Sikhs and Tamils : The Indus
Connection
Dr.N.Muthu Mohan
Reader & Head, Guru Nanak Devji Chair
Kamaraj University, Madurai Tamilnadu-625021
"..The Sikhs and the Tamils have
created two great non-Brahmanic cultures at the
two ends of India. The Cashmeres, the Marathas,
the Assamese or the Bengalis may contest this
claim and would like to join in the list. But it
is true that the Tamils and the Sikhs are the
only people who have openly fought
declaring their non-Brahmin ideology in the
recent history of India. The two peoples have a
political and cultural tradition of
non-Brahmanism. I do not think that the
non-Brahmin legacy of the Sikhs and the Tamil is
of recent origin. It is as old as Indian
history..."
It was 9th October 1994. We had a meeting at the
Institute of Sikh studies, Chandigarh. It was my
first visit to Punjab. After the meeting I was
invited to a tea at the house of a former IAS
officer who resigned his post responding to the
Blue Star Operation on Golden Temple, Amritsar.
In the middle of the tea, the Sikh officer
suddenly asked me a question. "Did you ever think
of Punjab as the oldest land of your Dravidian
ancestors?" I was taken aback by the question.
Because I had indeed thought of Punjab-the land of
Indus Civilisation-as the possible old land of the
Dravidians, my assumed cultural ancestors. It
occurred to me a few times, at least, during that
visit to Chandigarh.
Although I do not hail from a tradition that
very much appreciates Dravidian politics, I myself
wondered why such a thought came to my mind. I was
born in a family that was associated with the
Communist politics and when the anti-Hindi
agitations were going on during my student days I
was not a supporter of the movement. However, the
thought of Dravidian ancestry came to my mind and
for a long time afterwards I had many occasions
when I kept thinking about that Indus connection
between the people of Punjab and Tamilnadu.
Historians tell us that the Indus culture was an
agricultural one. I was born and brought up in a
peasant family. The Sikhs are basically
agriculturists. I find the Sikhs from rural Punjab
are thoroughly peasants. The five tributary rivers
of Indus are the basic natural endowment of the
Punjabis. Land and rivers, land and waters occur
repetitively in the Sikh perception. The Sikh
religiosity, as I understand it, is fertile with
abundant metaphors of land and waters. Indeed I
mentioned in one of my articles on Sikhism, that
Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh Religion is the
Sixth River of Punjab.
Guru Nanak says that the God is the water and
the creatures are the fishes in the Water. Do not
get separated from the waters, if you do, you are
lost. God is the root of the high green Tree and,
we are the branches and greens of the tree. Do not
get separated from the roots. Culture is the land,
water and roots of a people. God is the biggest
surplus symbol that the culture has produced.
The songs and dances of the Sikhs inform us
about the vibrancy of the Sikh culture and the Sikh
love of life. It is a very rare thing in history.
The Sikhs are not only the best agricultural
producers of the land but also the dynamic peasants
of the country. Usually the sociologists portray
the peasants as a passive and ritualistic mass of
people. This might be true about the peasants of
Bihar or Uttarpradesh. Tolstoy and even Gandhi
perceived the peasants as passive and inert.
Tolstoy and Gandhi idealised the peasant passivity.
Peasant passivity became the foundation to their
philosophy. Maxim Gorky criticised Tolstoy and
Dostoevsky for idealising the passive values of the
peasants. Gandhi too could be criticised for the
same. But Gandhi and Tolstoy would miserably fail
about the Sikhs. Serious sociological studies would
find the Sikh peasants as the most dynamic and
heroic people.
The Indus is the oldest known agricultural land
of Indian subcontinent. The archaeological
evidences of the Indus culture tell us that the
people of Indus were producing rice and wheat 5000
years ago as they are doing today. The Indus
culture celebrated fertility, particularly the
fertility of land. The Indus religion was a
religion of fertility. The Indus people symbolised
the land as the Mother and commemorated the
fertility of the Land-Mother. The material
prosperity and fertility were the objects of
worship and celebration to the people of Indus, the
Dravidians and the Sikhs.
Tamil culture in Tamil land too starts from
celebrating the fertility of land, mounts and
waters. The ancient Tamil Grammatical work,
Tolkaappiam, divides the
landscape into four- Kurinji, Mullai, Marutham and
Neithal. Kurinji is associated with the hilly
regions, Mullai with forestlands, Marutham with
rivers and fields, and finally, Neithal with the
banks of the sea.
It was a nascent and native division of lands,
people, their professions and their culture. It is
a naturalistic division of the people and their
ethos. The ancient Tamils agreed to have four
different deities corresponding to the different
ethos of the people of four different landscapes.
There was no attempt to pose one superior to the
other or to unite the four into one, under one
umbrella. Multiplicity is another name for
fertility.
The culture was land and river based. Every
classical and modern poet of Tamil celebrates the
rivers Thamiraparani, Vaigai and Kaveri. The rivers
and their cultures on the banks of the rivers have
distinct identities. Kaveri is associated with the
Chola kingdom, Vaigai with the Pandya kingdom and
the Thamiraparani with the late Pandyas and the
south of it with the Chera kingdom.
The rivers have their inalienable links with the
birth and growth of Tamil language too. The Tamil
took its birth, as the myth goes, on the mounts
where the Thamiraparani originates, the three
ancient Tamil Sangams flourished in the city of
Madurai on the banks of the river Vaigai, and the
Chola kingdoms on the banks of Kaveri patronised
the greatest Tamil poets to create the classical
Saivite epics.
The Tamils often claim that their ancient
culture was more of a secular type. I do not think
that the ancient Tamils were truly atheists. The
ancient Tamil literature including Tolkaappiam went
through the editorial work of the Jains and
Buddhists who occupied the Tamil culture some 2000
years ago.
Consequently the edited volumes of ancient Tamil
works have acquired a non-religious look. The
Tamils did have their old mythology and deities
most probably having the characteristics of the
fertility culture. Somehow they surface in the
post-Buddhist devotional period.
The ancient Tamils had another understanding
of life. Aham or life of love and Puram or life
of war and heroism are the two fundamental values
that were celebrated by the ancient Tamils. Aham
and Puram could also be translated as internal
and external. It means the internalised personal life of the
humans and the external and outspoken
life.
Some scholars may extend the internal to the
spiritual and religious, and the external into
temporal and social. If one accepts this type of
classification, the ancient Tamils stood for
correct combining of the spiritual and temporal
values. This idea of correct combination of
internal and external may take us to the Sikh
concept of MiriPiri, the unity of spirituality and
temporality. The dialectics of aham and puram
or that of miri and piri may suggest the rich
interaction of religious and social, spiritual and
temporal, transcendent and immanent.
The Indus civilisation really witnesses two
types of religiosity, one, the fertility brand of
religion that was more of an externalised and the
other, the anthropocentric or internalised. About
the first we spoke earlier.
The second one needs some explanation. The
Archaeological residues of Indus valley contain the
stamps of a bull-faced male figure sitting,
apparently in a yogic posture. Let us call it
proto-yogic. I take this figure as the evidence of
the existence of an anthropocentric culture in the
Indus civilisation. It must be in vogue at least at
the upper quarters of the society.
The proto-yogic figurine may be the Shaman of
the ancient tribal communities. The Shaman is the
elder, leader, magician, medical man, astrologer
and captain of the ancient communities. The
proto-yogic might have evolved into the ascetic of
the Jainism and Buddhism of later years in Indian
History.
The Jaina literatures describe the genealogy of
the 24 thirtankaras travelling into the very past
of ancient Indian culture possibly reaching the
Indus period. The proto-yogic is the originator of
internalised thinking and mysticism in the history
of Indian culture. The mystic lived with various
names in Indian culture. He was the Siddha,
Shraman, Arahat, Bhikku, Bhodhisatwa, Sadhu, Sant,
Guru and so many others. Interestingly, both Tamil
and Sikh cultures gave birth to almost all of these
types of holy persons. The religiosity of the
Tamils is connected with saints like Alwars,
Nayanmars and Siddhas, and
the Sikhs too are related with the Gurus, Siddh
yogis and Babas.
Indus religion in total was the combination of
the fertility culture and the anthropocentric
culture. It was either the combination, or the
rupture of the two. When it was a rupture, it was a
creative rupture. One is outwardly and the other is
inwardly. One resisted the other and reformed the
other. One is a mass phenomenon and the other is
comparatively elite-oriented. One is more of
ethical type and other is celebrative and
carnivalistic. One interesting aspect of both the
trends is that they are world-affirmative.... I
shall stop saying here only that both the Sikh
religion and the religions of the Tamils basically
reflect the features I have just now described,
that is the combination of, or rupture between, the
internalised-anthropocentric-mystical and the
externalised-popular-fertility culture. Should I
call them the religions of Miri and Piri or Aham
and Puram?
The Non-centric cultures of India
The Sikhs and the Tamils have created two
great non-Brahmanic cultures at the two ends of
India. The Cashmeres, the Marathas, the Assamese
or the Bengalis may contest this claim and would
like to join in the list. But it is true that the
Tamils and the Sikhs are the only people who have
openly fought declaring their non-Brahmin
ideology in the recent history of India. The two
peoples have a political and cultural tradition
of non-Brahmanism. I do not think that the
non-Brahmin legacy of the Sikhs and the Tamil is
of recent origin. It is as old as Indian
history.
As it has been mentioned earlier, Punjab hosted
the ancient Indian culture well before the arrival
of Aryans into India. It is said that the Aryans
entered into Indian subcontinent through the Indus
landscapes. But it seems that the Aryans did not
stay in the lands of Punjab for a long time. The
Sanskrit literatures inform us that the Aryans
found the Indus land highly unsafe and ethnically
threatening. Consequently they did not hang about
on the Indus and carefully moved into the interior
lands of India, approximately towards the banks of
river Yamuna and the western Ganges.
The sacred geography of Aryavarta that was
constructed by Aryans does not include the Punjab
region and it is around the western Ganges covering
mostly the central India. The Sanskrit literatures
evidence that the Aryans considered the lands of
Punjab as polluted and banned their own people to
cross the rivers westwards to reach Punjab. Some
texts prescribe compensatory rituals if one visits
Punjab on any compulsion. The people of Punjab are
described as thieves, robbers and more
particularly, Punjab is mentioned as the land of
people of mixed marriages. These references confirm
us that the people of Punjab from the most ancient
days onwards were of different ethnic origin and
the Aryans were afraid of them.
The ethnic fear of the Aryans compelled them
to be separate from the people of Punjab and to
be careful of the Punjabis. It has to be noted
that the ethnic fear of the Aryans, particularly
the Aryan priests, played the most determining
role in the ancient history of Indians in the
making of a varna system.
Untouchabilty was the basic principle of
the Aryan culture. The Aryans considered
the land of Indus as a polluted and the people
untouchables.
I would remind at this juncture that not only
the land of Punjab was considered polluted by the
Aryans; it was the case even more distinctly with
the southern lands on the other side the mounts
Vindhyas. Almost all the peripheral lands of
present India was considered by the Aryans as
polluted and untouchable.
The Aryan concept of non-Aryan lands
contributed to one interesting phenomenon in
Indian history. The so considered non-Aryan lands
became the avarna territories in India. Otherwise
said, the non-Aryan lands automatically became
the lands where the Varna system was not
systematically cultivated. The varna system found
its 'natural' home only at the Aryavarta.
It might be true that the peoples of
the non-Aryan lands at some historical stage of
their development started imitating the Aryans
and began imposing the Varna model in their own
territory too.
But it has to be remembered that the imitated
model is of secondary nature and not practiced
among the original stock of the Aryan population.
The Punjabi and the Tamil people hail basically
from the non-varnic and pre-varnic tribes of these
regions untouched by Aryan obscuring of the native
people. Thus the non-Brahmanic legacy of the Tamils
and the Sikhs has its very old history.
The land of Punjab again contains certain
adverse remarks in the Sanskrit epics. It occurs at
the end part of the Ramayana story. Rama, after
being crowned as the King of Ayothya, meets the
problem of public slander of his wife, Sita.
Failing to close the slandering mouths of the
people he decides to part with his wife. He asks
Lakshman, his loyal brother to lead Sita out of his
country, into the thick forests. After a lot of
sympathetic hesitation, Lakshman agrees to do the
job.
The forestlands selected to drop Sita seems to
be the lands of Punjab or bordering it. Sita was
left alone in the forests and the Rishi Valmiki
renders shelter to Sita. Sita was pregnant at that
time and she gives birth to Lava and Kusa, the
twin-sons of Rama. Locating the geography described
in the episodes we understand that Sita was dropped
in the lands of Valmiki.
As we see, Valmiki is the name of the Dalits
and tribes who were populating the lands of
Punjab in the old days. Even today the Dalit
associations of Punjab are called with the title
name Valmiki. They are Dalits in the Maharashtra
and the South, Ravidasis in the central and west
India and Valmikis in the North-west.
The story of Rishi Valmiki in the Ramayana too
is symptomatic. Rishi Valmiki was originally a
way-side robber turned into an ascetic due to some
peculiar reasons. The 'robber' Valmiki coincides
with the usual characterisation of an ancient rival
tribe in the Sanskrit literature. It is the typical
Sanskrit nomenclature to the other. And the naming
has continuity with the earlier portrayal in the
Ramayana about the Indus people that they were
'polluted and thieves'. Let us tolerate all this
nonsense and look at them as history.
Ramayana contains similar type of portrayal,
even worse, of the people of South India. The
Ramayana story unfolds as the expansion of an Aryan
kingdom into the South. Rama is sent out of his
country and he keeps himself moving into the depths
of South. In the earlier part of the stories Rama
keeps quarrelling and killing the Rakhshasas of the
forests who were disturbing the Yajnas of the
Brahmanic rishis. It is a clash of
civilisations.
Rama appears with the values of the kingdom of
Ayothya where the people of the forests outside of
the kingdom might have lived with their own values.
The charge that the forest dwellers disturbed the
Yajnas of the Rishis is problematic because the
rishis themselves must be the intruders into the
forest lands of the original inhabitants.
The epic depicts the things from the point of
view of Rama and it must be biased. If the forest
dwellers would have written their epic, they would
have represented it as an encroachment into their
territory, colonising and eliminating them. The
story again moves into the South. Sita is 'stolen'
from Rama by Ravana who is showed as a pious
Saivite.
The association of Saivism with the South has
interesting implications. Ravana is a wonderful
musician too. Lord Siva had passionate affection to
the music of Ravana. What is the meaning of these
combinations of Lord Siva, Music and the South? How
an 'uncultured' South was having a developed
religion, an organised kingdom and a sensitive
aesthetics?
Rama defeats Ravana and turns Ravana's brother
into his own man. Is it not the story of
infiltration of Vaishnavism into the Saivite South?
The episode of Hanuman too witnesses the conversion
of a Saivite into a Vaishnavite. Hanuman by birth
is said to be the Rudra-avatara. Rudra is the old
name for Sivan in his ferocious form. Hanuman is an
aspect of Siva. Hanuman achieves his might and
power through Lord Siva. Hanuman as a celibate is
symbolising the ascetic supremacy of Lord Siva, the
Mahayogi. But what happens to this staunch Saivite
in the course of Ramayana?
Hanuman is transformed into the symbol of
Vaishnavite devotion itself! Hanuman is the
symbol of a low-caste devotee who absolutely
surrenders before the Vaishnavite God. Open the
heart of Hanuman, you will find Rama and Sita
sitting there! Why is there a necessity to open
the heart of Hanuman? Because originally he was a
Saivite. You have to check the loyalty
thoroughly! Hanuman is thoroughly checked and he
had voluntarily become the slave of Rama. Hanuman
symbolises not only the conversion of the South
to Vaishnavism but also the type of devotion
prescribed to the low-caste masses of the
North.
In North India, temples for Hanuman are more in
number than the temples for Rama. Hanuman has
travelled through the entire history of North India
as the first and best devotee of Rama. So this is
the story of the colonisation of the South by
Vaishnavism. Either you have to be converted or to
be annihilated. Either get colonised or you would
be eliminated. The civilised model is the Aryan
King Rama. Rama is often called as uththama
purusha, literally the true noble man. By face, a
monkey, and by heart, a bhakta of Rama. Hanuman is
colonised and made into a hybrid. He is neither of
the two. He is the third. As Frantz
Fanon would say, black skin and white mask. The
body is Hanuman's but within that body sits Rama,
thus making the polluted body into a holy shrine.
Vaishnavism speaks about the Sarira-sariri bahava.
Hanuman has got the meaning of his life, he
emancipated himself.
The Buddhist Substratum in the Sikh and Tamil
cultures
There seems to be a strong residue of Buddhism
both in the regions of Punjab and Tamilnadu as well
as in the religiosities of the Sikhs and the
Tamils. This is not at all to reduce the Sikh
religion and the Religions of the Tamils to
Buddhism. Buddhism has come to stay in Punjab and
Tamilnadu as a trait in the cultures of these
people. A discussion about Buddhist substratum in
the Sikh and Tamil cultures is important because it
was that Buddhist moment in these cultures that
might have contributed to resist the Brahmanic
encroachments into these cultures during the entire
medieval period. In other words, the non-Brahmanism
of the Tamils and the Sikhs is conditioned in a big
scale by the Buddhist substratum in them.
From Later
Vedic Texts--The Brahmanas, Aranyakas, and
Upanisads "The
cult of sacrifice stressed encyclopedic
memorization of the sacred texts and the
painstaking performance of the sacrificial
rites--essentially a question of technical
profiency over a large body of knowledge.
It was a hereditary profession, in which
sons gained the necessary training from
their fathers, and the access to this
training was restricted to a small group of
people, who called themselves
brahmanas (i.e., brahmins).
Braahmanas tended to live in society as
householders, since it is difficult to
sustain a hereditary group unless it
reproduces itself. Their religious practice
was public, "traditional," and
"establishment"--since their major patrons
were the kings and nobles, the sacrifices
performed tended to benefit these ruling
groups, either addressing their personal
concerns (e.g., no sons) or for the more
general welfare of the kingdom.
The opposing model of
religious life was not based on learning,
memorization, and/or technical proficiency
over a body of knowledge, but on an
individual's personal insights and
realization into the nature of the
universe. Such sorts of essentially
mystical insights depends more on an
individual's efforts and innate capacities,
rather than his/her education and family,
and because of this predominant emphasis on
individual effort, people on this path were
called shramanas
("strivers"). Shramanas tended to lay far
less emphasis on the importance of
learning, hints of this can be seen in the
selections from the Chandogya Upanishad in
the following section. The Shramanas are
believed to have lived outside society (as
the name "forest-books" hints), and their
religious practice is private,
non-hereditary, and internalized. Given
their individualized practice, and the
stress on working with a teacher, the
shramanas were a diverse group. Some groups
accepted the Vedas as sacred texts, whereas
others rejected this notion (among them,
the Buddhists and Jains). What these groups
shared was not so much a body of ideas, but
a commitment to a certain "style" of
religious life. And is from the first such
group, who saw themselves as working within
the tradition of the Vedas, that we get the
Upanishads."
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Historically the Tamils were under the
overwhelming influence of Buddhism, broadly under
the influence of Ajivika, Jainism and Buddhism, in
the early centuries of the Christian era. It was a
period the Tamil society was transforming itself
from its tribal past into the civilised history or
as the Marxists say, into the class society. In
other words, it was the Shramana tradition of the
North that made its first appeal on the Tamil
culture that was in its transition stage.
It has to be noted that before the advent of the
Shramanas, the Tamil land did not have the
influence of the Vedic culture. The Early Tamils
had their nascent Tamil Sangam culture and then it
was followed by the Shramana coating upon it.
The presence of the Shramanas in ancient
Tamilnadu is important in two aspects. As it has
been mentioned earlier, the Shramana ascetics
collected and classified the pre-Shramana
literature of the Tamils on the one hand and
composed new literature with Jaina-Buddha influence
on the other hand. It was such a massive work that
Tamil language, literature and culture are
unimaginable without the works of the Jainists and
Buddhists during the ancient period. The early
Jains and Buddhists, as foreigners to this culture,
paid their attention to language, its construction,
grammar and the specificities of the culture.
The ancient Tamil Grammatical work Tolkaappiam
is believably a work of Jaina monks. It has no
reference to the Vedic gods and rituals. It is in a
thorough secular mode of presentation. Its
understanding of language takes it close to the
philosophies of Jainism and Buddhism.
As a first work of Grammar, Tolkaappiam has a
continuous influence in the later Grammar works
too. The Jains and the Buddhists have a continuous
contribution to Tamil Grammar till back to the late
medieval ages.
Once the monks have done with the editorial work
of language and existing literature, they went on
to compose their own literature. The Five classical
epics of the Tamils-Seevaka Sinthamani, Silappathikaaram, Manimakalai, Neelakesi and
Kundalakesi - are composed either by the Jaina or
the Buddhist monks. Many things are notable here.
By composing the classical epics the Jains and the
Buddhists had got the historical opportunity to
decide the literary patterns and modes of the
Tamils. The Tamil idiom somehow was created with
the active epistemological participation of the
Shramana -non-Brahmanic- religions.
Another big corpus of writings that comes across
is the didactic literature of the Tamils -
Thirukkural, Naaladiyaar,
Naanmanikkadikai, Achaarakkovai, Elaathi,
Thirikadikam etc. It is a rich ensample of writings
that cover the entire personal and social life of
the Tamils. Should I call them ethical literature
or the literature that determined cultural patterns
of the Tamils? The foods, dresses, manners of
eating and dressing, manners of speech and
behaviour, family values and hospitality, manhood
and womanhood, commitments to society and
citizenship, love and child-upbringing, education
and knowledge, kinghood and ministry- almost
everything amazingly was discussed and structured
in the Jaina and Buddhist didactic literatures. It
is many times more than mere influence.
Now I must say something about the Buddhist
contribution to the making of Sikh culture. In the
history of Punjabi culture one finds the early
influences of Buddhism. We read in the textbooks of
Buddhism that the western India had a considerable
following of Buddhism in the first centuries of the
Christian era. Possibly, Buddhism flourished in
this part of the country during the rule of
Kanishka dynasty. Kanishka was a patron of Buddhism
and many other religions. Taxila, one of the
popular Universities of Buddhism where thousands of
Buddhist monks used to gather and deliberate issues
of religion and philosophy, was situated in the
North-western India.
It is said that one of the schools of Buddhism,
Sarvastivada got its birth in
the Taxila University. Sarvastivada attracts the
philosophical curiosity of mine, particularly from
the point of view of Sikhism. Sarvastivada says
that matter is as real as the mind or vice versa.
It renders equal reality to both the spiritual and
the physical. This is an interesting standpoint.
Philosophers for ages have debated among themselves
with the question: What
is primary, matter or spirit? History of
philosophy shows that the armies of philosophers
divided among themselves into materialists and
idealists.
The Sarvastivada position is interesting from
the point of view of this long debate of
philosophers, because it attributes equal reality
to the physical and the mental worlds. The two
realities are different in their characteristics
but both are true. The problem does not end with
attributing truthfulness to both the types of
realities. It expands to the question about the
type of relationship the material side has with the
spiritual side. If both are equally true, one
potential answer is that even in their relations
there must not be any hierarchy. It means that they
relate among themselves equally, moderately and a
perfect balance is presupposed here. I am tempted
to compare this concept with the Sikh idea of
Miri-Piri. Sikhism holds the
principle of miri-piri as its basic and
methodological principle.
The term miri means earthly, worldly and
temporal wealth and success. The term piri means
spiritual, transcendental, divine and beyond.
Sikhism by putting the two words together, by
making them into one means a dialectical relation
between the two. It asserts the reality of the
two. It does not propose to achieve spiritual
success at the cost of earthly welfare as well as
it does not advocate to sacrifice our entire
spirituality to a successful man/woman in the
temporal life. A temporality devoid of
spirituality may become thoroughly corrupted and
a spirituality without any commitment to social
welfare may become an useless ideal.
Thus the Sikh philosophical position is to
recombine the severed two in the history of
religions and synthesise them. As a person trained
in some amount of Marxist dialectics, I am
attracted to this concept of miri-piri. I find this
concept to be of very fertile nature with so many
important and fundamental implications. I think
that this understanding of Sikhism is a major
contribution of this school of thought to the world
philosophical process. Suddenly Sikhism comes very
near to some of the recent European thoughts. If I
am allowed to compare this concept of miri-piri to
any other concept in Indian history I shall compare
it only to the Buddhist concept of middle path or
Madhya marga.
The Sarvastivada position that arose in the
North-west Indian soil, in my understanding, was
trying to explain the Buddhist middle path to which
I compared the Sikh principle of miri-piri. I do
not dare to engage in a historical exercise to
prove that Sarvastivada had travelled in history to
become the principle of miripiri in Sikhism. That
will be an unjustified and unnecessary exercise. I
am neither an historian to engage myself in such
exercises. My only interest is that a wonderful
idea of past finds its repetition in Sikhism in a
different historical and cultural surroundings. I
do not think that even the term 'repetition' is
appropriate. My intention is to bring closer the
three concepts I have referred in the last
paragraph namely the dialectics, the Buddhist
concept of Madhya marga and the Sikh concept of
miripiri.
The Early Devotion and Late Devotion
Once we start to look at the religiosities of
the Sikhs and the Tamils we find that both are part
of the devotional tradition for which Indian
medieval period was famous. This is not to say that
India had a unified devotional movement. Some
scholars are inclined to see that the Hindu
Devotional movement is symptomatic of a pan-Indian
culture, otherwise a Hindu culture. But we have to
state that the Bhakti traditions of Indian
subcontinent do not inform us about the existence
of any pan-Indian culture, on the other hand they
represent the plurality and variations of cultures
existing and articulating themselves.
Tamil Saivism and Vaishnavism, Maharashtra
worships of Vitthal and Vishoba, Kashmiri Saivism,
Bengal Vaishnavism, Basava's religion of Lingayats
in Karnataka or Sikhism in Punjab tell us not about
the unity of religion but the varieties of
religious experiences in the regional linguistic
paradigms. Notably every such religious outpouring
of culture is the powerful assertion of regional,
linguistic and cultural identity of that particular
people. The multiplicity of cultures in today's
India could find its origins in the medieval
expressions of devotionalism, in the varieties of
devotionalism.
It has to be noted that as such the devotional
culture in the North or South emerged out of the
Sanskritic fold. Devotion does not have origins in
the Vedic culture. The Vedic culture as such is
centred upon the Yajna sacrifice and the fire
symbolism associated with it. The Universe comes
into existence from and goes back into the Yajna
fire. Even the deities are less important in the
Vedic culture in comparison to the Yajna sacrifice.
If the procedures are rightly followed and the
mantras are correctly pronounced, the deities
inevitably appear to satisfy the needs of the yajna
performer.
In such a relationship, devotion does not play a
prominent role. References about the existence some
forms of Bhakti appear in the Mahabharata and
Ramayana. In the Bhagavat Gita there is a
consistent attempt to synthesise the Vedanta
philosophy with the popular religiosity to create
the theism of Vaishnavism. However, it was Bhakti
from above. That is, Bhakti had been adopted into
the Vedanta fold due its popularity among the
masses.
The Brahmanic culture first tried to reject the
space for Bhakti. Sanskrit sources tried to put
down Bhakti as that of non-Aryans and of Sudras.
However, it was compelled to accept the devotional
culture due to its unavoidable popularity. Although
we are not inclined to reject a source of Bhakti in
the north Indian non-Brahmin culture, it had not
articulated in the North in so fundamental a way as
in the South.
Tamilnadu is said to be one of the ancient
cradles of devotional culture. The Alwars and
Nayanmars of Vaishnavite and Saivite brands
represent the early articulation of devotion in
South India from the 5th century onwards. Jainism
and Buddhism that were dominating the Tamil land
for more than 300 years were replaced by the Tamil
Saivism and Vaishnavism.
The meeting point of Jainism-Buddhism and
Saivism-Vaishnavism has so many historical
complications. We do not indulge in those problems
for the present. It is said that Bhakti as a woman
born on the banks of the river Tamraparani
travelled to Karnataka and Maharashtra along with
her two sons, and then into the interior parts of
India. Thus it can be said that Tamilnadu was one
of the sources of Bhakti culture.
The Alwars and Nayanmars sang and danced under
the spell devotion. The Tamil poetry of Bhakti is
full of emotion. Bhakti emerged as a burst out of
native and nascent feelings in overflow. The dry
theoriticism of Jainism and Buddhism was displaced
by the fame of God. The water-tight rules of karma
were substituted by the loving Grace of God. God
can interfere into the rigidities of Karma and save
the devotees from the difficulties of
existence.
If Tamilnadu could be identified as the land of
early bhakti, Punjab must be said to be the land of
late Bhakti. Both the positions have their
advantages. About the first feelings of bhakti we
referred earlier. Now we must talk about the
advantages of late bhakti. The Sikh Gurus had the
advantage to go through the complications of Bhakti
culture during the entire medieval period.
The spontaneity of devotional feelings found in
the early bhakti soon vaporised to give way to
Sanskritisation and institutionalisation. Ritualism
took hold of the entire bhakti movement. The
nascent emotions of bhakti were contained by the
temple culture associated with the Mutts. The Mutts
became the centres of landlordism and elitism.
Theologising of religious feelings and
philosophising became prominent. Saivism became
Saiva Siddhanta and Vaishnavism became
Vishistadvaita. Casteism re-entered into
bhakti.
It is at this juncture of institutionalisation
of Bhakti appeared the Siddhas with their acidic
criticism of the ritualism, casteism and hypocrisy
of bhakti forms. The Siddhas put a stress on the
inward forms of devotion. They talked about the
inward purity and criticised the externalism and
ritualism of the known religions. The Siddhas
laughed at the idol worships, pilgrimages and the
puranas of the devotees. The Siddhas raised serious
ethical problems about the devotional values. It
must be also added that in their severe criticism
of the devotional forms, the Siddhas became
critical of mass forms of worship and prayer, and
tilted themselves into the elite form. In other
words, the ethical questions they raised and the
yogic forms they used for internal practices made
them more and more egoistic. The Siddha thought
represented the corruption of devotional tradition
on the one hand and rejection of popular forms
devotion on the other hand.
Guru Nanak had the opportunity to see both the
ends of the devotional culture. He understood the
strength of Devotion as a true and popular feeling
as well its historically corrupt developments. He
had the opportunity to travel all over India and
even out of India, and encountered the available
forms of religiosity in the length and breadth of
the land. The Janam Sakhis tell us about the
different types of religious personalities Guru
Nanak met and forms of worships in various parts of
the land. The Gurus had intimate contacts with the
Siddh yogis and the Sufis. Guru Granth Sahib has
the wonderful recording of the encounters between
Guru Nanak and the Siddhas. The encounters with
Islam and Sufis are another interesting chapter in
the annals of Sikhism. Guru Nanak could see the
results of political patronisation of religion as
well as the religion serving at the hands of the
rulers. The Sufi thought as a mystic and
internalised trend within Islam represented another
variation of Siddha thought. The rich experiences
of Guru Nanak help to work out a new religiosity in
the name of Sikhism.
Sikhism appears in the map of devotional
traditions of India as the most mature and the most
experienced constituent. The Sikh Gurus could
inherit the best out of the earlier traditions and
as well vehemently critical of the corrupt aspects.
The Guru revives the nascent and spontaneous
emotions of devotion on the one hand and careful to
avoid the temple-mutt-ritual complex of Saivism and
Vaishnavism on the other hand. The Gurus does not
accept the mythology of Puranas and the doctrine of
Avatarhood of God. Guru Nanak's God is one,
nameless and formless, without birth and death.
Guru Nanak although inspired by the Siddhas and the
Sufis, does not taken away by their unworldly path
to truth. Again the Guru inherits the
ethical-inward approach to themes of religiosity on
the one hand and very particular to avert the
egoistic and elite moments of the Sddhas and Sufis
on the other hand.
Thus, Guru Nanak synthesises the early
spontaneous devotion and the inner purity of the
Siddhas and the Sufis. It was a great experiment, a
great historical and cultural experiment. The Gurus
pushed out the ritual, mythological and caste
aspects of the devotional traditions. Equally, the
Guru was critical about the egoistic and elite
moments of the mystic creeds of the Siddhas and the
Sufis. The popular dimension is reintroduced but
along with an ethical rigour. It is a very
difficult thing to achieve. To popularise ethics,
to make ethics into a mass phenomenon, it is very
difficult. But the Gurus are decisive in their
commitments. Sikhism comes into the scene.
The Narrative and the Musical
If we go for discussing the devotional culture
in the North and in the South in a comparative
perspective, a clear distinction is there between
the two, namely the North Indian Bhakti is
dominantly a narrative tradition whereas the South
Indian Tradition is of musical and emotional form.
This distinction has its far reaching
implications.
Bhagavat Gita, Hari Vamsa, the eighteen Puranas
are the major sources of Bhagavata tradition in the
North in the early medieval period. While Bhagavat
Gita contains certain amount of philosophising in
the terrain of Bhakti, the entire remaining
literature is of narrative form. The Puranas
contain stories about the birth, activities and the
end of the incarnations and Lilas or plays of the
Gods. It is difficult to consider them as writings
of individual authors, they could very well be the
folk lore of people edited badly or goodly by the
intellectuals of the respective religions. However
one is astonished by the overwhelming narrative
mode in which the Bhakti motive is expressed.
Why so much stress was given to the narrative
form? One of the answers is that the narrative mode
itself is not the discovery of the Bhakti
tradition. The narrative mode existed well before
the emergence of devotion, in the jaina and
Buddhist tradition. Narrative mode had a
philosophical justification in the Jaina and
Buddhist traditions because it is aimed to 'prove'
the concept of karma to the common public by means
of telling the life-stories of prominent people who
committed the acts of karma and consequently, met
the implications of those karma acts. Narrative
form is linear and structured by means of the
principle of karma and its effects.
When the devotional culture started replacing
the Shramana culture, it continued to follow the
narrative tradition because the people are
accustomed to the narrative form. Even more to
that. The Saivite and Vaishnavite traditions too
were followers of Karma theory, they too followed
the narrative form adopted to it. Well, these are
some of the reasons for the north Indian Devotion
remained Narrative dominantly.
The South preferred the emotional and musical
form of expression of devotion. The Alwars and
Nayanmars were poets of classical type and their
compositions are in musical metres till date. The
Tamil saints repeatedly say that their songs are
composed in spontaneous but complete and total
involvement with the divine. The Alwars and
Naayanmaars, as it has been already mentioned, sang
and danced in total divine madness. They called
every bhakta to reach a similar state and merge
with the idea of God. The Alwars are particular to
propose an absolute surrender by the devotee to the
person of God. The state of surrender is a hopeless
situation to the devotee except the only and final
hope, that is God. In such a state psychological
thrown-ness into the idea and person of God is
absolute. Music and poetry overflows from such a
state. It is true that references are there in th
songs of Alwars and Nayanmars about the avtarhood
or leela of God. But they are mere references
without disturbing the general course of music of
the songs.
A close study of the narrative and musical modes
may reveal that the narrative is of objective type
and the musical is of subjective and existential
type. The narrative in general moves around
episodes described in a particular temporal order.
It may contain accounts of places, characters,
actions and reactions. The narrative may have a
linear structure unfolding in time and even when
the structure is not linear explicitly, its could
be worked out in the process of reading. Thus
linearity is one of its distinguishable characters.
Although the narrative is the construction of the
narrator, the narrator is often hidden behind the
narration.
The context is very much alive in the narrative
and the narrative is responsive to so many other
texts existing contemporenously. Not only the
narrator is absent or hidden in the narrative, the
addressee too unknown in the narrative. The musical
is very much different from the narrative form. In
the musical form the subjective moment is actually
present. The musical is emotionally immersed. The
musical does not possess a linear structure and its
inherent spontaneity breaks down any possible
linearity. In a musical mode of addressing the God,
the devotee and the God are present in emotional
relations.
It is interesting to note here that the
devotional culture of the Tamils and the Sikhs very
thickly picked up the musical mode of approaching
the God different from the puranic narrative mode
of the North Indian Vaishnavism. The Sikh Scripture
of Guru Granth Sahib is not a text like the Bible
or the Quran with mixed genres of prose, parables
and poetry. Guru Granth Sahib is a book of songs
that were composed in 31 ragas. The Sikh Gurus
appropriate to their aim of revoking the nascent
feelings of devotion have preferred the musical
emotional form. In a sense, the hymns of the Gurus
do not contain particular thematic ordering but are
recited as creative outbursts. Nature, society,
people of so many religious orders etc, are
referred in Guru Granth sahib.
But describing the nature or society or
religious orders is not the thematic motive of the
Sikh Scripture. In the Guru Granth Sahib the Gurus
are addressing and readdressing the divine again
and again. The greatest originality of the
Editorial work of Guru Granth Sahib is that the
editors have not made any attempt to order the
songs of the Gurus in theoretical or thematic row.
The 31 chapters of the Guru Granth Sahib are the 31
ragas in which the hymns are composed. The hymns of
the Gurus starting from Guru Nanak come first in
the order and then the songs of Hindu Bhagats and
Sufi saints. Every chapter-raga contains the same
pattern.
The most wonderful part of Sikh history is that
for the last five hundred years of the existence of
Sikhism in this land, the Sikhs have become Sikhs
not by reading and learning Guru Granth Sahib as a
religious text, but by reciting it in part or in
full as a musical text. Having in mind the literacy
rate of ordinary Sikhs in the past centuries, one
can confidently say that the Sikhs inherited the
faith for generations through listening or reciting
the hymns of Guru Granth Sahib. The highly
appealing mode of perception of the message of the
Gurus has made the Sikhs intensely committed to
their ideals.
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