Professional eaters 1

The job description of a Brahmin includes being treated to ritual meals as part of socio-religious ceremonies such as shraaddhas (श्राद्ध: solemnities honoring deceased ancestors), as hinted at in my previous post. There have always been men, Brahmin by birth but lacking any scholarly virtue, whose sole professional skill is to partake of such meals. In Bengali, there is a slightly pejorative term for an individual of this type: pholaare baamun (ফলারে বামুন​) where baamun is a modification of brAhmaNa (ब्राह्मण), and the adjective pholaare comes from pholaar (ফলার), "a (lacto-)vegetarian meal devoid of rice, ritually served to a Brahmin", which in turn derives from Sanskrit phalAhAra (फलाहार), "fruit-meal". Needless to say, these people were / are not held in high esteem by most of their peers, which brings us to today's quote.

This verse needs some background to be fully appreciated. While describing a skilled warrior wreaking havoc on enemy troops, it is quite common for a poet to compare him or her to a wildfire decimating a forest, or Indra's thunderbolt ripping mountains apart (perhaps an allusion to the well-known myth which states that every mountain could fly until Indra lopped their wings off with his weapon of choice to prevent these flying rocky behemoths from ruthlessly crushing lesser creatures whenever and wherever they alighted), or sometimes the rishi Agastya (अगस्त्य), also called Agasti (अगस्ति), drinking the ocean dry (in order to uncover demons who had taken refuge in its murky depths -- this legend might be based on the "calming of the waters" of the Indian Ocean with the rise of the star Agastya). 

Another point worth mentioning here is the use of two words that sound very similar:  (1) bhaTTa (भट्ट), a respectful term of address for, and an honorific often affixed to the name of, a learned Brahmin (or sometimes a prince), and the origin of present-day surnames like Bhattacharya (भट्टाचार्य) and perhaps Bhat; (2) bhaTa (भट): a soldier or hero (or, more appropriately, a mercenary, according to Monier-Williams). 

 Devanagari text:

अगस्तितुल्याश्च घृताब्धिशोषणे दम्भोलितुल्या वटकाद्रिभेदने|
शाकावलीकाननवह्निरूपास्त एव भट्टा इतरे भटाश्च||

Harvard-Kyoto transliteration:

agastitulyAzca ghRtAbdhizoSaNe dambholitulyA vaTakAdribhedane| 

zAkAvalIkAnanavahnirUpAsta eva bhaTTA itare bhaTAzca||

– Anonymous

Loose translation: Those who are comparable to Agasti in sucking up oceans of ghee, to the thunderbolt in obliterating mountains of vadas, and to a conflagration in consuming forests of vegetables are truly bhaTTas, the rest are merely bhaTas.

Source: Verse 176 of the Mahasubhasitasangraha (महासुभाषितसङ्ग्रह), "the great collection of good sayings", edited by Ludwik Sternbach and published in 1974. It is also available in many modern anthologies including Subhashita Ratnakara as verse 164 of the chapter on miscellaneous verses (मिश्रप्रकरण); Subhashita Sudha Ratna Bhandagara, (सुभाषितसुधारत्नभाण्डागार) compiled and annotated by Pandit S. Kaviratna and published in c. 1928 (samvat 1985), as verse 382.2;  Subhashita Ratna Bhandagara as verse 2 of the chapter  entitled bhikSuka (भिक्षुक), "the beggar".

Notes:  The (synonymous) reading वटिकाद्रि instead of वटकाद्रि in the second quarter is also found. For additional notes on South Asian savory cakes, please refer to this post.

The juxtaposition of the words bhaTTa and bhaTa deserves a few remarks. Although bhaTa primarily refers to a (hired) soldier, it does have a plethora of derogatory meanings recorded by lexicographers, such as "slave" and "a degraded tribe" (म्लेच्छभेद, नीचभेद, पामरविशेष, रजनीचर). It has also been postulated that bhaTTa and bhaTa are cognate, via the Prakrit languages, with bhartR (भर्तृ: "sustainer", hence "master" or "benefactor") and bhRta (भृत: "sustained", hence "servant" or "beneficiary") respectively. Moreover, perhaps in the poet's mind, the repetition of the hard consonant T (ट्) in bhaTTa connotes a greater weight (hence, greater importance) than the single occurrence of the same in bhaTa. Whatever the rationale, it is a safe guess that the poet uses "the rest" (इतरे) in the last quarter of the verse to refer to 'other' individuals whose destructive abilities might be described using similes similar to those in the first three quarters, i.e. actual warriors, and suggests that these warriors are inferior (bhaTas) to 'destroyers' of food (bhaTTas). And, of course, all this is pure sarcasm. This multi-level wordplay would be completely lost in translation.

It would be very remiss of me if I did not mention the other important meaning of the word bhaTTa: "a mixed caste of hereditary panegyrists" (Monier-Williams), called bhaats (भाट) in many North Indian languages and often mentioned along with the chaarans (चारण). However, I do not think this meaning is applicable here since I have never found any references to these bards being treated to lavish feasts or being gluttonous in general.

A. A. Ramanathan's translation of this distich, as recorded in the Mahasubhasitasangraha: "They only are Bhatta-s [a class of good eaters] who are similar to the sage Agastya in drying up the ocean of ghee, and thunderbolt in breaking [munching] the mountain of Vataka-s [savowries [sic]] and of the form of fire in burning [consuming] the forest of vegetable [dishes]. Others are merely Bhata-s [common fighters]." I do not know the basis for translating "Bhatta-s" as "a class of good eaters".