Hamsa-sandesha

Hansa-Sandesha (Sanskrit: हंससन्देश; IAST: Hansasandeśa) or "The message of the Swan" is a Sanskrit love poem written by Vedanta Desika in the 13th century AD. A short lyric poem of 110 verses, it describes how Rama, hero of the Ramayana epic, sends a message via a swan to his beloved wife, Sita, who has been abducted by the demon king Ravana. The poem belongs to the sandeśa kāvya, ‘messenger poem’, genre and is very closely modeled upon the Meghaduta of Kalidasa. It has particular significance for Srivaishnavites, whose god, Vishnu, it celebrates.

The Hansa-Sandesha owes a great deal to its two poetic predecessors, Kalidasa's Meghaduta and Valmiki’s Ramayana. Vedanta Desika's use of the Meghaduta is extensive and transparently deliberate; his poem is a response to one of India’s most famous poems by its most celebrated poet. Vedanta Desika’s debt to Valmiki is perhaps more pervasive but less obvious, and possibly less deliberate too. Where the poet consciously plays with Kalidasa’s verse, he treats the Ramayana more as a much-cherished story. Nevertheless he is clearly as familiar with the details of Valmiki’s poem as with Kalidasa’s, and he echoes very specific images and details from the epic.

Vedanta Desika (IAST:Vedānta Deśika) is best known as an important acarya in the Srivaishnavite tradition of South India which promulgated the philosophical theory of Viśiṣṭādvaita. He was a prolific writer in both Tamil and Sanskrit, composing over 100 philosophical, devotional and literary works; the Hamsa-Sandesha is his only work of this kind.

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