In 72, the contemplation of her breasts is unexpectedly enriched by a moment of uncertainty on Ganea’s part; in childlike doubt, he touches the frontal lobes of his head—as if they were her breasts— and this provokes the laughter of those watching:
72. Goddess, Your breasts, ever flowing with milk are sucked at once by Skanda and the Elephant-faced; when Herambha noticed this his heart was unsettled by doubt and he touched his own frontal globes with his trunk—thwack!—and provoked laughter; may they banish our affliction too.17
Dev’s breasts cause joy in her children, including puzzlement in Ganea who confuses the breasts with his own frontal lobes. Implied, of course, is that those breasts might also enlighten and entertain viewers who come to share in the laughter of the family, surprised like Ganea and enjoying the experience.
Verse 73 presents a different kind of problem, a puzzle and a tantalizing promise of eternal childhood:
73. Are Your breasts jeweled vessels filled with ambrosial essence? There is no quiver of doubt in our minds, O standard of the mountain Lord: Your sons Dviradavadana and Krauñca-breaker drink there, and do not know the taste of women; even today they are children.
The rich gift of her breast milk gives life and keeps young—and innocent—her sons Skanda and Ganea; by implication, the viewer is invited to drink and obtain immortality and eternal youthfulness. Here again the question of practice arises, since it is easy enough to conjecture that the unstated invitation is to engage in a consumption of Dev in order to obtain similar results. Only implied is the sense that the same paradoxical consumption and abstinence could occur in the viewer as well; overall, the viewer is left puzzled as to the vessel-breast simile, and whether, to what extent, those who drink of Dev really are children forever.18
By a striking shift in mood and image, verse 74 portrays a more violent scene: the bone necklace resting on her breasts, taken this time from a slain elephant:
74. Mother, Your breasts wear a luminous garment delicate as a creeper and are strung with pearls made from Stamberamadanuja’s skull; just as the fame of the vanquisher of the cities is enhanced by His valor. Their innate luster is refracted by the radiance of Your red bimba fruit lips.
We see an emphasis on the power of the breasts, which are by implication connected with the destruction of the demon elephant. The breasts are not merely objects of the observer’s view; adorned with the necklace of the elephant demon, they are radiant with their own power, hot like the valor of iva, who himself was a conqueror too. His valor in battle is rivaled by her beauty—her lips—and by implication his valor is thus defeated. The red of her lips, the red of his valor, and the red of the elephant’s blood deepen one another.
In a final shift, verse 75 focuses on the power of the milk generated by her breasts:
75. Daughter of the earth-bearing mountain, in Your breasts I picture the milk ocean of poetry flowing from Your heart; when by Your compassion the Dravida child drinks there, he becomes the most desired of great poets.
While the commentators speculate on the identity of the Dravida (“southern”) child, the emphasis is on the life-giving nourishment of her breasts, their prodigious generosity, and how their milk—“from the heart”—is generative of great skill in poetry. By implication, both the author and the readers are able to be energized and inspired.
Neither the verses nor the commentaries on them display Dev’s breasts in a way that reduces them or her to passive objects of a consuming male gaze. Contemplation is clearly not a review of inert images or detached body parts. Her breasts are not mere objects of view, but as the cited verses show, they energize, empower, give life, and overcome those entering into social relationships with her; she is a woman due to these breasts, but these breasts remind us how powerful Dev is. The viewing is a contemplation of her body and its particular parts a s ex pres sive of her power as this generates its own natural, social, and mythic context. By implication, too, viewers are drawn into the scene on which they reflect; they are invited to become engaged, consuming, changed, confused, and instructed. The “Flood of Beauty” is, rather, a contemplation of Dev in relationship to her lively world, at play in a world of deities, natural wonders, and human desires; by perception of her beauty one glimpses an engaging, pleasurable drama of beauty-in-action. In it, of course, the beautiful person rules those with whom she is in contact, by her beauty, which is her akti.
Every aspect of Dev thus occasions a rich natural and social divine scenario in which her physical beauty repeatedly appears as generative of her surroundings. Dev is not the passive object of the male gaze, even if males are supposed to be taking a long look at her. Several features of this visualization are notable. First, there is a direct and unproblematic focus on the female form as beautiful. It is described in (nearly complete) detail, which for the most part does not signal by appearance any material differences from a human female form; only grandeur and glory distinguish her female body. Second, the beauty and the visualization of it are complexified by the elaboration of dramatic scenarios for each verse, involving other divine persons and scenes from nature and religion that are transformed in the light of her beauty. As a beautiful woman, she is thus conceived as the active and dynamic transformer of the visual process, and not merely as its passive object. Third, by direct statement and indirect suggestion, extraordinary results are attributed to this visualization; the energies underlying Dev’s extraordinary beauty and the powers of deities and iva who contemplate and enjoy her eternally are made available to persons engaged in visualization, those who are willing to look and enjoy.
That the commentators read the verses according to figures of speech is of course not surprising. The verses are elegant Sanskrit compositions that merit sophisticated reading. But there is also the additional point that in their view the isualization they are describing must add up to more than can be expressed in simple description: the indirection and suggestion, the psychological states attended to, are noticed by the effects that occur in the person who contemplates Dev and allows the experience to have its effect. Lakmdhara and Kmevara Süri (the commentators I have read most closely) read each verse in the “Flood of Beauty” as suggestive of moods and insights not directly expressible in prose. What it means to see Dev can be said/described only indirectly, and the words of the verses aim skillfully at generating the elusive insights and moods. Appearances are attentively noted, described elegantly, and thereby even rendered generative of deeper experiences of what appears. Dev is beautiful and a pleasure to behold, but the more one sees her, the more one can see more deeply into the power radiated in that beauty. Every detail of her form thus becomes a material symbol of inner truth, a kind of sacramental sign, not to be replaced by the deeper insights. Their strategy for indicating the surfeit of significance over the limits of words is to use the classic figures of speech (alamkrd) that show how the subtle variations in description and mood expressed in the verses serve to indicate indirectly aspects of Devi’s power, splendor, and beauty. Although the “Flood of Beauty” obviously points us to visualization, the commentarial view is that intrinsic to that richer visualization is the skillful nuances of words that, by suggesting more than they are really able to say, “show” us more than we can really see in simple acts of looking.
CLIMAX
After the deconstructive move of the “Flood of Bliss” and the consequent “second gaze” of the “Flood of Beauty,” it becomes finally possible for the poet to imagine and utter, albeit imperfectly and in a teasingly incomplete fashion, the full richness of the union of Dev and iva. The conclusion of the hymn in a sense shows us where the practice of the “Flood of Bliss” followed by the “Flood of Beauty” leads, but it also leaves the student/reader at the edge of bliss. Verses 92–95 extend the meditation on Dev’s feet by a straightforward, imaginative approach to the lush and sensuous chamber where she reclines:
92. Your servants, Druhina, Hari, Rudra, and vara form Your couch, and iva seems a bedsheet of transpare
nt hue, as if the subtle erotic sentiment were embodied, red in desire, reflecting Your radiance, and milking the pleasure in Your eyes.
93. Her hair is curly, She is simple in nature, gentle in smile; in Her frame She is soft as a ira flower yet in the region of Her breasts hard like rock; at the waist She is quite slim but at the hips prodigious: She triumphs, She protects the world, ambhu’s grace, Aru.
94. The moon’s dark spot is musk, while its watery reflection is a canister of emerald filled with lumps of camphor, its phases; when day by day this is emptied for Your enjoyment, Vidhi fills it over and over, just for You.
95. You are the inner precinct of the cities’ foe and so the goal of worshipping Your feet is not easily accomplished by those with feeble senses, and so the immortals, atamakha in front, achieve unequalled perfection—with Animā and the others who stand at Your doorway.
By implication the listener is being invited to enter that precinct, into her presence, to touch her feet, to ascend onto her couch. He/she has gained this access by working through the preceding 91 verses, both the purification of the understanding of Dev, and the revisualization of her. Once the devotee is in her presence though, nothing more is said about what occurs there. It is left to the person who has come that far, to experience, see, and enjoy Dev in actual encounter.19
To summarize: the tantric analysis of bliss distills and refines experience so as to uncover direct, immediate experience of Dev as power. But one is then enabled to see her again in loving detail, and to be flooded by the cumulative experience of her beauty and the moods and relationships it generates. In the “Flood of Bliss,” conventional devotion is taken apart, analyzed, and with reference to tantric strategies given a new epistemological weight unencumbered by ordinary social expectations of female beauty. Bridging the gap between popular images of goddesses and esoteric and highly elite refinements of her representation, it makes Dev knowable in a new way. While the commentarial reading reintroduces an elite perspective—particular knowledge is amplified at great length, the importance of the privileged teacher-disciple relation is stressed—the “Flood of Bliss” nonetheless seems rather intent upon downplaying privilege, since Dev is always above and beyond that formidable learning, accessible to the devotee in verse 7, who sings, “may you stand forth before us!” In the “Flood of Beauty,” the love and visualization occurring in “bhakti” (loving devotion) are retrieved, as verbal play replicates visual play and the unseen is made obliquely present in what is said indirectly, suggestively. One is left finally at the doorway of her chamber, and what one then does is apparently a private matter, since the concluding verses (vv. 96–100) revert to a more stylized utterance of praise:
96. How many poets have not courted the wife of Vidhatr? Which poet does not become the Lord of the goddess rī, whatever his wealth? O foremost among good women, except for the great God, embracing Your breasts is not easily accomplished even by the kuravaka tree.
Bhakti, coming in its various forms, now has a tantric or post-tantric form: the deity is visible, material, beautiful, pleasurable, nearby, and able to be addressed directly, by anyone who is willing to be transformed by the experience. Tantra has been made into a useful tool by which loving contemplation of Dev is rendered possible, more potently, a second time.
LEARNING FROM THE SAUNDARYA LAHARI
The Saundarya Lahar is a program for analysis and visualization, but it also implies certain themes that may be summarized as follows:
1. Dev is supreme, in effect, greater even than iva; one can worship and pray to her.
2. Dev is a subtle tantric reality: in name (as mantra), image (as rī Cakrd), and form (as possessed of cakras).
3. Dev, made subtle, can be seen a second time again as a lovely, powerful woman.
4. Dev is an agent, not object; a mother who engenders a lovely world and living relationships.
5. Dev maximizes and satisfies desire for those devoted to her.
6. Dev can be encountered not only by the tantric connoisseur, but also by all those willing to become devotees and take the Saundarya Lahar to heart.
For the most part Dev is portrayed as possessing the attributes one might attribute to a supreme divine male figure—omnipotence, creative cosmic power and the power to save, serene and sovereign rule over the world in its every detail, the power to consume it and recreate it.20 Dev is the consort of iva, but she is never merely his consort; she remains distinct from him and is portrayed in various relationships—with him, in him, enveloping him, making him potent and provoking him, calming him—almost all the attributes and powers conceded to him are seen to be hers. Dev is demythologized rather thoroughly; much of the cultural expectation about goddesses and women is rendered rare and subtle by acts of tantric distillations. In form, image, and name she is reduced to her subtle essence, manifest for a time as pure female power, without any further accoutrements of female identity. But her female nature is not seen as a liability, for in the “Flood of Beauty” her specific feminine beauty is all the more obvious and potent, the very material and sensible presence of her divinity.21 The Saundarya Lahar presents her body as beautiful and erotic, and such is the power by which she rules her consort and other divine beings. But even more than that, she is so complete a reality, so perfect a fullness of power, that one must revise one’s understanding of what it means to relate to her: she is not merely a goddess before whom one does pj, but also the totality of which one is a part, and yet which, in the “Flood of Beauty,” one views face to face.
If we extrapolate from the Saundarya Lahar—mindful of the further research required to establish firmly this reading of it—we can also say something about what it means to assert that a goddess is the supreme divine reality and still, always, a woman. The deconstruc-tion and subtle reconceptualization of female divinity leave room for a new appreciation of the beautiful, powerful woman who generates the world around her, and to see this woman as an exemplar of the divine. Her beauty creates new situations, and those who contemplate the dramatic scenarios signaled by aspects of her beautiful form themselves become members of her retinue. Dev can be approached as divine only if appreciated as a woman. Obviously, the final and climactic portrayal of her pleasure with iva is intended to make sense only in terms of her female identity as against his male identity. The notion of power (akti) is enfleshed and given back the world of matter generated from that power. Visual contemplation is thus passive on neither side: Dev as an object of observation is “seen” only in her dynamic role, transforming her context and exhibiting her power, while the viewer is repeatedly drawn into the drama apparent in each scene. The viewer becomes a player in the world that is inevitably built around her, the ascesis and retrieval of visions of Dev draw one into her pleasure. The more one understands the powers of the verses and appreciates aesthetically the interplay of elements within them, the more one is enabled to begin to appreciate their deeper riches and participate in the represented scenarios.
We do not have evidence that the Saundarya Lahar was in fact or theory taken to be socially liberative for women. But as a religious classic that remains popular and vital today, it can be read as suggestive of strategies by which to reuse and reconstruct contemporary conceptualizations of gender in an affirmation of physicality, pleasure, and beauty as spiritually significant, and not just instrumental to the spiritual. We can find in the Saundarya Lahar implications for a constructive feminist thealogy (and anthropology) that seriously attends to this hymn, as the following theses suggest:
1. Gender stereotypes are accepted, as are cultural and religious t rad it ions, but then deconstructed and reconstr ucted for libera-tive purposes, as penultimate and auxiliary to devotion’s power and access.
2. Materiality, visibility, and pleasure are conceded, critiqued, and developed as female attributes.
3. Beauty is affirmed as available to the male gaze, but rendered dynamic in a richer mapping of the dramatic and social realm instigated by the visible beautiful.
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4. At the same time, a safe subject-object split is ruled out, as the viewer is drawn into the web of relationships instigated by the beautiful woman who creates, shapes, vivifies those gazing upon her.
5. Sexual pleasure, rooted in gender differences, is affirmed, purified, intensified, and spiritualized (without losing its materiality).
6. The Saundarya Lahar’s gender strategy can thus be made to accommodate still wider uses by female and also male readers, and with male as well as female divine figures drawn into the contemplative gaze.
In proposing such (hypo)theses, I am aware of the way in which I have (over)simplif ied the rich and complex tradition that has grown up around the Saundarya Lahar. I welcome corrections and modifications of the points expressed here. I am also aware that my reading of the Saundarya Lahar—that of a male American scholar, not a Hindu, reading a medieval Sanskrit hymn written by males for males—cannot possibly be applied directly in a contemporary Indian feminist context. But I do hope and expect that further critique and reconstruction will build on the reading of the hymn offered here.
NOTES
Another version of this essay, more ample and explicitly comparative, appears as chapter 3 of Clooney, 2005. All translations are my own, but I have consulted and included in the bibliography several translations valuable also for their notes.
1. Of the various translations and editions, the most helpful with respect to insights into the commentaries is the edition/translation by S. Subramanya Sastri and T. R. Srinivasa Ayyangar. Throughout, I draw particularly on comments from two influential commentators, Laksdhara (sixteenth century), author of the eponymous Lakmidhar, and Kmevara Süri (henceforth Kmevara), author of the Arumodin, a commentary that acknowledges its debt to Lakmdhara’s work. For the general intellectual and religious context of the work, see Brooks, 1992, especially cc. 3 and 4, and also Tigunait, 1998, c. 2. See also my translation in Clooney, 2005, and notes on individual verses.
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