Erotic Poems from the Sanskrit
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kvacittāṃbūlāktaḥ kvacidagarupaṅkāṅkamalinaḥ
kvaciccūrṇodgārī kvaccidapi ca sālaktakapadaḥ |
valībhaṅgābhogairalakapatitaiḥ sīrṇakusumaiḥ
striyā nānāvasthaṃ prathayati rataṃ pracchadapaṭaḥ ||
/here-[with] betel juice-smudged/1 /here-[with] aloe-paste-burnished/2
/here-powder-rising/3 /here-even and painted [with] lac-footprints/4
/folds-crumpled-winding-hair-fallen strewn-flowers/5
/[the] woman’s [in] every-position celebrate pleasure-of-making-love [the] sheets/6
The virgules indicate phrase or clause boundaries that are marked with Arabic numerals.
Smudged here with betel juice, burnished there
with aloe paste, a splash of powder in one corner,
and lac from footprints painted in another,
with flowers from her hair strewn all over
its winding crumpled folds, the sheets celebrate
the woman’s pleasure of making love in every position.13
The verse form is a single stanza of four lines (muktaka), the commonest of all forms in Sanskrit poetry. The stanza, and not the line as in Greek and Latin poetry, is the basic structural unit. The first three lines of the poem comprise noun (e.g., agaru paṅkāṅka, “aloe paste”) and verb (e.g., kvacit aktaḥ, “smudged here”) phrases; they lack the subject-predicate structure of a clause. The subject (pracchadapaṭaḥ, “the sheets”) and the verb (prathayati, “celebrate”) appear only in line 4. The inflectional nature of the language allows this freedom. The entire stanza is one sentence.
The word “sheets” has long been part of the euphemisms for lovemaking. Expressions include “between the sheets,” “possess a woman’s sheets,” and “shaking of the sheets.” Social conventions, however, prohibit the poet from describing the various positions. He gets around the prohibition by describing the traces left by the woman, who was probably a courtesan (gaṇikā), on the bedsheets during lovemaking. The telltale marks on the sheets—“betel juice,” “aloe paste,” “splash of powder,” “lac from footprints,” and “flowers from her hair”—bear witness to a night of wild lovemaking by the woman.
By concentrating almost entirely on the background, the poet forces the reader’s attention on the foreground—the woman’s lovemaking in “every position.” In his Interpretation of Love (Śṛṅgāradīpikā, ca. 1400), one of the four commentaries on Amaru’s One Hundred Poems, the commentator Vemabhūpāla identifies each of the telltale marks with a specific position: the “betel juice” with the “position of the cat”; the “aloe paste” with the “position of the elephant”; the “splash of powder” with the “position of the cow”; and “lac from footprints” with the unorthodox position, the woman on top of the man.14 Vātsyāyana’s Kāmasūtra offers the classic description of these positions (2.6 and 8).15
Sanskrit poetry is best understood in the light of two key concepts: rasa and dhvani. The word rasa means “flavor,” “relish,” or “taste.” “Mood” would be a better translation. Different emotions (bhāvas), such as passion, grief, peace, and so on, that are inherent in every human being, induce the corresponding moods (rasas), such as the erotic, the tragic, the peaceful, and so forth, through the power of suggestion, known as dhvani. The word dhvani means “sound,” “overtones,” or “resonance.” “Suggestion” would be a better translation. When an image, action, or situation (stimulant, or vibhāva) is objectively presented in a poem, it evokes a specific emotion in the reader. Once the emotion is purged of its impurities, it calls forth the corresponding mood realized through the power of suggestion. The aesthetic experience is the outcome or culmination of the refinement of the emotion. The process implies the “elevation of the consciousness of the poet and the reader from the plane of their private everyday world to the plane of collective human experience where poetry is created and enjoyed.”16 Each poem will have a dominant rasa, and the means of achieving it is through suggestion.
Nine rasas are generally recognized: the erotic, the comic, the tragic, the cruel, the heroic, the fearsome, the loathsome, the marvelous, and the peaceful. Here is a list of the stable emotions (sthāyibhāvas) with their corresponding moods (rasas).
STABLE EMOTIONS
MOODS
(Sthāyibhāvas)
(Rasas)
Desire (rati)
The erotic (śṛṅgāra)
Laughter (hāsa)
The comic (hāsya)
Grief (śoka)
The tragic (karuṇa)
Anger (krodha)
The cruel (raudra)
Energy (utsāha)
The heroic (vīra)
Fear (bhaya)
The fearsome (bhayānaka)
Disgust (jugupsā)
The loathsome (bībhatsa)
Wonder (vismaya)
The marvelous (adbhuta)
Peace (śānti)
The peaceful (śānta)
In the poem “The Sheets,” the telltale marks on the bedsheets—“betel juice,” “aloe paste,” “splash of powder,” “lac from footprints,” and “flowers from her hair”—are images that evoke the stable emotion of desire in the reader. Purged of its impurities, desire, through the power of suggestion, culminates in the mood of erotic love, more specifically “consummation of love” (saṃbhoga-śṛṅgāra), an aspect of erotic love; the other being “separation in love” (vipralamba-śṛṅgāra). The telltale marks on the sheets suggest as much. They are the only clues the reader is offered. Familiarity with ancient Indian erotic practices will help the reader to make sense of the poem. Through the use of suggestion, the poet brings out the implicit meanings of “sheets,” an image that resonates in the poem to create the mood of love in the reader.
“Sheets” is not only a tactile image but a visual and olfactory one as well. The poem is a feast of olfactory delights. It recognizes the erotic possibilities of scents such as aromatic herbs and perfumes in lovemaking. Other cultures are equally explicit on this matter. Proverbs 7:17–18 says, “I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning; let us solace ourselves with loves.”17 Kalyāṇamalla’s Anaṅgaraṅga speaks of the importance of a fine environment for lovemaking:
Choose a courtyard that is high up in the mansion,
that is spacious, pleasant, and newly whitewashed,
that is perfumed by incense from aloe and other fragrant substances,
that is filled with the sound of musical instruments and is bright with lamplight.
Here let the man make love to the woman freely to his heart’s content.18
The sense of total abandon with which the woman made love all over the bed is brought home in “The Sheets” by the insistent repetition of the adverb “here” (kvacit). The entire poem is one sentence wherein the subject, “the sheets” (pracchadapaṭaḥ), is deliberately withheld until the very end to create suspense. The poet invites the reader to experience the joy of lovemaking vicariously from behind the veil of language. The poem is an erotic masterpiece.
In the translation, the four lines of Sanskrit, each of which has seventeen syllables, have expanded to six lines in English that vary in length from nine to thirteen syllables. The classical meter is replaced by free verse. This is no doubt an impoverishment, but it is almost impossible to reproduce the quantitative meters of Sanskrit in a stress-timed language such as English. The erotic mood of the original has, I believe, come through and so has its delicate tone. The voice of the Sanskrit poet is heard distinctly. The poem’s rhythmic flow is unmistakable and so is its uninhibited celebration of erotic love.
By using as few words as possible, the stanza poem achieves an unusual intensity of vision. In this union of experience and the word, the poem takes the shape of an epigram. The stanza poem remains an enduring form in Indian literature.
Culture determines a society’s attitude toward sex. This perhaps explains why the Indian vi
ew of love differed from, say, the Greek view. Greek culture favored homoerotic love over heterosexual love as is evident from even a casual reading of Greek erotic poetry. If women figured in the poetic discourse, they were invariably courtesans. Take, for example, Asclepiades’s “The Waistband of Hermione” (pp. xxv–xxvi) and Dioscorides’s “Doris” (p. xxix). Greek women were protected from men outside their immediate family. Love poetry addressed to one’s wife is nonexistent. Sanskrit erotic poetry was also composed primarily by men; as such it reflects the attitudes toward women that were common to patriarchal societies. Women who figured in Sanskrit erotic poetry were generally, but not exclusively, courtesans. Unlike Greek poetry, Sanskrit poetry offers examples of love poems about one’s spouse. See, for example, “Aubade” (p. 17) and Śīlābhaṭṭārikā’s “Then and Now” (p. 86).
Again, Hermione and Doris are courtesans who are mentioned by name in the poems. In Sanskrit poetry, not a single woman is mentioned by name. Women remain anonymous. The individual is replaced by the type.
Courtesans figure prominently in Sanskrit erotic poetry. The Kāmasūtra (6.5.28–31, 39) makes a distinction between courtesans (gaṇikās) and prostitutes (veśyās). Courtesans are highly cultivated women who are skilled in the arts and cater to a select clientele. Prostitutes, on the other hand, do not possess the exceptional qualities of the former, and they offer their services in exchange for money.
ASPECTS OF LOVE
Erotic love has two aspects: consummation of love and separation in love. The first is about lovers’ meetings, both licit and illicit, and has as its object the consummation of love. The second is about lovers’ partings, the breakup of relationships because the man has been unfaithful. Separations are generally only temporary; the woman forgives her philandering lover, and the two are reunited. The poems do not always specify whether the lovers are married or not.
Let us look at some poems that illustrate both aspects of love. Here is a poem, “Complaint” (p. 95), by Vidyā (fl. 7th–9th cent.), the preeminent woman poet in Sanskrit, from Vidyākara’s A Treasury of Well-Turned Verse (Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa, ca. 1100). Vidyā is comparable to Sappho (fl. ca. 600 B.C.E.) in Greek and Sulpicia (1st cent. B.C.E.) in Latin.
How fortunate you are, my friends!
You can speak openly about the goings-on
with your lovers: the idle talk, the laughter
and fun, the endless rounds of pleasure.
As for me, once my lover undid the knot of my skirt,
I swear, I remember nothing.19
The Sanskrit poet recognized the primacy of sight and touch in sexual relations. Vidyā offers sufficient physical details without being offensive. The detail “once my lover undid the knot of my skirt” is powerful visually and tactilely. The speaker is reluctant to talk about her experience in the presence of her friends. Orgasm renders her speechless. The experience itself is so complete that it leaves no trace of memory. Silence is the only language of intimacy. Through silence the persona indicates her unwillingness to communicate. For it is speech that binds her to the world; in silence she returns to freedom.
Sexually explicit descriptions are, generally, not common in Sanskrit poetry as they might offend against canons of good taste. Under the circumstances, when a woman is pressed for details of her lovemaking by her friends, she pretends not to remember anything of what happened. Thus her friends, together with the reader, are kept on edge by the woman’s pretense. Amnesia may have been a writing convention used to overcome the social taboo against talking openly about sex. By effectively using amnesia as a trope, the poet has subverted the convention and transformed a limitation into a triumph. See also “Wild Nights” (p. 25) and Vikaṭanitambā’s “The Bed” (p. 97).
The motif of untying the knot of a woman’s skirt occurs elsewhere, too, as in “The Waistband of Hermione” by the Greek poet Asclepiades of Samos (4th cent. B.C.E.).
Chance one day found us alone together
and, as happens, with one thing leading to another,
I found my fingers undoing the knot
that fastened the ceinture around her waist. It was shot
through with lime green, jet, and organdy threads,
and in tiny white lettering on the underside
these words were stitched: “Enjoy me as you wish,
though at your own peril, for other men have handled this.”20
What is remarkable about the poems of Vidyā and Asclepiades is their success in breathing life into a traditional symbol such as the knot. Knots represent complications and entanglements that must be overcome before the lovers can be united. The Upaniṣads speak of untying the heart’s knot to attain immortality. The Buddha (463–383 B.C.E.) taught his disciples that untying the knots of existence was the first step toward liberation (mokṣa) from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. As a symbol, the knot is thus charged with significance. In “Complaint,” the untying of the knot is followed by a tongue-in-cheek remark about making love that erases one’s identity. “I swear, I remember nothing” effectively puts an end to any further questions. See the note (p. 107) on the poem “The Ways of Love.”
Here is an anonymous poem, “The Pledge” (p. 8), from Amaru’s One Hundred Poems, that speaks about separation in love.
He’s broken the pledge, banished me
from his heart where I held a special place.
No more in love, he now walks past me
like any other man. The days go by
as I keep thinking of this over and over again.
Dear friend, I don’t know why my heart
doesn’t break into a hundred pieces.21
The woman’s lover has not kept faith with her; he has, in fact, abandoned her. When he passes her in the street, he fails to recognize her; she has become a complete stranger. She is heartbroken. He is on her mind night and day, and she does not know what to do. In her loneliness, she confides to her friend and wonders why she is not dead from a broken heart. In fewer than thirty words in the original Sanskrit, the poem tells us all that there is to know about unrequited love. It is a man’s world; he does what he pleases. The woman is usually helpless.
Given the nature of Indian patriarchy, it is not unusual for a woman writer to hide her name and gender. Anonymity offered her a refuge from the prying eyes of men. Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was probably right when she said, “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”22 It is not improbable that a woman wrote “The Pledge.”
The Sanskrit poem begins on an ominous note, gate premābandhe (literally, “the bond of love is broken”), that is heartrending. The word gate (broken) falls on the ear with the force of a sledgehammer. It is all over between them. There is nothing more to be said. The rest of the poem is just a gloss on this phrase.
There is no such thing as a word-for-word or even a line-by-line translation. By attempting to be faithful to the original, the translation often fails to do justice to the poem. I have tried to make Anon’s distinctive voice heard in English by laboring to get the tone right. The result is an equivalent poem in English. The translation conveys, I hope, the woman’s helplessness when confronted with the enormity of her lover’s betrayal. Of the fifty-six words that make up the English poem, forty-three are monosyllables, suggesting thereby the speaker’s bewilderment and inability to fully spell out the magnitude of her loss.
Compare “The Pledge” with Ezra Pound’s (1885–1972) “The Jewel Stairs’ Grievance” (1915), a translation of a poem by Li Bai (701–762).
The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.23
Pound’s comment on the poem is instructive: “Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, theref
ore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.”24 The lady is probably one of the imperial concubines in whom the emperor is no longer interested; therefore he doesn’t show up. The woman in the Sanskrit poem talks freely and openly about her situation: “He’s broken the pledge, banished me/from his heart …” The woman in the Chinese poem is, on the other hand, reluctant to speak about her situation. Not one word of reproach escapes her lips. What is unusual about the poem is its admirable restraint. By saying little, it says it all. The images—“jewelled steps,” “white with dew,” “gauze stockings,” “crystal curtain,” “clear autumn”—offer the reader, through the power of suggestion, a road map to the situation in the poem: the lady’s disappointment in love.
The Sanskrit poets left no aspect of love untouched. There are even a few poems on the unorthodox woman-on-top position (viparītarata). Here is an example, “Who Needs the Gods?” (p. 2), from Amaru’s One Hundred Poems:
With her tangled hair in disarray,
her earrings swinging wildly,
and sweat wiping off the mark on her forehead,
the lovely woman’s eyes droop
from the fatigue of riding her lover.
Long may her face protect you.
Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Śiva—
who needs the gods now?25
The Kāmasūtra recommends the woman-on-top position when the man is exhausted from lovemaking, when the woman’s passion has not subsided, and when a pleasant diversion from the normal position is desired (2.8.1–6). Vātsyāyana explains that with flowers falling from her hair, with laughter interrupted by panting, the woman should pin her lover down and press him with her breasts. In this position, the woman conquers and subdues her man. The poem contrasts sensual pleasures with liberation. While the hermit shuns sensual pleasures for the sake of experiencing divine bliss, the lover shuns divine bliss for the sake of experiencing sensual pleasures. Note the irreverent, almost blasphemous, tone of the speaker. Jayadeva’s (12th cent.) The Love Song of Kṛṣṇa (Gītagovinda) describes Rādhā making love to Kṛṣṇa in this position: “Why do women in love take delight/in the superior position?”26