viloma-kavya - journal article

8/13/2019 Viloma-Kavya - Journal Article

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On Siryadasa and the Invention ofBidirectional Poetry (vilomakavya)

CHRISTOPHER INKOWSKI

CORNELL NIVERSITY

The subject of this communication s the small but well-known genre of bidirectional poetryin Sanskrit called vilomakavya, in which a poem is composed in such a way that it can beread meaningfully from left to right, and from right to left, and in which two different narra-tives are sustained in the two directions. Here I argue four points: (1) It is reasonable to sup-pose that this genre had a beginning; to suppose, that is, that someone invented it at sometime. (2) When one considers the evidence of the extant vilomakdavya iterature, t becomesclear that Siryadasa was the inventor of the genre. (3) For a Sanskrit literatus of his time,Siryadasa had an unusually detailed knowledge of the knowledge systems communicated nPersian and Arabic, and was active in a period when such interest was growing among San-skrit authors. (4) Given that the Arabic and Persian scripts read from right to left, and givenSuirya's predilection for ingenious forms of poetry, his invention of the full-length viloma-kavya was motivated most proximately by his engagement with the knowledge systems ofthe mlecchas or foreigners.

1. VILOMAKAVYA ND ITS BEGINNINGS

The term vilomakdvya means that all of the verses of the poem can be read both anulo-mena 'with the grain', in the ordinary direction, and also pratilomena 'against the grain', orfrom right to left. 1 The relevant units which are read in one direction or the other are thesyllables, not individual phonemes.2 Poets writing in the viloma form created verses of twotypes. In the first, called visamiksara, the verse sounds different when read in the two di-rections. The second, called samdksara, or tulyiksara, is palindromic; that is, each pdda,half-verse, or verse sounds the same when read either way, even though the words can besegmented differently and can take different semantic values, in the fashion of bitextual orflesakdvya poetry.3

An earlier version of thispaper

was read at the 213thmeeting

of the AOS in Nashville, 2003. I amgrateful

forthe helpful suggestions made by members present. I am also grateful to Allison Busch, Dominik Wuyastyk, YigalBronner, and Richard Eaton for advice and comments, and to David Pingree and the curators of the Oriental Insti-tute, Baroda, and the City Palace Museum, Jaipur, for giving me access to manuscripts necessary to produce thefollowing study. Any errors are mine solely. This material is based upon work supported by the National ScienceFoundation.

1. Another designation is anulomapratilomakavya. See Siegfried Lienhardt, A History of Classical Poetry:Sanskrit-Pali-Prakrit Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), 148-50, 224-25; M. Winternitz, Geschichte der indischenLitteratur, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Amelangs, 1920), 125.

2. At the level of reading the poem, however, one still reads only from first verse to last verse.3. An example of a visamaksara verse (Rdmakrsnavilomakadvya ): taqm hiisuta-muktim uddlra-hasam ande

yato bhavya-bhavarm ayd-?rtnh Sriyddavarm havya-bha-toya-devarm aqmhara-da-muktim tasubhatam IIAn example of a samaksara verse (Rdmakrsnavilomakdvya 1): Sarikdvajiid-nut v anujiivakad am ydne nadydm

ugram udydna-neyd I ydne nadydm ugram udydnaneyd daiikivajild-nut tv anujihavakadaqm II

Journal of the American Oriental Society 124.2 (2004) 325


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326 Journal of the American Oriental Society 124.2 (2004)

Was vilomakdvya nvented? There is nothing to recommend the idea that vilomakdvya asa genre always existed. On the face of it, bidirectional poetry does not strike one as the firstform that poetry would take in any literature. Furthermore, erious Indologists today cannotbelieve

anymore in a

timeless, unchangingIndian

culture,the same in all historical

periods,with all forms, concepts, beliefs, and literary genres always already existing. The burden ofproof really has to be placed on the other side of the argument, to show why and how it isthat the genre of vilomakivya could be uncreated, a svayambhii. Furthermore, he Sanskritpoetic tradition has long included in its conceptual repertoire he notion that genres can beinvented. Valmiki is accepted in the literary-critical and aesthetic tradition as the originalpoet (ddikavi), who is depicted in the opening chapters of the Ramayana inventing poetryin the epic meter.4 It is plausible, therefore, to assume for prima facie as well as for internalreasons that the vilomakdvya genre came into being at some moment. If this is so, is it pos-sible to discover who invented it, and when?

2. SURYADASA AS THE INVENTOR OF THE GENRE

Recently Yigal Bronner has produced a full-length study of the phenomenon of ?le-sakdvya in Sanskrit, in which he showed, among other things, the historical developmentof bitextual poetry, from its early form in individual verses, through the full-length poemsof double-meaning dvisandhdna kavya) of the Rdghavapdndaviya ort, and beyond.5 One ofthe many findings of Bronner's work is that full-length bitextual poems are a later develop-ment in this history.6 The vilomakavyas, which depend for their conception on the existenceof full-length bitextual works like the Rdghavapdndaviya, must be even more recent.

In fact, if we compile a list of all known vilomakdvya texts, we find that bidirectionalpoetry is a rare and relatively late phenomenon. The list below identifies known vilomakavyaworks.7 All but one of these texts have attributable dates, either because the author gives adate, or because the author himself can be assigned a date.

Vilomakdvya orks with Their Authors nd Probable Dates

Author Title of Work DateStiryaddsa Ramakrsnavilomakkdvya a. 1580 (Pdrthapur Ahmadnagar)Cidambara Kavi Sabddrthacintdmani ca. 1600 (Tanjore)8

4. Rdmayana 1.2 in the critical edition. The verse that Valmiki discovered, incidentally, (1.2.14) cannot be readin two directions.

5.Bronner, "Poetry

at Its Extreme: TheTheory

and Practice of BitextualPoetry ('lesa)

in SouthAsia,"

Ph.D.diss., University of Chicago, 1999. In ordinary lesakavya works, both registers of the poem are read in the samedirection.

6. Ibid., 193-251, shows that there were earlier attempts, but that the popularity of the full-length flesakavyaepic style arose in the first two centuries of the second millennium.

7. This list was developed using Bronner's study as a basis, and searching also through the standard referenceworks on the history of kdvya and the introductions o the published viloma texts.

8. Neither M. Krishnamachariar, History of Classical Sanskrit Literature, 2d ed. (Madras: Tirumalai-TirupatiDevasthanams Press, 1937), 512, nor E. V. Vira Raghavacharya, "Dvyarthi and Tryarthi Kavyas in Sanskrit," nCommemorative Essays Presented to Professor Kashinath Bapuji Pathak (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental ResearchInstitute, 1934), 381, identifies this work as a vilomakavya. Bronner follows NCC (7: 47), which does identify thework as a vilomakavya, referring o the Tanjore Descriptive Catalogue (7: 2840ff.). That catalogue, however, no-where identifies the work as viloma. The excerpts published in the TDC show a work that is a flesakavya of the

Rfma story and the Krsna story simultaneously, but the commentary reads both of these narratives rom the versesin the same direction. One of the verses of the introduction o the commentary dentifies the poem as having differ-ent meanings in krama and vyutkrama. The verses given in the catalogue appear o offer the possibility of at leasta partial viloma reading.


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MINKOWSKI: n Sitryaddsa and the Invention of Bidirectional Poetry 327

Vefikatddhvarin Yidavaraghaviya ca. 1650 (Kdfici)9? Nalahariscandriya ? lo

As it turns out, there are not that many vilomakavyas. A certain number of other texts are

identified as bidirectional in secondary sources; examination of the texts reveals that theyare flesakavyas but not vilomakavyas."l One work in this list remains undated-the Nala-hariscandriya-but its length, topic, and comparative obscurity suggest that it is a later andsecondary experiment in the genre.12 Short viloma-type poems have continued to be pro-duced by Sanskrit authors more recently. 13

Of these texts SUryadasa's poem, the Rdmakrsnavilomakdvya, s the oldest.14 GivenSfirya's dates, the work must have been composed in roughly the mid- or later sixteenthcentury. 5 In its two directions it tells the stories of Rima and Krsna, respectively.

If it is the oldest known, is it also the first? In the opening and concluding verses of hisautocommentary on the work, Sirya as much as claims that he has invented the genre.16 In

9. See Lienhardt, Classical Literature, 148-50; M. S. Narasimhacharya and M. C. Porcher, Le Raghavayd-daviya par

Vehka.tadhvarinPondicherry: nstitut franqais d'indologie, 1972), and M. C. Porcher, La Vilvagund-

darsacampii de Vehikatadhvarin Pondicherry: nstitut francais d'indologie, 1972), 1-11.10. Krishnamachariar, 94. A manuscript n the Madras Triennial Catalogue (2: 1716-17) shows that it con-

tained twenty cantos and was a vilomakavya of the Nala and Hariscandra tories.11. Krishnamachariar, 194, also lists Anantasuri's Hariscandrodaya in his section devoted to vilomakavya,

though he does not explicitly say that it is a vilomakavya. In fact it is a flesakavya but not a vilomakavya. (See theMysore Descriptive Catalogue 8: 206-7.)

Raghavacharya, 381, lists seven works as vilomakdvyas: he four given in the list above, and three others thatare not. Two of these are extant: the Rasikaraiijana of Rdmacandrakavi nd the Rdghavayadaviya of VifijamDri o-meivara Kavi. The Rasikaraiijana Krishnamachariar, 91) has been published at least twice (in Kavyamala, part 4,and in an edition by R. Schmidt, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1896). It clearly is a dvyarthi poem, but is not a vilo-

makdvya. The Raghavayadaviya of Somesvara (Krishnamachariar, 91) is extant in a manuscript n the MadrasTriennial Catalogue (4: 5489-91). The description in the MTC makes it clear that it is a ?lesakdvya, but not a vilo-makavya. On the existence of a lost work of Srutakirti, ee below, n. 23.

In the introduction o his edition of Sirya's Ramakrsnavilomakavya, K. N. Misra identifies, in addition to someof the works already mentioned, two other titles as vilomakdvyas: he Parvatirukminlya of Vidyam~dhava and the

Srihgaravairagyatararigini f Somaprabhacarya. oth of these are listed by Krishnamachariar 190, 193), but neitheris identified by Krishnamachariar s a viloma work, and indeed neither one is, as is clear from consulting the ex-ample of the former work given by Krishnamachariar nd the text of the latter published in the Kdvyamld. One

suspects that Misra has inferred that these are vilomakdvyas because of where they are described by Krishnama-chariar, hat is, on the pages adjacent to the ones where the vilomakdvyas are listed.

12. The work survives in only one manuscript see n. 10) and is unpublished. Given the relative length of the

work--SUrya's and Vefikata's are only thirty-six and thirty-two verses respectively-and its subject matter-thestories of two human

kings-itwould seem to

postdatethe shorter works

by SUryaand

Vefikata,which

exploreone

of the central topics of bitextual poetry, the combination of the stories of Rdma and Krsna. Where would the glorybe for them in writing a work of thirty or so verses, if there already existed one in ten cantos?

13. See, e.g., the short poems at the end of S. B. Velankar's edition of the Rdmakrsnakdvya.14. The title is also sometimes listed as Rdmakrsnakdvya r as Rdmakrsnavilomaksarakdvya. ditions: J. Hae-

berlin, Kdvyasamgraha 1847); Kavyamld, part 11 (1895); K. N. Misra, Haridas Sanskrit Series, vol. 288 (Vara-nasi: Chowkhamba, 1970); S. B. Velankar Bombay: K. B. Dhawale, 1977).

15. Lienhardt, Classical Poetry, gives a date of 1540, which appears o be drawn from Winternitz, Geschichte,125. Neither author gives a rationale for this date, which is presumably based on Surya's floruit derived from hisother dated works. David Pingree, Jyotihidestra Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1981), 124, lists astronomical works ofSirya's that can be dated to 1538 and 1541. See below, however, for another work of his that can be dated to 1583.I would argue that the Rdmakrsnakdvya s in fact a later work, composed closer to 1580 than 1540. Note that de-

spite its great success, Siirya makes no special point of referring to it in the closing verses of his works, where

he describes what earlier works he has written. The situation is the same for the Siddhdntasaimhitdsdrasamuccaya,another ate work not yet composed when those various concluding verses were written.

16. Note that most bitextual works come with an autocommentary, a guide to the double reading being consid-ered a necessary component of its composition.


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the introductory verses he explains, in more detail than would be necessary for an existinggenre, how a vilomakavya works, and what the registers of this particular poem will be(vss. 4-5). He lists the main difficulties that confront the author of a vilomakavya; con-fesses to

succumbingnevertheless to the

arrogance necessaryto

attemptthe feat; and

begspardon from those who will understand how difficult this achievement is (vs. 2). He pointsout the pitfalls common in ingenious poetry (citrakavya), which he has avoided in this work:monosyllabic words, unknown words, and grammatical olecisms (vs. 6). And he asserts thatwhile skill or talent might enable someone to accomplish great things, the writing of a viloma-kavya lies beyond the scope of ordinary human effort, and requires divine assistance (vs. 3).

The commentary ends with the following verses:

godavari brahmagireh sakaddt ampripitia prag udadhim prayatniatyenarsina so 'pi punah pratipam anetum adrim prabhavet kim etatm I

evam vilomaksarakavyakartur hiyaimsam ayasam aveksya tajjiadh

janantv imam citrakavitvasimagm aivajiiasiiryabhidhasampradistaim IThe sage made he Godavari low east from he Brahma Sahyadri) mountains o the ocean; butis even he able to make he river low backward o its mountain ource? Cognoscenti houldappreciate he huge effort hat he author f this viloma work has made, and should recognizethat his, the very imit of poetic skill n citrakaivya, has been marked y the one called DaivajfiaSarya.17

The great effort, which Surya mentions twice, might explain why there are so few bi-directional poems. The ones that do exist, however, especially Sfrya's and Vefikata's, arevery well known. The Rimakrsnavilomakdvya was disseminated throughout the Sanskrit-reading world.'18 The work turns up in almost every modern history of Sanskrit literature.

There are at least seven copies extant in the Sarasvati Mahal collection in Tanjore.19

Themanuscripts are not dated in the catalogue, but their presence in the Tanjore palace collec-tion lends further plausibility to the assumption hat Sirya's poem was the inspiration or thetwo southern authors.

It is important o make clear what Sfrya did and did not invent. Surya did not invent thesmall-scale effect of reversible poetry. Earlier theoreticians of literary form in Sanskrit hadalready posited a poetic ornament alarmkdra) alled pratilomanuloma "in which the syllablesin the second half of a verse repeat n exact inverse order those of the first half verse."20 Thefigure appeared n some earlier poetry, most notably two passages famously laden with word-play; the fifteenth chapter of Bharavi's Kirdtdrjuniya nd the nineteenth chapter of Magha'sSi?lipdlavadha.21 And yet the alamkdra is confined in theory and practice to a maximum

17. There appears to be a reference here to the most famous early Rlesa double epic, Kavirfija's Ragha-vapandaviya, which speaks of the merging of the two epics as being like the Gafiga flowing to the ocean (Bronner,247-48). Stirya claims that his accomplishment s that much more astounding.

18. Anecdotal vidence f early, dated manuscripts uggests arly dissemination f the work. aipur othikhand623 has he date 1718 Samvat. heDikshit ollection n the Deccan College ncludes manuscript Accn. No. 3920)dated aka 1644. There re eight copies n the Mysore Descriptive atalogue, hough nfortunately o date s given.

19. Tanjore Descriptive Catalogue, 6: Cat. nos. 3843-46.20. Edwin Gerow, A Glossary of Indian Figures of Speech (The Hague: Mouton, 1971), 185. The chief authors

who describe the alamkara are Dandin, Kdvyldaria 3.70, 74-77, and Rudrata, Kadvydlarmkdra .22-23. See alsoM. C. Porcher, Figures de style en Sanskrit: Thdories des alamkatraidstra: Analyse de pohmes de Vehika.tdhavarin(Paris: Publications de l'Institut de civilization indienne, 1978), 260-68.

21.Kirattrjuntya

15.18, 20, 22, 23. Sifupdlavadha 19.33-34, 40, 44, 88, 90. Each of these is a verse contain-ing a different variety of the anulomapratiloma alaqmkara; ome are palindromic and some are not. Other varieties


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MINKOWSKI: n Stiryaddsa and the Invention of Bidirectional Poetry 329

length of a single verse, and is always displayed in conjunction with other examples of citra-kivya effects.22 What SUirya as invented is the full-length bidirectional poem, in which,furthermore, wo different, continuous narratives are juxtaposed and sustained.

Could there have been somepredecessor

toSirya's

work, an earlier,full-length,

bidirec-tional poem now lost? Again, we are justified in shifting the burden of proof by asking acounter-question. Given the popularity of Surya's and Vefikata's bidirectional works, whywould an earlier work, or at least a memory of it, not have survived, especially from a pe-riod still rather close to our own, a period from which some manuscripts are still extant?23

3. SURYADASA AND THE KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS OF THE MLECCHAS

For a idstri of his time, Suryadasa had an unusually detailed knowledge of the exactsciences communicated n Persian and Arabic, and was active in a period when such interestamong Sanskrit authors was growing.

Siiryadasa, also known as Daivajiia SUrya or Sfirya Pandita, was born in a family ofastronomers n 1508.24 He lived in Pdrthapura, long the upper Goddvari river, in the Ah-madnagar kingdom. He was a prolific writer in a variety of genres, principally Jyotis in threeforms: astronomy, mathematics, and astrology. He also wrote Vedic commentaries, works ofVedanta, and works of kdvya, especially in the form of poetry dedicated to deities.25 For thegeneral Sanskrit readership his most celebrated work is the Ramakrsnavilomakavya.

Many of SUrya's works are as yet unpublished, but one text is of unusual interest for theway that it demonstrates he extent of his awareness of the knowledge systems in Arabic andPersian. The Siddhantasamhitasarasamuccaya s a "compendium of essential points aboutthe astronomical Siddhantas and Samhitas." n the text Surya refers to the year current at thetime of writing as Saka 1505, or A.D. 1583.26 The fifth chapter s the Mlecchamatanirupana,the "investigation of the views of the foreigners." The chapter is of interest as the earliestknown attempt n a Sanskrit astronomical reatise at a systematic description of Arabo-Persian

of word-play are invariably displayed in adjacent verses, so that the anulomapratiloma verses always form a part ofa set of varied effects. See, similarly, vss. 8, 9, in Anandavardhana's Devisataka (Daniel Ingalls, "Anandavardhana'sDevisataka," JAOS 109 [1989]: 568).

22. Dandin specifies a ptida, half-verse, or verse as the potential length of the effect.23. The only trace of a possible earlier work is a lone reference to a poem of Srutakirti. Pampa n his Pampara-

mayana says that Srutakirti wrote a Raghavapandaviya hat was gatapratyagata 'going and returning'. The schol-

arly communityhas been divided on the

identityand date of Srutakirti in

anycase before

Pampain the twelfth

century) and the nature of the work composed. There is no certainty that gatapratyagata refers to a vilomakavya nthe sense defined above. The term could as easily mean a poem in which verses are read from first to last and lastto first, but always left to right. Furthermore, f it ever existed, this work was lost early on. No author after Pampaknows of it. Siryadisa would have had to (re-)invent the genre in any case. For bibliography, see H. Jain and A. N.Upadhye, "Pradhan Sampadakiya" n Dvisandhana Mahakdvya of Mahakavi Dhanaiijaya, ed. K. C. Gorawala(Delhi: Bharatiya Jnanapitha, 1970), 23-31.

24. Also sometimes called Surya, Stirya Pandita and Stiryastiri, but not the same as Stiryakavi, author of thecommentary on the Kavikalpalat1. On Suirya, ee K. Madhava Krishna Sarma, "Siddhanta-samhita-s a-samuccayaof Stirya Panditf," Vilva Bharati 2 (1950): 222-25. For further bibliography, see Minkowski, "Astronomers andTheir Reasons: Working Paper on Jyotihsastra," ournal of Indian Philosophy 30 (2002): 507-10.

25. Sarma, "Siddhfnta-samhitf-sfra-samuccaya," 21-24. The Vedic works are not extant.26. In a discussion of the precession of the equinoxes in the grahakaksakrama ection of the last chapter, evam

vartamane dlivahanaSake 1505 haste saptarsayas tisthanti. This would make Stirya seventy-five years old at thetime of its composition. The work is not yet published, but I have had access to a copy of Jaipur Khasmohor 5026,and to copies of Baroda 3344 and 9473.


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cosmology, astronomy, and astrology. The chapter's eighty-two verses are divided into threemain parts: he account of the earth's position in the cosmos (vss. 1-39); the position, motion,and topothesia of the planets and stars (vss. 40-55); and a glossary of "foreign" terms (vss.

56-82).27The glossary section is introduced by a verse stating its rationale:

naksatrapramukhandmr aimjiiam riimo 'tha yavanasaistroktdamnarapatisabhopayogyam upakardrtham a daivavidalm I 56

We shall state he technical erms given n the Yavanas' cience or the lunar onstellations ndother hings. A knowledge f these erms will be useful n the royal court, and will also be help-ful to astrologers.

The verse gives us two related motivations for SUrya's glossary project: participation orcompetition at court, and the practice of the astrology of the foreigners. Indeed, the promi-nent presence of astrological terminology throughout the Mlecchamataniri~pana uggeststhat it was astrology that was the main vector of cultural interest for Stirya. In particularthis was interest n Tijika, a Persianized version of Indian astrology. Stryadasa himself wrotea text called the Tdjikdlahkadra.28 ajika s Sanskritic Jyotis astrology with some distinctive,imported features, especially to do with prorogation and planetary aspects, conjunctions, andstrengths.29 n Tdjika works these features are explicitly represented as foreign, with someof the foreign terminology preserved n transliterated orm, as the name Tdjika tself alreadyindicates.

As David Pingree has shown, Tijika works in Sanskrit first began to appear in the mid-fourteenth century in coastal Gujarat. From there the practice gradually spread throughcentral India. It was broadcast throughout the subcontinent by the success of the Tdjika-

nilakanthi,a work

bythe

Mughalcourt

astrologer Nilakantha,who was commissioned to

write it by Akbar in 1587, that is, just four years after Siirya wrote his chapter on the Mlec-chamata. Nilakantha's work was transmitted widely in the Sanskrit reading world almostimmediately, and continues to be published and republished today.

Strya's vocabulary ists are, furthermore, he forerunner of Persian-to-Sanskrit lossariesproduced by Sanskrit ?dstris in the following century. The first of these, the Pdrasiprakasa,was commissioned by Akbar and composed by Krsnadasa, probably in the decade after

Sfirya's Mlecchamataniriipana appeared.30Thus S~irya's chapter on the views of the foreigners came just before the cresting of a

wave of interest-in Tajika astrology, n the astronomical principles necessary to understandit, and in the vocabulary necessary to speak of it.

4. THE DIRECTION F WRITING AND BIDIRECTIONAL OETRY

Why was it Sirya in particular who invented vilomakavya and why at that moment?I propose that Sirya's invention was informed most significantly by his special interest inArabo-Persian knowledge systems. To be more specific, it was inspired most proximately by

27. For more on this chapter, see Minkowski and Pingree, "The Mlecchamataniripana of SiiryadSisa,"forthcoming.

28. Sarma, p. 221. The work is as yet unpublished, and I have not seen a copy of a manuscript at the time ofwriting.

29. David Pingree, "Tijika: Persian Astrology in Sanskrit," n From Astral Omens to Astrology: From Babylonto Bikaner (Rome: Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente, 1997), 79-90.

30. D. Pingree, "Indian Reception of Muslim Versions of Ptolemaic Astronomy," in Tradition, Transmission,

Transformation, d. E J. and S. P Ragep (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 474-75.


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MINKOWSKI: n Siryaddsa and the Invention of Bidirectional Poetry 331

Silrya's knowledge that the Arabo-Persian script reads from right to left. By the later six-teenth century, there would have been many literate Brahmins, including Siirya, who knewthe direction of the script. What made it Stirya who noticed this fact in some more signifi-cant sense? And what enabled him to make use of it in

poetry?We must begin with further consideration of the historical context, which shows why apandita would have been motivated to cultivate "foreign" ciences at this particular moment.Here one can begin with Sfirya's remark, cited above in verse 56 of the Mlecchamatanirti-panza, about the usefulness of knowing Arabo-Persian vocabulary for performing well atcourt.

Which court Stirya means is not clear. By 1583, when he was writing the Mlecchama-taniriipana, Sirya could have had in mind a general situation developing in a number ofkingdoms with an Islamicate mode of courtly culture, in which Brahmins could receivepatronage.31 Strya lived in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar, under the Nizam Shdhi rulers.32Though little archival material survives from the Ahmadnagar court, there is evidence that

the Nizam Shahis did patronize Brahmin intellectuals and authors.33 From about 1560 on,this was also the period of Akbar's various experiments n "Indianizing" he Mughal dynasty.Akbar's patronage of certain forms of Brahminical learning is well known.34 It was Akbarin this period who commissioned translations of Sanskrit works into Persian, and who com-missioned the Persian-Sanskrit glossary and the Thjika text mentioned above.35 In the pre-vailing political culture of the time, the same sort of liberal courtly patronage began to bereproduced n regional courts and among circles of nobles.36

From their side, some Brahmins began to respond to the transformed patronage situationby entering Islamicate courts, even by cultivating Persian and Persianate iterary practices.37

31. For the growing importance of Islamicate courtly culture, from the fifteenth century on, in Vijayanagar, eePhillip B. Wagoner, "'Sultan among Hindu Kings': Dress, Titles and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijaya-nagara," ournal of Asian Studies 55 (196): 851-80. For patronage by Muslim rulers of Sanskrit authors n Bengal,see J. P. Chaudhuri, Muslim Patronage to Sanskritic Learning (Calcutta: J. B. Chandhuri, 1942). For similar pa-tronage n Kashmir, see references n S. Pollock, "The Death of Sanskrit," Comparative Studies in Society and His-tory 43 (2001): 395-400.

32. Especially Murtaza Nizam Shah I, a.k.a. the "Madman" r. 1565-88). See Radhey Shyam, The Kingdom ofAhmadnagar (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1966), 151-201. An ancestor of Stirya had been a sdstri in the court ofthe Devagiri Yddavas. There is no record of contact of the family with the Ahmadnagar court, though it is probablethat the family's land-revenue ncome would have been confirmed by them.

33. Burhan Nizam Shah supported he work of Sabaji Prataparaja, while Ahmad Nizam Shah had Dalapatirayaas an officer in his court. Both were the authors of Dharmas'astra orks (P K. Gode, "Sabaji Prataparaja, Protege

of Burhan Nizam Shah of Ahmadnagar, and His Works-Between A.D. 1500 and 1560," ABORI 24 (1943): 156-64). Furthermore, he narrative f the eminent Bhatta family of Banaras, he Gddhivamravarnana, escribes variousoffers of support made by the Nizam Shahi ruler to Rameivara Bhatta, who lived in the Ahmadnagar kingdom be-fore migrating to Banaras (James Benson, "Samkarabhatta's amily Chronicle, the Gddhivamgavarnana," n ThePandit: Traditional Scholarship in India, ed. Axel Michaels [New Delhi: Manohar Publications, 2001], 105-18).According to one contemporary ource, the Nizam Shahis were Muslim-converted descendants of a family of Dec-cani Brahmins who came from Pathri, .e., Parthapura Benson, "Chronicle," 108).

34. See, e.g., Chaudhuri, Muslim Patronage, 86-88.35. This Tijika text was also translated nto Persian at Akbar's request. See M. Athar Ali, "Translations f San-

skrit Works at Akbar's Court," Social Scientist 20 (1992): 38-45.

36. There are contemporary accounts, for example, that the Adil Shahi rulers in Bijapur employed many Brah-mins as ministers (Muzaffar Alam, "Persian in Precolonial Hindustan," in Literary Cultures in History, ed. SheldonPollock [Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 2003], 157).

37. For some remarks on this trend at the turn of the seventeenth century, see Pollock, "The Languages ofScience in Early-Modern India," in Halbfass Commemoration Volume, ed. K. Preisendanz (Vienna: Akademie derWissenschaften, 2003), n. 44.


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MINKOWSKI: n Saryaddsa and the Invention of Bidirectional Poetry 333

shows that Suirya ould combine sensitive poetic effects with his knowledge of astronomy,medical theory, and local customs.45

Sfiryadasa's invention of bidirectional poetry, therefore, is properly understood in this

explanatoryframe: his

"interdisciplinary"ctivities and abilities, and his

engagementwith

the Yavana sciences, in an historical moment when cultural value was placed on this en-gagement. An alternative explanation of Sfirya's invention might appeal to other reverse-direction practices that were available somewhere within the Sanskrit sphere, most signifi-cantly the pre-existing alamkara described above.46 Even granted that such practices werecurrent and known to Surya, they shed no light on the proximate cause: why Stirya, in par-ticular, was the inventor of vilomakavya, and why at that particular historical moment.

To conclude, it is plausible to suppose that SUrya's discovery of the formal possibility ofvilomakavya poetry came as a result of his comparatively serious encounter with Arabo-Persian cultural forms. Note that one does not need to claim that vilomakavya is in anyserious sense "Islamicizing," only that its invention is based on the recognition of a formal

possibility, and that this possibility presented itself to someone who had a reason to take itseriously.

In his study of ?lesakavya, Bronner explored the kinds of intertextual readings andmeanings created by the dvisandhana epic poetry, in which the Rdmaiyana and Mahabha-rata are juxtaposed in the verses of a one-directional but bitextual poem. Bronner showedhow the simultaneous reading of both epics throws into relief certain features of both epicsand establishes a comparison of more than narrative.47 Are there, then, further mplicationsin having one of the two narratives, n this case the story of Kr~sna's hildhood and youth,read in reverse? Can the juxtaposition of Rama's and Krsna's narratives n opposite direc-tions be taken in a cultural-political way, to signal some sort of comparison of values; one

"straight,"he other

"perverse"-Ramathe

upright, Veda-supporting, demon-destroyingking, versus Krsna the rambunctious, king-slaying cowherd? Then again, in the palindromicverses, is there, by even greater ingenuity, a suspension, as it were, of the perverse impli-cation obtaining elsewhere in the poem? And finally, though one need not insist on any ex-plicit Islamicizing to secure the initial claim, is there some sort of implication of a valuingof cultural extroversion n juxtaposing Rama, the Kosalan, alien-fighting prince with Krsna,the omni-erotic, eternal youth from Braj?

45. Readers may also wish to consider the matigala verses of SUirya's ommentary on the Bhagavad Gitd, pub-lished with seven other commentaries, ed. Jivaram Sastri, M. D. Bakre, D. V. Gokhale, by the Gujarati PrintingPress in Bombay in 1915 (rpt. Delhi: Parimal Publications, 2001). The first verse, by way of example, shows someviloma effects, to which one can compare the first verse of Vefkata's (later) Yadavaraghaviya: amvidanandasam-dohasandram ndivareksanam indiramandiram devam vande tam nandananandanam III

46. Several other reverse-direction practices in the Sanskrit sphere, such as the pratiloma recitation of Vedic orTantric verses, were mentioned at the 2003 AOS meeting by members of the Society present. I am grateful for these

suggestions. There was no evidence that SUrya would have known of these practices, however, and none of themis meaning-bearing n reverse.

47. Bronner, Poetry at Its Extreme, 241-52. Porcher has already laid out some of the implications for the vilo-makdivya of Vefikata, Raghavayddaviya, 64-76.

viloma-kavya - journal article

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