Grim Pleasures

May all the forest fruits for you turn sweeter, May men surround you as the bees a flower, May the sun’s scorching rays for you get dimmer, And league after league, may heavenly halls appear. (Yasodaravata, translated by Ranjini Obeyesekere) Mourning is universal, its rituals manifold. Among them, one of the most interesting and least understood is lament.

Yasodaravata (Yasodara’s Lament) is the greatest available lament in Sinhala literature. Yasodaravata is a folk poem. It has often been sung and recited along with Vessantara Kavya in houses especially on the occasion of a funeral to drive home the truth that death is inevitable. I have heard it has been also recited in temples. Yasodara is the name in Buddhist literature of the wife of Prince Siddhartha who later became the Buddha.

Yasodhara went through samsara, the endless cycle of existence with Bodhisattva. When the Bodhisattva Siddhartha decided to renounce the world in his quest, he leaves his wife and newborn son behind. Yasodara grieves and laments with despair, but at the same time struggles to understand and accept the larger cause that made her husband pursue the course he did. My moon-like lord who partook of fragrant foods That I wish special flavouring made for you.

May fragrant herbs now sprout in the forest for you And scented flowers bloom for my lord of gold. (Obeyesekere’s translation) When we speak of lament, we are speaking of many genres. A lament is an expression of mourning, but it is not necessarily mourning for the dead.

A whole class of laments, including those of the biblical book of lamentations, is songs for the fall of great cities. In cultures where forced emigration is common, we often find laments either for those who have gone into exile or composed by émigrés for the homeland and family they have left behind.

Yasodara’s figure is not presented prominently in Sri Lankan Buddhist literary canon. But her shadowy figure continuously fascinated the imagination of creative thinkers over centuries.

Many retellings of the story of Yasodara in both prose and poetry by monks as well as laymen are proof of this fascination.

The story of Yasodara has been taken as a model to represent women who are suffering from the loss of their loved ones. This unique piece of folk literature offers a lesson of tolerance, love and acceptance. Women get the direct consequences of the loss of a loved one by being isolated or financially crippled. And that feeling is universal and cannot be evaluated according to the culture that woman belong.

With the translation of the Yasodaravata into English by Prof. Ranjini Obeysekera, a long-felt need for the ‘The Story of Yasodara’ in English was fulfilled. She has also written a comprehensive introduction to her translation. In that, she provides some important points to ponder in this piece of literature.

‘The emotional balance of the poem comes from the play between the two parallel sections in the narrative poem. One which describes the pain of parting the Bodhisattva feels as he goes to see his sleeping wife and newborn son before his final departure, and the other which describes Yasodara’s grief at his departure’.

The Yasodaravata is today both a popular folk poem and sung as a funeral lament in villages. Most of the Sinhala laments are based on a story of a woman. One such lament is associated with the rituals for the goddess Pattini. There is a section in the Pattini Halla (The Tale of Pattini) where the goddess find her husband killed by the evil king of Madurai and chants verses of lament as she weeps over his dead body.

These verses are often sung in the Pattini rituals. Similarly there is the lament of Kuveni (Kuveni Hella). Kuveni, the legendary queen of island of Lanka helped Vijaya, who was exiled from India to become the ruler of the island. But later she was cheated by Vijaya by importing ‘queens’ from India. In Vessantara Kavya, there is again a lament of Madri Devi, the wife of King Vessantara. She mourns the loss of her two young children, who was given away by their father.

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