KAVICHAKRAVARTIKAMBAN CAUSERIES ON TAMIL NAD'S GREATEST POET
Kamban had behind him an unbroken poetic tradition of over a thousand
years. Tiruvalluvar, of the 2nd Century A.D., had given it a lucidity,
precision and terseness, which forced Dr. Grail to describe his couplets as
"apples of gold in a network of silver." The Vaishnavism Saints (Alwars)
and the Saivite Saints (Nayanmars) had, between the 6th Century and the
9th, given the language an dextrorotary suppleness and a warm and moving
song quality. It appeared as if all the potentialities of the language had
been thoroughly exploited before Kamban's arrival. But, m spite of these
handicaps, Kamban's genius gave to the language fresh powers of
articulation and made it serve the pure perfection of poetry.
He chose the *Ramayana, *because the simple story of Rama, unlike
the *Mahabharata,
*was free from the complexities which would distract the reader from the
liberating influence of poetry. The Tamils had known for many centuries the
broad outlines of the story and enjoyed the different situations in the
story through the devotional songs of the Alwars. Kamban knew that when he
retold the story, no part of the attention of the readers would be wasted
in grappling with the lesser mechanics of plot and suspense or in the
anticipation of the events that would follow. The advantage of such a
familiar setting was that Kamban could divert the entire attention of the
reader from the story and focus it upon the marvels of his own creative
narrative, dramatic and lyrical genius. In fact in the prologue to his
*Ramayana,
*he proudly declares that he has chosen the *Ramayana *for his theme in
order that the greatness and divinity of poetry may be demonstrated. This
claims, he makes good with astonishing success.
In fact, with the birth of* Kamba Ramayana *the whole future of Tamil
poetry was altered, and this masterpiece has been exercising the most
profound impact upon the poetic sensibility of the Tamils during the last
eleven centuries. A long line of learned men have been thrilling the
masses, from the time of Kamban down to our own, with recitations from and
exposition of the *Kamba Ramayana. *Land grants have been made by the Tamil
Kings for the maintenance of these rhapsodists and
reciters. Stone inscriptions in the neighbouring territories of Kerala,
Kannada and Andhra show that *Kamba Ramayana *was being expounded to and
enjoyed even by people whose mother tongue was not Tamil. Thus, Kamban
became one of the most potent instruments of popular education and culture;
he shaped the outlook, character and the aesthetic and religious attitudes
of the people in the South; his *Ramayana *became part of the abiding
national memory. He was acclaimed by all poets and scholars as KAVI
CHAKRAVARTY or the Emperor of Poesy and he has passed into history as the
most learned of Poets. Popular exponents of a *Kamba Ramayana *hold
discourses continuously for months and it is a marvel that even to-day
mammoth crowds of twenty to forty thousand men, women and children attend
these discourses and listen with rapt attention and delight to the songs of
Kamban. There must be something timeless about a poet who has gripped the
attention of the people for over a millennium. Kamban can never become out
of date, because he speaks to us and to the whole world with the Voice of
To-morrow.
Popular imagination has woven several legends around the name of
Kamban, and these legends, which are totally valueless as historical
material, indicate the attempt of the people to analyse and evaluate the
genius of their greatest poet. According to one legend, Kamban was the
contemporary of Ottakootar, a minor poet in the court of a Chola King. By
his mastery of prosody and of the mechanics of versification, Ottakootar
exercised a tyrannical sway over the literary men of his time; he was
suffered by the King even to decapitate the poetasters of the age, who, out
of ignorance, committed the slightest mistakes of grammar, syntax or
prosody. But, with the advent of Kamban, whose intense poetic genius broke
the accepted moulds of grammar and who invented patterns of verbal
harmonics which far transcended the conventional scales of Ottakootar, the
latter's influence with the King began to dwindle and Kamban became the
Poet Laureate in the Court of the Chola King. One day the King requested
both the bards to prepare a poetic rendering of the epic story of Rama.
Ottakootar set about the task in great earnest and started producing a
laborious work of third-rate verse. Kamban was in no hurry to commence the
work but spent his time in playful amusements. Sometime later, the King
summoned
both the poets and questioned them about their progress. Kamban said that
he had come up to the Sixth Canto and was working upon the bridge that
Rama's monkey hordes were building between India and Lanka as a preliminary
to the final battle between Rama and Ravana. Ottakootar, who was listening
to this yam, knew that Kamban had not even commenced the first Canto. So he
challenged Kamban to recite one song from the scene relating to the
construction of the bridge. At once, Kamban, with unlaboured spontaneity,
sang the original of the following song impromptu:
Kumuda, the monkey-chief,
dropped a stately hill into the rocky sea;
and the hill, with the rhythmic footwork of a dancer,
glided over the rocks and twisted and churned,
shooting forth a spray of ocean-droplets into Heaven;
and the denizens of Heaven jumped with joy,
hoping that Nectar would rise again from the sea.
Ottakootar, who was irritated by this brilliant extempore performance of
Kamban, blamed him for using the word 'thumi' in the song. Kamban said it
meant 'droplet'. Ottakootar objected that 'thuli' was the proper word and
not 'thumi', but Kamban asserted that the word had the sanction of popular
usage. Ottakootar challenged Kamban to prove the usage. At once Kamban took
his rival and the Kang into the town.
The three saw a shepherd maid churning curd in front of her house and
telling the children playing around her, "Go away, you kids, lest the curd
'thumi' (droplet) should spill upon you." After making this statement, the
churning woman vanished miraculously. Ottakootar realised that Saraswati,
the Goddess of Leaming herself, had come in the shape of the shepherd maid
to justify the verbal inventions of Kamban.
Heart-broken, Ottakootar went home and started tearing to pieces the
seven cantos of the *Ramayana, *which he had carefully and laboriously
compiled with the aid of a thesaurus. By chance, Kamban went to his rival's
house at that juncture and found that only the last canto, Uttara Kanda,
renamed untorn. With characterist1c
graciousness, he grabbed his rival by the hand, prevented him from tearing
the Uttara Kanda and got his permission to include it as the final Kanda mn
the *Ramayana *he was yet to produce.
With the death of Kamban, even his jealous contemporaries began to
assess his poetic achievements in their proper perspective. While Kamban
was alive, the tillers of the soil threw aside the plough and followed the
great poet in ecstatic adoration; thus, Mother Earth lay forsaken. As
trades people neglected the accumulation of wealth and vied with one
another in enjoying the poetry of Kamban, Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth,
felt abandoned, whereas Saraswati, the Goddess of Leaming, reigned supreme.
But, after the death of Kamban, the ploughmen turned to the plough and the
tradesmen got busy at the counter; the Goddess of the Earth and the Goddess
of Wealth were thus restored to their origami glory. And what happened to
the Goddess of Learning? A contemporary poet gives a poignant answer to
this question in the following song he composed at the first anniversary of
the death
of Kamban:
Isn't this the day
that Kamban died? --
The day my tinsel verse began to glitter
and catch the royal eye?
Isn't this the day
when the Goddess of the Earth
and the Goddess of Wealth
were restored to their thrones?
Isn't this the day
when by virtue of Kamban's death
the Goddess of Learning herself
was left in the lurch-dethroned and bereaved?
This is the evaluation of a contemporary poet who was struck with the
tremendous influence that Kamban exerted on his contemporaries by
propounding the eternal verities through the medium of poetry. It is
desirable that we review the message of Kamban for the benefit of a society
which is in danger of losing the dimension of depth. To Kamban, the
question of the meaning of Life is one of infinite seriousness, and in his
Epic he silences the transitory concerns of life so effectively that he
enables us to listen continually to the voice of the Ultimate Concern. _His
intuitive and powerful presentation of Truth, Beauty and Goodness gives
sustenance to the springs of our own being, dissolves the rigidities of the
Ego and induces in us a new perspective of *Ananda. *The author starts this
series in the hope that something of this *Ananda *may come through in his
English renderings of Kamban.
We shall make a rapid survey of the maiden battle of Rama as described
by Kamban. Visvamitra, the great sage, takes young Rama and Lakshmana from
the custody of King Dasarathan, much against the latter's will, to a dreary
desert. Kamban brings out the dreariness of the desert after taking the
three characters through the luscious greenery of the forests and the cool
rivers undulating down the hills, pausing awhile on plain ground and
leaping down steep rocks. The alternate pauses and leaps of the rivers
remind them of the rhythmic tinkle of the dancer's anklet Now they come
upon the unfriendly desert, dried, parched and moisture less. The poet,
with a chuckle up his sleeve, compares the aridity of the desert with the
minds of two incompatible quantities, namely, seekers after Ultimate
Reality and harlots-with Reality-seekers, because in their ruthless search
for the Ultimate they have gone beyond the warmth of passion and become
detached; with the harlots, because they ply their passions for hire and
thereby become devoid of the least vestige of pass1on. We note that the
poet by his wit effects a skilful though startling linking of two
contradictory elements.
It is in the setting of such a dreary desert that Viswamitra starts
recounting to Rama the weird atrocities of Thadakai, the giantess. He says,
"In her hand Thadakai holds a trident, around which snakes remain coiled.
All having things she regards as her lawful prey. Ere long she will stuff
them into her stomach."
As Viswamitra was giving thus description, Rama raised his lovely head,
which was adorned with honey-filled flowers, and asked, “The one who
perpetrates such atrocities, where does she live?" Thus asked the One, who
held the bow in the hand which was accustomed to hold the Conch.
Before V1svamitra could say that she resided m yonder mountain, came a huge
black woman with crimson hair. She looked like a soot-black hull aflame
with fire; the ends of her eyebrows trembled with anger. With pursed lips,
she closed her cavernous mouth. She wore around her neck a string of
elephants, the trunks of each animal pair remaining inter twisted. She let
out a roar, at which the Heavens, the outer space and the seven worlds
trembled, at which thunder itself became hushed with fear.
"This is my impenetrable Jurisdiction," she roared, "I have destroyed the
wombs of things. Have you come here out of compassion to offer me your
meat? Or have you come here, egged on by Fate, to your funeral end? Speak
your purpose."
The Poet suggests the dynamics of the giantess m the followmg song:
She grabbed at the passing clouds
And, squeezing them with her hands,
She gobbled them up;
The huge hills she powdered
with her kick;
Her giant lips she bit hard
with her giant teeth,
Each of which looked like half a moon;
She seized her trident
And roared,
"You will get this in your chest."
Viswamitra thought it was time for Rama to act, but the chivalrous Rama,
out of deference to Thadakai's frail sex, refrained from putting arrows to
his bow. Visvamitra plumbed all the soft thoughts of Rama, who stood idly
by, even after the red-haired, white-toothed monster had threatened to kill.
"Oh bejewelled One!" implored the Rishi, "she has exhausted the entire
gamut of conceivable evil. she has left us alive, because she thinks we are
shrivelled up things unworthy of being eaten. This is her only restraint.
Would you look upon this monster as a woman and as a delicate damsel with
her plaited hair-do dangling on her back?"
Viswamitra added, "I utter these words not in anger but out of a calm
reflection upon inexorable duty. It is no part of your duty to show her
pity. I Kill her forthwith."
The fire-like demon guessed what the Rishi was whispering to Rama and she
flung at him her purple trident-fire along with the leaping fire of her
whitish eyes.
None saw Rama
Touching the arrow
Or bending his lovely bow,
But they saw
The falling pieces of the pulverised trident,
Which the monster had plucked from the very tree of Death
And flung
headlong.
Thereupon the woman, whose complexion was made as if out of darkness, sent
with the speed of sound a rain of stones sufficient to level up the seas.
With a rain of arrows the hero thwarted it. Then Rama sent out an arrow
which was as sharp and hot as an unkind word and which penetrated her chest
and shot past the heart like good counsel given by the virtuous to the
wicked. The blood that swelled out of her holed heart spread throughout the
desert. It seemed as if the rose of the evening sunset had detached itself
from the sky and fallen upon the earth.
In this maiden battle of Rama, the Lord of Death, who was pining to drink
the blood of the Rakshasa race, smacked his lips with a foretaste of their
blood.
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