Auditory pareidolia 2: Caw!

This is the second installment in my series on non-speech sounds that have been humorously interpreted by poets as messages in a human language (Sanskrit, more often than not). My first offering in this vein was about the crow of a rooster, and today I have for you a couple of snippets on another birdcall that signals the break of dawn – the caw of a corvine bird. 

Human beings have been sharing their living space with crows and ravens for a long time, and attributing supernatural powers to these black-feathered carrion-feeding opportunists who are somehow both familiar and enigmatic at the same time. Their croaking call is often seen as an omen, and is presumably the source of their names in several languages. The call is usually rendered kA kA (का का) in Indic languages, and the Sanskrit verbal root √kai (√कै), whose meaning is generally given simply as "to sound", is applied to these birds' vocalizations in particular. The most commonly used word for crow in Sanskrit is kAka (काक), which has spawned its own (somewhat poetic) synonym dvika (द्विक), "two k's"! A few other onomatopoeic verbal roots that refer to a crow's caw are √drAGkS (√द्राङ्क्ष्), √dhrAGkS (√ध्राङ्क्ष्), √dhvAGkS (√ध्वाङ्क्ष्), and √dhmAGkS (√ध्माङ्क्ष्), each of which has "to crave" as a secondary meaning!

My guess is that each of the following anonymous epigrams was composed extemporaneously by a poet on being requested by a patron to provide a (fanciful) explanation for the ruckus raised by crows at dawn. 

(1)  Devanagari script:

तिमिरारिस्तमो हन्ति तेन शङ्कितमानसाः|
वयं काका वयं काका रटन्तीति प्रगे द्विकाः||

Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

timirAristamo hanti tena zaGkitamAnasAH| 

vayaM kAkA vayaM kAkA raTantIti prage dvikAH||

Loose translation: As the Sun embarks on the destruction of darkness at daybreak, crows have their minds gripped by fear, and start yelling, "vayaM kAkA! vayaM kAkAH!" ("We are crows! We are crows!").

Notes: The word used for the Sun here is timirAri (तिमिरारि), "the foe of darkness". In the unnamed poet's imagination, the corvids with their dark feather coats are worried that the rampaging monarch of the day might mistake them for remnants of his enemy camp, and are hence declaring their identity in a frantic bid to save their lives.

Source: Udbhata Sagara Part II Verse 82; Udbhata Chandrika (उद्भटचन्द्रिका), "moonlight of epigrams", compiled by Chandramohan Tarkaratna Bhattacharya (चन्द्रमोहन-तर्करत्न-भट्टाचार्य), Professor of Sanskrit at Bethune College, Calcutta, and first published in 1880, contains the slight variant: तिमिरारिस्तमो हन्ति शङ्कातङ्कितमानसाः| वयं काका वयं काका इति जल्पन्ति वायसाः|| (Volume 1 Part (परिच्छेद) 1 Verse 43); Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar gives the first half as तिमिरारिस्तमो हन्तीत्यातङ्कव्याकुलान्तराः|  in his 1890 anthology Shlokamanjari (Verse 159).

(2)  Devanagari script:

का काबला निधुवनश्रमपीडिताङ्गी निद्रां गतोपपतिबाहुलतानिबद्धा|
सा सैव यातु भवनं मिहिरोद्गमोऽयं सङ्केतवाचमिति काकचया वदन्ति||

Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

kA kAbalA nidhuvanazramapIDitAGgI nidrAM gatopapatibAhulatAnibaddhA| 

sA saiva yAtu bhavanaM mihirodgamo(a)yaM saMketavAcaM||

Loose translation:  "Who are those women that are fast asleep, with limbs fatigued by lovemaking, in the arms of their paramours? Let them all return home, for the sun is rising!" – this is the cryptic message that flocks of crows send out (in the morning).

Notes: In Sanskrit, kA (का) is "who?" or "what?" in the feminine gender, and saying it twice is the correct way to generate the plural form in certain contexts. The poet (presumably) imagines an unholy nexus between these wily birds and human adulteresses, the formers' seemingly inarticulate call being an agreed-upon code word for signaling the hour for these nocturnal adventurers (who would otherwise likely sleep through sunrise) to resume their public lives. And our astute poet has taken it upon themselves to expand on the abbreviation kA kA. 

Source: Udbhata Chandrika Volume 1 Part 1 Verse 44.