Devlok With Devdutt Pattanaik: 3 Read online

  There is a popular story about his marriage. Once Khandoba and his men arrive at a hut in the forest, tired after a failed hunt. A girl, Banai, offers them water and welcomes Khandoba to rest there for as long as he wants. Later, he begins to help her and her father around the house. After a year passes, Khandoba asks the girl’s father for the payment for his services, but he is told that the food and shelter were his payment. Khandoba asks to marry Banai, which the father refuses. An angry Khandoba goes and kills all the goats in the pen and demands that he be married to Banai. He claims he would then bring all the goats back to life and make the father’s region prosper. This is how Khandoba and Banai—who is also believed to have had feelings for him—are married.

  This theme of marrying the god is an important one. The stories are probably meant to convey how different kuls or families settled in a village. There is a guardian gramadevata associated with any region or sthal and different families marry their daughters or kuldevis to him. Since most of this belongs to the oral tradition, you won’t find stories about them too easily. The Tirupati Devasthanam that is so famous now also has an interesting story. In Vaikuntha, there’s a disagreement between Lakshmi and Vishnu. Lakshmi comes to settle down in Kolhapur as Mahalakshmi. Vishnu follows her but she refuses to speak to him. Vishnu says he’ll stay back on earth till she does. But he does not find a region to stay as they are all taken up by the gramadevatas, so he asks Bhupati, the lord of the earth—who is also Vishnu in the Varaha avatar. Bhupati tells him to stay wherever he sees something like Shesh Naga, the king of serpents. At Tirupati there are seven mountains that are said to look like the heads of Shesh Naga, so Vishnu decides to stay there. As he lives there alone and has nothing to eat, Shiva and Brahma come there as a cow and a calf and provide him with milk.

  The local king, Kubera, gets upset that his cow is giving milk to someone else and beats it. Vishnu is angered on seeing this because he is Gopala (a cowherd) too and there’s an altercation between them. Meanwhile, Vishnu and the king’s daughter, Padmavati (a form of Lakshmi), fall in love. The king agrees to their marriage and lets him stay in his domain till he pays off the bride price. They say Vishnu still hasn’t paid off Kubera’s loan and so continues to live in Tirupati.

  So, through marriage, people of different communities formed a relationship with the gramadevatas and derived legitimacy from it. Some gramadevatas are bachelors, stay on a mountain away from women, protect the people, are yogis or from the Nath sect like Baba Balak Nath in north India and Ayyappa in south India.

  Why is a devi associated with the earth?

  The earth is seen as a mother. The gramadevi is a form of mother. A gramadevi’s puja is quite a violent ritual. For example, the bhakts or devotees walk on fire, pierce their tongues or attach a hook to their skin and swing from it—the intention is to express their devotion through pain and suffering. The explanation for this is that human beings torture the earth by cutting down trees, ploughing, dividing and controlling the land and choosing to grow different crops on it. The devi suffers because of all this but allows it because she is a mother.

  But once a year she reveals her anger, and we ask for her forgiveness and offer her blood to appease her thirst. So offering sacrifice is commonly associated with the gramadevis. The animals sacrificed are bullocks, male goats and so on, most famously during Dussehra. The crops that grow annually are seen as the mother’s milk, but once a year she wants to drink blood. This is seen as the cycle of life. Kali drinks blood and Gauri gives milk. This cycle of life is depicted in the gramadevis’ rituals. Through the year she is not given much importance, but after the harvest season, after all the celebrations, the sacrifice takes place and the sowing season begins.

  Animal sacrifice is legally not allowed any more.

  So now it is substituted with, say, a coconut or a pumpkin or mud dolls. You no longer need to sacrifice real animals; you only have to show your awareness that civilization or sanskriti is built atop nature, prakriti. It’s a form of environmental consciousness, a realization that all your prosperity is the result of domesticating the devi.

  There’s a puja to appease Kal Bhairava, a form of Shiva. Are all the gramadevatas forms of Shiva or Vishnu?

  Yes and no. The gramadevatas are local. Since we see Hinduism in a homogenized way, some have become associated with the Puranic gods. There’s Kaal (time) Bhairava, sometimes there are Kala (black) Bhairava and Gora (fair) Bhairava, associated with Shiva or Vishnu. In a way they become mainstream gods—Shiva, Vishnu, Shakti, Rama or Krishna—whom you find anywhere in India.

  Recently, my friend got married. He went to his village with his wife to get blessings from his kuldevata. Who is a kuldevata?

  The kuldevata concept is closely associated with the gramadevata. Gram, village, is associated with geography or physical space. Kul, with family. Whenever a family moves, the kuldevata is taken along. Each community has its own kuldevata, like the Saraswat Brahmins have Shanta Durga. After the wedding, the bride is introduced to or blessings are sought for the couple from the kuldevata.

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  Dravida

  The Mahabharata is based in Hastinapur and Indraprastha in north India. Rama goes from Ayodhya to Lanka—from the north to the south. Are there any stories that originate in the south?

  Yes. When the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were being created in north India, many mahakavyas were being written in the Tamil language. There used to be Sangams (meetings of poets) as far back as 3000 years ago in Madurai, Kanchipuram and so on. Sages and monks would also attend them. There was a rich tradition, a focus on literature, called Sangam parampara. The poems of this time are of two kinds: one is Puram, or poems of the city, and the other is Akam, which talk about emotions. Basically outer and inner traditions. This is also there in the Vedic tradition which had aranya gaan (forest songs) and gram gaan (city songs).

  The outer traditions were all about veer rasa, about kings and warriors going to war on elephants and so on. The inner traditions, private conversations, have stories of romance, shringara bhav, women, love and separation. There is a lot of sensuality and energy. There are strong women who play an important role in this tradition. We see gramadevis and devatas being depicted here, and we get a glimpse of the Vedic period. Yagna is spoken of, but in the background. The Buddhist and Jain traditions too are present here. But at the centre are stories of kings and queens, ganikas (courtesans), soldiers, merchants and their wives. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are more about kings and queens. Here, there are stories of the merchant class who had shipping businesses, which was a big tradition in south India. Merchants would sail to South East Asia, Egypt and Rome to sell cloth and masalas. They were never spoken about in the poetry of the north. The wealthy merchant class—today’s Chettiyars who have a long history—was present in south Indian poetry.

  There were four main mahakavyas, great epics, from the third to fourth centuries that are worthy of mention. One was Silappatikaram, the story of Kannagi, a merchant’s daughter. Second was Manimekalai, the story of the daughter of a ganika. Third was Civaka Cintamani, the story of a warrior, and the fourth was Kundalakesi, the story of a businessman’s daughter. Three out of these four have female central characters.

  Tell us the story of Silappatikaram.

  Silappatikaram is about a rich merchant’s daughter, Kannagi, who marries another merchant’s son, Kovalan, in a place called Poompuhar. The boy falls in love with a dancer called Madhavi and blows up all his money on her. In those days, men keeping mistresses was common, but this boy is so carried away that he loses his fortune. One night, Kannagi and Kovalan have an argument about him drinking and wasting money. Kannagi is so upset that she takes off her bangles, which were his anniversary gift to her, and tells him to leave the house and never come back. Kovalan comes to his senses, asks for her forgiveness and promises to turn a new leaf. She gives him her gold anklet, a wedding gift from her father, and asks him to sell it to restart his trade. One day the king’