Flowers
at the Feet of the King!
“The King is a thief!”
It was not the cry of some desperate anarchist who
was inciting the people to mutiny. It was the cry of a young maiden, a loyal
subject who was willing to give herself as tribute to the monarch: Why then did
she make this strange denunciation? And what had rich royalty stolen from this
poor subject?–It was her pair of bangles!
The maiden had fallen in love with the King, when
she had seen him coming on his triumphal march. It was of course no fault of
hers; the King was to blame. She languished in hopeless passion; her hands that
were once round, robust, and rosy grey thin; and the bangles slipped from her
hands and were lost.
“The King stole my bangles,” says she, with much
justification indeed!
The strange denunciation, born out of love, is
found in one of the stanzas of a Tamil work called ‘Muthollairam’. The
name means ‘three nine hundreds’, and comes from the fact that the work
contains 900 stanzas sung in praise of each of the three Tamil Kings, the
Chera, the Chola, and the Pandya. Of the 2,700 stanzas, only 109 songs have
been preserved for posterity. The rest have been lost in the ravages of time;
the name of the author is itself unknown; no detail of him is available except
that he lived more than 2,000 years ago. Some of the finest love poetry is
packed into the four lines that make up the stanzas of this work. There is no
plot or story; the theme is only praise of the three Kings. But from these
stanzas each one of which is complete in itself, it is possible to weave a
story of love and heroism. The ‘Nayaka Nayaki’ (lover and loved) Bhavam,
finds supreme expression in these stanzas. The traditional way is to portray
God and the devotee, as the lover and the loved. This work speaks of the King
as the Nayaka, and is proof of the fact that in those days, Raja-Bhakti (devotion
to the King) was held as sacred as Daiva-Bhakti (devotion to God).
The royal procession passes through the streets;
and a maiden rushes to the door to see him. The mother of the maiden, who knows
that to see the King is to love him, wishes to spare her the agony of
unrequited love and closes the door. The maiden is driven to desperation and
curses the callousness of her mother. “How is that my aged mother fails to
understand ‘love’? Did she never experience it? Was she born an old woman at
the time of birth itself?”
She cannot understand why her mother had changed.
In those days of old, when she was a little girl, her mother used to pet her
and say that some day she would marry the King of the land. Those were days
when she did not care for the King, or for herself being a queen. But now when
she loved him and wanted to marry him, her mother prevents her from even seeing
him. How inscrutable are the ways of fickle mortals!
Her ruminations are disturbed by the sound of drums
coming nearer and nearer. In a minute more, the King will have passed by, and
she will never see him again. She curses her fate, and lays her head against
the door to weep her heart out, when suddenly she discovers a small hole bored
in the door, through which she could look on to the street. Divine Mercy! Those
who made the door must have known what it was to love. To them she gives her
heart-felt thanks.
There comes the King himself, seated on his
elephant. It is the she-elephant that usually bears him on such occasions as
parades and processions; the he-elephant would carry him to the battle-field,
to destroy those that dared to defy him. The maiden curses the she-elephant.
“What woeful days these are when women have lost their one precious
possession–modesty. Look at that elephant, which without any womanliness,
rushes quickly. Why will it not go slow?” In her anxiety to see the King to her
heart’s content, she looks upon all the world as her enemy–even the elephant!
The King passes by and is lost to her sight. But
how could he be said to have gone away, when her eyes have drunk deep of his
beauty and have taken him in? Her friends come to find her burying her eyes in
her hands. She refuses to open them. “The King and his elephant have got into
my eyes. If I open my eyes, they may escape.”
She loses herself in the King, and dedicates
everything of hers, to him. Then the patent injustice of this oppressive
extortion strikes her, and she rebels: “The law of the land says that only
one-sixth of the produce belongs to the King; but this King has taxed
everything I have, and taken all, my heart, my womanliness, in short the whole
of me!” This must be a land where the law is not respected. Otherwise why
should one be punished for the crime that another did? “It was my eyes that saw
the King. Then why should my shoulders be punished?” So saying she looks with
sympathy at her shoulders that have grown thin on love. She can understand the
King punishing his foes, who dared to insult him. But why should he punish her,
a humble subject of his, whose only crime was her loyalty to, and love of, the
King?
Even the messengers of sweetness only bring
bitterness to her heart. The moon reminds her of all that she is missing; the
gentleness of the breeze burns into her heart the agony of separation; the
strains of music that come floating the evening breeze make her writhe in pain.
“Why cannot this King who has power over everything ban this music and spare
me?”
She longs to be protected by him, and nestle close
to him. She is jealous of the flower that he wears on his chest. Why should it
get a privilege, which is denied even to her? Then on second thoughts, she
thinks the flower deserves the honour. “Poor thing! Has it not been standing on
one leg and performing the Pasupada (standing on one foot), praying that it
should be taken to the King?”
At night she dreams of the King; the dream looks so
real that she convinces herself it is real, and opens her eyes. Lo, she loses
the dream and the reality. How ill-fated are her eyes that they should be
denied the reality and lose the dream also!
Her longing is no secret to others; all the world
knows of it and gossips too. She goes with her friends to bathe in the river.
If she takes a long time for her bath, her friends tease her that she is so
attached to the river because it belongs to the King. They say that, to her, a
bath in the river is a sentimental bond between her and the King. If she rushes
through her bath, they diagnose it as love-fever which prevents her from
relishing even the natural delights of a river bath.
Then one fine day, the royal procession comes
again. This time she will not be satisfied with looking through the hole in the
door. She longs to go out into the street and have a full look, but is afraid
that it will be an unwomanly act. Love goads her; modesty holds her back.
Longing drives her forward; womanliness restrains her step. Her heart is torn
between these two conflicting forces. The poet says that she is like one, who
driven by poverty goes forward to a rich man’s house to ask for alms, but
shrinks from this humiliating task, due to dignity. Dire necessity drives him
to beg; his intrinsic manliness and honour hold him back. Between these two,
his heart is tossed. Even so is the heart of the maiden, who wishes to see, and
yet dare not do it.
Her friends, who realise that her love can end only
in fulfillment, or in her own end, arrange for a meeting between the King and
her. He has promised to come at dusk; she waits on the river-bank. Time
tarries, and it looks as if he will never come. Will he fail her? She asks for
a sign from the gods. She closes her eyes, and in the sand before her, starts
drawing a circle with her finger. If the circle will become complete, that is,
if Providence will direct her finger to the same spot from which she started,
the King will come. If the ends do not meet, he will not come. This sign is
called the sign of ‘kudal’ (joining). She starts drawing and then suddenly
stops. Her heart is seized with the dread that by chance the ends may not meet.
In a fit of passion she wipes the circle away; she will take no chances with
chance. Her King will come.
And he did. At last her dream is realised; her
longing finds fulfillment. But still her mind is not at rest. Now it looks to
her as if time is flying. The night that used to hang on so oppressively
before, why should it now ride away on winged wheels? All the elements have
joined to conspire against her.
The day has dawned; her friends come to
congratulate her on her good fortune. But she tells them that she had not seen
the King at all! Will they, who themselves arranged the meeting, be taken in by
this falsehood? No. She does not lie; she explains the truth. There are two
stages in love play udal and kudal. In the first stage, the maiden quarrels
with the lover, and pretends as if she is estranged from him. Then the lover
woos her, pets her, pacifies her and ultimately wins her over; that is kudal
(mingling). “At first, when I feigned anger, I turned my face away from him,
and therefore did not see him. Later when he won me over, I was so lost in the
ecstacy of love, that I could not see his face for all my faculties had fled,
deserting me. So, now do you believe me; I have not seen the King’s face at
all.”
‘Muthollairam’ is not a song of love only;
it is a saga of heroism, too. The insignia of the Chera King was the bow. All
the world bowed to the bow. The poet says that even the gods who lived in
heaven, drew a bow on the sky, only to mark their allegiance to the Chera King.
Another stanza praises the valour of the Pandya
King. The classical works described the gods (Devas) as those whose eyelashes
never close, whose garlands never wither and whose feet never touch the ground.
The poet explains why their feet never touch the ground. They were so afraid of
the Pandya King’s bravery that they dared not set foot upon his soil! If the
gods themselves were seized with such dread, how would mortals dare?
Usually in royal establishments there will be many
accountants to keep accounts. But the Pandya King had only one accountant,–his
war-elephant! The pen with which that accountant wrote was his tusk; the
parchment was the chest of enemy kings; the ink was the blood that flowed from
their pierced bodies!
The King’s war-elephant would charge at the white
umbrellas of the enemy kings and destroy them in an instant. That was why he
would often mistake the moon for the umbrella of an enemy king, and prepare to
charge at it, with his tusk lifted towards the sky.
The King’s war-horse was no less brave. It was used
to trample, under its feet, the golden crowns of so many enemy kings, that its
hoof reminded the poet of the touch-stone on which genuine gold was tested.
The Chola King too, gets his share of the praise.
His feet were full of soars and bruises, caused by the countless crowns of
enemy kings who came and bowed at his feet.
There is a stanza describing a scene in the
battle-field. The battle is over; the Chola King has triumphed. The corpses lie
scattered here and again there; and the ghosts come to feast upon the bodies.
In their hands they carry weird-looking lamps. The lamp bowl is the scooped-out
skull of the dead soldier; the ghee, poured into the lamp for burning, is the
brain matter of the dead man; the wick is drawn out of his intestines! If
grotesqueness and grace can at all be blended, these four lines are an example.
These are only a few jewel-drops from the treasure
trove of ‘Mutholairam’. Passion in all its intense warmth, imagery in
all its riotousness, destruction in all its nakedness–all these are rolled into
one in the rich romance, and the marvel of melody, which is ‘Mutholairam’.