MĀHADĒVIYAKKA

(Mahadevi)

(12th century)

Māhadēviyakka was one of the poet-saints of the Virashaiva bhakti community, a spiritual movement particularly devoted to Siva, one of the three great gods of Hinduism. The -akkain her name means “elder sister,” suggesting a preeminent position in the spiritual family of bhakti devotees. This movement opposed the traditional Hindu caste system and what they saw as the mechanical rituals of the priesthood. is one of a number of women involved in the movement. Although Māhadēviyakka was married to a king, and although BASAVANNA (the apparent leader of the bhakti movement) was a Brahmin (the highest caste), many members of the movement came from the lower castes, who were generally illiterate.Māhadēviyakka, like the other Virashaiva poet-saints,wrote in the Kannada language of southern India, and typically composed short poems calledvacanas(literally “sayings” or “utterances”).Vacanastended to be colloquial and direct, rather than learned or obscure.

Tradition says that Māhadēviyakka was born in Udutaki in Sivamogga, and that aguru, or spiritual teacher, initiated her into the worship of ´Siva at the age of 10. She is said to have grown into a beautiful woman with long tresses. She was apparently forced into a marriage with the local king, Koushika— some say only to save her parents’ lives—but she never considered it to be a true marriage, because, as she said, she was already married to ´Siva, whom she calls Cenna Mallikarjuna (“Lord white as jasmine”). She even says in one poem that she intends to “cuckold her husband with ´ Siva.”

Clearly unhappy in the marriage, Mahadeviyakka ran away from her husband. Tradition says that she wandered naked in the countryside after leaving her marriage, covered only with her long hair. In defiance of societal norms, she discarded the material trappings of society and opened herself to total communion with ´Siva. In a poem about her nakedness, she declares:

light of morning,

you fool,

(Ramanujan 1973, 124)

Eventually Māhadēviyakka came to the bhakti community at Kalyanna, where a group like herself was advocating the radical reform of the Hindu caste system and the rejection of elaborate ritual in order to emphasize a more personal religion of the heart. This personal quest for religious truth was particularly important for Māhadēviyakka. Her spiritual attitude was certainly a mystical one, one that stressed a personal experience of God. For her, the total immersion in the love of God and the transcendence of the physical world was the ultimate religious experience. “I burn/desiring what the heart desires,” she says in one poem: “Cut through, O lord,/my heart’s greed,/and show me/your way out,/O lord white as jasmine” (Ramanujan 1973, 17).

She is said to have lived the final years of her life in a cave and to have died young, in her twenties. Yet her 350 poems have left a remarkable record of female spirituality in medieval India.

■ Ramanujan, A. K., ed. and trans.Speaking of Siva. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973.