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Gil Ben-Herut, "Stories of Shiva's Saints: Selections from Harihara's Ragales" (Oxford UP, 2025)
01:06:29
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Po. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:07]
B
Hello and welcome back to the new Books in Religions podcast, a podcast channel here on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Dr. Raj Balar. And more importantly, I have the pleasure of welcoming back to the podcast Dr. Gil Ben Haroot, who is professor at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Florida. We are talking about. The brand new publication is part of the American Academy of Religions Religion and Translation series that's edited by John Nemec of Uva. And this of course is called Stories of Shiva Saints. So, Gil, welcome back to the podcast.
- [01:47]
C
Hello. And it's great to be back here, Raj.
- [01:50]
B
Yes. And as part of this work, this really fascinating work, you had a collaborator on this work, didn't you?
- [01:59]
C
Yes, yes. This is a labor of co translation with my Canada teacher and mentor. His name is Arvi S. Sundaram, retired professor from the University of Mysore where he was the chair of the Covenpo Institute. And yes, we embarked on this project together and I'm indebted to him for doing this.
- [02:29]
B
See, this is academic Guru Bhakti. It's great.
- [02:33]
C
It's real. It's real.
- [02:37]
B
The parampara takes many shapes in the Kali Yuga. This is great. So tell us a bit about the Va. I mean, there's so much to say about this work, there may be members of the audience who are aware of it and members who are not. But tell us a bit about the backstory. How did you get pulled into this translation project?
- [02:55]
C
Okay, so actually this publication stands at the end of a kind of a string of related work that I've been doing for the last, I don't know, 15 years or so. I first, in 2009, going to Karnataka and studying Kannada, I came across a very interesting version about a local saint. His name is the Kantaramaya and he's famous for cutting off his own head and having Shiva restored the head. I was familiar with other versions of that story, but I was very surprised to find a version by a poet called Harihara in a style called Raggalle. So, as I said back in 2009, 2008, that for me was a discovery and I wrote about it, and it basically led me into my whole dissertation project of reading Harihara's Ragale stories, which is basically a collection of hagiographies of saint stories, both from the locality of Canada speaking region today Karnataka State, and also from the Tamil and from the Sanskrit lore. So different figures in this vast collection. But my curiosity about this particular work, and I will explain soon why I was so curious, also led me to publish my first monograph in 2018 with Oxford, which is called Shiva's Saints. And I, of course, published more articles about this interesting work, but I wasn't satisfied. I felt something is missing. I was so captivated by the stories, their historical significance, which I think is real, and also by just the pleasure of the narrative flow in Harihara's stories, And being able to get RVs Sundaram on this project and working together with him since 2018 into the COVID period and so on, led to this publication of the actual translations of the stories, which kind of gives people an opportunity to access the material itself, and not just through my own scholarly lens in my previous writing about it.
- [05:34]
B
Yeah, so there are a number of overarching sort of buckets or banners that appear perhaps that we'll dive into. One, of course, is the primary text, the translation, the process. We would welcome a vignette that you might like to share with us to give us a sense of the translation. Another is sort of the context and tradition and the commentary on this text and how it's functioning. What comes to mind at first, perhaps for those who are being introduced to this for the first time, is this motif of decapitation, or perhaps I think of as divine decapitation, that we Kind of see throughout the Indic world. And so one wonders whether this is a unique kind of decapitation. Are there sort of are there? Is it borrowing from various other decapitators or decapitates or self decapitations or what's up with that?
- [06:26]
C
Great, wonderful question which touches on that curiosity I had with Ekantaramaya back then. Because decapitation, as you said, is a familiar. We can call it a literary trope, maybe also a practice. But I think it has a particular flavor, sorry for the word choice, a particular flavor in South Indian Shaivism, in these traditions we find this motif appearing again and again in the Kannada culture. There is an expression, Talelanda, which is I'm going to cut off my own head. Kind of a, you know, expression of anger or frustration. So we have all these connections. I think in the case of a Kantaramaya, it's a very obviously intense moment when one chooses to cut off his own head. But here it's pitted against a Jain competitor over the identity of a local temple. So the wager that Ramaya will cut his own head and then be revived, which of course he succeeds and by that he succeeds to take over the Jain temple and so on. It carries a very harsh, violent tone. But I want to reserve this. This is part of Haryara's raggedy stories, but definitely not the only Rasa, not the only aesthetic flavor. There is a lot of devotion, there is a lot of romance in these stories, a lot of familial connections and passion to all things positive in life. But yes, that's the beheading we can't get out of it.
- [08:19]
B
Well, one certainly can't unsee this. I had the good fortune of being with a group of students from the online, my online school, adult learners from across the globe. We went to for the first time, I went to the motherland Bharat. I went to India with some students. I've been there quite some years, probably since my Sanskrit studies Yanzu. And we were visiting some Shaktipitas in Himachal Pradesh and one of them, it's locally called Chintpuni. But this is Chinnamasta. This is the self decapitating goddess. So we got to learn and think and reflect on, you know, what is this blissful deity who decapitates herself? What does that mean? And I mean it's just so, so pregnant with import, you know, the self decapitation of the saint. But maybe let's first alight a little bit more into the world within the text. Tell us A bit about maybe the contours of the text and what that's like. And then we will venture afterwards the world sort of behind the text, if we will.
- [09:20]
C
Sure. So the collection of hagiographies by Harihara Diz Rag stories counts over 100 stories. But we focused on those particular stories dedicated to the saints from the Canada speaking region. And they are usually dated around the 12th century. And Harihara wrote this text not many years after, probably at the end of the 12th century or the early 13th century. And by that he's the first poet or this is the earliest record of the lives of this particular group of saints in the Kannada region who are devotees of Shiva. Now there is a kind of a context to this tradition because today it's known as the Vira Shaiva Lingayat tradition consists of many communities in Karnataka and also in other places. And these communities are. They're very politically and socially visible and they drew attention of scholars and other people because they are quite unique. On the one hand they are definitely recognized as followers of the Hindu God Shiva, but at the same time they have a very unique set of rituals and practices. Maybe the most visible of these is the carrying of the Ishta linga, the personal linga that each member of the community receives in birth or through initiation. It's a small sized linga emblem of Shiva that they carry on their body. And by that they're kind of, they're being offered a certain independence or a certain individual personal connection with the God. So that's kind of a very major feature of this Vidashaiva tradition. But there are others. They bury their dead, they don't cremate, their widows can remarry. They have their own set of festivals, their own dietary customs, their own set of scripture which is in a very complicated relationship with Hinduism. Maybe we should say in general their uniqueness is such that their relation to Hinduism as we call it today, as we know it today is not simple. There is a contestation, an ongoing public debate in Karnataka and elsewhere about whether Vira Shaivas Lingayats should be considered as a separate minor religion in India or be considered under big tent Hinduism. And there are a lot of contemporary political, economic and other issues connected to this that I will not go into, but maybe bringing back to our texts, right. This collection of phygiographies by Hariela, by the fact that this is the first literary account which is very detailed about the lives of these devotees from the 12th century who presumably started the tradition or revived the tradition by the fact that this is the earliest recording we get access to an important foundational imagination and description of this tradition as a whole. So I would say there is historical significance by giving access through these translations to the early foundation of this tradition.
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B
That's really intriguing and certainly a milestone. I mean, to my knowledge, this is the first time that one can access this work in English. Correct?
- [13:12]
C
Yes, And I think I said it before. You know, I was writing very profusively and with a lot of excitement about this text, but it also left me, you know, wanting to have interlocutors in this conversation. And I'm definitely open to other readings of this collection, even though we only chose 18 stories out of over 100. It's pretty big. Our book contains over or almost. I'm sorry, almost 500 pages with the apparati added to it. But I also need to say it's not a very dense reading. We kept a format which is very kind of spread with short lines of verse as well as prose and a lot of spacing. So I don't think the reading is pretty accessible, but it's a large and a very rich work in that sense.
- [14:15]
B
Yeah, the reading is certainly accessible. And you make an interesting point. When I look at the works for the podcast, I look at them as sort of place myself more or less in the space of the audience, but of course, can't turn off my own sort of scholarly brain insights. But. But also, in addition to having access to this work, you know, I'm realizing, as you're saying all of a sudden now, if I, you know, my synapses are firing as I'm reading this with other shakta and shaiva, Sanskrit narrative motifs that come to mind, whether they're. Whether they're. They're. They're novice interpolations or whether they're insightful in some. Who knows? I mean, but. But. But for the. This being in English, I don't intend to learn Kannada in this life at present anyhow, and I would not otherwise be able to engage it or come to a specialist or try to. I could have some ideas of the text and maybe potential work that can be done and maybe team up with someone who can read the primary text for scholarly work. But it didn't even dawn on me that sort of the armchair intellectualization we all do when we read these books, the audience does, and we all do when we read it. As generalists across the world field. This could really serve as a platform for. You know, something may strike me here that I may actually ask you about Afghan Say, you know, what about this? This reminds me of the Devi Mahatma, like, where's this coming from? You know, and so it's very true. That would not be possible without a common language.
- [15:45]
C
Thank you for saying that, because you're giving me an opportunity to touch on this issue of Canada literature, which was, on the one hand, very little studied outside India and also within the kind of multilingual landscape of India. But at the same time, and it's recognized and acknowledged by many, Canada literature is vast and very ancient and very diverse and sophisticated. And, I mean, every time, you know, I think some translations from Canada did reach broad audiences and made impact way beyond the specific regional sphere. And, of course, we need to mention speaking of Shiva, the classic by now book by A.K. ramanujan, with translations of the Vachanas, those short, lyrical devotional poems which are associated with those saints whose lives are narrated in this work. So I think there is, on the one hand, a lot of interest in Kannada literature, and on the other hand, there is this inaccessibility that needs to be addressed. And I actually think it's addressed not just by me. I think we are experiencing a mini renaissance with new scholarly interest in Canada and new scholars trained in Canada. And in that sense, it's a very optimistic moment in history. I want to say one more thing about Kannada in relation to Sanskrit, which you mentioned earlier, and that's, of course, another famous work about Kannada by Sheldon Pollock, Language of the Gods in the World of Man, which traces the kind of classical period of Kannada literature at the courts, adopting this courtly Sanskrit sophisticated literature, which Pollock calls cosmopolitan idiom, into Kannada and in itself a hugely rich and amazing world. But Harihara, writing in the end of the 12th century, is really situated in a very dramatic moment in the history of kind of a literature, because he is both trained in the classical styles, Champu, which is a mixture of sophisticated meters and prose, in a very long work, pretty much following the Sanskrit caviar idioms with its own Kannada particularities. So Harihara is able to play in that court, and he produces a text called Girijakalyanam, which is celebrated and accepted by literary circles of Kannada. And he also composes other minor works like Shatakas and Ashtakas. But then he sits down and writes this very unique collection of hagiographies, huge, building on a very simple local meter called ragal, and developing it and expanding it into long, sophisticated, developed narratives, and a thing that no one did before him, surely to be accessible and get the reach of larger portions of society beyond the educated and the quarterly. So Harihara really marks a pivotal change in Kannada literary practices. And his nephew Raghavanka, like Haryara, composed in a single local meter, a different one called Chadpati works. And the style of Ragavanka of Hariara's nephew really became the standard of the rest of the pre modern period for kind of literature. So Harihara is really, on the one hand, a classical and an innovator. And this work of the Ragallet opens up doors to new ways of expression and new ways of reaching new audiences in Canada. And in that sense, it's exciting.
- [20:15]
B
Yes, and doubly so. Now in English, it's sort of. Not only is it. Not only does it provide the access that the sort of translation always provides, but. But it enacts the translation project that the world, that the work itself is doing in its native tongue. You see what I mean? It's sort of reflexive in that sense.
- [20:35]
C
I have to say, because this is, you know, an issue that was major for me and for Professor Sundaram in doing this work. We are translating from a language that's not frequently translated to English, and we're translating a style that is basically unknown or obscure for translations in English. So we really had to think hard about the translation practices. What do we make of this in the English? Because, you know, I already said we are facing a text written in one very simple repetitive meter for long chapters, hundreds of verses. But in some of the ragallehs, those which have multiple chapters, Harihara switch to prose in the odd. I'm sorry, in the even chapters. So odd chapters in ragalle, even chapters in prose, although the story itself continues without break. And then so we faced this question of, well, how do we render the translation? And our kind of immediate choice of prose, you know, was equivalent probably to things that you are familiar with, right, of translating Shloka's Anushtup from the classical epic in Sanskrit into prose narratives, especially because of the narrative component and the flow of a story. But then we notice that even though even in those chapters which are ragale meters, ragales verses, there are switches in the register that Harihara or the expression that Harihara is using, you know, I mentioned earlier, this is a devotional tradition. And indeed that aspect of expressing devotion or sentiments of awe towards the God Shiva is a very major feature in this text. So we noticed, you know, you can read the same regal meter, but the text switches from narration of events into an outpouring of emotions during a ritual to Shiva, or it can switch to very harsh language speaking with a religious other. Or it can be in dialogue with very brisk exchange of words with expletives in them. And so what we ended up doing is, yes, we rendering this in prose, we want to keep the reader engaged in storytelling. But whenever we sensed there is a switch in the register of Harrada's expressivity, we marked it by switching to short lines of verse without a meter or rhyme, but just to kind of convey some of this kind of staccato or parallelism between the lines or kind of first person, you know, suddenly Harihara himself would say, oh, what can I say about this? I have no words to describe it. And then he goes into a long passage of poetic descriptions. So we switched between prose sections for narrative and these kind of short verse lines to describe a more intense, I think, emotionality by Harihara. So I'm just commenting here, what you mentioned before, that when we're, you know, when we're translating a text which is from a less common language in a less common style, we are faced with these decisions, which are not easy, which I'm sure some people might not like. I might get some feedback and criticism for. Although, you know, we kind of tested and asked around, and we. We think this is a worthy rendering, a worthy conveying of Harihara's switches of registers to the English.
- [24:49]
B
I am realizing personally from personal experience as well as, you know, observation reading, a fair bit for the podcast. And beyond that, it is against the laws of physics, you know, metaphorically speaking, to accomplish translation without critique, because you will either be so focused on pleasing the ear of the language into which it is being rendered that the grammar police will be knocking on your door in the original language, or you'll be so avowed to philological rigor either for some intellectual or posturing exercise, that the grammar police will be appeased. It'll be. If it is beyond reproach for the grammar police, it will be disturbing to the ear of the resulting language. And so the only time I've agonized, I'm agonizing over this translation of the Devi Mahatma because I did a beautiful, fluid translation which flows in English, and I'm going back and I hem and haw over, well, should it be rigorous to the point of everything in the Sanskrit should be English or not? Or can I trust the process and can I trust that they understand that I'm not a blithering idiot and I understand these are liberties? It's impossible to do this without someone critiquing based on what they perceive as the pitfalls based on what side of the fence they are or whether or not they're just looking to critique. But as an English speaker who knows a thing or two about the Indic world, but not about this specialization, probably not so distant from many of the listeners. You know, when someone sees a line interrupted and then italicize, oh, my child, why are you casting your gaze as you are looking at the gods all around you and looking at other divinities? The towns will burn, the world will burn. Oh, earth will burn, oh child. And not even one human will survive. Oh, child. Stop, please stop. If someone does not read that and does not move, they don't have a pulse. So it is having some effect in English, it will have some effect whether that affect. It's not only just the semantic meaning. Language conveys so much more, and only someone familiar with the language can have a sense of whether that energetic sense is conveyed. And so, you know, it's a mechanical translation, I don't think will suffice. It'll actually do injustice to the beauty of the original. The problem lies in whether or not others view the energetics as you do or convey it as you do, blah, blah, blah. I'm foaming at the mouth, but please continue.
- [27:20]
C
No, no, not at all. I mean, first of all, thank you and thank you for reading this excerpt. So this was Shiva actually begging his devotee not to burn images at the temple with his third fiery eye that he got from Shiva a moment before. So it's a very dramatic appeal from the God. And that's something about the temperament of these devotees. But it's. Yeah, it's that temperament which we needed. And it's definitely a feature of Harihara. It's definitely a major characterization of this particular bhakti poet. And we made effort or we were very conscious of transferring that into the reading. Now, translation is a work of imperfection, and we are serving two unyielding masters, like you said, on the one hand, the original, on the other hand, the target audience. And as mediators, we can't satisfy everyone all the time. We can, you know, we can do a good enough work to accomplish something. And I don't think there is a perfect translation, and I don't think there is a single translation. A translation is captured in its time. And in that sense, we were very aware of the need of a contemporary text to have daily language to be accessible. That's why we didn't use diacritics, because we wanted it to be as accessible as possible. And we chose a very clear, straightforward language and so on. And it's totally fine that other people will, you know, will have other renderings of Harihara. But, you know, this issue also kind of translates, excuse me for the pun, into very specific decision making and choices. For example, the name of the manifestations of Shiva. So AK Ramanujan, famously, in his Vachana translation, speaking of Shiva, translated the name of the addressed God into English. So instead of Kudara Sangama deva, a particular name of Shiva, which Basava, one of the major, if not the most major, saint or devotee of this tradition, addresses the God with using this Kudara Sangama deva, and AK Ramanujan or Ramanujan, he translated it into Lord of the Meeting Rivers. We noted that people in the Kannadaland landscape are unhappy with this kind of, you know, the absence of local nomenclature, local names of gods, which for them is so integral. And so, for example, about the choice of translating names of deities, we went with keeping the original, right, with keeping Kudara Sangamma, but then in a phrase, in a comma, adding the meaning Lord of the Meeting Rivers, so that the uninitiated will also be able to appreciate the meaning behind particular names of gods, which, by the way, always, or not always, but many times play a part in the story, right? When there is an insinuation by choosing a particular name to a particular hero. And it would be a shame just to kind of convey the original name without giving the meaning and the suggestion. Suggestion that is brought together with that. So this is one very small technical example of what do you do when you translate with all the particularities in it?
- [31:11]
B
Yeah, that's a. That's a. I think we have unwittingly segued into one of my questions already, which is, what is. What was the translation process like for you? And I think you've shared much of your process already. Is there anything else about the primary text, about its contours, or maybe an excerpt or so you might want to share with us?
- [31:33]
C
Oh, sure, sure, I'd love to. Maybe before I read, I want to kind of touch on the thematic richness of these same stories. You know, we already said that this is an emerging tradition, local tradition, written very closely to the purported lives of these particular saints. This is an incredibly diverse work in the sense that we get, in this collection of stories, very different characters. We get people from the margins of society, like a potter or a servant, or while also getting stories about Brahmins who worship Shiva and are devotees or courtly People or jewelers and other kind of free occupations. We get a very rich texture of daily life in the markets, at the temples, at the kind of political exchanges between Brahmins and kings and Shaivas and Jains. And because it's a collection of disparate stories, there is some. They breathe of freedom and independence. And what I mean by that is that one story will have a very, let's say, kind of lyrical, devotional vector of story where a potter is making pots for God Shiva, who is so excited by the making of these pots by the devotee that Shiva himself comes down to the backyard to dance with this devotee. So this is an example of one kind of story, while another story will be about arguing with Vaishnavas and the king in the court and all kind of issues of money and treasury and untouchability. Other stories give us a window into the life of women. Harihara was writing about women as protagonists and devotees of the God. And that doesn't always jive well with society. And Harihara wrote about this openly. And in that sense, he was also an innovator. So it's not just the kind of stylistic, literary qualities that make this text, I think, exciting. There is also a very fresh approach to describing life of people in the 12th century, whether they are simple people or privileged people, whether they're Brahmins or non Brahmins or outcast, if we take up that word, that label. But this divergence, by the way, it also touches on the religious themes. If we today are asking, what is this tradition? Is it part of Hinduism? Is it not? This worship of the lingo, does it replace the temple? Or does it kind of combines with temple worship? So Harihara gives us a glimpse of an early moment in the tradition where everything goes for Harihara, everything goes in terms of worship practices. Yes, you can worship the Ishtalinga in your left palm like people do till today. And we have those descriptions in the text at the same time, the temple, the familiar temple of the kind of Hindu mainstream is very naturally part of the religious landscape in Haryala. Pilgrimage is part of the religious landscape. And so, and you know, those different spheres that Haryara writes about in this very rich text, they don't have to fit together well. And that's what I meant by saying that they breathe these freshness. Disparate stories don't need to come up into one cohesive tradition. One story can describe one mode of devotional life, while another story can describe a different mode of devotional life for Shiva without forcing them into a straight jacket of certain set of practices. And in that sense, it's an important sense historically to think about religious development in Karnataka, but also, I think more broadly in India and in South Asia. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:26]
B
Two thoughts come to mind. One is whether whether this is descriptive or prescriptive or, you know, clearly, you know, as an historian of religion, you'll have much more to say about that. But nevertheless, the fact that we have access to a variety of phenomena attest to the extent to which this is a bona fide people into a world and any world is multifaceted. If this were a sort of more monolithic or cohesive view, then it would clearly be more curated, maybe more synthetic, maybe more artificial in a sense, arguably. And the fact that we are seeing, you know, when you have a peephole into a world, the messiness means that you really have a peephole into a real world because the world is a messy place. And part of that texture, really, I view that as very much a texture of Hinduism, which isn't really a thing. It's an ecosystem. It's an ecosystem, it's extraordinarily syncretic, it's extraordinarily diverse, polyphonic. And so it's utterly intriguing to me that despite this utter polyphony that is Hinduism, there is one strand of the jungle that says, no, no, no, we're not part of the Hindu jungle, we're different. So it's intriguing, very intriguing, isn't it?
- [37:49]
C
I agree with you completely, of course. Hinduism, right? Ancient lived tradition. And I always tell my students, you know, in kind of the Hinduism 101, forget it, we're not going to get it all. You know, just, just walk with a flashlight into these dark rooms and enjoy what you're singing and it's fine. But I think in particular Harihara and the ragalis and the Virashaiva tradition more broadly are caught in a very particularly intense debate about the nature of this religion. And people can see the video. This is when I'm using the quotation mark of religion. Devotion is especially in how Harihara perceives it. Devotion is interior. It belongs to interior life, to experience of a relationship which is personal with the God that is the starting point for Harihara. And from there it can take on different social directions or different lives in kind of external biographies. And Harihara is very open to this. But when we go back to the questions of is Lingayatism, Vilashaivism a part of Hinduism or not? Today you will find different people in Karnataka giving you different answers. According to different affiliations and different understandings. And I'm not here to judge, you know, to give a verdict, but rather I'm excited by a richness of a text which is, I think, is everywhere in India, in every language and, of course, in the epics. I think our greater role as educators is exactly to prime our students to the complexities and the subtlety.
- [39:50]
B
Comfort with tension, comfort with paradox, feel comfortable with tension. That is the nature. We're not talking about tradition with a founder, and we're talking about the messy beauty of a jungle. It's a thing, but it's also not a thing you will ever get the bird's eye view of.
- [40:11]
C
And yet it will make you more observant and more shrewd. Right. And more careful thinker because of these complexities. So I find a lot of, you know, satisfaction engaging in these.
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B
Well, the complexities, I think prima facie to a novice student or even scholar presents as something. As an affront or something contradictory or irrational. But it's actually the complexity of life which holds, necessarily holds, multiple perspectives that are valid and awkward at the same time. They're not contradictory. There are multiple valences operating at the same time in different directions, and that.
- [41:03]
C
Is life, for the very least, it's a true reflection of the human experience, which is varied and changing over time. So, yes, I feel comfortable in this landscape, and probably this is one of the reasons that I was so much attracted to Haryara and to this particular corpus and for producing a transition so other people can also go in and out of this rich territory. Maybe. Maybe. Shall we switch to reading? I marked two excerpts that in many ways, they kind of. They express or they demonstrate this richness that we're talking about. So the first one is from the story about Alama Prabhu. Right. Alama Prabhu is a major figure. He is one of the four poets included in Ramanujan's Speaking of Shiva translations. So he's an incredibly prolific and appreciated Vachana composer. And in his Vachanas, he has a tendency to mysticism, to the inability of language to convey experience, to the, you know, the boundaries and limits of language. And he's very sophisticated in that way. However, Harihara's depiction of Allama is very interesting in this regard. Maybe. First of all, Hari Aral doesn't quote any Vachana by Allama and doesn't even mention Allama composing Vachanas, which is striking, historically striking, because what we inherit today is our idea of Allama Plabhu of Basavana of Akama had these major vir Shaiva saints is inherited through the centuries and through later reconfigurations re articulations of their life story and of their poetic oeuvre. And you know, getting access to an early version that doesn't even mention Vachanas by Allama is interesting. It poses historical questions. I can add in kind of parenthesis that the only two figures credited with Vachana composition in the whole corpus are Basavanna and Akka Mahadevi, who are also featured in Speaking of Shiva. But even there that credit is very limited. Only few three or four Vachanas quoted. We don't get the same appreciation of Vachanas that develops over the ages. I might return to that a little bit later on. So going back to the life story of Allama, it's a life story of a renouncer who leaves society to worship Shiva in reclusion. However, Harihara takes the trouble to describe the romantic relationship that Allama had before retiring. This romantic relationship was denied by later accounts of Allama's life. If we think about Shunya Sampadhana Prabhu Lingalile, for those who are familiar, those authors of later versions deny the fact that he had a love affair. And against that I want to read how Harihara describes the meeting between Alama and his lover to be. Her name is Kamalate. Alama, at this moment of their first encounter is playing drums at a temple. At a Shiva temple. Kamalate stood transfixed, watching Allama's performance and smitten by his appearance. She looked on as he played music that moved everyone. Suddenly Allama turned and cast his eyes on her. Oh Lord. He forgot the rhythms and the drums. Oh Lord. He forgot Shiva and he forgot himself. He was undone. Two gazes joined two minds. A blinding gaze, a sight that transcended the God of love. Alama quietly lowered his hands and then swooned in a faint onto those beside him. They moved him to one side and put away his drum, intending to carry him out immediately. Kamarate's maidens shuddered. They ran up to the stage and said worriedly, you cannot separate this pair. Oh no. Do not extinguish their life breath. Your intellect cannot grasp what is beyond appearance. Take both of them to the bed chamber. The love we have witnessed here is unlike any other. The girls asked for amulets to revive the pair. Everyone then went to Kamalata's mansion, whispering all the while in wonderment. Overflowing with astonishment, they took the couple to the bedchamber and with care Set the them on the grand bed. The women made their way in and then withdrew. Ah. The desire filled pair forestalled the pleasures of lovemaking. Their hairs stood on end as they opened their eyes in trembling delight. Right. And this is just the prelude to a very actually erotic description of Alama making love with Kamalate which very quickly turns into tragedy because Shiva takes Kamalate back to Kailasa, to heaven, meaning Kamalate dies unexpectedly which leaves Allama in ruins and that leads him to his deep connection with Shiva. So we see here a narrative logic for the depth of romanticism between and Kamalate as a backdrop for his intense devotion. And that kind of, I don't know, I think just good storytelling, good crafting of stories is something that gets right, gets later hampered by more sectarian institutional interest of, you know, purging Allama from any kind of defect, making him a perfectly divine saintly being which has its own logic but for storytelling is, is lacking in comparison.
- [47:29]
B
Well, that's. I was just about to comment that one of the most, I think profound and also practical elements of storytelling is the extent to which it is, it's translatable, it's, you know, universal. Might be a bit of stretch, but generalizable certainly. That good story is good story, gripping story, is gripping a story and gripping a will transcend all kinds of borders, the boundaries of epochs and landscapes and you know, a phenomenal story, the Mahabharata is doing the didactic work without the didactic portions on some level. Like the story is doing its own philosophical thing that may or may not, that may or may not agree with the ways in which stories are used for sort of ideological agendas. But, but I mean, gripping story is what's so, what's so refreshing. I mean, who doesn't want to. You teased us with that, with that, you know, that, that slightly X rated vignette there. And now we're, we're wondering, you know, we're wanting more and yeah, I mean, I've always mused at the interplay between overt philosophy, exposition and narrative and the ways in which they do similar work.
- [48:52]
C
You know, it's a perennial and you know, you can, you don't have to, but you can put it in terms of a conflict. Right. Is philosophy like, is storytelling bad philosophy or philosophy bad storytelling? But that's a different conversation. I just want to kind of, you know, echo back. I finished these yesterday. I finished teaching the seminar, my graduate seminar about the Mahabharata in translation. And I can tell you it definitely appeals to non Indians or People who are not initiated into this.
- [49:21]
B
You are the voice of Daiva. Just today, in the timeless time of podcast land, I've formally commenced a collaboration where I'm creating a retelling of the Mahabharata for a larger audience. And I've been saying for years, if not decades now that the core features of the Mahabharata are endlessly captivating. Not to take away from the religious, historical, geographical context, especially within an epic called the Mahabharata. Obviously, that piece is there, but we don't necessarily. Our appeal to Othello isn't necessarily Elizabethan England, right? There's that piece. There's an overlay, but then there's a great literature that's so human.
- [50:05]
C
I agree. And I don't think we need to peel off the locality, the regionality out of story to make it compelling. I mean, Fiddler on the Roof was an amazing success in Japan, right? This kind of East European Jewishness being appreciated. Why? Because Fiddler on the Roof is a story about family ties in the transition from tradition to modernity. And that is a universal theme. And in many ways, I think Harihara is really a capable storyteller that he can appeal to, to everyone. Let me put it in that actually, we were very conscientious that we are creating a translation that is meant to be appreciated by multiple audiences. Right? So first there is the scholarly audience, which I spoke about the historical significance of this text for understanding the religion, the tradition, society. And I think that extends into classrooms about Hinduism where students, you know, undergraduate can be familiarized with the, you know, this dense, infinitely rich tradition through this particular set of stories, which are accessible as stories. And then I also. And that was my thing, I was thinking about students of religious studies of other traditions beyond South Asia, you know, people who study geography in Christianity, in Islam, in other traditions, where there is really a basis for comparison and contrast by getting access to this. And lastly, but not least, I want to mention the audience in India, right? We have a growing population, a growing body of people who are interested or avid English readers in India, wanting to get access to regional literature through English translations. And I'm very fortunate that Oxford University Press agreed to publish this book locally in India by OUP India. And this book is available on Amazon in, for a local price in India and in a very good print quality. So, you know, catering to these various audiences, you get to ask yourself questions, does this story make sense to these people and to those. Or am I making sure to be mindful of local sensibilities in India that I need to be respectful of when I'm creating this text. And in that sense, I hope we didn't pull this transition in different directions that don't make sense. I hope it does make sense in a way. But yes, it was very much in the forefront of our work. Maybe I can just not to make all of this too nice and all. Honey, I want to read a very different passage which is about a religious conflict between the Shaiva devotee, the king, and his Vaishnava Brahmins who are complaining about this Shaiva devotee. His name is Bhogana. They're complaining to the king that he entertained another Shaiva devotee who is an untouchable, right? Asprisya. Asprisya in Canada, untouchable as in Sanskrit. So these terms are actually part of the text. So the Brahmins complain to the king. He has made a farce of the ways of the Brahmin community by showing deference to a man of low caste. O king, today you'll lose your entire community, O King, if you don't send for him and banish him if he stays here, and I'm adding here in parenthesis, the Brahm in Shaiva, we all leave. As King Chandima listened to the words of these dull minded people, Jerdah, his agitation grew, culminating in a harsh rage. He dispatched messengers to immediately summon Bogana, the follower of the slayer of the God of love. Gladsome and gleaming, arrived wearing shining sacred ash, his smile displaying bright clean teeth, his eyes revealing a splendid soft luster. Worryless and carefree, he was serenely present, standing there like an incarnation of the three eyed God. The king asked, what is this I hear? Good man, have you committed an offense against our town? What possible reason could you have had for entertaining in your home an untouchable Bogana? Did you take a nobody into your home, Bogana? Were you in your right mind when you acted in this manner? Bogona replied, O King, I did not entertain an untouchable in my home. O King, you are clueless. And since you are clueless, now listen carefully. Have I ever entertained in my home, followers of Vishnu? Have I ever sheltered and entertained in my home, Brahmin scholars? Just think, O King, would I entertain untouchables who are oblivious of Shiva's greatness? I certainly did host a devotee of Shiva. But tell me, O King, how could that have been wrong? Right? So we see here that's kind of a very blatant inversion of values, right? His kind of daring attribution of untouchability to vaiava Brahmins in this kind of deliberate reversal. And of course, we don't need to read this historically. I don't know if we can imagine this setting or how it happened, but it does reflect Harihara's concern with the court, with the king, with the Brahmins, who are not Shaiva followers, with the issue of untouchability. So even though these are not historical narratives, they do address historical issues that were concerns of the society of that time and until today in many ways. And in that sense it's relevant.
- [56:57]
B
Yeah, it's fascinating. And even in the absence of the Kannada original, which one will leave to experts such as yourself, in reading the English, the astute reader, someone remotely interested in people and ideas and literature, gets a sense that Harihara is a figure, he's a force. He has a range of. He has access to a range of emotion, he has access to command of language in general, of ideas. And he's not, let me use a metaphor, he's not a Muggle. Like, he's paying attention to life. He's able to see what's happening. He's not living the unexamined life. He's also.
- [57:37]
C
He's also not a pureblood. Right. He's not a death eater. He's moving right between these various spaces.
- [57:47]
B
He's at the threshold. Right. He's in the periphery.
- [57:50]
C
Yes, first of all, he's in. At the political periphery in Hampi at that period. But I think also. I think he's very much aware that he's doing something new and introducing a new lifestyle which he wants to appeal to many, many people of different strands. And it's sophisticated in that way. The text itself is sophisticated in that way. And on the one hand, straightforward narrations, emotional outbursts. On the other hand, you do find sporadic passages of very dense Sanskritic, like embellished poetry and long descriptions. And he was able to dabble in that as well. His other magna opus, really Giri Jakalianam, as I said before, is exactly that kind of courtly, epic work. So he could talk the talk, he could walk the walk, but he wanted something else. Yeah, that makes me. That maybe explains my fascination with him, I guess.
- [59:01]
B
What do I know? I mean, the only thing I really know is people here and there. But he's a fascinating figure. Right. He's not afraid to speak his mind. He's being purposely provocative, but not attention seeking for its own sake, you know, he's aiming to elicit an impression. It's obvious from the range and content of what he's doing, that he's an innovator and he would have gotten many likes and follows in our day and age on social media. He was that person. He was the influencer. Right? He's an influencer.
- [59:32]
C
You can tell any influence. Any influence in the sense of the kind of pivotal change I mentioned earlier in Canada literary history. We are actually, right now, Professor Sundara and myself were not willing to let go of Haryara, and we finished another translation of another work of his, Raksha Shataka, a plea to God for protection. This is how we translated it and that we're now trying, you know, kind of finding our legs and hands in the Girijakalyana, which is a very different sort of translation because of the kind of conventional scholarly merit of the Girijakalyanam. But we're working on that as well. So, yeah, it's an endless. I mean, but hey, if anyone here is listening and interested in picking up a regional language in India and start to work with it, Canada is the place. It's very roomy. There's a lot of space for discoveries, and the material itself is very. It's very. What should I say, intense. I think there is a certain intensity to Canada language, even to the sound of Canada, which is exciting.
- [60:45]
B
So we have heard what you're working on next, and we have a call, a call to future researchers, graduate students. We have an area that might be calling to. This is fantastic. Is there anything else about the work, the book, the enterprise, the meaning of life, that you'd like to comment on before we close today?
- [61:04]
C
Well, I'll save my insights about the meaning of life for later, but I want. I want to. I want to. I want to kind of tie one thread that came out of this translation into future work, which I was. When I. When we translated and I encountered these very rare quotations of Vachanas, I started thinking about Vachanas from a textual point of view. And I picked up a new project which I tentatively call a history of speaking. Speaking is one translation of the word Vachana. So a history of Vachana. But also I'm giving a nod to Ramanujan's speaking of Shiva. Now, in this project of a history of speaking, I'm tracing the textual history of the Vachanas from Haryara, the earliest recording of the vachanas, through the 15th century, 18th century, all the way to modernity. Because what we are knowing, what we are getting today is, you know, an English translation of a Vachana by Keronos is really a product of a lot of permutations and transmission and kind of historical variation and intervention, I would say. So this project of mine right now is supported by the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award and the Senior Short Term Research Grant funded by the American Institute of Indian Studies and the National Endowment of the Humanities. And I just completed my research in India and starting to write about it right now, so that's where I am now. But thank you so much for giving me the stage for this last comment and for presenting this work of mine and Professor Sundaram about Hari Haragula. It's such a pleasure to come back and visit this amazing, amazing podcast.
- [62:58]
B
Thank you, thank you. You're very welcome. And thank you for appearing on the podcast. This has been a great conversation for those listening Once again. We have been speaking with Dr. Gil Ben Haroot on Stories of Shiva Singhs, selections from Harihara's Regalis Brand new OUP publication, a part of the AAR Translation Series. All the details are in your podcast notes. Until next time, Keep listening, keep reading, keep thinking, keep reflecting and keep contemplating Power and Perils of Translation. Take care.