TRANSMUTATIONS OF DESIRE AND POWER IN
BHAKTI EXPRESSIONS

H S SHIVAPRAKASH

       One of the challenges associated with viewing India , as unified literary space is to trace continuities between creative practices in far-flung times and spaces of the many-tongued subcontinent. In this context, the study of various Bhakti movements assumes great significance for the simple reason that, as pointed out by Manager Pandey, Bhakti is the first and greatest pan-Indian literary and cultural movement across languages and regional barriers which altered cultures of people at large. The socio-historical and at times even the philosophical aspects of this pan-Indian movement have received sufficient scholarly and critical attention; at the same time, the literary and aesthetic dimensions of the movement have not yet received the attention they deserve. Because Bhakti mode of expressions dominated Indian creative psyche for well over a millennium, the study of patterns of continuities and divergences of the enormous body of literary and aesthetic practices relating to Bhakti can go a long way in helping us understand India as a common literary and cultural space.

      A judicious mixture of synchronic and diachronic approaches is necessary to arrive at a comprehensive view of the achievements of Bhakti movements.  The obstacles are many, however. As Manager Pandey pointed out again we do not have in India the likes of continental critics of the west - Rene Wedlock or George Steiner, for example - whose scholarship extends over several languages, classical and modern.   This is true of literature on Bhakti, too.  For instance, even an eminent authority like V Subramaniam, who has written the most comprehensive account of Bhakti movement from a comparative perspective, can be accused of lopsidedness. For his superb analysis of Tamil Bhakti in relation to North Indian Bhakti passes silently over Karnataka, the next door neighbour of Tamil Nadu. The Karnataka experiment pioneered the subaltern forms of expressions of urban artisan Bhakti that paved the way for Nirguna Bhakti of North and of Orissa. Neither does he say anything about Sakta Bhakti whose paradigms are considerably different.

       Attempts made to synthesize Bhakti in classical Bhakti texts also suffer from shortsighted view. Foe instance the typology of Bhakti worked out in Narada Bhakti Sutra in the form of nine types of Bhakti, though it relates Bhakti to mundane ways of relating, ignores some forms of labour-centered expressions characteristic of artisan Bhakti.

      Such lopsidedness results from a) the enormous volume and bewildering variety of Bhakti expression and (b) our own limited familiarity with this vast material.

      In view of the above difficulties, the present paper is humble in its intentions. It is an attempt to trace variations, transformations and inversions of the lover and the hero in a handful of Bhakti texts composed across languages, regions and centuries.  The texts invoked here are Andal's Tiruppavai , Kannada Vacanas and Jayadeva's Gita Govinda .

      I assume that Bhakti is of South Indian origin following Hazari Prasad Dwivedi and V Subramaniam as opposed to the foreign origin theory suggested by Ramachandra Shukla.

       Having firmly established the genesis of bhakti in Tamil Nadu in 6th century AD, Subramaniam demonstrates the indebtedness of Bhakti practices of both Saivite and Vaisnavite variety to Aham and Puram conventions of classical Sangam poetry. The Vaisnavite poetry of Azhwars is predominantly the transformation of human love-centered  Aham conventions whereas the Saivite poetry of Nayanmars is preponderantly based on Puram conventions heroic poetry praising the valour and generosity of earthly kings. Though there is considerable overlap of these modes in Tamil Bhakti, the predominance of one of the modes in each one of the Bhakti schools is emphasized.  Following suggestions given by Subramaniam, one can relate Aham and Puram typology to the basic human drives of desire and power. The negation of these two basic drives is the tenor of the world-negating Buddhism and Jainism that formed point of departure for Bhakti vision.  One of the main reasons for the emergence of Tamil Bhakti is the Kalabhra interregnum in Tamil history which imposed Jainism on people, Instead of rejecting desire and power Bhakti divinized them by making Siva or Visnu the idealized form of human lover and hero.

      I would like to point out another variation of this transformation in Bhakti poetry in the light of Andal's Tiruppavai .  This concerns the blending of Aham and Puram conventions because the interaction between the romantic and heroic aspects of the deity leads to a lot of drama and irony of Bhakti versions. Like Tamil Bhakti poetry of the period, Andal's work effects the sublimation with a keen sense of actual space and time so characteristic of Tamil this-worldliness.  Andal here assumes the persona of a cowherd girl going about waking up other girls of the clan to perform the markazhi ritual of taking an early morning bath to please the Lord In the imaginative processes involved in 30 stanzas of the poem the hero and the lover become reconciled into Narayana.  Listen to the very first stanza:

       Come all of you keen to sport in water on this moonlit day of markazhi , the best of months!  You adorned with ornaments of unusual loveliness! You lovely girls of cowherd's clan blessed with many riches! The spear-wielding vanquisher of the wicked, the lion-cub of splendid mother Yasoda, Lord Narayana, glorious like blue clouds, red-lotus-eyed, pleasing like the moon, magnificent like the sun and the moon both, will give us the wish-fulfilling drum, The whole world will praise us if you take the ritual bath. Great is our vow.

      The purpose of the vow is to please Narayana, the heart-throb of all cow-herd girls. He is invoked here with colours of both heroism and pastoral romanticism.-the wilder of spear quelling the wicked but glorious like the rain-cloud, a recurrent metaphor in the poem. In stanza 4, the creative transformation of clouds and rain turns into an ambivalent symbol of Narayana's fight against several demons.  The different aspects of the rain are turned into different indefatigable weapons of the Lord.  The slaying of different demons by the Lord is referred to in stanzas 6,8,11,12, 13,15,18,20,22,23,24,25 and 27. The warlike prowess of the Lord goes with generosity and that of his clan.

      Thus, Tiruppavai is a magnificent example of a new amalgamation of diverse expressive modes and conventions. One major aspect of it is the merging of Aham and Puram modes into the new bhakti mode. Desire and power both become identified with their Supreme Form-Lord Narayana.  Just as the colours and contours of the mythical nandagokula are translated into Tamil landscape in the context of the re-enactment of an ancient Tamil ritual, Aham and Puram , desire and power run into one another.

      We now move across centuries and languages to see another remarkable vision of Bhakti variation of desire and love towards Gita Govinda considered to be the finest flowering of vernacular bhakti in Sanskrit.  This dramatic poem is the intense expression of Radha's love for Krsna. Though the poem begins with the praise-song of the victorious Lord in 10 avatars and passing references of duti the messenger to Krsna's quelling of demons, the rest of the poem focuses mainly on desire. Desire and not valour is the burden of the song.  If Andal's poem balances desire and power, Jayadeva focuses exclusively on pangs of separation and union of carnal love between Radha and Krsna, Unlike in Tiruppavai where human power and love are unconditionally surrendered to the Lord; human love is not erased in Jayadeva's work. A K Ramanujan, in his introduction to the translation of Nammazhvar's poems, argues that human love, the signified in Sangam poetry in itself becomes signifier in Vaisnava poetry pointing to love of God. But this point needs to be examined critically. It is not always that Bhakti poetry is entirely metaphorical. For instance, in temple songs by Saivite poets the picturesque surroundings of the temple are invoked not as signifiers but in their own right. Even in Tiruppavai or in the Vacanas of Akkamahadevi landscape exists in its own right, but not as just a metaphor. Bhakti poetry is also, to use a phrase from William Carlos-Williams, 'poetry of things' Declares Jayadeva:

     Yadi harismarane sarasam mno yadi vilasakalasu kutuhalam Madhukomalakanthapadavalim shrunu tada jayadevasaraswatim(Whether pleased with Hari's remembrance or keen about erotic arts, listen to the sweet, tender and glorious poetry of Jayadeva)

       In Jayadeva's scheme of things, love is not justified just as a metaphor for devotion, but exists in its own right related to the divine in a metonymic way. In Indian Bhakti imagination desire is predominantly feminine and valour masculine except in Sakta manifestations. Gita Govinda is about the progressive defeat of male valour by female desire. Krsna the Supreme Male who is the centre of gravity to all gopikas in Andal's poem is depicted here as inconstant and shifting whereas Radha is depicted as the stable centre. At the climax of the poem, the relationship between Radha the Female and Krsna, the Male becomes completely inverted.  In stanza 6 of 19th song, pleads Krsna to Radha:

       Smaragarala khandanammama sirsi mandanamdehi padapallavamudaram(Give me your munificent tender feet; place them on my head, removing the venom of lust).  

      The victorious Lord has not only abdicated but also started celebrating his sweet defeat.  The masculist hero has given in to feminine desire, the denouement dramatized passionately in stanza 10 of song 23:

Maranke ratikelisamkularanarambhe taya sahasa
prayam kantajanaya kinchidupari prarambhi ytsambhramat
nishpandaa jaghanasthali shithilita dorvallirutkampitam
vaksho militamakshi pourusharasam streenaam kutah siddhyati

     (Driven by love's fever Radha rode over her lover Trying to dominate him
Nevertheless, her hips slowed down, arms grew slack, Her heart beat fast, her eyes were closed. How can women attain the prowess of men?)

      The question asked is rhetoric because in the next stanza Radha is described as nirabadha and svadhina bhartrka (easeful and domineering)
The conquest of Male Power by Female desire, the paradigm of Bhakti, has countless echoes in Kannada Bhakti also.  The process was begun by the rejection of earthly rulers by Tamil Bhakti poets like Appar and Periya Azhwar, a radical gesture echoed by Kannada Vacana poets who rejected all authority, earthly and religious, in favour of intense communion with the Divine through unitive devotion leading to the powerful hero becoming absorbed or subjugated by the feminine desire of Bhakti.  For Bhakti always aspires to unconditional love, transgressing human hero, military or ascetic. I would like to conclude with a handful of Vacanas , which illustrate this transmutation of power into desire.

The affairs of kings then show of wealth Are not constant, o man. Look,:
Kalyana was doomed by the pride Of a single jangama, The rule of Calukya king Was eliminated It went O master Kudalasangama Into your begging bowl of human skull.
(Basavanna)

I will capture the foe of lust
And produce him before you O Basava
I will capture the moon-decked one
And produce him before you O Basava
I will put up hurdles
For this extremely lascivious one,
Cenna Mallikarjuna
And mate with him
As if I am one with him
With your blessings
O Basava
(Akka)

Indian Literature, No.206, 2001.

Ibid.

V Subramaniam, The Origins of Bhakti in Tamilnadu: A Transformation of Secular Romanticism to Emotional Identification with a Personal Deity, in G.M.Bailey and I Kesarcodi-Watson (Ed.) Bhakti Studies, Sterling Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1992, P. 11-41.

V Subramaniam, op.cit.

Tiruppavai - 1 (Translation mine)

Gita Govindam - 1.4 (Translation mine)

ibid - 6.19 (Translation mine)

Basavanna - 165 (Translation mine)

Sunya Sampadane - 16.44 (Translation mine)