‘A person of understanding gives in charity without wondering, “What do I stand to lose?”, without hesitation, without the weight of self-doubt, and without any dampening of enthusiasm.’
“The one who gives quietly is noble. Someone who declares he will give and fulfils it lovingly is commendable. The person who promises to give but fails to do so lacks dignity. So the wise say.”
Composed between the 10th and 12th centuries, these moral observations from old Kannada texts show great care about how to be properly charitable. Acts of true generosity arise from firm conviction, not from half-hearted, doubtful, or morally confused minds.
Apart from offering advice on cultivating the ideal charitable self, the sayings above show a keen awareness of the pressure to reciprocate that an act of giving brings on the recipient and the necessity of pre-empting or lessening that moral burden. If in practical affairs a gift unfailingly entails reciprocal obligations for its receivers and establishes hierarchies of dependence, these sayings propose that this need not be an inevitability and affirm the desirability and practicability of an alternate state of affairs. The ideal of charity (dana) in India, of course, goes back to ancient times and is indeed of foundational moral importance to Buddhism, Jainism, Christianity and Islam, among other religions.
The old Kannada sayings that I have translated above are taken from the section on dana in Kannada Chennudi (1989), a compendium of over 2,400 thematically classified subhashitas (‘wise sayings’) compiled over a decade by the renowned Kannada scholar, Dr T V Venkatachala Sastri. Painstakingly selected from over 130 old Kannada texts – including poetry, puranas, and shastras – and presented with concise summaries, the subhashitas may have been composed by major or minor figures, and can reflect the independent observations of poets, their literary characters, or scholars. Noting that many such compendia have been compiled in Sanskrit over the centuries, while those based on Kannada sources are few, Dr Sastri hopes that his collection of subhashitas will delight readers and prove valuable to both children and the elderly.
The section on dana in Kannada Chennudi holds out a variety of insights – often via rich metaphors – around the value of charity. Reminding us that wealth is transitory, a subhashita observes: ‘Before your wealth fades, just as anointed turmeric loses its colour in the sun, help others with it. Otherwise, it will be like cooking in a pot of wax.’
Several subhashitas come down heavily on misers. Here is a powerful one: ‘A miser may possess a large fortune but will never know joy. Can a tick that has clung to a cow’s udder for years ever know the taste of milk?’ Another one compares misers who discourage charity in others to a thorny plant that surrounds a tree on all sides, keeping people from reaching its sweet fruits.
The moral qualities needed in a donor come into focus over and over again. ‘Can the wise donor ever speak, like the wicked, of those who come for help: “They survive solely because of us”?’
‘He who gives even in anger remains noble, but not those whose love of their possessions makes them distressed at the thought of giving. Even an unripe fruit in a mango tree can be eaten, but can a fully ripened neem fruit be eaten?’ Subhashitas like these hold out less than absolute standards for charitable conduct and offer sober glimpses of prevailing realities. Counselling donors to be discerning and mindful of charity’s abuse, a few of them lament that generosity was bestowed on liars, thieves, the cruel, and the morally unworthy. A few others emphasise the absolute importance of timely charity. Here is a telling instance: ‘Giving at the right time is like giving the three worlds themselves; making someone wait or struggle before helping amounts to making a meagre offering.’
Charity does not exclusively concern humans. One of the subhashitas asks: ‘Watering a fruit tree with love, guarding the seed carefully and sowing it in the field with love, giving charity to the deserving – why hesitate to regard any of these acts as charity?’
The writer is the Vidyashilp Professor looks for new ways of looking.