Throughout the centuries
religion and religious devotion had played a
very important role in shaping and enriching
the literature of a country and that of a
race. Hebraic literature is nothing without
the Songs of Solomon, the Psalms and
Proverbs. Without the poems of Kabir, Sur
Das and Tulasi Das, Hindi literature will be
incomplete. With its origin in religion and
social reform Vacans became a household name
to each and every Kannadiga and has
contributed much to Kannada literature.
The turbulent days of
ancient India, starting from Aryan
dominance, had much to contribute to the
varied Indian culture. The Bhakti movement
of the tenth and eleventh centuries connotes
a reawakening of the religious ardour of the
people by the songs of the saintly poets.
Their verses which were precise but had
volumes of meaning. Vaishnavism, a product
of the Bhakti movement in northern India had
a reciprocal reaction in the south,
especially among the Dravidians in the form
of Saivism. If Vishnu is the worshipping
deity of the Viashnavities, Siva, is
worshipped by the Saivities. At a time when
religion and scholarship went hand in hand,
the Saints, especially the Virasaivas of
Karnataka found a centre for kindred spirits
in Kalyan, under the leadership of Basavanna
and Allama Prabhu, both virasaiva saints and
also poets or vacanakaras. They took the
name Virasaivas from the militancy at the
heart of bhakti.
The poems of the Virasaiva
saints are named vacanas, which means ‘what
is said’, and stands in contrast to the
Smiriti or ‘what is remembered’ and Sruti or
‘what is received’ or ‘heard’, of the
ancient Sanskrit texts. Though the earliest
of the vacana poets is Devara Dasimayya, it
was under Basavanna that vacanas became
popular and had a significance which lasted
more than a century. Mahadeviyakka and
Allama Prabhu are the other two important
vacanakaras of the country. These saintly
poets accepted and worshipped Siva, the
androgynic god. Their personal signature in
their works show the form of diety each of
them worshipped; ‘Kudalasangamadeva’ as in
the case of Basavanna, meaning, Lord of the
meeting rivers; ‘Ramanatha’, or Rama’s Lord
i.e. Siva worshipped by Rama was the
favourite deity of Devara Dasimayya in the
tenth century; while Mahadeviyakka
worshipped Siva as ‘Cenna mallikarjuna’ i.e.
the lovely Lord white as Jasmine and uses it
as a signature for her poems. Allama, who is
regarded as the Prabhu or ‘the Master’ of
all the Vacanakaras has chosen ‘Guhesvara’
or Lord of the caves as his favourite name
for Siva and signs his vacanas with this
name.
The socio-cultural aspect of
vacanas and vacanakaras assumes gigantic
proportions when the Virasaivas revolted
against caste system and formed a formidable
force to be reckoned with in spite of the
Vishnavite opposition. The result was that
for a time they were able to overthrow the
existing system; later the Saivites
themselves seemed to defeat the purpose of
their religion by re-assuming the
socio-cultural division in a different
manner. Their later actions seemed to
resemble the fate of lesser animals in
Orwell’s allegorical novel, Animal Farm
where, with the advent of democratic rule
instead of equality there was the slogan
“some are more equal than the others”.
The vacanas were neither
prose nor poetry; they were religious
renderings of a devotee’s mind. In a way it
was also a literary revolt against the
existing poetic form of Kannada. It has
neither the laxness of prose nor the
inflexibility of the verse. It is precise
writing, which conveys a depth of meaning
expressing the personal religion of the
poet. Moreover no deliberate thinking had
gone into the making of these vavanas;
rather it is like Wordsworth’s theory of
poetry, a ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings’. This accounts for their lack of
regular metric pattern and the irregularity
of the lines. The didactic role of
exclaiming in ecstasy with love for the Lord
Siva and renouncing the world in no
uncertain terms, the vacanakaras set a model
of pure aestheticism in their bhakti. This
is illustrated vividly in the vacanas of
Mahadeviyakka, the only woman among the
vacanakaras. Mahadeviyakka, ‘the respected
elder sister’, recognized by her absence of
clothing, except for her tresses covering
her nudity, expresses her abandonment
through her vacana 88
He bartered
my heart
looted my
flesh
claimed as
tribute
my pleasure,
took over
all of me.
I’am the
woman of love
For my Lord,
white as jasmine
[Speaking
of Siva 125]
Devara
Dasimayya’s vacana 87 goes much further
Whatever It
was
that made
this earth
the base,
the world
its life,
the wind its
pillar,
arranged the
lotus and the moon,
and covered
it all with folds
of sky
With itself
inside,
to that
Mystery
indifferent
to differences,
to It I
pray,
O Ramanatha.
[SS 103]
Allama Prabhu’s lament about
the state of not being with the lord,
inspite of the knowledge and sensual
pleasures offered by the Lord, is that of a
void.
It’s ark
above the clutching hand
It’s dark
over the seeing eye
It’s dark
over the remembering heart
It’s dark
here
with the
Lord of Caves
out there.
[SS 154]
and Basava
‘anna’ or ‘the elder’, proclaims the
immortality of Siva, over even death itself
Before
the grey
reaches the cheek,
the wrinkle
the rounded chin
and the body
becomes a cage of bones;
Before
with fallen
teeth
and bent
back
you are
someone else’s ward:
Before
you drop you
hand to the knee
and clutch a
staff:
Before
age corrodes
your form:
Before
death
touches you:
worship
our lord
of the
meeting rivers!
[SS 78]
All the vacanakaras express
their devotion to their lord in a highly
musical tone evoking a kindred spirit in the
readers and listeners with their touch of
utter sincerity. Vacanas are recited in
almost all the houses in Karnataka as a sort
of devotional hymns and also for pure
aesthetic pleasure.
It is understood that
vacanas are indeed devotional songs. The
devotee, the vacanakara, considers himself
as a Saivite and worship Siva as Pasupati
and also as Rudra. Both Pasupati and Rudra
are two aspects of Siva which is mentioned
in Sivapurana. Pasupati means the lord of
beasts, where Pasu in Kannada means cove or
beast or creature. In Tamil, another
Dravidian language, Pasu is taken to mean
creature or creation, Pati the lord or
creator, and Pasam, the attachment or love
of the two. Basavanna uses these three
meanings in his vacana 52.
Like a cow
fallen into quagmire
i make
mouths at this corner and that,
no one to
look for me
or find me
till my lord
sees this beast
and lifts
him out by the horns
[SS 69]
Rudra Siva, is the Lord who
is the destroyer and lord of violence as
opposed to Pasupati. The twin aspects of
Siva, as destroyer and, preserver are
accepted by the Virasaiva Saints.
Siva Bhakti is synonymous
with Sakti and both has six phases or steps.
A Virasaiva goes through the six-phase
system before finally achieving oneness with
his Lord.
The six phases of Sakti are:
1.
Kariyasakti
- power of action
2.
Jnanasakti
- power of
knowing
3.
Icchasakti
- power of
will
4. Adisakti
- primal creativity
5. Parasakti
- ultimate power
6. Citasakti
- Supreme Intelligence
[SS 170]
And the six
phases of Bhakti are:
1. Sad
bhakti
- feeling,
‘bhakti proper’
2. Naistika
bhakti -
discipline
3. Avadhana
bhakti -
reception
4. Anubava
- mystical experience
5. Ananda
bhakti -
bliss
6. Samarasa
bhakti -
Oneness
[SS 171]
A devotee of
Siva goes through the two sets of six phases
in order to attain moksha or oneness with
the lord. The vacanakaras, ardent devotees
of Siva, goes through an all six phases as
is seen in their vacanas. The going is never
a smooth ride for them; they lash out as
Basavanna does at the undue delay, in his
eagerness to be one with the lord.
Siva, you
have no mercy
Siva, you
have no heart.
Why why did
you bring me to birth,
wretch in
this world,
exile from
the other?
Tell me,
lord,
don’t you
have one more
little tree
or plant
made just
for me?
[SS 71]
And Akka
Mahadevi, who has renounced the world and
had accepted Lord Siva as her husband, is
also impatient in her bhakti.
Husband
inside,
lover
outside.
I can’t
manage them both
This world
and that
other,
cannot
manage them both
O lord white
as jasmine
I cannot
hold in one hand
both the
round nut
and the long
bow
[SS 127]
Also as the
philosophical Allama Prabhu concludes
With a whole
temple
in this body
where’s the
need
for another?
No one asked
for two
O Lord of
caves,
if you are
stone,
what am i?
[SS 153]
The four Virasaiva Saints
taken here for study produced musical poetry
and its quality was not excelled by the
later vacanakaras. The vacanas of Basavanna,
Devara Dasimayya, Mahadeviyakka and Allama
Prabhu were their offerings for their lord
and master, Siva. All four had renounced the
world, their time and the worldly pleasures
in favour of the lord, taking pleasure in
his worship. But their path towards
attaining the union with the lord is
obstacle-ridden; for human beings endowed
with mind and body, feels the sensations and
the sensuality of the body which just cannot
be suppressed to suddenly. Control and
practice are needed for this. The restless
distracted heart or mind is compared to a
monkey by the vacanakaras. Controlling the
mind is a process that requires exerting
enormous self control. Prayer and meditation
achieves this. While prayer is man speaking
to God, Meditation is God speaking to man.
J. Krishnamurti’s words on meditation, makes
clear the purposeful intention of thee four
saints who left everything and assembled in
Kalyan. Krishnamurti spoke of meditation as
. . . . the
absolute stillness of the mind, the absolute
quietness of the brain. The foundation for
meditation has to be laid in daily life; in
how one behaves, in what one thinks. One
cannot be violent and meditate; that has not
meaning…one behaves, in what one thinks. …
For the stillness of the mind, its complete
quiet, an extraordinary discipline is
required; not the discipline of suppression,
conformity, or the following of some
authority, but that discipline or learning
which takes place throughout the day, about
every moment of thought; the mind then has a
religious quality of unity; from that there
can be action which is not contradictory.
[Beyond
Violence 156]
The country which had become
dark because of the prolixity of the
Brahmincal rites must be freed; instead of
the idolized gods there should only be a
personal god. With these intentions the
Virasaiva saints worked together and
gathered spiritual strength by meditation to
lash out. Their vacanas were truthful
outpourings of equally truth loving mind.
The defiance against the established Vedic
religion and Vedic puranas was the common
factor for these Virasaiva Saints. It took
courage to ignore such a formidable opponent
and get the approval and acceptance of the
people of the country. Their strength was
their bhakthi and the moral courage with
which these great people were endowed; this
formed the basis for stories that circulated
about them as performers of miracle.
Denouncing all types of ritualistic forms
these Virasaiva saints offers themselves as
objects of sacrifice. This idea also can be
seen in their vacanas.
Allama
Prabhu:
Light
Devoured
darkness
I was alone
Inside
Shedding
The visible
dark
I was your
target
O Lord of
Caves
[SS 164]
Firmly believing that they
are indeed chosen by the lord, the virasaiva
saints denounced all the worldly pleasures
and moved away from the crowd to a secluded
place so that they can spend their time with
the Lord. Resembling the ancient rishis,
this retreat from the world, provided them
with the silence to listen to the lord and
prepare for the oneness with Him. Meditation
created various imagery with which they
compared their mind and its waywardness and
lamented the difficulty in controlling the
five senses. Thus a monkey without brains is
the mind, cat is supreme knowledge, the
rooster is the worldly knowledge, the black
koil bird is the kriyasakti or the power of
action. The physical body is the city with
its nine gates or nine openings.
A saint devotee experiences
three obstacles that account for the
alienation. One is the physical obstacle to
knowledge, the second is the Karma and the
third is the experience of a primitive
darkness which is almost equivalent to
egoism in man. The quest for the citaasakti
or supreme intelligence is often hindered by
these obstacles. Hence the dilemma of the
devotee, as V. Ramakrishnan expresses in his
book Perspectives in Saivism:
The Saiva is
interested in discovering why he is provided
with a physical frame work and why he has
experiences of various kinds. The inner
essence of the self as an eternal
intelligent or conscious entity is seen as
subject to the limitations of a physical
body thus limiting its inherent capacity for
knowledge.
[Perspectives
in Saivism 49]
To overcome the three
obstacles the mind-sakti, born of
Siva-consciousness, is necessary. Allama
Prabhu speaks of such a devotee who has
conquered that past, future and the present
in his vacana 550 establishing the
relationship with the lord.
Poets of the
past
are the
children of my concumbines
Poets to
come
are infants
of my pity
The poets of
the sky
are babies
of my cradle
Vishnu and
Brahma
are my
kinsmen and sidekicks.
You are the
father-in-law
and I the
son-in-law
O Lord of
caves.
[SS 161]
S. Arulsamy speaks of Sakti,
as one with Siva. Thus
Sakti is not
something separate from, and independent of,
the Primal one. It is inseparable from Him.
The relation between Sivam and Sakti is
generally likened to that of sun and the
light of the sun.
[Saivism:
A perspective of Grace 46]
Here the devotee is wedded
to the mind-sakti, which is born of
Siva-consciousness and hence his daughter.
This makes Siva the father-in-law and the
devotee the son-in-law. The kind of informal
often playful irreverence towards the great
god, like the barren woman’s son, the Unborn
Lord without beginning or end, is yet
another characteristic feature of the
vacanas.
The vacanakaras dispensed
with all sorts of ritualistic offering as
opposed to the ritualistic worship of the
Brahmins-Vedic religions and also the blood
sacrifices of the smaller religions. To them
ritualistic offering is internalized and
they, themselves, were offered to the Lord
with all their imperfections and impurities.
They shun the popular places and found
asylum in the lonely places, so that their
interior dialogue with the lord may continue
without the word intruding.
The influx of meanings for
Siva and his actions show the popularity of
the Siva cult. The dance of Siva, taken as
the Cosmic Dance itself, is a symbol of the
cycle of birth and death. The eminent
scientist philosopher Fritjof Capra tries to
establish this with the help of an
examination of the dance of Siva and the
movement of particles in atmosphere. To him
dance of Siva,
….
symbolizes not only the cosmic cycles of
creation and destruction, but also the daily
rhythm of birth and death which is seen in
Indian mysticism as the basis of all
existence.
[The Tao
of Physics 270]
A devotee caught in the flux
of the Cosmic Dance, craves for a union with
the lord so that the dancer and the dance be
one. Vacanas expound this theory to such an
extent that their variety symbolizes the
myriad impressions of the mind during a
dance. Siva, the dancer of the universe of
Nataraja is the deity worshipped by the
artists. As such he is the inspiration for
all art forms including poetry. The
vacanakaras are endowed with the blessing of
the lord that their verse has a poetic
quality in spite of the most unpoetic
imagery used in it. Mahadeviyakka’s vacana
328 is an example for this.
I have Maya
for mother-in-law;
the world
for father-in-law;
three
brother-in-law, like tigers;
and the
husband’s thoughts
are full of
laughing women;
no god, this
man.
And I cannot
cross the sister-in-law.
But I will
give this
wench the slip
and go
cuckold my husband with Hara, my Lord.
My mind is
my maid:
by her
kindness, I join
my Lord,
my utterly
beautiful Lord
from the
mountain – peaks
my lord
white as jasmine,
and I will
make Him
my good
husband.
[SS 141]
Here
Mahadeviyakka uses as the central image the
image of an abhisarika, stealing out of the
house of in-laws to meet her lover. The
various members of the household stand for
various abstractions; Maya, the
mother-in-law is the Primal Illusion, the
father-in-law is the world, the three
brothers-in-law are the three gunas, they
are part of nature, hence inescapable. The
husband whom the woman cuckolds is Karma,
the sister-in-law is vasana or smell or the
binding memory of the past, helpful maid is
the Mind, who helps her to keep her tryst
with the Lord. The whole set up of a married
woman’s life is portrayed here, thus
emphasizing the fact that this is what a
woman acquires as a result of a marriage.
This social bondage is thrown over for an
illicit lover. The shock of reading about a
lover in the midst of this social set up is
what Mahadeviyakka intended by her vacana.
In a moment of defiance, she had thrown off
all her clothes, symbolic of throwing away
the conventions of the society and accepting
the Lord as an illicit lover. The
relationship with the Lord is never smooth
nor does it conform to the structure of the
society. The upsetting of all man made
structures is necessary if one is to have an
illicit relationship with the Lord. Only if
there is a structural build up of a society
does this lover become illicit. This vacana
of Mahadeviyakka is an open defiance against
the then existing social structures, rituals
and the code of behaviour expected of a
woman. Though a woman Mahadevi attained
oneness with the Lord and her quest for
ecstasy proved fruitful when death took her
while she was hardly in her twenties. During
her brief life-span she lived intensely
burning with the love for Lord Siva. Such an
intensity had its result when her union with
Lord Siva was brought forth much earlier at
Sri Saila.
The conflict of the
religious beliefs also made the vacanakaras
stand firm in their Lord. Devara Dasimayya
was also called as ‘God’s Dasimaya. Devara
Dasimayya’s vacanas are all divided
according to the six-phase system and an
example from the Bhakta phase is worth
mentioning.
You have forged
this chain
of eighteen
links
and chained
us humans
you have
ruined us
O Ramanatha
and made us
dogs forever
on the
leash.
[SS 102]
The eighteen
links referred to in the poem are the
traditional eighteen links or bonds of the
world listed in ancient Indian philosophy.
They are the past, present and future acts;
body, mind and wealth, substance, life, and
self – regard; gold land and woman; lust,
anger, greed, infatuation, pride and envy.
The one, who has got the strength to break
all the bonds and disregard the worldly
pleasures, will attain the final stage of
the six phase system.
Basava, also familiarly
called as ‘anna’ or brother, was the
treasurer of the ruling king and also the
treasurer of Lord’s Love. Along with Allama
Prabhu and Mahadeviyakka, he made Kalyan a
Virasaiva centre, and also initiated people
who came from afar into the Virasaiva cult.
The ‘Anubhava mandapa’ (The Hall of
Experience) was established as a religious
centre for the saints to have dialogue and
have communion with the new developing
section. Though Basavanna’s vacanas are
divided according to the six phase system,
the first phase i.e. that of Bhakta,
stretches to nearly half the number of his
total vacanas. This again shows the struggle
that he went through with the worldly
pleasures and its temptations as vacana 350
shows.
a grind
stone hung at the foot
a deadwood
log at the neck
the one will
not let me float
and the
other will not let me sink
O times true
enemy
O lord of
the meeting rivers
tide me over
this life at sea
and bring me
to
[SS 80]
The world is compared to a
sea and the Lord alone is the help there.
The poems of the vacanacaras are
characterized by its bisexual and double –
edged meanings.
Siva, the androgynic god,
creates a bisexuality among the devotees as
in Mahadeviyakka; Basavama also presents
this in his vacana 703.
Look here,
dear fellow:
I wear these
men’s clothes
only for you
sometimes I
am man,
sometimes I
am woman.
O Lord of
the meeting rives
I’ll make
wars for you
but I’ll be
your devotee’s’ bride
[SS 87]
Allama was
Prabhu or ‘master’ of the group of
Virasaivas assembled in Kalyan. By his sheer
presence alone he was able to point out the
imperfections in the worship of the lord in
devotees like Basavanna and Mahadeviyakka.
By argument, mockery and teasing he was able
to bring enlightenment to laymen. Unlike the
other Virasaiva saints, no biographical
detail is available on Allama Prabhu,
showing that his life after enlightenment is
that which matters. He was also presented by
the scholars as one who had overcome
passions and refused to be tempted by the
world. The wisdom and mastery of Allama
Prabhu was recognized and accepted by all.
Some of his vacanas were set to music. The
six phase system followed by the vacanakaras
was followed by Allama Prabhu also. His
vacana 431 which belongs to the Sarana
phase, the fifth of the six phases, is
symbolic.
Outside city
limits
a temple
in the
temple, look,
a hermit
woman.
In the
woman’s hand
a needle,
at needle’s
end
the fourteen
worlds
O Lord of
caves
I saw an ant
devour whole
the woman,
the needle,
the fourteen
worlds.
[SS 157]
The city in
the poem is the human body and the temple,
the mental form; the old woman stands for
power and knowledge, and the needle, the
mind on which the fourteen worlds are
balanced. When the devotee attains
enlightenment, as symbolized by the ant,
everything else disappears. The scholarship
and precision of the mind are evident in the
vacanas of Allama Prabhu.
The Vacanakaras and the
vacanas though belonging to the bhakti
movement, refuse to the classified as such.
What the vacanacaras fought against was
institutionalized religion. The religion one
is born into becomes one of the obstacles to
the attaining of enlightenment. Thus it is
that caste and creed had no value for a
vacanacara and their vacanas based on white
hot truth, could never be ignored.
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S.
Arulsamy, Saivism. A Perspective of
Grace, Bangalore: Sterling Publishers
Ltd., 1987
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Capra,
Fritjof, The Tao of Physics. Great
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G.N. Devy,
In another Tongue. Essays on Indian
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