The story which is the source of ‘The Repayment’ is one of a group which tries to explain incidents in the life of the Buddha by means of references to his past incarnations. This particular story purports to explain why the Buddha left his wife Yashodhara. In the following extract from Mitra, taken from the 1971 reprint published by Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar, Calcutta, the spellings of names have been slightly edited to avoid the use of diacritical marks:
‘There was in times of yore a horse-dealer at Takshashila, named Vajrasena; on his way to the fair at Varanasi, his horses were stolen, and he was severely wounded. As he slept in a deserted house in the suburbs of Varanasi, he was caught by policemen as a thief. He was ordered to the place of execution. But his manly beauty attracted the attention of Shyama, the first public woman in Varanasi. She grew enamoured of the man, and requested one of her handmaids to rescue the criminal at any hazard. By offering large sums of money, she succeeded in inducing the executioners to set Vajrasena free, and execute the orders of the king on another, a banker’s son, who was an admirer of Shyama. The latter, not knowing his fate, approached the place of execution with victuals for the criminal, and was severed in two by the executioners.
‘The woman was devotedly attached to Vajrasena. But her inhuman conduct to the banker’s son made a deep impression on his mind. He could not reconcile himself to the idea of being in love with the perpetrator of such a crime. On an occasion when they both set on a pluvial excursion, Vajrasena plied her with wine, and when she was almost senseless, smothered and drowned her. When he thought she was quite dead, he dragged her to the steps of the ghat and fled, leaving her in that helpless condition. Her mother, who was at hand, came to her rescue, and by great assiduity resuscitated her. Shyama’s first measure, after recovery, was to find out a Bhikshuni of Takshashila, and to send through her a message to Vajrasena, inviting him to her loving embrace. Buddha was that Vajrasena, and Shyama, Yashodhara.’
The essential part of this gruesome tale reads quite like a plausible, realistic story, such as we might read in the newspapers even today, emerging from a criminal court case. The banker’s son is not persuaded to offer himself as a sacrifice to please the woman he loves, but is quite simply murdered. Bribery and assassination secure the release of the condemned man. Tagore lifted the story out of its crude, sordid ambit, gave it a psychological twist, and turned it into a romantic-tragic narrative poem of considerable power and beauty. That Tagore was intrigued by the story is shown by the fact that he returned to it in his old age, making a musical play and then a dance-drama out of it in the last years of his life. In the dance-drama, Shyama (1939), the story reaches its height of psychological sophistication. Uttiya is not even persuaded to sacrifice himself: he offers to do so completely of his own accord. It is his idea. Shyama does accept his sacrifice, but also makes an unsuccessful last-minute attempt to save him. The inclusion of a few details ensures that even the Police Chief seems quite respectable. Bajrasen is arrested on reasonable grounds – because he refuses to open his case. And he refuses to do so because it contains a jewelled necklace brought by him from Subarna-dwip (‘the golden island’ of antiquity, usually identified with Sumatra), which he does not wish to surrender. When Uttiya pleads guilty to the charge of theft from the royal treasury, he shows the Police Chief a ring that Shyama had just given him as an ambivalent last gift, a royal ring which Shyama had herself had as a present from the king. This is accepted as evidence of his guilt. In these little subtle ways and with the help of powerful and moving songs, Tagore lifts the whole story onto a dizzy height of operatic tragedy (Tagore’s dance-dramas incorporate both operatic and balletic elements) where a love-infatuated teenager’s entirely spontaneous and voluntary act of self-sacrifice becomes the linchpin of action, miles removed from the original Buddhist story where the unsuspecting victim is persuaded to take food to the condemned man and is cut down by the executioners. Shyama is recognised by critics to be one of the highest of Tagore’s artistic achievements, taking into consideration the many genres in which he worked, and ‘The Repayment’, also regarded as one of the most remarkable poems of the early years, is, as it were, its first incarnation.
See the notes on the lotus and the goddess Lakshmi in the Glossary and also the information on the symbolism of the lotus in the note on ‘True Meditation’ above to appreciate the ironies implicit in the third stanza.
The ‘trident-peak’ of the temple in the last stanza indicates that it is a Shiva temple, the trident being one of his weapons.
128-29. The Realisation of Value (Katha): Mitra’s The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepal (see above) is also the source of this poem. In this case it is one of a group of stories illustrating miracles performed by the Buddha. In the following quotation from the 1971 edition, diacritical marks have been omitted and the punctuation has been emended in a few places:
‘Before the advent of Buddha, Raja Prasenajit used to worship the Tirthikas, but after the appearance of that great preacher, he bowed to none but the great Lord. When the Lord was dwelling in the Jeta grove, a gardener of Sravasti brought a big lotus flower as a present for the king.
‘A worshipper of the Tirthikas asked its price. At this time Anathapindada came and doubled its value. They bade against each other with emulous pride till the price rose to a hundredfold. Thereupon the gardener enquired about the whereabouts of Buddha, and hearing of his great power from Anathapindada, presented the flower to the Lord. Instantly the lotus swelled out to the size of a carriage wheel and stood over Buddha’s head. The gardener, astonished at this, asked instruction in supreme knowledge. The Lord said to Ananda, ‘‘This man is to become a great Buddha, Padmodbhava by name.”’
129-35. Dialogue between Karna and Kunti (Kahini, Tales): Translated from the text in the Rabindra-rachanabali, vol. 5, the older Visvabharati edition, this is a dramatic poem based on an episode in the Mahabharata. During the middle period of his life, Tagore was much preoccupied with claiming and reworking old stories from the Mahabharata or from Buddhist lore, offering reinterpretations which would resonate in his own times and act as bridges between tradition and modernity. He had been specially requested by his friend, the scientist Jagadishchandra Bose, to write a poem based on Karna’s story. Tagore takes details from two contiguous sections of the ‘Udyogaparva’ of the Mahabharata, a dialogue between Krishna and Karna, and a dialogue between Karna and Kunti, to make a new composite story of an encounter between a fostered son and a long-lost natural mother, set against the backdrop of the preparations for the great war between the rival collateral houses of the Pandavas and the Kauravas. Kunti is the mother of the five Pandavas – the natural mother of the three elder brothers, Yudhisthira, Bhima, and Arjuna, and the stepmother of the two younger ones. Karna is Kunti’s eldest child, born before her marriage, whom she had carefully packed and consigned to the mercy of a river, just as Moses had been consigned in the Jewish story. Karna was found and reared by foster-parents of the charioteer caste, eventually becoming a warrior, a man noted for his generosity, and an ally of the Kauravas, led by Duryodhana. On the eve of the war of Kurukshetra there is an attempt to woo Karna over to the side of the Pandavas, first by Krishna, who is an ally of the Pandavas, then by Kunti. Karna refuses to change sides.
In the Mahabharata, Kunti meets her first-born son when he is finishing his late morning prayers by the Ganges. She waits in the scorching sun till he finishes his prayers at noon. Tagore transfers the meeting to the glow of twilight deepening into a starlit night. The softer setting is more appropriate for Tagore’s purpose of highlighting the human emotions. Also in the epic, Karna does not really learn about his birth for the first time from Kunti. Krishna has already told him the details before Kunti has had a chance to do so, and in any case, Karna seems to know the essential facts already, what Krishna says being merely a confirmation. Tagore, interested in making a different kind of audience impact, makes Karna hear about who his natural mother is from her own mouth, thus making the
encounter much more meaningfully dramatic. At the same time, Tagore’s Kunti, more of a Victorian aristocratic matron, is too embarrassed to reveal the actual details of how she had conceived Karna out of wedlock, whereas in the Mahabharata, both Krishna and Kunti relate them to Karna in a matter-of-fact manner in keeping with the mores of the old epics. In the Mahabharata, Karna is much sterner with his mother, more outspoken, acerbic, and unambiguous in his condemnation of her actions, past and present, more sharply Hindu in his understanding of right action and caste ethics. He actually offers Kunti the consolation that he will not kill all her sons: he will either kill Arjuna or be killed by him, so that she will still remain the mother of five sons! He is, of course, eventually killed by Arjuna. Tagore’s treatment is more psychological: Karna is humanised to suit the tastes of Tagore’s own times. Tagore’s Karna berates his mother indirectly, rhetorically, through questions, with a mixture of sentiment and irony. He wavers, is flooded with nostalgia and filial affection, then retreats to a noble resolve.
Jahnavi and Bhagirathi are names for the Ganges. Kripa is a martial instructor. In the transliterations of proper names within the poem I have given slight tilts towards the way they would be pronounced in Bengali. Thus I have written Adhirath, not Adhiratha; Bhim, not Bhima; Arjun, not Arjuna; Durjodhan and Judhisthir instead of Duryodhana and Yudhisthira; Pandab and Kaurab instead of Pandava and Kaurava. These details are in consonance with my practice in the rest of this book.
135-36. A Stressful Time (Kalpana, Imagination): In its MS. draft this poem had a different title, meaning ‘On the Road to Heaven’, the present title appearing when the poem was first published a year later in the magazine Bharati (Pal, vol. 4, p. 137). Interestingly, this new title, ‘Duhsamay’ (A Bad Time/ A Stressful Time) is also the title of a poem of Chitra, written just three years ago on 17 April 1894, which is likely to have some connection with the tenth anniversary of Kadambari Devi’s death (Pal, vol. 4, p. 1). These facts may help us to understand the striking images of this poem. The bird, originally imagined as on its way to heaven, is now imagined as pursuing a strenuous flight over an ocean. The poet feels a strong identification with its plight. The difficult time is as much the bird’s as the sympathising poet’s. Does the bird embody both Kadambari’s agony and the poet’s grief? It would be hard to explain the intensity of the poem unless we assume some such anchorage for it in private grief. Compare this poem also with ‘Death-dream’ of Manasi, written on 28 April 1888, where the poet, dreaming that he is riding on the back of a swan, experiences the dissolution of the entire cosmos within himself. The similarity is striking. The fact that all these poems were written in the month of April, the month of Kadambari’s death, seems to be a clue to the similarity of moods in them.
136-39. Dream (Kalpana): The background to this poem is Tagore’s fascination with the period of the Sanskrit poet and dramatist Kalidasa (circa the 5th century A.D.: he is supposed to have lived some time between the middle of the 4th century and the end of the 5th). Kalidasa is thought to have pursued his literary career under the patronage of the Gupta emperors as one of the ‘nine jewels’ at the flourishing court of Ujjain. Elsewhere too Tagore has said that he wished he could have belonged to that time and that milieu. In this poetical fantasy, the details of the scenario are essentially derived from Kalidasa, especially the poem Meghaduta, a favourite of Tagore’s, where an exile in the highlands of central India sends a message to his wife in Alaka in the far north by means of a wandering raincloud. The cloud is asked to make a slight detour to pass over Ujjain. Though the imagined woman of Tagore’s poem lives in Ujjain on the Shipra, she is also partly drawn in the model of the exile’s wife in the Sanskrit poem, who lives in the city of Alaka. Accordingly there is an amalgam of details culled from the two sections of the Sanskrit poem, the Purva-megha and the Uttaramegha. Ujjain, Shipra, lodhra-pollen, dalliance-lotus, kunda-buds, kurubaks on the hair, evening service at the Shiva-temple, conchshell on the door, a young tree growing like a son by the door, pet doves or pigeons, pet peacock, incensed hair: all these minutiae are taken from the Meghaduta. But though the circumstantial details are Kalidasian, the human mood created is authentically Tagorean.
‘dalliance-lotus’ (stanza 2): a lotus held in the hand in dalliance, possibly used in flirtatious gestures like a hand-fan.
‘conch-shell and wheel’ (stanza 6): auspicious symbols, both associated with the god Vishnu. The Meghaduta mentions the conch-shell and the lotus (also associated with Vishnu). Some seem to think that those two symbols on the door in the Meghaduta may stand for the wealth of the householder, signifying a huge sum with many digits. Whatever the validity of that assumption, I am sure that in Tagore’s poem the conch-shell and wheel are simply auspicious marks on the door and not an indication of the material affluence of the dream-woman.
‘pet doves’ (stanza 7): The original word can mean either dove or pigeon, and doves and pigeons belong to the same family. This was an instance when I had to make a local decision to suit the sonic needs of the English poem. I wanted ‘doves’ so that I could have ‘dovecot’ in the next line and achieve some sort of assonance with ‘golden rod’ later.
‘incensed hair’ (stanza 8): hair perfumed by burning incense; ‘tracery of sandal’ (stanza 8): decorative patterns made with sandalwood paste to adorn and aromatise the skin.
For the flower-names and the other names in the poem see the Glossary.
In this translation I have taken more liberty than I usually take with regard to line-lengths and stanza-breaks vis-à-vis the original. A single line of the original is often broken into two lines in the English poem, and I have introduced extra stanza-breaks. I felt that a slightly different arrangement was necessary to make the English version effective both rhythmically and from the point of view of the pictures evoked.
139-40. What the Scriptures Say (Kshanika, She Who is Momentary): This poem is a rollicking rejection of the traditional concept of vanaprastha or retreat into the forest, the supposed third stage of life for the good Hindu. The four stages of life were more like an ideal to follow or a theoretical framework to live by than a mandatory code of conduct. They were: the stage of the celibate student, that of the married householder, that of the forest hermit, and lastly that of the wandering ascetic unattached to any earthly possessions or ties. In the third stage, supposed to start after the age of 50, a man was expected to hand over his family responsibilities to the next generation and retire with his wife into a forest hermitage, living a frugal and contemplative life in preparation for the final stage of total detachment. But, contends the poet, a sylvan retreat would surely be more appropriate in youth than in middle age! Note how the lack of privacy for young couples within the extended family strengthens his case.
142-43. Spiritual concerns predominate in the poems and songs of Naibedya (Offerings), which are said to have pleased Tagore’s father so much that he paid for the publication of the collection. Dedicated to Debendranath Tagore, the book was accordingly first published in a handsome edition on expensive paper.
144. The poems of Smaran (Remembering) remember Tagore’s wife, who died on 23 November 1902. In No. 14 he writes about the moving experience of discovering, among her things, some of his own letters which she had carefully preserved. Poem no. 5 was probably written in Calcutta in the fortnight after her death (Pal, vol. 5, p. 99).
145-47. The shadow of the dead Mrinalini also falls across many of the poems of Shishu (The Child). After the death of his wife, Tagore took his ailing second daughter Rani to the hills of Almora. Many of the poems in this collection were written there. The focus is often on the mother-child relationship, and the mood is usually a mingling of playfulness and pathos. It is as though Tagore is trying to tell his children that their mother has not really gone away. Seen in this context, a poem like ‘Hide-and-Seek’ becomes a comment on death, suggesting an oscillation between visibility and invisibility. The little boy proposes such a game of oscillation to tease his mother; could it
be that a mother can also play such a game with her children? One can also make a connection between ‘An Offer of Help’ and poem no. 14 of Smaran: an extra dimension is added to this poem of Shishu when one remembers how Mrinalini cherished her husband’s letters.
148. The two dates given after the title Utsarga (Dedications) need an explanation. All the poems of this book were first published in an edition of Tagore’s poems in nine volumes edited by Mohitchandra Sen (1903-4). Smaran and Shishu were first published in book-form in this edition. Utsarga was not published as a separate collection till 1914. In Tagore’s collected works Utsarga is always placed where it belongs chronologically, immediately after Smaran and Shishu, and I have followed that practice. (Rabindra-rachanabali, vol. 10, Granthaparichay section.)
149-50. The Auspicious Moment and The Renunciation (Kheya, The Ferry): MS. evidence indicates that these two poems were conceived of as one poem in two parts and were written on the same day (13 Srabon 1312). (MS. 110 (i) pp. 3-4, Rabindra Bhavana archives.)
150-54. The three poems from Gitanjali (Song-offerings) have been discussed in detail in the Preface to this edition. In poem no. 106 the phrase ‘awesome vina’ translates the word ‘rudravina’. While the word may refer to a version of the musical instrument – there is indeed a musical instrument of this name – I wonder how many Bengalis reading this poem would interpret it in that sense. I think most of them would understand rudra, the first component of this compound word, to refer to a name of Shiva associated with his fierce aspect, and thence to mean, adjectivally, ‘fierce, terrifying’. Thus the compound word can be interpreted as ‘Rudra’s vina’ or ‘fierce vina’, suggesting an awesome music accompanying Shiva’s dance of destruction, the destruction of the cosmos. I would also associate this word with the compound word ‘agnivina’ (fire-vina) which Tagore uses to open another of his songs, referring clearly to an imagined fiery music of the stars.