An Ornament for Jewels: Love Poems for the Lord of Gods by Vedantadesika.

• Author: Monius, Anne A.
• Position: Book review

An Ornament for Jewels: Love Poems for the Lord of Gods by Vedantadesika. By STEVEN P. HOPKINS. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2007. Pp. xviii +181. $29.95.

A welcome complement to the author's earlier study of the hymns of the important fourteenth-century Srivaisnava poet, theologian, and commentator, Vedantadesika (Singing the Body of God [Oxford, 2002]), An Ornament for Jewels offers complete translations of five extended poems attributed to Desika (also known as Venkatanatha or Venkatesa) in praise of Visnu as Devanayaka Swami, "Lord of Gods," the form of the deity enshrined at Tiruvahindrapuram in the Tamil-speaking region of southern India. Vedantadesika's life (traditional dates: 1268-1369) spanned the late Cola and early Vijayanagara empires, and his scholarly and devotional output embodies complex and self-conscious synthesis of both languages (Tamil, Sanskrit, and Maharastri Prakrit) and regional and trans-regional themes, theologies, and modes of expression. Arguing that the five poems to Devanayaka encapsulate the linguistic and thematic diversity found throughout Desika's complete oeuvre, Hopkins presents eminently readable translations suitably accessible for use in the classroom (including a helpful glossary of terms), while providing detailed remarks for the specialist throughout the endnotes.

The introductory chapter sets Desika's work in its devotional and theological context, highlighting the themes to which the poet (and Hopkins) return again and again: the union of intellect and emotion; the salvific nature of true beauty; the sometimes unsettled relationship between poetry and philosophy; the play of absence and presence, distance and intimacy in the poet's vision of the divine (p. 15). Hopkins here also explains his approach to the task of translation, attempting to move beyond the "Indologese" (p. 20) that characterizes so much translation from premodern South Asian texts, to render Desika's sophisticated verse in three languages into readable (even poetic) American English. A published poet in English himself and clearly influenced by the work of the late scholar, translator, and poet, A. K. Ramanujan, Hopkins eschews literal translation in favor of "producing a verse in English, something that will serve as more than a simple trot for the scholar-reader" (p. 20). Though only a few pages, the discussion and examples he provides of his method--juxtaposing his beautiful rendering of a Sanskrit verse on Visnu's...