Riddles (South Asia)

Riddles have at times been an important literary or folk-literary form in South Asia. Indeed, it is thought that the world's earliest surviving poetic riddles are those found in the Sanskrit Rigveda.[1][2]

Terminology

According to Richard Salomon, "the Sanskrit term that most closely corresponds to the English 'riddle', and which is usually translated thereby, is prahelikā—a term that is not only of uncertain etymology but is also subject to widely differing interpretations and classifications."[3]

In Tamil, riddles are called Vidukathai. They circulate in both folk and literary forms.[4]

Sanskrit

Hymn 164 of the first book of the Rigveda can be understood to comprise a series of riddles or enigmas[5] which are now obscure but may have been an enigmatic exposition of the pravargya ritual.[6] These riddles overlap in significant part with a collection of forty-seven in the Atharvaveda; riddles also appear elsewhere in Vedic texts.[7][8] According to Archer Taylor,

The highly sophisticated quality of many Sanskrit riddles can perhaps be adequately illustrated by one rather simple example ... "Who moves in the air? Who makes a noise on seeing a thief? Who is the enemy of lotuses? Who is the climax of fury?" The answers to the first three questions, when combined in the manner of a charade, yield the answer to the fourth question. The first answer is bird (vi), the second dog (çva), the third sun (mitra), and the whole is Viçvamitra, Rama's first teacher and counselor and a man noted for his outbursts of rage.[9]

Accordingly, riddles are treated in early studies of Sanskrit poetry such as Daṇḍin's seventh- or eighth-century Kāvyādarśa, the Kāvyālaṃkāra of Bhāmaha (c. 700), or the fifteenth-century Sāhityadarpaṇa by Viśwanātha Kaviraja.[10] Thus, for example, Daṇḍin cites this as an example of a name-riddle (nāmaprahelikā): "A city, five letters, the middle one is a nasal, the ruling lineage of which is an eight-letter word" (the answer being Kāñcī, ruled by the Pallavāḥ dynasty).[11]

Early narrative literature also sometimes includes riddles. The Mahabharata also portrays riddle-contests and includes riddles accordingly.[12] For example, this portrays Yaksha Prashna, a series of riddles posed by a nature-spirit (yaksha) to Yudhishthira,[12] and, in the third book, the story of Ashtavakra. Ashtavakra is the son of one Kahoda, who loses a wisdom-contest to Bandin and is drowned in consequence. Though only a boy, Ashtavakra goes to the court of King Janaka to seek revenge on Bandin. On arrival, he is presented with a series of riddles by Janaka, starting with the widespread year-riddle: what has six naves, twelve axles, twenty-four joints, and three hundred and sixty spokes? (The year.) Janaka then asks a mythic riddle about thunder and lightning, and then a series of simpler, paradox-based riddles like 'what does not close its eye when asleep?' Having won Janaka's approval, Ashtavakra goes on to defeat Bandin in a further wisdom-contest, and has Bandin drowned.[13] Meanwhile, Baital Pachisi (Tales of a Vetala), originating before the twelfth century CE, features twenty four tales, each culminating in a riddle or similar puzzle. Unusually, the challenge here is for the hero to not solve a riddle.[14]

Medieval Indic languages
Further information: Riddles of Amir Khusrow

The first riddle collection in a medieval Indic language is traditionally thought to be by Amir Khusro (1253–1325), though it is debated whether he actually composed the collection.[15] If he did, he wrote his riddles in the Indic language he called Hindawi rather than his usual Persian. The collection contains 286 riddles, divided into six groups, "apparently on the basis of the structure of the riddle and the structure of the answer"; "these riddles are 'in the style of the common people', but most scholars believe they were composed by Khusro".[16] The riddles are in Mātrika metre; one example is:

Nar naari kehlaati ha',
aur bin warsha jal jati hai;
Purkh say aaway purkh mein jaai,
na di kisi nay boojh bataai.

Is known by both masculine and feminine names,
And burns up without rain;
Originates from a man and goes into a man,
But no one has been able to guess what it is.

The emboldened text here indicates a clue woven into the text: it is a pun on nadi ("river").

Modern riddles

As of the 1970s, folklorists had not undertaken extensive collecting of riddles in India, but in 1974 Ved Prakash Vatuk published a significant collection of metrical folk-riddles from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh.[17]

They circulate in both folk and literary forms.[18] Types of Tamil riddles include descriptive, question, rhyming and entertaining riddles.[19]

Riddles are mostly found in oral form. The structure resembles folk songs. Most of the riddles are based on the living things and objects around in day-to-day life.[19] A sample riddle is given below.[20]

Polutu ponaal poontottam;
vitintu parttal, veruntottam. atu enna?

If the sun sets, a flower-garden;
but if you look at it after dawn, an empty garden. What is it?

—Vaanam —The sky

References
  1. A. A. Seyeb-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), 14.
  2. L. Sternbach, Indian Riddles: A Forgotten Chapter in the History of Sanskrit Literature (Hoshiarpur 1975).
  3. Richard Salomon, "When is a Riddle not a Riddle? Some Comments on Riddling and Related Poetic Devices in Classical Sanskrit", in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, ed. by Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 168–78 (p. 168).
  4. "Folklore – An Introduction". Tamil Virtual University. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  5. Martin Haug, "Vedische Räthselfragen und Räthselsprüche (Uebersetzung und Erklärung von Rigv. 1, 164)", Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-philologischen und historischen Classe der Köngl. bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München (1875), 457–515.
  6. Jan E. M. Houben, "The Ritual Pragmatics of a Vedic Hymn: The 'Riddle Hymn' and the Pravargya Ritual", Journal of the American Oriental Society, 120 (2000), 499–536 (English translation pp. 533–36), doi:10.2307/606614. JSTOR 606614.
  7. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 13–17.
  8. See also J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens: Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur (Haarlem, 1940), pp. 154ff.
  9. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 16–17, citing A. Führer, "Sanskrit-Räthsel", Zeitschrift der Deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 39 (1885), 99–100.
  10. Prakash Vatuk, Ved (1969). "Amir Khusro and Indian Riddle Tradition". The Journal of American Folklore. 82 (324): 142–54 [142]. doi:10.2307/539075. JSTOR 539075. citing Durga Bhagwat, The Riddle in Indian Life, Lore and Literature (Bombay, 1965), 5-9.
  11. Bronner, Yigal (2012). "A Question of Priority: Revisiting the Bhamaha-Daṇḍin Debate". The Journal of Indian Philosophy. 40 (1): 67–118 [76]. doi:10.1007/s10781-011-9128-x. JSTOR 43496624. Citing Kāvyādarśa 3.114.
  12. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), pp. 11–12; doi:10.21435/sff.10.
  13. Ioannis M. Konstantakos, "Trial by Riddle: The Testing of the Counsellor and the Contest of Kings in the Legend of Amasis and Bias", Classica et Mediaevalia, 55 (2004), 85–137 (pp. 111–13).
  14. Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 25.
  15. Annemarie Schimmel, Classical Urdu Literature from the Beginning to Iqbāl, A History of Indian Literature, 8 (Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, 1975), p. 129.
  16. Prakash Vatuk, Ved (1969). "Amir Khusro and Indian Riddle Tradition". The Journal of American Folklore. 82 (324): 142–54 [144, 143]. doi:10.2307/539075. JSTOR 539075.
  17. Alan Dundes and Ved Prakash Vatuk, 'Some Characteristic Meters of Hindi Riddle Prosody', Asian Folklore Studies, 33.1 (1974), 85-153.
  18. "Folklore – An Introduction". Tamil Virtual University. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  19. Shanthi (December 1993). "Tamil riddles". International Institute of Tamil Studies. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  20. Dieter B. Kapp (1994). "A Collection of Jaffna Tamil Riddles from Oral Tradition". Asian Folklore Studies. Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture. 53 (1): 125–149. doi:10.2307/1178562. JSTOR 1178562. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
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