Transgressing Boundaries: The Songs of Shenkottai Avudai Akkal

adversity.

Introduction

I. Describing the Indescribable

I began translating Avudai Akkal’s songs from Tamil into English about five years ago, initially for my own pleasure and learning, and then formally through a two-year fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Though I have immersed myself in this material in the process of translating it and researching its context, I remain as stunned by its power today as I was upon first encountering it. My increasing familiarity with the text over time has not diminished my awe at Akka’s exalted spirituality and metaphorical genius—each time I read these compositions, they are as fresh and vital. I consider myself truly fortunate in that this translation project enables the harmonious dovetailing of my profession (teaching Indian philosophy), my academic/research interests (aspects of Indian philosophy, particularly Vedanta), my cultural and linguistic roots (Tamil), and my personal orientation towards Vedanta.

It would be easy to describe the joy I experienced daily as I worked on the translations and the essays that accompany some of them. It is difficult, however, to describe my approach to the work as a scholar. From the very beginning of this project, I had to negotiate the difficulty of applying theoretical analysis, both Indian and Western, to my research. Theory, with its reliance on empirical categories and classifications, is for the most part unable, from my point of view, to absorb or contain the fundamentals of Vedanta, which calls for the subsuming and dissolution of all categories and posits a unitive vision of what we perceive as jagat/world. Since Vedanta is entirely oriented towards the experience of Self-realisation, a state that transcends all structures of logic and language, any effort to translate works that have this as their central theme will inevitably be caught— and occasionally paralyzed—in the struggle to find suitable articulation for what is actually beyond all discourse.

The Self-realized sages Ramana Maharshi and Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa both chose the same metaphor: they maintain that the state of Self-realization, the annihilation of ego, the extinction of individual self, is like plunging a doll made of salt into the ocean—dissolution is complete, no one and nothing returns; therefore it is impossible to narrate what was undergone. Yet in order to bring their experience to their disciples, as far as this was indeed possible, both sages used poetic forms as effective modes of teaching. The mostly unschooled Sri Ramakrishna firmly maintained that book-learning and textual exegesis was in most cases an obstacle between the devotee and the recommended direct experience of Self-realization; yet he consistently nurtured as his close disciples highly educated men of brilliant intellect, as well as the unlettered. Sri Ramana translated various Vedanta scriptures, wrote commentarial notes on classical advaitic texts (such as Vivekachudamani attributed to Shankaracharya) and composed spiritual verses himself, and yet also held that true knowledge (atma-jnana) could be attained through sustained enquiry (vichara) on the nature of the Self; he offered as a strategy available to all, the learned and the unlettered equally, the tool of the single, simple question: Who am I?

A person of realization need not claim or adopt the discursive mode of textuality or teaching. In Advaita, realisation of non-dual Reality is purna, fullness; it is krtakrtya (the condition where all that is to be attained is already attained), and therefore needs no further linguistic or other expression. Additionally, the knower of the Self, beyond spatial and temporal categories, leaves no trace of the path once taken: when ego is extinguished, there is neither doer nor deed, neither path nor goal—all that remains is silence and samadhi. However, many realised individuals take upon themselves the task of awakening those in the slumber of ego-constructed delusions. Such action is undertaken out of the compassion born from enlightenment. This is aptly expressed by Sri Ramakrishna:

[…] with great effort men dig a well for drinking water, using spades and baskets. After the digging is over, some throw the spades and other implements into the well, not needing them anymore. But some put them away near the well, so that others may use them. Some eat mangoes secretly and remove all traces of them by wiping their mouths with a towel. But some share the fruit with others. There are sages who, even after attaining knowledge, work to help others …"¹

This mode of perfected, constant compassion is markedly different from the erratic and conditional wish to disseminate the Truth that is displayed in the state of ignorance. The sharing mode could assume the form of generating analytical commentary on the ‘sacred texts’, an act through which the tradition of learning and understanding the Truth is preserved for future generations. This exacting textuality, sanctioned by teachers, may easily confine the parameters and interpretations of texts to what has been legitimated by scriptural ‘authority’. However, this tradition also accommodates sub-commentaries, thereby scrutinizing and flexibly extending the discourse through carefully chartered methodologies, epistemologies, ontologies and sophisticated polemics manifested in philosophical debates and counter-arguments. This rigorous schema is directed towards instilling the prescribed tradition of scholarship in the mind of the student, thus reinforcing the dominant canon and ensuring its preservation.

In contrast to such hegemony, Akka as the ecstatic knower of the Self describes in many songs the bliss of the direct experience of Oneness and union with the Supreme; when, as she so exquisitely sums up in her composition Paraparakkanni, the world itself slips off like a toy from the hand of a sleeping child. She completely rejects arid, rigid scholasticism and consciously chooses to develop her songs in the oral tradition—spontaneous, vibrant, lyrical and easily accessible to women, who sang these compositions, individually and collectively, while doing their household chores. She also denounces social and religious hypocrisy through stinging social critique, and song after song admonishes people for their claustrophobic stupor, ignorance and blind adherence to unjust systems. Akka also tries to break down the belief held by women, particularly widows, that they are forever fated to an oppressed existence—she creates unforgettable and extraordinarily subversive frames for her articulation of advaitic truths, drawing many of her radical metaphors from women’s daily lives and work. For over two hundred years, Akka’s songs were sung, circulated and preserved for posterity by women, especially widows, who gained immense solace, comfort and knowledge from the lyrical compositions, and from the awareness that the sage herself had undergone the grim life of a child-widow prior to initiation by her guru.

Akka’s poems are public songs that address Tamil women as a community. They are simple, direct, uncompromising, intense and profound. They are composed in simple spoken Tamil, carrying the advaitic message of sarvatmabhava, (Oneness of Being) and the eternal bliss of moksha/final liberation. Anyone familiar with even colloquial Tamil can access these powerful utterances. Her song Vedanta Pallu was published as early as 1896 by Sarada Vilasa Publication in Tamil Nadu. In 1910, further attempts were made to publish her work. In 1953, a major effort was made by A. Venkatarama Sastri to personally collect some songs from widows of Shenkottai (Akka’s birthplace in Tirunelveli district) and print them. Many more extant songs were later collected by the dedicated researcher Gomathi Rajankam who sporadically published them in Tamil spiritual journals such as Shankarakripa and Sri Ramakrishna Vijayam.

II. Knowledge Traditions

I have translated Akka’s padalgal (songs), and interpreted the tropes and rhetorical devices by which she critiques, subverts, inverts and overturns theological and metaphysical categories in order to express the Absolute which, in actuality, cannot be fixed or comprehended through the known structures of language and image. Yet, as both author and reader acknowledge, these ideological and symbolic frames are the only resources available to us for the articulation of a state that is fundamentally beyond articulation.

Akka draws upon folk tradition for her imagery, and includes singularly feminine tropes/motifs/frame stories as a conduit for the transmission of Vedanta. She thus moves away from the prescribed ‘great’ tradition in which, conventionally, Vedanta texts may utilize examples, metaphors, parables, etc. in a particular way to describe the Reality which otherwise cannot be bound within the parameters of language. The normative mode of Vedanta scholars is to use erudite discourse that has a standard format (wherein they state and critique/counter their opponents’ position prior to establishing their own argument). The great metaphysician and philosopher Shankaracharya is a classic example here. The audience for such debate is a select one, and the assumption is that it is already informed about all other schools of philosophy and the narrative strategies of the texts.

Akka’s literary feat is that she brings the abstract philosophy of Vedanta into the existential realm through a unique mode of vernacular poesis, thus enabling it to be assimilated within the desi or ‘little’ tradition. The fact that she chose to compose not formal written verses in chaste Tamil (cenntamilz) but instead rendered ‘songs’ that circulate orally (up to the present day), suggests her commitment to making the lofty principles of Vedanta accessible to all serious aspirants. This also orients her work toward the democratic tradition of Bhakti, where saint-poets completely rejected class paradigms and used dialect in their compositions, sung to the public in a spirit of ardent non-discrimination.

Akka’s poetic genius is in her radical subversion of particular symbols that are rooted in the Brahminical order. Acknowledging the power of these only to deny them, she audaciously deconstructs and reapplies the icons of ethical custom/context, simultaneously invoking their opposite. Akka’s Paraparakkanni is autobiographical in the sense that it describes her spiritual journey; it also raises the question of what it would mean to transcend ludicrous, repressive, suffocating social rules— existential tethers that from the Advaitic perspective are not only cruel, deluded and irrelevant, but also completely absurd. In Pantitan Kavi Akka juxtaposes two radical perspectives: medicine’s fundamental empiricism and the soteriological trajectory of Vedanta. In Vedanta Ammanai Akka draws upon the rudiments of Samkhya philosophy and its cardinal notion of prakrti to create an allegory of Self-realization. In Sri Vidya Shobhanam, Akka uses the vigorous dance and song form of shobhanam to radically subvert the established orthodox perspective that menstruation itself is considered to be an auspicious event (shobhanam), though associated with impurity (teettu). Taking the particulars of this practice, Akka develops a dramatic allegory of the Vedantic sublime, imaged ceremonial by ceremonial as a prolonged nuptial rite. The menstruating girl is presented as the pure/dispassionate soul undergoing preparation for blissful union with the Absolute. Akka shapes her images from all areas of life, ranging from the most ‘mundane’ such as menstruation, extraction of castor oil in the kitchen, to more sophisticated schema such as ship construction, Ayurveda and Siddha medicine, etc., to the most sublime Vedantic experience of non-duality. This expansive, all-inclusive spectrum does not allow the text to be slotted into any one known category of academic scholarship, nor lend itself to a predictable methodology.

The text compels me to move beyond the fixities of theoretical construction that I am habituated to as a scholar, and I find I have to submit with humility to the force of her diverse modes of narration. Even erudite Tamil scholars, as well as learned renunciates who have chosen the path of Advaita, find that this text cannot be contained within the established conventions of knowledge production for Self-realization. The seer’s single intention is to provoke and goad human beings, through her songs, into the knowledge/discovery of the immutable and inviolate true Self, which is sacchitananda, existence-consciousness-bliss.

I did not undertake this translation/research project in order to academically promote Akka’s work, nor to contextualise her work in a sociological, historical, political or religious frames. Her songs do not fall into the category of known philosophical or gender-oriented methodologies. My intent was neither analysis nor synthesis. I was attracted to the force of her compositions partly because as a Tamil Brahmin and native speaker, I understood the tradition from within. Her songs are unique in their capacity to convert ‘ordinary’ domestic/ mundane metaphors into extraordinary, sublime articulations of the Truth. Explaining the supra-normal via the normal, Akka adeptly dismantles the orthodox conceptualizations of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’. To me, this seems to be an unparalleled technique, used only by seers like Kabir, whose images are also amazingly forceful.

I was also fascinated by the space that her work afforded to women; her free-flowing, untrammeled, unfettered songs, originating in the ‘ordinary’ experiences, work and world of women, gave women an intimate understanding of the textual intricacies of the Advaita tradition. Women were severely excluded from upper-caste, male-dominated modes of know ledge acquisition. Akka strategically embeds the sophisticated polemics of the shastric tradition within her ‘ordinary’ metaphors, thus disseminating the knowledge denied to women. This provided women with an understanding of Vedanta which focuses on the emancipation of all, regardless of caste, gender, lineage and social privileges/entitlements. Her own experience of extreme social ostracism and stigmatization as a child-widow, combined with the Vedantic realization of oneness, enabled an all-inclusive approach to life and knowledge. As her songs recommend, what is really crucial is to finally transcend all categories of inclusion and exclusion.

Akka’s particular technique has given me a kind of intellectual freedom that I had not previously experienced, vis-à-vis the classical Indian philosophical schools such as Nyaya, Mimamsa or even textual study of Vedanta. The seer seems to demolish the distinctions of para and apara, strongly posited in the Upanishads, for instance, Mundaka 1: 4–6:

Two types of knowledge a man should learn—those who know Brahman tell us—the higher [para] and the lower [apara]. The lower of the two consists of the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, the Atharva Veda, phonetics, ritual science, grammar, etymology, metrics and astronomy; whereas the higher is that by which one grasps the imperishable. What cannot be seen, what cannot be grasped, without colour, without sight or hearing, without hands or feet; what is eternal and all-pervading, extremely minute, present everywhere—that is the immutable, which the wise fully perceive.²

Akka’s use of tropes from the realm of women’s experience is remarkable. The practical existential knowledge that women acquired within their closed, circumscribed domain of domesticity and family was generally dismissed as insignificant, and devalued even within the category of apara, the ‘lower’ form of knowledge. But the seer brilliantly uses this very form to ascend to para, finally transcending both categories. Her uncompromising strictures against fruitless shastric theorizations suggest that knowledge of the Truth can be experienced in a manner radically different from the orthodox conventions of learning. The acquisition of apara, or this-worldly knowledge, is justified only if it leads to attaining Brahmavidya, or knowing the Self. In her typically fierce and direct manner, regarding the task of goading the learned person who has no inclination towards acquiring intuitive knowledge of Self and remains within rigid theoretical constructions of the Truth, Akka says: It is like instructing into the ears of a donkey—will it stop braying? You tell me… It is like decorating a corpse with ornaments: will they shine?… It is like shooting an expensive arrow at a worthless target…

The project of preparing this material in the prescribed analytical format—as a thesis, as a manuscript, as a document, as a draft publication—does, as I mentioned earlier, bring me deep pleasure. Yet there were also days when I observed myself in a disturbing, slightly ironic position of ambivalence regarding my research, for it also compelled me to think about the discursive categories that we as scholars take for granted and unquestioningly: ‘data’; ‘information’; ‘learning’; ‘knowledge’; ‘wisdom’. Do these seamlessly contain and metamorphose into each other, like caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly? Or—as so exquisitely invoked by Sri Ramana’s advaitic metaphor—are the colors of the peacock always already contained within the yolk of its egg?

III. Mechanisms of Translation

More specifically, in terms of preparing this as a manuscript I also had to make certain complex—and largely intuitive—decisions regarding my mode/s of translation. In purely formal terms, English has nothing in common with Tamil. There are no common root derivatives; there are different rules of syntax, as well as embedded aspects that do not transfer over. I fully agree with the renowned poet and translator A.K. Ramanujan’s observation that the chief difficulty of translation is its impossibility ³, the translator has to necessarily accept hazards, damages in transit, the secret paths and lucky bypasses that characterize any transfer of meaning (especially between a ‘left-branching’ language like Tamil and a ‘right-branching’ language like English). The difference in configurations of word order in these two modes mandates a difference in meaning; word by word translation is not possible.⁴

For instance, with regard to the following two lines from Akka’s song Inta Rakasiyam (‘This Mystery’):

Inta rakasiyam chonner anal

This secret tell if you,

Irukkeren naan umakku sonntamai,

Will be I for you as a possession

In order to preserve the ‘essence’ and the ‘life-throb’ of the song, I have retained the central message of each line and have translated in accordance with that logic:

If you unravel this mystery

You can claim an exclusive right over me

The songs have a seductive, layered quality as well as direct, memorable refrains; ‘ordinary’ ‘woman-centric’ metaphors mingle with exalted advaitic terminology, compelling a focus on both strands together. The continual presence of the familiar and the domestic therefore enabled women who were unlettered/ untrained in philosophy, and forbidden to participate in classical knowledge production and transmission, to retain and interpret the abstract metaphysics of Vedanta.

Though Akka’s songs initially appeared to me as simple, easily accessible and readily translatable, it actually took me a long time to grasp her poetic technique and power. Her language is like a torrential river unobstructed by barriers, her choice of words flowing from her own advaitic experiences, and her colloquial Tamil carrying the sweet fragrance of the red soil of Tirunelveli. Moreover, the musical rhythm inherent in long songs such as Vedanta Ammanai and Sri Vidya Shobhanam does not render itself to any translation. I do not claim to have done justice to her work. Her articulation ceases to have the same force when translated. When I first encountered the text some years ago, and in my enthusiasm read some of the songs to an older Brahmin lady brought up in the orthodox tradition, she exclaimed, Stop this reading! The words are too strong and too much of a rebuke! If Akka’s metaphors could evoke such a response from a modern listener, one can only imagine their impact on the Brahmin community two centuries ago.

My translation strategies have varied from song to song. At times I tried to be as close to the original as possible; at other times I have relied on secondary and implied meaning. For instance, the colloquial term "Eranddum kettal" in her long song Vedanta Ammanai is impossible to translate. After much thought and experiment with phrasing, I finally translated it as a dubious in-between. The cadence of Akka’s song Manambuddhi Samvatam (‘The Question-Answer Dance’) is another instance of the effortless way she creates ringing lines that have the sonorous force of a temple gong—an aspect of her genius that cannot be expressed in English:

Ittu-vitta-nama-rupam-eppadi-poi-etacchu

Itiloru drshtantam-enakku chol anne,

Kattai-muttai-kaashthabhedam-kattut-teeyil kandatundo

Kala-desha-namarupa, kandukkol pinne.

Mother, provide me with an illustration

As to what happened, and unto where

All assigned names and forms disappeared.

As the raging forest fire consumes without discrimination

All the wood—trees, stumps, trunks—in its path,

So the fire of Knowledge completely devoured

The categories of time, space, name and form.

Readers familiar with both languages may find themselves pausing in dissent at this slightly divergent rendering. However, it is to be acknowledged that the choice to rely more or less fully on implied meaning when negotiating two completely unrelated languages is also part of any translator’s textual prerogative.

In this regard, the debate regarding the possibility or impossibility of good translation between unrelated languages continues to provoke aggressive responses and allegations from writers and translators, as well as from scholars in the fields of linguistics, communication, semiotics, cultural and translation studies. For instance:

As a work of English literature, Fitzgerald’s poetic version [of the Rubaiyat] is a high point of the 19th century. As a work of accurate line-by-line translation of Omar Khayyam’s quatrains, it is noted more for freedom than fidelity. Many verses are paraphrased, and some of them cannot be confidently traced to any one of Khayyam’s quatrains at all. Some critics informally refer to the English versions of Fitzgerald as "The Rubaiyat of FitzOmar, a practice that recognizes both the liberties Fitzgerald inflicted on his purported source and also credits Fitzgerald for the considerable portion of the translation" that is his own creation… It seems that Fitzgerald’s translation of Khayyam might be due to his limited knowledge of the Persian language, ignorance of the tradition of Persian poetry, the marginal position he assigned to Persian literature, and the resorting to translation as a mode of writing and composing in disguise… Fitzgerald’s translation… seems to have lost almost every connection with its Persian source in the process of its appropriation, and one wonders how English readers could appreciate it as non-English, oriental poetry, and what would happen if they had been better informed of what Khayyam presented in his quatrains… Fitzgerald’s so-called translation of the Rubaiyat of Khayyam, his attempts to alteration of symbols and images, adding new verses and quatrains of his own, and exclusion of significant cultural elements have transformed Khayyam into a western poet-philosopher… It seems that there is just one solution to this problem; we, eastern people, translate our own noble literature ourselves.⁵

Opinions continue to proliferate with regard to the theory of ‘equivalence’ in translation—dynamic equivalence, which emphasizes the free transfer of meaning, and formal equivalence, which emphasizes close fidelity to the source text. For instance:

Equivalence in meaning cannot be taken as a satisfactory criterion for a correct translation… We cannot even accept the naïve idea that equivalence in meaning is provided by synonym, since it is commonly accepted that there are no complete synonyms in language. Father is not a synonym for daddy, daddy is not a synonym for papa, and père is not a synonym for padre… The translator does not translate a text on the basis of the dictionary, but rather on the basis of the whole history of two literatures. Therefore translating is not only connected with linguistic competence, but with intertextual, psychological, and narrative competence. Thus, the translator is forced at all times to go beyond linguistic competence to the cultural spectrum. Consequently, translations do not constitute a comparison between two languages but the interpretation of two texts in two different languages… a good translation must generate the same effect aimed at by the original… [the goal of all translations is] to produce in a different language the same effect as the source discourse, and poetic discourse is said to aim at producing an aesthetic effect.⁶

Equivalence, the conceptual core of translation, has been theorized as having seven degrees: optimum translation, near-optimum translation, partial translation, weaker and stronger translation, poor translation, mistranslation and zero equivalence/ non-translation; Each degree has specific characteristics that keep it distant from the other.⁷ Equivalence has also been delineated as five types:

[…] ‘denotative equivalence’ refers to the case where the ST [source text] and the TT [target text] have the same denotations, that is conveying the same extra linguistic facts; ‘connotative equivalence’, also referred to as ‘stylistic equivalence’, is related to the lexical choices between near synonyms; ‘text normative’ refers to text types, i.e., the description and analysis of a variety of texts behaving differently; ‘pragmatic equivalence’, also called ‘communicative equivalence’, is oriented towards the receptor of the text, as he should receive the same effect that the original text produces on its readers; ‘formal equivalence’, may also be referred to as ‘expressive equivalence’, is related to the word-for-word rendition of forms, aesthetic and stylistic features of the ST.⁸

Attempting to locate adequate equivalences in his comparison of two translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?) from English into Japanese, one critic asks unequivocally, "Is translation really possible?"

[…] when we look at Todokoro and Nishiwaki’s translations, what is striking about the translations as poetry is not only that they were forced to omit the sonnet’s rhyme and rhythm structure from their translations because of the nature of Japanese, but also that they similarly omitted the poetic structure that would have been deemed sine qua non for a sixteenth-century Japanese poem. Japanese poems have traditionally utilized 5- and 7-syllable-long phrases as basic poetic units and connected those units to one another through a complex system of seasonal, historical, and geographical references… a translation expands the language into which it is introduced, but what is surprising is that the expansion may not have anything in particular to do with the source language. Although Shakespeare conformed to a strict 10-syllable meter, he brought to the Japanese free verse. Ezra Pound likewise brought blank verse to English even though the Chinese poetry he was obsessed with was quite thoroughly rhymed… Can the Japanese really read Shakespeare? Certainly, the tension between faithfulness and betrayal in translation ought to leave us uncomfortable with a simple yes or no… Now however, we see also that since Shakespeare lived four hundred years ago and the English language has been changing all this time, the remaining question must be, can we read Shakespeare? Has English expanded enough to allow us to read Shakespeare in his strangeness which is our strangeness? If so, the Japanese must read him the same way.⁹

Cutting past these complicated issues, and the equally complicated question of what would constitute an ideal reader (of both source text and target text), I return to what for me is a significant dimension of the task of translating Akka’s songs—the fact that they were orally preserved until the late 19th century, and thus perhaps were ‘translated’ by the women who memorized them, sang them and passed them on over the generations. Doubtless, over time words might have been changed or substituted, verses deleted or forgotten, sequences elided or omitted, metaphors augmented or reduced, etc., with meaning, aesthetic effect and symbolic resonance altered accordingly. What has come down to us might even owe some of its power to this ‘collective’ input and informal mode of collaborative authorship/’translation’ by the community of largely unlettered Brahmin women. Akka’s original language might, over centuries and across generations, have been inevitably dispersed into a series of culturally inflected ‘equivalences’, some yielding to the translator, others staying hesitant or recalcitrant.

Even within the circuits of written Tamil, the oral material may have undergone further ‘translation’—refraction, diffraction, manipulation, fragmentation—via the various committed researchers, transcribers and editors who collected, compiled and prepared Akka’s work for textual publication. I honour their tireless efforts, and acknowledge with all humility that my translation of the songs into English from a Tamil source text¹⁰ is therefore simply another mediation of a creative utterance that has already undergone continual intervention, and conscious or unconscious, deliberate or accidental layering, crafting and embellishment via multiple minds and hands during the process of dissemination.

I have chosen not to use italics for culturally familiar and commonly understood words such as ‘maya’, ‘moksha’, ‘guru’, ‘jivanmukta’, ‘Advaita’, ‘Vedanta’, etc. Other than when used in song titles, I have also not italicized words like ‘ammanai’, ‘shobhanam’, etc., which are the conceptual and imagistic fulcrum of the compositions in which they occur. To make the text more accessible to general readers, and also because Akka’s work belongs to the oral tradition, I have chosen to use phonetic spelling rather than the academic custom of rendering non-English words with diacritical notation. Some songs are associated with particular ragas, named beneath the song title. The shorter songs do not always have titles, so