That is a question that arose in my mind when I saw a tweet
some days ago. The tweet was a screen shot of a translation of a popular
Tallapaka Annamacharya Kirtana “Manujudai Putti” posted by a fellow tweeple.
Since it is a song that I had heard from my childhood, from the album of
M.S.Subbulakshmi I thought, am I missing the line “andamaina Sri
Venkatadrisu sevinci”. I had the book with me for long, but had done only a
cursory browsing as I have been using the translations only as a reference. Whenever
I heard a song, had a doubt over the lines that I can’t understand I refer to
translations. I do that with two books I have, one a Tamil translation of
Tyagaraja’s and another for Swati Tirunal compositions. I hardly ever referred
to the Annamayya translation volume ‘God on the Hill: Temple Poems from
Tirupati’ by Velcheru Narayan Rao and David Shulman. One reason perhaps is that
the book had only a handful of the popular songs.
To get back to those lines in Manujudai Putti:-
andarilo putti andarilo ceri
andari
rupamulatu tanai |
andamaina
sri veṅkatadrisu sevinci
andarani
pada mandenatugana
Translation
God is born in all of us.
Grows in all of us.
Is all of us.
If a man chooses him,
he goes where no one else can go.
To a devotee “Sri Venkatadrisu sevinci” become a
crucial line in this composition. I understand in literature a leeway called
poetic liberty can be exercised to exclude a line or an expression. However, in
translation can one exercise such poetic liberty, or one is expected to be true
to the original? Translations are a difficult exercise and we cannot expect it
to reflect an expression that is found in the original Telugu. Fair enough. I
leave it to readers to compare “Sri Venkatadrisu sevinci” in the
original to the Rao & Shulman translation of “If a man chooses him”.
The Pallavi or the first two lines of another popular song:
nAnATi batuku nATakamu
kAnaka kannati kaivalyamu
Translation
Life day after day is a game.
To find what you cannot see
is truth.
Agree that we cannot have literal translations since the language is archaic
and what exactly they mean is difficult to deduce in modern times, so “natakamu”
can be “game” instead of drama. Though for us it is easier to think of “All the
world is a stage” from Shakespeare. Then, the word “kaivalyam” become “truth”.
Does “kanaka kannati” become the one that is seen yet not seen or to
find what you cannot see? In spirit the translation “to find what you cannot
see is truth” goes against the Sri Vaishnava belief in the archa or the
God in the vigraha form. This can give rise to a confusion as to whether Annamayya
has to see Venkatesa to attain salvation or that he has to see a truth that is
beyond Venkatesa or that cannot be found in Venkatesa. Would it be better to
have “kaivalyam” rendered as salvation, liberation rather than “truth”? What is
that truth? Universal truth? Eternal truth? Is the truth that is hinted here mean
the same for all?
The final caranam or the paragraph:
tekadu pApamu tIradu puNyamu
naki naki kAlamu nATakamu
yeguvane Sri vEnkaTEShvaru Telika
gakhanamu mItiti kaivalyamu
Translation
Badness
never ends,
and there
is never enough good.
In the
end, time is a game.
High on
the mountain, god is king.
Higher
than heaven
is truth.
Seriously?
Papa and punya are as simple as bad and good. I understand the
authors have clearly stated in the introduction that they wanted to keep the
translation very simple, use a language that is simple. But, bad and good for papa
and punya? Again, I leave it to the readers who know Telugu to tell me tekadu
and tiradu indicate “end” and “never enough”. The last two lines are
even better. What have the translators achieved in omitting Sri Venkatesa and
making the “gaganamu” into heaven? How does the translation even do
justice to Annamayya’s understanding of swarga, moksham and who is the
one who can grant him that and where he lies - Vaikuntam. Many parallels have been
cited between Nammalvar’s verses and Annamayya’s. I couldn’t help thinking of “vandaai
pole vaaraadaai” in the Tiruvenkatam pasurams when I heard “kanaka
kannati kaivalyamu”. The translation of Thiruvenkatam to hill and
Thiruvenkatavan or Sri Venkatesa to God on the hill is in line with the title
of the book ‘God on the Hill’. Removing Thiruvenkatam from the verses is a
great injustice to Annamayya and the importance he and Alvars had given to “The
Hill”, not just a hill. Like how Nammalvar describes Thiruvenkatam in detail so
does Annamayya who in one of the songs said the hills have been built with the
stones made up of the Vedas (Vedamule silalai velasinadi komda), the Seshadri
Hills that is the abode of Sri’s Lord Venkatesvara. Nammalvar is clear it is
these Hills that would give liberation, and the way is to surrender to the one
who resides in Thiruvenkatam.
One more
popular song:
Entha maathramuna evvaru
thalachina Antha maathrame neevu
Antharaantharamu lenchi chooda Endanthe ippati annatlu ||
……..
Sri Venkatapathi neevaithe Mamu
chekoni yunna daivamu
Nee valenay nee sharananedanu Idiye para tatvamu naaku ||
A song etched in
our memory from M.S. Subbulakshmi’s Annamacharya volumes. One whose basic
meaning is easy to comprehend for anyone, though a few words need explanation
and guidance to get through certain nuances. But, it is a song that can be
easily misunderstood. From what I can understand the translation neither
recreates the lyrical beauty nor conveys its meaning properly. I would even
leave aside a line whose translation is obviously meant for a foreign or a
western world - “Those who carry skulls see a skull in your hand” for “Alari
pogadudhuru kaapaalikulu aadi bhairavudanuchoo”. Though they haven’t used
the term Adi Bhairava in their translation they have provided footnotes
to explain Bhariva and Kapalikas. I wonder why the same thing
couldn’t have been done for Sri Venkatesa? No one can read any serious poetry
without annotated texts. All of us who have read poetry in original as we as in
translation that. Be it a Chaucer, Shakespeare or even a twentieth century poet
like T.S.Eliot, it is impossible to read their poetry without annotated texts.
Replacing Sri Venkatapathi in the end to a god on the hill betrays Annamayya’s
expression of prapatti to a deity who is capable of granting moksham,
as believed by him and his gurus. In the first line they have used
“imagine” – “you are just about as much as one imagines you to be”. They are
masters of language studies and I am sure they would have weighed between
“imagine” and “perceive”.
The last couple of
lines in translation:
You are the god on
the hill,
The one who’s taken
hold of me.
For me, you are
real,
As real as I Imagine (that is the refrain of
the first line)
Earlier “kaivalyam”
was translated as truth and here the “paratattvam” is translated as
real. Simple and straightforward, right. However, by eliminating the Sri
Venkatesa and getting into a deeper meaning of “paratattva” the song is totally
lost on depth of Annamayya’s faith, relationship with Venkatesa and the surrender
as mentioned earlier.
If my reading is
correct, I think they have retained “Venkatesa” which was not only the name of
Annamayya’s ishta devata, but also his mudra or signature in only
one song. It is in the song “verrulala miku veduka galitenu” that they
have this line in translation: “Tallapaka Annamacharya sang for Venkatesa”.
That is the penultimate song in this collection. Apparently, it is very rare
that Annamayya uses his own name in the compositions, and this is one.
The last song in
the volume is a nice dedication Annamacharya offers Venkatesa “dAcuko
nIpAdAlaku daganE jEsinapUja livi”. It is a moving song and grateful the authors
chose such an apt song to end the collection.
vokkasaNkIrtane
cAlu voddikai mammu rakShiNcaga
takkinavi
BANDArAna dAci vuNDanI
vekkasamagunI
namamu vela sulaBamu Pala madhikamu
dikkai nannEliti
vika navi tIraninA dhanam ayyA
I was really
appalled to see that “vela sulabamu palam adhikamu” translated as “Your
name that is endless is CHEAP (emphasis is mine) to buy but worth a lot”. Such
learned scholars think that Annamayya was thinking of how cheap it is to buy
the bhagavan nama? The name even if in thousands are easier to chant, is
how as a devotee I would think, but can’t get down to thinking of sulabham as
cheap. They have chosen such a moving song as the last, but marred it with just
one wrong word. There may be lot of “ninda stuti” that many of the vaggeyakaras
and kavyakartas might resort to, obviously they are lost in
translation. Saulabhya as an inherent quality of the paramatma,
is a very essential philosophical underpinning of Sri Vaishnavism, and if sulabha
can be translated as cheap, I wouldn’t know what to say.
Dropping Sri
Venkatesa throughout, using “cheap” for the name, and finally a long afterword
where the authors seem to be really pushing the theory of what they call
“Venkatesvarization” of the god on the hill. Before I go further on this issue
let me clarify. That this is not unusual, translating the God’s name literally,
the name that has been used as a mudra, a signature in the corpus of Bhakti
poetry. The pioneer among them A.K.Ramanujan has translated Basavanna’s Kudalasangamadeva
into “Lord of the Meeting Rivers” and Akka Mahadevi’s Chenna Mallikarjuna
into “my lord white as jasmine”. Though Rao and Shulman have retained “Muvva
Gopala” as it is while translating Kshetrayya’s padams.
“Annamayya, that
is, like the god Venkateshvara himself, has been “venkatesvarized”, his image
rendered normative, beneficent, and supremely pacific in line with the pious,
elevated (sattvika) values of medieval Tamil Srivaishnavism,” Rao and Shulman I
should say rather lament how Annamayya has been formalized and “canonized” by
his heirs later on.
They go into
details about the family history of Annamayya, the lineage of Nandavarika
Brahmins. It is all fine to introduce the author and present the context so that
a 500-year old composer is better understood. But, the way it is told, feels as
if the history of a tantric female god worshipping community produced a person
who in one generation converted into Sri Vaishnavism. They talk about “Venkatesvarization”
as “reimagining of the deity in his full-fledged Venkatesvara persona as the
“god on the hill” or the “lord of the seven hills”. They also speculate if the sringara
poems which is supposed to be almost 12,000 out of the 14,000 plus songs so far
discovered and published. to be an influence of the Devi or a Feminine God
worship. This is where I feel the need for a right understanding and
representation of the “enta matramuna” song.
“There is a
stubborn local tradition that Venkatesvara himself was originally a goddess,
converted simultaneously to Srivaishnavism and to maleness by the philosopher
Ramanuja; the particularly graceful left hand of the Venkatesvara stone image
is said to be a remnant of this primordial feminine identity”. Here they
provide a footnote number 66 which is N. Ramesan’s, ‘The Tirumala Temple’
published by Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam. The books is available for free
download and anyone can read it online or download. If they are quoting a book in
this specific context would you expect it to support their cause in
establishing a “stubborn local tradition” or the one that denies it? In the
Srivaishnava tradition the dispute resolution of the nature of the deity by Sri
Ramanuja was mainly on the attributes of Vishnu and the appearance of Shanka
and Chakra that settled it. Where is this mischievous attribution of Swami
Ramanuja’s attempt to convert a female god into a male god? Was he not aware of
what all Alvar’s had sung before him? Did he not know Nammalvar’s
“Alarmelmangai urai marba”, the God on whose chest Lakshmi as Alarmelmanai
resides?
Their mischief
doesn’t end there. Ramanuja’s entry and the reforms is portrayed as the “slow
process of transformation, in which the early, rather severe male-dominated
Vaikhanasa vision of the God was driven to expand and incorporate a sensual and
personal Pancaratra theology, in which the goddess, Sri or Lakshmi plays a
central role”. They do not even think or pay heed to “alarmaelmangai urai
marba” and rue the fact that Sri has no room in Tirumala and she has to
reside at Mangapuram. Actually they trace from the early in the first millennium
when it got “agamized” by the Vaikanasa and slowly moving towards Vaishnavism
as transformation from worship of the “male dominated” boar god, a female god
to Venkatesa. Then came the Pancaratra that gave the lady God a place but
placed her temple at Mangapuram.
Finally, the intrigue
about that footnote 66 in page 117. Ramesan’s book quotes all the points
forwarded to support that deity could have been Shakti but rules that they are
untenable. He lists out the reasons one by one refuting the points forwarded to
contest that the vigraha of Venkatesa was a female representation. So
why would you quote that book to support your case to call it a “stubborn
belief”. Misquoting or just do not have the space or inclination to add that
those claims have been refuted?
One should really
read all those words they use to describe the transformation of Tirumala, and
certain sense of unacceptance and uneasiness emerges. The emergence of the
temple as a rich one, “a gradual monetarization and development of a cash
economy” as they put it, “when Talapakka Annamacharya arrived in the early fifteenth century he found the temple moving
toward an economic boom”, and “thriving
cash culture built into the very myth of Venkatesvara, was partly achieved
through the work of Annamayya himself”.
Finally, they pass
a verdict: “In a very real sense, Annamayya’s poems created Venkatesvara, the
god on the hill, as we know him today. Annamayya was Venkatesvara’s court poet,
and the god rewarded him and his family lavishly in the royal manner”. Who can
deny that Annamayya is the best brand ambassador one can have, but I am
uncomfortable about the way the whole idea of money constantly referred to and
discussed – it is like, how rich he must have been to get 32,000 songs
inscribed on copper plates! Is it a celebration or discomfort that his family,
son and grandsons became well off, endowed large sums to renovate the Srinivasa
Mangapuram temple, install a vigraha of Annamayya and so on.
As we approach the
temple, as we wait in the endless queue to have His darshan this song will waft
in the air and energize us. The quintessence perhaps of Annamayya’s
understanding, vision and what he has left for us devotees to understand and
cherish.
adivO alladivO
shree harivaasamu
padivElu sEshula paDagalamayamu
ade vEnkaTaacala
makhilOnnatamu
adivO brahmaadula kapuroopamu
adivO nitya nivaasa makhila munulaku
adhE cooDuDu adE mrugguDu aanandamayamu
cengaTa
nalladivO sEshaacalamu
ninginunna dEvatala nijavaasamu
mungiTa nalladivO moolanunna dhanamu
bhangaaru sikharaala bahu brahmmamayamu
kaivalyapadamu
vEnkaTanaga madivO
shree vEnkaTapatiki sirulainati
bhaavimpa sakala sampadaroopa madivO
paavanamula kella baavanamayamu
A translation of
that melodious, deeply divine representation of Thirvenkatam, from a TTD
publication ‘Spiritual Heritage of Annamacharya, Vol II’:
Behold! Yonder is the abode of Hari
It is the embodiment of thousand hooded Adisesha;
That is the lofty holy Venkata hill;
That is the hill which is dear and precious sight to even
Brahma and other devas;
That is the permanent residence of innumerable sages and saints;
Behold that holy hill,
Bow down to that hill of bliss;
Closeby is Seshadri;
It is the choice resort of devas from heaven;
Behold the priceless sacred Treasre of that hill (i.e. Lord Himself)
Behold the dazzling golden peaks;
Behold that embodiment of several Vedas
Behold the Venkatagiri, the seat of Kaivalya (salvation)
That is the hill which is Lord Srivenkatesvara’s wealth;
That is the quintessence of all conceivable wealth and
treasure;
That hill is the holiest of the holies.
Before I end, here
is another quote from the afterword: “This hagiographic re-imagination or
canonization of Annamayya, which does considerable violence to the unique
historical context which really shaped him, has by now thoroughly established
itself in Tirupati, as in south India generally”. I really wish the authors had thought about
this causing “violence” in the context of what they have done to Annamayya in
this translation. Actually, I happened to hear Rao in one of the literary
festivals (available on You Tube) where he says translations are against our
tradition. One needs to learn a language to read in it, and we all have to be
multilingual and graciously accepts that in translating he has violated the
tradition. However, he adds that since the world is “English” centric it is
necessary to translate and translators should follow a protocol. If this is the
kind of protocol they follow, imagine the plight of a generation of Indians who
grow up with no understanding of their mother tongue and end up reading the
works of Alvars, Nayanmars, Saints in translations like this. Do a google
search you wouldn’t get to a translation of Annamacharya sankirtanas published
by TTD but will only get this Rao and Shulman volume. They address western
audience, but they are going to be read more by Indians perhaps than
westerners. Annamacharya was a writer, composer and in trying to understand his
songs, what we need are an aid not a translation that robs it of its melody,
rhythm as well as the meaning. One can dismiss as to what a 100-songs could do
to a corpus of 14,000 plus songs. Most of the world view is going to be moulded
by volumes like these. Bhakti is lost in such translations.
Notes: The Telugu version of the songs quoted have been taken from various websites and blogs:
Karnatik.com, Shivkumar.org and references from blogs including
http://kruthivaibhavam.blogspot.com/2015/08/dachuko-nee-padalaku.html
Photographs from TTD website
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