Allama Prabhu - Poems

Poems

Allama Prabhu's poetic style has been described as mystic and cryptic, rich in paradoxes and inversions (bedagu mode), staunchly against any form of symbolism, occult powers (siddhis) and their acquisition, temple worship, conventional systems and ritualistic practices, and even critical of fellow Veerashaiva devotees and poets. However, all his poems are non-sectarian and some of them even use straight forward language. According to the Kannada scholar Shiva Prakash, Allama's poems are more akin to the Koans (riddles ) in the Japanese Zen tradition, and have the effect of awakening the senses out of complacency. Critic Joseph Shipley simply categorises Allama's poems as those of a "perfect Jnani" ("saint"). Some of Allama's poems are known to question and probe the absolute rejection of the temporal by fellow Veerashaiva devotees–even Basavanna was not spared. A poem of his mocks at Akka Mahadevi for covering her nudity with tresses, while flaunting it to the world at the same time, in an act of rejection of pleasures. The scholar Basavaraju compiled 1321 extant poems of Allama Prabhu in his work Allamana Vachana Chandrike (1960). These poems are known to cover an entire range, from devotion to final union with God. The poems give little information about Allama's early life and worldly experiences before enlightenment. In the words of the scholar Ramanujan, to a saint like Allama, "the butterfly has no memory of the caterpillar". His wisdom is reflected in his poems–only a small portion of which are on the devotee aspect (bhakta, poems 64–112). More than half of the poems dwell on the later phase (sthala) in the life of a saint, most are about union with god and of realization (aikya, poems 606–1321). Allama died in Kadalivana near Srishila (Andhra Pradesh), and legend has it that he "became one with the linga".

I saw
The fragrance fleeing
When the bee came,
What a wonder!
I saw
Intellect fleeing
When the heart came.
I saw
The temple fleeing
When God came. —Allama Prabhu, Shiva Prakash (1997), pp. 179–180 The tiger-headed deer,
The deer-headed tiger,
Joined at the waist.
Look, another
Came to chew close by
When the trunk with no head
Grazes dry leaves,
Look, all vanishes, O Guheswara. —Allama Prabhu in bedagu mode, Shiva Prakash (1997), p. 180 If the mountain feels cold,
What will they cover it with?
If the fields are naked,
what will they clothe them with?
If the devotee is wordly,
what will they compare him with?
O! Lord of the caves! —Allama Prabhu, Subramanian (2005), p. 219 Look here,
the legs are two wheels;
the body is a wagon
full of things
Five men drive
the wagon
and one man is not
like another.
Unless you ride it
in full knowledge of its ways
the axle
will break
O Lord of Caves —Allama Prabhu, Ramanujan (1973), p. 149