Excerpts from the Epic Hindi Poem Kamayani
(Translated from the original Hindi into English by Usha Kishore)
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Excerpts from Canto I: Chinta (Thought)
On Himalaya’s spiring summit
……………sheltered under shadows of stone,
the lone man, with tearful eyes,
……………discerned the swelling deluge.
Below was water, above ice;
……………one fluid, one frozen.
One elemental prime – call it
……………what you may, listless or live.
Strewn across the vast horizons,
……………ice, frozen like his heart;
striking the foot of silent stone,
……………purging winds surged.
A youthful sage, he sat
……………meditating on dead gods.
Below him, the swirling waves
……………of the deluge mercifully waned.
Soaring above that sage,
……………deodar trees towered;
dazzling in snow, frozen like
……………stone, they rigidly stood.
His lithe limbs and strapping sinews
……………bursting in lustrous vigour;
the blood in his inflamed veins
……………pulsing with spirited élan.
Furrowed by grief was his face, the warp
……………and weft of manly resolve withal;
within, his reckless youth ebbed away
……………in sweet subtle streams.
Anchored to a great banyan tree,
……………his boat lay on dry land;
descending was the deluge,
……………emerging was the earth.
Seeping out in dire distress,
……………his woe-begotten tale
that only listening nature
……………did hear, with sentient smile.
‘O first furrow of thought,
……………O serpent of world’s weald;
hissing in the terror of volcanic fire
……………impassioned as in first tremor.
O fickle maiden of misery,
……………O brow’s streak of deceit!
O sweltering quest of opulence,
……………O riotous ripple of mirage!
O feral fate of this starry ellipse,
……………O slender swirl of streaming venom!
O age-worn immortality, turning
……………a deaf ear to one and all!
O harbinger of decay!
……………Brooding thought, beauteous curse!
O comet of the mind sky,
……………sensuous sin of sacred spring!
Would you linger long, broodingly
……………in this wayward race of beings?
Would you slay this immortal?
……………Would you delve into my depths?
Would you shroud this heart,
……………its verdant terrains, in storming hail?
Hiding in mind’s chasms; you
……………remain an occult wealth.
Wisdom, desire, intellect, hope, thought,
……………your names are many!
You are sin incarnate! Begone!
……………Here, you have no pursuit.
Come oblivion! Sorrow beseige me!
……………Silence smother me!
Begone congizance! Fill my
……………void in arrant languor.
When I ponder over the past,
……………that bygone bliss,
then eternity is indented
……………with streaks of sorrow.
O herald of nature! You have
……………failed, you are dissolved!
Devourer or Saviour, you are
……………the fish that brought in the deluge!
O tempests, dancing day
……………and night in lightning’s flame!
your devotion to incessant passion
……………in cyclical refrain.
O night sky between the stars,
……………O unfortunate fate! In the
roaring thunder of vain glorious gods,
……………all was sacrament to sacred fire!
O dazzling deities of immortality!
……………Your triumphant roars,
faint echoes today, resounding as
……………though in heartrending woe!
Nature abided unconquered, conquered
……………were we in drunken stupor,
naïve we all, merely drifting
……………in vanity’s sensual stream!
All was drownèd, grandeur and glory,
……………melting into the mighty ocean!
Rising above immortal revelry
……………is the roar and din of deluge!’
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Excerpts from Canto II: Asha (Hope)
Raining arrows of gold, Dawn
arose like a triumphant spirit;
subdued, the dark deluge lay,
drownèd in its own waters.
Nature’s plaintive, pallid face
scintillant in smiles again;
rains bygone, earth’s autumnal
advent burgeoned again.
A soft virgin light cast forth
its caresses on the snowy terrain,
like honeyed drops of golden
pollen, dallying on a silvered lotus.
The shroud of snow rose
languorously from the land,
and sluggish shoots sprouted,
rinsing their faces in icy waters.
Opening her dazèd eyes, nature
awoke from slumberous depths;
and spent waves of the sea drowned
once more in slumber deep.
On the sea-bed, coy earth bride
lay in stupor, nursing her wounded
pride, as though writhing in the
nightmares of the deluging night.
Manu beheld the raptures
of forsaken, forlorn earth,
as though effete chaos had fallen
asleep, fatigued like frosted snow.
An upturned sapphire chalice,
the sky hung bereft of soma;
today, the wind softly sighed,
as though its burden spent.
Today, Splendour blended
his gold to paint new hues;
‘Who?’ A query rose unforeseen,
and yearning reigned.
‘Under whose decree do the lords
of the universe, Savita or Pusha,
Soma, Maruta, ephemeral Pavmana
and Varuna spin around unwithered?
Whose frowning brows, deluge like,
maimed them, enfeebled them all?
O! how might-less were these
ensigns of Nature’s might!
Crippled and quivering were
all creatures, alive and dying;
What hapless plight, what dire
distress, what fate forlorn?
We were no gods, nor they,
mere puppets of chance; perchance,
harnessed like subdued stallions
in the chariot of almighty pride.
‘In this azure empyrean realm,
effulgent in all the universe, whose
hands string these planets,
stars and lightning slivers?
Under whose bewitching spell,
do they rise and set?
In whose elixir, do grass and
shrub flourish, so bedewed?
With bowèd heads, to whose
sovereign sway do all submit here?
Where is that being, who dwells
in our hushed avowals?
O Eternal Splendour! Who are you?
How can I fathom you?
What mould? What spirit?
My wits bear not this weight.
O Infinity! Lord of the World!
Your spirit, I divine –
In solemn, sonorous, subtle strains,
the sea too sings my visions.
‘What sparkles like a seductive dream
in my languid, restless heart?
Like longing it unfurls, this
hope that is life’s breath!
How enticing is this grace,
sweet awakening like?
Rising in ripples like a smile,
it dances to dulcet descant!
Life! Life! The clarion call!
Mellow fervid fires frolic;
At whose feet does the sacred zeal
of a new dawn bow and yield?
I am, why does this resound,
grace like, in my ears?
I too echo, I am, in the
psalms of the eternal sky.’
Translator’s Note
Jaishankar Prasad (1890-1937), one of the most eminent poets of modern Hindi Literature, is a proponent of the Chhayavad Movement, popularly translated as Neo-Romanticism, which incorporates romanticism, mysticism and humanism. I would like to interpret Chhayavad as romantic mysticism. Prasad’s epic Kamayani, considered a philosophic allegory of life,is one of the greatest works of Hindi Literature. Indian philosophy and myth are juxtaposed in this epic, which illustrates the influence of the Vedas (a body of religious texts/scriptures of ancient India, approximated between 1500 – 1200 BCE) and Kashmir Shaivism, a religious tradition originating in Kashmir, based on the recognition of the self’s identity with the universal consciousness of Shiva. The narrative of Kamayani is based on the Vedic flood myth and the patriarchal flood hero, Manu. Kamayani consists of 15 Cantos, each symbolising a personified emotion. The epic opens with the scenes of the Great Deluge and the despairing protagonist Manu, whose emotions unfold in sequential narrative, moving from angst to bliss, with a whole host of emotions in between. Abounding in symbolism and metaphor, this epic has been composed in varied verse forms: prose poetry, quatrain, rhyming couplet and other stanzaic verse, all interwoven with monologues and dialogues.
Canto I entitled Chinta (Thought)i opens with the protagonist Manu brooding over the void left by the deluge, not dissimilar to John Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost. The first Canto portrays Manu’s despair, his lost gods and nature’s overwhelming destructive power. In Canto II, entitled Asha (Hope), Manu has visions of hope, amidst the deluge and his all-encompassing loneliness. Both Cantos constitute of Manu’s monologues. In the current pandemic scenario, Canto I (thought) reflects the world’s despair and isolation, while Canto II (Asha) resonates with hope and promises of light. Another version of Canto I: Chinta (Thought) has been previously published in SETU.
In Kamayani, Prasad’s employs a highly Sankritised version of Hindi. So, I have interpreted the text with Sanskritised elements as translations from the Sanskrit and the scriptures, rather than Hindi. As in:
नीरवता-सी शिला-चरन से टकराता फिरता पवमान: (Stanza 3 of Canto I). I have translated this line as ‘striking the foot of silent stone, purging winds surged.’ पवमान literally means ‘wind.’ I have interpreted पवमान, as ‘purging wind’ based on the पवमान मंत्र (the purification manta) of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (I.3.28) : असतो मा सद्गमय, तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय, मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय (trans.‘Lead me from untruth to truth, Lead me from darkness to light, Lead me from death to immortality
केवल अपने ही मीन हुए: (Stanza 19 of Canto I) – literally translated as ‘you have become your own fish’ (in other words – you have destroyed yourself) I have translated this as ‘the fish that brought in the deluge’ – to highlight the flood myth context and the saviour fish, the Matsya avatar of Vishnu.
महा नील् इस परम व्योम में/ अंतरिक्ष में ज्योतिर्मान,/ग्रह, नक्षत्र् और विद्युत्कण/किसका करते से संधान! (Stanza 14 of Canto II) – I have translated this as: In this azure empyrean realm, /effulgent in all the universe, whose/hands string these planets,/stars and lightning slivers? – Here, I have interpreted करते से as a possible Hindi derivative of the Sanskrit करतस् (trans. from the hand of/out of the hand of) and संधान as stringing together as in bow and arrow. Acknowledging Prasad’s affinity to Kashmiri Shaivism, I have interpreted this as Prasad’s invocation to Tripurari Shiva, who strings his bow to destroy the triple-aligned, demon satellite cities.
I have tried to emulate the poetic form and structure of the original text and tried to recreate the language of fin de siècle Hindi poetry with the use of archaisms to highlight the context of the Indian flood myth. I have also tried to highlight in my translation, Prasad’s recurring elemental motifs (पञ्चभूत or five elements of the Indian tradition): earth, water, fire, air and sky. In these two Cantos, my attempts have been to capture Prasad’s grandiloquence of the protagonist’s monologue, to render the subtle streams of hope seeping through Manu’s despair and to recreate the philosophical overtures of the Source Text and its interwoven contextual references to Hindu tradition and the Vedas.
These excerpts are part of my ongoing translation of the epic. Inspired by my mother, the late Gomathy Subramoney, Hindi teacher extraordinaire, this translation is a dream come true, a labour of love and unquestionably, a humble dedication to the spirit and vision of Mahakavi Jaishankar Prasad.
Poet’s Bio: Jaishankar Prasad (1890 – 1937) was one of the prominent figures in modern Hindi Literature. He was both poet and playwright. Prasad’s poetry has been composed in both dialect (khari boli) Hindi and in the khadi dialect of Sanskritized Hindi. A proponent of Chhayavad Movement (Neo-Romanticism), Prasad is conspicuous in the use of Sanskrit and Sanskrit derived diction in his poetry, as opposed to Persian and Urdu diction. PrasadPoet’s Bio: ’s Kamayani considered the magnum opus of the Chhayavadi school of Hindi poetry, is one of the greatest epics of modern Hindi Literature.
Translator’s Bio: Indian born Usha Kishore is a British poet and translator, resident on the Isle of Man. Usha is the author of 3 books of poetry and a book of translation from the Sanskrit. Usha is internationally published and anthologised by Macmillan, Hodder Wayland, Oxford University Press (UK) and Harper Collins and Orient Swan (India), among others. Her poetry is part of British Primary and Secondary and Indian Middle School and Undergraduate syllabi. Usha translates from Hindi and the Sanskrit.
Jaishankar Prasad 
Usha Kishore
