Praising God in "Wondrous and Picturesque Ways": Citrakavya in a Telugu Prabandha.

• Author: Kamath, Harshita Mruthinti

Nandi Timmana's epic poem, Parijatapaharanamu (hereafter Theft of a Tree), was produced at the height of the classical Telugu literary development in the court of Krsnadevaraya (r. 1509-29), the most powerful of the Vijayanagara rulers. (1) Drawing on Sanskrit literature, particularly the epics and puranas, Theft of a Tree tells the story of Krsna stealing the parijata tree from the garden of Indra, the king of the gods. The parijata is no ordinary tree. Befitting its place in Indra's garden, the tree gives everything that one desires; Krsna himself describes it as "the first jewel of heaven." (2) After Krsna gives his chief queen Rukmini a single parijata flower, his other wife Satyabhama is filled with jealousy and anger. Krsna appeases Satyabhama by promising to bring her the entire pahjata tree from Indra's palace in the heavenly city, Vaijayanta. Following an epic battle with Indra, Krsna brings the tree to earth and plants it in Satyabhama's garden.

Timmana's Theft of a Tree is classified as one of the great mahaprabandhas, or epic poems, produced in the Vijayanagara court of Krsnadevaraya, along with Allasani Peddana's Manucaritramu and Krsnadevaraya's own text, Amuktamalyada. (3) Akin to the mahakavyas of classical Sanskrit, the mahaprabandhas of classical Telugu usually consist of five or six chapters and adapt Sanskrit poetics within a vernacular mode. (4) In comparison to his contemporaries, namely Peddana and Krsnadevaraya, Timmana stays squarely within the confines of conventional Sanskrit and classical Telugu poetics in the five chapters and more than five hundred verses of his text.

Tucked at the end of Theft of a Tree, however, are eight verses written in a genre unique to Timmana's prabandha and not found in the works of other prabandha-period Telugu poets. In the final and fifth chapter of Theft of a Tree (verses 5.92-99), the sage Narada praises Krsna as god through citrakavya, or "picture" poetry, which is also referred to as "flashy," "special effects," and even "Xtreme" poetry. (5) Timmana's citras include verses that play with meter and sound, as well as four bandhas (linguistic bonds)--gomutrika (cow's urine), kundalinaga (snake), churika (dagger), and cakra (wheel). In translating Theft of a Tree, Velcheru Narayana Rao and I found it challenging to render these "special effects" poems in ways that are intelligible for the English reader. We wondered not only how to translate these verses, but also why Timmana decided to employ citrakavya at this point in his prabandha.

In Sanskrit and Indian literature more broadly, citrakavya is a capacious genre that includes figural verses, rhyming, alliteration, and other forms of word puzzles and metrical configurations, all of which are considered types of literary ornaments (alankaras) that embellish a given literary work. (6) Poets use citrakavya to display their poetic skills in composing word puzzles and the like, particularly in portions of a text related to battle or praise of a deity. Yet literary theorists decry citra as a lesser form of poetry, even going so far as to describe it as "a goiter on the body of poetry." (7) Even today, citrakavya is relegated to the status of mere curiosity and summarily dismissed as a display of poetic virtuosity; in other words, poets compose citrakavya simply because they are skilled at doing so. (8) Regarding citra simply as a form of skillful display or poetic flourish, however, does not fully capture the reasons for Timmana's use of citra verses at the end of his epic poem. Rather, I argue that Timmana shifts the flow of his fast-paced narrative and intentionally employs citrakavya to praise and even capture god through the complex figuration of syllables and sounds. Timmana's citras, which are conveyed through the direct speech of Narada to Krsna, are essential to scripting a new layer of the pahjata narrative, one that highlights the devotional perspectives of the poet himself. Timmana breaks with the poetic realm of the narrative, which is grounded in the human drama between Krsna and Satyabhama, to use citra as a form of stotra, or praise poetry. (9)

This break in narrative in favor of devotion is also found in the third chapter of Theft of a Tree, when Timmana employs dandaka, or garland verse, to extensively describe the life stories of Krsna told by Aditi, the mother of the gods. In choosing to employ dandaka in chapter three and citrakavya in chapter five, Timmana, the poet, moves beyond the aesthetic drive and overarching plot of the narrative to extol god through praise verses set in the voices of his characters. For Timmana, citrakavya is not simply an alankara, but rather the singular means through which he as the poet is able to praise his god in "wondrous and picturesque ways." (10)

CITRAKAVYA IN SANSKRIT

Before turning to citrakavya in classical Telugu, it is worthwhile to briefly outline the broader genre of citra, particularly in Sanskrit. This overview of citrakavya, albeit concise, provides important grounding for examining how Timmana deploys citra as a form of stotra in his prabandha. Citrakavya, which includes various kinds of patterned verses and word puzzles that play with sabda (sound) and artha (meaning), extends across a range of Indian literatures, including Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, and other languages. (11) A wide array of "special effects" poetry can be lumped under the umbrella of citrakavya, including yamaka (a form of twinning poetry in which syllabic sequences are repeated to yield new meanings), niyama ('regulation'; verses that are restricted to a limited number of syllables), and bandha ('bond'; figural verses). Of all the various types of citrakavya, bandhas are undoubtedly the most recognizable. They are figural verses formed by arranging syllables into the shapes of various objects, such as a dagger or wheel, both of which are illustrated below. Notably, bandha is not limited to the figural image created through syllabic arrangement; rather, it brings together the visual with the phonetic, a point underscored by David Shulman. (12)

Citrakavya is primarily used in the context of battle or in praise of a deity, either as part of a broader kavya or in self-contained poems such as Anandavardhana's Devisataka (discussed below). (13) The martial quality of citrakavya is evident in bandhas, which are often imaged to represent weapons of war. (14) The best-known examples of Sanskrit kavyas to use citras are Bharavi's Kiratarjumya (ca. sixth century) and Magha's Sisupalavadha (ca. seventh century). (15) Peterson argues that Bharavi's citras are suitable for the combat context of the fifteenth sarga (chapter) of Kiratarjumya. The pictorial verses can be likened to the complex battle formations found in the narrative--"calculated to engage the reader as well as the combatants in a 'battle' with their various forms of difficulty." (16) Citra devices thus work to perform the climactic context of battle through the manipulation of syllabic formations.

Despite the fact that poets like Bharavi and Magha employ citrakavya, the genre is often disparaged by Indian literary theorists. The famous Sanskrit aesthetician Anandavardhana (ca. eighth century), for example, considers citrakavya to be a mere "imitation of poetry" (kavyanukara) because it lacks any suggested meaning (dhvani) or aesthetic taste (rasa). (17) For Anandavardhana, citrakavya exists as part of the received literary tradition and must therefore be acknowledged; however, it should only be practiced by contemporary poets, he argues, as a pedagogical tool and never subservient to the ultimate goal of producing dhvani. (18)

In spite of this critique, Anandavardhana himself composed a text called Devisataka, or a one-hundred-verse praise poem (stotra) in honor of the Goddess. In Devisataka Anandavardhana skillfully employs citrakavya to create intricate poems that are made to fit particular designs, such as a great wheel or the zigzag shape of a cow urinating. The crown jewel of Devisataka is Anandavardhana's impressive cakrabandha, which is comprised of sixteen spoke-stanzas (verses 80-94) and four rim-stanzas (verses 96-97 and 99-100), and visually depicted by Daniel H. H. Ingalls in his well-known article on this text. If citra readers (or listeners) begin from the third syllable in from the top spoke and continue around the wheel clockwise, they can find the following secret message embedded in the spoke:

The son of Nona has thus performed his worship of the Goddess under the title of "The Goddess's Century" [Devisataka] as instructed in a dream, a worship unsurpassed by reason of her having been the instructress. (19) For Ingalls, this secret message provides the impetus behind Anandavardhana's use of citra in Devisataka, in spite of the critique of citra found in his earlier text, Dhvanyaloka. Ingalls writes: "I should think that a special command from [Anandavardhana's] istadevata [favorite deity] would offer an ideal solution to his tension. The Goddess commands him to use for her own special glory that talent in which he surpasses all other men, useless though the talent may be in his professional life." (20) For Ingalls, Anandavardhana's natural talent for composing citra and other forms of "special effects" poetry, coupled with his devotion to the Goddess, justifies the composition of Devisataka.

More recently, Hamsa Stainton provides an alternative explanation for Anandavardhana's deployment of citra. Rather than seeing Devisataka as simply a display of poetic virtuosity, Stainton suggests that Anandavardhana may have chosen to compose his own citrakavya in the stotra genre because the bhakti-focus of such a composition would have shielded him from potential criticism. (21) Stainton further argues that Anandavardhana's deployment of citra quite possibly functions in line with, rather than against, rasa: "Since his devotional praise to the goddess did not involve normal human interactions, the...