Abstract
The Avali Silūk (The Ultimate Song) and the Kāfir Bodh (The Wisdom of the Infidels) are lesser-known yogic granths, or treatises, in the early modern North Hindustani Nāth literary tradition. Erased from the modern literary canon in the mid-twentieth century, these multilingual teachings are crucial to understanding how the Nāth Yogīs conceptualized their complex relationships with Muslim communities around the time of the Nāth sampradāy’s foundation. Although the better-known Sabadī (The Sacred Utterances) attributed to Guru Gorakhnāth frequently speaks of the porous religious identity of early modern North Hindustani Nāth Yogīs, the Avali Silūk and the Kāfir Bodh are the only two known discourses that highlight Nāth Yogī engagement with Islamic publics from a Nāth point of view. This article examines these teachings, explores possible motives for their erasure in the modern printed canon, and reconsiders how the Nāth Yogīs expressed their identity and relationship with Muslim publics in early modern Hindustan.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Ahmad Asif (2020) argues that before modernity, the term “Hindustan” was used by historians to represent the areas now known as Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. It represents a political area where people consider themselves a political collective called Hindustani. I similarly employ the term Hindustan, shifting away from the colonial and modern terminology often applied to this region in premodern times.
In this article, I mostly follow the method for the romanization of vowels and consonants of Devanāgarī as put forward by R. S. McGregor. I do not include the final a, which is inherent in Sanskrit pronunciation but not in Hindi pronunciation. Where there is scholarly precedent such as for Gorakhbānī, I elide the inherent a between some consonants, but throughout the transliterations of the rest of the text, I have kept it intact. However, I have changed the Devanāgarī pha in Kāphir to a fa when I specifically refer this word as the title of this Nāth teaching, the Kāfir Bodh; and when I use the word kāphir in the teachings, I keep the original spelling of the word with a pha (फ). Additionally, I change the letter ṣha (ष) in the teachings to kha (ख) when it is employed to represent this syllable.
I am indebted to many people for my access to this manuscript. I am grateful to Winand M. Callawaert for making the manuscript available and Jaroslav Strnad for digitizing it and making the digital version available to me.
The teachings on these folios are written on both the recto and verso sides of each sheet of what is likely regionally produced paper. In 2014, I was fortunate to view the pothī at its home in Jaipur. However, I was not permitted to closely inspect the material that the text was written on.
Idva and Karail are towns in modern-day Rajasthan that were important monastic centers for the Dādūpanth.
A complete list of the folios, writings, and authors in the extant manuscript can be found in Horstmann 2021.
The Avali Silūk and the Kāfir Bodh both contain twenty lines per folio in their teachings. I have not been able to examine all of MS 3190.
Due to the nature of the black-and-white digitized manuscript, I cannot definitively assert these are the exact colors of ink employed. However, the lighter color in the folios appears to be the same red ink used throughout the codex for the titles and verse dividers rubrication.
The granth following the Avali Silūk is the Mahādev Gorakh Saṃvād and the Kāfir Bodh is the Gyān Cautīsā, both attributed to Gorakhnāth. Teachings attributed to other Nāth Yogī Siddhas do not begin until folio 571 verso.
As I will show, these teachings are not only in Hindavī but also include easy Persian in their composition.
A discussion of the differences between sandhyābhāṣā and ulaṭbāṃsī can be found in Hess (1983: 336–37).
According to Mallinson (2011: 409), it is probable that this historical Gorakhnāth lived sometime between the ninth and twelfth centuries.
Although I was not able to locate the Kāfir Bodh attributed to Kabīr in the manuscript tradition, I was able to find an early twentieth-century printed copy edited by Svāmī Śrī Yugalānanda. Yugalānanda, according to Friedlander (2012: 49–50), was an important figure in the collection and publication of the works attributed to Kabīr. Interestingly, within his publications attributed to Kabīr, Yugalānanda includes the Muhammad Bodh and the Kāfir Bodh (Kabīr 1980: 5–31). While the Muhammad Bodh does not appear to overlap with the Kāfir Bodh or the Avali Silūk of the Nāth tradition, the Kāfir Bodh attributed to Kabīr integrates verses from both Nāth teachings into its work. Kabīr’s Śrī Granth Kāfir Bodh contains the Kāfir Bodh from the Nāth tradition and adds subsections entitled “Ath Khān Muhammad Alī Pādśāh kā Prabodh” (The Teaching of Emperor Muhammad Alī), “Ath Band” (The Locks), and “Phiriśtoṃ kā Byān” (The Chapter on Angels) (Kabīr 1980: 26–31). Examining the “Muhammad Alī Pādśāh kā Prabodh” and “Ata Band,” one can see that combined the two construct a redaction of what is known in the North Hindustani Nāth manuscript tradition as the Avali Silūk. Crucially, although this text is attributed to Kabīr, verses in both texts point to their close connection and possible recitation by Nāth Yogīs. For example, in addition to authorship of this text, at times, being attributed to Zindā Pīr or Hājjī Ratannāth, the Śrī Granth Kāfir Bodh attributed to Kabīr in the Yugalānanda edition also includes a verse that is found in MS 3190 and suggests that it is a Nāth composition. The verse states, in nearly exact words as MS 3190’s Kāfir Bodh, “hindu musalmāṃ khudākebande, hamto yogī (kisī kā) narākhechande” (Hindus and Muslims are servants of god, We Yogīs do not tend to others’ verses of praise) (Kabīr 1980: 27; my translation).
MSS 12 (1741–43 VS) and 67 (nineteenth century VS) located at the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute in Jaipur and MS 371 (1715 CE) located at the Wellcome Library in London also attribute the Kāfir Bodh to Gorakhnāth in a similar way.
The lack of an official chāp in the Avali Silūk is the same in other manuscripts I have studied. This said, both Vidyābhūṣaṇ-granth-saṃgrah-sūcī (page 21), located at the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, and Horstmann (2021: 214) also ascribe the texts to Gorakhnāth.
The orthography for “pa” (प) and “ya” (य) in this manuscript appear at times to be used for one another. In writing the name of Zindā Pīr, the scribe consistently uses a “pa” (प).
Ernst’s (2016) work surrounding Sūfī and Yogī interactions, as well as Persian and Arabic translations of yogic texts, illustrates translations between Nāth Yogī preceptors and Sūfī prophets. The sixteenth-century Persian translation of the yogic work Amṛtakuṇḍ, or “The Pool of Nectar,” composed by Shaikh Muhammad Ghawth Gwāliorī, exemplifies how some Yogīs and Sūfīs in early modern Hindustan equated and translated their spiritual leaders into different religious contexts. Ernst cites Ghawth, who writes, “Their religious leader (imam) is Gorakh, and some say that Gorakh is an expression for Khizr (peace on our Prophet and on him)” (2016: 155).
The names of these two texts and a few brief Hindavī verses of the Kāfir Bodh and the Avali Silūk are included in the printed literature published by the Gorakhnāth Temple Press in Gorakhpur. Three publications sold at the temple—Gorakhcarit (Śrīvāstav 1996: 139), Gorakh Mahimā (Gosvāmī 1999: 126), and Nāthsiddhcaritāmṛt (Śrīvāstav 1993: 250)—cite modern renditions of the Kāfir Bodh but attribute it to Ratannāth. Śrīvāstav’s Nāthsiddhcartāmṛt (1993: 249–50) also cites Baṛthvāl’s commentary on these texts in the introduction to Gorakhbānī.
I am extremely grateful to Pranav Prakash for sharing his digitized copies of Kāfir Bodh’s MSS 565, 566, 567, 568, 569, and 570.
Digby cites a couplet on Quddūs from the Rushdnāma and composed in rekhtā. It states, “sadq rabbar sabr tosha dost manzil dil rafiq, satta nagari dharma raja joga marga nirmala / Sincerity is the guide; patience is the provision for the journey; the friend our destination; the heart our companion; truth is the city; righteousness its King; Yoga the pure road” (1975: 66).
Khizr is associated with a variety of names throughout Asian communities. In addition to the names Uderolāl, Jhūlelāl, Amarlāl, Zindā Pīr, Daryā Shāh, and Shaikh Tāhir that are mentioned by Briggs (1938), Khizr is also known as al-Khiḍr, Khezr, Hizir, Khidirnabi, Khidirnabi-Khidirilyas (Tovmasyan 2008: 195).
While Khizr’s name is not explicitly mentioned in the Muslim holy book, his spiritual importance is widely accepted across different Muslim communities (Suvorova 2004: 167) and, according to Wolper, Islam considers him as “one of four figures––including Jesus, Elijah, and Idris––endowed with the gift of immortality” (2011: 122).
See footnote 16 above.
Ernst states, “In the biographical account of Mu`in al-Din Chishti, his arrival in India is described as the result of divine command issued to him by God from the Ka`ba in Mecca. He consequently arrived in Ajmer.…Such was his power that the deity (dev) worshipped in the local temple converted to Islam and became his disciple. Then the yogi Ajaypal arrived with 1,500 followers, but his numerous magical assaults on the Sufi were all rendered ineffective by the saint’s power. In what becomes a typical episode in this kind of story, the yogi then took to the air and flew away on his deerskin, but the Sufi sent his shoes up in the air to beat the yogi into humble submission, and so the yogi returned and converted to Islam, becoming a disciple of Mu‘in al-Din and at the same time gaining the boon of immortality” (2016: 291).
It should be noted that both texts are transcribed in Devanāgarī.
These secondary pads are often omitted in later texts, perhaps indicating that they were no longer sung as much.
While the orthography of this verb appears to end in a pa (प), I believe that it is meant to represent a ya (य) and, therefore, romanize this syllable as such. There are two reasons I have come to this conclusion. The first is due to the use of a pa (प) for ya (य) in the writing of the name Zynda Pīr, as discussed above. Second, after having consulted five nineteenth-century manuscripts of the Avali Silūk at Maharaja Mansingh Pustak Prakash (MMPP) in Jaipur (June 30, 2023), I have noted that two of these manuscripts, Hindi MSS 540 and 545, have written this verb as hasi (हसि). I suggest that the shift from the semivowel ya to a vowel i is more likely than a shift from the syllable pa. It should be noted that in the remaining three manuscripts examined at MMPP the verb here is written as either hasp/hasy (हस्प/हस्य) or has (हस). I am grateful to Mahendra Singh Tanwar and the staff at the MMPP for granting me access to these manuscripts.
My gratitude to Murad Khan Mumtaz for alerting me to the idea that the mihrāb is considered the heart of every mosque.
Maśarū is said to be a fabric that is made of cotton inside and silk outside. Muslim women wear this, which is “permitted” because the cotton touches the skin, not the silk. Its use is described in the Āīn-i-Akbarī. The idea is that wearing luxury objects next to one’s skin is usually considered impious for good Muslims.
Ratan is also, at times, called Bābā Ratan Hājjī on account of the belief that during his life, he traveled to Mecca and met the prophet Muhammad. For more on Bābā Ratan/Ratannāth, see Boullier and Khan 2009.
The term baṃd (bandh) is used in this text. However, it is likely meant to describe what is commonly known as the chakras, or wheels, “distributed along the central channel of the body” (Mallinson and Singelton 2017: 175).
To the best I can ascertain, vo––like auṃ––is a word that is difficult to finitely define. However, it is commonly used in the beginning of Dādūpanthī texts, sometimes before auṃ and sometimes in place of auṃ.
References
Ahmad Asif, Manan. 2020. The Loss of Hindustan and the Invention of India. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Alam, Muzaffar. 2004. The Languages of Political Islam in India, c. 1200–1800. New Delhi: Permanent Black.
Baṛthvāl, Pītāmbardatt. 1946 [1942]. “Bhūmikā.” In Gorakhnāth, Gorakhbānī (ed. Pītāmbardatt Baṛthvāl), 11–20. Prayag: Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan.
Barthwal, P. D. 1978. Traditions of Indian Mysticism Based Upon Nirguna School of Hindi Poetry. New Delhi: Heritage Press.
Bouillier, Véronique and Dominique-Sila Khan. 2009. “Ḥājji Ratan or Bābā Ratan’s Multiple Identities.” Journal of Indian Philosophy 37, 6: 559–95.
Briggs, George Weston. 1938. Gorakhnāth and the Kanphata Yogīs. Calcutta: YMCA Publishing House.
Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Callewaert, Winand M. and Bart Op de Beeck. 1991. Devotional Hindī Literature: A Critical Edition of the Pañc Vāṇī or Five Works of Dādū, Kābir, Nāmdev, Raidās, Hardās with the Hindī Songs of Gorkhnāth and Sundardās, and a Complete Word-index. Volume 2: Global Index. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.
Cātak, Govind. 1978. “Bhūmikā.” In Govind Cātak, ed., Ḍokṭar Pītāmbaradatt Barthvāl ke Śreṣṭ Nibandh. New Delhi: Takṣaśilā Prakāśan.
Dalmia, Vasudha. 1997. The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśhchandra and Nineteenth-century Banaras. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Digby, Simon. 1975. “ ‘Abd Al-Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537 A.D.): The Personality and Attitudes of a Medieval Indian Sufi.” Medieval India: A Miscellany 3: 1–66.
Digby, Simon. 2000. Wonder-Tales of South Asia: Translated from Hindi, Urdu, Nepali and Persian. New Delhi: Manohar Publications.
Djurdjevic, Gordon and Shukdev Singh, trans. 2019. Sayings of Gorakhnath: Annotated Translatin of Gorakh Bānī. New York: Oxford University Press.
Dvivedī, Hajārīprasād, ed. 2008 [1957]. Nāth Siddhoṃ kī Bāniyāṃ. Varanasi: Kaśī Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā.
Ernst, Carl W. 2016. Refractions of Islam in India: Situation Sufism and Yoga. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Faruqi, Shamsur Rahman. 2003. “A Long History of Urdu Culture, Part 1: Naming and Placing a Literary Culture.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, 805–63. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ferg, Erica. 2020. Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean. New York: Routledge.
Friedlander, Peter. 2012. “Kabīr and the Print Sphere: Negotiating Identity.” Thesis Eleven 113, 1: 45–56.
Gandhi, Supriya. 2020. The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Gorakhnāth. 1946 [1942]. Gorakhbānī (ed. Pītāmbardatt Baṛthvāl). Prayag: Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan.
Gorakhnāth. 1978. Gorakhbānī (ed. Rāmlāl Śrīvastvā). Gorakhpur: Śrī Gorakṣanāth Mandir.
Gosvāmī, Mahendranāth. 1999. Gorakh Mahimā. Gorakhpur: Śrī Gorakṣanāth Mandir.
Goswamy, B. N. and J. S. Grewal, eds. 1967. The Mughals and Jogis of Jakhbar. Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study.
Habib, Irfan. 1982. An Atlas of The Mug̲ẖal Empire: Political and Economic Maps with Detailed Notes, Bibliography and Index. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Hatley, Shaman. 2007. “Mapping the Esoteric Body in the Islamic Yoga of Bengal.” History of Religions 46, 4: 351–68.
Hawley, John Stratton. 1984. “Author and Authority in the Bhakti Poetry of North India.” The Journal of Asian Studies 47, 2: 269–90.
Hess, Linda. 1983. “The Cow is Sucking at the Calf’s Teat: Kabir’s Upside-Down Language.” History of Religions 22, 4 (“Devotional Religion in India”): 313–37.
Horstmann, Monika. 2019. “Nāthyoga in the Dādūpanth: The Ādibodhasiddhāntagranta-yogaśāstra Attributed to Mohan Mevāṛau.” In Maya Burger and Nadia Cattoni, eds., Early Modern India: Literatures and Images, Texts and Languages, 219–37. Heidelberg: CrossAsia-eBooks.
Horstmann, Monika. 2021. Bhakti and Yoga: A Discourse in Seventeenth-Century Codices. New Delhi: Primus Books.
Irani, Ayesha A. 2021. The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation, and the Making of Bengali Islam. New York: Oxford University Press.
Kabīr. 1980 [1962]. Śrī Muhammdbodh aur Kāfirbodh (ed. Svāmī Śrī Yugalānanda). Mumbai: Śrī Veṇkaṭeśvar Press.
King, Christopher R. 1974. “The Nagari Pracharini Sabha (Society for the Promotion of the Nagari Script and Language) of Benares 1893–1914: A Study in the Social and Political History of the Hindi Language.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
King, Christopher R. 1994. One Language, Two Scripts: The Hindi Movement in the Nineteenth Century in North India. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lal, Ruby. 2018. Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
Mallinson, James. 2011. “Nāth Sampradāya.” In Knut A. Jacobsen, ed., and Helene Basu, Angelika Malinar, Vasudha Narayanan, assoc. eds., Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, 3: 409–28. Leiden: Brill.
Mallinson, James and Mark Singelton, trans. and eds. 2017. Roots of Yoga. London: Penguin Books.
Marrewa-Karwoski, Christine. 2012. “Paradoxical Authorship: Tracing Authority in the Gorakhbāṇī.” Acta Poetica 33, 2: 167–80.
Marrewa-Karwoski, Christine. 2022. “Listen, O King: Lessons on True Power in Early Modern Nath Hindavi Poetry.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 42, 2: 334–40.
McGregor, Stewart. 2003. “The Progress of Hindi, Part 1: The Development of a Transregional Idiom.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, 912–58. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Moin, A. Azfar. 2012. The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam. New York: Columbia University Press.
Nair, Shankar. 2014. “Sufism as Medium and Method of Translation: Mughal Translations of Hindu Texts Reconsidered.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 43, 3: 390–410.
Novetzke, Christian Lee. 2003. “Divining an Author: The Idea of Authorship in an Indian Religious Tradition.” History of Religions 42, 3: 213–42.
Orsini, Francesca. 2002. The Hindi Public Sphere, 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Orsini, Francesca. 2014. “Traces of a Multilingual World: Hindavi in Persian Texts.” In Francesca Orsini and Samira Sheikh, eds., After Timur Left: Culture and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century North India, 411–44. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2001. “New Intellectuals in Seventeenth-century India.” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 38, 1: 3–31.
Pollock, Sheldon. 2006. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pritchett, Frances W. 2003. “A Long History of Urdu Literary Culture, Part 2: Histories, Performances, and Masters.” In Sheldon Pollock, ed., Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia, 864–911. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rahman, Tariq. 2011. From Hindi to Urdu: A Social and Political History. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
Rai, Amrit. 1984. A House Divided: The Origin and Development of Hindi/Hindavi. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Śrīvāstav, Rāmlāl, ed. 1993. Nāthsiddhacaritāmṛt. Gorakhpur: Śrī Gorakṣanāth Mandir.
Śrīvāstav, Rāmlāl, ed. 1996. Gorakhcarit. Gorakhpur: Śrī Gorakṣanāth Mandir.
Stewart, Tony K. 2001. “In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter Through Translation Theory.” History of Religions 40, 3: 260–87.
Strnad, Jaroslav. 2016. “A Note on the Analysis of Two Early Rājasthānī Dādūpanthī Manuscripts.” Asiatiche Studien/Études asatiques 70, 2: 545–69.
Śukla, Rāmcandra. 1948 [1929]. Hindī Sāhitya kā Itihās. Varanasi: Kaśī Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā.
Suvorova, Anna. 2004 [1999]. Muslim Saints of South Asia: The Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries (trans. M. Osama Faruqi). New York: Routledge.
Thackston, Wheeler M., trans. and ed. 1999. The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of India. New York: Oxford University Press.
Tovmasyan, Hasmik. 2008. “St. Sargis and Al-Khidr: A Common Saint for Christians and Muslims.” ARAM Periodical 20, 1: 195–202.
Williams, Tyler. 2018. “‘If the Whole World Were Paper…’: A History of Writing in the North Indian Vernacular.” History and Theory 57, 4 (“Writing as Action, Situation, and Trace”): 81–101.
Wolper, Ethel Sara. 2011. “Khiḍr and the Changing Frontiers of the Medieval World.” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 17, 1–2: 120–46.
Acknowledgments
Reading and translating these texts was only possible with the help of many colleagues and teachers. I am particularly indebted to Murad Khan Mumtaz and Dalpat Rajpurohit for their time and suggestions while reading these previously untranslated works with me. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 45th Annual Conference of South Asia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 20–23, 2016 (“Under Erasure: A Voice of the Nāth Yogis in Early-modern Competitions of Spiritual Superiority”) and at the 13th International Conference on Early Modern Literatures in North India, University of Warsaw, July 18–22, 2018 (“Reading the Avali Silūk and the Kāfir Bodh: Communicating Similarity and Difference in Two Nāth Hybrid Texts”). Shireen Hamza, Monika Horstmann, Pasha M. Khan, Rachel Fell McDermott, and Andrew Ollett also provided valuable feedback on previous drafts and translations. This article is in memory of Allison Busch.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Marrewa-Karwoski, C. Voices from the Margins: Early Modern Nāth Yogī Teachings for Muslim Publics. Hindu Studies 27, 303–330 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-023-09341-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-023-09341-6