DAIR AL HINDIYA : INDIA'S OLDEST LINK WITH IRAQ

                                           

                           ( Old Photo of Basra , Iraq )

(Photo: Al-Hindiya Barrage on the Euphrates near Al-Hindiya, Karbala Province, Iraq. A historic barrage first built in 1911-1913 .The name Al-Hindiya is much older than the barrage. Medieval geographers mention Dair-al-Hindiya, the monastery or quarter of the Indians.)

 Dair-al-Hindiya and the old Indian link  to Iraq

Islam arrived in  Iraq during the 7th century.  Before Islam, Iraq was the heart of the Sassanid Empire of Persia 224-651 AD. Its capital was Ctesiphon at modern Salman Pak near Baghdad. The region was called Asuristan and Khvarvaran. The state religion was Zoroastrianism, but the population was mixed : Christians of the Church of the East, Jacobites, Jewish academies at Sura and Pumbedita where the Talmud was compiled, and Mandaeans in the south. With India, the link was trade and knowledge. Panchatantra was translated into Pahlavi as Kalila wa Dimna and Ayurvedic texts were studied at Jundishapur. Spices and goods from India flooded the markets.

Indian Trade With Sassanian Iraq

History  informs that in the 6th century Iraq was a province of the Sassanian Persian Empire and its main port Ubulla near modern Basra was the gateway for Indian trade. Indian merchants and sailors from Sindh, Gujarat and Malabar were not permanent settlers but a seasonal diaspora colony, living for months waiting for monsoon winds, so much so that early Arab sources called the Faw Peninsula Ard al-Hind, Land of India. 

Indian ships had to wait in Iraq because of the monsoon winds. In the 6th century there were no engines, only sails, so ships could not move against the wind. The wind in the Arabian Sea changes direction every six months. From November to February it blows from India towards Arabia and Iraq, allowing Indian ships to sail to Ubulla port near Basra. But from June to September it blows the opposite way, from Iraq back to India. So a merchant arriving in Iraq in winter could not return until summer. He had to stay for five to six months in Iraq waiting for the wind to flip, which is why Indian traders built warehouses and lived in a small colony there, and why early Arabs called the area Ard al-Hind.

By the 6th century BCE, overland trade between Iraq and India became an imperial road. After Cyrus and Darius I conquered both Mesopotamia and the Indus frontier, the Indus region was made the 20th satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire, and Indian goods moved solely overland via the Royal Road system :  from Taxila and the Punjab through Kandahar, Arachosia and Ecbatana to Babylon. Indian tribute recorded by Herodotus included gold dust, ivory, cotton, and teak, whilst Mesopotamia sent westward silver, horses, and woollen textiles; this state-maintained caravan route laid the foundation for what would later become the southern Silk Road.

Roman historian Procopius in 550 AD complained that Persian merchants bought whole cargoes of Indian ships as soon as they docked. From India came black pepper and other spices, fine cotton and Bengal muslin, teak and sandalwood for ships and furniture, sugar, indigo, ivory, pearls, diamonds and peacocks. In return, Iraq and Persia sent Arabian horses which were highly prized by Indian kings, Bahraini pearls, dates, frankincense and myrrh from Yemen, glassware, silver coins and woolen textiles. This trade made Iraq rich as middleman between India and Rome, and explains why Indians were present there long before Islam.

Jatts of Basra

Arabic sources like Tabari and Baladhuri call Indian Jatts as Az-Zutt, saying Sassanid kings brought them from Sindh and Punjab  to Iraq and Bahrain as marsh guards and soldiers. After the Muslim conquest,  they were kept by Caliphs as frontier troops in Basra and Kufa, and later Muawiya settled about 4,000 families in Antioch and Hajjaj bin Yusuf used them in his army, so they were not just hired mercenaries but settled military communities who later converted to Islam.

 They served Yazdegerd III, later settled in Basra, guarded the treasury in Hazrat Imam Ali's time and fought for him at the Battle of the Camel in 656 CE.

Barmakis :  The Buddhist Pramukhs of Balkh in Iraq

The Barmakis, Arabic Al-Baramika, were the most famous family of Abbasid Baghdad, but their origin was not Iraq. It was Balkh in modern Afghanistan.

Their name itself tells the story. Barmak is the Arabic form of Sanskrit  Pramukha, meaning chief or abbot.  In Prakrit it became Parmukh. Classical Arabic has 28 letters and there is no P. So when Arabs say a foreign word with P, they say it with B: Pepsi = Bebsi,  Plastic = Blastik and  Park = Bark. Accordingly, Parmukh becomes Barmukh in Arabic. And Barmukh shortened to Barmak or Barmaki. They were the hereditary high priests, the Pramukhs, of Nava Vihara or Nau Bahar, the great Buddhist monastery of Balkh. Some amongst the savants and scholars  at Nav-Vihara were Kashmiri Brahmins who had become Parmukhs due to their learning and getting involved in the spread of Buddhism in Central Asia. In the 7th century, Balkh was a great centre of Buddhist learning. Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang described 100 Viharas there. The Parmukhs were the custodians of Nav- Vihara and are  remembered as Indian Buddhist priests. Arab historians like Tabari and Masudi describe them as Khuddam of the Temple of Balkh.

Most of these  Parmukhs converted to Islam. After the Arab conquest, some  Parmukhs moved

 to Iraq . Under the Abbasids, Khalid ibn Barmak and  his family rose to become Viziers. Yahya ibn Khalid was tutor to Harun al-Rashid, and his sons Jafar and al-Fadl al-Barmaki practically ran the empire from Baghdad. 

The Parmukhs  of Nav Vihara were polyglots  and great translators and in Iraq they brought Indian knowledge with them : medicine, astronomy, Kalila wa Dimna, and Sanskrit works  and helped found kill the Bait al-Hikma, House of Wisdom. Thus the Buddhist  and Hindu Pramukhs of Balkh became the Muslim builders of Abbasid Iraq.

Hazrat Imam Ali And Non-Muslims 

The exemplary conduct of Hazrat Imam Ali  towards non-Muslims is considered a model of  justice and humanity. It is authenticated in early sources including Nahj al-Balagha, Tarikh al-Tabari, and Al-Baladhuri. The most authentic text is his instruction letter to Malik al-Ashtar when he appointed him Governor of Egypt in 657 CE. He wrote:

"Habituate your heart to mercy for the subjects and to affection and kindness for them. Do not stand over them like a greedy beast wanting to eat them. For they are of two kinds: either your brother in religion, or your equal in creation [imma akhun laka fi al-din wa imma nazirun laka fi al-khalq]. Show mercy to them as you would wish God to show mercy to you."

For this reason,  non-Arab and non-Muslim groups  found protection under his rule. 

During the caliphate of Hazrat Imam Ali  in Kufa from 656 to 661 AD, trade with India continued through the Persian Gulf, though not as a formal state treaty. Indian goods like pepper, cardamom, muslin, teak, pearls and wootz steel reached Iraqi markets via Basra. Despite civil wars of Jamal and Siffin, Basra remained active and its customs duty was collected in Kufa's Bait al-Mal. Hazrat Imam Ali's famous Letter to Malik al-Ashtar in Nahj al-Balagha instructs care for merchants who bring goods from distant lands, showing his trade policy. Sind was still under Hindu kings, so trade was merchant to merchant, not government to government.

The Link between Hazrat Imam Ali and Indians 

The link between Hazrat Imam Ali and Hindus is both historical and spiritual and it flows through the Mohyal Brahmins who became Hussaini Brahmins. Long before Karbala, there was an Indian settlement near Baghdad called Dair-al-Hindiya, the Indian Quarter, where families of Hindu traders, scholars, Vaids and warriors lived.

According to Mohyal community history  in books like Mirat-ul-Mohyali, Gulshan-e-Mohyali and The History of the Muhiyals 1911 by T.P. Russell Straceyac , this settlement is remembered as having about 1400 Mohyal Brahmins. 

Mohyals are the seven clans of Saraswat Brahmins of ancient Gandhara - Bali, Bhimwal, Chhibber, Datt, Lau, Mohan and Vaid. Tradition says Parashurama militarised this priestly community to defend the frontier. According to community history, they ruled as the Hindu Shahi kings of Gandhara and Kabul, blocking invasions at the Khyber for 300 years, fought Arab invaders and Ghaznavids and later Mughals, and later formed the martial core of Guru Gobind Singh's Khalsa. Historians note that the Hindu Shahis were indeed Brahmin kings of Kabul and Gandhara who resisted the early Arab and Ghaznavid advances, and Mohyal tradition identifies them with Mohyal clans. Bhai Mati Das and Bhai Sati Das, martyred with Guru Tegh Bahadur, were Mohyals of Chhibber clan . This is well documented.

According to  Mohyal tradition, when Hazrat Imam Ali moved his capital to Kufa in 36 AH and held open courts as Bab al-Ilm, Gate of Knowledge, the elders of  Indian quarter were drawn to his teachings on justice and equality, especially his letter to Malik al-Ashtar. 

Out of deep reverence, in their devotional language the Mohyals  remember Hazrat  Imam Ali as " Om Murti" . This is a respectful title given within the Mohyal  community tradition . The tradition further holds that this bond continued to Karbala in 680 CE.  The story is preserved as a faith tradition of sacrifice within the Mohyal community. After Karbala, Hazrat Zainab is remembered in this tradition as having blessed them, and they came to be known as Hussaini Brahmins.

Today their saying is well known: Wah Dutt Sultan, Hindu ka dharm, Musalman ka iman. Before Partition of the country ( 1947 ),   in Lahore and Amritsar, it is said no Taziya would rise during Muharram until a Hussaini Brahmin gave his shoulder to it.

Some Prominent Hussaini Brahmins of the 20th Century are :-

1. Sunil Dutt (actor-MP)

2. Jamna Das Akhtar (journalist,poet )

3. Sanjay Dutt (actor)

4. Priya Dutt (MP)

5. Chaman Lal Dutt (Gurdaspur Punjab)

6. Ram Nath Bali (Jammu ,social worker)

7.Krishan Lal Chhibber (Poonch Azakhana keeper)

8. Bhai Parmanand Mohan (freedom fighter)

9. Prof. J. N. Dutt (historian)

10. Brij Lal Dutt Shastri (Delhi poet)

11. Dr. M. L. Vaid (Ajmer Majlis organiser)

12. P. N. Mohan (Pune Hussaini Brahmin Panchayat Head)

13. K. K. Lau (Chandigarh )

14. Pandit Shamboo Dutt (Dina Nagar,Punjab)

15. R. C. Dutt (Delhi organiser)

16. Om Prakash Bali (Dehradun educationist who built Hussaini Dharamshala)

17.B. R. Dutt Bhimwal (Muzaffarabad-Jammu writer on Mohyal history)

18.Iqbal Krishna Lau (Lucknow journalist, Urdu Majlis writer)

19.Trilok Nath Chhibber (Mirpur businessman who also funded the Karbala Shrine renovation in Iraq)

20.Satish Kumar Dutt (Pune, secretary of All India Hussaini Brahmin Samaj in 1970s-80s)

In this way, documented history of Indians in Iraq, and the living tradition of Hussaini Brahmins, show an old bridge of respect.

( Avtar Mota )

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ALBERT CAMUS, POET RENE CHAR AND ASIAN THOUGHT

                                                                                          

                                                       (Photo: Albert Camus and René Char )

Albert Camus, René Char and Asian Thought

Albert Camus’s engagement with Asian thought was not confined to isolated references in his Notebooks. It also formed part of the intellectual atmosphere he shared with René Char, one of the most distinguished French poets of the twentieth century. Their correspondence, published as Albert Camus and René Char, Correspondance 1946–1959, edited by Franck Planeille and issued by Gallimard in 2007, reveals an unusually close literary and moral friendship concerned with suffering, revolt, freedom, responsibility and spiritual independence.

Camus had already encountered the Vedas, the Upanishads, Buddhism and the Bhagavad Gita during his intellectual formation. His interest centred on suffering, detachment, moral action and liberation, even though he resisted doctrines that seemed to encourage withdrawal from the world. The figure of Arjuna is especially suggestive in this context. Arjuna’s crisis on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, where action must be undertaken despite moral anguish and uncertainty, offers a striking comparative parallel with Camus’s own insistence upon responsible action in an absurd and violent world. That is why Camus once wrote this to René Char :

" We ate all Arjunas, and there is no charioteer ."

Char brought another Asian dimension to this friendship. He was deeply interested in Milarepa, the great Tibetan Buddhist poet and yogi, whose songs explored impermanence, solitude, discipline of mind and freedom from attachment. Char expressed his admiration memorably:

“L’œuvre de Milarépa fait mon enchantement.”

“The work of Milarepa fills me with delight.”

Jean Grenier had earlier opened Indian philosophy to Camus, while Char later reinforced an intellectual world receptive to Buddhism and Asian spirituality. Camus and Char thus converged upon a profound question shared by the Gita, Buddhism and Camus’s ethics: how can one confront suffering without surrendering freedom, responsibility or moral lucidity?

( Avtar Mota )

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ALBERT CAMUS : OCCIDENTAL IN LIFE , UNIVERSAL IN THOUGHT

                                                                      

Albert Camus: Occidental in Life, Universal in Thought

 

Albert Camus is not an Eastern Yogi, a Vedantist, a Hindu sage or a moral preacher. His beliefs, behaviour and intellectual formation remain inextricably tied to Occidental civilisation. To analyse his personal life through the categories of Eastern society or through the normative lens of the Orient is a hermeneutical misapprehension of considerable magnitude. Such a procedure possesses no epistemological basis, no logical coherence and no truthful relation to his illustrious oeuvre. Any genuine critique must therefore commence with this axiomatic recognition. Camus lived, loved, suffered and reasoned as a man of the Mediterranean Occident, formed by French culture, by Greek thought and by the stark light of Algeria. Yet to affirm this Occidental lineage is not to deny a profound and documented engagement with Hindu and Buddhist thought, an engagement which he himself inscribes within his published diaries and notebooks.

Camus encounters Buddhist studies not as a neophyte seeking initiation but as a philosopher of lucidity seeking consonance. In his notebooks, Buddhism is apprehended in its philosophical rigour rather than its ritual form. The doctrine of impermanence, the lucid articulation of suffering as constitutive of existence and the ethic of compassion devoid of metaphysical solace resonate powerfully with his own meditation on the absurd. The Buddhist refusal to invoke an absolute to redeem suffering parallels Camus and his insistence that man must live without appeal. He finds in this tradition not consolation but confirmation that lucidity need not lead to despair and that ethical action remains possible without promise of ultimate salvation.

His Hindu studies evince a similar depth of reflective assimilation. The Bhagavad Gita and its exposition of disinterested action, of duty performed without attachment to fruition, provide a striking antecedent to his myth of Sisyphus, where the rock must be borne with dignity even when victory is impossible. The Upanishadic corpus, with its dialectic of self and its apophatic intuition that ultimate reality exceeds discursive reason, accords with his philosophy of limits and his repudiation of totality. Ramakrishna, whom he notes with admiration, embodies the primacy of lived realisation over systematic abstraction, a principle central to his own Mediterranean empiricism. He scanned Greek texts, philosophy, the Mediterranean principles and Eastern thoughts in a scholarly way to arrive at his own style, assimilating without imitating and respecting without appropriating.

This metaphysical lucidity never estranged him from the world. On the contrary, it anchored him more profoundly within it. He loved sun, sea and blue sky. He loved this day, the present alone, and life in its immediate plenitude, even as he knew with unflinching clarity the benign indifference of the universe around him and the impermanence of all existence. For Camus, this knowledge was not a cause for negation but for revolt, for freedom and for passion. To live without appeal, to affirm the world without illusion, to embrace the fleeting hour as sufficient.

 ( Avtar Mota )

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FAITHS, IGNORANCE, AND WISDOM

                                          

Faiths Are Like  Rivers Moving Towards the Ocean 

Faiths are rivers. They originate from distinct epistemic peaks — different histories, languages, and symbolic imaginaries — yet converge toward one ontological Ocean, one Reality. Each carries the same vital essence: water.

Ignorance fetishises topography. It quarrels over banks, names, and channels. Wisdom is phenomenological: it bends to drink, seeking essence, not terrain.

The river does not own water, it only carries it. The claim "my river alone is pure" betrays that water was never tasted. Ignorance erects walls to monopolise flow; wisdom knows walls do not contain rivers, they only cause inundation.

A river that forgets the Ocean stagnates into a swamp of self-reference. A river that remembers remains humble, moving, and clear.

A peak confers origin, not value. Value lies in generativity — in rendering barren lands fertile, in quenching thirst.

The telos of every faith is not to clothe identity, but to unclothe it, to dissolve ego, anger, avarice and ignorance, until the self is denuded of the unreal and prepared for integration with the Ocean.

( Avtar Mota )

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UNDERSTANDING ATMAN - BRAHMAN AS WAVE AND WATER

                                          

           

Understanding  Atman- Brahman As Wave And Water

      

A broader and secular understanding of Atman and Brahman, the crown jewels of the Upanishads and Vedanta, offers perhaps the most metaphysically parsimonious and existentially potent framework ever conceived. Far beyond narrow, sectarian or ritualistic perceptions, it speaks to all humanity. Freed from limited theological dogma, it applies with equal force to theistic and atheistic worldviews, to the believer and the sceptic alike, for it requires no supernatural postulate and rests on direct inquiry.

Phenomenologically, Atman denotes the irreducible first person givenness of consciousness itself, the prereflective, self luminous awareness that any thought, any doubt, any denial must already presuppose. It is not the ego, not personality, not memory, not biography, but the very condition of experiencing, ever present and undivided.

                                        

Cosmologically, Brahman denotes the totality of what is, the impersonal, lawful, infinite plenum that precedes and conditions all particular manifestations. Not a creator God above the world, but the very being of the world, ceaseless, boundless and self existent, within which all forms arise and dissolve.

The logical relation is mereological and non dual. The part is constituted by the whole and cannot possess an essence alien to it. The whirlpool exemplifies this. It is not superimposed upon the river but is the river's own self organising activity rendered transiently distinct by form and momentum. Analogously, Atman is not inserted into Brahman but is Brahman's reflexive capacity localised temporally, Brahman knowing itself in human form.

                                

This yields a dual aspect anthropology. Qua Atman we pursue agency and coherence. Qua Brahman we confront impermanence and interdependence. I believe , ' Human Liberation' is holding both truths without reduction, to live simultaneously as wave and water, particular and universal, with radical clarity within the world rather than escape from it.

( Avtar Mota )

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MIRZA GHALIB, ADI SHANKARA,AND THE LIGHT OF UPANISHADS

                                    

Mirza Ghalib, Adi Shankra And Upanishads 

It is well-established that Ghalib was deeply influenced by the Persian poet Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil of the Sabk-e-Hindi tradition. Bedil studied ancient Indian philosophers extensively; the influence of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna is evident in his poetry. Bedil was also influenced by the Advaita philosophy of Adi Shankara. This may well explain the Vedantic undertones discernible in Ghalib’s verse.

Did Ghalib read Dara Shikoh’s Persian translation of the Upanishads? There is no firm evidence. Yet Dara Shikoh, a devoted seeker of spiritual unity, commissioned the translation of fifty-two Upanishads into Persian . He also arranged Persian translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Vasistha. In his foreword to the Persian  translation of the Upanishads , Dara wrote that the reader who studies this text  sincerely, abandoning prejudice, shall become fearless, imperishable, and eternally liberated. It is through Dara's translation that Upanishads reached the West . They were translated into French and Latin from  Persian. 

Dara Shikoh (1615-1659), in 1657  assembled Varanasi Pandits in Delhi and  got translated the Upanishads from Sanskrit to Persian as Sirr-i-Akbar, The Great Secret. In 1775 a copy reached French orientalist Anquetil-Duperron, who rendered it from Persian into Latin/French as Oupnek'hat (1801-02). This translation of a translation first introduced Vedanta to Europe, profoundly influencing Schopenhauer, who called Upanishads solace of his life and death.

 Ghalib endures as a poet of universal humanism, one whose art refuses sectarian delimitation. His conception of love, while steeped in sensuality, is ultimately sublimated into idealism and self-surrender. It is this duality that gives his verse its power ;  it emancipates reason while simultaneously making its home in the heart. Underlying it all is a profoundly inquisitive temperament, a mind given to metaphysical and cosmic questioning.

"Hasti ke mat fareb mein aa jaiyo Asad

Aalam tamaam halqa e daam e khayal hai"

(O Asad do not be deceived by existence

The entire world is but the loop of the snare of thought)

Commentary

This couplet of Mirza Ghalib presents in poetic form the central metaphysical insight of the Upanishads and Adi Shankara. The key term is "Hasti " which in this context signifies empirical existence that appears as independent and substantial. Ghalib warns the self not to be deluded by its apparent reality.

In the Upanishadic vision, this corresponds to the distinction between Brahman and Jagat. The Chandogya Upanishad declares "sarvam khalv idam brahma" , all this indeed is Brahman, and the Brihadaranyaka states that there is no duality. The world perceived as separate is not denied as an experience but its claim to ultimate reality is negated. Shankara formalised this as the doctrine of two levels of truth. "Paramarthika satya"  is the absolute truth of nondual Brahman, which alone is real. "Vyavaharika satya " is the transactional truth of the world, which is empirically experienced but not ultimately real.

Shankara calls this appearance "Maya" . In his Vivekachudamani and in his commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, Maya is not mere nothingness but an indescribable power of appearance that projects multiplicity upon the nondual. Ghalib's phrase" halqa e daam e khayal"  captures this with remarkable precision. Khayal is the equivalent of vikalpa or kalpana in Vedanta, the conceptualising activity of the mind. The world, "aalam" , is not a thing external to consciousness but a circle, "halqa" , formed by thought itself. The snare, "daam" , is not laid by the world for the self. The self lays the snare through its own imaginative construction and then becomes bound by it.

Thus the warning" mat fareb mein aa jaiyo"  corresponds to Shankara's constant exhortation to Viveka, discrimination between the real and the apparently real. The self that knows itself as Atman, identical with Brahman, ceases to mistake the loop of thought for existence itself.

The term "Hasti" denotes not mere life but that which appears to be, the empirical sense that a world stands apart from consciousness and possesses its own substance. The poet addresses himself by his early pen name Asad and issues a warning against ontological confusion. The Upanishadic root is in Chandogya Upanishad:

"Sarvam khalv idam brahma tajjalan iti shanta upasita"

(All this indeed is Brahman. From It all comes, in It all dissolves, by It all lives.)

And Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:

"Yatra hi dvaitam iva bhavati tad itara itaram pashyati, yatra tv asya sarvam atmaivabhut tat kena kam pashyet"

(Where there is duality as it were, there one sees another. But where all has become the Self alone, by what and whom should one see.)

Adi Shankara systematises this intuition. In Brahma Jnanavali Mala verse 20 and in Vivekachudamani he states:

"Brahma satyam jagan mithya jivo brahmaiva na parah"

(Brahman alone is real, the world is appearance only, the individual self is none other than Brahman itself.)

At the level of "Paramartha" , the absolute, only Brahman which is pure consciousness without attributes is satyam. At the level of "Vyavahara" , the everyday order, the world appears and is functional yet it is "mithya" , neither absolutely real nor simply nonexistent. Shankara explains this through "Maya"and "Adhyasa", the natural tendency to superimpose what is seen upon what truly is.

Maya is not a thing but the inexplicable power by which the formless appears as formed. This is precisely what Ghalib names "khayal". Khayal in his usage is not idle fancy but the active constitutive power of mind that projects, divides and names. The phrase "halqa e daam e khayal" suggests a circular trap. The circle is important. Thought creates the world and the world then validates thought, so consciousness moves in a loop.

Therefore "fareb" or deception does not come from outside. Existence does not deceive. The mind deceives itself by taking its own projection for an independent reality. Liberation in Shankara is not arrival at a new place but recognition through "Viveka"  and "Jnana" that Atman is ever free of the loop. In that recognition the snare is seen to be made of nothing but thought and the thought itself is seen to have no locus except Brahman. Ghalib thus reaches through poetry the same ground that Adi Shankara reaches through dialectic.

( Avtar Mota )

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MAHADEVI VERMA AND VEDANTA

                                         

                                          

Mahadevi Verma And Vedanta 

Mahadevi transformed Chhayavad from romantic sentiment into Vedantic experience. Where Chhayavad sought beauty in nature and love, she turned nature into symbol of atman and love into longing for Brahman. Her cloud, lamp and night became Upanishadic metaphors. Thus emotion became sadhana, shringara became jnana, sorrow became realisation of infinite.

Vedanta in Mahadevi Verma's poetry  is not borrowed doctrine but lived experience diffused across her entire body of work from Nihar to Deepshikha.

Her central metaphysics is Advaita rendered through feminine symbols. The lamp deepa burning alone in infinite night is atman holding against avidya. The cloud badli, the rain, the waiting temple, all articulate anitya. Form gathers and dissolves, essence remains.

Her beloved priyatama is never a man. He is Nirguna Brahman, unmanifest, unseen, yet intimate. Therefore her viraha is not romantic absence but Upanishadic longing of jiva for source. Separation itself becomes sacred.

She practises neti neti, refuses possession, refuses monument, refuses self display. This is vairagya not as dry asceticism but as karuna. Her celebrated dukha is not self pity but purnata, the fullness of consciousness that contains infinite sorrow because it contains infinite love.

"पथ को न मलिन करता आना

पथ चिह्न न दे जाता जाना

सुधि मेरे आगन की जग में

सुख की सिहरन हो अन्त खिली

विस्तृत नभ का कोई कोना

मेरा न कभी अपना होना

परिचय इतना इतिहास यही

उमड़ी कल थी मिट आज चली

मैं नीर भरी दुख की बदली".....  ( Mahadevi Verma )

Translation

Come without soiling the path. 

Go without leaving footprints. 

Let the memory of my courtyard remain

 in the world as a tender tremor of joy 

that blossomed at the end. 

No corner of the vast sky 

shall ever be my own. 

Such is my introduction, 

such is my history. 

Yesterday I had gathered,

 today I have dissolved. 

I am a cloud laden with the water of sorrow.

Commentary

Mahadevi Verma compresses the entire human condition into the biography of a cloud. The cloud is the perfect Upanishadic metaphor for Anitya. It has no origin that can be fixed and no residence that can be owned. It appears, it gathers darkness, it pours and it vanishes. Its life is brief and yet within that brevity it contains immense fullness. That is why she calls herself "neer bhari" , full of water. The sorrow she speaks of is not personal grief but the existential fullness of a sensitive being who knows impermanence.

The first ethic she proposes is lightness." Path ko na malin karta aana". Do not pollute the road by your coming. Human beings soil the path through possessiveness, through Raga and Dvesha, through the insistence that this world must belong to them. Mahadevi asks for a journey that leaves the world cleaner than it was found. The second ethic is even more radical." Path chihn na de jata jana" . Do not leave footprints. Modern civilisation desires monuments, archives, legacies. The Upanishads desire the opposite. The sage leaves no trace because trace is Karma, trace is Vasana that binds.That is why Albert Camus had desired no tombstone or memorial in his name after his death. 

She then redefines memory. If anything remains of her courtyard in the world, let it be not a stone but a "siharan" , a shiver of joy. This is a profound understanding of Anitya. Permanence cannot be achieved through solidity, only through tenderness that passes quickly through the heart.

"Vistrit nabh ka koi kona mera na kabhi apna hona"  is the purest expression of neti neti of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Not this, not mine. The sky is vast and the attempt to own a corner of it is Avidya.

The Upanishads speak in the same voice. Katha Upanishad says:

"anityam sukham lokam imam prapya bhajasva mam"

(Having come to this transient world that is devoid of lasting happiness, turn towards the eternal.)

Bhagavad Gita which distils Upanishadic wisdom says:

"nasato vidyate bhavo nabhavo vidyate satah"

(Of the transient there is no endurance, of the eternal there is no ceasing.)

Isha Upanishad gives the ethic of Mahadevi in one mantra:

"tena tyaktena bhunjithah ma gridhah kasyasvid dhanam"

(Enjoy through renunciation, do not covet, for whose is wealth)

Brihadaranyaka says:

"Purnamadah purnamidam purnat purnam udacyate purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavasisyate"

(From fullness comes fullness, taking fullness from fullness, fullness alone remains.)

The cloud form "badli" is asat, it will dissolve. The water "neer" is sat, it never dies. It moves from sea to sky to earth and back to sea. Death is not extinction but transformation. "Umadi kal thi mit aaj chali" is therefore not lament but liberation. Yesterday I swelled, today I have merged. In dissolving, the cloud fulfils its Dharma or duty. Thus Mahadevi offers a feminine Vedanta where Moksha is not ascent but gentle raining, not ownership of sky but intimate belonging through self emptying.

Mahadevi and Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna share reverence for impermanence but diverge in conclusion. Nagarjuna declares all phenomena shunya, empty of essence, through Madhyamaka dialectic. Mahadevi experiences emptiness not as void but as fullness of sorrowful love. Where he dissolves essence into relativity, she dissolves self into compassionate fullness, turning shunyata into purnata. In the later stage of her life,  Mahadevi moved closer to Buddhist thought, especially karuna and anitya. While early verse was Vedantic longing for eternal Brahman, later reflections show quiet acceptance of impermanence and compassion for all living forms. This brings her near Nagarjuna, yet she retains Vedantic fullness. She transforms shunyata into compassionate purnata, void into tender presence.

Mahadevi Verma was born on Holi, 26 March 1907 in Farrukhabad to Govind Prasad Verma and Hemrani, a liberal family that encouraged her education when girls were mostly confined to marriage. She was married at age 9 in 1916 to Dr. Swarup Narayan Verma but refused to move to her husband's house after puberty and lived independently all her life, dedicating herself to studies at Crosthwaite College and Allahabad University, and later to teaching as Principal/Vice-Chancellor of Prayag Mahila Vidyapeeth. She lived simply in white khadi, slept on a wooden chowki, and her only family became her pets : Neelkanth the peacock, Gillo the squirrel  immortalised in "Mera Parivar". Dr Swarup Narayan Verma practised Allopathic medicine in Jhansi , never married,  and died in 1966.

She shared a 40-year deep friendship with fellow Chhayavad pillar Suryakant Tripathi 'Nirala'. She tied rakhi to him every year for decades, and he called her "Saraswati in the vast temple of Hindi Literature". The bond was legendary ; it is said on Rakshabandhan he once asked back the money he gave her for the ritual because he needed it for his rickshaw home. In his later years, when he faced penury and mental illness after losing his wife and daughter Saroj, his government pension secured via Nehru was paid through Mahadevi, who managed his finances because he would give everything away. She painted his vivid portrait in her book "Path Ke Sathi".

I have always been an admirer of Mahadevi the poet and Mahadevi the person. 

( Avtar Mota)

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CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

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