Untouchable saints : an Indian phenomenon

285 Pages·2005·8.282 MB·English

by  Rohini Mokashi-Punekar, Eleanor Zelliot

UNTOUCHABLE SAINTS
An Indian Phenomenon

UNTOUCHABLE SAINTS
An Indian Phenomenon
Edited by
Eleanor Zelliot
Rohini Mokashi-Punekar
MANOHAR
2005
First published 2005
© Individual contributors, 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without prior permission of die editors and the publisher
ISBN 81-7304-644-1
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Contents
List of Illustrations 7
Introduction
Eleanor Zelliot
Rohini Mokashi-Punekar 9
I. THE TAMIL SAINTS: TIRUPPAN ALVAR AND NANDANAR
1. The Life and Lyrics of Tiruppan Alvar
Vasudha Narayanan 55
2. In Love with the Body of God:
Eros and the Praise of Icons in South Indian Devotion
Steven P. Hopkins 83
3. The Story of Nandanar: Contesting the Order of Things
Karen Pechilis Prentiss 95
4. Nandanar: Untouchable Saint and
Caste Hindu Anomaly
Lynn Vincentnathan 109
n. THE MARATHI SAINTS: CHOKHAMELA,
SOYRABAI, KARMAMEIA NIRMALA, BANKA
5. On the Threshold: The Songs of Chokhamela
Rohini Mokashi-Punekar 123
6. Banka Mahar and Karmamela
Rohini Mokashi-Punekar 143
7. The Story of Karmamela’s Birth
Eleanor Zelliot 149
8. Soyrabai and Nirmala
Eleanor Zelliot 157
6 CONTENTS
9. The Search for Chokhamela
Eleanor Zelliot
10. Representations of Chokhamela in
Marathi Film and Drama
Anil Sapkal
11. God in a Copper Pot
V.L. Manjul
12. Chokhamela and His Revilers
Mahipati
III. RAIDAS, RAVIDAS, ROHIDAS
13. The Poems of Ravidas
Translated by Anne Murphy
14. The Saintly Chamar:
Perspectives on the Life of Ravidas
James G. Lochtefeld
15. The Legends of Raidas in Word and Song:
Satire and the Rhetoric of Reform
Joseph Schaller
16. Stories of Ravidas (Raidas)
Ananladas
17. Rohidas the Shoemaker
Mahipati
18. Ravidas in the Contemporary World
Chandrabhan Prasad & Mahesh Dahiwale
19. Bhakti Voices on Untouchability
Glossary
Contributors
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Map 1 : Places associated with major Bhakti Saints 8
Plate 1.1 : Lord Ranganatha at Srirangam 59
Plate 3.1 : Sketch of Nandanar entering the fire and
emerging wearing a sacred thread 104
Plate 4.1 : Shiva Nataraj 114
Plate 5.1 : The samadhi of Chokhamela at the foot of
the stairs of the Pandharpur temple to Vithoba 127
Plate 5.2 : Chokhamela’s image at his samadhi at the foot
of the stairs of the Pandharpur temple to Vithoba 128
Plate 18.1 : Ravidas’ portrait in the hostel dining room run by
Sukhadeo Ranganath Waghmare of Pune 251
Plate 18.2 : The Guru Ravidas temple in Govardhanpur
village, behind Banares Hindu University
in Varanasi 252
Plate 18.3 : Saint Ravidas. Images of Guru Ravidas in
the R.K. Pur am temple in New Delhi 253
Prepared for Hinduism: New Essays in the History of Religions, edited by Bardwell L.
Smith (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1976). Note that Nandanar, Tiruppan Alvar and Chokhamela
and his family are not considered ‘major’. Tiruppan Alvar should be placed with
Ramanuja at Srirangam. Nandanar was transformed into a Brahmin at Chidambaram,
marked under Manikkavasagar in the map. Chokhamela should be located at
Pandharpur and his sister Nirmala at Mehunpuri, a village in Maharashtra north of
Paithan. The map was prepared to illustrate Eleanor Zelliot’s article, ‘The Medieval
Bhakti Movement in History: An Essay on the Literature in English’ in die above volume.
Thanks are due to Joseph and Philip Schwartzberg.
Introduction
ELEANOR ZELLIOT
ROHINI MOKASHI-PUNEKAR
This volume has a long history, beginning with my discovery of the
historical importance of the Marathi Untouchable saint of the fourteenth
century, Chokhamela, some forty years ago when I was doing research
on Dr B.R. Ambedkar and the Untouchable movement. Several
seminars at Carleton College on the literature and culture of India, in
which some students wrote papers on bhakti, allowed me to see how
fascinating a comparative study of the various bhaktas would be. This
volume began to take shape some ten years ago when Joseph Schaller,
Vasudha Narayanan, Karen Pechilis Prentiss, and I participated in a
panel on bhakti at the Association for Asian Studies. David Lorenzen
moderated that panel, and has consistently encouraged and produced
studies on bhakti. Through the years I have added to the file a number
of articles that dealt with any of the four basic Untouchable saints, or
commented on bhakti and untouchability. I had been in touch with
Rohini Mokashi-Punekar in connection with her translations of
Chokhamela’s poetry, which I considered excellent work. I invited
her to collaborate with me in editing the material I had, and to write
some additional essays on those Untouchable saints who also had to
be included in this book. In December 2002, Rohini Mokashi-Punekar
came to Pune (where I had gone for my annual visit) from Guwahati
on the other side of India, and we had several days of solid dawn-to-
midnight conferencing trying to make a book out of the material we
had collected. We have since worked together on the book with the
help of the electronic medium. Her grasp of Marathi and Hindi, and
her poetic sense, were invaluable not only in producing articles on
Chokhamela,1 Banka, and Raímamela, but also in the editing process.
The result is the volume we offer to you in appreciation of the lives of
10 ELEANOR ZELLIOT AND ROHINI MOKASHI-PUNEKAR
the bhaktas and the meaning they hold for the history of that important
group called the Untouchables, or now more often the Dalits (the
oppressed), in India. While this introduction is ‘told’ by Eleanor Zelliot,
we have both contributed to it conceptually. To refer to ourselves in
the third person, as some joint editors do in their introductions, did
not appeal to us. The following framework of the field of study is
therefore outlined by both of us.
The presence of poet-saints from all walks of life is one of the hallmarks
of the bhakti (devotional religion) movement, which began in south
India in the seventh century and left an imprint in the following centuries
on most language areas in the subcontinent Brahmins and low castes,
farmers and cobblers, potters and tailors, drummers and even Muslims,
joined in the passionate singing of religious experience. In at least
three language areas, Tamil, Marathi, and Hindi, saint-poets from
Untouchable castes are counted among those remembered in legend
and song. Each of these saints who hail from the lowest of castes is
surrounded by stories that give one an intense sense of real persons.
All but one have left songs and poems that tell of devotion, but also at
times are a revelation of the experience of being an Untouchable.
Chokhamela and his family and Ravidas sang of their place in society,
sometimes sorrowfully, and sang joyfully of their fellow bhaktas.
Although time and the oral tradition have undoubtedly changed their
songs, one still has a sense that these are the first authentic voices of
Untouchables, those outside the four-fold vama system, and the only
voices until the nineteenth century. In the south, there are no such
voices. All that has survived from Tiruppan Alvar and Nandanar is
one ecstatic song of praise to Vishnu. One wonders why this is so,
especially since the legends about both the saints are so rich and
poignant
In the Tamil-speaking area in about the eighth or ninth century, the
Untouchable Panar,2 Tiruppan is heralded as a devotee of Vishnu
among the twelve Alvars, and the Untouchable Pulai or Pulayan,
Nandanar (or Nantanar), sometimes referred to as a Paraiyan,3 is
counted one of the sixty-three Nayanars, devotees of Shiva. In the
fourteenth century, the Untouchable Mahar4 Chokhamela, and his entire
family—wife, son, sister, and brother-in-law—became honoured members
of the Marathi-speaking pantheon of poet-saints. A century later, Ravidas