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If there was ever a saint who deserved the truthful application of the cliché that
he possessed ‘Inner Sight’, it was Surdas. That he is one of the greatest poets
the Hindi language has ever known and that his work is a living reality taught in
schools all over the country even today is important but not as important as his
extraordinary love for Krishna. He was one of the greatest figures in the bhakti
movement, which anyway bristled like a thicket with great ones, since it emerged
in the tenth century to totally transform Hindu religion. The traditional date for
the birth of Surdas is 1478 and there is no great reason to doubt it. He was born
in a village called Siri, then on the outskirts of Delhi and today totally swallowed
up by the expanding city. His life is almost totally devoid of any other historical
accuracy in the reports that have come down to us, other than the usual romantic
fantasies of the hagiographers. In his case what really mattered was the work and
his work was only an external manifestation for his great love for Krishna.
Reports of his marriage and entanglements with amorous temptresses seem to be no
more than the standard stories which arise around such saintly figures. For the
average Indian mind, saintliness is not really sanctioned until it has encountered
and resisted or overcome fleshy temptations! The truth is even though he was born
blind he was an amazingly creative talent from infancy and his love for Krishna
seemed to have been genetically designed into him. He took to wandering
at an early age, impelled by the power of his genius, being as great a singer as
a poet and a favorite wherever he went. Unlike other bhakti saints he seems to have
faced very little actual opposition and abuse from the orthodoxy, presumably because
his genius was too manifest to be resisted and also because Bhakti had become too
popular by his time for such an obvious saint to be persecuted with ease. His choice
of subject matter, though dealing with the loves of Krishna was couched in language
very chaste, there was none, (well almost none) of the embarrassingly frank detail
so beloved of Sanskrit erotica, which used to serve as the template for the devotional
poets.
At the age of eighteen he reached Gau Ghat a sacred bathing spot on the banks
of the holy river Yamuna, somewhere between the cities of Mathura and Agra. He had
a chance meeting with Shri Vallabharacharya, the great saint-savant of the age who
listened to this young genius and instantly realized he had not found an area of
work comparable to this talent. He gave Surdas the significant advice to sing of
Bhagvat Lila, the Creative Play of the Lord. He also initiated the young man into
the mysteries of pure contemplative devotion. He had no formal guru before
that, and had missed out on the transfer of power believed to be so essential on
the spiritual path. After that there was no stopping him. He almost immediately
attained a mystical union with Krishna and from then on he could bring before his
minds eye any episode in the life of Krishna that he chose which he then rendered
into verse almost as if an eyewitness report.
He then moved to Vraj or Braja Bhoomi the traditional locale of the childhood of
Krishnan and he never shifted from there until his death in 1583. The poetic
compositions came in a flood, and they never seemed to vary much in quality, as
they were indeed a species of automatic writing. He had the habit of singing the
evening bhajans at the local temple and he could always describe in great and exact
detail the daily adornments of the image of Krishna. Most accepted this as part
of his inner sight but a few skeptics thought he was merely well informed of the
seasonal and festival changes and tried out a test. One day the sanctum doors opened
to reveal the image of god in its stark purity of stone with not a single flower
or ornament on it - and Surdas sang, as if it was the most normal thing, “Today
I see the Lord Unadorned.” So that was that.
His work consists primarily of three major compilations, the Sur-Saravali, the Sahitya-Lahiri
and the Sur-Sagar. The Saravali is supposed to have originally one hundred
thousand verses but many have been lost forever. It is based on the analogy of the
Holi festival, by far the most popular of the festivals of the time, and always
associated with Krishna as part of his Divine Play. It is unique in that he actually
attempts to formulate a theory of Genesis in that with Krishna being the Creator
God, and with 24 incarnations of Vishnu being described until with verse 360 he
gets to the main event - the incarnation of Krishna and the actions of his life.
In between he intersperses it with descriptions of Ragas and descriptions of Vasant
and Holi festivals. Apart from being great narrative poetry they are also significant
sources of information about the past.
The Sahitya-Lahiri is supposedly a treatise of various forms of poetical composition,
dealing primarily with Bhakti. This work still excites the disparagement of the
Victorian minded for Surdas evokes the older vein of Sanskrit poetry in full-blown
sensuousness here and that still abashes many people. The Sur-Sagar is his masterpiece,
the ‘oceanic work’ as its name indicates and remains the most influential and important
of all his works. It deals with the life of Krishna in such tireless detail that
most people are convinced this is the authentic version! This is not the
hardheaded patrician of the Mahabharatha, the politician and warrior. This is a
beloved and naughty child, incapable of tolerating any frustration because of his
divine nature that demands everybody concede his automatic superiority. Since Krishna
is the universe, or rather the Universe is a minor part of Krishna, this is a valid
position to take. In the imagination of North India at least, the life and times
of Krishna follow the Surdas version not the Mahabharatha or the Bhagvatam, which
are the older and more ‘authentic’ versions. Such is the power of a real poet in
full flow. It also confirmed a tendency to over sentimentalize everything and view
every situation through a sheen of tears but such things happen.
Surdas made Krishna, a dangerously ambivalent and sometimes ruthless god, into an
object of mass devotion, the recipient of the loving indulgence we give
to an adorable baby, or even more interestingly, the ultimate object of love, a
chance to transmute ordinary fleshy love into a pathway for salvation. It was a
remarkable project and a testament to this genius that it worked so well. No other
god straddles the spectrum quite so widely and so comfortably, and contradictions
that may exist are all Lila, Divine Play, and not for mere mortals to question.
He literally reinvented and popularized a god who was more respected than loved
until then and made him zoom to the forefront in the devotional stakes. The dominant
position of Krishna in the mental life of the Hindus is in many ways a contribution
of Surdas.
- Rohit Arya
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