Regaling repetitions

While the previous quote was notable for the author's deft employment of figurative speech or, to use the words of Sanskrit rhetoricians, for its arthaalankaara (अर्थालङ्कार; literally, "embellishment of the sense"), the couplet I will now present is characterized by a shabdaalankaara (शब्दालङ्कार; literally, "embellishment of the sound") which refers to the use of catchy sounds. This distich occurs as the first stanza of the naandee (नान्दी) or initial lines of benediction of the play Mukundaanandabhaana (मुकुन्दानन्दभाण) penned by one Kaasheepati Kaviraaja (काशीपति कविराज). I have no information on the playwright (ebook can be found here). 

वन्दे वन्दारुमन्दारमिन्दुभूषणनन्दनम्|

     अमन्दानन्दसन्दोहबन्धुरं सिन्धुराननम्|| 

 Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

vande vandArumandAramindubhUSaNanandanam|
amandAnandasandohabandhuraM sindhurAnanam||

Loose translation: I extol the elephant-faced son of the one adorned with the moon -- that son who is like a wish-granting heavenly tree to those respectful of him and is charming on account of bestowing immense happiness. 
N.B. For other valid interpretations of some parts, see below.

Let us take it one word at a time:
(i) Vande (वन्दे) simply means "I praise" or "I eulogize" and is the same vande that occurs in Vande Maataram! (वन्दे मातरम्), "I praise the mother!" All the words that follow are appellations of Ganesha.

(ii) Vandaarumandaara (वन्दारुमन्दार) is a combination of two words. Vandaaru (वन्दारु), derived from the same verbal root vand (वन्द्) as वन्दे, means "one who eulogizes", hence "one who venerates", and obviously refers to the devotees of Ganesha; Mandaara (मन्दार) here denotes one of the five trees that grace Nandana (नन्दन), the garden in Indra's heaven, the other four being Paarijaata (पारिजात), Santaana (सन्तान), Kalpa (कल्प), and Harichandana (हरिचन्दन). Each of these magical plants has the distinguishing property that it can provide anyone with anything they ask for. In Sanskrit, calling someone a mandaara (or a kalpa-tree or a paarijaata) is a clichéd way of glorifying their munificence. वन्दारुमन्दार thus means "generous to his votaries". Mandaara also refers to the very earthly coral tree (Erythrina variegata or E. stricta) and will reappear in a future post. 

(ii) Indubhooshananandana (इन्दुभूषणनन्दन) means "Shiva's son". Indu (इन्दु) is one of the several names of the moon and bhooshana (भूषण) is "ornament"; Shiva is called Indubhooshana (इन्दुभूषण) in the above couplet because of the crescent that famously adorns his head, or his headdress if he is shown wearing one. Recall his more common synonymous epithets Chandramauli (चन्द्रमौलि) and  Chandrashekhara (चन्द्रशेखर) [चन्द्र = "the moon"; मौलि/शेखर = "crest"]. Nandana literally means "one who gladdens" but, when used as a suffix, it often refers to a son or a descendant, obviously because an offspring is supposed to bring joy to the parents. Recall Krishna's metronymic Devakeenandana (देवकीनन्दन), "the son of Devakee". And in case you are wondering, this literary device is by no means sexist since the feminine form nandinee (नन्दिनी) is used similarly to mean "daughter"! 

Chandrashekhara Moorti,

one of the 64 principal forms of Shiva popular in Tamil Shaivism 

source: Wikimedia Commons

  

(iv) Amandaanandasandohabandhura (अमन्दानन्दसन्दोहबन्धुर) can be decomposed as अमन्द+आनन्द+सन्दोह+बन्धुर. The word bandhura (बन्धुर) has many meanings including "bent", "undulating", "curved", and "rounded", and the last couple of meanings probably has something to do with its frequent use in the literature in the sense "pleasant" or "beautiful". Sandoha (सन्दोह) literally refers to the "total milking of an entire herd of cattle" (from the verbal root duh (दुह्) which means "to milk" and the prefix sam (सम्) which signifies "togetherness") but its meaning has been generalized to cover any "mass" or "multitude". Aananda (आनन्द) of course means "happiness" and, interestingly, its connotations include both "spiritual bliss" and "sensual pleasure"! Manda (मन्द) is a highly negative term that can mean "slow", "dull", "feeble", "bad", "evil", or "insignificant", and amanda (अमन्द) is its antonym. Putting these together, we get "charming on account of bestowing immense happiness" (in the loose translation above) as a plausible interpretation of this long word. Another valid exegesis is "rounded on account of possessing immense happiness" or, to put it more simply, "a round bundle of joy" -- an allusion to the plump features and the delightful childlike disposition that are typically attributed to Ganesha.

(v) Sindhuraanana (सिन्धुरानन) is "elephant-faced"; sindhura (सिन्धुर) is a rather uncommon word for an elephant, while the oft-used aanana (आनन) means "face". The word सिन्धुर is particularly interesting since it literally means "a giver of सिन्धु", and it is well-known that सिन्धु refers to the Indus or a river in general. So what is the connection? It turns out that सिन्धु also denotes two different kinds of liquid discharge from an elephant's body: one through the nostrils (also called वमथु or करशीकर), and the other from a male elephant's temporal glands (also called दान or मद). References to these secretions are so common in the Sanskrit literature on Ganesha and elephants that I have decided to devote an entire post to a discussion thereof! 

Notes:

1. The particular type of shabdaalankaara used here (and, in fact, the most fundamental type of phonetic device in Sanskrit poetry) is called anupraasa (अनुप्रास). It simply refers to the repetition of one or more consonantal sounds within the same verse. English terms that come close in meaning are alliteration and consonance. Note that the conjunct consonant न्द् (composed of न् and द्) occurs eight times and the compound न्धु (comprising न्, ध्, and उ) occurs twice in the quoted couplet. There are other repetitions, too. For example,  the sequence वन्द् occurs twice at the very beginning, the consonants म्, न् and द् appear thrice in that order (-मन्दा-,-मिन्दु-, and -मन्दा- again), and there is a total of fifteen instances of न् out of which there are three pairs (in -नन्दनम्, अमन्दानन्द-, and -सिन्धुराननम्). 

Obviously, the most prominent repetitions in this composition are those of  न्, द्, and ध्, all of which belong to the same phonological category -- dantya (दन्त्य) or dental consonants: for the proper utterance of these sounds, the tip of the tongue must touch the palate close to the base of the upper row of teeth. This particular sub-type of anupraasa, characterized by consonant sounds that may not be identical but have a significant similarity in pronunciation, is called shrutyanupraasa (श्रुत्यनुप्रास​). Different rhetoricians provide varying classifications of anupraasa and other sub-types may also be identified in the stanza under consideration but I will stop here since I am not an expert on the subject.

Another observation I made is that the most repeated consonants न् and द् in these opening lines also occur repetitively in the title of the play itself, मुकुन्दानन्द (see above). I would like to believe that this similarity was intentional.

2. All the words used here to describe Ganesha are long compounds; their meanings can be inferred by breaking them down into their constituents, and then combining the meanings of these constituents in accordance with certain rules, often by inserting words that do not occur in the compound itself. For instance, take the word अमन्दानन्दसन्दोहबन्धुर above which, translated verbatim to English, would read something like "not-insignificant-bliss-mass-beautiful"! This hardly makes sense unless you expand it into a phrase or clause that includes certain extraneous words. And as we have already seen, this expansion of the word, and hence the interpretation, is by no means unique. 

The grammatical tool that allows one to string smaller words together to create new words of arbitrary length is called samaasa (समास), literally "throwing together" or "condensation" -- a feature Sanskrit famously shares with German (check this out). Samaasa is definitely a powerful device for it enables a writer to express a complex idea using a single word but it can also make life difficult for the reader! Apart from the obvious problem of a word becoming a bit too long, it can produce words that are ambiguous (sometimes deliberately so), or even completely unintelligible without special training or familiarity with certain cultural elements -- we will hopefully encounter several examples of these in future posts. Nevertheless, it is these very features of Sanskrit that make the language so dear to me; every read is a fresh intellectual adventure, and you never know what a marvelous treasure trove it might be holding in store for you!