THE REGIONAL KINGDOMS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIAspent in a continuous pilgrimage to the sacred places of southern India,
describes his love for Shiva in these moving words:
While Indra, Vishnu and Brahma and all the other gods have to line
up in heaven in order to get a glimpse of Shiva he has come down to
this earth, he has come to me who is of no use, he has shown his great
love for me as only a mother would do. He has made my body as soft
and tender as wax and has put an end to all my deeds, whether I was
born as an elephant or as a worm. He came like honey and milk, like
sugarcane, he came as a king who gives precious gifts and he has
graciously accepted my service as his slave.^1The early Bhakti mystics rejected Brahmin scholarship and ritual sacrifices
in which the lower classes could not, in any case, afford to participate.
They also rejected, or at least played down, the caste system. Of the sixty-
three Nayanar saints only a few were Brahmins. Mostly they were traders
and peasants (vellalas), people of such low caste as washermen, potters,
fishermen, hunters and toddy tappers; in addition, there were a few kings
and princes and also a woman among them. One of the few Brahmins thus
honoured was Sundaramurti, who married a temple dancer and a girl of
the Vellala caste. With the characteristic simplicity of Bhakti writings, the
Periya Puranam reports how Shiva had to mediate between the two jealous
wives of Sundaramurti—a task to which the god applied himself without
pride or prejudice.
Brahmins did not find it easy to accept Bhakti mysticism as an integral
part of Hinduism. Thus the Periya Puranam tells an interesting story about a
Brahmin whom the Chola king appointed as priest of one of the great
temples. On returning from a day of dealing with the crowd of Bhakti
devotees, this Brahmin tells his wife: ‘When the god appeared in public today,
I also went to worship him. But as people of all castes thronged around him I
got polluted and I must at first take a bath before performing my rites here at
home.’^2 But at night the priest dreamed of Shiva, who told him that all the
townspeople were his divine bodyguards. Next day everybody appeared to
the Brahmin as divine, and he was ashamed of his prejudice.
It is typical of the Bhakti tradition that this Brahmin was included
among the Nayanar saints. First, Shiva had appeared to him. Second, he
had repented the old prejudice that Brahmins would become polluted by
contact with the masses when serving as temple priests. (The Mahabharata
tells us that Brahmins serving in temples were considered to be the
‘Chandalas’—low-caste untouchables—among the Brahmins.)
Brahmins living at royal courts or in pure Brahmin villages (agrahara)
could afford to look down upon temple priests and could also disregard
the Bhakti movement for some time. Although the Nambudiri Brahmin
landlords of Malabar obviously remained unaffected, in most parts of