No place for immoral power

One day, in the valley of the Seven Hills, Maadeva lay on a rock. Half of his flowing matted hair was spread as a mattress, with the rest of it covering him like a blanket. Two wrathful deities, who were carrying pots filled with the milk of tigers and bears for Shravana, the king of Bankapura, walked in front of him. He asked them, “Can I have some milk?” They refused haughtily. Angered by it, Maadeva tied them up and kicked their pots. He then decided to visit the king.

Shravana was a mighty king. The very earth was in his hands. After undertaking a harsh penance, he had got a powerful boon from Shiva. With the newly acquired powers, he stormed the celestial abode and took the three hundred crore gods captive. An alarmed Brahma visited him to plead for their release. Hugely amused, Shravana replied, “Dear Lord Brahma, I’ve made Lord Shani my cot. Goddess Ideyamma has become the mattress. Only a pillow was missing.” He then seized Brahma and made him his pillow. The arrogant king set his eyes on Kailasa, too. A terrified Shiva turned himself into a stone to conceal himself. Shravana took his consort, Parvati, captive instead. He also seized Lakshmi and Saraswathi and made them his servants in the palace. The Goddess of Fire was already working as a cook. Kangolli Mallappa was a sweeper while Vishnu was entrusted with reading the almanac. And Ganga herself washed the king’s feet daily.

When Maadeva appeared in his court, Shravana asked him for his name. The visitor let him know. Mishearing it as “Maadaari,” he took him to be an untouchable cobbler. He asked Maadeva to make him a pair of leather sandals: he wished to wear them while visiting his wives.

Maadeva went to see Haralayya, a cobbler and a great devotee of Shiva, in Kalyana. Haralayya greeted him, “Sharanu!” Maadeva said, “Sharanu! Sharanu!” On seeing that a superior Guru had greeted him twice, Haralayya anxiously asked how he could make amends for what he had done. Maadeva said: “I need a pair of sandals. They have to be made with human skin and the soles need to be filled with lac and chillies.” Ever a man of his word, Haralayya didn’t hesitate to kill his wife, Kalyanamma, to procure the skin for the sandals. Moved by their devotion, Maadeva brought her back to life afterwards.

Maadeva took the sandals to Shravana. He suggested that he wear them in the presence of all the Gods. Shravana agreed. All the captive gods followed him as he made his way to the rock where the sandals had been placed. “When you slip your feet inside,” Maadeva advised, “imagine you are stepping on an enemy’s chest.” Putting on the new sandals, Shravana stamped his feet repeatedly. The sandals burst into flames. “Did you want to kill me, Maadaari? I’ll destroy you now!” the king cried loudly. The frightened gods scattered everywhere. But Lord Maadeva stood where he was. Becoming bigger and bigger, he tore out a large tree from the ground and used it as a crutch as he crushed Shravana’s head with his foot. At his behest, the Goddess of Fire burnt down the king’s palace.

An allegory of the human lust for domination and its moral unacceptability, the episode found above punishes the king with death for his power games. Wielding power, it affirms indirectly, needs to be a moral affair. The story of King Shravana joins hundreds of other Indian stories that disapprove the limitless hankering after power. But it is distinct from them, too. Enslavement, for one, clearly appears a bad deed here. Besides, the leather sandals, the makers of which belong to the lowest of castes, find symbolic centrality as a means for ensuring justice in the story. The flame of the sandals is indeed a metaphor for the creativity of lower castes and tribes, which has let them evolve a distinct mythic world, a space of autonomy as well as of critique of the moral and aesthetic values of dominant communities.

My narration of the King Shravana episode draws from three different versions of the major folk epic, Male Madeshwara Kavya, compiled respectively by J S Paramashivaiah, P K Rajashekhar and K Keshavan Prasad. The hugely popular epic from the hilly regions of the southern tip of Karnataka recounts the struggles of Madeshwara, a 14th century Saiva saint, to establish his faith.