Book review

The Ocean of Mirth: Reading Hāsyārṇava Prahasanaṁ of Jagadēśvara Bhaṭṭāchārya, A Political Satire for All Times

Author: Translated with an Introduction by Jyotirmaya Sharma

Publication House: Routledge: London, New York, New Delhi 2020

Printed Pages: 80

Price: 695

14th century Sanskrit satire

& the messiness of politics

Blurb:

It takes a certain courage to read the allegory within the play and allow it to speak to our age; it takes another kind of courage to show us the possibility of mirth behind the misfortunes of our own times

Vipin Krishna

What Jyotirmaya Sharma has done, with his translation of Jagadesvara Bhattacharya’s 14th century play, Hāsyārṇava-Prahasanaṁ, is to revivify the right to claim messiness as a legitimate political category. The play is rife with bawdy dialogues and indecorous characters who, with their satirical pronouncements, would make even the most permissive of readers blush. But akin to playing with an autostereogram, the reading of the text involves a game, and for those courageous enough to play beyond the ribaldry, the afterimage is indeed rewarding.

With a play such as Hāsyārṇava-Prahasanaṁ, if you blink, you miss this rather elusive background, and get caught up in its licentious humor. It is then good that Sharma accompanies you not only as a virtuoso translator of Sanskrit (and at times Prakrit), but also as a guide, so as to walk you through the thicket of scenes and characters. He does so by foregrounding the expositions and internal monologues, and letting the dialogues form a scaffold around these. The introduction he provides forms the conceptual load-bearing column for the whole structure of the play, which itself begins with the arrival of disorder.

This is the context of the play then whence the arrival of King Anayasindhu (King Ocean-of-Disorder) is announced. He is accompanied by his minister, Kumativarma (Protector-of-Folly), both of whom make their way to Bhandura the procuress’ brothel. Set against this backdrop, the rest of the play sees various characters enter and exit, and ends with two sets of marriages: one with Bhandura (Inclined-Vulva), and the other with Mrigankalekha (Streak-of-the-young-Moon’s-crescent) – her daughter – both of whom marry two men each. King Ocean-of-Disorder is largely absent from the second act, and yet, the allegorical import of his character leads us to think that this is not only the name of the King, but also, a metonymic device that designates an age, or an epoch. If the play begins with the King’s arrival, then Bhattacharya is trying to tell us that an age of disorder has been ushered in.

But if disorder has arrived, what sort of order of values existed before? And what does this new disorder signify? In order to understand what this means in terms of a change in values, we need to look closer. The signpost of clarity takes us to page 52, where a character called Wild-Cock tells us, “In Kaliyuga, the life-span of humans is expectedly short. On top of it, the wicked make other people fast and undertake various bodily mortifications, destroying the body as a result. Those blessed with wisdom realise the futility of bodily mortifications and relish a faith and a form of worship that includes savouring a life of licentiousness…”

We then come to understand that the play is speaking against the backdrop in which a revolution in ethics is occurring. As perhaps Sharma analyses so deftly in his introduction – the play converses with an age in which Vaishnavism had entered the geographical (Tantric) palimpsest, and it is perhaps glimpses of this conversation that not only allows us to contextualise the narrative better, but one that also inserts itself at the heart of the play.

But is the play so firmly ensconced in a time and place, and a context so specific, that its understanding lies beyond our grasp? Perhaps not, but to understand better, we must examine how Sharma renders the curtain call. He tells us at the very beginning that there is no denouement, no promise of a return to some golden age (where we might have encountered order and renunciation as ideals). In fact, when reading the ending of the play, you might even be left with a furrowed eyebrow.

And yet, if not a resolution, the play perhaps ends with two inevitabilities – that of life as embodied reality, and secondly, the very real problem of tragedy. If a prodigal age is a response that follows a mythical golden age of order – the tendency of a reactionary view of history is to revert to origins and golden age ideals.

Hāsyārṇava-Prahasanaṁ, on the other hand, rather lets things be as they are — with their vileness, their disorder, their play of appetites, and their suffering. Two characters capture this sense of an unending. Madanandhamisra (Blind-With-Passion’s) utters the following words, “Even if one fasts despite great suffering for fear of social censure from foolish people, and even if one endures the inner pain caused by the apprehension of impending death at night, a human still needs to eat first thing in the morning in order to live.”

If in one move the play reaffirms the body, in the second it reaffirms tragedy as heard in Mrigankalekha’s (Streak-of-the-Moon’s) voice, “I sat in extremely desolate places and worshipped the Goddess Pārvatī; every day, with my heart filled with utter devotion I had prayed to Kāmadeva, the God of Love. The prayers and devotion to all the gods like Pārvatī and Kāmadeva is bearing fruits today — my marriage to these two old Brahmins is as frighteningly painful as a death sentence, one that will push me closer to death.”

And by leaving us with these two things, what Sharma has done is to leave us with a text that reclaims life itself, with all its messiness and its real appetite, and yet, the inevitability of tragedy befalling us.

It takes a certain courage to read the allegory within the play and allow it to speak to our age; it takes another kind of courage to show us the possibility of mirth behind the misfortunes of our own times. As with the analogy of layers mentioned in the beginning, it is important to not only see this deeper truth of the text, but to also go back to seeing, once again, its more laughter-riddle surface. With this faithful translation, and excellent analysis, Sharma has done nothing short of giving us another language with which to speak politics.