Mencius Book

AK Ramanujan takes the prose of four medieval Virasaiva saints and translates it into rich haunting modern poetry. Basavanna speaks often of isolation and despair:

Don't make me hear all day
'Whose man, whose man, whose man is this?'
Let me hear, 'This man is mine, mine,
this man is mine.'

Devara Dasimayya was apparently the best missionary. He talks a lot about power and fire:

Till fire joins wind
it cannot take a step.

Do men know
it's like that
with knowing and doing?

Mahadeviyakka wandered nude and love-lorn for Siva. She talks to women and mango trees and cuckoo birds:

If He says
He has to go away
to fight battles at the front
I understand and can be quiet.

But how can I bear it
when He is here in my hands
right here in my heart
and will not take me?

O mind, O memory of pasts,
if you will not help me get to Him
how can I ever bear it?

Allama Prabhu was the most enlightened. His metaphors are academic but still shake the roots:

I saw:
heart conceive,
hand grow big with child;
ear drink up the smell
of camphor, nose eat up
the dazzle of pearls;
hungry eyes devour
diamonds.
In a blue sapphire
I saw the three worlds
hiding,
O Lord of Caves.


While the little I've seen of Ramanujan's own poetry was good but not particularly so, he has honored himself with these translations.

The intro and especially McCormack's appendix are laughably dated - not that I know enough about Lingayat culture to know about new research, but somehow the tone exudes the 1970s.