The Silence of Buddha: A tribute to the Guru

गुरु गोबिंद दोऊ खड़े, का के लागूं पाय।
बलिहारी गुरु आपणे, गोबिंद दियो मिलाय॥

In one of his popular couplets (dohe) Kabir wonders, “Both my guru and my god stand before me and I wonder who I should salute first”, and clarifies saying, “I salute my guru first as he was the one who showed me my god.”'

And it is not just Kabir who puts his guru before his god. It is the gods themselves who put their gurus above their own selves. Thus we find that, in their human avatars, Rama and Krishna bow down to the advice and good counsel of their gurus. In fact the entire text of Yoga Vasishta, is in the form of a discourse between Rama and his guru Vasishta who instructs Rama on the principles of Advaitha or non-duality of the universe. Again, without the able mentorship of Sandipani, would Krishna have evolved into the Gitacharya, as we know him, is a question worth asking. Not to forget the Indic religion of Sikhism that is founded entirely on the teachings of Guru Nanak.

Thus, in the Indian tradition, we find that a guru is held higher up even above the almighty, as he is the one who leads his/her students towards the path of enlightenment. (In Sanskrit, the syllable ‘gu’ means darkness and the syllable ‘ru’ means to drive away).

God, Guru & Shishya and their magical relationship

There is a very endearing story that illustrates this magical relation that exists between god, a guru and his disciple.

In the temple town of Thirumazhisai near the ancient Pallava city of Kanchi, lived an Alwar saint. The Alwar was an ardent devotee of Vishnu, who was the presiding deity at the local temple. Vishnu’s idol in the temple is in a reclining posture and the lord is seen lying on the coils of Shesh nag immersed in his Yoga nidra.

The Alwar had a disciple named Kanikannan, who was his most favourite. Kanikannan was as illustrious as his guru, and one day, he happened to see an old hunchback lady deeply engrossed in cleaning the temple. Impressed with the lady’s single-minded devotion, Kanikannan touched her back and lo! by magic, her bent back straightened out and she turned into a beautiful young lady that she had once been. Although deeply grateful for her physical transformation, she, however, decided to continue her life in the services of her lord, Vishnu, at the temple.

Hearing about the miracle performed by Kanikannan, the ageing king of Kanchi approached the disciple and requested that his youth too be restored so that he could indulge in worldly pleasures once again. Not surprisingly, Kanikannan refused to help saying that youth had no use for somebody who only wanted to indulge in the base pleasures of life. Angered by his response, the king ordered that Kanikannan be banished from his kingdom. Kanikannan was more than happy to comply with the order.

But what’s a guru without his pupil? So, when the Alwar got to know about his shishya’s fate, he decided to follow suit and leave the kingdom as he didn’t want to be away from his favourite disciple. But, he also had deep love for the lord of the temple, whom he had tirelessly served for long. Not wanting to leave his lord behind, he commanded Vishnu to gather his serpentine mat (Shesha nag) that he was lying on and leave the city along with him.

And, what’s god without his devotee? So, Vishnu implicitly obeyed the Alwar’s orders. Gathering Adisheshan’s coils, he set out along with the Alwar to leave Kanchi. Soon, the three of them – god, guru and shishya left the city and reached its outskirts where they decided to halt for the night.

Meanwhile, the city of Kanchi descended into darkness and misfortune, as Lord Vishnu, when he vacated the temple, had taken his consort, Shree (Goddess Lakshmi who lived in his bosom), along with him. As a result, all the city’s riches and wealth took flight and the kingdom soon became derelict of prosperity.

Terrified by the turn of events, the Pallava king at once rushed to Lord Vishnu, who was camping on the city’s outskirts, to seek forgiveness and begged him to return to Kanchi. But the good lord replied that he had no choice in the matter and it was really up to his devotee, the Alwar to take a decision. Disappointed by the lord’s response, the king then approached the Alwar and requested him to return to the city along with the lord. But the Alwar threw up his hands saying that he had no say in the matter and if his disciple Kanikannan was willing to return to the city, he too would gladly do so. So, the king was left with no choice but to approach Kanikannan and seek forgiveness for his own thoughtless act.

Approached by the king himself, Kanikannan relented, and decided to forgive him and return to Kanchi. The guru, of course, did not want to be left behind without his disciple. So he too decided to return. Having decided thus, he commanded his dear god to once again fold up his serpentine bed and return to Kanchi along with him.  

The trio thus returned to the city of Kanchi, and so did Shree (prosperity) along with them!

If the Alwar was a guru truly devoted to his disciple, Cheethalai Chattanar, a Tamil poet, took his commitment to his pupils to a different level.

The guru who punished himself for his pupils’ mistakes

Cheethalai Chattanar was the poet who is believed to have composed ‘Manimekalai’, counted among the five great Tamil epics and also considered the sequel to Silappathikaaram, the epic story of Kannagi.

Legend has it that for every mistake his pupils made, Chattanar would punish himself by striking his head with the stylus that was used for writing on palm leaves. So his head was seen perennially bruised with pus and blood covering it. It is said that he derived his name from the punishment that he gave himself, ‘Chee’ meaning pus and ‘thalai’ meaning head in Tamil.

With time, Chattanar’s students, for fear of punishing their guru, began to learn their lessons diligently and perfectly!

Both Alwar and Chattanar were indeed extremely dedicated gurus who held their disciples higher than themselves.

In Indian mythology we find gurus appearing in different avatars, and not always in the form of old, stereotypical Brahmin males. Here are some stories about some atypical gurus who taught a valuable lesson or two in the most unconventional ways.

Some unconventional gurus

The deity Dakshinamurthy, popular in the south, is considered an incarnation of Shiva and is held as the Supreme Guru, the God of Ultimate Knowledge. The iconography of Dakshinamurthy depicts Shiva, sitting in an ascetic posture under a banyan tree, in a gesture of imparting knowledge to his disciples who are significantly older than him. And this guru does not instruct; he remains quiet, yet his disciples attain complete realization of the eternal truth.  The sight is indeed strange, as Adi Shankaracharya in his Dakshinamurthy Stotra points out, ‘it is indeed peculiar to see the old disciples (sages) and their young guru (Dakshinamurthy) sitting under the banyan tree; the guru sits in silence, but all the doubts in the minds of his disciples are cleared.”

Indeed, the reversal of roles as depicted by a young guru teaching his old disciples and the magical transmission of knowledge between them is beautifully captured in Shankara’s hymns.

The idea that the age of the guru need have no relation with his competence to teach is further reinforced in the sthalapurana of two temples in Tamil Nadu -  Kumarakkottam and Swami Malai. In Swami Malai, the deity Murugan is depicted as a precocious child who punishes Lord Brahma for his ignorance of the knowledge of the Brahman and takes over the job of creation upon himself. Murugan subsequently goes on to impart knowledge of the primordial mantra ‘Aum’ to his own father, Lord Shiva. The deity in the temple is thus referred to as ‘Swami Nathan’ (Sanskrit) or ‘Thagappan Swami’ (Tamil) both meaning ‘his father’s lord’.

The iconography with respect to both these stories is very interesting. In the Swami Malai story, Murugan is seen sitting on the lap of his father, who bows down reverently to listen to his son’s discourse on the significance and meaning of ‘Brahman’. In the story of Kumarakottam, Brahma Shastha or the teacher of Brahma - as Murugan is referred to (Shastha means teacher) - is depicted as giving a knock on Brahma’s head as a punishment for both his ignorance and vanity.

                

                                  

The Upanishads and the Maha Puranas too talk about four kumaras (young boys), the mind-born sons of Brahma who live on as children, but are considered the epitome of wisdom – the gyanis, the yogis or the siddhas. In the Chandogya Upanishad, Santakumara instructs sage Narada and in the Mahabharata, he is referred to as a sage who dispels all doubts. In Buddhist mythology, we have Aushada Kumara, who is considered a Boddhisatva, coming across as the equivalent of the Sanatkumara.

What a householder, a butcher and a Chandala had to teach

And it was not that the guru could only be a Brahmin or a man or that he could come only from the upper echelons of the society. A guru was someone who opened one's eyes to the truth, irrespective of his social standing.

There is the story of a virtuous butcher who instructed a Brahmin, as told in the Vana Parva of the Mahabharata. According to the story, one day, deep inside a forest, a Brahmin monk sat in deep meditation. Unfortunately for him, his deep deliberations were disturbed by a crane perched on the tree above him  that defiled his head with its droppings. In a fit of anger, he burnt the bird with his mere look, using his yogic powers.

Shortly after this, he came to a household begging for alms to feed himself.  But the lady of the household was busy attending to her sick husband and asked him to wait till she was free to give him alms. Heckled by being made to wait, the monk threatened the lady of the house to use his yogic powers against her. But the unperturbed lady shot back saying she was not a crane who could be burnt down by him and that he must learn to keep his composure. Hearing her response, the monk was shocked. How had the lady come to know of the happenings inside the forest? The lady replied saying that she did no austerities like the monk, but had acquired the power to read his mind by simply doing her duty to her husband. Her unflinching and unwavering commitment to her duty vested her with miraculous powers.  

Her response humbled the monk who realized he had a lot more to learn in the world. The lady then directed him to an enlightened butcher, Dharma Vyadha, in Mithila who could instruct the monk on the pursuit of dharma. Surprised and initially unconvinced over what a lowly butcher could teach him, the monk nevertheless approached the butcher and asked him how he could have achieved enlightenment by doing such ‘filthy, ugly work’. To which, the butcher responded saying, “no duty was ugly or impure, but the manner in which the work was done decided its worth.” The detailed discourse between the butcher and the monk is referred to as the Vyadha Gita and has valuable insights on swadharma (one’s duty), detached performance (nishkamya karma) and on virtuous conduct.  

The message that a guru is anybody who has something to teach us is conveyed once again in the story of Adi Shankaracharya, who once had to cross paths with a Chandala in the holy city of Varanasi. As the Chandala was an untouchable, Shankara and his disciples gestured to him to move to the side to give way to them as they did not want his tainted presence to sully their sacred selves. 

Refusing to move immediately, the Chandala asked him, “Do you want my body or my soul to give way to you? If the atman is the same in all, unaffected by the body, how do differences such as Brahmana and the Chandala arise in the non-dual existence?” 

Shankara was stunned by the Chandala’s response and realized that this was no ordinary man. Shankara accepted him as his Guru even though he was of a low caste. Legend has it that the Chandala was none other than Lord Shiva who had taken the form of an outcaste to drive home a point. Shankara has composed the conversation between him and the Chandala in the form of five verses called, Maneesha Panchakam, which brings out the essence of Advaitha or non-duality of the universe.

Just as a householder woman, a butcher and a Chandala assumed the role of a guru in the above stories, there is the story where King Janaka, living the life of a householder, still had a thing or two to teach Sage Shukha, the son of Veda Vyasa.  

The story goes that Veda Vyasa sent his son, Shuka, for tutelage to King Janaka who was considered a brahmagyani or one who had attained self-realisation. But, Shuka, who was an ascetic, was not convinced that the King, mired in his hedonistic pursuits, could impart any valuable insights on brahmagyan to him. When presented before the king, the sage asked Janaka how the king, who lived amidst all the worldly pleasures could ever consider himself a jivan muktha or a renunciate.  To this, Janaka responded by giving Shuka a bowl filled to the brim with milk and asked him to carry it around the palace without spilling a drop. As instructed, Shukha set out circumambulating the palace. His trip around the palace was filled with various sights of sheer debauchery and self-indulgence that was characteristic of life in the palace. But, none of these sights distracted Shukha, as his mind was focused on carefully carrying the bowl of milk without spilling it. 

After having completed his task successfully, he returned to Janaka, who, after acknowledging Shuka’s accomplished mission, asked him what he had seen on his trip around the palace. Shukha replied saying that he had not paid any attention to any of the sights as his mind was focused on the task given to him. Hearing this, Janaka responded saying that this was exactly how he lived his own life too. Despite living a life of royalty, he kept his mind focused on carrying out his duties justly and dispassionately, without allowing himself to be swayed by the revelry around him.

Hearing Janaka’s reply, Shuka bowed down to him and accepted him as his guru and went on to acquire brahmagyan from him. The discourse that Janaka gave Shuka is found in the Maha Upanishad.   

Of course, the list of unconventional gurus is long and there are stories of Hemalekha (in Tripura Rahasya) and Chudala (In Yoga Vasishta) who took their pleasure-seeking husbands on the path of brahmagyan and how Yama, the lord of death instructed Nachiketas on the nature of the soul and the brahman (in Kathopanishad). And then, there are stories about the eccentric Zen masters who chose very unconventional means to teach life lessons to their pupils.

  

But, will keep them for later. Now, to end with a story on one of the greatest teachers India has ever had…the Buddha.

The Buddha’s silence

Once, a disciple of the Buddha approached him with the question, “Is there a self?” But, the Buddha did not answer. Eliciting no response from his teacher, the disciple quizzed on, “Does that mean, there is no self?” To this question too, the Buddha remained silent. Frustrated by the absence of any response from his teacher, the disciple walked away. After he had left, Ananda, another of Buddha’s pupils asked him why the Buddha had remained silent and not answered the questions. Buddha responded saying, “if I had responded with a ‘yes’ to the question if there was a self, I would have been siding with the eternalists and if I had answered with a ‘no’ I would have been siding with the nihilists. And if I had answered with a ‘yes’ my answer would have been inconsistent with the knowledge that there is no self and if I had answered ‘no’ I would have confused the disciple who believes that there is a self. And that is why I chose to remain silent, and the disciple is better off with no answers from me.”

And so it is that a guru need not always teach through instructions, sometimes, the silence of the guru can be itself be a great teaching!

  

On what kind of disciples befitted these great gurus… in my next blog!

Knights in Distress and Damsels to the Rescue

Damsels in distress and knights rushing to rescue them from the clutches of wily witches, scheming step-mothers and dangerous dragons has been the common theme of most fairy tales from our childhood.  

These stories from medieval Europe have largely presented women as delicate, helpless beings, incapable of defending themselves, and waiting for a valiant prince to arrive and liberate them from their miserable existence.

Surprisingly for a patriarchal society, this theme of men rescuing women is quite rare in Indian mythology, other than, of course, the famous story of Rama who goes out in search of his kidnapped wife.

On the contrary, Indian mythology is full of stories of women who go all out to rescue their lovers or consorts, with or without their shining armour. These women often save their beloveds from tricky tribulations and sticky situations, accompany them to the warfront, and at times even bring them back from the dead. 

Here are some stories of such gutsy women who displayed enormous valour in their quest to bring back their loved ones from the brink and beyond of disaster. What is interesting about these stories is that, unlike men, these women chose to rely entirely on their moral courage, wit and wisdom rather than swords and daggers to assist them in their quest.

Take the case of Kaikeyi. She was a skilled charioteer, who once accompanied King Dasharatha to a battle. The fact that Dasharatha, who (as his name implies) was himself an expert at flying his chariot in ten directions, allowed Kaikeyi to drive him talks volumes of his faith in her charioting ability.  During the battle, when the king was wounded by an enemy arrow, Kaikeyi deftly maneuvered the chariot to safety and later nursed the king back to health.

Stories of such female bravery may be few and far between in the Ramayana. But the Mahabharatha, unlike any other work of world mythology, is replete with stories of women champions.

Let’s begin with Ulupi, who revived her dead lover Arjuna with the Mrithasanjivani gem. As Arjuna lay dead, killed by his own son Babruvahana owing to a curse of the Vasus, it was Ulupi, Arjuna's Naga wife, who summoned the jewel of the Nagas, placed it on Arjuna's chest and brought him back to life. According to one version of the story, Ulupi plotted the entire drama of the son killing his father in order to redeem Arjuna from the curse of the Vasus for having slain their brother, Bhishma.

Shachi or Indrani, Indra's consort, was yet another courageous woman, who was believed to be the source of Indra’s powers. Once, after having killed the demon Vritra treacherously, Indra was so overcome with guilt and shame that he fled Amaravathi, and hid himself in the stem of a lotus in a pond so far away, where he could not be found by other gods.

Unable to find Indra, the gods replaced him with a human, Nahusha. Unfortunately, Nahusha turned out a bad choice as he harassed the gods and the sages, and also tried to persuade Shachi into marrying him.

However, clever Shachi managed to get rid of Nahusha by having sage Agasthya curse him into becoming a serpent. She also sought out Indra and convinced him to come out of his hiding and resume his position as the lord of the Devas. Thus, Shachi not only saved her husband from eternal damnation and but also became a kingmaker of sorts, giving back the Devas, their leader.

What makes Shachi’s story interesting is that, in her search for Indra, she is described as having undertaken a long and arduous journey, navigating high mountains and deep seas through darkness and difficulties, very similar to the journey undertaken by Joseph Campbell's hero.

Equally critical was the role of Damayanthi in tracking down Nala, her husband, who had been banished from his kingdom and forced into hiding. Damayanthi hatched a clever plan to track down Nala. Using a difficult riddle which only Nala could solve, she traced him to King Rituparna’s court. There, Damayanthi’s messenger spread false news about her second swayamvara. Hoping to prevent Damayanthi’s remarriage, Nala rushed to her, and was thus reunited with his family.

Of course, the list of heroic women from the Mahabharatha cannot be complete without the mention of Savithri, who got none other than the Lord of Death to rewrite the destiny of Satyavan, her beloved. After Satyavan’s death, Savithri followed Yama over long distances on his journey to the land of the dead, till he was forced to yield to the persuasive Savithri and agree to return Satyavan alive to her.    

It’s not just the epics, but our Puranas too talk of such valorous women.

Rati, was one such braveheart, who managed to have her consort Kamadeva resurrected after he had been burnt to ashes by the wrath of Shiva. According to the Skanda purana, Rati undertook severe penances to bring Kama back to life, in order to ensure the union of Shiva and Parvathi. Although the popular story goes that Shiva agreed to revive Kama, albeit in a disembodied form, the Bhagawata Purana says that Rati’s efforts bore fruits when Kamadeva returned to her in the form of Krishna's son, Pradyumna.

To conclude, it would be unfair to dismiss these mythological women as pativratas, to be lauded merely for their sexual fidelity. It is feminine nature to fiercely protect the loved ones, whatever the cost! And loved their men, these women did! To the extent of even choosing them over gods (Damayanthi) and mighty kings (Savithri) sometimes!

More importantly, like Campbell’s hero, many of these women (Savithri, Shachi) stepped beyond their conventional role, crossing the threshold from the ordinary into the extraordinary, thus undergoing a significant transformation in their personalities in the course of their quest.

In light of these stories, maybe our perception of Indian mythology as having no female heroes needs a serious rethink!

Andal : The Lover Saint - Part 2

As mentioned in my previous post, evidence of Andal is purely literary. We do not know for sure if such as person ever existed at all. Or whether ‘Andal’ was merely the pseudonym of an accomplished poet who didn’t wish to reveal himself/herself. Rajagopalachari, it is said, believed that it was none other Periyalvar (Vishnuchittar) who wrote as Andal. On the other hand, certain studies on Andal opine that she was a devadasi who was attached to the temple at Srirangam. Whatever the theories about her life – they are just that, theories, most plausible at best!

But even going by popular beliefs, Andal’s life story and her poetry were both non-conformist, given the social environment of her times. Large parts of 8^th century Tamil lands were under the influence of the monastic religions, particularly Jainism, whose philosophy was a total antithesis to the devotion of the Alvar saints. While Jainism was atheistic, the religion of the Alvars was centred around a very personal God. Where Jainism preached detachment, both physical and mental, the Alvars’ religion was founded on an intense emotional attachment to God. With Andal, the Alvars’ bhakthi reached the pinnacle of unorthodoxy in religion, for her poetry is manifest with primal emotions of sexuality – the intense urge of a woman to unite with her lover.

In fact, some scholars like Champakalakshmi (Religion, Tradition and Ideology: Pre-colonial South India) go as far to say that the chief enemies of the Bhakthi movement were not so much the Vedic-Brahminical traditions as the ‘heretic’ faiths of Buddhism and Jainism, especially the latter, which enjoyed significant royal patronage, especially among the Pallava Kings. If it was indeed so, it further strengthens the case for Andal as a social maverick of her times.  This is because while the Buddhists and Jains believed in negation of the human body, its sexuality, and in breaking free of the desires of the flesh, Andal was singularly cognisant of her sexuality and saw it as an instrument to unite with the divine.

While it was not uncommon to find sexual undertones in the poetry of male saints (eg., Nammalvar first and Jayadev later), who used the Nayaki bhava (imagining themselves as the God’s lover) to give form to their emotional expression, Andal was the first woman saint to give words to her bodily needs and sexual desires. Her desire to wear the garland before offering to the god suggests that in her mind, she was already in a physically intimate relationship with her lord, as exists between married couples. Andal’s poetry thus expresses her constant longing and yearning to unite with her divine lover. Some of the verses in her poetry are explicitly erotic in nature.

It is possible that Andal’s erotic expressions made her immediate society uncomfortable. Even today, some explicitly amorous verses of her poetry are skipped when her poems are recited in temples.

This discomfort could explain the stories around the origins of her birth, her subsequent canonisation and eventual deification. The story that she was found as a baby in the garden (like Sita) logically culminates in her final deification as Bhudevi, daughter of Mother Earth and consort of Lord Vishnu.

Nevertheless, in Indian culture, Andal's is the first female voice that dared to express the most intimate, erotic and sensual feelings of a woman!

It is interesting that while other girls of her probably age chose to settle down with a partner in flesh and blood, she refused to offer herself to any lesser mortal, instead choosing to dedicate herself, in body and spirit, to her celestial paramour.

In a particular verse, she says that ‘her voluptuous breasts will swell for the lord alone, and scorns the idea of making love to mortal beings, comparing that with the sacrificial offering made by Brahmins being violated by jackals in the forest.’

This sentiment resonates once again, four or five centuries later, in the verses of Akka Mahadevi, a Bhakthi saint poet from Karnataka. Believed to have lived in the 12^th century AD, Mahadevi too walked out of her wedded life, seeking union with the divine. Akka Mahadevi describes her love for Lord Shiva as adulterous, viewing her husband and his parents as impediments to her union with her Lord. Terming relationship with mortal men as 'unsatisfactory', Akka Mahadevi describes them as 'thorns hiding under smooth leaves, untrustworthy.’

From their verses it appears that both Andal and Akka Mahadevi refused to be confined to the shackles of a restrictive family system and sought to break free from it. As Romila Thapar, in her History of Early India– From the origins to AD 1300, says “Women participants in the Tamil devotional movement renounced their social obligations….They created alternative possibilities within the society by their poetry, their activities and their sublimation of eroticism.”

And Andal did just that – she rejected the mortal world and its restraining social contracts to explore an ‘alternate possibility’. In this pursuit, she aspired for the unattainable divine and was even successful in realising it. Her disdain for an unremarkable mundane life, a life that every other girl of her age lived in her society, made her an undisputed outlier of her times.

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Andal – The Lover Saint - Part 1

Counted as the only female Bhakthi saint among the 12 Alvars (who were staunch devotees of Vishnu) Andal is known for her exquisite devotional poetry – poetry that bursts with longing and desire, intimately physical, often erotic, an intense expression of her desire to unite with her lover, her lord, Vishnu.

Believed to have been active in the years spanning 7^th-8^th century AD, Andal was the predecessor of Meerabai, who followed nearly 7 centuries later. As with Meerabai's, evidence of her existence is only literary. An accomplished poetess, she is credited with two compilations – Thiruppavai and Naachiyaar Thirumozhi – parts of which are  still recited by devotees in temples even today.

Experts point out that Andal’s poetry borrowed both in form and spirit from the legacy of ancient Sangam love poetry called ‘Agam’ poetry.  (The entire corpus of Sangam literature is dated between 500 BCE to 400 CE.)  But the scope of these poems was limited to expressions of mortal love affairs. In contrast, Andal’s poetry was replete with her desire for divine love, a seeking for physical intimacy with a supreme being.

The story of Andal

The story goes that Andal was found as a baby lying in a garden by Vishnuchittar also known as Periyalvaar, who is also counted among the 12 Alvars. It happened that one day, Vishnuchittar, who was in the habit of gathering flowers from the garden at the temple of Lord Vatapathrashayi (Vishnu) at Srivillipuththoor (a village in South TamilNadu), found a beautiful baby under a Tulasi plant in the temple garden.

Naming the child Kodai, Vishnuchittar brought her up as his own. Breaking away from tradition, he imparted to her the education that is typically imparted to a boy. And soon enough, as she grew up, like her father, Kodai too blossomed into an accomplished poet.

Even in her childhood, Kodai was deeply impressed by Vishnuchittar’s devotion to Lord Vishnu. She helped him gather flowers and make beautiful garlands out of them. One day, when Vishnuchittar had left the garlands that he had made in a basket to take to the temple, Kodai found them and was at once tempted to try them out on herself, first. She felt that when she wore them, the flowers (in the garland) would take on her (bodily) fragrance and the garlands would smell sweeter when they were offered to her lord. Indeed, when the idol was adorned with these garlands, it shone like never before! The temple goers were awestruck by the sudden aura emanating from the temple idol and attributed it to the pure devotion that Vishnuchittar wove into the garlands he offered.

                                      Image Source: htttp://guruparamparai.wordpress.com

This routine continued for a while. Every day, thereafter, Kodai would try the garlands on herself before they were taken to the temple. For a while, Vishnuchittar was unaware of this till one day, he happened to see her with the garland on. He was aghast!! He chastised Kodai for her act of blasphemy. He was shocked to know that all these days, he had been unknowingly offering his lord, a garland already worn by a mere mortal! This was sacrilege!!

Admonished severely by her father for her presumptuous act, Kodai had to stop trying out the garlands on herself first. But it turned out that the garlands adorning the deity, unworn by her, were never the same! They had become bereft of fragrance and splendour. However, Vishnuchittar, who was filled with guilt and remorse over his daughter’s misdemeanour, continued to beg for forgiveness from his lord.

On a following night, Lord Vishnu appeared in his dream and asked His devotee not to fret over Kodai’s deed. Instead, He commanded His devotee to bring to Him only those garlands that Kodai had worn, saying that only her garlands pleased His mind and senses. 

Vishnuchittar was both amazed and pleased by the lord’s reaction! From that day on, Vishnuchittar allowed Kodai to wear the garlands before he took them to the temple to adorn the Lord. Following the incident, Kodai came to be known as Andal, its Tamil meaning being, someone who ruled (the heart of her beloved).

The story goes that, as she grew up, Andal grew very thin and lacklustre, pining away for her Lord. (There is a particular verse in her poetry where she confides to her friend about a dream that she had had in which she married her beloved Narayanan in a grand festive setting. The verse is often quoted for its lyrical beauty and for being among the finest expressions of divine love in Bhakthi literature.)

Refusing to marry any mortal, Andal expressed to her father her desire to have none other than Lord Ranganathan of Srirangam (a temple town in South Tamil Nadu where Lord Vishnu is seen reclining on the coils of Adisheshan in yoga nidra) for her husband. Predictably, this got Vishnuchittar very worried, and he prayed to his lord for a solution.

Soon enough, one day, Lord Vishnu appeared in Vishnuchittar’s dreams and asked him to bring Andal, decked as a bride, to His temple at Srirangam where He would accept her as His wife. Overjoyed, Vidhnuchittar arranged for his daughter to be dressed in bridal finery and had her brought from Srivilliputhoor to Srirangam in a palanquin. The story goes that on reaching the temple, the father-daughter duo entered the inner sanctum where Andal climbed on to the altar near the feet of the reclining Lord and simply disappeared! Vishnuchittar understood that his foster daughter had united with her divine consort.

And thus was Andal’s love consummated – through her union with her Beloved, both in body and spirit. 

Draupadi's five husbands

"यदिहास्ति तदन्यत्र यन्नेहास्ति न तत् क्वचित् |"

 "Whatever is here is found elsewhere, but what is not here is to be found nowhere else' claims the Mahabharatha (Mbh) about itself. True to its rhetoric, for generations now, the epic has continued to enchant, enthrall and intrigue us at the same time.

Talking of the intriguing aspects of Vyasa's epic, the one that has possibly been debated the most is the case of Draupadi's five husbands.

Not surprising though, considering that through large parts of our social history, we have been known to be a largely polygamous, and in very recent times,  a monogamous society. We don't find mention of too many instances of polyandry in our stories. Although it is believed that women in the early vedic age were free to take any man besides their husband, that practice apparently was brought to a stop by a sage, who could not tolerate seeing his mother go away with a man who was not his father. So, one woman having multiple sex partners was probably not very common in the later vedic period.

Social historians too opine that polyandry as a system was not prevelant among Aryan tribes.

But there are other scholars who point out that Draupadi came from Panchala desha, where polyandry could have been an accepted social practice.  Panchala desha is today identified as the area around present day Himachal Pradesh and Nepal. And in these mountainous regions where land is scarce, fraternal polyandry was  common and is believed to be in practice even today among Tibetans, the Nepalese and the Paharis of Himachal.

The idea behind fraternal polyandry was simple - it was to prevent the division of the limited land available in the mountainous regions. By marrying the same woman,  brothers managed to keep the land together and avoid fragmentation.

This explanation would have been perfectly satisfactory to justify Draupadi's marriage, but for the fact that Pandavas had no plans of settling down in Panchala and rule over it; instead, they wanted to go back to Hastinapura to stake their claim to the Kuru kingdom. While they might have wished for a powerful ally in Drupada, they  did not show any interest in his kingdom.

Nor did their marriage to Draupadi gain them instant lordship over Panchala as  the Parshatas (Drupada's tribe) were not  matrilineal. This is clear as Dhrishtadhyumna, Draupadi's brother, is identified as the king's heir apparent (although he was not the eldest of Drupada's sons, but that's another story!).

If this seemingly plausible explanation is ruled out, how then do we explain Draupadi's five husbands?

Of course, the epic itself offers several explanations for Draupadi's 'vichitra vivaha' in the form of backstories.

On hearing the suggestion by Yudhishtra that Draupadi marry all the brothers, King Drupada's initial reaction is one of shock. The king counters the suggestion by saying that such an arrangement is unheard of in the society.  Yudhishtra disagrees and cites the case of Jatila who married the saptharishis. But this does not satisfy Drupada.

Subsequently, the revered Krishna Dvaipayana himself enters the scene to convince Drupada to accept the marriage by narrating two stories that explain why Draupadi was destined to be the wife of five men.

The story wherein Draupadi in her earlier birth sought five boons from Lord Shiva asking for five elevated qualities in a husband is quite well known. In the other story, the sage tells the king that the Pandavas were actually Indras in their previous birth and Draupadi was goddess Shri. The Indras were ordained by Lord Shiva to be born as Pandavas and marry Shri who was to take birth as Draupadi.

Although, details of the second story are sketchy, both these stories nevertheless make it clear that Draupadi's marriage to the five brothers was pre-ordained, had divine sanction and was hence acceptable. And more importantly, the marriage was to be considered a unique arrangement and was not to become a societal norm.

Of course, one is not sure if these stories were part of Vyasa's original epic or if they were later day additions. As the popularity of the epic spread, it is believed that several layers of content were added to it to make the epic appealing to a wide audience with diverse cultures.

Some scholars are of the opinion that several backstories in the text as we know it today, including probably Draupadi's, were not part of Vyasa's original epic.

And some have even taken the explanation beyond stories to give it a metaphysical perspective by comparing the Pandavas to the five elements which converge into the kundalini shakthi, namely Draupadi.

How do we make sense of all this rationale? How do we interpret this idea if one were to approach it rationally and stripped off its different (desperate?!) justifications?

To me the explanation that the polyandrous marriage was actually Kunti's idea (as suggested by some) seems the most plausible one. 

Kunti, like her grand mother-in-law, Satyavati, was a very smart woman. After the incident at the lac house at Varanavrata, she was probably convinced that the Kauravas were a formidable force to be reckoned with. If at all the Pandavas had the faintest chance of regaining their right to rule, it was possible only if they stayed united. So, when opportunity came knocking in the form of Draupadi, she seized it. What better way to keep the brothers together than for them to have a common spouse? So it is quite possible that it was a deliberate decision by Kunti to have Draupadi marry all her sons. In any case, it  certainly was not the result of a misunderstanding on her part as it is made out to be.

Interestingly, even as Kunti implicitly suggests the idea, she goes against her own stance not to unite with more than three men in order to beget sons.  Earlier in the epic, she turns down Pandu's request asking her to invoke the mantra (given to her by Durvasa) for the fourth time (after the birth of Arjuna), citing that a woman having a relationship with more than three men is considered a woman of loose morals. Going by her own definition, Draupadi becomes a fallen woman by marrying five men.

In other words, Kunti deftly bent the rule of chastity for the women of those times (making Draupadi a scapegoat in that course!) in order to keep her sons together.

But Kunti was not the lone decision taker here. Yudhishtra had a role to play too. According to the epic, Kunti wanted Yudhishtra to endorse her decision. She consulted him and urged him to think of a way her directive that Draupadi (as the bhiksha) be shared could come true. This set Yudhihtra thinking, for he possibly found some merit in her suggestion.

Here, we must remember that the brothers had been roaming the forest for a long time without a consort (except Bhima who took Hidimbi). And their chances of getting back to civilisation looked bleak at that time. So when the lovely Draupadi was asked to be shared among the brothers by their mother, the idea was far from repulsive for them. According to the epic, 'one look at the radiant Draupadi put the brothers' senses on a turmoil.'

The wise Yudhishtra could make out what was running through his brothers' minds. He, as advised earlier by Vyasa, wanted to avoid any conflict among the brothers. So, he pronounced, "this fortunate Draupadi will be a wife to all of us'",  rendering him equally complicit in the decision.

And so, just as the Tibetans and Paharis adopted polyandry to keep their lands from division, the Pandavas took a common wife to stay united and consolidate their collective skills that would eventually help them win the war.

Thus, one finds that the reason for Draupadi to take five husbands was a practical one grounded in the harsh and cold reality of the day. The Pandavas were wifeless, landless and titleless, and desperately needed each other to reclaim their rights to the throne of Hastinapur. Towards that end, Draupadi was to be the thread that was to keep them bound together.




P.S: The views expressed here are mine unless stated otherwise, and are based on a reading of Bibek Debroy's translation of the critical edition of the Mahabharata.

Celebrating(?!) Diwali : Gujarati vs Tamil style

It is 14 years since I moved to Mumbai and this will be my 13th Diwali here.

The first few Diwalis were spent in Chembur, essentially the domain of South Indians, especially the Tamils.

And that meant I could continue to follow the Tamil customs and traditions even in distant Mumbai, thus making my great grandmother in heaven very proud.

Thus passed a few years, and some uneventful Diwalis. But it was only five years back when I moved into an essentially Gujarati locality that I came face to face with an entirely different way of celebrating Diwali.... and it would be an understatement to say the frugal Tamil in me was more than shocked!!!!

To tell you why, you must first understand how we Tamils traditionally celebrate Diwali.

Actually, to even say we 'celebrate' the festival is bit of a stretch.

Unlike in the north, Diwali for Tamils is a one-day affair. Ok, granted, it is a one helluva long day that starts at 3.30 am....(this annoying habit of waking up at insane hours of the morning is something that I strongly hold against my community.)

But if you are someone like me, who would rather link her Aadhar card to the bank account cheerfully than wake up early, then the harsh truth is, you have little choice. For, there is this whole community out there that takes upon itself the onerous responsibility of waking up the entire neighbourhood, which it does by firing a thousand-walah firecracker at the unholy hour. While every dog on the road thinks that the apocalypse has arrived, soporiphic denizens like me wake up from our beds quivering like Trump did when Kim Jong Un fired his missiles over Japan!!

Suffice to say our celebration of Naraka Chaturdashi starts with a bang!

After being woken up at the wickedest of the wee hours, slyly nicknamed, Brahma muhurtham, we are herded off to have the mandated oil bath.

As a wise man (in a movie) once pointed out, the oil bath bears a morbid resemblance to the bath ritual mandated for a shraddha. 'Are we actually mourning the death of narakasura in the guise of celebrating it', the wise man asked?! Something to be mulled over....yes! 

In any case, not a happy thought - this abhyanga snan - for the people on the east coast, because Diwali often  coincides with the north-east monsoons that brings rains in its most violent form - the cyclonic storms. Certainly, not the fairest of weathers for the firecracker enthusiast!

Sadly, even after we endure the early morn bath ritual on probably the wettest day of the year, our ordeal is far from over.

Instead of being treated to all the goodies that wait to be devoured, we are treated to a bitter-sweet dose of 'deepavali marundu' or medicine!!! Can you imagine a more cruel tradition where you kick-start a festival by consuming a medicine?!!!

The 'deepavali marundu' is a brownish-black gooey substance that is made up of a variety of herbs and spices such as jeera and ginger cooked by melting gud. It is believed(?!) that the medicine is consumed to pre-empt any gastronomical disturbances that may be caused by the untimely bath and the much promised feast that follows.  Whatever be the explanation, to many, the idea is weird, and the dish, unpalatable!!

Although the much promised feast does happen, the size of the celebrations comes nowhere close to the festivities that one sees up north. In short, the ornate gagra cholis and dry fruit burfies beat the grandest of kanjeevarams and the humble mysore-pak hands down!!

So you can imagine why my jaw scraped the floor when I was exposed to the Gujarathi style, four-day-long, stupendous Diwali, where, to start with, no expense is spared to give the house, and its members a new look. The festival is celebrated with sheer, unadulterated and unabashed abandon, and on a scale unfathomable for a traditionally groomed Tamil....And, the festivities only keep getting bigger every year, what with the 'great indian festival' and 'unbox zindagi' adding to the  dham, dhama, dham, dham!!

But there is one area where we Tamils undercut the Gujaratis - and that is in how we refer to the festival  by its actual longish name -  Deepavali.

Deepavali = deepa + avali- meaning a series of lamps. But the funny part is the Tamils dont light lamps for Deepavali. Instead, they choose to do so in the month of 'karthik' in a manner of paying obeisance to their favourite god Muruga aka Karthikeya. Yet another case of' being same, same but different'!

Deepavali, according to one school of thought, was not part of the ancient Tamil culture at all, till the Jains brought it along when they migrated from the North. (For the Jains, Deepavali is the day Mahavira attained Nirvana.) And the Jains were a dominant political and religious force in ancient Tamilagam even during the Sangam era. So it is quite possible that their customs were assimilated into the local culture. With time, the gods changed, but popular traditions apparently didn't.

Pan-religious it may be, but Diwali is not a pan-Indian festival as it is often made out to be. Large populations in the country, including the Keralites, Bengalis and people from the north-east don't bother to celebrate it.

And that is what makes Diwali aka Deepavali a fascinating festival - the innumerable ways we choose to celebrate it, or don't!!

Kandapuranam and Ramayana: Some stunning similarities

In India, a story is never told for the first time said eminent scholar and folk tale enthusiast AK Ramanujan. Every story there is, has been told so many times over (with some minor variations to fit regional requirements), that every story you hear reminds you of another. Thus we find the same thread running through the stories of Tenali Raman in Telugu, tales of Birbal in Hindi, fables of Mariyadai Raman in Tamil, stories of Gopal the maverick from Bengal and the stories of Sanathkumara in Sanskrit.

Or, take for example the two epics, Ramayana and Mahabharatha. These two epics are believed to have been composed a few centuries apart, with Ramayana’s oral version preceding its loftier counterpart. Yet they share several common motifs  - they both dwell on the concept of a king’s duty and they both have powerful women characters who perform the role of a catalyst in the elimination of evil. At a more basic level, they deal with the problems of heirless kings and even share similarities in linking physical handicaps to a crooked mind (Shakuni limped and Manthra was a hunchback).

What is even more remarkable is the stunning similarity that one finds between the Ramayana and a 17th century Tamil epic Kandapuranam (KP), an adaption of the Sanskrit work, Skandapurana, believed to have been composed a millennia earlier.

What is singularly intriguing about the stories of Rama and Murugan is that both these compositions choose to elevate deities from two (once) opposing sects – the Vaishnava and the Shaiva schools.

Before proceeding with identifying the similarities between the two epics, here is the story of KP in a capsule.

The story of Kandapuranam

Surapadman and his two brothers Tarakasuran and Simhamukhan gain the boon of invincibility from Shiva - they cannot be defeated by anyone other than a force of Shiva. Predictably, the boon makes them arrogant and all powerful. The three asuras invade Amaravathi, capture and enslave the devas and the sages and deploy them to do menial tasks. They also capture and imprison Indra’s son, Jayantha in their capital city, Veera Mahendrapuram.

Rendered powerless by the malicious asuras, the devas led by Brahma seek Shiva’s help to rein them in. Shiva creates Skanda who assumes the role of Senapathi of the deva armies, and with the help of Veerabahu (his confidant) and his men, decimates the three asuras and restores order to the establishment.

Uncanny similarities with the Ramayana

Let’s now go about identifying the similarities this story has with the pan-Indian epic, the Ramayana. To begin at the beginning, let’s take the reason for Skanda’s birth.

In the original Sanskrit text, Skanda is conceived by Shiva to destroy the evil Tarakasura. (There is no mention of Surapadman or Simhamukhan here.) In KP, Murugan alias Karthikeya is born to eliminate three asuras, namely Surapadman, Tarakasuran and Simhamukhan. These three asuras happen to be the sons of Sage Kashyapa.  Ravana, Kumbhakarna and Vibhishana are also sons of a seer - Sage Vishrava. In both the cases, their mothers Kaikesi (Ravana) and Maya (Surapadman) were asura women who chose to seduce and marry old, wise Rishis, with a specific agenda, namely to bear powerful offspring.

In the Ramayana, Rama wages war on Ravana to free his wife Sita, who is held captive in Lanka. In KP, Surapadman holds the devas and Indra’s son Jayantha captive. Murugan leads an army to free the celestials.

Ravana’s kingdom is the island city of Lanka whereas Surapadman’s kingdom is the city of Veera Mahendrapuram, also an island.

Both Ravana and Surapadman are ardent devotees of Lord Shiva and both are well versed in occult and magic, thanks to their asura geneology.

Incidentally in both the epics, the three asuras have a sister who has a critical role to play in the story. The Shurpanaka equivalent in KP is Ajamukhi. While Shurpanaka incites Ravana to kidnap Sita, Ajamukhi desires Indra’s wife Saachi for her brother, Surapadman. In the process, Ajamukhi loses her hands and Shurpanakha, her nose.

Again, among the three asuras, Simhamukha is portrayed as a moderate who warns Surapadman, his elder brother, against taking on the force of Shiva, i.e., Murugan. Similarly, in the Ramayana, Vibhishana advises Ravana to return Sita to Rama, whom he identifies as a divine and undefeatable force. However, the similarity ends there. Simhamukha is no deserter, and unlike Vibhishana, loses his life fighting for his brother.

In Kamban’s Ramavataram, as Kumbhakarna proceeds to the battlefield, he has a premonition that he may not return alive. However, he commits his life to his brother’s cause, namely to defeat Rama and his forces. A similar dialogue takes place between Simhamukha and Surapadman before the former leaves for the battlefield to fight Murugan’s armies.

Talking of family members, Surapadman has a son called Banugopan, just as Ravana has a son, Indrajeet. Both Banugopan and Indrajeet are killed in the war against the divine forces. 

In the Ramayana, Hanuman carries Rama’s message of peace to Ravana’s court. In KP, it is Veerabahu, Murugan’s confidant, who goes as the messenger to Surapadman’s court. Similar to Hanuman, Veerabahu is blessed with the ability to change form according to his wish. Just as Hanuman meets Sita to pass on the message of Rama’s wellbeing and his plans to free her, Veerabahu takes the form of a flying insect to visit Jayantha (Indra’s son), who is languishing in the prison. To him, Veerabahu announces the arrival of Murugan, and his plans to destroy Surapadman and his men.

And finally in popular culture today, just as Ramleela is celebrated with pomp and splendor, the slaying of Surapadman is celebrated with revelry at the Murugan temple at Thiruchendoor, a coastal town in southern Tamil Nadu. The festival is called Surasamharam in which the battle between Murugan and Surapadmam is enacted and thousands throng to watch the performance which culminates in Murugan slaying the mighty Surapadman.

Final thoughts on the striking parallels

It will not be an exaggeration to claim that the Tamil text composed by the Shaivite, Kachiappa Shivacharyar bears a stronger resemblance to the Ramayana than it does to its mother text, the Skandapurana.

Considering that Kachiyappar’s composition came some 4-5 centuries after Kamban’s Ramavataram (12th century), it is not surprising that KP was heavily inspired by Kamban’s hugely popular magnum opus.

In other words, KP once again reiterates the huge popularity of Ramayana as a story that has captured the imagination of the people of various cultures, across a very wide geography. Kachiappar could not have found a better vehicle to carry his story than the Ramayana whose structure was already familiar among people.

Or, was the similarity a deliberate attempt to integrate the two rival sects, the Shaivites and Vaishnavites under one umbrella......only Kachiappar can tell. 

Funnily enough, most people listening to the Kandapuranam hardly recognize the similarities between the two epics, and therein lies the success of the story-teller!