Adi Sankarachaarya’s Tribute to his Mother: “Maatru panchakam”.
In March 2002 my mother called me one day from Chennai on the phone to give me in Kuwait both good news and bad news. First she gave me the bad news: her diabetes and heart condition was getting worse. The good news was that the Govt of India was offering to grant her the Padma Shri Award in recognition of her lifetime contributions to classical Carnatic music of South India. Would I be able to be travel from Kuwait to New Delhi and be present on the occasion in the Rashtrapathi Bhavan when the President of India conferred on her the national honor?
I flew the following day in late March 2002 to Delhi and was proud to be present when President K R Narayanan conferred the award on her in the central hall of the Presidential quarters at a grand but solemn ceremony.
After the ceremony the President graciously invited my mother, other awardees and guests like me for tea. It was one of her proudest moments in life. And for my father and the rest of the family too.
On the way back to her hotel that evening in the car she turned to me and said, “I am happy, my son, life has been good to me. God has been generous to me. He has given me a loving family, fame, career success and fulfillment. You are happy. My daughter in law, husband and grandchildren are all happy. This is the moment I should be departing from this world. A moment when all the world around me I see is so happy”. I chided my mother then for speaking of death at a moment when we were all celebrating her achievements in life.
I flew out to return next morning back to Kuwait after seeing her off with my father on their flight back to Chennai.
On July 12 Sangitha Kalanidhi Padma Shri Dr Mani Krishnaswami breathed her last.
A year after she passed away, I came across Adi Sankara’s “maatru panchakam“, a verse the great Achaarya had composed in memory of his mother in Kaladi, Kerala, who had passed away while Sankara was in sanchaaram, wandering about on foot on his spiritual mission somewhere in North India. In the verse Sankara expresses his deepest regret for not being with his mother in her last dying days on earth. He begs her forgiveness and sings in praise of her memory in such endearingly simple, lilting and beautiful lyrics his poem becomes verily the idealization of Motherhood itself.
When I read the words of the Sanskrit original of Maatru Panchakam my heart broke with grief for my own mother in whose last moments in this world I could not be present. There was no way that my feeble heart or humble vocabulary could match the great Adi Sankara’s in giving voice to what we all know is common human grief when we bereaved of a mother. But I then thought I could do the next best thing possible: write a personal appreciation of Maatru Panchakam in my own personal way just to soothe the pain in my own wrenched spirit.
That was how I came to write this essay.
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Sankara’s “maatr-panchakam”
In large parts of the world — certainly in the English-speaking Western countries — the second Sunday of May every year is celebrated as “MOTHER’s Day”.
In India, people don’t make such a fuss about Mother’s Day, though for the sake of their dear mothers they really ought to. To the faithful of the Veda/Vedantic Path (“vedAnta-mArga“), the “Veda-vAkya” is an article of faith to be embraced in both precept and practice, in letter and spirit, in part and entirety. One oft-quoted “Veda vAkya” known to millions of Indians across the world is this one: “maatru devO bhava!” “Revere thy mother as if she were a celestial on earth!” This pithy Veda ‘vAkya’ appears in the Taittiriya Upanishad under the section known as “sIkshAvalli“.
At first glance, the statement does not appear profound. In fact, it sounds like a bland and well-worn platitude, a “motherhood” statement, a piece of holy didactic. Most truisms of the world indeed sound like dull platitudes when, long after they were first enunciated, they get repeated a zillion times by a zillion people who quote it at the drop of a zillion proverbial hats at every opportune occasion. Such holy ‘vAkya-s’ sink so very deep into the collective subconscious of ordinary people they usually end up being hailed as “gospel truth”; and “gospel truth” is so obvious it often sounds trite… a tad banal and boring too. The great sense of awe and wonder they first aroused, or the curiosity and debates they once inspired amongst people, gradually pales and then diminishes altogether. The hallowed “vAkya” ends up being taken so much for granted and for good reason too.
For much the same reason, I confess I too have long taken the famous Upanishad ‘vAkya’ of “maatru devO bhava!” as a rather didactic piece of Vedic injunction — a bland matter of fact in life: to be taken as much for granted in much the same way a mother’s love for her child is taken for granted everywhere in the world, both human and animal.
In the year 2002, my mother died suddenly. At the time of her death, I was living and working for over 10 years on foreign shores far away from home in Chennai, India. I remember well the rude shock and pain I felt when word of her death reached me via telephone. Until that precise moment in life I had assumed my mother would always be around in my world. The fact of her death refused to register in my mind for quite a while. It felt absurd and surreal somehow that she who had seemed for so long a constant in my world, at a single stroke of Fate’s pen, been simply deleted and cancelled irrevocably. In those black moments of grief, I was moved to recall Shelley’s famous lines:
“Now the last day of many days
All beautiful and bright as Thou,
The loveliest and the last, is dead;
So, arise, Memory, and write its praise!
Up, — to thy wonted work!
Come, trace the epitaph of glory fled,
For now, the Earth has changed its face,
A frown is on the Heaven’s brow.”
(“Recollection”: Percy B. Shelley)
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When one’s mother passes away the Earth’s face does seem to change and a dark, permanent frown seems to appear on Heaven’s brow.
When a parent is lost, it is a bit like losing a little part of ourselves. When one’s mother dies, it is the closest to a near-authentic near-death experience one can get. It then takes months and sometimes years to overcome the sense of loss that envelops one who has lost a dear mother. In those silent grieving years we start searching for solace in poetry, in philosophy or religion. It becomes, we realize in time, very much a search really for the meaning of our own existence on earth. It is also in many ways unclear to our own selves, a silent but intense search for answers to the larger unspoken questions about love, life, death and salvation.
For several years after my mother’s demise I found myself unable to come to terms with the loss. And it was to help me overcome such feelings of helplessness and drift that one day my wife recommended to me to read and ruminate upon Adi Sankara bhagavathpAdA’s poignant Sanskrit elegy to the memory of his mother, the 5-stanza “maathru-panchakam”.
The “maathru-panchakam” is balm to any bereaved son. It is a fitting paean, I would like to think, to be sung in praise of all mothers whose memory the children of this world value and cherish life-long. It is a hymn that is even apt and perfect indeed to recollect and recite on the occasion of “Mother’s Day”.
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Reproduced below is an English transliteration and translation of “maathru-panchakam” in my own words. I hope readers will enjoy this little but magnificent work of Adi Sankara. It does not matter which particular Vedantic school or “mattam” or “darsana” one belongs or is affiliated to in order to be able to appreciate and enjoy the “maathru panchakam” … so long as one loves one’s mother and genuinely wishes to express gratitude to her on any fitting occasion. Following the translation, is a short personal commentary on the 5 stanzas of the “maatru-panchakam” inspired by the inner delight I derived and experienced while reading this most intimate, this most human of all of Sankara BhagavathpAdA’s works.
maatru-panchakam
- “aasthAm tAvadiyam prasUti samayE durvArshUla’vyayAda nairUchyE tanushOshaNam malamayee sharayyA cha sAmvatsaree I ekasyApi na garbha-bhAra bharaNa-klEsha-sasya yasyamakshamah: dAtUm nishkrutimmunanntOpi tanayah: tasyai janannyai namah: II
In the throes of painful labor, O mother, You suffered much to beget me who was then but mere burden of ugly, noxious fetal flesh to be borne long and patiently. And so you did with loving expectation! For that one act of love — One act and the gift of suffering, O mother, nothing that I offer thee shall ever suffice as fitting repayment except eternal worship at thy feet!
- gurukulamupasrutya svapnakAlE tu dhrushtvA yatisamuchitavEsham prArudO mAm tvamuchhyai: I gurukulamaBhasarvE prArudathE samaksham sapadi charanayOh: tE mAtarastu praNAmah: II
How can I forget the overwhelming love you felt for me! Remember the day, O mother, when you came running from home all the way to the doorsteps of my teacher’s school with tears welling up in your eyes to tell us about an ill-omened dream you’d had the night before— s dream that spoke of the imminence of a mother’s loss ehen the son appeared dressed in the ochre robes of a renunciate: the nomadic mendicant ‘sannyAsi’. You were heart-broken that day, O mother, snd you broke the hearts of my teacher and my fellow-students too, so forceful was your motherly passion!
- na dattam mAtastE maraNasamayE tOyamapi vA svabaddhA bA nOdEyA maraNadivasE shradha-vidhinA I na japtO mAtastE maraNa-samayE tArakamanuh: a kAlE samprAptE mayi kuru dayAm mAtaratulAm II
In your final moments, O mother, I regret I wasn’t around to able to hold you in my arms, help quench your parched throat with those morsels of water every son pours into the lips of a dying parent as last farewell gift. The vows of ‘sannyAsa’ I embraced, O mother, held me back from the rites of “shrAddha” meant for your soul; Nor could I administer thee, as every dutiful son should, the words of the sacred chant of “taraka-nAma mantra” as you breathed your last. I turned up late, so very late, O mother of mine, to bid farewell. Show me kindness, a mother’s kindness, in your very last act of forgiveness for the son that failed you.
- mUkthA maNistvam nayanam mameti rAjEti jeevEti chiram sutathvam I ithyukthavatyA tava vaachi mAtah: dadAmyaham tandulamEva-shushkam II
“My precious gem”, “My precious eyes”, “My little king”, “My very breath and life!”…. Such were the terms of endearment you used to heap upon me, O mother! For all the love showered on me in such phrases, I have only these few uncooked seeds of rice to pour upon your lifeless lips in solemn and final thanks — a sacred obsequy: a token of the un-cancellable debt this son owes his mother.
- ambEti tAtEti shiveti tasmin prasUtikAlE yadavOcha ucchaih: I krishnEti gOvinda hare mukundE tyahO janannyai rachitOyamajalih: II
When you brought me forth into the world from out of your agonized but compassionate womb, you uttered aloud, it is said, the holy names of God: “O Divine Mother! O Lord my Father! “O Shiva! O Krishna! Govinda! “Harey! Mukunda!” That was an act of kindness too, O mother! For that was the chant of sacred names and the moment of my deliverance too! How shall I thank thee for that deed except by offering thee my soul’s eternal worship!
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Commentary on Verse 1:
The expression “durvArshUla’vyayAda” is very significant. It is Sankara’s phrase for the “ugly, noxious” embryo that takes seed inside a mother’s womb and begins to grow for 9 long months before the moment of birth arrives when it gets to see daylight for the first time ever in life. There are 2 profound ideas this phrase evokes in the mind of the reader:
(1) Firstly, during the course of the 9-month long pregnancy, a mother undergoes all kinds of pain, discomfort and bodily trials about which the foetus knows nothing at all — not during incubation, not after birth, and not after growth into adulthood. None of us in the world can ever imagine or realize fully what a terrible physical burden we must have been to our mothers while she carried us. Our existence in our mother’s womb was unquestionably parasitical. Now, the natural biological response of any host-body to a parasite is to try rejecting and expelling it. But our beloved mothers, all through the 9-month long period of pregnancy, gave the parasite nothing but “TLC” — tender loving care in gratuitous and spontaneous measure. One who has received an act of extraordinary favor, beneficence or kindness in life from another must never fail to show due gratitude. It is easy to feel and show proper gratitude for known or clearly recollected acts of kindness. But how is one to show due gratitude for the hundred little acts of loving kindness our mothers showered upon us during the difficult days of pregnancy — such acts always remaining unknown to us and ever beyond possible recollection?
(2) The second central idea in the stanza is this: The mother’s love for her unborn fetus is a unique one indeed. The feeling of love does not arise in the human breast unaided or in an utterly spontaneous manner, out of the void or a vacuum as it were. Love is inspired by sterling qualities — those qualities of body, mind and heart that the lover perceives the object of love to be possessing. Romeo loved Juliet for her beauty, for instance; King Midas craved gold for its value; the average Indian cricketing fan loves Sachin Tendulkar for his genius. To love somebody or something is thus always love felt for certain palpably attractive, endearing qualities or attributes (“guNa-visEsha”): physical, mental, moral or intellectual. If you wish to arouse love in someone, you must necessarily possess some quality or attribute, bodily or mental, that the other will find attractive or “lovable”.
Now, a human embryo taking shape inside the mother’s womb is nothing but an amorphous and unattractive piece of growing tissue. It has no character. It has no identity or intelligence. It has no great qualities of beauty, intelligence or virtue, nothing certainly that anyone would want to describe as endearing or attractive. The raw and clear truth is the human fetus is not exactly “lovable”; in a purely physical or mundane sense, it is quite grotesque and it can only arouse feelings of queasy revulsion in everyone. Everyone except the mother.
The pregnant mother alone is overwhelmed with extraordinary feelings of love overflowing towards what Sankara describes as “durvArshUla’vyayAda” — an amorphous piece of living tissue possessing no apparent or palpable human quality even remotely “lovable”, “attractive” or “endearing”. But our mothers gave us all such extraordinary love in spite of our pathetic fetal state when we were all un-defined, attribute-less and under-embodied.
At the very beginning of our earthly existence we were all indeed nothing but mere genetic speck, biological cipher and grotesque morphological monstrosity. The rest of the world would have regarded us certainly as nothing but that; our mothers however who saw us differently and treated us differently. It is the mother who looked upon us as part of her very own flesh, blood and soul. In our mothers’ eyes what defined and characterized us in our fetal condition and predicament was not what or how we were in that particular state but what we were going to be and how we would evolve in and through life.
It is for this particular reason therefore — the reason that our pregnant mothers gave us nothing but kindness, nurturing and soulful love when we were least “lovable”, least “attractive” or “endearing” in the eyes of the rest of the world— it is for this particular reason that every one of us is born into the world remain ever so deeply and profoundly indebted to our mothers.
Commentary on Verse 2:
In this stanza, Sri Sankara bhagavathpAda is being very autobiographical indeed leaving one a little surprised why of all persons, an avowed ‘sanyAsi’ should want to indulge in intimate, personal nostalgia even if it is all about his beloved mother. We are all used to regarding “achAryAs” or “sanyAsis” as being rather stone-hearted and un-emotional. After all they have renounced the world, become hermits, cut off all their worldly ties, purged their hearts of all feelings for a family, have transcended human bondage and hence they ought never to show the kind of emotional “weakness” or soft-heartedness that afflicts ordinary mortals of the world – “samsArins” like us who are inextricably attached to kith and kin, our flesh and blood, parents, spouses, children and lovers. Strange then therefore that the great Sankara himself, a giant amongst the foremost “sanyAsis” of the Vedantic fold, and he who had otherwise cut asunder all human ties of the world, should in this hymn reveal an altogether human side to his personality. Was the great ‘achArya” too as frail as we are? This is the almost blasphemous but not unreasonable thought that crosses one’s mind as one reads the second stanza of the “maathru–panchakam”.
To understand Sankara’s true intention of mind in this stanza one must closely examine a few biographical details. Sankara lost his father when he was but a toddler of two or three year’s age. The burden of his upbringing fell entirely on his mother. Life generally was very difficult for a widow the in the brahminical society of those times. We can only imagine today the extreme trials and tribulations Sankara’s mother must have surely endured in providing for little Sankara and getting him educated. In keeping with the tradition of those times, Sankara’s mother, with the help of in-laws and relatives, managed to get her son admitted into a Vedic “gurukula”. (The biography of Sankara reveals the great “advaitin” Sri GaudapAda as Sankara’s “guru” but it is not clear if the “gurukula” Sankara went to was his). In any case, Sankara was an extraordinarily precocious student. It is said by the age of 6 or 7 he had mastered Vedic syllabi that other students would have taken ordinarily all of 12 or 15 years to cover and attain a modicum of proficiency in. By the age of 7 or 8 Sankara became not just a Vedic adept … but a consummate Master endowed with that spark of enlightenment or “brahma-tejas” that marked him out in later life as a true “jagadguru” (universal teacher).
Sankara’s mother, the poor widow that she was, and wholly dependent for subsistence on the charity of her relatives, watched the scholastic and spiritual progress of her little son with a mixture of both great pride and deep anxiety. The pride in the son’s growing fame as a Vedic Master was greatly overshadowed by a growing premonition that Sankara would soon take the vows of worldly renunciation or “sannyAshrama” and go away into the wider world to fulfill his earthly destiny and purpose viz.: to bring about the restoration and renaissance of the Vedic faith in India and establish its pre-eminence in the land of his ancestors, the great “rshis” of yore.
Sankara’s mother knew in her heart of hearts that one day her son Sankara would heed the call of his destiny and on that day he would simply pack up his bags and take leave of her and go away forever in pursuit of his lofty goals in life, the loftiest of all being his own liberation. For the poor widowed mother, the prospect of losing her sole and beloved son to the order of “sannyAshrama” was a kind of second bereavement.
To a widow a son is really the last lifeline and if it snaps then there is really nothing left in the world for her except abject emptiness and endless despair. A son for a widow represents the promise of emotional wellbeing and the prime source of material security. Sankara’s mother knew that if he went away as a “sannyAsi” into the wide world, he would never be hers to call her own again. She would lose everything in life.
In the ancient Vedic scriptural text known as the “ushanha-samhita” the duty of a son towards his mother is laid out clearly: “Let a son be devoted to the service of the parents as long as they live, if they are satisfied with his virtue, he gets the reward of all religious deeds; there is no god equal to the mother, no guide on par with the father; there is no complete exoneration from a man’s obligation to them; let him do for them daily what is agreeable and let him not engage himself in any religious rite without their permission, the sole exception being what would lead to liberation.” (“usanhsamhita” I.33-37).
Purely from a maternal perspective, it is perhaps rather heartless irony that while the great Vedic “samhita’ loudly acknowledges the paramount nature of a son’s duty towards his mother and father, by way of a singular proviso of exception to the general rule however, the “samhita” recognizes that should the son hear the call of the heavens that beckon him to seek spiritual liberation, then that call must be heeded at any cost, with or without the leave of mother or father.
Sankara’s mother, aware as she was of her son’s growing spiritual stature and promise, must surely have anticipated the moment when he would hear call of the spirit and that would be the moment he would walk away to seek his liberation. It was to this sense of gnawing insecurity and foreboding that perhaps caused Sankara’s mother her troubled sleep and gave her too that strange but clairvoyant nightmare: the nightmare in which her darling son Sankara donned the ochre robes of a novitiate into “sannyasa”, took the solemn vows of celibacy, snapped all ties with family and went away into the wide world to do his life’s work.
The nightmare made her one day scurry in desperation to the school classroom where Sankara was undergoing “gurukulavAsa” and there she lamented aloud to him, his guru and to all his classmates about her terrible premonition. What an embarrassment his mother must have caused indeed to Sankara and the class! Poor lady! Her mother’s heart beat with love for her child but it was also filled with the fear of being deserted by him. Who else but mothers and sons of the world can truly fathom and empathize with Sankara’s mother?
Empathy certainly it was that drove Sri Adi Sankara too to indulge the slightly maudlin sentiment that overcomes any son who, in moments of somber recollection of times bygone, allows himself to shed a silent, private tear or two in memory of a dear, departed mother. Such emotion, such sentiment, is at all times great and noble when it moves the heart of ordinary sons; when it overwhelms one who is as mighty of spirit as the great Adi Sankara himself, without doubt or hesitation, it sanctifies and indeed glorifies the other-worldliness of “sannyAsis” even.
In the other world as much as in this, shall we say, they all know that “it is the hand that rocks the cradle which truly rules the world”?
Commentary on Verse 3:
In the 3rd stanza of the “maathru-panchakam” Sri Adi Sankara recollects the terminal moments spent with his mother on her death-bed. It is a verse of heart-breaking lamentation. But more importantly it contains an implied but fervent appeal to every son in the world not to fail in his duty to perform last-rites for a deceased mother and to ensure she receives the honor and dignity deserved in death that perhaps in some measure, for reasons good or otherwise, might have been denied her in life.
The great Vedantic “achArya”, after having left home as a mere boy-“sannyAsi”, returned after several years to his little non-descript village of Kaladdy (Kerala) as a world-renowned Vedantic “jagadguru”. The hagiographical account, the “sankara-digvijayam” is the standard narrative in India on the life of Sri Sankara BhagavathpAdA and it describes this homecoming in some detail.
The text speaks of how Sankara who was busy with his mission while sojourning in North India, one day had a clear premonition of his mother’s impending death and so hastened to his village to be by her side in the last mortal moments. When Sankara arrived his mother was already in the throes of death. The biographical details are rather shrouded in inconsistency.
One account of Sankara’s last meeting with his mother is that she breathed her last after he had chanted into her ear the sacred “tAraka-mantra”. But if one goes by the 3rd stanza of the “maatru-panchakam”, we cannot help inferring that when Sankara arrived at her death-bed, his mother had already passed away. He clearly does express regret not having arrived in time to administer the final “mantra’ to the departing soul.
Anyway, whichever version is true, the pathos of the moment itself and the pain that swelled up in Sankara’s heart is very vividly portrayed here in the 3rd stanza of the “AchArya’s” “maathru-panchakam”. We must remember that the circumstances surrounding the death of Sankara’s mother were extremely unfortunate and tragic. Since Sankara was a “sannyAsi”, he could not perform for his dead mother the traditional last-rites since it was against age-old brahminical codes (the “sAstrAs”) for “sanyAsins” to have anything to do with Vedic “fire-rituals” and his mother’s obsequies necessarily involved ritual fire. Sankara was hence compelled to run from pillar to post in the village to find a relative who could act as his proxy and perform the obsequies but then none was willing to oblige. Even in the days of Sankara, as much as it seems now, performing death-rites in the manner prescribed by sacred custom was never without its difficulties. The community did not cooperate willingly and the necessary means were not easily available. Even close kith and kin baulked and in general everyone grudged the effort and expense. Any convenient excuse or pretext that could be found to avoid volunteering help to those bereaved was readily claimed by everyone.
Sankara the “sannyAsi” had over the years gained both fame and notoriety as both a trail-blazing and an iconoclastic philosopher and radical reformer (anti-“mimAmsaka“). In Kaladdy particularly he had come to earn local enmity from amongst the village orthodoxy. They simply turned their backs on him in his hour of grave need and gave him the proverbially haughty and imperious brahminical cold-shoulder.
The body of his mother thus lay unattended for a long while before some sympathetic neighbors eventually came forward to make amends for the lapses of Sankara’s erstwhile kith and kin. This bitter and traumatic experience must have left a deep and permanent scar on Sankara’s mind and we see evidence of it in the anguished words of the celebrated 3rd stanza of the “maathru-panchakam. From the time he finished his Vedic “gurukula” studies at the age of 8 years, only to formally renounce the world as a “sannyAsi”, until the time he returned to Kallady to be at his mother’s deathbed, Sri Adi SankarAchArya had already gone around India twice on foot, had founded a great philosophical order and 4 great monasteries in the 4 corners of the country which still survive and flourish to this day as pre-eminent centers of the Advaita Order; he had also written about 80 books, dissertations on Vedantic philosophy and numerous devotional hymns in purest Sanskrit; he had restored the Brahmin-Hindu tradition of India which had been almost submerged in what was at that time popular Buddhism and, finally, he had safely established his reputation as undeniably the foremost scholastic philosopher of the millennium in this part of the world….
And yet …. yet, ironically, when such a man of herculean accomplishments, finally, arrived at his mother’s deathbed, he found to his deepest chagrin, dismay and regret that there wasn’t any way he could himself perform or otherwise arrange to have performed the customary Vedic past rites that would convey his beloved mother’s soul from this world to the other.
The great philosopher who preached a whole great philosophy that prided itself upon having solved the mysteries of the human soul, its true nature, purpose and destiny… such a great one found himself helpless at Kallady in his efforts to see his mother’s soul off from its earthly abode!
IN the brief lifetime of 33 years that the AchArya spent on earth he could not have spent but more than a few years –- 5 or 6 at the very most -– in the company of his dear mother. The bond of love between mother and son in those very brief and fleeting years might have been rich and intense but then it could never really have been seen by either one as growing to endure very long in life. She as a hapless widow might not have been in a position to give or demonstrate care and affection in the true measure she might otherwise have felt in her heart for her one and only son. And he too, when he embraced “sannyAsa” at the tender age of 8 and went away from home on his life’s mission, could scarcely have had time thereafter to spare very many moments for an affectionate thought for his forlorn mother languishing back in the village of Kallady…
Such a man as Sankara, yet, when he arrived at his mother’s deathbed to see her breathe her last, was moved to speak these heart-rending words : “na dattam mAtastE maraNasamayE tOyamapi vA svabaddhA bA nOdEyA maraNadivasE shradha-vidhinA I” Of what value or worth my monumental accomplishments in life as a “sannyAsi”, as a philosopher, as a “jagadguru” — Sankara seems to be saying in this stanza in the “maathru-panchakam”— of what merit is all this if at the moment of your passing away, dear mother, there is no way I can offer you the due courtesies and honors that I know you deserve and which a son must show his mother’s departing soul?
This soul-stirring verse should indeed make us all sit up and reflect deeply: If the great Sankara showed no mercy to himself and, in fact, severely castigated himself for it and took no shelter or defense behind any lame or valid excuse for failing to perform the obsequies for his departed mother, how can we, we who are indeed less-than-ordinary mortals by comparison, ever venture to think that we may, after all, be able to find, amidst the vast vagaries of our busy, modern and sophisticated lives, those convenient excuses we eagerly seek, in order that we may be able to shirk the sacred duty we owe to our departing mothers?
Commentary on 4th and 5th Verses:
These 2 verses of Sri SankarAchArya once again show us that the heart of an ascetic is not all cold, arid, lifeless stone.
Renouncing the world, embracing the vows of “sannyAsa” and wearing the ochre robe all do help the human heart to cultivate a certain worldly detachment but do not in any way for that reason either dehumanize or desensitize it. The sense of loss and anguish that the death of one as near and beloved as one’s mother arouses in anyone is felt by a “sannyAsi”, even one as great as Sankara, no less deeply or painfully than any ordinary ‘gruhasthA’ or householder of the world. It is only when we encounter Death at close quarters that we begin to realize, even if only dimly, that “we are not human beings here in the world undergoing spiritual experience but rather that we are all spiritual beings undergoing human experience”. (Teilhard de Chardin). To both “sanyAsin” and “samsArin” in equal measure of distress, Death is indeed an essentially human experience.
In the 4th verse SankarAchArya does not fight shy of sharing with us a tender and intimate memory of his. He recalls the way his mother called him fond “names”; the many ways she used to address him as a child, using little terms of motherly affection such as “my shining gem”, “apple of my eye”, “my little king” etc… the sort of common but sportive fancy monikers most mother’s give their children while, say, coaxing or cajoling their child to finish a meal… one “name” being thought up for every morsel, as it were!
“In return for those terms of endearment and affection”, Sankara seems to be saying in this verse, ”in return for all that love, mother, all that I have to now offer you finally by way of a son’s inadequate reciprocation, is this fistful of raw uncooked rice to pour upon your lifeless lips”.
The reference here in this verse to the age-old Vedic custom of “pouring a fistful of rice” or “pindapradanam” (as it is known in Sanskrit) upon the lifeless lips of the dead is quite significant. The custom is part of the elaborate ‘preta-samskAra’: the last solemn rites of passage that are traditionally administered by the offspring to a dead parent. It is a ritual act so rich in a two-fold symbolism explained below:
(1) On the part of the deceased parent, the ritual act is meant to symbolize the departing soul consuming its very last morsel of “food” as a human, being released thereafter from the “anna maya kOsa” and “prANa maya kOsa”, the realms (or “shrouds”) of earthly Sustenance and Energy respectively, in which the soul had lain ensconced and thrived all through its mortal existence, and now at last readies itself to begin its onward journey to celestial destinations where food and energy are no longer the means of sustenance.
(2) On the part of the offspring it is an act of final thanksgiving. Sankara, as already explained, being an ordained “sannyAsi” was forbidden from performing any one of the last rites for his mother in the prescribed Vedic manner. But even die-hard Vedic orthodoxy places no obstacles in the way of a son who chooses to perform the symbolic “samskAra” involving the mere simple act of offering a single morsel of “annam” to a departed mother in the genuinely humble spirit of final thanksgiving. It is in a way a kind of ‘samskara’ too and one that perfectly reciprocates another equally hoary and traditional Vedic “samskAra” called “anna prAsana” which is solemnly administered by every mother and father to an infant child who begins teething usually 6 months after birth. In the “anna prAsana” ritual, the mother and father take a fistful of freshly cooked rice, and to the chant of appropriate Vedic “mantras”, pour it gently through the lips of the beloved infant-son. It is the child’s very “first morsel of cooked rice” in life and is meant to bestow upon the child the life-long blessing of robust health and longevity.
If there is but only one lesson to be learnt from a reading of the 4th verse of Sankara’s “maathru-panchakam” it is this: no son who has received in infancy the maternal blessing inhered in the “samskAra” known as “anna prAsana” — a fistful of rice — would fail to return the kindness in like form to his mother after she breathes her last on a death-bed. And so it is precisely why a “sannyAsi” hastened to his mother’s side, as she lay dead, alone and unattended in a village square in Kaladdy, to ensure that he could at least render unto her a reciprocal “samskAra” described in the moving words of the “maathru-panchakam”: “ithyukthavatyA tava vaachi mAtah: dadAmyaham tandulamEva-shushkam”II
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A distant but remarkable parallel to the episode in the life of Sri Adi Sankara described in the verses of the “maathru-panchakam” can be found in a passage of rare but overwhelming poignancy written by St.Augustine (354 AD-430AD), the great mystic saint of pre-medieval times, in that all-time classic of religious autobiography, “Confessions of St.Augustine”.
Augustine, who too like Sankara was at his mother’s side on her death-bed, wrote eloquently about the misgivings that overpowered him as he witnessed his mother Monica pass away before his eyes. Both the Christian saint and the Vedantic “jagadguru” found themselves in a similar situation of extreme human distress and reading the former’s account of his experience written in Latin prose helps us gain some valuable insight into the emotional state that may have inspired the latter to describe the same experience in Sanskrit poetry:
“One day as she lay ill, she (Monica, St.Augustine’s mother) lost consciousness and for a little while she was withdrawn from all present things. We rushed to her but she quickly regained her senses. She looked at me and my brother as we stood there and said to us, after the manner of one seeking something.
“Where was I?” And she continued talking to me: “Son, for my own part, I now find no delight in anything in this life. What I can still do here and why I am here, I do not know, now that all my hopes in this world have been accomplished. One thing there was, for which I desired to linger a little while in this life, that I might see you a Catholic Christian before I died. God has granted this to me in more than abundance, for I see you His servant, with even earthly happiness held in contempt. So what am I doing here?”
“I also heard later that my mother one day in my absence, she had talked with a mother’s confidence to certain friends of mine about contempt of this life and the advantages of death. They were amazed at the woman’s strength which You, my Lord, had given to her, and asked if she did not fear leaving her body so far from her own city, she replied, “nothing is far from God. I need not fear that He will not know where to raise me up at the end of the world.”
“So on the ninth day of her illness, in the 56th year of her life and in the 33rd year of mine, this devout and holy soul was set loose from the body.
“I closed her eyes and a mighty sorrow welled up from the depths of my heart and overflowed into tears. At the same time, by a powerful command of my mind, my eyes drank up their source until it was dry. Most ill it was with me to fall into such agony!
“What was it that grieved me so heavily if not the fresh wound wrought by the sudden rupture of our most sweet and dear way of life together? I took joy indeed from her testimony, when in that last illness my mother mingled her endearments with my dutiful deeds and called me a good son. With great love and affection, she recalled that she had never heard me speak a harsh or disrespectful word to her. Yet, O my God who made us! What comparison was there between the honor she had from me and the services that she rendered to me? When I was bereft of such great consolation, my heart was wounded through and my life was as if ripped asunder. For out of her life and mine own life had been made.
“Those around me thought I was free from all sense of sorrow. But in your ears, my God, where none of them could hear, I upbraided the weakness of my affection, and I held back the flood of sorrow. It gave way a little before me but I was again and again swept away by its violence, although not as far as to burst into tears, nor to any change of expression. But I knew what it was I crushed down within my heart. Because it distressed me greatly that these human feelings had such sway over me, for this needs must be according to due order and our allotted state, I sorrowed over my sorrow with an added sorrow, and I was torn by a two-fold sadness.
All day long and in secret, so heavy was my sorrow, and with a troubled mind I besought you as best I could to heal my anguish. You did not do so, and it was I think to impress upon my memory by this one lesson how strong is the bond of any habit, even upon a mind that no longer feeds upon deceptive words. I also thought it good to go and bathe then as I had heard that the bath (Greek “balnea”) are so-called because the Greeks say that it drives anxiety from the mind. See, O Father of orphans, this fact too do I confess to Your mercy, for after I had bathed I was the same as before I bathed. Bitter grief did pour like sweat out of my heart. But then I slept, and I woke up, and I found that my sorrow had in no small part been eased. As I lay alone on my bed I remembered those truthful verses about you, and for who You are, my Lord Almighty: “God, creator of all things, ruler of the sky, Who clothes the day with beauteous light, and the night with grateful sleep, That rest may weakened limbs restore for labor’s needs, And ease our weary minds, and free our worried hearts from grief”.
“Little by little, I regained my former thoughts about my mother, Your handmaid, about the devout life she led in You, about her sweet and holy care for us, of which I was so suddenly deprived. I took comfort in weeping in Your sight, my God, over her and for her, over myself and for myself. I gave way to the tears that I held back, so that they poured forth as much as they wished. I spread them beneath my heart, and it was rested upon them, for at my heart were placed Your ears, not the ears of a mere man, who would interpret with scorn my weeping.
“Now, Lord, I confess to you in writing. Let him who read it who wants to, let him interpret it as he wants. If he finds a sin in it, that I wept for my mother for a small part of an hour, for that mother now dead to my eyes who for so many years had wept for me so that I might live forever in Your eyes, let him not laugh to scorn me. But rather, if he is a man of large charity, let him weep over my sins before you, the Father of all brothers of your Christ.””
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In the 5th and final stanza of the “maathru-panchakam”, Sankara recollects what he had been told about his mother that when she was pregnant with him, even while undergoing labor and painful birth-pangs she uttered the holy names of the Almighty, “O Shiva! O Krishna! Govinda! “Harey! Mukunda!”. It was an act of maternal kindness of far-reaching power and consequence, says Sankara, for by doing so his mother had actually gifted him at the moment of birth itself what otherwise ordinary men of the world struggle to earn only in the moment of death. His mother at the very moment she gave birth to him gave him a birth-right, says Sankara: the birthright of spiritual salvation that is obtained through merely uttering the sacred names of Vishnu!
One final thought that arises in my mind on a reading of the “maathru-panchakam” is that none of us should be surprised at all that the great Adi Sankara wept for his departed mother. Having received the highest spiritual reward in life from his mother at the very moment of birth even — the everlasting fortune of Salvation served on a gold platter as it were –it is really no wonder that Sankara considered himself eternally beholden to his mother: “tyahO janannyai rachitOyamajalih:”. To use the words of St Augustine in paraphrase: “I wept for my mother for a small part of an hour, for that mother now dead to my eyes who for so many years had wept for me so that I might live forever in Your eyes, My God!”.
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Sudarshan Madabushi / M.K.Sudarshan
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