SAUNDARYA LAHARI
VERSE 98
THE FINAL SURRENDER OF THE VIDYARTHI OR WISDOM-SEEKER
कदा काले मातः कथय कलितालक्तकरसं
पिबेयं विद्यार्थी तव चरण-निर्णेजनजलम् ।
प्रकृत्या मूकानामपि च कविता0कारणतया
कदा धत्ते वाणीमुखकमल-ताम्बूल-रसताम्
kada kale matah kathaya kalitalaktaka rasam
pibeyam vidyarthi tava carana nirnejana jalam
prakrtya mukanam api ca kavitah karanataya
kada dhatte vani mukha kamala tambula rasatam
pibeyam vidyarthi tava carana nirnejana jalam
prakrtya mukanam api ca kavitah karanataya
kada dhatte vani mukha kamala tambula rasatam
When, O Mother, tell me, shall this thy supplicant drink
Of the ablution water of Your magenta sap-smeared feet?
As causing even one dumb born to be a poet,
When will he enjoy within the flavour of the betel juice in the lotus mouth of the Word-Goddess?
Of the ablution water of Your magenta sap-smeared feet?
As causing even one dumb born to be a poet,
When will he enjoy within the flavour of the betel juice in the lotus mouth of the Word-Goddess?
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The black box referred to in Verse 94 was meant to be a summing up of the factors that have been used in something that resembles a game of chess, where various grades of chessmen have been put in the game to play their respective parts. The blackness of the ebony box marked the dark or negative perspective in which we were allowed to have a peep at the absolute beauty of the Goddess. The celestial bodies belonging to the world of Brahma, as the Creator, were treated as if placed in a jeweled casket, with the dark side of the chessboard more relevant to the context than the bright side. Now the negative perspective has been left behind and we have further crossed over an intervening three verses in which the pieces in the game, representing divinities, are again reshuffled and rearranged, so as to reveal the overall togetherness or inter-relatedness between them. All psychic perfections have been placed outside the door of the temple of the Goddess in Verse 95.
The union of Shiva and Parvati has been made most self-sufficient in Verse 97. The remaining three verses of the work are meant to help the reader gather up loose threads from the anterior parts of this work as it has unraveled itself in all its grandeur of overwhelming Beauty.
We should note that this verse is a dialogue between the Goddess and a supplicant who primarily belongs to the context of word-wisdom that She represents. To be a poet, instead of being dumb, as everyone is at birth, is evidently the aspiration that motivates him. This is not essentially an aspiration of a religious order, where holiness and the sacred merits from obligatory works enter into the picture. The reference in the first person to such an aspirant, who is here addressing the Mother, cannot be to anyone other than Sankara himself. Right from the beginning, he has taken care to disengage himself from the merely religious context. He maintains this detached attitude right through to the very end, where he is seen to wash his hands finally of all involvement, even disclaiming any direct responsibility for composing these verses. As if by way of preparing the ground for such a culminating attitude of detachment or neutrality, he is seen in the present verse to think in terms of becoming a good poet only.
It is as the Goddess of the Word, not merely as understood conventionally when we speak of the Vedic Sarasvati, but with a whole series of inner beauty-factors added to her total stock in trade, as it were, that we have here to think of the Devi as referred to in the last line of this verse. Her function does not pertain only to the numerator side of the poet´s skill, which might merely consist of the clever manipulation of words and phrases. The poetic genius here covers the whole range of inner and outer endowments that could enrich the consciousness of a man, born dumb and without words at all, to his positive culmination as a poet, beyond the O Point at the centre of the situation, to the heights of the perfected Word located at the Omega Point. Poetic genius is an inner endowment or accomplishment, referring to the self and the non-self, when understood in terms of an inner reference linking both of them by a parameter that passes from the head to the feet of the two-sided personality of the Devi, which we have always to keep in mind.
We have further to notice that it is only under the sole of the feet that evidence of this lengthy parameter reference could be seen by the eye, because poetic genius cannot be discerned from the outside appearance of the poet. We have agreed with the author that the beauty of these feet could be placed as high as one wants in a scale of values or could be brought down to touch the limits of the black ebony box, in which items of essential or existential beauty are enclosed. At whatever level the beauty of the twin feet might be placed, the magenta paste is the link and the indicator of the absolute value of Beauty that traverses the whole positive or negative gamut of possible aesthetic values, on whose basis poetic genius must live, move and have its being.
When ablution further purifies the beauty of the magenta sap-smeared feet, the water would acquire some of the same colour. Why does the supplicant want to drink this impotable water containing paste or incidental dirt, as stated in the first line? Further, in the last line, he also intends to enjoy the flavour of the betel juice in the mouth of the Goddess. It is repugnant to think that he wishes to swallow the spit of the Goddess, as some commentaries suggest. Moreover, there is the difficulty of mixed metaphors in different verses. In Verse 84, it was water that was given importance; in Verse 75 it was the ocean of milk and in Verse 65, it was the betel juice in the mouth . Now all these figures of speech seem to have been gathered up and treated together. The aspirant, Sankara, as a philosopher of Advaita, is able to substitute himself for the absolute Goddess of Beauty, and become identical with her, by his complete affiliation to what she represents. Even the duality between subject and object can be cancelled out, as has been suggested in previous verses, such as Verse 30, where the doomsday fire itself performs the light-waving rite. The non-self and the self as counterparts, whether as two individuals or fused into one, are to be treated as mathematically interchangeable terms, as in the limbs of an equation or in the cancellation of Numerator against Denominator.
Although betel-chewing and its resultant magenta-coloured saliva are inside the Goddess; because of its containing bits of soft camphor, the essential flavour could spread upward as well as downward into regions of memory or imagination within the body of the Goddess. The act of swallowing a liquid, not excluding one's saliva, is an activity taking place, as it were, at the very core of our functional consciousness. The child sucks milk even in sleep, and a thirsty man can dream of drinking cool clear water even when the water is not there. Clear water can be coloured magenta to make it participate with the beauty element of the betel juice of the mouth. A magenta colour can be added to the beauty of a lotus plant, coming either from the earth or from the tender sunlight playing upon it. We have to keep all these possibilities in our mind, especially as they have been justified already at different stages of the development of this composition. Magenta is the element of beauty which could mix with water or milk to inspire the genius of a dumb or inarticulate poet as his career develops from birth to death. From such a wholesale and global perspective we can see the relevance of this concluding prayer, where Sankara inserts himself directly in the first person, before the next two verses, where he rounds up the whole subject by way of conclusion.
Sankara is a wisdom-seeker still, because wisdom has never-ending possibilities. One can never say that one has attained to a stage where one does not wish to learn anymore. The analogy in Verse 90 of the six-footed bee lost in a lotus flower seems to suggest that one is always involved in a process of absorption, at least until life itself is gone. Even then, the six legs cannot be absorbed into the honey of the lotus. They have to drop out of the flower. Even the wisest persons are involved in a process of absorption, and not in any finalized state. All are thus pilgrims in the path of the Absolute, some possibly superior to others, but none are to be considered statically superior, once and for all. Spirituality is an aspiration in the world of intentions, and is not to be treated as something to be accomplished in fact. This justifies the anticipation contained in the question “When shall I… ?” of the first and last lines of this verse. Magenta pervades and permeates through all the levels of the various Chakras, whether in the first or the second part of this work. The submissiveness and humility of Sankara here adds a touching dimension to the whole situation and defines the whole work as something which can ennoble any other intelligent man like him.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.
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WORD FOR WORD
Kada kale matah - when, o Mother
Kathaya - tell me
Kalita laktaka rasam - mixed with magenta sap
Pibeyam vidyarthi - shall he drink, this wisdom-seeker
Tava charana nirne jana jalam - the ablution water of Your foot
Prakrtya mukanam api cha - even for one dumb born also
Kavita karanataya - as the cause of becoming a poet
Kada dhatte - when will he enjoy
Vani mukha kamala tambula rasatam - the flavour of the betel juice in the lotus mouth of the Word-Goddess
Kada kale matah - when, o Mother
Kathaya - tell me
Kalita laktaka rasam - mixed with magenta sap
Pibeyam vidyarthi - shall he drink, this wisdom-seeker
Tava charana nirne jana jalam - the ablution water of Your foot
Prakrtya mukanam api cha - even for one dumb born also
Kavita karanataya - as the cause of becoming a poet
Kada dhatte - when will he enjoy
Vani mukha kamala tambula rasatam - the flavour of the betel juice in the lotus mouth of the Word-Goddess
In this verse a dumb man becomes a poet and ascends from the feet to the mouth of the Devi.
True wisdom is supplied from the negative side; he does not need another Numerator to his own positivity.
He accepts the Devi up to the central O Point, while the writing of poetry will take care of itself.
In poetry the feeling has to be there and then brought up to the point of utterance; from there on it is just a question of a pen scratching endlessly on paper.
He wants magenta, or Beauty, so he is not just a philosopher.
"Magenta is real, and I want to have contact with that".
"Magenta is real, and I want to have contact with that".
The magenta streak of betel-nut juice from the mouth to the foot represents the final ontological dedication of the wisdom-disciple.
(Note that chewed betel nut produces a red or magenta juice and that the soles of the feet of a woman are trditionally coloured magenta. A vertical magenta streak is to be imagined as uniting these two. ED)
Insert yourself inside the Devi, you will find restful meditation.
Show Sankara ascending up through the Goddess.
To a vidyarthi (wisdom-seeker), everything is denied, except the seeking of wisdom.
The magenta streak from mouth to foot represents the final ontological dedication of the wisdom-disciple.
