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".

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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