meka thokaki meka thoka mekaki thoka
SS
The goat and its tail
For the goat's tail, the goat is the tail...
THAT is the first half of the first foot of a poem composed by Tenali
Rama. One would think that this is just another joke by that jester
and
that it has no particular meaning. It is not so. It is full of
meaning. Tenali
Rama composed it to outsmart a vainglorious poet who came to
Emperor Krishnadeva Raya one day and challenged him to see if any
of his court poets would explain the meaning of a poem he had
composed.
The Emperor, himself a great poet, could not understand it and sought
the help of Tenali Rama who said, "Your Majesty, I have also
composed a poem. If the visitor can explain its meaning, I would be
happy. Let him take his time. Meanwhile, I
will explain the meaning of his poem".
The visitor could not, literally, make head or tail of Tenali Rama's
poem. Promising to explain it the next day, he
disappeared during the night.
Tenali Rama's poem is no joke and is perhaps one of his sweetest
gifts to mankind to enjoy humour in almost any
kind of situation. His prescription is: look at anything from the
wrong or the opposite side of things. You can then
see the comical aspect of things or situations you earlier thought
were grave.
Using just two words, meka (Telugu for goat) and thoka (Telugu for
tail) and with the help of different prefixes and
suffixes, the poet has composed this stanza that is perfect
grammatically and conforms to the rules of prosody.
Rendered in English, the full first foot would read: "For the goat's
tail, the goat is the tail. For the goat, its tail is the
goat's tail, but for the tail the goat itself is the tail".
This first foot has to be repeated four times to conform to rules of
prosody, but as you repeat it at a quick pace a
picture emerges of a number of goats standing in a circle, one behind
the other, one goat's face right behind the tail
of the goat standing in front. The poet uses the word tail and its
meaning alternatively to bring out his own idea.
Shakespeare had said, "What is in a name? A rose will smell as sweet
by any other name". But Indian tradition is
different. Kalidasa says: "The word and its meaning are fused
together inseparably like Parvathi and Parameswara"
(Invocatory verse in "Kumarasambhava"). Tenali Rama adheres to both
the stipulations in his poem.
It is like this: For any animal we start with what we call the head,
then its neck, then its stomach standing on four
legs and finally the tail. That is, the head is the starting point
and the end portion is the tail.
This is the normal way to look at an animal. But, instead of the head
if we start with the tail, then the whole body of
the animal becomes the end portion of the tail and is consequently
the tail's tail.
The comical situation is well brought out by the selection of the
goat for this verse. It is well known that the goat is
by and large a useless animal, although called a poor man's cow, its
milk is sometimes useful and its meat is used
as food. But the tail takes the cake for uselessness. Of all the
animals, the goat has the most useless tail. The dog,
whatever its size, shakes its tail to express its joy whenever it
sees its master, or shows its sense of fear when it
runs with the tail between its legs. The tail also covers its
delicate hind portions. The cow's long tail can be a
picture of beauty. Some cowherds even take care to comb the last
portion of the tail. The cow uses its tail to drive
away insects like mosquitoes, and the tail is useful in covering the
hind portions. Even the elephant's tail, though
absurdly short, helps the animal to protect its hind portions. The
goat's tail is, however, singularly free of any such
useful function. The short stub that passes for a tail, standing
erect as it does, that too at an odd angle, cannot be
meaningfully shaken although it is shaken a bit sometimes to ward off
insects.
The way the verse is worded clearly brings out not only the
uselessness of the goat's tail but the pettiness of most
things man regards as great or essential. This verse is almost a
commentary on one of Barthruhari's verses which
reads: "We do not enjoy the pleasures, the pleasures enjoy us; we are
not doing the thapas or rituals, it is the
rituals that are using us; we are not spending the time, it is the
time that is spending us; we are not getting our
desires fulfilled, the desires are using us, (making us useless)
("Vairagya Satakam", verse 7).
One other meaning comes to mind, and that relates to mathematics. The
circle is described as a line drawn by a
point moving at a constant distance from a fixed point. This distance
is the radius. It is possible to imagine the
moving point as a fixed point and the fixed point as the moving one,
which then apparently draws a circle of the
same radius. This concept is useful in tackling many problems as, for
instance, in computing the positions of the
planets in the sky. The planets actually are circling the sun but as
seen from the earth, the sun and other planets
seem to be circling the earth. Astronomers first calculate the
positions in the orbits around the sun, called the
heliocentric positions, and then convert them into the apparent
positions as seen from the earth (geocentric). Tenali
Rama was an expert in astronomy and astrology as well.
G. DWARAKANATH