An Ancient Love Story

"Like a flaming torch carried along at night

as she passed by to choose the groom:

like a building on the main street,

every prince turned pale when she left him behind.”
(Kālidāsa) 

Raja Ravi Varma. “Hamsa Damayanti”, 1899

Lately I feel romantic, maybe because for a few days in a row I participated and photographed young married couples during their weddings.

So I want to tell you a wonderful and ancient love story. Because what is wonderful must be shared. He who keeps hundreds of beautiful flowers to himself in the enclosure of the greenhouse, so as not to be admired by anyone, will one day wake up and find all his arid flowers lying on the ground, lifeless, due to the absence of light and heat.

 

One of my flowers, for you, is a love story that is lost in time.

The story of Nala and Damayanti, narrated in the book Vana Parvan, of the great Indian epic Mahābhārata, developed over the centuries starting from the fourth century BC, reaching its completion in the fourth century AD, then also taken up in other Hindu texts, such as “Nishadha Charita”, one of the five great “Mahakavyas” poems, written in Sanskrit by Sriharsha in the 12th century.

Damayanti was the virtuous daughter of Bima, King of Vidarbha, whose beauty surpassed perfection, to the point that even the gods were in love with her. And the mother, the powerful queen, wanted a god to marry her daughter when the time came, and certainly not just any god, but Indra, the king of all divinities.

Therefore the mother sent in flight a hamsa (in Sanskrit it is a water bird, some translations describe it as a goose, but others – as in classical iconography – it's said to be a swan) containing a message and an invitation to the ceremony of the choice of the groom to the god Indra.

Damayanti, by her side, listened to that very royal swan decant the praises of Nala, ruler of Nishada. Besides his beauty, Nala was famous for his honesty, strength, skill with horses and culinary experience: he wrote the first cookbook in history – the “Pakadarpanam”.

The winged messenger who was to reach Indra was surprised by a storm and was forced to land in the kingdom of Nala, who took care of him, so the swan told to the ruler about the beauty of Damayanti and her search for a husband. At those words Nala fell in love with the beautiful daughter of Bima and decided that he would become her husband.

 

At the age of marriage, the father organized the svayamvara, that is the ceremony in which the princess would choose her husband, among the candidates, putting a garland of flowers around his neck.

Princes and kings from everywhere came to the kingdom, all attracted by the dazzling beauty of Damayanti.

Even four deities: Agni, Indra, Vayu and Varuna.

It was during his journey to Vidarbha that Nala met the four most powerful Vedic gods; the young ruler bowed at their feet, showing respect, and saying he would do anything in their honor, then the four deities ordered Nala to persuade the princess to marry one of them.

Heartbroken Nala obeyed and, thanks to a powerful mantra offered to him by the devas, he became invisible to enter the Damayanti room to deliver the message.

The princess listened to Nala's words and replied: 

“I will honor those mighty gods in a worthy way, but I will choose as a husband only that man who has long lived in my heart!”

 

Unknown. "Nala and Damayanti"

When the four deities learned of Damayanti's response, thanks to their powers, they assumed the form of Nala, so when the master of ceremonies announced the ruler of Nisada, five identical Nalas entered the court, to the amazement of all.

At the end of the svayamvara the moment came to choose the husband for Damayanti, and without any hesitation she placed the garland of flowers around the neck of the real Nala, among the astonished eyes of the gods.

“How did you know him?” they ask her.

So Damayanti replied: “I saw that Nala blinked, that his body was shading and that he put his feet on the ground. All things that you, being divine beings, do not do. And so I had no difficulty in choosing him, the only man I love.”

 

The pantheon of Indian deities is extremely complex and numerous.

Everything is written and collected in the Rigveda which are the origin, as primary writing, of Indian and Hindu beliefs, with the Creator God and the One Prajāpati and the tripartite cosmos: sky, atmosphere and earth, with all the main higher divinities, from the trimurti Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, up to the devas and asuras, for a total of thirty-three divinities (Tridaśā), who have become more than a million in modern Hinduism.

Deva and asura, are the “luminous beings” against the “spiritual beings”, very often demons fighting with the former. The devas themselves are anthropomorphized and, like human beings, they feel emotions, they have desires, they yearn for power, they want to get married. But what distinguishes them from humans, as divinities, is that they love what is secret, mysterious, they are immortal, they never sleep, they don't cast any shadow, they don't blink and they don't touch the ground with their feet.

 

Damayanti knew this well and this was the secret of her choice, fueled by her deep love for Nala. The story continues, after the wedding the two royals had two children and were happy.

But as in almost all the stories of the Indian and Hindu epic, as well as in the Greek-Latin ones, the two protagonists have an opponent plotting behind them, in this case it's Kali (pronounced as Koli), the male demon considered the tenth and last avatar of Vishnu, considered as the source of all evil, nothing to do with the terrible warrior goddess Kali, emanation of Durga, the Mother Goddess.

Envious and angry that Damayanti preferred to marry a mortal rather than a deity, the demon wanted to attempt Nala's righteousness, diverting him from dharma, the path of virtue. It took 12 years to find his weakness, eventually finding it in his passion for the game of dice. In this way, by challenging his brother Pushkara to dice, he lost his entire kingdom, forced to live with his family for three years in the forest.

Walking in those places Damayanti injured her foot, and one morning, while she was sleeping, Nala went off into the forest where he met a Kakotaga Naga, a serpent demon who was burning, saving it. As a reward, the Naga transformed him into Bahuka, a horrible dwarf, advising him to be hired – in this guise – as the personal cook of King Rituparna, a very skilled dice player, in order to learn this skill thoroughly and be able to have his kingdom back.

This was the happy ending of the story, with Nala gaining his kingdom, challenging his brother the dice again, and returning with Damayanti and their sons.

 

Raja Ravi Varma. “Nala and Damayanti”, 1909

The love story of Nala and Damayanti is among the best known of the Mahābhārata. There are many versions and interpretations over time.

It was also highly appreciated by Sufism, especially in the figure of Abu al-Fayz Faizi', Akbar's graduate poet, since Sufism is the actualization of Truth through love and devotion, and in this “romance” (in the triple etymological sense of romance, tale and romanticism) the Sufi found three powerful oppositions: love vs. the intellect (aql), love vs. beauty (husn) and ishq vs. frenzy (junnun).

Ishq is an Arabic word, especially used in the Indian sub-continent, not present in the Koran but which refers to the irresistible desire to obtain the possession of the beloved so that the lover can reach perfection (kamal), counterposed to junnun, which in Urdu means “obsession”.

It's the challenge of the pure love of two lovers against the obsession and exalted love of the deities, which in the Sufi perspective is considered an evil. For love to reach perfection must necessarily also use the intellect, the measure, to achieve its goal of rising to the truth, as Damayanti did, not only being blinded by love for Nala, but remaining cunning and alert in her choice.

But the reason why I am fascinated by this story is another.

First of all for its beauty itself.

That was a time when great tales and epics were written to define the cosmos, in every culture.

It was told of divinities, loves and passions, and often humans and divine beings merged, loved, challenged, told with a style so high that it has never been reached again in literature. And the theme of the transformations between human and divine was also dear to Greek-Latin poetry.

In our tradition the Latin poem “Metamorphoses” by Ovid, composed in the 8th century AD, is unforgettable and unsurpassed in beauty, in which it tells of the creation of the cosmos, and of the metamorphoses of divinities, fauns, water lilies, heroes, men, minerals, plants, in a continuous vortex of human passions and unhappiness:

“In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas
corpora. Di, coeptis – nam vos mutastis et illas –
adspirate meis primaque ab origine mundi
ad mea perpetuum deducite tempora carmen.”

“The inspiration pushes me to tell about changed forms
in new bodies. O gods – these transformations were also your doing –
please follow my enterprise and let my song
unfolds uninterrupted from the first origin of the world to my time.”

Carlo Saraceni. “The fall of Icarus”, 1605-1608

 

What struck me deeply is the vision of love that envelops Damayanti.

Usually, in our lives, in the arts and in literature, love is always experienced as that superior and supernatural force that pushes human to heaven – passion exalts and elevates us, makes us “divine”.

It's like a sort of magical mantra that changes our daily appearance and makes us superior in the eyes of those who love us.

At least this is our desire and, too often, an illusion.

 

But in this story it is the opposite.

Damayanti is able to recognize the real Nala thanks to his imperfections of being mortal, or as Nietzsche said graniticly, of being “human, all too human”.

It is thanks to his shadow, his eyelashes forced to beat, his feet constrained to the ground that she was able to recognize him among the gods, cunning and powerful, but still incapable of being definitively “human”, with our imperfections and weaknesses – with our shadows cast on the ground.

Yet Damayanti, in her unrivaled beauty, is just what she loves about Nala, and her choice should perhaps make us more aware of our weaknesses and imperfections.

The dream of love as a magic formula that transforms us into divine beings and raises us into the skies is good for romance books or for our teens of the first kisses and tears.

In reality, love is a passion like any other, and it's unable to make any shadow disappear from the ground, nor to make our feet rise in the air.

But whoever truly loves us must find the strength precisely in these imperfections.

Put the garland of flowers around the neck of our weaknesses and defects, of our “humanity”.

This, I believe, is the splendid lesson of the love story between Nala and Damayanti.

 

And this is my flower for you.

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Diego Manzi: “Enchantment. The divinities of India” (Le Lettere, 2019)
Ovid: “Metamorphosis” (Einaudi, 1994) 

Italian version