Two Religious Poems on Hindu Nose‑ornaments
By P. K. Gode
Summary
The article presents and analyses two devotional poems that use the image of a nose‑ornament as a spiritual metaphor. The first is a Sanskrit poem called the Nāsāmauktika‑pañcaviṃśatī attributed to Śrī Veṅkaṭeśa, son of Rāmānuja Deśika and grandson of Śeṣādri, whose colophon identifies him with the epithet Veḍuṭa‑nivāsadāsa. Surviving in a single manuscript in the Government Oriental Library at Madras, the poem comprises twenty‑five verses. Each verse describes the pearl adorning the nose of the goddess Godā (Andal), comparing it to various celestial or natural phenomena—the bright half‑moon, a swarm of bees hovering over a lotus or the Indus river meeting the sea—and concludes with the refrain “may the nose‑pearl bestow upon you manifold prosperity.” The images emphasise Godā’s beauty and the auspiciousness of her ornament while simultaneously inviting devotees to contemplate her divine attributes. The second poem is a Marathi pada by the seventeenth‑century saint Keshava, preserved in the Kavyasangraha. Here the nose‑ring becomes a metaphor for the guru’s instruction: the poet praises the pearl and ruby set in pure gold and likens the devotee’s mind to a lady adorning herself before her husband. The intimacy of the guru–disciple relationship is conveyed through the imagery of adornment and the exchange of glances. Together the poems show how commonplace ornaments could serve as vehicles for expressing bhakti (devotional) sentiments. The article includes transliterations and brief explanations of difficult terms but leaves a more detailed historical analysis to future scholarship.
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Conclusion
By juxtaposing a Sanskrit hymn to Godā’s nose‑pearl with a Marathi devotional song, the article illustrates how poets across regions employed the motif of the nose‑ornament to convey spiritual devotion. In both works the physical jewel symbolises inner purity and the transformative power of divine or guru‑given knowledge. The recurring refrain of the Sanskrit poem and the homely metaphors of the Marathi song show that aesthetic appreciation and religious emotion were closely linked in pre‑modern Indian poetry.