[An essay by Mr. Bhattu Venkat Rao titled ‘Portrayal of grief in King Hāla Sātavāhana’s GĀTHĀSAPTASHATI’.]
Gāthāsaptashati, as its name indicates, is a collection of seven hundred gāthās, the daily life instances poetized during the period of the reign of Hāla Sātavāhana, one of the kings of the Satavahana dynasty that ruled the entire region of South India and some parts of regions north India, for about 400 years ie., from 225 BC to 225 AD. Though his reign was only for a short period of 6 years, i.e., from 19 to 24 AD, Hāla Sātavāhana was very popular among the kings of Satavahana dynasty and remembered even today because of his literary mind and philanthropic attitude. He was in fact the hero of the Prākrit work named Lilavathi. Himself being a poet, he authored many gāthās in Prakrit language and collected thousands more. It is believed that a poet named Sripalithudu had selected 700 of the most romantic of the whole lot of thousands of gāthās collected by the king Hāla Sātavāhana and created Gāthāsaptashati.
Gāthāsaptashati has become world renown due to the one important reason that it had succeeded in recording the real-life instances, day-to-day occurrences and the life style of the people of the regions now known as Andhra, Telangana, and Maharashtra, during the reign of the Sātavāhanas. We find many of the habits, customs and the festivities which are observed even today have in fact come down from the days of the Gāthāsaptashati. It so appears that Hāla Sātavāhana, being an individual possessing an agile mind and a romantic heart, had recorded the most humane of the instances of the life and sentiments of the common people of his time. Not only the joys, festivities, and erotic occurrences but also the uncontrollable grief caused by the inescapable separation of the loved one has been excellently portrayed and poetized by the poets of Gāthāsaptashati.
The eventuality of the men leaving the village they live for earning the livelihood for his family has been a harsh reality since the days of Gāthāsaptashati. The male member of the family on whom the responsibility of earning the required money rested, would leave to places new and at times unknown to the members of his family, who were left alone in the village and were required to take care of themselves in his absence. After a while, men come back to their own village bringing with them the earnings. However, until he returned home, his woman bore the brunt of his absence, feeling all alone in the house of her in-laws. The suffering is imaginable since the separation, in most of the cases, occurred during the days of their prime youth. The following three gāthās portrayed the unbearable pain and the silent suffering of the woman, caused by the forced separation of her from her beloved husband:
తవ విరహోజ్జాగరకః స్వప్నేఽపి నదదాతి దర్శనసుఖాని|
బాష్పేణ యదాలోకనవినోదనం తస్యా హతం తదపి||
(5th hundred – 87th gātha)
Not a glimpse of you even in a dream does take place.
Alas! even when you really appear before her all at once
Reminiscing in your absence makes her remain long awake,
The tears that fill her eyes make a blur of your presence!
ప్రియ సంస్మరణ ప్రలుఠద్బాష్ప ధారానిపాత భీతయా|
దీయతే వక్త్రుగ్రీవయా దీపకః పథికజాయయా||
(3rd hundred -22nd gātha)
As memories of her beloved man brought tears to her eyes,
While lighting up the evening lamp in the front of the house
The woman of the house turned her face away to sideways
Fearing the lamp may not catch flame, drenched in falling tears.
గృహమివ విత్తరహితం నిర్ఝరకుహరమివ సలిలశూన్యమ్|
గోధనరహితం గోష్ఠమివ తస్యా వదనం తవ వియోగే||
(7th hundred – 9th gātha)
As a house without the trace of great wealth looked
As the dried-out stream in its parched markings looked
As a cowshed without the abundance of cows looked
Oh dear, the face of your loved one looked, in your absence!
Unable to bear the pain of separation, men and women resorted to doing things morally unacceptable, whenever they found themselves in occasions favorable to do so. The pain that grips the heart when another person happens to witness such a situation had become a subject for poetry and the pathos was amply brought into this gātha by a fellow-villager of Gāthātaptashati days.
దుష్టశునకో విపన్నః శ్వశ్రూర్మత్తా పతిరప్యన్యస్థః|
కార్పాస్యపి భగ్నా మహిషకేణ కస్తస్య కథయతు||
(6th hundred, 49th gātha)
Mad street dog is ransacking the house; the mother-in-law
Is unbothered and in constant drowse; her husband is away
And afar; the wild buffalo is feasting on the sumptuously
Grown cotton field; Alas, who will make this known to him?
Apart from the above, there were also the instances of separation of young lovers belonging to the same village due to the mishandling of love by one of them. These playful misunderstandings between the young lovers were made to remain forever in the gāthas by the poets of that period. The pain portrayed in the following gātha was an instance wherein a village girl lost the love of her lover because of her unmindful and reckless behavior. By the time the realization came, it was too late, the lover moved away and all that remained for her was repenting for the mistakes already done. An accomplice of the village girl noticed the lamentation and stepped in with some soothing words, one way consoling her and on the other way suggesting to her not to commit the same mistake again. The scene was dramatically poetized as under:
సఖి ఈదృశ్యేవ గతిర్మా రోదీస్తిర్యగ్వలిత ముఖచన్ద్రమ్|
ఏతేషాం బాలకర్కటీ తంతుకుటిలానాం ప్రేమ్ణామ్||
(1st hundred – 10th gātha)
Dear one, why to hide your moon-like face and grieve now?
Love is like the brittle finned fish ‘vaalunki’ that catches on
To the feet of the one nearby; when recklessly handled,
It will break down into thousand pieces and helplessly die!
bāla vālunki tamtu’ (which mean, the thread like tender legs of a baby vālunki fish) were the words used by the poet to effectively describe the brittleness of the bonding between the lovers of very young and immature age.
Showing displeasure and dissent is part of expressing human emotions. There are different ways of showing the same towards the person to whom they are intended. Different persons adopt different methods. The most common way of expressing dissent, we find, is shouting at the other person at the highest pitch of voice possible. This often is the way of expressing dissent instantaneously and is seen between persons of varying authority i.e., between an employer and the employed, a father and his son, a mother and her daughter or daughter-in-law etc. This method may work between them, but it will, very often found, fail to work between persons of equal authority, e.g., husband and wife. The relationship that binds a husband to his wife and vice versa is different. Between them, no one is higher or lower in authority; both are equal. Situations of expressing displeasure or for that matter dissent are to be handled with great care, so that the relationship is not jeopardized. Both should understand this and behave. A woman of the days of Gāthāsaptashati appears to have understood the importance of showing her displeasure in the most sublime way possible i.e., silence. How she was hurt by her husband is not known, but it was evident that she was hurt to the point that the hurt was very deep. She expressed her displeasure in the most profound way possible i.e., by observing absolute silence. The instance and the exemplary behavior of that housewife was immortalized in this gātha:
దివసం రోషమూకాయాస్తస్యాః కృత్వా గేహవ్యాపారమ్|
గురుకేఽపి మన్యుదుఃఖే స్మరామః పాదాన్తసుప్తస్య||
/em>(3rd hundred – 26th gātha)
All day long, she quietly bore the pain, doing daily chores
Silently without uttering a single word; as the night fell,
The pain remained still unabated; she quietly slept
At my feet, silently still without uttering a single word.
The heartening aspect of this gātha is that the mood set out in this gātha was of reflective nature i.e., the husband was reminiscing the entire occurrence during one of the nights of his absence from home and as a result from his wife. Evidently, he was repenting for the displeasing moments of hurting his wife and at the same time feeling great about his wife, for the way she managed to make her displeasure known to him.
In conventional poetry, a looking glass (a mirror) is very often used to represent a plain heart. The reason for this is that a mirror or a looking glass reflects the image as it is and it neither does hide anything nor distorts anything. This reflecting quality has, therefore, been considered as plainness and used likewise. However, one poet of Gāthāsaptashati days used this ‘looking glass’ metaphor in a different way. In the following gātha a young woman was lamenting about the insensitiveness of her husband comparing him to the lifeless behavior of the ‘looking glass’.
స్ఫుటతాపి హృదయేన మాతులాని కథం నివేద్యతే తస్మిన్|
ఆదర్శే ప్రతిబిమ్బమివ యస్మిన్దుఃఖం న సంక్రామతి||
(3rd hundred – 4th gātha)
Into whose heart the pain and sorrows of others,
Like the images into a looking glass, do not sink,
To him how do I reveal my pain and sorrow, dear aunt?
With the grief let my heart remain broken instead!
The above examples are only a selective few of the whole lot of gāthas which poetized the grief of the human heart nearly two thousand years ago. The expression of pain was so sincere and realistic that there may be so much of materialistic difference, in the form of scientific advancement, between the men and women of the Sātavāhana period and now, but there is no difference in the feelings of grief of that age and now.
A retired employee. Interested in Telugu literature.