Appendix 1 - Some Mystical aspects of the Kashmiri Folktale Akanandun

[By Geetika Kaw Kher]

Folklore reflects folk values and folk beliefs which are interactive and integral components of culture and ethos of a people. Various genres of folklore like folktales, folksongs, ballads, oral epic, folk theatre and other forms essentially contain features that enrich social life with all their vivacity and variety. Kashmir has rich folkloric traditions that go back to centuries, sharing many pan-Indian traits and characteristics and yet retaining a distinct regional flavour. Today origins of several themes that appear in Kashmiri folklore forms have totally faded away from folk memory, while some themes have not survived in their original form, having undergone mutations and variations due to a number of undetermined factors.

While magic, mystery and the supernatural element form inseparable aspects of folklore, there are several folktales in Kashmiri, as in other Indian languages, which have themes and structures permeated by elements that lend themselves easily to allegorical interpretations and reveal a vast potential for “atemporal-mystical” meaning. Not the surface or literal meaning that can be baffling and confusing at times as it defies logical thinking, but the deeper message that may need semiotic tools to decode it. One such tale from Kashmir which has terribly fascinated me with its intriguing central motif of mystical restoration to life or renewal of life is the story of Akanandun. The story, which has a didactic aspect, has been told, retold, presented many times, hence I am focusing on the core of the story rather than the details which might have been added later.

Apart from the central motif the other recognizable one with which the story starts is that of an intense desire that people have for a male child. The anxiety to have a male heir to perpetuate the ancestral lineage is a most commonly discerned trait in patriarchal communities. There are stories about the absurd lengths that parents go to in order to have this desire fulfilled. In the story of Akanandun too we find Akanandun’s parents, who happen to be a king and a queen, desperate to have a son although they already have seven daughters, the number seven not being without symbolical significance. On their part, the daughters too are shown filled with intense longing to have a brother. It is at this psychological moment that the Jogi appears as if out of nowhere and making his crucial entry in the story, offers to grant them their wish, though not without a condition. They are unable to believe their ears, with the prospect of having a son so overwhelming them that they are prepared to do anything to have him. The Jogi knows their weaknesses, the intensity of their desperation, and elicits from them the promise that they will return the child bestowed on them through his miraculous powers, exactly twelve years after his birth. Without giving a second thought to the implication this could actually have, Akanandun’s parents, accept the Jogi’s condition. Delirious with joy at his birth, they rejoice and bring him up offering all the pleasures that they can provide, imagining the period of twelve years to be an eternity away.

Lost completely in the flow of happiness that the presence of their son brings to them, the royal couple tries to wish away the future. Probably the fear of losing the child may have lurked somewhere in their subconscious, but they do not let that come to the surface and hamper their joy. Once engrossed in the pleasures that they experience in boy’s company, they totally lose sight of the threat that looms over them because of the promise. But the Jogi does not forget; he remembers the promise very well and returns exactly at the stipulated time, demanding that the boy be returned to him. Suddenly they wake up as though from a dream. The reality of the Jogi’s appearance shatters their reverie and they beg the Jogi to spare the child and take whatever else he wants.

Here the story seems to highlight the aspect of “moha”. The couple and their seven daughters have grown extremely fond of the boy and they weep, wail and use every stratagem to invoke the Jogi’s sympathy. But the latter has given up the world and along with it all materialistic concerns. He remains unmoved, untouched by the extreme emotions displayed by the family and makes it plain that he will have nothing but the child. He harshly reminds them of their fateful promise. As the moment of realization of the actual implication of the promise dawns, gloom descends upon the minds of Akanandun’s parents. It is a state of unmitigated despair.

Greatly aggrieved and pained, the parents oblige with a heavy heart and call Akanandun, a young, energetic and handsome lad of 12 who has shown great promise in all the fields, asking him to go with the hard-hearted ascetic. But what follows is unimaginable horror, something worse than the worst of nightmares. The Jogi instead of taking the boy with him commands that he be cleansed and draped in new clothes. And when the child is ready, he takes him to a side and axes him in full view of his parents. How terrible it must have been for them to witness the gory act! But their horror does not end here. The Jogi starts cutting the boy’s body in small pieces and nonchalantly separates the flesh from the bones. This leaves the parents shell shocked but helpless. In front of them is their dear son, killed and chopped into pieces. Imagine the condition of the mother who was then ordered by the Jogi to wash the pieces of the meat and cook them as a dish. The fact that she is shown complying with such a gruesome order cannot be explained except in terms of faith and points to the awe and reverence with which such ascetics were held. Fear of a curse or the demonstration of his tremendous supernatural powers by the Jogi can be of course a plausible cause, but it is not out of fear alone that a mother can force herself to take such a horrible step. Somewhere, it implies a trust in the spiritual prowess of the Jogi who had given her the greatest happiness of her life. But he is shown going a step further in this drama of horrors. Crossing all limits, he commands her to taste the flesh to see if it is properly cooked and also to serve the dish in seven vessels and cover them with a white cloth. Again she complies, almost mechanically. But she can control her feelings no more when the ascetic asks her to call Akanandun to partake of his share of the horrible meal. She bursts into tears and says that in no way can this be possible for her. She cries her heart out, but the Jogi does not relent. There must have been something in the Jogi’s voice that makes her call her son, but she does so in most pitiful a voice—a wail of a lamenting mother on whom the extent of her loss has just dawned. But even as she is undergoing these extreme emotions, Akanandun comes rushing into the room and takes his place, ready to have the meal. Dazed and bewildered, the family can believe their eyes no more. They turn their questioning glances towards the Jogi, only to find no one there. The holy man has disappeared along with the seven vessels. There is nothing which can remind them of the dreadful act they had witnessed only moments back. Was it all unreal, an illusion, maya? Who was the Jogi in reality and what was the purpose of his testing them in this manner?

The story is full of macabre and violent imagery, suffused to the core with bibhatsa rasa, arousing tremendous jugupsa (disgust), yet I feel that somewhere it has a cleansing power. A catharsis of sorts is achieved by reading and sure enough by watching the story being enacted. The narrative takes us through different planes of emotion, increases our heartbeats, purges us of the emotions of pity and fear embedded in our psyche. On one hand it has its own value as a moving human story; on the other it offers us an outlet into the realm of the mysterious, of supernatural powers and miracles accessible only through faith. Probably this is why the narrative has had a great appeal for Kashmiri Sufi poets like Samad Mir, Ahad Zargar and others who have used it to illustrate their concept of tawakkul or submission before God’s wish–an important stage in their spiritual practice.

As it emerges, the Jogi is a central character in the story of Akanadun. What is of great significance is that he connects the folktale unmistakably with the pan-Indian tradition of a sect of renouncer ascetics who have passed into folklore from their origins as followers of the Nath sampradaya that was founded by the legendary Gorakh Nath or Gorakshanatha, probably in the 10^th century. Their beliefs and practices are largely associated with Shaivite asceticism and Buddhist Tantrik ideology, the word jogi being a derivative of Skt. yogi. Following Gorakh Nath’s teachings, the jogis practice various meditative and physical techniques to achieve self-realization. About Gorakh Nath, to whom these jogis trace their lineage, the legend goes as follows:

Once a devotee of Shiva desired offspring, so the god, at Parvati's intercession, gave him some ashes from his dhuni or fire and told him to make his wife eat them. His wife, however, was incredulous and did not comply but let the ashes fall on a heap of cow dung. Eventually the devotee found a child where the ashes had been thrown, and took it to Shiva, who said that the child will grow up to be a yogi, a great spiritual soul and will return back to him.

Jogi is the popular designation of Gorakh Nath’s followers, the adherents of the Nath cult. Their cult spread rapidly through many parts of India, especially in the north, and in popular thought they came to be associated with certain external trappings and peculiarities of behavior. Smeared with sacred ashes and wearing ochre robes and large earrings in split ears with a begging bowl in hand they went from village to village and town to town to beg for alms, fervently making utterances like “Alakh Niranjan” or invoking the name of Shiva. Stories and tales of their extraordinary spiritual powers and secret knowledge, believed to have been acquired by them through rigorous cultic practices and strict self-discipline, gathered volume and became a remarkable part of popular lore over time. The figure of the jogi with all his idiosyncrasies appeared persistently and ubiquitously in Sanskrit as well as regional literatures and various folklore genres of India. Although a renouncer of the world and worldly pleasures, he often interfered in the affairs of the householders to whom he went for alms, helping them to solve their problems or to have their mundane wishes fulfilled through his mysterious supernatural powers. These included, among other things, the powers to bestow a child, more often a son, to infertile couples and to restore the dead to life. In many folktales related to the Jogis, we see them performing miraculous feats in a matter of fact manner, which made them favourite characters of the common people.

Our Jogi in the Kashmiri tale of Akanandun too is endowed with these extraordinary powers and fits well with the general character of such ascetics in the pan-Indian Nath traditions. The tale has survived from submergence under the flood of Islamic religiohistorical themes probably because of its popularization by the Sufi poets, for whom, as pointed out earlier, it served as an illustration of concepts related to their spiritual practice. The Jogi features as a character in a few other Kashmiri folktales as well, but with only minor and peripheral roles to play. The power of restoration to or renewal of life that the Jogi demonstrates in the Akanadun story is its main motif. This motif is not, however, confined to the jogi lore alone, but is a cross-cultural one. It can be seen, for instance, in the well known Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac as the motif of resurrection. Gen 22 NIV states that God ordered Abraham to take his only son, Isaac, to the region of Mariah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering to Him.

A story related to the myth of resurrection is also found in Egyptian Myth of Osiris, the god of afterlife who was cut into pieces by his arch enemy Set and was brought back to life by his wife Isis. Isis collected all the body parts and arranged them in order and started singing a song while going around the pieces until her husband came back to life and later on came to be known as the “god of afterlife”.

One finds in these different stories a stress on faith and trust, which appears to be their point of intersection. Somewhere in our story of Akanandun too it is faith and trust of the family, especially the mother, in the Jogi that seem to have been tested. One sees here a willing submission to the wishes of someone who has blessed her with a son. But the story appears to go even beyond that. What the Jogi wants to demonstrate through his act of disappearance towards the end is that the nature of both life and death is illusory.

As Subhash Kak observes, the idea of paroksha or paradox, in Epic myths can be extended to folk literature too. In such narratives the moral ambiguity works like the hubris of Greek myth and drama, creating a space that is not quite in the realm of gods, although it is superhuman. The story of Akanandun has definitely a mystical message to convey at the allegorical level. This can be decoded only after studying the violent imageries in the tale in the light of their motivational factors and the elements it has in common with the popular lore related to the Jogi tradition in other regional languages of India.