Penance of The Tongue

By K. VISWANATHAM, M.A.
(Reader in English, Andhra University)

All human problems come to the question of speech. Words may ignite the fuse or pour oil on troubled waters. Beatrix’s brittle remark that Lord Mohun was awaiting Lord Castlewood’s death to marry Lady Castlewood sets human boulders cataracting and crashing to red ruin. How far and how disastrously words influence or control thought is shown by Stuart Chase in ‘The Tyranny of Words’. Communism–the word–throws a great continent off her balance and Capitalism stinks in the nostrils of another. Due consideration to the listener, propriety and moderation in the use of words, might prevent the Gordian-knotting of human problems. Compliment may be like the encounter of dog apes, but it does stop much barking or simian jargoning. Convention or formality, though dry, is the grace of our life ‘red in tooth and claw’. Etiquette is the measure of a nation’s development though the vitamins are boiled out of it. Euphuism may be, and is, artificial moulding of language, but euphemism is not a figure of speech merely. It is a figure of thought, and a command of euphemism is a command of life and a conquest of culture. To say that a fellow ‘kicked the bucket’ is an offensive way; to say that he was gathered to the bosom of Abraham is a friendly way. The various figures of Rhetoric are not a barren faggot of futile ingenuity but an attempt at thought in as many charming ways as possible. Even abuse becomes the delicatest compliment, as in the devotee’s words:

Kas svardhuni vivekas te nayase papino’ divam

(Ganga! Is there wisdom in you? You take even sinners to Heaven.) Abuse is purged of its crudeness to look like its opposite, as in the words of a heroine to her Maid:

Yanmadartham vilunapi dantairapi nakhairapi

(Maid! For my sake your body is bruised by teeth and nails. A loyal confidante you!)

In ‘The Fairie Queene’ of Spenser (Book VI, Canto VI) the Squire and the Dame seek the help of the Hermit to become whole:

No wound, which warlike hand of enemy
Inflicts with dint of sword, so sore doth light
As doth the poysnous sting, which infamy
Infixeth in the name of noble wight.

The Hermit advises them to seek the cure in themselves:

First learn your outward senses to refraine
From things that stirre up fraile affection;
Your eies, your eares, your tongue, your talk restraine
From that they most affect, and in due termes containe.

The wounds that are inflicted by a rabid tongue are a villainous gangrene. A harsh tongue is a rabid dog and ought to be chained. To be blamed as some one that you are not is the most unkindest cut of all. To condemn Karna as a hard-fisted curmudgeon, to brand Christ as a self-seeker, to abuse hospitality as formality, to censure a silent man as a blab–is to abuse words and make the tongue a poison duct; cobra bite or scorpion sting is less harmful than a shrew’s eloquence.

In his Plays Shakespeare deals with the pangs of the Heroes about their ruined name. Hamlet asks his friend to ‘absent him from felicity awhile’ to tell his story aright. Othello desires that nothing should be extenuate nor aught set down in malice. The most memorable expression of this mood comes in the Sonnets. Shakespeare who is said to be ‘gentle’ according to contemporary witnesses (and it is by that gentle epithet, says Prof. Raleigh, that Englishmen wish to remember their greatest Poet) shouts challengingly at the top of his voice:

No, I am that I am and they that level
At me abuses reckon up their own.

These lines, says a commentator, are his single and final self-criticism. They are almost appalling in their superb brevity and concentrated insight; beside them even the pride of Milton dwindles and grows pale, for here Shakespeare, for one revealing moment, speaks not as though he were God’s elect but as though he were God Himself. Shakespeare is aware that none is so superior to another as to censure him:

For why should others’ false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or in my frailties why are frailer spies
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?

These lines explain Shakespeare’s understanding of sin and his almost divine compassion. Philosophers might write the style of gods but they do not endure tooth-ache patiently; they are as weak as water. We are all weak and we should not judge and condemn but understand and interpret. “Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” Shakespeare is the Englishmen’s Christ, and Milton their Rhadamanthus. Shakespeare, writes C. S. Lewis, is in one sense not only the greatest love poet but the only love poet in English Literature. “He conceals nothing and condemns nothing,” writes Dover Wilson. It is rather ununderstandable why Greene attacked him.

Hang up philosophy, cries Romeo, unless it can return Juliet to his arms. Hamlet asks Polonius to use the players ‘better’. “Use everyone after his desert and who should escape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.” The Duke in ‘As You Like It’ condemns Jacques’ censuring tongue as a most foul sin. One who condemns the world, said Burke wisely, condemns only oneself.

Nothing is ever cherished by us so lovingly as a good word about us. ‘I am hurt past surgery’, weeps Cassio. ‘Are you hurt?’ asks Iago. ‘No’, says Cassio, ‘my reputation is gone.’ One whose name is ruined is hurt past surgery. Antony is disqualified with very shame because he has offended reputation. One whose name is besmirched is

Defaced, deflowered and to death devote.

Arjuna is tempted by Krishna by this appeal to the most strongly entrenched weakness of man:

Avachyavadamscha bahunvadishyanti tavahitah
Nindantastava samarthyam tato duhkhataram nu kim.

(Many a vile word will thy enemies speak slandering thy strength. Could anything be more painful than that?,

The Gita in the 17th chapter speaks of three kinds of Penance (14-16)

(i)                  of the Body, 
(ii)                of Speech,
(iii)               of the Mind.

The worship of the gods, of the twice-born, of teachers and the wise, purity, uprightness, abstinence and non-violence constitute the Penance of the Body. Serenity of mind, beneficence, silence, self-control and purity of heart are the penance of the Mind:

What is the Penance of the Tongue?

anudvegakaram vakyam: inoffensive statement,
sat yam: truthful,
privahitam: pleasant and beneficial, 
svadhyayabhyasanam: recitation of the Vedas.

What can be possibly regarded as the finest delicacy of utterance and unimpeachable courtesy occurs in the Ramayana. In the last great fight with Ravana, Rama tells the charioteer sent by Indra how he should drive the chariot and then Valmiki makes him say:

smaraye tvam na sikshaye,

one of those miracles of poetry that turn up as if casually, and light up a whole personality and suggest the culture of a nation. Rama tells him: I am just reminding you, not instructing you. Perhaps Rama thought: Matali is the divine charioteer. Who am I, a mortal, to instruct him? It may be like instructing a monkey in hopping or an old man in coughing. Even if Rama instructed him it would not be a lapse. But Rama will not be Rama if he did not say: na sikshaye. In another context, passing by a lake, Rama hears melodies rising from beneath the waters and asks his companion sage to explain to him the mystery if proper. To know the measure of Valmiki’s culture one has only to count the number of times expressions like vagvidamvarah, priyamvadah, etc., occur in the great Epic. Chained by Rama’s nobility and fineness any woman other than Sita would have conducted herself like Sita; any brother other than Bharata or Satrughna would have clung to him as they did. Rama is the greatest and the finest and the kingliest of men in literature. He is characterised as

Buddhiman madhurabhashi purvabhashi priyamvadah.

It is the word ‘purvabhashi’ that gauges the height of Aryan culture and idealism. Elsewhere he is smitapurvabhashi. The mellowness of Sanskrit culture is seen in the pleasant aspect and words of even gods. One has to note prasannavadanam dhyavet in the sloka about Vighneswara, or in ‘Srisukta’ ‘kam sosmitam’ ……………sriyam’ etc.

Thucydides makes Pericles say of Athens: We give free play to all in our public life and carry the same spirit in our daily relations with each other; we have no black looks or angry words for our neighbour if he enjoys himself in his own way.

II

The art of conducting a controversy without acrimony or bitterness is a lost or languishing art. Even in academic discussions–let alone the irremediable political debates–crude verbal porcupines bristling with stinging quills are thrown about. We need not conduct controversies like the Epic heroes on the field of fight. I believe the Epic heroes use such barbed speech to strike terror into the opponent or to stimulate their courage, as a lone traveller whistles or sings to put the lid on his fears. Such speech is the privilege of the game, though heroes of a higher cast refrain from immodest boasting. A hero of the front rank is said to be an ‘avikatthana’. C. F. Andrews once remarked that the controversy between Tagore and Gandhiji was a measure of the culture attained by the country.

We should be extremely careful in the use of words. There is an Egyptian saying that as long as words remain within the lips we are their masters; but when they are out we are their servants. An unkind word may set families flying apart or create an ever-widening chasm between two nations. Kind words are better than coronets or a royal feast. The elders say: Food that is given is digested in a few hours, but a kind word uttered remains for ever and ever. A kind word leaps across centuries of time or centuries of miles and throws a bridge of love over yawning gulfs.

Even in laughter purposeless laughter is said to be of the purest English make. British humour is a kind of mysticism. Laughter which is supremely itself without any ulterior motive is the ally of the Penance of the Tongue. When advised by a doctor to walk on an empty stomach. Lamb replied, ‘Whose?’ That is a story which the doctor would have delighted in broadcasting out of high jinks.

Words are such rascals that the law should bind them. Words have overtones and undertones, and what one regards as an innocent word may be a red rag to another. We have to cultivate the art of thinking through words and not with words, as otherwise we become the slaves of words. Words should be the ‘ifrits’ of our minds; we should not become the ‘jinns’ of words. This is what is called word independence or resistance to suggestion. Bombs lose much of their terror by being called eggs; ‘wives and children in danger’, if repeated half a dozen times, may create the wildest emotional stampede.

If we use words strictly defining them, half the controversies will cease; if we avoid emotive words, three-fourths of the conflicts can be evaded; if offensive words are jettisoned, there is a cent per cent disarmament of minds and hearts; if we constantly associate with high-souled persons, our very propensities to use words that hurt may be effectively scotched.

III

The environment definitely shapes our linguistic variety. ‘Speak that I may know thee’, is a profound maxim. HigginS in Shaw’s play has so perfected his Phonetics that he easily spots the region of speech-sounds he listens to. What we speak is What we are. The seawaves beat in a sailor’s speech as the air-currents drift in an airman’s slang. The speech of the slaughter-house differs by the breadth of the whole heavens from that of the hermitage. The story is told of two parrots having been separated when young and brought up, one in a slaughter-house and the other in a hermitage. The first one shocked a tired traveller by his ‘Kill him! Murder him!’ into continuing his journey till he reached the hermitage, where the other parrot uttered heart-easing words like ‘Welcome, please! Rest awhile!’

Angry words bite like falchions; soft Words are a spread of ‘Burnol’. By a well turned compliment to the excellent wine, the soldiers of Augustus escaped from the executioner’s axe. There is the popular saying that if our tongue is good, the whole town will be good to us. A Samskrit sloka says: Lakshmi moves on the tip of the tongue; friends and relatives are there; imprisonment is on the tongue’s tip as also even death. Instead of saying crudely appreciatively that a woman’s breasts are plump, one can say with a poet: Her ripening youth like a gracious host is meeting half-way Kama (the god of love), the guest. In the Great March to Meru the Pandavas drop, one by one, all except Dharma. When Arjuna sinks, Bhima asks his brother and king why Arjuna the mighty warrior sank, and is told that he once let slip the boast that he would singlehanded destroy the entire host of the enemies in a single day. This boast, even if a slip of the tongue, even if appropriate on the lips of a ‘maharatha’, was enough to strike down Arjuna. What a noble courtesy even to the power of the enemy is implied in that story! How gracefully does Kalidasa speak of Ahalya’s error: kshanakalatratam yayau. He does not say that she was whored by Indra but became for a moment his leman. In the Ramayana, Rama constantly checks Lakshmana: whenever he is passionate against Kaikeyi, or instructs him to slur over the episode.

Every time a harsh word is said, Christ is crucified, the Buddha is denied and one’s own true self is banished. If after a lapseof time we think of our petty quarrels and stinging words, we are ashamed of our own speech. Anger is temporary madness, Let us count a hundred before we utter the one vitriolic word. Angry Words have harvested only angrier words; we sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. A gentle word calms the opponent, consoles the distressed, dissolves tension, stimulates a person, mellows the mind of the speaker himself. Those who chastise and revile others may exploit the gentleness of the victims. But those who come to scoff may remain to pray.

Let us go out into the world with a smile on our lips and a kind word on our tongues. Of course the smile should not be fashion’s wear and the kindness a pose. They should blossom out of an inner kindliness and charity. Even truth should not be spoken offensively. There are some who speak rudely and claim they are blunt and outspoken. But one can be frank and gentle. Such people cover up their crudities by explanations. To be dispraised of some, as Milton says, is praise indeed. Good old Gonzalo tells Sebastian:

The truth you speak did lack some gentleness
And time to speak it in: you rub the sore
When you should bring the plaster.

Anything is removed by its opposite. If vices are to be banished it should be by their opposites. Bitterness is removed, by sweetness, not by a greater dose of bitterness. If so, how can wars end wars? How can war-like speeches help the cause of Peace? War-like preparations are a negation of the efforts towards Peace. The one who achieved the Penance of the Tongue to the greatest extent in recent times was Gandhiji. It is hard to discover in even a stray utterance of his even the suggestion of harshness. His whole life is lighted up by that ‘toothless’ smile (to which Romain Rolland draws our attention). There may be a tooth in others’ smiles but his is toothless. The toothless smile is the midwife of the toothless speech, i. e., speech that does not bite:

‘He never saide no vilenye unto no maner wight.’

In his interpretation of Gandhiji, Stanley Jones writes: “The candid are not courteous and the courteous are not candid. But Mahatma Gandhi was both, and he was both at one and the same time. He spoke exactly what he thought and yet did it so gently and courteously that you loved it, even when it was cutting across your own views!”

He was the perfect Architect of Courtesy.