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The Corporeali meets the Spiritual: De-stereotyping the Indian Ascetic Body A Study on the Life and Select

Vachanas of Akka Mahadevi

ANILESH T.T.

Abstract Since the emergence of Semioticsii, the body has been considered a sign, an arbitrary blending of a signifier and signified(s). It simultaneously proclaims the constructedness of the body and rules out any attempt to infuse essentiality or conceptual coherence into it. To be specific, there has never been a the body in any discourse. Rather, there are bodies of multiple significations. Viewing from this theoretical perspective, my attempt in this paper is to read the body of Akka Mahadevi, a 12th century woman mystic from a different angle. The paper intends to foreground a generally unnoticed connotation she consciously or unconsciously brought into her body. Anecdotes from Akkas life and select Vachanas are taken for analysis Key Words: Akka Mahadevi, The Corporeal, The Erotic, Vachana, De-stereotyping, Text.

If you shoot an arrow/plant it/till no feather shows; If you hug/a body, bones/must crunch and crumble -Akka Mahadevi-

Body as Text The body which was confined within the boundaries of physicality is not anymore an essential concept now. Since the emergence of Semiotics the body has been considered a sign, an arbitrary blending of a signifier, sounds or letters that make the word body, and signified(s), the

concept or image or meaning the word evokes in ones mind. The very concept of the arbitrariness reminds us of the constructedness of the body, that is, the body with its supposed materiality and consolidated physicality is a linguistic/social/cultural construct rather than a natural phenomenon. In other words, the body is a sign which signifies cultural and contextual connotations, and like any other sign, is subjected to the linguistic inevitability of difference and deferring. It simultaneously proves that there is no the body with a singular signification. There is no body (the signifier) and a certain signified that maintain a one-to-one connotative bind. Rather there are bodies in which each body holds the potential of a multiplicity of meanings. Based on this concept, we have a plethora of bodies like Biological/Medical/Therapeutic bodies concerning health, mutation, dysfunction and decay; Enticing and Erotic bodies that attract, seduce, lure and stimulate; Athletic bodies to demonstrate skill, strength, speed and dexterity; Ritual bodies to evoke or create belief, trust, fear, wonder and awe in the contemporary culture. This one-to-many signifying potential of the body encourages the critic to view the body as a Text, the multi-dimensional space that differs itself from the single dimensional Work. From a poststructural perspective, the Text is conceived as an endless play of signifiers which prevent a final meaning or a supposed truth. Even though there are differences of opinion on the concept of Text in Poststructuralism itself, certain characteristics of Text can be summarised under the following heads: It is an endless play of signifiers which prevent a final meaning or truth. It is unlimited, unrestricted to genres, and open to infinite interpretations. It is a process, productivity, play and a methodological field which textualises the signifying practices.

It is neither a work nor a series of works, neither present nor absent, neither in scripture nor in diction, and it is neither inside nor outside.

There is nothing outside the Text. It overruns borders and margins and creates a ceaseless meeting with other discourses. The Text that is used as a theoretical framework in the paper is the later Barthian one

that remains contradictory to the Work. The difference between them has been much discussed in academic circles and there is hardly any need to explain it in this paper. However, the comment made by Robert Young on the Barthian Text would be helpful for a recapitulation : The difference between the two can be conceived in terms of difference between a thing and a process, a product and productivity, signified and signifier, or truth and play (Untying the Text 31) Considering these theoretical postulations, it can be assumed that the meanings or connotations inscribed on each body are readings that facilitate the then dominant ideologies of a culture. Since there are no innocent and apolitical bodies, the infusion of the meanings or epistemes on the body reveals a subtle political mechanism that functions behind it. In this regard, a subtle analysis of the cultural/political construction of the body may direct a researcher concerned to the political economy of a culture. Michel Foucault, the great poststructural thinker has rightly defined this quality of body in his Nietzsche, Geneology, History: The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dissolved by ideas) the locus of a dissociated self (adopting the illusion of substantial unity) and a volume of disintegration(148). Taking these theoretical stances, my attempt in this paper is to make a deconstructive reading of the body of Akka Mahadevi, the 12th century Kannada revolutionary woman mystic.

She is reported to have led a life of nonconformity and even her spiritual philosophy was iconoclastic in nature. Even though she lived and made her mystically poetic articulations in 12th century, its subversive and revolutionary potential have its own resonances in the contemporary social sphere of south India in general and Karnataka in particular. She is now generally considered the unacknowledged proponent of Feminism and Postcolonialism as her poems called Vachanas spoke against the discriminations based on the cultural categories of caste and gender. However, my endeavour in this paper is to reveal and foreground a different connotation her body consciously or unconsciously signified through the anecdotes from her life and Vachanas. While proclaiming her own personal spirituality, Akka can be seen rewriting the signification of the body in Indian ascetic discourse, and in this sense Akka, through her life and Vachanas can be seen de-stereotyping the Indian concept of the ascetic body. It should be noticed in this regard that, I do not presume an Indian or Pan Indian concept of ascetic body that is coherent, consistent and non-contradictory in nature. I am aware of the fact that the Indian ascetic discourse, like any other discourse, is not an absolute, but a contingent category. It is spatio-temporally confined and culture specific. Also, it has divergent voices that hold even self-contradictory views that make a unified Indian asceticism impossible. The same is the case with the deviant principles that oppose the general ascetic principles. In other words, neither traditional Indian asceticism nor oppositional practices to it are essential and absolute categories that transcend contradictions. In this context, I would like to make it clear that by Indian/pan Indian asceticism, I mean the very general concepts of Indian asceticism which are shared by most of the sects and groups irrespective of their religious affiliation. A commonly shared principle of Indian asceticism is undoubtedly the denial of the body in favour of the spirit or soul. It promotes rigorous and systematic techniques which are used to alter patterns of life,

especially concerned with eating, sleep and sexual behaviour in order to achieve religious ends. Underlying these ascetic practices is the belief that there exists a relationship between such practices and moral and spiritual development. Also, by the word de-stereotyping or deconstructing, I never mean that Akkas life or deeds have subverted the whole system of Indian asceticism. The term deconstruction, at its very theoretical sense, can also mean creating a fissure in the supposedly non-contradictory and unified discourse, and it is in this sense that the term is used in this paper. The aim of the paper, as mentioned earlier, is to foreground an otherwise important social/political effect of Akkas nakedness. Personal becomes Political Akka was born in Udutadi near the present Shimoga in Karnataka to parents who belonged to Veerashaiva movementiii. The oral data which were documented later tells that at an early age she was initiated into the worship of Lord Shiva. The Shiva-worshippers were then allowed to worship the forms or incarnations of Shiva to which they felt more affinity, and Akka preferred Chennamallikarjuna which literally means the beautiful Arjuna of Goddess Mallika. She betrothed herself to Shiva and submitted her total being before Him. This very early spiritual submission of Akka created material issues for her among which the most serious one was the threatening marriage proposal from King/chieftain Kausika. Even though she married him and lived a trying life, she left him and started her spiritual odyssey for her Chennamallikarjuna. She continued the journey, which was dramatic and eventful till her ultimate union with her Lord. Her poetic and mystical articulations are in the spoken form called Vachanas which are part of the oral tradition of Kannada. The English translation of Vachanas which I use for analysis in this paper is done by A.K.Ramanujan in his anthology titled Speaking of Shiva.

Now Akka is read as an anachronistic Feminist and a postcolonialist. However, my intention in this paper is to investigate the subversive connotations she knowingly or unknowingly brought into her body. As mentioned earlier, the body is the cultural site for inscribing the meanings a culture wants to maintain and propagate. So, the body should be understood as a canvas on which the culture draws its symbols of the dynamics of power. But it would be wrong to assume the body as a passive object on which the cultural power dynamics are played out. Elizabeth Grosz, an eminent theorist of the body rightly comments: If the body is the strategic target of systems of codification, supervision and constraint, it is also because the body and its energies and capacities exert an uncontrollable, unpredictable threat to a regular, systematic mode of social organisation. As well as being the site of knowledge-power, the body is thus a site of resistance, for it exerts a recalcitrance, and always entails the possibility of a counter-strategic reinscription, for it is capable of being self-marked, selfrepresented in alternative ways. (204) As far as the life of Akka is considered, a notable thing is her preference to be naked till her death. Even though such practices of being naked existed then and even today exists among certain ascetics of India, it can be read as an utterly nonconformist practice in Akka. If the present day male ascetics prefer to be naked on the basis of a common philosophy of asceticism, Akkas nakedness can be seen as holding an individual stamp on it. Even though it was reported that sixty woman mystics were there in the Anubhavamantap, the gathering of spiritual intelligentsia started by Basavanna and later managed by Allama Prabhu, none of them were reported to be naked in it. The dialogue between Allama Prabhu and Akka which will be analysed later in this paper itself reveals that being naked was an alien spiritual practice even for

Allama Prabhu, (and obviously for the people of the 12th century Karnataka) the great spiritual master whom Akka respects greatly. All these information persuades us to re-read the text of Akkas preferred nakedness. From all these, it can be inferred that Akkas being naked was not a blind following of a dressless code of the then ascetic tradition. Rather it was a bold action that is culturally shocking and politically revolutionary that is built on the spiritual conviction of her personal trust in her own god. Akkas act of being naked was criticised even by other women mystics of Veerasaiva movement like Guddavve and Akkamma, and Akka Mahadevi was not at all revered by these women saints in their Vachanas. All these reveal that Akkas way of proclaiming her spirituality was an alien one for her community and her contemporaries as it is today. A general survey of the Vachanas of will reveal that she has her own explanations for being naked: People, male and female, blush when a cloth covering their shame comes loose. When the lord of lives lives drowned without a face in the world, how can you be modest? When all the world is the eye of the lord, onlooking everywhere, what can you cover and conceal? (131) Notwithstanding these attempts to disrobe the body of its unduly privileged status, Akka can never be seen supporting the Indian ascetic concept of the dichotomy between the body and

the spirit and degradation of the body in favour of the spirit. A general observation on the philosophy of the Indian asceticism, whether it is of Hinduism, Jainism or Buddhism, will reveal that it has always nurtured the concept of the denial of the body, a philosophy that suppresses the corporal in favour of the spiritual. The body has always been a potential temptation for them to be denied and suppressed. It is considered the degraded version of ones self that is easily subjected to the temptation of pleasure which drags back the self from attaining greater spiritual enlightenment. It has no inherent values other than helping the seeker to facilitate the higher aims of the self. The body has been denied coherence, integrity and dignity, and as a corollary to this all positive epithets are endowed on the spirit. There is a notable incident in Akkas life in which she answered her rationale to be naked and cover herself with her long hair. It happened at Anubhavamantap where she was questioned of her being naked by Allama Prabhu:

Allama Prabhu: Thy profuse hair have hidden the body as a garment. God Guheshwara regards this garment as improper.

Akka Mahadevi: Of what use is it if the body turns dull and dark, if it appears blithe and bright? When the heart is rendered pure by the grace of Chennamallikarjuna, the complexion of body is of no consequence.

Allama Prabhu: If thy heart is pure, why dost thou hide thy body with the hair? That may be due to inward bashfulness which expresses itself outwardly. This our God Guheshwara does not like. Akka Mahadevi: I hide it so that your saints may not be enticed.

The very explanation reveals that the body for Akka was not something to be feared and suppressed. From a feminist perspective, Akkas act of being naked and her unwavering answers for the penetrating questions can be read as daring attempts from a woman to assert her self and her bodily identity in the oppressive patriarchal society, and thus holds the liberative agenda of female emancipation. In spiritual discourse, disrobing oneself may mean sexual transcendence, and Akkas nakedness can be read as her passing on to transcendence. But, from a political perspective, the female nudity holds the agenda of revolutionary social transformation which has feministic undertones. Vijaya Ramaswamy, a scholar, learned critic and a contemporary historian comments in this regard: While male nudity despite being unusual, is not socially cathartic in its impact, female nudity results in religious and social catharsis (Walking Naked 172). She sees Akkas nudity as the ultimate act of the shedding of social inhibitions and it is read as her flagrant refusal to conform to sexual expectations (174) of a society that is patriarchal. In this regard, Akkas being naked can be argued as a quintessentially female way to shock the patriarchal viewers. It embarrasses all his pleasure deriving mechanisms and offers an unexpected shock over his concept of the female body. It simultaneously creates a rethinking in the cultural mind-set of men about the female body. In this respect, Akkas self-imposed nudity can be compared to the feminist performances of artists like Carolee Schneemann, Orlan and Valie Exportiv in which the female body is manipulated as a major tool. They are reported to have used the multiple potentials of the female body among which the nudity is a major one to create a sea change in mans attitude towards women. The poetic articulations of Akka are included in the Vachanas, which are generally defined as religious or spiritual lyrics written in free verse. The period between the 10th -12th

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Centuries is considered the most intense period of Vachanas. Vachanas, as the word connotes, are what is said and obviously the part of the Orature or Oral Literature. While being a part of the Literary, they do not let themselves to be confined within the contours of the literary. They are both literary and more than literary. A.K.Ramanujan has defined them in his Speaking of Shiva: They (Vachanas) are a literature in spite of itself, scorning artifice, ornament, learning, privilege: a religious literature, literary because religious; great voices of a sweeping movement of protest and reform in Hindu society; witnesses to conflict and ecstasy in gifted mystical men..They have been called the Kannada Upanishads (13) Great writers of Vachanas in the aforementioned period were Basavanna, Allama Prabhu and Dasimayya. The major argument of the paper, Akka Mahadevis conscious or unconscious attempts to de-stereotype the pan-Indian concept of the ascetic body can be found in her Vachanas which are proclamations and exhortations that were arisen out of her personal life. However, I do not insist on that it is Akka Mahadevi, the spiritual seeker who is the speaking self in the Vachanas. In other words, the I or the poetic voice in the Vachanas need not be assumed as the individual Akka Mahadevi, rather, the speaking self can be read as any assertive woman who speaks against the culturally imposed, generally patriarchal, readings on her body and life. The self in the Vachanas can be read as the spokesperson of any assertive woman who resorts to her own unusual and uncanny bodily ways to shock and deconstruct the patriarchal understanding of female body.

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As far as the Vachanas of Akka are considered, it can be seen that they have dealt with the body from multiple perspectives. Akka seems to have possessed several bodies which connote the truth of sheer multiplicity of the poststructural Text. She appears as highly contradictory in her readings of the female body which is depicted in the Vachanas as her body. There can be seen obvious personal remarks reinforcing the concept that the body is only an irrelevant physicality. She has made explicit comments that body is dirt: My body is dirt (116), and till one attains the ultimate knowledge the body is nothing more than an abode of dirtiness, lower emotions and passions: Till youve earned knowledge of good and evil

it is lusts body site of rage, ambush of greed, house of passion, fence of pride, mask of envy ( 126) and she appears ready to abandon the worthless existence in body: Why do I need this dummy of a dying world? illusion's chamberpot, hasty passions' whorehouse,

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this crackpot and leaky basement? (133) But the most of the Vachanas treatment of the body is antithetical to this view. They can be seen taking diversion from the traditional ascetic concept of the body and sees the body as a royal road to the spiritual union and enlightenment. The erotic elements in the female body are highlighted and the so called inhibited passions of the ascetics, whether male or female, are used as sincere spiritual practices which can be followed without guilt. In her Vachanans she addresses her lord as her own Chennamallikarjuna which itself denotes a matter of erotic intimacy. He is depicted as an invisible and not-easily submissive lover for whom Akka waits eternally as a love-sick teenage girl. She asks the twittering birds, swans of the lakeshore, high-singing koils, swooping bees and peacock in the cavern about His whereabouts and admits her mad love for him: Four parts of the days. I grieve for you. Four parts of the night I'm mad for you. I lie lost sick for you, night and day, o lord white as jasmine. Since your love was planted, I've forgotten hunger, thirst, and sleep. (124)

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He is shamelessly called as her husband and lord. The images of her waiting for Him appears exactly analogous to those of a wifes or lady loves waiting for her husband or lover. A cursory analysis will reveal that there are only a few Vachanas that do not address Chennamallikarjuna as her husband or lover. Even though Akka admits that her body is only an illusion to be shattered, it should be seen that the imagery she used to depict the spiritual intimacy with her lord is undoubtedly related to the body and love that is made possible through the body: the erotic love. A close examination will offer several instances for it. In her Vachana 17 she compares her love and desire for Him with the silk worms weaving of her house with the threads of love made out of her body and very marrow. Even though she craves for an escape from the illusion of love, she can be seen admitting that her relating with her lord is through desire, love and ultimately through body. The threshold experience of spiritual ecstasy in Vachana 45 is described as the entering of a stream into the dry bed of a lake and rain/pouring on plants/parched to sticks which suggests a union of bodies. She confesses, I am like the love bird/with nothing/in her embrace (40). In this context the word embrace can be seen vividly hinting at the erotic connotation. In the next Vachana she speaks about the pleasure of meeting and mating which is also an apparent reference to the erotic urge that leads to the spiritual ecstasy. An analysis of the Vachana 117 will reveal that the body in its innate physicality is not denied by Akka like the mystics who followed the ascetic path. Rather, body for her is a tool and a precious gift to be presented to her lover/lord. Only after it reaches its destination and attains its ultimate aim, the union with Him, it becomes irrelevant: After this body has known my lord who cares if it feeds a dog

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or soaks up water? (127) A commonplace reading may misunderstand such statements as body denial or stoic ideal of the mortification of the body and place Akka at the side of the hard-core ascetics for whom the body is the most formidable nemesis in the voyage to the spiritual enlightenment. There is a similar situation in Vachana 93 in which she confesses the reason for not being in corporal intimacy with the other men because they all have thorns in their chests. With it she adds that she can take none except her lord in her arms. Even though these lines suggest an other-worldly relation with her lord, the image that is used to show this is undoubtedly corporal and erotic. This depiction of enlightenment via erotic reaches its climax in the Vachanas 88,317 and 319. In the first Vachana, Akka, in highly erotic terms, confesses his taking possession of her body and desire: He bartered my heart, looted my flesh, claimed. as tribute my pleasure, took over all of me. (125) Needless to say that this looting of the flesh is suggestive of an intercourse that is sexual. Bartering of heart, looting of flesh and claiming of pleasure as tribute undoubtedly refers to a conquest of the body of the addresser. The vocabulary which is used in this context is that of the war and the invasion or conquest of land. In this context, the body of the woman is symbolised as the virgin land which lies passively to be conquered. Even though the imagery can be criticised on the basis of its underlying anti-feministic and patriarchal undertones, here they can be used to

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substantiate the representation of the spiritual body as erotic. Akka can be seen concluding the Vachana with a reference to the female body that is made of love, even while it being spiritual: I'm the woman of love (125). It also hints that the womans body that is made of love is her way to the spirit and enlightenment. In Vachana 319, using copulatory vocabulary Akka confirms the sexual union with her lord: O lord white as jasmine your love's blade stabbed and broken in my flesh, I writhe. (138) The experience of the pang and pain of love is symbolised here as the stabbing of the blade which evokes the pain of sexual penetration which is followed by the writhing of the body. The breaking of the flesh by the lords blade of love in this regard can be read as a copulatory act which is an odd combination of both pain and pleasure. From a psycho-analytical perspective, the blade that penetrates her can be considered the phallic symbol that signifies both penetration into the female sexual body. A similar craving for painful and pleasurable sexual/erotic experience is mentioned in the Vachana 336 in which she demands for a hug that is potential enough to crush and crumble her bones: If you hug a body, bones must crunch and crumble (142)

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Another desiring devotee/lover can be seen in Vachana 317: O Siva when shall I crush you on my pitcher breasts (136) In both Vachanas the erotic picture evokes a wild sexual union which is escalated to the level of masochism,a sexual aberration in which the victims derives pleasure by enduring pain, both physical and mental. The female sexual desire to indulge in wild erotic experience is subtly synthesized to a spiritual union in which the body functions as a catalyst that merges into the divine. The body devoid of shame and its bodiness joins with the lord where the lord and the devotee, the lover and the lady love, and the life and death becomes the singularity that transcends all contradictions. Conclusion Considering the analysis done on these selected Vachanas, it can be argued that, for Akka, who is undoubtedly both a revolutionary and mystic, the female body and its desire are not antithetical to the spiritual ideals. She has never been a proponent of the stoic ideal of the bodymortification. Rather, for Akka the body, with all its sexual and erotic potential is a catalyst to reach the ultimate aim of spiritual enlightenment which for her is both corporeal and erotic. Holding such a revolutionary and subversive concept of spirituality, Akka can be seen triggering a single-handed battle or a private revolution against the stoic ideal of Indian asceticism and registering a dissenting voice of her own.

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i

Corporal means of human body and Corporeal of material body. The body that appears supposedly antithetical to Spiritual is Corporeal and it is used in the title. But, at the same time, since the study refers to Akkasphysical/humanbody,theCorporalcanalsobesuitableinthecontext.

An alternative name for Semiology that means the systematic study of signs, as these function in all areas of humanexperience.Herethesignisnotlimitedtoexplicitsystemsofcommunicationsuchaslanguage,thetraffic signs and signals; rather, it includes a great diversity of other human activities such as the bodily postures and gestures, the social and cultural rituals, the dress and dress code, the meals and food habits and the buildings in which people inhabit. However, the thrust of Semiotics is on the concept that language, in a broader sense, does notpassivelyreflectourreality,butitconstructsreality.
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The Veerasaivite or Lingayat movement that originated in Karnatakan in the 12th century was one of the predominant factors in overturning Brahminical superiority and to some extent even patriarchal values. The Veerasaiviteswhowerelargelycomprisedoftradesandcraftgroups,worshippedLordSivaasthepureformthat transcends all kinds of social and cultural discriminations. It observes the following Ashtavarnas: Guru, Linga, Jangama,Padodaka,Prasada,Vibhuti,RudrakshiandMantra.

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Carolee Schneemannis anAmericanvisual artist, known for her discourses on the body,sexuality andgender.

Her work is primarily characterised by research into visual traditions,taboos, and the body of the individual in relationship to social bodies. She used nudity in her artwork to break taboos associated with patriarchy. Orlan is a French performance artist whose artwork focuses on her body and representations of it. Valie Export is another feminist performer who made a performances of nudity named Touch Cinema (1968 )and Erosion (1973). Theexpectedeffect,inherwords,istochangethemalegaze.Themanseesyou(women)nakedyethecannot seeyouthewayhewantstoseeanakedfemalebody(FeministPerformance)

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