When God is a Customer: Telugu Courtesan Songs by Ksetrayya and Others.

• Author: Haberman, David L.

When God is a Customer: what a title! These are words that challenge and expand our understanding of both poetic art and devotional culture within the greater world of Hindu India. Scholars of South Asian literature and devotional culture have been aware for some time that the expressed range of possible emotional attitudes toward God has been great. The Natya Sastra of Bharata enumerated eight classical moods or rasas that became identified as the evocative basis of artistic creations. Later theologians, such as Rupa Gosvamin in his Bhaktirasamrtasindhu, developed the rasa-theory to fit the context of bhakti. Five primary emotions were recognized as being important to the development of bhakti. These were: santa, the peaceful emotion that resulted from the realization of the divine as the awesome, absolute reality; dasya, an emotional relationship wherein the worshiper assumed the role of a servant before God as a powerful master; sakhya, wherein the worshiper related to God as a friend; vatsalya, where the worshiper treated God with the affection of a parent for a child; and finally srngara, a passionately charged relationship wherein God became the worshiper's erotic lover. The last of these was often declared to be the most powerful. Abundant variety, however, does not end here. Within the srngara rasa itself can be found further shades of emotional possibilities. The lover might assume the passive role of waiting in the love bower for the divine beloved to come. Some exemplary models of srngara bhakti, however, have displayed much more aggression in their pursuit of the beloved. For example, the tamasika gopis of the Bhagavata Purana, who impatiently demanded that Krsna come to them, were identified as being more effective models for bhakti by the Braj theologians than the sattvika gopis, who politely requested Krsna to appear.

The Telegu poems now made available to English readers through the superb translations contained within this volume, however, give expression to an even more radical posture of srngara rasa, and certainly merit inclusion in our understanding of possible srngara approaches to God. In these poems, which span the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, the worshiper takes on the voice of a courtesan. Far from waiting passively for a God who has all the power, the courtesan takes charge of the relationship...