The Kondai on the Mandai: Why Dayasahasram Isn’t a Desika Composition
What pained Body soda was not his being stuck between a rock and a hard place. Think about it for a moment.
He knew well that he is indeed a joke, in the midst of the infamous Inspector and Satyamoorthy. He found in it a silver lining that his shadowing would let him be close to Surudhi; a saving grace after the Inspector calling the Master a Mama.
But, when his meticulously planned camouflage was such an easy track for Satya’s sidekicks, Body soda did lose his cool.
It took him a while to realise, “the kondai on his mandai” was a dead giveaway.
When one steps back a bit and observes, we have many in our midst that are Body sodas in varying shades.
Take Dayasahasram for a classic example.
Something that is a telltale in established writers of quality, is signature style, phrases, and patterns.
This is all the more pronounced in those that are prolific in their works; one gets large enough a corpus to work with, to identify style motifs. Besides philosophical layering and stylistic choices with metres, something that is unique with Swami Desikan is his inimitable style of introducing himself and his AcArya santati, and the same while closing texts.
So, when a work is introduced as “ve~NkaTanAthena anugRihItam,” the first touchstone before getting into the layers of theology and philosophy, is basic literary style. And, does dayAsahasram fit the bill? At least to a bare minimum?
The hard, uncomfortable answer is, no.
While usual stylistic would mean he introduces himself and his AcArya parampara, i.e AtreyarAmAnuja and further, our work at hand conspicuously shows two glaring tracks.
First, the lack of any reference to his own AcArya santati. Second, referencing kUrAdhinAtha’s discarding of svarNavaTTil (in the context of a discernment that lacks mamatA).
Now that this layer is addressed cursorily, one is led to the next, on textual concordance. Generally, when lofty works by equally lofty AcAryas are composed, the likes of “na bhaktimAn tvat caraNAravinde” gets explained off by two streams. First, naicAnusandhAna and the latter, positing oneself in the shoes of the laity as it were, for them to relate to later.
But, for someone who said, “silaM kimanalaM bhavet analaM audaraM bAdhitum,” “dravyatyAgI na cAhaM,” by dayAsahasraM makes it hard to justify veracity, even as a hyperbole of the above kind.
Moving to the next layer of consistency in statements, one finds more than just an eyesore. Swami Desikan has a particular way of putting forward pramANas; shruti-smRitItihAsa-purANas. The reason is very simple; prabalapramANa needs to set the anchor and then aprabalapramANas then aligning with it.
Similar in sense is how he handles pUrvapakShas in vAdagranthas/vyAkhyAnagranthas. Introduce the opponent’s strongest point, explain to bits how it does not mean what they opine and that it is our own strength, then introduce what is superficially seen as “our strength.”
And for someone with such a rigour, having inconsistent flow of texts, is rather out of place. What does the work at hand do? Just that. Starts addressing shrInivAsa at the start of the verse, and then in some invariant mode, adds dayA in.
As the parlance would say, one would be right to call it a case of, “இப்படிப்பட்ட பசுமாட்டை, தென்னைமரத்தில் கட்டுவார்கள்.”
One then would avoid going into a layer further to the heart of such questions; how does the work treat dayA?
Is it paraduHkha duHkhitva or paraduHkha nirAcikIrShA. A cursory reading of the work surfacese that it does the former.
Only problem is, Swami Desikan very clearly upholds only the latter and at many a places explains why bhaTTaparAshara and others use phrases like paraduHkha duHkhitva.
Such uses like “vyasaneShu manuShyANAM bhRshaM bhavati duHkhitaH,” are also handled the same way, if one were to look at Govindaraja’s vyAkhyA.
And for an involved reader, the takes on nairhetukya are to be the core and more telling of the unfortunate episode this is.
bAladhanvI jaggu sudarshanAcArya in his bhUmikA makes two remarks that make this entire positing of “anugRihItam,” a castle of cards.
First, the nirhetukA dayA. If one were to even gloss through tAtparyacandrikA, it would be amply clear where Swami Desikan holds things. “ahetutvAdi bhrama vyudAsAya Aha idAnIM ayatnopanatamiti”.
One would also find the publisher’s sticky wicket in using, “nirhetukA dayA eva khalu jagatsRiShTeH” and “tattakarmAnuguNaM viShamasRShTim”.
Second, and the worst part, is the premise as held by the publisher of Swami Desikan superintended varavarNinI’s body and through her, over time, created this work that lakShmI dAsa recorded.
Leaving aside the nuances of adhiShThAna, a remark like “mama antyakAleShu bhAvitAH anekAH apUrNAH ca AshAH,” is rank illogical and also, to put it mild, A.P. Nagarajan level writing.
Or, in some refined sense, manufactured consent for a future generation that thinks Swami Desikan did indeed have a hand in such work. Nay! worse, lecture on it with no thought of said concerns.
Doing a simhAvalokana, and going back to Body soda, what many such spurious works tend to miss is that the human mind, like Hansel and Gretel, always leaves crumbs of its own rumination wherever it visits.