A Political Satire for All Times: Reading Hāsyārṇava-prahasanaṁ or the Ocean of Mirth of Jagadēśvara Bhaṭṭāchārya

AuthorJyotirmaya Sharma
Published date01 June 2019
DOI10.1177/2321023019838647
Date01 June 2019
Subject MatterArticles
Article
A Political Satire for All Times:
Reading Hāsyārava-prahasana
or the Ocean of Mirth of
Jagadēśvara Bhaṭṭāchārya
Jyotirmaya Sharma1
Abstract
Ha¯sya¯rn
.
ava, the Ocean of Mirth, a medieval Sanskrit political satire, delineates three central themes that
require serious consideration. First, the Indic traditions underline the centrality of order in a polity.
This preoccupation is underlined by the supremacy of the Ra¯jadharma-dan
.d
.anı
-ti framework. A great
deal of violence and cruelty inheres within this framework. Second, if the order is the site for violence
and force, it follows that a glimpse of freedom, unshackled from the conventional implications of the
purus
.a¯rthas can only be had in upholding the desirability of disorder. Finally, the Indic traditions can
transgress and express dissent with the help of a plurality of philosophical and conceptual alternatives
rather than hankering after a single set of foundational values or an inevitable normativity.
Keywords
Violence, freedom, Ra¯jadharma-dan
.d
.anīti, order, disorder, chaos, purus
.a¯rthas
Hāsyārṇava, the Ocean of Mirth, is essentially a medieval Sanskrit political satire. At the centre of this
complex and uncompromising text is a king. The King in Hāsyārṇava embodies chaos, the very opposite
of what an ideal king must represent, namely, order. In a unique move, the text acknowledges and
embraces the absence of order; there are moments in it that make the reader believe that behind the vast
layers of satirical pronouncement, there is a fond, finely concealed wish to leave things in their messy
and untended state. There might be subtle suggestions about the gifts that restoration of order might
offer, bounties that order often predictably brings, but these gifts also inevitably carry with them the real
possibility of violence, cruelty, death and above all, a curtailment and smothering of freedom. These
untold bounties, then, are firmly and categorically spurned. Unlike almost all known political satires
in India, this text offers no apologies for the chaos that lies at its heart. In its unabashed celebration of
disorder, Hāsyārṇava seeks no return to a Golden Age or to the rule of an iconic king. Neither does it
Studies in Indian Politics
7(1) 16–32, 2019
© 2019 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
Reprints and permissions:
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DOI: 10.1177/2321023019838647
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1 Department of Political Science, The University of Hyderabad, Gachibowli, Hyderabad, Telangana, India.
Corresponding author:
Jyotirmaya Sharma, Department of Political Science, The University of Hyderabad, Prof C. R. Rao Road, PO
Central University, Gachibowli, Telangana 500046, Hyderabad, India
E-mail: me@jyotirmayasharma.in
Sharma 17
announce the arrival of a wise sage or a learned Brahmin to reinstate an ideal order. There is no promise
of a saviour or an incarnation either. It is a political farce that ends without any denouement in sight.
Consider this: all chaos, disorder, incompetence, weakness, decadence, sin, impropriety, indifference
and above all, the distortion of a sense of reality, emanates from the King. It is equally true that these
elements inhere in almost all the other characters as well; they are all an extension of the King.
In acknowledging its undeniable richness, Hāsyārṇava’s neglect as text is also perplexing. A disso-
nant and unsettling text ought to have had better visibility. Yet, very little is known either about its
literary history or its author. We know that it was composed by a poet called Jagadēśvara Bhaṭṭāchārya.
The text tells us that he was from an impeccable lineage; whether it was caste lineage or poetic lineage
we do not know. What about the text itself? It is also normal for the date or year of composition of many
ancient or medieval texts to be the subject of intense speculation and conjecture. Hāsyārṇava falls into
this category.
While there are scant references to the text among commentators, they have either remained silent of
the question of its historical context or have given dates that widely differ. Calling it a ‘medieval satire’
has been adequate for those not hazarding to guess the period of its composition. Lee Siegel’s (1987)
substantial survey of the comic traditions in India fails to mention the text’s provenance, so does an
earlier history of Sanskrit drama by Olith (1924). David Shulman (1985, p. 89) places it in the fourteenth
century and the only other extant translation in English by Ram Dayal Munda and David Nelson (1976)
too concur with the fourteenth century date.
The other usual signs in a text used as internal evidence to date a text are unavailable to us. There are
no references to Muslims, Jesuits, gunpowder, local gods and goddesses and folk or tribal traditions.
Neither are these markers reliable tools to establish the historicity of a text. It is well-known that
Brahmins continued to write poetry and prose in Sanskrit almost until the nineteenth century inhabiting
an altogether different temporality, ignoring historical events with benign condescension.
All this is still merely circumstantial and speculative. Evidence of the text being prior to the eight-
eenth century comes from an unexpected source. In her study of the nauṭankī theatre in North India,
Kathryn Hansen (1992, p. 62) mentions Hāsyārṇava as the first svāṅg text in Braj Bhasha, composed
between 1686 and 1689 by Rasrup. Is this the same Hāsyārṇava or just the same nomenclature for an
entirely different text? Drawing upon Ram Narayan Agraval’s work, Hansen points to internal evidence
(Hansen, 1992, p. 314) that indicates that Hāsyārṇava was transcribed after a naṭ named Kamrup who
performed it before a King of Telangana. To clinch the argument that it is indeed the same Hāsyārṇava,
now disseminated and performed in many regions of medieval India, the Ramrup text alludes to Kamrup
mentioning King Anayasindhu in his performance.
It is now safe to say that Hāsyārṇava could have been composed any time between the fourteenth and
seventeenth centuries. While the text translated here has the name of an author called Jagadēśvara
Bhaṭṭāchārya attached to it, there is little guarantee that he might have been the single author of this text.
In being transcribed, performed and translated, we would have to assume that there were multiple
versions of the text and the content would have gone through the normal process of endless interpola-
tions. But each of these versions promises the incomparable story of King Anayasindhu.
The King’s dramatic arrival in the text is announced by the naṭī, the principal female actor, just before
the conclusion of the prologue in Act I. The naṭī is preoccupied and absent-minded because the King is
arriving to discuss matters of governance; voices from the wings indicate that the King is coming to
ascertain the welfare as well as misfortunes of the city’s people. This is unusual because the King usually
spends all his time in the women’s quarter of his palace.2 His arrival, then, could not be a good omen:
2 The Arthaśāstra of Kauṭilya clearly prescribes the time a king ought to spend in the women’s quarters. See 1.20.1–23 in King,
Governance and Law in Ancient India: Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (Olivelle, 2013, p. 94).

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