“Introduction to Sanskrit Love”: Romance in a Lost Language

It might seem that writing love poetry in Sanskrit is excessively serious. With too much religious and traditional connotation, the “language of the gods” would undoubtedly not lend itself to sweet nothings. A recent poetry collection disproves our assertions. Anusha Rao and Suhas Mahesh translated and edited a collection of Sanskrit love poems called “How to Love in Sanskrit” (HarperCollins). It includes verses and brief prose pieces by well-known authors like Kalidasa and Banabhatta, as well as verses from Buddhist and Jain monks, scholars, emperors, and even contemporary poets. It illuminates the simultaneously tender and thrilling side of the “fusty-musty language of hymns, priests, and godmen.”

 

Mahesh is a materials physicist and a scholar of Prakrit and Sanskrit, while Rao is a scholar of Sanskrit and Indian religion now completing a PhD at the University of Toronto. The book is an attempt to make Sanskrit poetry approachable and, more importantly, pleasurable for everyone, according to the editor-translator couple who live in Toronto, Canada. They speak a mixture of Kannada, English, Sanskrit, and Prakrit at home and frequently quote and modify passages from their favorite verses in casual conversations.

Love serves as a link.

People have been seen reading versions of Gilgamesh aboard buses, Rumi on park benches, and Homer at airports. But why weren’t Banabhatta or Kalidasa mentioned? Of course, Sanskrit literature is exceptional; we have been immersed in it for a very long time. When friends asked us for book recommendations, we couldn’t confidently provide any. Everything in the world is either heavily scholarly, Victorian, smugly moralistic, or just plain dull. We wanted to create something that anybody might pick up and enjoy in order to make things right. And what greater subject than love to unite the ancient and the modern? Mahesh discusses the inspiration for the book.

The collection, which has sections labeled “How to Flirt,” “How to Quarrel,” “How to Make Love,” and “How to Break Up,” contains love poetry that speaks to modern romantic sensibilities, which don’t seem to have changed much from the time playwright Ishvaradatta wrote about the “heat of secret lovemaking” in 400 CE or poet and philosopher Shriharsha described a lover’s dimples in 1100 CE.

discovered during translation

The book’s creation was a labor of love for the pair. According to Rao, “we porred over 150 texts all evening, every evening, for two years.” Only 220 of the 10,000 poems that were reviewed by the team were chosen, she continues, acknowledging that they had to meet “a very stringent acceptance criterion.”

One of the obstacles in translating the works into English was dealing with the grammatical quirks of Sanskrit as well as the apparent cultural disparities. However, Rao and Mahesh managed to get past them. “The goal of poetry is to enjoy it, enjoy the rasa of it,” says Rao, adding, “We only considered verses where the main idea translates well into English.” Anything that gets in the way of this is not fit for a poem. In terms of the concept, we have translated these poems accurately; we have simply changed the style to entice readers to go further into the Sanskrit.

In addition to offering a refreshing take on Sanskrit love poetry, the anthology provides insight into lesser-known languages that have created equally excellent literature but have been forgotten. About fifty poems in Maharashtri Prakrit, two from Apabhramsha, and one from Pali are included in the anthology. Mahesh claims that the Prakrit languages are a part of the same literary lineage as Sanskrit and are pretty closely linked to it. For two millennia, Maharashtri Prakrit was read as a classical language across India and was well-known for its literature. Prakrit used to have the reputation of being the ideal language for love because of its gentle and beautiful sounds. “They don’t know Prakrit poetry, and they speak of love—the shame!” says the phrase. Though there aren’t many students studying Prakrit these days, it’s still worthwhile to master it if only to read the Gaha Sattasai, one of the greatest works of Indian literature, which is a compilation of 700 love poems from 100 CE, he adds.

The pair feels it is only just that we learn “what is it like to love in Sanskrit,” pointing out that “love poetry is, in fact, far more common in Sanskrit than religious poetry.” And as the book demonstrates, love in Sanskrit is filled with longing so intense that it finally submerges you in sorrow. It is described as “ecstatic lovemaking,” “clever flattery,” “quarrels of passion,” and “the cruel hand of fate.” A tribute to our ancient languages and their vanishing manuscripts, How to Love in Sanskrit simultaneously expresses the aspiration of individuals like Rao and Mahesh to “get to them before the bugs do.” It is also an homage to self-love in all of its “madness, melancholy, and intoxication.”

You may be able to get a sense of what love is like in Sanskrit by reading this little poetry from the Jain monk Somaprabha Suri’s Awakening, which was penned in 1200 CE: “Seeing the lovely red/ of your lips, darling/ the cherries hang themselves/ from a tree in despair.”