Kalidasa In Kolar

A friend recently got me to read the text of a lovely Telugu song, which will soon take an enchanting tune and will be part of an album of folk music from Kolar district in Karnataka. Kolar with an arid climate and a dusty existence is at a small distance, east of Bangalore — the district headquarters is about 68 km. It is a linguistic cusp where people speak Telugu and Kannada predominantly and Tamil co-exists as the district borders both Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu.

This particular song I read deserves a closer examination because it has echoes and traces of a familiar epic story that centuries ago became the subject of the Sanksrit play Sakuntala, by Kalidasa. The central emotion of the song is the anxiety of a young lady who has lost her signet ring and fears her family's retribution. At the beginning, it appeared to me that the song had been culturally transposed or adapted, but then I began to wonder if it is not a independent expression of the local culture. After all, there is nothing alien to the local conditions in the elements that constitute the song. Why should it have diffused? Why couldn't it have been invented independently?

Those who want to argue in favour of a diffusion of the theme may say that since the story of Sakuntala is essentially from the Adi Parva ('Book of the Beginnings') of the Mahabharata, this must be a inspirational rendering, but then the story as narrated in the Mahabharata does not make any reference to the signet ring or the curse. There is no loss or recovery of the ring and there is no restoration of memory. In fact, what is found in the epic version is Dushyanta's deceitful suppression of his memory. He clearly recalls his affair with Sakuntala, but chooses not to admit to it. The ring and the curse, which impart Dushyanta a benign grace and the benefit of doubt, were additions to the tale made by Kalidasa to heighten his play's dramatic effect. There is a suggestion that Kalidasa picked these two dramatic elements from other folk sources. As Romila Thapar writes in her book Sakuntala - Texts Readings and Histories (Anthem Press, 2002): "In writing this play Kalidasa selected a theme from the epic, but the sub-themes may well have come from folk literature. A flavour of this is found in some of the Jatakas which were popular tales each with a moral conforming to Buddhist ethics." This reference to other folk sources gives me confidence to place this song in the genre of Sakuntala stories, where the ring is the protagonist. 

So, essentially, the song under discussion, with the signet ring theme, may have come from similar or dissimilar folk sources that were available to Kalidasa or over the centuries, the influential play may itself have morphed into this beautiful song. If we reject this proposition, then what is plausible is that local social circumstances may have created it. A ring is after all a common element in the cosmos of our cultures. I think it is a bit foolhardy and futile to try to reconstruct the source of this song, but then it is a very tempting exercise to indulge in as it connects varied ends of imagination and bridges geographical distances. It is perhaps best to approach the song as holding a mirror to the local social histories. As Romila Thapar says: "Each new treatment provides an aspect which either illuminates the text or is a reflection of the historical moment when its particular perspective came into being."

Before we take a closer look at the song, let me give some additional information as to how and where my friend, K Y Narayanaswamy, a poet and Kannada lecturer in a government college, picked this gem up. It may be of some use to researchers. He hails from Kuppur village in Masti Hobli of Malur taluk in Kolar district. He heard it first in Kuppur and that's the physical location of the song as we know it. He apparently learnt this song as a boy from one Beerappa, an unlettered kolaatada haadugara (a folk singer who sang when people played a dance-game with arm-length sticks, like the Gujarati Dandiya. Here kolata would refer to the dance-game and hadugara would mean singer). This Beerappa belonged to the Beda (hunter) community or Valmiki community as they are known in Karnataka and he had learnt the song from his grandfather. 

Now the song. Here's a crude approximation of the original:

***

Oh dear friend, my dear young husband this is not good [good omen?]
My golden ring has slipped into the well
The ring will dissolve even if it were in water for a moment 
The dark fish in the tank is in a stupor.

The ring with four colours reached the Nagaloka
The ring with five colours reached the Asthaloka
The ring with three colours floated a while and drowned
The ring with seven colours became part of the stream
It became a part of Ganga.

Why should I tie the oxen to the cart? Why should I journey in the sun?
How do I go to the fair? Why should I go to the fair?

It has been only six months since I entered my in-laws house
What do I tell if my mother-in-law asks me about the ring?
What do I tell if my father-in-law asks me about the ring?

What do I tell my mother-in-law?
What do I tell my father-in-law?

***

Apparently, the song is incomplete. This is all my friend recalls. As is evident, the lady who has lost her ring is a newly-wed. She fears her parents-in-law and not so much her husband. Interestingly, the husband is addressed as a friend. She is also certain that it is very difficult to find a replacement for the ring. This is ambiguous but the talk of going to the fair tells us a bit about this dilemma. The social circumstance, the family structure and its hierarchy is very clear. It appears that the lady would lose her identity without the ring. 

With all the familiar and obvious elements, there is a magical play of colours and numbers and a reference to the mythical worlds. Folklorists should be able to tell us the metaphorical value of these. There is a seamless transition or journey from the real to the mythical and back to the real in the song. It comes a full cycle. Even as the lady speaks about her dilemma the ring has begun its swift journey into the nether worlds. Let me admit I find it a little difficult to connect the mention of dark fish and the Ganga to the larger narrative flow. One can only be sure they are not small embellishments.

What is most fascinating to me is the visual imagery of the ring's dissolution. The song tries to capture the optical illusion caused by the ring's contact with water with spectral specificity and grandeur. There must have been enough sunlight around. Kolar is never short of it anyway. Perhaps it is a ring with precious stones and perhaps a little swirl is also imagined. First as it turns in water she sees four colours, then five, then cut to three and finally seven different colours. Seven is a suggestion of finality. The end of all efforts to recover. Or in an extreme case, death. In Kannada there is a proverbial usage: Yelu Manege Bandide, literally meaning 'coming to the seventh house.' Indicating that the situation is quite dire. In the song there is a suggestion that the process of dissolution can't be stopped or controlled. An element of fate creeps in. The aspect that links this song and Kalidasa's Sakuntala is obviously the ring and its loss, but what also ties up the two is a certain destiny catching up as a consequence of losing the ring.

The lady here, like in Kalidasa's Sakuntala is not a free and independent-minded person. The two portrayals are unlike the Sakuntala in the Mahabharata. Comparing the epic Sakuntala and Kalidasa's heroine, Romila Thapar says: "The forthright, free-speaking Sakuntala of the epic, making her bargain with Duhsanta undergoes a radical change in the play; here she is an innocent child of the asrama, grappling with the emotions of love, bewildered by the instincts of sexual desire with which she was hitherto unacquainted: a natural woman of the forest who knows no deceit... In the transition from the epic story to the play there is a decline in the empowerment of women."

Picking on an earlier point made in the essay about each treatment of the story reflecting a particular historical and social moment, I'd like to end by referring to the popular Kannada film Kaviratna Kalidasa made in the 80s with Rajkumar and Jayaprada in the lead roles. In this film Kalidasa is an unlettered shepherd who transforms overnight into the great poet as a result of goddess Kali's blessings. Interestingly, this film coincided with the political ascendancy of the numerically third-largest Kuruba (shepherd) community in Karnataka. They were acquiring an identity of their own. A 17th century Tibetan legend about Kalidasa was being adapted here at an important bend in the state's political history. Whether this was conscious or subconscious one can't say. In the Tibetan legend the poet is a 'handsome cowherd,' while in the film he was a handsome shepherd. One may not be able to apply instantly a social and historical framework to the song we have discussed, but insights may follow as more people get acquainted with it.