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Written by Patrick Misson

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Published: 20 October 2008

Created: 20 October 2008

Last Updated: 27 September 2015

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

NEW SECTION 

VERSES 42-49: THE COMPLEMENTARITY OF BOWS AND CRESCENTS
AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF HYPOSTASY - BRACKETING
VERSES 42-51: THE FACE AS DIAL OR INDICATOR

VERSE 42 

KEY VERSE  

THE OPPOSITE OF VERSE 48
VERTICALIZED ORBS
THE FUSING OF 12 SUNS AND ITS DUPLICATIONS 

RUBY = TWILIGHT

गतै-र्माणिक्यत्वं गगनमणिभिः सान्द्रघटितं
किरीटं ते हैमं हिमगिरिसुते कीतयति यः ॥
स नीडेयच्छाया-च्छुरण-शकलं चन्द्र-शकलं
धनुः शौनासीरं किमिति न निबध्नाति धिषणाम्

gatair manikyatvam gagana manibhis sandra ghatitam
kiritam te haimamhimagirisute kirtayati yah
sa nideyachaya churana sabalam candra sakalam
dhanus saunasiram kimiti na nibhadrati dhisanam

These sky-orbs (twelve), attained to rubyhood and pressed close together;
He who can praise thus your golden crown, o daughter of the snowy peak,
Would he not have then in his mind the impression of the bow of Indra,
When, by reflected glory, a slender crescent is produced by gems embedded therein.

Verse 42 can be read in such a way as to presuppose the Chakra form of visualizing the absolute beauty value of the Goddess in the same way as hitherto, through the end of Verse 41. In Verses 39, 40 and 41, the transition from inner to outer space has already been completed. The lower negative limit of the vertical axis has been touched when the split-second-world is created once again by the joint dance of the goddess and the god there. It is not an actual terra firma that has been created, but one of an ontologically philosophical order. There is a difference between a clod of earth and a mentally revised version of the same; nor is the clod of earth a mere concept either. The schematic status of a neutrally monistic world, neither material or mental, was what the union on equal terms of the functions of Shiva and Parvati conferred in a combined dance of bliss: their joint parenthood on an orphaned universe. Now the Muladhara Chakra stands “over there” as it were, lifted hypostatically into outer space, rather than located in the inner space of the negative and collective unconscious of humanity, which is now awakened to its parenthood, having been hitherto steeped in empty orphanhood. Such are some of the implications to be carried over to the present verse before giving it a treatment which continues to respect the same norms and methodological requirements in the positive series of descending pictures that are going to follow in the remaining verses, beginning at the topmost level of the vertical axis. The three circles surrounding the Sri Chakra could still be retained, representing three limits of the upsurging billow of beauty. It cuts both ways, but here these circles are set in a background of borrowed light called cidabhasa, while in the previous context they glowed with a schematic splendour or “clear obscurity” still visible to the penetrating intuitive vision of the yogi or contemplative. A peacock's feather seen against the magenta background of a dark cloud would perhaps suggest such a dark-splendid vision of beauty. The magenta thus participates with the blue sapphire of Indra's world on the one hand, and the ruby on the other with all its brilliant fluorescent luminosity. Such would be the nearest analogy, as indicated by Sankara in the first line of this verse. A lotus shines or looms by virtue of its petals. A crystal radiates colour through its cross-polarized light, emitted as it were, through a grating, while a supernova sends its beams far and wide. Here the term mayukha, (ray of light) would be acceptable to Sankara, while monomarks, lettered or unlettered, could apply to a crystal, and the lotus could speak the language of the Sri Chakra, using symbols but relying on signs, whether colourful or not. The whole setup would be not unlike a chess-board on which the pieces live and move as in a game. The “rubyhood” of this verse has therefore to be understood as belonging to a context of brilliance and not of shade or mere tint.

A high degree of saturation, however, need not be ruled out because twelve sky orbs seem to have been pressed together and fused into one large brilliant magenta-coloured ruby here. We can readily guess that the twelve orbs refer to the twilight suns, two for each day, of the twelve months of the year. Imagine such suns at twenty-four sunsets and sunrises, typical of each of the twelve months, blending into twilight redness in the sky to produce this particular shade of magenta. One could even add the more fluorescent inner brilliance of moonsets and moonrises. One should locate such a precious stone inwardly at the very focal point of one´s meditation, where beauty is recognized to reside inside or outside in abstract and general terms.

This requires some philosophical or contemplative effort, but one could consciously or subconsciously cultivate such an attitude and construct it in absolute space, in spite of what might actually be experienced through the senses directly in the more overt or quantitative version of the same space. It is thus that the reader could correctly orient himself vis-à-vis the beauty to be appreciated in the remaining verses. It is a process of descending dialectics that will now unravel itself step by step before the contemplative, as induced by the poetic suggestions of Sankara, who will present a series of positive Chakras instead of the negative ones hitherto presented. The reader has to be carefully prepared to appreciate them as they are intended to be, and not as he might wrongly presume under premises unwarranted by a Science of the Absolute. If he should make such a mistake, it would be his own fault, and not that of anyone else. A further caution is that the onlooker will not see these visions when he is lying in an easy chair in a state of passivity, as has hitherto been acceptable. He is now asked to put some constructions on something that is lazily presented to his view at the lower level of sense impressions. The photographer must now adjust his camera and not just take sudden snapshots without adjusting for glare. As in a time exposure, the message has to sink in to reveal the superimposition of pictures. The datum of the senses is passive, while the higher intelligence constructs its own version of value, by “doing violence”, as Bergson put it, to the given picture so as to see it related to structural lines which, like ghostly holographic outline pictures of a different kind of wavelength or vibration, will add a stereoscopic structural dimension to the light, as if superimposed on the original datum more passively given to the eyes. First of all, we should notice that the creative imagination of a poet is brought into play here. The poet who is capable of such an imagination will see in the golden crown of the Goddess another crescent, besides the one that that is already placed there, because the Goddess is the dialectical counterpart of Shiva, as in Verse 23. It is normal for the absolute Goddess to retain, at least schematically a point of participation with the highest and thinnest of vertical points where Shiva, in a purely mathematical context, is placed.

The thin crescent represents a numerator limit where such participation between two absolute values, one belonging to Devi, the other belonging to Shiva, could meet and abolish themselves mutually into one and the same crescent. There is reference to a second crescent here, said to be that of Indra, who is a demiurge of a lower hypostatic order. The bow of Indra is sometimes spoken of as identical with a rainbow. A rainbow in its jewelled glory belongs more to an ontological than to a teleological order. Wordsworth said that a rainbow in the sky could make his heart leap up within him, in his childhood as well as in his old age. We have in him, therefore, just the poet under reference in this verse, to whom the glory of a rainbow succeeds in producing the echo of an upsurge of Absolute Beauty within. Half at least of such an experience must be personal or perceptual to him, while the other half could have a conceptual or mathematical status only. The creative minds of great poets are the common meeting ground of these two grades of crescents.

A hypostatic and a hierophantic crescent would thus become legitimately both possible and probable here. In Verse 46 also, there will be two more crescents which are juxtaposed like two brackets at a slightly lower level than the ruby tip of the crown of this verse. The crescent of the Indra context and the mathematically thin crescent already there, marking the limit of the function of Shivahood, belong to two distinct epistemological orders. The former is phenomenal and the latter is noumenal. If we should think in terms of these two divisions of Kantian philosophy, the two crescents given here could be placed inverted like two brackets enclosing the central value of the big ruby, resulting from the fusion of the twelve twilight orbs of each month. Though not explicitly stated in this verse, when read together with Verse 46, this bracketing could, in principle at least, be thought permissible in anticipation. This is not, however, necessary to insist upon, because it is within a poet´s imagination that we are asked to see the second Indra-bow. Furthermore, it is the product of something like diffraction and not of reflection or even of many refractions. One has to be a great poet to put it there. Then alone would such a second crescent correctly cancel out against the thinnest of mathematical crescents that is supposed already to belong to Shiva, without being based on any crown of the Goddess. Sankara here only intends to cancel the most delicate of ontological beauty-aspects with the most logically thin aspects of intelligible values. The cancellation between them is intended to produce in the mind of the reader that overwhelming upsurge of Absolute Beauty called Saundarya Lahari.

The beauty of a gem is colourful in its appeal. The beauty enclosed within the two crescents of Verse 46 is meant to encircle the ambrosial content of a mature moon, which essentially appeals to the sense of taste rather than to mere sight. Such gradations between hierophantic and hypostatic values should not be left unnoticed by the reader who wishes to master the more finalized lessons of the schematism contained in this composition. The “reflected glory” of this verse could even be changed into a “diffracted glory”. The Sanskrit text would bear such a revision, as the word nide suggests “home ground” and “chayac churana shabalam” means “to become brilliant with the variegated effect of bright shining light”. A kind of iridescent brightness is implied here.

The second and the third lines underline that all this is to be attributed to the fertile mind of the poet. Here this imaginary beauty belongs only to the golden crown of the Goddess and not to the person of the Goddess herself, to which we are coming more directly in Verse 46. We are still in the domain of a kind of mathematical mysticism here.

The fusion of the twelve luminaries of the twelve months is also an operation that only a mathematician-mystic could easily accomplish, when extrapolated and imagined as applicable to any number of years, past or future. We can arrive at a thin vertical parameter, without which the correlation of the various implied Chakras of many of these verses would become difficult. It is like the thread of Ariadne meant to guide Theseus back through the labyrinth of the Minotaur so that he would not be lost in that horizontal maze.

(Cidabhasa - variously described by Nataraja Guru as: reflected glory, the indirect conceptual light of reality, the atma which is its own mirror reflection, reflected reasoning. ED).

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

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From Verse 42 on, the methodology changes to descending dialectics.
In the same way, the periodic table descends from hydrogen to the heavy metals.

.

.

You can find God in the sky, in the luminaries on the positive side and also in the mother's milk on the negative side.

 

 

Carbon 6 is found in the middle - it is capable of joining with others to form the horizontal dimension; all living beings need carbon 6.

In the first of this series, 12 suns are fused into the ruby of the Devi's crown: this indicates the vertical dimension implied in twilight.
(12 suns can include 12 moons as well.)

 

 

.

 

These twelve diamonds - to the ordinary man - represent twelve distinct suns.
But the poet sees one reflected glory - a river of diamonds.

Sankara says: "surely the poet will make the mistake of seeing a bow in these diamonds - because that is nearer to the truth than just seeing diamonds".

There are twelve suns as a numerator fact: "Is it not just and fair that the poet sees one diamond's light permeating another? I am sure that he will see Indra's bow in these diamonds."

Sankara is saying that, schematically, all his poetic flights correspond to the Absolute.
A river of diamonds is not the same as another river.

Here, at the Omega Point which is the Devi's crown, all individual things tend to merge.
You cannot be a poet without being a philosopher and vice-versa.

 

 

 

 

AXIOMATIC THINKING IS AT THE CROWN OF THE DEVI.
EXPERIMENTAL THINKING IS IN THE LEGS OF THE DEVI.

In every Chakra the value factor is always the same.
(Woodroffe wrote his Tantra Shastra at second hand, as interpreted to him by some Bengali Pundits. ED)

The Malayali pundit says that up to Verse 41 it is Ananda Lahari, after that it is Saundarya Lahari.

The first 41 verses are conceived as Chakras and these were unknown in the North of India.

Thus this area of the Chakras of esoteric Devi-worship has been geographically isolated.

When Sankara left his village near Alwaye, in Kerala, he went north toward Goa.
He had to go along the neglected Kerala coast - the home of esoterically-minded Devi-oriented people.

 

The pundits will say that this was not the "real" Sankara in the first 41 verses because they do not like the Tantra there.

The only difference between the first 41 verses and the last 59 is in style.
The first 41 verses are concerned with Chakras and are Dravidian,
Then in the latter part he goes on to a more descriptive language.
Pundits want to say that the first part was written by a Dravidian, the last by an Aryan. But it is not true.

Sankara must have traveled all along the Kerala coast and been familiar with the Tantra practiced there.

The first 41 verses are esoteric, from Kerala - the rest speak the language of the Himalayas.

-

Another version:

 

TRANSLATION
- Gone to rubyhood.
- By virtue of the sky-suns (12 suns) of each month.
- The crown closely knit. (With gems)
- Your golden. (Gold is a numerator value - known to all people)
- O daughter of the Himalayas (there is reference to the Himalayas because he is turning to the hypostatic, positive, side)
- He who (intends to) praise.
- He (the poet).
- In the crown, what shade.
- Mixed radiance.
- Making a crescent.
- The bow.
- Of Indra.
- Is this not.
- Fixed.
- In his mind.

 

The important part is now to come.

 

Sankara is justifying a poet's doubting that they are just twelve suns - he is sure to see in them Indra's bow.

The poet's job is to conceptualize - and for the Indian poet, all brilliance and hypostatic beauty is Indra, the King of the Gods.

Sankara is saying, "I am also an Indian poet, and I am sure to do it. Don't you understand that any poet will do it".

This is an explanation of the first 41 verses.
It is natural for a poet to schematize.

THE POEM IS CHANGING NOW FROM WHAT YOU SEE INSIDE TO WHAT YOU SEE OUTSIDE;
IT IS GOING FROM PSYCHEDELIC INNER SPACE TO A NORMAL DESCRIPTION OF THE DEVI.

 

If you want to place Sankara culturally, put him in the exact centre of the Kerala coast, but he also has a place in the Aryan North Indian context.
Here, he is making a transition from one style to another.

Kerala, in the South, is one cultural region - it is fond of Mantras, Tantras and Esoterics.
Sankara first writes in the style of Kerala - about hierophantic inner space on the negative side, and then goes to the more conceptual, hypostatic and positive Aryan context.

 

To understand Verses 42 and 43, first descend from the ruby to the parting in the hair, that is the vertical axis - the main central road. Think of it as a river with the reflection of magenta sunlight: the high road to heaven.

It goes hypostatically upwards on the numerator side to infinity.

 

Jainas and Buddhists come very close to the Absolute, but you cannot worship "nothing".

(This is a reference to the fact that Buddhists say that the Absolute or Ultimate Reality is Nirvana - which could be translated as "nothingness". By contrast, Shankara's Advaita says that the Ultimate Reality or Absolute is the Devi described in the Saundarya Lahari. ED)

They have not arranged a scale of values and given a content to Absolute Beauty or reality.

A whole series of Chakras is needed, without a gap between the Alpha and the Omega Points.

In the Saundarya Lahari, Sankara gives them a map, showing all the intermediate stations: even if you are capable of going directly to the highest Satori (enlightenment), you had better know the intermediate steps.

In the verses following this one, Sankara says that there are two smells in Parvati's hair - the natural fragrance of the hair and the smell of the flowers that are put there.
The series ends with the Devi's jingling anklets teaching the cygnets how to walk.

Note: the Mukambika temple in Kollur, just north of Kerala, is the headquarters of erotic mysticism in India.

 

 

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Written by Patrick Misson

Parent Category: Content

Published: 20 October 2008

Created: 20 October 2008

Last Updated: 27 September 2015

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 43

ONTOLOGICAL RICHNESS AND TELEOLOGICAL INDIGENCE
INDIGENCE = LACK OF FRAGRANCE

धुनोतु ध्वान्तं न-स्तुलित-दलितेन्दीवर-वनं
घनस्निग्ध-श्लक्ष्णं चिकुर निकुरुम्बं तव शिवे ।
यदीयं सौरभ्यं सहज-मुपलब्धुं सुमनसो
वसन्त्यस्मिन् मन्ये बलमथन वाटी-विटपिनाम्

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

Indigence or darkness is the same as lack of fragrance.

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When the two scents come together, our sin is banished.

 

Narayana Guru has a similar reference where he writes that a garland of three kinds of precious materials (silver, quartz and pearls) should be worn by Subrahmanya.

This is the essence of idol-worship, when the cancellation takes place, sin is abolished: c.f. Kalidasa who, in his poem, will cancel all evil in the body with sandal paste. (This reference is not clear, ED).

So the attempt is to achieve erotic cancellation of sin and concupiscence on your own Denominator side with such a Numerator.
A woman has a perfume rising from the legs (?) to the hair, like a flower.

We live in the gooey stuff; try to cancel it out with this: even if it is not true, it is healthy to believe it.

 

GOD IS WHAT IS RIGHT WHEN YOU ARE WRONG.

 

 

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Written by Patrick Misson

Parent Category: Content

Published: 20 October 2008

Created: 20 October 2008

Last Updated: 27 September 2015

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 44

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

.

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Here, "Saundarya Lahari " is directly referred to, in the first line, translated as "The upsurging billow of the beauty of Your face".

This is a point of punctuation.

The preceding Tantric approach has been terminated.

It says that the parting of the hair (a "semanteme", or indivisible unit of meaning), which would generally be white, is decorated with magenta powder.

Sankara is referring to more than convention when he says, "Let this line save us".
It can save us because it is a vertical parameter, while the horizontal is negative.
The Devi's face is thus a bright parameter - it is a correlation.

As for the pundits, they will say: "there is nothing to be emotional about, it is all a joke and it is all Maya".

Ignorance is like darkness - the Devi parts it - then she paints the parting in Her dark hair in magenta to add vitality and beauty to an otherwise mathematical parameter.

So let us be saved by this parameter.
We do not need Zeus or God; this line, which is the vertical axis, will save us.)
A parameter is solely mathematical in nature and the whole universe can be related to it.

"The world is a machine for creating Gods" - Bergson.

-

Another version:

 

TRANSLATION
- Let it confer happiness on us.
- Like the streak of the overflow.
- Of the beauty of Your face.
- The ceremonially decorated streak of women.
- Bears the vermilion.
- The gangs of enemies of
- The darkness represented by the strong hair growth.
- Ever bound
- As if it is a streak of morning sunlight (pink dawn).

 

Beauty has broken through the face of the Devi - breaking through barriers like a streak of white light.

 

SOMETHING (MAGENTA) IS ADDED TO THE WHITE COLOUR OF HER PARTING IN ORDER TO NORMALIZE IT FROM THE "JEHOVAH" PRINCIPLE INTO SOMETHING KIND.

A group of factors of darkness have tried to overbind even that (white) parameter - they are ganging up against the Absolute Beauty and Wisdom of this magenta-coloured parameter.
This neutral magenta streak is there to save you from ignorance.
It gives you knowledge of the Absolute and knowledge is the saving factor.

 

 

Let the streak of light bless us - why?
Because it is Numerator light.

 

 

Thus, the parameter is given a logical status, without a horizontal dimension.
The parameter is not a road or path, which simply lies there.
There is water overflowing from below, sunlight overflowing from above.
Then there is the magenta colour.

 

The magenta colour is Eros' colour.

EVEN HERE THE DEVI CRIES FOR ALL BABIES

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Written by Patrick Misson

Parent Category: Content

Published: 20 October 2008

Created: 20 October 2008

Last Updated: 27 September 2015

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SAUNDARYA LAHARI

VERSE 45

CENTRAL AND PERIPHERAL AMBIVALENCE

COMPLEMENTARY COUNTERPARTS

BEES AROUND A LOTUS FACE

अरालै स्वाभाव्या-दलिकलभ-सश्रीभि रलकैः
परीतं ते वक्त्रं परिहसति पङ्केरुहरुचिम् ।
दरस्मेरे यस्मिन् दशनरुचि किञ्जल्क-रुचिरे
सुगन्धौ माद्यन्ति स्मरदहन चक्षु-र्मधुलिहः

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.

The "filament" refers to the inner part of a flower's stem.

(This filament is the Mrinala Tantu or central filament of the lotus stem which is described as being taken by swans to the "mind-lake" (Manasarovar) in the Himalayas. See Verse 38. The vertical axis has just been described as the parting in the Devi's hair; perhaps it could be seen as this filament, if we keep in mind that this view of the Devi's face is a conic section. This may be going too far. ED)