by M Krishnan
Spent with his blaze the sun is red: the eyes
of women redden in the toils of love:
the poet’s heart grows red reading the classes—
and Seethakkaathi’s hands are red with giving.
So much for the roses—the thorns are also there. Quite a number of vituperative verses have been composed through the centuries by poets denied reward for their offerings, especially when the denial was by someone with pretensions to status and culture. Except for being in a standard verse form, most of these are just plain, uninhibited abuse, but there were specialists in this line, too. Kaallameghappulavar was an acknowledged master of instant repartee, and has written some foul-mouthed insults and curses in immaculate metres, but these are not addressed to any patron. He seldom approached patrons and except for a rare stanza in praise of some benefactor (like the Aamoor Mudali) has not written of them at all.
Ramachandra Kavirayar (who lived in Madras towards the close of the nineteenth century) was a talented poet, noted for his power of invective, but his ‘sung abuse’ is difficult to translate. One of his verses is about a patron named Mazhuvarangan, on whom some sycophant had conferred the grandiose title ‘Bhoopan’, meaning ‘lord of the earth’:
Why does the milk-hedge need a protective thorn fence?
Why does one need a bridle for a donkey?
Why take an axe to break thin, dried up twigs?
Why scents for garlic, or for salt-earth seeds?
Why should this idle, worthless outcast need
The pompous title, Mazhuvarangan Bhoopan?
Even in comparatively recent times, there have been men feared for their facile mastery of verse and vituperative verve, among them Muthukuttippulavar of Ramanathapuram, Vasaikavi Aandaan Pulavar (‘Vasaikavi’ means ‘abusive verse’!), and Avinasippulavar of Tirunelveli. The last has utilized a sacred classical form of loving addresses to the gods termed Pillai-ththamizh, in which the deity is imagined as a very young child just learning to clap hands and indulge in similar infantile activities. Exploiting the fourfold pun on the word kottu, which means clap, sting, beat and shed or spill, and addressing a patron called Venkataraman who refused him aid in the Pillai-th-thamizh form, he has urged Venkataraman to clap hands while scorpions and wasps sting him, funeral drums beat around his house and his nearest and dearest shed torrential tears of grief.
Vituperative responses have also been much more cultured and subtly barbed than such fiendish addresses. The finest example of such verse that I know is by a poet whose name is unknown and who, to judge by his verse, probably lived early in the nineteenth century. This gem was discovered, inscribed on an isolated palm-leaf slat, nearly a hundred years ago by my father (A. Madhaviah, the Tamil scholar, poet and novelist) and, to the best of my knowledge, has never been published before. It is addressed to a petty chieftain named Kumaraswami Pandian (‘Pandian’ is a generic clan title of southern Tamil Nadu) in whose praise this anonymous poet had composed a santhappaa and a rathabandhan, verse forms likely to impress the semi-literate. He was rewarded with eighteen pice for his pains (roughly equal to 38 paise). The response refers to two celebrated instances from the past of impulsive generosity to an indigent poet. The chieftain Mothaipperiyavan was so enchanted by the verse that a poor poet took to him that he gave his daughter’s hand to the young man in wedlock and bestowed a part of his holdings on him. It is said that when Seethakkaathi was about to be buried, a footsore poet in need arrived from some distant place, and lamented the power of his poverty that had killed so great a patron. And as the richly bedecked body was being lowered into the burial pit, its right hand was flung out towards the sorrowing supplicant, and realizing the significance of this accidental happening, they took the diamond ring from the patron’s finger and gave it to the poet:
Long ago, Mothaipperiyavan gave a beautiful maiden,
and later Seethakkaathi stretched out his hand from the grave.
Tell me, free-handed Kumaraswami,
you who have given for these songs all of this sum of eighteen
pice,
what will you do tomorrow for your creature needs and daily
rice?
1995
THE BEGINNING
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First published by Oxford University Press 2000
This Collection Published by 2018
Copyright © The Estate of M. Krishnan 2000, 2007
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover Designer: by M. Krishnan
ISBN 978-0-143-09985-7
This digital edition published in 2018.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05252-2
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.