SAUNDARYA LAHARI
VERSE 50
JEALOUSY IS A CONTRADICTION BETWEEN HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL
कवीनां सन्दर्भ-स्तबक-मकरन्दैक-रसिकं
कटाक्ष-व्याक्षेप-भ्रमरकलभौ कर्णयुगलम् ।
अमुञ्च्न्तौ दृष्ट्वा तव नवरसास्वाद-तरलौ
असूया-संसर्गा-दलिकनयनं किञ्चिदरुणम्
kavinam sandarbha stabaka makarandaika rasikam
kataksa vyaksepa bhramara kalabhau karna yugalam
amuncantau drstva tava navarasasvada taralav-
asuya samsargad alika nayanam kincid arunam
kataksa vyaksepa bhramara kalabhau karna yugalam
amuncantau drstva tava navarasasvada taralav-
asuya samsargad alika nayanam kincid arunam
Seeing your young-bumblebee-like pair of eyes; which, while seeming to cast side-glances,
Do not give up the basis of your ears, mellowed by the play of the nine aesthetic interests,
Remaining like aptness with poets, wholly absorbed in drinking of the honey within a spray of blossoms
Your mid-forehead lotus bud eye, touched by jealousy, seems magenta tinged.
Do not give up the basis of your ears, mellowed by the play of the nine aesthetic interests,
Remaining like aptness with poets, wholly absorbed in drinking of the honey within a spray of blossoms
Your mid-forehead lotus bud eye, touched by jealousy, seems magenta tinged.
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In Verse 50, the abstraction and generalization applied to value factors of geography or physiography is carried over from the previous verses to an even more thin and elusive domain where poets are engaged in finding apt analogies when they play with the nine aesthetic interests which constitute the stock and trade of their art. A vibrating magnetic needle can be imagined as slanting 90 degrees to the right or 90 degrees to the left, according to the aptness of the analogies that the poet might employ in his art. In this way, the whole range of the nine interests could be imagined at every 10 degrees on either side, thus filling the whole 180 degrees above the horizontal straight line. When aptness succeeds, the pointer may be said to stabilize itself, with an equilibrium point ranging from left to right, covering all possible points between the limits of - 90 and + 90. In this verse, the eyes are compared to young bumblebees that are very impatient to enjoy the honey within a spray of blossoms. The blossoms could be at the positive end of the horizontal axis, or virtually enjoyable at the negative end, as when through apt analogies we appreciate good poetry. Both could be equally sweet to the young bumblebees as they actively flit between actual and virtual interests in the domain of poetic appreciation. We have also to carry over from Verse 48 a middle eye as a witness to the playful eroticism in which the other two ordinary eyes are likely to indulge. The ordinary eyes can express their interest normally by coquettish side-glances. The serious middle eye does not approve of such fickleness on the part of these younger ones. Such is the background on which the dynamism of the structure here is to be superimposed, playing on the living beauty of the face of the Goddess.
The reference to the base of the ears is justified by the fact that it is in this region that visual imagery transforms itself into auditory imagery of a more virtual order. There is a kind of figure-of-eight circulation taking place where alternating interests, virtual or actual, visual or auditory, change sides and play, as it were, a constant game of hide and seek. Aptness is the constant factor that always constitutes the interest involved. The highest sense of aptness, however, is ashamed of its own fickleness when viewed from a horizontal perspective.
The young bumblebees here, which refer to the two eyes, are said to be highly interested in looking slantingly, with the ear bases as a reference. Eroticism being natural to youth, enjoyment of the honey is all they care for, resulting in the fickle form of a vibrating needle which stabilizes itself only at a zero point or at 180 degree limits, where the ear bases transform visual into auditory impulses and vice-versa.
The central eye, carried over from Verse 48, is not golden in colour, as it was in that verse. By resentment of the shameful conduct of the fickle-minded young bees, a red colour invades the central lotus-bud eye. The aptness of the analogy of Sankara here makes this colour correspond to the jealousy which arises from the resentment natural to a more mature and dispassionate person whom we could call the Absolute Female, for which principle the Goddess here would stand. She is jealous only in proportion to the restless fickleness of the younger bees, which are excited and therefore incapable of any steady contemplation. Steady contemplation corresponds to the vertical parameter, but fickleness oscillates between the positive and negative horizontal limits. When jealousy is cancelled against fickleness, the resultant is the neutral Absolute represented by the Beauty of the face of the Goddess.
The expression “seeming to cast side-glances” would suggest that sometimes side-glances could be justified, but not all the time - as the young folk might claim or pretend. The ear-region is further qualified in the vertical axis as “mellowed”, or made more sensitive by constant interest in aesthetic enjoyment. This seems to suggest that mere dilettantism cannot produce the same enjoyment as the fully-matured taste of a person of artistic appreciation. The young bees refuse to leave the base of the ears because they are able to appreciate art in its full value or import, and not merely as persons with a passing interest in it. Side-glances are respectable and become interchangeable with this end of serious interest in art. Pretension of one for the other thus becomes possible and the element of pretence found in the text therefore becomes justified. The bees are not conferring grace on anyone with a really serious side-glance. They are only enjoying the erotic play.
The ear bases, which are the centre of aesthetic interest, could be centralized together and the fan-wise expansion of the various items of interest, radiating and overlapping both ways, could all be bundled up into one master interest, when a contemplative touch confers maturity upon the individual sentiments, and inclusively binds them together into an enjoyment which is a central interest that knows no duality.
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ADDITIONAL COMMENTS WITH STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS RELATED TO THIS VERSE FROM SAUNDARYA LAHARI/NOTES.
Jealousy is a contradiction between the vertical and the horizontal.
An alternative translation:
TRANSLATION
The (third) eye on thy forehead is somewhat red (as though) influenced by jealousy,
The (third) eye on thy forehead is somewhat red (as though) influenced by jealousy,
seeing that Thy two young-bee like obliquely glancing (eyes),
in their eagerness to swallow the verse rasas (poetic sentiments) do not leave off thy pair of ears,
which chiefly delight in the honey of the cluster of flowers of poetic composition.
The eyes of the Devi are straining to the ears, to see what the ears are enjoying - the nine Rasas (aesthetic interests or moods) of Sanskrit verse, the most important of which is the erotic.
The eyes are like bumblebees - doubly dark.
The eyes are like bumblebees - doubly dark.
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We have here a splendid chiaroscuro, like the shell of a bumblebee.
The eyes are tragic, full of life with tragic import.
When she hears what the poets sing of erotic mysticism, about her beauty, her eyes turn to the ears in enjoyment
- but her third eye becomes red in protest at the lewdness of the poetry.
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It is saying to the two eyes, stop being horizontal: "why don't you verticalize yourself? I am a Goddess".
This represents the same eye and power by which Kama Deva was burned by Shiva.
Pure love is to be extolled.
The story of Eros must be presented first.
(A brief summary of the relevant myth concerning Eros or Kamadeva is provided at the bottom of this page.ED)
This is like Schroedinger's picture of the Universe.
(This reference is not clear to us. Can it be a reference to Scroedinger's cat? Why? ED.)
(On second thoughts, it is possible that the Guru was referring to the many-worlds interpretation which is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wave-function and denies the actuality of wave-function collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" (or "universe").
In lay terms, the many-worlds hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite—number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes.
Many-worlds views reality as a many-branched tree, wherein every possible quantum outcome is realised
This is not directly related to Schroedinger's Cat, but is in some sense a corollary of it.
Maybe what the Guru means is that there is a vertical reality, as seen by the third eye, and a a horizontal one, moving from the auditory - belonging to the ears - and the visual, relating to the eyes.
To be frank, ED is puzzled.)
The quantum-mechanical "Schrödinger's cat" paradox according to the many-worlds interpretation is shown in the above illustration. In this interpretation, every event is a branch point; the cat is both alive and dead, even before the box is opened, but the "alive" and "dead" cats are in different branches of the universe, both of which are equally real, but which do not interact with each other.
In quantum mechanics, there is no such thing as "the location of the cat."
According to quantum mechanics, what we can observe about the world is only a tiny subset of what actually exists.
Our point is that the paradox between vertical and horizontal eroticism in this verse may be like two branches of the universe - in one the cat lives and horizontal eroticism flourishes - in the other we have a dead cat and vertical eroticism.
This is pretty far-fetched, but a lot of structuralism appears pretty far-fetched at first.
What else does the Guru mean by comparing this verse to Schroedinger's world- view?
Suggestions are welcome. ED)
Every verse can be reduced and reconstructed.
Go from the real to the schema.
From the schema to the real.
In this verse, we have vertical eroticism versus horizontal eroticism: there is a paradox involved here.
(A paradox between the eyes being attracted horizontally to the ears and the verticalization of the third eye. ED)
The middle eye has a pink colour.
At the extremities of her two eyes there are two bumblebees hiding.
At the extremities of her two eyes there are two bumblebees hiding.
The Devi does not approve of these horizontal tendencies to appreciate the erotic aspects of poetry.
She has a superior, an Absolute, taste in her consciousness;
She feels that she should verticalize these horizontal erotic tendencies.
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Another version:
TRANSLATION
- For poets
- That master taste enjoying in the total situation compared to a nectar-bearing bunch of blossoms.
- The extremes of the side-regards putting on the appearance of twin small bumblebees (they are horizontal - the bees of the eyes are whispering to the ears)
- Never leaving the ears (always whispering of eroticism).
- Agitated by the effects.
- The nine factors of taste.
- By having a touch of jealousy.
- The forehead eye.
- Has somewhat a magenta touch
- For poets
- That master taste enjoying in the total situation compared to a nectar-bearing bunch of blossoms.
- The extremes of the side-regards putting on the appearance of twin small bumblebees (they are horizontal - the bees of the eyes are whispering to the ears)
- Never leaving the ears (always whispering of eroticism).
- Agitated by the effects.
- The nine factors of taste.
- By having a touch of jealousy.
- The forehead eye.
- Has somewhat a magenta touch
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The Devi does not appreciate cheap eroticism.
The Guru decides that the two bees are extracting a horizontal factor from the poetry - but not necessarily the erotic factor - just any horizontal aspect.
Why pick on the erotic aspect?
The Guru decides that the two bees are extracting a horizontal factor from the poetry - but not necessarily the erotic factor - just any horizontal aspect.
Why pick on the erotic aspect?
In thinking of the Absolute (Metaphysics) and seeing the Absolute (Physics), the two are brought together.
When the notion is placed at the Alpha Point, you get a Goddess. Otherwise, we can hypostatize and get Jupiter or Zeus at the positive Omega Point.
This mathematical and structural language is used in science.
Time - there is pure time and mechanistic time. (The cockcrow time and the alarm clock time) as described by Bergson, who writes that for the individual, time may speed up or slow down, whereas, for science, it would remain the same - these two should agree.
Bergson says - do not mix these two times".
Unless you know this, do not study Brahma Vidya (The Science of the Absolute).
From Verse 41 there is a change in style.
The magenta third eye comes into play when eroticism obtrudes into the situation.
The eyes can be treated together, using the same face throughout: it requires a lot of polish on her face, like a varnished door.
(With double negation.)
(With double negation.)
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THE NEXT 10 VERSES ARE SECTION 6, DEALING WITH THE DEVI'S EYES
A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF EROS (KAMADEVA) IN INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
One of the principal myths regarding Kama is that of his burning by Shiva.
Indra and the gods are suffering at the hands of the demon Tarakasura, who cannot be defeated except by a son of Shiva - but Shiva is a celibate ascetic who has renounced marriage and fatherhood. Brahma advises Parvati to seduce Shiva so that she may bear a son to defeat the demon Taraka. Indra assigns Kamadeva to break Shiva's meditation. To create a congenial atmosphere, Kamadeva creates an untimely spring. He evades Shiva's guard, Nandin, by taking the form of the fragrant southern breeze, and enters Shiva's abode.
After he awakens Shiva with a flower arrow, Shiva, furious, opens his third eye, which incinerates Kamadeva instantaneously and he is turned into ash. However Shiva observes Parvati and asks her how he can help her. She enjoins him to resuscitate Kamadeva, and Shiva agrees to let him live, but in a disembodied form, hence Kamadeva is also called 'Ananga' (an- = without; anga = body, "bodiless"). The spirit of love embodied by Kama is now disseminated across the cosmos: it affects Shiva whose union with Parvati is consummated. Their son Subrahmanya or Kartikeya goes on to defeat the demon, Taraka.