Who was this Ashtavakra, this uncompromising poet and saint?

Since Ashtavakra's whole point is that individual identity is an illusion, it is perfect irony that the only certain thing we can say about him is that he was not Ashtavakra. He was an anonymous master who adopted Ashtavakra's character as he found it represented in a number of tales in classical Indian literature, and used it as a suitably faceless mask through which to deliver his gospel of self-effacement.

The best known tale, in the Mahabharata, explains how he got his name, which means 'eight twists'. When still in his mother's womb, Ashtavakra overheard his father Kahoda reciting the Vedas. Though still an unborn he already knew the scriptures, and hearing his father's mistakes, he called out to correct him. Kahoda was insulted and cursed him, and in due course he was born with deformed limbs.

Some years later, at the court of Janaka, Kahoda engaged in a debate with the great scholar Bandin, son of King Varuna. He was defeated, and Bandin had him drowned.

When Ashtavakra was twelve he discovered what had happened. He went at once to Janaka's court where he beat Bandin in a debate. Bandin then explained that his father had not been drowned, but had been banished to the bottom of the sea to serve King Varuna. He released Kahoda, who wished at once to lift the curse from his son. He told Ashtavakra to bathe in the river Samanga. When he came out of the water, his body was straight.

There is another story about him in the Vishnu Purana. As Ashtavakra was performing penances under water, celestial nymphs gathered and sang for him. He was so delighted, he gave them a boon: they would all marry Krishna. But when he came out of the water, the nymphs saw his deformities and made fun of him. Ashtavakra added a curse to the boon: after their marriage they would all fall into the hands of robbers. And so it happened. They all married Krishna, but after his death, despite the efforts of Arjuna, they were all carried off by robbers.

The moral of both stories is, of course, that even the ugliest form is filled with God's radiance. The body is nothing, the Self is everything. There may be, as well, some notion of the sacrificial value of deformity, of the kind we find in Saint Augustine when he remarks of the breaking of Christ's body on the cross 'his deformity forms you.'

So the Ashtavakra Gita was written by an unknown master who took his inspiration from the contest between Ashtavakra and Bandin, which Ashtavakra wins by demonstrating the absolute oneness of God (brahmadavaitam).

Though he casts his verses as a debate, there is, as I have said, no real dialogue. Only one voice is heard, speaking through the assumed character and with the borrowed yet potent authority and special facelessness of Ashtavakra. And it is entirely appropriate that the real master of the Gita remain forever unknown since, as he has Ashtavakra say of himself, for what he has become there is no name.

We not only know next to nothing about him, we cannot even be sure when he lived. Sanskrit was so static, especially after Panini's account of it became prescriptive, a little before Christ, that its literature is hard to date on linguistic evidence alone. Since we have only the slimmest literary, historical, or philosophical evidence besides, it is very hard to date the Ashtavakra Gita with any accuracy.

Indian editors usually argue, with some sentimentality, that it was written in the same age as or just before the Bhagavad Gita, which they date to the fifth of fourth century B.C.E., but they generally agree that the Ashtavakra Gita comes a good deal later still. Without rehearsing the arguments, we may safely guess that it was written either in the eighth century by a follower of Shankara, or in the fourteenth century during a resurgence of Shankara's teaching. As a distillation of monastic Vedanta, it certainly has all the marks of Shankara's purification of ancient Shaivism.

Ashtavakra ends his Gita with a litany of self-dismissive questions, all of them utterly rhetorical.

What is good or evil? Life or death? Freedom or bondage? Illusion or the world? Creation or dissolution? The Self or the not-Self?

The Sanskrit literally asks 'where?' rather than 'what?'

Where is the little soul, or God Himself?

Within the ever-fulfilled and ubiquitous Self there is no place for these or any distinctions.

There is no place even for spiritual enquiry. Who is the seeker? Ashtavakra asks. What has he found? What is seeking and the end of seeking? These final questions dissolve even the voice which asks them. Who is the disciple, and who the master? With this last gesture of self-erasure, the nameless master is finally free to declare his real identity, which he shares unconditionally with all beings.

For I have no bounds.

I am Shiva.

Nothing arises in me,
In whom nothing is single,
Nothing is double.

Nothing is,
Nothing is not.

What more is there to say?

Some years ago, when we first settled in our ashram in Florida, we used to go out ridingす in the very early morning. My teacher always insisted that we take with us a much-thumbed, broken-backed but well-loved copy of the Ashtavakra Gita. We would saddle our horses before dawn and ride out along the banks of the Sebastian River. I remember the frost glazing the water, the ghostly breath of the horses, and on the western horizon the thin crescent of a Shiva moon. Once, looking back when the horses shied, I saw a panther standing in our tracks, silent and unafraid, smelling our voices.

Just before the sun came up we would dismount and, gathering frosted palm fans and handfuls of oak duff, make a fire. And as the sun rose above the bright water we read aloud from the Gita.

It is easy.

God made all things.
There is only God.

When you know this
Desire melts away.

Clinging to nothing,
You become still. . . .

Thomas Byrom
Kashi Foundation

July 1989