SANSKRIT POETRY OF LOVE BY PROFESSOR INGALLS

Named Vidyakara was a Buddist monk at the monastery of Jagaddala, in Bengal. A.D. 1050 he prepared an anthology of Sanskrit poetry. In 1957, it was discovered and published by the late Professor D.D. Kosambi and Dr. V.V. Gokhale. Entitled “Treasury of Well-Turned Verse” (Subhasitaratnakosa), it contains verses by more than two hundred poets who lived for the most part from the eighth to the eleventh century A.D.

Vidyakara begins the volume with religious verses by scholars from his own and neighboring monasteries. However, he includes more poems in praise of Hindu gods than of the Buddha and one finds no sectarianism in his selections. His love for love poetry outweighed his interest in religion. His selections focus on Adolescence, The Blossoming of Love, The Wanton, Darkness, Poverty and Misers and Old Age.

Professor Daniel Ingalls, former professor of Sanskrit at Harvard, is known for his work on Indian logic and philosophy, studied Sanskrit in India and wrote his thesis on “Navya-Nyaya logic.” He spent ten years in translating the volume. Ingalls designed the translation for two types of readers. For the non-Sankritist he introduced each of the original Sanskrit sections with an account of the type of verse to be found there, an explanation of its conventions and relevant mythological references. Much of what he said in these introductions, is commonly known to readers of Sanskrit poetry. But his original and very significant contribution in the sectional introductions is his scholarly attempt to evaluate the verses as poetry and to contrast the attitudes which appear in them with those of Western verse.

For the Sanskritist Ingalls supplied a list of textual corrections and emendations, notes on the verses, and an index of words discussed in the notes. There are also indexes of Sanskrit meters, authors, names and subjects. He provides the reader with notes on language and grammar, on different and difficult meanings and expressions and figures of speech. Here one finds a further proof of Ingalls’s herculean scholarship to supply the Sanskritist reader with materials to read and enjoy.

In the general introduction, Ingalls, with a creative understanding of Sanskrit poetry, rejects the views of those authorities who based their values “on nineteenth-century Western morals and nineteenth-century Western notions of literature.” His most powerful argument is that these scholars did not once apply the standard of a Sanskrit critic to any of the Sanskrit works they were dealing with. “Macdonnel laughed,” Ingalls writes, “at the Sanskrit excesses of love-lorn damsels, and Kosambi heaps scorn on the hyperboles of Sanskrit panegyrics. But one may ask what the Sanskrit critics would have said of Albertine or of Molly Bloom.”

At one point, Ingalls contrasts the impersonality of Sanskrit and the prevailingly personal poetry of the West. He cites the following:

“They lay upon the bed each turned aside and suffering in silence; though love still dwelt within their hearts each feared a loss of pride.
But then from out the corner of their eyes the sidelong glances met
and the quarrel broke in laughter as they turned and clasped each other’s neck.”

“Half the charm of the verse,” he rightly asserts, “lies in the anonymity of the lovers. So left, they express an eternal moment of young love. To specify that they are Jack and Joan or that they are Lionel and Blanchefleur would be to destroy the universality by the intrusion of social particulars.” Further, he argues that it is man’s personality that stands between man and nature. Hence, as to Indian philosopher so to the Sanskrit poet “the removal of the person was felt not as a limitation of art but as a chance for freedom, an opportunity for suggestion to bring the reader to a sudden view of the universe within the minute compass of a verse.”

He points out that mood, suggestion, and the sudden revelation of universal truth have been asserted as among the salient characteristics of Sanskrit poetry. He defends the frequent use of pun and says that criticism of this device indicates a “lack of taste for Sanskrit,” which is peculiarly well adapted to punning.

There are statements that may be questioned; there are passages that may be rendered differently: but on the whole Ingalls’ Sanskrit Poetry is a superb work presented by a mastermind in whom Sarasvati had endowed both logic and literature.