Article from "The Hindu"

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Cadambi Sriram

10/03/97 12:51 PM

An article on ''Abhiti-stava" from "The Hindu" by M.K.Sudarshan ( a

former member of this mailing list).

 

Sriram

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[THE HINDU]

 

Friday, October 03, 1997

SECTION: Entertainment

 

 

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Well ahead of his times

 

03-10-1997 :: Pg: 34 :: Col: d

 

Swami Vedanta Desikan's ``Abhiti-stava'' is a poetic

analysis of the modern psychology of fear. An insight

into the timeless work.

 

Swami Vedanta Desikan has written copiously on the

subject of human ``fear and fearlessness''. His

references to this most primal of human emotion are

strewn in almost all his rahasya, stotra, gadya, kavya

or vyakhyana works.

 

In principal Sanskrit stotra works (for which Swami

Desikan is remembered) like the ``Abhiti-stava,''

``Daya-satakam'' and ``Ashta- bhujashtakam,'' the

poet-philosopher-polymath seems to have approached the

subject of human `fear' in an amazingly 20th- century

manner. Modern practice and methods in clinical

psychiatry or psycho-analysis seem to distinctly echo

between the lines of religious poetry that this great

Sri Vaishnava ``acharya'' of the 13th-century wrote.

 

Swami Desikan's allusions to fear in his stotra, the

``Abhiti- stavam,'' carry muted tones of autobiography.

On reading the hymn after more than 700 years since

composed, one senses he is describing the emotion out of

first-hand, intimate knowledge of raw, palpable human

fear.

 

When the Muslim cohorts of Malik Kafur, the general

representing Alauddin Khilji in South India, attacked

the temple-town of Srirangam around 1327 A.D. the

Vaishnavas there and religious leaders like Pillai

Lokachariar and Swami Desikan were forced to flee

Srirangam taking with them the priceless treasures and

symbols of Vaishnavism.

 

While the former fled with the idol of Lord Ranganatha,

Swami Desikan - at the time in his late fifties - fled

alongwith a band of followers with the ``sruta

prakasika,'' the hallowed philosophical treatise on Sri

Ramanujacharya's ``Sri-Bhashya.''

 

Unfortunately, barely had Swami Desikan and his band

crossed the outskirts of Srirangam when a stray

contingent of the invading Muslim army discovered them.

History notes that Swami Desikan himself narrowly

escaped being killed.

 

Several decades thereafter, having stared death in its

face and known ``fear,'' Swami Desikan lived the life of

a near-exile in a village, Satyakaalam, what is now in

Karnataka and close to Melkote. During that time he

confronted `fear' of a different sort - the fear of

individual futility, personal ineffectiveness and of

``cosmic loneliness.'' Here, Swami Desikan spent years

in solitude, contemplation and deep meditation of Sri

Lakshmi Hayagriva. Although the Swami had not formally

embraced sanyasa, he lived a great part of his life away

from family and close social bonds.

 

He longed for Srirangam and wished that the Sri

Vaishnava faith be restored to its pre-eminent status.

He longed for the faith to be rejuvenated with the

robustness and vigour of its founders - Nathamuni,

Yamuna and Ramanuja.

 

One gets an extremely clear glimpse of the history of

those times, and Swami Desikan's own state of mind, on

reading ``Abhiti-stava,'' wherein he invokes the

awesome, terrible wrath of Lord Ranganatha and directs

it towards the enemies of the faith.

 

Swami Desikan blends a therapist's scientific viewpoint

with the whole theology of the school of Vedantic

thought called `Sri Ramanuja siddhantam.'

 

The poetic hymn is a many-splendoured classic in other

respects as well: it is an epigram of Visishtadvaitic

truths; an easy handbook of reference for the theme of

``saranagathi'' containing, as it does, a variant each

for the famous three ``charama shlokas'' (of Krishna,

Ram and Sita) it is a snap-shot account of a slice of

the history of Srirangam around the 13/14th century A.D.

 

In Verse 13 of the ``Abhiti-stava'' the swami states the

stark fact that ``fear'' is the most deep-seated of

human behavioural drives. A man is born with it, lives

with it and goes to the grave with it. Swami Desikan in

this verse squarely faces up to the question of ``fear''

being a basic driver of all human behaviour.

 

In stating the nature of the problem in such a blunt and

bland way, he seems to have anticipated, over seven

centuries ago, a methodology which is today followed in

modern psychiatric practice.

 

In Verse 12 the swami examines the nature and cause of

the problem of fear and observes that ``happiness

derived from the pettiness of the world (materialism)

and from wife, sons, relations, neighbours, servants and

the like (social and familial props) is evanescent. We

sense the echo of the above sentiment resonating in the

methodology of contemporary psychiatric practice.

 

After the patient has learnt to squarely face up to his

problem, to trust the therapist and to openly seek his

help, the former is encouraged by the latter to

carefully examine and dissect the conditions of his

station in life.

 

He is gently prodded by the therapist into deeply and

honestly (often brutally) analysing, one by one, his

relationships with everything living or material that

populates his life.

 

Swami Desikan captures this ``regressive'' phase of the

patient, too, in Verse 10 of the ``Abhiti-stava'' where

he notes, ``Oh, Prabho (Lord), your instructions and

prescriptions to me are bitter-medicine. You ask me to

do things now which are totally alien to my nature. I am

so accustomed now to my wanted and degenerate life-style

of many years that I am allured by and drawn easily to

the same old ways. I feel I am much like a fish that

finds it hard to resist devouring the bait hanging at

the end of a deadly hook-and-line.''

 

In the next phase of the patient's recovery, clinical

psychiatry explains, he is evolving into a new robust

person. He has conquered fear, trauma and self-doubt.

But intermittenty, the therapist perceives, the patient

is plagued by an irrational anxiety: that, for some

reason or the other, he may lose the support of the

therapist; and that he may again become unprotected and

vulnerable to the old illnesses.

 

In Verse 17 of the `Abhiti-stava,' Swami Desikan

accurately captures feelings of post-recovery ``angst''.

 

In the post-cure period a patient is known by modern

practitioners of psycho-therapy to transform himself

into a completely new person. He develops a new

self-image after plumbing the depths of his being in

search of powers of regeneration, creativity and

goodness.

 

The totally transformed person is aware of a

``well-spring of creative power'' within him and is

known to exult over the fact that he feels truly ``

liberated'' and hence needs nothing else in life but to

be able to stay constantly in touch with some strange

source of power felt ``deep within.''

 

These sentiments are expressed in Verse 7 and in several

of Swami Desikan's other Sanskrit hymns too, and most

notably in Verse 100 of the Daya Satakam, where he

beseeches Daya-devi (the Goddess of Compassion) to

bestow on him ``nothing else in life but the experiences

of the truly liberated one.''

 

Thus, on careful literary analysis, one can indeed say

that Swami Desikan, over 700 years ago, revealed through

his religious poetry an extremely scientific and

amazingly 20th-century-line approach to the portrayal of

a mental affliction known today in the parlance of

clinical psychiatry as ``fear-and-anxiety syndrome.''

 

M. K. SUDARSHAN