, is devoted to enumerating and illustrating these attributes: Shareeram taavadishtaartha vyavachchinna padaavalee.1

Delighting verbal chain [composes] the (kavya) body. That body in question is of three types for Dandi: padya (which is made of four lines/feet); gadya (prose); and mishrama (combination of padya and gadya). The kavya body is made of at least four different verbal material substances: Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsa and Misrama. It is only the cultivated endowments which evoke or enliven actional flavours. Like Bharata, Dandi too draws attention to graamyatva (vulgarity or uncouth utterance). Graamyatva in sound and sense can crop up everywhere (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 1.62–66, pp. 32–33). Depending on the cultivation of verbal material substances, Dandi identifies two major poetic paths which shape the kavya body. These two paths, however, are not meant to be exhaustive. Dandi says: Iti maargadvayam bhinnam tatsaroopa niroopanaat tadbhedaastu na shakyante vaktum prati kavisthita (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 1.101, p. 46).

Thus, the two different paths can be demonstrated. But how in each poet these modes manifest is impossible to delineate. (For Dandi these two paths are Gaudi and Vaidarbhi. But the kavya bodies manifest with infinite variation.) If the kavya bodies are countless, even the experiential flavours they evoke can also be indescribable: Ikshu ksheeera gudaadeenaam maadhuryasyaantaram mahat tathaapi na tadaakhyaatum sarasvatyaapi shakyate (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 1.102, p. 46).

The difference among the tastes [such kavya bodies evoke] of sugar-cane juice, milk and jaggery is enormous. Verbalizing that difference is impossible even to [the goddess of learning] Saraswati. Here, although Dandi seems to allude to Bharata, like the latter he too does not give any special prominence to rasa. As in the case of Bharata, Dandi seems to incorporate rasa as one of alamkaaras—the endowed adornment of the kavya body. Although Dandi’s inquiry into micrological differences (of sonic verbal substances, their modes of combination and the flavours they entail) indicates the complexity of the poetic body/formation—and the incalculable ways these formations can come forth, his work confines itself to what a finite formation in an instant of existence can configure. These individuated differences in poetic modes and their 1

Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Potti Sriramulu Telugu University, 2011), 1.10, p. 7.

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actional effects, for Dandi, however, emerge from transgenerationally accrued capability and learning (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 1.103, p. 46). Even without this transgenerational endowment, however, one can gain poetic ability with only vast learning and devotion to sonic utterance to gain the wealth of kavya, adds Dandi. But such ‘learned’ poets may not be able to create a noble poem; they can shine forth among gatherings of poets, says Dandi (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 1.105, pp.45–46). The attributes that accrue radiance to kavya are called embellishments; they are not accessories added to the body externally. They are the inherent traits of the language of the poetic formation. ‘Embellishments’ are the cultivable traits inherent in language. In other words, the radiance of kavya is contingent upon its cultivable endowments. These endowments are multiple and varied. No one can definitively recount these endowments (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 2.1, p. 49). Dandi discusses briefly but annotatively 35 such verbal–acoustic embellishments in addition to listing out a dozen more, specific to the two paths which he identified earlier; his account suggests internal variations of these components ranging up to 180. The bulk of Dandi’s work is devoted to the annotative account of these embellishing attributes of kavyashareera. The sources of the differential endowments are in the bodies of the composition of earlier aachaaryaas (like Bharata). Despite his finite enumeration, Dandi is firm in stating that none can exhaust the cultivation of these endowments. Such particular manifestations and their effects can be known only through reflective practice and experience (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 2.368, p. 210). That is, the infinite– finites cannot exhaust the emergences and articulations of endowments. It must be noted that the addressee of this inquiry into kavyashareera is definitely the poet (Dandi, Kavyaadarsha, 3.187, p. 293). Dandi, who is himself a reputed poet, is here meditating on the complexity of the kavya attributes and how kavya can be brought forth from within a practitional matrix of poiesis.

12.2 Being of the Literary Living In their close attention to the kavyashareera, what is common across all the inquirers designated as aalamkaarikas (inquirers of endowed traits of embellishment) is their attention to the formation of sound units into syllables, syllables into words and the latter into sentences. The inquirers consider some of the ancillaries of the Veda (the Vedangas) like siksha, vyaakarana, chandas and nirukta as essential sources for the various manifestations of the shabda. The knowledge of the ancillaries is assumed to be essential to refine and differentiate formations of sound from unrefined (graamya) manifestations of it. From Bharata onwards, these refinements were designated as qualities (gunas) and cultivable elements of embellishment (alamkaara). The poetic body thus is composed of refined qualities and embellishments of sound, hence the attention to the formation. Vamana says in his first two sturas—aphoristic utterances—of Kavayaalamkaarasutraani: Kaavyam graahyamalamkaaraat. Kavya is received/grasped for its figural embellishments.

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Soundaryam alamkaarah.2

Figural embellishment is beauty. Now these formations of sound are exposed to the dualities of merits and defects. The reckoning of these cultivable endowments of the kavya body differs greatly from inquirer to inquirer. Consequently, their accounts of the poetic formations also vary across centuries. However, each of these inquirers—from Dandi to Jagannathapanditaraja and beyond—is involved essentially and exhaustively not only in enumerating the attributes of the poetic body but also in demonstrating their merits and failings in practice. This demonstration does not, however, take any perspectival thematization, analytical dissection, comparison and theorization of merit or defect: in a word, there is no normative approach in these inquiries. It simply takes the form of annotated glossing by means of a citation of a most minimal extract from a poetic composition; no ‘demonstration’ takes recourse to offer any ‘total’ analysis of the poem. In a word, these inquirers were not oriented towards founding some poetic ontology. The cultivable endowments are not ransacked for obtaining the singular essence of the poetic formation as such. But what is important to notice is that most of these inquirers, spread over two millennia appear inclined to see the poetic as the convergent effect of the cultivable endowments. This effect, however, is not reducible to any particular endowment of the composition. Such an effect can only be accrued through experience but cannot be demonstrated, they suggest. But there is no consensus about any particular effect as experientially common. Thus, Bharata’s brief account about the actional flavour (rasa) as the convergent emergence of gestural, verbal, decorative and affective (angika, vachika, aaharya, sattvika) endowments is not reducible to any one of these actional attributes. But this particular formulation of the effect is not universally endorsed by other inquirers. Thus, for Dandi (who barely takes up Bharata’s account of rasa), it is the convergent effect of decorative embellishments of language that radiate the poem and delight the receiver. Vamana too affirms with variations this position; for Vamana, it is the qualities (guna)—rather than embellishments that are prominent. Interestingly, Vamana titles his account about the poetic as shaareeram: of the body. For him, what is essential to the poetic body is reeti—mode or path: Reetiraatmaa kaavyasya (Vamana, Kavyaalankaarasutraani, 1.1.6, p. 7).

The mode/path is the atma of kavya. The mode in question is none other than the distinctive composition of verbal units. What gives the distinction to these verbal units? The qualities of the units make them unique. These qualities are savourable delights (Vamana, Kavyaalankaarasutraani, 1.1.7–8, p. 8). Vamana then goes on to enumerate (three) distinctive modes that are formed by varying savourable qualities. Vamana too sees these endowments as cultivable and considers the beneficial and detrimental effects they have for the poet/poem. The effects are borne out in the 2

Vamana, Kavyaalankaarasutraani, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad; Jayalakshmi Publications, 2003), 1.1.1–2, pp. 1–2.

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loka. If the cultivation is beneficial, it will yield fame and glory to the formation of the poet(ic body). The effect can be borne out in the human world or in god’s world. Similarly, the detrimental ones suffer on the earth and in the hell (Vamana, Kavyaalankaarasutraani, 1.1.5, pp. 3–4). The configuration of the poetic formation as the attributive body is more than a mere analogy here. For any and every formation is the actional effect and these effects as remainders of action recursively come forth in/as formations. As seen earlier, actions are exposed to the duality of merit and demerit. Beneficial action accrues transformative refinement in the formation; this accrual is a transgenerational effect. The seed of the poetic (kavitva beeja), says Vamana, is: Kavitva beejam pratibhaanam janmaantaraagata samskaara visheshah (Vamana, Kavyaalankaarasutraani, 1.2.16, p. 23).

The seed of the poetic emerges from a distinctive blossoming radiance which is the result of transgenerationally accrued refinement or cultivation. As actional effects, capabilities and endowments are vulnerable. Vamana, like others in the tradition drawing on the tradition (advanced by Bharata), enumerates his own set of attributes and qualities of the verbal utterance and demonstrates the ways in which these get disoriented and fail or ruin the poetic composition. If Dandi identified 37 types of embellishments (in which he incorporates all qualities as well as flavours), Vamana specifies 31. It is the refined articulation of the endowments of a body that evoke a subtle experiential flavour which is a kind of rapturous delight. This evocation is neither determinable nor definable. Literary inquirers differed on how this effect gets evoked and offered different names to it. If Bharata called it rasa, Dandi, Bhamaha and Vamana called it attributive embellishments and modes (and incorporated Bharata’s account into theirs). Differing from others, Kshemendra says: Alamkaarastvalamkaaraa gunaa eva gunaah sadaa auchityam rasa siddhasya sthiram kaavyasya jeevitham3

Embellishments are only decorations, and qualities are only attributes. But that which gives stable or enduring living to a delighting poem is its auchitya (contextual propriety). For Kshemendra it is not the mere display of figures of speech or simple exhibition of endowments that evokes the delighting touch or taste of the poetic body; only when these endowments are put to appropriate work in specific situations, such delight ensues. The endowments must be cultivated and oriented towards transformative refinement. Kshemndra’s reflective inquiry reiterates the performative challenge of actions. If we consider all the verbal–acoustic endowments/attributes with which all the literary inquirers are so deeply involved as figures of speech, the involvement can be said to concern itself more with how to put them to work to evoke an experiential 3

Kshemendra, Auchityavichaaracharchaa, trans. (with commentary by) Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Surabharati, 1983), 5, p. 2.

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flavour; the concern of the literary inquirers does not seem to be aimed at creating a persuasive discourse. For, in the ultimate analysis the experiential flavour never gets decisively verbalized nor is it configured as an object of such a discourse. None of the inquirers undertakes any such analysis. Their entire endeavour is to explore how to put to work the endowments in such a way that a work yields a certain kind of (undefinable) rapturous delight. As in the case of performative traditions, even in the poetic context too we notice that the literary endeavour yields its effect in two related paths: composer/performer oriented and the other oriented paths. In other words, the rapturous delight can be a savourable experience for the poet in the very process of his/her modes of putting to work the endowments; at the same time, they can also reach out and communicate and evoke the delighting experience among the indefinite addressees. The composer and the addressee/listener cannot be categorically segregated here. Vamana clearly spells out that the addressee of his composition is the discerning poet (aarochaki) and not the one who simply indiscriminately gobbles up or just consumes whatever he gets (satrunaabhyavahaari—this term literally means the one who consumes everything along with grass) (Vamana, Kavyaalankaarasutraani, 1.2.1, pp. 5–8). Most importantly, an exclusive response of the addressee/listener who is not at the same time a composer/performer is starkly absent in these traditions.The path of action/performance/composition or the mode of being and the destinal target are not decisively segregated. Thus, the interminable question of how/what one does with one’s cultivable endowments reiterates itself in this domain as well.

12.3 Articulations of the Unsayable While working from within the tradition of literary inquiries, Anandavardhana articulates his inquiry in more intimate resonance with the general imports of the tradition than others have done so far. For him too undoubtedly, the task of the poet is: Vaachyanaam vaachakaanaam cha yadauchityena yojanam rasaadi vishaye nai tat karma mukhyam mahaakaveh.4

The most important activity of the poet is in the composition of expressions and what is (to be) expressed and appropriate conjoining of motifs concerning actional flavours. He moves much further from others in exploring this activity, though. For him the poem and play, the utterances as well as their themes—both are only the aspects of the poetic body; that is, what is said and the way it is said in a poem or play make the poetic body. The savourable flavours (the actional effects) are the life-living-beings of the poetic formations; in other words, the actional flavours form the subtle bodies of the kavya shareera (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3.33, p. 745). Access to such 4

Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaalokamu (along with Lochana), trans. (with commentary by) Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 1998), 3.32, p. 743.

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flavours is possible only through indirection and not through direct denotation, states Anandavardhana; we are not too far from the anaahata sonance of Sarngadeva. Ananadavardhana offers an extended and multifaceted account of how indirection as a poetic mode occurs and effects from the very commonly prevalent articulatory means of language; then, he goes on to show how the indirectional modes are at work in poetic compositions. These are shown at the very discrete levels of acoustic, verbal, figural and sentence formations. Like others earlier in the tradition, Anandavardhana too draws on the figure of the body. He sets out to inquire into and elaborate on something that has already been configured by the learned before him. Turning the literary inquiries to a different level, Anandavardhana declaims: Kavyassaatmaa dhvaniriti budhairyah (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 1.1. p. 10).

Dhvani is the atma of kavya say the learned; this atma shines in the hearts and is dear to the empathetic or the cordial ones: sahrudayamanah preetaye tatsaroopam (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 1.1, p. 10).

Here, Anandavardhana differentiates his account from others who configure the essence of kavya with verbal–acoustic attributes, modes and qualities of composition. Apart from all these embodied attributes, there inheres in the poetic body something else which he calls dhvani. Others thought that ‘shabdaartha shareeram tatkaavyam’ (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, p. 11). That is, kavya is the body composed of sound and meaning. Anandavardhana calls those who deny the inherence of dhvani— argumentative negators (abhaava vaadis). Anandavardhana’s designation of these nay-sayers seems to draw on the anaatmavaadis (deniers of the existence of atma— the Buddhists [we will return to this]). Dhvaneh svaroopam sakala satkavi kavyopanishadbhootamati ramaneeyam (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, p. 50).

Dhvani is the most attractive secret inherent in all accomplished kavyas. Anandavardhana differentiates this kavyaatma—dhvani—as vaachyaartha (apparent, denotative meaning) and prateeyamaanaartha (latent, connotative and counter-sense) (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 1.2, pp. 56–57). He treats all the attributes discussed by earlier inquirers (embellishments, modes and qualities) as simply vaachyaarthas (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 1.2 pp. 56–67). In other words, vachyaarthas are the expressive or manifest traits of the poetic body. Whereas, he contends, the connotative sense is not reducible to the denotative utterances (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 1.4, pp. 62–63); in other words, the prateeyamaana is the subtle inhering sense of the expressed trait invisible directly and irreducible to the visible. In Anandavardhana’s account, dhvani appears to be the subtle body of the kavya. For alamkaaraas, forms, modes, etc., he argues, function as limbs of the gross body and they turn dhvani into the converged essence of these limbs. The subtle body receives the affective effects of the gross body. Anandavardhana contends that alamkaaraas are expressive and they shine essentially because of the radiance that

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the dhvani already exudes in the poetic body (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 2.28, pp. 488–89). Anandavardhana’s treatment of a poem as the body complex deeply resonates with the ‘logic’ of formations that one finds prevalent in Indian reflective traditions. Anandavardhana is acutely aware of this logic. The kavya body for him is just one formation among the others; but this is itself a whole loka/universe and the poet is the (regal) generative medium and effect of this universe: Apaare kaavyasamsaare kavirekah prajaapatih yathasmairochate vishvam tatheva parivartate (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3. p. 895).

In this limitless universe of poetic family circle (samsaara), the poet is the only Prajapati (the one who brings forth formations). The universe moulds itself in accord with his desire. Shrungaari chet kavih kaavye gaatam rasamayam jagat Sa eva veeta raagaschenneerasam sarva meva tat (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3. P. 895).

If the poet is eros-driven, the entire poetic universe will be pervaded by the savourable flavours. If the poet is freed from indulgent longings of the moving world, everything will be devoid of actional flavours. Bhaavanaa chetanaanapi chetana vachechetanaana chetanavat vyavahaarayati yatheshtam Dhvanyaaloka, 3. P. 895).

sukavih

kaavye

svatantratayaa

(Anandavardhana,

Since a great poet is independent, he can as he desires spur inanimate substances into action and transform animate entities into inanimate formations. All the three verses confirm the figure of the primal being—Prajapati—and reiterate his work of formations. At the same time, the second line of the second verse— although seems negatively put in the context—indicates the cultivated unaffective actional mode in such desire-driven loka and its formations. Clearly, these verses affirm the dynamic of desire and its projectional longings towards formations. Thus in this conception, kavyaatma is that which evokes and receives actional flavours for its gratification. Here, atma clearly is identified with the primal being who is himself a convergent emergence and who in turn brings forth every entity through this very process. He also inheres in every entity as a subtle body of life-living-being. It may be recalled that what differentiated the primal being and all his formations was ahamkaara—the ‘I’ness. It is the convergence of elemental essences and this individuating trait which is the basis of formations in general. Anandavardhana considers the actional flavour of eros as the supreme among savourables. But he seems more inclined towards the serene quiescent actional flavour of shaanta rasa. In discussing the ways in which certain actional flavours can be conjoined without rupture, Andandavardhana describes the nature or state of this flavour: Shaantascha trushnaakshaya sukhasya yah pariposhah tallakshano rasah prateeyata eva (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3. p. 723).

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Shaanta rasa which nurtures desire-depleted gratificatory status is experiential (and obverse of other flavours). Anandavardhana goes on to add: Yachcha kaamasukham loke yachcha divyam mahatsukham Trushnaakshya sukhasyaite Dhvanyaaloka, 3.101, p, 724.)

naarhatah

shodasheem

kalaam

(Anandavardhana,

Whatever the comforting joys that one enjoys in the loka and the greater pleasure that is associated with the loka of gods are not even comparable to the sixteenth part of happiness one gains from the gratification that accrues when freed from indulgent longing/craving. In Anandavardhana’s reckoning, this actional savourable (which is indeed unaffective actional mode) can be conjoined by the eros-oriented actional effect as well as those of affective concern linked with the valorous flavour (dayaaveera). Here, the implication is that once these very same strident actional modes are relieved of their passion, affect and ahamkaara, they are transformed into shaanta rasa (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3, p. 724). As already pointed out, the savourable actional flavours are described as life-living-beings (jeevas) by Anandavardhana (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3.33, p. 745). Given the fact that actional flavours are desire-driven and that they spur action, there is no object in the world on which desire cannot be projected; Manu’s intimations are palpable here. This echoes with Bharata and Bhamaha who too centuries earlier declared that there is no object of learning that cannot be embraced by the play (naatya) and poetry (kavya) (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3.1. p. 900): Anantaahi dhvaneh prakaaraah…kena shakyante samkhyatum Dhvanyaaloka, 3.44. p 932 (sentence order slightly changed)).

(Anandavardhana,

Differences among dhvani are infinite and counting them is impossible. Asphuta sphuritam kaavya tattvam (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 3.46. p. 932).

The essence of kavya is an obscure spurring. (Here, Anandavardhana is directly being critical of Vamana who proposed different typologies of kavya on the basis of their emphases on different qualities (guna). Anandavardhan claims that his dhvani account presents the essence of kavya more lucidly (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, p. 932).) In this context, it may be said that it is rather odd to describe Anandavardhana as a propounder of a school called dhvani. The entire treatise, Dhvanyaaloka, in fact is devoted to delineating how rasa gets articulated and communicated. This entire process of articulating rasa is designated by Anandavardhana as dhvani—the sonatic connotation or connotative sonance. Nowhere does Anandavardhana depart from the essence of kavya as a composition of rasa-dhvani. Dhvani is essentially: Rasaadimaya ekasmin vyangya vyanjaka bhaave yatnaadavdheeta (Ananadavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4.5, p. 960).

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Even when there are multiple possibilities of showing mere denotation–connotation, the poet must be primarily preoccupied with savourable flavours of such motifs. Anandavardhana vehemently contends that for the work of kavya as in the case of examining the nature of pearls, there is nothing that cannot be expressed. The work of laakshanikas has made expressions crystal clear, he contends (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 938). There is nothing that cannot be expressed or articulated. Even that which cannot be expressed is already captured by the utterance that it is non-expressible (anaadhyeya) (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 938). Here, Anandavardhana is emphasizing the infinite power of the formational force of apara. But here, the target of critique appears to be the Buddhist claims concerning anaatma—absence of atma. The ontological denial of articulability—since everything is absolutely transient—nothing is articulable—seems to be the Buddhist claim. Anadavardhana counters it by foregrounding the very fact of Buddhist recourse to linguistic expression to describing even the ephemeral features of the object. That is, even negation ends up being positive in linguistic articulation (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. pp. 939–40).

12.4 Affective Probes The aims of Indian literary inquiries are not oriented towards determining some literary essence or establish a literary ontology. The essence of kavya, their work shows, is the absence of essence. No wonder no one engages with any particular kavya to demonstrate a thesis pertaining to some putative essence of kavya. The literary inquiries at a very primary level were inquiries into language in general. But such an enterprise—inquiry into language—is a naïve or foolhardy effort so belatedly in a tradition which for over millennia has intensely probed into language in its minutest detail. To be sure, Vedangas, the six limbs of the Vedas with their detailed and internally varied approaches to utterance, metrics, formation of sound, word and sentence units, sources of words, etc., have already exhaustively explored the nature of language and utterance in general and (Sanskrit) in particular. Added to this, by the time the early aalamkaarikas like Bhamaha and Dandin began their inquiries, there were other more intensely focused modes of inquiry in general. These inquiries, of Daarshanikas, were not just confined to language but with the very nature of the formational in general (be it verbal, actional, phenomenal, relational, etc.). These modes were aimed at specifying rigorous means of validating the sense of the formational. Various Daarshanik positions advanced intense inquires into the means of validation. Literary inquiries, in other words, had to advance their claims about language in the context of the formidably developed inquiries into language made vibrant over millennia by the Vedangas on the one hand; and they had put forward their formulations in the context of flourishing Daarshanik traditions which questioned rigorously the means of validation on the other. One can perhaps contend that the

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literary inquirers were aspiring to advance their specific kind of inquiry as yet another ‘anga’ of the Vedic tradition (the seventh anga as it were) or another darshana (the seventh darshana). This is no easy task at all for an emerging inquiry. Yet, the literary inquirers (from Bhamaha—if not Bharata—to Panditaraja Jagannatha) persisted in the effort to carve out a distinctive niche for themselves. The literary inquirers were no upstarts, and they were certainly prepared for the task in two ways: (i) inquiries in Indian tradition, however radical their claims and contestations were, do not take the path of radical opposition with what they contend. In other words, inquiries do not affirm breaks or discontinuities with the tradition within which they advance their specific and distinct claims. Inquiries often move on the basis of responsive receptions. They receive what the tradition of their choice offers and in their reception respond to it in their own unique ways. Indian reflective and creative traditions nurtured themselves on the basis of such mode of responsive reception; (ii) literary inquirers like any other inquirer in the tradition are by default brought up on the advanced disciplines of learning of their times. Thus, every inquiry was nurtured in Vedas, Vedangas and various darshanas, depending on the milieu in which they were emerging. Thus, the literary inquiries were no different species from an unknown genus as such. They emerged entirely from the extended Vedic (including Buddhist) traditions of learning (which include shruti and smriti vaangmayas). Literary inquirers were emerging from within the formidably developed learning traditions. No wonder most of the literary inquirers (like Dandi, Rajasekhara, Anandavardhana, Harsha, Abhinavagupta, Bhoja, Jagannatha and many others) were able to bring forth shaastra and kavya compositions. How did the literary inquirers advance their claim then in such a milieu? The distinctive inflection of inquiry, however, advanced by the literary inquirers can be discerned from their insistence on the affective aspect of utterance. Literary inquiries insist that language is not a simple ‘dyad’ (if it is at all) of expression and meaning but more primarily that this very diad itself is deeply impacted by the affective aspect of utterance; that one cannot reduce the affective determination of utterance. The affective aspect of utterance is what the literary inquiries foregrounded in terms of aalamkaaras, lakshanaas, rasa, bhava, dhvani, auchitya, riti and many other figures of speech. In carving out this distinctive mode of inquiry, literary inquiries were drawing on the traditions of Vedanga and Darshana. In fact, their aspiration to accomplish a Daarshanik status for their inquiries can be evidenced in the work and titles they choose for their compositions. Rajasekhara calls his inquiry Kavyameemaamsaa, and Mahimabhatta names his treatise as Vyaktiviveka (after Udayana’s Atmatattvaviveka). Jagannatha was known to have drawn on the ascendant Navya-nyaya Darshana. As is well known, Rajasekhara explicitly formulates sahitya vidya on shaastra lines. Literary inquiries seem to configure the affect (articulated in terms of figural expressions of alamkaaraas, etc., mentioned earlier) in terms of a means of validation—a pramaana (as the Nyaya Darshana propounded). As Bharata explored and related lokadharmi (ethos of loka) and naatyadharmi (performative ethos), literary inquiries also can show the operation of affect across various levels—of gramya (vulgar, common, unrefined), loka, and naatya or kavya. But to affirm the distinctive

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status of the affect, literary inquiries focused on the most refined articulation of the affect. Such articulation is exemplified in kavya. Yet, kavya is not a specific genre developed in a particular period as such. One could see kavya across all kinds of compositions beginning with the Veda. Rajasekhara demonstrates this aspect. In essence, what the literary inquiries of India foreground is: the irreducibility of the affect in existence. Given that the affect articulates desire and (as we saw earlier in the discussion of the Manusmriti) as desire is the basis of formations in general, one can neither abandon, ignore, celebrate and renounce desire in existence. One must learn to work with it in modes of being in the world. Confronted with the problem of pravrutti or dharmi, Bharata suggests that one must learn to reorient the affect in such a way that it moves beyond the unrefined, common, worldly to more refined articulation of it. Teleocultural mediations enable such refinement of the affect. Given the salience of the affect and its extended reach and effect, one cannot afford to reduce its significance. No wonder why literary inquiries found it important to insist on the role and status of the affect. In the process, literary inquiries, though never systemic and homogeneous in their formulations and argumentation, attain a distinctive status in the Indian reflective traditions.

12.5 Indirectional Intimations In a careful and closer attention, one can see that Anandavardhana’s treatise fundamentally foregrounds the formational force as a detour to or implicit articulation of the infinite—which cannot be exhausted. Dhvani is a particular articulative effect which cannot be found explicitly formulated in verbal–acoustic utterance at its manifest level; on the contrary, dhvani spurs a sense which is obverse of what is explicitly stated. It can, however, only be sensed by the discerning and cultivated from within the manifest expression. Thus those who focus only on the mere articulatory capacities, their expressive achievements miss the intimations of the implicit. The detour or articulating otherwise (than mere perceptual–visible material expressions) is not teleological in its effort: that the detour will ultimately reach the goal of grasping the infinite. On the contrary, what it seems to affirm unequivocally is that without such detour or doing otherwise it is impossible to sense the infinite. That is, it is the finite and the articulable that are the constituents or conditions of possibility of sensing the impossible. For Aanandavardhana, the otherwise—mode is not a peculiarity of poetic formulations—but is of general significance. In a consummative finale to his extended inquiry, Anandavardhana sets out to show—in a rather unusual account—how the affect of dhvani as intimation through sonatic connotation is at work in both poetic and shaastra modes. But clearly, he does not see these modes as antagonistic with a ruptured relation between them. On the contrary, both these modes can conjoin to communicate intimations of the inexhaustible. Such a convergent emergence is the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata conjoins extended reflections on the circuit of desire—action—generativity on the one hand and brings forth this reflection through the evocation of savourable affective

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effects on the other. Precisely due to such creative reflection, the Mahabharata is described as the shaastrakavya (reflective poem): Shaastraroopa kaavyachchayaanukaarini (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 961.)

[The Mahabharata is a] Reflective formation in a poetic mode. (Heidegger would have called it ‘poeitizing thinking’.5 ) The Mahabharata embodies and enacts two apparently contrary pulls: that of the ultimate of the ends of man—releasement from the binds and bonds on the one hand, and the seductive pulls of the savourable flavours of the actional desire on the other. But these varied flavours of the affect (of rage, grotesque, wonderment, magnificence, eros-driven, affective concern) appear as differentiated aspects or limbs of the composition, so do the differentiated ends of man (that of cultivable endowments, desirable wealth, the drive of eros and the ultimate releasement). But the accounts of lived experience that the composition delineates with such intensity and magnitude ultimately drive one to be freed of the pulls of this circuit of indulgent seductive actional flavours: Avasaana virasam avidya prapancha roopam.

Ultimately depleted of seductive flavours—this nescient form of the projectional universe [is shown in the Mahabharata] (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 965). Such an effect is also a savourable flavour—the ultimate among the actional effects of the affect. This is the serene quietude which is of a peculiar kind. It is an actional flavour which can form a mode of being that relates non-relationally to the formational universe one finds oneself in. It is the unaffected mode of being in the affective seductive universe of actional provocation. This is precisely the mode of being intimated by the ultimate of the ends of man—releasement—releasement from the binds and bonds of actional existence in existence. Both these seemingly differently articulated modes of being are the paths to sense the intimations of para— the infinite and pervasive—that inheres in every formation: Parabrahmanah praapyupaayatvena.

To access para (as shown in the Bhagavadgita and other compositions, says Anandavardhana) (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 967). Extending his general claim concerning the sonatic connotation (dhvani) as indirectional intimation, Anandvardhana contends that neither of the modes (kavya or shaastra) directly gets explicitly stated in the annotative sequence (anukramani) placed at the beginning of the Mahabharata; the anukramani does not declare itself to be either (shaastra or kavya). This annotative account provides a comprehensive summation of all the themes of the composition—but is devoid of any statements about the ultimate paths of kavya or shaastra, says Aanandavardhana: na chaitattatra drushyate: there, these are not shown (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 5

Heidegger, Introduction to Philosophy–Thinking and Poetizing, trans. Phillip Jacques Braunsteing (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017); also, Rodolphe Gaschè, Europe, or the Infinite Task: A Study of a Philosophical Concept (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), pp. 134–140.

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4, p. 964). But these intimations are presented indirectionally: darshitaantu vyangatvena (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 965)—intimated through connotation, implicitly, through figural affect. The singular allusion to these intimations is in the mentioning of para figuratively (‘Bhagavaan…sanaatanah’—cited by Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4. p. 965). For para is the non-existent but pervasive, originless force that limits the finite from inside and outside. The fact that this nonexistent can be figured without being stated reinforces Anandavardhana’s earlier point that there is nothing that cannot be verbally articulated (even if negatively or obliquely stated). The annotative significance of the Mahabharata shows that everything that is different from para is ephemeral; and the composition intimates (from the shaastra strand) that the ultimate mode of being is in releasement, and the serene quiescence as the final actional flavour intimating a mode of being. These two modes are the culminating destinations of modes of being. These are presented only indirectly and not through explicit expression: Vyangatvenaiva darshitah na tu vaachyatvena (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 4, p. 970).

Anandavardhana’s virtuoso performance of the play of the formational and the non-formational in the context of the poetic compositions is singular. Yet, it seems to leave a question unaddressed, especially for the ‘theoretically’ oriented. In this colossal recursive interface between para and apara, what is the status of the poetic compositions with regard to para as the ultimate limit? In contrast, for example, as discussed earlier, the Chitrasutra delineates a similar scenario of the coming together of the formational and non-formational in the plastic and pigmental forms. But the Vishnudharmottara affirms that para cannot be accessed by means of the formational objects. How does Anandavardhana’s inquiry in particular and literary inquiries in general respond to such a resolution? Despite its apparent immersion in the domain-specific verbal poetic exploration, Anandavardhana’s inquiry has a general significance. But nowhere does he—or others—in the tradition privilege this general significance of their inquiries exclusively. Anandavardhana’s contention pertaining to the indirectionality/detoured articulation affirms the condition of impossibility also as an opening up of a condition of possibility as well. Even the inarticulate can be articulated by means of connotative sonance, affirms Anandavardhana. The Bruhadaaranyaka says that only by foreclosing the attributional factors (of the senses, genitive/possessive faculty, of the elemental essences) that para can be sensed (Bruahadaaranyaka 2.3.6, p. 201 and Sankara’s commentary, pp. 202–03). But Anandavardhana’s account would, while affirming the heterogeneity of para, imply that the very process of the foreclosure— negation of the positive—itself can be accomplished only through the expressive– connotative articulations. Like the tattvadarshi (the discerner of that other—para) it is only the kavyatattva darshi who can sense the essence of the literary through connotative intimations; no mere expertise in language can enable one to access such essence, contends Anandavardhana. (Anandavardhana, Dhvanyaaloka, 1.7, p. 136). In a way, Aanandavardhana is only reiterating the projectional nature of the naming and forming activities (Bruhadaaranyaka, 2.3.6, pp. 202–03). Thus, even the sense of

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para as the infinite, inarticulable, non-existent, etc., can be figured out only through the formational sources, Anandavardhana would contend. Yet, the naivety of privileging the latter or reducing the former to the latter is never even suggested here. Sankara’s Nirvaanashatka appears very proximate to Anandavardhana’s inquiries and meditations. Further, as discussed in the context of Manu, if desire is the condition of possibility of formations but irreducible to them, it is precisely an inquiry into the affect which enables us to see how the non-manifest can impact the manifest formations. It is precisely such probing that the literary inquiries open up and enable one to sense the inarticulable (para/desire/kavya) from the proliferation of articulations. The intimations of the non-formational can be accessed or sensed/savoured only through the equally infinite but differentially proliferated finite formations. Hence the obsessive concern with the differentiated formational substances and the formational relations among Indian reflective compositions that we have explored so far; these formational endowments and their lokations are fundamentally orientative, refinable and thus transformative. Each one of the compositions in differentiated domains reiterates the double strand of the formational elements and entities (immersive engagement with the substances, qualities and actions)—and at the same time insists on sensing of their limits and reach. The double relation (affective and apathetic) of para and apara gets played out in and as the scenarios of existence. Yet as in the case of the other domains, even in this poetic-reflective tradition—no one ever attempted to crystallize a positive science of a literary theory or a ‘critique of judgement’ out of these centuries long literary inquiries. Each one drew on Bharata’s inaugural composition in one’s own way and set out to prepare his own assemblages of the verbal–acoustic embellishments, qualities and their modes of conjoining the language of the affect. In other words, to echo Bharata, each one carved out his own subtle kavyadharmi—poetic cultivable endowments from the gross verbal–acoustic lokadharmi (threatened by graamyadharmi). None of their inventions became the standard normative models for an applicational analysis of poetic compositions. No one submitted or succumbed to such validational indulgence. The enormity of the ‘positive’, discrete, concrete detail that they assembled was not abstracted to build a ‘system’ of analysis. Such assemblages of loka/naatya/kavya/shilpadharmis were never prioritized over the general intimations of the internally differentiated body complex and their affective connotative sonance pertaining to the (non)-relation of para and apara. They all explored the possibilities from impossible constraints. Nowhere in the tradition either of these ‘contrary’ forces—para or apara— gets exclusively prioritized or is accorded some supreme powers from their interminable play. There is no attribution of sovereignty to either of these. As Anandavardhana demonstrates, even the non-articulate—the non-formational para—appears to be contingent upon the articulations of apara or on the formational. Similarly, the formational cannot arrogate for itself the status of the all powerful. As shown earlier, Sankara’s Nirvaanashatka captures this haunting play of para and apara most eloquently. For all that which gets formed as convergent emergence from the nonformational is bound to dissolve itself into the apeironal (a)para; and this colossal dissolution process does not spare even the so-called ‘divine’ creator—Prajapati.

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Hence, the emphasis is on the modes of being within the (im)possible circuit of existence in the mnemopraxial Indian traditions. The reflective coherence of Indian cultural practices emerges from this (im)possible circuit enlivened in modes of being. It is easy to frame the elaborations of this part of the work unfolded so far as merely historical, as sentiments pertaining to a by-gone age. Can such figuration of the (im)possible and the (non)-relation of a/para be made intelligible after the Samskruta traditions were exposed to the Semitic heritage? Can the reflective integrity or coherence of the traditions traced here be relevant or intelligible in the aftermath of the violent interface of the non-Semitic (Indian) and the Semitic (Western) traditions? Can the mnemocultural ethos be said to survive the programmed cultural genocidal invasion of the West? We shall take the risk and explore this play of (a)para in the contexts of ruptured interfaces that surround us today in the rest of this work.

Part II

Dispersed Mnemocsapes

Chapter 13

Mnemoscapes of Water: The Vaangmaya of Rains and Rivers in Indian Traditions

Abstract The essence of the sky is said to be sound; the sky is the guardian medium of wind, light/fire and water and their respective essences of touch, sight and taste. The elements are cumulative in their emergences—the latter contain the former. This cumulative set of elements and essences goes into the formation of the earth and its olfactory essence. The convergent dynamic of the earth brings forth every formation and relation—be it moving or rooted, animate or inanimate. As every emergent formation is exposed to the relentless logic of dissolution—the process sketched here gets inverted when dissolution sets in. Memory is an effect of this process, and memory tracks this very dynamic of emergences and dissolutions. Culture is a formation of such palimpsest memories. Indian culture embodies millennially extended memories about the elemental processes indicated here; the most prominent one among these elements is water—in its congealed and cascading formations. Rains are Vedic and rivers are Puranic. If rains are Vedic and rivers Puranic, is there a dividing line between the mnemoscapes of the Vedas and puranas as the dominant account about rains and rivers advances today? Such a division and hierarchy cannot be missed in the Indological accounts about India where the Vedic is seen as Brahmanical orthodoxy and the puranic, popular Hindu. Are the cultures of memory formed by the double strand of shruti and smriti discontinuous and are they divided by a disruptive line? This chapter advances the account that the cultural memories of the elemental immerse and animate millions in a shared experience of a cherished inheritance: tirthas and mahatmyas vibrate and proliferate on the flows of rivers. But the force of the flow and the weaves of memory get interrupted when they are ordered to serve an end; such an irruption in the cultural memories of Indian traditions began to occur from the eighteenth century. Today, the elemental—the waters—is increasingly invaded by such demands and commands and yet the mnemoscapes of India continue to endure with vigour. But the elemental responds violently to such regimes of supremacy. This chapter, while affirming the shared transmissions of immemorial traditions, articulates the relation between the double strand of Indian vaangmaya and the mnemoscpaes of water figured as Ganga.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_13

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13.1 Weaves of Memory Rains are Vedic and rivers Puranic. Surely, the Vedas refer to the seven rivers (saptasindhu), and the puranas, the primal dark waterscape before the emergence of the gigantic primordial oval formation (Brahmaanda). Yet the ‘heard’ memory (shruti) of the Vedas celebrates waters in general and rains in particular; whereas, the ‘recalled’ (smriti) memories of the puranas devote themselves to the (im)measured flows of rivers. If the shruti is replete with epithets of aapah, salila, vrushti, jala, varsha, the smriti Amarakosha characterizes figures of river as follows: Atha nadee sarit taranginee shaivalinee thatinee hraadinee dhunee srotasvinee dveepavatee sravantee nimnagaa pagaa.1

Amarakosha goes on to enumerate in another five verses the names of about 39 rivers (1.12.31–25, pp. 195–97). Nadee is that which (flows) is mellisonant; sarit is that which flows; taranga is that which has waves; shaivalamasya is that which contains moss; thatamasya is that which has banks; hraadah has indistinct resonance; dhunee, which trembles with wind; srota is that which flows; dveepavatee is that which has islands in it; giribhya sravanti is that which flows through the mountains; nimna is what glides into slopes; asaamsamooha is that which moves with collective flows. Yet, the Amara also enumerates the varied epithets with which waters are identified in the first 28 verses before referring to rivers. The section of the Amara that gathers these various epithets is appropriately called Vaarivarga (Vaari section). This section can be said to bring together both shruti and smriti reflective currents. Vaari refers in general to water, rain—and also to the more specific water collectives— flowing, circumscribed or limitless. It would appear utterly naïve to ask about the relation between rain and river. It is a commonsense perception that without rains there is no water, let alone rivers. Yet, today the most reigning account of water that determines our relation to the elemental is centred on river and not on rain. Rains have come to be seen as a seasonal, temporary disruption or interruption in an otherwise regular (or regulated) flow of life—a flow calibrated with the presumed ordered flow of river. Life is organized and measured through the order of the river. The saga of human life is carved out as an adventurous taming of the river. In a remarkable work of critical insight and erudition, The Invention of Rivers, Dilip da Cunha contends that the river is essentially a human ‘invention’.2 This invention fundamentally aims at drawing a categorical line of distinction between water and earth. We ‘take the river’s natural status for granted’, points out da Cunha. However, behind the naturalized perception lurks the formidable apparatus of the line that presupposes normalcy of a ‘fair weather moment’, treated as the ‘time of reality while other moments like rain, snow, dew, mist and vapour are reduced to ephemerality’. The designated line requires confining 1

Amarakosha, trans. Saraswati Tiruvengadacharyulu (1859; Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications 2006), 1.12.29–30, p. 194. 2 Dilip da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers: Alexander’s eye and Ganga’s descent. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.

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‘water to a place, and calibrate water into flow’ which ‘took centuries to articulate’, states da Cunha (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, pp. 274–75). Rain appears to be a tolerable but obtrusive and irritable guest; whereas, river is an intransigent and hence surveilled phenomenon of nature requiring normalization and domestication. There is an ‘irreconcilable difference’ between rain and river terrains, and they initiate ‘two inquiries, two infrastructures, two modes of design. The more one is pursued, the more it diverges from the other’, observes da Cunha (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, pp. xi–xii). The line between these hardens and discriminates. All the dominant narratives about the so-called Neolithic revolution, agriculture, sedentarization, conceptions of political state, urbanization, revolution of literacy or lithic learning, scientific revolution and its colossal consequences can be traced back to this deadening discriminating line. But is such a normative explanatory model universally tenable? Or, are all such grand narratives only the ineluctable and legitimizing consequences of a particular determinative-discriminative line thinking? Da Cunha is more inclined towards pursuing the latter question and embraces the rather unpopular position. In contrast to the formidable accounts which championed the primacy of the river-line model, da Cunha sets out courageously to shore up Ganga as a ‘river’ that challenges the normative order of the linear thinking. It is the Ganga of rains, da Cunha contends, that forced Alexander to retreat and thus to bring to an end the mighty emperor’s unabated linear progression across river terrains. Yet, as we know, his linear designation—the Ganges—continues to prevail in the cognitive spheres of the learned even today. While drawing on da Cunha’s powerful arguments, this chapter attempts to explore the relation between river and rain scapes through the enduring mnemocultures of India. If rains are Vedic and rivers puranic, is there a dividing line between the mnemoscapes of the Vedas and puranas as the dominant account about rains and rivers advances? Such a division and hierarchy cannot be missed in the Indological accounts about India where the Vedic is seen as Brahmanical orthodoxy and the puranic, popular Hindu. Are the cultures of memory of shruti and smriti discontinuous? Are they divided by a disruptive line? Let us see how the mnemoscapes of water articulate the relation between rains and rivers in the Indian cultural formations. Before we undertake that a brief annotation about the term mnemoculture will be in order here. Mnemocultures conceive, as discussed earlier, recall, generate and disseminate cultural memory through the most primal cultural media of gesture and speech. That is, utterance, recitation, singing, storytelling on the one hand and ritual renderings, bodily activities, dances and other performative modes on the other hand compose and impart cultural memory across generations. In a word, embodied and enacted performative reflective modes articulate relations among everything that composes— be it animate or inanimate, tangible or intangible, formational and non-formational— the loka or vishwa. Mnemocultures articulate the body as the medium and effect of such performative transmissions. Irrespective of the distinction of the body that comes forth in the composition of the vishwa—be it of gods, stars, lokas, elements, species, etc.,—every endowed body formation must put itself to work in the liveable learning of mnemocultures. The transformation of every body formation is entirely

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contingent upon these performative modes of being. It is the performative modes that attract boons or curses which are little more than actional spurs and effects in existence. Cultural forms—be they verbal or visual—are fundamentally performative in orientation in mnemocultures. Given that the articulations of the body complex are essential, mnemocultures either bypass or are indifferent to cultural media that displace or substitute embodied and enacted performative modes. Such surrogate media can be designated as inscriptional technology, and they range from literacy-based scribal medium to code-based digital systems. The inscriptional media with their powerful accumulative impulse (with exponentially enhanced memory devises) quest for longevity or immortality; the ultimate autonomy of the surrogate body reckons the constitutive endowed body complexes of the universe as unenduring, chaotic and staggered or retarded. Hence, the necessity and justification of surrogate or prosthetic bodies which can be designed with enhanced capacities (of memory, retention, retrieval and spread). No wonder cultural forms of inscriptional orientation privilege manuscripts, archives, libraries, texts, museums and databases—that is, cultural forms and institutions that valorize prosthetic and surrogate bodies. In a word, inscriptionality appears to be an anxious response to the threat of finitude of existence; in other words, these prosthetic apparatuses evince a desire to survive death and thus inscribe what is called the human permamently. In contrast, mnemocultures prefer living on with the endowed and constituted body complexes and affirm the efficacy of living in putting the body complex to activity in discrete and related situations. Mnemocultural response does not seem to be an anxiety-ridden urge for immortality. Mnemocultures seem to live on with a singular intimation: what all emerges, comes forth, is bound to disperse, decompose and yet re-converge and trans-form discontinuously. Such a process is interminable and inescapable for formations (be they stable or moving). Yet mnemocultures do not categorically segregate themselves against inscriptional modes; they may bypass, evince indifference to or, as discussed earlier, simply assimilate them in the enduring mnemocultural modes. Cultural memories can be said to be shaped by such (mnemocultural and inscriptional) cultural technologies. It may be possible to explore cultural difference, that is, different ways in which different cultures think, live on and go about in the world, on the basis of the preference they accord to these distinctive (but not necessarily exclusive) cultural media. What follows can be seen as an attempt to explore Indian cultural response to rains and rivers on the basis of the heuristic of cultural media outlined so far. This chapter unfolds in detail the ways in which the predominantly mmnemocultural impulse (of the shruti tradition) permeates and mediates the extraordinarily proliferated cultural domains (of smriti tradition) which were exposed to the inscriptional media in the Indian context and implicitly emphasizes the shared reflective current of the double strand of traditions.

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13.2 Another Learning In a scene of learning, the erudite peripatetic Narada approaches the sage Sanatkumara and bemoans that despite the magnitude of learning that he acquired he has not been able to free himself from the slough of sorrow and pain. All that he has learnt so far only turned him into a reciter of utterance but not a discerning seer of what he recited, says Narada. What he seeks now, he says, is the learning that enables him to sense and access that which inheres in every entity and relation but which cannot be reduced to the cognitive–perceptual formation of the entity. In a word, he seeks the radically non-formative para in the infinite formations of apara. Such seeking enables one to see the relation between the formational and non-formational and live on in existence beyond the disruptive strife, he surmises. Sanatkumara in response does not discard any of Narada’s learning. In a 22-step gradation (incidentally, the disciplines that Narada mentions also number 22), which begins with para and ends with bhuma (pervasive, permeative), Sanatkumara helps Narada focus attention on each of the entities he invokes. On this graded scale, Sanatkumara invokes the primal entity of water at level nine, which is preceded by food and followed by the element of tejas (light, energy) and celebrates the essence of this element: Yeyam pruthvee yadantariksham yadyauryatparvata yaddeva manushya yatrushavascha vayaamsi cha truna vanaspatayah shvaapadanyaa keeta patangam pipeelika yaapa yevemaa moorta apa upaasveti.3

[Water is precious and superior to food. When there are no good rains, then living beings become sorrowful. They are agonized that food will deplete. With bountiful rains, they are pleased that plenty of food will be available.] The entire earth is permeated by the form of water. Similarly, the mid-region, the world of gods, mountains and the entirety of human, animal, bird, grass, flora, dog, insect, kites, worms, ants and other living entities are all formations of water. Therefore, you devote attention to water and meditate. The Vedic memory celebrates water. Water is the fourth of the set of five primal elements in Indian traditions. It is the conjoining of these elements which brings forth the formations mentioned in the mantra above. As the fourth in the set, water is already the effect of the confluence of the preceding three elements (sky, wind and fire). And the commingling of these four individuated elements in turn will form the earth (the fifth primal element of the set), and it moves on as the abode of infinite variety of static and moving formations. Such formations are exposed to actional performative modes of being. As a generative force, the complex of water brings forth not just food, semen, but even the subtle being that inheres in every body (purusha), blood, urine, soma, medicinal plants and even the life breath (the subtle part of water swallowed turns into breath: aapomayah praana, [Chandogya, 6.6.5. p. 71]). It is such seminal water that Narada is asked to invoke and devote 3

Chandogya Upanishad, trans. (with commentary by) Rayasam Veerashwara Sarma (Hyderabad: Seetarama Adisankara Trust, 2002), 7.10.1, p. 209.

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his singular attention. Such a devout attention will enable him to receive the new learning concerning para, says Sanatkumara. The Bhagavadgita carries the Vedic import and formulates the entire circuitry of food, formations, water, rain, performative modes in the most profound and economic way: Annaadbhvanti bhootaani parjanyaadanna sambhavaah yajnaadbhavati parjanyo yajnah karma samudbhavah.4

All the lively beings emerge from food; food emerges from rain. Ritual performances generate rains. The source of ritual fire ceremonies is the cultivable actional modes of learning. The actional circuit affirms a relational network—a network that connects the entirety of formational matrix and its infinite entities. As in Narada’s counsel, let us attend to how water spaces itself across varied formations, through a detour into the formational matrix and its emergences. One of the ancient critical disciplines of learning is computational astronomy (Jyotisha). Astronomy along with other five verbal performative disciplines (siksha, vyaakaranam, chandas, nirukta, kalpa) is filiated to the Vedic tradition, and the entire set is a part of ‘recalled’ smriti mnemoscape. The entire set (perhaps with the exception of Nirukta) can be said to be composed by a certain mathematical or computational impulse. Given that all formations manifest and circulate as spatiotemporal convergences, the formations are configured in numerical magnitudes. No wonder, this tradition gave birth to numerational digits (0–9) and the decimal system. Mathematical or computational astronomy inquires into and configures the measurement, dimension and distances and the movement of planetary, stellar and other ‘cosmological’ formations of the universe; these colossal formations, ranging from the ‘first born’ gigantic oval formation (Brahmaanda) to the satya/Brahma loka, are counted as numbering 12 in the puranas.5 These distinctive sets of lokas or spatiotemporal formations are made possible by a more primal differentiated and individuated dynamic set of circles of elemental forces (the primal set of five) and other (two) generative circuits (ahamkaara and mahat) (Shivamahapurana, 3.19, pp. 435–36). It must be noted that the two sets of formations—‘cosmic’ and elemental are—the infinitely varied effects of a more primal generative force which has neither a form nor a decisive origin. It is a force which differentiates, individuates, relates and catalyses action. All the formations that result from the primal force are entirely composed of these features in varying degrees. The primal generative force called apara-prakriti brings forth effects which emerge and dissolve periodically in/as/from a more pervasive force without power and effect called para. Para is radically non-formational and hence without origin and end. What emerges from this pervasive and supremely indifferent force as apara (or 4

Srimad Bhagavadgita, trans. Krishnamacharyulu and Goli Venkataramayya, (Gorakhpur: The Gita Press, 2003), 3.14. p. 168. 5 Shivamahapuranamu, trans. Swami Tattvavidananda Saraswati, (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 2001), Part 3:19, pp. 434–35.

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non-para) is at once ‘outside’ and inside of para. Therefore, para is both pervasive and permeative without any relation of bonding or (dis)concern with the generative force that opens form it. The question of relationship pertains essentially only to generative effects and their formational circuits. The interminable task that the Indian traditions reiterate persistently is to reflect performatively on the relation between the formational (apara-prakriti) and the non-formational (para). Disenchanted by his pursuit of revered formational learning, Narada approaches Sanatkumara to receive from him the learning of para—in order to sense and discern the relation between apara and para. There appear to be two sides of the task here. The first involves living and the network of relations among the formational universe. The second one is discerning in living the relation to the non-formational and non-relating force that permeates and inheres in and surrounds every formation. The efficacy of these tasks can be rendered only in reflective performative modes of being. It is a complex but everyday task of relating the formational and the non-formational in existence. All the puranas explicitly affirm the palpable, predictable and inescapable relations among the two sets of formations. Existence is composed of these formations, and none—not even gods—is outside this dynamic of interrelated formations. The transformation of an entity in existence is contingent upon the way it goes about in its given formation—as a spatio-temporal coordinate in the matrix of emergences. This question of relation pertains to every loka and its formations mentioned earlier. The Matsyapurana, drawing on the learning of computational astronomy specifies three distinctive trajectories through which human beings traverse the formational universe; depending on the cultivation of modes of their beings either they discern the ‘relation’ of para or seek gratification through their routinized ritual acts (of the kind that are referred to from the Chandogya earlier); or, disregarding any of the cultivable modes of being one condemns oneself to machinic circulation within various formations and dissolutions and is abandoned to sorrow and pain that Narada experiences at one point. These trajectories are computed on the basis of the peregrinations of the sun—in conjunction with other planets and stars.6 In a word, ancient liveable learning of mathematical astronomy intensely explores the relation between the varied formations of the universe and the actional circuit which operates performative modes of being. Computational astronomy observes, calculates measures, anticipates and predicts the movement of planets and stellar clusters on all the formations—animate and inorganic—that compose the universe. Calculation or computation here does not aim at gaining mastery over these cosmic and elemental formations. There is no singular or all-powerful sovereign entity that commands and controls these sets. Para permeates and inheres in all these entities but para is not a commanding sovereign authority. Computationality, as a result, is more aimed at adjusting, preparing, timing and reorienting human actional endeavours. One adjusts, accommodates, endures and

6

Matsyamahapuranamu, trans. (with commentary by) Paturi Seetaramanjaneyulu, (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 1986), vol. 1. intro, pp. 42–44.

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appeals to or appeases the relational circuits or formations in question and lives on in transformative contexts of existence.

13.3 Conceptions of Rain One of the early astronomers/astrologer to probe extensively the Vedic enunciations of rains is Varahamihira. Drawing on the Upanishadic and the Bhagavadgita premise that annah jagata praanaah (food is the enlivnining breath of the entire universe), Varahamihira affirms the necessity of a careful inquiry into the season of rains.7 Varahamihira’s approach is that of computational astronomy aimed at measuring the impact of relations among stars and planets that generate rains. Varhamihira’s entire account pertaining to rains is figured as a procreative generative act. The rains are the generative effect. In order to foresee the kind of ‘issue’ that is likely to get generated, Varahamihira sees, in accordance with tradition, the need to examine the nature of conception and gestation of ‘pregnancy’. The characteristics of the generated rains can be ascertained by observing the features of pregnancy, says Varahamihira. Given the fact that the moon is the lord of waters/rains, moon’s conjunction with specific stars in specific period/month indicates the nature of pregnancy. The delivery of rains occurs 195 days after the moon’s cohabitation with a star in question. Depending on the moment of time and conception, the moment of delivery is ascertained—after 195 days. (According to this reckoning, there is no absolute order that the rainy season abides by. It differs on the basis of the time of conjunction and conception.) The position of delivery depends on the conjunction of the clouds and wind at the time of the moon’s cohabitation with the specific star. If the conjunction of clouds and wind is in the western side of the meeting of the moon and the star at the time of conception, then the delivery of rains occurs on the eastern side of the couple and vice versa. Here a whole range of other occurrences—the colours and shapes of cloud (such as the aquatic tortoise, fish or crocodile), appearance of stars and moon, the movement of birds in the sky, the kinds of breezes, etc., all have effect on the conception. Varahamihira enumerates myriad signs on the basis of which one can anticipate rains: these signs include shapes and clours of clouds, the colour of mountains, the movement and chirping, singing of birds, the gestures of cows (rapid movement of ears, lifting their face skyward and their mooing, barking of dogs, etc.). In other words, conception here is not reduced to some internal biophysical occurrence. The biophysical is never seen as radically segregated from the biocultural: the formational is an effect of their articulation. Varahamihira’s entire account appears to be pitched on the observational (perceptual and inferential) activity, but it is also a tradition-nurtured observation. (Obviously, garbhaadhaarana, conception, occurs in the stars. These stars, in turn, usher

7

Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita, trans. (with commentary by) Shishtla Umamaheshwarasarma, (Rajamahendravaram: Mohan Publications, 2018), vol. 1, Chap. 21, pp. 213–220.

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in the monsoon, and the rains get delivered in 195 days from the moment of conception.) Pregnancy, conception in the womb will have five characteristics: wind, electricity/lightening, thunder and cloud spread (Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita, 21.31. p. 218). All this is clearly delineated in Chap. 25 of Bruhatsamhita. The chapter also details the rituals through which the conjunction of the moon and the star cluster Rohini, for example, can be known. By knowing this union, one can predict the kind of rains such union can yield. This elaborate account about rains is also aimed at predicting the kind harvest one would have (Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita, 24, pp. 238–39). In all, Varahamihira devotes ten chapters of Bruhatsamhita to describe the formation of rains and their effect on crops. He does, however, also refer to about twentytwo names of rivers. But this is done in passing while referring to various regions of the Jambudvipa and its different cultural formations (of inhabitants). Similarly, the erudite commentator on Varahamihira, Bhattotpala refers to about forty great rivers, sixty thousand tributaries and four ‘oceans’ (the latter appear to be large-scale water bodies—for immediately, Bhattotpala comments that all these waters of these rivers end up in the ocean) (Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita, 1.16, pp. 189–94). But in either case, the river is not the focus of attention of Varahamihira—but the Vedic rains. Neither the shruti nor smriti tradition rigorously sets apart rain from river and thus imposes a fracturing line between water and land. Vedic reflective traditions are not line-driven; they are classificatory but not categorizing. Categorization demarcates through exclusions and conceptual consolidations: they build systems of thought. However, classifications enumerate, compute and then undermine crystallizations of categories. Categories, when they appear to get formed, lend themselves to classifications and thus interrupt lines of rigorous demarcation. Take the ubiquitous case of jati. It can be designated as referring to a category of species. But no such species can maintain its categorical homogeneity for long. Species gets further classified into permeative tributaries which traverse in multiple ways. In other words, an apparently unifying and categorizing term like jati remains an internally self-differentiating and eminently dispersive convergence. Graama, for instance, is yet another such a convergence of internally differentiated assemblage of units on the move. It does not refer to some territorially demarcated consolidated category (like village). Indian traditions do not valorize conceptual categorizing systems of thought; they emerge and circulate more as performative reflective modes of being. The linear fracturing of formations of modes and being invades the mnemoscapes of India only in the modern period over the last two centuries. As enduring mnemocultural complex, Indian traditions turned to literacy nearly two millennia after the mnemoscapes of shruti and smriti were fully formed. Inscriptional technologies and their cultural forms were conspicuous in their absence in India (especially in the context of Veda-impacted traditions). No wonder there were neither manuscripts, archives, archaeological ‘wealth’ nor pictorial and pigmental accumulations from the Vedic India until almost the beginning of the Common Era. Despite the prominence computational astronomy has with regard to the performative ritual traditions, ganita Jyotisha was practised without turning to inscriptional representation of geometric figuration even in the first millennium of the Common

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Era.8 Computational numeration preferred verbal and performative modes of articulation. Visualizable figures were not abstracted from praxial contexts and their verbal renderings; and they were not configured graphically on the basis of their presumed principles for their transcontextual function. In a word, performative reflections were not conceptually abstracted for some alleged universal system building. Indian traditions do not appear to be determined by any metaphysical paradigm which draws a decisive line between the sensuous, intuitive, empirical, perceptual knowing on the one hand and conceptual, abstract, a priori and transcendental understanding on the other. Such a paradigm structures the former as a preparatory learning, ultimately to be subordinated to the transcendental understanding. Such an understanding alone can grasp, explain and impose an order on otherwise the chaotic heterogeneity of infinite formations. Such a transcendental position resonates beyond metaphorics with theological explanation about the omniscient and omnipotent creator god as the all determining sovereign: such a position derives from a theological ground. What such a position seems to declare is that without the god(ly) being imposing an order, the universe and its delirious entities are dangerously chaotic. It draws on a fundamental division and distinction between formations and an explanatory order and agency. But in the Indian context, as suggested earlier, despite its pervasive and permeative force para cannot be fitted into such theo-rhetorical position. The non-formational para is unequivocal in its mindful song sung through the formational figure of Krishna: Na cha maam taani karmaani nibadhnanti dhananjaya udaaseena vadaaseenam asaktakm teshu karmasu (Bhagavadgita, 9.9, p. 461).

Even when (para) inheres in formations and their actional circuits, they neither bind ‘me’ [para] to them nor do ‘I’ get inclined towards them: ‘I’ (para) remain seated indifferently among them. If para inheres in every formation—not just the so-called human—the task of every formation is to sense such non-agentive and indifferent para inhering in one’s own actional circuit and reorient one’s mode of being among formations of the universe. Narada was seeking precisely such learning when he approached Sanatkumara. In such a tradition of praxial reflective learning, the paradigm of the empirical opposed to transcendental subject of thought would be unintelligible. That was also the lesson that Sanatkumara imparts Narada in advising him to focus attention on any of the entities listed in his enumerative gradation of domains of learning. Formations are certainly varied, but they are all transforamatively determined, based on their modes of being and the actional circuits they lend themselves to. There is no ‘great chain of being’ that orders and regulates their state in existence. Formations will have to put their cultivable endowments to work, and no surrogate bodies or formations can serve as proxies in these performative traditions. Despite innumerable classificatory designation of formations, such as planetary, stellar, terrestrial, mountainous, riverine, human, animal, floral and their delineations (as in the puranas), the Indian traditions have taken recourse neither to geometric, 8

Plofker (2009).

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geographical or architectural apparatuses of inscription. The puranas like the shruti traditions are profoundly agraphic, alithic and un-architectural. Therefore, there is no celebrated presence of the ‘architecton’—the one who conceives of the totality of plan and visually projects it as he appears privileged in Aristotole’s thought and gets reconfigured in the work of Kant.9 Even after the interface with the lithic inscriptional apparatuses, the Indian traditions persisted in numerical computational modes of measuring magnitudes and composed them in verbal mnemotexts (as in the case of the extended accounts of sculpture, painting and temples in the Vishnudharmottaramahapurana). These modes varied conventionally and in practice and as a result no abstract set of principles normatively regulated lithic practices even after they made inroads into mnemocultures. Even the so-called linear or line-based modes got multiplied dizzyingly and were articulated in the mnemocultural confluences.

13.4 Inscripted Violence If rains were Vedic and radically nonlinear and if rivers are puranic and if rivers are designated by the line, two questions crop up: (i) how did the linear thought become prominent? and (ii) did the puranas incline towards linearity in their invocative memories of rivers? Linear thought desires to command and control rivers between the demarcated banks, and such an urge can be tracked in Greek antiquity. ‘[T]he quintessential line of the rivberbank is that of the Nile’, states da Cunha (Da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 60). The Nile fascinated and intrigued ancient philosophers and mapmakers. Why did the Nile flood and how did it dry up? The pre-Socratic philosophers and mapmakers searched for natural causes to explain such phenomena (winds stalled it from flowing into the sea; melting of snow bulged the waters; or, the sun dried up the river: these were their explanations). But what puzzled the philosophers more was the ‘fact that Egyptians had no explanation [of these phenomena], merely seeing an annual occurrence’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 60). Philosophers were beginning to usurp the position of the archaic ‘masters of truth’—a position, even in their time, was accorded to the bard, the diviner and the king of justice.10 The new masters would inaugurate a metaphysical—categorical thinking. Perhaps Egypt, like the prephilosophical epoch of Greece, was free from such usurpations. But it is the philosophers and mapmakers who would configure the world henceforth. The first map of the world was designed by Anaximander—which required a ‘precise geometric arrangement’, says the eminent classicist, Charles Kahn. But ‘nothing could be more alien [than the inscriptional geometry and cartography] to 9

Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils’, in Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy vol. 2, trans. Jan Plug and others, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 128–155. 10 Marcel Detienne, The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece, trans. Janel Lloyd, (New York: Zone Books, 2009).

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the poet’s [Homer the bard] state of mind’.11 ‘Homer did not and perhaps could not’, writes da Cunha, draw like Anaximander; ‘may be’, he adds, because Homer resisted ‘diagramming.’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 48). The decisive casualty of Anaximander’s inscriptional adventure is the quintessentially mnemocultural Homer. The lithic adventure programmatically segregates the poetic performative verbal imagination from the visually synoptic, precisely demonstrable, clearly presented graphical model for verification. What does such a geometric and geographic linear model achieve? Anaximander’s map kept out, wrote another classicist, James Romm, ‘the terrifying apeiron of primal chaos…where flowed the stream of Ocean, so as to present a more formal ordering of its central spaces.’ (James Romm cited in da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 49). The inscriptional venture rooted the desire to set apart chaos from order, or more concretely, water from land; the venture achieves something more colossal: it gradually erases the mnemotraces of an immemorial tradition. Chaos is one of the first gods from whom emerge the other archaic gods Tartarus, Gaia and Eros. It is from Uranus and Gaia that the twelve Titans emerge severing Uranus from Gaia from their coital lock. Among the Titans is the god Oceanus—the river of all rivers that encircles the earth. Oceanus is not among the rebellious Titans who usurped the power of Uranus. Oceanus’s wife is Tethys who nourishes all springs and aquifers with the waters of Oceanus. The Greek myth nurtured an immemorial mnemotrace which sees the divine pair Oceanus and Tethys feeding waters to all kinds of formations. Through a subterranean channel, Tethys carries the waters of Oceanus and through the pores, caverns and arteries of Gaia replenishes waters of springs, lakes, rivers, aquifers and all waterscapes of the earth. The custodians of all these currents were the progeny of Oceanus and Tethys—Potomai, Oceanids and the myriad nymphs of springs and fountains. And the water currents of Gaia flowed back into Oceanus— replenishing its perennial resources. The traversal through the subterranean earth channels desalinates the waters of Oceanus.12 The philosopher Aristotle, more in line with Anaximander than with the bard, posited an observed alternative to the mythic current. He postulated the medium of water cycle to be the air and not Gaia. Due to the sun’s heat, water turns into vapour in the clouds, and when the air cools the vapour, water descends into the earth from clouds; on earth, water flows and also congeals into ice—the watery earth. It is Aristotle’s observational account which gets transformed into hydrologic cycle with scientific proof in the seventeenth century—the logic ‘required a scientific proof of the adequacy of rain.’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, pp. 64–69; the quoted line appears on p. 66). The ancient Greek memory recedes beyond retrieval as theoretical systems of explanation take over. For modern geologists, Tethys is the mother of the ‘Ganges’. With the tectonic movement and continental drift, the ocean bottom of Tethys that 11

Charles Kahn, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, (Indianapolis: Hacket Publishing Company, 1994). 12 For the myth of Chaos, cf., Robert Graves, The GreekMyths: 1, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, pp. 1a, p. 27, 3a, p. 31, 4a, p. 33, 4c, p. 34, 11.1, p. 49. Also, cf., https://mythology.net/greek/greekconcepts/chaos/ and https://mythology.net/greek/titans/oceanus/ (accessed on 25 March 2020).

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formed a part of the continental unity called Pangea rose up from the south and drifted and crashed into the Eurasian and Tibetan tectonic plates. It is from this collision emerged the Himalayas and from them emerged the river ‘Ganges’. This river takes along with it much older river, Kali Gandaki, from Nepal which cuts through the Himalayan massif to join Ganga. The nurturing of Oceanus and Tethys is erased by what is dubbed as ‘oceanfed theory’, and Aristotle’s observational insight turns into ‘rainfall percolation theory’ explaining the ‘evaporation-condensation-precipitation-percolation cycle’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, pp. 133–34). The hydrologic science departs even from Aristotle’s insight more radically than he did from the myth. Aristotle’s account retains water and explains its transformation through careful observation. In the modern epoch, water disappears in the hydrologic cycle. What circulates in the cycle is not the ‘watery element but a chemical compound, H2 O, a colourless, odourless and tasteless substance’. And the source of this substance is no longer the namesake of the Greek god—the Ocean (the limitless apeiron) but the hydrosphere located just above the earth’s surface, in the groundwater and in frozen surfaces (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 71). Mere observation—as in the case of Aristotle—is subordinated to a transcendental a priori which is systemically projected on a demarcated aspect of a phenomenon (‘water’), and thus, the scientific object (a chemical compound, to be more precise) gets constituted. The scientific object operates a double erasure: the erasure of the bardic mnemocultures and even the erasure of the philosopher’s observational explanation. What takes the place of these erased experiences is the mathematical projection of the thinking subject. This is the subject (not any particular individual) who through his rigorous procedures of pre-formed framework propounds certainty of knowledge. Such a knowledge model can turn every entity (or any aspect of it) into a scientific and mathematical object. In such a framework, the immemorial mnemocurrents, their formations and their relations get obscured or erased; or, they may have some residual existence as curios of a bygone age. Alternatively, the mnemotraces get invasively prised open to reinforce the scientific, a priori projections (the re-evocation of Anaximander or Democritus in modern physics or astrophysics is a case in point).13 The traditionally received memory currents are attributed a status independent of the immersive ambience in which they emerged and circulated. Any modes of being (stable and mobile) in such ambience are violently severed from such ambience for scientific inquiry; or, they are condemned to obscurity (as it happened with Greek myths). The scientific model has little to do with either the philosopher’s observational accounts of things seen in everyday life (water, plant, earth, sky, etc.), or the immersive performative modes of being of antiquity. The human creation of a wholly preconceived mathematical or a priori model does not just render the things (water, earth, stars, planets, air, etc.,) as such redundant for the model; it makes the human modelling/determination of ‘reality’ absolute and as a result human domination of 13

Cf., Carlo Rovelli, Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey into Quantum Gravity, trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre, (UK: Penguin Books, 2017); Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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reality inevitable.14 The modern scientific or mathematical model as it secures for itself an unrivalled universal status cannot afford to expose itself to any other immersive ambience—that is, other than that of the laboratory, archive, museum—or, in a word, the prosthetic or surrogate apparatus. Or, it can do so only as a temporary break as on a holiday. The prosthetic ambience which also can conceive and project scientific models cannot be risked. The risk would unleash only chaos. Chaos continues to haunt ever since it was demarcated from the covetable and cherished order—from Alexander to Lee Smolin.15 Although the philosophers of antiquity were involved in securing for themselves the position of truth in championing order against chaos, they do not appear completely purged of their inherited mnemotraces. Parmaneides’s goddess of truth, Socrates’s invocations of Homer and Homeric ritual gestures, Aristotle’s deathbed yearning for the transmitted accounts of gods (myths)16 are significant here. It is indeed the Homeric memory of the earth-girdling Oceanus that inspired Alexander III of Macedon to undertake his world-conquering mission. Spurred by Homeric imagination about the other end of the circling Oceanus, he waded unvanquished up to the river Indus. The Indian season of rains (later to be called monsoon from the Arab word mausem, or mosum for wind) stalled him there. The rains were torrential and the waters apeironal. The exhausted army wanted to end the triumphal war and return home with all the booty that they accumulated so far. Alexander was singleminded and wanted to reach the other end of the Oceanus. But his army had already heard about the might army of the Indian king and his ferocious elephants; above all, they also heard about the gigantic river which Alexander called the Ganges. They were terrified of the ferocious elephants, the powerful army and the impossible river. Having vanquished several kingdoms already, Alexander was undaunted. Above all, he was armed with a map of the world—the map made by Anaximander or Hacataeus. He compels his army to burn all its booty and prepare for war. He promises them unimaginable wealth and glory from the Indi (where gold-digging ants were believed to be ubiquitous). Eventually, though, some kind of good sense prevailed; the native information gathered by his commanders shows its impact on the world conqueror. He gives up his onwards march over the Ganges. What might have prevented Alexander’s march, reasons da Cunha, in his exquisitely woven account of Alexander’s cartographic gaze, was not so much the disturbing native information about the enemy’s power and the terror of the elephants. Perhaps it was the unheard of and the overwhelming rain terrain that confronted him which stalled his progress, surmises da Cunha. The Vedic rain terrain is pervasive and permeative; it abides by no cartographic order and acquiesces to no divine borders. It simply inundates and overwhelms the guardrail of every ordering graphematic 14 Heidegger, What is a Thing? Trans. W.B. Barton, Jr. and Vera Deutsch, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company,1967), 55–111; Heidegger, ‘The Age of the World Picture,’ trans. William Lovitt, in The Question Concerning Technology and OtherEssays, (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1977), pp. 115–154. 15 Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). 16 Detienne, The Creation of Mythology, trans. Margaret Cook, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. xii.

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line. Ganga is the most eloquent and metonymic medium and effect of the Vedic rain terrain. However, the Ganges is a product of Alexander’s cartographic view; the latter gets circumscribed by the river terrain engineered and commanded by the border petrol of surveyors, designers, engineers, architects, realtors, captains of industry and purveyors of trade. The collective goal of all these makers of our busy world is to keep apart land from water, da Cunha contends (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, pp. 40–41). Alexander’s lasting legacy seems to have taken the form of a certain river literacy. ‘River literacy’, observes da Cunha, forges a linear narrative— whose course moves between two points: source to culmination. Such a trajectory is essentially aimed at imposing a meaning and thus aspires to control and project one’s own desires and demands on it to serve the land and its inhabitants: ‘supplying it [land] with water, draining settlements, generating energy, transporting people and goods, providing land with a waterfront and as a result elevating land values, and so on’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 60).

13.5 Mnemotraces of Emergence In stark contrast to the geometrically engineered Ganges live on immemorially the dancing rhythms of Ganga; this Ganga is cherished through the mnemocultures of Vedic rains. It is through the infinitely resonant song cultures and interminable storytelling, unending ritual acts, inexhaustible performative modes, the liveable learning of Ganga is communicated transgenerationally. The invasive disciplines of rain literacy—historiography, geology, geometry, theology, anthropology, hydrology, etc.,- despite their triumphal march, have not (yet) been able to erase the liveable memories of the rain literacy. Ganga continues to enliven the mnemocultural modes of being. This learning imparts savaourable memories and not some time capsules from a bygone age which can be philologically or hermeneutically prised open and deciphered. The puranas embody and transmit these enduring memories across generations. Puranas gloss Ganga as the one that has gone: Gaam gatam Ganga

Where has it gone? Gaam pruthveemcha gataa.17

Ganga has gone to the earth. Says the Brahmavaivartamahapurana.

17

Brahmavaivartamahapuranamu, trans. N.L. Narasimhacharya, (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 2000), vol. 1.2.13.20, p. 201.

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But, from where did it go to the earth? Puranas trace Ganga to the infinite formations of/as the universe(s). Although puranas share accounts of emergence of the universe(s), there is no single unified standardized account about emergences. What seems shared, however, across all the major puranas is that the emergence and dissolution of the universe(s) are seen as a perennial but unmotivated play of the ‘relation’ between the formational and nonformational forces. The play has neither a beginning nor an end—nor does it have a purpose. These forces are called prakriti and para. Avyaktam kaaranam yattu nityam sadasadaatmakam pradhaanam prakritim chaiva yamaahustattva chintakaah … jagadyonim mahaadhbhootam param brahma sanaatanam.18

The reason or cause of the moving universe is inarticulable. But it is timeless and formational; and it is formational and non-formational at the same time. The discerning invokes it as pradhaana and prakriti (primal)….The singular source of this moving universe is the great (non-formational) force called para Brahma, the timeless. Prakritim purusham chaiva vidyanaadi ubhaavapi vikaaranscha gunaanschaiva viddi prakriti sambhavaan (Bhagavadgita, 13.19, p. 660).

Says the Bhagavadgita Know that prakriti and purusha are the originless duality. All derivative and attributive formations are made possible by prakriti. Brhamaandamahapurana too refers to prakriti and purusha as different;19 Brahmavaivarta sees them as two ‘sides’ of the inarticulable para (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.1.9, pp. 130). Brahmavaivarta shows how the word prakriti itself is formed of sounds that are attributive: Pra is seen as radiant, lucid and serene (sattva); kru is seen as impulsive, generative and charged (rajas); ti is seen as indolent, dark and ignorant (tamas) (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.1.6, p. 130). Although both para and prakriti are seen as origin and endless, inarticulable and irreducible to any of the emergences, all emergences, in a word the recursive srishti itself, are seen as the result of their ‘union’; but the emergences in particular for sure are seen as the effects of prakriti. Prakriti is formless but all formations are its effects: Brahmasvaroopaa prarkritirnabhinnaa yayaacha srushtim kurute sanaatanah (Brahmavaivarta, 1.1.30.11, p. 128; also pp. 140–41). Brahma (para) and prakriti are not really different (are not distinguishable). Yet from prakriti emerges the srishti immememorially. 18

Vaayumahapuranamu, trans. Moolampalli Chandrashekharasarma, (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 2003), 1.4.18–20, p. 24. (The first and last line appear verbatim in Brahmaandapurana, 3.8–10, p. 14). 19 Brahmaandamahapuranamu, trans. Divakarla Ramamurthi, Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 2004), 1.4.1, p. 17.

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When the attributes are in an equilibrial state and as a result unexpressed—a state prior to any kind of differentiation—para and prakriti are indistinguishable. Given that the attributes are differentiated in their manifestation, their presence or absence in such a prior state is immaterial: Guna saamyo layao jneya aadhikye srishtiruchyate (Brahmaanda, 1.1.4.3, p. 17).

[When] Gunas (attributes) are equal, they are in stasis; formations get generated when an attribute dominates the others. Vaayumahapurana says the same with a variation: Guna samye layao jneyo vaishamye srishtiruchyate (Vaayumahapuranamu, 1.5.9, p. 30).

When the attributes are in equilibrial state, formless quietude prevails; distortion among attributes brings forth generative emergences. Puranas delineate in detail various kinds of emergences and relations among them. Everything—tangible and intangible—that is, either a formation or a relation is from the varied effects of prakriti. Thus, prakriti as such appears non-formational too but it yields generative, differential, individuative, relational and actional effects. Thus, prakriti and its effects appear to surge forth from time to time from/in the undifferentiated para; but they also dissolve into para intermittently. The occurrence of the condition of emergences and the primal differentiation from within para is simultaneous. Para, however, remains supremely indifferent to the emergences and dissolutions of conditions and their effects. The non-formational para remains pervasive and permeative as always already around within and across every formation that emerges: Samam sarveshu bhooteshu tishtantam parameshvaram (Bhagavadgita, 13.27, p. 670).

Para resides in every emergent entity equably, (says the Bhagavadgita.) The entirety of the formational activitiy is that of prakriti. Formations are of three different types: (i) primal, (ii) derivative (vikruti) and (iii) primal–derivative combine (kaumaara). The primal ones emerge without any purpose or will; the derivative ones are from a non-determining desire; the combine is through a mixed mode of the above two. All these varied emergences come forth from the permutations and combinations of the three attributes imbued in prakriti. The primal type brings forth three formational essences: the supremely great (but invisible (mahat), the five elemental essences (pancha tanmaatra) and the faculties (indriyas) (Vaayumahapurana, 1.6.46–76, pp. 38–40). Here it must be noted that different puranas and other shruti and smriti compositions (Upanishads, shaastras and itihaasa) provide varying accounts about the emergences from the three kinds. However, the mahat (the magnificent) as the first emergence is common across all. The Matsyamahapurana says Avyaktaatmaa mahantaatmaahankaaraatmaa tathaivacha bhootaatmaa chendriyaatmaacha teshaam tadjnaana muchyate (Matsyamahapurana, 1.144.88–89, pp. 568–69).

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From the inarticulate formations, atma of apara-prakriti emerges great atma (mahat) and from which the individuating atma; similarly, from the elemental essence come forth the atmas of the faculties. Such is said to be the learning. Given that from the undifferentiated mahat emerges individuating faculty, the latter is derivative of the former, and this faculty gains the first form which is that of a gigantic oval formation and from which appears the first born Brhama/purusha/Hiranyagarbha. This first born as an individuating force has the non-determining desire to generate; from such desire begins what is called derivative emergences of the second type (vikruti) indicated earlier. Brahma brings forth various kinds of moving and stable formations—trees, creepers, mountains, birds, gods, humans and other infinite formations. But he cannot be seen as the sovereign creator. His desire is not that of omnipotent will. The Brahmaandamahapurana is unequivocal about this: Etadevam cha naivam cha na chobhe naanu bhe na cha svakarma vishayam brooyuh satvasthaah samadarshinah (Bramhaanda, 1.8.64. p. 49, also pp. 14–50).

Such formations are neither creations of purusha (Brahma) nor divinely generated; nor are they self-willed emergences either. The serene and lucid, the equanimous say that the universe is the actional effects of the entities and formations [themselves]. [Kaaranam]…jaguh karmah (Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita, vol. 1.7, p. 22).

For the formation of moving universe, the source is actional circuit [says Varahamihira]. Bhattotpala provides an extended commentary detailing the formation of the universe and its source in actional circuit (Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita, 1.7, pp. 22–24). Formations are the medium and effect of actional circuitry. The entirety of vaangmaya (shruti and smriti) reiterates this ‘logic’ of formations and emphasizes the task of responding to the reality of relation: relation among formations and relation between the formational in general (prakriti or apara) and the non-formational (para). This is an intermittent but interminable rhythm of the colossal complexes of emergence—the Brahmaanda—the giant oval formation.

13.6 Spatio-temporal Confluences Vishnumahapurana says that the Brahmaanda is composed of fourteen lokas and the earth (bhooloka) happens to be one among them. A loka is a formation of spatiotemporal convergence—manifesting and containing infinite such formations. The Brahmaanda is not just composed of lokas, but it also shelters about ten massive stellar and planetary circles ranging from the solar circle to the Dhruva circle. The stellar constellational circles are spread out in the shape of a crocodile (or scorpion— shimshumaara). Dhruva (the son of Uttanapada who gains the stellar position with

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his tapas) is in the tail of such a formation. From this position, Dhruva is said to impact and control stellar and planetary circles; these circles in turn impact the lokas and the actional circuits of their formations. The reed-like oval formation that sprouts or pops up is not a unique one. There are innumerable such egg-verses that emerge, circulate and dissolve declare the puranas. Andaanaam tu sahasraanaam sahasraanyayutaanicha

Tens of thousands of lakhs of such seed-egg-verses emerge (Shivamahapurana, 3.9.24, p. 435). Andaanaam eedrushaanaam tu kotyo jneyaah sahasrashah… Parasparaavrutaah sarvey utpannaascha parasparam (Brahmaandamahapurana, vol. 1.19.158, 160, p. 110).

Know that such egg–seeds are in thousands of crores in number, above, below, and on the sides. All these egg–seeds surround (circle) each other, and they are mutually constitutive or generative. All such infinite gigantic yet tiny (wood apple) seed–eggs, these Brahmaandaas, in turn, are generated by the confluence of other primal elemental formations that encircle and permeate the formations that emerge from/within them. Thus, the vishwaandas (egg-verses) are encircled by waters which are ten times the size of these seed–eggs; the water circle is surrounded by the circle of fire which exceeds the previous one by ten times; similarly, fire is encircled by wind bigger by ten times and the wind in turn by the sky by ten times. Now this entire set of differentiated and individuated elemental formations emerges from the primal but undifferentiated, unformed mahat—the supreme one. The mahat, in turn, is the primal emergent from the infinitely spread out but inarticulate, in itself formless prakriti-pradhaana. As pointed out earlier, prakriti is the primal condition of difference within a nondifferentiable and non-formational para. Prakriti as the primal source of difference gets accented as apara—the non-para. Exploration of the manifestations of apara is the liveable learning of formations. Thus, goes the shruti: Dve vidye veditavyau paraach aparaacha sa.20

Know that there are two kinds of learning—that of apara and of para. The entirety of shruti and smriti vaangmaya—as it is quintessentially formed of verbal–acoustic and of performative compositions—is the learning of apara. It is in the context of the apara learning one is required to explore the learning of para. In all the crores and crores of infinite formations of apara-prakriti, says Vishnumahapurana, like fire in the wood, and like oil in the sesame seed inheres in para indifferently permeating them.21 The formations (bhootas) are dependent on 20

Mundakopanishad, trans. (with commentary by) Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: Surabharati Publications, 1984), 1.4, pp. 137–8. 21 Vishnumahapuranamu, trans. Kalluri Venkat Subrahmanya Deekshitulu, (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 2008), 2.7.28, p. 126.

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rains and rains depend on the sun, the sun on Dhruva and Dhruva in turn on the Shinshumara circle and in the heart of this circle as in any other entity resides para (Vishnumahapurana, 2.9.23–24, pp. 137–38). The puranas extensively recount the play of prakriti and the magnitude of its bewildering effects. They heavily draw on computational and mathematical astronomy to configure the spatio-temporal dimensions of formations. Every formation is measured and described in terms of the space it covers, the distance it maintains from others and the enduring temporality it spans. The earth, for instance, is said to be distanced from the solar circle by a lakh yojanas (a yojana is between 10 and 12 km); from the solar to lunar circle about a lakh yojanas; from the solar to Dhruva, it is about 14 lakh yojanas (Vishnumahapurana, 2.7–2.8, pp. 125–138). Computational astronomy calculates the precise temporal movements, alignments of stellar and planetary clusters, their abodes and their impact on formations. Varahamihira’s extended account of rains is an eloquent testimony to such computation (see Varahamihira, Bruhatsamhita vol. 1, Chap. 2, pp. 25–58 for his elaborate computational schema to reckon temporal movements of formations). Almost every major purana in particular and the smriti vaangmaya in general provides an elaborate account of the earth. What stands out for attention in these accounts is the description of Jambudvipa (the island of the Indian blue berry— jamun). The earth itself is composed of seven such islands—each encircled by an ocean double the size of the island. Each of these seven islands has a presiding tree for itself and contains seven mountain ranges in it. Each of these ranges is replete with rivers and their tributaries. Among these mountain ranges cohabit varied janapadas—that is varied cultural formations of people live on among the mountains. The Brahmaandamahapurana gives an extended account of the varied formations and among them comes forth an elaborate account of the earth and the islands of it. The Jambudvipa is described as measuring a lakh yojanas. Its kula mountain ranges are seven (excluding the Himalayas). From all these, mountains traverse over a hundred major rivers with thousands of tributaries. The Brahmaandamahapurana (like the Matsya and others) names all the mountain ranges and their major rivers. Among all the remaining six islands, their seven respective mountain ranges and their seven respective rivers are also listed. Among them inhabit twenty janapadas, (Brahmaandamahapurana, 1.2.15–1.2.19, pp. 84–110). Mastyamahapurana lists about 101 rivers and mentions their hundreds of thousands of tributaries. The janapadas among the mountains and rivers are numbered 161 (Matysamahapurana pp. 1.113, pp. 401–02). Rains and rivers are the formations of the elemental; these are the effects of the primal force of prakriti. Parjanya is the Vedic rain god. Prakriti is the primal condition of difference from the undifferentiable and pervasive para. It is this condition that releases genera of differences. One among these derivative differences is that of individuated and sexuated formations. Although all formations are composed of prakriti’s effective traits, the formation generally differentiated as female is seen as an embodied aspect of prakriti: Aamsha roopaah kalaaroopah kalaanshaansha samudhbhavaah

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prakruteh prativishvancha roopam syaatsarva yoshitahah (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.59-60, p. 134).

In all the universes—lokas, women come forth as a part or an aspectual formation or phase or portional manifestation of prakriti. (In this context, it may not be irrelevant to point out that the woman as created from the body of Prajapati is doubly derivative. For, formations of genera as the effects of prakriti’s primal condition of difference make Prajapati a derivative formation in the first instance. And to conceive woman emerging from him is a further derivation— what is described as vaikruta sarga (derivative emergences). However, what the purana suggests is a relatively more originary engendering of ‘woman’ as an aspect of or manifestation of the differential force—prakriti; and the latter no longer reduces ‘woman’ to a sexually differentiated entity.) Almost all the rivers (excluding the prominent Brahmaputra) are figured as goddesses or female deities. Whether rains or rivers, they are endowed with the generative, differentiative and erasive powers. Sensitivity and attunement towards the powers of such elemental formations are the condition of emergence of habitats of most mobile and stable formations. Such an attunement opens up formations to each other and enables responsive receptions of formations from each other. Sensitivity and responsiveness will entail bountiful or accursive effects for formations. Mnemocultural liveable learning abounds with accounts of such attunement and responsiveness (even their distortion and perversion) to what they receive from formations.

13.7 Actional Routes Vedic rains are invoked by means of speech and gesture, through the song and ritual— with mantra and yajna. The relation with the elemental is inextricably woven into actional circuitry. The Vedic utterances are not just praiseful invocations but are also blameful accusations. Parjanya-Indra gets invoked and blamed often. Puranas are eloquent about the curses Indra suffers due to his concupiscence (the Ahalya episode) and his prideful arrogance (the Govardhanagiri episode of the Bhagavata). As formations, the river goddesses Ganga and Saraswati are also exposed to this double bind of boon and curse. The puranas delineate Ganga as a figure exposed to boon and curse. Ganga is also a formation that embodies the aspectual effects of prakriti; generativity, individuation, differntiality, relationality and actionality are her features. These aspects expose every formation, even gods, to the double strand of boon and curse. Ganga as the precious daughter of Himavan—the god of the Himalayas—is gifted away to gods when they seek her as a boon. Ganga’s trajectories are varied, and she manifests everywhere. As the gods’ boon, she permeates the loka of gods and the other two—the loka of the humans and the realm sheltered between the earth and the planetary circles—the antariksha. She benefits all these three lokas:

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Svacchanda pathagaamgamgaam trilokya hitakaamyayaa.22

Free to flow on its own path, Ganga benefits the three lokas. Ganga is the earth’s offering to gods. The formations of the lokas are palpably and impalpably but profoundly related; these modes of relation attune and open formations to each other; or, they immunize themselves from each other. The Brhmavaivarta recounts a scene of curses where Ganga in the gods’ world is slighted and accursed. Narayana, the god of limitless waters, has three wives— the goddesses Lakshmi, Saraswati, and Ganga (the account does not figure Ganga here as Himavan’s daughter). In the fateful scene, Saraswati suspects that Narayana is more inclined towards Ganga. In a fit of envious rage, the sharply vocal (from vaak, the volatile goddess of speech and learning) Saraswati curses Ganga to turn into a river and condemns her to the earth to suffer for all the effects of violations incurred by wrongful deeds of people there. The rageful Saraswati curses the silent observer Lakshmi as well for not supporting her in her suspicion. She is cursed to turn into a tree (trees—as sthavaras are speechless beings) on the earth. The innocent but dismayed Ganga too returns the curse to Saraswati to turn her into a river in Bhooloka. Curses and boons are efficacious utterances, and they cannot be withdrawn once they are released or hurled at someone; they can at the most be mitigated; or, their end can be indicated in the course of their endurance by the accursed (or gifted). Narayana intervenes and tells the accursed goddesses that as rivers Ganga and Saraswati will flow in the earthly loka for five thousand years (in the last of the epochs—that of Kali) taking in the wrong doers’ violations but cleansing them of their wrongs. Then they will return to the world of gods after the effect of the curse wanes. Ganga will be henceforth the spouse of Shiva and Saraswati of Brahma and only Lakshmi will remain with him (when he manifests as Vishnu). In her accursed life, Ganga is accorded boons on the earth as well. Narayana tells her that the ocean god— Samudra—will be her husband with whom she would rush to unite; that Samudra would love her more than Saraswati. Cleansing the lapses of wrong doers is a gift on earth for her. Therefore, whoever sees her, takes her name, dips in her, takes her water or bathes will be cleansed of the wrongs he/she has committed or accrued, says Narayana (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.6.16–121, pp. 161–67). Here it must be noted that it is not the narrative of the puranas that is efficacious in shaping the cultural mnemoscape. The story is barely known. It is the efficacious utterance of the boon that gets nurtured in cultures of memory and it is that utterance that gets generationally transmitted across time and space. As an embodied pulse of memory, it evokes countless performative acts—acts where the body complex is effectively put into action. Acts of singing, recitation, ritual acts, dances, perambulations in one’s own location before the river, or around the entirety of the river itself, submerging in the waters, carrying Ganga, seasonal gatherings on its banks, gatherings occasioned by the computational calculations of stellar and planetary conjunctions in their abodes (rashis)—proliferate countlessly. It is the lively mnemotrace of the boon that impels many to terminate traversal of their biocultural complex of the 22

Ramayana, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: Aarsha Vijnaana Trust, 2007), 1.35.18, pp. 386–87.

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body either by seeking cremation on Ganga’s banks or by drowning in its confluence. (Akbar is said to have stopped the last mentioned performative act at Prayag—where the aged would wait standing on one foot waiting for the gushing confluences to take them in.)23 The mnemotrace of the boon enlivens millions even to this day (Kumbh, Prayag, Sagar among myriad others); it attunes formations—the Ganga and the lively millions (praanikoti)—to open up to each other. Ganga transforms itself and all that opens itself to Ganga. Ganga is not so much a bridge (‘ford)’) as some think (Sudipta Sen, Ganga, pp. 152–54), but essentially an immersive formation that transforms. The instinct of exposure, interface or the embrace is seminal: it regenerates. As da Cunha affirms time and again, Ganga is never a river terrain engineered by geometry and cartography. The puranas, even when they offer extraordinary computational arithmetic about Ganga’s measure, never conceive it as a regimented flow between policed boundaries. Ganga above all is the essence of liquid—that which can transform into flow or hold itself in its essence. Brahmavaivarta in another account figures Ganga as a formation emerging from the union of the formless and the formational. This purana, however, attributes names to these forces as Krishna (formless) and Radha (formative). What emerges as Ganga from this union is designated as the presiding deity of ‘wetness’ (seminal term in da Cunha’s work) in general. Puraa babhoova goloke saa gangaa drava roopinee radhaakrishnaanga sambhootaa tadanshaa tattsvaroopinee dravaadhishtaatruroopaa yaa roopena pratimaabhuvi (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.11, 7– 8, pp.192–93).

In ancient time, Ganga was born from the limbs of Radha and Krishna in liquid form. She is the presiding deity over liquid formations. The scene is Goloka, yet another spatio-temporal complex beyond all other worlds in the Brahmaanda. On a festive occasion, when gods are assembled in the presence of Radha and Krishna, Shiva breaks into singing. All gods get immersed in Shiva’s mesmerizing melodies; they are like figures in a painting—stunned. When they recover after the musical spell, the gods realize that neither Radha nor Krishna is any longer present there. But in their place appears a pool of water. Shiva’s melodies have melted them away. The agitated gods bemoan and plead for their return. Radha and Krishna—now avyakta (unformable state)—do not return but a voice from the sky announces that Krishna is the formless and non-formative para and Radha his (formational) force. And the water appearing in their place is the primal elemental formation from their union. The musical power to efface differences in an immersive union—a union which releases the generative force and the differential condition is clearly palpable in the account. Ganga is such primal generative formation and as such she reins over wetness (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.10.153–164, pp. 190–91). Drawing on the computational reckoning the Bramhavaivarta provides an extensive enumeration of the magnitudes of Ganga’s spread in various lokas. In Goloka, where it began, Ganga has the width of ten million yojanas and flows about 1000 23

Sudipta Sen, Ganga: Many Pasts of a River, (London: Penguin Books, 2019).

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billion yojanas (a lakh crore yojanas); in Vaikuntha ten million yojana width and 24 million length; in Shiva loka three million and fifteen million yojanas; in Brahma loka two and eight, respectively. Thus, the measure and magnitudes decline as we go further down to other lokas. In Patala (the river is known as Bhagavati), its width is mere ten yojanas and length a hundred yojanas; on the earth (perhaps only as Alakananda), its width is said to be one kose (three km) and length too is the same (perhaps this is a reference to a lake) (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.10.114–133, pp. 187–88). Clearly, the purana is eloquent about the colossal presence of Ganga in its essence (as wetness) and its formation (as river). But Ganga is also a rather shy and withdrawing figure. In the Goloka where she emerges, Ganga is also said to appear as a charming beauty. One day Radha catches Krishna watching Ganga intently and Radha is furious with envy. She prepares to swallow Ganga in its watery substance in one gulp. Radha complains of Krishna’s well-known amorous escapades with Gopis in the past and her experience alerts her to be cautious. Fearing the threat, the timid damsel rushes to the feet of Krishna (a formation of Vishnu) and hides in his feet: hence, the appellation, Vishnupadi (from the feet of Vishnu). The disappearance of Ganga sets in draught and lively formations start dying. The gods approach Radha and plead with her to relent. Krishna reminds Radha that, after all, Gaga was born out of their union; this reminder allays here fears. Radha then relents, and Krishna in turn releases Ganga from his toe. This Ganga gets into Brahma’s water pot and Shiva’s tasseled locks and resides, among other places, there securely (Brahmavaivarta, 1.2.11.81–142, pp. 196–99). The Vishnudharmottara gives a very different account of about Ganga’s name as Vishnupadi and suggests how she spreads across the various lokas and returns to her primal elemental state. This account once again draws on the celebrated reckoning of computational astronomy and its figuration of lokas and stellar circles. The scene that the Vishnudharmottara sketches is that of a purposeful fire ceremony undertaken by the noble demon king Bali (called Bashkali in this purana). The success of the ritual will yield the loka of gods to the demon king. To interrupt the ceremony, Vishnu approaches the ritual scene as a celibate seeker of Brahma (para) with the pretext of getting a boon from the king. The king right away grants whatever the young seeker desires. The latter seeks the grant of a mere three feet space from the king. The moment the boon is granted, the celibate seeker expands into a gigantic size and extends one foot to the edge of Brahmaanda (the gigantic oval formation). As the toe touches the upper shell of the egg–seed, it perforates the shell and thence gushes in the waters from the colossal water body that encircles the Brahmaanda—ten times the size of the egg–seed. As the gushing waters emerge from the touch of Vishnu’s toe, the water is called Vishnupadi—Ganga. Ganga thus, spreads across the Brahmaanda, by first getting into Vishnuloka, then all the other lokas, constellational planetary centres, all the islands of Bhuloka and then traverses to Patala—as Patala Ganga. After this stupendous journey, Ganga returns to its colossal waterscape around the Brahmaanda through the very opening

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which Vishnu’s toe makes in the shell. Thus, Ganga circulates inside and outside of the entire Brahmaanda and enlivens the formations of all these lokas.24 As a formation Ganga pervades, permeates, disturbs, provokes, withdraws, gets cursed and receives boons. Yet as an effect of prakriti’s emergence Ganga is never only at a receiving end. Ganga also tries to throw her individuating distinction around and thus undermine her receivers. Ganga tries to lord her pride in her very first passage to the earth on the request of Bhagiratha. Shiva alone, and not even the earth, can receive her mighty descent. The prideful Ganga indulges in the thought that with her forceful plummeting she would drag away Shiva with her to Patala. Shiva senses this ruse of Ganga: Tassyavalepanam jnaatvaa (Ramayana, 1.43.6, p. 452).

Shiva notices Ganga’s willful pride. Shiva captures the plummeting force in his densely tasseled hair and makes her breathless there. The suffocated Ganga tries to escape from the thickets of hair without success. As a result of her strife, droplets of Ganga descend from the hair and they form into a pool of water (Bindusagara—literally droplet ocean). It is eventually the pleas of the enduring Bhagiratha that persuade Shiva to let Ganga pass from his locks. Gaga descends in seven channels from the tassels—three move towards east (known as Hlaadini, Pavani and Nalini) and three to the west (Suchakshu, Sita and Sindhu). The last one that follows Bhagiratha is Ganga. The cascading Ganga is tumultuous, and her dance across glaciers, mountains, gorges, plains and valleys is electric: Kachidhrutataram yaati kutilam kvachidaayatam vinatam kvachiduddhootam kvachidyaati shanaih shanaih (Ramayana, 1.43.23, p. 457).

Rapidly in some places, slowly in others, crooked in some, long in others, falling down in some and raising up in others, Ganga flows (in some places, Ganga collides with its own receding waves and leaps up on the earth). This impulsive, spontaneous dance of Ganga—as if longing to be united with her beloved ocean god—Samudra—is not completely free from her prideful distinction, even after the suffocating embrace with Shiva; the pride blinds her momentarily. Flowing across the terrains willfully as it were, she is unmindful of sage Juhnu and his hermitage with Vedic ceremonial settings—and the sage there immersed in his ceremonies. Ganga inundates all these unmindfully and hopes to rush further. Like Shiva earlier, Juhnu too senses Ganga’s pride (and Valmiki uses exactly the same verbal utterance to identify Ganga’s demeanour): Tassayvalepanam jnaatvaa kruddho yajvaa (Ramayana, 1.43.35, p. 460).

Noticing the arrogant Ganga the sage engrossed in the ceremonies was furious. Juhnu swallows the entirety of Ganga in a gulp. Ganga realizes her prideful act but is helpless—caught in the belly of the sage. The parental Bhagiratha pleads with 24 Sri VishnudharmottaraMahapuranamu, trans. and edited by K. V. S. Deekshitulu & D. S. Rao, P. Seetaramanjaneyulu, (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arshabharati Trust, 1988), 1.21.1–32,1.22.1– 34, pp. 38–42).

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the sage to condone Ganga and release here to fulfil his own ancestral obligation: to cleanse the fatal effects of his ancestors’ arrogant acts with yet another sage and to free them from their curse. Juhnu releases Ganga from his knee (some puranas say, from his ear)—hence Ganga’s name as Jahnavi: birthed from Juhnu (Ramayana, 1.43, p. 460). Formations emerge as commingled effects of prakriti. They gain their distinctive status only through the operation of these effects (generative, differential, etc.). The going about of formations—their modes of being are forever (i.e. as long as they circulate as formations) effected by the attributive traits of prakriti’s effects. The dynamic of actional circularity is impacted by the traits. The asymmetry and irreducibility of traits are the conditions of emergence in general. Srishti is impossible without the disequilibrium (vaishamya) of the traits, enounce the puranas. Ganga as a formation is exposed to the double strand of boon and curse. Her curse (condemned to go to earth) turns into boon (to cleanse the wrongdoers). Receiving and enduring all the wrongs of all who rush to her, Ganga as a formation is also impelled to reflect: How to cleanse myself of what all I receive? That is, indeed, an ineluctable question for every formation from the tiniest of entities such as a grain of sand to the most gigantic Brahmaandaas. According to Bhagavatapurana, Ganga is even hesitant at the beginning to descend to the earth precisely due to this doubt. Bhagiratha alleys her fears. But the task of responding to that question cannot be undertaken outside the formational matrix one finds oneself in and the actional circuitry it exposes itself to. The task here would involve seeing the ‘logic’ of formations (as apara’s effects) as the medium and effect of their actional circuitry, the limits of the formational on the one hand and sense the intimations of that which is ungraspable by the foratmional traits and effects on the other. All formations are exposed to the singular double task—a task which can be rendered only in the formational existence. Such rendering gets articulated in modes of being in their attunement towards formations. In response to Ganga’s anxious question, Bhagiratha responds by alluding precisely to those who attune themselves to the double strand of formations. Those, says Bhagiratha, who continue to live in their endowed (effective) formations and yet do not succumb to the vagaries of the formational effects and their regulative traits, when they interface with Ganga, the latter will be cleansed of the mounting accretions of others’ wrong doings. In a word, when Ganga as a formation of the forces of apara is exposed to other formations that sense the inhering para—Ganga will be purified. Para in a way here alludes to a state where saamya (equilibrial) and vaishamya (disturbance) appear conjoined or articulated. (Bhagiratha in a way is orienting Ganga to the intimations of para indirectly.) The Bhagavata states this possibility of Ganga’s own cleansing. Paratattvanjnulu shaantachittulu tapah pareenulaaryul ghanul purushasreshtulu vacchi talli! Bhavadambhogaahamul seyagaa narasamghaaghamu ninnu bondune jagannathundu naanaagha sam harudaa vishnudu vaari chittamula daanai yunta mandaakinee.25 25

Potanabhagavatamu, (Tirupati: Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanamulu, 2007), 3.9.226, p. 386.

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O! Mandakinee when the serene and the learned of para, the ennobled and seasoned in austerities come to bathe in your waters how can the wrongs of the lapsed touch you? For the one Hari who would cleanse all wrongs is himself resting in their hearts.

13.8 Sovereign Designs Ganga is wetness and waters. Water, wind, fire and earth are the elemental formations. Formations are derivative, and their traits for ever expose formations to strife. Yet nowhere in the puranas or in the entirety of Indian mnemocultural vaangmaya all the formations are compelled to be subservient to any singular formation as such. Formations are individuated and differentiated; without these aspects, they cease to be formations. It must be noticed that the strife is inside and outside—that is, within and among formations. But there is no absolute line of demarcation between these internal and external rhythms. As a convergent complex, the formation is always exposed to the predominance of one effect (say individuation) and one trait (say, the impulsive–aggressive) over the others. And a similar process can be at work in the scalable formations of formations—that of the Brahmaanda. Therefore, it is necessary that the generative strife of the formational negotiate with and reorient itself to sense that which is indifferent to the formational strife—para. What is most curious among the puranas is that despite their copious allusions to various Janapadas among the mountains and rivers, none of the major puranas discussed here shows that the rivers or mountains were forcibly appropriated by any Janapadas as a resource for their individuated purpose. In all the mnemocultural recounting about rivers, references to agriculture are conspicuous by their absence. Varahamihira’s extended discussion refers to rains and their effect on crops in a very general way. Mathematical or computational astronomy does not seem oriented to marshalling, regimenting and controlling the elemental formations to secure and celebrate only one classified formation: the human. On the contrary, it seems to orient humans to attune themselves and their activities by learning from other prior formations such as trees, mountains, animals, birds and other lively millions. Janapadas, more as seasoned rain-sensitive collectives, evinced such attunement to rains and water, contends da Cunha. Janapadas alternated their activities with the dance of rain water (which they saw as sindhu) by moving to elevated lands (mounds) during the season of rains and confluencing on the basin with the ebb of waters, observes da Cunha. Janapadas, adds da Cunha, bring forth different rhythms of cohabitation which move more like the polis of archaic Greece (and not the polis of the agora celebrated by classicists as the source of democracy). The archaic polis linked ‘a variety of communities and polities into political, economic and cultural systèmes-modes’ contends another scholar of archaic Greece (Vlassopoulos cited in da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 235). Perhaps this sets apart Janapadas of India and archaic (Homeric) Greece from the hydrological political regimes of other ancient cultures like China (Sudipta Sen, Ganga, pp. 7–8). Perhaps the residual memory of the transects of Janapadas lingers on even to this day in Indian cultural

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formations of jatis. It is precisely these jati modes of being and their immensely diverse practices that converge (and diverge) in what is called Indian culture. They cannot be radically set apart and inscriptionally demarcated among mnemocultural formations. Mnemocultures do not draw a rigorous line of opposition between them and discriminate transecting formations. Despite the prominence of computational and mathematical astronomy, Ganaita–Jyotisha of India rarely or only belatedly turned towards inscription—towards geometric graphematics. It is almost two millennia after the formations of Indian mnemocultural traditions (shruti and smriti)—only towards the beginning of the Common Era (centuries after Panini) that inscriptional literacy begins to make inroads. Yet throughout their exposure to inscriptional apparatuses neither the computational nor geometric mathematics was accorded any privileged status as the paradigm for all learning. Similarly, lithic literacy was not a normative model for articulating and transmitting cultural memory. Mnemocultural modes evinced their efficacy vibrantly. In contrast, the archaic mnemocultural Greece was overpowered and displaced by the inscriptional invasions and geometric– cartographic conceptualizations. Ocular (eidos)—mathematical logic begins to gain prominence and in an encroaching (lithic) epoch such logic gets identified with the sovereign creator of the universe. All formations by default are compelled to obligate themselves to the mathematical-sovereign henceforth. The sovereign is the determining force of order and command. It is such a force which divides land and water and impels the elemental to subserve the sovereign—a power that could emanate either from a singular god or human. Alexander the great, a prominent descendant of post-archaic Greece—confronted the elemental waters with mathematical cartography and—was forced to retreat. Alexander’s inscriptional legacy remained confined largely to naming the river as the Ganges. In the second millennium of the Common Era spurred by the conception of the sovereign god, the Islamic epoch invaded the mnemocultural milieu. The new force was brought up on river literacy. More than commanding and regimenting the river, the epoch turned its attention to the banks—the densely forested river beds. It is during the Islamic epoch that the river was seen as an agricultural resource. The impact of Neolithic revolution appears to have flourished during the Islamic epoch in the Ganga basin. Rice cultivation expanded immensely during this period. The Ganga and the Bengal deltas were said to have been exposed to long-term ecological transformation (from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries and beyond) due to the spread of Islam and agriculture on the countryside. Large tracts of forests were cleared for rice cultivation. The forest clearing Muslims were called Ghazis—religious warriors fighting the enemies of god. In the case of forests, the Ghazis are claimed to tame and vanquish the forest spirits (jinn) (Sudipta sen, Ganga, p. 282). Despite such onslaught of the inscriptional river literacy, the mnemocultural milieu replenished itself in its attunement to waters and rivers even during this epoch. But the most devastating invasion of the inscriptional learning occurred in the Christian epoch from the eighteenth century onwards. This epoch—a definite progeny of earlier epoch (bereft of mnemocultural enlivening background)—is armed with the new literacy of science—a literacy which turns the elemental phenomena into objects of scientific projection. The ‘objects’ are purged of their elemental and immemorial

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significances. They are summoned to conform to a priori schemas projected on them. A plethora of professionals—surveyors, planners, cartographers, guides, engineers, army, hydrologists, administrators, geologists, etc.,—descends on the Ganga from the eighteenth century to capture her and confine her between the lines. They first imposed a narrative triptych on her with an origin, course and floods (or the end). The narrative was primarily to achieve a demythification or demystification of Ganga—it was an effort to erase the salience of an enduring (puranic) mnemotrace. Yet Ganga, like the currents of mnemocultural rhythms, was not easily amenable to the designs of the professionals. Journeying the post-mutiny India, Jules Verne has one of his characters say this about Ganga in his fantasy novel, The Demon of Cawnpore: ‘There never was such a whimsical capricious lunatic of a river as this same Ganges. People take the trouble to build a town on its banks, and behold, a few centuries later the town is in the midst of a plain, its harbors are dry, the river has changed course!’ The Ganges, he adds, is ‘a faithless stream’.26 Ganga was a sort of nightmare for planners. She was mostly characterized as ‘unruly and capricious’ in changing its course and direction—resulting in severe disruptions of British planners’ calculations in the nineteenth century (Sen, Ganga, p. 12). Ganga frustrated the labours of the surveyors; her movements undermined their scientific predictions and their trigonometrical maps. Ganga would cut new channels at will and take away silt to form new islands (794 million tons every year (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p.90)). As was in the case of the native Egyptians who attuned to the flooding Nile in antiquity, the dance of Ganga did not surprise the native Indians at all: ‘“The frequent alterations in the course of the Ganges,” writes [Robert] Colebrooke [in the early nineteenth century] “have been a subject of wonder to the generality of Europeans residing in these provinces; [whereas for the natives]…who have long witnessed such changes, the most remarkable encroachments of the rivers, and deviations of their streams, are productive of little surprise”’ (Colebrooke cited in da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 230). Within two centuries of the European epoch, Ganga was pinned down as ‘the Ganges to a channel in the plains’ and the ‘geography of the Ganges was firmly established’, for documenting and grasping Ganga’s shifting rhythms. ‘Ultimately it was the points laid down by the Great Trigonometrical Survey…that structured the earth’s surface and held the river to a space’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, pp. 241–42). The two epochs of the second millennium expose the immemorial mnemocultural ethos of attunement to the formational forces to a domineering logic of divine/human sovereignty; this logic demands of what all exists to subordinate itself and serve the sovereign interests. If the theo-centred Islamic epoch enhanced the Neolithic revolution and devastated the banks of the rivers, the European epoch armed with the scientific revolution aimed at permanently altering the ecological, environmental and above all the immemorial liveable learning of Indian traditions. British India became the architect of and custodian of one of the ‘largest canal systems’, in the world in the 1860s. Despite early surveyors warning to the East India Company not 26

Verne cited in Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India’s Ancient River, (San Francisco: Applied Design and Research, 2015). p. 103, italics in the original.

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to ‘tamper’ with ‘nature’, (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 109), British India inscribed an unprecedented 898 mile long system of ‘canals, aqueducts and water causeways [which] transformed the waterscape of the Ganges [sic]’ (Sen, Ganga, p. 339). Two significant figures get exemplified in this colossal theatre of sovereign design aimed at transforming nature during the European epoch: the surveyor and the engineer. If the eighteenth-century Europe introduced the new heroic model in the designation of the surveyor, the nineteenth century celebrated the engineer as the creator figure. In the Indian context, Ganga became the first ‘laboratory’ for water management. In this theatre, if the heroic surveyor of the eighteenth century was James Rennell, the ‘Herodotus of India’ (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 108), then Sir Proby Cautley was the divine engineer of the nineteenth century. The latter would do nothing less than reveal the truth of nature, unconceal the truth of nature as waiting for human unravelement. Proby Cautley was the amateur palaeontologist turned superintendent of canals; he worked for years on tracking and excavating Mughal canals and on the Jamuna canal system. For Cautley ‘nature had designed the region [Roorkee] for artificial irrigation. This was not a plan to alter reality so much as reveal it. The engineer would be the great revealer of this latent truth.’ (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 115). The engineer indeed is the Heideggerian unconcealer in the modern metaphysical epoch: the discloser of truth, the seeker after truth—aletheia—concealed in nature. The plan in question was the first ever conceived and implemented Ganges canal (1445 km—898 mile) and the world famous Solanki Aqueduct in the 1850s. But the engineer is no surveyor who would walk the land and mark it—who would only inscribe or cartograph the space. The engineer is the designer and creator indeed. He would impel the phenomenon to yield to the design he conceives beforehand. The engineer is fully conscious of his total power: ‘to obtain a command of water, which places the whole country under his control.’ (Cautley cited in Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 114).27 In accordance with his willed and intended plan prepared in advance, ‘the engineer reshapes land and redirects rivers, creating an entirely new, artificial topos.’ (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 108). 27

It is this celcebrated figure of the engineer as the creator, designer out of nothing, that Derrida famously unravels as a theological legacy in his critique of Levi–Strauss’ idealization of the engineer in the 60s. On closer examination, however, this unravelling in this particular context has an ironic effect. On the one hand, Derrida exposes the theological dogma of the creator in the critique of the figure of the engineer; but on the other, his entire deconstruction of Levi–Strauss’s work there wholly relies on the value of the a priori model of science. The distinction of rigorous philosophers, Derrida contends, is that they all work with the a priori model and do not confuse it with the empirical. For Derrida, Levi–Strauss’s work confusedly circulates between the empiricial and the theoretical. But are not these two figures—the engineer and the philosopher of the a prior the offspring of the same species born in the same epoch: modern metaphysics? Is not the real exemplar or the architecton of the a priori the celebrated philosopher Kant? It is curious that Derrida never attends to this ironic turn in his argument. It can perhaps only suggest that Derrida was either ambivalent or committed to the project of the enlightenment. He does not seem to expose himself to the kind of risk (questioning modern metaphysics—or which means the same—Western metaphysics) which Heidegger dares. In this regard, Derrida continues to remain a Husserlian. Cf., Derrida ’Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 278-294.

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The engineer thus first ‘pictures’ the topos and then conjures it up by forcing the phenomenon. This is precisely what the exemplar engineer of the first half of the nineteenth century achieved; and the phenomenon he was dealing with is the anarchic or ‘lunatic’ Ganga waters. The engineer’s achievement, surpassing the Roman endeavours, is hailed across the world as the greatest human achievement; the human, however, of a particular background—destined to liberate humankind from their inherited darkness. ‘The night’, writes the famous American scholar from Harvard, Charles Norton Eliot, ‘in which false religion, tyranny, and war have enveloped India, is giving place to the day of Christianity, good government, and peace…the glow of the morning is in the East, and the first streaks of light are reflected brightly in the flowing waters of the great Ganges Canal.’ (Eliot cited in Acciavtti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 117). The engineer/scientist can show that theology and science can surely go together in the name of man—(the civilizing, progressive man of reason, of course) for the sake of humanity. In the context of India, the engineer was perpetrating something which had no place in the millennially enduring traditions of India. The engineer wrenched apart the river from rain and waged a war against rain to possess the river to command it, its habitats and its inhabitants. No one, declared the engineer, any longer has to fear rain either for its floods or for the drought it unleashes: ‘The canal easily supplanted the rain and local tanks and wells’. (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 124). The engineer brought forth a ‘peaceful’ army to sustain this interminable war: ‘the Ganges contains the largest water management bureaucracy in the world’, states Acciavatti (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 39). The Ganga basin is turned into ‘one of the most engineered spaces on the planet’ (Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, p. 350). ‘In a matter of a century or two’, writes da Cunha in a rather melancholic strain, ‘it seemed that the complexity of a rain terrain entertained by people for centuries would be relegated to religion, superstition, and cultural disposition, displaced by a surface divided between river and land, a surface that claimed to be the ground of science.’ (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 166) With regard to the elemental in particular and the formational in general, we continue to wallow in the epistemic dream spawned in the European epoch. Investing in scientific prowess to subordinate all formations, the modern Indian state not only took to fabricating dams and barrages but even to materialize the nineteenth century army engineer’s dream: the river linking project of Arthur Cotton (bitter rival of Sir Proby Cautley) (da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, 287; also, Sandip Sen, Ganga, pp. 346–47, Acciavatti, Ganges Water Machine, on Cotton Cautley rivalry, pp. 196–97).

13.9 Elemental Wonders The dance of the rivers and the openness of formations—the plant, mineral, animal and human transect—and their millennial responsive reception to the formations of water are incomprehensible to inscriptional structures of thought; they see such

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attunement as an affront to the inscriptional sovereignty: the rivers of Bengal, (Ganga, Padma, Bhagirathi, Brahmaputra and myriad others), write discerning scholars, ‘with their constantly shifting and changing courses, were seen as inconvenient and in need of control. The long history of human life and living with water became invisible and was ignored by the modernist worldview that was in favour of engineering its control. Thus engineering control of rivers came to be seen as fundamental to the economic social advancement of communities living with rivers’.28 Obsessed with his triumphal march to the other end of the earth and into the encircling ocean of Greek memory, Alexander ignored the rain and did not taste Ganga— let alone heard anything about its wondrous descriptions (mahatmya). Another monarch who was an avid listener of the puranic and itihaasic accounts of India never touched any other water to quench his thirst: Akbar commissioned the Ganga water to be brought everyday in sealed jars from a city near Agra (Sen, Ganga, p. 35). On seeing the ‘grandeur of Ganga’, Ghalib in 1828, even as the surveyor and engineer figures were invading Ganga, wanted to pass his life on Ganga’s banks with his prayer beads, a sacred thread and a mark on his forehead (Sen, Ganga, p. 20). Mnemocultues surely touched these latter figures of the Islamic epoch. In contrast, unmindful of the immemorial transmissions of liveable learning, British physicians of the nineteenth century experimented on Ganga water with cholera microbes. They were astounded to see that the microbes lived for fortyeight hours in distilled water but ended their lives in three hours in the waters of Ganga. Hydrologists were amazed to see that the Ganga waters remained germ-free for a very long period unlike waters from wells and other rivers. Captains of ships carried Ganga for their travel until they reached England. Army filled their reservoirs with Ganga water. The scientists ‘discovered’ that the waters of Ganga were ‘energetically bactericidal’ (Sen, Ganga, pp. 36–37). The ‘scientific spirit’ of the European epoch did not exempt even those ascendant professionals who represented culture. Silencing the articulations of mnemotraces, they prised open the puranas as the myths of a bygone age and sought to extract facts to shore up their derivative models of historical narration. They labouriously searched for political models of state and its sovereignty or class exploitation or priestly connivance; they launched philological and hermeneutical analyses and textualized mnemocultures: they turned puranas into information sources.29 We continue to wallow in these autoimmune dreams. Blissfully ignorant about scientific discoveries about Ganga’s bateriaphage, its germ-proof longevity, millions gather at tirthas and prayags to open themselves to this dynamic elemental—Ganga. They immerse in it, invoke it full-throated, decorate 28

Kuntala-Lahiri and Gopu Samant, cited in da Cunha, The Invention of Rivers, p. 103. It is after the great surveys of British India—from late eighteenth century that finding referents to the puranic allusions to rivers, mountains, kingdoms, communities has expanded fervently. Mapping of the topography with details of referents promised certainty of the place and its entities—rivers, mountains and people. To map is to annex and appropriate for returns. Dinesh Chandra Sircar’s Lists of Rivers and People is a quintessential product of this colonial epistemic enterprise. Pargiter and Cunningham preceded Sircar. Sircar painstakingly tries to match puranic allusions to rivers and mountains with their appropriate modern references. Cf., Sircar, Historical Geography of India: Collection of Articles from the Indian Historical Quarterly, ed. Devendra Swarup, Vol. 1. (Delhi: Low Price Publications, 2005).

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it and offer themselves to it in gesture and speech. Such tirthas are counted in millions, and their mahatmyas are interminable. The tirthas are not just out there—but are seen as part of one’s own body complex. In Yoga, the three critical nadis—channels of life breath—are identified with three rivers and three kinds of breath of praanaayaama. The channel called Ida, presided over by the planet moon, is identified as Ganga; the channel Pingala governed by the solar circle is identified as Yamuna; and the middle passage Sushumna presided over by the elemental formation of fire is identified as Saraswati. Living in this context is the result of confluence of the formations of the universe. Irrespective of size each formation is an embodiment of such confluences. In a cultivated mode of breathing, Yamuna is rechaka (exhalation), Ganga pooraka (inhalation) and Saraswati kumbhaka (retention). In every breath, rivers enliven life and living.30 Nurtured in such mnemocultures, the Bhatiali majhi’s melodious life breath turns into a song on the shoreless sea of Ganga and his body the boat. He opens himself fully to the intimacies and intimations of the watery formation. His journey is the interminable strife of formations. He senses it; he sings eloquently about the ‘six enemies’ who loot him and target the vulnerability of his body. Yet he lives on with the intimations of the other inhering in him whom he intimately addresses at every wave in the river: moner maanush: para of manas. It is only the manas that can enable one to sense and discern para: Indriyaanaam manaschaasmi (Bhagavadgita, 10.22, p. 535).

‘I am’ the manas among the faculties. Says Krishna as para in the Bhagavadgita. But manas is also the fire that burns down the entire universe: Mano mayognir dahati prapancham.31

The smriti compositions continue to resonate and reverberate shruti intimations: Manasaivaanu drashtavyam (Bruhadaaranyaka32 ).

Only by means of focused attention of the manas can one know para. Exposed to the elemental from the sky, stellar and planetary circles and the varied lokas, surrounded by shoreless apeironal water currents, endowed with a resonant voice that attunes with mellisonances of the moving waters in thunder and in rain filiated to all the forces and traits, the majhi sings of moner maanush for the intricately networked relations of formations. The river song that reverberates between the sky and the dancing earth of the river is the dwelling of the majhi. He sings—and as song and he unfold each other endlessly—of and for Ganga. 30

David Gordon Smith, The Alchemic Body: Siddha Traditions in Medieval India, (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal,2004). 31 (Attributed to) Sankaracharya, Sri Vivekachudamani, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 1995), 170, p. 250. 32 Bruhadaranyaka Upanishad, trans. (with a commentary by) Suri Ramkakoti Sastry, (Hyderabad, 1989), v.v.19, pp. 136, 138.

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The Vedic rains and the purana rivers weave new currents in his mnemocultures. These enduring mnemocurrents which survived the invasive lines of the two rupturing inscriptional epochs continue to expose the limits of the sovereign lineaments and continue to affirm the task of formational attunement and live on with/as heterogeneous transects. The puranas enliven mnemotraces and nurture shareable experiences. The liveable learning that gets imparted from the puranas requires to be put into practice; its efficacy unfolds in living it. The rain, river, tree, mountain, earth, water, fire— just every element and formation communicates through a relational network. Such network of intimations is made palpable by the puranas. If the puranas form one seminal channel for enhancing and enlivening mnemocultures, the itihaasa form is yet another most disseminal route for the enlivenment of mnemocultures. The itihaasa form is claimed to spread across the imports of shruti vaangmaya across all cultural formations (Bharata’s Naatyashaastra too makes such a claim—as the panchama Veda—the fifth Veda). The itihaasa form intricately and delicately weaves the disciplines of learning (shaastras) in acoustic poetic forms. The first of such itihaasa, the Ramayana, is treated as the aadikavya—the first poem in the Indian tradition. The Ramayana like the Mahabharata is considered the embodiment of Vedic learning. Today, the Ramayana lives on among radically heterogeneous cultural formations (jatis) in varied languages; distinctive idioms and modes have received it and responded to it. These formations have carved out distinct performative idioms to respond to the Ramayana they received and as a result transformed it. The Ramayana enhances mnemocultural ethos as the mnemocultural modes extend its salubrious longevity. The next chapter traces the pulsation of the reflective ethos of Indian traditions through the instantiation of myriad inflexions of the Ramayanas.

Chapter 14

Teleocultural Mediations: In Performing Traditions of the Ramayana

Abstract The Ramayanas live on as performing traditions in the cultures of memory of the subcontinent. Performing traditions are composed of visual (drushya) and verbal (shravya) cultural technics and put the body to work in articulating cultural memories. The mnemocultural technics of speech (song) and gesture (performance) dispersed the Ramayana across changing communication systems (from oral to digital) among heterogeneous biocultural formations (jatis) over millennia. As the jatis proliferated, the compositional genres like the itihaasa and purana have multiplied and dispersed beyond calculation: hence the heterogeneity of the lively Ramayanas. The efficacy of the performative traditions cannot be measured by the textualist strategies (philological, art-aesthetic) institutionalized in the colonial– Indological epoch. The mnemocultural force of these traditions received, incorporated and surpassed the inscriptional textualist technologies (from scribal to digital). Therefore, there is a need to explore new ways of reflecting on these lively traditions beyond the lithic frames of European interpretations. In this context, the primal reflective–praxial composition on performing traditions, Bharata’s Naatyashaastra, can provide resources for responding to itihaasa, kavya and purana cultural forms and their performative receptions. This chapter unfolds the ways in which the shared reflective current of Indian traditions disseminates across song–performative cultural forms. While focusing on some of the verbal (song, musical poem, pravachana, paaraayana) and visual (dance drama, plastic/iconic, film and television) cultural forms in which the Ramayana disperses itself, this chapter inquires into the ends envisaged in the itihaasic, puranic, kavya cultural mediations. In the process, the chapter configures the mnemocultural force that animates multiple biocultural formations which bring forth heterogeneous cultural forms and enlivens the Ramayanas of India. The throbbing mnemoculturality of these formations and their forms reiterates the enduring coherence of the Samskruta traditions.

Note: An earlier and shorter version of this chapter was submitted for publication in 2019 to the Backwaters Collective, edited by Vinay Lal (forthcoming). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_14

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14.1 Performative Inheritance The Ramayana comes forth in a performative cultural tradition. Performative traditions are those in which cultural memory is formed mainly by means of embodied and enacted articulations of it. That is, the body is the absolute medium (and considered also as the effect) of performative configurations of memory in these traditions. Cultural forms in such traditions compose and disseminate their cultural inheritance fundamentally through the work of the body. Such mnemocultural creations and reflections are indifferent to archiving their memories outside the resources of the body. The lives of cultural memory are enlivened and extended through the work of the body and not through the silent tomes and tombs of the archive and museum. In a word, the body is the destiny and destination of cultural memory. From its very conception to its countless manifestations, the Ramayana sustained and replenished itself in the mnemocultural performative impulse. Although designated as the primal composition (aadikavya), the Ramayana does not inaugurate performative traditions in India. It emerges as a live current in a more robust performative culture which preceded and survived the coming forth of the Ramayana. If the Ramayana emerges and moves on as a prevalent lively impulse how does one configure its singularity? What made such an unprecedented composition to emerge within a larger flow of a performative culture? How does the Ramayana relate itself to this larger flow and articulate it? How does this distinctive cultural form disseminate itself across very diverse cultural technologies (from scribal to digital) and yet retain its mnemocultural performative impulse? Can such mnemocultural forms be easily subsumed under the barely thought out (in the Indian context) categories like ‘art’ and ‘aesthetics’? How to rethink today these cultural forms from within the institutional structures which neither generated nor sustained such immeasurable mnemocultural forms—especially when these structures seem to routinely participate in a double violence that our colonial epoch bestowed upon us? The double violence consists of (i) violence of categorizing these cultural forms as art and aesthetics and (ii) disavowal of the cultural formations (jatis) that birth and nurture the cultural forms like the Ramayana in countless ways. This chapter makes an attempt to grapple with these questions and offers the Ramayanas of India as disseminating varied modes of liveable learning. For millennia Vedic (shruti) cultural memory was shaped by the most primordial and the most immemorial verbal and visual communicational technics of speech (song) and gesture (performance); here technics refers to the modes and means by which cultural memories are brought forth and generationally imparted. The liveable learning of the Vedic vaangmaya (the pervasive verbal utterance) entirely proliferated through such cultural technics. It unfolded divergent verbal and visual compositions (shruti, smriti, sutra and their rendering) which reiterated inherited cultural memory in multiple ways. Here, it must be noted that the relationship between the verbal and visual (speech and gesture) was neither causal nor hierarchical. The verbal formations were not valorized and privileged for either their semantic efficacy or their narrative or doctrinal integrity. They were not related in any linear sequentiality. What is

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significant here is that both the verbal and visual activities were effective articulations of the body; they put the body to work in the most rigorous ways. The body hones the verbal and performative efficacy in composing and rendering the inherited acoustic memory. Although there are indications of music, dance performances and minimal narrative accounts even in the Vedic cultural formations,1 we do not come across any combination of all these forms in elaborating concatenated narrative performances that are enacted in the caesuras (karmaantara) of Vedic ritual–recitational performances. We see references to multiple unelaborated narratable allusions (or narratemes) in Vedic compositions, but they neither get elaborated nor emphasized during the Vedic rituals. The Upanishads do contain narrative fragments—but they (the fragments) do not appear as instances of generationally imparted learning even when the Upanishads get generationally reiterated in transmission. In other words, the narrative fragments do not become the core of Vedic or Upanishadic learning. We do not see Yajnavalkya, Sanatkumara or Yama elaborating any narrative performance. The sutra genre remains essentially a non-narrative performative form. One brings forth the sutra contextually. Narratives have no status as wisdom capsules of experience (as Walter Benjamin characterizes them2 ) in the Vedic traditions. In a word, the Vedic performative traditions are yet to space the suta (the exemplar reciter performer of generationally imparted learning) and Bharata (in the sense of performer–actor of diachronically remote episodes and events of lives and times, in an instance of existence) in their regulated performances. The bard (suta) and the actor (bharata) are the quintessential figures of mnemocultures; they overlap, merge and separate each (from the) other. But they are not masters of the primordial mnemocultural technics of speech and gesture; they are not the originary, if one can find any such, figures, of mnemocultures. The Vedic performing traditions do not begin with them. They all (Vedic, bardic, bharatic) emerge in the immemorial mnemocultural currents. The bard and bharata certainly draw on and respond to the Vedic performing traditions; in the process, they open up and elaborate but also elliptically condense verbally and visually the cryptic narratemes and allusions woven into the Vedic performative compositions. Such layered waves of mnemocultural articulations are compiled in the names of itihaasa, purana, kavya and naatya. What is common to these unprecedented cultural forms is that each one is the effect of a singular responsive reception of what precedes its emergence. In other words, all these forms receive and respond to the Vedic performative traditions and what they impart. Their responses come forth as singular individuated compositions. Mnemocultural forms are reiterations of palpable (temporal and/as phenomenal) traces whose intractable movement is inaccessible to definitive verification. Philological and archaeological adventures aggravate the asymptotic relation between the dynamic of responsive reception and the mummifying academic research. The archival/historical fevers in their passion for reasoning out and garnering verifiable evidence have no space for sensing the immersive experiential response that sustained 1

V. Raghavan , ’Sanskrit Drama in Performance’, in Sanskrit Drama: Its Aesthetics and Production, (Madras, 1993), pp. 50-91. 2 Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn, (London: Fontana Press, 1992).

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the vibrant mnemocultural dispersals across heterogeneous cultural formations. Only the bard and bharata nurture and enhance the traces across immemorial generations. The Ramayana is reckoned as the primal poetic–performative composition of generational learning (kavya-itihaasa).

14.2 Receptive Detours But does the emergence of suta and bharata imply any rupture in the Vedic performing culture? Do their compositions mark any break in the Vedic mnemocultural formations? Can the relation between the Vedic learning and that of the suta and bharata be plotted in paradigmatic terms of truth versus art as Plato or Nietzsche did in the European context?3 What is the status of these compositions (of itihaasa, purana, kavya and naatya) in traditions of performative learning generated by the Vedic vaangmaya? The emergence of suta and bharata and the coming forth of distinct compositions associated with them surely are remarkable occurrences in the Vedic heritage. Yet, they emerge from within the mnemocultural inheritance and master the verbal– visual technics of the traditions. As they weave and compose performative cultural forms, their essential task is to elucidate, elaborate and fulfil the Vedic imports of the traditions: Itihaasa puranaabhyam vedam samupabrumhayet.4 Itihaasa and purana receive the essential sense of the Vedas.

Valmiki, though not a suta but, as a weaver of the primal kavya-itihaasa, says that his composition aims for Vedopabrumhanaarthaaya5 (Ramayana, 1.4.6, p. 85).

[The Ramayana aims] To elucidate the sense of the Veda. The fundamental aim of the kavya-itihaasa is to elaborate the sense of the Veda by exploring the sonic–figural weave of the Vedas, says Rajasekhara.6 Similarly, shaastra vaangmaya too is said to have emerged, drawing on different forms of testimony (pramaana) to envision the Vedic sense, says Bhartrhari.7 No wonder why 3

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings, trans. Ronald Speirs and ed. Ramond Geuss and Ronald Speirs, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 4 Mahabharata, Adiparva, Mahabharat-Sanskrit to Hindi –Gita Press, 1.267, online: https://nyk trivedi.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/mahabharata-sanskrit-hindi-01-gitapress.pdf (accessed on 28 February, 2021). 5 Valmiki, Balakanda, Srimadramayanamu, trans. Pullela Sriramachandrudu (1987; Hyderabad: Arsha Vijnana Trust, 2003). Throughout this chapter, I have drawn on this bilingual Sanskrit–Telugu work. All references to this work henceforth are cited in the text. 6 Rajasekhara, Kavyameemamsaa, trans. (with a commentary by) Pullela Sreeramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Jayalakshmi Publications, 2003), 2.1.p. 6. 7 Bhartrhari, ‘Bramhakandamu,’ Vaakyapadeeyamu, I, trans. (into Telugu by) Peri Suryanarayanasastri et.al. (2001; Hyderabad: Telugu Akademi, 2006), 1.5–10, pp. 4–8.

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Rajasekhara insists on affirming an interanimating relationship between shaastra and kavya in their responsive reception of the Vedic heritage. Further, it is important to notice that even the compositions emerging from such responsive receptions are essentially forged by the mnemocultural modes that brought forth the Vedic heritage in the first instance. These modes can be identified as listening, reiterating the heard in silence and focused meditative attention on the heard and recalled. The Ramayana foregrounds precisely these modes at play in the composition. As it is the seminal compositional feature of the itihaasa, purana and naatya forms, the Ramayana opens with a dialogue between Valmiki and Narada. Valmiki asks a set of sixteen questions focused entirely on the present, that is, the instant of their existence and the moment of the questions.

14.3 Instantial Wormholes If there were to be one most significant aspect of the set of cultural forms associated with suta and bharata, it is the question of the instant in particular and of temporality in general. The ‘present’ instant, the moment of existence and the context of the event when and where a performative unfolding begins, appears to be of seminal significance and central focal point of rendering an action or event. But the performative barely lets the instant to close in on itself. On the contrary, the ‘present’ moment—the Narada-Valmiki samvada—is persistently drawn out radially to filiate itself and the lives in it to most remote but recursive durations of time; that is, the temporal extensions and relays which the composition releases cannot be confined to the instant of its unfolding. Thus, in the recursive time-scale stretching from the blink of an eyelid (nimesha) to a kalpa of billions of years, the life story of Rama (repeatedly) occurs in the last phase of the third of the four yugas (epochs)—Tretayuga. But the particular account performed here occurs in the 24th of the colossal yuga (mahaayuga—composed of yugas along with the periods of interregnums). This particular (24th) Mahaayuga itself is specified as occurring in the epoch of the seventh Manu (Vaivasvata), and this epoch itself in truth belongs not to any kalpa but to that of Sveta kalpa—one of the 30 kalpas. Brahma’s life span consists of thirty such kalpas. Mathematical astronomy unfolds and reckons these recursive spatiotemporalities in terms of lokas and yugas (spatio-temporal complexes). Every kalpa is seen to bring forth and instantiate the Ramayana performative composition. As kalpas differ so do the renderings of the Ramayana: Prati kalpam bhavet ramah ravanascha tadhaivacha.8

From every kalpa, Rama and Ravana and others emerge. The puranas allude to variations in the Ramayana renderings. For example, in the Padmapurana Jambava recounts the Ramayana from another kalpa and refers to 8

Cf. Kalikapurana cited in Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastri, Sriramayana Rahasya Darshini (Viewing the secrets of the Ramayana) (2000; Hyderabad: Malladi Dharma Prabodham Trust, 2014), p. 26. Sastri is a renowned living Pravachanakara. More about this later.

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the episode of Lava and Kushas capturing Rama’s sacrificial horse, whereas such an episode does not occur in the extant Valmiki Ramayana. Itihaasa and puranas open up the wormholes of temporality that compose the instant and pre-empt the latter from sealing itself in the exclusive enclosure of the present. The present never culminates into the isolated ‘now’ but is made radically anachronistic by the remotest antecedent. The suta-bharata compositions weave together the discontinuous and variedly repeated, and not necessarily cohering, generational traces in the instant of an existence. It is in such a pluralizable instant that Valmiki advances his set of sixteen (sodasha—the phases and aspects not only of the moon but also those of Vishnu) questions; the set pertains to identifying a man of virtuous ethos in the present, that is, in the moment of their meeting. Such ethos is composed of attributes of valour, being just, enabling endowments, abiding gratitude, truth-telling, firm determination, significant lived life, learnedness, competent, focused on para, overcoming rage, devoid of jealousy, etc. Is there such an exalted man in the present, Valmiki asks Narada.9 In response to this particular set of questions about finding an exemplary figure of virtuous ethos, Narada recounts in about 93 shlokas a condensed version of the Ramayana but highlights, in the process, Rama’s virtues (Ramayana, 1.1.7–100, pp. 8–51). Valmiki listens: tadvaakyam shrutvaa (Ramayana, 1.2.1, p. 52) and later worships Narada for what he imparted. There is no indication at all in Narada’s imparting of the condensed Ramayana that Valmiki was urged to compose his kavya-itihaasa. There is nothing in the scene which makes the seer (rshi) experience and which evokes the creative composer (kavi) in him. The hunting scene on the river bank later triggers the composer in the seer—and what emerges is the first metrically composed musically articulable verse outside the Vedic compositions.10 The mundane activity of a hunter killing a bird plunges the surviving bird into grief and instantaneously evokes an impulsive curse from the mouth of the observing seer. The curse—efficacious speech resulting in actional effect, an effect that changes the destiny of the addressee or the accursed—startles the seer himself and makes him reflect (hrudi veekshitam [Ramayana, 2.16. p. 61]) on how the ‘curse’ came forth. The amused reflection makes it clear to the seer that the curse was articulated in a musical metrical performable composition which emerged as a primal verse form (shloka) from the disturbing grief (shoka). This shloka as the inaugural compositional unit draws on the Vedic acoustic performative elements but outside the Vedic melopoeiac repertoire here. This novel form filiated to the Vedic inheritance but differing from it is the celebrated forte of the seer, suta and bharata. Their compositional forms reiterate it with multifarious alternations infinitely. 9

Curiously, the set does not contain even a single question that can be considered ‘political’ in the sense of a ruler who imposes law or exercises power over the ruled. 10 Cf. Sri Bhashyam Appalacharyulu, Balakanda, Srimadramayanamu: Tattva Dipika (1993; Visakhapatnam: Sri Ramayana Pravachana Mahayajna Nirvahana Samgham, 2013), p. 80; Pullela Sriramachandrudu, Preface to Ramayana, Ayodhyakanda, Part I (1990; Hyderabad: Arsha Vijnana Trust, 2001), p. xxvii; Yellamraju Srinivasa Rao, Chitra Tarangini: Vedanta, Samskritika Sahitya Vyasa Samputi (Vijayawada, 2007), pp 25–26.

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We can never know whatever may have been the effect of the curse on the hunter, but the composition of the curse begins to haunt Valmiki and it transforms his destiny from being a hermit/sage into a seer of unprecedented poetic composition. The unusual curse inaugurates an unforeseen event. There is no sign of such an event emerging in the context when Valmiki actually meets Sita and Rama for the first time (and perhaps the only time in the case of Rama) in the Ayodhya Kanda (Ramayana, 2.56.16, p. 16)—nor in any other instant. In that meeting, Valmiki comes across as a non-descript hermit engrossed in his own forest ritual life. The efficacy of the composed curse magically transforms a mundane experience into a haunting melody of grief and wormholes the mundane; and it inaugurates the possibility of evoking a trans-mundane experience within the mundane existence. The shloka haunts Valmiki and he keeps repeating it—even as Brahma later confirms that what Valmki has brought forth was indeed a shloka and that he was enabled to create it by the goddess of learning, Saraswati. The instant begins to open up Valmiki’s mnemoscape. Brahma once again synoptically recounts the Ramayana—and now invites Valmiki to compose the account of Rama’s travails and traversals (yaana) in existence. As Brahma reiterated what Valmiki listened from Narada, the seer–composer (or, composeer) silently recalls and rapidly traverses over the events of Rama’s life in his mnemoscape. He begins to focus meditatively on the aspects of this exalted figure whose virtues he only figured out abstractly in his inaugural set of questions. The meditative focus evokes (tatah pashyati…tatsarvam [Ramayana, 1.2.6. p. 72]) what all he visualized through the mnemagination, and it became as clear as an amla placed in the palm. The instant unfolds through the mnemocultural modes—of listening (shravana), silent recall (manana) and meditative focus (nidhidhyaasa) the vision of his task; and the unexpected and involuntary emergence of the primal compositional unit evoked by the grief screens before him the eventful life account of Rama in the topos of existence. The pregnant instant catalysed by these apparently fortuitous factors propels him to compose an unprecedented cultural form which has an oceanic depth, expanse and which is filled with concealed wealth of countless pearls. But what he sits down to compose is a vibrant oceanic sonic scape which is only performatively communicable. Such a composition—delineating the virtuous ethos of the exalted being in existence—would delight everyone’s ears and hearts: Sarvashruti manoharam (Ramayana, 1.2.8, p. 73).

Such an extended composition (of 24,000 shlokas) reflectively delineating the lived life of individuated beings unfolding in the existence is an unprecedented event in the Vedic heritage. As suggested earlier, Valmiki does not create a performing tradition for the first time. But the exploration of a dense topo-temporal instant through intense attentiveness to intricate modes of being, woven together in precisely formulated sonic–affective and visual–evocative performative forms, to bring forth the virtuous ethos in existence is a singular event without precedence in the Vedic heritage. The Ramayana is filiated to the performing traditions of the heritage: the two Ashwamedha yagas at the beginning and at the end, Viswamitra’s yagas, and multiple other ritual ceremonies and innumberable instances of performing tapas

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(fervid ordeals of Viswamitra, Vishnu, Shiva, Ravana, Vedavati and many others) permeate and punctuate the travails and traversals of Rama. Yet, the Ramayana comes forth as a response to these traditions even as it receives them. The difference can be specified at least in two significant aspects between these traditions and the Ramayana: (i) all the performing traditions are attuned to and presuppose virtuous ethos—as configured by the ends of man (purushaarthas). The efficacy of performance requires one to abide by the virtuous ethos. But the ends of these performative ceremonies largely yield performer-oriented gratification. Viswamitra sought to become a Brahmarshi, Trishanku wished to ascend to heaven with his mortal body intact, Ravana wanted to remain undefeated by any mighty celestial beings and thus sought immortality, Dasharatha desired progeny and so on. Thus, these performative ceremonies, as they directly involve the specific individuated life of a person, are generally performer-oriented in their effect and efficacy. (ii) Although the Ramayana as a performative event incorporates and escapes these ceremonies across the entire weave, it graphically and acoustically captures the ceaseless struggle in a topo-temporal existence of an individual (or individuals) against almost insurmountable obstacles to affirm virtuous ethos. It shows the possibility of the virtuous in a seemingly impossible context of lived life. A performative composition that audiovisions the protracted travails from others’ lives is said to yield immense gratification to all those who are exposed to such a performance. Here, the performative composition exceeds the performer-oriented gratification and communicates it to all those topo-temporally distanced beings. The spatio-temporal longevity of such a composition is assumed to last in all the lokas as long as the mountains and rivers exist on the earth (Ramayana, 1.2.36, p. 68). Surely, the composer of this performative—Valmiki—himself is assured of traversals across all the three lokas—a privilege granted to seers and sages (Ramayana, 1.2.37, p. 68). Thus, the suta, bharata and seer–composers bring forth teleocultural performative compositions that would intimately affect from a distance the indetermined addressees across changing topo-temporalities. And the indefinite addressees will continue to receive and respond to these compositions in their own unforeseen modes by means of changing cultural technics from oral to digital systems.

14.4 Dispersed Intimacies Two specific features differentiate itihaasa-kavya from the prevailing shruti compositions, even as the former are filiated to the latter: (i) a certain teleocultural affective intimacy is one aspect that differentiates the suta-–bharata–seer–composers’ performative compositions from those that preceded (and followed) them; (ii) the other crucial difference can be located in the very indeterminacy of the addressees of these cultural forms. As is well known, the recipients and practitioners of certain Vedic performative cultural forms were rigorously delimited among the three types of cultural formations: the trivarnikas. Although every cultural formation (jati) is endowed and configures itself with distinct performing traditions of its own, there is

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nothing that is universally common across all these formations that everyone is obligated (‘ought’) to honour. It is in the context of such related but non-homogeneous mnemocultural constellations that the teleocultural forms of the suta–bharata–seer permeate and get incorporated into the distinctive performing traditions of the hetero-geneous. The cultural forms of itihaasa, purana, naatya and kavya drawing on Vedic inheritance radically pluralize and for ever keep open the addressees of these forms beyond the determined constituencies of the three cultural formations. Yet even across all these multiple cultural formations, performative rendering of the teleocultural forms will continue to yield the delighting gratification through affective intimacy. Indeed while specifying the distinct ends, the performative reception of the Ramayana entails among different cultural formations, Narada at the end of his condensed rendering states that when a Shudra recites it: Janashcha sudro pi mahatvameeyaat (Ramayana, 1.1.100, p. 51).

The Shudra will become an exalted person. That is, the performative recipients of this cultural form will all be impacted by the virtuous ethos which the composition explores through the life story of Rama. In a word, the work of the suta–bharata–seer in their receptive response to it opens up a detour to the traversal of the Vedic inheritance indefinitely and indeterminably. In the process, this inheritance itself gets reiterated differentially: hence the teleocultural mediation of the heritage. Whether it is Koodiyattam performance or Chhau enactment or the ankiya nat or Yakshagana rendering, or, even beyond India, in Wiang–Siem among many others, each of these distinct performing traditions has received kavya-itihaasas and transformed them in the singularity of their mnemocultural idioms. The work of the bard–actor–seer is seen as both elucidatory and elaborative of the sense of the Vedas on the one hand and is claimed to be equivalent of the Vedas on the other hand. As Vyasa and Bharata both reckon their compositions as the fifth Veda, Narada too designates the Ramayana as Vedaischa sammitam (equivalent to the Veda [Ramayana, 1.1.98, p. 50]). All the puranas are also treated as the muthos emerging from the fifth face of Brahma. Thus, their response to the heritage repeats with alteration and enhances by disseminating it beyond the delimited boundaries. Therefore, the relationship between suta–bharata–seer and the heritage cannot be answered merely in terms of the dogmatic template of continuity versus discontinuity or as exclusive oppositional categories. Their disseminative reception of the heritage makes it impossible to unify and homogenize the entirety of its lively circulation. To subsume and enclose performative configuration of the bard–actor–seer under the category of ‘art’ is to remain impervious to the singularity of their unbound proliferative impulse and to ignore their indefinite and undefinable manifestations. It is to impose on them categories forged elsewhere.

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14.5 Interanimating Currents As is well known, ‘art’ is a philosophical category that gained ascendancy by enclosing what the discourse of philosophy designated as ‘art’ in European intellectual traditions. It is imperative to remember, as discussed earlier in the first part of this work, that none of the mnemocultural forms associated with the bard–actor– seer was categorically defined and differentiated by any theorist–philosopher in the Indian reflective traditions. On the contrary, cultural forms like the itihaasa, purana and kavya naatya, each one of them was persistently and perennially formed and reformed through the dynamic of responsive receptions by the very composers of these forms themselves. The itihaasa tells us what it does and how or the way it brings forth what it does in each instance; each of the poet–composers in their ambidextrous performances grappled intensely with the form of poetic composition in their very compositions on the one hand (as Valmiki preoccupied himself with the startling emergence of the shloka) and, as discussed in an earlier chapter, explored the very sense of the poetic in their extended inquiries into the literary. Every purana reflectively foregrounds the nature of the composition and in the process configures and disarticulates all the definitional enclosures. Similarly, it is the reflective practitioner Bharata who configures the form of naatya and leaves open the possibility (in his reference to Kohala and loka) of improvising responses to naatya in future. Promptly, the responsive receptions of Nandikeshwara and Sarngadeva (among many others across centuries) supplemented Bharata’s colossal composition.11 This mnemopraxial impulse is eloquently but most economically grasped by Mammata when he says that the composition of kavya is done in accord with the sutra: Niyatikruta niyamarahitaam.12

[Kavya is] Composed in accord with conventions-rules but abides by no regimen. Mammata’s aphoristic formulation can be extended easily to configure all the performing traditions, especially those of the suta–bharata–seer. Here, the work of shaastra (whether Vedangas or Darshanas) cannot easily be opposed in a hierarchic relation to the performative traditions of the trio. The latter extensively receive and responsively inflect the imports of the shaastra (above all the Vedashaastra). Valmiki, exploring the virtuous ethos, explicitly affirms that he would emphasize the three ends of man (seeking endowed and cultivable sense of the just [dharma], permissible wealth [artha] and eros [kama]) in his account of Rama’s travails in life (Ramayana, 1.3.8, p. 73). The entire tradition of literary inquiries demonstrates the interanimating relationship between their work and that of the shaastras. Indeed, they compose their inquiries as shaastras (naatya, alamkaara, shilpa, sangita etc.) Bharata declares 11

Cf. Mandakranta Bose, Movement and Mimesis: The Idea of Dance in the Sanskritic Tradition (1991; Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2007), pp. 13–107. 12 Mammata, Kavyaprakashamu, trans. into Telugu by Pullela Sriramachandrudu (Hyderabad: Samskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 1995), 1.1. p. 1.

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his work to be a shaastra too. What needs attention here is that whether it is a shaastra or kavya-itihaasa-purana-naataka, this entire reflective creative heritage variedly reiterates the mnemopraxial impulse of the heritage; they all bring forth their compositions as embodied and enacted reflexive memories (the received practice of listening, reiterating the listened in silence, intensely meditative focus on the reiterated). Shaastra too must be put to work in the embodied existence through performative forms. No wonder such a mnemopraxial tradition has little use for a professionalized tribe of interpreters of kavya-itihaasa-naataka and shaastras. The practitioners themselves reflected and responded to the forms they live on in/with and transformatively reiterated them in practice. Therefore, the discourse of a ‘raging discord’ between art and truth, which Nietzsche characterizes European thought13 with, is alien to and has no use for Indian traditions of liveable learning. The liveable learning that the heritage disseminates through detours in countless modes ceaselessly emphasizes two things: putting to work what is received and living the learning in the myriad unforeseen situations of life in indeterminable topotemporalities. The liveable learning does not valorize linguistic–theoretical formulations as a priori imperatives determining practices. The hierarchy between theory and practice where theoretical clarity is seen as a sign of superior (human) intelligence and manual practice as just somatic (animal) sensible mechanism is very alien to the mnemopraxial traditions of India. This does not mean that abstract linguistic formulations are absent in Indian traditions. On the contrary, axiomatic, aphoristic logical verbal coinages are replete in the colossal work of the Samskruta traditions.

14.6 Disconcerting Grafts As pointed out earlier, the set of questions—to seek an exemplar of virtuous ethos in the present—that Valmiki poses to Narada are filled with abstract categories (such as a man with ‘good qualities’, valorous, truthful, learned). But what is striking here is that Narada in response does not indulge in any constative disquisition about definitions of the abstractions. On the contrary, he moves into a metonymic delineation of the physique of Rama and his activities (to allude to his valour and strength); how Rama protects all the living creatures of the world; about how he obliged his father; how he relates himself to Sita and Lakshmana, etc. Response to abstractions here evokes description of actional life and not an analytic exposition in abstractions of some impersonal (‘categorical’) imperatives. Of course, a kavya-itihaasa, one might object, is not the place for seeking such constative expositions. But what needs to be taken note of here is that, as pointed out earlier, Valmiki himself appears to be involved in delving into what appear to be the abstract ends of man (dharma, artha, kama); there are no treatises that offer normative theories about virtues in the tradition. 13

Nietzsche quoted in Heidegger, ‘The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art’ in M. Heidegger’s Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art, Vol. 1, trans. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1979), pp. 142-150.

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Yet, even the patently shaastra-oriented works (such as Dharma, Artha, Naatya) too are fundamentally composed by actional learning; that is, they are composed with accounts of how one does what one does—ways of doing things in practice in distinct situations; they render situated performative knowledge; they are not devoted to establishing of or acquiescing in some canonical and universal normative codes. The fundamental aim of mnemopraxial learning is to reorient (and thus affirm the possibility of such reorientation) ways of going about in the world; that is, impart a learning that affects the modes of being and doing in existence—in the very process of living. The virtuous ethos explored in the Ramayana is therefore not some set of doctrines that are didactically coerced into the regimen of a mass of people to unify them as such (there is no political pact or covenant here). The myriad forms of Ramayana cannot be unified into making an integrated totality with a seamless continuity, for none of the performing traditions can be unified to forge a community. When one learns to attend to the mnemopraxial nature of these performing traditions, one begins to discern that they cannot be easily surrendered to aesthetic and political categories derived from ill-understood European cultural heritage. The category of aesthetic is essentially an offspring of a philosophical heritage. There are at least two significant takes on the aesthetic in European heritage: (i) the aesthetic is considered as a theory or philosophy of art which configures the art work as an internally ‘well-wrought’ unity, integrating all its elements into a coherent whole by dividing it from the outside—external or extraneous contingencies. More fundamentally, aesthetic is a rational theory of sensibility—aimed at explaining the logic of senses; as the works of art are seen to appeal to the senses, aesthetics provides a theory of art. Such a view opens up a vocation for delineating and analysing the internal elements and their ironic, paradoxical, thematic, formal aspects, and such analysis ultimately culminates into celebrating the coherence contributing to the beauty of the work of art. An aesthetic object is the result of a determinate unification of a variety of sensate representations. Now the concept of determination itself is derived from the schools of logic in the eighteenth century. Logic and aesthetics are siblings of rationality in European thought—where reason itself is a secularized affirmation of the divine. In fact, the idea of the beautiful itself emerges from theological provenance where the beautiful is seen to be the absolute spirit—which is the other name for divine immanence; in such a tradition, beauty is regarded as a symbol of morality. The story of the spirit is too deeply theological to be associated with the Indian reflective practices.14 (ii) Although the second take too is the child of the philosophical tradition, it sees the category of the aesthetic and its counterpoint, the sublime, as signs of limits of 14

When Hegel thought Indian spirit was in slumber (hence it cannot generate art proper), he was only subsuming India into his grand Christian speculative philosophy of spirit. It is the spread of Christian gaze that encompasses the world and its history in terms of the evolution of spirit. Hasty attempts to counter Hegel with an Indian spirit, or beauty would only advance and reinforce the theory that Hegel launched. For an illuminating discussion of the theological provenance of the ill-thought concepts (in modern Indian context) of reason, history and aesthetics see (especially, Part II, “Parting with the Paradigms” in) Rodolphe Gasché, The Stelliferous Fold: Toward a Virtual Law of Literature’s Self-Formation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), pp. 173–243.

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philosophical thematization. In this take, the aesthetic has little to do with the theory of beauty or art; the aesthetic here is not aimed at interpreting the already presumed works of art. Here, the aesthetic—but more importantly the sublime—indicates the impossibility of theorization of an experience—a domain that exceeds or escapes the philosophical imperium. What we are provided in the second take finally is yet again a philosophical determination of the other of philosophy—where the determining borderline is demarcated by philosophy; it is the philosophical borderline that frames the sublime other.15 Both the takes on the aesthetic are irrelevant in responding to the compositions of the bard–actor–seer in the Indian context. Nowhere is the Ramayana performed in its totality (whatever this totality might mean). When he prepares Lava and Kusha to perform the Ramayana in Rama’s court, Valmiki’s advice to them was to perform only 20 sargas on each day. None of the performing traditions aims at giving the ‘whole’ of the Ramayana. In the lively currents of the Paaraayana traditions, only selected sargas are sung/recited during very specific periods. Every Koodiyattam or ankiyanaat, and Chaau performance enacts a very select set of ankas and palas (episodes) and renders them in the radically different performative idiom of these traditions. No one can ever answer the question: what is Ramayana in its totality? It is an irrelevant question in the lively mnemocultures of India. If the Ramayana can be rendered from just three verbal utterances (in Telugu: katte-kotte-techche: tied [the bridge], killed [Ravana] and brought [Sita]) to an extended thirty-day (and beyond) performances, such an improvisational dynamic cannot be measured in categorial unities of time, space and plot. Search for such unities is determined by theological notions of the world as a unified order and (in its secularized version) literature as ‘instrumental in making sense of the world’.16 As discussed earlier, the complexity of topo-temporality of the instant in the Indian reflective traditions disallows the spatio-temporal unities measured in terms of chronometer and calendrical mechanisms, or even as a divinely regulated order. Now the idea of plot as the sole (soul) seminal denominator–regulator of action has no significance in the Indian performing traditions. In what can be considered as ‘minor’ or rather ‘irrelevant’ episode of Kailasoddharana in Koodiyattam, Mani Madhava Chakyar can with great ease spend one entire night just enacting Ravana’s wonder and strife in his attempt to lift the abode of Shiva. Mnemocultural technics 15

Cf. Heidegger indicates the danger of non-European thinking always ‘forced over into the sphere of European ideas’. One such Western metaphysical conception is art: art as a sensuous representation of the suprasensuous. Aesthetics fundamentally represents this conception of art: ‘The aistheton, what can be perceived by the senses, lets the noeton, the nonsensuous, shine through’. Cf., On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (1972; New York: Harper Sanfrancisco, 1982), p. 14. Derrida grapples with Heidegger’s critique of aesthetics in The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). Cf. Rodolphe Gasché, The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant’s Aesthetics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002) and David Carroll, Paraaesthetics: Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida (New York: Routledge, 1988). 16 The term saeculum, points out Gasché, refers to the ‘Biblical meaning of aion, world, and worldliness’. Saeculum is a holistic, if not organic–temporal totality like the parts of the body with a beginning, middle and end. Cf. Gasché, The Stelliferous Fold, p. 195. We shall later see how the conception of the body in the Naatyashaastra radically differs from this theologico-secular notion.

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of gesture and music exceed even verbal recitation, luxuriously dwell on the detail of embodied experience and articulate such an experience in minutest detail. The singularity of such receptions immersively appropriated very divergent aspects of the itihaasa-puranas in kavyas and naatya and devoutly delineated the metonymic aspects into extended compositions without precedence (Bhasa, Kalidasa, Murari, Kamba, Kruttivasa, Ezutachan, Viswanatha Satyanarayana—just to cite a few at random). For all these performing traditions the notion of plot cannot be reduced to some inviolable, intact essence located at some centralized nerve system commanding the entire organism as such. The essence, if there is any singular one, can be evoked from any aspect (the leaves and branches of Ashokavana, the day light or sunset, the remotest lived life of a sage or savage (Kabandha), the dilemmas of a garden keeper [Sankukarna], etc.)—but its life emerges from the intensity and vitality of the performing mode which receives it. Any node or pearl (as Valmiki figures it) from the ocean filled with precious pearls can be abstracted for the improvisational weave of the receptive composer—the indefinite addressee. If the aesthetic as the study of a unified and integrated work of art is of no use in responding to the stelliferous mnemocultural forms, aesthetic as the other of philosophy is also equally of no value here. As discussed earlier, the compositions of shaastra and the work of the performative trio are nowhere in exclusive and antagonistic relationship in the Indian traditions. Nowhere does one treat the other as an exclusive but desirable other from one’s own position; they bleed into each other to invigorate the mnemocultural traditions; they are the ‘same’ articulated variedly. In the Indian context, art and aesthetics have remained ill-thought (European) categories assumed to be of universal value. In the process, deploying them with dubious confidence betrays a sense of insecurity (the legacy of colonial mind change); we have barely learnt to learn from the mnemocultural experience of performing traditions that permeate us with vigour.

14.7 Violence of Identity If art and aesthetic categories are ill-suited to grapple with the mnemocultural traditions, the concept of politics appears to be even a more dubious category to examine these traditions—especially when politics is understood in terms of uniting a fraternal community to exercise power.17 Such a fraternal totality is ontologically impossible to find in Indian cultural formations for two fundamental reasons: (i) in the Indian context, the ‘groups’ of people that can be erroneously described as ‘community’ are constituted by a peculiar kind of biocultural formation called jati (jana). The peculiarity of this non-cohering unit is that it is internally self-differentiating and distancing itself from itself. Jati—emerging from the generative root ja (as in janani, mother)—comes forth and differing and deferring from itself proliferates without 17

Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 28–62.

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end. Such heterogeneous palimpsest of differences cannot be easily unified into a cohering community. There is nothing in the world, in terms of a normative code, a commanding institution, a shared book or a single sovereign god—that tethers jatis into a common abode of a fraternal commune. These biocultural formations are too striated vertically and horizontally to coalesce into a seamless community (an ecclesia)—let alone a political community or a social system. It is these internally differentiated cultural formations that occluded the wholesale ‘communalization’ (categorizing heterogeneous groups into unified communities such as Christian, Muslim and Hindu) of these asystemic biocultural formations by the invading Semitic cultures in the last two millennia. On the contrary, this distinctive biocultural element has impacted even these Semitic communities in the Indian context. It is inconceivable for such centrifugal cultural formations to conceptualize and coerce life into either a nation or a nation state. No wonder such colonially grafted concepts and institutions remain deeply caught in the faultlines of cultural tectonic upheavals today. None of these colonial grafts is unravelled even now from the dynamic of the biocultural formations. (ii) If the centrifugal impulse of the formations pre-empts seamless cementing of fraternal totalities, paradoxically the centripetal element of the jati-specific performing traditions leaves little space for political unifications. None of the ritual performatives nurtures any telos of establishing political communities. As discussed earlier, ritual performances yield mainly performer-oriented gratification. None of the celebrated ritual performances—Rajasuya, Aswamedha, Agnichayana or even vrat ceremonies, etc.,—appears to be aimed at forming any grand politically united community. The liveable learning of these performances is essentially learner— performer-oriented; it aims at inculcating and cultivating a mnemopraxial ethos. The shareable impulse of Indian cultural formations patently cannot be accomplished (and it has never been done) by such political or religious pacts. When one attends to the complex orchestration of centripetal and centrifugal impulses of the biocultural formations, one notices that the pronounced absence of identitarianist drive18 among these formations enables them to live along with the radically different. These biocultural formations, depending on the circulation of cultural force, seem to evince a kind of ‘asymptotic freedom’ in moving about together in a location with relative autonomy, but also affirming a tendency to force them apart into differential formations. Thus, living along with the entirely unlikely is the result of neither conscious (‘tolerance’) nor unconscious (‘instinctive’) decisions. Such a hierarchical binary is of little use in responding to the biocultural experience of living on with what is not like oneself. Given that the biocultural formations are non-normative articulations of living on in the world, the liveable learning enables one to live on with the hetero-geneous. In articulating one’s difference, one can also remain indifferent to what is not like oneself. Life is lived (on) in/difference. Yet, such indifference laces a relationship of non-relationship among the biocultural 18

This identitarian frenzy, it must be pointed out, is the blatant consequence of the communitygrafting mechanism (categorizing groups into identitarian communities) deployed in the colonial period and institutionalized through the constitution.

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formations. Perhaps, it is such a peculiar relationship that provided no space for any genocidal impulses among the biocultural formations over millennia. The emergence of such violence can be traced to the identitarianist communalization of hetero-genos in the Indian context. If one can hazard a generalization in this context, the end—if there can be ends at all—of the Indian mnemocultural performing traditions in their differing manifestations (performer-oriented and indefinite other-oriented) it is to provide the possibility of cultivating mnemopraxial–virtuous ethos, that is, ethos whose efficacy can be affirmed only in the liveable instants. But as can be seen, this is an end without a determinable destination—an end that is open to the unforeseen jatis of unpredictable topo-temporalities. It is an end that terminates all determinable ends; for it is an end that one must necessarily be attentive to as long as modes of being in the world are in circulation, that is, as long as generations emerge and move on as formations. If the virtuous ethos is commonly affirmed by all performing traditions, why is it that the suta–bharata–seer’s compositions in particular devote their entire work to explore such ethos? Why do they give such prominence to this ethos? Perhaps, the most outstanding performative composition on performative traditions can help us addressing this question in the context of our inquiry. And the only such composition one can think of here is Bharata’s Naatyashaastra.

14.8 Technics of the Body It is not clear from their respective compositions whether Bharata knew of either Valmiki or the Ramayana, or whether Valmiki knew of Bharata or the Naatyashaastra. Yet, one can see Bharata referring to itihaasa as a source for composing naatya: Veda vidyetihaasanaam aakhyaana parikalpanam (Naatyashaastra, 1.1. p. 80).19

The episodes of naatya are drawn from the Vedas, allied sources and itihaasas. Yaschetihaasa vedartho brahmanaa samudaahrutah (Naatyashaastra, 13.81, p. 458).

Brahma culled episodes from Vedas and itihaasas to form Naatya. The itihaasa themes contemplated by Brahma and Bharata for naatya are the war of gods and Asuras (Devasura Yuddham), the Churning of the Ocean (Amritamathanam) and The Killing of Tripurasura (Tripura Samharam). Yet, there is no mention of either Valmiki or Vyasa for their kavya-shaastra-itihaasa compositions. There are significant parallels in the conception of the work of the dramaturge Bharata and the composer–seer Valmiki. Brahma plays a catalytic role in both cases. In the 19

Bharata, Naatyashaastram, trans. (with commentary by) Pullela Sriramachandrudu (Hyderabad: P.S. Sastry, 2014). The verse mentioned is not numbered; it appears as an additional verse available only in certain redactions). Henceforth, all further references to this edition are mentioned in the text.

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context of the Naatyashaastra he—drawing on the mnemocultural technics—recalls the Vedas that he had heard, goes into intense meditative reflection and through the resources of the Vedic heritage and composes the primal other-oriented performative form: Naatya. Like the Ramayana, naatya too aims at cultivating the praxial–virtuous ethos (pertaining to justice, wealth and eros): Dharma kaamartha saadhakah (Naatyashaastra, 4.3. p. 119).

If mnemocultures in general put the body to work in existence, the seer’s mode differs from that of the dramaturge’s in deploying the body in their distinct but related cultural forms. The seer recognizes the inherently performative potential of the primal verse composition that springs forth from his breath: Paadabaddhokshara samastantree laya samanvitah (Ramayana, 1.2.18, p. 62).

Acoustic units composed in metrical feet (can be) rendered in consonance with the tempo of stringed music. Here, the body devotes itself to musical performance. Its acoustic rendering of the composition can move on: Paathye geye cha madhuram pramaanaistribhiranvitam. Jatibhih saptabirbaddham tantreelaya samanvitam (Ramayana, 1.4.8 p. 85).

Delighting in poetic and musical modes set in accord with the three standard established pitches, composed as per the categories of the seven notes and played to the accompaniment of the rhythms of (veena) strings. After composing the poetic–musical performative ensemble, Valmiki particulary advices Lava and Kusha emphasizing the melopoeiac aspect of the composition: Imaastrantreeh su madhuraah sthaanam vaa poorvadarshanam. Moorchayitvaa sumadhuram gaayatam vigatajvarau (Ramayana, 10. 2. 93.14, p. 563).

While evoking the most delighting melodies from the strings of the veena or from the base head of the veena where the strings are tied providing the source of the division of notes, you must sing by spreading the sonic resonance. The entire sarga 94 of the Uttarakanda (part 10 of the Ramayana [Uttara Ramayana]) is devoted to highlight the melopoeiac performativity of the entire Ramayana. As a cultural form open to pluralized or indeterminable addressees, the Ramayana is dispersed across the heterogeneous. Valmiki insists that the bardic performers Lava and Kusha must perform before the abodes of Rishis, homes of Brahmins, in streets, on royal pathways, among king’s palaces, before the reciters of the Vedas, on the venue of sacrifice and at the doorway of Rama’s home (Ramayana, 10.2. 93–94, p. 560). The Ramayana is open to indefinite recipients. The composition circulated over millennia and has reached us is this melopoeiac performance disseminated by Lava and Kusha.

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If the seer–composer brought forth the primal poetic–musical composition, the dramaturge Bharata foregrounds the extraordinarily pluralized body in his primal composition on theatricality—bringing forth virtual living in existence. Although Bharata’s treatise focuses on eleven distinct aspects of theatricality (savourable emotions, action–sediments, virtual acting in life, ethos, determinate ways of being, ends, tune, percussion, song, stage) (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 6.10, p. 209), a substantial part of it is devoted to highlight discrete singularities of embodied action. As discussed earlier, the Naatyashaastra offers a stunning range of digitalized articulations of the body—where every part of the body is discretized in such a way that any attempt to unify them to figure out a totalized homogeneous body is impossible. Pluralized movements of each part and parts within parts of the body capture the addressees’ attention exclusively as they bring forth savourable emotion (rasa) transmuting actional sediments (bhava). Thus, for example, as shown earlier, from the discretized rendering of parts of the head and face when one moves to limbs, one can see that hands can articulate separately and together in 37 ways; the fingers alone can generate 30 distinct signs (mudras); the waist, thighs, calves and feet can move in 5 distinct ways each. What we have identified above is largely the dynamic movement of individuated body parts. Theatricality in Sanskrit and (Indian) performing traditions involves an intricate combinatoire of dance and melopoeiac (recitation/song) dialogue, and the permutations and combinations of technics of speech and gesture are absolutely essential to evoke this conjunction. Indian performative traditions generate theatricality on the basis of such inexhaustible articulations of the body. As discussed at the beginning, mnemocultures come forth, disseminate and proliferate by means of the body. The body becomes the absolute medium and effect of the generative impulse that conditions life in general. In responding to this incalculable impulse, mnemocultures deploy the very resources of the body that has been brought forth by the impulse. Life is impelled to grapple with the source of life by means of its material effects. In this regard, mnemocultures forge the most primordial technics of life—acoustic, verbal and gestural means of the body—to articulate and orient life itself. The compositions of the suta–bharata–seer offer inexhaustible resources to reflect on the irreducible relations between life and the technics of the body. What is common to all these three colossal cultural forms is their amplified reiteration of mnemopraxial modes of being in existence, their persistent iteration of liveable learning. In a way, these compositional forms enact what they aim at communicating. That is, the affirmation of liveable learning takes place as the compositional forms are themselves brought forth by embodied and enacted memory. Both the Ramayana and the Naatyashaastra show the deeper mnemocultural currents—of listening, reiteration and meditative focus—weaving together a reflexive–praxial performative composition. Bharata explicitly makes his addressees/viewers indeterminate. As the constituency of the Vedic addressees is enclosed and delimited, and the Vedas are not for the listening of the Shudra formation, naatya was brought forth as the fifth Veda which is open to all the biocultural formations says Bharata:

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Tasmat srujaaparam vedam panchamam saarvavarnikam (Naatyashaastra, 1.12, p. 61).

Such a Veda incorporates in it all the shaastras, all kinds of action and the itihaasic learning as its ingredients. Naatya is open to anyone and everyone. The Naatyashaastra emerges as yet another singular responsive reception of the Vedic mnemocultural heritage. Its singularity perhaps can be located not only in its intense exploration of the relation between life and technics of the body, but equally in providing resources to differentiate between performing traditions involving actional life and the ones evoking virtual actional life. Actional life involves unfolding one’s existence in a topo-temporal instant by means of embodied and enacted activities considered salient in specific situations. One’s life is distinguished on the basis of rendering such contextually relevant actions. Liveable learning imparts salience to actional life.

14.9 Cultivable Ethos A preoccupation with actional life is the most central concern of performative mnemocultural traditions of India (and perhaps in other mnemocultures as well). The work of suta–bharata–seer fundamentally shares this concern of the heritage. But their response to this inherited concern manifests in terms of reorienting actional life from the threats of contamination and perversity. Although even such an effort at reorientation can be discerned in the Vedic heritage, the singularity of the bard– actor–seer can be specified in their unprecedented recourse to bringing forth virtual action for such reorientation of life. They accomplished their distinction praxially by generating unforeseen mnemocultural forms. Perhaps, Bharata is the first one to thematize the generative emergence of a novel performative composition open to hetero-genos. The sages who approach Bharata, while acknowledging naatya’s comparability with Veda, do not begin with the ontological question—what is naatya?—but with a set of five questions pertaining to the necessity (why), means (how), addressee (for whom), scope (scalability) and its components (technics) of naatya (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.4–5, p. 60). In response, Bharata does not indulge in conceptual–theoretical abstractions aimed at offering a decisive definition of naatya. On the contrary, his entire work, apparently devoted largely to the last two questions (scope and components), offers reflection on naatya by configuring it in terms of what it does—as a form of actional learning. But the responses to the first three questions (although apparently brief in the first few verses) undergrid the entire composition and what the composition in turn opens up for the indefinite posterity. As discussed earlier, the topo-temporal moment when naatya was conceived was identified to be an instant when actional life was degenerated and mundane or vulgar ethos pervaded life; this was also the time when the celestial and nether worldly beings ruled over the regions of Jambudvipa. The perversion of actional life took the form of enslavement to lust, rage, jealousy, greed; the inhabitants of the loka

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were submerged in ephemeral pleasure and pain which ultimately intensify pain alone (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.9–10, p. 60). There is nothing in the context that isolates a particular species of beings (say, humans) that were particularly affected by the threat of degeneration of actional life. Even the rule of gods and other beings of celestial and nether region could not prevent the perversion of ethos. It is from such an instant that gods concerned about the spread of vulgar ethos approach Brahma and ask for the creation of something which is unprecedented and is playable but which through sound and visual means—gestural and speech technics— provides pleasure and thus attracts attention: a performative form which can reorient actional life by pleasurable means. The eventful instant brings forth a cultural form that communicates pleasure by virtual ‘play-like’ means. The pleasure evoked by this detour of play is entirely different from the pleasure or pain that the mundane actional life that was sucking beings in. That is, the pleasure indulged in (pervert) actional life cannot be compared to the pleasure emerging from the audio-visual play. For the former emerges from the repetitive vulgar actions which degenerate actional life; whereas the latter through the detour of virtual actional life—that is actional life played out theatrically—would not just evoke pleasure in the viewer/receiver but could provide the possibility of changing their own actional life. Whereas, in contrast to the mundane actional life, virtual actional life brings forth topo-temporally distanced lives of others in a moment of someone’s specific existence. The virtual actional life synchronizes the diachronically remote and opens up the wormhole for the diachronically present in the instant. This performative mode thus makes it possible for the topo-temporally dispersed, indefinite generations to receive and respond to teleocultural mediations. If the performative mode of actional life evokes performer-oriented gratification, the mode of the virtual actional life brings forth the other-oriented gratification. Yet, the difference between, as pointed out earlier, these traditions can neither be categorically nor rigorously opposed. On the contrary, Bharata repeatedly affirms that naatya is equivalent to performing Vedic rituals. The recitational and sung parts of naatya and the accompanying music are all analogous to Vedic mantras and even superior to rituals like bathing and repetition of mantras thousands of times says Bharata (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 36.27–28, p. 1100). As in the case of itihaasa and purana compositions, whoever even listens to the composition of the Naatyashaastra is said to gain the noble destiny that accrues to the performers of yajnas and those who give gifts (daana). Among all the daanas, performing naatya composition is said to be the most precious one (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 37.27–29, p. 1108). Yet, the breath of difference between these proximate modes (of actional life and virtual action) can evoke an abyssal divergence between them. But both these filiated but yet heterogeneous performing traditions are immersed in reiterating virtuous ethos— without investing in the certainty of their possibility. What gets reiterated here is that the performing traditions must be rendered only through the performative cultivation of the body complex—with the acute awareness of the absence of any certainty that such embodied enactments are forever free from contamination. Such awareness alone reinforced mnemopraxial traditions of India.

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The life of teleocultural forms in these traditions was extended neither by textualization nor by metacritical analysis or even by translation of such (‘art’) works— but essentially by a mnemocultural dynamic of responsive reception performatively rendered in countless but varied repetitions of such compositions. The compositions of suta–bharata–seer live on outside the necrophilic institutions—that sublimate the dead—such as the archive, museum, library or the university. The mnemocultural forms lived on among the embodied and immersed lively currents of Paaraayana, Pravachana, Bhajana, naatya, atta and other performing traditions over two millennia; and they regenerate themselves in bringing forth newer compositions through responsive receptions of their generative impulse.

14.10 Voicing Response As discussed earlier, Bharata’s extraordinary mnemopraxial composition provides resources to receive and respond to performative traditions of India. In bringing forth the primal melopoeiac performative composition, Valmiki is aware of how his kavya-itihaasa will transmute actional life into joysome experiential flavours. Here, the idiom released in figuring virtual delight is strikingly resonant with that of Bharata’s in its entirety. As in the case of Bharata’s composition, the Ramayana’s paradigmatic compositional unit too comes forth from a mundane hunting scene. The intense agony suffered by the two birds—one with fatal shot and the other with the total bereavement—evokes profound sorrow and agonized compassion of Valmiki. This utterly unexpected scene (for Valmiki) emerging from a routine action life of loka turns into an incomparable event. The seer’s curse opens up a melopoeiac passageway to reflect on the actional life of the loka from a teleocultural distance and difference—a mode that can have consequences for the actional life in the world. The inaugural rhythm of the mundane action echoes in the entire Ramayana beyond its compositional structure and indicates the possibility of its resurgence from time to time. The sign of mundane action is emphatically audible in the primal verse as ‘kaamamohitam’ (erotically indulgent). The perverted repetition of this actional sediment can be seen in the blatant acts of Indra, Vali, Shurpanaka and Ravana and in milder forms in the case of Dasharatha, Rushyasrunga, Viswamitra and Shiva. Each one of these scenes results in a critical turn and twist in the events of the lived lives of the figures concerned. If the perversion of actional life is witnessed at the end of Bharata’s composition, we notice it in the Ramayana at the very parergonal threshold—which permeates the composition in various guises. But curiously as if to ward off such a dangerous virus, the very first framing of the Ramayana is—Valmiki’s questions to Narada and his answers—bent upon extolling the virtuous ethos of Rama and Sita. In Valmiki’s own elaborate reiteration of this account, he extends such ethos not just to Dasharatha but to the entire jana of Ayodhya. Ayodhay is said to be inhabited by wholly virtuous people—people learned in the Vedas, free from jealousy, rage, lust and those who practise the noble

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ends of man (just life, permeable wealth and desire) (Ramayana, 1.6.1–28, pp 103– 112). This rather exaggerated highlighting of the virtuous ethos only foreshadows the threat hinted at in the primal scene and suggests the vulnerability of such an ethos in existence. Yet, what gets reaffirmed in multiple renderings of the Ramayana is the fortitude with which the virtuous ethos is upheld in living when the mundane actional sediments plague life. Like the Vedic compositions, the Veda-like compositions of suta, bharata and the seer often incorporate here and there pregnant clues to the nature of the composition and the kind of composer who brought forth the said composition. Thus, we get to know, however briefly, about Bharata, his sons, their curse on the one hand and the verse (sutra/shloka) and commentatorial (Karika, vyaakhyana and nirukta—these could be in shloka form, though) compositional forms involved in the creation of the Naatyashaastra, on the other. Similarly, we get to know rather in a quick pace the sudden development of events in the otherwise tranquil life—as witnessed in the Aranyakanda when Rama visits him—of Valmiki, events that culminate in his composition of the Ramayana. The composition in its melopoeiac form elaborately weaves together the travails of Sita and Rama in living by the virtuous ethos in their excruciating traversals in life. The confluence of musical poetic strand with the virtuous ends of dharmartha-kaama in enlivening the lived life in loka is eloquently announced in the characterization of Valmiki’s acoustic prowess: Koojintam Ramarameti madhuram madhuraaksharam. Aaruhya kavitaa shaakhaam vande valmiki kokilam.

Like the koel singing sweetly from a tree branch, scaling a poetic branch of a tree [Valmiki] too sings ‘Rama Rama’ in delightfully composed sounds—salutes to such Valmiki-koel. The second verse advances a very contrastive trope to the earlier delicate one: Valmikermuni simhasya kavitaa vanachaarinah. Shrunvan ramakathaa naadam ko na yaati paraamgatim.20

Like the roaring lion in the forest, Valmiki the seer prowls the poetic forest. As the animals are stunned by the roar of the lion, who does not pass away into the path of para [the other that inhabits every body] at the sound of Rama’s story? The delighting appeal of koel’s delicate tone and the reigning command of the lion’s roar clearly allude to the combination of poetic–musical (kavya) and the demanding praxiality of (Vedic) cultural virtues in Valmiki’s primal composition. As a well-known ancient, shloka says (again repeated by Pravachanakaaras):

20

It must be pointed out here that both the above shlokas, regularly recited in every Paaraayana and Pravachana session, are not to be found inside the composition of the Ramayana. But they can be seen incorporated into the frame verses of various editions. Cf. Ramayana, Sundarakanda, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, vol. 6, annexure, p. 2.

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Vedah praachetasaadaaseeth saakshaat ramayanaatmanaa.21

The Veda directly was brought forth by Prachetasa (son of Varuna—Valmiki) as the essence of Ramayana. The melopoeiac composition is Valmiki’s responsive reception to/of the Vedas. But this response carefully attends to the double strand of the weave—that of the ends of man: Kaamaartha guna samyuktam dharmaartha guna vistaram (Ramayana, 1.3.8, p. 73).

Conjoined actional elements of the erotic and economic but with the expansively spread out sense of the just on the one hand and that of the sonic melody that pleasingly moves the hearts on the other [Valmiki composed the Ramayana.] When Lava and Kusha rendered it before him, even Rama was amused and attracted by the musicality of the performance: Taam sa sushraava kaakutsaha poorvaachaarya vinirmitaam. Apoorvam paathya jatincha geyena samalamkrutaam (Ramayana, 10.2, 94.2, p. 566).

Although created by ancient teachers, the set of musical notes embellished by the song that Rama heard came across as unprecedented. Rama invites all competent people from diverse fields to listen to Lava and Kusha: pundits, leaders of various associations, Pauranikas, elders well versed in the science of sound, competent in judging features of tone (svara), learned listeners, experts in discerning the efficacy of poetic features, of metrical feet, musicians, the learned in metrics, those well versed in poetic tropes, experts in song and dance and various languages (Ramayana, II 94.4–11, p. 567). The more the knowledgeable audience listened to the melopoeiac musical performance, the more insatiable they became (Ramayana, 10.2, 94.12, p. 570). The musical performance of Lava and Kusha enhanced the audience’s delight: shrotroonaam harshavardhanam (Ramayana, 10.2. 94.11, p. 569). As can be seen, the Ramayana perfectly substantiates the insights into performing traditions that Bharata developed. Valmiki’s composition weaves out a musical poem that draws on the deeply disturbed actional life of a living person during his life time. The composition is performed in his presence by his own offspring; that is, the recounted events can further disturb the actional life of the figures involved in life and in the virtual actional life of the composition. Thus, the scene of ‘recognition’ here can dispel the virtual, ignore its effects and advance the actional. Rama could take recourse to an explanation with regard to the meaning of his life and actions. But none of this has any space here. On the contrary, Rama’s questions after the entire performance were about the scope of the kavya, the identity of the seer–composer and his whereabouts (Ramayana, 10.2. 94.24, p. 573). Here, what gets privileged reception is the composition and its effect—not the living figures of actional life. The actional effects that the virtual actional life evokes among the audience touch and move Rama too: Rama too savours the delightful song: shrutvau tadgeeta maadhuryam 21

Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastry, Ramayana Rahasya Darshini, p. 1.

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(Ramayana, 10.2. 94.31, p. 575). These inaugural compositions of kavya-itihaasa and naatya amplify the possibility of performing traditions differentiating themselves from themselves internally and reaching out and communicating their effects affectively to indeterminate addressees. Although there are definite references to associations of actors, dancers, singers (kusheelavas) and a whole range of performing groups in the Ramayana (Ramayana, 5.11–12, pp. 97–98; 13.7, p. 163; Ramayana, 10.2. 97.5, p. 592), there is no direct mention of Bharata anywhere in the entire composition. Yet, Valmiki’s creation is a virtuoso composition that transmutes the dross of actional sediments into the savouries of experiential delight. Valmiki himself provides a clue that opens up a destinal passage to sense the virtual actional features that the composition evokes: Rasaih shrungaara kaarunya haasya veera bhayaanakaih. Raudraadhibhischa samyuktam kavyametadagaayataam (Ramayana, 1.4. 9, p. 85).

The verbal musical poem to be sung is indeed composed of actional flavours such as the erotic, compassionate, valorous, frightening, rageful and such others. Surely, Bharata or the sources of Bharata are in intimate proximity with Valmiki as well. As discussed earlier, these flavours emerging and distancing themselves from actional sediments reach out through the teleocultural detour to evoke and communicate pleasure by releasing actional effects among others. But such musical poem does not end up generating just a seductive life story (aakhyaana) about the upheavals endured by an individual in his existence. It is also brought forth as a worthy account of virtuous ethos: Dharmyamaakhyaana muttamam (Ramayana, 1.4. 12, p. 87).

The Ramayana comes forth as an upadesha—a secret praxial learning/counsel to be lived in existence—but which is open to all. If it is open, why call it a secret? The upadesha is a secret because it is imparted to singular, individuated beings caught in the machinic gyrations of existence. It is individuated because it is as an individuated being one traverses the travails (sukhita dukhita) in the gyrations of life. It is as an individuated being one is required to put to work the liveable learning one receives. It is not just this reception but one’s singular response to it that makes all the difference with regard to the secret learning which is open to all. Naatyopadesha is for sarvavarna says Bharata. Similarly, it is for janasamsadi says the Ramayana (Ramayana, 1.4.29, p. 92). In fact, Valmiki himself as a singular being received Ramayana as an upadesha (the puranic allusion to his earlier life of robber turning into that of a seer after receiving the upadesha of Rama’s name from the sages is well known). As a seer, Valmiki is propelled to compose the Ramayana only after the upadesha is reiterated twice at the beginning: once by Narada and next by Brahma. The singularity of Valmiki’s response brings forth an event—always a secret and yet is open to all.

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14.11 Performative Virtuosos The paradox of secret learning is that it enhances the life of the bard–actor–seer’s performative compositions. Paaraayana, Pravachana and Sankeertana cultural forms vibrantly extend the life of Kusheelava performing traditions across millennia. In the Telugu regions, the Ramayana Pravachana tradition surpassed all other Pravachanas (say, of the Bhagavata) in the recent times. In the last one decade, the Telugu regions witnessed over 776 (reported) Pravachana performances running into several thousands of hours and continued to be accessed over the Internet in tens of thousands times.22 Pravachana is a recitational–commentatorial performative cultural form. The singular performer is often an extraordinarily learned person in itihaasa-purana tradition. These performing sessions on the Ramayana can go on for days (seven to forty-nine)—and each day’s rendering ranging from an hour to three. Vachana refers to eloquently communicable prose/poetic utterance. The Pravachana utterance abides by no canonical standard in terms of its length and breadth (a contemporary Pravachanakaara—Chaganti Koteshwararao, for instance, can continue a single utterance breathlessly for over sixty seconds). Since mnemocultures have no use for graphical punctuational marks, it is only a sense of verbal musicality that seems to govern the composition and utterance of the Pravachana composition. Not a single utterance of the Pravachanakaara is a prefabricated sentence. Everything she/he utters gets generated in the performing instance. Therefore, it is impossible to calculate and measure the acoustic moves of an ageing but incomparable contemporary Pravachanakaara like Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastry. Sastry devoted his entire life to Ramayana Pravachanas over the last sixty years. As is the case with the Pravachana tradition, his entire breath of eloquence is devoted to amplifying the significance of the virtuous ethos and in reinforcing the necessity of a praxial cultivation of them in existence. Given the status of Rama, Sastry says: Ramo vigrahavaan dharma23

Rama is an iconic manifestation of dharma. The upadesha that Ramayana communicates is that every burdensome and troubling situation can be overcome if one can recall Rama’s name and remember how Rama faced such situation in his adversity, Sastry stresses. Yet, neither any Pravachanakaara nor the performing tradition of the trio (suta–bharata–seer) to whom the former are the illustrious heirs disseminating the heritage variedly, turns this liveable knowledge into a didactic counsel. This is the most significant itihaasicpuranic mode of contemporizing the diachronically remote—pluralizing the instant by opening it to the distant. The distant is never sought to be valued on the basis of its referential certainty—determined on the basis of some artefactual proof (for 22

Cf. http://www.pravachanam.com/browse/telugu/srimad_ramayanam [as accessed in the first week of May 2015]. 23 http://www.pravachanam.com/browse/telugu/srimad_ramayanam/malladi_chandrasekhara_s astri [as accessed in the first week of May 2015].

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the Pravachanakaara all locations are traversed by Sita and Rama). Such itihaasicpuranic mode of synchronizing the diachronic is immeasurably at work across multitudes of cultural formations and their cultural forms. This is yet another way of transmuting the mundane into the virtuous and pleasurable. All sorts of life-cycle rituals— those performed at child birth, puberty, marriage and other routinized labouring acts such as grinding mill work, sowing, harvesting and pilgrimage journeys—reverberate with variously composed Ramayana songs. These song cultures relate the moment of mundane life—the joy one seeks and the pain one suffers in life—at once to the events in the troubled journey of Sita and Rama in life and weave their own experience with the lives of these itihaasa figures. Sita and Rama appear in these songs as prosopopoeic figures—the diachronically distanced, unanswering figure; but these figures enable reconfiguration of one’s own mundane actional life otherwise. This teleocultural mediation enables the distantiation of oneself from one’s immediate ways of going about in existence.24 Approaching this teleocultural mediation by means of character analysis and through other contextually deterministic (historic–philological) readings barely helps us in sensing the deeper cultural dynamic of the suta–bharata–seer traditions. The Pravachanakaaras enliven this sense. In their mnemopraxial renderings of the liveable knowledge, the sole destination of the Pravachanakaaras—like that of any upadesha—appears to be the ear of the other. The ear of the indefinite addressee beckons their seasoned eloquence. Mere contentoriented didactic monologue will lose the ear—but there is also no guarantee that the ear will get what it receives. What one listens requires to be recalled in silence and meditatively focused upon. This mnemocultural mode is what the Pravachanakaara reaffirms in every session praxially. Although disseminating the generationally imparted is the goal of Pravachana, it is never done through a linear tunnel. As suggested earlier, it is difficult to predict the dance of Pravachanakaara’s learning. For example, when Sastry renders his Ramayana Pravachana his throw is radial and his movement is mercurial. The way he choreographs his first beat (Ramasya charitam Ramayanam), his telescopic plunges (from Balakanda to Uttarakanda), his extended relays, associations, departures and returns never allow the melopoeiac composition to become a stabilized monotonous discourse. Sastry makes Ramayana into a radically porous mnemoscape whose notes can be extended and reconnected incalculably. Sastry plunges into these porous spacings that the composition provides and sutures it with the colossal puranic acoustic palimpsests. For example, he dives into Skaandapurana (to give another version of Valmiki as a degenerate Brahmin—Agnisarma—transforming himself through a bi-syllabic upadesha—Rama Rama), emerges from Padmapurana (where Shiva promises to be born as Rama to kill Ravana), dives into Brahmaandapurana (to 24

Vidya Nivas Misra, ‘The Rama Story in Indian Folklore: Some Significant Innovations,’ in Aisan Variations in Ramayana, edited by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1983; Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2003), pp., 100–107; also cf., Streela Ramayanapu Patalu (Women’s Ramayana Songs), edited by ‘Krishnasri’ (1955; Hyderabad: Andhra Sarasvata Parishattu, 1986). This is a collection of 43 songs entirely devoted to the Ramayana theme.

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emphasize that Rama must be meditated upon as Shiva), rushes into Vishnupurana (to date Valmiki in the 24th Mahayuga), penetrates into Suryasiddhaanta— Horadarpanam (mathematical astrological computations—to refer to the period of Rama as belonging to the last 30,000 years of Tretayuga) and draws on Matsya, Vayupuranas and Harivamsa (to sketch the births of Rama, Ravana and others). Sastry’s range is stunning, and his reach is breathtaking. It is precisely the breath and the ear that are put to work in this brilliant mnemocultural figure. But these Sanskrit puranic shaastra notes are throughout inflected by a whole range of poetic–musical–reflective compositions. And one never knows when and how Sastry catapults himself from a puranic note to a full-throated recitation of a Shataka stanza from the sixteenth-century Koravi Goaparaju’s Dasarathi Shatakamu. The vachana in Sastry’s rendering moves like electric mnemocurrents— sublime and incalculable. The timber of the deep voice emerging from the energetic plexis cannot fail to capture the ear. The ardour of the utterance is extended often when he turns to the aid of Thyagaraja’s plaintive or playful cry invoking Rama in his apostrophes; the invocative pitch often resonates in the ear but touches the eye, and the eye can only respond here with tears. As we know, tears confound the division between pleasure and pain. But what is imparted by Sastry’s immersive invocation is a delight that moves one beyond the (mundane) categorial division between pleasure and pain in everyday existence. The Ramayana composition emerged, and Valmiki himself has clearly shown this, only when shoka brought forth a shloka. Similarly, the shloka/song can also surge up tears but they are not the result of actional life. They are the unexpected, incalculable effect of distancing and differentiating (but intimate and affective in consequence) transfiguration of actional sediments. Sastry is unique in enlivening this performative tradition—a tradition that affectively communicates a generational learning in entirely mnemocultural modes.

14.12 Melodic Mnemoscapes The Pravachanakaaras while reaffirming the shareability of a certain experiential pleasure mnemopraxially reiterate the performer-oriented rendering of the tradition. This is done at the beginning and end of every Pravachana session through the recitational medium of Paaraayana. Paaraayana is an individual or group-based recitation/singing of selected number (usually about 30) of shlokas and mantras. There is no standard limit to the number of shlokas to be recited, but different ‘schools’ (matas—such as Vaishnava, smarta, Madhva, etc.) of reflective commentaries include different sets of shlokas.25 Given that the Ramayana is composed with each letter of Gayatri mantra at the beginning of every thousandth shloka, the recitation of Ramayana, like that of Gayatri, is considered efficacious in overcoming personal obstacles and achieving 25 Cf., Pullela Sriramachandrudu, ‘Paaraayana Vidhaanamu’ [modes of paaraayana], Ramayana, Sundarakanda, annexure, pp. 2–14.

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personal (individual-oriented) actional goals. The Ramayana is recited/sung as a maala (garland/chain) mantra. A more popular Pravachanakaara in the last few years, for example, ended his sessions with the collective Paaraayana of Nama Ramayana (whose refrain runs: Ramanaamamu Ramanaamamu ramyamainadi Ramanaamamu—The Rama name is a joyful delighting one)—which has upadesha gist in its entirety. The Nama Ramayana is (anonymously composed) of 108 verses and is sung collectively at the Pravachana sessions but can also be rendered individually outside the session as well. As discussed earlier, performing traditions can be performer-oriented and can also exceed them by being other-oriented. If the Pravachana form signifies the latter, the Paaraayana tradition—even when collectively rendered—is largely individual, performer-oriented in its effects. Every recitation can promise to accrue a certain expectation or result—of course, with no guarantees offered at all—to the reciting individual. Given that the Ramayana is not a unified and totalized text, the Paaraayana of Ramayana mostly focuses on selected verses of sargas for rendering. We must remember that Valmiki’s advice to Lava and Kusha was to render only 20 sargas each day before Rama and the assembled audience at the venue of Ashwamedha: Divase vimshatih sargaa geyaa madhurayaa gira (Ramayana, Uttarakanda: II, 93.11, p. 562).

You must sing delightingly twenty sargas each day. Similarly, quite often specific sections/verses in specific situations are chosen for recitation/singing. For example, in the Telugu regions, the Balakanda is recited when one hopes for a beautiful wife; sarga 73 of the Balakanda (Sita’s marriage ceremony) when desiring longevity of husband’s life; and sarga 3 of Ayodhyakanda (Vasistha’s overseeing the arrangements of Rama’s proposed coronation) when seeking stability in job and business. Similarly, selected sections such as Rama’s birth (Balakanda), freeing of Rama and Lakshmana from the snares of snakes (Yuddhakanda), praise of Aditya, the sun god (Yuddhakanda), Ravana’s killing (Yuddhakanda), and Sundarakanda (especially seven sargas a day) are regularly recited. But recitations can differ in accordance with the astrological placement of planetary bodies. Paaraayana based on astrological calculations aims at well-being in existence. All Paaraayanas are accompanied by performative rituals—puja and offerings made to deities.26 Paaraayana is an essential feature of the Ramayana. Ezutacchan’s Aadhyatma Ramayana rendering is seen as a kilipattu (parrot song), and it survives largely on extensive seasonally based Paaraayana in Kerala today. It is indeed the Pravachana and Paaraayana performative traditions that can be said to have inspired countless number of Ramayana cultural forms. One such vibrant performative form is the Chaau dance of Purulia, West Bengal.

26

Cf. Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastry, Ramayana Rahasya Darshini, pp. 448–458.

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14.13 Enactive Energies Chaau is one of the naatya forms flourishing in Purulia (apart from Jharkhand and in northern Odisha (Mayurbhanj)). The Chaau performers selectively incorporate episodes called palas of the Ramayana into their performative repertoire. Chaau is a cultural form collectively enacted traditionally by diverging cultural formations such as Munda, Kurmi, Dom and others. Their musical compositions and the bands are entirely locally generated and sustained. The Ramayana palas are drawn from at least two sources—that of Krittibasa Ramayana and the local Pravachana and Paaraayana traditions of rendering this Bangla composition. But the Chaau groups of Purulia improvise on what they receive and incorporate local events and accounts. Perhaps, Chaau is one of the few naatya forms that strikingly retains the scene of fighting that originarily generated the choreographic styles of naatya. The Chaau performance surges up with bursting energy and vitality. The very entry of characters—fully costumed and masked with sizeable headgears—begins with a vigorous run by the characters (as if they are at the finishing line of a race) onto the play scene (which is any piece of flatland chosen for a particular performance). They stop at a specific place and stride along onto the scene in a totally stylized gait (chal). Bharata devotes an entire chapter on the gait (gati) of different characters and their standing positions on stage (Naatyashaastra, Chap. 12). The Chaau gait is divided into two styles—one for gods (Dev chal) and the other for demons (Danav chal). Bharata classifies the movement of the characters in accord with their status and associates appropriate musical pitches with specific gait (vilambit—leisurely paced; madhyam—medium paced; and drut—fast paced and vigorous. [Naatyashaastra, 12.12, p. 410]). While noblemen and gods move in vilambit, the lowly move in fast pace says Bharata (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 12.13, p. 410). Bharata’s specification that the gait must be in consonance with musical pitches (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 12.14.410) appears strongly at work in Chaau. Bharata’s account about the distance that must be maintained in the stylized movement of each step of god and demon characters (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 12.23, p. 411) is strongly at work in Chaau performances. Rama and Lakhsmana move about the play scene in symmetrical steps—each foot lifted almost up to knee and placed firmly on ground. What is most unique in the idiom of Chaau choreography is the series of vigorous jumps which pervade the performance. There are at least three distinct types of jump that markedly spread across in each performance: (i) ulfa—somersault where the jump takes place without allowing the head to touch the ground; this is of two kinds: frontal (aglia) and reversed (pichlia). These jumps are repeated in the dance scene in ‘Meghajit Vadha’27 ; (ii) the second type of jump is called digbaji; this is yet another kind of somersault that lets the head touch the 27

‘Pitar Jonyo Putrer Moron: Parajito Meghanath’, a two-part video recording done by Shaktipada Kumar. Kumar is a Chaau music composer and researcher. He manages a Chhou troupe of his own in Purulia. I thank Kumar for providing me access to these recordings and for discussing the performances with me. Kumar since then has developed a most comprehensive account of the Chaau tradition in his PhD thesis, ‘Reconfiguring Performative Traditions: A Mnemocultural Inquiry into

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ground. (iii) The third and most difficult jump is a swirl in the air called jhaap dewa. This pirouetting in the air and landing perfectly in a standing or sitting position on the ground is performed often with ease by the performers. These higly energetic bodily articulations do not make any direct contribution to the pala’s theme. But the jump captures and retains the audience’s attention definitively. The jump in Chaau is a non-semantic embodied action. It is indeed an element of naatyadharmi but has no semantic significance in the actional life of loka—except to denote the extraordinary vigour and vitality of the bodily articulation. The jhaap appears to be the singular non-narrative element of Chaau choreography. Without any semantic value, it operates as an interruptive but riveting caesura in the performance. The jhaap appears to belong to the dance form described by Bharata as nrutta. Nrutta is devoid of virtual actional life (abhinaya) and is devoid of song or sense. Nrutta is characterized as Na gitakaartha sambaddham na chaaprthasya bhaavanam (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 4.262, p. 161).

[Nrutta is] without any song and sense association and lacking any meaning and actional sediments. Nrutta is the contribution of Shiva as naatya is that of Brahma. The Chaau can surely be placed in the category of uddhata naatya—vigorous performance that Shiva renders in his nrutta. The prominence of nrutta form pre-empts any linear or sequential relationship in Chaau (as in Koodiyattam) between the verbal and the performative modes. In the analysis of visual cultures, especially (in studies on painting and sculpture) a certain phonetic linearism subordinates the visual idiom to the textual content; that is, the visual composition is often seen as a mere illustration of the dominant verbal poetic narrative. As a consequence of such a linearism, the idiomatically composed—that is, the singularity of the varied—visual technics gets a secondary or derivative significance. The performative technics of Chaaunrutta resists such linearization. As can be seen from the performances of Meghnath Vadh or Sitaharan or Ravan Vadh, the verbal musical composition–dialogue is rendered in all seriousness by the musical troupe. But what dominates and captures the addressees’ attention is the vigorous spectacle—especially its nrutta idiom surging up on the visual scape. The visual idiom articulates music devoid of any narrative content. The forging of this performative idiom is an excruciatingly laborious process; the Chaau actors undergo training for several years to learn this technic. Bharata insists that the naatyadharmi must be cultivated through a rigorous training and practice. The Chaau performers are devoted to developing such a robust performative ethos. It is in the singular idiom of dance-war choreography that Chaau receives the performative ethos of the itihaasa-puranas. No wonder Chaau abstracts mainly fight or war episodes of the heritage. What is striking in this context is that it is in this singular choreographic idiom—the distinct performative ethos (naatyadharmi) of the Chhou Dance of Purulia’ (thesis submitted at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad 2019).

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Chaau differentiated itself from the everyday actional life of the cultural formations. It is the vitality of this performative ethos that evokes the pleasurable experience of rage and valour and ultimately affirms the actional effect of the virtuous ethos of dharma. The relation between loka and naatya is rearticulated through a responsive reception to the itihaasa-kavya-Ramayana.

14.14 Minimal Magnitudes There is nothing in the loka that naatya cannot go after says Bharata. In the same breath, one can also discern from Bharata’s discussion of theatricality that naatya does not exclusively privilege any (of the eleven) aspects of performance. As a praxial composition that grapples with the question of how to articulate embodied living through virtual detours of action, Bharata digitizes the technics of the body and discretizes the verbal and musical rhythms. Neither a particular character nor a particular plot is shown to be exclusively essential in Bharata’s theatre. Koodiyattam demonstrates spectacularly this a-centric conception of theatricality in Indian traditions. Koodiyattam is the lively affirmation of the possibility of infinite discretization of technics of the body on the one hand and the elements of the loka on the other. As in the case of Bharata’s account, Koodiyattam performative tradition combines ritual performances of everyday life and virtual ethos of the theatre. Every session begins and ends with specific set of ritual actions. The traditional custodians of this performing tradition—Chakyars—have genealogical connection with warrior cultural formation. In fact, the Chakyar is the charioteer–bard of the warrior. The Chakyar along with another cultural formation—the Nambiyar—who are singers and players of instruments—are the guardians of this singular performing tradition. In a seven-night performance, a whole night’s action can either be devoted to enacting either a particular scene/thematic element, which might appear ‘minor’ or ‘incidental’, or it can rapidly recall and reconnect to actions and personages of the past epochs or eons. The Ramayana performances in Koodiyattam are largely drawn from that other renowned responsive reception of Valimiki—that of Bhasa. The Chakyar performer enacting a scene from the third act, Ashokavanikaanka, of Bhasa’s Abhishekanaatakam, for instance, devotes an entire evening’s session to enact a ‘minor’ scene: Shankukarna’s attempt to report to Ravana about Hanuman’s destruction of Ashokavana. Six of the seven-day performance is by Shankukarna who feigns the roles of Mandoari, her maids and Ravana. Ravana enters the fifth day and the sixth day, and Shankukarna gets to report to Ravana about the destruction. After the introduction of the scene of the first day, Shankukarna reverts back in time and enacts episodes in Ravana’s past exploits: his fight with Kubera and Mandodari’s fear of touching the leaves of the garden (second day), his attempt to lift Kailasa, Parvati and Nandi’s curses (third day), Ravana’s defeat of Yama and Indra (fourth day) and shifting the plants and trees of Indra’s garden to Ashokavana (fifth day).

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In Koodiyattam no actor is confined just to one role. Given that the performance is character-based whoever the character might be (gatekeeper, maid servant, Rama, Ravana, etc.), what is important is the way the actor excels in rendering the given role. The actor who plays Shankukarna on one day himself may play Ravana on the last day and Mandodari on the second day. Here, what is singularized is the bodily articulation of actional sediments. The Koodiyattam actor can elucidate an action, for example, of Ashokavanikaanka, for about two hours; each word of a small verse rendered is taken up and elaborated through the discrete, meticulous articulations of the body parts (angikaabhinaya) with the appropriate accompaniment of music. He can improvise on the elements endlessly.28 Similarly, Lakshamana’s performance in making of parnashaala (hermitage) stands out exquisitely. As he tightens his bow to clear the animals from the surroundings, the agitated rush of animals is captured in Lakshamana’s angikaabhinaya. These ankas/palas, episodes indicate not much of the central core (if there is one) of the kavya—but focus on a fractal segment of it or a micro-element of the musical note and put it to work for improvised enactment. Rama, watching the parnashaala built by Lakshamana, for example, enacts the stable emotions—by moving eyes and facial muscles—and evokes the sense of wonder (adbhuta) expressing amazement at his brother’s work. His eyes roam over the hermitage, and he moves his eyebrows and stands still in a position without making any hand gestures. Similarly, Ravana shows wonder at Mount Kailas. This kind of expression of stable emotions (saatvikaabhinaya) differs from angikaabhinaya by not involving elaborate hand gestures. Koodiyattam excels in enacting varnanas (poetic descriptions rendered through the articulations of the body): of the beauty of the forest, mountains, descriptions of the beauty of a woman from hair to foot and preparations for war. Here, the enactment exceeds the verbal composition and the improvisation of elements supplements the verbal composition in the singularity of enactment. In the mnemagination of Koodiyattam, verbal poetic units are at times ‘subordinated to the Angika Abhinaya and particularly the verses of the text of the play become merely a delicate thread on which the varied and imaginative “improvisations” are strung together to delight the audience by its subtleties and exuberance’.29 In the radial singularity of its gestural and visual idiom, Koodiyattam explores the question of temporality in putting the body to work. Here, the articulations of the body too are realized in the musical impulse. This is not to say that the enactment is musically derived or determined. On the contrary, it refers to a common impulse— the impulse of improvisation—shared by music and enactment. Although the instant of improvisation (i.e. a particular performative moment) is critically important to sense the unfolding of improvisation, the impulse itself recursively lives on in the temporally distanced events of the past. Thus, a particular episode to be enacted, as pointed out earlier, is never performed straight away through a linear sequence of 28

Goverdhan Panchal, Kuttampalam and Kutiyattam: A Study of the Traditional Theatre for the SanskritDrama of Kerala, (Delhi: Sangeet Natak Akademi, 1984), p. 54. 29 Ibid., p. 55.

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emplotment (if there is one). In order to arrive at the episode of the chosen act, multiple indefinite episodes are re-lived and their rendering itself can defer the reaching of the present (the chosen act) indefinitely. This entire process of temporal movement is called nirvahana—orchestration. The temporal movement itself unfolds in three ways: (i) Anukrama (recursive sequence)—where from the moment/instance of the performing act there is a repeatable return into a past—a return that is signalled by the current instance. (ii) Sankshepa (condensation): the return itself can evoke a remoter past and align it in a condensed form to the moment of the past incorporated by Anukrama. (iii) Vistaara (expansion or elaboration): this provides the opportunity in the instant to elaborate and improvise any moment of the vistaara in its extended connection to the sanskshepa moment. All these movements are orchestrated by means of angikaabhinaya—through the articulation of hand gestures and facial movements.30 Thus, these temporal modes of recursive sequence, condensation and elaboration forever amplify the possibility of improvisation or rendering the moment otherwise. The dynamic of responsive reception suspends any closure either to the performance or to what it receives and transforms. One of the conventions of staging in Koodiyattam is that when one character is speaking another/others leave(s) the stage. This has pragmatic and structural implications. The bell-metal lamp can provide direct focus on the speaking character when she/he is facing it—otherwise the other characters, if present, will not be all that visible. Thus, when Shurpanaka starts speaking, Rama and Lakshmana leave the stage. The other structural reason could be that each and every character is significant in this tradition. Their significance comes from their mode of enactment, their unique articulations of the body. Therefore, the speaking character’s abhinaya gets foregrounded when the others leave. The foregrounding is to bring forth the singular abhinaya of each character/actor.31 Sometimes, two characters remain on stage but each one does not take cognizance of the other. Thus, when Rama talks about Shurpanaka she could be very much on stage and she can caricature Rama—who does not ‘see’ her. Thus, the flow of action is discontinuous (for characters and not necessarily for the audience). In other words, simultaneously different actions can take place on stage. The movement in space and time in returning the events of the past can go on for days before one arrives at the instant of the act to be performed (say, the Shankukarna episode). In other words, the specific instantiation of the episode is in no way privileged over the other episodes; that is, there is no ‘central’ episode to which all the other episodes are subordinated or culminated into; it is only on the last day of the performance that the episode announced is actually performed. Yet, nirvahana cannot be easily reduced to some determinable motivation of an agentive actor. It is the naatyadharmi—the performative ethos which at once obliges ‘rules’ but plays with them in unforeseen ways—that enables the unprecedented articulations of the body of the performer (we recall Mammata: niyatikruta niyama 30 31

Ibid., p. 85. Ibid., p. 92.

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rahitaam). Thus, what the performing tradition seems to reiterate in every act is the singularity of every instance and the way it gets constituted by the durationality of such instantiations. Further, it may be said that any instance can be an extraordinary opportunity or chance for unprecedented improvisation of living; it could also spur unexplored or unfamiliar palimpsests of memory (we will discuss this in the next chapter). The performative idiom of Koodiyattam—especially its radical discretization of angikaabhinaya (hands, face, eyes, eyebrows, eyelids, nose, cheeks, chin, etc.)— reinforces the detoured relationship between naatya and loka. Such an incomparable a-centric enactment disallows any oppositional, hierarchical division between ritual actional life and some other sublimated theatre. In fact, nowhere does one find Bharata dividing the loka into some profane empirical and sacred transcendental worlds. As discussed earlier, loka is a topo-temporal cathexis—and wherever name and form appear they do so only in a loka, or, they come forth in/as loka. All lokas are already exposed to the threat of contamination. A mnemopraxial cultivation of virtuous ethos must be persistently lived/practised. The division and hierarchy of sacred and profane are alien to such a mnemocultural liveable knowledge. The suta– bharata–seer reaffirmed this learning in myriad ways. The mnemopraxial legacy of the heritage can be seen to be at work in innumerable performing traditions today.

14.15 Irruptive Interfaces Mnemocultures are cultures that articulate their memories through the technics of the body. The most immemorial technics of the body are speech (song) and gesture (performance). Mnemocultural creativity, reflection and the entirety of its liveable knowledge emerge from the generative force of the body—where the body operates as the absolute medium and effect of generativity. Mnemocultures are not necessarily antagonistic to inscriptional technics but are by and large indifferent to them. Inscriptional technologies inscribe the articulations of memory on a substrate—on a non-organic retentional medium outside the body—such as stone, metal, parchment, leaf, bark, paper, plastic and chip. Inscriptional technologies promise immortality to memory outside and beyond its generative provenance (the body). Now, if inscriptional cultures and their products are brought forth by lithic technics (writing on a substrate), mnemocultures can be said to be generated by alithic technics. Performative traditions in the Indian context have predominantly lived on alithically through the generative technics of the body. This mnemocultural impulse received, incorporated the lithic media (for a long time scribal and print) and even put it to work to sustain the alithic technics of its heritage. The Paaraayana and Pravachana modes do keep printed copies of the Ramayana but what takes over is the pervasive utterance of the Pravachanakaara and the reciters’ or singers’ voices. All the Ramayanas of various bhasha regions emerged in the scribal epoch—yet, their life continues to be sustained by the Paaraayana/Pravachana modes of disseminating cultural memory.

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How does mnemoculturality face the pervasive penetration of lithic inscriptional and retentional media of cinema and television? As we know these cultural forms entirely depend on prosthetically retained memories, audio-visual memories prerecorded and mediated or manipulated in their archived repositories. The apparatus of camera—the prosthetic eye, peering through the editing apparatus, captures and monuments memory and the silent eye and the silenced voice—determines the salience of what is to be viewed or heard. But the hidden eye and the voice are themselves affected by what they consider to be the traditions of viewing and hearing. Performing traditions of India have nurtured audiovisions and sustained responses to them over millennia. Let us recall that when the gods approached Brahma, they wanted him to crate a playable thing that is aural and visual: Kreedaneeyaka michhaamo drushyam shravyam cha yadbhavet (Bharata, Naatyashaastra, 1.11, p. 60).

As we discussed earlier, this (extant) inaugural work (the Naatyashaastra) has unfolded an extraordinary range of performative audiovisions that are intensely demanding in the generation and dissemination of them. The composition has deeply impacted even the externally retainable visual cultural forms (sculpture and painting) when they emerged. What is strikingly significant here is that even when these apparently prosthetically retained memories (drawn from the itihaasa-purana accounts) emerged they were deeply permeated and were engrossed in the mnemocultural impulse; they were enlivened by the performative heritage. As one can see from the performative cultural procedures specified by Bharata in the construction of the playhouse/playfield and spacing of different celestial and netherworld being on the field, architecture and sculpture were never free from mnemocultural performativity.32 Needless to say that the temples have for centuries remained the abode of various kinds of performances. As discussed in an earlier chapter, temple brought together shilpadharmi and naatyadharmi (and naada-vaadyadharmi) for millennia. The mnemocultural breath and the embodied voice kept the temple warm. Similarly, when the cultural form of painting gained its prominence—in pats, scrolls, murals, etc.,—it did not emerge as some museum or gallery artefact stared at by silenced spectators. The canvases, when they were displayed, were in the warm embrace of the performer who would breathe sonic life into the image and simulate the figure in his performance. The Pahadi paintings of the Ramayana were extensively used for such performances. This goes on even to this day when the Dakkalis perform Jambapuranamu with their thirty-feet-long scroll painting in Telangana. The scroll has no other sanctified space for display excepting the lively playfield of performance.

32

Cf. ‘Chitrasutra’, in Vishnudharmottaramahapurana extensively enumerates the confluence of performative and plastic creations, ritual acts and figurations in stone or wood along with the recitational compositions that accompany these performances. Cf. the ‘Chitrasutra’ in Vishnudharmottara Mahapurana, Part III, trans. (edited with commentary by) Kalluri Venkata Subrahmanya Dikshitulu and Devarakonda Seshagirirao (Hyderabad: Sri Venkateshwara Arsha Bharati Trust, 1988), pp. 1–300.

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14.16 Analogue Memories What we are exposed to in the alithic cultures is a vital resilience that extends the life of these cultures through lively archives which embody and enact cultural memories performatively. In the process, they either bypass or even pass through lithic inscriptional technics and its cultural forms. Cinema and TV are quintessentially lithic cultural forms. But in the Indian context, they are received into pervasive mnemocultures. Film too responded by welcoming and incorporating performers and performing traditions into its prosthetic folds. Mnemocultures, in turn, insisted on their singular space in the cinema. Ever since the cinema began in India, the dance and song caesuras into the episodic assemblage of scenes from a life or event could not be eliminated. Secondly, from the very inaugural opportunity to align mnemocultures with cinematic inscriptional culture, cinema could not but turn to the originary trio of suta–bharata–seer. And it was indeed the Ramayana episode—that of Harischandra—that confirmed the embrace or interface between cinema and performing cultures of India. Perhaps, it is the Telugu cinema which surpassed others in the production of films on the Ramayana; over 25 films were produced since the 1930s (the first one being Rama Paduka Pattabhishekamu [1932] which was remade again in 1945). The Telugu Ramayana films too incorporated traditional Telugu performative cultural forms like Harikatha,33 Yakshagana and leather puppetry shows. Among these films, the most outstanding ones were Seetaramakalyanamu (1961), Lava Kusha (1963) and Sampoorna Ramayanamu (1971). These films were considered to be everlasting visual and acoustic feasts. Songs and poems written specially for films or poems drawn from Telugu literary culture (from Dasarathi Shatakam mentioned earlier) were rendered in the most memorable ways. It is difficult to imagine a marriage ceremony even to this day where the immortal song rendered during the wedding scene of Sita and Rama (from Sitarama Kalyanamu) is not replayed, vocally or instrumentally; similarly, it is difficult to imagine a childhood for decades that was not overwhelmed by the film Lava Kusha and haunted by its song about Rama’s life. As is well known, the first TV rendering of the Ramayana in the 1980s was an extraordinary phenomenon. Like the cultural form of film, the TV also draws on performative traditions such as Ramlila and Katha. Although it declares its allegiance to Tulsidas’s song poem Manas, it attests to drawing on about ten different Ramayana compositions (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Bengali and Urdu). Curiously, however, the TV serial shows all the composers (except Eknath), including Valmiki of the Ramayana busily squiggling away their compositions with 33

The legendary figure of Telugu cultural scene, Adibhatla Narayana Dasu, comes to mind here. Adibhatla performed hundreds of Ramayana episodes, earned an everlasting name for the cultural form and for himself in the first half of last century. Cf. Na Eruka: Sri Adibhatla Narayanadasu Sveeya Charitra (My Sense: The Autobiography of Sri Adibhatla Narayana Dasu), compiled by Modugula Ravikrishna (Guntur: Mitramandali Prachuranalu, 2012).

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either a peacock quill or a ‘pen’. The only redeeming feature in these lithically recorded images is that they are also simultaneously somewhat ecstatically singing their compositions full-throated. Despite its stunning success and claims to creative retelling of Manas, one cannot help observing the fact that the TV Ramayana cannot be said to have generated either a novel performative idiom or a haunting melody. It is difficult to imagine either of these lithic appropriations (cinema and TV) ever found any spae in the Paaraayana or Pravachana sessions. As pointed out earlier, the latter are not some self-enclosed performing traditions. The Telugu Pravachanakaaras eloquently cite from a twentieth century Telugu kavya composition of Ramayana (of Viswanatha Satyanarayana) in exalted ways. Yet, one cannot assume that the relation between the alithic mnemocultures and the lithic cultural forms like cinema and TV is celebratorily harmonious. The mnemocultural technics of gesture and speech are immemorial and universal, and they enabled hetero-genos to bring forth cultural forms on a planetary scale. In a word, these technics of the body were entirely non-exclusive in their range and reach. It is with lithic technics that we find exclusivist strategies emerging and inaugurating the great divide between the lithic and alithic forms.

14.17 Prosthetic Heritages The purported claim to provide immortality to memory contributed to the ascendancy of inscriptional technics and at the same time legitimated its exclusivism. It may look counter-intuitive to suggest (despite its filiation with what is glibly called democracy) that it is perhaps impossible (as it stands) for the lithic technics and its concomitant cultural forms to be inclusive in their generative, retentional and disseminative reach. The ever inventive hyperparanoid security systems and firewalls of lithic digital repositories drastically confine their access only to the vulnerable–critical tip of the pyramid. The control and command over the prosthetically amassed planetary memories works entirely on the principle of radical exclusion. The lithic pyramid, however, grew over time—though rapidly in the late twentieth century. Therefore, when compared to print and audio-visual technics, writing was relatively less exclusive—in that it could grow from non-centralized locations (though the Church was its centre of operation). That is, whoever could gain access to literacy could function from one’s own differentiated location. Whereas, print technology—as it involved lithic apparatus—again narrowed access to generation of printed works. As one can foresee, such access was further reduced in the context of audio-visual prodution of cultural forms. The heavy apparatus of cinema and TV could easily exercise control and command over what gets produced and disseminated. What are identified in such contexts as creativity and knowledge get entirely determined by such lithically determined apparatuses and institutions.

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Mnemocultural proliferations were not controlled and determined by any such normalizing and normative prosthetic technics or culture. Like the cultural formations (jatis) that dispersed through internal self-differentiation, the mnemocultural forms they generated spread across cultivating their singular performative idioms. In the context of such resilient cultural dynamic, modern education which restricted access to what is determined as education, the lithic apparatus began to constitute what is considered a cultural form and beamed it to collectivized audiences. Surely, both these lithic cultural forms—institutionalized education and the audio-visual cultural creations—could not erase or obliterate the mnemocultural force. As we discussed in the previous chapter, they ruptured the rhythms of mnemocultures, displaced their recipients and above all, in a word, neglected the vital impulse of responsive reception that enlivened mnemocultures over millennia. What has come to be called Indian cultural heritage evolved in silent and slow time on the basis of a generative–reflective filiation between cultural formations (jatis) and their cultural forms. As pointed out earlier, the guardians of numerous performative traditions are from very distinct cultural formations (like Chakyars, Kurmis, Dakkalis, Doms, Dhadis, Aos, Meiteis, Manganiyars, Mukkuvars and countless others). They are also the masters of the idioms carved out by the technics of the body; the liveable learning that they forged was excruciating and demanding and they carved out the recipients for it with patience and perseverance. It is these cultural formations which receive and respond to the shareable impulse and provide palpable coherence among Indian traditions: these traditions are the confluence of the enduring shruti and smriti mnemocurrents. Now, the lithic apparatuses and institutions implanted in the country disregarded the jati–cultural filiation and the generationally imparted liveable learning. On the contrary, they developed an unexamined rabid resentment towards the filiative bond between jati and culture. The lithic cultural forms like film and TV can easily appropriate these diverse traditions but have not contributed in any way for the invigoration of their actional learning. Thus, the seeming alliance between alithic performative traditions and the lithic apparatuses hides deeper cultural fissures. These fissures can be seen in the case of other lithic institutions—the legacy of colonial transplants—such as the university, art gallery, museum, archive, cinema and many other forms—as well. These disruptive fissures cannot be dealt with unless one struggles to understand without alibis the cultural tectonic differences at work in alithic mnemocultures and the dominant lithic apparatuses.

14.18 Irredenta Jeevitha The university, the purported cultivator of the life of the mind (bildung), is barely in a position to undertake the struggle today. As a colonial implant, it largely succeeded in infusing a sort of self-contempt and self-denigration for what one has grown up with, one’s salient experience, through the very channels of education it imparted to the recipients. Such a retarding educational programme cannot be expected to

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initiate new inquiries into the much maligned relationship between (bio)cultural formations and cultural forms that wove the cultural inheritances of India. On the contrary, they busy themselves in reprogramming inherited cultural forms through the readymade categories and frames—art, aesthetics, literature, etc.,—that are the unrethought legacies of colonial education. These lithic cultural levers of control can only deepen the divide between the mnemocultural actional learning from which emerged the extraordinary composition on performative traditions and the thetic (theoretical/aesthetic) knowledge. The lithic cultural structures can do little to help suturing the ruptured filiation between jati and culture as long as they continue to see the world only through Europe’s institutionalized programmes; they can do little to explore beyond the colonial rupture what the suta–bharata–seer trio inaugurated and enable us to find how they may help us in addressing the most urgent and demanding questions—such as how to live along with others who are not alike—today? However paradoxical this may sound, today the most fundamental question of how to receive and respond to both the legacies—the legitimate but marginalized mnemocultural one and the illegitimate but hegemonic colonial/European one—can only be addressed in the context of the humanities research in the university. One cannot conceive of a topo-temporal vantage today where the hetero-genos—the inheritors of multiple cultural formations—commingle, but without any awareness of their heritage of actional learning. How to reorient the teleocultural mediations that the performing traditions of the bard–bharata–seer have opened up in our centripetal and centrifugal instant is of absolute importance. Living on in this skewed heritage (legitimate–illegitimate), we are all responsible to all the indefinite and indeterminable addressees of tomorrow: our responsibility must vindicate our reception and our response to the inheritance(s) and future in the topo-temporal moment of our existence, wherever we are. Otherwise, there can be neither humanities nor a planetary hetero-genos tomorrow—loka—to live in/on. We have so far tracked a shareable impulse which moves across the shruti and smriti strands of Indian reflective creative traditions and provides palpable coherence among divergent cultural forms and cultural formations. We have examined the ways in which such impulse gets irrupted in the second millennium. It is in the European epoch that we begin to see forced and laboured efforts to forge an identity for India in political and cultural terms. Such an exigency had no place in the dispersed traditions, cultural forms and formations in the previous millennia. It is this identitarian enframing which is inimical to the enduring sense of the shared impulse. How to respond to such an impulse today when enframed by this aggravated inimical force? Are there any voices which sense the shared impulse and tapping its currents respond to the pernicious enframing of Indian pasts which the European epoch initiated? Even destitute (colonial) postcolonial scenarios cannot be said to have completely succeeded in their efforts at mnemocides. From the shifting currents of inheritance, one can sense, if one is attentive, the spurring currents of improvised and innovative responsive reception of tradition even in these destitute times. One can find such a voicing current in the unparalleled work of Viswhanatha Satyanarayana.

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Emerging from the colonial Telugu India, Viswanatha’s work spans over the colonial and postcolonial periods and stands out in its irredentist inventions. The next chapter opens up the ways in which Viswanatha’s colossal work embodies the shared currents of Indian traditions and the modes in which these currents pulsate against the genocidal contemporaneity programmed in the European epoch.

Part III

Inventive Iterations

Chapter 15

Inventions of the Literary and Affirmations of Inheritance: The Enduring Legacies of Viswanatha Satyanarayana

‘Europé kaaka prapanchamunnadi…Europé prapanchamu kaadu’.1

Abstract Invention implies bringing forth the unprecedented; it involves making of the radically new. Yet, inventions are contingent upon sedimented patterns, longstanding practices and demarcated domains of reflection. Significance of the new can be cognized only in the context of the established. ‘Literary studies’ of any culture that faced colonial onslaught cannot hope to be inventive unless creative persons in that culture have learnt to grapple with the devastation their culture was exposed to. In the absence of such fundamental reckoning, such cultures will be condemned to remain derivative. Literary studies (not just in Telugu) in the Indian context are yet to measure the abyss of (post)colonial destitution. Irony and sarcasm, political correctness and rage are the reigning symptoms of this destitution: they foreclose autonomous inquiries into inherited literary reflective traditions. Precisely when such expedient nihilism was pervasive across (post)colonial times, emerged the singular work of Viswanatha Satyanarayana and challenged dominant colonial consciousness from the Telugu India. His challenge emerged directly as an open and courageous poetic-reflective affirmation of his double heritage—Telugu and Sanskrit traditions. Over six decades, his supple and resilient imagination nurtured his vigorous inventiveness and forged the colossal work of inexhaustible proportions. This chapter is a preliminary attempt at exploring the singularity of his literary inquiries and his incomparable literary inventions. The chapter aims at drawing attention to at least three significant accomplishments of Viswanatha’s work: (i) Drawing on the mnemocultures of the double heritage his work traverses the verbal(acoustic), visual, musical and performative domains and brings forth the ways to reinvigorate the resources of the past today; (ii) his responsive reception of the past shows the possibility of an alternative to Platonic agonism of a ‘raging discord’ between art and philosophy—a 1

Veyipadagalu, the monumental work completed in 29 days in 1934, serialized in 1937–38 and said to have sold over 100,000 copies. (1934; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006, 21st edition), p. 106. Henceforth, all references to this text will be given in the text.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2_15

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haunting agonism even today; this alternative takes the question of ‘art’ beyond the entrenched European binary: art (illusion) versus truth (reality); (iii) his teleocultural reflective imagination shows the possibility of moving beyond the suicidal/genocidal conceptual traps of nation/nationalism and national aesthetic. This chapter contends that there is an urgent need to receive and respond to Viswanatha’s literary-reflective inventions beyond the bounds of the Telugu regions to configure affirmative passageways over our postcolonial abyss to think in general about the question of living on with the radically different. Viswanatha’s work singularly exemplifies the ways in which the enduring coherence of Indian traditions can continue to communicate in creative and reflective ways today.

15.1 Risking the Literary The discourse of literary studies in cultures that faced colonialism is a legacy of Europe. The larger domain of the humanities (of which literary studies is a part) itself is an essential outcome of European preoccupation with the questions of man (or human—what/who is man, what is proper to man, the rights of man, the place and the ends of man); the humanities emerges as an intelligible ‘explanatory system’ from such preoccupations. The discipline of literary studies presupposes and contains the experience of these human-centred accounts. Such accounts and the cultural assumptions that determined them have been intensely unravelled by major European thinkers (and from outside Europe as well) in the twentieth century. ‘Literary studies’ of any (non-European) culture that faced European invasion cannot hope to be autonomous in its thought and be inventive in its creativity unless the creative persons of that culture have grappled with the devastation their culture was exposed to. In the absence of such fundamental inquiry, these cultures will be condemned to remain derivative. Literary studies (not just in Telugu) in the Indian context are yet to measure the abyss of (post)colonial intellectual destitution. Irony and sarcasm, political correctness and rage are the reigning symptoms of this destitution: they foreclose autonomous inquiries into inherited literary reflective traditions. Precisely when such expedient nihilism was pervasive across (post)colonial times, the singular work of Viswanatha Satyanarayana (henceforth Viswanatha) emerged and challenged the dominant ‘colonial consciousness’ from the Telugu India. His challenge emerged directly as a courageous and open poetic-reflective affirmation of his double heritage—Telugu and Sanskrit traditions. Over six decades, his robust imagination nurtured his vigourous inventiveness and forged the colossal work of inexhaustible proportions. This chapter is a preliminary attempt at exploring the singularity of his literary inquiries and his incomparable literary inventions. In tune with the work developed so far in this book, this chapter traces the intimate resonances that wove the cogency of Indian traditions across millennia. The uniqueness of Viswanatha’s relation to such inheritance is that, despite the tumultuous upheavals of his times, he sought to receive from and communicate with deeper currents of his traditions. In order to demonstrate these claims, this chapter aims at drawing attention to at least three significant accomplishments of Viswanatha’s work: (i) Drawing on

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the mnemocultures of the double heritage his work traverses the verbal (acoustic), visual, musical and performative domains and brings forth the ways to reinvigorate the resources of the past today; (ii) his responsive reception of the past shows the possibility of an alternative to Platonic agonism of a ‘raging discord’2 between art and philosophy—a haunting agonism even today—emerging from his work; this alternative takes the question of ‘art’ beyond the entrenched European binary: art (illusion) versus truth; (iii) his teleocultural reflective imagination shows the possibility of moving beyond the suicidal/genocidal conceptual traps of nation/nationalism and the national aesthetic. This chapter contends that there is an urgent need to receive and respond to Viswanatha’s literary-reflective inventions beyond the bounds of the Telugu regions to configure affirmative passageways over our postcolonial abyss to think in general about the question of living on with the radically different. It should be possible and necessary to attend with care to such writers from various regions of India.

15.2 Inventions of the Other Half way through his major ‘novel’—Veyipadagalu (Thousand Hoods)—Viswanatha identifies the symptoms of the ‘literary education’ influenced by colonial institutions. Kumaraswamy, a limited aspect (a restricted alter ego) of the connecting thread of this composition (Dharmarao), says: ‘They [administrator teachers] have drafted Telugu syllabus on the basis of English syllabus. They made English literary forms mandatory here too. If there are two “non-detailed” texts there, they insisted on two here. But who inquired into the tradition of that [English] language and the tradition of this [Telugu] language? Who reflected on how to teach these different languages?’ (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 562.)3 As the agonizing conflict between his nurtured Telugu literary tradition and the invasive new syllabus intensifies, Kumaraswamy gives up (and also is asked to leave by the English administrator) his teaching position. This symptomatic scene of literary learning functions as an allegory, and it alludes to another (invasive) layer of the text; it projects the colossal extirpative experience of tradition that European colonialism irrupts through its cognitive-discursive frames. In such a devastating context, Viswanatha’s work appears to confront two crucial questions: (i) How to configure and respond to this disruption? And: (2) What forms can such a response come forth in? Viswanatha’s expansive oeuvre emerges as a 2

Nietzsche’s phrase quoted in Heidegger. Cf. Heidegger, ‘The Raging Discordance between Truth and Art’. In M. Heidegger, Nietzsche: The Will to Power as Art, Vol. 1, trans. D. F. Krell (New York: Harper San Francisco), 1979, pp. 142–150. 3 (What was provided above is more a gist rather than a literal summary of the comment. All renderings of Viswanatha’s work into English in this chapter, unless mentioned otherwise, are mine.) Kumaraswamy is only a circumscribed aspect of Dharmarao in the sense that the former receives only a shade of the latter’s literary personality. Dharmarao moves as a trope of much larger and deeper search that can have different orientations. The burden of this chapter is to elaborate the significance of this trope in Viswanatha’s work.

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formidable answer to these questions. In his work, the magnitude of cultural disruption is rendered as the end of a shared but ununified or non-totalized orientation of a people. The rendering is a pathos-ridden, heart-touching, passion-free concern evoking thematization. ‘I may defend’, says Viswanatha, ‘lost causes. I do not want them to be revived, which I know is an impossible thing. But I want the modern people not to call… [them] a dog and hang them’.4 The mode in which the thematization takes place draws on the lively currents of Telugu (Sanskrit) literary-reflective inheritances. Viswanatha forges or invents a literary form in prose but he draws on the contemporaneously much discredited poetic form called Prabandha to do so. Prabandha itself was an inventive form in a literary tradition which for long composed poetry within the itihaasa-purana vein. Prabandha broke open daring poetic-linguistic, lexical-acoustic, thematicdescriptive, sonic-idiomatic literary textures for over half a millennium.5 In a word, Viswanatha innovates an unprecedented prose-Prabandha to configure his response to the disruption. In his variegated literary-reflective oeuvre, the prose-Prabandha dominates. This choice, however, does not appear accidental. The most celebrated literary form that Europe’s colonial cultural expansion deployed everywhere was the novel. As a new literary forms within European literary heritage, this generic innovation (the novel) at once advances Europe’s distinction and at the same time exposes the lack (of it) in colonized cultures. Whatever the vicissitudes of this genre within European literary-theoretical history, it continued to reign the literary imagination of the colonized cultures from the moment of is invasion to this day. Viswanatha was confronting this dominant cultural form. The novel as a literary form sublimates the individual as the reflective subject in the process of becoming and determining his existence in the world; his existence, in this epistemic account, is the effect of his cogitative being’s becoming: the novel, like its siblings, auto-biographs this cogitative bildung (cultivated formation). In a word, the novel is the quintessential humanistic (deeply filiated to philosophical nationalist) cogitational genre. This theo-epistemological source of the novel has much deeper root in the ipsocratic—that is, self-assertive, auto-kratic—heritage of Europe; and the novel form records an internal (Lutheran/Descartean) turn within this sedimented tradition.6 It may also be pointed out without elaboration that the 4

Viswanatha, ‘My Self - My Work’, in Upanyasalu, Interviews: Viswanatha Asamkalita Sahityam, (Speeches and Interviews: Viswanatha’s Uncollected Literary Writings), vol. 2, edited by Kovela Sampatkumaracharya, (Warangal: Viswanatha Bharati, 1995), p. 199. (This is from an interview which was conducted entirely in English, in 1971.). 5 Cf. the Introduction to Allasani Peddana, Manucharitramu, The Story of Manu, trans. and Introduced by Velcheru Narayana Rao and David Shulman, MCLI 4, (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2015), pp. xxvii–xxxiii. 6 Cf. Derrida’s extended seminar on Daniel Defoe’s Biblical-humanist novel, Robinson Crusoe, Sessions 2 and 3 in The Beast and the Sovereign, trans. Geoffrey Bennington, vol. II, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011), pp. 31–92. Drawing on Hans-Georg Gadamar’s passing comment on Robinson Crusoe as an experiment in the creation of the ‘phenomenon of the solus ipse’ (Gadamar’s phrase), Rodolphe Gasché writes that the achievement of the book ‘is to show the composition of the self, or what since modernity has come to be known as the subject…’ Such a composition of the sole self (or self alone), Gasché contends, is in complicity with cannibalism

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novel form was projected as a singular endeavour to reconcile the philosophical and literary/poetic domains (in antiquity) on the one hand and the scientific-secular and moral-religious realms (in modernity) on the other. These domains were thought to have been wrenched apart from each other in European culture. How can such a theo-cultural root and its literary off-shoot (like its other conceptual manifestations such as politics, law, ethics, history, aesthetics, etc.,) fare with the millennially nurtured and disseminated modes of being and forms of response remain unexplored but unavoidable questions even to this day in the context of (‘pagan’) cultures like India. Yet these (European) cultural-conceptual forms circulate as domineering super-impositions on much deeper cultural experiences. Consequently, the radical disjuncture between the theo-cultural forms and the Indian cultural experience gets aggravated and it forebodes calamitous consequences. But to sense the disjuncture, one must first take the risk of configuring the singularity of the ‘Indian experience’. Such a task was never a necessity in the millennial spread of cultural formations of India and their cultural forms—until the European theo-cultural invasion. Discourses unleashed by the theo-cultural root (such as religious, historical, literary or philosophical etc.,) are of little help in configuring the Indian cultural experience. For, the root-model of these discourses remains derived from European cultural experience—irrespective of who takes recourse to such discourses. Eschewing such discourses explicitly, Viswanatha draws on his immersive experience of expansive literary-reflective (Telugu and Sanskrit) traditions of India and puts to work his vigorous and inventive imagination to configure the singularity of Indian experience. It is from such immersive experience that Viswanatha forges his unprecedented gadya-Prabandhas (prose compositions) as a response to the invasive literary form called the novel. As the Prabandha genre is known for its innovative themes and experiments, Viswanatha weaves his prose-poems to grasp the consequences of the cultural disjuncture. Despite the fact that he exposed himself to the pervading (European) literary genres—especially novels—he was unable to grasp the literary essence of these works. Dharmarao, the poet-yogic figure of Veyipadagalu thinks that Dickens and Thackeray to be far superior to Telugu novelists. But Dharmarao was brought upon savouring the pioneers of the Telugu literary tradition (Errana, Surana, Krishnadevaraya, Srinatha). He feels that the taste of Prabandhas surpassed any other reading-savouring experience. He could get the themes and content of the English novels but the delicateness of that language, its luminous essence, its seminal energy, its serenity—he could not experience. He was not able to sense the poised rhythm and the delectable essence of the English poets like Shelly and Keats; the differentiated styles of their rhythms and essences were not touching his heart, feels Dharmarao (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 177). As can be seen, Dharmarao (devouring or internalizing the other). Cf. Rodolphe Gasché, The Stelliferous Fold: Towards a Virtual Law of Literature’s Self-Formation, (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), pp, 247– 268 (the quoted lines appear on pp. 247–248.) The prototype of the Cartesian novel is provided by Descartes himself. Descartes describes his ‘discourse’ on the certitude of ‘self-grounding (solus ipse) as a “fable”’. Cf. J.M. Bernstein, ‘The Cartesian Novel’, in The Philosophy of the Novel: Lukacs, Marxism and the Dialectics of Form, (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986), pp. 157–164.

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does not deny the poetic grandeur to the English literary works. But he tries to receive and respond to the European literary forms from the long-cherished poetic-reflective root-model and the embodied immersive experience of India and realizes that their (European) literary delicacies could not reach and touch his biocultural complex. The body complex—that which is absolutely irreducible in the processes of immersive experience in Viswanatha’s tradition—itself is a transgenerationally processed and cultivable actional entity. Therefore, in order to respond to the poetic essence of a language and the actional sediments that it touches and awakens, one’s (instinctual) body complex and the blood that circulates in it must be nurtured in the culture of that language, concludes Dharmarao. Any amount of exposure to another culture may provide access to it but in the absence of such experiential immersion it would not provide the experiential fullness; the cultivable biocultural formation misses something from that culture, reasons Dharmarao (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 177.) (The tropes of language, blood, body and culture may sound ominous to the European theo-cultural historical experience. But these tropes do not at any point get sublimated into spiritual-political unifications in Viswanatha and the resources that he draws on. On the contrary, they open up access to another root-model for being in the world among the lively millions who are not alike. We shall return to this.) Although the novel literary composition—the gadya-Prabandha—dominates his oeuvre—it has little to do with the theo-humanist ontology of the (auto-bio) novel form that gained supremacy in the European expansional drive; such ontology consolidates and declares—through virile or impotent, utopic or dystopic thematics—the ipsocratic impulse.

15.3 Facing the Invasive The double task that Viswanatha’s work grapples with (thematization of the disjuncture and the configuration of the singularity of Indian experience) cannot be undertaken by embracing the alluring but invasive literary-cultural forms. (It must be noted in passing here that the novelistic genre in India both in English and in the Indian languages has largely succumbed to this alluring invasion.) Viswanatha exposes himself to these pervasive winds but his experiential unease with these novels impels him to figure out the cultural difference. He senses that European difference is not experientially accessible to him and the reasons for that cannot be measured in terms of individual voluntary choices or personal capabilities. Given the fact that no individual (or even species) can be absolutely autonomous, one is impelled to track and sense the transgenerational, teleocultural (that which affects from long-distance) intimations that enable individuals to act in differentiated but distinct locations. For Viswanatha, the ‘Indian experience’ is formed by such intractable intimations. For him, the inexhaustible sources of Indian imaginative-reflective traditions open up access to these intimations; these sources form his robust and daring imagination. Traditions continue through (trans)generational learning, sharing and imparting of what is learnable. When such traditions are disrupted and suffer discontinuity, one

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has to depend on the imagination to sense and reconfigure traditions, says Dharmarao (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 122). It is precisely such vibrant imagination that the primal guardians of Indian mnemocultures—suta-bharata-seer7 —put to work to disseminate distinct modes and forms of liveable learning. The verbal– acoustic and performative traditions they inaugurated imparted transgenerational memories with profound teleocultural affect. The itihaasa-purana-kavya and the naatya-sangita compositions nurtured the spring currents of the imagination. It is this radical context-transcendent faculty that threw open the flood gates of the Vedic imports across the hetero-genos. They are the primal inventive responses to the Vedic imports. Such inventive responsive reception remained the absolute generative source for the proliferation of the unprecedented cultural formations (genos—jatis) and their cultural forms (genres) over the last two millennia in India. They seeded and fecundated all the major Indian languages and their literary-reflective traditions. The most significant aspect of the Vedic imports that gets disseminated persistently emphasized actional life and actional modes of being as the effective determinants of being in the loka. Now, loka is the spatio-temporal matrix that comes forth along with and shelters the lively millions. That is, loka and the beings of it are mutually constitutive, or, they are co-emergent. Every being, including gods, demons and myriad other life (and non-life) forms recursively emerge and dissolve with/in/as the loka. As the actional life is the most efficacious mode of being in the loka, the body becomes the sole arena of actional-praxial mode of existence. In a word, the body is the absolute medium and effect of the praxial mode of being. The Vedic imports disseminate mnemopraxial modes of being through the mnemocultural formations. The loka in other words is the topo-temporal trope of the context. This trope extends to include multiple lokas (Deva, Daanava, Manusha and other) and epochal temporalities (Yugas). The embodied beings circulate across these topo-temporalities. Their circulation is contingent upon their actional modes that attract curses and boons perennially; only the embodied can attract such endowments. The puranic imagination dances with these circulations across recursive topo-temporalities. But the trope of context that the loka alludes to cannot be calculated with and reduced to the territorial and calendrical techniques of time and space that the historical discourse is fixated with. It is precisely to expose the absurdity of such calculative reductions with which Indology operated in determining the territorial-temporal limits of India that Viswanatha unleashes his puranic imagination and launches a series of gadya-Prabandhas under the name Purana-Vaira Grantha Mala (Chain or Garland of Compositions of/for the Enemies of Puranas).8 The targets of this garland are none other than William Jones and Max Muller and their efforts at dating the 7

Here, the reference is to Vyasa, Bharata (of Naatyashaastra) and Valmiki respectively. PuranaVaira Grantha Mala is a collection of 12 Gadya-Prabandhas which Viswanatha composed between 1958 and 1963. During the same years, Viswanatha composed two other sets of puranic Prabandhas under the series (i) Kashmirarajavamsha Kathalu (Genealogical Accounts of the Kings of Kashmir), numbering six (1966–1969) and (ii) Nepalarajavamsha Kathalu (Genealogical Accounts of the Kings of Nepal, numbering six (1964–66).

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Indian mnemocultural ‘references’.9 Similarly, to expose the limits of philological and zoographical researches in ascertaining the puranic beings, he hurls at them this magisterial Gandharva figure with a horse-face, clothed in human body with wings; the Gandharva (an heir of the famed Gaandharva vidya) is a musical genius who takes pity on a musical display celebrated in the cultural life of the West. The Prabandha with an onomatopoeic title (to frame the convulsive responses of the West to this puranic imagination)—Ha, Ha! Hoo Hoo!—is set in Trafalgar square (incidentally, a Gandharva with that name is mentioned in the puranic lore).10 In order to demarcate and differentiate the acoustic–verbal mode of articulating experience of the Indian traditions form that of the English (European), Viswanatha invokes two masters of Indian languages and imagination—Vishnusarma (of Panchatantra) and Tikkana (of the Telugu Mahabharata) in the ‘novel’ Visnusarma Englishu Chaduvu (Visnusarma’s English Learning).11 The novel captures the disjuncture felt by these masters and their travails in a world pervaded by the European cultural forms.

15.4 Enduring Disjunctures Blessed by the intimations of the primal guardians of memory and imagination— suta-bharata-seer—Viswanatha extended his Shiva’s dance in an unlikely loka—a loka disrupted by the invasive alien. With his robust imagination, he swam across the lokas and yugas and the sonic-poetic textures of his double heritage forged his double response. He was convinced that despite the efforts of the Europeans, they could, perhaps, understand but not experience the Vedic imports of these dizzying (to Europeans) cultural forms. Their understanding led them to discursive objectification of a cultural experience by means of calculative propositional and evidentiary mechanisms and apparatuses. Whereas such experience can be sensed and evoked in immersive mnemocultural forms of embodied and enacted modes of being. No wonder no such mnemopraxial response could come forth in the two centuries of European (American) ‘understanding’ of Indian experience. While acutely sensing the depths of the disjuncture, Viswanatha’s restive imagination at the same time affirmed the possibility of configuring the singularity of Indian cultural experience. His work certainly embodies the mark of the fissure. There is a profound sense of epochal loss—the waning away of traditions and the enduring pain of this loss in his work. Veyipadagalu can easily be characterized as a poignant dramatization of the colossal loss of a cherished socio-cultural imaginary. While talking to the bereaved queen, Dharmarao says: Girika, the temple dancer, is the figure of complete surrender to god. At a time when the centuries long institution 9

Cf, Viswanatha, Introduction, Bhagavantuni Meeda Paga, vol. 1 of the Garland, (1959; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006, 5th edition), unnumbered (fourth page). 10 Ha Ha!Hoo Hoo!, (ca. 1952; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006; 6th Edition.). 11 Visnusarma Englishu Chaduvu, (1960; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006).

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(of temple dancer and her total surrender to god) was perishing, she emerged as an icon to show the total splendour of that figure. Rangajamma—a Kshatriya woman (one among the four from different jatis whom the Brahmin Sastry marries12 )—is a sign of biocultural [varna] purity, chastity and emotional intensity of yester years. Krishnamanayudu—the landlord-king of a modest estate: a symbol of the king of ancient times. Rani—Nayudu’s wife: the icon of grand queen-hood. ‘All that is of the ancient past is vanishing and newness is entering’. The learning or knowledge that comes from tradition is different, says Dharmarao, from the one gained by modern ‘studies’. There has been a colossal war between the traditional learning and these ‘studies’. ‘The defeat that the tradition suffered did not allow it to raise its head again. The tradition suffered ignominy and insult at many places’ (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 401). Whether there really was such a battle and what form it took is not elaborated in this work. But there is ample evidence that such learning was simply discarded (without any engagement); it was slighted and deprived of sustenance. [The humiliation of Ratnagiri and the dance tradition she embodied is a case in point. Similarly, at another point while exposing the defects of compulsory primary education introduced by the British in schools, Dharmarao recounts how this ‘education’ has displaced the generationally imparted verbal– visual (puranic) performative cultural forms of learning. Such learning is accessible to all jatis, he contends (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, pp. 431–436.)] ‘I too am born as a figure’, says Dharmarao in his conversation with the queen, ‘only to witness while you all perish. I do not belong to the present time. All these are the last sparks of a dying cultural formation [jati]’. (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 156). His cousin, Ramachandraraju, echoes Dharmarao and says that there is no relation at all between today’s world and the puranic accounts that his father recounted to him (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 148.) The pervasive figure of this Prabandha is a great snake. It manifests in thousand hoods to protect the cultural imaginary of the Indian habitat (in this Prabandha). There are only sporadic allusions to the glory of this habitat in its salubrious times. But what the Prabandha thematizes substantially is the gradual but definitive vanishing of the protective hoods of the snake, one after the other. The snake is also an unequivocal itihaasic trope of termporality. The time declines as the hoods fall and the time swallows as the snake bites. The Prabandha graphically delineates the change and decline of the topo-temporal matrix of the village. New institutions (modern school and colleges, municipality, elections, cinema and the railways) penetrate and the topography changes rapidly and invasively. Cash crops, irrigational projects take over, trees disappear, birds vanish, floods engulf, heat overpowers and guts down homes into ashes. The loka bears the marks of irrevocable devastation in the name of the novelty of progress. The ‘novel’ Veyipadagalu (like Viswanatha’s other gadya-Prabandhas) is entirely composed of episodic units. Each section (chapter) itself is made up of several 12

Earlier in the novel, Rameswarasastry (father of Dharmarao) is portrayed as the allegorical figure of the Indian (Sanskrit) reflective-praxial essence: ‘He [Sastry] is the iconic bundle of biocultural life-cycle stages; he is the atma of India; he is a commentary on the Vedic learning’. (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 41).

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episodes internally. Most of the episodes in turn are woven with extended, richly delineated passages—a significant feature of the traditional Prabandha. These delineations can be either of sunsets, rains, crops, deities in the temple or even of the persons in the novel: see for instance the sordid account of the cuckold Josyulu (the school teacher) who tries to kill himself and the enchanting description of the sunrise and the broken heart (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 301). Similarly, the description of the erotic surges up through evocative parallels between the spring season and the dancer: the koel’s song, the bounty of Girika’s desiring body—her sturdy, thickened thighs that provoke god’s desire, her narrowed waist and her strengthened buttocks, her eyes evoking waves of her desire, the intoxicating melodies of bees and Girika’s singing of Gopikas’ voluptuous songs (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 309). The novel excels in concatenating extraordinary range of delineations of changing seasons—of monsoon and the plants that grow (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, pp. 388–389), and of winter (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, pp. 228–229). These richly textured descriptions—irrespective of the loss and devastation that they eventually signify—embody the verve and the vigour of a reasoning imagination that weaves these Prabandhas. Perhaps one can argue that Veyipadagalu (and this may be said of his entire work grappling with the devastating impact of alien cultural invasion) evokes intense but endearing empathy for the poignant experience it delineates. After a discussion with the English administrator who kidnaps the unusual ‘magical’ figure— Pasirika—who/which is an embodiment of the greenery and the entire flora and fauna of the village, the administrator (who conspired to shift Pasirika to a zoo or museum in England) is bewildered by the force of Dharmarao’s reasoning. The narrative, projecting a view over the administrator, provides a comment that can be an epigraph for the entire novel: Even when a cultural collective (jati) is extirpated, its force does not die out. When you see the place where force is dried up, karuna (endearing empathy) will surge up in everyone. We can reconcile to the fact of death and normalize but when we see a state where something has ended but not died out, we cannot bear that. (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 570). Yet, Viswanatha composes the unnerving loss and the poignant experience of the lost in a millennially textured reflective idiom by means of a vibrant imagination. The apparent paradox of the vigour of the mode and the gravity of the thematic of loss do not seem to have any space for either nostalgia or mourning in Viswanatha’s work. One can focus only on the mournful loss at the cost of excluding the cascading currents of evocative poetic weavings. Nannaya, Tikkana, Errana, Potana, Srinatha, Somana, Peddana (the celebrated pantheon of Telugu poetry) and others dance on his tongue and his creative force bounces forth taking the Telugu language and literary imagination to unforeseen heights; and all this he achieves precisely in a crisis-battered loka of the twentieth century. What is significant about mnemocultures is that they have little space for mourning and nostalgia. For, memory is forever renewed in lively enactments in these cultures of memory. The lively archives of the embodied memory synchronize the diachronic—that is, Krutayuga beings circulate in Dvaapara—and diachronize the synchronic; Krishnamanayudu of the twentieth-century Subbannapeta is made one with ancient kings. The puranic axiom—pura api navam iti—turns the remote and

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ancient into something contemporaneously novel. Even as the colossal devastation is underway, Viswanatha affirms the enduring capability of the most critical generative pivot of the biocultural life-cycle: the institution of the householder (and its requisite marital bond). This institution is the absolute centre for the generation and dissemination of mnemopraxial liveable learning of Indic traditions. For, this is the institution that makes the three seminal pairs of actional modes of being: (i) rendering ritual ceremonies and soliciting subsistence (yajana-yachana); (ii) learning and imparting (adhyayana-adhyaapaka); (iii) gifting and receiving gifts (daana-parigrahana). It is considered to be the highest stage of the life-cycle for it provides unconditional hospitality to the guest (atithi—the one who visits unregulated by any tithi—and like tithi, moves on.) Irrespective of the provenance of these praxial tenets of the liveable learning—they are indispensable for transgenerational bonding in the loka for living together among the hetero-genos—the lively millions are not alike (semblables), they are not homogenous; their praxial modes differentiate them signficantly. Viswanatha affirms such institution of the householder in Veyipadagalu throughout. If mnemocultural traditions—in which embodied memory is essential for differentiated modes of being—formed the Indian (not just Sanskritic) experience—what is the status of the literary (‘artistic’) in Viswanatha’s configuration of this experience? Given the magnitude of his literary compositions—only through which he sought to configure Indian experience—does his literary-reflective practice suffer the disjuncture? Thus, consequently, does it come out as a derivative of or a reactionary formation with regard to the European conceptions of the literary/artistic—as has been the case with the field of literary studies from the colonial period to contemporary times? Mnemocultural formations draw on the most immemorial and primordial verbal and visual, speech and gestural communicational media for generating cultural forms. These cultures of memory prefer song, recitation and performative forms to nurture, transform and disseminate their memories. As the body is the absolute medium for the generative rendering of these formations of memory—the body circulates as the ‘lively archive’—a dynamic assemblage that needs no surrogates (such as documentary archives, museums, databases etc., which are indispensable for inscriptional cultures). The singular body enacts and imparts a liveable learning—something that is liveable in/as a mode of being and something that is shareable through the embodied enactment of it. Thus, the body is both the efficacious medium and possible effect of performative modes of being in the world. In a word, the mnemocultural mode is performative and its absolute medium—the body—is quintessentially actional: the body generates actions and the body results from actions. It must be pointed out here that Viswanatha composed all his gadya-Prabandhas (at least) mnemoculturally: as he ‘recited’ his Prabandha composition someone at hand inscribed it (he took about 15 days maximum to recite a ‘novel’).13 He himself never wrote his gadya-Prabandhas. 13

Viswanatha, Upanyasalu, Interviews, p. 195. Curiously, even his poetry, he first composed it in his mind. ‘As for my poetry, it is very very rarely I sit at home and write….I write poetry while walking, traveling, eating, lying down on a cot till sleep comes. After that I commit them to the paper. All through my life I did this and this only’. Upanyasalu, Interviews, p. 206.

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All the mnemocultural forms of Sanskrit (Vedic-Upanisadic) and their incalculable dehiscence were disseminated across the hetero-genos by the suta-bharataseer inventively; and they regenerate the performative learning through biocultural formations (jatis)) and their enduring traditions of knowledge. As a remarkable heir of these mnemocultural traditions, Viswanatha’s literary practice in particular and his reflections on the ‘arts’ in general can only emerge in relation to the actional body in existence; for, by definition and substance, these (‘literary’/ ‘artistic’) cultural forms are performative in nature and body-based in their emergence and transferral in practice. In this regard, they open up a passage to a genus of performative reflection that is fundamentally different from that inaugurated by Platonism in the European heritage. This difference pivots on the differing conceptions of the body (and the technics) nurtured in these traditions.

15.5 Contextures of Sense Viswanatha draws on the ancient Upanisadic and Daarshanic14 roots to reflect on the body and the place of the literary/artistic in their context. In these traditions, the body is a heterogeneous complex of differentiated (subtle and gross) sense-faculties on the one hand and a dynamic force (chaitanya) which is irreducible to the sensorium on the other. The sensorium is propelled into or retarded from action by the impact of the force. This heterogeneous complex is the abode of an individuated ‘figure’ called, as we discussed earlier, the lively being (jeevi or jeevudu). This being is ambivalently located amidst the heterogeneous factors of the force and the sensorium. This being as ‘it’ is drawn towards the force gropes towards it while, at the same time, it gets caught in the pulls and binds of the sensorium. Consequently, it is exposed to the pleasure and pain of the sensorial actional effects. But the pleasure of the sensorium is ephemeral and its privation reinforces pain. Whereas its aim is to seek a certain kind of ‘pleasure’ that is beyond the dualities (of pleasure and pain) that the sensorium provides; but such ‘pleasure’ too must be attained as an embodied being in existence. It can attain such pleasure when it moves and accesses the dynamic force that inhabits the body complex. In other words, the lively being is a seeker of rapturous experience which it can attain in existence by accessing the force. The rapturous experience is enduring for it is beyond the morphed actional effects of the pleasure and pain duality. But the lively being also has the tendency to get deluded by the pleasure purveyed by the sensorium. The arena of this entire strife of the lively being is the body and its actional modes; the theatre of its operation and its destiny is the very biocultural formation called the body. Now the topos, if it can be called that, of the dynamic force is the figure called hrudaya. Although this term is often rendered as the heart, it should not be reduced to the throbbing physical lump of meat found in every body. For it is also the topos of limitless aakaasha (space)—which is one of the five constitutive elements of the 14

Darshanas refer to six different learning traditions developed after the Vedas.

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body. It is from this space-less space that the dynamic force moves (while itself unmoving) and animates the sensorium. But between the hrudaya and the sensorium lies the most volatile and unsettling but demanding and binding interior faculty called manas. This faculty enables communication between the exterior (perceptual and actional) and interior faculties (and their effects) of the body complex. More importantly, manas as a psychical passageway is also the wormhole of desire and (transgenerational) memory. The restive manas with all the decisive contents and operations is also the abode of actional sediments or actional impulses (that evoke actions). The latter as structural or constitutive spurs of action are the patterned modes of salient responses of a being in a given situation in the loka. These actional sediments are finite in number (eight or nine), and they manifest as forms of mediated (by manas) response to the stimulations from the exterior set of faculties of the sensorium; and they also inform or impact the entire set of faculties. In a word, the manas is the decisive actional mechanism for (dis)orienting actional modes of being in the loka. Now, the lively being who is a seeker of rapturous experience is thwarted in its pursuit when it gets entangled with the morphing pleasures of the passageway of manas. For the manasic mechanism, as it is disorienting in its nature, can occlude one from sensing the enchainment of one’s existence to a repetitive compulsion—a compulsion that churns one in the actional impulses without respite; the embodied being gets propelled in a mechanic gyration in existence. The loka—the topo-temporal abode of beings—is replete with alluring actional impulses—such as concupiscence, miserliness, envy, rage and such others which enchain beings in sorrow(ful)/pleasure. The task of the being is to free itself from these ensnaring binds and bonds and the test site is the embodied existence in the loka. Drawing on these ancient roots of praxial reflection, Viswanatha’s entire work can be seen as a persistent effort to reiterate inventively the literary trajectory as a crucial way of accessing the rapturous experience. He differentiates the literary trajectory from at least two other modes of being which can also open up into such an experience: that of a yogi and of bhakta (‘devotee’.) His colossal work can be seen as an unequivocal affirmation of these three modes as constitutive of the singularity of Indian experience. Although these trajectories and modes are differentiated, there is something strikingly common to all these modes of being: (i) the non-spatial terminus that they all turn to offers the rapturous experience—and this experience is nonrepresentable; (ii) without doubt, they are all the paths of seekers and experimenters with the liveable learning they receive; (iii) these modes are open to everyone— every lively being in the embodied existence; and (iv) as can be seen, all these are performative mnemopraxial modes. It must, however, be pointed out that, though Viswanatha does not do this (nor does the suta-bharata-seer tradition): the modes of the first two (that of the yogi and of the bhakta) are performer-oriented in their quest and what it entails. Whereas that of the ‘literary/artistic’ trajectories, the effect of the pursuit moves beyond the composer-seeker and reaches out to the indefinite seeker-addressee. In a word, the efficacy of mnemopraxial modes of being and forms of articulation can be tested only by seekers. Their effectiveness can be seen only in responsive receptions that

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affect and transform modes of being. As will be shown later, Viswanatha’s work amply demonstrates the distinctiveness of these modes and sometimes even runs them together. Viswanatha designates the rapturous experience attained through the yogic path as yogaanandamu; and the one attained through the poetic path Kavyaanandamu. Such delight can be attained by the ‘arts’ (music, sculpture and painting) as well says Viswanatha.15 Here, the yogic path is clearly distinguished by him. As discussed earlier, the lively being is ambivalently caught in the interior and exterior communicational passageways: the interior one beams the dynamic force via the vicissitudinal manas and thus animates the sensorium; and the other, receiving stimulation from the exterior faculties, either propels the actional impulses or through transmutations of manas extends to the hrudaya—yielding the ecstatic experience. Now, in these alluring traffic of actional modes, the yogic mode closes off the passage between manas and the exteriorizing sensorium and thus thwarts any communication from or to manas from the stimulations from the exterior faculties. In such, a trajectory the yogi either can get stuck in the vacillations of the manasic apparatus and thus suffer the darker turns of the actional impulses; or, the yogi tempers the manas and keeps the passage between manas and hrudaya—the non-place of the dynamic force—open. The yogic passage has no use for verbal (name/nama) and visual (form/rooa) significatory categories. The passage immerses the seeker in a delighting experience, and it cannot be measured in terms of the categories of the conscious or unconscious. It is an immersive state which the embodied (yogic) being savours without termination. In contrast to the yogic trajectory, the literary/artistic mode embraces the world (loka) directly and relishingly. The actional sediments/impulses, says Viswanatha, form and move the loka. The loka, like the body, is also the medium and effect of actional impulses. There is nothing in the world (no form, no knowledge, no learning, no yoga, and no art) say Bharata and Bhamaha that performative modes of dance and poetry cannot embody and enact.16 Therefore, the poet welcomes and receives the seething manasic complex. Through reflective practice, the poet/artist/performer keeps both the passageways (from hrudaya to manas and from the latter to the 15 Kavyaanandamu, (Poetic Rapture), (1972; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2007) p. 111. Henceforth, all references from this work will be given in the text. 16 Cf. Bhamaha following Bharata states: Na sa shabdo na tadvaachyam na sa nyaayo na saa kalaah. Jaayate yanna kavyaajna mahaabhaaro mahaan kaveh. (There is no sound, no expression, no logic, no ‘art’ that a kavi cannot know. What a burden the poet has to carry!). Bhamaha, Kavyaalankaarah, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (1979; Hyderabad: Sanskruta Bhasha Prachara Samiti, 2004), 5.4, p. 106. Bharata’s original claim runs as follows: Na tad jnaanam na tatchchilpam na saa vidya na saa kalaa. Na sau yogo na tatkarma naatyesmin yanna drushyate. (No knowledge, form, wisdom, art, yoga, ritual-act exists which cannot be shown in the. dance-drama/theatre.) cf. Naatyashaastra, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (Hyderabad: P.N. Sastry, 2004), 1.116, p. 79.).

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sensorium and their reversal as well) with manas as the tumultuous (dis)orienting gateway. The poetic trajectory draws on the acoustic–verbal power of language and transmutes the actional sediments of the manas into savourable flavours which are capable of touching the hrudaya of the cultivated addressee. The poetic utterance has the rare potential in it to stir awake the deeply dormant transgenerational experiential memories sedimented in the mnemoscape. The poetic language puts to work the actional sediments from the life of a remote personage to configure an account of that life. Such transfigured actional impulses teleoculturally evoke delighting flavours in the indefinite (and unintended) addressee. In the routine course of existence in the loka actional sediments provoke actions (anger raking up anger, laughter inciting rage, desire provoking envy, etc.,); whereas, when these actional sediments are transmuted, they yield emotional flavours that correspond with the actional but do not evoke real raw actions as such. Thus, a scene of love evokes the delicate emotion of shrungaara but not lustful carnal desire/action; that of valour evokes enthusiasm, and so on. The evocation of the flavours (or actional effects) and moods have the potential to yield or release rapturous experience. The poetic trajectory thus affirms the possibility of accessing the unique delighting experience through the very volatile actional matrix that manas seethes with and the loka is moved by. Such experience which the poetic trajectory releases is called Kavyaanandamu: poetic rapture. Unlike yogaanandamu which lasts for longer duration, Viswanatha observes that Kavyaanandamu is short-lived. For, manas which throbs with restive actional impulsions and provocations of the sensorium goes breathless in the proximity of the dynamic force and rushes back to its raging actional matrix—that is, the tumult of faculties and their disturbing pulsations. In other words, the maker and the addressee of the literary experience are filiated to the loka and only through that they experiment with the passage between manas and hrudaya. Kavya and the experiential flavour it evokes are deeply contingent upon the passion-ridden actional impulsive modes of being in the world. Yet the magic of transfiguring the laukik actional pulsations has no space for these devouring actional pulls (such as sorrow, delusion and darkness) in the (albeit vanishing) literary experiential rapture. (Viswanatha, Kavyaanandamu, p. 37.) The raging pulsations too are transmuted to release delighting experience. Therefore, actional sediments are deeply laukika—of the loka; whereas the immersive experiential taste they release in their transfiguration is heterogeneous to the imposing seethe of the actional web. In other words, both the yogic and the poetic modes provide the possibility of experiencing the radically heterogeneous and emphasize the immersive delight such experience entails—within the folds of the existence itself. Therefore, both the modes— indeed all the modes of the seeker—are bound to be actional modes in essence. And the actional life—saadhana—remains interminable (Viswanatha, Kavyaanandamu, pp. 70–73.) The idea of transcendence has no place in this practitional reflective inquiry. Here, it must be pointed out that as in the case of the yogic mode, even the poetic delight exceeds and remains irreducible to the signifying categories of name and form. Even the Kavyaanandamu can dispense with the name and form, Viswanatha contends.

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The poetic experience can access the dynamic force of hrudaya beyond the verbal and visual paraphernalia. For that experience remains non-discursive, and it is not an objectifiable knowledge. The experience of taste must be immersive. In experiencing this, one’s heart turns soft, cordial, and it throbs; the throat gets choked and tears surge up: these are all non-verbalizable, formless allusions to a non-representable experience—an experience that undermines and moves beyond the duality of pleasure and pain. The primal and decisive end of kavya is experiential delight. And all other preoccupations with verbal-figural analysis belong to the calculable domain of knowledge; it has its own place, contends Viswanatha (Viswanatha, Kavyaanandamu, p. 44).

15.6 Enabling Demarcations In configuring ‘Indian experience’, Viswanatha experimented with and traversed both the yogic and poetic paths with utmost rigour. A remarkable poem that came out of this arduous journey indicates the choice he made very early, even before his stupendous oeuvre has begun to emerge. It can be argued that this extraordinary poem is an unparalleled poetic inventive prolegomenon to his extended half-a-century work that followed, if a poem can be such an introduction. Viswanatha’s entire oeuvre can be seen as an innovative and tireless unfoldment of the essence of this poem. The poem titled, Bhrasta Yogi, (Lapsed Yogi/Debased Yogi), was a part of a collection of poems written between 1916 and 1926. What is offered here below is only a prose summary of this poem affirming his poetic-reflective integrity: Bhrasta Yogi17 : Listening to the call of para from beyond the verbal address, from the profound yogic meditative state in my manas and imagining the beauty of soft mountains, as a lapsed yogi I descended into the poet’s life. Reflecting on the morphing of para(Brahman) with immeasurable and ungraspable urge for beauty, Preferring the form of sound for para, but focused on reflection that is indistinct from para’s call; sensing that para is not beyond the moving universe (jagat), and reflecting (on) para in the essence of this moving universe, as a lapsed yogi I descended into poet’s life. (Viswanatha, Bhrasta Yogi, p. 119.)

Clearly, the idiom of the poem is Upanishadic and the mode chosen is that of the deep-meditative stasis; but the lokus chosen for this mode is manas and the verbal means in order to reflect on beauty accessible through the sensorium; and it explores 17

Bhrasta Yogi, in Sri Viswanathawari Laghu Kavyalu, (Viswanatha’s Shorter Poems), vol. 4, (Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, nd.).

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the reflective imagination further to articulate the modes of experiencing and being in the loka with the sense of para’s unfoldment. In a word, the choice made is to experience what is radically heterogeneous to the sensorium with the irreducible biocultural complex called the body. Even if the risk of the poet’s birth demeans him as a yogi, Viswanatha affirms that ‘lowly’ birth as his preferred mode of being. Yet, we learn from his extended work that the poet is no belittled entity. On the contrary, he emerges as a seer of tattva (kavyatattva darshi, we recall Anandavardhana). At the end of his Veyipadagalu, Dharmarao observes: ‘The ultimate effect of the sensuous experience is pleasure, whereas the hrudaya-atma experience is rapture. Consequently, in the experience of the loka both pleasure and rapture can accrue. The one who knows this is the seer of tattva’ (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 822.) As one reads the poem closely, however, one notices the conspicuous absence of something in it. The poem has no place for the radical disjuncture that Europe has irrupted everywhere—an experience which we see forming one significant layer of the background of Veyipadagalu. Viswanatha cannot not have been aware of the cognitive-experiential fracture Europe launched. He has already written, around the same time, about Veereshalingam and his reformisms (Viswanatha, Kedaaragauda, pp. 34–35).18 The only way, perhaps, one can surmise from this prominent absence here is that Viswanatha had no use at all of European cultural experience in configuring the Indian experience. What his entire work unfolds from this point is the lively possibility of imaginative-reflective configuration of the Indian singularity. Europe disrupts this singular experience by violently imposing alien cognitive frames on this experience. As pointed out earlier, Viswanatha does not explore this disjuncture by any discursive (historico-socio-anthropo-logical) means. He prefers the literary reflective mode, and this mode differs from but parallels that of the yogi. In other words, the implicit interlocutor for the poet here is the yogi (within Viswanatha’s dynamic mnemagination). The literary-reflective path like that of the yogi has little to do with European experience. The Platonic agonism that bifurcated and hierarchized the categories of poetry/art/myth/music/performance (in a word mnemocultural forms) and the discursive-philosophical theorization have no place in the reflective-imaginative traditions of India. Mnemocultures differentiate but do not categorize and hierarchize rigidly or rigorously. The Platonic agonism, as is well-known undermines and discards the mnemocultural forms as efficacious modes of accessing truth, beauty and happiness (eudemonia).19 Platonism institutes the discursive (dianoiac) conceptual thinking of philosophy (and mathematics) as the privileged form of obtaining truth and virtue and happiness. The power of this tradition reigns supremely even to this 18

Kedaragouda, Sri Viswanathawari Laghu Kavyalu. Hegel cited by Heidegger. Hegel’s statement runs as follows: ‘Art no longer counts for us as the highest manner in which truth obtains existence for itself….its form has ceased to be the highest need of the spirit….art is and remains for us, on the side of its highest vocation, something of the past’. Art’s privileged place has ceased with the Greeks. The place of art has been taken over by the dianoiac or philosophical thinking. Cf. Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadeter, (New York: Haper & Row, 1975), p. 80.

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day despite challenges to it from within the European intellectual history (Nietzsche, Heidegger and Derrida). In contrast to the repression and subjugation of mnemocultural forms in European culture, Viswanatha’s poetic-reflective oeuvre celebrates these forms with passion. More importantly, reflections on these performative cultural forms do not get segregated from the practitioners’ own formative reflections on the one hand and reflections on other’s formations on the other. As discussed earlier, all major reflective works on the formation of poetry are composed by practicing poets in Sanskrit (as is well known in the context of Alamkaarashaastra). Even shaastra compositions come forth as kavya creations, says Viswanatha: ‘They [shaastra compositions] specify shaastra but they too shine forth like great kavyas. They are both shaastra compositions as well as kavyas at the same time’ (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 447). (Rajasekhara identified such compositions as shaastra kavya.)20 Indian reflective-imaginative traditions eschewed assigning any categorically demarcated position to the philosopher as someone who discourses upon thinking about thinking—a metaphysician. On the contrary, they embodied reflection in/as their distinct modes of composition. Like Rajasekhara, Viswanatha too declares that kavya is an aspect of shaastra: Shaastrammunaku rendu pakshamulu kalavu kavyapakshamu shaastra pakshammatanchu kavyapakshammunan brayogammulunu saa marthyamulu kavi pratibha samunchitamulu21 Shaastra has two sides to it; kavya side and shaatra side. On the kavya side novelty of use, ability and blossoming radiance converge.

The literary aspect of shaastra manifests in exploring, experimenting and eliciting novel sense, and they are the indications of the poet’s blossoming radiance (pratibha). Viswanatha also declared that Indian kavyas come forth at the same time as reflective accounts of what they deal with. He contended that Nannaya did not just render the Mahabharata into Telugu but at the same time in his very creation he also offered a commentary on Vyasa. He called Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Dignaga and Murari ‘Ramakathaa bhaashyakaarulu’ (commentators on Rama’s story) and salutes them in his Ramayana Kalpavruksham (Viswanatha, Kalpavrkshamu, p. 11.)

15.7 Paths of Rapture Viswanatha’s oeuvre advances poetic-reflective integrity as an autonomous formation of thinking emerging from Indian traditions. This differs from yet another 20

Rajsasekhara, Kavyameemaansaa, trans. Pullela Sreeramachandrudu, (1979; Hyderabad: Sri Jayalakshmi Publications, 2003), pp. 13, 44–45. 21 Viswanatha, Ramayana Kalpavrukshamu, (Vijayawada, Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2015),1.36, p. 2.

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autonomous reflective mode of being—that of the yogi. But nowhere, are they offered as antagonistic rivals. On the contrary, his work (as the poem discussed earlier suggests) repeatedly draws on these two modes. Dharmarao, for instance, is a poet (though we do not get to know his poems in the Prabandha); but he is also portrayed as a yogi and an upaasaka—yet another type of seeker who relentlessly invokes a deity (iconic or aniconic in form, often a goddess-shakti)—and surrenders himself to her either by means of verbal apostrophic praise songs or in silent dedication to her. For instance, in his first rendering of a meditative shloka in the temple, Dharmarao gets immersed in invoking the god—an invocation based on a descriptive account of the image approximated to the idol in the front. Dharmarao becomes unaware of his surroundings as he gets absorbed in the musical/verbal apostrophic invocation. (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, pp. 30–31). At the same time at various places in the novel, Dharmarao also offers incisive comments on the Telugu poetic tradition and poetic experience. He likens poetic experience with a delighting savourable like the honey freshly drawn from the hive hanging at the edge of a mountain cliff. But this savouring is cordial (hrudaya) experience and not a manasic activity. The poem must touch the hrudaya and not manas, says Dharmarao. One gets immersed in that which touches the hrudaya. Only in such an experience, one really learns whatever one wishes to. Potana’s Bhagavata poems touch the heart directly, observes Dharmarao. And Veyipadagalu re-cites Potana at various places in the novel immersively. In reflecting on the poetic experience, Viswanatha maintains the difference between the manasic and hrudaya-based responses. While discovering Aamuktamaalyada (of Krishnadevaraya of Vijayanagara, which he considers to be the greatest formal achievement in Telugu [Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p.p. 178–179]), Dharmarao says: A response to kavya after completing the reading and reflecting on how the parts cohere (or do not) is not an appropriate analysis. Such reflection on different issues of the poem takes place in the manas; such manas-based analysis is different from the reflection on the delight itself as it accrues in the very process of reading the kavya. One should reflect on this delighting experience as it emerges in the process of reading and that would be a proper analysis. Such a response is hrudaya-based experience, whereas manas-based analysis focuses only on the meaning of the delighting experience. The manas analyses memory of an experience, whereas the hrudaya performatively reflects and savours experience itself. (Viswahnatha, Veyipadagalu, pp. 180–181). The paths of accessing and experiencing the cordial (hrudaya) dynamic force are multiple. Apart from that of the yogi, poet and upaasaka, there is yet another mode—that of the bhakta. Viswanatha differentiates this path meticulously from the others. Unlike for the yogi who seeks the dynamic force by tempering manas and even the life breath (prana), for the bhakta god’s name is the primal and the only source of gaining the ecstatic experience. The bhakta immerses himself/herself in the recitation, singing, and celebration of god’s name. The Bhagavata exemplifies Prahlada as pursing the path of the bhakta and Shuka exemplifies the path of yogi. Viswanatha observes that like the yogic path, the poet’s mode also can move beyond

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the verbal binds and sublimate itself in property- or quality- (guna)-free immersive experience (Viswanatha, Kavyaanandamu, pp. 174–177). Girika, the figure of undivided devotion to god, traverses this path of bhakta in Veyipadagalu. She must have in front of her the iconically formed, embodied aspect of god. ‘The kind of delight I savour when I am in front of the god in the temple, I cannot get at home’, says Girika. She decorates and dedicates her entire body as an offering to god (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, pp. 139–140). Her love-dance of communion with god evokes the delight no different from the ultimate rapturous experience one seeks in accessing the cordial dynamic, says the dance master invoking Bharata (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 638). Curiously, although it is the poet Dharmarao who imparts her the Bhagavata, he feels that the poetic essence has directly reached her heart—but he himself was not able to get such experience. Girika was able to immerse herself in it, whereas he was able to learn more about the literary imports of the Bhagavata but not its essence. He could focus on the poise of the idiom, the assemblage of letters, the gait of the stanza, and he could derive pleasure only from these aspects of the poetic body (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 118). But Girika through her performative mode (drawn from the Kuchipudi dance traditions) was able to combine bhakti and the poetic (in song) and evoke the savourable delight while she herself experienced the rapture. She faints in crucial dance scenes towards the end—a testimony to the consummation of her ecstasy (a whole chapter—29 of Veyipadagalu—is exclusively devoted to delineate the weaving together of performer-oriented and addressee-oriented rendering of the literary-devotional mnemocultural form). Resonating with the poem Bhrashta Yogi, Dharmarao’s musings in Veyipadagalu move him ambivalently among the three passageways to explore the immersive experience. Dharmarao thinks he traverses at least two universes (jagat). In one universe, he is prone to dumbness (mookibhaavamu), and in another, he is in limitless verbal transactions. One universe is divinely splendorous (divyamu), another earthly (bhaumamu) and intensely grounded. One is purified and another is of sensuous faculties. Moving from the splendorous to the earthly is arduous as moving from the latter to the former is difficult (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 364). Unlike in the earlier poem here Dharmarao thinks: ‘There isn’t another deluded yogi like me…Although his [Dharmarao’s] is a lapsed and contaminated path, it still follows only the yogic one’. (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 355.) But this is what the figure (character) in the composition says. Whereas the composition itself is a multiply layered, densely textured literary weave, and the figure in the weave contributes significantly to its literary effect/affect.

15.8 Experiential Excess The apparent ambivalence with regard to the parallel paths in Viswanatha’s work is a productive one. As discussed earlier, a major part of Viswanatha’s work is to configure the Indian experience. Even when the ends of such an experience seem

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to converge, the modes and means of attaining it are different. But neither the yogi nor the bhakta will delineate these modes and means. Each one is indifferent to the other mode. Now, it is only the poet who deals with the worldly modes of being for reorienting the worldly experience can portray these modes with involvement. In the very delineation of these modes of living in the world, the poet can evoke delighting experience. The poet alone can weave their figurations for, the poet moves with reflective imagination and verbalizes it for the indefinite addressee. As recognized very early in the Sanskrit tradition, there is nothing that the poetry cannot draw into its figural texture. If the rapturous immersive experience can be accessed and savoured through different modes, Viswanatha chooses the literary mode. The one who accesses such experience is called kavyajna or rasajna (a discerning, rejoicing, recipient of poetic delight). But, curiously Viswanatha says this in his work devoted to Kavyaanandamu: ‘I am afraid of the prospect of saying that there is no such experiencer of poetic delight. Even if there is such a one he will not disclose that he had attained such a state’. (Viswanatha, Kavyaanandamu, p. 179.) There are at least two implications to this observation: (i) that the poetic (or artistic) experience is not amenable to representation; In other words, it is non-representable, and as a consequence, inaccessible to discursive rendering; (ii) that such an experience is a state in a process which cannot be measured in terms of conscious or unconscious states of being. The embodied being in existence is too immersed in it to figure it out; that is a state that cannot be calculated with the protocols of existence—even when such a state is attained in existence. ‘When I am acting out a role’, says Vasanthi (a young actress) in Terachiraju (Checkmate), ‘if I know that I am acting that is not real action at all. Real action is a kind of ecstatic, glorious state’ (Viswanatha, Terachiraju, p. 136).22 It is a state of non-knowledge that surges up without the aids of awareness and knowledge. The actor’s observation suggests the possibility of sensing the existence of rasajna or kavyajna (the experiencer). Such a figure can be discerned in the mode of being of any seeker—be it a yogi, upaasaka, poet, musician, actor, etc. In the process of their intense and relentless mnemopraxial modes of being, these figures, perhaps, have the possibility of attaining such rapturous experience. It is such a possibility alone that enables them to pursue that path without compromise. Viswanatha’s work is woven with such enigmatic but poignant figures. These figures are enlivened always in poetic compositions. Two such pairs of figures (among many others) that haunt us from his oeuvre (perhaps more than Dharmarao and Veyipadagalu) are: Bruhaspati Bhattu and Kalidasa in Dootameghamu (Messenger Cloud) and Narayanarao and Viswanatha (the author tropes himself into a character) in Mroyu Tummeda (Soundings of a Humming Bee).23

Viswanatha, Terachiraju, (1955; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006, 6th edition). Viswanatha, Dootameghamu, in Nepala Rajavamsha Navalalu, vol. 4, (1966; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006, 3rd edition). Henceforth, all references to this work will be provided in the text. Viswanatha, Mroyu Tummeda, (1961; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2006, 2nd edition). All further references to this work will be provided in the text.

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If mnemopraxial modes are the main sources for configuring Indian experience in Viswanatha, the verbal and musical modes, that of poetry and music, play a major role in his creative reflections. These latter are related to and differentiated persistently from the yogic, upaasaka and bhakta’s modes. Yet they are all figural folds of the saadhaka (seeker’s matrix). Music and poetry are troped as the twin nurturing breasts of the goddess of learning. Poetry and music cultivate and delight the lively being. The experience of musical rapture is instantaneous and spontaneous (aapaatamadhuram), whereas the poetic delight is a reflective effect (aalochanmrutam). Yet the reflection must occur in the very instant of poetic reception. Everything must refulge in the fraction of a second: aa vichaaramantayu saadyah kaalamulone jarugunu. Sarvamunoka liptamulone bhaasinchunu. That micro-instant of refulgence is called surge or thrust of remembrance (sphurana); such remembrance erupts from the depths of restive memory. Such intense reflective spurt of awareness and remembrance yield immersive delight (Viswanatha,Kavyaanandamu, pp. 51–52). Although formally and presentationally different, poetry and music can reach out to hrudaya and evoke delighting experience. Unlike the yogic mode, the poetic and musical modes entail such delight to the performer and the indefinite addressee. Viswanatha accords more of such efficacy to music: Gaana vidya ‘ubhaya taarakamaina vidya’. (Musical learning entails a double articulation, (Viswanatha, Mroyu Tummeda, p. 27).)

15.9 Musica Ficta Mroyu Tummeda is the most intense and minute exploration of the essence of music and of the ultimate ends it can reach. Such an exploration is accomplished in and with relation to a deeply reflective literary inquiry; these inquiries are inseparably entwined. This unprecedented musical exploration is pursued in a gadya-Prabandha. As in the case of the other mnemopraxial modes, the ultimate of the musical mode too is to evoke/attain an immersive experience—an experience which can appear as a simulacrum of yogic Samadhi state; the musical experience can only be ephemeral but nevertheless experientially distinctive. The writer delineates such an experience by concentrating on the acoustic elements of the primal musical syllable—aum. In focusing on this syllable, the writer draws on the millennially nurtured improvised and disseminated verbal–acoustic Sanskrit traditions: The internally differentiated and minutely discretized vocalic musical locutions (trivibhakta, panchavibhakta, saptavibhaktamaina ‘samavedamu parinaminchi’) are of the Samaveda; their filiation to the variedly graded states of embodied existence (svapna, jaagrat, sushupti and tureeya) as configured in the Mandukya Upanisad and the sublime or sublimated psychic-somatic life evoked in differing acoustic formations (vaikhari, maadhyama, pashyanti, para) as unfolded in the reflective inquiries into language (Bhartrhari). What appears to be shared among all these differentiated compositions (of musical, somatic and verbal) is the figuration of the singularly common: the life-living-being (jeeva).

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Such intense and intricate weavings of the vocalic, musical, psychic-somatic trajectories that articulate the traversals of the lively being are thematized as a part of the unprecedented praxial experimentation of the seeker—an upaasaka (the hapless father of the future musical genius). His body and his breath are the site and technics of this stupendous experiment. A regular yogic path would have, by accomplishing focused attention on the unified primal syllable (aum), by abandoning even the verbal element, reached the final deep-meditative (tureeya) state. But this seeker’s invocation of the primal syllable is not that of the regular path. He is after something unexplored. He devotes himself to the discretized acoustic elements and practices them with total intensity. The sonic element ‘A’ is the first sound of the spatio-temporal emergence of beings (srishtiki pradhamaaksharamu). That sound emerges when wind surges up in the sky. The sound form ‘A’ emerges when the abdominal air gathers and comes forth from the open sky mouth. The primal locution ‘A’ is the figure of everything in the srishti. The father meditates and immersively invokes the ‘A’-kaara devoutly. He concentrates on the primal sound with ‘indifference’ to everything—births, deaths, distortions in lives. He gains maturity and competence; whether he moves in the air/sky or in mud is all the same for him now. He walks like a being of play (leelaapurushudu). Then he begins his focus on the next locution ‘U’. The U-kaara sound form emerges when the flow of abdominal wind is moved through the condensed mouth-sky. If the ‘A’-kaara is the space of wakefulness, the ‘U’-kaara is of dream-space. ‘There is no difference between them. But there is difference’. The dream-space condenses time. The wakeful existence can manifest in dream-space too. Both are experiential reflections of the singular lively being that inhabits everybody. Yet both dream and wakeful-states are unreal (idi–jaagrata–yunu kallaye. Svapnamu kalla, jaagradaavastha kalla); dream condenses the sky and the time and pushes forth a life motif. The seeker then concentrates and meditates on ‘A’ and ‘U’ of the primordial vocalic elements together. He realizes that the condensation of dream and the elaboration of wakeful-states both lack the real-actual in them (yadaarthalemi). The seeker-experimenter notices that he cannot reflect on para in a dream-state; after all, the dream-state is only a reflection of wakeful-state. The dream has no reflective appearance. Yet the father focuses further and reasons: if wakefulness itself is the mirror image of the ultimate awakening, and if it can enlighten reflection in the mirror image in wakeful-state, why can’t the mirror image of mirror image (which is the dream-state) evoke such wakefulness? Without being reflection of reflection the dream-state can hope to mirror the primal reflection, he reasons. Therefore, with intense attention to the ‘U’-kaara he gains control over his dream-state and regulates his dreams too. The seeker gains control over his dream-state; he achieves indifference towards the worldly emergences and disappearances; and yet he is aware that both these states are, albeit different, very much alike: they lack the experience of the real (yadaartha). As in the yogic path, this upaasaka of mantras (discrete sound units brought together in a chain of utterance) too appears to have closed the passage from the volatile manasic gateway to the sensorium. But his experimentation with the mantras is entirely a strife

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within the matrix of manas. His life probe continues. He then grasps the third locution ‘Ma’-kaara. This ‘Ma’-kaara is the deep sleep state (sushupti)—a dream-less state. This is a unique state. The lively being is awake among the faculties in wakefulstate. In the dream-state, it is awake among the appearance of faculties. Where is he awake in such deep-sleep-state then? If he is awake in the enlightened para state (thus accessing the dynamic force), that state will be the ultimate (tureeya). Sushupti is only the third leg. And that is achieved with ‘Ma’-kaara. There is no wakefulness in that state. The matter will remain matter. The movements in the matter, the sense movements will remain undisclosed in that state. Yet the Brahmin father does not wish to sublimate his quest into that ultimate tureeya state. He wishes to contain it within the third (sushupti) state but seeks to acquire in it the experience of the final state. For this, he does an amazing kind of invocative meditation. But that does not work out for him. He knows that such an experiment would not succeed. He struggles to achieve it by some means. When he meditates on ‘U’-kaara, he realizes that he sensed only the movement of the wind in the open—where the wind gets released from the open mouth-sky. Whereas the ‘Ma’-kaara that he practised is not like the earlier one. The movement of the wind stops in this; the lips close off; the wind flutters inside. Unless such arrested wind is released, the ‘Ma’-kaara will not emerge. This (arrested) ‘Ma’kaara is different from the other two sonic elements. Whether the latter made any rustle one does not know. Whereas the ‘Ma’-kaara’s rustle is eloquent. He reflects on this sound. He notices that this primal sonic element touches the zenith of the bodily regions and gets released from the meeting of the lips. It ascends and descends. As there is the upper most region in the infinite sky, there is such a region in the face. That sky is the face of the ultimate wakefulness; and that face has no knowledge of where its zenith is (it is infinite). When the wind flows, based on its force, it forms itself. The top-most part of this form itself is its zenith. When one edge rubs against another then the rustle emerges: that is ‘Ma’-kaara. The wave of the wind that comes forth in the open when it brushes with the ultimate region of the ‘sky’: then emerges the ‘Ma’-kaara. That is the nasal location in the sky. This ‘Ma’-kaara is the most delighting one. It is from this intensely focused invocative learning that the soundings of the humming bee emerged—and it immersed itself in the sounding of the river; the bee figure resonates and reverberates in the entire novel. The bee figure is white as it emerged from learning and knowledge—from the immersive upaasana, an ordeal of ardour. The father begins to invoke and meditate this sonic ‘Ma’-kaara of the bee. Without his awareness what emerged gained the musical form. Its status was ambiguous—whether it can be called such would be answered both ways (musical/non-musical). This is not the ultimate tureeya state. This is only the third sushupti stage for the seeker here. Here, once again playing with the acoustic tropes, the writer describes the pregnant wife of the seeker who is accompanying him on the forest path as an ‘A’-kaara state; she is the entirety of manifestation that emerged from his ‘A’-kaaropaasana. As the condensed figure of the entirety of creation, this ‘A’-kaara figure (the mother) could not assimilate the ‘Ma’-kaara. But the ‘Ma’-kaara has begun to shine in the womb of this ‘A’-kaara mother. Thus the third state of ‘Ma’-kaara was internalized in the

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first state of ‘A’-kaara and there it began to glow; the bee figure is now one with the body in the womb. The seeker’s own meditative invocation of ‘Ma’-kaara has yielded him no results. He was easily moving into the final tureeya state. He has no awareness of the faculties. He is unaware of even the sense of such awareness. He could not even awake in that third state of ‘Ma’-kaara. Not only that; in the process of his immersive saadhana, his experimentation with his acoustic-pneumatic states, he has exposed himself and his pregnant wife carrying the future musical genius to an attack by a wild tiger on their forest path. They both succumb to the wounds, but the wife dies after delivering the boy—Tummeda (bee). Yet they both continue to visit him and make demands on his capability in his later life. They try to bind him with their unfulfilled aspirations. The upaasaka’s experimentation (saadhana) has moved him into an extreme state. This is an unVaidika kind of Vaidika practice. Why and how is this a non-Vaidika yet Vaidika practice at the same time? Is musical learning that resists sublimation into the ultimate tureeya such a non-Vaidika upaasana? Is ‘art’ then such a type of involved absorbing practice? If this is the case then is the Brahmin father—without his knowledge, but with determination and experience—bringing forth a form of upaasana? Or, is he providing another meaning to upaasana that can be but is not sublimated into the final tureeya? In other words, is the writer in this Prabandha like the Brahmin father advancing the literary path as another such aVaidika-yet-Vaidika immersive practice? But, later on the writer shows that the Brahmin father’s efforts to bring forth a musical genius—an apara or abhinava Narada—from the child in the womb to be a ‘failure’. In doing so is the writer reinforcing the ultimate tureeya as the end of all uapasana—a state which the child, the musical virtuoso (incidentally, called till the end of the novel, Tummeda—the humming bee) eventually seeks? In other words, is the ultimate of the Vaidka mnemocultures the achievement of the tureeya as the real or the ultimate state of being? Is it precisely because of such a sense that the attempt to achieve such a state, in the third sushupti state, considered an aVaidika-Vaidika act? By extension do all other modes of being—especially those of the ‘arts’—whether literary or musical (even of dance) as they emerge from deep filiation with the loka— become aVaidika-Vaidika practices? Viswanatha’s work impels us to confront such tasks of inquiry. Interestingly, the bee, whose humming pervades the opening of the novel, is denied ‘awareness’ of its creation—its music. It immerses itself and moves about everything (including the rhythm of the river) as its own manifestation, its extension. Such awareness is explicitly accorded to the father who reflects on the discretized sonic elements. Similarly, the son, Tummeda, too is initially unaware of the nature of his musical renderings. He lets them out as he receives them; but his tone transforms them into magical notes and melodic elaborations. He is blissfully unaware of the logic or rationale of these musical articulations. Later on, however, Tummeda begins to learn the musical techniques consciously and with determination. He gains the competence to explicate the logic, provenance and the effect of his renderings. In this vein, Tummeda could have made a contribution to the musical heritage by developing an ‘Andhra Marga’ (the Andhra Way) in

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music and become an apara Narada (an other Narada, the puranic musical genius). The father wanted him to become precisely that. Tummeda does relentless practice (abhyaasa). But instead of learning and practising from the dream-lessons that his father provided him from time to time, Tummeda gets exposed to and gets soaked in the inscriptional and documented accounts of music developed by Bhatkhande in Bombay. The father who was an upaasaka of the pranava nada (primal sonic melody) wants Tummeda to learn from the non-inscriptional, undocumented and unprecedented vidya that he imparts him in dreams. Curiously, the father himself gains mastery over sleep, wakeful and dream-states of his existence. He imparts the musical knowledge to his son by blurring the wakeful and dream-states of his son too. The father controls even his son’s dreams. The son learns his music from that twilight zone of dream–wakeful-state. But what he learns, he puts to practice rigorously in his wakeful sate. The father–teacher’s dreamteaching wanes out from the moment the son turns to the inscriptional Bhatkhande and the gharaana traditions and their repertoire of ragas. Consequently, he pays the price as a school member—albeit a distinguished one. He continues to practice such inquiring and explicative performances with seductive impact—but they are all largely learnt from the newly emergent forms of the city. During this phase, he is also haunted by the goddess of Naada seeking him to release her from the musical incarceration that a nawab has confined her. Apart from Bhatkhande’s textualization–contemporization of music, the urge to free Indian music from the Islamic fold appears to be the demands that impinge on him from time to time. Along with these, his mother’s sole desire to see him become a star musician cumulates the pressures on Tummeda. He realizes that he was losing the path—though he does not yet know what this path meant. He drifts and drifts in a musical limbo, albeit with ‘success’. The telos of the Bildungsroman cannot be the terminus of this seeker’s epistemic-experiential quest. The city cannot entrap him.

15.10 Sensorial Sublimations Tummeda eventually turns around and gets himself on to the path of an upaasakaseeker without abandoning music, though. The last chapter of this Prabandha, while recapitulating the entire account, culminates in a poetic musical reflective portrayal of the terminus Tummeda seeks in his musical traversal. His musical learning consummates in his upaasana of the goddess of vocal-musical creativity. He dedicates his learning in the Devi upaasana. The Devi is here figured as a reflection and radiance (vimarsha/prakaasha); it is the confluence of light and inquiry. The light is the marker of everything; reflection is the cause of everything. Therefore, light and reflection both together are the creative force. Reflection is like the mirror which reflects the light and is projected on the wall of attention (chitta). That awareness gives the sense of being whole—a sense of plenitude to him. Tummeda devotes morning, evening and even in the middle of the night in the upaasana with his extraordinary musical learning. This becomes possible as he moves away from the trappings of knowledge,

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world, fame, patronage and the cities. He frees himself from those binds and bonds— but does not abandon his musical life and learning. He offers it to the Devi now. He receives it from her and what he receives he turns into an offering. The offering seeks endearing empathy from the Devi but what it releases as effect is a sort of serene tranquillity evoked through the novel resonances. The music-seeker’s (naadopaasaka) unprecedented meditative invocation is different from the yogic samadhi state which the yogi would achieve in the ultimate tureeya stage; but it is akin to that. The latter state does not invoke and externalize anything. It might appear to be a sort of intensified self-absorption—except that the ‘self’ in question as an agentive, psycho-biographical individuated entity has no place here. Narcissus has no use here; for, the latter gets fixated in the (reproducible) self-imaginary of himself. Tummeda’s meditative apostrophic invocation is imbued with the ultimate state but it differs in drawing on the verbal-sonic elements and sublimating them in musical forms. He breathes musical invocations. But this breath of life differs radically from his earlier pursuit and renderings of his musical learning in the cities. Earlier he indulged in the musical drift his life exposed him to. He and the invisible forces acting upon him (the mother, the goddess of music and the father) wittingly or unwittingly nurtured and projected his musical self; this could be seen in his defiance of patronage and in the palpable pride that he nurtured in himself. Although they both seem to have something common in focusing on the acoustic if not pneumatic, Tummeda’s saadhana is different from his father’s experiment. The father sought mastery over the primal acoustic elements and deliberately thwarted his path from turning into the yogic mode and thus attaining the ultimate (devoid of sound and form) state. All this he sought in order to invent an unprecedented musical tradition—to bring forth yet another Narada. In a word, one could say that the father was striving to capture the formless in acoustic-pneumatic form—a gesture not without pride. Whereas Tummeda, who emerges as the actional effects of his father’s experimentation, could have materialized his father’s yearning. While retaining the musical medium, he moves away from the father’s ambition and dedicates the sole medium that he is endowed with to the goddess. In contrast to his father, at the end, Tummeda turns himself into an absolute medium that spreads tranquillity and evokes delight. His upaasana is not with an ulterior purpose. It is more akin to the soundings of the humming bee. Here, it must be noted that the yogi, in contrast, cannot be such a medium; for, the yogi has no use for sound and form (nama and roopa). In figuring this experience of the saadhaka, the writer too seems to offer himself as such a medium which still sacrificially nurtures a difference essentially in order to share the delight. The imaginative vigour and creative intensity of Mroyu Tummeda excel even that of Veyipadagalu (though the latter works on a much bigger canvas of the mnemoscape). Here, Viswanatha penetrates deeply into the musical and literary ontologies (if one can put it that way). The first and the last two chapters (9 and 10) are the supreme literary-reflective achievements in Telugu literature. In the last phase of this Prabandha, Viswanatha innovatively and ingeniously introduces himself, in

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his very name, as the writer-trope. Instead of rushing to trace the autobiographical or historical clues to decipher the novel, if we attend to the pair Tummeda and ‘Viswanatha’ (the troped writer), one can sense the intensity of Viswanatha’s inquiry into differential modes of being and seeking delight in the loka. Viswanatha maintains such intensity throughout his work. Here, the writer begins to figure out in descriptive poetic compositions the transformations of the musician and their impact on his (the writer’s) own reflection and writing. The writer denies that he is giving a biography of the musician. He says that what he has given is only an account of the musician’s musical learning and its trajectory. Interestingly, it is the mother of Tummeada who gives an account of the poet/writer’s work. The writer (Viswanatha) would only take up an uncommon life story and delineate the states of mind, she says. These states are common in expression—but it is their delineation that sets them apart. What the real poet seeks out is the description of the uncommon mental states of a unique person. The savourable actional effect emerges from the portrayal of actional sediments of the manas (manobhaavas). There can never be any change in the actional sediments (which Bharata identified as eight). It is the poetic figuration of them that brings forth the change. Tummeda’s singular life account attracted the poet’s mind and hence his creation, explains the mother. The account once again maintains a distinction between thematization of a learning life and liveable learning. A liveable learning imparts learning for a reflective living but it does not thematize that living. The writer only indicates that the musician will continue this kind of transmuted musical performative learning—and then he will completely free himself from even that (which he has already done in a way by abandoning the musical career and patronage in Hyderabad and Bombay) and that he will become a yati/sanyasi. The experience of that ultimate state of liveable learning is unthematizable; and the writer only suggests it by deferring such a possibility in the case of the musician by another five or six years. Such a state—though the writer does not say this—is similar to that of the humming bee which immersively moves about in its environs without any reflection about its movement. The yati goes beyond the state of analytical thematization of the affective experience—while being in the world. Whereas, in contrast to the yogic saadhana, Viswanatha invokes once again the Bhrashta Yogi theme when the writer in Mroyu Tummeda confesses that he cannot attain that state/stage. The writer Viswanatha hides behind the unmasterable transgenerational trace of life as the reason for the failure of his own effort to achieve that state (of yogi/sanyasi): ‘My agony for not being able to receive that stage of life is indescribable. It should be there in my lifeline, shouldn’t it? It is absent in my lifeline, I believe’. (Viswanatha, Mroyu Tummeda, p. 378). Although the writer says this, he himself, like the Brahmin father at the beginning, is immersed in another a-Vaidika-Vaidika experiment—that of the literary exploration. The writer confines himself to the role of thematizing the reflective affect. The possibility and the paradox of the musician’s life account are contingent upon the writer’s apparent ontological undermining of his own work. Yet we learn from the work that the writer (in this novel) in his other work has attempted to extend

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the legacy of the kavya/literary tradition from Nannaya, Tenali Ramakrishnat and created an unprecedented poetic oeuvre. But that work will have to wait for a future generation to discover its singularity and distinction, feels the writer: ‘Andhra literary formation has changed. Interest in the earlier modes of composing has declined. If it has not declined, after a few years my new path will be received and welcomed…over a period of time my poetic work will be accepted’. (Viswanatha, Mroyu Tummeda, p. 375.)

15.11 Uncanny Intimations Viswanatha’s work stands apart from just every other’s in grappling with the question of ‘Indian experience’. Unlike the predominantly disciplinary-discursive accounts that thematized this ‘experience’ (Indology, literary studies, social sciences, history, philosophy, anthropology etc.), Viswanatha puts to work his literary-reflective imagination to configure this experience. As discussed so far, his work spreads on a vast canvas and gathers its resources from the most ancient to the most contemporary ones. In such extended imaginative exploration, Viswanatha provides a place of privilege to poetry and music. Surely, he differentiates poetry from music as dealing with articulable and inarticulable delights, respectively. Poetry renders articulable delight and music the inarticulable. Poetry renders awareness of the loka through sentential composition, through concatenation of affective verbal weaves. One can learn of other’s imagination by means of the language in poetry. The imagination is one but could appear to function as plural as it relates the exterior and interior lokas and their experiences. Music travels directly from ears to hrudaya, whereas the sentence (language) first circulates in manas and then travels to hrudaya. Viswanatha’s Dootameghamu (Messenger Cloud) once again grapples with the distinctive powers of music and speech (poetry). It elaborates the relation between the articulable and inarticulable. Music can delight even when it offers sorrow-filled tunes. It is precisely such sorrow-filled music that haunts the young girl in the palace in this ‘novel’. But she cannot verbalize that musical affect. It is here that the teacher, Bruhaspatibhattu, not a poet but who can probe into the inarticulable, enables her to verbalize and sense the uncanny musical haunting and its affect. But neither the teacher nor the taught have any inkling as to how the musical verbal powers would wormhole them into their (and others’) transgenerational existences. Music stirs up memories buried under layers of forgetful existences. The disturbing yet magnetic emotions and experiences excavated by music may themselves be delighting even when painful in their content. Only a verbalization of such paradoxical delight makes the experience articulable and shareable. Dootameghamu indicates the possibility of accessing transgenerational memory through music and creative poetic reflection. It shows the profound relationship between unbearable pain and the most absorbing poetic composition (Valmiki comes to mind; Kalidasa who appears as a figure in this Prabandha creates his own Meghadootamu as the composition unfolds). Even when one discounts the work

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as a literary fantasy in its conjuring of transgenerational memory and in its fabrication of a source tale for Kalidasa’s Meghadootamu, one remarkable factor pertaining to transgenerational memory cannot be ignored. The reasoning imagination of the work shows the profound filiation between memory and action as mutually co-constitutive. And the vector through which they operate is the vicissitudinal manas. As a passageway between the exterior and interior faculties manas configures actions and the modes of beings. Although the being may strive to master and orient manas, the being is unlikely to have complete control over the pulls and determinations of manas. For, the latter is a wormhole that can open passageways to the transgenerational. At the most, the being caught in an instant can sense the determining effects of the durational past—but cannot stop their course decisively. The being can have no sovereign power over the workings of manas. The teacher, Bruhaspatibhattu, can only sense the gravity of the past in the makings of beings in the present. But he cannot alter their course completely. He probably was acutely aware that the death of the girl (of the palace) at the age of twelve was inevitable; his effort to thwart it or alter the determination by hurrying everyone to reach the temple fails: he was prepared for the failure of his efforts as well. He makes the effort, takes a chance with the pulls of the actional past—but only in vain. Then he reveals the transgenerational determinations of the girl’s life. The durational agony will only have to be lived and endured in existence. Such endured agony has a chance of evoking or bringing forth a poetic or musical composition in existence. These compositions—even as they communicate the experience of agony—teleoculturally evoke delight among the performer–receivers. Such immersive delight may in turn (as in the case of the girl who from the age of 5 begins to be haunted by the invisible veena tunes) stir up passageways of memory. Such upheavals of remembrance fundamentally pluralize the apparently singular being in the instance of its (lively being’s) existence. The girl is often said to belong only three tenths of her durational existence to the present; that is, she is only three tenths the daughter of her present parents. Her lively being is intimated and haunted by the irreducible pulls of the durational. Poetic and musical compositions can intimate and articulate the haunting of such teleocultural memories. Viswanatha’s work shows another path to sense the transgenerational mediations of existence which is independent of but could also be related to the musical/poetic compositions. This mode of sensing is not contingent upon its articulability by verbal, musical or poetic means. It does not require to be externalized—even if it is verbalizable. This sense is accessed and lived in existence. That inarticulable experience can only be surmised by the observers in the mode of ‘indifference’—or as a relation of non-relationship through which the experiencer lives on his existence; he moves on in his existence in the loka—with such indifference. Bruhaspatibhattu is such a person—who was almost unaware of Kalidasa and has never read his work and has no knowledge of music or shaastras. He is not a pandita. Yet he is the one who traverses the mnemoscape-wormhole and through minimal verbalizations of the intimations helps the girl to access her memory; his verbalizations are neither musical nor poetic. How does Bruhaspatibhattu achieve such an extraordinary capability? Viswanatha points to the path of upaasana—the yogic mode of immersive meditative invocation

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of a formless force. Bruhaspatibhattu spends most of his daily routine in such immersive meditation; he finds ways to anticipate and deal with problems that surface in the lives of others, through his upaasana. But this intensive meditative reflective mode is not directed towards making him gain supremacy over his life and those of others (as it was in the case of the saadhana of Tummeda’s father). He knows about the impending death of the girl who was his daughter in her earlier existences (thrice)— but he cannot prevent (though he makes an effort) the death from happening. He lets the transgenerational determinations unfold in existence—and endures the pain and pleasure they unleash with indifference; he cannot undo them. He does not verbalize what he sensed and inform others of the impending calamity. It is the poet Kalidasa who renders the shattering agony of the sudden death of the girl into a delighting poetic composition. The upaasaka would be indifferent to such evocations; he has no use for them. Such upaasaka differs from Tummeda of Mroyu Tummeda. As could be seen, the latter sublimates his upaasana—by moving music from other kinds of entanglements—to invoke the visible–invisible, verbal–visual force of the goddess.

15.12 Haunting Melodies Dootameghamu is a poignant poetic ‘novel’.Viswanatha celebrates a poetic insight of Kalidasa which accords poetry the power to delight. During such delighting moments, the recipient can even experience feelings that he was totally unaware of until that moment; such moment can also stir awake transgenerational actional sediments sheltered in the body: Tachchetasaa smarati noona mabodha poorvam bhaavassthiraani jananaantara sauhrdaani. (cited in K, 83)

In Dootameghamu (which as is well known an inversion of the title of the famous kavya by Kalidasa—Meghadootamu), Viswanatha projects on music such power to stir up deeply submerged memories. This Prabandha can be said to continue a dialogue with Kalidasa. If this dialogue goes on at one level, at another, Viswanatha pursues his deeper inquiry into the plurality of modes of accessing delight. The upaasaka mode of Bruhaspatibhattu can sense the upheavals of manas but he is not perturbed by them. He keeps the gateway between manas and the sensorium, but the turbulent flows in this passage do not affect him. As a jyotisha, he can sense the future on the basis of his insight into durational pasts of persons—but he has no power to alter the workings of those intractable pasts. He himself is seized by their determinations and he endures them with indifference. But in the particular instant of existence—the ‘present’ of the Prabandha—the only ones who can begin to sense the transgenerational intimations are the hapless girl and with great effort the king Vikramaditya. Ironically, Kalidasa who is in the retinue of the king has no sense of such intimations. The poignancy of the novel does not come from the work of Kalidasa—who is troped into a character in the novel. If Bruhaspatibhattu is the yogi/upaasaka who is

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indifferent to the havoc played by the manas, the one who plays with this manasic matrix is not Kalidasa but the composer of Dootameghamu—Viswanatha himself. The manasic apparatus rivets almost everyone who is one with the ‘present’ instant— who do not sense the impact of the durational on the latter. The ‘present’ engulfs them in sorrow. But, as in the case of Valmiki, the overpowering sorrow itself has the force to free one from the paralyzing sorrow. Such an affect can open up the mnemoscape of durational intimations. Viswanatha creates precisely such a sorrowful instant which the poet Kalidasa transmutes into an abiding and everlasting poetic composition (though we do not get to see that composition in this novel). As the girl’s shockingly sudden death benumbs everyone, Kalidasa is the only one who feverishly weaves out his quatrains. Whereas the supremely seeing Bruhaspatibhattu (who endured transgenerational sorrow) disappears or withdraws into silence and darkness, unnoticed. Dootameghamu evokes the enduring feeling of endearing empathy for the immensity of loss; a sense of serenity takes over as one reaches the end of this haunting composition. Dootameghamu exemplifies, without being idiosyncratic, an essential component of Indian experience. It is the intractability of the origins of being and the necessity to temper one’s being even when one has no way of tracing the antecedents of one’s pasts definitively. For the traces and remainders of extended duration of being continue to haunt the being in the instant of its existence. In other words, transgenerational traces impact the emergence of being in an instant of existence. This recursive process of emergence of beings and their dissolution is profoundly contingent upon the actional life and the actional life cannot be completely purged from the work of desire. In a word, it is this dynamic combine of desire and actional life that is at the basis of the formation and circulation of beings in/as the loka. In such a reckoning, every instant of existence is singular and critical—for it provides the arena for the unfoldment of action and desire and their effect; it is also the chance of being in the world otherwise. Yet, and this is the point, the instant cannot be sublimated into affirmation of sovereignty of the being; that is, one cannot arrogate to oneself complete autonomy to redesign one’s being. Such arrogation forgets the workings of duration—the extended palimpsest of traces that makes and unmakes the being. Such complex weaving of the intractable duration and the lokated instant occlude the human (or any particular being—be it god or danava) as the supreme agent of action and the human as the origin and end of existence in the loka. This does not, however, imply that the necessity to act with one’s endowments is denied. On the contrary, actional life is ineluctable in the transformation of being. In short, the weave of transgenerationality disallows celebration of any sovereign humanist ontology. Such an imaginative-reflective mnemopraxial tradition has no use for theology— for no ‘theo’ ( ground or basis, or, deva) can escape the overdeterminations of the recursive durational-instantial weave in these traditions. Dootameghamu enacts this ‘non-humanist’ reflective orientation—an orientation that is pervasive in Indian modes of being. Drawing on the Vaidika sources Viswanatha exemplifies this orientation to configure Indian experience. But even here, he carves out his singularity by experimenting and innovating with his inheritance: he risks the a-Vaidika orientation and discerns the Vaidika in it. Despite the

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apparent and persistent urge to affirm the unity and centrality of Vaidika cultural image in his work, closer attention shows that this urge eventually gets surpassed by the inclination to seek more common delighting and happiness-yielding (eudaimonia) modes of living on. The violence of the invasive European cultural forces impelled him to discern and figure out Indian reflective-imaginative traditions and affirm their commonality. Yet his experiments and explorations have other intimations to offer.

15.13 Foreclosing Unifications Viswanatha traces the disruption of Indian traditions to the Islamic period; yet he does not conflate it with the violence of European invasion. In Mroyu Tummeda, for instance, he is sensitive to the significant contrast between the British and Islamic ruptures. Contrasting the experience of these two regimes in two different places, the narrator at one point says that the kind of degeneration that the coastal Andhra people suffered in their contact with the English cannot be seen in the seven hundred years of Islam in the (then state of) Hyderabad region. One of the reasons for the absence of such degeneration is the continuity of what can be called the bioculturally sustained cultural forms in this region. European invasion’s first major and lasting form of violence is the denigration and stigmatization of jati-cultural formations. This ruptured and tore apart the relationship between culture and jati—a bonding that was the basis of the immeasurable diversity of modes of being and articulating experience in this country. Viswanatha does not lose a chance to foreground the divergent biocultural formations and their cultural forms throughout in his work. In Mroyu Tummeda, he discusses the itinerant performing tradition of Kuchipudi troupes and the surviving vestiges of the song cultures of Babajis in the Islamic Telangana region. ( Viswanatha, Mroyu Tummeda, p. 63). But Viswanatha moves beyond the thematization of differentiated violence of the two regimes in Mroyu Tummeda. Overcoming his urge to save Saraswati as the goddess of Indian music from her enslavement in the Islamic reign, Tummeda moves towards immersive invocation of the goddess in musical notes. The desire for a reformative reclamation of a musical language wanes away and the musical impulse sublimates itself in the immersive apostrophic celebration of the source of verbal–visual elements. Similarly, in the context of Veyipadagalu, which graphically thematizes the geo-epistemic rupture, neither the narrator nor the protagonist Dharmarao and his variations (Kumaraswamy and Mangamma) appear as the champions of some national unification. This is explicitly stated in Dharmarao’s confrontation with the British administrator (Gardiner) who kidnaps Pasirika. Dharmarao tells the bewildered Gardiner that he (Dharmarao) is neither disloyal to the British, nor is he a member of non-cooperation movement; nor does he have any hatred towards the British nation (Viswanatha, Veyipadagalu, p. 575). Though Dharmarao was not antagonistic to Gandhi and the national movement, his search takes him elsewhere.

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He is a figure in a composition (which is a part of a much larger oeuvre) which strove to discern and reflect on cultural difference for configuring Indian experience. Dootameghamu too evokes themes that traverse beyond the apparent unificatory thematic. The novel portrays Vikramaditya as a valiant and victorious upholder of the Vaidika tradition across various domains and kingdoms in turbulent times (much before Islamic or European incursions). But this thematic fades away in the riveting accounts of the emergence of transgenerational memory and the sorrowful upheavals it leaves behind. What surpasses even this ’sorrowful’ account are the two very different kinds of responses it evokes: that of the poet Kalidasa (who turns the shoka into shloka—pain into poetry); and that of the yogic Bruhaspatibhattu who evokes the layered memory and knows the paralyzing pain it brings along but silently moves beyond the dualities of pain and pleasure. As a reflective poet who responsively received intimations of a tradition that persistently inquired into the possibility of happiness sans desire, it is inconceivable that Viswanatha would terminate his reasoning imagination in consolidating some putative national(ist) mission— either aesthetic or political. As discussed earlier, the tradition in which he is nurtured undermines the theology of humanism which became the basis for philosophical and political nationalism in Europe.24 On the contrary, Viswanatha’s work unequivocally affirms the possibility of exploring cultural difference outside the nationalist framework. More importantly, his productive imagination advances a formidable alternative to the ‘raging discord’ between philosophy and art that Platonism inaugurated in European (and not the pagan Greek) intellectual history. Viswanatha’s work shows the irrelevance of such Platonism in the Indian context. For, Indian traditions have not taken recourse to such categories as art, philosophy and indulged in aggravating their antagonism. Kavya and shaastra are, after all, two sides or aspects of the same coin; or, more precisely, they variedly and together reiterate, differentially articulate a common experience. The discerning faculty (buddhi) and the (with)drawing faculty (manas) are surely differentiated but not in any categorically antagonistic relationship here; as discussed earlier, these faculties in conjunction with the sensorium constitute the actional life of beings. Drawing on these resources Viswanatha composes his mnemocultural ensemble. This ensemble unfolds and spreads across through the figures of the poet, performer, musician (singer), upaasaka, bhakta and the yogi. Yet the very persistent effort to reinvigorate the inheritances in a ruptured context itself can be labelled as a passion for consolidating a unified culture and flaunt its supremacy. Viswanatha’s work does lend itself to fortify such an arraignment, in hasty readings. His phantasies about ‘out of India’ hominization of the planet, about Sanskrit as the source of all languages, kings of India as makers of Ramarajya (the kingdom of Rama), Vaidika India as the exemplar of human kind—all these are clearly aimed at overturning the colonial projection of European supremacy in 24

Cf. Derrida, ‘Onto-Theology of National-Humanism (Prolegomena to a Hypothesis)’, Oxford Lit Review Oxford LiteraryReview 14.1 (1992), pp. 4–23; and Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), pp. 6–18, 42–55.

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a specific context. But mere inversions tend to reinforce the hierarchical structure even if they change the role players. The glorified figure of Vedic India can surely be conscripted to erect a monument of national(ist) culture and Viswanatha’s work can be treated as embellishing a nationalist aesthetic. The restive polysemic notion of jati can be appropriated to reinforce this reading of Viswanatha’s oeuvre by the impatient. Despite the fact that Viswanatha’s work appears to lend itself to such attack— such a reading would betray its hasty expedient manoeuvre on two simple counts: (i) such a reading would largely deploy simple information retrieval method; and (ii) it betrays its inability to inquire into the epistemic-experiential status, if any at all, of the concept of the nation (or aesthetic) in the context of the traditions of performative reflection and creation that Viswanatha is immersed in. As is well known both the method (of retrieving verifiable information—‘history’) and the concept of nation are the legacy of colonial accounts of India. Once such a method and concept provide models of representation—and colonial education institutionalized such models—the long-cherished modes of literary reflective inquiries and the kinds of creative forms such inquiries brought forth do not receive the necessary attention. They get subordinated to the referential-representational apparatus. The performative epistemological work of the imagination is forced to serve the informative machine. This reigning model does not inquire into why the reflective-imaginative work in a culture remains indifferent to such models. As is fairly well known—on the basis of internal textual compositional allusions and relations (kavya/kavi prashasti)—there has been extended, even if intricate and non-continuous, communications across literary reflective traditions of India over millennia. These communications—manifesting as responsive receptions—disseminated across emerging bhasha traditions, fortified them into related but autonomous traditions and brought forth immeasurable range of cultural forms (of poetic, visual, textual, musical, performative kind) from internally differentiated regions. The reflective-imaginative disseminations worked in accord with a double dynamic. If a centripetal force converged the dissemination into a nameable, identifiable set (jati), at once another centrifugal force from within dispersed the seminal imports into heterogeneous formations (jatis). The heterogeneous destinies of the Ramayana, the Mahabharata or the Panchatantra and the puranas can be seen as the dehiscent effect of this double dynamic. The dynamic is at work not just in the context of cultural forms but operates at the very basis of what can be called the biocultural formations (jatis/kulas) of India. The most striking feature of a biocultural formation is that it is a persistently selfdifferentiating and contingently realigning entity. In other words, jatis self-divide and bring forth new jatis—and thus, they proliferate interminably. Jatis as (centripetal) name makers remix only contingently and guarantee no certitudes of identity; for they are prone to differentiate and disperse (centrifugally) interminably. Consequently, in the context of the phenomena called India, we are confronted with cultural forms and cultural formations, genres and genos that persistently form and transform, figure and transfigure themselves; and they responsively receive and disseminatively proliferate their inheritances.

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Now, such a restive dynamic of hetero-genos cannot be expected naively or delusively to invest in the (presumptive) certitude of a totalizing nation/nationalism. The concept of the nation did not emerge from the phenomena called India not because of the evolutionary retardation of some putatively covetable universal principle in its context. The stark absence of such a totalizing concept could possibly be due to a sense of the colossal price, such a presumptuous certitude will demand. The genocidal massacres that continue to be unleashed in cultures that are forced (or rush) to reckon themselves with the normative (identitarian) concept of the nation is glaringly and chillingly visible. It looks like the normative concept of nation cannot escape complicity with genocide—in its two senses—of erasing the genus and eliminating the genos; for the nation as a totalizing model with homogeneous identity would remain intolerant towards the hetero-genos.

15.14 Dancing in the Double Bind The expedient models (informational-normative-conceptual) of approaching colonized pasts commit a double violence: (i) they foreclose the possibility of inquiring into the responsive receptions of the hetero-genos beyond the programmings of the normative models; (ii) they barely prepare one to unravel the cultural, philosophical and religious milieu which brings forth such informational and conceptual models. Contemporary European inquiries into European heritage demonstrate that the fundamental source of European thinking is Christian theology: our culture is a ‘barely secularized theology’,25 declared Derrida. The entire conceptual grid (of history, ethics, law, politics, aesthetics, democracy, etc.,) of European thought is deeply rooted in the theological source; and some of the thinkers have been restlessly exploring ways to emancipate their thought from this theological heritage. Indian intellectuals and writers are barely in a position today to forge thinking beyond this double violence. No wonder V.S. Naipaul declared a few years ago: India ‘has no autonomous intellectual life’ in the modern period.26 It is in such an intellectually destitute situation that one sees the incomparable literary inquiries of Viswanatha. It is true that he seems to offer fantasies of kings protecting the entirety of the country (as if there was such a territorial unity) from the snow mountains to salty oceans and refers to it in the name of a ‘jati’; even if one considers such references to the country as a unified entity untenable, it is difficult to find a king in his work who turned it into a homogeneous entity or race. No celebrated king of his work would violate the diversity of the hetero-genos of the biocultural formation called India. On the contrary, Viswanatha would not lose any opportunity to bring out the distinctions and competencies of each of the demarcated jatis (the 25

Derrida. Without Alibi, edited and trans. by Peggy Kamuf, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 207. 26 V.S. Naipaul, ‘Sixty years after Independence that problem is still there. India has no autonomous intellectual life’. A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling, (London: Picador, 2007), p. 191.

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weaver jati of Mroyu Tummeda, the sabara of Dootameghamu, the Jangamas, the dommaris, the devadasis of Veyipadagalu, etc., bustle in his work). He would never erase the singularities of these cultural formations and through such genocide glorify a homogeneous nation. It is simply unthinkable in Viswanatha’s work. The vigorous refusal in Viswanatha to homogenize the genos is not the result of any empirical, ethnological information retrieving mechanism of the modern objectifying writer. Although Viswanatha asserts the need to be immersed in the village life to be a writer, his refusal seems to come more form his attempt to thematize the heterogeneous impulse that permeates the literary performative reflections of his inheritance. He does not turn to the village for some ‘local colour or flavour’ as is the wont of modern writers. Nowhere do the Sanskrit and Telugu literary-reflective traditions disregard the singularities of individuated entities and their distinctive actional lives. In fact, the topo-temporal formations of the loka that these traditions work with and in are fundamentally (and only) composed of radically differentiated individuated entities that are required to put to work their being in existence. The loka and being in the loka are the effects and sources of the actional life that one cannot escape putting to work. Viswanatha’s (gadya-Prabandha) work bustles with these individuated beings that move about and transact with/in the loka. For all the minute detail that he etches out, the focus of thematization in his work is more on the general imports of the loka (pleasure and pain and the need to negotiate with them in the world). Therefore, the detail is not aimed at providing empirically verifiable locations of time (thus, we get little of empirical descriptions of Hyderabad, Nagpur and Bombay in Mroyu Tummeda which is dense with visually evocative accounts); similarly, we get nothing of the geographical Nepal that one can reach out to physically in Dootameghamu. But the imaginatively evoked graphic detail of peopled, physical, temporal loka is surely tangible and definitely perceptible for the unfolding of actional life of beings circulating in it. Viswanatha is acutely sensitive to the inklings of the sensorium. In his writings the microscopic precision of the verbal–acoustic, visual graphical, olfactory and palatial and tactilic detail played out by the reigning desire intensifies the immersive pull of the loka (cf. especially the stunning beginning of Mroyu Tummeda). Although this delineation is certainly experientially sensible and it can evoke deeply submerged actional sediments (emotions and feelings), it is for sure does not derive from informationally observable and verifiable physical reality; even if such information can be amassed from his work, it will only have a secondary status. In a word, Viswanatha’s work does not come out primarily as a representation of the physical world as such; it evokes a perceptual world but the very idea of sensorial perception is mediated through a much deeper performative epistemic-imaginative reflection. Undoubtedly, one can find concrete references to changing physical and social environment in Viswanatha’s work (especially in crops and rivers, transport and education etc., in Veyipadagalu); but they appear as general (if not abstract) allusions to the colonial devastation. But he does not indulge in offering thick descriptions of these changes and thus privilege historical factors exclusively. Allusions to colonial

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events and their consequences are mainly aimed at thematizing the loka in an instance of existence. The real dynamic of the reflective imagination can be seen operating through the mnemoscape of the poet affirming millennial inheritances in the figuration of ‘Indian experience’. Empirical descriptions of the world are only secondary (or redundant) on this mnemoscape. Since the actional life is inescapable in the loka, the mnemagination here focuses mainly on the evocation of actional effects by means of graphic delineation of imaginatively configured perceptual detail. What is crucial here is: how do the actional effects relate to the (persistent) actional sediments (bhaavaas)? That is, how do the verbal–visual compositional forms that evoke actional effects impact actional sediments which in turn regulate our actional lives in the loka? In this complex biocultual reflective imagination, the goal of the being is to seek happiness by reorienting the actional life towards virtuous ethos. Virtuous ethos seeks undesiring happiness. It can be differentiated from the dualities of pleasure and pain. Viswanatha’s oeuvre enlivens these cherished intimations. Now in order to thematize these enduring teleocultural intimations, Viswanatha does not require empirically verifiable historical information. If one looks only for such information, his work will either frustrate or infuriate the investigator. Allusions to either Islamic or British historical time are only incidental and not essential for Viswanatha to thematize the loka in his context. Such references provide the occasion for instantiating the deeper reflective dynamic in a time—space that he lived in—a context which cannot be definitively severed from the conception of the loka in general. Yet the singularity of this oeuvre itself has been made possible by the millennial Sanskrit and Telugu poetic traditions. He responded to their legacies and invigorated them.

15.15 Enduring Legacies Viswanatha stands apart and alone in the entirety of Telugu literary reflective heritage in forging such a singular responsive reception. He immersed himself in the live currents of Telugu literary traditions; he nurtured and cherished the deepest praxial intimations pertaining to the lively being as the effect of actional life and the necessity of non-sovereign, an-agentive rendering of actional life; and he chiselled out his own sonic-poetic, visual acoustic communicational idiom on the currents and intimations of these legacies. Above all, it must not be forgotten that this most singular smelting of idiom was achieved during the period of prevailing colonial violence and its nihilistic aftermath in the twentieth century. It is against such colossal epistemic ruptures that he sought to affirm and extend the intimations and currents of his complex inheritance. He sought after very selective singular figures (about ten) of the extended Telugu poetic tradition, offered penetrating insights into their compositions with precise analysis, and remained immersed in the sonic-poetic smithies of their compositions. His remarkable invocation of them as source of his own work stands testimony to his singular reception of their heritage:

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Rushivanti Nannayya rendava Valmiki Tikkanna shilpapu denugutota Yerranna sarvamaargechachaa vidhaatrundu Potanna telugula punyapeti Srinaathudu rasaprasidhdha dhaaraadhuni Krishnaraayadananya krutiprabandha Peddanna vadapota pettu nikshurasambu Ramakrushnudu suraaraamagajamu Okadu Nachana Somanna; yukkivundu cheripi padisarlu tiruga vrasinanu mokka voni yee yaandhra kaviloka moordhamanula madguru sthaanamuluga namaskarinchi. Sage-like Nannaya is a second Valmiki Tikkana is the ‘style’ of Telugu arbour; Yerrana the maker of all poetic paths; Potana the Telugus’ receptacle of virtues; Srinatha pours the flows of precious flavours; Krishnaraya the incomparable creator of prabandhas Peddana the essence of filtered cane juice; Ramakrishna the divinely intoxicated elephant. And the one Nachana Somana remains: Even if ten times obliterated and rewritten, unblunted, shine these precious gems of Andhra; placed as my teachers, I salute them. It is not just the path-breaking Telugu poets whom he salutes; the Sanskrit tradition too forms his element: Bhasa KalidasaBhavabuthi Dijnaugulaku brashasta vagvilakshanudu Mu raribhattunakunu Rama katha bhaashya kaarulakunu modpu kai ghatinchi. (Viswanatha, Kalpavrkshamu, (1.1.29–30, 10– 11)) To all Bhasa, Kalidasa, Bhavabhuti, Dinnaga and Muaribhattu with supremely refined poetic utterance, I join my hands and salute all these poet-commentators of the Ramakatha.

Viswanatha forged his own poetic filament from this actional sonic reflectivity. He risked and experimented and brought forth an unprecedented oeuvre which gifted the Telugus inexhaustible pathways for exploration. He sought to affirm the imports of

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reflective inheritances as they are articulated in singular compositions of poets with vigour (cf. Okadu Nachana Somanna, and Shakuntala yokka Abhijnata).27 Beyond that, as we tried to show earlier, he persisted in thematizing these imports in his own extended experiments in his gadya-Prabandhas. Viswanatha’s reasoning imagination traversed fearlessly at a time when documentarist, verificationist discourses on the one hand, and unificatory and identitarian discourses on the other were stridently on the ascendant. These discourses continue to ransack reflective-imaginative compositions for documentary evidence in the name of advocating politically correct redressals. In such a pervasively expedient context, which can have catastrophic genocidal implications, Viswanatha restlessly forged the paths of inventive responsive receptions. Against the nihilism of (post)colonial virus, Viswanatha’s work voiced in the open the significance of Indian cultural difference and showed how the intimations of this difference can move everyone beyond the sui-geno-cidal ipsocratic structures that Europe deployed everywhere. His daring reflective imagination and his acute responsive reception distinguish him as a singular figure to have emerged in the last millennium in Telugu literary heritage. He forged the singularity of cultural difference of the Indian traditions and from that he configured the distinctive Indian experience which none in the millennial heritage of Indian creative-reflective traditions was impelled (even during the Islamic period) to do. It must be pointed out that no one in the destitute (post)colonial times even attempted to figure out what Viswanatha accomplished in such an expansive and intense ways. The destitute postcolonial nihilism continues to succumb to cultural self-denigration which the colonial virus spreads. Viswanatha intimated the possibility of happiness beyond the viral nihilism through his incomparable reasoning imagination. Tirelessly, he affirmed the experience of an entire existence and loka outside Europe, beyond Europe. The future of ‘Telugu Literary Studies’, if there is any, is contingent upon learning from the daring experiments and the enduring legacies of Viswanatha Satyanarayana.

27

Viswanatha has written about ten commentaries (apart from numerous lectures and essays) on major poets of the Telugu (and some Sanskrit) traditions. Among them are Okadu Nachana Somanna (The One Nachana Somana), (1970; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2007); Shakuntalamu Yokka Abhijnaanata, (Remembrance of Shakuntala), (1961; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2007; Allasani Vaari Allika Jigibigi, (The Dense Textured Weave of Allasani), (1961; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2007); Nannayyagari Prasanna Katha Kalitarthayukti, (Nannaya’s Delicate-Pleasant Poetic Composition), (1954; Vijayawada: Sri Viswanatha Publications, 2007, 5th edition).

Sendings: Communicating Responses

The ‘call’ of ‘infinite justice’, stated Jacques Derrida, required a commitment to the ‘universalizable culture of singularities’—a ‘culture in which the abstract possibility of an impossible translation could nevertheless be announced’.1 Infinite justice would imply justice which is interminable—that which can never be reduced to some concretely determined objective entity, which can never be fully present like an historical monument. It is justice that is deferred asymptotically with the struggle for it. In the singularly Judaic theological idiom, it is the justice which is ‘yet-tocome’. This idiom draws from and repeats other Judaic conceptions such as the world-to-come, the god (messiah)-to-come and in Derrida’s evocative rephrasing, the ‘democracy-to-come’. One ‘waits’ forever—like the countryman in Kafka’s tale for the yet-to-open doorway of justice (law for Kafka).2 Here, the ‘call’ indeed is the command, injunction, order and also a plea of the Judaic god—the call to commit oneself in total abandon in an unflinching acquiescence. In a word, the ‘call’ is the covenant. Abraham commits himself to this call and sets out to sacrifice his one and the only beloved son. The call reinforces the ‘covenant’—a holy pact between god and the patriarch—between two fathers. The call and the covenant are destined for a wholly singular group—the chosen people with a promise of the unforeseen rewards: a promise of the world-to-come. Derrida scrupulously put to work the concept of singularity to affirm its repeatability, its transformed iteration, in a word, its universalizability. No singularity can exist without the possibility of its repeatability, contended Derrida. Iterability is the absolute condition of possibility of signification. But, he would contend, the work of iteration cannot deprive the distinction of the singular. Thus, instead of conforming to the traditional hierarchy between the universal and particular, Derrida goes on to 1

Jacques Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone’, trans. Samuel Weber, in ed. Gil Anidjar. Acts of Religion, (New York: Routledge. 2002), pp. 40-101. 2 Franz Kafka, ’Before the Law’, in Collected Stories, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf (e-book), pp. 185-86. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2

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overturn and displace the received hierarchy by foregrounding the singular on the one hand and at the same time underlining the iterability of the singular (which would be to universalize it) on the other. Translation is an idiomatic trope which unfolds the relation between the singular and the universal in Derrida’s work. Translation is a daring-violating act that wrenches something which seems impregnably nestled in the womb of an idiom (a ‘native’ ambience). Thus, translation relays the abstracted singular from what seemed like the impossible-to-penetrate habitat—into the (wholly) alien but pregnable receptacles groomed in their own soils. Translation turns the impossible possible. Translation, however, is not just a(n almost impossible) transaction among two different languages as such. It can be a transferral of inheritances and individual efforts at materializing the effect of thought or creative sense. Translation at a primal level can be a transaction (between the two senses) of the sense itself. Translation is an act that forges its effect while the act itself not being the sole cause. Translation promises the afterlife for the translated. Yet no translation can assume or announce a transparent relay between the act and its effect—between the ‘source’ and the ‘target’, the given and what gets delivered. Further, the host receptacle—the supposedly relaying receptor and the soil of its nurture may remain incompatible with the arriving guest. Or, the arriving implant can be invasive and thrive in the host soil (like the ashen eucalyptus) sucking out the saps of the invaded host soil. Translation and hospitality thus would remain more abstract formal principles unconcerned with the soil and the seed on occasions. Kshetra kshetrajnayoh jnaanam yattad jnaanam matam mama3

Sings the Bhagavadgita from the untranslating Samskruta traditions: A learning pertaining to the soil and the knower of the soil is the position of learning of mine [says Krishna]. Such is the essence of learning that enables refining the cultivation of soil and the knower of the soil in existence in the liveable learning traditions of India (we will return to this). The translational relation between the Semitc and the non-Semitic (in this context, the Samskruta traditions) is never a comforting and felicitous one. The Semitic translates—as a curse and makes virtue of this by turning it into a singular gift to universalize. The Semitic is the only heritage (as in the case of many other domains) which offers a theoretical account of translation. Sanskrit does not translate but is indifferent to translational appropriations of it. Consequently, neither the Greek nor the Samskruta traditions found it necessary to offer an explanation about translation. The Samskruta traditions spread across their sonatic compositions rendering them performatively through the lively archives of their biocultural formations. The rhythms of their resonances remain untranslatable. No one, excepting the Semitic Europeans (from the nineteenth century), indulges in translating the Vedas in the last four millennia. Vedic compositions are musically performed in distinct contexts. 3

Bhagavadgita, trans. Krishnamacharyulu and Goli Venkataramayya, (Gorakhpur: The Gita Press, 2003), 13.2, p. 641.

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The division and hierarchy of the particular (‘chosen’, the ‘called’, the ‘faithful’, the ‘true’) and the universal (mankind, race, world, community and indeed the universe) is entirely alien to the Samskruta traditions. They grappled with the question of difference beyond this oppositional hierarchy—and found no use for the gestures of overturning and displacing any structures; their formations indulged in valorizing no structures and systems. A shared idiom fecundated their non-invasive traversals; and the received idiom was inflected in incalclculable ways from the responsive contexts which opened up from time to time. Even when it aimed at deconstructing scrupulously the division between the singular and the universal, it is the spirit of translation—the violence and courage— which permeates Derrida’s work. It might sound strange but transparent that almost all the singular instances he lovingly engages with to show their unversalizability offer themselves essentially from Judeo-Christian heritage. Perhaps it might sound counter-intuitive to ask: why is it that the Semitic particularity persistently or obsessively seeks to prove its universality? Unfortunately, we do not find such a question receiving any particular attention in the work of Derrida. One can think of his painstaking explanation of the ‘secret’ ‘covenant’ of Abraham to affirm its singularity and universality at the same time.4 One can think of the fiduciary relation between ‘faith and knowledge’—the two sources of religion—which he endearingly elaborates from the Tertullian-Kantian imperatives. (Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge’, Acts of Religion, pp. 42–101) Further, his open acknowledgement of the whole range of Judaic theologemes (cut, circumcision, break, crypt, mark, promise, secret, wait, etc.), which are operative in his entire work, reinforces the deeper desire of the Semitic traditions (to universalize the particular or subsume the latter under the former).5 Yet Derrida’s (equivocal) play with the singular universal risks a question which can, perhaps, only evoke an undecidable response. Does not Derrida, in conformation with the cherished European philosophical heritage (acclaimed to be the only universalizing entelechy, which must be differentiated from the pagan Greek and Roman heritages), presupposing the universal a priori, sought to excavate its presence in the singularities he so patiently and exemplarily engaged with? In other words, does not deconstructive unravelling (as he demonstrates in the cases of Levi– Strauss or Rousseau, Freud or Genesis), in its prising open of the singular, in fact track and extract the operation of the universal a priori? Alternatively, is not his dauntingly devoted attention to the detail of the singular, in the ultimate analysis a concerted strife to forge the universal from the particular? As mentioned a moment ago, given the fact that all the major instances of the singular which receive Derrida’s singular attention are offered from the Semitic heritage, one cannot help raising the question concerning Derrida’s play with the singular and universal. In this context, 4

Derrida, ‘Literature in Secret: An Impossible Filiation’, trans. David Willis, In The Gift of Death, (Second Edition), (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), pp. 119-158, see especially, pp. 143– 158. 5 Derrida, ‘The Principle of Reason: The University in the Eyes of Its Pupils’, in Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy vol. 2, trans. Jan Plug and others, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 129-155.

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one wonders whether the singular instances of Plato (especially the discussion of khora) are not really a part of Derrida’s play with the unversalization of the Semitic singularities? Plato appears to be the only exemplary pagan (not so much Aristotle) who plays such a (unversalizable singular) part in Derrida’s deconstructive scenarios. But deconstruction can tempt every singular culture to reiterate the principle of the universalizable singular or the translational imperative. One can easily guess the pastime such a template can unleash. Let us return to Sankara to figure the contours of the limits of the unversalizable singular principle or project. Tenaasya shravanaattadartha mananaat dhyaanaachya samkeertanaat.6

Listening, sensing, meditating and singing in melodies (of ) that [other/para]. Here, the that can refer to the composition (Dakshinamurthy Stotra) whose finale this line introduces. It can also refer to para(shabda)tattva jnaana—that other in you everywhere. In other words, the song composition sings of what it has. That is, every formation like the composition in question here is at once the weave of its sonic acoustic verbal elements and at the same time it is also that (para) which cannot be reduced to those elements. Thus, all formations are of the ‘same’ with the inhering in of an other. The transformation of every such formation depends on the way it lives the ‘relation’ or non-relation between the non-other (apara) and other (para), the elements of the formation and the inhering in of the non-formational other. The emergent-dissolutions of formations are all involved in working out this (non)relation. But this relation has never been conceived in terms of a hierarchy of oppositionality in the Samskruta traditions. As pointed out earlier, tat-tva refers to that other (in/of ) you; thus para can inhere only in formations and in relations; para does not exist—and it cannot be conflated with or referred to as a formation. Therefore, the question of translation is unintelligible in these traditions—for para tattva is neither an entity or a sense nor intelligence nor a negative force to be transferred from a source to a target. Therefore, when one listens, senses, recalls, meditates, sings or enacts one is only multiplying formations—each one of them articulating the question of the (non)relation. Consequently, no formation has been accorded an exclusively superior position over others. It must be noted that when one refers to the problematic of formation and relation one is not exclusively referring to some privileged intellectual philosophical heritage of India. There is no such privileged domain. The formations in question are not necessarily verbal or visual. The problematic pertains to formations in general or formationality as such. It can be an individuated unit or an assemblage of individuated units. Yet no individuated unit is a seamless totality, unified from inside as such. No formation can sublimate itself into such a unified entity. That other of you would always already open up the individuated entity in its very formation of you. This can be witnessed in the much maligned caste/jati formations of India. 6

Sankaracharya, Sri Dakshisamurthy Stotram, trans. Svami Tattvavidananda Saraswati, (Secunderabad: Brahma Vidya Kuteer, nd.,), 10, p. 17.

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Jati as a biocultural formation internally mutifugally differentiates itself from itself. It is from the womb of a jati that other jatis come forth interminably: jati originarily is a trope of generativity. Yet individuation implies a minimal internal coherence, an operation of some kind of pluripetal force. Emergences and dissolutions of entities and relations manifest individuations and imply the operation of pluripetal forces. Thus, neither of these forces, multifugal or pluripetal, can be exclusively operational; nor can one exclusively lord over the other structurally. There is no space for any sovereign force in these formations. Yet the individuating impulse can have a tendency to assert itself exclusively as in the case of an individual/ jati. But the consequences of such assertions can be suicidal. It would amount to denying, disavowing or ignoring the other of the formation. It is precisely in such a context—the context where the individuating tendency deludedly strides to assert its autonomy—that Samskruta in its fundamental sense of transformative refinement is offered as a cultivable endowment. It is the task of the individuated formation to attune itself to the praxis of Samskruta. It is precisely the element of Samskruta which internally differentiates formations—be they performative reflective (graamya-naatyadharmi as in the case of naatya; graamya-guna-alamkaara in the case of kavyadharmi) or the internally varied biocultural formations (the ‘Brahmana’ ethos) and among all the other formations (be they flora or fauna or mineral formations; in a word, all moving and rooted entities). The Samskruta ethos can also spur strife and polemos among formations— and thus affirm further finessing of cultivable ethos. Such strife is interminable as long as the dynamic rhythms of emergences and dissolutions are at play. The Samskruta traditions tell us that such play has neither an origin nor terminal. The Samskruta traditions proliferated with the double dynamic of pluripetal and multifugal forces bringing forth non-homogeneous modes of being and forms of performative reflections. The double dynamic and its effective formations cannot, however, be coded in terms of a translational transaction between apara and para. The double dynamic is entirely the operative force of only apara. Para’s ‘relation’ to this dynamic is that of unaffected indifference. Yet, the attribute such as ‘dynamic’ to apara is not entirely appropriate. It seems to accord an autonomous power to apara and elevate it to a sovereign position. Such positions have the status of delusive projections in the Samskruta traditions. For, the unfolding of apara’s effects cannot occur independent of the indifferent para’s pervasive and permeative force being (not) there/without being present; apara is ineffective without the unaffective para. At the same time, (a)para is/are nothing (but) indifference. And this (in)differential relation appears to provide a certain cohering impulse of formationality as such and enable the proliferation of formations of finite infinity in the reckoning of the Samskruta traditions. Samskruta is essentially the cultivation of learning to live this (non)relationality in existence—while being involved among formations as a nonunifiable emergences. Performative Reflections attempted to sketch the elliptical contours of the liveable learning, which the Samskruta traditions unfolded over millennia. The essence of learning which these traditions imparted was faced with the alien heritage of the Semitic religions. Whether there was a genuine interface between these heritages

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remains a debatable question. From the work explored so far, one can surmise that the Samskruta traditions could not have evinced any anxiety to demonstrate their superiority or supremacy over Semitic religions. There is barely any sign of any kind of fundamental engagement with the Semitic religions from within these traditions. It is only in the nineteenth century, as the European heritage interrogated or prised open the Samskruta traditions from within their (European) frames of inquiry (originary, historical, religious, ethnographic, philological and above all, universalist) that it provoked reaction formations from the fringes of these traditions. Given their interminable praxial orientation aimed at transformative refinement of modes of being in existence to sense paratattva jnaana, Samskruta traditions were attentive to individuated and differentiated formations and their cultivable ethos. Such ethos and its orientation were never driven by any anxious (or supercilious) spirit to universalize and appropriate or translate, compare and totalize or unify all formations. Thus, the Samskruta traditions cannot be said to have thought of codifying or subsuming their varied modes of liveable learning under unifying or totalizing terms such as the nation, canon, system, period and territory. They drift across (as) the formations of spatio-temporal complexes. As their entire orientation is in putting to work the emerging formations, these traditions can also live along indifferently with the unifying formations of religions, nations and identities unleashed by the invasive Semitic religions. Over millennia Samskruta traditions lived on with what are entirely unlike them; they live on with the unlikely without the violence of anxiety to appropriate them and impose their modes of being on the appropriated. The wholly other can move about in its own preferred mode of being in these traditions. The case of the heterogeneous biocultural formations (tenaciously affirming individuation and differentiation) is an eloquent (and not necessarily privileged) instance of such in-differentiated modes of being of the Samskruta traditions. Yet, emerging from the discursive domain and the institution implanted in the colonial epoch, even this work of critical humanities cannot help acknowledge that Performative Reflections can also be seen, after all, as a concerted endeavour in translation. Surely, but as might be evident by now, this work remains an uneasy (or even a failed) translation of what never inclined to translate or what cannot be translated (the essence of learning). Performative Reflections, perhaps, can be seen as the legacy of not an altogether fructuous interface, if such a telos is possible in this case. When seen from the ethos of the drifting modes of being, the universalizing and translational spirit advanced (perhaps) entirely in good faith by the most concerned philosophers from the Semitic religions, it is difficult to see whether these religious heritages are open to the essence of learning as the cultivable ethos to sense jnaana in enduring modes of being. The Samskruta traditions intimated such an essence of learning and were attentive to respond to it in (non)relational modes of being. Such praxial responsive reception does not hesitate to suspend even the cherished ends of man—the Purushaarthaas. As Sankara observed:

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Na Dharmo na chaartho na kaamo na mokshaha7

Neither cultivable tenor nor desirable wealth, neither erotic drive nor the ultimate release. Beyond these disciplines of learning, Samskruta (refined, cultivable ethos) can access a delighting serenity of apathetic affect in existence even while being among unlikely formations: a non-universalizing liveable learning open to every singular formation (in)differently.

7

Sankaracharya, ‘Nirvanashatkam’, in Sri Sankaracharyakruta Stotramulu, edited by Challapalli Venkata Ratna Prasad, (Hyderabad, 2017), pp. 201–203.

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Aachaarya Teacher, the one who sustains the tradition Aadhyaatma Individuated mode of being, open to sensing the other Aahata Struck, bound Aakaasha Sky, the first of the five elements Aalamkaarika Competent in verbal embellishments Aalochanmrutam Savour of reflective nectar Aananda Delight, rapture Aapaatamadhuram Instantaneous delight Aapah Water, the fourth of the elements Aarochaki Discerning, reflective being Abhaavavaadis Nay-sayers, deniers of atma (Buddhists) Abhinaya Enactment Adhyaasa Projectional miscognition Aglia Frontal jump Aham I-ness, Sense of individuation Ahamkara Individuated sense as the cause Alamkaara Verbal-sonic embellishments of poetic body Alaukik Irreducible to the spatio-temporal complex of a given existence Anaahata Unstruck,unheard Anaakhyaana Non-narrative Angahaara Concatenated movements of the limbs (in dance) Angikaabhinaya Enactment by means of limbs Anka Episode Antahkarana Internal faculty Anukrama Sequence Anuloma Regular alliance Anushtaana Rendering through traditional practice Apara Non-other Apara-vidya Learning of the non-other Apaurusheya Unagentive (formation) © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2

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Artha Wealth, sense Atma That which inheres in and circulates among formations Aum Primal syllable Avidya Devoid of learning Ayuh Life breath, duration of life Ayurveda Learning pertaining to life and its duration Bhaava Actional sediment Bhashas Languages Bhooloka Earth-based habitat Bhoota Being, element Bhootaatma That which pertains to beings and elements Bhuvarloka Mid-region between heaven and earth Chaari Movement Chetana Spur Chitra Figure Daasa-sthiti A state of offering oneself (to the other) Daitya Children of Diti, demons, raakshasas Daana Offering made to others Daanava Raakshasa, children of Danu Darshana Seeing, sensing the presence Dayaaveera Compassionate hero Desha Lokation Deva God Devaloka Abode of gods Dharma Cultivable endowment Dharma-aachaara Traditionally cultivated endowments Dhaatu Substance, tissue Dhvani Sonance Digbaji Jump Drushya Visual presentation Drut Speeded up movement Dukhita Sorrowful Dveepavatee Containing islands Gadya Prose Gadya-prabandha Prose composition Giribhyasravanti Flows among mountains Graamya Common, Vulgar Graamyapravrutti Vulgar ethos Graamyatva Vulgar mode of being Guna Quality Guru Teacher Hlaadah Delight Hrudaya Cordial Hrudiveekshitam Cordially discerned Iha Here

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Indriya Faculty Itihaasa Already occurred event Jaagrat Wakeful Jagat That which moves, oval seed-shaped universe Jala Water Jamun Blackberry Janasamsadi Gatherings of people Jati Cultural formation Jeeva Life-living-being Jeevi Living being Jeevita Living Jhaap Jump Jnaana Knowing, discerning Jnaanamaarga Path of knowing Jnaana-karmendriya Cognitive-actional faculties Jyotisha Astrology, Astronomy Kaala Temporality Kaama Desire Kala Phase or aspect Kalpa An epoch of temporality Kapha Watery component Karana Act Kavitvabeeja Seed of poetic saying Kavyaanandamu Poetic delight Kavyaatma The essence of kavya Kavyadharmi Poetic ethos Kriya Action Kshetrajna The one who knows the domain or field Kumbhaka Retention of air in lungs Laakshanika Competent in sensing the alluded meaning Lasya Delicate action Lingaatma Trace of the subtle Loka Spatio-temporal complex Lokadharmi Common ethos Maadhyama Medial state Mahaayuga A sum of four sets of temporal duration Mahatmya Splendorous occurrence Mama Of mine Manana Ruminative recall Manas Abode of desire and memory Mandala A gestural formation Manobhaava Inner feelings Mantra A verbal spell, utterance Manusha Of human Mishrama Mixed

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Moksha Releasement Mudra Gestural sign Na-iti Not this Naada Sonance Naama Name Naatya Dance drama Naatyadharmi Performative ethos Naatyopadesha Performative counsel Nadee That which flows, river Naadi A channel (of the body) Nidhidhyaasa Focused attention Nimesha A blink of an eye Nimna Slow or quiet flow Nirukta Definitional rendering Nirvahana Orchestration Nrutta Dance without narrative, non-narrative performance Padya Poetic stanza Pala Episode Panchatanmaatra Essences of the five elements Panchavibhakta Divided into five Pannaga Snake Para The other Paraayana Recitation Paratattva Of the other Parnashaala Hermitage made of leaves Pashyanti Seeing Paurusheya Agentive (formation) Pichlia Back jump Pitta Fiery substance Pooraka Inhalation Praanaayaama Breathing modes Prabandha Composition Pradhaana-prakriti Primordial, primal source Prakaasha That which shines Pramaana Rule of validation Praana Life breath Pratibha Blossoming radiance Pravachana Performative commentary Pravachanakaara The one who offers commentary in a performative mode Puja A mode of invocation and offering made to god Purana A genre of ancient composition Purusha The one who dwells in a formation Purushaartha Ends of man Raashipurusha Composite being Rajas Energetic, actional faculty

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Rakshasa Demon Rechaka Exhalation Rishis Sages Roopa Form Saadhaka Practitioner Saakshi Witness Saatvikaabhinaya Enactment of emotive states at once Sadaachaara Practice of appropriate modes of being Salila Water Samkalpa Resolve Samvaada Conversation Sangita Music Sankeertana A song genre Sankshepa Summation Sanyasi Renouncer Sarga Chapter, phase of creation Sarvavarna Pertaining to all cultural formations Sat That which is Sattva Strength, substance Sattvaatma The core formation Shaareerika Of the body, the one who inheres in the body Shaastra A discipline of learning Shaastrakaaras The one well-versed in disciplines of learning Shabda tattva The nature of sound Shadangas Six disciplines of learning, six limbs (of the Veda) Shareera The body complex Shatdarshanas The six disciplines of learning Shatka A poem of six stanzas Shilpadharmi Sculptural ethos Shimshumaara Crocodile or scorpion Shravana Heard Shravya Audible, heard Shruti The Vedas, a composition that is sung, heard Shilpa Formation Shrota The one who listens Smriti That which is recalled, remembered Srushti Formation of beings Sthavaras Located beings, formations Stuti Invocative praise Sukhita Happy Sura Intoxicant Sushupti A state of rest, sleep (without dreams) Suta Bard Sutra Thread, verbal aphoristic composition Svanah Sound

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Svapna Dream Svarga Abode of gods Tamas Indolent state Tapa Arduous ordeal Taranga Wave Tattva That other (of me), essence Tirtha Crossing, ford Tithi Moment of time Trivarnika Of three cultural formations Trivibhakta Formed (or divided) into three Tureeya A state of awareness Uddhatanaatya Vigorous, energetic dance Ulfa Somersault Upaasana Invocative devotion Upadesha Counsel Upastha Generative source Vaachyaartha Denotative sense Vaangmaya Pervasive utterance Vaasana Desire Vaata Airy substance Vaidka Pertaining to the Veda Vaidya The one who knows, physician Vaikhari A mode of utterance Vaikrutasarga Derivative formation Vaishamya Deviation, distortion Varna Cultural formation Varnana Description Varsha Rain, year Vedana Affective effect Vedanga Limbs of the Veda Vidhi Customised action Vidya Learning Vihaara An abode, meeting place of learning Vikruti Derivative formation Vilambit Staggered, belated Viloma Non-regulated relation Vishwa Universe Vishwaanda Oval-shaped universe Vistaara Spread Vrata Ritual act Vrushti Growth Vrutta A composition, circle Vyanjana Counter or obverse sense Yaana Travel, travail Yadaartha The ‘real’ (not apparent) sense

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Glossary of Sanskrit Terms

Yajna Fire ceremony Yogaananda Delight of Yoga

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Index

A Aadhyaatma, 15, 16, 34 Aalamkara, 55 Abraham, 241, 243 Accented, 3 Acciavatti, Anthony, 153–155, 257 Actional, 15, 61, 63, 67, 70, 97, 145, 177 Actional effects, 35, 51, 59, 64, 68, 70, 96– 98, 101, 109, 111, 112, 119, 141, 142, 181, 182, 212, 215, 227, 238 Actional sediments, 31, 32, 36, 58–61, 63, 64, 66–71, 77, 85, 176, 180, 182, 185, 188, 190, 206, 213–215, 228, 231, 237, 238 Adhyaasa, 15, 16 Aesthetics, 63, 71, 72, 88, 160, 170–172, 197, 205, 236 Affective, 116 Aham, 9, 10, 12–14 Alexander, 127, 138, 152, 156 Amara, 18, 85, 126 Anaakhyaana, 25, 41, 55, 79, 105 Anandavardhana, xi, 21, 112–121, 217 Anaximander, 135–138 Apara, 3, 6, 7, 10, 16–18, 38, 45, 46, 49, 55, 57, 77, 78, 83, 86–88, 105, 107, 116, 120, 121, 129, 130, 142, 143, 150, 225, 244, 245 Apeiron, 15, 136, 137 Apparatus, 6–9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 38, 85, 101, 126, 138, 193, 195, 196, 214, 232, 235 Artha, 30, 88, 168, 169, 180 Ashokavanikaanka, 189, 190 Assemblages, 87, 93, 97, 101, 121 Astrology, xi, 43, 45

Astronomy, xi, 17, 43, 130–133, 144, 148, 151, 152, 163 Augustine, 4 Ayurveda, 28, 54

B Being, 70, 107, 109 Bhagavadgita, 5, 7, 12, 13, 16, 22, 34, 48, 51, 77, 97–99, 119, 130, 134, 140, 141, 157, 242 Bhagavata, 9, 145, 150, 183, 219, 220 Bhagavatapurana, 150 Bhamaha, x, 17, 111, 115–117, 214 Bharata, x, 17, 21, 28, 31, 54, 55, 57–71, 59, 61–66, 68, 69, 71, 74–76, 78, 81, 82, 86, 91, 108–111, 115, 117, 118, 121, 158, 159, 161, 167, 168, 174, 176– 182, 187–189, 192, 193, 207, 214, 220, 228 Bhartrhari, 17, 162, 222 Bhasa, 172, 189, 239 Bhatiali, 157 Bhava, 68, 87, 117, 176 Bhrasta Yogi, 216 Body complex, 8, 11, 30–33, 35, 36, 44, 74, 77, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91, 97, 99, 100, 114, 121, 128, 146, 157, 178, 206, 212, 213 Brahma, 5, 17, 21, 28, 34, 44, 47, 49, 58, 60, 62, 70, 76, 82, 83, 86, 95–97, 130, 140, 142, 146, 148, 163, 165, 167, 174, 178, 182, 188, 193, 244 Brahman, 5, 86, 216 Brahmavaivarta, 140, 145–148 Brhamaandamahaapurana, 140

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 D. V. Rao, Performative Reflections of Indian Traditions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-2391-2

263

264 Bruhadaaranyaka, 5–7, 29, 34, 94, 120 Bruhatsamhita, 132, 133, 142, 144 Buddhist, x, 4, 116, 117

C Cautley, Proby, 154, 155 Chandogya Upanishad, 10 Charaka, 17, 21, 27–35, 36–39, 51, 81–83, 91 Charakasamhita, 27 Chhau, 167 Chitra, 20, 21 Chitrasutra, 43–45, 52, 81, 120, 193 Christian, 3, 4, 6, 7, 13, 72, 152, 170, 173, 236, 243 Cinema, 194 Colonized, xii, xiv, 204, 236 Conceptualize, 20, 173 Coomaraswami, Ananada, 52 Covenant, xiii, 243 Coward, Harold, 4 Cultures, xiii Cultures of memory, 3, 25, 81, 125, 127, 146, 159, 210, 211

D da Cunha, Dilip, 126, 127, 135–139, 147, 151, 153–156, 258 Danavas, 59 Dandi, 21, 108–111, 117 Darshana, x, 117 Derrida, Jacques, 3, 4, 135, 154, 171, 172, 204, 218, 234, 236, 241–243, 258 Desire, 69, 93–96 Detours, 162 Dharma, 17, 20, 21, 30, 75, 88, 92–94, 99, 168, 169, 183, 189 Dhatus, 30, 31, 35 Dhvani, 55, 113, 115, 117–119 Dhvanyaaloka, 112–116, 119, 120 Dionysius, 4, 14 Discipline of learning, x, xii, 21, 45, 78, 81, 91 Disjunctures, 208 Dispersals, 71 Dootameghamu, 221, 229, 231, 232, 234, 237 Double Bind, 236

E Elemental, 155

Index Embodied, xiii, 7, 8, 16, 20, 33, 47, 50, 51, 55, 58, 59, 62, 66, 68–70, 72, 73, 87, 97, 99, 113, 127, 128, 144, 146, 160, 169, 172, 176–179, 188, 189, 193, 206–214, 218, 220–222 Emergence, 13, 17, 18, 27, 36, 40, 48, 50, 58, 63, 67, 72, 73, 80–84, 94, 96, 97, 100, 102, 110, 114, 118, 126, 139– 142, 145, 149, 150, 161, 162, 165, 168, 174, 177, 212, 223, 232, 234 Enacted, xiii, 20, 22, 47, 58, 68, 73, 127, 128, 160, 161, 169, 176, 177, 187, 190, 208 Ends of Man, 27 Equilibrial, 95, 141, 150 Ethos, 57, 63, 91, 177 Europe, xi, xiii, 20, 21, 23, 51, 79, 80, 102, 107, 119, 154, 197, 202, 204, 217, 234, 240 European, xi, xii, xiii, 3, 4, 13, 19, 20, 22, 31, 53, 63, 71, 73, 102, 153–156, 159, 162, 168–172, 197, 202–206, 208, 211, 212, 217, 218, 233, 234, 236, 243, 246 F Figurations, 12, 40, 193, 221 Force, 8, 17, 35, 37, 38, 45, 49, 53, 54, 66, 67, 75, 78, 84, 86, 88, 93–95, 98, 100, 101, 116, 118, 120, 125, 129–131, 134, 140, 142, 144, 145, 147, 149, 152, 159, 173, 192, 196, 197, 210, 212, 214, 216, 219, 224, 226, 231, 232, 235, 244, 245 Formation, x, xiii, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12–17, 19, 21, 25, 27, 28, 30–38, 41, 45, 46, 49, 55, 60, 61, 64, 66, 67, 70, 72, 77, 79, 81, 83, 85, 86, 88, 91, 93–97, 100– 102, 105, 108–111, 114, 116, 119, 125–127, 129–131, 133, 134, 141– 145, 147–151, 157, 158, 166, 172, 176, 189, 204, 206, 209, 211, 212, 218, 229, 232, 235, 236, 244, 245, 247 G Ganga, 22, 125, 127, 137, 139, 140, 145–157 Generative, 4, 6, 34, 39, 49, 59, 67–69, 73, 74, 91, 94, 95, 97, 99, 114, 129, 130, 132, 140, 141, 143, 145, 147, 150, 151, 172, 176, 177, 179, 192, 195, 196, 207, 211

Index

265

Graamyapravrutti, 74 Gratifying, 66 Greek, xi, 4, 27, 135–137, 156, 234, 242, 243

Itihaasa, x, 17, 162, 164 Itihaasic, 17, 18, 57, 59, 62, 81, 156, 159, 177, 183, 209

H Hearing, 3, 25 Heidegger, Martin, 72, 119, 138, 139, 154, 169, 171, 203, 217, 218, 258–259 Heritages, 195 Heterogeneous, 12, 100 Hinduism, xii, 4 Hiranyagarbha, 6, 34, 36, 41, 96, 99, 142 Human, 11, 17, 28, 41, 61, 65, 82, 83, 100, 111, 126, 128, 129, 131, 134, 137, 151–155, 169, 202, 208, 232, 234 Humanities, xiv, 197, 202, 246

J Janapadas, 151 Jati, 11, 65, 93, 133, 152, 166, 172, 173, 196, 197, 209, 210, 233, 235, 236, 244, 245 Jeevitham, 29, 30, 33, 111 Jnaana, xii, xiii, 7, 33, 37–39, 77, 79, 80, 88, 105, 244, 246 Juhnu, 149

I Iconic, 40, 43, 46, 73, 159, 183, 209, 219 Identity, 172 Imagination, 79, 136, 138, 201, 202, 204– 208, 210, 217, 221, 229, 230, 234, 235, 238, 240 Impossible possibility, 100 Indian traditions, 8, 13, 16, 18–23, 27, 38, 41, 44–47, 51, 54, 55, 57, 77, 78, 81, 83, 88, 91, 94, 102, 107, 122, 125, 129, 131, 133, 134, 153, 158, 159, 169, 172, 189, 196, 198, 202, 208, 218, 233, 234, 240 Indifference, 8, 14, 37, 39, 94, 95, 105, 128, 173, 223, 230, 231, 245 Individuating, 9 Infinite, x, 6, 7, 9, 12, 17, 27, 45, 46, 60, 74, 78, 82, 83, 86, 108, 109, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 129, 130, 134, 140, 142, 143, 189, 224, 241 Inherence, 36 Instantial, 163 Instants, 17 Institutional, xiii, 160 Intellectual destitution, xiv, 21, 202 Interanimating, 168 Interfaces, 192 Intimations, xii, xiv, 14, 16, 22, 25, 36, 51, 74, 88, 101, 115, 118–121, 150, 157, 158, 206, 208, 229–234, 238, 240 Invasive, 206 Inventive, 201 Islamic, xi, 20, 152, 153, 156, 226, 233, 234, 238, 240 Iterations, 201

K Kaama, 30, 82, 88, 93, 115, 179, 180 Kafka, Franz, 241 Kalidasa, xi, 61, 62, 69, 172, 218, 221, 229–231, 234, 239 Kalpavrkshamu, 218, 239 Kama, 168, 169 Karma, 33, 92, 96, 98–100, 112, 130 Kavya, x, 17, 109, 215, 234 Kavyaalankaarasutrani, 110–112 Kavyaanandamu, 214, 215, 220–222 Kavyadharmi, 74, 121, 245 Kavyameemaamsaa, 21, 162 Koodiyattam, 167, 171, 188–192 Koravi Goaparaju, 185 Krishna, 9, 13, 44, 48, 134, 147, 148, 157 Kshemendra, 111

L Laakshanika, 52, 55 Learning, 38, 129, 208 Legacies, 201, 238 Life, 27–29, 236 Liteary inquiries, 103 Literary, x, xi, xiii, 17, 18, 21, 22, 103, 107, 109, 111–113, 116–118, 120, 121, 168, 194, 201–207, 210–215, 217, 218, 220–222, 225, 227–230, 234–238, 240 Liveable learning, xiv, 17, 20, 22, 23, 28, 30, 38, 39, 43, 57, 62, 72, 73, 76, 78, 80, 87, 88, 91, 102, 127, 131, 139, 143, 145, 153, 156, 158, 160, 169, 173, 176, 182, 196, 207, 211, 213, 228, 242, 245–247 Lokadharmi, 63–65, 68, 69, 73, 117, 121

266 M Machinations, 8 Mahabharata, x, 19, 44, 73, 118–120, 158, 208, 218, 235 Mammata, 19, 168, 191 Manana, 7, 165 Manas, 8, 15, 16, 30, 33–35, 50, 83, 84, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98–100, 157, 213–216, 219, 224, 228–232, 234 Manu, 17, 18, 21, 62, 91–93, 95–100, 102, 115, 121, 162, 163, 204 Manudharmashaastra, 18 Manusmriti, 89, 91–102, 118 Marion, Jean-Luc, 4, 6, 7 Markandeya, 17, 44, 51, 87 Mathematical, 17, 102, 107, 130, 131, 137, 144, 152, 185 Matsyapurana, 131, 141 Mazhi’s, 157 Mediations, 59, 159 Melodies, 85, 231 Memory, 95, 125, 126 Metaphysical, 16, 18, 45, 46, 53, 79, 88, 134, 135, 154, 171 Mnemocultural, 7, 16, 22, 40, 43, 47, 48, 50, 51, 59, 61, 62, 67, 73, 75, 78, 122, 128, 133, 135, 136, 139, 151– 153, 158–162, 167, 168, 172, 174– 177, 179, 185, 192, 193, 196, 197, 207, 208, 211, 212, 217, 218, 220, 234 Mnemoscapes, 125, 185 Mnemotrace, 136, 146, 147, 153 Moksha, 30, 88 Mroyu Tummeda, 221, 222, 227–229, 231, 233, 237 Musical, 81, 222 N Naada, 81, 82, 84, 86, 87, 193 Naadis, 84 Naatya, x, 17, 61–63, 66, 68, 69, 170, 174, 175, 177 Naatyadharmi, 63, 64, 69, 73 Naatyashaastra, 17, 28, 54, 55, 57–72, 74– 78, 81, 85, 88, 158, 159, 171, 174– 178, 180, 187, 193, 207 Narada, 129–131, 134, 163–165, 167, 169, 179, 182, 225–227 Nardi, Isabella, 52, 53, 54, 259 Narrateme, 21, 62, 78 Narrative, 21, 25, 58, 62, 78, 139, 146, 153, 160, 161, 188, 210

Index Navya-Nyaya, xi Negative theology, 3, 4 Nidhidhyaasa, 165 Nietzsche, 72, 162, 169, 203, 218 Nirvaanashatka, 3, 17, 20, 29, 35, 77, 121 Non-formational, 3, 5–8, 11–13, 17–19, 25, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 79, 83, 87, 95, 100, 102, 120, 121, 127, 129–131, 134, 140–143, 244 Non-narrative, 21, 25, 62, 78, 161 Nrutta, 44, 62, 82, 188 O Ontological, 31 Orientation, 101 Other, 72, 138, 203 P Paaraayana, 159 Painting, 3, 8, 17, 40, 43, 44, 47, 52–54, 57, 81, 102, 107, 135, 147, 188, 193, 214 Para, xiii, 3–10, 12–18, 37–39, 44–46, 48– 51, 55, 57, 77, 78, 83, 85–88, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 107, 119–122, 129– 131, 134, 140–144, 147, 148, 150, 151, 157, 164, 180, 216, 217, 222– 224, 244–246 Paratattva, xii Performative, xiii, xiv, 3, 8, 12, 16, 20–23, 27, 43–47, 49–51, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62–68, 70, 71, 73–78, 81, 85, 87, 88, 91, 102, 103, 107, 111, 112, 117, 127–131, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 143, 146, 158–172, 174–179, 183, 185–194, 196, 201, 203, 207, 209, 211–214, 218, 220, 228, 235, 237, 245, 246 Performative ethos, 60, 63–66, 71, 73, 103, 107, 117, 188, 191 Performing traditions, 61, 66, 72, 73, 76, 77, 159, 161, 165–168, 170–174, 176– 179, 181–183, 186, 192, 194, 195, 197 Philological, xi, 156, 159, 184, 208, 246 Philosophical, xiii, 52, 71, 135, 168, 170, 204, 205, 217, 234, 236, 243, 244 Plastic, 3, 12, 40, 44, 47, 48, 50–52, 67, 73, 74, 120, 159, 192, 193 Plato, 72, 79, 162, 244 Play, 6, 8, 9, 13, 15–17, 39, 45, 46, 55, 57– 59, 63, 65, 66, 68, 70, 77, 78, 83, 87, 88, 94, 101, 112, 115, 120–122, 140,

Index 144, 163, 178, 187, 190, 222, 223, 243, 245 Poiesis, 107 Postcolonial, xiv, 22, 197, 202, 203, 240 Prabandha, 204–206, 208–211, 219, 222, 225–227, 229, 231, 237 Prakriti, 130, 140–145, 149, 150 Pravachana, 159 Praxis, 17, 74, 245 Principles, xiii, 19, 54, 88, 102, 134, 135, 242 Projections, 3, 46 Prosthetic, 195 Puranas, ix, x, 17, 18, 125–127, 130, 131, 134, 135, 139–141, 143–148, 150, 151, 156, 158, 207, 235 Purusha, 25, 30, 33–37, 48, 51, 83, 97, 129, 140, 142, 150 R Raashipurusha, 35, 37, 38 Radha, 147, 148 Rains, 125, 126, 144 Rajasekhara, 117, 118, 162, 218 Rapture, 214, 218 Rasa, 29, 67, 68, 72, 77, 78, 108, 110, 111, 114, 115, 117, 176 Receptions, x Recursive, 71 Reflections, xiii, xiv, 20–22, 245, 246 Reflective integrity, x, xi, 3, 20, 52, 88, 122, 216, 218 Releasement, 8, 27, 38, 47, 55, 68, 82, 86, 87, 119, 120 Responses, 4, 169, 179, 241 Risks, xiv, 3, 202, 232, 243 Ritual, 17, 31, 43, 49, 51, 62, 64, 65, 81, 94, 96, 127, 130, 131, 133, 138, 139, 145, 146, 148, 161, 165, 173, 189, 192, 193, 211, 214 Rivers, 17, 28, 45, 125–128, 133, 135–137, 139, 144–146, 151–158, 166, 237 S Samskruta, x–xiv, 7, 22, 39, 45, 89, 107, 122, 157, 159, 168, 169, 242, 244–247 Samvaada, 21, 29, 32, 33, 44, 51, 57, 78 Sangita, 20, 21, 78, 81–83, 168 Sangitaratnaakara, 18, 78, 81–88 Sankara, ix–xii, xiv, 5, 6, 10, 20, 29, 33, 34, 120, 121, 244, 246 Sankaracharya, 3

267 Sanskrit, x, xi, xiv, 3, 15, 20, 37, 45, 52, 54, 85, 105, 108, 116, 162, 176, 185, 190, 201, 202, 204, 205, 209, 212, 218, 221, 222, 234, 237–240, 242 Sarngadeva, 18, 21, 78, 81–87, 113, 168 Sastry, Malladi Chandrasekhara, 181, 183, 186 Sattvaatma, 30, 32–35 Satyanarayana, Viswanatha, 22, 88, 172, 194, 195, 197, 201, 202, 240 Savouring, xii, 69, 77, 205, 219 Scientific, 39, 52, 127, 136, 137, 152, 153, 155, 156, 205 Sculpture, 3, 17, 40, 43, 44, 47, 52–54, 57, 67, 73, 81, 102, 107, 135, 188, 193, 214 Secret, 243 Secular, xiii, 82, 171, 205 Semitic, x–xiv, 4, 41, 122, 173, 242, 243, 245, 246 Sense, 194, 212 Sen, Sudipta, 147, 151 Shaanta, 69, 72 Shaareerasthaana, 32, 33, 35–37 Shabda, xiii, 108, 109, 244 Shankukarna, 189–191 Shareable, 23, 74, 77, 78, 81, 173, 196, 197, 211, 229 Shilpa, 20, 21, 168 Shilpadharmi, 74, 193 Shiva, 11, 49, 62, 146–149, 179, 184, 188 Shloka, 164, 165, 168, 180, 185, 219, 234 Shoka, 164, 185, 234 Shravana, 165 Shruti, 5, 21, 22, 43, 59, 76–78, 92, 93, 117, 126–128, 133, 135, 141–143, 152, 157, 158, 160, 166, 196, 197 Shudras, 62, 75 Shukraneeetsara, 49 Smriti, 4, 7, 17, 18, 21–23, 43, 55, 78, 81, 88, 92, 93, 102, 117, 125–127, 130, 133, 141–144, 152, 157, 160, 196, 197 Sonances, 81, 83 Sovereign, 151, 204 Sovereignty, xiii, 14, 101, 121, 153, 156, 232 Spatio-Temporal, 142 Stotra, 10, 247 Strands, 18, 21, 22, 25, 43, 74, 197 Sutra, x Sutrasthaana, 28–31 Symbolization, 45–47

268 T Tapas, 47, 92, 99, 143, 165 Tat-tva, 244 Teleocultural, 59, 118, 159 Theory, 51–54 Traditions, 159, 187, 206 Translation, xi, xiv, 39, 179, 241–244, 246

U Upanishads, 3, 4, 9, 20, 141, 161 Utterance, 7, 8, 11, 25, 46, 99, 100, 108, 109, 111, 116–118, 127, 129, 146, 149, 160, 183, 185, 192, 215, 223, 239

V Vaangmaya, 4, 7, 12, 18, 22, 25, 59, 76–78, 80, 88, 91, 125, 142–144, 151, 158, 160, 162 Vaayumahaapurana, 141 Vaidika, x, xi, 225, 228, 232, 234 Vaidya, 20, 21 Valmiki, 149, 162–166, 168, 169, 171, 172, 174, 175, 179–182, 184–186, 194, 207, 229, 232, 239 Vamana, 21, 109–112, 115 Varahamihira, 132, 133, 142, 144, 151 Vedana, 3, 4, 33, 84

Index Vedanga, x, 117 Vedic, x, xii, 54, 62, 70, 75, 76, 92, 117, 125– 127, 129, 130, 132, 133, 135, 138, 139, 144, 145, 149, 158, 160–162, 164–167, 175–178, 180, 207–209, 212, 235, 242 Verne, Jules, 153 Veyipadagalu, 201, 203, 205–211, 217–221, 227, 233, 237 Violence, 135 Virtual, 58–65, 67, 68, 70, 71, 75, 77, 176– 179, 181, 182, 188, 189 Vishnudharmottara, 29, 43–51, 54, 57, 74, 81, 85, 120, 148, 149, 193 Vishnumahaapurana, 142–144 Viswanatha, 22, 88, 172, 195, 198, 201–222, 225, 227–240 Vivekachudamani, x, xii, 7, 157 Vyasa, 3, 4, 43

W Water, xii, 9, 31, 34, 65, 95, 125–127, 129, 130, 133, 136, 137, 139, 143, 146–149, 151, 152, 154–158

Y Yoga, 157