Land of Lime

Do you say you act not?
There lies the act!

Do you say think not?
There lies your thought!

Do you say you’ve forgotten
What you have known?
there’s knowledge and forgetfulness!

Do you say that Linga
Is absorbed in your anga?
Even there is anga!
Do you say you are
Divorced from the flesh?
There is the taint of sense!

Do you know ‘I am I’?
Then you are you!

How, then, did you forget
what you have known?

If there is one in whom
All knowledge is lost,
All ignorance has ceased,
I know it’s none other
Than Ajaganna, my brother!

Muktayakka’s challenge to Allama Prabhu’s advaitin, non-duality is one of the fascinating episodes in medieval Kannada imagination. In the fourth edition of Sunyasampadane, the canonical Virasaiva text edited by Gulura Siddavirannodeya, there is a description of the meeting between Allama and Muktayakka. We don’t know whether historical Allama and Muktayakka actually met but this is a significant moment in the Virasaiva history. Mystical vacanakara Allama, who has realized that there is no difference between Siva and Jiva as well as Linga (symbol) and anga (body) meets Muktayakka as he embarks on a jourey to help Saiva devotees in their spiritual journey. Muktayakka has just lost her brother and teacher, Ajaganna and is griefstricken. Allama offers an advaitin (intellectual) solution to Muktayakka and asks whether she should grieve when the self (of her brother) has gone back to Self. The above vacana is Muktayakka’s response pointing out the duality in Allama’s own argument.

Let us consider the entire episode and Allama’s somewhat lame, inadequate (at least in my view) some other time. In the meanwhile, Muktayakka’s hauning questions occupy our mind.

Translation of this vacana from the 1965 edition of Sunyasampadane, edited and translated by Menezes, Angadi et al and published by Karnataka University.