Towards a history of courtly emotions in early medieval India, c. 300–700 CE

ABSTRACT

The birth of courtly emotions in early India was intimately linked to the proliferation of royal households across the subcontinent between the fourth and seventh centuries CE. Though earlier political formations saw the consolidation of monarchy, the rise of imperial ideology, and the evolution of royal functionaries, sources neither shed light upon, nor stress, the affective world of individuals around the king and his court until the first centuries of the Common Era. A convergence of sources from the end of the third century—including inscriptional encomia, manuals on polity, and didactic poetry—all point to the steady emergence of a constellation of openly articulated emotions that were deemed to constitute the relations between men of birth and standing who attended the lordly households of the era. These emotions, often obliquely perceived through the modern lens of a ‘classical’ literary culture’ are here situated in the political context of the fourth to seventh centuries and through an analysis across genres, with the hope of moving beyond current assumptions about the relations between aesthetically defined emotions (bhāva and rasa) and the social world that produced them. In particular, the essay explores different types of bonds of love and affection and their various inflections that were thought to arise between courtly actors. It further argues that knowledge about these emotions contributed to a kind of ‘science of emotional interpretation’ that helped men and women express and interpret emotions at court and negotiate the complex relationships that were cast in their idiom.

KEYWORDS:

• Courtly emotions
• early medieval India
• courtly love
• affection
• interpretation of emotions
• management of emotions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See the remarks of Trainor, “Seeing, Feeling, Doing,” 523.

2. Scholastic and monastic circles developed more detailed, distinct, and even variant ideas of the origin and role of emotions in public, but particularly soteriological life. For a review of the status of emotions in traditional Indian philosophical schools, see Tuske, “The Concept of Emotion.”

3. This is the case in various soteriological discourses as well. See the discussion of vedanā in early Buddhist sources in Heim, “Aesthetics of Excess.”

4. See McCrea, Teleology of Poetics; and Pollock, Rasa Reader.

5. For a assessment and critique of Koselleck’s approach, see Pernau, “Emotional Translations.”

6. See Chattopadhyaya, Aspects of Rural Settlements.

7. See Ali, Courtly Culture; and Pollock, Language of the Gods.

8. See Trautmann, Kauṭilya and the Arthaśāstra; and more recently and definitively, McClish, “Political Brahmanism.”

9. Few studies of this important text exist. See Singh, “Politics, Violence and War.”

10. See Artola, “The Title Pañcatantra.”

11. Though the text likely emerged from already existing traditions, it is not possible to reconstruct its relation to those traditions. The earliest shape of the current text thus remains an enunciative one and should probably be dated to the Gupta period, though it was likely re-edited and partly rewritten around the eighth or ninth century in Kashmir, where it gained its first commentary, see Sircar, Studies in the Yugapurāṇa, 21–23; and Pollock, Rasa Reader, 47.

12. Inden, “Hierachies of Kings.”

13. Boquet and Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities, 106.

14. The preface of the Pañcatantra, for example, declares that the treatise was composed for three dullard princes of king Amaraśakti, but many of the lessons relate to the policies of ministers.

15. See the discussion in Kāmandaki’s Nītisāra 1.33–37.

16. On defeat of the group of six enemies in political manuals, see Arthaśāstra 1.6.1, 1.7.1; and Nītisāra 1.57.

17. See the opinions quoted in Arthaśāstra 8.3.1–12, and though Kauṭilya disagrees with this particular opinion, he himself notes that kāma, or desire, for example, was to be enjoyed by the king if it did not contravene dharma and artha, see Arthaśāstra 8.3.13–22.

18. See Inscriptions of the Śarabhapurīyas, vol. 2, no. 3.3, 108.

19. See Ali, “Violence, Courtly Manners.”

20. The Arthaśāstra (9.4.4, 9.4.25), in advising the king about to march, notes that incitement to anger could be the cause of political advantage, but that anger itself was more often a hindrance to it.

21. See Epigraphia Indica, vol. 8 (1905–6), no. 5. My interpretation follows Herman Tieken’s conjectural re-reading of the term ghaṭikā as ‘customs house’ rather than ‘college,’ though it is not material to the argument made here. See Tieken and Sato, “‘ghaṭikā’ of the Twice-Born.”

22. For European counterparts, see Boquet and Nagy, Medieval Sensibilities, 105–22; and Jaeger, Ennobling Love, 36–53.

23. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 1: āryyo hīty upaguhya bhāvapiśunair utkarṇṇitair romabhiḥ sabhyeṣūcchvasiteṣu tulyakulajamlānānanodvīkṣitaḥ snehavyālulitena baṣpaguruṇā tattvekṣiṇā cakṣuṣā yaḥ pitrābhihito nirīkṣya nikhilaṃ pāhyevam urvim iti.

24. See Gupta, “Kāca.”

25. They could in some cases be used in relation to female-male relationships, as in the Eran pillar inscription commemorating the immolation (sati) of the wife of the Gupta general Goparāja, that describes her as ‘devoted and attached’ (bhaktānuraktā). See Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 43, 353.

26. See, for example, descriptions in the grants of the seventh and eighth century Maitraka kings of Valabhi: Epigraphia Indica 1 (1894), no. 13, 86; Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1888) no. 39, 173, 177. We also encounter the idea that the Goddess fortune is overcome with affection (anurakta) for the king, as in the eighth century inscription of the Early Gurjara king Ahirola. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 4 (1955), no. 24, 105.

27. For examples of various formulations as to the causes of affection among nobles, occuring between the fifth and eighth centuies, beyond those cited in the previous note, see Epigraphia Indica 19 (1927–28), no. 19, 118; Epigraphia Indica 24 (1937–38), no. 17, 134–135. Ābhigāmika guṇa and triśakti are technical terms from nīti manuals. The former were ‘attractive qualities’ that kings and princes were to cultivate to pull courtiers and servants to themselves, and the latter a formulation meant to describe the sources of a king’s power. See Arthaśāstra 6.1.3, 6.2.33.

28. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1888), no. 39, 177: atiprakṛṣṭānurāgasarabhasavaśīkṛtapraṇatasamastasāmāntacakracūḍāmaṇimayūkhakhacitacaraṇakamalayugalaḥ.

29. References to devotion to one’s father are numerous – often devotion to one’s ‘father’s feet.’ See fifth and sixth century land grants of the Pitṛbhakta (‘Father Devoted’) dynasty of Kalinga, Epigraphia Indica 12 (1913–14) no. 2; Epigraphica Indica 4 (1896–97) no. 16, etc. See Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (rev. 1981), no. 14, for description of the fifth century Gupta feudatory Naravarman as devoted to the gods, the twice-born, spiritual preceptors, and kin. For the description of the Vakāṭaka king Pravarasena II, son of the Gupta princess Prabhāvatiguptā, as ‘devoted to those who are worthy’ (pātragatabhakta) in the fifth century Jamb Plates, see Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 5 (1963): no. 3.

30. For the juxtaposition of the terms as virtues, see the description of Parṇadatta, a Gupta courtier, in the Junagadh rock inscription, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 28; and also the fifth century copper plates of the Vālkha king Bhuluṇḍa from central India, who is praised in the inscription as “viṣṇoḥ parameṇa bhaktisnehānurāgeṇa śirasā praṇipatya,” A Copper-Plate Hoard, no. 1.

31. For an analysis of the Tiruvorriyur inscription, see Ali, “Death of a Friend.”

32. jānātyeva mānyo yathaikagotratā vā samānajātitā vā samaṃ saṃvardhanaṃ vā ekadeśanivāso vā darśanābhyāso vā, parasparānurāgaśravaṇam vā parokṣopakārakaraṇam vā samānaśīlatā snehasya hetavaḥ/tvayi tu vinā kāraṇenādṛṣṭe’pi pratyāsanne bandhāviva baddhapakṣapātaṃ kimapi snihyati me hṛdayaṃ dūrasthe’pīndoriva kumudākare: Harṣacarita, 24.

33. Kṛṣṇa’s curious affection for Bāṇa, as his ensuing dialogue implies, is based on a discerning analysis of his reputation – creating a kind of ‘long distance affection’ for the young poet. One is reminded of the attraction that Nala and Damayantī feel for one another based entirely on their reputations.

34. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 1.

35. See the Bhitari pillar inscription of Skandagupta, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 31. There are several variations on this formula, which is used to characterized relations not only between kings and princes but between lords and their retainers, dependants, and vassals as well. For an illuminating discussion of the meaning of these formulas, see Ferrier and Törzsök, “Meditating on the King’s Feet?” Ferrier and Törzsök provide a welcome critique of and corrective to earlier scholars (including the present author), in rendering the phrase ‘meditating upon the feet of.’

36. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 1: grahaṇamokṣānugrahajanitapratāponmiśramahābhāgyasya.

37. Ibid. Examples are copious. Two further examples include the Eran stone pillar inscription of the time of Budhagupta, which characterizes the relations between two brothers (subordinates to the Guptas) in such a way that the younger brother is said to have been accepted by the favour of his elder brother (tatprasādaparigṛhīta), Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 39; and an inscription of king Jīvitagupta, from a later Gupta house based in Magadha during the seventh century, that addresses royal servants as ‘those who subsist on the favour of our feet’ (asmatpādaprasādopajīvinaḥ), Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1888), no. 46.

38. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 1.

39. The seals on the copper plates recording donations to Brahmins by the Śarabhapurīya kings in the sixth century describe the king as having a ‘conciliated’ or ‘gracious’ heart (prasannahṛdaya). See Inscriptions of the Śarabhapurīyas, no. 4, et passim.

40. Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3 (1981), no. 28: saṃraṃjayāṃ prakṛtīr babhūva pūrvasmitābhāṣaṇamānadānaiḥ niryantraṇānyōnyagṛhapraveśaiḥ saṃvarddhitaprītigṛhopacāraiḥ.

41. Arthaśāstra 5.5.5. See also Nītisāra 5.34. Elsewhere the Arthaśāstra (1.15.8–9) defines iṅgita as ‘any unusual action’ (iṅgitam anyathāvṛttiḥ) and ākāra as ‘putting on a visage’ (ākṛtigrahaṇam ākāraḥ).

42. Arthaśāstra 5.5.6, 5.5.7; Nītisāra 5.35–36, 5.39.

43. For an example of a courtier apprehending the king’s disfavour by observation of his gestures and demeanour, see the story of Vasurakṣita and Anantavarman in Daśakumāracarita, chap. 8, 195.

44. Mānavadharmaśāstra 8.25–26.

45. Arthaśāstra 1.16.12. Nītisāra 14.46 advises the king to observe carefully the envoys reporting to him.

46. Kādambarī, p. 59.

47. Arthaśāstra 1.15.7.

48. Arthaśāstra 1.15.10.

49. Arthaśāstra 5.5.6.

50. Nītisāra 13.15.

51. Pañcatantra 1.1ff.

52. Pañcatantra 1.18.

53. See Arthaśāstra 1.17.28–41. The Junagadh rock inscription, dated to the time of Skandagupta, notes that both Parṇadatta and his son received the favour of the emperor after examinations of their qualities. See Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum (1981), no. 28.

54. See Krishan, “Astronomical Revolution in India.” Varāhamihira’s fifth to sixth century ‘Great Compendium’ or Bṛhatsaṃhitā contains large amounts of physiognomic knowledge incorporated into this new astronomy. For a comparison between Gupta period and Roman physiongnomic knowledges, see Johanning, Reading the Signs.

55. See Elias, The Court Society, 104–106.