Readings from Ramayana

 

Of late, I've been attending a weekly talk on Ramayana. By the time I joined couple of weeks back, the speaker has started to beautifully tread into Kishkinda Kanda (that part of Ramayana where Rama and Lakshman meet the vanaras in their kingdom, Kishkinda). I'll try posting weekly thoughts as we go along!    

 

December 12, 2020

The faceoff of Hanuman with Rama and his anuja is interesting in its own way. I at least remember two ways that Hanuman's form was revealed to Rama. First, he presented himself as a vanara but his erudition and class in asking the question puzzles Rama:

 

ना ऋग्वेद विनीतस्य

ना यजुर्वेद धरिनह

ना सामवेद विदुशह

शक्य मेवं विभषितुं

 

His mastery over the Vedas and grammar can only make one talk like this. So it was more that Rama reimagined the Kapivira as a scholar and so became worthy of a listen. 

Secondly, though he presents himself as a scholarly person, Hanuman’s erudition is acknowledged by Rama only after he talks with them about who he is and how he is connected with Sugriva. There’s a beautiful observation in this regard:

 

अविस्तारम् असंदिग्धं

अवल्म्बितं अव्यधं

 

Neither did he waste words nor did he doubt what he speaks. That is a mark of a scholar and only then does Rama acknowledge Anjaneya’s erudition. This is evident in one of Tyagaraja’s popular composition (set in shankarabharanam): Sita Kalyana Vaibhogame. The musician flips the relationship between the bhakta (Hanuman) and bhokta (Rama) by defining Rama in the kriti as “pavanaja stuthi patra”. It is not that the Pavanaja (Hanuman) sings dearly of his Rama but that Rama becomes eligible (patra) of Anjaneya’s praise. And this is because of Hanuman's infallible devotion and fallible erudition.   

Words and their use are interesting in their very purpose. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a brilliant philosopher-linguist, warned: “whereof you cannot speak, thereof you should remain silent”. Language can do a lot of violence -- better to use it as less as we can. Our very own Brtrahari’s Sphota theory masks this concept of how meaning emerges from an utterance very well – the “bursting forth” of the meaning is what makes language immediately useful yet invariably destructive simultaneously.     

In fact, there’s an interesting course that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad teaches its folks about “need-to-know” talk. Very important for them as a spy should spill only as much as they should or in most cases, nothing. In this course, many texts are supposedly studied including the Gita where the idea is that Arjuna’s questions are answered on a need-to-know basis.