Transgressing the Boundaries: Avudai Akkal, an Advaitic Seer

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) The brightest star in the sky of Advaita Vedanta is the 18th century woman sage Avudai Akkal of Tamil Nadu, henceforth referred to as Akka, who used the mode of song to expound Vedantic philosophy to women in general, and Brahmin widows in particular, having personally experienced the oppression and humiliation to which they were subjected. The brilliant metaphorical play in her compositions weaves together the two fundamental requirements for the practice of Vedanta: viveka, discrimination between the Real and the unreal, using systematic self-inquiry as a methodological tool; and vairagya, dispassion or withdrawal from all things one is familiar with and attaches to (house, family, progeny, property, possessions, work domain, identity, community etc.). Both practices, viveka (which includes formal instruction in methods of spiritual inquiry) and vairagya (renunciation particularly of householder status), were considered unsuitable and strictly prohibited for women. In traditional male-dominated households, women were permitted to follow the path of bhakti, devotion involving the personalized worship of deities, as long as the ritual practices did not encroach upon or compromise the fulfillment of women's family obligations. This domesticated spiritual aspiration was generally approved for women, whereas for any woman to fearlessly claim the path of vairagya (a complete and permanent relinquishing of household and family bonds in the traditional manner of male renunciates through the millennia, upheld as a classical ideal), as Akka did, amounted to a threatening inversion, as well as a profound violation of all the prevalent personal and social codes of Brahmin patriarchy. Avudai Akkal communicated the Vedantic truths that lead ordinary mortals to the path to liberation. Her are simple, direct, uncompromising, intense and profound. They are composed in simple spoken Tamil, carrying the Advaitic message of sarvatmabhava (seeing all in one's own self or seeing one's own self in all), and the eternal bliss of final liberation. The are public, addressing the female community. For over two hundred years, Akka' s were sung, circulated and preserved for posterity by women, especially widows, who gained immense solace, comfort and knowledge from the lyrical compositions, and from the awareness that the sage herself had undergone the grim life of a child-widow prior to initiation by her spiritual master, Tiruvisainallur Shridhara Venkatesa Ayyawal.3 Akka draws upon folk tradition for her imagery, and includes singularly feminine tropes/motifs/frame stories as a conduit for the transmission of Vedanta. She thus moves away from the prescribed tradition in which, conventionally, Vedanta texts may utilize examples, metaphors, parables, etc. in a particular way to describe the Reality which otherwise cannot be bound within the parameters of language. The normative mode of Vedanta scholars is to use erudite discourse that has a standard format wherein they state and critique/counter their opponents' position prior to establishing their own argument. The great metaphysician and philosopher Shankaracharya is a classic example here. The authence for such debate is a select one, and the assumption is that it is already informed about all other schools of philosophy and the narrative strategies of the texts. Akka's literary feat is that she brings the abstract philosophy of Vedanta into the existential realm through a unique mode of vernacular poesis, thus enabling it to be assimilated within the deshi or little tradition. The fact that she chooses to compose not formal written verses in chaste Tamil (chenntamilz) but instead rendered songs that circulate orally (up to the present day), suggests her commitment to making the lofty principles of Vedanta accessible to all serious aspirants. This also orients her work toward the democratic tradition of Bhakti, where saint-poets completely rejected class paradigms and used dialect in their compositions, sung to the public in a spirit of ardent non-discrimination. …