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The Wonders of Śrī Mastnāth
The Nāth Siddhas in Their Religious Context
In about the twelfth century C.E., a sect called the Nāth Siddhas appeared on the Indian religious scene. The name of this sect tells us much about its adherents. Nāth, which means “lord” or “master,” is a term that is often suffixed to names of the great god Śiva (so, for example, the phallic image of Śiva in his main temple in Varanasi is called Viśvanāth, “Lord of the Universe”). The Nāth Siddhas took Śiva to be the highest god, and claimed to imitate him in much of their religious practice. They furthermore suffixed the term nāth to their own names: upon his initiation, a member of this sect would be given a name ending in -nāth, such as Bīrnāth, Gambhīrnāth, and so on.
The second term in the name of this sect is siddha. Siddha literally means “one who is accomplished or perfected,” “one who has become fully realized.” A siddha was one who, through the practice (sādhana) of a number of techniques for perfecting his body, had realized (siddha) bodily perfection, and had thereby become possessed of supernatural powers (siddhis) and bodily immortality (jīvanmukti: literally “liberation in the body”). The Nāths were not the sole group to take the name of “Siddha” in the medieval Indian religious context; a number of other sects, generally Śaiva, were also called “Siddhas.” Among these may be counted the Maheśvara Siddhas (also known as the Vīraśaivas or Liṅgāyatas), the Rasa Siddhas (the alchemists of medieval India), and the Mahāsiddhas (Buddhist tantric yogins).
In very broad terms, the siddha traditions of medieval India constituted a broad current of religious thought and practice that emphasized the perfectability of the human body as a means to dominating the forces and laws of nature, including life and death. Present in every siddha tradition was a body of techniques for physical transformation called haṭha yoga (the “yoga of violent force”). This system projected upon the gross human body a remarkably intricate physiology of the yogic or subtle body, which was composed of a series of energy centers, networks of channels, and an array of male and female divine forces. It was upon this subtle body that the yogic practitioner, through an elaborate combination of postures, breathing techniques, meditative states, and acoustic devices, came to channel forcibly all of his internalized divine energies, breaths, bodily fluids, and mental states into a single point, at which he realized, once and for all time, bodily perfection and immortality.
No Indian siddha sect has ever compared with the Nāth Siddhas for its use of this system of haṭha yoga. It is, in fact, Gorakhnāth and Matsyendranāth, the legendary founders of this sect, who are credited with having first revealed the secret techniques of haṭha yoga to humanity. Both were and remain the greatest of India’s haṭha yogis, living on from age to age and aeon to aeon in perfected, immortal, ever-rejuvenated bodies. In all that they do, the Nāth Siddhas wear their haṭha yoga “on their sleeves,” in the form of the insignia particular to their sect. These insignia include wide hoop earrings (called mūdrās or darśans), worn through the thick of their ears; a small piece of antelope horn (called a nād) that hangs on a woollen thread upon their chests; and ashes that they smear over their entire bodies. In addition to these, they also pile up heaps of ashes (called dhūnīs) wherever they install themselves to practice their yoga.
When a novice is initiated into a Nāth Siddha order, his ears are bored in order that a subtle channel in his yogic body be opened, without which it would be impossible for him to carry his yogic practice through to its ultimate goal. A short time later, mūdrās are placed in these earholes. It is by virtue of this practice of ear-boring that the Nāth Siddhas have also come to be known as the Kānphaṭa (“Ear-bored”) yogis.
The nād (“sound,” “note”) the Nāth Siddha wears over his heart is both a piece of horn—which, when blown into, sounds a note—and an external mark of the subtle sound heard internally by the yogi in the course of his practice. It is at the level of the heart, precisely, that the yogic nād is said to be reversed: instead of being uttered by the yogi, the sound begins to reverberate of its own accord once the yogi has raised his yogic energy, seed, and breath up to the level of his heart. “Reversing the nād” is also a metaphor for the haṭha yogic process in its most general sense. Through the application of “violent force” haṭha) in his yogic practice, the yogi succeeds in reversing the natural trends of aging, disease, and death, and channels his energy, seed, and breath upward, against the normal flow of bodily processes. In so doing, he rejuvenates himself—growing younger instead of older—and realizes all manner of other powers that flaunt the laws of nature, culminating in bodily immortality.
This concept of reversal is also present in the ashes and dhūnī of the Nāth Siddha. “Ashes to ashes” is the way of the world. In India, nearly every human life ends with cremation, in which the physical body is reduced to ashes. So too, the universe, at the end of a cosmic aeon, is reduced to ashes by Śiva, who incinerates all matter with his wild dance. In the Hindu context of cyclic time, however, the universe is always born anew, out of those same ashes. More than this, the renewed universe is always a better, more purified universe than that which was burnt away through Śiva’s irresistable energy, an energy born of his yogic practice. Śiva is said to smear his own body with the ashes of past creations. The Nāth Siddha, who imitates Śiva in his practice of yoga, wears ashes on his body and piles up his dhūnī before him to symbolize the yogic dissolution of his own gross, physical body. The burning energy born of the practice of haṭha yoga internally incinerates the gross, mortal body, tempers and purifies the subtle yogic body, and ultimately gives rise to the perfected, immortal, and supernaturally powerful body that is the Nāth Siddha’s goal. The ashes of death and destruction are thus emblems of the transformative power of yoga. It is this nearly single-minded adherence to the haṭha yogic system, however, that has historically brought about the censure of the Nāth Siddhas by a number of other Hindu groups.
The Nāth Siddhas are, in present-day India, the sole religious sect to have remained truly faithful to the precepts of the medieval siddha traditions. The Rasa Siddha alchemists have disappeared, the Buddhist Mahāsiddhas have long since left Indian soil to thrive in altered form as the Vajrāyāna Buddhists of Tibet, and the Maheśvara Siddhas or Vīraśaivas have, since their twelfth-century inception, been mainly a devotional sect. Apart from the Nāth Siddhas, most medieval Indian religious movements evolved in three different directions. The first of these was a trend toward devotionalism, which turned around a loving god who offered salvation through grace to his devotees. Leading the faithful in the medieval devotional sects were charismatic leaders called Sants, “saints,” who were at once models of devotion, intercessors between god and man, and at times earthly incarnations of the god himself.
The second major medieval trend in Hinduism was tantra, a mystic body of religious theory and practice which, while it certainly grew out of the earlier siddha traditions, came to diverge widely from them after the tenth century. Briefly stated, tantra retained the goals (immortalization and divinization of the human body) and some of the means (haṭha yoga and meditative practices) of the siddha traditions, but greatly altered their conceptual foundations. Whereas the siddhas emphasized the concrete manipulation of substances (bodily fluids, alchemical preparations, and so on) for the material transformation of the human body (into, for example, a body hard as a diamond) for the concrete domination of the physical world, tantra operated at a higher level of abstraction. Tantric transformations were more acoustic than transmutational, and tantric realization more gnostic than physical. The ultimate tantric goal of “becoming a second Śiva” referred more to the liberation of consciousness than to the immortalization of the body. Tantra (or that aspect of tantra known as Śāktism) was, moreover, devotional in its own way, worshiping Śiva, the absolute, through the intermediary of his divine energy, which was portrayed at once as a goddess, the phenomenal world, the phonemes of the Sanskrit language, womanhood in general, and the subtle body in all its constituent parts.
The medieval Nāth Siddhas, in contrast, left nearly no place for devotionalism in their religious practice. Although they have historically identified and worshiped their founders as incarnations of Śiva himself, this has more to do with “guru-ism,” the adoration of one’s teacher and initiator as god (whence the denominations gurudev, “guru-god” and gurunāth, “lord guru” applied to illustrious Nāth Siddhas), than with devotion to god. They have, moreover, perceived the female sex to be the greatest danger and barrier to success in the practice of haṭha yoga, for which the retention of male semen is the sine qua non.
The third religious current to dominate the medieval Indian scene was Islam, the faith of the peoples who gradually conquered most of the northern part of the subcontinent from the year 1000 when Mahmud of Ghazni entered from the west, down through the rule of the Mughal dynasty, from 1526 to 1788. In the course of nearly a millennium of Islamic presence in India, perhaps no Hindu religious sect has interacted on as profound and sustained a level as have the Nāth Siddhas with exponents of that mystic branch of Islam known as Sufism. Over the centuries, a great number of the religious virtuousi of Sufism, called fakirs (faqīrs), pīrs, or waifs (plural: awliyā’) have come to be identified with various Nāth Siddhas, and vice versa. So, for example, the “Hindu” Matsyendranāth is called Morchā Pīr by the Muslims, while the Muslim Ratan Pīr is known as Ratannāth by the Hindus. Often, it is impossible to extract specifically Hindu or Muslim elements from the syncretist cults of these holy god-men, who could evoke, in the same breath, both the Hindu god Rāma and the Muslim Allah.
In the final analysis, we can say that the Nāth Siddhas were censured by broader elements of Hindu society for three reasons. The first of these was their Islamicizing tendency, their willingness to absorb and adapt to Sufi practices. For an orthodox Hindu, such syncretism was unacceptable. Second, the Nāth Siddha emphasis on a haṭha yoga that had no need for a god or goddess for success (and which thereby was, for all intents and purposes, atheistic) did not sit well with the more mainstream devotional cults of medieval India. For this, the Nāth Siddhas are criticized by Sants from a broad array of traditions, who revile them for their arrogance and materialistic self-sufficiency. Last, the Nāth Siddhas were and remain a kind of throwback to a relatively archaic form of Hindu religious practice. Clearly the heirs to such earlier Śaiva sects as the Pāśupatas (followers of Śiva, the “Lord of Beasts”) and the Kāpālikas (“Skull-Bearers”), the Nāth Siddhas seem not to have changed with the times, as have the majority of the tantric sects. Whereas the latter have refined and reformed their theory and practices to phase out the matter-oriented tendencies of the siddha traditions, the Nāth Siddhas have continued to cultivate their old haṭha yogic practices. For this, they have been branded by their critics as frauds and conjurers, deceivers both of themselves and of their followers.
The Acts of the Illustrious Mastnāth as Nāth Hagiography
In this light, it is striking that the Nāth Siddhas continue to survive if not thrive in much of north India, whereas the great majority of the medieval tantric sects who once “improved” on the Nāth Siddhas’ synthesis have died out. What has been the secret of the Nāth Siddhas’ relative success? Like the fakirs and pīrs who are their Muslim counterparts—and this much to the chagrin of the more elite sectarian followers of medieval and contemporary Hinduism—they have always been the chosen holy men and wonder workers of the Hindu masses. Whenever a village in the Himalayan foothills of Garhwal is threatened by a hailstorm, it is a Nāth Siddha (called a wāli, which at once means “hail-man” in Hindi and “holy man” in Perso-Arabic) who is called upon to deflect the storm through the power of his yoga. And so it is that down the ages, it has been Nāth Siddhas who have healed ailing cows, provided barren women with sons, and brought down the mighty in favor of the poor.
These perceived powers of the Nāth Siddhas have translated, in history and legend, into a great body of accounts that portray their most illustrious holy men as power brokers of sorts. The most common scenario runs as follows: A prince, divested of his kingdom, meets a Nāth Siddha in the forest. The Nāth Siddha helps him to regain his kingdom, in thanks for which the prince takes initiation by that Nāth Siddha, and establishes the Nāth Siddhas as the religious specialists of his royal house.
In at least one case, this kingmaker role is supported by historical documentation. This is the account of the surprising rise of Man Singh, in the year 1804, to the royal throne of Marwar, a kingdom in the western part of the state now called Rajasthan, in western India. Prince Man Singh, by birth the rightful heir to the kingdom of Marwar, has seen his cousin Bhīm Singh kill all of his brothers. Bhīm Singh’s army has lain seige to Mān Singh and his forces, who are camped in the city of Jalore. A Nāth Siddha appears in Jalore, discovers a “hidden” well containing abundant food and water for the beseiged, and then mysteriously predicts that Man Singh’s troubles will soon be at an end. That very night, Bhīm Singh dies by poisoning. Mān Singh takes initiation from the Nāth Siddha, makes him his prime minister, and becomes a great benefactor of the sect.
The name of the Nāth Siddha who intervened in this episode of Rajasthani history was Ayasdevnāth. There is, however, a source that gives this Nāth Siddha another name: this is the hagiographical Śrī Mastnāth Carita (“Acts of the Illustrious Mastnāth”), authored by a certain Śankarnāth in the late nineteenth century. As Śankarnāth’s title indicates, the Nāth Siddha in question is Mastnāth, the “Intoxicated Lord,” whose traditional dates are 1704-1804. Although Mastnāth’s dates would render an intervention in events of 1804 historically possible, the historical documents clearly state that the Nāth Siddha who saved the situation was named Ayasdevnāth. This disagreement between our sources would be troubling were it not for the fact that Śankarnāth’s glorification of Mastnāth (the subtitle of which is “Exposition of the Supernatural Sport of the Illustrious Mastnāth”) has little or no historical pretensions. This is, after all, the biography of a wonder-working Nāth Siddha who, by definition, is immortal and capable of changing bodies at will. Therefore, there can be no contradiction in terms when Śankarnāth says that it was Mastnāth who intervened on Man Singh’s behalf: this was merely Mastnāth inhabiting Ayasdevnāth’s body.
While Śankarnāth does not make the explicit claim that this is what he is doing in his hagiography of Mastnāth, such is clearly the case. So it is that, in the course of his lifetime, Mastnāth is shown to perform miracles universally attributed to Gorakhnāth, the founder of the Nāth Siddhas, and is said to be, in a number of passages, identical to Gorakhnāth himself. It is in this light that we are to read Śankarnāth’s work: this is a compendium of some one thousand years of Nāth Siddha miracles concentrated into the hundred-year lifespan of one of their number (who, in the logic of Nāth Siddha doctrine, did not die when he gave up his material body, but merely entered into another body as part of his yogic sport).
What sort of miracles does Mastnāth perform? As a child, he brings rain to a village suffering from drought, produces a milk pail that never empties, and simultaneously herds cows in the forest while playing with his friends back at home in the village. After he has been initiated, the miracles multiply: he restores the limbs of a woman who is without arms or legs, causes a barren woman to bear sons, becomes the disciple of an illustrious guru before becoming an illustrious guru himself, prophesies future events, and turns a camel bone into gold and watermelon seeds into pearls. There is also a dark side to Mastnāth’s supernatural sport, however. Once, when he has gone to a village to beg alms, the abbot of a nearby monastery advises the villagers close their doors to him. Mastnāth punishes the village, besetting it with poverty, panic, pestilence, and death.
Mastnāth and Shah Alam II
It is Mastnāth’s combination of creative and destructive yogic power, as well as the Nāth Siddhas’ traditional roles as wonder workers and intercessors on the behalf of the poor that are brought to the fore in the seventeenth chapter of Śankarnāth’s hagiography, translated here. This is the chapter entitled “Account of the Miracles [Concerning] Alamshāh.” Here, a mature Mastnāth (the chronology would make him eighty-four years old here) plays a role in nothing less than the collapse of the mighty Mughal empire, in the person of Shāh Alam II.
History tells us that Shāh Alam II was the last emperor of the Mughal dynasty, which had been founded some two hundred fifty years earlier by Bābar. By the end of Shāh Alam’s life, little remained of this once great empire, and the poor emperor found himself buying off both allies and enemies with what little remained of the imperial treasury. His chroniclers tell us that in these sad times he took some solace in the princely vices of sex and indolence. In matters of religion, he practiced the eclectic faith of a number of Mughal emperors after Akbar, a religion that was a combination of Hindu and Islamic doctrines that wholly respected neither faith.
The Mughal empire and Shāh Alam’s time ran out in 1788, in the person of Gulam Qādir, a rogue and adventurer working in the service of a political faction called the Rohillas. Having insinuated himself into the imperial court, he quite suddenly turned against his emperor and inflicted terrible tortures upon his person (eventually blinding him with his own dagger) as a means of extorting the last meager resources of the once fabled empire. Gulam Qādir continued his depradations against the entire imperial family until Shāh Alam’s Maratha allies defeated his army and put him to a slow and terrible death in 1789. Shāh Alam survived his blinding, and was put back on the throne of Delhi in the same year, but only in a figurehead role. In 1803, the British took over Shāh Alam’s so-called Kingdom of Delhi, but continued to bankroll the old monarch until his death in 1806.
Without ever saying so explicitly, Śankarnāth intimates that Mastnāth played some role in the blinding of Shāh Alam II (whom he calls Alamshāh): at the very least, he prophesied Shāh Alam’s blinding before leaving Delhi behind; at most, it was he himself who, through his yogic powers, punished Shāh Alam for the latter’s failure to come and pay homage to him. It is quite likely that Śankarnāth based his compilation of this chapter on popular traditions concerning both the deeds of some Nāth Siddha, perhaps Mastnāth himself, and the events that swept through the court of Shāh Alam in the year 1788. He portrays the emperor as a man who is personally intrigued by the wild yogi who has appeared in the suburbs of his capital city, but as a ruler who is so insulated from the real world by his courtiers that he is unable to carry out his desire actually to see Mastnāth. At one point, Mastnāth appears to condemn Shāh Alam for this, telling a royal servant (prophetically?) that the emperor has been blinded by his obsession with pleasure and sex. Later in his narration, Śankarnāth calls Gulam Qādir “Gulam Kokar,” is rather vague on the details of his blinding of Shāh Alam II, and collapses some fifteen years of British colonial history into a single verse.
It is clear, however, that Śankarnāth is not particularly interested in writing accurate history; his purpose rather is to sing the glories of Mastnāth and of the Nāth Siddhas in general. It is for this reason that the narrative of chapter seventeen appears to be somewhat disjointed. It is in fact divisible into four parts. The chapter opens with Mastnāth coming to Delhi and word of his greatness spreading and reaching the ears of the emperor. Next, the emperor seeks to persuade Mastnāth to take audience with him in his imperial court. To this end, he sends Mastnāth a shawl with which to cover his nakedness, which was prohibited within the Delhi city limits. Mastnāth’s handling of this matter is highly illustrative of Nāth Siddha belief and practice. First, the Nāth Siddha, as a perfected being, need not answer to any worldly law or custom: his nakedness, like his other yogic insignia, is symbolic of his transcendence and freedom. Second, Mastnāth’s incineration of Shāh Alam’s shawl in his dhūnī fire and production of a seemingly infinite number of shawls from the same fire is yet another case in which ashes symbolize the creative power of the Nāth Siddha as a living image of the great god Śiva. Mastnāth’s feat is in fact a favorite element in the repertoire of Indian magicians and conjurers, who have historically impersonated powerful yogis and fakirs in their acts (critics of the Nāth Siddhas have long tended to confuse the two).
Following this, there is a rather abrupt transition to the account of Mastnāth’s disciples “reversing their nāds,” (or “playing their horns backwards”), the symbolism of which we have already discussed. A shadow falls across the sky: this is, according to the Śiva Saṃhitā, a guide to haṭha yoga, a sign of great yogic power. This issues into the final portion of the narrative: in answer to a disciple’s question, Mastnāth prophesies the fall of Shāh Alam. Śankarnāth then has Mastnāth leave Delhi for the city of Cittor in Rajasthan (where he will intervene in the fate of Man Singh in chapter twenty), after which he relates the blinding of Shāh Alam by Gulam Qādir.
Drawing all of these rather disconnected episodes together, and undergirding the entire narrative, is the theme of the Nāth Siddha as a god-man who plays with the entire universe, with the lives of the great and small alike, as he pleases. In both word and deed, Mastnāth, the “Intoxicated Lord,” takes the universe to be his plaything, with its every element (shawls and ashes, mountains and mustard seeds, princes and paupers) interchangeable according to his whim. This is the raw, unalloyed power of the Nāth Siddhas, which have made them the butt of attacks by Hindu elites even as they have remained the objects of awed respect (and sometimes fear) by the masses of village India.
Chapter 17 of Śrī Mastnāth Carit is found in Śrī Mastnāth Carit (Śrī Mastnāth Adbhut Līlā Prakāś of Śrī Saṅkarnāth Yogīśvara (Delhi: Dehati Pustak Bhandar, 1969), pp. 103-112.
Account of the Wonders [Concerning] Alamshāh
Refrain: Mastnāth is the gurudev, there is none as merciful as he; one need only think of him, and a hundred thousand obstacles fade away.
One day the gurunāth thought, “Just this once I’ll take in Delhi’s sights! There’s saints and holy men galore, one is good, the next one more. That’s where the lovely Yamunā flows, the Yamunā whose fair waters are pure and holy, whose praises are sung in the Vedas and Purāṇas, whose contact drives away all sin. Emotion, devotion, and virtue, I’ll come to know them all—but in a sultan’s town, how will things fall? I’ll go and take a look around, and put on a wondrous show for all to see! I’ll protect the faithful and remove the thorns that trouble their way. Highly virtuous are the motives of a saint; what’s good for him is good for all.”
Refrain: Having resolved this in his mind, he gathered his disciples around him. Every one of them shared his desire, and the gurudev rejoiced.
Accompanied by his many disciples, the Nāth made his way toward Delhi. Slowly they advanced until they came to the place called “Five Wells,” where they set up camp. Once he saw that all were seated in their proper yogic postures, the venerable gurunāth began to practice his yoga. The news spread throughout all Delhi city that a great jewel among siddhas had come. “He’s come together with a host of disciples, each one greater in wisdom than the last. Some are smeared with ashes, some live on milk alone, some are silent, some eat only fruit. Some have shed all worldly ties, some have broken all attachments, some act like fools, some are clever sophists. They call themselves Nāths, but they look like yogis; their wondrous arts cannot be pondered.”
Refrain: Then, hearing he had settled near the city, the people rejoiced in their hearts. By gaining a vision of the gurunāth, their lives would be fulfilled.
Men and women thronged to the Five Wells, swelling to a great crowd, bearing with them gifts of betel nut, flowers, coconuts and bhel fruits, and performing every kind of service. Gaining a vision of him, the people were gladdened, joy welling up in every heart. Like hands joined in prayer, prosperity and success were joined together. Coming before him, they stood and washed his feet. The words they spoke were blissful, and rang with joy, “We are the servants of the Nāth’s feet!” The news at last reached Alam Shāh himself that a yogi named Mastnāth had come. “He’s a mighty one, a wild fakir, a carefree holy man, and a pīr. I’ll go and gain a vision of him, once and for all!” and hope ran high in the emperor’s heart.
Refrain: The emperor turned the matter over in his mind. One who sees and touches a saint comes to know joy itself.
The sultan came into his throne room, a diadem upon his head. He quickly summoned his Muslim advisors, and the judges and scholars came, one and all. The prince gave a speech on the matter, and the court was filled with great wonder. “Word has reached us that there’s a fakir, a holy man, nearby. Seated in yogic posture at the Five Wells, in the company of his many expert disciples, is a world famous yogi, a siddha, a mind-reader! I’ve heard reports of the people’s love for him, and now I want to see him too. Speak! Here’s your chance to give expert advice. You all know the ins and outs of government!”
Refrain: Then an advisor spoke these words: “Hear, noble prince! A detailed report on this ascetic has come to my attention. I now describe him to you.”
“Word of mouth from the city has reached me, word that overflows with praise. His body is totally covered with ashes, crowned with a crest of yogi’s locks! Great thick earrings bedeck his ears, and a piece of antelope horn, strung upon a woolen thread, shines at his throat. He sits in yogic posture, his dhūnī burning before him. They say he’s a naked sage, a pīr, a fakir. He doesn’t have a stitch on him: a yogi with nothing on is always in his element. He has no modesty or shame—that’s the Hindu path he follows night and day. One ought not look upon a naked man. Think this over, Lord, then make up your mind. Considering what tradition, faith, and the Qur’ān say, here’s my advice, don’t ever go his way!”
Refrain: “Now that you’ve been duly informed, and all have had their say, cause your will to be known to us: your wish is our command!”
When the emperor had heard their counsel, he quickly considered, and then spoke in this wise: “What this naked yogi needs is a good double shawl, so send one please! Just some token to honor his dhūnī, give him that but nothing more. Holy men and saints do not like material goods; food and clothing are the two things they ever beg for.” Receiving his orders, the king’s man went off and made his way to Mastnāth. Holding the gift of the shawl before him, he joined his hands together and placed it between his feet. “The wise and sage king Alamshāh has sent me here before you. O gurunāth! Accept this gift and give your blessing!”
Refrain: In his mind, Mastnāth weighed the man’s words. “A shawl, a double shawl, what use are they to me, I who am naked and unfettered?”
The gurunāth then took the double shawl, and with his own hand tossed it into his dhūnī fire. The king’s man, seeing it had been reduced to ashes in the fire, took fright. “Now that I’ve fulfilled my mission, I must depart at once. Now I have to go away and make a full report!” “Hear, Your Majesty, O noble sire, he burned that double shawl right up! He’s a carefree holy man, a venerable fakir, with no use for possessions.” When the entire affair had been recounted truthfully to him, the emperor became incensed. “How can a yogi who has no illusions burn up a double shawl that’s offered him?” Then the prince turned the matter over in his mind. “Just this once, I’ll witness his miraculous powers.”
Refrain: “I’ll go see this siddha, this holy man, and find out what he’s famous for. And if he doesn’t prove his powers to me, I’ll have him tied up on the spot!”
The king called to one of his men, and told him in detail what he had to do. “Go to this Mastnāth fellow. Have him give you my double shawl and bring it back to me.” The servant came before the yogi, and spoke these words: “Long life to you, O wise and venerable one! O gurunāth, give me that double shawl, and take another in its place. That last shawl wasn’t worth very much, now I’ll give you an expensive one.” Hearing his words, the Nāth considered, “I see what the emperor’s driving at. He’s looking to see one of my miracles today, so I’ll give him a real one this time around. All anybody asks for is miracles, they want you to be Brahmā, Viṣṇu, and Maheś.”
Refrain: Mastnāth is the bearer of the three worlds, the giver and remover of sorrow; whatever he wishes to do he does, and there is no one who can stop him.
Out of his dhūnī the gurunāth suddenly pulled a great heap of double shawls. He threw them down before the servant saying, “Take the one that’s yours!” Seeing this, the servant became ashamed, his heart filled with remorse. “Now that I’ve seen this siddha’s wondrous act, I’d give up my right arm for him! Whose friend is a yogi when he plays? It takes so little to please him. He doesn’t give a thought to what’s high or what’s low. Whatever he wants to do, he just does it.” Joining his hands, he bowed at his feet, “O guru, please be merciful! You, O Nāth, are my lord and master, and I your servant and slave.”
Refrain: You are Lord Gorakṣanāth, powerful and able. Your glory, greatness, revelation, and splendor, how can they be described?
When the servant had pronounced on his greatness, the wise Nāth then spoke. “I teach both kinds of revelation. I say Gorakṣa and I are yogis. The world’s four cornerstones are my playground; when you’re carefree you want for nothing. From a pauper to a king, from a king to a pauper, I’ve never had a care for the difference between the two. Alamshāh is a man gone blind. Pleasure and sex have been his calling in life. What reason have I to go to him? Go now, and tell him he is to come to me. For his thoughtlessness and carelessness he must suffer an unhappy fate; that which he has sown he now must reap. Ruination and failing will follow in his path.”
Refrain: Thinking “what he says is true,” the king’s man followed his command. He took the double shawl in his hand, and went to the imperial court.
Holding the double shawl before him as he went, he joined his hands together and entreated the emperor, “Hear my words, O honored one! The yogi performed a great miracle! I asked him for one double shawl, and right there the mad yogi gleefully pulled a pile of shawls, each one a different color, from out of his dhūnī! Putting them down, he gave them to me, all of those finely woven shawls. ‘Take from these the one that’s yours, and send it back to the emperor’!” Many agreed that this was a wondrous thing, and recounted the whole affair from beginning to end. “We’ve never seen or heard the likes, a yogi who performs such miracles.”
Refrain: The conjurations of this wild man are a curious thing, hear, hear,
O Alamshāh! You can go to every last siddha there is, but you’ll find none as imponderable as he.
Then the prince thought the matter over: “It’s true what my chief has told me. He’s a master, a holy man, a carefree saint, one who holds his desires in check. The word is spreading that there isn’t another like Mastnāth.” Then the Nāth called all his disciples together, and spoke words that all could understand. “Reverse your nāds, yogis! To do it but once would be a mighty act. Then say such-and-such a thing will happen, and both Rāma and Allah will go and do it.” Taking their guru’s words to heart, all immediately reversed their nāds. Rāma and Allah both went and did their bidding, for whatever a yogi says, is.
Refrain: Suddenly what they said came to pass, when all set their minds to it at once. They raised a great and mighty roar, and a shadow fell across the sky!
There was one wise disciple who did nothing at all, an obedient one named Kīratnāth. He didn’t sound his nād at all, for he had something on his mind. A disciple came and said, “Kīrat didn’t sound his nād.” The accomplished guru called out at once, and his disciple came and bowed his head. The Nāth said, “Listen, you who have no disciples of your own, why didn’t you sound your horn? Everyone followed my order but you; why are you being obstinate? What was your reason for doing this today? Tell me that, thoughtful one!” Coming before him with joined hands, the disciple told him why.
Refrain: “O gurunāth, exceedingly merciful, listen to what I have to say to you. I have a doubt that’s nagging me, so please relieve me of it.”
“Both the Hindu and Muslim are religions that the wise of this world follow. When these have both become minor faiths, who will rule the Kingdom of Delhi? It is this doubt that troubles my mind, and that is why I did not sound my horn. So by your grace do tell me please, and erase this doubt from my mind today.” The gurunāth’s voice was soft when he spoke, “Listen my child, this is something you do not know. The Kingdom of Delhi will have a new master when on the third day of the month a terrible calamity strikes. Men of every caste will be thrown together, with all creaturely distinctions broken down. Both religions will be ordered about, and the king and all his subjects will be filled with fear.”
Refrain: Some time passed before this happened to Delhi and its king. I [Śankarnāth] am without doubt when today I tell you this is so.
Know that the guru’s word is true. Hearing it, surrender all worldly knowledge up to him. Whenever a gurunāth has given his word, that has fully come to pass, for the welfare of all. He is an accomplished knower of the three worlds, an ocean of mercy, a protector. The Nāth then made up his mind: “It is no longer fitting that I remain here.”
He then took himself to another place—I can no longer recall what day it was. The yogi gradually made his way until he came to Cittor, where he stopped to rest. Because he was a yogi, he remained forever free, settling in a forest that held no fear for him. As many souls and their bodily husks as there were, moving and unmoving in that grove, all were in his power, all under his command.
Refrain: Acknowledge the gurudev Mastnāth to be Gorakṣa himself, whose sport in this world is a mine of happiness and bliss!
Hear, O nobles in the service of the king, how the emperor came to be blinded! Gulam Kokar was a servant who was very dear to him. Staying in Delhi night and day, the promise of great fortune made him turn against the emperor. He overthrew the emperor, he took away his rule! Then, seizing the moment, he gave the order, and commanded the emperor be taken. With a dagger he put out his eyes, and sending the others to prison, he spread terror! The white man’s army put down the rebellion, and the English made the Kingdom of Delhi their own. This story is known the world over, and has been talked about in every place.
Refrain: A mountain was made from a grain of mustard, and a grain of mustard became a mountain. This is but the gurunāth’s sport, that none is able to fathom.
Within every body the pure Nāth dwells, an ocean of mercy to drown all sorrow. There are a few saints and wise ones capable of knowing this, but the foolish cannot recognize it. Desire and passion are snares of sorrow, into which the unknowing fall time and again. The yogi remains ever absorbed in yoga, caring nothing for either wealth or women. Illusion and women when joined together can break a yogi’s concentration. The wise man always remains aloof and fearless, and will have no doings with either. Those whose vision is exalted as theirs will brook no debate or discussion.
Refrain: The connoisseur tests the diamond, the goldsmith’s nature is gold; the test of a saint is the saint none other than himself, who raises himself above this world!