Appar Was An Ecology Hero Before It Was Cool To Be One

The story of Thirunavukkarasar, a seventh-century Saivite saint, is unique in many ways. Though born in a Saivite family with the name Marulneekiyar (one who dispels darkness), for most of his life he was a Jain monk and scholar. His Jain name was Dharmasena.

Jainism was known for its strong negation of all sensory pleasures and for practising an extreme form of non-violence (ahimsa).

One of the traditional accounts of Thirunavukkarasar getting the ultimate vision – the darshan (sight) of Kailash – stands unparalleled in the history of human spiritual odyssey.

According to traditions, Appar was very old when he decided that he should have the vision of Kailash. So he started the journey. The journey was arduous. The octogenarian saint walked with determination. But his body was old and started yielding to the hardships of the journey. His bones started eroding and at one point he could walk no more. Now with his hands, he started crawling. His arms started bleeding. At this point came another Saivite seer on the lonely path. He asked Appar why he was in pain. Appar said he was going to Kailash. The seer then advised Appar to return. Appar had already aged and even if he were young and could reach Kailash, there was no guarantee that he would be able to see with his human eyes the divine vision there. Though discouraged by the seer, Appar remained determined. “Either I am getting the vision or I am done with this physical body,” he declared to the seer and crawled forward.

Then the seer disappeared, and there stood Shiva.

He commanded Appar to stand and – lo and behold! – Appar could stand on his feet, which had become stronger again. Now Appar demanded that he be given the divine vision of Kailash. Pleased with Appar’s determination, Shiva created a pond nearby and told him to take a dip in it. As he took a dip in the water and emerged from it, he saw that he was transported to a tank in Thiruvaiyaru – a temple town in Chola province. And there he saw the grand vision of Shiva-Shakti in Kailash.

And what was that?

To the One, adorned with the beautiful crescent moon,
With whom inseparable is the Daughter of the Mountain,
To Him they come for worship, with praise, flowers and water;
And I enter His shrine after them;
Reaching Thiruvaiyaar with no footprints left behind
I see the love consumed male elephant along with his mate
Seeing His (dancing) feet auspicious,
I see the unknowable the unseen!

Starting with the elephant and his mate, Appar sang 10 verses describing his vision of Kailash. Next, he described seeing the hen and the rooster, the cuckoo and its mate, the swan and his mate, the peacock and peahen, the deer and its lover, the blackbuck antelope and his consort, the stork and his mate, the parrot and its mate, and, at last, the young bull and the cow.

For each of these pairs, he sang and ended the verse with the lines: Seeing His (dancing) feet auspicious, I see the unknowable the unseen!

The verses are brave and unparalleled. They show how the yogic vision transcends narrow frameworks like the Freudian ones, which the Western psychology is tentatively building now. More importantly, Appar shows that the vision of Kailash can be had here and now. The divine surrounds us in each and every act of creation that happens around us. From the primordial sankya pair of purusha and prakrithi to the organic life forms that have evolved on this planet, the dance is there always, waiting for one to discover. It is the ceaseless dance of Shiva and Shakti. Appar had spent most decades of his life as a Jain whose mainstream traditions considered sex as, at best, a necessary evil. Further, though Jainism allowed monkhood for women, there were strong debates as to whether a woman could attain liberation in the female body itself.

Having been raised in such a religion, Appar now sang about his vision of the dance of divine, which he saw in every mating creature. It was the life-affirming spirituality that encompassed all aspects of life and infused them all with the divine process. What’s more, Appar equated this with the ultimate vision one has at Kailash. Transcending the reverence for life, Appar saw in biological processes the dance of Shiva – cutting across barriers of species.

The cosmic dance of Shiva has been providing symbolism and metaphor for various phenomena we observe in nature. As science deepens our understanding of the macrocosom and microcosom, the canvas of his dance expands and there is multiplicity of the stages of his dance – the levels of reality. After Indophile scholar Ananda Coomaraswamy made it popular, scientists like Illya Prigogine, Fritjof Capra, and Carl Sagan, to name a few, have used the image to describe the vision of reality that their domains of knowledge unveiled. However, these have been in the realms of atomic physics, molecular chemistry, and cosmology.

Eminent philosopher of ecology, Henryk Skolimowski from Poland, who died just a month back, realised the importance of the dance of Shiva in the realm of the biocosm. He wrote:

Skolimowski was right when he used the dance of Shiv as eco-yoga. We are thankful to him for providing an Indic-centric vision statement for a global ecological movement. However, he was wrong when he said this was a new face of Shiva. Actually, 13 centuries before Skolimowski, Appar had had this vision of Shiva's dance as the uniting mystery that runs through all biological existence and the dynamic ecological matrix. The vision that Appar got is shown in the sculpture in Darasuram temple, which was built by Raja Raja II in the twelfth century.

In the first panel, one can see Shiva (and Parvati, not shown here) in the form of a seer and his wife, he looks at the crawling Appar and makes him stand on his feet. Then, they dissuade him to give up this futile attempt to go to Kailash. In the second panel, they tell him to take a holy dip in a water body and then Appar sees himself teleported to Thiruvaiyaar temple. In the next panel, the Kailash Vision of Shiva-Shakti that Appar had through the various animal forms starting from the elephant couple, is shown. Note the reverence with which Appar stands as indicated by the folded hands - all couples cutting across species barrier become the manifestation of Shiva-Parvati.

The hymns of Appar and the Saivite saints, as also in the case of Vaishnava Azhwars, defy the classification that they are just Bhakti literature which ushered in a revival of Vedic streams. Far from that, they articulated a renewed Vedic vision of life. This vision was down to earth and also sacred. It was devotional as well as mystical. It sang the transcendental praise as well as the immanent presence of the Divine. It is a unique heritage that can grow with us - guiding us, providing us with insights and values. As Swami Ranganathananda said it aptly about Indian culture in general, we too can say about Appar that he sang the eternal values for an ever changing humanity. The only question is are we receptive to their songs?

(Yesterday was Chitra-Sathayam - the traditional day of Appar Swamigal merging with Shiva)