The cult of devotion or bhakti in South India had almost independent origins from the rest of India sharing with it only the spirit of the age, which insisted on rushing headlong towards God in a creative frenzy of devotion. Originating in the tenth century the movement has never really died away though its freshness and originality has been rather badly weathered. The north of India was slower to catch up with the bhakti Weltanschauung, being in the grip of Brahmanical orthodoxy for much longer. It was only after the inroads of a militant Islam had collapsed the citadels of authority that bhakti could flower in the ruins. In the south however bhakti had not even any awareness of the presence of Islam as an alternative contender for souls. All their issues were concentrated on removing the stifling regulations of the priests, which, they contented, prevented man from directly experiencing god. The other great rival was the Jain faith, then not a minority religion but in favor with the state authority of most of the many kingdoms of the day, with large numbers of adherents and generous funds from the faithful, self confident and contentious as Buddhism was in the north and east of India. Against these two great and powerful forces were ranged the instinctual genius of devotion of the great bhakti poets and so aligned were they with the shift in consciousness that they triumphed against all reasonable calculation and are still the dominant point of view where matters of the spirit are concerned. One of the greatest of these change makers was Mahadeviyakka, born in the 12th century in Udutadi village in Sivamogga area, almost an independent kingdom in those days. Her great contemporaries were the saints Bassavana and Allama, the latter being actually born near Sivamogga too. At the age of ten she was initiated by an anonymous guru into Shiva worship, an even she considered so significant that she counted the days of her life as beginning only from that act. The form of Shiva worshipped at the temple of Udutadi was named Chennamallikarjuna, which was parsed as meaning the ‘beautiful Lord, white as jasmine’. She so totally identified with this form of God that she actually used his name as her ankita or signature in all her poems. She also decided that she the beloved of Shiva and none other, no matter what actually befell her physical body. This resolution would be tested more than once especially because the king of the land saw her and immediately fell in love. The parents were intimidated and awed into agreeing to a marriage and why not by normal standards? He was the king and he was in love though he made no secret of the fact that the royal wrath would descend heavily if his desire were not gratified. Mahadevi wanted no part of this sensual lover who also proudly boasted of being an unbeliever or atheist. The marriage was presumably stormy as the king, held fast by his desire could neither do away with her nor ever swerve her to feel for him as he desired. Some devotes dispute this ‘marriage’ ever took place, as they feel it belittles and degrades their beloved Akka ‘elder sister’, the sworn opponent of all carnal pleasures, though in her poetry she uses the standard imagery of Sanskrit erotica to depict the spiritual longing of the soul, O lord white as jasmine When do I join you Stripped of body’s shame And hearts modesty? an astonishing and audacious innovation but there is really no need to think the marriage never took place. Even Meera, a few hundred years later in Rajashtan would face similar trouble. Like all artists Mahadevi used the miserable circumstances of her life into grist for her creative mill of poetry. In a remarkable point of view she described Shiva as her illegitimate or illicit lover. This is something that would actually get enshrined as the epitome of theological correctness in 18th century Bengal, but it is predominantly a Vaishnava view that illicit love (for the Lord) is greater than the socially sanctioned one because it is far stronger and willing to stake all. The articulation of that view however is first Mahadevi’s and she can thus be regarded as making an original and important contribution to the corpus of the faith. Sometimes, with the inspired malice of the saintly, she described Shiva as her only legitimate husband, something that must have boomed unpleasantly in the ears of her mortal spouse. After one such devotional poetic jab So the immortal Lord white as jasmine is my husband Take these husbands who die, decay, and feed them to the kitchen fires the man lost his patience and tried to force himself on her and she abandoned him forever. When her conventional parents expressed their horrified remonstrance she abandoned them too, the ruthlessness of saints towards those standing in their spiritual path is never to be underestimated. She began the wandering life so beloved of India, For hunger There is the village rice in the begging bowl For thirst There are tanks and streams and wells For sleep Temple ruins do well For the company of the soul I have you, Chennamallikarjuna deciding some where along the way, in spite of the endless male attention coming her way because of her beauty, that clothes were a needless adornment for one who wanted only the lord, covering her self only with her long tresses from then on. The great Lalla of Kashmir would behave similarly some centuries later so she was a pioneer here too. That it was culturally influenced by the similar beliefs of the digambara or sky clad monks of the Jains need not be doubted though every body seems to pass over an obvious feature of the cultural landscape in which Mahadevi lived. What was odd was a Hindu woman going completely naked, though just a few hundred kilometers to the south the women of Kerela would remain topless until well into the mid 20th century. Mahadevi reached the stronghold of Shaiva bhaktas at the time, Kalyana, presided over by Basavanna and Allama for fellow rebels against the norms of the time. Even Allama had some trouble accepting this strange apparition and a famous debate-dialogue began between the two, containing some of her greatest poetry. Who is your husband? I am forever married to Chennamallikarjuna. Why do you roam naked as though illusion could be peeled off my mere gestures? And yet you wear the robe of hair? If the heart is free and pure, why this sari of hair? Till the fruit is ripe inside the skin will not fall off - an answer so devastating in its honesty, of her spiritual limitations even though she was already a giant in the field, that Allama bowed to the genuine article and accepted her into the community. She learnt a lot there and more importantly was accepted as a great poet and devotee though she herself was dissatisfied as she had not had the direct experience of God she so craved. Mahadevi wandered off to Srisaila, the Holy Mountain, where she finally had the blissful merger with the Lord she so loved and, again a typical note of hagiography, disappeared from human eyes. She had not even reached thirty years of age. - Rohit Arya Archive