14 The Cittar: An Enigma
“They are most popular works in Tamil and there is no pure Tamilian, educated or uneducated, who has not committed to memory at least a few stanzas from one or other of them” (M. S. Purnalingam Pillai).
Here and there one comes across stray poems in Tamil which have a number of features in common: a protest, sometimes expressed in very strong terms, against the formalities of life and religion; rough handling of priests and Brahmins in general; denial of the religious practices and beliefs of Brahmanism, and not only that an opposition against the generally accepted pan-Indian social doctrine and religious practice; protest against the abuses of templerule; emphasis on the purity of character; claims made by the authors of these poems that they have achieved certain psychokinetic powers and other capabilities which belong to the sphere of parapsychological phenomena; use of imaginative and ambiguous language, rather puzzling, though strongly colloquial; no systematic doctrical exposition. Finally, all these poems are ascribed to a body of sages known as the cittar, the Siddhas.
The writings of the cittar belong to the most perplexing and intricate pages in the history of Tamil literature and culture. It is a very provocative puzzle; the flashes of exceptional knowledge and deep wisdom, and the social and philosophical context of the writings of the cittar are so stimulating and exciting that one feels compelled to investigate the matter and to try to unravel its mysteries. Besides, some cittar poems are truly great poetry.
Who were the cittar? What have they written and when did they write? At present, we are almost unable to answer even these fundamental questions with any appreciable degree of certainty.
Why should it be so? There are at least three major causes for this highly unsatisfactory state of affairs. First, nobody has ever published the writings of the Tamil Siddhas in toto, and in a critical or even a near-to-critical manner. The first modern comprehensive —but by no means complete-edition of these poems appeared in 1947 and was reprinted in 1956.1 It is not even an approximation to a critical edition (though the editor is capable of preparing nearto-critical editions, as we know e.g. from his excellent edition of Iṟaiyaṉār Akapporu!); it lacks the apparatus criticus, there is no commentary on the poems, no notes, reading variations are not given in short, the book is rather a kind of “popular print” serving as an aid to memory for those who profess devotion to the cittar. We must, nevertheless, be grateful to the editor for having collected the texts and for having them printed in one handy volume.2
1 Cittar ňānak kōvai, edited by Mē. Vi. Vēņukōpālap Pillai, Madras, 1947, 2nd ed. 1956. Another recent edition is Aru. Rāmanātaṇ’s Cittar Pāṭalkaļ, Madras, 1959, 2nd 1963, 3rd 1968.
2 The editor admits in the foreword that this is not a critical, but a “popular” edition. He has, however, appended a Tamil-Tamil glossary of difficult and unusual terms found in the texts. The edition has 816 pp. It includes the works of most of the traditionally quoted siddhar, the cittarka! patineņmār, “the 18 siddhar”, plus the works of Paṭṭiṉattar who is usually not included among “The Eighteen”; it further contains a number of anonymous works of similar kind; on the other hand, it does not contain the texts ascribed to some of the traditionally quoted cittar like Pōkanātar, Pōtakuru, Kōrakkar, Tanvantiri etc.-There had been other editions earlier, e.g. a fairly comprehensive and good edition by Ramalinga Mudaliyar, Periya ňāṇak kōvai, 1899, in 2 vols. The works of individual siddha poets were also published, cf. e.g. Rajagopala Pillai who in 1915 published a book entitled Tiruvenkāṭarennum paṭṭtinattup piḷḷaiyār carittiva purāṇamum, tirup- pātarrirattum (British Museum Libr. 14170. dd. 69). A few years ago I performed a preliminary and informative digging in the library of the BM in London; the library contains a large number of manuscripts of cittar works. The Mackenzie Collection (BM 620. g. 34) contains a long list of items connected directly or indirectly with the Siddhar (e.g. Agastya’s “autobiography” plus a list of 38 works ascribed to him, p. 228, LIII, or, on p. 251, Agastya Vyakaraṇa described as “a short grammar of the Tamil language attributed to the sage Agastya, but the genuine work is supposed not to be in existence”). It also seems that Det Kongelike Bibliotek in Copenhagen contains under Cod. Tamoul 10, 39, and 48 some cittar texts (Rāmatēvar pāṭal, Akattiya cuttiram, and Cittarpāṭaltiraṭṭu). The more interesting and promising items in the BM may be found under the following numbers: Oriental 1008 Magic, Orient. 1048 Medical, Orient. 5004, Orient. 11726, and especially Orient. 11727 (Civavākkiyar), Orient. 11729 (Rāmatēvar), Orient. 11736 (Civaväkkiyar), further Or. 11736. 15. A.C. and Or. 11727. 15. A.C. But I am sure there is much more. The obvious first prerequisite for any further serious work on the Tamil Siddhars seems to be, therefore, to unearth all published and especially unpublished (manuscript) texts collected in such libraries as the BM, Copengahen’s Royal Library, Lisabon, the Vatican, Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, etc., and, second, to prepare an annotated catalogue of these works. After the texts are gathered and classified, a critical edition at least of the basic cittar works may be contemplated.
3 Cf. Mā. Campāciva Pillai, Tirunānmaraivilaka ārāycci 210: “caiva camayattai* tāpittu upakaritta caiva camaya kuravarkal karpitta valiyaik kaippitittu olukum caiva makkalum cittar nūlai nōkkavum icaivārā? orukālum icaiyār”. Cf. what Taylor has to say in his catalogue (under Sivaväkkiyam):”I was told some years ago, that the ascetics (Panḍārams) of the Saiva class seek after copies of this poem with avidity and uniformly destroy every copy they find. It is by consequence rather scarce and chiefly preserved by native Christians”. Heinrich Nau, in his very interesting Prolegomena* (Zwickau, 1920), says: . . die Werke der Sidhars (sind) von śivaistischen Zeloten, besonders den Paṇḍārams, systematisch verfalscht und beseitigt worden”.
But why this neglect of the writings of the cittar? It seems that the texts have been regarded, by the adherents of the cittar movement themselves, as esoteric teaching; hence almost no commentaries, no expository literature, and no handy editions. On the other hand, orthodox Hindus in Tamilnad have always had a deeprooted prejudice against the Siddhas. They tended to ignore them, even to suppress them; the works of the Siddhas were uncared for, neglected, and even destroyed.3
Another reason why the study of this fascinating body of literature has so far been unsuccessful derives probably from the fact that it has not been approached and discussed from the right angle: if mentioned and commented upon at all, this was done in isolation, and not in the context of very similar or almost identical philosophical, social and literary movements in other parts of India. The Siddhas in Tamilnad are certainly not an isolated and unique body of freethinkers, but part of a very general tradition, well-spread in space and time in medieval India-the tradition of the siddhāchār- yas, who are, again, part of a larger āgamic, tantric and yogic tradition of India. Any further study of the Tamil cittar should be performed against the background of and in relation to this pan-Indian siddhācharya movement.
Probably the most important reason why Siddhar texts remain enigmatic to us has already been hinted at. Unlike e.g. the “Cankam” poetry or the Cilappati kāram, these texts are fully alive in the sense that they are until this day used and followed in daily yoga practice; but unlike the bhakti hymns, which are “open” texts, the cittar texts are “closed”: their only “true”, authentic “esoteric” interpretation may be revealed by oral instruction, through a guru: in other words, it may be gathered from the cittar themselves—and there are a number of Siddha teachers at large in Tamilnad even today. I am happy to say that some of my data in this chapter were graciously supplied by two Siddha yogis in Madras early in 1968.
We do not know when the cittar tradition and the cittar line begins in Tamilnad. As an undercurrent, it might have been there since very early times. Yoga and tantrism are truly archaic and pan-Indian. Whenever the 18 cittar are enumerated traditionally in Tamilnad, one begins with Tirumūlar. Tirumūlar is undoubtedly one of the direct and most influential forerunners of the movement. At the other end of the line in time stands Tāyumāṉavar (17061744), a real giant of Tamil religious and philosophical poetry, who may be considered as a direct descendant of the Tamil cittar.
Considering Civaväkkiyar as the earliest of the great genuine Tamil Siddhas, we shall probably not be far from truth if we say that the most important exponents of the movement-or, shall we say, the greatest and most interesting poets among the Siddhas?–that is, Civaväkkiyar, Pattirakiriyar, Pāmpāṭṭi Cittar, Iṭaikkāṭṭuccittar and Paṭṭiṉattar, flourished between the 10th-15th Cent. A.D.4
4 Among the cittar, we have a few Muslim poets, e.g. Kuṇankuṭimastāṇ, the obscure mystic, who was under strong influence of sūfism. In Paṭṭinattār’s poems, we find the Telugu pl. suff.-lu and some other indications which seem to point out that the poet belonged to the Vijayanagar period. Some cittar texts mention intustāni pāṣai, “the Hindustani language”, and seem to be actually translations from some North Indian texts (e.g. the prosepassages a commentary?-of Civayōkacāram mention pañcāpu, a guru Caraṇtās, Nānak’s disciples, etc.). It is clear that even under a more specific and narrow conception of the Siddhar movement, we still have to do with works of very different nature and very different dates. The language of most of the cittar texts is too modern to be older than the 15th cent. A.D. Also, it is an established usage among the Siddhars to assume the names of the seers of ancient times. “There is no end to the growth of such apocryphal works but this does not minimise their greatness and usefulness” (Simon Casie Chitty, The Tamil Plutarch, ed. 1946). Cf. also L’Inde classique, II, 163: “Le classement dans ce groupe des Çittar d’auteurs légendaires pêlemêle avec des personalités qui ont des chances d’être historiques brouille toute chronologie et oblige pour le moment à rapporter en block au moyen âge l’élaboration des traités des Çittar, dans lesquels d’ailleurs des additions trés tardives sont parfois manifestes”. An interesting assessment of the Siddhas may be read in M. Srinivasa Aiyangar’s Tamil Studies (1914) p. 226: “Most of them were plagiarists and impostors. . Being eaters of opium and dwellers in the land of dreams, their conceit knew no bounds”. Needless to say that we do not agree in the least.
5 And, in fact, M. V. Venugopala Pillai has included his Tiruvaruṭpātivaṭṭu into his anthology of cittar poetry.
However, a much broader and wider conception of the Siddha movement in Tamilnad is certainly possible; the only one really unifying and common element of the cittar thus conceived would be their eclecticism, and their popularity with the masses. If we stretch our conception of the cittar like this, then even the great Rāmaliṅka Cuvāmi of the 19th Century belongs here (as he actually claims to),5 and even Subrahmanya Bharati († 1921) who said: “I am one of the Siddhas of this land!” But this very wide and very nebulous conception of the cittar would not be of much use for our purposes or for any purposes, in fact.
Traditionally, the Tamil Siddhas trace their origin to Agastya (Akattiyan), and to various works on mysticism, worship, medicine and alchemy ascribed to him.6 In the Ṛgveda a brief reference occurs to Agastya’s miraculous birth from a pitcher (kumbha), but otherwise he seems to have been a historical person who composed hymns, a real Vedic ṛṣi. In the Mahabharata we already have a developed story of Agastya, including his marriage with Lopāmudrā, a princess of Vidarbha, the motive of the two daitya kings and Agastya’s search for wealth, Agastya’s drinking up the waters of the ocean, and his journey to the South when he prevailed upon the Vindhyas to stop growing until he returned-which, however, he never did. In the Rāmāyaṇa, Agastya figures, too (he fights the asuras and rākṣasas). But in the early Tamil works, there is no reference to Agastya the sage. It is only the Maṇimēkalai, a Buddhist epic, which knows of the miraculous birth of the sage and his relation to Vasiṣṭha. The first reference to Agastya as the “Father of Tamil” and the first Tamil grammarian is in Nakkīrar’s commentary to Iṟaiyaṉār’s Akapporu! (8th Cent.). Later, medieval commentators, Nacciṉārkkiṉiyar (14th Cent.) and Pērāciriyar (ca. 1300 A.D.), narrate a number of Agastya-stories and make him the “Sage of Potiyil”.7 This Agastya, however, whether he existed or not,8 is a very different person (and legendary hero) from the Siddha Akattiyar. It is obvious that one or more Siddhas assumed the name of the ancient, legendary ṛṣi, and there exists a number of works on medicine and alchemy, but also poetic works, ascribed to an Akattiyar.9
6 Editio M. V. Venugopala Pillai contains Akastiyar ňāṉam I-IV (pp. 277 ff) and Akastiyar ňāṉam V (p. 559).
7 Potiyil is the southernmost mountain of the Western Ghats, the Bettigo of Ptolemy.
8 Cf. T. P. Meenakshisundaran (ed. The Tamil Plutarch): “Agastya as a historical figure is no more than a will o’ the wisp but as a tradition he wields an influence which is felt in all walks of Tamilian life”.
9 That this Agastya was a very late author may be seen from two works ascribed to him, Irunurṛaňcu (a medical treatise) and Pūraṇacuttiram (alchemy) in which he speaks about syphilis as parankiviyāti “Frankish disease”, and about quick-silver as parańki paṣanam “Frankish remedy”.
10 Cf. Robert’s Oriental Illustrations of the Sacred Scriptures, p. 281.
11 Cf. English Cyclopaedia, Biography, vol. III, p. 871. Cf. also W. Taylor, Oriental Historical Manuscripts, in the Tamil Language, Vol. I, Madras, 1835, pp. 135, 172, 175, and Madras Journal of Literature and Science, vol. IX, p. 161.
Some of the medical works contain fascinating details. Thus e.g. in Akattiyar’s Kurunāṭiccūttiram,10 the author discusses seminal animalcules, discovered in Western medicine by Ludwig Hamm in 1677.11 Akattiyar is also said to have performed the trephination of the skull.
This brings us to a brief discussion of the cittavaittiyam or the system of Siddha medicine in Tamilnad. It belongs here only marginally, since it is hardly a part of literature in the sense we are discussing it here. On the other hand, some of the Siddhas were both poets and physicians, and most if not all of the cittar were vitally interested-as we shall see-in human body and its health. All of them were undoubtedly yogis.
The medical system claims to be original, not derived from the Ayurvedic system; contrary to the Ayurveda medicinal practice which seems to have been concerned primarily with herbs and other organic drugs, the cittavaittiyam-though not adverse to herbsmakes much use of salts, metals, mineral poisons etc., in short of elements of anorganic nature. Sometimes it is said that the three basic methods of Siddha medicine are maṇi, mantiram, and maruntu, i.e. astrology, reciting mantras and using drugs. However, according to some more modern exponents of cittavaittiyam, the Siddha therapy consists of 1) yoga āsanas, mudras and bandhas (“locks”), 1) of cürya cikiccai or “sun-baths”, and 3) of taking drugs (maruntu).
The great Tirumūlar himself spoke about a number of yogic āsanas (Tirumantiram 541, 543, 545): he recommends pattiram (“leaf-pose”), kōmukam (“cow-pose”), pankayam (“lotus-pose”), kecari (“lion-pose”), cottiram (= svastikāsana), vīram (“heroic pose”), cukātanam (“easy pose”), and māmutu for taking food, further the kokku (“cock-pose”) and one or two other poses. According to later exponents of Siddha yoga, there are eighteen poses, used in the therapy (combined with the bandhas and mudras).12
12 The eighteen indispensable āsanas (Tam. ācanam, ātanam) are: 1. salutation (vanakkam), 2. sun-worship (süryanamaskāram), 3. shoulder integral pose (carvānkācaṇam), 4. fish (min), 5. crane (kokku), 6. bow (vil), 7. topsyturvy pose (viparītācaṇam), 8. half-fish (pāti min), 9. plough (kalappai), 10. serpent (pāmpu), 11. yogic symbol pose (yōkamutvācanam), 12. half wheel (pāti cakkaram), 13. sitting crane (amarnta kokku), 14. locust (viṭṭil), 15. supine pose (vajroli mutrācanam), 16. kneeling pose (supta vajrācaṇam), 17. triangular pose (mukkōṇācanam), 18. corpse (cavācanam).
13 ulakattil mäniṭarkkām āṇṭu nūrē |ām enrē irupattō rāyirattōṭu / aru nūru cuvācam allō oru nāļaikkup pōm. . .
14 According to Western medicine, it is 18 / min.
Breathing is of course a most important part of citta yoga. Breath, pirāṇam, is the vital energy, and death, maraṇam, is defined by Rōma Rṣi, one of the classical Siddha therapeutists, as complete loss of prāņa: pirāṇan pōyviṭṭa nilai maraṇam. On various practices of breathing, the Siddhas based their theory and practice of physical longevity and even immortality. According to Rōma riṣi ňāṉam 13, a man who is one hundred years old breathes 21,600 times per day.13 That is, during one hour this healthy centenarian breathes 900 times, which will give 15 respirations per minute.14 The span of life is inversely proportional to the rate of breathing. If the respiration is 15/min. and the length of life 100 years, then 18/min. gives us approximately 83 1/3 years. But, the respiration 2/min. gives us 100 15:2 = 750 years, the respiration 1/min. 1500 years, and if the respiration is o/min., the span of life is 100 15:0 =8, i.e. infinity. If there is no respiration, leading to stoppage of breath, as in the so-called corūpa camāti, the yogi attains immortality, since the span of his life is infinity. Practical consequences, appearing in citta yoga therapy: control your breathing; unnecessary talk, slip-shod panting and gasping, unnecessary respiratory muscle work is harmful.
Siddha medicine cannot be discussed at length here, since it is entirely outside the scope of this book, just as the preoccupation of the Siddhas with racavātam or alchemy. As M. Eliade (Yoga, 2nd ed., 1969, 281) rightly stresses, in this kind of alchemy we have no prechemistry, no pre-science, but a spiritual technique, operating on matter but seeking first to bring about deliverance and autonomy of spirit. “Gold is immortality” (amṛtam ayur hiranyam, Maitrāyaṇī Samhitā II,2,2 and elsewhere)—it is the one perfect, solar metal, the symbol of spiritual freedom and autonomy. Alchemy in the Siddha practice has soteriological function. Just as the cittar work on their body, so they also work on matter-to finish it, to make it mature, perfect, to change it into gold. There is an occult correspondence between matter and man’s psychophysical body. The vital interest of the cittar in medicine and alchemy is no accident; it is closely connected with their religion and philosophy, as will be shown later.
Who is a Siddha? A Siddha is one who has attained siddhi (Tamil citti), i.e. “power, prowess, strength, ability”, then a special kind of psychic and supernatural, miraculous, occult power. There are eight kinds of this specific power:
- anima (Skt. aṇiman) “shrinking”, the faculty of reducing oneself to the size of an atom;
- makimā (Skt. mahiman) “illimitability”, the power of increasing one’s size without limit;
- lakimā (Skt. laghiman) “lightness”;
- piratti (Skt. kāmāvasāyitva) “fulfillment of desires”, the power of attaining everything desired;
- pirakamiyam (Skt. prākāmya) “irresistible will”, the power to overcome natural objects and go anywhere;
- icattuvam (Skt. isitva) “supremacy”, dominion over animate and inanimate nature;
- vacittuvam (Skt. vasitva) “dominion over the elements”, the power of changing the course of nature and assuming any form;
- karima (Skt. gariman) “weight”, the power of rendering the body immaterial and able to penetrate matter.
According to Vāṇmīki cūttira ňāṉam 3, “by purifying the mind and attaining perfection one becomes a cittan; he is indeed fit to be called Siva”.15 A classical definition of the Siddhas is given by the great Tirumūlar: “Those who live in yoga and see the divine light (oli) and power (cakti) through yoga are the cittar” (Tirumantiram 1490).
15 cirantu manat teļivākic cērnton cittan/civaciva avanavanen ruraikkā lāmē.
16 Thus e.g. añcu “five” may mean, according to context, the five senses, or the five elements, or the five “sacred” letters, etc.
Tirumūlar’s Tirumantiram is very probably the spring and source of all āgamic texts in Tamil. This is the other stream of religious and philosophical thought which ran parallel with the bhakti movement, only it was much less conspicuous and much more “esoteric”. The poet, philosopher and yogi Tirumūlar might have lived sometime in the 7th Cent. A.D., since he prays to Vināyaka in his invocatory stanza, and since he is mentioned by Cuntarar in Tiruttoṇṭattokai, st. 5 (7621). The work became part of the Saiva canon (of its 10th Tirumuṟai). In his yogic passages, Tirumūlar is clearly indebted to Patanjali’s Yogasūtras and to the Mandukyopaniṣad. The Tirumantiram is the greatest treatment of yoga in Tamil literature, and more than that: the Saiva Siddhānta philosophy as such takes its origin from this marvellous text. In spite of the simple style, the text is often obscure, since it uses a wide variety of symbolism, especially numerical symbolism.16
Tirumantiram contains very many features which are typical for Siddha writings. Thus it attacks caste-system and the Brahmins, whom it calls foolish and gluttonous.17 Though the text contains stanzas which have devotional character (e.g. 712, 1651, 1816, 2104, 2958), much more accent is on yoga and knowledge. The body is valued as the temple of God,18 and as a fit instrument for the soul in its career of self-discipline and search of God (307, 724). Tirumūlar is sharply opposed to the ultraemotional type of bhakti. God, for him, is “light” and “lustre” (cōti, cuṭar), he is omnipresent, omnipotent, creator of all, one, the divine potter (kucavan), the divine bull (nanti), above all sects, creeds and religious groups. Like in later Siddhas, and in contrast to bhakti, in Tirumantiram there is total absence of the local cult, of “henolocotheism”, there are almost no references to the worship of God through arccanās in temples. The Siddhas have not built up a unified system of philosophy. The same is true of Tirumantiram. However, this collection of more than 3000 quatrains in the kaliviruttam metre is the earliest work in Tamil to contain Śaiva āgamic matter, and though Tirumūlar’s thought19 is not identical with later Saiva Siddhānta, it is its source, as stressed above.
17 Cf. Tirumantiram 231: “The Brahmins. . . are truly without truth and knowledge, without devotion, they are gluttonous and foolish”. Cf. also onrē kulamum oruvanē tēvanum “There is one humanity and one god”.
18 1823: ullam perunkōyil un uṭampu ālayam.
19 Accord. to A. V. Subramania Aiyar, Tirumūlar was probably an advaitic vedantin (cf. 116, 1789, 2820), cf. the pratyabhijňa school of Kashmir Saivism. It is believed that he came to Tamilnad from Kashmir.
Tirumūlar was a great poet-philosopher, one of the greatest poets of symbolism in Tamil literature. For those who follow the Siddha teachings, he is “the most ancient of the Tamil yoga Siddhas”. To us, some parts of his Tirumantiram are “a masterpiece of mystic wisdom, robust philosophy and moving poetry”.
In what follows I shall discuss some of the features which are typical for all or almost all cittar as a body of thinkers.
First, in sharp opposition to the bhakti tradition, they refuse to allow themselves be carried away by idol-worship in particular temples. Cf. Civaväkkiyar st. 126: tēvar kallum āvarō “Should gods become stones?” Paṭṭiṉattar in XI,16, sings: “I cannot exalt the polished stone or the moulded lime or the burnished brass; it is true that within my heart I have set his two feet similar to gold… Now I do not need anything more”.
The mind, the heart, is the temple of God, and God enters the heart in a mysterious way, like “coconut water into coconut shell”: “The Lord came and made a temple of my heart here, entering it in the same way in which fresh water gets into the reddish young coconut”.20
20 Civaväkkiyar 31: Ceyya tenki leyilanir cērnta kāra ṇankalpōl | aiyaṉ vantin kennulam pukuntu kōyil kontavan. And again in 33: kōyil um manat- tule, kulankal um manattulē “temples are within your minds, temple-tanks are within your minds”.
21 manamatu cemmaiyānāl mantiram cepikka vēṇṭā. . . manamatu cemmaiyānāl mantivañ cemmaiyāmē.
Second, in contrast to bhakti which emphasizes passionate devotion to God, to the iṣṭadevatā, the cittar emphasize knowledge (ňāṇam), yoga practice, and character, moral behaviour, right conduct. Anger (kōpam), lust (ācai), egoism (akaǹkāram) are the worst sins. According to Akattiyar 7,1, if the mind is in the right disposition, it is unnecessary to say prayers.21
Third, almost all Siddhas raise a protest against caste and casteism. cāti yāvat(u) ēt(u)aṭā “What is caste?” asks Civaväkkiyar in st. 47. And Pattirakiri in his Lamentations 126 cries: “O when will come the day when we shall live without caste-distinctions?”
We are primarily interested in the Siddhas’ conception of God, body and soul, karma and reincarnation, since these are the keyproblems of Indian philosophy. The whole atmosphere of the Siddha thinking is empirical and experimental. Their writings are not in the nature of clear-cut formalized statements of any well-defined doctrine; hence it is difficult to extricate a philosophical system out of their writings, at least at the present state of our knowledge of their works; but it is possible to point out a few essential features, and one day, when their writings are better known, it should be possible to state their philosophy more explicitly.
There is god, or rather godhead, deity, civam, without limitation, who, by force of sheer custom, carries the name civan, Siva (almost all of them are Saivites but Civaväkkiyar-to quote just one example glorifies also Visņu). The paramātmā is identical with jīvātmā, with uyir “soul, life-force”; and uyir does not exist apart from uṭal “body”, just as body has no life without uyir. If body is destroyed, soul, life is destroyed. Hence it is necessary to protect and cherish the body. There is an important stanza in Tirumūlar which has become one of the corner-stones of cittar thinking:
If body is destroyed, soul is destroyed;
and one will not attain true powerful knowledge.
Having acquired the skill to foster the body,
I cherished the body, and I fostered the soul.
Hence the obsession of the Siddhas with the dream of eternal youth and splendid health; or at least with the possibility to prolong individual life; and hence the preoccupation with medicine. The Siddhas professed that there was no incurable disease; and that it was possible to maintain eternal youth. It was possible, so they maintained, to get over the five limitations of narai, “grey hair”, tirai, “dim vision”, muppu, “old age”, nōy, “disease”, and maraṇam, “death”. Rōma Riși says explicitly in Ṁānam 12: “If you ask what is the sign (aṭaiyāļam) of corūpa mutti (= true liberation of body and spirit), it is the physical body (tūla tēkam) aglow with the fire (of immortality)”.
Karma and reincarnation are simply and forcefully refuted. God, “the ancient one”, “the omnipotent”, “the divine potter”, is not directly engaged in the three actions of creation, preservation and destruction. Those who actually re-create and procreate, foster, preserve and destroy the world, including themselves, are men and women in their actions, one of which, and a very important one, is the sexual union.
The world is real, not illusory. It exists and endures because of the ignorance of the soul, of the spirit. Māyā, cosmic illusion, endured by man as long as he is blinded by ignorance, makes possible the maintenance of the material world. Liberation (mutti) -in contrast to bhakti-is achieved through knowledge; it is a liberation from the idea of evil and pain. Suffering ceases as soon as one understands that it is exterior to Self. It is destroyed by ignoring it as suffering. This true knowledge is obtained in enstasis (samādhi) which is achieved by practice, by physiological yogic techniques.
Poetry was not the primary concern of the Siddhas. They were ignorant of, or indifferent to, the complicated poetics of the post-classical age. The rhythm of their stanzas is simple, robust, unrefined, reminiscent of folk songs. One of them, Pāmpāṭṭi Cittar, sings verses in the metre used by snake-charmers. Iṭaikkāṭṭu Cittar sings as if he were a shepherd. They use many colloquial forms like añcu for aintu “five”, vaicca for vaitta “placed”, enkutu for enkiratu “it says”, etc.
They are not free from ambiguous and obscure passages; and some portions of their works are so obscure that Gover in his wellknown book Folk-Songs of Southern India (1871) suggested that the obscure chiaroscuro passages are mischievous interpolations intended to ridicule the cittar and weaken their impact on the people. Indeed a naive and ridiculous statement! Whenever the Siddhas use ambiguous language, it is on purpose; they are obscure because they want to be obscure. Their obscure language is an important device by the means of which they can at the same time address both a casual listener as well as an adept of greater spiritual awareness who reads a deep mystic interpretation into their verses. Thus the dancing pāmpu “snake” may be interpreted as one’s own heart or soul; the akappēy is the daimonion in one’s own soul, or the devil of human mind, etc. In fact, according to the living cittar tradition, the texts are a closed mystic treasure-box bound by the Lock of ignorance, and only a practising Siddha yogi is able to unlock the poems and reveal their true meaning.
I will now discuss in some detail two of the Tamil Siddha poets, Civaväkkiyar and Paṭṭiṉattar. The first because he is typical; the second, because he is not.
All in all, 527 stanzas are ascribed to Civaväkkiyar, probably one of the earliest, if not the earliest of the great Tamil Siddha poets22. In some respects, he is the greatest rebel against religious orthodoxy, sacerdotalism, and the Hindu “establishment”.
22 The earlier Paṭṭiṉattar of the 10th-11th Century refers to Civaväkkiyar in his poem Tiruviṭaimarutur mummaṇikkōvai 11. 33. A strange story (in Kuruparamparā pirapāvam, ed. K. Kiruṣṇamācāriyār, 1909) maintains that Civaväkkiyar the Siddha converted to Vaiṣṇavism and became one of the greatest Vaisnava poets under the name Tirumālicai Āḻvār. It is a fact that his poems are in tiruccanta viruttam metre just like the poems of the Vaiṣṇava poet; even more curious is the fact that there is a number of stanzas ascribed to both poets which are nearly identical. Were these two indeed one and the same person, or did the iconoclastic Saivite cittar copy the Vaiṣṇava mystic?
“What does it mean - a Paraiya woman?
What is it a Brahmin woman?
Is there any difference in them
in flesh, skin or bones?
What is the difference if you sleep
with a Paraiya or a Brahmin woman?”
(38)
He also rejects the division between Saivites and Vaiṣṇavites. Again and again he speaks of Rāma but, at the same time, he extolls Siva and śaivism.23 He denounces the Brahminical way of life, he repudiates the authority of the Vedas and condemns idol worship in temples.
23 entai rāma rāma rāma rāmavenrum nāmame, st. 10; civayam enra āṭcă- ram civan irukkum āṭcāram.
“What are temples? What are bathing tanks?
Fools who worship in temples and tanks!
Temples are in the mind. Tanks are in the mind.”
(33)
“You say that Śiva is in bricks and granite,
in the red-rubbed lingam, in copper and brass!
If you could learn to know yourself first,
the God in temple will dance and sing within you!”
(34)
Recalling the scheme S1 S2 O1 O2 which we used when structurally analysing bhakti hymns, we observe in the poetry of the Siddhas complete negation of O2. One cannot say at all what is God, how he is. God is described almost exclusively in negative terms, in what he is not. This is in sharp contrast with the bhakti conception of a personal, individualized God having so many attributes and residing in a particular form in a particular shrine.
“The lazy ones say: Far away, far away, far away (is God).
The paraparam (Supreme Being) is spread everywhere on earth and
in the skies.
O you poor dumb ones, running through towns and country and
jungles, suffering in search,
Know well that Godhead is right there within you, and stand still!”
(14)
Observe how he describes God: ap parāparam “that supreme thing”, spread everywhere (enkumāy paranta), and being within men (ummul). In another stanza, Civaväkkiyar identifies civam, the Absolute, with aṟivu, knowledge. This is, of course, nothing new; again we may point back to Tirumūlar who says “Those who say that knowledge and civam are two (different) things, are ignorant”.
This aṟivu or ňāṉam24 is naturally not the discursive kind of knowledge found in the texts:
24 A rather late highly philosophical Siddha text (Civāṇanta põtam) is a dispute in dialogue form between maṇam “mind” and aṟivu “knowledge, wisdom”. The interesting thing is that the ignorant mind speaks in prose, whereas the supreme knowledge speaks in verse.
“O you who proclaim yourselves the yogis of knowledge,
who search after knowledge in books!
You do not know your own hearts -
there you should search after the light of knowledge!
Knowing the unique Lord who is knowledge,
there is nothing else than the truth we proclaimed!”
(453)
Elsewhere Civaväkkiyar speaks of those who drag the burden of books and blabber lies. True knowledge empirical and experimental.
One of the most powerful stanzas of all his poems is the one in which he plainly refutes the theory of transmigration; it deserves to be quoted fully:
karanta pāl mulaippukā kaṭainta veņṇey mōrpukā
uṭaintu pōna cankinōcai yuyirkalum uṭarpukā
virintapu vutirnta kāyum mīṇṭu pōy marampukā
irantavar pirappa tillai yillaiyillai yillaiye
(46)
“Milk does not return to the udder, nor butter to butter-milk.
Nor the life within the sea-shell, when it breaks, to its body.
The blown flower, the fallen fruit do not return to the tree.
The dead are not born, never, never, never!”
Civaväkkiyar also ridicules many ritual and social customs and practices: thus e.g. saliva, which is considered by the Hindus as something utterly unclean, he refuses to regard as unclean in itself. In st. 479 he says: “Why should you be so fussy about eccil, about saliva? Why-honey is the bee’s saliva; the beetle’s spittle is on the flower, the cow’s milk itself is mixed with the saliva of the calf”.25 And he laughs at those who bathe for cleanliness’ sake and yet are impure in their hearts (cf. stanzas 207, 209 etc.).
25 vaicca veccil ten alō vanti neccil pūvalō / kaiccu tavil vaittutan karanta palum eccile.
Civavākkiyar’s poetry shows that there had been a school of thought in Tamilnad that repudiated caste and stood for absolute equality of all in the religious and social practices. His great contribution to Tamil literature lies in the fact that he has used, probably for the first time in Tamil writing, the common idiom of the people, both in syntax and lexis. On the whole, he is a powerful, independent, crude and often striking poet, who is definitely worth reading.
In the concluding remark on Civaväkkiyar I cannot abstain from quoting one of his stanzas which illustrates the “purposeful obscurity” of the cittar diction (st. 221):
akāra kāra ṇattilē yanēka nēka rūpamāy
ukāra kāra ṇattilē yurutta rittu ninranan
makāra kāra ṇattilē mayankukira vaiyakam
cikāra kāra ṇattilē teļinta tēci vāyamē
“Like so many forms he stands through the sound a,
having dressed himself in shapes through the sound u,
the world confused - through the sound ma;
it became clear as civāyam - through the sound ci.”
This may indeed seem “closed by the lock of ignorance”. However: the sound a (akāram) is the symbol of beginning, and of the Primeval Lord (cf. Pāmpāṭṭi Cittar 5: āti tēvaṇ, also Tirukkuṟaḷ 1) who is eternal and omnipresent, in many forms; the sound u stands for uru, uruvu which means “shape, form”, i.e. material shapes; the sound ma symbolizes mayakkam “bewilderment, confusion”, also māyā “illusion of creation” (so important in yoga philosophy); and ci is of course the first syllable of civāyam, i.e. namacivāyam, the sacred “five letters”, the mystic formula of Saivism and Siddhism. In other words, the quatrain contains a whole theology: God is the eternal and omnipresent Lord, clad in material forms, dispelling the confusion and ignorance of the world by the mystic doctrine of namacivāyam. Schematically:
| a | = Supreme God |
| U | = in many material forms |
| m(a) | = in real world existing because of ignorance |
| ci | removed by the doctrine and practice of civāyam |
Reading the first “letters” of the quatrain vertically, we get the greatest and the most potent mantra: a + u + m + ci = aum i.e. ōm ci(vāyanama).
The greatest poet among the Tamil Siddhas is undoubtedly Paṭṭiṇattār. It is very probable that at least two poets hide under this name, an earlier one (10th-11th Cent. A.D.), whose five poems26 were included into the 11th book of the Saivite canon (Tirumurai), and a later one, the true cittar, probably of the Vijayanagara period, of the 14th Cent. A.D. The earlier Paṭṭiṉattar is a Śaiva Nāyaṉmār, a bhakti poet writing in grand style of literary Tamil a poetry of charming descriptions and captivating similes, but, at the same time, picturing the ephemeral nature of physical pleasures and human sufferings in very dark colours (and this he has in common with the later Paṭṭiṉattar).
26 Kōyil nānmaṇimālai, Tirukkalumala mummaṇikkōvai, Tiruviṭai marutūr mummaṇikkōvai, Tiru ēkampamuṭaiyār tiruvantāti, Tiruvōṛṛiyūr orupā orupaḥtu.
However, here we are not concerned with the poems of this earlier Paṭṭiṉattar. We shall discuss Paṭṭiṉattar the Great, Paṭṭiṉattar the Siddha, the author of the 632 stanzas and 207 lines going under the name Pattinattar Pātal, a poet who probably belonged to the 14th-15th Cent. A.D. Together with Tāyumāṉavar and Rāmaliṅka Cuvāmi, he is the most popular religious poet of South Indian Saivism. In this great poet, we have a yogic ascetic, a man of revolt against Brahmanic and ritualistic social order, as well as a saint with mellowed and sublimated outlook, a bard singing of sadness in this world, but also accepting this world with almost cheerful resignation.
The very first lines of his songs sound like blows of a hammer:
pirantana irakkum irantana pirakkum
tōnrina maraiyum maraintana tōnrum
punarntana piriyum pirintana puṇarum…
uvappana veruppam veruppana vuvappam etc.
Those who are born, die; the dead are born;
those that appear, disappear; those who vanish, appear;
who join, separate; those that separate, join.
Joys become hateful; hatreds become joys
Paṭṭiṉattar, in most of his poems, is the great relativist and the great pessimist of Tamil literature. Life is a tragedy, an eternal interplay of contradictions and antinomies, a lie, “a tale told by an idiot”.
“Uttering lies so much that your tongue cracks
Hoarding riches and wealth
You lie with women who know no good
And bring forth children
So rapidly, so readily
Like the poor white ants that come out when earth cracks!
You do not know how to foster them.
You will not forsake them.
You have put your foot into a hole
in the bole of a tree.
Like the monkey that removed the wedge
You are caught to stay and suffer,
You are caught,
You!”
(XI. 65)
His language is cruel, fierce and direct in his treatment of woman as the seat of filth and temptation, and of man as the seat of vileness and egoism.
“I loved this mortal vessel stuffed with blabbering air,
this leather bag for rice, this torn sack wrapped in flesh,
this stinking body, cow-stable of lust,
and roamed about and begged,
o Ēkampan of Kāňci, Lord!”
(II. 27)
“The fire says: It is mine. But the worm, too, says: It’s mine.
And this earth says: Well, it’s mine. But the kite says:
It is mine. And the jackal says It’s mine
And wants to devour it. And the mean dog says: It’s for me!
This stinking body I cherished with love.
And what was the use?’
(XI. 26)
“The treasury of insolence; the granary of anger;
the palace from which ignorance does not depart;
the home of falsehood, this rag of a body,
full of lust and flirting, its towering weapon
swelling into skies!
How to attain wisdom
in worshipping you?”
(XI. 55)
Woman’s beauty is to him the most detestable thing on earth. In seventy lines he strips woman totally of her glamour. “I shall now teach something all those men / who have been enjoying and loving and taking women in lust!” And he describes the female body as a bag of filth. The belly, compared by poets to a banian leaf, is a shaking screen of dirt and dregs; the breasts, compared to lotus-buds, are in fact two hanging dried-up pouches, parched and full of inner heat, scratched by the finger-nails of lusty men. The neck is full of sweat and dust and filth, and out of the hellish mouth spurts poison. And so on and so forth. As we see, there is a very notable difference between Paṭṭiṉattar and the early cittar: they liked their own body, they wanted to cherish and foster and preserve it, in order to use it for yogic techniques. Paṭṭiṉattar, in this respect, is actually more of a ‘classical’ yogi than a Siddha: according to Patanjali (Yogasūtras II.40), physical purification produces disgust with one’s own body, and cessation of contact with other bodies a point in which “classical” yoga and the “magical”, Siddha yoga differ significantly.
While the early cittar are full of confidence and self-respect, Paṭṭiṉattar and his disciple, the poet Pattirakiriyar (Bhadragiri, who composed the heart-rending Moaning cry of true wisdom, Meyňňānappulampal) show a kind of spiritual frustration, a passionate longing for peace, even in death, for deliverance, for liberation. Their songs are pathetic outcries ending with passionate wails; personal God returns, not to the extent we know in classical bhakti, but indicating that we are on the road to Tāyumāṉavar and Rāmaliṅkar. In Paṭṭinattār’s and Pattirakiriyar’s writings there is almost no trace of that self-confidence, of the proud and sure knowledge of a Tirumūlar or Civaväkkiyar. Listen to Paṭṭiṉattar XV.1: mūlam ariyēn muṭiyu muṭivariyēn “I do not know the beginning, I do not know the ultimate end…” Or XV.5: “The earth devoured me who desired earth, and the desire of gold and women (ponnācai penṇācai) do not want to leave me!” XV.13: “Fear and egoism refuse to go”. The notion of sin, the feeling of shame, of self-humiliation–these are new and unheard of notes in cittar creations.
In Paṭṭiṉattar, there is almost always a mixture of cynicism and pathetic helplessness; of vile abuse-abuse of self, of women, of the sinners and moving appeal. He has composed a number of beggary stanzas, too, with a particular charm of their own.
“For the cool mist
there are tight rags.
There’s rice in every house,
just beg and eat.
And when you are aroused,
there are fine harlots roaming in the street.
Why then grow weary of this world?
O heart! To be so sore each day!”
(XI. 15)
There are hardly more moving “beggary stanzas” in Tamil literature than the following:
“When cold wind blows
and the sun is gone,
there is an old abandoned dressjust
take it
and cover your body.
All the world over
there’s everywhere an outside porch
to lie down and to sleep.
When hunger comes,
there’s Śiva to give.
O heart!
There’s indeed nothing which we lack!”
The cittar tradition—especially the Siddha vaidya, the Siddha medicine is fully alive. So are most of the cittar songs. One can hear them sung often by wandering religious mendicants. “To denounce today caste, worship in temples and religious and āgamic rituals does not require much courage, but to have done so in the centuries in which the Tamil Siddhars lived required extraordinary heroism and strength of conviction”.27 A knowledge of the works of the cittar is absolutely necessary to have a correct perspective of the civilization of the Tamils, of their religious, social and literary history.
27 A. V. Subramania Aiyar, The Poetry and the Philosophy of the Tamil Siddhars, Tirunelveli, 1957, p. 82.