Hindustan Times
Foot-in-mouth
This week my halo slipped a bit. I lost my temper with someone quite unnecessarily and snarled at them. I went back to say sorry and sincerely repented my little outburst. But then I thought of someone quite the opposite, who is actually celebrated for having his foot in his mouth. Here’s His picture, done in the 18th century Tanjore glass painting style.
The painting embodies a famous concept of Infant Krishna at perfect peace floating in his luminous beauty and purity (hence the ‘child’ image) on a banyan leaf (that holds the earth) on the ocean (of existence).
This is an important key to the Hindu religion.
The abstract concept is ‘personified’ with suitable earthly metaphors, so that when we feeble humans look at a picture of Baby Krishna, we are eased with grace into the vast, terrifying Unknown, Immeasurable, Omniscient, Infinite concept of God.
This idea is explored in both painting and poetry.
Its most famous expression in verse is the Balamukundashtakam, the Eight Verses to the Holy Child.
Hear this preview of Carnatic singer O.S. Arun singing it in his 2003 album Yadava Madhava.
These verses were composed by the medieval saint-poet Bilvamangal whose story many of us have almost certainly read in good old Amar Chitra Katha. He was quite a rake (think hot St Augustine of Hippo) and his favourite person was the courtesan Chintamani.
One stormy night (quite like two other great Vaishnava saint-poets, Tulsidas and Siddhendra Yogi of Kuchipudi), he swam across a flooded river to get to his ladylove and climbed the wall of her house by grabbing a rope that turned out to be a cobra!
Reproached soundly by Chintamani for being so addicted to a mere ‘bag of bones and flesh’ as she called herself, instead of to Immortal God, Bilvamangal turned the proverbial new leaf.
He went off to Vrindavan, blinding himself on route to kill his ‘lustful gaze’ and found a guru, Somagiri.
Like that other famous reformed rake, Narayana Bhattadri, who composed the Narayaneeyam about Krishna (the official text at Guruvayoor, just as Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda is the official text at Puri Jagannath), he sublimated all his sexual experience into ecstatic, mystical poetry evoking Sri Krishna’s Rasakrida (Dance with the Gopis). They began to call him ‘Lila-suka’ (the parrot who sings of the Divine Play).
Bilvamangal founded a whole sampradaya (tradition) of Radha-worship at Vrindavan. It was taken up by other gifted, intense men, enchanted by the perfection of the emotional-erotic transference from the mundane to the mystic in Radha-worship. The resulting poetic legacy was mind-blowing and a huge bandwidth of Indians has stayed blown for about 500 years.
‘Radhey-Radhey!’ remains the daily greeting to this day in Brij-bhumi, not ‘Ram-Ram’ as elsewhere in North India.
Anyhow, our present business is with the Balamukundashtakam: it is quite a favourite in many South Indian homes and children are taught to say it early on (I wasn’t, I got to it a lifetime later).
Here’s the first verse from the Sanskrit and below is the translation of the entire eight. (Unlike our love poetry, our devotional poetry doesn’t always shine in English, but wotthehell).
Do note how Bilvamangala starts off with deceptive simplicity, describing the ‘obvious’. But what a humongous concept already, to tuck into that first line!
As he proceeds, recalling incidents from Krishna’s childhood, each verse deepens with further meaning and by Verse Eight, the full portent, glory and grandeur of God imaged in that tiny baby is openly resounded.
The contrast is complete.
The mind finds the paradox just too scrumptious, for Hinduism likes its notions layered.
kararavindena padaravindam´
mukharavinde vinivesayantam
vat?asya patrasya put?esayanam´
balam´ mukundam´ manasa smarami
TRANSLATION of Bilvamangala’s Eight Verses
1. I meditate on that Holy Child who sleeps on the banyan leaf with his lotus-like foot in his lotus-like hand, placed in his lotus-like mouth.
2. I meditate on that Holy Child who sleeps holding all the worlds together on the leaf of a banyan tree, in a form with no beginning or end. He is the incarnation of God for the welfare of all mankind and the Lord of all.
3. I meditate on Bala Mukunda (the Holy Child) in my heart, whose body is delicate as a blue lotus, whose foot is worshipped by all the deities. He is the wish-fulfilling tree for those who take refuge in him.
4. I meditate on that Bala Mukunda in my heart who has hanging curls and necklaces and beautiful teeth that show so playfully. His lower lip is as red as a bimba fruit and he has wide, beautiful eyes.
5. I meditate on that Bala Mukunda in my heart, who pretended to sleep, having emptied the hanging yogurt pots of the Gopis while they were away.
6. I meditate on Bala Mukunda whose beautiful face resembles the autumn moon, who dances happily in the Kalinda pond on the hood of the serpent Kaliya, holding its tail with his hand.
7. I meditate on Bala Mukunda who has beautiful eyes like the petals of a full-blown lotus, who bravely broke the pair of tall yamala-arjuna trees despite being tied to a mortar.
8. I meditate on Bala Mukunda: God, replete with truth and pure consciousness, of infinite divine form; the lotus-eyed one who gazed fondly at his mother as she nursed him.
Hare Krishna!
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Nirguna Reply:
June 12th, 2009 at 10:22 am
In reference to Pradip Rao’s comment– there is a theme of Braj being lost and found. I did some research/writing on this, so am cutting and pasting a part that may be relevant.
A hundred years after Krishna left this world, Arjuna the Pandava ruler of Indraprastha (present day Delhi), brought Vajranabh, Krishna’s great- grandson, from Dwarka to Braj and appointed him king of the land of Krishna’s childhood and youth. Braj at the time, after the great war depicted in the epic Mahabharata, had been abandoned and the legendary places of Krishna had become untraceable.
The head priest of the cowherds, Sandilya, was sought and the sacred domains of Krishna lila were once again mapped. Vajranabh facilitated the establishment of village settlements around the sacred spaces so that they could be preserved. He also memorialised Krishna’s presence in the four quarters of Braj by establishing the temples of Govindev in Vrindavan, Keshavdev in Mathura, Haridev in Govardhan and Baladev in Dauji. He consecrated the presence of Shiva in his linga form at four sites: Gopeshwar in Vrindavan, Bhuteshwar in Mathura, Chakreshwar in Govardhan and Kameshwar in Kamban. All these sites were within the twelve main forests of Vrindavan .
Mathura, the centre of Braj, during the rule of Ashoka and the Mauryas, was dominated by Buddhist influence and the sites of Krishna lila were once again neglected. The Muslim invasions and the fervour of the Moghul emperor Aurangzeb, further destroyed whatever vestiges time had left of the Braj tradition. Between the 11th and 15th century images and deities were hidden in the sacred kunds ( water tanks);once again the forests of Braj grew thick and covered these sites. Some deities were taken to various places in Rajasthan, where they still remain– Radha Givindadevji in Jaipur and Srinathji at Nathdwara.
The very first historical record we find, in writing, about Mathura ,dates back to the year 1017. This is the year that Mahmud of Gazni ransacked Mathura in his ninth invasion of India. The ruler of Mahaban, Kulchand, stood up to Gazni’s invading armies by drawing them deep into a great forest (Mahaban). In the battle that ensued 50,000 of Kulchand’s men perished. Realising he had lost, the king first slew his wife and then himself, with a dagger. When Gazni entered the nearby holy city of Mathura “he saw a building of exquisite structure, which the inhabitants described to be the handiwork not of men but of Genii…”. Ghazni saw that “the town wall was constructed of solid stone and had opening onto the river, two gates, raised on high and massive basements to protect them from the floods. On the two sides of the city were thousands of houses with idol temples attached, all of masonry and strengthened by bars of iron; and opposite them were other buildings supported on stout wooden pillars. In the middle of the city was a temple larger and finer than the rest, to which neither painting nor description would do justice.” ( F.S. Growse)
The Sultan, in awe of what he was seeing, wrote: “ If any one wished to construct a building equal to it, he would not be able to do so without expending a hundred million dinars, and the work would occupy two hundred years, even though the most able and experienced workmen were employed.”
Growse relates:“Orders were given at the time that the temples should be burnt with naphtha and fire and leveled to the ground.”
“The city was plundered for twenty days by the marauding army. Five great images of pure gold with eyes of rubies and adornments of precious stones and numerous silver images were melted down.” A hundred camels were required to carry the loot out of Mathura.
The temple of Keshavdev was rebuilt in grand style by the Maharaja of Orcha, but Sikhandar Lodi’s (1488-1516) attack, again destroyed the shrines of Mathura. Further, stone images were given to butchers to serve as meat weights and Hindus in Mathura were forbidden from shaving their heads and beards and performing ablutions.
During the Moghul rule of Akbar, Braj culture and tradition prospered and continued unhindered by subsequent Moghul rulers, until the reign of Aurangzeb. Many of Mathura’s shrines, sculptures and pieces of architecture were defaced by Aurangzeb (1618-1707) and in addition to the destruction of temples such as Keshavdev, “the ancient name of the city was substituted for Islampur or Islamambad.” (Growse)
Repeated raids and attacks compelled the temple builders to be moderate in the use of materials and in the size and scale of monuments. Perhaps, this is the reason for the lack of any especially ornate architecture in Braj. Then again, the idea could have been that lavish structures were never really the criterion for the worship of Krishna in the first place.
Please note: F.S. Growse, District administrator at Mathura from 1871 -1877, recorded during his tenure, in substantial detail, the history and culture of Braj. Though ‘Mathura A District Memoir’ is a gazette, his extensive and mostly sympathetic study of Braj tradition is remarkably comprehensive.
Also, the red sandstone that was used to build many of the temples in Brindaban was provided by Akbar who had also visited Brindaban and been influenced by the bhakti tradition.
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Diva Reply:
June 12th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Great work Nirgunaji….wonderful!!!
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pradeep rao Reply:
June 16th, 2009 at 12:17 am
Radhey radhey Nirgunaji – Thank you for a fascinating write-up on the ups and downs of our faith on part of India’s most sacred soil
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