(This aricle of mine was written circa. 1997 and published in THE HINDU)
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The “abheeti-sthavam” is a 29-stanza hymn in Sanskrit composed by the tallest amongst Sri Vaishnava philosophers and preceptors in the post-Ramanujacharya times, Swami Vedanta Desikan (1268-1369 AD). The hymn is devotional in principal intent but it is in fact much more. It may be even regarded as a poetic analysis of the psychology of the sum of all fears: soulful loneliness, human frailty and futility… and death. This essay is an attempted insight into this timeless work.
Vedanta Desika has written copiously about Fear and Fearlessness. His references to this most primal of human emotions are strewn in almost all his “rahasya” (doctrinal), “stotra” (devotional), “gadya” (poetic), “kaavya” (drama) and “vyaakhyaana” (exegetic) works in Sanskrit.
In the principal Sanskrit “stotra” works (for which Desika is very popular to this day) like “abheeti-sthavam”, “dayaa-satakam” and “ashta-bhujaashtakam”, the poet-philosopher-polymath seems to have approached the subject of human Fear in an amazingly modern manner. The concepts of present-day practice and methods in clinical psychiatry seem to distinctly echo between the lines of religious poetry written by this great Sri Vaishnava “AchArya” of the 13th-century AD.
Allusions to Fear in his stotra the “abheeti-sthavam” carry muted tones of autobiographic experiences of Fear. On reading this hymn today, 750 years after it was composed, one senses he was describing the emotion out of first-hand, intimate knowledge of raw, palpable human fear.
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When the Muslim armies of Malik Kafur, the general of Alauddin Khilji, the first Mughal invader of India, attacked and sacked the temple-town of Sri Rangam around 1327 AD, the community of Sri Vaishnavas there, led by religious leaders like Pillai Lokachariar and Vedanta Desikan were forced to flee the temple for safety. They took with them the only priceless treasures and symbols of Sri Vaishnavism they could.
While Pillai Lokachariar fled with the icon of Lord Ranganatha, the Deity of Sri Rangam, Vedanta Desikan – at that time in his late fifties in age – fled along with a band of followers with the “sruta prakaasika”, a hallowed philosophical treatise on Sri Ramanujacharya’s original commentary on the “brahma-sutras”, called “Sri Bhaashya”.
Unfortunately, barely had Desika and his followers crossed the outskirts of Sri Rangam when a stray contingent of the invading Muslim army discovered them. History notes that Vedanta Desika himself narrowly escaped being killed.
Several decades thereafter, having stared death in the face and known Fear first-hand, Desikan lived the life of a near-exile in a tiny hamlet, Sathyaakaalam, now in the State of Karnataka very near Melkote. During that time, he perhaps confronted Fear in all its manifestations: the fear of individual loneliness, personal futility, the specter of death and frailty of faith. Here, Vedanta Desika sent years in solitude, contemplation and deep meditation upon Sri Lakshmi Hayagreeva, an avatar of Vishnu, and a deity who conferred wisdom and enlightenment. Though he lived in isolation, and away from family and close social bonds, he did not formally embrace ‘sannyAsa’, a life of ascetic renunciation.
During his long years of exile, Vedanta Desika did long for Sri Rangam and wished that the Sri Vaishnava faith be restored to its pre-eminent status in the land. He yearned for the faith to be rejuvenated with the full vigor and robustness of its founders, Nathamuni, Yamunacharya and Ramanujacharya.
On reading the “abheeti-sthavam”, one gets an extremely clear glimpse of the history of those times, as well as of the state of mind in which Desikan composed it. In the hymn, he invokes the awesome, terrible wrath of Lord Ranganatha and directs it towards all enemies of the faith. If poetic words could ever be described as a furious fusillade, this stanza in Sanskrit literature must certainly be one:
kali praNidhi lakshaNaihi kalita shaakya lOkaayataihi,
turushka yavanaadhibhirjagati jrimbhamaaNam bhayam|
prakrishTa nijasakthibhihi prasabhamaayudhaihi panchabhihi,
kshiti tridasha rakshakaihi kshpaya ranganaatha ksaNaat|| Stanza 22
Although this hymn is essentially a heartfelt prayer for divine succor, it is a many splendored classic in many other respects as well. It is an easy handbook of reference for the theological theme of “saranaagathi”, the Sri Vaishnavite doctrine of self-surrender, containing as it does a variant each of the famous three “charama shloka-s” (of Sri Varaha in the Varaaha Purana, of Sri Rama in Valmiki Ramayana and of Sri Krishna in the Bhagavath-Gita). It is also a snapshot account of a slice of the history of Sri Rangam around the 13th-14th century. But what is interesting to me is that in this hymn where Desikan speaks of Fear as an emotion, one sees poetic flashes wherein ancient theology and modern psychology seem to echo one another in very subtle ways.
In Stanza 13 of the “abheethi-sthavam”, Vedanta Desika states the stark fact that Fear is the most deep-seated of human behavioral drives. A man is born with it, lives with it and goes to the grave with it. The poet thus in this verse squarely faces up to the question of Fear being a driver of human psychology.
na vaktumapi sakyate naraka garbha vaasaadikam,
vapuschabahu dhaathukam nupiNa chintane taadrisham|
trivishTapa mukham thathaa tava padasya dedeepathaha,
kimatra na bhayaaspadam bhavati ranga prithveepate|| Stanza 13
In stating the problem in such a brutally blunt and bland way, the poet seems to have anticipated over seven centuries ago, a methodology which is common today in modern psychiatric practice viz. getting the patient to encounter his Fear or phobia as the very first step in trauma therapy.
In Stanza 12, the poet examines the general nature and causes of Fear as a debilitating mental condition and delves into the nature of what defines happiness and the fear of losing it. “Worldly happiness is derived from the small self-centered relationships we build around and for ourselves all our lives — wife, sons, relations, neighbors, servants and other familial or social anchors — and fear arises in us whenever these relationships fail or they are lost. Fear arises because relationships do not endure. This is also exactly what modern psychiatry too deals with.
agishTa sukha saNgadaih svakrita karma nirvartitaihi,
kaLatra suta sOdarAnuchara bhandhu sambandhibhihi|
dhana prabhritikairapi prachura bheethi bhEdhottaraihi,
na bhibhrati dhritim prabho tvadhanubhuuthi bhogaarthinaha|| Stanza 12
In modern psycho-therapy, after the patient has learnt to squarely face up to the nature of his problem, to place trust in the therapist and to openly seek his help, the former is encouraged to carefully examine and dissect the conditions and circumstances of his life and relationships. This is the phase when an intense and prolonged phase of interpersonal engagement occurs between therapist and patient. The therapist gently prods the patient into deep and honest self-analysis and stock-taking of his relationships with everything living or material that populates his life. Together they jointly plumb the psychological depths of Fear and its psychotic symptoms, if any. This is a long process, and often the patient “regresses” and has to be coaxed and sometimes firmly commanded too to help him overcome deeply suppressed memories, emotions and inhibitions. The “abheethi-sthavam” seems to capture and suggest such “regressive” phases too of the mental struggle to overcome Fear. In Stanza 10, the poet’s words are significant in this regard:
bibhEti bhavabhrit prabhO tvadupadesha teevraushadaat,
kadhadhva rasa durvishe baLisha bhakshavat preeyate|
apathya parihaara dhee vimukha mitthamaakasmikee,
tamapyavasare kramaadavati vatsalaa tvaddayaa|| Stanza 10
“O Prabho! What you prescribe for me and what you make me undergo and endure are like bitter medicine to me… You ask me to do things now which are alien to my nature. I am accustomed to the degenerate life.. I find myself drawn to it again every time you draw me away from it. I feel like a fish that finds it hard to resist devouring the bait dangling before it even when it knows it means its end!”.
In the next phase of the patient’s therapy, clinical psychiatric practice explains, he is evolving into a new person. He has learnt to conquer the self-doubt and trauma that Fear induces. But intermittently, the therapist perceives, the patient is plagued by irrational anxieties; that for some unnamed reasons, he may lose the support of the therapist; be deserted by him; and that he may become unhinged again. In Stanza 17, such feelings of angst are described in very evocative words:
vishaada bahuLaadaham vishaya vargato durjayaat,
bibhEmi vrujinottarastvad anub huuthi vicchEdataha|
mayaa niyata naathavaanayamiti tvamarthaapayan,
dayaadhana jagatpatE dayita ranga samraksha maam|| Stanza 17
In the post-cure period a patient, as the modern practitioner of psycho-therapy knows, gradually transforms himself into a completely new person, acquires a new self-image and taps into powers of regeneration, creativity and goodness deep within himself. It is an experience of self-discovery. He exults in the feeling of being “liberated”, of needing nothing else in life but to be able to stay connected constantly with a source of power felt deep within. That state of mind is described in the joyous words of Stanza 7:
ramaadayita rangabhuuramaNa krishna vishNO hare,
trivikrama janaardana triyuga naatha naaraayaNa|
iteeva shubadhaani yah paTathi naamadhEyaani te,
na tasya yama vashyataa naraka paatha bheethih kutaha|| Stanza 7
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Sanskrit scholars will attest to the “abheeti-sthavam” being a minor masterpiece of Sanskrit religious poetry. But when one reads and savors it through the prism of modernity, one cannot fail to discern that it is an amazingly scientific delve into human psychology. It is a subtle portrayal of all manifestations of Fear inside the human mind and yet, in the end, the “sthavam” offers a spiritual key to their conquest through a mantra, the sum of all Fearlessness:
prabhuddha guru veekshaNa prathitha vEnkaTEshOdbhavam,
imaambhayasiddhaye paTatha rangabharthuh sthuthim|
bhayam tyajata bhadra mityabhidhadhat sa vah kEsavaha,
svayam ghana grNaa nidhirguNagaNEna gOpAyati|| Stanza 29
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Sudarshan Madabushi