The Flight of Love: A Messenger Poem of Medieval South India by Venkatanatha by Steven P. Hopkins

Author:Steven P. Hopkins
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2016-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Veṅkaṭeśa’s Geocultural Imaginary: Stages of the Southern Route

Rāma then tells the goose in great detail where it is to go, across what beloved landscapes, to Laṅkā and to Sītā. He imagines in vivid detail stages of the southern route, a geographical imaginaire that favors very specific southern regions that, though particular to this Śrīvaiṣṇava poet of northern Tamil Nadu, immediately bring to mind the literary Tamil landscapes described in Kampaṉ’s Irāmāvatāram. Veṅkaṭeśa praises the Toṇṭai, Cōḻa, and Pāṇṭiya regions, the exoticized charms of Andhra and Karṇāṭic girls (an idealized erotic ecology from the Tamil perspective), the Kāvērī and Tāmraparṇī Rivers, the equally exoticized badlands of tribal forests, and the very few specific shrines—Tirupati, Kāḷahasti, Varadarāja, and Ekāmreśvara temples in Kāñcī, the simple serpent shrine in the country in what will become Śrīraṅgam, Vṛṣabha Hill, and its Anklet Gaṅgā, a landscape marked by particular beauties and the extravagant rhetoric of a lover’s awe.31 Veṅkaṭeśa’s South also gives reference to conventionalized landscapes (tiṇai) in old Tamil poetry, from the hill country of Tirupati (kuriñci), the wilderness (pālai) of the Kallar lands, to the Cōḻa delta (marutam) and the coasts of the deep South (neytal).32 The sectarian commentaries link the coming descriptions with Veṅkaṭeśa’s preference for the South, and for the southern divya deśas, holy places of pilgrimage, Indeed, the South and sacred places particularly dear to him form the core of the anticipated journey’s descriptions. And there is a hint of internal scholarly critique. At one point (1.10), Veṅkaṭeśa refers to wild peacocks (vipinaśikhinaḥ) struck dumb as the goose flies by, having lost their “eye-feathers in autumn,” the same birds who had prattled endlessly when the goose was far away on the peaks of Kailāsa. The verse conceals a śleṣa, a double entendre: vipinaśikhināṃ can also refer to crude country Brahmans (sikhā refers to the traditional hair tuft) who prattle away when the most noble and learned among them are gone. Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition links this to Veṅkaṭeśa’s own experience: when he had gone on his pilgrimage to the North, say the commentators, corrupt South Indian Brahmans had made a grand show of themselves, only to fall silent upon his return.33

With 1.11 begins a richly figured series of descriptions of a landscape redolent with perfumes, of night-flowering red lotus and the kuvalaya blossoms that whirl about in the currents of the lakes, the honeyed sexual exudations of elephants in rut, and the air thick with the pollen of the red bandhujīva flowers. In 1.12 we hit upon a perhaps unusual detail: a lovely iconic image of the god Śiva who bears both the crescent moon and the goddess Gaṅgā in his hair. The verse is a most elaborate upamā or extended simile based on red and white color, the śleṣa or double entendre on each adjective, and another example of atiśayokti, hyperbole, indexing Rāma’s excessive mood and powerful emotional state. The goose is compared to the crescent moon on Śiva’s head, drowned in the waters of the Gaṅgā, reflecting the red-lac dye from the feet of his wife Pārvatī.

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