On October 10th, the Asian Institute hosted an India-Canada Association Lecture with an intriguing name – “The Dark Night of Love in the Indian Tradition”. The speaker, Dr. Fabrizia Baldissera, discussed Indian literature and its descriptions of love and desire. Christoph Emmrich, the Director of Centre for South Asian Studies at U of T introduced the speaker as a prominent Italian Indologist and an associate professor of Sanskrit language and literature at the University of Florence. Apart from the support from Asian Institute and Centre for South Asian Studies, this talk was also co-sponsored by Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Toronto.
In this talk, Professor Baldissera took the audience on a walk through different literature in Sanskrit in India. The word love (‘kama’) in Sanskrit means desire and therefore is not similar to the word for love and friendship in other Indo-European languages, like the Latin ‘amor’ (love) and ‘amicitia’ (friendship). In Sanskrit literature then, desire connotes not just a sexual desire but desire as the first seed of mind as defined in the Hindu canonical text Rigveda 10.129. Without desire, one is thought of as unable to accomplish anything. Interestingly, as Professor Baldissera notes, this idea carries on in some other religious thinking in India, referring to Kashmiri Shaivism as an example.
There is a specific manner in which love stories are presented in Indian literature, but more so in Sanskrit. The conventions also differ depending on the type of literature. For instance, in the Vedas sex is discussed very openly. In the epics, however, the type of language used around the topic is much more guarded. Feelings of love are very strong but expressed in a very poetic and delicate manner. In Kavya, the literary style of Sanskrit courtly poetry, there is a great amount of nuance to such discussions, where sex is only suggested, not described.
The name for the talk ‘dark night of desire’ is very much intentional and reflects the social life of the time period in which those literary compositions were created. People deemed to be in higher levels of society, such as the Brahmins class and warriors and princes, led a very guarded life in some sense. This was very much like Buddha during his time as a prince, who was protected from all the harshness of life. As a result, neither young women nor young men ever had an education that took love into account. There were some love manuals such as the Kama Sutra, yet the aim of those manuals was not just to show how to make love in sexual intercourse, but rather how to use it to have a harmonious life. Since high-class people had arranged marriages, the only escape from an unhappy marriage for men was resorting to an adulterous relationship risky for both lovers, or by frequenting high-end prostitutes. The latter were in fact – barring a few South Indian queens and some female ascetics – the only educated females of the time. They were supposed to know 64 arts such as speaking many languages, drawing, playing musical instruments, dancing and composing poetry… Thus, their careful education was somehow akin to that of the geishas in Japan. 64 is indeed a big number and the expectation was that sophisticated courtesans would need to be experienced in all of them. There were special meetings of the town’s cultivated men, where they would be discussing poetry and the arts, and the only women allowed there were the accomplished courtesans.
However, this meant that young people oftentimes were not prepared for the strong emotions aroused by love. When they fell in love, they were completely overwhelmed by their feelings and lost all notion of where they were or what they should do. This, explains Professor Baldissera, constitutes the darkness of desire. When people are so infused with love as an emotion, they are not able to think clearly. Darkness also reflects the Sanskrit word ‘tamas’ (opaqueness), which in India is thought to be the lowest of the 3 gunas. or human qualities/tendencies. In such darkness, one doesn’t know anything and doesn’t understand what is happening.
There is a brighter side of the darkness, however. “It is the darkness of moonless nights, which protects like a velvety cloak the secret meetings of lovers”, explains Professor Baldissera. The figure of an enamoured woman who leaves her house without anyone noticing, and braves the dangers of the night to meet her lover is a much-appreciated storyline in courtly poetry. The female figure, initially portrayed as “a shy damsel”, is here perceived as so strongly motivated by passion that she dares to go out on her own even on a stormy night.
There are two modes in which love stories are told in Sanskrit literature. We find either the mutual joy experienced in the union of the lovers, or love suffering due to separation from one’s beloved. The latter happens not only because lovers live apart, but also even before they know one another. For instance, in many stories desire awakens when they have only glimpsed each other’s face, or even more delicately, when they have only heard someone speaking of the other. From then on, the aroused person cannot be happy until being within the arms of their loved one.
In Indian literature, and especially in the religious ones, women are envisioned to be more passionate than men, and therefore personify the danger of leading men astray. Many religious texts and even the epic, Mahabharata, portray women as too prone to fall in love, and hence not to be trusted. The story of Lopamudra in the Vedas is an example. In the story, she finally manages to obtain love from her husband after many years of abstinence, but in so doing, ruins his ascetic exercises.
Professor Baldissera particularly highlights the situation in Kavya, where the total loss of one’s former persona takes place because of great passion for which the only form of relief is the embrace of the beloved. As a very refined form of literature, Kavya does not speak openly of sexual intercourse, but only suggests situations. Yet sometimes, in drama, and especially in comic plays, prose and satirical works, there are more frank expressions of love.
Professor Baldissera read directly from two dramatic works: Kālidāsa’s play Shakuntala and Bhavabhuti’s play Malati Madhava. The story of Shakuntala reveals an occurrence that happens when beautiful women are too forward: they can be seduced and abandoned. In the play, the young king courts Shakuntala. Since they cannot get married with the approval of her foster parent, who is absent, the king intends to marry her with the special Gandharva marriage allowed to princes – the one in which two lovers run away together and make love without asking the permission of their parents. Then, though the king has promised to send for her, due to the curse of an ascetic, he forgets all about Shakuntala and when she comes to his court, pregnant with his son, he refuses to acknowledge her. The story then ends well but after many vicissitudes. In another Kālidāsa play, Vikramorvashiyam, a different story is told which is similar to the Greek tale of Eros and Psyche. In it, a heavenly, a nymph, falls in love with a human king. When the nymph gets pregnant. she needs to go back to heaven, leaving the king is distraught. In this, Kalidasa exhibits another known theme of Sanskrit literature, in which the lover in his delusion starts to see likenesses of his beloved in different creatures of the forest. It is something that had already happened before, in the epic called Ramayana, when Rama, distracted by the loss of his wife, imagined he could see her as if she had assumed the shape of creatures in the forest. In Sanskrit poetry, however, this story would not be seen as a repetition, but in the words of Professor Baldissera – “as a different way of treating a universal theme, the delusion provoked by the loss of the beloved”. Though the ideas might be the same, the creatures involved, the story itself and the manner of treating it are different.
In Kavya literature, arranged marriages were often portrayed as loveless. Women could only resort to acceptance of a dismal situation. If they were very daring, they could resort to an illicit love that, if discovered, would lead to ignominy or even death. Many examples of illicit love can be found in the literature, especially in comic texts, but also in the side adventures of a main story or play.
In the 8th century play Malatimadhava by Bhavabhuti, the adolescent heroine Malati is chosen by the king’s foster brother, the villain, for marriage. However, Malati had already been arranged to marry another man, Madhava. When he happens to spot Malati, he falls in love with her, stating that his “consciousness takes the very substance of her”. Professor Baldissera reads a few passes from this text that emphasized the depth of emotion of the lovers. Later in the story, the lovers become separated, and Madhava seeks help from his friend, who is a great hero. In Indian literature, boys and girls often have their own special friends who help them in every endeavour. In this story, the boy’s friend was very close to him, also because they have had the same foster mother. Professor Baldissera notes that the expressions of love between friends border on homosexual love, although this is never explicitly spoken of. “You are sandalwood to my body” is one of the expressions Madhava’s friend says to him after he faints when Malati is taken away. These are indeed very strong feelings between friends, but despite that, both boys also have female lovers and Madhava’s friends approve of him being in love with Malati.
Since love entails difficulties for young people in these stories, friends from both sides often interfere, acting as a go-between to help one or the other. Whereas in North Indian Sanskrit poetry, there are few instances when such a female go-between is unfaithful to her friend, there are no classical South Indian poems where the messenger betrays a friend. In Tamil poems, it is also often not the girl who goes out at night in secret, but the boy, who either descends from steep mountain paths or comes across the sea through a dangerous storm. In one of such poems, the girl’s friend talks to the boy and in guarded language to present him the risks he is running in these secret nighttime meetings. In doing so, she implies that it would be much easier if he declared his love publicly by asking her in marriage from her parents.
Professor Baldissera, remarking that a large part of Indian literature is indeed satirical, entertained the audience at the end of her presentation by showing a comical cartoon from the New Yorker called “the married Kama Sutra” (by Simon Rich and Farley Katz). She said that the comic and satirical literature were the only places where authors spoke openly about making love. The reason why we cannot find instances of people actually being engaged in the act of love is because of its perception as something gross. What was considered beautiful, however, is the anticipation, everything which precedes the act of love such as the initial trembling. This also applies to after love, such as the physical signs indicating that love had been consummated (perspiration or uneven and fast breathing in men, or scratches on the breasts in women).
Throughout the talk, the speaker quoted a number of beautiful passages from the texts, helping the audience to understand the ‘darkness of desire’ in love stories and to really appreciate the depth of Sanskrit literature. Due to the limitations of this report, it is impossible to include all those passages. If you are interested in learning more, please refer to translations of Kālidāsa’s play Shakuntala and Vikramorvasya, and of Bhavabhuti’s play Malatimadhava.
Anna Aksenovich is a fourth year student majoring in Diaspora and Transnational Studies. She is a Lead Editor for Synergy: The Journal of Contemporary Asian Studies, South Asia section. Her research interests include neoliberal governance, urban planning, identity and belonging and production of knowledge with a particular regional focus on India.
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