Article from "The Hindu"
From the Bhakti List Archives
• October 3, 1997
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
Date: 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
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