Dying to redress the grievance of another: On praya / prayopavesa(na) in Kalhana's Rajatarangini.

• Author: Nemec, John
• Position: Essay

In this essay, I examine selected narratives in the Rajatarangini that invoke a specific practice of suicide by starvation, what is referred to as praya, prayopavesa, and/or prayopavesana. Commonly attested in the legal literature as well as in the epics, praya is normally deployed there to redress financial grievances, to force debtors to pay their due. The use of the practice in the Rajatarangini is often quite different from this, however: Kalhana suggests that Brahmins, and others, engaged in the fast-unto-death not only to redress their own (financial) grievances, but also the grievances of others. In particular, Kalhana presents praya as a tool used to compel Kashmiri kings to conform to the dharmasastric strictures of good government, to promote policies favoring not only Brahmins but also other, non-Brahmin subjects. The existence of such a form of the fast-unto-death is significant, for it signals a potentially unselfish use of caste, however imperfectly and corruptly the Rajatarangini shows it to have been applied: by threatening their own deaths and promising thereby the karmic and social consequences of brahminicide, Brahmins sought to compel those sovereigns who pursued their own narrow interests to better serve the common good. That this is so raises a trio of vital concerns regarding (1) the nature of the fast and its modern legacies, and (2) the nature of royal succession, on the one hand, and (3) on the other, the proper role of social and political elites in premodern South Asia. INTRODUCTION

While Hindu law has traditionally forbidden acts of willful self-harm, labeling them sinful, (1) there are, parallel to this proscriptive tradition, various social institutions that make positive use of suicide. (2) In the present essay I propose to examine selected instances of a particular form thereof--death by willful starvation--which was commonly deployed to "redress a grievance," as E. Washburn Hopkins expressed it in the title of his foundational essay on the subject (Hopkins 1900). In particular I propose to survey selected instances of the practice in the Rajatarangini (RT), where Kalhana refers repeatedly to it with the commonly attested terms praya, prayopavesa, or (in one instance at least) prayopavesana. (3) Though Hopkins noted the presence of the practice in the Rajatarangini, he left it out of his study in favor of exemplars culled primarily from the Mahabharata and Ramayana, on the reasoning that the epics predate the historically comparatively late Kashmiri chronicle. (4)

The argument I wish to prosecute is this, that in setting aside the evidence of the RT, Hopkins failed to note a particular type, or facet, of the fast-unto-death, one that may be described as an act of dying to redress the grievance of another than oneself. (5) Specifically, instances of what may therefore be labeled unselfish (or, at the least, partially unselfish) suicides in the RT depict Brahmins, and others, engaging in the fast-unto-death to further what can properly be described as policy aims: they do so to effect changes in the way governance is administered in Kashmir, often for the good of Kashmiri subjects in general and not simply for the limited ends of selected individuals. Such acts raise a trio of vital concerns regarding (1) the nature of the fast and its modern legacies, and (2) the nature of royal succession, on the one hand, and (3) on the other, the proper role of social and political elites in premodern South Asia.

HOPKINS'S HEPTADIC TYPOLOGY OF SUICIDE BY STARVATION

Hopkins offers a heptadic typology of praya that progressively offers increasingly more specialized definitions of the practice. (6) He begins first by surveying what he characterizes as more general uses of the fast-unto-death, followed by exemplars of what, in accordance with the law books of Manu, (7) Brhaspati, (8) and Apastamba, (9) he identifies as its most definitive function--what he refers to as its "legal use" (p. 150) (10)--namely, "the legal aspect of suicide as a means of compelling payment" (p. 146), "according to which the creditor sets out to starve himself to death to compel [such] payment" (p. 150).

Central to this "legal" type of praya is, first of all, the fact that it is deployed to motivate another to conform to one's wishes. That is, one promises to harm the person targeted by the fast if this debtor does not repay the requisite sum. The normal practice was to fast at the door of the debtor's abode, and the one against whom the praya was directed was also expected to fast in a sort of "stomach-duel." (11) The practice thus was clearly intended to lead to a repayment rather than a death, (12) because, as Hopkins put it, "the one who rejects a suppliant and compels him to kill himself, goes to hell" (p. 157).

A second major element of this "legal" use of praya, this "door-sitting," is that it was meant to be practiced only by Brahmins, even if the legal texts cited above did not explicitly say as much, for such a rule was articulated in the epics. (13)

Finally, Hopkins mentions what is a third element of "legal" fasting, namely, that Brahmins were barred from deploying the practice against kings--or, at least this much is said at Ramayana 2.103.17: (14)

brahmano hy ekaparsvena naran roddhum iharhati / na tu murdhavasiktanam vidhih pratyupavesane For a Brahmin here has a claim to obstruct men by [lying on] one side (ekaparsvena), (15) but the conduct [in question] does not [qualify] with respect to the besieging (pratyupavesana) of consecrated kings (murdhavasikta). Hopkins has also already noted that such a proscription is unusual, given that the fast was reserved especially for kings in other Indo-European traditions; (16) and it is nowhere explicitly articulated by Manu, Brhaspati, or Apastamba. Praya, however, is habitually directed against the royal sovereign in the RT, normally (though not exclusively) deployed as it is by Brahmins and others to compel the king--or queen--to act.

We shall turn momentarily to instances where the fast-unto-death is utilized to achieve more than the private aims of the individual engaged in it. One may first note, however, that as with all of the seven types identified by Hopkins, praya is occasionally engaged in in the RT precisely and only to further an agent's or agents' personal aims; and it may be shown to have been deployed by those seeking to redress personal, financial grievances, though not without complications.

Take the use of praya in the seventh taranga, for example, where it is cleverly employed purportedly to redress a financial wrong but in reality to thwart King Harsa's invasion of a neighboring kingdom. An opposing monarch, one Samgramapala, whose kingdom was invaded, offered tributes to Harsa that he might spare his men, whom the latter had trapped in a fort he had placed under siege; but Harsa would have none of it.

7.1152 sa tu prthvigirim durgam drstva tadgrahanodyatah / apravisto rajadhanlm (17) tanmule samupavisat 7.1153 masam abhyadhikam tena tasthusa paripiditah / praksinannadisambhara babhuvur durgaraksinah 7.1154 tratum samgramapalas tan uricakre dharapatih (18) / kiyantam na karam bhitah kiyatlr na ca samvidhah But he [i.e., King Harsa] laid eyes on the Prthvigiri stronghold and, intent on capturing it, encamped at its base without having entered the capital. The defenders of the stronghold became thoroughly distressed as a result of his remaining there [in a posture of siege] for more than a month, their provisions--food, etc.--having been [eventually] exhausted. How much tribute did King Samgramapala, alarmed [over their fate], not promise in order to save them, and how many supplies? In the face of Harsa's intransigence, Samgramapala deployed another tactic: he bribed an officer of the king's army, who in turn instigated a protest among Harsa's men, a fast-untodeath (praya) engaged in in order to secure hardship wages that the men were persuaded were due to them as compensation for their extended stay outside of their home country (pravasavetana). Harsa could not pay the salary immediately, his treasury being remotely situated (that is, closer to home in Kashmir), and his men therefore chose to abandon the siege.

7.1155 upodhaddrdhye nrpatau sa tadapratigrhnati / lubdham utkocadanena svicakre dandanayakam 7.1156 amanyamane (19) nrpatau vyavrttim prerita rahah / pravasavetanam bhuri margitum tena (20) sastrinah 7.1157 taih praye prakrtaprayaih (21) krte sollunthabhasitaih / rajno durasthakosasya (22) katakah ksobham ayayau When the king [Harsa], not accepting those [offerings], showed [his] firmness, he [i.e., Samgramapala] co-opted the avaricious prefect of police (dandanayaka) with a bribe. Secretly, the arms-bearers were urged repeatedly by him to seek a salary for living abroad (pravdsavetana), even while the king gave no thought to turning away [from the siege]. Once those [men], who were mostly of low character, engaged in the fast-unto-death under ironical sayings, (23) the king's army fell into a state of agitation, his treasury being far away. Here, in sum, we find praya deployed by (non-Brahmin) individuals against a king, all to settle a debt, even if the fast is itself a manipulation. (24) Indeed, one wonders whether Kalhana's narrative self-consciously, if implicitly, invokes the "legal" use of praya to illustrate the ways in which the practice could be and indeed was abused, manipulated in an age when men did not always act as they properly should. (25)

A second example, also drawn from the seventh tarahga, depicts Brahmins who engage in an act of pray a to thwart King Harsa's decree, namely, that they be conscripted, along with all the other subjects, into service as porters in the Kashmir Valley.

7.1088 krtaprayaih (26) sa tatratyaih parisadyais tato nrpah / niskrayam rudhabharodhivaranena pradapitah Then the king was compelled by the local purohitas of [Kashmir's] temples and tirthas (parisadya), (27) who had...