I wish to post below the article by Prof G Narsimhan who is one of the most knowledgeable person whether you take carnatic music, chemistry or applied mathematics. His analysis of carnatic music applying mathematical formulas are so astonishing. I shall post his past articles in relevant subjects. Please find below of an analysis he made about how common men are raised to elevated souls. Please share your views.
Title: The Female Form and Sexuality-The Double Standards
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The learned ascetics of ancient India who prescribed rules of ethics and behavior for the ordinary masses did not derogate sexual predilection as a wanton act. In fact it was accorded legitimacy as one of the four stages of a wholesome life namely "dharma, artha, kama and moksha".The Turkkural of sage Tiruvalluvar who lived in the beginning of the Christian era, has been the most inspiring literary work on general ethics, political principles and harmony and intimacy in married lives. It has been translated into many modern languages as the work does not embrace any specific religious faith. It has a total of 1330 couplets of compressed wisdom divided into three of the four sections mentioned above. The last section moksha has been left out to those who are inclined towards a life of detachment and renunciation . Of the origins of the universe, speculated by forest sages, one was construed as a sexual union of the god and his consort. The walls and the stone sculptures in temples, therefore, reveal, in much detail, the knotted embraces of gods and goddesses. Special mention may be made of the temple of the Black Pagoda of Konarak in Orissa, which has acquired a tarnished reputation in that the temple sculptures involve figures of couples engaged in actual sexual acts, the essence of the maituna concept dedicated to the sun-god. As Professor Bhasham* says: "Possibly the temple of Konarak was a centre of the tantric cult and harboured the rites of sexual mysticism which played so great a part in Hindu and Buddhist religious thought. The oft repeated Buddhist mantra "Om, mani padme hum" ( The jewel is indeed in the lotus) might have been of sexual significance referring to the divine union of Buddha and Tara". In fact the tantric Buddhism resorted to this cult as a means to obtain supernatural powers. The group of temples built in Khujuraho around 1000 AD, in North India, similarly depict the intense sexuality of couples in close embrace. Therefore Indian preoccupation with order and organization did not leave the topic of sexuality as something private and consensual . The most famous of this outlook has been a text titled Kamasutra written by the sage Vatsyayana during the early period of the Christian era. After the wedded couple had taken their vows, sexual activity was indeed formally recommended by vedic edicts and this handbook came in handy for the householder as it graphically described the numerous erotic techniques. If the sage had indeed experimented with such a plethora of physical architecture before recommending them he must have become a bundle of dislodged and distorted knots!. Many puranic stories chronicle the infatuation of not only the rishis but gods themselves in the female seductive form and go astray. The engrossment of the early Hindu society in such matters had obviously tricked into art, literature and music. The additional input to the Indian sexuality had been the emergence of the genre of courtesans and mistresses under the espousal of kings and nobles. The emergence of the genre of devadasis had been of quasi-religious significance. The gods and goddesses in temples have always been treated as earthly kings and queens with the attendant appurtenances of the royal court including the presence and services of the courtesans. This sect consisting of young females born to prostitutes, acquired the lofty title of devadasis or servants of gods and later the nobles and chieftains became their patrons .These divinely chosen servants however were well trained in the art of music and dance and in the modern era were absorbed into the main stream of urban cultural milieu. The earliest reference to the lofty male-female union was during the golden era of South Indian cultural history between 700 and 1100 AD when the Tamil hymnodists, the Nayanmars and Alwars, cast themselves in the role of distraught goddesses seeking desperate union with the gods and this new form of devotional Hinduism made a dominant appeal to the common man and trickled into the dance and music repertoire in later centuries. The famed, Gita Govinda Ashtapatis of Jayadeva, an Oriya brahmin who lived during early 12 th. century detail the travails of Radha, the mistress of Lord Krishna, through overt sexual references and are referred to as the Indian version of the Songs of Solomon! The deliberate infusion of gross sexuality in such padams, as they are normally referred to in musical pedagogy, were later copied by other composers like Annamyya, Kshetragna and the bundle of Telugu-Tamil padam-creaters of the 19th century. The triangular motif of the Lord-Mistress-Companion has been a monotonous and vapid theme in dance and music repertoires.
Sankaracharyya, a Hindu brahmin born around 780 AD in the midst of the golden era was a monk and belonged to the Saivite religious sect. During the short span of his life time, he imbibed the essence of the philosophical treatises of Hinduism, mainly the Upanishads and Brahma sutras and advocated a systematic interpretation of such lofty system of rather obscure philosophical thought. According to him, the phenomenal world is unreal and behind this exists the unchanging reality, the Brahman or the Creator who is formless and only defined through attributes. The phallic symbol linga is its essence. This primeval entity has also been called Paramatma or the Universal Soul as the essence of Ultimate Reality and the individual soul Jeevatma is no different from this, stressing the Christian concept that Man has been made in His image. Nevertheless this unity of the inner spirit is not recognized by the individual soul due to the corrupting influence of "ignorance, ego and attachment" . If these "layers of ash" are blown away through a thorough intellectual enquiry of Gnana Yoga, then the individual realises the glow of divinity within himself. In delineating such a concept of monism, Adi Sankara had been a forerunner to the Roman Catholic philosopher St Thomas Aquinas who lived in the mid 13th. century AD. In addition to delving into the essence of Hinduism, Adi Sankara also was reputed to have indulged in fervent devotional poems like the Soundaryalahiri and Sivanandalahiri and dedactic verses like Bhajagovindam. If one studies the former two works carefully he would be struck by the fact that Adi Sankara has taken the view of divinity totally antithetical to that espoused by him in advaita philosophy. While monism depicts a formless entity, in these two devotional works consisting of 100 verses each, divinity is broken into countless clinical descriptive images that would adorn pages of modern human anatomy. It has been suggested that the first 41 verses were gifted to him by the sage Pushpatandera at the environs of Mount Kailash and that the rest, consisting of 59 verses were composed by him independently. In fact while the first bunch of verses delve into rather abstract mysticism surrounding the personality of Goddess Parvathi, the consort of Siva, the second part consists, of minute description of the form of the goddess from head to toe with special emphasis on the mid-region. The concept of Hindu female beauty is often referred to this part of anatomy: large breasts, strong muscular thighs, slim waist, folded belly and fine hair patterns descending from the pelvic region downwards! into the zone of mystery! I shall illustrate this fascination of Sankara to female form and sexuality through the following passages:
# 13: " naram va kshiyamsam nayana virasam narmasu jadam...." " man under your influence, however elderly, ugly and uninitiated in love foreplay, is chased by young females in undress, with hair let free and flowing, with waist band loose to let the saree unfold.. "
# 19: " mukham bindum krutva kusayuga-madas thasya thadadho..." " any devotee who contemplates your lovely face, the two magnificent breast mounds and finally the vagina below is at once under the influence of carnal pleasure..."
* 75: " tava sthanyam manye daranidhara kanye hrdayatha: paya:paravara:..." "flow of breast milk from the heart is like the torrent of amrita..."
# 80: " kusau satya: savidhyat-thadakatita kurpasabhidurau..." "...tearing the blouse sticking to the skin and exposing breasts like golden bowls circling the slender waist with three folds to support them..."
In the didactic poem "Bhaja Govindam" Sankara admonishes humanity for its preoccupation with mundane matters especially the womanly wiles, which prevent contemplation on Govinda and hence ultimate salvation
#3: " naari sthanapara nabhikesam drushtva makaa mohavesam , yetan mamsa vasadi vikaaram manasi vichintaya varam varam "
"You idiot, a woman's breasts, belly, belly hair are made of flesh, blood, urine and other disagreeable matter and therefore do not be attracted by female form..."
In this context observe Sankara's obsession with female form, especially the breasts and abdominal hairlines:
# 72: " samam devi skanda dvipavanadana peetham, sthana yugam, tavedam na: kedam haratu satatam prasnuta-mukham..."
"Let your twin breasts from which both Skanda and Ganapathi suck the milk, dispel our anguish..."
# 77: " yadetat kalinditanutara tarangaakruti sive...." -description of fine abdominal hair-lines that terminate at the belly button....
Logic demands that celestial forms brought down to the level of ordinary human beings should have the same interests and inclinations as an average human being. Thus to admonish the average man that female form is just a bundle of flesh, blood, skin and urine and should be shunned as empty dialectic. Man, after all, according to Sankara is an image of Paramatma. That such an eminent philosopher who, apparently, had no out-worldly interests should concern himself with such minute details of femlale sexuality is something that defies reason. There can be no double standards of behavior. The 31 hymns of Bajagovindam centre around Lord Govinda and not Lord Maheswara as one would have expected. Govinda or Krishna is one of the ten incarnations of Vishnu and this concept of incarnation or avatar is central to the tenets of Visishtadwaitham, the other school of vedanta that came into the fore three centuries later. Did Sankara anticipate that his advaita doctrine would be too cerebral to be assimilated by the common man when he needed a protector or saviour in times of distress? This is a train of thought that is worth pursuing.
To conclude I would like to present for analysis, an equally embarrassing but critical analysis of a single composition of Thyagaraja which, in actual verbal format, is identical to the third hymn of Bhajagovindam, referred to earlier. This composition set to the major raga Sarasangi proceeds as indicated below:
" menu juchi mosapogave manasa, loni jada leelagu gadaa, heenamaina mala-mutra rakhtamula kila nenju mayamayamaina sana..."
" Oh! mind do not go astray on seeing the female form and beauty; we know only too well of the latent make-up of these. They represent a mix of lowly excreta, faeces, urine and blood...." Has anyone rendered this kriti in a Thyagaraja festival? and elaborated with a neraval at the anupallavi "heenamaina...!! Thyagaraja has added an additional component, faeces to the list of Sankara. He , like Sankara, however goes into ecstasy when describing the beauty of female form in the 20 compositions titled Naukacharitra which chronicle the intimate love play of a set of female devotees and Krishna.
Both Sankara and Thyagaraja stand condemned for their double standards! G.Narsimhan
Appendix: For the benefit of an idle devotee who is too lazy to go to the temple:
# 27 Sloka of Soundaryalahiri :
" Japo jalpa: silpam sakalamapi mudravirachana gati:pradakshinya kramana machanaadyahuti vidi: pranama:samvesa:sukham akila atmarpana drusa, saparya-paryaas tava bhavatu enme vilasitam"
Let these be the sacred eqivalents:
idle talk>> Japa; handicraft>>mystical code; walk>> pradakshanam food>> prasadam; sleeping>>namaskaram and everything else done without effort>> pooja procedure!!
Who would spend idle time to go to the temple?
* A.L.Basham " The Wonder That Was India" Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road London N1 RR 2004; pp. 363