Musings of Veerasaiva mystics
PREMA NANDAKUMAR
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COLLECTION OF 330 VACHANAS OF VEERASAIVA MYSTICS IN TRANSLATION
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FOREVER SAINTS — Selected Vachanas of Basavanna, Allama and Akka Mahadevi: Translated with Introduction and Notes by D.A. Shankar; Jagadguru Sri Shivarathreeswara Granthamala, JSS Mahavidyapeetha, Mysore.
Rs. 100.
Ever since S. S. Basawanal and K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar published Musings of Basava in 1940, the Kannada Vachanakaras are being presented in the English language off and on with varying degrees of success. D.A. Shankar's is the latest and certainly one of the best of its kind.
Forever Saints contains 330 vachanas in all. Himself a professor of English with a steadfast attachment to Veerasaiva literature, he has chosen the right kind of style for a contemporary audience. The original Kannada Vachanas are dear to us because we can comprehend them easily. As easy flows the translation too, even when dealing with the symbolist style of Allama Prabhu:
On a hillock of live-coal,
I saw a pillar of wax;
On top of the pillar of wax,
I saw a swan;
The pillar melted; the swan flew away; And, O Guheshwara, where
Did the live-coal disappear?
As we savour the unusual image, Shankar helps us with his notes: "The pillar of wax is the sense of attachment to the body, and the swan the soul. When the ego disappears, the soul is free."
While the innumerable Veerasaiva hymnologists of Karnataka have written such intuitive and arresting poems, three of them stand out because of their Vachanas as well as their crucial importance to the Veerasaiva movement. Basavanna was "the unifying focal point" of the movement; Allama Prabhu the master who helped others reach the highest liberation and Akka Mahadevi was the great rebel who touched the spires of bridal mysticism effortlessly. She is certainly Veerasaivism's Andal, dreaming of her Lord:
Sister, listen, I saw in a dream,
A gorava, with small, little red plaits of hair;
He came and took me.
I hugged him and was lost in wonderment.
I saw Chennamallikarjuna:
I shut and opened my eyes, and I was lost to me.
Devotion to Shiva apart, the movement was engaged in the de-brahmanisation of the society. The leader was Basavanna who was a brahmin himself. This did not stop him from lashing out at the so-called upper castes for rejecting a portion of humanity as `untouchables'. Among the hymnologists are devotees drawn from various castes, and as Shankar rightly says, "at no other point of time in India's social history did so many from deprived and depressed classes assume the mantle of the ancient Upanishadic seers and saints." The `afterword' essay on the phases of Bhakti in Basavanna lists the many facets of the devotee's poetic approach to life within and without. When one is immerged in Shiva consciousness, what does he have to do with external ritualism?
Within the great Absolute
I became another Absolute;
I became a particle of light
In the light called Kudala Sangamadeva.
We have in his hymns "peaks of ecstasy, whirlpools of self-doubt and agony, and, of course, the joy of union sung in full-throated pleasure." That is why Basavanna's musings have transcended time and enrich our lives even today.
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