Songs For Siva: Vacanas Of Akka Mahadevi

by Vinaya Chaitanya

Hailed as early feminist literary voice, Akka Mahadevi was born in the twelfth century in the southwest Indian province of Karnatka. As a child she was initiated into the worship of Channamallikarjuna (translated here as 'jasmine-tender'), her village's version of Siva. She was forced to marry her region's ruler. But because she was devoted only to Siva, she left her husband and all her possessions, including her clothes, and wandered a naked poet-saint covered only by her long hair. Her vacanas—a new populist literary form meaning literally 'to give one's word'—collected here demonstrate both her radical devotion to Siva and the radical commitment to equality, for her the vira-saiva movement, she joined.

Genres: Poetry, India, Philosophy

137 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 2005

Reviews

[Sookie · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as the translation goes, this is quite good. However there are places where the translations just doesn't work. Its just the issue with boundaries of language because so much of meaning and cultural history is crammed into certain words that when translated, it gets lost or it comes off jagged and out-of-place. It requires very detailed footnotes to make a reader understand why certain words were chosen in the context or the translator could have retained the kannada words and provided an extensive summary instead.

The vachanas are fairly spiritual, some social commentaries where Akka comments on men who lust after her, about women about samsara and the hypocritical society in general.

Also, I had hoped to see the verses in Kannada itself. That would have been a nice touch.

[Sem · Rating 4 out of 5]

It may be, as the writer of the foreword says (more than once), that Ramanujan's translations of Akka Mahadeva in Speaking of Siva have 'shortcomings' - I'm not equipped to judge - but nonetheless when I binged on Ramanujan decades ago his translations bowled me over in a way that I haven't forgotten. Had these translations come to me first I'd have remained unbowled. Surely, if Ramanujan was able to 'capture successfully those aspects of his source texts that lent themselves to translation into the Anglo-American poetic language of the time' he did what was necessary, what was essential? I liked Chaitanya's translations, sometimes very much, but when I finished I was as solid as I had been when I began instead of thoroughly melted. I must read Ramanujan again...

[Kaye · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short devotional pieces are very good, and I found them very relatable — not the monotheizing context, as I'm very much a polytheist, but that indescribable feeling when in contemplation of the God whom one is particularly devoted to and the way in which all of the other Gods sort of fall away while in that state. (The intensity for someone like Akka Mahadevi who was a renunciate was obviously so, so much greater.) It was the first time I had encountered any writings from someone in the Lingayat Shiva tradition, and it's curious to me that nobody mentions that there's been resistance to caste and sexism from within Hinduism for at least a millennium (even if they see themselves as somewhat separate nowadays). So I learned a lot while reading this.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

One thought I had while reading this was how many of the ascetic writers from the myriad religions were asexual with how much they consider sexuality to be degenerate. Only a few, I'm sure, as most are likely just prudish sadists (*cough* Paul *cough*) and/or totalitarians (...Paul again), but of all that I've read Mahadevi had a distinct feeling of sexual indifference although vacana 174 is a counterpoint to my hypothesis.