Nature's Spokesman

by M Krishnan

  Translations from classical Tamil of pieces about such lovers’ quarrels cannot convey their poetic worth. But I must give one little piece (or rather a fragment from a piece) that tells the story from an unusual angle, the third angle, and which displays a certain devilry and elan too rare, unfortunately, these days. This was written by Paranar, some 1,800 years ago, and is an anecdotal address by one of the aforementioned ladies to her thozhi (a feminine friend, in whom one confided), telling of a tiff between herself and her youthful, married paramour:

  Whenever I think of it, my dear, I laugh—

  And I said to him, levelly.

  ‘I will go and tell your wife’—

  How he trembled then,

  Like the binding of earth on a drum!

  Whenever I think of it, I laugh.

  The translation is loose, but still fails to convey the zest of the original. Next time you see the tabla or mridangam or some similar drum being played, watch the way the binding of earth on the tympanum quivers, and you will know just how that unfortunate man must have trembled!

  Love has many moods on the sea coast, but most typically it is sombre and tragic—a man bemoaning his dead love. The finality and deprivation of death have been powerfully realized in Tamil poetry with a maritime setting.

  The barren wastelands had their own, tough vegetation—spiky, dwarfed trees and the much-branched, cylindrical cladodes of the Kalli (Euphorbia tirucalli) and other xerophytes. Here lovers parted, not in anger, but with many promises as the truest of lovers must part when their love cannot be publicized. The setting is particularly apposite for such farewells, but again it is futile to try and explain its poetic virtue in English, because of its allusiveness. Moreover, it is neither artistic nor even decent to go too deeply into these highly personal and fond farewells.

  1954

  2

  Fabular Fauna

  Astriking peculiarity of the birds and beasts of Indian legends is their realism. No unicorn and roc, no griffin or phoenix or basilisk, is common in our literature, oral, written or carved. There are, it is true, just a few wholly fabulous creatures, which I shall mention later, but for the best part the legendary fauna is extremely naturalistic.

  It is the common animals of the countryside that figure in the old tales, with only the difference that they confab and plot and indulge in soliloquies. There are a number of supernatural creatures, gnomes, sprites and demons of many kinds, but these are not animals. And our legendary animals are more unnatural in the characters that are ascribed to them than in their ability to talk, when you look at them narrowly. The jackal, for instance, is always cunning and thinks out infamous schemes (note that the fox, a close cousin, is also a shady character in Western folklore), the tiger is cruel and fond of human flesh, the lion is the noble and warlike King of Beasts (as lions in stories are universally), the cat is a sanctimonious humbug, crows are fond of council meetings, the hare is crafty, the deer ingenuous and timid, and the crocodile villainous.

  The ancient Panchatantra tales, so long and so widely known to every Indian language, are typical of our stories. All the characters I have mentioned, and many more figure in them, but it is only fair to point out, in an aside, that though naturalists may think these characters highly fictitious, there is also much observation of nature in the tales. Skipping rapidly through the pages of my copy of the Panchatantra, I find there close observations of nature leavening the anthropomorphism of the narrative: monkeys suffer much from the cold and elephants from drought; snakes are much given to egg-stealing and heat is quickly lethal to them; pigeons are deeply attached to one another and grow miserable when separated from their mates; rock-owls are the enemies of crows, which they kill by night. These are only examples chosen at random, but, frankly, did you know that these things are true?

  However, it is far stranger and less factual observation that we must look for in any legendary natural history. Although our old tales cannot produce much in the form of such lore, our art and poetry can, and there is also some strange natural history to be culled from popular superstition.

  Taking the last first, the Abominable Snowman of the Himalaya and the Biscobra of the Deccan are known well beyond their territories. No one really knows the truth about the Yeti, but ‘Eha’ discovered the identity of the latter. The Biscobra, as the name implies, is twice as terrible as the cobra, and since it can fly through the air in attack, the man who provokes it has practically no chance. ‘Eha’ found that the dreaded Biscobra was nothing more than a very young common monitor, while it was still slim and agile and banded. Why a lizard innocent of all poison should have achieved this reputation is hard to say, but the fact remains that it did, and that another harmless lizard, the sinuous little skink, is also dreaded for its venom. True that the skink does not bite humanity, but it darts its slick little tongue in and out of its straight jaws, and its lick is sure death. However, it has a forgetful nature, and often it forgets, when it sets out to lick one, why it set out at all and turns back. Because of this, very few men have been skink-licked, but I have been, and, believe me, I didn’t die.

  Poetry, especially the more romantic type of lyric, gives us some definite rara avis. There is the Chuckor or Chakoram, which languishes when the moon that it loves is away—the bird has been identified, by pundits, with the Chuckor partridge of the Himalaya. Then there is the Crowncha-pakshi of the classics, which is always seen in inseparable pairs, one of the pair pining to death if the other is killed. Some years ago, a pundit of the most formidable scholarship in Sanskrit and I joined forces in an attempt to establish the identity of this bird, he supplying details from all references to it in the classics, which I collated and compared to the likeliest birds of Indian ornithology. We were both satisfied at the end of this, that the Crowncha-pakshi (which is tall and red-headed, and so utterly devoted to its mate) could only be the Sarus, stateliest of our cranes. Let me quote Hume and Marshall on the Sarus, in this context:

  Whether in large or small numbers, they are always in pairs, each pair acting independently of the other pairs. They certainly pair for life, and palpably exhibit great grief for the loss of their mate. On two occasions I have actually known the widowed bird to pine away and die.

  Not all legendary fowl can be so certainly identified, though. What, for instance, is the two-headed ‘Gandaberandam’ known to Tamil? Unquestionably it is the two-headed bird of that same name that figures in the coat of arms of the Maharajas of Mysore, but that takes us no nearer its identity, though I think there is a resemblance to the Crested Serpent-Eagle. And what is the Anril, beloved of Tamil poets? Or the Eight-legged Bird?

  The fauna of our art is usually naturalistic, if puns in stone are excepted. I should explain just what I mean by ‘puns in stone’ for the description has not been used in any comment on Indian art so far, and yet is so apt. In Hampi, over a gateway, there is a bas-relief showing a bull and an elephant engaged in a mighty butting contest, head to head. The bodies are distinct, but the head is common to both combatants, and is in the form of a clever play upon contours that allows the onlooker to see it unmistakably as the head of the elephant, joined on to the elephantine body, or as the bull’s head, in conjunction with the bull’s body. Again, at the Meenakshi Temple in Madura, there is a monkey with three bodies but only one head—the onlooker may see this monkey in three different postures, depending on which body he chooses to view with the head.

  Well, apart from such carvings, the fauna of our stone is highly realistic. However there are the snake-people and the Yali, genuinely fabulous both. The Nagas and Naginis, subterranean and semi-serpentine, snakes really with the heads and torsos of human beings, are well known to our art all over the country. Along with these creatures, a truer snake whose features are rigidly prescribed by iconology may also be mentioned, the eight-headed Adhi-Sesha, also known all over India. But the Yali, for some reason that is quite beyond me, is less celebrated by our art critics.

  Actually, I think the Yali
is the most genuinely fabulous of our legendary beasts. It belongs both to the literature and the art of the South and is half-elephant, half-lion, as per the written and oral literature of Tamil. It is the mightiest of all creatures, and preys freely on the lion—the lion, according to literary and artistic traditions all over India, is the King of Beasts and kills elephants with ease (in those traditions, of course). Imagine an animal, then, so powerful that it subsists largely on the elephantslaying King of Beasts! Literary traditions are discreetly reticent over the Yali, for they know well that when dealing with such a terrible beast, the power of suggestion is defeated by detail. But in south Indian stone, the Yali is a familiar figure, lacking the idiomorphic integrity and dreadful mystery that it has in verse and folklore—Yalis, carved in florid detail and often with formal scroll-work delineating their features, are quite common in southern temples, where they squat timelessly supporting a cornerstone, or rear like a circus horse beside a pillar, or even prance in packs across lintels!

  The orthodox Yali (I mean the beast which conforms to literary and folk traditions) has the trunk, face and even the forelegs of the elephant, but is otherwise leonine, particularly in its wavy mane and ears. But many temple Yalis are strikingly different—some have strongly clawed forelegs, like a lion, and many lack the trunk, the head being part-leonine, part-canine. One peculiarity of those ‘unorthodox’ Yalis is that their tushes seem to start from the sides of their jaws, more like a boar’s (though they do not curve up) than an elephant’s or a lion’s. Sometimes it is hard to tell, especially in weathered stone, whether the sculptor intended a Yali or a lion. I am unable to find any specific literature on the Yali in the writing of art critics like Vincent Smith, Favell and others—a surprising omission, considering the profusion of Yalis in southern temples. For this reason, I do not know by what tokens the pundits determine that a particular carving is a Yali and not a lion, but if the somewhat canine cast of countenance is what guides them, it is unreliable. The following excerpt, from Dr Rajendralal Mitra’s Indo-Aryans (1881), on the sculpture of Orissa, may be cited here.

  The lion among animals is however, invariably ill-carved. It has everywhere a conventional, unnatural half-dog half-wolf look about it.

  Some day, perhaps, a more systematic natural history of our literature and oral traditions and art will be attempted, but there is so much scope for work here that whoever takes it on should be prepared to devote a lifetime to the study, and to write a ponderous tome at the end of his researches. Thereafter, of course, there will be sufficient scope for several further books of even larger size, by way of dissent. But that is as it should be, for what study is worth the undertaking if it has no room for argument?

  1955

  3

  Ancient Depictions of Hanuman

  When I was a boy I was taken to a zoo and shown the ‘Hanuman-monkey’, a full-grown, male mandrill with vivid grooves of vermilion and azure over its nose. I protested that it could not be Hanuman for all its blatant ‘naamam’, for even then I knew that the mandrill was a native of Africa whereas Hanuman belonged solely to our traditions. Thereupon I was promptly snubbed and asked to hold my tongue, and had to submit to the authority of the elder in whose company I was, for in those days I thought that knowledge went with years.

  In writing this I am fulfilling neither a long-suppressed childhood desire for retribution, nor an adult, spiteful wish to shock those that are orthodox. This discussion need hurt no one’s susceptibilities, however traditionally religious: in fact, it cannot. There is nothing sacrilegious in a theoretical inquiry into the mundane identity assumed by any divine character. Granted that Vishnu did take on the form of a fish and a tortoise in the course of the Dasavathara, it is perfectly in order to seek to know which particular fish and tortoise were so honoured. Similarly, it is quite proper to ask which species it was to which the monkeygod belonged.

  Several lines of inquiry suggest themselves at once. One could refer to classical Ramayana literature or to iconography: one can look into folklore or else study our highly depictive sculpture.

  We need not go into literature or iconography here. For one thing, a cursory consultation with pundits has yielded little information that is taxonomically significant. But I would like to point out that it is generally conceded that the canto of the Ramayana that refers to Hanuman, Vaali and Sugriva is laid well in the south and that Lanka is Ceylon.

  I make this point because in north India, which was not the home of the monkey characters of the Ramayana, the Common Langur is called ‘Hanuman’. So far as I know, there is no reliable evidence in southern folklore that points to a langur, or any other kind of monkey, being of the caste and tribe of Hanuman. But I may add that the Tamil word ‘kurangu’ is usually used of the macaques, ‘sengurangu’ denoting the common ‘red monkey’ (Bonnet Monkey) that adds so much to the zest of life in southern shrines and railway stations and ‘karungurangu’ denoting the black Lion-tailed Macaque of the far south: this macaque, is also called ‘arakkan’. The langurs are usually called ‘manthi’, a word that also indicates she-monkeys generally, the Common Langur being known as ‘ven-manthi’ and the Nilgiri Black Langur as ‘karumanthi’. I should make it clear that I speak of the common far southern Tamil names for these monkeys. I have not looked into the Kamba Ramayana for my terminology, for while I have the most genuine respect for the acute observation of nature that occasionally inspires the poetry of the Sangam period, I am not prepared to trust Kamban’s natural history an inch.

  Of course we cannot now say that the monkeys of the south in Puranic days must have been identical with those found here today, but it seems unlikely that any northern species then inhabited this area, and anyway it is safe to rule out all exotic species, such as the mandrill. The question, then, is quite straightforward and is merely this: Was Hanuman a langur or a macaque?

  The langurs are tall, slim, arboreal and long-tailed. The langurs that might have lived here in Puranic days still live here—the grey or silver-grey Common Langur, with a prominent peak of hair shading the eyes, white whiskers around a flat, black face and dark hands and feet, and the Black Langur, with a rich black pelage and black all over except for a tawny cap and whiskers. The macaques are shorter, thicker set and less arboreal. The common macaque of the south is the Bonnet Monkey, redfaced, grey-coated and very agile. The Lion-tailed Macaque is black all over, except for a great, grizzled mane framing the black face; even if the Northern Rhesus had lived here in Puranic days (it is rather like the Bonnet Monkey but lacks the crown of radiating hair and is thicker-built), both the Lion-tailed Macaque and this have short tails and are not particularly good at aerial acrobatics. Hanuman, as everyone knows, had a very long tail and was famed for his powers of leaping. The Bonnet Monkey has a long tail.

  We may safely go by our art in deciding this question, for it is very depictive. Ravi Varma, the Kerala painter of scenes from the Puranas shows an unmistakable Bonnet Monkey in his pictures of Hanuman. But Ravi Varma, painstaking as he was in his details, was recent and might have fallen into an error. The traditional folk art of the countryside is more reliable. Clay figures of Hanuman and crude frescoes on walls depicting the god always show a Bonnet Monkey, and the face is invariably pale red. However, folk art is also susceptible to recent corruptive trends and so let us look at our old traditional stone.

  The Hanuman of our classical stone has a muscular, patently macaque build, a very long tail and features that suggest, in their lack of heavy whiskers and the lack of a peak of hair shading the eyes, in the displayed ears and the strong profile of the nose and muzzle, a definite macaque affinity. Incidentally, Hanuman’s tail is frequently much longer than that of any Indian monkey, but both the Bonnet Monkey and the langurs have long tails, though the latter have longer tails.

  The heroic-sized Hanuman at Hampi is typical of the figure of the monkey-god in our classical stone, and is obviously Bonnet Monkey. I should add that the carvers of Hampi could not have been led by lac
k of choice in their models, as langurs are as common there, or commoner, than Bonnet Monkeys.

  I have no doubt that it is the Bonnet Monkey, and no other that has been depicted in old representations of Hanuman. But of course this identification is purely of theoretical interest, and it would be valid to argue that Hanuman was a special kind of Puranic super-monkey, unrelated to existing species. That, however, would not explain the almost reverential tolerance that the Common Langur and the Bonnet Monkey (and even the Rhesus) have enjoyed in our country from time immemorial till yesterday.

  1955

  4

  The Shawk

  Afew miles from Mahabalipuram, celebrated for the richness of its carvings, is a shrine no less celebrated among the pious. Tirukkalukunram (I follow the spelling of the railway guide) is one of the sixteen (or is it sixty?) holy places of the south.

  It is a temple perched on top of a small, rocky hill, lacking the rugged grandeur of other southern hilltop shrines. But every day it is graced by the visit of two saints in avian garb.

  Rain or shine, shortly after the noon invocation, a portion of the sweet, opulent prasad, of jaggery and milk, ghee and rice, is brought out by the priest and placed on a shelf of rock. And two large, white birds materialize from the skies and partake of the offering. They are, of course, not birds at all but saints in feathers, most rigorous in their penances and rites.

  Each morning they wing their northern way to the Ganges, for a dip in its purifying waters, then they fly all the way back to Rameswaram for a further dip in sanctity, visiting Tirukkalukunram in time for lunch. Local traditions give the names of these two punctilious saints, and further particulars.