Mahipati's Bhaktavijaya
I remember reading ‘Mahabhaktavijaya’ in Tamil published by Lifco with stories of Saint poets of India, especially the Maharashtrian Saints Jnaneshwar, Tukaram and Namdev when I was still in school. I gave the book to my maternal grandmother one summer when I was spending my vacation and she was overjoyed read them, as much as I did.
At the time I had no clue about the greatness of the work or
its original author. For years, I had not heard or read anything about it. I
have been living in and out of Bombay/Mumbai for the last 20 years. Have been
following abhangs of the Saint poets with great interest and keep dreaming of
the day I can visit Dehu, Alandi and Pandharpur and if possible walk with the
Palki of Varkaris. It is by accident that I came across this book ‘Stories of
Indian Saints’ by Justin E.Abbott and N.R.Godbole at the Motilal Banarasidas
shop near Mahalakshmi temple in Mumbai. I read the word Mahipati for the first
time. The introduction to the book made me very sad. Why didn't my Maharastrian
friends talk to me about one of their brilliant poets who sketched the
biography of the Bhakti Poets. Why did I not know that the Maha Bhaktavijayam I
read in Tamil was based on Mahipati's lyrical biographical collection
Bhaktavijaya? I want to share my journey of this discovery of Mahipati's
Bhaktavijaya and my planned visits to sacred pilgrimage sites in Maharashtra.
My online search for Mahipati yielded only a few and sketchy
details. The introduction to Stories on Indian Saints says Mahipati's (1715-1790)
was Taharabad in Ahmednagar district and he was learned and worked as a
town-scribe under Muhammadan rule. It is said Tukaram himself was Mahipati's
Guru as he initiated him in a dream and asked him to record the lives of
Saints. Tukaram had attained Moksha in 1649 as per the same account.
This is what the Maharashtra gazette says:
"MAHIPATI OR MAHIPATI BHAVA.-A Deshast Brahman of the Rigved, and an inhabitant of Zaharabad, a village in the Ahmadnagar district, near to the river Godavari, not far from Paitan. He was born in Saka 1637 (A.D. 1715), and died in Saka 1712 (A.D. 1790)."
In his forward to the book J.F.Edwards wrote - "rare quality of Marathi literature he has given us". Mahipati's original Bhaktavijaya consisted of 10,000 verses of 4 lines each. The work starts with Jayadeva, covers north Indian saints Tulsidas, Kabir, Gujarati Narsi Mehta and Maharastrians saints from Jnaneshwar to Chokamela to Tukaram and Namdev.
The book also quotes ICS officer C.A.Kincaid who wrote the history of Marthas saying, "had Mahipati used a linguistic medium more widely known than Marathi he would have ranked high among the world's poets". I am sure the available English translation can only satisfy our curiosity about the book but cannot make us enjoy the beauty of Mahipati's poetry.
It is interesting that the gazette says Mahipati was very prolific but an intolerably verbose writer. It dates Bhaktavijaya as written in 1774 A.D. He also wrote Santa Lilamrita, Bhakta Lilamrita, Santa Vijaya, Krishna Lilamrita, Radha Saramrita, Pandurang Mahatma, Sant Mahatma, and Tukaram charitra.
How I wish the Shiv Sena, MNS do something concrete to propagate such works so that we who live here instinctively take to the language and learn to read and write in it instead of forcing it on migrant taxi drivers. Even a work as great as Dasabodha of Swami Ramdas is not available in any of the book shops (with English translation and transliteration of original verses) and we have to buy it directly from the Samarth Ramdas trust.
This is what the Maharashtra gazette says:
"MAHIPATI OR MAHIPATI BHAVA.-A Deshast Brahman of the Rigved, and an inhabitant of Zaharabad, a village in the Ahmadnagar district, near to the river Godavari, not far from Paitan. He was born in Saka 1637 (A.D. 1715), and died in Saka 1712 (A.D. 1790)."
In his forward to the book J.F.Edwards wrote - "rare quality of Marathi literature he has given us". Mahipati's original Bhaktavijaya consisted of 10,000 verses of 4 lines each. The work starts with Jayadeva, covers north Indian saints Tulsidas, Kabir, Gujarati Narsi Mehta and Maharastrians saints from Jnaneshwar to Chokamela to Tukaram and Namdev.
The book also quotes ICS officer C.A.Kincaid who wrote the history of Marthas saying, "had Mahipati used a linguistic medium more widely known than Marathi he would have ranked high among the world's poets". I am sure the available English translation can only satisfy our curiosity about the book but cannot make us enjoy the beauty of Mahipati's poetry.
It is interesting that the gazette says Mahipati was very prolific but an intolerably verbose writer. It dates Bhaktavijaya as written in 1774 A.D. He also wrote Santa Lilamrita, Bhakta Lilamrita, Santa Vijaya, Krishna Lilamrita, Radha Saramrita, Pandurang Mahatma, Sant Mahatma, and Tukaram charitra.
How I wish the Shiv Sena, MNS do something concrete to propagate such works so that we who live here instinctively take to the language and learn to read and write in it instead of forcing it on migrant taxi drivers. Even a work as great as Dasabodha of Swami Ramdas is not available in any of the book shops (with English translation and transliteration of original verses) and we have to buy it directly from the Samarth Ramdas trust.
I would have skipped the introduction to 'Stories on Indian Saints'
had I any knowledge of the author or the book. So to understand what the book
is all about and the author I read through the introduction, foreword etc. It
has been a dampener - it robbed the unalloyed joy I wanted to derive from
reading Mahipati's account of the Bhakti poets or Saints.
Despite all the research and scholarship, the western Christian mind sometimes lacks understanding of the core of the Hindu religion. There is a great confusion in their mind in perceiving the concept of Brahman on the one hand and the multiple avatars and millions of Gods on the other hand. From whatever little my mind could understand there has been a mischievous element in trying to show Bhakti and Vedanta as two diverse and different streams that doesn't meet.
For instance, in his foreword J.F.Edwards from the United Theological College of Western India, Pune devotes a sub-head called "India's yearning for a personal God". Let me quote him: "But there is more than the democratising influence of bhakti to be learned from Mahipati's Bhaktavijaya stories. They show how wide and deep has been India's revolt against the deadening philosophy of the Hindu Vedanta...These stories in the Bhaktavijaya disclose how passionately India wants a personal God, that she will refuse to be satisfied until she finds such a God, or is found by Him, as the New Testament affirms; and that for a thousand years past India has been driven by the inner urge of the heart to a conception of a Personal Lord or Ishwar which the most strenuous efforts have not been able to reconcile with the older philosophy."
Then what was Narayana to Prahlada? Weren't the avatars themselves the personal Gods who were in existence and worshipped much before what came to be labelled the "Bhakti movement". Before the dawn of Kaliyuga didn't Lord Krishna himself beautifully outline what would be the characteristics of the yuga and what kind of a marga human beings would need? A simple introduction in Srimad Bhagavata is an example as to how the Kaliyuga was envisaged and the prescription that Sri Krishna himself puts down as cure.
I quote here what Ugrashrava has to say about Kaliyuga as described in chapter 1 of Kamala Subramaniam's ‘Srimad Bhagavatam’. "Contemplating on the Absolute will not be possible for man today, ridden as he is by besetting sins. But even the worst sinner can be saved if he listens to the stories of the Lord, his many avataras. The Bhagavata is just that. The path to the Lord is devotion, the Bhakti marga. It is bhakti which we see as the golden thread running through all the avataras. The Bhagavata is a string of beads which, like a japamala, helps you to realise the Lord and reach Him. Vyasa composed this Puranas as his last contribution for the good of the world. I will tell you how it came about.'
Mahipati knows this; he knows how all these great saints from the earlier yugas were ordained by the Lord to manifest themselves in the Kaliyuga. That is why he humbly starts with list of people who the God commands to take various avatars even as he himself takes the form of Buddha. Uddhava should become an avatara at Pandhari in Dindiravana. Akrura should go to Mathura and Vrindavan. He sends Vyasa to the east of Jagannath (Puri). Valmiki is sent to Hastinapur to rewrite Ramayana. An in a fitting manner Mahipati starts his work not with any of the Maharashtrian Saints but with Vyasa who was born in the East as Jeyadeva. The great rishi felt a void even after writing Mahabharata, compiling Vedas and was advised by Sage Narada to write about the avataras of the Supreme Lord in Srimad Bhagavatam. The same Vyasa takes the form of a simple Krishna Bhakta in the Kaliyuga to give us yet another immortal beauty, Gita Govinda. Like Vyasa recounted the Lord’s avataras for the benefit of men and women in Kaliyuga so does Mahipati in recording the lives of the Saints for those who are born later when the Kali’s works get deeper and pushes them into further ignorance.
Despite all the research and scholarship, the western Christian mind sometimes lacks understanding of the core of the Hindu religion. There is a great confusion in their mind in perceiving the concept of Brahman on the one hand and the multiple avatars and millions of Gods on the other hand. From whatever little my mind could understand there has been a mischievous element in trying to show Bhakti and Vedanta as two diverse and different streams that doesn't meet.
For instance, in his foreword J.F.Edwards from the United Theological College of Western India, Pune devotes a sub-head called "India's yearning for a personal God". Let me quote him: "But there is more than the democratising influence of bhakti to be learned from Mahipati's Bhaktavijaya stories. They show how wide and deep has been India's revolt against the deadening philosophy of the Hindu Vedanta...These stories in the Bhaktavijaya disclose how passionately India wants a personal God, that she will refuse to be satisfied until she finds such a God, or is found by Him, as the New Testament affirms; and that for a thousand years past India has been driven by the inner urge of the heart to a conception of a Personal Lord or Ishwar which the most strenuous efforts have not been able to reconcile with the older philosophy."
Then what was Narayana to Prahlada? Weren't the avatars themselves the personal Gods who were in existence and worshipped much before what came to be labelled the "Bhakti movement". Before the dawn of Kaliyuga didn't Lord Krishna himself beautifully outline what would be the characteristics of the yuga and what kind of a marga human beings would need? A simple introduction in Srimad Bhagavata is an example as to how the Kaliyuga was envisaged and the prescription that Sri Krishna himself puts down as cure.
I quote here what Ugrashrava has to say about Kaliyuga as described in chapter 1 of Kamala Subramaniam's ‘Srimad Bhagavatam’. "Contemplating on the Absolute will not be possible for man today, ridden as he is by besetting sins. But even the worst sinner can be saved if he listens to the stories of the Lord, his many avataras. The Bhagavata is just that. The path to the Lord is devotion, the Bhakti marga. It is bhakti which we see as the golden thread running through all the avataras. The Bhagavata is a string of beads which, like a japamala, helps you to realise the Lord and reach Him. Vyasa composed this Puranas as his last contribution for the good of the world. I will tell you how it came about.'
Mahipati knows this; he knows how all these great saints from the earlier yugas were ordained by the Lord to manifest themselves in the Kaliyuga. That is why he humbly starts with list of people who the God commands to take various avatars even as he himself takes the form of Buddha. Uddhava should become an avatara at Pandhari in Dindiravana. Akrura should go to Mathura and Vrindavan. He sends Vyasa to the east of Jagannath (Puri). Valmiki is sent to Hastinapur to rewrite Ramayana. An in a fitting manner Mahipati starts his work not with any of the Maharashtrian Saints but with Vyasa who was born in the East as Jeyadeva. The great rishi felt a void even after writing Mahabharata, compiling Vedas and was advised by Sage Narada to write about the avataras of the Supreme Lord in Srimad Bhagavatam. The same Vyasa takes the form of a simple Krishna Bhakta in the Kaliyuga to give us yet another immortal beauty, Gita Govinda. Like Vyasa recounted the Lord’s avataras for the benefit of men and women in Kaliyuga so does Mahipati in recording the lives of the Saints for those who are born later when the Kali’s works get deeper and pushes them into further ignorance.
P.S. This was written in 2010, and I thought I would blog everyday as I read the book. But couldn't. Maybe I can make another attempt now. Dehu and Alandi journey happened, but Pandharpur still remains a dream.
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