Mahadeviyakka: The Original Indian Feminist Flower Child

This is a part of an ongoing series on ‘Lesser-known Indian poets’. A link to her book can be found at the end of the piece.

‘I saw the Great One
who plays at love
With Sakti,
Original to the world,
I saw his stance and began to live’

Though Mahadeviyakka was born in a village called Udutadi, she believed her true birth took place at the age of ten when an unknown guru initiated her into the mysteries of Siva. She was a part of the Bhakti tradition that advocated an individual-focused model of spirituality that disregarded cast, class or gender. Her defiance of convention and youthful bravery led her to be subject of many legends and her appearance is described as similar to the flower children of the early 1970s. Scholar and poet AK Ramanujan, who translated the excerpts in this post, often referred to her as ‘Love-Child’. Adding to this, there are stories of her being courted by numerous men besotted by her beauty, though she was finally wedded to the local village chieftain. The marriage was now a happy one as she considered herself betrothed to her lord and could not accept a human lover. Many of her songs play on the conflict between her lord Mallikarjuna (White as Jasmine, another version of Siva) and her human husband.

‘Mother,’ She says.
‘Because they all have thorns in their chests
I cannot take
Any man in my arms
But my lord
White as Jasmine’

With time, this conflict led her to shed all her social ties, including her marriage and take to wandering about the country. She also abandoned clothes and is said to have used only her long tresses to cover herself. In one of her songs she writes-

‘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,
on looking everywhere, what can you
cover and conceal’

In yet another defiance of social convention, this time of caste, she writes-

‘She has lain down
With the Lord, white as jasmine,
and has lost caste’

She belonged to a group of poets who began to appear in the Tamil speaking regions who were called ‘Virasaivas’ (Heroes of Siva). She posed herself as the protagonist in her poetry and traced the precise moods of love explored in Sanskrit poetry. The strength of her writing, combined with her passion led her to be respected amongst her fellow poets as one of the finest there was.

Though she achieved enough in one lifetime, Mahadeviyakka, believed that one was not enough; Like Mirabai, who wrote several centuries after her, she insisted that she had been born again and again to pursue her beloved and will continue doing so until she attains him.

‘Not one, not two, not three or four,
But through eighty-four thousand vaginas
Have I come’
Till we see her again, her poetry remains.

You can read more of her poetry in Ramanujan’s collection ‘Speaking of Siva’, Buy here.