Buddhism in India

The Bhakti Movements 203

However, Eleanor Zelliot has noted that more bitterness is shown

in many abhangsof Cokha’s son, Karmamela, which may well

reflect growing up in an atmosphere in which equality is seen as a

possibility.

You made us low caste. Why don’t you face that fact, Great Lord?

Our whole life leftover food to eat. You should be ashamed of this.

You have eaten in our home. How can you deny it?

Cokha’s Karmamela asks: Why did you give me life?

Are we happy when we’re with you? O Cloud-Dark One, you don’t

know!

The low place is our lot; the low place is our lot;

the low place is our lot, King of Gods!

We never get the good sweet food.

It’s a shameful life here for us.

It’s a festival of bliss for you and misery written on our faces.

Cokha’s Karmamela asks, O God, why is this our fate? (#3–4).

The protest is there, but is repressed. The whole situation illustrates

the major problem of the bhakti movement: since its records were

not in the hands of the devotees themselves, in contrast to

Buddhism or Jainism, the movement was open to an immediate

theoretical and practical appropriation. In fact, the stories of

Cokhamela, and the songs he wrote, show not so much the liberatory

thrust of the bhakti movements as the degree to which caste had

become crystallised in India of this period, from which there was

no real way out. His death took place when a wall he and other

Mahars were working on as part of their traditional duty collapsed

and buried them (Zelliot 1992: 3–4).

Tukaram: ‘Good You Made Me a Kunbi’

The seeds of revolt in bhakti devotionalism flowered in

Maharashtra in the 17th century with the great poet Tukaram

(1608–1649). His abhangbeginning, ‘Good you made me a Kunbi;

otherwise I might have died an arrogant hypocrite!’ (#320)^6 is

The Vedas are polluted; the ksastras are polluted; the Puranas are

full of pollution.

The self is polluted; the overself is polluted; the body is full of

pollution.

Brahma is polluted; Vishnu is polluted; the world is full of pollution.

Birth is polluted; death is polluted.

Cokha says: there’s pollution at the beginning and at the end (#282;

all translations and numbers of abhangsfrom Zelliot 1995).

Thus, while many of his abhangslament his oppressed state, a very
famous one even gives a seemingly very orthodox explanation:

I am a low-caste Mahar;

Prevously in the avatar of Nila

I had slandered Krishna

and so was born as a Mahar;

Cokha says, this impurity is the fruit

of what was done before (#76).

Of course, it is quite possible that this was an interpolated abhang.
Dalit-Buddhist radicals have recently interpreted it to argue that it
refers to a ‘Nila Naga’ who had challenged Krishna’s claim to
divinity, in the context of major conflict between the Brahmanising
Aryans and the resisting indigenous people (the ‘Nagas’); Mahars
then are seen as Nagas who were branded as untouchables (Javale
1999).^5 Unfortunately, there is insufficient scholarship to date to
back up such claims, and the existing abhangseems to have a clear
meaning fitting into the Brahmanic framework. Thus, the popular
abhangs of Cokhamela suggest his humble approach to God, his
pleading for humanity in the face of an accepted inferiority. One of
his most famous abhangsis sung on the road to Pandharpur:

The cane is crooked, but the sugar is sweet;

Refrain: Why be fooled by outward appearance?

The river is winding, but the water is pure;

The bow is bent, but the arrow is straight;

Cokha is uncouth, but his devotion is not (#125).

202 Buddhism in India

(^5) The reference to Nagas is particularly interesting both in the context of the historical
evidence for these in the Satavahana period in Maharashtra—and the fact that ‘Nila
Naga’ is a subject of tradition in faraway Kashmir.
(^6) Translations are by myself with the help of Bharat Patankar. The references are to
Tukaram(1973), the comprehensive collection of his poetry published by the
Maharashtra state government.