Retelling Time: Alternative Temporalities from Premodern South Asia [1 ed.] 9781032061931, 9781032062051, 9781003202783

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Contents
List of contributors
Preface
1 Temporality and its discontents or why time needs to be retold
2 The moment in which the river rests: time in early Buddhism
3 Proleptic pasts and involuted causalities in Kūṭiyāṭṭam
4 Taking, Making, and Leaving Time: the many times of the Āyāraṃga
5 The guru and the mantra: transcending time in the philosophy and practice of yoga
6 Time is born of his eyelashes: Purāṇic measurement and conceptions of time
7 On rasa and recursivity: ethics and aesthetics of time in Sanskrit poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra)
8 Sun, consciousness and time: the way of time and the timeless in Kashmir Śaivism
9 Time is in the moment (waqt) and also in eternity (dahr): reflections from Sufi Islam
10 Concentric worlds: space and time in the Pratyabhijñā school and the Abhinavabhāratī
11 From corporal time to cognitive time: Kannada word-scape in transition, 10th to 12th century
12 (Un)doing space and time: ‘doing’ the Rāmcaritmānas
13 The ontology of now: reading time through 16th- and 17th-century nyāya philosophy
14 ‘A farrago of legendary nonsense’?: myth, time and history in the Keralolpatti
15 The knots of time: reading nostalgia in Bengali literature from the 13th to the 19th centuries

Citation preview

RETELLING TIME

Retelling Time challenges the hegemony of colonial modernity over academic disciplines and over ways in which we think about something as fundamental as time. It reclaims a bouquet of alternative practices of time from premodern South Asia, which stem from multiple worldviews that have been marginalized. These practices relate to a range of classical and vernacular genres, including alaṃkāra, theravāda, yoga, rāmakathā, tasawwuf, āyāraṃga, purāṇa, trikā-tantra, navya-nyāya, pratyabhijñā, carita, kūṭīyāṭṭam and maṅgala kāvya. They represent multiple languages, such as Sanskrit, Persian, Pali, Prakrit, Awadhi, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali, as well as diverse streams, from Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sufi Islam to logic, yoga, tantra, theatre and poetics. Retelling Time questions the modern Eurocentric belief in an empty, homogenous, abbreviated, secular and irreversible time. It proposes instead that premodern South Asia invested time with cultural function and value, which ranged from the contingent to the transcendent, the quotidian to the cosmic, the fleeting to the eternal and the social to the spiritual. Accordingly, time was reworked – stretched, melded, collapsed, recursed, rolled over and even extinguished. Sacred, social, aesthetic, scientific, fictional, historical and performative South Asian traditions are seen here in conversation with one another, mediated by an ethical paradigm. Their collective challenge is to decolonize our ways of knowing and being. This book will be of interest to scholars of South Asian history, philosophy of history, anthropology, literature, Sanskrit, post-colonial studies, cultural studies, studies of temporality and studies of the Global South. Shonaleeka Kaul is a cultural and intellectual historian of early South Asia, specializing in working with Sanskrit texts. She is Professor at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She has also been the Malathy Singh Distinguished Lecturer in South Asian Studies at Yale University, USA; the Jan Gonda Fellow in Indology at Leiden University, The Netherlands; and the DAAD Professor of History at the South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany. She is the author of Imagining the Urban: Sanskrit and the City in Early India (2010) and The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini (2018). She has edited four volumes, including Cultural History of Early South Asia: A Reader (2014) and Eloquent Spaces: Meaning and Community in Early Indian Architecture (2019).

RETELLING TIME Alternative Temporalities from Premodern South Asia

Edited by Shonaleeka Kaul

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Shonaleeka Kaul; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Shonaleeka Kaul to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-032-06193-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-06205-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-20278-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783 Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Śrīkṛṣṇārpaṇamastu

For Nachiketa

CONTENTS

List of contributors Preface

ix xi

1 Temporality and its discontents or why time needs to be retold

1

S H O N A L E E K A KAUL

2 The moment in which the river rests: time in early Buddhism

11

G E R G A N A R U ME NOVA RUS E VA

3 Proleptic pasts and involuted causalities in Kūṭiyāṭṭam

24

D AV I D D E A N S HUL MAN

4 Taking, Making, and Leaving Time: the many times of the Āyāraṃga

41

C H R I S TO P H E MMRI CH

5 The guru and the mantra: transcending time in the philosophy and practice of yoga

62

TA R I N E E AWA S T HI

6 Time is born of his eyelashes: Purāṇic measurement and conceptions of time

75

M c C O M A S TAYL OR

7 On rasa and recursivity: ethics and aesthetics of time in Sanskrit poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra) S H O N A L E E K A KAUL

vii

89

CONTENTS

8 Sun, consciousness and time: the way of time and the timeless in Kashmir Śaivism

97

B E T T I N A S HARADA BÄUME R

9 Time is in the moment (waqt) and also in eternity (dahr): reflections from Sufi Islam

104

K A S H S H A F GHANI

10 Concentric worlds: space and time in the Pratyabhijñā school and the Abhinavabhāratī

122

R A D H I K A K O UL

11 From corporal time to cognitive time: Kannada word-scape in transition, 10th to 12th century

137

M A N U V. D E VADE VAN

12 (Un)doing space and time: ‘doing’ the Rāmcaritmānas

157

A D I T YA C H AT URVE DI

13 The ontology of now: reading time through 16th- and 17th-century nyāya philosophy

172

S A M U E L WRI GHT

14 ‘A farrago of legendary nonsense’?: myth, time and history in the Keralolpatti

185

D I L I P M M E NON

15 The knots of time: reading nostalgia in Bengali literature from the 13th to the 19th centuries A N U PA R N A MUKHE RJE E

viii

200

CONTRIBUTORS

Tarinee Awasthi is a PhD candidate in the department of Asian Studies at Cornell University, Ithaca, USA. Bettina Sharada Bäumer is Director, Abhinavagupta Research Library, Varanasi, India. Aditya Chaturvedi is a PhD candidate in the department of Religious Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, USA. Manu V. Devadevan is Assistant Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, India. Christoph Emmrich is Associate Professor for Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. Kashshaf Ghani is Assistant Professor of History at Nalanda University, Rajgir, India. Shonaleeka Kaul is Professor of Ancient Indian History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Radhika Koul is a PhD candidate in the department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University, Palo Alto, USA. Dilip M Menon is the Mellon Chair in Indian Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Anuparna Mukherjee is Assistant Professor, Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, India. Gergana Rumenova Ruseva is Associate Professor of Sanskrit, department of the Classical East, Sofia University, Bulgaria. David Dean Shulman is Professor Emeritus of South Asian Studies at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.

ix

CONTRIBUTORS

McComas Taylor is Reader in Sanskrit at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Samuel Wright is Post-Doctoral Researcher at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and Visiting Faculty, Division of Humanities and Languages, Ahmedabad University, India.

x

PREFACE

The origins of this volume can be traced to a panel that I organized for the Association of Asian Studies conference (AAS-in-Asia) held in New Delhi in July 2018. More on that panel in a bit. But first, what made me think of time, or rethink it, to begin with? It was a monograph that I completed writing in 2017. The Making of Early Kashmir, published by Oxford University Press, provided a revisionist take on the 12th-century Sanskrit text the Rājataraṅgiṇī, which was supposedly ancient India’s first and only work of true history. As I read and re-read this iconic literature, I discovered that time did not subserve history in this text’s vision; instead, it seemed to respond to its own logic, which exceeded the rather more limited aims of a simply documentarial work of history. Among other things, the Rājataraṅgiṇī was animated by a concern for not only contingent but transcendent truths, which it identified not in the sacred but in the politico-ethical (thus also defying modern stereotypes of the Sanskritic premodern as an exclusively ritualistic undertaking. But more on the problematic binary of ‘sacred’ and ‘secular’ in the Introduction to this volume). In the Rājataraṅgiṇī’s understanding and treatment, time was a laboratory where personal and societal ideals played themselves out. Time could stretch, collapse or return relentlessly because so did patterns of human ethics and behaviour. These, then, were the organizing principles of time and history, not chronology, causality, objectivity or even linearity, which were all expectations that modern scholarship had mistakenly nurtured of the text. With this foretaste, I decided that expressions of time in early India deserved wider investigation. Piquantly titled Time before ‘Time’: Alternative Temporalities from Premodern South Asia, the 2018 AAS panel of four papers argued that time was crucial to how societies understood themselves and their lineages so that spatiality was not enough to grasp regional histories in their entirety: temporality was instrumental. And further, this meant acknowledging that, the hegemony of International Standard Time notwithstanding, there could be multiple temporalities, in conception and practice, not only across the world but across history. Yet this acknowledgement seemed to be completely lacking – in everyday life as much as in the doings of the small but influential community of international academics, especially history departments worldwide, where time and xi

P R E FA C E

time-reckoning, including dating systems and periodizations, not to say the discipline of history itself, were treated as a monolithic given. This, despite the plethora of alternative conceptions of time (and indeed history!) that actually obtained throughout, for example, South Asian premodernity, some of which are presented in this volume. Why was there no place for these different ways of thinking in global and South Asian universities? The more I thought about it, the more it became clear that this implicit reluctance, reflected most of all in the silences and omissions or exoticizations about the non-West that still mar international course curricula, was not to multiple chronologies but in fact to the local epistemologies and ontologies – ways of knowing and being – that underwrote them. And the reluctance came from a position that rendered these non-Western thought-worlds ‘local’ in the first place and, concomitantly, what was essentially a Western colonial worldview as ‘global.’ Of course, as Neil Lazarus put it, the West names not a geographical location but an episteme or line of vision, and it could and did have votaries anywhere in the world. The point was that politics underwrote the modern regime of time that we unquestioningly inhabited today, and this politics of time corresponded to a wider global politics of power. Given the self-styled radicalism of the academic fraternity, the last place where this power-play should have found shelter was the academy, and yet here we were, still peddling, for the most, thoroughly colonized terms of intellectual engagement. Lip service to an egalitarian knowledge order notwithstanding, it would be fair to observe that decolonizing the mind in pedagogy and practice remains a distant dream in South Asian studies. This volume explicitly locates itself in the intellectual Global South as an attempted corrective to this state of affairs with regard to how we may think about such fundamentals of existence and cognition as time. *** For those who may think bringing out an edited volume is a breeze, think again. This labour of love has been a three-year slog in the making. While the conceptualization in 2017 came early and clear and was indeed intuitive, executing it over a diverse range of texts and traditions from South Asia was a different matter. It included long days and nights of research, looking for the right people – first for the panel and then for the volume – to carry out a mandate as revolutionary as rethinking something as fundamental as time. (I would have liked to have a few more representative papers in this volume, especially on time among forestdwelling and other non-literate communities, but despite my efforts, that was not to be.) Only some of the contributors to this volume had thought and written about time before. The others enthusiastically plunged into uncharted waters, responsive to my faith and exhortation no less than to the intriguing allure of the theme itself, which I happily plugged to the volume’s advantage. Then, with the exception of a few, all papers went in for intensive editing and re-drafting as I sought to pull together and harness a bunch of highly specialized and diverse studies to the common – and rather uncommon – vision of the volume. xii

P R E FA C E

Credit to my contributors for embracing all the very many ideas and detailed changes I suggested to their pieces – everything from titles to structure to texts and arguments – and for appearing as satisfied and excited at the end product of our labours as I was. In particular I’d like to thank David Shulman, McComas Taylor and Samuel Wright for sending in their wonderful pieces early. Gergana Rumenova Ruseva, who happened to join the team last, was warm and prompt in responding to every tight deadline, for which I thank her. My gratitude to Padmashri Bettina Sharada Bäumer for permitting reuse of her razor-sharp essay, which is the only piece not written fresh for this volume yet captures its essence to a T. I thank also Ramesh C. Gaur of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi, for facilitating reuse permission for the same. At the other end of the spectrum, this volume introduces the refreshing work of three young doctoral scholars, Tarinee Awasthi, Aditya Chaturvedi and Radhika Koul, while it showcases the new vistas explored by my colleagues Kashshaf Ghani, Anuparna Mukherjee, Manu Devadevan, Christoph Emmrich and Dilip Menon. My felicitations and gratitude to them all. I wish to thank my publishers, Routledge, for their committed pursuit of this volume and its expeditious publication after initial delays elsewhere. Looking at the span of this book, I suspect they may have got more than they bargained for! Thanks are due also to Tanmay for his cheerful bibliographic support. At home, my husband, Nachiketa, has championed my work over the last decade in a way that only the rare spouse does. This book is dedicated to him. Jim and Kalli, on the other hand, wish I worked less and played with them more. Sage advice. The late Buzky, Kalu, Vito, Chhutki, Champak and Chameli bring up the canine rear that frames my days and puts the world of history in perspective! Thank God for these people and this book. Shonaleeka Kaul May 2020/March 2021

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1 TEMPORALITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS OR WHY TIME NEEDS TO BE RETOLD Shonaleeka Kaul

What is time? Reams of scholarship have long concluded that time, like one’s shadow, may be that which most eludes the grasp of comprehension the more one tries to capture it. It cannot be known by either its affirmation (time is this) or its negation (time is not this). It is a point but also a duration. It is measurable but measureless. It finishes but does not end. It is absolute but relative. Objective but subjective. One could go on. Something so elusive has also, however, along with space, attained in the modern world the status of a fundamental dimension of existence – a measure and frame of all action and inaction, of change and of movement, of progress and growth and thereby of life and vitality itself. A first principle, if ever there was one. And yet – is time even real? Unlike space, does it have an existence, not to say substance, in and of itself, independent of experience or even apprehensible through the five forms of sensory perception? It may be reasonable to assert that it does not. In other words, there is no clarity about the ontological status of time. And this, together with the large number of paradoxes or aporia about it, only some of which are listed above, suggests that it is highly likely that time has been little more than a human construct. Further, the same qualities undermine the assumption of its given-ness. Not counting natural cycles and rhythms, time, as a human construct, may well be, as Norbert Elias put it, “first and foremost the medium of orientation for the social world, regulating it in relation to human life” (1988: ix). Indeed this is precisely the awareness that thinking with the term ‘temporalities’ has effected: namely, the inseparability of time from human, rather than natural, configurations. But which social world or human configuration do we speak of? As such, and as this volume will also argue, it may be productive to think about time through its functions, its fields of operation, or its contextualization (Lebovic 2010: 282) – and thereby through its multiplicity. However, while some have influentially argued that the discovery of this subjective multiplicity of time is itself a product of modernity (Koselleck 2002: 110–11), Retelling Time contests this, demonstrating 1

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-1

SHONALEEKA KAUL

instead premodernity’s indubitable, deep and prolific engagement with the many faces and functions of time. We call these the alternative temporalities of premodernity – the word ‘alternative’ an allusion to something that was certainly the product of modernity, namely the invention and imposition all over the world of a single, universal standard of time, aptly described by Francois Hartog as a regime (2003, 2013). The metaphor of regime implies an ordered and ordering nexus of powers, a dominion in and through which historical actors seek to control space by mastering time (Lianeri 2014: 605). Likewise, the modern regime of temporality was a mode of governing time and thereby peoples who were brought, or in other ways came, under its sway. Emerging out of 18th-century Western Europe, the modern regime of temporality, also known as Hegelian or Newtonian time, was characterized by proclamations of the homeogeneity, discreteness, linearity, directionality (progress to the future), immanence and absoluteness of time. It was operationalized through techniques and mechanisms like Greenwich Mean Time (1884), the Gregorian Calendar (spread between 1582 and 1882), and the Before Christ/Anno Domini mode of chronology-marking, to give but a few examples. So whether it was quotidian time we are speaking of or historical time, there was – and still is – but one uniform measure applied across the entire modern world. In homes and in factories, in classrooms and in offices, in the field and in the marketplace, the time of modernity came to rule. Further, it was experienced by much of the non-European world as a project of colonialism, complete with its irruptive political violence that was predicated on the delegitimation and destruction of the premodern past and the construction of a victorious ‘present’ which, given the apogee of human historical development the modern stood for, brooked no alternatives. This was the modern dominant narrative of ‘rupture and progress.’ As Aleida Assman writes: Unlike previous cultural time regimes, which aimed to ensure continuity, modernity provided concepts indicating a new beginning, the creative destruction of the past, the invention of the ‘historical’ as engagement with a past that is no longer present, as well as a logic of accelerated change, which, in contrast with the slow life of traditions, identified the modern with a temporality of the break. (paraphrased by Lianeri 2014: 606) The politics underwriting this modern regime of time and its close fit with the ends of Empire should thus be evident. As Helge Jordheim reminds us, it birthed an entire vocabulary of delays, lags and accelerations, as evidenced in terms like the ‘first world’ and ‘third world,’ ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries and so on, used consistently right into our times to signal global orders and disorders (2014: 513). The colonial spatialization of time, and juxtaposition of temporal difference onto cultural difference, achieved the inferiorization of local life-worlds as 2

WHY TIME NEEDS TO BE RETOLD

unequal to the European standard. And this is why, in this volume, we define the premodern as coterminous with the precolonial in South Asia.1 *** Since much of the debate on time in the West has, unlike in this volume, tended to become a reckoning with historical time, a word on history is due at this juncture. Though this volume tries to rescue time from the thrall of history and go well beyond it, it begs stating that history as a discipline, which is another product of post-Enlightenment modernity, has been a crucial agent of the project of constructing and valorizing a colonial epistemology at the cost of local historical modes of premodernity. This is especially and amply demonstrable in South Asia. (See Kaul 2014, 2018a, b for a recent discussion.) What’s more, the project of history has outlasted Empire itself by enshrining a deeply empiricist and exclusionary self-definition as hegemonic in academia across the world to date. This definition papers over and brackets out the multiple visions and purposes of representing the past that flourished in premodern South Asia, with their emphasis on the didactic and the ethical, for example, and the use of figurative and mythical registers over and above the documentary function of history. Instead, the modern ‘global’ discipline of history set up the tyranny of the ‘fact,’ of scientific method, chronology (dates and precedence!), objectivity and rational causality – prime but fraught emblems of a ‘modern/Western’ intellect – whether or not these were appropriate to the logic of the intellectual cultures on which these were imposed. In classic circularity, these non-European, premodern cultures and their texts ended up being heavily misinterpreted in the process, furthering the production of the colonial Other. From E.H Carr and R.G Collingwood to Leon Goldstein, David Carr, Hayden White, Paul Ricouer and others, much has been written by way of debunking this Rankean positivism, which found its way from the Continent to the colonies via European imperialists and orientalists alike throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and was internalized gospel-like by South Asian historians in a scramble for coevality with the West. The contemporary avatar of historicism, too, has come in for a fair share of critique. But make no mistake, the modern lives and thrives even in the postmodern world in the form of the “disciplinary essentialism” and “methodological fetishism” enforced in and through history departments and historical praxis across the world and (therefore?) certainly across South Asian academies. (For a devastating exposé of the discipline and method of history worldwide, see Kleinberg et al. 2018.) Most attempts to intervene and self-correct on the part of practitioners and pedagogues of history are likely to be met with an obdurate anxiety about unscientifism, nativism and reaction. In today’s polarized politics in South Asia and the West alike, especially if premodern Indian classical or vernacular traditions or alternatives of history are invoked, charges of cultural chauvinism or cultural nationalism are not hard to come by either. It takes no labouring to see that central to this project of history is the modern regime of time – linear, uniform, ‘progressive,’ strictly diachronic, profane, 3

SHONALEEKA KAUL

immanent time. Certainly this regime, too, has come in for handsome and multilinear critique from recent postmodern/postcolonial scholarship. The concepts of the Anthropocene and deep time of climate change, of presentism, memory studies, the global contemporary and heterochronicities, among others, have all dented the certitudes of modern time so much so that some scholars, like Assman (2013), are convinced of the latter having met its death. In practice, this is hardly true, as we have seen. Plus some of these new concepts may fall for cultural relativism, inadvertently fortifying the anthropological Othering of difference and denial of coevalness that they set out to demolish (Helgesson 2014). In any case, just as modern time emerged from what a scholar has called our “obsession with certain theatres of theorizing time” – a thinly veiled reference to the hold of German, French and American scholars on the field for the last hundred years and more2 – few of the challenges or critiques of modern time have originated from the non-West, either. Those that have, perhaps never get the same audience or reach. In any case, as Neil Lazarus put it, “the West names not a geographical location but an episteme or line of vision” (2011: 98). It could have votaries and mediaries anywhere in the world. Retelling Time departs from both these trends in taking on the tyranny and telos of the modern regime of time: its challenge is mounted not from the Western episteme at all but from South Asian traditions and on behalf of the premodern rather than the postmodern world. The premodern, after all, suffered the greatest epistemic violence at the hands of the colonizing modern; postcolonialists, then, need not have reinvented the wheel of time but merely dug deep into the bottomless reservoirs of (in our case) South Asian knowledge systems. Insofar as critics of modernity may have overlooked or abandoned the premodern, they have perpetuated the sins of modernity and left behind an unfinished task. In contrast, defying a priori concerns over nativism and the like to which such an attempt is deemed susceptible, this volume presents a bouquet of alternative temporalities from premodern South Asia, which stem from an array of world views, epistemologies and ontologies that have been systematically marginalized and invisibilized thus far. This volume may therefore be understood as positioning itself within the intellectual discourse of the Global South. What does that mean? For reasons explained at the beginning of this chapter, it is possible to see that the way we figure time figures us (Terdiman 2008: 142) and, further, that temporal assumptions and habits can shape entire fields of knowledge. Hence, for this volume, time helps formulate a political challenge which, in engaging the hegemony of the time of colonial modernity and its concomitant weltanschauung, embraces a number of alternative visions of time from the non-modern3 South Asian world, without committing the volume to any one in particular. Their challenge is collective. This volume thus seeks to de-occidentalize yet again, and desync from modernity, our ways of seeing and knowing the world and our place in it, for which the diagnostic of time offers a fundamental opportunity. It does not seek, however, to propose any substitute, unitary dogma. 4

WHY TIME NEEDS TO BE RETOLD

Retelling Time aims perhaps higher than that. It seeks to problematize how we think about something as foundational as time rather than bracketing away other understandings of it as niche or exotic. In presenting variegated, viable yet radical South Asian alternatives to doing time and history, and in asking that these premodern ways of knowing and being find a natural place in international discourses, this volume seeks to confound long-lasting and all-pervasive global regimes of thought and pedagogy in the hope that a non-sovereign intellectual world-order may yet be within reach. *** Some words now on the volume in closer focus. While the field of ‘regional history’ or ‘area studies’ – departments to which the study of non-Western societies (Asia, Africa and Latin America) is typically consigned (confined?) internationally – may admit of distinctive histories arising from different spatialities, social sciences the world over, as we saw, still seem to work with the premise of a uniform global time, which is projected onto the past as well, over and above the present. In this way, denied their own temporalities, the possibility of genuinely diverse regional histories is perhaps foreclosed. Retelling Time is an attempt to reopen this question for South Asia via a series of case studies that interrogate a range of premodern South Asian classical and vernacular genres of thought and language use for their alternative conceptions and practices of time. These include alaṃkāra, theravāda, yoga, rāmakathā, tasawwuf, āyāraṃga, purāṇa, trikā-tantra, navya-nyāya, pratyabhijñā, carita, kūṭiyāṭṭam and maṅgala kāvya. Some of these relate not just to textual but oral and performative genres. Further, without being comprehensive (an unachievable goal if ever there was one, given the linguistic and intellectual prolixity in South Asia), the chapters in Retelling Time are nonetheless widely representative in that they examine the question of time in multiple languages and dialects over some 2000 years: viz. Sanskrit, Persian, Pali, Prakrit (Ardha-magadhi), Awadhi, Malayalam, Kannada and Bengali, and relate to an equally wide range of traditions, viz. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism and Sufi Islam to logic, yoga, tantra, theatre and poetics. In every instance, these case studies depart from the modern Eurocentric belief in a homogenous, abbreviated, secular, empty and irreversible time. They recover instead vast, transcendent, eternal or recursive notions of time and the reworking, stretching, collapsing, melding and even ceasing and extinguishing of time (to give just a few examples), all of which, as the 14 chapters that follow will show, are closely connected to deeper cosmologies and weltanschauungs of the beliefs and practices they represent. (It should be added that it is not necessarily the case that these premodern temporalities ran extinct with the arrival in South Asia of the colonial disjuncture 18th–20th century. They instead perhaps invisibly joined what Partha Chatterjee [2003: 166] calls “the real space of modern life” where time is “heterogeneous and unevenly dense.”) Given that time is crucial to how societies understand their pasts and themselves – their genealogies – the import of the clash between these alternative temporalities, 5

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it bears repetition, runs deeper than a concern for mere chronology; it represents alternative epistemologies and ontologies – and a multiplicity of them. One hastens to add, however, that this is not a resort to the familiar, if inaccurate, binaries of physics versus metaphysics or materialism versus spiritualism, which replay the Orientalist stereotypes about the West and the East that this volume seeks to dismantle. (Indeed, modern physics may today be suggesting radical things, such as the possibility that the past, present and future exist at the same time [!], which, fascinatingly, mirrors premodern notions of contemporaneity discussed in at least two chapters here (Chapters 5 and 12).4 Such binaries would be highly reductive of the diversity of treatments of time and their multifarious contexts discussed in the essays in Retelling Time. Witness: While in kāvya we get a transtemporality and universalizing of time which are linked to affect and ethics (Chapter 7), in pratyabhijñā we see a concentrifying and ‘dreamatization’ of time as meta-theatre plays out (Chapter 10). In Sufism we see a rolling back of time (Chapter 9), while in kūṭiyāṭṭam we see a flashforwarding of it linked to causality and narrative structure (Chapter 3). While in yoga one transcends time and moves through it thanks to the guru (Chapter 5), in the Rāmakathā it is thanks to the recital of the devotional story itself (Chapter 12). In the purāṇas we get vast cycles of time mirroring the unreckonable nature of God (Chapter 6), but in Kashmir tantra time ceases and disappears out of the realization of the ineffable nature of a supra-theistic reality (Chapter 8). In Kannada poetics we see a corporalization of time (Chapter 11), while early Buddhism unravels its psychic and nihilistic dimensions (Chapter 2). While navya-nyāya speaks of the ontology of the present (Chapter 13), early Jainism considers the many moments before and after ‘now’ (Chapter 4). And while Bengali literature presents intersecting knots of time as forms of cultural memory and nostalgia (Chapter 15), in the Keralolpatti it is myth that negotiates both eternity and the Malayali socio-political present (Chapter 14). As stated in the beginning of this Introduction, the point therefore is the multiplicity of premodern temporalities rather than merely their alterity. And, for the same reason, as also to avoid the production of essentialized dichotomies, the temptation to derive some overarching unity to the functions of time found in this volume – that is, to speak of some monolithic, hegemonic time of South Asian premodernity that would rival that of colonial modernity – is a temptation that must be resisted. But more on this further on. In particular, given that about half the chapters explore traditions of what may be called faith and spiritual practice, it must not be assumed that premodern time was essentially religious time. Not only is the Judaeo-Christian category of ‘religion’ inapt for early South Asia, it would also misleadingly conflate discrete modes of thought and practice touched on in this book, such as devotionalism (Vaishnavism) on the one hand and monism (sufism, trikā-tantra) and gnosis (yoga) on the other, with different brands of a-theism and rejection of the soul (Jainism, Buddhism) in between. (Overlaps among these as well as their internal variations on time further complicate the picture.) Perhaps the more appropriate word to use 6

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in the context of South Asia is ‘sacred’ – except that the sacred, too, can thus be seen to inhabit a fundamental variety; and, as some of the chapters again show (Chapter 7, 10, 11), tracing a fixed line between the sacred and the profane may not be a worthwhile pursuit either. It would overlook the fact that rather than a binary opposition, the two ‘realms’ may have occupied something of a shifting continuum in premodern South Asia. In the same way, departing from most modern scholarship on time that is unable or unwilling to speak of it other than in relation to history, this volume is not primarily about historical time any more than it is exclusively about sacred time. For, as recent research has shown, history for the last 200 years is really a construct and extension of modernity and its privileging of certitudes, verifiability and linearity, underwritten, in some measure, again by Semitic theologies and mensuration. Insofar as history is studied between the covers of Retelling Time (Chapter 7, 14), it is sought to be done in emic ways, uncovering endogenous understandings of it. (For more on the emic Indic understandings of history, see Kaul 2018b.) What does this volume propose, then? In contrast to what Walter Benjamin called the “homogenous empty time” of modernity, this volume is an attempt to understand time and expressions of time as serving certain functions – sometimes specific to their contexts and sometimes transcendental but always foregrounding values. This is in fact the closest one can come to speaking of any dominant South Asian cultural subjectivity regarding time during premodernity. As I write in Chapter 7 with regard to Sanskrit aesthetics: while the modern academic response to temporal aporia has been perhaps to give up on it and settle for engaging with [its] mere representations . . . in Sanskrit thought (to use a very sweeping category), there is a comfortable acceptance of the fundamentally correlative nature of time. To put that differently, it is believed that the key to understanding time lies not in its representations but in its functions. Functions in turn could relate to the finite or the infinite. (p. 89) Retelling Time therefore certainly looks at the sacred and the sotereological in premodern/non-modern South Asia but also at the social, the aesthetic, the scientific, the historical, the fictional and the performative – and often all of these in conversation with one other, mediated by an ethical paradigm (ethical here standing for a set of values distinctive of a particular culture or group). And in this context, time is a singularly apt category or analytic to frame this enquiry because it is naturally both social and spiritual, both quotidian and cosmic. *** To reimagine time, and allow for South Asian varieties of it, is to open a window to reimagining South Asia itself. It is also, as we saw, to challenge colonial epistemic hierarchies, which remain firmly entrenched in pedagogic practice in mainstream 7

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South Asia and the world, however much they may have been indicted in theory and rhetoric. This volume invokes the aspiration for a truly globalized knowledge order and makes a case for inviting premodern/non-modern South Asian knowledge systems to their well-earned place at the international high table of academia, especially but not only when such fundamentals of human experience and cognition as time are at debate. Have no works on South Asia dealt with the theme before? Speaking of relatively recent English-language publications, there have been a few, but these may be justifiably described as stray and rare, itself a commentary on the unquestioned given-ness that modern time has acquired as well as on the continuing domination of modern South Asian disciplines by Anglophonic categories, queries and discourses. One pioneering book which spoke of the textures of time gained celebrity 20 years ago (Narayan Rao et al. 2001). However, it was not about time per se but about historicity in premodern South India, thereby perhaps underlining the bondage of the concept of time to modern anxieties surrounding mensurability, linearity, empiricism and other such concerns associated with the search for history in non-western texts.5 Another work that came out a few years later (Banerjee 2006) provided a critique of the mechanisms of colonial modernity but did not engage with the premodern or with endogenous alternatives of time. Of course there is no dearth of works that are in the nature of anthologies (for example: Prasad 1992; Vatsyayan 1996; Balslev 2009), which essentially bring together, review-like, a sweeping mix of concepts of time in ancient and modern Indian philosophies. These are profound and invaluable in their own right but by and large descriptive and do not engage with the international political implications, or challenge the imbalance of the modern knowledge order, or theorize the strength of the epistemological alternatives that premodern South Asia may proffer the world. On the whole, then, the study of temporalities in and from South Asia is an incomplete or preliminary project so far. Though necessarily only illustrative in its coverage, Retelling Time seeks to nudge this project closer to its logical conclusion: it is both wider than the monographs mentioned previously and more pointed and aspirational than the anthologies. Fittingly, it brings together an outstanding, fresh and diverse international cast of historians, philologists, philosophers, practitioners and scholars from religious studies and literary theory and criticism, and puts them to work in concert on temporality and its discontents in our part of the world.

Notes 1 This is notwithstanding the somewhat ambiguous and inconclusive debate on the existence of an Indian ‘early modernity.’ 2 For a discussion of this scholarship, see Lebovic (2010). This monopoly over the global discourse on time by Western thought is reflected unavoidably in the all-Western scholars and contexts cited in this introduction as well! It is hoped, however, that the chapters that follow in this volume will redeem and remedy that situation.

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3 The terms non-modern and premodern will appear to be used interchangeably in this chapter. The reason is to emphasize the non-modernity of the South Asian premodern. Otherwise, of course, non-modern modes may exist well into the modern world. See, for example, this instance reported in 2018 in the Indian national daily, The Times of India, about how a certain tribal community in the state of Gujarat is even today fashioning clocks for sale to run backwards, or counterclockwise, in stark defiance of the logic of modern global time-keeping. These clocks are selling well, to boot! https://timesofindia. indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/these-clocks-run-backwards-in-tribal-standard-practice/ articleshow/65047407.cms. Last accessed on 26.03.2020. 4 https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/a-controversial-theory-claims-present-pastand-future-exist-at-the-same-time. Last accessed 26.03.2020. 5 The more recent edited volume Time, History and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia (2011) displays a similar focus on time as history, which is rendered as the past. It is also devoted to a study of exclusively religious traditions. Its important contribution, however, is that it demonstrates the relationship between time and identity formation.

References Assman, Aleida, 2013, ‘Transformations of the Modern Time Regime’ in Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage, eds, Breaking Up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 39–56. Balslev, Anindita Rastogi, 2009, A Study of Time in Indian Philosophy, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Banerjee, P. 2006, Politics of Time: ‘Primitives’ and History-Writing in a Colonial Society, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chatterjee, Partha, 2003, ‘Anderson’s Utopia’ in Jonathan Culler and Pheng Cheah, eds, Grounds of Comparison: Around the Work of Benedict Anderson, New York and London: Routledge, 161–70. Elias, Norbert, 1988, Über die Zeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hartog, Francois, 2003, Régimes d’historicité: Présentisme et expériences du temps, Paris: Seuil [published in translation in 2015 as Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and the Experiences of Time, New York: Columbia University Press]. ———, 2013, ‘The Modern Regime of Historicity in the Face of the Two World Wars’ in Chris Lorenz and Berber Bevernage, eds, Breaking Up Time: Negotiating the Borders between Present, Past and Future, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 124–34. Helgesson, Stefan, 2014, ‘Radicalizing Temporal Difference: Anthropology, Postcolonial Theory and Literary Time’ History and Theory, 53, 4, 545–62. Jordheim, Helge, 2014, ‘Multiple Times and the Work of Synchronization’ History and Theory, 53, 4, December, 498–518. Kaul, Shonaleeka, 2014, ‘Seeing’ the Past: Text and Questions of History in Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī’ History and Theory, 53, 2, 194–211. ———, 2018a, The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini, Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———, 2018b, ‘Historical Methods’ in Pankaj Jain et al., ed, Encyclopaedia of Indian Religions: Hinduism and Tribal Religions, New York: Springer. Kleinberg, Ethan, Joan Wallach Scott and Gary Wilder, May 2018, Theses on Theory and History, Theoryrevolt.com, Wild On Collective. Koselleck, Reinhart, 2002, The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Lazarus, Neil, 2011, The Postcolonial Unconscious, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lebovic, Nitzan, 2010, ‘The Sovereignty of Modern Times: Different Concepts of Time and the Modernist Perspective’ History and Theory, 49, May, 281–88. Lianeri, Alexandra, 2014, ‘Resisting Modern Temporalities: Toward a Critical History of Breaks in Time’ History and Theory, 53, 4, 603–15. Murphy, Anne, ed, 2011, Time, History and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia, London: Routledge. Narayan Rao, V., David Shulman and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 2001, Textures of Time: Writing History in South India 1600–1800, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prasad, H.S., ed, 1992, Time in Indian Philosophies: A Collection of Essays, Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications. Terdiman, Richard, 2008, ‘Taking Time: Temporal Representations and Cultural Politics’ in Tyrus Miller, ed, Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context, Budapest: CEU Press, 131–44. Vatsyayan, Kapila, ed, 1996, Concepts of Time, Ancient and Modern, Delhi: IGNCA and Sterling.

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2 THE MOMENT IN WHICH THE RIVER RESTS Time in early Buddhism Gergana Rumenova Ruseva

Do not chase after the past; do not seek for the future The past is already no more; the future is not yet. And see the elements of present in every place, without attachment Without moving – yet clearly see and strive in the present. Majjhima Nikāya, 131–32 (Translated by Miyamoto 1959: 122)

The sense of time is central for every sensation, experience and thought. It is a specific focus, through which one or another phenomenon and experience is structured and comprehended. And it can also be manipulated – to create or reach different worlds; to see the death coming by in the next moment; to see a lack of entities; to cut all attachments; and, at last, to find a state without time, without becoming. This chapter looks at the notion of time in relation to the self and the psyche in three of the five Nikāyas (or collections) of the Sutta Piṭaka – Majjhima, Saṃyutta and Aṅguttara, which are a part of the earliest canonical literature in the Pali language attributed to Buddhism. Some of the earliest discourses are said to be composed circa 5th–6th century BCE by the Buddha or his close companions, but the earliest collection is dated circa 3rd–1st century BCE, and the collections are written (in different languages) not earlier than the 1st century BCE (Müller 1899: 19–21; Warder 2004 [1970]: 3–7, 282–83; Gombrich 2006 [1996]: 3, 8–11; Sujato 2012 [2005]: 23–37; Singh 2008: 25). From the very beginning, we should keep in mind that early Buddhism is, most of all, a soteriological teaching. It is not a system of metaphysics but a practical teaching leading to salvation from suffering (dukkha), so we don’t expect to find in the texts abstract notions concerning time (Koller 1974). For this reason, different ideas on the nature of time were not an object of a metaphysical investigation but probably were used to manipulate the sense of time as a means of gaining a

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-2

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broader comprehension of the world and the human condition and of reaching liberation. The Buddha and his adepts of early Buddhism were quite aware that there is an intimate relationship between the sense of time, the structure of the human thought and sensations, the sense of body and the sense of self. (This intimate relationship has been demonstrated and investigated in Ataria, Neria 2013 and Zhou, Pöppel, Bao 2014. See also Ruseva 2018). These manipulations of the time sensation/perception have been used not just once but throughout the whole way (magga) to salvation (nibbāna). (Very profound and abounding with citations from early Buddhist texts are the works on time in Buddhism of Coomaraswamy 1947; Bareau 1957; Miyamoto 1959; Kalupahana 1974; Prasad 1988; Rospatt 1995; Rospatt 2004. See also Eliade 1958: 188–93.) To what extent are most of the Buddhist ideas and notions about time and practices based on the sense of time not just trickery that can catch and direct awareness in a specific sphere of experience and keep it focused in this mode, destroying the unmoving stability of this world? It seems that man should be tricked to leave the stable security of its own longevity and continuance to step on the road to salvation. According to Ronald Purser (2015), the deepest and most hidden level of suffering is based on the comprehension that everything is subject to the laws of kamma (“action,” “doing,” actions driven by intention, a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind, which leads to future consequences) and dependent origination and on the vague feeling that self may be empty and devoid of a separate identity. This level of suffering is usually repressed, or covered up, through incessant goal-directed activities that are attempts to make the self feel more secure, grounded and real. The suffering of conditioning, or “third-level” suffering, requires the deepest level of investigation of temporality. (Purser 2015: 380) One of the most influential hypotheses about the origin of some Buddhist theories and speculations is that these ideas originated from meditative practice. For example, according to Schmithausen (2014: 630, 635–36; early variants of the theory are from 1973 and 1976), the theory of momentariness is “rooted in spiritual practice.” This idea has been critiqued by Franco (2009, 2018). Rospatt (1995: 209) suggested that the notion of momentariness could be incorporated in satipaṭṭhāna (“application of mentality”) practice “as the adequate understanding of impermanence.” And he added (Rospatt 1995: 209, note 445): “Such a hypothesis leaves the question open whether the new metaphysical assumption of momentariness will have prompted a spiritual experience of a new quality, or whether only the conceptualization of the experience, and not its nature, changed” (see also Rospatt 2004). I would like to emphasize here that both levels of experience – that of the metaphysical understanding, and that of the personal practice and meditation, have been actively and simultaneously used for attaining the state “without becoming” – nibbāna. But investigating the notions and ideas about time 12

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outside the sphere of practice and experience, we somehow look at the finger, never what is aimed. For example, central for Buddhism is the collapse of the sense of self. But, as is shown by Ataria, Neria (2013: 159) “the loss of the sense of body and the loss of the sense of time are in fact connected; that is, they collapse together. This breakdown in turn results in collapse of the sense of self.” So, through specific practices at first glance aimed at the change in the sensation of time, the mind is tricked to reach an experience central for Buddhism – the loss of the self-sense (anatta). In the beginning of the Buddha’s path to enlightenment is the realization of aniccatā (noneternity, impermanence) – the realization of the impermanent nature of existence (Rospatt 2004), and early Buddhism emphasizes the brevity of life and the mortality of all living beings (Coomaraswamy 1947: 30–33). Seyyathāpi brāhmaṇā, thullaphusitake deve vassante udakabubbūḷaṃ khippameva paṭivigacchati na ciraṭṭhitikaṃ hoti, evameva kho brāhmaṇā, udakabubbūḷupamaṃ jīvitaṃ manussānaṃ parittaṃ lahukaṃ bahudukkhaṃ bahūpāyāsaṃ, mantāya boddhabbaṃ. Kattabbaṃ kusalaṃ caritabbaṃ brahmacariyaṃ. Natthi jātassa amaraṇaṃ. (Aṅguttaranikāya IV. 137) (7.2.2.10.3 Arakasuttam) (GRETIL) Just as a line drawn on water with a stick will quickly vanish and will not last long, so too, brahmins, human life is like a line drawn on water with a stick. It is limited and fleeting; it has much suffering, much misery. One should wisely understand this. One should do what is wholesome and lead the spiritual life; for none who are born can escape death. (Aṅguttaranikāya 2012: 1096) In the Pаli canon, there are many different techniques and practices for comprehending the transience of life, most of them based on the manipulation of the time sense/perception. (Here I will mention only some of them as depicted by Rospatt [2004], who made a profound and detailed study on the subject.) These include the contemplation of death in the charnel fields, with the awareness that the decaying corpse is one’s own body or at least that one’s own body will end in the same manner, gradually reducing in the mind the time that is left to live to a single breath (satipaṭṭhāna) in order not to waste time and to be mindful of the present (Rospatt 1995: 210–12), concentrating on the impermanent nature of existence. These practices are based on different concepts of time – while the first and the second (more archaic) emphasize the linearity of time and the final end, death, the third is more connected with the cyclicity of time – a periodic dissolution and reappearance stretched across long eons of time – death is, by no means, a special moment in the endless cycle (see also Rospatt 2004). On what basis do the ideas of time in Buddhism emerge, and to what notion of time is Buddhism opposed? We can understand the Buddhist attitude towards time only if we have in mind the Buddhist vision of the world and of the human 13

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condition. But before Buddhism, in the Ṛgveda, time is conceived in two ways: from one side, time is cyclic, and the basic cycle is the year (saṃvatsara). The wheel of this year is then equated with the wheel of the cosmic order (ṛta). The movement of the sun has a power to regulate the universe – thus, the year is the eternal principle, mirrored in the cyclic time and represented again by the year. Only after the creation of the year did the universe become organized (Yanchevskaya, Witzel 2017). In the Atharvaveda, there is a slightly different version – time again is all-powerful and creates and regulates the universe, but the cyclic and fluid time is opposed to an eternal time, “located” in the realm of immortality (Ibid.), something like a “mythological time” (Eliade 1958). The immobile eternity is imitated by moving in a circle. In the Epic, it is depicted as an elaborate system of big cycles of creations, beings and destructions of the world (Yanchevskaya, Witzel 2017). In early Buddhism, attitudes about time are completely different. The Buddhists opposed the idea that time is the cause of the world and the notions of permanence, especially of the permanence of the self. They emphasized opposition to the common orthodox beliefs and invented quite new ideas of impermanence and selflessness (anatta). These are, first of all, negative theories (Miyamoto 1959), but some of the ideas concerning time are not quite new. They have parallels in some orthodox teachings, for example, in Yogasūtra of Patañjali and in Yogasūtrabhāṣya of Vyāsa (Ruseva 2015a). We should also keep in mind that there are many different concepts of time in early Buddhism. Some schools considered time as an empty frame, similar to space, while others refused to see in it something other than simple modes. Some conceived it as a perpetual present full of the reality and efficiency of existence and being the very substance of existence, while others maintained that past and future exist as does the present. For some there was nothing but a succession of separate instants; for others everything is evolving. (Bareau 1957: 362) (See also Prasad 1988.) Yes, the Buddha does acknowledge the existence of long durations of time – kappa – but only to deny them, to say how a person from the immemorial time (without a beginning) is entangled and trapped in the fabric of time. The moment of the Buddha’s enlightenment or the moment of his birth marks the beginning of a new linear time for men – as the wheel rotates along the path, the path does not (Rospatt 2004). It is not necessary to maintain this infinite time and its cyclicity – no more rituals are needed to maintain the world and its pace – the year (saṃvatsara). We must reach the end of time – the release from the cycle of being – saṃsāra. So, man’s condition is like a wheel, turning on a road, without a beginning but with an end. 14

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Sāvatthiyaṃ. Atha kho aññataro bhikkhū yena bhagavā tenupasaṅkami. Upasaṅkamitvā bhagavantaṃ abhivādetvā ekamantaṃ nisīdi. Ekamantaṃ nisinno kho so bhikkhū bhagavantaṃ etadavoca: “kīvadīgho nu kho bhante, kappo” ti? Dīgho kho bhikkhu, kappo. So na sukaro saṅkhātuṃ ettakāni vassāni iti vā, ettakāni vassasatāni iti vā, ettakāni vassasahassāni iti vā, ettakāni vassasatasahassāni iti vā’ti. Sakkā pana bhante, upamaṃ kātunti? Sakkā bhikkhū’ti bhagavā avoca. mahāselo pabbato yojanaṃ āyāmena, yojanaṃ vitthārena, yojanaṃ ubbedhena, acchiddo asusiro ekaghano, tamenaṃ puriso vassasatassa vassasatassa accayena kāsikena vatthena sakiṃ sakiṃ parimajjeyya, khippataraṃ kho so bhikkhu mahāselo pabbato iminā upakkamena parikkhayaṃ pariyādānaṃ gaccheyya, na tveva kappo. Evaṃ dīgho kho bhikkhu, kappo. Evaṃ dīghānaṃ kho bhikkhu, kappānaṃ neko kappo saṃsito nekaṃ kappasataṃ saṃsitaṃ, nekaṃ kappasahassaṃ saṃsitaṃ, nekaṃ kappasatasahassaṃ saṃsitaṃ. Taṃ kissa hetu? Anamataggoyaṃ bhikkhu, saṃsāro pubbākoṭi na paññāyati avijjānīvaraṇānaṃ sattānaṃ taṇhā saṃyojanānaṃ sandhāvataṃ saṃsarataṃ. Yāvañcidaṃ bhikkhave, alameva sabbasaṅkhāresu nibbindituṃ, alaṃ virajjituṃ, alaṃ vimuccitunti. (3.1.5. Pabbatasuttaṃ, Saṃyuttanikāya, 268) (GRETIL) At Savatthi. Then a certain bhikkhu approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, sat down to one side, and said to him: “Venerable sir, how long is an aeon?” “An aeon is long, bhikkhu. It is not easy to count it and say it is so many years, or so many hundreds of years, or so many thousands of years, or so many hundreds of thousands of years.” “Then is it possible to give a simile, venerable sir?” “It is possible, bhikkhu,” the Blessed One said. “Suppose, bhikkhu, there was a great stone mountain a yojana1 long, a yojana wide, and a yojana high, without holes or crevices, one solid mass of rock. At the end of every hundred years a man would stroke it once with a piece of silk cloth. That great stone mountain might by this effort be worn away and eliminated but the aeon would still not have come to an end. So long is an aeon, bhikkhu. And of aeons of such length, we have wandered through so many aeons, so many hundreds of aeons, so many thousands of aeons, so many hundreds of thousands of aeons. For what reason? Because, bhikkhu, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. For such a long time, bhikkhus, you have experienced suffering, anguish, and disaster, and swelled the cemetery. It is enough to experience revulsion towards all formations, enough to become dispassionate towards them, enough to be liberated from them. (Saṃyuttanikāya 3.1.5) (This is Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation 2000: 654) 15

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The Buddha describes time in terms of events, as is seen from the citation (see also Ruseva 2018). We derive time from events – “Unlike the Emperor dressed in nothing, time is nothing dressed in clothes. I can only describe the clothes” (Barbour 2009: 2). As Gibson (1973) said: “Events are perceivable but time is not.” Linear or cyclic events correspondingly provoke a sense of a linear or cyclic time. Linear events can be “measured” through measuring the length when we have a uniform motion – the measurement of time in this case is equivalent to measuring the distance, the length of a line, and hence “linear” time; cyclic time is measured through measuring the change in the angle when a (celestial) body is moving in a circle. The cyclicity is deeply embedded in us – even most clocks are cyclic. There is also another kind of clock that uses “a measurement” of irreversible events – because of the regularity of radioactive decay of unstable particles, the fraction of surviving particles depends on the time elapsed, so by measuring the quantity of the particles, we measure time (see Sudarshan 2017). Cyclic time is repetition, and no point in a circle is special – there are no beginnings, middle points or ends; no absolute chronology of “before” and “after”; no real change, and nothing really new happens or arises (Puech 1958). The change is a fall from an ideal primordial mythological state. Eliade (1958: 180) speaks about the “progressive decadence of man . . . marked in Buddhist tradition.” In early Buddhism, there is quite a different picture (see the citation from Saṃyuttanikāya 3.1.5) – the past is not important; the most important thing is that there is dukkha (suffering), and there is a path out of this dukkha; there is no return to the primordial state of any kind. (See profound critique of Lopez [1992] of this position of Eliade.) Yes, Buddha has remembered his innumerable births, but he progresses on the way; there is a direction towards emancipation (see also Ruseva 2015). Time lays down/settles the cosmic order – it is an effect and an expression of this cosmic order. The idea of recurring time repeating itself periodically without a beginning, an end or a goal inspires either an esthetical admiration or weariness, an anguish (Puech 1958). To this strict determinism, Buddhism answers with the contrast of obvious aniccatā – a perpetual change, leading to the final end, death (at least at the beginning of Buddhism), with the rebellion against the course of the world and against the world itself. Now the direction of time is irreversible and time is a medium of a continuous progress towards the moment of liberation – everyone has the responsibility for his actions and a free will. Life (or successive lives) in saṃsāra will never be repeated and is oriented towards the future achievement. There is a tension towards the end of aniccatā, of saṃsāra, of paṭiccasamuppāda (dependent origination), towards the end of time, towards the end of becoming. (On this point, an interesting parallel with the notions of time in Ancient Greece, in Christianity and in Gnosticism can be made. See Puech’s [1958] wonderful work on this subject.) In the cyclic notion of time, based partially on the primordial mythological time, which may manifest itself at any moment and somehow has a more substantial reality than the “real” play of myths in “real” life, the responsibility for action is lost – the action and its consequences are destined, and small variations – name, 16

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occupation and so on – do not change anything. The whole reality is a constant play and a repetition of the original myths, and there is no way to get rid of this cycle. However, with the Buddha’s birth, time becomes linear – it changes from an immemorial time without a beginning but with an end – there is a path that leads to the end of time. The Buddha himself went to the end of time when he found nibbāna. Now the responsibility for one’s actions is real and significant. For anyone who has followed the Buddha’s path, time is flowing linearly to a specific goal, which is actually the end of time. In the notion that good kamma determines the path to nibbāna, the idea that the path is inherently linear is also evident – moving in saṃsāra, a man goes to a point where/when he steps on the road – this is the beginning of linear time. Why this path has no beginning is probably not so important – the most important thing is that we can get rid of the whole scheme of action, which adheres to us, directs and pushes us into its schemes and becomes a real part of us, becomes us. Until we finally realize that time is also a mental construct by which we compensate for becoming. Time compensates for becoming, and the self is a state, a being or a highly dynamic process, a becoming. Thus, to some extent, we can say that time is only illusorily linear – in fact, it is the illusion we ourselves create while performing actions or becoming conscious of the actions and the events – it is tied to our own imperfect notion of becoming, conditioned by that primary cyclicality and subsequently by the concept of the purpose and the achievement and, finally, abandoning the idea of kamma, nibbāna and time. And the most important thing here is that this abandoning actually happens at each moment, at every right moment (khaṇa) – the awareness of the reality is already a fact but veiled by representations and attributes such as the actions kamma – a cocoon of connections and realizations, woven into ruptured threads of time, optionally linear, optionally connected. And it is exactly from this kamma, from this perpetual change and dying in every, single moment, the Buddhist wants to free himself, wants to find a stability, wants to find a state “without becoming.” But how, where and when in the course of life can a man stop and rest for a while, because Seyyathāpi brāhmaṇā, nadī pabbateyyā dūraṅgamā sīghasotā hārahārīnī natthi so khaṇo vā layo vā muhutto vā yaṃ sātharati, atha kho sā gacchateva vattateva sandateva, evameva kho brāhmaṇā, nadīpabbateyyupamaṃ jīvitaṃ manussānaṃ. (Aṅguttaranikaya IV. 137) (7.2.2.10.4 Arakasuttam) (GRETIL) Just as a river flowing down from a mountain, going a long distance, with a swift current, carrying along much flotsam, will not stand still for a moment, an instant, a second, but will rush on, swirl, and flow forward, so too, brahmins, human life is like a mountain stream. (Aṅguttaranikaya) (The translation is of Bhikkhu Bodhi 2012: 1096) 17

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The awareness of the perpetual change evokes the longing for stability, and exactly this stability is aimed towards. One who has captured the right moment, who has attained liberation, “stands” (tiṭṭhati); he has “a stable consciousness/ mind” (ṭhittacitto), “a stable self” (ṭhit’attā). He/she is “timeless” (akālika) and transcends the eons (kappātita). (See Coomaraswamy 1947: 38–41. Here Coomaraswamy [1947: 41, note 20] mentions that he does not transcend only “time,” but “temporalia” too.) When, where and what is exactly this “moment in which the river rests”? Is it in time, out of time, beyond time, after time, before time, ever or never? Could it be found in a special place, a special groove, a charnel field? And is this moment a part of time: does it have a duration or continuity? Could something be said about it, or, rather, it is far beyond any words, far beyond any concepts, when/where there is no becoming? It is the present moment, the one that should not be missed, the one, although without a duration, is only real. (For this craving for the present moment and the contemporary techniques of mindfulness for the present, see Purser 2015. On the present moment, see also Montemayor, Wittmann 2014). Also called khaṇa, this is “the appropriate moment,” the moment when the Buddha attains enlightenment (Miyamoto 1959; Coomaraswamy 1947: 43–44), the present moment in which anyone can attain liberation. Atītaṃ nānvāgameyya nappaṭikaṅkhe anāgataṃ, Yadatītaṃ pahīnaṃ taṃ appattañca anāgataṃ. Paccuppannañca yo dhammaṃ tattha tattha vipassatī, Asaṃhīraṃ asaṅkuppaṃ taṃ viditvā manubrūhaye. Ajje va kiccaṃ ātappaṃ ko jaññā maraṇaṃ suve, Na hi no saṅgaraṃ tena mahāsenena maccunā. Evaṃ vihāriṃ ātāpiṃ ahorattamatanditaṃ, Taṃ ve bhaddekarottoti santo ācikkhate munīti. (Majjhimanikāya, III. 188. Bhaddekarattasuttaṃ 131–34) Do not chase after the past; do not seek for the future. The past is already no more; the future is not yet. And see the elements of present in every place, without attachment, Without moving – yet clearly see and strive in the present. Do earnestly the task for today; who knows the nearness of death on the morrow? Truly who can say he will not meet the great army of death? Such a man of realization, earnestly striving day and night without indolence, He, surely, is the sage of time, the peaceful one, the steady one. (Majjhimanikāya, III. 188. Bhaddekarattasuttaṃ 131–34) (The translation is Miyamoto’s [1959: 122]. See also Bhikkhu Ñāṇamoli and Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation 1995: 1039)

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What kind of man is the one who takes advantage of this moment, the one who “goes” on the way and captures the right moment? How does he go; where/when does he go? Kathañca bhikkhave bhikkhu gantā hoti? idha bhikkhave bhikkhu yā s ā disā agatapubbā iminā dīghena addhunā yadidaṃ sabbasaṃkhārasama tho sabbupadhipaṭinissaggo taṇhakkhayo virāgo nirodho nibbānaṃ, taṃ khippaññeva gantā hoti. Evaṃ kho bhikkhave bhikkhu gantā hoti. (Aṅguttaranikāyo III. 164) And how is a bhikkhu one who goes? Here, a bhikkhu is one who quickly goes to that region where he has never before gone in this long time, that is, to the stilling of all activities, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, dispassion, cessation, nibbāna. It is in this way that a bhikkhu is one who goes. (Aṅguttaranikāya III. 164) (The translation is that of Bhikkhu Boddhi 2012: 757) Why is this “present moment” so important? It is the instant (without duration?) of the “real” present, but what exactly does “real” mean (especially in Buddhist context)? Only in the present moment can we have a direct experience, so to what extent we can speak about the experience of time as a direct experience? (“temporal experiences are often retrospectively constructed and not representing ‘experiences’ at all”; “subjects reconstruct the sequence of events retrospectively” Zhou, Pöppel, Bao 2014: 2). The judgment for the duration, the becoming, the change is based on the remembrance and the anticipation (for a review of different psychological, neurophysiological and cognitive models of “time perception,” see Wittmann 2009; Wittmann 2013), which are intimately connected with and have their origin in the process of self-creating in every moment – “every organism is in a constant process of becoming that reinstantiates itself in some duration” (Brown 1996: 3).2 The self is a kind of structure created to compensate for the modalities of time (Zhou, Pöppel, Bao 2014). Somehow, both the time and the self arise simultaneously in the process of becoming, which also brings to light objects. And speaking about “What was I?”, “What am I?” and “What shall I be?” for every knowledgeable Buddhist monk is just a manner of speaking, because one sees everything in terms of paṭiccasamuppāda – dependent origination, as a becoming, and says “I” and its tree modalities – “past,” “present” and “future” just for practical purposes (Coomaraswamy 1947: 41, note 31). Yato kho bhikkhave, ariyasāvakassa ayañca paṭiccasamuppādo ime ca paṭiccasamuppannā dhammā yathābhūtaṃ sammappaññāya sudiṭṭhā honti, so vata pubbantaṃ vā paridhāvissati: “ahosiṃ nu kho ahaṃ atītamaddhānaṃ, na nu kho ahosiṃ atītamaddhānaṃ, kiṃ nu kho ahosiṃ atītamaddhānaṃ, kathaṃ nu kho ahosiṃ atītamaddhānaṃ, kiṃ hutvā kiṃ

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ahosiṃ, nu kho ahaṃ atītamaddhānanti”, aparantaṃ vā upadhāvissati. “Bhavissāmi nu kho ahaṃ anāgatamaddhānaṃ, na nu kho bhavissāmi anāgatamaddhānaṃ, kiṃ nu kho bhavissāmi anāgatamaddhānaṃ, kathaṃ nu kho bhavissāmi anāgatamaddhānaṃ, kiṃ hutvā kiṃ bhavissāmi nu kho ahaṃ anāgatamaddhānanti”, etarahi vā paccuppannaṃ addhānaṃ ajjhattaṃ kathaṅkathī bhavissati: “ahaṃ nu khosmi, no nu khosmi, kiṃ nu khosmi, kathaṃ nu khosmi, ayaṃ nu kho satto kuto āgato, so kuhiṃ gāmī bhavissatī”ti netaṃ ṭhānaṃ vijjati. Taṃ kissa hetu? Tathā hi bhikkhave, ariyasāvakassa ayañca paṭiccasamuppādo, ime ca paṭiccasamuppannā dhammā yathābhūtaṃ sammappaññāya sudiṭṭhāti. (Saṃyuttanikāyo II. 26–27) (GRETIL) When, bhikkhus, a noble disciple has clearly seen with correct wisdom as it really is this dependent origination and these dependently arisen phenomena, it is impossible that he will back into the past, thinking: “Did I exist in the past? Did I not exist in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what did I become in the past?” Or that he will run forward into the future, thinking: “Will I exist in the future? Will I not exist in the future? What will I be in the future? How will I be in the future? Having been what, what will I become in the future?” Or that he will now be inwardly confused about the present thus: “Do I exist? Do I not exist? What am I? How am I? This being – where has it come from, and where will it go?” “For what reason [is this impossible]?” Because, bhikkhus, the noble disciple has clearly seen with correct wisdom as it really is this dependent origination and these dependently arisen phenomena. (Saṃyuttanikāya II. 20. 10) (The translation is of Bhikkhu Bodhi 2000: 552) We double ourselves in the past and/or in the future; thus, we construct the personal identity. This concept of the identity gives the reality of time-experience (Zhou, Pöppel, Bao 2014). And again – when, where and what exactly is this moment in which the river rests, the moment without a becoming? Aññatreva āvuso saviṭṭha, saddhāya aññatra ruciyā aññatra anussavā aññatra ākāraparivitakkā aññatra diṭṭhinijjhānakkhantiyā ahametaṃ jānāmi, ahametaṃ passāmi bhavanirodho nibbāṇanti. (Saṃyuttanikāyo II. 117) (GRETIL) Friend Savittha, apart from faith, apart from personal reference, apart from oral tradition, apart from reasoned reflection, apart from acceptance of a view after pondering it, I know this, I see this: “Nibbana is the cessation of becoming.”3 (Saṃyuttanikāya II. 117, Kosambi 68.8) (The translation is of Bhikkhu Bodhi 2000: 610) 20

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But what is “the becoming”? Time is judged by the rise and the maintenance of the self. Its creation at all times is closely linked to the creation of time. Time is created simultaneously (we should keep in mind that simultaneity can be judged only retrospectively; see Zhou, Pöppel, Bao 2014) with the becoming and with the creation of the self (or the self-extension – the identity). “the time of a becoming is the time the becoming creates” (Brown 1996: 3). A Buddhist tries to withdraw from the initial phase in the mental state beyond the creation of time, beyond the self and the objects, beyond the becoming. Since their birth, people in one way or another fight with death. They devise a variety of strategies. One of these devices is mythological thinking, in which by capturing the archetype, one becomes eternally connected with the world, intensely capturing all the influences – the experience of the participants in the primordial myths and of all those who have played them before. Embodying the myth, one lives in a momentary eternity beyond linear or cyclic time. The Buddhist strategies are quite different. Their goal is to reach a moment (khaṇa) out of time in which there is no becoming – the present moment, in which the river rests.

Notes 1 A measure of distance, equal to 4, 5, 9 or 2.5 English miles. 2 This is so in terms of his theory of microgenesis (Brown 1996, 2000, 2008), very similar (because his approach is based on the experience of the psyche) to the Buddhist ideas in many aspects. For some parallels between microgenesis and the ideas of momentarity in Buddhism see Brown (1999). 3 Here I prefer the variant “becoming” instead of Bhikkhu Bodhi’s “existence.” The word bhava from the verbal root √bhū – “become,” “exist,” “is,” can mean both. Coomaraswamy (1947: 33) also prefers “becoming.”

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3 PROLEPTIC PASTS AND INVOLUTED CAUSALITIES IN KŪṬIYĀṬṬAM* David Dean Shulman

Kūṭiyāṭṭam, the last form of living Sanskrit theatre in the world, is said to be a long art. In some sense – a modern, impoverished sense – it is. The shortest full performance, Matta-vilāsam, takes about 12 hours, spread over three days and nights. The longest, the magisterial Mantrāṅkam, lasts around 150 hours (41 days), and the tradition tells us that it was once a hundred-day performance. Each night has its own segment, as we can see from the handbooks, Āṭṭa-prakāram, that have come down in the Chakyar families; thus segmentation into two- or three- or four-hour stretches (on some nights, seven hours or more) has been the practice for many generations, probably at least since the tradition crystallized in its present form in the 16th century or so. Does all this seem long? Only if you measure it, as I just have, by the hours of a Newtonian clock, which is best left at home. It would be easy, too easy, to say that Kūṭiyāṭṭam de-linearizes sequence at every point – that its unique temporal mode operates through non-sequential flares, irregular, dizzying journeys into the depths of time, unforeseeable links and discontinuities that create new kinds of continuities. This description is not untrue, but one has to keep in mind that a full performance does move from its initial moment – the puṟappāṭu, or actor’s Entrance on the Stage – through a nirvahaṇam retrospective toward the final kūṭiyāṭṭam in the narrow sense, that is, a conclusion, often a climax, in which more than one actor is present on stage. There is thus forward movement over the course of several days or nights. Non-linear temporality does not preclude straight lines, from time to time. That continuous development and deepening of the act appear easily to coexist with, indeed to enhance and even to merge with, the wild swerves and jagged fragments of sequence that are typical of these plays. I will be concerned here mostly with the swerves and fragments in their temporal guise. It all starts with a single beat of the huge miḻāvu drum. The spell is cast, and the audience falls silent. So does the drum. For some moments, perhaps a minute, there is a resonant silence, the voice of the drum echoing until it is too attenuated DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-3 24

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to hear. Then comes another drum beat. After a while, the rhythm picks up, to hypnotic effect. One might say, though, that the initial burst of sound followed by a burst of silence already constitutes one primary temporal unit that will be enacted again, hundreds of times, in each performance. A measure of time opens up and lapses into an infinity that awaits another beginning. That expectation has a name in Sanskrit theories of syntax: ākāṅkṣā, the anticipation of a conclusion that generates a sentence, a finite verb (see Shulman 2016). In the silence following upon the first drum beat, time has not stopped.1 It moves inaudibly, examining itself. Contiguous to, or emerging within, this tiny temporal fragment, we should situate the fluid, continuous, curving movement of hands, abhinaya, a marvel of expressive grace (Bar-On 2019). Often a mudrā or semantic collocation of signs, weaving and turning, rises up toward a punctuation mark in visible space: the gesture concludes and, a micro-moment later, tension falls away. This progression is always signalled by the drums. A curve comes to a point. Sound and sense are isomorphic and profoundly synaesthetic whenever this happens. Fingers – also eyes – speak, conclude their utterance, and are released. That tension, prior to release, is also heavy with time. Thus any moment articulated by abhinaya, of whatever kind – the gestural movements of hands, feet, eyes – has tension operating inside it. An apparent linear progression stops as time, still moving, delves into itself before re-emerging within that progression. Possibly the temporal unfolding of Night 1, Night 2, Night 3 and so on in natural order is but the semblance of a sequence that puts into play a contrast – between some version of normative, experienced time and a far more consequential, creative and multi-directional temporality that is also a part of our experience. The contrast is mutually constitutive, giving space for both temporal modes. Now let me start again. What if every temporal flash, every atomic moment, in Kūṭiyāṭṭam is capable of opening up in any direction, laterally, vertically, in spiralling helixes, zooming in, zooming out of perception, involuting, exvoluting, disappearing? What if what looks to us like centripetal or centrifugal movement is entirely dependent on the vantage point from which we are studying it? I think that to spectators who have seen many hours of Kūṭiyāṭṭam, this notion of variable temporal operations may seem intuitively correct. It also sheds some light on what can be called “insight” and the conditions for its emergence, as we shall see in a moment. A multifarious potentiality of timefulness would also operate in the creation, shaping or building of a universe like the one that is visible on stage – time thus being not a given, a datum, but something that the actors (with the active help of the spectators) actively make. Words, the unfolding of character, moral-ethical themes, the constant self-inspection of the art and its most important result – namely beauty – all these depend upon such a temporal understanding of action, karma, including the ritualized actions that are inherent to the drama. We could extrapolate from this description a novel theory of causal sequence. Such temporal modules regularly generate expansion (vistāra), the life-blood of the entire Kūṭiyāṭṭam style of performance. Any instant can expand (or contract).

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Before this opening discussion becomes dizzying, let’s take shelter once more with the relatively simple linear movement from one night to the next. It is good to keep in mind that the nirvahaṇam is itself a retrospective framing of a character’s experience, like much human memory, but within this backward glance, what is enacted (that is, demonstrated in abhinaya and/or text) takes the form of a set of present moments sliding toward the future as seen from within the temporal perspective of those moments. Thus it might seem that the past is continuously being swallowed up by an infinity located somewhere behind us and by a future opening before us. That is, in fact, how we tend to perceive our present. In fact, however, what we are watching is almost always a series of pasts embedded as future within a deeper past. Let me say again that from the vantage point of the Entrance on to the Stage, that is, the point of departure for the entire play and specifically for the nirvahaṇam, the movement of retrospection lies ahead of actors and spectators alike. Forward movement in the performance entails, initially, a backward movement of the mind. Once the nirvahanam is concluded, still more complex temporalities are set loose. *** An analysis such as this inexorably drives one toward the reality of a present moment, as the previous paragraph suggests. Bearing in mind that this form of drama is mostly immune to representation, that is, to anything resembling a symbolic or representational semiotic, it would seem that the foundational time of the play in performance is an ever-emergent, constantly thickening present – not present-tense time, which is another matter altogether, but present time as subsuming all other temporal excursions. A performance spread over many days and nights may achieve such thick present time toward its climax. This sounds paradoxical: Kūṭiyāṭṭam time is a palpable present that has to be generated over time. That, however, is the nature of any present moment. In Kūṭiyāṭṭam, one reaches the point where Hanuman or Rāma or Sītā are alive and visible, in the Kūṭiyāṭṭam way of thinking visibility, on stage. One sees them in the empty space filled by the abhinaya that has created them. One might even say that this art is structured so as to allow such moments to emerge and endure, until the cosmos of the drama is destroyed at the end. Before that happens, an unexpected form of total visibility – maybe an Advaitic or non-dualist way of seeing – also breaks out on stage. The first articulation of presentness infuses the puṟappāṭu Entrance onto the Stage; this present moment is always textualized in a fragment of Sanskrit poetry or prose from the original play, the mūla (if we insist on thinking of it as such), that the actor begins to recite – and then stops in the middle, leaving the rest to be enacted in gesture. Like the opening drum beat, this leaves a syntactic suspension that is resolved at the end of the nirvahaṇam, perhaps many nights later. Thus, presentness in Kūṭiyāṭṭam includes a hiatus, and that gap is filled with retrospection that moves in two directions: first from the present backwards into the past (anukramam), then from a point deep in the past moving toward the initial present of the puṟappāṭu. Relative to both these movements – both inhering in 26

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presentness – the puṟappāṭu present exists as future. That future preexists in the past that is being re-enacted, relived – and beyond that limited temporal vision, it probably exists in any conceivable past time, just as pastness inheres in all forms of futureness. Still, as the historian Koselleck says, “The presence of the past is distinct from the presence of the future” (Koselleck 2004: 260; Thiranagama 2011: 168). We will want to interrogate this statement. One thing is certain a priori: The nirvahaṇam past thickens the dramatic present through the crisscrossing, at times contradictory, perspectives that always inform pastness, since pastness can only artificially be reduced to a single narrative.2 Sometimes that refashioned pastness exists primarily as futurity. By now we badly need a concrete example. *** Toraņa-yuddham (TY), “The Battle at the Gate,” is a seven-day-long play enacting Act III of the medieval drama known as Abhiṣeka-nāṭakam, one of the southern Rāmāyaṇa plays and a popular part of the repertoire.3 Among other things, this work is distinguished by its long, melodramatic repetitions – all of them geared toward a moment of insight that pops up first on Night 3 and then on Night 6, the true climax of the play and an intimation of its end on Night 7. Like all other Kūṭiyāṭṭam masterpieces, the TY is tightly constructed and thus overwhelming in its visual and cognitive impact. It could also be said to be a sustained meditation on themes of temporality and cause. To help the reader understand the dramatic process leading to the rich statement on time (Nights 3 and 6), here is a synopsis of events that take place on each of the nights. Taken together, they give some sense of how this play is put together and to what aesthetic ends. Night 1. Puṟappāṭu. Śaṅkukarṇa, a servant of Rāvaṇa, enters running, in panic, after having seen Hanuman’s destruction of the Aśoka Garden. He begins the verse addressed to the gatekeeper, Vijaya: yasyām na priya-maṇḍanāpi mahiṣī devasya maṇḍodarī snehāl lumpati pallavān na ca punar vījanti yasyāṃ bhayāt/ vījanto malayānilā ravi-karair aspṛṣṭa-bāla-drumā seyaṃ śakra-ripor aśoka-vanikā bhagneti vijñāpyatām// [1] Not even Queen Maṇḍorī allows herself to pick budding leaves from this garden, fond as she is of adornments. She loves it. The southern breezes are afraid to enter there, and the sun’s rays never touch those trees. That’s the Aśoka Garden that has now been wrecked. Tell the king! Śaṅkukarṇa recites only the first syllables of this poem, but he shows the rest of it in abhinaya. Maṇḍodarī comes to the garden with her girlfriends, who wish to complete her adornment with fresh leaves; but they are afraid to pluck even 27

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a single leaf because Rāvaṇa will be angry. The fragrant wind from the south is equally terrified. Similarly (as we know from the Aśokavanikāṅkam, that is, Act 5 of Śaktibhadra’s Āścarya-cūḍāmaṇi), the sun’s rays don’t touch the trees because Rāvaṇa had driven the sun god away lest he dry up the vegetation in his garden. This over-protected garden has now been destroyed by the monkey. Night 2. Nirvahaṇam of Śańkukarṇa (as Sūta Storyteller). Anukramam (backwards in time): How did Śańkukarṇa come to the golden gate of the palace and tell the gatekeeper what has happened? Before that, how did Rāvaṇa defeat the gods in heaven and transplant the wishing trees to Laṅkā? Before that, how did Rāvaṇa defeat the serpents in the nether world? And so on. Saṅkṣepam (moving forward from a point in the past toward the dramatic present): Rākṣasolpatti, the origin of the Rākṣasas. Rāvaṇa’s penance at Gokarṇa, where Śiva makes him invincible to gods, serpents and others. Rāvaṇa’s early career: his entry into Laṅkā, marriage to Maṇḍodarī, the births of their sons. The demon army sets out for war with Vaiśravaṇa and defeats him; Rāvaṇa steals Vaiśravaṇa’s flying chariot, the Puṣpaka Vimāna. Night 3. Nirvahaṇam continued. Rāvaṇa, flying in his new chariot, is trying to conquer the entire world, but the chariot is blocked when it reaches Mount Kailāsa, home to Śiva and Pārvatī. What to do? Rāvaṇa decides he will lift up the enormous mountain (which is described at length in abhinaya) and get it out of his way. Straining with all his might, he manages to uproot it and throw it high into the sky. As this happens, Pārvatī is interrogating her husband about the river Gaṅgā, whom he carries in his matted hair. Śiva denies that there is a woman on his head. “But I see a face,” says Pārvatī. “No,” he says, “it’s a lotus.” “What about the eyebrows?” “They are waves.” “I see eyes.” “They are fish.” Gaṅgā’s presence is denied by identifying each of her bodily features with the objects to which they are usually compared by poets. Pārvatī, who sees through these clumsy lies and excuses, furious and jealous, starts to leave Ṡiva (this segment is known as Pārvatī-viraha, “Pārvatī’s Departure”) – and just then the mountain begins to shake because of Rāvaṇa’s feat. The goddess rushes back into Śiva’s arms. Śiva presses down on the mountain with his toe, crushing Rāvaṇa beneath it. The demon screams in pain, and Śiva gives him his name, “the Howler.” He also gives him his great sword and disappears. Now something crucial happens. Pārvatī wants to give him a boon – but he won’t accept any such gift from a woman. Rejected, she curses him to die because of a woman. The doorkeeper Nandikeśvara, sent by Pārvatī to curse Rāvaṇa, appears as a monkey and slyly offers him a boon; again Rāvaṇa rejects the offer: he wants no boon from a monkey. Nandikeśvara can then curse him to be destroyed by monkeys.4 The journey of conquest continues with many battles, in all of which Rāvaṇa triumphs. Night 4. End of the nirvahaṇam. Recapitulation of the martial expedition up to this point. Another violent confrontation: Rāvaṇa conquers the world of the gods and brings back to Laṅkā the rare trees from heaven. Here the actor abandons the 28

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role of Storyteller and reverts to his identity as Śaṅkukarṇa. He completes the recitation of the opening verse. He tells Vijaya, the doorkeeper, to hurry to the court in order to inform Rāvaṇa that his garden has been destroyed by a monkey. “What’s the rush?” asks Vijaya. “It is extremely urgent,” says Śaṅkukarṇa (though he has just spent three days to reach this point). Kūṭiyāṭṭam, in the narrow sense of a transition from a single actor on stage to more than one, begins. Rāvaṇa enters. He is enraged by the news. Can a monkey have wrought such havoc? Perhaps the gods want another battle. He orders the demons to get ready for a war that he plays out, in detail, in his imagination. Night 5. Kūṭiyāṭṭam (second day). Śaṅkukarṇa enters the court, trembling, and informs Rāvaņa about what has happened to his garden. Rāvaṇa is enraged and sends his best warriors to kill the monkey; these include the five generals (pañca senāpati). Hanuman beats them to death. Finally, Rāvaṇa learns that his own son, Indrajit, has entered the fight and, after a furious struggle, managed to tie up Hanuman with a rope. Rāvaṇa orders the monkey to be brought into the court. But as Śaṅkukarṇa leaves to carry out this command, Rāvaṇa sits down, deep in thought. Night 6. Kūṭiyāṭṭam (third day). Rāvaṇa thinks back to the major events of his life. He replays in his mind the paṭappuṟappāṭu, the setting out of his army to fight Vaiśravaṇa (which we see on stage). He recalls his appropriation of the Puṣpaka Vimāna and his digvijaya, the military campaign to conquer the entire world. He remembers, and reenacts, how the flying chariot got stuck and how he had to uproot Mount Kailāsa – also the dispute between Śiva and Pārvatī about whether the god had another woman in his hair. These two major set pieces, Kailāsoddhāraṇa and Pārvatī-viraha, are fully performed for the second time. Then Rāvaṇa remembers the two curses he received, Pārvatī’s and Nandikeśvara’s. He suddenly, reluctantly, starts to wonder: “Is the double curse coming true in the guise of a monkey in my garden?” Night 7. Kūṭiyāṭṭam (fourth day). Vibhīṣaṇa, Rāvaṇa’s wise and healthy-minded brother, enters the court. Hanuman, too, is brought into Rāvaṇa’s presence. He offers a précis of the Drama of the Ring – his meeting with Sītā and his presenting her with Rāma’s ring as a sign that Rāma is on his way to save her. Hanuman, sitting, bound, on his tail, introduces himself to Rāvaņa and tells him that Rāma will soon arrive and kill him. Rāvaṇa is unimpressed: how can a mere human being be a threat to him? Vibhīṣaṇa advises his brother to give Sītā back to her husband; kidnapping her was an immoral act, a sin. Rāvaṇa is prepared to fight to the end, and Vibhīṣaṇa sadly takes his leave. He will take refuge with Rāma while Rāvaṇa prepares for war. *** In true Kūṭiyāṭṭam fashion, my brief exegesis of this play will begin with the ending. Kūṭiyāṭṭam, for reasons that I discuss elsewhere, has a predilection for sorrowful, even tragic, conclusions. The Toraṇa-yuddham is true to this statement. It ends not only with the clear intimation of what lies in store for Rāvaṇa, subject and hero of the play, but also with the agonizing separation between two brothers. 29

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That the reason for this separation has everything to do with an ethical judgment only deepens the agony. Notice that to appreciate that judgment, the spectator has to be awake and cognitively engaged with what is happening on stage. We’ll get back to the movement of time in “just” a moment. First, I want to say something about the particularities of this play and the way they set up the baffling temporal realities that interest us here. Like any Kūṭiyāṭṭam play, the TY follows the logic of composition that takes us from the opening via the long nirvahaṇam to the finale with several characters/actors on stage; this extended dénouement follows the Sanskrit text of the play very closely. In this play, the retrospective and the final narrative sequence are nicely balanced (three nights each). There is meaning to this symmetry. It allows for consequential repetition on a large scale. What transpires in retrospection has a way of recurring in the forward-moving narrative segment. Thus we have, for example, multiple instances of the long set-piece known as the paṭappuṟappāṭu, the army’s preparation and setting out for war – three on Night 2, another three on Night 4 (before the transition to kūṭiyāṭṭam proper) and another striking one on Night 6 (enacted by Rāvaṇa while sitting on his stool). This elaborate and often surprising fragment, which recurs in other plays, overshadows by far any enactment of actual fighting. It is the moving toward battle, or imagining it, that matter. The soldiers arm themselves, mount their horses and elephants and move off to the sound of trumpets and drums and other instruments; there are also dancing girls that follow the marching army, acrobats and jugglers, cooks, even experts in preparing betel-nut for the fighters. The whole parade is a vast entertainment which, like so often in this art, suggests its own self-image, as if Rāvaṇa’s soldiers, and he himself, were actually watching a Kūṭiyāṭṭam performance as they readied themselves to fight. As indeed they are. And if this ramified expectation of war can take a good hour or more to perform, the battle scenes themselves rush past us, almost eluding notice. Time deepens and distends and also condenses into thick but rapid moments that constitute an occurrence, an event or a memory. Similarly, the conjoined narratives of Lifting Mount Kailāsa and Pārvatī’s Departure are enacted twice – first on Night 3, as part of the nirvahaṇam with its Storyteller actor, then again on Night 6, in Rāvaṇa’s narration. Though the performance of these well-known pieces is relatively fixed and stable, they are not identical. We asked Margi Madhu, the central actor of the Nepathya troupe whose performances of TY we watched in Muzhikkulam in 2011 and in Delhi in 2016, why this repetition was important. He said: the first time, Śaṅkukarṇa reports it, as the tradition knows it – including the fact that Rāvaṇa feels pain in his arms as he struggles to lift Mount Kailāsa. The second time, Rāvaṇa is reporting his own experience, with no trace of the somewhat embarrassing pain (Margi Madhu, Muzhikkulam 2011, private communication). Pārvatī’s Departure is also lightly inflected at its second enactment, this time emphasizing Pārvatī’s terror and trembling when the mountain begins to shake under her. In more abstract language, we could say that the first performance of the twinned sequence, as revealed by the Storyteller, has the aspect of objective, reported fact, if indeed such a thing can 30

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exist in this artistic form; the second appears under the guise of an experiencing and remembering subject. Beyond these non-trivial differences, however, lies the consistent significance of repetition throughout Kūṭiyāṭṭam as part and parcel of the very notions of sequence, memory, cause and happening, all of which are constituted as recursive. Only recurrence enables creativity. Each time we see what unfolds on stage, as in life, is the first time, transpiring in a present moment. Each time generates a range of meanings, never identical to the previous range. In the case of these two linked narrative sequences, the drama toys with vectors that define the hidden life of gods: Lifting Mount Kailāsa catches Śiva and Pārvatī in a potentially far-reaching, centrifugal phase of their shared existence (he lies to her, and she tears herself away from him, wanting only to escape), but the upheaval Rāvaņa has caused drives these two pieces of a single deity back into each other’s arms. The centrifugal impulse, inevitable for a fissiparous god, converts itself into a centripetal re-coalescence of parts (Handelman and Shulman 1997). It is possible that this same pattern applies to the disparate temporalities active in this moment and in the play as an integrated whole. Not only divinity but time as well can be torn apart and re-composed, as can the spectator or actor whose imaginations are twined together to create the performance. The unfinished act of departure, with its emotional cost (viraha), will re-appear, at the very end of the play, in the irrevocable separation of the two brothers. And what about the character of the play’s dominating figure? Kūṭiyāṭṭam, as I have said elsewhere, is a drama of extreme personalization or characterization. Everything is set up so as to enable us, the spectators, to know the character in his or her fullness, including the half-conscious or unconscious contents of his or her mind. It may also be set up to enable the character to see into his or her own inner world – that is, to generate insight, as is the case in TY. Rāvaṇa in this play is a multi-dimensional person – gruff, rough, self-absorbed, given to threats and coercion, driven by desire whose unjust and unethical aspect is hidden from his eyes, but also capable, at moments, of going beyond the idiosyncratic and contingent conditions of his biography. He is also capable of feeling love. Twice in the TY we see him sink into deep thought, though not much good comes of it. Still, he is a thinking being. His meditative moment at the end of Night 5 leads directly to the burst of unsettling insight in Night 6. As Madhu performed the latter sequence, we could see Rāvaṇa’s tremendous difficulty, the disturbing thought at the back of his mind. For a moment, Rāvaņa loses his ability to speak. In this sense, the TY as a complex unity has one very evident theme. The play is about Rāvaṇa’s coming to terms with his own destiny, as Sudha Gopalakrishnan has said (personal communication, Delhi, 2016). Destiny, or fate, as usual, is really a function of his being something or someone distinct in self and nature, a matter of his who-he-is-ness. Hence the largely tragic nature of this drama. Rāvaṇa, like everyone else, is a moral agent, not quite aware of this inescapable fact. The entire play moves remorselessly toward the devastating fullness of insight that changes nothing. 31

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It is time for us to consider that insight, its latent presence, its depths and subtleties and its embodiment in the rhythms of time. *** It’s a matter of the old, mostly forgotten curse, which is really two consonant curses woven together for greater efficacy. This curse – we see and hear it twice, as I’ve said, as is also the case with Rāvaṇa in two different temporal guises – has been ripening in silence, awaiting its emergence into the light. Rāvaṇa himself seems to have suppressed his awareness of it, though on another level he knows all about it and, even more importantly, he knows long in advance what lethal effects it will certainly have. On Night 5, he is struggling with that memory as it breaks through a resistant surface. In another sense, he, and the entire play, have been moving toward that lost moment from the moment he steps on to the stage. There is the knowledge that he knows from inside but not the knowledge that he knows it. The curse was spoken in the distant past. We first encounter it in the nirvahaṇam retrospective. In fact, the nirvahaṇam takes the form it has in order to generate the curse at the most sensitive point in the remembered story. Once it has been made present, the retrograde direction of retrospection can grind to a halt and the present moment of the Entrance onto the Stage can resume its movement (and the verse-text of the puṟappāṭu can be completed in words and abhinaya, allowing the spectator’s mind to release something of the tension it has been carrying for four nights). Time, the rhythm of the visible surface, seems to reverse its course, extricating itself from the magnetic pull of memory. Something new might happen. With an effort, we can reconfigure the events in a normative sequence, with the future somewhere ahead of the past and the present pitched at the meeting place of these two tense-times. Rāvaṇa has a history. Once upon a time, he was born and grew up and did tapas to Śiva and got a boon and went off to conquer the world, but he got stuck at Mount Kailāsa and ended up with a name, a sword and a pregnant curse. Then he did this and that, and now, after Hanuman’s visit to Laṅkā, the curse is beginning to work. What happens in this now is intelligible, to Rāvaṇa and to us, in terms of that older then. With some jolts and false starts, we are heading forward into some sort of future. The striking thing is that the Kūṭiyāṭṭam style won’t permit this straightforward linearity of movement. The text of the performance has done everything to make sure that we don’t think of temporal events in that predictable way. A present instant of beginning turns back on itself, probes its disharmonious pasts, if they are indeed pasts, twists into a proleptic mode or rhythm, zigzags back and forth between that prolepsis and the ambivalent workings of memory, turns back again to inspect the already visible effect of a deeply embedded future and breaks off with fraternal fissure whose consequences predate their enactment in the world. Incidentally, this convenient separation between the world of the stage and the world outside is more than a little tenuous, although some semblance of marked sites of transition between the realms are in place. As Rahul Chakyar said 32

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in discussing the TY, “If everything in the world of the performance is a stage, an enactment, then all this is in the ordinary world, too” (Delhi, March 2016). Unusual weight attaches to this last point if we want to understand how Kūṭiyāṭṭam works. Once again, I have to remind you that this art-form knows nothing of representation. Its effects – cognitive, emotional, physical – are felt by every spectator in one way or another. But we are still lost in the intricacies of a curse, couched as operative in some kind of future whose effects we have been seeing night after night, thus belonging by now to some kind of past. Time-future keeps running backwards into time-past. Naturally, this business of the curse rests on a Sanskrit verse, number 12 in the text of Act III of the Abhiṣeka-nāṭaka. Here is the text, performed on Night 6. In the “original” play, Rāvaṇa utters it after ordering Śaṅkukarṇa to bring the bound Hanuman into the court. jitvā trailokyam ājau sa-sura-danu-sutaṃ yan mayā garvitena krāntvā kailāsam īśaṃ sva-gaṇa-parivṛtaṃ sākam ākampya devyā/ labdhvā tasmāt prasādaṃ punar aga-sutayā nandinānādṛtatvād dattaṃ śaptaṃ ca tābhyāṃ yadi kapi-vikṛti-cchadmanā tan mama syāt// First I conquered all three worlds in battle, including all gods and demons. Then, very proud, I overcame Kailāsa and shook up Śiva with his servants – and the goddess, too. I won his blessing, but because I paid no heed to the Mountain’s Daughter or to Nandin, both of them gifted me with a curse . . . or maybe . . . this crazy monkey. That’s the story of our play, in a nutshell, possibly the original nutshell put (at some point) into words that shed light on everything seen so far. The verse, like the play, works its way toward Lifting Mount Kailāsa and its aftermath, ending with an unusual anacoluthon, a syntactic diversion that replaces any possible closure with an open-ended optative of uncertainty. This indeterminacy, too, is revealed for what it is in the enactment of the play both in performing this verse and in the wider expansion of these lines and their added meanings after its recitation. There is no doubt that we are hearing and seeing the dawning of insight – an unwelcome one. Everything in the poem is grammatically situated in the past except for the final 14 syllables, where a tentative present-future pours into the narrative of past exploits and explodes them from inside. Like Rāvaṇa, we are left dangling with possibility, though we also know very well, as he may also know, that the point of departure for this performance – Hanuman’s destruction of the garden and Śaṅkukarṇa’s panic – is indeed the effect of that curse. In fact, we have been waiting, all along, for someone to articulate this knowledge, and so has he. What was once in the future is now past, though rather a lot of future is still waiting 33

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to happen, to fulfil itself entirely. Or is that future series of terminal events also somewhere behind us? How could we describe the temporal arc or arcs that these words describe? I will try to state them in minimalist terms. I will also put aside something that I think must be true of this utterance, as it is of most other South Indian words – that is, the idea that once the syllables have been spoken audibly, they take on a life of their own. Moreover, especially if we are dealing with promises, prognostications, curses or blessings, this future life of the word already exists, both seed and fruit alive and active in the world. It would be possible to read Kūṭiyāṭṭam as an massive and intricate experiment in teasing out the consequences of such a view of language. If we examine the way the total performance is planned and conceived (in the Āṭṭa-prakāram manuals), we see at once that it begins with the final, seemingly overdetermined result of those two curses. It then works back toward the moment when the curses were uttered and to the circumstances that generated them. All this is enacted within retrospection as a future-oriented set of events, a prolepsis. The critical moment, however, exists a priori, deeply embedded as it may be. The spectator’s prior knowledge, which we sometimes think of as producing dramatic irony, has a role in shaping this prolepsis. The spectator knows the story, may even know the verse and may have seen the play many times. Now consider again the uprooting of the mountain. We see it emerging as an event in the present carved out of a still indeterminate future, though actually it has happened long ago (in Rāvaṇa’s past) – and, as spectators, we may also have seen it, ostensibly belonging to the past, many times. A past event is thus keyed as future. This is not an idle matter. Lifting the mountain is a vast challenge even for Rāvaṇa. He always manages to do it – sometimes after an hour or so of struggle on stage – but along the way, it often appears that he will fail. No matter how many times we have seen him do it or heard or read his story, we are still amazed that he brings it off. Perhaps someday he will give up. Kūṭiyāṭṭam sequences such as this suggest that what we experience as future may in fact lie far in the past, a potential seed of future enactment. As such, the seed condenses a near infinity of ramifying, non-random possibilities capable of exfoliating in any temporal or spatial dimension. This axiomatic character of an event – any event – gives Kūṭiyāṭṭam-style retrospection a special flavour, rather different from that of other stories told in the past tense about events that are more recent than their narrative point of departure. Although the curse exists as an autonomous progression toward a determined end, the Lifting of Kailāsa is never felt or perceived as something certain. What is the temporal nature of the prolepsis? In its own, self-generated terms, it awaits future realization. But in the play as performed, that future operation precedes the moment when the curse is first formulated. We thus have an a posteriori prolepsis, which looks impossible but is in fact what we are made to see. Moreover, the potential future situated in the past is undoubtedly the deepest temporal point in the play. The moment of the curse sucks other temporal 34

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rhythms and progressions into itself and then emits them back into the performance, as if a vortex has opened up, twice, in the very middle of the main narrative running either backwards or forward, or in both directions at once. It is there, in the dense movement of prolepsis, that time itself can be palpably seen and known, and it is there, and only there, that Rāvaṇa’s insight becomes possible. The genius of the TY is in that linkage of a seed buried in the heart of time with the insight that makes the already visible fruits intelligible in the dramatic present. In fact, insight is itself the necessary fruit of that hidden seed, continuously moulding and nourishing the latter from the moment it emerged from or as the recesses of time. Those temporal depths have been ripening for ages: hence the opening drumbeat of this play followed by all the rest, from the brief instant of silence on. Rāvaṇa is not Oedipus, and remorse is not part of his character. Insight, in this play as in others in this tradition, is only rarely transformative. More to the point is the riveting progress from seed to a many-faceted set of understandings on the part of everyone concerned – the character, the actor, the spectator, the drummer, the Naṅṅyār, the authors of the Āṭṭa-prakāram and even the person who writes these lines. All of this is in the seed, and all of us are differently involved in recovering what lies hidden. Interestingly, that recovery happens at least twice in the TY, on nights 5 and 6. Ask again: why twice? Because once will never suffice. “Once” may not even exist. It is in the nature of perception itself that each flash is unique only insofar as it recurs. Since Oedipus has somehow fought his way into this chapter, let me say something about the apparent parallelism of Sophokles’ play and the TY. Both texts are dramas of knowledge and self-discovery. Oedipus, too, lives a life shaped, at least ostensibly, by an unknown or half-known oracle. That adverb, “ostensibly,” matters; I have never really believed the story. What if Oedipus’s parents had simply ignored the oracular prophecy? Might Oedipus have lived a “normal” life? But apart from this heretical notion, there are crucial differences between the two works. Most importantly, the nature of the knowledge in question is far from shared. The Greek oracle habitually speaks in riddles that, more often than not, are misunderstood (the Oedipus-oriented oracle thus overlaps with the riddles that Oedipus supposedly solves and that are linked to his name). Ambiguity necessarily envelops these enigmatic words. When clarity does emerge, it reveals the dark, even tragic, nature of all self-knowledge (Kaufmann 1992). This notion may be the deep heart of the play. By contrast, Rāvaṇa’s insight seems to leave him untouched. Only in the Drama of Entering the Fire, Agni-praveśāṅkam, in Śaktibhadra’s play, do we see a fundamental change in Rāvaṇa’s self-understanding, a few moments before he is killed. We are dealing with two quite distinct epistemic theories. For our purposes, it is also striking that the temporality of the Greek drama moves in relatively linear ways. The vortex where time shows its face, consuming tense-time altogether, mocking futurity and past-ness as distinctive modes of experience, is altogether missing. In the TY, sequence as such pulls us toward, then into, that vortex. 35

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The further we pursue the comparison, the more different the two dramas of self-knowledge seem to be and the more remote from one another are their modellings of time. In the TY, indeed in Kūṭiyāṭṭam generally, future seen as past has an intricate surface, a specific gravity, informing the present. And there is another dimension that should be mentioned. The textuality of Kūṭiyāṭṭam replicates, in an uncanny way, this same temporal logic, as I have tried to show elsewhere (Shulman 2019). We are used to thinking of the Sanskrit text of the play as the prior existent out of which the performance text emerged as extensive amplification and commentary. But what if the Sanskrit root-text were itself a condensation of a preexisting body of dramatic and poetic knowledge? What if the end of the textual process were its beginning, just as the effects of the double curse are there from the opening words of the performance? It is misleading to present the performance as derived in linear fashion from a pre-existing root-text. At the very least, text and performance determine one another in a mutuality of cause and effect. One might say the same thing about Rāvaṇa’s reminiscence of lifting the mountain and his repeated, actual lifting it on stage. Which happened first? What is lost if we insist that he must first have lifted it, maybe only once, and then later, endlessly, re-enacted that past act? That act, too, is unique by virtue of its recurrence. It is recollection that lies in the past, while the mountain can only be lifted, again and again, in the present. As for Rāvaṇa’s suppressed knowledge of the vortex of time-forward circling somewhere in time-past, inaccessibility does not imply absence. Knowledge of the double curse exists in his mind and may even explain something of how he habitually thinks and acts. Does such knowledge inhabit a definable temporal mode of being? Does it have its own inner rhythm? Possibly – since this knowledge breaks through at a particular time, at its own pace, as if it had been germinating within his awareness for a long period. But it is also possible that the very slow time of the mind cannot be measured by our usual criteria. Steadiness and simultaneity are features of that deliberate, in-densified pace. The mind as revealed in Kūṭiyāṭṭam is thick with time, or timefulness, moving through and beyond all the temporal rhythms at work in the story; the organization and composition of the performance text; and the shifting perceptual fields that are continually unfolding, shaping themselves anew, for the audience. Given this saturation with timefulness, it makes sense that time in Kūṭiyāṭṭam, generally, at any given moment, has a granular aspect, a thickness of cumulating, often uneven, temporal beats. I repeat: The TY moves, in widening circles, backwards toward a cause whose effects have already appeared and will continue to appear. A future, active and self-fulfilling, heavy with time and potential being, is coded as past. By the same logic, a past event – say, the visionary curse – can be coded as future. But as a text, this play may well post-date the tradition that performs it. Effects can as easily precede their causes as the future may be lost somewhere in the past (in one or more of several possible pasts), just as any one of those pasts may be understood as a still-unachieved future. Much of Kūṭiyāṭṭam is given over to exploring these propositions. 36

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Sanskrit poetics has a name for such aberrant causalities. Daṇḍin, in his Mirror of Poetry, calls them citra-hetu, “colorful causes,” or, in Yigal Bronner’s translation, “striking causation.”5 He lists several exemplary types: an effect very remote from its cause; a simultaneity of cause and effect, or an effect that may even precede its cause; logically unlikely or (upon reflection) possibly reasonable effects (Kāvyādarśa 2.253, with the following verses). He says that such figures have a special beauty, and he gives several poetic illustrations. Thus: paścāt paryasya kiraṇān udīrṇaṃ candra-maṇḍalam/ prāg eva hariṇākṣīṇām udīrṇo rāga-sāgaraḥ// (2.257) The moon rose after scattering its rays, a little late. An ocean of flowing desire in doe-eyed girls was already at high tide. Moon-rise and high tide are meant to coincide, the former generating the latter. Not, however, where love is concerned. This case is clearly a little different from the reverse causality the Kūṭiyāṭṭam narratives often prefer. Yet figuration is itself a kind of causal statement. Here’s another example: rājñāṃ hastāravindāni kuḍmalī-kurute kutaḥ/ deva tvac-caraṇa-dvandva-ravi-bālātapaḥ spṛśan// It’s amazing, isn’t it, my lord, that the hands, like lotuses, of other kings are turned back into closed buds when your feet, two dawning suns, touch them. (2.258) All kings fold their hands and bow to touch the feet of their patron or overlord. Something important happens at that touch. The red lotus unfolds at dawn. The patron’s feet are rising suns. The infigured lotuses of this poem are the hands that close in worship. Normal sequence is inverted. The patron is, presumably, amused. The figure is a little forced, but the mere fact that this category exists has significance. Once we start looking for literary examples, they are far from rare. In Kūṭiyāṭṭam, they are routine. As in the case of temporal movement, there is, first, the compositional rationale of the performance. The nirvahaṇam deals in prior causes of events in the dramatic present, yet it follows upon the puṟappāṭu: thus, on the level of enacted sequence, these causes always post-date their effects. As I have tried to show, this ordering of presentation is not a merely technical matter. It is conducive to rethinking the common-sense sequence of cause to result and past to future. Indeed, it demands that re-thinking. Just as the TY brings Rāvaṇa, 37

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and us as spectators, face to face with the opaque density of time, so other plays regularly reveal the strange intimacies of causal progression, or perhaps regression. We feel our way forward toward a cause buried in the future: Hanuman, at the end of the Drama of the Ring, offers a glimpse of a pre-existent template that he happens to know, parts of which have been narrated before by the omniscient expert in the Rāmāyaṇa story, Jāmbavān, though only up to the point that his listeners have already reached in that story.6 Its ending, at once telos, origin, and cause, will have to wait. Kūṭiyāṭṭam de-routinizes temporal sensation and causedriven intellection; in any case, these two are one. But even this formulation is too descriptive. In a way, it misses the point. That one is living out a pre-existing story of which one is unwittingly a part, thus moving forward toward the cause or trigger of one’s own trajectory, is a major way of understanding the world in Kūṭiyāṭṭam and in its allied genres. Its temporal aspects have been discussed. It would, however, be more accurate to say about the TY, which I have taken as a paradigm, that from the beginning, it is engaged in creating the cause of its own existence. The play is arranged, conceived and enacted in order to fashion the conditions and temporal prerequisites for its coming to be. It takes several days for this to happen as we watch; when it is finally, fully present, we are deeply moved. Let me follow this thought through. *** All along I have been speaking of past, future and present as if they are, or were, discrete entities. Clearly, these divisions have their uses, in Kūṭiyāṭṭam as in life. It is also clear that by naming them as such and then toying with their definitions, we are objectifying them – or, stated more radically, we are coercing time into a set of hard, encrusted categories perhaps at odds with its realities. The linear labels along with the distinctive chunks of temporality that go with them are, in any case, not “entities.” Here we may want to invoke Koselleck’s statement once again: “The presence of the past is distinct from the presence of the future.” Is there some sense in which this sentence can be meaningful in describing the TY, in which these chronologies of counting and thinking keep turning up inside one another, hiding within one another, becoming one another? An overriding perspectivism might dissolve the crusts to some extent. Words like “past” and “future” change in accordance with the vantage point from which they are inspected, as we have seen many times in this essay. Beyond this axiomatic statement, we have the experience, familiar to all spectators of Kūṭiyāṭṭam, of intermittent zooming in and zooming out when any temporal chunk, however small, is created on stage. Mostly, in Kūṭiyāṭṭam, we have the zoom-in: a single instant blossoms, in enactment, into a luxurious wilderness.7 We are invited to look ever more deeply into the textured conflation of perspectives that, in some sense, comprises the concept of reality. Such thick textures also conflate temporalities. The curse on Rāvaṇa, no matter how we come to it, cannot be said to belong solely to any temporal mode such as “past” or “future.” It is a fact in the etymological meaning of the word: something made, in our case through 38

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performance in word and gesture. The act of making cannot be reduced to a chronology. But it would be far more in harmony with the conceptual underpinnings of this art form to say about that curse, as we meet it on each of the two occasions, that the character – Rāvaṇa – is, in the moment of insight, with the help of the actors, reconstituting a cause from the perspective of the present (each time a little differently). That cause, a compounded and intensified sequence of charged syllables, is not a given, a datum. It has to be created – anew – each time Rāvaṇa touches it. Presumably, like all curses in South Asian literature, this one, too, picks up on something that exists or that is coming into being within the mind of the cursed subject. That’s how it works its magic. More generally, as a rule for Kūṭiyāṭṭam performance: It is always the present that brings pastness to the past and futurity to the future, by inventing them, though these two vectors are never parallel. The creation of pastness is perhaps freer, less constricted, a little easier than the imaginative creation of something that appears, wrongly, to lie ahead. On the largely illusory time-line of Rāvaṇa’s mind, that is, his sense of who he is, it is almost impossible for him to accept the latent, unactivated knowledge of his coming destruction, which, in a way, has already happened in the heated module of the curse. That destruction is both certain and indeterminate, at once overdetermined and underdetermined, the relation between these opposing forces changing in tandem with the shape of each particular moment when insight filters up into the mind. As I have said, one such moment is never enough. Rāvaṇa begins to understand the disaster that is overtaking him in terms of a half-forgotten curse; this dawning of insight is, on one level, the telos driving the drama from the start. It all goes back – so he thinks – to the heroic lifting of Mount Kailāsa. What is missing from this contemplation is Rāvaṇa’s sense of his own ongoing contribution to this perception. Like everyone else in the drama, and like the actors performing it and the spectators seeing it, he works upon the critical instant, kneading it, emptying and refilling it, decelerating and accelerating it, stretching it out in the mode of ākāṅkṣā, the syntactical suspense that never really lets up, even when a verse is completed and temporary closure is achieved. An aspect of arbitrary closure inheres in insight, as it does in the empirical fact that the play will at some point come to an end. How far can we go with this line of thinking about time? Very far indeed. There is plenty of time to meditate on time in the action-packed unfolding of every Kūṭiyāṭṭam play. The TY takes this theme, with its allied topic of causality, as its special focus. But this is not a matter of discursive analysis crystallized from watching and thinking; the actors might well find that my last sentence jars with their own self-understanding. And the audience, too, will surely be mostly engaged by the sheer lyricism, melodrama and emotional richness of what they are seeing, even as the play embodies and performs before them the lush timefulness of time. They, too, however, are enveloped by, perhaps baffled by, perhaps kneaded or moulded by Kūṭiyāṭṭam time. Once one enters the kūttambalam, there is no escaping it. 39

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Notes * This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 786083 - NEEM) . 1 Indeed, it seems unlikely that time (unlike the drumming) ever stops within a Kūṭiyāṭṭam performance; for a contrary view, see Johan (2014). 2 See the statement by Velcheru Narayana Rao, cited by Paula Richman (2001). 3 This play is, almost certainly erroneously, attributed to the ancient poet Bhāsa. 4 The verses that articulate the double curse are taken from Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa 7. 5 My thanks to Yigal Bronner for discussing the verses cited in the following. See his forthcoming translation of Chapter 2 of the Mirror of Poetry. 6 The test case is Sampāti, who hears from Jāmbavān the Rāmāyaṇa story up to the death of Jaṭāyu; a second narration allows Sampāti’s wings to grow back, but he still cannot fly. Jambavān then secretly tells him all the rest of the story (up to Rāma’s ascent to heaven), and now Sampāti can once again fly. See Aṅgulīyāṅkam, Night 6. There are thus two (rather long) recitations of the Rāmāyaṇa-saṅkṣepam on that night. 7 My thanks to Yael Shir for this observation.

References Abhiṣeka nāṭakam. Attributed to Bhāsa. Göettingen Register of Electronic texts in Indian Languages. Bar-On, Einat 2019. Kūṭiyāṭṭam. In Press. Bronner, Yigal Forthcoming. Translation of Daṇḍin’s Mirror of Poetry. Daṇḍin 1890. Kāvyādarśa. Edited by O. Böhtlingk. Leipzig: H. Haessel. Handelman, Don and David Shulman 1997. God Inside Out: Śiva’s Game of Dice. New York: Oxford University Press. Johan, Virginie 2014. Du je au jeu de l’acteur: Ethnoscénologie du Kūṭiyāṭṭam, théâtre épique indien. Thèse du doctorat, Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. Kaufmann, Walter 1992. Tragedy and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Koselleck, Reinhardt 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press. Richman, Paula (ed.) 2001. Questioning Rāmāyaṇas: A South Asian Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press. Shulman, David 2016. “Deep Seeing: Notes on Kūṭiyāṭṭam.” In Arindam Chakrabarty (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Indian Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Shulman, David 2019. “A South Indian Canon of Visible Sound.” In Silvia D’Intino and Sheldon Pollock (eds.), L’espace du sens/The Space of Meaning. Paris: Institut d’études indiennes, Collège de France. Thiranagama, Sharika 2011. In My Mother’s House: Civil War in Sri Lanka. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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4 TAKING, MAKING, AND LEAVING TIME The many times of the Āyāraṃga1 Christoph Emmrich

The puzzling redactorial mosaic presented to us by the first Śvetāmbara canonical text, the Āyāraṃga (“The Section on Conduct”), and particularly the Bambhacerāiṃ, or “The Ascetic Life” (Skt. brahmacārya), the first collection, or suyakkhaṃdha, is an ideal place to look for the diverse, divergent, disconnected and often difficult-to-understand instances of what later becomes a scholastically regimented discourse on time left unregulated and which presents itself as a dimly visible constellation of times. This chapter, building on some of the author’s earlier work on the emergence of time as a central and more unified category of Jain thought,2 will present a close reading of the way praises, exhortations and prescriptions directed at Jain religious agents reveal that the linguistic experiences of punctuality or lateness, persistence or evanescence, insistence and deviation, seriality or repetition are ways to orient the monastic performance towards āyāra (Skt. ācāra), or right conduct, in other words, instructing in how to properly know what later texts may end up calling time. The Bambhacerāiṃ, which may contain some of the oldest Jain material on the topic, presents us with the most diverse set of times we encounter in Jainism.3 It is in the second lecture (ajjhayaṇa) of the Bambhacerāiṃ, called the Logavijao (“The Conquering of the World”), that we find the most comprehensive single text passage dealing with time. It begins with a line, identified as a verse quote by one of the early editors of the text, Walther Schubring, on a person’s relation to the guṇas, the qualities – more technically, the superficial attributes, more pragmatically, the karmically compromising things in life4 – and the fact that he who is close to the guṇas has a place (-ṭṭhāṇe) at the root or at the beginning (mūla) (je guṇe se mūlaṭṭhāṇe, je mūla-ṭṭhāṇe se guṇe./ iti, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,8). The “beginning” is, in Schubring’s reading, that of “des wahren Mönchtums” (Āyār transl Schubring 72, “of true monastic life” Āyār transl Schubring Eng 84), and in the reading by Schubring’s predecessor, Hermann Jacobi, who unlike Schubring closely followed the commentary (Āyār comm), taking a more cosmological-eschatological DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-4 41

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perspective on the text, “the Samsâra, viz. sin” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15, n. 1). While Jacobi takes mūla as the causal origin of the process of rebirth, Schubring understands it as the first level of a prospective monastic career. To the first verse, the Bambhacerāiṃ’s redactor adds a second that speaks about “someone who has the guṇas as his aim” as “with great suffering dwelling as someone who is careless” (se guṇ’aṭṭhī/ mahayā pariyāveṇa vase pamatte/, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,9–10). In the vein of his more sociological reading, Schubring takes vase pamatte to refer to someone who “führt . . . leichtsinning sein Leben als Häuslicher” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 72), or, with some extra words thrown in, “leads his life as a householder with great difficulty [and] imprudently” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 84), while Jacobi takes it as “is overcome by great pain and he is careless” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15). Schubring, without being wrong, may be over-reading here, probably looking ahead at the subsequent prose passage in which, introduced with “this so” (taṃ-jahā), an example or testimony of that guṇa-centric attitude is given: the person in general (Jacobi) or a householder in particular (Schubring) invokes his or her ties to family members, such as “my mother, my father” (māyā me, piyā me) and so on, as well as to friends and acquaintances, and being involved in the circulation of commodities (Āyār-ed Schubring 6,11–13). This prose quote is then commented on by the insertion of what Schubring identifies as two distinct quote fragments: “The world is bound by the way of these aims” (‘icc-atthaṃ gaḍhie loe’) and a repetition of the previously mentioned vase pamatte, “dwelling as someone who is careless” (Āyār-ed Schubring 6,13–14).5 Then, again temporalizing, the text dramatically breaks into verse: “day and night (aho ya rāo) it [i.e. the world] is burning all around” (aho ya rāo paritappamāṇe, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,15).6 The text returns to a line of prose but stays thematically with time: “[the world] works in time and out of time (kālâkāla-samuṭṭhāī), having connections as its aim, desiring goals [or wealth]” (kālâkāla-samuṭṭhāī saṃjog’aṭṭhī aṭṭhālobhī, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,16). Switching back to verse, the text continues: “[the world] commits violent acts, with a narrowly focussed mind (sahasā-kāre viṇiviṭṭha-citte, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,17)” and, returning to what seems like a prose quote: “here [i.e. in this world] there are repeated (puṇo-puṇo) means for harming” (‘ettha satthe7 puṇo-puṇo,’ Āyār-ed Schubring 6,18),8 followed by a verse stating that “for some humans the life span (āuṃ) is short” (appaṃ ca khalu āuṃ iha-megesiṃ māṇavāṇaṃ, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,19).9 What follows is a relatively long prose passage seemingly prompted by the preceding verse’s reference to a short life span but actually slightly shifting topics, addressing a human life’s progressive deterioration: it outlines the decline of a person’s sense faculties “verily with each advanced life stage” (abhikkaṃtaṃ ca khalu vayaṃ), “leading at one point to impaired mental faculties” (egayā mūḍha-bhāvaṃ jaṇayaṃti) and to conflicts with close kin, in turn, first (puvviṃ) by their complaints about him and then (pacchā) by his complaints about them (Āyār-ed Schubring 6,20–23). The insertion of a verse fragment “they are of no use for protection” (nâlaṃ te tava tāṇāe, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,24) prompts a return to prose for the warning that under the conditions of personal

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decay, the willingness for mutual care and protection will break down (vā saraṇāe vā, tumaṃ pi tesiṃ nâlaṃ tāṇāe vā saraṇāe vā, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,25) and the subject will be able to neither experience laughter (se na hassāe), nor games (na kiḍḍāe), nor sensual pleasures (na raīe), nor entertainment (na vibhūsāe, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,25–26). What follows is advice: “[Under these conditions] he [or she] should, [in the] realization (sãpehāe, Skt. saṃprekṣā) that this (imaṃ) is truly (khalu) the time window (antaraṃ), [say to himself:] ‘proceed (aho) towards a place of mendicant religious practice (vihārē)’.”10 After this, the text switches to a set of verses that conclude this long and time-heavy passage: “a bold one (dhīre) should not even for a moment (muhuttam̱ avi no) relent (pamāyae). The stage of life (vao) unravels (accei), [including] youth (jovvaṇaṃ) and life (jīvie) [as a whole]” (dhīre muhuttam̱ avi no pamāyae;/ vao accei jovvaṇaṃ ca jīvie, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,28–29).11 This long and rich passage covers in a nutshell the main times and themes that will persistently resurface throughout the Bambhacerāim. The human world, the world of the people (loe), driven by attraction towards the guṇas, which include common social relations and possessions, is characterized by doing (or thinking) the wrong things repeatedly, that is, the same thing intermittently but persistently over time, the abstract seriality of habit and routine marked by puṇo-puṇo and, analogously yet in contrast, marked by the units of the experiential, lived-through repetitive times of day and night, aho ya rāo. Doing the wrong thing includes doing things at the wrong time, with possession and violence piled on. This is the basic situation, temporally speaking, of the world and of the beings in it, and more specifically, if one follows Schubring, of the householder who is being addressed as a potential mendicant. Now the seriousness of this situation moves up a level when this undifferentiated seriality, without beginning or end, is combined with the finitude of the human life, and it is clear from the examples that the text here speaks of human, not of animal or vegetal (or nigoḍa), times. “Burning day and night” is particularly bad first because life is short and death, the ultimate burning, is not far away, and there is not much time to get things right. But, almost as bad, second, life comes with the unavoidable and speedy deterioration of its quality: life is not only short, but one experiences it passing quickly, and it gets worse. The brevity of the life stages, vayas or vaos, are a marker of that speed, most of all youth, jovvaṇaṃ. The deterioration is here, both causally and temporally, grounded in sensory decay, mediated by verbal abuse, leading to vulnerability, with the resulting affective impoverishment of one’s life. The universality of these features that are not specific to the householder would speak for Jacobi’s more general reading. As if the text were referring to the insight it itself provides and to the time in which it allows the listener or reader to attain that insight, to be aware of what life still holds in store or what one is already experiencing, the text calls this the aṃtara, literally “the in-between,” or “the interval,” in which the move into the religious life should be made.12 Finally, the times of the mendicant’s life are times of being bold (dhīre), which involves not relenting even for an instant or a muhutta. We will see in later passages that to be bold in this sense also implies

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doing and experiencing things puṇo puṇo or ayo ya rāo, but only the right things and only those under one’s control. As we see, the passage is utterly saturated with the most diverse times, and there is not “one time” to be found, nor would the passage’s logic call for any such overarching conceptualization. Instead, the individual times seem to be sewn together into a larger rhetoric of factuality, dread, urgency and prescription, one entangled with the other and leading to the next, driving ahead the argument that, understanding which time comes after the other and how to time one’s taking the initiative, makes the whole project one of realizing, assessing and managing the individual times at hand. What also allows for this text to be preeminently temporal is that it leaves out details that would weave a more systematic whole: we do not learn why and how the decision to opt for the vihāra would help deal with the daily burning or with the brevity of life; we do not learn about previous or future rebirths or the elaborate ethical and ontological workings of karma, all of which would lead us to the larger doctrinal framework and away from the motivational aspects of āyāra. The preacher and the redactor of our passage are not interested in the times of rebirth but rather in those of this life, so the audience is made to remain in this one life and is moved along a stringent and well-timed path that begins with suffering and ends in boldness. This is an express lane, so to speak, to the mendicant’s life, one that accommodates both the universal human appeal as well as the very specific monastic teleology. It takes times to get there, but that is all. What we need to keep in mind is that the Bambhacerāiṃ is about the humans’ and the mendicant’s life, its constraints and its choices, not about time. But even though there is no one term to reduce the times to or to expand them into, one still must guard oneself from playing off multiplicity against unity and vice versa: the mystifying use of the English term “time,” which is nothing but a modern construct, is as misguided as the assumption that there was no consistency in how the premodern Jains referred to religious experiences that involved experiences like day, night or death. We still need to imagine one temporal context in which all these times make sense, one that prefigures the later “one time” kāla to which all these may refer back. That context may be described as one in which times give humans “a bad time” and in which humans are “out of time” both in terms of a disjunction of a particular action, which always needs to be timed, and its time and in terms of experiencing a lack of time in terms of lifespan. On the other hand, it is also a context in which humans aspire to be “good at time,” in which they are aware of “the bad times” and aim at coordinating action and time successfully. In the first context, misguided, wrong actions make for harsh rhythms and imminent deadlines, the repetition of the bad and the shortening of temporal resources. In the second, an awareness of the connection between actions and temporal experience leads to the timing of corrected action that ameliorates the previously experienced temporal effects. Yet both contexts appear strikingly reduced. Neither does our text elaborate on the way humans suffer under bad times, nor does it give us an opening on what rewards doing the right thing at the right time may bring. All it gives us is a sketch of the overall constellation of 44

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times and how to navigate them. It tells the audience how urgent it is to get things right and how to do so. In terms of address, it pushes the audience from the temporally painful consequences of wrong actions to their avoidance through the right handling of time. Wrong actions make humans act at the wrong time, while right actions, even if they may not make humans act at the right time, lead to more right actions all governed by right time. It is the mendicant’s life that needs to be lived at the right time and which ensures that nothing is done wrongly, including its timing. If there is any such thing as one time in the Bambhacerāim, it is a time that at the same time says: “you don’t have time” and “this time, not that time.” If there is one time, it is one of which there is always too little and which is either right or wrong. It is that time in which a sense of urgency merges with the accuracy of timing. The urgency itself is that of the appeal to make “a turn in time,” from time being overwhelming because it is produced by wrong actions to time controlled by the project of achieving correspondence between an action and its time. In any of these two simultaneous addresses and in both sides of the turn, the time – if there is indeed one, or if we want to call “one” and “time” the context of all the singular times – is a time that is only relevant because it is of immediate concern to the human addressed by this text. It may, by extension, by logical extrapolation or by historical development of the relevant terminology also be the time of the animals, the nigoḍas, the celestial bodies, the units of time, the phases of cosmic up- and downturn, the universal working of karma and much more. As far as the text goes, it is none of that. And yet time in this text may be in turn that which gives a very specific foundation, motivation, and meaning to all of this. Our passage covering the times of the world is, a few lines down, followed by another related passage which brings back the sense of the time of the interval (antaraṃ), which earlier introduced the idea of the practice of timing. The passage (Āyār-ed Schubring 7,1–12) repeats the motif of a prototypical person running through a series of bad actions until he falls ill, leading his companions to leave him and he them, discovering that neither can protect the other and “understanding as suffering every single instance of pleasure” (jāṇittu dukkhaṃ patteya-sāyaṃ, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,7)13 “and reflecting on the not yet quite (na khalu) advanced life stage” (aṇabhikkantaṃ ca khalu vayaṃ sãpehāe, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,8)14 where “the wise one should know the khaṇa” (khaṇaṃ jāṇāhi paṇḍie, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,8), with khaṇa being translated by both Jacobi and Schubring as “the right moment” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 74: “den rechten Augenblick”) or “the proper moment” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 16), with Jacobi adding “(for a religious life).” While later South Asian scholastic literature on time, particularly that of the Buddhists starting with the Yogācārins, is well known for stressing the momentary nature of the khaṇa (Skt. kṣaṇa), the earlier and less scholastic literature instead prioritizes the kairological over the minute, implying an undefined duration rather than one that approximates the atomic as in the sutra passages referenced previously. It is the rarity of the kairos in its South Asian form in relation to the extension of pre- and post-kairological time that makes khaṇa acquire, as if metaphorically, a quantitative character and moves it closer to the moment: the instant of the potential event 45

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as contrasted to the years and aeons of pointless time. In this passage, khaṇa is used in obvious repetition and parallelism to antaraṃ previously, which lets Jacobi’s and Schubring’s translations as “moment” and “Augenblick” appear unjustified, except in a merely metaphorical sense. Momentariness is beside the point, as the khaṇa that the wise one should know is a time where urgency outweighs duration, one in which a certain age (vayaṃ) of an individual’s life is not yet over and there is still time left to do the right thing, but not much. The khaṇa would then certainly assemble in itself connotations of the “proper” and the “right” not in the prescriptive sense of somebody who has already submitted to a (e.g. monastic) time regime but in the sense of “it is time, if you do not want it to be too late.” The urgency of the khaṇa is the one which still needs to get the addressee to submit to a specific time regime in the first place, and the khaṇa is the emergence of the opportunity for undertaking that submission. As appaṃ ca khalu āuṃ in our earlier passage indicated, the times are not only getting worse, one’s life’s remaining time is short. Hence, the situation of time running out, of a tight schedule, a last opportunity, a “going-going-gone,” a “before-it’s-too-late” kind of situation would be the one more properly associated with khaṇa as used here. Quantitatively speaking, the khaṇa as the antaraṃ, the interval between the end of the good life and the beginning of comprehensive incapacitation, is thus everything but a fixed or set time: it is literally one that is slipping away, one that risks to be over “anytime.” The text then, again in a parallel to the earlier section, lays out when that specific khaṇa, that time window, “opens up,” or rather how long it stays open: “as long as (jāva) the perceptions of the ear are not deteriorated” (sotta-parinnāṇehiṃ aparihāyamāṇehiṃ, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,10), and so on for the other senses,15 “you should pursue the real aim which is his self.16 This I say.” (āy’aṭṭhaṃ sammaṃ samaṇuvāsējjāsi – tti bemi, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,12). This confirms our reading of the appeal of the khaṇa as being one that says both “now there is still time, but not much” and “this is the best possible time for you.” The time is such because the best possible conditions for success, defined by optimal cognitive functioning, are given now. The khaṇa here is clearly neither an instant, nor some larger cosmological configuration, but a temporally extended critical “moment” in the religious subject’s life in which certain things are still possible. *** The Logavijao’s first lesson (uddesao) ends here. The second lesson begins, strikingly, with another reference to the khaṇa, a confirmation of Schubring’s suspicion that the redactor had certain themes and key terms in mind when piecing together the Bambhacerāiṃ. It starts with the verse fragment “That wise one shall counter the lack of enthusiasm [about ‘the real aim which is his self,’ i.e. āy’aṭṭhaṃ (see above)]” (araiṃ āuṭṭe se mehāvī, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,13) to which the “preacher” adds in prose: “unknowingly the khaṇa is wasted [lit. freed, dropped, thrown away]” (khaṇaṃsi mukke aṇāṇāe, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,14) before returning to verse with “Some slow ones, however, having been touched [by the guṇas?], revert [to their past life ways], enveloped in delusion/” (puṭṭhā vi ege niyaṭṭanti 46

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mandā moheṇa pāuḍā:/,” Āyār-ed Schubring 7,13). The wasted khaṇa here is left unqualified but is likely the same as the one referred to in the previous passage. Going back to the first sentence, we see that it is the lack of enthusiasm about the opportunity the khaṇa offers that needs to be overcome. Two more things are added to what we have learned from the previous passage about the khaṇa. First, it takes knowledge (ṇāṇa) about the implications of the khaṇa not to waste it, harking back to Āyār-ed Schubring 7,11 and the paṇḍie who “knows” (jānāhi) the khaṇa. Second, wasting the khaṇa means that the ignorant ones slide back (nivaṭṭanti). This implies that those who end up as backsliders may have already “gone forward” or “gone forth” and may have, for whichever reason (motivation by others, misguided motifs or a merely partial appreciation of the khaṇa), already tentatively embarked on the right path. But, as the khaṇa, in its urgency and finitude, is still in effect and as the person of a certain age needs to make the most of it through monastic practice, there still remains the risk of wasting it if one does not keep making the most of that ongoing opportunity which, for him who keeps it up, will only have passed with death. It is the slow (mandā) and those shrouded by delusion (moheṇa pāuḍā), in other words, those who do not know, who fail to maintain themselves in that state of final opportunity. Before we proceed with our question about what knowing the khaṇa means, let us take a look at a comparable treatment of a similar time in the Uttarajhayaṇa (Utt 1977), a text stemming from the historical and thematic environment of the Āyāraṃga. That might help us do two things: first, see that the same or similar times may be referred to by different expressions, in other words, that in a preterminological way, there is a plurality of signification. Second, it will make us aware of the stark difference between this kind of understanding of khaṇa and a more scholastically oriented understanding of the time this particular word, or related ones such as samaya, denotes. For that, it is useful to look at Ludwig Alsdorf’s remarks on Devendra’s commentary on the refrain verse of the tenth section of the Uttarajhayaṇa that runs: “Don’t squander, Goyama, the samaya!” (samayaṃ, Goyama, mā pamāyae). The proximity of this verse to the Āyāraṁga’s “unknowingly the khaṇa is wasted” (khaṇaṃsi mukke aṇāṇāe) discussed previously is striking. Devendra comments on it thus: “because one should not be careless even for a samaya, which is followed [in the ascending order of time spans] first by the line [of instants] (āvalikā)” (ataḥ samayam api, āstām āvalikādi, aper gamyamānatvāt) and (after a comment on the name Goyama) explains further: “don’t be careless [means] do not perform carelessness” (mā pramādīḥ, mā pramādaṃ kṛthāḥ) (Alsdorf 1974: 228). Alsdorf points out that the commentary mentions samaya, the instant, among the terms for durations of time, followed by the āvalikā, the line [of instants], samaya being, in scholastic typology, the most minute one. Devendra thus makes the verse mean that Goyama should be careful even for the shortest of time spans. Alsdorf criticizes Jacobi for following Devendra in his translation of the verse as “Gautama, be careful all the while” (e.g. Uttar transl. Jacobi 42) and rightly reproaches Jacobi for taking samaya “in its general meaning ‘time’.” This criticism is only partly valid, for in that case, Jacobi would 47

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clearly not be following Devendra, lest Devendra also have that “general meaning ‘time’” in mind, an assumption falsified, however, by the typology Devendra’s list invokes. Jacobi’s “all the while” could well be a reading with Devendra and a less literal way of saying “be careful” and, adverbially, “[during every] samaya.” However, the bigger misunderstanding of both Devendra and Jacobi, as Alsdorf points out, is to have taken pamāyae as optative of pramādyati, “to sport, to be careless,” and not (referencing the Kleines Petersburger Wörterbuch) of pramādayati “to forfeit, to squander,” with samaya as the direct object. Reading the verse as the Uttarajhayaṇa’s appeal not to squander the samaya allows us to read it as an echo of the Bambhacerāiṃ’s threat not to unknowingly waste the khaṇa. Both terms would then be semantically very close, both denoting opportunity, finiteness and rarity and requiring awareness combined with a sense of urgency. A unifying textual effort that aims at assembling one temporal experience or one time relies on diverse terms whose connotations may centripetally point in diverging directions and thus both enrich and destabilize an emerging unity. With khaṇa, we have a greater affinity to the temporarily precarious, minute in terms of tending towards dissolution. Samaya, in contrast, opens towards its other and even more dominant meaning of “convention,” literally “coming together, converging,” and thus a more composite, conditional, situational meaning (Mette 1991). On the other hand, the possible misreading of samaya also speaks of the possible difference that lies between the sermonizing world of Schubring’s preachers and redactors of the Bambhacerāiṃ and the doctrinal world of the exegetes of the Bambhacerāiṃ’s cuṇṇis and ṭīkās. Just as Jacobi tended to fuse the horizon of the former and the latter, Schubring and Alsdorf did not hesitate to point out the mistakes and misunderstandings that prevented the horizons from merging. One aim of this chapter is to work towards a better understanding of time and times in the older text in order to more accurately determine what the conditions for the scholastic understanding of time and times may be, how the understanding of time and times of the mūla may be partially lost, but may also partially live on, if transformed, in that of its commentaries. *** Having analyzed these initial passages of the first and second ajjhayaṇa of the Bambhacerāiṃ, which cite the various times; arrive at one of them, the khaṇa; and stress the cognitive, if not to say gnostic, aspect of its handling by the ideal Jain subject, we will now, in a first step, pursue the question of what it means to know the khaṇa and, in a second step, what it means to act within the khaṇa to keep realizing the opportunity it offers. Much of the required knowledge about the khaṇa has already been mentioned in the passages covered so far, and as the Bambhacerāiṃ expands, it reemerges and is expanded beyond the individuality, life stage and social situation of the prospective mendicant by the addition of further ethical and cosmological dimensions. There is first of all the knowledge of the boundaries and the limitedness of life. Still within the second lesson, we find the verse “Pleasures are difficult to master, life is difficult to fortify” (kāmā duraikkamā, jīviyaṃ duppaḍivūhaṇaṃ, 48

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Āyār-ed Schubring 11,1). For duppaḍivūhaṇaṃ (Skt. duḥprativṛmhanīya, from prati-√bṛh) Āyār-trsl Schubring 78 has “steigern,” which Āyār-trsl Schubring 91 gives as “increase,” while Āyār-trsl Jacobi 24, thinking of the lifespan (āuṃ) as aspect of life, has “prolong.” Schubring’s translation “steigern” (not verlängern “verlängern” or “vergrößern,” – so “increase” may not be the ideal “translation of the translation”) denotes intensification, increase of quality and performance, while the connotations of √bṛh go in the direction of nourishing, growing big, fat or strong, and hence do also have a quantitative meaning, as Jacobi is suggesting, but would need to be supplemented by more vitalistic connotations of strength and health. Those qualities are not sustainable, claims the text. Instead, what the breakdown of this life leads to is more lives experienced as the kind of pain experienced by a diminished, weak and unhealthy body. Having full insight into the obstruction of the lifespan: know suffering or what is to come,/ suffer repeated suffering,/ and see the world subjected to suffering (imaṃ niruddh’āuyaṃ saṃpehāe,/ dukkhaṃ ca jāṇa adu vâgamissaṃ;/ puḍho phāsāiṃ ca phāsae:/ logaṃ ca pāsa vipphaṃdamāṇaṃ,17 Āyār-ed Schubring 19,23–26). Āuyo (Skt. āyus) is not restricted in meaning to the quantitative extension of life in years, as in Āyār-trsl Jacobi 39 (translating his edition viruddhāuyaṃ, “the shortness of life”),18 it is also the (in some contexts karmically determined, in others not) qualitative vital power that imparts physical strength and health and propels the human being across time. Its obstruction (viruddha) is hence not just a “cutting short” but a holding back and reducing of vital functions that produce a “strong” life and keep it going.19 The full insight (saṃpehāe) into that obstruction gives access to other forms of understanding of times. First, it allows one to experience present suffering (dukkha) as contrasted with and augmented by future (āgamissaṃ) suffering, which is how the commentary takes it (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 39, n. 3). It also allows one to understand its repetitive (puḍho) nature. And it further leads to widening the scale from the individual life, its ending and its repetitiveness to an undefined future and to the suffering of the world. We will return to both these last two aspects further on. For now, let us look at repetition. The connection between these two fragments speaks of the link between the brevity of this life and the cosmic duration of serial repetition that awaits the human once the khaṇa is no more. But more than that: the negativity of repetition in this life is extended to the projected negativity that lies beyond it. If we pursue the theme of the statement that “day and night it [i.e. the world] is burning all around” (aho ya rāo paritappamāṇe, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,15) and “here [i.e. in this world] there are repeated (puṇo-puṇo) means for harming” (‘ettha satthe20 puṇopuṇo,’ Āyār-ed Schubring 6,18), from the first ajjhayaṇa discussed previously, we find in the fourth ajjhayaṇa the verse fragment: “again and again they bring about birth” (‘puṇo-puṇo jāiṃ pakappēṇti,’ Āyār-ed Schubring 17,29), referring 49

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to a immediately preceding prose fragment mentioning “those who, being calm, are stirring” (sāmemāṇā calemāṇā, Āyār-ed Schubring 17,28–29). Here we have the description of a similar situation where those who have proceeded on the mendicant’s path fall back, only here the consequences reach beyond just this one life and repeated harming but translate into repeated rebirth. The verse fragment is followed by a second: “day and night the wise one is struggling” (aho ya rāo jaṭamāṇĕ dhīre, Āyār-ed Schubring 17,29–30), which is then connected to another verse which invites the wise to “see the careless outside” (pamatte bahiyā pāsa), meaning outside of, as Jacobi, adds, “(salvation)” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 37). While the doublet again-and-again retains its negativity, the dyad day-and-night maintains only the connotation of hardship, shifting from being the time in which people burn to the time in which the mendicant strives to uphold his or her arduous but meritorious lifestyle. Moving beyond the mere repetitive series of days and nights, in the light of ascetic consistency and endurance, aho ya rāo acquires not just positive valence but also the additional meaning of long duration. The mendicant endures for a long time, and that is what it takes to make the most of the khaṇa. We will come back to this important turn in the understanding of day-and-night later. Staying within the neighbourhood of this passage, the again-and-again (here puḍho-puḍho) returns soon after in a longer verse passage that addresses the inevitability of a life cut short, repetition and rebirth: Suffering and careless ones!21/Truthfully I say this:/ there is nobody who is not approached by the mouth of death./ Driven by desires bad householders/are seized by the time of death,22 enter the mass23/and attain birth again and again. (aṭṭā vi santā adu vā pamattā!/ahā-saccam̱ iṇaṃ ti bemi:/ nâṇāgamo maccu-muhassa atthi/ icchā paṇīyā vaṅkânikeyā/kāla-ggahīyā nicae niviṭṭhā/ puḍho-puḍho jāiṃ pakappayanti./ Āyār-ed Schubring 18,6–11) The repetition of birth here is the last element of the trajectory for “bad householders” that starts with their inevitable movement towards death (maccu-), being passively immobilized by an active death conceived of temporally (kāla-), in contrast to a khaṇa which was to be actively known, and finally with the individual merging with the depersonalized flow of equally bad subjects that fill up saṃsāra. An alternative recension (pāṭhāntaraṃ) of this passage replaces the verses that follow “Truthfully I say this:” with a prose section that replaces the drama of death with a stress on the cognitive aspect of rebirth and reprising the again-andagain by beginning “Here delusion [occurs] again and again; certain ones end up here and there [and] experience suffering that comes with embodiment” (ēttha mohe puṇo puṇo iham egesiṃ tattha tattha saṃthavo bhavaṭi, ahovavāie phase paḍisaṃveḍayaṃti, Āyār-ed Jacobi 19,1–7). The repetition of the effect, which is the repeated various locations of rebirth (tattha tattha), is grounded in the repetition of the cause that is ignorance. In the sixth ajjhayaṇa, two seemingly grafted fragments similarly connect lack of discernment and repeated birth: “those men 50

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need to be called childish; [they] attain birth again and again” (‘bāla’ vayaṇịjjā hu te narā; puṇo-puṇo jāiṃ pagappenti,’ Āyār-ed Schubring 30,25–26). It is the knowledge of the consequences of ignorance, including suffering on a cosmic scale, that make the Jain listeners understand what is important about the times they are confronted with in the text. In addition to repetition, it is the rarity of human birth and the rare opportunity for liberation that help rhetorically increase urgency. So far urgency had been expressed by the worsening cognitive and social conditions of the human and by the fact that the khaṇa, once lost, is irretrievable. Further on, in a long prose passage in the sixth ajjhayaṇa, this finality of human life brought about by not opting for the monastic life and giving in to desire (kāma) too is expanded onto a cosmic scale: “Him who internalizes desire [awaits] disintegration, either now or shortly, [and] for an immeasurable [amount of time]” (kāme mamāyamāṇassa iyāṇiṃ vā muhutte24 vā aparimāṇāe25 bheo, Āyār-ed Schubring 28,23–24). “Disintegration (bheo) now (iyāṇiṃ) or shortly (muhutte),” as confirmed by Āyār-ed Jacobi 55, n. 3, refers to the end of the human body at the unpredictable time of death in this life, but unpredictability and unavoidability of this specific time are then compounded by the unmeasurability of the time in which the human body remains unreconstituted, monastic life out of reach and liberation out of the question. The text adds, returning to the timing of desire itself, that the irretrievability of a human body is caused not just by “internalizing” desire, that is, by making it a permanent part of one’s self, but also if one gives in to it just for an intermittent period of time (antara): “Thus [occurs] to him [even] due to intermittent desires that are incomplete” (evaṃ se antarāiehiṃ kāmehiṃ ākevaliehiṃ Āyār-ed Schubring 28,24–25), a reminder, possibly, that even if the khaṇa of the mendicant’s life is realized, control needs to be continuous, aho ya rāo, “day and night” (aho ya rāo). But maybe the most important part of the required knowledge regarding the khaṇa, once the urgency part is properly understood, concerns its proper timing. As the khaṇa is something that can be lost (mukka), there is definitely the possibility of an action being “too late,” which may imply that there may also be one that is “too early,” and certainly that there is a before, an after and an in-between, a during or in the khaṇa. The following passages articulate this: He who is ignorant in darkness /cannot receive instruction, – that is what I say./ Who is without earlier [and] later, from where should he [get it] in the middle?/ That wise is awakened, refrains from action./ (tamaṃsi avijāṇao/ āṇāe lambho n’atthi tti bemi,/ jassa n’atthi purā pacchā[,?, A/N] majjhe tassa kuo siyā? se hu pannāṇamante buddhe āraṃbhôvarae;/ Āyār-ed Schubring 20,11–14). The weakly defined purā, pacchā, and majjhe are not easy to understand. Āyārtrsl Jacobi 40–41 takes the three together and translates “Whence should he have it, who does not get it early [purā], late [pacchā], or in the middle [majjhe] of 51

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life?” There is nothing in the text to confirm that the three prepositions, with very general meanings, refer to life stages, and yet the reading is tempting and sounds traditional. Āyār-trsl Schubring 89, instead, takes purā and pacchā together, separating them from majjhe with a comma (which I find a strong editorial intervention, hence the slight scepticism tentatively voiced in my previous emendation questioning the comma), and understands majjhe to be part of the question, translating: “[was] dem nicht sogleich [purā] oder schließlich [pacchā] zufällt, wie könnte er es [nur] zeitweilig [majjhe] gewinnen?” (“what does not fall upon him [better: what comes to him, A/N] immediately or finally, how can he acquire it [only] temporarily?” Āyār transl Schubring Eng 103). Striking about Schubring’s translation is his unusual interpretation of purā, pacchā and majjhe as “immediately,” “finally” and “temporarily,” in what seems like a rejection of a more conventional temporal understanding as represented by Jacobi. In phrases, purā, pacchā and majjhe, before, later and in the middle, is usually another way of saying “at any time,” as we will later see about the times past, present and future. So Jacobi would be saying that he who is ignorant all the time and does not become wise in any of the three stages of life will never be wise, even if instructed, implying that if he were to become wise at one stage of his life, he might still be able to be instructed. Schubring’s translation is less intuitively clear: he seems to be saying that one grows wise either immediately (without lead-up or instruction) or afterwards (after the instruction or just at some later point in time, maybe just before it is too late?) and will not stand any chance of getting wise “temporarily,” which is the most unclear term, meaning, maybe, during instruction, or for a short period, sufficient for understanding the urgency of the khaṇa. One could alternatively read Schubring’s translation as referring to becoming wise, either before it becomes relevant, understanding purā as “before” or “in the past,” or when it is too late, understanding pacchā as “later” or “in the future,” or at the right moment, understanding majjhe as between past and future, that is, in the present,” with the latter being the most useful and well-timed option but also the most difficult, particularly if it has not happened before and, obviously, if it is not likely to happen in the future. While Jacobi’s reading of purā, pacchā and majjhe as the three stages of life flattens the temporal dimension to cover all of the lifespan and the timing of the position of the religious subject and his or her insight vis-à-vis desire and the khaṇa remains opaque, Schubring understands the passage as positioning the religious subject and his or her insight vis-à-vis desire relative to instruction and the occurrence of the khaṇa, not before or after but “temporarily,” that is, in a well-timed fashion that is neither too early nor too late and hence at the exact right moment to realize its opportunity. Our closer look has, however, shown that Schubring’s reading, which sticks to the immediate meaning of the prepositions, comes with less interpretative baggage but begs the question what the referent of the three prepositions is. His isolation of majjhe, then, is the second, more speculative divergence from Jacobi. I do not see a way of proving either Jacobi’s or Schubring’s reading wrong, though both have their own problems: Jacobi’s tends towards the tautological; Schubring’s caution on the semantic is outweighed by the 52

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weight of his intervention on the syntactic level, and one could grant that the difference between Jacobi’s and Schubring’s readings is a subtle one: in both cases, the phrase says, basically, “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it. Ever.” Schubring’s reading (“If you do not get it even when you do not need it, you will not get it when you really do need it”) connects more closely to the preceding discussions of the temporal position of the religious subject in the subjective experience of the khaṇa, while Jacobi’s reading (“You need to get it at some point in life, sooner or later or in the middle, else, forget it”) frames objectively and more broadly the individual within its life course, including the closeness to death – a theme that is also taken up again by our text. *** But before following the death theme, we may need to stay with a passage that also employs a before-after scheme and may help us understand the right time in life for renouncing, or rather the possible consequences for renouncing depending on the time of its occurrence. The passage goes: That is why I say: “He should not underestimate [his own] initiative.[”] [One] who rises earlier does not fall back later, [while another] who rises early falls back later, [and in contrast] who does not rise early does not fall back later. He may be of such kind, who seeks the world after having known [better]. (tamhā bemi: “no niṇhavejja vīriyaṃ.[”]. je puvv’uṭṭhāī no pacchā-nivāī, je puvv’uṭṭhāī pacchā-nivāī, je no puv’uṭṭhāī no paccha nivāī. se vi tārisae siyā, je parinnāya logam-annesie./ Āyār-ed Schubring 23,1–5). Jacobi translates puvva- and paccha- as “earlier” and “afterwards,” while Schubring elaborates puvv’uṭṭhāī in his glossary, translating it there beautifully as “der sich früh aufmacht” (“who sets off early”) and explaining our passage as saying that “he who becomes a mendicant in possession of the power of youth (vīriya) may later in life become guilty of falling back.”26 In his completed Bambhacerāiṃ translation, however, he moves back closer to the more general rendering of Jacobi, rendering puvva as “anfangs” (“at the beginning”) and paccha as “nachher” (“afterwards”) and then renders the negative no puv’uṭṭhāī not like Jacobi simply as “not . . . exert themselves,” but as “wer [freilich] niemals tatbereit war” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 92; “whoever [though] was never ready,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 107). A cautious reading would understand this passage as saying first that different people pursue and maintain religious initiative differently and second that taking the initiative early is not the only way and not even necessarily a guarantee for long-term success. The Schubring of the glossary reads it as addressing the age bracket at which going-forth may be most effective, that is, later in life. The reference to the world (logam) and knowing it (nivāī) suggests that the matter discussed here is indeed one of a larger scale and deals with changing one’s attitude toward the world with an eye on liberation rather than just 53

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doing anything or even important individual monastic activities earlier or later. But even if we just confine ourselves to the most general and basic possible meaning, “before, early, or earlier” vs. “after, late, or later,” the passage would still fall within the preoccupation of finding the best possible time to begin a certain activity to allow for its sustainability. And it would still say: early is not always better, early is not necessarily the khaṇa and the khaṇa may still need to come. If the talk is indeed of life stages, then the text would be suggesting that embarking on the mendicant’s life may be more effective if it is done at a point in time when one’s initiative, vigour and indeed manliness (vīriya), not necessarily only “youthful” power, is fully appreciated, visible and developed. That also fits the earlier statements about the khaṇa emerging when the sensory, mental and social capabilities are still at their fullest and one is nevertheless aware of the brevity of life. At the very beginning of the fifth ajjhayaṇa, called Logasāro (“The World’s Essence”), we find a prose passage that speaks of those who are, with or without a purpose, violent, and continues: Weighty are his desires. Therefore he is in the vicinity of death. Who is in the vicinity of death, that person is far out. He is neither in the vicinity [of death], nor far out. He sees the drop, so to speak, driven along, at the tip of a blade of kuśa [grass], falling, dissolving. (gurū se kāma, tao se mārassa anto; jao se mārassa anto, tao se dūre. n’eva se anto, n’eva se dūre. se pāsai phusiyam̱ iva kus’agge paṇunnaṃ nivaiyaṃ vā’eriyaṃ/ Āyār-ed Schubring 20,28–30). To the prose passage is added the verse that gives meaning to the image: “Such is the life of the dim and ignorant goon.”/(evaṃ bālassa jīviyaṃ mandassa avijāṇao./ Āyār-ed Schubring 20,31). The passage, with its prepositions, its reference to death and its drop-on-and-off-the-leaf imagery, clearly deals with temporally understood “location” within and from without certain forms of a religiously conceived understanding of lifespan. It speaks of two religious subjects: the goon (bāla), on the one hand, and the one who sees (pāsai), on the other. Starting from the end of the passage, it is the non-goon, that is, the person who has knowledge and who is in the place other than that the goon occupies, who sees the goon being in a bad place. In the image of the knowledgeable, the goon, who takes on the precarious form of a drop, is him- or herself in a precarious place, or not so much in a place but moving along an unstable location that is all slippage and disintegration (cp. bheda, previously). The life of the uninformed other is de-humanized and scaled down to the insignificant and short-lived time of the next-to-nothing, while the time of the seeing subject is extended as to be able to contemplate, as if in time lapse, the dissolution of the ephemeral. Knowing the times implies being already removed from certain times and realizing how unmanageable they are for those weighed down by their own desires. The preceding lines about vicinity and distance, however, are more difficult to read, and Jacobi and Schubring need to mobilize some extra “words in brackets” to make them intelligible. That desires 54

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mean that the time of death is literally around the corner all the time is clearly an echo of the earlier passage about the roaming mouth of death, but it is the “far out” that is less intuitively clear. It is clear that it denotes a location that is negatively connoted, and both translators take it as being at a distance (dūre) from “(from liberation)” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 42) or the equivalent “(von der Erlösung)” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 90), which makes good sense. The “far out” dhūre echoes the “heavy” (gurū) of the passions but also other expressions of measurement, mentioned previously, denoting the unliberated and the careless, that is, being on the “outside” (bahiyā) of the religious life and the “immeasurable” (aparimāṇa) time of future rebirths. Temporally speaking, “far out” would mean to be lost in the times and spaces of saṃsāra, from where it takes a long time to come back, and removed from the place that is not only the time window that khaṇa offers but confined to where time passes as quickly and as unwittingly as in the minute spaces of tips of grass and drops of dew, far from the calm and dispassionate eye of the viewer who is near his own liberation. There is another passage, or rather another term appearing in separate passages, which may speak most directly to the issue of timing religious action and khaṇa. The passage occurs all the way back in the second ajjhayaṇa, the Logavijao, and Āyār-trsl Jacobi 22 gives as “He recognizes the proper moment (for all actions).” Surprisingly, the term Jacobi translates with “the proper moment” is not khaṇa but saṃdhi: ‘ayaṃ saṃdhī’27 ti addakkhu, Āyār-ed Schubring 10,13), which literally should be rendered as: “after having had the insight: ‘This is the saṃdhi’.” The text attributes this insight to “a mendicant, noble and of noble mind, who has taken initiative” (aṇāgare samuṭṭhie ārie āriya-panne), who, on the basis of this insight, proceeds with behaviour that behoves the mendicant, that is, “refuses, or does not allow or does not approve others, to accept” (se n’āie n’āiyāvae na samaṇujāṇāi) (Āyār-ed Schubring 10,13–14). There is nothing in the text that would justify Jacobi translating saṃdhi as “the proper moment” or adding “(for all actions).” Jacobi’s translation here is a good example of an interpretation that excessively temporalizes the source and therefore risks impeding our understanding of how a complex issue, such as whatever may be meant by saṃdhi, that may indeed contain temporal content actually works and may help us explain in surprising new ways the workings of time in this Jain text. Temporalizing is important, as it sensitizes us to the hidden temporal powers at work in a passage or an expression. But unreflectively and abstractly claiming temporal content without exploring what is actually going on stands in the way of any understanding of the inner workings of something that we may not yet know enough about and of learning anything new about time except that it’s everywhere. Āyār-trsl Schubring 77 is more literal, giving: “nachdem er eingesehen, daß hier eine Anknüpfung [an die Weltlichkeit] vorliege” (“after he has perceived that here is a case of attachment [to worldliness],” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 90). For the English rendering of Schubring’s “Anknüpfung,” I would prefer a more technical solution, like “link,” rather than Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng’s stronger and affectively loaded “attachment.” Schubring, in his typical matter-of-fact way, swings to the other extreme, 55

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denying any temporal content to saṃdhi, which for him is the crucial bond that the aspiring mendicant needs to sever, the only implicit temporal connection (not made in this passage, however) being that the interruption of this link is what needs to happen in the khaṇa. In fact, Jacobi himself elsewhere, not surprisingly, translates saṃdhi in a nontemporal way. In the lecture called Logasāro, there is a prose passage that stresses the precarious nature (in all likelihood) of the body: “a brittle thing, a thing fit for destruction, unstable, unsteady, impermanent, fluctuating, a changeable thing” (bheura-dhammaṃ viddhaṃsaṇa-dhammaṃ adhuvaṃ anitiyaṃ asāsayaṃ cayâvacaiyaṃ vipariṇāma-dhammaṃ, Āyār-ed Schubring 22,7–8). The syntax is contested. Āyār-ed Jacobi 23,7–9 has the sentence stop there and has the subsequent sentence continue pāsaha evaṃ rūvasaṃdhiṃ, hence his translation: “(The body) is of a fragile, decaying nature. . . . Perceive this as its true character” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 44), while Schubring has the first sentence end with pāsaha and has the subsequent one begin with evaṃrūva-saṃdhiṃ samuvehamāṇassa . . ., translating “Sehet, wie dieser [Leib] nach wie vor gebrechlich, anfällig . . . ist. Der die Anknüpfung dieser Art gehörig übersieht . . . ” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 91; “See how this [body] as always is fragile, susceptible. . . . Who duly ignores the attachment of this kind . . ., ”Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 106). While it remains unclear what in “true character” may represent Jacobi’s reading of saṃdhi here, Schubring’s translation with “Anknüpfung” (“link”) remains consistent with his previous translation of Āyār-ed Schubring 10,13, not only in terms of lexic but also in terms of discourse: it is the link that ties the religious subject to the dysfunctional body and that needs to be jettisoned mentally, as, the passage continues, “there is no path [anymore] for the person who is liberated and who has renounced here” (iha vippamukkassa n’atthi magge virayassa, Āyār-ed Schubring 22,9–10). Schubring, in fact, did give a good amount of thought to the specifically technical meaning of term saṃdhi, as is proven by the entry to this term in the glossary to his edition of the Baṃbhaceraiṃ (Āyār-ed Schubring 104, s.v.),28 which is dated earlier (1910) than his translation (1926). In the entry, Schubring points to the fact that the commentarial tradition, represented by the cūrṇi and by Śīlāṅka’s ṭīkā consulted by Schubring (Āyār-ed Schubring vii), reads saṃdhi as either “joint” or “gap” (vai-kuḍḍ’āīṇaṃ) or as “union” or “community” (sāhāraṇaṃ). Curiously, considering his translation for the passages we reviewed, he writes: “I take the meaning ‘point of contact’ [Berührungspunkt, A/N] (with the world of karman),” a much weaker word than “Anknüpfung,” which he would eventually choose in his translation of the text. Far from being the general, weak, and casual “connection” that may be translated variously depending on the context (as seems to be the case with Jacobi), and occasionally even temporalized, Schubring recognizes it as a key term in the conceptualization of the religious subject’s predicament and the element critical for its liberation. In the entry, Schubring also points out that this translation is particularly adequate in those instances in which saṃdhi appears joined by jhosiya, 56

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“destroyed.” One such passage, in fact, is found very close by, prior to the passage on the body and following the lines with the image of the drop at the tip of the blade of grass. The passage speaks of those “who live in the world without initiating activity” (logaṃsī aṇāraṃbha-jīvī). Of one of these (in the switch from pl. to sing. so typical for the text), the prose/verse cluster says: “Having stopped thus, having destroyed it [i.e. the life of activity, A/N], he perceives ‘This is the link,’ he understood that ‘This in the khaṇa of that vigraha.’/” (etthôvarae taṃ jhosamāṇe/ ‘ayaṃ saṃdhī’ ti addakkhū, je ‘imassa viggahassa ayaṃ khaṇe’ tti annesī./ (Āyār-ed Schubring 21,26–28). Here Jacobi returns to his earlier reading of saṃdhi as “the right moment” by translating “this is the favourable opportunity” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 44), while Schubring stays with his solution of translating “daß dies eine Anküpfung [and die Weltlichkeit] war” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 91; “that this was an attachment [to worldliness],” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 105). But it is the occurrence of khaṇa in the following difficult phrase and its crucial combination with saṃdhi that makes this passage so important. Both Jacobi and Schubring take khaṇa as “moment,” viz. “Augenblick.” The fact that Jacobi in the earlier passage had already translated saṃdhi as “moment” and now does the same for khaṇa means that his overall treatment of these terms is at the very least imprecise. What it certainly indicates for this passage is that he sees saṃdhi and khaṇa as close to merging in meaning and that the passage says the same thing twice, maybe with an additional specification, that is, imassa viggahassa ayaṃ khaṇe,’ which Jacobi translates as “the right moment for this body” (Āyārtrsl Jacobi 44), reading viggahassa (Skt. vigrahasya), which I left untranslated previously, with the commentaries that have śarīra as vigraha. Schubring, reads viggaha literally as vi-graha, “doing away with grasping,” “separation,” translating “daß hier der Augenblick der Trennung sich bot” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 91, “that here the moment of separation offered itself,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 105). Schubring cogently points out that in this passage vigraha, as denoting the separation effected by opting for the religious life, may have been consciously deployed in opposition to the link with the world of desires as denoted by saṃdhi. But Schubring doesn’t completely discard the commentary’s reading as body, either, surmising that the commentators may have been induced by the imassa to think of the body and that even a pun may be intended here.29 While the meaning “dispute, quarrel” seems out of question here, a possibility neither translator considers is whether viggaha could also mean “taking hold of” or “seizing,” referring to the mendicant’s life that is reached out to in the khaṇa. Jacobi and Schubring also disagree on the verb that describes how to handle the khaṇa: Jacobi translates annesī as “he who searches” (Skt. anveśin) but rightly surmises that it may be an aor. of √jñā (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 44, n. 2), which is what Schubring takes it for in his more convincing translation: “”([er] der gewiß war,) daß hier der Augenblick der Trennung sich bot” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 91; “[he] (who was certain) that here the moment of separation offered itself,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 105). The predominantly cognitive approach to khaṇa would 57

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indicate that it is indeed more about knowing the khaṇa when making the crucial step than about still hunting for it in the first place. *** The connection between saṃdhi and khaṇa made in this passage takes us full circle. We started with the passage on the interval (aṃtara) between the deterioration of the religious subject’s cognitive decline and death as a religiobiographical phase in which urgency peaks and that one needs to know to lead one to the religious life (icc-evaṃ samuṭṭhie ‘aho vihārae.’ antaraṃ ca khalu imaṃ sãpehāe, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,26–27). From there we proceeded to the strongly kairological expression khaṇa that constituted both the object and the field of practice of an awareness of one privileged time among others, helping to formulate the appeal that “the wise one should know the khaṇa” (khaṇaṃ jāṇāhi paṇḍie, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,8). That knowledge brought with it all the temporal connotations of tedium and duration (repetition, puṇo-puṇo), irreversibility (of the approaching death, maccu) and lost opportunity (immeasurable in time, aparimāṇa), which was a move from biographical-individually defined to collective-cosmic expanded times. Finally, the translators’ intuition that a non-temporal expression such as saṃdhi may offer the key to how understanding and resolution may go together if understood temporally led us to understand the importance of that term, which brought us back to khaṇa. It became clear that khaṇa is not only a new phase in life that may offer the opportunity for a change in lifestyle but that to know its time involves knowing what ties the human to the guṇas, as mentioned in the first lines of the Bambhacerāiṃ, to kāma and to the workings of karma. Knowing the khaṇa means knowing that saṃdhi. The Jain subject only understands the deadline if he or she knows that the link that ties him or her to this finitude brings death and does so again and again. In that sense, to translate khaṇa as “the right moment,” as if it were either a predetermined constellation of supporting circumstances or something that is granted by some higher force, which the individual may take advantage of, is superficial and misleading. Instead, this time is driven by the pressure other times exert on the religious subject and the ethical appeal to deal with the link in the awareness of those pressures. In that sense, it is not “the right” but “the only remaining” moment – were it not for the fact that, as we have seen, it is not even a moment at all but a time that extends over what is left of the Jain subject’s religious life, which could indeed be over “in a moment” at any time but which is still long enough for even the most ardent mendicant to fall back. There is always enough time to still miss that specious (and all too long) moment.

Notes 1 I am indebted to Shonaleeka Kaul for motivating me to write this piece, to Ulrich Pagel for help with literature and to Srilata Raman for her constant advice, crucial comments and our shared ongoing conversation. 2 Emmrich (2001), Emmrich (2003).

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3 References to Āyār-ed Jacobi and Āyār-ed Schubring all include page and line number. Schubring’s German translation of the Bambhacerāiṃ (Āyār-trsl Schubring) was in turn translated into English by Jayandra Soni and Willem Bollée (Āyār-trsl Schubring). 4 Schubring translates “äußeren Dingen” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 72), “external things” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 84), while Jacobi has “quality” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15). 5 While Schubring has two sentences, “‘Um solcher [Dinge] willen liegt die Welt in Banden’! (‘er führt sein Leben leichtsinnig als Häuslicher’) . . . (Āyār-trsl Schubring 72)” or “‘For the sake of such [things] the world is in bondage’! (‘he leads life imprudently as a householder,’ . . . ” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 84), Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15, following Āyār-ed Jacobi 7,7–8, takes both quotes together as one, translating “Longing for these objects, people are careless.” 6 For paritappamāṇe, Jacobi has, more in terms of the universalist dukkha, “suffer,” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15), while Schubring has, in line with the toils of a householder, “sich mühend” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 72,16), “exerting himself” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 84). In Schubring’s German wording, there may be an echo of Luther’s translation of God’s words to the primordial householder Adam, Genesis 3,17: “Mit Mühsal sollst du dich . . . nähren ein Leben lang,” for which the King James Version has “in sorrow shalt thou eat . . . all the days of your life.” 7 Satthe, lit. “weapons,” is taken as “injurious doings” by Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15 and as “Kampf” by Āyār-trsl Schubring 73, 6,18 (“a fight,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 84). 8 The whole passage “aho ya rao . . . puṇo-puṇo” recurs (abbreviated by Schubring) at Āyār-ed Schubring 7,26. 9 Āyār-transl Jacobi 15 assumes “is shortened,” but I am not sure whether that is justified. The details of a deteriorating life that follow in the text make sense even without assuming that the text talks about lifespan-reducing effects of one’s actions. 10 icc-evaṃ samuṭṭhie ‘aho vihārae’. antaraṃ ca khalu imaṃ sãpehāe, Āyār-ed Schubring 6,26–27. 11 Āyār-trsl Jacobi 16 has “he should be steadfast and not, even for an hour, carelessly conduct himself. His youth, his age, his life fade away,” while Āyār-trsl Schubring, 73 has “möge ein Kluger auch nicht einen Augenblick sich gehen lassen. Die [frühe] Lebensstufe geht dahin und die Jugend im Leben.” (“may a prudent one not lose control over himself even for a moment. The [early] stage of life passes by and youth in life.” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 85). 12 The commentary Jacobi uses explains aṃtara as “in his present life” and adds “for the birth in âryakshetra and in a noble family is difficult to obtain in this Samsâra.” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 16, n. 1). This enlarges the scale to include the doctrinal perspectives of rebirth, sacred South Asian cosmography and the rarity of human birth over time and connects aṃtara with a trans-sectarian tradition of opportune and inopportune times (khaṇa-akkhaṇa), or, better, conditions, for rebirth, also prominent in Buddhism. Schubring, in contrast, translates “diese [kurze] Zwischenzeit [bis zum Tode]” (Āyārtrsl Schubring 73), “this [short] interval [until death]” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 85), narrowing down the scale of the time window to the temporal proportions of this very life. 13 Āyār-trsl Schubring 73, 7,8 temporalizes patteya-, rendering it as “jedesmal,” with Āyārtrsl Schubring Eng 85, temporalizing even further as “every time.” Rather than referencing temporal sequence, patteya (Skt. pratyekaṃ) is more likely to stress the individuality of each event of pleasure. 14 Āyār-trsl Jacobi 16 has correctly, but somewhat counter-intuitively, “seeing his life not yet decline.” 15 jāva sotta-parinnāṇehiṃ aparihāyamāṇehiṃ, netta-p[arinnāṇehiṃ] a[parihāyamāṇehiṃ], ghāṇa-p[arinnāṇehiṃ] a[parihāyamāṇehiṃ], rasa-p[arinnāṇehiṃ] a[parihāyamāṇehiṃ], phāsa-p[arinnāṇehiṃ] a[parihāyamāṇehiṃ] icc-eehiṃ virūva-rūvehiṃ parinnāṇehiṃ aparihāyamāṇehim, Āyār-ed Schubring 7,10–12.

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16 My translation is closer to Schubring’s, who has “den Vorteil für dich selbst wahrnehmen” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 74) or “as the advantage to yourself” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 74). Āyār-trsl Jacobi 17, n. 2, following the commentary, takes it as a genitive tatpuruṣa and supplies with Śīlāṅka “control” as the “end of his soul.” Differently from Schubring, however, Jacobi famously does not follow the commentary in reading the si in si tti bemi as a second-person singular ending of samaṇuvāsejjāsi but takes it as a pronoun (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 17, n. 1). 17 Āyār-trsl Schubring 88 translates beautifully as “die zuckende Welt,” “the twitching world” (rather than “the convulsive world” given in Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 102). 18 Better Āyār-trsl Schubring 88 “begrenztes Leben” (“limited life,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 102). 19 In the Buddhist context, MN-a (1922–1938) I 58,13–27 remarks that kāla, the time of death: “consumes the beings not by pulling off their skin and flesh and eating them, but it consumes and wastes them by destroying their lifespan (āyu), beauty and strength, destroys their youth and damages their health.” 20 Satthe, lit. “weapons,” is taken as “injurious doings” by Āyār-trsl Jacobi 15 and as “Kampf” by Āyār-trsl Schubring 73 (“a fight,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 84). 21 Āyār-trsl Schubring 87 adds in his translation maybe more temporal specificity than warranted: “Ihr, die ihr [schon] elend seid oder [erst] leichtsinnig!” or “You who are [already] miserable or [just] imprudent?” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 101), implying that suffering is not already inherent carelessness but that there is a phase of mere carelessness that only later results in suffering. 22 For kāla-, Jacobi has “Time” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 37), Schubring has “Death” (Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 101). 23 Jacobi adds “(of karman)” (Āyār-trsl Jacobi 37, while Schubring adds “[unerlöster Seelen]” or “[of unliberated souls]” (Āyār-trsl Schubring 87; Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 101). 24 Āyār-trsl Schubring 99 has correctly “nach kurzer Frist,” “after a short period” (Āyārtrsl Schubring Eng 115). Āyār-trsl Jacobi 55, translates muhutta too literally with “after an hour,” but then in n. 2 adds adequately “I. e. after a short time.” 25 Āyār-trsl Jacobi 55 has “for an infinite space of time,” Āyār-trsl Schubring 99 has “auf unendliche Zeit” (“for endless time,” Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng 115). 26 “vv’uṭṭhaiṃ- 23,3 f.: der sich früh aufmacht”; d. h. der in der Jugendkraft (vīriya) Mönch wird, macht sich später möglicherweise des Rückfalls schuldig (pacchā-nivāīṇ-).,” (Āyār-ed Schubring 91, s.v. puvva). 27 N. 3 to Āyār-ed Jacobi 11,5 gives the alternative reading saṃdhiṃ. 28 The entry in its entirety runs: “Die Erklärungen in CṬ gehen auf “Fuge” oder “Breshe” (vai-kuḍḍ’āīṇaṃ s., kamma-cchidraṃ, -vivaro) und “Vereinigung”, “Gemeinschaft” (sāhāraṇaṃ); zu 10,13 auch bhikkhā-kāla C, zu 21,27 avasara Ṭ. Ich nehme die Bed. “Berührungspunkt” (mit der Karman-Welt) an für alle Stellen, zumal für die, wo saṃdhi mit jhosiya verbunden erscheint. Nur 15,18, vgl 13,10, wird zu übersetzen sein: “den Zusammenhang der Welt erkennend”, nämlich des Ich mit den übrigen Geschöpfen.” 29 “doch wohl “Trennung” im Gegensatz zu saṃdhi; CṬ, augenscheinlich durch das vorhergehende imassa bestimmt (vgl. 37,15), erklären śarīra. Vielleicht ein Wortspiel.” (Āyār-ed Schubring 100, s.v. viggaha).

References Alsdorf, Ludwig. “Uttarajjhāyā Studies,” in Kleine Schriften, pp. 225–51. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1974. Āyār comm ed Sāgarānandasūri & Jambūvijaya = Ācārāṅgasūtram and Sūtrakṛtāṅgasūtram with Niryukti of Ācārya Bhadrabāhu Svāmī and the Commentary of Śīlāṅkācārya, edited

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by Ācārya Sāgarānandasūrijī Mahārāja, re-edited with appendices by Muni Jambūvijayajī. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass VS 2034 [1977/78]. Āyār-ed Jacobi. The Âyâraṃga Sutta of the Çvetâmbara Jains, edited by Hermann Jacobi. Part I. – Text. London: Pali Text Society, 1882. Āyār-ed Schubring = Schubring, Walther. Ācārâṅga-Sūtra. Erster Śrutaskandha. Text, Analyse und Glossar [Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, published by the Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, XII, 4. Leipzig, 1910]. Repr. Nendeln: Kraus Reprint, 1966. Āyār-trsl Jacobi. = Jaina Sūtras. Part I. The Ākārāṅga Sūtra. The Kalpa Sūtra, translated from the Prākrit by Hermann Jacobi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1884. Āyār-trsl Schubring. = Walther Schubring. Worte Mahāvīras. Kritische Übersetzungen aus dem Kanon der Jaina. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1926. Āyār-trsl Schubring Eng = Walther Schubring. Mahāvīra’s Words, translated from the German with much added material by W. Bollée and J. Soni. Ahmenabad, 2004. CṬ = Cūrṇi and Ṭīkā by Śīlāṅka quoted after Āyār-ed Schubring vii. Emmrich, Christoph. “Some Remarks on the Terminological Construction of kāla in Kundakunda.” In Vasantagauravam: Essays in Jainism Felicitating Professor M. D. Vasantha Raj of Mysore on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday, edited by Jayandra Soni, 73–83. Mumbai: Vakils, Feffer and Simons, 2001. Emmrich, Christoph. “How Many Times? Monism and Pluralism in Early Jaina Temporal Description.” In Essays in Jaina Philosophy and Religion, edited by Piotr Balcerowicz, 69–88. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2003. Mette, Adelheid. “Notes on Samaya ‘Convention’ in Pali and Prakrit.” In Middle IndoAryan and Jaina Studies, edited by Colette Caillat, 69–80. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991. MN-a = Majjhimanikāya-aṭṭhakathā. Papañcasūdanī, edited by J. Woods, D. Kausambi and I. B. Horner, 5 vols. London: Pali Text Society, 1922–1938. Schubring, Walther. Die Lehre der Jainas nach den alten Quellen dargestellt. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1935. Utt = Uttarajhayaṇaṃ. In Dasaveyāliy[a]suttaṃ, Uttarajhayaṇaṃ and Āvassayasuttaṃ, edited by Muni Shri Puṇyavijayaji and Amritlāl Mohanlāl Bhojak. Jaina Āgama Series, 15. Bombay: Shri Mahāvīra Jaina Vidyālay, 1977.

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5 THE GURU AND THE MANTRA Transcending time in the philosophy and practice of yoga Tarinee Awasthi

A staggering variety of texts and approaches have had ‘Yoga’ appended to their titles. The picture is complicated further when its uses in the last couple of centuries are considered. Insofar as the texts explored here are concerned, we may provisionally understand Yoga as referring to systems of praxis which aim at the individual self’s cessation of identification with transient physical or mental conditions. The texts are separated by time as well as antecedent. The first discussion focuses on the Yoga-sūtra and bhāṣya (commentary), datable to the close of the first half of the first millennium CE. It is chiefly concerned with causing the cessation of mental modifications and effecting the stabilization of the ‘consciousness-capacity’ in its own form (as opposed to its identification with the modifications of the mind). The second set of texts explored are associated with Nātha yogins, and one of the concerns there is with the manipulation of energy streams in the practitioner’s body and movements through energy centres. The last text explores the mantra and sound as a means to liberation. We find in these texts an interest in how Yogic practice may effect a change in the pracitioner’s relationship with time. By exploring the relationship between time, the states aimed at by various strands of Yoga and the guru (preceptor), it is possible to posit a special kind of relationship between time and spiritual practice in these contexts and the kind of transmission and reception of ‘knowledge’ they involve. The thread which ties the texts taken up here is that a specific kind of transformative (non-intellectual) ‘knowledge,’ connected with certain states of existence, is central to bringing about the shift in the relationship with time. In the Yoga-sūtras, we find a relationship between time and Īśvara’s1 function as the Guru and elsewhere a description of how the practitioner meditates on time. In the Nātha material, we find a discussion of the way time becomes irrelevant to the practitioner and the Guru’s efficacy in bringing about that state. Finally, in the mantra-yoga section, we explore the relationship between the coming into being of the world and language and the timeless state achieved by the practitioner, which is the state whence the guru functions. DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-5 62

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In important ways, each of these texts is a product of its historical context. However, if we take seriously the claims they make, it stands to reason that the transformed relationship with time and the subjectivity associated with it can be effected at any point in history, pointing towards a way out of history. The idea of alternative conceptions of time which may have existed before being displaced by those informed by (colonial) modernity has been an object of some interesting studies over the last three decades or so. However, even those which consider how the postcolonial historian may inhabit more than one temporality and how that may influence her writing of history (such as Chakrabarty, 2000) hold the return to history as central. Although this chapter does not try to exemplify the alternative that is made possible by the transformed relationships with time it explores, it tries to indicate towards the end just what it is that is facilitated by them, particularly with reference to disciplinary history. These alternative temporalities may be located, then, on the one hand, in the historical narrative of alternative conceptions of time available in premodern India and, on the other, might be seen in terms of a relationship with time which allows a disruption of the historical, for how can history narrate a subjectivity and temporality that appear incomprehensible to it? *** The Yoga-sutras, usually dated to the early centuries AD, consist of a set of short statements, divided into four chapters, usually read with commentary. The earliest available commentary is attributed to Vyāsa and is supposed to be quite close to the text in time. The other commentary we will refer to is Vācaspati Miśra’s, dated to the end of the first millennium. While this is certainly a text of practice, it has more of a life as an object of intellectual commentary than much of the other material in this paper. Although we refer to the commentaries, this is not a doxographical account of the positions on ‘time’ but a more limited attempt to demonstrate the tendencies available in this strand of literature. There are three specific sutras in the first chapter that we turn to. The first of the Yoga-sūtras reads atha yogānuśāsanam; the most straightforward translation of this would be, ‘now,2 the re3-telling of Yoga.’ Vyāsa’s commentary on this sūtra is concerned with the definition of yoga, which he defines as samādhi.4 He then goes on to discuss the states to which the notion is applicable and to lay out the basis for some of the upcoming discussion. Atha is seen as denoting the eligibility of Patañjali to compose this text.5 However, for our purposes, anuśāsana is particularly important. Śāsana can mean instruction or teaching. The prefix anu often carries the sense of ‘coming after.’ Anuśāsana, then, means the teaching-after. While Vyāsa simply sees anuśāsana as implying that the text has begun, Vācaspati Miśra (9th century), after discussing the question of eligibility implied in atha, suggests6 that Hiraṇyagarbha is the early instructor/speaker of Yoga, none other. How, then, could Patañjali have composed the Yoga-sūtras? He responds to his own question by saying that anuśāsana refers to the teaching of what has already been taught, and through this, Patañjali is referring to prior teachers. (Karnatak,

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1992a, p. 9) There is, then, a notion of a tradition of prior teachers for Vācaspati Miśra. The idea of transmission, however, comes through more clearly in the discussion on Īśvara. In the next sūtra, Patañjali defines Yoga as the cessation of the modifications of the mind-field. In doing so, both Vyasa and Patañjali clearly posit Yoga as a system of meditative absorption oriented towards a certain state of consciousness, which (we shall see) involves a transformation in the yogin’s7 relationship with time, language and knowledge. Shortly after, this chapter goes on to define what these modifications are. These include not only false knowledge and knowledge of mere words with no reference to real objects but also what is usually understood as means of valid knowledge, or pramāṇa. Pramāṇa in the context of Yoga8 includes pratyakṣa (direct perception), anumāna (inference) and āgama (scriptural authority). These modifications, moreover, are of two kinds: obstructive and non-obstructive. It follows, then, that these means of valid knowledge, too, may either hinder or assist the aspirant in the endeavour towards kaivalya. (Karnatak, 1992a, pp. 127–8). There is then a discussion of how these modifications may be caused to cease and how that functions for various kinds of beings, including how distinct intensities in practitioners impact the process. Vyāsa’s commentary following this discussion asks if there is another way to attain samādhi than the one delineated in the previous several sütras, and the sūtra responds, ‘īśvarapraṇidhānādvā’ – ‘or, by the practice of the presence of Īśvara’ (Karnatak, 1992a, p. 298). The next few sūtras define what this Īśvara is. Vyasa prefaces the next sūtra with the question, ‘now who is this Īśvara, distinct from pradhāna and puruṣa?’9 The response is that Īśvara is a special puruṣa which is untouched by afflictions, actions, their ripening and the desires resulting therefrom, which lie dormant in the mind. He is characterized, inter alia, by his relationship with time. One aspect of this is that for all other puruṣas, there may be postulated a past moment when they were not free or a future moment when they will be free. This is not so for Īśvara, who was always free (Karnatak, 1992a, p. 303). Here, already, we have the suggestion of the conceivability of a state which is not affected by the modulations of time and somehow located outside it. This characterizes a being whose presence is to be practiced, implying the practitioner needs at least to be open to the possibility of a distinctive relationship with time. This is not the only way in which Īśvara has a distinctive relationship with time. The other aspect of this is to be found in the articulation of Īśvara’s ‘knowledge.’ The sūtra says that the seed of omniscience is un-exceeded in Īśvara. Vyāsa glosses this by saying that the limited knowledge of various kinds is the seed of omniscience. The omniscient, that is, Īśvara, is the locus where this seed grows to a point of no further excess. The upliftment of the worldly puruṣas (individual selves) is the only motivation of Īśvara in the instruction of beings. The example here is that of the first teaching of the Sāṃkhya system of philosophy. Vyāsa writes, ‘Thus it has been said – the splendorous one, the great seer, who was the first knower, relying on a nirmāṇacitta’ [or ‘individualized’ (Feuerstein, 1998 64

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[2008], p 322) consciousness], spoke the [this] system to Āsuri who was desirous of knowing’ (Karnatak, 1992a, p. 344). In this case, the first teacher of the system is identified with the divine being. The relationship between Īśvara, time and transmission is developed further. Because Īśvara is not interrupted by time in the manner of the other puruṣas, he is the guru even of the pūrvas, or the earlier ones. The earlier gurus, Vyāsa points out, are interrupted by time. That which kāla, or time, does not pertain to with the purpose of interruption is this guru of even the earlier ones (Karnatak, 1992a, p. 362). Having described this special entity, whose relationship with time, transmission and knowledge partly characterizes it, Patañjali moves on to describing how the practice of closeness to it may be actualized. Its signifier is praṇava10 (Karnatak, 1992a, p. 366). Here, we find another aspect of the way the Yoga-sūtras view language, knowledge and time. Our commentator, Vyasa, tells us: Īśvara is the intended meaning of praṇava. Is its relationship of signifiersignified like sign, or is it a pre-existent like something that is being illumined by a lamp? The relationship of this intended meaning with the signifier is pre-existent. Just as the pre-existing relationship between the father and son is illumined by the sign, ‘this is his father, this is his son’; in different emanations,11 too, with reference to the power of the signifier-signified (relationship) is sign-ed. Experts in the Veda know that the relationship between the word and its end is eternal because of the eternality in sampratipatti. This last word can be interpreted in two ways – continuity in cognition or consciousness and continuity in usage. While the latter is often the most obvious, it is the first that seems to be more apt to the way Īśvara has been defined (Arya, 1986, p. 309). It would then mean that this eternality is of a continuity in the consciousness of Īśvara. In the next two chapters, the eight limbs of Yoga are discussed – yama (restraints), niyama (regulations), āsana (generally, postures), prāṇāyama (the regulation of life-force), dhāraṇā (contemplation of an object), dhyāna (the persistence of that contemplation) and samādhi (the presence only of that object). Of these, the first five are considered external means, and the last three are collectively termed saṃyama and said to be internal. The second chapter ends with a discussion of the former. The third chapter, vibhūti-pāda, describes dhāraṇā, dhyāna and samādhi, along with the effects of performing each of them in different kinds of objects. Vibhūti refers to ‘supernatural’ abilities, which are said to be positive during the ascent but ultimately considered hindrances, or lower stages which must be transcended. The discussion of vibhūti, however, leads to detailed elucidation of the Yogic view on time and language. The 17th sūtra in the chapter proclaims that by performance of saṃyama upon the distinction between the cognitions of word and their ends/meanings, normally 65

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superimposed upon one another, the yogin attains the knowledge of the sounds of all beings. Vyasa’s detailed commentary on it begins with the statement that there, speech possesses meaning in letters, or sounds, and the ear has as its object only the result of the sound. Words, then, can only be grasped by an intellect which follows the collapse of the sound. Because each distinct sound can only exist at different points in time from the other, it is not of the same form as the word. At the same time, because each sound contains the possibility of realizing the word, it is, in fact, of the same sound as the word. The expression of these distinct sounds, which form the signifier, in the mind as a whole is called a word. While in practice, they may appear to be the same thing, there is, in fact, a distinction. The contemplation of this difference between the word, its meaning and the cognition which arises therefrom causes complete knowledge. (Karnatak, 1992b, pp. 1221–1223) In the same chapter, there is also a discussion of the way time may be comprehended by the yogin. It is said that the practice of saṃyama in the moment and its sequence leads to knowledge, which leads to discriminating knowledge. Vyasa comments on the sutra, saying, just as matter, to the point of diminution is the atom, time, till the point of absolute diminution is moment. Alternatively, the time in which a particle which has moved leaves its space and transits into the other, is a moment. The continuity of the flow of that is the sequence (karma). There is no objective collection of the moment and its time, and there is only a collection of the cognition, [such as] . . . hour, night et cetera. The moment is real [and] the foundation of the sequence. And the sequence has as its self the continuity of the moment. That moment is called kāla by yogins who know kāla. And no two moments come into being together, and because of this non-coming into being, the sequence is not of two co-existing ones; sequence is (then) the continuity of the moment which shall come into being later. . . . Because of that, there is only one moment which is existing now, no previous or later moments exist. Therefore, there is no collection of these. The moments which passed and shall come into being should be explained as being imbued [in the present moment] as transformation. The entire realm experiences transformation through that one moment. All these characteristics are surely ascendant upon that moment. By performance of saṃyama on the moment and its sequence, they are seen as manifest. And thence emerges the knowledge which is the cause of discriminatory insight. (Karnatak, 1992b, p. 1443) However, just as significant for our purposes here is another kind of knowledge, which we hinted at before in the way the Yoga-sūtras located the means of valid knowledge. For the Yoga-sutra, the knowledge that otherwise valid means offer is still not quite the Knowledge the yogin should aspire to. The 47th sutra in the first chapter describes a specific stage in samadhi, called nirvicāra, expertise in which 66

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leads to spiritual ‘clarity.’ There, the sūtra in question says, ‘knowledge is truthbearing.’ Vyāsa further clarifies, the name ṛtambharā is effective, because in it, there isn’t the slightest trace of false knowledge. Following this, Vyāsa quotes a verse, ‘āgama (scripture), anumāna (inference), and dhyānābhyāsarasa (the bliss of practice of meditation); achieving prajñā, or knowledge, through these three ways, [the yogin] achieves the supreme yoga’ (Karnatak, 1992a, p. 526). The 49th is tajjaḥ saṃskāro’nyasaṃskārapratibandhī; the saṃskāra emerging from it prohibits other saṃskāras, or impressions. However, even this Knowledge, which is ever true, is not quite the ultimate aim. The final realization of yoga comes at a stage where even that ceases; the 50th sutra reads Tasy’āpi nirodhe sarvavṛttinirodhānnirbījaḥ samādhiḥ; when even that ceases, because of the cessation of all modifications, is the seedless samādhi. *** We turn, here, to a different strand within what is termed ‘Yoga,’ which has explicit associations with Tantra and deals categorically with the kuṇḍalinī. Yoga here comes to be very closely associated with specific ways of orienting the body and ‘energy channels,’ or nāḍīs, focused on the coiled-up energy at the base of the spine, called the kuṇḍalinī (see n9 for some distinguishing characteristics of the Nātha tradition). We explore two Sanskrit texts from this corpus. Of these, the Siddha-siddhānta-paddhati (hereafter SSP) goes into great detail as to the precise configurations and typologies of various energies and states. The discussion in the Haṭha-Yoga-Pradīpikā (HYP), The Illuminator of Haṭha Yoga, of the internalization of the cosmos in the body, and the various kinds of bodies, is less extensive. It is slightly later (around the 15th century) and is generally believed to be a compendium. The tenor in these texts is different from that in the Yoga-sūtras, and, particularly in the HYP, we find less investment in responding to or engaging with positions adopted with reference to time or language in other ‘systems of philosophy’ and a much more straightforward description, oriented almost exclusively towards practice. In the Haṭha-Yoga-Pradīpikā, we find a focus on time and the guru, in a slightly different way. For our purposes, the important aspect of Svātmārāma’s hatha yoga is its notion of iḍā, piṅgalā and suṣumnā and the dissolution of time in the khecarī. The idea is that there are two main energy channels, the iḍā to the left and the piṅgalā to the right, between which prāṇa normally alternates. There is a central channel, called the suṣumnā, at the base of which we find the kundalini. Part of the endeavour of a Haṭha Yoga practitioner then, is to get prāṇa to shift into the suṣumnā. Iḍā and piṅgalā are often referred to as representing moon and sun, or night and day, while the suṣumnā is called the śūnyapadavī (‘the one with the title śūnya, or nothing’). The HYP says that that time, whose nature is of day and night, is created by the sun and moon; it is the greatest of great secrets that the suṣumnā is the devourer of time (4.17) (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 157). The transitions between the two channels on either side characterize a state of being bound by time, and subject to it, while the transition into the suṣumnā leads to transcendence. 67

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The khecarī mudrā is also extremely significant in this context. Khe-carī literally means one who travels in kha, or space. This mudrā involves a lengthening of the tongue, which is doubled up and used to penetrate the brahmadvāra (brahmangateway) in the head and partake of the nectar stored behind it (Mallinson, 2007, p. 3). In the khecarī, it is said, the mind dissolves in the spot of Śiva in the middle of the eyebrows. That great seat, the turya (the fourth state which transcends the three regular ones of sleep, dream and being awake) is worthy of being known. Time does not exist there (4.48) (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 173). Further, the khecarī should be practiced until the practitioner is in yoganidrā. For one who has attained yoganidrā, there is no time/death, ever (4.49) (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 173). These practices are related to knowledge in important ways, as is the lineage of gurus, which makes them possible. The text declares that until marut has not entered the middle path, until the bindu has not been stabilized, until That-ness has not been established as natural in meditation, whatever is said is false utterance (4.114) (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 201). In fact, the only way to know is to be established steadily in practice. The only way to viably speak of the phenomena discussed here is to speak from experience. This also suggests something else: this remains false for the reader until s/he performs the practice. The Guru facilitates the truth of these statements. At the beginning of the text, veneration is offered in the HYP to Śrī Ādinātha, ‘by whom the knowledge of Haṭha Yoga was taught’ (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 1). It then goes on to list the various siddha (lit., accomplished, or adept) master tradition, beginning with Śrī Ādinātha; it says, then, these and other great siddhas, by the effect of Haṭhayoga, move about the brahmāṇḍa, the universe, having shattered (khanḍayitvā) the kāladaṇḍa, the sceptre of death/time (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 9). Later, Śiva and Guru are referred to coreferentially (Svātmārāma, 1962, p. 137).

Siddha-Siddhānta-Paddhati From here we may turn to the description of the avadhūta-guru found in the Siddha-Siddhānta-Paddhati. The guru, according to the SSP, must be an avadhūta, or ‘one who has cast off.’ The fifth chapter declares that its purpose is the achievement of that which can only be experienced by itself (svasaṃvedya). It goes on, [in that supreme station] where there is no mind, nor cognition, no substance or knower, and no other aspect either; where contemplation and reasoning are both not possible, what shall language do? And how shall an eloquent guru speak of it? Therefore, it is said that this supreme station is only an object of the self-intelligibility of Śiva. (Mallik, 1954, p. 23) However, this begs the question of how this is to be transmitted. The quality which is the grace of the feet of the guru, which is said to be absolute, is the only way to determine this supreme station, and that is how this station comes to be 68

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well known. What is often said to be a suspicion of writing in these traditions is in fact a suspicion of language itself, as it emerges from certain planes of consciousness. The language emerging from the guru, for instance, is not an object of suspicion in the same way, because it comes from different plane and subjectivity. The SSP continues, guru is of the śīla, or possesses the quality of demonstrating the true path, which is said to be the yoga-path. The manifest experience of the self-experience arises from the moment the path has been demonstrated by the guru, and therefore the guru alone is said to be the cause in this matter. Therefore, the proposition here is that it is only through the descent of the guru’s glance, and then through self-experience, that the yogin would be rendered as being ‘of one essence’ (Mallik, 1954, p. 23). The text goes on to say that knowledge of the self is sahaja (‘born with’; innate). The saṃyama [here, restraint], the repose in one’s self, the nondual supreme station should be understood from the ‘guru’s mouth’ and not from the multitudes of śāstras, including ‘logic, the knowledge of words [grammar], Vedic recitation, or the teaching of tat-tvam-asi (that you are; one of the Great Statements in Vedantic nondual systems), etc.’ All accomplishments are impossible without the compassion of the sadguru, and so the text declares on the authority of Īśvara (here a form of Śiva) that the sadguru is to be served. This is followed by a description of the progressive effects of the guru’s grace, beginning with becoming free from ailments and becoming the beloved of people and ending with becoming comparable with Śiva in the 12th year (Mallik, 1954, p. 26). All conventionally accepted means for the realization of the supreme reality are said to be inefficacious partly because they are based in the body and must be given up by those seeking the paraphysical reality. This, it is repeated, is brought about for the steadfast and truthful by the glance of the guru. The descent of the guru’s grace, further, is through various means, including speech, the descent of sakti, the sight of his sandals and so on. Śiva is then said to command/instruct (sāsana), ‘[there is] not greater than guru, not greater than guru, not greater than guru; by the saying of Siva, by the saying of Siva, by the saying of Siva.’ The guru destroys the eightfold bondage of the disciple by bringing down the sword of his compassion, and thus gives rise to true bliss. The sight of the guru’s feet, even for a moment, or half of that, or half even of that, is said to lead to stability in one’s self (Mallik, 1954, p. 29). What are the characteristics of the greatest of siddha-yogins? Part of the discussion of his characteristics deals with the internalization of what appear to be external markers of spiritual disciplines. Eventually, it says, ‘The yogin does not grieve that which has passed, desire dominion, or become pleased at attainment; he is filled with bliss, immersed in his consciousness, and never blocked by the path of time/death.’ (Mallik, 1954, p. 38) *** This part of the chapter deals with another related way in which an alternative state of consciousness is sought to be effected and the dynamics of that. In the first part, 69

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we have already seen the way a special mantra, praṇava, is seen as sharing a special relationship with its referent. Praṇava is thus the prototype of a certain kind of mantra which is used in spiritual practice. The Mantra-yoga-saṃhitā (MYS), or the Compendium on the Yoga of Mantras, is a kind of manual on the initiation into and use of mantras. This is being used only as an example of one strand of mantra practice; there are entire traditions which are oriented entirely in terms of a certain kind of mantra, which is seen to be the speech-body of the deity herself, such as Śrīvidyā. It appears that the ideas about time and guru which we have encountered in the Yoga-sūtras, the Haṭhayogapradīpikā and Siddha-siddhānta-paddhati are common to a range of practice-oriented ‘yoga’ texts, where transmission is central. The MYS refers to a nondual divinity which is worshipped in different forms by people, including Viṣṇu, Śakti, Śiva, Gaṇapati, Sūrya and the formless and attribute-less One, thus positioning itself as a manual for mantras for people with different chosen deities. For our purposes, the identification of the alignment of the text with one or other system or tradition is not immediately relevant, although there are plenty of clues to suggest at least resonances. In describing the means to liberate oneself from this world which consists of name and form, the text suggests that since beings are bound by form and name, it is only through them that they can free themselves, just as if one falls on the floor, it is only possible to raise oneself by using it as support. From here, it enters the subject of the mantra proper, drawing a close connection between the emergence of the mantra and the emergence of the world. The possibility of activity is always accompanied by vibration, and that, in turn, is always accompanied by the possibility of sound. Thus, the sound which accompanied the coming into being of the world was praṇava (which we have already encountered). The emergence of various seed mantras from Oṃkāra is discussed as parallel to the coming into being of the world itself. (Rai, 1975, pp. 1–2) Just as one would press upon the floor to get up, one uses the mantra to rise above the world which has come into being in conjunction with sound, disrupting the normal temporal process which accompanies the coming into being of the world. Of those varied mantras which arise in this way, the most appropriate one is picked for a disciple by the guru, who does this keeping in mind the disciple’s proclivities. Initiation into the mantra must be received from the guru. All spiritual practice is said to have initiation as its basis, and practices performed without such initiation are thought to be powerless and pointless. A verse which also appears elsewhere states the desperate fate of those who see the mantra as sounds and the guru as a human being. The guru is said to be the basis of spiritual enlightenment even as brahman is the source of the world (Rai, 1975, pp. 7–8). There is no clear connection drawn between this on the one hand and the parallel process of the emergence of the world and sound on the other, and perhaps some of these are stock verses about the guru’s efficacy which appear across texts. However, the resonance with the opening verse is clear enough, which reads, ‘repeated obeisance to that omnipresent paramatman who is imbued with sat-cit-ānanda, whence this world emerges, in which it is stable, and where it dissolves.’ This seems to imply a definite causal priority. 70

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Usually, where and when the mantra is given is important and determined through a variety of processes. There is an extensive discussion of the exact temporal and spatial conditions under which initiation may be carried out and the method whereby the guru should determine the deity whose mantra is to be imparted. Even so, the text adds, since the guru is omniscient and omnipotent, if such a guru is found, there is to be no determination of time and place (Rai, 1975, p. 14); the guru may impart it whenever He wills. Similarly, the series of places where the guru may impart the initiation is followed by the statement; ‘otherwise, where he may decide to do it is good, because he is superior even to brahman.’ The auspiciousness of time and place are already only provisionally relevant in the context of initiation. Naturally, the text argues for the greatness of the path it proclaims. The verse which praises the means discussed in this treatise, that is, mantra, also defines the relationship between the yogin, brahman and time. The state that is attained by the yogin is said to be śāśvata, or eternal, and the yogin who attains the supreme state is said to be the guru of the divinities as well as the humans (Rai, 1975, p. 6), emphasizing, as we have seen in other contexts, a state where the limitations inherent to our normal relationship with time cease to function. We have already seen the identification of the guru with the Supreme as well as the special relationship with time. This seems to be a common thread despite all the shifts in the precise way the Guru, yogin and Īśvara are specifically defined individually and with reference to each other. A clear articulation of the exceptional character of the guru in these traditions is found here. If the guru is only a teacher, then there are plenty of scholars who can impart knowledge on an intellectual plane. A key distinction is drawn between the ācārya and the guru, which helps us pre-empt some of the questions which we take up in the next section. Usually, ācārya refers to a preceptor. If orality were all that distinguished the guru’s teaching from that of the book, the ācārya would be just as good a candidate. The key distinguishing marker of the guru is precisely that they possess the ability to effect a transformation in the internal life and reality of the disciple (Rai, 1975, pp. 8–9). In the discussion on the highest kinds of initiations possible, the identification of the name and the form with one another is described. Once this has been achieved, by the grace of the guru, further practices become increasingly fruitful (Rai, 1975, pp. 62–63). These include dhāraṇā, which we have already encountered, and japa, which we have also encountered but which is dealt with at somewhat greater length here. Efficacy of any practice is then dependent on the grace of the guru, who is an embodiment of the Supreme and who is unaffected by time in the way bound beings are. *** There are two kinds of points it is pertinent to make at the end of this discussion. One is the persistence of certain ideas and connotations through this wide range of texts, which are separated by both by time and distinct, if closely related, 71

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approaches to the state they aim at. These texts are also not consistent in terms of genre, and in that sense, this is not a clear intellectual history. This is intended more as a demonstration of a persistence of certain ideas across systems of spiritual praxis. The concept of the guru is consistently related to the Supreme and a transcendence of time, even if his human form is emphasized more in some texts (II and III) than in others (I). The specific nature of the ‘knowledge’ these texts speak of is generally emphasized as being more than merely intellectual. The guru, regardless of whether we think of him as the Divine in human form or Īśvara who instructs with the sole intent of liberating bound beings, is also associated with an exceptional, if not ‘unexceeded,’ knowledge or capacity. The practitioners, too, in all cases, whether they are actively encouraged to establish identity with the divine or not, are directed towards a state where their own relationship with time is transformed; this may be through focusing on the transitions of time in special ways, causing the vital breath to stop alternating between the right and left channels or the practice of the mantra which leads to an eternal state. The implications of this discussion go beyond a mere demonstration of the alternative temporalities available to us in premodern India. What is important to note is that these are not intellectual categories but related closely to states which these texts instruct the practitioner to achieve. If that is, indeed, the case, it is possible to achieve such a state in a contemporary context just as well. Since one’s position with reference to time constitutes a central category in the relationship with the past, it becomes central to one’s choice in narrating the past as well. If the practitioners or their gurus or Īśvara are not bound by time, how are we to comprehend them in history? If these traditions see their practices as leading to a transcendence of time, how do we understand them as bounded by their temporal contexts? Dipesh Chakrabarty, in Provincializing Europe, has referred to the possibility of renewing European thought by rethinking it from the margins. He has also spoken of European thought being our shared legacy and that with which we engage as contemporaries, as opposed to premodern Indian thinkers (Chakrabarty, pp. 5–6). This proposition informs his discussion in ‘Minority Histories, Subaltern Pasts,’ where he distinguishes between two ways in which narratives from outside mainstream history can inform disciplinary history. He terms these ‘minority histories’ and ‘subaltern pasts’ (Chakrabarty, pp. 101). In delineating how this relationship works, he develops a sensitive critique of Ranajit Guha’s discussion of the Santal rebellion in ‘The Prose of CounterInsurgency.’ There, Guha embodies what Chakrabarty terms the anthropologist’s position of ‘I respect your beliefs, but they are not mine’ (pp. 105). This is characterized by Chakrabarty as an example of a subaltern past, which cannot ever be the position of the historian, and its explanation must always carry with it an element of the modern attitude towards such a position. Chakrabarty argues that this problem can partly be understood through a time-knot; the historian is not located merely in one kind of time, and it is through that that better history may be written. The problem, he tells us, is not ‘historicize!’ but ‘always historicize!’ 72

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(Chakrabarty, pp. 111). Although he admits that the reason it is possible for the historian to historicize is that that the object of history is also contemporaneous, his subject position is that of a historian who also has access the subjectivity of that which he studies. Chakrabarty’s understanding of which thinkers have come to be historically considered ‘contemporary’ within the social sciences, and the irreversibility of this, is historically situated. While Yoga, in its varied forms, offers no way to reverse history in any simplistic sense, in the way we have tried to present it here, it indicates an endeavour aimed outside history and puts forth the achievement of a ‘state’ (for want of a better word) where time would not be relevant in the way it is now. Because of this, the guru, as well as the mantra, are seen to be ‘transtemporary.’ ‘Trans temporality’ and related words have been used over recent years in the study of trans narratives and the like. Here, written simply as transtemporal/transtemporaneity/ transtemporary, with neither space nor hyphen, it is being put in a relationship with ‘contemporary’ not merely in the sense of persisting across time but being accessible at all times because it is not bound by our usual notions of time. The kind of approach to the reading of these texts which has been attempted here, basing itself on the avowed transtemporaneity of these practices and states of consciousness, is not only intended as a complementary or alternative way to the study of a certain kind of spirituo-philosophical text. Not only can they be read outside history by virtue of their content and its implications, but they can potentially make an alternative epistemology available for history and its allied disciplines, rendering them inadequate and allowing us to bring them to bear upon the objects of their study.

Notes 1 In the Yoga-sūtras, a special kind of being which is ever free and not affected by time. The practice of the presence of Īśvara is one of the factors in achieving the ultimate goal of Yoga. 2 In Yoga, as well as in some of the other systems of philosophy with which it came to be grouped, there is fairly detailed discussion of the term ‘atha’ and what it implies. The general point is usually that if it implies a transition or movement in time (now, or then, or further), what is it that conditions this movement? In some cases, for example, it may be taken to mean that a student’s expertise in the Vedic texts is a prerequisite. In this case, it is seen to refer to the adhikāra, or eligibility, of Patañjali rather than something which must exist for it to be followed by the instruction in Yoga. 3 Śāsana in this context means teaching. The prefix anu usually gives the following word a sense of coming after. Anuśāsana is thus often defined as the teaching of that which has been taught. Later commentators have usually explained the term as referring to previous texts and sages teaching Yoga. 4 Samādhi, in Vyāsa’s commentary, is explained as the nature of the mind when it is one pointed or when its activity has completely ceased. 5 In commentaries to the sutra texts in Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, there is often an extended discussion on the meaning of atha, which provides an opportunity for the commentator to begin to articulate an approach where each word has a relationship with their position and often locates the specific system with reference to, say, Vedic learning.

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6 Philosophical commentary in these contexts often poses questions to itself and frames its positions or the text itself as responses to it. 7 The practitioner of Yoga. 8 Pramāṇa is taken up extensively in many different systems of Indian thought, and extensive discussions pertain to the pramāṇas accepted within different systems. 9 Often, in contemporary Hindi usage, the word is used simply to refer to some conception of God. It has a rather specific meaning in the Yoga-sutras. 10 That is, Om/Aum. 11 The term sarga is usually translated as ‘creation cycles.’ However, in order to disambiguate the meaning of ‘creation’ in a Samkhya-Yoga context, which is not the most obvious meaning of ‘creation’ in English, I have used the etymologically closer meaning, ‘emanation,’ which also better conveys the connotations here.

References Arya, Usharbudh. 1986. The Yoga Sūtras of Patañali with the Exposition of Vyāsa: A New Translation and Commentary; Volume I, Samadhi Pada. Honesdale: The Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the USA. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Reissued with new preface by the author in 2008. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Feuerstein, Georg. 1998 (2008). The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice. Prescott, Arizona: Hohm Press. Karnatak, Vimala, ed. 1992a. Pātañjala-Yoga-Darśanam (A Critical Edition and Hindi Exposition of Tattvavaisaradi and Yogavarttika on Vyasabhasya of the Yogas-Sutra). Vol. 1. 4 vols. Varanasi: Kashi Hindu Vishvavidyalaya. Karnatak, Vimala, ed. 1992b. Pātañjala-Yoga-Darśanam (A Critical Edition and Hindi Exposition of Tattvavaisaradi and Yogavarttika on Vyasabhasya of the Yoga-Sutra). Translated by Vimala Karnatak. Vol. 3. 4 vols. Varanasi: Kashi Hindu Visvavidyalaya. Mallik, Kalyani, ed. 1954. Siddha-Siddhānta-Paddhati and Other Works of the Nātha Yogis. Poona: Poona Oriental Book House. Mallinson, James, ed. 2007. The Khecarīvidyā of Ādinātha: A Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of an Early Text of Haṭhayoga. London: Routledge. Rai, Ram Kumar, ed. 1975. Mantra-Yoga-Saṃhitā. Varanasi: Chowkhambha Orientalia. Svātmārāma. 1962. Haṭhayogapradīpikā. Mumbayyaṃ: Kshemarāja-Śrīkṛshṇadāsaśr eshṭhinā.

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6 TIME IS BORN OF HIS EYELASHES Purāṇic measurement and conceptions of time McComas Taylor

‘Greed arose from his lower lip, affection from his upper lip, lustre from his nose, animal desire from his touch, Yama from his brows and time was born from his eyelashes: may the Almighty favour us’ (BhP 8.5.42). Apart from the inherent poetic charm of this invocation of the deity Viṣṇu, it provides a useful double entry point into the exploration of time in the purāṇas. This quotation not only reminds us of the never-ending potential of Sanskrit literature to surprise and delight, it also links two aspects of this chapter, pre-modern Indian measurement of time and the nature of time as the purāṇic poets understood it. Measurement of time begins with a nimeṣa, literally ‘a blink of the eye’ – a moment or an instant – hence the deity’s eyelashes as time’s ultimate origin. The nimeṣa is the shortest practical unit of time in daily life. In this chapter, I will explore the fractions and multiples of the nimeṣa and the development of time measurement from the purāṇas’ early precursors in the form of the epics and lawbooks, through the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (VP) to its ultimate florescence in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (BhP) (Pathak, 1997–1999; Goswami, 2005). Besides elucidating the measurement of time, I will explore the ways in which it was conceptualized, its relationship with the divine and the twinned roles of the deity and time in the creation, preservation and destruction of the universe. The purāṇas constitute a genre of Sanskrit texts which preserve the foundational accounts of Hindu cosmogony, cosmology, orthodoxy and orthopraxis. The important narratives concerning the most popular Hindu deities are found in these texts in their most authoritative form. The major purāṇas, whose authors are unknown, probably developed over the course of centuries but are thought to have reached their current form between the middle of the first and the middle of the second millennium of the current era. The purāṇas’ precursors, including especially the Vedas and the epics, contain a wealth of mythological material, but the purāṇas were the first to systematize

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-6 75

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these earlier narratives into a unified ‘history of everything,’ albeit in a mythic mode. Many of the major purāṇas harvested the myths and legends, histories and genealogies, from earlier sources and traditions and synthesized them into chronologies of the universe from its earliest creation through to the narrative ‘present,’ a point in deep mythological time. Embedded in purāṇic accounts of the world and its creation are detailed descriptions of units for the measurement of time, ranging from infinitesimal fractions of a second to cosmic units extending to billions of years. Identical or similar blocks of text defining these units have been shared among different purāṇas. Over the centuries, from the earlier to the later texts, the system of measurement grew in complexity, especially under the theological influence of the Vaiṣṇava bhakti sentiment, culminating in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. For the purposes of this investigation, I have chosen to explore the measurement and conceptualisation of time in two representative purāṇas, the Viṣṇu and Bhāgavata. The reason for limiting the selection to these two sources is that the accounts found in the Viṣṇu are almost identical with those found in many other purāṇas, and broadening the field of inquiry yields little in the way of deeper insight. Second, the Viṣṇu and Bhāgavata are very much in the same lineage, the latter being an expansion, elaboration and intensification of the former. As such, these two texts enable us to see how the measurement and conceptualisation of time developed over a historical period. Before we commence this exploration, however, it is worth establishing a baseline by looking at the purānas’ precursors on the subject of time, the Mahābhārata (Mbh) and the dharmaśāstras or law-books. *** Time before the Purāṇas: There is great uncertainty about the absolute and relative dating of nearly all Sanskrit texts, including the epics and purāṇas. Yet most scholars agree that the great epic the Mahābhārata reached its current form between the 3rd century BCE and the 3rd century CE (Smith, 2009). Further, there is a general consensus that the encyclopaedic Śānti-parvan in which Bhīṣma on his death-bed delivers 400 chapters of advice on life, the universe and everything is a later part of the epic. This suggest that the later parts of the epic may be contemporaneous with the earliest purāṇas or somewhat earlier. In any case, we can’t really begin an exploration into purāṇic time without mentioning the account in the Mahābhārata, as it seems to be the basis of the earliest purāṇic accounts. In a nutshell, the Mahābhārata account of time is as follows (Mbh 12.224.12– 17). The basic unit is the nimeṣa, or ‘blink of the eye,’ 15 nimeṣas make one kāṣṭhā, 30 kāṣṭhās make one kalā, 30 kalās make one muhūrta and 30 muhūrtas make one day and one night. If we take one day and one night as being 24 hours, by a simple process of arithmetic, we can come up with modern approximations for each of these units:

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30 muhūrtas 30 kalās 30 kāṣṭhās 15 nimeṣas 1 nimeṣa

= 1 day and night = 1 muhūrta = 1 kalā = 1 kāṣṭhā

= 24 hours = 48 minutes = 96 seconds = 3.2 seconds ~ 0.21 seconds

The Mbh’s units of time longer than one day are self-explanatory: 30 days and nights make a month and 12 months make a year. Here the Mbh also interpolates a unit called an ayana, literally a ‘passing,’ two of which make a year. During the southern ayana, the sun is to the south of the celestial equator, and during the northern ayana, it is to the north. The day on which the sun crosses the equator from its southern passage and begins its northern passage is celebrated today with the festival of Makar Sankranti. The Mbh also notes that one human year equals one day and night for the gods. From this we can infer that a year for gods equals 360 human years. This is important because longer cosmological time-spans are given in these divine years. An important and well-known feature of Indian cosmology are the four ages, Kṛta, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali, which endure for 4800, 3600, 2400 and 1200 divine years, respectively. At the end of the Kali yuga, the age of decadence, the world is destroyed, then recreated, and the cycle begins again. This cycle of four ages is known as the cāturyuga. The duration of cycle is 12,000 divine years, which we can multiply out to give 4.32 million human years. One thousand of these four-fold cycles constitutes a single day for Brahmā, the creator deity, which then equates to 4.32 billion years. The Mbh suggests that after one such long day, the universe is destroyed and the deity then sleeps for one of his own nights: another 4.32 billion years, after which he wakes and creates the universe again. The Mbh seems to leave the measurement of time at this: from a nimeṣa of about one fifth of a second to a day and a night of Brahmā, a period of roughly eight billion years. As we will see, later sources cannot resist multiplying out one day and night of Brahmā’s to calculate the life-span of that deity and in fact take it even further. This account in the Mbh is important because it is seems to be the earliest such account in epic and purāṇic literature. This or similar accounts have been passed from one text to another, subject to elaboration as they went under the influence of the various theological currents of the time. As a brief aside, Manusmṛti, an early but influential book of laws extending to about 2700 verses, probably dates from the 2nd or 3rd century of the current era (Olivelle, 2005, pp. 24–25). It may be contemporaneous with the later part of the Mbh in which the previous account of time is found and is probably earlier than the earliest purāṇas. Like the Mbh, Manusmṛti also divides time into nimeṣas, kāṣṭhās, kalās, muhūrtas and the longer units. The only difference is the this text states that 18 nimeṣas make a kāṣṭhā, whereas the Mbh gives 15 (Ms 1.64). ***

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Measurement of time in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa: The Viṣṇu Purāṇa probably dates from around the 5th century of the current era and irrespective of its precise age, relatively speaking, is certainly more recent than the Mbh (Rocher, 1986). The VP runs to about 5600 verses and is a mythico-historical account of the world, beginning with the creation, the peopling of the worlds and the accounts of various legendary lineages of kings and sages. The main purpose of the VP is the magnification of the deity Viṣṇu. Many of the episodes in the VP illustrate how devotees are saved from various perils by praising the deity. Large sections of the text deal with the deeds of full or partial incarnations of Viṣṇu, especially the eternally popular avatāra of Kṛṣṇa. The VP adopts the same system of time as the Mbh consisting of nimeṣa, kāṣṭhā, kalā, muhūrta, ayana, one year of humans, the cycle of four yugas and the day of Brahmā. There are also two significant innovations. First, the VP does not stop with one of Brahmā’s days and one of his nights as the longest unit of time. It posits a further unit fittingly called a para, which means ‘further’ or ‘highest’ and, possibly by inference, ‘longest.’ One para is 100 of Brahmā’s years, which coincidentally is his expected lifespan (VP1.3.5). One hundred of his years equals 36,000 of his days, and, as we have seen, one of his days is 8.64 billion years. Some contemporary authors delight in pointing out that this is coincidentally not far off the modern calculation of the age of the universe, 13.8 billion years. If we multiply one para out, we find that Brahmā’s lifespans, or the final age of the universe, including all its cycles of creation and dissolution, equates to 3.11 × 1014 or roughly 300 trillion years. The second major innovation that we see in the VP, whether it originated here or elsewhere, is the concept of the Manu, a legendary progenitor who rules over the universe. The period of his rule is called a Manvantara or ‘Manu-interval.’ Each aeon (kalpa) or 1000 cycles of the four ages (cāturyuga) is divided into 14 Manvantaras. Each Manvanatara brings with it a new Manu, a new set of seven sages who ‘hear’ the Vedas, and a complete new set of deities with their own divine overlord. At the end of each Manvantara, all these are absorbed into the Absolute and are re-emitted anew during the subsequent period. The purāṇic authors divided the length of an aeon by 14 to calculate the duration of a Manvantara and came up with a figure of ‘more than seventy-one times the total number of years in a cycle of four yugas,’ or 852,000 divine years, or 367,020,000 human years (VP 1.3.17–20). Fourteen of these Manvantaras are thought to be the length of one of Brahmā’s days, which has the derivative name one brāhma. At the end of one such day, the universe is destroyed. At that time, all three worlds – earth, space and everything – are consumed by fire (VP1.3.22–23). In the final book of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (6.3), we find a second account of the units of time. This account is broadly similar to the earlier one, but there are three interesting points of departure. First, in defining the nimeṣa, this later account adds the observation that the nimeṣa is also the duration of a prosodically short syllable in the Sanskrit language, or literally ‘the measure of one mātrā in terms of 78

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its duration’ (mātrā-mātra-pramāṇataḥ VP 6.3.6). Mātrā is itself a cognate of the English word ‘measure.’ Usually the length of syllables in Sanskrit are described in terms of beats: one for a short, two for a long and three for the longest form of syllables. I have not seen this formulation before, and a quick search of the digital Sanskrit corpus yielded no similar entries. The second point of interest is that between the kalā (1.6 minutes) and the muhūrta (48 minutes), this account interpolates another measure, the nāḍikā. Fifteen kalās make one nāḍikā, and two nāḍikās make a muhūrta, so this new unit must be about 24 minutes. The point of interest here is that the nāḍikā is measured by means of a water-clock, known in early European texts as a clepsydra, a Greek word meaning ‘water-thief’ (Fleet, 1915). The verse describing the water-clock or ‘hour-cup’ is terse to the point of incomprehensibility: By measuring with water, it [nāḍikā] is one half less than thirteen palas. With four māṣas of gold, in which a hole has been made, it is four fingers wide. It has one prastha of water by the Māgadhan system of measurement. (VP 6.3.8)1 With the help of the two Sanskrit commentaries, we can unpack this riddle. The key word is missing and must be added: ‘vessel.’ One takes a vessel (the commentary adds that it must be made of copper), weighing twelve and a half palas, or roughly 0.56 kg. The commentary also explains that the width of four fingers referred to in the root text is the width of the mouth of the vessel. The common meaning of māṣa is bean, but it is also a weight of gold, given as about 17 grains troy. By this, four māṣas of gold equals about 4.4 g. As several commentators have pointed out, this only makes sense if the gold is in the form of a tube or pipe, as the apparatus has to admit water through the hole in its base. A prastha is defined as one sixteenth of a droṇa, or bucket. We can now assemble our clepsydra of the basis of the previous description. Take a copper vessel of known weight, width and volume. Make a hole in its base and insert a tube also of known weight. Place the vessel in a large container of water so that the water can rise through the pipe in the base of the vessel and gradually fill it. The time taken to completely fill the vessel constructed to these specifications is 24 minutes. There is a description of such an apparatus from the end of the 18th century: an empty thin brass cup (kutoree) perforated at bottom, and placed on the surface of water in a larger vessel, where nothing can disturb it, while the water gradually fills the cup, and sinks it in the space of one g,huree [sic], to which this hour-cup or kutoree has previously been adjusted astronomically by an astrolabe, used for such proposed in India. (Gilchrist, 1799, p. 87) 79

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The third point of interest in this second meditation on time is the definition of the length of a parārdha. The sage Parāśara, who narrates the VP, says to his disciple Maitreya, ‘Counting from one place to the next in the decimal system, brahmin, a parārdha is said to occupy the eighteenth place’ (VP 6.3.4), that is, 1018 years. During the dissolution of the universe which occurs after two parārdhas, everything manifest is absorbed into the unmanifest, which we are told is its ultimate cause (VP 6.3.5). Very briefly, many of the other older purāṇas have similar accounts to the one given in the first part of the VP discussed previously. These include the Mārkaṇḍeya (46), Matysa (142), Kūrma (1.5.4–16) and the Liṅga Purāṇas (1.4. 64–73). The supplement to the Agni Purāṇa, which differs from the other texts in many other ways as well, has a similar system of time measurement but follows the Manusmṛti in defining one kāṣṭhā as 18 nimeṣas, rather than 15 as do the other sources (AP *1.005). The accounts in these sources are all closely related, as the following extracts demonstrate: kāṣṭhā nimeṣā daśa pañca caiva triṃśat tu kāṣṭhā gaṇayet kalāṃ tām | (Mbh 12.224.21.1) kāṣṭhā nimeṣā daśa pañca caiva triṃśac ca kāṣṭhā gaṇayet kalāṃ tām | (VP 2.8.59.1) kāṣṭhā nimeṣā daśa pañca caiva triṃśac ca kāṣṭhāṃ gaṇayet kalāṃ tu | (MP 142.4.1) aṣṭādaśa nimeṣāstu kāṣṭhā triṃśat tu tāḥ kalā || (AK 1.136.2) nimeṣā daśa cāṣṭau ca kāṣṭhā triṃśat tu tāḥ kalā | (MS 1.64.1) It is possible that authors of both sets of texts simply copied from one another or from some common source. It seems that the accounts underwent a process of Chinese whispers in which slight differences crept in. Nevertheless, the strongly intertextual nature of these passages and indeed of much of purāṇic narrative as a whole is evident. It is also possible of course that verses like these existed in the oral tradition, just as we recite ‘Thirty days hath September . . .’. This would also account for the slight variation that exists among the different versions. How Sanskrit texts were created, their relationship with oral tradition and the role of intertextuality are all important questions that warrant further exploration. *** Measurement of time in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa: The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is generally thought to be more recent than the other purāṇas mentioned previously. Most authorities date it between the middle and the end of the first millennium of the current era (Rocher, 1986). Like the VP, it is a ‘history of everything’: the creation and peopling of the world, with accounts of various legendary families of sages and kings. Like the VP, the BhP also exists to magnify Viṣṇu but in every sense is more elaborate. It is more than twice as long and is written in a highly elevated, courtly register. Compared with the workaday Sanskrit of the earlier 80

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texts, this is a much more sophisticated work which self-consciously addresses itself to ‘connoisseurs’ – rasikas. Not only does the BhP include many episodes not found in the earlier work, the narrative structure is far more complex and contains numerous additional songs in praise of the deity. While devotion to Viṣṇu is certainly the dominant sentiment of the VP, the BhP literally drips with the nectar of devotion. Just as the language, structure and content of the BhP are more sophisticated and elaborate than its predecessors, so too are its accounts of time, both in the sense of measurement and in the sense of conceptualisation. One chapter in particular (3.11) deals with the measurement of time (Goswami, 2005). The basic structure of this account is similar to the system outlined in the VP, but it includes several sub-units which are shorter than a nimeṣa. It also interpolates additional units into the VP’s system, and it extends the system in an interesting way, which will be discussed in the following. The system of time measurement in the BhP can be summarized as follows: 1 nimeṣa ~0.53 secs 3 nimeṣas = 1 kṣaṇa 5 kṣaṇas = 1 kāṣṭhā 15 kāṣṭhās = 1 laghu 15 laghus = 1 nāḍikā or daṇḍa 2 daṇḍas = 1 muhūrta 6–7 daṇḍas = ¼ of a day or night = 1 prahara or yāma 8 praharas = 1 day 15 days = 2 fortnights = 2 months = 6 seasons = 1 year = 1 cāturyuga = 12 000 divine years

~1.6 secs ~8 secs ~2 mins ~30 mins ~ 1 hour = 3 hours = 24 hours 1 fortnight month 1 season 1 year 1 divine day

Some of these figures differ slightly from those in the VP, but the overall scheme is similar. At the larger cosmic scale, the two sources agree: 1000 cāturyugas constitute one day and night of Brahmā, and 360 of Brahmā’s days equal one of his years. His total lifespan is 100 of his own years, the equivalent of 311 trillion human years. The BhP, in which everything is bigger, better and more Viṣṇava than its predecessor, adds a wonderful punchline. The rather impressive period of 300 trillion years or so, ‘is just a nimeṣa for Hari, the elemental being who is without beginning or end and is the heart of the universe.’ This fits very neatly with the overriding philosophy of the BhP which promotes Viṣṇu as Brahman, the ultimate reality, so of course even the longest possible period of time is merely a blink of the eye for him. In addition to the positioning of Viṣṇu above and beyond the measurement of time, another interesting feature of the BhP’s account is the subdivision of a nimeṣa, which, I believe, is an innovation in this source. The text lists the following 81

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lesser units: 1 nimeṣa = 3 lavas, 1 lava = 3 vedhas, 1 vedha = 100 truṭis, 1 truṭi = 3 trasareṇus, 1 tresāṇu = 3 aṇus and 1 aṇu = 2 paramāṇus, and this paramāṇu is the shortest possible unit. From this description, a muhūrta is not very accurately described, but it seems to be about one hour. If this is the case, then we can estimate the duration of these sub-units in the following way:

3 lavas 3 vedhas 100 truṭis 3 trasareṇus 3 aṇu 2 paramāṇu 1 paramāṇu

= 1 nimeṣa = 1 lava = 1 vedha = truṭi = 1 trasareṇus = 1 aṇu

~0.53 secs ~0.18 secs ~0.06 secs ~0.0006 secs ~0.0002 secs ~0.00007 secs ~0.00003 secs

The three smallest units, paramāṇa, aṇu and trasareṇu, are primarily units of matter, but they also function as units of time, as will be explained in the following. The paramāṇu is a truly wondrous concept, representing a fraction of a tenthousandth of a second. Note that the smallest unit of time in pre-modern Europe was the second, and this did not come into use until the Middle Ages. The word paramāṇu is a compound of two terms, parama ‘ultimate’ and aṇu ‘particle’ or ‘atom.’ The BhP has this description: ‘The ultimate [particle] in descriptions of existence, innumerable and always unmixed, is known as the paramāṇu, from which the illusion of unity [of matter] arises for men’ (BhP 3.11.1). By ‘unmixed,’ the text implies that the paramāṇu does not combine with other matter, and the ‘illusion of unity’ suggest that objects which appear to be solid, unitary entities consist in fact of countless atoms. The time taken for the sun as it moves through the sky to traverse the width of the particle known as a paramāṇu is known by the same name (BhP 3.11.4). The idea that time and space are mutually constitutive is an attractive one. Both time and space are defined in terms of the tiniest particle of matter, the paramāṇu. Time is defined in terms of movement across space. The shortest unit of time is also the smallest unit of space. At the other end of the scale, the longest unit of time is the duration of the universe, which is the largest possible aggregate of these same infinitesimal units of matter, the paramāṇu. As we have seen, two paramāṇus make and aṇu, and three aṇus make a trasareṇu. The BhP states that ‘A trasareṇu can be perceived floating through the air when the rays of the sun shine through a lattice’ (BhP 3.11.5). Further, ‘The time taken [for the sun] to traverse three trasareṇus is thought to be a truṭi. One hundred of these are one vedha. Three of these are thought to be a lava’ (BhP 3.11.6). One problem with these definitions is that they don’t make sense unless we know or assume the speed of the sun. Neither the authors of the BhP nor the commentators address this problem. In any case, we can calculate the duration of a truṭi by working backwards, as we can calculate the number of the truṭis in a 82

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day (about 150 m) and divide this by the number of seconds in 24 hours (86,400), that is, about 0.0006 seconds. Just as the paramāṇu is a measure of both time and matter, so too is the trasareṇu. According to Manusmṛti (8.132): The mote of dust seen in a sunbeam that comes in through a lattice is called trasareṇu, the first of units of measurement. Eight trasareṇus equal the egg of a louse (likṣā). Three likṣās equal one black mustard seed (rājasarṣapa), and three of the latter equal a white mustard seed (gaurasarṣapa). (MS 8.132–33) We have seen two important innovations in the measurement of time in the BhP. On the one hand, it introduced a measure infinitely larger than the largest of its predecessors: the entire duration of the universe is just a nimeṣa for the deity. On the other hand, the BhP defined many sub-divisions of time, until it reached the smallest possible unit, the infinitesimal paramāṇu. Fitting the overarching theology of the BhP, time measured by movement across the least and greatest aggregates of these particles is none other the deity himself (BhP 3.11.3). This leads from a discussion of the measurement of time to the ways in which it was conceptualized. *** Nature of time in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa: As mentioned earlier, the primary function of both of the purāṇas in question is the magnification of the deity Viṣṇu. They both provide a guide for devotees on how to achieve the ‘highest state,’ which is the complete and final union with the divine. In this form of ‘non-dual’ Advaita Vaiṣṇava discourse, Viṣṇu is all things, and as such, other names, forms or manifestation of the deity such as Bhagavān, Nārāyaṇa, Hari, Viṣṇu, Vāsudeva and Kṛṣṇa are all identical and are used interchangeably. As Viṣṇu is all things, it is unsurprising to find that time must be an aspect of the deity. In fact, there are frequent references in the VP, for example, ‘He is this whole world, the Seen and Unseen, existing in the form of Spirit and Time’ (VP 1.2.14, see also 1.22.23, 5.38.59). Because Viṣṇu is eternal and without beginning or end, this implies that time shares these same qualities; for this reason, the VP informs us that ‘these cycles of creation, preservation and dissolution never cease’ (VP 1.2.26). Viṣṇu’s consort Lakṣmī has the dual nature of being identical with her partner but at the same time complementary. For example, we learn that Viṣṇu is the meaning and Lakṣmī is the word; she is policy and he is principle, he is perception and she is intellect and he is virtue and she is conduct (VP 1.8.17). In a similar vein, the pair of deities share identities as complementary units of time: Lakṣmī is the kāṣṭhā and he is the nimeṣa, and he is the muhūrta and she is the kalā (VP 1.8.28). 83

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Elsewhere in the VP, time is less closely tied to the deity and fulfils a more independent function at a lower level as the creator and destroyer of beings. In the penultimate book of the VP, Vyāsa comforts Arjuna and the other Pāṇḍavas who had retired to the forest: Time brings all creatures into being and then destroys them, son of Pāṇḍu. Understand that this world is rooted in time, and treasure your strength while it lasts, Arjuna. The rivers, oceans, mountains and the whole world along with gods, mortals, animals, trees and reptiles were brought forth by time, and time will bring them to an end once more. When you realise that time is at the heart of all this, then be at peace. (VP 5.38.55–57, see also VP 5.1.15) The preceding extract mentions time as destroyer of mortals. This idea of time as the final arbiter in the world of men and the shaper of history is elegantly expressed in the following passage, in which we see time reducing the mightiest of men, such that only tales survive. This reminds me of Shelley’s Ozymandias, of whom ‘Nothing beside remains.’ The descendants of Raghu who have passed on – Ikṣvāku, Jahnu, Māndrātṛ and Sagar – as well as Yayāti, Nahuṣa and the others who are no more, strong and heroic kings whose masses of wealth were boundless, were all undone by mighty time, and now only their stories remain. Knowing this, and hearing these accounts, a man who has grown wise will never call his sons or wife, house or fields, possessions or anything else, his own. The austerities practiced by the foremost individuals for many years and the sacrifices performed by great heroes have been reduced by time to mere tales. Pṛthu, whose discus felled his foes and who traversed all three worlds unresisted, was destroyed by the winds of time, just like the fluff of the śālmali-tree thrown on a fire. (VP 4.24.59–64) Where Shelley’s ‘traveller from an antique land’ found nothing where ‘boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away,’ the purāṇic authors saw the insubstantial nature of cottonwood fibres. *** The nature of time in the BhP: Many of the features of time described the VP are also found in the BhP. In comparison, however, the earlier source is relatively terse and unforthcoming. We see the same themes repeated in the BhP but typically in a far more effusive and elaborate formulation. In the latter text, we also find that time is a form of the Divine, but it is also viewed independently as the autonomous creator and destroyer of beings and creation. In the BhP, time is intimately tied up with the Divine, hardly surprising in view of the fact that in Bhāgavata philosophy, 84

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all creation and phenomena are ultimately forms of the Lord. Specifically, time can be correlated with the three cosmic functions of the deity, namely the cyclical creation, preservation and destruction of the universe. In the simplest formulation, Bhagavān is time. One common formulation of Viṣṇu is kālātman (e.g. BhP 9.4.53). Kāla is the usual word for time, and ātman means ‘self’ or ‘soul.’ Compounds with ātman as the final member are often difficult to translate, and senses include, ‘whose inner self is time,’ ‘whose soul is time,’ ‘time-souled’ and so on. I prefer ‘the heart of time,’ suggesting an deep interdependence and mutual identity. In the introduction to this chapter, we saw that time arose from the deity’s eyelashes. In an allied formulation, we are told elsewhere in the BhP that time emanates from his brows – perhaps not exactly the blinking eyelashes which produced the nimeṣa mentioned previously but certainly close by. The other lesser deities, ‘the lords of heaven,’ had their hopes of eternal life swept away under the ‘impetus of time which emanates from your [i.e. Viṣṇu’s] brows’ (BhP 10.60.39). Later, we read that ‘your furrowed brow, the wheel with three fellies, repeatedly instils fear in those who have not taken refuge in you’ (BhP 10.87.32). The wheel referred to here is the wheel of time. ‘Felly’ is a word sadly lost from modern English and is one of several curved pieces of timber that form the rim of a wheel. The wheel of time, and hence time itself, the commentators explain, consists of three such segments representing past, present and future. We will return to the three-fold nature of time in the following. Time may arise from Bhagavān’s eyelashes or his brows, but time is the Lord. Early in the BhP, Arjuna’s mother Kunti recognises the true nature of Viṣṇu, manifesting in the form of Kṛṣṇa, and exclaims, ‘I believe you are time, the reigning lord who has neither beginning nor end’ (BhP 1.8.28). The well-known tenth book of the BhP is largely concerned with the līlā or divine pastimes of Kṛṣṇa, and here the praise of the divine takes on an appropriately pastoral character. In one passage, time is directly equated with the ‘eternal Lord’ and is described as stronger than the strongest. Here, time the deity ‘shows or measures the time’ for his subjects, like a herdsman playing with his herd. In addition to the cattle-herding reference, particularly apposite in this context, the poet includes a pleasing play on words by juxtaposing kāla, ‘time,’ with a rare verb kālāyati, ‘to show the time to’ (BhP 10.51.19). The BhP is rich in references to the fact that time is the deity. At the end of Brahmā’s lifespan of 100 of his own years, Viṣṇu, who is time itself (kālātman), will incinerate the universe merely by furrowing his brows (BhP 9.4.53), as it is time which, as we saw earlier, emanates from the forehead of the divine and which ultimately destroys the world. Kṛṣṇa is praised in these words, ‘You are indeed time, the lord, eternal Viṣṇu, the master’ (BhP 10.10.30). A little later, the deity is worshipped as ‘time, the navel of time and witness of the divisions of time’ (BhP 10.16.41) Time is the deity and the deity is time. Just as the deity has three functions, the creation, preservation and destruction of the universe, time shares in all three of 85

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these. At its simplest level, time stirs up the wind at the moment of creation. At the beginning of each cosmic cycle, Brahmā emerges from a lotus at the navel of Viṣṇu, the ultimate deity. On awaking, he perceives that both the lotus in which he rests and the cosmic waters which surround him are stirred by a puff of wind, and the wind itself was set in motion by the force exerted by time (BhP 3.10.5). In terms of the preservation or maintenance of the universe, time is also central. Fundamental to Indic conceptions of the world are the three qualities or guṇas: sattva, rajas and tamas. These terms are impossible to translate precisely, but ‘purity,’ ‘passion’ and ‘dullness’ are widely used and are at least workable approximations. It is the interaction of these three modes that underlies all the processes of the world. These modes do not act by themselves, however, and need to be set in motion. Time, or the divinity in the form of time – which are the same thing – are the motive force. Time is the movement of the deity that causes the guṇas to operate: ‘Time is your movement, you are all the deities themselves, the directions are your ears and the lord of waters (Varuṇa) is your taste’ (BhP 8.7.26). It is time in the form of the deity which interacts with the three guṇas (BhP 2.5.14, 3.32.15 and so on). It is during this intermediate state of existence, between the creation and the destruction of the world, that it seems appropriate to make some general observations on the nature of time as by the authors of the BhP. Time is three-fold, consisting of past, present and future. Each of these is a felly in the wheel which rolls ever onwards. The present inherits the imprint of the past and is pregnant with the characteristics of the future. Time is insuperable: ‘People cannot overcome time with force, the counsel of ministers, intelligence, fortresses, mantras, herbs and the like or by means such as diplomacy.’ It is formless, mysterious, invisible and inescapable. It controls everything and drives all the world before it, just as clouds are driven by the wind, or as an ox is led by a rope through its nose. Time causes the stars and planets to revolve around the Pole Star.2 Just as the time/deity dyad creates and maintains the universe, it is also its undoing at both mundane and cosmic scales. Time as a destructive force is attended by a rich and terrible catalogue of metaphors: it is a sword, a noose, bondage, a snake or a fire, and we are all subject to the ‘grip of time.’ Either the Lord himself is time the destroyer, or time functions as the agent of destruction in its own right. At the outset of the cataclysmic Mahābhārata war, Kṛṣṇa-Viṣṇu manifested in the world ‘in the form of time’ to eliminate humanity and to relieve the burden of the earth. During the battle itself, Kṛṣṇa, again in the form of time, it is foretold, will become Arjuna’s charioteer and will bring about the destruction of both armies. The Lord as time is frequently referred to as the anta-kara, literally, the ‘end-maker’: ‘You indeed are vigilant time, eroding the lifespan of living beings with lavas and the other units of time.’3 Four-armed Viṣṇu is usually represented as holding a sword, mace and conch, but his most famous and effective weapon is his discus, Sudarśana. Purāṇic authors have created a nice literary conceit by drawing a parallel between time as a revolving wheel and the deity’s weapon, as they both share such destructive 86

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potential, and one word, cakra, implies them both. Among numerous examples of this, in a difficult passage (BhP 5.14.29), we read that Viṣṇu’s personal weapon, the kāla-cakra, is characterized by all the units of time from the paramāṇu to the dvi-parārdha, or two halves of Brahmā’s life. As it turns, the wheel swiftly erodes the lifespans of all living things, from Brahmā himself to clumps of grass. Finally, at the cosmic scale: ‘when the dissolution of material elements is at hand, time, which is beginningless and endless, draws the manifest universe of gross objects and the three subtle qualities back into a state of non-manifestation’ (BhP 11.3.8). Alone at the end of the aeon, the deity Nārāyaṇa, having withdrawn this universe previously created by his own power of illusion, by means of a fraction of time at the end of the aeon, becomes the one without a second, himself the support and refuge of all. (BhP 1.9.66) *** What is the function of such extreme units at both the infinitesimal and cosmic ends of the spectrum, situated as they are so far beyond the practical, contemporary human experience, let alone the world of a pre-modern Indian author? What is the use of units of time either so small or so large that they could never be measured or experienced without the aid of atomic clocks or sophisticated astronomical instruments? What is the value of a unit in the fractions of a millisecond to a traditional paṇḍit and his audience, when the most accurate device for measuring time was a dripping waterclock? Why did Indian authors conjure units in the billions of years when their physical experience of the world could be measured only in human generations? Perhaps these questions can be explored in terms of origins, authenticity and fullness, or pūrṇatā in Sanskrit, a thirst for completeness and universality that seems to arise in many branches of the pre-modern Indic knowledge system. Pāṇini encompasses every grammatical rule, the Mahābhārata contains all knowledge, even the Kāmasūtra documents every possible (and impossible) technique of pleasure. This same intellectual urge for completeness generated a system of time that is ultimately comprehensive, in which nothing could be shorter and nothing could be greater. Here time may be understood in terms of the most infinitesimal units, from one paramāṇu being a fraction of a ten-thousandth of a second to a parārdha, which endures for hundreds of trillions of years. In addition to this desire for fullness, I suggest that the vast and complex system of time measurement and the deep intertwining of deity and time, especially in the Bhāgavata Purāna, are driven by the theological imperatives of the text. Viṣṇu must be universal; he must be everywhere and everything; he must be the creator, preserver and destroyer of the universe. As such, time serves the purpose of the authors, as it provides a scale from the infinitely small to the infinitely large on which to map the deity. The deity must be shown to be the all-pervasive, 87

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compelling force that controls the world, and by linking the deity with time, which shares these characteristics, the authors seek to accentuate the universal, all-pervasive and enduring nature of Bhagavān.

Notes 1 unmānena ambhasaḥ sā tu palāny-ardha-trayodaśa | hema-māṣaiḥ kṛta-cchidraṁ caturbhiś catur-aṅguraiḥ | māgadhena pramāṇena jala-prasthas tu sa smṛtaḥ || 2 BhP 3.31.16, 3.30.17, 10.97.32, 6.1.47, 8.21.22, 10.71.8, 10.73.13, 11.7.48. 10.74.31, 10.54.14, 1.9.14, 11.6.14, 5.23.2. 3 BhP 4.9.10, 5.26.8, 7.9.5, 8.2.33, 10.17.24, 7.8.42, 1.13.49, 10.37.21, 4.11.19, 7.3.31.

References Fleet, J. (1915). The Ancient Indian Water-Clock. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, pp. 213–30. Gilchrist, J. (1799). Account of the Hindustanee Horometry. In Asiatic Researches or Transactions of the Society Instituted in Bengal, pp. 81–89. Goswami, C., trans. (2005). Śrīmad Bhāgavata Mahāpurāṇa. Gorakhpur: Gita Press. Olivelle, P. (2005). Manu’s Code of Law. London and New York: Oxford University Press. Pathak, M., ed. (1997–1999). The Critical Edition of the Viṣṇupurāṇam. Vadodara: Oriental Institute. Rocher, L. (1986). The Purāṇas. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Smith, J. (2009). The Mahabharata. London: Penguin.

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7 ON RASA AND RECURSIVITY Ethics and aesthetics of time in Sanskrit poetics (alaṃkāraśāstra) Shonaleeka Kaul

Śāktyātmadevatāpakṣair bhinnam kālasya darśanam/ Prathamam tad avidyāyām yad vidyāyām na vidyate// First, in a state of ignorance, time manifests itself in different forms – power, soul, or God they say. In a state of wisdom but – it disappears. (Kālasamuddeśa, 62. Translated by author)

This Sanskrit verse from the 5th century poet-philosopher Bhartṛhari is an excellent introduction to all the many difficulties in talking about time. The biggest is the contradiction or aporia that while time is an inescapable and ubiquitous existential dimension, it is essentially ungraspable, and we can resort at best only to representations of it in order to grapple with its opacity. The poet refers to three such representations or manifestations of time (kālasya darśanam), which can broadly translate (with some liberty) into historic time, cosmic time and inner time of consciousness, if you will. However, while the modern academic response to temporal aporia has been perhaps to give up on it and settle for engaging with these mere representations, early Sanskrit poets and thinkers showed no such fear or confusion when confronting time. What Bhartṛhari does, in fact, is take us beyond the aporia to its resolution. He first shatters the apparent uniformity of time, indicating its different possible spheres of experience, a goal that matches our own in this volume, but then goes on to expose that very multiplicity as being in fact superficial in the face of an underlying implacable indivisibility of time which is knowable only on transcending it. He calls that transcendent state vidyā. In other words, in Sanskrit thought (to use a very sweeping category), there is a comfortable acceptance of the fundamentally correlative nature of time. To put that differently, it is believed that the key to understanding time lies not in its representations but in its functions. Functions in turn could relate to the finite or the infinite. In this chapter, I will argue that Sanskrit poetics (alaṃkāra) showed a predilection for functions of infinitude – representing not only historically contingent DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-7 89

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truths but also transhistorical dynamics that were unending and repeated incessantly, in the nature of transcendent truths. Now this is not an entirely new observation. Western scholarship has long misread this predilection for the infinite as traditional Sanskrit literature’s lack of a sense of time and history and its espousal of timelessness instead. This in turn was believed to derive from other stereotypes developed by the establishing colonial state in early 19th-century India: namely, Indian society’s stasis on the one hand and her proclivity for spiritual over material interests on the other, both of which, it was suspected by the likes of James Mill, who wrote the infamous History of British India in 1817, rendered the tracking of worldly, linear time redundant to Indians. Though we are not concerned with (only) historic time in this chapter or volume, the colonial construction of India as a timeless society was closely tied up with the construction of India as an ahistorical society as well. As I have argued elsewhere (Kaul 2018), this directly led to Orientalist scholars like Harold Wilson in 1825 isolating and applauding a work of epic poetry like Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī from Kashmir as the only work of true history in all of Sanskrit literature for, among other things, its deference to chronology in dating the kings and dynasties that it named. So celebration of one text stood on the back of the deprecation of the entire literary culture to which it in fact belonged but from which it was segregated hereby on the ground of time-keeping. Moreover, as I have also shown, this characterization of the Rājataraṅgiṇī as empiricist history was predicated on positivist valorizations and a concomitant rejection of traditional Indian modes of historical engagement, like myth, rhetoric and the didactic. This flawed, internally riven scholarly assessment of the Rājataraṅgiṇi, which came to be regurgitated by philologists and historians of all hues throughout the 20th century, at once appropriated and undermined a work of traditional Sanskrit poetry in the service of a Rankean, thoroughly modernist idea of history. More recently, scholars like Sheldon Pollock have shown perhaps a greater sympathy to Sanskrit literature’s mechanisms. Pollock (1989) influentially suggested that Sanskrit’s apparent indifference to history and time was really an eccentric cultural indifference to transience in favour of an eternalizing discourse informed by the immutability of Vedic scriptures. One notes the fundamental validity of the observation that some Sanskrit genres, including classical poetry or kāvya, as I too have argued elsewhere (Kaul 2010), do appear to try to escape limits of time and place, and we will see later in this chapter why they may have done so. However, whatever the merits of this argument, it will be clear that in attempting to explain Sanskrit’s purported ahistoricity thus, this theory ended up essentially restating it. In this chapter, I will explore some prominent strands of alaṃkāra/ kāvya-śāstra or Sanskrit poetics from in and around the 1st millennium CE to argue that what has been projected as an aberrant, civilizational ahistoricity was in fact a cultivated and purposive transhistoricity – not indifference to time or history but a self-reflexive reworking of both to serve functions and foreground values 90

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far removed from what Eurocentric modernity allows. Moreover, these values and functions of time were not necessarily sacred or scriptural – phenomena deemed to stand outside of time – but often firmly located in, and oriented towards, the social. (Of course I make this distinction between the spiritual and the social or aesthetic in a qualified and entirely provisional sense, since Sanskritic traditions do not uphold it in any absolutist way.1 The point here is merely to emphasize values and functions of time within a discourse such as kāvya, which was not primarily sacred.) *** Alaṃkāraśāstra is the theory of the composition of Sanskrit kāvya. Kāvya is literature as art – highly aesthetic poetry and prose, composed chiefly in Sanskrit all across India during the first millennium CE and after. The genre is marked by the use of ornamented, figurative language (alaṃkāra) and the evocation of various states of essentialized emotion (rasa), from the erotic and heroic to the calm and compassionate. Though occurring in at least four sub-genres, as spelled out by the early theorist Bhāmaha, including drama (nāṭya), ‘biography’ (ākhyāyikā) and tale (kathā), kāvya is most widely associated with the fourth sub-genre, epic poetry (mahākāvya or sargabandha) – continuous, metrical, narrative verse.2 The composer of kāvya was the kavi, the quintessential poet. Before discussing the specific examples of the treatment of time in kāvya and its theory, it is important to note the kavi’s claim to epistemic insight and authority that was believed to provide, among other things, a unique access to and knowledge of time. The earliest work on Sanskrit etymology, the Nirukta by Yāska, 5th century BCE, gives the meaning of kavi as follows: kaviḥ krāntadarśano bhavati, or the poet is the true seer (Nirukta 12.13). It is a testament to the continuity of this semantic tradition that even 1500 years later, the Kashmiri poetician Bhaṭṭa Tauta, the preceptor of the renowned Abhinavagupta, was explicating the idea of the kavi in identical terms: None a poet (kavi) but also a seer (ṛṣi). A seer is so called because of his vision (darśana), which is knowledge of the true nature of entities and their varied states of being. And it is because of his vision of the truth that the seer is declared . . . a poet. The conventional meaning of the word poet, for its part, is derived from his capacity for vision (darśana) as well as his powers of description (varṇana). (Kāvyānuśāsana, 432, translated by Pollock 2004: 53) Similarly, the great Rājaśekhara, in his 10th-century Kāvyamīmāṃsā, an influential alaṃkāra text, speaks of the power (śakti) of true poets lying in their divine sight (divyadṛṣṭi), which enables them to perceive that which no one before them has ever seen. He also likened poetic power to spiritual omniscience, saying: “Poets explore with their words that which yogins see through the power of their spiritual accomplishments” (Kāvyamīmāṃsā 12.62–63, See also 1.17–21. Translated 91

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by Granoff 1995: 364). Further, this omniscience of the kavi empowered him to speak of past realities (bhūtārthakathanam), as Kalhaṇa in the 12th century avers, and indeed made of kāvya a “lamp that illumines matters of the past” (kāvyadīpam bhūtavastuprakāśakam), as the poet Śrīvara, who succeeded Kalhaṇa in the 15th century, evocatively put it (Zaina Rājataraṅgiṇī 1.1, 4). However, the kavi’s access to the past is not merely by way of illuminating it. In a strikingly constructivist approach to time that has passed and to the pursuit of its knowledge, the Sanskrit poet is understood to be not just the “knower” but even the “creator” of the past: kavi-prajāpati or kavi-vedhas, that is, poet-creator. Thus Kalhaṇa writes: “Who else is capable of making visible (pratyakṣatām) bygone times (kālamatikrāntam) except the poet-creator who can make delightful productions (ramyanirmāṇa)?” (Rājataraṅgiṇī 1.4). It should be noted that Kalhaṇa is merely repeating the understanding and usage in a host of poets and poeticians before him like Bāṇa (8th century), Ānandavardhana (9th century), Kuntaka (10th century) and Abhinavagupta (11th century).3 Here again, then, is Sanskrit kāvya’s belief in the poet’s creative ability to make elusive, ungraspable time perceptible and indeed a statement on time itself so rendered as a construction or production (nirmāṇa). *** From practitioner to praxis: Poets not only constructed time, specifically past time, in this fashion; they could rework time – and all dimensions of it – in other ways as well. Let us look at two possible examples. The first example I take up relates to the centrepiece of Sanskrit aesthetic theory to which all literature/kāvya – poetry, prose or drama – was directed. This was rasa, which has been mentioned before: a common word in Sanskrit and Hindi today, rasa, literally juice or flavour, referred to the savouring of essentialized emotions, bhāva, rendered as aesthetic experience. If there was one purpose of kāvya, it was the generation and enjoyment of rasa. Thus, from its first statement in Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra, circa 2nd century CE, there were eight rasas, to which a ninth was added a few centuries later. These rasas are: śṛṅgāra, translated as the erotic and the beautiful more generally; hāsya, or comic and entertaining; karuṇa, the piteous and the compassionate; raudra, the angry and violent; vīrya, the heroic and the noble; bhayānaka, the fearful; bībhatsa, the macabre; adbhuta, the wondrous or amazing; and śānta, the equanimous or the quiescent. These were not randomly arrived at choices; the nine rasas were the distillate, as it were, of a much larger, carefully collated list of nearly 50 other emotions and emotion-like situations (Nāṭyaśāstra 342.8, cited in Pollock 2017: 54). These were, for example, beauty, despair, fatigue, determination, languor, resentment, shame, intoxication, joy, madness, perplexity and so on. These categories of feeling were meant to cover a very wide, if not comprehensive, range of common human sentiments and behaviour that cut across ages and even social groups. Literature was, after all, sārvavarṇikam (for all classes), as Bharata tells us (Nāṭyaśāstra I.12). 92

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At its basics, Bharata simply says: “That subject matter with which the heart concurs is the source of rasa” yoartho hṛdayasamvādī tasya bhāvo rasodbhavaḥ (Nāṭyaśāstra 7.7). Thus rendering emotions as universals, the rasa theory, I submit, argues against the historical contingency of human affect. Feelings were not bound by time, according to alaṃkāraśāstra. Rasa collapses time instead and instates emotions as a deeply humanizing, and hence inherently transtemporal, reality. Not only the generation of rasa/aesthetic pleasure but its reception, too, was understood as a fundamentally transtemporal process. For the only way readers – who were potentially separated by many centuries from the composition of a literary work and the protagonists in it, say, Rāma and Sītā or Cāṇakya and Candragupta – could still experience the emotions of these protagonists was precisely because of the literary force of rasa. The poetician Bhaṭṭa Nāyaka, in his 10thcentury Hṛdayadarpaṇa, called the effect sādhāraṇīkaraṇa or the commonization of aesthetic experience that facilitated its recovery or enjoyment (bhogīkaraṇa) across time and space. The result: “a unique mode of aesthetic knowledge that replaces an empirical imaginary of time with a figural one.” In this, the literary experience was indeed akin to the spiritual experience, for the savouring of rasa emerged quite like an experience of or absorption in consciousness itself, which was rid of “the dross of everyday life” (Pollock 2017: 25) by ridding itself of the very element of time and the changes or fluctuations it could entail. *** And now for the second and concluding example of the reworking of time in kāvya’s vision. It can be argued that at the heart of all this investment in emotion by the rasa theory is a concern for the social – in other words, a concern for representing a broad gamut of social and therefore emotional situations and experiences (and vice versa). Extending this concern was another momentous and complementary strand of alaṃkāra, namely a theory of kāvya as social and ethical pedagogy. Though until recently scholars like Pollock believed the didactic function to be entirely subordinate to kāvya’s aesthetic aims (Pollock 2004: 49–50), I have long argued that faith in literature’s capacity for refining our ethical imagination – kāvya as upadeśa or instruction – resonates from as early as Bharata. It is continued through Bhāmaha, in the 5th-century Kāvyālaṃkāra, who used the term vaicakṣaṇya (insight/expertise), up to Bhoja, in the 11th-century Śṛṅgāraprakāśa, who coined the term adhyeyam (lesson/learning) for one of the main goals of composing and consuming kāvya (Kaul 2010: 20). But instruction and insight and learning in what? In the entire spectrum of human goals and activities, captured in the concept of puruṣārtha: dharma (piety/duty), artha (power/domination), kāma (pleasure/desire) and mokṣa (liberation). Stated already by Bharata (when he refers to lokasya anukaraṇa or mimesis of the world as a goal of kāvya) and Bhāmaha, the point is most directly made by Abhinavagupta in his 11th-century commentary on the Nāṭyaśāstra, the Abhinavabhāratī. He writes in no uncertain terms that the end result of the savouring of rasa is 93

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instruction in dharma and the other ends of man (Abhinavabhāratī 1.261 and also 1.36, 1.292.20, 1.276, cited and translated by Pollock 2017: 33). Sanskrit kāvya’s predisposition to ethical instruction should thus be more than evident. I propose that under the influence of this ethical-injunctive understanding of its own project, kāvya conceived of time as a laboratory where overarching ethical principles governing social behaviour (dharma, karma) played out. An excellent example of this is in fact the same 12th-century mahākāvya, Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī, the history of the kings of Kashmir over two millennia, which we had occasion to discuss earlier in this chapter. As I have argued in detail elsewhere (Kaul 2018), the organizing principle of time in Kalhaṇa’s narrative is a set of prescriptive ethical values – good conduct (sadācāra), liberality (dākṣinya), discriminating intellect (sārāsāravicāra) and love for ensuring justice and fearlessness in the subjects (dharma, abhaya) – according to which he classifies the ancient kings of Kashmir into pairs of ethical exemplars. Again and again there came kings like Mihirakula, Jayāpīḍa, Kalaśa and Harṣa, who were greedy, tyrannical or degenerate, and again and again there were kings like Lalitāditya, Candrāpīḍa, Avantivarman and Uccala, who were high-minded, just and dedicated to people’s welfare (prajānupālanam). Kalhaṇa self-reflexively clubs these disparate kings into two groups, collapsing the gulf of centuries that actually separated them from each other. Ethics then, more than chronology, seems to determine the larger poetic order after all. In fact, I argue that the title of the poem, Rājataraṅgiṇī, which means River of Kings, is an allusion to history as precisely this endless flow of ethical exemplars through time, thereby endowing time with culturally sanctioned meanings. At one point, attesting to the internal memory of the massive text spanning 2000 years and more, Kalhaṇa takes a time-out from the narrative towards the end of his epic to ruminate metahistorically, in 11 verses, over his entire thesis, zigzagging through the centuries, wherever his quest for the ethical takes him. With the principle of royal greed (lobha) as the thread, he concludes by bunching together half a dozen exploitative kings and another half a dozen virtuous ones and says of them, respectively: The wealth of kings acquired by persecution of the commonalty went either to their rivals in love, or to their enemies, or to the flames. [But] those who unflinchingly upheld the law, their justly acquired treasure never found an indecent end. (Rājataraṅgiṇī 8.1951–61. Translated by Pandit) At other places, too, in the text, the poet collapses time, as it were. To give just one more instance, when noting the “transient nature of existence” (asthāyinīm sthitim), which is a major concern in the poem, the poet speaks of how on the same path of death is every individual plunging headlong. I am the slayer and he the slain – the notion of a difference [between the two] lasts 94

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but a short while. . . . He who but yesterday exults while slaying his foe, at the end sees an enemy gloating over him when he is himself about to be killed. How awful! Fie on this illusion! (dhik aho ayam andhyāvaḥ). (Rājataraṅgiṇī 8.358–59. Translated by Pandit) Thus, time in kāvya ‘returned’ relentlessly, mirroring persistent patterns of human thought, action and experience. It looped around deeply ethical moments or ruptures in history which connected with other such moments otherwise far apart in time from one another. Hence Sanskrit poetry’s preference not for linearity or diachronicity alone but for recursivity and synchronicity of a fashion alongside. *** Returning to Bhartṛhari, then, and to functions of infinitude, I would submit that not only spiritual knowledge but also aesthetic and socio-ethical knowledge seemed to render divisions of time as we know them peripheral. Time stretched and melded to produce or capture a simultaneity in difference. Time persisted – because perhaps so did human affect and ethics. Indeed, one would venture to say that, more than any other Sanskrit genre, kāvya instated emotions and ethics as deeply humanizing and hence inherently transtemporal – not ahistorical – realities. And this speaks to a fundamentally non-teleological view of time, since the telos or ethically imbued cultural purpose was not somewhere out there in the future but ‘already-always.’

Notes 1 For a discussion of the far more integrated life goals that may have been professed in early Indian cultural thought, see Shonaleeka Kaul (2019). 2 Recent scholarship has urged separating drama from poetry and “stage from page” in a study of Sanskrit poetics. See Pollock (2017). But the tradition itself does not separate the two, the Nāṭyaśāstra treating nāṭya and kāvya interchangeably and the Kāvyālaṃkāra enumerating the sub-genres named in this chapter. Rasa was common, besides, to both drama and poetry. 3 For details, see Walter Slaje (2008: 217–18). For more on the creativity of the kavi, though not with regard to history, see Phyllis Granoff (2014).

References Primary texts Abhinavabhāratī, Oriental Research Institute and Manuscripts Library, Trivandrum, ms. T566a,b,c. The Kālasamuddeśa of Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya, 1972, translated by Peri Sarveswara Sharma, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Kāvyānuśāsana, 1964, edited by Rasiklal C. Parikh and V. M. Kulkarni, Bombay: Sri Mahavira Jaina Vidyalaya.

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Kāvyamīmāṃsā, 1934, edited by C. D. Dalal et al., Baroda: Oriental Institute. Kavyālaṃkāra of Bhāmaha, 1928, edited by B. N. Sarma and Baladeva Upadhyaya, Benaras: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series. Nāṭyaśāstra, 1934, edited by M. Ramakrishna Kavi, Baroda: Oriental Institute. The Nighaṇṭu and the Nirukta, 1927, crit. edited and translated by Lakshman Sarup, Lahore: University of the Panjab. Kalhaṇa’s Rājataraṅgiṇī or Chronicle of the Kings of Kashmir, 1960 [1892. 1900], 2 vols., edited and translated by Marc Aurel Stein, Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal [First Edition: Bombay]. The River of Kings: Rājataraṅgiṇī, The Saga of the Kings of Kaśmīr, 2004 [1935, 1968], translated by Ranjit Sitaram Pandit, New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Rājataraṅgiṇī of Śrīvara and Śuka, 1966, edited by Srikanth Kaul, Hoshiarpur: Woolner Indolological Series 8. Śṛṅgāraprakāśa of Bhojarāja, 1997, edited by V. Raghavan, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Secondary literature Granoff, Phyllis, 1995, ‘Sarasvati’s Sons: Biographies of Poets in Medieval India’, Asiatische Studien/Études Asiatiques 49, no. 2. ———, 2014, ‘Putting the Polish on the Poet’s Efforts: Reading the Karnasundari as a Reflection on Poetic Creativity’, in Yigal Bronner et al., edited, Innovations and Turning Points: Toward a History of Kavya Literature, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Kaul, Shonaleeka, 2010, Imagining the Urban: Sanskrit and the City in Early India, Delhi: Permanent Black; New York: Seagull Books (2011). ———, 2018, The Making of Early Kashmir: Landscape and Identity in the Rajatarangini, Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———, 2019, ‘Introduction: Towards a Semantics of Architecture’, in Shonaleeka Kaul, edited, Eloquent Spaces: Meaning and Community in Early Indian Architecture, London and Delhi: Routledge. Mill, James, 1817, The History of British India, 3 vols., London: Baldwin, Cradock and Joy. Pollock, Sheldon, 1989, ‘Mīmāṁsā and the Problem of History in Traditional India’, Journal of American Oriental Society 109, no. 4: 603–10. ———, 2004, ‘Sanskrit Literary Culture from the Inside Out’, in Sheldon Pollock, edited, Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———, edited and translated, 2017, A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics, New York: Columbia University Press. Slaje, Walter, 2008, ‘In the Guise of Poetry: Kalhaṇa Reconsidered’, in Walter Slaje, edited, Śāstrārambha: Inquiries into the Preamble in Sanskrit, Weisbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 207–44. Wilson, Harold Hayman, 1825, ‘An Essay on the Hindu History of Cashmir’, Asiatic Researches 15: 1–119.

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8 SUN, CONSCIOUSNESS AND TIME The way of time and the timeless in Kashmir Śaivism* Bettina Sharada Bäumer

The non-dualistic school of Kashmir Śaivism, with its various designations and sub-schools of Trika (the Trinitarian school), Pratyabhijñā (‘the doctrine of Recognition’), Spanda (the doctrine of Vibration), Krama (the doctrine of succession’) and Kula (‘the doctrine of the totality), has evolved a subtle speculation on time and spiritual practice which aims at mastering and absorbing time in pure consciousness. The Svacchanda Tantra, one of the authoritative sources of Śaivism, defines time as twofold: solar and spiritual (saura and ādhyātmika, SvT VII.2). The time based on the movement of the astral bodies is gross external time (sthūla), and spiritual time is subtle (sūkṣma) and related to the movement of the vital air in the body (prāṇa) (Kṣemarāja’s Comm. on above, and SvT VII. 3–5 etc.).1 Abhinavagupta (10–11 cent.), the greatest genius of the school, asks the question from where time arises and hence also where it subsides, as he says in his Tantrāloka: This whole expansion of Time (kāla) is established in the vital energy of breath (prāṇa). The vital energy depends on vibration (spanda), vibration rests in the void, and the void in consciousness (cit). Therefore, the whole universe is based on consciousness. (Tantrāloka, VII.62–63)2 Here we find the unfolding of time, where consciousness, meaning absolute Consciousness, evolves in the void, and from the void, a subtle vibration arises. Time being intimately connected with movement, the source of movement is found in the stirring of consciousness as vibrative energy. Abhinavagupta defines spandana: “By vibration’ (we mean) subtle movement. It is subtle in the sense that although it moves not, it manifests as motion” (ĪPV I, pp. 208–09, transl. R. Torella3). In his Spandasandoha, Kṣemarāja gives some important synonyms of DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-8 97

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spanda: effulgence (sphurattā), wave (ūrmi), strength (balam), upsurge (udyoga), heart (hṛdayam) and essence (sāram) (SpSand p. 5)4, and he calls this vibration the one Energy of reflection of the Supreme (parāmarśaśakti). Abhinavagupta also uses the synonyms ‘repose’ (viśrānti), ‘life’ (jīva) and intuition (pratibhā, TĀ VI. 13). Spanda is the subtle rise of energy, which then manifests as the vital air (prāṇa). An oft quoted dictum by Kallaṭa states that consciousness first evolves into vital energy or breath: prāksaṃvit prāṇe pariṇatā (quoted also in TĀ VI. 12). And the movement of the vital air is the source of the expansion of time. Another common definition of time in the non-dualistic Trika Śāsana is as being both succession and non-succession (kramākrama, cf. TĀ VI.6). In as far as kāla is resting in Absolute Consciousness, it is both succession and successionless potentially. When it starts manifesting in the process described previously, it assumes succession (kramākramātmā kālaśca paraḥ saṃvidi vartate, TĀ VI.7). In his Tantrasāra, Abhinavagupta defines time thus: “Time is the creative impulse characterized by sequence and non-sequence. That (time) shines as the very nature of the great Lord. Its appearance is due to the energy of the Lord named Kālī” (TSā VI)5. Krama is also an important mystical concept and has given its name to one of the Tāntric schools. When outward manifestation occurs, both space and time arise, and Utpaladeva, in his Īśvarapratyabhijñā Kārikā, explains the manifestation of space due to the variety or multiplicity of forms (mūrtivaicitrya) and the manifestation of time due to the variety of actions (kriyāvaicitrya, ĪPK II. 1.5). Hence time is inseparably related with action, which is, again, a more external and gross manifestation of the subtle vibration of consciousness. Both Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta give a detailed analysis of time in relation to action. Time is thus understood as the vibration of consciousness manifesting in breath. This is not only applicable to the microcosmic level but also to the macrocosmic manifestation, to the creation, maintenance and dissolution of the universe. Thus (says Abhinavagupta) the creation and dissolution of the world are dependent on the vital energy, which in its turn depends on consciousness, and pure consciousness without an object is the great Goddess, the Supreme. (TĀ, VI.179–80) He further says: The variety of actions is based on will alone – this is the energy of Time (Kālaśakti). Therefore (the time which manifests) externally does not have any determined form. (TĀ, VI.182–83) Time is more dependent on subjective consciousness than space, and the divisions of time are wilful, for time does not have such a clear, objectifiable form as 98

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space. Abhinavagupta says that this is due to the fact that time depends entirely on the power of will of the Lord. He further demonstrates the relativity of time by describing the experience of time in dreams, in sleep, in samādhi, where even a minute unit of time may appear immense (TĀ VI. 182–84). There is, thus, a correspondence, if not identity, between cosmic and microcosmic time, between inbreath and outbreath, sun and moon, creation and dissolution. Abhinavagupta devotes the VIth chapter of his Tantrāloka to the spiritual process called “the Way of Time,” kālādhvan, which consists of equating the processes of breath with units and divisions of time. The very concept of ‘way’ (adhvan) implies a process in time. For those who are moving on a path in stages, the “way” is the cause of attaining their goal, in the case of those who still move in the realm of duality. But for the awakened ones the whole objective reality is simply to be swallowed (lit. “eaten”). (TĀ, VI. 30) The metaphor of “eating” or “swallowing” time is frequently used in the texts, and the whole process is also called kālagrāsa. This appears to be a reversion of the common simile in the Mahābhārata and elsewhere that Time ‘cooks’ and ‘favours’ everything (cf. also YoVā I.23.11)6. The Energy which effects the reabsorption of Time in consciousness is called Kālasaṃkarṣiṇī, “she who attracts Time or draws it in.” The Energies manifesting time are called Kālī, and they are 12, but the Energy withdrawing and controlling Time is one only, Kālasaṃkarṣiṇī (cf. TĀ IV. 179ff.) Time and breath being correlative both in manifestation and withdrawal, the process of “swallowing time” is a process of controlling, observing and sublimating breath. Only when time is thus “swallowed” can the fluctuation between subject and object cease. “The aim consists therefore in perceiving the entire temporal way (adhvan) in the appearance of one breath” (Silburn 1975: 50)7. The yogī whose awareness is sharpened by the practice of concentration is able to divide his outbreath and inbreath (prāṇa and apāna), significantly called sun and moon, into minute units (16 divisions), which are equated with periods of cosmic time, from the smallest division to days and nights, half-month and months, season and years and so on. The yogī can internally identify one movement of his outbreath and inbreath with one month. This practice is done with other time divisions as well, going into all the details of cosmic time. It also implies an awareness of the symbolism of the divisions of time, for example: “Day and night mean light and rest. The day consists in the light of knowableness (i.e. when the light illumines the external object), and the night in the merging of the external objects in the subject” (Tantrasāra VI). The alternation of outbreath and inbreath corresponds thus to the outgoing, objectifying movement of the mind and to the ingoing movement which takes the outer objects into the inner consciousness. In other words, the day corresponds to the creative, outgoing tendency and the night to rest and withdrawal. 99

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But the secret of overcoming the limiting and dispersing factor of time lies in the juncture between these two movements, which in cosmic time can be the movements of junctures between day and night (sandhyā), the transitions between the signs of the zodiac (saṅkrānti) and the equinoxes (viṣuvat and abhijit, which have a great mystical significance in the system). In the movement of breath, this juncture is the split second between outbreath and inbreath, between inbreath and outbreath, which have their localization in the body (heart and dvādaśānta). In these moments, time as movement, so to say, ceases to function. “Contrary to the ordinary consciousness which is mostly engaged in movement and hence bound by time, that of the yogī concentrates on the intermediary void where duration cannot be felt, where time dissolves, having no support” (Silburn 1975: 50). In the cosmic day, it is the moment when the sun sets and the moon has not yet arisen, and vice versa. There is a third juncture, the midday sandhyā when the sun is in the centre, and creates an impression of immobility. Since the Upaniṣads, this is an image of attaining one’s goal, the immobility or the ātman in the centre of consciousness (cf. Ch Up III. 11.-3)8. This Sun that never sets is the unfailing light of consciousness. Without going into further details, we may quote Abhinavagupta’s own summary of this path in his Tantrāloka: The yogī who practices this (voluntary) movement of breath devours it. The gradual withdrawal of breath is the state of the absorption of Time (Kālasaṃkarṣaṇa), and when this happens, the one pure Consciousness shines in its fullness, due to the elimination of the differentiation of knowledge. Thus, since no new movement of breath arises, the differentiation of knowledge does not occur, which is generated by the differentiation of time. Knowledge, in fact, is not fragmented due to the differentiation of the knowable (objects), just like one who is on top of a mountain (and who sees all things at one glance), but rather due to the differentiation in time. In its subtle form this is called the moment. The limit of its subtlety is knowledge, which is precisely the moment (kṣaṇa). (Tantrāloka VII. 21–25) Thus, when this movement of breath stands still, time itself ceases and with it the fragmented knowledge. At that moment, pure consciousness shines forth without separation. The kālādhvan or ‘Way of Time” described by Abhinavagupta actually belongs to the “individual means” (āṇavopāya), the lowest of the four (or three) spiritual ways. But the same state is described in a mystical way by Utpaladeva in his Śivastotrāvalī, which appears to belong to the highest way of realization: Neither ‘then’ nor ‘always.’ Nor even ‘once.’ Where every notion of time is absent 100

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That state is your realization. It can neither be called ‘eternal’ nor anything else. na tadā na sadā na caikadetyapi sā yatra na kāladhīrbhavet/ tadidaṃ bhavadīyadarśanaṃ na ca nityaṃ na ca kathyate’nyathā // (Śivastotrāvalī, XII.5)9 The state described here makes it clear that any notion of time applied to the experience of the ultimate Reality is wrong, for even the notion of eternity is still relative to that of time. It has become clear that there are essentially two levels in the conception of Time: At the absolute level, it is Kālaśakti or Kālī, the Energy of the Supreme Lord, inseparable from Him, and at the relative level, it is time (kāla) as one of the five limiting factors of the individual (kañcuka). When kāla is enumerated in the scheme of the 36 principles constituting reality (tattva), it is this latter, the limited and limiting power of time. The Energy is one only, but when it becomes veiled by fragmented individuals’ consciousness, it becomes a limitation (kañcuka). When Abhinavagupta calls Time the power of God manifesting the whole universe, he makes it clear that he does not mean kāla as one of the tattvas.10 Kashmir Śaivism accepts three Energies of the Lord, the Energies of Will, Knowledge and Action (icchā, jñāna and kriyāśakti). The manifestation of Time has been related to the powers of Will and Action. Utpaladeva says: And the Lord, being of unlimited power, makes the objects manifest through His power of will. It is his power of activity which constitutes his being creator. (Īśvarapratyabhijñā Kārikā, II.4.1) Action, being the external manifestation of Will, makes temporal succession visible. External time, necessary for worldly action, is not denied but has to be seen in relation to its source. Worldly action can be maintained to be successive due to the power of time, but not the eternal activity of the Highest Lord, like the Lord Himself. Time in reality is nothing else than the succession, observable in the movement of sun, etc., in birth of different flowers and in summer and winter. (ĪPK, II.1.2–3) We started by saying, with the Svacchanda Tantra, that time is both solar and spiritual, Ultimately, there is also non-dualism between sun and consciousness, 101

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since there is only one centre – the sun being the grand symbol of the light of consciousness and consciousness being the inner sun. Kashmir Śaivism frequently uses the terms cidarka, citsūrya and so on, meaning the sun of consciousness. Sun worship has been prevalent in Kashmir and has been absorbed by Śaivism. An ancient hymn to the Sun-god which has been accepted as part of the Śaiva tradition, at least by the time of Kṣemarāja (11th century), its commentator, is the Sāmbapañcāśikā11, which in a highly poetical, philosophical and mystical form develops the symbolic relationship between Sun, consciousness and time. All the aspects of cosmic Sun and cosmic time are clearly present, but they are related to the spiritual realities. Two examples may suffice to throw light on this metaphor. One verse refers to the symbolism of day and night and of the juncture times, which effect release from the limiting power of time: O Sun! Those who are fully awakened in the day enlightened with the light of Reality, and those who have entered the yogic sleep in the night at the quietening of the mind, having pierced through the light of the sun in the junctures between day and night, full of supreme bliss, they attain the supreme state of nirvāṇa. (SP V.29) The day is here identified with the light of supreme Reality and the night with the quietening of senses and mind, the juncture (sandhyā) with supreme bliss independent of any alternation. In the kālādhvan, the yogī identifies his one breath – exhaling and inhaling with one unit of day and night, or with a whole year whose two halves are the northern and southern course of the sun, at whose junctures are the equinoxes. If, in the previous verse, the yogī penetrates the juncture between day and night in order to overcome time, here he enters the state of equinox, viṣuvat or abhijit, “the middle path, void of action” (V. 49), which is the transcendental state (unmanā), free from good or bad actions, pure rest in one’s innate bliss (Kṣemarāja on 49). Attaining the middle path or the centre between two times or two actions means attaining the state of equality, balance, harmony (samatā), which by definition is beyond time. To conclude: Sun, consciousness, time and breath cannot be separated, because macro- and microcosm cannot be separated. The integration of time in consciousness, of succession in non-succession and vice-versa, is the secret of harmony.

Notes * This chapter was originally published in K. Vatsyayana (ed.), 1996. Concepts of Time – Ancient and Modern, pp. 73–78, New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and Sterling. It is reproduced here with permission. 1 The Svacchanda Tantram with Commentary by Kshemarāja, edited by Paṇḍit Madhusūdan Kaul Shāstrī, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies No. LVI. Bombay: ‘Nirnaya Sagar’ Press Volume VI, 1935. SvT.

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2 The Tantrāloka of Abhinavagupta, with the Commentary of Jayaratha, edited by Madhusudan Kaul Shastri, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies, 12 vols., Bombay and Srinagar, 1918–38. TĀ. 3 Īśvara Pratyabhijñā Kārikā of Utpaladeva with the Author’s Vṛtti. Critical edition and annotated translation by Raffaele Torella, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2002. IPK. 4 The Spanda Sandoha of Kṣemarāja, edited with notes by Paṇḍit Mukunda Rāma Shastri, Kashmir Series of Texts and Studies No. XVI. Bombay: Shri Venkateshwar Steam Press, 1917. SpSand. 5 Tantrasāra of Abhinavagupta, translated from Sanskrit with Introduction and Notes by H.N. Chakravarty, edited by Boris Marjanovic, Portland, OR: Rudra Press, 2012, TSā. 6 The Yoga Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, translated from the original Sanskrit by Vihari-Lala Mitra, 1999. 7 Silburn, L., Hymnes aux Kālī, La Roue des Énergies Divines, Paris: Institut De Civilisation Indienne, 1975. 8 The Early Upanisads: Annotated Text and Translation, translated and edited by Patrick Olivelle. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ChUp = Chāndogya Upanisad. 9 Śivastotrāvalī of Utpaladeva: A Mystical Hymn of Kashmir, by Swami Lakshman Joo. Delhi: D. K. Printworld Pvt. Ltd., 2008. Shaiva Devotional Songs of Kashmir, A Translation and Study of Utpaladeva’s Shivastotrāvali. Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1990. 10 TĀ I, 38: eṣa kālo hi devasya viśvābhāsaṅkāriṇī kriyāśaktiḥ. 11 Śrīsāmbapañcāśikā, edited with Hindi translation by Swami Lakshman Joo Mahārāj, Srinagar, Ishvar Ashram Trust, 3rd ed. 2009. Sambapancasika with Ksemaraja’s Commentary, translated by Nilkanth Gurtu. Delhi: Penman Publishers, 2002.

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9 TIME IS IN THE MOMENT (WAQT) AND ALSO IN ETERNITY (DAHR) 1 Reflections from Sufi Islam Kashshaf Ghani

The understanding of time in Islam, interestingly, can be gleaned from a crosssection of fields, many of which, particularly philosophy, are heavily influenced by Western and Indian traditions. When we try to imagine how time came to be understood, beginning from the pre-Islamic Age of Ignorance ( jahiliya) in Arabia, to the age of Prophet Muhammad (d. 632) and after, a strong presence of Greek philosophical traditions can be discerned. Pre-Islamic Arabia recognized time as dahr – the controller of destiny (Watt 1991: 94–95). The rise and fall of human destinies would, therefore, be attributed to good times or bad. Interpreted also as ‘days’ and ‘nights,’ dahr would, quite spontaneously, be cursed as the cause of human misfortunes. The arrival of Islam sought to challenge this apocalyptic and fearful idea of time through contested Hadith traditions, on the authority of Abu Huraira (d. 678), a companion of the Prophet and a prolific Hadith narrator. Citing a Hadith qudsi,2 Prophet Muhammad is said to have warned his community (umma) for cursing time as one’s fate – ‘So said God, a human being injures me when he curses time, al-dahr, for I am time. All things are in my hand and I change day to night.’ Since the Arabic word for time was dahr, equating it with God not only imparted it with an eternal character but also became one of God’s names (Goodman 1992: 3). Multiple understandings of time emerged from Arab traditions, starting with the earliest one, dahr (time from the beginning of the world to its end), followed by zaman (a long time with a beginning and end), qidam (time without beginning), asr (a span of time), hin (a period of time, little or more), dawam (duration), mudda (a space of duration), waqt (a moment in time), an (present time), awan (time or season), yawm (a time in night or day), saa (a while or an hour), abad (duration without an end) and azal (duration without beginning), sarmad (incessant continuation), khulud (perpetual existence, also explained as the Quranic idea of paradise) (Ibid.: 58–59). The idea of time in Islam gets complicated, first, due to a series of Muslim military conquests in Iran, Iraq and in the Levant and, second, with the rise of the DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-9 104

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schools of kalam (dialectical theology) and falasifa (Islamic philosophy). The latter was heavily influenced by Plato, Aristotle and Neoplatonism, and the former by Plotinus, through the momentous exercise of translation that rendered the rich corpus of Greek scholarship into Arabic. Thus the Greek equivalences of the idea of time came to be understood by Arab philosophers as chronos (zaman), aion (dahr), kairos (waqt) and diastasis (mudda). *** Islamic Calendar and the Chronology of ‘Time’: If tradition is to be believed, then God created Muhammad from His light (nur) before creating any other being in created time (zaman). This was before the beginning of creation by a million years. And when the process of creation began, Adam was created from the light of Muhammad. Then he took the personality of Adam. When the prophets and the spiritual universe were completed in pre-eternity, Muhammad was shaped in his temporal and earthly form. Therefore, Muhammad’s name and entity can be understood to have existed from Eternal Time (dahr) as a column of light (Nur e Muhammadi) (Ibid.: 208–09). It is perhaps natural, then, that the idea of historical time in Islam, conceptualized through the formalization of a calendar, began from the event that inaugurated a new chapter in Muhammad’s career – his migration (hijrat) to Yathrib, later named Medina, in 622, marking the beginning of the Islamic lunar calendar. The lunar year of the Islamic calendar was drawn out by Muhammad during his last pilgrimage to Mecca. He arranged the year according to 12 lunar months, which when calculated is approximately 11 days shorter than the solar year. Divine injunction (Quran 9:37) forbade intercalation or the process of inserting one extra month in the lunar calendar to correlate the cycle of lunar months with the solar year. Hence, by beginning the lunar month only through a confirmed sighting of the crescent (Ghurrat al-Hilal), an unmistakable Divine control over time was established. It was not permissible to calculate it through astronomical tables and could only be ascertained by two ‘witnesses of the instant,’ known as the Iltimas al-Hilal, practiced across the Islamic world. After nightfall, the rise of the moon marked the beginning of a new day (yawm), and the rise of the first crescent announced the date of pilgrimage. Sighting of the new moon also signalled the beginning of the temporal epoch, like on 16 July 622, the first day of the Islamic calendar marked by the hijrat of Meccan Muslims under Muhammad (Massignon 1957: 108–09; Bowering 1997: 62–65). Although the Prophet introduced the lunar calendar, its formalization was left to the second Caliph Umar, who after consulting a council of Meccan elders straightened the difficulties with regard to tax collection and tribute payment, thereby finalizing the calendar that is in uniform use today across the Muslim world for religious and legal observances like pilgrimage, period of widowhood, divorce and so on (Ibid.). Times of prayer, on the other hand, were finalized in the days after Muhammad’s death, depending on the position of the sun – morning prayer at daybreak, midday prayer when sun started to decline from its zenith, afternoon 105

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prayers when shadows matched their objects, evening prayer immediately after sunset and night prayer when twilight disappeared (Bowering 1992: 79). *** Time in South Asian Sufism: Our current discussion will focus on the third major influence on an already diverse understanding of time in Islam, as received from and greatly enriched by its spiritual masters, the Sufis – through their practices, rituals, understanding of chronology and temporality, behaviour and doctrines. In the following sections, we explore the idea of time primarily through the framework of spiritual practices of Sufi saints from South Asia, beginning with the Chishti, whose masters understood time in human existence as captured between two non-existences, that of preeternity or azal and posteternity or abad. In the Chishti ideology, since human existence on earth originates from the primordial covenant (mithaq)3 and yearns to return to its origin in the Lord, worldly life is therefore illusory and impermanent before it fades into abad (Lawrence 1992: 130). Some ideas on the Chishti approach to time will be accessed primarily through a reading of the Fawaid-ul Fuad, the malfuzat (recorded conversations) of the foremost Chishti saint Shaykh Nizamuddin Awliya (d. 1325) of Delhi. This malfuzat, the first of its kind to be written in the South Asian region, familiarizes the reader with, among other issues, the diverse understandings of time in the sayings of a Sufi master of great spiritual stature – not only through rituals but also through miracles in which time would be rolled up or extended to great lengths. Thereafter the chapter will explore a rich corpus of records handed down from one of Nizamuddin’s near-contemporaries, but less read, Sufi saint Shaykh Sharafuddin ibn Yahya Maneri (d. 1381) from Bihar. Maneri belonged to the less popular Firdausi order, and the sources that will be used in this discussion include his two malfuzat – Khwan-i Pur Nimat (A Table Laden with Good Things) and Madan-ul Mani (A Mine of Meaning) and two collections of letters – Maktubat-i Sadi (Hundred Letters), written to Qazi Shamsuddin of Chausa, and the Maktubati Do Sadi (Second Collection of 150 Letters). The discussion will end with Khayrul Majlis (Best of the Assembly), the malfuzat of Nizamuddin’s spiritual successor in Delhi, Nasiruddin Mahmud ‘Chirag-e Dehli’ (d. 1356). The primary focus on the tradition of South Asian Sufi saints will be supplemented with references to masters from the classical period. The practice of Sufism, to be precise, concerns the spiritual journey of the mystic towards a realization of the Divine. Across generations, Sufi masters through their teachings have emphasized on the centrality of the practice of tawakkul (complete trust in God) for any individual aspiring to travel on the spiritual Path. In the Sufi understanding, God being the divine all-embracing, at every moment (waqt) of man’s createdness, He has secured his sustenance through blood and milk. And it is the acceptance of tawakkul in God that strengthens a Sufi to rise above hope (bast) and fear (qabd) towards that moment when the Divine vision enlightens the saint towards an experience in time (zaman) when no veil exists between the human lover and the Divine Beloved. Such moments of withholding the Divine 106

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can be lived only through an instant (waqt) without duration (al sayyal), bound between feelings of hope (wajada) of witnessing the Divine and fear (wajida) of returning to darkness and solitude. Early Sufis like Junayd (d. 910) recognized such sudden moments of grace, but they refrained from attaching any real duration to it. Husayn ibn Mansur al Hallaj (d. 922), the famous Sufi martyr from Baghdad, also in the early period of Sufism, recognized the eternal transcendence of God beyond the realm of His created beings. For Hallaj, the state of union which a Sufi experiences is achieved at a rare moment (waqt) of ecstasy when the temporal divide that separates the uncreated spirit in preeternity (azal) from the human spirit ‘created in time’ (zaman) collapses. In such circumstances, the mystic becomes the living witness (shaheed) to Divine glory, which may lead him to declare ‘I am the Truth’ (ana al-haqq) (Schimmel 2011: 72). When asked about what such an instant meant for the Sufi, Hallaj replied ‘It is a breeze of joy (farja) blown by pain’ (Ibid.: 117, 128–29; Massignon 1957: 110–13). To reach the moment of Divine countenance, a Sufi has to endure severe hardships on the body in order to control the lower self (nafs) and purify the soul. And all hardships on the Path have durations. For different mystics, these durations constitute various spans of time, measured in hours, days, weeks, months – occurring either at daytime or night. It is through a combination of linear time (days, weeks and months) and cyclical time (night and day) that the most important practices for controlling worldly desires and enhancing spiritual strength are carried out. For Sufis, the understanding of time came to be realized primarily through spiritual practices they undertook and prescribed as integral to their training, particularly fasting and sleeplessness, various forms of prayer over and above the mandatory five times, recitation of the Quran, followed by remembrance of God (zikr) and listening to music (sama). Other ways of understanding ‘time’ were seen through a combination of special moments and specific periods of longer duration – the former would include moments of revelation through Divine proximity; the latter can be taken as spiritual training and periodic retreats undertaken by Sufis, significant days and nights according to the calendar that are meant to attract special blessings and the day of Muhammad’s heavenly ascension (miraj). Sources, mentioned previously, refer to all such practices and periods which, I argue, can be read as important measures of time, without specifically using terminologies like waqt and zaman. The following discussion will explore each of these practices and periods and try to elaborate, through a simultaneous reading of sources, on the approach of individual Sufi masters with regard to their multiple understandings of time. *** Fasting and Sleeplessness: The Islamic notion of fasting corresponding to daytime, Sufis conveniently divided cyclical time by ‘spending their nights upright in prayer and maintaining a perpetual fast by day’ (Schimmel 2011: 114). Such sleepless vigils could continue over long stretches of linear time, into weeks and 107

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years, in the hope for some revelation at the end of sleeplessness. Once when Shah Kirmani was overwhelmed by uncontrollable slumber after 40 years of sleepless nights in prayers, he saw God. Needless to say, the significance of 40 as a span of time, whether in days, weeks or years, varied from one Sufi saint to another. While many Sufis wilfully fasted beyond the lunar month of Ramadan, others took to a pattern of fasting on alternate days (saum daudi) so as to balance eating with fasting. Sufis trained in the spiritual Path gradually extended their periods of fasting, beginning from a day, to a week, then to 10 days, then 15, until they reached a period of continuous fasting for 40 days. Sufi saints like Shaqiq al Balkhi from the Khurasani ascetic school proposed an extreme practice of continuous fasting for 40 days to ‘transform the darkness of the heart into light.’ It is believed that their pangs of hunger were subsumed in the joy of nearness to the Lord. ‘Make your bellies hungry, your livers thirsty, and your bodies hungry that you might perhaps see God in this world.’ During his 40 days retreat, as discussed in the following, Moses was blessed with the power to talk to the Almighty because his continuous fasting kept his inner body empty and light. Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209) speaks of a saint who fasted for 70 days while in deep contemplation of the Divine. In such states of long contemplation, one sees a combination of cyclical time (fasting throughout day and remaining awake throughout night) and linear time that constituted the length of such contemplation, in days, weeks and years. Sustenance under such states arrives from the Unseen, ‘Who feeds me and gives me drink’ (26:79), and the Sufi is nourished by Divine light (Ibid.: 115–16). As explained in the Madin and the Maktubat-i Sadi, fasting is as much about a struggle for self-restraint as it is about worship that helps to curb the selfish soul and feelings of sensuality within the seeker. The varying lengths of fasting mentioned previously are intended to keep worldly desires under control by depriving the body of food and material nourishment. Once the desire for the world ebbs through daytime fasting, it opens the way for resolute night-time contemplation through sleeplessness and varied acts of worship. The month of Ramadan has been made a mandatory period of fasting for all believers. However, for those on the spiritual Path, fasting continues beyond the prescribed month of Ramadan, and the period of fasting varies, as seen previously. However, Sufis discouraged continuous fasting for their disciples for more than four days at a stretch. Extending the period of Ramadan fasting beyond a month was also not encouraged for the common masses who are not trained to bear it. As Maneri noted, while referring to Ghazzali’s Ihya Ulum al Din, for Sufis, the fast of Ramadan is the most common form of fasting that involves refraining from food, drink and sexual intercourse for a fixed period of time – dawn until sunset every day. The more advanced form of fasting is beyond any fixed period of time and involves not only physical hunger but spiritual deprivation as well – keeping the heart under close control so that anything other than the remembrance of God ‘constitutes breaking the fast.’ Such an advanced form of fasting is different from Ramadan and beyond any temporal timeframe. The mention of 40 days can be 108

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taken as a relative point of reference that on many occasions should not be taken literally. Some Sufis have also argued that the 40-day fast constitutes the mandatory month-long Ramadan fast, followed by a supererogatory fast of 10 more days to witness the revelation of the Lord in the heart of the Sufi. Maneri thereafter elaborated on the varied forms of fasting undertaken by Sufis that seldom followed a fixed pattern but differed according to their spiritual state. Some Sufis are also mentioned by him to have fasted for years but broke their fast before sundown, which is against the prescribed law on the hour for breaking fast. The sheikhs observe different practices. Some have fasted continually and reached their Lord. Others have fasted for a day and then broken their fast for a day. Pious people have praised this, for this exercises both patience and gratitude. Some have fasted for two days and then broken their fast for a day. Others have fasted on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, but not on other days. It is related that Khwaja Junaid of Baghdad fasted continually but would break his fast with anyone who visited him. In such circumstances, noted previously, related to fasting, one can perceive multiple ideas of time – one that is laid down by the letter of the Law, whereby believers are meant to fast from daybreak to sundown continuously during the month of Ramadan. For Sufis, however, this sense of a fixed timeframe gets convoluted into various spans of linear and cyclical time, ranging from days to weeks and months depending on the stage of their spiritual maturity (Jackson 2012: 132–38; Jackson 1980: 128–30). *** Prayers: Mandatory and Supererogatory: Lay believers aspire to break through the veil of temporal time into eternal time thereby achieving momentary proximity with the Lord through the daily ritual of prayer, performed at definite points of a cyclical time pattern visualized through the rising and setting of the sun. The importance of the movement of the sun determining the daily time of ritual prayers is emphasized in Maneri’s Khwan-i Pur Nimat, where he mentions a particular city, Bulghar, possibly closer to the poles, where there is no night-prayer, as the sun never sets for a long duration of time. Hence people offer only four obligatory prayers each day. It was legally decided that, since for the residents of that city, the moment for night-prayer never arrived due to natural causes, the night-prayer was not obligatory for them. According to Hadith traditions, in such daily moments (waqt) with God, through prayer, an individual believer aspires to step out of the created time (zaman) and space into the Eternal Now in Divine presence. The Prophet, too, looked forward to such moments when he called out to Bilal, his Abyssinian muezzin, ‘O Bilal, quicken us with the call to prayer.’ Ritual prayer for Muhammad created opportunities for Divine proximity (Schimmel 1985: 277–78). 109

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Maulana Jalaluddin Rumi conceptualizes formal prayer, at regular intervals, as an exercise bound in temporality. However, the prayer of the soul for him is beyond the limits of time when the soul is drowned in the contemplation of the Divine and remains unconscious of the material surroundings, as well as created time (zaman). It is during those moments (waqt) of intense contemplation that the seeker breaks through created time into Eternal time (dahr). Here, Rumi recognizes Gabriel in an imagery of reasoning, whereby the angel knows his spatial limit (the last Lote-tree of the farthest point) as well as the temporal limit that stops him from the experience of Divine union. For the seeker of Divine love, there is no threshold or veil separating him from the Lord (Ibid.). Maneri mentions in the Madin that two cycles of prayer done with utmost devotion by a believer combine all the forms of worship carried out continuously by angels for the Lord. Muhammad received the act of prayer as a gift for his community on the night of his ascension. A single observance of two cycles of prayer is said to combine in itself the various actions angels undertake in their worship of the Lord – standing, sitting, bowing, prostrating, reciting the Quran, praising and glorifying the Lord. Thus by emulating the angelic form of worship, lay believers in such specified periods of prayer spiritually touch an otherworldly realm located in eternal time, to which humans have no physical access (Jackson 2012: 110). Maneri goes on to argue in the Madin that prayers that are lost during the day, as well as supererogatory prayers, can be offered during night. For Maneri, this is in accordance with the Quran, since God ‘makes night follow day for those who want to be mindful or render thanks’ (Quran 25:62). Thus arrangements of day and night are done in a pattern where one follows the other, allowing the believer to pray at night when daytime work does not bother him. For Sufis, however, there is no fixed time of the day for supererogatory prayers, as they are constantly engaged in offering prayers to their Lord. However, some prayers are meant to be offered at fixed times of day or night, possibly going by the position of the sun. Maneri calls this repetitive prayer, defined as any act of worship or recitation of the Quran at a fixed time. Such a prayer thus follows a cyclical pattern, being repeated every day, primarily through four cycles of ritual prayer or recitation of 30 sections or the first seven chapters of the Quran. Similarly, intercessory prayers are also fixed ones that need to be done regularly to ward off a forthcoming calamity. Maneri also identified four moments where prayers have maximum possibility of being accepted. Within a normal day, that is, at the break of the day, then in the morning and at sunset; also between the call to prayer and its commencement. Apart from these, certain nights are believed to carry special powers, such as the Night of Power (Laylatul Qadr) and Night of Decrees (Shab e Barat). And among days – Friday, the ninth day of the month of pilgrimage and the tenth day of the month of Muharram. Shaykh Nizamuddin once remarked that supererogatory prayers are to be offered at particular times. In course of a day, these prayers that can be performed throughout the day and night are called tahajjud. In a week, such a prayer begins 110

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on a Sunday, then continues through Monday and Tuesday before ending on Saturday. Every month, this prayer takes place through 20 prostrations on the appearance of the new moon. In a year, there are four occasions for such prayer – two Eid prayers (Eid e Saghir and Eid e Kabir), the prayer of rest (tarawih) and the prayer on the eve of the 14th day of Shaban (Shab e Barat) (Lawrence 1992: 181–82). Special invocations and supplications are usually prescribed to be recited 1000 times, or at least 100 times and thereafter in multiples of 100 until one succeeds in reaching 1000 recitations (Ibid.: 231–32, 332). Also, the last watch of the night, usually three hours to dawn, should be spent in tahajjud or night prayer. It consists of 12 cycles of prayer and is done in imitating a popular practice of the Prophet. For Maneri, this is the time for blessings and forgiveness of disciples (Jackson 2004: 72–76). According to Nizamuddin Awliya, certain litanies of prayer bring forth certain benefits from the Unseen. After performing the afternoon prayer, if one continues to perform a litany consisting of ten cycles of prayer along with ten recitations of Sura al-Ikhlas, with five pauses for greetings, then the individual is assured of meeting Khizr, the eternal saint. Recitation of the Sura al-Fatiha 1000 times or more is believed to help the reciters attain what they had wished for (Lawrence 1992: 150). *** Recitation of the Quran: For Sufis, recitation of the Quran within certain short spans of time indicated their spiritual stature. One day, Shaykh Bahauddin Zakaria (d. 1262), the Suhrawardi Sufi master from Multan in Punjab, recited the entire Quran plus an additional four sections in one cycle of prayer. Later, however, Zakaria rued his inability to recite the entire Quran from the break of dawn to the rising of the sun. Anecdotes like these provide evidence of Quran recitation at great speed (Tayy ul Huruf ), and by doing so, Sufis give an impression of rolling up time (Tayy al Zaman) to incredible extents. Once when Qazi Hamiduddin Nagauri (d. 1152), the Suhrawardi master from Delhi, was circumambulating the Kaba, he came across a mystic who claimed to recite the Quran 700 times every day, literally rather than figuratively, a miracle providing an insight into Sufi spiritual practices beyond the understanding of ordinary human intellect (Jackson 2004: 85–86). In the blessed month of Ramadan, one full recitation of the Quran is completed during the evenings. Human capacity to memorize the Quran can take varying lengths of time and may not be possible in one’s lifetime. In such circumstances, the person will be blessed in his grave, as a result of which, on the Day of Judgment, he will be accorded the status of one who has memorized the Quran (Lawrence 1992: 156). For Maneri, in the Madin, common beings who are unable to interiorize the Quran to such an extent as mentioned should try to follow a time schedule of complete recitation – once every month and at least twice in a year. Recitations of the Quran on certain auspicious days of the calendar fulfil the needs of the worshipper. These recitations should be done through four cycles 111

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of prayer on the tenth day of the month of Muharram. In the first cycle, after recitation of the opening chapter, the 112th chapter should be recited 11 times. In the second cycle, after the opening chapter, the 109th chapter should be recited 3 times, and the 112th chapter should be recited 11 times. In the third cycle, the 102nd chapter should be recited once, and the 112th chapter should be recited 11 times. In the fourth cycle, the Throne Verse should be recited 3 times, and the 112th chapter should be recited 25 times. Maneri also went on to share a tradition where this litany of prayer and recitation was performed by the Prophet on six days of the year – the 10th of Muharram, the 8th and 9th days of the month of pilgrimage, the Feast of Sacrifice, the 15th of Shaban and the last Friday of Ramadan (Jackson 2012: 48–49; 152–53). *** Remembrance (zikr) of God and Prophet: Temporal time in Islam is also measured through the single most important act of reverence towards the Prophet – his remembrance through recollection (zikr). The practice of recollection can assume various forms, spanning equally diverse lengths of time in different traditions. An act that combined remembrance and veneration of the Prophet was the reading of Hadith traditions, a collection of Muhammad’s words and advice on various matters of life and faith. Particularly revered among majority Muslims are Imam Bukhari’s collections of the Hadith, the largest, known as the Sahih, having great authority. In many traditions like Mamluk Egypt, the entire 7000 Hadith collections were read out in the span of Islam’s holiest month, Ramadan (Schimmel 1985: 53). In North African Sufi circles, the following formula of blessing for the Prophet should be recited 4444 times in one session to fulfil one’s wish, O God, bless with a perfect blessing our lord Muhammad by whom difficulties are solved, sorrows consoled, affairs completed, through whom the longed-for object is obtained and from whose noble countenance the clouds ask for rain, and bless his family and his companions. (Ibid.: 170) Members of the Hamidiyya Shadhiliyya order pray for the Prophet for two hours every night. The following litany practiced by the Tijaniya order is supposed to bestow multiple benefits on the reciter, depending on the number of times recited, O God, bless our master Muhammad, who opened what had been closed, and who is the seal of what had gone before; he who makes the Truth victorious by the Truth, the guide to Thy straight path, and bless his household as is the due of his immense position and grandeur! He who reads it once is guaranteed the bliss of the two abodes. A single recitation of the litany is equivalent to 6000 times all prayers of glorification to God, all zikr and dua, long or short. He who recites it ten times acquires recompense greater 112

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than that due a saint who lived 10,000 years but did not recite it. One recitation of it is equivalent to the prayers of all angels, human beings and jinn from the beginning of their creation to the time when it was uttered (Ibid.: 171–72). In the 14th century, the historian Safadi enumerated 99 names of the Prophet, known as Asma al-Sharifa. The name of Muhammad has existed from the beginning of time, and mere repetition (zikr) of it, or the 99, ensures blessings on his followers from this world and the next. Abdur Qadir Gilani (d. 1166), the Qadiri Sufi master, is reported to have said that any person who repeated the 99 names once during day and night would be protected from all kinds of affliction and his faith will remain preserved. Makhdum Jahaniyan (d. 1384) of Ucch remarked that whoever recites these names after the dawn prayer will have all forms of sins forgiven. To him was revealed by the Prophet, during Jahaniyan’s pilgrimage to Medina, that anyone reciting the 99 names 12 times after night prayer would be brought to paradise by the Prophet himself. For Sultan Sayyid Mahmud Nasiruddin Bukhari, the recitation of these names seven times after noon prayer will protect the person from animals and beasts. Another Sufi is said to have mentioned that whoever recited these names 11 times after evening prayer will increase in knowledge, mildness and gnosis. Such advice on remembering the Prophet through zikr connects the exercise to the important Muslim ritual of prayer five times throughout the day and night following a cyclical order of time, as much as the ritual itself follows a cycle of continuous repetition to the end of one’s life in a linear created time (Ibid.: 181, 185–86). Invoking the names and attributes of God at certain periods of a particular day is believed to be efficacious. An individual seeking relief from illness for which no medical cure is available should finish all his prayers on a Friday and before the evening prayer engage himself in constant remembrance (zikr) of the following names of God – O God, O Source of Compassion, O Ever Compassionate (Lawrence 1992: 112). *** Listening to Music (sama): For Chishti Sufis, rituals like sama provided opportunities to break through the limits of temporal time, into those moments when they can behold Divine adornment in Divine time. The moments of ecstasy (wajd) during such spiritual practices are considered a blessing from the Divine, who is remembered by the name Al wajid, ‘the one who induces wajd’ (Ibid.: 118). As a spiritual exercise for the initiated, though sama could be organized on any day and hour, some Sufi masters over course of time laid down detailed instructions with regard to the three essentials of sama – Time (zaman), Place (makan) and Brethren (Ikhwan). With regard to time, Shaykh Muhammad Gesudaraz (d. 1422), a Chishti Sufi master of the Deccan region in India, insisted that sama be performed at night after completing all religious and social duties, since at night-time it is easier for a Sufi to conceal his spiritual state (hal). However, the place chosen needs to be well illuminated. If a Sufi expects visitors at his khanqah, then it is advisable to 113

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arrange sama during daytime for their convenience (Nizami 2007: 34; Sikandarpuri 1979: 155). Spiritual Training and Retreats: For Maneri, a spiritual novice begins his training with his Sufi master, where he is required to perform three kinds of work in the first three years of his training to be qualified for acceptance into the Path – one year he has to serve on behalf of other people, one year should be devoted to God and the remaining year should be spent ‘in watching over one’s own heart’ (Jackson 1980: 29). According to Maneri, before moving into the advanced practice of spiritual retreats, once a disciple has reached a certain stage in the spiritual path, he should not miss any of the five mandatory prayers in congregation. The detailed hourly observance laid down by Maneri is an effective model of how to divide an entire day or 24 hours according to the five mandatory prayer cycles. It begins from the time before dawn, when the disciple should take a purificatory bath and two cycles of prostrations in gratitude. Thereafter, the dawn prayers should be performed in congregation. Thereafter, he should be in meditation until the time for midday prayer. The following two prayers of setting-sun and after sunset should be performed accordingly, with long meditation spells and Quranic recitations in between. The last prayer at night is the retiring prayer, after which a period of meditation shall follow before retiring to sleep for six hours, rising up again before dawn (Ibid.: 111–13). ‘Forty’ as a span of time carry multiple references in holy scriptures and sayings. God is believed to have ‘kneaded the mud of Adam for forty days.’ Moses set aside 40 days and nights, the entire month of Zul-Qada and 10 days from ZulHijja, to contemplate his Lord (Ibid.: 400–01; Quran 7:142). According to a tradition, Prophet Muhammad advised the community that whoever dedicates ‘forty days to God, God, in turn will order streams of wisdom to issue forth continuously from his heart and upon his tongue.’ It is also said that Prophet David sought pardon for his fault through 40-day prostration to God (Jackson 1980: 88, 90). For Sufis, following the Prophets, the idea of ‘forty days’ varied from one saint to another. The most common observance for this practice is found in the 40-day spiritual retreat that Sufis undertake, emulating the example of Adam, who for the first time undertook this exercise between Mecca and Taif, and of Prophet Muhammad in the mountain cave of Hira. This 40-day retreat is the first major spiritual exercise that a Sufi master baptizes his disciple with. It is meant to initiate the disciple into the Path of material deprivation that ultimately lead to a gradual strengthening of the soul. Only when a disciple succeeds in the first retreat will he be allowed to move on to the second. Such retreats are usually accompanied by fasts that may be broken at sundown or on many occasions continue uninterrupted, adding to the spiritual strength of the saint (Jackson 1986: 12–13). Retreats of less than 40 days are also practiced by Sufis, like on the last 10 days in the month of Ramadan (Ibid.: 106–07). According to Maneri, meditation lies at the core of such 40-day retreat, which is meant to drive away all worldly thoughts from the heart and mind of the disciple. 114

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It is also agreed by many Sufis that such intense meditation for an hour through spiritual retreat is better than usual prayers done for one year (Ibid.: 61; Jackson 2012: 211; Jackson 2004: 71). *** Moments of Revelation/Witnessing: Occasions of revelation signify moments of time that are unmeasured in worldly, commonsensical, terms but are known exclusively to those who experience it. Sufis aspire to such moments, not knowing when they may arrive, when they can break into a countenance of their Lord, thereby touching eternal time. Prophets, however, from their past experience, know when to expect a revelation and look forward to it to descend. However, there are occasions when the expected time-window passes by without any revelation, and Prophets come to realize that the moment of revelation has passed by (Jackson 1986: 23). For Sufis, there is no fixed passage of temporal time during which they can experience the Divine countenance or the pleasure of witnessing. Many have argued that it depends on a combination of spiritual maturity and yearning with Divine grace. When measured in temporal scales, it might take someone seventy years to traverse the difficulties of the Way. Another might spend twenty years in overcoming these difficulties. Another might take ten years to do so. Someone else might pass beyond them in a year. It is also possible that someone might do so in a month, or even in a week, or in only an hour. Finally, it might happen that, by a special grace of God, all difficulties of the Way are traversed in a single moment. (Jackson 1980: 166) Special Days and Nights: Certain days of a week are said to attract special blessings and rewards, like on Thursday evenings, the doors of paradise are said to be opened, and ‘the mercy of the Lord descends upon his servants.’ Similarly, Friday is called the Yaum-ul Mazid (Day of Increase) for believers, for ‘there is an increase in their acts of devotion and perfection’ (Jackson 1986: 67). According to Maneri, Friday is supposed to be the most excellent of all days in the week, when the Lord sets free 600,000 from the fire of hell. The ordinary day also has a special time window when wishes of the devout are granted. Sufis identify the hour in different parts of the day – in the morning before sunrise, when the preacher descends from the pulpit until the beginning of Friday prayer, between afternoon prayer and sunset. This uncertainty allows Sufis and believers to spend the entire day in contemplation and meditation without worrying about that particular hour. Also, reciting blessings on the Prophet 80 times on a Friday leads to 80 years of sin being pardoned by the Lord (Jackson 2012: 121–22) For certain special prayers, certain periods of time are preferred. Once Shaykh Nizamuddin remarked that the virtue of the Night of Supererogatory Devotions 115

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(Laylat al Raghaib) is great, since many things occur on that night. Whoever completes the prayers prescribed for this night will not die in that particular year. In the month of Rajab occurs the Prayer of Khwaja Uways Qarani, which, as opinions differ, falls on the 3rd, 4th and 5th day; or 13th, 14th and 15th; or 23rd, 24th and 25th. At the end of this month occurs a day for performing the Prayers for Long Life (Lawrence 1992: 103–05). The month of Rajab has special benefits during four particular nights when many petitions are answered – first night, first Friday, evening of the 15th and evening of the 27th, when the ascension of Muhammad took place (Ibid.: 146). The Night of Power (Laylat ul Qadr) can be taken as another moment when temporal time touched Divine time with the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad (Kalin 2006: 7). Truly We sent it down in the Night of Power. The Night of Power is better than a thousand months. The angels and the Spirit descend therein, by the leave of their Lord, with every command; peace it is until the break of dawn. (Quran 97:1–5) Here, all of human worship and good deeds spread over a temporal time of thousand months is spiritually of lesser value when compared to such acts undertaken during the Night of Power. It is believed to be the night whose entire length beings peace and mercy on the believer, until it passes into the day with the break of dawn. It is also the night when the sphere of angels descends into the lower realm of human creation under the command of their Lord. This night therefore recalls for humankind a moment (waqt) of ecstatic intimacy between the Lord and His prophet when the uncreated words of God were revealed to him, piercing through Divine time into temporal time. Special cycles of prayer, meditation and recitation are offered on such ‘nights’ to extract maximum benefits from such periods of Divine blessedness. Maneri specified that 12 cycles of night-prayer are offered on the Night of Power. There remains a dispute as to the exact day of the month, among the 21st, 23rd, 25th, 27th and 29th of Ramadan. For Maneri, the uncertainty is on purpose so that people do not focus their energy and prayers on that particular night only. However the common opinion is in favour of the 27th (Jackson 1986: 122, 157–58, 160). According to Maneri, the most difficult night for a dead person is the first one, for which it is necessary to offer some special prayers and charity in order to make it easier for the deceased (Jackson 198: 89). *** Day of Heavenly Ascension (Miraj): Sufis draw their inspiration for Divine adoration and unity from the life of Prophet Muhammad – the Perfect Man (insan e kamil) and exemplar. Muhammad’s night journey, the Miraj, on the 27th of Rabi al Awwal, a special night for all believers when he ascended through the spheres of the heavens and the earth, has left behind an enduring model of spiritual ascension 116

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and Divine proximity aspired to by every mystic through their own spiritual strivings. According to Hadith traditions, at the end of his ascension, the Prophet was left in the company of the Lord, where even the Archangel Gabriel had no access. Hadith traditions record the Prophet to have described the experience as ‘I have a time with God in which no created being has access, not even Gabriel who is pure spirit.’ The example of the Prophet’s time (waqt) with God inspired Sufis to describe their own experience of the moment (waqt) when their presence in the Divine light breaks through created time (zaman) and gets annihilated in Eternal time (dahr). No other created being has a presence in that moment when the Sufi directly beholds his Lord as the highest spiritual experience, much like the ascension of Muhammad when he was taken out of linear created time into an Eternal Now in the presence of God (Schimmel 2011: 219–20). Muhammad’s miraj became the model for Sufis and devotees to live for that moment (waqt) of Divine adoration, a span of created time (zaman) that could stretch for days, months, years and millennia. Traditions explain this idea of timelessness, or the impossible idea of rolling up long time into extremely short spans, during such moments of Divine proximity through an anecdote in which the Prophet returned from his heavenly journey to find his bed still warm and the water pitcher that had tumbled over when he left still leaking water. All this when the miraj consisted of multiple stages spread across far-flung geographical spaces between Medina and Jerusalem and heavenly stations. Muhammad’s experience of timelessness in the Divine realm can perhaps be explained through a Quranic verse that give us a glimpse of heavenly time – ‘Unto Him ascend the angels and the Spirit on a day whose measure is fifty thousand years’ (70:4). Though variedly interpreted, this verse provides the believer with a sense of mathematical equivalence between created and Divine time. Other Forms of Time: According to Maneri, in the Madin, Sufis divide 24 hours of a day through various activities beginning with prayer and ending with sleep. Eight hours are kept aside for sleep, spread over two hours during the day and six hours at night. In the morning, two hours of rest should be taken after the midmorning meal but before noon. Sufis are expected to wake up before noon and be ready for the noon prayer. At night, a Sufi should sleep only after completion of the night prayer. Maneri further adds that the hours meant for rest are fixed and cannot be altered (Jackson 2012: 210–11). It is interesting to note that the moment in life which erases all distance between temporal and eternal time is death, when the soul escapes the boundaries of worldly time into the eternal. Sufis like Maneri rightfully observed that moments like death arrive at no particular time and cause no delay or postponement even for Prophets (Jackson 1986: 3–4). For Maneri, it is a moment that is loved by the Lovers of God, for it holds within itself the promise of Divine countenance that a Sufi yearns for in this material world. With death, he is relieved from the prison of temporal time, passing into eternal time so that ‘he might rise to the abode near his Friend’ (Jackson 1980: 407–08). *** 117

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In the previous discussion, the idea of time in Sufism can be seen as complex and multidimensional. The understanding of time that Sufis from South Asia put forward is not the only model to be engaged with, but is interestingly an outcome of an objective calendar time combined with a personalized subjective experience gathered at various moments, eventually completing the approach. This can be understood more clearly through the mind of Ibn al Arabi, the Spanish mystic philosopher, for whom the measurement of time through various units can be infinite in nature. What is counted as units, for Arabi, has a measured existence (like day and night) and is composed of a series of atoms arranged in a particular sequence. These atoms constitute the moment (waqt) of the present and the now. Sufis seek to seize the moment, striving to touch God’s eternal time (dahr) where the past and the future have no existence (Bowering 2012: 109–23). Recent scholarship have argued that ‘Islamic materials contain complex and varied constructions of time,’ thus arguing against a model that follows a single timeline beginning from the time of the Prophet and continuing through periodizations into recent times (Bashir 2014: 520). The idea of chronology and temporality in Islam should thus be understood, perhaps, through Kosselleck’s ‘theory of overlapping temporal structures and layers’ that rest on a theoretical platform of ‘multiple temporalities.’ Rather than understanding time packaged into successively neat periods, the idea is to engage with the idea of multiplicity, that on many occasions overlap with each other (Jordheim 2012: 157). Thus, in the Islamic tradition, rather than picking up an existing idea of time in dahr and equating it with God, concepts of eternity and Divine were combined, as God in Islam came forth to identify Himself as time. However, God being eternal, His sense of time too is beginningless and endless. Everything else that was created thereafter came under the idea of temporal time, with a clear beginning and an end. Islamic mystics, or Sufis, successfully broke through the veil that separated the idea of created time (zaman) from eternal time (dahr), leading to experiences of Divine countenance and spiritual union. Sufis, while introducing us to an important approach to understanding time in Islam, themselves conceptualized it through a diverse set of spiritual practices and devotional exercises. These practices, when studied carefully, reject any singular notion of time, constituting within its observance a connection between Divinely ordained eternal and temporal time. While Sufis recognized the concept of 24 hours as a daily cycle of time, spiritual practices were organized keeping in mind the movement of planetary spheres – the sun and the moon. While fasting lasted from sunrise to sunset, prayers and meditation followed night-time or the rising and setting of the moon. A linear recognition of time among Sufis was accepted when degrees and patterns of fasting were calculated through multiples of a day or 24 hours, in weeks and months. In Islam, the time for prayer and worship is Divinely controlled, following the movement of the sun, but takes place in created time through human worship, as well as in eternal time through angelic worship of the same Lord. The movement 118

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of the Divinely controlled planetary body, the sun, leads to determining of time for various forms of prayer – the mandatory ones, those missed during the daytime, extra prayers for night-time and supererogatory prayers. Performance of Sufi rituals like zikr and sama carry Sufis closer towards moments when they aspire to break through created time into touching eternal time through the state of Divine countenance that descends upon them. Observing special zikr litanies in auspicious months like Ramadan and Muharram attracts Divine blessings, while occasional incidents of death in sama result in Sufis escaping from created time into eternal time, unlike moments of Divine witnessing, when Sufis return to created time after momentarily touching Divine time. As a result, spiritual union is achieved in a moment of time (waqt) which is recognized by the Sufis as the ‘present moment,’ separated from the past gone by and the unknown future. It is in this waqt that Sufis are bestowed with a state of Unity in the presence of the Lord. Drawing from this Divine experience, enlightened Sufis are therefore called ‘the son of the present moment’ (ibn al-waqt), where ‘he gives himself completely to the moment and receives what God sends down to him without reflecting about present, past and future.’ Sufis like Nasiruddin Mahmud remarked that such moments (waqt) with the Divine appear as a boon for Sufis, not certain whether he can return to that station later (Nizami 1959: 138). In other words, the moment of Divine experience is an atomic sense of time, severed from the past and the future, providing a third dimension to eternal time and created time. Being submerged in the Divine light, the Sufi is one, even if briefly, with eternal time (dahr) of the Lord, freed from a temporal measurement of time (zaman). The most significant representation of created time in Islam overlapping with eternal time can be seen through advanced spiritual practices like the 40-day retreat that is supposed to bless the Sufi with Divine witnessing. Special days of the week, like Thursday evening and Friday, along with special nights in a calendar year, attempt to bridge eternal time and created time. The most important of such nights is the Night of Muhammad’s Ascension that represents an experience in timelessness moving into heavenly time. Moments when Sufis can roll up incredible lengths of time are recognized as miracles and acts of spiritual accomplishment, understood through terms like ‘Revelation’ and ‘Witnessing.’ Such experiences when the ideas of eternal and created time collapse cannot be measured in temporal timeframes, as there are no appointed moments for receiving such experiences. Sufis, therefore, bring forth a fascinating dimension to the idea of time by firmly resting it on the idea of multiplicity rather than proposing an alternate timescale. I would argue that it is due to a particular set of exercises that Sufis pursue in accordance with the body of spiritual knowledge in which they are trained that take them repeatedly towards an alarming proximity to Divine time that on many occasions are experienced by these masters, even if momentarily. Undeniable recorded evidence of such experiences from the life of Muhammad, though of a much higher spiritual scale, have created what I prefer to call a genealogy of 119

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experiencing eternal time which Sufis attach themselves to, through varied spiritual practices, all the while physically locating oneself in created time.

Notes 1 This article has benefitted from the suggestions by Suleman Siddiqi, Carl Ernst, Shonaleeka Kaul and Scott Kugle. The author thanks them all. 2 Hadith qudsi is a saying (hadith) of the Prophet Muhammad in which the meaning is revealed by God and the phrasing is formulated by the Prophet. Unlike the sayings of the Prophet, this chain of transmission is traced back directly to God instead of ending with the Prophet. See Oxford Islamic Studies Online, www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/ opr/t125/e760, accessed on June 18, 2019. 3 Creation of humanity in the Sufi imaginary is located in the pre-temporal moment when ‘the Lord took from the Children of Adam from their loins their progeny and made them bear witness concerning themselves, “Am I not your Lord?” they said “Yes, we bear witness” – lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection “Truly of this we were heedless.”’ (Quran 7:172) The Day of Alastu is recollected by Sufis through the sealing of the primordial covenant (mithaq), signifying a moment before time when no veil existed between God and humanity.

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Schimmel, Annemarie, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1985 Schimmel, Annemarie, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 2011 Sijzi, Amir Hasan, Fawaid al Fuad, translated by Bruce Lawrence, Morals for the Heart, Paulist Press, New York, 1992 Watt, Montgomery, ‘Dahr’, in The Encyclopedia of Islam, New ed., Vol. 2, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991

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10 CONCENTRIC WORLDS Space and time in the Pratyabhijñā school and the Abhinavabhāratī Radhika Koul

So long as we do not go outside the domain of consciousness, the notion of time is relatively clear. – Henri Poincaré (1898)

What is the shape of time? What is the relationship between time and subject? From Latin absolotus, “freed, unrestricted,” absolute time and space are concepts formally theorized in European early modernity.1 Linear and unidirectional, untethered to the particularities of phenomena, the concept of absolute time became salient with the work of Isaac Newton, who was among the first to formulate it in a scholium to his Principia (1687): “Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and by its own nature, flows uniformly on, without regard to anything external. . . . All motions can be accelerated and retarded. But the flow of absolute time cannot be changed” (2004: 64). Removed from the particular debates of natural philosophy, Romantic idealists gave teleological agency to this time: the present became a laboratory for the imperial domination of land, language and thought. It was in these decades of the 19th century that the study of science, history, art and literature were established in the Western academy. Despite decades of postcolonial critique, it is still ingrained in academese to use categories to describe the intellectual, social and artistic phenomena of the Indian subcontinent that are in fact germane to the advent of European modernity. In this broader process, it is hard to underestimate the role played by implicit notions of time – a time that seemingly grounds all action, all phenomena. Many before me have discussed how early modern European conceptions of space and time would resurface, via Hume and Kant, in the thought of a long line of physicists – Ernst Mach, Joseph Petzold and, eventually, Albert Einstein.2 By the 20th century, Newton’s physics is entirely superseded: Einstein suspected that Newton’s absolute time had no physical meaning. Against the stark backdrop of Newton’s declarations of absoluteness in both time and space, Einstein’s theories DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-10 122

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of relativity shook the foundations not just of physics but also of philosophy, most critically to our understanding of time. The Encyclopædia Britannica clarifies just what the theory of general relativity did to ideas such as simultaneity and duration: The theory of relativity implies that simultaneity is relative to a frame of axes. If one frame of axes is moving relative to another, then events that are simultaneous relative to the first are not simultaneous relative to the second, and vice versa. (Smart et al. 2017) In other words, space and time were co-referential: the idea of an absolute time was a construct because no object can escape its own locality. The French mathematician Henri Poincaré, writing in the wake of these theories in the early 20th century, makes this same point: The simultaneity of two events, or the order of their succession, the equality of two durations, are to be so defined that the enunciation of the natural laws may be as simple as possible. In other words, all these rules, all these definitions are only the fruit of an unconscious opportunism. (1898: 13)3 Where does such a radical disavowal of absoluteness leave time? Some 900 years before Einstein, Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta in Kashmir explored how space and time had the same metaphysical basis, succession, krama, as they together defined a reference frame. Most significantly for the purposes of our discussion, Utpala and Abhinava do not consider space and time an objective framework for phenomena to manifest in. In the philosophical school of the Pratyabhijñā (“Recognition”), space and time, deśa and kāla, become the defining coordinates of a subjective ontology.4 In this chapter, I consider the implications of taking their ideas on time in the different but complementary discourses of aesthetics and metaphysics out of the locked chest of historicism, itself a consequence of certain provincial and colonial conceptions of time. In traditional systems of scholarship in India, there was an emphasis on synthesis and harmonization: commentators looked at older works with the desire to bring disparate ideas together and construct a systematic whole. Given the number of disparate thought systems that a polymath like Abhinavagupta brought together under his pen, there has been in the last few years remarkable progress in illuminating distinct threads of his oeuvre. Many studies on Abhinavagupta’s aesthetics emphasize the metaphysical foundations of his conception of aesthetic delight, rasa, but fewer focus on what Navjivan Rastogi would call his “aestheticisation of metaphysics,” constituting pervasive associations between two schools of thought usually studied in mutual exclusion today (see Rastogi 2016). In exploring only a few points of radical cohesion between Abhinavagupta’s commentaries

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on Utpaladeva’s Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā, the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī and on Bharata’s Nātyaśāstra, the Abhinavabhāratī, this chapter considers how space and time define the interlacing, concentric contours of the phenomenal and aesthetic worlds in Abhinava’s thought, both of which cohere only with respect to a particular subjective centre. *** Kriyā and Kāla : The school of the Pratyabhijñā (“Recognition”) develops an idea of action that is not based on an objective framework of time, an idea that might seem counter-intuitive to many. Founded by Utpaladeva in the first half of the 10th century in Kashmir, the Pratyabhijñā school has a multi-layered textual structure.5 The seminal section on time, space and action in the Pratyabhijñā texts is the Kriyādhikāra (“the Section on Action”). A key premise of this monistic system is the identity between the self of each being and that of the Lord, Śiva. Śiva is not a passive, external, anthropomorphic entity outside of us but the active, free consciousness in us, pure and unveiled. Let us begin with a look at the benedictory verse, the maṇgala śloka, of this section in Abhinava’s commentary, the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī (“Reflection on the Recognition of the Lord”): vitataviśadasvātmādarśe svaśaktirasojjvalām prakaṭayati yo matṛsvānśaprameyataṭadvaye bahutarabhavadbhaṅgībhūmim kriyāsaritam parām prakaṭayatu naḥ śrīmāngaurīpatiḥ sa ṛtam param | | May the glorious husband of Gaurī, who manifests the full river of the power of action, which is the basis of countless waves of time between two banks, the individual subjects and objects, through his Free Will, on the extended and clear mirror of his own self, reveal to us the highest truth. (Bhāskarī III, 119)6 Already in this benedictory verse, one sees the major philosophical axes of this system: Śiva, the self-luminous, the absolute truth, manifests in the clear and extended mirror of his self the river of action, which flows between subjects and objects, all parts of his own self.7 Note here that this river of action is the ground, the bhūmi, for the manifold waves of time, here expressed with the verbal stem, bhavat, to become. With the same compound, Abhinava’s poetic figuration, śleṣa, allows for a very different reading: this river of action is akin to Śiva’s bhūmi, theatrical role, consisting of unlimited modes of acting, which is radiant with the rasa of his own śakti, power. Rasa is the seminal word that Pandey’s translation of the verse elides: the essence, at once fluid, aesthetic and joyful, that grounds Śiva’s being. After the dense ornamentation of these three lines, the benediction of the last line hits straight and clear: may the same Śiva who manifests this multifarious river of action in the mirror of his self manifest to us the absolute truth. The suggestive 124

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power with which the verse yields the final emphasis on naḥ, us, reflects the system’s systemic investment in subjectivity. Contrary to a common contemporary assumption of time as the basis of action, Abhinava here suggests that the active power of the Lord, his kriyāśakti, is what in fact grounds time. In order to clarify just what he means by this active power, Abhinava defines this concept in clear terms at the end of this first section, or āhnika: svarūpabhedena deśakramakāriṇākriyābhedena ca kālakramasaṃpādakena upalakṣito yo vijñatuḥ śūnyādeḥ pramātuḥ bhedo’nyonyaṃ jñeyacca evaṃ ghaṭādeḥ parasparaṃ jñātuśca sa bhagavatā avabhāsyate, yat tadavabhāsanaṃ sā īśiturapi nirmāṇaśaktiḥ kriyāśaktiḥ | (Vimarśinī ad 2.1.8) The act of manifesting mutual difference of the limited subjects such as Sūnya etc., characterised by spatial and temporal succession, from one another as well as from the objects of perception; and of the external objects from one another as also from the limited subjects, is the power of Creation, i.e. Action, of the Lord. (Bhāskarī III, 126) The “active” part of this power of action does not properly consist of things like motion but in the differentiation of subjects and insentient objects with respect to each other. This very variegation of worldly phenomena into subjectivities and the objects of their perception is the defining feature of Śiva’s creative, active power. The critical aspect of this creative manifestation is not in that of objects and motions but in the intersubjective gap alongside the gap between subjects and objects. It is key for our discussion, then, that time as we know it is intertwined with the limited subjectivity of sentient creatures in the Pratyabhijñā school, not prior to it. There is no objective framework for time that is absolute from subjective perception except for Śiva, the absolute reality itself, who is also known as Mahākāla, “time as such.”8 We are therefore left with a conception of time that is fundamentally associated with our own consciousness of it. What, then, is the essential nature of time? Like space, time is characterized by its involvement in succession, kramatva.9 Utpala provides examples of natural movements, like those of the sun, the seasons and the circadian rhythms of plants, which best demonstrate succession as they are delimited by nature; that is, there is a regularity in their succession.10 These phenomena can therefore be used as references to measure phenomena that are not limited by nature, such as reading, walking and so on. In the midst of emphasizing a conception of time that depends on references to other phenomena, which is still how we measure time, Abhinavagupta remarks that even simultaneity can be considered relative and hence successive: “even the simultaneity of two manifestations is successive with respect to other manifestations.”11 How does succession come about? The answer 125

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depends on the Pratyabhijñā theory of manifestations, ābhāsavāda, a glimpse of which we see in this verse: mūrtivaicitryato deśakramamābhāsayatyasau kriyāvaicitryanirbhāsātkālakramamapīśvaraḥ | (IPK 2.1.5) The Lord makes the spatial succession manifest by means of variety of manifestations of bodies and the temporal succession by means of manifestation of the variety [of forms] in action. Note again the inverse order of emphasis: temporal and spatial succession do not ground the manifestation of bodies and action. They derive both from the activity of manifestation, nirbhāsāt, of the Lord and ultimately from his free will, svātantraya. When Utpala and Abhinava assert that the Lord manifests, they are talking squarely about the work of consciousness experienced by us in our everyday lives. This is especially the case for space and time, which, far from being fundamental entities, exist only at the phenomenal level. As succession fundamentally defines both time and space in the Pratyabhijñā school, one might ask what exactly is the true nature of succession. In response to this question, Utpala identifies its key feature as differentiation, bhedana: nanu evaṃ kālo nāma bhāvasvabhāva eva astu, kā asau kālaśaktiḥ ityāśaṅkyāha: kramo bhedāśrayo bhedo’pyābhāsasadasattvataḥ ābhāsasadasattve tu citrābhāsakṛtaḥ prabhoḥ | (IPK 2.1.4) But let the so called time be the very nature of the thing. What is this power of time? To this he replies: Succession depends upon difference, the latter on the existence of a certain manifestation and non-existence of another, and the existence of some manifestation and non-existence of another are brought about by the Lord Himself, who manifests the variety of manifestations. (Bhāskarī III, 122) This kārikā is at the centre of Utpala and Abhinava’s theory of manifestations: ābhāsavāda. Note here the teleology of this explanation: time is fundamentally successive, and succession depends on difference, that is, the difference between a phenomenon X and a phenomenon Y based on which particular manifestation exists and which does not. Another way of putting it, bearing in mind the etymology of the word ābhāsa, is which manifestation shines, or appears, and which does not. This latter process depends ultimately on the absolute agency, the complete freedom of Śiva, his svātantraya. 126

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It is critical to note here that what Utpala and Abhinava mean by the working of Śiva is not an entity external to us, our minds, our consciousnesses. The very cornerstone of their philosophy rests on an identity between one’s consciousness and the Lord, and we see here how Abhinava explicates this relationship: tau ca ābhāsānāṃ bhāvābhāvau na bāhyahetukṛtau iti vistārya upapāditam, iti ya eva saṃvitsvabhāva ātmā svapnasaṃkalpādau ābhāsavaicitryanirmāṇe prabhuḥ prabhaviṣṇuḥ iti svasaṃviditastata eva tau bhavataḥ (Vimarśinī ad 2.1.4) And the existence and the non-existence of manifestations (ābhāsas) are not caused by any external cause. This has already been explained in detail. Therefore, that very self, whose essential nature is consciousness and which is known through one’s own experience as capable of bringing about various manifestations in dreams, imagination, et cetera, is the cause of these manifestations also. (Bhāskarī III, 122) The agency that is ascribed to the Lord is therefore a reference to how the consciousness of the individual subject is able to bring about worldly phenomena independently of external cause (see Ratié 2010). It is hard to overestimate the importance of this statement: the reality of external perception is something grounded only in the ability of the consciousness to manifest them, and time and space are only aspects of this projection. But why would one believe such an outrageous idea? Fully aware of the objection, Abhinava adds the key modifier – as one would in one’s “dreams, imagination, et cetera,” svapnasaṃkalpādau. In associating this process of phenomenal projection with imagining and dreaming, Abhinava makes an analogy that is key for our understanding of how space and time behave in the realms of both metaphysics and aesthetics. Just as the self needs no external cause or object to dream and imagine, so is the perception of the world only an act of imagined reality. Abhinava can therefore reiterate very clearly that time and space are not features of external objects but of the subject’s own position: iti pramātrāśrayo bhāveṣvapi kramo na yuktaḥ, na ca pramātṛnirapekṣeṣvapi teṣu svātmani dūratvādi bhūtatvādi vā (Vimarśinī ad 2.1.5) Therefore, the temporal and spatial orders, which are recognised to be dependent upon the subject, cannot either be spoken of in reference to external objects. For, distance and priority etc. do not belong to them independently of the subject. (Bhāskarī III, 123) 127

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Succession, both temporal and spatial, is not an attribute of external phenomena but only makes sense with respect to the subject. Just as one does while dreaming or imagining things, it is the subject who projects space and time onto the world. A useful metaphor for understanding the relationship between the limited self and the phenomenal world is therefore spectatorship. *** Dreamatization & Metadrama: svapnāyita & nāṭyāyita: It should not surprise us, then, that Abhinavagupta employs a similar analogy with dreaming and imagining in an entirely different place in his oeuvre, in the midst of theorizing metadrama, which I would define as the kind of drama that betrays consciousness of the work of drama itself. We find this discourse in Abhinavagupta’s commentary on Bharatamuni’s Nāṭyaśāstra (Treatise on Drama), where time and space are once again associated with specific subjectivities. In this encyclopaedic commentary, the Abhinavabhārati, Abhinavagupta elaborates on a concept of metatheatre that he inherits from Bharata. Though Bharata mentions the word nāṭyāyita, literally “drama-ness,” its theorization is mainly Abhinava’s.12 Abhinava analogizes nāṭyāyita explicitly with svapnāyita, meta-dreaming: Tasmāditthametad vyākhyātavyam – iha yadā svapno’pyekaghano dṛśyate tanmadhyata eva ca kiṁciddṛśyamānaḥ parasya svapna eva jāgradrūpatāmāpādite “svapno’yaṃ mayā dṛṣṭa” iti varṇyate, tadā jāgradapekṣayāsvapnavyavahāra, na tatra pāramārthikaṃityaupacārikaṃ tadapekṣaṃ tasya svapnatvamiti tasya svapnāyitavyavaharo dṛṣṭaḥ | evamihāpi nāṭya ekaghanasvabhāve hi sthite tatraivāsatyanāṭyānupraveśān nāṭyapātreṣu sāmājikībhūteṣu tadapekṣayā yadanyaṃ nāṭyam tasya tadapekṣayā nāṭyarūpatvaṃ pāramārthikamiti nāṭyāyitam ucyate |13 The explanation goes like this: when a dream (svapna) is experienced as one solid, continuous, organic whole, and something perceived – which is but another dream occurring in the middle of that dream – seems to assume the appearance of wakefulness, and [the dreamer] says [to himself] “I have been dreaming,” then, with regard to that spectator-like dreamer, his [imagined] wakefulness is [but] the stuff of dreams; there is nothing ultimately real about that “wakefulness;” only in an analogical sense is it wakefulness, and, as such, it is [still] a state of dreaming, and, as a consequence, it is to be regarded as an instance of meta-dreaming. (svapnāyita) So also in [the realm of] drama (nāṭya), when a play [i.e. the play proper] is one solid, continuous, organic whole, and when, in the middle of that play proper, a “make-believe play” (asatya-nāṭaka, i.e. a playwithin-the-play) appears, and [some of] the characters of the play proper become spectators [of the play-within-the-play], then, with respect to those spectators [of the play-within-the-play], the make-believe play is 128

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regarded as assuming the appearance of a real play, and, as such, it is called metadrama. (nāṭyāyita) Crucial to Abhinava’s conception of metadrama, then, is spectatorship: the conscious, subjective avowal of having apprehended a different order of reality. One’s subjective reflection of the sort “I saw this dream” or “I saw this play,” as well as the perception that the phenomenon being watched is “really of the form of a play” (nāṭyarūpatvam paramārthikam), is a defining characteristic of metadrama for Abhinava. The subjective consciousness of spectatorship, even if crystallized only in retrospect, predicates the whole theatrical phenomenon. The comparison between dreaming and performing is not based on the illusory character of these two phenomena, then, but on the very fact that they are both self-projected. Abhinava explicitly theorizes the possibility of multiple levels and varying kinds of theatricality: he specifies that these layers could be of limited permeation (parimita-vyāpi) or of the form of multiple “emboxments” (bahutara-vyāpi).14 A dyad of acting and spectating that does not necessarily entail a well-defined “play” within the play is still metadramatic for Abhinava. On the other hand, just as one could, theoretically at least, “wake up” from a dream, this being just a dreamed-state of waking, and “wake up” from it again only to find that one had only been dreaming within a dream; drama too could have multiple, ensconced levels of spectatorship and play-acting. Abhinava describes it as the kind of metadrama that is comparable to “multi-wombed meta-dreaming” (bahu-garbha-svapnāyita). How does time figure in this theorization of metadrama? In defining the layers of theatrical reality, Abhinava actually employs language similar to that of the Pratyabhijñā texts: that of a phenomenal space characterized by a particular space-time that is projected outwards by the spectator. The explanation comes about as the analogy between metadreams and metadrama is not entirely symmetric. A play-within-a-play is further embedded than the play proper, but the state of dreaming that is “wakeful” with respect to the original dream is relatively less embedded. How, then, does one reconcile this difference? The analogy holds only when one’s focus lies squarely on the state of mind of the spectator. Both in the case of a play-within-the-play as well as in the case of the wakeful state within a dream, the subject spectates on nothing but spectatorship per se. Anticipating a hypothetical counter-argument to his theory wherein the concept of metadrama might be an unnecessary theorization, with both the play-within-the-play and the play proper being considered part of the play proper, Abhinava responds thus in the same section: Nanūbhayamapi nāṭyaṃ kasmānna bhavati natveka-ghanatā ityāś ankyāha kāla-prakarṣa-lakṣaṇād-hetoranyonya-bhinna-kālatvāt | kathaṃ tatraikaghanatā yukteti bhāvaḥ | (Abhinavabhāratī ad Nāṭyaśāstra 22.48) 129

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If that were done, then there would be a lack of one solid continuity (ekaghanatā) that is required of a simple, single-level drama. Because the two layers are characterized by two different time-duration [levels], how then can one speak of a simple, single-level drama? This reference to the work of time in characterizing different layers of theatrical reality is critical to how we understand time in general for both Abhinava’s metaphysics as well as his aesthetics. Abhinava insists that metatheatre cannot be flattened out to be “single-level drama” because of this characteristic function of time in metatheatre: kāla-prakarśa-lakṣaṇād-hetoranyonya-bhinna-kālatvāt. Each level of dramatization is characterized by its own time, duration, space and extension, even though that of the play-within-the-play is by definition embedded within the play proper and hence always related to it. Abhinava uses the word satya-nāṭaka, literally “true play,” for the play proper and asatya-nāṭaka, literally “false play,” for the play-within-the-play, only to insinuate the “falseness” of the internal play with respect to the reality encapsulated in the space-time coordinates of the play proper. In emphasizing this relational nature of dramatic orders, Abhinava also hints at a relational concept of reality itself, expanded fully in the ontic hierarchy of Trika Śaivism. Perceived reality and theatricality might not be “true” and “fake,” respectively, but just different levels of reality bound by their own space-time coordinates – note the explicitness with which the concepts of space and time are employed to limit each level of the play. Since the phenomenal world that we see around is itself the creation of the Lord’s māyā, we continually inhabit a theatrum mundi.15 Is this whole world as illusory as dreams and drama, then? To clarify the interstices between different orders of reality in Abhinava’s metaphysics, I return to how he theorizes illusion in the first place and what that means for time. Utpaladeva distinguishes between the state of dreaming and the wakeful state in the following way: manomātrapathe’py akṣaviṣayatvena vibhramāt spaṣṭāvabhāsā bhāvānāṃ sṛṣṭiḥ svapnapadaṃ matam / sarvākṣagocaratvena yā tu bāhyatayā sthirā sṛṣṭiḥ sādhāraṇī sarvapramātṝṇāṃ sa jāgaraḥ / (IPK 3.2.16–17) The state of dreaming is that in which [phenomenal] objects, though they are objects to the mind only, are so created that they shine as clearly as they do when they are related to the external senses, due to an illusion. And the wakeful state of the subjects is that in which the creation [of phenomenal objects] is common to all subjects, has stability and is external inasmuch as it is the object of all senses. (Bhāskarī III, 213) 130

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I would like to highlight three aspects of this analysis that I find relevant for a conception of time inspired by Abhinava: first, that the apprehension of phenomenal reality as well as that of dreams is creative in nature. Second, that the creative apprehension in question is located squarely in the subject – māyā is not a general state of illusion but acts as each subject thinks, knows and acts. Third, that the real can be distinguished from the illusory by its common and stable functionality to all subjects, not just one. Insofar as time characterizes the real-imagined world of the limited subject, time too can therefore be creative, subjective and functional. With such a dynamic conception of the world, how then does one avoid conflating “truth” and “error”? Keenly aware of this objection, Utpala and Abhinava discuss in much detail their understanding of the phenomenal world as a creation of māyā vis-à-vis plain error. Putting forth a counter-argument (pūrvapakśa) from a hypothetical opponent to their philosophical school, Abhinava poses the following question to Utpala: If the phenomenal world is created by māyā, how then does one distinguish between optical illusions that are demonstrably false, such as a double moon, and the fact that the Earth has a single moon? Is everything in the phenomenal world false, then? Utpala reiterates in the negative: kriyāsaṃbandhasāmānyadravyadikkālabuddhayaḥ satyāḥ sthairyopayogābhyāmekānekāśrayā matāḥ / (IPK, 2.2.1) The ideas of action, relation, universal, substance, place and time are not erroneous because they persist (i.e. because they are not proven to be false at any later stage) as also because they have functional capacity i.e. they serve our purpose in everyday life. (Bhāskarī III, 128) Stability and functionality are the two main criteria for ascertaining the reality of a phenomenon. If something breaks this state of common and stable functionality, one has to contend with a different layer of relative reality, with its own spacetime framework. I find it extremely pertinent, and not at all surprising, then, that to describe the metaphysical status of error in the world, Abhinava resorts to the same metaphor of the dream within a dream: māyāpadaṃ hi sarvaṃ bhrāntiḥ, tatrāpi tu svapne svapna iva gaṇḍe sphoṭa iva apareyaṃ bhrāntirucyate, anuvṛttyucitasyāpi vimarśasyāshtairyāt (Vimarśinī ad 2.3.13) All that shines in the condition of Māyā is illusory. And the erroneous knowledge in the sphere of Māyā is an error on error. It is like a dream in dream or a boil on the cheek; because there is a break in the continuity of that determinate knowledge, the continuity of which should not be broken. (Bhāskarī III, 157–58) 131

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The almost too-physical image of the boil on the cheek represents the protrusion and eruption of a layer of phenomena whose space-time coordinates do not cohere with the underlying world, however illusory it might be on its own. Hence the same metaphor of the dream within the dream that we find in Abhinava’s theory of nāṭyāyita. The benedictory verses of the Abhinavabhāratī emphasize the same conflation of the aesthetic and metaphysical that we find in Abhinava’s language of dreams and theatre.16 yas tanmayān hṛdayasaṃvadanakrameṇa drāk citraśaktigaṇabhūmivibhāgabhāgī harṣollasatparavikārajuṣah karoti vandetamāṃ tam aham indukalāvataṃsam | | I heartily salute the one, whose diadem is the digit of the moon, who, by partaking the element ‘Earth’ through the series of his multifarious powers by means of consent with the heart, abruptly acts so that those who take delight in the transformations [of the world], consisting of [his] beaming of joy, [his devotees or the spectators] may obtain identification [with him or the common world, which is nothing but him, or the theatrical representation].17 In this theatrum mundi, Śiva, the Lord is not the spectator but the actor himself, adorned beautifully by the moon. As Cuneo points out in his annotated translation, there is a complex śleṣa throughout this verse, as the word bhūmi, here translated as “Earth,” refers not only to the base ontic level in Trika metaphysics but also to the assortment of theatrical roles Śiva plays in this world, no doubt referring to the theory of manifestations. We had noted the double use of this very word in the benedictory verse of the Vimarśinī. To complement this role of Śiva as a multifarious actor, we have a parallel transformation of the figure of the spectator. Indeed, the key poetic and philosophical move in this verse is the identity sought between the spectator and the devotee, the relisher of dramatic art and the seeker of spiritual union. We know this to be the case because the same identification, tanmayatva, through the consent of the heart, hṛdayasaṃvadana, underlies the processes of spiritual self-realization and aesthetic relishing, rasa.18 The fact that Abhinava uses the language of dramatics in his metaphysics and the language of metaphysics in his dramatics only demonstrates how aesthetically imbued his conception of the world itself is, time and space both included, and how critical the phenomenon of subjective spectatorship is not just for his aesthetics but also for his epistemology and ontology. How, then, do we imagine a world containing so many individual consciousnesses of time and space within, each governed by its own subjectivity? Poincaré, writing in the wake of developments in physics at the turn of the 20th century, considered a similar question:

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We should first ask ourselves how one could have had the idea of putting into the same frame so many worlds impenetrable to each other. We should like to represent to ourselves the external universe and only by so doing could we feel that we understood it. We know we never can attain this representation: our weakness is too great. But at least we desire the ability to conceive an infinite intelligence for which this representation would be possible, a sort of great consciousness which should see all, and which should classify all in its time, as we classify, in our time, the little we see. (1898: 7)19 Like Utpala and Abhinava, Poincaré is concerned with the issue of time relative to subjectivity. He tries to imagine a supra-entity that incorporates these worlds but admits then a Kantian handicap – our weakness is too great, he says. For Utpala and Abhinava, on the other hand, the ultimate consciousness of Śiva, the truly absolute, is entirely beyond successive time: sakramatvaṃ ca laukikyāḥ kriyāyāḥ kālaśaktitaḥ ghaṭate na tu śāśvatyāḥ prābhavyāḥ syāt prabhor iva | (IPK 2.1.2) Succession pertains to ordinary action, which is dependent on the power of Time; it is not, however, admissible for divine eternal action, as it is not for the Lord.20 At the same time, the Pratyabhijñā system boldly emphasizes an identity between the self and the Lord and the workings of an individual’s consciousness with that of the dynamic consciousness of Śiva: “The world shines in you,” (tvayi prakāśarupē viśvam iti) says Abhinava to the reader at a particularly important juncture in the Vimarśinī (2.3.17). To conclude, then, we can imagine the shape of time to include innumerable interlacing circles signifying the limited consciousnesses of particular subjects. These limited subjects can each identify with the ultimate dynamic consciousness of Śiva, who is untouched by the succession that characterizes time and space, to yield subjectivities that are not individually siloed but able to commune with each other. We are all spectators, then, in this theatre of consciousnesses. But when do we, too, like Śiva, transcend time? When we are sahṛdayas, the ideal spectators who are not just connoisseurs but those able to feel, to give the “consent of their heart,” to experience aesthetic bliss, rasa.21 Abhinava states that by being such a participant in the process of identification (tanmayibhavana), the rasika is able to transcend the space-time of both the actor and the character. Only then can this ideal spectator experience the supra-natural bliss of being, which in its beauty blooms like a magic flower and gives one the smallest peek into the ultimate reality of Śiva – beyond space, beyond time.

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NOTES 1 See the first chapter of Ariew (1999) for a rundown of how some discussions of absoluteness feature in the scholasticism of the late Middle Ages in Europe. 2 For Ernst Mach’s reading of Newton and its influence on his philosophy of time, see Mach 1883: 271–86. See also Ryckman (2005) for a discussion of Kant’s influence on Einstein. 3 Translation from Halsted (1958: 13). 4 Whereas neither Utpala nor Abhinava is a physicist per se, my purpose in bringing them “into the conversation” to inflect our understanding of time is only partly similar to Popper’s, who reads Berkeley as a predecessor to Mach even though the latter was convinced that the philosophy of physics he taught for years was “new and revolutionary” (Popper 1972: 32). 5 Utpaladeva wrote a series of verses, the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā (“Verses in Recognition of the Lord,” hence IPK), or just the kārikā, followed by a relatively short auto-commentary, known as the vṛtti. He then wrote a discursive commentary on the short commentary called the vivṛtti or the ṭīkā. This is the work that is lost to us, except for fragments found in the work of Abhinavagupta, his grand-disciple, who provides a philosophical expansion of Utpala’s verses in his own commentary on the kārikā, the vimarśinī, “for those of reduced understanding” as well as in a greater commentary, his magnum opus in philosophy, the vivṛtvimarśinī. 6 All translations of Abhinavagupta’s Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī are from K.C. Pandey’s three-volume Bhāskarī, first published in 1938, with minor edits by me. I use the “Vimarśinī ad IPK verse number” format to refer to the Sanskrit text and the page numbers of the Bhāskarī for the English translation. 7 This expression of the relationship between Śiva and the world is why the school of the Pratyabhijñā is known as pratibimbavāda, or the theory of reflection, though as we see even in this verse, this mirror of consciousness does not depend on light and objects external to itself. See Ratié (2017) for a magisterial treatment of why and how Utpala and Abhinava use this metaphor. 8 See Rastogi’s (forthcoming) work on Abhinavagupta and the esoteric ethos of kālikrama, which also elaborates on the nexus between krama, succession, and kāla, time. Only the complete absence of succession makes for a conception of absolute time for Abhinava. 9 Poincaré had a similar idea of temporal succession, complicated by a Humean understanding of the relation between succession and causality: Behold then the rule we follow, and the only one we can follow: when a phenomenon appears to us as the cause of another, we regard it as anterior. It is therefore by cause that we define time; but most often, when two facts appear to us bound by a constant relation, how do we recognize which is the cause and which the effect? We assume that the anterior fact, the antecedent, is the cause of the other, of the consequent. It is then by time that we define cause. How save ourselves from this petitio principii? (Poincaré 1898: 8–9, trans. Halsted 1958: 32). 10 kālaḥ sūryādisaṃcāras tattatpuṣpādijanma vā//śītoṣṇe vātha tallakṣyaḥ krama eva sa tattvataḥ (IPK II.1.3). 11 yaugapadyamapi dvayorābhāsayoḥ aparābhāsāpekṣayā krama eva (Vimarśinī ad 2.1.3). 12 This is a trend one finds in Abhinava’s work across genre: in the fields of poetics, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology and spiritual mysticism, Abhinava is rarely the originator of a particular theory but the commentator par excellence who gives deep philosophical foundations to the theory in question. 13 Abhinavabhāratī ad Nāṭyaśāstra 22.48. All translations from this section on metadrama are from Lockwood and Bhat, 1995, pp. 41–48, with minor edits by me. 14 The terms used to distinguish this limited permeation of theatricality and a significant permeation are parimita-vyāpi and bahutara-vyāpi respectively.

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15 The concept of māyā in Indian philosophy is at least as old as the Rig Veda. One must note that every philosophical school in India develops its own idiosyncratic understanding of māyā, as does the Pratyabhijñā. It theorizes māyā as an aspect of Śiva’s own power, or śakti, which has the total freedom to manifest as well as hide itself. 16 See Lyne Bansat-Boudon’s “The World on Show, or Sensibility in Disguise: Philosophical and Aesthetic Issues in a Stanza by Abhinavagupta” in Around Abhinavagupta: Aspects of the Intellectual History of Kashmir from the Ninth to the Eleventh Century, eds. Eli Franco, Isabelle Ratié. 17 Text and translation from Daniele Cuneo’s Emotions without Desire: An Interpretive Appraisal of Abhinavagupta’s Rasa Theory. Annotated Translation of the First, Sixth and Seventh Chapter of Abhinavagupta’s Abhinavabhāratī, PhD dissertation, Sapienza Università di Roma. 18 Abhinava defines the ideal spectator in terms of the same process: “Spectators are those who do savour rasa, as they have become deprived of aversion and attachment, detached in their conduct and endowed with the faculty of identification, given that the mirror of their heart has been polished.” vigatarāgadveṣāḥ madhyasthavṛttayaḥ nirmalahṛdayamukure sati tanmayībhavanayogyatopetā āhitarasāsvādāḥ sāmājikā iti / (ABh ad NS, avataranikā ad I 19–127, p. 15). 19 Translation from Halsted (1958: 31). 20 Translation from Raffaelle Torella’s critical edition and translation of the IPK, p. 153. 21 For a definition of the sahṛdaya, the ideal spectator, see Locana ad Dhvanyāloka (Ingalls et al. 1990) 1.5: sa eva tathābhūtavibhāvatadutthākrandādyanubhāvacarvaṇ ayā hṛdayasaṃvādatanmayībhavanakramād āsvādyamānatāṃ pratipannaḥ.

References Sanskrit [Bhāskarī] Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī of Abhinavagupta, Doctrine of Divine Recognition, vols. I & II: Sanskrit text with the Commentary Bhāskarī, edited by K. A. S. Iyer and K. C. Pandey [Allahabad,1938, 1950], vol. III: English translation by K. C. Pandey [Allahabad, 1938, 1950, 1954], Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 1986. [ĪPK] Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā of Utpaladeva with the Author’s Vṛtti, critical edition and annotated translation by R. Torella, [Roma, 1994], Corrected Edition, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi, 2002. Nāṭya Śāstram (with the Abhinavabhāratī by Abhinavagupta), 4 vols, ed. Ram Krishna Kavi, Baroda, 1926, 1934, 1954, 1964.

English Ariew, Roger. Descartes and the Last Scholastics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Cuneo, Daniele. Emotions without Desire: An Interpretive Appraisal of Abhinavagupta’s Rasa Theory. Annotated Translation of the First, Sixth and Seventh Chapter of Abhinavagupta’s Abhinavabhāratī, PhD Dissertation, Sapienza Università di Roma, 2008. Franco, Eli, and Ratié, Isabelle, eds. Around Abhinavagupta: Aspects of the Intellectual History of Kashmir from the Ninth to the Eleventh Century. Berlin: Lit – Leipziger Studien Zu Kultur Und Geschichte Sud-und-Zentralasiens, 2016. Ingalls, D.H.H., Masson, J.M., and Patwardhan, M.V. The Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana, with the Locana of Abhinavagupta, Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, Harvard Oriental Series 49, 1990. Lockwood, Michael, and Bhat, A.V. Metatheater and Sanskrit Drama. Chennai: Tambaram Research Associates, 1995.

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Mach, Ernst. The Science of Mechanics (1883), based on the translation of T.J. McCormack of the 6th German edition (1912). La Salle, IL: The Open Court Co., 1960, pp. 271–86. Newton, Isaac. Newton: Philosophical Writings, edited by Andrew Janiak. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Poincaré, J.H. “The Measure of Time” [“La mesure du temps”, Revue de Métaphysique et Morale Vol. 6, 1898, 371–84], as translated by G. B. Halsted, in Poincaré, The Value of Science, 1913. Reprint ed. New York, Dover Publishers, 1958; pp. 26–36. Popper, Karl. “A Note on Berkeley as Precursor to Mach,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4, No. 13, 1972, pp. 26–36. Rastogi, Navjivan. “Utpala’s Insights into Aesthetics and His Impact on Abhinavagupta’s Aesthetic Speculation,” in Utpaladeva, Philosopher of Recognition, ed. Raffaele Torella and Bettina Bäumer. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 2016. Rastogi, Navjivan. Kālikrama and Abhinavagupta: The Epistemological Ethos of a Tantric Tradition, forthcoming. Ratié, Isabelle. “‘A Five-Trunked, Four-Tusked Elephant Is Running in the Sky’: How Free Is Imagination According to Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta?” Asiatische Studien/ Etudes Asiatiques, Vol. 64, No. 2, 2010, pp. 341–85. Ratié, Isabelle. “An Indian Debate on Optical Reflections and Its Metaphysical Implications: Śaiva Nondualism and the Mirror of Consciousness,” in Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics, ed. J. Tuske. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Smart, John Jamieson Carswell, Markowitz, William, and Toynbee, Arnold Joseph. “Time”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 April 2020, https://www.britannica.com/science/ time. Accessed 22 May 2017.

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11 FROM CORPORAL TIME TO COGNITIVE TIME Kannada word-scape in transition, 10th to 12th century Manu V. Devadevan

Between the mid-10th century and late 12th century, the production of kāvya in Kannada developed into a formidable tradition that drew its models from the works of Paṃpa, who was to earn recognition by the 13th century as the first poet (ādikavi) in the language (on Paṃpa, see Thimmappayya 1977; Kalburgi 2010a). Paṃpa’s was a court-sponsored model of poetry, drawing extensively upon the Kavirājamārgaṃ, a work on poetics composed in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa court of Amōghavarṣa I in the preceding century and recognized today as the oldest surviving literary text in Kannada. In the course of its evolution, the model produced such works as Candrarāja’s Madanatilakaṃ, a text on erotics, and Āṇḍayya’s Kabbigara Kāva, a piece of erotic poetry that claimed distinction as a work that refrained from the use of Sanskrit words. Paṃpa’s model met with serious challenge when the composition of Śaiva devotional songs, the vacanas, that had commenced in the 11th century on a small scale snowballed into a powerful mode of expression in the third quarter of the 12th century. These were also the years that witnessed the breakup of that paragon of monarchic power that had held sway over large parts of Deccan for nearly two centuries, the Kalyāṇa Cāḷukya state. The vacanas changed the world of letters in historically decisive ways, but they didn’t claim recognition as kāvyas and were not identified as works of literature until the 20th century. The break in kāvya conventions came with Harihara and his nephew Rāghavāṅka in the last quarter of the 12th century. The duo moved away from existing forms of court poetry and composed hagiographic kāvyas on the lives of the Śaiva saints from the Kannada-, Tamil- and Telugu-speaking regions. With the wide-ranging innovations that Harihara and Rāghavāṅka brought into effect, the model Paṃpa had pioneered began to lose its appeal. The early 13thcentury poet Janna, who was part of the Hoysaḷa court, was the last major literary figure to work with the old model, although a few less accomplished poets continued to keep the model alive. DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-11 137

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In the following pages, I will explore the two kāvyas that Paṃpa composed, the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ and the Ādipurāṇaṃ, to understand why they became the source for a powerful convention that lasted for over two and a half centuries. I will then examine the vacanas of two prominent 12th-century Śaiva saints, Allama Prabhu and Basava, to identify the character of the challenge that the world finding expression in them posed to the world of court poetry, precipitating in the process a new convention in literature that Harihara and Rāghavāṅka would launch. The discussion centres on the manner in which time was imagined in Paṃpa and how the vacanas reject it to provide a forceful alternative. Briefly put, I will argue that time in Paṃpa had its source in action that breeds karma and precipitates rasa. Vehemently opposed to this mode of representation, the vacanas imagined time as a product of recognition. The shift from Paṃpa to the vacanas was in this sense a shift from a corporal to a cognitive understanding of time. Paṃpa was a court poet who had the Vēmulavāḍa Cāḷukya chief, Arikēsari II, for a patron. The patron was a tributary of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa rulers, Gōvinda IV, Amōghavarṣa III and Kṛṣṇa III. He wielded enormous influence and was one of the most powerful rulers in the Kannada and Telugu countries during the ten-odd years between the demise of Indra III (929) and the ascension of Kṛṣṇa III (939). Arikēsari II contracted matrimonial alliances with the Rāṣṭrakūṭas and played an important role in ousting Gōvinda IV to bring Amōghavarṣa III to power in 936. Our poet completed the Ādipurāṇaṃ in the year Plava that fell in Śaka 863 (941 CE, Ibid.). The date of the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ is not recorded. The Ādipurāṇaṃ is the earlier of the two and finds mention in the latter. So far as we can assess, it is reasonable to trace the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ to a date not later than 945. The Ādipurāṇaṃ is an abridged Kannada rendition of the Sanskrit Pūrvapurāṇa of Jinasēna II. It recounts the life-cycles (bhava) of Ādinātha, the first Jaina Tīrthaṅkara, and also tells the story of the famous rivalry between his sons, Bharata and Bāhubali. The text remains faithful to its source, with few digressions from the narrative contours that Jinasēna II had laid out. The Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, on the other hand, is a retelling of the Mahābhārata with Arjuna as hero. It carries strong influences of Bhāravi’s Kirātārjunīya and, to a limited extent, Kālidāsa’s Raghuvaṃśa. A political project through and through, it was in effect a praśastī writ large. In a Sanskrit ślōka towards the end of the text, the poet calls his work samara-ślāghya-praśasti-kramaḥ, a laudable praśastī of his patron’s military exploits (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ 14.28). Paṃpa’s innovation involved grafting the image of his patron onto the figure of the hero of the kāvya to produce a narrative that is putatively a simultaneous account of the exploits of Arjuna as well as of Arikēsari II. The form that Paṃpa chose for both works was the caṃpū, in which verses were regularly interspersed with prose passages. The Vikramārjunavijayaṃ and the Ādipurāṇaṃ differed from each other in their approaches to the problem of human existence. The former, drawn from the itihāsa-purāṇa traditions, was a text of world conquest and the latter, based on Jaina legends, an ode, as it were, to the ethic of renunciation. Paṃpa was conscious of this difference, which he identified as a difference between the worldly (laukika) 138

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and the transcendental (āgamika). This was essentially a difference between the here and the hereafter and, as we shall soon see, between being inside of time and being beyond time. In doing so, however, he scarcely felt the ‘inner conflict of tradition’ that a 20th-century Indologist was to sense in the apparent contradiction between the householder and renouncer ethics. This was made possible by the fact that conquest formed the ideational basis in both cases, the worldliness in the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ being a conquest of the other and the renunciation in the Ādipurāṇaṃ driven by the resolve to be a conqueror (jina) of the self. The Vikramārjunavijayaṃ has little to tell us of the life of Arikēsari II. It is, prima facie, a retelling of the Mahābhārata. There are no comparisons of Arjuna’s exploits and fortunes in the epic with any known battles that Arikēsari II had fought or the travails that the latter is likely to have gone through as an ambitious warlord. We get snippets of Arikēsari’s life in the first chapter. Here, we are introduced to Arikēsari as a protégé of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Indra III. Arikēsari is said to have had for his cradle the shoulders of Indra III, who Paṃpa tells us is none other than Indra the deity (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ 1.44), who in the Mahābhārata was Arjuna’s father. The comparison that Paṃpa makes is for the most part by way of using the patron’s name, Arikēsari (a lion to the enemies), and his title, Guṇārṇava (an ocean of virtue), to signify Arjuna and the name Arjuna in turn as a synonym for Arikēsari. The first chapter ends with the birth of Arjuna in Śatasṛṅga and the name-giving rite that follows, in which members of Indra’s court (dēvasabhe) and Brahma’s court (brahmasabhe) confer upon him 108 names, which mostly turn out to be the titles that Arikēsari II and his contemporaries had (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ 1.148 prose). The emphasis of the text is not on a narrative comparison between the exploits of Arjuna and Arikēsari but on the ideal of valour and the end it serves, victory, which both Arjuna and Arikēsari embody in equal measure. In this sense, human existence (in its limited sense as fortitude and victory) in Paṃpa’s scheme of things is a recursive affair, an ideational continuity that has its beginnings at the time of the origin of the world. Time moves in the form of a spiralling linearity, the linearity in it involving movement without progress or change. The recursive quality of human existence, which for that reason does not call for the production of narratives other than the ones that the itihāsa-purāṇa traditions already embody in exemplifying terms, is hinted at towards the end of each chapter of the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, where Paṃpa presents the narrative as originating at the beginning of time. In Paṃpa’s understanding, the Mahābhārata is a Jaina epic, which is primordial, as it is born of the holy offering from the feet of the Jina (jina-pādāmbhōja-vara-prasādōtpanna, Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, maṅgaḷa in each chapter). It embodies the kernel of human existence (which in this case centres on the ideal of victory) and can be presented as a narrative to extol his patron’s exploits as well. Emphasis on the recursive character of time occurs at various places in the text in different forms. In the ninth chapter, for instance, when Virāṭarāja learns of the true identity of the Pāṇḍava siblings living in disguise, he urges Yudhiṣṭhira to accept his daughter Uttara as bride for Arjuna’s son, Abhimanyu. Yudhiṣṭhira 139

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agrees to the proposal, declaring that their relationship was not created now but has come down without break from the time of Brahma, the Hiraṇyagarbha. A primordial relationship that began at the commencement of the world is only being reenacted now. Virāṭa, his head wearing the jewelled crown bowed, entreated the son of Dharma: You have kindly arrived here, not staying in any other country. My kingship is honoured. It’ll be a thing of great prosperity to marry My famed daughter, Uttara, to your Abhimanyu. Agree to it. Son of King Yama, with your kindness, I’ll come to prevail. At this, he made Virāṭa rejoice, saying, “I agree. The alliance between you and I is not made now. It has come without break from Brahma, the Hiraṇyagarbha. Where will I find an alliance that compares with yours?” (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 9.6–9.7 prose) Paṃpa constructs a tightly woven narrative imbued with action after action in quick succession. Moments of serious reflections or thoughtful deliberations blend into the narrative structure in a manner that promotes the larger objective of producing a praśasti of valour. They do not have an autonomy or an existence as ethical subtexts. Lengthy scenes occur at several places in the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, which, given our present purpose, we must overlook. It must be noted, though, that these concerns spring from the ideal of valour and not the ideal of reason, a proposition that is of consequence to our argument. Paṃpa produces a text that involves little deviation from the kernel of the story he has set out to narrate. In this respect, he is closer to Kālidāsa than to his model, Bhāravi, although Paṃpa is ill at ease with the simplicity in storytelling that Kālidāsa revels in. A modern reader cannot but be struck by the skilful storytelling that keeps him or her on the edge of his or her seat. Paṃpa is a master of descriptive (varṇaka) poetry, but it is in the Ādipurāṇaṃ that we meet with prolonged descriptive sections. The descriptive parts of the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ have a brevity which ensures that there is no rupture in storytelling. The flow and integrity of the narrative notwithstanding, it is paradoxical that the Vikramārjunaviyaṃ was historically successful because of the perpetual breaches in narration that Paṃpa caused in the text. This might appear as an overstatement, but we are faced with the unavoidable fact that there is no narration in the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ. The text drives the attention of the reader – or the listener in a royal court where it might have been recited – away from the story in every one of its lines with its textured vocabulary and a specific form of sonic orchestration. There is a story, and the story is masterfully told, but the poet’s lexical and sonic choices are directed towards serving ends other than storytelling, for Paṃpa’s objective is to produce an extended piece of panegyric, not to tell us a story that we all know only too well. 140

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It is with the question of Paṃpa’s lexical preferences and the end they serve that the poet’s vision of time and its embedding in the text is intertwined. A characteristic feature of the Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages used in India is their ability to produce lengthy compounds (samāsa) of an agglutinative nature. Another vital feature is their openness to alliteration (prāsa), not necessarily in the form of the first-, second- or end-syllable rhyme. The use of alliteration on a vast, if not profligate, scale is not dependent on the occurrence of involved compound constructions, but the compounds facilitate their widespread use. Paṃpa’s is a royal praśasti, and, as such, its success is at the mercy of the extent to which it can evoke the mood or emotion associated with valour, which in Bharata’s scheme of rasa would be called vīra. I propose that alliteration, combined with the right choice of words in terms of meaning, is arguably the most effective – and in lesser hands, a rather mechanical – way of producing a rasa. In the Kannada texts, rasa is not so much product of the force of narration in terms of the intensity of plot constructions or the depths of the characters’ mind that the poet succeeds in descending into as it is of the outcome of the force that these aspects of narration gain through the sonic orchestration of signifiers. In this scheme of things, signifiers only bring to mind the signified. The affects of the signified are propelled into being only by the sonic force of the respective signifiers. This little-appreciated aspect of poetics is central to Paṃpa’s text, as it is through the sonic play of alliteration that he suffuses the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ with vīra rasa. The letters that Paṃpa picks up for repetition embody utsāha, the abiding emotion (sthāyībhāva) behind vīra. Consider this line: antu nabhōbhāgadim ̣bhūmibhāgakkiḻidu tanna munde nindaravinda bāndhavanaṃ nōḍi nōḍi . . . (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 1.91 prose) As a piece of prose, this line is not constrained by demands made of it in a metre. Yet an expression that could have been āgasadiṃ bhūmigiḻidu (descended from the sky to earth) with the charm of its simplicity is rendered as nabhōbhāgadiṃ bhūmibhāgakkiḻidu, with the phoneme bh used four times and the word bhāga twice. Corresponding to the four uses of bh are the four uses of nd in the later part of the line. The repetition of the word nōḍi (having seen) at the end has a similar sonic implication. The repetition is not necessary, but the retroflex in it, ḍ, produces an effect, particularly because in the verse that immediately follows this line, ḍ occurs as the letter for the second syllable rhyme, besides figuring two times more in the third line. koḍagūsutanada bhayadiṃ naḍuguva kannikeya bemara nīrgaḷa ponaloḻkuḍiyaloḍagūḍe gaṅgeya maḍu karegaṇmidudu nāṇa peṃpēṃ piridō (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 1.92) 141

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The previous example is verse 92 from the first chapter. Two instances picked randomly, verse 92 of Chapter 4 and verse 92 of Chapter 11, should highlight the quality of lexical choices that Paṃpa makes. basanadoḍaṃbaḍiṅgalasi māṇdoḍamintidanīvenendanaṃ pusidoḍamāsedōṟi bagedōṟadoḍaṃ neradirdoḍaṃ sagāṭisadoḍamāyamuṃ calamumuḷḷoḍe pēsadavaḷge mattamāṭisuvude mattamañjuvude mattamaḻalvude mattamīvude (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 4.92) Let us ignore the second syllable rhyme and look at other instances of alliteration. In the last two lines are four compounds, each beginning with mattam and ending with -vude, and in the second line are three compounds containing -doḍaṃ, which also figures twice in the first line and once in the third. The rhythm that the alliterations create is not synchronized with the rhythm of the metre that might then either induce a measure of monotony in their occurrence or produce a musical effect (laya) that is liable to be hijacked to evoke a diversity of moods. The regularity causing the rhythm here depends on specific ways of recitation meant to generate a specific mood. In the other example, the deployment of the word krama grabs attention to the detriment of the meaning of the verse: kramaṃ keyyoḷalendu puṭṭi raṇadoḷ sāvannegaṃ māṇdoḍakramamakkuṃ kramamakkumē kramamanānēgeydupeṃ vikramaṃ kramamāṃ vikramadātaneṃ kramada mātantirke māṇirdoḍāṃ kramakendirdene biṭṭoḍaṃ biḍadoḍaṃ bīḻkoṇḍeniṃ māṇbenē (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 11.92) The tedium of krama is broken by a new set of alliteration in the last line in the three words, where the phonemes b and ḍ figure. The alliterations produce a sonic rhythm that overrides the metrical rhythm even as it complements the latter in making the meaning of the ravishing signifiers affective. This is Paṃpa’s method of generating the vīra rasa effect. Occurring in every verse and sections of prose that he composes, the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ comes to be permeated by sonic rhythms devised to evoke the mood of valour. This mood encrusts the otherwise dexterously crafted narrative to make it less a narrative text and more a pretext for generating the affect of valour. There is, then, no love, sorrow, compassion or other such moods in the text, only valorous love, valorous sorrow, valorous compassion and suchlike. Here, for instance, is what transpires between Kunti and Mādri upon the death of Pāṇḍu: “What if you’ve left me and the children I raised In the forest here, without a word? I’ll come after you. King, how’ll I live without you?” 142

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Thought she (Kunti), and said, “Accept the children and raise them. Give me my beloved. I’ll become what he has become,” to which Mādri replied: “My beloved has granted me The turn today. Will I in any way let go off My turn for you? Take my children in your care. Don’t blabber anything else.” (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 2.25–26) This is a wife grieving at the loss of her husband, vintage Paṃpa style. The poet seems to be telling us that no grief is grief unless it is stroked or ruffled by a breeze of valour. Valour is not limited in our poet’s aesthetic to the choice of theme or the methods devised in relation to form. It is represented as the raison d’être of human existence. Here is the scene where Paraśurāma approaches Bhīṣma with the request to accept Aṃba as his wife: Learning of Paraśurāma arrival in Nāgapura (Hastinapura), Gāṅgēya arrived, offered him waters in vessels of gold and silver, bowed to him And asked, “What command do I have?” “Listen to my command. Accept this girl. Set up a green roof and a wedding stage, and take her. If your mind disagrees to accept her, give up the devotion that he is my teacher And prepare for battle. I give you either of the two for you to choose. What do you say?” As he heard these words of Paraśurāma, Gāṅgēya said, “I have no relationship with any woman other than the glory of victory and the glory of fame. Why do you ask this of me?” (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 1.77 prose-1.78 prose) This is more than a representation of Bhīṣma’s vow of celibacy that the context warrants. It is the poet’s approach to a specific form of life that the courtly world of the 10th century chooses to champion. A few lines before this exchange between Paraśurāma and Bhīṣma, we see Aṃba meeting Sālvala, who had been betrothed to her in childhood. She appeals to him to accept her as his bride. Sālvala refuses, saying: “The son of the river carried you away, Driving me away in the combat. I’ve become a woman too. Girl, how can women unite with women?” (Vikramārjunavijayaṃ, 1.76) Paṃpa was perhaps the first known poet in South Asia to exploit the effect of sound through and through in a full-length kāvya, as if with a resolve, without always confining it to yamaka, of which he was a master. This is not to claim that he was 143

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the first to use the effect of sound, per se, for generating rasa. Bhāravi and Māgha had already shown the effectiveness of this technique, and rhetoricians had recognized the rasa-producing powers of sound before Paṃpa’s time. In the 9th-century Dhvanyālōka, Ānandavardhana had observed that letters such as śa and ṣa, when combined with ra and ḍha, inhibited the production of śṛṅgāra (Dhvanyālōka 3.3), stating in the auto-commentary thereof that these letters are better suited for bhībatsa. The Dhvanyālōka was borrowing from the near-contemporary Kāvyālaṅ kārasārasaṅgraha of Udbhaṭa, which had identified the pairing of śa and ṣa with ra and the retroflex consonants (ṭa, ṭha, ḍa, ḍha, ṇa) as harsh (paruṣā), implying thereby, although not stating it expressly as the Dhvanyālōka was to do, that these are ill suited for śṛṅgāra (Kāvyālaṅkārasārasaṅgraha 1.4). Paṃpa seems to have been familiar with Ānandavardhana’s work, for dhvani is already (mis-)quoted in the 9th-century Kavirājamārgaṃ. There were occasions when he went a step further than what Ānandavardhana had prescribed and tried to eschew śa, ṣa and ḍha altogether, retaining ra alone, as the phonology of the Dravidian language in which he wrote forced this liquid upon his śṛṅgāra verses. Consider the three consecutive śṛṅgāra verses from the legend of Lalitāṅga in the Ādipurāṇa, where not only are the pairings of śa or ṣa with ra or ḍha missing but also never once are śa, ṣa, and ḍha used in describing śṛṅgāra. maṇimayadīptiyoḷ pudidu pajjaḷipujjvaḷakānti gāḍiyoḷ peṇedu viḷāsadoḷ toḍardu keytamalaṃpane māḍe nōḍi kaṇtaṇivinamappi tōḷ taṇiviniṃ suratāmṛtasēveyoḷ manaṃ taṇivinamādalaṃpu mige bhōgisidaṃ suralōkasaukhyamaṃ poḷeveḷemiñcinantesedu gāḍiyoḷondida tanna rūpu kaṇgoḷe saviyaṃ puduṅgoḷipa citrarataṅgaḷ bhaṅgigaḷ manaṅgoḷe nage savvavaṃ binadamębivaṟiṃ lalitāṅganaṃ manaṃgoḷisuvariccikārtanada lalleya saggada dēsekārtiyar kaḻiye viḷāsamaṃ paḍeda rāgada bhōgadalaṃpiniṃpu poṃpuḻiyene tadvimānadoḷ puṭṭida tannaya dēviyar palar paḻivinamāyurabdhiyoḷanukramadiṃ paḷitōpamaṅgaḷayduḻivinamuṇḍanā tridaśalōkasukhāmṛtamaṃ surōttamaṃ (Ādipurāṇaṃ 2.70–72) Only in the last line does śa appear, after the flow of śṛṅgāra is broken in the previous compound. Whether there were similar directions for vīra in the alaṅkāraśāstra texts or Paṃpa was formulating prescriptions of his own are questions that we might not be able to answer. What can be said with conviction is that the production of vīra rasa in the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ depended on a wellconceived scheme of alliteration. We must now move from the method that Paṃpa adopted to evoke a rasa to an assessment of the relationship that rasa had with time in this poet’s scheme of things. This brings us to the Ādipurāṇaṃ, where the connection between the two 144

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emerges with a great measure of clarity. What might have to be inferred from the Vikramārjunavijayaṃ with some flights of fantasy is laid out in the Ādipurāṇaṃ, almost like a declaration. In Paṃpa’s aesthetic, a mood, emotion or feeling – or whatever one understands by rasa – is a faculty of the mind that has its source in action. Love, valour, fury and compassion are all products of actions that vary in their form and intention. And, proud champion of Jainism that he was, our poet was given to the belief that action is bound to breed karma. An emotion such as śṛṅgāra or vīra is then a metaphor for as well as a vivid representation of karma. In the Ādipurāṇaṃ, karma forms the link between rasa and time. The continuity of a rasa, which in the early chapters of the text is śṛṅgāra, means that action in the form of lovemaking has kept karma alive. In the Jaina scheme of things, the liberation that comes from kēvalajñāna is the end that a being must aspire to, which is possible only when the karma that has piled up in the course of several births is exhausted. The state of liberation is beyond time and therefore beyond narration. What Paṃpa narrates in the Ādipurāṇaṃ is the travails of Ādinātha, the first Tīrthaṅkara, across several births to live rather recursive lives of accumulating karma through acts of lust before outliving them to empty himself of karma. Time (kāla) is one of the five forms (pañcavidhaṃ) of worldliness (saṃsāra), the other four being matter (dravya), place (kṣētra), being (bhava) and imagination (bhāva) (Ādipurāṇaṃ 10.63 prose). Ādinātha’s evolution into a Tīrthaṅkara involves transcending time, but the time that he eventually succeeds in transcending is a seamless continuity of karma through acts of lovemaking in life after life, the śṛṅgāra rasa being its aesthetic index and alliteration, the method for generating this index. The end of action in its form as lovemaking, and the resultant end of śṛṅgāra rasa, is also the end of time. With the end of time, word or sound with its alliterative power to produce rasa must also come to an end. Paṃpa invokes the Jaina scheme of the progressive utsarpiṇi and the regressive avasarpiṇi cycles of time (Ādipurāṇaṃ 6.48 prose, passim), but unlike the yuga scheme described in the Mahābhārata, which the poet acknowledges, a being in utsarpiṇi and avasarpiṇi is not completely at the mercy of time. Individuals are endowed with a great degree of volition, which drives them into action and perpetuates the recursive cycles of karma and breeds the rasa that represents them. It is the same volition that enables them to transcend, through the right knowledge, the sphere of action and the karma that springs from it to attain liberation. The Vikramārjunavijayaṃ is the story of the former, a laukika account of revelling in the action that precipitates vīra rasa, the Ādipurāṇaṃ a saga of the latter, an āgamika account of the erasure of karma, action and rasa. Kannada poets who came after Paṃpa and followed his model turned out to be mostly Jainas. They explored the relationship between time, action, and rasa with varying degrees of success for close to two and a half centuries. In the meantime, in the later half of the 11th century, Śaiva saints in Karnataka began to construct another aesthetic involving a different understanding of human existence. Mādāra Cannayya, Ḍōhara Kakkayya and Dēvara Dāsimayya were among the pioneers 145

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whose works have survived. They composed short poems in a genre that was perhaps originally identified as song, gītaṃ, but later conferred recognition as vacana. Saints such as Ādayya and Sakalēśa Mādarasa carried the practice forward in subsequent decades. It is beyond us to ascertain how the idea of time in these pioneers differed from the one in Paṃpa. There isn’t much concerning time in the surviving corpus, and what little exists is not easy to decipher. Look, for instance, at this vacana, where Dēvara Dāsimayya makes a difference between the past and the present. The people of those times Are children of the first nature, The people of these times, Children of the nature of life. My sole refuge Is the foot of those That know the difference between The first nature and the nature of life, Rāmanātha. (Basavaraju 2012: No. 93) The production of vacanas burgeoned into a vibrant activity between 1150 and 1175 when more than 100 saints, both men and women, composed poems in great numbers. The saints belonged to diverse backgrounds. Some of them, such as Allama Prabhu, Akkamahādēvi and Siddharāma, were renouncers; most others practiced sainthood even as they followed worldly pursuits without taking to renunciation. Among the saints were brāhmaṇas, royal officials, soldiers and people from a wide range of artisanal and service groups, including groups considered untouchable. They inaugurated new literary and religious conventions in the Kannada-speaking region. The literary aesthetic that Paṃpa had inaugurated in the mid-10th century began to crumble under the weight of the vacanas, and with Harihara and Rāghavāṅka pioneering new models for kāvyas that were full-length hagiographies of the Śaiva saints, the Jaina model went into oblivion. The Śaivas who participated in the new literary and religious practices came from the Kāḷāmukha and Lakulīśa (Pāśupata) sects, but the most significant among them in terms of numbers and influence were the followers of the Māhēśvara (Śrōtrīya or Śuddhaśaiva, also called simply Śaiva) sect, which was powerful in the Tamil and Telugu countries but marginal in Karnataka. Basava’s 13th-century Telugu hagiographer, Pālkurike Sōmanātha, called them Vīramāhēśvaras. By the 15th-century, the saints had come to be designated as Vīraśaivas (Kalburgi 2010b). The Śaiva saints were heralding a new genre of literary production, a new approach to asceticism, newer ways of engaging with the question of knowledge and a new approach to life that involved a critique of power and the rejection of rituals, temple worship, pilgrimage, priesthood and inequalities based on caste 146

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and gender. These aspects were common to all the saints who composed vacanas between ca. 1050 and 1200, even though the production of vacanas was not a concerted or centrally overseen project. There were, nonetheless, wide divergences not only in points of emphasis but also in objects of concern and frames of references. Existing studies on the vacanas have commented on most of these aspects (Schouten 1995) in spite of their far-from-persuasive appraisal of the historical context (Devadevan 2016: 40–42; 77 passim). What is less appreciated is the fact that the vacanas involved, among other things, an approach to time that was altogether new to the Kannada-speaking region. In one of his vacanas, Allama Prabhu says, In the times when there was no Beginning and base, The times when there was no Pride and bias, Times when there was no Form and formlessness, When there was no Void and non-void, When the moving and the static Weren’t made yet, Goggeśvarā, That was when Your Protégé arose. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 5) Here Allama presents the śaraṇa, literally a protégé of Śiva, not as an individual but as an ideal that is irreducible to a being that has facets of individuality. This is a widely pervasive understanding of śaraṇa as an ideal among the saints, the individual śaraṇas being embodiments of the ideal. As an ideal, it is supra-corporal and therefore metaphysical. In this sense, the śaraṇa is devoid of substance from within and shares no association with substances from without. Appreciating Śiva’s protégés in these terms makes the śaraṇa as an ideal an immanent presence. We could argue that the immanence here does not translate into omnipresence in relation to time, for the śaraṇa is said to have a finite beginning that goes back to a time when beginning and base, pride and bias, form and formlessness, void and non-void and the moving and the static did not exist. We must, however, submit on the basis of another vacana that this is either not the case or that it is a position which Allama rejected later. The devotee has no existence, For he has no birth, No destruction, 147

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For he has no existence. Goggeśvarā, Your Protégé remains eternal, Returning to where he came from. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 428) The ambiguity noticed here with respect to the question of a beginning is not specific to the two vacanas of Allama but characteristic of the larger vacana corpus. There is no ambiguity here, though, because what appears to us ambiguous is true only within a linear frame of time. The śaraṇas did not endorse this linearity, as we shall presently see. Time in Allama is not the measurable or recursive time of the phenomenal world, which he barely recognizes, but a thing that originates in the mind as a moment of recognition. This moment of perception, experience and knowledge, involving a nowness and an immediacy of being and time, is the Śaiva saints’ basis for time. Time can take on a wide range of forms – linear, cyclical, spiral, narrative, creative and so on – all springing from acts of the mind in the nowness of imagination or recognition. In Allama’s understanding, the moment of awareness occurs as the beginning that gives birth to the śaraṇa. The time before beginning that he speaks of is the time that unfurls in the mind, a vertical time of the nowness of temporality and not the horizontal time of the past, the present and the future in an ordered succession. The śaraṇa is a product of this time. The Protégé born in awareness, His forgetting spent – Can his ways be known? Can his movement be known? Goggēśvara, Your Protégés exist Like a child’s dream. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 384) Within the time that has its source in the mind, the śaraṇa has a primacy in its coming into being over everything else that exists. One of Allama’s vacanas seems to suggest that the śaraṇa shares an intrinsic relationship with Śiva. Your bond with the Protégé is Like fire in the stone, Like reflection in the water, Like tree in the seed,

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Like silence in the sound, Goggēśvara (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 1) In effect, then, the śaraṇa is an attribute of Śiva. Allama appears to have moved away from this position later, as in another of his vacana, he declares: Goggēśvara is nowhere Other than in the devotees’ Acts of the mind. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 77) There are several other vacanas in which Allama presents Śiva as an aspect of consciousness or of bhāva (Devadevan 2019), which we have translated as ‘acts of the mind’ but which occurs in different contexts in the vacanas as the expression for conception, imagination, feeling and determination. Few of the saints share Allama’s position that Śiva is a product of bhāva. Yet comparable if not similar sentiments occur even in the most devout of the saints, such as Basava, who observes in a vacana: Will I say the ocean is mighty? It came to rest on the earth. Will I say the earth is mighty? It came to rest on the hood Of the lord of serpents. Will I say the lord of serpents is mighty? It turned into the ring On Pārvati’s little finger. Will I say this Pārvati is mighty? She became half the body of Paramēśvara. Will I say this Paramēśvara is mighty? He came to rest on the last edge Of the mind Of the Protégés Of our Kūḍalasaṅga. (Basavaraju 2017: No. 473) What this vacana shares with the first of Allama’s vacanas we have discussed is the primacy that it accords the śaraṇa over Śiva. At a practical level, the vacanas make a distinction between the śaraṇa and the devotee (bhakta), placing the latter at a lower level in the practitioner’s hierarchy. There are many vacanas, though,

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where this distinction blurs, as bhakta is used as a synonym for the śaraṇa. Basava generally regards himself as a devotee rather than a śaraṇa, but there are times when he seems to fancy himself a śaraṇa scoring over Śiva even in his eternality, which, as it turns out from his oeuvre, is not a sentiment that Basava would otherwise wish to endorse. Before Kāḷi’s skeleton was made, Before the destruction of the three cities, Before Viṣṇu and Brahma were born, Before Uma’s wedding, Before, before before . . . You were ever young then, I, ever old. Great Giver, Kūḍalasaṅgamadēva (Basavaraju 2017: No. 2) In developing the idea of the śaraṇa as an eternal entity, the Śaiva saints also placed this liberated being within time and within the world and not beyond them. This world and the next dwell Where the self resides. The sky, Mēru, and Mandhara dwell Where the self resides. All worlds dwell Where the self resides. The true, the eternal, and the blissful form of Shiva dwells Where the self resides. Beyond the north and the four quarters dwell Where the self resides. The sun, the moon, and the firmament of stars dwell Where the self resides. The distance and the great distance dwell Where the self resides. Goggēśvara-liṅga, with its own ways, dwells Where the self resides. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 370) In this departure from Paṃpa’s understanding, the liberated being has a place within time and within the world even while being untouched by worldliness. There are repeated allusions in Allama to the effect that time springs from the mind. The moment of recognition is the moment when time emerges.

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The form in the mirror has the mirror alone For creation, sustenance and destruction. Why is the nature of the human world Not present there, my friend? What’s the creation, sustenance and destruction In this world, bound to karma, my friend? Look, one’s ways don’t occur in the other. The true devotee in the visible hands of a guru Has creation, sustenance and destruction verily there. What ways of karma is this? Not any other way, It’s the Linga’s way that Goggēśvara made. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 350) It is not easy to characterize in categoric terms this moment of recognition as an aspect of knowledge, awareness or consciousness. The vacanas do not give us a coherent statement with which to reflect upon this question. The moment of recognition is the moment when time flashes forth or reflects in the mind. The mirror is the metaphor here. The reflection in the mirror – the creation, sustenance and destruction of forms seen in it – is an aspect of the mirror. There is a real world, and the reflection, we know, is contingent upon this real world. It is true that the reality of the world in Allama is conceptual and not corporal. It is bhāva that is reflecting bhāva. But the reflection is not an aspect of the real world but of the mirror. Allama declares in so many words that the nature of the real world is not in the mirror. We have here an endorsement of the nowness of existence in terms of bhāva, which rejects karma. The vacanas admit of time as an aspect of the mind in the moment of existence with recognition as its source, just as reflection is in relation to the mirror. There is enough material in the vacanas for us to debate whether the aspect of the mind here is knowledge involving methodical reflections, awareness involving an intuitive understanding of the state of affairs coming from one’s place and experience in the world or consciousness involving unmediated cognition. And there are enough ambiguities in the vacanas to argue in favour of all three positions. What cannot be debated is the understanding of time as a product of bhāva, an act of the mind. The idea of time in the Śaiva saints’ understanding stands in contradistinction to the one in Paṃpa’s Jaina model, where knowledge brings time to an end and transforms the being into an entity beyond time. The here and now of the Śaiva saints was, in this line of thinking, the place and moment for realization and liberation. A being was not condemned to wait until the ceasing of karma and time brought him to an afterworld, without which liberation was not possible in the Jaina imagination. What had to be abjured was worldliness (bhava or saṃsāra), not the world itself. The reflection in the mirror is contingent on the world but remains untouched by it. Of worldliness, here is what Basava has to say:

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My worldliness went To bear the burnt corpse, Wondering, “What has today in store for us! What has tomorrow in store for us!” There’s no revulsion for appearing In many a womb in the past. There’s no mind For liberation in the future. Kūḍalasaṅgamadēva, Here’s māya butchering, Not letting remember Sadāśiva forever. (Basavaraju 2017: No. 9) Elsewhere, he resigns to the inevitability of being in the world: Can I but take birth where you give birth And die where you kill, Master? Can I but remain where you place me? Ho! Ho!! Ho!!! Master, Kūḍalasaṅgamadēva, Say, “He’s mine! He’s mine!” (Basavaraju 2017: No. 39) It is, nevertheless, not a resignation to fate that Basava is invoking in this vacana. For this world does not stand in opposition to the divine world. The mortal world is the maker’s mint, Master. They that are accepted here Are accepted there too, Master. They that aren’t accepted here Aren’t accepted there too, Master, Kūḍalasaṅgamadēva. (Basavaraju 2017: No. 102) Elsewhere, the presence of Śiva’s devotee within time is more emphatically underlined. Don’t say “then,” “now,” and “yet another.” This is the day for the one that says, “Śiva is the refuge.” This is the day for the one that says, “Hara is the refuge.” 152

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This is the day for the one That remembers Kūḍalasaṅga ceaselessly. (Basavaraju 2017: No. 120) Again, Is the divine world different from the mortal world? Within this world are endless worlds again. Śiva’s world is where There’s service for Śiva, My Lord. The divine world is where Śiva’s devotee dwells. The devotee’s courtyard is Vārāṇasī, His body, Kailāsa. This is true, Kūḍalasaṅgamadēva. (Basavaraju 2017: No. 92) Allama, on the other hand, distinguishes the divine world (dēvalōka) and the mortal world (martyalōka) by reserving the latter for the worldly and the former for the divine being. O Man with a body – Instant born And dying in no time – Tell me, When will you be known as god? Tell me, What’s the difference between god And the dying, Were god to die? The divine world is For the gods, The human world For humans. Goggēśvarallayya Has no other world. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 503) There is no physical separation between the divine and the mortal worlds here, as it appears at the outset. It is a conceptual difference springing from the presence or absence of divinity. The sacredness of the śaraṇa makes him or her a being that 153

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dwells in the divine world, which as a conceptual presence arising from the mind is very much a world within time in the way in which the saints imagined it, for time also has its source in the mind. We must then say, going back to the metaphor of the mirror, that the world reflects as divine or mortal based on the manner in which it is conceptualized. Hence it is that the saints insist on the purity (śuddhi) of the bhāva. In rejecting Paṃpa’s Jaina view of action as the source of time and replacing it with the view that time springs from the act of recognition in the mind, the Śaiva saints laid the foundations for a new way of life that crystallized by the 15th century into Vīraśavism. Here, the liberated being is within time and therefore capable of savouring rasa. The action behind rasa does not breed karma, though, for the action unfurls in the mind like the reflection in the mirror. It is not the physical action of the real world, for its physicality does not have the corporality of the real world but has a different nature altogether for which the reflection seen in the mirror serves as a metaphor. Says Basava in a vacana that invokes saṃbhōga śṛṅgāra, where lovemaking is physical as in a piece of reflection, but not corporal: To look at you is endless bliss, To make love with you is bliss supreme. I was looking – The eighty million strands of hair Turned into eyes! Kūḍalasaṅgamadēva, My Lord, Looking at you on and on, There arose in my mind The craving for sex, And my digits sprang into life. (Basavaraju 2017: No. 288) The nowness that the vacanas spoke for was invested with sacredness, because it was a moment in which liberation was possible. It was also the moment in which the liberated śaraṇa lived. This approach to time brought lasting changes to religious traditions in Karnataka. As in the Jaina scheme, the liberated being was a sacred being, but unlike the former, liberation for the Śaiva saints occurred here and now and not upon the cessation of time. The presence of the sacred śaraṇa in the world made the world sacred. What was sacred had to be shorn of pollution. This was an inevitable corollary. And, reasonably enough, the word or the sound, which in Paṃpa’s works conjured up a world of emotions, was in the vacanas the vehicle for transmitting the new knowledge of the sacred that they embodied. There was, in addition to this, a self-representation of the word or the sound as the divine itself, untouched by pollution. Says Allama, 154

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Sound is polluted, they say. Does sound have pollution Beyond one’s suspicion? Does dust ever stick to the wind? Goggēśvara-liṅga Isn’t of this trait, O Saṅgana Basavaṇṇa. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 1018) And again, The spoken word Is the luminous Linga, Voice, Is the supreme core of the self. The palate-lip complex of the Protégés Are beyond sound, atom, and trace. Listen, dear fool, The Protégés of Goggēśvara Are not polluters When they speak. (Hiremath and Sunkapur 1976: No. 1234) Pollution was a repulsive idea for the Śaiva saints. It provoked reactions ranging from disapprovals expressed in the vacanas of several saints to the massfeeding events that Basava organized, in which commensality was the norm. The intensity of this sentiment can hardly be overstated. In their vacanas, over half of the 130-odd saints of the 11th and 12th centuries disavowed pollution in one form or the other. The word sūtaka, pollution, is used in the vacanas only to condemn the idea. It occurs more than 500 times in the extant corpus, of which 41 are in Basava, 50 in Allama, 60 in Dhūḷayya the tanner and 116 in Cannabasava. Other expressions used widely with a reproachful tone include hole, impure, and sūtaki, polluter. The rejection of pollution in the vacanas was of great historical consequence to the Kannada-speaking region. The Vīraśaivas, who inherited the vacanas, disavowed the caste system, which had pollution as one of its bases. They rejected pilgrimage and temple worship, as all places were equally sacred in the order of things that the vacanas represented. As Basava had said, “There’s but one land for the scavenger’s street and the shrine of Śiva” (Basavaraju 2017: No. 474). And they dismissed priesthood, as it was enjoined upon every devotee to perform his or her own worship. 155

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The rejection of caste, pilgrimage, temple worship and priesthood occurred more in words and less in deeds. As with all conventions that come into being when revolutions come to pass, things that the vacanas had rejected came to be practiced with great devotion and much fanfare, even by the saints who claimed the legacies of the 12th-century pioneers. Yet there was one sphere of life where the ideal was honoured in the observance and not in the breach: pollution in women (Devadevan 2020). It is for this reason that Vīraśaiva women in Karnataka have historically not observed pollution during menstruation and childbirth. Nothing can be said of it with certainty for times before the 20th century, but in the last hundred years, menstruating women among the Vīraśaivas have worked at home and in the fields, cooked food for themselves and for others and offered worship, although the ones given to pilgrimage and temple visits refrained from them at such times. The absence of pollution was liberating in its own ways, even if this was not the liberation that the saints spoke of in the 12th century. But then, strange are the ways of time.

References Basavaraju, L. (ed.), 2012 [1970], Dēvara Dāsimayyana Vacanagaḷu (in Kannada), Sapna Book House, Bangalore. ———, 2017 [1952], Basavaṇṇanavara Vacanagaḷu (in Kannada), Geetha Book House, Mysore. Devadevan, Manu V., 2016, A Prehistory of Hinduism, DeGruyter, Warsaw and Berlin. ———, 2019, God Is Dead, There Is No God: The Vachanas of Allama Prabhu, Speaking Tiger, New Delhi. ———, 2020, ‘Caste, Gender and the Landed Patriarchy,’ in The ‘Early Medieval’ Origins of India, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi. Hiremath, R.C. and M.S. Sunkapur (eds), 1976, Vyōmamūruti Allamaprabhudēvara Vacanagaḷu (in Kannada), Kannada Adhyayana Peetha, Karnatak University, Dharwad. Kalburgi, M.M., 2010a, Mārga 1, revised edition (in Kannada), Sapna Book House, Bangalore. ———, 2010b, ‘Karnāṭaka Śuddhaśaiva Mattu Gōlakimaṭha Saṃpradāya,’ (in Kannada), in Marga, vol. 3, Sapna Book House, Bangalore. Schouten, J.P., 1995, Revolution of the Mystics: On the Social Aspects of Vīraśaivism, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi. Thimmappayya, Muliya, 1977, Nāḍōja Paṃpa (in Kannada), second revised edition, edited by M. Keshava Bhat, Geetha Book House, Mysore.

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12 (UN)DOING SPACE AND TIME ‘Doing’ the Rāmcaritmānas Aditya Chaturvedi

śrotā baktā gyānanidhi kathā rām ke gūRha kimi samujhauṅ maiṅ jīv jaḍa kali mala grasit bimūRha Both the listener (śrotā) and speaker (baktā) of the rām kathā are repositories of wisdom. How, then could I, a dull and stupid creature steeped into the impurities of the kali age, expect to understand it? (RCM.I. 30.kha)1

Rāmcaritmāns (Mānas hereafter) is undoubtedly the most popular Rāmāyaṇa in the Hindi belt of north India. Ever since its composition in the 16th century, it has been central to Rām-bhakti traditions. Tulsidas’ prabandha kāvya is considered a fine example of medieval Indian poetry, and the couplet quoted previously captures the complexity of interpreting it. Despite kavi’s denial of the presence of any kāvya-guṇa (poetic-quality) in his composition, it is laced with various meters (doha-caupai being the primary), alaṅkāras and rasas. Mānas’ popularity and its reception as an excellent bhakti kāvya have led to academic engagements with it. Modern scholars of history and literature, however, have treated it as any other text, enquiring into its historical and social contexts and poetic elements. While Ramcaritmānas quite easily opens itself to a ‘modern’ textual analysis, a parallel tradition of scholarship by the bhaktas who regard it as the vāṅmaya svarūpa (form imbued in speech) of Rām provides one with an alternative understanding of the spatio-temporal frameworks within which the Mānas is practiced and transmitted in these traditions. In this chapter, I discuss four ways in which Mānas alters the quotidian spatiotemporal frameworks through: 1) its concept of language, 2) a bicitra (astonishing) narrative structure, 3) its oneness with Rām and 4) its transformative nature. For this analysis, I rely on Mānas Pīyuṣ (MP hereafter), the most extensive compilation of oral and written commentaries on the Mānas, edited by Sri Anajananandan Sharan ji and published by Gita Press. The commentators, whose

DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-12 157

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commentaries he compiled and edited, were Rāmkathā-vācakas (narrators) and sādhakas (spiritual practitioners) of the Mānas and hence provide an emic perspective on it. *** Concept of Language in the Mānas: Tulsidas opens the Mānas praising “the two doers of the cluster of letters – words, meanings, rasas, chandas, and auspiciousness – Vāṇī (the goddess of speech – Sarasvatī) and Vināyaka (Gaṇeśa).”2 While it is customary to begin texts with such ślokas to deities to mark an auspicious beginning for a composition, Tulsidas’ references to Vāṇī and Vināyaka as the cause of the linguistic units – words, meanings, rasas and meters – hints at their special nature as ‘auspicious’ in his text. As mentioned earlier, the Mānas is called the vāṅmaya svarūpa of Rām and hence is considered divine. In the seventh and the last verse of the maṅgalācaraṇa, he says: nānāpurāṇanigamāgamasammataṃ yadrāmāyaṇenigaditaṃ kvacidanyato’pi, svāntaḥasukhāya tulasi raghunāthagāthābhāṣānibandhamatimañjulamātanoti. Trans: The Rāmāyaṇa, in which that which is in agreement with various purāṇas, nigama (Veda), āgamas, has been said; for his own pleasure, Tulsidas, weaves it (Rāmāyaṇa) as nibandha, the charming kathā (story or words) of Raghunātha (Rām) in bhāṣā. Of importance to us in this śloka is the term ‘bhāṣā,’ which is often translated as ‘language.’ In some contexts, ‘bhāṣā’ is used in contrast with Sanskrit to mean the language(s) of the masses, and since Tulsidas composed the Mānas in Awadhi, according to some scholars, bhāṣā signifies that distinction with the Sanskrit language in this verse (Sharan, 1939, 39). A commentary on the verse interpreting ‘bhāṣā’ in its popular meaning suggests that Tulsidas, for his own pleasure, presents the Mānas (created by Śiva) that was ‘duragam’ (difficult to be traversed or known) by the means of speech or language (Sharan, 1939, 43). While this interepreter understands Tulsidas’ act of composition as a translation of one or several kathā(s) from Sanskrit to a language that is spoken and understood, another intepretation of the same verse suggests a pre-lingual or transecendent nature of the Mānas and a more complex and obscure act by the phrase ‘weaving/ spreading in language.’ Through the title of the Ramayana itself, Tulsidas creates a distinct spatiotemporal location for his audience to access the suyaś of Śrī Sītārām, which he claims his Mānas contains. Mānas’ pre-lingual creation by Śiva is asserted by Tulsidas while discussing the christening of this Rāmayaṇa in the caupāīs following the dohā 34 of the Bālakāṇḍa. raci mahes nija mānasa rākhā, pāī susamau sivā san bhāṣā. tāten rāmacaritamānas bar, dhareu nāma hiyan heri haraṣi bar 158

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Trans: having created it (the Rāmāyaṇa), Maheśa (Śiva) kept it in his mānas; finding the auspicous time he narrated it before Śivā. Therefore, pleasing at seeing it in his own heart, Hara (Śiva) named it ‘Rāmacaritamānas.’ The title is a genitive tatpuruṣa compound and can be broken as Śrīrāmasya caritasya mānasaṃ, that is, the mānasa of Śrī Rāma’s carita. ‘Mānas’ here is a śleṣa – it is used once but has a couple of meanings. The term is derived by adding the suffix ‘aṇ’ to the prātipadika (stem) ‘manas’ meaning born of manas – mind – of Śiva, in this case. Mānas also refers to the trans-Himalayan lake in Tibet that faces the mountain Kailash – a tirtha that acts as the rūpaka for Tulsi’s prabandha – the second meaning of the title – the manasarovara lake of Śrī Rāma’s carita. Together it refers to the Manasarovara lake of Śrī Rāma’s carita that is born out of Śiva’s mind/heart. It can be inferred from the aforementioned verses that Śiva first created and kept this Rāmāyaṇa in his Mānas. In the second half of the verse, the kavi uses the term ‘bhāṣā’ to denote Śiva’s narration to his consort Śivā. Commenting on this verse, some commentators emphasize the temporal gap between the creation and narration of the Mānas. Some kathāvācakas cite these verses as the explanation for their commenteries on the seventh śloka of the maṅgalacaraṇa and suggest that since Tulsidas uses the term ‘bhāṣā’ to describe the act of narration of the kathā, its creation, therefore, is in a medium prior to language. By “medium prior to language,” the four stages of the ‘Vāc’ are meant. These four stages are explained in the commentary on the following verses in the caupāīs following the tenth dohā of the Bālakāṇḍa. bhagati hetu bidhi bhaban bihāī, sumirat sārad āvati dhāī. Trans: For her devotion [in Rām] Śāradā (Sarasvati) leaves Vidhi’s house and comes running on being invoked (by the poets). Sri Anajananadan Sharan ji presents Swami Kashthajivha Tirtha ji’s interpretation of this verse. According to Swami Kashthajihva Tirtha ji, Tulsidas uses the phrase ‘āvatī dhāī’ (comes running) to emphasize Sarasvati’s devotion to Rām, for whom, on being invoked by the poets, she leaves Vidhi’s (Brahmā, her husband) house. He interprets “bhidhi bhaban” or Vidhi’s house as the navel region in sādhaka’s body. Here Sarasvati dwells in her subtlest form as the Parā vāc. She transforms in to the Paśyantī state in the heart region and takes a place in the throat region as the Madhyamā. Finally, as Vaikharī, she manisfets through the toungue region. Parā, according to him, is the stage of undifferentiated speech. As Paśyantī, the speech becomes manifest and thus accessible to the mind. These stages of speech are only known to and experienced by advanced sādhaka-kavis (like Valmiki and Tulsidas) in samādhi. Madhyamā, as the name suggests, remains between the unmanifest and manifest states of speech. Vaikharī literally means 159

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corporeal, and it is the manifest state of speech (Sharan, 1939, 211). It is the level of vāc in which everday human interaction takes place and therefore can be understood as language. The commmentary on this verse suggests that the expression of the kāvya is not same as its creation and that the creation happens at the subtlest level of speech. Śiva’s creation of the Mānas, according to this interpretation of language, happened at the highest and subtlest stage of the Vāc. Tulsidas probably also received this kathā in the Parā state and then expressed it in Vaikharī bhāṣā in his kāvya. This explains the commentry on the last verse of the Maṅglācaraṇa. The different levels of the Vāc correspond with different levels of emanation of tattvas, including kāla (time). In the Parā stage, the universe remains unexpressed. Andrè Padoux, qouting Abhinavagupta, says that there are no spearate forms in existence in this plane (sarvasarvātmakatā) and that all is actually and perpetually produced (satatodita). Universe, words and their meaning exist in this state undifferentiatedly. In the Paśyanti state, the intention of disctinction arises which becomes manifest in the Madhyamā state. At Madhyamā, one becomes aware of the differentiation between the signifiers and the signifieds and I-ness (ahantā) and this-ness (idantā) (Padoux, 1990, 181–90). At the Vaikharī stage, the universe manifests with all differentiations, inculding temporal and spatial. Padoux, in this regard, writes: Finally there arises . . . the last stage of the Speech, vaikaharī, that stage where differentiation is fully manifested, and which is linked with time since with it the process of language becomes fully manifest. Here we are in the sphere of the objectivity of māyā, in the empirical and limited world brought about through the agency of cosmic illusion. (Padoux, 1990, 216) Time only manifests in the Vaikharī Vāc after Pāra enters the realm of māyā. Mānas, by this understanding, when created by Śiva in his heart, is in a time-less eternal state and becomes manifest in time on his revelation to his consort, Śivā. Similarly, Tulsidas or any other Kavi’s task by this logic should be understood as the expresstion of the ‘timeless’ in time. Because time manisfests only after Parā Vāc, following Paśyanti and Madhyamā states, and mingles with māyā to project Vaikharī, it can be transcended on separation from māyā. The separation from māyā occurs as the result of ‘doing Mānas.’3 This makes Mānas both within and beyond time. Tulsidas and commentators on Mānas also suggest an alternative spaciality through this concept of language. Almost all commentators explain “mānas” in the verse “rachi mahes.” qouted previously as ‘hṛdaya.’ Manas, from which the word ‘mānas’ is derived, is associated with the faculty of thinking, but when it is used as a synonym of‘hṛdaya,’ or heart, it acquires the capacity to keep or store something as well. In this case, we see that Śiva keeps the Mānas in his heart and therefore gives it that name. The commentary on “bhagati hetu” that locates Brahmā’s dwelling (bidhi bhaban) in the navel region of the sādhaka’s body also 160

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suggests the presence of mānas (both the lake and this Rāmkathā) in the hearts of the devotees. Thus Mānas is both within and without the bodies of the sādhakas. *** Bicitra Narrative Structure: Tulsidas does not claim to create a new kathā; instead, he repetedly attibutes it to divine, human and avian narrators. Explaining this, he says: jāgbalik jo kathā suhāī; bharadvāj munibarahi sunāī. kahihun soi saṃbād bakhānī; sunahun sakal sajjan sukha mānī. saṁbhu kīnha yaha carit suhāvā; bahuri kṛpā kari umahi sunāvā. soi siva kāgbhusuṇḍihi dīnhā; rāmbhagat adhikārī cīnhā. tehi san jagbālik puni pāvā; tinh puni bharadvāj prati gāvā. te śrotā bakatā samślīlā; sanvadarasī jānahī harilīlā. jānahiṅ tini kal nij gyānā; karatalagat āmalaka samānā, aurau je haribhagata sujānā, kahain sunahinsamujhahin bidhi nānā. Trans: The charming story which Yājñavalkya narrated to the sage Bharadvāja, I shall repeat the same dialogue with explanation; let all sajjanas hear it with a feeling of delight. This ravishing carita was done by Śambhu (another name for Śiva), graciously, he narrated it to His consort Umā (Pārvatī). Śiva imparted it to Kāgabhuśuṇḍi (a sage in form of the crow), knowing him to be a devotee of Rām and therefore an adhikāri of the kathā. Kāgabhuṣuṇḍi sang it to Yājñvalkya, who in turn sang it to Bharadvāja. Both the listeners and narrators are equally virtuous; they view all alike and know the Harilīlā. Like an āmalaka fruit placed on one’s palm, they hold the past, present, and future within their knowledge. Besides these, other enlightened devotees of Hari too recite, hear, and understand this story in diverse ways. (RCM.I.caupāī 30) In these verses Tulsidas preents the lineage of the ṛṣis of this Mānas. He begins with Yājñavalkya, who narrated the kathā to Bharadvāja. Both these sages are prominent Vedic ṛṣis. The creation of the kathā is again attributed to Śiva, who narrates it to Pārvati and Kāgabhuṣuṇḍi. Kāgabhuṣuṇḍi narrates it to Yājñavalkya. Sri Anajananandan Sharan ji draws our attention to these three sets of narrators and listeners, namely Śiva and Pārvati, Yājñavalkya and Bharadvāja and Kāgabhuṣuṇdi and Garuḍa, as corresponding to āgama, nigama and purāṇas, respectively. Since Tulsidas, in the last śloka of the maṅgalācaraṇa quoted earlier (nānāpurāṇan igmāgamāsammataṃ yad.), calls his kathā ‘sammataṃ,’ or in agreement with the views of various purāṇas, nigamas (Veda) and āgamas (tantras), he narrates the kathā through the narrators associated with these different genres of texts. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, these narrators also belong to different realms of being. Śiva and Pārvati are divine, Yājñavalkya and Bharadvāja belong to the human realm and Kāgabhuṣuṇdi and Garuḍa are divine birds (Sharan, 1939, 390). 161

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Tulsidas praises other narrators of the kathā and then in dohā 30 of the Bālakāṇḍa states that he heard this kathā from his guru as a child at a place called Sūkarkhet. Placing himself in this supposedly eternal tradition of the kathā, he introduces his prabanadha kāvya as bicitra and says: kīnha prasna jehi bhānti bhavāni, jehi bidhi saṅkara kahā bakhāni. so sab hetu kahab main gāī, kathā prabandha bicitra banāī. jehiṃ yaha kathā suni nahiṃ hoī, jani ājaraju karai suni soi. kathā alaukika sunahiṃ je jñānī, nahi ācaraju karahiṃ as jānī. rāmakathā kai miti jaga nāhīṃ, asi pratīta tini ke mana māhiṃ. nānā bhaṃti rām avatārā, rāmāyana sata koṭi apārā. kalapa bheda haricarita suhāe, bhaṃti aneka munīsanh gāe. rām anaṃnta anaṃnta gun amit kathā bistār; suni ācaraju na mānahahiṃ jinke bimal bicār. Trans: The way Bhavāni asked the question and the way Śaṅkara said explaining them. Those causes I will sing, making an astonishing prabandha (structure) of the kathā. Those who have not heard this katha, should not express astonishment on hearing it. Listening to this alaukika (out-worldly or extraordinary) kathā, the wise shall not be surprised for the following reason. ‘Rāmkathā is immesurable in this world,’ such is the thought in their mind. Rām’s manifestations are manifold and the Rāmāyaṇa is hundred-crore – endless. Haricarita is pleasing in different Kalpas;4 sages have sung it in different ways. Rām is infinite with infinite qualities and expanse of the kathā is immesurable; those of pure thought will not be astonished. (RCM.I.caupāī 30.1–8) In these verses, Tulsidas calls his prabandha bicitra, or astonishing. One of the astonishing features he mentions here pertains to time. According to the commentators in MP, the ‘kalpa bheda’ in these verses refer to the difference of many kalpas between narration of the kathā by different narrators (Sharan, 1939, 521). Tulsidas emphasizes the infinitude of the kathā, both spatial and temporal, by calling it amita – immesurable or inexaustible. These verses also read as a foreword to the kathā in which the kavi asks his audience not to be surprised at its bicitratā. Tulsidas’ prabandha kāvya acts as a finite instrument to access the infinite Rām and his kathā. The kavi takes us back to the metaphor of mānas and explains its construction. He places it on the soil of good intelligence in the depths of the heart and the source of its water in the boundless ocean of the Vedas and Puranas, thus making it a space within the hearts of devotees. The saints are called the clouds, which draw this water from the depths and release it in showers of “Śrī Rām’s glory,” the stories of his deeds, which enter through the ears of the devotees and collect in the heart. The three sets of dialouges mentioned earlier and Tulsidas’ own narration to the sant samāj (assembly/community of saints) form the four ghāṭs that bound the this lake. Throughout the mānas, one 162

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is reminded of these ‘ghāts. To understand the same, an example from the fifth Sopāna (literally step or descent, used to refer to books or chapters of the text), the Sundarkāṇḍa can be cited. Hanumān, delighted by Jāmvant’s words, decides to cross the ocean, keeping in his heart Śrī Raghunāth’s name (Rām) (RCM. V.1. i-vii). On his way to Laṅkā, he faces many problems. After Hanumān reaches Laṅkā, Tulsi’s narrative suddenly pauses and one hears the dialogue between Śiva and Pārvatī: Umā na kachu kapi kai adhikāī, prabhu pratāp je kālahiṃ khāīm “Umā! It is not Kapi’s (monkey’s – Hanuman’s) greatness, but is Lord’s who devours the Kāla (Death and Time) itself.” (RCM.V. 3.) The narrative, after this small vignette of the dialogue between Śiva and Pārvatī, resumes discussing the grandeur of Laṅkā. This scheme can be traced in the text for other dialogues as well, and the narrative is layered in a manner such that dialogues get interwoven. This not only binds the text together but also places Tulsi in an older and perhaps eternal tradition of the Kathā with other baktās. The transmitters/narrators and receivers/listeners of the kathā, as mentioned earlier as well, are not mere audiences or tellers to it but ‘act’ in it as well. Now I shall discuss some of the actions of each of these four sets (Śiva – Pārvatī, Yājñavalkya – Bharadvāja, Kāgabhuśuṇḍi – Garuda and Tulsi and his audience, the Santa Samāja) in the kathā. Śiva, who narrates the story to Pārvatī, goes to have a darśan (glance) at Rām after his ‘prākat̟ ya (appearance)’5 and at his Rājyābhiśeka (coronation or enthronement) and sings praise to him as well at the latter incident.6 Pārvatī, when incarnated as Satī, meets Rām in the Dan̟ d̟ aka kānana after Sītā’s abdication7 and in another instance, in Janankpur, gives a boon to Sītā after her Gauri (the fair one, a name of Pārvatī) pūjan (worship).8 The two sages (Yājñavalkya and Bharadvāja) are met by Rām, Sītā and Lakṣmaṇa at Prayāga.9 Kāgabhuśuṇḍī is one of the sages who go to have darśana at Śrī Rām in his bāla rūpa (childhood form) at Ayodhyā.10 Garuda is called to remove Rām and Lakṣmaṇa from the nāgapāṣa (snake-noose). Tulsidas, according some interpreters, meets Rām in the Araṇyakāṇḍa. His audience, the santa samāj, in a similar fashion has been playing an active role in the kathā. The classic example from the Ramnagar Ramlila holds testimony to this. The performers of the kathā, in form of a līlā, embody the characters from Mānas in their persons. The space for the performance has also been imagined along the lines of Mānas. Thus, people doing the kathā live (in) it, transcending time and space; for practitioners of kath, Śrī Rāma’s līlā (divine play) is not just an annual celebration but an eternal state which they experience by being in it (bhāva).11 Bhāva here refers to aesthetic and devotional mood. The caupāī, following dohā 36 of the Bālakāṇḍa, then further describes the allegory of the Mānas. The seven books are called the Sopāns (stairways), leading 163

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down in the water, while its meters are the lotus leaves and flowers that cover the surface of the water. The space of the lake is filled with living creatures like the bees of the good deeds, which sip the nectar of the lotus verses; the swans of wisdom and detachment; and fishes of various alaṅkārs (poetic devices) and moods, which dart about below the water’s surface (RCM. I.37.i–xv). This description of mānasarovara again places its waters of the glory of Sitaram at the level of parā, as everything expressed in Vaikharī, like meters, poetic devices, and moods, has some form and lives, floats, or leads to it but is not the water itself – asserting its liminal nature. *** Mānas’ oneness with Rām: The complex and astonishing structure of conversations/ transmissions/actions then makes one wonder about the specific time in which the text was conceived and transmitted. Based on some caupāīs, one may try to ascribe a date to it: saṁbat soraha sai ektīsā | karau̐ kathā hari pada dhara sīsā || naumi bhaum bār madhu māsā | avadhpuriṅ yaha carit prakāsā ||| In the Samvat 1631, I do the kathā prostrating at Hari’s feet. This carit illuminated on the Naumī,12 the Bhaumbār (Tuesday), of madhumāsa13 at Avadhapurī (Ayodhya). (RCM.I.caupāī 34 2–3.5) On the basis of this caupāī, one can easily date the text to the Samvat 1631 (1574 CE). But a more careful reading obscures this notion. Tulsidas, in Samvat 1631 says, does the kathā prostrating at the feet of Śrī Hari. The act of creation of the kathā is signified by the verb karau (do), and the verbs in these verses are in agreement with dates mentioned in them. However, the next verse creates a complex situation when read in terms of the idea of ‘prakāsā’ (illuminated). The verb prakāsā presumes the presence of the object in the question prior to the action it is used to describe. Following this argument, the date mentioned becomes a date on which Tulsidas received the carita or gave it its present form but not the date of the carita itself, thus creating a sense of eternity for it.14 The conjugation of ‘naumī’ and ‘madhumāsā’ (caitra) figures again in the text when the ‘prākṭya’15 (appearance) of Rām happens. Naumi tithi madhumās punītā, sukala paccha abhijit hariprītā madhyadivas ati sīta nā ghāmā, pāvan kāla loka biśrāmā Trans: [on the] ninth day of pure madhumās (caitra), [of] the bright fortnight [during] Abhijit muhurta, that is dear to Hari; midday when it was neither cold nor sunny, at that auspicious moment [Rām] descended on earth. (RCM.I, 191, 1–2)

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Reading the two together establishes the oneness of the carita and the person of Śrī Rām.16 Like ‘prakāsā,’ ‘prākt̟ ya’ also implies the presence or existence of the object it is used for. Sharan, in his commentary on this section, states that appearance of Rām and the Mānas during the same conjugations implies their oneness (Sharan, 1939, 347). It can be said that Rām’s incarnation (taking human body) and inliberation (taking form of a text), though distanced in quotidian time, are understood as simultaneous processes. While there are several similarities between Rām and the Mānas that Tulsidas elaborates on throughout his kāvya, it will be useful to mention the one regarding the spatial aspects of their descent here. It is a well-known fact that Rām was born in Ayodhya, and, like Rām, Mānas too ‘came to light’ (prakāśita) in Ayodhya, as seen in the verses quoted previously. It has been discussed in some detail in earlier sections that the Mānas was first created and kept by Śiva in his heart. Tulsidas’ telling of it in Ayodhya to his audience only happens later. Similar to the appearance of Mānas, Rām also appears first in Śiva’s heart before his descent to earth in Ayodhya. Mānas follows the same tropes of the descent of Viṣṇu mentioned in purāṇas and other Rāmāyaṇas. These include descriptions of the atrocities on brahmanas, cows and ṛiṣis (seers) inflicted by asuras (anti-gods/ demons) and propitiation of Viṣṇu by gods led by Indra. In the Mānas, Indra and other gods, including earth, having been tortured by Rāvaṇa and other asuras, beseech Brahmā for help, who suggests they pray to Viṣṇu to help them with their difficulties. Following Brahmā’s advice, everybody starts looking for Viṣṇu, and the following happens. baiṭhe sur sab karahiṃ bicārā, kahaṃ pāia prabhu karia pukārā. pura baikuṇṭh jān kaha koī, kou kaha payanidhi basa prabhu soī. jāke hṛdaya bhagati jasa prītī, prabhu tahaṃ pragaṭa sadā tehiṃ rītī. tehi samāj girijā maiṃ raheūṃ, avasar pāī bacan ek kaheūṃ. hari byāpak sarbatra samāna, prem teṃ pragaṭ hohiṃ maiṃ jānā. des kāla disi bidisihu māhiṃ, kahahu so kahāṃ jahāṃ prabhu nāhīṃ aga jagamaya saba rahita birāgī, prem ate pragaṭai jimi āgī. mora bacana saba ke mana mānā, sādhu sādhu kari brahma bakhānā Trans: All gods sat in counsel, [and discussed] where shall we find the lord (Viṣṇu/Rām). Some body referred to the city of Baikuṇṭha, while the other said that that lord resides in Payanidhi (the ocean of milk). “The one who cherishes love and devotion in their heart, the lord remains ever-manifest their (in the heart). In that assembly I was also there, Girijā (Parvati), and on getting the chance said something. ‘Hari (Viṣṇu/Rām) is omnipresent equally, I know that he manifests through love [in the hearts of the devotees]. In this land, time, directions and elsewhere too, name that place where the lord is absent. Though imbued by the entire world [he remains] indifferent/ unattached [to it], with love he manifests and fire manifest [through

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friction].’ My words were favoured by all and Brahma applauded me saying ‘sādhu! sādhu!’” (RCM I.185.1–8) Following Śiva’s advice, Brahmā, with exalted heart and steady mind, sings in Viṣṇu’s praise in his own heart, and the latter descends earth after this episode. According to the commentaries in the MP, Śiva’s words act as instructions on bhakti (devotion) for Brahmā, Indra and other gods, and Rām appears in the hearts of the gods (including Śiva) present in that assembly. This episode insists on the omnipresence and accessibility of Rām across time(s) and spac(es) (Sharan, 1939, 331). It undermines the beleif in the exclusive presence of Rām/Viṣṇu in specific places like Vaikuṇṭha or Payanidhi while not rejecting them completely. I interpret Śiva’s words as teaching the simultaneous presence of Rām within and without body and everywhere else, too. Both Rām and Mānas appear first in devotees’ hearts and then take more gross forms – or these processess are simultaneous but are experienced in limited or unlimited ways through the devotees they occur to. *** Tranformative effect of the Mānas: These dicussions on alternative saptial and temporal concepts will be futile if they do not alter our approach to understanding texts and traditions like the Mānas, especially when they are alive with the practioners who cherish, practice and transmit them. Certainly, if read as a text for analysis (as I have done here), Mānas does not change our experience of time or space. However, our experience(s) of the phenomenal world alone should not be the touchstone to assert the veracity of concepts expounded in texts and traditions such as Mānas. The alteriety of time and space is closely linked to the tranformative effect of Mānas emphasized repeatedly by Tulsidas throughout the text. Following is one of the examples of this tranformative efficacy: ehi mahaṃ raghupati nāma udārā, ati pāvana purāna śruti sārā maṅgala bhavana amaṅgala hārī, umā sahita jehi japata purārī bhaniti bicitra sukabi kṛta joū, rāma nāma binā sohu na sou bidhubadani saba bhāṃti savṃārī, soha na basana binā bara nārī saba guna rahita kukabi kṛta bānī, rāma nāma jasa aṅkita jānī sādara kahahīṁ sunahīṃ budha tāhī, madhukara sarisa santa guna grāhī jadapi kabita rasa ekau nāhiṃ, rāma pratāpa pragaṭa ehi māhīṃ soi bharosa more mana āvā, kehiṃ na susaṅga baḍappanu pāvā dhūmau tajai sahaja karuāī, agaru prasaṅga sugandha basāī bhaniti bhadesa bastu bhali baranī, rām kathā jaga maṅgala karanī Trans: In this (referring to the Mānas) is the gracious name of the lord of the Raghus – Rām, very holy and the very essence of the and Purāṇas and Śruti (Vedas). Doer of auspiciousness and remover of inauspiciousness, [that which is] muttered by Śiva and Pārvati. The astonishing compostion 166

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of a good poet does not commend itself with out the name of Rām. [Just like] a moon-faced lady adorned by all means, does not look good without clothes. [However,] the composition of a bad poet, devoid of all qualities, [when] marked by the name Rām – is narrated and lisstened to by the wise, like the bee, santas only intake good qualities. Although there are no qualities of a good poetry [here], the glory of Rām is manifest here. That faith alone comes to my mind; who has not been overwhelmed [with joy/devotion] in good company. The smoke casts off its natural quality of black-ness, when arises from aloe wood with its fragrance. [Althogh] my composition is in bhadesa (a dialect) expounds a commendable theme – the Rām kathā, which causes auspiciouness in the world. (SRM.I.10.1–10) Tulsidas takes a very humble position in these verses and calls his composition the cause of auspiciousness because of the presence of Rām’s name and his glory. By calling his composition the sāra, or the essence of the Vedas and the Purāṇas, Tulsidas enshrines the efficacy and knowledge contained in Vedas and Purāṇas in the Mānas. In the following verses, the kavi, using several metaphors, explains the transformative efficacy of Rāmcaritmānas. rāmcarit cintāmani cārū, saṃta sumati tiya subhaga sināru jaga maṅgala gunagrāma rām ke, dāni mukuti dhana dharama dhāma ke sadaguru gyana birāga joga ke, bibudha baida bhava bhīma roga ke janani janaka siya rām prema ke, bjīja sakala brata dharama nema ke samana pāpa saṃtāpa soka ke, priya pālaka paraloka loka ke saciva subhaṭa bhūpati bicāra ke, kuṃbhaja lobha udadhi udāra ke kāma koha kalimala karigana ke, kehari sāvaka jana mana bana ke atithi priya priyatama purāri ke, kāmada dhana dāradi davāri ke mantra mahāmani biṣaya byāla ke, meṭata kaṭhina kuaṃka bhāla ke harana moha tama dinakara kara se, sevaka sāli pāla jaladhara se abhimata dāni devataru bara se, sevata sulabha sukhada hari hara se sukabi sarada nabha mana uḍagana se, rāmabhagata jana jīvana dhana se sakal sukṛta phala bhūri bhoga se, jaga hita nirupadhi sādhuloga se sevaka mana mānasa marāla se, pāvana gaṅga taraṅga māla se kupatha kuatarka kucāli kali kapaṭa dambha pākhaṇḍa; dahana rāma guna grāma jimi, indhana anala pracaṇḍa rāmacarita rākesa kara sarisa sukhada saba kāhu; sajjana kumuda cakora cita hita biseṣi baḍa lāhu Trans: The Rāmacarita(s) is/are lovely wish-fullfilling gem, for the wisdom of saints, a graceful adornment. The qualities of Rām are aupicious to the world, bestowers of liberation, wealth, piety and divine abode. They are [both kathā and aualities of Rām contained in it] true preceptors of knowledge, renunciation, and yoga, and celestial physcians for 167

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the great diseases of existence; parents to the devotion in Sītā-Rām, the seeds of all vows, duties, and observances; crushers of sins, agonies, and sorrows, the beloved guardians of this realm and beyond; valiant minister to the king-thought, Agastya [who drank the ocean] to the limitless ocean of greed; to the elephant-herd of the impurities of lust and anger of the kali age, the lion cubs to mind-forests of people; guests worshipped by Śiva, the wish-yielding clouds that quench the fire of indigence; the mantras and gems [to curb the venom of] sense-snakes, they efface evil destiny [written on] the forehead; like sun [they are] remover of the darkness of delusion, [they are] the clouds that nourish the paddy crop – like devotees; divine wish-fullfilling trees, easy of access for service like Viṣṇu and Śiva; [they are] the stars adorning the autumnal sky of the poet’s mind, the life’s treasures to the devotees of Rām; the relishments attained through meritorious actions, devoted to the good of the world like attributeless holy men; like the swans sporting the mānsarovara mind of the devotees, purifying as the waves of the Ganga. [To] the evil path, evil reasoning, evil conduct, deceit and hypocrisy of the Kaliyuga, Rām’s host of virtues are like fierce fire that burns the fuel; Rām’s carita (s) are like moonrays – evenly comforting to all, especially dear to the sajjanas (holy men) who are like the cakora bird (the bird that flys towards the Moon) and waterlily (that blossoms when moon rays fall on them). (SRM.I 32) These verses are emphatic about the efficacy of Rām’s carita and his qualities contained or transmitted through them. They not only cause auspiciousness in the world but also take on roles as true preceptors who impart wisdom, physicans who cure the diseases of existence, fire that burns the evils of the Kali age. Tulsidas’ metaphors for thoughts, bad deeds, mind and greed, which are controlled or removed by the virtues of Rām in different forms, are reflective of the spiritual disciplines which require sādhakas to contol their minds and senses and remove qualites like greed, deceit and hypocrisy to progress on their paths. The caritas and guṇas that are contained and accessed through the Mānas, I argue, are transformative because they remove the hurdles in the sādhanā (spiritual practice) of the sādhakas and bestow on them liberation, knowledge and bhakti. This transformative aspect of the Mānas is also understood as its cause or hetu. The four narrators narrate the kathā to the their respective listeners to remove the impurities of the māyā (the illusionary force) from their minds. Due to the impurities of māyā, like moha, they fail to understand the real nature of Rām as simultaneously immanent (bound by space and time) and transcendent reality (free of temporal and spatial limitations). They doubt the divinty of Rām and consider him a human prince, the son of Daśaratha. On listening to this kathā, their impurites are wiped away and they succeed in realizing the real nature of Rām as both Brahman (the supreme principle of Vedanta) and Dāśarathī (the son of 168

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Daśaratha). The conversation between Bharadvāja and Yājñavalkya is illustrated here to explain this. jāgabalika muni parama bibekī, bharadvāja rākhe pada ṭekī sādara carana saroja pakhāre, ati punīta āsana baiṭhare kari pūja muni sujasu bakhānī, bole ati punīta mṛdu bānī nātha eka saṃsau baḍa more, karagata bedatattva sabu toreṃ kahata so mohi lāgata bhaya lājā, jauṃ na kahuṃ baḍa hoī akājā santa kahahiṃ asa nīti prabhu ßruti purāna muni gāva, hoi na bimala bibeka ura gura sana kieṃ durāva.45. asa bicāri pragaṭuṃ nija mohū, harahu nātha kari jana para chohū rām nāma kara amita prabhāvā, santa purāna upaniṣad gāvā ākara cāri jīva jaga ahahīṃ, kāsī marata prama pada lahahiṃ sopi rāma mahimā munirāyā, siva upadesu karata kari dāyā rām kavana pūchauṃ prabhu tohī, kahia bujhāI kṛpānidhi mohī eka rām avadhesa kumārā, tinha kara carita bidita saṃsārā nāri birahaṃ dukhu laheu apārā, bhayau roṣu rana rāvanu mārā prabhu soi rām ki apara kou jāhi japata tripurāri, satyadhāma sarbagya tumha kahau bibeka bicāri.46 jaise mitai mora bhrama bhārī, kahau so kathā nātha bistārī jāgablaika bole musukākaī, tumahahi bidita raghupati prabhutāī rāmabhagata tumha mana krama bānī, caturāī tumharī maiṃ jānī cāhahu sunai rāma guna gūḍhā, kīnhihuṃ prasna manahū ati mūḍhā tāta sunahu sādara manu lāī, kahaūṃ rāma ke kathā suhāī mahāmoha mhiṣesu bisālā, rāmkathā kālikā karālā ramakathā sasi kirana samānā, santa cakora karahiṃ jehi pānā aisei saṃsaya kinha bhavānī, mahādeva taba khā bakahānī Trans: Yājñvalkya, the sage with great sense of viveka (discriminatory knowledge), was clasped by feet by Bharadvāja (to stay in his āśram in Prayāga, when the latter had come to bathe for Makar Sankranti festival). With due respect Bharadvāja washed the lotus-feet of Yajñavalkya, and seated him on a holy āsana. He perfomed the worship to the sage and sang to his glory and then said in soft voice, “O Lord, I have a great doubt and vedas are under your palms. I feel shamed in expressing it and hiding it from you shall be a misfortune. Holy men express such a rule and Vedas and Purāṇas also sing it ‘that pure wisdom cannot inculcate in hearts of the ones who conceal secrets from their gurus.’ Keeping this in mind, I express my own delusion, please remove it lord, being gracious unto me. The effect of the Name Rām is infinite, such has been stated by sages, Purāṇas and Upaniṣads; chanted by sages and Śiva, the undying, God, cause of peace and auspiciousness, the repository of Knowledge. Jivas (souls) come to the world in four states and they attain liberation by dying in Kāśī [where] Śiva instructs out of compassion. ‘Who is Ram?’ 169

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I ask you, O lord, please explain it so that I understand, O the ocean of compassion! One Rām, the son of the lord of Avadh (Daśarath), his carita is know to the world. He took endless grief on being separated from his wife, due to great anger at this, he killed Rāvaṇa in the battle. Lord! is that Rām some other person who is chanted of by Śiva, you are abode of truth, omniscient, say [something] thinking about it. By which my delusion is erased, say such a kathā elaborately.” Yājñavalkya smiled and said, “you know the glory of the lord of Raghus (Rām). You are Rām’s devotee by mind, actions, words and I understand your wit. You are desirous of listening to the esoteric virtues of Rām, and therefore have asked this question, as if you are a fool. O sage, listen to this with respect as I say the pleasing kathā of Rām. The great delusion is like Mahiṣāsura and Rāmakathā is like fierce Kalikā. Rāmkathā is like moon rays, which are drunk by holy men as cakora bird drinks the moon rays. Consort of Śiva also had the same doubt, and Śiva then said elaborately.” (SRM.I.45–47) These verses present before us the questions the Bharadvāja asked Yajñavalkya about Rām. He attributes his doubts and questions to moha, and Yajñavalkya, in his reply, compares the Rāmkathā to goddess Kalikā, who slays the Mahiṣasura in the form of delusion. He proceeds to narrate the kathā and begins with a reference to the dialogue between Śiva and Bhavānī. Bhavānī, in later verses, asks the same question about Rām. Garuḍa also puts the same set of questions regarding the divinity of Rām before Kāgabuṣuṇḍi.17 The kathā in the Mānas concludes with all the listeners realizing the true nature of Rām. The doubt about Rām’s divinity is also linked with the understanding of time and space in Mānas. As the son of Daśarath, Rām seems to be limited by time and space, but as the ultimate reality, who is worshipped by Śiva himself, he is free of these limitations. Since the Mānas shares all the qualites of Rām, it too is both immanent and transcendent simultaneously. It seems to be limited by space and time in Vaikharī, when its reader is tainted with the impurities of māyā. The constant sādhanā of the kathā is supposed to remove the impurities that generate limited and limiting notions of space and time. Therefore, those who possess the knowledge of the Mānas, as we see in the text, travel across time or gain knowledge of the past, present and future. The sādhanā of the kathā is often described as ‘kathā karanā’ or ‘doing kathā.’ The phrase is used by Tulsidas himself in the text several times. The ‘doing’ here could refer to a varity of actions, including narrating, reciting, listening, singing or acting the kathā. These acts of ‘doing Ramcaritmānas,’ I argue, are understood by practitioners as means of transforming themselves to understand the real nature of Rām. *** The Mānas not only offers alternative spatial and temporal concepts but also suggests ways of altering and even ‘undoing’ the experience of quotidian time 170

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through ‘doing’ it. The commentaries on Mānas discussed in this chapter present some useful analytical categories that are used by practitioners to enhance their understanding and experience of texts and traditions like this. These categories, I argue, help us understand the texts better, as they tend to be in synch with the internal logic of the text. They also call for a reconsideration of the utility of dominant Euro-American approaches in academe which overlook and underestimate the importance of the spiritual and tranformative efficacy of these textual traditions.

Notes 1 RCM refers to Rāmcaritamānas; the numeral is the number for the sopānas or books of the text; the first Hindu-Arabic numeral is the number of the dohā; and the digits following it in the same numeral style are the number of verses from caupāīs. 2 varṇānāmarthasṅghānāṃ rasānāṃ chandas̄ mapi, maṅgalānāṃ ca kartārau vande vāṇīvinayakau.1. 3 I shall discuss this in detail in the last section of this chapter. 4 1 kalpa equals 4.32 billion human years. 5 See RCM Bālakān̟ d̟ a 195–96. 6 See RCM Uttarkān̟ d̟ a 13–14. 7 See RCM Bālakān̟ d̟ a 51–53. 8 See RCM Bālakān̟ d̟ a 235–36. 9 See RCM Ayodhyākān̟ d̟ a 106–11. 10 See RCM Bālakān̟ d̟ a 195–96 & RCM Uttarakān̟ d̟ a 69–73. 11 See Sarah Bonnemaison and Christine MacySource the RamLila in Ramnagar: Design Quarterly, No. 147, Celebrations: Urban Spaces Transformed, pp. 2–23 Published by: Walker Art CenterStable URL: www.jstor.org/stable/4091217 12 Ninth day of each fortnight of the month, 13 Could mean both the season of spring and the month of Caitra (the first month of the Vikram calendar), the latter in this case. Use of the term madhumāsā denotes the auspicious nature of this conjugation. 14 It should be noted that Kathā and Carita are synonymous here. 15 Prākaṭya. 16 See RCM Bālakān̟ d̟ a 19–29. 17 See SRM. VII.60.

References Padoux, A. G. (1990). Vāc: The Concept of The Word in Selected Hindu Tantras. Albany: Sate University of New York. Sharan, Anajananandan. (1939). Mānas Piyūṣ. Gorakhpur: Gitapress.

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13 THE ONTOLOGY OF NOW Reading time through 16th- and 17th-century nyāya philosophy Samuel Wright

It must be readily admitted that while we find ourselves amidst the objects of the world, we do not call to mind every object we come across. To do so would be overwhelming not only cognitively but also psychologically. Instead, we retain blind spots in order to focus on those objects that are deemed relevant to us as we conduct specific activities. On the basis of this simple division between relevant and non-relevant objects in the world, entire disciplines have been formed, since a discipline is the focused attention on a field of relevant phenomena that are made into objects of study. Part of what disciplines do, then, is make phenomena available for critical thought by separating them from other parts of the world, a separation that takes place within and through a specific language of a discipline as and when it is applied to the world. This activity of critical thought transcends modern and premodern temporal divides. Consider the knowledge-system of Sanskrit logic (nyāya-śāstra) in premodern India. Sanskrit logicians – whom I refer to in this chapter as nyāya scholars – argued that objects do not make themselves immediately available to us; that is, we cannot simply turn to objects. Instead, to draw an object into our thought involves, for nyāya scholars, a two-step process. In the first step, we purposefully engage with an object through a sense perceptual act (pratyakṣa). But, in this step, we find that we are only presented with an indeterminate mass separated from the other stuff of the world that can only be accurately described as a ‘something’ (kiṃcit) – a stand-in term for what we might call an ‘object-variable’: we know it as something out there, but we are not able to further analyze it because it remains indeterminate or non-conceptual. As phrased well by Annaṃbhaṭṭa (c. 1620, Banaras): With regard to the types of sense perception, indeterminate or nonconceptual sense perception is a cognition of which there is no primary descriptive feature. Consider this as an example: ‘This is something.’ DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-13 172

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tatra niṣprakārakaṃ jñānaṃ nirvikalpakam. yathedaṃ kiṃcit. (Paraba, 1883, p. 14) This ‘something’ is grasped as an object-variable since it is without any identifiable features – or, more technically, it is grasped as something that stands in front of us without any determinate ontology and as such is unanalyzable. But, for nyāya scholars, as we hold our attention on that object-variable, it becomes analyzable since in casting attention onto it, we draw it near and into our cognitive processes through which the ontological arrangement of that ‘something’ comes to be known. Annaṃbhaṭṭa is again helpful: With regard to the types of sense perception, a determinate or conceptual sense perception is a cognition of which there is a primary descriptive feature. Consider these examples: ‘This is [a man named] Dittha,’ ‘This is a Brahmin,’ and ‘This is black.’ saprakārakaṃ jñānaṃ savikalpakam. yathā ḍittho ’yaṃ brāhmaṇo ’yaṃ śyāmo ’yam iti. (Paraba, 1883, p. 14) Provided that our perceptual senses are functioning properly, the two-step process in which we move from a sense perceptual act of an object-variable, during which the object remains conceptually empty, to a sense perceptual act in which the object is conceptually rich is a process that ultimately allows for critical thought. On the basis of the second step, we are able to ask certain questions of the object, such as what sort of substance (dravya) it is, what sort of tropes (guṇas) exist in this substance and in what manner those tropes stand in relation to the substance such as an inherence or contact relation (nyāya scholars adhere to a philosophical realism). In this two-step process, then, the sense perceptual act that began as grasping something that had no ontological or epistemological certainty has resulted in presenting to us an ‘object’ (viṣaya) – something that does have an epistemic and ontological certainty and contains, most crucially, a primary descriptive feature or prakāra, as formulated in Annaṃbhaṭṭa’s definition previously. For nyāya scholars, the ability to label something an object means that we know the ontological relations that obtain within it and its relation to other such objects in the world. The movement from an undefined variable of the world to a well-defined object of the world is similar to how time (kāla) is theorized by nyāya scholars. For nyāya scholars, time is a universal (sarvagatatva), singular (ekaikatva) and the substratum of the world (āśraya-jagat). Yet, for nyāya scholars, we cannot experience nor can we directly cognize time as a universal. Instead time is experienced only through its heterogeneity – a commitment also found among postcolonial theorists (Chatterjee, 2001). For nyāya scholars, the heterogeneity of time is experienced when universal time becomes differentiated into other sorts of smaller units of

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time or ‘time-frames’ (samaya-bheda) such as the moment, the day, the month and the year. In short, we can only experience and directly cognize time when universal time is made into an object or when it is converted from a universal into a particular. These time-frames are of critical importance because they enable time to have an objectivity, similar to how the ‘something’ in an indeterminate sense perception attains a determinate ontology as and when it becomes an object or viṣaya (as defined previously). Here, time is transformed from a universal, homogenous substratum of the world into specific and heterogeneous units of temporality that limit this universal in specific ways such that time can become an object of thought. In this chapter, I would like to explore these issues further in relation to one of the time-frames mentioned previously: the moment (kṣaṇa). In my reading of nyāya scholars, the moment is the most important division of time, since the month, the day, the year and so forth, as temporal units, are made up of and defined according to whether they have more or fewer ‘moments’ (Sastry, 1923, p. 377; Prasad, 1984, pp. 235–36). This means that the moment functions as the temporal foundation for other time-frames as and when universal time attains an objective status, that is, when it attains a particularity. It is through this particularity that we are able to know or cognize time, and is a particularity whose possibility ends, for nyāya scholars, when the universe terminates into the cosmic dissolution (mahāpralaya), that is, when the particularity of time is no longer possible since everything has been absorbed back into endless, homogenous time (Sastry, 1923, pp. 376–77; Prasad, 1984, 236, fn. 30). Reading time through nyāya philosophy is important because reflections by nyāya scholars on the moment – the smallest measure or smallest particular of time – encourage a discussion on how we might read ‘the now.’ A variety of modern scholars have made use of the category of ‘the now,’ such as Walter Benjamin in theorizing now-time (Jetztzeit) and Dipesh Chakrabarty in his critique of historicism (Ferguson, 1994; Chakrabarty, 2007, pp. 8–9 and 249–50, respectively). Yet, despite a robust discussion on time and ‘the moment’ among nyāya scholars, their arguments have not been made part of the critical genealogy of these contemporary debates. This chapter is an attempt to bring nyāya philosophical analysis into conversation with these larger theoretical debates on the significance and potential of ‘the now.’1 *** The Ontology of Time: Before entering into larger questions about ‘the now,’ however, it is important to get some handle on the arguments made by nyāya scholars about the moment as a temporal unit and how these arguments changed in the early modern period from the beginning of the 16th century. As discussed in the following, a basic conception of the moment was that it was a temporal unit that, by definition, was a movement or action (karman) out of and back into universal time – this movement identified in technical terms as a limiting condition (upādhi) of universal time. Theorizing the moment as a movement or action was a major 174

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distinction from time in its universal form, which was theorized as motionless or inactive (niṣkriyā) (Prasad, 1984, p. 234).2 In traditional nyāya accounts, inactive, universal time was theorized as a substance (dravya), and the active and moving moment was atomized into the dynamic processes of separation and connection – each identified as two tropes (guṇas) of that substance (Prasad, 1984, p. 235).3 This action or movement was absolutely crucial, since otherwise time could not attain an objectivity. Consider the presentation by Kr̥ snadāsa Sārvabhauma (c. 1570, Bengal) when discussing the moment: A moment and other time-frames are the result of certain limiting conditions (upādhi) placed on time. Yet, even though universal time is unanalyzable (eka), due to the various limiting conditions placed on it, it becomes an analyzable object (viṣaya) as a result of various linguistic expressions [that serve to particularize time] such as the term ‘moment’ and so forth. ksạṇādiḥ syād upādhita iti. kālas tv eko ’py upādhibhedāt kṣaṇādivyavahāraviṣayaḥ. (Sastry, 1923, p. 374) While this broad outline of the traditional view seems simple enough, a specific detail I have not yet mentioned may meet with disapproval among readers. Curiously, in nyāya theory, a moment is analyzed as made up of four sub-moments. It is our attention to these four sub-moments that allows us to know a moment. While this aspect of nyāya arguments on time may seem unnecessarily complex, it is the result of a close analysis by nyāya scholars on how an action or a movement actually takes place. Typically, in nyāya analysis, the separation of two terms requires an initial action. In nyāya discussions on the moment, the two terms are ‘the moment’ (kṣaṇa) and ‘universal time’ (kāla). When analyzing a moment, then, nyaya scholars begin by noting that an initial action initiates the separation of the moment from universal time, but, crucially, their separation has yet to occur. This is the ‘first sub-moment’ (prathama-kṣaṇa) of a moment identified by nyāya scholars. In the second submoment (dvitīya-kṣaṇa), both terms become separated from each other, whereas the third sub-moment (tr̥ tīya-kṣaṇa) is the complete termination of that original connection between the two terms, with no indication that they may reconnect again. The distinction between the second and third sub-moments is slight but might be approximated to the English expression: ‘broke and came apart.’ The fourth sub-moment (caturtha-kṣaṇa) consists of a second action that serves to initiate the connection between the two terms again.4 In this account, then, a moment is actually only known through these various limiting conditions: an initial action to commence separation, separation, complete disjunction and then a connective action. Taken together, this is the movement through which a moment is known to emerge out of universal time and then merge back into it. 175

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This theory of time and of moment, however, was not the only option available to nyāya scholars in early modern India. In the early 16th century, another view on time and the moment had been proposed by Raghunātha Śiromaṇi (c. 1510, Bengal) in his well-known work, An Inquiry into the True Nature of the Ontological Categories (hereafter, Inquiry). In the Inquiry, Raghunātha eliminates time as a separate substance in nyāya ontology, arguing instead that it is part of god (īśvara).5 The decision by Raghunātha to place time within god rather than retaining it as a substance forced him to approach the question of the moment in a different manner than previous nyāya scholars. At the end of the Inquiry, Raghunātha argues for eight new ontological categories. One of the first new categories he adds is moment (kṣaṇa). His arguments are explicitly framed against the traditional account presented previously concerning the four-fold division of a moment. He begins by calling the moment a specific temporal unit (kṣaṇika) and stating that it should be taken as a previously unacknowledged ontological category. Then, he explicitly rejects the theory of the four sub-moments of a moment. After making these claims, he puts forward how we should define the moment as a temporal unit. The passage reads: A moment is a specific, temporal unit; it is ontologically distinct and is a unique condition of universal time. If you were to argue that a moment is simply a [temporal] movement characterized by an impending, but still yet to transpire, separation [from universal time] that will be produced by a forthcoming action, I would disagree. I would disagree because a [temporal] movement that is characterized by an impending, but still yet to transpire, separation [of a moment from universal time] is part of the theory of a four-fold division of the moment. If you were to argue that a moment is a [temporal] movement that is characterized by an impending, but still yet to transpire, separation [from universal time] that will be produced by that movement itself, I would also disagree. In such a case, there would be no homogenizing element (an-anugama) [of a moment] since there cannot be one when something is understood only in terms of itself. And, in a temporal disjunction generated by itself, how could the term ‘moment’ be used [since it would not mark something common to all moments]? If you reply that the term could be used because that movement is qualified by disjunction and an earlier connection, then I would still say that there is no homogenizing element. Thus, we ought to speak of a temporal unit as a moment when there is a movement or action that occurs at the time of a termination of an earlier connection [to universal time] as well as at the time of a forthcoming connection [back into universal time]. kṣaṇaś ca kṣaṇiko ’tiriktaḥ kālopādhiḥ. vibhāgaprāgabhāvaviśiṣṭaṃ karmaiva tatheti cet. na udīcyakarmajanyavibhāgaprāgabhāvaviśiṣṭasya karmaṇaḥ kṣaṇacatuṣṭayāvasthāyitvāt. svajanyavibhāgaprāgabhāvaviśiṣṭaṃ tat tatheti cet tarhi svatvānanugamād ananugamaḥ jāte ca 176

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vibhāge kutaḥ kṣaṇavyavāharaḥ vibhāgapūrvasaṃyogaviśiṣṭāt karmaṇa eveti cet tarhi sutarām ananugamaḥ. evaṃ pūrvasaṃyoganāśakāle uttarasaṃyogakāle ’pi karmasattve kṣaṇatvaṃ vaktavyam iti. (Rajpal, 2008, p. 123) As usual, Raghunātha has completely discarded earlier nyāya analysis – an agenda he highlights by explicitly rejecting any position that lends further support to the four-fold division of a moment. His passage suggests that the ‘first sub-moment’ of a moment is ill conceived. In my reading of Raghunātha, he is arguing that the first sub-moment, identified by an impending action, does not actually properly identify a moment and, in addition, that the way this first sub-moment is conceived creates confusion about how the ‘action,’ by which the first sub-moment is identified, arises. In the former, Raghunātha, at the end of this passage, suggests that a moment as a temporal unit should only be identified when such an action suitable for producing a temporal separation from universal time has already taken place, not when it is impending. And, in the latter, Raghunātha seems to be addressing an opponent who wants to claim that the ‘action’ that constitutes the first sub-moment is sui generis. But, for Raghunātha, if this ‘action’ is only explained to produce a moment by referring back to itself as a unique action, then it will have no commonality to other actions that produce other temporal units that count as a ‘moment.’The consequence of this is that, for Raghunātha, we will not be able to use the term ‘moment’ (kṣaṇa) to indicate a shared and common quality among temporal units that we identify as moments, because we will be prevented from subsuming these particular moments within a homogenizing element called ‘being a moment’ (kṣaṇatva). These issues aside, however, we are still left with the larger question: What is Raghunātha’s conception of a moment? At the end of the previous passage, he defines a moment as a temporal unit that is broken out of universal time but which will reconnect to universal time at some point in the future so that the ‘moment’ will come to an end. This definition of a moment by Raghunātha is further clarified by his commentators. For example, Raghudeva Nyāyālaṅkāra (fl. 1657, Banaras), one of the better commentators on Raghunātha’s Inquiry, expands on Raghunātha’s passage in two ways by presenting two glosses on the definition. First, Raghudeva explains that, according to Raghunātha, “A moment is to be spoken of as an action specific to the arising of a destruction of an earlier connection [to universal time] and also specific to the arising of a subsequent connection [to universal time] (pūrvasaṃyoganāśotpattiviśiṣṭakriyāyā uttarasaṃyogotpattiviśiṣṭakriyāyāś ca kṣaṇatvaṃ vaktavyam ity arthaḥ)” (Rajpal, 2008, p. 124). But then Raghudeva presents another interpretation of Raghunātha’s definition, which is likely Raghudeva’s preferred reading. In this second gloss, Raghudeva expands on Raghunātha’s conception of a moment by saying that we should accept the definition of a moment as, “An action that is characterized by both an absence of a new connection [to universal time] and an end of an earlier connection [to universal time] (pūrvasaṃyoganāśottarasaṃyogaprāgabhāvobhayaviśiṣṭakriyāyā api kṣaṇatvaṃ avaseyam)” (Rajpal, 2008, p. 124). 177

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Another commentator on the text, contemporaneous with Raghudeva, Govinda Bhaṭṭācārya (c. 1660, Bengal), provides a similar reflection. Govinda’s gloss is perhaps more specific, as he provides the definition of a temporal unit (kṣaṇika), a term that Raghunātha used to describe ‘the moment.’ Govinda states that a temporal unit is, the positive correlative of a destruction [of a connection to universal time] in the condition of a ‘moment’ that is subsequent to [that terminated connection] and is not spoken of as having arisen from itself. kṣaṇikatvañ ca svotpattyavyavahitottarakṣaṇavrttidhvaṃsapratiyogitvam ity arthaḥ. (Govinda, folio 29b, line 3) Govinda’s explanation allows us to posit with more certainty that Raghunātha is particularly keen to do away with the four-fold division of a moment and replace it with a more parsimonious conception. If I might be allowed to rephrase the reflections of Raghunātha’s commentators into my own words, I would say that Raghunātha’s conception of a moment is a movement or action that entails the breaking of ‘time’ into a particular such that this particular is an identifiable temporal unit that takes place in between its separation from and its subsequent connection back into universal time, and it is a movement or action that is produced not by itself but by something or someone exerting force upon universal time. A much more radical claim by Raghunātha, however, is that a moment is no longer only a limiting condition of universal time but is also a new ontological category. The consequences of this mean that while an action or movement is still how we locate a moment (or find it epistemologically) and through which time attains an objectivity (or attains a specific ontology), the moment has been given an existence – a Being – that was earlier denied to it. This means that as an ontological category, the moment is now a fundamental and subsuming class of the world just like a substance or trope in the earlier ontology of nyāya philosophy. I explore the significance of this new ontological status of a moment in the next section. *** The Now: The previous discussion suggests that ‘the moment’ represents a movement out of and away from universal, non-historical time and into a particularity and historicity of ‘the now.’ The emergence of ‘the now’ as and when the moment emerges as a category is also noted by nyāya scholars. Turning again to Kr̥ snadāsa, he suggests that our judgments are able to locate ‘the now’ and, in so doing, give universal time a specific objectivity. He says, Judgements such as, ‘Object x (e.g., a pot) exists now,’ attribute an objectivity to or make into an object that which is associated with the motion of the sun[, namely, time (kāla)]. 178

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idānīṃ ghaṭa ityādipratītiḥ sūryaparispandādikaṃ . . . viṣayīkaroti. (Sastry, 1923, pp. 372–73)6 Kr̥ snadāsa’s comments here are important because they demonstrate that for nyāya scholars, ‘the now’ is directly available to human cognition and can be picked out by our judgments as we cast our attention out into the world. The explicit association between ‘the moment’ and ‘the now’ is made by another commentator on Raghunātha’s Inquiry, Viśvanātha Nyāyapañcānana (fl. 1640, Bengal). In his commentary, Viśvanātha turns to an analysis of language. Viśvanātha argues that since we use expressions such as ‘A moment is a now (idānīṃ kṣaṇaḥ),’ the moment – as ‘the now’ – must be available to our cognition (our thought) in the same way that other objects in the world are, what are called the prameyas in nyāya philosophy. Viśvanātha writes, A linguistic expression such as, ‘A moment is a now,’ is made on the basis of the appearance [of a moment] as finite and empirical time (sthūla-kāla) – just as something is called an object of cognition (prameya) because it appears as something that is finite and empirical. idānīṃ kṣaṇa iti vyavahāras tu sthūlakālasyedānīntvena bhānāt prameyatve prameyatvam itivan nirvāhyaḥ. (Rajpal, 2008, pp. 125–26) Empirical in form, ‘the now’ is argued by Viśvanātha to be an object of cognition and as such can be analyzed as we would analyze any other object in our cognition. These objects, within which ‘the now’ is included, can be grasped cognitively because they have an objectivity: they entail various relations to other objects around them and contain various relations within them. Recall, however, that as theorized by Raghunātha, the moment is a potentialized moment. This is because, as clearly glossed by the commentator Raghudeva, the moment contains an impending connection – technically phrased as a ‘prior absence of a connection’ in nyāya philosophy. This connection anticipates a movement back into universal time and stands for an end to the moment that is not yet extant but is necessarily forthcoming or potentialized in the moment. By extension, the potentiality of the moment implies that ‘the now’ – a specific identity of the moment – is also potentialized. What sort of potentiality can be read here? In my view, this potential of ‘the now’ need not contain what Dipesh Chakrabarty has called the “‘not yet’ . . . [of] the historian’s lexicon” through which “historicism follows” (2007, p. 65). Instead, ‘the now’ in this case allows room for an imagining outside the time of the historian and away from historicism, since the term (universal time) into which ‘the now’ is potentialized to terminate cannot be pre-defined. Pre-defining time would only be possible if we accept that universal, homogenous time (kāla) can be filled with a certain quality (such as the historical trajectory of Enlightenment Europe). However, according to nyāya 179

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scholars, it is impossible to attribute qualities (limiting conditions or upādhis) to universal time and still be able to refer to it as a universal. For, once we attribute qualities to time, then the time created is no longer universal but rather particular. As a particular, ‘the now’ is thus a site of ‘content’ (viṣaya) to be critically analyzed, but only because it is available to human thought as a site of empirical and ordinary time (a temporal unit), which separates it from universal time and brings it into historical time. We can always compare various and different moments or different ‘nows’ we find in the world, but it must be acknowledged that that comparison relies upon a temporality that is not part of universal time, since that is outside of history and thus lacks temporality. Thus, as historicism attempts to make a particular now the basis of temporal comparison, historicism ignores the potential of different and other nows to elide a historicist reading in reconnecting to universal time in unique and unanticipated ways based upon the unique actions that led to that moment’s – that now’s – emergence in the first place. This is because one problem that historicism produces is that these different and other nows are not permitted to reconnect to universal time but are artificially connected to another particular now in order to place it on a temporal (and comparative) scale, which obscures and mutes its potential. Let me turn to another issue important in the analysis of ‘the now’: the ability of humans to create ontologies out of and against things that do not stand in direct relation to human cognition and are not directly accessible to human experience. In this regard, nyāya scholars appear to be arguing that we cannot ‘think’ universal time, yet we are able to successfully act against and in response to universal time such that we can create particulars from it and, in so doing, build an ontology of ‘the now’ (an objective piece of time) from a non-object (a-viṣaya) – universal time. Recall that although Raghunātha disagrees with the earlier nyāya account of the moment, he still supports the idea that a moment qua moment is an action or a movement. As and when this action or movement takes place, universal time, which exists outside of direct human cognition and direct human experience, is brought into direct human cognition and direct human experience as a finite and empirical object in the form of the moment, ‘the now.’ What initiates this action? In Kr̥ snadāsa’s comments quoted previously, our judgments certainly appear capable of recognizing the result of this action or the emergence of a moment by focusing on the creation and/or temporality of objects (such as a pot in Kr̥ snadāsa’s example). However, we might take Kr̥ snadāsa’s example further and say that it suggests that humans are able to exert a force or undertake an action that results in placing a form of time in a direct relation to our thought and experience. As is well known, a pot is a created object that is made through certain actions of the potter, which she or he initiates in the course of making a pot: the action of the stick against the potter’s wheel so that the wheel turns, the movement of the wheel and the relation between the movement of the wheel and the clay out of which a pot is made (Shaw, 2002, pp. 241, 243, 247). Could this sort of action or movement be interpreted as the action required to particularize 180

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time? Answering in the affirmative could mean that although universal time is never in a direct relation to human thought and human experience, humans are able to exert a force or initiate an action against that universal which makes time accessible and/or in relation to our thought. Can we then say that this sort of action underwrites the ability among humans to read an ontology out of something which lacks a direct relation to human thought and is inaccessible to direct human experience? This seems to be the case for Raghunātha, for whom the significance of this action is doubled. In the first, it collides with universal time to create the objectivity of time as a moment, and, in the second, it marks the moment as an ontological category with a Being that other temporal units lack. This doubling means that while we cannot experience time (kāla), we nevertheless have the ability to act against it to build an ontology of temporality (the moment or kṣaṇa). This seems a very powerful ability and may even gesture toward what Dipesh Chakrabarty, in the context of the climate crisis, has called the “non-ontological agency” of humans – a provocative and challenging idea (2018, pp. 240, 239–42). While non-ontological action may appear contradictory from the perspective of nyāya scholars since it suggests the movement of a non-object (a universal), I want to offer a brief interpretation of this type of action, as it is important and relevant to our discussion of ‘the now.’ In my reading of Chakravarty, non-ontological action is an action that is never fully revealed to human cognition and never fully accessible to human experience; instead, it can only be known and experienced incompletely and indirectly through the particulars that are built out of or in response to it.7 In my view, this means that an interpretation of non-ontological action involves analyzing a double action: collectively as humans (as a species?) we initiate a non-ontological action that is never directly and fully revealed to us as separate individuals – thus, the action retains the form of a universal. But as individuals, we are able to particularize that non-ontological action, although only incompletely since non-ontological action constantly withdraws from us as seperate individuals. If we accept this interpretation, ‘the now’ of the climate crisis is the moment during which our (ontological) action as separate individuals meets our (non-ontological) action as connected humans. It may be that this ‘now’ is one moment (out of many) in which we find ourselves today, or perhaps it is a moment, borrowing from Raghunātha, that has attained a Being, and thus a prominence, that others lack. Whatever the case, a now of this sort can only be one of unease. And, while my interpretation may raise questions about Chakrabarty’s claim that humans can coalesce together in a “mode of existence” that transcends ontology, it nevertheless points in the direction suggested by Chakravarty that the non-ontological acts as a limit on the ontological (Ibid: 242). *** In a beautifully worded 16th-century Telugu verse, translated by David Dean Shulman, time is personified as someone searching for buried treasure as the sun sets and the moon rises in the night sky. The verse reads: 181

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Time smears his eyes with the magic of darkness, makes the stars his grains of rice, mixes in the red quiver of moonrise that could be a hapless traveler’s blood and sprinkles this offering in the eastern sky. Now he can see the spot marked by the black banyan in the moon, and sure enough, digging there, he uncovers the hidden treasure, glowing with gold, that we call the moon – a gift set aside for the God of Love.8 The verse stresses the requirement of an action or a movement in order for time to form relations with the world.9 Of course, each verb in the verse stands for a particular action, but each also stands for actions that mark the emergence of various relations between time and the world: the stars, the eastern sky and, most prominently, the moon. These are ontological relations that human cognition can grasp and make sense of as and when they form and indicate that time has thus been brought into human experience as a particular, even though its universal form remains outside of (not in a direct relation to) human cognition and human experience. By emphasizing that crafting time’s objectivity as ‘the moment’ also involves bringing time into a relation with imaginative, not only critical, thought, the verse opens up multiple ways in which we might ‘understand’ time. This is the case even though universal time, for nyāya scholars, can never be understood, since it is only the observance of its particularities that leads us to understand time. But, in so doing, the verse simultaneously challenges us to find the imaginative and critical potentials of ‘the now.’ Whichever potential is emphasized or explored in future analysis, however, what is certain is that the theoretical complexities of the moment in the form of ‘the now’ stress the need to forge a global critique of time.

Notes 1 The introductory article for a recent special issue of Past and Present, for example, notes the absence of critical thought on time and temporality from regions outside of Europe and America yet admits that it does not close this gap (Champion, 2019, pp. 7–8). 2 Indeed, a universal, by definition, must be motionless or inactive, since it is always already present in every location. 3 Both substance and trope are theorized as ontological categories (padārthas) by nyāya scholars. 4 For example, see Kr̥ snadāsa (Sastry, 1923, pp. 375–76): “Now, these limiting conditions are of four types: (1) an action – defined in terms of an absence of a separation (from universal time) that has yet to come about, but which will be produced by that action; (2) a separation – defined in terms of that connection which was prior [to this separation from universal time]; (3) the absence of that forthcoming and impending connection – defined

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5 6

7

8 9

in terms of the cessation of that earlier connection; or (4) an action – defined in terms of an anticipated connection [with universal time]” (upādhis tu svajanyavibhāgaprāgabhāvāvacchinnaṃ karma pūrvasaṃyogāvicchinnavibhāgo vā pūrvasaṃyoganāśāvacchinnottarasaṃyogaprāgabhāvo vā uttarasaṃyogāvacchinnaṃ karma vā). See also Dinakara’s (c. 1620, Banaras) commentary on Kr̥ snadāsa (Sastry, 1923, pp. 375–76). For secondary sources, see Shaw (2016, p. 34), Madhavananda (1954, p. 63), and, briefly, Prasad (1984, p. 241). His argument also states that another former substance is in god, namely space (diś). This is part of a larger sentence which I do not quote here. The entire passage is (Sastry, 1923, pp. 372–73): “Judgements such as, ‘Object x (e.g., a pot) exists now,’ attribute an objectivity to that of which there is an association with the motion of the sun. When this judgement takes place, then we must speak of a relation of object x (such as a pot) to the motion of the sun. This relation cannot be a contact relation but rather must be posited as time itself” (idānīṃ ghaṭa ityādipratītiḥ sūryaparispandādikaṃ yadā viṣayīkaroti tadā sūryaparispandādinā ghaṭādeḥ sambandho vācyaḥ sa ca sambandhaḥ saṃyogādir na sambhavatīti kāla eva sambandhaghaṭakaḥ kalpyate). Chakrabarty (2018, p. 239) posits that this action is akin to a “geophysical force.” This force is a result of human action, even though, for Chakrabarty, “we cannot send someone out to experience in an unmediated manner this ‘force’ on our behalf” (Ibid). Elsewhere, he writes that, “A force is the capacity to move things. It is pure, nonontological agency (Ibid: 240).” Shulman (2012, p. 216). The verse is from Allasāni Pĕddana’s Story of Man (Manucaritramu) verse 3.21 (Shulman, 2012, p. 206). For Shulman’s own interpretation of the poem, see Shulman (2012, pp. 216–17).

References Chakrabarty, D. 2007, Provincializing Europe: Post-Colonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chakrabarty, D. 2018, The Crises of Civilization: Exploring Global and Planetary Histories, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Champion, M. S. 2019, ‘The History of Temporalities: An Introduction’, Past and Present, vol. 243, no. 1, pp. 247–54. Chatterjee, P. 2001, ‘The Nation in Heterogeneous Time’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 399–418. Ferguson, J. 1994, ‘Benjamin’s Blur: The Site of Practice in the History of Photography’, Art Documentation, Winter, pp. 9–11. Govinda [Bhaṭṭācārya], Padārthakhaṇḍaṇaśiromaṇe[ḥ] Vyākhyā (commentary on the Padārthatattvanirūpaṇa), Nyaya MS No. 2278, Calcutta: Sanskrit College. Madhavananda, S. 1954, Bhāṣāpariccheda with Siddhānta-muktāvalī by Viśvanātha Nyāyapañcānana, Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama. Paraba, K.P. 1883, The Tarkasangraha of Annam Bhatta with His Own Gloss (the Dīpikā) and an English Translation, Bombay: Nirnaya-Sagara Press. Prasad, H.S. 1984, ‘Time as a Substantive Reality in Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika’, East and West, vol. 34, no. 1/3, pp. 233–66. Rajpal, A. 2008, Padārthatattvanirūpanam (Ṭikātrayopetam): Śrīraghudevanyāyālaṅkār akr̥ tapadārthakhaṇḍaṇavyākhyā, Śrīrāmabhadrasārvabhaumaviracitaḥ Padārthata ttvavivecanaprakāśa, Śrīviśvanāthanyāyapañcānanaviracitaḥ Padārthatattvāloka, Dilli: Amara Grantha Pablikesans.

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Sastry, C.S.R. 1923, Karikāvalī with [Siddhānta]muktāvalī, Prabhā, Mañjuṣā, Dinakarīya, Rāmadrudrīya, and Gaṅgārāma Jaṭīya, Madras: Sri Balamanorama Press. Shaw, J.L. 2002, ‘Causality: Sāṃkhya, Bauddha, and Nyāya’, Journal of Indian Philosophy, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 213–70. Shaw, J.L. 2016, The Collected Writings of Jaysankar Lal Shaw: Indian Analytic and Anglophone Philosophy, London and Oxford: Bloomsbury Publishing. Shulman, D. 2012, More than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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14 ‘A FARRAGO OF LEGENDARY NONSENSE’? Myth, time and history in the Keralolpatti Dilip M Menon

We have become more accustomed now to thinking with great swathes of time – of geological formation and the time of human evolution – so that the idea of a few thousand years of civilizations and states seems to be something that even a schoolchild can grasp. The historical conjuncture of the newly designated Anthropocene that we inhabit is variously seen as having originated with humans having turned to agriculture 12,000 years ago, with the industrial revolution of the 18th century, or more proximately with the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 on civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, when it comes to the writing of history, we still work with conventional time divisions of prehistory (stretching back to some distant point in time) and the more modest temporal divisions of the ancient, early medieval, medieval, early modern and modern worlds. Most historians of the modern deal with the abbreviated time of a modernity inaugurated by colonialism with the neat triad of the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial. Time hinges on the colonial axis; there is only the before and after of this world-defining period. While the world may indeed have existed for a few millennia, the birth of the “world as we know it now” is dated to no more than 500 years or so ago. While historians may make distinctions between the early modern and the modern, or indeed between the precolonial and the colonial, we must bear in mind that these are merely heuristic divisions. Time and space are not conditioned by a singular idea but rather are better understood as a concatenation of multiple temporalities and spatialities in any given historical conjuncture. One must also bear in mind that these divisions of time and periods are located in transitions and conjunctures in a European historiography (Davis, 2008). We need to evolve another set of categories for understanding the reckoning of time in societies such as our own. Historians combine long memories with selective amnesia, a paradoxical situation that does not allow us to ask the question as to how far back we must go to write a history of the present. More profoundly, we could ask: When did we stop thinking with eternity? These are questions that haunt us as we study texts from DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-14 185

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the immediate precolonial period that have a dilatory temporality and begin, as it were, at the very beginning, rather than with the proximate. The chronology of the puranas encompasses vast swathes of time, and local histories have an idea of a past that is both distant and near at the same time. Along the southwest coast, origin myths of coastal regions from Gujarat and Maharashtra down to Kanyakumari summon up the figure of Parasurama, an avatar of Vishnu, who it is believed, reclaimed land from the ocean, thus creating the possibility of human habitation. These are not disenchanted histories, so to speak, in which there is only the secular homogeneous empty time of modernity, as Walter Benjamin memorably characterized it. There is a concatenation of times, indeed, calendars. The local calendar in Kerala that sits alongside the Gregorian one commences from 825 CE and is called the Kollam era. It is commonly understood to date from a convention that was held by the king Kulasekhara Perumal at Kollam, the most important port of its time on the Malabar coast, signifying the emergence of a stable political realm founded on maritime commerce as much as control over land. However, among the many other versions of origin is the one associated with Parasurama that is sometimes divided into cycles of 1000 years reckoned from 1176 BCE. Thus, 825 CE would have been the first year of the era’s third millennium (Sarma, 1996). This chapter looks at the first English translation of one such origin story, the Malayalam Keralolpatti, in the late 18th century CE, commissioned by Alexander Walker, who came to the western coast of India as a young cadet of the East India Company. Influenced by the comparative historical method of the Scottish Enlightenment, Walker read the Keralolpatti sympathetically, putting its notions of temporality within a comparative framework of ancient civilizations. His was one of the earliest attempts to engage with a local sense of time and history in colonial South Asia. *** Ocean, space and time: If colonialism has abbreviated our sense of time, arguably, nationalism has curtailed our notion of space. We tend to think with the short history of nations and a comparative history, and it is only very recently that we have begun to rethink the wider geographies of an earlier period and the question of connected histories (Subrahmanyam, 2012). It is a curious feature of the historiography of Kerala that the dominant paradigm writes about this coastal region almost entirely through the histories of land, landlords, tenants, temples and monarchies. There appears to be a piquant division of labour between historians who work on the maritime and those who work on the hinterland. This paradigm itself reveals deeper Hindu mentalités of land, caste and privilege which associate the ocean with the unHindu (the Muslim and Syrian Christian) as much as the subaltern (fisherpeople and coastal traders) (Menon, 1999, 2005). This raises the question of the occlusion of the sea by those who live by the sea, or is it that the dominant groups that write histories derive their wealth and power from the land and have little interest in the sea? Of course, one may say that the ocean, by its very there-ness, is both present and forgotten in the literary and historical 186

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imagination. As Borges observed, there are no camels in the Koran. However, this has deep implications for conceptions of time in the historiography. Historical thinking is premised on a terrestrial temporality: the seasonality of land revenue payments, the time discipline of agrarian work and subsequently factory labour, and so on. The monsoons are seen as a minor climatic irritation, notwithstanding the fact that from Roman times to the Vasco da Gama, the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean were what integrated Kerala and the maritime world that extended from Melaka through Calicut to Aden and beyond to Lisbon, Amsterdam and London (Menon, 2019). We need a departure in the writing of the histories of Kerala that truly integrates the histories on land and the histories on the ocean that would bring together themes of agrarian history, maritime commerce and the histories of religion, as in the case of Indian Ocean Islam. That said, perhaps what we might need is less a departure and more a recovery of imaginations submerged by a colonial history writing that wrote the histories of the subcontinent itself in terms of land, zamindars and land revenue settlements alone. The origin legend of Kerala makes an intimate connection between the ocean and the history of the region. In fact, the retreat of the ocean makes possible settlement and habitation on the land. The Keralolpatti, or the origin myth of Kerala, is widely believed to have been composed in c. 17th century CE by Thunjath Ezhuthachan, the “father of modern Malayalam literature.” This attribution could well be to grant legitimacy to a document whose status between myth and history has always been in doubt. It is stated in this chronicle (carita) that Parasurama, the sage of legend, slew 21 generations of Kshatriya warriors and then threw the bloodstained axe into the sea, thus recovering the land of Kerala from the waters. The text also traces the evolution of kingly rule and social order in this coastal region over the centuries. *** Sympathy and early colonial historiography: The southwest coast of India became embroiled in the politics of East India Company mercantilism and the conflict over the pepper trade from the mid-18th century onwards. The trade in Malabar pepper across the Indian Ocean had a history that integrated the domains of many oceans and transient empires for over a millennium, uniting the southwest coast of India to the vicissitudes of war and tribute between the Roman Empire and Carthage; to the 12th-century trade in the Mediterranean reflected in Arabic sources as much as the Cairo genizah; and, finally, the appearance of European parvenus like the Portuguese and the Dutch (Gurukkal, 2015; Goitein, 1999; Chaudhuri, 1985). Intellectuals on the coast drew upon a collective unconscious of historical memories and a sense of their place in the world, only recently sullied by the immediate histories of European colonialism. When Balakrishna Pillai began to write his series of essays in the 1940s on the history of Kerala in deep time, he could legitimately premise his enquiry on a fundamental question: Is Kerala a chapter in the history of Rome, or is Rome a chapter in the history of Kerala? (Menon, 2010). This extended sense of time was not merely empirical but 187

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one of actual mercantile connections and the reality of empires. It was also a reaction to the abbreviation of time under colonialism, which wrote history in terms of its own ascendancy. What was lost in thinking about the history of the coast, and indeed of India, merely in terms of the rise and expansion of British power? And, on the other hand, why, indeed, did the British deem it necessary to deal summarily with the longer narrative of history that Indian imaginations offered? Unlike the invocations of messianic and millenarian time that we spoke of earlier, which sat beside the emerging historical imagination under colonialism, Pillai’s was a frontal engagement with the secular, yet abbreviated, conception of historical time introduced by the British. It is salutary to remember that it was not until the time of Darwin that the short chronology for human history based on the biblical narrative collapsed, a chronology, as Trautmann puts it, “in which the whole of human history had been crowded into the space of a few thousand years” (2009: 5). The Indian classical texts, on the other hand, particularly that of Manu, reveal “a unitary Indian intellectual culture of time,” the tendency of which is to “multiply cycles of world ages without limit; to make of time an eternity” (Trautmann, 2009: 30). James Mill’s History of British India (1818) is derisive of this capaciousness of time combined with what he thought was a parsimony of restraint and analysis that characterized Indian reflections on time and history. “Rude nations,” he observed patronizingly, “seem to derive a peculiar gratification from pretensions to a remote antiquity” (quoted in Trautmann, 2009: 32). Trautmann argues that Mill’s critique draws upon earlier understandings of Chaldean, Chinese and Egyptian systems of temporal thinking, showing a “structure of thought” in which non-European nations are counterposed to a European sense of time: it is, in fact, a “defense of European time against the time of other nations” (Trautmann, 2009: 33). He goes on to argue that this defence has its source neither in modern science nor in ancient Greece and came rather from Christianity. In the 20th century, Indian conceptions of time seem more familiar than exotic. The length of yugas, four million years, may appear long as against the span of human history, given two million years or so of hominid development, but, against the age of the earth itself, it does appear to be too short. Trautmann states wryly that it has often seemed to me that the Indian time units . . . should, if anything, have been a more congenial matrix for the development of a modern scientific cosmology than the cramped confines of the time sense traditional in Europe. (2009: 35) The chronological scale of the Bible puts Creation between 4000 to 5000 years before Christ, and the content of this time is strongly directional and informed by a single cycle of fall and redemption, of paradise lost and regained. Trautmann is right in thinking that 19th-century disquisitions on Indian (Chinese, Egyptian) 188

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notions of time by Hegel, Mill and others are better thought of as “secularized renderings of the Christian culture of time,” one that is “short and linear, directional, possibly progressive, possibly unicyclic” (Trautmann, 2009: 37). If one of the dominant features of colonialism in its effect on colonized societies is the “clash of chronologies,” this clash has replayed itself variously: secular vs religious time, Biblical chronology vs deep time, linearity vs cyclicity and history vs eternity. One of the first attempts to engage with the historical imagination along the Malabar Coast was by Alexander Walker (1764–1831), who arrived as an ensign in India in 1782 and was involved in the campaigns by the East India Company to take control of the pepper trade through conquest and subordination of the chiefs and kings along the coast. He was assisted in his efforts to gather information on local traditions, myths and histories in Kerala by Callinguel Cunhy Coroo a Tien (of the Tiyya caste) who acted as Walker’s menon (or supervisor) and who “though of low caste [he] was conversant with the Sanscrite writings” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13810: xi-xii). Most of the information for his extensive writings was collected when he was a member of the commission for administering Malabar in the last decade of the 18th century. Walker observed that he had the daily opportunity of being with “Natives of all ranks”; he “mixed with them frequently and conversed with them with the freedom of a friend.” He felt that as he was entrusted with government and administration, “these duties could only be performed by understanding the civil and religious institutions of a people” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13810: III). He displayed a sensitive understanding of the circumstances of his conversation framed as they were by the fact of conquest. They will not bestow their confidence on Men who treat them superciliously. They suspect their intentions: they are alarmed and repelled by their manners”. As a result, he stated, they give evasive replies and “lead their querists into a maze of errors. This draws on them the character of treachery and insincerity. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13810: IV-V) His observations on the circumstances of knowledge production in the aftermath of war are worth quoting at length, particularly as he was deeply aware that victors judge harshly the character and culture of those they conquer. He warned against a tendency to generalize on the “character of the native” reducing a varied humanity to a type. The estimation of character must always have some dependence on the feelings and taste of those who undertake the delineation, and upon their opportunities of observation. Their judgment in any case can only have a comparative value. It is not easy even for a philosophical mind to preserve a calm and impartial course. The mind is apt to be biased by momentary and local circumstances, by irritation, and unreasonable disappointment. But one great cause of error in forming a right estimate 189

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of the People of India, has arisen from applying insulated and particular facts as a representation of them all. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms.13810: VIII) In writing about the history of the region and the character, as it were, of the native, Walker was insistent that the best way to establish truth is to give a plain narrative and an unwarranted detail of facts. It is theory and speculation that leads to error. It is the spirit of generalizing, which from a single or a small number of facts draws permanent and universal conclusions, that is unfavourable to the real state of things. This spirit is unphilosophical. . . It levels the characters of Nations and decides on them summarily without a sufficient investigation. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13810: IX–X) In this, Walker was following in the footsteps of Adam Ferguson, the Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment, whose Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) showed much sympathy towards traditional societies and developed a sociology that, contrary to contemporary trends, saw commercial society as making men dishonourable and unsympathetic. Ferguson was against the “spirit of generalizing” that would read the history of one people in terms of another, and he reproaches unscientific historians who substitute hypothesis instead of reality “confound[ing] the provinces of imagination and reason, of poetry and science” (Hill, 2006: 59–60). *** The Keralolpatti in the Walker Manuscript Collection: The Keralolpatti exists in many versions and follows a trajectory from the founding of Kerala by Parasurama to the eventual consolidation of a monarchy under the Zamorin of Calicut sometime in the early 12th century CE after the dissolution of the Chera empire. Reverend Herman Gundert, missionary and scholar of the Basel Evangelical Mission compiled a translation in 1843, which follows this narrative. Arguably the telos of the establishment of the Zamorin’s rule had much to do with the fact that most of the sources that Gundert collected and commented on were from northern Kerala. The Keralolpatti itself may be a northern tradition and could be said to bear the impress of early colonialism and its search for legitimating histories that would allow an easier transition to East India Company rule. The search for the emergence of a monarchy and kings had its roots in the Company’s investment in the pepper trade in the late 18th century and the need to arrive at settlements regarding the produce and its trade. This was short lived, as Tipu Sultan’s invasion of Malabar and his subsequent defeat meant that the Company had to work with a different set of prerogatives, which did not require deference to local authority. Kings and the idea of kingship went through a brief efflorescence before the 190

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Company downgraded political authority and vested the rights to collection of land revenue and maintaining law and order in janmis (previously regarded as so many rajas) or landlords. Since this settlement in the late 18th century was coeval with the Permanent Settlement in Bengal, the idea of an extensive right to property in land, previously non-existent, was imported into the region (Nightingale, 1970; Menon, 1999). As the Company slowly consolidated its authority over the region, individuals like Walker were keen on gathering information on local traditions of rule and conceptions of history. The general rule of sympathy meant that there was no condemnation of the local imagination. Derrett has argued that in the colonial encounter, the early attempt by the East India Company in Bengal to govern the ‘natives’ according to their own legal traditions (consulting with pandits and maulavis) had two consequences. The first was the textualization of tradition, where the diversity of practice was ignored. The second was that the demand for texts led to the generation of “responsive texts” to meet this requirement (Derrett, 1968). Kesavan Veluthat has pointed out there was no distinct, secular historical practice on the southwest coast, centred on kings and monarchical rule that had, for instance, emerged on the eastern coast as early as the 7th c. CE with Pallava rule. Prasastis or accounts recording and praising the rule of kings were absent here, and this is attributed to a stronger brahminical presence and the subservience of rulers to spiritual authority (Veluthat, 2011: 131–32). The Keralolpatti that came into Walker’s hands, through Callinguel Cunhy Koroo, the Tiyya interlocutor mentioned earlier, provides a different account from the traditional narratives. It may well be that Koroo provided what he thought Walker needed, an account from the beginning of time to the present, a very responsive text indeed! It begins with the establishment of the region of Keralam by Parasurama but ends unlike nearly all other versions of the Keralolpatti with the coming of the ‘Christians.’ Most versions follow a more or less uniform chronological sequence: Age of Parasurama, Age of Perumals and Age of Tampurans. The few variations are related to the third period of petty locality chieftains in the post-12th-century period (Veluthat, 2011: 134). The text Translation of the Book called Kerul Oodpattee or Production of the Kerul Country (58 paragraphs written on 12 manuscript pages written on both sides) begins with a concise account of the establishment of the land of Keralam and its being granted by Parasurama to brahmins brought in from the north of India. What we see in this text is a condensation of time which brings the story from the very beginning in mythical times beyond reckoning to the present. As observed earlier, the idea is to proceed from the present and establish its genealogy; thus, it is not a chronology that gets established so much as mnemonic markers of descent. Thus, the story goes, Parasurama – establishment of Brahmins on the land – need for kingly authority –acknowledgement of suzerainty of Vijayanagara – Adi Shankara and the emergence of caste – the coming to power of the Zamorins – the arrival of the Christians. How far back does one have to go to write a history of the present? The answer is to the very beginning, and vast swathes of time are compressed in this narration, but what is clearly marked are 191

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the transitions from priestly rule, to rule by multiple sources of authority under a nominal monarch, to the emergence of a singular monarchy and social order. The text is very much a response to a question which inserts the listener into a duration of time that is a strategic telling. It tells the origins of the present moment, and possibly each telling would vary depending on the enquirer. Alexander Walker, having desired to know the history of the region, is told the history until his coming, as it were. The variance of this text (which is also a telling by Callinguel Coroo) from the standard versions of the Keralolpatti which end with a conventional attribution to Thunjath Ezhuthachan as author is significant. Veluthat has suggested that the Keralolpatti was not intended for private reading but for public performance (Veluthat, 2018). This makes eminent sense in a largely oral society and opens up the question of the dissemination of historical traditions as much as religious imaginaries, since tellings of the Keralolpatti are incorporated into teyyam performances, held at shrines and draw an audience across castes. In a copy belonging to Herman Gundert, the authorship is attributed to Tuncattu Ramanujan, and the date given as K.E. 772 (1596 CE). At the end of one section, there is the note When a person expounds this prabandha, he should be given [the expenses for] oil, bath, food and a fee according to [one’s] ability. Or else . . . [one] will incur the terrible sin equaling matricide. (Veluthat, 2018: 250–51) This allows us to understand tradition as inhering in practice and performance rather than text alone. Did Coroo tell the origin story as he had heard it at a performance? If so, how much licence did he exercise in the telling; are the minor variations and discrepancies to be attributed to his invention, misrecognition and lapses in memory or, indeed, his creativity? Did the occasion of being summoned by Walker to tell the story generate a telling for the occasion and for the person? The manuscript necessitates our imagining the scene as it were of narration, the question asked and the precise window that was opened up to the present. In The Tempest, Prospero, enquiring from his daughter Miranda as to what she remembers of her past, poses the question, “What seest thou else/In the dark backward and abysm of time?” One can imagine Coroo’s response: that which leads to the present. A teleological response that creates a narrative out of eternity for a particular person and particular query in time. While vast swathes of time are summoned up, which then come to be dismissed by the likes of Mill and Macaulay as fantasies of antiquity, what is important to note is the precision of remembrance. Eternity is held in a moment of telling. The following excerpts give a sense of this concatenation of time and the precision of the telos. 1st The author of this Pooran do write that in the course of the Sat Ioog and of the Treta and Dvapaar and Calie Ioogs many famous Sovereigns

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and Powerful Rulers having freed the Earth from tumults and dissensions, have preserved mankind in the Cradle of Safety and security, and for the suppression of the race of the Khatry Kings who were wicked, the Lord Pursram assumed the flesh, after which he twenty-one Times slew and rooted out the foundation of the Khatry kings. He then for the remission of his Sins sat down at Gowkurn upon a hill becoming absorbed in that kind of pious meditation called Tapas he asked some ground from the King of the Ocean and the latter bestowed on him accordingly 160 Gaow . . . of Land which land he called Muly Yalum . . . along the coast of which he erected 108 Temples . . . he brought Brahmans and placed them therein (1 recto) 8th Lord Pursram sending for Indra Deo appointed him to watch over the Country; decreeing that the People here might be as . . . the Inhabitants of Indra, and that the said Deity should uphold them under his gracious protection; and that he should cause 6 months of rain, and 6 months of heat, and that he should keep the Country replenished with Grain and Fruits and the Produce of Cultivation; and that there should be plenty of Flowers and of Water and abundance of bountiful and of worthy and Virtuous deeds (2 verso) 14th the Brahmins going into a foreign country brought thence a Khetry or Chetry and a woman, and that woman was married by a Brahmin and the issue thence produced were called Chetries and the name of the Chetry was Permoo or Permal and he became the ruler of the Rauje or Kingdom and divided Malabar into four Tookrees or Devesoms (from Gowkurn to Kanyakumari) (4 recto) 20th In this way the Rajas and the Brahmins passed their time in peace and happiness till by the prevalence of the Kali Jogue (5 recto) 20th . . . at the time the prevalence of the Kali Jug becoming exceedingly high, the Mohammedans came at that time and visited the Permal and made him acquainted with what was their religion and Permal placing faith therein and believing the Truth thereof became himself a Mussulman and after thus becoming himself of that faith he ordered that every one else should become so. (5 verso) 30th [brahmins] Went to the Rao [Krishnadeva Raya] and said, “Give unto us a Raja for our country for the period of 12 years and Rao did

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accordingly command a Perumal to go unto their country and after remaining there 12 year to return again to him. (7 recto) 49th Mana Vikarma Erary and the other Erarees and . . . taking those 10000 Nayrs and the 30000 Nayrs in all 40000 Nayrs went forth to fight and the remaining troops having been taken up by . . . of the Carigurs or Ministers or officers of the Sherman Permal they . . . with them for the same purpose, and accordingly those . . . Carigurs taking a . . . to the right proposed for the fight whilst the others proceeded right onward for the same purpose and entering on . . . they proved victorious and the army of Rao being . . . fled from Malabar and took . . . in another country. (9 recto) 51st [Sankara] Became omniscient and sending for the Brahmins of all the 64 villages he pointed out to them how they should act and each should remain within their own limits and all preserve and remain steady in their own caste; and that if their hands should be in any respect defiled, they should wash the same and put away their garments if similarly spoiled and put on others and that if they met those of another Tribe they should bathe; for which purpose they should have each of the Casts, separate and distinct . . . and that every Cast should remain within its own limits and there being 4 original Casts he subdivided each into 18 making in all the 72 Casts spoken of. (9 verso) 53rd Sherman Permal lighting a golden lamp showered water from his own hands into that of Mana Vikerman signifying that the country was his and the said Mana Vikarman asking Sherman Permal answered by saying “in the place where I lived do you also abide”. . . Having thus delivered himself he committed his sword to Mana Vikarman and commanded that slaying all he should take the country for himself and taking water and flowers in his hand he delivered his sword which Mana Vikarman received in both his (11 recto) 58th At that time there was a Nasranee or Christian called Ari . . . which Christian had erected a fort and factory and collected the taxes and custom and had begun to use great violence and oppression such as the slaughtering of kine and seizing on Brahmins wherefore he was attacked and expelled and the Samoory took the said Christians property into his own hands and created a Kolgum or Palace and having assembled all the Brahmins of the 64 villages he kept and maintained them in happiness. (12 verso) *** 194

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Temporality in a gratuitous archive: This early stage of intellectual engagement with indigenous traditions was not marked by the dismissal of the “ungoverned imaginings” of native intellection that was to mark the work of James Mill and Thomas Macaulay from the third decade of the 19th century (Marshall [1970], 2009; Stokes, 1959; Majeed, 1992). The triumph of Utilitarian enterprise meant that the late 18th-century enterprise of orientalism and the discovery and translation of Indian philosophy and literature, so associated with Sir William Jones, was slowly replaced by what Trautmann has termed “Indophobia” (1997). While the orientalist enterprise was scholarly, it was also strategic in that it attempted to engage with the foundations of political rule and governance in Islamic and Hindu texts. Given the Manichaean thrust of much recent postcolonial scholarship, and the tendency to stress the intimate and violent relation between power and knowledge, it has become customary to see the gathering of colonial knowledge within a paradigm of the denigration and suppression of indigenous intellection. However, it is important to remember that the late 18th century was also characterized by what I would like to term ‘gratuitous intellectual interest’ as officials engaged with local informants and gathered information on cosmologies, history, religious practices and legends. Nicholas Dirks has written on such an archive of information subsequently deemed superfluous to the emerging colonial enterprise in India: the collection of manuscripts and accounts of the Mysore region by Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821) between 1799 and 1810 in collaboration with native intellectuals employed to collect, evaluate and collate information on an extraordinary range of issues (Dirks, 2001, 2005; Mantena, 2012). Walker similarly created a ‘superfluous archive’ which, as with Mackenzie’s collection, bears the impress of the comparative and evolutionary historical method of the Scottish Enlightenment. He was the first to get translated into English the traditional accounts in Malayalam and Sanskrit of the origin and early history of the Malabar Coast, using this and his own research to produce four volumes of notes towards a history of Malabar. The brief description of Chapter 1 goes thus: Deficiency of authentic history: great value that all Nations set upon Antiquity. Natural Appearances in Malabar favour the Idea of the Natives of its origin. Proofs that it was formerly covered by Water: different opinions on the subject: names of the Country. Herbelot: Its History united probably with the Flood: coincidence between it and the account given in the Genesis. Probable account of Parashu Rama and his adventures. The Natives of Malabar trace many of his rights to him. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797) The legend of the origins of Kerala goes back to the story of Paraśurāma (Rāma of the Axe), the sixth incarnation of the god Viṣṇu. Paraśurāma is believed to have slain 21 generations of kṣatriyas after a king insulted his father Jamadagni. Tired and remorseful of his excessive vengeance, he sought the advice of sages. He was advised to fling his bloodstained axe into the ocean, and where his axe fell, 195

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the sea receded, creating the narrow strip of land which we now know as Kerala. Subsequently, Paraśurāma is believed to have settled the region with brāhmaṇas brought from northern India. This legend of reclamation of land from the sea is found among many communities along the south-west coast and in the story of a Cēra king of the early centuries of the Common Era who flung his spear into the sea to reclaim land. What is important here is the coming together of the idea of antiquity and the common myth of the Flood. Walker is agnostic as much as equable in his description of local accounts. Chapter 3 “The History of all Nations resemble each other: universal Belief in Giants, monsters and supernatural agency. Wars in Heaven: the contention of the good and bad principle: duties of Kings according to Menu . . . Malabar peopled: first governed by Brahmans, Aristocracy established: destroyed . . .” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797) On Parasurama himself, the fact that he was worshipped as a god did not occasion much surprise. Such of the First Inhabitants of the Earth, as were eminent for their talents or skill were everywhere exalted by the gratitude of mankind into Gods and heroes. . . This is not a mere sacrifice to credulity and vanity. Nations as well as Individuals endeavor to counsel themselves with a superior existence by ascribing more than human powers to their ancestors: it asserted for themselves a high and exclusive prerogative. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 226–27) As for the reclamation of Kerala from the sea, There is nothing in the event that is incredible: it is confirmed by appearances. Provinces and Islands as large as Malabar owe their origin to the retreat of the sea. . . . Most of these calamities have happened anterior to the present Civilization of the World, (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 229) What was important here was less the plausibility of a story of land reclamation through divine intervention and more the fact that this had resonances across space and time. “The creation of Malabar, or its recovery from the ocean, has probably some reference to the Universal Deluge and the recession of the Waters after that event” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 233). The similarities with the Biblical story extended to the subsequent settlement of Kerala. Parasurama built temples and directed that the first fruits of the earth should be given to god in return for regulating the seasons, “similar to God’s promise to Noah.” “The intention in both cases was to remove the curse and by 196

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taking away the apprehension of another deluge to encourage the Inhabitants to pursue their peaceful labours in security” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 235–36). The original spur for Parasurama’s actions, the insult to his father, as much as the consequent unremitting hostility to the warrior class, was also reasonable within a comparative framework. The war which ended nearly in the extirpation of the Kshatriyas has a theatre probably far more extensive than India. . . . May we venture to conjecture that the War against the Kshatriya was the same as that of the Titans. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 256) Parasurama’s character in itself needed little explanation, and, in fact, carried a veiled lesson for the East India Company: The character of Parashurama is that of a virtuous, pious and holy Hermit. He engages in the business of War from necessity, and lays it aside as soon as his Enemy is crushed. He commences hostilities with reluctance and immediately grants peace when the Foe is humbled. (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 257–58) Walker, coming out of the traditions of the Scottish Enlightenment, was interested in the comparative study of civilizations as much as the evolution of societies through the stages of savagery, barbarism and civilization. Therefore, he could write with equanimity of accounts of Kerala’s past, that “Everything is darkened by Fable and superstitions so that the whole appears to be a mass of extravagance and contradictions. This however, is the basis of all early History and more especially of that of the Hindoos” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms.13797: 225). The idea of origins of great antiquity, and of the country being a gift of a divine personage, is attributed to “one of the most universal feelings of our nature,” citing both Job and Cicero. At the heart of this comparative method was the fact that none of these beliefs were peculiar to Indian history. “Rome herself endeavoured to conceal an infamous origin by an illustrious Pedigree. This prejudice is not altogether without advantage. It gives to the Infancy of Society an appearance of Decency and Dignity” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms. 13797: 226). What is even more significant here is the legitimacy accorded to this account by folding it back into Biblical narratives of the Flood. “The creation of Malabar, or its recovery from the ocean, has probably some reference to the Universal Deluge and the recession of the Waters after that event” (Walker of Bowland Papers, Ms.13797: 229). In this account, we can see some of the generosity and vision and scholarship of officials of the late 18th century who worked within a paradigm of civilization and the possibility of comparison across space and time. Walker, in the course of his unpublished research, quotes widely from Humboldt, Goquet’s Origins of Laws and Government, Herodotus, Livy, Tacitus and the Bible in order to make legible 197

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the customs and history of Malabar, but the Biblical narrative and temporality remains the framing device. This is being stressed not so much to emphasize a failure of imagination on Walker’s part but rather to state the Christian limits of the beginnings of time that Trautmann draws our attention to. By the mid-19th century, with the influence of Lyell in laying out a notion of geological time, and Darwin’s elaboration of the origin of species, the Biblical “short chronology,” as Trautmann terms it, was superseded in the intellectual imagination by the idea of a great antiquity. *** While temporality was opened up beyond Biblical myopia and seemed to stretch backwards into the “dark backward and abysm of time,” colonial history writing remained suspicious of undisciplined imaginations of antiquity. Histories of India written in the 19th century by colonial officials increasingly concentrated on British conquest and the proximate past of what they saw as political disequilibrium and internecine warfare (Inden, 2001). The period prior to the arrival of the Europeans was characterized as the age of despotism and the dark age of reason under Islamic rulers, while the ancient period found a limit in 326 BCE and the invasion of India by Alexander the Great. The short temporality of the Bible came to be replaced by the abbreviated time of colonial conquest and the onset of Pax Britannica. As the inheritors of the mantle, however frayed, of the Mughal Empire, the British also set in place a terrestrial imagination that saw the space of the Indian subcontinent as the theatre of rule and extraction. Beginning from the late 18th century, a series of land settlements with landlords, cultivators, communities carved out the space of colonial rule and cemented the space-time of colonial modernity. Pax Britannica paradoxically became the paradigm within which both colonial administrator and nationalist agitators worked. The consolidation of Gandhi’s authority over politics from the 1930s on meant a curtailed notion of space and an abbreviated notion of time (Goswami, 2004). While Gandhi may have gestured towards an apodictic temporality in his rejection of history, the homogeneous, empty time of colonial modernity came to set the parameters of elite thinking (Skaria, 2016).

References Chaudhuri, K.N. 1985. Trade and Civilization on the Indian Ocean: An Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, Kathleen. 2008. Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Derrett, J.D.M. 1968. Religion, Law and the State in India. London: Faber and Faber. Dirks, Nicholas B. 2001. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2005. Autobiography of an Archive: A Scholar’s Passage to India. New York: Columbia University Press

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Goitein, S.D. 1999. A Mediterranean Society: An Abridgment in One Volume. Berkeley: University of California Press. Goswami, Manu. 2004. Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Gurukkal, Rajan. 2015. Rethinking Classical Indo-Roman Trade: Political Economy of Eastern Mediterranean Exchange Relations. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hill, Susan. 2006. The Passionate Society: The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson. Dordrecht: Springer. Inden, Ronald. 2001. Imagining India. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Majeed, Javed. 1992. Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s the History of British India and Orientalism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mantena, Rama. 2012. The Origins of Modern Historiography in India: Antiquarianism and Philology, 1780–1880. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Marshall, P.J. [1970] 2009. The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Menon, Dilip M. 1999. “Houses by the Sea: State Formation Experiments in Malabar, 1760–1800”. Economic and Political Weekly, 34, 1995–2003. ———. 2005. “Things Fall Apart: The Cinematic Rendition of Agrarian Landscape in South India”. Journal of Peasant Studies, 32:2, 304–34. ———. 2010. “A Local Cosmopolitan: Kesari Balakrishna Pillai and the Invention of Europe for a Modern Kerala”. In Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas, ed. Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2019. “Continuous Oceans: Writing Histories of the Indian Ocean”. Keynote at workshop on Twin Seas: the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Doha, Qatar. Nightingale, Pamela. 1970. Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784–1806. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarma, K.V. 1996. “Kollam Era”. Indian Journal of History and Science, 31:1, 93–99. Skaria, Ajay. 2016. Unconditional Equality: Gandhi’s Religion of Resistance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Stokes, Eric. 1959. The English Utilitarians and India. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 2012. From Tagus to the Ganges: Explorations in Connected History. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Trautmann, Thomas. 1997. Aryans and British India. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 2009. The Clash of Chronologies: Ancient India in the Modern World. Delhi: Yoda Press. Veluthat, Kesavan. 2011. “The Kéralōlpatti as History”. In The Early Medieval in South India, ed. Kesavan Veluthat. Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 129–46 ———. 2018. “History as Performance: A Note on the Keralolpatti”. In Questioning Paradigms, Constructing Histories: A Festschrift for Romila Thapar, ed. Kumkum Roy and Naina Dayal. Delhi: Aleph, pp. 242–58. Walker of Bowland Papers, National Library of Scotland. Ms. 13810 Jadee Jathu or an Account of the Castes in Malabar, Volume I. ______. Ms. 13797, Part the Second, History of Malabar and the Translation of Zeinuddeen Mucdom’s Book on that Subject.

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15 THE KNOTS OF TIME Reading nostalgia in Bengali literature from the 13th to the 19th centuries Anuparna Mukherjee

This chapter analytically delves into the multifarious formulations of nostalgia in precolonial literature in Bengal. It subsequently charts how, as an affective state, nostalgia marks in the textual field the rupture in Bengali society transitioning to colonial modernity. The discourse of nostalgia that typically feeds on a “lack” or a “loss” thus becomes an important conduit for gauging the shifts in the temporal register and the way in which it impacted the cultural ethos of Bengal, responding to the unforeseen changes wrought by colonialism. Tracing its etymology to the 17th century, “nostalgia” was coined in 1688 by a Swiss medical student, Johannes Hofer (1669–1752), by soldering nóstos (“homecoming”) and álgos (“ache” or “pain”) in modern Latin to indicate a specific form of “melancholia caused by prolonged absence from one’s home or country” (OED). Such condition widely affected Swiss workers, students and mercenaries in the foreign climes of Italy, France and Germany. Consumed by nostalgia, they wallowed in their desire to return to the homeland. In the 18th and 19th centuries, nostalgia gained traction in Europe with the Industrial Revolution, the expansion in travel and the concomitant growth of imperial trade and commerce in the outlying colonies. In the Bengali context, the import of this notion of nostalgia was immanently tied to the European encounter. Its present form largely evolved out of colonial modernity and the sprouting of urban centres like Calcutta, where life was closely aligned to the industrial clock. It discarded all the precolonial perceptions of time incommensurable with this regime of linear temporality. This was coupled with the mass migration of job seekers from villages to the new crop of colonial cities. Both occurrences resulted in a deep spatiotemporal disjuncture. The experience of educating oneself to the new temporal economy combined with an acute sense of cultural isolation in big urban conurbations created overpowering disorientation. It engendered a nostalgia that is keyed to the new spatial configurations in the form of Western cities which displaced the traditional societal structures. DOI: 10.4324/9781003202783-15 200

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Working around this conjunctural moment, this chapter locates how nostalgia shaped by plural trajectories might be conceptualized within Bengali language and culture. It therefore symptomatically traces a tradition of nostalgia through certain local precolonial manifestations in literature such as the Mangal Kavyas (with their copious references to journeys and separation from homes). The chapter simultaneously meditates upon the various trappings of nostalgia in Bengali literature of the 19th century, briefly touching upon two distinct genres: the street songs and the urban satires in the new novelistic form such as Durgacharan Ray’s Debganer Martye Agaman/God’s Visit to the Earth. The latter hinged on the dilemma of choosing between two social orders: one ordained by the Hindu gods in traditional Bengali society and the other propped by the “new deities” through the discourses of Western science, technology and secularism in cities like Calcutta. While these texts are deeply embedded in their milieux, they are also laced with the pre-modern memories that stand as resilient remainders from earlier times. Nonetheless, before moving into a discussion on this temporal break instituted by colonialism, it would help to situate in the following section some of the ramifications of nostalgia that one might observe before the arrival of the Europeans. For it was not merely the notion of time but also the modalities of nostalgia that underwent a transformation with the colonial incursions. However, it might be cogent to declare the possibilities and limitations of this chapter at the outset. This does not attempt a sweeping view of nostalgia in precolonial literature and society in Bengal that is deeply riven with multiple classes, castes and religious denominations. Further, there exists an immensely rich body of esoteric and secular literature in Persian, among many other traditions that remain outside the purview of this chapter. Instead, the readings claim to locate only a few of its evocations to extend the understanding of homesickness and longing that permeated the literary embodiments of nostalgia in subsequent times. *** While nostalgia as an affective condition persists across geographic locations, its expressions have specific cultural moorings: “Nostalgia is neither an absolute nor singularly universal phenomenon” (Pickering and Keightley 2006: 934). Its practice at an individual and communal level “is subject to circumstance, motivation and interests, and over both time and space, to degree, variation and change” (Pickering and Keightley 2006: 929). How nostalgia could be characterized with its affective associations, ideas and aesthetics when mediated through the matrix of Bengali language thus becomes a significant concern in relation to its interpretation within the rubric of my work. In modern Bangla, there is a litany of terms defining nostalgia. Swaran-bedona (swaran, from Sanskrit smaran – to recall; bedona – ache or pain), emphasizes the agony that is entrenched in the recall. The other expression, smriti-katorota (smriti – memory; kator – distressed with pain), might mean languishing from a memory or suffering its torments.

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An acuminous understanding of the difference between smriti (memory) in smriti-katorota and swaran (recall) in swaran-bedona requires mulling over the subtle modifications in the semantic register. While the former addresses the memory, the latter explicitly relates to recall or the process of summoning a past through reminiscences. These compounds weigh heavily on the side of algos, or the pain that wraps nostalgia. However, there is a perceptual ambiguity in indicating the position of that pain: whether it is the memory which is painful or the active process of recall that rouses pain. Curiously, none of these allude to the “home,” which is tenuously implied but never distinctly articulated. The expressions in Bengali structurally cohere around the forms of memory and the specifics of recollection. Again, there are several qualifiers for smriti in nostalgia which reveal the affective conditions – ranging from bedona (pain), katorota (anguish) to medurota (mellowness) – triggered by the mnemonic encounter with the past. These may be called smritir rasa,1 or the affective essence of memory. Rasa (meaning “juice,” “sap,” “essence” or “flavour”) uncovers the finest part of anything. Rasa theory stresses the “aesthetic flavour” as a keystone of literary and performing arts. It is “a kind of contemplative abstraction in which the inwardness of human feelings suffuses the surrounding world of embodied forms” (britannica. com).2 Rasa constitutes the rudiments of emotion, which may be transmitted suggestively through dhvani or nuances in language. One may, in fact, call nostalgia a rasa – but not so in the classical sense, which catalogues the fundamental ones in Indian aesthetic theory. Here I am using the conceptual register derivatively, as Tagore did, for example, when he invoked the oitihasik or historical rasa, which according to him is a “vital principle of the epic” (2010: 195). Tagore speaks of “indefinable mixed rasas which it [rasa theory] has not attempted to name” (2010: 195). Nostalgia, too, could be among those unspecified ones. As a rasa, it speaks of “the climate of memory,” (Christine 2002: 128) and together functions as an aesthetic principle that animates a literary creation. Noticeably, the expression that goes missing in all standard Bengali dictionaries such as Samsad and Chalantika, and yet most commonly accepted name for nostalgia, is smriti-medurota (smriti – memory; medur – spell). Medurota, which comes from medur, has different connotations in the dictionary, all of which could be adduced as conditions for understanding nostalgia. Medur may be “soft,” “mellow” or “gentle.” If one goes by this, the splicing of two terms, smriti-medur evokes a sentimentalized notion of nostalgia as gentle memories that are untainted by the vagaries of time. There are, however, other meanings that retain nostalgia’s ambiguity without tempering the memory as tender or harsh. According to Kalim Khan, medur may also be “full.” Smriti-medurota is then characteristically a condition of being saturated or overwhelmed by memories. The other interpretation of medur in the Bengali lexicon is “to be under a spell” or “a trance-like state.” Smriti-medurota would then imply something that is under the spell of memory. In Bengali, there is no exact parallel for the term, “nostalgia.” Its counterparts hinge on the temporal dimension of memory by suppressing the spatial coordinate of nostalgia ingrained in nostos. So even though it must be granted that 202

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the nostalgia that I discuss here is a conjunctural phenomenon, defined by the cultural encounter with the West through imperial routes, it is worthwhile to look at some of its precolonial manifestations before deliberating upon the specific conditions for its explosion in the 19th century. Of course, nostalgia’s affective history predates the modern birth of the term in the medical nosology of the 17th century. From Odysseus’s journey in Homer’s epic to the Genesis stories in Christian-Judaic tradition, nostalgia figures ubiquitously through ages. The Old Testament recounts the “original sin,” man’s eviction from the Garden of Eden and the consequent yearning for that idyllic home. This pursuit of the lost paradise is once again treated with different layers of complexity in the exile of Cain, the homelessness of the eternal wanderer. While the cultural codifications differ considerably in Indian contexts and languages, the literary traditions from ancient times record episodes of nostalgic yearnings to grapple with various estrangements. In Hindu mythologies, celestial beings such as the nymphs are banished from their heavenly abode by the curse of incensed deities to suffer the separation from their families as mortals on earth. In the two foundational epics in Sanskrit literature, Ramayana and Mahabharata, the protagonists are repeatedly cast out of their homes by conniving relatives or caprices of fate. For instance, Sita, the daughter of King Janak, was born from the soil. The beloved child of the Earth goddess Bhumi and the consort of Lord Rama in Ramayana, Sita was faced with multiple separations from her loved ones in her mortal life. First, she accompanied her husband in exile for 14 years away from their kingdom in Ayodhya. Next, Sita was abducted by King Ravana in their exile in Dandaka forest. Finally, following her rescue through a deadly battle and a brief reunion with her family, her husband deserted her in the hermitage of sage Valmiki, as his subjects suspected that Sita had been rendered impure during her abduction. Eventually, she decided to end her life of suffering, which constantly needed proof of her purity and spousal loyalty, by entering the womb of the earth. This reunited Sita with her mother to complete the homecoming that was denied in her earthly life. Separation and yearning endemic to the human condition are at the heart of the epics. In fact, according to Hindu mythology, they fostered the creation of the Ramayana and poetry itself. Valmiki, hailed as the Adi Kavi, or the “first poet,” who is credited with having created the shlokas (verse meter; a “song” poem or a hymn, from the Sanskrit root śru, “to hear”) and to whom Ramayana is traditionally attributed, started composing his lines after witnessing a Krauncha bird cut down by a hunter during love-making. The excruciating sorrow of its female companion stung Valmiki with grief. He immediately recalled the story of Rama and Sita and their ordeals: love, departures and impossible longings. These instances of estrangement, pain and yearning help us to make a segue into a very significant strain in Classical literature – viraha – that has been augmented by variegated aesthetic and spiritual traditions in South Asia. It is a vast field unto itself, meriting a separate discussion. Here my aim is to focus on the accents of nostalgia in viraha through allusions to some select texts. 203

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In Sanskrit, a term associated with amorous longing and remembrance is smara, which shares its root with smaran, meaning memory or recollection. As a memory, smara is thus constitutive in the terms smaran (to recall) and smriti (which variously means memory or that “which is remembered”). In the amatory context, smara is often used in compounds such as smara-chakra (a form of sexual union), smara-griha (the abode of love), smara-stambha (the pillar of love, also referring to the male phallus) or smara-kūpaka (the well or the cave of love, alluding to female genitalia). In Hindu mythology, Kamadeva, the god of love, is sometimes called Smara, and Shiva, the destroyer of Kamadeva for interrupting his meditation, Smara-hara. Based on these relations, Charles Malamoud, in his treatise “By Heart: Notes on the Interplay between Love and Memory in Ancient Indian Poetry,” builds an intimate ontological relationship between love and remembrance in Sanskrit literature. Malamoud asserts that “Memory is determined by love. A being or an object could not occupy my memory were I not bound to it by some form of attachment” (1996: 249). He then probes deeper into this connection by alluding back to the etymology: It is the verbal root that bears the primary meaning, which is also the broadest meaning. From SMAR, ‘to remember,’ is derived smara, which is recollection,’ with a nuance of ‘love’ – which nuance, we must imagine, comes to wholly mask the primal tonality. Smara is that which awakens in us the remembrance of things . . . desired. (1996: 249) Here Malamoud offers a love that proliferates in absentia: “love draws its power of seduction from the fact that it is, at the same time, a recollection of love” (1996: 250). We wistfully remember those we love, and nostalgia redoubles our yearning by dwelling on the aspect of unreachability. We may once again recall the origin of poetic utterance in Ramayana from beholding the unbearable longing of the female bird for her dead partner, which spawned the memory of Rama and Sita’s love, separation and the resultant suffering for the rest of their lives. It is perhaps for that reason, viyoga (loss, separation, death) and viraha (lack, longing in separation) are considered crucial in themes dealing with both love and nostalgia. As Laubscher purports, nostalgia is different from “plain” reminiscence or “simple” memory recall. It is as if memory, conceived of as a cognitive activity, needs to be cathected or “lit up” by affect, as it were, for it to be nostalgic (2012: 218). And love or separation from the object one loves becomes a fundamental affective condition that propels nostalgia. “No one is nostalgic for grief, alarm, a funeral” (Darwish 2010: 82) or things one hates. Though love here is used in a broad sense (as in love for one’s family, home, certain food or a song etc.), it could also very specifically refer to a state of lovelorn yearning, caused by distance, desolation, deception or desertion by the Divine or earthly lover. By attempting to understand nostalgia through viraha, this chapter invokes a very particular context in the corpora of erotic literature. 204

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In Classical literature, women most commonly experience viraha, or the insufferable pangs of separation. However, exceptions are not infrequent. A man’s lament for his estranged wife is given most enduring expression in Kālidāsa’s lyric poem Meghadūta or The Cloud-Messenger, dated tentatively around 375 CE. Meghadūta opens with a conventional situation of a proscription, which heightens the longing in love. The yaksa,3 or a semi-divine caretaker of the treasures of Kubera,4 the God of Wealth is thrown out of his kingdom in the Himalayas for neglecting the duties of his lord. The forlorn lover woefully pines for his wife, from whom he has been torn away in his exile for a period of 12 months in Ramagiri. The poem opens at the onset of monsoon in the Hindu month of Asharha, where: A banished Yaksha passed his lonely life: Doomed, be his lord’s stern sentence, to sustain Twelve tedious months of solitude and pain. (1963: 3) As in the other poems of Kālidāsa, nature stimulates in humans different emotions that are sensitive to the minute changes in the inventory of time – the rhythmic patterns of day and night, the movement of the season and so on. The yaksha, who is stricken with grief due to the separation from his wife, observes a cloud on the mountain-top from his retreat. On seeing this passing cloud, the petulant yaksha beseeches him to be his emissary to carry his tidings to his wife in Alakā on Mount Kailasha. To convince his messenger of the benefits of the journey, Yaksha elucidates, with a wealth of detail, the many picturesque sights that the cloud is likely to discover on his northward voyage to Alakā, where Yakshapriya (Yaksha’s beloved) awaits his return. His words, redolent with nostalgia, describe the absent homeland with a flourish: There is the fountain, emerald steps denote, Where golden buds on stalks of coral float; And for whose limpid waves the Swans forsake, Pleased at thy sight, the mount-encircled lake. (7) From the city, his description shifts to his beloved’s unrivalled beauty that is now frozen in sorrow. The husband envisages the vyakul (a feeling that combines restlessness, anxiety, distress and perplexity) and virahotkanthita (“distraught by the separation”), Yakshapriya languishing like a lovelorn, solitary Chakravaki: a female counterpart of Chakravaka, also identified as the Brahmany duck in India. In mythology, Chakravaki is held as the symbol of steadfastness in conjugal loyalty and love. The birds are normally seen in pairs during the day but are doomed to remain apart every night for annoying a muni (sage) during his meditation. Yaksha imagines himself suffering from a similar crisis when he compares his 205

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lonely wife (pathikavanita) in waiting, mourning her husband’s absence like an estranged Chakravaki: Lone as the widowed Chakravaki mourns, Her faithful memory to her husband turns, And sad, and silent, shalt thou find my wife, Half of my soul, and partner of my life, Nipped by chill sorrow, as the flowers enfold Their shrinking petals from the withering cold. (my emphasis; 85) Interestingly, Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta became an occasion for another poet centuries later5 to speak of literary inheritance and nostalgia in a short essay. Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), one of the greatest figures of modern Indian literature, muses on the idea of home, exile and nostalgia in yoking two disparate times. He compares his modern readers with the exiled yaksha, estranged from their idyllic home: The Yaksa’s cloud thus sails over hills, rivers, and cities, and with it go the sighs of the reader, afflicted by the sorrow of separation from his loved one. It was the India of the poet, where the loving-tender eyes of village wives had not yet learnt the artful play of eyebrows, and the town wives’ long-lashed dark eyes, adept at beguiling play, sent out curious glances like swarms of bees. We are banished from that India. We have only the poet’s cloud to send there as a messenger. (“The Meghaduta” 222, translation; Bhawani-Prasad Chattopadhay)6 What is interesting here is the role Tagore ascribes to the poet’s flight of imagination in bridging the vast temporal gap between the ancient and the present. The poetic imagination, like the cloud, is not merely a shape-shifter but also a time-shifter which takes us back and forth in the temporal scale by organically connecting us to the ages, severed by centuries. This probably comes from his faith that Sahitya (literature), which etymologically draws on sahit (together), embodies the idea of union. According to Tagore, this is not “simply a union of idea and idea, language and language, book and book: nothing except sahitya or literature can establish deeply intimate ties between one person and another, between past and present, between far and near” (Tagore, “Bengali National Literature” 2010: 179). The poet’s craft, backed by his imagination, thus substitutes the “cloud” for modern readers. His views may be placed within a larger current of “romantic nationalism” in the 1890s. It resonates with the “aspiration” for “national literature,” which believes that through the intercession of poetry/literature, one can tower over the temporal fissures and come closest to that India lost in the morasses of time. At another level, the passage also shows Tagore’s nostalgia 206

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for the pastoral life of man-nature harmony that he believes is now effaced by the urban culture. Invasive urbanity is distancing humans from their original homes amid nature. The traditions of viraha – separation and an ineffable longing – have evolved, expanded and been modified across generations. This has significantly honed the aesthetics of modern-day nostalgia. In medieval and precolonial Bengal, the instances of viraha were most manifest in Vaishnava literature, with Jayadeva’s (arguably born in Orissa or Bengal) 12th-century Sanskrit poem, Gita Govinda (The Songs of Govinda). The narrative dramatizes Krishna’s adoration for his mortal lover, the cowherdess Sriradha.7 “The esthetic experience of their love is the means for breaking the imaginary barrier dividing human from divine” (Miller 1977: 15). Through an intricate detailing, the poem builds the mood for viraha before culminating in a passionate ecstasy of reunion for the loves. Here the poet draws a connection between love’s manifestations and the time of the year that heightens amorous longing, which soon spirals into opprobrious pangs of separation. “Their romance is a rite of spring, the dark thickets of the poem fragrant with danger, desire, and uncertainty . . . when we humans become achingly vulnerable to love and wind, flowers, birdlife, and soft grasses” (Schelling 2013: 127). Jayadeva tells us that “cruel time deserted lovers” (1977: 74). While the flirtatious Krishna engages in dalliance with other Gopis or the milkmaids of Braj in the riverbanks of Yamuna, Radha completely succumbs to her restlessness. The weight of her insuperable suffering breaks the threshold of her mind and transforms into bodily anguish: “She laments, laughs, collapses, cries, trembles, utters her pain” (Miller 1977: 87). The sensorial and affective tonalities encapsulating the progressive shifts in mood of Sriradha (avastha) alter the perception of time through as many as eight stages to embody the love, separation, viraha, anger, pain, quarrel and eventual reconciliation with the “cosmic lover.” The intensity of emotions, their number, the keenness of memories and expectations, the effect of routine or of its opposite – all that lends psychological time its own rhythm and duration. Time speeds up and slows down, shrinks and stretches, in keeping with what happens in our consciousness. (Draaisma 2004: 210) Sriradha’s anticipation of her union with Krishna lengthens the “subjective time” and calibrates her suffering. This time perception that relates to the state of her mind is distinct from historical and other temporal reckonings. Its subtle transitions are mediated through the spectrum of affects, culminating in the various phases of Radha’s viraha. Another fundamental condition for the escalation of such amorous pining in the lovers is the awareness of two discordant temporalities. A happy past and a lack or a loss of love in the present nourish Radha’s viraha and give it an aesthetic charge in the current context. 207

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Gita Govinda was an inspiration for wide-ranging literary and artistic compositions in South Asia. For instance, the padavalis (constellation of songs, pada – a short verse or a “measured unit in poetry”; vali – collection, assortment) and devotional songs known as Kirtans were steeped in this Radha-Krishna legend. In medieval times, the padavalis in Eastern India were written in two languages: brajabuli, an apabramsha of Maithili, adopted by the 14th-century poet Vidyapati, and in Bengali by Chandidas. In the subsequent era, the songwriters Govindadasa and Jnanadas, influenced by Krishna-Bhakti of the 15th-century saint and proponent of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gained eminence in Eastern India as the composer of padavalis. While padavali lost eminence in modern Bangla, the cult of erotic mysticism inspired several poets, including young Rabindranath Tagore, who composed songs in brajabuli on the perennial theme Radha’s viraha and union with her paramour Krishna under the pseudonym Bhanusingha. The songs exist in a collection, Bhanusimha Thakurer Padavali. Apart from the Padavalis, ensconced in Radha-Krishna Viraha, there were other allusions to separation and suffering, such as those that occur in the prolific folk renderings of Ramayana. They speak of the exile, or Rama and Sita’s griefstricken outbursts (bilap) when the latter was abducted by Ravana. Some of the best-known examples of such episodes occur in the Panchalis (oral ballads), such as Dasu or Dasarathi Ray’s Panchanli in 19th-century Bengal, where the anguish of the estranged couple was invoked with a great affective import. The tradition of viraha that has grown over the centuries pervades a gamut of literary works from erotic to esoteric, from classical compositions in Sanskrit to innumerable demotic folk forms in Bhasha literature. Recasting some of the central thematics of viraha might be efficacious in arriving at an aesthetic model of nostalgia that attends to the poetics of “desire” and “lack” in specific situations of longing in a different time-space configurations. Biroho, a derivation from the Sanskrit viraha, is a common term used in both literary and everyday speech in Bengali. Modern writers in vernacular variously invoke the tradition of Viraha in a diluted and delimited sense by mostly jettisoning its elaborate stylized representation but nevertheless retaining the core of the sentiment. However, the affective economy of nostalgia I am about to discuss around the colonial modernity in the final section cannot be merely contained within the conventions of Viraha. Thus, in the following segment, I shall trace some other inflections of nostalgia in precolonial literature through a brief survey of the Mangal Kavyas. *** The contours of nostalgia may be mapped in the tradition of Malgal Kavyas, the dominant literary genre in medieval Bengal. They were largely spun around the miracles of non-Aryan female godheads on earth to spread their names far and wide in the mortal world. Some of the popular deities were Chandi; Manasha the snake goddess; Sheetala the goddess of smallpox; Annada the provider of rice, the

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staple food of the Bengalis; and so on. Their stories entrenched in the folk tradition had a wide circulation, especially among labouring men and women and the lower classes in rural Bengal. These Kavyas, multiple in number, were produced tentatively between 13th and 19th centuries when the deltaic Bengal, as a flourishing trade post, was attracting foreign merchants from different corners of the expanding world. The narratives of the medieval Mangal Kavyas betray a thriving practice of commerce under royal patronage. They speak of local communities engaged in seaborne trade. In Chandi Mangal Kavya, attributed to Kabikankan Munkundaram, an entire section (known as Banik Kanda or the Book of the Merchant) covering nearly half of the text is devoted to the toils of the tradesman Dhanapati. It is followed by his son Srimanta’s exploits at sea and on land in far-off Sinhala. Similarly, Manasa-Mangal Kavya revolves around the merchant-patriarch Chand Saudagar (an ardent devotee of Shiva) and his violent clashes with the one-eyed female deity Manasa, whom he refuses to worship. This leads to dire distress in his maritime enterprises. The Mangal Kavyas reveal that carrying out trade across the sea, braving the perils of a long and arduous journey through the rough waters, was a matter of prestige, befitting a man, in the merchant societies of Bengal. Such voyages received extensive support from the local kings, and their success was a means of establishing one’s authority in the community. However, the journeys were often premised on an aporetic desire for return – inherent homesickness is endemic to the narratives of travel (which also make the accounts of the voyages nostalgia narratives in a certain sense). And travels in Mangal Kavyas gave emotional valence to homesickness by enfolding protracted periods of “waiting” and the separation of the merchants from their families. They always carried dire threats of death, incarceration and damage. This was often due to the wrath of an angry goddess who cast spells to capsize the ships in the storm or hold the trader captive in a foreign land to force him to capitulate to her wishes. Consequently, these stories about the precarious lives of the merchants are laden with the apprehension of loss, estrangement and demise, which becomes a potential breeding ground for nostalgic mourning, prompting restive behaviour and anxiety. For instance, in Chandi Mangal, the pain of separation induced by springtime suffering gets vivid expression in Khullana’s complaint about her husband Dhanapati’s absence. She woefully narrates the travails of 12 months (baramsya) while he is away, leaving her in the custody of his co-wife: In Chaitra, chatak8 pleads the raincloud for water, The bee-couple revel in the lotus for nectar. The bodies of man and wife are tormented in love by Madan9 Like the fire in my belly tormented my body Cruel is my fate, cruel is my fate. The god betrayed me, you were not .at home. (Canto 289, p. 168)

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There are manifold strands of time that are entwined in the diegetic universe of these Kavyas. They are conceived within an enormous temporal frame. The Mangal Kavyas begin with a salutary vandana or votive verses to Ganesha and other godheads. Through the stories of creation by Manu, they gradually trace the religious genealogy of the titular deity in heaven and earth. By covering a vast tract of time, they reach the realm of the quotidian in a more contemporary era to show how the gods control the everyday lives of the humans of all ages. Finally, the story of the mortal winds back to the cosmological, as the deities go back to their abodes after establishing the cult of devotees on earth. The castaways from Heaven, too, return to their former selves by completing their assigned duties on earth. Such narratives enmesh the mythical with the chronological in Devakhanda (“The Episode of Gods”) and Narakhanda (“The Episode of the Humans”), showing interpenetration across various horizons of time. This is also illuminated in the way the heavenly beings assume their earthly frames. Nilambar, a disciple of Shiva, takes birth as Kalketu. Ratnamala, a dancer in the court of Indra, becomes Khullana in her mortal reincarnation, and Maladhar is reborn as her son Srimanta in Chandi Mangal. Similarly, the divine lovers Usha and Aniruddha are introduced as Behula and Laksmindar in Mansa Mangal. These characters, otherwise immortal and deathless, are exiled for a certain period on earth due to their alleged sins,10 which invited the wrath of the mercurial deities. Through their rebirth as humans, they enter the realm of the mortal and create a thoroughfare between the mutable and the transcendent by connecting different temporal orders. Their stories braid various scales of time within the narrative schema. For instance, the sections devoted to the mortals in these Kavyas often depict the journey of the central characters from birth to death. The human lifetime is placed as an inset narrative within the larger story of the creation and mythical time where all micro-denominations or temporal fragments roll back, joining the part with the whole. Returning to the enunciations of homesickness in the anecdotes of Nilambar, Ratnamala or Maladhar, the incidents of banishment from their abode by the capricious gods again bring into the fold of the Kavyas, the angst of parting, nostalgia and passage across time and space. Their departure from heaven is an occasion of great sorrow. These characters often treat their life on earth as a temporary sojourn and long for union with their divine counterparts at the end of their toils on earth. The traces of time variously inflect the texts of Mangal Kavyas and their journey down the ages. While a thorough reading of these threads lies outside the frame of this article, a few of them are worth a mention. An example of plaiting time, memory and a distant notion of literary nostalgia is the elaborate evocation of a religio-cultural inheritance. The texts’ customary remembrance of the mythical past generates a structural template: the invocatory section contains salutary hymns, and then the Book of Gods takes its readers on a journey from the divine dream that inspires the poet to write the benedictory verses. The first sections skim through the life of the gods in Heaven and establish their relationship with the 210

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eponymous deity of the Kavya who descends amidst humanity to fulfil her desires. It is at this point that the narrative embarks on its own journey. The transmission of memory through a long chain of events such as the recollection of the creation story or the conjugal life Shiva-Parvati woven into the structure of the Kavyas builds a narrative pattern which not only situates the text in a certain literary tradition but also attempts to bridge the hiatus between the various iterations of the past from mythical to the contemporary within a single diegetic frame. However, a seamless narrative in these Kavyas is often undermined by inconsistencies, temporal overlaps, neologisms or anachronistic details introduced by interpolations in various historical periods. A text “survives with the support of its environs” (Tagore 2010: 153) and “speaks of the world around it, because it survives more by the force of its surroundings” (Tagore 2010: 153). So, while the authorship of the Mangal Kavyas is attributed to specific names, the verses were routinely customized, abridged and revised from the 16th through the first half of the 19th centuries to suit to the exigencies of time and the audience to whom they were regularly narrated and performed in various demotic forms. And these temporal marks that remain as tenacious residues of the era when they were modified could be unearthed in the extant manuscripts by those who engage with the physical history of the texts to corroborate their age (especially when the name of the composer and/or its year is found missing in a damaged or incomplete document). For instance, eminent linguist Sukumar Sen, in his introduction to the Sahitya Akademi edition of the Chandi Mangal Kavya, narrates his encounter with one such unintended error that crept in with a word emendation in a verse by an unwitting editor of Chandi Mangal. The term ulti-dabor was in vogue in the 16th century. Dabor is typically a metal pot for carrying liquids. Sometimes betel leaves were also stored in such containers. Its qualifier ulti was prefixed to the container to refer to the practice of rinsing one’s mouth in these vessels or the custom of using them as spittoons. Ulti here meant belching or throwing up (udgirno). The term, however, had another connotation. It implied “return” or a “change” (paribartan). By comparing it with other surviving manuscripts, Sen infers that editors of this rendition of Chandi Mangal Kavya (and those that followed this version) were probably not conversant with the first meaning of ulti in the 16th century. They interpreted the term as a “change” and initiated modifications which altered the meaning of the word (from spittoon to a “return-container”) and the line altogether.11 Looking at the usage of a term, the corrections and alterations introduced in the process of revisions by simultaneously reading different manuscripts of the same text become one of the many ways of placing a text within a tentative timeframe to determine its age, along with palaeography and other methods of enquiry. And while the archival history of various texts of Mangal Kavya remains beyond the scope of this chapter, it is interesting to see how memories of different times repeatedly etch their presence on the body of the text through the process of evolution. *** 211

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However, despite these precolonial figurations, the contemporary body of nostalgia that assumed a generic form in the 18th and the 19th centuries is contiguous with the Indo-European encounter. As a cultural formation, it was intimately associated with the changes brought by the new reckonings of time and space which came with industrialization. Although the Puranas and the epics speak of a cyclical notion of time divided in yugas (ages), prior to the European arrival, in traditional Indian society, one witnessed the concurrence of manifold temporal registers, extending from planetary, genealogical and generational to dynastic or linear. Mythical and cyclical time, as Romila Thapar posits, could itself “encompass segments of time consisting of historical chronologies” (1996: 8). We have seen in the previous segment that the Mangal Kavyas speak of both macro and micro time extending from the cosmological to the ritual,12 following the rhythm of natural cycles, such as we observe in Phullara or Khullana’s recounting of seasonal activities around the year in Baromashya13 or the toils of the 12 months (Barah –twelve; masya – from months) in Chandi Mangal. With the arrival of the Europeans, secular horology that gained prominence in post-Enlightenment industrial cities was at once linear and quintessentially associated with trade, commerce and work schedules in the factories. The experience of colonialism in India grounded in the temporal order based on the new workregimes of capitalism sidelined other calculations of time in non-western societies. The new fixture of urban life and the concomitant sense of alienation created a perplexity that presaged a form of nostalgia associated with the birth of the Western cities in India. In the early phase, as we see in the vernacular literature of the 19th century, a nostalgia for the village and an oblique yearning for an older order become manifest in novels like Debganer Martye Agaman/God’s Visit to the Earth, which was possibly inspired by Suraloke Bonger Parichay (Bengal’s Identity in the Kingdom of Heaven in two parts, 1875)14 for its theme. This 19th-century novel first appeared in the magazine Kalpadrum and was subsequently published as a book in 1886. Debgan was loosely conceived as a travelogue with a detailed account of cities, towns and pilgrimage centres visited by the gods. It also incorporated the popular genre of the 19th-century naksha by typically merging the picturesque with social satire on Calcutta. A naksha, variously interpreted as a map, design or photographic sketch, not only charted the new urban landscape with sardonic humour; it also immersed itself in the gossip, rumours, behaviours and practices of the thriving metropolis. In Debganer Martye Agaman, the narrative unspools around the journey of the gods: Brahma (the creator of the universe), Indra (the king of heaven), Varuna (the rain god), Shiva (the god of time, destruction and divine energy) and Narayana (a form of Vishnu, the preserver of the universe). They come amidst humanity to observe the life under the British rulers, the “new deities” who created a parallel empire on earth. In his initial encounter with Kolkata, an awestruck Brahma quips: “The more I look around – I feel that I have not created this. It is a new creation altogether by someone else” (2001: 264). At first, they are totally befuddled and even fear that one day the British would invade their kingdom. In a conversation, when Indra assures the rest of the gods that the English do not know the way to heaven, Varuna 212

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agrees but adds that given their opportunistic and indomitable nature, they will soon find the path to paradise: To determine the way to heaven, they had created a byomjan15 a long time back, nowadays they are trying to make a spaceship. They are probably thinking that once they discover the route to heaven, they would come in hordes to invade the kingdom of gods. (2001: 9–10; my translation) While the gods were initially left flabbergasted by the advancement of science and technology, they gradually uncovered an urban life mired in danger, deprivation and poverty under the veneer of progress: “Theft, fraud, and vicious falsehood/ On which the mighty Kolikata stood” (2001: 269). Indeed, the erstwhile capital of the British Empire in India “was often portrayed as the heart of Kaliyuga, the last and the most degenerate of eras in the traditional upper-caste Hindu notion of cyclical time” (Sarkar 1997: 177). In colonial Bengal, both notions of Western chronological time and Hindu epochal cycles coexisted with their discrete or distinct spheres of application. On occasions, the two would roughly merge to justify each other contextually. For instance, vernacular texts in Bengal often referred to Kaliyuga to explain the wretched state of man under colonial rule and presented Kalikata as the capital of corruption, frequently punning on Kali in its nomenclature. Since ancient times, Kali has also been a generic name that signposts all the anxieties which plagued humanity about the present with an implicit longing for better times in the past. However, the allusion to this past in common parlance does not always refer to some primordial period in the Satya or Treta age. Instead, the gigantic time-cycle is broken into small units of linear time, perceivable by humans, “although a location within the yuga system forms the ultimate time frame” (Thapar 1996: 27).16 Here, Kali represents the disjunction between a qualitatively superior past and a debased present where social mores are upended to rue the collapse of the edifices of an older structure. Despite a seeming nonchalance about the old traditions and customs in the city raised by the British, the detritus of precolonial life troubled its margins as memories in vernacular writings. In fact, the narrative in Debgan is laced with a complex layering of wonder at the opulence of the modern city and a nostalgia for a stable older order, which is ironically imported by the new notion of linear chronology that renders the past irredeemable. Here, the ordeals of contemporary life, coordinated with the sirens of the factory, are invoked when the gods bemoan the fate of the keranis or clerks in the merchant offices, who gulp down their food in a rush to reach their office on time: How do they manage to eat rice so early in the day and in such wintry weather? VA R U N A : Do they have an option? Do not talk about their misery, dear Brother. At three in the morning, they wake their family by calling out “cook cook.” They somehow pour a few mugs of water from the well on their heads [bathe] [NARAYAN]

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and start screaming “bring my food quickly, bring my food, it’s getting late.” The wives bring the plateful of steaming rice with curry and hot lentil soup on it. The babus hardly get the time to cool them before guzzling the food in the fear of getting late for work. They eat the steaming dishes, which either burn their tongues or else they gulp down the meal by making various facial distortions. . . . There are days when even before the babu could finish half his food, the siren the workplace rings out loud. Immediately he leaves his food [in the fear of subjecting himself to strict punitive measures for being late] and jumps up saying [to his wife], beloved, I am not fated to have the milk. He then rushes out washing his mouth and satisfying himself with a betel leaf. (2001: 114–15, my translation) The urgency to adjust to the pace of the modern city invariably bred a nostalgia for the time and place left behind, which allowed a more leisurely, unhurried life. Yet despite the deep-seated discontent, the amenities of urban life were nonetheless much sought after. For instance, in Debganer Martye Agaman, when Brahma first becomes acquainted with the facility of domestic water supply through the pipes, he is elated with the tap water and the human ability to regulate its consumption by turning the faucet (271). Again, the gods are equally thrilled to see electric lights or the rapid transmission of news through the telegraph wires by compressing time and distance. The Eden Gardens for them look better than the Nandan Kanan created by the celestial beings (281). This practice of appreciating the modern city with the help of metaphors and images that were afloat in the Hindu cultural imagination was a literary commonplace. Calcutta was essentially a city of migrants, and every population that inhabited the urban space brought forth their recollections of the past for cultural anchorage in the alien environment. So, in the corpus of Bengali vernacular writings, the scenes of the British capital were expectedly interpreted in local idioms, imbued with the familiar religious and folkloric memories that shaped the lives of the people in precolonial times. Hence, drawn-out comparisons between the modern marvels and the immortal creation of the gods were popular and occurred everywhere, including street songs and poems. One such song that became well known was Rupchand Pakkhi’s (1814–1890?) Kolikata Barnan (The Description of Kolkata). In the song, there is an extensive catalogue of modern urban planning and the civic facilities put in place by the colonial government. However, he recasts them within familiar reference points in mythology. The song alternates between his inimitable humour and a sense of bewilderment at the wonders of the modern metropolis: Looking at the telegraph Indra hides his face in shame.17 Watching how letters transfer from wire to wire Praise to the fine craftsman, praises to the engineer’s name, 214

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Travelling nimbly from wire to wire News reaches in a day that once took half a year. (Pakshi 1905: 404–05, my translation) Interestingly, throughout this celebratory verse on Kolkata, the mise-en-scène of the city is rooted in the religious idioms of Hinduism. It invokes the cultural nostalgia around myths and legends to initiate a dialogue between tradition and the transformations wrought by colonial science through a comparison between here/now and then/elsewhere (the earth and heaven, the celestial and the mortal). The conjunction of the mythical and the secular not only draws us to the juxtaposition of two vastly different thought-worlds but also points to the coevality of various temporalities in the song. Through a constant navigation between the timeless domain of the mythical and the technological progress in the new temporal regime, the indigenous past is synchronized with the contemporary order to measure the feats of Western modernity. While speaking of the novelties in Calcutta both in terms of their newness and scale, the poet dexterously customizes the understanding of the colonized space to attenuate the cultural strangeness and make it accessible to the common man on the streets. By calling Calcutta an “earthly paradise,” Rupchand introduces a series of cultural memories and metaphors that are encoded in Hindu cosmology to augment the new spatiotemporal concepts within his narrative framework. As a way of initiating comparisons, he refers to Vaikuntha, the abode of the Hindu divinity Vishnu, or Nandankanan, the celestial garden, to which he equates the greens of Eden Gardens in Calcutta. Marking the city as an emporium of technological marvels, the persona gives a long list of civic amenities from the rail and the telegraph to the fire brigade and crematorium while trying to find their parallels in the mythology. The bard matches the shining phiton-carriages that ply the streets of Calcutta with Airavath, the magnificent white elephant who carried Indra, the king of the gods in heaven on its back. However, these new inventions have, paradoxically, not only accelerated the pace of workaday life but also created a consciousness that time is valuable and fleeting. This produced an impossible desire to hold back the irretrievable time, creating a pool of nostalgia in the interstices of modern existence. Indeed, early Bengali literature in the colonial period is marked by different levels of oscillation that layered the equation between the city and the village, the sacred and the profane and the past’s relationship to the present. The imbrication of nostalgia in these intricacies of time and space makes it remarkably polyvalent in all its literary avatars. This chapter crystallizes nostalgia’s changing relationship with plural histories and traditions entangled in different knots of time in a complex and interlocking chain. The discussions draw our attention to the protean possibilities for exploring the evolving dynamic between temporality and nostalgia, re-conceptualized and reviewed against the emerging colonial worldview in Bengali society. 215

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Notes 1 In a conversation with Dipesh Chakrabarty about the different formulations of nostalgia in vernacular, he used the phrase smritir rosh (rasa), which I believe is crucial in understanding nostalgia both as an affective memory and an aesthetic principle. 2 Bhatata in Natyashastra or the Treatise of Performing Arts postulated the theory of rasa somewhere between 200 BC and 200 AD, and it further evolved under Anandavardhan and the philosopher and rhetorician Avinavagupta around 1000 CE. As aesthetic categories in Sanskrit poetics, while the alamkaras (literary and poetic embellishments) are intrinsic to the “body” of poetry, the rasas form the immortal soul or the atma (“Rasa: Indian Aesthetic Theory” 2017). 3 “Yaksha, Sanskrit masculine singular yakṣa, Sanskrit feminine singular yakṣī or yakṣinī, in the mythology of India, a class of generally benevolent but sometimes mischievous, capricious and sexually rapacious ‘nature spirits’ who are the custodians of treasures that are hidden in the earth and in the roots of trees. They are powerful magicians and shape-shifters. Principal among the yakshas is Kubera, who rules in the mythical Himalayan kingdom called Alaka” (www.britannica.com/topic/yaksha). 4 “Kubera, in Hindu mythology, the king of the yakshas (nature spirits) and the god of wealth. He is associated with the earth, mountains, all treasures such as minerals and jewels that lie underground, and riches in general” (www.britannica.com/topic/ Kubera). 5 While Meghadūta is neither a text in Bengali, nor does it belong to the corpus of work from Bengal, its influence in modern Bengali literature is immense. Songwriters, poets and novelists from Tagore to the Modernists in the 20th century (Buddhadeva Basu, one of the proponents of Bengali modernism, translated Meghadūta into Bengali with a scholarly introduction) and beyond have displayed enduring signs of literary nostalgia by idealizing the lovers in Kālidāsa’s poem. They variously engaged with the text through allusions, translations, interpretations and analysis. 6 “The Meghadutam” was first published in the journal Sahitya in 1891. It was subsequently included in the collection Prachin Sahitya (Ancient Literature). The editor/ translator of this essay in Selected Writings notes that the “Meghadutam was perhaps Rabindranath’s favourite poem, an inseparable part of his mental landscape and, consequently, a crucial text in understanding the nature of his poetic imagination” (2010d: 290). 7 Sriradha or Radha is both perceived as a woman and a goddess in Vaishnava literature. 8 Pied cuckoo. 9 Kamadeva. The god of love or amatory union. 10 These sins were often committed inadvertently by these characters. The situations were pre-planned by the titular deities of the Mangal Kavya to send them among the mortals as agents of God in order to spread their influence on earth. 11 See Sukumar Sen’s introduction to Chandi Mangal Kavya (2013). New Delhi: Sahitya Academy, 1955. p. 1. 12 Romila Thapar notes that ritual time is based on “routine activities of a given society over a year, e.g. the grazing circuits of herders or the sowing and harvesting period of cultivators. Some of these were also moments for gathering of wealth” (10). 13 The tradition of Baromasya or Baromashi (account of the 12 months) is also associated with viraha or songs of longing (Viraha Barahmasya), recounting 12 months of pining and suffering due to an estrangement with one’s lover. 14 See Sukumar Sen’s introduction to the novel, reprinted in 1948. 15 Spacecraft. 16 We do not necessarily read our everyday in terms of the vast time cycles to realize that the yugas repeat themselves endlessly, making the yearning for an unrecoverable past (as one does in chronological time) virtually useless. An epoch covers many, many

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generations of human lives, and it is impossible to see the beginning and end of a yuga. Humans, thus, perceive time in small linear units where what passes away does not come back. So nostalgia is effective in evoking a strong sentiment and mourning for yesteryear. 17 Indra, who wields thunderbolts like Jupiter, feels ashamed because the invention of the telegraph has enabled the transmission of news faster than a flash of lightning.

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–———. “Literary Creation”. Translated by Swapan Chakravorty, Selected writings on Literature and Language. Edited by Sisir Kumar Das, Sukanta Chaudhuri, and Saṅkha Ghosh. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2010c, pp. 151–63. –———. “The Meghadutam.” Translated by Bhawani Prasad Chattopadhyay, Selected writings on Literature and Language. Edited by Sisir Kumar Das, Sukanta Chaudhuri, and Saṅkha Ghosh. New Elhi: Oxford UP, 2010d, pp. 222–25. Thapar, Romila. Time as a Metaphor of History: Early India. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1996.

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