A mother's pride, a devotee's joy

The following is the introductory prayer of the Tantric treatise Swachchhanda Paddhati (स्वच्छन्दपद्धति) ascribed to one Chidaanandanaatha (चिदानन्दनाथ). The suffix naatha suggests that the author belonged to the famous Nath tradition of Indian ascetics.  

अगजाननपद्मार्कं गजाननमहर्निशम्|

अनेकदं तं भक्तानामेकदन्तमुपास्महे||

Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

agajAnanapadmArkaM gajAnanamaharnizam|

anekadaM taM bhaktAnAmekadantamupAsmahe||

Loose translation: We always worship him who is a sun unto the face-lotus of the Moutain-born (i.e. Parvati), has the face of an elephant, is the giver of many (boons) to his devotees, and has a single tusk.  

Let us take this one word at a time:

1. agajaananapadmaarka (अगजाननपद्मार्क) breaks down as 

अगजा (the daughter of a mountain) + आनन (face) + पद्म (lotus) + अर्क (the Sun).

Agajaa, as already explained in "A paradoxical doxology 1", is one of the names of Ganesha's mother Parvati who is the daughter of Himavaan, the presiding deity of the Himalayas. To understand the rest of this long compound, one needs to know the relationship between the Sun and lotuses in Sanskrit literature in particular and Indian culture in general.

Ancient Indians divided lotuses (and similar aquatic flowers such as water-lilies) into two broad categories: those that unfurl their petals at sunrise and close them at night, and those that do the opposite. Unless otherwise stated, any Sanskrit word that is usually translated to English as "lotus" (for example, padma (पद्म), kamala (कमल), abja (अब्ज) etc.) refers to the former, i. e. diurnal, variety. For this reason, the Sun is very often associated with lotuses in literature and religious iconography. In most artistic portrayals, the sun god is seen holding at least one lotus in one of his hands (often two lotuses in two of his four hands), for which he is also called Abjahasta (अब्जहस्त) or Padmakara (पद्मकर), "lotus-handed". Moreover, any compound formed by prefixing any word which means "lotus" (like padma) or a "group of lotuses" (like padminee (पद्मिनी)) to any word which means "lord/husband/lover" (like pati (पति)) or "friend" (like bandhu (बन्धु)), is a valid word for the Sun in Sanskrit. Examples include Ambujabaandhava (अम्बुजबान्धव), Kamalineekaanta (कमलिनीकान्त), Padmineevallabha (पद्मिनीवल्लभ), and many more. 

The sun god Surya holding two stylized lotuses, British Museum

source: Wikimedia Commons

This association of the Sun with the opening of lotus buds is also the origin of the following literary trope in Indic literature: if X is the cause of the "blossoming" of Y,  where Y is any individual or community or suchlike, and "blossoming" figuratively refers to happiness or prosperity, then Y may be compared to a lotus and X to the Sun. For instance, Alexander the Great could be nicknamed "Macedon-lotus-sun"! In the above quote, Ganesha has been called his mother's "face-lotus-sun" for her countenance surely lights up in joy whenever he appears before her.

2. gajaanana (गजानन) or "elephant-faced" is a popular name of Ganesha.

3. aharnisham (अहर्निशम्) means "day (अहर्) and night (निशा)", hence "always". The suffix म् is the usual way of forming an adverb from a noun or adjective.

4. anekadaM taM bhaktaanaam (अनेकदं तं भक्तानाम्): Tam (तं) simply means "him" and bhaktaanaam anekadam is "much-giver to devotees." Aneka literally translates to "not-one" and the suffix da (द) derives from the verb daa (दा), "to give".

5. ekadanta (एकदन्त), "one-tusked", is another commonplace descriptor of Ganesha. It alludes to the fact that, in most standard depictions, the elephant-headed god has one tusk intact while all that is left of the other is a small cylindrical stump; he is sometimes also shown sporting the broken tusk in the grip of one of his hands. It is said that the single tusk is symbolic of Ganesha's association with the Advaita philosophy, sometimes called "non-dualism" or "monism" in English. However, there are several mythological stories that seek to provide less spiritual explanations of Ganesha's missing tusk, the most popular one being that Parashurama chopped it off with his famous axe. You can read more about it here. 

As the popularity of Ganesha grew, multiple manifestations called roopas (रूप) and incarnations called avataaras (अवतार) of the deity began to emerge particularly within the Ganapatya sect – the sect that worships Ganapati as the Supreme Being – and what had merely been different names of the one and only Ganesha came to be applied to his particular forms. According to the Mudgala Purana, Ekadanta is the second of the eight incarnations of Ganesha and was manifested in order to kill the demon Madaasura (मदासुर). Ekadanta Ganapati also refers to two distinct forms of the god mentioned in separate traditions: one blue-black in complexion (the twenty-second of the thirty-two forms of Ganapati recognized in the 19th century treatise Shreetattvanidhi) and the other red-skinned! Details are available in this compilation by the Kamakoti Mandali (Sanskrit descriptions in Devanagari on pages 6 and 14,  Roman transliterations on pages 37 and 48 respectively).

Ekadanta Ganapati, Shreetattvanidhi
(N.B. All illustrations of forms of Ganapati in this manuscript have a fair complexion but the text clearly states that the color of the above form is blue-black.)

source: Wikipedia

6. upaasmahe (उपास्महे) means "we worship"; the underlying verbal root is upa-aas (उप-आस्) which literally means "to sit near", hence "to wait upon", hence "to pay homage to".

Notes:
The appeal of today's quote undoubtedly lies in its wordplay: there is a yamaka (यमक) in each half-verse (I introduced the yamaka in my post "A paradoxical doxology 2")! As a quick reminder, yamaka refers to the presence of two or more strings of syllables, that sound identical but differ entirely in meaning, close to one another; in fact, one (or more) of said strings might actually be a non-isolable component of a bigger sequence, the whole of which must be considered for it to make sense. 

Here, in the first line, the string gajaanana (गजानन) appears twice, first as part of the adjective agajaananapadmaarka (अगजाननपद्मार्क), and then as a word in its own right to denote Ganesha. In the second hemistich, a similar role is played by the string ekadanta (एकदन्त):  its first occurrence is as part of the two-word sequence anekadaM taM (अन्-एकदं तम्), and the second is as an independent word. It must be noted that visually the last two strings mentioned do not look quite the same. Indeed, the anusvaara (अनुस्वार) or bindu (बिन्दु) – here, the dot above the da (द) in anekadaM (अनेकदं)) – is a pronunciation-modifier that in general denotes a nasalization of the vowel to which it is attached; but it can alternatively be pronounced as a constantal na (न्) if followed immediately by any of the dental consonants ta (त), tha (थ), da (द), dha (ध) or na  (न). Going by this alternative pronunciation, it is easy to see how this is an example of the yamaka alankaara.

A quick note

Before the next real post, I thought I should draw your attention to a variant of the excerpt in "A paradoxical doxology 1" that I came across in a couple of Vijayanagara inscriptions (of the reign of Tirumala I and Ranga Raya II). It differs from said verse only in the last quarter: instead of harinaapi cha poojyate (हरिणापि च पूज्यते), it reads panchaasyenaapi laalitam (पञ्चास्येनापि लालितम्) which means "caressed by a lion/caressed by Shiva", [panchaasya = panchaanana = "five-faced", literally]. The exegesis of this version is  quite understandably similar to that of the second quote in the same vein (A paradoxical doxology 2).

Another point to be noted is that all adjectives used to describe Ganesha in both versions of the stanza under consideration are in the neuter gender. This is because Ganesha is referred to as gajaratna ("a gem of an elephant"/"an excellent elephant"); the grammatical gender of ratna ("gem") in Sanskrit is neuter, and in Sanskrit grammar, an adjective has the same gender, number, and case-ending as the noun it qualifies. This rule is quite convenient, especially in poetry, since an adjective can be placed practically anywhere in a sentence and yet it is possible to figure out precisely, more often than not, which noun it is associated with! Thus the sentence

सुशीलः बालकः उष्णं दुग्धं पिबति|

 (The well-behaved boy drinks warm milk.)

can be rewritten as  

उष्णं पिबति सुशीलः दुग्धं बालकः|

without changing its meaning. (Of course, it is possible to construct pathological examples where this idea breaks down. )

A paradoxical doxology 2

I apologize in advance for the elephantine (see what I did there?) size of this post :) 

As you might have guessed from the title, today's snippet is yet another fine specimen of the virodhaabhaasa (विरोधाभास) trope that, loosely translated, refers to a paradox. And, just as in the previous quote, the paradox is in the second half-verse and alludes to the celebrated enmity between the lion and the elephant! It was penned by a poet called Chakra (चक्र) who hailed from Southern India and is placed in the 17th century by the renowned Sanskrit scholar T. Ganapati Sastri. Chakra's magnum opus "Jaanakeeparinaya" (जानकीपरिणय) or "The Wedding of Jaanaki (Sita)", an epic poem based on the Ramayana, begins with cleverly worded invocations to several deities – the third couplet of the work, which is excerpted below, glorifies Ganesha. My source is the scanned version of Trivandrum Sanskrit Series publication No. XXIV (1913), available here.

गजरत्नं चिरत्नं तदद्भुतं श्रेयसेऽस्तु यत्|
पञ्चाननो लालयति क्षोणीभृद्भूगुहाश्रयः||

Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

gajaratnaM ciratnaM tadadbhutaM zreyase'stu yat|

paJcAnano lAlayati kSoNIbhRdbhUguhAzrayaH||

Reading 1 (self-contradictory and inadmissible): May that ancient and extraordinary gem of an elephant produce welfare – which is caressed by a lion that frequents mountainous terrain and dwells in caves. 

Reading 2 (admissible): May that ancient and extraordinary gem of an elephant produce welfare – which is caressed by the Five-faced Man (i.e. Shiva) in whom the Mountain-born (i.e. Parvati) and Guha (i.e. Skanda) find refuge. 

Notes:

1. The magic, as already stated, lies in the second hemistich "पञ्चाननो लालयति क्षोणीभृद्भूगुहाश्रयः". The second word laalayati (लालयति) is unambiguous and means "he/she/it caresses". Let us take up the remaining two words one by one.

Panchaanana (पञ्चानन): The word pancha (पञ्च), which means "five", suffixed with any word which means "face", such as aanana (आनन), vaktra (वक्त्र), mukha (मुख), aasya (आस्य) etc., is a popular appellation of Shiva since he is often represented as five-faced, especially in the Tantric tradition. The faces even have names: Ishaana (ईशान), Tatpurusha (तत्पुरुष), Aghora (अघोर), Vaamadeva (वामदेव), and Sadyojaata (सद्योजात). Each face is said to point in a particular direction, and is identified with one of the five syllables of the most important mantra (मन्त्र = sacred formula) associated with Shiva: Namah Shivaaya (नमः शिवाय). The five-headed ten-armed form of the deity is sometimes called Sadaashiva (सदाशिव). 

Five-headed Shiva, Nurpur, Himachal Pradesh, 1696

source: Wikimedia Commons

Panchaanana, as well as its above synonyms, is also another Sanskrit word for "lion"! According to lexicographers, panchaanana is figuratively used to mean "very fierce or passionate."¹ It is presumably for this reason that this surprising epithet was given to the formidable, albeit one-faced, predator! But again, the 13th century Jain scholar Hamsadeva in his Mrigapakshishaastra, "The science of animals and birds", restricts the meaning of the word panchaasya (पञ्चास्य), which is semantically identical to panchaanana, to the third of the six varieties of lion he recognizes; according to him, the distinguishing characteristics of this type include whitish color, a short tail, dense body hair, a short mane, a long body, perpetual sleepiness, and a walk accompanied by frequent jumps and turning of the head. Here is the scanned version of said text for your reference. 

The last word of the verse kshoneebhRdbhooguhaashraya (क्षोणीभृद्भूगुहाश्रय) is even more interesting. Kshonee (क्षोणी) denotes the earth (and hence "soil" or "land"), and in Sanskrit any word for the earth, followed by a suffix which means "supporter" such as -dhara (-धर) or -bhRt (-भृत्), refers to a king or a mountain. It is understandable why a king would be called kshoneebhRt or "earth-supporter" – his foremost duty is to sustain a piece of land and the life forms that thrive on it. But what entitles a mountain to be honored with the same epithet? Isn't it rather the other way around? One of the most important Shakta scriptures, the Devee-Bhaagavata Puraana (देवीभागवतपुराण), solves the mystery. 

"... [the earth] is called Mahî because it is great, ... . O King! the Ananta serpent is holding it on [his] thousand-hoods. To make the earth remain solid and compact, Brahmâ built at places mountains. As iron nails in a log of wood, so these hills and mountains within this earth made it fixed. Therefore the Pundits call these mountains “Mahîdhara,” holder of the earth."

– Devi-Bhagavata Purana, Book 3, Chapter 13, Verses 9-10 (link)

There is no way to know what the person/people who coined these terms actually had in mind. But it can be guessed that the "earth" here refers to the "flat" hard crust on which we live and some ancients believed that it was held in place by mountains driven, as it were, right through it so as to have their "roots" embedded in a perhaps softer substratum.

Now, bhoo (भू) is another word for "the earth", "soil", or "land" and hence the compound kshoneebhRdbhoo (क्षोणीभृद्भू) may be translated as "mountain-soil" or "hilly land." Guhaa (गुहा) means "cave" and is connected with the verb guh (गुह्), "to conceal". Finally, aashraya (आश्रय) is "shelter". Putting the pieces together, we have the first interpretation of the word: "one who uses mountainous regions and caves for shelter" – an apt description of the Asiatic lion. Here is a (by no means exhaustive) list of Sanskrit appellations of the lion that literally mean "moutain-dweller" or "mountain-wanderer": agaukas (अगौकस्), nagaukas (नगौकस्), shailaata (शैलाट), shaileya (शैलेय).

But how does the adjective under consideration relate to Shiva? The verb bhoo (भू) means "to be", "to become" or "to be born" and hence, when used as a suffix, can be interpreted as "born from" or "offspring of". So kshoneebhRdbhoo can refer to Shiva's consort Parvati who is the daughter of the mountain-king Himalaya (both the meanings "king" and "mountain" of kshoneebhRt apply here). Guha (गुह) is a popular name of Shiva and Parvati's other son Skanda (स्कन्द) or Kaartikeya (कार्तिकेय), and Shiva is, of course, "one who offers shelter to the mountain-born Parvati and Guha"! 

Somaskanda, representation of Shiva with Uma and a dancing infant Skanda (Guha),  Nayak Palace Art Museum, Tanjore

source: Wikipedia

And just in case someone fails to see why the above stanza is an illustration of virodhaabhaasa or "apparent contradiction", here is a reminder: the lion is notorious in Sanskrit literature for (supposedly) being innately hostile towards the elephant. So a lion showering love on an elephant would come across as a shocker to most readers targeted by our poet. Let me take this opportunity to present you with another list of Sanskrit names (given by lexicographers and/or used by littérateurs) of the lion: 

• ibhaari (इभारि), kunjaraarati (कुञ्जराराति), gajaari (गजारि), dvipaari (द्विपारि), sindhuradveshin (सिन्धुरद्वेषिन्), "the enemy/hater of elephants";
• ibhamaacala (इभमाचल), karidaaraka(करिदारक),  karimaacala(करिमाचल),  dviradaantaka (द्विरदान्तक), "elephant-destroyer";
• garjitaasaha (गर्जितासह), "one who does not tolerate (an elephant's) trumpets"!

2. Another noteworthy feature of the couplet is the duplication of the segment ratnaM (रत्नं) in the first half-verse. Since consonants are repeated, you might be tempted to call this an instance of anupraasa. But here the embellishment consists of more than just recurring sounds; we have multiple copies of a sequence of syllables, differing in meaning. The ratna part of gajaratna means "gem" and, as a suffix to the name of a demographic or species, signifies a member enjoying a position of superiority; gajaratna means "the best among elephants" (gaja = elephant). The second ratna is part of chiratna (चिरत्न) which means "ancient" – a rather obscure derivative of chira (चिर), "lasting a long time". Rhetoricians have not subsumed this special type of shabdaalankaara (शब्दालङ्कार) under anupraasa and have given it the name yamaka (यमक; literally, "twin"). In all the examples of yamaka I have seen, the repeated chunk of text spans multiples syllables and at least of the occurrences includes a complete word that may or may not be part of a compound. For instance, here the first ratna, although embedded in the longer word gajaratna, is capable of making sense on its own while the second is non-isolable since chiratna, at least in this context, cannot be broken down into chi and ratna.

We just saw that, in order to label a trope as a yamaka, the meaning or sense must be taken into account. Why then is it not considered an arthaalankaara (अर्थालङ्कार) or "embellishment of the sense"? My knowledge of the subject is limited but here goes my understanding: in a shabdaalankara, the beauty or appeal derives primarily from the sounds themselves and not from the objects or ideas they denote. More simply, a literary device qualifies as a shabdaalankaara if it is possible to make the alankaara vanish by replacing the words involved by some synonymous words or expressions. In our specimen, this can be confirmed by replacing, say, chiratna with its synonym puraana (पुराण). 

That's all for today. And in case your thirst for wordplay is still unquenched, I leave you with the assurance that the next post will be mainly about yamakas!

¹ In this context, it is worthwhile to mention the related Bengali idiom proshongsay ponchomukh howa (Bengali: প্রশংসায় পঞ্চমুখ হওয়া) which literally means "to become five-faced (or five-mouthed) in praise" and is used to describe a person showing excessive enthusiasm in extolling someone or something.↩