Author Archives: dhubert

A17 – W5 Brajabuli padas from “The Wishing Stone of Nightly Songs”

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On October 23rd, we will two Brajabuli padas from the earliest anthology of Vaishnava lyrics titled “The Wishing Stone of Nightly Songs” (Kṣaṇadāgītacintāmaṇi)  compiled in Vrindavan in the 17th/early 18th century by Vishvanath Chakravartin “Harivallabh”:

  1. dekha soi mūratimaẏa neha | See, see! He is love embodied,…
  2. (dhani go!) āju pekhanu bālā-kheli, yaba mandira bāhira bheli | Woman! Today I observed the young girl playing/ as she came out of her house.

See the Word doc. here for further comments on the texts.

Source: Viśvanātha Cakravartin “Harivallabha.” Kṣaṇadāgītacintāmaṇi. Edited by Bimanbehari Majumdar. Calcutta: Jenārel Lāibrerī, 1369.

(১) শ্রীগৌরচন্দস্য

কেদার

  1. দেখ দেখ সোই মূরতিময় নেহ |
    কাঞ্চন-কাঁতি, সুধা জিনি মধুরিম, নয়ন-চষক ভরি লেহ || ধ্রু ||
  2. শ্যামল বরণ, মধুর-রস ঔষধি, পূরব যো গোকুল মাহ |
    উপজল জগত, যুবতী উমতাওল, যো সৌরভ-পরবাহ ||
  3. যো রস বরজ-,গোরি-কুচ-মণ্ডল-,মণ্ডন-বর করি রাখি |
    তে ভেল গৌর, গৌড় অব আওল, প্রকট প্রেম-সুরশাখী ||
  4. সকল-ভুবন-সুখ-,কীর্ত্তন-সম্পদ, মত্ত রহল দিন-রাতি |
    ভব-দব কোন, কলি-কল্মষ, যাঁহা হরিবল্লভ ভাতি ॥ ১

(1) śrīgauracandrasya

kedāra

  1. dekha dekha soi mūratimaẏa neha |
    kāñcana-kā̃ti, sudhā jini madhurima, naẏana-caṣaka bhari leha || dhru ||
  2. śyāmala baraṇa, madhura-rasa auṣadhi, pūraba yo gokula māha |
    upajala jagata, yuvatī umatāola, yo saurabha-parabāha ||
  3. yo rasa baraja-,gori-kuca-maṇḍala-,maṇḍana-vara kari rākhi |
    te bhela gaura, gauḍa aba āola, prakaṭa prema-suraśākhī ||
  4. sakala-bhuvana-sukha, kīrttana-sampada, matta rahala dina-rāti |
    bhava-dava kona, kali-kalmaṣa, yā̃hā harivallabha bhāti || 1

(1) To the Golden Moon, Kr̥ṣṇa Caitanya

Rāga Kedāra

  1. See, see! He is Love embodied,
    shining like gold, sweeter than nectar;
    fill the cup of your eyes! (Refrain)
  2. His skin is dark, a sweet elixir;
    he used to live in Gokul.
    He created the world; he is the fragrant breeze
    that drove maidens mad.
  3. He is the delight that placed this best of ornaments
    on the curved breasts of the fair ladies of Braj.
    He became Gaur and to Gaud he came,
    a wishing tree of love in this world.
  4. Day and night, I’m enraptured
    by the auspicious praise
    of [this spring] of universal joy.
    The dangers of this world, the sins of the Kali age,
    do not reach [those who share] Harivallabha’s ways. 1

This poem was composed by the compiler of the anthology, Vishvanath Chakravarti “Harivallabha” (fl. 1704), who was then living in Vrindavan. It works as an auspicious invocation to open both the anthology as a whole and this section of the anthology in particular. One section of the anthology corresponds to one session of devotional singing performance (kirtana) and each opens with a poem praising Chaitanya (called Gaurachandra “The Golden Moon”) and it is followed by another song dedicated to his disciple Nityananda. (On the sub-genre of the “gaura-chandirka” in Bengali Vaishnava literature, see Dimock 1958).

The pada introduces us to the idea of nitya-lila (eternal game) of Krishna in Vrindavan, which implies a juxtaposition of the world depicted in the Bhagavatapurana with that of Chaitanya and his disciples – each of them corresponding to a character in the lila of Vrindavan. In this scheme Chaitanya is the avatar of Krishna in the dark age (see stanza 3d). The delight of taking part in the kirtana session is presented as the ultimate means of salvation, and Harivallabha’s own experience testifies to this phenomenon (4).

A note on prosody: The structure of the song is rather common. It is a tripadi that follows the standard set by Vidyapati’s poems (itself derived from the metrical patterns of Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda), in which we find mainly three metrical schemes of 15, 16, and 28 (16+12) morae; this song uses the third meter. The song opens with a refrain (NB: it is often the second couplet in eastern lyrics), which is metrically distinct from the other stanzas (the first line only has the first two metrical segments of approx. 16 morae).

 

৩ (শ্রীকৃষ্ণের উক্তি, তাঁহার পূর্ব্বরাগ)

(ধানশী)

  1. (ধনি গো !) আজু পেখনু বালা-খেলি, যব মন্দির বাহির ভেলি।
    নব জলধরে, বিজুরী-রেখা, ধন্ধ বাড়াইয়া গেলি॥
  2. (সে যে) অলপ-বয়সি বালা, জনু গাঁথনি পঁহুপ-মালা।
    থোরি দরশনে, আশ না পুরল, বাঢ়ল মদন-জ্বালা॥
  3. (সে যে) গোরি কলেবর লূনা, জনু কাজরে উজোর সোনা।
    কেশরী জিনিয়া, মাঝারি ক্ষীণী, দুলহ লোচন-কোণা॥
  4. (সে যে) ঈষৎ হাসনি সনে, মঝু হানল নয়ন-বাণে।
    চিরঞ্জীব রহু পঞ্চগৌড়েশ্বর, কবি বিদ্যাপতি ভাণে ॥ ৩

3 (śrīkr̥ṣṇer ukti, tā̃hār pūrvvarāg)

(Dhānaśī)

  1. (dhani go!) āju pekhanu bālā-kheli, yaba mandira bāhira bheli |
    naba jaladhare, bijurī-rekhā, dhandha bāṛāiẏā geli ||
  2. (se ye) alapa-baẏasi bālā, janu gā̃thani pãhupa-mālā |
    thori daraśane, āśa nā purala, bāḍhala madana-jvālā ||
  3. (se ye) gori kalevara lūnā, janu kājarĕ ujŏra sonā |
    keśarī jiniẏā, mājhāri kṣīnī, dulaha locana-koṇā ||
  4. (se ye) īṣat[a] hāsani sane, majhu hānala naẏana-bāṇe |
    cirañjīva rahu pañcagauṛeśvara, kavi vidyāpati bhāṇe || 3

3 (Kr̥ṣṇa’s speech; the prelude of his love for Rādhā)

(Rāga Dhānaśī)

  1. Woman! Today I observed the young girl playing
    as she came out of her house.
    Lightning in a dark cloud,
    she teased my curiosity and left.
  2. She is a young girl
    like a garland of flowers.
    Catching a glimpse of her,
    my wish unfulfilled, Love’s fire increased.
  3. The fair maiden has a slender body,
    she shines like gold on black kohl.
    The waist thinner than a lion’s,
    lovely are her side-glances.
  4. With a hint of a smile,
    the shafts of her eyes hit me.
    The poet Vidyāpati says:
    “May the Lord-of-the-five-Gauḍas live forever.”

— Th. d’Hubert

A17-W4 Bihari Lal (dohā) & Sundardas (pada)

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To kick off the Lunchtime Lyrics series, we read two short poems in early Hindi (also known as Brajbhasha): although both poems were written by contemporaneous poets in eastern Rajasthan, they represent very different genres, styles, and sensibilities.

The first poem is a dohā or couplet by Bihari Lāl (1599-1663), a poet at the court of Jai Singh I in Amber (Jaipur). His many dohās (collected together in the Satsāi or Seven Hundred Verses) deal primarily with themes of love and pleasure, as well as heroism and statecraft/comportment (nīti).

तंत्री नाद कबित्त रस सरस राग रति रंग ।
अनबूड़े बूड़े तरे जे बूड़े सब अंग ।।

tantrī nāda kabitta rasa sarasa rāga rati raṅga
anabūṛe būṛe tare je būṛe saba aṅga

Instrumental music, the flavor of poetry,
a sweet raga, and the pleasure of making love:
Those who are half-immersed in them will drown,
but those who are immersed in every detail [or fully immersed with all their limbs] will float.

The pleasure of the verse stems partly from the double meaning of aṅga as both ‘limb of the body’ and ‘field of knowledge.’ The overall import is clear: one should cultivate a taste for music (both its rhythmic and melodic intricacies), poetry, and the art of love. And not only that; one should immerse themselves fully in all aspects of these areas of knowledge, so that they can truly ‘drown’ in a sea of pleasure.

The second poem is a pad (or lyric) by Sundardas (1599-1689) of the Dadu Panth, a bhakti religious community that coalesced in eastern Rajasthan around the turn of the seventeenth century. Sundardas was born into a Jain Khandelwal family, joined the community’s monastic order as a child, was educated in Banaras, and returned to Fatehpur (near Jaipur) to establish a monastery.

देखहु साह रमइया ऐसा सो रहै अपरछन बैसा ।टेक।
यहु हाट कियौ संसारा ता मैं बिबिधि भांति ब्यौपारा ।
सब जीव सौदागर आया जिनि बनज्या तैसा पाया ।
किनहूं बनिजी खलि खारी किनहूं लइ लौंग सुपारी ।
किनहूं लिये मूंगा मोती किनहूं लइ काचा की पोती ।
किनहूं लइ औषढ मूरी किनहूं केसर कस्तुरी ।
किनहूं लियौ बहुत अनाजा किनहूं लियौ ल्हसण प्याजा ।
संतनि लीयौ हरि हीरा तिन स्यौं कीयौ हम सीरा ।
दुख दलिद्र निकट न आवै यौं सुंदर बनिया गावै ।

dekhahu sāha ramaïyā aisā so rahai aparachana baisā
yahu hāṭa kiyau saṁsārā tā maiṁ bibidhi bhāṁti byaupārā
saba jīva saudāgara āyā jini banajyā taisā pāyā
kinahūṁ banijī khali khārī kinahuṁ laï lauṁga supārī
kinahūṁ liye mūṁgā motī kinahūṁ laï kāca kī potī
kinahūṁ laï auṣadha mūrī kinahūṁ kesara kastūrī
kinahūṁ liyau bahuta anājā kinahūṁ liyau lhasaṇa pyājā
saṁtani līyau hari hīrā tina syauṁ kīyau hama sīrā
dukha dalidra nikaṭa na āvai yauṁ sundara baniyā gāvai

Look! King Ram is such
That He remains hidden like this. (Refrain)
He has made this market of saṁsārā
In which there are all types of businesses (byaupārā).
All beings have come as merchants (saudāgar)–
They earn according to their trade (banajyā).
Someone has traded in oil cake and salts,
Someone else has brought cloves and supārī.
Someone has brought coral and pearl,
Someone else has brought beads of glass.
Someone has brought medicinal roots,
Someone else saffron and musk.
Someone took a lot of grain,
Someone else took garlic and onions.
The sants took the diamond of Hari,
Which I [took] from them and placed on my head.
[Now] pain and destitution do not come near,
So sings Sundardas the baniyā.

The beauty of this poem is in the movement back and forth between the individual verses, which describe everyday commodities and activities in a market, and the refrain, which reminds us that God (in this case nirguṇ or formless) pervades everything we see, even if He is hidden. Thus the Absolute is hidden in the quotidian. Dadu Panthi saints like Sundardas often suggested that, although one must live in the world of saṁsāra with its material concerns, simply keeping in mind the presence of a higher Truth could lead to liberation. This poem reflects that theology. The chāp or poet’s ‘signature’ in the final verse also adds charm to the poem: although Sundardas began life in this world as a baniyā (merchant) in the worldly sense, being born into a Khandelwal baniyā family, he has now become a merchant in a different sense, a merchant of God’s word.

— T. Williams