Karaikkal Ammaiyar: The Woman Who Asked to Be Made Terrible

Her response to her husband's prostration is the decisive act of her life.

She accepted his account. And then she said, in substance:

If this body has now no use as a wife, take it away. I do not want it. Give me the form of a pey, so that nobody wants me and I am free of it.

Pey. The word means a ghoul, a demoness, a corpse eating spirit of the cremation ground.

What she asked for:

• The flesh to go
• To be left as bone, with veins and dry sinew
• Wild hair
• Sunken eyes
• Protruding teeth
• The form of the beings who attend Shiva's dance in the burning ground

And it was given.

Why she asked. The tradition gives the reason directly: she did not want the body that had made her an object of somebody else's decision.

Her beauty had been the thing that made her a wife, and the loss of the marriage had made it useless. So she asked for it to be removed entirely, and for the form that nobody would want.

How to read this. It is genuinely difficult and a guide should not flatten it.

What can be said:

• A woman whose husband left her asked to be made physically repulsive, and it was granted, and the tradition treats this as her liberation
• The ganas, the attendants of Shiva at the cremation ground, are not evil in the tradition. They are his company
• She did not become a monster in the tradition's terms. She joined the household
• The request is a refusal of the terms on which women were valued, made by taking the valuation away entirely

What should be handled carefully:

• This is not a model, and no tradition presents it as one
• A woman whose marriage ends does not owe the world her disfigurement
• Reading the story as approving of the destruction of a woman's body would be a serious misreading, and the tradition itself reads it as her choosing rather than being punished

A note that has to be made. Acid attacks and disfigurement of women are a real crime in India and elsewhere, overwhelmingly committed against women who have refused somebody.

There is no connection between that and this story, and no reading of Karaikkal Ammaiyar supports it. She asked, for herself, and what she was asking to be free of was other people's evaluation of her.

If you or somebody you know is facing threats of that kind, that is a police matter and there are specific legal provisions and support services. The women's helpline is 181 in India, and 112 is the emergency number.

What she did next:

• She went to Kailasa
• The tradition says she walked there, and that when she reached the mountain she would not put her feet on it
• So she went up on her head
• Shiva saw her coming and said: Ammaiye

Mother.

And that is why she is Ammaiyar, and not by any other title.

What she asked for then. Shiva asked what she wanted, and she made three requests:

• Undying love for him
• That she should not be born again
• And that if she must be born, she should never forget him

And a fourth: that she should be at his feet, singing, while he dances.

He told her to go to Thiruvalangadu, where he dances, and to sing there.

And she did, and that is where she is.

What she wrote. Four works, all in book eleven of the Tirumurai.

• Arputha Thiruvandhadhi, the wondrous sacred antadi, 101 verses
• Thiru Irattai Manimalai, twenty verses
• Two Thiruvalangattu Mootha Thirupathigams, the older decads on Thiruvalangadu, of eleven verses each

The antadi form. The same chain form described in the Poigai Alvar entry, in which the last word of each verse begins the next.

She is among the earliest users of it in Tamil.

What the verses are about:

• Shiva's dance in the cremation ground
• The ganas and the peys, the attendants, among whom she now is
• The burning ground itself, described in detail
• Her own state
• The Lord's form: the ash, the snake, the crescent, the matted hair, the fire in the hand

The cremation ground verses. These are what she is known for, and they are unlike anything else in the Tamil canon.

She describes the burning ground with complete specificity: the fires, the bones, the jackals, the vultures, the demonesses with their hair, the corpses, the flesh, the smell.

And in the middle of that, Shiva dancing.

Why she can write it. Because she is there. She asked to be one of the beings in that place and she is describing where she lives.

The other poets describe the cremation ground from outside as an image of dispassion. She describes it from inside as her address.

The famous verse. Her most quoted lines, from the Thiruvalangadu decads, describe a demoness in the burning ground with dried breasts, swollen veins, sunken eyes, red hair standing on end, and protruding teeth, sitting in the middle of the fires and the noise.

And then says that it is there, among them, that he dances.

The self portrait. That demoness is herself. The verse is a description of the poet.

That is one of the most remarkable moves in Indian devotional poetry: a woman writing a physical self description of a body she asked to be given, in a landscape she asked to be placed in, in order to watch a dance.

What she is not doing. Complaining, or asking for anything back.

There is nothing in the verses about her husband, her marriage, or what she lost. The entire subject is the dance and the place where it happens.

Her place in Tamil literature:

• Among the earliest named women poets in Tamil after the Sangam poets
• The Sangam corpus contains many women poets including Avvaiyar, Nachchellaiyar and others, so she is not the first, but she is the earliest in the bhakti period
• Her work is in the Tirumurai, so it is scripture
• Her verses are recited

How she is depicted. This is worth knowing before you see her.

Her images show her exactly as she described herself: emaciated to the bone, with visible ribs, dried breasts, wild hair, protruding teeth, seated, holding cymbals, singing.

The Chola bronzes of Karaikkal Ammaiyar are among the great works of Indian sculpture, and there are examples in museums.

She is shown at the feet of Nataraja in many Nataraja compositions, seated, playing the cymbals, which is what she asked for.

Seeing her image. It is confronting the first time, and it is meant to be.

What you are looking at is a woman who asked to be made to look like that so that nobody would want her, and who is depicted in that form, in bronze, at the feet of a dancing god, playing time.

Since she is one of very few, the general position deserves setting out honestly.

The numbers:

• Of the twelve Alvars, one is a woman: Andal
• Of the sixty three Nayanars, three are women: Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Mangayarkkarasiyar and Isaignaniyar
• Isaignaniyar is Sundarar's mother, and is in the list as a mother rather than for her own compositions
• So of seventy five canonical Tamil bhakti saints, four are women, and two of those left substantial written work

That is the honest number and it should not be presented as anything else.

What the two who wrote produced:

• Andal: 173 verses, the Thiruppavai recited across Tamil Nadu every Margazhi, and the position of a goddess with her own temples
• Karaikkal Ammaiyar: around 143 verses, in the Tirumurai, and images in bronze at the feet of Nataraja

What their subjects were. This is worth noticing, because they are not the same.

Andal wrote about wanting. Desire, marriage, the body, the refusal to accept a human husband, and eventually union.

Karaikkal Ammaiyar wrote about the loss of the body, the cremation ground, and watching from the position of a spectator at the feet.

They are the two available positions for a woman in that literature: the bride and the one who has renounced being a bride, and both are taken to their limit.

The wider picture across India. Worth listing since this series will meet them.

• Akka Mahadevi in Kannada, twelfth century, who left her marriage and went naked, covered by her hair
• Lal Ded in Kashmir, fourteenth century, who did the same
• Mirabai in Rajasthan
• Janabai, Muktabai, Bahinabai and Kanhopatra in Marathi
• Avvaiyar in Tamil
• Gangasati in Gujarati
• Sahjo Bai and Daya Bai in the north
• Ramprasad's tradition produced women singers
• Andal and Karaikkal Ammaiyar here

The recurring pattern. It is striking and uncomfortable.

A very large proportion of India's named women saints reached their position by leaving or refusing a marriage, and the tradition's records of them are largely records of that refusal and its cost.

Akka Mahadevi left. Lal Ded left. Mirabai left. Karaikkal Ammaiyar was left and then asked for her body to be taken. Andal refused to marry a human being at all.

What that indicates. That for a woman in those societies, the household was not compatible with the life these women wanted, and the only route to it was out.

That is a fact about the societies, not about devotion, and the tradition's own records are the evidence for it.

What is also true:

• The overwhelming majority of devotional practice in India, then and now, has been carried by women in households, without any of it being written down
• The vrats, the daily lamps, the kolams, the songs at weddings and births and deaths, the teaching of children, the fasts, the temple visits
• None of that produces a named saint, and all of it is the actual substance of the tradition's continuity

The honest summary. The canons name few women. The practice was and is carried substantially by women. Those two facts sit together and neither cancels the other.

And the four who are named. They are named prominently.

Andal is a goddess with temples. Karaikkal Ammaiyar is in bronze at Nataraja's feet. Mangayarkkarasiyar is in the procession at Mylapore every Panguni. Isaignaniyar is there too.

The tradition did not include them grudgingly. Having included them, it gave them full standing.

Thiruvalangadu is where she was sent and where she is, and the place is worth describing.

Where it is:

• In Tiruvallur district, Tamil Nadu, around 60 kilometres west of Chennai
• The Vadaranyeswarar temple
• A Paadal Petra Sthalam
• The name means the banyan forest, from alam, banyan

What the dance there is. Thiruvalangadu is one of the Pancha Sabhai, the five halls of Shiva's dance.

The five halls:

• Chidambaram, the Kanaka Sabhai, the golden hall, where the Ananda Tandava is danced
• Madurai, the Rajata Sabhai, the silver hall
• Thiruvalangadu, the Ratna Sabhai, the hall of gems
• Thirunelveli, the Tamra Sabhai, the copper hall
• Kutralam, the Chitra Sabhai, the hall of pictures

The dance at Thiruvalangadu is the Urdhva Tandava, the dance with the leg raised straight up.

The story of it. Worth telling.

• Kali was established at Thiruvalangadu, in the cremation ground
• Shiva came, and there was a contest between them as to who could dance better
• Every posture Shiva did, Kali matched
• Then Shiva performed the Urdhva Tandava, raising one leg vertically above his head
• Kali could have matched it, and did not, because to do so would have been immodest
• So Shiva won

How to read that. The tradition tells it in different ways and it is worth noting the difficulty.

The standard telling has Kali decline out of modesty. Some readings treat this as the tradition explaining a Shaiva takeover of an older goddess site, which is a plausible historical reading given how many Shiva temples sit on older Devi sites.

And the story is not entirely comfortable, since it has a goddess lose a contest by a rule that applies only to her.

The tradition holds both the contest and Kali's continuing presence at the site, and at Thiruvalangadu she has her own shrine.

Karaikkal Ammaiyar there:

• She is at the feet, as she asked
• Her shrine is at the temple
• Her Guru Puja is observed there
• Images of her are at the site

The Chola bronzes. Worth seeking out.

The Thiruvalangadu hoard, discovered in the early twentieth century, produced one of the greatest Chola Nataraja bronzes, now in the Government Museum, Chennai.

Bronzes of Karaikkal Ammaiyar are in the Government Museum Chennai, the Thanjavur Art Gallery and in international collections.

If you want to see her, and the temple visit is difficult, the museums are the way, and Chola bronze galleries are among the best things in Indian museums.

Visiting:

• Thiruvalangadu, Tiruvallur district, around 60 kilometres from Chennai, reachable as a day trip
• Combine with Thirutthani, the Murugan hill temple, which is nearby
• Mylapore in Chennai for the Arupathimoovar procession in Panguni, where she is carried
• Karaikkal, in Puducherry, her birthplace, on the coast, which has her temple and where the Mangani Thiruvizha, the mango festival, is held

The Mangani festival at Karaikkal. It commemorates the mangoes, and it is her principal festival at her birthplace.

So a story about a woman giving a piece of fruit to a hungry stranger, and what followed from it, is observed annually in the town where it happened, with mangoes.

One. She fed the stranger first.

The whole story begins because a hungry devotee came to the door and she gave him the mango her husband had sent home.

That is the only ordinary act in the biography and it is the one that caused everything else.

The practical version: feed people. The tradition's most consistent instruction across every entry in this series is that food given is the reliable devotional act, and it requires no qualification of any kind.

Two. She did not ask for the marriage back.

Nothing in her verses is about her husband. She had been left, and she did not spend the rest of her life on it.

Three. She asked for the position at the feet.

When offered anything, she asked to be at the feet, singing, while he danced. Not to be beautiful, not to be honoured, not for the marriage.

To be a spectator, close, with cymbals.

Four. The three requests.

Undying love, no rebirth, and if there must be birth then no forgetting.

Those are worth sitting with as a form of prayer, and they ask for nothing material at all.

Practice

Reading her:

• The Arputha Thiruvandhadhi, 101 verses, in Tirumurai book eleven
• Available in Tamil with translation
• Her Thiruvalangadu decads for the cremation ground verses
• Translations into English exist, including in anthologies of Tamil bhakti poetry

Seeing her:

• The Chola bronzes at the Government Museum Chennai and the Thanjavur Art Gallery
• At the feet of Nataraja in many Nataraja groups
• Her shrine at Thiruvalangadu
• The Arupathimoovar at Mylapore in Panguni

Namah Shivaya:

• As throughout this batch

Feeding:

• The annadanam tradition at temples
• Feeding anybody who comes, which is what she did
• Most Tamil temples run food distribution and welcome help

A closing thought. A woman gave away a piece of fruit to somebody hungry, and produced another when her husband asked, and he worked out that she was not what he had thought and left the country without telling her.

Years later she found him with a second family, and he knelt in the street in front of her.

She accepted that and then asked for her body to be taken away, since it had been the thing that made her somebody's wife and was no longer useful for anything.

She was made into a skeleton with wild hair. She walked to a mountain on her head so as not to tread on it. And she was called mother.

Then she asked to sit at the feet and play the cymbals while the dance went on, and was sent to a banyan forest sixty kilometres from what is now Chennai, and she is there, in bronze, at the feet, with the cymbals, exactly as asked.