Keywords

Vidyapati, Kirtilata, narrator, flâneur, city, flâneuse, avhatta, maithili, Jaunpur, Turk.

Abstract

Vidyapati is the arch-poet of Maithili literature. His work is popular in Maithili and Bengali speaking regions of India and Nepal. Kirtilata is his great work in the language of common people: avhatta. It is about the life and work of the poet’s patron Kirti Singh. It is in the second canto of the work mentioned above that there’s a detailed description through the narrator’s mouth, of the city of Jaunpur, the seat of Sharki power. The present paper is an analysis of the narrator-flâneur‘s gaze in Kirtilata.

I

The history of Maithili literature places the Cuckoo of Mithila, Vidyapati (1360-1450) in its Ancient Age i.e. from 1300 AD to1600 AD (Singh 30).His ascent to the firmament of Maithili literature happened in the same time period as Geoffrey Chaucer’s rise in the sky of English literature. His stature in Maithili literature is similar to that of the English poet’s in literature of that language. He wrote in Sanskrit, Maithili and Avahatta. The greatest Maithili poet Vidyapati’s writing finds place not only in all the canons of Maithili literature, but also in many canons of Bengali literature. He had a long and productive creative life span and lived in the Medieval Tirhut. Ramanath Jha mentions in his monograph that in the reign of Shiva Singha, Vidyapati completed four works:  “Kīrtipatākā and Kīrtilatā in Abahaṭṭa, Puruṣaparīkṣā in Sanskrit prose and verse, and a drama in Sanskrit and Prakrita, Gorakṣavijaya by name” (18).He also mentions that Kirtilata is the most controversial of all the works of Vidyapati because is in Avahatta language. Historically, the book presents a detailed account of the travails of Prince Kirti Singha (his name gives the book its name) and his brother after their father was assassinated by a dastardly enemy Aslan. The princes reach Jaunpur, the seat of Sharki power in the North, and convince the ruler of the day, Ibrahim Shah, to accompany them to Tirhut and help them avenge their father’s assassination. The King agrees, but takes his own time to finally accompany the princes to the battlefield. In the end Aslan is defeated and Kirti Singh is anointed the king.

Vidyapati’s Kirtilata is characterized by the use of multiple languages as and when required, e.g. Sanskrit, Avahatta, Pali etc. There is an interesting account of the turks in the section on the description of Jaunpur and there the“sentences, and interspersed with Persian and Arabic terms especially where the Mohammedan court and army are described” (Jha 27).Although Baburam Saxena’s edition was the pioneer in introducing the readers to Vidyapati’s Kirtilata, Vasudev Sharan Agrawal shows in the introduction to his translation of Kirtilata that Saxena’s translation has textual errors of various kinds. Therefore, all the quotations in this paper have been taken from Agrawal’s translation of Kirtilata. Before we go into the psychogeographical details of its sections on cities it’d be wise to first draw an outline of the work.

Vidyapati begins Kirtilata with the praise of his great lord Kirti Singh. He then justifies the creation of his book. The extended metaphor he uses to justify it is that columns of words hold the stage of poetry so that the vine of Kirti Singh’s fame can cover the three worlds. As the common man can’t enjoy verse in Sanskrit he uses avahatta for his poem. The narration shifts to the Bhring-Bhringi couple after the initial few pages. A bumblebee (bhring) tells the story of Kirti Singh’s life to its mate. He begins the story by first mentioning a long list of great men that ends with the name of King Ganeshwar’s son King Kirti Singh. 

In the second canto the Turk Aslan betrays and murders Kirti Singh’s father Ganeshwar. It creates anarchy all around. Aslan realizes that his action was sinful and wrong and wants to make the dead king’s son Kirtin Singh the next king. The young prince does not accept the offer. He tells his people that he will avenge his father’s murder by killing Aslan on the battlefield. Along with his brother Veer Singh, he decides to meet King Ibrahim Sharki of Jaunpur. The two brothers reach Jaunpur after a long journey. It is in the description of the city and its inhabitants in the second canto that the main interest of this paper lies, because in the narrator’s gaze lies the key to flânerie. The second canto ends with the two princes spending their night at a Brahmin’s place outside the city. In the third canto the prince convinces Ibrahim Shah to accompany him to Tirhut and drive Aslan out. The king takes time, and digresses many times, yet the princes persevere. The second half of the third canto is an account of their travails and their success in convincing King Ibrahim to finally take his army to Tirhut. In the fourth canto Ibrahim Shah’s army engages Aslan’s army in the battle for Tirhut. Kirti Singh defeats Aslan yet lets him go when he runs away from the battle field. Thus he avenges his father’s murder, and is later anointed the King of Tirhut by the Shah.

II

Jaunpur, seen through the narrator’s eyes, has been introduced as a “city composed of paroxysmal places in monumental reliefs… a universe that is constantly exploding” (de Certeu 91). The city has a moat filled with water all around it. Gardens are full of flowering and fruit plants in bloom. The only entrance to the city has a wooden drawbridge. The initial description of Jaunpur is characterized by the use of words and tone that build the image of the city as a beautiful and safe place. After a long and perilous journey, the two brothers seem to be entering a veritable oasis of pleasure. The reader sees the city through their eyes in the narrator-flâneur’s description of it. The numerous labyrinthine streets and lanes of the city baffle the newcomers’ sense of direction. It seems that the narrator strolls at a leisurely pace as he drinks the sight in. He is the veritable “solitary stroller who both records and comes to symbolize the emergence of the modern city… the flâneur” (Coverley 19). The narrator-flâneur, unlike the two princes, is in no hurry as he wanders on the city streets and lanes. The intricately planned city deserves all that attention.

Gardens, ponds, fountains, houses with gates, small openings in the fort’s wall etc. are reported and amidst them is the majestic palace of King Ibrahim Shah. It’s just at this juncture that the narrator-flâneur’s gaze falls upon its most typical object of attraction for the intended male readership: women. The lotus-eyed women of the city that amble with the gait of a she-elephant can be seen at the streets and crossings, ogling at men and getting ogled at in return. Women, both, housewives and prostitutes, are prominently present in the public sphere and the narrator-flâneur’s gaze that’s roving everywhere, looking for the female presence is fixed upon them time and again. The prostitute is a prominent part of the crowd of women seen on the streets. The narrator’s walks, similar to that of his modern counterpart viz. André Breton, Louis Aragon etc. apparently “revolve unerringly around the pursuit of beautiful women. The city had become a primarily erotic location and the prostitute came to represent the female flâneur or flâneuse” (Coverley 21). His erotic energy is transposed on the wandering monks that are aroused by the crowd’s pressing them against the ample breasts of street walkers.

The city makers and the narrator tend to favour a special quarter of the city: that of the prostitutes. Their houses are architectural wonder and draw the attention of every passerby. The details of their toilet and personality traits are given epic treatment. They narrator’s eyes linger voyeuristically at how they stencil coloured shapes on their body parts that are generally covered with clothes. Flowers in their hair look like darkness laughing at the decline of their suitors (88). It appears that under the weight of their full bosoms their waist will break. Their (painted) beauty is beyond compare. Prostitutes are shown as having unnatural coyness, made-up youth, love for money and humility for greed. The social exclusion of women of that profession has been mentioned in the passing, and underscored by mentioning that a good person does not find welcome at their place, whereas, villains are revered there. Yet even the most cultivated and reputed citizen would die for the breeze of the flowing cover of their upper body. The narrator- flâneur’s deep knowledge of the prostitute-flâneuse is reflected in their detailed description and in the complete classification of the same presented on the pages of Kirtilata.

Although the narrative is full of waves of sensory inputs of various kinds the visual element dominates. The city has various sections and parts and the description of city market in the second canto provides an occasion for an auditory cornucopia of sorts. Section for metal utensil makers, jewellers, gold ornaments, alcoholic beverages, betel leaves and savouries, the fish market etc. are full of a variety of sounds and talks. The potpourri of sounds is compared to the trumpeting of tuskers and the sound of ocean waves. The meeting of waves is compared to the meeting of people and the formation of the most prominent source of visual and auditory stimuli:  crowd. The minute description of people, their appearance etc. act as counterbalance to a detailed description of crowds of various kinds. Groups and crowds are given attributes like wandering, laughing, frolicking and observing. The narrator-flâneuris “immersed in the crowd but isolated by it” (Coverley 60). His tone is that of partial attachment, and he clearly likes being in the midst of that entire hustle bustle that he calls the “sea of humanity” (Vidyapati 77).

The streets, corners and crossings of the city are places of interest, interaction and instruction. They show the quasi-utopian nature of the king’s intent, and the crowd is that catalyst that facilitates the melting and fusing of various dissimilar factors. Men meet women, humans meet animals, members of the lower castes meet those of the upper castes and they have equal claim on the public sphere and in the eyes of the narrator- flâneur. He sees everything, partakes in every action vicariously, is at the centre of everything yet remains, as Baudelaire mentions, “hidden from the world” (Quoted from Coverley 61). There’s some naïveté that may be a part of the narratorial convention, that surfaces in the generalizations and homogenization of the citizens and the standard of living there. Ibrahim Shah’s city is projected as some kind of utopia where everyone has a good place to live and tasty and wholesome food to eat.

The 110th floor of the World Trade Center presented the city of Manhattan to de Certeau as a “gigantic mass immobilized… [and] transformed into a texturology in which extremes coincide” (The Practice of Everyday Life, 91). Vidyapati’s narrator-flâneur experiences the city of Jaunpur from the street, at the ground level, not separated from the crowd, but being a part of it. Yet he experiences the city in a comparatively similar manner. Categories are not as clearly separated as they used to be once people reach the city streets. The traditional castes from Brahmin to Shoodra meet as equals and are assimilated into one conglomerate. There’s extreme homogeneity in wealth and status among the citizens. The city is presented as a veritable Garden of Eden until the Turk enters the scene. Then both the objects of description and the tone of description become diametrically opposite to the same in the first half of the second canto. The description of the Turks is from sections 2/27 to section 2/31, i.e. total 66 verse lines of description. Throughout the description the narratorial stance is clearly anti-Turk, yet never anti-Islam or anti-Muslim. The very alarming and jarring presence of the Turk threatens the equilibrium of the city and poses a problem that is neatly solved through the application of a trick. Although the Turk is full of hatred for Hindus and will decimate their population at the first chance, the presence of the great King Ibrahim is enough to protect all his (Hindu) subjects. The description of the king’s palace, the court and those who want to meet the king are given the same detailed treatment that the city and its crowd were given earlier. One thing that strikes the reader through all the pages of description is thenarrator-flâneur’s “immediate participation in a passionate abundance of life” that’s all around him (Debord 61). Interpreting his gaze correctly is the key to understanding the second canto in particular, and a large part of the text in general.

References

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Debord, Guy. Guy Debord and the Situationist International: Texts and Documents. Editor Tom McDonough. Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002. Print.

de Certeu, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Tr. Steven Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Print. 

Jha, Ramanath. Vidyapati. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademy, 2017. Print.

Singh, Baijnath. Maithili Sahitya: Sanchipt Parichay. Patna: Shree Ajanta Press, 1956. Print

Vidyapati. Kirtilata. Editor Baburam Saxena. Varanasi: Nagari Pracharini Sabha, 1957. Print.

Vidyapati. Kirtilata. Translator Vasudev Sharan Agrawal. Jhansi: Sahitya Sadan, 1962. Print.